note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the lovely original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) the french impressionists ( - ) by camille mauclair author of _l'art en silence_, _les mères sociales_, etc. translated from the french text of camille mauclair, by p. g. konody london: duckworth & co. new york: e. p. dutton & co. turnbull and spears, printers, edinburgh [illustration: renoir at the piano] to auguste brÉal to the artist and to the friend as a mark of grateful affection c.m. author's note it should be stated here that, with the exception of one reproduction after the neo-impressionist van rysselberghe, the other forty-nine engravings illustrating this volume i owe to the courtesy of m. durand-ruel, from the first the friend of the impressionist painters, and later the most important collector of their works, a friend who has been good enough to place at our disposal the photographs from which our illustrations have been reproduced. chosen from a considerable collection which has been formed for thirty years past, these photographs, none of which are for sale, form a veritable and unique museum of documents on impressionist art, which is made even more valuable through the dispersal of the principal masterpieces of this art among the private collections of europe and america. we render our thanks to m. durand-ruel no less in the name of the public interested in art, than in our own. contents author's note i. the precursors of impressionism--the beginning of this movement, the origin of its name ii. the theory of the impressionists--the division of tones, complementary colours, the study of atmosphere--the ideas of the impressionists on subject-pictures, on the beauty of character, on modernity, and on style iii. edouard manet: his work, his influence iv. edgar degas: his work, his influence v. claude monet: his work, his influence vi. auguste renoir: his work, his influence vii. pissarro, sisley, caillebotte, cÉzanne, berthe morisot, mary cassatt; the secondary artists of impressionism--jongkind, boudin viii. the modern illustrators connected with impressionism: raffaËlli, toulouse-lautrec, forain, chÉret, etc. ix. neo-impressionism: gauguin, denis, thÉo van rysselberghe--the theory of pointillism--seurat, signac and the theories of scientific chromatism--faults and qualities of the impressionist movement, what we owe to it, its place in the history of the french school--some words on its influence abroad list of illustrations renoir. at the piano (frontispiece) manet. rest manet. in the square manet. young man in costume of majo manet. the reader degas. the dancer at the photographer's degas. carriages at the races degas. the greek dance--pastel degas. waiting claude monet. the pines claude monet. church at vernon renoir. portrait of madame maitre manet. the dead toreador manet. olympia manet. the woman with the parrot manet. the bar at the folies bergère manet. déjeuner manet. portrait of madame m. l. manet. the hothouse degas. the beggar woman degas. the lesson in the foyer degas. the dancing lesson--pastel degas. the dancers degas. horses in the meadows claude monet. an interior after dinner claude monet. the harbour, honfleur claude monet. the church at varengeville claude monet. poplars on the epte in autumn claude monet. the bridge at argenteuil renoir. déjeuner renoir. in the box renoir. young girl promenading renoir. woman's bust renoir. young woman in empire costume renoir. on the terrace pissarro. rue de l'epicerie, rouen pissarro. boulevard montmartre pissarro. the boildieaux bridge at rouen pissarro. the avenue de l'opéra sisley. snow effect sisley. bougival, at the water's edge sisley. bridge at moret cÉzanne. dessert berthe morisot. melancholy berthe morisot. young woman seated mary cassatt. getting up baby mary cassatt. women and child jongkind. in holland jongkind. view of the hague thÉo van rysselberghe. portraits of madame van rysselberghe and her daughter note to list of illustrations the illustrations contained in this volume have been taken from different epochs of the impressionist movement. they will give but a feeble idea of the extreme abundance of its production. banished from the salons, exhibited in private galleries and sold direct to art lovers, the impressionist works have been but little seen. the series left by caillebotte to the luxembourg gallery is very badly shown and is composed of interesting works which, however, date back to the early period, and are very inferior to the beautiful productions which followed later. renoir is best represented. the private galleries in paris, where the best impressionist works are to be found, are those of mm. durand-ruel, rouart, de bellis, de camondo, and manzi, to which must be added the one sold by mm. théodore duret and faure, and the one of mme. ernest rouart, daughter of mme. morisot, the sister-in-law of manet. the public galleries of m. durand-ruel's show-rooms are the place where it is easiest to find numerous impressionist pictures. in spite of the firm opposition of the official juries, a place of honour was reserved at the exposition of for manet, and at that of a fine collection of impressionists occupied two rooms and caused a considerable stir. amongst the critics who have most faithfully assisted this group of artists, i must mention, besides the early friends previously referred to, castagnary, burty, edouard de goncourt, roger marx, geffroy, arsène alexandre, octave mirbeau, l. de fourcaud, clemenceau, mallarmé, huysmans, jules laforgue, and nearly all the critics of the symbolist reviews. a book on "impressionist art" by m. georges lecomte has been published by the firm of durand-ruel as an _edition-de-luxe_. but the bibliography of this art consists as yet almost exclusively of articles in journals and reviews and of some isolated biographical pamphlets. manet is, amongst many, the one who has excited most criticism of all kinds; the articles, caricatures and pamphlets relating to his work would form a considerable collection. it should be added that, with the exception of manet two years before his death, and renoir last year at the age of sixty-eight, no impressionist has been decorated by the french government. in england such a distinction has even less importance in itself than elsewhere. but if i insist upon it, it is only to draw attention to the fact that, through the sheer force of their talent, men like degas, monet and pissarro have achieved great fame and fortune, without gaining access to the salons, without official encouragement, decoration, subvention or purchases for the national museums. this is a very significant instance and serves well to complete the physiognomy of this group of independents. i the precursors of impressionism--the beginning of this movement and the origin of its name it will be beyond the scope of this volume to give a complete history of french impressionism, and to include all the attractive details to which it might lead, as regards the movement itself and the very curious epoch during which its evolution has taken place. the proportions of this book confine its aim to the clearest possible summing up for the british reader of the ideas, the personalities and the works of a considerable group of artists who, for various reasons, have remained but little known and who have only too frequently been gravely misjudged. these reasons are very obvious: first, the impressionists have been unable to make a show at the salons, partly because the jury refused them admission, partly because they held aloof of their own free will. they have, with very rare exceptions, exhibited at special minor galleries, where they become known to a very restricted public. ever attacked, and poor until the last few years, they enjoyed none of the benefits of publicity and sham glory. it is only quite recently that the admission of the incomplete and badly arranged caillebotte collection to the luxembourg gallery has enabled the public to form a summary idea of impressionism. to conclude the enumeration of the obstacles, it must be added that there are hardly any photographs of impressionist works in the market. as it is, photography is but a poor translation of these canvases devoted to the study of the play of light; but even this very feeble means of distribution has been withheld from them! exhibited at some galleries, gathered principally by durand-ruel, sold directly to art-lovers--foreigners mostly--these large series of works have practically remained unknown to the french public. all the public heard was the reproaches and sarcastic comments of the opponents, and they never became aware that in the midst of modern life the greatest, the richest movement was in progress, which the french school had known since the days of romanticism. impressionism has been made known to them principally by the controversies and by the fruitful consequences of this movement for the illustration and study of contemporary life. [illustration: manet rest] i do not profess to give here a detailed and complete history of impressionism, for which several volumes like the present one would be required. i shall only try to compile an _ensemble_ of concise and very precise notions and statements bearing upon this vast subject. it will be my special object to try and prove that impressionism is neither an isolated manifestation, nor a violent denial of the french traditions, but nothing more or less than a logical return to the very spirit of these traditions, contrary to the theories upheld by its detractors. it is for this reason that i have made use of the first chapter to say a few words on the precursors of this movement. no art manifestation is really isolated. however new it may seem, it is always based upon the previous epochs. the true masters do not give lessons, because art cannot be taught, but they set the example. to admire them does not mean to imitate them: it means the recognition in them of the principles of originality and the comprehension of their source, so that this eternal source may be called to life in oneself, this source which springs from a sincere and sympathetic vision of the aspects of life. the impressionists have not escaped this beautiful law. i shall speak of them impartially, without excessive enthusiasm; and it will be my special endeavour to demonstrate in each of them the cult of a predecessor, for there have been few artistic movements where the love for, and one might say the hereditary link with, the preceding masters has been more tenacious. the academy has struggled violently against impressionism, accusing it of madness, of systematic negation of the "laws of beauty," which it pretended to defend and of which it claimed to be the official priest. the academy has shown itself hostile to a degree in this quarrel. it has excluded the impressionists from the salons, from awards, from official purchases. only quite recently the acceptance of the caillebotte bequest to the luxembourg gallery gave rise to a storm of indignation among the official painters. i shall, in the course of this book, enter upon the value of these attacks. meanwhile i can only say how regrettable this obstinacy appears to me and will appear to every free spirit. it is unworthy even of an ardent conviction to condemn a whole group of artists _en bloc_ as fools, enemies of beauty, or as tricksters anxious to degrade the art of their nation, when these artists worked during forty years towards the same goal, without getting any reward for their effort, but poverty and derision. it is now about ten years since impressionism has taken root, since its followers can sell their canvases, and since they are admired and praised by a solid and ever-growing section of the public. the hour has therefore arrived, calmly to consider a movement which has imposed itself upon the history of french art from to with extreme energy, to leave dithyrambics as well as polemics, and to speak of it with a view to exactness. the academy, in continuing the propagation of an ideal of beauty fixed by canons derived from greek, latin and renaissance art, and neglecting the gothic, the primitives and the realists, looks upon itself as the guardian of the national tradition, because it exercises an hierarchic authority over the _ecole de rome_, the _salons_, and the _ecole des beaux arts_. all the same, its ideals are of very mixed origin and very little french. its principles are the same by which the academic art of nearly all the official schools of europe is governed. this mythological and allegorical art, guided by dogmas and formulas which are imposed upon all pupils regardless of their temperament, is far more international than national. to an impartial critic this statement will show in an even more curious light the excommunication jealously issued by the academic painters against french artists, who, far from revolting in an absurd spirit of _parti-pris_ against the genius of their race, are perhaps more sincerely attached to it than their persecutors. why should a group of men deliberately choose to paint mad, illogical, bad pictures, and reap a harvest of public derision, poverty and sterility? it would be uncritical to believe merely in a general mystification which makes its authors the worst sufferers. simple common sense will find in these men a conviction, a sincerity, a sustained effort, and this alone should, in the name of the sacred solidarity of those who by various means try to express their love of the beautiful, suppress the annoying accusations hurled too light-heartedly against manet and his friends. [illustration: manet in the square] i shall define later on the ideas of the impressionists on technique, composition and style in painting. meanwhile it will be necessary to indicate their principal precursors. their movement may be styled thus: a reaction against the greco-latin spirit and the scholastic organisation of painting after the second renaissance and the italo-french school of fontainebleau, by the century of louis xiv., the school of rome, and the consular and imperial taste. in this sense impressionism is a protest analogous to that of romanticism, exclaiming, to quote the old verse: "_qui nous délivrera des grecs et des romains?_"[ ] from this point of view impressionism has also great affinities with the ideas of the english pre-raphaelites, who stepped across the second and even the first renaissance back to the primitives. [footnote : who will deliver us from the greeks and the romans.] this reaction is superimposed by another: the reaction of impressionism, not only against classic subjects, but against the black painting of the degenerate romanticists. and these two reactions are counterbalanced by a return to the french ideal, to the realistic and characteristic tradition which commences with jean foucquet and clouet, and is continued by chardin, claude lorrain, poussin, watteau, la tour, fragonard, and the admirable engravers of the eighteenth century down to the final triumph of the allegorical taste of the roman revolution. here can be found a whole chain of truly national artists who have either been misjudged, like chardin, or considered as "small masters" and excluded from the first rank for the benefit of the pompous allegorists descended from the italian school. impressionism being beyond all a technical reaction, its predecessors should first be looked for from this material point of view. watteau is the most striking of all. _l'embarquement pour cythère_ is, in its technique, an impressionist canvas. it embodies the most significant of all the principles exposed by claude monet: the division of tones by juxtaposed touches of colour which, at a certain distance, produce upon the eye of the beholder the effect of the actual colouring of the things painted, with a variety, a freshness and a delicacy of analysis unobtainable by a single tone prepared and mixed upon the palette. [illustration: manet young man in costume of majo] claude lorrain, and after him carle vernet, are claimed by the impressionists as precursors from the point of view of decorative landscape arrangement, and particularly of the predominance of light in which all objects are bathed. ruysdael and poussin are, in their eyes, for the same reasons precursors, especially ruysdael, who observed so frankly the blue colouring of the horizon and the influence of blue upon the landscape. it is known that turner worshipped claude for the very same reasons. the impressionists in their turn, consider turner as one of their masters; they have the greatest admiration for this mighty genius, this sumptuous visionary. they have it equally for bonington, whose technique is inspired by the same observations as their own. they find, finally, in delacroix the frequent and very apparent application of their ideas. notably in the famous _entry of the crusaders into constantinople_, the fair woman kneeling in the foreground is painted in accordance with the principles of the division of tones: the nude back is furrowed with blue, green and yellow touches, the juxtaposition of which produces, at a certain distance, an admirable flesh-tone. and now i must speak at some length of a painter who, together with the luminous and sparkling landscapist félix ziem, was the most direct initiator of impressionist technique. monticelli is one of those singular men of genius who are not connected with any school, and whose work is an inexhaustible source of applications. he lived at marseilles, where he was born, made a short appearance at the salons, and then returned to his native town, where he died poor, ignored, paralysed and mad. in order to live he sold his small pictures at the cafés, where they fetched ten or twenty francs at the most. to-day they sell for considerable prices, although the government has not yet acquired any work by monticelli for the public galleries. the mysterious power alone of these paintings secures him a fame which is, alas! posthumous. many monticellis have been sold by dealers as diaz's; now they are more eagerly looked for than diaz, and collectors have made fortunes with these small canvases bought formerly, to use a colloquial expression which is here only too literally true, "for a piece of bread." monticelli painted landscapes, romantic scenes, "fêtes galantes" in the spirit of watteau, and still-life pictures: one could not imagine a more inspired sense of colour than shown by these works which seem to be painted with crushed jewels, with powerful harmony, and beyond all with an unheard-of delicacy in the perception of fine shades. there are tones which nobody had ever invented yet, a richness, a profusion, a subtlety which almost vie with the resources of music. the fairyland atmosphere of these works surrounds a very firm design of charming style, but, to use the words of the artist himself, "in these canvases the objects are the decoration, the touches are the scales, and the light is the tenor." monticelli has created for himself an entirely personal technique which can only be compared with that of turner; he painted with a brush so full, fat and rich, that some of the details are often truly modelled in relief, in a substance as precious as enamels, jewels, ceramics--a substance which is a delight in itself. every picture by monticelli provokes astonishment; constructed upon one colour as upon a musical theme, it rises to intensities which one would have thought impossible. his pictures are magnificent bouquets, bursts of joy and colour, where nothing is ever crude, and where everything is ruled by a supreme sense of harmony. [illustration: manet the reader] claude lorrain, watteau, turner and monticelli constitute really the descent of a landscapist like claude monet. in all matters concerning technique, they form the direct chain of impressionism. as regards design, subject, realism, the study of modern life, the conception of beauty and the portrait, the impressionist movement is based upon the old french masters, principally upon chardin, watteau, latour, largillière, fragonard, debucourt, saint-aubin, moreau, and eisen. it has resolutely held aloof from mythology, academic allegory, historical painting, and from the neo-greek elements of classicism as well as from the german and spanish elements of romanticism. this reactionary movement is therefore entirely french, and surely if it deserves reproach, the one least deserved is that levelled upon it by the official painters: disobedience to the national spirit. impressionism is an art which does not give much scope to intellectuality, an art whose followers admit scarcely anything but immediate vision, rejecting philosophy and symbols and occupying themselves only with the consideration of light, picturesqueness, keen and clever observation, and antipathy to abstraction, as the innate qualities of french art. we shall see later on, when considering separately its principal masters, that each of them has based his art upon some masters of pure french blood. impressionism has, then, hitherto been very badly judged. it is contained in two chief points: search after a new technique, and expression of modern reality. its birth has not been a spontaneous phenomenon. manet, who, by his spirit and by the chance of his friendships, grouped around him the principal members, commenced by being classed in the ranks of the realists of the second romanticism by the side of courbet; and during the whole first period of his work he only endeavoured to describe contemporary scenes, at a time when the laws of the new technique were already dawning upon claude monet. gradually the grouping of the impressionists took place. claude monet is really the first initiator: in a parallel line with his ideas and his works manet passed into the second period of his artistic life, and with him renoir, degas and pissarro. but manet had already during his first period been the topic of far-echoing polemics, caused by his realism and by the marked influence of the spaniards and of hals upon his style; his temperament, too, was that of the head of a school; and for these reasons legend has attached to his name the title of head of the impressionist school, but this legend is incorrect. to conclude, the very name "impressionism" is due to claude monet. there has been much serious arguing upon this famous word which has given rise to all sorts of definitions and conclusions. in reality this is its curious origin which is little known, even in criticism. ever since the works of manet and of his friends caused such a stir, that they were rejected _en bloc_ by the salon jury of . the emperor, inspired by a praiseworthy, liberal thought, demanded that these innovators should at least have the right to exhibit together in a special room which was called the _salon des refusés_. the public crowded there to have a good laugh. one of the pictures which caused most derision was a sunset by claude monet, entitled _impressions_. from this moment the painters who adopted more or less the same manner were called _impressionists_. the word remained in use, and manet and his friends thought it a matter of indifference whether this label was attached to them, or another. at this despised salon were to be found the names of manet, monet, whistler, bracquemont, jongkind, fantin-latour, renoir, legros, and many others who have since risen to fame. universal ridicule only fortified the friendships and resolutions of this group of men, and from that time dates the definite foundation of the impressionist school. for thirty years it continued to produce without interruption an enormous quantity of works under an accidental and inexact denomination; to obey the creative instinct, without any other dogma than the passionate observation of nature, without any other assistance than individual sympathies, in the face of the disciplinary teaching of the official school. [illustration: degas the dancer at the photographer's] ii the theory of the impressionists--the division of tones, complementary colours, the study of atmosphere--the ideas of the impressionists on subject-pictures, on the beauty of character, on modernity, and on style it should be stated from the outset that there is nothing dogmatic about this explanation of the impressionist theories, and that it is not the result of a preconceived plan. in art a system is not improvised. a theory is slowly evolved, nearly always unknown to the author, from the discoveries of his sincere instinct, and this theory can only be formulated after years by criticism facing the works. monet and manet have worked for a long time without ever thinking that theories would be built upon their paintings. yet a certain number of considerations will strike the close observer, and i will put these considerations before the reader, after reminding him that spontaneity and feeling are the essentials of all art. [illustration: degas carriages at the races] the impressionist ideas may be summed up in the following manner:-- in nature no colour exists by itself. the colouring of the objects is a pure illusion: the only creative source of colour is the sunlight which envelopes all things, and reveals them, according to the hours, with infinite modifications. the mystery of matter escapes us; we do not know the exact moment when reality separates itself from unreality. all we know is, that our vision has formed the habit of discerning in the universe two notions: form and colour; but these two notions are inseparable. only artificially can we distinguish between outline and colour: in nature the distinction does not exist. light reveals the forms, and, playing upon the different states of matter, the substance of leaves, the grain of stones, the fluidity of air in deep layers, gives them dissimilar colouring. if the light disappears, forms and colours vanish together. we only see colours; everything has a colour, and it is by the perception of the different colour surfaces striking our eyes, that we conceive the forms, _i.e._ the outlines of these colours. the idea of distance, of perspective, of volume is given us by darker or lighter colours: this idea is what is called in painting the sense of values. a value is the degree of dark or light intensity, which permits our eyes to comprehend that one object is further or nearer than another. and as painting is not and cannot be the _imitation_ of nature, but merely her artificial interpretation, since it only has at its disposal two out of three dimensions, the values are the only means that remain for expressing depth on a flat surface. colour is therefore the procreatrix of design. or, colour being simply the irradiation of light, it follows that all colour is composed of the same elements as sunlight, namely the seven tones of the spectrum. it is known, that these seven tones appear different owing to the unequal speed of the waves of light. the tones of nature appear to us therefore different, like those of the spectrum, and for the same reason. the colours vary with the intensity of light. there is no colour peculiar to any object, but only more or less rapid vibration of light upon its surface. the speed depends, as is demonstrated by optics, on the degree of the inclination of the rays which, according to their vertical or oblique direction, give different light and colour. the colours of the spectrum are thus recomposed in everything we see. it is their relative proportion which makes new tones out of the seven spectral tones. this leads immediately to some practical conclusions, the first of which is, that what has formerly been called _local colour_ is an error: a leaf is not green, a tree-trunk is not brown, and, according to the time of day, _i.e._ according to the greater or smaller inclination of the rays (scientifically called the angle of incidence), the green of the leaf and the brown of the tree are modified. what has to be studied therefore in these objects, if one wishes to recall their colour to the beholder of a picture, is the composition of the atmosphere which separates them from the eye. this atmosphere is the real subject of the picture, and whatever is represented upon it only exists through its medium. [illustration: degas the greek dance--pastel.] a second consequence of this analysis of light is, that shadow is not absence of light, but light of _a different quality_ and of different value. shadow is not a part of the landscape, where light ceases, but where it is subordinated to a light which appears to us more intense. in the shadow the rays of the spectrum vibrate with different speed. painting should therefore try to discover here, as in the light parts, the play of the atoms of solar light, instead of representing shadows with ready-made tones composed of bitumen and black. the third conclusion resulting from this: the colours in the shadow are modified by _refraction_. that means, _f.i._ in a picture representing an interior, the source of light (window) may not be indicated: the light circling round the picture will then be composed of the _reflections_ of rays whose source is invisible, and all the objects, acting as mirrors for these reflections, will consequently influence each other. their colours will affect each other, even if the surfaces be dull. a red vase placed upon a blue carpet will lead to a very subtle, but mathematically exact, interchange between this blue and this red, and this exchange of luminous waves will create between the two colours a tone of reflections composed of both. these composite reflections will form a scale of tones complementary of the two principal colours. the science of optics can work out these complementary colours with mathematical exactness. if _f.i._ a head receives the orange rays of daylight from one side and the bluish light of an interior from the other, green reflections will necessarily appear on the nose and in the middle region of the face. the painter besnard, who has specially devoted himself to this minute study of complementary colours, has given us some famous examples of it. the last consequence of these propositions is that the blending of the spectral tones is accomplished by a _parallel_ and _distinct_ projection of the colours. they are artificially reunited on the crystalline: a lens interposed between the light and the eye, and opposing the crystalline, which is a living lens, dissociates again these united rays, and shows us again the seven distinct colours of the atmosphere. it is no less artificial if a painter mixes upon his palette different colours to compose a tone; it is again artificial that paints have been invented which represent some of the combinations of the spectrum, just to save the artist the trouble of constantly mixing the seven solar tones. such mixtures are false, and they have the disadvantage of creating heavy tonalities, since the coarse mixture of powders and oils cannot accomplish the action of light which reunites the luminous waves into an intense white of unimpaired transparency. the colours mixed on the palette compose a dirty grey. what, then, is the painter to do, who is anxious to approach, as near as our poor human means will allow, that divine fairyland of nature? here we touch upon the very foundations of impressionism. the painter will have to paint with only the seven colours of the spectrum, and discard all the others: that is what claude monet has done boldly, adding to them only white and black. he will, furthermore, instead of composing mixtures on his palette, place upon his canvas touches of none but the seven colours _juxtaposed_, and leave the individual rays of each of these colours to blend at a certain distance, so as to act like sunlight itself upon the eye of the beholder. [illustration: degas waiting] this, then, is the theory of the _dissociation of tones_, which is the main point of impressionist technique. it has the immense advantage of suppressing all mixtures, of leaving to each colour its proper strength, and consequently its freshness and brilliancy. at the same time the difficulties are extreme. the painter's eye must be admirably subtle. light becomes the sole subject of the picture; the interest of the object upon which it plays is secondary. painting thus conceived becomes a purely optic art, a search for harmonies, a sort of natural poem, quite distinct from expression, style and design, which were the principal aims of former painting. it is almost necessary to invent another name for this special art which, clearly pictorial though it be, comes as near to music, as it gets far away from literature and psychology. it is only natural that, fascinated by this study, the impressionists have almost remained strangers to the painting of expression, and altogether hostile to historical and symbolist painting. it is therefore principally in landscape painting that they have achieved the greatness that is theirs. through the application of these principles which i have set forth very summarily, claude monet arrived at painting by means of the infinitely varied juxtaposition of a quantity of colour spots which dissociate the tones of the spectrum and draw the forms of objects through the arabesque of their vibrations. a landscape thus conceived becomes a kind of symphony, starting from one theme (the most luminous point, _f.i._), and developing all over the canvas the variations of this theme. this investigation is added to the habitual preoccupations of the landscapist study of the character peculiar to the scene, style of the trees or houses, accentuation of the decorative side--and to the habitual preoccupations of the figure painter in the portrait. the canvases of monet, renoir and pissarro have, in consequence of this research, an absolutely original aspect: their shadows are striped with blue, rose-madder and green; nothing is opaque or sooty; a light vibration strikes the eye. finally, blue and orange predominate, simply because in these studies--which are more often than not full sunlight effects--blue is the complementary colour of the orange light of the sun, and is profusely distributed in the shadows. in these canvases can be found a vast amount of exact grades of tone, which seem to have been entirely ignored by the older painters, whose principal concern was style, and who reduced a landscape to three or four broad tones, endeavouring only to explain the sentiment inspired by it. and now i shall have to pass on to the impressionists' ideas on the style itself of painting, on realism. from the outset it must not be forgotten that impressionism has been propagated by men who had all been realists; that means by a reactionary movement against classic and romantic painting. this movement, of which courbet will always remain the most famous representative, has been _anti-intellectual_. it has protested against every literary, psychologic or symbolical element in painting. it has reacted at the same time against the historical painting of delaroche and the mythological painting of the _ecole de rome_, with an extreme violence which appears to us excessive now, but which found its explanation in the intolerable tediousness or emphasis at which the official painters had arrived. courbet was a magnificent worker, with rudimentary ideas, and he endeavoured to exclude even those which he possessed. this exaggeration which diminishes our admiration for his work and prevents us from finding in it any emotion but that which results from technical mastery, was salutary for the development of the art of his successors. it caused the young painters to turn resolutely towards the aspects of contemporary life, and to draw style and emotion from their own epoch; and this intention was right. an artistic tradition is not continued by imitating the style of the past, but by extracting the immediate impression of each epoch. that is what the really great masters have done, and it is the succession of their sincere and profound observations which constitutes the style of the races. [illustration: claude monet the pines] manet and his friends drew all their strength from this idea. much finer and more learned than a man like courbet, they saw an aspect of modernity far more complex, and less limited to immediate and grossly superficial realism. nor must it be forgotten that they were contemporaries of the realistic, anti-romantic literary movement, a movement which gave them nothing but friends. flaubert and the goncourts proved that realism is not the enemy of refined form and of delicate psychology. the influence of these ideas created first of all manet and his friends: the technical evolution (of which we have traced the chief traits) came only much later to oppose itself to their conceptions. impressionism can therefore be defined as a _revolution of pictorial technique together with an attempt at expressing modernity_. the reaction against symbolism and romanticism happened to coincide with the reaction against muddy technique. the impressionists, whilst occupying themselves with cleansing the palette of the bitumen of which the academy made exaggerated use, whilst also observing nature with a greater love of light, made it their object to escape in the representation of human beings the laws of _beauty_, such as were taught by the school. and on this point one might apply to them all that one knows of the ideas of the goncourts and flaubert, and later of zola, in the domain of the novel. they were moved by the same ideas; to speak of the one group is to speak of the other. the longing for truth, the horror of emphasis and of false idealism which paralysed the novelist as well as the painter, led the impressionists to substitute for _beauty_ a novel notion, that of _character_. to search for, and to express, the true character of a being or of a site, seemed to them more significant, more moving, than to search for an exclusive beauty, based upon rules, and inspired by the greco-latin ideal. like the flemings, the germans, the spaniards, and in opposition to the italians whose influence had conquered all the european academies, the french realist-impressionists, relying upon the qualities of lightness, sincerity and expressive clearness which are the real merits of their race, detached themselves from the oppressive and narrow preoccupation with the beautiful and with all the metaphysics and abstractions following in its train. [illustration: claude monet church at vernon] this fact of the substitution of _character_ for _beauty_ is the essential feature of the movement. what is called impressionism is--let it not be forgotten--a technique which can be applied to any subject. whether the subject be a virgin, or a labourer, it can be painted with divided tones, and certain living artists, like the symbolist henri martin, who has almost the ideas of a pre-raphaelite, have proved it by employing this technique for the rendering of religious or philosophic subjects. but one can only understand the effort and the faults of the painters grouped around manet, by constantly recalling to one's mind their predeliction for _character_. before manet a distinction was made between _noble_ subjects, and others which were relegated to the domain of _genre_ in which no great artist was admitted to exist by the school, the familiarity of their subjects barring from them this rank. by the suppression of the _nobleness_ inherent to the treated subject, the painter's technical merit is one of the first things to be considered in giving him rank. the realist-impressionists painted scenes in the ball-room, on the river, in the field, the street, the foundry, modern interiors, and found in the life of the humble immense scope for studying the gestures, the costumes, the expressions of the nineteenth century. their effort had its bearing upon the way of representing persons, upon what is called, in the studio language, the "_mise en cadre_." there, too, they overthrew the principles admitted by the school. manet, and especially degas, have created in this respect a new style from which the whole art of realistic contemporary illustration is derived. this style had been hitherto totally ignored, or the artists had shrunk from applying it. it is a style which is founded upon the small painters of the eighteenth century, upon saint-aubin, debucourt, moreau, and, further back, upon pater and the dutchmen. but this time, instead of confining this style to vignettes and very small dimensions, the impressionists have boldly given it the dimensions and importance of big canvases. they have no longer based the laws of composition, and consequently of style, upon the ideas relative to the subjects, but upon values and harmonies. to take a summary example: if the school composed a picture representing the death of agamemnon, it did not fail to subordinate the whole composition to agamemnon, then to clytemnestra, then to the witnesses of the murder, graduating the moral and literary interest according to the different persons, and sacrificing to this interest the colouring and the realistic qualities of the scene. the realists composed by picking out first the strongest "value" of the picture, say a red dress, and then distributing the other values according to a harmonious progression of their tonalities. "the principal person in a picture," said manet, "is the light." with manet and his friends we find, then, that the concern for expression and for the sentiments evoked by the subject, was always subordinated to a purely pictorial and decorative preoccupation. this has frequently led the impressionists to grave errors, which they have, however, generally avoided by confining themselves to very simple subjects, for which the daily life supplied the grouping. [illustration: renoir portrait of madame maitre] one of the reforms due to their conception has been the suppression of the professional model, and the substitution for it of the natural model, seen in the exercise of his occupation. this is one of the most useful conquests for the benefit of modern painting. it marks a just return to nature and simplicity. nearly all their figures are real portraits; and in everything that concerns the labourer and the peasant, they have found the proper style and character, because they have observed these beings in the true medium of their occupations, instead of forcing them into a sham pose and painting them in disguise. the basis of all their pictures has been first of all a series of landscape and figure studies made in the open air, far from the studio, and afterwards co-ordinated. one may wish pictorial art to have higher ambitions; and one may find in the primitives an example of a curious mysticism, an expression of the abstract and of dreams. but one should not underrate the power of naïve and realistic observation, which the primitives carried into the execution of their works, subordinating it, however, to religious expression, and it must also be admitted that the realist-impressionists served at least their conception of art logically and homogeneously. the criticism which may be levelled against them is that which realism itself carries in its train, and we shall see that esthetics could never create classifications capable of defining and containing the infinite gradations of creative temperaments. in art, classifications have rarely any value, and are rather damaging. realism and idealism are abstract terms which cannot suffice to characterise beings who obey their sensibility. it is therefore necessary to invent as many words as there are remarkable men. if leonardo was a great painter, are turner and monet not painters at all? there is no connection between them; their methods of thought and expression are antithetical. perhaps it will be most simple, to admire them all, and to renounce any further definition of the painter, adopting this word to mark the man who uses the palette as his means of expression. thus preoccupation with contemporary emotions, substitution of character for classic beauty (or of emotional beauty for formal beauty), admission of the _genre_-painter into the first rank, composition based upon the reciprocal reaction of values, subordination of the subject to the interest of execution, the effort to isolate the art of painting from the ideas inherent to that of literature, and particularly the instinctive move towards the "symphonisation" of colours, and consequently towards music,--these are the principal features of the aesthetic code of the realist-impressionists, if this term may be applied to a group of men hostile towards esthetics such as they are generally taught. iii edouard manet: his work, his influence as i have said, edouard manet has not been entirely the originator of the impressionist technique. it is the work of claude monet which presents the most complete example of it, and which also came first as regards date. but it is very difficult to determine such cases of priority, and it is, after all, rather useless. a technique cannot be invented in a day. in this case it was the result of long investigations, in which manet and renoir participated, and it is necessary to unite under the collective name of impressionists a group of men, tied by friendship, who made a simultaneous effort towards originality, all in about the same spirit, though frequently in very different ways. as in the case of the pre-raphaelites, it was first of all friendship, then unjust derision, which created the solidarity of the impressionists. but the pre-raphaelites, in aiming at an idealistic and symbolic art, were better agreed upon the intellectual principles which permitted them at once to define a programme. the impressionists who were only united by their temperaments, and had made it their first aim to break away from all school programmes, tried simply to do something new, with frankness and freedom. manet was, in their midst, the personality marked out at the same time by their admiration, and by the attacks of the critics for the post of standard-bearer. a little older than his friends, he had already, quite alone, raised heated discussions by the works in his first manner. he was considered an innovator, and it was by instinctive admiration that his first friends, whistler, legros, and fantin-latour, were gradually joined by marcelin desboutin, degas, renoir, monet, pissarro, caillebotte, berthe morisot, the young painter bazille, who met his premature death in , and by the writers gautier, banville, baudelaire (who was a passionate admirer of manet's); then later by zola, the goncourts, and stéphane mallarmé. this was the first nucleus of a public which was to increase year by year. manet had the personal qualities of a chief; he was a man of spirit, an ardent worker, and an enthusiastic and generous character. [illustration: manet the dead toreador] manet commenced his first studies with couture. after having travelled a good deal at sea to obey his parents, his vocation took hold of him irresistibly. about the young man entered the studio of the severe author of the _romains de la décadence_. his stay was short. he displeased the professor by his uncompromising energy. couture said of him angrily: "he will become the daumier of ." it is known that daumier, lithographer, and painter of genius, was held in meagre esteem by the academicians. manet travelled in germany after the _coup d'etat_, copied rembrandt in munich, then went to italy, copied tintoretto in venice, and conceived there the idea of several religious pictures. then he became enthusiastic about the spaniards, especially velasquez and goya. the sincere expression of things seen took root from this moment as the principal rule of art in the brain of this young frenchman who was loyal, ardent, and hostile to all subtleties. he painted some fine works, like the _buveur d'absinthe_ and the _vieux musicien_. they show the influence of courbet, but already the blacks and the greys have an original and superb quality; they announce a virtuoso of the first order. it was in that manet first sent to the salon the portraits of his parents and the _guitarero_, which was hailed by gautier, and rewarded by the jury, though it roused surprise and irritation. but after that he was rejected, whether it was a question of the _fifre_ or of the _déjeuner sur l'herbe._ this canvas, with an admirable feminine nude, created a scandal, because an undressed woman figured in it amidst clothed figures, a matter of frequent occurrence with the masters of the renaissance. the landscape is not painted in the open air, but in the studio, and resembles a tapestry, but it shows already the most brilliant evidence of manet's talent in the study of the nude and the still-life of the foreground, which is the work of a powerful master. from the time of this canvas the artist's personality appeared in all its maturity. he painted it before he was thirty, and it has the air of an old master's work; it is based upon hals and the spaniards together. the reputation of manet became established after . furious critics were opposed by enthusiastic admirers. baudelaire upheld manet, as he had upheld delacroix and wagner, with his great clairvoyance, sympathetic to all real originality. the _olympia_ brought the discussion to a head. this courtesan lying in bed undressed, with a negress carrying a bouquet, and a black cat, made a tremendous stir. it is a powerful work of strong colour, broad design and intense sentiment, astounding in its _parti-pris_ of reducing the values to the greatest simplicity. one can feel in it the artist's preoccupation with rediscovering the rude frankness of hals and goya, and his aversion against the prettiness and false nobility of the school. this famous _olympia_ which occasioned so much fury, appears to us to-day as a transition work. it is neither a masterpiece, nor an emotional work, but a technical experiment, very significant for the epoch during which it appeared in french art, and this canvas, which is very inferior to manet's fine works, may well be considered as a date of evolution. he was doubtful about exhibiting it, but baudelaire decided him and wrote to him on this occasion these typical remarks: "you complain about attacks? but are you the first to endure them? have you more genius than chateaubriand and wagner? they were not killed by derision. and, in order not to make you too proud, i must tell you, that they are models each in his own way and in a very rich world, whilst you are only the first in the decrepitude of your art." [illustration: manet olympia] thus it must be firmly established that from this moment manet passed as an innovator, years before impressionism existed or was even thought of. this is an important point: it will help to clear up the twofold origin of the movement which followed. to his realism, to his return to composition in the modern spirit, and to the simplifying of planes and values, manet owed these attacks, though at that time his colour was still sombre and entirely influenced by hals, goya and courbet. from that time the artist became a chief. as his friends used to meet him at an obscure batignolles café, the café guerbois (still existing), public derision baptized these meetings with the name of "l'ecole des batignolles." manet then exhibited the _angels at the tomb of christ_, a souvenir of the venetians; _lola de valence_, commented upon by baudelaire in a quatrain which can be found in the _fleurs du mal_; the _episode d'un combat de taureaux_ (dissatisfied with this picture, he cut out the dead toreador in the foreground, and burnt the rest). the _acteur tragique_ (portrait of rouvière in hamlet) and the _jésus insulté_ followed, and then came the _gitanos_, _l'enfant à l'epée_, and the portrait of mme. manet. this series of works is admirable. it is here where he reveals himself as a splendid colourist, whose design is as vigorous as the technique is masterly. in these works one does not think of looking for anything but the witchery of technical strength; and the abundant wealth of his temperament is simply dazzling. manet reveals himself as the direct heir of the great spaniards, more interesting, more spontaneous, and freer than courbet. the _rouvière_ is as fine a symphony in grey and black as the noblest portraits by bronzino, and there is probably no goya more powerful than the _toréador tué_. manet's altogether classic descent appears here undeniably. there is no question yet of impressionism, and yet monet and renoir are already painting, monet has exhibited at the _salon des refusés_, but criticism sees and attacks nobody but manet. this great individuality who overwhelmed the academy with its weak allegories, was the butt of great insults and the object of great admiration. banished from the salons, he collected fifty pictures in a room in the avenue de l'alma and invited the public thither. in appeared the portrait of emile zola, in the _déjeuner_, works which are so powerful, that they enforced admiration in spite of all hostility. in the salon of was shown the portrait of eva gonzalès, the charming pastellist and pupil of manet, and the impressive _execution of maximilian at queretaro_. manet was at the apogee of his talent, when the franco-german war broke out. at the age of thirty-eight he had put forth a considerable amount of work, tried himself in all styles, severed his individuality from the slavish admiration of the old masters, and attained his own mastery. and now he wanted to expand, and, in joining monet, renoir and degas, interpret in his own way the impressionist theory. [illustration: manet the woman with the parrot] the _fight of the kearsage and the alabama_, a magnificent sea-piece, bathed in sunlight, announced this transformation in his work, as did also a study, a _garden_, painted, i believe, in , but exhibited only after the crisis of the terrible year. at that time the durand-ruel gallery bought a considerable series by the innovator, and was imitated by some select art-lovers. the _musique aux tuileries_ and the _bal de l'opéra_ had, some years before, pointed towards the evolution of this great artist in the direction of _plein-air_ painting. the _bon bock_, in which the very soul of hals is revived, and the grave _liseur_, sold immediately at vienne, were the two last pledges given by the artist to his old admirers; these two pictures had moreover a splendid success, and the _bon bock_, popularised by an engraving, was hailed by the very men who had most unjustly attacked the author of the portrait of mme. morisot, a french masterpiece. but already manet was attracted irresistibly towards the study of light, and, faithful to his programme, he prepared to face once again outbursts of anger and further sarcasms; he was resolved once again to offer battle to the salons. followed by all the impressionists he tried to make them understand the necessity of introducing the new ideas into this retrograde _milieu_. but they would not. having already received a rebuff by the attacks directed for some years against their works, they exhibited among themselves in some private galleries: they declined to force the gate of the salons, and manet remained alone. in he submitted, with his _argenteuil_, the most perfect epitome of his atmospheric researches. the jury admitted it in spite of loud protests: they were afraid of manet; they admired his power of transformation, and he revolted the prejudiced, attracting them at the same time by the charm of his force. but in the portrait of _desboutin_ and the _linge_ (an exquisite picture,--one of the best productions of open-air study) were rejected. manet then recommenced the experience of , and opened his studio to the public. a register at the door was soon covered with signatures protesting against the jury, as well as with hostile jokes, and even anonymous insults! in the defeated jury admitted the portrait of the famous singer faure in the part of hamlet, and rejected _nana_, a picture which was found scandalising, but has charming freshness and an intensely modern character. in , and they accepted _la serre_, the surprising symphony in blue and white which shows mr george moore in boating costume, the portrait of antonin proust, and the scene at the _père lathuile_ restaurant, in which manet's nervous and luminous realism has so curious a resemblance to the art of the goncourts. in the portrait of rochefort and that of the lion-killer, pertuiset, procured the artist a medal at the salon, and antonin proust, the friend of manet's childhood, who had become minister of fine arts, honoured himself in decorating him with the legion of honour. in appeared a magnificent canvas, the _bar des folies-bergère_, in which there is some sparkling still-life painting of most attractive beauty. it was accompanied by a lady's portrait, _jeanne_. but on april , , manet died, exhausted by his work and struggles, of locomotor ataxy, after having vainly undergone the amputation of a foot to avoid gangrene. [illustration: manet the bar at the folies-bergÈre] it will be seen that manet fought through all his life: few artists' lives have been nobler. his has been an example of untiring energy; he employed it as much in working, as in making a stand against prejudices. rejected, accepted, rejected again, he delivered with enormous courage and faith his attack upon a jury which represented routine. as he fought in front of his easel, he still fought before the public, without ever relaxing, without changing, alone, apart even from those whom he loved, who had been shaped by his example. this great painter, one of those who did most honour to the french soul, had the genius to create by himself an impressionism of his own which will always remain his own, after having given evidence of gifts of the first order in the tradition handed down by the masters of the real and the good. he cannot be confused either with monet, or with pissarro and renoir. his comprehension of light is a special one, his technique is not in accordance with the system of colour-spots; it observes the theory of complementary colours and of the division of tones without departing from a grand style, from a classic stateliness, from a superb sureness. manet has not been the inventor of impressionism which co-existed with his work since , but he has rendered it immense services, by taking upon himself all the outbursts of anger addressed to the innovators, by making a breach in public opinion, through which his friends have passed in behind him. probably without him all these artists would have remained unknown, or at least without influence, because they all were bold characters in art, but timid or disdainful in life. degas, monet and renoir were fine natures with a horror of polemics, who wished to hold aloof from the salons, and were resigned from the outset to be misunderstood. they were, so to say, electrified by the magnificent example of manet's fighting spirit, and manet was generous enough to take upon himself the reproaches levelled, not only against his work, but against theirs. his twenty years of open war, sustained with an abnegation worthy of all esteem, must be considered as one of the most significant phenomena of the history of the artists of all ages. this work of manet, so much discussed and produced under such tormenting conditions, owes its importance beyond all to its power and frankness. ten years of developing the first manner, tragically limited by the war of ; thirteen years of developing the second evolution, parallel with the efforts of the impressionists. the period from to is logically connected with hals and goya; from to the artist's modernity is complicated by the study of light. his personality appears there even more original, but one may well give the palm to those works of manet which are painted in his classic and low-toned manner. he had all the pictorial gifts which make the glory of the masters: full, true, broad composition, colouring of irresistible power, blacks and greys which cannot be found elsewhere since velasquez and goya, and a profound knowledge of values. he has tried his hand at everything: portraits, landscapes, seascapes, scenes of modern life, still-life and nudes have each in their turn served his ardent desire of creation. his was a much finer comprehension of contemporary life than seems to be admitted by realism: one has only to compare him with courbet, to see how far more nervous and intelligent he was, without loss to the qualities of truth and robustness. his pictures will always remain documents of the greatest importance on the society, the manners and customs of the second empire. he did not possess the gift of psychology. his _christ aux anges_ and _jésus insulté_ are obviously only pieces of painting without idealism. he was, like the great dutch virtuosos, and like certain italians, more eye than soul. yet his _maximilian_, the drawings to poe's _raven_, and certain sketches show that he might have realised some curious, psychological works, had he not been so completely absorbed by the immediate reality and by the desire for beautiful paint. a beautiful painter--this is what he was before everything else, this is his fairest fame, and it is almost inconceivable that the juries of the salons failed to understand him. they waxed indignant over his subjects which offer only a restricted interest, and they did not see the altogether classic quality of this technique without bitumen, without glazing, without tricks; of this vibrating colour; of this rich paint; of this passionate design so suitable for expressing movement and gestures true to life; of this simple composition where the whole picture is based upon two or three values with the straightforwardness one admires in rubens, jordaens and hals. [illustration: manet dÉjeuner] manet will occupy an important position in the french school. he is the most original painter of the second half of the nineteenth century, the one who has really created a great movement. his work, the fecundity of which is astonishing, is unequal. one has to remember that, besides the incessant strife which he kept up--a strife which would have killed many artists--he had to find strength for two grave crises in himself. he joined one movement, then freed himself of it, then invented another and recommenced to learn painting at a point where anybody else would have continued in his previous manner. "each time i paint," he said to mallarmé, "i throw myself into the water to learn swimming." it is not surprising that such a man should have been unequal, and that one can distinguish in his work between experiments, exaggerations due to research, and efforts made to reject the prejudices of which we feel the weight no longer. but it would be unjust to say that manet has only had the merit of opening up new roads; that has been said to belittle him, after it had first been said that these roads led into absurdity. works like the _toréador_, _rouvière_, _mme. manet_, the _déjeuner_, the _musique aux tuileries_, the _bon bock_, _argenteuil_, _le linge_, _en bateau_ and the _bar_, will always remain admirable masterpieces which will do credit to french painting, of which the spontaneous, living, clear and bold art of manet is a direct and very representative product. there remains, then, a great personality who knew how to dominate the rather coarse conceptions of realism, who influenced by his modernity all contemporary illustration, who re-established a sound and strong tradition in the face of the academy, and who not only created a new transition, but marked his place on the new road which he had opened. to him impressionism owes its existence; his tenacity enabled it to take root and to vanquish the opposition of the school; his work has enriched the world by some beautiful examples which demonstrate the union of the two principles of realism and of that technical impressionism which was to supply manet, renoir, pissarro and sisley with an object for their efforts. for the sum total of all that is evoked by his name, edouard manet certainly deserves the name of a man of genius--an incomplete genius, though, since the thought with him was not on the level of his technique, since he could never affect the emotions like a leonardo or a rembrandt, but genius all the same through the magnificent power of his gifts, the continuity of his style, and the importance of his part which infused blood into a school dying of the anaemia of conventional art. whoever beholds a work of manet's, even without knowing the conditions of his life, will feel that there is something great, the lion's claw which delacroix had recognised as far back as , and to which, it is said, even the great ingres had paid homage on the jury which examined with disgust the _guitarero_. [illustration: manet portrait of madame m.l.] to-day manet is considered almost as a classic glory; and the progress for which he had given the impulse, has been so rapid, that many are astonished that he should ever have been considered audacious. sight is transformed, strife is extinguished, and a large, select public, familiar with monet and renoir, judge manet almost as a long defunct initiator. one has to know his admirable life, one has to know well the incredible inertia of the salons where he appeared, to give him his full due. and when, after the acceptance of impressionism, the unavoidable reaction will take place, manet's qualities of solidity, truth and science will appear such, that he will survive many of those to whom he has opened the road and facilitated the success at the expense of his own. it will be seen that degas and he have, more than the others, and with less apparent _éclat_, united the gifts which produce durable works in the midst of the fluctuations of fashion and the caprices of taste and views. manet can, at the louvre or any other gallery, hold his own in the most crushing surroundings, prove his personal qualities, and worthily represent a period which he loved. an enormous amount has been written on him, from zola's bold and intelligent pamphlet in , to the recent work by m. théodore duret. few men have provoked more comments. in an admirable picture, _hommage à manet_, the delicate and perfect painter fantin-latour, a friend from the first hour, has grouped around the artist some of his admirers, monet, renoir, duranty, zola, bazille, and braquemond. the picture has to-day a place of honour at the luxembourg, where manet is insufficiently represented by _olympia_, a study of a woman, and the _balcony_. a collection is much to be desired of his lithographs, his etchings and his pastels, in which he has proved his diversified mastery, and also of his portraits of famous contemporaries, zola, rochefort, desboutin, proust, mallarmé, clemenceau, guys, faure, baudelaire, moore, and others, an admirable series by a visionary who possessed, in a period of unrest and artificiality, the quality of rude sincerity, and the love of truth of a primitive. [illustration: manet the hothouse] iv edgar degas: his work, his influence i have said how vain it is to class artistic temperaments under a title imposed upon them generally by circumstances and dates, rather than by their own free will. the study of degas will furnish additional proof for it. classed with the impressionists, this master participates in their ideas in the sphere of composition, rather than in that of colour. he belongs to them through his modernity and comprehension of character. only when we come to his quite recent landscapes ( ), can we link him to monet and renoir as colourist, and he has been more their friend than their colleague. degas is known by the select few, and almost ignored by the public. this is due to several reasons. degas has never wished to exhibit at the salons, except, i believe, once or twice at the beginning of his career. he has only shown his works at those special exhibitions arranged by the impressionists in hired apartments (rue le peletier, rue laffitte, boulevard des capucines), and at some art-dealers. the art of degas has never had occasion to shock the public by the exuberance of its colour, because he restricted himself to grey and quiet harmonies. degas is a modest character, fond of silence and solitude, with a horror of the crowd and of controversies, and almost disinclined to show his works. he is a man of intelligence and ready wit, whose sallies are dreaded; he is almost a misanthrope. his pictures have been gradually sold to foreign countries and dispersed in rich galleries without having been seen by the public. his character is, in short, absolutely opposed to that of manet, who, though he suffered from criticism, thought it his duty to bid it defiance. degas's influence has, however, been considerable, though secretly so, and the young painters have been slowly inspired by his example. [illustration: degas the beggar woman] degas is beyond all a draughtsman of the first order. his spirit is quite classical. he commenced by making admirable copies of the italian primitives, notably of fra angelico, and the whole first series of his works speaks of that influence: portraits, heads of deep, mat, amber colour, on a ground of black or grey tones, remarkable for a severity of intense style, and for the rare gift of psychological expression. to find the equal of these faces--after having stated their classic descent--one would have to turn to the beautiful things by ingres, and certainly degas is, with ingres, the most learned, the most perfect french draughtsman of the nineteenth century. an affirmation of this nature is made to surprise those who judge impressionism with preconceived ideas. it is none the less true that, if a series of degas's first portraits were collected, the comparison would force itself upon one's mind irrefutably. in face of the idealist painting of romanticism, ingres represented quite clearly the cult of painting for its own sake. his ideas were mediocre, and went scarcely beyond the poor, conventional ideal of the academy; but his genius was so great, that it made him paint, together with his tedious allegories, some incomparable portraits and nudes. he thought he was serving official classicism, which still boasts of his name, but in reality he dominated it; and, whilst he was an imitator of raphael, he was a powerful realist. the impressionists admire him as such, and agree with him in banishing from the art of painting all literary imagination, whether it be the tedious mythology of the school, or the historical anecdote of the romanticists. degas and besnard admire ingres as colossal draughtsman, and, beyond all, as man who, in spite of the limitations of his mind, preserved the clear vision of the mission of his art at a time when art was used for the expression of literary conceptions. who would have believed it? yet it is true, and manet, too, held the same view of ingres, little as our present academicians may think it! it happens that to-day impressionism is more akin to ingres than to delacroix, just as the young poets are more akin to racine than to hugo. they reject the foreign elements, and search, before anything else, for the strict national tradition. degas follows ingres and resembles him. he is also reminiscent of the primitives and of holbein. there is, in his first period, the somewhat dry and geometrical perfection, the somewhat heavy colour which only serves to strengthen the correctness of the planes. at the exposition of , there was a degas which surprised everybody. it was an _interior of a cotton factory_ in an american town. this small picture was curiously clear: it would be impossible to paint better and with a more accomplished knowledge of the laws of painting. but it was the work of a soulless, emotionless realist; it was a coloured photograph of unheard-of truth, the mathematical science of which left the beholder cold. this work, which is very old (it dates back to about ), gave no idea of what degas has grown into. it was the work of an unemotional master of technique; only just the infinitely delicate value of the greys and blacks revealed the future master of harmony. one almost might have wished to find a fault in this aggravating perfection. but degas was not to remain there, and already, about that time, certain portraits of his are elevated by an expression of ardent melancholy, by warm, ivory-like, grave colouring which attracts one's eye. before this series one feels the firm will of a very logical, serious, classic spirit who wants to know thoroughly the intimate resources of design, before risking to choose from among them the elements which respond best to his individual nature. if degas was destined to invent, later on, so personal a style of design that he could be accused of "drawing badly," this first period of his life is before us, to show the slow maturing of his boldness and how carefully he first proved to himself his knowledge, before venturing upon new things. in art the difficulty is, when one has learnt everything, to forget,--that is, to appear to forget, so as to create one's own style, and this apparent forgetting cloaks an amalgamation of science with mind. and degas is one of those patient and reticent men who spend years in arriving at this; he has much in common with hokusai, the old man "mad with painting," who at the close of his prodigious life invented arbitrary forms, after having given immortal examples of his interpretation of the real. [illustration: degas the lesson in the foyer] degas is also clearly related to corot, not only in the silvery harmonies of his suave landscapes, but also, and particularly, in his admirable faces whose inestimable power and moving sincerity we have hardly commenced to understand. degas passed slowly from classicism to modernity. he never liked outbursts of colour; he is by no means an impressionist from this point of view. as a draughtsman of genius he expresses all by the precision of the planes and values; a grey, a black and some notes of colour suffice for him. this might establish a link between him and whistler, though he is much less mysterious and diffuse. whenever degas plays with colour, it is with the same restraint of his boldness; he never goes to excess in abandoning himself to its charm. he is neither lyrical, nor voluptuous; his energy is cold; his wise spirit affirms soberly the true character of a face or an object. since a long time this spirit has moved degas to revel in the observation of contemporary life. his nature has been that of a patient psychologist, a minute analyst, and also of a bitter ironist. the man is very little known. his friends say that he has an easily ruffled delicacy, a sensibility open to poetry, but jealous of showing its emotion. they say that degas's satirical bitterness is the reverse side of a soul wounded by the spectacle of modern morality. one feels this sentiment in his work, where the sharp notation of truth is painful, where the realism is opposed by colouring of a sober distinction, where nothing, not even the portrait of a drab, could be vulgar. degas has devoted himself to the profound study of certain classes of women, in the state of mind of a philosopher and physiologist, impartially inclined towards life. his work can be divided into several great series: the race-courses, the ballet-dancers, and the women bathing count among the most important. the race-courses have inspired degas with numerous pictures. he shows in them a surprising knowledge of the horse. he is one of the most perfect painters of horses who have ever existed. he has caught the most curious and truest actions with infallible sureness of sight. his racecourse scenes are full of vitality and picturesqueness. against clear skies, and light backgrounds of lawn, indicated with quiet harmony, degas assembles original groups of horses which one can see moving, hesitating, intensely alive; and nothing could be fresher, gayer and more deliciously pictorial, than the green, red and yellow notes of the jockey's costumes strewn like flowers over these atmospheric, luminous landscapes, where colours do not clash, but are always gently shimmering, dissolved in uniform clearness. the admirable drawing of horses and men is so precise and seems so simple, that one can only slowly understand the extent of the difficulty overcome, the truth of these attitudes and the nervous delicacy of the execution. [illustration: degas the dancing lesson--pastel] the dancers go much further still in the expression of degas's temperament. they have been studied at the _foyer_ of the opera and at the rehearsal, sometimes in groups, sometimes isolated. some pictures which will always count among the masterpieces of the nineteenth century, represent the whole _corps de ballet_ performing on the stage before a dark and empty house. by the feeble light of some lamps the black coats of the stage managers mix themselves with the gauze skirts. here the draughtsman joins the great colourist: the petticoats of pink or white tulle, the graceful legs covered with flesh-coloured silk, the arms and the shoulders, and the hair crowned with flowers, offer motives of exquisite colour and of a tone of living flowers. but the psychologist does not lose his rights: not only does he amuse himself with noting the special movements of the dancers, but he also notes the anatomical defects. he shows with cruel frankness, with a strange love of modern character, the strong legs, the thin shoulders, and the provoking and vulgar heads of these frequently ugly girls of common origin. with the irony of an entomologist piercing the coloured insect he shows us the disenchanting reality in the sad shadow of the scenes, of these butterflies who dazzle us on the stage. he unveils the reverse side of a dream without, however, caricaturing; he raises even, under the imperfection of the bodies, the animal grace of the organisms; he has the severe beauty of the true. he gives to his groups of ballet-dancers the charming line of garlands and restores to them a harmony in the _ensemble_, so as to prove that he does not misjudge the charm conferred upon them by rhythm, however defective they may be individually. at other times he devotes himself to the study of their practice. in bare rooms with curtainless windows, in the cold and sad light of the boxes, he passionately draws the dancers learning their steps, reaching high bars with the tips of their toes, forcing themselves into quaint poses in order to make themselves more supple, manoeuvring to the sound of a fiddle scratched by an old teacher--and he leaves us stupefied at the knowledge, the observation, the talent profusely spent on these little pictures. furthermore there are humorous scenes: ballet-dancers chatting in the dark with _habitués_ of the opera, others looking at the house through the small opening of the curtain, others re-tying their shoe-laces, and they all are prodigious drawings of movement anatomically as correct as they are unexpected. degas's old style of drawing undergoes modification: with the help of slight deformations, accentuations of the modelling and subtle falsifications of the proportions, managed with infinite tact and knowledge, the artist brings forth in relief the important gesture, subordinating to it all the others. he attempts _drawing by movement_ as it is caught by our eyes in life, where they do not state the proportions, but first of all the gesture which strikes them. in these drawings by degas all the lines follow the impulsion of the thought. what one sees first, is the movement transmitted to the members by the will. the active part of the body is more carefully studied than the rest, which is indicated by bold foreshortenings, placed in the second plane, and apparently only serves to throw into relief the raised arm or leg. this is no longer merely _exact_, it is _true_; it is a superior degree of truth. [illustration: degas the dancers] these pictures of dancers are psychologic documents of great value. the physical and moral atmosphere of these surroundings is called forth by a master. such and such a figure or attitude tells us more about parisian life than a whole novel, and degas has been lavish of his intellect and his philosophy of bitter scepticism. but they are also marvellous pictorial studies which, in spite of the special, anecdotal subjects, rise to the level of grand painting through sheer power of draughtsmanship and charm of tone. degas has the special quality of giving the precise sensation of the third dimension. the atmosphere circulates round his figures; you walk round them; you see them in their real plane, and they present themselves in a thousand unexpected arrangements. degas is undoubtedly the one man of his age who has most contributed towards infusing new life into the representation of human figures: in this respect his pictures resemble no one else's. the same qualities will be found in his series of women bathing. these interiors, where the actions of the bathers are caught amidst the stuffs, flowered cushions, linen, sponges and tubs, are sharp visions of modernity. degas observes here, with the tenacious perfection of his talent, the slightest shiver of the flesh refreshed by cold water. his masterly drawing follows the most delicate inflexion of the muscles and suggests the nervous system under the skin. he observes with extraordinary subtlety the awkwardness of the nude being at a time when nudity is no longer accustomed to show itself, and this true nudity is in strong contrast to that of the academicians. one might say of degas that he has the disease of truth, if the necessity of truth were not health itself! these bodies are still marked with the impressions of the garments; the movements remain those of a clothed being which is only nude as an exception. the painter notices beauty, but he looks for it particularly in the profound characterisation of the types which he studies, and his pastels have the massiveness and the sombre style of bronze. he has also painted café-scenes, prostitutes and supers, with a mocking and sad energy; he has even amused himself with painting washerwomen, to translate the movements of the women of the people. and his colour with its pearly whites, subdued blues and delicate greys, always elevates everything he does, and confers upon him a distinctive style. finally, about , degas has revealed himself as a dreamy landscapist. his recent landscapes are symphonies in colours of strange harmony and hallucinations of rare tones, resembling music rather than painting. it is perhaps in these pictures that he has revealed certain dreams hitherto jealously hidden. and now i must speak of his technique. it is very singular and varied, and one of the most complicated in existence. in his first works, which are apparently as simple as corot's, he does not employ the process of colour-spots. but many of the works in his second manner are a combination of drawing, painting and pastel. he has invented a kind of engraving mixed with wash-drawing, pastel crayon crushed with brushes of special pattern. here one can find again his meticulous spirit. he has many of the qualities of the scientist; he is as much chemist as painter. it has been said of him, that he was a great artist of the decadence. this is materially inexact, since his qualities of draughtsmanship are those of a superb classicist, and his colouring of very pure taste. but the spirit of his work, his love of exact detail, his exaggerated psychological refinement, are certainly the signs of an extremely alert intellect who regards life prosaically and with a lassitude and disenchantment which are only consoled by the passion for truth. certain water-colours of his heightened by pastel, and certain landscapes, are somewhat disconcerting through the preciousness of his method; others are surprisingly spontaneous. all his work has an undercurrent of thought. in short, this realist is almost a mystic. he has observed a limited section of humanity, but what he has seen has not been seen so profoundly by anybody else. [illustration: degas horses in the meadows] degas has exercised an occult, but very serious, influence. he has lived alone, without pupils and almost without friends; the only pupils one might speak of are the caricaturist forain, who has painted many small pictures inspired by him, and the excellent american lady-artist miss mary cassatt. but all modern draughtsmen have been taught a lesson by his painting: renouard, toulouse-lautrec and steinlen have been impressed by it, and the young generation considers degas as a master. and that is also the unexpressed idea of the academicians, and especially of those who have sufficient talent to be able to appreciate all the science and power of such an art. the writer of this book happened one day to mention degas's name before a member of the institute. "what!" exclaimed he, "you know him? why didn't you speak to me about him?" and when he received the reply, that i did not consider degas to be an agreeable topic for him, the illustrious official answered vivaciously, "but do you think i am a fool, and that i do not know that degas is one of the greatest draughtsmen who have ever lived?"--"why, then, my dear sir, has he never been received at the salons, and not even been decorated at the age of sixty-five?"--"ah," replied the academician a little angrily, "that is another matter!" degas despises glory. it is believed that he has by him a number of canvases which will have to be burnt after his death in accordance with his will. he is a man who has loved his art like a mistress, with jealous passion, and has sacrificed to it all that other artists--enthusiasts even--are accustomed to reserve for their personal interest. degas, the incomparable pastellist, the faultless draughtsman, the bitter, satirical, pessimistic genius, is an isolated phenomenon in his period, a grand creator, unattached to his time. the painters and the select few among art-lovers know what considerable force there is in him. though almost latent as yet, it will reveal itself brilliantly, when an opportunity arises for bringing together the vast quantity of his work. as is the case with manet, though in a different sense, his powerful classic qualities will become most prominent in this ordeal, and this classicism has never abandoned him in his audacities. to degas is due a new method of observation in drawing. he will have been the first to study the relation between the moving lines of a living being and the immovable lines of the scene which serves as its setting; the first, also, to define drawing, not as a graphic science, but as the valuation of the third dimension, and thus to apply to painting the principles hitherto reserved for sculpture. finally, he will be counted among the great analysts. his vision, tenacious, intense, and sombre, stimulates thought: across what appears to be the most immediate and even the most vulgar reality it reaches a grand, artistic style; it states profoundly the facts of life, it condenses a little the human soul: and this will suffice to secure for degas an important place in his epoch, a little apart from impressionism. without noise, and through the sheer charm of his originality, he has contributed his share towards undermining the false doctrines of academic art before the painters, as manet has undermined them before the public. [illustration: claude monet an interior, after dinner] v claude monet: his work, his influence with claude monet we enter upon impressionism in its most significant technical expression, and touch upon the principal points referred to in the second chapter of this book. claude monet, the artistic descendant of claude lorrain, turner, and monticelli, has had the merit and the originality of opening a new road to landscape painting by deducing scientific statements from the study of the laws of light. his work is a magnificent verification of the optical discoveries made by helmholtz and chevreul. it is born spontaneously from the artist's vision, and happens to be a rigorous demonstration of principles which the painter has probably never cared to know. through the power of his faculties the artist has happened to join hands with the scientist. his work supplies not only the very basis of the impressionist movement proper, but of all that has followed it and will follow it in the study of the so-called chromatic laws. it will serve to give, so to say, a mathematic necessity to the happy finds met by the artists hitherto, and it will also serve to endow decorative art and mural painting with a process, the applications of which are manyfold and splendid. i have already summed up the ideas which follow from claude monet's painting more clearly even than from manet's. suppression of local colour, study of reflections by means of complementary colours and division of tones by the process of touches of pure, juxtaposed colours--these are the essential principles of _chromatism_ (for this word should be used instead of the very vague term "impressionism"). claude monet has applied them systematically, especially in landscape painting. there are a few portraits of his, which show that he might have made an excellent figure painter, if landscape had not absorbed him entirely. one of these portraits, a large full-length of a lady with a fur-lined jacket and a satin dress with green and black stripes, would in itself be sufficient to save from oblivion the man who has painted it. but the study of light upon the figure has been the special preoccupation of manet, renoir, and pissarro, and, after the impressionists, of the great lyricist, albert besnard, who has concentrated the impressionist qualities by placing them at the service of a very personal conception of symbolistic art. monet commenced with trying to find his way by painting figures, then landscapes and principally sea pictures and boats in harbours, with a somewhat sombre robustness and very broad and solid draughtsmanship. his first luminous studies date back to about . obedient to the same ideas as degas he had to avoid the salons and only show his pictures gradually in private galleries. for years he remained unknown. it is only giving m. durand-ruel his due, to state that he was one of the first to anticipate the impressionist school and to buy the first works of these painters, who were treated as madmen and charlatans. he has become great with them, and has made his fortune and theirs through having had confidence in them, and no fortune has been better deserved. thirty years ago nobody would have bought pictures by degas or monet, which are sold to-day for a thousand pounds. this detail is only mentioned to show the evolution of impressionism as regards public opinion. [illustration: claude monet the harbour, honfleur] so much has monet been attracted by the analysis of the laws of light that he has made light the real subject of all his pictures, and to show clearly his intention he has treated one and the same site in a series of pictures painted from nature at all hours of the day. this is the principle whose results are the great divisions of his work which might be called "investigation of the variations of sunlight." the most famous of these series are the _hay-ricks_, the _poplars_, the _cliffs of etretat_, the _golfe juan_, the _coins de rivière_, the _cathedrals_, the _water-lilies_, and finally the _thames_ series which monet is at present engaged upon. they are like great poems, and the splendour of the chosen theme, the orchestration of the shivers of brightness, the symphonic _parti-pris_ of the colours, make their realism, the minute contemplation of reality, approach idealism and lyric dreaming. monet paints these series from nature. he is said to take with him in a carriage at sunrise some twenty canvases which he changes from hour to hour, taking them up again the next day. he notes, for example, from nine to ten o'clock the most subtle effects of sunlight upon a hay-rick; at ten o'clock he passes on to another canvas and recommences the study until eleven o'clock. thus he follows step by step the modifications of the atmosphere until nightfall, and finishes simultaneously the works of the whole series. he has painted a hay-stack in a field twenty times over, and the twenty hay-stacks are all different. he exhibits them together, and one can follow, led by the magic of his brush, the history of light playing upon one and the same object. it is a dazzling display of luminous atoms, a kind of pantheistic evocation. light is certainly the essential personage who devours the outlines of the objects, and is thrown like a translucent veil between our eyes and matter. one can see the vibrations of the waves of the solar spectrum, drawn by the arabesque of the spots of the seven prismatic hues juxtaposed with infinite subtlety; and this vibration is that of heat, of atmospheric vitality. the silhouettes melt into the sky; the shadows are lights where certain tones, the blue, the purple, the green and the orange, predominate, and it is the proportional quantity of the spots that differentiates in our eyes the shadows from what we call the lights, just as it actually happens in optic science. there are some midday scenes by claude monet, where every material silhouette--tree, hay-rick, or rock--is annihilated, volatilised in the fiery vibration of the dust of sunlight, and before which the beholder gets really blinded, just as he would in actual sunlight. sometimes even there are no more shadows at all, nothing that could serve to indicate the values and to create contrasts of colours. everything is light, and the painter seems easily to overcome those terrible difficulties, lights upon lights, thanks to a gift of marvellous subtlety of sight. [illustration: claude monet the church at varengeville] generally he finds a very simple _motif_ sufficient; a hay-rick, some slender trunks rising skywards, or a cluster of shrubs. but he also proves himself as powerful draughtsman when he attacks themes of greater complexity. nobody knows as he does how to place a rock amidst tumultuous waves, how to make one understand the enormous construction of a cliff which fills the whole canvas, how to give the sensation of a cluster of pines bent by the wind, how to throw a bridge across a river, or how to express the massiveness of the soil under a summer sun. all this is constructed with breadth, truth and force under the delicious or fiery symphony of the luminous atoms. the most unexpected tones play in the foliage. on close inspection we are astonished to find it striped with orange, red, blue and yellow touches, but seen at a certain distance the freshness of the green foliage appears to be represented with infallible truth. the eye recomposes what the brush has dissociated, and one finds oneself perplexed at all the science, all the secret order which has presided over this accumulation of spots which seem projected in a furious shower. it is a veritable orchestral piece, where every colour is an instrument with a distinct part, and where the hours with their different tints represent the successive themes. monet is the equal of the greatest landscape painters as regards the comprehension of the true character of every soil he has studied, which is the supreme quality of his art. though absorbed beyond all by study of the sunlight, he has thought it useless to go to morocco or algeria. he has found brittany, holland, the _ile de france_, the _cote d'azur_ and england sufficient sources of inspiration for his symphonies, which cover from end to end the scale of perceptible colours. he has expressed, for instance, the mild and vaporous softness of the mediterranean, the luxuriant vegetation of the gardens of cannes and antibes, with a truthfulness and knowledge of the psychology of land and water which can only be properly appreciated by those who live in this enchanted region. this has not prevented him from understanding better than anybody the wildness, the grand austereness of the rocks of _belle-isle en mer_, to express it in pictures in which one really feels the wind, the spray, and the roaring of the heavy waters breaking against the impassibility of the granite rocks. his recent series of _water-lilies_ expressed all the melancholic and fresh charm of quiet basins, of sweet bits of water blocked by rushes and calyxes. he has painted underwoods in the autumn, where the most subtle shades of bronze and gold are at play, chrysanthemums, pheasants, roofs at twilight, dazzling sunflowers, gardens, tulip-fields in holland, bouquets, effects of snow and hoar frost of exquisite softness, and sailing boats passing in the sun. he has painted some views of the banks of the seine which are quite wonderful in their power of conjuring up these scenes, and over all this has roved his splendid vision of a great, amorous and radiant colourist. the _cathedrals_ are even more of a _tour de force_ of his talent. they consist of seventeen studies of rouen cathedral, the towers of which fill the whole of the picture, leaving barely a little space, a little corner of the square, at the foot of the enormous stone-shafts which mount to the very top of the picture. here he has no proper means to express the play of the reflections, no changeful waters or foliage: the grey stone, worn by time and blackened by centuries, is for seventeen times the monochrome, the thankless theme upon which the painter is about to exercise his vision. but monet finds means of making the most dazzling atmospheric harmonies sparkle upon this stone. pale and rosy at sunrise, purple at midday, glowing in the evening under the rays of the setting sun, standing out from the crimson and gold, scarcely visible in the mist, the colossal edifice impresses itself upon the eye, reconstructed with its thousand details of architectural chiselling, drawn without minuteness but with superb decision, and these pictures approach the composite, bold and rich tone of oriental carpets. [illustration: claude monet poplars on the epte in autumn] monet excels also in suggesting the _drawing of light_, if i may venture to use this expression. he makes us understand the movement of the vibrations of heat, the movement of the luminous waves; he also understands how to paint the sensation of strong wind. "before one of manet's pictures," said mme. morisot, "i always know which way to incline my umbrella." monet is also an incomparable painter of water. pond, river, or sea--he knows how to differentiate their colouring, their consistency, and their currents, and he transfixes a moment of their fleeting life. he is intuitive to an exceptional degree in the intimate composition of matter, water, earth, stone or air, and this intuition serves him in place of intellectuality in his art. he is a painter _par excellence_, a man born for painting, and this power of penetrating the secrets of matter and of light helps him to attain a kind of grand, unconsciously lyrical poetry. he transposes the immediate truth of our vision and elevates it to decorative grandeur. if manet is the realist-romanticist of impressionism, if degas is its psychologist, claude monet is its lyrical pantheist. his work is immense. he produces with astonishing rapidity, and he has yet another characteristic of the great painters: that of having put his hand to every kind of subject. his recent studies of the thames are, at the decline of his energetic maturity, as beautiful and as spontaneous as the _hay-ricks_ of seventeen years back. they are thrillingly truthful visions of fairy mists, where showers of silver and gold sparkle through rosy vapours; and at the same time monet combines in this series the dream-landscapes of turner with monticelli's accumulation of precious stones. thus interpreted by this intense faculty of synthesis, nature, simplified in detail and contemplated in its grand lines, becomes truly a living dream. since the _hay-ricks_ one can say that the work of claude monet is glorious. it has been made sacred to the admiring love of the connoisseurs on the day when monet joined rodin in an exhibition which is famous in the annals of modern art. yet no official distinction has intervened to recognise one of the greatest painters of the nineteenth century. the influence of monet has been enormous all over europe and america. the _process of colour spots_[ ] (let us adhere to this rudimentary name which has become current) has been adopted by a whole crowd of painters. i shall have to say a few words about it at the end of this book. but it is befitting to terminate this all too short study by explaining that the most lyrical of the impressionists has also been the theorist _par excellence_. his work connects easel painting with mural painting. no minister of fine arts has been found, who would surmount the systematic opposition of the official painters, and give manet a commission for grand mural compositions, for which his method is admirably suited. it has taken long years before such works were entrusted to besnard, who, with puvis de chavannes, has given paris her most beautiful modern decorations, but besnard's work is the direct outcome of claude monet's harmonies. the principle of the division of tones and of the study of complementary colours has been full of revelations, and one of the most fruitful theories. it has probably been the principle which will designate most clearly the originality of the painting of the future. to have invented it, is enough to secure permanent glory for a man. and without wishing to put again the question of the antagonism of realism and idealism, one may well say that a painter who invents a method and shows such power, is highly intellectual and gifted with a pictorial intelligence. whatever the subjects he treats, he creates an aesthetic emotion equivalent, if not similar, to those engendered by the most complex symbolism. in his ardent love of nature monet has found his greatness; he suggests the secrets by stating the evident facts. that is the law common to all the arts. [footnote : _procédé de la tache._] [illustration: claude monet the bridge at argenteuil] vi auguste renoir and his work the work of auguste renoir extends without interruption over a period of forty years. it appears to sum up the ideas and methods of impressionist art so completely that, should it alone be saved from a general destruction, it would suffice to bear witness to this entire art movement. it has unfolded itself from to our days with a happy magnificence, and it allows us to distinguish several periods, in the technique at least, since the variety of its subjects is infinite. like manet, and like all truly great and powerful painters, m. renoir has treated almost everything, nudes, portraits, subject pictures, seascapes and still-life, all with equal beauty. his first manner shows him to be a very direct descendant of boucher. his female nudes are altogether in eighteenth century taste and he uses the same technique as boucher: fat and sleek paint of soft brilliancy, laid on with the palette knife, with precise strokes round the principal values; pink and ivory tints relieved by strong blues similar to those of enamels; the light distributed everywhere and almost excluding the opposition of the shadows; and, finally, vivacious attitudes and an effort towards decorative convention. nevertheless, his _bathers_, of which he has painted a large series, are in many ways thoroughly modern and personal. renoir's nude is neither that of monet, nor of degas, whose main concern was truth, the last-named even trying to define in the undressed being such psychologic observations as are generally looked for in the features of the clothed being. nor is renoir's nude that of the academicians, that poetised nude arranged according to a pseudo-greek ideal, which has nothing in common with contemporary women. what renoir sees in the nude is less the line, than the brilliancy of the epidermis, the luminous, nacreous substance of the flesh: it is the "ideal clay"; and in this he shows the vision of a poet; he transfigures reality, but in a very different sense from that of the school. renoir's woman comes from a primitive dream-land; she is an artless, wild creature, blooming in perfumed scrub. he sets her in backgrounds of foliage or of blue, foam-fringed torrents. she is a luxuriant, firm, healthy and naïve woman with a powerful body, a small head, her eyes wide open, thoughtless, brilliant and ignorant, her lips blood-red and her nostrils dilated; she is a gentle being, like the women of tahiti, born in a tropical clime where vice is as unknown as shame, and where entire ingenuousness is a guarantee against all indecency. one cannot but be astonished at this mixture of "japanism," savagism and eighteenth century taste, which constitutes inimitably the nude of renoir. [illustration: renoir dÉjeuner] [illustration: renoir in the box] m. renoir's second manner is more directly related to the impressionist methods: it is that of his landscapes, his flowers and his portraits. here one can feel his relationship with manet and with claude monet. these pictures are hatchings of colours accumulated to render less the objects than their transparency across the atmosphere. the portraits are frankly presented and broadly executed. the artist occupies himself in the first place with getting correct values and an exact suggestion of depth. he understands the illogicality of a false perfection which is as interested in a trinket as in an eye, and he knows how to proportion the interest of the picture which should guide the beholder's look to the essential point, though every part should be correctly executed. he knows how to interpret nature in a certain sense; how to stop in time; how to suggest by leaving a part apparently unfinished; how to indicate, behind a figure, the sea or some landscape with just a few broad touches which suffice to suggest it without usurping the principal part. it is now, that renoir paints his greatest works, the _déjeûner des canotiers_, the _bal au moulin de la galette_, the _box_, the _terrace_, the _first step_, the _sleeping woman with a cat_, and his most beautiful landscapes; but his nature is too capricious to be satisfied with a single technique. there are some landscapes that are reminiscent of corot or of anton mauve; the _woman with the broken neck_ is related to manet; the portrait of _sisley_ invents pointillism fifteen years before the pointillists; _la pensée_, this masterpiece, evokes hoppner. but in everything reappears the invincible french instinct: the _jeune fille au panier_ is a greuze painted by an impressionist; the delightful _jeune fille à la promenade_ is connected with fragonard; the _box_, a perfect marvel of elegance and knowledge, condenses the whole worldliness of . the portrait of _jeanne samary_ is an evocation of the most beautiful portraits of the eighteenth century, a poem of white satin and golden hair. [illustration: renoir young girl promenading] renoir's realism bears in spite of all, the imprint of the lyric spirit and of sweetness. it has neither the nervous veracity of manet, nor the bitterness of degas, who both love their epoch and find it interesting without idealising it and who have the vision of psychologist novelists. before everything else he is a painter. what he sees in the _bal au moulin de la galette_, are not the stigmata of vice and impudence, the ridiculous and the sad sides of the doubtful types of this low resort. he sees the gaiety of sundays, the flashes of the sun, the oddity of a crowd carried away by the rhythm of the valses, the laughter, the clinking of glasses, the vibrating and hot atmosphere; and he applies to this spectacle of joyous vulgarity his gifts as a sumptuous colourist, the arabesque of the lines, the gracefulness of his bathers, and the happy eurythmy of his soul. the straw hats are changed into gold, the blue jackets are sapphires, and out of a still exact realism is born a poem of light. the _déjeûner des canotiers_ is a subject which has been painted a hundred times, either for the purpose of studying popular types, or of painting white table-cloths amidst sunny foliage. yet renoir is the only painter who has raised this small subject to the proportions and the style of a large canvas, through the pictorial charm and the masterly richness of the arrangement. the _box_, conceived in a low harmony, in a golden twilight, is a work worthy of reynolds. the pale and attentive face of the lady makes one think of the great english master's best works; the necklace, the flesh, the flounce of lace and the hands are marvels of skill and of taste, which the greatest modern virtuosos, sargent and besnard, have not surpassed, and, as far as the man in the background is concerned, his white waistcoat, his dress-coat, his gloved hand would suffice to secure the fame of a painter. the _sleeping woman_, the _first step_, the _terrace_, and the decorative _dance_ panels reveal renoir as an _intimiste_ and as an admirable painter of children. his strange colouring and his gifts of grasping nature and of ingenuity--strangers to all decadent complexity--have allowed him to rank among the best of those who have expressed childhood in its true aspect, without overloading it with over-precocious thoughts. finally, renoir is a painter of flowers of dazzling variety and exquisite splendour. they supply him with inexhaustible pretexts for suave and subtle harmonies. [illustration: renoir woman's bust] his third manner has surprised and deceived certain admirers of his. it seems to mix his two first techniques, combining the painting with the palette knife and the painting in touches of divided tones. he searches for certain accords and contrasts almost analogous to the musical dissonances. he realises incredible "false impressions." he seems to take as themes oriental carpets: he abandons realism and style and conceives symphonies. he pleases himself in assembling those tones which one is generally afraid of using: turkish pink, lemon, crushed strawberry and viridian. sometimes he amuses himself with amassing faded colours which would be disheartening with others, but out of which he can extract a harmony. sometimes he plays with the crudest colours. one feels disturbed, charmed, disconcerted, as one would before an indian shawl, a barbaric piece of pottery or a persian miniature, and one refrains from forcing into the limits of a definition this exceptional virtuoso whose passionate love of colour overcomes every difficulty. it is in this most recent part of his evolution, that renoir appears the most capricious and the most poetical of all the painters of his generation. the flowers find themselves treated in various techniques according to their own character: the gladioles and roses in pasty paint, the poor flowers of the field are defined by a cross-hatching of little touches. influenced by the purple shadow of the large flower-decked hats, the heads of young girls are painted on coarse canvas, sketched in broad strokes, with the hair in one colour only. some little study appears like wool, some other has the air of agate, or is marbled and veined according to his inexplicable whim. we have here an incessant confusion of methods, a complete emancipation of the virtuoso who listens only to his fancy. now and then the harmonies are false and the drawing incorrect, but these weaknesses do at least no harm to the values, the character and the general movement of the work, which are rather accentuated by them. [illustration: renoir young woman in empire costume] surely, it would be false to exclude ideologist painting which has produced wonders, and not less iniquitous to reproach impressionism with not having taken any interest in it! one has to avoid the kind of criticism which consists in reproaching one movement with not having had the qualities of the others whilst maintaining its own, and we have abandoned the idea of beauty divided into a certain number of clauses and programmes, towards the sum total of which the efforts of the eclectic candidates are directed. m. renoir is probably the most representative figure of a movement where he seems to have united all the qualities of his friends. to criticise him means to criticise impressionism itself. having spent half of its strength in proving to its adversaries that they were wrong, and the other half in inventing technical methods, it is not surprising to find that impressionism has been wanting in intellectual depth and has left to its successors the care of realising works of great thought. but it has brought us a sunny smile, a breath of pure air. it is so fascinating, that one cannot but love its very mistakes which make it more human and more accessible. renoir is the most lyrical, the most musical, the most subtle of the masters of this art. some of his landscapes are as beautiful as those of claude monet. his nudes are as masterly in painting as manet's, and more supple. not having attained the scientific drawing which one finds in degas's, they have a grace and a brilliancy which degas's nudes have never known. if his rare portraits of men are inferior to those of his rivals, his women's portraits have a frequently superior distinction. his great modern compositions are equal to the most beautiful works by manet and degas. his inequalities are also more striking than theirs. being a fantastic, nervous improvisator he is more exposed to radical mistakes. but he is a profoundly sincere and conscientious artist. [illustration: renoir on the terrace] the race speaks in him. it is inexplicable that he should not have met with startling success, since he is voluptuous, bright, happy and learned without heaviness. one has to attribute his relative isolation to the violence of the controversies, and particularly to the dignity of a poet gently disdainful of public opinion and paying attention solely to painting, his great and only love. manet has been a fighter whose works have created scandal. renoir has neither shown, nor hidden himself: he has painted according to his dream, spreading his works, without mixing up his name or his personality with the tumult that raged around his friends. and now, for that very reason, his work appears fresher and younger, more primitive and candid, more intoxicated with flowers, flesh and sunlight. vii the secondary painters of impressionism--camille pissarro, alfred sisley, paul cÉzanne, berthe morisot, miss mary cassatt, eva gonzalÈs, gustave caillebotte, bazille, albert lebourg, eugÈne boudin. manet, degas, monet and renoir will present themselves as a glorious quartet of masters, in the history of painting. we must now speak of some personalities who have grown up by their side and who, without being great, offer nevertheless a rich and beautiful series of works. of these personalities the most considerable is certainly that of m. camille pissarro. he painted according to some wise and somewhat timid formulas, when manet's example won him over to impressionism to which he has remained faithful. m. pissarro has been enormously productive. his work is composed of landscapes, rustic scenes, and studies of streets and markets. his first landscapes are in the manner of corot, but bathed in blond colour: vast cornfields, sunny woods, skies with big, flocking clouds, effects of soft light--these are the motifs of some charming canvases which have a solid, classic quality. later the artist adopted the method of the dissociation of tones, from which he obtained some happy effects. his harvest and market scenes are luminous and alive. the figures in these recall those of millet. they bear witness to high qualities of sincere observation, and are the work of a man profoundly enamoured of rustic life. m. pissarro excels in grouping the figures, in correctly catching their attitudes and in rendering the medley of a crowd in the sun. certain fans in particular will always remain delightful caprices of fresh colour, but it would be vain to look in this attractive, animated and clear painting for the psychologic gifts, the profound feeling for grand silhouettes, and the intuition of the worn and gloomy soul of the men of the soil, which have made millet's noble glory. at the time when, about , the neo-impressionists whom we shall study later on invented the pointillist method, m. pissarro tried it and applied it judiciously, with the patient, serious and slightly anxious talent, by which he is distinguished. recently, in a series of pictures representing views of paris (the boulevards and the avenue de l'opéra) m. pissarro has shewn rare vision and skill and has perhaps signed his most beautiful and personal paintings. the perspective, the lighting, the tones of the houses and of the crowds, the reflections of rain or sunshine are intensely true; they make one feel the atmosphere, the charm and the soul of paris. one can say of pissarro that he lacks none of the gifts of his profession. he is a learned, fruitful and upright artist. but he has lacked originality; he always recalls those whom he admires and whose ideas he applies boldly and tastefully. it is probable that his conscientious nature has contributed not little towards keeping him in the second rank. incapable, certainly, of voluntarily imitating, this excellent and diligent painter has not had the sparks of genius of his friends, but all that can be given to a man through conscientious study, striving after truth and love of art, has been acquired by m. pissarro. the rest depended on destiny only. there is no character more worthy of respect and no effort more meritorious than his, and there can be no better proof of his disinterestedness and his modesty, than the fact that, although he has thirty years of work behind him, an honoured name and white hair, m. pissarro did not hesitate to adopt, quite frankly, the technique of the young pointillist painters, his juniors, because it appeared to him better than his own. he is, if not a great painter, at least one of the most interesting rustic landscape painters of our epoch. his visions of the country are quite his own, and are a harmonious mixture of classicism and impressionism which will secure one of the most honourable places to his work. [illustration: pissarro rue de l'epicerie, rouen] [illustration: pissarro boulevarde montmartre] [illustration: pissarro the boildieaux bridge at rouen] [illustration: pissaro the avenue de l'opÉra] there has, perhaps, been more original individuality in the landscape painter alfred sisley. he possessed in the highest degree the feeling for light, and if he did not have the power, the masterly passion of claude monet, he will at least deserve to be frequently placed by his side as regards the expression of certain combinations of light. he did not have the decorative feeling which makes monet's landscapes so imposing; one does not see in his work that surprising lyrical interpretation which knows how to express the drama of the raging waves, the heavy slumber of enormous masses of rock, the intense torpor of the sun on the sea. but in all that concerns the mild aspects of the _ile de france_, the sweet and fresh landscapes, sisley is not unworthy of being compared with monet. he equals him in numerous pictures; he has a similar delicacy of perception, a similar fervour of execution. he is the painter of great, blue rivers curving towards the horizon; of blossoming orchards; of bright hills with red-roofed hamlets scattered about; he is, beyond all, the painter of french skies which he presents with admirable vivacity and facility. he has the feeling for the transparency of atmosphere, and if his technique allies him directly with impressionism, one can well feel, that he painted spontaneously and that this technique happened to be adapted to his nature, without his having attempted to appropriate it for the sake of novelty. sisley has painted a notable series of pictures in the quaint village of moret on the outskirts of the forest of fontainebleau, where he died at a ripe age, and these canvases will figure among the most charming landscapes of our epoch. sisley was a veteran of impressionism. at the exhibition of , in the two rooms reserved for the works of this school, there were to be seen a dozen of sisley's canvases. by the side of the finest renoirs, monets and manets they kept their charm and their brilliancy with a singular flavour, and this was for many critics a revelation as to the real place of this artist, whom they had hitherto considered as a pretty colourist of only relative importance. [illustration: sisley snow effect] [illustration: sisley bougival, at the water's edge] [illustration: sisley bridge at moret] paul cézanne, unknown to the public, is appreciated by a small group of art lovers. he is an artist who lives in provence, away from the world; he is supposed to have served as model for the impressionist painter claude lantier, described by zola in his celebrated novel "l'oeuvre." cézanne has painted landscapes, rustic scenes and still-life pictures. his figures are clumsy and brutal and inharmonious in colour, but his landscapes have the merit of a robust simplicity of vision. these pictures are almost primitive, and they are loved by the young impressionists because of their exclusion of all "cleverness." a charm of rude simplicity and sincerity can be found in these works in which cézanne employs only just the means which are indispensable for his end. his still-life pictures are particularly interesting owing to the spotless brilliancy of their colours, the straightforwardness of the tones, and the originality of certain shades analogous to those of old faience. cézanne is a conscientious painter without skill, intensely absorbed in rendering what he sees, and his strong and tenacious attention has sometimes succeeded in finding beauty. he reminds more of an ancient gothic craftsman, than of a modern artist, and he is full of repose as a contrast to the dazzling virtuosity of so many painters. [illustration: cÉzanne dessert] berthe morisot will remain the most fascinating figure of impressionism,--the one who has stated most precisely the femineity of this luminous and iridescent art. having married eugène manet, the brother of the great painter, she exhibited at various private galleries, where the works of the first impressionists were to be seen, and became as famous for her talent as for her beauty. when manet died, she took charge of his memory and of his work, and she helped with all her energetic intelligence to procure them their just and final estimation. mme. eugène manet has certainly been one of the most beautiful types of french women of the end of the nineteenth century. when she died prematurely at the age of fifty (in ), she left a considerable amount of work: gardens, young girls, water-colours of refined taste, of surprising energy, and of a colouring as distinguished, as it is unexpected. as great grand-daughter of fragonard, berthe morisot (since we ought to leave her the name with which her respect for manet's great name made her always sign her works) seemed to have inherited from her famous ancestor his french gracefulness, his spirited elegance, and all his other great qualities. she has also felt the influence of corot, of manet and of renoir. all her work is bathed in brightness, in azure, in sunlight; it is a woman's work, but it has a strength, a freedom of touch and an originality, which one would hardly have expected. her water-colours, particularly, belong to a superior art: some notes of colour suffice to indicate sky, sea, or a forest background, and everything shows a sure and masterly fancy, for which our time can offer no analogy. a series of berthe morisot's works looks like a veritable bouquet whose brilliancy is due less to the colour-schemes which are comparatively soft, grey and blue, than to the absolute correctness of the values. a hundred canvases, and perhaps three hundred water-colours attest this talent of the first rank. normandy coast scenes with pearly skies and turquoise horizons, sparkling nice gardens, fruit-laden orchards, girls in white dresses with big flower-decked hats, young women in ball-dress, and flowers are the favourite themes of this artist who was the friend of renoir, of degas and of mallarmé. [illustration: berthe morisot melancholy] [illustration: berthe morisot young woman seated] miss mary cassatt will deserve a place by her side. american by birth, she became french through her assiduous participation in the exhibitions of the impressionists. she is one of the very few painters whom degas has advised, with forain and m. ernest rouart. (this latter, a painter himself, a son of the painter and wealthy collector henri rouart, has married mme. manet's daughter who is also an artist.) miss cassatt has made a speciality of studying children, and she is, perhaps, the artist of this period who has understood and expressed them with the greatest originality. she is a pastellist of note, and some of her pastels are as good as manet's and degas's, so far as broad execution and brilliancy and delicacy of tones are concerned. ten years ago miss cassatt exhibited a series of ten etchings in colour, representing scenes of mothers and children at their toilet. at that time this _genre_ was almost abandoned, and miss cassatt caused astonishment by her boldness which faced the most serious difficulties. one can relish in this artist's pictures, besides the great qualities of solid draughtsmanship, correct values, and skilful interpretation of flesh and stuffs, a profound sentiment of infantile life, childish gestures, clear and unconscious looks, and the loving expression of the mothers. miss cassatt is the painter and psychologist of babies and young mothers whom she likes to depict in the freshness of an orchard, or against backgrounds of the flowered hangings of dressing-rooms, amidst bright linen, tubs, and china, in smiling intimacy. to these two remarkable women another has to be added, eva gonzalès, the favourite pupil of manet who has painted a fine portrait of her. eva gonzalès became the wife of the excellent engraver henri guérard, and died prematurely, not, however, before one was able to admire her talent as an exquisitely delicate pastellist. having first been a pupil of chaplin, she soon came to forget the tricks of technique in order to acquire under manet's guidance the qualities of clearness and the strength of the great painter of _argenteuil_; and she would certainly have taken one of the first places in modern art, had not her career been cut short by death. a small pastel at the luxembourg gallery proves her convincing qualities as a colourist. [illustration: mary cassatt getting up baby] [illustration: mary cassatt women and child] gustave caillebotte was a friend of the impressionists from the very first hour. he was rich, fond of art, and himself a painter of great merit who modestly kept hidden behind his comrades. his picture _les raboteurs de parquets_ made him formerly the butt of derision. to-day his work, at the luxembourg gallery seems hardly a fit pretext for so much controversy, but at that time much was considered as madness, that to our eyes appears quite natural. this picture is a study of oblique perspective and its curious _ensemble_ of rising lines sufficed to provoke astonishment. the work is, moreover, grey and discreet in colour and has some qualities of fine light, but is on the whole not very interesting. recently an exhibition of works by caillebotte has made it apparent that this amateur was a misjudged painter. the still-life pictures in this exhibition were specially remarkable. but the name of caillebotte was destined to reach the public only in connection with controversies and scandal. when he died, he left to the state a magnificent collection of objets-d'art and of old pictures, and also a collection of impressionist works, stipulating that these two bequests should be inseparable. he wished by this means to impose the works of his friends upon the museums, and thus avenge their unjust neglect. the state accepted the two legacies, since the louvre absolutely wanted to benefit by the ancient portion, in spite of the efforts of the academicians who revolted against the acceptance of the modern part. on this occasion one could see how far the official artists were carried by their hatred of the impressionists. a group of academicians, professors at the _ecole des beaux-arts_, threatened the minister that they would resign _en masse_. "we cannot," they wrote to the papers, "continue to teach an art of which we believe we know the laws, from the moment the state admits into the museums, where our pupils can see them, works which are the very negation of all we teach." a heated discussion followed in the press, and the minister boldly declared that impressionism, good or bad, had attracted the attention of the public, and that it was the duty of the state to receive impartially the work of all the art movements; the public would know how to judge and choose; the government's duty was not to influence them by showing them only one style of painting, but to remain in historic neutrality. thanks to this clever reply, the academicians, among whom m. gérôme was the most rabid, resigned themselves to keeping their posts. a similar incident, less publicly violent, but equally strange, occurred on the occasion of the admission to the luxembourg gallery of the portrait of m. whistler's mother, a masterpiece of which the gallery is proud to-day, and for which a group of writers and art lovers had succeeded in opening the way. it is difficult to imagine the degree of irritation and obstruction of the official painters against all the ideas of the new painting, and if it had only depended upon them, there can be no doubt that manet and his friends would have died in total obscurity, not only banished from the salons and museums, but also treated as madmen and robbed of the possibility of living by their work. the caillebotte collection was installed under conditions which the ill-will of the administrators made at least as deplorable as possible. the works were crowded into a small, badly lighted room, where it is absolutely impossible to see them from the distance required by the method of the division of tones, and the meanness of the opposition was such that, the pictures having been bequeathed without frames, the keeper was obliged to have recourse to the reserves of the louvre, because he was refused the necessary credit for purchasing them. the collection is however beautiful and interesting. it does not represent impressionism in all its brilliancy, since the works by which it is composed had been bought by caillebotte at a time, when his friends were still far from having arrived at the full blossoming of their qualities. but some very fine things can at least be found there. renoir is marvellously represented by the _moulin de la galette_, which is one of his masterpieces. degas figures with seven beautiful pastels, monet with some landscapes grand in style; sisley and pissarro appear scarcely to their advantage, and finally it is to be regretted, that manet is only represented by a study in black in his first manner, the _balcony_, which does not count among his best pictures, and the famous _olympia_ whose importance is more historical than intrinsic. the gallery has separately acquired a _young girl in ball dress_ by berthe morisot, which is a delicate marvel of grace and freshness. and in the place of honour of the gallery is to be seen fantin-latour's great picture _hommage à manet_, in which the painter, seated before his easel, is surrounded by his friends; and this canvas may well be considered the emblem of the slow triumph of impressionism, and of the amends for a great injustice. it is in this picture that the young painter bazille is represented, a friend and pupil of manet's, who was killed during the war of , and who should not be forgotten here. he has left a few canvases marked by great talent, and would no doubt have counted among the most original contemporary artists. we shall terminate this all too short enumeration with two remarkable landscapists; the one is albert lebourg who paints in suave and poetic colour schemes, with blues and greens of particular tenderness, a painter who will take his place in the history of impressionism. the other is eugène boudin. he has not adopted claude monet's technique; but i have already said that the vague and inexact term "impressionism" must be understood to comprise a group of painters showing originality in the study of light and getting away from the academic spirit. as to this, eugène boudin deserves to be placed in the first rank. his canvases will be the pride of the best arranged galleries. he is an admirable seascape painter. he has known how to render with unfailing mastery, the grey waters of the channel, the stormy skies, the heavy clouds, the effects of sunlight feebly piercing the prevailing grey. his numerous pictures painted at the port of havre are profoundly expressive. nobody has excelled him in drawing sailing-boats, in giving the exact feeling of the keels plunged into the water, in grouping the masts, in rendering the activity of a port, in indicating the value of a sail against the sky, the fluidity of calm water, the melancholy of the distance, the shiver of short waves rippled by the breeze. boudin is a learned colourist of grey tones. his impressionism consists in the exclusion of useless details, his comprehension of reflections, his feeling for values, the boldness of his composition and his faculty of directly perceiving nature and the transparency of atmosphere: he reminds sometimes of constable and of corot. boudin's production has been enormous, and nothing that he has done is indifferent. he is one of those artists who have not a brilliant career, but who will last, and whose name, faithfully retained by the elect, is sure of immortality. he may be considered an isolated artist, on the border line between classicism and impressionism, and this is unquestionably the cause of the comparative obscurity of his fame. the same might be said of the ingenuous and fine landscapist hervier, who has left such interesting canvases; and of the lyons water-colour painter ravier who, almost absolutely unknown, came very close to monticelli and showed admirable gifts. it must, however, be recognised that boudin is nearer to impressionism than to any other grouping of artists, and he must be considered as a small master of pure french lineage. finally, if a question of nationality prevents me from enlarging upon the subject of the rank of precursor which must be accorded to the great dutch landscapist jongkind, i must at least mention his name. his water-colour sketches have been veritable revelations for several impressionists. eugène boudin and berthe morisot have derived special benefit from them, and they are valuable lessons for many young painters of the present day. [illustration: jongkind in holland] [illustration: jongkind view of the hague] we do not pretend to have mentioned in this chapter all the painters directly connected with the first impressionist movement. we have confined ourselves to enumerating the most important only, and each of them would deserve a complete essay. but our object will have been achieved, if we have inspired art-lovers with just esteem for this brave phalanx of artists who have proved better than any aesthetic commentaries the vitality, the originality, and the logic of manet's theories, the great importance of the notions introduced by him into painting, and who have, on the other hand, clearly demonstrated the uselessness of official teaching. far from the traditions and methods of the school, the best of their knowledge and of their talent is due to their profound and sincere contemplation of nature and to their freedom of spirit. and for that reason they will have a permanent place in the evolution of their art. viii the modern illustrators connected with impressionism: raffaËlli, toulouse-lautrec, forain, chÉret, etc. not the least important result of impressionism has been the veritable revolution effected by it in the art of illustration. it was only natural that its principles should have led to it. the substitution of the beauty of character for the beauty of proportion was bound to move the artists to regard illustration in a new light; and as pictorial impressionism was born of the same movement of ideas which created the naturalist novel and the impressionist literature of flaubert, zola and the goncourts, and moreover as these men were united by close relations and a common defence, edouard manet's modern ideas soon took up the commentary of the books dealing with modern life and the description of actual spectacles. the impressionists themselves have not contributed towards illustration. their work has consisted in raising to the style of grand painting subjects, that seemed at the best only worthy of the proportion of vignettes, in opposition to the subjects qualified as "noble" by the school. the series of works by manet and degas may be considered as admirable illustrations to the novels by zola and the goncourts. it is a parallel research in modern psychologic truth. but this research has remained confined to pictures. it may be presumed that, had they wished to do so, manet and degas could have admirably illustrated certain contemporary novels, and renoir could have produced a masterpiece in commenting, say, upon verlaine's _fêtes galantes_. the only things that can be mentioned here are a few drawings composed by manet for edgar a. poe's _the raven_ and mallarmé's _l'après-midi d'un faune_, in addition to a few music covers without any great interest. but if the impressionists themselves have neglected actively to assist the interesting school of modern illustration, a whole legion of draughtsmen have immediately been inspired by their principles. one of their most original characteristics was the realistic representation of the scenes, the _mise en cadre_, and it afforded these draughtsmen an opportunity for revolutionising book illustration. there had already been some excellent artists who occupied themselves with vignette drawings, like tony johannot and célestin nanteuil, whose pretty and smart frontispieces are to be found in the old editions of balzac. the genius of honoré daumier and the high fancy of gavarni and of grévin had already announced a serious protest of modern sentiment against academic taste, in returning on many points to the free tradition of eisen, of the two moreaus and of debucourt. since the draughtsman constantin guys, baudelaire's friend, gave evidence, in his most animated water-colour drawings, of a curious vision of nervous elegance and of expressive skill quite in accord with the ideas of the day. impressionism, and also the revelation of the japanese colour prints, gave an incredible vigour to these intuitive glimpses. certain characteristics will date from the days of impressionism. it is due to impressionism that artists have ventured to show in illustration, for instance, figures in the foreground cut through by the margin, rising perspectives, figures in the background that seem to stand on a higher plane than the others, people seen from a second story; in a word, all that life presents to our eyes, without the annoying consideration for "style" and for arrangement, which the academic spirit obstinately insisted to apply to the illustration of modern life. degas in particular has given many examples of this novelty in composition. one of his pastels has remained typical, owing to the scandal caused by it: he represents a dance-scene at the opera, seen from the orchestra. the neck of a double bass rises in the middle of the picture and cuts into it, a large black silhouette, behind which sparkle the gauze-dresses and the lights. that can be observed any evening, and yet it would be difficult to recapitulate all the railleries and all the anger caused by so natural an audacity. modern illustration was to be the pretext of a good many more outbursts! we must now consider four artists of great importance who are remarkable painters and have greatly raised the art of illustration. this title illustrator, despised by the official painters, should be given them as the one which has secured them the best claim to fame. they have restored to this title all its merit and all its brilliancy and have introduced into illustration the most serious qualities of painting. of these four men the first in date is m.j.f. raffaëlli, who introduced himself about with some remarkable and intensely picturesque illustrations in colours in various magazines. he gave an admirable series of _parisian types_, in album form, and a series of etchings to accompany the text of m. huysmans, describing the curious river "la bièvre" which penetrates paris in a thousand curves, sometimes subterranean, sometimes above ground, and serves the tanners for washing the leather. this series is a model of modern illustration. but, apart from the book, the entire pictorial work of m. raffaëlli is a humorous and psychological illustration of the present time. he has painted with unique truth and spirit the working men's types and the small _bourgeois_, the poor, the hospital patients and the roamers of the outskirts of paris. he has succeeded in being the poet of the sickly and dirty landscapes by which the capitals are surrounded; he has rendered their anaemic charm, the confused perspectives of houses, fences, walls and little gardens, and their smoke, under the melancholy of rainy skies. with an irony free from bitterness he has noted the clumsy gestures of the labourer in his sunday garb and the grotesque silhouettes of the small townsmen, and has compiled a gallery of very real sociologic interest. m. raffaëlli has also exhibited parisian landscapes in which appear great qualities of light. he excels in rendering the mornings in the spring, with their pearly skies, their pale lights, their transparency and their slight shadows, and finally he has proved his mastery by some large portraits, fresh harmonies, generally devoted to the study of different qualities of white. if the name "impressionist" meant, as has been wrongly believed, an artist who confines himself to giving the impression of what he sees, then m. raffaëlli would be the real impressionist. he suggests more than he paints. he employs a curious technique: he often leaves a sky completely bare, throwing on to the white of the canvas a few colour notes which suffice to give the illusion. he has a decided preference for white and black, and paints very slightly in small touches. his very correct feeling for values makes him an excellent painter; but what interests him beyond all, is psychologic expression. he notes it with so hasty a pencil, that one might almost say that he writes with colour. he is also an etcher of great merit, and an original sculptor. he has invented small bas-reliefs in bronze which can be attached to the wall, like sketches or nick-nacks; and he has applied his talent even to renewing the material for painting. he is an ingenious artist and a prolific producer, a roguish, but sympathetic, observer of the life of the small people, which has not prevented him from painting very seriously when he wanted to, as is witnessed among other works by his very fine portrait of m. clemenceau speaking at a public meeting, in the presence of a vociferous audience from which rise some hundred of heads whose expressions are noted with really splendid energy and fervour. henri de toulouse-lautrec, who died recently, insane, leaves a great work behind him. he had a kind of cruel genius. descended from one of the greatest families of france, badly treated by nature who made him a kind of ailing dwarf, he seemed to take a bitter pleasure in the study of modern vice. he painted scenes at café-concerts and the rooms of wantons with intense truth. nobody has revealed better than he the lowness and suffering of the creatures "of pleasure," as they have been dubbed by the heartrending irony of life. lautrec has shown the artificiality of the painted faces; the vulgarity of the types of the prostitutes of low origin; the infamous gestures, the disorder, the slovenliness of the dwellings of these women; all the shady side of their existence. it has been said that he loved ugliness. as a matter of fact, he did not exaggerate, he raised a powerful accusation against everything he saw. but his terrible clairvoyance passed for caricature. this sad psychologist was a great painter; he pleased himself with dressing in rose-coloured costumes the coarsest and most vulgar creatures he painted, such as one can find at the cabarets and concerts, and he enjoyed the contrast of fresh tones with the faces marked by vice and poverty; lautrec's two great influences have been the japanese and degas. of the former he retained the love for decorative arabesques and the unconventional grouping; of the other the learned draughtsmanship, expressive in its broad simplification, and one might say that the pupil has often been worthy of the masters. one can only regret that lautrec should have confined his vision and his high faculties to the study of a small and very parisian world; but, seeing his works, one cannot deny the science, the spirit and the grand bearing of his art. he has also signed some fine posters, notably a _bruant_ which is a masterpiece of its kind. degas's deep influence can be found again in j.l. forain, who has made himself known by an immense series of drawings for the illustrated papers, drawings as remarkable in themselves as they are, through their legends, bitterly sarcastic in spirit. these drawings form a synthesis of the defects of the _bourgeoisie_, which is at the same time amusing and grave. they also concern, though less happily, the political world, in which the artist, a little intoxicated with his success, has thought himself able to exercise an influence by scoffing at the parliamentary régime. forain's drawing has a nervous character which does, however, not weaken its science: every stroke reveals something and has an astonishing power. in his less known painting can be traced still more clearly the style and influence of his master degas. they are generally incidents behind the scenes and at night restaurants, where caricatured types are painted with great force. but they are insistently exaggerated, they have not the restraint, the ironical and discreet plausibility, which give so much flavour, so much value to degas's studies. nevertheless, forain's pictures are very significant and are of real interest. he is decidedly the most interesting newspaper illustrator of his whole generation, the one whose ephemeral art most closely approaches grand painting, and one of those who have most contributed towards the transformation of illustration for the contemporary press. jules chéret has made for himself an important and splendid position in contemporary art. he commenced as a lithographic workman and lived for a long time in london. about chéret designed his first posters in black, white and red; these were at the time the only colours used. by and by he perfected this art and found the means of adding other tones and of drawing them on the lithographic stone. he returned to france, started a small studio, and gradually carried poster art to the admirable point at which it has arrived. at the same time chéret drew and painted and composed himself his models. about his name became famous, and it has not ceased growing since. some writers, notably the eminent critic roger marx and the novelist huysmans, hailed in chéret an original artist as well as a learned technician. he then exhibited decorative pictures, pastels and drawings, which placed him in the first rank. chéret is universally known. the type of the parisian woman created by him, and the multi-coloured harmony of his works will not be forgotten. his will be the honour of having invented the artistic poster, this feast for the eyes, this fascinating art of the street, which formerly languished in a tedious and dull display of commercial advertisements. he has been the promoter of an immense movement; he has been imitated, copied, parodied, but he will always remain inimitable. he has succeeded in realising on paper by means of lithography, the pastels and gouache drawings in which his admirable colourist's fancy mixed the most difficult shades. in chéret can be found all the principles of impressionism: opposing lights, coloured shadows, complementary reflections, all employed with masterly sureness and delightful charm. it is decorative impressionism, conceived in a superior way; and this simple poster-man, despised by the painters, has proved himself equal to most. he has transformed the street, in the open light, into a veritable salon, where his works have become famous. when this too modest artist decided to show his pictures and drawings, they were a revelation. the most remarkable pastellists of the period were astonished and admired his skill, his profound knowledge of technique, his continual _tours-de-force_ which he disguised under a shimmering gracefulness. the state had the good sense to entrust him with some large mural decorations, in which he unfolded the scale of his sparkling colours, and affirmed his spirit, his fancy and his dreamy art. chéret's harmonies remain secrets; he uses them for the representation of characters from the italian comedy, thrown with fiendish _verve_ upon a background of a sky, fiery with the bengal lights of a fairy-like carnival, and he strangely intermingles the reality of the movements with the most arbitrary fancy. chéret has also succeeded in proving his artistic descent by a beautiful series of drawings in sanguine: he descends from watteau, boucher and fragonard; he is a frenchman of pure blood; and when one has done admiring the grace and the happy animation of his imagination, one can only be surprised to see on what serious and sure a technique are based these decorations which appear improvised. chéret's art is the smile of impressionism and the best demonstration of the decorative logic of this art. these are the four artists of great merit who have created the transition between impressionist painting and illustration. it would be fit to put aside toulouse-lautrec, who was much younger, but his work is too directly connected with that of degas for one to take into account the difference of age. he produced between and works which might well have been ante-dated by fifteen years. we shall study in the next chapter his neo-impressionist comrades, and we shall now speak of some illustrators more advanced in years than he. the oldest in date is the engraver henri guérard, who died three years ago. he had married eva gonzalès and was a friend of manet's, many of whose works have been engraved by him. he was an artist of decided and original talent, who also occupied himself successfully with pyrogravure, and who was happily inspired by the japanese colour-prints. his etchings deserve a place of honour in the folios of expert collectors; they are strong and broad. as to the engraver félix buhot, he was a rather delicate colourist in black and white; his paris scenes will always be considered charming works. in spite of his spanish origin, the painter, _aquarelliste_, and draughtsman daniel vierge, should be added to the list of the men connected with impressionism. his illustrations are those of a great artist--admirable in colour, movement and observation; all the great principles of impressionism are embodied in them. but there are four more illustrators of the first rank: steinlen, louis legrand, paul renouard and auguste lepère. steinlen has been enormously productive: he is specially remarkable for his illustrations. those which he has designed for aristide bruant's volume of songs, _dans la rue_, are masterpieces of their kind. they contain treasures of bitter observation, quaintness and knowledge. the soul of the lower classes is shown in them with intense truth, bitter revolt and comprehensive philosophy. steinlen has also designed some beautiful posters, pleasing pastels, lithographs of incontestable technical merit, and beautifully eloquent political drawings. it cannot be said that he is an impressionist in the strict sense of the word; he applied his colour in flat tints, more like an engraver than a painter; but in him too can be felt the stamp of degas, and he is one of those who best demonstrate that, without impressionism, they could not have been what they are. the same may be said of louis legrand, a pupil of félicien rops, an admirably skilful etcher, a draughtsman of keen vision, and a painter of curious character, who has in many ways forestalled the artists of to-day. louis legrand also shows to what extent the example of manet and degas has revolutionised the art of illustration, in freeing the painters from obsolete laws, and guiding them towards truth and frank psychological study. legrand is full of them, without resembling them. we must not forget that, besides the technical innovation (division of tones, study of complementary colours), impressionism has brought us novelty of composition, realism of character and great liberty in the choice of subjects. from this point of view rops himself, in spite of his symbolist tendencies, could not be classed with any other group, if it were not that any kind of classification in art is useless and inaccurate. however that may be, louis legrand has signed some volumes resplendent with the most seductive qualities. paul renouard has devoted himself to newspaper illustration, but with what surprising prodigality of spirit and knowledge! the readers of the "graphic" will know. this masterly virtuoso of the pencil might give drawing-lessons to many members of the institute! the feeling for the life of crowds, psychology of types, spirited and rapid notation, astonishing ease in overcoming difficulties--these are his undeniable gifts. and again we must recognise in renouard the example of degas and manet. his exceptional fecundity only helps to give more authority to his pencil. renouard's drawings at the exhibition of were, perhaps, more beautiful than the rest of his work. there was notably a series of studies made from the first platform of the eiffel tower, an accumulation of wonders of perspectives framing scenes of such animation and caprice as to take away one's breath. finally, auguste lepère appears as the debucourt of our time. as painter, pastellist and wood-engraver he has produced since , and has won for himself the first place among french engravers. it would be difficult to recount the volumes, albums and covers on which the fancy of his burin has played; but it is particularly in wood-engraving that he stands without rival. not only has he produced masterpieces of it, but he has passionately devoted himself to raising this admirable art, the glory of the beautiful books of olden days, and to give back to it the lustre which had been eclipsed by mechanical processes. lepère has started some publications for this purpose; he has had pupils of great merit, and he must be considered the master of the whole generation of modern wood-engravers, just as chéret is the undisputed master of the poster. lepère's ruling quality is strength. he seems to have rediscovered the mediaeval limners' secrets of cutting the wood, giving the necessary richness to the ink, creating a whole scale of half-tones, and specially of adapting the design to typographic printing, and making of it, so to say, an ornament and a decorative extension for the type. lepère is a wood-engraver with whom none of his contemporaries can be compared; as regards his imagination, it is that of an altogether curious artist. he excels in composing and expressing the life, the animation, the soul of the streets and the picturesque side of the populace. herein he is much inspired by manet and, if we go back to the real tradition, by guys, debucourt, the younger moreau and by gabriel de saint-aubin. he is decidedly a realist of french lineage, who owes nothing to the academy and its formulas. it would be evidently unreasonable to attach to impressionism all that is ante-academical, and between the two extremes there is room for a crowd of interesting artists. we shall not succumb to the prejudice of the school by declaring, in our turn, that there is no salvation outside impressionism, and we have been careful to state repeatedly that, if impressionism has a certain number of principles as kernel, its applications and its influence have a radiation which it is difficult to limit. what can be absolutely demonstrated is, that this movement has had the greatest influence on modern illustration, sometimes through its colouring, sometimes simply through the great freedom of its ideas. some have found in it a direct lesson, others an example to be followed. some have met in it technical methods which pleased them, others have only taken some suggestions from it. that is the case, for instance, with legrand, with steinlen, and with renouard; and it is also the case with the lithographer odilon redon, who applies the values of manet and, in his strange pastels, the harmonies of degas and renoir, placing them at the service of dreams and hallucinations and of a symbolism which is absolutely removed from the realism of these painters. it is, finally, the case with the water-colour painter henri rivière, who is misjudged as to his merit, and who is one of the most perfect of those who have applied impressionist ideas to decorative engraving. he has realised images in colours destined to decorate inexpensively the rooms of the people and recalling the grand aspects of landscapes with a broad simplification which is derived, curiously enough, from puvis de chavannes's large decorative landscapes and from the small and precise colour prints of japan. rivière, who is a skilful and personal poetic landscapist, is not exactly an impressionist, in so far as he does not divide the tones, but rather blends them in subtle mixtures in the manner of the japanese. yet, seeing his work, one cannot help thinking of all the surprise and freedom introduced into modern art by impressionism. everybody, even the ignorant, can perceive, on looking through an illustrated paper or a modern volume, that thirty years ago this manner of placing the figures, of noting familiar gestures, and of seizing fugitive life with spirit and clearness was unknown. this mass of engravings and of sketches resembles in no way what had been seen formerly. they no longer have the solemn air of classic composition, by which the drawings had been affected. a current of bold spontaneity has passed through here. in modern english illustration, it can be stated indisputably that nothing would be such as it can now be seen, if morris, rossetti and crane had not imposed their vision, and yet many talented englishmen resemble these initiators only very remotely. it is exactly in this sense that we shall have credited impressionism with the talents who have drawn their inspiration less from its principles, than from its vigorous protest against mechanical formulas, and who have been able to find the energy, necessary for their success, in the example it set by fighting during twenty years against the ideas of routine which seemed indestructible. even with the painters who are far removed from the vision and the colouring of manet and degas, of monet and renoir, one can find a very precise tendency: that of returning to the subjects and the style of the real national tradition; and herein lies one of the most serious benefits bestowed by impressionism upon an art which had stopped at the notion of a canonical beauty, until it had almost become sterile in its timidity. ix neo-impressionism--gauguin, denis, thÉo van rysselberghe--the theory of pointillism--seurat, signac and the theories of scientific chromatism--faults and qualities of the impressionist movement, what we owe to it, its place in the history of the french school--some words on its influence abroad the beginnings of the movement designated under the name of neo-impressionism can be traced back to about . the movement is a direct offshoot of the first impressionism, originated by a group of young painters who admired it and thought of pushing further still its chromatic principles. the flourishing of impressionism coincided, as a matter of fact, with certain scientific labours concerning optics. helmholtz had just published his works on the perception of colours and sounds by means of waves. chevreul had continued on this path by establishing his beautiful theories on the analysis of the solar spectrum. m. charles henry, an original and remarkable spirit, occupied himself in his turn with these delicate problems by applying them directly to aesthetics, which helmholtz and chevreul had not thought of doing. m. charles henry had the idea of creating relations between this branch of science and the laws of painting. as a friend of several young painters he had a real influence over them, showing them that the new vision due to the instinct of monet and of manet might perhaps be scientifically verified, and might establish fixed principles in a sphere where hitherto the laws of colouring had been the effects of individual conception. at that moment the criticism which resulted from taine's theories tried to effect a _rapprochement_ of the artistic and scientific domains in criticism and in the psychologic novel. the painters, too, gave way to this longing for precision which seems to have been the great preoccupation of intellects from to about . their researches had a special bearing on the theory of complementary colours and on the means of establishing some laws concerning the reaction of tones in such manner as to draw up a kind of tabula. georges seurat and paul signac were the promoters of this research. seurat died very young, and one cannot but regret this death of an artist who would have been very interesting and capable of beautiful works. those which he has left us bear witness to a spirit very receptive to theories, and leaving nothing to chance. the silhouettes are reduced to almost rigorously geometrical principles, the tones are decomposed systematically. these canvases are more reasoned examples than works of intuition and spontaneous vision. they show seurat's curious desire to give a scientific and classic basis to impressionism. the same idea rules in all the work of paul signac, who has painted some portraits and numerous landscapes. to these two painters is due the method of _pointillism_, _i.e._ the division of tones, not only by touches, as in monet's pictures, but by very small touches of equal size, causing the spheric shape to act equally upon the retina. the accumulation of these luminous points is carried out over the entire surface of the canvas without thick daubs of paint, and with regularity, whilst with manet the paint is more or less dense. the theory of complementary colours is systematically applied. on a sketch, made from nature, the painter notes the principal relations of tones, then systematises them on his picture and connects them by different shades which should be their logical result. neo-impressionism believes in obtaining thus a greater exactness than that which results from the individual temperament of the painter who simply relies on his own perception. and it is true, in theory, that such a conception is more exact. but it reduces the picture to a kind of theorem, which excludes all that constitutes the value and charm of an art, that is to say: caprice, fancy, and the spontaneity of personal inspiration. the works of seurat, signac, and of the few men who have strictly followed the rules of pointillism are lacking in life, in surprise, and make a somewhat tiring impression upon one's eyes. the uniformity of the points does not succeed in giving an impression of cohesion, and even less a suggestion of different textures, even if the values are correct. manet seems to have attained perfection in using the method which consists in directing the touches in accordance with each of the planes, and this is evidently the most natural method. scientific chromatism constitutes an _ensemble_ of propositions, of which art will be able to make use, though indirectly, as information useful for a better understanding of the laws of light in presence of nature. what pointillism has been able to give us, is a method which would be very appreciable for decorative paintings seen from a great distance--friezes or ceilings in spacious buildings. it would in this case return to the principle of mosaic, which is the principle _par excellence_ of mural art. the pointillists have to-day almost abandoned this transitional theory which, in spite of the undeniable talent of its adepts, has only produced indifferent results as regards easel pictures. besides seurat and signac, mention should be made of maurice denis, henri-edmond cross, angrand, and théo van rysselberghe. but this last-named and maurice denis have arrived at great talent by very different merits. m. maurice denis has abandoned pointillism a few years ago, in favour of returning to a very strange conception which dates back to the primitives, and even to giotto. he simplifies his drawing archaically, suppresses all but the indispensable detail, and draws inspiration from gothic stained glass and carvings, in order to create decorative figures with clearly marked outlines which are filled with broad, flat tints. he generally treats mystic subjects, for which this special manner is suitable. one cannot love the _parti pris_ of these works, but one cannot deny m. denis a great charm of naivete, an intense feeling for decorative arrangements and colouring of a certain originality. he is almost a french pre-raphaelite, and his profound catholic faith inspires him nobly. [illustration: thÉo van rysselberghe portraits of madame van rysselberghe and her daughter] m. théo van rysselberghe continues to employ the pointillist method. but he is so strongly gifted, that one might almost say he succeeds in revealing himself as a painter of great merit in spite of this dry and charmless method. all his works are supported by broad and learned drawing and his colour is naturally brilliant. m. van rysselberghe, a prolific and varied worker, has painted nudes, large portraits, landscapes with figures, seascapes, interiors and still-life, and in all this he evinces faculties of the first order. he is a lover of light and understands how to make it vibrate over flesh and fabrics. he is an artist who has the sense of style. he has signed a certain number of portraits, whose beautiful carriage and serious psychology would suffice to make him be considered as the most significant of the neo-impressionists. it is really in him that one has to see the young and worthy heir of monet, of sisley, and of degas, and that is why we have insisted on adding here to the works of these masters the reproduction of one of his. m. van rysselberghe is also a very delicate etcher who has signed some fine works in this method, and his seascapes, whether they revel in the pale greys of the german ocean or in the warm sapphire and gold harmonies of the mediterranean, count among the finest of the time; they are windows opened upon joyous brightness. to these painters who have never taken part at the salons, and are only to be seen at the exhibitions of the _indépendants_ (except m. denis), must be added m. pierre bonnard, who has given proof to his charm and fervour in numerous small canvases of japanese taste; and m. edouard vuillard, who is a painter of intimate scenes of rare delicacy. this artist, who stands apart and produces very little, has signed some interiors of melancholic distinction and of a colouring which revels in low tones. he has the precision and skill of a master. there is in him, one might say, a reflection of chardin's soul. unfortunately his works are confined to a few collections and have not become known to the public. to the same group belong m. ranson, who has devoted himself to purely decorative art, tapestry, wall papers and embroideries; m. georges de feure, a strange, symbolist water-colour painter, who has become one of the best designers of the new art in france; m. félix vallotton, painter and lithographer, who is somewhat heavy, but gifted with serious qualities. it is true that m. de feure is dutch, m. vallotton swiss, and m. van rysselberghe belgian; but they have settled down in france, and are sufficiently closely allied to the neo-impressionist movement so that the question of nationality need not prevent us from mentioning them here. finally it is impossible not to say a few words about two pupils of gustave moreau's, who have both become noteworthy followers of impressionism of very personal individuality. m. eugène martel bids fair to be one of the best painters of interiors of his generation. he has the feeling of mystical life and paints the peasantry with astonishing psychologic power. his vigorous colouring links him to monticelli, and his drawing to degas. as to m. simon bussy who, following alphonse legros's example, is about to make an enviable position for himself in england, he is an artist of pure blood. his landscapes and his figures have the distinction and rare tone of m. whistler, besides the characteristic acuteness of degas. his harmonies are subtle, his vision novel, and he will certainly develop into an important painter. together with henri le sidaner and jacques blanche, simon bussy is decidedly the most personal of that young generation of "intimists" who seem to have retained the best principles of the impressionist masters to employ them for the expression of a psychologic ideal which is very different from realism. outside this group there are still a few isolated painters who are difficult to classify. the very young artists laprade and charles guérin have shown for the last three years, at the exhibition of the _indépendants_, some works which are the worthy result of manet's and renoir's influence. they, too, justify great expectations. the landscapists paul vogler and maxime maufra, more advanced in years, have made themselves known by some solid series of vigorously presented landscapes. to them must be added m. henry moret, m. albert andré and m. georges d'espagnet, who equally deserve the success which has commenced to be their share. but there are some older ones. it is only his due, that place should be given to a painter who committed suicide after an unhappy life, and who evinced splendid gifts. vincent van gogh, a dutchman, who, however, had always worked in france, has left to the world some violent and strange works, in which impressionism appears to have reached the limits of its audacity. their value lies in their naïve frankness and in the undauntable determination which tried to fix without trickery the sincerest feelings. amidst many faulty and clumsy works, van gogh has also left some really beautiful canvases. there is a deep affinity between him and cézanne. a very real affinity exists, too, between paul gauguin, who was a friend and to a certain extent the master of van gogh, and cézanne and renoir. paul gauguin's robust talent found its first motives in breton landscapes, in which the method of colour-spots can be found employed with delicacy and placed at the service of a rather heavy, but very interesting harmony. then the artist spent a long time in tahiti, whence he returned with a completely transformed manner. he has brought back from these regions some landscapes with figures treated in intentionally clumsy and almost wild fashion. the figures are outlined in firm strokes and painted in broad, flat tints on canvas which has the texture almost of tapestry. many of these works are made repulsive by their aspect of multi-coloured, crude and barbarous imagery. yet one cannot but acknowledge the fundamental qualities, the beautiful values, the ornamental taste, and the impression of primitive animalism. on the whole, paul gauguin has a beautiful, artistic temperament which, in its aversion to virtuosoship, has perhaps not sufficiently understood that the fear of formulas, if exaggerated, may lead to other formulas, to a false ignorance which is as dangerous as false knowledge. gauguin's symbolical intentions, like those of his pupil emile bernard, are sincere, but are badly served by minds which do not agree with their technical qualities, and both gauguin and emile bernard are most happily inspired when they are painters pure and simple. next to gauguin, among the seniors of the present generation and the successors of impressionism, should be placed the landscapist armand guillaumin who, without possessing sisley's delicate qualities, has painted some canvases worthy of notice; and we must, finally, terminate this far too summary enumeration by referring to one of the most gifted painters of the french school of the day, m. louis anquetin. his is a most varied talent whose power is unquestionable. he made his _début_ among the neo-impressionists and revealed the influence upon him of the japanese and of degas. it may be seen that these two influences predominate in the whole group. then m. anquetin became fascinated by the breadth and superb freedom of manet's works, and signed a series of portraits and sketches, some of which are not far below so great a master's. they are works which will surprise the critics, when our contemporary painting will be examined with calm impartiality. after these works, m. anquetin gave way to his impetuous nature which led him to decorative painting, and he became influenced by rubens, jordaens, and the fontainebleau school. he painted theatre curtains and mythological scenes, in which he gave free rein to his sensual imagination. in spite of some admirable qualities, it seems as though the artist had strayed from his true path in painting these brilliant, but somewhat declamatory works, and he has since returned to a more modern and more direct painting. in all his changed conditions anquetin has shown a considerable talent, pleasing in its fine vigour, impetuosity, brilliancy and sincerity. his inequality is perhaps the cause of his relative want of success; it has put the public off, but nevertheless in certain of this brave and serious painter's canvases can be seen the happy influence of manet. it seems to us only right to sum up our impartial opinion of neo-impressionism by saying that it has lacked cohesion, that pointillism in particular has led painting into an aimless path. it has been wrong to see in impressionism too exclusive a pretext for technical researches, and a happy reaction has set in, which leads us back to-day, after diverse tentative efforts (amongst others some unfortunate attempts at symbolist painting), to the fine, recent school of the "intimists" and to the novel conception which a great and glorious painter, besnard, imposes upon the salons, where the elect draw inspiration from him. we can here only indicate with a few words the considerable part played by besnard: his clever work has proved that the scientific colour principles of impressionism may be applied, not to realism, but to the highest thoughts, to ideologic painting most nobly inspired by the modern intellectual preoccupations. he is the transition between impressionism and the art of to-morrow. of pure french lineage by his portraits and his nudes, which descend directly from largillière and ingres, he might have restricted himself to being placed among the most learned impressionists. his studies of reflections and of complementary colours speak for this. but he has passed this phase and has, with his decorations, returned to the psychical domain of his strangely beautiful art. the "intimists," c. cottet, simon, blanche, ménard, bussy, lobre, le sidaner, wéry, prinet, and ernest laurent, have proved that they have profited by impressionism, but have proceeded in quite a different direction in trying to translate their real perceptions. some isolated artists, like the decorative painter henri martin, who has enormous talent, have applied the impressionist technique to the expression of grand allegories, rather in the manner of puvis de chavannes. the effort at getting away from mere cleverness and escaping a too exclusive preoccupation with technique, and at the same time acquiring serious knowledge, betrays itself in the whole position of the young french school; and this will furnish us with a perfectly natural conclusion, of which the following are the principal points:-- what we shall have to thank impressionism for, will be moral and material advantages of considerable importance. morally it has rendered an immense service to all art, because it has boldly attacked routine and proved by the whole of its work that a combination of independent producers could renew the aesthetic code of a country, without owing anything to official encouragement. it has succeeded where important but isolated creators have succumbed, because it has had the good fortune of uniting a group of gifted men, four of whom will count among the greatest french artists since the origin of national art. it has had the qualities which overcome the hardest resistance: fecundity, courage and sure originality. it has known how to find its strength by referring to the true traditions of the national genius, which have happily enlightened it and saved it from fundamental errors. it has, last, but not least, inflicted an irremediable blow on academic convention and has wrested from it the prestige of teaching which ruled tyrannically for centuries past over the young artists. it has laid a violent hand upon a tenacious and dangerous prejudice, upon a series of conventional notions which were transmitted without consideration for the evolution of modern life and intelligence. it has dared freely to protest against a degenerated ideal which vainly parodied the old masters, pretending to honour them. it has removed from the artistic soul of france a whole order of pseudo-classic elements which worked against its blossoming, and the school will never recover from this bold contradiction which has rallied to it all the youthful. the moral principle of impressionism has been absolutely logical and sane, and that is why nothing has been able to prevent its triumph. technically impressionism has brought a complete renewal of pictorial vision, substituting the beauty of character for the beauty of proportions and finding adequate expression for the ideas and feelings of its time, which constitutes the secret of all beautiful works. it has taken up again a tradition and added to it a contemporary page. it will have to be thanked for an important series of observations as regards the analysis of light, and for an absolutely original conception of drawing. some years have been wasted by painters of little worth in imitating it, and the salons, formerly encumbered with academic _pastiches_, have been encumbered with impressionist _pastiches_. it would be unfair to blame the impressionists for it. they have shown by their very career that they hated teaching and would never pretend to teach. impressionism is based upon irrefutable optic laws, but it is neither a style, nor a method, likely ever to become a formula in its turn. one may call upon this art for examples, but not for receipts. on the contrary, its best teaching has been to encourage artists to become absolutely independent and to search ardently for their own individuality. it marks the decline of the school, and will not create a new one which would soon become as fastidious as the other. it will only appear, to those who will thoroughly understand it, as a precious repertory of notes, and the young generation honours it intelligently by not imitating it with servility. not that it is without its faults! it has been said, to belittle it, that it only had the value of an interesting attempt, having only been able to indicate some excellent intentions, without creating anything perfect. this is inexact. it is absolutely evident, that manet, monet, renoir and degas have signed some masterpieces which did not lose by comparison with those in the louvre, and the same might even be said of their less illustrious friends. but it is also evident that the time spent on research as well as on agitation and enervating controversies pursued during twenty-five years, has been taken from men who could otherwise have done better still. there has been a disparity between realism and the technique of impressionism. its realistic origin has sometimes made it vulgar. it has often treated indifferent subjects in a grand style, and it has too easily beheld life from the anecdotal side. it has lacked psychologic synthesis (if we except degas). it has too willingly denied all that exists hidden under the apparent reality of the universe and has affected to separate painting from the ideologic faculties which rule over all art. hatred of academic allegory, defiance of symbolism, abstraction and romantic scenes, has led it to refuse to occupy itself with a whole order of ideas, and it has had the tendency of making the painter beyond all a workman. it was necessary at the moment of its arrival, but it is no longer necessary now, and the painters understand this themselves. finally it has too often been superficial even in obtaining effects; it has given way to the wish to surprise the eyes, of playing with tones merely for love of cleverness. it often causes one regret to see symphonies of magnificent colour wasted here in pictures of boating men; and there, in pictures of café corners; and we have arrived at a degree of complex intellectuality which is no longer satisfied with these rudimentary themes. it has indulged in useless exaggerations, faults of composition and of harmony, and all this cannot be denied. but it still remains fascinating and splendid for its gifts which will always rouse enthusiasm: freedom, impetuousness, youth, brilliancy, fervour, the joy of painting and the passion for beautiful light. it is, on the whole, the greatest pictorial movement that france has beheld since delacroix, and it brings to a finish gloriously the nineteenth century, inaugurating the present. it has accomplished the great deed of having brought us again into the presence of our true national lineage, far more so than romanticism, which was mixed with foreign elements. we have here painting of a kind which could only have been conceived in france, and we have to go right back to watteau in order to receive again the same impression. impressionism has brought us an almost unhoped-for renaissance, and this constitutes its most undeniable claim upon the gratitude of the race. it has exercised a very appreciable influence upon foreign painting. among the principal painters attracted by its ideas and research, we must mention, in germany, max liebermann and kuehl; in norway, thaulow; in denmark, kroyer; in belgium, théo van rysselberghe, emile claus, verheyden, heymans, verstraete, and baertson; in italy, boldini, segantini, and michetti; in spain, zuloaga, sorolla y bastida, dario de regoyos and rusiñol; in america, alexander, harrison, sargent; and in england, the painters of the glasgow school, lavery, guthrie and the late john lewis brown. all these men come within the active extension of the french movement, and one may say that the honour of having first recognised the truly national movement of this art must be given to those foreign countries which have enriched their collections and museums with works that were despised in the land which had witnessed their birth. at the present moment the effects of this new vision are felt all over the world, down to the very bosom of the academies; and at the salons, from which the impressionists are still excluded, can be witnessed an invasion of pictures inspired by them, which the most retrograde juries dare not reject. in whatever measure the recent painters accept impressionism, they remain preoccupied with it, and even those who love it not are forced to take it into account. the impressionist movement can therefore now be considered, apart from all controversies, without vain attacks or exaggerated praise, as an artistic manifestation which has entered the domain of history, and it can be studied with the impartial application of the methods of critical analysis which is usually employed in the study of the former art movements. we shall not pretend to have given in these pages a complete and faultless history; but we shall consider ourselves well rewarded for this work, which is intended to reach the great public, if we have roused their curiosity and sympathy with a group of artists whom we consider admirable; and if we have rectified, in the eyes of the readers of a foreign nation, the errors, the slanders, the undeserved reproaches, with which frenchmen have been pleased to overwhelm sincere creators who thought with faith and love of the pure tradition of the national genius, and who have for that reason been vilified as much as if they had in an access of anarchical folly risen against the very common sense, taste, reason and clearness, which will remain the eternal merits of their soil. this small, imperfect volume will perhaps find its best excuse in its intention of repairing an old injustice and of affirming a useful and permanent truth: that of the authenticity of the classicism of impressionism, in the face of the false classicism of the academic world which official honours have made the guardian of a french heritage, whose soul it denied and whose spirit it deceived with its narrow and cold formulas. [illustration: velasquez. head of Æsop, madrid.] a text-book of the history of painting by john c. van dyke, l.h.d. professor of the history of art in rutgers college and author of "art for art's sake," "the meaning of pictures," etc. longmans, green, and co. and fifth avenue, new york london, bombay, and calcutta copyright, , by longmans, green, and co. * * * * * preface. the object of this series of text-books is to provide concise teachable histories of art for class-room use in schools and colleges. the limited time given to the study of art in the average educational institution has not only dictated the condensed style of the volumes, but has limited their scope of matter to the general features of art history. archæological discussions on special subjects and æsthetic theories have been avoided. the main facts of history as settled by the best authorities are given. if the reader choose to enter into particulars the bibliography cited at the head of each chapter will be found helpful. illustrations have been introduced as sight-help to the text, and, to avoid repetition, abbreviations have been used wherever practicable. the enumeration of the principal extant works of an artist, school, or period, and where they may be found, which follows each chapter, may be serviceable not only as a summary of individual or school achievement, but for reference by travelling students in europe. this volume on painting, the first of the series, omits mention of such work in arabic, indian, chinese, and persian art as may come properly under the head of ornament--a subject proposed for separate treatment hereafter. in treating of individual painters it has been thought best to give a short critical estimate of the man and his rank among the painters of his time rather than the detailed facts of his life. students who wish accounts of the lives of the painters should use vasari, larousse, and the _encyclopædia britannica_ in connection with this text-book. acknowledgments are made to the respective publishers of woltmann and woermann's history of painting, and the fine series of art histories by perrot and chipiez, for permission to reproduce some few illustrations from these publications. john c. van dyke. * * * * * table of contents. list of illustrations general bibliography introduction chapter i. egyptian painting chapter ii. chaldÆo-assyrian, persian, phoenician, cypriote, and asia minor painting chapter iii. greek, etruscan, and roman painting chapter iv. italian painting--early christian and mediÆval period, - chapter v. italian painting--gothic period, - chapter vi. italian painting--early renaissance, - chapter vii. italian painting--early renaissance, - , _continued_ chapter viii. italian painting--high renaissance, - chapter ix. italian painting--high renaissance, - , _continued_ chapter x. italian painting--high renaissance, - , _continued_ chapter xi. italian painting--the decadence and modern work, - chapter xii. french painting--sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries chapter xiii. french painting--nineteenth century chapter xiv. french painting--nineteenth century, _continued_ chapter xv. spanish painting chapter xvi. flemish painting chapter xvii. dutch painting chapter xviii. german painting chapter xix. british painting chapter xx. american painting postscript index * * * * * list of illustrations. velasquez, head of Æsop, madrid _frontispiece_ hunting in the marshes, tomb of ti, saccarah portrait of queen taia offerings to the dead. wall painting vignette on papyrus enamelled brick, nimroud " " khorsabad wild ass. bas-relief lions frieze, susa painted head from edessa cypriote vase decoration attic grave painting muse of cortona odyssey landscape amphore, lower italy ritual scene, palatine wall painting portrait, fayoum, graf collection chamber in catacombs, with wall decorations catacomb fresco, s. cecilia christ as good shepherd, ravenna mosaic christ and saints, fresco, s. generosa ezekiel before the lord. ms. illumination giotto, flight into egypt, arena chap. orcagna, paradise (detail), s. m. novella lorenzetti, peace (detail), sienna fra angelico, angel, uffizi fra filippo, madonna, uffizi botticelli, coronation of madonna, uffizi ghirlandajo, visitation, louvre francesca, duke of urbino, uffizi signorelli, the curse (detail), orvieto perugino, madonna, saints, and angels, louvre school of francia, madonna, louvre mantegna, gonzaga family group, mantua b. vivarini, madonna and child, turin giovanni bellini, madonna, venice acad. carpaccio, presentation (detail), venice acad. antonello da messina, unknown man, louvre fra bartolommeo, descent from cross, pitti andrea del sarto, madonna of st. francis, uffizi michael angelo, athlete, sistine chap., rome raphael, la belle jardinière, louvre giulio romano, apollo and muses, pitti leonardo da vinci, mona lisa, louvre luini, daughter of herodias, uffizi sodoma, ecstasy of st. catherine, sienna correggio, marriage of st. catherine, louvre giorgione, ordeal of moses, uffizi titian, venus equipping cupid, borghese, rome tintoretto, mercury and graces, ducal pal., venice veronese, venice enthroned, ducal pal., venice lotto, three ages, pitti bronzino, christ in limbo, uffizi baroccio, annunciation annibale caracci, entombment of christ, louvre caravaggio, the card players, dresden poussin, et in arcadia ego, louvre claude lorrain, flight into egypt, dresden watteau, gilles, louvre boucher, pastoral, louvre david, the sabines, louvre ingres, oedipus and sphinx, louvre delacroix, massacre of scio, louvre gérôme, pollice verso corot, landscape rousseau, charcoal burner's hut, fuller collection millet, the gleaners, louvre cabanel, phædra meissonier, napoleon in sanchez-coello, daughter of philip ii., madrid murillo, st. anthony of padua, dresden ribera, st. agnes, dresden fortuny, spanish marriage madrazo, unmasked van eycks, st. bavon altar-piece, berlin memling (?), st. lawrence, nat. gal., lon. massys, head of virgin, antwerp rubens, portrait of young woman van dyck, portrait of cornelius van der geest teniers the younger, prodigal son, louvre alfred stevens, on the beach hals, portrait of a lady rembrandt, head of a woman, nat. gal., lon. ruisdael, landscape hobbema, the water wheel, amsterdam mus. israels, alone in the world mauve, sheep lochner, sts. john, catharine, matthew, london wolgemut, crucifixion, munich dürer, praying virgin, augsburg holbein, portrait, hague mus. piloty, wise and foolish virgins leibl, in church menzel, a reader hogarth, shortly after marriage, nat. gal., lon. reynolds, countess spencer and lord althorp gainsborough, blue boy constable, corn field, nat. gal., lon. turner, fighting téméraire, nat. gal., lon. burne-jones, flamma vestalis leighton, helen of troy watts, love and death west, peter denying christ, hampton court gilbert stuart, washington, boston mus. hunt, lute player eastman johnson, churning inness, landscape winslow homer, undertow whistler, the white girl sargent, "carnation lily, lily rose" chase, alice, art institute, chicago * * * * * general bibliography. (this includes the leading accessible works that treat of painting in general. for works on special periods or schools, see the bibliographical references at the head of each chapter. for bibliography of individual painters consult, under proper names, champlin and perkins's _cyclopedia_, as given below.) champlin and perkins, _cyclopedia of painters and paintings_, new york. adeline, _lexique des termes d'art_. _gazette des beaux arts_, paris. larousse, _grand dictionnaire universel_, paris. _l'art, revue hebdomadaire illustrée_, paris. bryan, _dictionary of painters_. _new edition_. brockhaus, _conversations-lexikon_. meyer, _allgemeines künstler-lexikon_, berlin. muther, _history of modern painting_. agincourt, _history of art by its monuments_. bayet, _précis d'histoire de l'art_. blanc, _histoire des peintres de toutes les Écoles_. eastlake, _materials for a history of oil painting_. lübke, _history of art, trans. by clarence cook_. reber, _history of ancient art_. reber, _history of mediæval art_. schnasse, _geschichte der bildenden künste_. girard, _la peinture antique_. viardot, _history of the painters of all schools_. williamson (ed.), _handbooks of great masters_. woltmann and woermann, _history of painting_. * * * * * history of painting. introduction. the origin of painting is unknown. the first important records of this art are met with in egypt; but before the egyptian civilization the men of the early ages probably used color in ornamentation and decoration, and they certainly scratched the outlines of men and animals upon bone and slate. traces of this rude primitive work still remain to us on the pottery, weapons, and stone implements of the cave-dwellers. but while indicating the awakening of intelligence in early man, they can be reckoned with as art only in a slight archæological way. they show inclination rather than accomplishment--a wish to ornament or to represent, with only a crude knowledge of how to go about it. the first aim of this primitive painting was undoubtedly decoration--the using of colored forms for color and form only, as shown in the pottery designs or cross-hatchings on stone knives or spear-heads. the second, and perhaps later aim, was by imitating the shapes and colors of men, animals, and the like, to convey an idea of the proportions and characters of such things. an outline of a cave-bear or a mammoth was perhaps the cave-dweller's way of telling his fellows what monsters he had slain. we may assume that it was pictorial record, primitive picture-written history. this early method of conveying an idea is, in intent, substantially the same as the later hieroglyphic writing and historical painting of the egyptians. the difference between them is merely one of development. thus there is an indication in the art of primitive man of the two great departments of painting existent to-day. . decorative painting. . expressive painting. pure decorative painting is not usually expressive of ideas other than those of rhythmical line and harmonious color. it is not our subject. this volume treats of expressive painting; but in dealing with that it should be borne in mind that expressive painting has always a more or less decorative effect accompanying it, and that must be spoken of incidentally. we shall presently see the intermingling of both kinds of painting in the art of ancient egypt--our first inquiry. chapter i. egyptian painting. books recommended: brugsch, _history of egypt under the pharaohs_; budge, _dwellers on the nile_; duncker, _history of antiquity; egypt exploration fund memoirs_; ely, _manual of archæology_; lepsius, _denkmaler aus aegypten und aethiopen_; maspero, _life in ancient egypt and assyria_; maspero, _guide du visiteur au musée de boulaq_; maspero, _egyptian archæology_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in ancient egypt_; wilkinson, _manners and customs of the ancient egyptians_. land and people: egypt, as herodotus has said, is "the gift of the nile," one of the latest of the earth's geological formations, and yet one of the earliest countries to be settled and dominated by man. it consists now, as in the ancient days, of the valley of the nile, bounded on the east by the arabian mountains and on the west by the libyan desert. well-watered and fertile, it was doubtless at first a pastoral and agricultural country; then, by its riverine traffic, a commercial country, and finally, by conquest, a land enriched with the spoils of warfare. its earliest records show a strongly established monarchy. dynasties of kings called pharaohs succeeded one another by birth or conquest. the king made the laws, judged the people, declared war, and was monarch supreme. next to him in rank came the priests, who were not only in the service of religion but in that of the state, as counsellors, secretaries, and the like. the common people, with true oriental lack of individuality, depending blindly on leaders, were little more than the servants of the upper classes. [illustration: fig. .--hunting in the marshes. tomb of ti, saccarah. (from perrot and chipiez.)] the egyptian religion existing in the earliest days was a worship of the personified elements of nature. each element had its particular controlling god, worshipped as such. later on in egyptian history the number of gods was increased, and each city had its trinity of godlike protectors symbolized by the propylæa of the temples. future life was a certainty, provided that the ka, or spirit, did not fall a prey to typhon, the god of evil, during the long wait in the tomb for the judgment-day. the belief that the spirit rested in the body until finally transported to the aaln fields (the islands of the blest, afterward adopted by the greeks) was one reason for the careful preservation of the body by mummifying processes. life itself was not more important than death. hence the imposing ceremonies of the funeral and burial, the elaborate richness of the tomb and its wall paintings. perhaps the first egyptian art arose through religious observance, and certainly the first known to us was sepulchral. art motives: the centre of the egyptian system was the monarch and his supposed relatives, the gods. they arrogated to themselves the chief thought of life, and the aim of the great bulk of the art was to glorify monarchy or deity. the massive buildings, still standing to-day in ruins, were built as the dwelling-places of kings or the sanctuaries of gods. the towers symbolized deity, the sculptures and paintings recited the functional duties of presiding spirits, or the pharaoh's looks and acts. almost everything about the public buildings in painting and sculpture was symbolic illustration, picture-written history--written with a chisel and brush, written large that all might read. there was no other safe way of preserving record. there were no books; the papyrus sheet, used extensively, was frail, and the egyptians evidently wished their buildings, carvings, and paintings to last into eternity. so they wrought in and upon stone. the same hieroglyphic character of their papyrus writings appeared cut and colored on the palace walls, and above them and beside them the pictures ran as vignettes explanatory of the text. in a less ostentatious way the tombs perpetuated history in a similar manner, reciting the domestic scenes from the life of the individual, as the temples and palaces the religious and monarchical scenes. in one form or another it was all record of egyptian life, but this was not the only motive of their painting. the temples and palaces, designed to shut out light and heat, were long squares of heavy stone, gloomy as the cave from which their plan may have originated. carving and color were used to brighten and enliven the interior. the battles, the judgment scenes, the pharaoh playing at draughts with his wives, the religious rites and ceremonies, were all given with brilliant arbitrary color, surrounded oftentimes by bordering bands of green, yellow, and blue. color showed everywhere from floor to ceiling. even the explanatory hieroglyphic texts ran in colors, lining the walls and winding around the cylinders of stone. the lotus capitals, the frieze and architrave, all glowed with bright hues, and often the roof ceiling was painted in blue and studded with golden stars. [illustration: fig. .--portrait of queen taia. (from perrot and chipiez.)] all this shows a decorative motive in egyptian painting, and how constantly this was kept in view may be seen at times in the arrangement of the different scenes, the large ones being placed in the middle of the wall and the smaller ones going at the top and bottom, to act as a frieze and dado. there were, then, two leading motives for egyptian painting; ( ) history, monarchical, religious, or domestic; and ( ) decoration. technical methods: man in the early stages of civilization comprehends objects more by line than by color or light. the figure is not studied in itself, but in its sun-shadow or silhouette. the egyptian hieroglyph represented objects by outlines or arbitrary marks and conveyed a simple meaning without circumlocution. the egyptian painting was substantially an enlargement of the hieroglyph. there was no attempt to place objects in the setting which they hold in nature. perspective and light-and-shade were disregarded. objects, of whatever nature, were shown in flat profile. in the human figure the shoulders were square, the hips slight, the legs and arms long, the feet and hands flat. the head, legs, and arms were shown in profile, while the chest and eye were twisted to show the flat front view. there are only one or two full-faced figures among the remains of egyptian painting. after the outline was drawn the enclosed space was filled in with plain color. in the absence of high light, or composed groups, prominence was given to an important figure, like that of the king, by making it much larger than the other figures. this may be seen in any of the battle-pieces of rameses ii., in which the monarch in his chariot is a giant where his followers are mere pygmies. in the absence of perspective, receding figures of men or of horses were given by multiplied outlines of legs, or heads, placed before, or after, or raised above one another. flat water was represented by zigzag lines, placed as it were upon a map, one tree symbolized a forest, and one fortification a town. these outline drawings were not realistic in any exact sense. the face was generally expressionless, the figure, evidently done from memory or pattern, did not reveal anatomical structure, but was nevertheless graceful, and in the representation of animals the sense of motion was often given with much truth. the color was usually an attempt at nature, though at times arbitrary or symbolic, as in the case of certain gods rendered with blue, yellow, or green skins. the backgrounds were always of flat color, arbitrary in hue, and decorative only. the only composition was a balance by numbers, and the processional scenes rose tier upon tier above one another in long panels. [illustration: fig. .--offerings to the dead, wall painting, eighteenth dynasty. (from perrot and chipiez.)] such work would seem almost ludicrous did we not keep in mind its reason for existence. it was, first, symbolic story-telling art, and secondly, architectural decoration. as a story-teller it was effective because of its simplicity and directness. as decoration, the repeated expressionless face and figure, the arbitrary color, the absence of perspective were not inappropriate then nor are they now. egyptian painting never was free from the decorative motive. wall painting was little more than an adjunct of architecture, and probably grew out of sculpture. the early statues were colored, and on the wall the chisel, like the flint of primitive man, cut the outline of the figure. at first only this cut was filled with color, producing what has been called the koil-anaglyphic. in the final stage the line was made by drawing with chalk or coal on prepared stucco, and the color, mixed with gum-water (a kind of distemper), was applied to the whole enclosed space. substantially the same method of painting was used upon other materials, such as wood, mummy cartonnage, papyrus; and in all its thousands of years of existence egyptian painting never advanced upon or varied to any extent this one method of work. historic periods: egyptian art may be traced back as far as the third or fourth memphitic dynasty of kings. the date is uncertain, but it is somewhere near , b.c. the seat of empire, at that time, was located at memphis in lower egypt, and it is among the remains of this memphitic period that the earliest and best painting is found. in fact, all egyptian art, literature, language, civilization, seem at their highest point of perfection in the period farthest removed from us. in that earliest age the finest portrait busts were cut, and the painting, found chiefly in the tombs and on the mummy-cases, was the attempted realistic with not a little of spirited individuality. the figure was rather short and squat, the face a little squarer than the conventional type afterward adopted, the action better, and the positions, attitudes, and gestures more truthful to local characteristics. the domestic scenes--hunting, fishing, tilling, grazing--were all shown in the one flat, planeless, shadowless method of representation, but with better drawing and color and more variety than appeared later on. still, more or less conventional types were used, even in this early time, and continued to be used all through egyptian history. [illustration: fig. .--vignette on papyrus, louvre. (from perrot and chipiez.)] the memphitic period comes down to the eleventh dynasty. in the fifteenth dynasty comes the invasion of the so-called hyksos, or shepherd kings. little is known of the hyksos, and, in painting, the next stage is the theban period, which, culminated in thebes, in upper egypt, with rameses ii., of the nineteenth dynasty. painting had then changed somewhat both in subject and character. the time was one of great temple and palace building, and, though the painting of _genre_ subjects in tombs and sepulchres continued, the general body of art became more monumental and subservient to architecture. painting was put to work on temple and palace-walls, depicting processional scenes, either religious or monarchical, and vast in extent. the figure, too, changed slightly. it became longer, slighter, with a pronounced nose, thick lips, and long eye. from constant repetition, rather than any set rule or canon, this figure grew conventional, and was reproduced as a type in a mechanical and unvarying manner for hundreds of years. it was, in fact, only a variation from the original egyptian type seen in the tombs of the earliest dynasties. there was a great quantity of art produced during the theban period, and of a graceful, decorative character, but it was rather monotonous by repetition and filled with established mannerisms. the egyptian really never was a free worker, never an artist expressing himself; but, for his day, a skilled mechanic following time-honored example. in the saitic period the seat of empire was once more in lower egypt, and art had visibly declined with the waning power of the country. all spontaneity seemed to have passed out of it, it was repetition of repetition by poor workmen, and the simplicity and purity of the technic were corrupted by foreign influences. with the alexandrian epoch egyptian art came in contact with greek methods, and grew imitative of the new art, to the detriment of its own native character. eventually it was entirely lost in the art of the greco-roman world. it was never other than conventional, produced by a method almost as unvarying as that of the hieroglyphic writing, and in this very respect characteristic and reflective of the unchanging orientals. technically it had its shortcomings, but it conveyed the proper information to its beholders and was serviceable and graceful decoration for egyptian days. extant paintings: the temples, palaces, and tombs of egypt still reveal egyptian painting in almost as perfect a state as when originally executed; the ghizeh museum has many fine examples; and there are numerous examples in the museums at turin, paris, berlin, london, new york, and boston. an interesting collection belongs to the new york historical society, and some of the latest "finds" of the egypt exploration fund are in the boston museum. chapter ii. chaldÆo-assyrian painting. books recommended: babelon, _manual of oriental antiquities_; botta, _monument de ninive_; budge, _babylonian life and history_; duncker, _history of antiquity_; layard, _nineveh and its remains_; layard, _discoveries among ruins of nineveh and babylon_; lenormant, _manual of the ancient history of the east_; loftus, _travels in chaldæa and susiana_; maspero, _life in ancient egypt and assyria_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in chaldæa and assyria_; place, _ninive et l'assyrie_; sayce, _assyria: its palaces, priests, and people_. tigris-euphrates civilization: in many respects the civilization along the tigris-euphrates was like that along the nile. both valleys were settled by primitive peoples, who grew rapidly by virtue of favorable climate and soil, and eventually developed into great nations headed by kings absolute in power. the king was the state in egypt, and in assyria the monarch was even more dominant and absolute. for the pharaohs shared architecture, painting, and sculpture with the gods; but the sargonids seem to have arrogated the most of these things to themselves alone. religion was perhaps as real in assyria as in egypt, but it was less apparent in art. certain genii, called gods or demons, appear in the bas-reliefs, but it is not yet settled whether they represent gods or merely legendary heroes or monsters of fable. there was no great demonstration of religion by form and color, as in egypt. the assyrians were semites, and religion with them was more a matter of the spirit than the senses--an image in the mind rather than an image in metal or stone. the temple was not eloquent with the actions and deeds of the gods, and even the tomb, that fruitful source of art in egypt, was in chaldæa undecorated and in assyria unknown. no one knows what the assyrians did with their dead, unless they carried them back to the fatherland of the race, the persian gulf region, as the native tribes of mesopotamia do to this day. art motives: as in egypt, there were two motives for art--illustration and decoration. religion, as we have seen, hardly obtained at all. the king attracted the greatest attention. the countless bas-reliefs, cut on soft stone slabs, were pages from the history of the monarch in peace and war, in council, in the chase, or in processional rites. beside him and around him his officers came in for a share of the background glory. occasionally the common people had representations of their lives and their pursuits, but the main subject of all the valley art was the king and his doings. sculpture and painting were largely illustrations accompanying a history written in the ever-present cuneiform characters. [illustration: fig. .--enamelled brick. nimroud. (from perrot and chipiez.)] but, while serving as history, like the picture-writings of the egyptians, this illustration was likewise decoration, and was designed with that end in view. rows upon rows of partly colored bas-reliefs were arranged like a dado along the palace-wall, and above them wall-paintings, or glazed tiles in patterns, carried out the color scheme. almost all of the color has now disappeared, but it must have been brilliant at one time, and was doubtless in harmony with the architecture. both painting and sculpture were subordinate to and dependent upon architecture. palace-building was the chief pursuit, and the other arts were called in mainly as adjuncts--ornamental records of the king who built. [illustration: fig. .--enamelled brick. khorsabad. (from perrot and chipiez.)] the type, form, color: there were only two distinct faces in assyrian art--one with and one without a beard. neither of them was a portrait except as attributes or inscriptions designated. the type was unendingly repeated. women appeared in only one or two isolated cases, and even these are doubtful. the warrior, a strong, coarse-membered, heavily muscled creation, with a heavy, expressionless, semitic face, appeared everywhere. the figure was placed in profile, with eye and bust twisted to show the front view, and the long feet projected one beyond the other, as in the nile pictures. this was the assyrian ideal of strength, dignity, and majesty, established probably in the early ages, and repeated for centuries with few characteristic variations. the figure was usually given in motion, walking, or riding, and had little of that grace seen in egyptian painting, but in its place a great deal of rude strength. in modelling, the human form was not so knowingly rendered as the animal. the long eastern clothing probably prevented the close study of the figure. this failure in anatomical exactness was balanced in part by minute details in the dress and accessories, productive of a rich ornamental effect. hard stone was not found in the mesopotamian regions. temples were built of burnt brick, bas-reliefs were made upon alabaster slabs and heightened by coloring, and painting was largely upon tiles, with mineral paints, afterward glazed by fire. these glazed brick or tiles, with figured designs, were fixed upon the walls, arches, and archivolts by bitumen mortar, and made up the first mosaics of which we have record. there was a further painting upon plaster in distemper, of which some few traces remain. it did not differ in design from the bas-reliefs or the tile mosaics. the subjects used were the assyrian type, shown somewhat slighter in painting than in sculpture, animals, birds, and other objects; but they were obviously not attempts at nature. the color was arbitrary, not natural, and there was little perspective, light-and-shade, or relief. heavy outline bands of color appeared about the object, and the prevailing hues were yellow and blue. there was perhaps less symbolism and more direct representation in assyria than in egypt. there was also more feeling for perspective and space, as shown in such objects as water and in the mountain landscapes of the late bas-reliefs; but, in the main, there was no advance upon egypt. there was a difference which was not necessarily a development. painting, as we know the art to-day, was not practised in chaldæa-assyria. it was never free from a servitude to architecture and sculpture; it was hampered by conventionalities; and the painter was more artisan than artist, having little freedom or individuality. [illustration: fig. .--wild ass. bas-relief, british museum. (from perrot and chipiez.)] historic periods: chaldæa, of unknown antiquity, with babylon its capital, is accounted the oldest nation in the tigris-euphrates valley, and, so far as is known, it was an original nation producing an original art. its sculpture (especially in the tello heads), and presumably its painting, were more realistic and individual than any other in the valley. assyria coming later, and the heir of chaldæa, was the second empire: there are two distinct periods of this second empire, the first lasting from , b.c., down to about b.c., and in art showing a great profusion of bas-reliefs. the second closed about b.c., and in art produced much glazed-tile work and a more elaborate sculpture and painting. after this the chaldæan provinces gained the ascendency again, and babylon, under nebuchadnezzar, became the first city of asia. but the new babylon did not last long. it fell before cyrus and the persians b.c. again, as in egypt, the earliest art appears the purest and the simplest, and the years of chaldæo-assyrian history known to us carry a record of change rather than of progress in art. art remains: the most valuable collections of chaldæo-assyrian art are to be found in the louvre and the british museum. the other large museums of europe have collections in this department, but all of them combined are little compared with the treasures that still lie buried in the mounds of the tigris-euphrates valley. excavations have been made at mugheir, warka, khorsabad, kouyunjik, and elsewhere, but many difficulties have thus far rendered systematic work impossible. the complete history of chaldæo-assyria and its art has yet to be written. persian painting. books recommended: as before cited, babelon, duncker, lenormant, ely; dieulafoy, _l'art antique de la perse_; flandin et coste, _voyage en perse_; justi, _geschichte des alten persiens_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in persia_. history and art motives: the medes and persians were the natural inheritors of assyrian civilization, but they did not improve their birthright. the medes soon lost their power. cyrus conquered them, and established the powerful persian monarchy upheld for two hundred years by cambyses, darius, and xerxes. substantially the same conditions surrounded the persians as the assyrians--that is, so far as art production was concerned. their conceptions of life were similar, and their use of art was for historic illustration of kingly doings and ornamental embellishment of kingly palaces. both sculpture and painting were accessories of architecture. of median art nothing remains. the persians left the record, but it was not wholly of their own invention, nor was it very extensive or brilliant. it had little originality about it, and was really only an echo of assyria. the sculptors and painters copied their assyrian predecessors, repeating at persepolis what had been better told at nineveh. [illustration: fig. .--lions' frieze, susa. (from perrot and chipiez.)] types and technic: the same subjects, types, and technical methods in bas-relief, tile, and painting on plaster were followed under darius as under shalmanezer. but the imitation was not so good as the original. the warrior, the winged monsters, the animals all lost something of their air of brutal defiance and their strength of modelling. heroes still walked in procession along the bas-reliefs and glazed tiles, but the figure was smaller, more effeminate, the hair and beard were not so long, the drapery fell in slightly indicated folds at times, and there was a profusion of ornamental detail. some of this detail and some modifications in the figure showed the influence of foreign nations other than the greek; but, in the main, persian art followed in the footsteps of assyrian art. it was the last reflection of mesopotamian splendor. for with the conquest of persia by alexander the book of expressive art in that valley was closed, and, under islam, it remains closed to this day. art remains: persian painting is something about which little is known because little remains. the louvre contains some reconstructed friezes made in mosaics of stamped brick and square tile, showing figures of lions and a number of archers. the coloring is particularly rich, and may give some idea of persian pigments. aside from the chief museums of europe the bulk of persian art is still seen half-buried in the ruins of persepolis and elsewhere. phoenician, cypriote, and asia minor painting. books recommended: as before cited, babelon, duncker, ely, girard, lenormant; cesnola, _cyprus_; cesnola, _cypriote antiquities in metropolitan museum of art_; kenrick, _phoenicia_; movers, _die phonizier_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in phoenicia and cyprus_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in sardinia, judea, syria and asia minor_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in phrygia, lydia, etc._; renan, _mission de phénicie_. the trading nations: the coast-lying nations of the eastern mediterranean were hardly original or creative nations in a large sense. they were at different times the conquered dependencies of egypt, assyria, persia, greece, and their lands were but bridges over which armies passed from east to west or from west to east. located on the mediterranean between the great civilizations of antiquity they naturally adapted themselves to circumstances, and became the middlemen, the brokers, traders, and carriers of the ancient world. their lands were not favorable to agriculture, but their sea-coasts rendered commerce easy and lucrative. they made a kingdom of the sea, and their means of livelihood were gathered from it. there is no record that the egyptians ever traversed the mediterranean, the assyrians were not sailors, the greeks had not yet arisen, and so probably phoenicia and her neighbors had matters their own way. colonies and trading stations were established at cyprus, carthage, sardinia, the greek islands, and the greek mainland, and not only eastern goods but eastern ideas were thus carried to the west. [illustration: fig. .--painted head from edessa. (from perrot and chipiez.)] politically, socially, and religiously these small middle nations were inconsequential. they simply adapted their politics or faith to the nation that for the time had them under its heel. what semi-original religion they possessed was an amalgamation of the religions of other nations, and their gods of bronze, terra-cotta, and enamel were irreverently sold in the market like any other produce. art motives and methods: building, carving, and painting were practised among the coastwise nations, but upon no such extensive scale as in either egypt or assyria. the mere fact that they were people of the sea rather than of the land precluded extensive or concentrated development. politically phoenicia was divided among five cities, and her artistic strength was distributed in a similar manner. such art as was produced showed the religious and decorative motives, and in its spiritless materialistic make-up, the commercial motive. it was at the best a hybrid, mongrel art, borrowed from many sources and distributed to many points of the compass. at one time it had a strong assyrian cast, at another an egyptian cast, and after greece arose it accepted a retroactive influence from there. it is impossible to characterize the phoenician type, and even the cypriote type, though more pronounced, varies so with the different influences that it has no very striking individuality. technically both the phoenician and cypriote were fair workmen in bronze and stone, and doubtless taught many technical methods to the early greeks, besides making known to them those deities afterward adopted under the names of aphrodite, adonis, and heracles, and familiarizing them with the art forms of egypt and assyria. [illustration: fig. .--cypriote vase decoration. (from perrot and chipiez.)] as for painting, there was undoubtedly figured decoration upon walls of stone and plaster, but there is not enough left to us from all the small nations like phoenicia, judea, cyprus, and the kingdoms of asia minor, put together, to patch up a disjointed history. the first lands to meet the spoiler, their very ruins have perished. all that there is of painting comes to us in broken potteries and color traces on statuary. the remains of sculpture and architecture are of course better preserved. none of this intermediate art holds much rank by virtue of its inherent worth. it is its influence upon the west--the ideas, subjects, and methods it imparted to the greeks--that gives it importance in art history. art remains: in painting chiefly the vases in the metropolitan museum, new york, the louvre, british and berlin museums. these give a poor and incomplete idea of the painting in asia minor, phoenicia and her colonies. the terra-cottas, figurines in bronze, and sculptures can be studied to more advantage. the best collection of cypriote antiquities is in the metropolitan museum, new york. a new collection of judaic art has been recently opened in the louvre. chapter iii. greek painting. books recommended: baumeister, _denkmäler des klassischen altertums_--article "_malerei_;" birch, _history of ancient pottery_; brunn, _geschichte der griechischen künstler_; collignon, _mythologie figurée de la grèce_; collignon, _manuel d'archaeologie grecque_; cros et henry, _l'encaustique et les autres procédés de peinture chez les anciens_; girard, _la peinture antique_; murray, _handbook of greek archæology_; overbeck, _antiken schriftquellen zur geschichte der bildenen kunste bie den griechen_; perrot and chipiez, _history of art in greece_; woerman, _die landschaft in der kunst der antiken volker_; _see also books on etruscan and roman painting_. greece and the greeks: the origin of the greek race is not positively known. it is reasonably supposed that the early settlers in greece came from the region of asia minor, either across the hellespont or the sea, and populated the greek islands and the mainland. when this was done has been matter of much conjecture. the early history is lost, but art remains show that in the period before homer the greeks were an established race with habits and customs distinctly individual. egyptian and asiatic influences are apparent in their art at this early time, but there is, nevertheless, the mark of a race peculiarly apart from all the races of the older world. the development of the greek people was probably helped by favorable climate and soil, by commerce and conquest, by republican institutions and political faith, by freedom of mind and of body; but all these together are not sufficient to account for the keenness of intellect, the purity of taste, and the skill in accomplishment which showed in every branch of greek life. the cause lies deeper in the fundamental make-up of the greek mind, and its eternal aspiration toward mental, moral, and physical ideals. perfect mind, perfect body, perfect conduct in this world were sought-for ideals. the greeks aspired to completeness. the course of education and race development trained them physically as athletes and warriors, mentally as philosophers, law-makers, poets, artists, morally as heroes whose lives and actions emulated those of the gods, and were almost perfect for this world. art motives: neither the monarchy nor the priesthood commanded the services of the artist in greece, as in assyria and egypt. there was no monarch in an oriental sense, and the chosen leaders of the greeks never, until the late days, arrogated art to themselves. it was something for all the people. in religion there was a pantheon of gods established and worshipped from the earliest ages, but these gods were more like epitomes of greek ideals than spiritual beings. they were the personified virtues of the greeks, exemplars of perfect living; and in worshipping them the greek was really worshipping order, conduct, repose, dignity, perfect life. the gods and heroes, as types of moral and physical qualities, were continually represented in an allegorical or legendary manner. athene represented noble warfare, zeus was majestic dignity and power, aphrodite love, phoebus song, niké triumph, and all the lesser gods, nymphs, and fauns stood for beauties of nature or of life. the great bulk of greek architecture, sculpture, and painting was put forth to honor these gods or heroes, and by so doing the artist repeated the national ideals and honored himself. the first motive of greek art, then, was to praise hellas and the hellenic view of life. in part it was a religious motive, but with little of that spiritual significance and belief which ruled in egypt, and later on in italy. [illustration: fig. .--attic grave painting. (from baumeister.)] a second and ever-present motive in greek painting was decoration. this appears in the tomb pottery of the earliest ages, and was carried on down to the latest times. vase painting, wall painting, tablet and sculpture painting were all done with a decorative motive in view. even the easel or panel pictures had some decorative effect about them, though they were primarily intended to convey ideas other than those of form and color. subjects and methods: the gods and heroes, their lives and adventures, formed the early subjects of greek painting. certain themes taken from the "iliad" and the "odyssey" were as frequently shown as, afterward, the annunciations in italian painting. the traditional subjects, the centaurs and lapiths, the amazon war, theseus and ariadne, perseus and andromeda, were frequently depicted. humanity and actual greek life came in for its share. single figures, still-life, _genre_, caricature, all were shown, and as painting neared the alexandrian age a semi-realistic portraiture came into vogue. the materials employed by the greeks and their methods of work are somewhat difficult to ascertain, because there are few greek pictures, except those on the vases, left to us. from the confusing accounts of the ancient writers, the vases, some greek slabs in italy, and the roman paintings imitative of the greek, we may gain a general idea. the early greek work was largely devoted to pottery and tomb decoration, in which much in manner and method was borrowed from asia, phoenicia, and egypt. later on, painting appeared in flat outline on stone or terra-cotta slabs, sometimes representing processional scenes, as in egypt, and doubtless done in a hybrid fresco-work similar to the egyptian method. wall paintings were done in fresco and distemper, probably upon the walls themselves, and also upon panels afterward let into the wall. encaustic painting (color mixed with wax upon the panel and fused with a hot spatula) came in with the sikyonian school. it is possible that the oil medium and canvas were known, but not probable that either was ever used extensively. there is no doubt about the greeks being expert draughtsmen, though this does not appear until late in history. they knew the outlines well, and drew them with force and grace. that they modelled in strong relief is more questionable. light-and-shade was certainly employed in the figure, but not in any modern way. perspective in both figures and landscape was used; but the landscape was at first symbolic and rarely got beyond a decorative background for the figure. greek composition we know little about, but may infer that it was largely a series of balances, a symmetrical adjustment of objects to fill a given space with not very much freedom allowed to the artist. in atmosphere, sunlight, color, and those peculiarly sensuous charms that belong to painting, there is no reason to believe that the greeks approached the moderns. their interest was chiefly centred in the human figure. landscape, with its many beauties, was reserved for modern hands to disclose. color was used in abundance, without doubt, but it was probably limited to the leading hues, with little of that refinement or delicacy known in painting to-day. art history: for the history of greek painting we have to rely upon the words of aristotle, plutarch, pliny, quintilian, lucian, cicero, pausanias. their accounts appear to be partly substantiated by the vase paintings, and such few slabs and roman frescos as remain to us. there is no consecutive narrative. the story of painting originating from a girl seeing the wall-silhouette of her lover and filling it in with color, and the conjecture of painting having developed from embroidery work, have neither of them a foundation in fact. the earliest settlers of greece probably learned painting from the phoenicians, and employed it, after the egyptian, assyrian, and phoenician manner, on pottery, terra-cotta slabs, and rude sculpture. it developed slower than sculpture perhaps; but were there anything of importance left to judge from, we should probably find that it developed in much the same manner as sculpture. down to b.c. there was little more than outline filled in with flat monochromatic paint and with a decorative effect similar, perhaps, to that of the vase paintings. after that date come the more important names of artists mentioned by the ancient writers. it is difficult to assign these artists to certain periods or schools, owing to the insufficient knowledge we have about them. the following classifications and assignments may, therefore, in some instances, be questioned. [illustration: fig. .--muse of cortona, cortona museum.] older attic school: the first painter of rank was polygnotus (fl. - b.c.), sometimes called the founder of greek painting, because perhaps he was one of the first important painters in greece proper. he seems to have been a good outline draughtsman, producing figures in profile, with little attempt at relief, perspective, or light-and-shade. his colors were local tones, but probably more like nature and more varied than anything in egyptian painting. landscapes, buildings, and the like, were given in a symbolic manner. portraiture was a generalization, and in figure compositions the names of the principal characters were written near them for purposes of identification. the most important works of polygnotus were the wall paintings for the assembly room of the knidians at delphi. the subjects related to the trojan war and the adventures of ulysses. opposed to this flat, unrelieved style was the work of a follower, agatharchos of samos (fl. end of fifth century b.c.). he was a scene-painter, and by the necessities of his craft was led toward nature. stage effect required a study of perspective, variation of light, and a knowledge of the laws of optics. the slight outline drawing of his predecessor was probably superseded by effective masses to create illusion. this was a distinct advance toward nature. apollodorus (fl. end of fifth century b.c.) applied the principles of agatharchos to figures. according to plutarch, he was the first to discover variation in the shade of colors, and, according to pliny, the first master to paint objects as they appeared in nature. he had the title of _skiagraphos_ (shadow-painter), and possibly gave a semi-natural background with perspective. this was an improvement, but not a perfection. it is not likely that the backgrounds were other than conventional settings for the figure. even these were not at once accepted by the painters of the period, but were turned to profit in the hands of the followers. after the peloponnesian wars the art of painting seems to have flourished elsewhere than in athens, owing to the athenian loss of supremacy. other schools sprang up in various districts, and one to call for considerable mention by the ancient writers was the ionian school, which in reality had existed from the sixth century. the painters of this school advanced upon the work of apollodorus as regards realistic effect. zeuxis, whose fame was at its height during the peloponnesian wars, seems to have regarded art as a matter of illusion, if one may judge by the stories told of his work. the tale of his painting a bunch of grapes so like reality that the birds came to peck at them proves either that the painter's motive was deception, or that the narrator of the tale picked out the deceptive part of his picture for admiration. he painted many subjects, like helen, penelope, and many _genre_ pieces on panel. quintilian says he originated light-and-shade, an achievement credited by plutarch to apollodorus. it is probable that he advanced light-and-shade. in illusion he seems to have been outdone by a rival, parrhasios of ephesus. zeuxis deceived the birds with painted grapes, but parrhasios deceived zeuxis with a painted curtain. there must have been knowledge of color, modelling, and relief to have produced such an illusion, but the aim was petty and unworthy of the skill. there was evidently an advance technically, but some decline in the true spirit of art. parrhasios finally suffered defeat at the hands of timanthes of kythnos, by a contest between ajax and ulysses for the arms of achilles. timanthes's famous work was the sacrifice of iphigenia, of which there is a supposed pompeian copy. sikyonian school: this school seems to have sprung up after the peloponnesian wars, and was perhaps founded by eupompos, a contemporary of parrhasios. his pupil pamphilos brought the school to maturity. he apparently reacted from the deception motive of zeuxis and parrhasios, and taught academic methods of drawing, composing, and painting. he was also credited with bringing into use the encaustic method of painting, though it was probably known before his time. his pupil, pausias, possessed some freedom of creation in _genre_ and still-life subjects. pliny says he had great technical skill, as shown in the foreshortening of a black ox by variations of the black tones, and he obtained some fame by a figure of methè (intoxication) drinking from a glass, the face being seen through the glass. again the motives seem trifling, but again advancing technical power is shown. [illustration: fig. .--odyssey landscape, vatican. (from woltmann and woermann.)] theban-attic school: this was the fourth school of greek painting. nikomachus (fl. about b.c.), a facile painter, was at its head. his pupil, aristides, painted pathetic scenes, and was perhaps as remarkable for teaching art to the celebrated euphranor (fl. b.c.) as for his own productions. euphranor had great versatility in the arts, and in painting was renowned for his pictures of the olympian gods at athens. his successor, nikias (fl. - b.c.), was a contemporary of praxiteles, the sculptor, and was possibly influenced by him in the painting of female figures. he was a technician of ability in composition, light-and-shade, and relief, and was praised for the roundness of his figures. he also did some tinting of sculpture, and is said to have tinted some of the works of praxiteles. late painters: contemporary with and following these last-named artists were some celebrated painters who really belong to the beginning of the hellenistic period ( b.c.). at their head was apelles, the painter of philip and alexander, and the climax of greek painting. he painted many gods, heroes, and allegories, with much "gracefulness," as pliny puts it. the italian botticelli, seventeen hundred years after him, tried to reproduce his celebrated calumny, from lucian's description of it. his chief works were his aphrodite anadyomene, carried to rome by augustus, and the portrait of alexander with the thunder-bolt. he was undoubtedly a superior man technically. protogenes rivalled him, if we are to believe petronius, by the foam on a dog's mouth and the wonder in the eye of a startled pheasant. aëtion, the painter of alexander's marriage to roxana, was not able to turn the aim of painting from this deceptive illusion. after alexander, painting passed still further into the imitative and the theatrical, and when not grandiloquent was infinitely little over cobbler-shops and huckster-stalls. landscape for purposes of decorative composition, and floor painting, done in mosaic, came in during the time of the diadochi. there were no great names in the latter days, and such painters as still flourished passed on to rome, there to produce copies of the works of their predecessors. it is hard to reconcile the unworthy motive attributed to greek painting by the ancient writers with the high aim of greek sculpture. it is easier to think (and it is more probable) that the writers knew very little about art, and that they missed the spirit of greek painting in admiring its insignificant details. that painting technically was at a high point of perfection as regards the figure, even the imitative roman works indicate, and it can hardly be doubted that in spirit it was at one time equally strong. extant remains: there are few wall or panel pictures of greek times in existence. four slabs of stone in the naples museum, with red outline drawings of theseus, silenos, and some figures with masks, are probably greek work from which the color has scaled. a number of roman copies of greek frescos and mosaics are in the vatican, capitoline, and naples museums. all these pieces show an imitation of late hellenistic art--not the best period of greek development. the vases: the history of greek painting in its remains is traced with some accuracy in the decorative figures upon the vases. the first ware--dating before the seventh century b.c.--seems free from oriental influences in its designs. the vase is reddish, the decoration is in tiers, bands, or zig-zags, usually in black or brown, without the human figure. the second kind of ware dates from about the middle of the seventh century. it shows meander, wave, and other designs, and is called the "geometrical" style. later on animals, rosettes, and vegetation appear that show assyrian influence. the decoration is profuse and the rude human figure subordinate to it. the design is in black or dark-brown, on a cream-colored slip. the third kind of ware is the archaic or "strong" style. it dates from b.c. to the peloponnesian wars, and is marked by black figures upon a yellow or red ground. white and purple are also used to define flesh, hair, and white objects. the figure is stiff, the action awkward, the composition is freer than before, but still conventional. the subjects are the gods, demi-gods, and heroes in scenes from their lives and adventures. the fourth kind of ware dates down into the hellenistic age and shows red figures surrounded by a black ground. the figure, the drawing, the composition are better than at any other period and suggest a high excellence in other forms of greek painting. after alexander, vase painting seems to have shared the fate of wall and panel painting. there was a striving for effect, with ornateness and extravagance, and finally the art passed out entirely. there was an establishment founded in southern italy which imitated the greek and produced the apulian ware, but the romans gave little encouragement to vase painting, and about b.c. it disappeared. almost all the museums of the world have collections of greek vases. the british, berlin, and paris collections are perhaps as complete as any. [illustration: fig. .--amphore, lower italy.] etruscan and roman painting. books recommended: see bibliography of greek painting and also dennis, _cities and cemeteries of etruria_; graul, _die portratgemalde aus den grabstatten des faiyum_; helbig, _die wandgemalde campaniens_; helbig, _untersuchungen uber die campanische wandmalerei_; mau, _geschichte der decorativen wandmalerei in pompeii_; martha, _l'archéologie Étrusque et romaine_. etruscan painting: painting in etruria has not a great deal of interest for us just here. it was largely decorative and sepulchral in motive, and was employed in the painting of tombs, and upon vases and other objects placed in the tombs. it had a native way of expressing itself, which at first was neither greek nor oriental, and yet a reminder of both. technically it was not well done. before b.c. it was almost childish in the drawing. after that date the figures were better, though short and squat. those on the vases usually show outline drawing filled in with dull browns and yellows. finally there was a mingling of etruscan with greek elements, and an imitation of greek methods. it was at best a hybrid art, but of some importance from an archæological point of view. roman painting: roman art is an appendix to the art history of greece. it originated little in painting, and was content to perpetuate the traditions of greece in an imitative way. what was worse, it copied the degeneracy of greece by following the degenerate hellenistic paintings. in motive and method it was substantially the same work as that of the greeks under the diadochi. the subjects, again, were often taken from greek story, though there were roman historical scenes, _genre_ pieces, and many portraits. [illustration: fig. .--ritual scene, palatine wall painting. (from woltmann and woermann.)] in the beginning of the empire tablet or panel painting was rather abandoned in favor of mural decoration. that is to say, figures or groups were painted in fresco on the wall and then surrounded by geometrical, floral, or architectural designs to give the effect of a panel let into the wall. thus painting assumed a more decorative nature. vitruvius says in effect that in the early days nature was followed in these wall paintings, but later on they became ornate and overdone, showing many unsupported architectural façades and impossible decorative framings. this can be traced in the roman and pompeian frescos. there were four kinds of these wall paintings. ( .) those that covered all the walls of a room and did away with dado, frieze, and the like, such as figures with large landscape backgrounds showing villas and trees. ( .) small paintings separated or framed by pilasters. ( .) panel pictures let into the wall or painted with that effect. ( .) single figures with architectural backgrounds. the single figures were usually the best. they had grace of line and motion and all the truth to nature that decoration required. some of the backgrounds were flat tints of red or black against which the figure was placed. in the larger pieces the composition was rather rambling and disjointed, and the color harsh. in light-and-shade and relief they probably followed the greek example. [illustration: fig. .--portrait-head. (from fayoum, graf col.)] roman painters: during the first five centuries rome was between the influences of etruria and greece. the first paintings in rome of which there is record were done in the temple of ceres by the greek artists of lower italy, gorgasos and damophilos (fl. b.c.). they were doubtless somewhat like the vase paintings--profile work, without light, shade, or perspective. at the time and after alexander greek influence held sway. fabius pictor (fl. about b.c.) is one of the celebrated names in historical painting, and later on pacuvius, metrodorus, and serapion are mentioned. in the last century of the republic, sopolis, dionysius, and antiochus gabinius excelled in portraiture. ancient painting really ends for us with the destruction of pompeii ( a.d.), though after that there were interesting portraits produced, especially those found in the fayoum (egypt).[ ] [footnote : see scribner's magazine, vol. v., p. , new series.] extant remains: the frescos that are left to us to-day are largely the work of mechanical decorators rather than creative artists. they are to be seen in rome, in the baths of titus, the vatican, livia's villa, farnesina, rospigliosi, and barberini palaces, baths of caracalla, capitoline and lateran museums, in the houses of excavated pompeii, and the naples museum. besides these there are examples of roman fresco and distemper in the louvre and other european museums. examples of etruscan painting are to be seen in the vatican, cortona, the louvre, the british museum and elsewhere. chapter iv. italian painting. early christian and mediÆval period. - . books recommended: bayet, _l'art byzantin_; bennett, _christian archæology_; bosio, _la roma sotterranea_; burckhardt, _the cicerone, an art guide to painting in italy, ed. by crowe_; crowe and cavalcaselle, _new history of painting in italy_; de rossi, _la roma sotterranea cristiana_; de rossi, _bullettino di archeologia cristiana_; didron, _christian iconography_; eastlake (kügler's), _handbook of painting--the italian schools_; garrucci, _storia dell' arte cristiana_; gerspach, _la mosaïque_; lafenestre, _la peinture italienne_; lanzi, _history of painting in italy_; lecoy de la marche, _les manuscrits et la miniature_; lindsay, _sketches of the history of christian art_; martigny, _dictionnaire des antiques chrétiennes_; pératé, _l'archeologie chretienne_; reber, _history of mediæval art_; rio, _poetry of christian art_; lethaby, _medieval art_; smith and cheetham, _dictionary of christian antiquities_. rise of christianity: out of the decaying civilization of rome sprang into life that remarkable growth known as christianity. it was not welcomed by the romans. it was scoffed at, scourged, persecuted, and, at one time, nearly exterminated. but its vitality was stronger than that of its persecutor, and when rome declined, christianity utilized the things that were roman, while striving to live for ideas that were christian. [illustration: fig. .--chamber in catacombs, showing wall decoration.] there was no revolt, no sudden change. the christian idea made haste slowly, and at the start it was weighed down with many paganisms. the christians themselves in all save religious faith, were romans, and inherited roman tastes, manners, and methods. but the roman world, with all its classicism and learning, was dying. the decline socially and intellectually was with the christians as well as the romans. there was good reason for it. the times were out of joint, and almost everything was disorganized, worn out, decadent. the military life of the empire had begun to give way to the monastic and feudal life of the church. quarrels and wars between the powers kept life at fever heat. in the fifth century came the inpouring of the goths and huns, and with them the sacking and plunder of the land. misery and squalor, with intellectual blackness, succeeded. art, science, literature, and learning degenerated to mere shadows of their former selves, and a semi-barbarism reigned for five centuries. during all this dark period christian painting struggled on in a feeble way, seeking to express itself. it started roman in form, method, and even, at times, in subject; it ended christian, but not without a long period of gradual transition, during which it was influenced from many sources and underwent many changes. art motives: as in the ancient world, there were two principal motives for painting in early christian times--religion and decoration. religion was the chief motive, but christianity was a very different religion from that of the greeks and romans. the hellenistic faith was a worship of nature, a glorification of humanity, an exaltation of physical and moral perfections. it dealt with the material and the tangible, and greek art appealed directly to the sensuous and earthly nature of mankind. the hebraic faith or christianity was just the opposite of this. it decried the human, the flesh, and the worldly. it would have nothing to do with the beauty of this earth. its hopes were centred upon the life hereafter. the teaching of christ was the humility and the abasement of the human in favor of the spiritual and the divine. where hellenism appealed to the senses, hebraism appealed to the spirit. in art the fine athletic figure, or, for that matter, any figure, was an abomination. the early church fathers opposed it. it was forbidden by the mosaic decalogue and savored of idolatry. but what should take its place in art? how could the new christian ideas be expressed without form? symbolism came in, but it was insufficient. a party in the church rose up in favor of more direct representation. art should be used as an engine of the church to teach the bible to those who could not read. this argument held good, and notwithstanding the opposition of the iconoclastic party painting grew in favor. it lent itself to teaching and came under ecclesiastical domination. as it left the nature of the classic world and loosened its grasp on things tangible it became feeble and decrepit in its form. while it grew in sentiment and religious fervor it lost in bodily vigor and technical ability. [illustration: fig. .--catacomb fresco. crypt of s. cecilia. third century.] for many centuries the religious motive held strong, and art was the servant of the church. it taught the bible truths, but it also embellished and adorned the interiors of the churches. all the frescos, mosaics, and altar-pieces had a decorative motive in their coloring and setting. the church building was a house of refuge for the oppressed, and it was made attractive not only in its lines and proportions but in its ornamentation. hence the two motives of the early work--religious teaching and decoration. subjects and technical methods: there was no distinct judaic or christian type used in the very early art. the painters took their models directly from the roman frescos and marbles. it was the classic figure and the classic costume, and those who produced the painting of the early period were the degenerate painters of the classic world. the figure was rather short and squat, coarse in the joints, hands, and feet, and almost expressionless in the face. christian life at that time was passion-strung, but the faces in art do not show it, for the reason that the roman frescos were the painter's model, not the people of the christian community about him. there was nothing like a realistic presentation at this time. the type alone was given. in the drawing it was not so good as that shown in the roman and pompeian frescos. there was a mechanism about its production, a copying by unskilled hands, a negligence or an ignorance of form that showed everywhere. the coloring, again, was a conventional scheme of flat tints in reddish-browns and bluish-greens, with heavy outline bands of brown. there was little perspective or background, and the figures in panels were separated by vines, leaves, or other ornamental division lines. some relief was given to the figure by the brown outlines. light-and-shade was not well rendered, and composition was formal. the great part of this early work was done in fresco after the roman formula, and was executed on the walls of the catacombs. other forms of art showed in the gilded glasses, in manuscript illumination, and, later, in the mosaics. technically the work begins to decline from the beginning in proportion as painting was removed from the knowledge of the ancient world. about the fifth century the figure grew heavy and stiff. a new type began to show itself. the roman toga was exchanged for the long liturgical garment which hid the proportions of the body, the lines grew hard and dark, a golden nimbus appeared about the head, and the patriarchal in appearance came into art. the youthful orphic face of christ changed to a solemn visage, with large, round eyes, saint-like beard, and melancholy air. the classic qualities were fast disappearing. eastern types and elements were being introduced through byzantium. oriental ornamentation, gold embossing, rich color were doing away with form, perspective, light-and-shade, and background. [illustration: fig. .--christ as good shepherd. mosaic, ravenna, fifth century.] the color was rich and the mechanical workmanship fair for the time, but the figure had become paralytic. it shrouded itself in a sack-like brocaded gown, had no feet at times, and instead of standing on the ground hung in the air. facial expression ran to contorted features, holiness became moroseness, and sadness sulkiness. the flesh was brown, the shadows green-tinted, giving an unhealthy look to the faces. add to this the gold ground (a persian inheritance), the gilded high lights, the absence of perspective, and the composing of groups so that the figures looked piled one upon another instead of receding, and we have the style of painting that prevailed in byzantium and italy from about the ninth to the thirteenth century. nothing of a technical nature was in its favor except the rich coloring and the mechanical adroitness of the fitting. early christian painting: the earliest christian painting appeared on the walls of the catacombs in rome. these were decorated with panels and within the panels were representations of trailing vines, leaves, fruits, flowers, with birds and little genii or cupids. it was painting similar to the roman work, and had no christian significance though in a christian place. not long after, however, the desire to express something of the faith began to show itself in a symbolic way. the cups and the vases became marked with the fish, because the greek spelling of the word "icthus" gave the initials of the christian confession of faith. the paintings of the shepherd bearing a sheep symbolized christ and his flock; the anchor meant the christian hope; the phoenix immortality; the ship the church; the cock watchfulness, and so on. and at this time the decorations began to have a double meaning. the vine came to represent the "i am the vine" and the birds grew longer wings and became doves, symbolizing pure christian souls. it has been said this form of art came about through fear of persecution, that the christians hid their ideas in symbols because open representation would be followed by violence and desecration. such was hardly the case. the emperors persecuted the living, but the dead and their sepulchres were exempt from sacrilege by roman law. they probably used the symbol because they feared the roman figure and knew no other form to take its place. but symbolism did not supply the popular need; it was impossible to originate an entirely new figure; so the painters went back and borrowed the old roman form. christ appeared as a beardless youth in phrygian costume, the virgin mary was a roman matron, and the apostles looked like roman senators wearing the toga. classic story was also borrowed to illustrate bible truth. hermes carrying the sheep was the good shepherd, psyche discovering cupid was the curiosity of eve, ulysses closing his ears to the sirens was the christian resisting the tempter. the pagan orpheus charming the animals of the wood was finally adopted as a symbol, or perhaps an ideal likeness of christ. then followed more direct representation in classic form and manner, the old testament prefiguring and emphasizing the new. jonah appeared cast into the sea and cast by the whale on dry land again as a symbol of the new testament resurrection, and also as a representation of the actual occurrence. moses striking the rock symbolized life eternal, and david slaying goliath was christ victorious. [illustration: fig. .--christ and saints. fresco. s. generosa, seventh century (?).] the chronology of the catacombs painting is very much mixed, but it is quite certain there was degeneracy from the start. the cause was neglect of form, neglect of art as art, mechanical copying instead of nature study, and finally, the predominance of the religious idea over the forms of nature. with constantine christianity was recognized as the national religion. christian art came out of the catacombs and began to show itself in illuminations, mosaics, and church decorations. notwithstanding it was now free from restraint it did not improve. church traditions prevailed, sentiment bordered upon sentimentality, and the technic of painting passed from bad to worse. the decline continued during the sixth and seventh centuries, owing somewhat perhaps to the influence of byzantium and the introduction into italy of eastern types and elements. in the eighth century the iconoclastic controversy broke out again in fury with the edict of leo the isaurian. this controversy was a renewal of the old quarrel in the church about the use of pictures and images. some wished them for instruction in the word; others decried them as leading to idolatry. it was a long quarrel of over a hundred years' duration, and a deadly one for art. when it ended, the artists were ordered to follow the traditions, not to make any new creations, and not to model any figure in the round. the nature element in art was quite dead at that time, and the order resulted only in diverting the course of painting toward the unrestricted miniatures and manuscripts. the native italian art was crushed for a time by this new ecclesiastical burden. it did not entirely disappear, but it gave way to the stronger, though equally restricted art that had been encroaching upon it for a long time--the art of byzantium. byzantine painting: constantinople was rebuilt and rechristened by constantine, a christian emperor, in the year a.d. it became a stronghold of christian traditions, manners, customs, art. but it was not quite the same civilization as that of rome and the west. it was bordered on the south and east by oriental influences, and much of eastern thought, method, and glamour found its way into the christian community. the artists fought this influence, stickling a long time for the severer classicism of ancient greece. for when rome fell the traditions of the old world centred around constantinople. but classic form was ever being encroached upon by oriental richness of material and color. the struggle was a long but hopeless one. as in italy, form failed century by century. when, in the eighth century, the iconoclastic controversy cut away the little greek existing in it, the oriental ornament was about all that remained. there was no chance for painting to rise under the prevailing conditions. free artistic creation was denied the artist. an advocate of painting at the second nicene council declared that: "it is not the invention of the painter that creates the picture, but an inviolable law of the catholic church. it is not the painter but the holy fathers who have to invent and dictate. to them manifestly belongs the composition, to the painter only the execution." painting was in a strait-jacket. it had to follow precedent and copy what had gone before in old byzantine patterns. both in italy and in byzantium the creative artist had passed away in favor of the skilled artisan--the repeater of time-honored forms or colors. the workmanship was good for the time, and the coloring and ornamental borders made a rich setting, but the real life of art had gone. a long period of heavy, morose, almost formless art, eloquent of mediæval darkness and ignorance, followed. [illustration: fig. .--ezekiel before the lord. ms. illumination. paris, ninth century.] it is strange that such an art should be adopted by foreign nations, and yet it was. its bloody crucifixions and morbid madonnas were well fitted to the dark view of life held during the middle ages, and its influence was wide-spread and of long duration. it affected french and german art, it ruled at the north, and in the east it lives even to this day. that it strongly affected italy is a very apparent fact. just when it first began to show its influence there is matter of dispute. it probably gained a foothold at ravenna in the sixth century, when that province became a part of the empire of justinian. later it permeated rome, sicily, and naples at the south, and venice at the north. with the decline of the early christian art of italy this richer, and in many ways more acceptable, byzantine art came in, and, with italian modifications, usurped the field. it did not literally crush out the native italian art, but practically it superseded it, or held it in check, from the ninth to the twelfth century. after that the corrupted italian art once more came to the front. early christian and byzantine remains: the best examples of early christian painting are still to be seen in the catacombs at rome. mosaics in the early churches of rome, ravenna, naples, venice, constantinople. sculptures, ivories, and glasses in the lateran, ravenna, and vatican museums. illuminations in vatican and paris libraries. almost all the museums of europe, those of the vatican and naples particularly, have some examples of byzantine work. the older altar-pieces of the early italian churches date back to the mediæval period and show byzantine influence. the altar-pieces of the greek and russian churches show the same influence even in modern work. chapter v. italian painting. gothic period. - . books recommended: as before, burckhardt, crowe and cavalcaselle, eastlake, lafenestre, lanzi, lindsay, reber; also burton, _catalogue of pictures in the national gallery, london_ (_unabridged edition_); cartier, _vie de fra angelico_; förster, _leben und werke des fra angelico_; habich, _vade mecum pour la peinture italienne des anciens maîtres_; lacroix, _les arts au moyen-age et à la Époque de la renaissance_; mantz, _les chefs-d'oeuvre de la peinture italienne_; morelli, _italian masters in german galleries_; morelli, _italian masters, critical studies in their works_; rumohr, _italienische forschungen_; selincourt, _giotto_; stillman, _old italian masters_; vasari, _lives of the most eminent painters_; consult also general bibliography (p. xv). signs of the awakening: it would seem at first as though nothing but self-destruction could come to that struggling, praying, throat-cutting population that terrorized italy during the mediæval period. the people were ignorant, the rulers treacherous, the passions strong, and yet out of the dark ages came light. in the thirteenth century the light grew brighter, but the internal dissensions did not cease. the hohenstaufen power was broken, the imperial rule in italy was crushed. pope and emperor no longer warred each other, but the cries of "guelf" and "ghibelline" had not died out. throughout the entire romanesque and gothic periods ( - ) italy was torn by political wars, though the free cities, through their leagues of protection and their commerce, were prosperous. a commercial rivalry sprang up among the cities. trade with the east, manufactures, banking, all flourished; and even the philosophies, with law, science, and literature, began to be studied. the spirit of learning showed itself in the founding of schools and universities. dante, petrarch, and boccaccio, reflecting respectively religion, classic learning, and the inclination toward nature, lived and gave indication of the trend of thought. finally the arts, architecture, sculpture, painting, began to stir and take upon themselves new appearances. subjects and methods: in painting, though there were some portraits and allegorical scenes produced during the gothic period, the chief theme was bible story. the church was the patron, and art was only the servant, as it had been from the beginning. it was the instructor and consoler of the faithful, a means whereby the church made converts, and an adornment of wall and altar. it had not entirely escaped from symbolism. it was still the portrayal of things for what they meant, rather than for what they looked. there was no such thing then as art for art's sake. it was art for religion's sake. the demand for painting increased, and its subjects multiplied with the establishment at this time of the two powerful orders of dominican and franciscan monks. the first exacted from the painters more learned and instructive work; the second wished for the crucifixions, the martyrdoms, the dramatic deaths, wherewith to move people by emotional appeal. to offset this the ultra-religious character of painting was encroached upon somewhat by the growth of the painters' guilds, and art production largely passing into the hands of laymen. in consequence painting produced many themes, but, as yet, only after the byzantine style. the painter was more of a workman than an artist. the church had more use for his fingers than for his creative ability. it was his business to transcribe what had gone before. this he did, but not without signs here and there of uneasiness and discontent with the pattern. there was an inclination toward something truer to nature, but, as yet, no great realization of it. the study of nature came in very slowly, and painting was not positive in statement until the time of giotto and lorenzetti. [illustration: fig. .--giotto, flight into egypt. arena chap. padua.] the best paintings during the gothic period were executed upon the walls of the churches in fresco. the prepared color was laid on wet plaster, and allowed to soak in. the small altar and panel pictures were painted in distemper, the gold ground and many byzantine features being retained by most of the painters, though discarded by some few. changes in the type, etc.: the advance of italian art in the gothic age was an advance through the development of the imposed byzantine pattern. it was not a revolt or a starting out anew on a wholly original path. when people began to stir intellectually the artists found that the old byzantine model did not look like nature. they began, not by rejecting it, but by improving it, giving it slight movements here and there, turning the head, throwing out a hand, or shifting the folds of drapery. the eastern type was still seen in the long pathetic face, oblique eyes, green flesh tints, stiff robes, thin fingers, and absence of feet; but the painters now began to modify and enliven it. more realistic italian faces were introduced, architectural and landscape backgrounds encroached upon the byzantine gold grounds, even portraiture was taken up. this looks very much like realism, but we must not lay too much stress upon it. the painters were taking notes of natural appearances. it showed in features like the hands, feet, and drapery; but the anatomy of the body had not yet been studied, and there is no reason to believe their study of the face was more than casual, nor their portraits more than records from memory. no one painter began this movement. the whole artistic region of italy was at that time ready for the advance. that all the painters moved at about the same pace, and continued to move at that pace down to the fifteenth century, that they all based themselves upon byzantine teaching, and that they all had a similar style of working is proved by the great difficulty in attributing their existing pictures to certain masters, or even certain schools. there are plenty of pictures in italy to-day that might be attributed to either florence or sienna, giotto or lorenzetti, or some other master; because though each master and each school had slight peculiarities, yet they all had a common origin in the art traditions of the time. [illustration: fig. .--orcagna, paradise (detail). s. m. novella, florence.] florentine school: cimabue ( ?- ?) seems the most notable instance in early times of a byzantine-educated painter who improved upon the traditions. he has been called the father of italian painting, but italian painting had no father. cimabue was simply a man of more originality and ability than his contemporaries, and departed further from the art teachings of the time without decidedly opposing them. he retained the byzantine pattern, but loosened the lines of drapery somewhat, turned the head to one side, infused the figure with a little appearance of life. his contemporaries elsewhere in italy were doing the same thing, and none of them was any more than a link in the progressive chain. cimabue's pupil, giotto ( ?- ), was a great improver on all his predecessors because he was a man of extraordinary genius. he would have been great in any time, and yet he was not great enough to throw off wholly the byzantine traditions. he tried to do it. he studied nature in a general way, changed the type of face somewhat by making the jaw squarer, and gave it expression and nobility. to the figure he gave more motion, dramatic gesture, life. the drapery was cast in broader, simpler masses, with some regard for line, and the form and movement of the body were somewhat emphasized through it. in methods giotto was more knowing, but not essentially different from his contemporaries; his subjects were from the common stock of religious story; but his imaginative force and invention were his own. bound by the conventionalities of his time he could still create a work of nobility and power. he came too early for the highest achievement. he had genius, feeling, fancy, almost everything except accurate knowledge of the laws of nature and art. his art was the best of its time, but it still lacked, nor did that of his immediate followers go much beyond it technically. taddeo gaddi ( ?- ?) was giotto's chief pupil, a painter of much feeling, but lacking in the large elements of construction and in the dramatic force of his master. agnolo gaddi ( ?- ?), antonio veneziano ( ?- ?), giovanni da milano (fl. ), andrea da firenze (fl. ), were all followers of the giotto methods, and were so similar in their styles that their works are often confused and erroneously attributed. giottino ( ?- ?) was a supposed imitator of giotto, of whom little is known. orcagna ( ?- ?) still further advanced the giottesque type and method. he gathered up and united in himself all the art teachings of his time. in working out problems of form and in delicacy and charm of expression he went beyond his predecessors. he was a many-sided genius, knowing not only in a matter of natural appearance, but in color problems, in perspective, shadows, and light. his art was further along toward the renaissance than that of any other giottesque. he almost changed the character of painting, and yet did not live near enough to the fifteenth century to accomplish it completely. spinello aretino ( ?- ?) was the last of the great giotto followers. he carried out the teachings of the school in technical features, such as composition, drawing, and relief by color rather than by light, but he lacked the creative power of giotto. in fact, none of the giottesque can be said to have improved upon the master, taking him as a whole. toward the beginning of the fifteenth century the school rather declined. siennese school: the art teachings and traditions of the past seemed deeper rooted at sienna than at florence. nor was there so much attempt to shake them off as at florence. giotto broke the immobility of the byzantine model by showing the draped figure in action. so also did the siennese to some extent, but they cared more for the expression of the spiritual than the beauty of the natural. the florentines were robust, resolute, even a little coarse at times; the siennese were more refined and sentimental. their fancy ran to sweetness of face rather than to bodily vigor. again, their art was more ornate, richer in costume, color, and detail than florentine art; but it was also more finical and narrow in scope. [illustration: fig. .--a. lorenzetti. peace (detail). town-hall, sienna.] there was little advance upon byzantinism in the work of guido da sienna (fl. ). even duccio ( ?----?), the real founder of the siennese school, retained byzantine methods and adopted the school subjects, but he perfected details of form, such as the hands and feet, and while retaining the long byzantine face, gave it a melancholy tenderness of expression. he possessed no dramatic force, but had a refined workmanship for his time--a workmanship perhaps better, all told, than that of his florentine contemporary, cimabue. simone di martino ( ?- ?) changed the type somewhat by rounding the form. his drawing was not always correct, but in color he was good and in detail exact and minute. he probably profited somewhat by the example of giotto. the siennese who came the nearest to giotto's excellence were the brothers ambrogio (fl. ) and pietro (fl. ) lorenzetti. there is little known about them except that they worked together in a similar manner. the most of their work has perished, but what remains shows an intellectual grasp equal to any of the age. the sienna frescos by ambrogio lorenzetti are strong in facial character, and some of the figures, like that of the white-robed peace, are beautiful in their flow of line. lippo memmi (?- ), bartolo di fredi ( - ), and taddeo di bartolo ( - ), were other painters of the school. the late men rather carried detail to excess, and the school grew conventional instead of advancing. transition painters: several painters, starnina ( - ), gentile da fabriano ( ?- ?), fra angelico ( - ), have been put down in art history as the makers of the transition from gothic to renaissance painting. they hardly deserve the title. there was no transition. the development went on, and these painters, coming late in the fourteenth century and living into the fifteenth, simply showed the changing style, the advance in the study of nature and the technic of art. starnina's work gave strong evidence of the study of form, but it was no such work as masaccio's. there is always a little of the past in the present, and these painters showed traces of byzantinism in details of the face and figure, in coloring, and in gold embossing. gentile had all that nicety of finish and richness of detail and color characteristic of the siennese. being closer to the renaissance than his predecessors he was more of a nature student. he was the first man to show the effect of sunlight in landscape, the first one to put a gold sun in the sky. he never, however, outgrew gothic methods and really belongs in the fourteenth century. this is true of fra angelico. though he lived far into the early renaissance he did not change his style and manner of work in conformity with the work of others about him. he was the last inheritor of the giottesque traditions. religious sentiment was the strong feature of his art. he was behind giotto and lorenzetti in power and in imagination, and behind orcagna as a painter. he knew little of light, shade, perspective, and color, and in characterization was feeble, except in some late work. one face or type answered him for all classes of people--a sweet, fair face, full of divine tenderness. his art had enough nature in it to express his meanings, but little more. he was pre-eminently a devout painter, and really the last of the great religionists in painting. [illustration: fig. .--fra angelico. angel (detail). uffizi.] the other regions of italy had not at this time developed schools of painting of sufficient consequence to mention. principal works: florentines--cimabue, madonnas s. m. novella and acad. florence, frescos upper church of assisi (?); giotto, frescos upper and lower churches assisi, best work arena chapel padua, bardi and peruzzi chapels s. croce, injured frescos bargello florence; taddeo gaddi, frescos entrance wall baroncelli chapel s. croce, spanish chapel s. m. novella (designed by gaddi (?)); agnolo gaddi frescos in choir s. croce, s. jacopo tra fossi florence, panel pictures florence acad.; giovanni da milano, bewailing of christ florence acad., virgin enthroned prato gal., altar-piece uffizi gal., frescos s. croce florence; antonio veneziano, frescos in ceiling of spanish chapel, s. m. novella, campo santo pisa; orcagna, altar-piece last judgment and paradise strozzi chapel s. m. novella, s. zenobio duomo, saints medici chapel s. croce, descent of holy spirit badia florence, altar-piece nat. gal. lon.; spinello aretino, life of st. benedict s. miniato al monte near florence, annunciation convent degl' innocenti arezzo, frescos campo santo pisa, coronation florence acad., barbarossa frescos palazzo publico sienna; andrea da firenze, church militant, calvary, crucifixion spanish chapel, upper series of life of s. raniera campo santo pisa. siennese--guido da sienna, madonna s. domenico sienna; duccio, panels duomo and acad. sienna, madonna nat. gal. lon.; simone di martino, frescos palazzo pubblico, sienna, altar-piece and panels seminario vescovile, pisa gal., altar-piece and madonna opera del duomo orvieto; lippo memmi, frescos palazzo del podesta s. gemignano, annunciation uffizi florence; bartolo di fredi, altar-pieces acad. sienna, s. francesco montalcino; taddeo di bartolo, palazzo pubblico sienna, duomo, s. gemignano, s. francesco pisa; ambrogio lorenzetti, frescos palazzo pubblico sienna, triumph of death (with pietro lorenzetti) campo santo pisa, st. francis frescos lower church assisi, s. francesco and s. agostino sienna, annunciation sienna acad., presentation florence acad.; pietro lorenzetti, virgin s. ansano, altar-pieces duomo sienna, parish church of arezzo (worked with his brother ambrogio). transition painters: starnina, frescos duomo prato (completed by pupil); gentile da fabriano, adoration florence acad., coronation brera milan, madonna duomo orvieto; fra angelico, coronation and many small panels uffizi, many pieces life of christ florence acad., other pieces s. marco florence, last judgment duomo, orvieto. chapter vi. italian painting. early renaissance. - . books recommended: as before, burckhardt, crowe and cavalcaselle, eastlake, lafenestre, lanzi, habich, lacroix, mantz, morelli, burton, rumohr, stillman, vasari; also crowe and cavalcaselle, _history of painting in north italy_; berenson, _florentine painters of renaissance_; berenson, _venetian painters of renaissance_; berenson, _central italian painters of renaissance_; _study and criticism of italian art_; boschini, _la carta del navegar_; calvi, _memorie della vita ed opere di francesco raibolini_; cibo, _niccolo alunno e la scuola umbra_; citadella, _notizie relative a ferrara_; cruttwell, _verrocchio_; cruttwell, _pollaiuolo_; morelli, anonimo, _notizie_; mezzanotte, _commentario della vita di pietro vanucci_; mundler, _essai d'une analyse critique de la notice des tableaux italiens au louvre_; muntz, _les précurseurs de la renaissance_; muntz, _la renaissance en italie et en france_; patch, _life of masaccio_; hill, pisanello, _publications of the arundel society_; richter, _italian art in national gallery, london_; ridolfi, _le meraviglie dell' arte_; rosini, _storia della pittura italiana_; schnaase, _geschichte der bildenden kunste_; symonds, _renaissance in italy--the fine arts_; vischer, _lucas signorelli und die italienische renaissance_; waagen, _art treasures_; waagen, _andrea mantegna und luca signorelli_ (in _raumer's taschenbuch_, ( )); zanetti, _della pittura veneziana_. the italian mind: there is no way of explaining the italian fondness for form and color other than by considering the necessities of the people and the artistic character of the italian mind. art in all its phases was not only an adornment but a necessity of christian civilization. the church taught people by sculpture, mosaic, miniature, and fresco. it was an object-teaching, a grasping of ideas by forms seen in the mind, not a presenting of abstract ideas as in literature. printing was not known. there were few manuscripts, and the majority of people could not read. ideas came to them for centuries through form and color, until at last the italian mind took on a plastic and pictorial character. it saw things in symbolic figures, and when the renaissance came and art took the lead as one of its strongest expressions, painting was but the color-thought and form-language of the people. [illustration: fig. .--fra filippo. madonna. uffizi.] and these people, by reason of their peculiar education, were an exacting people, knowing what was good and demanding it from the artists. every italian was, in a way, an art critic, because every church in italy was an art school. the artists may have led the people, but the people spurred on the artists, and so the italian mind went on developing and unfolding until at last it produced the great art of the renaissance. the awakening: the italian civilization of the fourteenth century was made up of many impulses and inclinations, none of them very strongly defined. there was a feeling about in the dark, a groping toward the light, but the leaders stumbled often on the road. there was good reason for it. the knowledge of the ancient world lay buried under the ruins of rome. the italians had to learn it all over again, almost without a precedent, almost without a preceptor. with the fifteenth century the horizon began to brighten. the early renaissance was begun. it was not a revolt, a reaction, or a starting out on a new path. it was a development of the gothic period; and the three inclinations of the gothic period--religion, the desire for classic knowledge, and the study of nature--were carried into the art of the time with greater realization. the inference must not be made that because nature and the antique came to be studied in early renaissance times that therefore religion was neglected. it was not. it still held strong, and though with the renaissance there came about a strange mingling of crime and corruption, æstheticism and immorality, yet the church was never abandoned for an hour. when enlightenment came, people began to doubt the spiritual power of the papacy. they did not cringe to it so servilely as before. religion was not violently embraced as in the middle ages, but there was no revolt. the church held the power and was still the patron of art. the painter's subjects extended over nature, the antique, the fable, allegory, history, portraiture; but the religious subject was not neglected. fully three-quarters of all the fifteenth-century painting was done for the church, at her command, and for her purposes. but art was not so wholly pietistic as in the gothic age. the study of nature and the antique materialized painting somewhat. the outside world drew the painter's eyes, and the beauty of the religious subject and its sentiment were somewhat slurred for the beauty of natural appearances. there was some loss of religious power, but religion had much to lose. in the fifteenth century it was still dominant. [illustration: fig. .--botticelli. coronation of madonna. uffizi.] knowledge of the antique and nature: the revival of antique learning came about in real earnest during this period. the scholars set themselves the task of restoring the polite learning of ancient greece, studying coins and marbles, collecting manuscripts, founding libraries and schools of philosophy. the wealthy nobles, palla strozzi, the albizzi, the medici, and the dukes of urbino, encouraged it. in the greek was taught in five cities. immediately afterward, with constantinople falling into the hands of the turks, came an influx of greek scholars into italy. then followed the invention of printing and the age of discovery on land and sea. not the antique alone but the natural were being pried into by the spirit of inquiry. botany, geology, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, anatomy, law, literature--nothing seemed to escape the keen eye of the time. knowledge was being accumulated from every source, and the arts were all reflecting it. the influence of the newly discovered classic marbles upon painting was not so great as is usually supposed. the painters studied them, but did not imitate them. occasionally in such men as botticelli and mantegna we see a following of sculpturesque example--a taking of details and even of whole figures--but the general effect of the antique marbles was to impress the painters with the idea that nature was at the bottom of it all. they turned to the earth not only to study form and feature, but to learn perspective, light, shadow, color--in short, the technical features of art. true, religion was the chief subject, but nature and the antique were used to give it setting. all the fifteenth-century painting shows nature study, force, character, sincerity; but it does not show elegance, grace, or the full complement of color. the early renaissance was the promise of great things; the high renaissance was the fulfilment. florentine school: the florentines were draughtsmen more than colorists. the chief medium was fresco on the walls of buildings, and architectural necessities often dictated the form of compositions. distemper in easel pictures was likewise used, and oil-painting, though known, was not extensively employed until the last quarter of the century. in technical knowledge and intellectual grasp florence was at this time the leader and drew to her many artists from neighboring schools. masaccio ( ?- ?) was the first great nature student of the early renaissance, though his master, masolino ( - ), had given proof positive of severe nature study in bits of modelling, in drapery, and in portrait heads. masaccio, however, seems the first to have gone into it thoroughly and to have grasped nature as a whole. his mastery of form, his plastic composition, his free, broad folds of drapery, and his knowledge of light and perspective, all placed him in the front rank of fifteenth-century painters. though an exact student he was not a literalist. he had a large artistic sense, a breadth of view, and a comprehension of nature as a mass that michael angelo and raphael did not disdain to follow. he was not a pietist, and there was no great religious feeling in his work. dignified truthful appearance was his creed, and in this he was possibly influenced by donatello the sculptor. [illustration: fig. .--ghirlandajo. the visitation. louvre.] he came early in the century and died early, but his contemporaries did not continue the advance from where he carried it. there was wavering all along the line. some from lack of genius could not equal him, others took up nature with indecision, and others clung fondly to the gold-embossed ornaments and gilded halos of the past. paolo uccello ( ?- ), andrea castagno ( - ), benozzo gozzoli ( ?- ?), baldovinetti ( - ), antonio del pollajuolo ( - ), cosimo rosselli ( - ), can hardly be looked upon as improvements upon the young leader. the first real successor of masaccio was his contemporary, and possibly his pupil, the monk fra filippo lippi ( - ). he was a master of color and light-and-shade for his time, though in composition and command of line he did not reach up to masaccio. he was among the first of the painters to take the individual faces of those about him as models for his sacred characters, and clothe them in contemporary costume. piety is not very pronounced in any of his works, though he is not without imagination and feeling, and there is in his women a charm of sweetness. his tendency was to materialize the sacred characters. with filippino ( ?- ), botticelli ( - ), and ghirlandajo ( - ) we find a degree of imagination, culture, and independence not surpassed by any of the early florentines. filippino modelled his art upon that of his father, fra filippo, and was influenced by botticelli. he was the weakest of the trio, without being by any means a weak man. on the contrary, he was an artist of fine ability, much charm and tenderness, and considerable style, but not a great deal of original force, though occasionally doing forceful things. purity in his type and graceful sentiment in pose and feature seem more characteristic of his work. botticelli, even, was not so remarkable for his strength as for his culture, and an individual way of looking at things. he was a pupil of fra filippo, a man imbued with the religious feeling of dante and savonarola, a learned student of the antique and one of the first to take subjects from it, a severe nature student, and a painter of much technical skill. religion, classicism, and nature all met in his work, but the mingling was not perfect. religious feeling and melancholy warped it. his willowy figures, delicate and refined in drawing, are more passionate than powerful, more individual than comprehensive, but they are nevertheless very attractive in their tenderness and grace. without being so original or so attractive an artist as botticelli, his contemporary, ghirlandajo, was a stronger one. his strength came more from assimilation than from invention. he combined in his work all the art learning of his time. he drew well, handled drapery simply and beautifully, was a good composer, and, for florence, a good colorist. in addition, his temperament was robust, his style dignified, even grand, and his execution wonderfully free. he was the most important of the fifteenth-century technicians, without having any peculiar distinction or originality, and in spite of being rather prosaic at times. [illustration: fig. .--francesca. duke of urbino. uffizi.] verrocchio ( - ) was more of a sculptor than a painter, but in his studio were three celebrated pupils--perugino, leonardo da vinci, and lorenzo di credi--who were half-way between the early and the high renaissance. only one of them, leonardo, can be classed among the high renaissance men. perugino belongs to the umbrian school, and lorenzo di credi ( - ), though florentine, never outgrew the fifteenth century. he was a pure painter, with much feeling, but weak at times. his drawing was good, but his painting lacked force, and he was too pallid in flesh color. there is much detail, study, and considerable grace about his work, but little of strength. piero di cosimo ( - ) was fond of mythological and classical studies, was somewhat fantastic in composition, pleasant in color, and rather distinguished in landscape backgrounds. his work strikes one as eccentric, and eccentricity was the strong characteristic of the man. umbrian and perugian schools: at the beginning of the fifteenth century the old siennese school founded by duccio and the lorenzetti was in a state of decline. it had been remarkable for intense sentiment, and just what effect this sentiment of the old siennese school had upon the painters of the neighboring umbrian school of the early fifteenth century is a matter of speculation with historians. it must have had some, though the early painters, like ottaviano nelli, do not show it. that which afterward became known as the umbrian sentiment probably first appeared in the work of niccolò da foligno ( ?- ), who was probably a pupil of benozzo gozzoli, who was, in turn, a pupil of fra angelico. that would indicate florentine influence, but there were many influences at work in this upper-valley country. sentiment had been prevalent enough all through central italian painting during the gothic age--more so at sienna than elsewhere. with the renaissance florence rather forsook sentiment for precision of forms and equilibrium of groups; but the umbrian towns being more provincial, held fast to their sentiment, their detail, and their gold ornamentation. their influence upon florence was slight, but the influence of florence upon them was considerable. the larger city drew the provincials its way to learn the new methods. the result was a group of umbro-florentine painters, combining some up-country sentiment with florentine technic. gentile da fabriano, niccolo da foligno, bonfiglio ( ?- ?), and fiorenzo di lorenzo ( ?- ) were of this mixed character. [illustration: fig. .--signorelli. the curse (detail). orvieto.] the most positive in methods among the early men was piero della francesca ( ?- ). umbrian born, but florentine trained, he became more scientific than sentimental, and excelled as a craftsman. he knew drawing, perspective, atmosphere, light-and-shade in a way that rather foreshadowed leonardo da vinci. from working in the umbrian country his influence upon his fellow-umbrians was large. it showed directly in signorelli ( ?- ), whose master he was, and whose style he probably formed. signorelli was umbrian born, like piero, but there was not much of the umbrian sentiment about him. he was a draughtsman and threw his strength in line, producing athletic, square-shouldered figures in violent action, with complicated foreshortenings quite astonishing. the most daring man of his time, he was a master in anatomy, composition, motion. there was nothing select about his type, and nothing charming about his painting. his color was hot and coarse, his lights lurid, his shadows brick red. he was, however, a master-draughtsman, and a man of large conceptions and great strength. melozzo da forli ( - ), of whom little is known, was another pupil of piero, and giovanni santi ( ?- ), the father of raphael, was probably influenced by both of these last named. the true descent of the umbrian sentiment was through foligno and bonfiglio to perugino ( - ). signorelli and perugino seem opposed to each other in their art. the first was the forerunner of michael angelo, the second was the master of raphael; and the difference between michael angelo and raphael was, in a less varied degree, the difference between signorelli and perugino. the one showed florentine line, the other umbrian sentiment and color. it is in perugino that we find the old religious feeling. fervor, tenderness, and devotion, with soft eyes, delicate features, and pathetic looks characterized his art. the figure was slight, graceful, and in pose sentimentally inclined to one side. the head was almost affectedly placed on the shoulders, and the round olive face was full of wistful tenderness. this perugino type, used in all his paintings, is well described by taine as a "body belonging to the renaissance containing a soul that belonged to the middle ages." the sentiment was more purely human, however, than in such a painter, for instance, as fra angelico. religion still held with perugino and the umbrians, but even with them it was becoming materialized by the beauty of the world about them. [illustration: fig. .--perugino. madonna, saints, and angels. louvre.] as a technician perugino was excellent. there was no dramatic fire and fury about him. the composition was simple, with graceful figures in repose. the coloring was rich, and there were many brilliant effects obtained by the use of oils. he was among the first of his school to use that medium. his friend and fellow-worker, pinturricchio ( - ), did not use oils, but was a superior man in fresco. in type and sentiment he was rather like perugino, in composition a little extravagant and huddled, in landscape backgrounds quite original and inventive. he never was a serious rival of perugino, though a more varied and interesting painter. perugino's best pupil, after raphael, was lo spagna (?- ?), who followed his master's style until the high renaissance, when he became a follower of raphael. schools of ferrara and bologna: the painters of ferrara, in the fifteenth century, seemed to have relied upon padua for their teaching. the best of the early men was cosimo tura ( - ), who showed the paduan influence of squarcione in anatomical insistences, coarse joints, infinite detail, and fantastic ornamentation. he was probably the founder of the school in which francesco cossa (fl. - ), a _naif_ and strong, if somewhat morbid painter, ercole di giulio grandi (fl. - ), and lorenzo costa ( ?- ) were the principal masters. cossa and grandi, it seems, afterward removed to bologna, and it was probably their move that induced lorenzo costa to follow them. in that way the ferrarese school became somewhat complicated with the bolognese school, and is confused in its history to this day. costa was not unlikely the real founder, or, at the least, the strongest influencer of the bolognese school. he was a painter of a rugged, manly type, afterward tempered by southern influences to softness and sentiment. this was the result of paduan methods meeting at bologna with umbrian sentiment. the perugino type and influence had found its way to bologna, and showed in the work of francia ( - ), a contemporary and fellow-worker with costa. though trained as a goldsmith, and learning painting in a different school, francia, as regards his sentiment, belongs in the same category with perugino. even his subjects, types, and treatment were, at times, more umbrian than bolognese. he was not so profound in feeling as perugino, but at times he appeared loftier in conception. his color was usually rich, his drawing a little sharp at first, as showing the goldsmith's hand, the surfaces smooth, the detail elaborate. later on, his work had a raphaelesque tinge, showing perhaps the influence of that rising master. it is probable that francia at first was influenced by costa's methods, and it is quite certain that he in turn influenced costa in the matter of refined drawing and sentiment, though costa always adhered to a certain detail and ornament coming from the north, and a landscape background that is peculiar to himself, and yet reminds one of pinturricchio's landscapes. these two men, francia and costa, were the perugino and pinturricchio of the ferrara-bolognese school, and the most important painters in that school. [illustration: fig. .--school of francia. madonna and child. louvre.] the lombard school: the designation of the lombard school is rather a vague one in the history of painting, and is used by historians to cover a number of isolated schools or men in the lombardy region. in the fifteenth century these schools counted for little either in men or in works. the principal activity was about milan, which drew painters from brescia, vincenza, and elsewhere to form what is known as the milanese school. vincenzo foppa (fl. - ), of brescia, and afterward at milan, was probably the founder of this milanese school. his painting is of rather a harsh, exacting nature, and points to the influence of padua, at which place he perhaps got his early art training. borgognone ( - ) is set down as his pupil, a painter of much sentiment and spiritual feeling. the school was afterward greatly influenced by the example of leonardo da vinci, as will be shown further on. principal works: florentines--masaccio, frescos in brancacci chapel carmine florence (the series completed by filippino); masolino, frescos church and baptistery castiglione d' olona; paolo uccello, frescos s. m. novella, equestrian portrait duomo florence, battle-pieces in louvre and nat. gal. lon.; andrea castagno, heroes and sibyls uffizi, altar-piece acad. florence, equestrian portrait duomo florence; benozzo gozzoli, francesco montefalco, magi ricardi palace florence, frescos campo santo pisa; baldovinetti, portico of the annunziata florence, altar-pieces uffizi; antonio pollajuolo, hercules uffizi, st. sebastian pitti and nat. gal. lon.; cosimo rosselli, frescos s. ambrogio florence, sistine chapel rome, madonna uffizi; fra filippo, frescos cathedral prato, altar-pieces florence acad., uffizi, pitti and berlin gals., nat. gal. lon.; filippino, frescos carmine florence, caraffa chapel minerva rome, s. m. novella and acad. florence, s. domenico bologna, easel pictures in pitti, uffizi, nat. gal. lon., berlin mus., old pinacothek munich; botticelli, frescos sistine chapel rome, spring and coronation florence acad., venus, calumny, madonnas uffizi, pitti, nat. gal. lon., louvre, etc.; ghirlandajo, frescos sistine chapel rome, s. trinità florence, s. m. novella, palazzo vecchio, altar-pieces uffizi and acad. florence, visitation louvre; verrocchio, baptism of christ acad. florence; lorenzo di credi, nativity acad. florence, madonnas louvre and nat. gal. lon., holy family borghese gal. rome; piero di cosimo, perseus and andromeda uffizi, procris nat. gal. lon., venus and mars berlin gal. umbrians--ottaviano nelli, altar-piece s. m. nuovo gubbio, st. augustine legends s. agostino gubbio; niccolò da foligno, altar-piece s. niccolò foligno; bonfigli, frescos palazzo communale, altar-pieces acad. perugia; fiorenzo di lorenzo, many pictures acad. perugia, madonna berlin gal.; piero della francesca, frescos communitá and hospital borgo san sepolcro, san francesco arezzo, chapel of the relicts rimini, portraits uffizi, pictures nat. gal. lon.; signorelli, frescos cathedral orvieto, sistine rome, palazzo petrucci sienna, altar-pieces arezzo, cortona, perugia, pictures pitti, uffizi, berlin, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; melozzo da forli, angels st. peter's rome, frescos vatican, pictures berlin and nat. gal. lon.; giovanni santi, annunciation milan, pieta urbino, madonnas berlin, nat. gal. lon., s. croce fano; perugino, frescos sistine rome, crucifixion s. m. maddalena florence, sala del cambio perugia, altar-pieces pitti, fano, cremona, many pictures in european galleries; pinturricchio, frescos s. m. del popolo, appartamento borgo vatican, bufolini chapel aracoeli rome, duomo library sienna, altar-pieces perugia and sienna acads., pitti, louvre; lo spagna, madonna lower church assisi, frescos at spoleto, turin, perugia, assisi. ferrarese and bolognese--cosimo tura, altar-pieces berlin mus., bergamo, museo correr venice, nat. gal. lon.; francesco cossa, altar-pieces s. petronio and acad. bologna, dresden gal.; grandi, st. george corsini pal. rome, several canvases constabili collection ferrara; lorenzo costa, frescos s. giacomo maggiore, altar-pieces s. petronio, s. giovanni in monte and acad. bologna, also louvre, berlin, and nat. gal. lon.; francia, altar-pieces s. giacomo maggiore, s. martino maggiore, and many altar-pieces in acad. bologna, annunciation brera milan, rose garden munich, pieta nat. gal. lon., scappi portrait uffizi, baptism dresden. lombards--foppa, altar-pieces s. maria di castello savona, borromeo col. milan, carmine brescia, panels brera milan; borgognone, altar-pieces certosa of pavia, church of melegnano, s. ambrogio, ambrosian lib., brera milan, nat. gal. lon. chapter vii. italian painting. early renaissance-- - --continued. books recommended: those on italian art before mentioned; also consult the general bibliography (page xv.) paduan school: it was at padua in the north that the influence of the classic marbles made itself strongly apparent. umbria remained true to the religious sentiment, florence engaged itself largely with nature study and technical problems, introducing here and there draperies and poses that showed knowledge of ancient sculpture, but at padua much of the classic in drapery, figures, and architecture seems to have been taken directly from the rediscovered antique or the modern bronze. the early men of the school were hardly great enough to call for mention. during the fourteenth century there was some giotto influence felt--that painter having been at padua working in the arena chapel. later on there was a slight influence from gentile da fabriano and his fellow-worker vittore pisano, of verona. but these influences seem to have died out and the real direction of the school in the early fifteenth century was given by francesco squarcione ( - ). he was an enlightened man, a student, a collector and an admirer of ancient sculpture, and though no great painter himself he taught an anatomical statuesque art, based on ancient marbles and nature, to many pupils. squarcione's work has perished, but his teaching was reflected in the work of his great pupil andrea mantegna ( - ). yet mantegna never received the full complement of his knowledge from squarcione. he was of an observing nature and probably studied paolo uccello and fra filippo, some of whose works were then in paduan edifices. he gained color knowledge from the venetian bellinis, who lived at padua at one time and who were connected with mantegna by marriage. but the sculpturesque side of his art came from squarcione, from a study of the antique, and from a deeper study of donatello, whose bronzes to this day are to be seen within and without the paduan duomo of s. antonio. [illustration: fig. .--mantegna. gonzaga family group (detail). mantua.] the sculpturesque is characteristic of mantegna's work. his people are hard, rigid at times, immovable human beings, not so much turned to stone as turned to bronze--the bronze of donatello. there is little sense of motion about them. the figure is sharp and harsh, the drapery, evidently studied from sculpture, is "liney," and the archæology is often more scientific than artistic. mantegna was not, however, entirely devoted to the sculpturesque. he was one of the severest nature students of the early renaissance, knew about nature, and carried it out in more exacting detail than was perhaps well for his art. in addition he was a master of light-and-shade, understood composition, space, color, atmosphere, and was as scientific in perspective as piero della francesca. there is stiffness in his figures but nevertheless great truth and character. the forms are noble, even grand, and for invention and imagination they were never, in his time, carried further or higher. he was little of a sentimentalist or an emotionalist, not much of a brush man or a colorist, but as a draughtsman, a creator of noble forms, a man of power, he stood second to none in the century. of squarcione's other pupils pizzolo (fl. ) was the most promising, but died early. marco zoppo ( - ) seems to have followed the paduan formula of hardness, dryness, and exacting detail. he was possibly influenced by cosimo tura, and in turn influenced somewhat the ferrara-bolognese school. mantegna, however, was the greatest of the school, and his influence was far-reaching. it affected the school of venice in matters of drawing, beside influencing the lombard and veronese schools in their beginnings. schools of verona and vicenza: artistically verona belonged with the venetian provinces, because it was largely an echo of venice except at the very start. vittore pisano ( - ), called pisanello, was the earliest painter of note, but he was not distinctly veronese in his art. he was medallist and painter both, worked with gentile da fabriano in the ducal palace at venice and elsewhere, and his art seems to have an affinity with that of his companion. liberale da verona ( - ?) was at first a miniaturist, but afterward developed a larger style based on a following of mantegna's work, with some venetian influences showing in the coloring and backgrounds. francesco bonsignori ( - ) was of the verona school, but established himself later at mantua and was under the mantegna influence. his style at first was rather severe, but he afterward developed much ability in portraiture, historical work, animals, and architectural features. francesco caroto ( - ), a pupil of liberale, really belongs to the next century--the high renaissance--but his early works show his education in veronese and paduan methods. [illustration: fig. .--b. vivarini. madonna and child. turin.] in the school of vicenza the only master of much note in this early renaissance time was bartolommeo montagna ( ?- ), a painter in both oil and fresco of much severity and at times grandeur of style. in drawing he was influenced by mantegna, in composition and coloring he showed a study of giovanni bellini and carpaccio. venetian life and art: the conditions of art production in venice during the early renaissance were quite different from those in florence or umbria. by the disposition of her people venice was not a learned or devout city. religion, though the chief subject, was not the chief spirit of venetian art. christianity was accepted by the venetians, but with no fevered enthusiasm. the church was strong enough there to defy the papacy at one time, and yet religion with the people was perhaps more of a civic function or a duty than a spiritual worship. it was sincere in its way, and the early painters painted its subjects with honesty, but the venetians were much too proud and worldly minded to take anything very seriously except their own splendor and their own power. again, the venetians were not humanists or students of the revived classic. they housed manuscripts, harbored exiled humanists, received the influx of greek scholars after the fall of constantinople, and later the celebrated aldine press was established in venice; but, for all that, classic learning was not the fancy of the venetians. they made no quarrel over the relative merits of plato and aristotle, dug up no classic marbles, had no revival of learning in a florentine sense. they were merchant princes, winning wealth by commerce and expending it lavishly in beautifying their island home. not to attain great learning, but to revel in great splendor, seems to have been their aim. life in the sovereign city of the sea was a worthy existence in itself. and her geographical and political position aided her prosperity. unlike florence she was not torn by contending princes within and foreign foes without--at least not to her harm. she had her wars, but they were generally on distant seas. popery, paganism, despotism, all the convulsions of renaissance life threatened but harmed her not. free and independent, her kingdom was the sea, and her livelihood commerce, not agriculture. the worldly spirit of the venetian people brought about a worldly and luxurious art. nothing in the disposition or education of the venetians called for the severe or the intellectual. the demand was for rich decoration that would please the senses without stimulating the intellect or firing the imagination to any great extent. line and form were not so well suited to them as color--the most sensuous of all mediums. color prevailed through venetian art from the very beginning, and was its distinctive characteristic. [illustration: fig. .--giovanni bellini. madonna of ss. george and paul. venice acad.] where this love of color came from is matter of speculation. some say out of venetian skies and waters, and, doubtless, these had something to do with the venetian color-sense; but venice in its color was also an example of the effect of commerce on art. she was a trader with the east from her infancy--not constantinople and the byzantine east alone, but back of these the old mohammedan east, which for a thousand years has cast its art in colors rather than in forms. it was eastern ornament in mosaics, stuffs, porcelains, variegated marbles, brought by ship to venice and located in s. marco, in murano, and in torcello, that first gave the color-impulse to the venetians. if florence was the heir of rome and its austere classicism, venice was the heir of constantinople and its color-charm. the two great color spots in italy at this day are venice and ravenna, commercial footholds of the byzantines in mediæval and renaissance days. it may be concluded without error that venice derived her color-sense and much of her luxurious and material view of life from the east. the early venetian painters: painting began at venice with the fabrication of mosaics and ornamental altar-pieces of rich gold stucco-work. the "greek manner"--that is, the byzantine--was practised early in the fifteenth century by jacobello del fiore and semitecolo, but it did not last long. instead of lingering for a hundred years, as at florence, it died a natural death in the first half of the fifteenth century. gentile da fabriano, who was at venice about , painting in the ducal palace with pisano as his assistant, may have brought this about. he taught there in venice, was the master of jacopo bellini, and if not the teacher then the influencer of the vivarinis of murano. there were two of the vivarinis in the early times, so far as can be made out, antonio vivarini (?- ) and bartolommeo vivarini (fl. - ), who worked with johannes alemannus, a painter of supposed german birth and training. they all signed themselves from murano (an outlying venetian island), where they were producing church altars and ornaments with some paduan influence showing in their work. they made up the muranese school, though this school was not strongly marked apart either in characteristics or subjects from the venetian school, of which it was, in fact, a part. [illustration: fig. .--carpaccio. presentation (detail). venice acad.] bartolommeo was the best of the group, and contended long time in rivalry with the bellinis at venice, but toward he fell away and died comparatively forgotten. luigi vivarini (fl. - ) was the latest of this family, and with his death the history of the muranese merges into the venetian school proper, except as it continues to appear in some pupils and followers. of these latter carlo crivelli ( ? ?) was the only one of much mark. he apparently gathered his art from many sources--ornament and color from the vivarini, a lean and withered type from the early paduans under squarcione, architecture from mantegna, and a rather repulsive sentiment from the same school. his faces were contorted and sulky, his hands and feet stringy, his drawing rather bad; but he had a transparent color, beautiful ornamentation and not a little tragic power. venetian art practically dates from the bellinis. they did not begin where the vivarini left off. the two families of painters seem to have started about the same time, worked along together from like inspirations, and in somewhat of a similar manner as regards the early men. jacopo bellini ( ?- ?) was the pupil of gentile da fabriano, and a painter of considerable rank. his son, gentile bellini ( ?- ), was likewise a painter of ability, and an extremely interesting one on account of his venetian subjects painted with much open-air effect and knowledge of light and atmosphere. the younger son, giovanni bellini ( ?- ), was the greatest of the family and the true founder of the venetian school. about the middle of the fifteenth century the bellini family lived at padua and came in contact with the classic-realistic art of mantegna. in fact, mantegna married giovanni bellini's sister, and there was a mingling of family as well as of art. there was an influence upon mantegna of venetian color, and upon the bellinis of paduan line. the latter showed in giovanni bellini's early work, which was rather hard, angular in drapery, and anatomical in the joints, hands, and feet; but as the century drew to a close this melted away into the growing splendor of venetian color. giovanni bellini lived into the sixteenth century, but never quite attained the rank of a high renaissance painter. he had religious feeling, earnestness, honesty, simplicity, character, force, knowledge; but not the full complement of brilliancy and painter's power. he went beyond all his contemporaries in technical strength and color-harmony, and was in fact the epoch-making man of early venice. some of his pictures, like the s. zaccaria madonna, will compare favorably with any work of any age, and his landscape backgrounds (see the st. peter martyr in the national gallery, london) were rather wonderful for the period in which they were produced. of bellini's contemporaries and followers there were many, and as a school there was a similarity of style, subject, and color-treatment carrying through them all, with individual peculiarities in each painter. after giovanni bellini comes carpaccio (?- ?), a younger contemporary, about whose history little is known. he worked with gentile bellini, and was undoubtedly influenced by giovanni bellini. in subject he was more romantic and chivalric than religious, though painting a number of altar-pieces. the legend was his delight, and his great success, as the st. ursula and st. george pictures in venice still indicate. he was remarkable for his knowledge of architecture, costumes, and oriental settings, put forth in a realistic way, with much invention and technical ability in the handling of landscape, perspective, light, and color. there is a truthfulness of appearance--an out-of-doors feeling--about his work that is quite captivating. in addition, the spirit of his art was earnestness, honesty, and sincerity, and even the awkward bits of drawing which occasionally appeared in his work served to add to the general naive effect of the whole. [illustration: fig. .--antonello da messina. unknown man. louvre.] cima da conegliano ( ?- ?) was probably a pupil of giovanni bellini, with some carpaccio influence about him. he was the best of the immediate followers, none of whom came up to the master. they were trammelled somewhat by being educated in distemper work, and then midway in their careers changing to the oil medium, that medium having been introduced into venice by antonello da messina in . cima's subjects were largely half-length madonnas, given with strong qualities of light-and-shade and color. he was not a great originator, though a man of ability. catena (?- ) had a wide reputation in his day, but it came more from a smooth finish and pretty accessories than from creative power. he imitated bellini's style so well that a number of his pictures pass for works by the master even to this day. later he followed giorgione and carpaccio. a man possessed of knowledge, he seemed to have no original propelling purpose behind him. that was largely the make-up of the other men of the school, basaiti ( - ?), previtali ( ?- ?), bissolo ( ), rondinelli ( ?- ?), diana (?- ?), mansueti (fl. ). antonello da messina ( ?- ), though sicilian born, is properly classed with the venetian school. he obtained a knowledge of flemish methods probably from flemish painters or pictures in italy (he never was a pupil of jan van eyck, as vasari relates, and probably never saw flanders), and introduced the use of oil as a medium in the venetian school. his early work was flemish in character, and was very accurate and minute. his late work showed the influence of the bellinis. his counter-influence upon venetian portraiture has never been quite justly estimated. that fine, exact, yet powerful work, of which the doge loredano by bellini, in the national gallery, london, is a type, was perhaps brought about by an amalgamation of flemish and venetian methods, and antonello was perhaps the means of bringing it about. he was an excellent, if precise, portrait-painter. principal works: paduans--andrea mantegna, eremitani padua, madonna of s. xeno verona, st. sebastian vienna mus., st. george venice acad., camera di sposi castello di corte mantua, madonna and allegories louvre, scipio summer autumn nat. gal. lon.; pizzoli (with mantegna), eremitani padua; marco zoppo frescos casa colonna bologna, madonna berlin gal. veronese and vicentine painters--vittore pisano, st. anthony and george nat. gal. lon., st. george s. anastasia verona; liberale da verona, miniatures duomo sienna, st. sebastian brera milan, madonna berlin mus., other works duomo and gal. verona; bonsignori, s. bernardino and gal. verona, mantua, and nat. gal. lon.; caroto, in s. tommaso, s. giorgio, s. caterina and gal. verona, dresden and frankfort gals.; montagna, madonnas brera, venice acad., bergamo, berlin, nat. gal. lon., louvre. venetians--jacobello del fiore and semitecolo, all attributions doubtful; antonio vivarini and johannes alemannus, together altar-pieces venice acad., s. zaccaria venice; antonio alone, adoration of kings berlin gal.; bartolommeo vivarini, madonna bologna gal. (with antonio), altar-pieces ss. giovanni e paolo, frari, venice; luigi vivarini, madonna berlin gal., frari and acad. venice; carlo crivelli, madonnas and altar-pieces brera, nat. gal. lon., lateran, berlin gals.; jacopo bellini, crucifixion verona gal., sketch-book brit. mus.; gentile bellini, organ doors s. marco, procession and miracle of cross acad. venice, st. mark brera; giovanni bellini, many pictures in european galleries, acad., frari, s. zaccaria ss. giovanni e paolo venice; carpaccio, presentation and ursula pictures acad., st. george and st. jerome s. giorgio da schiavone venice, st. stephen berlin gal.; cima, altar-pieces s. maria dell orte, s. giovanni in bragora, acad. venice, louvre, berlin, dresden, munich, vienna, and other galleries; catena, altar-pieces s. simeone, s. m. mater domini, ss. giovanni e paolo, acad. venice, dresden, and in nat. gal. lon. (the warrior and horse attributed to "school of bellini"); basaiti, venice acad. nat. gal. lon., vienna, and berlin gals.; previtali, altar-pieces s. spirito bergamo, brera, berlin, and dresden gals., nat. gal. lon., venice acad.; bissolo, resurrection berlin gal., s. caterina venice acad.; rondinelli, two pictures palazzo doria rome, holy family (no. ) louvre (attributed to giovanni bellini); diana, altar-pieces venice acad.; mansueti, large pictures venice acad.; antonella da messina, portraits louvre, berlin and nat. gal. lon., crucifixion antwerp mus. chapter viii. italian painting. the high renaissance-- - . books recommended: those on italian art before mentioned, and also, berenson, _lorenzo lotto_; clement, _michel ange, l. da vinci, raphael_; crowe and cavalcaselle, _titian_; same authors, _raphael_; grimm, _michael angelo_; gronau, _titian_; holroyd, _michael angelo_; meyer, _correggio_; moore, _correggio_; muntz, _leonardo da vinci_; passavant, _raphael_; pater, _studies in history of renaissance_; phillips, _titian_; reumont, _andrea del sarto_; ricci, _correggio_; richter, _leonardo di vinci_; ridolfi, _vita di paolo cagliari veronese_; springer, _rafael und michel angelo_; symonds, _michael angelo_; taine, _italy--florence and venice_. the highest development: the word "renaissance" has a broader meaning than its strict etymology would imply. it was a "new birth," but something more than the revival of greek learning and the study of nature entered into it. it was the grand consummation of italian intelligence in many departments--the arrival at maturity of the christian trained mind tempered by the philosophy of greece, and the knowledge of the actual world. fully aroused at last, the italian intellect became inquisitive, inventive, scientific, skeptical--yes, treacherous, immoral, polluted. it questioned all things, doubted where it pleased, saturated itself with crime, corruption, and sensuality, yet bowed at the shrine of the beautiful and knelt at the altar of christianity. it is an illustration of the contradictions that may exist when the intellectual, the religious, and the moral are brought together, with the intellectual in predominance. [illustration: fig. .--fra bartolommeo. descent from cross. pitti.] and that keen renaissance intellect made swift progress. it remodelled the philosophy of greece, and used its literature as a mould for its own. it developed roman law and introduced modern science. the world without and the world within were rediscovered. land and sea, starry sky and planetary system, were fixed upon the chart. man himself, the animals, the planets, organic and inorganic life, the small things of the earth gave up their secrets. inventions utilized all classes of products, commerce flourished, free cities were builded, universities arose, learning spread itself on the pages of newly invented books of print, and, perhaps, greatest of all, the arts arose on strong wings of life to the very highest altitude. for the moral side of the renaissance intellect it had its tastes and refinements, as shown in its high quality of art; but it also had its polluting and degrading features, as shown in its political and social life. religion was visibly weakening though the ecclesiastical still held strong. people were forgetting the faith of the early days, and taking up with the material things about them. they were glorifying the human and exalting the natural. the story of greece was being repeated in italy. and out of this new worship came jewels of rarity and beauty, but out of it also came faithlessness, corruption, vice. strictly speaking, the renaissance had been accomplished before the year , but so great was its impetus that, in the arts at least, it extended half-way through the sixteenth century. then it began to fail through exhaustion. motives and methods: the religious subject still held with the painters, but this subject in high-renaissance days did not carry with it the religious feeling as in gothic days. art had grown to be something else than a teacher of the bible. in the painter's hands it had come to mean beauty for its own sake--a picture beautiful for its form and color, regardless of its theme. this was the teaching of antique art, and the study of nature but increased the belief. a new love had arisen in the outer and visible world, and when the church called for altar-pieces the painters painted their new love, christened it with a religious title, and handed it forth in the name of the old. thus art began to free itself from church domination and to live as an independent beauty. the general motive, then, of painting during the high renaissance, though apparently religious from the subject, and in many cases still religious in feeling, was largely to show the beauty of form or color, in which religion, the antique, and the natural came in as modifying elements. in technical methods, though extensive work was still done in fresco, especially at florence and rome, yet the bulk of high-renaissance painting was in oils upon panel and canvas. at venice even the decorative wall paintings were upon canvas, afterward inserted in wall or ceiling. [illustration: fig. .--andrea del sarto. madonna of st. francis. uffizi.] the florentines and romans: there was a severity and austerity about the florentine art, even at its climax. it was never too sensuous and luxurious, but rather exact and intellectual. the florentines were fond of lustreless fresco, architectural composition, towering or sweeping lines, rather sharp color as compared with the venetians, and theological, classical, even literary and allegorical subjects. probably this was largely due to the classic bias of the painters and the intellectual and social influences of florence and rome. line and composition were means of expressing abstract thought better than color, though some of the florentines employed both line and color knowingly. this was the case with fra bartolommeo ( - ), a monk of san marco, who was a transition painter from the fifteenth to the sixteenth century. he was a religionist, a follower of savonarola, and a man of soul who thought to do work of a religious character and feeling; but he was also a fine painter, excelling in composition, drawing, drapery, color. the painter's element in his work, its material and earthly beauty, rather detracted from its spiritual significance. he opposed the sensuous and the nude, and yet about the only nude he ever painted--a st. sebastian for san marco--had so much of the earthly about it that people forgot the suffering saint in admiring the fine body, and the picture had to be removed from the convent. in such ways religion in art was gradually undermined, not alone by naturalism and classicism but by art itself. painting brought into life by religion no sooner reached maturity than it led people away from religion by pointing out sensuous beauties in the type rather than religious beauties in the symbol. fra bartolommeo was among the last of the pietists in art. he had no great imagination, but some feeling and a fine color-sense for florence. naturally he was influenced somewhat by the great ones about him, learning perspective from raphael, grandeur from michael angelo, and contours from leonardo da vinci. he worked in collaboration with albertinelli ( - ), a skilled artist and a fellow-pupil with bartolommeo in the workshop of cosimo rosselli. their work is so much alike that it is often difficult to distinguish the painters apart. albertinelli was not so devout as his companion, but he painted the religious subject with feeling, as his visitation in the uffizi indicates. among the followers of bartolommeo and albertinelli were fra paolino ( ), bugiardini ( - ), granacci ( - ), who showed many influences, and ridolfo ghirlandajo ( - ). [illustration: fig. .--michael angelo. athlete. sistine, rome.] andrea del sarto ( - ) was a florentine pure and simple--a painter for the church producing many madonnas and altar-pieces, and yet possessed of little religious feeling or depth. he was a painter more than a pietist, and was called by his townsmen "the faultless painter." so he was as regards the technical features of his art. he was the best brushman and colorist of the florentine school. dealing largely with the material side his craftsmanship was excellent and his pictures exuberant with life and color, but his madonnas and saints were decidedly of the earth--handsome florentine models garbed as sacred characters--well-drawn and easily painted, with little devotional feeling about them. he was influenced by other painters to some extent. masaccio, ghirlandajo, and michael angelo were his models in drawing; leonardo and bartolommeo in contours; while in warmth of color, brush-work, atmospheric and landscape effects he was quite by himself. he had a large number of pupils and followers, but most of them deserted him later on to follow michael angelo. pontormo ( - ) and franciabigio ( - ) were among the best of them. michael angelo ( - ) has been called the "prophet of the renaissance," and perhaps deserves the title, since he was more of the old testament than the new--more of the austere and imperious than the loving or the forgiving. there was no sentimental feature about his art. his conception was intellectual, highly imaginative, mysterious, at times disordered and turbulent in its strength. he came the nearest to the sublime of any painter in history through the sole attribute of power. he had no tenderness nor any winning charm. he did not win, but rather commanded. everything he saw or felt was studied for the strength that was in it. religion, old-testament history, the antique, humanity, all turned in his hands into symbolic forms of power, put forth apparently in the white heat of passion, and at times in defiance of every rule and tradition of art. personal feeling was very apparent in his work, and in this he was as far removed as possible from the greeks, and nearer to what one would call to-day a romanticist. there was little of the objective about him. he was not an imitator of facts but a creator of forms and ideas. his art was a reflection of himself--a self-sufficient man, positive, creative, standing alone, a law unto himself. technically he was more of a sculptor than a painter. he said so himself when julius commanded him to paint the sistine ceiling, and he told the truth. he was a magnificent draughtsman, and drew magnificent sculpturesque figures on the sistine vault. that was about all his achievement with the brush. in color, light, air, perspective--in all those features peculiar to the painter--he was behind his contemporaries. composition he knew a great deal about, and in drawing he had the most positive, far-reaching command of line of any painter of any time. it was in drawing that he showed his power. even this is severe and harsh at times, and then again filled with a grace that is majestic and in scope universal, as witness the creation of adam in the sistine. [illustration: fig. .--raphael. la belle jardiniÈre. louvre.] he came out of florence, a pupil of ghirlandajo, with a school feeling for line, stimulated by the frescos of masaccio and signorelli. at an early age he declared himself, and hewed a path of his own through art, sweeping along with him many of the slighter painters of his age. long-lived he saw his contemporaries die about him and humanism end in bloodshed with the coming of the jesuits; but alone, gloomy, resolute, steadfast to his belief, he held his way, the last great representative of florentine art, the first great representative of individualism in art. with him and after him came many followers who strove to imitate his "terrible style," but they did not succeed any too well. the most of these followers find classification under the mannerists of the decadence. of those who were immediate pupils of michael angelo, or carried out his designs, daniele da volterra ( - ) was one of the most satisfactory. his chief work, the descent from the cross, was considered by poussin as one of the three great pictures of the world. it is sometimes said to have been designed by michael angelo, but that is only a conjecture. it has much action and life in it, but is somewhat affected in pose and gesture, and volterra's work generally was deficient in real energy of conception and execution. marcello venusti ( - ?) painted directly from michael angelo's designs in a delicate and precise way, probably imbibed from his master, perino del vaga, and from association with venetians like sebastiano del piombo ( - ). this last-named painter was born in venice and trained under bellini and giorgione, inheriting the color and light-and-shade qualities of the venetians; but later on he went to rome and came under the influence of michael angelo and raphael. he tried, under michael angelo's inspiration it is said, to unite the florentine grandeur of line with the venetian coloring, and thus outdo raphael. it was not wholly successful, though resulting in an excellent quality of art. as a portrait-painter he was above reproach. his early works were rather free in impasto, the late ones smooth and shiny, in imitation of raphael. raphael sanzio ( - ) was more greek in method than any of the great renaissance painters. in subject he was not more classic than others of his time; he painted all subjects. in thought he was not particularly classic; he was chiefly intellectual, with a leaning toward the sensuous that was half-pagan. it was in method and expression more than elsewhere that he showed the greek spirit. he aimed at the ideal and the universal, independent, so far as possible, of the individual, and sought by a union of all elements to produce perfect harmony. the harmonist of the renaissance is his title. and this harmony extended to a blending of thought, form, and expression, heightening or modifying every element until they ran together with such rhythm that it could not be seen where one left off and another began. he was the very opposite of michael angelo. the art of the latter was an expression of individual power and was purely subjective. raphael's art was largely a unity of objective beauties, with the personal element as much in abeyance as was possible for his time. his education was a cultivation of every grace of mind and hand. he assimilated freely whatever he found to be good in the art about him. a pupil of perugino originally, he levied upon features of excellence in masaccio, fra bartolommeo, leonardo, michael angelo. from the first he got tenderness, from the second drawing, from the third color and composition, from the fourth charm, from the fifth force. like an eclectic greek he drew from all sources, and then blended and united these features in a peculiar style of his own and stamped them with his peculiar raphaelesque stamp. in subject raphael was religious and mythological, but he was imbued with neither of these so far as the initial spirit was concerned. he looked at all subjects in a calm, intellectual, artistic way. even the celebrated sistine madonna is more intellectual than pietistic, a christian minerva ruling rather than helping to save the world. the same spirit ruled him in classic and theological themes. he did not feel them keenly or execute them passionately--at least there is no indication of it in his work. the doing so would have destroyed unity, symmetry, repose. the theme was ever held in check by a regard for proportion and rhythm. to keep all artistic elements in perfect equilibrium, allowing no one to predominate, seemed the mainspring of his action, and in doing this he created that harmony which his admirers sometimes refer to as pure beauty. for his period and school he was rather remarkable technically. he excelled in everything except brush-work, which was never brought to maturity in either florence or rome. even in color he was fine for florence, though not equal to the venetians. in composition, modelling, line, even in texture painting (see his portraits) he was a man of accomplishment; while in grace, purity, serenity, loftiness he was the florentine leader easily first. [illustration: fig. .--giulio romano. apollo and muses. pitti.] the influence of raphael's example was largely felt throughout central italy, and even at the north, resulting in many imitators and followers, who tried to produce raphaelesque effects. their efforts were usually successful in precipitating charm into sweetness and sentiment into sentimentality. francesco penni ( ?- ) seems to have been content to work under raphael with some ability. giulio romano ( - ) was the strongest of the pupils, and became the founder and leader of the roman school, which had considerable influence upon the painters of the decadence. he adopted the classic subject and tried to adopt raphael's style, but he was not completely successful. raphael's refinement in giulio's hands became exaggerated coarseness. he was a good draughtsman, but rather hot as a colorist, and a composer of violent, restless, and, at times, contorted groups. he was a prolific painter, but his work tended toward the baroque style, and had a bad influence on the succeeding schools. primaticcio ( - ) was one of his followers, and had much to do with the founding of the school of fontainebleau in france. giovanni da udine ( - ), a venetian trained painter, became a follower of raphael, his only originality showing in decorative designs. perino del vaga ( - ) was of the same cast of mind. andrea sabbatini ( ?- ) carried raphael's types and methods to the south of italy, and some artists at bologna, and in umbria, like innocenza da imola ( - ?), and timoteo di viti ( - ), adopted the raphael type and method to the detriment of what native talent they may have possessed, though about timoteo there is some doubt whether he adopted raphael's type, or raphael his type. principal works: florentines--fra bartolommeo, descent from the cross salvator mundi st. mark pitti, madonnas and prophets uffizi, other pictures florence acad., louvre, vienna gal.; albertinelli, visitation uffizi, christ magdalene madonna louvre, trinity madonna florence acad., annunciation munich gal.; fra paolino, works at san spirito sienna, s. domenico and s. paolo pistoia, madonna florence acad.; bugiardini, madonna uffizi, st. catherine s. m. novella florence, nativity berlin, st. catherine bologna gal.; granacci, altar-pieces uffizi, pitti, acad. florence, berlin and munich gals.; ridolfo ghirlandajo, s. zenobio pictures uffizi, also louvre and berlin gal.; andrea del sarto, many pictures in uffizi and pitti, louvre, berlin, dresden, madrid, nat. gal. lon., frescos s. annunziata and the scalzo florence; pontormo, frescos annunziata florence, visitation and madonna louvre, portrait berlin gal., supper at emmaus florence acad., other works uffizi; franciabigio, frescos courts of the servi and scalzo florence, bathsheba dresden gal., many portraits in louvre, pitti, berlin gal.; michael angelo, frescos sistine rome, holy family uffizi; daniele da volterra, frescos hist. of cross trinità de' monti rome, innocents uffizi; venusti, frescos castel san angelo, s. spirito rome, annunciation st. john lateran rome; sebastiano del piombo, lazarus nat. gal. lon., pietà viterbo, fornarina uffizi (ascribed to raphael) fornarina and christ bearing cross berlin and dresden gals., agatha pitti, visitation louvre, portrait doria gal. rome; raphael, marriage of virgin brera, madonna and vision of knight nat. gal. lon., madonnas st. michael and st. george louvre, many madonnas and portraits in uffizi, pitti, munich, vienna, st. petersburgh, madrid gals., sistine madonna dresden, chief frescos vatican rome. romans: giulio romano, frescos sala di constantino vatican rome (with francesco penni after raphael), palazzo del tè mantua, st. stephen, s. stefano genoa, holy family dresden gal., other works in louvre, nat. gal. lon., pitti, uffizi; primaticcio, works attributed to him doubtful--scipio louvre, lady at toilet and venus musée de cluny; giovanni da udine, decorations, arabesques and grotesques in vatican loggia; perino del vaga, hist. of joshua and david vatican (with raphael), frescos trinità de' monti and castel s. angelo rome, creation of eve s. marcello rome; sabbatini, adoration naples mus., altar-pieces in naples and salerno churches; innocenza da imola, works in bologna, berlin and munich gals.; timoteo di viti, church of the pace rome (after raphael), madonnas and magdalene brera, acad. of st. luke rome, bologna gal., s. domenico urbino, gubbio cathedral. chapter ix. italian painting. the high renaissance, - .--continued. books recommended: the works on italian art before mentioned and consult also the general bibliography (p. xv.) leonardo da vinci and the milanese: the third person in the great florentine trinity of painters was leonardo da vinci ( - ), the other two being michael angelo and raphael. he greatly influenced the school of milan, and has usually been classed with the milanese, yet he was educated in florence, in the workshop of verrocchio, and was so universal in thought and methods that he hardly belongs to any school. he has been named a realist, an idealist, a magician, a wizard, a dreamer, and finally a scientist, by different writers, yet he was none of these things while being all of them--a full-rounded, universal man, learned in many departments and excelling in whatever he undertook. he had the scientific and experimental way of looking at things. that is perhaps to be regretted, since it resulted in his experimenting with everything and completing little of anything. his different tastes and pursuits pulled him different ways, and his knowledge made him sceptical of his own powers. he pondered and thought how to reach up higher, how to penetrate deeper, how to realize more comprehensively, and in the end he gave up in despair. he could not fulfil his ideal of the head of christ nor the head of mona lisa, and after years of labor he left them unfinished. the problem of human life, the spirit, the world engrossed him, and all his creations seem impregnated with the psychological, the mystical, the unattainable, the hidden. [illustration: fig. .--leonardo da vinci. mona lisa. louvre.] he was no religionist, though painting the religious subject with feeling; he was not in any sense a classicist, nor had he any care for the antique marbles, which he considered a study of nature at second-hand. he was more in love with physical life without being an enthusiast over it. his regard for contours, rhythm of line, blend of light with shade, study of atmosphere, perspective, trees, animals, humanity, show that though he examined nature scientifically, he pictured it æsthetically. in his types there is much sweetness of soul, charm of disposition, dignity of mien, even grandeur and majesty of presence. his people we would like to know better. they are full of life, intelligence, sympathy; they have fascination of manner, winsomeness of mood, grace of bearing. we see this in his best-known work--the mona lisa of the louvre. it has much allurement of personal presence, with a depth and abundance of soul altogether charming. technically, leonardo was not a handler of the brush superior in any way to his florentine contemporaries. he knew all the methods and mediums of the time, and did much to establish oil-painting among the florentines, but he was never a painter like titian, or even correggio or andrea del sarto. a splendid draughtsman, a man of invention, imagination, grace, elegance, and power, he nevertheless carried more by mental penetration and æsthetic sense than by his technical skill. he was one of the great men of the renaissance, and deservedly holds a place in the front rank. though leonardo's accomplishment seems slight because of the little that is left to us, yet he had a great following not only among the florentines but at milan, where vincenza foppa had started a school in the early renaissance time. leonardo was there for fourteen years, and his artistic personality influenced many painters to adopt his type and methods. bernardino luini ( ?- ?) was the most prominent of the disciples. he cultivated leonardo's sentiment, style, subjects, and composition in his middle period, but later on developed independence and originality. he came at a period of art when that earnestness of characterization which marked the early men was giving way to gracefulness of recitation, and that was the chief feature of his art. for that matter gracefulness and pathetic sweetness of mood, with purity of line and warmth of color characterized all the milanese painters. [illustration: fig. .--luini. daughter of herodias with head of john the baptist. uffizi.] the more prominent lights of the school were salaino (fl. - ), of whose work nothing authentic exists, boltraffio ( - ), a painter of limitations but of much refinement and purity, and marco da oggiono ( ?- ) a close follower of leonardo. solario ( ?- ?) probably became acquainted early with the flemish mode of working practised by antonello da messina, but he afterward came under leonardo's spell at milan. he was a careful, refined painter, possessed of feeling and tenderness, producing pictures with enamelled surfaces and much detail. gianpietrino (fl. - ) and cesare da sesto ( - ?) were also of the milanese school, the latter afterward falling under the raphael influence. gaudenzio ferrara ( ?- ?), an exceptionally brilliant colorist and a painter of much distinction, was under leonardo's influence at one time, and with the teachings of that master he mingled a little of raphael in the type of face. he was an uneven painter, often excessive in sentiment, but at his best one of the most charming of the northern painters. sodoma and the siennese: sienna, alive in the fourteenth century to all that was stirring in art, in the fifteenth century was in complete eclipse, no painters of consequence emanating from there or being established there. in the sixteenth century there was a revival of art because of a northern painter settling there and building up a new school. this painter was sodoma ( ?- ). he was one of the best pupils of leonardo da vinci, a master of the human figure, handling it with much grace and charm of expression, but not so successful with groups or studied compositions, wherein he was inclined to huddle and over-crowd space. he was afterward led off by the brilliant success of raphael, and adopted something of that master's style. his best work was done in fresco, though he did some easel pictures that have darkened very much through time. he was a friend of raphael, and his portrait appears beside raphael's in the latter painter's celebrated school of athens. the pupils and followers of the siennese school were not men of great strength. pacchiarotta ( - ?), girolamo della pacchia ( - ), peruzzi ( - ), a half-lombard half-umbrian painter of ability, and beccafumi ( - ) were the principal lights. the influence of the school was slight. [illustration: fig. .--sodoma. ecstasy of st. catherine. sienna.] ferrara and bolognese schools: the painters of these schools during the sixteenth century have usually been classed among the followers and imitators of raphael, but not without some injustice. the influence of raphael was great throughout central italy, and the ferrarese and bolognese felt it, but not to the extinction of their native thought and methods. moreover, there was some influence in color coming from the venetian school, but again not to the entire extinction of ferrarese individuality. dosso dossi ( ?- ), at ferrara, a pupil of lorenzo costa, was the chief painter of the time, and he showed more of giorgione in color and light-and-shade than anyone else, yet he never abandoned the yellows, greens, and reds peculiar to ferrara, and both he and garofolo were strikingly original in their background landscapes. garofolo ( - ) was a pupil of panetti and costa, who made several visits to rome and there fell in love with raphael's work, which showed in a fondness for the sweep and flow of line, in the type of face adopted, and in the calmness of his many easel pictures. he was not so dramatic a painter as dosso, and in addition he had certain mannerisms or earmarks, such as sootiness in his flesh tints and brightness in his yellows and greens, with dulness in his reds. he was always ferrarese in his landscapes and in the main characteristics of his technic. mazzolino ( ?- ?) was another of the school, probably a pupil of panetti. he was an elaborate painter, fond of architectural backgrounds and glowing colors enlivened with gold in the high lights. bagnacavallo ( - ) was a pupil of francia at bologna, but with much of dosso and ferrara about him. he, in common with imola, already mentioned, was indebted to the art of raphael. correggio at parma: in correggio ( ?- ) all the boccaccio nature of the renaissance came to the surface. it was indicated in andrea del sarto--this nature-worship--but correggio was the consummation. he was the faun of the renaissance, the painter with whom the beauty of the human as distinguished from the religious and the classic showed at its very strongest. free animal spirits, laughing madonnas, raving nymphs, excited children of the wood, and angels of the sky pass and repass through his pictures in an atmosphere of pure sensuousness. they appeal to us not religiously, not historically, not intellectually, but sensuously and artistically through their rhythmic lines, their palpitating flesh, their beauty of color, and in the light and atmosphere that surround them. he was less of a religionist than andrea del sarto. religion in art was losing ground in his day, and the liberality and worldliness of its teachers appeared clearly enough in the decorations of the convent of st. paul at parma, where correggio was allowed to paint mythological dianas and cupids in the place of saints and madonnas. true enough, he painted the religious subject very often, but with the same spirit of life and joyousness as profane subjects. [illustration: fig. --correggio. marriage of st. catherine and christ. louvre.] the classic subject seemed more appropriate to his spirit, and yet he knew and probably cared less about it than the religious subject. his dianas and ledas are only so in name. they have little of the hellenic spirit about them, and for the sterner, heroic phases of classicism--the lofty, the grand--correggio never essayed them. the things of this earth and the sweetness thereof seemed ever his aim. women and children were beautiful to him in the same way that flowers and trees and skies and sunsets were beautiful. they were revelations of grace, charm, tenderness, light, shade, color. simply to exist and be glad in the sunlight was sweetness to correggio. he would have no sibylesque mystery, no prophetic austerity, no solemnity, no great intellectuality. he was no leader of a tragic chorus. the dramatic, the forceful, the powerful, were foreign to his mood. he was a singer of lyrics and pastorals, a lover of the material beauty about him, and it is because he passed by the pietistic, the classic, the literary, and showed the beauty of physical life as an art motive that he is called the faun of the renaissance. the appellation is not inappropriate. how or why he came to take this course would be hard to determine. it was reflective of the times; but correggio, so far as history tells us, had little to do with the movements and people of his age. he was born and lived and died near parma, and is sometimes classed among the bologna-ferrara painters, but the reasons for the classification are not too strong. his education, masters, and influences are all shadowy and indefinite. he seems, from his drawing and composition, to have known something of mantegna at mantua; from his coloring something of dosso and garofolo, especially in his straw-yellows; from his early types and faces something of costa and francia, and his contours and light-and-shade indicate a knowledge of leonardo's work. but there is no positive certainty that he saw the work of any of these men. his drawing was faulty at times, but not obtrusively so; his color and brush-work rich, vivacious, spirited; his light brilliant, warm, penetrating; his contours melting, graceful; his atmosphere omnipresent, enveloping. in composition he rather pushed aside line in favor of light and color. it was his technical peculiarity that he centralized his light and surrounded it by darks as a foil. and in this very feature he was one of the first men in renaissance italy to paint a picture for the purpose of weaving a scheme of lights and darks through a tapestry of rich colors. that is art for art's sake, and that, as will be seen further on, was the picture motive of the great venetians. correggio's immediate pupils and followers, like those of raphael and andrea del sarto, did him small honor. as was usually the case in renaissance art-history they caught at the method and lost the spirit of the master. his son, pomponio allegri ( - ?), was a painter of some mark without being in the front rank. michelangelo anselmi ( - ?), though not a pupil, was an indifferent imitator of correggio. parmigianino ( - ), a mannered painter of some brilliancy, and of excellence in portraits, was perhaps the best of the immediate followers. it was not until after correggio's death, and with the painters of the decadence, that his work was seriously taken up and followed. principal works: milanese--leonardo da vinci, last supper s. m. delle grazie milan (in ruins), mona lisa, madonna with st. anne (badly damaged) louvre, adoration (unfinished) uffizi, angel at left in verrocchio's baptism florence acad.; luini, frescos monastero maggiore, fragments in brera milan, church of the pilgrims sarrona, s. m. degli angeli lugano, altar-pieces duomo como, ambrosian library milan, brera, uffizi, louvre, madrid, st. petersburgh, and other galleries; beltraffio, madonna louvre, barbara berlin gal., madonna nat. gal. lon., fresco convent of s. onofrio rome (ascribed to da vinci); marco da oggiono, archangels and other works brera, holy family madonna louvre; solario, ecce homo repose poldi-pezzoli gal. milan, holy family brera, madonna portrait louvre, portraits nat. gal. lon., assumption certosa of pavia; giampietrino, magdalene brera, madonna s. sepolcro milan, magdalene and catherine berlin gal.; cesare da sesto, madonna brera, magi naples mus.; gaudenzio ferrara, frescos church of pilgrims saronna, other pictures in brera, turin gal., s. gaudenzio novara, s. celso milan. siennese--sodoma, frescos convent of st. anne near pienza, benedictine convent of mont' oliveto maggiore, alexander and roxana villa farnesina rome, s. bernardino palazzo pubblico, s. domenico sienna, pictures uffizi, brera, munich, vienna gals.; pacchiarotto, ascension visitation sienna gal.; girolamo del pacchia, frescos ( ) s. bernardino, altar-pieces s. spirito and sienna acad., munich and nat. gal. lon.; peruzzi, fresco fontegiuste sienna, s. onofrio, s. m. della pace rome; beccafumi, st. catherine saints sienna acad., frescos s. bernardino hospital and s. martino sienna, palazzo doria rome, pitti, berlin, munich gals. ferrarese and bolognese--dosso dossi, many works ferrara modena gals., duomo s. pietro modena, brera, borghese, doria, berlin, dresden, vienna, gals.; garofolo, many works ferrara churches and gal., borghese, campigdoglio, louvre, berlin, dresden, munich, nat. gal. lon.; mazzolino, ferrara, berlin, dresden, louvre, doria, borghese, pitti, uffizi, and nat. gal. lon.; bagnacavallo, misericordia and gal. bologna, louvre, berlin, dresden gals. parmese--correggio, frescos convent of s. paolo, s. giovanni evangelista, duomo parma, altar-pieces dresden ( ), parma gals., louvre, mythological pictures antiope louvre, danae borghese, leda jupiter and io berlin, venus mercury and cupid nat. gal. lon., ganymede vienna gal.; pomponio allegri, frescos capella del popolo parma; anselmi, frescos s. giovanni evangelista, altar-pieces madonna della steccata, duomo, gal. parma, louvre; parmigianino, frescos moses steccata, s. giovanni parma, altar-pieces santa margherita, bologna gal., madonna pitti, portraits uffizi, vienna, naples mus., other works dresden, vienna, and nat. gal. lon. chapter x. italian painting. the high renaissance. - . (_continued._) books recommended: the works on italian art before mentioned and also consult general bibliography, (page xv.). the venetian school: it was at venice and with the venetian painters of the sixteenth century that a new art-motive was finally and fully adopted. this art-motive was not religion. for though the religious subject was still largely used, the religious or pietistic belief was not with the venetians any more than with correggio. it was not a classic, antique, realistic, or naturalistic motive. the venetians were interested in all phases of nature, and they were students of nature, but not students of truth for truth's sake. what they sought, primarily, was the light and shade on a nude shoulder, the delicate contours of a form, the flow and fall of silk or brocade, the richness of a robe, a scheme of color or of light, the character of a face, the majesty of a figure. they were seeking effects of line, light, color--mere sensuous and pictorial effects, in which religion and classicism played secondary parts. they believed in art for art's sake; that painting was a creation, not an illustration; that it should exist by its pictorial beauties, not by its subject or story. no matter what their subjects, they invariably painted them so as to show the beauties they prized the highest. the venetian conception was less austere, grand, intellectual, than pictorial, sensuous, concerning the beautiful as it appealed to the eye. and this was not a slight or unworthy conception. true it dealt with the fulness of material life, but regarded as it was by the venetians--a thing full-rounded, complete, harmonious, splendid--it became a great ideal of existence. [illustration: fig. .--giorgione(?). ordeal of moses. uffizi.] in technical expression color was the note of all the school, with hardly an exception. this in itself would seem to imply a lightness of spirit, for color is somehow associated in the popular mind with decorative gayety; but nothing could be further removed from the venetian school than triviality. color was taken up with the greatest seriousness, and handled in such masses and with such dignified power that while it pleased it also awed the spectator. without having quite the severity of line, some of the venetian chromatic schemes rise in sublimity almost to the sistine modellings of michael angelo. we do not feel this so much in giovanni bellini, fine in color as he was. he came too early for the full splendor, but he left many pupils who completed what he had inaugurated. the great venetians: the most positive in influence upon his contemporaries of all the great venetians was giorgione ( ?- ). he died young, and what few pictures by him are left to us have been so torn to pieces by historical criticism that at times one begins to doubt if there ever was such a painter. his different styles have been confused, and his pictures in consequence thereof attributed to followers instead of to the master. painters change their styles, but seldom their original bent of mind. with giorgione there was a lyric feeling as shown in music. the voluptuous swell of line, the melting tone of color, the sharp dash of light, the undercurrent of atmosphere, all mingled for him into radiant melody. he sought pure pictorial beauty and found it in everything of nature. he had little grasp of the purely intellectual, and the religious was something he dealt with in no strong devotional way. the fête, the concert, the fable, the legend, with a landscape setting, made a stronger appeal to him. more of a recorder than a thinker he was not the less a leader showing the way into that new arcadian grove of pleasure whose inhabitants thought not of creeds and faiths and histories and literatures, but were content to lead the life that was sweet in its glow and warmth of color, its light, its shadows, its bending trees, and arching skies. a strong full-blooded race, sober-minded, dignified, rationally happy with their lot, giorgione portrayed them with an art infinite in variety and consummate in skill. their least features under his brush seemed to glow like jewels. the sheen of armor and rich robe, a bare forearm, a nude back, or loosened hair--mere morsels of color and light--all took on a new beauty. even landscape with him became more significant. his master, bellini, had been realistic enough in the details of trees and hills, but giorgione grasped the meaning of landscape as an entirety, and rendered it with poetic breadth. technically he adopted the oil medium brought to venice by antonello da messina, introducing scumbling and glazing to obtain brilliancy and depth of color. of light-and-shade he was a master, and in atmosphere excellent. he, in common with all the venetians, is sometimes said to be lacking in drawing, but that is the result of a misunderstanding. the venetians never cared to accent line, choosing rather to model in masses of light and shadow and color. giorgione was a superior man with the brush, but not quite up to his contemporary titian. [illustration: fig. .--titian. venus equipping cupid. borghese pal., rome.] that is not surprising, for titian ( - ) was the painter easily first in the whole range of italian art. he was the first man in the history of painting to handle a brush with freedom, vigor, and gusto. and titian's brush-work was probably the least part of his genius. calm in mood, dignified, and often majestic in conception, learned beyond all others in his craft, he mingled thought, feeling, color, brush-work into one grand and glowing whole. he emphasized nothing, yet elevated everything. in pure intellectual thought he was not so strong as raphael. he never sought to make painting a vehicle for theological, literary, or classical ideas. his tale was largely of humanity under a religious or classical name, but a noble, majestic humanity. in his art dignified senators, stern doges, and solemn ecclesiastics mingle with open-eyed madonnas, winning ariadnes, and youthful bacchuses. men and women they are truly, but the very noblest of the italian race, the mountain race of the cadore country--proud, active, glowing with life; the sea race of venice--worldly wise, full of character, luxurious in power. in himself he was an epitome of all the excellences of painting. he was everything, the sum of venetian skill, the crowning genius of renaissance art. he had force, power, invention, imagination, point of view; he had the infinite knowledge of nature and the infinite mastery of art. in addition, fortune smiled upon him as upon a favorite child. trained in mind and hand he lived for ninety-nine years and worked unceasingly up to a few months of his death. his genius was great and his accomplishment equally so. he was celebrated and independent at thirty-five, though before that he showed something of the influence of giorgione. after the death of giorgione and his master, bellini, titian was the leader in venice to the end of his long life, and though having few scholars of importance his influence was spread through all north italian painting. taking him for all in all, perhaps it is not too much to say that he was the greatest painter known to history. if it were possible to describe that greatness in one word, that word would be "universality." he saw and painted that which was universal in its truth. the local and particular, the small and the accidental, were passed over for those great truths which belong to all the world of life. in this respect he was a veritable shakespeare, with all the calmness and repose of one who overlooked the world from a lofty height. [illustration: fig. .--tintoretto. mercury and graces. ducal pal., venice.] the restfulness and easy strength of titian were not characteristics of his follower tintoretto ( - ). he was violent, headlong, impulsive, more impetuous than michael angelo, and in some respects a strong reminder of him. he had not michael angelo's austerity, and there was more clash and tumult and fire about him, but he had a command of line like the florentine, and a way of hurling things, as seen in the fall of the damned, that reminds one of the last judgment of the sistine. it was his aim to combine the line of michael angelo and the color of titian; but without reaching up to either of his models he produced a powerful amalgam of his own. he was one of the very great artists of the world, and the most rapid workman in the whole renaissance period. there are to-day, after centuries of decay, fire, theft, and repainting, yards upon yards of tintoretto's canvases rotting upon the walls of the venetian churches. he produced an enormous amount of work, and, what is to be regretted, much of it was contract work or experimental sketching. this has given his art a rather bad name, but judged by his best works in the ducal palace and the academy at venice, he will not be found lacking. even in his masterpiece (the miracle of the slave) he is "il furioso," as they used to call him; but his thunderbolt style is held in check by wonderful grace, strength of modelling, superb contrasts of light with shade, and a coloring of flesh and robes not unworthy of the very greatest. he was a man who worked in the white heat of passion, with much imagination and invention. as a technician he sought difficulties rather than avoided them. there is some antagonism between form and color, but tintoretto tried to reconcile them. the result was sometimes clashing, but no one could have done better with them than he did. he was a fine draughtsman, a good colorist, and a master of light. as a brushman he was a superior man, but not equal to titian. paolo veronese ( - ), the fourth great venetian, did not follow the line direction set by tintoretto, but carried out the original color-leaning of the school. he came a little later than tintoretto, and his art was a reflection of the advancing renaissance, wherein simplicity was destined to lose itself in complexity, grandeur, and display. paolo came on the very crest of the renaissance wave, when art, risen to its greatest height, was gleaming in that transparent splendor that precedes the fall. [illustration: fig. .--p. veronese. venice enthroned. ducal pal., venice.] the great bulk of his work had a large decorative motive behind it. almost all of the late venetian work was of that character. hence it was brilliant in color, elaborate in subject, and grand in scale. splendid robes, hangings, furniture, architecture, jewels, armor, appeared everywhere, and not in flat, lustreless hues, but with that brilliancy which they possess in nature. drapery gave way to clothing, and texture-painting was introduced even in the largest canvases. scenes from scripture and legend turned into grand pageants of venetian glory, and the facial expression of the characters rather passed out in favor of telling masses of color to be seen at a distance upon wall or ceiling. it was pomp and glory carried to the highest pitch, but with all seriousness of mood and truthfulness in art. it was beyond titian in variety, richness, ornament, facility; but it was perhaps below titian in sentiment, sobriety, and depth of insight. titian, with all his sensuous beauty, did appeal to the higher intelligence, while paolo and his companions appealed more positively to the eye by luxurious color-setting and magnificence of invention. the decadence came after paolo, but not with him. his art was the most gorgeous of the venetian school, and by many is ranked the highest of all, but perhaps it is better to say it was the height. those who came after brought about the decline by striving to imitate his splendor, and thereby falling into extravagance. these are the four great venetians--the men of first rank. beside them and around them were many other painters, placed in the second rank, who in any other time or city would have held first place. palma il vecchio ( ?- ) was so excellent in many ways that it seems unjust to speak of him as a secondary painter. he was not, however, a great original mind, though in many respects a perfect painter. he was influenced by bellini at first, and then by giorgione. in subject there was nothing dramatic about him, and he carries chiefly by his portrayal of quiet, dignified, and beautiful venetians under the names of saints and holy families. the st. barbara is an example of this, and one of the most majestic figures in all painting. [illustration: fig. .--lotto. three ages. pitti.] palma's friend and fellow-worker, lorenzo lotto ( ?- ?) came from the school of the bellini, and at different times was under the influence of several venetian painters--palma, giorgione, titian--without obliterating a sensitive individuality of his own. he was a somewhat mannered but very charming painter, and in portraits can hardly be classed below titian. rocco marconi (fl. - ) was another bellini-educated painter, showing the influence of palma and even of paris bordone. in color and landscape he was excellent. pordenone ( - ) rather followed after giorgione, and unsuccessfully competed with titian. he was inclined to exaggeration in dramatic composition, but was a painter of undeniable power. cariani ( - ) was another giorgione follower. bonifazio pitati probably came from a veronese family. he showed the influence of palma, and was rather deficient in drawing, though exceedingly brilliant and rich in coloring. this latter may be said for paris bordone ( - ), a painter of titian's school, gorgeous in color, but often lacking in truth of form. his portraits are very fine. another painter family, the bassani--there were six of them, of whom jacopo bassano ( - ) and his son francesco bassano ( - ), were the most noted--formed themselves after venetian masters, and were rather remarkable for violent contrasts of light and dark, _genre_ treatment of sacred subjects, and still-life and animal painting. painting in venetian territories: venetian painting was not confined to venice, but extended through all the venetian territories in renaissance times, and those who lived away from the city were, in their art, decidedly venetian, though possessing local characteristics. at brescia savoldo ( ?- ), a rather superficial painter, fond of weird lights and sheeny draperies, and romanino ( ?- ), a follower of giorgione, good in composition but unequal and careless in execution, were the earliest of the high renaissance men. moretto ( ?- ) was the strongest and most original, a man of individuality and power, remarkable technically for his delicacy and unity of color under a veil of "silvery tone." in composition he was dignified and noble, and in brush-work simple and direct. one of the great painters of the time, he seemed to stand more apart from venetian influence than any other on venetian territory. he left one remarkable pupil, moroni (fl. - ) whose portraits are to-day the gems of several galleries, and greatly admired for their modern spirit and treatment. at verona caroto and girolamo dai libri ( - ), though living into the sixteenth century were more allied to the art of the fifteenth century. torbido ( ?- ?) was a vacillating painter, influenced by liberale da verona, giorgione, bonifazio veronese, and later, even by giulio romano. cavazzola ( - ) was more original, and a man of talent. there were numbers of other painters scattered all through the venetian provinces at this time, but they were not of the first, or even the second rank, and hence call for no mention here. principal works: giorgione, fête rustique louvre, sleeping venus dresden, altar-piece castelfranco, ordeal of moses judgment of solomon knight of malta uffizi; titian, sacred and profane love borghese, tribute money dresden, annunciation s. rocco, pesaro madonna frari venice, entombment man with glove louvre, bacchus nat. gal. lon., charles v. madrid, danæ naples, many other works in almost every european gallery; tintoretto, many works in venetian churches, salute ss. giovanni e paolo s. maria dell' orto scuola and church of s. rocco ducal palace venice acad. (best work miracle of slave); paolo veronese, many pictures in s. sebastiano ducal palace academy venice, pitti, uffizi, brera, capitoline and borghese galleries rome, turin, dresden, vienna, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; palma il vecchio, jacob and rachel three sisters dresden, barbara s. m. formosa venice, other altar-pieces venice acad., colonna palace rome, brera, naples mus., vienna, nat. gal. lon.; lotto, three ages pitti, portraits brera, nat. gal. lon., altar-pieces ss. giovanni e paolo venice and churches at bergamo, treviso, recanti, also uffizi, vienna, madrid gals.; marconi, descent venice acad., altar-pieces s. giorgio maggiore ss. giovanni e paolo venice; pordenone, s. lorenzo madonna venice acad., salome doria st. george quirinale rome, other works madrid, dresden, st. petersburg, nat. gal. lon.; bonifazio, st. john, st. joseph, etc. ambrosian library milan (attributed to giorgione), holy family colonna pal. rome, ducal pal., pitti, dresden gals.; supper at emmaus brera, other works venice acad.; paris bordone, fisherman and doge, venice acad., madonna casa tadini lovere, portraits in uffizi, pitti, louvre, munich, vienna, nat. gal. lon., brignola pal. genoa; jacopo bassano, altar-pieces in bassano churches, also ducal pal. venice, nat. gal. lon., uffizi, naples mus.; francesco bassano, large pictures ducal pal., st. catherine pitti, sabines turin, adoration and christ in temple dresden, adoration and last supper madrid; savoldo, altar-pieces brera, s. niccolò treviso, uffizi, turin gal., s. giobbe venice, nat. gal. lon.; romanino, altar-pieces s. francesco brescia, berlin gal., s. giovanni evangelista brescia, duomo cremona, padua, and nat. gal. lon.; moretto, altar-pieces brera, staedel mus., s. m. della pieta venice, vienna, berlin, louvre, pitti, nat. gal. lon.; moroni, portraits bergamo gal., uffizi, nat. gal. lon., berlin, dresden, madrid; girolamo dai libri, madonna berlin, conception s. paolo verona, virgin verona gal., s. giorgio maggiore verona, nat. gal. lon.; torbido, frescos duomo, altar-pieces s. zeno and s. eufemia verona; cavazzola, altar-pieces, verona gal. and nat. gal. lon. chapter xi. italian painting. the decadence and modern work. - . books recommended: as before, also general bibliography, (page xv.); calvi, _notizie della vita e delle opere di gio. francesco barbiera_; malvasia, _felsina pittrice_; sir joshua reynolds, _discourses_; symonds, _renaissance in italy--the catholic reaction_; willard, _modern italian art_. the decline: an art movement in history seems like a wave that rises to a height, then breaks, falls, and parts of it are caught up from beneath to help form the strength of a new advance. in italy christianity was the propelling force of the wave. in the early renaissance, the antique, and the study of nature came in as additions. at venice in the high renaissance the art-for-art's-sake motive made the crest of light and color. the highest point was reached then, and there was nothing that could follow but the breaking and the scattering of the wave. this took place in central italy after , in venice after . art had typified in form, thought, and expression everything of which the italian race was capable. it had perfected all the graces and elegancies of line and color, and adorned them with a superlative splendor. there was nothing more to do. the idea was completed, the motive power had served its purpose, and that store of race-impulse which seems necessary to the making of every great art was exhausted. for the men that came after michael angelo and tintoretto there was nothing. all that they could do was to repeat what others had said, or to recombine the old thoughts and forms. this led inevitably to imitation, over-refinement of style, and conscious study of beauty, resulting in mannerism and affectation. such qualities marked the art of those painters who came in the latter part of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth. they were unfortunate men in the time of their birth. no painter could have been great in the seventeenth century of italy. art lay prone upon its face under jesuit rule, and the late men were left upon the barren sands by the receding wave of the renaissance. [illustration: fig. .--bronzino. christ in limbo. uffizi.] art motives and subjects: as before, the chief subject of the art of the decadence was religion, with many heads and busts of the madonna, though nature and the classic still played their parts. after the reformation at the north the church in italy started the counter-reformation. one of the chief means employed by this catholic reaction was the embellishment of church worship, and painting on a large scale, on panel rather than in fresco, was demanded for decorative purposes. but the religious motive had passed out, though its subject was retained, and the pictorial motive had reached its climax at venice. the faith of the one and the taste and skill of the other were not attainable by the late men, and, while consciously striving to achieve them, they fell into exaggerated sentiment and technical weakness. it seems perfectly apparent in their works that they had nothing of their own to say, and that they were trying to say over again what michael angelo, correggio, and titian had said before them much better. there were earnest men and good painters among them, but they could produce only the empty form of art. the spirit had fled. the mannerists: immediately after the high renaissance leaders of florence and rome came the imitators and exaggerators of their styles. they produced large, crowded compositions, with a hasty facility of the brush and striking effects of light. seeking the grand they overshot the temperate. their elegance was affected, their sentiment forced, their brilliancy superficial glitter. when they thought to be ideal they lost themselves in incomprehensible allegories; when they thought to be real they grew prosaic in detail. these men are known in art history as the mannerists, and the men whose works they imitated were chiefly raphael, michael angelo, and correggio. there were many of them, and some of them have already been spoken of as the followers of michael angelo. agnolo bronzino ( ?- ) was a pupil of pontormo, and an imitator of michael angelo, painting in rather heavy colors with a thin brush. his characters were large, but never quite free from weakness, except in portraiture, where he appeared at his best. vasari ( - )--the same vasari who wrote the lives of the painters--had versatility and facility, but his superficial imitations of michael angelo were too grandiose in conception and too palpably false in modelling. salviati ( - ) was a friend of vasari, a painter of about the same cast of mind and hand as vasari, and federigo zucchero ( - ) belongs with him in producing things muscularly big but intellectually small. baroccio ( - ), though classed among the mannerists as an imitator of correggio and raphael, was really one of the strong men of the late times. there was affectation and sentimentality about his work, a prettiness of face, rosy flesh tints, and a general lightness of color, but he was a superior brushman, a good colorist, and, at times, a man of earnestness and power. [illustration: fig. .--baroccio. annunciation.] the eclectics: after the mannerists came the eclectics of bologna, led by the caracci, who, about , sought to "revive" art. they started out to correct the faults of the mannerists, and yet their own art was based more on the art of their great predecessors than on nature. they thought to make a union of renaissance excellences by combining michael angelo's line, titian's color, correggio's light-and-shade and raphael's symmetry and grace. the attempt was praiseworthy for the time, but hardly successful. they caught the lines and lights and colors of the great men, but they overlooked the fact that the excellence of the imitated lay largely in their inimitable individualities, which could not be combined. the eclectic work was done with intelligence, but their system was against them and their baroque age was against them. midway in their career the caracci themselves modified their eclecticism and placed more reliance upon nature. but their pupils paid little heed to the modification. there were five of the caracci, but three of them--ludovico ( - ), agostino ( - ), and annibale ( - )--led the school, and of these annibale was the most distinguished. they had many pupils, and their influence was widely spread over italy. in sir joshua reynolds's day they were ranked with raphael, but at the present time criticism places them where they belong--painters of the decadence with little originality or spontaneity in their art, though much technical skill. domenichino ( - ) was the strongest of the pupils. his st. jerome was rated by poussin as one of the three great paintings of the world, but it never deserved such rank. it is powerfully composed, but poor in coloring and handling. the painter had great repute in his time, and was one of the best of the seventeenth century men. guido reni ( - ) was a painter of many gifts and accomplishments, combined with many weaknesses. his works are well composed and painted, but excessive in sentiment and overdone in pathos. albani ( - ) ran to elegance and a porcelain-like prettiness. guercino ( - ) was originally of the eclectic school at bologna, but later took up with the methods of the naturalists at naples. he was a painter of far more than the average ability. sassoferrato ( - ) and carlo dolci ( - ) were so super-saturated with sentimentality that often their skill as painters is overlooked or forgotten. in spirit they were about the weakest of the century. there were other eclectic schools started throughout italy--at milan, cremona, ferrara--but they produced little worth recording. at rome certain painters like cristofano allori ( - ), an exceptionally strong man for the time, berrettini ( - ), and maratta ( - ), manufactured a facile kind of painting from what was attractive in the various schools, but it was never other than meretricious work. [illustration: fig. .--annibale caracci. entombment of christ. louvre.] the naturalists: contemporary with the eclectics sprang up the neapolitan school of the naturalists, led by caravaggio ( - ) and his pupils. these schools opposed each other, and yet influenced each other. especially was this true with the later men, who took what was best in both schools. the naturalists were, perhaps, more firmly based upon nature than the bolognese eclectics. their aim was to take nature as they found it, and yet, in conformity with the extravagance of the age, they depicted extravagant nature. caravaggio thought to represent sacred scenes more truthfully by taking his models from the harsh street life about him and giving types of saints and apostles from neapolitan brawlers and bandits. it was a brutal, coarse representation, rather fierce in mood and impetuous in action, yet not without a good deal of tragic power. his subjects were rather dismal or morose, but there was knowledge in the drawing of them, some good color and brush-work and a peculiar darkness of shadow masses (originally gained from giorgione), that stood as an ear-mark of his whole school. from the continuous use of black shadows the school got the name of the "darklings," by which they are still known. giordano ( - ), a painter of prodigious facility and invention, salvator rosa ( - ), best known as one of the early painters of landscape, and ribera, a spanish painter, were the principal pupils. the late venetians: the decadence at venice, like the renaissance, came later than at florence, but after the death of tintoretto mannerisms and the imitation of the great men did away with originality. there was still much color left, and fine ceiling decorations were done, but the nobility and calm splendor of titian's days had passed. palma il giovine ( - ) with a hasty brush produced imitations of tintoretto with some grace and force, and in remarkable quantity. he and tintoretto were the most rapid and productive painters of the century; but palma's was not good in spirit, though quite dashing in technic. padovanino ( - ) was more of a titian follower, but, like all the other painters of the time, he was proficient with the brush and lacking in the stronger mental elements. the last great italian painter was tiepolo ( - ), and he was really great beyond his age. with an art founded on paolo veronese, he produced decorative ceilings and panels of high quality, with wonderful invention, a limpid brush, and a light flaky color peculiarly appropriate to the walls of churches and palaces. he was, especially in easel pictures, a brilliant, vivacious brushman, full of dash and spirit, tempered by a large knowledge of what was true and pictorial. some of his best pictures are still in venice, and modern painters are unstinted in their praise of them. he left a son, domenico tiepolo ( - ), who followed his methods. in the late days of venetian painting, canaletto ( - ) and guardi ( - ) achieved reputation by painting venetian canals and architecture with much color effect. [illustration: fig. .--caravaggio. the card players. dresden.] nineteenth-century painting in italy: there is little in the art of italy during the present century that shows a positive national spirit. it has been leaning on the rest of europe for many years, and the best that the living painters show is largely an echo of dusseldorf, munich, or paris. the revived classicism of david in france affected nineteenth-century painting in italy somewhat. then it was swayed by cornelius and overbeck from germany. morelli ( -[ ]) shows this latter influence, though one of the most important of the living men.[ ] in the 's mariano fortuny, a spaniard at rome, led the younger element in the glittering and the sparkling, and this style mingled with much that is more strikingly parisian than italian, may be found in the works of painters like michetti, de nittis ( - ), favretto, tito, nono, simonetti, and others. [footnote : died, .] [footnote : see _scribner's magazine_, neapolitan art, dec., , feb., .] of recent days the impressionistic view of light and color has had its influence; but the italian work at its best is below that of france. segantini[ ] was one of the most promising of the younger men in subjects that have an archaic air about them. boldini, though italian born and originally following fortuny's example, is really more parisian than anything else. he is an artist of much power and technical strength in _genre_ subjects and portraits. the newer men are fragiocomo, fattori, mancini, marchetti. [footnote : died, .] principal works: mannerists--agnolo bronzino, christ in limbo and many portraits in uffizi and nat. gal. lon.; vasari, many pictures in galleries at arezzo, bologna, berlin, munich, louvre, madrid; salviati, charity christ uffizi, patience pitti, st. thomas louvre, love and psyche berlin; federigo zucchero, duomo florence, ducal palace venice, allegories uffizi, calumny hampton court; baroccio, pardon of st. francis urbino, annunciation loreto, several pictures in uffizi, nat. gal. lon., louvre, dresden gal. eclectics--ludovico caracci, cathedral frescos bologna, thirteen pictures bologna gal.; agostino caracci, frescos (with annibale) farnese pal. rome, altar-pieces bologna gal.; annibale carracci, frescos (with agostino) farnese pal. rome, other pictures bologna gal., uffizi, naples mus., dresden, berlin, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; domenichino, st. jerome vatican, s. pietro in vincoli, diana borghese, bologna, pitti, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; guido reni, frescos aurora rospigliosi pal. rome, many pictures bologna, borghese gal., pitti, uffizi, brera, naples, louvre, and other galleries of europe; albani, guercino, sassoferrato, and carlo dolci, works in almost every european gallery, especially bologna; cristofano allori, judith pitti, also pictures in uffizi; berrettini and maratta, many examples in italian galleries, also louvre. naturalists--caravaggio, entombment vatican, many other works in pitti, uffizi, naples, louvre, dresden, st. petersburg; giordano, judgment of paris berlin, many pictures in dresden and italian galleries; salvator rosa, best marine in pitti, other works uffizi, brera, naples, madrid galleries and colonna, corsini, doria, chigi palaces rome. late venetians--palma il giovine, ducal palace venice, cassel, dresden, munich, madrid, naples, vienna galleries; padovanino, marriage in cana kneeling angel and other works venice acad., carmina venice, also galleries of louvre, uffizi, borghese, dresden, london; tiepolo, large fresco villa pisani stra, palazzo labia scuola carmina, venice, villa valmarana, and at wurtzburg, easel pictures venice acad., louvre, berlin, madrid; canaletto and guardi, many pictures in european galleries. modern italians[ ]--morelli, madonna royal chap. castiglione, assumption royal chap. naples; michetti, the vow nat. gal. rome; de nittis, place du carrousel luxembourg paris; boldini, gossips met. mus. new york. [footnote : only works in public places are given. those in private hands change too often for record here. for detailed list of works see champlin and perkins, _cyclopedia of painters and paintings._] chapter xii. french painting. sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth-century painting. books recommended: amorini, _vita del celebre pittore francesco primaticcio_; berger, _histoire de l'École française de peinture au xvii^{me} siècle_; bland, _les peintres des fêtes galantes, watteau, boucher, et al._; curmer, _l'oeuvre de jean fouquet_; delaborde, _Études sur les beaux arts en france et en italie_; didot, _Études sur jean cousin_; dimier, _french painting in xvi century_; dumont, _antoine watteau_; dussieux, _nouvelles recherches sur la vie de e. lesueur_; genevay, _le style louis xiv., charles le brun_; goncourt, _l'art du xviii^{me} siècle_; guibel, _Éloge de nicolas poussin_; guiffrey, _la famille de jean cousin_; laborde, _la renaissance des arts à la cour de france_; lagrange, _j. vernet et la peinture au xviii^{me} siècle_; lecoy de la marche, _le roi rené_; mantz, _françois boucher_; michiels, _Études sur l'art flamand dans l'est et le midi de la france_; muntz, _la renaissance en italie et en france_; palustre, _la renaissance en france_; pattison, _renaissance of art in france_; pattison, _claude lorrain_; poillon, _nicolas poussin_; stranahan, _history of french painting_. early french art: painting in france did not, as in italy, spring directly from christianity, though it dealt with the religious subject. from the beginning a decorative motive--the strong feature of french art--appears as the chief motive of painting. this showed itself largely in church ornament, garments, tapestries, miniatures, and illuminations. mural paintings were produced during the fifth century, probably in imitation of italian or roman example. under charlemagne, in the eighth century, byzantine influences were at work. in the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries much stained-glass work appeared, and also many missal paintings and furniture decorations. [illustration: fig. .--poussin. et in arcadia ego. louvre.] in the fifteenth century rené of anjou ( - ), king and painter, gave an impetus to art which he perhaps originally received from italy. his work showed some italian influence mingled with a great deal of flemish precision, and corresponded for france to the early renaissance work of italy, though by no means so advanced. contemporary with rené was jean fouquet ( ?- ?) an illuminator and portrait-painter, one of the earliest in french history. he was an artist of some original characteristics and produced an art detailed and exact in its realism. jean péreal (?- ?) and jean bourdichon ( ?- ?) with fouquet's pupils and sons, formed a school at tours which afterward came to show some italian influence. the native workmen at paris--they sprang up from illuminators to painters in all probability--showed more of the flemish influence. neither of the schools of the fifteenth century reflected much life or thought, but what there was of it was native to the soil, though their methods were influenced from without. sixteenth-century painting: during this century francis i., at fontainebleau, seems to have encouraged two schools of painting, one the native french and the other an imported italian, which afterward took to itself the name of the "school of fontainebleau." of the native artists the clouets were the most conspicuous. they were of flemish origin, and followed flemish methods both in technic and mediums. there were four of them, of whom jean ( ?- ?) and françois ( ?- ?) were the most noteworthy. they painted many portraits, and françois' work, bearing some resemblance to that of holbein, it has been doubtfully said that he was a pupil of that painter. all of their work was remarkable for detail and closely followed facts. the italian importation came about largely through the travels of francis i. in italy. he invited to fontainebleau leonardo da vinci, andrea del sarto, il rosso, primaticcio, and niccolò dell' abbate. these painters rather superseded and greatly influenced the french painters. the result was an italianized school of french art which ruled in france for many years. primaticcio was probably the greatest of the influencers, remaining as he did for thirty years in france. the native painters, jean cousin ( ?- ) and toussaint du breuil ( - ) followed his style, and in the next century the painters were even more servile imitators of italy--imitating not the best models either, but the mannerists, the eclectics, and the roman painters of the decadence. [illustration: fig. .--claude lorrain. flight into egypt. dresden.] seventeenth-century painting: this was a century of great development and production in france, the time of the founding of the french academy of painting and sculpture, and the formation of many picture collections. in the first part of the century the flemish and native tendencies existed, but they were overawed, outnumbered by the italian. not even rubens's painting for marie de' medici, in the palace of the luxembourg, could stem the tide of italy. the french painters flocked to rome to study the art of their great predecessors and were led astray by the flashy elegance of the late italians. among the earliest of this century was fréminet ( - ). he was first taught by his father and jean cousin, but afterward spent fifteen years in italy studying parmigianino and michael angelo. his work had something of the mannerist style about it and was overwrought and exaggerated. in shadows he seemed to have borrowed from caravaggio. vouet ( - ) was a student in italy of veronese's painting and afterward of guido reni and caravaggio. he was a mediocre artist, but had a great vogue in france and left many celebrated pupils. by all odds the best painter of this time was nicolas poussin ( - ). he lived almost all of his life in italy, and might be put down as an italian of the decadence. he was well versed in classical archæology, and had much of the classic taste and feeling prevalent at that time in the roman school of giulio romano. his work showed great intelligence and had an elevated grandiloquent style about it that was impressive. it reflected nothing french, and had little more root in present human sympathy than any of the other painting of the time, but it was better done. the drawing was correct if severe, the composition agreeable if formal, the coloring variegated if violent. many of his pictures have now changed for the worse in coloring owing to the dissipation of surface pigments. he was the founder of the classic and academic in french art, and in influence was the most important man of the century. he was especially strong in the heroic landscape, and in this branch helped form the style of his brother-in-law, gaspard (dughet) poussin ( - ). the landscape painter of the period, however, was claude lorrain ( - ). he differed from poussin in making his pictures depend more strictly upon landscape than upon figures. with both painters, the trees, mountains, valleys, buildings, figures, were of the grand classic variety. hills and plains, sylvan groves, flowing streams, peopled harbors, ionic and corinthian temples, roman aqueducts, mythological groups, were the materials used, and the object of their use was to show the ideal dwelling-place of man--the former garden of the gods. panoramic and slightly theatrical at times, claude's work was not without its poetic side, shrewd knowledge, and skilful execution. he was a leader in landscape, the man who first painted real golden sunlight and shed its light upon earth. there is a soft summer's-day drowsiness, a golden haze of atmosphere, a feeling of composure and restfulness about his pictures that are attractive. like poussin he depended much upon long sweeping lines in composition, and upon effects of linear perspective. [illustration: fig. --watteau. gilles. louvre.] court painting: when louis xiv. came to the throne painting took on a decided character, but it was hardly national or race character. the popular idea, if the people had an idea, did not obtain. there was no motive springing from the french except an inclination to follow italy; and in italy all the great art-motives were dead. in method the french painters followed the late italians, and imitated an imitation; in matter they bowed to the dictates of the court and reflected the king's mock-heroic spirit. echoing the fashion of the day, painting became pompous, theatrical, grandiloquent--a mass of vapid vanity utterly lacking in sincerity and truth. lebrun ( - ), painter in ordinary to the king, directed substantially all the painting of the reign. he aimed at pleasing royalty with flattering allusions to cæsarism and extravagant personifications of the king as a classic conqueror. his art had neither truth, nor genius, nor great skill, and so sought to startle by subject or size. enormous canvases of alexander's triumphs, in allusion to those of the great louis, were turned out to order, and versailles to this day is tapestried with battle-pieces in which louis is always victor. considering the amount of work done, lebrun showed great fecundity and industry, but none of it has much more than a mechanical ingenuity about it. it was rather original in composition, but poor in drawing, lighting, and coloring; and its example upon the painters of the time was pernicious. his contemporary, le sueur ( - ), was a more sympathetic and sincere painter, if not a much better technician. both were pupils of vouet, but le sueur's art was religious in subject, while lebrun's was military and monarchical. le sueur had a feeling for his theme, but was a weak painter, inclined to the sentimental, thin in coloring, and not at all certain in his drawing. french allusions to him as "the french raphael" show more national complacency than correctness. sebastian bourdon ( - ) was another painter of history, but a little out of the lebrun circle. he was not, however, free from the influence of italy, where he spent three years studying color more than drawing. this shows in his works, most of which are lacking in form. contemporary with these men was a group of portrait-painters who gained celebrity perhaps as much by their subjects as by their own powers. they were facile flatterers given over to the pomps of the reign and mirroring all its absurdities of fashion. their work has a graceful, smooth appearance, and, for its time, it was undoubtedly excellent portraiture. even to this day it has qualities of drawing and coloring to commend it, and at times one meets with exceptionally good work. the leaders among these portrait-painters were philip de champaigne ( - ), the best of his time; pierre mignard ( ?- ), a pupil of vouet, who studied in rome and afterward returned to france to become the successful rival of lebrun; largillière ( - ) and rigaud ( - ). eighteenth-century painting: the painting of louis xiv.'s time was continued into the eighteenth century for some fifteen years or more with little change. with the advent of louis xv. art took upon itself another character, and one that reflected perfectly the moral, social, and political france of the eighteenth century. the first louis clamored for glory, the second louis revelled in gayety, frivolity, and sensuality. this was the difference between both monarchs and both arts. the gay and the coquettish in painting had already been introduced by the regent, himself a dilettante in art, and when louis xv. came to the throne it passed from the gay to the insipid, the flippant, even the erotic. shepherds and shepherdesses dressed in court silks and satins with cottony sheep beside them posed in stage-set arcadias, pretty gods and goddesses reclined indolently upon gossamer clouds, and court gallants lounged under artificial trees by artificial ponds making love to pretty soubrettes from the theatre. yet, in spite of the lack of moral and intellectual elevation, in spite of frivolity and make-believe, this art was infinitely better than the pompous imitation of foreign example set up by louis xiv. it was more spontaneous, more original, more french. the influence of italy began to fail, and the painters began to mirror french life. it was largely court life, lively, vivacious, licentious, but in that very respect characteristic of the time. moreover, there was another quality about it that showed french taste at its best--the decorative quality. it can hardly be supposed that the fairy creations of the age were intended to represent actual nature. they were designed to ornament hall and boudoir, and in pure decorative delicacy of design, lightness of touch, color charm, they have never been excelled. the serious spirit was lacking, but the gayety of line and color was well given. [illustration: fig. .--boucher. pastoral. louvre.] watteau ( - ) was the one chiefly responsible for the coquette and soubrette of french art, and watteau was, practically speaking, the first french painter. his subjects were trifling bits of fashionable love-making, scenes from the opera, fêtes, balls, and the like. all his characters played at life in parks and groves that never grew, and most of his color was beautifully unreal; but for all that the work was original, decorative, and charming. moreover, watteau was a brushman, and introduced not only a new spirit and new subject into art, but a new method. the epic treatment of the italians was laid aside in favor of a genre treatment, and instead of line and flat surface watteau introduced color and cleverly laid pigment. he was a brilliant painter; not a great man in thought or imagination, but one of fancy, delicacy, and skill. unfortunately he set a bad example by his gay subjects, and those who came after him carried his gayety and lightness of spirit into exaggeration. watteau's best pupils were lancret ( - ) and pater ( - ), who painted in his style with fair results. after these men came van loo ( - ) and boucher ( - ), who turned watteau's charming fêtes, showing the costumes and manners of the regency, into flippant extravagance. not only was the moral tone and intellectual stamina of their art far below that of watteau, but their workmanship grew defective. both men possessed a remarkable facility of the hand and a keen decorative color-sense; but after a time both became stereotyped and mannered. drawing and modelling were neglected, light was wholly conventional, and landscape turned into a piece of embroidered background with a dresden china-tapestry effect about it. as decoration the general effect was often excellent, as a serious expression of life it was very weak, as an intellectual or moral force it was worse than worthless. fragonard ( - ) followed in a similar style, but was a more knowing man, clever in color, and a much freer and better brushman. a few painters in the time of louis xv. remained apparently unaffected by the court influence, and stand in conspicuous isolation. claude joseph vernet ( - ) was a landscape and marine painter of some repute in his time. he had a sense of the pictorial, but not a remarkable sense of the truthful in nature. chardin ( - ) and greuze ( - ), clung to portrayals of humble life and sought to popularize the _genre_ subject. chardin was not appreciated by the masses. his frank realism, his absolute sincerity of purpose, his play of light and its effect upon color, and his charming handling of textures were comparatively unnoticed. yet as a colorist he may be ranked second to none in french art, and in freshness of handling his work is a model for present-day painters. diderot early recognized chardin's excellence, and many artists since his day have admired his pictures; but he is not now a well-known or popular painter. the populace fancies greuze and his sentimental heads of young girls. they have a prettiness about them that is attractive, but as art they lack in force, and in workmanship they are too smooth, finical, and thin in handling. principal works: all of these french painters are best represented in the collections of the louvre. some of the other galleries, like the dresden, berlin, and national at london, have examples of their work; but the masterpieces are with the french people in the louvre and in the other municipal galleries of france. chapter xiii. french painting. the nineteenth century. books recommended: as before, stranahan, _et al._; also ballière, _henri regnault_; blanc, _les artistes de mon temps_; blanc, _histoire des peintres français au xix^{me} siècle_; blanc, _ingres et son oeuvre_; bigot, _peintres français contemporains_; breton, _la vie d'un artiste_ (_english translation_); brownell, _french art_; burty, _maîtres et petit-maîtres_; chesneau, _peinture française au xix^{me} siècle_; clément, _Études sur les beaux arts en france_; clément, _prudhon_; delaborde, _oeuvre de paul delaroche_; delécluze, _jacques louis david, son École, et son temps_; duret, _les peintres français en _; gautier, _l'art moderne_; gautier, _romanticisme_; gonse, _eugène fromentin_; hamerton, _contemporary french painting_; hamerton, _painting in france after the decline of classicism_; henley, _memorial catalogue of french and dutch loan collection_ ( ); henriet, _charles daubigny et son oeuvre_; lenormant, _les artistes contemporains_; lenormant, _ary scheffer_; merson, _ingres, sa vie et son oeuvre_; moreau, _decamps et son oeuvre_; planche, _Études sur l'École française_; robaut et chesneau, _l' oeuvre complet d'eugène delacroix_; sensier, _théodore rousseau_; sensier, _life and works of j. f. millet_; silvestre, _histoire des artistes vivants et étrangers_; strahan, _modern french art_; thoré, _l'art contemporain_; theuriet, _jules bastien-lepage_; van dyke, _modern french masters_. the revolutionary time: in considering this century's art in europe, it must be remembered that a great social and intellectual change has taken place since the days of the medici. the power so long pent up in italy during the renaissance finally broke and scattered itself upon the western nations; societies and states were torn down and rebuilded, political, social, and religious ideas shifted into new garbs; the old order passed away. [illustration: fig. .--david. the sabines. louvre.] religion as an art-motive, or even as an art-subject, ceased to obtain anywhere. the church failed as an art-patron, and the walls of cloister and cathedral furnished no new bible readings to the unlettered. painting, from being a necessity of life, passed into a luxury, and the king, the state, or the private collector became the patron. nature and actual life were about the only sources left from which original art could draw its materials. these have been freely used, but not so much in a national as in an individual manner. the tendency to-day is not to put forth a universal conception but an individual belief. individualism--the same quality that appeared so strongly in michael angelo's art--has become a keynote in modern work. it is not the only kind of art that has been shown in this century, nor is nature the only theme from which art has been derived. we must remember and consider the influence of the past upon modern men, and the attempts to restore the classic beauty of the greek, roman, and italian, which practically ruled french painting in the first part of this century. french classicism of david: this was a revival of greek form in art, founded on the belief expressed by winckelmann, that beauty lay in form, and was best shown by the ancient greeks. it was the objective view of art which saw beauty in the external and tolerated no individuality in the artist except that which was shown in technical skill. it was little more than an imitation of the greek and roman marbles as types, with insistence upon perfect form, correct drawing, and balanced composition. in theme and spirit it was pseudo-heroic, the incidents of greek and roman history forming the chief subjects, and in method it rather despised color, light-and-shade, and natural surroundings. it was elevated, lofty, ideal in aspiration, but coldly unsympathetic because lacking in contemporary interest; and, though correct enough in classic form, was lacking in the classic spirit. like all reanimated art, it was derivative as regards its forms and lacking in spontaneity. the reason for the existence of greek art died with its civilization, and those, like the french classicists, who sought to revive it, brought a copy of the past into the present, expecting the world to accept it. there was some social, and perhaps artistic, reason, however, for the revival of the classic in the french art of the late eighteenth century. it was a revolt, and at that time revolts were popular. the art of boucher and van loo had become quite unbearable. it was flippant, careless, licentious. it had no seriousness or dignity about it. moreover, it smacked of the bourbon monarchy, which people had come to hate. classicism was severe, elevated, respectable at least, and had the air of the heroic republic about it. it was a return to a sterner view of life, with the martial spirit behind it as an impetus, and it had a great vogue. for many years during the revolution, the consulate, and the empire, classicism was accepted by the sovereigns and the institute of france, and to this day it lives in a modified form in that semi-classic work known as academic art. the classic school: vien ( - ) was the first painter to protest against the art of boucher and van loo by advocating more nobility of form and a closer study of nature. he was, however, more devoted to the antique forms he had studied in rome than to nature. in subject and line his tendency was classic, with a leaning toward the italians of the decadence. he lacked the force to carry out a complete reform in painting, but his pupil david ( - ) accomplished what he had begun. it was david who established the reign of classicism, and by native power became the leader. the time was appropriate, the revolution called for pictures of romulus, brutus and achilles, and napoleon encouraged the military theme. david had studied the marbles at rome, and he used them largely for models, reproducing scenes from greek and roman life in an elevated and sculpturesque style, with much archæological knowledge and a great deal of skill. in color, relief, sentiment, individuality, his painting was lacking. he despised all that. the rhythm of line, the sweep of composed groups, the heroic subject and the heroic treatment, made up his art. it was thoroughly objective, and what contemporary interest it possessed lay largely in the martial spirit then prevalent. of course it was upheld by the institute, and it really set the pace for french painting for nearly half a century. when david was called upon to paint napoleonic pictures he painted them under protest, and yet these, with his portraits, constitute his best work. in portraiture he was uncommonly strong at times. [illustration: fig. .--ingres. oedipus and sphinx. louvre.] after the restoration david, who had been a revolutionist, and then an adherent of napoleon, was sent into exile; but the influence he had left and the school he had established were carried on by his contemporaries and pupils. of the former regnault ( - ), vincent ( - ), and prudhon ( - ) were the most conspicuous. the last one was considered as out of the classic circle, but so far as making his art depend upon drawing and composition, he was a genuine classicist. his subjects, instead of being heroic, inclined to the mythological and the allegorical. in italy he had been a student of the renaissance painters, and from them borrowed a method of shadow gradation that rendered his figures misty and phantom-like. they possessed an ease of movement sometimes called "prudhonesque grace," and in composition were well placed and effective. of david's pupils there were many. only a few of them, however, had pronounced ability, and even these carried david's methods into the theatrical. girodet ( - ) was a draughtsman of considerable power, but with poor taste in color and little repose in composition. most of his work was exaggeration and strained effect. lethière ( - ) and guérin ( - ), pupils of regnault, were painters akin to girodet, but inferior to him. gérard ( - ) was a weak david follower, who gained some celebrity by painting portraits of celebrated men and women. the two pupils of david who brought him the most credit were ingres ( - ) and gros ( - ). ingres was a cold, persevering man, whose principles had been well settled by david early in life, and were adhered to with conviction by the pupil to the last. he modified the classic subject somewhat, studied raphael and the italians, and reintroduced the single figure into art (the source, and the odalisque, for example). for color he had no fancy. "in nature all is form," he used to say. painting he thought not an independent art, but "a development of sculpture." to consider emotion, color, or light as the equal of form was monstrous, and to compare rembrandt with raphael was blasphemy. to this belief he clung to the end, faithfully reproducing the human figure, and it is not to be wondered at that eventually he became a learned draughtsman. his single figures and his portraits show him to the best advantage. he had a strong grasp of modelling and an artistic sense of the beauty and dignity of line not excelled by any artist of this century. and to him more than any other painter is due the cultured draughtsmanship which is to-day the just pride of the french school. gros was a more vacillating man, and by reason of forsaking the classic subject for napoleonic battle-pieces, he unconsciously led the way toward romanticism. he excelled as a draughtsman, but when he came to paint the field of eylau and the pest of jaffa he mingled color, light, air, movement, action, sacrificing classic composition and repose to reality. this was heresy from the davidian point of view, and david eventually convinced him of it. gros returned to the classic theme and treatment, but soon after was so reviled by the changing criticism of the time that he committed suicide in the seine. his art, however, was the beginning of romanticism. the landscape painting of this time was rather academic and unsympathetic. it was a continuation of the claude-poussin tradition, and in its insistence upon line, grandeur of space, and imposing trees and mountains, was a fit companion to the classic figure-piece. it had little basis in nature, and little in color or feeling to commend it. watelet ( - ), bertin ( - ), michallon ( - ), and aligny ( - ), were its exponents. a few painters seemed to stand apart from the contemporary influences. madame vigée-lebrun ( - ), a successful portrait-painter of nobility, and horace vernet ( - ), a popular battle-painter, many of whose works are to be seen at versailles, were of this class. romanticism: the movement in french painting which began about and took the name of romanticism was but a part of the "storm-and-stress" feeling that swept germany, england, and france at the beginning of this century, appearing first in literature and afterward in art. it had its origin in a discontent with the present, a passionate yearning for the unattainable, an intensity of sentiment, gloomy melancholy imaginings, and a desire to express the inexpressible. it was emphatically subjective, self-conscious, a mood of mind or feeling. in this respect it was diametrically opposed to the academic and the classic. in french painting it came forward in opposition to the classicism of david. people had begun to weary of greek and roman heroes and their deeds, of impersonal line-bounded statuesque art. there was a demand for something more representative, spontaneous, expressive of the intense feeling of the time. the very gist of romanticism was passion. freedom to express itself in what form it would was a condition of its existence. [illustration: fig. .--delacroix. massacre of scio. louvre.] the classic subject was abandoned by the romanticists for dramatic scenes of mediæval and modern times. the romantic hero and heroine in scenes of horror, perils by land and sea, flame and fury, love and anguish, came upon the boards. much of this was illustration of history, the novel, and poetry, especially the poetry of goethe, byron, and scott. line was slurred in favor of color, symmetrical composition gave way to wild disordered groups in headlong action, and atmospheres, skies, and lights were twisted and distorted to convey the sentiment of the story. it was thus, more by suggestion than realization, that romanticism sought to give the poetic sentiment of life. its position toward classicism was antagonistic, a rebound, a flying to the other extreme. one virtually said that beauty was in the greek form, the other that it was in the painter's emotional nature. the disagreement was violent, and out of it grew the so-called romantic quarrel of the 's. leaders of romanticism: symptoms of the coming movement were apparent long before any open revolt. gros had made innovations on the classic in his battle-pieces, but the first positive dissent from classic teachings was made in the salon of by géricault ( - ) with his raft of the medusa. it represented the starving, the dead, and the dying of the medusa's crew on a raft in mid-ocean. the subject was not classic. it was literary, romantic, dramatic, almost theatric in its seizing of the critical moment. its theme was restless, harrowing, horrible. it met with instant opposition from the old men and applause from the young men. it was the trumpet-note of the revolt, but géricault did not live long enough to become the leader of romanticism. that position fell to his contemporary and fellow-pupil, delacroix ( - ). it was in that delacroix's first salon picture (the dante and virgil) appeared. a strange, ghost-like scene from dante's _inferno_, the black atmosphere of the nether world, weird faces, weird colors, weird flames, and a modelling of the figures by patches of color almost savage as compared to the tinted drawing of classicism. delacroix's youth saved the picture from condemnation, but it was different with his massacre of scio two years later. this was decried by the classicists, and even gros called it "the massacre of art." the painter was accused of establishing the worship of the ugly, he was no draughtsman, had no selection, no severity, nothing but brutality. but delacroix was as obstinate as ingres, and declared that the whole world could not prevent him from seeing and painting things in his own way. it was thus the quarrel started, the young men siding with delacroix, the older men following david and ingres. in himself delacroix embodied all that was best and strongest in the romantic movement. his painting was intended to convey a romantic mood of mind by combinations of color, light, air, and the like. in subject it was tragic and passionate, like the poetry of hugo, byron, and scott. the figures were usually given with anguish-wrung brows, wild eyes, dishevelled hair, and impetuous, contorted action. the painter never cared for technical details, seeking always to gain the effect of the whole rather than the exactness of the part. he purposely slurred drawing at times, and was opposed to formal composition. in color he was superior, though somewhat violent at times, and in brush-work he was often labored and patchy. his strength lay in imagination displayed in color and in action. the quarrel between classicism and romanticism lasted some years, with neither side victorious. delacroix won recognition for his view of art, but did not crush the belief in form which was to come to the surface again. he fought almost alone. many painters rallied around him, but they added little strength to the new movement. devéria ( - ) and champmartin ( - ) were highly thought of at first, but they rapidly degenerated. sigalon ( - ), cogniet ( - ), robert-fleury ( -), and boulanger ( - ), were romanticists, but achieved more as teachers than as painters. delaroche ( - ) was an eclectic--in fact, founded a school of that name--thinking to take what was best from both parties. inventing nothing, he profited by all invented. he employed the romantic subject and color, but adhered to classic drawing. his composition was good, his costume careful in detail, his brush-work smooth, and his story-telling capacity excellent. all these qualities made him a popular painter, but not an original or powerful one. ary scheffer ( - ) was an illustrator of goethe and byron, frail in both sentiment and color, a painter who started as a romanticist, but afterward developed line under ingres. [illustration: fig. .--gÉrÔme. pollice verso.] the orientalists: in both literature and painting one phase of romanticism showed itself in a love for the life, the light, the color of the orient. from paris decamps ( - ) was the first painter to visit the east and paint eastern life. he was a _genre_ painter more than a figure painter, giving naturalistic street scenes in turkey and asia minor, courts, and interiors, with great feeling for air, warmth of color, and light. at about the same time marilhat ( - ) was in egypt picturing the life of that country in a similar manner; and later, fromentin ( - ), painter and writer, following delacroix, went to algiers and portrayed there arab life with fast-flying horses, the desert air, sky, light, and color. théodore frere and ziem belong further on in the century, but were no less exponents of romanticism in the east. fifteen years after the starting of romanticism the movement had materially subsided. it had never been a school in the sense of having rules and laws of art. liberty of thought and perfect freedom for individual expression were all it advocated. as a result there was no unity, for there was nothing to unite upon; and with every painter painting as he pleased, regardless of law, extravagance was inevitable. this was the case, and when the next generation came in romanticism began to be ridiculed for its excesses. a reaction started in favor of more line and academic training. this was first shown by the students of delaroche, though there were a number of movements at the time, all of them leading away from romanticism. a recoil from too much color in favor of more form was inevitable, but romanticism was not to perish entirely. its influence was to go on, and to appear in the work of later men. eclectics and transitional painters: after ingres his follower flandrin ( - ) was the most considerable draughtsman of the time. he was not classic but religious in subject, and is sometimes called "the religious painter of france." he had a delicate beauty of line and a fine feeling for form, but never was strong in color, brush-work, or sentiment. his best work appears in his very fine portraits. gleyre ( - ) was a man of classic methods, but romantic tastes, who modified the heroic into the idyllic and mythologic. he was a sentimental day-dreamer, with a touch of melancholy about the vanished past, appearing in arcadian fancies, pretty nymphs, and idealized memories of youth. in execution he was not at all romantic. his color was pale, his drawing delicate, and his lighting misty and uncertain. it was the etherealized classic method, and this method he transmitted to a little band of painters called the new-greeks, who, in point of time, belong much further along in the century, but in their art are with gleyre. their work never rose above the idyllic and the graceful, and calls for no special mention. hamon ( - ) and aubert ( -) belonged to the band, and gérôme ( -[ ]) was at one time its leader, but he afterward emerged from it to a higher place in french art, where he will find mention hereafter. [footnote : died, .] couture ( - ) stood quite by himself, a mingling of several influences. his chief picture, the romans of the decadence, is classic in subject, romantic in sentiment (and this very largely expressed by warmth of color), and rather realistic in natural appearance. he was an eclectic in a way, and yet seems to stand as the forerunner of a large body of artists who find classification hereafter under the title of the semi-classicists. principal works: all the painters mentioned in this chapter are best represented in the louvre at paris, at versailles, and in the museums of the chief french cities. some works of the late or living men may be found in the luxembourg, where pictures bought by the state are kept for ten years after the painter's death, and then are either sent to the louvre or to the other municipal galleries of france. some pictures by these men are also to be seen in the metropolitan museum, new york, the boston museum, and the chicago art institute. chapter xiv. french painting. the nineteenth century (_continued_). books recommended: the books before mentioned, consult also general bibliography, (page xv.) the landscape painters: the influence of either the classic or romantic example may be traced in almost all of the french painting of this century. the opposed teachings find representatives in new men, and under different names the modified dispute goes on--the dispute of the academic _versus_ the individual, the art of form and line _versus_ the art of sentiment and color. with the classicism of david not only the figure but the landscape setting of it, took on an ideal heroic character. trees and hills and rivers became supernaturally grand and impressive. everything was elevated by method to produce an imaginary arcadia fit for the deities of the classic world. the result was that nature and the humanity of the painter passed out in favor of school formula and academic traditions. when romanticism came in this was changed, but nature falsified in another direction. landscape was given an interest in human affairs, and made to look gay or sad, peaceful or turbulent, as the day went well or ill with the hero of the story portrayed. it was, however, truer to the actual than the classic, more studied in the parts, more united in the whole. about the year the influence of romanticism began to show in a new landscape art. that is to say, the emotional impulse springing from romanticism combined with the study of the old dutch landscapists, and the english contemporary painters, constable and bonington, set a large number of painters to the close study of nature and ultimately developed what has been vaguely called the fontainebleau-barbizon school: this whole school was primarily devoted to showing the sentiment of color and light. it took nature just as it found it in the forest of fontainebleau, on the plain of barbizon, and elsewhere, and treated it with a poetic feeling for light, shadow, atmosphere, color, that resulted in the best landscape painting yet known to us. [illustration: fig. .--corot. landscape.] corot ( - ) though classically trained under bertin, and though somewhat apart from the other men in his life, belongs with this group. he was a man whose artistic life was filled with the beauty of light and air. these he painted with great singleness of aim and great poetic charm. most of his work is in a light silvery key of color, usually slight in composition, simple in masses of light and dark, and very broadly but knowingly handled with the brush. he began painting by using the minute brush, but changed it later on for a freer style which recorded only the great omnipresent truths and suppressed the small ones. he has never had a superior in producing the permeating light of morning and evening. for this alone, if for no other excellence, he deservedly holds high rank. rousseau ( - ) was one of the foremost of the recognized leaders, and probably the most learned landscapist of this century. a man of many moods and methods he produced in variety with rare versatility. much of his work was experimental, but at his best he had a majestic conception of nature, a sense of its power and permanence, its volume and mass, that often resulted in the highest quality of pictorial poetry. in color he was rich and usually warm, in technic firm and individual, in sentiment at times quite sublime. at first he painted broadly and won friends among the artists and sneers from the public; then in his middle style he painted in detail, and had a period of popular success; in his late style he went back to the broad manner, and died amid quarrels and vexations of spirits. his long-time friend and companion, jules dupré ( - ), hardly reached up to him, though a strong painter in landscape and marine. he was a good but not great colorist, and, technically, his brush was broad enough but sometimes heavy. his late work is inferior in sentiment and labored in handling. diaz ( - ) was allied to rousseau in aim and method, though not so sure nor so powerful a painter. he had fancy and variety in creation that sometimes ran to license, and in color he was clear and brilliant. never very well trained, his drawing is often indifferent and his light distorted, but these are more than atoned for by delicacy and poetic charm. at times he painted with much power. daubigny ( - ) seemed more like corot in his charm of style and love of atmosphere and light than any of the others. he was fond of the banks of the seine and the marne at twilight, with evening atmospheres and dark trees standing in silent ranks against the warm sky. he was also fond of the gray day along the coast, and even the sea attracted him not a little. he was a painter of high abilities, and in treatment strongly individual, even distinguished, by his simplicity and directness. unity of the whole, grasp of the mass entire, was his technical aim, and this he sought to get not so much by line as by color-tones of varying value. in this respect he seemed a connecting link between corot and the present-day impressionists. michel ( - ), huet ( - ), chintreuil ( - ), and français ( -) were all allied in point of view with this group of landscape painters, and among the late men who have carried out their beliefs are cazin,[ ] yon,[ ] damoye, pointelin, harpignies and pelouse[ ] seem a little more inclined to the realistic than the poetic view, though producing work of much virility and intelligence. [footnote : died, .] [footnote : died, .] [footnote : died, .] contemporary and associated with the fontainebleau painters were a number of men who won high distinction as painters of animals: troyon ( - ) was the most prominent among them. his work shows the same sentiment of light and color as the fontainebleau landscapists, and with it there is much keen insight into animal life. as a technician he was rather hard at first, and he never was a correct draughtsman, but he had a way of giving the character of the objects he portrayed which is the very essence of truth. he did many landscapes with and without cattle. his best pupil was van marcke ( - ), who followed his methods but never possessed the feeling of his master. jacque ( -[ ]) is also of the fontainebleau-barbizon group, and is justly celebrated for his paintings and etchings of sheep. the poetry of the school is his, and technically he is fine in color at times, if often rather dark in illumination. like troyon he knows his subject well, and can show the nature of sheep with true feeling. rosa bonheur ( -[ ]) and her brother, auguste bonheur ( - ), have both dealt with animal life, but never with that fine artistic feeling which would warrant their popularity. their work is correct enough, but prosaic and commonplace in spirit. they do not belong in the same group with troyon and rousseau. [footnote : died, .] [footnote : died, .] [illustration: fig. .--rousseau, charcoal burners' hut. fuller collection.] the peasant painters: allied again in feeling and sentiment with the fontainebleau landscapists were some celebrated painters of peasant life, chief among whom stood millet ( - ), of barbizon. the pictorial inclination of millet was early grounded by a study of delacroix, the master romanticist, and his work is an expression of romanticism modified by an individual study of nature and applied to peasant life. he was peasant born, living and dying at barbizon, sympathizing with his class, and painting them with great poetic force and simplicity. his sentiment sometimes has a literary bias, as in his far-famed but indifferent angelus, but usually it is strictly pictorial and has to do with the beauty of light, air, color, motion, life, as shown in the sower or the gleaners. technically he was not strong as a draughtsman or a brushman, but he had a large feeling for form, great simplicity in line, keen perception of the relations of light and dark, and at times an excellent color-sense. he was virtually the discoverer of the peasant as an art subject, and for this, as for his original point of view and artistic feeling, he is ranked as one of the foremost artists of the century. jules breton ( -), though painting little besides the peasantry, is no millet follower, for he started painting peasant scenes at about the same time as millet. his affinities were with the new-greeks early in life, and ever since he has inclined toward the academic in style, though handling the rustic subject. he is a good technician, except in his late work; but as an original thinker, as a pictorial poet, he does not show the intensity or profundity of millet. the followers of the millet-breton tradition are many. the blue-frocked and sabot-shod peasantry have appeared in salon and gallery for twenty years and more, but with not very good results. the imitators, as usual, have caught at the subject and missed the spirit. billet and legros, contemporaries of millet, still living, and lerolle, a man of present-day note, are perhaps the most considerable of the painters of rural subjects to-day. the semi-classicists: it must not be inferred that the classic influence of david and ingres disappeared from view with the coming of the romanticists, the fontainebleau landscapists, and the barbizon painters. on the contrary, side by side with these men, and opposed to them, were the believers in line and academic formulas of the beautiful. the whole tendency of academic art in france was against delacroix, rousseau, and millet. during their lives they were regarded as heretics in art and without the pale of the academy. their art, however, combined with nature study and the realism of courbet, succeeded in modifying the severe classicism of ingres into what has been called semi-classicism. it consists in the elevated, heroic, or historical theme, academic form well drawn, some show of bright colors, smoothness of brush-work, and precision and nicety of detail. in treatment it attempts the realistic, but in spirit it is usually stilted, cold, unsympathetic. cabanel ( - ) and bouguereau ( - ) have both represented semi-classic art well. they are justly ranked as famous draughtsmen and good portrait-painters, but their work always has about it the stamp of the academy machine, a something done to order, knowing and exact, but lacking in the personal element. it is a weakness of the academic method that it virtually banishes the individuality of eye and hand in favor of school formulas. cabanel and bouguereau have painted many incidents of classic and historic story, but with never a dash of enthusiasm or a suggestion of the great qualities of painting. their drawing has been as thorough as could be asked for, but their colorings have been harsh and their brushes cold and thin. gérôme ( -[ ]) is a man of classic training and inclination, but his versatility hardly allows him to be classified anywhere. he was first a leader of the new-greeks, painting delicate mythological subjects; then a historical painter, showing deaths of cæsar and the like; then an orientalist, giving scenes from cairo and constantinople; then a _genre_ painter, depicting contemporary subjects in the many lands through which he has travelled. whatever he has done shows semi-classic drawing, ethnological and archæological knowledge, parisian technic, and exact detail. his travels have not changed his precise scientific point of view. he is a true academician at bottom, but a more versatile and cultured painter than either cabanel or bouguereau. he draws well, sometimes uses color well, and is an excellent painter of textures. a man of great learning in many departments he is no painter to be sneered at, and yet not a painter to make the pulse beat faster or to arouse the æsthetic emotions. his work is impersonal, objective fact, showing a brilliant exterior but inwardly devoid of feeling. [footnote : died, .] [illustration: fig. .--millet. the gleaners. louvre.] paul baudry ( - ), though a disciple of line, was not precisely a semi-classicist, and perhaps for that reason was superior to any of the academic painters of his time. he was a follower of the old masters in rome more than the _École des beaux arts_. his subjects, aside from many splendid portraits, were almost all classical, allegorical, or mythological. he was a fine draughtsman, and, what is more remarkable in conjunction therewith, a fine colorist. he was hardly a great originator, and had not passion, dramatic force, or much sentiment, except such as may be found in his delicate coloring and rhythm of line. nevertheless he was an artist to be admired for his purity of purpose and breadth of accomplishment. his chief work is to be seen in the opera at paris. puvis de chavannes ( -[ ]) is quite a different style of painter, and is remarkable for fine delicate tones of color which hold their place well on wall or ceiling, and for a certain grandeur of composition. in his desire to revive the monumental painting of the renaissance he has met with much praise and much blame. he is an artist of sincerity and learning, and as a wall-painter has no superior in contemporary france. [footnote : died, .] hébert ( - ), an early painter of academic tendencies, and henner ( -), fond of form and yet a brushman with an idyllic feeling for light and color in dark surroundings, are painters who may come under the semi-classic grouping. lefebvre ( -) is probably the most pronounced in academic methods among the present men, a draughtsman of ability. portrait and figure painters: under this heading may be included those painters who stand by themselves, showing no positive preference for either the classic or romantic followings. bonnat ( -) has painted all kinds of subjects--_genre_, figure, and historical pieces--but is perhaps best known as a portrait-painter. he has done forcible work. some of it indeed is astonishing in its realistic modelling--the accentuation of light and shadow often causing the figures to advance unnaturally. from this feature and from his detail he has been known for years as a "realist." his anatomical christ on the cross and mural paintings in the pantheon are examples. as a portrait-painter he is acceptable, if at times a little raw in color. another portrait-painter of celebrity is carolus-duran ( -). he is rather startling at times in his portrayal of robes and draperies, has a facility of the brush that is frequently deceptive, and in color is sometimes vivid. he has had great success as a teacher, and is, all told, a painter of high rank. delaunay ( - ) in late years painted little besides portraits, and was one of the conservatives of french art. laurens ( -) has been more of a historical painter than the others, and has dealt largely with death scenes. he is often spoken of as "the painter of the dead," a man of sound training and excellent technical power. regnault ( - ) was a figure and _genre_ painter with much feeling for oriental light and color, who unfortunately was killed in battle at twenty-seven years of age. he was an artist of promise, and has left several notable canvases. among the younger men who portray the historical subject in an elevated style mention should be made of cormon ( -), benjamin-constant ( -[ ]), and rochegrosse. as painters of portraits aman-jean and carrière[ ] have long held rank, and each succeeding salon brings new portraitists to the front. [footnote : died, .] [footnote : died, .] the realists: about the time of the appearance of millet, say , there also came to the front a man who scorned both classicism and romanticism, and maintained that the only model and subject of art should be nature. this man, courbet ( - ), really gave a third tendency to the art of this century in france, and his influence undoubtedly had much to do with modifying both the classic and romantic tendencies. courbet was a man of arrogant, dogmatic disposition, and was quite heartily detested during his life, but that he was a painter of great ability few will deny. his theory was the abolition of both sentiment and academic law, and the taking of nature just as it was, with all its beauties and all its deformities. this, too, was his practice to a certain extent. his art is material, and yet at times lofty in conception even to the sublime. and while he believed in realism he did not believe in petty detail, but rather in the great truths of nature. these he saw with a discerning eye and portrayed with a masterful brush. he believed in what he saw only, and had more the observing than the reflective or emotional disposition. as a technician he was coarse but superbly strong, handling sky, earth, air, with the ease and power of one well trained in his craft. his subjects were many--the peasantry of france, landscape, and the sea holding prominent places--and his influence, though not direct because he had no pupils of consequence, has been most potent with the late men. [illustration: fig. .--cabanel. phÆdra.] the young painter of to-day who does things in a "realistic" way is frequently met with in french art. l'hermitte ( -), julien dupré ( -), and others have handled the peasant subject with skill, after the millet-courbet initiative; and bastien-lepage ( - ) excited a good deal of admiration in his lifetime for the truth and evident sincerity of his art. bastien's point of view was realistic enough, but somewhat material. he never handled the large composition with success, but in small pieces and in portraits he was quite above criticism. his following among the young men was considerable, and the so-called impressionists have ranked him among their disciples or leaders. painters of military scenes, genre, etc.: the art of meissonier ( - ), while extremely realistic in modern detail, probably originated from a study of the seventeenth-century dutchmen like terburg and metsu. it does not portray low life, but rather the half-aristocratic--the scholar, the cavalier, the gentleman of leisure. this is done on a small scale with microscopic nicety, and really more in the historical than the _genre_ spirit. single figures and interiors were his preference, but he also painted a cycle of napoleonic battle-pictures with much force. there is little or no sentiment about his work--little more than in that of gérôme. his success lay in exact technical accomplishment. he drew well, painted well, and at times was a superior colorist. his art is more admired by the public than by the painters; but even the latter do not fail to praise his skill of hand. he was a great craftsman in the infinitely little. as a great artist his rank is still open to question. the _genre_ painting of fashionable life has been carried out by many followers of meissonier, whose names need not be mentioned since they have not improved upon their forerunner. toulmouche ( -), leloir ( - ), vibert ( -), bargue (?- ), and others, though somewhat different from meissonier, belong among those painters of _genre_ who love detail, costumes, stories, and pretty faces. among the painters of military _genre_ mention should be made of de neuville ( - ), berne-bellecour ( -), detaille ( -), and aimé-morot ( -), all of them painters of merit. quite a different style of painting--half figure-piece half _genre_--is to be found in the work of ribot ( -), a strong painter, remarkable for his apposition of high flesh lights with deep shadows, after the manner of ribera, the spanish painter. roybet ( -) is fond of rich stuffs and tapestries with velvet-clad characters in interiors, out of which he makes good color effects. bonvin ( - ) and mettling have painted the interior with small figures, copper-kettles, and other still-life that have given brilliancy to their pictures. as a still-life painter vollon ( -) has never had a superior. his fruits, flowers, armors, even his small marines and harbor pieces, are painted with one of the surest brushes of this century. he is called the "painter's painter," and is a man of great force in handling color, and in large realistic effect. dantan and friant have both produced canvases showing figures in interiors. a number of excellent _genre_ painters have been claimed by the impressionists as belonging to their brotherhood. there is little to warrant the claim, except the adoption to some extent of the modern ideas of illumination and flat painting. dagnan-bouveret ( -) is one of these men, a good draughtsman, and a finished clean painter who by his recent use of high color finds himself occasionally looked upon as an impressionist. as a matter of fact he is one of the most conservative of the moderns--a man of feeling and imagination, and a fine technician. fantin-latour ( - ) is half romantic, half allegorical in subject, and in treatment oftentimes designedly vague and shadowy, more suggestive than realistic. duez ( -) and gervex ( -) are perhaps nearer to impressionism in their works than the others, but they are not at all advance advocates of this latest phase of art. in addition there are cottet and henri martin. [illustration: fig. .--meissonier. napoleon in .] the impressionists: the name is a misnomer. every painter is an impressionist in so far as he records his impressions, and all art is impressionistic. what manet ( - ), the leader of the original movement, meant to say was that nature should not be painted as it actually is, but as it "impresses" the painter. he and his few followers tried to change the name to independents, but the original name has clung to them and been mistakenly fastened to a present band of landscape painters who are seeking effects of light and air and should be called luminists if it is necessary for them to be named at all. manet was extravagant in method and disposed toward low life for a subject, which has always militated against his popularity; but he was a very important man for his technical discoveries regarding the relations of light and shadow, the flat appearance of nature, the exact value of color tones. some of his works, like the boy with a sword and the toreador dead, are excellent pieces of painting. the higher imaginative qualities of art manet made no great effort at attaining. degas stands quite by himself, strong in effects of motion, especially with race-horses, fine in color, and a delightful brushman in such subjects as ballet-girls and scenes from the theatre. besnard is one of the best of the present men. he deals with the figure, and is usually concerned with the problem of harmonizing color under conflicting lights, such as twilight and lamplight. béraud and raffaelli are exceedingly clever in street scenes and character pieces; pissarro[ ] handles the peasantry in high color; brown ( - ), the race-horse, and renoir, the middle class of social life. caillebotte, roll, forain, and miss cassatt, an american, are also classed with the impressionists. [footnote : died, .] impressionist landscape painters: of recent years there has been a disposition to change the key of light in landscape painting, to get nearer the truth of nature in the height of light and in the height of shadows. in doing this claude monet, the present leader of the movement, has done away with the dark brown or black shadow and substituted the light-colored shadow, which is nearer the actual truth of nature. in trying to raise the pitch of light he has not been quite so successful, though accomplishing something. his method is to use pure prismatic colors on the principle that color is light in a decomposed form, and that its proper juxtaposition on canvas will recompose into pure light again. hence the use of light shadows and bright colors. the aim of these modern men is chiefly to gain the effect of light and air. they do not apparently care for subject, detail, or composition. at present their work is in the experimental stage, but from the way in which it is being accepted and followed by the painters of to-day we may be sure the movement is of considerable importance. there will probably be a reaction in favor of more form and solidity than the present men give, but the high key of light will be retained. there are so many painters following these modern methods, not only in france but all over the world, that a list of their names would be impossible. in france sisley with monet are the two important landscapists. in marines boudin and montenard should be mentioned. principal works: the modern french painters are seen to advantage in the louvre, luxembourg, pantheon, sorbonne, and the municipal galleries of france. also metropolitan museum new york, chicago art institute, boston museum, and many private collections in france and america. consult for works in public or private hands, champlin and perkins, _cyclopedia of painters and paintings_, under names of artists. chapter xv. spanish painting. books recommended: bermudez, _diccionario de las bellas artes en españa_; davillier, _mémoire de velasquez_; davillier, _fortuny_; eusebi, _los differentes escuelas de pintura_; ford, _handbook of spain_; head, _history of spanish and french schools of painting_; justi, _velasquez and his times_; lefort, _velasquez_; lefort, _francisco goya_; lefort, _murillo et son École_; lefort, _la peinture espagnole_; palomino de castro y velasco, _vidas de los pintores y estatuarios eminentes españoles_; passavant, _die christliche kunst in spanien_; plon, _les maîtres italiens au service de la maison d'autriche_; stevenson, _velasquez_; stirling, _annals of the artists of spain_; stirling, _velasquez and his works_; tubino, _el arte y los artistas contemporáneos en la peninsula_; tubino, _murillo_; viardot, _notices sur les principaux peintres de l'espagne_; yriarte, _goya, sa biographie_, etc. spanish art motives: what may have been the early art of spain we are at a loss to conjecture. the reigns of the moor, the iconoclast, and, finally, the inquisitor, have left little that dates before the fourteenth century. the miniatures and sacred relics treasured in the churches and said to be of the apostolic period, show the traces of a much later date and a foreign origin. even when we come down to the fifteenth century and meet with art produced in spain, we have a following of italy or the netherlands. in methods and technic it was derivative more than original, though almost from the beginning peculiarly spanish in spirit. [illustration: fig. .--sanchez coello. clara eugenia, daughter of philip ii. madrid.] that spirit was a dark and savage one, a something that cringed under the lash of the church, bowed before the inquisition, and played the executioner with the paint-brush. the bulk of spanish art was church art, done under ecclesiastical domination, and done in form without question or protest. the religious subject ruled. true enough, there was portraiture of nobility, and under philip and velasquez a half-monarchical art of military scenes and _genre_; but this was not the bent of spanish painting as a whole. even in late days, when velasquez was reflecting the haughty court, murillo was more widely and nationally reflecting the believing provinces and the church faith of the people. it is safe to say, in a general way, that the church was responsible for spanish art, and that religion was its chief motive. there was no revived antique, little of the nude or the pagan, little of consequence in landscape, little, until velasquez's time, of the real and the actual. an ascetic view of life, faith, and the hereafter prevailed. the pietistic, the fervent, and the devout were not so conspicuous as the morose, the ghastly, and the horrible. the saints and martyrs, the crucifixions and violent deaths, were eloquent of the torture-chamber. it was more ecclesiasticism by blood and violence than christianity by peace and love. and spain welcomed this. for of all the children of the church she was the most faithful to rule, crushing out heresy with an iron hand, gaining strength from the catholic reaction, and upholding the jesuits and the inquisition. methods of painting: spanish art worthy of mention did not appear until the fifteenth century. at that time spain was in close relations with the netherlands, and flemish painting was somewhat followed. how much the methods of the van eycks influenced spain would be hard to determine, especially as these northern methods were mixed with influences coming from italy. finally, the italian example prevailed by reason of spanish students in italy and italian painters in spain. florentine line, venetian color, and neapolitan light-and-shade ruled almost everywhere, and it was not until the time of velasquez--the period just before the eighteenth-century decline--that distinctly spanish methods, founded on nature, really came forcibly to the front. spanish schools of painting: there is difficulty in classifying these schools of painting because our present knowledge of them is limited. isolated somewhat from the rest of europe, the spanish painters have never been critically studied as the italians have been, and what is at present known about the schools must be accepted subject to critical revision hereafter. [illustration: fig. .--murillo. st. anthony of padua. berlin.] the earliest school seems to have been made up from a gathering of artists at toledo, who limned, carved, and gilded in the cathedral; but this school was not of long duration. it was merged into the castilian school, which, after the building of madrid, made its home in that capital and drew its forces from the towns of toledo, valladolid, and badajoz. the andalusian school, which rose about the middle of the sixteenth century, was made up from the local schools of seville, cordova, and granada. the valencian school, to the southeast, rose about the same time, and was finally merged into the andalusian. the aragonese school, to the east, was small and of no great consequence, though existing in a feeble way to the end of the seventeenth century. the painters of these schools are not very strongly marked apart by methods or school traditions, and perhaps the divisions would better be looked upon as more geographical than otherwise. none of the schools really began before the sixteenth century, though there are names of artists and some extant pictures before that date, and with the seventeenth century all art in spain seems to have centred about madrid. spanish painting started into life concurrently with the rise to prominence of spain as a political kingdom. what, if any, direct effect the maritime discoveries, the conquests of granada and naples, the growth of literature, and the decline of italy, may have had upon spanish painting can only be conjectured; but certainly the sudden advance of the nation politically and socially was paralleled by the advance of its art. the castilian school: this school probably had no so-called founder. it was a growth from early art traditions at toledo, and afterward became the chief school of the kingdom owing to the patronage of philip ii. and philip iv. at madrid. the first painter of importance in the school seems to have been antonio rincon ( ?- ?). he is sometimes spoken of as the father of spanish painting, and as having studied in italy with castagno and ghirlandajo, but there is little foundation for either statement. he painted chiefly at toledo, painted portraits of ferdinand and isabella, and had some skill in hard drawing. berruguete ( ?- ) studied with michael angelo, and is supposed to have helped him in the vatican. he afterward returned to spain, painted many altar-pieces, and was patronized as painter, sculptor, and architect by charles v. and philip ii. he was probably the first to introduce pure italian methods into spain, with some coldness and dryness of coloring and handling. becerra ( ?- ) was born in andalusia, but worked in castile, and was a man of italian training similar to berruguete. he was an exceptional man, perhaps, in his use of mythological themes and nude figures. there is not a great deal known about morales ( ?- ), called "the divine," except that he was allied to the castilian school, and painted devotional heads of christ with the crown of thorns, and many afflicted and weeping madonnas. there was florentine drawing in his work, great regard for finish, and something of correggio's softness in shadows pitched in a browner key. his sentiment was rather exaggerated. sanchez-coello ( ?- ) was painter and courtier to philip ii., and achieved reputation as a portrait-painter, though also doing some altar-pieces. it is doubtful whether he ever studied in italy, but in spain he was for a time with antonio moro, and probably learned from him something of rich costumes, ermines, embroideries, and jewels, for which his portraits were remarkable. navarette ( ?- ), called "el mudo" (the dumb one), certainly was in italy for something like twenty years, and was there a disciple of titian, from whom he doubtless learned much of color and the free flow of draperies. he was one of the best of the middle-period painters. theotocopuli ( ?- ), called "el greco" (the greek), was another venetian-influenced painter, with enough spanish originality about him to make most of his pictures striking in color and drawing. tristan ( - ) was his best follower. [illustration: fig. .--ribera. st. agnes. dresden.] velasquez ( - ) is the greatest name in the history of spanish painting. with him spanish art took upon itself a decidedly naturalistic and national stamp. before his time italy had been freely imitated; but though velasquez himself was in italy for quite a long time, and intimately acquainted with great italian art, he never seemed to have been led away from his own individual way of seeing and doing. he was a pupil of herrera, afterward with pacheco, and learned much from ribera and tristan, but more from a direct study of nature than from all the others. he was in a broad sense a realist--a man who recorded the material and the actual without emendation or transposition. he has never been surpassed in giving the solidity and substance of form and the placing of objects in atmosphere. and this, not in a small, finical way, but with a breadth of view and of treatment which are to-day the despair of painters. there was nothing of the ethereal, the spiritual, the pietistic, or the pathetic about him. he never for a moment left the firm basis of reality. standing upon earth he recorded the truths of the earth, but in their largest, fullest, most universal forms. technically his was a master-hand, doing all things with ease, giving exact relations of colors and lights, and placing everything so perfectly that no addition or alteration is thought of. with the brush he was light, easy, sure. the surface looks as though touched once, no more. it is the perfection of handling through its simplicity and certainty, and has not the slightest trace of affectation or mannerism. he was one of the few spanish painters who were enabled to shake off the yoke of the church. few of his canvases are religious in subject. under royal patronage he passed almost all of his life in painting portraits of the royal family, ministers of state, and great dignitaries. as a portrait-painter he is more widely known than as a figure-painter. nevertheless he did many canvases like the tapestry weavers and the surrender at breda, which attest his remarkable genius in that field; and even in landscape, in _genre_, in animal painting, he was a very superior man. in fact velasquez is one of the few great painters in european history for whom there is nothing but praise. he was the full-rounded complete painter, intensely individual and self-assertive, and yet in his art recording in a broad way the spanish type and life. he was the climax of spanish painting, and after him there was a rather swift decline, as had been the case in the italian schools. mazo ( ?- ), pupil and son-in-law of velasquez, was one of his most facile imitators, and carreño de miranda ( - ) was influenced by velasquez, and for a time his assistant. the castilian school may be said to have closed with these late men and with claudio coello ( ?- ), a painter with a style founded on titian and rubens, whose best work was of extraordinary power. spanish painting went out with spanish power, and only isolated men of small rank remained. andalusian school: this school came into existence about the middle of the sixteenth century. its chief centre was at seville, and its chief patron the church rather than the king. vargas ( - ) was probably the real founder of the school, though de castro (fl. ) and others preceded him. vargas was a man of much reputation and ability in his time, and introduced italian methods and elegance into the andalusian school after twenty odd years of residence in italy. he is said to have studied under perino del vaga, and there is some sweetness of face and grace of form about his work that point that way, though his composition suggests correggio. most of his frescos have perished; some of his canvases are still in existence. cespedes ( ?- ) is little known through extant works, but he achieved fame in many departments during his life, and is said to have been in italy under florentine influence. his coloring was rather cold, and his drawing large and flat. the best early painter of the school was roelas ( ?- ), the inspirer of murillo and the master of zurbaran. he is supposed to have studied at venice, because of his rich, glowing color. most of his works are religious and are found chiefly at seville. he was greatly patronized by the jesuits. pacheco ( - ) was more of a pedant than a painter, a man of rule, who to-day might be written down an academician. his drawing was hard, and perhaps the best reason for his being remembered is that he was one of the masters and the father-in-law of velasquez. his rival, herrera the elder ( ?- ) was a stronger man--in fact, the most original artist of his school. he struck off by himself and created a bold realism with a broad brush that anticipated velasquez--in fact, velasquez was under him for a time. the pure spanish school in andalusia, as distinct from italian imitation, may be said to have started with herrera. it was further advanced by another independent painter, zurbaran ( - ), a pupil of roelas. he was a painter of the emaciated monk in ecstasy, and many other rather dismal religious subjects expressive of tortured rapture. from using a rather dark shadow he acquired the name of the spanish caravaggio. he had a good deal of caravaggio's strength, together with a depth and breadth of color suggestive of the venetians. cano ( - ), though he never was in italy, had the name of the spanish michael angelo, probably because he was sculptor, painter, and architect. his painting was rather sharp in line and statuesque in pose, with a coloring somewhat like that of van dyck. it was eclectic rather than original work. [illustration: fig. .--fortuny. spanish marriage.] murillo ( - ) is generally placed at the head of the andalusian school, as velasquez at the head of the castilian. there is good reason for it, for though murillo was not the great painter he was sometime supposed, yet he was not the weak man his modern critics would make him out. a religious painter largely, though doing some _genre_ subjects like his beggar-boy groups, he sought for religious fervor and found, only too often, sentimentality. his madonnas are usually after the carlo dolci pattern, though never so excessive in sentiment. this was not the case with his earlier works, mostly of humble life, which were painted in rather a hard, positive manner. later on he became misty, veiled in light and effeminate in outline, though still holding grace. his color varied with his early and later styles. it was usually gay and a little thin. while basing his work on nature like velasquez, he never had the supreme poise of that master, either mentally or technically; howbeit he was an excellent painter, who perhaps justly holds second place in spanish art. school of valencia: this school rose contemporary with the andalusian school, into which it was finally merged after the importance of madrid had been established. it was largely modelled upon italian painting, as indeed were all the schools of spain at the start. juan de joanes ( ?- ) apparently was its founder, a man who painted a good portrait, but in other respects was only a fair imitator of raphael, whom he had studied at rome. a stronger man was francisco de ribalta ( ?- ), who was for a time in italy under the caracci, and learned from them free draughtsmanship and elaborate composition. he was also fond of sebastiano del piombo, and in his best works (at valencia) reflected him. ribalta gave an early training to ribera ( - ), who was the most important man of this school. in reality ribera was more italian than valencian, for he spent the greater part of his life in italy, where he was called lo spagnoletto, and was greatly influenced by caravaggio. he was a spaniard in the horrible subjects that he chose, but in coarse strength of line, heaviness of shadows, harsh handling of the brush, he was a true neapolitan darkling. a pronounced mannerist he was no less a man of strength, and even in his shadow-saturated colors a painter with the color instinct. in italy his influence in the time of the decadence was wide-spread, and in spain his italian pupil, giordano, introduced his methods for late imitation. there were no other men of much rank in the valencian school, and, as has been said, the school was eventually merged in andalusian painting. eighteenth and nineteenth-century painting in spain: almost directly after the passing of velasquez and murillo spanish art failed. the eighteenth-century, as in italy, was quite barren of any considerable art until near its close. then goya ( - ) seems to have made a partial restoration of painting. he was a man of peculiarly spanish turn of mind, fond of the brutal and the bloody, picturing inquisition scenes, bull-fights, battle pieces, and revelling in caricature, sarcasm, and ridicule. his imagination was grotesque and horrible, but as a painter his art was based on the natural, and was exceedingly strong. in brush-work he followed velasquez; in a peculiar forcing of contrasts in light and dark he was apparently quite himself, though possibly influenced by ribera's work. his best work shows in his portraits and etchings. after goya's death spanish art, such as it was, rather followed france, with the extravagant classicism of david as a model. what was produced may be seen to this day in the madrid museum. it does not call for mention here. about the beginning of the 's spanish painting made a new advance with mariano fortuny ( - ). in his early years he worked at historical painting, but later on he went to algiers and rome, finding his true vent in a bright sparkling painting of _genre_ subjects, oriental scenes, streets, interiors, single figures, and the like. he excelled in color, sunlight effects, and particularly in a vivacious facile handling of the brush. his work is brilliant, and in his late productions often spotty from excessive use of points of light in high color. he was a technician of much brilliancy and originality, his work exciting great admiration in his day, and leading the younger painters of spain into that ornate handling visible in their works at the present time. many of these latter, from association with art and artists in paris, have adopted french methods, and hardly show such a thing as spanish nationality. fortuny's brother-in-law, madrazo ( -), is an example of a spanish painter turned french in his methods--a facile and brilliant portrait-painter. zamacois ( - ) died early, but with a reputation as a successful portrayer of seventeenth-century subjects a little after the style of meissonier and not unlike gérôme. he was a good colorist and an excellent painter of textures. [illustration: fig. .--madrazo, unmasked.] the historical scene of mediæval or renaissance times, pageants and fêtes with rich costume, fine architecture and vivid effects of color, are characteristic of a number of the modern spaniards--villegas, pradilla, alvarez. as a general thing their canvases are a little flashy, likely to please at first sight but grow wearisome after a time. palmaroli has a style that resembles a mixture of fortuny and meissonier; and some other painters, like luis jiminez aranda, sorolla, zuloaga, anglada, garcia y remos, vierge, roman ribera, and domingo, have done excellent work. in landscape and venetian scenes rico leads among the spaniards with a vivacity and brightness not always seen to good advantage in his late canvases. principal works: generally speaking, spanish art cannot be seen to advantage outside of spain. both its ancient and modern masterpieces are at madrid, seville, toledo, and elsewhere. the royal gallery at madrid has the most and the best examples. castilian school--rincon, altar-piece church of robleda de chavilla; berruguete, altar-pieces saragossa, valladolid, madrid, toledo; morales, madrid and louvre; sanchez-coello, madrid and brussels mus.; navarette, escorial, madrid, st. petersburg; theotocopuli, cathedral and s. tomé toledo, madrid mus.; velasquez, best works in madrid mus., escorial, salamanca, montpensier gals., nat. gal. lon., infanta marguerita louvre, borro portrait (?) berlin, innocent x. doria rome; mazo, landscapes madrid mus.; carreño de miranda, madrid mus.; claudio coello, escorial, madrid, brussels, berlin, and munich mus. andalusian school--vargas, seville cathedral; cespedes, cordova cathedral; roelas, s. isidore cathedral, museum seville; pacheco, madrid mus.; herrera, seville cathedral and mus. and archbishop's palace, dresden mus.; zurbaran, seville cathedral and mus. madrid, dresden, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; cano, madrid, seville mus. and cathedral, berlin, dresden, munich; murillo, best pictures in madrid mus. and acad. of s. fernando madrid, seville mus. hospital and capuchin church, louvre, nat. gal. lon., dresden, munich, hermitage. valencian school--juan de joanes, madrid mus., cathedral valencia, hermitage; ribalta, madrid and valencian mus., hermitage; ribera, louvre, nat. gal. lon., dresden, naples, hermitage, and other european museums, chief works at madrid. modern men and their works--goya, madrid mus., acad. of s. fernando, valencian cathedral and mus., two portraits in louvre. the works of the contemporary painters are largely in private hands where reference to them is of little use to the average student. thirty fortunys are in the collection of william h. stewart in paris. his best work, the spanish marriage, belongs to madame de cassin, in paris. examples of villegas, madrazo, rico, domingo, and others, in the vanderbilt gallery, metropolitan mus., new york; boston, chicago, and philadelphia mus. chapter xvi. flemish painting. books recommended: busscher, _recherches sur les peintres gantois_; crowe and cavalcaselle, _early flemish painters_; cust, _van dyck_; dehaisnes, _l'art dans la flandre_; du jardin, _l'art flamand_; eisenmann, _the brothers van eyck_; fétis, _les artistes belges à l'Étranger_; fromentin, _old masters of belgium and holland_; gerrits, _rubens zyn tyd, etc._; guiffrey, _van dyck_; hasselt, _histoire de rubens_; (waagen's) kügler, _handbook of painting--german, flemish, and dutch schools_; lemonnier, _histoire des arts en belgique_; mantz, _adrien brouwer_; michel, _rubens_; michiels, _rubens en l'École d'anvers_; michiels, _histoire de la peinture flamande_; stevenson, _rubens_; van den branden, _geschiedenis der antwerpsche schilderschool_; van mander, _le livre des peintres_; waagen, _uber hubert und jan van eyck_; waagen, _peter paul rubens_; wauters, _rogier van der weyden_; wauters, _la peinture flamande_; weale, _hans memling_ (_arundel soc._); weale, _notes sur jean van eyck_. the flemish people: individually and nationally the flemings were strugglers against adverse circumstances from the beginning. a realistic race with practical ideas, a people rather warm of impulse and free in habits, they combined some german sentiment with french liveliness and gayety. the solidarity of the nation was not accomplished until after , when the dukes of burgundy began to extend their power over the low countries. then the flemish people became strong enough to defy both germany and france, and wealthy enough, through their commerce with spain, italy, and france to encourage art not only at the ducal court but in the churches, and among the citizens of the various towns. [illustration: fig. .--van eycks. st. bavon altar-piece (wing). berlin.] flemish subjects and methods: as in all the countries of europe, the early flemish painting pictured christian subjects primarily. the great bulk of it was church altar-pieces, though side by side with this was an admirable portraiture, some knowledge of landscape, and some exposition of allegorical subjects. in means and methods it was quite original. the early history is lost, but if flemish painting was beholden to the painting of any other nation, it was to the miniature painting of france. there is, however, no positive record of this. the flemings seem to have begun by themselves, and pictured the life about them in their own way. they were apparently not influenced at first by italy. there were no antique influences, no excavated marbles to copy, no byzantine traditions left to follow. at first their art was exact and minute in detail, but not well grasped in the mass. the compositions were huddled, the landscapes pure but finical, the figures inclined to slimness, awkwardness, and angularity in the lines of form or drapery, and uncertain in action. to offset this there was a positive realism in textures, perspective, color, tone, light, and atmosphere. the effect of the whole was odd and strained, but the effect of the part was to convince one that the flemish painters were excellent craftsmen in detail, skilled with the brush, and shrewd observers of nature in a purely picturesque way. to the flemish painters of the fifteenth century belongs, not the invention of oil-painting, for it was known before their time, but its acceptable application in picture-making. they applied oil with color to produce brilliancy and warmth of effect, to insure firmness and body in the work, and to carry out textural effects in stuffs, marbles, metals, and the like. so far as we know there never was much use of distemper, or fresco-work upon the walls of buildings. the oil medium came into vogue when the miniatures and illuminations of the early days had expanded into panel pictures. the size of the miniature was increased, but the minute method of finishing was not laid aside. some time afterward painting with oil upon canvas was adopted. school of bruges: painting in flanders starts abruptly with the fifteenth century. what there was before that time more than miniatures and illuminations is not known. time and the iconoclasts have left no remains of consequence. flemish art for us begins with hubert van eyck (?- ) and his younger brother jan van eyck (?- ). the elder brother is supposed to have been the better painter, because the most celebrated work of the brothers--the st. bavon altar-piece, parts of which are in ghent, brussels, and berlin--bears the inscription that hubert began it and jan finished it. hubert was no doubt an excellent painter, but his pictures are few and there is much discussion whether he or jan painted them. for historical purposes flemish art was begun, and almost completed, by jan van eyck. he had all the attributes of the early men, and was one of the most perfect of flemish painters. he painted real forms and real life, gave them a setting in true perspective and light, and put in background landscapes with a truthful if minute regard for the facts. his figures in action had some awkwardness, they were small of head, slim of body, and sometimes stumbled; but his modelling of faces, his rendering of textures in cloth, metal, stone, and the like, his delicate yet firm _facture_ were all rather remarkable for his time. none of this early flemish art has the grandeur of italian composition, but in realistic detail, in landscape, architecture, figure, and dress, in pathos, sincerity, and sentiment it is unsurpassed by any fifteenth-century art. [illustration: fig. .--memling (?). st. lawrence (detail). nat. gal., london.] little is known of the personal history of either of the van eycks. they left an influence and had many followers, but whether these were direct pupils or not is an open question. peter cristus ( ?- ) was perhaps a pupil of jan, though more likely a follower of his methods in color and general technic. roger van der weyden ( ?- ), whether a pupil of the van eycks or a rival, produced a similar style of art. his first master was an obscure robert campin. he was afterward at bruges, and from there went to brussels and founded a school of his own called the school of brabant: he was more emotional and dramatic than jan van eyck, giving much excited action and pathetic expression to his figures in scenes from the passion of christ. he had not van eyck's skill, nor his detail, nor his color. more of a draughtsman than a colorist, he was angular in figure and drapery, but had honesty, pathos, and sincerity, and was very charming in bright background landscapes. though spending some time in italy, he was never influenced by italian art. he was always flemish in type, subject, and method, a trifle repulsive at first through angularity and emotional exaggeration, but a man to be studied. by van der goes ( ?- ) there are but few good examples, the chief one being an altar-piece in the uffizi at florence. it is angular in drawing but full of character, and in beauty of detail and ornamentation is a remarkable picture. he probably followed van der weyden, as did also justus van ghent (last half of fifteenth century). contemporary with these men dierick bouts ( - ) established a school at haarlem. he was dutch by birth, but after settled in louvain, and in his art belongs to the flemish school. he was influenced by van der weyden, and shows it in his detail of hands and melancholy face, though he differed from him in dramatic action and in type. his figure was awkward, his color warm and rich, and in landscape backgrounds he greatly advanced the painting of the time. memling ( ?- ?), one of the greatest of the school, is another man about whose life little is known. he was probably associated with van der weyden in some way. his art is founded on the van eyck school, and is remarkable for sincerity, purity, and frankness of attitude. as a religious painter, he was perhaps beyond all his contemporaries in tenderness and pathos. in portraiture he was exceedingly strong in characterization, and in his figures very graceful. his flesh painting was excellent, but in textures or landscape work he was not remarkable. his best followers were van der meire ( ?- ?) and gheeraert david ( ?- ). the latter was famous for the fine, broad landscapes in the backgrounds of his pictures, said, however, by critics to have been painted by joachim patinir. he was realistically horrible in many subjects, and though a close recorder of detail he was much broader than any of his predecessors. flemish schools of the sixteenth century: in this century flemish painting became rather widely diffused. the schools of bruges and ghent gave place to the schools in the large commercial cities like antwerp and brussels, and the commercial relations between the low countries and italy finally led to the dissipation of national characteristics in art and the imitation of the italian renaissance painters. there is no sharp line of demarcation between those painters who clung to flemish methods and those who adopted italian methods. the change was gradual. [illustration: fig. .--massys. head of virgin. antwerp.] quentin massys ( ?- ) and mostert ( - ?), a dutchman by birth, but, like bouts, flemish by influence, were among the last of the gothic painters in flanders, and yet they began the introduction of italian features in their painting. massys led in architectural backgrounds, and from that the italian example spread to subjects, figures, methods, until the indigenous flemish art became a thing of the past. massys was, at antwerp, the most important painter of his day, following the old flemish methods with many improvements. his work was detailed, and yet executed with a broader, freer brush than formerly, and with more variety in color, modelling, expression of character. he increased figures to almost life-size, giving them greater importance than landscape or architecture. the type was still lean and angular, and often contorted with emotion. his money-changers and misers (many of them painted by his son) were a _genre_ of his own. with him closed the gothic school, and with him began the antwerp school, the pupils of which went to italy, and eventually became italianized. mabuse ( ?- ) was the first to go. his early work shows the influence of massys and david. he was good in composition, color, and brush-work, but lacked in originality, as did all the imitators of italy. franz floris ( ?- ) was a man of talent, much admired in his time, because he brought back reminiscences of michael angelo to antwerp. his influence was fatal upon his followers, of whom there were many, like the franckens and de vos. italy and roman methods, models, architecture, subjects, began to rule everywhere. from brussels barent van orley ( ?- ) left early for italy, and became essentially italian, though retaining some flemish color. he painted in oil, tempera, and for glass, and is supposed to have gained his brilliant colors by using a gilt ground. his early works remind one of david. cocxie ( - ), the flemish raphael, was but an indifferent imitator of the italian raphael. at liége the romanists, so called, began with lambert lombard ( - ), of whose work nothing authentic remains except drawings. at bruges peeter pourbus ( ?- ) was about the last one of the good portrait-painters of the time. another excellent portrait-painter, a pupil of scorel, was antonio moro ( ?- ?). he had much dignity, force, and elaborateness of costume, and stood quite by himself. there were other painters of the time who were born or trained in flanders, and yet became so naturalized in other countries that in their work they do not belong to flanders. neuchatel ( ?- ?), geldorp ( - ?), calvaert ( ?- ), spranger ( - ?), and others, were of this group. among all the strugglers in italian imitation only a few landscapists held out for the flemish view. paul bril ( - ) was the first of them. he went to italy, but instead of following the methods taught there, he taught italians his own view of landscape. his work was a little dry and formal, but graceful in composition, and good in light and color. the brueghels--there were three of them--also stood out for flemish landscape, introducing it nominally as a background for small figures, but in reality for the beauty of the landscape itself. [illustration: fig. .--rubens. portrait of young woman. hermitage, st. petersburgh.] seventeenth-century painting: this was the great century of flemish painting, though the painting was not entirely flemish in method or thought. the influence of italy had done away with the early simplicity, purity, and religious pathos of the van eycks. during the sixteenth century everything had run to bald imitation of renaissance methods. then came a new master-genius, rubens ( - ), who formed a new art founded in method upon italy, yet distinctly northern in character. rubens chose all subjects for his brush, but the religious altar-piece probably occupied him as much as any. to this he gave little of gothic sentiment, but everything of renaissance splendor. his art was more material than spiritual, more brilliant and startling in sensuous qualities, such as line and color, than charming by facial expression or tender feeling. something of the paolo veronese cast of mind, he conceived things largely, and painted them proportionately--large titanic types, broad schemes and masses of color, great sweeping lines of beauty. one value of this largeness was its ability to hold at a distance upon wall or altar. hence, when seen to-day, close at hand, in museums, people are apt to think rubens's art coarse and gross. there is no prettiness about his type. it is not effeminate or sentimental, but rather robust, full of life and animal spirits, full of blood, bone, and muscle--of majestic dignity, grace, and power, and glowing with splendor of color. in imagination, in conception of art purely as art, and not as a mere vehicle to convey religious or mythological ideas, in mental grasp of the pictorial world, rubens stands with titian and velasquez in the very front rank of painters. as a technician, he was unexcelled. a master of composition, modelling, and drawing, a master of light, and a color-harmonist of the rarest ability, he, in addition, possessed the most certain, adroit, and facile hand that ever handled a paint-brush. nothing could be more sure than the touch of rubens, nothing more easy and masterful. he was trained in both mind and eye, a genius by birth and by education, a painter who saw keenly, and was able to realize what he saw with certainty. well-born, ennobled by royalty, successful in both court and studio, rubens lived brilliantly and his life was a series of triumphs. he painted enormous canvases, and the number of pictures, altar-pieces, mythological decorations, landscapes, portraits scattered throughout the galleries of europe, and attributed to him, is simply amazing. he was undoubtedly helped in many of his canvases by his pupils, but the works painted by his own hand make a world of art in themselves. he was the greatest painter of the north, a full-rounded, complete genius, comparable to titian in his universality. his precursors and masters, van noort ( - ) and vaenius ( - ), gave no strong indication of the greatness of ruben's art, and his many pupils, though echoing his methods, never rose to his height in mental or artistic grasp. [illustration: fig. .--van dyck. portrait of cornelius van der geest. nat. gal. london.] van dyck ( - ) was his principal pupil. he followed rubens closely at first, though in a slighter manner technically, and with a cooler coloring. after visiting italy he took up with the warmth of titian. later, in england, he became careless and less certain. his rank is given him not for his figure-pieces. they were not always successful, lacking as they did in imagination and originality, though done with force. his best work was his portraiture, for which he became famous, painting nobility in every country of europe in which he visited. at his best he was a portrait-painter of great power, but not to be placed in the same rank with titian, rubens, rembrandt, and velasquez. his characters are gracefully posed, and appear to be aristocratic. there is a noble distinction about them, and yet even this has the feeling of being somewhat affected. the serene complacency of his lords and ladies finally became almost a mannerism with him, though never a disagreeable one. he died early, a painter of mark, but not the greatest portrait-painter of the world, as is sometimes said of him. there were a number of rubens's pupils, like diepenbeeck ( - ), who learned from their master a certain brush facility, but were not sufficiently original to make deep impressions. when rubens died the best painter left in belgium was jordaens ( - ). he was a pupil of van noort, but submitted to the rubens influence and followed in rubens's style, though more florid in coloring and grosser in types. he painted all sorts of subjects, but was seen at his best in mythological scenes with groups of drunken satyrs and bacchants, surrounded by a close-placed landscape. he was the most independent and original of the followers, of whom there was a host. crayer ( - ), janssens ( - ), zegers ( - ), rombouts ( - ), were the prominent ones. they all took an influence more or less pronounced from rubens. cornelius de vos ( - ) was a more independent man--a realistic portrait-painter of much ability. snyders ( - ), and fyt ( ?- ), devoted their brushes to the painting of still-life, game, fruits, flowers, landscape--snyders often in collaboration with rubens himself. [illustration: fig. .--teniers the younger. prodigal son. louvre.] living at the same time with these half-italianized painters, and continuing later in the century, there was another group of painters in the low countries who were emphatically of the soil, believing in themselves and their own country and picturing scenes from commonplace life in a manner quite their own. these were the "little masters," the _genre_ painters, of whom there was even a stronger representation appearing contemporaneously in holland. in belgium there were not so many nor such talented men, but some of them were very interesting in their work as in their subjects. teniers the younger ( - ) was among the first of them to picture peasant, burgher, alewife, and nobleman in all scenes and places. nothing escaped him as a subject, and yet his best work was shown in the handling of low life in taverns. there is coarse wit in his work, but it is atoned for by good color and easy handling. he was influenced by rubens, though decidedly different from him in many respects. brouwer ( ?- ) has often been catalogued with the holland school, but he really belongs with teniers, in belgium. he died early, but left a number of pictures remarkable for their fine "fat" quality and their beautiful color. he was not a man of italian imagination, but a painter of low life, with coarse humor and not too much good taste, yet a superb technician and vastly beyond many of his little dutch contemporaries at the north. teniers and brouwer led a school and had many followers. in a slightly different vein was gonzales coques ( - ), who is generally seen to advantage in pictures of interiors with family groups. in subject he was more refined than the other _genre_ painters, and was influenced to some extent by van dyck. as a colorist he held rank, and his portraiture (rarely seen) was excellent. at this time there were also many painters of landscape, marine, battles, still-life--in fact belgium was alive with painters--but none of them was sufficiently great to call for individual mention. most of them were followers of either holland or italy, and the gist of their work will be spoken of hereafter under dutch painting. eighteenth-century painting in belgium: decline had set in before the seventeenth century ended. belgium was torn by wars, her commerce flagged, her art-spirit seemed burned out. a long line of petty painters followed whose works call for silence. one man alone seemed to stand out like a star by comparison with his contemporaries, verhagen ( - ), a portrait-painter of talent. nineteenth-century painting in belgium: during this century belgium has been so closely related to france that the influence of the larger country has been quite apparent upon the art of the smaller. in david, the leader of the french classic school, sent into exile by the restoration, settled at brussels, and immediately drew around him many pupils. his influence was felt at once, and francois navez ( - ) was the chief one among his pupils to establish the revived classic art in belgium. in , with belgian independence and almost concurrently with the romantic movement in france, there began a romantic movement in belgium with wappers ( - ). his art was founded substantially on rubens; but, like the paris romanticists, he chose the dramatic subject of the times and treated it more for color than for line. he drew a number of followers to himself, but the movement was not more lasting than in france. wiertz ( - ), whose collection of works is to be seen in brussels, was a partial exposition of romanticism mixed with a what-not of eccentricity entirely his own. later on came a comparatively new man, louis gallait ( -?), who held in brussels substantially the same position that delaroche did in paris. his art was eclectic and never strong, though he had many pupils at brussels, and started there a rivalry to wappers at antwerp. leys ( - ) holds a rather unique position in belgian art by reason of his affectation. he at first followed pieter de hooghe and other early painters. then, after a study of the old german painters like cranach, he developed an archaic style, producing a gothic quaintness of line and composition, mingled with old flemish coloring. the result was something popular, but not original or far-reaching, though technically well done. his chief pupil was alma tadema ( -), alive to-day in london, and belonging to no school in particular. he is a technician of ability, mannered in composition and subject, and somewhat perfunctory in execution. his work is very popular with those who enjoy minute detail and smooth texture-painting. in the influence of the french realism of courbet began to be felt at brussels, and since then belgian art has followed closely the art movements at paris. men like alfred stevens ( -), a pupil of navez, are really more french than belgian. stevens is one of the best of the moderns, a painter of power in fashionable or high-life _genre_, and a colorist of the first rank in modern art. among the recent painters but a few can be mentioned. willems ( -), a weak painter of fashionable _genre_; verboeckhoven ( - ), a vastly over-estimated animal painter; clays ( -), an excellent marine painter; boulanger, a landscapist; wauters ( -), a history, and portrait-painter; jan van beers and robie. the new men are claus, buysse, frederic, khnopff, lempoels. [illustration: fig. .--alfred stevens. on the beach.] principal works:--hubert van eyck, adoration of the lamb (with jan van eyck) st. bavon ghent (wings at brussels and berlin supposed to be by jan, the rest by hubert); jan van eyck, as above, also arnolfini portraits nat. gal. lon., virgin and donor louvre, madonna staedel mus., man with pinks berlin, triumph of church madrid; van der weyden, a number of pictures in brussels and antwerp mus., also at staedel mus., berlin, munich, vienna; cristus, berlin, staedel mus., hermitage, madrid; justus van ghent, last supper urbino gal.; bouts, st. peter louvain, munich, berlin, brussels, vienna; memling, brussels mus. and bruges acad., and hospital antwerp, turin, uffizi, munich, vienna; van der meire, triptych st. bavon ghent; ghaeraert david, bruges, berlin, rouen, munich. massys, brussels, antwerp, berlin, st. petersburg; best works deposition in antwerp gal. and merchant and wife louvre; mostert, altar-piece notre dame bruges; mabuse, madonnas palermo, milan cathedral, prague, other works vienna, berlin, munich, antwerp; floris, antwerp, amsterdam, brussels, berlin, munich, vienna; barent van orley, altar-pieces church of the saviour antwerp, and brussels mus.; cocxie, antwerp, brussels, and madrid mus.; pourbus, bruges, brussels, vienna mus.; moro, portraits madrid, vienna, hague, brussels, cassel, louvre, st. petersburg mus.; bril, landscapes madrid, louvre, dresden, berlin mus.; the landscapes of the three breughels are to be seen in most of the museums of europe, especially at munich, dresden, and madrid. rubens, many works, in munich, in dresden, at cassel, at berlin, in london, in vienna, in madrid, in paris, at st. petersburg (as given by wauters), best works at antwerp, vienna, munich, and madrid; van noort, antwerp, brussels mus., ghent and antwerp cathedrals; van dyck, windsor castle, nat. gal. lon., in munich, in dresden, in cassel, in berlin, in vienna, in madrid, in paris, and in st. petersburg (wauters), best examples in vienna, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; and madrid, good example in met. mus. n. y.; diepenbeeck, antwerp churches and mus., berlin, vienna, munich, frankfort; jordaens, brussels, antwerp, munich, vienna, cassel, madrid, paris; crayer, brussels, munich, vienna; janssens, antwerp mus., st. bavon ghent, brussels and cologne mus.; zegers, cathedral ghent, notre dame bruges, antwerp mus.; rombouts, mus. and cathedral ghent, antwerp mus., beguin convent mechlin, hospital of st. john bruges; de vos, cathedral and mus. antwerp, munich, oldenburg, berlin mus.; snyders, munich, dresden, vienna, madrid, paris, st. petersburg; fyt, munich, dresden, cassel, berlin, vienna, madrid, paris; teniers the younger, pictures in munich, in dresden, in berlin, in nat. gal. lon., in vienna, in madrid, in louvre, in st. petersburg (wauters); brauwer, in munich, in dresden, in berlin, in paris, in st. petersburgh (wauters); coques, nat. gal. lon., amsterdam, berlin, munich mus. verhagen, antwerp, brussels, ghent, and vienna mus.; navez, ghent, antwerp, and amsterdam mus., nat. gal. berlin; wappers, amsterdam, brussels, versailles mus.; wiertz, in wiertz gal. brussels; gallait, liége, versailles, tournay, brussels, nat. gal. berlin; leys, amsterdam mus., new pinacothek, munich, brussels, nat. gal. berlin, antwerp mus. and city hall; alfred stevens, marseilles, brussels, frescos royal pal. brussels; willems, brussels mus. and foder mus. amsterdam, met. mus. n. y.; verboeckhoven, amsterdam, foder, nat. gal. berlin, new pinacothek, brussels, ghent, met. mus. n. y.; clays, ghent mus.; wauters, brussels, liége mus.; van beers, burial of charles the good amsterdam mus. chapter xvii. dutch painting. books recommended: as before fromentin, (waagen's) kügler; amand-durand, _oeuvre de rembrandt_; _archief voor nederlandsche kunst-geschiedenis_; blanc, _oeuvre de rembrandt_; bode, _franz hals und seine schule_; bode, _studien zur geschichte der hollandischen malerei_; bode, _adriaan van ostade_; brown, _rembrandt_; burger (th. thoré), _les musées de la hollande_; havard, _la peinture hollandaise_; michel, _rembrandt_; michel, _gerard terburg et sa famille_; mantz, _adrien brouwer_; rooses, _dutch painters of the nineteenth century_; rooses, _rubens_; schmidt, _das leben des malers adriaen brouwer_; van der willigen, _les artistes de harlem_; van mander, _leven der nederlandsche en hoogduitsche schilders_; vosmaer, _rembrandt, sa vie et ses oeuvres_; westrheene, _jan steen, Étude sur l'art en hollande_; van dyke, _old dutch and flemish masters_. the dutch people and their art: though holland produced a somewhat different quality of art from flanders and belgium, yet in many respects the people at the north were not very different from those at the south of the netherlands. they were perhaps less versatile, less volatile, less like the french and more like the germans. fond of homely joys and the quiet peace of town and domestic life, the dutch were matter-of-fact in all things, sturdy, honest, coarse at times, sufficient unto themselves, and caring little for what other people did. just so with their painters. they were realistic at times to grotesqueness. little troubled with fine poetic frenzies they painted their own lives in street, town-hall, tavern, and kitchen, conscious that it was good because true to themselves. at first dutch art was influenced, even confounded, with that of flanders. the van eycks led the way, and painters like bouts and others, though dutch by birth, became flemish by adoption in their art at least. when the flemish painters fell to copying italy some of the dutch followed them, but with no great enthusiasm. suddenly, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, when holland had gained political independence, dutch art struck off by itself, became original, became famous. it pictured native life with verve, skill, keenness of insight, and fine pictorial view. limited it was; it never soared like italian art, never became universal or world-embracing. it was distinct, individual, national, something that spoke for holland, but little beyond it. in subject there were few historical canvases such as the italians and french produced. the nearest approach to them were the paintings of shooting companies, or groups of burghers and syndics, and these were merely elaborations and enlargements of the portrait which the dutch loved best of all. as a whole their subjects were single figures or small groups in interiors, quiet scenes, family conferences, smokers, card-players, drinkers, landscapes, still-life, architectural pieces. when they undertook the large canvas with many figures, they were often unsatisfactory. even rembrandt was so. the chief medium was oil, used upon panel or canvas. fresco was probably used in the early days, but the climate was too damp for it and it was abandoned. it was perhaps the dampness of the northern climate that led to the adaptation of the oil medium, something the van eycks are credited with inaugurating. [illustration: fig. .--hals. portrait of a lady.] the early painting: the early work has, for the great part, perished through time and the fierceness with which the iconoclastic warfare was waged. that which remains to-day is closely allied in method and style to flemish painting under the van eycks. ouwater is one of the earliest names that appears, and perhaps for that reason he has been called the founder of the school. he was remarked in his time for the excellent painting of background landscapes; but there is little authentic by him left to us from which we may form an opinion.[ ] geertjen van st. jan (about ) was evidently a pupil of his, and from him there are two wings of an altar in the vienna gallery, supposed to be genuine. bouts and mostert have been spoken of under the flemish school. bosch ( ?- ) was a man of some individuality who produced fantastic purgatories that were popular in their time and are known to-day through engravings. engelbrechsten ( - ) was dutch by birth and in his art, and yet probably got his inspiration from the van eyck school. the works attributed to him are doubtful, though two in the leyden gallery seem to be authentic. he was the master of lucas van leyden ( - ), the leading artist of the early period. lucas van leyden was a personal friend of albrecht dürer, the german painter, and in his art he was not unlike him. a man with a singularly lean type, a little awkward in composition, brilliant in color, and warm in tone, he was, despite his archaic-looking work, an artist of much ability and originality. at first he was inclined toward flemish methods, with an exaggerated realism in facial expression. in his middle period he was distinctly dutch, but in his later days he came under italian influence, and with a weakening effect upon his art. taking his work as a whole, it was the strongest of all the early dutch painters. [footnote : a raising of lazarus is in the berlin gallery.] sixteenth century: this century was a period of italian imitation, probably superinduced by the action of the flemings at antwerp. the movement was somewhat like the flemish one, but not so extensive or so productive. there was hardly a painter of rank in holland during the whole century. scorel ( - ) was the leader, and he probably got his first liking for italian art through mabuse at antwerp. he afterward went to italy, studied raphael and michael angelo, and returned to utrecht to open a school and introduce italian art into holland. a large number of pupils followed him, but their work was lacking in true originality. heemskerck ( - ) and cornelis van haarlem ( - ), with steenwyck ( ?- ), were some of the more important men of the century, but none of them was above a common average. seventeenth century: beginning with the first quarter of this century came the great art of the dutch people, founded on themselves and rooted in their native character. italian methods were abandoned, and the dutch told the story of their own lives in their own manner, with truth, vigor, and skill. there were so many painters in holland during this period that it will be necessary to divide them into groups and mention only the prominent names. portrait and figure painters: the real inaugurators of dutch portraiture were mierevelt, hals, ravesteyn, and de keyser. mierevelt ( - ) was one of the earliest, a prolific painter, fond of the aristocratic sitter, and indulging in a great deal of elegance in his accessories of dress and the like. he had a slight, smooth brush, much detail, and a profusion of color. quite the reverse of him was franz hals ( ?- ), one of the most remarkable painters of portraits with which history acquaints us. in giving the sense of life and personal physical presence, he was unexcelled by any one. what he saw he could portray with the most telling reality. in drawing and modelling he was usually good; in coloring he was excellent, though in his late work sombre; in brush-handling he was one of the great masters. strong, virile, yet easy and facile, he seemed to produce without effort. his brush was very broad in its sweep, very sure, very true. occasionally in his late painting facility ran to the ineffectual, but usually he was certainty itself. his best work was in portraiture, and the most important of this is to be seen at haarlem, where he died after a rather careless life. as a painter, pure and simple, he is almost to be ranked beside velasquez; as a poet, a thinker, a man of lofty imagination, his work gives us little enlightenment except in so far as it shows a fine feeling for masses of color and problems of light. though excellent portrait-painters, ravesteyn ( ?- ) and de keyser ( ?- ) do not provoke enthusiasm. they were quiet, conservative, dignified, painting civic guards and societies with a knowing brush and lively color, giving the truth of physiognomy, but not with that verve of the artist so conspicuous in hals, nor with that unity of the group so essential in the making of a picture. [illustration: fig. .--rembrandt. head of woman. nat. gal. london.] the next man in chronological order is rembrandt ( ?- ), the greatest painter in dutch art. he was a pupil of swanenburch and lastman, but his great knowledge of nature and his craft came largely from the direct study of the model. settled at amsterdam, he quickly rose to fame, had a large following of pupils, and his influence was felt through all dutch painting. the portrait was emphatically his strongest work. the many-figured group he was not always successful in composing or lighting. his method of work rather fitted him for the portrait and unfitted him for the large historical piece. he built up the importance of certain features by dragging down all other features. this was largely shown in his handling of illumination. strong in a few high lights on cheek, chin, or white linen, the rest of the picture was submerged in shadow, under which color was unmercifully sacrificed. this was not the best method for a large, many-figured piece, but was singularly well suited to the portrait. it produced strength by contrast. "forced" it was undoubtedly, and not always true to nature, yet nevertheless most potent in rembrandt's hands. he was an arbitrary though perfect master of light-and-shade, and unusually effective in luminous and transparent shadows. in color he was again arbitrary but forcible and harmonious. in brush-work he was at times labored, but almost always effective. mentally he was a man keen to observe, assimilate, and express his impressions in a few simple truths. his conception was localized with his own people and time (he never built up the imaginary or followed italy), and yet into types taken from the streets and shops of amsterdam he infused the very largest humanity through his inherent sympathy with man. dramatic, even tragic, he was; yet this was not so apparent in vehement action as in passionate expression. he had a powerful way of striking universal truths through the human face, the turned head, bent body, or outstretched hand. his people have character, dignity, and a pervading feeling that they are the great types of the dutch race--people of substantial physique, slow in thought and impulse, yet capable of feeling, comprehending, enjoying, suffering. his landscapes, again, were a synthesis of all landscapes, a grouping of the great truths of light, air, shadow, space. whatever he turned his hand to was treated with that breadth of view that overlooked the little and grasped the great. he painted many subjects. his earliest work dates from , and is a little hard and sharp in detail and cold in coloring. after he grew broader in handling and warmer in tone, running to golden browns, and, toward the end of his career, to rather hot tones. his life was embittered by many misfortunes, but these never seem to have affected his art except to deepen it. he painted on to the last, convinced that his own view was the true one, and producing works that rank second to none in the history of painting. rembrandt's influence upon dutch art was far-reaching, and appeared immediately in the works of his many pupils. they all followed his methods of handling light-and-shade, but no one of them ever equalled him, though they produced work of much merit. bol ( - ) was chiefly a portrait-painter, with a pervading yellow tone and some pallor of flesh-coloring--a man of ability who mistakenly followed rubens in the latter part of his life. flinck ( - ) at one time followed rembrandt so closely that his work has passed for that of the master; but latterly he, too, came under flemish influence. next to eeckhout he was probably the nearest to rembrandt in methods of all the pupils. eeckhout ( - ) was really a rembrandt imitator, but his hand was weak and his color hot. maes ( - ) was the most successful manager of light after the school formula, and succeeded very well with warmth and richness of color, especially with his reds. the other rembrandt pupils and followers were poorter (fl. - ), victoors ( ?- ?), koninck ( - ), fabritius ( - ), and backer ( ?- ). van der helst ( ?- ) stands apart from this school, and seems to have followed more the portrait style of de keyser. he was a realistic, precise painter, with much excellence of modelling in head and hands, and with fine carriage and dignity in the figure. in composition he hardly held his characters in group owing to a sacrifice of values, and in color he was often "spotty," and lacking in the unity of mass. the genre painters: this heading embraces those who may be called the "little dutchmen," because of the small scale of their pictures and their _genre_ subjects. gerard dou ( - ) is indicative of the class without fully representing it. he was a pupil of rembrandt, but his work gave little report of this. it was smaller, more delicate in detail, more petty in conception. he was a man great in little things, one who wasted strength on the minutiæ of dress, or table-cloth, or the texture of furniture without grasping the mass or color significance of the whole scene. there was infinite detail about his work, and that gave it popularity; but as art it held, and holds to-day, little higher place than the work of metsu ( - ), van mieris ( - ), netscher ( - ), or schalcken ( - ), all of whom produced the interior piece with figures elaborate in accidental effects. van ostade ( - ), though dealing with the small canvas, and portraying peasant life with perhaps unnecessary coarseness, was a much stronger painter than the men just mentioned. he was the favorite pupil of hals and the master of jan steen. with little delicacy in choice of subject he had much delicacy in color, taste in arrangement, and skill in handling. his brush was precise but not finical. [illustration: fig. .--j. van ruisdael. landscape.] by far the best painter among all the "little dutchmen" was terburg ( ?- ), a painter of interiors, small portraits, conversation pictures, and the like. though of diminutive scale his work has the largeness of view characteristic of genius, and the skilled technic of a thorough craftsman. terburg was a travelled man, visiting italy, where he studied titian, returning to holland to study rembrandt, finally at madrid studying velasquez. he was a painter of much culture, and the keynote of his art is refinement. quiet and dignified he carried taste through all branches of his art. in subject he was rather elevated, in color subdued with broken tones, in composition simple, in brush-work sure, vivacious, and yet unobtrusive. selection in his characters was followed by reserve in using them. detail was not very apparent. a few people with some accessory objects were all that he required to make a picture. perhaps his best qualities appear in a number of small portraits remarkable for their distinction and aristocratic grace. steen ( ?- ) was almost the opposite of terburg, a man of sarcastic flings and coarse humor who satirized his own time with little reserve. he developed under hals and van ostade, favoring the latter in his interiors, family scenes, and drunken debauches. he was a master of physiognomy, and depicted it with rare if rather unpleasant truth. if he had little refinement in his themes he certainly handled them as a painter with delicacy. at his best his many figured groups were exceedingly well composed, his color was of good quality (with a fondness for yellows), and his brush was as limpid and graceful as though painting angels instead of dutch boors. he was really one of the fine brushmen of holland, a man greatly admired by sir joshua reynolds, and many an artist since; but not a man of high intellectual pitch as compared with terburg, for instance. pieter de hooghe ( ?- ) was a painter of purely pictorial effects, beginning and ending a picture in a scheme of color, atmosphere, clever composition, and above all the play of light-and-shade. he was one of the early masters of full sunlight, painting it falling across a court-yard or streaming through a window with marvellous truth and poetry. his subjects were commonplace enough. an interior with a figure or two in the middle distance, and a passage-way leading into a lighted background were sufficient for him. these formed a skeleton which he clothed in a half-tone shadow, pierced with warm yellow light, enriched with rare colors, usually garnet reds and deep yellows repeated in the different planes, and surrounded with a subtle pervading atmosphere. as a brushman he was easy but not distinguished, and often his drawing was not correct; but in the placing of color masses and in composing by color and light he was a master of the first rank. little is known about his life. he probably formed himself on fabritius or rembrandt at second-hand, but little trace of the latter is apparent in his work. he seems not to have achieved much fame until late years, and then rather in england than in his own country. jan van der meer of delft ( - ), one of the most charming of all the _genre_ painters, was allied to de hooghe in his pictorial point of view and interior subjects. unfortunately there is little left to us of this master, but the few extant examples serve to show him a painter of rare qualities in light, in color, and in atmosphere. he was a remarkable man for his handling of blues, reds, and yellows; and in the tonic relations of a picture he was a master second to no one. fabritius is supposed to have influenced him. the landscape painters: the painters of the netherlands were probably the first, beginning with bril, to paint landscape for its own sake, and as a picture motive in itself. before them it had been used as a background for the figure, and was so used by many of the dutchmen themselves. it has been said that these landscape-painters were also the first ones to paint landscape realistically, but that is true only in part. they studied natural forms, as did, indeed, bellini in the venetian school; they learned something of perspective, air, tree anatomy, and the appearance of water; but no dutch painter of landscape in the seventeenth century grasped the full color of holland or painted its many varied lights. they indulged in a meagre conventional palette of grays, greens, and browns, whereas holland is full of brilliant hues. [illustration: fig. .--hobbema. the water-wheel. amsterdam mus.] van goyen ( - ) was one of the earliest of the seventeenth-century landscapists. in subject he was fond of the dutch bays, harbors, rivers, and canals with shipping, windmills, and houses. his sky line was generally given low, his water silvery, and his sky misty and luminous with bursts of white light. in color he was subdued, and in perspective quite cunning at times. salomon van ruisdael ( ?- ) was his follower, if not his pupil. he had the same sobriety of color as his master, and was a mannered and prosaic painter in details, such as leaves and tree-branches. in composition he was good, but his art had only a slight basis upon reality, though it looks to be realistic at first sight. he had a formula for doing landscape which he varied only in a slight way, and this conventionality ran through all his work. molyn ( ?- ) was a painter who showed limited truth to nature in flat and hilly landscapes, transparent skies, and warm coloring. his extant works are few in number. wynants ( ?- ?) was more of a realist in natural appearance than any of the others, a man who evidently studied directly from nature in details of vegetation, plants, trees, roads, grasses, and the like. most of the figures and animals in his landscapes were painted by other hands. he himself was a pure landscape-painter, excelling in light and aërial perspective, but not remarkable in color. van der neer ( - ) and everdingen ( ?- ) were two other contemporary painters of merit. the best landscapist following the first men of the century was jacob van ruisdael ( ?- ), the nephew of salomon van ruisdael. he is put down, with perhaps unnecessary emphasis, as the greatest landscape-painter of the dutch school. he was undoubtedly the equal of any of his time, though not so near to nature, perhaps, as hobbema. he was a man of imagination, who at first pictured the dutch country about haarlem, and afterward took up with the romantic landscape of van everdingen. this landscape bears a resemblance to the norwegian country, abounding, as it does, in mountains, heavy dark woods, and rushing torrents. there is considerable poetry in its composition, its gloomy skies, and darkened lights. it is mournful, suggestive, wild, usually unpeopled. there was much of the methodical in its putting together, and in color it was cold, and limited to a few tones. many of ruisdael's works have darkened through time. little is known about the painter's life except that he was not appreciated in his own time and died in the almshouse. hobbema ( ?- ) was probably the pupil of jacob van ruisdael, and ranks with him, if not above him, in seventeenth-century landscape painting. ruisdael hardly ever painted sunlight, whereas hobbema rather affected it in quiet wood-scenes or roadways with little pools of water and a mill. he was a freer man with the brush than ruisdael, and knew more about the natural appearance of trees, skies, and lights; but, like his master, his view of nature found no favor in his own land. most of his work is in england, where it had not a little to do with influencing such painters as constable and others at the beginning of the nineteenth century. [illustration: fig. .--israels. alone in the world.] landscape with cattle: here we meet with wouverman ( - ), a painter of horses, cavalry, battles, and riding parties placed in landscape. his landscape is bright and his horses are spirited in action. there is some mannerism apparent in his reiterated concentration of light on a white horse, and some repetition in his canvases, of which there are many; but on the whole he was an interesting, if smooth and neat painter. paul potter ( - ) hardly merited his great repute. he was a harsh, exact recorder of facts, often tin-like or woodeny in his cattle, and not in any way remarkable in his landscapes, least of all in their composition. the young bull at the hague is an ambitious piece of drawing, but is not successful in color, light, or _ensemble_. it is a brittle work all through, and not nearly so good as some smaller things in the national gallery london, and in the louvre. adrien van de velde ( ?- ) was short-lived, like potter, but managed to do a prodigious amount of work, showing cattle and figures in landscape with much technical ability and good feeling. he was particularly good in composition and the subtle gradation of neutral tints. a little of the italian influence appeared in his work, and with the men who came with him and after him the italian imitation became very pronounced. aelbert cuyp ( - ) was a many-sided painter, adopting at various times different styles, but was enough of a genius to be himself always. he is best known to us, perhaps, by his yellow sunlight effects along rivers, with cattle in the foreground, though he painted still-life, and even portraits and marines. in composing a group he was knowing, recording natural effects with power; in light and atmosphere he was one of the best of his time, and in texture and color refined, and frequently brilliant. both ( - ?), berchem ( - ), du jardin ( ?- ), followed the italian tradition of claude lorrain, producing semi-classic landscapes, never very convincing in their originality. van der heyden ( - ), should be mentioned as an excellent, if minute, painter of architecture with remarkable atmospheric effects. marine and still-life painters: there were two pre-eminent marine painters in this seventeenth century, willem van de velde ( - ) and backhuisen ( - ). the sea was not an unusual subject with the dutch landscapists. van goyen, simon de vlieger ( ?- ?), cuyp, willem van de velde the elder ( ?- ), all employed it; but it was van de velde the younger who really stood at the head of the marine painters. he knew his subject thoroughly, having been well grounded in it by his father and de vlieger, so that the painting of the dutch fleets and harbors was a part of his nature. he preferred the quiet haven to the open sea. smooth water, calm skies, silvery light, and boats lying listlessly at anchor with drooping sails, made up his usual subject. the color was almost always in a key of silver and gray, very charming in its harmony and serenity, but a little thin. both he and his father went to england and entered the service of the english king, and thereafter did english fleets rather than dutch ones. backhuisen was quite the reverse of van de velde in preferring the tempest to the calm of the sea. he also used more brilliant and varied colors, but he was not so happy in harmony as van de velde. there was often dryness in his handling, and something too much of the theatrical in his wrecks on rocky shores. the still-life painters of holland were all of them rather petty in their emphasis of details such as figures on table-covers, water-drops on flowers, and fur on rabbits. it was labored work with little of the art spirit about it, except as the composition showed good masses. a number of these painters gained celebrity in their day by their microscopic labor over fruits, flowers, and the like, but they have no great rank at the present time. jan van heem ( ? ?) was perhaps the best painter of flowers among them. van huysum ( - ) succeeded with the same subject beyond his deserts. hondecoeter ( - ) was a unique painter of poultry; weenix ( - ) and van aelst ( - ), of dead game; kalf ( ?- ), of pots, pans, dishes, and vegetables. eighteenth century: this was a period of decadence during which there was no originality worth speaking about among the dutch painters. realism in minute features was carried to the extreme, and imitation of the early men took the place of invention. everything was prettified and elaborated until there was a porcelain smoothness and a photographic exactness inconsistent with true art. adriaan van der werff ( - ), and philip van dyck ( - ) with their "ideal" inanities are typical of the century's art. there was nothing to commend it. the lowest point of affectation had been reached. nineteenth century: the dutch painters, unlike the belgians, have almost always been true to their own traditions and their own country. even in decadence the most of them feebly followed their own painters rather than those of italy and france, and in the early nineteenth century they were not affected by the french classicism of david. later on there came into vogue an art that had some affinity with that of millet and courbet in france. it was the dutch version of modern sentiment about the laboring classes, founded on the modern life of holland, yet in reality a continuation of the style or _genre_ practised by the early dutchmen. israels ( -) is a revival or a survival of rembrandtesque methods with a sentiment and feeling akin to the french millet. he deals almost exclusively with peasant life, showing fisher-folk and the like in their cottage interiors, at the table, or before the fire, with good effects of light, atmosphere, and much pathos. technically he is rather labored and heavy in handling, but usually effective with sombre color in giving the unity of a scene. artz ( - ) considered himself in measure a follower of israels, though he never studied under him. his pictures in subject are like those of israels, but without the depth of the latter. blommers ( -) is another peasant painter who follows israels at a distance, and neuhuys ( -) shows a similar style of work. bosboom ( - ) excelled in representing interiors, showing, with much pictorial effect, the light, color, shadow, and feeling of space and air in large cathedrals. [illustration: fig. .--mauve. sheep.] the brothers maris have made a distinct impression on modern dutch art, and, strange enough, each in a different way from the others. james maris ( -) studied at paris, and is remarkable for fine, vigorous views of canals, towns, and landscapes. he is broad in handling, rather bleak in coloring, and excels in fine luminous skies and voyaging clouds. matthew maris ( -), parisian trained like his brother, lives in london, where little is seen of his work. he paints for himself and his friends, and is rather melancholy and mystical in his art. he is a recorder of visions and dreams rather than the substantial things of the earth, but always with richness of color and a fine decorative feeling. willem maris ( -), sometimes called the "silvery maris," is a portrayer of cattle and landscape in warm sunlight and haze with a charm of color and tone often suggestive of corot. jongkind ( - ) stands by himself, mesdag ( -) is a fine painter of marines and sea-shores, and mauve ( - ), a cattle and sheep painter, with nice sentiment and tonality, whose renown is just now somewhat disproportionate to his artistic ability. in addition there are kever, poggenbeek, bastert, baur, breitner, witsen, haverman, weissenbruch. extant works: generally speaking the best examples of the dutch schools are still to be seen in the local museums of holland, especially the amsterdam and hague mus.; bosch, madrid, antwerp, brussels mus.; lucas van leyden, antwerp, leyden, munich mus.; scorel, amsterdam, rotterdam, haarlem mus.; heemskerck, haarlem, hague, berlin, cassel, dresden; steenwyck, amsterdam, hague, brussels; cornelis van haarlem, amsterdam, haarlem, brunswick. portrait and figure painters--mierevelt, hague, amsterdam, rotterdam, brunswick, dresden, copenhagen; hals, best works to be seen at haarlem, others at amsterdam, brussels, hague, berlin, cassel, louvre, nat. gal. lon., met. mus. new york, art institute chicago; rembrandt, amsterdam, hermitage, louvre, munich, berlin, dresden, madrid, london; bol, amsterdam, hague, dresden, louvre; flinck, amsterdam, hague, berlin; eeckhout, amsterdam, brunswick, berlin, munich; maes, nat. gal. lon., rotterdam, amsterdam, hague, brussels; poorter, amsterdam, brussels, dresden; victoors, amsterdam, copenhagen, brunswick, dresden; fabritius, rotterdam, amsterdam, berlin; van der helst, best works at amsterdam mus. genre painters--examples of dou, metsu, van mieris, netscher, schalcken, van ostade, are to be seen in almost all the galleries of europe, especially the dutch, belgian, german, and french galleries; terburg, amsterdam, louvre, dresden, berlin (fine portraits); steen, amsterdam, louvre, rotterdam, hague, berlin, cassel, dresden, vienna; de hooghe, nat. gal. lon., louvre, amsterdam, hermitage; van der meer of delft, louvre, hague, amsterdam, berlin, dresden, met. mus. new york. landscape painters--van goyen, amsterdam, fitz-william mus. cambridge, louvre, brussels, cassel, dresden, berlin; salomon van ruisdael, amsterdam, brussels, berlin, dresden, munich; van der neer, nat. gal. lon., louvre, brussels, amsterdam, berlin, dresden; everdingen, amsterdam, berlin, louvre, brunswick, dresden, munich, frankfort; jacob van ruisdael, nat. gal. lon., louvre, amsterdam, berlin, dresden; hobbema, best works in england, nat. gal. lon., amsterdam, rotterdam, dresden; wouvermans, many works, best at amsterdam, cassel, louvre; potter, amsterdam, hague, louvre, nat. gal. lon.; van de velde, amsterdam, hague, cassel, dresden, frankfort, munich, louvre; cuyp, amsterdam, nat. gal. lon., louvre, munich, dresden; examples of both, berchem, du jardin, and van der heyden, in almost all of the dutch and german galleries, besides the louvre and nat. gal. lon. marine painters--willem van de velde elder and younger, backhuisen, vlieger, together with the flower and fruit painters like huysum, hondecoeter, weenix, have all been prolific workers, and almost every european gallery, especially those at london, amsterdam, and in germany, have examples of their works; van der werff and philip van dyck are seen at their best at dresden. the best works of the modern men are in private collections, many in the united states, some examples of them in the amsterdam and hague museums. also some examples of the old dutch masters in new york hist. society library, yale school of fine arts, met. mus. new york, boston mus., and chicago institute. chapter xviii. german painting. books recommended: colvin, _a. durer, his teachers, his rivals, and his scholars_; eye, _leben und werke albrecht durers_; förster, _peter von cornelius_; förster, _geschichte der deutschen kunst_; keane, _early teutonic, italian, and french painters_; kügler, _handbook to german and netherland schools, trans. by crowe_; merlo, _die meister der altkolnischer malerschule_; moore, _albert durer_; pecht, _deutsche kunstler des neunzehnten jahrhunderts_; reber, _geschichte der neueren deutschen kunst_; riegel, _deutsche kunststudien_; rosenberg, _die berliner malerschule_; rosenberg, _sebald und barthel beham_; rumohr, _hans holbein der jungere_; sandrart, _teutsche akademie der edlen bau, bild-und malerey-kunste_; schuchardt, _lucas cranach's leben_; thausig, _albert durer, his life and works_; waagen, _kunstwerke und kunstler in deutschland_; e. aus'm weerth, _wandmalereien des mittelalters in den rheinlanden_; wessely, _adolph menzel_; woltmann, _holbein and his time_; woltmann, _geschichte der deutschen kunst im elsass_; wurtzbach, _martin schongauer_. early german painting: the teutonic lands, like almost all of the countries of europe, received their first art impulse from christianity through italy. the centre of the faith was at rome, and from there the influence in art spread west and north, and in each land it was modified by local peculiarities of type and temperament. in germany, even in the early days, though christianity was the theme of early illuminations, miniatures, and the like, and though there was a traditional form reaching back to italy and byzantium, yet under it was the teutonic type--the material, awkward, rather coarse germanic point of view. the wish to realize native surroundings was apparent from the beginning. it is probable that the earliest painting in germany took the form of illuminations. at what date it first appeared is unknown. in wall-painting a poor quality of work was executed in the churches as early as the ninth century, and probably earlier. the oldest now extant are those at oberzell, dating back to the last part of the tenth century. better examples are seen in the lower church of schwarzrheindorf, of the twelfth century, and still better in the choir and transept of the brunswick cathedral, ascribed to the early thirteenth century. [illustration: fig. .--lochner. sts. john, catherine, and matthew. nat. gal. london.] all of these works have an archaic appearance about them, but they are better in composition and drawing than the productions of italy and byzantium at that time. it is likely that all the german churches at this time were decorated, but most of the paintings have been destroyed. the usual method was to cover the walls and wooden ceilings with blue grounds, and upon these to place figures surrounded by architectural ornaments. stained glass was also used extensively. panel painting seems to have come into existence before the thirteenth century (whether developed from miniature or wall-painting is unknown), and was used for altar decorations. the panels were done in tempera with figures in light colors upon gold grounds. the spirituality of the age with a mingling of northern sentiment appeared in the figure. this figure was at times graceful, and again awkward and archaic, according to the place of production and the influence of either france or italy. the oldest panels extant are from the wiesenkirche at soest, now in the berlin museum. they do not date before the thirteenth century. fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: in the fourteenth century the influence of france began to show strongly in willowy figures, long flowing draperies, and sentimental poses. the artists along the rhine showed this more than those in the provinces to the east, where a ruder if freer art appeared. the best panel-painting of the time was done at cologne, where we meet with the name of the first painter, meister wilhelm, and where a school was established usually known as the school of cologne: this school probably got its sentimental inclination, shown in slight forms and tender expression, from france, but derived much of its technic from the netherlands. stephen lochner, or meister stephen, (fl. ) leaned toward the flemish methods, and in his celebrated picture, the madonna of the rose garden, in the cologne museum, there is an indication of this; but there is also an individuality showing the growth of german independence in painting. the figures of his dombild have little manliness or power, but considerable grace, pathos, and religious feeling. they are not abstract types but the spiritualized people of the country in native costumes, with much gold, jewelry, and armor. gold was used instead of a landscape background, and the foreground was spattered with flowers and leaves. the outlines are rather hard, and none of the aërial perspective of the flemings is given. after a time french sentiment was still further encroached upon by flemish realism, as shown in the works of the master of the lyversberg passion (fl. about - ), to be seen in the cologne museum. [illustration: fig. .--wolgemut. crucifixion. munich.] bohemian school: it was not on the lower rhine alone that german painting was practised. the bohemian school, located near prague, flourished for a short time in the fourteenth century, under charles iv., with theodorich of prague (fl. - ), wurmser, and kunz, as the chief masters. their art was quite the reverse of the cologne painters. it was heavy, clumsy, bony, awkward. if more original it was less graceful, not so pathetic, not so religious. sentiment was slurred through a harsh attempt at realism, and the religious subject met with something of a check in the romantic mediæval chivalric theme, painted quite as often on the castle wall as the scriptural theme on the church wall. after the close of the fourteenth century wall-painting began to die out in favor of panel pictures. nuremberg school: half-way between the sentiment of cologne and the realism of prague stood the early school of nuremberg, with no known painter at its head. its chief work, the imhof altar-piece, shows, however, that the nuremberg masters of the early and middle fifteenth century were between eastern and western influences. they inclined to the graceful swaying figure, following more the sculpture of the time than the cologne type. fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: german art, if begun in the fourteenth century, hardly showed any depth or breadth until the fifteenth century, and no real individual strength until the sixteenth century. it lagged behind the other countries of europe and produced the cramped archaic altar-piece. then when printing was invented the painter-engraver came into existence. he was a man who painted panels, but found his largest audience through the circulation of engravings. the two kinds of arts being produced by the one man led to much detailed line work with the brush. engraving is an influence to be borne in mind in examining the painting of this period. [illustration: fig. .--dÜrer. praying virgin. augsburg.] franconian school: nuremberg was the centre of this school, and its most famous early master was wolgemut ( - ), though plydenwurff is the first-named painter. after the latter's death wolgemut married his widow and became the head of the school. his paintings were chiefly altar-pieces, in which the figures were rather lank and narrow-shouldered, with sharp outlines, indicative perhaps of the influence of wood-engraving, in which he was much interested. there was, however, in his work an advance in characterization, nobility of expression, and quiet dignity, and it was his good fortune to be the master of one of the most thoroughly original painters of all the german schools--albrecht dürer ( - ). with dürer and holbein german art reached its apogee in the first half of the sixteenth century, yet their work was not different in spirit from that of their predecessors. painting simply developed and became forceful and expressive technically without abandoning its early character. there is in dürer a naive awkwardness of figure, some angularity of line, strain of pose, and in composition oftentimes huddling and overloading of the scene with details. there is not that largeness which seemed native to his italian contemporaries. he was hampered by that german exactness, which found its best expression in engraving, and which, though unsuited to painting, nevertheless crept into it. within these limitations dürer produced the typical art of germany in the renaissance time--an art more attractive for the charm and beauty of its parts than for its unity, or its general impression. dürer was a travelled man, visited italy and the netherlands, and, though he always remained a german in art, yet he picked up some italian methods from bellini and mantegna that are faintly apparent in some of his works. in subject he was almost exclusively religious, painting the altar-piece with infinite care upon wooden panel, canvas, or parchment. he never worked in fresco, preferring oil and tempera. in drawing he was often harsh and faulty, in draperies cramped at times, and then, again, as in the apostle panels at munich, very broad, and effective. many of his pictures show a hard, dry brush, and a few, again, are so free and mellow that they look as though done by another hand. he was usually minute in detail, especially in such features as hair, cloth, flesh. his portraits were uneven and not his best productions. he was too close a scrutinizer of the part and not enough of an observer of the whole for good portraiture. indeed, that is the criticism to be made upon all his work. he was an exquisite realist of certain features, but not always of the _ensemble_. nevertheless he holds first rank in the german art of the renaissance, not only on account of his technical ability, but also because of his imagination, sincerity, and striking originality. [illustration: fig. .--holbein the younger. portrait. hague mus.] dürer's influence was wide-spread throughout germany, especially in engraving, of which he was a master. in painting schäufelin ( ?- ?) was probably his apprentice, and in his work followed the master so closely that many of his works have been attributed to dürer. this is true in measure of hans baldung ( ?- ?). hans von kulmbach (?- ) was a painter of more than ordinary importance, brilliant in coloring, a follower of dürer, who was inclined toward italian methods, an inclination that afterward developed all through german art. following dürer's formulas came a large number of so-called "little masters" (from the size of their engraved plates), who were more engravers than painters. among the more important of those who were painters as well as engravers were altdorfer ( ?- ), a rival rather than an imitator of dürer; barthel beham ( - ), sebald beham ( - ), pencz ( ?- ), aldegrever ( - ), and bink ( ?- ?). swabian school: this school includes a number of painters who were located at different places, like colmar and ulm, and later on it included the holbeins at augsburg, who were really the consummation of the school. in the fifteenth century one of the early leaders was martin schöngauer ( ?- ), at colmar. he is supposed to have been a pupil of roger van der weyden, of the flemish school, and is better known by his engravings than his paintings, none of the latter being positively authenticated. he was thoroughly german in his type and treatment, though, perhaps, indebted to the flemings for his coloring. there was some angularity in his figures and draperies, and a tendency to get nearer nature and further away from the ecclesiastical and ascetic conception in all that he did. at ulm a local school came into existence with zeitblom (fl. - ), who was probably a pupil of schüchlin. he had neither schöngauer's force nor his fancy, but was a simple, straightforward painter of one rather strong type. his drawing was not good, except in the draperies, but he was quite remarkable for the solidity and substance of his painting, considering the age he lived in was given to hard, thin brush-work. schaffner (fl. - ) was another ulm painter, a junior to zeitblom, of whom little is known, save from a few pictures graceful and free in composition. a recently discovered man, bernard strigel ( ?- ?) seems to have been excellent in portraiture. [illustration: fig. .--piloty. wise and foolish virgins.] at augsburg there was still another school, which came into prominence in the sixteenth century with burkmair and the holbeins. it was only a part of the swabian school, a concentration of artistic force about augsburg, which, toward the close of the fifteenth century, had come into competition with nuremberg, and rather outranked it in splendor. it was at augsburg that the renaissance art in germany showed in more restful composition, less angularity, better modelling and painting, and more sense of the _ensemble_ of a picture. hans burkmair ( - ) was the founder of the school, a pupil of schöngauer, later influenced by dürer, and finally showing the influence of italian art. he was not, like dürer, a religious painter, though doing religious subjects. he was more concerned with worldly appearance, of which he had a large knowledge, as may be seen from his illustrations for engraving. as a painter he was a rather fine colorist, indulging in the fantastic of architecture but with good taste, crude in drawing but forceful, and at times giving excellent effects of motion. he was rounder, fuller, calmer in composition than dürer, but never so strong an artist. next to burkmair comes the celebrated holbein family. there were four of them all told, but only two of them, hans the elder and hans the younger, need be mentioned. holbein the elder ( ?- ), after burkmair, was the best painter of his time and school without being in himself a great artist. schöngauer was at first his guide, though he soon submitted to some flemish and cologne influence, and later on followed italian form and method in composition to some extent. he was a good draughtsman, and very clever at catching realistic points of physiognomy--a gift he left his son hans. in addition he had some feeling for architecture and ornament, and in handling was a bit hard, and oftentimes careless. the best half of his life fell in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and he never achieved the free painter's quality of his son. hans holbein the younger ( - ) holds, with dürer, the high place in german art. he was a more mature painter than dürer, coming as he did a quarter of a century later. he was the renaissance artist of germany, whereas dürer always had a little of the gothic clinging to him. the two men were widely different in their points of view and in their work. dürer was an idealist seeking after a type, a religious painter, a painter of panels with the spirit of an engraver. holbein was emphatically a realist finding material in the actual life about him, a designer of cartoons and large wall paintings in something of the italian spirit, a man who painted religious themes but with little spiritual significance. it is probable that he got his first instruction from his father and from burkmair. he was an infant prodigy, developed early, saw much foreign art, and showed a number of tendencies in his work. in composition and drawing he appeared at times to be following mantegna and the northern italians; in brush-work he resembled the flemings, especially massys; yet he was never an imitator of either italian or flemish painting. decidedly a self-sufficient and an observing man, he travelled in italy and the netherlands, and spent much of his life in england, where he met with great success at court as a portrait-painter. from seeing much he assimilated much, yet always remained german, changing his style but little as he grew older. his wall paintings have perished, but the drawings from them are preserved and show him as an artist of much invention. he is now known chiefly by his portraits, of which there are many of great excellence. his facility in grasping physiognomy and realizing character, the quiet dignity of his composition, his firm modelling, clear outline, harmonious coloring, excellent detail, and easy solid painting, all place him in the front rank of great painters. that he was not always bound down to literal facts may be seen in his many designs for wood-engravings. his portrait of hubert morett, in the dresden gallery, shows his art to advantage, and there are many portraits by him of great spirit in england, in the louvre, and elsewhere. saxon school: lucas cranach ( - ) was a franconian master, who settled in saxony and was successively court-painter to three electors and the leader of a small local school there. he, perhaps, studied under grünewald, but was so positive a character that he showed no strong school influence. his work was fantastic, odd in conception and execution, sometimes ludicrous, and always archaic-looking. his type was rather strained in proportions, not always well drawn, but graceful even when not truthful. this type was carried into all his works, and finally became a mannerism with him. in subject he was religious, mythological, romantic, pastoral, with a preference for the nude figure. in coloring he was at first golden, then brown, and finally cold and sombre. the lack of aërial perspective and shadow masses gave his work a queer look, and he was never much of a brushman. his pictures were typical of the time and country, and for that and for their strong individuality they are ranked among the most interesting paintings of the german school. perhaps his most satisfactory works are his portraits. lucas cranach the younger ( - ) was the best of the elder cranach's pupils. many of his pictures are attributed to his father. he followed the elder closely, but was a weaker man, with a smoother brush and a more rosy color. though there were many pupils the school did not go beyond the cranach family. it began with the father and died with the son. [illustration: fig. .--leibl. in church.] seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: these were unrelieved centuries of decline in german painting. after dürer, holbein, and cranach had passed there came about a senseless imitation of italy, combined with an equally senseless imitation of detail in nature that produced nothing worthy of the name of original or genuine art. it is not probable that the reformation had any more to do with this than with the decline in italy. it was a period of barrenness in both countries. the italian imitators in germany were chiefly rottenhammer ( - ), and elzheimer ( ?- ). after them came the representative of the other extreme in denner ( - ), who thought to be great in portraiture by the minute imitation of hair, freckles, and three-days'-old beard--a petty and unworthy realism which excited some curiosity but never held rank as art. mengs ( - ) sought for the sublime through eclecticism, but never reached it. his work, though academic and correct, is lacking in spirit and originality. angelica kauffman ( - ) succeeded in pleasing her inartistic age with the simply pretty, while carstens ( - ) was a conscientious if mistaken student of the great italians--a man of some severity in form and of academic inclinations. nineteenth century: in the first part of this century there started in germany a so-called "revival of art" led by overbeck ( - ), cornelius ( - ), veit ( - ), and schadow ( - ), but like many another revival of art it did not amount to much. the attempt to "revive" the past is usually a failure. the forms are caught, but the spirit is lost. the nineteenth-century attempt in germany was brought about by the study of monumental painting in italy, and the taking up of the religious spirit in a pre-raphaelite manner. something also of german romanticism was its inspiration. overbeck remained in rome, but the others, after some time in italy, returned to germany, diffused their teaching, and really formed a new epoch in german painting. a modern art began with ambitions and subjects entirely disproportionate to its skill. the monumental, the ideal, the classic, the exalted, were spread over enormous spaces, but there was no reason for such work in the contemporary german life, and nothing to warrant its appearance save that its better had appeared in italy during the renaissance. cornelius after his return became the head of the munich school and painted pictures of the heroes of the classic and the christian world upon a large scale. nothing but their size and good intention ever brought them into notice, for their form and coloring were both commonplace. schnorr ( - ) followed in the same style with the niebelungen lied, charlemagne, and barbarossa for subjects. kaulbach ( - ) was a pupil of cornelius, and had some ability but little taste, and not enough originality to produce great art. piloty ( - ) was more realistic, more of a painter and ranks as one of the best of the early munich masters. after him munich art became _genre_-like in subject, with greater attention given to truthful representation in light, color, texture. to-day there are a large number of painters in the school who are remarkable for realistic detail. dusseldorf school: after this school came into prominence under the guidance of schadow. it did not fancy monumental painting so much as the common easel picture, with the sentimental, the dramatic, or the romantic subject. it was no better in either form or color than the munich school, in fact not so good, though there were painters who emanated from it who had ability. at berlin the inclination was to follow the methods and ideas held at dusseldorf. the whole academic tendency of modern painting in germany and austria for the past fifty years has not been favorable to the best kind of pictorial art. there is a disposition on the part of artists to tell stories, to encroach upon the sentiment of literature, to paint with a dry brush in harsh unsympathetic colors, to ignore relations of light-and-shade, and to slur beauties of form. the subject seems to count for more than the truth of representation, or the individuality of view. from time to time artists of much ability have appeared, but these form an exception rather than a rule. the men to-day who are the great artists of germany are less followers of the german tradition than individuals each working in a style peculiar to himself. a few only of them call for mention. menzel ( - ) is easily first, a painter of group pictures, a good colorist, and a powerful pen-and-ink draughtsman; lenbach ( - ), a forceful portraitist; uhde ( -), a portrayer of scriptural scenes in modern costumes with much sincerity, good color, and light; leibl ( - ), an artist with something of the holbein touch and realism; thoma, a frankfort painter of decorative friezes and panels; liebermann, gotthardt kuehl, franz stuck, max klinger, greiner, trübner, bartels, keller. [illustration: fig. .--menzel. a reader.] aside from these men there are several notable painters with german affinities, like makart ( - ), an austrian, who possessed good technical qualities and indulged in a profusion of color; munkacsy ( - ), a hungarian, who is perhaps more parisian than german in technic, and böcklin ( - ), a swiss, who is quite by himself in fantastic and grotesque subjects, a weird and uncanny imagination, and a brilliant prismatic coloring. principal works: bohemian school--theoderich of prague, karlstein chap. and university library prague, vienna mus.; wurmser, same places. franconian school--wolgemut, aschaffenburg, munich, nuremberg, cassel mus.; dürer, crucifixion dresden, trinity vienna mus., other works munich, nuremberg, madrid mus.; schäufelin, basle, bamberg, cassel, munich, nuremberg, nordlingen mus., and ulm cathedral; baldung, aschaffenburg, basle, berlin, kunsthalle carlsruhe, freiburg cathedral; kulmbach, munich, nuremberg, oldenburg; altdorfer and the "little masters" are seen in the augsburg, nuremberg, berlin, munich and fürstenberg mus. swabian school--schöngauer, attributed pictures colmar mus.; zeitblom, augsburg, berlin, carlsruhe, munich, nuremberg, simaringen mus.; schaffner, munich, schliessheim, nuremberg, ulm cathedral; strigel, berlin, carlsruhe, munich, nuremberg; burkmair, augsburg, berlin, munich, maurice chap. nuremberg; holbein the elder, augsburg, nuremberg, basle, städel mus., frankfort; holbein the younger, basle, carlsruhe, darmstadt, dresden, berlin, louvre, windsor castle, vienna mus. saxon school--cranach, bamberg cathedral and gallery, munich, vienna, dresden, berlin, stuttgart, cassel; cranach the younger, stadtkirche wittenberg, leipsic, vienna, nuremberg mus. seventeenth and eighteenth-century painters: rottenhammer, louvre, berlin, munich, schliessheim, vienna, kunsthalle hamburg; elzheimer, stadel, brunswick, louvre, munich, berlin, dresden; denner, kunsthalle hamburg, berlin, brunswick, dresden, vienna, munich; mengs, madrid, vienna, dresden, munich, st. petersburg; angelica kauffman, vienna, hermitage, turin, dresden, nat. gal. lon., phila. acad. nineteenth-century painters: overbeck, frescos in s. maria degli angeli assisi, villa massimo rome, carlsruhe, new pinacothek, munich, städel mus., dusseldorf; cornelius, frescos glyptothek and ludwigkirche munich, casa zuccaro rome, royal cemetery berlin; veit, frescos villa bartholdi rome, städel, nat. gal. berlin; schadow, nat. gal. berlin, antwerp, städel, munich mus., frescos villa bartholdi rome; schnorr, dresden, cologne, carlsruhe, new pinacothek munich, städel mus.; kaulbach, wall paintings berlin mus., raczynski gal. berlin, new pinacothek munich, stuttgart, phila. acad.; piloty, best pictures in the new pinacothek and maximilianeum munich, nat. gal. berlin; menzel, nat. gal., raczynski mus. berlin, breslau mus.; lenbach, nat. gal. berlin, new pinacothek munich, kunsthalle hamburg, zürich gal.; uhde, leipsic mus.; leibl, dresden mus. the contemporary paintings have not as yet found their way, to any extent, into public museums, but may be seen in the expositions at berlin and munich from year to year. makart has one work in the metropolitan mus., n. y., as has also munkacsy; other works by them and by böcklin may be seen in the nat. gal. berlin. chapter xix. british painting. books recommended: armstrong, _sir henry raeburn_; armstrong, _gainsborough_; armstrong, _sir joshua reynolds_; burton, _catalogue of pictures in national gallery_; chesneau, _la peinture anglaise_; cook, _art in england_; cunningham, _lives of the most eminent british artists_; dobson, _life of hogarth_; gilchrist, _life of etty_; gilchrist, _life of blake_; hamerton, _life of turner_; henderson, _constable_; hunt, _the pre-raphaelite brotherhood_ (_contemporary review, vol. _); leslie, _sir joshua reynolds_; leslie, _life of constable_; martin and newbery, _glasgow school of painting_; mckay, _scottish school of painting_; monkhouse, _british contemporary artists_; redgrave, _dictionary of artists of the english school_; romney, _life of george romney_; rossetti, _fine art, chiefly contemporary_; ruskin, _pre-raphaelitism_; ruskin, _art of england_; sandby, _history of royal academy of arts_; william bell scott, _autobiography_; scott, _british landscape painters_; stephens, _catalogue of prints and drawings in the british museum_; swinburne, _william blake_; temple, _painting in the queen's reign_; van dyke, _old english masters_; wedmore, _studies in english art_; wilmot-buxton, _english painters_; wright, _life of richard wilson_. [illustration: fig. .--hogarth. shortly after marriage. nat. gal. london.] british painting: it may be premised in a general way, that the british painters have never possessed the pictorial cast of mind in the sense that the italians, the french, or the dutch have possessed it. painting, as a purely pictorial arrangement of line and color, has been somewhat foreign to their conception. whether this failure to appreciate painting as painting is the result of geographical position, isolation, race temperament, or mental disposition, would be hard to determine. it is quite certain that from time immemorable the english people have not been lacking in the appreciation of beauty; but beauty has appealed to them, not so much through the eye in painting and sculpture, as through the ear in poetry and literature. they have been thinkers, reasoners, moralists, rather than observers and artists in color. images have been brought to their minds by words rather than by forms. english poetry has existed since the days of arthur and the round table, but english painting is of comparatively modern origin, and it is not wonderful that the original leaning of the people toward literature and its sentiment should find its way into pictorial representation. as a result one may say in a very general way that english painting is more illustrative than creative. it endeavors to record things that might be more pertinently and completely told in poetry, romance, or history. the conception of large art--creative work of the rubens-titian type--has not been given to the english painters, save in exceptional cases. their success has been in portraiture and landscape, and this largely by reason of following the model. early painting: the earliest decorative art appeared in ireland. it was probably first planted there by missionaries from italy, and it reached its height in the seventh century. in the ninth and tenth centuries missal illumination of a byzantine cast, with local modifications, began to show. this lasted, in a feeble way, until the fifteenth century, when work of a flemish and french nature took its place. in the middle ages there were wall paintings and church decorations in england, as elsewhere in europe, but these have now perished, except some fragments in kempley church, gloucestershire, and chaldon church, surrey. these are supposed to date back to the twelfth century, and there are some remains of painting in westminster abbey that are said to be of thirteenth and fourteenth-century origin. from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century the english people depended largely upon foreign painters who came and lived in england. mabuse, moro, holbein, rubens, van dyck, lely, kneller--all were there at different times, in the service of royalty, and influencing such local english painters as then lived. the outcome of missal illumination and holbein's example produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries a local school of miniature-painters of much interest, but painting proper did not begin to rise in england until the beginning of the eighteenth century--that century so dead in art over all the rest of europe. figure and portrait painters: aside from a few inconsequential precursors the first english artist of note was hogarth ( - ). he was an illustrator, a moralist, and a satirist as well as a painter. to point a moral upon canvas by depicting the vices of his time was his avowed aim, but in doing so he did not lose sight of pictorial beauty. charm of color, the painter's taste in arrangement, light, air, setting, were his in a remarkable degree. he was not successful in large compositions, but in small pictures like those of the rake's progress he was excellent. an early man, a rigid stickler for the representation, a keen observer of physiognomy, a satirist with a sense of the absurd, he was often warped in his art by the necessities of his subject and was sometimes hard and dry in method, but in his best work he was quite a perfect painter. he was the first of the english school, and perhaps the most original of that school. this is quite as true of his technic as of his point of view. both were of his own creation. his subjects have been talked about a great deal in the past; but his painting is not to this day valued as it should be. [illustration: fig. .--reynolds. countess spencer and lord althorp.] the next man to be mentioned, one of the most considerable of all the english school, is sir joshua reynolds ( - ). he was a pupil of hudson, but owed his art to many sources. besides the influence of van dyck he was for some years in italy, a diligent student of the great italians, especially the venetians, correggio, and the bolognese eclectics. sir joshua was inclined to be eclectic himself, and from italy he brought back a formula of art which, modified by his own individuality, answered him for the rest of his life. he was not a man of very lofty imagination or great invention. a few figure-pieces, after the titian initiative, came from his studio, but his reputation rests upon his many portraits. in portraiture he was often beyond criticism, giving the realistic representation with dignity, an elevated spirit, and a suave brush. even here he was more impressive by his broad truth of facts than by his artistic feeling. he was not a painter who could do things enthusiastically or excite enthusiasm in the spectator. there was too much of rule and precedent, too much regard for the traditions, for him to do anything strikingly original. his brush-work and composition were more learned than individual, and his color, though usually good, was oftentimes conventional in contrasts. taking him for all in all he was a very cultivated painter, a man to be respected and admired, but he had not quite the original spirit that we meet with in gainsborough. reynolds was well-grounded in venetian color, bolognese composition, parmese light-and-shade, and paid them the homage of assimilation; but if gainsborough ( - ) had such school knowledge he positively disregarded it. he disliked all conventionalities and formulas. with a natural taste for form and color, and with a large decorative sense, he went directly to nature, and took from her the materials which he fashioned into art after his own peculiar manner. his celebrated blue boy was his protest against the conventional rule of reynolds that a composition should be warm in color and light. all through his work we meet with departures from academic ways. by dint of native force and grace he made rules unto himself. some of them were not entirely successful, and in drawing he might have profited by school training; but he was of a peculiar poetic temperament, with a dash of melancholy about him, and preferred to work in his own way. in portraiture his color was rather cold; in landscape much warmer. his brush-work was as odd as himself, but usually effective, and his accessories in figure-painting were little more than decorative after-thoughts. both in portraiture and landscape he was one of the most original and most english of all the english painters--a man not yet entirely appreciated, though from the first ranked among the foremost in english art. [illustration: fig. .--gainsborough. blue boy.] romney ( - ), a pupil of steele, was often quite as masterful a portrait-painter as either reynolds or gainsborough. he was never an artist elaborate in composition, and his best works are bust-portraits with a plain background. these he did with much dash and vivacity of manner. his women, particularly, are fine in life-like pose and winsomeness of mood. he was a very cunning observer, and knew how to arrange for grace of line and charm of color. after romney came beechey ( - ), raeburn ( - ), opie ( - ), and john hoppner ( - ). then followed lawrence ( - ), a mixture of vivacious style and rather meretricious method. he was the most celebrated painter of his time, largely because he painted nobility to look more noble and grace to look more gracious. fond of fine types, garments, draperies, colors, he was always seeking the sparkling rather than the true, and forcing artificial effects for the sake of startling one rather than stating facts simply and frankly. he was facile with the brush, clever in line and color, brilliant to the last degree, but lacking in that simplicity of view and method which marks the great mind. his composition was rather fine in its decorative effect, and, though his lights were often faulty when compared with nature, they were no less telling from the stand-point of picture-making. he is much admired by artists to-day, and, as a technician, he certainly had more than average ability. he was hardly an artist like reynolds or gainsborough, but among the mediocre painters of his day he shone like a star. it is not worth while to say much about his contemporaries. etty ( - ) was one of the best of the figure men, but his greek types and classic aspirations grow wearisome on acquaintance; and sir charles eastlake ( - ), though a learned man in art and doing great service to painting as a writer, never was a painter of importance. william blake ( - ) was hardly a painter at all, though he drew and colored the strange figures of his fancy and cannot be passed over in any history of english art. he was perhaps the most imaginative artist of english birth, though that imagination was often disordered and almost incoherent. he was not a correct draughtsman, a man with no great color-sense, and a workman without technical training; and yet, in spite of all this, he drew some figures that are almost sublime in their sweep of power. his decorative sense in filling space with lines is well shown in his illustrations to the book of job. in grace of form and feeling of motion he was excellent. weird and uncanny in thought, delving into the unknown, he opened a world of mystery, peopled with a strange apocalyptic race, whose writhing, flowing bodies are the epitome of graceful grandeur. [illustration: fig. .--constable. corn field. nat. gal. london.] genre-painters: from blake to morland ( - ) is a step across space from heaven to earth. morland was a realist of english country life, horses at tavern-doors, cattle, pigs. his life was not the most correct, but his art in truthfulness of representation, simplicity of painting, richness of color and light, was often of a fine quality. as a skilful technician he stood quite alone in his time, and seemed to show more affinity with the dutch _genre_-painters than his own countrymen. his works are much prized to-day, and were so during the painter's life. sir david wilkie ( - ) was also somewhat like the dutch in subject, a _genre_-painter, fond of the village fête and depicting it with careful detail, a limpid brush, and good textural effects. in he travelled abroad, was gone some years, was impressed by velasquez, correggio, and rembrandt, and completely changed his style. he then became a portrait and historical painter. he never outlived the nervous constraint that shows in all his pictures, and his brush, though facile within limits, was never free or bold as compared with a dutchman like steen. in technical methods landseer ( - ), the painter of animals, was somewhat like him. that is to say, they both had a method of painting surfaces and rendering textures that was more "smart" than powerful. there is little solidity or depth to the brush-work of either, though both are impressive to the spectator at first sight. landseer knew the habits and the anatomy of animals very well, but he never had an appreciation of the brute in the animal, such as we see in the pictures of velasquez or the bronzes of barye. the landseer animal has too much sentiment about it. the dogs, for instance, are generally given those emotions pertinent to humanity, and which are only exceptionally true of the canine race. this very feature--the tendency to humanize the brute and make it tell a story--accounts in large measure for the popularity of landseer's art. the work is perhaps correct enough, but the aim of it is somewhat afield from pure painting. it illustrates the literary rather than the pictorial. following wilkie the most distinguished painter was mulready ( - ), whose pictures of village boys are well known through engravings. [illustration: fig. .--turner. fighting tÉmÉraire. nat. gal. london.] the landscape painters: in landscape the english have had something to say peculiarly their own. it has not always been well said, the coloring is often hot, the brush-work brittle, the attention to detail inconsistent with the large view of nature, yet such as it is it shows the english point of view and is valuable on that account. richard wilson ( - ) was the first landscapist of importance, though he was not so english in view as some others to follow. in fact, wilson was nurtured on claude lorrain and joseph vernet and instead of painting the realistic english landscape he painted the pseudo-italian landscape. he began working in portraiture under the tutorship of wright, and achieved some success in this department; but in he went to italy and devoted himself wholly to landscapes. these were of the classic type and somewhat conventional. the composition was usually a dark foreground with trees or buildings to right and left, an opening in the middle distance leading into the background, and a broad expanse of sunset sky. in the foreground he usually introduced a few figures for romantic or classic association. considerable elevation of theme and spirit marks most of his pictures. there was good workmanship about the skies and the light, and an attentive study of nature was shown throughout. his canvases did not meet with much success at the time they were painted. in more modern days wilson has been ranked as the true founder of landscape in england, and one of the most sincere of english painters. the norwich school: old crome ( - ), though influenced to some extent by wilson and the dutch painters, was an original talent, painting english scenery with much simplicity and considerable power. he was sometimes rasping with his brush, and had a small method of recording details combined with mannerisms of drawing and composition, and yet gave an out-of-doors feeling in light and air that was astonishing. his large trees have truth of mass and accuracy of drawing, and his foregrounds are painted with solidity. he was a keen student of nature, and drew about him a number of landscape painters at norwich, who formed the norwich school. crome was its leader, and the school made its influence felt upon english landscape painting. cotman ( - ) was the best painter of the group after crome, a man who depicted landscape and harbor scenes in a style that recalls girtin and turner. the most complete, full-rounded landscapist in england was john constable ( - ). his foreign bias, such as it was, came from a study of the dutch masters. there were two sources from which the english landscapists drew. those who were inclined to the ideal, men like wilson, calcott ( - ), and turner, drew from the italian of poussin and claude; those who were content to do nature in her real dress, men like gainsborough and constable, drew from the dutch of hobbema and his contemporaries. a certain sombreness of color and manner of composition show in constable that may be attributed to holland; but these were slight features as compared with the originality of the man. he was a close student of nature who painted what he saw in english country life, especially about hampstead, and painted it with a knowledge and an artistic sensitiveness never surpassed in england. the rural feeling was strong with him, and his evident pleasure in simple scenes is readily communicated to the spectator. there is no attempt at the grand or the heroic. he never cared much for mountains or water, but was fond of cultivated uplands, trees, bowling clouds, and torn skies. bursts of sunlight, storms, atmospheres, all pleased him. with detail he was little concerned. he saw landscape in large patches of form and color, and so painted it. his handling was broad and solid, and at times a little heavy. his light was often forced by sharp contrast with shadows, and often his pictures appear spotty from isolated glitters of light strewn here and there. in color he helped eliminate the brown landscape and substituted in its place the green and blue of nature. in atmosphere he was excellent. his influence upon english art was impressive, and in the exhibition at paris of his hay wain, together with some work by bonington and fielding had a decided effect upon the then rising landscape school of france. the french realized that nature lay at the bottom of constable's art, and they profited, not by imitating constable, but by studying his nature model. [illustration: fig. .--burne jones. flamma vestalis.] bonington ( - ) died young, and though of english parents his training was essentially french, and he really belonged to the french school, an associate of delacroix. his study of the venetians turned his talent toward warm coloring, in which he excelled. in landscape his broad handling was somewhat related to that of constable, and from the fact of their works appearing together in the salon of they are often spoken of as influencers of the modern french landscape painters. turner ( - ) is the best known name in english art. his celebrity is somewhat disproportionate to his real merits, though it is impossible to deny his great ability. he was a man learned in all the forms of nature and schooled in all the formulas of art; yet he was not a profound lover of nature nor a faithful recorder of what things he saw in nature, except in his early days. in the bulk of his work he shows the traditions of claude, with additions of his own. his taste was classic (he possessed all the knowledge and the belongings of the historical landscape), and he delighted in great stretches of country broken by sea-shores, rivers, high mountains, fine buildings, and illumined by blazing sunlight and gorgeous skies. his composition was at times grotesque in imagination; his light was usually bewildering in intensity and often unrelieved by shadows of sufficient depth; his tone was sometimes faulty; and in color he was not always harmonious, but inclined to be capricious, uneven, showing fondness for arbitrary schemes of color. the object of his work seems to have been to dazzle, to impress with a wilderness of lines and hues, to overawe by imposing scale and grandeur. his paintings are impressive, decoratively splendid, but they often smack of the stage, and are more frequently grandiloquent than grand. his early works, especially in water-colors, where he shows himself a follower of girtin, are much better than his later canvases in oil, many of which have changed color. the water-colors are carefully done, subdued in color, and true in light. from , or thereabouts, to was his second period, in which italian composition and much color were used. the last twenty years of his life he inclined to the _bizarre_, and turned his canvases into almost incoherent color masses. he had an artistic feeling for composition, linear perspective, and the sweep of horizon lines; skies and hills he knew and drew with power; color he comprehended only as decoration; and light he distorted for effect. yet with all his shortcomings turner was an artist to be respected and admired. he knew his craft, in fact, knew it so well that he relied too much on artificial effects, drew away from the model of nature, and finally passed into the extravagant. the water-colorists: about the beginning of this century a school of water-colorists, founded originally by cozens ( - ) and girtin ( - ), came into prominence and developed english art in a new direction. it began to show with a new force the transparency of skies, the luminosity of shadows, the delicacy and grace of clouds, the brilliancy of light and color. cozens and blake were primitives in the use of the medium, but stothard ( - ) employed it with much sentiment, charm, and _plein-air_ effect. turner was quite a master of it, and his most permanent work was done with it. later on, when he rather abandoned form to follow color, he also abandoned water-color for oils. fielding ( - ) used water-color effectively in giving large feeling for space and air, and also for fogs and mists; prout ( - ) employed it in architectural drawings of the principal cathedrals of europe; and cox ( - ), dewint ( - ), hunt ( - ), cattermole ( - ), lewis ( - ), men whose names only can be mentioned, all won recognition with this medium. water-color drawing is to-day said to be a department of art that expresses the english pictorial feeling better than any other, though this is not an undisputed statement. [illustration: fig. .--leighton. helen of troy.] perhaps the most important movement in english painting of recent times was that which took the name of pre-raphaelitism: it was started about , primarily by rossetti ( - ), holman hunt ( -), and sir john millais ( - ), associated with several sculptors and poets, seven in all. it was an emulation of the sincerity, the loving care, and the scrupulous exactness in truth that characterized the italian painters before raphael. its advocates, including mr. ruskin the critic, maintained that after raphael came that fatal facility in art which seeking grace of composition lost truth of fact, and that the proper course for modern painters was to return to the sincerity and veracity of the early masters. hence the name pre-raphaelitism, and the signatures on their early pictures, p. r. b., pre-raphaelite brother. to this attempt to gain the true regardless of the sensuous, was added a morbidity of thought mingled with mysticism, a moral and religious pose, and a studied simplicity. some of the painters of the brotherhood went even so far as following the habits of the early italians, seeking retirement from the world and carrying with them a gothic earnestness of air. there is no doubt about the sincerity that entered into this movement. it was an honest effort to gain the true, the good, and as a result, the beautiful; but it was no less a striven-after honesty and an imitated earnestness. the brotherhood did not last for long, the members drifted from each other and began to paint each after his own style, and pre-raphaelitism passed away as it had arisen, though not without leaving a powerful stamp on english art, especially in decoration. rossetti, an italian by birth though english by adoption, was the type of the brotherhood. he was more of a poet than a painter, took most of his subjects from dante, and painted as he wrote, in a mystical romantic spirit. he was always of a retiring disposition and never exhibited publicly after he was twenty-eight years of age. as a draughtsman he was awkward in line and not always true in modelling. in color he was superior to his associates and had considerable decorative feeling. the shortcoming of his art, as with that of the others of the brotherhood, was that in seeking truth of detail he lost truth of _ensemble_. this is perhaps better exemplified in the works of holman hunt. he has spent infinite pains in getting the truth of detail in his pictures, has travelled in the east and painted types, costumes, and scenery in palestine to gain the historic truths of his scriptural scenes; but all that he has produced has been little more than a survey, a report, a record of the facts. he has not made a picture. the insistence upon every detail has isolated all the facts and left them isolated in the picture. in seeking the minute truths he has overlooked the great truths of light, air, and setting. his color has always been crude, his values or relations not well preserved, and his brush-work hard and tortured. millais showed some of this disjointed effect in his early work when he was a member of the brotherhood. he did not hold to his early convictions however, and soon abandoned the pre-raphaelite methods for a more conventional style. he has painted some remarkable portraits and some excellent figure pieces, and to-day holds high rank in english art; but he is an uneven painter, often doing weak, harshly-colored work. moreover, the english tendency to tell stories with the paint-brush finds in millais a faithful upholder. at his best he is a strong painter. madox brown ( - ) never joined the brotherhood, though his leaning was toward its principles. he had considerable dramatic power, with which he illustrated historic scenes, and among contemporary artists stood well. the most decided influence of pre-raphaelitism shows in burne-jones ( -), a pupil of rossetti, and perhaps the most original painter now living[ ] of the english school. from rossetti he got mysticism, sentiment, poetry, and from association with swinburne and william morris, the poets, something of the literary in art, which he has put forth with artistic effect. he has not followed the brotherhood in its pursuit of absolute truth of fact, but has used facts for decorative effect in line and color. his ability to fill a given space gracefully, shows with fine results in his pictures, as in his stained-glass designs. he is a good draughtsman and a rather rich colorist, but in brush-work somewhat labored, stippled, and unique in dryness. he is a man of much imagination, and his conceptions, though illustrative of literature, do not suffer thereby, because his treatment does not sacrifice the artistic. he has been the butt of considerable shallow laughter from time to time, like many another man of power. albert moore ( - ), a graceful painter of a decorative ideal type, rather follows the rossetti-burne-jones example, and is an illustration of the influence of pre-raphaelitism. [footnote : died .] other figure and portrait painters: among the contemporary painters sir frederick leighton ( - ), president of the royal academy, is ranked as a fine academic draughtsman, but not a man with the color-sense or the brushman's quality in his work. watts ( - ) is perhaps an inferior technician, and in color is often sombre and dirty; but he is a man of much imagination, occasionally rises to grandeur in conception, and has painted some superb portraits, notably the one of walter crane. orchardson ( -) is more of a painter, pure and simple, than any of his contemporaries, and is a knowing if somewhat mannered colorist. erskine nicol ( -), faed[ ] ( -), calderon ( -), boughton ( - ), frederick walker ( - ), stanhope forbes, stott of oldham and in portraiture holl ( - ) and herkomer may be mentioned. [footnote : died .] [illustration: fig. .--watts. love and death.] landscape and marine painters: in the department of landscape there are many painters in england of contemporary importance. vicat cole ( - ) had considerable exaggerated reputation as a depicter of sunsets and twilights; cecil lawson ( - ) gave promise of great accomplishment, and lived long enough to do some excellent work in the style of the french rousseau, mingled with an influence from gainsborough; alfred parsons is a little hard and precise in his work, but one of the best of the living men; and w. l. wyllie is a painter of more than average merit. in marines hook ( -) belongs to the older school, and is not entirely satisfactory. the most modern and the best sea-painter in england is henry moore ( - ), a man who paints well and gives the large feeling of the ocean with fine color qualities. some other men of mark are clausen, brangwyn, ouless, steer, bell, swan, mctaggart, sir george reid. modern scotch school: there is at the present time a school of art in scotland that seems to have little or no affinity with the contemporary school of england. its painters are more akin to the dutch and the french, and in their coloring resemble, in depth and quality, the work of delacroix. much of their art is far enough removed from the actual appearance of nature, but it is strong in the sentiment of color and in decorative effect. the school is represented by such men as james guthrie, e. a. walton, james hamilton, george henry, e. a. hornel, lavery, melville, crawhall, roche, lawson, mcbride, morton, reid murray, spence, paterson. principal works: english art cannot be seen to advantage, outside of england. in the metropolitan museum, n. y., and in private collections like that of mr. william h. fuller in new york,[ ] there are some good examples of the older men--reynolds, constable, gainsborough, and their contemporaries. in the louvre there are some indifferent constables and some good boningtons. in england the best collection is in the national gallery. next to this the south kensington museum for constable sketches. elsewhere the glasgow, edinburgh, liverpool, windsor galleries, and the private collections of the late sir richard wallace, the duke of westminster, and others. turner is well represented in the national gallery, though his oils have suffered through time and the use of fugitive pigments. for the living men, their work may be seen in the yearly exhibitions at the royal academy and elsewhere. there are comparatively few english pictures in america. [footnote : dispersed, .] chapter xx. american painting. books recommended: _american art review_; amory, _life of copley_; _the art review_; benjamin, _contemporary art in america_; _century magazine_; caffin, _american painters_; clement and hutton, _artists of the nineteenth century_; cummings, _historic annals of the national academy of design_; downes, _boston painters_ (_in atlantic monthly vol. _); dunlap, _arts of design in united states_; flagg, _life and letters of washington allston_; galt, _life of west_; isham, _history of american painting_; knowlton, _w. m. hunt_; lester, _the artists of america_; mason, _life and works of gilbert stuart_; perkins, _copley_; _scribner's magazine_; sheldon, _american painters_; tuckerman, _book of the artists_; van dyke, _art for art's sake_; van rensselaer, _six portraits_; ware, _lectures on allston_; white, _a sketch of chester a. harding_. american art: it is hardly possible to predicate much about the environment as it affects art in america. the result of the climate, the temperament, and the mixture of nations in the production or non-production of painting in america cannot be accurately computed at this early stage of history. one thing only is certain, and that is, that the building of a new commonwealth out of primeval nature does not call for the production of art in the early periods of development. the first centuries in the history of america were devoted to securing the necessities of life, the energies of the time were of a practical nature, and art as an indigenous product was hardly known. after the revolution, and indeed before it, a hybrid portraiture, largely borrowed from england, began to appear, and after there was an attempt at landscape painting; but painting as an art worthy of very serious consideration, came in only with the sudden growth in wealth and taste following the war of the rebellion and the centennial exhibition of . the best of american art dates from about , though during the earlier years there were painters of note who cannot be passed over unmentioned. [illustration: fig. .--west. peter denying christ. hampton ct.] the early painters: the "limner," or the man who could draw and color a portrait, seems to have existed very early in american history. smibert ( - ), a scotch painter, who settled in boston, and watson ( ?- ), another scotchman, who settled in new jersey, were of this class--men capable of giving a likeness, but little more. they were followed by english painters of even less consequence. then came copley ( - ) and west ( - ), with whom painting in america really began. they were good men for their time, but it must be borne in mind that the times for art were not at all favorable. west was a man about whom all the infant prodigy tales have been told, but he never grew to be a great artist. he was ambitious beyond his power, indulged in theatrical composition, was hot in color, and never was at ease in handling the brush. most of his life was passed in england, where he had a vogue, was elected president of the royal academy, and became practically a british painter. copley was more of an american than west, and more of a painter. some of his portraits are exceptionally fine, and his figure pieces, like charles i. demanding the five members of house of commons are excellent in color and composition. c. w. peale ( - ), a pupil of both copley and west, was perhaps more fortunate in having celebrated characters like washington for sitters than in his art. trumbull ( - ) preserved on canvas the revolutionary history of america and, all told, did it very well. some of his compositions, portraits, and miniature heads in the yale art school at new haven are drawn and painted in a masterful manner and are as valuable for their art as for the incidents which they portray. [illustration: fig. .--gilbert stuart. washington (unfinished). boston mus.] gilbert stuart ( - ) was the best portrait-painter of all the early men, and his work holds very high rank even in the schools of to-day. he was one of the first in american art-history to show skilful accuracy of the brush, a good knowledge of color, and some artistic sense of dignity and carriage in the sitter. he was not always a good draughtsman, and he had a manner of laying on pure colors without blending them that sometimes produced sharpness in modelling; but as a general rule he painted a portrait with force and with truth. he was a pupil of alexander, a scotchman, and afterward an assistant to west. he settled in boston, and during his life painted most of the great men of his time, including washington. [illustration: fig. .--w. m. hunt. lute player.] vanderlyn ( - ) met with adversity all his life long, and perhaps never expressed himself fully. he was a pupil of stuart, studied in paris and italy, and his associations with aaron burr made him quite as famous as his pictures. washington allston ( - ) was a painter whom the bostonians have ranked high in their art-history, but he hardly deserved such position. intellectually he was a man of lofty and poetic aspirations, but as an artist he never had the painter's sense or the painter's skill. he was an aspiration rather than a consummation. he cherished notions about ideals, dealt in imaginative allegories, and failed to observe the pictorial character of the world about him. as a result of this, and poor artistic training, his art had too little basis on nature, though it was very often satisfactory as decoration. rembrandt peale ( - ), like his father, was a painter of washington portraits of mediocre quality. jarvis ( - ) and sully ( - ) were both british born, but their work belongs here in america, where most of their days were spent. sully could paint a very good portrait occasionally, though he always inclined toward the weak and the sentimental, especially in his portraits of women. leslie ( - ) and newton ( - ) were americans, but, like west and copley, they belong in their art more to england than to america. in all the early american painting the british influence may be traced, with sometimes an inclination to follow italy in large compositions. the middle period in american art dates from to about . during that time, something distinctly american began to appear in the landscape work of doughty ( - ) and thomas cole ( - ). both men were substantially self-taught, though cole received some instruction from a portrait-painter named stein. cole during his life was famous for his hudson river landscapes, and for two series of pictures called the voyage of life and the course of empire. the latter were really epic poems upon canvas, done with much blare of color and literary explanation in the title. his best work was in pure landscape, which he pictured with considerable accuracy in drawing, though it was faulty in lighting and gaudy in coloring. brilliant autumn scenes were his favorite subjects. his work had the merit of originality and, moreover, it must be remembered that cole was one of the beginners in american landscape art. durand ( - ) was an engraver until , when he began painting portraits, and afterward developed landscape with considerable power. he was usually simple in subject and realistic in treatment, with not so much insistence upon brilliant color as some of his contemporaries. kensett ( - ) was a follower in landscape of the so-called hudson river school of cole and others, though he studied seven years in europe. his color was rather warm, his air hazy, and the general effect of his landscape that of a dreamy autumn day with poetic suggestions. f. e. church ( -[a]) was a pupil of cole, and has followed him in seeking the grand and the startling in mountain scenery. with church should be mentioned a number of artists--hubbard ( - ), hill ( -,) bierstadt ( -),[ ] thomas moran ( -)--who have achieved reputation by canvases of the rocky mountains and other expansive scenes. some other painters of smaller canvases belong in point of time, and also in spirit, with the hudson river landscapists--painters, too, of considerable merit, as david johnson ( -), bristol ( -), sandford gifford ( - ), mcentee ( - ), and whittredge ( -), the last two very good portrayers of autumn scenes; a. h. wyant ( - ), one of the best and strongest of the american landscapists; bradford ( - ) and w. t. richards ( -), the marine-painters. [footnote : died, .] [illustration: fig. .--eastman johnson. churning.] portrait, history, and genre-painters: contemporary with the early landscapists were a number of figure-painters, most of them self-taught, or taught badly by foreign or native artists, and yet men who produced creditable work. chester harding ( - ) was one of the early portrait-painters of this century who achieved enough celebrity in boston to be the subject of what was called "the harding craze." elliott ( - ) was a pupil of trumbull, and a man of considerable reputation, as was also inman ( - ), a portrait and _genre_-painter with a smooth, detailed brush. page ( - ), baker ( - ), huntington ( -), the third president of the academy of design; healy ( -[ ]), a portrait-painter of more than average excellence; mount ( - ), one of the earliest of american _genre_-painters, were all men of note in this middle period. [footnote : died .] leutze ( - ) was a german by birth but an american by adoption, who painted many large historical scenes of the american revolution, such as washington crossing the delaware, besides many scenes taken from european history. he was a pupil of lessing at dusseldorf, and had something to do with introducing dusseldorf methods into america. he was a painter of ability, if at times hot in color and dry in handling. occasionally he did a fine portrait, like the seward in the union league club, new york. during this period, in addition to the influence of dusseldorf and rome upon american art, there came the influence of french art with hicks ( - ) and hunt ( - ), both of them pupils of couture at paris, and hunt also of millet at barbizon. hunt was the real introducer of millet and the barbizon-fontainebleau artists to the american people. in he established himself at boston, had a large number of pupils, and met with great success as a teacher. he was a painter of ability, but perhaps his greatest influence was as a teacher and an instructor in what was good art as distinguished from what was false and meretricious. he certainly was the first painter in america who taught catholicity of taste, truth and sincerity in art, and art in the artist rather than in the subject. contemporary with hunt lived george fuller ( - ), a unique man in american art for the sentiment he conveyed in his pictures by means of color and atmosphere. though never proficient in the grammar of art he managed by blendings of color to suggest certain sentiments regarding light and air that have been rightly esteemed poetic. [illustration: fig. .--inness. landscape.] the third period in american art began immediately after the centennial exhibition at philadelphia in . undoubtedly the display of art, both foreign and domestic, at that time, together with the national prosperity and great growth of the united states had much to do with stimulating activity in painting. many young men at the beginning of this period went to europe to study in the studios at munich, and later on at paris. before some of them had returned to the united states, bringing with them knowledge of the technical side of art, which they immediately began to give out to many pupils. gradually the influence of the young men from munich and paris spread. the art students' league, founded in , was incorporated in , and the society of american artists was established in the same year. societies and painters began to spring up all over the country, and as a result there is in the united states to-day an artist body technically as well trained and in spirit as progressive as in almost any country of europe. the late influence shown in painting has been largely a french influence, and the american artists have been accused from time to time of echoing french methods. the accusation is true in part. paris is the centre of all art-teaching to-day, and the americans, in common with the european nations, accept french methods, not because they are french, but because they are the best extant. in subjects and motives, however, the american school is as original as any school can be in this cosmopolitan age. portrait, figure, and genre painters ( - ): it must not be inferred that the painters now prominent in american art are all young men schooled since . on the contrary, some of the best of them are men past middle life who began painting long before , and have by dint of observation and prolonged study continued with the modern spirit. for example, winslow homer ( -) is one of the strongest and most original of all the american artists, a man who never had the advantage of the highest technical training, yet possesses a feeling for color, a dash and verve in execution, an originality in subject, and an individuality of conception that are unsurpassed. eastman johnson ( -) is one of the older portrait and figure-painters who stands among the younger generations without jostling, because he has in measure kept himself informed with modern thought and method. he is a good, conservative painter, possessed of taste, judgment, and technical ability. elihu vedder ( -) is more of a draughtsman than a brushman. his color-sense is not acute nor his handling free, but he has an imagination which, if somewhat more literary than pictorial, is nevertheless very effective. john la farge ( -) and albert ryder ( -) are both colorists, and la farge in artistic feeling is a man of much power. almost all of his pictures have fine decorative quality in line and color and are thoroughly pictorial. [illustration: fig. .--winslow homer. undertow.] the "young men," so-called, though some of them are now on toward middle life, are perhaps more facile in brush-work and better trained draughtsmen than those we have just mentioned. they have cultivated vivacity of style and cleverness in statement, frequently at the expense of the larger qualities of art. sargent ( -) is, perhaps, the most considerable portrait-painter now living, a man of unbounded resources technically and fine natural abilities. he is draughtsman, colorist, brushman--in fact, almost everything in art that can be cultivated. his taste is not yet mature, and he is just now given to dashing effects that are more clever than permanent; but that he is a master in portraiture has already been abundantly demonstrated. chase ( -) is also an exceptionally good portrait painter, and he handles the _genre_ subject with brilliant color and a swift, sure brush. in brush-work he is exceedingly clever, and is an excellent technician in almost every respect. not always profound in matter he generally manages to be entertaining in method. blum ( -) is well known to magazine readers through many black-and-white illustrations. he is also a painter of _genre_ subjects taken from many lands, and handles his brush with brilliancy and force. dewing ( -) is a painter with a refined sense not only in form but in color. his pictures are usually small, but exquisite in delicacy and decorative charm. thayer ( -) is fond of large canvases, a man of earnestness, sincerity, and imagination, but not a good draughtsman, not a good colorist, and a rather clumsy brushman. he has, however, something to say, and in a large sense is an artist of uncommon ability. kenyon cox ( -) is a draughtsman, with a strong command of line and taste in its arrangement. he is not a strong colorist, though in recent work he has shown a new departure in this feature that promises well. he renders the nude with power, and is fond of the allegorical subject. the number of good portrait-painters at present working in america is quite large, and mention can be made of but a few in addition to those already spoken of--lockwood, mclure hamilton, tarbell, beckwith, benson, vinton. in figure and _genre_-painting the list of really good painters could be drawn out indefinitely, and again mention must be confined to a few only, like simmons, shirlaw, smedley, brush, millet, hassam, reid, wiles, mowbray, reinhart, blashfield, metcalf, low, c. y. turner, henri. [illustration: fig. .--whistler. white girl.] most of the men whose names are given above are resident in america; but, in addition, there is a large contingent of young men, american born but resident abroad, who can hardly be claimed by the american school, and yet belong to it as much as to any school. they are cosmopolitan in their art, and reside in paris, munich, london, or elsewhere, as the spirit moves them. sargent, the portrait-painter, really belongs to this group, as does also whistler ( -[ ]), one of the most artistic of all the moderns. whistler was long resident in london, but has now removed to paris. he belongs to no school, and such art as he produces is peculiarly his own, save a leaven of influences from velasquez and the japanese. his art is the perfection of delicacy, both in color and in line. apparently very sketchy, it is in reality the maximum of effect with the minimum of display. it has the pictorial charm of mystery and suggestiveness, and the technical effect of light, air, and space. there is nothing better produced in modern painting than his present work, and in earlier years he painted portraits like that of his mother, which are justly ranked as great art. e. a. abbey ( -) is better known by his pen-and-ink work than by his paintings, howbeit he has done good work in color. he is resident in england. [footnote : died, .] [illustration: fig. .--sargent. "carnation lily, lily rose."] in paris there are many american-born painters, who really belong more with the french school than the american. bridgman is an example, and dannat, alexander harrison, hitchcock, mcewen, melchers, pearce, julius stewart, weeks ( - ), j. w. alexander, walter gay, sergeant kendall have nothing distinctly american about their art. it is semi-cosmopolitan with a leaning toward french methods. there are also some american-born painters at munich, like c. f. ulrich; shannon is in london and coleman in italy. landscape and marine painters, - : in the department of landscape america has had since something distinctly national, and has at this day. in recent years the impressionist _plein-air_ school of france has influenced many painters, and the prismatic landscape is quite as frequently seen in american exhibitions as in the paris salons; but american landscape art rather dates ahead of french impressionism. the strongest landscapist of our times, george inness ( -[ ]), is not a young man except in his artistic aspirations. his style has undergone many changes, yet still remains distinctly individual. he has always been an experimenter and an uneven painter, at times doing work of wonderful force, and then again falling into weakness. the solidity of nature, the mass and bulk of landscape, he has shown with a power second to none. he is fond of the sentiment of nature's light, air, and color, and has put it forth more in his later than in his earlier canvases. at his best, he is one of the first of the american landscapists. among his contemporaries wyant (already mentioned), swain gifford,[ ] colman, gay, shurtleff, have all done excellent work uninfluenced by foreign schools of to-day. homer martin's[ ] landscapes, from their breadth of treatment, are popularly considered rather indifferent work, but in reality they are excellent in color and poetic feeling. [footnote : died .] [footnote : died .] [footnote : died .] the "young men" again, in landscape as in the figure, are working in the modern spirit, though in substance they are based on the traditions of the older american landscape school. there has been much achievement, and there is still greater promise in such landscapists as tryon, platt, murphy, dearth, crane, dewey, coffin, horatio walker, jonas lie. among those who favor the so-called impressionistic view are weir, twachtman, and robinson,[ ] three landscape-painters of undeniable power. in marines gedney bunce has portrayed many venetian scenes of charming color-tone, and de haas[ ] has long been known as a sea-painter of some power. quartley, who died young, was brilliant in color and broadly realistic. the present marine-painters are maynard, snell, rehn, butler, chapman. [footnote : died .] [footnote : died .] [illustration: fig. .--chase. alice.] principal works: the works of the early american painters are to be seen principally in the boston museum of fine arts, the athenæum, boston mus., mass. hist. soc., harvard college, redwood library, newport, metropolitan mus., lenox and hist. soc. libraries, the city hall, century club, chamber of commerce, national acad. of design, n. y. in new haven, at yale school of fine arts, in philadelphia at penna. acad. of fine arts, in rochester powers's art gal., in washington corcoran gal. and the capitol. the works of the younger men are seen in the exhibitions held from year to year at the academy of design, the society of american artists, n. y., in philadelphia, chicago, boston, and elsewhere throughout the country. some of their works belong to permanent institutions like the metropolitan mus., the pennsylvania acad., the art institute of chicago, but there is no public collection of pictures that represents american art as a whole. mr. t. b. clarke, of new york, had perhaps as complete a collection of paintings by contemporary american artists as anyone. postscript. scattering schools and influences in art. in this brief history of painting it has been necessary to omit some countries and some painters that have not seemed to be directly connected with the progress or development of painting in the western world. the arts of china and japan, while well worthy of careful chronicling, are somewhat removed from the arts of the other nations and from our study. moreover, they are so positively decorative that they should be treated under the head of decoration, though it is not to be denied that they are also realistically expressive. portugal has had some history in the art of painting, but it is slight and so bound up with spanish and flemish influences that its men do not stand out as a distinct school. this is true in measure of russian painting. the early influences with it were byzantine through the greek church. in late years what has been produced favors the parisian or german schools. in denmark and scandinavia there has recently come to the front a remarkable school of high-light painters, based on parisian methods, that threatens to outrival paris itself. the work of such men as kröyer, zorn, petersen, liljefors, thaulow, björck, thegerström, is as startling in its realism as it is brilliant in its color. the pictures in the scandinavian section of the paris exposition of were a revelation of new strength from the north, and this has been somewhat increased by the scandinavian pictures at the world's fair in . it is impossible to predict what will be the outcome of this northern art, nor what will be the result of the recent movement here in america. all that can be said is that the tide seems to be setting westward and northward, though paris has been the centre of art for many years, and will doubtless continue to be the centre for many years to come. index. (_for additions to index see page ._) abbate, niccolò dell', . abbey, edwin a., . aelst, willem van, . aëtion, . agatharchos, . aimé-morot, nicolas, . albani, francesco, , . albertinelli, mariotto, , . alemannus, johannes (da murano), , . aldegrever, heinrich, . alexander, john, . alexander, j. w., . aligny, claude françois, . allegri, pomponio, , . allori, cristofano, , . allston, washington, . alma-tadema, laurenz, , . altdorfer, albrecht, , . alvarez, don luis, . aman-jean, e., . andrea da firenze, , . angelico, fra giovanni, , , , , . anselmi, michelangelo, , . antiochus gabinius, . antonio veneziano, , . apelles, . apollodorus, , . aranda, luis jiminez, . aretino, spinello, , . aristides, . artz, d. a. c., . aubert, ernest jean, . backer, jacob, . backhuisen, ludolf, , . bagnacavallo, bartolommeo ramenghi, , . baker, george a., . baldovinetti, alessio, , . baldung, hans, , . bargue, charles, . baroccio, federigo, , . bartolo, taddeo di, , . bartolommeo, fra (baccio della porta), , , , . basaiti, marco, , . bassano, francesco, - . bassano, jacopo, - . bastert, n., . bastien-lepage, jules, . baudry, paul, . beccafumi, domenico, , . becerra, gaspar, , . beckwith, j. carroll, . beechey, sir william, . beham, barthel, . beham, sebald, . bellini, gentile, , , . bellini, giovanni, , , , , , , - , , . bellini, jacopo, , , . boltraffio, giovanni antonio, . benjamin-constant, jean joseph, . benson, frank w., . béraud, jean, . berchem, claas pietersz, , . berne-bellecour, Étienne prosper, . berrettini, pietro (il cortona), , . berruguete, alonzo, , . bertin, jean victor, , . besnard, paul albert, . bierstadt, albert, . billet, pierre, . bink, jakob, . bissolo, pier francesco, , . björck, o., . blake, william, , . blashfield, edwin h., . blommers, b. j., . blum, robert, . böcklin, arnold, , . bol, ferdinand, , . boldini, giuseppe, , . bonfiglio, benedetto, , , . bonheur, auguste, . bonheur, rosa, . bonifazio pitati, - . bonington, richard parkes, , . bonnat, léon, . bonsignori, francesco, , . bonvin, françois, . bordone, paris, , . borgognone, ambrogio, , . bosboom, j., . bosch, hieronymus, , . both, jan, , . botticelli, sandro, , , . boucher, françois, , , . boudin, eugène, . boughton, george h., . bouguereau, w. adolphe, , . boulanger, hippolyte, . boulanger, louis, . bourdichon, jean, . bourdon, sebastien, . bouts, dierich, , , , . bradford, william, . breton, jules adolphe, . breughel, , . bridgman, frederick a., . bril, paul, , , , . bristol, john b., . bronzino (agnolo di cosimo), il, , . brouwer, adriaan, , . brown, ford madox, . brown, john lewis, , brush, george d. f., . bugiardini, giuliano di piero, , . bunce, w. gedney, . burkmair, hans, , , . burne-jones, sir edward, . butler, howard russell, . cabanel, alexandre, , . caillebotte, . calderon, philip hermogenes, . callcott, sir augustus wall, . calvaert, denis, . campin, robert, . canaletto (antonio canale), il, , . cano, alonzo, , . caracci, agostino, - , . caracci, annibale, - , , . caracci, ludovico, - , . caravaggio, michelangelo amerighi da, , , , , , . carolus-duran, charles auguste emil, . caroto, giovanni francisco, , , , . carpaccio, vittore, , , , . carrière, e., . carstens, asmus jacob, . cassatt, mary, . castagno, andrea del, , , . castro, juan sanchez de, , . catena, vincenzo di biagio, , . cattermole, george, . cavazzola, paolo (moranda), , . cazin, jean charles, . cespedes, pablo de, , . champaigne, philip de, . champmartin, callande de, . chapman, carlton t., . chardin, jean baptiste simeon, . chase, william m., . chintreuil, antoine, . church, frederick e., . cima da conegliano, giov. battista, , . cimabue, giovanni, , , . clays, paul jean, , . clouet, francois, . clouet, jean, . cocxie, michiel van, , . coello, claudio, , . coffin, william a., . cogniet, leon, . cole, vicat, . cole, thomas, . coleman, c. c., . colman, samuel, . constable, john, , , - , . copley, john singleton, , . coques, gonzales, , . cormon, fernand, . cornelis van haarlem, , . cornelius, peter von, , , , . corot, jean baptiste camille, , , . correggio (antonio allegri), il, , - , , , , , , , . cossa, francesco, , . costa, lorenzo, , , , . cotman, john sell, . cottet, . courbet, g., , , , , . cousin, jean, , . couture, thomas, , . cozens, john robert, . cox, david, . cox, kenyon, . cranach (the elder), lucas, , , , . cranach (the younger), lucas, , . crane, r. bruce, . crawhall, joseph, . crayer, kasper de, , . credi, lorenzo di, , , . cristus, peter, , . crivelli, carlo, , , . crome, john (old crome), . cuyp, aelbert, , , . dagnan-bouveret, pascal a. j., . damoye, pierre emmanuel, . damophilos, . dannat, william t., . dantan, joseph Édouard, . daubigny, charles françois, . david, gheeraert, , , . david, jacques louis, , - , , , , , , . dearth, henry j., . decamps, a. g., . degas, . de haas, m. f. h., . delacroix, ferdinand victor e., , , , , , . delaroche, hippolyte (paul), , , . delaunay, jules elie, . de neuville, alphonse maria, . de nittis. see "nittis." denner, balthasar, , . detaille, jean baptiste Édouard, . devéria, eugene, . dewey, charles melville, . dewing, thomas w., . dewint, peter, . diana, benedetto, , . diaz de la pena, narciso virgilio, . diepenbeeck, abraham van, , . dionysius, . dolci, carlo, , , . domenichino (domenico zampieri), , . domingo, j., . dossi, dosso (giovanni di lutero), , , . dou, gerard, , . doughty, thomas, . du breuil, toussaint, . duccio di buoninsegna, , , . duez, ernest ange, . du jardin, karel, , . dupré, julien, . dupré, jules, . durand, asher brown, . dürer, albrecht, , - , . eastlake, sir charles, . eeckhout, gerbrand van den, , . elliott, charles loring, . elzheimer, adam, , . engelbrechsten, cornelis, . etty, william, . euphranor, . eupompos, . everdingen, allart van, , . eyck, hubert van, , . eyck, jan van, , , - , , , , . fabius pictor, . fabriano, gentile da, , , , , , , , . fabritius, karel, , , . faed, thomas, . fantin-latour, henri, . favretto, giacomo, , . ferrara, gaudenzio, , . fielding, anthony v. d. copley, . filippino. see lippi. fiore, jacobello del, , . fiorenzo di lorenzo, , . flandrin, jean hippolyte, . flinck, govaert, , . floris, franz, , . foppa, vincenzo, , , . forain, j. l., . forbes, stanhope, . fortuny, mariano, , - . fouquet, jean, . fragonard, jean honoré, . français, françois louis, . francesca, piero della, , , . francia, francesco (raibolini), , , , . franciabigio (francesco di cristofano bigi), , . francken, . fredi, bartolo di, , . fréminet, martin, . frere, t., . friant, emile, . fromentin, e., . fuller, george, . fyt, jan, , . gaddi, agnolo, , . gaddi, taddeo, , . gainsborough, t., - , . gallait, louis, . garofolo (benvenuto tisi), il, , , . gay, edward, . gay, walter, . geldorp, gortzius, . gérard, baron françois pascal, . géricault, jean louis, a. t., . gérôme, jean léon, , , , , . gervex, henri, . ghirlandajo, domenico, , , , , . ghirlandajo, ridolfo, , . giampietrino (giovanni pedrini), , . gifford, sandford, . gifford, r. swain, . giorgione (giorgio barbarelli), il, , , - , . giordano, luca, , , . giotto di bondone, , , , , , , . giottino (tommaso di stefano), , . giovanni da milano, , . giovanni da udine, , girodet de roussy, anne louis, . girtin, thomas, . giulio (pippi), romano, , , , . gleyre, marc charles gabriel, . goes, hugo van der, , . gorgasos, . goya y lucientes, francisco, , . goyen, jan van, , , . gozzoli, benozzo, , , . granacci, francesco, , . grandi, ercole di giulio, , . greuze, jean baptiste, . gros, baron antoine jean, , , . grünewald, matthias, guardi, francesco, , . guercino (giov. fran. barbiera), il, , . guérin, pierre narcisse, . guido reni, , , . guido da sienna, , . guthrie, james, . hals, franz (the younger), , , , . hamilton, james, . hamilton, mclure, . hamon, jean louis, . harding, chester, . harpignies, henri, . hassam, childe, . harrison, t. alexander, . healy, george p. a., . hébert, antoine auguste ernest, . heem, jan van, . heemskerck, marten van, , . helst, bartholomeus van der, , . henner, jean jacques, . henry, george, . herkomer, hubert, . herrera, francisco de, , , . heyden, jan van der, , . hicks, thomas, . hill, thomas, . hitchcock, george, . hobbema, meindert, , , , . hogarth, william, , . holbein (the elder), hans, , . holbein (the younger), hans, . - , , . holl, frank, . homer, winslow, . hondecoeter, melchior d', , . hooghe, pieter de, , , . hook, james clarke, . hoppner, john, . hornell, e. a., . hubbard, richard w., . huet, paul, . hunt, holman, , . hunt, william henry, . hunt, william morris, . huntington, daniel, . huysum, jan van, - . imola, innocenza da (francucci), , , . ingres, jean auguste dominique, , - , , . inman, henry, . inness, george, . israels, jozef, , . jacque, charles, . janssens van nuyssen, abraham, , . jarvis, john wesley, . joannes, juan de, , . johnson, david, . johnson, eastman, . jongkind, . jordaens, jacob, . justus van ghent, , . kalf, willem, . kauffman, angelica, , . kaulbach, wilhelm von, , . kendall, sergeant, . kensett, john f., . kever, j. s. h., . keyser, thomas de, , . klinger, max, . kneller, sir godfrey, . koninck, philip de, , . kröyer, peter s., . kuehl, g., . kulmbach, hans von, , . kunz, , . la farge, john, . lancret, nicolas, . landseer, sir edwin henry, . largillière, nicolas, . lastman, pieter, . laurens, jean paul, . lavery, john, . lawrence, sir thomas, . lawson, cecil gordon, . lawson, john, . lebrun, charles, , . lebrun, marie elizabeth louise vigée, . lefebvre, jules joseph, . legros, alphonse, . leibl, wilhelm, , . leighton, sir frederick, . leloir, alexandre louis, . lely, sir peter, . lenbach, franz, , . leonardo da vinci, , , , , , , - , , , . lerolle, henri, . leslie, robert charles, . lessing, karl friedrich, . le sueur, eustache, . lethière, guillaume guillon, . leutze, emanuel, . lewis, john frederick, . leyden, lucas van, , . leys, baron jean auguste henri, , . l'hermitte, léon augustin, . liberale da verona, , , . libri, girolamo dai, , . liebermann, max, . liljefors, bruno, . lippi, fra filippo, , , . lippi, filippino, , . lockwood, wilton, . lombard, lambert, . lorenzetti, ambrogio, , , , , . lorenzetti, pietro, , , . lorrain, claude (gellée), , , , , , . lotto, lorenzo, , . low, will h., . luini, bernardino, , . mabuse, jan (gossart) van, , , , . mcbride, a., . mcentee, jervis, . mcewen, walter, . madrazo, raimundo de, , . maes, nicolaas, , . makart, hans, , . manet, Édouard, , , . mansueti, giovanni, , . mantegna, andrea, , , , , , , , , . maratta, carlo, , . marconi, rocco, , , . marilhat, p., . maris, james, . maris, matthew, . maris, willem, . martin, henri, . martin, homer, . martino, simone di, , . masaccio, tommaso, , , , , , . masolino, tommaso fini, , . massys, quentin, , , , . master of the lyversberg passion, . mauve, anton, . mazo, juan bautista martinez del, , . mazzolino, ludovico, , . maynard, george w., . meer of delft, jan van der, , . meire, gerard van der, , . meissonier, jean louis ernest, , . meister, stephen (lochner), . meister, wilhelm, . melchers, gari, . melozzo da forli, , . melville, arthur, . memling, hans, , . memmi, lippo, , . mengs, raphael, , . menzel, adolf, , . mesdag, hendrik willem, . messina, antonello da, , , , , . metcalf, willard l., . metrodorus, . metsu, gabriel, , , . mettling, v. louis, . michael angelo (buonarroti), , , , , , , , , - , , , , , . michallon, achille etna, . michel, georges, . michetti, francesco paolo, , . mierevelt, michiel jansz, , . mieris, franz van, , . mignard, pierre, . millais, sir john, , , . millet, francis d., . millet, jean francois, - , , , , . miranda, juan carreño de, , . molyn (the elder), pieter de, , . monet, claude, , . montagna, bartolommeo, , . montenard, frederic, . moore, albert, . moore, henry, . morales, luis de, , . moran, thomas, . morelli, domenico, , . moretto (alessandro buonvicino) il, , . morland, george, . moro, antonio, , , , . moroni, giovanni battista, , . morton, thomas, . mostert, jan, , , . mount, william s., . mowbray, h. siddons, . mulready, william, . munkacsy, mihaly, , . murillo, bartolomé estéban, , - , . murphy, j. francis, . navarette, juan fernandez, , . navez, francois, , , . neer, aart van der, , . nelli, ottaviano, , . netscher, kasper, , . neuchatel, nicolaus, . neuhuys, albert, . newton, gilbert stuart, . niccolo (alunno) da foligno, , , . nicol, erskine, . nikias, . nikomachus, . nittis, giuseppe de, , . nono, luigi, . noort, adam van, , , . oggiono, marco da, , . opie, john, . orcagna (andrea di cione), , . orchardson, william quiller, . orley, barent van, . ostade, adriaan van, , , . ouwater, aalbert van, . overbeck, johann friedrich, , , . pacchia, girolamo della, , . pacchiarotta, giacomo, , . pacheco, francisco, , , . pacuvius, . padovanino (ales. varotari), il, , . page, william, . palma (il vecchio), jacopo, , , . palma (il giovine), jacopo, , . palmaroli, vincente, . parmigianino (francesco mazzola), il, , , . pamphilos, . panetti, domenico, . paolino (fra) da pistoja, , . parrhasios, . parsons, alfred, . pater, jean baptiste joseph, . paterson, james, . patinir, joachim, . pausias, . peale, charles wilson, . peale, rembrandt, . pearce, charles sprague, . pelouse, léon germaine, . pencz, georg, . penni, giovanni francesco, , . péreal, jean, . perino del vaga, , , , . perugino, pietro (vanucci), , , , , , . peruzzi, baldassare, , . petersen, eilif, . piero di cosimo, , . piloty, carl theodor von, , . pinturricchio, bernardino, , , . piombo, sebastiano del, , , . pisano, vittore (pisanello), , , , . pissarro, camille, . pizzolo, niccolo, , . platt, charles a., . plydenwurff, wilhelm, . poggenbeek, george, . pointelin, . pollajuolo, antonio del, , . polygnotus, . pontormo, jacopo (carrucci), , , . poorter, willem de, , . pordenone, giovanni ant., , . potter, paul, , . pourbus, peeter, , . poussin, gaspard (dughet), . poussin, nicolas, , , , , . pradilla, francisco, . previtali, andrea, , . primaticcio, francesco, , , . protogenes, . prout, samuel, . prudhon, pierre paul, . puvis de chavannes, pierre, . quartley, arthur, . raeburn, sir henry, . raffaelli, jean françois, . raphael sanzio, , , , , , , , , , , , , , . ravesteyn, jan van, , . regnault, henri, . regnault, jean baptiste, , . rehn, f. k. m., . reid, robert, . reid-murray, j., . reinhart, charles s., . rembrandt van ryn, , , , - , , . rené of anjou, . renoir, . reynolds, sir joshua, , - . ribalta, francisco de, , . ribera, roman, . ribera (lo spagnoletto), josé di, , , , , , . ribot, augustin theodule, . richards, william t., . rico, martin, . rigaud, hyacinthe, . rincon, antonio, , . robert-fleury, joseph nicolas, . robie, jean, . robinson, theodore, . roche, alex., . rochegrosse, georges, . roelas, juan de las, , , . roll, alfred philippe, . romanino, girolamo bresciano, , . rombouts, theodoor, , . romney, george, . rondinelli, niccolo, , . rosa, salvator, , . rosselli, cosimo, , , . rossetti, gabriel charles dante, , , . rosso, il, . rottenhammer, johann, , . rousseau, théodore, , , . roybet, ferdinand, . rubens, peter paul, , , - , , . ruisdael, jacob van, , , . ruisdael, solomon van, , . ryder, albert, . sabbatini (andrea da salerno), , . st. jan, geertjen van, . salaino (andrea sala), il, , . salviati, francesco rossi, , . sanchez-coello, alonzo, , . santi, giovanni, , . sanzio. see "raphael." sargent, john s., , . sarto, andrea (angeli) del, , , , , . sassoferrato (giov. battista salvi), il, , . savoldo, giovanni girolamo, , . schadow, friedrich wilhelm von, , , . schaffner, martin, , . schalcken, godfried, , . schäufelin, hans leonhardt, , . scheffer, ary, . schöngauer, martin, , , , . schnorr von karolsfeld, j., , . schüchlin, hans, . scorel, jan van, , , . segantini, giovanni, . semitecolo, niccolo, , . serapion, . sesto, cesare da, , . shannon, j. j., . shirlaw, walter, . shurtleff, roswell m., . sigalon, xavier, . signorelli, luca, , , , . simmons, edward e., . simonetti, . sisley, alfred, . smedley, william t., . smibert, john, . snell, henry b., . snyders, franz, , . sodoma (giov. ant. bazzi), il, , . solario, andrea (da milano), , . sopolis, . sorolla, joaquin, . spagna, lo (giovanni di pietro), , . spence, harry, . spranger, bartholomeus, . squarcione, francesco, , , , . starnina, gherardo, , . steele, edward, . steen, jan, , , . steenwyck, hendrik van, , . stevens, alfred, , . stewart, julius l., . strigel, bernard, , . stothard, thomas, . stott of oldham, . stuart, gilbert, , . stuck, franz, . sully, thomas, , . swanenburch, jakob isaaks van, . tarbell, edmund c., . teniers (the younger), david, , . terburg, gerard, , , . thaulow, fritz, . thayer, abbott h., . thegerström, r., . theodorich of prague, , . theotocopuli, domenico, , . thoma, hans, . tiepolo, giovanni battista, , . tiepolo, giovanni domenico, , . timanthes, . tintoretto (jacopo robusti), il, - , , , . titian (tiziano vecelli), , - , , , , , , , , , . tito, ettore, . torbido, francisco (il moro), , . toulmouche, auguste, . tristan, luis, , , . troyon, constant, , . trumbull, john, , . tryon, dwight w., . tura, cosimo, , , . turner, c. y., . turner, joseph mallord william, , , . twachtman, john h., . uccello, paolo, , , . uhde, fritz von, , . ulrich, charles f., . vaenius, otho, , . van beers, jan, , . vanderlyn, john, . van dyck, sir anthony, , , , , , . van dyck, philip, , . van loo, jean baptiste, , , . van marcke, Émil, . vargas, luis de, , . vasari, giorgio, , vedder, elihu, . veit, philipp, , . velasquez, diego rodriguez de silva y, , , - , , , , , , . velde, adrien van de, , . velde (the elder), willem van de, , . velde (the younger), willem van de, , . venusti, marcello, , . verboeckhoven, eugène joseph, , . verhagen, pierre joseph, , . vernet, claude joseph, , . vernet, Émile jean horace, . veronese, paolo (caliari), - , , , . verrocchio, andrea del, , , . vibert, jehan georges, . victoors, jan, , . vien, joseph marie, . villegas, josé, , . vincent, françois andré, . vinci. see "leonardo." vinton, f. p., . viti, timoteo di, , . vivarini, antonio (da murano), , . vivarini, bartolommeo (da murano), , . vivarini, luigi or alvise, , . vlieger, simon de, , . vollon, antoine, . volterra, daniele (ricciarelli) da, , . vos, cornelis de, , . vos, marten de, . vouet, simon, , . walker, frederick, . walker, horatio, . walton, e. a., . wappers, baron gustavus, , . watelet, louis Étienne, . watson, john, . watteau, antoine, , . watts, george frederick, . wauters, Émile, . weeks, edwin l., . weenix, jan, , . weir, j. alden, , . werff, adriaan van der, , . west, benjamin, , , . weyden, roger van der, , , , . whistler, james a. mcneill, . whittredge, worthington, . wiertz, antoine joseph, , . wiles, irving r., . wilkie, sir david, . willems, florent, , . wilson, richard, , . wolgemut, michael, , . wouverman, philips, , . wright, joseph, . wurmser, nicolaus, , . wyant, alexander h., , . wyllie, w. l., wynants, jan, , . yon, edmund charles, . zamacois, eduardo, , . zegers, daniel, , . ziem, . zeitblom, bartholomäus, , . zeuxis, . zoppo, marco, , . zorn, anders, . zucchero, federigo, , . zuloaga, ignacio, . zurbaran, francisco de, , , . additions to index. anglada, . bartels, . baur, . bell, . brangwyn, . breitner, . buysse, . cariani, . claus, . clausen, . fattori, . fragiacomo, . frederic, . garcia y remos, . greiner, . haverman, . henri, robert, . keller, . khnopff, . lempoels, . lie, jonas, . mctaggart, . mancini, . marchetti, . ouless, . reid, sir george, . steer, . swan, . trübner, . vierge, . weissenbruch, . witsen, . * * * * * college histories of art edited by john c. van dyke, l.h.d. professor of the history of art in rutgers college history of painting by john c. van dyke, the editor of the series. with frontispiece and illustrations, bibliographies, and index. crown vo, $ . . history of architecture by alfred d. f. hamlin, a.m., adjunct professor of architecture, columbia college, new york. with frontispiece and illustrations and diagrams, bibliographies, glossary, index of architects, and a general index. crown vo, $ . . history of sculpture by allan marquand, ph.d., l.h.d., and arthur l. frothingham, jr., ph.d., professors of archæology and the history of art in princeton university. with frontispiece and illustrations. crown vo, $ . . * * * * * a history of architecture. by a. d. f. hamlin, a.m. adjunct professor of architecture in the school of mines, columbia college. with frontispiece and illustrations and diagrams, bibliographies, glossary, index of architects, and a general index. crown vo, pp. xx- , $ . . "the text of this book is very valuable because of the singularly intelligent view taken of each separate epoch.... the book is extremely well furnished with bibliographies, lists of monuments [which] are excellent.... if any reasonable part of the contents of this book can be got into the heads of those who study it, they will have excellent ideas about architecture and the beginnings of a sound knowledge of it."--the nation, new york. "a manual that will be invaluable to the student, while it will give to the general reader a sufficiently full outline for the purposes of the development of the various schools of architecture. what makes it of special value is the large number of ground plans of typical buildings and the sketches of bits of detail of columns, arches, windows and doorways. each chapter is prefaced by a list of books recommended, and each ends with a list of monuments. the illustrations are numerous and well executed."--san francisco chronicle. "probably presents more comprehensively and at the same time concisely, the various periods and styles of architecture, with a characterization of the most important works of each period and style, than any other published work.... the volume fills a gap in architectural literature which has long existed."--advertiser, boston. "a neatly published work, adapted to the use either of student or general reader. as a text-book it is a concise and orderly setting forth of the main principles of architecture followed by the different schools. the life history of each period is brief yet thorough.... the treatment is broad and not over-critical. the chief facts are so grouped that the student can easily grasp them. the plan-drawings are clear cut and serve their purpose admirably. the half-tone illustrations are modern in selection and treatment. the style is clear, easy and pleasing. the entire production shows a studious and orderly mind. a new and pleasing characteristic is the absence of all discussion on disputed points. in its unity, clearness and simplicity lie its charm and interest."--notre dame scholastic, notre dame, ind. "this is a very thorough and compendious history of the art of architecture from the earliest times down to the present.... the work is elaborately illustrated with a great host of examples, pictures, diagrams, etc. it is intended to be used as a school text-book, and is very conveniently arranged for this purpose, with suitable headings in bold-faced type, and a copious index. teachers and students will find it a capital thing for the purpose."--picayune, new orleans. a history of sculpture, by allan marquand, ph. d., l. h. d. and arthur l. frothingham, jr., ph. d. professors of archæology and the history of art in princeton university. with frontispiece and illustrations in half-tone in the text, bibliographies, addresses for photographs and casts, etc. crown vo, pages, $ . . * * * * * henry w. kent, _curator of the seater museum, watkins, n. y._ "like the other works in this series of yours, it is simply invaluable, filling a long-felt want. the bibliographies and lists will be keenly appreciated by all who work with a class of students." charles h. moore, _harvard university_. "the illustrations are especially good, avoiding the excessively black background which produce harsh contrasts and injure the outlines of so many half-tone prints." j. m. hoppin, _yale university_. "these names are sufficient guarantee for the excellence of the book and its fitness for the object it was designed for. i was especially interested in the chapter on _renaissance sculpture in italy_." critic, _new york_. "this history is a model of condensation.... each period is treated in full, with descriptions of its general characteristics and its individual developments under various conditions, physical, political, religious and the like.... a general history of sculpture has never before been written in english--never in any language in convenient text-book form. this publication, then, should meet with an enthusiastic reception among students and amateurs of art, not so much, however, because it is the only book of its kind, as for its intrinsic merit and attractive form." outlook, _new york_. "a concise survey of the history of sculpture is something needed everywhere.... a good feature of this book--and one which should be imitated--is the list indicating where casts and photographs may best be obtained. of course such a volume is amply indexed." notre dame scholastic, _notre dame, ind._ "the work is orderly, the style lucid and easy. the illustrations, numbering over a hundred, are sharply cut and well selected. besides a general bibliography, there is placed at the end of each period of style a special list to which the student may refer, should he wish to pursue more fully any particular school." * * * * * longmans, green & co., publishers, & fifth avenue, new york. [illustration: sir joshua reynolds] masterpieces of art sir joshua reynolds a collection of fifteen pictures and a portrait of the painter with introduction and interpretation by estelle m. hurll boston and new york houghton mifflin company the riverside press cambridge copyright, , by houghton, mifflin & co. * * * * * preface this selection of pictures from reynolds's works is intended to show him at his best in the various classes of subjects which he painted. johnson and lord heathfield are among his finest male portraits, miss bowles and master bunbury are unsurpassed among his pictures of children, and the strawberry girl was the painter's own favorite fancy picture. penelope boothby and angels' heads are popular favorites which could not be omitted from any collection. in lady cockburn and her children, the duchess of devonshire and her child, and pickaback we have typical groups of mothers and children. mrs. siddons stands apart as one of his most unique and remarkable productions. the other pictures add as much as possible to the variety of the collection, and show something of the range of reynolds's art. estelle m. hurll. new bedford, mass. september, . * * * * * contents and list of pictures portrait of reynolds. painted by himself. (_frontispiece_) from a carbon print by braun, clement & co. introduction i. on the art of reynolds ii. on books of reference iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection iv. outline table of the principal events in reynolds's life v. contemporaries i. penelope boothby picture from a photograph by mansell ii. master crewe as henry viii picture from an engraving by s. w. reynolds iii. lady cockburn and her children picture from a photograph by franz hanfstaengl iv. miss bowles picture from a photograph by mansell v. master bunbury picture from an engraving by s. w. reynolds vi. mrs. siddons as the tragic muse picture from a photograph by w. m. spooner & co., london. vii. angels' heads picture from a carbon print by braun, clement & co. viii. the duchess of devonshire and her child picture from a carbon print by braun, clement & co. ix. hope picture from a photograph by the london autotype co. x. lord heathfield picture from a photograph by franz hanfstaengl xi. mrs. payne-galloway and her child--"pickaback" picture from a photograph by the london autotype co. xii. cupid as love boy picture from an engraving by s. w. reynolds xiii. the hon. anne bingham picture from an engraving by bartolozzi xiv. the strawberry girl picture from a photograph by mansell xv. dr. samuel johnson picture from a carbon print by braun, clement & co. xvi. the portrait of reynolds * * * * * introduction i. on the art of reynolds the name of sir joshua reynolds holds a place of honor among the world's great portrait painters. to appreciate fully his originative power one must understand the disadvantages under which he worked. his technical training was of the meagrest kind, and all his life he was hampered by ignorance of anatomy. but on the other hand he combined all those peculiar qualities of the artist without which no amount of technical skill can produce great portrait work. he had, in the first place, that indefinable quality of taste, which means so much in portraiture. his was an unerring instinct for poise, drapery, color, and composition. each of his figures seems to assume naturally an attitude of perfect grace; the draperies fall of their own accord in beautiful lines. reynolds knew, too, the secret of imparting an air of distinction to his sitters. the meanest subject was elevated by his art to a position of dignity. his magic touch made every child charming, every woman graceful, and every man dignified. finally, he possessed in no small degree, though curiously enough entirely disclaiming the quality, the gift of presenting the essential personality of the sitter, that which a critic has called the power of "realizing an individuality." this is seen most clearly in his portraits of men, and naturally in the portraits of the men he knew best, as johnson. it is a matter of constant amazement in studying the works of reynolds to observe his "inexhaustible inventiveness in pose and attitude." for each new picture he seemed always to have ready some new compositional motive. claude phillips goes so far as to say that in the whole range of art rembrandt alone is his equal in this respect. this versatility was due in a measure to his story-telling instinct. his imagination seemed to weave some story about each sitter which the picture was intended, as it were, to illustrate. from lord heathfield, refusing to yield the keys of gibraltar, to little miss bowles, dropping on the ground in the midst of her romp, through the long range of mothers playing with their children, there seems no end to the variety of lively incident which he could invent. the pose of the sitter suggests some dramatic moment in the imaginary episode. often the attitude is full of action, as in the miss bowles, and at times there is a striking impression of motion, as in pickaback. so strong is the dramatic effect conveyed by these pictures that the figures seem actually taken unaware in the very act of performance, as by a snapshot in modern photography. this quality of "momentariness," as phillips calls it, so dangerous in the hands of a commonplace painter, lends a peculiar fascination to many of reynolds's pictures. that he also appreciated the beauty of repose we see in such portraits as penelope boothby and anne bingham. reynolds's inventiveness was so overtaxed by his enormous number of sitters that it is scarcely to be wondered at that it sometimes failed him. occasionally he resorted to such artificial devices as were common among his contemporaries. such fresh inspirations as the strawberry girl and master bunbury could come but rarely in a lifetime. the spontaneity of miss bowles is perhaps unexcelled in all his works. reynolds's compositional schemes are of an academic elegance reminiscent of raphael. he knew well how to accomplish the flow of line, the balance of masses, the symmetry of outline, which produce a harmonious effect. a variety of designs were at his command, from the well-worn but always effective pyramidal form illustrated in many single figures, to those more novel forms he invented for groups such as lady cockburn and the duchess of devonshire. reynolds was frankly a borrower from many sources. in the roman, the bolognese, the venetian, flemish, and dutch schools, he found something to appropriate and make his own. from rembrandt he took suggestions of lighting, and such sombre color harmonies as are seen in the portrait of mrs. siddons. something of bloom and splendor he caught from the florid rubens; something of the decorative effectiveness of such pictures as lady cockburn may be traced to the influence of titian and the venetians. yet to all that he borrowed, reynolds added his own individual touch. as a critic has said, he was always reynolds from first to last. much has been written of the evanescence of reynolds's colors. his passion for color experiments amounted to a mania, and cost the world many beautiful pictures. precisely what was the nature of these experiments, and what combination of pigments ruined his pictures, is of interest only to the expert. fortunately, enough pictures escaped to show us the original glory of those which have faded. among the best preserved canvases, "those in which his power and brilliancy appear least impaired, those in which the typical sir joshua still most unmistakably shines forth," are lady cockburn and her children, miss bowles, mrs. siddons, and angels' heads. the range of reynolds's art is much wider than is commonly supposed. a very imperfect appreciation of his gifts is gained by those who know only his portraits of women and children. these indeed show a peculiar insight into childhood, and a rare delicacy in the interpretation of womanhood. but reynolds is at his strongest in the portrayal of men. it is by such portraits as the johnson and heathfield that he is worthy a place among the immortals. ii. on books of reference the original biographical material on the subject of reynolds was supplied by his own contemporaries. his friend malone wrote a valuable memoir ( ), and his pupil northcote furnished the first biography of the painter, the life of reynolds in two volumes published in . a half century later ( ) was published the most comprehensive work on reynolds in two large volumes by c. r. leslie and t. taylor. at about the same time ( ) appeared a book by f. g. stephens, "english children as painted by sir joshua reynolds." all these books have been long out of print, and there are now but two books of reference generally available. "sir joshua reynolds," by claude phillips ( ), is a small volume, but it gives a fairly complete summary of the painter's works, with valuable critical comments. sir walter armstrong's large and richly illustrated work "sir joshua reynolds" ( ) treats the subject exhaustively, and contains a complete descriptive catalogue and directory of reynolds's works--portraits and subject pictures--arranged in alphabetical order. there is an immense bibliography of memoirs of the period of george iii., and such books throw an interesting light upon the lives of many of reynolds's sitters. some of the most valuable are horace walpole's "letters," fanny burney's "diary," mrs. piozzi's "memoirs," and wraxall's "memoirs." in addition to these, boswell's incomparable "life of johnson" presents a series of vivid pictures of the life of the period, and contains many anecdotes of the friendship between reynolds and the great lexicographer. reynolds's lectures and writings fill two volumes of the bohn library. of these the twelve discourses delivered before the royal academy are the most valuable, and have been reprinted in various editions. the most recent is that of , with notes and a biographical introduction by e. g. johnson. intended as means of instruction to beginners in painting, these lectures deal with general principles rather than with practical technique, and are not to be taken as expository in any measure of reynolds's own art. iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection _portrait frontispiece._ painted in for the imperial academy in florence, and now in the uffizi gallery, florence. . _penelope boothby._ painted in july, . in the possession of mrs. thwaites. . _master crewe as henry viii._ painted in for john crewe, esq., and exhibited at the royal academy, . size: ft. in. by ft. in. in the possession of the earl of crewe. . _lady cockburn and her children._ reynolds began the picture in and upon its completion in received £ s. in payment. it was exhibited at the royal academy in , after which it was dated . passed into the possession of lady hamilton, daughter of sir james cockburn ( th baronet), and by her bequeathed to the english national gallery, where it hung, - , when it was learned that lady hamilton had no power to dispose of the picture. it was then sold at auction to mr. beit, park lane, london. size: ft. in. by ft. - / in. . _miss bowles._ painted in . now in the wallace collection, hertford house, london. size: ft. - / in. by ft. - / in. . _master bunbury._ exhibited at the royal academy, ; bequeathed by reynolds to mrs. bunbury. in the possession of sir henry bunbury. size: ft. in. by ft. . _mrs. siddons as the tragic muse._ painted in and exhibited at the royal academy in . the original work was bought by m. de calonne for guineas, and finally came into the possession of the marquis of westminster, in whose family it has since remained. it is in the gallery of grosvenor house, london. . _angels' heads._ painted for lord william gordon ( guineas) and exhibited at the royal academy, . presented by lady gordon to the national gallery, london, . size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _the duchess of devonshire and her child._ exhibited at the royal academy in . the original is at chatsworth house, and there is a copy at windsor castle, from which our reproduction is made. . _hope._ one of the figures of the window design, new college chapel, oxford. the original design was painted in oil in , and was purchased by the earl of normanton. . _lord heathfield._ begun august , , and exhibited at the royal academy in . originally painted for alderman boydell, and purchased by parliament in . now in the national gallery, london. size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _mrs. payne-gallwey and child_ (pickaback). painted . as late as it was in the possession of lord monson, and is now owned by j. pierpont morgan, esq. . _cupid as link boy._ the date is not certainly fixed, but it is known that reynolds was at work in the spring of upon some subjects of this class, several of which were engraved in the period - . in the possession of alexander henderson, esq. size: ft. in. by ft. . _hon. anne bingham._ painted in . in the possession of earl spencer. size: ft. - / in. by ft. / in. . _the strawberry girl._ painted for the earl of carysfort ( guineas) and exhibited at the royal academy, . as reynolds repeated the subject it is difficult to trace the history of the original picture. the painting now in the wallace collection, hertford house, came from the samuel rogers collection. size: ft. - / in. by ft. / in. . _samuel johnson._ painted for mr. thrale for the streatham gallery, . now in the national gallery, london. size: ft. - / in. by ft. in. iv. outline table of the principal events in reynolds's life . reynolds born at plympton, devonshire, england, july . - . apprenticeship with the painter thomas hudson, london. - . residence in devonshire. . portrait of captain hamilton first to attract attention. death of reynolds's father. - . residence in plymouth docks. - . voyage in centurion with commodore keppel; studies in italy; and return, via paris, to london. . establishment of reynolds in london as a portrait painter, with apartments in st. martin's lane, leicester fields. . removal to great newport st. whole length portrait of commodore keppel by the seashore, an epoch-making picture in reynolds's career. - . rapid advance of reynolds to the foremost place as portrait painter. . portrait of horace walpole; portrait of samuel johnson. . pocket book gives list of sitters. . two papers contributed to the idler. pocket book gives sitters. . removal to handsome house, leicester fields. first exhibition of pictures by living artists, in room of society for encouragement of arts, manufactures, and commerce. reynolds's contributions, elizabeth duchess of hamilton, lady elizabeth keppel, and two male portraits. names of sitters recorded in reynolds's pocket book. . exhibition of pictures at society of artists' rooms in spring gardens. some of reynolds's contributions: captain orme leaning on his horse, portrait of laurence sterne, and countess waldegrave. . visit to devonshire with dr. samuel johnson. exhibition in spring gardens. some of reynolds's contributions: lady elizabeth keppel as bridesmaid, countess waldegrave and child, and garrick between tragedy and comedy. . four portraits sent to spring gardens exhibition, including "nelly o'brien." . two portraits sent to spring gardens exhibition. severe illness. . founding of literary club. . lady sarah bunbury sacrificing to the graces, sent to spring gardens exhibition. . four pictures contributed to the spring gardens exhibition. election to membership in the dilettanti society. . foundation of the royal academy with reynolds as president, and honor of knighthood conferred. four pictures contributed to spring gardens exhibition, september. trip to paris, september-october. . first discourse as president delivered before the academy, january. first academy exhibition opened in pall mall, april , with several contributions from reynolds. second discourse delivered before the academy, december . . royal academy exhibition in april, with several contributions from reynolds, including the children in the wood. visit in devonshire, september-october. third discourse delivered, december . . several pictures contributed to academy exhibition. northcote apprenticed to reynolds. visit to paris, august-september. fourth discourse delivered, december . . several pictures contributed to the academy exhibition, including mrs. crewe as st. genevieve. election of reynolds as alderman of plympton, september. fifth discourse delivered, december . . twelve pictures contributed to royal academy exhibition, including the strawberry girl, the portrait of joseph banks, and ugolino. . honorary degree of d. c. l. conferred by oxford, july. . thirteen pictures contributed to royal academy exhibition, including lady cockburn and her children, three ladies adorning a term of hymen, and the baby princess sophia, duchess of gloucester. sixth discourse delivered, december . . william doughty received as pupil into reynolds's home. twelve pictures contributed to the royal academy exhibition, including mrs. sheridan as st. cecilia and a half-length portrait of dr. robinson, primate of ireland. . twelve pictures contributed to royal academy exhibition, including georgiana, duchess of devonshire, and master crewe as henry viii. termination of northcote's services. election to membership in florentine academy, and portrait painted for the uffizi gallery. seventh discourse delivered, december . . thirteen pictures contributed to royal academy exhibition, including lady caroline montagu (winter). - . two portrait groups for dilettanti society. . marlborough family portrait exhibited at royal academy. eighth discourse, december . . designs for windows of new college chapel, oxford, executed and exhibited at royal academy; also portraits of lady louisa manners and viscountess crosbie. . removal of royal academy to somerset house and exhibition of reynolds's portrait of gibbon. . ninth discourse delivered, october . tenth discourse delivered, december . . fourteen pictures exhibited at royal academy, including master bunbury, the duchess of rutland, and the design of temperance for oxford window. journey to holland and flanders, july. . fifteen pictures exhibited at royal academy. second paralytic attack, and visit to bath. eleventh discourse delivered, december . . ten pictures exhibited at royal academy. visit to antwerp and brussels. . sixteen pictures exhibited at royal academy, including portrait of mrs. siddons as tragic muse, prince of wales with horse, charles james fox. appointment as court painter. twelfth discourse delivered, december . . sixteen pictures exhibited at royal academy. visit to flanders to purchase pictures. commission from empress catherine of russia for historical picture. . thirteen pictures exhibited at royal academy, including the duke of orleans, john hunter, the duchess of devonshire and child. thirteenth discourse delivered, december . . three illustrations contributed to boydell's shakespeare gallery. thirteen pictures exhibited at royal academy, including angel heads and master philip york. . eighteen pictures sent to royal academy exhibition, including lord heathfield and the infant hercules. fourteenth discourse, with eulogy on gainesborough. . portrait of richard brinsley sheridan, and "simplicity." . loss of sight in left eye (_gutta serena_) and abandonment of painting. . resignation from presidency of royal academy and from seat as academician. "mrs. billington as st. cecilia" sent with other pictures to academy exhibition. fifteenth and farewell discourse delivered december . . death of reynolds, february . v. contemporaries noted painters: thomas hudson ( - ). richard wilson ( - ). john opie ( - ). george romney ( - ). allan ramsay ( - ). thomas gainesborough ( - ). sir william beechey ( - ). james barry ( - ). francis cotes ( - ). pupils and assistants: peter toms. giuseppe marchi. thomas beach or beech. hugh barron. berridge. parry. james northcote. score. list of original members of royal academy:[ ] william chambers. george michael moser. francis milner newton. edward penny. thomas sandby. samuel wade. william hunter. *francis hayman. george barrett. francesco bartolozzi. edward burch. *agostino carlini. *charles catton. mason chamberlin. *j. baptist cipriani. richard cosway. john gwynn. william hoare. nathaniel hone. mrs. angelica kauffmann. jeremiah meyer. mrs. mary moser. joseph nollekens. john richards. paul sandby. domenick serres. *peter toms. william tyler. *benjamin west. *richard wilson. joseph wilton. richard yeo. john zoffanii. *francesco zuccarelli. [footnote : the names starred were the artists who formed the first staff of visiting critics.] friends and acquaintances at the dilettanti society: earl of holderness. lord gowran. sir everard fawkener. the marquis of granby. lord eglinton. lord anson. stuart, the painter. sir charles bunbury. lord euston. the marquis of hartington. dick edgcumbe. captain george edgcumbe. literary club: first twelve members:[ ] reynolds. johnson. goldsmith. dr. nugent. dr. percy, afterwards bishop of dromore. sir robert chambers. sir john hawkins. burke. bennet langton. chamier. dyer. hon. topham beauclerk. [footnote : the membership was afterwards successively increased to thirty-five and forty.] i penelope boothby somewhat over a century ago, at the time when our american colonies were struggling for liberty, lived the great english portrait painter, sir joshua reynolds. in those days photography had not been invented, and portrait painting was a profession patronized by all classes of people. there were many portrait studios in london, but none were so fashionable as that of reynolds. it is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. there was scarcely a distinguished man or beautiful woman in the kingdom who did not sit to him, and many were the children whose portraits he painted. if all his works could be brought together they would form a complete historical gallery of the reign of george iii. here we should see princes, statesmen, and warriors, actors and poets, court beauties and "blue stockings," the petted children of the rich, and the picturesque waifs of the london streets. among the faces we should find those, like fox and burke, whose lives were intimately connected with the destinies of our own nation, and those, like goldsmith and johnson, whose names are familiar in our schools and homes. there is something about these portraits which makes them seem alive, something too which gives to the plainest person a certain dignity and interest. with all the variety of subjects which reynolds treated he was never happier than when painting children. he loved them dearly, delighted to play with them, and seemed to understand them as few grown people do. in his great octagonal painting room were many things to amuse his little friends, and a portrait sitting there usually meant a frolic. penelope boothby is the name of the little girl in our illustration, and the old-fashioned name is precisely suited to the quaint figure in cap and mitts. we are reminded of that penelope of the old greek poem, the odyssey, who waited so faithfully through the years for the return of her husband odysseus from the trojan war. the story runs that, believing odysseus to be dead, many suitors begged her hand, but she always replied that before marrying she must first complete the shroud she was making for her aged father-in-law. every day she busied herself with the task, but when night came she secretly undid all that she had wrought through the day, so that it might never reach completion. thus she prolonged the time of waiting until at last odysseus returned to claim his wife. whether or not the little penelope of our picture knew this story we cannot say, but it was the fashion of the times to revive the names and legends of mythology, and penelope was a name which had come to stand for all the domestic virtues. [illustration: penelope boothby] as we look at the picture for the first time the quaint costume of the little girl suggests the idea that she is dressed for a tableau. children the world over love to don the clothes of a past generation and play at men and women. miss penelope, we fancy, has been ransacking some old chest of faded finery, and has arrayed herself in the character of "martha washington," as painted by gilbert stuart. the snowy kerchief folded across her bosom and the big mob cap on her head are precisely like those in the portraits of the colonial lady. the child purses her lips together primly and folds her hands in a demure attitude in her lap, as if to play her part well, but she is far too shy to look us directly in the face, and glances aside with downcast eyes. all this illusion is dispelled when we come to study the customs of the period. it appears that children then, both in england and america, dressed precisely like their elders, and penelope's costume here is doubtless such as she wore every day. a little boston girl, anna green winslow, wrote in her diary in of wearing a cap and black mitts which we fancy were not unlike these. there are portraits, too, of other little girls of the time, wearing the same huge headdress, as we may see in the family group of the copleys in the boston art museum. penelope was the only child of sir brooke boothby, and, as we may well believe from her winsome face, the darling of the household. her home was a fine mansion buried among trees in the beautiful english country. she was, we fancy, a quiet little girl, preferring a corner with her dolls to any boisterous romp, but not without a bit of fun in her nature. she was an affectionate little creature, and very fond of her father, watching at the gate for his return home, and sitting on his knee in the evening. on sunday mornings she went to the quaint old church of ashbourne and knelt beside her mother in the service. all this and much more we learn from a book written by her father which bears the pathetic title of "sorrows." for little penelope died at the age of seven, and the stricken parent solaced himself in his loneliness by writing the memories of his darling. the portrait by reynolds was made when the child was four years old. after her death, fuseli painted a picture representing her borne to heaven by an angel. there is also a lovely marble monument to penelope, by banks, in the ashbourne church.[ ] [footnote : see mrs. rebecca harding davis's article in _st. nicholas_, november, , "about the painter of little penelope."] ii master crewe as henry viii there was once on the throne of england a king named henry viii. he was a man of extraordinary character, with qualities both good and bad. his conduct was sometimes unscrupulous and tyrannical, and he let nothing interfere with his own pleasure. nevertheless his reign brought many benefits to england, and his memory is respected by english people. in his early manhood, henry was accounted the handsomest prince of his time, but allowance must be made for the flattery of his subjects. he was a big, rather coarse-looking man, with small eyes, and a large face and double chin. for his noisy ways and rough manners he has been familiarly called "bluff king hal" and "burly king harry." he was fond of the hunt and the tournament and all kinds of manly exercise. he was also much given to show and display, and loved rich dresses. he employed as his court painter the celebrated dutch artist holbein, who made various portraits of the members of the royal family. there was one particularly fine group which was unfortunately destroyed by fire, but as a copy had previously been made we still know what the picture was like. henry viii. had been dead some two hundred years before the master crewe of our picture was born, but english kings are not allowed to be forgotten. successive generations of children were shown holbein's portraits of the bluff old ruler, and were taught something about his reign. it happened one time that the children of master crewe's acquaintance had a fancy dress party. the crewes were people of fashion who entered constantly into social affairs. naturally there was much discussion over their son's part and costume. it was a happy thought which fixed upon the character of henry viii., for the boy's round face, square shoulders, and sturdy frame were well fitted for the rôle. evidently no pains were spared to make the costume historically correct. holbein's portrait was the costumer's model, and every detail was faithfully followed. the boy is dressed in the fashion of the sixteenth century in "doublet and hose." this consists first of a richly embroidered waistcoat, the most effective part of the dress. the sleeves are made of the same material and are gathered at the wrists in a ruffle. the lower part of the doublet is a skirt falling just above the knees. [illustration: master crewe as henry viii.] over all is flung a handsome mantle; but this is drawn apart in front to display the smart waistcoat to full advantage. a broad-brimmed hat set jauntily on one side, and trimmed with a long feather, completes the costume. by way of ornament is worn a big jewelled collar and a long chain with locket. a short sword swings from the girdle, and on the left leg is the garter, which is the badge of membership in the ancient order of the garter, of which henry viii. was the tenth sovereign member. this is of dark blue ribbon edged with gold, and bearing in gold letters the motto "honi soit qui mal y pense".[ ] [footnote : evil to him who evil thinks.] it is one thing to have a perfect costume, and another to understand the rôle. master crewe not only looks his part, but he acts it as well. he has not failed to take in all the points of the portrait, and imitates the pompous attitude to perfection. he stands with feet wide apart, grasping his gloves in the right hand and supporting the other on the sash. he is a bright boy, who enters into the spirit of the game, and it tickles him hugely to play the part of a despot. but while he is henry viii. in miniature, he is henry viii. without the king's coarseness, and in the place is a child's innocent pleasure. it was no wonder that his parents, delighted with the success of the costume, wished to have a portrait made. the boy is painted as he appeared when posing for his admiring friends. in his effort to assume a lordly air his boyish glee gets the better of him, and he belies the character by a broad grin. perhaps he has caught the twinkle in his father's eye, or his mother's suppressed smile, and he can keep serious no longer. "bravo!" cries the audience, and he smiles in innocent delight at his success. his pet dogs are in the room, and one of them is rather suspicious of this strange young prince. he sniffs cautiously at his legs, for though his eyes deceive him, his sense of smell cannot be mistaken. through a window in the rear we get a glimpse of the park beyond, which adds much to the beauty of the picture. as we shall see in other pictures of this collection[ ] an interior gives a sense of imprisonment unless it contains some opening. the mass of bright color which the landscape makes in the upper right corner is balanced in the lower left corner by a cloak thrown over a chair. [footnote : see lady cockburn and her children, and the duchess of devonshire and her child.] reynolds painted so many fine portraits of boys that it is hard to say that this or that one is best, though some have preferred master crewe to all others.[ ] we shall see by-and-by in master bunbury, and the cupid, that the painter understood boy nature pretty thoroughly. this rollicking master crewe is not so serious as master bunbury, nor so sly as the cupid boy; he is in fact a typical english lad, sturdy, masterful, frank, and good-natured. [footnote : leslie and taylor say that "none of his many admirable boy pictures is so consummate."] iii lady cockburn and her children a pretty story is told of a roman matron named cornelia, who was one day entertaining a visitor, when the conversation led to the subject of jewels. "these are my jewels," said the hostess, and turned to show the stranger her beautiful children. the story comes readily to mind as one looks at this portrait of lady cockburn and her children. indeed, the picture was once engraved[ ] under the fanciful title of "cornelia and her children." like the roman matron of old, the english mother gathers her children about her as the choicest jewels of her possession. her stately beauty is of the classic sort, and the children are as charming as english children are reputed to be. [footnote : by tomkins, in .] all three are boys. the eldest is james, who kneels on his mother's lap, playfully grasping the mantle about her neck, and supported in his precarious position by her hand placed firmly on his back. he has the sweet expression which betokens a sunny nature, and his well-cut features are such as make a handsome man. he was his father's heir and namesake, succeeding him as the seventh baronet. the rogue peeping over his mother's shoulder is george. though his features are less regular than his elder brother's, he is none the less attractive, for he is a jolly little fellow. when he grew to manhood he entered the navy and became an admiral. it was on his ship, the northumberland, that napoleon was conveyed to the island of st. helena to end his days in exile. in the course of time admiral cockburn became the eighth baronet of the name. the baby lying on the mother's lap is william. in after years he entered the ministry, married a daughter of sir robert peel, and became dean of york. it was fitting that one of lady cockburn's sons should enter the church, as her father, dr. ayscough, had been dean of bristol. upon the death of his elder brother, the dean of york became the ninth baronet. the picture shows the three children in a game of hide-and-seek. george, who is evidently the leader of the fun, dodges up and down behind his mother, throwing little william into an ecstasy of delight. as the round face appears again over the shoulder, the baby reaches up his fat little hand to clutch his brother's arm, fairly doubling himself up in his pleasure, and grasping one foot in his other hand. james enjoys the play more quietly. it is quite likely that he has been hiding his face in his mother's mantle, but now he pauses to watch his little brother's amusement, his lips parted in a smile, his finger directing the baby where to look. [illustration: lady cockburn and her children] the mother turns her face towards that of her eldest son, scanning it closely. the action in the picture is so delightfully natural that we do not at first realize how difficult a problem is solved in the arrangement of the four figures. an amateur photographer places his sitters in a stiff row and directs them all to look towards a single point. the master artist conceives of some action which shall engage the attention of all, and form a natural connection between them. thus, in our picture, the interest of the game binds the figures together. the baby lifts his face to that of the mother and brother; the mother turns to the child at her right, and the latter looks down at the baby, thus completing the circle. the lines of the composition are also so disposed as to bring the figures together in a close unity. follow the outer edge of the figure of james at the left; trace across the mother's lap the line made by the border of her mantle, and continued along the baby's body. from the mother's elbow move the pencil past the baby's head and along his out-stretched arm till the line ends at the top of george's head, and from this point carry a somewhat irregular line across to the head of james. we have thus traced the parallelogram which incloses the group. the centre of the group is somewhat at the left of the centre of the canvas, and the picture would seem one-sided were it not for the details of the background at the right. here the painter has represented a parapet supporting a marble pillar, at the base of which a large macaw perches. beyond is seen a beautiful landscape. this spot of color brings the composition into perfect balance. more than this, the view thus opened relieves the crowded effect of the compact grouping. the surrounding space would not seem large enough for the four figures were it not for this added depth of space, which gives the eye a long distance to traverse. the composition is as fine in color as it is in lines and masses. it is a "splendid tawny color harmony, formed by the red of the curtain, the warm flesh tints, the rich orange yellow of the outer robe of satin bordered with white fur, and the gaudy plumage of the macaw".[ ] [footnote : claude phillips.] with so many great artistic qualities, it is no wonder that the portrait has always been admired. upon its completion in it was sent to the royal academy to be exhibited, and when it was first brought into the room, all the painters present, struck with admiration, burst into a tumult of applause and handclapping. even after this the painstaking painter probably added some finishing touches and inscribed his name and the date, , upon the ornamental border of the lady's mantle. iv miss bowles a little girl and her dog are playing together in a wooded park. the place is a fine playground, with its soft, grassy carpet, and noble old trees. it is the sort of park which adjoins country houses of wealthy old english families, where years of training have brought to perfection the trees planted by previous generations. here and there, through spaces among the branches, shafts of sunlight illumine the shady spot. the child herself seems like some woodland sprite. she is bubbling over with fun, and is scarcely still a minute. her spaniel is a gay playfellow,--a beautiful creature, with long silky hair and drooping ears. he is intelligent, too, and devoted to his mistress. she leads him a merry chase, darting in and out among the big trees which hide her from him. he bounds after her, loses her a moment, and then, as she reappears, leaps upon her with delight. in the midst of the frolic the child's attention is attracted by a group of boys who have entered the park, all unobserved, and have begun a game of cricket. on the instant she drops on her knees on the grass, seizes the dog, and, lest he should interrupt the sport, clasps her arms tight around his neck, to hold him fast. the poor spaniel is nearly choked, but patiently yields to the caprice of his young mistress while she watches the game with dancing eyes. from her gleeful expression one would fancy that the winner was her favorite. some such simple incident as this sir joshua reynolds must have had in mind when painting the portrait of miss bowles; for every picture of his seems to carry a story with it, each one thought out to fit the circumstances and character of the sitter. the lively miss bowles, as we see, is totally unlike the demure miss boothby. they are both charming children; but, while penelope would love to nestle in her mother's arms, miss bowles would dance coyly away. while penelope would sit in doors by the hour, contented with her sewing, miss bowles would be skipping about the park like a little hoyden. the picture of miss bowles is, therefore, full of action; both child and dog pause only an instant, caught, as it were, in the midst of their play. the attitude of penelope boothby, on the other hand, is one of repose, as suits the tranquil nature of the little girl. the background of each picture is likewise perfectly appropriate. miss penelope's placid figure is seen against a leafy screen which nearly closes in the picture; but miss bowles needs plenty of space for her romps, and has a whole park to herself. the painter's acquaintance with little miss bowles began very pleasantly. her parents, proud of their lovely daughter, were planning to have her portrait made, and had chosen romney for the painter. a friend of theirs--sir george beaumont--induced them to change their minds and engage reynolds. even if the portrait faded in time, as they were afraid it might, sir joshua's pictures sometimes having that fault, it would still be more beautiful than if painted by any other hand. [illustration: miss bowles] at sir george's suggestion the painter was first invited to dinner, that he might see the child. she appeared at dessert, and was placed beside the stranger at the table. it did not take long for the two to become acquainted, for the painter immediately began to amuse the little girl with stories and all sorts of tricks. calling her attention to some object on the other side of the room, he would steal her plate while she was looking away, and pretend to be greatly surprised at its disappearance. they would then try to find it, but in vain, until, when she was again off her guard, he would slip it into place, and there would be a great sensation over its discovery. was there ever a jollier man for a little girl to dine with! the next day it was proposed that miss bowles should be taken to visit her new friend, and she was of course delighted to go. when the party reached the studio, the child's face was shining with expectancy as she greeted the painter. it was this expression which reynolds has caught so perfectly on his canvas, and which makes the little girl's face seem actually smiling into ours. he was equally successful in catching a natural pose, watching her closely as she danced about the room. it was a theory of his that the unconscious movements of a child are always graceful, and we may be sure that miss bowles's position here is one of her own invention. her skirt is spread out a little at one side, balancing, as it were, the figure of the dog opposite. the lines inclosing the entire group form a pyramid. the original painting is still beautiful in color, being among the best preserved of reynolds's works. critics have pronounced it a "matchless work that would have immortalized reynolds had he never painted anything else." v master bunbury by a pleasant coincidence the year brought to reynolds's studio for portrait sittings two young people who began an acquaintance at this time which had a romantic ending. they were miss catherine horneck and henry william bunbury, who were married a few years later, and were the parents of the little boy in our picture. miss horneck was one of two pretty sisters who, upon their father's death, had become wards of sir joshua, the family being old devonshire acquaintances of his. they were now living in london with their mother, and were great pets in society. goldsmith, who knew them well, playfully named miss catherine "little comedy" from the resemblance between her face and that of the allegorical figure of comedy in one of reynolds's portraits of garrick. mr. bunbury was a gentleman of family and fortune, who had unusual artistic talent. his special forte was in humorous subjects and caricatures, and his works were sought and praised by connoisseurs. reynolds must have followed with affectionate interest the lives of these young friends whose attachment had been fostered in his studio. he always felt a fatherly regard for mrs. bunbury and a generous admiration for her husband's artistic work. their elder son, the boy of our picture, was born in , and was named charles john. the painter visiting his friends saw the child grow out of baby-hood and become a sturdy boy. he was a beautiful child, with large eyes set wide apart in his round face. his expression was delightfully frank and honest. when he was nine years old the portrait was painted which is reproduced in our illustration. the boy sits under a tree in a pleasant landscape looking intently before him at some object. though he seems to have been carefully dressed for some special occasion he has been enjoying himself in boy fashion in spite of that. his ringletted hair is blown about by the wind, and the coat is unbuttoned at the throat, as he drops down to rest, hot and panting from some vigorous exercise. his chubby hands rest on his knees, and his eyes are fixed on something directly in front of him. he does not seem to be a boy given to day-dreaming, and he is much too active to sit still a long time. it must be something very interesting which awakens his curiosity. perhaps a bumble-bee, buzzing in and out the bell-shaped blossoms of some sweet wild flower, catches his eye, and he almost holds his breath and watches it. [illustration: master bunbury] the boy's dress looks very quaint to our modern eyes. the trousers and waistcoat are made "in one piece," and the velvet coat, with its wide skirt, seems a garment made for a middle-aged man. as we have already seen, the children of this time dressed as miniature copies of their elders. but while fashions in dress have changed, the child's nature is about the same in every country and period. the eighteenth-century boy, in spite of his grown-up clothes, was fond of all sorts of out-of-door games. master bunbury could doubtless match a boy of his age to-day at marbles, tops, kites, battledore, and hop-scotch, and teach him besides many now-forgotten sports, as "bally-cally," "chucks," "sinks," and the like. the modern american schoolboy, studying the history of our own country, may be interested to know that this portrait of an english boy, who was a subject of george iii., was painted five years after the signing of the declaration of independence. one of the signers had a son who was of nearly the same age as master bunbury, a boy named william henry harrison, who afterwards became the president of our republic. if we possessed a portrait of harrison at the age of nine, it would be interesting to compare the two boyish contemporaries of the old and the new country. master bunbury, as the son of an english aristocrat, must needs have regarded our colonists as troublesome rebels, while on his part young harrison looked upon the english as tyrants. bunbury finally entered the english army and became a general officer. he was sent to the cape of good hope while the british were holding possession there in behalf of the dutch, and there he died in the fullness of his early manhood in . the portrait of master bunbury was painted a few years after that of miss bowles, and reynolds here repeated the same arrangement which had been so successful before. it differs only in that the entire figure of master bunbury is not seen, being cut off in what is called three quarters length, just below the knees. in both pictures the lines of the composition follow the same pyramidal form, and in both also the park-like surroundings extend into an indefinite distance, so that the eye may follow with pleasure the long vista. both pictures suggest the same idea of a child pausing in play to look directly out of the canvas at some distant object. yet the painter has shown a perfect understanding of the difference in the temperament of the two children, the girl, graceful, quick, mischievous, the boy, sturdy, rather serious, and with a mind eager for information. the portrait of master bunbury was evidently painted by reynolds for his own pleasure, and retained by him during his lifetime, after which it passed by bequest to the boy's mother. vi mrs. siddons as the tragic muse the name of mrs. siddons is one of the most distinguished in the history of english dramatic art. for thirty years she was unsurpassed in her impersonation of the tragic heroines of shakespeare. her first great success was in the season of , when she appeared for the second time on the london stage. she was then about twenty-seven years of age, and had devoted years of arduous study to her profession. though gifted by nature with strong dramatic instincts inherited from generations of players, her powers developed slowly. the rôles which she acted were of the more serious sort, which required maturity and experience for interpretation. her personal appearance was eminently fitted for tragic parts. she had a queenly presence, a countenance moulded in noble lines, a deep-toned measured voice, and an impressive enunciation. in private as well as in public she commanded the highest admiration. though all london was at her feet flattery could not spoil her. her children adored her, her friends found her the soul of sincerity, and all the world honored her noble womanhood. it was while she was still on the threshold of her great career that reynolds painted her portrait as the tragic muse. in the old greek mythology every art had a corresponding goddess or muse who inspired the artistic instincts in human hearts. there was, for instance, a muse of tragedy, called melpomene, a muse of the dance, terpsichore, and so on through the nine arts. the great sculptors used to make statues of these muses, trying to express in each the highest ideal of the particular art represented. it was in imitation of this old custom that reynolds conceived the idea that mrs. siddons, as the greatest of tragediennes, would appropriately impersonate the muse of tragedy.[ ] the story is related that when she came to his studio for the first sitting the painter took her by the hand and led her to the chair, saying in his courtly way: "ascend your undisputed throne; bestow on me some idea of the tragic muse." whereupon she instantly assumed the attitude in which she was painted. among michelangelo's frescoes in the sistine chapel there is a figure of the prophet isaiah, whose pose is quite similar, and may have suggested both to painter and sitter the idea of the tragic muse. in any case the attitude which mrs. siddons assumes is entirely characteristic. [footnote : russell had already celebrated mrs. siddons as the tragic muse in his history of modern europe, and romney had previously painted mrs. yates in the same character.] [illustration: mrs. siddons as the tragic muse] the expression of her face shows the stress of strong emotion--the struggle of a noble soul in a conflict of forces which must end in tragedy. her hair is brushed back from the face and ornamented with a tiara like a royal diadem. a rich rope of pearls falls across her beautiful neck and is gathered in a knot on her bodice. a mantle lies across her lap draped somewhat like that in the portrait of lady cockburn, and, like it, inscribed with the name of the painter, who gallantly said that "he could not resist the opportunity of going down to posterity on the hem of her garment".[ ] [footnote : the compliment has sometimes been referred to the portrait of lady cockburn, but the incident is related by northcote as told him by mrs. siddons herself in regard to her own portrait.] behind her chair are two allegorical figures representing crime and remorse, the two primary causes of tragedy. in the full face of the one at her left we can trace the features of sir joshua himself, distorted though they are into the expression of a criminal. the color of the original painting has a sombre magnificence which is in keeping with the seriousness of the subject. the painting of the head and bust places it among the finest works of reynolds. the portrait shows a remarkable insight on the part of the painter into the character of mrs. siddons. she had not at that time played any of her great shakespearean rôles, but reynolds seemed to anticipate her power. he followed her career with unfailing interest and always made a point of attending her first appearances and benefits, sitting among the musicians in the orchestra. when she prepared for the character of lady macbeth he helped her plan the costumes and sat rapt and breathless during her first performance. this was generally considered her grandest effort, and she used herself to say that after playing it thirty years she never read over the part without discovering in it something new. in this character she bade farewell to her profession june , . it was said by a contemporary critic that "there was not a height of grandeur to which she could not soar, nor a darkness of misery to which she could not descend; not a chord of feeling from the sternest to the most delicate which she could not cause to vibrate at her will." vii angels' heads our thoughts of angels are naturally connected with thoughts of children. jesus once spoke of the little ones as those whose angels always behold the face of the heavenly father. their innocence is the best type we have on earth of the purity of beings of a higher sphere. often when we try to describe the beauty of some little child, we use the word angelic. this explains why sir joshua reynolds when called to paint the portrait of a little girl conceived the pretty fancy of the picture of angels' heads.[ ] the child's fair face suggested that of an angel. she had golden hair and blue eyes, and a very sweet little mouth. it was a face which was so charming from every point of view that he painted it in five positions. grouping the heads in a circle, he added wings after the manner of the cherubs of the old italian masters, surrounded them with clouds, and lighted the composition with a broad ray of light streaming diagonally across the canvas. [footnote : originally called a cherub head in different views.] the child's hair falls about the face in straight dishevelled locks, and it is not easy to tell at once whether it is a boy or a girl. in reality the original was little miss frances isabella ker gordon, only child of lord william gordon and his wife frances. in each position of the five heads the expression varies, and looking from one to another, we may trace through the series the child's changing moods. let each face tell its own story, and perhaps we may learn something of the workings of the mind behind it. here at the lower left side the child suddenly sees some new object, a strange bird or flower, and fixes her eyes upon it. she has a wide awake, inquiring mind, quick to notice all that life has to offer, and she is now in an observing mood. the expression of the face just above is very thoughtful and perhaps a little puzzled. life brings many hard questions to the serious child, and this is one of the little girl's pensive moods. the two upper faces at the right show quite another expression. the lips of both are parted, and they seem to be singing. one is reminded of the rapturous faces sometimes seen among choir boys when the music lifts them out of their surroundings. all childish troubles and questions are forgotten, as the two faces, flooded with light, seem to look into the glory of heaven. and now the head is turned and the child gazes directly out of the picture with far-seeing eyes. the expression is of perfect contentment. it will be noticed that the position of the last head is precisely like that of master bunbury, and there are points of resemblance between the two faces. the mood and expression are, however, quite unlike in the two children. the boy's eyes are directed towards some actual object, but the eyes of the child here are those of a dreamer fixed upon some vision of the imagination. [illustration: angels' heads] a portrait study like the angels' heads combines in a novel way the many-sided character of the child. the mother watching a little daughter from day to day feels that she has half a dozen little girls in one. a romp, a chatterbox, a living question mark, a philosopher, a dreamer, a veritable angel, all these and many more change places rapidly in the child's mood. she is taken to the photographer's for her portrait, and the negative shows only a sober little face intently anxious to look pleasant. a more fortunate photographer may perhaps catch her expression of eager interest as some curious new toy is shown her. but that innocent smile of happiness that comes into her face when singing, or that far-away look of the dreamer which she wears in the quiet twilight, is quite beyond the photographer's skill. reynolds knew the secret of representing these rarer and more delicate expressions. he was by nature a true lover of children, and many years of experience had taught him to understand their ways. lady gordon must have felt rich indeed to have instead of one commonplace picture five of the dearest faces her little girl could show, preserved on a single canvas. it is true that something of the child's individuality is lost by the sacrifice of the figure. when we look at the other child portraits of our collection we notice how much is expressed in the attitude and gesture of which we here have no indication. yet the picture shows how truly the face is "a mirror of the soul," and as an interpretation of the child's mind it is unique among reynolds's works. the original picture is painted in very delicate colors, and is one of the best preserved of reynolds's canvases. miss frances died unmarried in , and ten years later her mother presented the picture to the english national gallery. viii the duchess of devonshire and her child georgiana, the duchess of devonshire, was one of the most celebrated beauties of her time. she was the daughter of the earl of spencer, and was married[ ] at the age of seventeen to william, duke of devonshire, "the first match in england". [footnote : march , .] the young duchess was as clever as she was beautiful. she was fond of history, music and drawing, and she wrote verses both in french and english.[ ] she was an ardent admirer of the great johnson, and in a circle of his listeners hung with breathless interest upon his conversation. her charming manners, her wit, wealth, and rank drew a host of admirers about her, and she became the leader of english society. whatever the duchess of devonshire did, or whatever the duchess of devonshire wore, at once became the fashion. she opened the fashionable balls, she was a leading spirit in the ladies' club, and she set the standard for the height of headdresses and the length of feathers! [footnote : a long poem by the duchess was "the passage over mt. gothard," celebrated in coleridge's ode to georgiana.] she was not content with merely social triumphs, but her influence reached even into politics. her most remarkable political exploit was to secure the reëlection of charles james fox to parliament ( ) from the borough of westminster. for this she has sometimes been called "fox's duchess," but she is usually known as "the beautiful duchess." sir joshua reynolds was among the fortunate number upon whom the beautiful duchess bestowed her smiles. he had first painted her portrait in her girlhood and again as a young wife but two years married ( ). he was afterwards often honored with invitations to her house and enjoyed the hospitality of her brilliant entertainments. at length (june, ) a daughter was born to the duke and duchess of devonshire, whom they christened georgiana dorothy. the parents were so happy in their baby that the mother founded a charitable school in her honor. the child was a winning little creature, round and rosy and full of spirits. when she was about two years old the duchess again called her former portrait painter's services into use, desiring a picture of herself and daughter. by this time, the girlish beauty of the duchess had faded, and her slender figure had become somewhat stout. but the new grace of motherhood was now added to her other charms. as she had been the model of fashion for all the ladies of england in matter of dress, she now became a model of motherhood for their imitation. fashionable women usually gave over the care and nourishment of their children to nurses, but the duchess of devonshire took upon herself these tender maternal duties. thus mother and child were constantly together and became boon companions. the duchess had a very lively nature, and a child could not wish a gayer playmate. [illustration: the duchess of devonshire and her child] it is in one of their merry romps together that the painter has represented them. the mother is sitting on a sofa with the child on her knee, and the two are playing the old game of ride a cock horse to banbury cross. to and fro on her imaginary steed swings the little rider, supported by the encircling arm of the mother. it is rare sport, and the child kicks her bare feet and throws up her chubby arms gleefully. we can fancy we hear the baby voice gurgling with delight, and the mother smiles at the child's pleasure. some years afterward, the poet coleridge, writing an ode to the beautiful duchess, pays a tribute to her motherhood which forms a fitting comment on our picture:-- "you were a mother! at your bosom fed the babes that loved you. you, with laughing eyes, each twilight thought, each nascent feeling read which you yourself created." it is interesting to compare the picture with that of lady cockburn and her children which we have already studied. the lighting is managed in the same way, a curtain being drawn aside at the right, that we may look beyond the parapet into the open. it is an important principle in art that in representing any inclosed space like the interior of a room, there should be some device for increasing the length of the perspective. the imagination delights in distance, and feels imprisoned where there is no opening in an inclosure. the principal lines of this composition run diagonally from corner to corner, intersecting in the centre. some of these are so clearly defined that we can easily trace them. one extends from the uplifted right hand of the duchess across the slanting line of her bodice and along the lower edge of the child's frock. the lines of her left arm run parallel with this. in the other direction the uplifted arms of the baby, as well as the edge of the curtain, indicate the lines which cross these. ix hope we have naturally come to think of reynolds as chiefly a portrait painter. it was, indeed, by his work in portraiture that his name ranks among the great masters. yet he made various interesting excursions into other fields. we may see what charming fancy pictures he sometimes painted in cupid as link boy and the strawberry girl. historical pictures he also attempted, but not so successfully. religious and allegorical subjects he tried occasionally, and it is to illustrate his work of this kind that our picture of hope is chosen. the figure is a part of a large decorative scheme for a stained window. the central compartment is devoted to the subject of the nativity, and shows a group of the virgin mother with the christ child in the manger, joseph and the angels. in imitation of correggio's famous painting of the same subject, called the _notte_, the light of the picture proceeds from the babe. two smaller compartments on either side are filled with shepherds coming to worship. below is a series of seven panels, containing the figures of faith, hope, and charity, and the four cardinal virtues--temperance, justice, fortitude, and prudence. this plan of subjects was made by reynolds early in , to meet an order from new college, oxford, for a window design to be executed for their chapel. hope was one of the first figures that he painted, and in he was ready to exhibit, at the royal academy, the nativity, with faith, hope, and charity. the three fundamental elements of christian character have been associated together ever since the fifteenth chapter of first corinthians was written. artists and poets have had a fashion of personifying them as allegorical figures. certain symbols have even been invented to correspond to each--the cross for faith, the anchor for hope, and the heart for charity. thus the imagination has been called to the aid of religion in impressing christian teaching. reynolds tried to put into this figure the various qualities which make up our thought of hope. a pretty young woman steps forth from a region of clouds and lifts her face and hands towards the light. through an opening in the sky a broad beam of sunshine falls upon her. following its direction, she seems to be looking through the opening into some glad vision beyond. like the figure of hope in swinburne's sonnet, she "looks godward, past the shades where blind men grope round the dark door that prayers nor dreams can ope, and makes for joy the very darkness dear." in the lower left-hand corner we may barely make out the portion of an anchor. the meaning of the old symbol is that hope keeps the soul firm, as an anchor holds the ship. the face of which we have a glimpse is girlish and innocent; the figure is full of buoyancy. the left arm and the uplifted hands are very delicately modelled. [illustration: hope] in a painting of this kind the artist is free to follow his own bent in the matter of dress, no longer hampered, as in his portraits, by the follies of fashion. it is delightful to see here the exquisite simplicity of the gown falling in long, beautiful lines. the only adornment is a gauzy scarf, twisted about the bodice and falling on each side in spiral folds. one is reminded of the swirling scarfs in our american vedder's designs, having, as here, a purely decorative purpose in the scheme. the hair is gathered up on the head in a loose knot, from which the end escapes in a curl. we are not looking here for any strong delineation of character, as in a portrait, and the painter did not even think it worth while to show much of hope's face. the panel is to be studied as a work of decorative art, and its beauty lies in its scheme of color, the contrast of light and shade, and the graceful patterns traced by the lines. these are drawn in long flowing curves. the strongest are those which run from the upper left to the lower right corner, to emphasize the motion of the figure towards the left. the outline of the cloud billows which separate the light from the darkness are counter curves cutting across diagonally. we could appreciate the lines of the panel even better if we could see it in its relation to the entire plan. each figure is drawn with reference to its place in the great design. though there are so many component parts, they unite to form a coherent whole, the main lines flowing together in a harmonious unity. reynolds's design was executed by the glass painter jervas; but when the window was set in place it was a great disappointment. the colors are opaque, and can properly be seen only in a darkened room; with the light falling through them they are at a great disadvantage. nevertheless the window is a matter of great pride to the fortunate college which possesses it. the original designs, instead of being black and white cartoons, as another artist might have made them, are finished paintings in oil. x lord heathfield lord heathfield, the original of this portrait by reynolds, is famous in english history as the hero of the siege of gibraltar. gibraltar, as is well known, is that great rock on the coast of spain, overlooking the narrow strait which forms the passage between the atlantic ocean and the mediterranean sea. in the affairs of nations this rock occupies a position of great importance, forming, as it were, a "key to the mediterranean." the strait of gibraltar is the gateway through which all ships must pass to gain the ports of southern europe, and it is therefore a matter of moment to all the civilized world what nation holds possession there. nature has made the rock a fortress, and military inventions have been added, through the centuries, to strengthen its defences. it has been the scene of some fearful conflicts. gibraltar once belonged to spain; but, by the fortunes of war, it fell into the possession of the english early in the eighteenth century. various attempts were made to recover it, but the most determined was that of , when the combined land and sea forces of france and spain were brought to bear upon it. the struggle lasted over three years; but, in the end, the english were victorious, and they have retained the fortress to this day. the governor in command at that time was general elliott, who was afterwards rewarded for his services here by being raised to the peerage as lord heathfield. general elliott was already well known as a gallant officer. he had served in the war of austrian succession, holding a colonel's commission at dettingen, where the english defeated the french in . in the seven years' war he had raised and disciplined a splendid corps of cavalry, known as the "light horse." he was now over sixty years old, and his long military career fitted him admirably for the command at gibraltar. he showed his calibre in the beginning of the siege, in refusing the keys of the fortress, which were demanded of him. with tremendous odds against him, his conduct has not inappropriately been likened to that of the greek hero leonidas, at thermopylæ, when ordered by the persian king to lay down his arms. throughout the defence his intrepidity, resource, and generalship, proved him a man of remarkable military genius. the crisis in the siege was reached in september, , when a fleet of ten enormous floating batteries opened fire on the fortress, each one manned by a picked crew, and carrying from ten to eighteen guns. these batteries were the invention of the most skilled french engineers, and were believed to be impenetrable to shot. the cannonading began in the morning and continued all day. soon after midnight nine ships were on fire, and the hostile fleet was doomed. [illustration: lord heathfield] general elliott showed himself a generous victor, and the men saved from the enemy's ships owed their lives to him. five years later the returned hero, now become lord heathfield, sat to reynolds for his portrait, ordered by a wealthy admirer--the public-spirited alderman boydell. the picture shows the brave old soldier as he took his stand in command of gibraltar. some one has said that it tells the whole story of the siege. the general grasps firmly the key of the fortress, the chain wound twice about his hand, to emphasize the determination of the man to hold it against all odds. his sword swings at his side, ready for instant use; a cannon in the rear is pointed downward towards the hostile fleet, and the smoke of battle rolls in clouds behind him. far away on the horizon a glimmer of light shines on the distant sea. the veteran stands as immovable as a stonewall jackson. his face is set in determined lines, the lips firmly closed, the head thrown back a little, and the eyes steadily fixed on the battle. yet the face is not altogether stern; there is much that is kindly and noble in the expression. one can fancy it in another moment softening into an expression of gentleness. it was a remarkable feature of his success during these terrible months of siege, that he was able to hold the love and loyalty of his men. when the spirits of the little garrison flagged, under the combined influence of disease and impending famine, his genial presence animated them with fresh hope. his chivalry was as unfailing as his bravery. it is said that "his military skill and moral courage place him among the best soldiers and noblest men europe produced in the eighteenth century." the portrait painter makes us feel all this in his picture. the attitude is so dignified, the gesture so forcible, the countenance so expressive, that we are impressed at once with the dignity of his character. even if we knew nothing of his history we should still be sure that this is a great man. the last days of the hero of gibraltar were spent at his home, kalkofen, near aix-la-chapelle, where he died, july , , in the seventy-third year of his age. xi mrs. payne-gallwey and her child (pickaback) pickaback is one of the old, old games which no one is so foolish as to try to trace to its origin. we may well believe that there was never a time when mothers did not trot their children on their knees and carry them on their backs. the very names we give these childish games were used in england more than a century ago. the picture of mrs. payne-gallwey and her child has long been known as pickaback, and will always be so called by many who would not be at the pains to remember the lady's name. it is one of those portraits in which the painter, impatient of the stiff conventional attitudes which were in vogue in his day, drew his inspiration from a simple homely theme of daily life. what an ingenious painter reynolds was, we learn more and more as we examine one picture after another and compare them with those of his predecessors. he liked to have his pictures tell stories, and often, when he had a mother and child to paint, he represented them as playing together just as they might have done every day in their own nursery or garden.[ ] the duchess of devonshire is seen in her boudoir trotting her baby to banbury cross, and the cockburn children are surprised in a game of hide-and-seek on their mother's lap. [footnote : claude phillips refers to pickaback as "one of the most popular and representative" of this class.] mrs. payne-gallwey seems to have just caught her little girl up on her back and to be starting off to give her a ride. her body is bent slightly forward in the attitude of one walking with a burden, and we almost seem to see her move. it is as if in another moment they would pass across the canvas and out of our sight. the incident is so precisely like something which happens every day that we might think the picture was painted yesterday instead of in , were it not for the few signs which indicate its date. for one thing, the lady's hair is arranged over a high cushion in the peculiar style affected at this period in fashionable circles. the style was carried to absurd extremes, ladies vying with one another in the height of the coiffure until in some cases it actually towered a foot and a half in height. over this structure were worn nodding plumes of feathers, increasing the fantastic effect. we may imagine how these unsightly erections vexed the artistic soul of sir joshua reynolds. he was, however, enough of an autocrat to take liberties with the fashions. when obliged to paint the portrait of a lady with a "head" (for so the coiffure was called) he always managed to modify its height and make its outlines harmonize with his composition. [illustration: mrs. payne-gallwey and her child "pickaback"] a side view was of course much less objectionable than the full front, in which the face was elongated to such strange proportions. in this case the face is turned in profile, and its delicacy is enhanced rather than injured by the masses of hair which frame it. the hair, instead of being drawn tightly back from the forehead in the ordinary way, waves in graceful curves, which are quite beyond the art of any hairdresser. finally, the massive effect of the hair is broken by the narrow scarf bound about it and tied under the chin. the curve of this scarf meets the curve of the profile to form a beautiful oval. the quaintest touch in the picture is the child's big hat. the same shape is worn to-day by men, and one might fancy that the baby had borrowed her papa's hat for the frolic. it is a curious change in fashions which transfers any part of a little girl's wardrobe to that of a grown man. we may feel a little better acquainted with the mother and daughter to know their names. mrs. payne-gallwey was philadelphia, the daughter of general de lancey, lieutenant governor of new york. the child was charlotte, who afterwards married john moseley. mrs. gallwey's beauty is of a very fragile type, and her eyes have a languor hinting of invalidism. only a few years later she died, while still in her young motherhood. little charlotte has a round healthy face, but it is a little sober. indeed, both mother and child seem to be of a rather dreamy, poetic temperament. their mood is hardly merry enough for such a game, but they enjoy it in their own way with quiet contentment. it is an idealized version of the ordinary romping game of pickaback. the composition is based on lines which cut the canvas diagonally. in one direction is the line running the length of the profile and continued along the bodice. crossing this at right angles is the shorter line made by the two arms. it is the first of these which gives character to the picture and produces the impression of motion which is so striking. it is almost as if a modern photographer had taken a snap shot of a figure in the act of walking. but in no such photograph, it is safe to say, would the lines chance to flow in such perfect rhythm. xii cupid as link boy a familiar figure in classic mythology was that of the little god of love, cupid. he was the son of venus, and, like her, was concerned in the affairs of the heart. ancient art represented him as a beautiful naked boy with wings, carrying a bow and quiver of arrows, and sometimes a burning torch. the torch was to kindle the flame of love, and the arrows were to pierce the heart with the tender passion. these missiles were made at the forge of vulcan, where venus first imbued them with honey, after which cupid, the mischievous fellow, tinged them with gall. thus it was that the wounds they inflicted were at once sweet and painful.[ ] [footnote : anacreon's ode xxxiii. in moore's translation.] now cupid was always bent upon some of his naughty pranks. he was afraid of nothing, and we read of his riding on the backs of lions and sporting with the monsters of the deep. he played all sorts of tricks on the gods, stealing the arms of hercules, and even breaking the thunderbolts of jove. his bow and arrows were a source of great amusement to him. he delighted in taking aim at unsuspecting mortals, and his random shots often wrought sad havoc. one of anacreon's odes relates how the poet was awakened on a rainy midnight by the cry of a child begging shelter. the little waif proved to be cupid in disguise. after being warmed and dried by the fire, the boy artfully craved permission to try his bow, to see if the rain had injured its elasticity. the arrow flew straight at the poet's heart with a sweet pain, and away flew cupid laughing gayly at his exploit.[ ] [footnote : anacreon's ode xxviii. in moore's translation.] cupid was naturally a very popular god, yet his tricksy ways caused him to be looked upon with suspicion. every one was anxious to stand well with him. in some of the cities of ancient greece, as sparta and athens, he was worshipped with great solemnity, and every five years festivals were held in his honor. in our picture the painter has represented the little torch-bearing god disguised as a link boy. he is dressed in the clothes of a london street urchin, and behind him are the warehouses of the great city. the link bearer's occupation was abandoned so long ago that it needs a word of explanation. in the old times, before there were stationary street lights of any kind, men and boys used to run about by night, carrying torches or links, as they were called, to lighten the way for passers-by. they were like the newsboys of to-day, running up to each wayfarer to offer their services, and always glad to pick up a few pennies. they accompanied parties home from the clubs, the theatres, and all sorts of entertainments, running beside carriages, as well as foot passengers. nor was their occupation solely by night. there sometimes came suddenly in london a thick fog, shutting out the sunlight as completely as if it had been night. people caught in the streets at such times soon lost their way, and the services of the link boy were then very useful. [illustration: cupid as link boy] we may now understand what a capital chance for fun cupid would have, playing the part of a link boy. the strangers whom he guided on their way would little suspect that the link boy's torch was kindling the flame of love within them. he might lead them whither he pleased, and finally, disclosing his true identity, would draw his bow upon them and leave them to their fate. it is perhaps after some such escapade as this that we see him in the picture, link in hand, pausing to look back with a smile of suppressed amusement at some of his victims. it seems very odd to find cupid in such surroundings, and especially to see the little god hampered by the clumsy garments of mortals. they are old and ragged, the cast-off finery such as is picked up by street gamins. the child's hair is tossed about his head in unkempt locks, and altogether he looks the part to perfection. yet there are unmistakable signs of his identity in the wings spread from his shoulders. if you look closely, too, you can see through the rip in his sleeve the quiver of arrows which the sly fellow thought to hide under his coat. the face and expression could belong alone to cupid. the mouth is shaped in a genuine cupid's bow, and the pointed chin shows his astuteness. mischief lurks in the corners of the eyes and in the curve of his mouth. the cupid as link boy is one of a number of fancy pictures which sir joshua reynolds painted for his own pleasure. his portrait orders were nearly all from the wealthy and aristocratic classes, and the artist would not have been content without a greater variety of subjects than this work afforded. he had a fertile imagination for ideal or "fancy" subjects, particularly for those of a humorous nature. often when he chanced to be driving through the streets his attention would be attracted by some little waif, and he would take the child back to his studio for a model. our picture is from one of these mischievous london street boys, whose face reappears in several other works. xiii the hon. anne bingham miss anne bingham was one of the many aristocratic ladies whose portraits reynolds painted, and one of the most interesting of this class of sitters. her vivacious face looking into ours wins us at once, and we should be glad to know more of the charming original. anne bingham was the youngest daughter of sir charles bingham, who in was created baron lucan. her mother, lady lucan, was a remarkably talented woman, trying her hand with success at modelling, painting, and poetry. she was ambitious to be an intellectual leader, and like several other ladies of the time entertained after the fashion of the french salons, inviting people of wit and learning to meet in her drawing-room for discussion. her artistic work was really remarkable. encouraged by the advice and help of horace walpole, she became a skilful copyist, and it is said imitated the works of some earlier painters with a genius that fairly depreciated the originals! it was thus in exceptionally artistic and intellectual surroundings that anne grew out of girlhood. her oldest sister, lavinia, who afterwards became countess spencer, inherited the mother's artistic tastes, and was likewise a favorite with horace walpole. the two daughters were both charming in appearance, and there was a certain sisterly resemblance between them. if lavinia's eyes were a bit more sparkling, judged by the portraits, anne's mouth was smaller and more daintily modelled. as a frequent guest in their mother's drawing-room, sir joshua must have known both the young ladies. of the elder he painted several portraits; of the younger, but this one, executed in . it was a natural and appropriate idea that miss anne's portrait should be made in a style similar to one of her sister, as a companion picture. both were represented in half-length figure, wearing white kerchiefs and broad-brimmed hats. those must have been pleasant sittings which gave the veteran portrait painter miss anne for a subject.[ ] plainly there was a perfect sympathy between sitter and painter. the smile the lady turns towards the easel is as naïve as that of miss bowles herself. she watches his clever work with an artist's delight, and with the simple spirit of a child. [footnote : when her father was created an earl in , she became lady anne.] nothing could be more distasteful to such a character than the affected pose of a woman of fashion. she has dropped into a chair with a careless grace all her own, and tells the painter she is ready. he takes up his brush, and lo, the very essence of her smile is transferred to his canvas. [illustration: the hon. anne bingham] we praise the delicate rendering of the gauzy kerchief veiling her neck, but it is far less wonderful than the delicate interpretation of her expression. the fine sensitiveness of her nature, her lively fancy and sense of humor, her playfulness, her coquetry, her impulsiveness, her volatile temperament--all this we read in the shining eyes and the smiling mouth, though no one can say how they were made to tell so much. the signs of her birth and breeding are in every line, yet she is something of a bohemian too. there is a delightful sense of camaraderie in her smile. there is a certain portrait by leonardo da vinci known as the mona lisa, and famous for its baffling smile. there is a tantalizing quality about it which makes one forever wonder what the lady is thinking about and why she is smiling. nothing could be more in contrast than this smile of miss bingham. there is no mystery in it, but rather it takes us into her confidence in the most winning way. the costume interests us not only as a reminder of bygone fashions, but for its picturesqueness. the bodice is ornamented only by the big buttons by which it is laced. a narrow belt finishes it at the waist, with a small buckle in front. the hair is frizzed in puffy masses about the face, escaping in a few curls which fall over the shoulders. this was evidently the favorite coiffure in the year , as the portrait of the duchess of devonshire with her child, painted in the same year, shows precisely the same style. both ladies also wear low-cut bodices with kerchiefs arranged in the same manner. the finishing touch of miss bingham's costume is the big straw hat worn aslant on the back of the head. it has been a favorite device of great portrait painters to dress their sitters in all sorts of fanciful headwear. rembrandt's portraits show an endless variety of caps, turbans, and hats. rubens was fond of painting broad-brimmed hats shading the face, one of his celebrated pictures being a study of this kind called le chapeau de paille (the straw hat). now reynolds was to some extent an imitator of these two men, and it may be he learned something from their pictures about hats. however that may be, we see how the hat here proves very effective in bringing the head into harmonious relation with the whole composition. the brim describes a diagonal line parallel with the line made by the kerchief over the left shoulder. the kerchief on the right shoulder falls in a line parallel with the left arm. a composition based on short diagonal lines like these is as different as possible in character from one of long flowing curves like hope. each one is appropriate to its own subject. xiv the strawberry girl village life in england before the time of railroads had a picturesque charm which it has since lost except in remote districts. we learn something about it in miss mitford's sketches of "our village" and in miss edgeworth's "tales." from such books it is delightful to reconstruct in imagination some of these rural scenes; the wide meadows where the cowslips grow, the brooks running beneath the hawthorns and alders, the lanes winding between hedgerows, the green common where the cricketers play, the low cottages covered to the roof with vines, and the trim gardens gay with pinks and larkspur. these villages are connected with the outside world only by the postcart and chapman. here modest little girls like miss mitford's hannah and miss edgeworth's simple susan move about their daily tasks and run on their errands of mercy. now sir joshua reynolds was a native of devonshire, a beautiful english district which all born devons love with peculiar devotion, as we may see from charles kingsley's descriptions in "water-babies." from time to time in his busy life the painter returned to his home for a breath of country air. on one of these visits he brought back to london with him his young niece theophila palmer, whose father had just died. offy, as she was called, soon became the pet of her bachelor uncle's household, of which she long remained a member. as she flitted about the house the little country-bred girl with her fresh healthy beauty was a constant reminder to the painter of the woods and fields. perhaps one day as he was looking at her with special pleasure the picture suddenly flashed upon his fancy of offy in the character of a village maid. the idea developed into the strawberry girl, for which offy sat as model. a little girl has been sent on an errand along a lonely road leading out of the village. it may be that like little red riding hood in the nursery tale she is carrying some dainties to her grandmother. a basket of strawberries hangs on her arm, and her apron also seems to be filled with something, for it is gathered up in front like a bag, the corners dropping over the arm. twilight begins to fall as she comes to a turn of the road overshadowed by a high rock. there are all sorts of queer noises and shadows here, and she steals timidly past the eerie place, peering forward with big eyes. [illustration: the strawberry girl] yet she is a womanly child, who will not easily be turned back. she feels the importance of her errand, and is worthy of the trust. the simple low-cut gown is that of a village maid. an odd cap, something like a turban, covers her head and adds a trifle to her height and dignity. her round face and chubby neck would be the envy of the puny city child who knows not the luxury of big porringers of bread and milk. if her hands are rather too delicately moulded for those of a country child we must remember again that reynolds was painting from his own little niece. in imagination we follow the little maid about the simple round of her childish pursuits. every morning she goes demurely to school to fix her thoughts on "button holes and spelling books." perhaps it is a dame school like that in "water babies," with a "shining clean stone floor and curious old prints on the wall and a cuckoo clock in the corner," here some dozen children sit on benches "gabbling chris-cross," while a nice old woman in a red petticoat and white cap hears them from the chimney corner. our little girl has duties at home as well, and is sometimes seen, a pitcher in one hand and a mop in the other, making the house tidy. she can boil potatoes, shell the beans, feed the hens, and make herself useful in many ways. on rare occasions she has a holiday in the fields, and then what joy it is in spring and early summer to find the haunts of the wild flowers which grow in such abundance in the english country. miss mitford writes of a wonderful field where bloomed in season, "primroses, yellow, purple, and white, violets of either hue, cowslips, oxlips, arums, orchises, wild hyacinths, ground ivy, pansies, strawberries, and heart's ease, covering the sunny open slope under a weeping birch." a favorite game is making cowslip balls. the tufts of golden flowerets are first nipped off with short stems, until a quantity are gathered. then the ribbon is held ready and the clusters are nicely balanced across it until a long garland is made, when they are pressed closely together and tied into a sweet golden ball. when we remember that the little offy, who was the original strawberry girl, was transplanted from her devonshire home to the great city of london, we are interested to know something of her after life. she grew to be as dear as a daughter to her uncle. in the dreary days when he could not use his eyes she was his reader and amanuensis. the many distinguished guests who enjoyed his hospitality were charmed with her sweet manners. in the course of time she married richard lovell gwatkin, a cornish gentleman in every way worthy of her. "her happiness was as great as her uncle could wish. she lived to be ninety, to see her children's children, and, intelligent, cheerful, and affectionate to the last, vividly remembered her happy girlhood under her uncle's roof, and the brilliant society that found a centre there." xv dr. samuel johnson the eccentric figure of dr. samuel johnson was one of the familiar sights of london during the middle of the eighteenth century. he was a man of great learning, a voluminous writer, and an even more remarkable talker. he was born in , and, the son of a poor bookseller, he struggled against poverty for many years. literary work was ill paid in those days, and johnson gained his reputation but slowly. he contributed articles to the magazines, and twice he conducted short-lived periodicals of his own--the "rambler" and the "idler." he wrote, besides, a drama, "irene"; a tale, "rasselas"; a book of travel, a "journey to the hebrides"; and many biographies, including the "lives of the poets." his largest undertaking was an english dictionary, upon which he spent eight years of labor. at length his pecuniary troubles came to an end when, in , the government awarded him a pension of £ a year. by this time his great intellectual gifts had begun to be appreciated, and he was the first man of letters in england. in thackeray's phrase, he "was revered as a sort of oracle." johnson was now too old to acquire the graces of polite society, even had he wished them. his huge, uncouth figure and rolling walk, his countenance disfigured by scrofula, his blinking eyes, his convulsive movements, his slovenly dress and boorish manners made him a strange figure in the circles which entertained him. his appetite was enormous, and he ate "like a famished wolf, the veins swelling on his forehead, and the perspiration running down his cheeks." he usually declined wine, but his capacity for tea was unlimited. many funny stories are told of the number of cups poured for him by obliging hostesses, for, oddly enough, he was a great favorite with the ladies, and knew how to turn a pretty compliment. his temper was at times very irritable and morbid, and he occasionally had violent fits of rage. yet, with all these peculiarities, he had a kind heart and was sincerely religious. his devotion to his wife and his aged mother[ ] was very touching, and the poor and infirm knew his charities. in his own lodgings he provided a home for an oddly assorted family of dependents, consisting of an old man, a blind woman, a negro boy, and a cat. all the details of his daily life and habits are minutely described in a biography written by his admiring friend, boswell, who was intimately associated with him for many years. the book he wrote after johnson's death tells us not only all about the learned doctor, but much also about his friends. [footnote : his wife died in , and his mother in at the age of ninety.] [illustration: dr. samuel johnson] reynolds was one of his warm friends, and the two understood each other well. often when they were together in company, the painter's tact and courtesy smoothed over some breach of etiquette on the part of his companion. at reynolds's suggestion, the two founded together a small club of congenial spirits, called the literary club. some other good friends of johnson's were the thrales. mr. thrale was a rich brewer, and a man of parts, and his wife was one of the brightest women of her day. johnson was a constant visitor at their house, and became at last, practically, a member of the family. the thrales's drawing-room at their streatham villa was the scene of many brilliant gatherings, where intellectual people met for conversation and discussion. johnson was the autocrat of this circle. he was often rude, even insolent, in expressing his opinion, and wounded many by his sarcasm. but his vast stores of information, his keen mind and ready wit, made his conversation an intellectual feast. it was an ambition of mr. thrale to ornament his house with a gallery of portraits of contemporary celebrities, and it was for this collection that reynolds painted the portrait of johnson, reproduced in our illustration. it was really a repetition of a portrait he had previously painted for their common friend and club-fellow, bennet langton. here we see the sage at the age of sixty odd years, precisely as he appeared among his friends at streatham. the painter has straightened the wig, which was usually worn awry, but otherwise it is the very dr. johnson of whom we read so much, with his shabby brown coat, his big shambling shoulders, and coarse features. a remarkable thing about the portrait is that reynolds succeeded so well in showing us the man himself under this rough exterior. the inferior artist paints only the outside of a face just as it looks to a stranger who knows nothing of the character of the sitter. the master paints the face as it looks to a friend who knows the soul within. now, reynolds was not only a master, but he was, in this case, painting a friend. so he put on the canvas, not merely the eccentric face of dr. johnson as a stranger might see it, but he painted in it that expression of intellectual power which the great man showed among his congenial friends. something, too, is suggested in the portrait of that sternly upright spirit which hated a lie. it is a portrait of johnson the scholar, the thinker, and the conversationalist. he seems to be engaged in some argument, and is delivering his opinion with characteristic authoritativeness. the heavy features are lighted by his thought. one may fancy that the talk turns upon patriotism, when johnson, roused to indignation by the false pretences of many would-be patriots, exclaims, "sir, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." xvi the portrait of reynolds in the city of florence, italy, there is a famous gallery of portraits unlike any other collection of pictures in the world. it consists of the portraits of artists, painted by their own hands, and includes the most celebrated painters of all nations, from the fifteenth century to the present time. here may be seen the portraits of velasquez, titian, tintoretto, rembrandt,--the world's greatest portrait painters,--and in the same splendid company hangs the portrait of reynolds, reproduced in our frontispiece. he painted it in for the special purpose of sending it to florence at the request of the imperial academy of that city, of which he had just been elected a member. as we have seen in our study of the angels' heads, a single portrait can show us only one side of the sitter's character. this portrait of reynolds, painted as a condition of membership in a society of artists, and for a gallery of artists' portraits, was intended chiefly to show the artistic side of his nature. the pose itself at once suggests the artist. the expression of the mobile face is that of a painter engaged at his easel, turning a searching glance upon the object he is painting. in short, it is a sort of official portrait, introducing the new member to his associates in the imperial academy. the artist wears the oxford cap and gown, to which he is entitled, by virtue of the honorary degree of d. c. l., conferred upon him by the university of oxford. in his hand he carries a roll of manuscript, presumably one of his lectures before the royal academy. both the roll and the costume are, as it were, insignia of his english honors. a latin inscription on the back of the portrait, written by the painter's own hand, enumerates the several distinctions which are his. reynolds might, indeed, be pardoned the pride with which he reviewed his career. from somewhat humble beginnings he had now made his way to the foremost place in his profession. he was born at a time when art was in a very low state in england, and there were no advantages for the study of painting. his only instruction was under an inferior portrait painter named hudson, with whom he served as apprentice about two years. his real art training was during three years of travel in italy. there he examined and studied the works of the greatest masters of the past, and returned to england with altogether new ideals. setting up a studio in london, he soon gained an immense popularity. when the royal academy was founded, in , he became the first president, and at the same time the honor of knighthood was conferred upon him. other artists now rose to prominence, but he still held the supremacy. the painter's popularity depended by no means on his artistic talents alone; his opinions were worth hearing on many subjects. he was fond of books and literary discussions, and his friendship was valued by such men of intellect as johnson, goldsmith, burke, and others of that charmed circle making the literary club. he had a genial, kindly nature, and his manners were exquisitely courteous. thackeray once wrote that "of all the polite men of that age, joshua reynolds was the finest gentleman." he was a member of several clubs, was fond of society, and was a welcome guest in many of the best houses in london. he himself entertained with generous hospitality, and gathered about his table some of the brightest people of his time. his intimate friend, edmund malone, described him as a man "rather under the middle size, of a florid complexion, and a lively and pleasing aspect; well made, and extremely active. his appearance at first sight impressed the spectator with the idea of a well-born and well-bred english gentleman. with an uncommon equability of temper, which, however, never degenerated into insipidity or apathy, he possessed a constant flow of spirits which rendered him at all times a most pleasing companion.... he appeared to me the happiest man i have ever known." through many years reynolds was very deaf, and was obliged to use an ear trumpet to aid him in general conversation. in later years he also wore spectacles, so that we always picture him in his advancing life with trumpet and glasses. his habit of taking great quantities of snuff was one which gave occasion to many jokes among his friends. numerous poetic tributes were written by his admirers, describing more or less rhetorically his qualities as a man and an artist. there is one bit of verse by goldsmith ( ), in a comic vein, and in the form of an epitaph, which delineates very cleverly the real character of the man:-- "here reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, he has not left a better or wiser behind; his pencil was striking, resistless and grand, his manners were gentle, complying, and bland; still born to improve us in every part, his pencil, our faces, his manners, our heart: to coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering, when they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing; when they talked of their raffaelles, correggios, and stuff, he shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff!" * * * * * masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyke macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. leighton. a. lys baldry. rembrandt. josef israels. watts. w. loftus hare. titian. s. l. bensusan. raphael. paul g. konody. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate .--suzanna van collen this portrait, painted about , and one of the gems of the wallace collection, presents susanna van collen, wife of jan pellicorne, and her daughter.] rembrandt by josef israels illustrated with eight reproductions in colour london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh list of illustrations plate i. suzanna van collen frontispiece from the wallace collection page ii. a portrait of saskia in the brera, milan iii. syndics of the cloth merchants' guild in the royal museum at amsterdam iv. portrait of an old man in the pitti palace at florence v. the company of francis banning cocq in the royal museum at amsterdam vi. portrait of a young man in the pitti palace at florence vii. portrait of an old lady from the national gallery, london viii. head of a young man in the louvre introduction while the world pays respectful tribute to rembrandt the artist, it has been compelled to wait until comparatively recent years for some small measure of reliable information concerning rembrandt the man. the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have been very little concerned with personalities. a man was judged by his work which appealed, if it were good enough, to an ever-increasing circle. there were no newspapers to record his doings and, if he chanced to be an artist, it was nobody's business to set down the details of his life. sometimes a diarist chanced to pass by and to jot down a little gossip, quite unconscious of the fact that it would serve to stimulate generations yet unborn, but, for the most part, artists who did great work in a retiring fashion and were not honoured by courts and princes as rubens was, passed from the scene of their labours with all the details of their sojourn unrecorded. rembrandt was fated to suffer more than mere neglect, for he seems to have been a light-hearted, headstrong, extravagant man, with no capacity for business. he had not even the supreme quality, associated in doggerel with dutchmen, of giving too little and asking too much. consequently, when he died poor and enfeebled, in years when his collection of works of fine art had been sold at public auction for a fraction of its value, when his pictures had been seized for debt, and wife, mistress, children, and many friends had passed, little was said about him. it was only when the superlative quality of his art was recognised beyond a small circle of admirers that people began to gather up such fragments of biography as they could find. shakespeare has put into mark antony's mouth the statement that "the evil that men do lives after them," and this was very much the case with rembrandt van ryn. his first biographers seem to have no memory save for his undoubted recklessness, his extravagance, and his debts. they remembered that his pictures fetched very good prices, that his studio was besieged for some years by more sitters than it could accommodate, that he was honoured with commissions from the ruling house, and that in short, he had every chance that would have led a good business man to prosperity and an old age removed from stress and strain. these facts seem to have aroused their ire. they have assailed his memory with invective that does not stop short at false statement. they have found in the greatest of all dutch artists a ne'er-do-well who could not take advantage of his opportunities, who had the extravagance of a company promoter, an explosive temper and all the instincts that make for loose living. [illustration: plate ii.--a portrait of saskia rembrandt's portraits of his wife saskia are distributed fairly equally throughout the world's great galleries, but this one from the brera in milan is not so well known as most, and on this account it is reproduced here. it is called "portrait of a woman" in the catalogue, but the features justify the belief that the lady was the painter's wife.] alas for these poor biographers, who, had they but taken the trouble to trust to the pictures rather than to the lies that were current, would have seen that the artist's life could not have been nearly as bad as they imagined. happily, to-day, we have more than the testimony of the painted canvas, though that would suffice the most of intelligent men. further investigation has done a great deal to remove the blemishes from rembrandt's name; mm. vosmaer and michel have restored it as though it were a discoloured picture, and those who hail rembrandt master may do so without mental reservation. his faults were very human ones and his merits leave them in the shade. rembrandt was born in the pleasant city of leyden, but it is not easy to name the precise year. somewhere between and he started his troubled journey through life, and of his childhood the records are scanty. doubtless, his youthful imagination was stirred by the sights of the city, the barges moving slowly along the canals, the windmills that were never at rest, the changing chiaroscuro of the flooded, dyke-seamed land. perhaps he saw these things with the large eye of the artist, for he could not have turned to any point of the compass without finding a picture lying ready for treatment. even when he was a little boy the fascination of his surroundings may have been responsible in part for the fact that he was not an industrious scholar, that he looked upon reading and writing as rather troublesome accomplishments, worth less than the labour involved in their acquisition. and yet his father was a wealthy man, he would seem to have had no occasion to neglect his studies, and the best one can find to say about these early years is that they may have been directed badly by those in authority. in any case, it is well-nigh impossible to make rules for genius. the boy who sits unmoved at the bottom of his class, the butt of his companions, the horrible example to whom the master turns when he wishes to point a moral, may do work in the world that no one among those who attended the school since its foundation has been able to accomplish and, if rembrandt did not satisfy his masters, he was at least paving the way for accomplishment that is recognised gratefully to-day wherever art has found a home. his family soon knew that he had the makings of an artist and, in , when he could hardly have been more than sixteen, and may have been considerably less, he left leyden university for the studio of a second-rate painter called jan van swanenburch. we have no authentic record of his progress in the studio, but it must have been rapid. he must have made friends, painted pictures, and attracted attention. at the end of three years he went to lastman's studio in amsterdam, returning thence to leyden, where he took gerard dou as a pupil. a few years later, it is not easy to settle these dates on a satisfactory basis, he went to amsterdam, and established himself there, because the dutch capital was very wealthy and held many patrons of the arts, in spite of the seemingly endless war that holland was waging with spain. the picture of "st. paul in prison" would seem to have been produced about , but the painter's appearance before the public of amsterdam in the guise of an accomplished artist whose work had to be reckoned with, may be said to have dated from the completion of the famous "anatomy lesson," in or . at this time he was living on the bloemgracht. rembrandt had painted many portraits when the picture of the medical men and the cadaver created a great sensation and, if we remember that he could not have been more than twenty-seven years old, and may have been no more than twenty-five, it is not difficult to understand that amsterdam was stirred from its usual reserve, and greeted the rising star with enthusiasm. in a few weeks the entrance to the painter's studio was besieged by people wishing to sit for their portraits, by pupils who brought florins, no small sum in those days for the privilege of working for a year in the master's studio. it may be mentioned here that even in the days when the painter's popularity with the general public of holland had waned, there was never any lack of enthusiastic students from many countries, all clamouring for admission to the studio. many a man can endure adversity with courage; success is a greater trial. bad times often avail to bring out what is best in creative genius; success tends to destroy it. rembrandt did not remain unaffected by the quick response that amsterdam made to his genius. his art remained true and sincere, he declined to make the smallest concession to what silly sitters called their taste, but he did not really know what to do with the money and commissions that flowed in upon him so freely. the best use he made of changing circumstances was to become engaged to saskia van uylenborch, the cousin of his great friend hendrick van uylenborch, the art dealer of amsterdam. saskia, who was destined to live for centuries, through the genius of her husband, seems to have been born in , and to have become engaged to rembrandt when she was twenty. the engagement followed very closely upon the patronage of rembrandt by prince frederic henry, the stadtholder, who instructed the artist to paint three pictures. there seemed no longer any need to hesitate, and only domestic troubles seem to have delayed the marriage until . saskia is enshrined in many pictures. she is seen first as a young girl, then as a woman. as a bride, in the picture now at dresden, she sits upon her husband's knee, while he raises a big glass with his outstretched arm. her expression here is rather shy, as if she deprecated the situation and realised that it might be misconstrued. this picture gave offence to rembrandt's critics, who declared that it revealed the painter's taste for strong drink and riotous living--they could see nothing more in canvas than a story. several portraits of saskia remained to be painted. she would seem to have aged rapidly, for after marriage her days were not long in the land. she was only thirty when she died, and looked considerably older. [illustration: plate iii.--syndics of the cloth merchants' guild this fine work, of which so much has been written, is to be seen to-day in the royal museum at amsterdam. it is one of the finest examples of the master's portrait groups, and was painted in .] in the first years of his married life rembrandt moved to the nieuwe doelstraat. for the time he had more commissions than he knew how to execute, few troubles save those that his fiery temperament provoked, and one great sorrow, arising out of the death of his first-born. there can be no doubt at all that he spent far too much money in these years; he would attend the sales of works of art and pay extravagant sums for any that took his fancy. if he ever paused to question himself, he would be content to explain that he paid big prices in order to show how great was his respect for art and artists. he came to acquire a picture by rubens, a book of drawings by lucas van leyden, and the splendid pearls that may be seen in the later portraits of saskia. very soon his rash and reckless methods became known to the dealers, who would push the prices up with the certain knowledge that rembrandt would rush in where wiser buyers feared to tread. the making of an art collection, the purchase of rich jewels for his wife, together with good and open-handed living, soon began to play havoc with rembrandt's estate. the artist's temperament offended many of the sober dutchmen who could not understand it at all, his independence and insistence upon the finality of his own judgment were more offensive still, and after there were fewer applications for portraits. in we find rembrandt taking an action against one albert van loo, who had dared to call saskia extravagant. it was, of course, still more extravagant of rembrandt to waste his money on lawyers on account of a case he could not hope to win, but this thought does not seem to have troubled him. he did not reflect that it would set the gossips talking more cruelly than ever. still full of enthusiasm for life and art, he was equally full of affection for saskia, whose hope of raising children seemed doomed to disappointment, for in addition to losing the little rombertus, two daughters, each named cornelia, had died soon after birth. in rembrandt's mother died. her picture remains on record with that of her husband, painted ten years before, and even the biographers of the artist do not suggest that rembrandt was anything but a good son. a year later the well-beloved saskia gave birth to the one child who survived the early years, the boy titus. then her health failed, and in she died, after eight years of married life that would seem to have been happy. in this year rembrandt painted the famous "night watch," a picture representing the company of francis banning cocq, and incidentally a day scene in spite of its popular name. the work succeeded in arousing a storm of indignation, for every sitter wanted to have equal prominence in the canvas. they had subscribed equally to the cost, and rembrandt had dared to compose the picture! it may be said that after his wife's death, and the exhibition of this fine work, rembrandt's pleasant years came to an end. he was then somewhere between thirty-six and thirty-eight years old, he had made his mark, and enjoyed a very large measure of recognition, but henceforward, his career was destined to be a very troubled one, full of disappointment, pain, and care. perhaps it would have been no bad thing for him if he could have gone with saskia into the outer darkness. the world would have been poorer, but the man himself would have been spared many years that perhaps even the devoted labours of his studio could not redeem. saskia's estate, which seems to have been a considerable one, was left to rembrandt absolutely, in trust for the sole surviving child titus, but rembrandt, after his usual free and easy fashion, did not trouble about the legal side of the question. he did not even make an inventory of the property belonging to his wife, and this carelessness led to endless trouble in future years, and to the distribution of a great part of the property into the hands of gentlemen learned in the law. perhaps the painter had other matters to think about, he could no longer disguise from himself the fact that public patronage was falling off. it may be that the war with spain was beginning to make people in comfortable circumstances retrench, but it is more than likely that the artist's name was not known favourably to his fellow-citizens. his passionate temperament and his quick eye for truly artistic effects could not be tolerated by the sober, stodgy men and women who were the rank and file of amsterdam's comfortable classes. to be sure, the stadtholder continued his patronage; he ordered the famous "circumcision" and the "adoration of the shepherds." pupils continued to arrive, too, in large numbers, many of them coming from beyond holland; but the public stayed away. rembrandt was not without friends, who helped him as far as they could, and advised him as much as they dared; but he seems to have been a man who could not be assisted, because in matters of art he allowed no outside interference, and he was naturally impulsive. money ran through his hands like water through a sieve, though it is only fair to point out that he was very generous, and could not lend a deaf ear to any tale of distress. between , when saskia died, and , it is not easy to follow the progress of his life; we can only state with certainty that his difficulties increased almost as quickly as his work ripened. his connection with hendrickje stoffels would seem to have started about , and this woman with whom he lived until her death some thirteen years later, has been abused by many biographers because she was the painter's mistress. some have endeavoured to prove, without any evidence, that he married her, but this concession to mrs. grundy seems a little beside the mark. the relations between the pair were a matter for their own consideration, and it is clear that hendrickje came to the painter in the time of his greatest trouble, to serve him lovingly and faithfully until she passed away at the comparatively early age of thirty-six. she bore him two children, who seem to have died young, and, curiously enough, her position in the house was accepted by young titus rembrandt, who, when he was nearing man's estate, started, in partnership with her, to deal in pictures and works of art--a not very successful attempt to support the establishment in comfort. in the year when hendrickje joined rembrandt, he could no longer pay instalments on the house he had bought for himself in the joden breestraat. about the following year he began to sell property, hoping against hope that he would be able to tide over the bad times. three years later he started borrowing on a very extensive scale. in a fresh guardian was appointed for titus, to whom his father transferred some property, and in that year the painter was adjudged bankrupt. the year saw much of his private property sold, but his collection of pictures and engravings found comparatively few bidders, and realised no more than florins. a year later his store of pictures came under the hammer, and in , hendrickje and titus started their plucky attempt to establish a little business, in order that they might restore some small part of the family fortune. [illustration: plate iv.--portrait of an old man rembrandt painted very many portraits of men and women whose identity cannot be traced, and it is probable that the original of this striking portrait in the pitti palace at florence was unknown to many of the painter's contemporaries. this is one of rembrandt's late works, and is said to have been painted about .] for a little time the keen edge of trouble seems to have been turned. one of rembrandt's friends secured him the commission to paint the "syndics of the drapers' guild," and this is one of the last works of importance in the artist's life, because his sight was beginning to fail. to understand why this fresh trouble fell upon him, it is necessary to turn for a moment to consider the marvellous etchings he produced between and . the drawings may be disregarded in this connection, though there are about a thousand undisputed ones in existence, but the making of the etchings, of which some two hundred are allowed by all competent observers to be the work of the master, must have inflicted enormous strain upon his sight. when he was passing from middle age, overwhelmed with trouble of every description, it is not surprising that his eyes should have refused to serve him any longer. one might have thought that the immortals had finished their sport with rembrandt, but apparently their resources are quite inexhaustible. one year after the state of his eyes had brought etching to an end, the faithful hendrickje died. a portrait of her, one of the last of the master's works, may be seen in berlin. the face is a charming and sympathetic one, and moves the observer to a feeling of sympathy that makes the mere question of the church's participation in her relations with rembrandt a very small affair indeed. in the next seven years the old painter passed quietly down towards the great silence. a few ardent admirers among the young men, a few old friends whom no adversity could shake, remained to bring such comfort as they might. with failing sight and health he moved to the lauriergracht, and the capacity for work came nearly to an end. the lawyers made merry with the various suits. some had been instituted to recover money that the painter had borrowed, others to settle the vexed question of the creditors' right to saskia's estate. in titus received the balance that was left, when the decision of the courts allowed him to handle what legal ingenuity had not been able to impound. in the summer of , when he was about twenty-seven years old, titus married his cousin magdellena, and this little celebration may be supposed to have cheered the elder rembrandt a little, but his pleasure was brief, for the young bridegroom died in september of the same year, and in the following year a posthumous daughter was born. by this time the immortals had completed their task, there was nothing left for them to do; they had broken the old painter's health and his heart, they had reduced him to poverty. so they gave him half a year to digest their gifts, and then some word of pity seems to have entered into their councils, and one of the greatest painters the world has seen was set free from the intolerable burden of life. from certain documents still extant we learn that he was buried at the expense of thirteen florins. he has left to the world some five or six hundred pictures that are admitted to be genuine, together with the etchings and drawings to which reference has been made. he is to be seen in many galleries in the old world and the new, for he painted his own portrait more than a score of times. saskia, too, may be seen in several galleries and hendrickje has not been forgotten. [illustration: plate v.--the company of francis banning cocq generally known as the "night watch." this famous picture, now to be seen in the royal museum at amsterdam, is the best discussed of all the master's works. it has been pointed out that it is in reality a day scene although it is known to most people as the "night watch." the picture was painted in .] there is no doubt that many of rembrandt's troubles were self-inflicted; but his punishment was largely in excess of his sins. his pictures may be admired in nearly all great public collections; they are distributed, too, among private galleries. rembrandt's art has found a welcome in all countries. we know now that part of his temporary unpopularity in holland was due to the fact that he was far in advance of his own time, that the conventions of lesser men repelled him, and he was perhaps a little too vigorous in the expression of his opinions. now, in the years when the voice of fame cannot reach him and his worst detractors are silent, he is set on a pedestal by the side of velazquez and titian. rembrandt an appreciation of the pictures in amsterdam will the reader turn away with a shrug of the shoulder, when he sees, heading this essay, the famous name that we hear so often? i feel like one sitting among friends at a banquet, and though many of the guests have expressed and analysed the same feelings in different toasts, i will not be restrained from expressing, in my turn, my delight in the festive gathering. i touch my glass to ensure a hearing, and i speak as my heart prompts me. it is not very important or interesting, but i am speaking in praise of him in whose honour the feast is given. in this frame of mind i am contributing my little share to the pile of written matter, which has been produced from all quarters, in honour of the great painter. i many years ago i went to amsterdam as an art student, to be trained under the auspices of the then famous portrait painter kruseman. very soon i was admitted to the master's studio, and beheld with admiration the portraits of the distinguished personages he was painting at the time. the pink flesh-tints of the faces, the delicate treatment of the draperies and dresses, more often than not standing out against a background of dark red velvet, attracted me immensely. when, however, i expressed a desire to be allowed to copy some of these portraits, the master refused my request. "no," he said; "if you want to copy, go to the museum in the 'trippenhuis.'"[ ] i dared not show the bitter disappointment this refusal caused me. having come fresh from the country, the old masters were a sealed book to me. i failed to discover any beauty in the homely, old-fashioned scenes of dark landscapes over which people went into ecstasies. to my untrained eyes the exhibition in "arti"[ ] seemed infinitely more beautiful; and pieneman, gallait, calame, and koekoek especially excited my admiration. i was not really lacking in artistic instinct any more than my fellow-students, but i had not yet gained the experience and practice, which are indispensable to the true understanding of the quaint but highly artistic qualities of the old dutch masters. i maintain that however intelligent a man may be, it is impossible to appreciate old dutch art to the full, or even to enjoy it, unless one has become thoroughly familiar with it, and has tried to identify oneself with it. in order to be able to sound the real character and depth of manifestations of art, the artistic sensibility has to be trained and developed. it was long before i could summon up sufficient courage to enter this holy of holies armed with my colours and brushes. indeed i only started on this venture after a long spell of hard work, out-of-doors as well as in the studio, and after having made many studies from the nude, and many more still-life studies; then a light broke in upon my darkness. i began to understand at last that the true aim of art does not consist in the smooth and delicate plastering of the colours. i realised that my chief study was to be the exact value of light and shade, the relief of the objects, and the attitude, movements, and gestures of the figures. having learned to look upon art from this point of view, i entered the old "trippenhuis" with pleasure. little by little the beauty and truth of these admirable old masters dawned upon me. i perceived that their simple subjects grew rich and full of meaning through the manner in which they were treated. the artists were geniuses, and the world around them either ignored the fact, or did not see it until too late. knowing little of art, i chose for my first copy a small canvas, a "hermit" by gerard dou, not understanding that, though small, it might contain qualities which would prove too difficult for me to imitate. i had to work it over and over again, for i could not get any shape in the thick, sticky paint. then i tried a head by van der helst, and succeeded a little better. [illustration: plate vi.--portrait of a young man this portrait may be seen to-day in the pitti palace at florence. it is said to be one of rembrandt's portraits of himself, painted about .] at last i stopped before one of the heads in the "syndics of the cloth merchants' guild." the man in the left-hand corner, with the soft grey hair under the steeple-hat, had arrested my fancy. i felt that there was something in the portrait's beauty i could grasp and reproduce, though i saw at once that the technical treatment was entirely different from what i had attempted hitherto. however, the desire to reproduce this breadth of execution tempted me so much that i resolved to try my hand at it. i forget now what the copy looked like; i only remember that for years it hung on my studio wall. so i tried to grasp the colour scheme, and the technique of the different artists, until the beauties of the so-called "night patrol" and the "syndics" took such hold of me that nothing attracted me but what had come from the hand of the great master, the unique rembrandt. in his work i found something which all the others lacked. freedom and exuberance were his chief attractions, two qualities utterly barred and forbidden in the drawing class and in my teacher's studio. although frans hals impressed me more than any other painter with the power with which he wielded the brush, even he was put in the shade by rembrandt's unsurpassable colour effects. when i had looked at rembrandt's pictures to my heart's content, i used to go down to the ground floor in the "trippenhuis" to the print cabinet. here i found his etchings beautifully arranged. it was a pleasant room overlooking a garden, and in the centre stood a long table covered with a green cloth, on which one could put down the portfolio and look at the gems they contained at leisure. i often sat there for hours, buried in the contemplation of these two hundred and forty masterpieces. the conservator never ceased urging me to be careful when he saw me mix them up too much in my efforts to compare them. how astonished i was to find in the painter who, with mighty hand, had modelled in paint the glorious "night patrol," an accomplished engraver, not only gifted with the power and freedom of a great painter, but thoroughly versed in all the mysteries of the use of the etching needle on the hard, smooth copper. still it was not the extraordinary skill which attracted me most in these etchings. it was rather the singular inventive power shown in the different scenes, the peculiar contrast between light and shade, and the almost childlike manner in which the figures had been treated. the artist's soul not only spoke through the choice of subject, but it found an expression in every single detail, conveyed by the delicate handling of the needle. many biblical subjects are represented in the amsterdam collection; they are full of artistic imagination and sentiment in their composition in spite of their seeming incongruity. the conception is so highly original, and at the same time betrays such a depth of understanding, that other prints, however beautifully done, look academic and stilted beside them. among those etchings were excellent portraits, wonderfully lifelike heads of the painter's friends and of himself; but when one has looked at the little picture of his mother, he is compelled to shut the portfolio for a moment, because the unbidden tears rise to the eyes. it is impossible to find anything more exquisite than this engraving. motherly kindness, sweetness, and thoughtfulness are expressed in every curve, in the slightest touch of the needle. each line has a meaning; not a single touch could have been left out without injury to the whole. hokusai, the japanese artist, said that he hoped to live to be very old that he might have time to learn to draw in such a way that every stroke of his pencil would be the expression of some living thing. that is exactly what rembrandt has attained here, and, in this portrait, he realised at the age of twenty-four the ideal of the old japanese; it is one of his earliest etchings. i re-open the portfolio to have a look at the pictures of the wonderful old jewish beggars. they were types that were to be found by the score in the amsterdam of those days, and rembrandt delighted to draw them. one is almost inclined to say that they cannot be beggars, because the master's hand has endowed them with the warmth and splendour with which his artistic temperament clothed everything he looked at. when i had looked enough at the etchings, i used to go home through the town, and it seemed to me as if i were meeting the very people i had just seen in the engravings. as i went through the "hoog straat" and "st. anthony's breestraat" to the "joden breestraat," where i lived a few doors from the famous house where rembrandt dwelt and worked so long, i saw the picturesque crowd passing to and fro; i saw the vivid hebrew physiognomies, with their iron-grey beards; the red-headed women; the barrows full of fish or fruit, or all kinds of rubbish; the houses, the people, the sky. it was all rembrandt--all rembrandtesque. a great deal has been changed in those streets since the time of which i have been writing, yet, even now, whenever i pass through them i seem to see the colours, and the kind of people rembrandt shows us in his works. in the meantime i had found a third manifestation of rembrandt's talent, viz., his drawings. to a young painter, who himself was still groping in the dark for means of expressing his feelings, these drawings were exceedingly puzzling, but at the same time full of stimulus. less palpably living than his etchings, it was some time before i could properly appreciate them, but when i understood what i firmly believe still, namely, that the master did not draw with a view to exhibiting them or only for the pleasure of making graceful outlines i felt their true meaning. they were simply the embodiments of his deeper feelings; emanations from the abundance of his fertile imagination. they have been thrown on the paper with an unthinking, careless hand; the same hand that created masterpieces, prompted by the slightest impulse, the least sensation. when i looked at them superficially they seemed disfigured by all sorts of smudges and thick black lines, which cross and recross in a seemingly wild and aimless sort of way; but when looked into carefully, they all have a meaning of their own, and have been put there with a just and deep felt appreciation of light and shade. the greater compositions crowded with figures, the buildings, the landscapes--all are impregnated with the same deep artistic feeling. [illustration: plate vii.--portrait of an old lady this famous portrait of an old lady unknown is in our national gallery. it is on canvas ft. + / in. by ft. in.] one evening one of my friends gave us a short lecture on art and showed us many drawings by ancient and modern artists, most of them, however, being by contemporaries who had already become famous. among them was one drawing by rembrandt, and it was remarkable to notice the peculiar effect it produced in this collection. the scene represented on the old smudgy piece of paper was so simple in execution, so noble in composition, done with just a few strokes of the pencil, that all the other drawings looked like apprentice-work beside it. here was the master, towering above all. thus i saw rembrandt, the man who could tell me endless stories, and could conjure them up before my eyes with either brush, pencil, or etching needle. whether heaven or earth; the heroes of old; or only a corner of old amsterdam--out of everything he made the most beautiful drawings. his pictures of lions and elephants are wonderfully naïve. his nude figures of female models are remarkable, because no painter dared paint them exactly as he saw them in his studio, but rembrandt, entranced by the glow and warmth of the flesh tints, never dreamt of reproducing them otherwise than as he saw them. it was no venus, or june, or diana he wanted. he might, perhaps, even take his neighbour's washerwoman, make her get up on the model throne, and put her on the canvas in all the glory of living, throbbing flesh and blood. and the way in which he put his scrawls and strokes is so wonderful that one can never look too long at them. all his work is done with a light-heartedness, a cheerfulness, and firmness which preclude at once the idea of painful study and exertion. ii what do i think of the master now, after so many years? come with me, reader, let us look together at the strongest expression of rembrandt's art, viz., his picture "the night patrol." our way leads us now to the ryksmuseum, and we sit down in the newly built "rembrandt room," with our backs to the light, so as to obtain a full view of the picture, and we try to forget all about the struggle it cost to erect this temple of art. at first sight, we are struck by the grand movements of light and shade, which seem to flood the canvas as if with waves of coloured harmonies. then, suddenly, two men seem to step out from the group. the one is dressed in sombre-coloured clothes, whilst the other is resplendent in white. that is rembrandt all over, not afraid of putting the light in bold contrast against the dark. so as to maintain the harmony between the two he makes the dark man lift his hand as if he were pointing at something, and in doing so, he casts a softening shadow on his brilliant companion. genius finds a way where ordinary mortals are at a loss how to help themselves. clearly these men are in earnest conversation with each other, and it is quite evident that they are the leaders of the company. but when everything was put on the canvas that he intended to put there, the master stood in front of it and shook his head. to him these two leaders did not stand out sufficiently from the rest. so he took up his palette again, and again he dipped his broadest brushes deep in paint and with a few mighty strokes he transformed these two figures; a little more depth here, some more light there. he tried every means to give the scene more depth, and a fuller meaning. then he saw that it was all right and left it. the likeness of his patrons was, perhaps, not very exact and most likely some murmurs were raised at the want of minutely finished detail; but he did not heed such matters. to him the main point was to make his figures live and breathe and move; and see how he succeeded! from the plumes of their hats to the soles of their feet everything is living, tangible. how full of energy and character are their heads! their dress, the steel gorget, the boots of the man in white; everything bears witness to the wonderful power of the master. and look at the man in black, with his red bandolier, his gloves, and his stick. this does not strike one as anything out of the common, because the composition is so true, so perfectly natural and simple. i cannot remember having seen a single picture in which the peculiar style and picturesqueness of those days is so vividly expressed, as in the figures of these two men calmly walking along on the giant canvas. now let us turn to the right and have a look at the perspiring drummer. his pock-marked face, overshadowed by a frayed hat, is of the true falstaff type. the swollen nose, the thick-lipped mouth, every detail is carried out with the daring of the true artist which characterises all the master's work. look at him, drumming away as if he wanted to make it known that he himself is one of the most magnificent specimens of the work of the genius whom men call rembrandt. on looking at this man i can understand why gerard de lairesse exclaimed in his great book on painting: "in rembrandt's pictures the paint is running down the panel like mud!" but it was only his conscientious narrow-mindedness which made him say it. genius never fails to get into conflict with narrow thought. but now let us turn our attention to the left-hand corner. there we see that pithy soldier all in red. rembrandt, with his intuitive knowledge of chiaroscuro, was not afraid of painting a figure all in red. he knew that the play of light and shade on the colour would help him out. here part of the red is toned down by a beautiful soft tint, which makes the whole figure blend harmoniously with the greyish-green of the others. this man in red, too, has been treated in the same masterly manner of which i spoke above. if one looks at him attentively, it seems as if the man, who apparently might step out of the canvas at any rate, had been painted with one powerful sweep of the brush. how firm is the treatment of the hand loading the gun; how true the shadows on the red hat and jerkin. there the figure stands, alert, living, full of movement, rich in colour. in this marvellous picture we come across something striking at every turn. how life-like is the halberdier looking over his shoulder; and the man who is inspecting his gun, just behind the figure in white; observe the wonderful effect of the laughing boy in the grey hat against the dark background. even the pillar which serves as a background to the man with the helmet adds to the harmony of the whole. but here we meet with something peculiar! what is that quaint little girl doing among all those men? [illustration: plate viii.--head of a young man. (unknown) in the louvre] numbers of critics have racked their brains about the meaning of different details. but if rembrandt could have heard them, he would have answered with a laugh, "don't you see that i only wanted this child as a focus for the light, and a contrast with all the downward lines and dark colours?" the man with the banner in the background, the dog running away, all these details help each other to carry out the effect of line and colour. there is not a square inch in this canvas which does not betray a rare talent. this is a case in which the assertion, "cut me a piece out of a picture and i will tell you if it is by an artist," could successfully be applied. now, i hope my readers won't object to accompanying me a little further, and stopping with me before the "syndics." there it hangs, the great simple canvas, quite different in character from the "night patrol." everything here is dignified and stately. the whole picture is a glorious witness to the consummate knowledge the master possessed of expressing the individual soul in the human face. here they sit, those old dutch fathers, assembled in solemn conclave, debating about their trade, with the books on the table in front of them; and rembrandt has painted these heads so true to life that in the course of years they have become like old friends; yes, old friends, though they lived hundreds of years before we were dreamt of. how long have i known that man on the left, with his hand on the knob of his arm-chair, and the fine grey hair on his broad wrinkled brow showing from under the high steeple-hat? the flesh tints in the face, whether catching the full light, or partly veiled by shadows, display an endless variety of shades, and the neutral greens and reds, greys and yellows, are put against each other in such a wonderful manner that an effect has been attained which strikes us dumb with admiration. the way in which he is made to stand out from the background is in itself marvellous, but just look at the man! how full of life and understanding is the look in those eyes. it is something quite unique, something rembrandt himself has never surpassed. and then there are the other figures; the man who is leaning forward; the one sitting right in front of the book, his neighbour; even the fifth merchant on the right, with his servant behind him--one and all are full of life and light. the background is such as rembrandt only, with his understanding of lines, could have devised. the wall and the panelling shut in the composition in such a way that one cannot possibly imagine it ever having been otherwise. and even this skilful touch is made subordinate to the warm red colour of the tablecloth, which lends the picture an additional depth. i don't know whether this picture was very much discussed by rembrandt's contemporaries when it was finished. but to us, who have seen so much of the art of the great italians, germans, and spaniards, these heads are the highest achievement of the art of painting. when i was in madrid, where i was charmed by velasquez' work, our party was one day walking through the broad streets of the capital. passing a large, picturesque building, our attention was attracted by a gaudy poster informing us that an exhibition of the works of modern spanish artists was being held within. our curiosity being aroused, we entered, and found that in this country, where so many famous artists lived and worked, there are among the modern artists many studious, highly talented men, who serve their art with true love and devotion. but suddenly it seemed as if we had been carried by magic from spain back to amsterdam. we had come face to face with a copy of the "syndics," painted by a spanish artist during a stay in amsterdam. was it national prejudice, or was it conviction? i don't know; but this copy spoke to us of a spirit of greater simplicity, of a truer conception of the nature and dignity of mankind than anything we had admired in the prado. yes; this picture even kills its own dutch brothers. it makes van der helst look superficial, and franz hals unfinished and flat. so much thoroughness and depth combined with such freedom and grace of movement is not to be found anywhere else. these people have lived on the canvas for centuries, and they will outlive us all. and the man who achieved this masterpiece was at the time of its production a poor, struggling burgher living in an obscure corner of the town where his tercentenary festival was lately celebrated. iii but this is not the place for the sad reflections which are awakened in our minds on examining the records of him whose name the world now glorifies and raises to the skies. better to honour the great master who, for so many centuries, has held the world in awed admiration. there is no need to-day to drag rembrandt forth from the obscurity of the past to save him from oblivion; we were not obliged to cleanse his image from the dust of ages before showing to the world this unequalled genius to whom holland proudly points as one of her own sons. on the contrary, never was rembrandt's art valued so highly as it is now. archives and documents are searched for details about his life and works. we want to know all about his life, and are anxious to share his inmost feelings in prosperity and adversity. the houses where he lived are marked down and bought by art-lovers. at the present time rembrandt is in the zenith of his glory. gold loses its value where his pictures are concerned. fortunes are spent to secure the most insignificant of his works; people travel across continents to see them; and criticism, which for long years did little more than snarl at rembrandt, has for nearly fifty years been dumb. it is remarkable that none of the great painters have, in the course of years, been subjected to so much criticism as rembrandt. and notwithstanding all the things which have been said about the improbability of the scene, and the exaggeration of the dark background, the "night patrol" is now, as it ever was and ever will be, the "world's wonder," as our english neighbours say. during his lifetime there were people who condemned rembrandt because he refused to follow in the footsteps of the old italian painters, because he persisted in painting nature as he saw it. to us such a reproach seems strange, yet it is quite true. even during the last years of rembrandt's life a growing dissatisfaction with the existing ideas on art and literature had taken possession of the dutch mind. people developed a morbid taste for everything classical; and when i read in the prose works and poems of these days the latinised names and the constant allusions to greek gods and goddesses and mythological personages, so strangely out of place under our northern sky, i am filled with disgust. it was fortunate, indeed, that rembrandt always felt strong in his own conviction and only followed his own views. for many years after his death, even as late as the middle of the nineteenth century, a number of art critics raised objections against the dangerous theories of which his pictures were the expression. again and again they attacked his technical treatment; none of them ever grasped its deeper, fuller meaning. happily those days are far behind us. a great number of books and pamphlets have been published on rembrandt during the last fifty years, and they are almost unanimous in their praise and admiration of the great master. the more liberal feelings of the modern world have achieved some victories in the realms of art as well as elsewhere. we moderns feel that the apparent shortcomings and exaggerations are nothing but the inevitable peculiarities attendant upon genius. and we even go so far that we would not have him be without a single one of them, for fear of losing the slightest trait in the character of the great man whose every movement roused our intellectual faculties. so rembrandt has been raised in our days to the pinnacle of fame which is his by right; the festival of his tercentenary was acknowledged by the whole civilised world as the natural utterance of joy and pride of our small country in being able to count among its children the great rembrandt. i finish,--"with the pen, but not with the heart!" for if i should go on until the inclination to add more to what i have written here should fail me, my readers would have tired of me long before i had tired of my subject. i am thinking of that rare gem, the portrait of jan six--of the louvre, of cassel, of brunswick, of what not! may these pages convey to the reader the fact that i have always looked upon rembrandt as the true type of an artist, free, untrammelled by traditions, genial in all he did; in short, a figure in whom all the great qualities of the old republic of the united provinces were concentrated and reflected. footnotes: [footnote : the "trippenhuis" was used as a picture gallery before the ryksmuseum was built. it was an old patrician family mansion belonging to the trip family. several members of this family filled important posts in the government of the old republic of the united provinces, and some were burgomasters of amsterdam.] [footnote : "arti et amicitiæ" is a society of modern dutch painters. occasionally the members organise exhibitions of the work of contemporary countrymen or of foreign artists, and every year there is an exhibition of their own works. these shows are held in the society's own building in amsterdam at the corner of the "rokin" and "spui."] solutions of baryta salts, has been described as carmine-coloured and permanent. we have not found it to be so--an experience which has evidently not been confined to ourselves; and we cannot help thinking that this is one of those errors which get copied from one chemical work into another, to the special confusion of students. it is but fair, however, to add that in mr. watts' dictionary of chemistry, the latest and best work of the kind, this ferrate is said to become "brick-red after washing and drying at ° c.," and to be only "tolerably stable." . _gold reds._ many organic substances added to gold solutions throw down either the metallic gold or the red oxide, which then unites with the organic compound more or less decomposed and forms a red precipitate. sugar, gum, the decoctions of cochineal, gamboge, fustic, turmeric, sumach, catechu, and brazil wood, all afford red pulverulent colours. boiled with sugar, gold solution gives first a light and then a dark red. whatever their merits, the excessive costliness of these preparations renders them inadmissible as pigments. at one time, indeed, a gold compound known as purple of cassius was so employed, but this soon became obsolete on the introduction of madder purple. . _iodine pink._ there may be obtained from iodine and mercury a very pretty pink colour, analogous in composition to pure scarlet. it is apt to pass into the scarlet modification, and is in other respects even less to be depended on than that variety. . _kermes lake_ is an ancient pigment, perhaps the earliest of the european lakes, and so called from the arabic alkermes. it is sometimes spelt _cermes_, whence probably cermosin and crimson, and kermine and carmine. in old books it is named vermilion, in allusion to the insect, or _vermes_, from which it is prepared. this insect is the "coccus ilicis," which feeds upon the leaves of the prickly oak in the south of europe. like the "coccus cacti," it is covered with a whitish dust, and yields a tinctorial matter soluble in water and alcohol. kermes and the lac of india doubtless afforded the lakes of the venetians, and appear to have been used by the earliest painters in oil of the school of van eyck. the former, under the appellation [greek: kurno kokino], is said to be employed by the modern greeks for dyeing their caps red. some old specimens of this pigment which the author obtained were in drops of a powdery texture and crimson colour, warmer than cochineal lakes, and having less body and brilliancy. they worked well, however, and withstood the action of light better than the latter, though the sun ultimately discoloured and destroyed them. in other respects, they resembled the lakes of cochineal. as a colouring matter, kermes is only about one-twelfth part as powerful as that substance. . _lawson's red._ in it was stated that professor lawson had prepared a new dye of great richness, in the laboratory of queen's college, canada, from an insect, a species of coccus, found the previous summer for the first time on a tree of the common black spruce (_abies nigra_), in the neighbourhood of kingston. having been but recently observed, a sufficient quantity had not been obtained for a complete series of experiments as to its nature and uses; but the habits of the insect, as well as the properties of the dye, seemed to indicate that it might become of practical importance. in colour it closely resembled ordinary cochineal, but was rather more scarlet in hue. it was described as capable of being produced in temperate countries. the colouring matter had not then been thrown upon a base, nor do we know that it has since been introduced as a pigment. if it possessed greater stability than cochineal, with equal brilliancy and depth, this dye might form one of those colours of the future, to whose possible sources we would direct attention. . _manganese red._ bisulphide of arsenic combines with basic metallic sulphides forming a class of sulphur-salts, called by berzelius, hyposulpharsenites. the hyposulpharsenite of manganese is a dark red precipitate, uninjured by sulphuretted hydrogen, and so far applicable as a pigment. containing arsenic, it would of course be poisonous; and would probably be found to fade on exposure to air and light. . _murexide._ the red obtained from this substance created a great deal of interest among printers and dyers on its introduction in , or thereabouts. for purity and brilliancy of shade it was not excelled by any other colour, but not being able to stand the effects of air and light, its employment was limited. we are not aware that murexide has yet been brought forward as a pigment, and judging from its character as a dye, it would scarcely enrich the palette. dyes and pigments have much in common, and a fugitive dye cannot be expected to furnish a permanent pigment. murexide is produced by the action of ammonia on alloxan, which is itself derived from the uric acid of guano by treatment with nitric acid, and was known nearly forty years back to stain the fingers and nails red. the first murexide sent into the market was a reddish-purple powder, dissolving in water with a fine purple tint, leaving a little residue undissolved. owing to improvements in manufacture, it is now capable of being prepared almost chemically pure, and with that green metallic reflection peculiar to several coal-tar salts and the wings of certain insects. when sulphuretted hydrogen is passed through a concentrated solution of murexide, it is immediately decoloured; a fact which renders it likely that murexide pigments would be as liable to suffer from an impure atmosphere, as from exposure to light and air. when an alkaline solution of murexide is precipitated by an acid, a light shining powder results, called purpuric acid. this dissolves in alkalies, and combines with metalline bases to form various coloured compounds, termed _purpurates_. among them may be mentioned a red purpurate of lead, a purple-red and a rose-coloured purpurate of mercury, a purple-red purpurate of silver, a dark red-brown purpurate of strontia, a crystalline red purpurate of cobalt, a scarlet purpurate of platinum, a yellow purpurate of zinc, and a green purpurate of baryta. all of these, however, being more or less soluble in water, and owing their colours to murexide, would be ill adapted for pigments. . _paille de mil,_ or african cochineal, is a substance obtained from africa. whether it has received its name of cochineal from its appearance or origin is not clear, but it behaves more like galls and sumac than cochineal, though it does give a kind of red with alumina mordants. the colours it yields are deficient in brightness, and it has otherwise been reported unfavourably of. . _peganum harmala,_ the seeds of which afford a red colour, has been investigated by the french, but described as inferior to existing reds both in brilliancy and stability. . _persulphomolybdates._ the metallic compounds formed by the combination of persulphomolybdic acid with a base are pulverulent, in many cases of a red colour, and for the most part insoluble in water. with barium, the acid furnishes a yellowish-red powder, insoluble in, but made denser by water, which imparts to it a cinnabar colour. with calcium it is said to yield a scarlet, sparingly soluble in water. with chromium, uranium, lead, platinum, and copper, it gives a dark red; that from the last metal turning brown when collected on a filter. it likewise produces reds with zinc, cadmium, iron, mercury, and tin; of which the last is slightly soluble in water. molybdenum being a rare metal, and persulphomolybdate of potash, the salt used in the foregoing reactions, difficult to prepare, it is unlikely that the colours named will rank among the pigments of this generation. nevertheless, as we have observed before, such fancy products should not be altogether ignored, it being quite as well to have some knowledge of our resources, even though those resources be not at present available. all the rare metals afford coloured compounds: tantalum, niobium, pelopium, vanadium, tellurium, titanium, yttrium, lanthanum, didymium, glucinum, cerium, thorinum, zirconium, palladium, rhodium, iridium, ruthenium, osmium, indium, thallium, &c.; and it is just possible that some of these may one day scrape acquaintance with the palette. . _red chalk_, the colouring matter of which is sesquioxide of iron, is used as a crayon. some specimens are excessively hard, so much so that they are difficult to crush, even in an iron mortar; while others have the consistence of the softest iron-ochres. they vary too in tint from a fawn colour to the softest brick-red, occasionally being almost as bright as a mixture of equal weights of vermilion and venetian red. the amount of iron oxide present has been found to range from four to thirty-seven per cent, according to the depth and hardness of the samples. when a specimen of red chalk tolerably rich, but not too rich, in iron oxide is finely powdered and strongly ignited, it offers a remarkable change of colour, becoming a dull sage-green. perhaps this, if it were permanent, might prove useful in foliage tints. . _red precipitate_, or mercuric oxide, may be obtained either of a brick-red or orange-yellow colour. it is destroyed by impure air, and on exposure to sunshine gradually turns black, being superficially decomposed into oxygen and metallic mercury or mercurous oxide. . _rose pink_ is a coarse kind of lake, produced by dyeing chalk or whitening with decoction of brazil wood, peachwood, sapan, bar, camwood, &c. it is a pigment much used by paper-stainers, and in the commonest distemper painting, &c., but is too perishable to merit the attention of the artist. chevreul obtained a crystalline substance from brazil wood, which he looked upon as the pure colouring matter, or as containing the pure colouring matter, and which gave red and crimson precipitates with many salts. possibly some of these might prove more durable than the roughly made rose pink. . _rouge_, the rouge végétale of the french, is a species of carmine, prepared from safflower or carthamus, which is the flower of a plant growing in the north of africa, india, and other warm climates. safflower yields two colours--a valueless yellow which dissolves in cold water, and about five per cent of red, insoluble in water but dissolved by alkalies. the red, or carthamin, furnishes a pigment of exquisite beauty, marked by richness, transparency, and free working. its extreme fugacity, however, militates against its employment by artists. as a dye, its manner of fixing upon fibre is different from that of any other colouring matter; requiring no mordant, like madder or cochineal, and needing no solution, like indigo or anotta, but fixing at once as soon as the cloth is brought into contact with it. but even for a dye the colour is fugitive, fading after a few hours' exposure to sunshine, and sometimes being quite bleached in the course of a day. it is when combined with levigated talc to form the paint of the toilette that the red becomes most serviceable. possessing a peculiar softness and velvety glow, rouge is an unrivalled--and a most harmless--aid to beauty. _chinese rouge_ and _pink saucers_ have much of the qualities of, and appear to be also prepared from, the safflower. . _rufigallic red._ when a duly proportioned mixture of gallic acid and oil of vitriol is carefully and gradually heated to °, a viscid wine-red liquid results. if this be poured into cold water, after cooling, a heavy brown-red granular precipitate is formed, soluble in parts of boiling water. it dissolves in potash-ley, and to fabrics impregnated with alum or iron mordants, imparts the same shades of colour as madder; the colours so produced withstanding soap but not chlorine. whether brilliant lakes could be obtained from the potash solution of the red, and whether those reds would be stable, it might be worth while to ascertain. . _sandal red._ we have kept this separate from other reds derived from woods, because it is said (by professor h. dussance) to be obtainable not only equal in beauty and brightness to carmine, but of greater permanence. the process of preparation is as follows:--the powdered root exhausted by alcohol gives a solution to which hydrated oxide of lead is added in excess. the combination of colouring matter and lead oxide is then collected on a filter, washed with alcohol, dried, dissolved in acetic acid, and mixed with a quantity of water. the red being insoluble therein is precipitated, while the acetate of lead remains dissolved. after being washed, the colour is dried at a low temperature. the professor affirms that the red so produced is unaffected by sulphuretted hydrogen, or by light and air; and it is stated that the colour which was used to paint the carriages of the emperor napoleon, remained as bright at the end of nine years as when it was put on. possessing such properties, it is curious that the red has never been--in this country at least--introduced as an artistic pigment, the more especially as seventeen years have elapsed since its discovery. . _silver red._ by adding monochromate of potash to an acid solution of nitrate of silver, a particularly fine ochre-red is obtained. it is, however, apt to be injured both by foul air and exposure. . _sorgho red._ some nine years back there was found to be a carmine colouring matter in most parts of the chinese sorgho, chiefly in the unpressed stem. the red, which is extracted in an impure state, is dissolved in weak potash-ley, thrown down by sulphuric acid, and washed with water. this purified product, soluble in alcohol, caustic alkalies, and dilute acids, has been employed in austria, baden, &c., for the dyeing of silks and woollens with the common tin mordants. the colours produced from it are unchanged, they say, by warm soapsuds or light. we do not know whether the red found its way to england, but it has certainly not appeared here as a pigment. . _thallium red._ the orange-yellow precipitate formed by mixing a neutral salt of protoxide of thallium with bichromate of potash, is converted by nitric acid into an orange-red. the latter compound, which is a terchromate, is almost insoluble in cold water, parts being required to dissolve it. if the colour be boiled in a large excess of moderately strong nitric acid it is dissolved, yielding magnificent cinnabar red crystals on the solution cooling. these crystals likewise seem to be the terchromate. . _tin pink._ by igniting strongly for some hours a mixture of stannic oxide, chalk, chromate of potash, and a little silica and alumina, a dingy red mass is obtained, which acquires a beautiful rose-red colour on being washed with water containing hydrochloric acid. for the same reason that the pinks of cobalt are superfluous as artistic pigments, this tin product is commercially ineligible. having, however, the advantage of being cheap, and being probably durable, it would be well adapted for the common purposes of painting, in place of the fugitive rose pink. . _ultramarine red?_ in gmelin's handbook of chemistry it is remarked that "hydrogen gas passed over ignited ultramarine, colours it light red, from formation of liver of sulphur, hydrosulphuric acid gas and water being evolved at the same time." on most carefully making the experiment with a sample of native blue (the variety referred to) we did not succeed in effecting this change: no alteration to red or even to purple took place, the only result being that the colour was entirely spoilt, having assumed a leaden slate-gray hue. at our request, the trial was kindly repeated by well-known chemists, who took every precaution to ensure success. several specimens of ultramarine were acted upon, but in no case was a red or anything like a red obtained, the products ranging from a slate-gray to a drab-grey. sufficient hydrosulphuric acid gas was evolved to blacken paper moistened with acetate of lead, a fact which proved that the blue had lost some of its sulphur. seeing that not only no red was produced, but that no tendency to red was imparted, is it possible the change described by gmelin occurred under exceptional circumstances? all conversant with chemical matters will admit that results are obtained occasionally which cannot be repeated, owing it may be to some slight difference in the materials employed, or some slight variation of the process. perhaps a link, considered of no importance at the time and overlooked, has been lost, and thus the whole chain of proceeding becomes useless. it is, therefore, within the bounds of probability that the red ultramarine of the great german chemist was furnished either by a peculiar specimen of blue, or by a modified form of the method he gives. we have noticed the subject at some length because if a red ultramarine, brilliant and durable, could be obtained, the colour might prove of value. a permanent artificial compound corresponding to french blue would certainly be an acquisition. . _uranium red._ by treating the yellow sulphite of uranium with a prolonged current of sulphuretted hydrogen, and saturating gradually with ammonia, a red finally results. this colour is insoluble in water, and it has the objection of remaining partially suspended for an almost indefinite time, colouring the liquid light red. the product is brighter and more beautiful while moist; when dried and powdered, its tone--slightly approaching vermilion--is duller. the colour may be obtained of several degrees of brilliancy, but, apart from the question of expense, it would be inadmissible in oil, the red gradually altering by contact therewith. the most persistent tint at length resembles burnt sienna. . _wongshy red._ there was imported a few years ago from batavia a new colouring principle, under the name of _wongshy_, and consisting of the seed-capsule of a species of gentian. the aqueous extract, freed from the pectin which it contains, yields with baryta- and lime-water yellow precipitates, from which acids separate the colouring matter of a vermilion hue. when thus prepared it is insoluble in water, and would so far be adapted for a pigment. the red has not, however, been employed as such, and we are unacquainted with its habitudes. * * * * * the concluding remarks appended to the chapter on yellow apply equally to red, and indeed to all other colours. it is not assumed that the list is exhausted: there are other reds, but they are, like some we have mentioned, ineligible as pigments, either by reason of their fugacity, their costliness, the difficulty of producing them on a scale, or the sources whence they are derived being commercially unavailable. while endeavouring throughout the work to render complete the collection of pigments actually in use, it is our object to give a selection only of numbered italicised colours; ample enough, however, to include those which have become obsolete or nearly so, and full enough to afford some insight into our resources. the nearer we approach perfection, the more eager we are to arrive at it: the path before us, therefore, cannot fail to be of interest. looking back, and noting those pigments commonly employed, we find that the reds like the yellows are divisible into three classes--the good, bad, and indifferent; or the permanent, the semi-stable, and the fugitive. among permanent reds, rank cadmium red, madder reds, mars red, the ochres, and vermilions. in the second or semi-stable class, must be placed cochineal lakes, indian lake, and red chrome. to the third division, or the fugitive, belong dragon's blood, pure scarlet, red lead, and the coal-tar reds. with regard to the foregoing classification, it must be borne in mind that the properties and effects of pigments are much influenced by adventitious circumstances. sometimes pigments are varied or altogether changed by the grounds on which they are employed, the vehicles in which they are used, the siccatives and colours with which they are mixed, and the varnishes by which they are covered. and as there is no exact and constant agreement in different specimens of like pigments, so there is no exact and constant result in their use. artists vary as much as the pigments they employ: some resemble the old masters in the delicacy with which they treat their colours, the cleanliness with which they surround them, and the care with which they compound them: in the hands of such artists pigments have every chance. some, however, are characterized by a careless manipulation, a dirty mode of working, an utter disregard for all rules of admixture: with such painters the best colours may be ruined. and here, indeed, it may be asked, whether these latter are not more properly termed painters than artists, chiefly belonging as they do to that slap-dash school which manufactures pictures simply to sell them. duly subordinated, the commercial side of art has a value which it were affectation to ignore; but to paint merely for the present, heedless of the future, is to sink art to the level of a trade, not the most honest. for it is the purchaser who suffers from the want of thought bestowed on the materials, the sloppy manipulation, the careless compounding; sins of omission and commission that cause him, on finding his picture becoming chaos, to join the detractors of modern pigments. in classifying colours therefore, those also should be classified who use them:--into artists, whose love for art would render it more lasting than themselves; and into painters, whose motto is _vita brevis est, ars quoque_. chapter x. on the primary, blue. the third and last of the primary or simple colours is _blue_, which bears the same relation to shade as yellow to light. hence it is the most retiring and diffusive of all colours, except purple and black; and all colours have the power of throwing it back in painting, to a greater or less extent, in proportion to the intimacy of their relations to light--first white, then yellow, orange, red, &c. blue alone possesses entirely the quality technically called 'coldness' in colouring, and it communicates this property variously to all other colours with which it happens to be compounded. most powerful in a strong light, it seems to become neutral and pale in a declining light, owing to its ruling affinity with black or shade, and its power of absorbing light. consequently, the eye of the artist is liable to be deceived when painting with blue in too low a light, or toward the close of day, to the endangering of the warmth and harmony of his picture. entering into combination with yellow in the composition of all _greens_, and with red in all _purples_, blue characterizes the tertiary _olive_, and is also the prime colour or archeus of the neutral _black_, &c., as well as of the semi-neutral _gray_, &c.: it therefore is changed in hue less than any other colour by mixture with black, as it is likewise by distance. blue is present subordinately in all tertiary and broken colours, and being nearest in the scale to black, breaks and contrasts powerfully and agreeably with white, as in pale blues, skies, &c. being less active than the other primaries in reflecting light, it is sooner lost as a local colour by assimilation with distance. there is an ancient doctrine that the azure of the sky is a compound of light and darkness, and some have argued hence that blue is not a primary colour, but a mixture of black and white; but pure or _neutral_ black and white compound in infinite shades, all of which are neutral also, or _grey_. it is true that a mixture of black and white is of a _cool_ hue, because black is not a primary colour, but a compound of the three primary colours in which blue predominates, a predominance which is rendered more sensible when black is diluted with white. as to the colour of the sky, in which light and shade are combined, that is likewise neutral, and never blue except by contrast; thus, the more the light of the sun partakes of a golden or orange hue, and the more parched and burnt the earth is, the bluer appears the sky, as in italy and all hot countries. in england, where the sun is cooler, and a perpetual verdure reigns, infusing blue latently into the landscape, the sky is warmer and nearer to neutrality, partaking of a diversity of greys, which beautifully melodize with blue as their key, and harmonize with the light and landscape. therefore the colour of the sky is always a contrast to the direct and reflected light of the scene: if this light were of a rose colour, the neutral of the sky would be converted into green, or if purple, the sky would become yellow. similarly would it be in all cases, according to the laws of chromatic equivalence and contrast, as may be often seen in the openings of coloured clouds at the rising and setting of the sun. in art, blue is apt to be discordant in juxtaposition with green, and less so with purple, both which are cool colours; consequently blue requires its contrast, _orange_, in equal proportion whether of surface or intensity, to compensate or resolve its dissonances and correct its coldness. in nature, however, blue is not discordant with either green or purple, nor are any two colours (as we have said before) ever found so. on the palette of nature each _colour_ is an example of _colouring_: no colour is too absolute or defined, no perfectly pure blue appears beside a perfectly pure green. a blue flower nestled in its green leaves does not offend the nicest eye, but the blue and green are not blue and green alone. there is, perhaps, but a single gleam of pure colour in each: the rest is composed of such varied hues and tints and shades, so broken and blended and beautifully harmonized, that no jarring discord is possible. hue melts into hue, tint into tint, shade into shade; and thus does the simplest weed teach a lesson in colouring the proudest painter may stoop to learn. we have spoken of blue, which is termed a cold colour, as retiring; and of yellow and red, which are called warm colours, as advancing. by this we must not be understood to mean that blue, as blue, expresses distance; or that yellow and red, as yellow and red, express nearness. colours are advancing or retiring in their _quality_--as depth, delicacy, &c., not in their hue. a blue object set side-by-side a yellow one will not look an inch farther off, but a red or orange cloud, in the upper sky, will always seem to be beyond a blue cloud close to us, as it is in reality. we grant that in certain objects, blue is a _sign_ of distance, but that is not because blue, as a mere colour, is retiring; but because the mist in the air is blue, and therefore any warm colour which has not strength of light enough to pierce the mist is lost or subdued in its blue. blue in itself, however, is no more, on this account, retiring, than brown is retiring, because when stones are seen through brown water, the deeper they lie, the browner they appear. neither blue nor yellow nor red possesses, as such, the smallest power of expressing either nearness or distance; they merely express themselves under the peculiar circumstances which render them at the moment, or in that place, signs of nearness or distance. thus, purple in a violet is a sign of nearness, because the closer it is looked at the more purple is seen; but purple in a mountain is a sign of distance, because a mountain close at hand is not purple, but green or grey. it may, indeed, be generally assumed that a tender or pale colour will more or less denote distance, and a powerful or dark colour nearness; but even this is not always so. heathery hills will usually give a pale and tender purple near, and an intense or dark purple far away: the rose colour of sunset on snow is pale on the snow at one's feet, but deep and full on the snow in the distance; and the green of a swiss lake is pale in the clear waves on the beach, but intense as an emerald in the sunstreak, six miles from shore. and in any case, when the foreground is in strong light, with much water about it or white surface, casting intense reflections, all its colours may be perfectly delicate, pale, and faint; while the distance, when it is in shadow, may relieve the whole foreground with deepest shades of purple, blue green, or ultramarine blue. there is one law, however, about distance, which has some claims to be considered constant, namely, that dulness and heaviness of colour are more or less indicative of nearness. all distant colour is pure colour: it may not be bright, but it is clear and lovely, not opaque nor soiled; for the air and light coming between us and any earthy or imperfect colour, purify or harmonize it; hence a bad colourist is peculiarly incapable of expressing distance. it is not of course meant that bad colours are to be used in the foreground by way of making it come forward; but only that a failure in colour there will not put it out of its place. a failure in colour in the distance will at once do away with its remoteness; a dull-coloured foreground will still be a foreground, though coloured badly; but an ill-painted distance will not be merely a dull distance, it will be no distance at all. this seeming digression is not out of place, as it will enable the artist better to understand that it is in their quality, not in their hue, that colours are advancing or retiring; and that he must rely on the depth, delicacy, &c., of his pigments, and not simply on their colours, to produce effects of distance. of all colours, except black, blue contrasts white most powerfully. in all harmonious combinations of colours, whether of mixture or neighbourhood, blue is the natural, prime, or predominating power. accordingly, blue is universally agreeable to the eye in due relation to the composition, and may more frequently be repeated therein, pure or unbroken, than either of the other primaries; whence the employment of ultramarine by some masters throughout the colouring of a picture. blue pigments, like blue flowers, are more rare than those of the other primary colours. in permanent blues the palette is very deficient, the list being exhausted when the native and artificial ultramarines and the cobalts have been mentioned. that there is room for new blues, durable and distinct, cannot therefore be denied. a good addition has been made of late years in the german _coëlin_, known here as cerulian blue and coeruleum. what is chiefly wanted, however, is a colour combining the wonderful depth, richness, and transparency of prussian blue with the strict stability of ultramarine. a permanent prussian blue would be the most valued gift the palette could receive. cobalt blues comprise _cerulian blue_ or _coeruleum_, _cobalt blue_, _smalt_, _royal blue_, _dumont's blue_, _saxon blue_, _thénard's blue_, _leithner's blue_, _hungary blue_, _dutch ultramarine_, _zaffre or enamel blue_, _vienna blue_, _paris blue_, _azure_, &c., and are obtained by the action of heat on mixtures of earthy or metallic bases with cobalt. they are divisible into three classes--the stannic cerulian blue, the aluminous cobalt blues, and the siliceous smalts. of these, the first possesses the least depth; the second hold a middle position; while the third are marked by exceeding richness. although not to be ranked with ultramarine, the stannic and aluminous blues may be described as durable, or at least as durable rather than semi-stable. there are, as we have before observed, different degrees of permanence, and the blues in question are not readily affected. with regard to smalts, they are, as artist's pigments, inferior in stability to other blues of cobalt. . cerulian blue, or _coeruleum_. under the name coëlin there has of late years been imported from germany the cobalt blue with a tin base to which reference has just been made. this comparatively new pigment--which likewise contains or is mixed with gypsum, silica, and sometimes magnesia--has the distinctive property of appearing a pure blue by artificial light, tending neither to green on the one hand nor to purple on the other. this advantage, added to its permanence, has conferred a popularity upon coeruleum which its mere colour would scarcely have gained for it. a light and pleasing blue, with a greenish-grey cast by day, it possesses little depth or richness, and is far excelled in beauty by a good aluminous cobalt. a certain chalkiness, moreover, somewhat detracts from its transparency, and militates against its use in water. it is in oil, and as a night colour, that coeruleum becomes of service, as our present system of lighting picture galleries by gas affects the purity of blues generally. if those galleries were illuminated by means of the electric light, we have it on the authority of chevreul that all colours and shades would show as well as by day: the same purpose would be answered by the magnesium light. some artificial lights are the ruin of colours; in the soda flame (alcohol and salt) for instance, yellow chromate of lead appears white, while red ochre and aniline blue appear black. like other blues of cobalt, coeruleum assumes a greenish obscurity in time, but like them it resists for a lengthened period both the action of light and impure air, although chemically it is more open to the influence of the latter, owing to its tin base. in admixture it may safely be employed, as well as in fresco or enamel. for stage skies, &c., in high-art scenery, the blue is admirably adapted. now that there are so many scene-painters who are artists--and so many artists who are scene-painters--in bringing nature to the foot-lights the effect of gas on colours is of importance. . cobalt blue, to which the various appellations have been given of _thénard's blue_, _vienna blue_, _paris blue_, _azure_, _cobalt-ultramarine_, &c., is the name now exclusively confined to that preparation of cobalt which has a base of alumina. it may, therefore, be not improperly called a blue lake, the colour of which is brought up by fire, in the manner of enamel blues. the discovery of this important pigment was made in by m. thénard, who obtained it by calcining a well-combined mixture of alumina and crystals of cobalt. there may be employed with the aluminous base, either the arseniate, the borate, or the phosphate of cobalt; but the latter in preference, as it produces the purest colour. the arseniate has always a violet tinge, more visible by gas-light than by day; while, on account of the arsenic, the blue is more apt to be greened by impure air, by reason of the formation of yellow sulphide of arsenic. the purity of the colour, however, does not altogether depend on the compound of cobalt used; in a great measure--as with other pigments--it rests on the purity of the materials. to obtain a perfect blue, neither inclining to purple nor green, the cobalt and alumina should be freed from iron, and the former, as much as possible, from nickel also. with the absence of these and proper skill, a true and brilliant blue may be produced, almost rivalling the finest ultramarine. apart, too, from its increased beauty, a cobalt blue containing no iron or nickel is of greater permanence than the ordinary products, being less liable to that greenness and obscurity which time confers. though not possessing the body, transparency, and depth of ultramarine, nor its natural and modest hue, commercial cobalt blue works better in water than that pigment in general does; and is hence an acquisition to those who have not the management of the latter. resisting the action of strong light and acids, its beauty declines by time, while impure air greens and ultimately blackens it. nevertheless, these changes are not readily effected, especially in well made samples full of colour, and sometimes the green tone is mechanically imparted. what wheat is to a loaf, colour is to a pigment--it has to be ground and made up for use; in the one vehicle to be mixed with gums, in the other with oils. it often happens that colours have an antipathy to the latter, and refuse to compound kindly therewith. occasionally this repugnance manifests itself in a few days, occasionally not for months. we know of a green which flatly declines to have anything to do with oils, sinking and separating therefrom in the course of a week, and leaving the clear oil on the top. repeatedly have colours to be coaxed to behave themselves as pigments, coaxed not to 'run,' to work well, to dry well, &c.; and in the humouring of their likes and dislikes the skill and patience of the artist-colourman are sometimes severely taxed. given a colour, it might puzzle most chemists to convert it into a pigment; luckily commerce lends her aid. lasting success, it is true, does not always follow, and oils will rise to the surface now and then, giving green hues to blues, orange hues to reds, and buff hues to yellows. hence changes of colour have been imputed before now to chemical alteration, when in reality the results have been physical, caused by the subsidence of the pigments, and the floating of the vehicles employed. cobalt blue dries well in oil, does not injure or suffer injury from pigments in general, and may be used with a proper flux in enamel, as well as in fresco. it affords clear bright tints in skies and distances, but is apt to cause opacity if brought too near the foreground, and to assume a violet tinge by artificial light. with madder brown it yields a range of fine pearly neutrals; and with light red, in any proportion, gives beautiful cloud tints. in combination with aureolin and sepia, or rose madder, cobalt furnishes most agreeable and delicate tints for distant trees, when under the influence of a soft light, or hazy state of the atmosphere. in water-colour painting, cobalt is tolerably firm on paper, and consequently answers better for some purposes than french blue. in middle distances, if the cobalt possess a tendency to chalkiness, the addition of a little indigo is a good corrective, especially where the blue tone is required to be sombre and dark: it should, however, be observed that the change is but temporary, indigo being a fugitive pigment. in marine painting in water-colours, cobalt is most useful for the remotest parts of seas and headlands. when dry, it can be changed by going over it with a slight wash of vermilion or light red, whereby a prismatic character is realized. any strength of tone can be obtained by repeating the washes, and should the colour be too powerful, it may be reduced by pouncing it with a soft wet sponge; or if too cold and blue, by a thin wash of burnt sienna, merely the water stained. the blues of cobalt, on whatever base they may be prepared, are distinguished from native and artificial ultramarines by not being decolorised by acids. . smalt, invented about the year , in saxony, is a vitreous compound of cobalt and silica, in fact a blue glass. since the fifteenth century, cobalt has been used in different parts of europe to tinge glass; and so intense is the colouring power of its oxide, that pure white glass is rendered sensibly blue by the addition of one thousandth part, while one twenty-thousandth part communicates a perceptible azure tint. in common with cobalt blue, the name _azure_ has sometimes been given to it. varying exceedingly in quality and colour, the rougher kinds have been employed by the laundress, and in the making of porcelain, pottery, stained glass, encaustic tiles, &c.; as well as to cover the yellow tinge of paper. for this last purpose, however, smalt is not perfectly adapted, the colour being difficult to lay on uniformly, and the paper when written on blunting the nibs of pens. hence it has been superseded to a great extent by artificial ultramarine, the presence of which may be detected by the yellow spot which a drop of acid leaves on the paper. a coarse gritty texture is peculiar to smalt, whether it be the _powder blue_ of the washtub and _blue sand_ of the pottery, or the _dumont's_ and _royal blue_ of the artist and high-class manufacturer. but the strict stability which is a feature in smalt when used for painting on glass and enamel does not follow it to the studio: both in water and oil its beauty soon decays, as is often the case with other vitrified pigments; nor is it in other respects eligible, being, notwithstanding its richness and depth, very inferior to the cobalts preceding. it may seem a paradox that the same colour should be at once so durable and so fugitive, but we may briefly explain it by saying _when vitreous pigments are reduced to that extreme state of division which the palette requires, they lose the properties they possess in a less finely divided state_. the best smalt in lumps appears black, yields a blue powder on grinding, becomes paler on further grinding, and may be almost decolourised by continued and excessive grinding. smalt, it has been stated, is merely a blue glass; and when a piece of blue glass, or a blue crystal of sulphate of copper, is reduced to the fineness of flour, the blue is lost. in vitrified and crystallised compounds, colour depends on cohesion: sufficiently separate the particles, and the colour more or less disappears. not only, moreover, does grinding effect an optical change in vitreous pigments, but it imposes further alteration. that colour which was safe when locked up in a mass, crushed to minute atoms is no longer so: imbedded in glass or enamel it will endure for ages, but ground to impalpable powder becomes as liable to influence as though it had never been subjected to heat at all. to sum up, vitreous pigments are durable in a coarse or compact form, but are not more stable than others when reduced to extreme division. as far as regards artists' colours, therefore, vitrification does _not_ impart permanence. the grittiness to which we have referred is one of the defects of smalt, which cannot, consistently with preserving its colour be entirely freed from that drawback--an objection which pertains to vitreous pigments in general. hence it does not wash well, and in mural decoration is sometimes applied to work by strewing the dry powdered colour upon a flat ground of white or blue oil paint immediately after the latter is laid on, whilst it yet remains wet. of little body, it is a vivid and gorgeous blue; bright, deep, and transparent, bordering on the violet hue. it is chiefly employed in illumination and flower painting. the inferior kinds of smalt are occasionally adulterated with chalk. . cyanine. beckmann is fully convinced that the _cyanus_ of theophrastus and the _coeruleum_ of pliny were a blue copper earth. however that may be, in these days both names signify cobalt compounds, coeruleum being a stannate of cobalt, and cyanine a mixture of cobalt and prussian blue. unlike the former, cyanine, being composed of two old colours, can lay no claim to originality. in the fourth chapter it was observed, "it is quite possible for the artist to multiply his pigments unnecessarily. colours are sometimes brought out under new names which have no claim to be regarded as new colours, being, indeed, mere mixtures. compound pigments like these may most frequently be dispensed with, in favour of hues and tints composed extemporaneously of original colours upon the palette." whether these remarks are applicable to cyanine or not is a question for artists to decide: in our opinion, with so many semi-stable original pigments, the introduction of semi-stable compounds is to be deprecated. cyanine is a rich, deep, transparent blue, but its richness and depth, as well as to a great extent its transparency, depend upon prussian blue, which is not strictly stable. hence the peculiar properties of cyanine remain unchanged only so long as the prussian blue itself, the pigment losing its colour by degrees on exposure to air and light, and gradually assuming the tint of the paler but more permanent cobalt. a mixture, be it remembered, necessarily partakes of the qualities of its constituents, and if one of these be fugitive, the compound cannot preserve its original hue. within the last few years, a compound similar to cyanine has appeared, under the name of _leitch's blue_. . indigo, or _indian blue_, was known to the ancients under the name of _indicum_, whence its present appellation. in modern europe, it first came into extensive use in italy; but about the middle of the sixteenth century, the dutch began to import and employ it in considerable quantity. present in the woad plant, which is a native of great britain, indigo is chiefly derived from a genus of leguminous plants called _indigofera_, found in india, africa, and america. the colouring matter of these is wholly in the cellular tissue of the leaves, as a secretion or juice; not, however, in the blue state in which one is accustomed to see indigo, but as a colourless substance, which continues white only so long as the tissue of the leaf remains perfect: when this is by any means destroyed, oxygen is absorbed from the atmosphere, and the principle becomes blue. the best indigo is so light as to swim upon water, but the commercial article seldom contains more than per cent. of blue colouring matter or true indigo, the remainder consisting of either accidental or intentional impurities. in painting, indigo is not nearly so bright as prussian blue, but it is extremely powerful and transparent, and may be described as a prussian blue in mourning. of great body, it glazes and works well both in water and oil. its relative permanence as a dye has obtained it a false character of extreme durability as a pigment, a quality in which it is nevertheless very inferior even to prussian blue. by impure air it is injured, and in glazing some specimens are firmer than others, but not durable; while in tint with white lead they are all fugitive. employed in considerable body in shadow, it is more permanent, but in all respects prussian blue is superior. despite this want of stability, indigo is a favourite colour with many artists, who sacrifice by its use future permanence to present effect. it is so serviceable a pigment for so many purposes, especially in admixture, that its sin of fugacity is overlooked. hence we find indigo constantly mentioned in works on painting, their authors forgetting or not caring to remember that wholesome axiom, a fugitive colour is not rendered durable by being compounded. artistically, it is adapted for moonlights, and when mixed with a little lamp black, is well suited for night clouds, distant cliffs, &c. with a little raw umber and madder it is used for water in night effects. with the addition of a little madder it forms a good gray; and with madder and burnt sienna is useful for dark rocks, this combination, with raw sienna, being also eligible for boats. for these and other mixed tints, however, prussian blue saddened by black with a suspicion of green in it, is equally fitted, and is more permanent. indeed, it would be perhaps justifiable to introduce such a compound, under the name say, of factitious indigo. indigo in dust, or in small bits, is often adulterated with sand, pulverized slate, and other earthy substances. that indigo is best which is lightest, brightest, most copper-coloured, most fine-grained, and inodorous. . intense blue is indigo refined by solution and precipitation. by this process, indigo becomes more durable, and, being separated from impurities, is rendered much more powerful, transparent, and deep. it washes and works admirably in water; in other respects it possesses the common properties of indigo. it is apt, however, to penetrate the paper on which it is employed, if not well freed by washing from the acid and saline matter used in its preparation. this is not always easily effected, and we cannot help thinking that in the manufacture of intense blue a dry method would be preferable. indigo may, by cautious management, be volatilized, and therefore be most thoroughly purified without the aid of acids and alkalies. the best mode of subliming this substance is to mix one part of indigo with two parts of plaster of paris, make the whole into a paste with water, spread it upon an iron plate, and, when quite dry, heat it by a spirit lamp. the volatilization of the indigo is aided by the vapour of water disengaged from the gypsum, and the surface of the mass becomes covered with beautiful crystals of pure indigo, which may be readily removed by a thin spatula. at a higher temperature, charring and decomposition take place. . prussian blue, otherwise called _berlin blue_, _paris blue_, _prussiate of iron_, _ferrocyanide of iron_, &c., was accidentally discovered in by diesbach, a colour-maker at berlin. it is a compound of iron and cyanogen, of varying composition, formed by adding yellow prussiate of potash to a persalt of iron, or by oxidizing the precipitate obtained from the prussiate and a protosalt. the finest blue is furnished by sesquinitrate of iron, but the salt almost exclusively employed is the protosulphate, the freedom of which from copper is essential to the colour of the blue. as is the case with other pigments, prussian blue differs considerably in colour, in depth, and in permanence, according to the purity of the materials, the mode of manufacture, and the absence of adulterants. like smalt, it is known in the washtub as well as in the studio; and in the cheaper varieties, alumina, starch, chalk, oxide of iron, &c., are often largely present. a good unsophisticated sample in the dry state is intense blue, almost black, hard and brittle, much resembling in appearance the best indigo, and having a similar copper-red fracture. it does not effervesce with acids, as when adulterated with chalk; nor become pasty with boiling water, as when sophisticated with starch. further, it feels light in the hand, adheres to the tongue, is inodorous, tasteless, not poisonous, and is insoluble in water. forming a bulky mass while moist, prussian blue shrinks to a comparatively small compass when well washed and dried by gentle heat; and, when once dried, being difficult to reduce again to the state of extreme division which it possessed while wet, it is frequently sold and used in paste for common purposes. we have said that a good sample of prussian blue is insoluble in water, and for artistic use it should certainly be so, as otherwise it has a tendency to stain the fabric on which it is employed, a defect formerly very prevalent. all prussian blues, however, are not insoluble, and these are not only liable to the drawback named, but are less to be depended on for permanence. improper proportions, for instance, of sesquichloride of iron and potash-ferrocyanide will yield a blue which, when washed even with cold water, continually imparts to it a yellow or green colour, through the partial solution of the prussiate. all commercial prussian blue, and indeed that which is prepared by careful chemical processes, give up the ferrocyanide to boiling water, thereby colouring it greenish yellow; but a sample which parts with its prussiate to _cold_ water is quite unfitted for the palette, for which the most perfect specimen is none too stable. in spite of the learned researches of professor williamson, whose name is as closely connected with the pigment as are the names of schunck and de la rue with madder and cochineal, prussian blue is not yet entirely understood. complex and uncertain in composition, uncertain too in its habitudes, our best course perhaps will be not to attempt a complete survey, but to state briefly those facts which bear on the artist's craft. prussian blue is a colour of vast body and wonderful transparency, with a soft velvety richness, and of such intense depth as to appear black in its deepest washes. notwithstanding it lasts a long time under favourable circumstances, its tints fade by the action of strong light; becoming white, according to chevreul, in the direct rays of the sun, but regaining its blue colour in the dark; hence that subdued light which is favourable to all colours is particularly so to this blue. its colour has the singular property of fluctuating, or of coming and going, under certain conditions; and which it owes to the action and reaction by which it acquires or relinquishes oxygen alternately. it also becomes greenish sometimes by a development of the oxide of iron; and is purpled, darkened, or otherwise discoloured by damp or impure air. time has a neutralizing tendency upon its colour, which forms tints of much beauty with white lead, though they are not equal either in purity, brilliancy, or permanence to those of cobalt and ultramarine. when carefully heated, prussian blue gives off water and assumes a pale green hue; its colour, therefore, depending on the presence of water, must not be exposed to a high temperature. and as it is likewise injured or destroyed by alkalis, which decompose it into oxide of iron and a soluble prussiate, the blue should be avoided in fresco, on account of the lime; neither should it be employed with pigments of an alkaline nature, nor with hard water containing bicarbonate of lime in solution, but with clean rain or distilled water, either of which is preferable for colours generally. prussian blue dries and glazes well in oil, but its great and principal use is in painting deep blues, in which its body helps to secure its permanence, and its transparency gives force to its depth. it is also valuable in compounding deep purples with lake, and is a powerful neutralizer and component of black, to the intensity of which it adds considerably. prussian blue borders slightly on green, a quality which militates against its use in skies and distances. in spite, however, of its want of, or deficiency in, durability, the old water-colour painters so employed it, neutralized by the addition of a little crimson lake. it is serviceable in mixed tints of greens, affording with light red a sea-green neutral. dissolved in oxalic acid, the blue is available as an ink, or for tinting maps. besides the preceding, there is a _basic prussian blue_, formed by simply submitting to the air the bluish-white precipitate which falls on adding yellow prussiate of potash to green vitriol. this compound dissolves entirely by continued washing with water, yielding a beautiful deep blue solution, from which the colour may be thrown down in a solid form by the addition of any salt. probably it was this basic preparation, so cheaply and easily made, that conferred upon prussian blue the character of staining paper. in name, there is also another variety of this pigment, known as _native prussian blue_; which is really a native phosphate of iron, occurring as a blue earthy powder, or as a white powder that becomes blue by exposure. . antwerp blue, _haerlem blue_, _berlin blue_, _mineral blue_, is a lighter and somewhat brighter prussian blue, with less depth and less permanence. it is a species of lake, having a considerable proportion of aluminous base, to which its paler tint is due. as the stability of prussian blue rests in a great measure on the marvellous amount of latent colour the pigment contains, when its particles of colour are set farther apart by the intervention of the alumina, the permanence of its hue is endangered. it was remarked, with respect to vitrified pigments, that colour depends on cohesion. more or less, this holds good as regards all pigments; but not only, as was also observed, does colour rest on cohesion, in many instances durability depends likewise. it is only when a colour is stable in itself that its particles will bear separating: native ultramarine, for example, may be weakened almost to white, and will still preserve its hue. if, however, a colour be naturally fugitive, and rely chiefly on its extreme depth for what permanence it possesses, that colour cannot with impunity be paled: witness the cochineal lakes, which the deeper they are, the more durable they are found; and so it is with prussian blue. antwerp blue is distinguished from the latter by its more earthy fracture. . turnbull's blue, or _ferricyanide of iron_, is formed by adding the red prussiate of potash to a protosalt of iron. this blue is lighter and more delicate than ordinary prussian blue, and is believed to resist the action of alkalies longer. it is a question whether the common prussian blue obtained by oxidizing the precipitate yielded by green vitriol and the yellow prussiate is not in reality this variety. however that may be, there is, as far as permanence goes, little or no difference between the two kinds. ultramarines. artificial ultramarines comprise the varieties known as _french ultramarine_, _french blue_, _brilliant ultramarine_, _factitious ultramarine_, _guimet's ultramarine_, _new blue_, _permanent blue_, _gmelin's german ultramarine_, _bleu de garance_, _outremer de guimet_, &c. the unrivalled qualities of native ultramarine prepared from the lapis lazuli rendered it most desirable to obtain an artificial compound which, while possessing similar properties, could be produced in quantity, and at a less costly rate. in demolishing some furnaces employed in making soda, by means of decomposing sulphate of soda, some earth had been found impregnated with a light blue, which was proved to have so close a resemblance to ultramarine as to foster hopes of success. as a stimulus, there was offered a prize of six thousand francs or £ for the production of artificial ultramarine by the _société d'encouragement_ of paris, which was won in by m. guimet. it is fitting that the discoverer of a colour should excel in its manufacture, and to this day guimet's ultramarine is the finest made. as an instance of how the researches of different men may, almost simultaneously, lead to the same results, it is curious that very shortly after the problem was also solved by gmelin. the cause of the blue colour of ultramarine was long a matter of controversy, but was believed generally to be due to iron. when, however, the discovery of artificial ultramarine was made, this assumption was shown to be false, by the fact that a blue could be obtained with materials perfectly free from iron. the absolutely necessary constituents of ultramarine are silica, alumina, sulphur, and soda; and there is little doubt that the colouring matter consists of hyposulphite of soda and sulphide of sodium: it is certain that the blue colour is dependant on the soda, inasmuch as potash yields an analogous compound which is purely white. a number of substances, such as iron, lime, magnesia, and potash, may be present as impurities, and were, in part at least, purposely added to the earlier manufactures; but they are found to be superfluous. nevertheless, as regards iron, it is probable that a very small portion, such as is usually contained in the ingredients, greatly facilitates the production of the blue, and may even be essential in some cases. the colour of ultramarine is brought out by successive heatings. green portions, more or less in quantity, are often formed in the crucibles, especially on the first ignition. on repeated heating they pass into a blue tint. artificial ultramarines are said to be seldom entirely freed from all traces of the green modification, and are therefore less beautiful than the natural varieties, having a shade of green or grey. this defect, however, is certainly not discernible in guimet's products, which sometimes incline so much to purple as to require neutralizing with a little prussian blue. depth for depth, the artificial are darker and less azure than the natural varieties, but the superiority of the latter consists not so much in their greater purity of hue, although this is considerable, as in their far greater transparency. the finest french ultramarine is never so transparent as the native; it is brilliant, it is powerful, it is permanent, it is nearly--but only nearly--transparent. possessing in a subdued degree the characteristics and qualities of the genuine, it works, washes, and dries well; and is useful either in figures, draperies, or landscape. rivalling in depth, although not equalling in colour, the pure azure of native ultramarine, it answers to the same acid tests, but is sometimes distinguished therefrom by the effervescence which ensues on the addition of an acid. not a bubble escapes in such case from the natural blue; unless, indeed, as occasionally happens, it retain a portion of alkali, with which it may have been combined in the preparation, but from which it should have been freed. darkened as a rule by fire, factitious ultramarine becomes dingy blue, and at last white, when strongly ignited for a long time; and is, like the true variety, decolourised by ignition in an atmosphere of hydrogen gas. at a high temperature, this effect is even produced by silica, whence the unfitness of ultramarine for painting on glass or porcelain; and simply by a prolonged red heat the blue is rendered white. being unaffected by alkalis, it is eligible in mural decoration, and is particularly adapted to siliceous painting, on account of the silica and alumina which it contains, two substances with which a soluble silicate readily unites. if artificial ultramarine be mixed with a soluble silicate, for example silicate of potash, and be laid on a properly prepared ground, it will become so firmly fixed, says mr. barff, that no amount of washing nor the slow action of moisture will remove it, or affect its brilliancy. judging from the behaviour of ultramarine, therefore, if the colours employed in siliceous painting contain silica and alumina, they should adhere as firmly to the surface on which they are placed; and this is really the case. it is possible to produce a mixed solution of aluminate and silicate of potash which will remain liquid for twenty-four hours. if, while in the liquid state, colours are saturated with this solution and allowed to dry, their particles will be very intimately mixed with silica and alumina chemically combined with potash. according to the author quoted, the admixture of silica and alumina does not interfere with the brilliancy or depth of the colours, and the method may be used for all those which are not injured by potash, and are in themselves adapted to the art. with respect to permanence, the finer varieties of artificial ultramarines may, undoubtedly, be pronounced stable; but, like all other colours, these blues are apt to vary in quality, and inferior kinds are liable to lose their purity in a measure, and become grayer. moreover, they are made by different processes, and the mode adopted for the manufacture of a pigment not only tells upon the colour, but may influence to some extent its durability. from the following experiment of an ingenious artist and friend of the author, it is evident that the production of artificial ultramarine was not carried in its early days to that state of perfection at which it has now arrived. he took a picture, the sky of which had been recently painted in the ordinary manner with prussian blue and white; and having painted over the clear part of the sky uniform portions with tints formed of the best factitious ultramarine, cobalt blue, and genuine ultramarine, so as to match the ground of the sky, and to disappear to the eye thereon by blending with the ground, when viewed at a moderate distance, he set the picture aside for some months. upon examination, it appeared that the colour of these various blue pigments had taken different ways, and departed from the hue of the ground: the factitious ultramarine had _blackened_, the cobalt blue _greened_, the genuine ultramarine remained a _pure azure_, like a spot of light, while their ground, the prussian blue sky, seemed by contrast with the ultramarine of a _grey_ or _slate colour_. other things being equal, those artificial ultramarines are most durable which possess the most colour; and all are, perhaps, most permanent in water. if used in that vehicle, care should be taken to employ a gum free from acid; also, whether in water or oil, not to compound the blue with a pigment which may possibly contain acid, such as constant white. acid, as we have said, is the great test for ultramarine; whence if a sample be sophisticated with cobalt, its blue colour will not be entirely destroyed. with high-class artistic pigments, however, adulteration is the exception and not the rule. it is as a powder-blue for the washtub that ultramarine gets disguised, when it is ground up with soda-ash, chalk, gypsum, &c., and sold sometimes under its own name, but more frequently as superfine saxon smalts. . brilliant ultramarine, lately called _factitious ultramarine_, is a specially fine preparation of m. guimet, presenting the nearest approach to the natural product of any artificial ultramarine, both in transparency, purity of hue, and chemical characteristics. equalling in depth and power the ordinary french ultramarine, it possesses greater clearness, beauty, and brightness; and has, in a subdued degree, that quality of light in it, and of the tint of air, which forms so distinguishing a feature in the native blue. . french ultramarine, or _french blue_, is a rich deep colour, but less transparent and vivid than the preceding variety, which is preferable in unmixed tints. for compound hues, french blue is sufficiently well adapted, and is extremely useful. with aureolin and burnt sienna, or vandyke brown, it affords valuable autumn greens; and with lamp black, or lamp black and light red, good stormy clouds. a sombre gray for distant mountains is furnished by french blue and madder brown, with a very little gamboge; and a deep purple for sunsets, by the blue and purple madder, or indian red and rose madder. with cadmium and orient yellows, sepia, viridian, and many other colours, this ultramarine is of service. . new blue is confined to water-colour painting, and is an artificial ultramarine, holding a middle position between french blue and permanent blue, being less deep than the one and less pale than the other. it may be said to hover in tint between a rich ultramarine and cobalt. . permanent blue is a pale ultramarine, with a cobalt hue; and, in spite of its name, less permanence than belongs to the richer and deeper sorts. what antwerp blue is to prussian blue, this is to french blue--that is, as regards colour. with respect to durability, however, permanent and antwerp blues cannot be compared; the former being a weakened variety of a stable, and the latter a weakened variety of a semi-fugitive, pigment. hence permanent blue justifies its name, although that name would be more suited to the brilliant, or french, ultramarine. . genuine ultramarine, _native ultramarine_, _natural ultramarine_, _real ultramarine_, _true ultramarine_, _ultramarine_, _pure _ultramarine_, _azure_, _outremer_, _lazuline_, _lazulite blue_, and _lazurstein_. this most costly, most permanent, and most celebrated of all pigments, is obtained by isolating the blue colouring matter of the _lapis lazuli_, a stone chiefly brought from china, thibet, and the shores of lake baikal. about the antiquity of the stone, and its colour, much has been written, and many conflicting statements have been made; but there is little doubt that our lapis lazuli was the sapphire of the ancients; and that the first certain mention of ultramarine occurs in a passage of arethas, who lived in the eleventh century, and who, in his exposition of a verse in the book of revelation, says, the sapphire is that stone of which _lazurium_, as we are told, is made. it has been common to confound ultramarine with the _cyanus_ and _coeruleum_ of the ancients; but their cyanus, or armenian blue, was a kind of mineral or mountain blue, tinged with copper; and their coeruleum, although it may sometimes have been real ultramarine, was properly and in general a copper ochre. that ultramarine was known to the ancients there seems every probability, for it is certain they were acquainted with the stone; and modern travellers describe the brilliant blue painting still remaining in the ruins of temples of upper egypt as having all the appearance of ultramarine. whether it is so or not, however, could only be proved by analysis; for, be it recollected, although the colour had preserved its hue during so many centuries, it had been completely buried, and therefore most perfectly secluded from light and air. mr. layard, in his 'nineveh,' referring to some painted plaster, remarks that "the colours, particularly the blues and reds, were as brilliant and vivid when the earth was removed from them as they could originally have been; but, on exposure to the air, they faded rapidly." in all likelihood, these were of organic, or semi-organic, origin, prepared in some such manner as that mentioned by pliny, who speaks of an earth which, when boiled with plants, acquired their blue colour, and was in some measure inflammable. as a pigment, cobalt was unknown to the ancients; but to these vegetable and copper blues of theirs, a third blue may perhaps be added. experiments made upon blue tiles, found in a roman tesselated foot-pavement at montbeillard, showed that the colour was due to iron. m. gmelin has proved that a blue tint can be imparted to glass and enamel by means of iron; and it is probable that the ancients were first induced by the blue slag of their smelting-houses to study the colouring of glass with iron; that in this art they acquired a dexterity not possessed at present, and that they employed their iron-smalt as a pigment, as we do our smalt of cobalt. to sum up, there are grounds for believing that the ancients were acquainted with copper blues, vegetable blues, and iron blues; and that, consequently, the blue described by travellers as having all the appearance of ultramarine may, or may not, be that pigment. lapis lazuli, or lazulite, is usually disseminated in a rock, which contains, among other substances, a fine white lazulite. in the _musée minéralogique_ of paris are two splendid specimens of the stone, in which is seen the transition from the azure to the white. according to the quantity and quality of blue present, the lapis varies from an almost uniform tint of the deepest indigo-blue to grayish-white, dotted and streaked at intervals with pale blue. the exceeding beauty of good samples has caused the lazulite to be much sought after, both as a gem for adorning the person, and for inlaid works in ornamental decoration. in china the stone is highly esteemed, being worn by mandarins as badges of nobility conferred only by the emperor; and in the apartments of a summer palace near st. petersburg, the walls are covered with amber, interspersed with plates of this costly lapis. besides the colouring principle of the lazulite, there are always more or less mica and iron pyrites, the latter a lustrous yellow bisulphide of iron, which has often been mistaken for pellets of gold. having chosen portions of the stone most free from these impurities, it is simply requisite to reduce them to an impalpable powder to obtain a blue pigment; and probably this was the original mode of preparing it before the discovery of the modern process. this curious method, which is mechanical rather than chemical, depends for its success on the character and proportions of the materials employed, as well as on the nicety of working. when well carried out, it perfectly isolates the blue from all extraneous matter, yielding the colour at first deep and rich, then lighter and paler, and lastly of that gray tint which is known by the name of ultramarine ash. the refuse, containing little or no blue, furnishes the useful pigment, mineral gray. the immense price of ultramarine--or, as it was at first called, azurrum ultramarinum, blue beyond-the-sea--was almost a prohibition to its use in former times. it is related that charles i. presented to mrs. walpole, and possibly to vandyke also, five hundred pounds worth of ultramarine, which lay in so small a compass as only to cover his hand. even in these days, despite the introduction of artificial ultramarines, the native product continues costly, commanding in proportion to its intensity and brightness, from two to eight guineas an ounce. to say, however, that the merits of the blue at least equal its expense, is to give the genuine ultramarine no more than its due. it has, indeed, not earned its reputation upon slight pretensions, being, when of fine quality, and skilfully prepared, of the most exquisitely beautiful blue, ranging from the utmost depth of shadow to the highest brilliancy of light and colour,--transparent in all its shades, and pure in all its tints. a true medial blue, when perfect, partaking neither of purple on the one hand, nor of green on the other, it sustains no injury either by damp and impure air, or by the intensest action of light, and is so eminently durable, that it remains unchanged in the oldest paintings. drying well, working well in oil and fresco, ultramarine may be safely compounded with pigments generally, excepting only an acid sulphate of baryta or constant white. the blue has so much of the property of light in it, and of the tint of air--is so purely a sky-colour, and hence so singularly adapted to the direct and reflex light of the sky, and to become the antagonist of sunshine--that it is indispensable to the painter. moreover, it is so pure, so true, so unchangeable in its tints and glazings, as to be no less essential in imitating the marvellous colouring of nature in flesh and flowers. to this may be added that it enters so admirably into purples, blacks, greens, grays, and broken hues, that it has justly obtained the character of clearing or carrying light and air into all colours, both in mixture and glazing, as well as gained a sort of claim to universality throughout a picture. nevertheless, ultramarine is not always entitled to the whole of this commendation. frequently it is coarse in texture, in which case it is apparently more deep and valuable; yet such blue cannot be used with effect, nor ground fine without injuring its colour. again, it is apt to be separated in an impure state from the lapis lazuli, which is an exceedingly varying and compound mineral, abounding with earthy and metallic parts in different states of oxidation and composition: hence ultramarine sometimes contains iron as a red oxide, when it has a purple cast; and sometimes the same metal as a yellow oxide, when it is of a green tone; while often it retains a portion of black sulphuret of iron, which imparts a dark and dusky hue. occasionally, it is true, artists have preferred ultramarine for each of these tones; still are they imperfections which may account for various effects and defects of this pigment in painting. growing deeper by age has been attributed to ultramarine; but it is only such specimens as would acquire depth in the fire that could be subject to the change; and it has been reasonably supposed that in pictures wherein other colours have faded, it may have taken this appearance by contrast. ultramarine, prepared from calcined lapis, is not liable to so deepen; but this advantage may be purchased at some sacrifice of the vivid, warm, and pure azure colour of the blue produced from unburnt stone. we have frequently found ultramarine to be darkened, dimmed, and somewhat purpled by ignition; and the same results ensue, in many instances, when the lazulite is calcined. in burning the stone, the sulphur of the pyrites is in a great measure expelled, and during its expulsion has probably a deteriorating influence on the beauty of the colour: our belief in this being so is strengthened by the fact that certain samples of ultramarine, ignited with sulphur, were not improved thereby. similar effects are likewise caused by a careless or improper mode of treatment, for the finest lapis may yield dingy blues, containing particles of mica, metal, &c., and possessing a dull green, black, or purple hue. of course the perfection of the pigment is dependant to a large extent upon the quality of the stone itself. though unexceptionable as an oil-colour, both in solid painting and glazing, it does not work so well as some other blues in water; nor is it, unless carefully prepared, so well adapted for mixed tints, on account of a gritty quality, of which no grinding will entirely divest it, and which causes it to separate from other pigments. when extremely fine in texture, however, or when a considerable portion of gum, which renders it transparent, can be employed to give connexion or adhesion while flowing, it becomes no less valuable in water than in oil; but when its vivid azure is to be preserved, as in illuminated manuscripts and missals, little gum must be used. the fine greens, purples, and grays of the old masters, are often unquestionably compounds of ultramarine; and formerly it was the only blue known in fresco. pure ultramarine varies in shade from light to dark, and in hue from pale warm azure to the deepest cold blue. native ultramarine consists of silica, alumina, sulphur, and soda; its colouring matter seeming to be due to hyposulphite of soda and sulphide of sodium. in these respects, as well as in that of being decolourised by acids, the natural product resembles the artificial. as a precious material, the former has been subject to adulteration; and it has been dyed, damped, and oiled to enrich its appearance; attempts of fraud, however, which may be easily detected. in the preceding edition of this work the author adds--"and the genuine may be as easily distinguished from the spurious by dropping a few particles of the pigment into lemon-juice, or any other acid, which almost instantly destroys the colour of the true ultramarine totally, and without effervescence." with this statement, so far as it pretends to be a test for the two kinds, we are not inclined to agree. genuine ultramarine is always decolourised by acids; but it depends on the mode and nicety of its preparation whether it is decolourised without effervescence: that this is the case the author himself admits in his article on artificial ultramarine. moreover, the "violent effervescence" which he describes as ensuing on the latter being dropped into an acid, does not of necessity take place: in m. guimet's finest variety, the brilliant ultramarine, acid produces little or no effervescence. seeing, therefore, that both sorts are decolourised by acids, and that both may or may not effervesce therewith, the acid test must be considered fallacious. experiments made with different samples of each, showed that native ultramarines offered greater resistance to acid than the artificial, taking longer to decolourise; and that the residues of the first were in general of a purer white than those of the last. it was also found that the brilliant ultramarine, above referred to, was less readily decolourised than other french or german kinds. * * * * * . _blue carmine._ in a former edition of this work there appeared the following:--"blue carmine is a blue oxide of molybdenum, of which little is known as a substance or as a pigment. it is said to be of a beautiful blue colour, and durable in a strong light, but is subject to be changed in hue by other substances, and blackened by foul air: we may conjecture, therefore, that it is not of much value in painting." in his estimate of this colour the author was certainly right. it is formed when a solution of bichloride of molybdenum is poured into a saturated, or nearly saturated, solution of molybdate of ammonia. a blue precipitate falls, which is a molybdate of molybdic oxide, hydrated, and abundantly soluble in water. when dried, it furnishes a dark blue powder, resembling powdered indigo, having a bitter, rough, metallic taste, and reddening litmus strongly. the solubility of this hydrated oxide is alone fatal to its employment as a pigment. it may, indeed, be rendered comparatively insoluble in water by ignition; but the anhydrous oxide so obtained is nearly black, and as a colour worthless. a more eligible preparation is the molybdate of baryta, produced by mixing solutions of molybdate of potash and acetate of baryta. a white, flocculent precipitate results, which rapidly condenses to a crystalline powder, and turns blue on ignition. it is, however, a costly compound, of little merit, and not likely to come into use. it is insoluble in water. . _blue ochre_, which has been improperly called native prussian blue, is a native hydrated phosphate of iron of rare occurrence, found with iron pyrites in cornwall, and also in north america. what indian red is to the colour red, and oxford ochre to yellow, this pigment is to the colour blue, being sober and subdued rather than brilliant. it has the body of other ochres, more transparency, and is of considerable depth. both in water and oil it works well, dries readily, and does not suffer in tint with white lead, nor change when exposed to the action of strong light, damp, or impure air. as far as its powers extend, therefore, it is an eligible pigment, though not generally employed nor easily procured; it may, however, be artificially prepared. answering to similar acid tests as ultramarine, it is distinguished therefrom by assuming an olive-brown hue on exposure to a red heat. . _cobalt prussian blue._ gmelin states that yellow prussiate of potash yields with a solution of oxalate of sesquioxide of cobalt a blue resembling prussian blue--that, in fact, there can be obtained a prussian blue with a base of cobalt instead of iron. in the moist state, the similarity is sufficiently great, but when washed and dried, the product is, with us, a dingy slate colour. possibly, if such a blue could be produced, it might exceed in permanence the ferro- and ferri-cyanides of iron. of course the compound would be much more expensive. _copper blues_ are now seldom or never employed as artists' pigments. the following are the principal varieties:-- . _bice_, blue bice, iris, terre bleu, was prepared, when true, from the armenian stone, which is a calcareous kind of stone coloured with copper. it was of a light bright hue, but is completely superseded by pale ultramarine. the persian lazur appears to have been a similar pigment, being a sort of copper ore, which, when the stone was pounded and sifted, furnished a fine paint, very bright and pleasant. it could not, however, stand the effects of the atmosphere like the tartarian lazur or lapis lazuli, in the course of time becoming of a dark and dismal colour. ground smalts, blue verditer, and other pigments, have passed under the name of bice. . _blue ashes_, or _mountain blue_, are both hydrated carbonates of copper, the first being artificially prepared, and the second found native in cumberland. neither is durable, especially in oil; and, as pigments, both are precisely of the character of verditer. by treating the natural malachite green with an alkali, it may be converted into blue. . _blue verditer_, or verditer, is an oxide of copper, formed by precipitating nitrate of copper with lime. it is of a beautiful light blue colour, little affected by light, but greened and ultimately blackened by time, damp, and impure air--changes which ensue even more rapidly in oil than in water. it is mostly confined to distemper painting and paper-staining. . _egyptian blue_, called by vitruvius, coeruleum, is frequently found on the walls of the temples in egypt, as well as on the cases enclosing mummies. count chaptal, who analysed some of it discovered in in a shop at pompeii, found that it was blue ashes, not prepared in the moist manner, but by calcination. he considers it a kind of frit, of a semi-vitreous nature; and this would appear to be the case from sir h. davy obtaining a similar colour by exposing to a strong heat, for two hours, a mixture of fifteen parts of carbonate of soda, twenty of powdered flints, and three of copper. the colour is very brilliant when first made, and retains its hue well in distemper and decorative painting; but it has the common defect of copper blues of turning green in oil, when ground impalpably for artistic use. one remarkable effect of this copper smalt--for it is nothing else--is, that by lamp-light it shows somewhat greenish, but shines by day with all the brightness of azure. mérimée believes that paul veronese employed this sort of blue in many of his pictures where the skies have become green. . _saunders blue_, a corrupt name from _cendres bleues_, the original denomination probably of ultramarine ashes, is of two kinds, the natural and artificial. the first is a blue mineral found near copper mines, while the last is simply a verditer. . _schweinfurt blue_, or reboulleau's blue, is prepared by fusing together equal weights of ordinary arseniate of protoxide of copper and arseniate of potash, and adding one-fifth its weight of nitre to the fused mass. the result is, so to speak, a sort of blue scheele's green, into which latter colour it soon passes when rubbed with oil. . _cotton seed blue._ cotton seed oil is bleached by treatment with either carbonate of soda or caustic lime. in both cases, a considerable residue is left after drawing off the bleached oil. this residue is treated with sulphuric acid, and distilled at a high temperature, when there is left a compact mass of a deep greenish-blue colour. on further treatment of this mass with strong sulphuric acid, the green tint disappears, and a very intense pure blue colour is produced. the blue mass is a mixture of the coloured substance with some sulphuric acid, sulphate of soda, and fats. the two former may be removed by washing with water; the latter by treatment with naptha. alcohol now dissolves the blue colour, and water precipitates it from the solution chemically pure. this blue has not been introduced as a pigment; and of its permanence, and other attributes, we know nothing. . _gold blue._ gold purple, under the name of purple of cassius, was once very well known: a like compound of tin and gold may be made to yield a blue. resembling indigo, the colour is not remarkably brilliant, and, unless several precautions are carefully observed, is rather violet than blue. when obtained, the colour must be quickly washed by decantation, or it changes first to violet and then to purple. its costliness, lack of brightness, and tendency to redden, are against its employment on the palette. in enamelling it would doubtless preserve its colour, and in exceptional cases might be useful. . _iodine blue._ it is curious that iodine, which gives a yellow with lead, should also afford a blue with the same metal. when a solution of iodine in aqueous soda (carbonate of soda is not so good) is added to nitrate or acetate of lead-oxide, a transient violet-red precipitate falls, which decomposes spontaneously under water, yielding iodine and a beautiful blue powder. the colour, however, is exceedingly fugitive, even the carbonic acid of the air separating iodine from it and forming a lead salt. bearing in mind the scarlet iodide of mercury, iodine is capable of furnishing the three primary colours, distinguished alike by their brilliancy and fugacity. . _iridium blue._ the rare metal iridium affords a blue which is a mixture of the oxide and the sesquioxide. but being slightly soluble in water and decolourised by sulphuretted hydrogen, it would not, other considerations apart, be an acquisition. . _manganese blue._ an aqueous solution of permanganate of potash yields with baryta-water a violet mixture, which afterwards becomes colourless, and deposits a blue precipitate. this retains its colour after washing and drying, but cannot be recommended as a pigment, being liable to suffer in contact with organic substances, which deoxidize and decolourize the manganates and permanganates. . _platinum blue._ with mercurous nitrate, the platinocyanide of potassium forms a thick smalt blue, and the platinidcyanide a dark blue precipitate. the compound is a mixture of platino- or platinidcyanide of mercury and mercurous nitrate. upon the presence of the latter the colour seems to depend, for on washing with cold water containing nitric acid, the nitrate is not removed nor the blue affected; but boiling water extracts the nitrate and leaves a white residue. a blue containing mercurous nitrate must necessarily be injured by impure air, and be otherwise objectionable. . _tungsten blue_ is an oxide formed by the action of various deoxidizing agents on tungstic acid. it remains unaltered in the air at ordinary temperatures, is opaque, and of a blackish indigo-blue colour. as a pigment, there is little to recommend it. . _wood-tar blue._ the colours obtained from coal-tar have become household words, and it is not impossible that those from wood-tar may be some day equally familiar. at present wood-tar is comparatively unexplored, but the fact that picamar furnishes a blue is at least as suggestive and hopeful as that transient purple colouration by which aniline was once chiefly distinguished. as aniline is a product of coal-tar, so picamar is a product of wood-tar; and as the former gives a purple with hypochlorites, so the latter yields a blue with baryta-water. both are distinguished by coloured tests, but there is this advantage in the picamar blue--it is comparatively permanent. picamar blue is produced when a few drops of baryta-water are added to an alcoholic solution of impure picamar, or even to wood-tar oil deprived of its acid. the liquor instantly assumes a bright blue tint, which in a few minutes passes into an indigo colour. from [greek: pitta] pitch, and [greek: kallos] ornament, the blue is named _pittacal_. the mode of separating pittacal has not been clearly described. dumas states, that when precipitated in a flocculent state from its solutions, or obtained by evaporation, it closely resembles indigo, and, like it, acquires a coppery hue when rubbed. it is inodorous, tasteless, and not volatile; and is abundantly soluble in acetic acid, forming a red liquid, which, when saturated by an alkali, becomes of a bright blue. it is represented as a more delicate test of acid and alkalis than litmus. with acetate of lead, protochloride of tin, ammonio-sulphate of copper, and acetate of alumina, it yields a fine blue colour with a tint of violet, said not to be affected by air or light, and therefore recommended for dyeing. like indigo, pittacal is believed to contain nitrogen, but its ultimate composition has not been accurately determined. dumas considers it identical with a blue product obtained in from coal-tar by mm. barthe and laurent. if this be the case, its greater stability over coal-tar blues and colours generally admits of doubt. that, however, has yet to be ascertained. our object in noticing this blue has been two-fold: first, to direct attention to wood-tar as a possible source of colour; and secondly, to point to pittacal as a possible substitute for indigo, possessing greater durability. . _zinc-cobalt blue._ cobalt, as furnishing a blue colour, is usually associated with alumina, silica, or tin; and, as furnishing a green colour, with zinc. but there is obtainable a compound of zinc and cobalt which gives a blue not only free from green, but inclining rather to red. it is made by adding to a solution of ordinary phosphate of soda in excess a solution first of sulphate of zinc and then of sulphate of cobalt, and washing and igniting the precipitate. the result is a vitreous blue with a purple cast, of little body, and exceedingly difficult to grind. altogether, it is not unlike smalt, over which it has no advantages as an artistic pigment either in colour or permanence. for tinting porcelain, however, it is admirably adapted, imparting thereto a very pure dark blue of extraordinary beauty. this blue is distinguished from smalt by dissolving in acetic acid. * * * * * compared with the wide range of yellows, or even with reds, the artist finds the number of his blues limited. the perfect native and excellent artificial ultramarines, the good blues of cobalt, the fair prussian blue, and the doubtful indigo, are the four varieties he has for years been in the habit of using, and is still mainly dependent on. our division, therefore, into permanent, semi-stable, and fugitive, is easily effected. in the front rank, pre-eminent among blues as among pigments generally, stands genuine ultramarine. behind it, are the artificial ultramarines; and behind them again, cobalt and cerulian blue. to a greater or less extent, all these are durable. among the semi-stable, must be classed cyanine or leitch's blue, smalt, and prussian blue. to the fugitive, belong indigo and the somewhat more permanent intense blue, antwerp blue, and the copper blues. in this list of blues, which grace or disgrace the palette of the present day, there is one colour which, although not permanent, is almost indispensable. as yet, the chemist cannot in all cases lay down the law as to what pigments may or may not be employed. the painter who unnecessarily uses fugitive colours must have little love for his craft, and a poor opinion of the value of his work; but, even with the best intentions and the utmost self-esteem, the artist cannot always confine himself to strictly stable pigments. he has no right to use orpiment instead of cadmium yellow, or red lead instead of vermilion, or copper blue instead of cobalt: he has no business to employ indigo when prussian blue saddened by black will answer his purpose; but--what pigment can he substitute for prussian blue itself? none. in its wondrous depth, richness, and transparency, it stands alone: there is no yellow to compare with it, no red to equal it, no blue to rival it. in force and power it is a colour among colours, and transparent beyond them all. the great importance of transparent pigments is to unite with solid or opaque colours of their own hues, giving tone and atmosphere generally, together with beauty and life; to convert primary into secondary, and secondary into tertiary colours, with brilliancy; to deepen and enrich dark colours and shadows, and to impart force and tone to black itself. for such effects, no pigment can vie with prussian blue. what purples it produces, what greens it gives, what a matchless range of grays; what velvety glow it confers, how it softens the harshness of colours, and how it subdues their glare. no; until the advent of a perfect palette, the artist can scarcely part with his prussian blue; nor can the chemist, who has nothing better to offer, hold him to blame. it is for art to copy nature with the best materials she possesses: it is for science to learn the secrets of nature, and turn them to the benefit of art. chapter xi. on the secondary, orange. orange is the first of the secondary colours in relation to light, being in all the variety of its hues composed of _yellow_ and _red_. a true or perfect orange is such a compound of red and yellow as will neutralize a perfect blue in equal quantity either of surface or intensity; and the proportions of such compound are five of perfect red to three of perfect yellow. when orange inclines to red, it takes the names of _scarlet_, _poppy_, &c.: in gold colour, &c., it leans towards yellow. combined with green it forms the tertiary _citrine_, and with purple the tertiary _russet_: it also furnishes a series of warm semi-neutral colours with black, and harmonizes in contact and variety of tints with white. orange is an advancing colour in painting:--in nature it is effective at a great distance, acting powerfully on the eye, diminishing its sensibility in accordance with the strength of the light in which it is viewed. it is of the hue, and partakes of the vividness of sunshine, as it likewise does of all the powers of its components, red and yellow. pre-eminently a _warm_ colour, being the equal contrast of or antagonist to blue, to which the attribute of _coolness_ peculiarly belongs, it is discordant when standing alone with yellow or with red, unresolved by their proper contrasts or harmonizing colours, purple and green. as an archeus or ruling colour, orange is one of the most agreeable keys in toning a picture, from the richness and warmth of its effects. if it predominate therein, for the colouring to be true, the violet and purple should be more or less red, the red more or less scarlet, the yellow more or less intense and orange, and the orange itself be intense and vivid. further, the greens must lose some of their blue and consequently become yellower, the light blues be more or less light grey, and the deep indigo more or less marrone. although the secondary colours are capable of being obtained by admixture of the primaries in an infinitude of hues, tints, and shades; yet simple original pigments of whatever class--whether secondary, tertiary, or semi-neutral--are, it has been said before, often superior to those compounded, both in a chemical and artistic sense. hence a thoroughly good original orange is only of less value and importance than a thoroughly good original yellow, a green than a blue, or a purple than a red. to produce pure and permanent compound hues requires practice and knowledge, and we too often see in the works of painters combinations neither pleasing nor stable. colours are associated with each other which do not mix kindly, and compounds formed of which one or both constituents are fugitive. as a consequence, mixed tints are frequently wanting in clearness, and, where they do not disappear altogether, resolve themselves into some primary colour; orange becoming red by a fading of the yellow, green yellow by a fading of the blue, and purple blue by a fading of the red. again, with regard to compound tints, there is the danger of one colour reacting upon and injuring another, as in the case of greens obtained from chrome yellow and prussian blue, where the former ultimately destroys the latter. of course a mixture of two permanent pigments which do not react on each other will remain permanent; the green, for instance, furnished by aureolin and native ultramarine lasting as long as the ground itself. to produce, however, the effects desired, the artist does not always stop to consider the fitness and stability of his colours in compounding, even if he possess the needed acquaintance with their physical and chemical properties. at all times, therefore, but especially when such knowledge is slight, good orange, &c., pigments are of more or less value, as by their use the employment of inferior mixtures is to a great extent avoided. in mingling primary with primary, if one colour does not compound well with the other, or is fugacious, the result is failure; but a secondary is not so easily affected by admixture: a green, for example, is seldom quite ruined by the injudicious addition of blue or yellow; and even if either of the latter be fugitive, the green will remain a green if originally durable. thus the secondaries, if they are not already of the colour required, may be brightened or subdued, deepened or paled, with comparative impunity. the artist who, from long years of experience, knows exactly the properties and capabilities of the colours he employs, may in a measure dispense with secondary pigments, and obtain from the primaries mixed tints at once stable, beautiful, and pure; but even he must sometimes resort to them, as when a green like emerald or viridian is required, which no mixture of blue and yellow will afford. the primaries, by reason of their not being able to be composed of other colours, occupy the first place on the palette, and are of the first importance; but the secondaries are far too useful to be disregarded, and have a value of their own, which both veteran and tyro have cause to acknowledge. the list of original orange pigments was once so deficient, that in some old treatises on the subject of colours, they are not even mentioned. this may have arisen, not merely from their paucity, but from the unsettled signification of the term orange, as well as from improperly calling these pigments reds, yellows, &c. in these days, however, orange pigments are sufficiently numerous to merit a chapter to themselves; they indeed comprise some of the best colours on the palette. . burnt sienna, or _burnt terra di sienna_, is calcined raw sienna, of a rich transparent brown-orange or orange-russet colour, richer, deeper, and more transparent than the raw earth. it also works and dries better, has in other respects the qualities of its parent colour, and is a most permanent and serviceable pigment in painting generally. for the warm tints in rocks, mud banks, and buildings, this colour is excellent. when mixed with blue it makes a good green; furnishing a bright green with cobalt, and one much more intense with prussian blue. for the foresea, whether calm or broken by waves, it may be employed with a little madder; while compounded with a small portion of the latter and lamp black, it meets the hues of old posts, boats, and a variety of near objects, as the tints may be varied by modifying the proportions of the component colours. used with white, it yields a range of sunny tones; and with aureolin or french blue and aureolin will be found of service, the last compound giving a fine olive green. similar but fugitive greens are afforded by admixture of burnt sienna with indigo and yellow or roman ochre, or raw sienna; tints which may be saddened into olive neutrals by the addition of sepia, and rendered more durable by substituting for indigo prussian blue and black. mixed with viridian, it furnishes autumnal hues of the utmost richness, beauty, and permanence; and, alone, is valuable as a glaze over foliage and herbage. for the dark markings and divisions of stones a compound of payne's gray and burnt sienna will prove serviceable; while for red sails the sienna, either by itself, with brown madder, or with indian red, cannot be surpassed. for foregrounds, banks and roads, cattle and animals in general, burnt sienna is equally eligible, both alone and compounded. it has a slight tendency to darken by time. . cadmium orange was first introduced to the art-world at the international exhibition of , where it was universally admired for its extreme brilliancy and beauty, a brilliancy equalled by few of the colours with which it was associated, and a beauty devoid of coarseness. we remember well the power it possessed of attracting the eye from a distance; and how, on near approach, it threw nearly all other pigments into the shade. it has in truth a lustrous luminosity not often to be met with, added to a total absence of rankness or harshness. a simple original colour, containing no base but cadmium, it is of perfect permanence, being uninjured by exposure to light, air or damp, by sulphuretted hydrogen, or by admixture. having in common with cadmium sulphides a certain amount of transparency, it is invaluable for gorgeous sunsets and the like, either alone or compounded with aureolin. of great depth and power in its full touches, the pale washes are marked by that clearness and delicacy which are so essential in painting skies. as day declines, and blue melts into green, green into orange, and orange into purple, the proper use of this pigment will produce effects both glowing and transparent. transparency signifies the quality of being seen through or into; and in no better way can it be arrived at than by giving a number of thin washes of determined character, each lighter than the preceding one. with due care in preserving their forms, from the commencement to the termination, such washes of orange will furnish hues the softest and most aerial. for bits of bright drapery, a glaze over autumn leaves, and mural decoration, this colour is adapted; while in illumination it supplies a want formerly much felt. "with the exception of scarlet or bright orange," said mr. bradley, nine or ten years since, in his manual of illumination, "our colours are everything we could wish." as an original pigment, a permanent scarlet does not yet exist; but the brilliancy of cadmium orange cannot be disputed, nor its claim to be the only unexceptionable bright orange known. it even assists the formation of the other colour: remarks the author mentioned, "brilliancy is obtained by gradation. suppose a scarlet over-curling leaf, for example. the whole should be painted in pure orange, with the gentlest possible after-touch of vermilion towards the corner under the curl. when dry, a firm line--not wash--of carmine, (of madder, preferable.--_ed._), passed within the outline on the shade side only of the leaf, will give to the whole the look of a bright scarlet surface, but with an indescribable superadded charm, that no merely flat colour can possess." in the same branch of art, illumination, cadmium orange, opposed to viridian, presents a most dazzling contrast, especially if relieved by purple. . chinese orange belongs to the coal-tar colours, and ought strictly to have been classed therewith. we have preferred, however, to keep it separate, because, as chinese orange, it was introduced as a pigment, and has not been employed as a dye. in colour, it somewhat resembles burnt sienna, enriched, reddened, brightened, and made more transparent, by admixture with crimson lake. from its behaviour, it would seem to be composed of yellow and red, such a compound as magenta and aniline yellow would afford. its pale washes are uncertain, being apt to resolve themselves into red and yellow, of which the latter appears the most permanent; for, on exposure to light and air, the red more or less flies, leaving here a yellow, and there a reddish-yellow ground: in places both red and yellow disappear. like all fugitive colours, it is comparatively stable when used in body; but even then it entirely loses its depth and richness, and in a great measure its redness, becoming faded and yellowish. in thin washes or glazing it is totally inadmissible; and, being neither a red, an orange, nor a brown, is unsuited to pure effects. nevertheless, where it need not be unduly exposed; in portfolio illuminations, for instance, the richness, subdued brilliancy, and transparency of this pigment, justify its adoption. it is not affected by an impure atmosphere. aniline colours may be adapted for oil painting by dissolving them in the strongest alcohol, saturating the solution with dammar resin, filtering the tincture, and pouring the filtrate either on pure water or solution of common salt, stirring well all the time. the water or brine solution must be at least twenty times the bulk of the tincture. the colour after being collected on a filter, washed, and dried, can be ground with linseed oil, poppy oil, or oil varnishes. . chrome orange, _orange chrome_, or _orange chromate of lead_, is a sub-chromate of lead of an orange-yellow colour, produced by the action of an alkali on chrome yellow. like all the chromates of lead, it is characterized by power and brilliancy; but also by a rankness of tone, a want of permanence, and a tendency to injure organic pigments. by reason of its lead base it is subject to alteration by impure air, but is on the whole preferable to the chrome yellows, being liable in a somewhat less degree to their changes and affinities. as, however, a colour has no business to be used if a better can be procured, the recent introduction of cadmium orange renders all risk unnecessary. . mars orange, _orange de mars_, is a subdued orange of the burnt sienna class, but without the brown tinge that distinguishes the latter. marked by a special clearness and purity of tone, with much transparency, it affords bright sunny tints in its pale washes, and combines effectively with white. being an artificial iron ochre it is more chemically active than native ochres, and needs to be cautiously employed with pigments affected by iron, such as the lakes of cochineal and intense blue. . mixed orange. orange being a compound colour, the place of original orange pigments can be supplied by mixtures of yellow and red; either by glazing one over the other, by stippling, or by other modes of breaking and intermixing them, according to the nature of the work and the effect required. for reasons lately given, mixed pigments are apt to be inferior to the simple or homogeneous both in colour, working, and other properties; yet some pigments mix and combine more cordially and with better results than others; as is the case with liquid rubiate and gamboge. generally speaking, the compounding of colours is easier in oil than in water; but in both vehicles trouble will be saved by beginning with the predominating colour, and adding the other or others to it. perhaps in this, our first chapter on the secondary colours, and consequently on colours that can be compounded, a few remarks on mixed tints from a chemical point of view will not be deemed superfluous. there are two ways, we take it, of looking at a picture--from a purely chemical, and from a purely artistic, point of view. regarded in the first light, it matters little whether a painting be a work of genius or a daub, provided the pigments employed on it are good and properly compounded. the effects produced are lost sight of in a consideration of the materials, their permanence, fugacity, and conduct towards each other. painting is essentially a chemical operation: with his pigments for reagents, the artist unwittingly performs reaction after reaction, not with the immediate results indeed of the chemist in his laboratory, but often as surely. as colour is added to colour, and mixture to mixture, acid meets alkali, metal animal, mineral vegetable, inorganic organic. with so close a union of opposite and opposing elements, the wonder is not so much that pictures sometimes perish, but that they ever live. it behoves the artist, then, not only to procure the best and most permanent pigments possible, but to compound them in such a manner that his mixed tints may be durable as well as beautiful. to effect or aid in effecting this, although he may not always be able to act upon them, the following axioms should be borne in mind:-- . if they do not react on each other, a permanent pigment added to a permanent pigment yields a permanent mixture. . if they do react on each other, a permanent pigment added to a permanent pigment yields a semi-stable or fugitive mixture. . a permanent pigment added to a semi-stable pigment yields a semi-stable mixture. . a permanent pigment added to a fugitive pigment yields a fugitive mixture. consequently-- . a permanent pigment may be rendered fugitive or semi-stable by improper compounding. . a semi-stable or fugitive pigment is not rendered durable by being compounded. . as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so a mixture is only as permanent as its least durable constituent. to give illustrations-- . ultramarine added to chinese white yields a permanent mixture. . ultramarine added to an acid constant white yields a semi-stable or fugitive mixture. . ultramarine added to prussian blue yields a semi-stable mixture. . ultramarine added to indigo yields a fugitive mixture. except in the second instance, where the blue is either partially or wholly destroyed--in time, be it remembered, not at once--according to the quantity and strength of the acid in the white, the ultramarine remains unchanged. hence at first sight our third and fourth conclusions may appear wrong; inasmuch as, it may be argued, a blue mixture cannot be semi-stable or fugitive when blue is left. to this we reply, unless both constituents are fugitive, a mixture will always more or less possess colour; but, if even one constituent be semi-stable or fugitive, a mixture will slowly but surely lose _the_ colour for which it was compounded, and be _as a mixture_ semi-stable or fugitive. it need hardly be observed that the number of permanent orange, green, and purple hues which the artist can compound, depends mainly on the number of permanent yellows, reds, and blues at his disposal. in mixed orange, therefore, a selection of durable yellows and reds is of the first importance. it should, however, be remarked that mixed orange, more sober and less decided, is obtainable by the use of citrine and russet; in the former of which yellow predominates, and in the latter, red: consequently orange results when yellow is added to russet, red to citrine, or citrine to russet. permanent yellows. | permanent reds. | aureolin. | cadmium red. cadmium, deep. | liquid rubiate. cadmium, pale. | madder carmine. lemon yellow. | rose madder. mars yellow. | mars red. naples yellow, modern. | ochres. ochres. | vermilions. orient yellow. | raw sienna. | none of these pigments react on each other, and from them can be produced the most durable mixed orange that yellow and red will afford. . neutral orange, or _penley's neutral orange_, is a permanent compound pigment composed of yellow ochre and the russet-marrone known as brown madder: it is chiefly valuable in water-colour. paper, being white, is too opaque to paint upon, without some wash of colour being first passed over it; otherwise the light tones of the sky are apt to look crude and harsh. it must, therefore, be gone over with some desirable tint, that shall break, in a slight degree, the extreme brilliancy of the mere paper. for this purpose, a thin wash of the orange is to be put over the whole surface of the paper with a large flat brush, care being taken never to drive the colour too bare, _i.e._ never to empty the brush too closely, but always to replenish before more is actually required. this first wash of colour not only gives a tone to the paper, but secures the pencil sketch from being rubbed out. the reason why, in this compound, yellow ochre, as a yellow, is preferred to any of the others, is, that it is a broken yellow, that is, a yellow slightly altered by having another hue, such as red, or brown, in its composition. it is somewhat opaque too, and hence, from this quality, is especially adapted for distances. brown madder also is a subdued red, which, when in combination with the former, produces a neutral orange, partaking of the character of soft light. as a general rule, yellow ochre is to predominate in broad daylight, and brown madder in that which is more sombre and imperfect: hence the pigment can be yellowed or reddened, by the addition of one or the other. for a clear sunset, the neutral orange must be repeated, with a preponderance of ochre at the top, assisted by a little cadmium yellow near the sun; the madder being added downwards. in treating of distant mountains, a distinction is to be made between them and the clouds, the former requiring solidity, while the latter are only to be regarded as vapour and air. mountains, being opaque bodies, are acted upon by atmosphere more or less, according to their position, their distance, and the state of the weather. to express this distinction, recourse must be had to an under tint, except where the tone is decidedly blue--an uncommon case. no mixture can give this with such truth as the neutral orange. a wash, therefore, should be passed over the mountains, with nearly all yellow in the high lights, or in the gleams of sunshine, and, on the contrary, almost all brown madder for the shadows. these two degrees of tone must be run into each other while the drawing is wet. a beautiful and soft under tone will thus be given to receive the greys. . orange, or burnt roman ochre, called also _spanish ochre_, is a very bright yellow or roman ochre burnt, by which operation it acquires warmth, colour, transparency, and depth. moderately bright, it forms good flesh tints with white, dries and works well both in water and oil, and is a very good and eligible pigment. it may be used in enamel painting, and has all the properties of its original ochre in other respects. a redder hue is imparted by mixing the ochre with powdered nitre before ignition, the orange red being subsequently washed with hot water. * * * * * . _anotta_, annotto, annatto, arnotto, arnotta, terra orellana, rocou, &c., is met with in commerce under the names of cake anotta, and flag or roll anotta. the former, which comes almost exclusively from cayenne, should be of a bright yellow colour: the latter, which is imported from the brazils, is brown outside and red within. it is prepared from the pods of the _bixa orellana_, and appears generally to contain two colouring matters, a yellow and a red, which are apt to adhere to each other and produce orange. anotta dissolves with difficulty in water, but readily in alcohol and alkaline solutions, from which last it may be thrown down as a lake by means of alum. being, however, exceedingly fugitive and changeable, it is not fit for painting; but is chiefly employed in dyeing silk, and colouring varnishes and cheese. very red cheese should be looked upon with suspicion, for although the admixture of anotta is in no way detrimental to health provided the drug be pure, it is commonly adulterated with red lead and ochre. several instances are on record that gloucester and other cheeses have been found contaminated with red lead, through having been coloured with anotta containing it, and that this contamination has produced serious consequences. _bixine_ is a purified extract of anotta made in france, and used by dyers. . _antimony orange_, golden sulphur of antimony, or golden yellow, is a hydro-sulphuret of antimony of an orange colour, which is destroyed by the action of strong light. it is a bad dryer in oil, injurious to many pigments, and in no respect eligible either in water or oil. . _chromate of mercury_ has been improperly classed as a red with vermilion, for though it is of a bright ochrous red in powder, when ground it becomes a bright ochre-orange, and affords with white very pure orange tints. nevertheless it is a bad pigment, since light soon changes it to a deep russet colour, and foul air reduces it to extreme blackness. . _damonico_, or monicon, is an iron ochre, being a compound of raw sienna and roman ochre burnt, and having all their qualities. it is rather more russet in hue than the pigment known as orange or burnt roman ochre, has considerable transparency, is rich and durable in colour, and furnishes good flesh tints. as in orange ochre, powdered nitre may be employed in its preparation. notwithstanding its merits, it is obsolete or nearly so; doubtless because burnt sienna mixed with burnt roman ochre sufficiently answers the purpose. . _gamboge orange._ on adding acetate of lead to a potash solution of gamboge, a rich bright orange is precipitated, which may be washed on a filter till the washings are colourless, and preserves its hue with careful drying. the orange which we thus obtained stood well in a book, but it cannot be recommended as an artistic pigment. perhaps in dyeing, the lead and gamboge solutions might be worth a trial. . _laque minérale_ is a french pigment, a species of chromic orange, similar to the orange chromate of lead. this name is likewise given to orange oxide of iron. . _madder orange_, or orange lake. it has been said that the yellows so-called produced from madder are not remarkable for stability, differing therein from the reds, purples, russets, and browns. like them, this 'orange' is of doubtful colour and permanence, and not to be met with, brilliant and pure, on the palette of to-day. the russet known as rubens' madder has a tendency to orange. . _orange lead_, of a dull orange colour, is an orange protoxide of lead or massicot. like litharge, it may be employed in the preparation of drying oils, and, being a better drier than white lead, may be substituted for it in mixing with pigments which need a siccative, as the bituminous earths. minium sometimes leans to orange; and there is made from ceruse a peculiar red, _mineral orange_. _orange orpiment_, or realgar, has also been called red orpiment, improperly, since it is a brilliant orange, inclining to yellow. there are two kinds, a native and an artificial, of which the former is the _sandarac_ of the ancients, and is rather redder than the latter. they possess the same qualities as pigments, and as such resemble yellow orpiment, to which the old painters gave the orange hue by heat, naming it alchemy and burnt orpiment. orange orpiment contains more arsenic and less sulphur than the yellow, and is of course highly poisonous. it is often sophisticated with brickdust and yellow ochre. . _thallium orange_ is produced when bichromate of potash is added to a neutral salt of the protoxide of thallium, as an orange-yellow precipitate. the scarcity of the metal precludes their present introduction as pigments, but if the chromates of thallium were found to resist the action of light and air, and not to become green by deoxidation of the chromic acid, they might possibly prove fitted for the palette. it is a question whether their _very_ slight solubility in water would be a fatal objection; and, although they would be liable to suffer from a foul atmosphere, we are inclined to think the effects would not be so lasting as in the chromates of lead. like lead sulphide, the sulphide of thallium ranges from brown to brownish-black, or grey-black; and, like it too, is subject to oxidation and consequent conversion into colourless sulphate. it is, however, much more readily oxidized than sulphate of lead; and hence the thallium chromates would doubtless soon regain their former hue on exposure to a strong light. mr. crookes, who discovered this new metal in , believes that the deep orange shade observable in some specimens of sulphide of cadmium is due to the presence of thallium. he has frequently found it, he says, in the dark-coloured varieties, and considers the variations of colour in cadmium sulphide to be owing to traces of thallium. that thallium affects the colour is most probable, but it is not necessarily the cause of the orange hue. the tint of cadmium sulphide is a mere matter of manufacture, seeing that from the same sample of metal there can be obtained lemon-yellow, pale yellow, deep yellow, orange-yellow, and orange-red. with deference to the opinion of a chemist so distinguished, we hold that thallium rather impairs the beauty of cadmium sulphide than imparts to it an orange shade, the thallium being likewise in the form of sulphide, and therefore more or less black. on chromate of cadmium, made with bichromate of potash, thallium would naturally confer an orange hue. . _uranium orange_ is obtainable by wet and dry methods as a yellowish-red, or, when reduced to powder, an orange-yellow, uranate of baryta. it is an expensive preparation, superfluous as a pigment. . _zinc orange._ when hydrochloric acid and zinc are made to act on nitro-prusside of sodium, a corresponding zinc compound is formed of a deep orange colour, slightly soluble in water, and not permanent. * * * * * for a secondary colour, orange is well represented on the modern palette, and can point to some pigments as good and durable as any to be found among the primaries. burnt sienna, cadmium orange, mars orange, neutral orange, and orange or burnt roman ochre, are all strictly permanent. the so-called orange vermilions were, it will be remembered, classed among the reds. as semi-stable, must be ranked chrome orange; and as fugitive, chinese orange, orange orpiment, and orange lead. from the foregoing division, the predominance of eligible orange pigments over those less trustworthy is manifest. unfortunately, with many painters it is not so manifest that their secondary and compound colours should receive as much attention as the primaries, and that it is their duty, not only to the art which they practice, but to the patrons for whom they practice it, that their orange and green and purple hues, should be as durable as their yellows, reds, and blues. for such, the introduction of a new permanent pigment is of little interest, unless its colour be primary; so wedded are they to that passion for compounding which the chemist views with dismay. with dismay, because he knows that the rules of mixture are severe, and cannot with impunity be altered; that, although disguised in oil or gum, each pigment is a chemical compound, with more or less of affinity and power, more or less likely to act or be acted upon. because he knows that, except with the most experienced artists, compounding leads to confusion; and that in it the temptations to use semi-stable or fugitive colours are strong. look at those tables of mixed tints of which artist-authors are so fond, and tell us whether they always bear scrutiny--surely not. admirable, perfect as these tints may be in an artistic sense, how often is their beauty like the hectic flush of consumption, which carries with it the seeds of a certain death. will that orange where indian yellow figures ever see old age, or that green with indigo, or purple with cochineal lake? will they not rather spread over the picture the upas-tree of fugacity, and kill it as they die themselves! chapter xii. on the secondary, green. green, which occupies the middle station in the natural scale of colours and in relation to light and shade, is the second of the secondary colours. it is composed of the extreme primaries, _yellow_ and _blue_, and is most perfect in hue when constituted in the proportions of three of yellow to eight of blue of equal intensities; because such a green will exactly neutralize and contrast a perfect red in the ratio of eleven to five, either of space or power. of all compound colours, green is the most effective, distinct, and striking, causing surprise and delight when first produced by a mixture of blue and yellow, so dissimilar to its constituents does it appear to the untutored eye. compounded with orange, green converts it into the one extreme tertiary _citrine_; while mixed with purple, it becomes the other extreme tertiary _olive_: hence its relations and accordances are more general, and its contrasts more agreeable with all colours, than those of any other individual colour. accordingly it has been adopted very wisely in nature as the common garb of the vegetal creation. it is, indeed, in every respect a central or medial colour, being the contrast, compensatory in the proportion of eleven to five, of the middle primary _red_, on the one hand, and of the middle tertiary _russet_, on the other; while, unlike the other secondaries, all its hues, whether tending to blue or yellow, are of the same denomination. these attributes of green, which render it so universally effective in contrasting colours, cause it also to become the least useful in compounding them, and the most apt to defile other colours in mixture. nevertheless it forms valuable semi-neutrals of the olive class with _black_, for of such subdued tones are those greens by which the more vivid tints of nature are opposed. accordingly, the various greens of foliage are always more or less semi-neutral in hue. as green is the most general colour of vegetal nature and principal in foliage; so red, its harmonizing colour, with compounds of red, is most general and principal in flowers. purple flowers are commonly contrasted with centres or variegations of bright yellow, as blue flowers are with like relievings of orange; and there is a prevailing hue, or character, in the green colour of the foliage of almost every plant, by which it is harmonized with the colours of its flowers. the chief discord of green is blue; and when they approximate or accompany each other, they require to be resolved by the opposition of warm colours. it is in this way that the warmth of distance and the horizon reconciles the azure of the sky with the greenness of a landscape. its less powerful discord is yellow, which needs to be similarly resolved by a purple-red, or its principles. in tone, green is cool or warm, sedate or gay, either as it inclines to blue or to yellow; yet in its general effects it is cool, calm, temperate, and refreshing. having little power in reflecting light, it is a retiring colour, and readily subdued by distance: for the same reason, it excites the retina less than most colours, and is cool and grateful to the eye. as a colour individually, green is eminently beautiful and agreeable, but it is more particularly so when contrasted by its compensating colour, red, as it often is in nature, even in the green leaves and young shoots of plants and trees. "the autumn only is called the painter's season," remarks constable, "from the great richness of the colours of the dead and decaying foliage, and the peculiar tone and beauty of the skies; but the spring has, perhaps, more than an equal claim to his notice and admiration, and from causes not wholly dissimilar,--the great variety of tints and colours of the living foliage, accompanied by their flowers and blossoms. the beautiful and tender hues of the young leaves and buds are rendered more lovely by being contrasted, as they now are, with the sober russet browns of the stems from which they shoot, and which still show the drear remains of the season that is past." the number of pigments of any colour is in general proportioned to its importance; hence the variety of greens is very great, though the classes of those in common use are not very numerous. of the three secondaries, green is the colour most often met with, and, consequently, the most often compounded: for this last reason, perhaps, the palette is somewhat deficient in really good original greens--more deficient than there is any necessity for. chrome oxides. by numerous methods both wet and dry, oxides of chromium are obtainable pale and deep, bright and subdued, warm and cool, opaque and transparent: sometimes hydrated, in which case they cannot be employed in enamelling; and sometimes anhydrous, when they are admissible therein. but whatever their properties may be, chemical, physical, or artistic, they are all strictly stable. neither giving nor receiving injury by admixture, equally unaffected by foul gas and exposure to light, air, or damp, these oxides are perfectly unexceptionable in every respect. for the most part they are eligible in water and oil, drying well in the latter vehicle, and requiring in the former much gum. they have long been known as affording pure, natural, and durable tints; but, until within the last few years, have been rather fine than brilliant greens. lately, however, processes have been devised, yielding them almost as bright, rich, and transparent, as the carmine of cochineal itself. . oxide of chromium, _opaque oxide of chromium_, _green oxide of chromium_, _chrome oxide_, _true chrome green_, _native green_, _&c._, is found native in an impure state as chrome ochre, but is always artificially prepared for artistic use. obtained anhydrous by dry modes, this is the only chrome oxide available in enamelling, and is the one seen on superior porcelain. it is a cold, sober sage green, deep-toned, opaque, and, although dull, agreeable to the eye. its tints with white are peculiarly delicate and pleasing, possessing a silvery luminous quality, and giving the effect of atmosphere. being very dense and powerful, it must be employed with care to avoid heaviness, and is preferably diluted with a large quantity of white, or compounded with transparent yellow. in the hands of a master, this gray-green furnishes lustrous hues with brown pink, italian pink, and indian yellow; three beautiful but fugitive pigments, of which the two last may be replaced by aureolin. of this mr. penley observes, "as adapted for the colouring of foliage and herbage, it is impossible to say too much in its praise. it imparts the vividness and freshness of nature to every colour with which it is combined;" and he brackets oxide of chromium with aureolin as a compound hue "extremely useful." in flat tints, the oxide sometimes does not wash well in water. . transparent oxide of chromium being deficient in body, is only eligible in oil. a very pale greyish-white green in powder, it gives an agreeable yellowish green of some depth in oil, moderately bright, but not very pure or clear. we are acquainted with another transparent chrome oxide of far greater beauty, brightness, purity, and clearness than the above. of a bluish green hue, a difficulty in getting it to mix with oil renders it at present unavailable. . veronese green, or _french veronese green_, is a comparatively recent introduction, similar in colour and general properties to the following; beside which, however, it appears dull, muddy, and impure. it is often adulterated with arsenic to an enormous extent, which interferes with its transparency, mars its beauty, and renders it of course rankly poisonous. . viridian is a still later addition to the palette, and the only permanent green which can be described as gorgeous, being not unlike the richest velvet. pure and clear as the emerald, it may be called the prussian blue of greens, of such richness, depth, and transparency is it. in hue of a bluish-green, its deepest shades verge on black, while its light tints are marked by transparent clearness unsurpassed. no compound of blue and yellow will afford a green at once so beautiful and stable, so gifted with the quality of light, and therefore so suited for aerial and liquid effects. used with aureolin, it gives foliage greens sparkling with sunshine; and, fitly compounded, will be found invaluable for the glassy liquidity of seas, in painting which it becomes incumbent to employ pigments more or less transparent. "the general failing in the representation of the sea is, that instead of appearing liquid and thin, it is made to bear the semblance of opacity and solidity. in order to convey the idea of transparency, some object is often placed floating on the wave, so as to give reflection; and it is strange that we find our greatest men having recourse to this stratagem. to say it is not true in all cases, is saying too much; but this we do assert, that as a general principle it is quite false, and we prove it in this way: water has its motion, more or less, from the power of the wind; it is acted upon in the mass, and thus divided into separate waves, and these individually have their surface ruffled, which renders them incapable of receiving reflection. the exception to this will be, where the heaving of the sea is the result of some gone-by storm, when the wind is hushed, and the surface becomes bright and glassy. in this state, reflections are distinctly seen. another exception will be in the hollow portion of the waves, as they curl over, and dash upon the shore." as viridian, like the sea, is naturally "liquid and thin, bright and glassy," the extract we have quoted from mr. penley, points to this green as a pigment peculiarly adapted for marine painting; in which, it may be added, its perfect permanence and transparency will be appreciated in glazing. its fitness for foliage has been remarked; but in draperies the colour will prove equally useful, and in illumination will be found unrivalled. in the last branch of art, indeed, viridian stands alone, not only through its soft rich brilliancy, but by the glowing contrast it presents with other colours: employed as a ground, it throws up the reds, &c., opposed to it, in a marvellous manner. like the three preceding oxides of chromium, viridian neither injures nor is injured by other pigments; is unaffected by light, damp, or impure air; and is admissible in fresco. in enamelling it cannot be used; the colour, depending on the water of hydration, being destroyed by a strong heat. copper greens are commercially known as _emerald green_, _malachite green_, _scheele's green_, _schweinfurt green_, _verdigris_, _green bice_, _green verditer_, _brunswick green_, _vienna green_, _hungary green_, _green lake_, _mineral green_, _patent green_, _mountain green_, _marine green_, _saxon green_, _french green_, _african green_, _persian green_, _swedish green_, _olympian green_, _imperial green_, _mitis green_, _pickle green_, &c. the general characteristics of these greens are brightness of colour, well suited to the purposes of house-painting, but seldom adapted to the modesty of nature in fine art; considerable permanence, except when exposed to the action of damp and impure air, which ultimately blacken most of them; and good body. they have a tendency to darken by time, dry well as a rule in oil, and are all more or less poisonous, even those not containing arsenic. . emerald green, _schweinfurt green_, _vienna green_, _imperial green_, _brunswick green_, _mitis green_, &c., is a cupric aceto-arsenite, prepared on the large scale by mixing arsenious acid with acetate of copper and water. it differs from scheele's green, or cupric arsenite, in being lighter, more vivid, and more opaque. powerfully reflective of light, it is perhaps the most durable pigment of its class, not sensibly affected by damp nor by that amount of impure air to which pictures are usually subject: indeed it may be ranked as permanent both in itself and when in tint with white. it works better in water than in oil, in which latter vehicle it dries with difficulty. bearing the same relation to greens generally as pure scarlet bears to reds, its vivid hue is almost beyond the scale of other bright pigments, and immediately attracts the eye to any part of a painting in which it may be employed. too violent in colour to be of much service, it has the effect, when properly placed, of toning down at once, by force of contrast, all the other greens in a picture. if discreetly used, it is occasionally of value in the drapery of a foreground figure, where a bright green may be demanded; or in a touch on a gaily painted boat or barge. when required, no mixture will serve as a substitute. compounded with aureolin, it becomes softened and semi-transparent, yielding spring tints of extreme brilliancy and beauty. . scheele's green, or _swedish green_, resembles the preceding variety in being a compound of copper and arsenic, and therefore rankly poisonous; but differs from it in containing no acetic acid, in possessing less opacity, and in having a darker shade. it is a cupric arsenite, with the common attributes of emerald green, under which name it is sometimes sold. of similar stability, it must not be employed with the true naples yellow or antimoniate of lead, by which it is soon destroyed. upon the lavish use of this dangerous pigment in colouring toys, dresses, paper-hangings, artificial leaves, and even cheap confectionery, it is not our province to enlarge: the constant-recurring diseases and deaths, which, directly or indirectly, result from the employment of arsenical pigments, are such every-day facts that they are merely deplored and forgotten. with arsenic on our heads, our clothes, our papers, our sweets, our children's playthings, we are so accustomed to live--and die--in a world of poison, that familiarity with it has bred contempt. into the fatal popularity, therefore, of arsenical colours for decorative purposes, we shall not further enter; but it behoves us to deprecate their presence, and the presence of all poisonous pigments, in colour-boxes for the young. it is one of the pleasures of childhood to suck anything attractive that comes in its way, openly if allowed, furtively otherwise: and as in early life we have a preference for brilliancy, so vivid a pigment as scheele's green is an object of special attention. artistically, it matters little whether a pigment is noxious or not, but we hold that poison should not be put into the hands of the young; and indeed are of opinion that a box of colours is about the worst present a child can receive. . malachite green, or _mountain green_, is met with in cumberland, and is also found in the mountains of kernhausen, whence it is sometimes called _hungary green_. it is prepared from malachite, a beautiful copper ore employed by jewellers, and is a hydrated dicarbonate of copper, combined with a white earth, and often striated with veins of mountain blue, to which it bears the same relation that green verditer bears to blue verditer. the colour, which may be extracted from the stone by the process followed for native ultramarine, varies from emerald-green to grass-green, and inclines to grey. it has been held in great esteem by some, and considered strictly stable, on the assumption, probably, that a pigment obtained from a stone like ultramarine, and by the same method, could not be otherwise than permanent. that it is so, with respect to light and air, there is no denying; but the green, when separated from the ore and purified for artistic use, is merely a carbonate of copper, and therefore subject to the influence of damp and impure air, in common with other non-arsenical copper colours. as a pigment, native malachite green has the same composition, or very nearly the same, as that which can be artificially produced, and answers to the same tests. water-rubs of the two varieties which we exposed to an atmosphere of sulphuretted hydrogen became equally blackened by the gas. practically, there is little or no difference between them: both preserve their colour if kept from damp and foul air, both are injured by those agents, and both are liable to darken in time, especially when secluded from light. the artificial, however, can be obtained of a much finer colour than the natural, which it may be made to resemble by admixture with mineral gray. on the whole, they can scarcely be recommended for the palette, and are certainly inferior in durability to scheele's and schweinfurt greens. in fresco painting they have been pronounced admissible; but, apart from the question of damp, we should deem the conjunction of lime with carbonate of copper not favourable to permanence. by the action of alkalies, even the native green malachite may be converted into blue; and it becomes a question whether the dingy greenish-blue on some ancient monuments was not originally malachite green. . verdigris, or _viride Æris_, is of two kinds, common or impure, and crystallized or _distilled verdigris_, or, more properly, refined verdigris. the best is made at montpellier in france, and is a sub-acetate of copper of a bright green colour inclining to blue. the least durable of the copper greens, it soon fades as a water-colour by the action of light, &c., and becomes first white and ultimately black by damp and foul gas. in oil, verdigris is permanent with respect to light and air, but moisture and an impure atmosphere change its colour, and cause it to effloresce or rise to the surface through the oil. it dries rapidly, and is exceptionally useful with other greens or very dark colours. in varnish it stands better; but cannot be considered safe or eligible, either alone or compounded. vinegar dissolves it, forming a solution used for tinting maps, and formerly much employed for colouring pickles, &c. the painters, who lived at the time when the arts were restored in italy, used this pigment; and the bright greens seen in some old pictures are made by glazings of verdigris. it is often largely adulterated with chalk and sulphate of copper. . mixed green green, being a compound of blue and yellow, may be got by combining those colours in the several ways of working--by mixing, glazing, hatching, or otherwise blending them in the proportions of the various hues required. to obtain a _pure_ green, which consists of blue and yellow only, a blue should be chosen tinged with yellow rather than with red, and a yellow tinged with blue. if either a blue or a yellow were taken, tinged with red, this latter colour would go to produce some grey in the compound, which would tarnish the green. the fine nature-like greens, which have lasted so well in some of the pictures of the italian schools, appear to have been compounded of ultramarine, or ultramarine ashes and yellow. whatever pigments are employed on a painting in the warm yellow hues of the foreground, and blue colouring of the distance and sky, are advantageous for forming the greens in landscape, &c., because they harmonize better both in colouring and chemically, and impart homogeneity to the whole: a principle conducive to a fine tone and durability of effect, and applicable to all mixed tints. in compounding colours, it is desirable not only that they should agree chemically, but that they should have, as far as possible, the same degree of durability. in these respects, aureolin and ultramarine, gamboge and prussian blue, indian yellow and indigo, are all judicious mixtures, although not all to be recommended. permanent yellows. | permanent blues. | aureolin. | cerulian blue. cadmium yellow, pale. | cobalt blue. cadmium yellow, deep. | genuine ultramarine. lemon yellow. | brilliant ultramarine. mars yellow. | french ultramarine. naples yellow, modern. | new blue. ochres. | permanent blue. orient yellow. | raw sienna. | the foregoing yellows and blues are in no wise inimical to each other, and yield the best mixed greens, chemically considered, the palette can afford. in an artistic sense, we confess, the result is not so satisfactory: the list of blues, it must be admitted, being somewhat scant. among the latter there is no pigment with the wonderful depth, richness, and transparency of prussian blue, and none consequently which will furnish with yellow a green of similar quality. that the artist, therefore, will dispense with prussian blue, it would be too much to expect. there is, however, less necessity for it since the introduction of viridian, a green resembling that which is produced by admixture of prussian blue and yellow, and which may be varied in hue by being compounded with aureolin or ultramarine. our object in this work is to give precedence to the chemical rather than the artistic properties of pigments, to separate the strictly stable from the semi-stable, and the semi-stable from the fugitive. a colour or a mixture may be chemically bad but artistically good, and vice versâ; but the chemist looks upon no pigment or compound with favour unless it be perfectly permanent, and ignores its mere beauty when void of durability. hence, all artistic considerations are set aside in our lists of permanent pigments: if it be possible to use them alone, so much the better for the permanence of painting; if not, so much the worse will it be, according to the degree of fugacity of the colours employed. . bronze, and the three succeeding varieties, are greens resembling each other in being semi-stable, and more or less transparent. bronze is a species of prussian green, of a dull blue-black hue. in its deep washes it appears a greenish-black with a coppery cast. it is used in ornamental work, and sometimes as a background tint for flower pieces. . chrome greens, commonly so called, are compounds of chromate of lead and prussian blue, a mixture which is also known as _brunswick green_. fine bright greens, they are suited to the ordinary purposes of mechanic painting, but are quite unfit for the artist's craft, chrome yellow reacting upon and ultimately destroying prussian blue when mixed therewith. for the latter, cheap cobalts and ultramarines are preferably substituted, although they do not yield greens of like power and intensity. under the names of english green, green cinnabar, &c., 'new' green pigments have been from time to time introduced, which have turned out mixtures of prussian blue and chromate of lead; not made, however, by compounding the two, but directly by processes similar to the following:--a mixed solution of the acetates of lead and iron is added to a mixed solution of the yellow prussiate and chromate of potash, the necessary acetate of iron being obtained by precipitating a solution of acetate of lead by sulphate of iron, and filtering the supernatant liquid. or; to a solution of prussian blue in oxalic acid, first chromate of potash is added, and then acetate of lead. by the last process, superior and more permanent chrome greens may be produced, free from lead, by using chloride of barium or nitrate of bismuth in place of the acetate of lead. chromate of baryta, or chromate of bismuth is then formed, neither of which acts on the prussian blue. it should be added that where the latter pigment is present, no green will serve for painting walls containing lime, as its action alters the tint of the prussian blue. . hooker's green is a compound of prussian blue and gamboge, two pigments possessing a like degree of stability, and perfectly innocuous to each other. it is a mixture more durable and more transparent than chrome greens made with chromate of lead. there are two varieties in common use--no. , a light grass green, in which the yellow predominates; and no. , a deeper and more powerful green, with a larger amount of blue. . prussian green, like the preceding, is composed of prussian blue and gamboge; but contains a very great excess of the former, and is therefore a bluish-green of the utmost depth and transparency, verging on black in its deep washes. yellow ochre may be employed instead of gamboge, but is not so eligible. a true prussian green, which has been recommended as a pigment, can be produced as a simple original colour, with a base wholly of iron. it is got by partially decomposing the yellow oxalate of protoxide of iron with red prussiate of potash. we have made this green and given it a fair trial, but our verdict is decidedly against it. in colour it is far from being equal to a good compound of prussian blue and gamboge, and it assumes a dirty buff-yellow on exposure to light and air, the film of blue on the oxalate more or less disappearing. another prussian green, with a base of cobalt, is obtained by precipitating the nitrate of that metal with yellow prussiate of potash. according to the mode adopted, and the degree of heat, either a light or dark green results; but this also is inferior in colour, and presents no advantage as to permanence. . sap green, _verde vessie_, or _iris green_, is a vegetal pigment prepared from the juice of the berries of the buckthorn, the green leaves of the woad, the blue flowers of the iris, &c. it is usually preserved in bladders, and is thence sometimes called _bladder green_. when good, it is of a dark colour and glossy fracture, extremely transparent, and a fine natural yellowish green. this gummy juice, inspissated and formed into a cake, is occasionally employed in flower painting. it is, however, a very imperfect pigment, disposed to attract the moisture of the atmosphere, and to mildew; while, having little durability in water and less in oil, it is not eligible in the one and is totally useless in the other. similar pigments, obtained from coffee-berries, and named venetian and emerald greens, are of a colder colour, equally defective and fugitive, and now obsolete. . terre verte, or _green earth_, is a sober bluish green with a grey cast. it is a species of ochre, containing silica, oxide of iron, magnesia, potash, and water. not bright and of little power, it is a very durable pigment, being unaffected by strong light or impure air, and combining with other colours without injury. it has not much body, is semi-transparent, and dries well in oil. veins of brownish or reddish ochre are often found mixed with terre verte, to the detriment of its colour; and there are varieties of this pigment with copper for their colouring matter, which, although generally brighter, are inferior in other respects, and not true terre vertes. verona green and verdetto or holy green, are ferruginous native pigments of a warmer hue. these are met with in the mendip hills, france, italy, and the island of cyprus, and have been used as pigments from the earliest times. rubens has availed himself much of terre verte, not in his landscapes merely, but likewise in the carnation tints in his figures of a dead christ. it is evident that much of the glazing is done with this colour: it is, in fact, most useful in glazing; because, having only a thin substance, it can be rendered pale by a small portion of white; although in the end it becomes darker by a concentration of its molecules. mérimée states that in the greater part of alexander veronese's works--in his death of cleopatra, in the louvre, for instance--there are some demi-tints which are too green, and which it is certain were not so originally. terre verte, therefore, must be employed with caution; and it would be well to ascertain beforehand whether a mineral colour will in time become darker than when first laid on the picture, by putting a drop of oil on the powder in its natural state. if the tone this gives to it be more intense than that which it acquires by being ground up, it may fairly be assumed that it will attain to the same degree of strength whenever, having completely dried, its molecules shall have re-united as closely as it is possible. umber and terra di sienna are of this class. in combination with indian red and naples yellow, terre verte forms a series of mild russet greens, of much use in middle distance. * * * * * . _chrome arseniate_ is an agreeable apple-green colour, prepared from arseniate of potash and salts of chromic oxide. it is durable, but possesses no advantages over the chrome oxides, and is of course poisonous. . _cobalt green_, rinman's green, vert de zinc or zinc green. true cobalt green is made by igniting a very large quantity of carbonate of zinc with a very small quantity of carbonate of cobalt. to give a green tint to an enormous proportion of the former, an inappreciable amount of the latter will suffice. some samples which were analysed, consisted almost entirely of zinc, there being only two or three per cent. of cobalt present. this green presents an example of a pigment being chemically good and artistically bad, or at least indifferent. it is a moderately bright green, apt to vary in hue according to the mode of manufacture, permanent both alone and compounded, but so sadly deficient in body and power, as to have become almost obsolete. with other physical defects, and a colour inferior to the chrome oxides, cobalt green has never been a favourite with artists, though justly eulogised by chemists. . _copper borate_ is obtained by precipitating sulphate of copper with borax, washing the residue with cold water, and, after drying, igniting it, fusion being carefully avoided. in this manner, a pretty yellowish green is produced, which upon longer ignition assumes a dark green shade: the mass is levigated for use. the compound has the objection of being glassy, and possessing little body, but is preferable to verdigris as to permanence. . _copper chrome_ may be prepared by several methods, but the colour is in no case so fine as scheele's or schweinfurt green, nor is it as stable. . _copper stannate_, or tin-copper green, equals in colour any of the copper greens free from arsenic. the cheapest way of making it is to heat parts of tin in a hessian crucible with parts nitrate of soda, and dissolve the mass when cold in a caustic alkali. to the clear solution, diluted with water, a cold solution of sulphate of copper is added: a reddish-yellow precipitate falls, which on being washed and dried, becomes a beautiful green. on the palette it would be superfluous, but for common purposes might be found of service. . _elsner's green_ is also a combination of tin and copper. it is made by adding to a solution of sulphate of copper a decoction of fustic, previously clarified by a solution of gelatine. to this mixture are added ten or eleven per cent. of protochloride of tin, and lastly an excess of caustic potash or soda. the precipitate is then washed and dried, whereupon it takes a green colour tinged with blue, but without the brightness or durability of the preceding stannate. . _green bice_, or green verditer, is the same in substance as blue verditer, which is converted into green verditer by boiling. this pigment is one of the least eligible of copper greens. . _green ochre._ by partially decomposing yellow ochre with prussiate of potash, we have produced a fine dark blue-green, resembling prussian green, of great depth and transparency. there are, however, difficulties in the process; and the results do not warrant us in pronouncing this green superior or equal to a mixture of the ochre and prussian blue. . _green ultramarine_ is french or artificial ultramarine before the final roasting. it is a somewhat bright bluish-green, becoming a dull greenish-blue on continued exposure. chemically, it is not a bad colour; but artists generally have decided against it. . _manganese green_, or cassel green. by several methods, manganate of baryta may be obtained either as an emerald-green, a bluish-green, or a pale green. the manganates, however, are decomposed by contact with organic matter; and hence the green would be liable to suffer from the vehicles employed, as well as by being compounded with animal or vegetal pigments. . _mineral green_ is the commercial name of _green lakes_, prepared from sulphate of copper. these vary in hue and shade, have all the properties of the common non-arsenical copper-greens, and, not being subject to change of colour by oxygen and light, stand the weather well, and are excellent for the use of the house-painter, &c. having a tendency to darken and blacken by time and foul air, they are not eligible in the nicer works of fine art. another mineral green adopted in germany as a substitute for the poisonous schweinfurt green, is composed of chromate of lead, carbonate of copper, oxide of iron, and chalk. valueless for the palette, it has not the beauty of schweinfurt green, but is recommended as being free from arsenic. it is not, however, altogether harmless, and should not be used in confectionery or the like. . _molybdenum green._ a clear malachite green colour, when dried, is produced from molybdate of soda and potash-chrome-alum, or from the molybdate and alum with ammonia. being more expensive than the chrome oxides and not better, its introduction, for use by artists, would be attended with no advantage. there is likewise obtainable a copper molybdate, by adding neutral molybdate of soda in excess to sulphate of copper. the precipitate is a very pale green colour, flocculent at first, but crystalline after washing. like the chrome molybdate it would be superfluous as a pigment. . _quinine green_ is rather adapted for a dye than an artist-colour. it is furnished by acting on quinine with hypochlorite of lime, hydrochloric acid, and ammonia, successively. thus prepared, the green resembles a resin, insoluble in water, but soluble in alcohol, and turned blue by acetic acid. its alcoholic solution dyes silk green, and also woollen and cotton when mordanted with albumen. . _roman green_, brought from rome some years back by a president of the royal academy, appeared to be a mixture of prussian blue and dutch or italian pink. it was a fugitive compound, which became blue in fading. . _silicate of baryta._ one part of silica heated to whiteness with three parts of baryta, yields a pale green solid mass, permanent, but deficient in colour when ground. it might be employed in enamelling. . _titanium green_ has been proposed as a substitute for the green arsenical pigments in common use; but, apart from its expense, the colour is very inferior to scheele's green, &c. titanium green is a ferrocyanide of that metal, produced by adding yellow prussiate of potash to a solution of titanic acid in dilute hydrochloric acid, and heating the mixture to ebullition rapidly. the dark green precipitate is washed with water acidulated with hydrochloric acid, and dried with great care, since it decomposes at temperatures above °. . _uranium green_ is an oxide of a deep dull green colour, inclining to olive, and nearly black when in lumps. a durable but unattractive preparation, equalled in permanence and far surpassed in beauty by many cheaper compounds. . _vanadium green_ falls when ferrocyanide of potassium is added to vanadic acid dissolved in a strong acid. it is a beautiful green precipitate, but at present simply a curiosity, owing to the rarity of the metal vanadium. * * * * * adopting our usual custom of separating the wheat from the chaff, we point to the opaque and transparent oxides of chromium, veronese green, viridian, emerald green, scheele's green, and terre verte, as more or less worthy of being dubbed durable. as semi-stable, malachite green, bronze, hooker's green, and prussian green, must be classed. verdigris, chrome greens, and sap green, should be branded as fugitive: the chrome greens, because they are always commercially composed of chromate of lead and prussian blue, two compounds which are semi-stable in themselves, but become fugacious when compounded. a reference to the numbered italicised greens will show that there are many not known to the palette, which are nevertheless very greatly superior, as regards permanence, to some that disgrace it. why these latter are suffered to hold their position is a mystery not easily explained: it is hard to reconcile the deplored degeneracy of modern pigments with the popularity of semi-stable and fugitive colours. pictures do not stand, is the common cry; therefore, says the public, there are no good pigments now-a-days. to which we answer, newly built houses are constantly falling down; therefore there are no good bricks in these times. of a truth, one conclusion is as reasonable as the other: in either case, if rotten materials be used, the result cannot be lasting; but in neither case does it follow, because such materials are employed, that there are no better obtainable. a well-built house implies a conscientious builder, and a well-painted picture implies a conscientious artist. it is because, we fear, that there are so few conscientious artists, that there are so few permanent paintings; not, certainly, because there are no good pigments. in this last belief, however, the public is encouraged by certain painters, who seek thereby to excuse their own shortcomings, forgetting that it is a bad workman who finds fault with his tools. it has been well observed that when artists speak regrettingly of lost 'systems,' or pigments enjoyed by the mediævalists and unattainable now, it would be far better were they to make the best use of existing materials, and study their further development. there is no need for this cant cry of fugacity, which casts such a blight on modern art. durable pigments are not yet obsolete, they have only to be employed and employed properly to furnish paintings equal in permanence to those of the old masters. "titian," says haydon, "got his colours from the colour shops on the rialto, as we get ours from brown's; and if apelles or titian were living now, they would paint just as good works with our brushes and colours as with their own." chapter xiii. on the secondary, purple. purple, the third and last of the secondary colours, is composed of _red_ and _blue_, in the proportions of five of the former to eight of the latter; proportions which constitute a perfect purple, or one of such a hue as will neutralize and best contrast a perfect yellow, in the ratio of thirteen to three, either of surface or intensity. when mixed with its co-secondary colour, green, purple forms the tertiary _olive_; and, when compounded with the remaining secondary, orange, it constitutes in like manner the tertiary _russet_. of the three secondary colours it is the coolest, as well as the nearest in relation to _black_ or shade; in which respect, and in never being a warm colour, it resembles blue. in other respects also, purple partakes of the properties of blue, which is its archeus, or ruling colour; hence it is to the eye a retiring colour, that reflects light little, and loses rapidly in power in a declining light, and according to the distance at which it is viewed. by reason of its being the mean between black and blue it becomes the most retiring of all positive colours. nature employs this hue beautifully in landscape, as a sub-dominant, in harmonizing the broad shadows of a bright sunshine ere the light sinks into deep orange or red. girtin, who saw nature as she is, and painted what he saw, delighted in this effect of sunlight and shadow. as a ruling colour, whether in flesh or otherwise, purple is commonly too cold, or verges on ghastliness, a fault which is to be as much avoided as the opposite extreme of viciousness in colouring, stigmatized as foxiness. yet, next to green, purple is the most generally pleasing of the consonant colours; and has been celebrated as a regal or imperial colour, as much perhaps from its rarity in a pure state, as from its individual beauty. romulus wore it in his trabea or royal mantle, and tullus hostilius, after having subdued the tuscans, assumed the pretexta or long robe, broadly striped with purple. under the roman emperors, it became the peculiar emblem or symbol of majesty, and the wearing of it by any who were not of the imperial family, was deemed a "treasonable usurpation," punishable by death. at the decline of the empire, the tyrian purple was an important article of commerce, and got to be common in the clothing of the people. pliny says, "nepos cornelius, who died in the reign of augustus cæsar, when i was a young man, assured me that the light violet purple had been formerly in great request, and that a pound of it usually fetched denaria (about £ sterling): that soon after the tarentine or reddish purple came into fashion; and that this was followed by the tyrian dibapha, which could not be bought for less than denaria (nearly £ sterling) the pound; which was its price when p. lentulus spinter was Ædile, cicero being then consul. but afterwards, the double-dyed purple became less rare, &c." the tyrian purple alluded to was obtained from the purpuræ, a species of shell-fish adhering to rocks and large stones in the sea adjoining tyre. on account, probably, of its extreme costliness, it was frequently the custom to dye the cloth with a ground of kermes or alkanet, previous to applying the tyrian purple. this imparted to the latter a crimson hue, and explains doubtless the term, double-dyed. the greeks feigned the ancient purple to be the discovery of hercules tyrius, whose dog, eating by chance of the fish from which it was produced, returned to him with his mouth tinged with the dye. alexander the great is said to have found in the royal treasury, at the taking of susa, purple to the enormous value of talents,[a] which had lain there one hundred and ninety-two years, and still preserved its freshness and beauty. when inclining to red, purple takes the name of _crimson_, &c.; and when leaning to blue, the names of _violet_, _lilac_, _mauve_, _&c._ blue is a colour which it serves to mellow, or follows well into shade. the contrast or harmonizing colour of purple is yellow on the side of light and the primaries; while purple itself is the harmonizing contrast of the tertiary _citrine_ on the side of shade, and less perfectly so of the semi-neutral _brown_. as the extreme primaries, blue and yellow, when either compounded or opposed, afford, though not the most perfect harmony, yet the most pleasing consonance of the primary colours; so the extremes, purple and orange, yield the most pleasing of the secondary consonances. this analogy extends likewise to the extreme tertiary and semi-neutral colours, while the mean or middle colours furnish the most agreeable contrasts or harmonies. in nature pure purple is not a common colour, and on the palette purple pigments are singularly few. they lie under a peculiar disadvantage as to apparent durability and beauty of colour, owing to the neutralizing power of yellowness in the grounds upon which they are laid; as well as to the general warm colour of light, and the yellow tendency of almost all vehicles and varnishes, by which the colour of purple is subdued. . burnt carmine is the carmine of cochineal partially charred till it resembles in colour the purple of gold, for which, in miniature and water-painting, it is substituted. it is a magnificent reddish purple of extreme richness and depth, eligible in flower-painting and the shadow of draperies. as it is generally impossible, however, to alter the nature of a pigment by merely changing its colour, burnt carmine is scarcely more permanent than the carmine from which it is produced. if used, therefore, it should be in body, and not in thin washes or as a glaze. durable pigments are admissible in any form; but semi-stable pigments (gamboge excepted) should only be employed in body. . burnt lake holds the same relation to crimson lake as burnt carmine to ordinary carmine; and is hence a weaker variety of the preceding, with less richness, and likewise less permanence. . indian purple is prepared by precipitating an extract of cochineal with sulphate of copper. it is a very deep-toned but rather cold and subdued purple, neither so red nor so brilliant as burnt carmine; and is chiefly of service in draperies. it is apt to lose its purple colour in a great measure on exposure to light and air, and assume an inky blackness; a defect which becomes less apparent when the pigment is used in bulk. . mars violet, _violet de mars_, _purple ochre_, or _mineral purple_, is a dark ochre, native of the forest of dean in gloucestershire. it is of a murrey or chocolate colour, and forms cool tints of a purple hue with white. it is of a darker colour than indian red, which has also been classed among purples, but has a similar body and opacity, and generally resembles that pigment. it may be prepared artificially, and some natural red ochres burn to this colour. being difficult and sometimes impossible to procure, mars violet is often compounded; in which case it is liable to vary both in hue and stability. as, however, indian red is always taken for its basis, the mixture is never wholly fugitive, nor exhibits any very glaring contrast on exposure. . mixed purple. purple being a secondary colour, composed of _blue_ and _red_, it follows of course that any blue and red pigments, which are not chemically at variance, may be employed in producing mixed purples of any required hue, either by compounding or grinding them together ready for use, or by combining them in the various modes of operation in painting. in such compounding, the more perfect and permanent the original colours are, the more perfect and permanent will be the purple obtained. to produce a pure purple, neither the red nor the blue must contain or incline to yellow; while to compound a durable purple, both the red and the blue must be durable also. ultramarine and the reds of madder yield beautiful and excellent purples, equally stable in water or oil, in glazing or tint, whether under the influence of light or impure air. cobalt blue and madder red likewise afford good purples; and some of the finest and most delicate purples in ancient paintings appear to have been composed of ultramarine and vermilion, which furnish tints equally permanent, but less transparent than the above, and less easily compounded. facility of use, and other advantages, are obtained at too great a sacrifice by the employment of perishable mixtures, such as the lakes of cochineal with indigo. permanent reds. | permanent blues. | cadmium red. | cerulian blue. liquid rubiate. | cobalt blue. madder carmine. | genuine ultramarine. rose madder. | brilliant ultramarine. mars red. | french ultramarine. ochres. | new blue. vermilions. | permanent blue. it should be noted that all the above reds do not afford pure purples with blue; those which contain more or less yellow, as cadmium red and orange vermilion, furnish purples partaking more or less of olive, which is a compound of purple and green. to those reds may be added the russet rubens madder and the marrone madder brown, two pigments which are alike eligible for mixed purple and mixed orange. no purple, it will be remarked, equal in gorgeous richness to that produced from crimson lake and prussian blue is obtainable from the colours given; just as no mixed green is of such depth and power if that blue be wanting as a constituent. but, as our compound tints are given rather as examples of durability than beauty, all semi-stable or fugitive mixtures are of necessity ignored. . purple madder, _field's purple_, or _purple rubiate_, is the only durable organic purple the palette possesses. marked by a soft subdued richness rather than by brilliancy, it leans somewhat towards marrone, and affords the greatest depth of shadow without coldness of tint. unfortunately, in the whole range of artistic pigments there is no colour obtainable in such small quantity as madder purple; hence its scarcity and high price cause it to be confined to water-colour painting, in which the clearness and beauty of its delicate tones render it invaluable in every stage of a drawing. with raw sienna and indigo or prussian blue, subdued by black, it gives beautiful shadow tints, and will be found useful in sky and other effects compounded with cobalt, rose madder, french blue and sepia, yellow ochre and cobalt, lamp black and cobalt, light red, vandyke brown, burnt sienna, or aureolin. with great transparency, body, and depth, it is pure and permanent in its tints, neither gives nor sustains injury on admixture, dries and glazes well in oil, works well, and is altogether most perfect and eligible. for fresco it is admirably adapted, being quite uninjured by lime. there is a lighter and slightly brighter sort, containing less colouring matter and more base, which has all the properties of the above with less intensity of colour. for the sake of cheapness, the purple is sometimes compounded in oil, generally of brown madder and a blue. provided the latter be stable, transparent, and mix kindly, no greater objection can be taken to this than to the neutral orange of brown madder and yellow ochre. . violet carmine is a brilliant bluish purple of much richness, employed in draperies and the like. it is prepared by precipitating an alcoholic extract of the root of the _anchusa tinctoria_, commonly known as alkanet, a plant growing in the levant, and some other warm countries. it was used by the ancients as a dye, or as a groundwork to those stuffs which were to be dyed purplish-red: the ladies in ancient times also employed it as a paint. its colouring matter or _anchusin_ has the character of a resin, and is dark-red, softened by heat, insoluble in water, soluble in alcohol and alkalis, and freely so in ether, fats, and volatile oils, to all of which it imparts a brilliant red hue. to obtain anchusin, all the soluble matters are first abstracted from the bruised root by water: it is then digested in a solution of carbonate of potash, from which it may be readily precipitated by an acid. its alcoholic solution yields with different reagents crimson, flesh-coloured, blue, and violet precipitates, none of which, however, can be classed as durable. the variety under notice, violet carmine, resembles the other colours afforded by alkanet in not being able to withstand the action of light. on continued exposure, it loses its beauty and brightness, together with much of its colour, and, like indian purple, assumes an inky blackness. hence it is unsuited to permanently pure effects, and should only be used in body. * * * * * . _archil purple._ archil may be regarded as the english, cudbear as the scotch, and litmus as the dutch name for one and the same substance, extracted from several species of lichens by various processes. these lichens, which are principally collected on rocks adjacent to the sea, are cleaned and ground into a pulp with water, treated from time to time with ammoniacal liquor, and exposed with frequent agitation to the action of the atmosphere. peculiar principles existing in the lichens are, by the joint instrumentality of the air, water, and ammonia, so changed as to generate colouring matter, which, when perfect, is expressed. soluble in water and alcohol, this colouring principle yields by precipitation with chloride of calcium a compound known as 'solid french purple', a pigment more stable than the archil colours generally, but all too fugitive for the palette. . _bismuth purple._ a purple powder is capable of being produced from bismuth by passing chlorine gas through the hydrated oxide suspended in a saturated solution of potash. as soon as the oxide becomes brown-red, the mixture is boiled and the liquid decanted off at once, the residue being immediately washed first with alcohol and then with water. on the whole, the result is not, for an artistic pigment, worth the trouble involved in the preparation. . _burnt madder_ is obtained by carefully charring madder carmine until it becomes of the hue required. bearing the same relation to madder carmine as burnt carmine to the carmine of cochineal, burnt madder is a permanent and perfectly unexceptionable pigment. by reason, probably, of its great price, it is not mentioned in trade catalogues, and must be held as commercially unknown. . _cobalt purples_ are obtainable ranging from the richest crimson purple to the most delicate violet. we have produced them by wet and dry methods, varying in brilliancy and beauty, but characterised generally by want of body, and frequently by a smalt-like grittiness. chemically, good and stable colours, they are not received with favour on the palette, and certainly may be very well replaced by mixtures of cobalt blue and madder red. when a permanent compound is obtainable equal in colour to an original pigment, and superior in its physical attributes, no objection can fairly be taken to its artistic preference. there are other things to be considered in a pigment besides permanence, or even permanence and colour combined. the two together do not constitute a perfect pigment, that is, a material of practical utility and value. in the last chapter, allusion was made to a green which possesses both the one and the other, and yet is--at present, at least--quite unfitted for artistic use. hence, with a strong partiality for simple original pigments, we are bound to confess there are cases where mixtures are justifiably preferred. all we contend for is, that each constituent of such mixtures should be stable, and neither give nor receive injury by being compounded. . _gold purple_, purple of cassius, or cassius's purple precipitate, was discovered in by cassius of leyden. it is a compound of tin and gold, best formed by mixing aqueous perchloride of iron with aqueous protochloride of tin, till the colour of the liquid has a shade of green, and then adding this liquid, drop by drop, to a solution of perchloride of gold, which is free from nitric acid and very dilute: after twenty-four hours the purple is deposited. when recently prepared, the colour is brightened by boiling nitric acid. not brilliant, but rich and powerful, this purple varies in hue according to the mode of manufacture from deep crimson to murrey or dark purple: it also differs in degrees of transparency. working well in water, it is an excellent though costly pigment, once popular in miniatures, but at present rarely, if ever used, as purple madder is cheaper, and perfectly well supplies its place. retaining its colour at a high red heat, it is now confined to enamel and porcelain painting, and to tinging glass of a fine red. if, whilst in its hydrated state, it be washed with ammonia, a bright purple liquid results, from which a violet colour, somewhat less expensive, can be produced, by combining the gold purple with alumina, and calcining the product in the same way that is practised with cobalt. this compound may be exposed to the action of the sun's rays for a year without being sensibly affected. . _prussian purple._ a prussiate of iron is obtainable of a violet hue, affording good shadow tints and clear pale washes. it has not, however, been introduced as a pigment, as ordinary prussian blue tinged with red furnishes a similar colour. . _sandal wood purple._ sandal wood contains about per cent. of colouring matter, soluble with difficultly in water, but readily dissolved by alcohol. from the latter solution, chloride of tin throws down a purple, and sulphate of iron a deep violet precipitate; neither of which is remarkable for permanence. . _tin violet._ by heating chromate of stannic oxide to bright redness, a dark violet mass is obtained, which is better adapted to enamel painting than to the palette. it communicates in glazings a variety of tints, from rose-red to violet. * * * * * so scant is the number of good purples in common use, that there are but two which can be classed as durable, namely, purple madder and the true mars violet. foremost in the second group stands burnt carmine. as there are different degrees both of permanence and fugacity, so are there different degrees of semi-stability. burnt carmine, burnt lake, indian purple, and violet carmine, all belong to this division; but the first certainly is more permanent than the rest. rich and beautiful as it is, purple madder cannot be called brilliant; while mars violet is, of course, ochrous. unlike green and orange, therefore, purple can point to no original pigment at once vivid and durable: as regards purple, brilliancy implies a semi-stability that borders more or less closely on fugacity. until the advent of a perfect palette, however, brilliancy and semi-stability will doubtless hold their own. their present popularity may be seen by a glance at the lists of artist-colours--lists compiled, be it remembered, in obedience to the law of demand and supply. if art were really so much honoured as some of its disciples pretend, none but durable colours would be employed. in our opinion, if a picture be worth painting at all, it is worth painting with permanent pigments; but many evidently think otherwise. deploring an error neither flattering to the craft they practise nor to themselves, we would urge such to bear in mind this axiom, semi-stable pigments become fugitive when used in thin washes. even in body they do not preserve their primitive hue, but in glazing and the like, their colour altogether flies or is wholly destroyed. it is this semi-stability, recommended to the thoughtless and indifferent by the beauty which generally accompanies it, that is the bane of modern art. even our greatest painters have yielded to its fascination. who has not gazed upon one of turner's fading pictures with still more of sadness than enjoyment, that anything so grand, so beautiful, so true, should slowly but surely be passing away? a feeling akin to pity is conjured up at the sight of the helpless wreck, abandoned amid the treacherous materials employed, and sinking deeper and deeper. mournful, indeed, is that mighty ruin of mind amid matter; mournful the thought that in years to come, the monument sought for will not be found. footnotes: [a] a talent of money, _i.e._, a talent's weight of silver, was equal to nearly £ . chapter xiv. on the tertiary, citrine. citrine, or the colour of the citron, is the first of the tertiary class of colours, or ultimate compounds of the primary triad, yellow, red, and blue; in which yellow is the archeus or predominating colour, and blue the extreme subordinate. for citrine being an immediate compound of the secondaries, _orange_ and _green_, of both which yellow is a constituent, the latter colour is of double occurrence therein, while the other two primaries enter singly into its composition. the mean or middle hue comprehends eight blue, five red, and six yellow, of equal intensities. hence citrine, according to its name, which is that of a class of colours and used commonly for a dark yellow, partakes in a subdued degree of all the powers of its archeus yellow. in estimating, therefore, its properties and effects in painting, it is to be regarded as participating of all the relations of yellow. by some this colour is improperly called brown, as almost all broken colours are. the harmonizing contrast of citrine is a _deep purple_, which may be seen beautifully opposed to it in nature, when the green of summer declines. as autumn advances, citrine tends towards its orange hues, including the colours termed aurora, chamoise, and others before enumerated under the head of yellow. it is the most advancing of the tertiary colours, or nearest in relation to light; and is variously of a tender, modest, cheering character. to understand and relish the harmonious relations and expressive powers of the tertiary colours, require a cultivation of perception and a refinement of taste for which study and practice are needed. to a great extent the colourist, like the poet, is born not made; but although he must have an innate sense of the beautiful and the true, hard work alone, with his head, his eyes, and his hands, will enable him to learn and turn to account the complex beauties and relations of tertiary colours. they are at once less definite and less generally evident, but more delightful--more frequent in nature, though rarer in common art, than the like relations of the secondaries and primaries. there is very little pure colour in the world: now and then a gleam dazzles us, like a burst of sunshine through grey mists; but as a rule, nature prefers broken colours to absolute hues. most pure in spring, most full in summer, most mellow in autumn, most sober in winter, her tints and shades of colour are always more or less interlaced, from white and the primaries to the semi-neutral and black. of original citrine-coloured pigments there are only a few, unless we include several imperfect yellows which might not improperly be called citrines. the following are best entitled to this appellation:-- . brown pink, _brown stil de grain_, _citrine lake_, or _quercitron lake_ is usually prepared from the berries of avignon (ramnus infectorius), better known as french, persian, or turkey berries; but a more durable and quicker drying species is obtained from the quercitron bark. if produced from the former, it must be branded as fugitive, but if from the latter, it may be termed semi-stable. in either case it is a lake, precipitated from the alkaline decoction by means of alum, in such proportions that the alkali shall not be more than half saturated. the excess of soda or potash employed imparts a brown hue; but the lake being in general an orange broken by green, falls into the class of citrine colours, sometimes inclining to greenness, and sometimes towards the warmth of orange. it works well both in water and oil, in the latter of which it is of great depth and transparency, but its tints with white lead are very fugitive, and in thin glazing it does not stand: the berry variety dries badly. a fine rich colour, more beautiful than eligible, it is popular in landscape for foliage in foregrounds. modified by admixture with burnt sienna or gamboge, it yields a compound which, with the addition of a small quantity of indigo, gives a warm though not very durable green. in many of the flemish pictures the foliage has become blue from the yellowish lake, with which the ultramarine was mixed, having faded. it has been remarked that the alteration made by time in semi-stable pigments is not so observable when they are employed in full body. their use generally has been deprecated, but in shadows such vegetable colours as brown pink are sometimes of advantage, as they are transparent, lose part of their richness by the action of the air, and do not become black. moreover, if mixed with pigments which have a tendency to darken, they mitigate it very much. this last, indeed, is the most legitimate purpose to which semi-stable pigments whose colour fades on exposure can be put. . mars brown, or _brun de mars_, is either a natural or artificial ochre containing iron, or iron and manganese. of much richness and strict permanence, it resembles raw umber in being a brown with a citrine cast, but is generally marked by a flush of orange which is not so observable in the latter pigment. . mixed citrine. what has been before remarked of the mixed secondary colours is more particularly applicable to the tertiary, it being more difficult to select three homogeneous substances of equal powers as pigments than two, that shall unite and work together cordially. hence the mixed tertiaries are still less perfect and pure than the secondaries; and as their hues are of extensive use in painting, original pigments of these colours are proportionably estimable to the artist. nevertheless there are two evident principles of combination, of which he may avail himself in producing these colours in the various ways of working; the one being that of combining two original secondaries; and the other, of uniting the three primaries in such a manner that the archeus shall predominate. thus in the case of citrine, either orange and green may be directly compounded; or yellow, red, and blue be so mixed that the yellow shall be in excess. these colours are, however, obtained in many instances with best and most permanent effect, not by the intimate combination of pigments upon the palette, but by intermingling them, in the manner of nature, on the canvas, so as to produce the appearance at a proper distance of a uniform colour. thus composed is the _citrine_ colour of fruit and foliage, on inspecting which we distinctly trace the stipplings of orange and green, or of yellow, red, and green. the truth and beauty resulting from such stipplings in art may be seen in the luscious fruit-pieces of the late w. hunt, where the bloom on the plum, the down of the peach, &c., are given with wondrous fidelity to nature. in the _russet_ hues of autumn foliage, where purple and orange have broken or superseded the summer green, this interlacing of colour appears; and also in the _olive_ foliage of the rose-tree, formed in the individual leaf by the ramification of purple in green. besides the durable yellows, reds, and blues, the following orange and green pigments are eligible for mixed citrines. they may likewise, however, be safely and simply compounded by slight additions, to an original brown, of that primary or secondary tone which is requisite to give it the required hue. permanent orange. | permanent green. | burnt roman ochre. | oxide of chromium, opaque. burnt sienna. | oxide of chromium, transparent. cadmium orange. | veronese green. mars orange. | viridian. neutral orange. | emerald green. | scheele's green. | terre verte. . raw umber, or umber, is a natural ochre, chiefly composed of oxide of manganese, oxide of iron, silica, and alumina. it is said to have been first brought from ancient ombria, now spoleto, in italy. found in england, and in most parts of the world, that which comes from cyprus, under the name of turkish or levant umber, is the best. of a quiet brown-citrine colour, semi-opaque, it dries rapidly, and injures no other good pigment with which it may be mixed. by time it grows darker, a disadvantage which may be obviated by compounding it with colours which pale on exposure. for light shadow tones and delicate grays it is extremely useful, and yields with blue most serviceable neutral greens. to mud walls, tints for stone, wood, gray rocks, baskets, yellow sails, and stormy seas, this citrine is suited. some artists have painted on grounds primed with umber, but it has penetrated through the lighter parts of the work. mérimée states that there are several of poussin's pictures so painted; that fine series, "the seven sacraments," being clearly among the number. * * * * * . _cassia fistula_ is a native vegetal pigment, though it is more commonly employed as a medicinal drug. it is brought from the east and west indies in a sort of cane, in which it is naturally produced. as a pigment it is deep, transparent, of an imperfect citrine colour, inclining to dark green, and diffusible in water without grinding, like gamboge and sap green. once sparingly used in water as a sort of substitute for bistre, it is not now to be met with on the palette. . _citrine brown._ from boiling, hot, or cold solutions of bichromate of potash and hyposulphite of soda in excess, we have obtained an agreeable citrine-brown colour, varying in hue and tint according to the mode of preparation and proportions of materials employed. it is a hydrated oxide of chromium which, when washed and carefully dried, yields a soft floury powder. transparent, and affording clear, delicate pale washes, the oxide has not been introduced as a pigment; partly owing to certain physical objections, and partly to a tendency to greenness. this tendency is peculiar to all the brown chrome oxides of whatever hue, whether hydrated or anhydrous; and indeed distinguishes more or less nearly all the compounds of chromium. green, in fact, is the natural colour of such compounds, the colour which they are constantly struggling to attain; and hence it is that the green oxides of chromium, being clothed in their native hue, are of such strict stability. the inclination to green which the citrine under notice possesses, may be seen by washing the precipitate with boiling water. it has been supposed that hydrated brown oxide of chromium is not a distinct compound of chromium and oxygen, but a feeble union of the green oxide with chromic acid. if this be the case, the citrine cast of the brown oxide is easily explained, as well as the gradual addition to its green by the deoxidation of the chromic acid. in mixed tints for autumn foliage and the like, the tendency to green of this citrine brown would be comparatively unimportant; but whether the oxide be adapted to the palette or not, we believe the colour might be utilized. in dyeing, for instance, the solutions of bichromate of potash and hyposulphite of soda would be worth a trial, the liquids of course being kept separate, and the brown washed with cold water. various patterns could be printed with the bichromate on a ground previously treated with hyposulphite. * * * * * several other browns, and ochrous earths, partake of a citrine hue, such as cassel earth, bistre, &c. but in the confusion of names, infinity of tones and tints, and variations of individual pigments, it is impossible to arrive at an unexceptionable or universally satisfactory arrangement. we have therefore followed a middle and general course in distributing pigments under their proper heads. of the three citrines in common use, mars brown and raw umber are strictly stable; while brown pink, the purest original citrine the palette possesses, is either semi-stable or fugitive, according to the colouring substance used in its preparation. chapter xv. on the tertiary, russet. russet, the second or middle tertiary colour, is, like citrine, constituted ultimately of the three primaries, red, yellow, and blue; but with this difference--instead of yellow as in citrine, the archeus or predominating colour in russet is red, to which yellow and blue are subordinates. for _orange_ and _purple_ being the immediate constituents of russet, and red being a component part of each of those colours, it follows that red enters doubly into russet, while yellow and blue appear but once therein. the proportions of its middle hue are eight blue, ten red, and three yellow, of equal intensities. thus composed, russet takes the relations and powers of a subdued red; and many pigments and dyes of the latter denomination are strictly of the class of russet colours. in fact, nominal distinction of colours is only relative; the gradation from hue to hue, as from tint to tint, and shade to shade, being of such unlimited extent, that it is impossible to pronounce absolutely where one hue, tint, or shade ends, and another begins. the harmonizing, neutralizing, or contrasting colour of russet, is a _deep green_; or when the russet inclines to orange, a _gray_ or _subdued blue_. these are often beautifully opposed in nature, being medial accordances or in equal relation to light, shade and other colours, and among the most agreeable to sense. russet, as we have said, partakes of the relations of red, but it is a hue moderated in every respect, and qualified for greater breadth of display in the colouring of nature and art; less so, perhaps, than its fellow-tertiaries in proportion as it is individually more beautiful. the powers of beauty are ever most effective when least obtrusive; and its presence in colour should be chiefly evident to the eye that seeks it--not so much courting as being courted. of the tertiary colours, russet is the most important to the artist; and there are many pigments classed as red, purple, &c., which are of russet hues. but there are few true russets, and only one original pigment of that colour is now known on the palette, to wit-- . rubens' madder, _orange russet_, _russet rubiate_, or _field's russet_. this is a very rich crimson russet with a flush of orange; pure, transparent, and of a middle hue between orange and purple. prepared from the madder root, it is not subject to change by the action of light, time, or mixture of other pigments. although not so much employed as the marrone madder brown, it is serviceable both as a local and auxiliary colour in compounding and producing with yellow the glowing hues of autumnal foliage, &c.; and with blue, the beautiful and endless variety of grays in skies, flesh, &c. a good glazing colour, its thin washes afford fine flesh tints in water: as an oil pigment it dries indifferently, and requires to be forced by the addition of a little gold size or varnish. cappah brown and burnt umber sadden it to the rich tones adapted for general use in shadows. so saddened, this lake meets admirably the dark centres of the upper petals of certain fancy geraniums, while alone its pale washes are equally well suited to the lower leaves. . mixed russet. what has been remarked in the preceding chapter upon the production of mixed citrine colours, is likewise applicable to mixed russet. by the immediate method of producing it materially from its secondaries, good and durable colours are obtained by compounding the following orange and purple pigments-- permanent orange. | permanent purple. | burnt roman ochre. | mars violet, true. burnt sienna. | purple madder. cadmium orange. | mars orange. | neutral orange. | many other less eligible duple and triple compounds of russet are obvious upon principle, and it may be produced by adding red in due predominance to some browns; but these, like most mixtures, are inferior to original pigments. to the orange colours there may be added cadmium red and the orange vermilions, pigments which were classed among the reds, but which contain sufficient yellow to render them adapted for either compound russets or compound citrines. and as of original purple pigments there are two only which are stable, such mixtures as madder red and french blue will help to swell the list of available permanent purples. rubens' madder itself may be changed in hue by being first mixed with blue and then with orange. * * * * * . _prussiate of copper_ differs chemically from prussian blue only in having copper instead of iron for its basis. it varies in hue from russet to purple brown, is transparent and deep, but, being very liable to change in colour by the action of light and by other pigments, has never been much used, and is now obsolete. the compound has the objection of containing free prussiate of potash, not removable by continued washing--sometimes as much as five per cent. * * * * * there are several other pigments which enter imperfectly into, or verge upon, the class of russet, which, having obtained the names of other classes to which they are allied, will be found under other heads; such are some of the ochres, as indian red. burnt carmine is often of the russet hue, or convertible to it by due additions of yellow or orange; as are burnt sienna and various browns, by like additions of lake or other reds. the one pigment in this chapter known to the modern palette, rubens' madder, is permanent. chapter xvi. on the tertiary, olive. olive is the third and last of the tertiary colours, and nearest in relation to shade. like its co-tertiaries, citrine and russet, it is composed of the three primaries, blue, red, and yellow; but is formed more directly of the secondaries, _purple_ and _green_, in each of which blue is a constituent: hence blue occurs twice in the latter mode of forming olive, while red and blue enter therein singly and subordinately. blue is, therefore, in every instance the archeus or predominating colour of olive; its perfect or middle hue comprehending sixteen of blue to five of red and three of yellow. it partakes in a proportionate measure of the powers, properties, and relations of its archeus: accordingly, the antagonist or harmonizing contrast of olive is a _deep orange_. like blue, olive is a retiring colour, the most so of all the colours, being the penultimate of the scale, or nearest of all in relation to black, and last, theoretically, of the regular distinctions of colours. hence its importance in nature and painting is almost as great as that of black; it divides the office of clothing the face of creation with green and blue; with both which, as with black and grey, it enters into innumerable compounds and accordances, changing its name as either hue prevails, into green, gray, ashen, slate, &c. thus the olive hues of foliage are called green, and the purple hues of clouds are called gray, &c.; but such terms are general only, and unequal to the infinite particularity of nature. this infinity, or endless variation of hue, tint, and relation, of which the tertiaries are susceptible, gives a boundless license to the revelry of taste, in which the genius of the pencil may display the most captivating harmonies of colouring, and the most chaste and delicate expressions; too subtle to be defined, too intricate to be easily understood, and often too exquisite to be felt by the untutored eye. nature always melodizes by imperceptible gradations, while she harmonizes by distinct contrasts. at different seasons we have blossoms of all hues, variously subordinated; and when the time of flowers may be considered past, as if she had no further use for her fine colours, or were willing to display her ultimate skill and refinement, nature lavishes the contents of her palette, not disorderly, but in multiplied relations, over all vegetal creation, in those rich and beautiful accordances of broken and finishing colours with which autumn is decorated ere the year decays and sinks into olive darkness. as a rule, no colour exists in nature without gradation, which is to colours what curvature is to lines. the difference in mere beauty between a gradated and ungradated colour may be seen by laying an even tint of rose-colour on paper, and putting a rose leaf beside it. the victorious beauty of the rose, as compared with other flowers, depends wholly on the delicacy and quantity of its colour gradations, all other flowers being either less rich in gradation, not having so many folds of leaf; or less tender, being patched and veined instead of flushed. it is not enough, however, that colour should be gradated in painting by being made simply paler or darker at one place than another. generally, colour changes as it diminishes, and is not only darker at one spot, but also purer at one spot than elsewhere; although it does not follow that either the darkest or the lightest spot should be the purest. very often the two gradations more or less cross each other, one passing in one direction from paleness to darkness, another in another direction from purity to dulness; but there will almost always be both of them, however reconciled. hence, every piece of blue, say, laid on should be quite pure only at some given spot, from which it must be gradated into blue less pure--greyish blue, or greenish blue, or purplish blue--over all the rest of the space it occupies. in turner's largest oil pictures, there is not one spot of colour as large as a grain of wheat ungradated; and it will be found in practice that brilliancy of hue, vigour of light, and even the aspect of transparency in shade, are essentially dependent on this character alone; hardness, coldness, and opacity, resulting far more from equality of colour than from nature of colour. given some mud off a city crossing, some ochre out of a gravel pit, a little whitening, and some coal-dust, and a luminous picture might be painted, if time were allowed to gradate the mud, and subdue the dust. but not with the red of the ruby, the blue of the gentian, snow for the light, and amber for the gold, could such a picture be produced, if the masses of those colours were kept unbroken in purity, and unvarying in depth. olive being usually a compound colour both with the artist and mechanic, there are few olive pigments in commerce. . mixed olive may be compounded in several ways; directly, by mixing green and purple; or indirectly, by adding to blue a smaller proportion of yellow and red, or by breaking much blue with little orange. cool black pigments, combined with yellow ochre, afford eligible olives; hues which are called _green_ in landscape, and _invisible green_ in mechanic painting. it is to be noted that in producing these and other compound colours on the palette or canvass, those mixtures will most conduce to the harmony of the performance which are formed of pigments otherwise generally employed in the picture. thus, presuming aureolin to be the principal yellow used, the same yellow should be chosen for compounding orange and green, or for obtaining indirectly citrine, russet, and olive. permanent green. | permanent purple. | oxide of chromium, opaque. | mars violet, true. oxide of chromium, transparent. | purple madder. veronese green. | viridian. | emerald green. | scheele's green. | terre verte. | as in the case of russet, there may be added to the two original purples, mixtures composed of durable reds and blues. there are so many ways of producing the tertiaries, that no difficulty can be found in compounding them with stable pigments. each tertiary may be represented as follows:-- citrine = orange + green. " = (yellow + red) + (yellow + blue.) " = yellow + red + blue. russet = orange + purple. " = (yellow + red) + (red + blue.) " = red + yellow + blue. olive = green + purple. " = (yellow + blue) + (red + blue.) " = blue + yellow + red. from the above equations, and by consulting the lists given of permanent primary and secondary colours, the artist will at once see how easily and safely he may vary his mode of compounding the tertiaries. . olive green, sometimes called _dewint's green_, is an arbitrary compound, or mixed green, of a fine deep olive colour and sober richness. advisedly or not, it is used in landscape, sketching, &c.; but only in water, olive lake supplying its place in oil. like many other compound pigments, it is either permanent, semi-stable, or fugitive, according to the constituents of which it is composed. generally speaking, it is more beautiful than durable, and is often decidedly fugacious, fading on exposure. it is impossible for a writer to pronounce an absolute opinion on the stability of all mixtures sold in a separate form, inasmuch as the compounds of one firm may differ from those of another. we have before expressed our dislike to such pigments, and this uncertainty with regard to their composition serves to strengthen it. nevertheless, as there are exceptions to every rule, it must be admitted that the palette possesses compounds always to be relied upon. . olive lake is in commerce exclusively an oil colour. when true, it is a lake prepared from the green ebony, or laburnum, and is of considerable permanence, transparency, and depth, both in water and oil; in which latter vehicle it dries well. this variety, however, may be said to be obsolete; having given way to a mixture, usually semi-stable, and liable to blacken. * * * * * . _burnt verdigris_ is what its name expresses, and is an olive-coloured oxide of copper deprived of acid. it dries remarkably well in oil, is more durable than the original verdigris, and is in other respects an improved and more eligible pigment, although not to be recommended. . _olive oxide of chromium._ an olive oxide of this metal is obtainable, transparent, of strict stability, and altogether superior to any original or compound olive pigment as yet known. eligible either in water or oil, it is admirably adapted for autumn foliage, where a quiet, subdued, nature-like green is required. it has not, however, been introduced, partly because of its expense, and partly because a mixture of other pigments with the ordinary chrome oxides sufficiently answers the purpose. there are more good colours in the world than are dreamt of in the palette's philosophy, but either they are not wanted, or are too costly to sell. in a great measure, both art and science are dependent on commerce. . _olive rinman's green._ a compound analogous to cobalt green may be made, of an olive hue, with more body, and equally stable. . _olive scheele's green._ cupric arsenite, when heated, gives off arsenious acid and water, leaving a residue of arsenide of copper and copper arseniate. a series of olive colours is so afforded, which are as durable as their original pigment, and might with advantage be substituted for the doubtful compounds at present in use. . _olive schweinfurt green_ is likewise furnished by gentle calcination. it may be directly prepared by mixing boiling aqueous solutions of equal parts of crystallised verdigris and arsenious acid. an olive-green precipitate is immediately formed, which is apt, without due precaution, to pass into an emerald green. a durable copper colour. . _olive terre verte._ we have obtained a very beautiful olive from terre verte by simply changing its hue. in oil, especially, the colour so produced would be found of service for autumn foliage, or richly painted foregrounds. a simple original pigment, consisting wholly of the earth, it resembles ordinary terre verte in being unaffected by strong light or impure air, and uninjured by admixture; but differs from it in not darkening by time. semi-transparent, of sober richness and drying well in oil, it is, according to its powers, a perfectly unexceptionable colour, of strict stability. * * * * * of the two olive colours in common use, olive lake and olive green, the first is generally semi-stable, and apt to blacken; while the second is usually fugitive, and liable to fade: both are compounds. the palette, therefore, possesses no original olive pigment, good or bad. a glance at the numbered italicised olives will show that the doubtful mixtures referred to might with advantage be superseded. it is clear that the olive pigments which the palette does not know, are better than those with which it is acquainted. chapter xvii. on the semi-neutral, brown. as colour, according to the regular scale descending from white, ceases properly with the last of the tertiaries, olive, in theory the neutral black would here form a fitting conclusion. practically, however, every coloured pigment, of every class or tribe, combines with black as it exists in pigments--not simply being deepened or lowered in tone thereby, but likewise defiled in colour, or changed in class. hence there arises a new series or scale of coloured compounds, having black for their basis, which, though they differ not theoretically from the preceding order inverted, are yet in practice imperfect or impure. these broken compounds of black, or coloured blacks and greys, we have distinguished by the term, semi-neutral, and divided them into three classes: brown, marrone, and gray. what tints are with respect to white, they are with regard to black, being, so to speak, black tints or shades. the first of the series is brown, a term which, in its widest acceptation, has been used to include vulgarly every kind of dark broken colour, and is, in a more limited sense, the rather indefinite name of a very extensive class of colours of warm or tawny hues. accordingly there are browns of every denomination except blue; to wit, yellow-brown, red-brown, orange-brown, purple-brown, citrine-brown, russet-brown, &c. but there is no such thing as a blue-brown, nor, strictly, any other coloured brown in which blue predominates; such predominance of a cold colour at once carrying the compound into the class of gray, ashen, or slate. brown comprises the hues called dun, hazel, auburn, feuillemort, mort d'ore, &c.; several of which have been already mentioned as allied to the tertiary colours. the term _brown_, then, denotes rightly a warm broken colour, of which _yellow_ is a chief constituent: hence brown is in some measure to shade what yellow is to light. hence, also, proper quantities of either the three primaries, the three secondaries, or the three tertiaries, produce variously a brown mixture. browns contribute to coolness and clearness by contrast when opposed to pure colours, and rubens more especially appears to have employed them upon this principle; although the same may be said of titian, correggio, paulo veronese, and all the best colourists. being a sort of intermedia between positive colours and neutrality, browns equally contrast colour and shade. this accounts for their vast importance in painting, and the necessity of preserving them distinct from other colours, to which they give foulness in mixture; and to this is due their use in backgrounds and in relieving of coloured objects. the tendency in the compounds of colours to run into brownness and warmth is one of the common natural properties of colours which occasions them to deteriorate or defile each other in mixture. brown by consequence is synonymous with foul or dirty, as opposed to fair or clean; and hence brown, which is the nearest of the semi-neutrals in relation to light, is to be avoided in mixture with light colours. yet is it an example of the wisdom of nature's author that brown is rendered, like green, a prevailing hue, and in particular an earth colour, as a contrast which is harmonized by the blueness and coldness of the sky. this tendency will likewise explain the use of brown in harmonizing and toning, as well as the great number of natural and artificial pigments and colours so called. it was the fertility and abundance of browns that caused our great landscape-colourist wilson, when a friend went exultingly to tell him that he had discovered a new brown, to check him in his characteristic way, with--"i'm sorry for it: we have gotten too many of them already." nevertheless, fine transparent browns are obviously very valuable. if red or blue in excess be added to brown, it falls into the other semi-neutral classes, marrone or gray. the wide acceptation of the term brown has occasioned much confusion in the naming of colours, since broken colours in which red, &c. predominate, have been improperly called brown. that term, therefore, should be confined to the semi-neutral colours, compounded of, or like in hue to, either the primary _yellow_, the secondary orange, or the tertiary _citrine_, with a _black_. the general contrast or harmonizing colour of such compounds will consequently be more or less purple or blue. the number of browns is great, as may be seen by the following list. this list, however, is good, and includes a considerable proportion of permanent pigments. . asphaltum, _asphalt_, _bitumen_, _mineral pitch_, _jew's pitch_, _antwerp brown_, _liquid asphaltum_, &c., is a sort of mineral pitch or tar which, rising liquid to the surface of the lacus asphaltites or asphaltic lake (the dead sea) concretes there by the natural action of the atmosphere and sun, and, floating in masses to the shores, is gathered by the arabs. the french give it an additional name from the region of the lake, to wit, bitumen of judea; and with the english, from the same cause, it has the alias of jew's pitch. asphaltum is not so called, however, after the lake, as is asserted by a writer in the encyclopædia: it is just the reverse--pliny says, "the asphaltic lake produces nothing but bitumen (in greek, asphaltos); and hence its name." a substance resembling asphalt is found at neufchâtel in switzerland, and in other parts of europe. a specimen of the native bitumen, brought from persia, and of which the author made trial, had a powerful scent of garlic when rubbed. in the fire it softened without flowing, and burnt with a lambent flame; did not dissolve by heat in turpentine, but ground easily as a pigment in pale drying oil, affording a fine deep transparent brown colour, resembling that of commercial asphaltum; dried firmly almost as soon as the drying-oil alone, and worked admirably both in water and oil. asphaltum may be used as a permanent brown in water, for which purpose the native is superior to the artificial. the former, however, is now seldom to be met with, the varieties employed on the palette being the residua of various resinous and bituminous matters, distilled for the sake of their essential oils. these residua are all black and glossy like common pitch, which differs from them only in having been less acted upon by fire, and thence in being softer. at present asphaltum is prepared in excessive abundance as a product of the distillation of coal at the gas manufactories, and is chiefly confined to oil-painting, being first dissolved in turpentine, which fits it for glazing and shading. its fine brown colour and perfect transparency are lures to its free use with many artists, notwithstanding the certain destruction that awaits the work on which it is much employed, owing to its tendency to contract and crack by changes of temperature and the atmosphere; but for which, and a slight liability to blacken, it would be a most beautiful, durable, and eligible pigment. the solution of asphaltum in turpentine, united with drying oil by heat, or the bitumen torrefied and ground in linseed or drying-oil, acquires a firmer texture, but becomes less transparent and dries with difficulty. if common asphaltum, as usually prepared with turpentine, be used with some addition of vandyke brown, umber, or cappah brown ground in drying oil, it will gain body and solidity which will render it much less disposed to crack. nevertheless, asphaltum is to be regarded in practice rather as a dark varnish than as a solid pigment, and all the faults of a bad varnish are to be guarded against in employing it. it is common to call the solution in turpentine _asphaltum_, and the mixture with drying-oil _bitumen_: the latter is likewise known as _antwerp brown_. a preparation for the use of water-colour artists is employed under the name of _liquid asphaltum_. . bistre is extracted by watery solution from the soot of wood fires, whence it derives a strong pyroligneous scent. it is a very powerful citrine-brown, washes well, and has a clearness suited to architectural subjects. its use is confined to water-colour painting, in which it was much employed by the old masters for tinting drawings and shading sketches, before the general application of indian ink to such purposes. of a wax-like texture, it is perfectly durable, but unfitted for oil, drying therein with the greatest difficulty. a substance of this kind collects at the back of fire-places in cottages where peat is the constant fuel burnt; which, purified by solution and evaporation, yields a fine bistre, similar to the scotch. all kinds of bistre attract moisture from the atmosphere. . bone brown and _ivory brown_ are obtained by roasting bone and ivory until by partial charring they become of a brown colour throughout. though much esteemed by some artists, they are not quite eligible pigments, being bad driers in oil, the only vehicle in which they are now used. moreover, their lighter shades are not permanent either in water or oil when exposed to the action of strong light, or mixed in tint with white lead. the palest of these colours are the most opaque: the deepest are more durable, and most so when approaching black. neither bone nor ivory brown is often employed, but the former may be occasionally applied in forming clear, silvery, warm grays, in combination with zinc white. . burnt umber is what its name denotes, and has a deeper shade with a more russet hue than the raw umber. a quiet brown, it affords clear and warm shadows, but is apt to look rather turbid if used in great depth. it washes and works capitally in water, and dries quickly in oil, in which it is employed as a siccative. perfectly stable in either vehicle, it may sometimes be substituted for vandyke brown, is eligible in fresco, and invaluable in buildings. where the lakes of madder require saddening, the addition of burnt umber increases their powers, and improves their drying in oil. it contains manganese and iron, and may be produced artificially. the old italians called it _falsalo_. . caledonian brown is a permanent native pigment, the use of which is confined to oil. a magnificent orange-russet brown of considerable transparency, it is marked by great depth and richness, and will be found serviceable where a powerful brown of the burnt sienna class is required. . cappah brown, or _cappagh brown_, is likewise a colour peculiar to oil. it is a species of bog-earth or peat, mixed with manganese in various proportions, and found on the estate of lord audley at cappagh, near cork. the specimens in which the peat earth most abounds are of light weight, friable texture, and dark colour; while those which contain more of the metal are heavy and paler. as pigments, the peaty cappah brown is the most transparent and rich in colour. a prompt drier in oil, its surface rivels during drying where it lies thick. the other and metallic sort is a more opaque, a lighter and warmer brown pigment, which dries rapidly and smoothly in a body or thick layer. the first may be regarded as a superior vandyke brown, the second as a superior umber. the two extreme kinds should be distinguished as light and deep cappah browns; the former excellent for dead colouring and grounds, the latter for glazing and graining. these pigments work well in oil and varnish; they do not, however, keep their place while drying in oil by fixing the oil, like the driers of lead, but run. under the names of _euchrome_ and _mineral brown_, they have been introduced into commerce for civil and marine painting. . cassel earth, _terre de cassel_, or, corruptly, _castle earth_, is specially an oil pigment, similar to burnt umber but of a more russet hue. it is an earth containing bitumen, a substance which, with pit-coal, lignite or brown coal, jet, petroleum or rock oil, naphtha, &c., is looked upon as a product of the decomposition of organic matter, beneath the surface of the earth, in situations where the conditions of contact with water, and almost total exclusion of atmospheric air, are fulfilled. deposited at the bottom of seas, lakes, or rivers, and subsequently covered up by accumulations of clay and sand, the organic tissue undergoes a kind of fermentation by which the bodies in question are slowly produced. the true bitumens appear to have arisen from coal or lignite by the action of subterranean heat; and very closely resemble some of the products yielded by the destructive distillation of those bodies. rich as is the tone of colour of cassel earth, it is apt to lose this in some measure on exposure to light. mérimée remembers to have seen a head, the brown hair of which had been painted partly with the earth alone, and partly with a mixture of the earth and white; yet the hair where the white was employed was darker than that painted solely with the brown, the white having fixed the colour. to compensate for its thus fading, it should be mixed with pigments that are permanent, such as umber and lamp black. like all bituminous earths, it needs the strongest drying oil. by calcination, a greater degree of intensity may be imparted to the colour, and perhaps a little more solidity. in landscapes it is of much service for the most vigorous portions of foregrounds and the trunks of trees, as well as for painting cavernous rocks or deep recesses in architecture. compounded with burnt lake and a little prussian blue, it gives a black the most profound. . chalon's brown is a water-colour pigment, transparent and inclining to red; deep, full, and very rich. on exposure to light it becomes less russet, but is otherwise strictly stable. . cologne earth, incorrectly called _cullen's earth_, is a native bituminous earth, containing less bitumen than cassel earth, and therefore drying more quickly. darker than that variety, it is less transparent, and covers better. in its general qualities it resembles vandyke brown, except that in combination with white, it affords a range of cooler brown tints. useful for the shadows of buildings, it does not wash so well as sepia, and is preferred occasionally on that account. by some it has been called durable, by others branded as fugacious. according to bouvier, brown hair represented by this colour has been known to disappear in six months, all the brown vanishing, and nothing remaining but a few black lines of the sketch. as it is similar in composition to cassel earth, the safest course would be to mix it with umber, and not to employ it alone. calcined, it acquires a reddish hue. . indelible brown ink. although this cannot be classed as a pigment, yet, being very useful in water-colours, it may be proper to describe its qualities. the ink is a rich brown fluid, and, as its name imports, is indelibly fixed on the paper as soon as it is dry; thus allowing the artist to work or wash over it repeatedly, without its being disturbed. if diluted with water to its faintest tint, it still continues to retain its indelible properties undiminished. it is generally used with a reed pen, and employed chiefly in architectural details and outlines. various brown inks, principally solutions of bistre and sepia, were adopted in sketching by claude, rembrandt, and many of the old masters. in modern times, a beautiful transparent brown for water-colour artists, known as _liquid prout's brown_, has been extensively employed. this contains less fixative than the indelible ink, and is the vehicle with which nearly all samuel prout's drawings were executed. . leitch's brown is a permanent pigment peculiar to water painting. a most beautiful olive brown, soft and rich, it is admirably adapted for autumnal foliage tints and the like, either alone or compounded with burnt sienna or cadmium orange. transparent and clear in its washes, this is a most serviceable colour in landscape generally. . mixed brown can be produced in endless variety, either by adding a warm colour to black, such as yellow, orange, or citrine, or else by combining the three primaries, secondaries, or tertiaries in suitable proportions. by consulting the lists given of permanent pigments belonging to those classes, and by referring to the chapter on black, it will be seen that no difficulty exists in obtaining durable mixed browns when required. for example, there may be formed from the primaries, a compound of aureolin, rose madder, and ultramarine; or from the secondaries, a mixture of cadmium orange, viridian, and madder purple. of course, as with other mixed tints, the brown hue can be furnished not only by direct compounding of the colours on the palette, but by laying one colour over the other on the paper or canvass, or by stippling. . mummy, _mummy brown_, or _egyptian brown_, is a bituminous product mixed with animal remains, brought from the catacombs of egypt, where liquid bitumen was employed three thousand years ago in embalming. by a slow chemical change, it has combined during so many ages with substances which give it, as a rule, a more solid and lasting texture than simple asphaltum. generally resembling the latter in its other properties and uses as a pigment, mummy is often substituted for it, being less liable to crack or move on the canvass. it must be remembered, however, that mummy varies exceedingly both in its composition and qualities; and as from its very nature and origin nothing certain can be said of it, but little reliance should be placed on this brown. mummy belongs to the class of pigments which are either good or bad, according as they turn out. on the whole, we agree with the american artist, who has been more than once quoted in these pages, that nothing is to be gained by smearing one's canvass with a part, perhaps, of the wife of potiphar. with a preference for materials less frail and of a more sober character, we likewise hold with bouvier, that it is not particularly prudent to employ without necessity these crumbled remains of dead bodies, which must contain ammonia and particles of fat in a concrete state and so be more or less apt to injure the colours with which they may be united. the use of mummy is now confined to oil, in which, says mr. carmichael, a mixture of mummy and bitumen will dry and never crack. if this be the case, the compound would be preferable to either separate. . prussian brown is an iron oxide, containing more or less alumina, and prepared by calcining an aluminous prussian blue, or treating an aluminous ferrocyanide of peroxide of iron with an alkali. possessing the nature and properties of burnt sienna, it is transparent, permanent, and dries well in oil. of an orange hue, it is neither so rich nor so powerful as that pigment, and is better employed as a glaze than in body. . sepia, _liquid sepia_, _seppia_, or _animal Æthiops_, is named after the sepia or cuttle-fish, also called the ink-fish, from its affording a dark liquid, which was used as an ink and pigment by the ancients. all the species of cuttle-fish are provided with a dark-coloured fluid, sometimes quite black, which they emit to obscure the water, when it is wanted to favour their escape from danger, or, by concealing their approach, to enable them with greater facility to seize their prey. the liquid consists of a mass of extremely minute carbonaceous particles, intermixed with an animal gelatine or glue, and is capable of being so widely spread, than an ounce of it will suffice to darken several thousand ounces of water. from this liquid, brought chiefly from the adriatic, but likewise obtainable from our own coasts, is derived the pigment sepia, as well as, partially, the indian ink of the chinese. sepia is a powerful dusky brown, of a fine texture, transparent, works admirably in water, combines cordially with other pigments, and is very permanent. it is much used as a water-colour, and for making drawings in the manner of bistre and indian ink; but is not employed in oil, as it dries therein very reluctantly. extremely clear in its pale tints, and perhaps the best washing colour known, sepia must be used with caution, or otherwise heaviness will be engendered in the shades, so strong is its colouring property. mixed with indigo, or, preferably, prussian blue and black, it is eligible for distant trees, for a general shadow tint in light backgrounds, and for the shade of white linen or white draperies. with madder red it forms a fine hue, somewhat resembling brown madder, and with crimson lake and indigo gives an artistically excellent black. sometimes alone and sometimes in combination with lamp black, or madder red and prussian blue saddened by the black, it will be found useful in dark foreground boats, rocks, near buoys, sea-weed, &c. compounded with aureolin, sepia yields a series of beautiful and durable neutral greens for landscape; and mixed with prussian blue, affords low olive greens, which may be deepened into very cool dark greens by the addition of black. for hills and mountains in mid-distance, sepia combined with cobalt and brown madder is of service; or, for the dark markings and divisions of stones in brooks and running streams, the same compound without the cobalt. mixed with purple madder, it furnishes a fine tint for the stems and branches of trees; and with french blue and madder red gives a really good black. compounds of sepia and yellow ochre, gamboge, raw sienna, or cobalt and aureolin, are severally useful. a rich and strong brown is formed by the admixture of madder red, burnt sienna, and sepia; a tint which may be modified by omitting the sepia or the sienna, or reducing the proportions of either. for dutch craft, this tint and its variations are of great value. a wash of sepia over green very agreeably subdues the force of the colour. . warm sepia is the natural sepia warmed by mixture with other browns of a red hue, and is intended for drawings where it would be difficult to keep the whole work of the same tint, unless the compound were made in the cake of colour. . roman sepia is a preparation similar to the preceding, but with a yellow instead of a red cast. . vandyke brown. this pigment, hardly less celebrated than the great painter whose name it bears, is a species of peat or bog-earth of a fine, deep, semi-transparent brown colour. the pigment so much esteemed and used by vandyke is said to have been brought from cassel; an assertion which seems to be justified by a comparison of cassel earth with the browns of his pictures. gilpin in his essays on picturesque beauty, remarks that "in the tribe of browns--in oil-painting, one of the finest earths is known, at the colour shops, by the name of castle-earth, or vandyke's brown." the vandyke brown of the present day is a bituminous ochre, purified by grinding and washing over. apt to vary in hue, it is durable both in water and oil, but, like all bituminous earths, dries tardily as a rule in the latter vehicle. clear in its pale tints, deep and glowing in shadows, in water it has sometimes the bad property of working up: for this reason, where it is necessary to lay on a great body of it, the moist tube colour should be preferred to the cake. with madder red, the brown gives a fine tint, most useful as a warm shadow colour; and with prussian blue, clear, very sober neutral greens for middle distances. in banks and roads, vandyke brown is the general colour for dragging over the surface, to give roughness of texture: compounded with yellow ochre, it affords a good ground tint, and with purple madder a rich shadow colour. in sunrise and sunset clouds, a mixture of the brown with cobalt yields a cold neutral green, adapted for those clouds at the greatest distance from the sun. for foliage tints, aureolin, french blue, and vandyke brown, will be found of service; or as a glaze over such tints, the yellow and the brown. with raw sienna, brown madder, payne's gray, gamboge, and roman ochre, this brown is useful. in a water-colour winter scene, when the trees are denuded of foliage, the net work of the small branches at the tops of them may be prettily given with cobalt and vandyke brown, used rather dry, and applied with a brush having its hairs spread out either by the fingers or by drawing them through a fine-tooth comb before working. grass is likewise represented readily by this means, and so are small trees on the summit of a cliff or in like positions. the campania brown of the old italian painters was a similar earth. . verona brown, a pigment peculiar to oil painting, is a native ferruginous earth. a citrine brown of great service in tender drab greens, it forms with terre verte and the madder lakes rich autumnal tints of much beauty and permanence. . yellow madder, _cory's yellow madder_, or _cory's madder_, is classed among the browns for the same reason that italian pink was ranked among the yellows. it was stated in the eighth chapter that no true madder yellow, brilliant and pure, exists as a pigment at the present day, and certainly this preparation can lay no claim to the title. except in name, it is an orange-brown of the burnt sienna hue, and might therefore with more reason have been called orange madder. it is a good and permanent colour, rich and transparent, at present used only in oil, we believe, and chiefly as a glaze. * * * * * . _cadmium brown_. by igniting the white carbonate of cadmium, among other methods, a cinnamon-brown oxide is obtainable, of a very clear and beautiful colour if the process be well conducted. it is, however, not eligible as a pigment, owing to the rapidity with which the oxide is acted upon by the air. in water, especially, we have found this brown so eagerly absorb carbonic acid from the atmosphere as to become in a few months once more a carbonate, and as purely white as before. the same result is observable when the powder is exposed: some shown at the international exhibition of , on a glass stand, had to be removed, its label marked 'cadmium brown' being at last found attached to a sample of cadmium white. in oil, the conversion takes place less readily, that vehicle having the property of protecting, to some extent, pigments from oxidation. it is curious that even in a book a water-rub of the brown slowly but surely changes to white. . _catechu browns._ catechu is an extract of the khair tree or _acacia catechu_ of bombay, bengal, and other parts of india. with the exception of such earthy matters as are communicated to it during the preparation, or are added purposely as adulterants, catechu is entirely soluble both in water and alcohol. an aqueous solution has a reddish-brown colour, and gives the following results:--protosalts of iron thrown down olive-brown and persalts greenish-brown precipitates; salts of tin and lead yield brownish-yellow and brick-coloured deposits respectively; while acetate of copper or bichromate of potash furnishes brown residues. to our knowledge, none of these have been introduced as pigments, but a brown prepared by dr. lyon playfair some years back from the catechu bark has been described as exceedingly rich, transparent, and beautiful; and recommended for painting _if not too thinly applied_. . _chrome browns_ are produced by various methods of several hues, tints, and shades, both by wet and dry processes. we have obtained them by many methods, of different degrees of permanence. some very intense in colour have stood well, while others paler and more delicate have gradually greened, but none possessed the strict stability of the green oxides. presuming a paucity of browns, these preparations of chromium would be worth further attention; but, with the objection of being--for browns--somewhat expensive, they have the far more fatal objection of not being wanted. . _copper brown_, varying in hue, is obtainable, in the form of prussiate, &c., but cannot be recommended, however made. . _french prussian-brown._ according to bouvier, a colour similar to that of bistre, and rivalling asphaltum in transparency, is produced by partially charring a moderately dark prussian blue; neither one too intense, which gives a heavy and opaque brownish-red, nor one too aluminous and bright, which yields a feeble and yellowish tint. yielding to a rapture we cannot wholly share, he describes its qualities in the warmest terms. in his opinion, it has the combined advantages of asphaltum, mummy, and raw sienna, without their drawbacks. "i cannot," he says, "commend too highly the use of this charming bistre-tint: it is as beautiful and good in water as in oil, perfectly transparent, of a most harmonious tone, and dries better than any other colour suitable for glazing. closely resembling asphaltum in tint as well as in transparency, this brown is preferable to it in every point of view." as the colour is very quickly and easily obtained, the artist can judge for himself of its proper value. m. bouvier's process is, to place upon a clear fire a large iron spoon, into which, when red hot, some pieces of the prussian blue are put about the size of a small nut: these soon begin to crackle, and throw off scales in proportion as they grow hot. the spoon is then removed, and allowed to cool: if suffered to remain too long on the fire, the right colour will not be produced. when the product is crushed small, some of it will be found blackish, and the rest of a yellowish brown: this is quite as it should be. chemically, the result is a mixture of oxide of iron and partly undecomposed or carbonised prussiate. . _gambogiate of iron._ dr. scoffern read a paper at the meeting of the british association of science, in , describing this combination as a rich brown, like asphaltum, but richer, as well as more durable in oil. it has not been, however, employed as a pigment, or at least is not at present. . _hypocastanum_, or chestnut brown, is a brown lake prepared from the horse-chestnut. this now obsolete pigment is transparent and rich in colour, warmer than brown pink, and very durable both in water and oil; in the latter of which it dries moderately well. . _iron browns_, native or artificial, are well represented on the palette, but nothing would be easier than to increase their number. of all metals, iron is the richest source of colour, capable of affording all colours with the exception of white. none of them, however, are so numerous as the browns, a description of which would fill this chapter. suffice it to state they are obtainable of every hue, tint, and shade, and are generally permanent. they are made on a large scale and sold under various names for house-painting, &c. . _manganese brown_ is an oxide of manganese, which is quite durable both in water and oil, and dries admirably in the latter. a fine, deep, semi-opaque brown of good body, it is deficient in transparency, but might be useful for glazing or lowering the tone of white without tinging it, and as a local colour in draperies, &c. . _nickel brown._ a very pleasing yellowish brown is obtainable from nickel, bright and clear in its pale washes, and of some richness in oil. unless thoroughly washed, it has a tendency to greenness in time. . _ochre browns._ the slight affinity of sulphur for yellow ochre, with its merely temporary effect thereon, was observed in the eighth chapter, where allusion was made to the action of sulphuretted hydrogen and sulphide of ammonium on the earth. sulphur alone, and in the dry state, ignited with yellow or other native ochres converts them into browns, varying in hue, and of greater or less durability. those browns, however, which we have made by this process, although standing well in a book, have not withstood exposure to light and air. they have all become pale, whitish, or of a drab cast, evidently through the oxidation of the sulphur, or rather the sulphide of iron formed during the calcination. practically, therefore, ochres have an antipathy to sulphur, moist or dry, by itself or in combination; and are, so to speak, the disinfectants of the palette. ever waging war against sulphurous vapours, the native earths serve to protect a picture from the damaging influence of impure air, whether they be used alone, or employed in admixture with such pigments as are injured thereby. . _purple brown_ is a refuse manufacture from indian red washings. a dull, heavy, coarse colour, it belongs to the class of common pigments which are unexceptionable for decorative painting, but scarcely suited to the higher branches of art. as this work professes simply to treat of artistic pigments, that have been, are, or might be, more than a passing reference to those colours exclusively adopted by house-painters, &c., would be out of place. . _rubens' brown_, still in use in the netherlands under this appellation, is an earth of a lighter colour and more ochrous texture than the vandyke brown of english commerce: it is also of a warmer or more tawny hue than the latter pigment. beautiful and durable, it works well both in water and oil, and much resembles the brown employed by teniers. . _uranium brown._ yellow, red, orange, green, have been previously noticed as being derived from uranium, and to this list of colours may now be added brown. a warm rich hue of the utmost intensity may be produced, which possesses considerable permanence, although not equal to that of uranium yellow. . _zinc brown._ a yellow-brown, so yellow that it might fairly have been classed with the ochrous colours of that denomination, is made by combining zinc with another metal by the aid of heat. experience tells us that it is, chemically, a thoroughly good and stable pigment. safely to be used in admixture, it is a clear, bright colour, affording good greens by compounding with blue. of no great power, and semi-opaque, this yellow-brown or brown-yellow is superior to some of the pigments at present used, but is probably too much like them in hue and other properties to be of any special value. * * * * * besides the preceding, there are those browns of a citrine or russet cast which are elsewhere described, such as raw umber, madder brown, &c. moreover, there are numberless other varieties, obtainable from most of the metals, from many organic substances, and from a combination of the two. of all colours, a 'new' brown is the most easily discovered: success may not be met with in seeking a yellow, red, or blue, or an orange, green, or purple; but it is strange if in the course of one's experiments a brown does not turn up. no difficulty, therefore, would have been found in greatly extending the present list; but it was felt that no advantage could have accrued by further multiplying the notices of a colour, with which we are already furnished so abundantly by nature and art, and which is capable of being produced in such profusion by admixture. with the exception of ivory and bone browns, and perhaps cassel and cologne earths, all the browns commonly employed may be considered more or less durable. chapter xviii. on the semi-neutral, marrone. we have adopted the term marrone, or _maroon_ as it is sometimes called, for our second and middle semi-neutral, as applicable to a class of impure colours composed of black and red, black and purple, or black and russet, or of black and any other denomination in which red predominates. it is a mean between the warm, broken, semi-neutral _browns_, and the cold, semi-neutral _grays_. marrone is practically to shade, what red is to light; and its relations to other colours are those of red, &c., when we invert the scale from black to white. it is therefore a following, or shading, colour of red and its derivatives; and hence its accordances, contrasts, and expressions agree with those of red degraded; consequently red added to dark brown converts it into marrone if in sufficient quantity to prevail. in smaller proportions, red gives to lighter browns the names of bay, chestnut, sorrel, &c. owing to confused nomenclature, most of the colours and pigments of this class have been assigned to other denominations--puce, murrey, morelle, chocolate, columbine, pavonazzo, &c., being variously ranked among reds, browns, and purples. this vagueness also accounts for pigments having been ranged under heads not suited to the names they bear, and explains why brown ochre has been classed among the yellows, italian pink among the same, brown pink among the citrines, &c. as adapted to the walls of a picture gallery, marrone, more or less deep and inclined to crimson, is one of the best colours known. for the reason that each colour has its antagonist, and consequently may affect a picture well or ill, according to its tone or general hue, there can be no universally good colour for such a purpose. what suits one picture or style of painting may not suit another: with a blood-red sunset, for instance, or portrait with crimson drapery, marrone would be out of place. but as it is impossible to provide each picture with a separate background, all that can be done in large collections is to study the general effect, sacrificing the interests of the few to the good of the many. if cool-coloured landscapes predominate, with blue skies and green foliage, it will be found that the orange-yellow of the frames agreeably contrasts the former, and the crimson-marrone of walls as agreeably sets off the latter. if portraits and historic paintings prevail, which are in general of a warm advancing nature, then a modest green may prove eligible. and if engravings form the staple, the grey hue of the print is best opposed by a bright fawn colour. where several rooms are devoted to pictures, a suitable wall colour is most easily secured by classifying the paintings as far as possible according to their general hue, and placing them in different chambers: in each there will be a prevailing character in the colouring of its pictures, and each can be painted or papered accordingly. however, whether this plan is adopted or not--and it may be objected to as involving a certain monotony--care should be taken to have a wall colour of some sort or other, that is, to let it be seen. pictures crammed together kill each other: without a pin's point between them, a speck of wall space visible, much of the illusion is destroyed. "it is only," says chevreul, "the intelligent connoisseur and amateur who, on seeing a picture exhibited in a gallery, experience all the effect which the artist has wished to produce; because they alone know the best point of view, and because, while their attention is fixed on the work they are observing, they alone end by no longer seeing the surrounding pictures, or even the frame of that one they contemplate." amid a moving crowd of people, inseparable from nearly all public exhibitions, it becomes difficult for the visitor, intelligent or otherwise, thus to concentrate his attention on one work. as far, therefore, as space will allow, paintings should be kept separate: larger rooms, or fewer pictures, are what is wanted.[b] from this digression, pardonable, let us hope, because in the interests of art, we will pass on to a consideration of marrone pigments. . brown madder is an exceedingly rich marrone or russet-marrone brown, bearing the same relation to the colour marrone that raw umber bears to the colour citrine. one of the most valuable products of the madder root, it has supplied a great desideratum, and in water especially is indispensable, both as a local and auxiliary colour. of intense depth and transparency, if made with skill, it affords the richest description of shadows, either alone or compounded with blue, and the most delicate pale tints. being quite permanent, a good drier, and working most kindly, it is a pigment which cannot be too strongly recommended to the landscape painter's notice. containing a large proportion of red, it is eligible, with yellow or blue, for mixed orange or mixed purple of a subdued tone. it may be used tolower red curtains or draperies, and for the darkest touches in flesh. mixed with cobalt, it forms a fine shadow colour for distant objects; and with indigo or prussian blue and black, is serviceable for the shades of those nearer the foreground. it is similarly useful when mixed with black, and will be found advantageous in rusty iron, as anchors, chains, &c. for the deepest and richest parts of foregrounds it may be employed alone, as also for deep dark cracks and fissures, or strong markings in other near objects, as boats and figures. with french blue, or cobalt and white, a set of beautiful warm or cold grays may be obtained, in proportion as the brown or blue predominates. compounded with blues and bright yellows such as aureolin, it gives fine autumnal russet greens. a good purple for soft aerial clouds is furnished by cobalt and brown madder, or for stormy clouds by the brown, prussian blue, and black: an equally good slate colour is obtained from cobalt, sepia, and the brown. for glazing over foliage and herbage, a mixture of the madder with aureolin or gamboge is adapted; and for brooks and running streams compounds of this brown with raw sienna, cobalt and raw sienna, vandyke brown, and french blue, will each be found useful. black sails are well represented by burnt sienna, french blue, and brown madder; and red sails by light red or burnt sienna with the brown. . mixed marrone. marrone is a retiring colour easily compounded in all its hues and shades by the mixture variously of red, and black or brown; or of any other warm colours in which red and black predominate. a reference to the permanent brown, black, and red or reddish pigments will show to what extent the colour marrone may safely be produced by admixture. in compounding marrone, the brown or black may be itself compounded, before the addition of the red, reddish-purple, or russet, requisite for its conversion. * * * * * . _chica marrone_. chica, the red colouring principle alluded to in the ninth chapter, is extracted from the _bignonia chica_, by boiling its leaves in water, decanting the decoction, and allowing it to cool, when a red matter falls down, which is formed into cakes and dried. insoluble in cold water, it dissolves in alcohol and alkalies; is precipitated from alkaline solutions by acids without alteration; and is bleached by chlorine. another variety of the same substance, obtained from para in brazil, and known as crajuru, carajuru, or caracuru, behaves in a similar manner. this is said to be superior to the former sort. a chica pigment, brought from south america, and examined by the author, was of a soft powdery texture, and rich marrone colour. somewhat resembling rubens' madder in hue, it was equal in body and transparency to the carmine of cochineal, though by no means approaching it in beauty, or even in durability. simply exposed to the light of a window, without sun, the colour was soon changed and destroyed. conclusive evidence as this is that the sample submitted to mr. field was worthless, it remains to be seen whether all the colours to be derived from chica, by different modes and from different kinds, are equally valueless as pigments. . _chocolate lead_, or marrone red, is a pigment prepared by calcining oxide of lead with about a third of copper oxide, and reducing the compound to a uniform tint by levigation. it is of a chocolate hue, strong opaque body, and dries freely. like all lead and copper colours, it is blackened by impure air. . _cobalt marrone._ there is obtainable from cobalt a very rich marrone brown, which, like many other colours, is more beautiful while moist than when dried. permanent, if carefully made and most thoroughly washed, it is an expensive compound, and must rank among those colours which are interesting in the laboratory but superfluous in the studio. . _madder marrone_, or marrone lake, was a preparation of madder, of great depth, transparency, and stability. working well in water, glazing and drying in oil, and in every respect a good pigment, it was one of those colours which gradually--and often, as in this case, unfortunately--become obsolete, on account of their hues being easily given by admixture of other pigments. there was likewise a deeper kind, called purple black. a good madder marrone may be produced by adding to brown madder either rose madder, madder carmine, or rubens' madder, with a slight portion of black or blue if required. . _mars marrone._ under the heading of a new marrone pigment there appeared some months back in a chemical journal the following:--"the blood-red compound obtained by adding a soluble sulphocyanide to a salt of iron in solution can be made (apparently at least) to combine with resin thus: to a concentrated solution of sesquichloride of iron and sulphocyanide of potassium in ether, an etherial solution of common resin is added, and the whole well shaken together. there is then mixed with it a sufficiency of water to cause a precipitate, when it will be found, after the mixture has stood a few hours, that the whole or nearly the whole of the red-coloured iron compound has united with the precipitated resin, forming the marrone-coloured pigment in question. when this coloured substance is finely powdered and mixed with water, the liquid is not the least coloured; whence it is inferred that the red iron compound has chemically united itself with the resin." the foregoing account is rather to be regarded as of scientific interest than of practical utility. the blood-red solution of sulphocyanide of iron is in itself not stable: when the red solution of this salt is so exposed to the sun, that the rays pass through the glass jar containing it, it is rendered colourless, but the colour is retained or restored when the rays pass directly from the air into the fluid; so that when a properly diluted solution is placed in a cylindrical glass vessel in direct sunshine, it loses colour in the morning till about eleven in the forenoon, when the rays beginning to fall upon the surface exposed to the air, gradually restore the colour, which attains its maximum about two o'clock. moreover, the solution is immediately decolourised by sulphuretted hydrogen and other deoxidizing agents, as well as by alkalies and many acids. it is scarcely probable that the union of the red colouring matter with the resin would suffice to secure it from change; and there is little doubt that the new marrone pigment would be a chameleon colour. * * * * * failures in the process of burning carmines, and preparing the purple of gold, frequently afford good marrones. compounds more or less of that hue are likewise furnished by copper, mercury, &c. some ochres incline to marrone when calcined: indeed we have remarked in many instances that the action of fire anticipates the effects of long continued time; and that several of the primary and secondary colours may, by different degrees of burning, be converted into their analogous secondary, tertiary, or semi-neutral colours. the one marrone or brown-marrone pigment at present employed, brown madder, is permanent. footnotes: [b] this was written previous to the opening of the new rooms of the royal academy at burlington house. in these, among other improvements, the subject of wall space has been considered. chapter xix. on the semi-neutral, gray. of the tribe of semi-neutral colours, gray is third and last, being nearest in relation to black. in its common acceptation, and that in which we here use it, gray, as was observed in the third chapter, denotes a class of cool cinereous colours faint of hue; whence we have blue grays, olive grays, green grays, purple grays, and grays of all hues, in which blue predominates; but no yellow or red grays, the prevalence of such hues carrying the compounds into the classes of brown and marrone, of which gray is the natural opposite. in this sense the _semi-neutral_ gray is distinguished from the _neutral_ grey, which springs in an infinite series from the mixture of the neutral black and white. between gray and grey, however, there is no intermediate, since where colour ends in the one, neutrality commences in the other, and vice versâ. hence the natural alliance of the semi-neutral gray--definable as a cool coloured grey--with black or shade; an alliance which is strengthened by the latent predominance of blue in the synthesis of black, so that in the tints resulting from the mixture of black and white, so much of that hue is developed as to give apparent colour to the tints. this explains why the tints of black and dark pigments are colder than their originals, so much so as in some instances to answer the purposes of positive colours. it accounts in some measure for the natural blueness of the sky, yet not wholly, for this is in part dependent, by contrast, upon the warm colour of sunshine to which it is opposed; for, if by any accident the light of nature should be rendered red, the colour of the sky would not appear purple, in consequence, but green. again, if the sun shone green, the sky would not be green, but red inclined to purple; and so would it be with all colours, not according to the laws of composition, but of contrast; since, if it were otherwise, the golden rays of the sun would render a blue sky green. the grays are the natural cold correlatives, or contrasts, of the warm semi-neutral browns, as well as degradations of blue and its allies. hence blue added to brown throws it into or toward the class of grays, and hence grays are equally abundant in nature and necessary in art: in both they comprehend a widely diffused and beautiful play of retiring colours in skies, distances, carnations, and the shadowings and reflections of pure light, &c. gray is, indeed, the colour of space, and has therefore the property of diffusing breadth in a picture, while it furnishes at the same time good connecting tints, or media, for harmonizing the general colouring. consequently the grays are among the most essential hues of the art, though they must not be suffered to predominate where the subject or sentiment does not require it, lest they cast over the painting that gloom or leaden dulness reprobated by sir joshua reynolds; yet in solemn works they are wonderfully effective, and proper ruling colours. nature supplies these hues from the sky abundantly and effectively throughout landscape, and rubens has employed them as generally to correct and give value to his colouring, with fine natural perception in this branch of his art: witness his works in the national gallery, and in that of the luxembourg. according to the foregoing relations, grays favour the effects and force of warm colours, which in their turn also give value to grays. it is hence that the tender gray distances of a landscape are assisted, enlivened, and kept in place by warm and forcible colouring in the foreground, gradually connected through intermediate objects and middle distances by demi-tints declining into gray; a union which secures full value to the colours and objects, and by reconciling opposites gives repose to the eye. as a general rule, it may be inferred that half of a picture should be of a neutral hue, to ensure the harmony of the colouring; or at least that a balance of colour and neutrality is quite as essential to the best effect of a painting as a like balance of light and shade. . mineral gray, or mineral gr_e_y, as it is often improperly spelt, is obtainable from the lapis lazuli, after the blue and ash have been worked out. so derived, it is a refuse article, worthless if the stone has been skilfully exhausted of its ultramarine. as this is now generally the case, the best mineral gray is no longer a waste product, but a lower species of ash, a pale whitish blue with a grey cast. possessing the permanence of ultramarine, it may be regarded in colour as a very weak variety of that blue, diluted with a large quantity of white slightly tinged by black. a pigment peculiar to oil painting, it is admirably adapted to that gray semi-neutrality, the prevalence of which in nature has been just remarked. for misty mornings, cloudy skies, and the like, this gray will be found useful. . mixed gray is formed by compounding black and blue, black and purple, black and olive, &c.; and is likewise produced by adding blue in excess to madder brown, sepia, &c., transparent mixtures which are much employed. it should be borne in mind that the semi-neutrals, like the secondaries and tertiaries, may be so compounded as to be permanent, semi-stable, or fugitive. the due remembrance of this cannot be too strongly insisted upon, seeing that in every picture the browns and grays are of frequent occurrence. these it is that lend such charm to the whole, flowing, as it were, like a quiet under-current of colour beneath the troubled surface of more decided hues. in the work of every true artist--between whom and the mere painter there is as much difference as between the poet and the poetaster--there is sentiment as well as colour, whether the subject be an exciting battle-scene or a bit of still life. this sentiment, as strongly felt as the colour is clearly seen, is imparted in no small degree by the skilful use of semi-neutrality, the compounding of which, as time goes on, will therefore affect a picture for good or for evil. subjoined is an analysis of the three semi-neutrals, which serves partly to show in what great variety they may be obtained by admixture. brown = black + yellow } " = " + orange } + red, purple, &c. " = " + citrine} " = yellow + red + blue " = orange + green + purple " = citrine + russet + olive marrone = black + red " = " + purple-red " = " + russet " = red } " = purple-red} + dark brown or black " = russet } gray = black + blue } " = " + purple-blue} + white " = " + olive } " = blue } " = purple-blue} + light brown, or black + white " = olive } in the last division, the white has been added to remind the reader that grays are coloured greys, not coloured blacks; and are therefore faint of hue. this paleness, however, need not necessarily be produced by admixture with white: it can be gained by means of thin washes. as a pigment, gray may be to all appearance black in bulk. . neutral tint, or, more correctly, _semi_-neutral tint, is a compound shadow colour of a cool character. it is permanent, except that on exposure the gray is apt to become grey, a change which may be prevented by a slight addition of ultramarine ash. so protected, it becomes serviceable in landscape for the extreme distance, which, it may be laid down as a general principle, should be painted rather cold than otherwise. blue being the principal compound of atmosphere, it is of the utmost importance to obtain this in the first instance, particularly as, from its being only of a blue tint, not blue colour, it is so immediately altered and acted upon by subsequent washes; whereas, the blue tone once lost, it will be found very difficult to be recovered. wherever a picture is wanting in air effect, the cause will, upon examination, be seen to rest entirely upon the absence of pure grays, bordering upon a bluish tone, not tending, be it observed, to brown or purple. a bluish gray, then, of rather a cold tone, such as the neutral tint, is recommended as the prevailing hue with which to begin the extreme distances; and, as a rule, it is better to pass with this over as much of the landscape as possible, and thus lay the foundation for a general atmosphere. . payne's gray resembles the preceding in being a compound colour and liable to assume a grey cast by time, but differs from it in having more lilac in its hue, and being therefore of a warmer tone. giving by itself a clear violet shadow, it may be rendered more neutral by a small portion of burnt sienna, an admixture which, whether the gray or sienna predominates, affords useful tints. compounded with light red or vandyke brown, the gray is good for shipping and sails, or the stems and branches of trees; while with gamboge or aureolin it is suited to glossy leaves in high light, also to very cold tones in foregrounds, herbage, &c. yellow ochre, light red, and payne's gray form a mixture for banks and roads; the ochre, gray, and sepia, a most beautiful tint for stones; and brown madder and the gray, a fine shade for the black head and feet of cattle. alone, the gray is serviceable for slate; and compounded with light red, for bricks or tiles in shadow. . ultramarine ash is obtained from the stone after the richer and more intense blue has been extracted. although not equal in beauty, and inferior in strength of colour to ultramarine, it is a valuable bye-product varying in shade from light to dark, and in hue from pale azure to cold blue. with a grey cast, it affords delicate and extremely tender tints, not so positive as ultramarine, but which, as water-colours, wash much better. it furnishes grays softer, purer, and more suited to the pearly tints of flesh, skies, distances, foliage, shadows of drapery, &c. than those composed of other blues, with white and black, which the old masters were wont to employ. ultramarine, however, produces the same effects when broken with black and white, and is thus sometimes carried throughout the colouring of a picture. the ash, compounded with lamp black, gives a soft cold gray for dark louring clouds, or for twilight away from the sun's influence. alone it is adapted to very remote hills or mountains, and with orient yellow or aureolin to distant foliage. * * * * * the native phosphate of iron, which has been already described in the tenth chapter under its name of blue ochre, might have been classed among the grays, being similar in colour to the deeper hues of ultramarine ashes. powdered slate, slate clays, and several native earths, likewise rank with grays; but some of the earths we have tried are not durable, being apt to become brown by the oxidation of the iron they contain. it may be proper here to mention those other pigments, known as tints, which, being the result of the experience of accredited masters in their peculiar modes of practice, serve to facilitate the progress of their amateur pupils, while they are more or less eligible for artists. such are _harding's_ and _macpherson's tints_, composed of pigments which associate cordially, and sold ready prepared in cakes and boxes for miniature and water painting. of the four grays in use--mineral gray, ultramarine ash, neutral tint, and payne's gray--the two first are quite unchangeable, and the others sufficiently stable to be classed as permanent. chapter xx. on the neutral, grey. grey is the second and intermediate of the neutral colours, standing between _white_ and _black_. true or normal grey is only obtainable by admixture of pure white with pure black, various proportions of which afford numerous tones of pure grey. in practice it may likewise be produced by a thin wash of black over white. the neutral gr_e_y differs from the semi-neutral gr_a_y in not being coloured by any primary, secondary, tertiary, or semi-neutral; hence any blue, purple, olive, or gray added to it, at once destroys the neutrality of grey, and converts it into gray. thus easily defiled and changed in class, grey is rather a theoretical than a practical colour. to our knowledge, there has never been a true grey pigment, that is, one composed exclusively of pure white and pure black; the gr_a_ys known to the palette as mineral grey and payne's grey having been incorrectly named. practically, the nearest approach to a normal grey is furnished by black lead, which forms grey tints of greater permanence and purity than the blacks in general use, and is now employed for this purpose with approved satisfaction by experienced artists. being compounded of white and black, grey partakes in some measure of the qualities of both those colours--for colours, as a matter of convenience, they must be called; although white is often spoken of as no colour, and black as the complete extinction of all colour. with white predominant, grey is used, pure or coloured, for the general lights of a picture; just as, with black predominant, grey is employed, pure or coloured, for the shades. it helps to subdue the absolute white, and to make the absolute black conspicuous. black and white are in some respects complementary to each other, and when in contact, appear to differ more from each other than when viewed separately: both show with best effect when harmonised by a medium of grey, normal or otherwise. the primary colours, also, gain in brilliancy and purity by the proximity of grey. with dark colours, such as blue and violet, and deep tones in general, grey forms assortments of analogous harmonies; while with the luminous colours, such as red, orange, yellow, and the light tints of green, it forms harmonies of contrast. although grey never produces a bad effect in its assortments with two luminous colours, in most cases the association is dull and inferior to black and white. the only instance in which grey associates with two such colours more happily than white is that with red and orange. grey is inferior to both white and black with red and green, red and yellow, orange and yellow, orange and green, yellow and green; and is not so good as white with yellow and blue. in association with sombre colours, such as blue and violet, and with broken tones of luminous colours, grey gives rise to harmonies of analogy which have not the vigour of those with white; but if the colours do not combine well together, it has the advantage of separating them from each other. associated with two colours, one sombre, the other luminous, grey will perhaps be better than white, if white produces too strong a contrast of tone: on the other hand, grey will be preferable to black, if that has the inconvenience of increasing too much the proportion of sombre colours. grey associates more happily than black with orange and violet, green and blue, or green and violet. . mixed grey. when a ray of solar light (a sunbeam) is passed through a prism of flint glass, and the image or 'prismatic spectrum' received upon a screen of white paper, it is found to consist of numerous rays of different colours, which are conveniently divided into six groups--red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. optically, the union of red, yellow, and blue, in proper proportions, constitutes white light; whether the rays of the three separate colours are mixed, or of one with the other two in combination: the same result ensues when red is mixed with green as if it were mixed with blue and yellow, because green is composed of blue and yellow. consequently, any primary mixed with a secondary composed of the other two primaries, forms the complement of rays necessary to constitute or make up white light, and vice versâ. there is, however, a very great difference between the results arising from the mixture of the pure coloured rays of the spectrum, and those from material colours or pigments. when, by means of a convex lens, we reunite the coloured rays of the spectrum white light is reproduced; but when we mix coloured materials, blues, yellows, and reds, the compound is never white, but grey or black; even if these coloured pigments are taken in the exact proportions in which their colours exist in the spectrum. ultramarine, our purest blue, reflects red rays as well as blue rays; aureolin, our purest yellow, reflects blue as well as yellow rays; and carmine reflects yellow as well as red rays. now whenever the third primary colour is present in any mixture of coloured materials, it tends to form grey, by mixing with a sufficient quantity of the other coloured rays to neutralize it, and the presence of this grey breaks or tarnishes the pure colour. hence it is that to obtain a pure green, a blue should be taken tinged with yellow rather than with red, and a yellow tinged with blue: if there were chosen either a blue or a yellow tinged with red, this latter colour would go to form some grey in the compound, which would tarnish the green. in like manner, to produce pure orange, neither the red nor the yellow must contain blue; and similarly with pure purple, neither the blue nor red should contain yellow. as regards pigments, then, a proper mixture of yellow, red, and blue; or of yellow and purple, red and green, or blue and orange; or of orange, green, and purple, affords black if sufficiently intense, and grey if sufficiently diluted. the black may be rendered grey by spreading a thin wash over a white ground, or by the direct addition of white. it must be remembered, however, that suitable proportions of the component colours are essential. when all three of the primaries, for example, are mixed together, colour is neutralised according as they are compounded of equal strength and in right quantities: if proper proportions are observed, pure black or normal grey results; but if not, there will be produced a coloured black or a coloured grey, an excess of one or two of the primaries giving rise to brown, marrone, or gray. a reference to the lists of permanent primary and secondary pigments will show to what extent durable greys can be compounded. as these pigments differ so widely in hue and other properties, no fixed rules can be given for their admixture: to ensure neutrality, practice and a correct eye are indispensable. without perfect neutrality, difficult to attain and rarely to be met with, grey ceases to exist. in pure white, pure grey, and pure black, colour is, so to speak, conspicuous by its absence. chapter xxi. on the neutral, black. black is the last and lowest in the series or scale of colours descending--the opposite extreme from white--the maximum of colour. to be perfect, it must be neutral with respect to colours individually, and absolutely transparent, or destitute of reflective power as regards light; its use in painting being to represent shade or depths, of which black is the element in a picture and in colours, as white is of light. as there is no perfectly pure and transparent black pigment, black deteriorates all colours in deepening them, as it does warm colours by partially neutralizing them, but it combines less injuriously with cold colours. though black is the antagonist of white, yet added to it in minute portion, it in general renders white more neutral, solid, and local, with less of the character of light. impure black is brown, but black in its purity is a cold colour, and communicates a coolness to all light colours; thus it _blues_ white, _greens_ yellow, _purples_ red, and _cools_ blue. hence the artist errs with ill effect who regards black as of nearest affinity to hot and brown colours, and will do well to keep in mind--"the glow of sunshine and the _cool_ of shade." it is a fault of even some of our best colourists, as evinced by their pictures, to be too fond of black upon their palettes, and thence to infuse it needlessly into their tints and colours. with such it is a taste acquired from the study of old pictures; but in nature hardly any object above ground is black, or in daylight is rendered neutral thereby. black, therefore, should be reserved for a local colour, or employed only in the under-painting properly called grounding and dead colouring. as a local colour, black has the effect of connecting or amassing surrounding objects, and is the most retiring of all colours, a property which it communicates to other colours in mixture. it heightens the effect of warm as well as light colours, by a double contrast when opposed to them, and in like manner subdues that of cold and deep colours. in mixture or glazing, however, these effects are reversed, by reason of the predominance of cold colour in the constitution of black. having, therefore, the double office of colour and of shade, black is perhaps the most important of all colours to the artist, both as to its use and avoidance. it may be laid down as a rule that the black must be conspicuous. however small a point of black may be, it ought to catch the eye, otherwise the work is too heavy in the shadow. all the ordinary shadows should be of some _colour_--never black, nor approaching black, they should be evidently and always of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange among them; never occurring except in a black object, or in small points indicative of intense shade in the very centre of masses of shadow. shadows of absolutely negative grey, however, may be beautifully used with white, or with gold; but still though the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous: the spectator should notice this grey neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold colour and the white which it relieves. of all the great colourists, velasquez is the greatest master of the black chords: his black is more precious than other people's crimson. yet it is not simply black and white that must be made valuable, rare worth must be given to each colour employed; but the white and black ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the other colours should be continually passing one into the other, being all plainly companions in the same gay world; while the white, black, and neutral grey should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. crimson may be melted into purple, purple into blue, and blue into green, but none of them must be melted into black. all colours are comprehended in the synthesis of black, consequently the whole sedative power of colour is comprised in black. it is the same in the synthesis of white; and, with like relative consequence, white includes all the stimulating powers of colour in painting. it follows that a little white or black is equivalent to much colour, and hence their use as colours requires judgment and caution. by due attention to the synthesis of black, it may be rendered a harmonizing medium to all colours, to all which it lends brilliancy by its sedative effect on the eye, and its powers of contrast: nevertheless, we repeat, it must be introduced with caution when _hue_ is of greater importance than shade. even when employed as a shadow, without much judgment in its use, black is apt to appear as local colour rather than as privation of light; and black pigments obtained by charring have a tendency to rise and predominate over other hues, subduing the more delicate tints by their chemical bleaching power upon other colours, and their own disposition to turn brown or dusky. for these reasons deep and transparent colours, which have darkness in their constitution, are better adapted as a rule for producing the true natural and permanent effects of shade. many pictures of the early masters, and especially of the roman and florentine schools, evince the truth of our remarks; and it is to be feared the high reputation of these works has betrayed their admirers into this defective employment of black. black substances reflect a small quantity of white light, which receives the complementary of the colour contiguous to the black. by 'complementary' is meant that colour which is required with another colour to form white light; thus, green is the complementary of red, blue of orange, and yellow of violet, or vice versâ; because green and red, blue and orange, and yellow and violet, each make up the full complement of rays necessary to form white light. briefly digressing, we give the following mode of observing complementary colours:--place a sheet of white paper on a table opposite to one of two windows admitting diffused daylight[c] into a room; take a piece of coloured glass and so place it that the coloured light transmitted through it falls over the surface of the paper; then put an opaque object on the paper close to the coloured glass. the shadow of this object will not appear black or of the colour of the glass, as might be supposed, but of its complementary colour; thus if the glass is red, the colour of the shadow will be green, although the whole of the paper surrounding it appears red. similarly, if the glass is blue, the shadow will appear orange; if it is green, the shadow will appear red; and so with other colours. it is absolutely essential, however, to the success of this experiment, that the paper be also illuminated with the white light admitted from the other window. it has been said that black substances reflect a small quantity of white light, which receives the complementary of the colour contiguous to the black. if this colour is deep, it gives rise to a luminous complementary, such as orange, or yellow, and enfeebles the black; while the other complementaries, such as violet or green, strengthen and purify it. in colours associated with black, if green is juxtaposed therewith, its complementary red, added to the black, makes it seem rusty. those colours which best associate with black are orange, yellow, blue, and violet. it would be well to remember that black, being always deeper than the juxtaposed colour, entails contrast of tone, and tends to lower the tone of that colour. most of the black pigments in use are obtained by charring, and owe their colour to the carbon they contain. as the objects of vegetal and animal nature may be blackened through every degree of impurity by the action of fire, black substances more or less fitted for pigments abound. the following are the chief native and artificial black pigments, or colours available as such:-- . black lead, _plumbago_, or _graphite_, contains in spite of its name no lead, being simply a species of carbon or charcoal. in most specimens iron is present, varying in quantity from a mere trace up to five per cent, together with silica and alumina. sometimes manganese and titanic acid are likewise found. it is curious that carbon should occur in two distinct and very dissimilar forms--as diamond, and as graphite; one, white, hard, and transparent; the other, black, soft, and opaque: the artist, therefore, who uses a pigment of plumbago, paints with nothing more or less than a black diamond. the best graphite, the finest and most valuable for pencils, is yielded by the mine of borrowdale, at the west end of derwent lake, in cumberland, where it was first wrought during the reign of elizabeth. a kind of irregular vein traverses the ancient slate-beds of that district, furnishing the carbon of an iron-grey colour, metallic lustre, and soft and greasy to the touch. universally employed in the form of crayons, &c. in sketching, designing, and drawing, until of late years it was not acknowledged as a pigment: yet its powers in this respect claim a place for it. as a water-colour, levigated in gum in the usual manner, it may be effectively used with rapidity and freedom in the shading and finishing of pencil drawings, or as a substitute therein for indian ink. even in oil it may be employed occasionally, as it possesses remarkably the property of covering, forms very pure grey, dries quickly, injures no colour chemically, and endures for ever. these qualities render it the most eligible black for adding to white in minute quantity to preserve the neutrality of its tint. although plumbago has usurped the name of black lead, there is another substance more properly entitled to this appellation, and which may be used in the same way, and with like effects as a pigment. this substance is the sulphide of lead, found native in the beautiful lead ore, or galena, of derbyshire. an artificial sulphide can be prepared by dry and wet processes, which is subject to gradual oxidation on exposure to the air, and consequent conversion into grey or white. neither variety can be compared to graphite for permanence, although the native is preferable to the artificial. plumbago, or the so-called black lead, is often adulterated to an enormous extent with lamp black. . blue black, _charcoal_, _liege_, or _vine black_, is a well-burnt and levigated charcoal prepared from vine twigs, of weaker body than ivory or lamp black, and consequently better suited to the grays and general mixed tints of landscape painting, in which it is not so likely to look black and sooty as the others may do. of a cool neutral tint, it has, in common with all carbonaceous blacks, a preserving influence on white when duly mixed therewith; which it owes, chemically, to the bleaching power of carbon, and, chromatically, to the neutralizing and contrasting power of black with white. compounded slightly with blue black, and washed over with zinc white, white lead may be exposed to any ordinary impure atmosphere with comparative impunity. it would be well for art if carbon had a like power upon the colour of oils, but of this it is deficient; and although chlorine destroys their colour temporarily, they re-acquire it at no very distant period. alone, blue black is useful as a cool shade for white draperies; and compounded with cobalt, affords a good gray for louring clouds. . british ink is a compound black, preferred by some artists to indian ink, on account of its not being liable to wash streaky, as the latter does: at the same time it is not so perfectly fixed on the paper as indian ink. . indian ink, sometimes called _china_ or _chinese ink_, is chiefly brought from china in oblong cakes, of a musky scent, ready prepared for painting in water. varying considerably in body and colour, the best has a shining black fracture, is finely compact, and homogeneous when rubbed with water, in which, when largely diluted, it yields no precipitate. without the least appearance of particles, its dry surface is covered with a pellicle of a metallic appearance. when dry on the paper, it resists the action of water, yet it will give way at once to that action, when it has been used and dried on marble or ivory, a fact which proves that the alummed paper forms a strong combination with the ink; possibly a compound of the latter on an aluminous base, might even be employed in oil. different accounts are given of the mode of making this ink, the principal substance or colouring matter of which is a smoke black, having all the properties of our lamp black; the variety of its hues and texture seeming wholly to depend on the degree of burning and levigating it receives. from certain chinese documents, we learn that the ink of nan-king is the most esteemed; and among the many sorts imported into this country, we find those of the best quality are prepared with lamp black of the oil of sesame; with which are combined camphor, and the juice of a plant named _houng hoa_ to give it brightness of tone. according to an analysis by m. proust, the better kinds contain about two per cent. of camphor. by some, the pigment known as sepia has been supposed to enter into their composition. _liquid indian ink_ is a solution for architects, surveyors, &c. . ivory black is ivory charred to blackness by strong heat in closed vessels. differing chiefly through want of care or skill in preparing, when well made it is the richest and most transparent of all the blacks, a fine neutral colour perfectly durable and eligible both in water and oil. when insufficiently burnt, however, it is brown, and dries badly; or if too much burnt, it becomes cineritious, opaque, and faint in hue. with a slight tendency to brown in its pale washes, this full, silky black is serviceable where the sooty density of lamp black would be out of place. it is occasionally adulterated with bone black, a cheaper and inferior product. being nothing more nor less than animal charcoal, ivory or bone black had best not be compounded with organic pigments, in water at least. it is well known that this charcoal possesses the singular property of completely absorbing the colour of almost any vegetal or animal solution, and of rendering quite limpid and colourless the water charged with it. if a solution of indigo in concentrated sulphuric acid be diluted with water, and animal charcoal added in sufficient quantity, the solution will soon be deprived of colour. the more perfect the ivory or bone black, the more powerful is its action likely to be: either over or under calcined, animal charcoal is less energetic; in the former case, because it is less porous; in the latter, because the animal matter, not being wholly consumed, makes a kind of varnish in the charcoal which interferes with its acting. to a greater or less extent, gums, oils, and varnishes serve similarly as preventives, thereby decreasing the danger of employing these blacks in admixture; but, in the compounding of colours, nothing is gained by needless risk. to mix with organic pigments, therefore, blue or lamp blacks should be substituted for those of ivory or bone; that is, vegetal charcoal should be used instead of animal. it is a question whether even with inorganic pigments the adoption of the former in admixture would not be advisable. it was once the general opinion that the action of animal charcoal was limited to bodies of organic origin, but it has since been found that inorganic matters are likewise influenced. "through its agency," says graham, "even the iodine is separated from iodide of potassium;" whence probably pigments containing iodine would suffer by contact. the investigation of weppen appears to prove that the action of the charcoal extends to all metallic salts; with the following, no doubt remains of this being so, to wit:--the sulphates of copper, zinc, chromium, and protoxide of iron; the nitrates of lead, nickel, silver, cobalt, suboxide and oxide of mercury; the protochlorides of tin and mercury; the acetates of lead and sesquioxide of iron; and the tartrate of antimony. whether animal charcoal exercises any deleterious influence on pigments consisting of these metals, and, if so, how far and under what circumstances, can only be answered when our knowledge of the properties of pigments is greater than it now is. at present, perhaps, it is safer to choose vegetal charcoal for mixed tints, inasmuch as, although it shares the property of bleaching in a certain degree, it does not possess the same energy. . lamp black, or _lamblack_, is a smoke black, being the soot procured by the burning of resins or resinous woods. it is a pure vegetal charcoal of fine texture, not quite so intense nor so transparent as the black made from ivory, but less brown in its pale tones. it has a very strong body that covers readily every underlay of colour, works well, but dries badly in oil. on emergency, it may be prepared extemporaneously for water-painting by holding a plate over the flame of a lamp or candle, and adding gum to the colour: the nearer the plate is held to the wick of the lamp, the more abundant and warm will be the hue of the black obtained; at a greater distance it will be more effectually charred, and blacker. mixed with french blue or cobalt, lamp black gives good cloudy grays, which are useful for the shadows of heavy storm clouds. with french blue and this black alone various beautiful stormy skies may be represented; the contrast of the blue causing the black to assume, if desired, a warm tone in shadows. for like purposes, the black with ultramarine ash affords a very soft hue, and with light red and cobalt in different proportions yields silvery tones most serviceable. to the dark marking of murky and dirty clouds, a compound of lamp black and light red is particularly suited; while a mixture of the black with cobalt and purple madder is adapted for slate-coloured sunset and sunrise clouds. french blue softened with a little lamp black is fitted for mountains or hills, very remote; and the same blue and black with rose madder meet their tints if nearer. in seas the black is useful with raw sienna and other colours; while, whether in storm or calm, vessels and boats may be painted with tints of lamp black, madder brown, and burnt sienna, varying in degrees of strength according to the distances. lamp black alone, or with french blue, cobalt and purple madder, emerald green, or rose madder, is good for rocks; and for dark foreground objects when mixed with madder lake and burnt sienna. with aureolin the black furnishes a sober olive for foliage, and with rose madder a fine colour for the stems and branches of trees. compounded with light red, it is suited to the first general tones of the ground for banks and roads; and with yellow ochre or madder red, to parts of buildings and cattle. a very eminent miniature painter recommends for hair tints, lamp black, indian red, and burnt sienna. being a dense solid colour, this black must be used sparingly to avoid heaviness. hitherto confined to painting and engraving, lamp black has lately refuted the assertion that there is nothing new under the sun by making its appearance in photography. by a method which combines the fidelity of that art with the permanence of prints, there is produced a species of photographic engraving, so to speak, having lamp black or carbon for its colouring matter. indeed, in this 'autotype' process, as it is called, any other durable pigment or pigments may be used, and a photographic picture thus obtained. in copying the works of artists, especially, the mode promises to be of value, inasmuch as by its agency the same pigments may be made the colouring matter of the reproduction as are employed in the original. if this be in sepia or bistre, the copy can be autotyped in those colours; or if a red chalk drawing be required to be multiplied, the proofs may be in red chalk, the copy when produced to the same scale being scarcely distinguishable from the original. in like manner, any single colour of the artist's palette is applicable without restriction or limitation, so that not only are every line and touch rendered absolutely, but the very pigment used in the original is found in the copy. moreover, as the pigments are quite unchanged by the action of the other agents employed, the resulting colour of the print is determined once for all, just as the artist mixes those pigments on his palette for his picture. as extending the use of lamp black and permanent pigments in general, this brief digression on autotypography may be pardoned in a treatise on colours. . mixed black. black is to be considered as a synthesis of the three primary colours, the three secondaries, or the three tertiaries, or of all these together; and, consequently, also of the three semi-neutrals, and may thus be composed of due proportions of either tribe or triad. all antagonistic colours, or contrasts, likewise afford the neutral black by composition; but in all the modes of producing black by compounding colours, blue is to be regarded as its archeus or predominating colour, and yellow as subordinate to red, in the proportions, when their hues are true, of eight blue, five red, and three yellow. it is owing to this predominance of blue in the constitution of black, that it contributes by mixture to the pureness of hue in white colours, which usually incline to warmth, and that it produces the cool effect of blueness in glazing and tints, or however otherwise diluted or dilated. it accords with the principle here inculcated that in glass-founding the oxide of manganese, which gives the _red_ hue, and that of cobalt, which furnishes the _blue_, are added to brown or _yellow_ frit, to obtain a velvety black glass. similarly the dyer proceeds to dye black upon a deep blue basis of indigo, with the ruddy colour of madder and the yellow of quercitron, &c. some of the best blacks and neutrals of the painter are those formed with colours of sufficient power and transparency upon the palette. prussian blue and burnt lake afford a powerful though not very durable black; and compound blacks in which transparent pigments are employed will generally go deeper and harmonize better with other colours than any original black pigment alone. hence lakes and deep blues, added to the common blacks, greatly increase their clearness and intensity: in mixture and glazing of the fine blacks of some old pictures, ultramarine has evidently been used. in this view, black altogether compounded of blue with red and yellow, each deep and transparent, and duly subordinated according to its powers, will give the most powerful and transparent blacks; although, like most other blacks, they dry badly in oil. of course, as with all compound colours, it depends entirely on the pigments employed whether these mixed blacks are permanent or not: a compound black can very well pass through the stages of black to grey, gray, or dirty white, if each link in the chain of combination be not as strong as its fellows. * * * * * . _black chalk_ is an indurated clay, of the texture of white chalk, and chiefly used for cutting into crayons. fine specimens have been found near bantry in ireland, and in wales, but the italian has the most reputation. crayons for sketching and drawing are also artificially prepared, which are deeper in colour and free from grit. wood charcoal is likewise cut into crayons, that of soft woods, such as lime, poplar, &c., being best adapted for the purpose. . _black ochre_, earth black, or prussian black, is a native earth, combined with iron and alluvial clay. it is found in most countries, and should be washed and exposed to the atmosphere before being employed. sea-coal, and other black mineral substances, have been and may be used as substitutes for the more perfect blacks, when the latter are not procurable, which now seldom or never happens. . _bone black_, obtained by charring, is similar to that of ivory, except that it is a little warmer in tone, having a reddish or orange tinge, and is a worse drier in oil. like ivory black, it is very transparent. immense quantities of bone black are consumed with sulphuric acid in the manufacture of shoe blacking. . _coffee black_, though little known and not on sale, has been strongly recommended by bouvier as one of the best blacks that can be used. soft without being greasy, light, almost impalpable, even before being ground, it gives tints of a very bluish gray when mixed with white, a quality precious for making the blues of the sketch, and dull greens. it is said to dry better than blue or vine black, and to combine admirably with other colours. de montabert prefers calling it coffee brown, giving it as an exemplification of a bluish-brown, but probably this brown hue is owing to want of skill in its manufacture. we have not had personal experience of the colour, but there is no theoretical reason why a carbonaceous black should not be produced from coffee. the mode of proceeding is to calcine the berry in a covered vessel, and well wash the resulting charcoal with boiling water by decantation. in order to prevent the powder, which is of great lightness, from floating, it is made into paste with a few drops of alcohol before adding the water. . _frankfort black_ is said to be made of the lees of wine from which the tartar has been washed, by burning, in the manner of ivory black; although the inferior sort is merely the levigated charcoal of woods, of which the hardest, such as box and ebony, yield the best. fine frankfort black, though almost confined to copper-plate printing, is one of the best black pigments extant, being of a neutral colour, next in intensity to lamp black, and more powerful than that of ivory. strong light has the effect of deepening its colour. it is probable that this was the black used by some of the flemish painters, and that the pureness of the greys formed therewith is due to the property of charred substances of preventing discolourment. . _manganese black_, the common black oxide of that metal, is the best of all blacks for drying in oil without addition. it is also a colour of vast body and tingeing power. as a siccative, it might be advantageously employed with ivory black. . _mineral black_ is a native impure carbon of soft texture, found in devonshire. blacker than plumbago, and free from its metallic lustre, it is of a neutral colour, greyer and more opaque than ivory black, and forms pure neutral tints. being perfectly durable, and drying well in oil, it is of value in dead colouring on account of its solid body, as a preparation for black and deep colours before glazing. it would likewise be the most permanent and best possible black for frescoes. . _paper black_, a pigment unknown to the modern palette, like most of our numbered italicised colours, is of the nature of blue or vine black. very soft and of a fine bluish-gray, it is fitted for flesh, or for mixing with whites or yellows in landscapes. . _peach black_, or almond black, made by burning the stones of fruits, the shell of the cocoa-nut, &c., is a violet-black, once much used by parisian artists. bouvier believes it to be a good black, but at the same time sensibly asks, of what use is it to have a black of this cast, which can always be given by lake, without diminishing but rather increasing the intensity of the black it may be mixed with. . _prussian black._ the same prussian blue which gives a brown when burnt in the open air, yields a black when calcined in a close crucible. very intense, very soft and velvety, and very agreeable to work, this bluish-black dries much more promptly than most other blacks, and scarcely requires grinding. on account of its extreme division, however, it would probably be found more energetic as a decolourising agent in admixture with organic pigments than most carbonaceous blacks. another prussian black, containing copper, and made by a wet process, is obtained when a dilute solution of cupric sulphate and ferrous sulphate, in proper proportions, is mixed with a quantity of ferrocyanide of potassium not in excess. a very bulky deep black precipitate is formed, which is difficult to wash, and is deep black when dry. it is insoluble in water, and appears to be a compound analogous to prussian blue. as a pigment, this black is inferior to the preceding. . _purple black_ is, or rather was, a preparation of madder, of a deep purple hue approaching black. powerful and very transparent, it glazed and dried well in oil, and was a durable and eligible pigment. its tints with white lead were of a purple cast. . _spanish black_, or cork black, is a soft black, obtained by charring cork, and differs not essentially from frankfort black, except in being of a lighter and softer texture. "some of my friends," says bouvier, "call it _beggars' ultramarine_, because it produces, by combinations, tints almost as fine as ultramarine." a blue but not a velvet black, where intensity is required some other is to be preferred. for mixtures, however, it is stated to be admirable, and especially for linen, skies, distances, and the various broken tints of carnations, &c. * * * * * besides those blacks which have been mentioned, there are others furnished by several of the metals and by many organic substances employed as dyes; but as the blacks in common use are all permanent, and have been found sufficient for every purpose, it is scarce needful to swell the list. nor is it more needful, the editor considers, to swell the book; lest his aim be defeated of reflecting in a _moderate_-sized mirror the palette as it is and might be at the present day. arrived at age, as it were, in its twenty-first chapter, this treatise may fitly conclude with black, the last of the series of colours. let us hope the maxim of sir joshua reynolds, that success in some degree was never denied to earnest work may apply here. still, by way of finale, we would offer a few remarks. in no branch of the science, perhaps, is it more hazardous to commit oneself to a positive dictum than in the chemistry of colours, so liable are theory and practice to clash, and so often does the experience of one person or one time differ from that of another. he who has turned his attention to pigments, finds nearly every assertion must be qualified, for to nearly every rule there is some exception, and learns that theory alone may mislead. for example, a colour known to be fugacious may last, in certain cases, a surprisingly long time; while, on the contrary, a pigment permanent when used alone, may be rendered fugitive by improper compounding. again, what holds good of a colour produced by one process, or employed in one vehicle or by one artist, may not be true of the same colour made by a different mode, or used in another vehicle or by another artist. it is because, then, colours are of every degree of durability, from the perfectly stable to the utterly fugitive, and because each one is liable to influence by every condition of time, place, and circumstance, that the chemist's theory is opposed as often to the painter's practice as the experience of artists themselves varies. this may explain the charges of inconsistency and contradiction which have been brought against writers on pigments, faults that lie rather with the nature of the subject than with the authors. even at the risk of being tiresome, we have throughout insisted on the choice of permanent pigments, not simply for use alone but for mixed tints. to quote cennini, "i give you this advice, that you endeavour always to use ... good colours.... and if you say that a poor person cannot afford the expense, i answer, that if you work well (and give sufficient time to your works), and paint with good colours, you will acquire so much fame that from a poor person you will become a rich one; and your name will stand so high for using good colours, that if some masters receive a ducat for painting one figure, you will certainly be offered two, and your wishes will be fulfilled, according to the old proverb, 'good work, good pay.'" of a truth, if man cannot dip his brush in the rainbow and paint with the aerial colours of the skies, he can at least select the best pigments that earth and the sea afford him; preferring, where he cannot get brilliancy and permanence combined, sobriety and permanence to brilliancy and fugacity. it must be the wish of every real artist to leave behind him a lasting record of his skill, a permanent panorama of those hues of nature which in life he loved so well. to effect this, genius alone is powerless: there must be first a proper choice of materials, and next a proper use of them. the painter's pigments are the bricks wherewith the mortar of his mind must be mixed, either to erect an edifice that shall endure for ages, or one which will quickly topple over like a house of cards. now in nothing more than in painting is prevention better than cure--indeed cure may be said to be here out of the question: for good or for evil a picture once painted is painted for ever. without a strong constitution there is no hope for it; no chemistry can strengthen the sickly frame, restore the faded colour, stop the ravages of consumption: science stands helpless before dying art. and yet, she sighs to think, it might have been otherwise. if durable pigments had been employed, if her counsel had been sought, this need not have been. in the history of modern art the use and abuse of colours would furnish a sad chapter, telling of gross ignorance, and a grosser indifference. happily there is promise of a healthier state of things. when this comes, art will be less shy to consult her sister: in the interests of both there should be closer union. without waiting till the picture is finished--for then it will be too late--let her, if in doubt, frankly display the contents of her palette and ask advice. now, not knowing what pigments are chosen or how they are used, never standing by and watching the progress of the work, how can science lend her aid? she would willingly, for she herself needs help: at present her knowledge is limited, not so much of the chemistry of colours as of the properties of pigments. she seeks to mix her pound of theory with an ounce of practice, and craves a warmer welcome to the studio. for any approximation to the truth to be arrived at, facts must be noted with the conditions under which they occur, not by one sister alone nor by the other alone, but by both. in future, art and science should go hand in hand, mutually dependent on each other, mutually trustful of each other, working with and for each other, earnestly and patiently. footnotes: [c] light is either direct or diffused--direct, when the sun's rays fall upon any object; diffused, when ordinary daylight illumines objects with white light, causing them to appear of their peculiar colours. addendum. with the present rapid progress of applied chemistry, an addendum in a work of this kind is quite excusable. even while the book is being printed some fact may be announced which the author or editor would wish to insert. in our case this has happened. very recently there has been introduced in france as a pigment . tungsten white, or _tungstate of baryta_. "at the request of a landscape painter," says m. sacc in a letter to m. dumas, "i was induced to examine in succession all our insoluble white compounds, with regard to their adaptability to painting purposes. tungstate of baryta answers perfectly, covers as well as white lead, and is as unalterable as zinc white. it has been employed by this artist for three months, and was found equally successful in oil or water colours, chromolithography, and even in making white impressions on a black ground. this harmless substitute for the injurious white lead is prepared on a large scale in paris by m. e. rousseau." we have not met with a sample of that gentleman's manufacture, but judging from our own specimens, made both by wet and dry processes, and carefully tried in water and oil, it would seem that a perfect white pigment has yet to be discovered. with us, at least, tungstate of baryta is far from having the body of white lead, and indeed is inferior in opacity to good zinc white. unaffected by foul air, the tungstate appears to possess the common fault of all whites when compared with white lead--want of body, moreover it is a bad dryer. however, m. rousseau's preparation may not be open to these objections, and we therefore reserve our final opinion of tungsten white. it is intended to publish from time to time a fresh edition of field's chromatography, and we hope in the next issue to give a more detailed and favourable account of the new pigment. index. a. acacia catechu, . academy, royal, at burlington house, . acetate of lead, as a siccative, . " improper use of, . adulteration, . " of anotta, . " artificial ultramarine, . " black lead, . " cadmium yellow, . " carmine, . " chrome yellow, . " cochineal, . " genuine ultramarine, . " indigo, . " ivory black, . " madder, . " madder carmine, . " mars yellow, . " prussian blue, . " red lead, . " smalt, . " verdigris, . " vermilion, . " veronese green, . " white lead, , , . " yellow and orange orpiment, , . " zinc white, . advancing and retiring colours, - . advice, cennini's, . aerial perspective, . african cochineal, . " green, . air and light, action of, on pigments, . air effect, want of, . albumen, . alchemy, . alexander the great, . " veronese, . alkanet, . almagra, . almond black, . american artist, an, . analysis of brown, . " citrine, . " gray, . " marrone, . " olive, . " russet, . anchusa tinctoria, . ancients, colouring of the, . " colours of the, , , . aniline, . " colours, . " " cakes of, . " " in oil, . animal Æthiops, . " charcoal, - . " jelly, . anotta, . antimony, golden sulphur of, . " orange, . " red, . " white, . " yellow, . antipathies of pigments, . antwerp blue, . " brown, . apelles, , . archil, . " purple, . arethas, . armenian blue, , , . " bole, . " stone, . arsenical pigments, . arsenic green, substitutes for, , . " white, . " yellow, . art and science, , . artificial ultramarine, - . " acid pigments with, . " adulteration of, . " green in, . " gum with, . artificial ultramarine, in siliceous painting, . " origin of, . " prize for, . " test for, . artists and painters, . arts, society of, . ash, ultramarine, . ashes, blue, . asphaltic lake, the, . asphaltum and asphalt, . " liquid, . association of science, british, . assyrians, colouring and colours of, . augustus cæsar, . aureolin, , , - . " chemical news on, . " in admixture, . " mr. aaron penley on, . " the purest yellow, , . aurine, . autotype process, the, . avignon, berries of, . axiom, a wholesome, . axioms for compounding, . azuline, . azure, , , . b. barff, mr., . barium and bismuth chrome greens, . barthe and laurent, mm., . bartholomew, mr., . baryta, ferrate of, . " silicate of, . barytic white, . beauty in pigments, . beeswax, . berries, french, persian, and turkey, . berzelius, . bice, green, . bignonia chica, . bismuth purple, . bixa orellana, . bixine, . black, . " ancient, . " as a colour, , . " as a pigment, . " colours with, . " on the neutral, . black pigments:-- almond black, . beggars' ultramarine, . black chalk, . black lead, , . black ochre, . blue black, . bone black, . british ink, . charcoal black, . chinese ink, . coffee black, . copper prussian black, . cork black, . earth black, . frankfort black, . galena, . graphite, . indian ink, . ivory black, . lamp black, . liege black, . manganese black, . mineral black, . mixed black, . paper black, . peach black, . plumbago, . prussian black, , . purple black, . spanish black, . vine black, . bladder green, . blanc d'argent, . blending of pigments, . blood, dragon's, . bloodstone, . blue, . " ancient, , . " armenian, , . " as a colour, . " contrast of, , . " discordant, . " on the primary, . blue pigments:-- antwerp blue, . artificial ultramarines, - . azure, , . basic prussian blue, . berlin blue, , . bice, . bleu de garance, . blue ashes, . blue bice, . blue carmine, . blue ochre, , . blue sand, . blue verditer, . brilliant ultramarine, . cerulian blue, or coeruleum, . cobalt blue, . cobalt blues, - . cobalt prussian blue, . cobalt ultramarine, . coëlin, . copper blues, - . cotton seed blue, . cyanine, . dumont's blue, . dutch ultramarine, . enamel blue, . egyptian blue, . factitious ultramarine, . ferricyanide of iron, . ferrocyanide of iron, . french blue, . french ultramarine, . genuine ultramarine, - . gmelin's german ultramarine, . gold blue, . guimet's ultramarine, . haerlem blue, . hungary blue, . indian blue, . indicum, . indigo, . intense blue, . iodine blue, . iridium blue, . iris, . lazuline, . lazulite blue, . lazurstein, . leitch's blue, . leithner's blue, . manganese blue, . mineral blue, . mountain blue, . native prussian blue, . native ultramarine, . natural ultramarine, . new blue, . outremer, . outremer de guimet, . paris blue, , . permanent blue, . platinum blue, . powder blue, . prussian blue, . prussiate of iron, . pure ultramarine, . real ultramarine, . reboulleau's blue, . royal blue, . saunders' blue, . saxon blue, . schweinfurt blue, . smalt, - . terre bleu, . thénard's blue, . true ultramarine, . tungsten blue, . turnbull's blue, . ultramarines, - . verditer, . vienna blue, . wood-tar blue, . zaffre, . zinc-cobalt blue, . body white, . bole, armenian, . borrowdale, . bouvier, , , , , , , . box, the painter's, . bradley, mr., . british school, . broken colours, . bronze, . brown, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " citrine, . " contrast of, . " liquid, prout's, . " madder, . " mars, . " on the semi-neutral, . brown pigments:-- animal Æthiops, . antwerp brown, . asphaltum or asphalt, . bistre, . bitumen, . bitumen of judea, . bone brown, . burnt umber, . cadmium brown, . caledonian brown, . campania brown, . cappah brown, . cassel earth, . castle earth, . catechu browns, . chalon's brown, . chestnut brown, . chrome browns, . cologne earth, . copper brown, . cory's madder or yellow madder, . cullen's earth, . egyptian brown, . euchrome, . french prussian brown, . gambogiate of iron, . hypocastanum, . iron browns, . ivory brown, . jew's pitch, . leitch's brown, . manganese brown, . mineral brown, . mineral pitch, . mixed brown, . mummy, . mummy brown, . nickel brown, . ochre browns, . prussian brown, . purple brown, . roman sepia, . rubens' brown, . sepia, . terre de cassel, . uranium brown, . vandyke brown, . verona brown, . warm sepia, . yellow madder, . zinc brown, . brown pink, . " red, . " spanish, . " stil de grain, . browns, abundance of, , . brun de mars, . brunswick green, , . brushes, soap and alkali in, . burlington house, royal academy at, . burnt carmine, . " lake, . " madder, . " orpiment, . " roman ochre, . " sienna, . " terra di sienna, . " verdigris, . c. cadmium brown, . " orange, , , . " red, , . " white, . " yellow, , . " " adulteration of, . " " manufacture of, . " " when fugacious, . " " with white lead, . caledonian brown, . campania brown, . camphor, . cappah or cappagh brown, . carajuru, . carbolic acid, . carbon, . carmichael, mr., . carmine, , . " adulteration of, . " blue, . " burnt, . " field's, . carmine, madder, . " manufacture of, . " vermilion, . " violet, . " with indian yellow, . " " white lead, . carnac, ruins at, . carnagione, . carthamus, . cartoons at hampton court, . cassel earth, . " green, . " terre de, . " yellow, . cassius, purple of, . cassius's purple precipitate, . castle earth, . catechu browns, . celandine, . cendres bleues, . cennini, advice of, . cerulian blue or coeruleum, . ceruse, . chalk, black, . " green, . " red, . " white, . chalon's brown, . chaptal, count, , . charcoal, animal, , . " black, . " vegetal, , . charles i., . charred blacks, , , . cheese, anotta in, . chemical news, extract from, . chestnut brown, . chevreul, m., , , , . chiaroscuro, . chica d'andiguez, . " marrone, . " red, . china, mandarins of, . " white, . chinese ink, . " lake, . " orange, . " rouge, . " vermilion, . " white, . " yellow, . chinoline, . chocolate lead, . chromate of mercury, . chromates of lead, organic pigments with, , . chrome arseniate, . " browns, . " green, true, . " greens, - . " ochre, . chrome orange, . " oxide, . " oxides, - . " red, . " scarlet, . " yellows, - . " " adulteration of, . chromium, green oxide of, . " opaque oxide of, . " oxide of, . " transparent oxide of, . church, professor, . cicero, . cinnabar, . " green, . citrine, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " contrast of, . " on the tertiary, . citrine pigments:-- brown pink, . brown stil de grain, . brun de mars, . cassia fistula, . citrine brown, . citrine lake, . mars brown, . mixed citrine, . quercitron lake, . raw umber, . umber, . citron yellow, . classes of colours, on, - . classified pigments:-- black, . blue, . brown, . citrine, . gray, . green, . grey, . marrone, . olive, . orange, . purple, . red, . russet, . white, . yellow, . claude, . cleanliness in painting, . coal-tar colours, - , . " cakes of, . " in oil, . cobalt blue, . chalkiness in, . manufacture of, . " blues, - . " green, . " marrone, . " prussian blue, . " " green, . " purples, . " ultramarine, . coccus (abies nigra), . " cacti, . " ficus, . " ilicis, , . cochineal, . " adulteration of, . " dr. warren de la rue on, . " lake, with vermilion, . " lakes, - . coëlin, . coeruleum, , , , . coffee black, . " brown, . cohesion and colour, , . " durability, , . cologne earth, . " yellow, . colour and neutrality, . " latent, . " of extreme light objects, . " of shadow, . " on the relations and harmony of, . coloured rays, mixture of, . colouring, ancient, - . " false, . " importance of, - . " on, . " vicious, - . colours, ancient, , , . " and pigments individually, on, . " broken, . " classes of:-- " " neutral, . " " primary, . " " secondary, . " " semi-neutral, . " " tertiary, . " complementary, . " discordant, , . " entire, . " extreme, . " fugacity of ancient, . " held in check, . " hot and cold, . " imaginary, . " individual beauty of, . " light and dark, . " material, mixture of, . " mixture and compounding of, - . " not obtainable, . " not pigments, . " perspective of, . colours, retiring or advancing, - . " superfluous, . " unfitted for pigments, , . " vitrified, , . " with black, , . " " colours, . " " grey, . " " white, , . common pigments, . compounding colours, on, - , . compound pigments, . constable, . constantinople, . constant white, . " free acid in, . contrast of colour and neutrality, . " gradations and extremes, . " hues, - . " shades, . " warmth and coolness, . copper blues, - . " borate, . " brown, . " chrome, . " greens, - . " prussian black, . " prussiate of, . " reds, . " smalt, . " stannate, . " yellow, . cork black, . correggio, , . cory's madder or yellow madder, , . cotton seed blue, . cremnitz or crems white, . crimson lake, . crookes, mr., . crowding of pictures, . cudbear, . cullen's earth, . cuttle fish, . cuyp, . cyanine, . cyanus, , . d. damonico, . darkening of mineral colours, . davy, sir h., . dead sea, the, . deep cadmium, . " chrome, . " vermilion, . " deoxidation of pigments, . detractors of modern pigments, - . dewint's green, . diagram, . diesbach, m. . dilution of colour, . di palito, . direct and diffused light, . discord of colours, , . disinfectants of the palette, . distance, law about, . distilled verdigris, . distinction of colours, , . dominichino, . dragon's blood, . " with white lead, . drop gum, . drying of pigments, . " oils, lead in, . duffield, mrs., . dumas, m., , . dumont's blue, . durability of pigments, - , . dussance, professor h., . dutch pink, . " schools, . " the, , . " ultramarine, . " white, . dyeing, brown for, . " orange for, . dyes and pigments, . e. earth black, . " burnt sienna, . " cassel, or castle, . " cologne, . " cullen's, . " green, . " raw sienna, . egg-shells, white of, . egypt, catacombs of, . " temples of upper, , . egyptian blue, . " brown, . egyptians, the, colouring and colours of, - . elizabeth, queen, . eisner's green, . emerald green, . emeraldine, . enamel blue, . " colours, , . england, climate and females of, . english green, . " pink, . " red, . " vermilion, . entire colours, . equations, , , . euchrome, . exhibition, international, of , , . experiment, . exposure of pigments, . extract of gamboge, . " vermilion, . extreme colours, . f. factitious indigo, proposed, . " ultramarine, . falsalo, . fast and fugitive, pigments both, . ferrate of baryta, . ferricyanide of iron, . ferrocyanide " . field's carmine, . " lakes, - . " orange vermilion, . " purple, . " russet, . fineness of texture in pigments, . fire, action of, on pigments, . " pigments affected by, . fistula, cassia, . flake white, . flemish painters, . " schools, , . " white, . florentine lake, . " painters and painting, , , , . flower pieces, background tint for, . foul air, ochres with, . frankfort black, . french berries, . " blue, . " green, . " prussian brown, . " purple, solid, . " ultramarine, . " veronese green, . " white, . fresco, prussian blue in, , . fruit pieces of w. hunt, . fugacity of pigments, - . fugitive colours, . g. gainsborough, . galena, . galleries, picture, - . gallstone, . gamboge, . " as a glaze, . " extract of, . gamboge orange, . gambogiate of iron, . garance, bleu de, . gas, effect of, on colours, . gelbin's yellow, . general qualities of pigments, on the, . genuine ultramarine, - . " adulteration of, . " colouring matter of, . " defects in, . " manufacture of, . " price of, . " properties of, . " tests for, . giallolino, . gilpin, . giovanni bellini, . giulio romano, . glazing of colours, . gloucestershire, . gmelin, m., , , , . gmelin's german ultramarine, . gold blue, . " purple, . " reds, . " size, japanner's, . golden sulphur of antimony, . " yellow, . gradation in art, . " nature, . graham, mr., . graphite, . gray, , . " analysis of, . " and grey, , , . " as a colour, , . " as a pigment, . " contrast of, . " on the semi-neutral, . gray pigments:-- mineral gray, . mixed gray, . neutral tint, . payne's gray, . ultramarine ash, . greeks, colouring of the, , . " the, , , . green, . " as a colour, , . " contrast of, . " dewint's, . " discordant, . " olive, . " on the secondary, . green pigments:-- african green, . barium chrome green, . bismuth chrome green, . bladder green, . bronze, . brunswick green, , . chrome arseniate, . chrome greens, - . chrome oxide, . chrome oxides, - . cobalt green, . cobalt prussian green, . copper borate, . copper chrome, . copper greens, - , - , . copper stannate, . distilled verdigris, . elsner's green, . emerald green, , . english green, . french green, . french veronese green, . german mineral green, . green bice, . green cinnabar, . green earth, . green lake, . green ochre, . green oxide of chromium, . green ultramarine, . green verditer, . holy green, . hooker's green, . hungary green, . imperial green, . iris green, . malachite green, . manganese green, . marine green, . mineral green, . mitis green, . mixed green, . molybdenum green, . mountain green, . native green, . olympian green, . opaque oxide of chromium, . oxide of chromium, . patent green, . persian green, . pickle green, . prussian greens, . quinine green, . rinman's green, . roman green, . sap green, . saxon green, . sheele's green, . schweinfurt green, . silicate of baryta, . swedish green, . terre verte, . titanium green, . transparent oxide of chromium, . true chrome green, . true prussian green, . uranium green, . vanadium green, . venetian green, . verde vessie, . verdetto, . verdigris, . verona green, . veronese green, . vert de zinc, . vienna green, . viride Æris, . viridian, . zinc green, . green, pure, to obtain, . greens, ancient, . grey, - , . " and gray, , . " as a colour, . " as a pigment, . " colours with, , . " on the neutral, . grey pigments:-- black lead, . mixed grey, - . grinding of pigments, . guido, . guimet, m., , . " outremer de, . guimet's ultramarine, . gum, drop, " tragacanth, . gyges, . h. haerlem blue, . hamburgh lake, . " white, . hampton court, cartoons at, . harding's tint, . harmony of colour, - . hatching of colours, . haydon, . hercules tyrius, . holy green, . hooker's green, . houng hoa, . hues, , . hungary blue, . " green, . hunt, w., . hypocastanum, . i. illumination, cadmium orange in, . " coal-tar colours in, , . " manual of, . " viridian in, . imperial green, . indian blue, . " ink, , . " lake, . " ochre, . " purple, . " red, . " yellow, . indicum, . indigo, . " adulteration of, . " possible substitute for, . " proposed factitious, . indigofera, . indium yellow, . individually, on colours and pigments, . ink, blue, . " british, . " chinese, . " green, . " indelible brown, . " indian, . " liquid indian, . " red, . inkfish, the, . innoxious pigments, . intense blue, . " " manufacture of, . international exhibition of , , . invisible green, . iodine, . " blue, . " pink, . " scarlet, . " yellow, . iridium blue, . iris, . " green, . iron browns, . " ferricyanide of, . " ferrocyanide of, . " gambogiate of, . " pigments affected by, , , , , , , . " prussiate of, . " smalt, . " yellow, , . italian greens, , . " pink, . italics, numbered colours in, , . italy, colouring in modern, . ivory black, . " " with manganese black, . ivory brown, . j. japanner's gold size, . jaune de cologne, . " " fer, . " " mars, . " minérale, . jew's pitch, . judea, bitumen of, . k. kermes, . " lake, . " mineral, . key of colouring, . khair tree, the, . king's yellow, . knowledge of pigments, , . kremnitz or krems white, . kremser white, . l. lac, , . " lake, . lake, asphaltic, the, . " burnt, . " chinese, . " citrine, . " crimson, . " drop, . " florentine, . " green, . " hamburgh, . " indian, . " kermes, . " liquid madder, . " madder, . " marrone, . " olive, . " orange, . " purple, . " quercitron, , . " roman, . " scarlet, . " venetian, . " yellow, . lakes, cochineal, - . " field's, - . " madder, - . " rubric, - . " yellow, , . lamblack, . lamp black, . lapis lazuli, , , . laque de garance, . " minérale, . latent colour, . lawson, professor, . lawson's red, . layard, mr., , . lazuline, . lazulite blue, . lazur, persian and tartarian, . lazurium, . lazurstein, . lead, acetate or sugar of, - . " black, , . " carbonate of, . " chocolate, . " dicarbonate of, . " hydrated oxide of, . " in drying oils, . " orange, " oxychloride of, . " pigments affected by, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . " pigments, avoidance of, . " red, . " sulphate of, . " white, - . " whites, - . leitch's blue, . " brown, . leithner's blue, . lemon cadmium, . " yellow, . leonardo da vinci, . leyden, cassius of, . lichens, . liege black, . light and air, pigments affected by, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . light, direct and diffused, . " electric, the, . " magnesium, the, . " red, . likes and dislikes of pigments, . lime, pigments affected by, , , , , , . " with prussian blue, , . linear perspective, . linseed oil with white lead, . liquid asphaltum, . " indian ink, . " madder lake, . " prout's brown, . " rubiate, . lists of permanent pigments:-- " blue, , . " green, , . " orange, , . " purple, , . " red, , . " yellow, , . litharge, , . litmus, . local colour, . lombard school, . london white, . m. macpherson's tint, . madder, . " adulteration of, . " brown, . " burnt, . " carmine, . " " adulteration of, . " colouring matters of, . " cory's or cory's yellow, , . " dr. schunck on, . " lake, . " lakes, - . " " manufacture of, . " liquid lake, . " orange, , . " pink, . " purple, . " reds in oil, . " rose, . " rubens', . " yellow, , . magenta, . majolica, . malachite green, . manganese as a siccative, , , . " black, . " blue, . " brown, . " green, . " red, . manufacture of cadmium yellow, . " carmine, . " cobalt blue, . " intense blue, . " vermilion, , . marine green, . marrone, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " contrasts of, . " for walls of picture galleries, . " on the semi-neutral, . marrone pigments:-- brown madder, . chica marrone, . chocolate lead, . cobalt marrone, . madder marrone, . marrone lake, . marrone red, . mars marrone, . mixed marrone, . purple black, . mars brown, . " brun de, . " colours named after, , . " orange, . " red, . " rouge de, . " violet, . " violet de, . " yellow, . massicot, . mastic varnish, . mauve, . mercury, chromate of, . " marrone, . " white, . mérimée, , , , , , . metallic whites, . metals, rare, . michael angelo, . mineral black, . " blue, . " brown, . " colours, darkening of, . " gray, . " green, . " green, german, . " kermes, . " orange, . " pitch, . " purple, . " turbith, . " yellow, , , . minérale, jaune, . " laque, . miniature painter, a, . minium, , . mitis green, . mixed colours:-- " black, . " brown, . " citrine, . " gray, . " green, . " grey, . " marrone, . " olive, . " orange, . " purple, . " russet, . mixed tints, on, - , . mixture, a, . " of bitumen and mummy, . " of coloured rays, . " of material colours, . " unnecessary, . modan or morat white, . modern pigments, - . " detractors of, - . " inferior, . " superior, . molybdenum green, . monicon, . montabert, de, . montbeillard, roman pavement at, . montpellier yellow, . mountain blue, . " green, . mountains, . mummy, . " brown, . " and bitumen, mixed, . murexide, . musée minéralogique, of paris, . mutrie, miss, . " yellow, . n. naphthaline, . naples yellow, modern, . " old, . napoleon, emperor, . native bitumen, . " green, . " prussian blue, , . " ultramarine, . natural ultramarine, . nature, colour in, . " gradation in, . " palette of, . " study of, . negative colours, . nepos cornelius, . neutral colours, . " orange, penley's, . " tint, . neutrality and colour, , . neutrals, colour as applied to the, . new blue, . " pigments, - . nickel brown, . nineveh, , . nottingham white, . o. objectionable pigments, substitutes for, , , . ochre, black, " blue, . " brown, . " browns, . " burnt roman, . " chrome, . " green, . " indian, . " orange, . " oxford, . " purple, . " red, . " roman, . " scarlet, . " spanish, . " spruce, . " stone, . " transparent gold, . " yellow, . ochres and foul air, . " red, - . " yellow, - . ocre de ru, oil, coal-tar colours in, . " water-colour cakes in, . oils, , , . olive, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " contrast of, . " on the tertiary, . olive pigments:-- burnt verdigris, . dewint's green, . mixed olive, . olive green, . olive lake, . olive oxide of chromium, . olive rinman's green, . olive scheele's green, . olive schweinfurt green, . olive terre verte, . olive purples, . olympian green, . o'neill, mr., . opacity of pigments, . orange, , " as a colour, . " as an archeus, . " contrast of, . " discordant, . " on the secondary, . orange pigments:-- anotta, . antimony orange, . bixine, . burnt roman ochre, . burnt sienna, . burnt terra di sienna, . cadmium orange, , . chinese orange, . chromate of mercury, . chrome orange, . damonico, . gamboge orange, . golden sulphur of antimony, . golden yellow, . laque minérale, . madder orange, , . mars orange, . mineral orange, . mixed orange, . monicon, . neutral orange, . orange chrome, . orange chromate of lead, . orange de mars, . orange lake, . orange lead, . orange ochre, . orange orpiment, . penley's neutral orange, . realgar, . red orpiment, . rocou, . spanish ochre, . terra orellana, . thallium orange, . uranium orange, . zinc orange, . orange russet, . " vermilion, . " " field's, . order of colours:-- white, - , . yellow, - . red, - . blue, - . orange, - . green, - . purple, - . citrine, - . russet, - . olive, - . brown, - . marrone, - . gray, - . grey, - . black, - . organic pigments with lead chromates, . orient yellow, , . original pigments, . " importance of, - . orpiment yellow, - . outremer, . outremer de guimet, . oxford ochre, . oxidation of pigments, . oxide, chrome, . " of chromium, green, . " " opaque, . " " transparent, . oxychloride of lead, . oxygenated water, . oyster-shell, white of, . p. paille de mil, . painting, siliceous, . pale cadmium, . " chrome, . " vermilion, . " washes of a pigment, . palette, disinfectants of the, . " motto for the, . " setting the, . palette-knife, avoidance of a steel, , , , . palladium, . paper black, . " smalt and ultramarine in, . " to give a tone to, . paris blue, , . paris, musée minéralogique at, . " société d'encouragement of, . particular colour, predilection for a, , . patent green, . " yellow, . pattison's white, . paul veronese, , . payne's gray, . peach black, . pearl white, . peganum harmala, . penley, mr. aaron, - , , , . penley's neutral orange, . perfect pigment, a, . perkin, mr. w., . permanent blue, . " pigments, , , , , , . " white, . peroxidized pigments, . persian berries, . " green, . " lazur, . " red, . perspective, aerial, , . " linear, . " of colours, , . persulphomolybdates, . philocles, . phosphine, . photography, lamp black in, . " pigments generally in, . pickle green, . picric acid, . picture galleries, - . pictures and pigments, . pigment and colour, . pigments, action of fire and time on . " adulteration of, . " apt to vary, , . " beauty in, . " blending of, . " common, . " compound, . " drying of, . " fineness of texture in, . " grinding of, . " individual beauty of, . " innoxious, . " on the durability and fugacity of, . " on the general qualities of, . " opacity and transparency of, . " past and present, . " rays from, . " truth of hue in, . " vehicles with, - . " working well, . pink, brown, . " dutch, . " english, . " italian, . " madder, . " rose, . " saucers, . pitch, jew's, . " mineral, . pittacal, . platinum blue, . " yellow, . playfair, dr. lyon, . pliny, , , , , , . plumbago, . polygnotus, . pompeii, , . porcelain, blue for, . " green for, . poussin, , . powder blue, . power of pigments, individual, . powers of colours, . practice of sir j. reynolds, . precipitate, red, . prevention and cure, . price, dr. d. s., . primary colours, . principles of practice, . process, autotype, . protoxide, pigments in the state of, . proust, m., . prout, samuel, . prout's brown, liquid, . prussian black, , . " copper, . prussian blue, . " adulteration of, . " character of, , , . " cobalt, . " manufacture of, . " native, , . " want of a permanent, . " with alkalies, . prussian brown, . " " french, . " greens, , . " red, . prussiate of copper, . " iron, . pure scarlet, . " ultramarine, . purple, . " as a colour, . " as a pigment, . " black, , . " brown, . " contrast of, , . " lake, . " on the secondary, . purple pigments:-- archil purple, . bismuth purple, . burnt carmine, . burnt lake, . burnt madder, . cassius's purple precipitate, . cobalt purples, . field's purple, . gold purple, . indian purple, . mars violet, . mauve, . mineral purple, . mixed purple, . prussian purple, . purple madder, . purple ochre, . purple of cassius, . purple rubiate, . sandal wood purple, . solid french purple, . tin violet, . violet carmine, . violet de mars, . purple, pure, . " tyrian, , . purpurates, . purree, . q. qualities of pigments, on the general, . queen's yellow, . quercitron lake, , . " yellow, . quinine green, . r. ramnus infectorius, . raphael, , . rare metals, . raw sienna, . " umber, . rays from pigments, . real ultramarine, . realgar, . reboulleau's blue, . red, . " as a colour, . " contrasts of, , . " discordant, . " marrone, . " on the primary, . " orpiment, . red pigments:-- almagra, . antimony red, . armenian bole, . bloodstone, . brown red, . cadmium red, . carmine, - . carmine vermilion, . carnagione, . chica red, . chinese lake, . chinese rouge, . chinese vermilion, . coal-tar colours, . cobalt reds, . cochineal lakes, - . copper reds, . crimson lake, . deep vermilion, . dragon's blood, . english red, . english vermilion, . extract of vermilion, . ferrate of baryta, . field's carmine, . field's lakes, - . field's orange vermilion, . florentine lake, . red pigments:-- gold reds, . hamburgh lake, . indian lake, . indian ochre, . indian red, . iodine pink, . iodine scarlet, . kermes lake, . lac lake, . lawson's red, . light red, . liquid madder lake, . liquid rubiate, . madder carmine, . madder lake, . madder lakes, - . magenta, . majolica, . manganese red, . mars red, . mineral kermes, . minium, . murexide, . ochres, - . orange vermilion, . paille de mil, . pale vermilion, . peganum harmala, . persian red, . persulphomolybdates, . pink madder, . pink saucers, . prussian red, . pure scarlet, . purple lake, . red chalk, . red chrome, . red lead, . red ochre, . red precipitate, . redding, . roman lake, . rose madder, . rose pink, . rose rubiate, . rouge, . rouge de mars, . rubric lakes, - . rufigallic red, . sandal red, . saturnine red, . scarlet chrome, . scarlet lake, . scarlet ochre, . scarlet vermilion, . sil atticum, . silver red, . sinoper, . sorgho red, . spanish brown, . spanish red, . terra puzzoli, . terra sinopica, . thallium red, . tin pink, . ultramarine red, . uranium red, . venetian lake, . venetian red, . vermilion, . vermilions, - . wongshy red, . reds, ancient, . relations of colour, - . relative durability of colour, . rembrandt, , . revelation, book of, . reynolds, sir joshua, , , , , , . rinman's green, . " olive, . rocou, . roman green, . " lake, . " ochre, . " " burnt, . " painters and painting, , , , . " sepia, . " white, . romans, the, , . romulus, . rosaniline, . rose, the, . rousseau, m. e., . rowbotham, messrs., . royal academy at burlington house, . " blue, . rubens, , , , , , , . " brown, . " madder, . rubia tinctorum, . rubiate, purple, . rue, dr. warren de la, . ruskin, mr., . russet, . " analysis of, . " as a colour, . " contrast of, . " on the tertiary, . russet pigments:-- field's russet, . mixed russet, . orange russet, . prussiate of copper, . rubens' madder, . russet rubiate, . s. sacc, m., . safflower, . samuel prout, . sandal red, . " wood purple, . sandarac, . sap green, . satin white, . saturnine red, . saucers, pink, . saunders blue, . saxon blue, . " green, . " smalts, . scarlet chrome, . " iodine, . " lake, . " ochre, . " pure, . " transparent, a, reward for, . " " substitute for, . " vermilion, . scheele's green, . " olive, . schools of painting, - , . schunck, dr., . schweinfurt blue, . " green, . " " olive, . scoffern, dr., . sea, the dead, . " transparency of the, . secondary colours, . " pigments, . semi-neutral colours, . " the term, . semi-stability, on, . semi-stable pigments, , . sepia, , . " liquid, . " roman, . " warm, . shades, . shadow, colour of, , . siccatives, - . sienna, burnt, . " raw, . " terra di, . sil atticum, . silicate of baryta, . siliceous painting, ultramarine in, . silver red, . " white, . sinoper, . slate clays, . " powdered, . smalt, - . " adulteration of, . " copper, . smalt, grinding of, . " in mural decoration, . " in paper, . " iron, . soap and alkali in brushes, . société d'encouragement of paris, . society of arts, . soda flame, . solid french purple, . sorgho red, . sources of pigments, . south america, chica from, . spanish black, . " brown, . " ochre, . " red, . " schools, . " white, . spence, mr., . spruce ochre, . st. petersburg, palace at, . starch, . stil de grain, brown, . stippling, . stone, armenian, . " lapis lazuli, , . " malachite, . " ochre, . strontian yellow, . sulphate of lead, . " zinc, . sulphide of cadmium, thallium in, . sulphur and ochres, . sulphuretted hydrogen, pigments affected by, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . susa, . swedish green, . synonyms, value of, . t. talent of money, . teniers, . terra di sienna, . " " " burnt, . " orellana, . " puzzoli, . " sinopica, . terre bleu, . " verte, . " " olive, . terrene whites, , . tertiary colours, . " on, . thallium, in sulphide of cadmium, . " orange, . " red, . " yellow, . thebes, mausoleum at, . thénard, m., , . thénard's blue, . theophrastus, . theory and practice, . thwaites' yellow, . time, pigments affected by, . tin pink, . " violet, . " white, . tin-copper green, . tint, harding's, . " macpherson's, . " neutral, . tintoret, . tints, . titanium green, . titian, , , , , , , , , . transparency of pigments, . " to obtain, . transparent gold ochre, . " oxide of chromium, . " pigments, use of, . troy white, . true chrome green, . " prussian green, . " ultramarine, . truth of hue in pigments, . tullus hostilius, . tungsten blue, . " white, . turacine, . turbith mineral, . turkey berries, . turnbull's blue, . turner, , . turner's yellow, . tyrian purple, , . u. ultramarine, artificial, - . " acid pigments with, . " adulteration of, . " experiment with, . " green in, . " gum with, . " in siliceous painting, . " test for, . ultramarine ash, . " beggars', . " brilliant, . " cobalt, . " dutch, . " factitious, . " french, . ultramarine, genuine, - . " adulteration of, . " colouring matter of, . " defects in, , . " manufacture of, . " price of, . " properties of, . " tests for, . ultramarine, gmelin's german, . " green, . " guimet's, - . " native, . " natural, . " pure, . " real, . " red, . " true, . umber, . " burnt, . " grounds primed with, . " raw, . unnecessary mixture, . uranium brown, , " green, . " orange, . " red, . " yellow, . ure, dr., . v. vanadium green, . vandyke, , , , . " brown, . van eyck, . varnishes, , . vegetal charcoal, . vehicles with pigments, - . velasquez, . venetian green, . " lake, . " painters, painting, and pigments, , , , , , . " red, . " white, . verde vessie, . verdetto, . verdigris, , . " burnt, . " distilled, . verditer, blue, . " green, . vermilion, - . " adulteration of, . " carmine, . " chinese, and english, , . " deep, . " european and chinese, . " extract of, . " field's orange, . " manufacture of, . " orange, . vermilion pale, . " scarlet, . " with cochineal lake, . " with iodide of mercury, . verona brown, . " green, . veronese green, . " french, . vert de zinc, . vicious extremes in colouring, . vienna blue, . " green, . " white, . vine black, . violet, carmine, . " de mars, . " mars, . " tin, . viride Æris, . viridian, , . vision, derangement of, . vitrification and permanence, . vitrified colours, , , . vitruvius, . w. wall colour for picture galleries, . " space in " " . walpole, mrs., . warm sepia, . water-colour cakes in oil, . watts, mr., . weppen, . white, . " as a colour, . " as a pigment, . " chalk, . " colour as applied to, . whitelac varnish, . white lead, - . " adulteration of, . " colour restored in, . " hydrated oxide in, . " loss of opacity in, . " use of, . " with blue black, . " " bone brown, . " " brown pink, . " " cadmium yellow, . " " carmine, . " " dragon's blood, . " " gamboge, . " " indian lake, . " " indigo, . " " massicot, . " " orpiment, . " " prussian blue, . " " red lead, . " " yellow lakes, . white, on the neutral, . " perfect, , . white pigments:-- antimony white, . arsenic white, . barytic white, . blanc d'argent, . body white, . cadmium white, . ceruse, . china white, . chinese white, . constant white, . cremnitz or kremnitz white, . crems or krems white, . dutch white, . flake white, . flemish white, . french white, . hamburgh white, . kremser white, . london white, . mercury white, . modan or morat white, . nottingham white, . oxychloride of lead, . pattison's white, . pearl white, . permanent white, . roman white, . rouen white, . satin white, . silver white, . spanish white, . sulphate of lead, . tin white, . tungsten white, . troy white, . venetian white, . vienna white, . white lead, - . zinc white, . zinc whites, - . white, properties of, - . " use of, . whites, classified, . " in old pictures, . williamson, professor, . wilson, . winter scene, a water-colour, . wongshy red, . wood-tar blue, . working well in pigments, . y. yellow, . " as a colour, . " contrasts of, , . yellow, discordant, . " golden, . " madder, cory's, . " on the primary, . yellow pigments:-- antimony yellow, . arsenic yellow, . aureolin, - . bismuth yellow, . brown ochre, . cadmium yellows, - . cassel yellow, . chinese yellow, . chrome yellows, - . citron yellow, . cologne yellow, . copper yellow, . deep cadmium, . deep chrome, . di palito, . drop gum, . dutch pink, . english pink, . extract of gamboge, . gallstone, . gamboge, . gelbin's yellow, . giallolino, . indian yellow, . indium yellow, . iodine yellow, . iron yellow, , . italian pink, . jaune de cologne, . jaune de fer, . jaune de mars, . jaune minérale, . king's yellow, . lakes, , . lemon cadmium, . lemon yellow, . litharge, . madder yellow, , . mars yellow, . massicot, . mineral yellow, , , . montpellier yellow, . mutrie yellow, . naples yellow, . ochres, - . ocre de ru, . orient yellow, . orpiment or yellow orpiment, . oxford ochre, . pale cadmium, . pale chrome, . patent yellow, . platinum yellow, . purree, . queen's yellow, . quercitron lake, or yellow, . raw sienna, . roman ochre, . spruce ochre, . stone ochre, . strontian yellow, . terra di sienna, . thallium yellow, . thwaites' yellow, . transparent gold ochre, . turbith yellow, . turner's yellow, . uranium yellow, . yellow carmine, . yellow lake, . yellow ochre, . yellows, ancient, . " classified, . " former paucity of, . " various, . z. zaffre, . zeuxis and apelles, . zinc brown, . " cobalt blue, . " green, . " orange, , " siccatives, , . " vert de, . " white, . " " adulteration of, . " " over white lead, . " whites, - . errata. page _for_ inharmonious _read_ harmonious " _for_ there prevails _read_ there prevail " _for_ as whiteness, or light do, _read_ as whiteness or light does " _for_ purple of cassius _read_ purple of cassius " _for_ which manufactures _read_ which manufactures pictures " _for_ _laque minéral_ _read_ _laque minérale_ " _for_ rivals _read_ rivels " _for_ predominate _read_ predominates the end. london: printed by a. schulze, , poland street. +------------------------------------------------------+ |transcriber's note: | | | |the errata above and the following have been corrected| |in the text: | | | |page vi semi-neutral changed to semi-neutral | | life less changed to lifeless | | sun-rise changed to sunrise | | in the the changed to in the | | perpective changed to perspective | | marone changed to marrone | | di-carbonate changed to dicarbonate | | hydrogren changed to hydrogen | | imimical changed to inimical | | feuillemorte changed to feuillemort | | item numbering has been left consistent | | with the omission of item no. | | extemes changed to extremes | | muroxide changed to murexide | | dullness changed to dulness | | gaslight changed to gas-light | | durablity changed to durability | | and developement changed to development | | decolorized changed to decolourised | | indentical changed to identical | | re-acting changed to reacting | | exibition changed to exhibition | | childrens' changed to children's | | toneing changed to toning | | fine tooth-comb changed to fine-tooth comb | | analagous changed to analogous | | announceed changed to announced | | abies changed to abies | | | |inconsistencies in the use of analyse/analyze, | |harmonise/harmonize and neutralise/neutralize have | |been retained as in the original text, as have the | |use of aërial and aerial. | +------------------------------------------------------+ lectures on landscape delivered at oxford in lent term, . library edition the complete works of john ruskin crown of wild olive time and tide queen of the air lectures on art and landscape aratra pentelici national library association new york chicago [illustration: brantwood from a photograph] prefatory note. _these lectures on landscape were given at oxford on january , february , and february , . they were not public lectures, like professor ruskin's other courses, but addressed only to undergraduates who had joined his class. they were illustrated by pictures from his collection, of which several are here reproduced, and by others which may be seen in the oxford university galleries or in the ruskin drawing school._ _w.g.c._ contents. page lecture i. outline lecture ii. light and shade lecture iii. color list of plates page vesuvius in eruption, by j.m.w. turner near blair athol, by j.m.w. turner dumblane abbey, by j.m.w. turner madonna and child, by filippo lippi the lady with the brooch, by sir joshua reynolds Æsacus and hesperie, by j.m.w. turner mill near grande chartreuse, by j.m.w. turner l'aiguillette; valley of cluses, by j.m.w. turner lectures on landscape. i. outline. . in my inaugural lecture,[ ] i stated that while holding this professorship i should direct you, in your practical exercises, chiefly to natural history and landscape. and having in the course of the past year laid the foundational elements of art sufficiently before you, i will invite you, now, to enter on real work with me; and accordingly i propose during this and the following term to give you what practical leading i can in elementary study of landscape, and of a branch of natural history which will form a kind of center for all the rest--ichthyology. [footnote : "lectures on art, ," § .] in the outset i must shortly state to you the position which landscape painting and animal painting hold towards the higher branches of art. . landscape painting is the thoughtful and passionate representation of the physical conditions appointed for human existence. it imitates the aspects, and records the phenomena, of the visible things which are dangerous or beneficial to men; and displays the human methods of dealing with these, and of enjoying them or suffering from them, which are either exemplary or deserving of sympathetic contemplation. animal painting investigates the laws of greater and less nobility of character in organic form, as comparative anatomy examines those of greater and less development in organic structure; and the function of animal painting is to bring into notice the minor and unthought of conditions of power or beauty, as that of physiology is to ascertain the minor conditions of adaptation. . questions as to the purpose of arrangements or the use of the organs of an animal are, however, no less within the province of the painter than of the physiologist, and are indeed more likely to commend themselves to you through drawing than dissection. for as you dissect an animal you generally assume its form to be necessary and only examine how it is constructed; but in drawing the outer form itself attentively you are led necessarily to consider the mode of life for which it is disposed, and therefore to be struck by any awkwardness or apparent uselessness in its parts. after sketching one day several heads of birds it became a vital matter of interest to me to know the use of the bony process on the head of the hornbill; but on asking a great physiologist, i found that it appeared to him an absurd question, and was certainly an unanswerable one. . i have limited, you have just heard, landscape painting to the representation of phenomena relating to human life. you will scarcely be disposed to admit the propriety of such a limitation; and you will still less be likely to conceive its necessary strictness and severity, unless i convince you of it by somewhat detailed examples. here are two landscapes by turner in his greatest time--vesuvius in repose, vesuvius in eruption. one is a beautiful harmony of cool color; and the other of hot, and they are both exquisitely designed in ornamental lines. but they are not painted for those qualities. they are painted because the state of the scene in one case is full of delight to men; and in the other of pain and danger. and it is not turner's object at all to exhibit or illustrate natural phenomena, however interesting in themselves. [illustration: vesuvius in eruption. from the painting by turner.] he does not want to paint blue mist in order to teach you the nature of evaporation; nor this lava stream, to explain to you the operation of gravity on ponderous and viscous materials. he paints the blue mist, because it brings life and joy to men, and the lava stream because it is death to them. . again here are two sea-pieces by turner of the same period--photographs from them at least. one is a calm on the shore at scarborough; the other the wreck of an indiaman. these also are each painted with exquisitely artistic purpose: the first in opposition of local black to diffused sunshine; the second in the decorative grouping of white spots on a dark ground. that decorative purpose of dappling, or [greek: poikilia], is as studiously and deliciously carried out by turner with the dædalus side of him, in the inlaying of these white spots on the indiaman's deck, as if he were working a precious toy in ebony and ivory. but turner did not paint either of the sea-pieces for the sake of these decorous arrangements; neither did he paint the scarborough as a professor of physical science, to show you the level of low tide on the yorkshire coast; nor the indiaman to show you the force of impact in a liquid mass of sea-water of given momentum. he painted this to show you the daily course of quiet human work and happiness, and that, to enable you to conceive something of uttermost human misery--both ordered by the power of the great deep. . you may easily--you must, perhaps, for a little time--suspect me of exaggeration in this statement. it is so natural to suppose that the main interest of landscape is essentially in rocks and water and sky; and that figures are to be put, like the salt and mustard to a dish, only to give it a flavor. put all that out of your heads at once. the interest of a landscape consists wholly in its relation either to figures present--or to figures past--or to human powers conceived. the most splendid drawing of the chain of the alps, irrespective of their relation to humanity, is no more a true landscape than a painting of this bit of stone. for, as natural philosophers, there is no bigness or littleness to you. this stone is just as interesting to you, or ought to be--as if it was a million times as big. there is no more sublimity--_per se_--in ground sloped at an angle of forty-five, than in ground level; nor in a perpendicular fracture of a rock, than in a horizontal one. the only thing that makes the one more interesting to you in a landscape than the other, is that you could tumble over the perpendicular fracture--and couldn't tumble over the other. a cloud, looked at as a cloud only, is no more a subject for painting than so much feculence in dirty water. it is merely dirty air, or at best a chemical solution ill made. that it is worthy of being painted at all depends upon its being the means of nourishment and chastisement to men, or the dwelling place of imaginary gods. there's a bit of blue sky and cloud by turner--one of the loveliest ever painted by human hand. but, as a mere pattern of blue and white, he had better have painted a jay's wing: this was only painted by him--and is, in reality, only pleasant to you--because it signifies the coming of a gleam of sweet sunshine in windy weather; and the wind is worth thinking of only because it fills the sails of ships, and the sun because it warms the sailors. . now, it is most important that you should convince yourselves of and fully enter into this truth, because all the difficulty in choosing subject arises from mistakes about it. i daresay some of you who are fond of sketching have gone out often in the most beautiful country, and yet with the feeling that there was no good subject to be found in it. that always arises from your not having sympathy enough with its vital character, and looking for physical picturesqueness instead. on the contrary, there are crude efforts at landscape-painting, made continually upon the most splendid physical phenomena, in america, and other countries without any history. it is not of the slightest use. niagara, or the north pole and the aurora borealis, won't make a landscape; but a ditch at iffley will, if you have humanity in you--enough in you to interpret the feelings of hedgers and ditchers, and frogs. . next, here is one of the most beautiful landscapes ever painted, the best i have next to the greta and tees. the subject physically is a mere bank of grass above a stream with some wych-elms and willows. a level-topped bank; the water has cut its way down through the soft alluvion of an elevated plain to the limestone rock at the bottom. had this scene been in america, no mortal could have made a landscape of it. it is nothing but a grass bank with some not very pretty trees scattered over it, wholly without grouping. the stream at the bottom is rocky indeed, but its rocks are mean, flat, and of a dull yellow color. the sky is gray and shapeless. there's absolutely nothing to paint anywhere of essential landscape subject, as commonly understood. now see what the landscape consists in, which i have told you is one of the most beautiful ever painted by man. there's first a little bit of it left nearly wild, not quite wild; there's a cart and rider's track through it among the copse; and then, standing simply on the wild moss-troopers' ground, the scattered ruins of a great abbey, seen so dimly, that they seem to be fading out of sight, in color as in time. these two things together, the wild copse wood and the ruin, take you back into the life of the fourteenth century. the one is the border-riders' kingdom; the other that of peace which has striven against border-riding--how vainly! both these are remains of the past. but the outhouses and refectory of the abbey have been turned into a farmhouse, and that is inhabited, and in front of it the mistress is feeding her chickens. you see the country is perfectly quiet and innocent, for there is no trace of a fence anywhere; the cattle have strayed down to the riverside, it being a hot day; and some rest in the shade and two in the water. they could not have done so at their ease had the river not been humanized. only a little bit of its stony bed is left; a mill weir, thrown across, stays the water in a perfectly clear and delicious pool; to show how clear it is, turner has put the only piece of playing color in all the picture into the reflections in this. one cow is white, another white and red, evidently as clean as morning dew can wash their sides. they could not have been so in a country where there was the least coal smoke; so turner has put a wreath of perfectly white smoke through the trees; and lest that should not be enough to show you they burnt wood, he has made his foreground of a piece of copse just lopped, with the new fagots standing up against it; and this still not being enough to give you the idea of perfect cleanliness, he has covered the stones of the river-bed with white clothes laid out to dry; and that not being enough yet, for the river-bed might be clean though nothing else was, he has put a quantity more hanging over the abbey walls. . _only natural phenomena in their direct relation to humanity_--these are to be your subjects in landscape. rocks and water and air may no more be painted for their own sakes, than the armor carved without the warrior. but, secondly. i said landscape is to be a _passionate representation_ of these things. it must be done, that is to say, with strength and depth of soul. this is indeed to some extent merely the particular application of a principle that has no exception. if you are without strong passions, you cannot be a painter at all. the laying of paint by an insensitive person, whatever it endeavors to represent, is not painting, but daubing or plastering; and that, observe, irrespective of the boldness or minuteness of the work. an insensitive person will daub with a camel's hair-brush and ultramarine; and a passionate one will paint with mortar and a trowel. . but far more than common passion is necessary to paint landscape. the physical conditions there are so numerous, and the spiritual ones so occult, that you are sure to be overpowered by the materialism, unless your sentiment is strong. no man is naturally likely to think first of anatomy in painting a pretty woman; but he is very apt to do so in painting a mountain. no man of ordinary sense will take pleasure in features that have no meaning, but he may easily take it in heath, woods or waterfalls, that have no expression. so that it needs much greater strength of heart and intellect to paint landscape than figure: many commonplace persons, bred in good schools, have painted the figure pleasantly or even well; but none but the strongest--john bellini, titian, velasquez, tintoret, mantegna, sandro botticelli, carpaccio and turner--have ever painted a fragment of good landscape. in missal painting exquisite figure-drawing is frequent, and landscape backgrounds in late works are elaborate; but i only know thoroughly good landscape in one book; and i have examined--i speak deliberately--thousands. . for one thing, the passion is necessary for the mere quantity of design. in good art, whether painting or sculpture, i have again and again told you every touch is necessary and beautifully intended. now it falls within the compass of ordinary application to place rightly all the folds of drapery or gleams of light on a chain, or ornaments in a pattern; but when it comes to placing every leaf in a tree, the painter gets tired. here, for instance, is a little bit of sandro botticelli background; i have purposefully sketched it in the slightest way, that you might see how the entire value of it depends on thoughtful placing. there is no texture aimed at, no completion, scarcely any variety of light and shade; but by mere care in the placing the thing is beautiful. well, every leaf, every cloud, every touch is placed with the same care in great work; and when this is done as by john bellini in the picture of peter martyr,[ ] or as it was by titian in the great peter martyr, with every leaf in a wood he gets tired. i know no other such landscape in the world as that is, or as that was. [footnote : national gallery, no. .] . perhaps you think on such conditions you never can paint landscape at all. well, great landscape certainly not; but pleasant and useful landscape, yes; provided only the passion you bring to it be true and pure. the degree of it you cannot command; the genuineness of it you can--yes, and the depth of source also. tintoret's passion may be like the reichenbach, and yours only like a little dripping holywell, but both equally from deep springs. . but though the virtue of all painting (and similarly of sculpture and every other art) is in passion, i must not have you begin by working passionately. the discipline of youth, in all its work, is in cooling and curbing itself, as the discipline of age is in warming and urging itself; you know the bacchic chorus of old men in plato's _laws_. to the end of life, indeed, the strength of a man's finest nature is shown in due continence; but that is because the finest natures remain young to the death: and for you the first thing you have to do in art (as in life) is to be quiet and firm--quiet, above everything; and modest, with this most essential modesty, that you must like the landscape you are going to draw better than you expect to like your drawing of it, however well it may succeed. if you would not rather have the real thing than your sketch of it, you are not in a right state of mind for sketching at all. if you only think of the scene, "what a nice sketch this will make!" be assured you will never make a nice sketch of it. you may think you have produced a beautiful work; nay, perhaps the public and many fair judges will agree with you; but i tell you positively, there will be no enduring value in what you have thus done. whereas if you think of the scene, "ah, if i could only get some shadow or scrawl of this to carry away with me, how glad i should be!"--then whatever you do will be, according to your strength, good and progressive: it may be feeble, or much faultful, but it will be vital and essentially precious. . now, it is not possible for you to command this state of mind, or anything like it, in yourselves at once. nay, in all probability your eyes are so satiated by the false popular art surrounding us now on all sides, that you cannot see the delicate reality though you try; but even though you may not care for the truth, you can act as if you did, and tell it. now, therefore, observe this following quite plain direction. whenever you set yourself to draw anything, consider only how best you may give a person who has not seen the place, a true idea of it. use any means in your power to do that, and don't think of the person for whom you are drawing as a connoisseur, but as a person of ordinary sense and feeling. don't get artist-like qualities for him: but first give him the pleasant sensation of being at the place, then show him how the land lies, how the water runs, how the wind blows, and so on. always think of the public as molière of his old woman; you have done nothing really great or good if you can't please her. . now beginning wisely, so as to lose no time or labor, you will learn to paint all the conditions of quiet light and sky, before you attempt those of variable light and cloud. do not trouble yourselves with or allow yourselves to be tempted by any effects that are brilliant or tremendous; except only that from the beginning i recommend you to watch always for sunrise; to keep a little diary of the manner of it, and to have beside your window a small sketch-book, with pencil cut over night, and colors moist. the one indulgence which i would have you allow yourselves in fast coloring, for some time, is the endeavor to secure some record at the instant of the colors of morning clouds; while, if they are merely white or gray or blue, you must get an outline of them with pencil. you will soon feel by this means what are the real difficulties to be encountered in all landscape coloring, and your eyes will be educated to quantity and harmonious action of forms. but for the rest--learn to paint everything in the quietest and simplest light. first outline your whole subject completely, with delicate sharp pencil line. if you don't get more than that, let your outline be a finished and lovely diagram of the whole. . all the objects are then to be painted of their proper colors, matching them as nearly as you can, in the manner that a missal is painted, filling the outlined shapes neatly up to their junctions; reënforcing afterwards when necessary, but as little as possible; but, above all, knowing precisely what the light is, and where it is.[ ] [footnote : make a note of these points: . date, time of day, temperature, direction and force of wind. . roughly, by compass, the direction in which you are looking; and angle of the light with respect to it. . angle subtended by picture, and distance of nearest object in it.] . i have brought two old-fashioned colored engravings,[ ] which are a precise type of the style i want you to begin with. finished from corner to corner, as well as the painter easily could; everything done to good purpose, nothing for vain glory; nothing in haste or affectation, nothing in feverish or morbid excitement. the observation is accurate; the sentiment, though childish, deep and pure; and the effect of light, for common work, quite curiously harmonious and deceptive. [footnote : from a "picturesque tour from geneva to milan" ... engraved from designs by j. lory of neufchâtel. london: published by r. ackermann, at his repository of arts, .] they are, in spite of their weaknesses, absolutely the only landscapes i could show you which give you a real idea of the places, or which put your minds into the tone which, if you were happy and at ease, they would take in the air and light of italy. i dwell on the necessity of completion especially, because i have lost much time myself from my sympathy with the feverish intensity of the minds of the great engravers; and from always fastening on one or two points of my subject and neglecting the rest. . we have seen, then, that every subject is to be taken up first in its terminal lines, then in its light and shade, then in its color. first of the terminal lines of landscape, or of drawing in outline. i think the examples of shell outline in your copying series must already have made you feel the exact nature of a pure outline, the difficulty of it, and the value. but we have now to deal with limits of a more subtle kind. the outline of any simple solid form, even though it may have complex parts, represents an actual limit, accurately to be followed. the outline of a cup, of a shell, or of an animal's limb, has a determinable course, which your pen or pencil line either coincides with or does not. you can say of that line, either it is wrong or right; if right, it is in a measure suggestive, and nobly suggestive of the character of the object. but the greater number of objects in a landscape either have outlines so complex that no pencil could follow them (as trees in middle distance), or they have no actual outline at all, but a gradated and softened edge; as, for the most part, clouds, foam, and the like. and even in things which have determinate form, the outline of that form is usually quite incapable of expressing their real character. [illustration] . here is the most ordinary component of a foreground for instance, a pleasantly colored stone. any of its pure outlines are not only without beauty, but absolutely powerless to give you any notion of its character, although that character is in itself so interesting, that here turner has made a picture of little more than a heap of such stones, with blue water to oppose their color. in consequence of these difficulties and insufficiencies, most landscape-painters have been tempted to neglect outline altogether, and think only of effects of light or color on masses more or less obscurely defined. they have thus gradually lost their sense of organic form, their precision of hand, and their respect for limiting law; in a word, for all the safeguards and severe dignities of their art. and landscape-painting has, therefore, more in consequence of this one error than of any other, become weak, frivolous, and justly despised. . now, if any of you have chanced to notice at the end of my "queen of the air," my saying that in landscape turner must be your only guide, you perhaps have thought i said so because of his great power in melting colors or in massing light and shade. not so. i have always said he is the only great landscape-painter, and to be your only guide, because he is the only landscape-painter who can draw an outline. his finished works perhaps appear to you more vague than any other master's: no man loses his outlines more constantly. you will be surprised to know that his frankness in losing depends on his certainty of finding if he chooses; and that, while all other landscape-painters study from nature in shade or in color, turner always sketched with the point. "always," of course, is a wide word. in your copying series i have put a sketch by turner in color from nature; some few others of the kind exist, in the national gallery and elsewhere. but, as a rule, from his boyhood to the last day of his life, he sketched only with the fine pencil point, and always the outline, more if he had time, but at least the outline, of every scene that interested him; and in general, outline so subtle and elaborate as to be inexhaustible in examination and uncopiable for delicacy. here is a sketch of an english park scene which represents the average character of a study from nature by turner; and here the sketch from nature of dumblane abbey for the _liber studiorum_, which shows you what he took from nature, when he had time only to get what was most precious to him. . the first thing, therefore, you have to learn in landscape, is to outline; and therefore we must now know precisely what an outline is, how it ought to be represented; and this it will be right to define in quite general terms applicable to all subjects. we saw in the fifth lecture[ ] that every visible thing consisted of spaces of color, terminated either by sharp or gradated limits. whenever they are sharp, the line of separation, followed by the point of your drawing instrument, is the proper outline of your subject, whether it represents the limits of flat spaces or of solid forms. [footnote : "lectures on art, ," § .] . for instance, here is a drawing by holbein of a lady in a dark dress, with bars of black velvet round her arm. her form is seen everywhere defined against the light by a perfectly sharp linear limit which holbein can accurately draw with his pen; the patches of velvet are also distinguished from the rest of her dress by a linear limit, which he follows with his pen just as decisively. here, therefore, is your first great law. wherever you see one space of color distinguished from another by a sharp limit, you are to draw that limit firmly; and that is your outline. . also, observe that as your representing this limit by a dark line is a conventionalism, and just as much a conventionalism when the line is subtle as when it is thick, the great masters accept and declare that conventionalism with perfect frankness, and use bold and decisive outline, if any. also, observe, that though, when you are master of your art, you may modify your outline by making it dark in some parts, light in others, and even sometimes thick and sometimes slender, a scientifically accurate outline is perfectly equal throughout; and in your first practice i wish you to use always a pen with a blunt point, which will make no hair stroke under any conditions. so that using black ink and only one movement of the pen, not returning to thicken your line, you shall either have your line there, or not there; and that you may not be able to gradate or change it, in any way or degree whatsoever. . now the first question respecting it is: what place is your thick line to have with respect to the limit which it represents--outside of it, or inside, or over it? theoretically, it is to be over it; the true limit falling all the way along the center of your thick line. the contest of apelles with protogenes consisted in striking this true limit within each other's lines, more and more finely. and you may always consider your pen line as representing the first incision for sculpture, the true limit being the sharp center of the incision. but, practically, when you are outlining a light object defined against a dark one, the line must go outside of it; and when a dark object against a light one, inside of it. in this drawing of holbein's, the hand being seen against the light, the outline goes inside the contour of the fingers. . secondly. and this is of great importance. it will happen constantly that forms are entirely distinct from each other and separated by true limits, which are yet invisible, or nearly so, to the eye. i place, for instance, one of these eggs in front of the other, and probably to most of you the separation in the light is indiscernible. is it then to be outlined? in practically combining outline with accomplished light and shade there are cases of this kind in which the outline may with advantage, or even must for truth of effect, be omitted. but the facts of the solid form are of so vital importance, and the perfect command of them so necessary to the dignity and intelligibility of the work, that the greatest artists, even for their finished drawings, like to limit every solid form by a fine line, whether its contour be visible to the eye or not. . an outline thus perfectly made with absolute decision, and with a wash of one color above it, is the most masterly of all methods of light and shade study, with limited time, when the forms of the objects to be drawn are clear and unaffected by mist. but without any wash of color, such an outline is the most valuable of all means for obtaining such memoranda of any scene as may explain to another person, or record for yourself, what is most important in its features. . choose, then, a subject that interests you; and so far as failure of time or materials compels you to finish one part, or express one character, rather than another, of course dwell on the features that interest you most. but beyond this, forget, or even somewhat repress yourself, and make it your first object to give a true idea of the place to other people. you are not to endeavor to express your own feelings about it; if anything, err on the side of concealing them. what is best is not to think of yourself at all, but to state as plainly and simply as you can the whole truth of the thing. what you think unimportant in it may to another person be the most touching part of it: what you think beautiful may be in truth commonplace and of small value. quietly complete each part to the best of your power, endeavoring to maintain a steady and dutiful energy, and the tranquil pleasure of a workman. ii. light and shade. . in my last lecture i laid before you evidence that the greatness of the master whom i wished you to follow as your only guide in landscape depended primarily on his studying from nature always with the point; that is to say, in pencil or pen outline. to-day i wish to show you that his preëminence depends secondarily on his perfect rendering of form and distance by light and shade, before he admits a thought of color. i say "before" however--observe carefully--only with reference to the construction of any given picture, not with reference to the order in which he learnt his mechanical processes. from the beginning, he worked out of doors with the point, but indoors with the brush; and attains perfect skill in washing flat color long before he attains anything like skill in delineation of form. . here, for instance, is a drawing, when he was twelve or thirteen years old, of dover castle and the dover coach; in which the future love of mystery is exhibited by his studiously showing the way in which the dust rises about the wheels; and an interest in drunken sailors, which materially affected his marine studies, shown not less in the occupants of the hind seat. but what i want you to observe is that, though the trees, coach, horses, and sailors are drawn as any schoolboy would draw them, the sky is washed in so smoothly that few water-color painters of our day would lightly accept a challenge to match it. and, therefore, it is, among many other reasons, that i put the brush into your hands from the first, and try you with a wash in lampblack, before you enter my working class. but, as regards the composition of his picture, the drawing is always first with turner, the color second. . drawing: that is to say, the expression by gradation of light, either of form or space. again i thus give you a statement wholly adverse to the vulgar opinion of him. you will find that statement early in the first volume of "modern painters," and repeated now through all my works these twenty-five years, in vain. nobody will believe that the main virtue of turner is in his drawing. i say "the main virtue of turner." splendid though he be as a colorist, he is not unrivaled in color; nay, in some qualities of color he has been far surpassed by the venetians. but no one has ever touched him in exquisiteness of gradation; and no one in landscape in perfect rendering of organic form. . i showed you in this drawing, at last lecture, how truly he had matched the color of the iron-stained rocks in the bed of the ticino; and any of you who care for color at all cannot but take more or less pleasure in the black and greens and warm browns opposed throughout. but the essential value of the work is not in these. it is, first, in the expression of enormous scale of mountain and space of air, by gradations of shade in these colors, whatever they may be; and, secondly, in the perfect rounding and cleaving of the masses alike of mountain and stone. i showed you one of the stones themselves, as an example of uninteresting outline. if i were to ask you to paint it, though its color is pleasant enough, you would still find it uninteresting and coarse compared to that of a flower, or a bird. but if i can engage you in an endeavor to draw its true forms in light and shade, you will most assuredly find it not only interesting, but in some points quite beyond the most subtle skill you can give to it. . you have heard me state to you, several times, that all the masters who valued accurate form and modeling found the readiest way of obtaining the facts they required to be firm pen outline, completed by a wash of neutral tint. this method is indeed rarely used by raphael or michael angelo in the drawings they have left us, because their studies are nearly all tentative--experiments in composition, in which the imperfect or careless pen outline suggested all they required, and was capable of easy change without confusing the eye. but the masters who knew precisely before they laid touch on paper what they were going to do--and this may be, observe, either because they are less or greater than the men who change; less, in merely drawing some natural object without attempt at composition, or greater in knowing absolutely beforehand the composition they intend; it may be, even so, that what they intend, though better known, is not so good:--but at all events, in this anticipating power tintoret, holbein and turner stand, i think, alone as draughtsmen; tintoret rarely sketching at all, but painting straight at the first blow, while holbein and turner sketch indeed, but it is as with a pen of iron and a point of diamond. . you will find in your educational series[ ] many drawings illustrative of the method; but i have enlarged here the part that is executed with the pen, out of this smaller drawing, that you may see with what fearless strength holbein delineates even the most delicate folds of the veil on the head, and of the light muslin on the shoulders, giving them delicacy, not by the thinness of his line, but by its exquisite veracity. [footnote : at the ruskin drawing school, oxford.] the eye will endure with patience, or even linger with pleasure, on any line that is right, however coarse; while the faintest or finest that is wrong will be forcibly destructive. and again and again i have to recommend you to draw always as if you were engraving, and as if the line could not be changed. . the method used by turner in the _liber studiorum_ is precisely analogous to that of holbein. the lines of these etchings are to trees, rocks, or buildings, absolutely what these of holbein are; not suggestions of contingent grace, but determinations of the limits of future form. you will see the explanatory office of such lines by placing this outline over my drawing of the stone, until the lines coincide with the limits of the shadow. you will find that it intensifies and explains the forms which otherwise would have escaped notice, and that a perfectly gradated wash of neutral tint with an outline of this kind is all that is necessary for grammatical statement of forms. it is all that the great colorists need for their studies; they would think it wasted time to go farther; but, if you have no eye for color, you may go farther in another manner, with enjoyment. . now to go back to turner. the _first_ great object of the _liber studiorum_, for which i requested you in my sixth lecture[ ] to make constant use of it, is the delineation of solid form by outline and shadow. but a yet more important purpose in each of the designs in that book is the expression of such landscape powers and character as have especial relation to the pleasures and pain of human life--but especially the pain. and it is in this respect that i desired you (sect. ) to be assured, not merely of their superiority, but of their absolute difference in kind from photography, as works of disciplined design. [footnote : "lectures on art, ," § .] [illustration: near blair athol. from the painting by turner.] . i do not know whether any of you were interested enough in the little note in my catalogue on this view near blair athol, to look for the scene itself during your summer rambles. if any did, and found it, i am nearly certain their impression would be only that of an extreme wonder how turner could have made so little of so beautiful a spot. the projecting rock, when i saw it last in , and i am certain, when turner saw it, was covered with lichens having as many colors as a painted window. the stream--or rather powerful and deep highland river, the tilt--foamed and eddied magnificently through the narrowed channel; and the wild vegetation in the rock crannies was a finished arabesque of living sculpture, of which this study of mine, made on another stream, in glenfinlas, only a few miles away, will give you a fair idea. turner has absolutely stripped the rock of its beautiful lichens to bare slate, with one quartz vein running up through it; he has quieted the river into a commonplace stream; he has given, of all the rich vegetation, only one cluster of quite uninteresting leaves and a clump of birches with ragged trunks. yet, observe, i have told you of it, he has put into one scene the spirit of scotland. [illustration: dumblane abbey. from the painting by turner.] . similarly, those of you who in your long vacations have ever stayed near dumblane will be, i think, disappointed in no small degree by this study of the abbey, for which i showed you the sketch at last lecture. you probably know that the oval window in its west end is one of the prettiest pieces of rough thirteenth-century carving in the kingdom; i used it for a chief example in my lectures at edinburgh; and you know that the lancet windows, in their fine proportion and rugged masonry, would alone form a study of ruined gothic masonry of exquisite interest. yet you find turner representing the lancet window by a few bare oval lines like the hoop of a barrel; and indicating the rest of the structure by a monotonous and thin piece of outline, of which i was asked by one of yourselves last term, and quite naturally and rightly, how turner came to draw it so slightly--or, we may even say, so badly. . whenever you find turner stopping short, or apparently failing in this way, especially when he does the contrary of what any of us would have been nearly sure to do, then is the time to look for your main lesson from him. you recollect those quiet words of the strongest of all shakespeare's heroes, when any one else would have had his sword out in an instant: "keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them ... were it my cue to fight, i should have known it without a prompter."[ ] [footnote : "othello," i. .] now you must always watch keenly what turner's _cue_ is. you will see his hand go to his hilt fast enough, when it comes. dumblane abbey is a pretty piece of building enough, it is true; but the virtue of the whole scene, and meaning, is not in the masonry of it. there is much better masonry and much more wonderful ruin of it elsewhere; dumblane abbey--tower and aisles and all--would go under one of the arches of buildings such as there are in the world. look at what turner will do when his cue is masonry,--in the coliseum. what the execution of that drawing is you may judge by looking with a magnifying glass at the ivy and battlements in this, when, also, his cue is masonry. what then can he mean by not so much as indicating one pebble or joint in the walls of dumblane? [illustration] . i was sending out the other day, to a friend in america, a chosen group of the _liber studiorum_ to form a nucleus for an art collection at boston. and i warned my friend at once to guard his public against the sore disappointment their first sight of these so much celebrated works would be to them. "you will have to make them understand," i wrote to him, "that their first lesson will be in observing not what turner has done, but what he has not done. these are not finished pictures, but studies; endeavors, that is to say, to get the utmost result possible with the simplest means; they are essentially thoughtful, and have each their fixed purpose, to which everything else is sacrificed; and that purpose is always imaginative--to get at the heart of the thing, not at its outside." . now, it is true, there are beautiful lichens at blair athol, and good building at dumblane; but there are lovely lichens all over the cold regions of the world, and there is far more interesting architecture in other countries than in scotland. the essential character of scotland is that of a wild and thinly inhabited rocky country, not sublimely mountainous, but beautiful in low rock and light streamlet everywhere; with sweet copsewood and rudely growing trees. this wild land possesses a subdued and imperfect school of architecture, and has an infinitely tragic feudal, pastoral, and civic history. and in the events of that history a deep tenderness of sentiment is mingled with a cruel and barren rigidity of habitual character, accurately corresponding to the conditions of climate and earth. . now i want you especially to notice, with respect to these things, turner's introduction of the ugly square tower high up on the left. your first instinct would be to exclaim, "how unlucky that was there at all! why, at least, could not turner have kept it out of sight?" he has quite gratuitously brought it into sight; gratuitously drawn firmly the three lines of stiff drip-stone which mark its squareness and blankness. it is precisely that blank vacancy of decoration, and setting of the meager angles against wind and war, which he wants to force on your notice, that he may take you thoroughly out of italy and greece, and put you wholly into a barbarous and frost-hardened land; that once having its gloom defined he may show you all the more intensely what pastoral purity and innocence of life, and loveliness of nature, are underneath the banks and braes of doune, and by every brooklet that feeds the forth and clyde. that is the main purpose of these two studies. how it is obtained by various incidents in the drawing of stones, and trees, and figures, i will show you another time. the chief element in both is the sadness and depth of their effect of subdued though clear light in sky and stream. . the sadness of their effect, i repeat. if you remember anything of the lectures i gave you through last year, you must be gradually getting accustomed to my definition of the greek school in art, as one essentially chiaroscurist, as opposed to gothic color; realist, as opposed to gothic imagination; and despairing, as opposed to gothic hope. and you are prepared to recognize it by any one of these three conditions. only, observe, the chiaroscuro is simply the technical result of the two others: a greek painter likes light and shade, first, because they enable him to realize form solidly, while color is flat; and secondly, because light and shade are melancholy, while color is gay. so that the defect of color, and substitution of more or less gray or gloomy effects of rounded gradation, constantly express the two characters: first, academic or greek fleshliness and solidity as opposed to gothic imagination; and secondly, of greek tragic horror and gloom as opposed to gothic gladness. . in the great french room in the louvre, if you at all remember the general character of the historical pictures, you will instantly recognize, in thinking generally of them, the rounded fleshly and solid character in the drawing, the gray or greenish and brownish color, or defect of color, lurid and moonlight-like, and the gloomy choice of subjects, as the deluge, the field of eylau, the starvation on the raft, and the death of endymion; always melancholy, and usually horrible. the more recent pictures of the painter gérôme unite all these attributes in a singular degree; above all, the fleshliness and materialism which make his studies of the nude, in my judgment, altogether inadmissible into the rank of the fine arts. . now you observe that i never speak of this greek school but with a certain dread. and yet i have told you that turner belongs to it, that all the strongest men in times of developed art belong to it; but then, remember, so do all the basest. the learning of the academy is indeed a splendid accessory to original power, in velasquez, in titian, or in reynolds; but the whole world of art is full of a base learning of the academy, which, when fools possess, they become a tenfold plague of fools. and again, a stern and more or less hopeless melancholy necessarily is under-current in the minds of the greatest men of all ages,--of homer, aeschylus, pindar, or shakespeare. but an earthy, sensual, and weak despondency is the attribute of the lowest mental and bodily disease; and the imbecilities and lassitudes which follow crime, both in nations and individuals, can only find a last stimulus to their own dying sensation in the fascinated contemplation of completer death. . between these--the highest, and these--the basest, you have every variety and combination of strength and of mistake: the mass of foolish persons dividing themselves always between the two oppositely and equally erroneous faiths, that genius may dispense with law, or that law can create genius. of the two, there is more excuse for, and less danger in the first than in the second mistake. genius has sometimes done lovely things without knowledge and without discipline. but all the learning of the academies has never yet drawn so much as one fair face, or ever set two pleasant colors side by side. . now there is one great northern painter, of whom i have not spoken till now, probably to your surprise, rubens; whose power is composed of so many elements, and whose character may be illustrated so completely, and with it the various operation of the counter schools, by one of his pictures now open to your study, that i would press you to set aside one of your brightest easter afternoons for the study of that one picture in the exhibition of old masters, the so-called "juno and argus," no. . so-called, i say; for it is not a picture either of argus or of juno, but the portrait of a flemish lady "as juno" (just as rubens painted his family picture with his wife "as the virgin" and himself "as st. george"): and a good anatomical study of a human body as argus. in the days of rubens, you must remember, mythology was thought of as a mere empty form of compliment or fable, and the original meaning of it wholly forgotten. rubens never dreamed that argus is the night, or that his eyes are stars; but with the absolutely literal and brutal part of his dutch nature supposes the head of argus full of real eyes all over, and represents hebe cutting them out with a bloody knife and putting one into the hand of the goddess, like an unseemly oyster. that conception of the action, and the loathsome sprawling of the trunk of argus under the chariot, are the essential contributions of rubens' own netherland personality. then the rest of the treatment he learned from other schools, but adopted with splendid power. . first, i think, you ought to be struck by having two large peacocks painted with scarcely any color in them! they are nearly black, or black-green, peacocks. now you know that rubens is always spoken of as a great colorist, _par excellence_ a colorist; and would you not have expected that--before all things--the first thing he would have seen in a peacock would have been gold and blue? he sees nothing of the kind. a peacock, to him, is essentially a dark bird; serpent-like in the writhing of the neck, cloud-like in the toss and wave of its plumes. he has dashed out the filaments of every feather with magnificent drawing; he has not given you one bright gleam of green or purple in all the two birds. well, the reason of that is that rubens is not _par excellence_ a colorist; nay, is not even a good colorist. he is a very second-rate and coarse colorist; and therefore his color catches the lower public, and gets talked about. but he is _par excellence_ a splendid draughtsman of the greek school; and no one else, except tintoret, could have drawn with the same ease either the muscles of the dead body or the plumes of the birds. . farther, that he never became a great colorist does not mean that he could not, had he chosen. he was warped from color by his lower greek instincts, by his animal delight in coarse and violent forms and scenes--in fighting, in hunting, and in torments of martyrdom and of hell: but he had the higher gift in him, if the flesh had not subdued it. there is one part of this picture which he learned how to do at venice, the iris, with the golden hair, in the chariot behind juno. in her he has put out his full power, under the teaching of veronese and titian; and he has all the splendid northern-gothic, reynolds or gainsborough play of feature with venetian color. scarcely anything more beautiful than that head, or more masterly than the composition of it, with the inlaid pattern of juno's robe below, exists in the art of any country. _si sic omnia!_--but i know nothing else equal to it throughout the entire works of rubens. . see, then, how the picture divides itself. in the fleshly baseness, brutality and stupidity of its main conception, is the dutch part of it; that is rubens' own. in the noble drawing of the dead body and of the birds you have the phidias-greek part of it, brought down to rubens through michael angelo. in the embroidery of juno's robe you have the dædalus-greek part of it, brought down to rubens through veronese. in the head of iris you have the pure northern-gothic part of it, brought down to rubens through giorgione and titian. . now, though--even if we had given ten minutes of digression--the lessons in this picture would have been well worth it, i have not, in taking you to it, gone out of my own way. there is a special point for us to observe in those dark peacocks. if you look at the notes on the venetian pictures in the end of my "stones of venice," you will find it especially dwelt upon as singular that tintoret, in his picture of "the nativity," has a peacock without any color in it. and the reason of it is also that tintoret belongs, with the full half of his mind, as rubens does, to the greek school. but the two men reach the same point by opposite paths. tintoret begins with what venice taught him, and adopted what athens could teach: but rubens begins with athens, and adopts from venice. now if you will look back to my fifth lecture[ ] you will find it said that the colorists can always adopt as much chiaroscuro as suits them, and so become perfect; but the chiaroscurists cannot, on their part, adopt color, except partially. and accordingly, whenever tintoret chooses, he can laugh rubens to scorn in management of light and shade; but rubens only here and there--as far as i know myself, only this once--touches tintoret or giorgione in color. [footnote : "lectures on art" (the inaugural course, ), § .] . but now observe farther. the greek chiaroscuro, i have just told you, is by one body of men pursued academically, as a means of expressing form; by another, tragically, as a mystery of light and shade, corresponding to--and forming part of--the joy and sorrow of life. you may, of course, find the two purposes mingled: but pure formal chiaroscuro--marc antonio's and leonardo's--is inconsistent with color, and though it is thoroughly necessary as an exercise, it is only as a correcting and guarding one, never as a basis of art. . let me be sure, now, that you thoroughly understand the relation of formal shade to color. here is an egg; here, a green cluster of leaves; here, a bunch of black grapes. in formal chiaroscuro, all these are to be considered as white, and drawn as if they were carved in marble. in the engraving of "melancholy," what i meant by telling you it was in formal chiaroscuro was that the ball is white, the leaves are white, the dress is white; you can't tell what color any of these stand for. on the contrary, to a colorist the first question about everything is its color. is this a white thing, a green thing, or a blue thing? down must go my touch of white, green, or dark blue first of all; if afterwards i can make them look round, or like fruit and leaves, it's all very well; but if i can't, blue or green they at least shall be. . now here you have exactly the thing done by the two masters we are speaking of. here is a copy of turner's vignette of "martigny." this is wholly a design of the colored school. here is a bit of vine in the foreground with purple grapes; the grapes, so far from being drawn as round, are struck in with angular flat spots; but they are vividly purple spots, their whole vitality and use in the design is in their tyrian nature. here, on the contrary, is dürer's "flight into egypt," with grapes and palm fruit above. both are white; but both engraved so as to look thoroughly round. . all the other great chiaroscurists whom i named to you--reynolds, velasquez, and titian--approached their shadow also on the safe side--from venice: they always think of color first. but turner had to work his way out of the dark greek school up to venice; he always thinks of his shadow first; and it held him in some degree fatally to the end. those pictures which you all laughed at were not what you fancied, mad endeavors for color; they were agonizing greek efforts to get light. he could have got color easily enough if he had rested in that; which i will show you in next lecture. still, he so nearly made himself a venetian that, as opposed to the dutch academical chiaroscurists, he is to be considered a venetian altogether. and now i will show you, in a very simple subject, the exact opposition of the two schools. . here is a study of swans, from a dutch book of academical instruction in rubens' time. it is a good and valuable book in many ways, and you are going to have some copies set you from it. but as a type of academical chiaroscuro it will give you most valuable lessons on the other side--of warning. here, then, is the academical dutchman's notion of a swan. he has laboriously engraved every feather, and has rounded the bird into a ball; and has thought to himself that never swan has been so engraved before. but he has never with his dutch eyes perceived two points in a swan which are vital to it: first, that it is white; and, secondly, that it is graceful. he has above all things missed the proportion, and necessarily therefore the bend of its neck. . now take the colorist's view of the matter. to him the first main facts about the swan are that it is a white thing with black spots. turner takes one brush in his right hand, with a little white in it; another in his left hand, with a little lampblack. he takes a piece of brown paper, works for about two minutes with his white brush, passes the black to his right hand, and works half a minute with that, and, there you are! you would like to be able to draw two swans in two minutes and a half yourselves. perhaps so, and i can show you how; but it will need twenty years' work all day long. first, in the meantime, you must draw them rightly, if it takes two hours instead of two minutes; and, above all, remember that they are black and white. . but farther: you see how intensely turner felt precisely what the fleming did not feel--the bend of the neck. now this is not because turner is a colorist, as opposed to the fleming; but because he is a pure and highly trained greek, as opposed to the fleming's low greek. both, so far as they are aiming at form, are now working in the greek school of phidias; but turner is true greek, for he is thinking only of the truth about the swan; and de wit is pseudo-greek, for he is thinking not of the swan at all, but of his own dutch self. and so he has ended in making, with his essentially piggish nature, this sleeping swan's neck as nearly as possible like a leg of pork. that is the result of academical work, in the hands of a vulgar person. . and now i will ask you to look carefully at three more pictures in the london exhibition. the first, "the nativity," by sandro botticelli.[ ] it is an early work by him; but a quite perfect example of what the masters of the pure greek school did in florence. [footnote : now in the national gallery, no. .] one of the greek main characters, you know, is to be [greek: aprosôpos], faceless. if you look first at the faces in this picture you will find them ugly--often without expression, always ill or carelessly drawn. the entire purpose of the picture is a mystic symbolism by motion and chiaroscuro. by motion, first. there is a dome of burning clouds in the upper heaven. twelve angels half float, half dance, in a circle, round the lower vault of it. all their drapery is drifted so as to make you feel the whirlwind of their motion. they are seen by gleams of silvery or fiery light, relieved against an equally lighted blue of inimitable depth and loveliness. it is impossible for you ever to see a more noble work of passionate greek chiaroscuro--rejoicing in light. from this i should like you to go instantly to rembrandt's "portrait of a burgomaster" (no. in the exhibition of old masters). . that is ignobly passionate chiaroscuro, rejoicing in darkness rather than light. you cannot see a finer work by rembrandt. it has all his power of rendering character, and the portrait is celebrated through the world. but it is entirely second-rate work. the character in the face is only striking to persons who like candle-light effects better than sunshine; any head by titian has twice the character, and seen by daylight instead of gas. the rest of the picture is as false in light and shade as it is pretentious, made up chiefly of gleaming buttons in places where no light could possibly reach them; and of an embossed belt on the shoulder, which people think finely painted because it is all over lumps of color, not one of which was necessary. that embossed execution of rembrandt's is just as much ignorant work as the embossed projecting jewels of carlo crivelli; a real painter never loads (see the velasquez, no. in the same exhibition). . finally, from the rembrandt go to the little cima (no. ), "st. mark." thus you have the sandro botticelli, of the noble greek school in florence; the rembrandt, of the debased greek school in holland; and the cima, of the pure color school of venice. the cima differs from the rembrandt, by being lovely; from the botticelli, by being simple and calm. the painter does not desire the excitement of rapid movement, nor even the passion of beautiful light. but he hates darkness as he does death; and falsehood more than either. he has painted a noble human creature simply in clear daylight; not in rapture, nor yet in agony. he is dressed neither in a rainbow, nor bedraggled with blood. you are neither to be alarmed nor entertained by anything that is likely to happen to him. you are not to be improved by the piety of his expression, nor disgusted by its truculence. but there is more true mastery of light and shade, if your eye is subtle enough to see it, in the hollows and angles of the architecture and folds of the dress, than in all the etchings of rembrandt put together. the unexciting color will not at first delight you; but its charm will never fail; and from all the works of variously strained and obtrusive power with which it is surrounded, you will find that you never return to it but with a sense of relief and of peace, which can only be given you by the tender skill which is wholly without pretense, without pride, and without error. iii. color. . the distinctions between schools of art which i have so often asked you to observe are, you must be aware, founded only on the excess of certain qualities in one group of painters over another, or the difference in their tendencies; and not in the absolute possession by one group, and absence in the rest, of any given skill. but this impossibility of drawing trenchant lines of parting need never interfere with the distinctness of our conception of the opponent principles which balance each other in great minds, or paralyze each other in weak ones; and i cannot too often urge you to keep clearly separate in your thoughts the school which i have called[ ] "of crystal," because its distinctive virtue is seen unaided in the sharp separations and prismatic harmonies of painted glass, and the other, the "school of clay," because its distinctive virtue is seen in the qualities of any fine work in uncolored terra cotta, and in every drawing which represents them. [footnote : "lectures on art, ," § .] . you know i sometimes speak of these generally as the gothic and greek schools, sometimes as the colorist and chiaroscurist. all these oppositions are liable to infinite qualification and gradation, as between species of animals; and you must not be troubled, therefore, if sometimes momentary contradictions seem to arise in examining special points. nay, the modes of opposition in the greatest men are inlaid and complex; difficult to explain, though in themselves clear. thus you know in your study of sculpture we saw that the essential aim of the greek art was tranquil action; the chief aim of gothic art was passionate rest, a peace, an eternity of intense sentiment. as i go into detail, i shall continually therefore have to oppose gothic passion to greek temperance; yet gothic rigidity, [greek: stasis] of [greek: ekstasis], to greek action and [greek: eleutheria]. you see how doubly, how intimately, opposed the ideas are; yet how difficult to explain without apparent contradiction. . now, to-day, i must guard you carefully against a misapprehension of this kind. i have told you that the greeks as greeks made real and material what was before indefinite; they turned the clouds and the lightning of mount ithome into the human flesh and eagle upon the extended arm of the messenian zeus. and yet, being in all things set upon absolute veracity and realization, they perceive as they work and think forward that to see in all things truly is to see in all things dimly and through hiding of cloud and fire. so that the schools of crystal, visionary, passionate, and fantastic in purpose, are, in method, trenchantly formal and clear; and the schools of clay, absolutely realistic, temperate, and simple in purpose, are, in method, mysterious and soft; sometimes licentious, sometimes terrific, and always obscure. [illustration: madonna and child. from the painting by filippo lippi.] . look once more at this greek dancing-girl, which is from a terra cotta, and therefore intensely of the school of clay; look at her beside this madonna of filippo lippi's: greek motion against gothic absolute quietness; greek indifference--dancing careless--against gothic passion, the mother's--what word can i use except frenzy of love; greek fleshliness against hungry wasting of the self-forgetful body; greek softness of diffused shadow and ductile curve, against gothic lucidity of color and acuteness of angle; and greek simplicity and cold veracity against gothic rapture of trusted vision. . and now i may safely, i think, go into our work of to-day without confusing you, except only in this. you will find me continually speaking of four men--titian, holbein, turner, and tintoret--in almost the same terms. they unite every quality; and sometimes you will find me referring to them as colorists, sometimes as chiaroscurists. only remember this, that holbein and turner are greek chiaroscurists, nearly perfect by adopted color; titian and tintoret are essentially gothic colorists, quite perfect by adopted chiaroscuro. . i used the word "prismatic" just now of the schools of crystal, as being iridescent. by being studious of color they are studious of division; and while the chiaroscurist devotes himself to the representation of degrees of force in one thing--unseparated light, the colorists have for their function the attainment of beauty by arrangement of the divisions of light. and therefore, primarily, they must be able to divide; so that elementary exercises in color must be directed, like first exercises in music, to the clear separation of notes; and the final perfections of color are those in which, of innumerable notes or hues, every one has a distinct office, and can be fastened on by the eye, and approved, as fulfilling it. . i do not doubt that it has often been matter of wonder among any of you who had faith in my judgment, why i gave to the university, as characteristic of turner's work, the simple and at first unattractive drawings of the loire series. my first and principal reason was that they enforced beyond all resistance, on any student who might attempt to copy them, this method of laying portions of distinct hue side by side. some of the touches, indeed, when the tint has been mixed with much water, have been laid in little drops or ponds, so that the pigment might crystallize hard at the edge. and one of the chief delights which any one who really enjoys painting finds in that art as distinct from sculpture is in this exquisite inlaying or joiner's work of it, the fitting of edge to edge with a manual skill precisely correspondent to the close application of crowded notes without the least slur, in fine harp or piano playing. . in many of the finest works of color on a large scale there is even some admission of the quality given to a painted window by the dark lead bars between the pieces of glass. both tintoret and veronese, when they paint on dark grounds, continually stop short with their tints just before they touch others, leaving the dark ground showing between in a narrow bar. in the paul veronese in the national gallery, you will every here and there find pieces of outline, like this of holbein's; which you would suppose were drawn, as that is, with a brown pencil. but no! look close, and you will find they are the dark ground, _left_ between two tints brought close to each other without touching. [illustration: the lady with the brooch. from the painting by reynolds.] . it follows also from this law of construction that any master who can color can always do any pane of his window that he likes, separately from the rest. thus, you see, here is one of sir joshua's first sittings: the head is very nearly done with the first color; a piece of background is put in round it: his sitter has had a pretty silver brooch on, which reynolds, having done as much as he chose to the face for that time, paints quietly in its place below, leaving the dress between to be fitted in afterwards; and he puts a little patch of the yellow gown that is to be, at the side. and it follows also from this law of construction that there must never be any hesitation or repentance in the direction of your lines of limit. so that not only in the beautiful dexterity of the joiner's work, but in the necessity of cutting out each piece of color at once and forever (for, though you can correct an erroneous junction of black and white because the gray between has the nature of either, you cannot correct an erroneous junction of red and green which make a neutral between them, if they overlap, that is neither red nor green): thus the practice of color educates at once in neatness of hand and distinctness of will; so that, as i wrote long ago in the third volume of "modern painters," you are always safe if you hold the hand of a colorist. . i have brought you a little sketch to-day from the foreground of a venetian picture, in which there is a bit that will show you this precision of method. it is the head of a parrot with a little flower in his beak from a picture of carpaccio's, one of his series of the life of st. george. i could not get the curves of the leaves, and they are patched and spoiled; but the parrot's head, however badly done, is put down with no more touches than the venetian gave it, and it will show you exactly his method. first, a thin, warm ground had been laid over the whole canvas, which carpaccio wanted as an under-current through all the color, just as there is an under-current of gray in the loire drawings. then on this he strikes his parrot in vermilion, almost flat color; rounding a little only with a glaze of lake; but attending mainly to get the character of the bird by the pure outline of its form, as if it were cut out of a piece of ruby glass. then he comes to the beak of it. the brown ground beneath is left, for the most part; one touch of black is put for the hollow; two delicate lines of dark gray define the outer curve; and one little quivering touch of white draws the inner edge of the mandible. there are just four touches--fine as the finest penmanship--to do that beak; and yet you will find that in the peculiar paroquettish mumbling and nibbling action of it, and all the character in which this nibbling beak differs from the tearing beak of the eagle, it is impossible to go farther or be more precise. and this is only an incident, remember, in a large picture. . let me notice, in passing, the infinite absurdity of ever hanging venetian pictures above the line of sight. there are very few persons in the room who will be able to see the drawing of this bird's beak without a magnifying-glass; yet it is ten to one that in any modern gallery such a picture would be hung thirty feet from the ground. here, again, is a little bit to show carpaccio's execution. it is his signature: only a little wall-lizard, holding the paper in its mouth, perfect; yet so small that you can scarcely see its feet, and that i could not, with my finest-pointed brush, copy their stealthy action. . and now, i think, the members of my class will more readily pardon the intensely irksome work i put them to, with the compasses and the ruler. measurement and precision are, with me, before all things; just because, though myself trained wholly in the chiaroscuro schools, i know the value of color; and i want you to begin with color in the very outset, and to see everything as children would see it. for, believe me, the final philosophy of art can only ratify their opinion that the beauty of a cock robin is to be red, and of a grass-plot to be green; and the best skill of art is in instantly seizing on the manifold deliciousness of light, which you can only seize by precision of instantaneous touch. of course, i cannot do so myself; yet in these sketches of mine, made for the sake of color, there is enough to show you the nature and the value of the method. they are two pieces of study of the color of marble architecture, the tints literally "edified," and laid edge to edge as simply on the paper as the stones are on the walls. . but please note in them one thing especially. the testing rule i gave for good color in the "elements of drawing," is that you make the white precious and the black conspicuous. now you will see in these studies that the moment the white is inclosed properly, and harmonized with the other hues, it becomes somehow more precious and pearly than the white paper; and that i am not afraid to leave a whole field of untreated white paper all round it, being sure that even the little diamonds in the round window will tell as jewels, if they are gradated justly. again, there is not a touch of black in any shadow, however deep, of these two studies; so that, if i chose to put a piece of black near them, it would be conspicuous with a vengeance. but in this vignette, copied from turner, you have the two principles brought out perfectly. you have the white of foaming water, of buildings and clouds, brought out brilliantly from a white ground; and though part of the subject is in deep shadow the eye at once catches the one black point admitted in front. . well, the first reason that i gave you these loire drawings was this of their infallible decision; the second was their extreme modesty in color. they are, beyond all other works that i know existing, dependent for their effect on low, subdued tones; their favorite choice in time of day being either dawn or twilight, and even their brightest sunsets produced chiefly out of gray paper. this last, the loveliest of all, gives the warmth of a summer twilight with a tinge of color on the gray paper so slight that it may be a question with some of you whether any is there. and i must beg you to observe, and receive as a rule without any exception, that whether color be gay or sad the value of it depends never on violence, but always on subtlety. it may be that a great colorist will use his utmost force of color, as a singer his full power of voice; but, loud or low, the virtue is in both cases always in refinement, never in loudness. the west window of chartres is bedropped with crimson deeper than blood; but it is as soft as it is deep, and as quiet as the light of dawn. . i say, "whether color be gay or sad." it must, remember, be one or the other. you know i told you that the pure gothic school of color was entirety cheerful; that, as applied to landscape, it assumes that all nature is lovely, and may be clearly seen; that destruction and decay are accidents of our present state, never to be thought of seriously, and, above all things, never to be painted; but that whatever is orderly, healthy, radiant, fruitful and beautiful, is to be loved with all our hearts and painted with all our skill. . i told you also that no complete system of art for either natural history or landscape could be formed on this system; that the wrath of a wild beast, and the tossing of a mountain torrent are equally impossible to a painter of the purist school; that in higher fields of thought increasing knowledge means increasing sorrow, and every art which has complete sympathy with humanity must be chastened by the sight and oppressed by the memory of pain. but there is no reason why your system of study should be a complete one, if it be right and profitable though incomplete. if you can find it in your hearts to follow out only the gothic thoughts of landscape, i deeply wish you would, and for many reasons. . first, it has never yet received due development; for at the moment when artistic skill and knowledge of effect became sufficient to complete its purposes, the reformation destroyed the faith in which they might have been accomplished; for to the whole body of powerful draughtsmen the reformation meant the greek school and the shadow of death. so that of exquisitely developed gothic landscape you may count the examples on the fingers of your hand: van eyck's "adoration of the lamb" at bruges; another little van eyck in the louvre; the john bellini lately presented to the national gallery;[ ] another john bellini in rome: and the "st. george" of carpaccio at venice, are all that i can name myself of great works. but there exist some exquisite, though feebler, designs in missal painting; of which, in england, the landscape and flowers in the psalter of henry the sixth will serve you for a sufficient type; the landscape in the grimani missal at venice being monumentally typical and perfect. [footnote : no. . "landscape, with the death of st. peter martyr."] . now for your own practice in this, having first acquired the skill of exquisite delineation and laying of pure color, day by day you must draw some lovely natural form or flower or animal without obscurity--as in missal painting; choosing for study, in natural scenes, only what is beautiful and strong in life. . i fully anticipated, at the beginning of the pre-raphaelite movement, that they would have carried forward this method of work; but they broke themselves to pieces by pursuing dramatic sensation instead of beauty. so that to this day all the loveliest things in the world remain unpainted; and although we have occasionally spasmodic efforts and fits of enthusiasm, and green meadows and apple-blossom to spare, it yet remains a fact that not in all this england, and still less in france, have you a painter who has been able nobly to paint so much as a hedge of wild roses or a forest glade full of anemones or wood-sorrel. . one reason of this has been the idea that such work was easy, on the part of the young men who attempted it, and the total vulgarity and want of education in the great body of abler artists, rendering them insensitive to qualities of fine delineation; the universal law for them being that they can draw a pig, but not a venus. for instance, two landscape-painters of much reputation in england, and one of them in france also--david cox and john constable, represent a form of blunt and untrained faculty which in being very frank and simple, apparently powerful, and needing no thought, intelligence or trouble whatever to observe, and being wholly disorderly, slovenly and licentious, and therein meeting with instant sympathy from the disorderly public mind now resentful of every trammel and ignorant of every law--these two men, i say, represent in their intensity the qualities adverse to all accurate science or skill in landscape art; their work being the mere blundering of clever peasants, and deserving no name whatever in any school of true practice, but consummately mischievous--first, in its easy satisfaction of the painter's own self-complacencies, and then in the pretense of ability which blinds the public to all the virtue of patience and to all the difficulty of precision. there is more real relation to the great schools of art, more fellowship with bellini and titian, in the humblest painter of letters on village signboards than in men like these. do not, therefore, think that the gothic school is an easy one. you might more easily fill a house with pictures like constable's from garret to cellar, than imitate one cluster of leaves by van eyck or giotto; and among all the efforts that have been made to paint our common wild-flowers, i have only once--and that in this very year, just in time to show it to you--seen the thing done rightly. . but now observe: these flowers, beautiful as they are, are not of the gothic school. the law of that school is that everything shall be seen clearly, or at least, only in such mist or faintness as shall be delightful; and i have no doubt that the best introduction to it would be the elementary practice of painting every study on a golden ground. this at once compels you to understand that the work is to be imaginative and decorative; that it represents beautiful things in the clearest way, but not under existing conditions; and that, in fact, you are producing jeweler's work, rather than pictures. then the qualities of grace in design become paramount to every other; and you may afterwards substitute clear sky for the golden background without danger of loss or sacrifice of system: clear sky of golden light, or deep and full blue, for the full blue of titian is just as much a piece of conventional enameled background as if it were a plate of gold; that depth of blue in relation to foreground objects being wholly impossible. . there is another immense advantage in this byzantine and gothic abstraction of decisive form, when it is joined with a faithful desire of whatever truth can be expressed on narrow conditions. it makes us observe the vital points in which character consists, and educates the eye and mind in the habit of fastening and limiting themselves to essentials. in complete drawing, one is continually liable to be led aside from the main points by picturesque accidents of light and shade; in gothic drawing you must get the character, if at all, by a keenness of analysis which must be in constant exercise. . and here i must beg of you very earnestly, once for all, to clear your minds of any misapprehension of the nature of gothic art, as if it implied error and weakness, instead of severity. that a style is restrained or severe does not mean that it is also erroneous. much mischief has been done--endless misapprehension induced in this matter--by the blundering religious painters of germany, who have become examples of the opposite error from our english painters of the constable group. our uneducated men work too bluntly to be ever in the right; but the germans draw finely and resolutely wrong. here is a "riposo" of overbeck's for instance, which the painter imagined to be elevated in style because he had drawn it without light and shade, and with absolute decision: and so far, indeed, it is gothic enough; but it is separated everlastingly from gothic and from all other living work, because the painter was too vain to look at anything he had to paint, and drew every mass of his drapery in lines that were as impossible as they were stiff, and stretched out the limbs of his madonna in actions as unlikely as they are uncomfortable. in all early gothic art, indeed, you will find failure of this kind, especially distortion and rigidity, which are in many respects painfully to be compared with the splendid repose of classic art. but the distortion is not gothic; the intensity, the abstraction, the force of character are, and the beauty of color. . here is a very imperfect, but illustrative border of flowers and animals on a golden ground. the large letter contains, indeed, entirely feeble and ill-drawn figures: that is merely childish and failing work of an inferior hand; it is not characteristic of gothic, or any other school. but this peacock, being drawn with intense delight in blue, on gold, and getting character of peacock in the general sharp outline, instead of--as rubens' peacocks--in black shadow, is distinctively gothic of fine style. . i wish you therefore to begin your study of natural history and landscape by discerning the simple outlines and the pleasant colors of things; and to rest in them as long as you can. but, observe, you can only do this on one condition--that of striving also to create, in reality, the beauty which you seek in imagination. it will be wholly impossible for you to retain the tranquillity of temper and felicity of faith necessary for noble purist painting, unless you are actively engaged in promoting the felicity and peace of practical life. none of this bright gothic art was ever done but either by faith in the attainableness of felicity in heaven, or under conditions of real order and delicate loveliness on the earth. . as long as i can possibly keep you among them, there you shall stay--among the almond and apple blossom. but if you go on into the veracities of the school of clay, you will find there is something at the roots of almond and apple trees, which is--this. you must look at him in the face--fight him--conquer him with what scathe you may: you need not think to keep out of the way of him. there is turner's dragon; there is michael angelo's; there, a very little one of carpaccio's. every soul of them had to understand the creature, and very earnestly. . not that michael angelo understands his dragon as the others do. he was not enough a colorist either to catch the points of the creature's aspect, or to feel the same hatred of them; but i confess myself always amazed in looking at michael angelo's work here or elsewhere, at his total carelessness of anatomical character except only in the human body. it is very easy to round a dragon's neck, if the only idea you have of it is that it is virtually no more than a coiled sausage; and, besides, anybody can round anything if you have full scale from white high light to black shadow. . but look here at carpaccio, even in my copy. the colorist says, "first of all, as my delicious paroquet was ruby, so this nasty viper shall be black"; and then is the question, "can i round him off, even though he is black, and make him slimy, and yet springy, and close down--clotted like a pool of black blood on the earth--all the same?" look at him beside michael angelo's, and then tell me the venetians can't draw! and also, carpaccio does it with a touch, with one sweep of his brush; three minutes at the most allowed for all the beast; while michael angelo has been haggling at this dragon's neck for an hour. . then note also in turner's that clinging to the earth--the specialty of him--_il gran nemico_, "the great enemy," plutus. his claws are like the clefts of the rock; his shoulders like its pinnacles; his belly deep into its every fissure--glued down--loaded down; his bat's wings cannot lift him, they are rudimentary wings only. . before i tell you what he means himself, you must know what all this smoke about him means. nothing will be more precious to you, i think, in the practical study of art, than the conviction, which will force itself on you more and more every hour, of the way all things are bound together, little and great, in spirit and in matter. so that if you get once the right clue to any group of them, it will grasp the simplest, yet reach to the highest truths. you know i have just been telling you how this school of materialism and clay involved itself at last in cloud and fire. now, down to the least detail of method and subject, that will hold. . here is a perfect type, though not a complex one, of gothic landscape; the background gold, the trees drawn leaf by leaf, and full green in color--no effect of light. here is an equally typical greek-school landscape, by wilson--lost wholly in golden mist; the trees so slightly drawn that you don't know if they are trees or towers, and no care for color whatever; perfectly deceptive and marvelous effect of sunshine through the mist--"apollo and the python." now here is raphael, exactly between the two--trees still drawn leaf by leaf, wholly formal; but beautiful mist coming gradually into the distance. well, then, last, here is turner's; greek-school of the highest class; and you define his art, absolutely, as first the displaying intensely, and with the sternest intellect, of natural form as it is, and then the envelopment of it with cloud and fire. only, there are two sorts of cloud and fire. he knows them both. there's one, and there's another--the "dudley" and the "flint." that's what the cloud and flame of the dragon mean: now, let me show you what the dragon means himself. . i go back to another perfect landscape of the living gothic school. it is only a pencil outline, by edward burne-jones, in illustration of the story of psyche; it is the introduction of psyche, after all her troubles, into heaven. now in this of burne-jones, the landscape is clearly full of light everywhere, color or glass light: that is, the outline is prepared for modification of color only. every plant in the grass is set formally, grows perfectly, and may be realized completely. exquisite order, and universal, with eternal life and light, this is the faith and effort of the schools of crystal; and you may describe and complete their work quite literally by taking any verses of chaucer in his tender mood, and observing how he insists on the clearness and brightness first, and then on the order. thus, in chaucer's "dream": "within an yle me thought i was, where wall and yate was all of glasse, and so was closed round about that leavelesse none come in ne out, uncouth and straunge to beholde, for every yate of fine golde a thousand fanes, aie turning, entuned had, and briddes singing divers, and on each fane a paire with open mouth again here; and of a sute were all the toures subtily corven after floures, of uncouth colors during aye that never been none seene in may." . next to this drawing of psyche i place two of turner's most beautiful classical landscapes. at once you are out of the open daylight, either in sunshine admitted partially through trembling leaves, or in the last rays of its setting, scarcely any more warm on the darkness of the ilex wood. in both, the vegetation, though beautiful, is absolutely wild and uncared for, as it seems, either by human or by higher powers, which, having appointed for it the laws of its being, leave it to spring into such beauty as is consistent with disease and alternate with decay. [illustration: Æsacus and hesperie. from the painting by turner.] in the purest landscape, the _human_ subject is the immortality of the soul by the faithfulness of love: in both the turner landscapes it is the death of the body by the impatience and error of love. the one is the first glimpse of hesperia to Æsacus:[ ] "aspicit hesperien patria cebrenida ripa, injectos humeris siccantem sole capillos:" in a few moments to lose her forever. the other is a mythological subject of deeper meaning, the death of procris. [footnote : ovid, "metamorphoses," xi. .] . i just now referred to the landscape by john bellini in the national gallery as one of the six best existing of the purist school, being wholly felicitous and enjoyable. in the foreground of it indeed is the martyrdom of peter martyr; but john bellini looks upon that as an entirely cheerful and pleasing incident; it does not disturb or even surprise him, much less displease in the slightest degree. now, the next best landscape[ ] to this, in the national gallery, is a florentine one on the edge of transition to the greek feeling; and in that the distance is still beautiful, but misty, not clear; the flowers are still beautiful, but--intentionally--of the color of blood; and in the foreground lies the dead body of procris, which disturbs the poor painter greatly; and he has expressed his disturbed mind about it in the figure of a poor little brown--nearly black--faun, or perhaps the god faunus himself, who is much puzzled by the death of procris, and stoops over her, thinking it a woeful thing to find her pretty body lying there breathless, and all spotted with blood on the breast. [footnote : (of the purist school.)] . you remember i told you how the earthly power that is necessary in art was shown by the flight of dædalus to the [greek: herpeton] minos. look for yourselves at the story of procris as related to minos in the fifteenth chapter of the third book of apollodorus; and you will see why it is a faun who is put to wonder at her, she having escaped by artifice from the bestial power of minos. yet she is wholly an earth-nymph, and the son of aurora must not only leave her, but himself slay her; the myth of semele desiring to see zeus, and of apollo and coronis, and this having all the same main interest. once understand that, and you will see why turner has put her death under this deep shade of trees, the sun withdrawing his last ray; and why he has put beside her the low type of an animal's pain, a dog licking its wounded paw. . but now, i want you to understand turner's depth of sympathy farther still. in both these high mythical subjects the surrounding nature, though suffering, is still dignified and beautiful. every line in which the master traces it, even where seemingly negligent, is lovely, and set down with a meditative calmness which makes these two etchings capable of being placed beside the most tranquil work of holbein or dürer. in this "cephalus" especially, note the extreme equality and serenity of every outline. but now here is a subject of which you will wonder at first why turner drew it at all. it has no beauty whatsoever, no specialty of picturesqueness; and all its lines are cramped and poor. the crampness and the poverty are all intended. this is no longer to make us think of the death of happy souls, but of the labor of unhappy ones; at least, of the more or less limited, dullest, and--i must not say homely, but--unhomely life of the neglected agricultural poor. it is a gleaner bringing down her one sheaf of corn to an old watermill, itself mossy and rent, scarcely able to get its stones to turn. an ill-bred dog stands, joyless, by the unfenced stream; two country boys lean, joyless, against a wall that is half broken down; and all about the steps down which the girl is bringing her sheaf, the bank of earth, flowerless and rugged, testifies only of its malignity; and in the black and sternly rugged etching--no longer graceful, but hard, and broken in every touch--the master insists upon the ancient curse of the earth--"thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." . and now you will see at once with what feeling turner completes, in a more tender mood, this lovely subject of his yorkshire stream, by giving it the conditions of pastoral and agricultural life; the cattle by the pool, the milkmaid crossing the bridge with her pail on her head, the mill with the old millstones, and its gleaming weir as his chief light led across behind the wild trees. [illustration: mill near grande chartreuse. from the painting by turner.] . and not among our soft-flowing rivers only; but here among the torrents of the great chartreuse, where another man would assuredly have drawn the monastery, turner only draws their working mill. and here i am able to show you, fortunately, one of his works painted at this time of his most earnest thought; when his imagination was still freshly filled with the greek mythology, and he saw for the first time with his own eyes the clouds come down upon the actual earth. [illustration: l'aiguillette, valley of cluses. from the painting by turner.] . the scene is one which, in old times of swiss traveling, you would all have known well; a little cascade which descends to the road from geneva to chamouni, near the village of maglans, from under a subordinate ridge of the aiguille de varens, known as the aiguillette. you, none of you, probably, know the scene now; for your only object is to get to chamouni and up mont blanc and down again; but the valley of cluse, if you knew it, is worth many chamounis; and it impressed turner profoundly. the facts of the spot are here given in mere and pure simplicity; a quite unpicturesque bridge, a few trees partly stunted and blasted by the violence of the torrent in storm at their roots, a cottage with its mill-wheel--this has lately been pulled down to widen the road--and the brook shed from the rocks and finding its way to join the arve. the scene is absolutely arcadian. all the traditions of the greek hills, in their purity, were founded on such rocks and shadows as these; and turner has given you the birth of the shepherd hermes on cyllene, in its visible and solemn presence, the white cloud, hermes eriophoros forming out of heaven upon the hills; the brook, distilled from it, as the type of human life, born of the cloud and vanishing into the cloud, led down by the haunting hermes among the ravines; and then, like the reflection of the cloud itself, the white sheep, with the dog of argus guarding them, drinking from the stream. . and now, do you see why i gave you, for the beginning of your types of landscape thought, that "junction of tees and greta" in their misty ravines; and this glen of the greta above, in which turner has indeed done his best to paint the trees that live again after their autumn--the twilight that will rise again with twilight of dawn--the stream that flows always, and the resting on the cliffs of the clouds that return if they vanish; but of human life, he says, a boy climbing among the trees for his entangled kite, and these white stones in the mountain churchyard, show forth all the strength and all the end. . you think that saying of the greek school--pindar's summary of it, "[greek: ti de tis; ti d'ou tis];"[ ]--a sorrowful and degrading lesson. see at least, then, that you reach the level of such degradation. see that your lives be in nothing worse than a boy's climbing for his entangled kite. it will be well for you if you join not with those who instead of kites fly falcons; who instead of obeying the last words of the great cloud-shepherd--to feed his sheep, live the lives--how much less than vanity!--of the war-wolf and the gier-eagle. or, do you think it a dishonor to man to say to him that death is but only rest? see that when it draws near to you, you may look to it, at least for sweetness of rest; and that you recognize the lord of death coming to you as a shepherd gathering you into his fold for the night. [footnote : pyth. viii. . ( .)] distributed proofreaders europe at http://dp.rastko.net the old masters and their pictures _for the use of schools and learners in art_ by sarah tytler author of "papers for thoughtful girls" etc. _new and enlarged edition_ * * * * * london isbister and company limited & tavistock street covent garden [_the right of translation is reserved_] london: printed by j.s. virtue and co., limited, city road. preface to first edition. i wish to say, in a very few words, that this book is intended to be a simple account of the great old masters in painting of every age and country, with descriptions of their most famous works, for the use of learners and outsiders in art. the book is not, and could not well be, exhaustive in its nature. i have avoided definitions of schools, considering that these should form a later and more elaborate portion of art education, and preferring to group my 'painters' according to what i hold to be the primitive arrangements of time, country, and rank in art. preface to new edition. the restrictions with regard to space under which the little volume called "the old masters" was originally written, caused me to omit, to my regret, many names great, though not first, in art. the circulation which the book has attained induces me to do what i can to remedy the defect, and render the volume more useful by adding two chapters--the one on italian and the other on german, dutch, and flemish masters. these chapters consist almost entirely of condensed notes taken from two trustworthy sources, to which i have been already much indebted--sir c, and lady eastlake's version of kugler's "handbook of italian art," and dr. waagen's "handbook,"--remodelled from kugler--of german, dutch, and flemish art, revised by j.a. crowe. i have purposely given numerous records of those dutch painters whose art has been specially popular in england and who are in some cases better represented in our country than in their own. contents. chap. page i. early italian art--giotto, - --andrea pisano, - --orcagna, - --ghiberti, - --masaccio, - _or_ --fra angelico, - ii. early flemish art--the van eycks, - --mabuse, _about_ - --memling, _about_ - --quintin matsys, - or iii. in early schools of italian art--the bellini, - --mantegna, - --ghirlandajo, - --- il francia, - --fra bartolommeo, - --andrea del sarto, - iv. lionardo da vinci. - --michael angelo, - --raphael, - --titian, - v. german art--albrecht dÜrer, - vi. later italian art--giorgione, - --correggio, _about_ - --tintoretto, - --veronese, - vii. carracci, - --guido reni, - --domenichino, - --salvator rosa, - viii. later flemish art--rubens, - --rembrandt, _or_ - --teniers, father and son, - --wouvverman, - --cuyp, ; _still living_, --paul potter, - --cornelius de heem, ix. spanish art--velasquez, - --murillo, - x. french art--nicolas poussin, - --claude lorraine, - --charles le brun, - --watteau, - --greuze, - xi. foreign artists in england--holbein, - --van dyck, - --lely, - --canaletto, - --kneller, - xii. italian masters from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries--taddeo gaddi, , supposed to have died --fra filippo, - --benozzo gozzoli, - --luca signorelli, , supposed to have died about --botticelli, - --perugino, - --carpaccio, date and place of birth and death unknown--crivelli, filippino lipi, earlier than --antonella da messina, believed to have died at venice, --garopalo, - --luini, date of birth unknown, supposed to have died about --palma, about - --pardenone, - --lo spagna, date of birth unknown, --giulio romano, - --paris bordone, - --il parmigianino, - --baroccio, - --caravaggio, - --lo spagnoletto, - --guercino, - --albano, - --sassoferrato, - --vasari, - --sofonisba anguisciola, , about --lavinia fontana, - xiii. german, flemish, and dutch artists from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century--van der weyden, a contemporary of the van eycks, - --van leyden, - --van somer, - --snyders, - --g. honthorst, - --jan steen, - --gerard dow, - --de hooch, dates of birth and death unknown--van ostade, - --maas, - --metzu, . still alive in --terburg, - --netcher, - --bol, - --van der helst, - --ruysdael, (?)- --hobbema, - --berchem, - --both (?)- (?) du jardin, - --adrian van de velde, - --van der heyden, - --de witte, - --van der neer, (?)- --william van de velde, the younger, - --backhuysen, - --van de capella, about --hondecoeter, - --jan weenix, - --pater segers, - --van huysum, - --van der werff, - --mengs, - * * * * * the old masters and their pictures. * * * * * chapter i. early italian art--giotto, - --andrea pisano. - --orcagna, - ghiberti, - --masaccio, - or --fra angelico, - . a pencil and paper, a box of colours, and a scrap-book, form so often a child's favourite toys that one might expect that a very large portion of men and women would prove painters. but, as we grow in years and knowledge, the discrepancy between nature and our attempts to copy nature, strike us more and more, until we turn in dissatisfaction and disgust from the vain effort. there was only one old woman in an esquimaux tribe who could be called forward to draw with a stick on the sand a sufficiently graphic likeness of the erebus and the terror. it is only a few groups of men belonging to different countries, throughout the centuries, who have been able to give us paintings to which we turn in wonder and admiration, and say that these are in their degree fair exponents of nature. the old painter's half-haughty, half-humble protest was true--it is 'god almighty,' who in raising here and there men above their fellows, 'makes painters.' but let us be thankful that the old propensity to delight in a facsimile, or in an idealized version of nature, survives in the very common satisfaction and joy--whether cultivated or uncultivated--- derived from looking at pictures, thinking over their details, striving to understand the meaning of the painters, and proceeding farther to consider the lives and times which throw light on works of genius. music itself is not more universally and gladly listened and responded to, than pictures are looked at and remembered. thus i have no fear of failing to interest you, my readers, in my subject if i can only treat it sympathetically,--enter at a humble distance into the spirit of the painters and of their paintings, and place before you some of the paintings by reverent and loving word-painting such as others have achieved, and such as i may strive to attain to, that you may be in a sort early familiar with these paintings, before you see them in engravings and photographs, and on canvas and in fresco, as i trust you may be privileged to see many of them, when you may hail them not only for what they are, the glories of art, but for what they have been to you in thoughts of beauty and high desires. of the old greek paintings, of which there are left isolated specimens dug up in herculaneum and pompeii, i cannot afford to say anything, and of the more modern greek art which was spread over europe after the fall of constantinople i need on europe the birth-place of painting as of other arts, that greek painting which illustrated early christianity, was painting in its decline and decay, borrowing not only superstitious conventionalities, but barbaric attributes of gilding and blazoning to hide its infirmity and poverty. virgins of the same weak and meaningless type, between attenuated saints or angels, and doll-like child-christs in the one invariable attitude holding up two fingers of a baby hand to bless the spectator and worshippers, were for ever repeated. in a similar manner the instances of rude or meagre contemporary paintings with which the early christians adorned their places of worship and the sepulchres of their dead in the basilicas and catacombs of rome, are very curious and interesting for their antiquity and their associations, and as illustrations of faith; but they present no intrinsic beauty or worth. they are not only clumsy and childish designs ill executed, but they are rendered unintelligible to all save the initiated in such hieroglyphics, by offering an elaborate ground-work of type, antitype, and symbol, on which the artist probably spent a large part of his strength. lambs and lilies, serpents, vines, fishes, dolphins, phoenixes, cocks, anchors, and javelins played nearly as conspicuous a part in this art as did the dead believer, or his or her patron saint, who might have been supposed to form the principal figure in the picture. italian art existed in these small beginnings, in the gorgeous but quaintly formal or fantastic devices of illuminated missals, and in the stiff spasmodic efforts of here and there an artist spirit such as the old florentine cimabue's, when a great man heralded a great epoch. but first i should like to mention the means by which art then worked. painting on board and on plastered walls, the second styled painting in fresco, preceded painting on canvas. colours were mixed with water or with size, egg, or fig-juice--the latter practices termed _tempera_ (in english in distemper) before oil was used to mix colours. but painters did not confine themselves then to painting with pencil or brush, else they might have attained technical excellence sooner. it has been well said that the poems of the middle ages were written in stone; so the earlier painters painted in stone, in that mosaic work which one of them called--referring to its durability--'painting for eternity;' and in metals. many of them were the sons of jewellers or jewellers themselves; they worked in iron as well as in gold and silver, and they were sculptors and architects as well as painters; engineers also, so far as engineering in the construction of roads, bridges, and canals, was known in those days. the greek knowledge of anatomy was well-nigh lost, so that drawing was incorrect and form bad. the idea of showing degrees of distance, and the management of light and shade, were feebly developed. even the fore-shortening of figures was so difficult to the old italian painters that they could not carry it into the extremities, and men and women seem as though standing on the points of their toes. landscape-painting did not exist farther than that a rock or a bush, or a few blue lines, with fishes out of proportion prominently interposed, indicated, as on the old stage, that a desert, a forest, or a sea, was to play its part in the story of the picture. so also portrait-painting was not thought of, unless it occurred in the likeness of a great man belonging to the time and place of the painter, who was the donor of some picture to chapel or monastery, or of the painter himself, alike introduced into sacred groups and scenes; for pictures were uniformly of a religious character, until a little later, when they merged into allegorical representations, just as one remembers that miracle plays passed into moral plays before ordinary human life was reproduced. until this period, what we call dramatic expression in making a striking situation, or even in bringing the look of joy or sorrow, pleasure or pain, into a face, had hardly been attained. perhaps you will ask, what merit had the old paintings of the middle ages to compensate for so many great disadvantages and incongruities? certainly before the time i have reached, they have, with rare exceptions, little merit, save that fascination of pathos, half-comic, half-tragic, which belongs to the struggling dawn of all great endeavours, and especially of all endeavours in art. but just at this epoch, art, in one man, took a great stride, began, as i shall try to show, to exert an influence so true, deep, and high that it extends, in the noblest forms, to the present day, and much more than compensates to the thoughtful and poetic for a protracted train of technical blunders and deficiencies. giotto, known also as magister joctus, was born in near florence. i dare say many have heard one legend of him, and i mean to tell the legends of the painters, because even when they are most doubtful they give the most striking indications of the times and the light in which painters and their paintings were regarded by the world of artists, and by the world at large; but so far as i have heard this legend of giotto has not been disproven. the only objection which can be urged against it, is that it is found preserved in various countries, of very different individuals--a crowning objection also to the legend of william tell. giotto was a shepherd boy keeping his father's sheep and amusing himself by drawing with chalk on a stone the favourites of the flock, when his drawings attracted the attention of a traveller passing from the heights into the valley. this traveller was the well-born and highly-esteemed painter cimabue, who was so delighted with the little lad's rough outlines, that getting the consent of giotto's father, cimabue adopted the boy, carried him off to the city of florence, introduced him to his studio, and so far as man could supplement the work of god, made a painter of the youthful genius. i may add here a later legend of giotto. pope boniface viii, requested specimens of skill from various artists with the view to the appointment of a painter to decorate st peter's. giotto, either in impatient disdain, or to show a careless triumph of skill, with one flourish of his hand, without the aid of compass, executed a perfect circle in red chalk, and sent the circle as his contribution to the specimens required by the pope. the audacious specimen was accepted as the most conclusive, giotto was chosen as the pope's painter for the occasion, and from the incident arose the italian proverb 'round as the o of giotto.' giotto was the friend of dante, petrarch, and boccaccio, especially of dante, to whom the grandeur of some of the painter's designs has been vaguely enough attributed. the poet of the 'inferno' wrote of his friend: '......... cimabue thought to lord it over painting's field; and now the cry is giotto's, and his name eclipsed.' petrarch bequeathed in his will a madonna by giotto and mentioned it as a rare treasure of art. boccaccio wrote a merry anecdote of his comrade the painter's wit, in the course of which he referred with notable plain-speaking to giotto's 'flat currish' plainness of face. the impression handed down of giotto's character is that of an independent, high-spirited man, full of invention, full of imagination, and also, by a precious combination, full of shrewdness and common sense; a man genial, given to repartee, and at the same time not deficient in the tact which deprives repartee of its sting. while he was working to king robert of naples, the king, who was watching the painter on a very hot day, said, with a shrug, 'if i were you, giotto, i would leave off work and rest myself this fine day, 'and so would i, sire, if i were _you_,' replied the wag. i need scarcely add that giotto was a man highly esteemed and very prosperous in his day; one account reports him as the head and the father of four sons and four daughters. i have purposely written first of the fame, the reputed character, and the circumstances of giotto before i proceed to his work. this great work was, in brief, to breathe into painting the living soul which had till then--in mediæval times--been largely absent. giotto went to nature for his inspiration, and not content with the immense innovation of superseding by the actual representation of men and women in outline, tint, and attitude, the rigid traditions of his predecessors, he put men's passions in their faces--the melancholy looked sad, the gay glad. this result, to us so simple, filled giotto's lively countrymen, who had seldom seen it, with astonishment and delight. they cried out as at a marvel when he made the commonest deed even coarsely lifelike, as in the case of a sailor in a boat, who turned round with his hand before his face and spat into the sea; and when he illustrated the deed with the corresponding expression, as in the thrill of eagerness that perceptibly pervaded the whole figure of a thirsty man who stooped down to drink. but giotto was no mere realist though he was a great realist; he was also in the highest light an idealist. his sense of harmony and beauty was true and noble; he rose above the real into 'the things unseen and eternal,' of which the real is but a rough manifestation. he was the first to paint a crucifixion robbed of the horrible triumph of physical power, and of the agony which is at its bidding, and invested with the divinity of awe and love. giotto's work did not end with himself; he was the founder of the earliest worthy school of italian art, so worthy in this very glorious idealism, that, as i have already said, the men whose praise is most to be coveted, have learned to turn back to giotto and his immediate successors, and, forgetting and forgiving all their ignorance, crudeness, quaintness, to dwell never wearied, and extol without measure these oldest masters' dignity of spirit, the earnestness of their originality, the solemnity and heedfulness of their labour. it would seem as if skill and polish, with the amount of attention which they appropriate, with their elevation of manner over matter, and thence their lowered standard, are apt to rob from or blur in men these highest qualifications of genius, for it is true that judges miss even in the lionardo, michael angelo, and raphael of a later and much more accomplished generation, and, to a far greater extent, in the rubens of another and still later day, the perfect simplicity, the unalloyed fervour, the purity of tenderness in giotto, orcagna, fra angelico, and in their flemish brethren, the van eycks and mabuse. the difference between the two classes of painters in not so wide as that between the smooth and brilliant epigrammatic poets of anne's and the ruggedly rich dramatists of elizabeth's reign, neither was there the unmistakable preponderance of such a mighty genius as that of shakespeare granted to the first decade, still the distinction was the same in kind.[ ] i wish you, my readers, to note it in the very commencement, and to learn, like the thoughtful students of painting, to put aside any half-childish over-estimate of the absurdity of a blue stroke transfixing a huge flounder-like fish as a likeness of a sea, (which you have been accustomed to see translucid, in breakers and foam, in modern marine pictures,) or your quick sense of the ugliness of straight figures with long hands, wooden feet, and clinging draperies, while your eyes have been familiar with well-modelled frames and limbs and flowing lines. but we must look deeper if we would not be slaves to superficial prettiness, or even superficial correctness; we must try to go into the spirit of a painting and value it more in proportion as it teaches art's noblest lesson--the divinity of the divine, the serenity of utmost strength, the single-heartedness of passion. i have only space to tell you of three or four of the famous works of giotto. first, his allegories in the great church, in honour of st francis, at assisi, in relation to which, writing of its german architect, an author says: 'he built boldly against the mountain, piling one church upon another; the upper vast, lofty, and admitting through its broad windows the bright rays of the sun: the lower as if in the bowels of the earth--low, solemn, and almost shutting out the light of day. around the lofty edifice grew the convent, a vast building, resting upon a long line of arches clinging to the hill-sides. as the evening draws nigh, casting its deep shadows across the valley, the traveller beneath gazes upwards with feelings of wonder and delight at this graceful arcade supporting the massy convent; the ancient towers and walls of the silent town gathering around, and the purple rocks rising high above--all still glowing in the lingering sunbeams--a scene scarcely to be surpassed in any clime for its sublime beauty.' the upper church contains frescoes wonderfully fresh, by cimabue, of scriptural subjects, and frescoes of scenes from the life vowed to poverty of st francis. in the lower church, over the tomb of st francis, are the four masterpieces with which we have to do. these are the three vows of the order figuratively represented. mark the fitness and grandeur of two of the figures, the suggestion of which has been attributed to dante, the woman chastity seated beyond assault in her rocky fortress, and obedience bowing the neck to curb and yoke. the fourth fresco pictures the saint who died, 'covered by another's cloak cast over his wasted body eaten with sores,' enthroned and glorified amidst the host of heaven. i have chosen the second example of the art of giotto because you may with comparative ease see it for yourselves. it is in the national gallery, london, having belonged to the collection of the late samuel rogers. it is a fragment of an old fresco which had been part of a series illustrating the life of john the baptist in the church of the carmine, florence, a church which was destroyed by fire in . the fragment in the national gallery has two fine heads of apostles bending sorrowfully over the body of st john. though it is not necessary to do it, in strict justice, because good work rises superior to all accidents of comparison as well as accidents of circumstance, one must remember in regarding this, the stilted and frozen figures and faces, which, before giotto broke their bonds and inspired them, had professed to tell the bible's stories. the third instance i have chosen to quote is giotto's portrait of dante which was so strangely lost for many years. the portrait occurs in a painting, the first recorded performance of giotto's, in which he was said to have introduced the likeness of many of his contemporaries, on the wall of the palazzo dell' podestà or council chamber of florence. during the banishment of dante the wall was plastered or white-washed over, through the influence of his enemies, and though believed to exist, the picture was hidden down to , when, after various futile efforts to recover it, the figures were again brought to light. this portrait of dante is altogether removed from the later portraits of the indignant and weary man, of whom the italian market-women said that he had been in hell as well as in exile. giotto's dante on the walls of the council chamber is a noble young man of thirty, full of ambitious hope and early distinction. the face is slightly pointed, with broad forehead, hazel eyes, straight brows and nose, mouth and chin a little projecting. the close cloak or vest with sleeves, and cap in folds hanging down on the shoulder, the hand holding the triple fruit, in prognostication of the harvest of virtue and renown which was to be so bitter as well as so glorious, are all in keeping and have a majesty of their own. the picture is probably known by engravings to many of my readers. the last example of giotto's, is the one which of all his works is most potent and patent in its beauty, and has struck, and, in so far as we can tell, will for ages strike, with its greatness multitudes of widely different degrees of cultivation whose intellectual capacity is as far apart as their critical faculty. i mean the matchless campanile or bell-tower 'towering over the dome of brunelleschi' at florence, formed of coloured marbles--for which giotto framed the designs, and even executed with his own hands the models for the sculpture. with this lovely sight dean alford's description is more in keeping than the prosaic saying of charles v., that 'the campanile ought to be kept under glass.' dean alford's enthusiasm thus expresses itself: 'a mass of varied light written on the cloudless sky of unfathomed blue; varied but blended, as never in any other building that we had seen; the warm yellow of the lighter marbles separated but not disunited by the ever-recurring bands of dark; or glowing into red where the kisses of the sun had been hottest; or fading again into white where the shadows mostly haunted, or where the renovating hand had been waging conflict with decay.' it is known that giotto, together with his friend dante, died before this--giotto's last great work--was finally constructed by giotto's pupil, taddeo gaddi, and that therefore neither of the friends could have really looked on 'giotto's tower,' though italian ciceroni point out, and strangers love to contemplate, the very stone on which 'grim dante' sat and gazed with admiration in the calm light of evening on the enduring memorial of the painter. giotto died in the year or , his biographer adds, 'no less a good christian than an excellent painter,' and in token of his faith he painted one crucifixion in which he introduced his own figure 'kneeling in an attitude of deep devotion and contrition at the foot of the cross.' the good taste of such an act has been questioned, so has been the practice which painted the virgin mother now as a brown italian, now as a red and white fleming, and again as a flaxen-haired german or as a swarthy spaniard, and draped her and all the minor figures in the grandest drama the world ever saw--as well as the characters in older scripture histories, in the florentine, venetian, and antwerp fashions of the day. the defence of the practice is, that the bible is for universal time, that its virgin mother, its apostles and saints, were types of other mothers and of other heroes running down the stream of history; that even the one central and holy figure, if he may be represented at all, as the divine brother of all humanity, may be clad not inaptly in the garments of all. it appears to me that there is reason in this answer, and that viewed in its light the criticism which constantly demands historic fidelity is both carping and narrow. i do not mean, however, to underrate historic accuracy in itself, or to depreciate that longing for completeness in every particular, which drives our modern painters to the east to study patiently for months the aspects of nature under its oriental climate, with its peculiar people and animals, its ancient costumes and architecture. giotto was buried with suitable honours by a city which, like the rest of the nation, has magnified its painters amongst its great men, in the church of santa maria del fiore, where his master cimabue had been buried. lorenzo de' medici afterwards placed over giotto's tomb his effigy in marble. in chronicling ancient art i must here diverge a little. i have already mentioned how closely painting was in the beginning allied with working in metals as well as with sculpture and architecture. it is thus necessary to write of a magnificent work in metal, the study and admiration of generations of painters, begun in the life of giotto, and completed in two divisions, extending over a period of nearly a hundred years. we shall proceed to deal with the first division, and recur to the second a little later. the old italian cities. they were then the great merchant cities of the world, more or less republican in their constitution. they stood to the citizens, who rarely left their walls, at once as peculiar possessions and as native countries rather than as cities alone, while they excited all the patriotism, pride, and love that were elsewhere expended on a whole country--which after all was held as belonging largely to its king and nobles. the old italian merchant guilds, and wealthy merchants as individuals, vied with each other in signalizing their good citizenship by presenting--as gifts identified with their names--to their cities, those palace buildings, chapels, paintings, gates, which are the delight of the world to this day. it was a merchant guild which thought happily of giving to florence the bronze gates to the baptistery of san giovanni or st john the baptist, attached to the cathedral. after some competition the gates were intrusted to andrea pisano, one of a great group of painters, sculptors, and architects linked together and named, as so often happened in italy, for their place of birth, pisa. andrea executed a series of beautiful reliefs from the life of john the baptist, which were cast in , gilt, and placed in the centre door-way. i shall leave the rest of the gates, still more exquisitely wrought, till their proper time, only observing that the pisani group of carvers and founders are supposed to have attained their extraordinary superiority in skill and grace, even over such a painter as giotto, in consequence of one of them, nicola pisano, having given his attention to the study of some ancient greek sarcophagi preserved at pisa. passing for a while from the gates of st john of florence, we come back to painting and a painter, and with them to another monument--in itself very noble and curious in its mouldering age, of the old italians' love to their cities. andrea orcagna, otherwise known as andrea di cione, one of a brotherhood of painters, was born in florence about . his greatest works are in the campo santa of pisa. this wonderful 'holy field' is a grand legacy, so far as dilapidation, alas, will let it be, of the old painters. originally a place of burial, though no longer used as such, it is enclosed by high walls and an arcade, something like the cloisters of a cathedral or college running round, and having on the north and east sides chapels where masses for the dead were celebrated. the space in the centre was filled with earth brought from the holy land by the merchant ships of pisa. it is covered with turf, having tall cypress-trees at the corners, and a little cross in the centre. the arcade is pierced with sixty-two windows, and contains on its marble pavement hundreds of monuments--among them the greek sarcophagi studied by nicola pisano. but the great distinction of the campo santa (of which there are many photographs) are the walls opposite the windows of the arcade painted with scriptural subjects by artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, for the decoration of the walls was continued at intervals, during two hundred years. the havoc wrought by time and damp has been terrible; not only are the pictures faded and discoloured, but of the earliest only mutilated fragments, 'here an arm and there a head,' remain. giotto's illustrations of the book of job have thus perished. still orcagna's work has partially escaped, and left us indications of what it was in his and its youth, when michael angelo and raphael did not disdain to borrow from it in design and arrangement. dean alford has thus described orcagna's mournful, thoughtful 'triumph of death:' 'the picture is one of crowded action, and contains very many personages. the action may be supposed to begin in the lower corner on the right hand. there we see what appears to be a wedding-party seated in festivity under a grove of orange-trees laden with fruit. over two of them a pair entertaining them with merry strains. but close to them on the left comes swooping down on bats' wings, and armed with the inevitable scythe, the genius of death. her wild hair streams in the wind, her bosom is invulnerable, being closed in a trellised armour of steel. beneath her, on the ground, are a heap of corpses, shown by their attire to be the great and wealthy of the world. three winged figures, two fiends and one angel, are drawing souls, in the form of children, out of the mouths of three of these corpses. above, the air is full of flying spirits, angels and demons: the former beautiful and saintly, the latter hideous and bestial. some are dragging, or bearing upwards, human souls: others are on their way to fetch them from the heaps of dead: others, again, are flying about apparently without aim. further yet to the left, a company of wretched ones, lame and in rags, are invoking death with outstretched arms to come to their relief; but she sweeps by and heeds them not. 'dividing one half of the picture from the other, is a high range of rocks, terminating in a fiery mountain, into which the demons are casting the unhappy souls which they have carried off. beyond that seems to be a repetition of the same lesson respecting death in another form. a party of knights and dames are issuing on horseback from a mountain pass. in the left hand of the picture there lie in their path three corpses in coffins, with coronets on their heads. one is newly dead; on the second, decay has begun its work; the third is reduced to a grinning skeleton. the impression produced on the gay party by the sight is very various. some look on carelessly; one holds his nose in disgust; one, a lady jewelled and crowned, leans her head on her hand in solemn thought. above, on a rising ground, an aged monk (it is said, saint macarius) is holding a scroll, and pointing out to passengers the moral of the sight which meets them. the path winds up a hill crowned with a church, and by its side at various points are hermits sitting in calm security, or following peaceful occupations. one of them is milking a doe; another is reading; a third is calmly contemplating from a distance the valley of death. about them are various animals and birds. the idea evidently intended to be conveyed is that deliverance from the fear of death is to be found not in gaiety and dissipation, but in contemplation and communion with god. 'such is the wonderful fresco, and the execution is as wonderful as the conception. belonging as the painter did to a rude and early period of art, he yet had the power of endowing his figures with both majesty and tenderness of expression.' the last judgment is no less solemn and sad, with hope tempering its sadness. mrs jameson's note of it is: 'above, in the centre, christ and the virgin are throned in separate glories. he turns to the left, towards the condemned, while he uncovers the wound in his side, and raises his right arm with a menacing gesture, his countenance full of majestic wrath. the virgin, on the right of her son, is the picture of heavenly mercy, and, as if terrified at the words of eternal condemnation, she turns away. on either side are ranged the prophets of the old testament, the apostles and other saints, severe, solemn, dignified figures. angels, holding the instruments of the passion, hover over christ and the virgin; under them is a group of archangels. the archangel michael stands in the midst holding a scroll in each hand; immediately before him another archangel, supposed to represent raphael, the guardian angel of humanity, cowers down, shuddering, while two others sound the awful trumpets of doom. lower down is the earth where men are seen rising from their graves; armed angels direct them to the right and left. here is seen king solomon, who, whilst he rises, seems doubtful to which side he should turn; here a hypocritical monk, whom an angel draws back by the hair from the host of the youth in a gay and rich costume, whom another angel leads away to paradise. there is wonderful and even terrible power of expression in some of the heads; and it is said that among them are many portraits of contemporaries, but unfortunately no circumstantial traditions as to particular figures have reached us.' one of orcagna's altar-pieces, that of 'the coronation of the virgin,' containing upwards of a hundred figures, and with the colouring still rich, is in our national gallery. as an architect, orcagna designed the famous loggia de' lanzi of the grand ducal palace at florence. now i must take you back to the bronze gates of the baptistery in their triumphant completion nearly a hundred years after the first gate was executed by andrea pisano. i should have liked, but for our limits, to tell in full the legend of the election of lorenzo ghiberti, the step-son of a goldsmith, and skilled in chasing and enamelling, to design the second gate; when yet a lad of twenty-three, how he and two other young men, one of them still younger than ghiberti, were declared the most promising competitors in the trial for the work; how the last two voluntarily withdrew from the contest, magnanimously proclaiming lorenzo ghiberti their superior; how all the three lived to be famous, the one as a founder in metal, the others as an architect and a sculptor, and remained sworn brothers in art till death. lorenzo ghiberti has left us an expression of the feeling with which he set about his task, an expression so suggestive that, even had we no other indication, it is enough to stamp the true and tender nature of the man. he prepared for his achievement 'with infinite diligence and love'--the words deserve to be pondered over. he took at least twenty-two years to his work, receiving for it eleven hundred florins. he chose his subjects from the life and death of the lord, working them out in twenty panels, ten on each side of the folding doors, and below these were eight panels containing full-length figures of the four evangelists and four doctors of the latin church, with a complete border of fruit and foliage, having heads of prophets and sibyls interspersed. so entire was the satisfaction the superb gate gave, that lorenzo was not merely loaded with praise, he received a commission to design and cast a third and central gate which should surpass the others, that were thenceforth to be the side entrances. for his second gate lorenzo ghiberti repaired to the old testament for subjects, beginning with the creation and ending with the meeting of solomon and the queen of sheba, and represented them in ten compartments enclosed in a rich border of fruit and foliage, with twenty-four full-length figures of the hebrew heroes and prophets, clearly and delicately designed and finished, occupying corresponding niches. this crowning gate engaged the founder upwards of eighteen years--forty-nine years are given as the term of the work of both the gates. the single defect which is found in those marvellous gates--left to us as a testimony of what the life-long devotion of genius could produce--is that they abound floridly both in ornament and action, in place of being severely simple and restrained according to the classical standard. michael angelo called these gates 'worthy to be the gates of paradise,' and they are still one of the glories of florence. casts of the gates are to be found in the school for art at kensington, and at the crystal palace. a young village boy learned to draw and model from ghiberti's gates. he in his turn was to create in the brancacci chapel of the church of the carmine at florence a school of painters scarcely less renowned and powerful in its effects than that produced by the works in the campo santa. you will find the italian painters not unfrequently known by nicknames, quite as often by their father's trades as by their father's surnames, and still oftener by the town which was their place of birth or nurture. this tom village birth-place, was commonly called masaccio, short for tomasaccio, 'hulking tom,' as i have heard it translated, on account of his indifferent, slovenly habits. i think there is a tradition that he entered a studio in florence as a colour boy, and electrified the painter and his scholars, by _brownie_ like freaks of painting at their unfinished work, in their absence, better than any of his masters, and by the dexterity with which he perpetrated the frolic of putting the facsimile of a fly on one of the faces on the easels. his end was a tragic conclusion to such light comedy. at the age of twenty-six, he quitted florence for rome so suddenly that he left his finest frescoes unfinished. it was said that he was summoned thither by the pope. at rome, where little or nothing of masaccio's life is known, he died shortly afterwards, not without a suspicion of his having been poisoned. a curious anecdote exists of the identification of the time when he forsook florence to meet his death in rome. just as we have read, that the period of the death of massinger the dramatist has been settled by an entry in an old parish register, 'died, philip massinger a stranger,' so there has been found some quaint equivalent to a modern tax-paper which had been delivered at the dwelling of masaccio when the word 'gone' was written down. there is a further tradition--not very probable under the circumstances--that masaccio is buried, without name or stone, under the brancacci chapel. be that as it may, he very early rose to eminence, surpassing all his predecessors in drawing and colouring, and he combined with those acquirements such animation and variety of expression in his characters, that it was said of him 'he painted souls as well as bodies,' while his invention was not less bold and fresh. it is difficult to indicate masaccio's pictures because some of them have been repainted and destroyed. as to those in the brancacci chapel from the life of st peter, (with the exception of two,) considerable confusion has arisen as to which are masaccio's, and which belong to his scholar filippino lippi. the fresco which masaccio left unfinished, that of the apostles peter and paul raising a dead youth (from traditional history), was finished by lippi. in the fresco of peter baptizing the converts, generally attributed to masaccio, there is a lad who has thrown off his garments, and stands shivering with cold, whose figure, according to authority, formed an epoch in art. lionardo da vinci, michael angelo, andrea del sarto, fra bartolommeo, all studied their art in this chapel. raphael borrowed the grand figure of st paul preaching at athens in one of the cartoons, from one of masaccio's or filippo lippi's frescoes. masaccio's excellence as an artist, reached at an immature age, is very remarkable. i have come to the last and probably the best appreciated among modems of the early italian painters. fra angelico da fiesole, the gentle devout monk whom italians called '_il beato_,' the blessed, and who probably did receive the distinction of beatification, a distinction only second in the roman catholic church to that of canonization. he was born at the lovely little mountain-town of fiesole near florence, , and his worldly name, which he bore only till his twenty-first year, was guido petri de mugello. in his youth, with his gift already recognized, so that he might well have won ease and honour in the world, he entered the dominican convent of st mark, florence, for what he deemed the good and peace of his soul. he seldom afterwards left it, and that only as directed by his convent superior, or summoned by the pope. he was a man devoid of personal ambition, pure, humble, and meek. when offered the archbishopric of florence as a tribute to his sanctity, he declined it on account of his unworthiness for the office. he would not work for money, and only painted at the command of his prior. he began his painting with fasting and work, he steadfastly refused to make any alteration in the originals. it is said that he was found dead at his easel with a completed picture before him. it is not wonderful, that from such a man should come one side of the perfection of that idealism which giotto had begun. fra angelico's angels, saints, saviour, and virgin are more divinely calm, pure, sweet, endowed with a more exulting saintliness, a more immortal youth and joy, and a more utter self-abnegation and sympathetic tenderness than are to be found in the saints and the angels, the saviour and the virgin of other painters. neither is it surprising that fra angelico's defects, besides that of the bad drawing which shows more in his large than in his small pictures, are those of a want of human knowledge, power, and freedom. his wicked--even his more earthly-souled characters, are weak and faulty in action. what should the reverent and guileless dreamer know, unless indeed by inspiration of the rude conflicts, the fire and fury of human passions intensified in the malice and anguish of devils? but fra angelico's singular successes far transcend his failures. in addition to the sublime serenity and positive radiance of expression which he could impart to his heads, his notions of grouping and draping were full of grace, sometimes of splendour and magnificence. in harmony with his happy temperament and fortunes, he was fond of gay yet delicate colours 'like spring flowers,' and used a profusion of gold ornaments which do not seem out of keeping in his pictures. the most of fra angelico's pictures are in florence--the best in his own old convent of st mark, where he lovingly adorned not only chapter-hall and court, but the cells of his brother friars. a crucifix with adoring saints worshipping their crucified saviour is regarded as his masterpiece in st mark's. a famous coronation of the virgin, which fra angelico painted for a church in his native town, and which is now in the louvre, paris, is thus described by mrs jameson: 'it represents a throne under a rich gothic canopy, to which there is an ascent of nine steps; on the highest kneels the virgin, veiled, her hands crossed on her bosom. she is clothed in a red tunic, a blue robe over it, and a royal mantle with a rich border flowing down behind. the features are most delicately lovely, and the expression of the face full of humility and adoration. christ, seated on the throne, bends forward, and is in the act of placing the crown on her head; on each side are twelve angels, who are playing a heavenly concert with guitars, tambourines, trumpets, viols, and other musical instruments; lower than these, on each side, are forty holy personages of the old and new testament; and at the foot of the throne kneel several saints, male and female, among them st catherine with her wheel, st agnes with her lamb, and st cecilia crowned with flowers. beneath the principal picture there is a row of seven small ones, forming a border, and representing various incidents in the life of st dominic.' chapter ii. early flemish art--the van eycks, - --mabuse, matsys, - or . in the low countries painting had very much the same history that it had in italy, but the dates are later, and there may be a longer interval given to each stage of development. religious painting, profuse in symbolism, with masses of details elaborately worked in, meets us in the first place. this style of painting reached its culmination, in which it included (as it did not include in its representation in the italian pictures) many and varied excellencies, among them the establishment of painting in oil in the pictures of the flemish family of painters--the van eycks. before going into the little that is known of the family history of the van eycks, i should like to call attention to the numerous painter families in the middle ages. what a union, and repose, and happy sympathy of art-life it indicates, which we appear to restlessness and separate interests of modern life. the van eycks consisted of no less than four members of a family, three brothers, hubert, john, and lambert, and one sister, margaret, devoted, like her brothers, to her art. there is a suggestion that they belonged to a small village of limburg called eyck, and repaired to bruges in order to pursue their art. hubert was thirty years older than john, and it is said that he was a serious-minded man as well as an ardent painter, and belonged to the religious fraternity of our lady of ghent. he died in . john, though of so much consideration in his profession as to be believed to be 'the flemish painter' sent by duke philip the good of flanders and burgundy with a mission to portugal to solicit the hand of a princess in marriage, is reported to have died very poor in , and has the suspicion attached to him of having been a lover of pleasure and a spendthrift. of lambert, the third brother, almost nothing is known; indeed, the fact of his existence has only lately come to light. margaret lived and died unmarried, and belonged, like her brother hubert, to the religious society of our lady of ghent. she died about . the invention of painting in oil, for which the van eycks are commonly known, was not literally that of mixing colours with oil, which was occasionally done before their day. it was the combining oil with resin, so as to produce at once a good varnish, and avoid the necessity of drying pictures in the sun, a bright thought, which may stand in the same rank with the construction, by james watt, of that valve which rendered practicable the application of steam to machinery. the thought, occasioned by the cracking of a picture in tempera exposed to the sun, is due to hubert van eyck. the great picture of the van eycks, which was worked at for a number of years by both hubert and john, and, as some reckon, touched by the whole family, is the 'adoration of the lamb,' at st bavon's, ghent. i should like to give a faint idea of this extraordinary picture, which was painted for a burgomaster of ghent and his wife in order to adorn their mortuary chapel in the cathedral. it was an altar piece on separate panels, now broken up and dispersed, only a portion of it being retained in ghent. it may strike some as strange that a picture should be on panels, but those of the old pictures which were not on plastered walls were commonly on panels, many of them on the lids and sides of chests and presses which were used to hold sacred vessels and priestly raiment. when the wings of the van eycks' altar-piece of the 'adoration of the lamb' were opened on festivals, the subjects of the upper central picture were seen, consisting of the triune god, a majestic figure, and at his side in stately calm the virgin and the baptist. on the inside of the wings were angels, at the two extremities adam and eve. the lower central picture shows the lamb of the revelation, whose blood flows into a cup; over it is the dove of the holy spirit. angels, who hold the instruments of the passion, worship the lamb. four groups of many persons advance from the sides, these are the holy martyrs, men and women, priests and laymen. in the foreground is the fountain of life; in the distance are the towers of the heavenly jerusalem. on the wings other groups are coming up to adore the lamb; on the left those who have laboured for the kingdom of the lord by worldly deeds--the soldiers of christ led by st george, st sebastian, and st michael, the patron saints of the old flemish guilds, followed by emperors and kings--a goodly company. beyond the soldiers and princes, on the left, are the righteous judges, also on horseback. in front of them, on a splendidly caparisoned gray, rides a mild, benevolent old man in blue velvet trimmed with fur. this is the likeness of hubert van eyck, painted after his death by his brother john, and john himself is in the group, clothed in black, with a shrewd, sharp countenance. on the self-renunciation have served the lamb in the spirit, hermits and pilgrims, among them st christopher, st anthony, st paul the hermit, mary magdalene, and st mary of egypt. a compartment underneath, which represented hell, finished the whole--yet only the whole on one side, for the wings when closed presented another series of finely thought-out and finished pictures--the annunciation; figures of micah and zechariah; statues of the two st johns, with the likenesses of the donors who gave to the world so great a work of art, kneeling humbly side by side, the burgomaster somewhat mean-looking in such company in spite of the proof of his liberality, but his wife noble enough in feature and expression to have been the originator of this glory of early flemish painting. the upper part of the picture is painted on a gold ground, round the central figure of the lamb is vivid green grass with masses of trees and flowers--indeed there is much lovely landscape no longer indicated by a rock or a bush, but betokening close observation of nature, whether in a fruitful valley, or a rocky defile, or mountain ridges with fleecy clouds overhead. the expression of the immense number of figures is as varied and characteristic as their grouping.[ ] hubert van eyck died while this work was in progress, and it was finished by his brother john six years after hubert's death. when one thinks of the intense application and devotion which such a work costs, and recalls the bronze gates of st john that occupied lorenzo ghiberti years, and when we read, as we shall read a few chapters farther on, of large paintings which were begun and ended in so many days--even so many hours, one can better understand what is the essential difference between the works of the early and the later painters, a difference which no skill, no power even can bridge over. john van eyck, who had lived late enough to have departed from the painting of sacred pictures alone, so that he left portraits and an otter hunt among his works, is three times represented in our national gallery, in three greatly esteemed portraits, one a double portrait, believed to be the likenesses of the painter and his wife, standing hand in hand with a terrier dog at their feet. gossaert, called de mabuse from his native town of mabeuze, sometimes signing his name joannes malbodius, followed in the steps of the van eycks, particularly in his great picture of the 'adoration of the kings,' which is at castle howard, the seat of the earl of carlisle. mabuse was in england and painted the children of henry vii, in a picture, which is at hampton court. there is a picture in the palace of holyrood, edinburgh, which has been attributed to mabuse. it represents on the sides of a triptych or diptych (somewhat like a folding screen) james iii. and his queen with attendants. the fur on the queen's dress displays already that marvellous technical skill for which flemish painting is so celebrated. hans memling belonged to bruges. there is a tradition of him, which is to a certain extent disproven, that he was a poor soldier relieved by the hospital of st john, bruges, and that in gratitude he executed for the hospital the well-known reliquary of st ursula. however it might have originated, this is the most noted work of a painter, who was distinguished frequently by his minute missal-like painting (he was also an illuminator of missals), in which he would introduce fifteen hundred small figures in a picture two feet eight inches, by six feet five inches in size, and work out every detail with the utmost niceness and care. the reliquary, or 'chasse,' is a wooden coffer or shrine about four feet in length, its style and form those of a rich gothic church, its purpose to hold an arm of the saint. the whole exterior is covered with miniatures by memling, nearly the whole of them giving incidents in the legendary history of st ursula, a 'virgin princess of brittany,' or of england, who, setting out with eleven thousand companions, her lover, and an escort of knights on a pilgrimage to rome, was, with her whole company, met and murdered, by a horde of heathen huns, when they had reached cologne, on their return. my readers may be aware that the supposed bones of the virgins and st ursula form the ghastly adornment of the church founded in her honour at cologne. it is absolutely filled with bones, built into the walls, stowed under the pavement, ranged in glass cases about the choir. hans memling's is a pleasanter commemoration of st ursula. quintin matsys, the blacksmith of antwerp, was born at louvain about . though he worked first as a smith he is said by kugler to have belonged to a family of painters, which somewhat takes from the romance, though it adds to the probability of his story. another painter in antwerp having offered the hand and dowry of his daughter--beloved by quintin matsys--as a prize to the painter who should paint the best picture in a competition for her hand, the doughty smith took up the art, entered the lists, and carried off the maiden and her portion from all his more experienced rivals. the vitality of the legend is indicated by the inscription on a tablet to the memory of quintin matsys in the cathedral, antwerp. the latin inscription reads thus in english: 'twas love connubial taught the smith to paint,' quintin matsys lived and died a respected burgher of antwerp, a member of the great antwerp painters' guild of st luke. he was twice married, and had thirteen children. whatever might have been his source of inspiration, quintin matsys was an apt scholar. his 'descent from the cross,' now in the museum, antwerp, was _the_ 'descent from the cross,' and _the_ picture in the cathedral, until superseded by rubens' masterpiece on the same subject. still quintin matsys version remains, and is in some respects an unsurpassed picture. there is a traditional grouping of this divine tragedy, and quintin matsys has followed the tradition. the body of the lord is supported by two venerable old men--joseph of arimathea and nicodemus--while the holy women anoint the wounds of the saviour; the virgin swooning with grief is supported by st john. the figures are full of individuality, and their action is instinct with pathos. for this picture quintin matsys--popular painter as he was--got only three hundred florins, equivalent to twenty-five pounds (although, of course, the value of money was much greater in those days). the joiners' company, for whom he painted the 'descent from the cross,' sold the picture to the city of antwerp for five times the original amount, and it is said queen elizabeth offered the city nearly twenty times the first sum for it, in vain. quintin matsys painted frequently half-length figures of the virgin and child, an example of which is in the national gallery. he excelled in the 'figure painting' of familiar subjects, then just beginning to be established, affording a token of the direction which the future eminence of the flemish painters would take. one of his famous pictures of this kind is 'the misers,' in the queen's collection at windsor. two figures in the flemish costume of the time, are seated at a table; before them are a heap of money and a book, in which one is writing with his right hand, while he tells down the money with his left. the faces express craft and cupidity. the details of the ink-horn on the table, and the bird on its perch behind, have the flemish graphic exactness. chapter iii. in early schools of italian art--the bellini, - --mantegna, - --ghirlandajo, - --il francia, - --fra bartolommeo, - --andrea del sarto, - . i have come to the period when italian art is divided into many schools--paduan, venetian, umbrian, florentine, roman, bolognese, etc., etc. with the schools and their definitions i do not mean to meddle, except it may be to mention to which school a great painter belonged. another difficulty meets me here. i have been trying so far as i could to give the representative painters in the order of time. i can no longer follow this rule strictly, and the grouping of this chapter is made on the principle of leading my readers up by some of the predecessors who linked the older to the later italian painters, and by some of the contemporaries of these later painters, to that central four, lionardo da vinci, michael angelo, raphael, and titian, who occupy so great a place in the history of art. in the brothers bellini and their native venice, we must first deal with that excellence of colouring for which the venetian painters were signally noted, while they comparatively neglected and underrated drawing. a somewhat fanciful theory has been started, that as venice, holland, and england have been distinguished for colour in art, and as all those states are by the sea, so a sea atmosphere has something to do with a passion for colour. within more reasonable bounds, in reference to the venetians, is the consideration that no colouring is richer, mellower, more exquisitely tinted than that which belongs to the blue italian sky over the blue adriatic, with those merged shades of violet, green, and amber, and that magical soft haze which has to do with a moist climate. the two brothers gentile and gian or john bellini, the latter the more famous of the two, were the sons of an old venetian painter, with regard to whom the worthy speech is preserved, that he said it was like the tuscans for son to beat father, and he hoped, in god's name, that giovanni or gian would outstrip him, and gentile, the elder, outstrip both. the brothers worked together and were true and affectionate brothers, encouraging and appreciating each other. gentile was sent by the doge at the request of the sultan--either mahommed ii, or bajazet ii., to constantinople, where gentile bellini painted the portrait of the sultan and the sultana his mother, now in the british museum. the painter also painted the head of john the baptist in a charger as an offering--only too suitable--from him to the grand turk. the legend goes on to tell that in the course of the presentation of the gift, an incident occurred which induced gentile bellini to quit the ottoman court with all haste. the sultan had criticized the appearance of the neck in john the baptist's severed head, and when gentile ventured to defend his work, the sultan proceeded to prove the correctness of his criticism, by drawing his scimitar and cutting off at a stroke the head of a kneeling slave, and pointing to the spouting blood and the shrinking muscle, gave the horrified painter a lesson in practical anatomy. on gentile's return from the east, he was pensioned by his state, and lived on painting, till he was eighty years of age, dying in . gian bellini is said to have obtained by a piece of deceit, which is not in keeping with his manly and honourable character, the secret, naturally coveted by a venetian, of mixing colours with resin and oil. a venetian painter had brought the secret from flanders, and communicated it to a friend, who, in turn, communicated it to a third painter, and was murdered by that third painter for his pains, so greedy and criminal was the craving, not only to possess, but to be as far as possible the sole possessor of, the grand discovery. gian bellini was much less guilty, if he were really guilty. disguised as a venetian nobleman, he proposed to sit for his portrait to that antonella who first brought the secret from flanders, and while antonella worked with unsuspicious openness, gian bellini watched the process and stole the secret. gian bellini lived to the age of ninety, and had among his admirers the poet ariosto and albrecht dürer. the latter saw gian bellini in his age, and said of him, when foolish mockers had risen up to scout at the old man, and his art now become classic, 'he is very old, but he is still the best of our painters.' gian bellini had illustrious pupils, including in their number titian and giorgione. the portraits of gentile and gian, which are preserved in a painting by gian, show gentile fair-complexioned and red-haired, and gian with dark hair. gian bellini is considered to have been less gifted with imagination than some of his great brother artists; but he has proved himself a man of high moral sense, and while he stopped short at the boundary between the seen and the unseen, it is certain he must still have painted with much of 'the divine patience' and devout consecration of all his powers, and of every part of his work, which are the attributes of the earliest italian painters. when he and his brother began to paint, venetian art had already taken its distinctive character for open-air effects, rich scenic details in architecture, furniture and dress (said to be conspicuous in commercial communities), and a growing tendency to portraiture. gian went with the tide, but he guided it to noble results. his simplicity and good sense, with his purity and dignity of mind, were always present. he introduced into his pictures 'singing boys, dancing cherubs, glittering thrones, and dewy flowers,' pressing the outer world into his service and that of religious art. it is said also that his madonnas seem 'amiable beings imbued with a lofty grace;' while his saints are 'powerful and noble forms.' but he never descended to the paltry or the vulgar. he knew from the depths of his own soul how to invest a face with moral grandeur. especially in his representations of our saviour gian bellini 'displays a perception of moral power and grandeur seldom equalled in the history of art.' the example given is that of the single figure of the lord in the dresden gallery, where the son of god, without nimbus, or glory, stands forth as the 'ideal of elevated humanity.' the greater portion of gian bellini's pictures remain in the churches and galleries of venice. but the first great work at which the two brothers in their youth worked in company--the painting of the hall of council in the palace of the doge, with a series of historical and legendary pictures of the venetian wars with the emperor frederick barbarossa ( ), including the doge ziani's receiving from the pope the gold ring with which the doge espoused the adriatic, in token of perpetual dominion over the sea--was unfortunately destroyed by fire in . giovanni bellini's greatest work, now at st salvatore, is christ at emmaus, with venetian senators and a turkish dragoman introduced as spectators of the risen lord. of another great work at vicenza, painted in gian bellini's old age, when neither his skill nor his strength was abated, 'the baptism of christ,' dean alford writes thus: 'let us remain long and look earnestly, for there is indeed much to be seen. that central figure, standing with hands folded on his bosom, so gentle, so majestic, so perfect in blameless humanity, oh what labour of reverent thought; what toil of ceaseless meditation; what changes of fair purpose, oscillating into clearest vision of ideal truth, must it have cost the great painter, before he put forth that which we see now! it is as impossible to find aught but love and majesty in the divine countenance, as it is to discover a blemish on the complexion of that body, which seems to give forth light from itself, as he stands in obedience, fulfilling all righteousness. 'and even on the accessories to this figure, we see the same loving and reverent toil bestowed. the cincture, where alone the body is hidden from view, is no web of man's weaving; or, if it were, it is of hers whose heart was full of divine thoughts as she wove: so bright and clear is the tint, so exquisitely careful and delicate every fold where light may play or colour vary. and look under the sacred feet, on the ground blessed by their pressure; no dash of hurrying brush has been there: less than a long day's light, eve, did not suffice to give in individual shape and shade every minutest pebble and mote of that shore of jordan. every one of them was worth painting, for we are viewing them as in the light of his presence who made them all and knew them all. 'and now let us pass to the other figures: to that living and glowing angelic group in the left hand of the picture. three of the heavenly host are present, variously affected by that which they behold. the first, next the spectator, in the corner of the picture, is standing in silent adoration, tender and gentle in expression, the hands together, but only the points of the fingers touching, his very reverence being chastened by angelic modesty; the second turns on that which he sees a look of earnest inquiry, but kneels as he looks; and indeed that which he sees is one of the things which angels desire to look into. the third, a majestic herald-like figure, stands, as one speaking, looking to the spectator, with his right hand on his garment, and his left out as in demonstration, unmistakeably saying to us who look on, "behold what love is here!" then, hardly noticing what might well be much noticed, the grand dark figure of the baptist on the right, let us observe how beautifully and accurately all the features of the landscape are given.' of the same work another critic records: 'the attendant angels in this work (signed by the artist) are of special interest, instinct with an indefinable purity and depth of reverential tenderness elsewhere hardly rivalled. but the picture, like that in s. giovanni crisostomo, with which it is nearly contemporary, is almost more interesting from the astonishing truth and beauty of its landscape portions. _these_ form here a feature more important, perhaps, than in any work of that period; the stratification and form of the rocks in the foreground, the palms and other trees relieved against the lucid distance, and the mountain-ranges of tender blue beyond, are as much beyond praise for their beauty and their truth, as they have been beyond imitation from the solidity and transparent strength of their execution! the minute finish is nature's, and the colouring more gem-like than gems.' no praise can exceed that bestowed on gian bellini's colouring for its intensity and transparency. 'many of his draperies are like crystal of the clearest and deepest colour,' declares an authority; and another states' his best works have a clear jewel brightness, an internal gem-like fire such as warms a summer twilight. the shadows are intense and yet transparent, like the adriatic waves when they lie out of the sun under the palace bridges.' portrait-painting, just beginning, was established in venice, its later stronghold, by gian bellini. his truthful portrait of the doge loredano, one of the earliest of that series of doges' portraits which once hung in state in the ducal palace, is now in our national gallery. of gentile bellini, whose work was softer, but less vigorous than his brother's, the best painting extant is that at milan of st mark preaching at alexandria, in which the painter showed how he had profited by his residence at constantinople in the introduction of much rich turkish costume, and of an animal unknown to europe at the time--a camelopard. andrea mantegna was born near padua. he was the son of a farmer. his early history, according to tradition, is very similar to that of giotto. just as cimabue adopted giotto, squarcione, a painter who had travelled in italy and greece, and made a great collection of antiques, from which he taught in a famous school of painters, adopted andrea mantegna at the early age of ten years. it was long believed that mantegna, in the end, forfeited the favour of his master by marrying nicolosa bellini, the sister of gentile and gian bellini, whose father was the great rival of squarcione; and farther, that mantegna's style of painting had been considered bellini. modern researches, which have substituted another surname for that of bellini as the surname of andrea mantegna's wife, contradict this story. andrea mantegna, a man of much energy and fancy, entered young into the service of the gonzaga lords of mantua, receiving from them a salary of thirty pounds a year and a piece of land, on which the painter built a house, and painted it within and without--the latter one of the first examples of artistic waste, followed later by tintoret and veronese, regardless of the fact that painting could not survive in the open air of northern italy. andrea mantegna had his home at mantua, except when he was called to rome to paint for the pope, innocent viii. an anecdote is told by mrs jameson of this commission. it seems the pope's payments were irregular; and one day when he visited his painter at work, and his holiness asked the meaning of a certain allegorical female figure in the design, andrea answered, with somewhat audacious point, that he was trying to represent _patience_. the pope, understanding the allusion, paid the painter in his own coin, by remarking in reply, 'if you would place patience in fitting company, you would paint discretion at her side.' andrea took the hint, said no more, and when his work was finished not only received his money, but was munificently rewarded. andrea mantegna had two sons and a daughter. one of his sons painted with his father, and, after andrea mantegna's death, completed some of his pictures. andrea mantegna's early study of antique sculpture moulded his whole life's work. he took great delight in modelling, in perspective, of which he made himself a master, and in chiaroscuro, or light and shade. had his powers of invention and grace not kept pace with his skill, he would have been a stiff and formal worker; as it was, he carried the austerity of sculpture into painting, and his greatest work, the 'triumph of julius cæsar,' would have been better suited for the chiselled frieze of a temple than it is for the painted frieze of the hall of a palace. yet he was a great leader and teacher in art, and the true proportions of his drawing are grand, if his colouring is harsh. i am happy to say that mantegna's 'triumph of julius cæsar' is in england at hampton court, having been bought from the duke of mantua by charles i. these cartoons, nine in number, are sketches in water-colour or distemper on paper fixed on cloth. they are faded and dilapidated, as they well may be, considering the slightness of the materials and their age, about four hundred years. at the same time, they are, after the cartoons of raphael (which formed part of the same art collection of charles i.), perhaps the most valuable and interesting relic of art in england. the series of the 'triumph' contain the different parts, originally separated by pillars, of a long and splendid procession. there are trumpeters and standard bearers, the statues of the gods borne aloft, battering-rams and heaps of glittering armour, trophies of conquest in huge vases filled with coin, garlanded oxen, and elephants. the second last of the series, presents the ranks of captives forming part of the show, rebellious men, submissive women, and unconscious children--a moving picture. in the last of the series comes the great conqueror in his chariot, a youth in the crowd following him, carrying his banner, on which is inscribed cæsar's notable despatch, 'veni, vidi, vici;' 'i came, i saw, i conquered.' another of mantegna's best pictures is in distemper--in which, and on fresco, mantegna chiefly painted,--and is in the louvre, paris. it is the madonna of victory, so called from its being painted to commemorate the deliverance of italy from the french army under charles viii., a name which has acquired a sardonic meaning from the ultimate destination of the picture. this picture--which represents the virgin and child on a throne, in an arbour of fruit and flowers, between the archangels, michael and st maurice, in complete armour, with the patron saints of mantua and the infant st john in the front, and the marquis ludovico of mantua and his wife, isabella d'este, kneeling to return thanks--was painted by mantegna at the age of seventy years; and, as if the art of the man had mellowed with time, it is the softest and tenderest of his pictures in execution. a beautiful madonna of mantegna's, still later in time, is in the national gallery. when mantegna was sixty years old he took up the art of engraving, and prosecuted it with zeal and success, being one of the earliest painters who engraved his own pictures, and this accomplishment spread them abroad a hundredfold. domenico ghirlandajo was properly domenico bicordi, but inherited from his father, a goldsmith in florence,[ ] the by-name of ghirlandajo or garland-maker--a distinctive appellation said to have been acquired by the elder man from his skill in making silver garlands for the heads of florentine women and children. domenico ghirlandajo worked at his father's craft till he was twenty-four years of age, when, having in the mean time evinced great cleverness in taking the likenesses of the frequenters of ghirlandajo the elder's shop, the future painter abandoned the goldsmith's trade for art pure and simple. he soon vindicated the wisdom of the step which he had taken by giving proofs of something of the strength of masaccio, united with a reflection of the feeling of fra angelico. ghirlandajo was summoned soon to rome to paint in the sistine chapel, afterwards to be so glorious; but his greatest works were done in the prime of his manhood, in his native city, florence, where he was chosen as the teacher of michael angelo, who was apprenticed to ghirlandajo for three years. while still in the flower of his age and crowned with golden opinions, being, it is said with effusion, 'the delight of his city,' ghirlandajo died after a short illness, in ghirlandajo's time florence had reached her meridian, and her citizens outvied each other in the magnificence of their gifts to their fair mother city. ghirlandajo was fitted to be their painter; himself a generous-spirited artist, in the exuberance of life and power, he wished that his fellow-citizens would give him all the walls of the city to cover with frescoes. he was content with the specified sum for his painting, desiring more the approbation of his employers than additional crowns. his genius lying largely in the direction of portrait painting, he introduced frequently the portraits of contemporaries, causing them to figure as spectators of his sacred scenes. one of these contemporaries thus presented, was amerigo vespucci, who was to give his name to a continent. another was a florentine beauty, a woman of rank, ginevra de benci. ghirlandajo was lavish in his employment of rich florentine costumes and architecture. he even made the legends of the saints and the histories of the bible appear as if they had happened under the shadow of brunelleschi's duomo and giotto's campanile, and within sound of the flow of the arno. in the peculiar colouring used in fresco painting ghirlandajo excelled. he painted a chapel for a florentine citizen, francesco sasetti, in the church of the trinità, florence, with scenes from the life of st francis. of these, the death of st francis, surrounded by the sorrowing monks of his order, with the figures of francesco sasetti and his wife, madonna nera, on one side of the picture, is considered the best. as a curious illustration of the modernizing practice of ghirlandajo, he has painted an old priest at the foot of the bier, chanting the litanies for the dying, with spectacles on his nose, the earliest known representation of these useful instruments. ghirlandajo painted during four years the choir of the church of santa maria novella, florence, for one of the great florentine benefactors, giovanni tornabuone, and there are to be seen some of ghirlandajo's finest frescoes from the history of john the baptist and the virgin. a madonna and child with angels in the national gallery is attributed to ghirlandajo. francesco francia, or il francia, was born at bologna, and was the son of a carpenter, whose surname was raibaloni, but francesco assumed the name of his master, a goldsmith, and worked himself at a goldsmith's trade till he was forty years of age. indeed he may be said never to have relinquished his connection with the trade, and certainly he was no more ashamed of it than of his calling as a painter, for he signed himself indiscriminately 'goldsmith' and 'painter,' and sometimes whimsically put 'goldsmith' to his paintings and 'painter' to his jewellery. he was a famous designer of dies for coins and medals, and it is quite probable, as a countryman of his own has sought to prove, that he was the celebrated type-cutter, known as 'francesco da bologna.' but it is with francesco '_pictor_' that we have to do. though he only began to prosecute the painter's art in middle age, he rose with remarkable rapidity to eminence, was the great painter of lombardy in his day, rivalling squarcione, mantegna's teacher in his school, which numbered two hundred scholars, and becoming the founder of the early bolognese school of painters. francia is said to have been very handsome in person, with a kindly disposition and an agreeable manner. he was on terms of cordial friendship with raphael, then in his youth, and thirty years il francia's junior. il francia addressed an enthusiastic sonnet to raphael, and there is extant a letter of raphael's to il francia, excusing himself for not sending his friend raphael's portrait, and making an exchange of sketches, that of his 'nativity' for the drawing of il francia's 'judith;' while it was to il francia's care that raphael committed his picture of st cecilia, when it was first sent to bologna. these relations between the men and their characters throw discredit on the tradition that il francia died from jealous grief caused by the sight of raphael's 'st cecilia.' as il francia was seventy years of age at the time of his death, one may well attribute it to physical causes. il francia had at least one son, and another kinsman, painters, whose paintings were so good as to be occasionally confounded with those of il francia. il francia is thought to have united, in his works, a certain calm sedateness and frank sincerity to the dreamy imaginativeness of some of his contemporaries. his finest works are considered to be the frescoes from the life of st cecilia in the church of st cecilia at bologna. of a madonna and child, by francia, at bologna, i shall write down another of dean alford's descriptions,--many of which i have given for this, among other reasons, that these descriptions are not technical or professional, but the expression of the ardent admiration and grateful comprehension of a sympathetic spectator. 'he,' speaking of the divine child, 'is lying in simple nakedness on a rich red carpet, and is supported by a white pillar, over which the carpet passes. of these accessories every thread is most delicately and carefully painted; no slovenly washes of meretricious colour where he is to be served, before whom all things are open; no perfunctory sparing of toil in serving him who has given us all that is best. on his right hand kneels the virgin mother in adoration, her very face a magnificat--praise, lowliness, confidence; next to her, joseph, telling by his looks the wonderful story, deeply but simply. two beautiful angels kneel, one on either side--hereafter, perhaps, to kneel in like manner in the tomb. their faces seemed to me notable for that which i have no doubt the painter intended to express,--the pure abstraction of reverent adoration, unmingled with human sympathies. the face and figure of the divine infant are full of majesty, as he holds his hands in blessing towards the spectator, who symbolizes the world which he has come to save. close to him on the ground, on his right branch in trustful repose; on his left springs a plant of the meadow-trefoil. thus lightly and reverently has the master touched the mystery of the blessed trinity: the goldfinch symbolizing by its colours, the trefoil by the form of its leaf.' in our own national gallery is a picture by il francia of the enthroned virgin and child and her mother, st anne, who is presenting a peach to the infant christ; at the foot of the throne is the little st john; to the right and left are st paul with the sword, st sebastian bound to a pillar and pierced with arrows, and st lawrence with the emblematical grid-iron, etc. etc. opposite this picture hangs, what once formed part of it, a solemn, sorrowful pietà, as the italians call a picture representing the dead redeemer mourned over by the virgin and by the other holy women. these pictures were bought by our government from the duke of lucca for three thousand five hundred pounds. fra bartolommeo. we come to a second gentle monk, not unlike fra angelico in his nature, but far less happy than fra angelico, in having been born in stormy times. fra bartolommeo, called also baccio della porta, or bartholomew of the gate, from the situation of his lodgings when a young man, but scarcely known in italy by any other name than that of il frate, or the friar, was born near florence, and trained from his boyhood to be a painter. in his youth, however, a terrible public event convulsed florence, and revolutionized baccio della porta's life. he had been employed to paint in that notable dominican convent of st mark, where savonarola, its devoted friar, was denouncing the sins of the times, including the profligate luxury of the nobles and the degradation of the representatives of the church. carried away by the fervour and sincerity of the speaker, baccio joined the enthusiasts who cast into a burning pile the instruments of pride, vanity, and godless intellect denounced by the preacher. baccio's sacrifice to the flaming heap of splendid furniture and dress, and worldly books, was all his designs from profane subjects and studies of the undraped figure. a little later savonarola was excommunicated by the pope and perished as a martyr; and baccio, timid from his natural temper, distracted by doubt, and altogether horror-stricken, took a monk's vows, and entered the same convent of st mark, where for four years he never touched a pencil. at the request of his superior fra bartolommeo painted again, and when raphael visited florence, and came with all his conquering sweetness and graciousness to greet the monk in his cell, something of il frate's old love for his art, and delight in its exercise, returned. he even visited rome, but there his health failed him, and the great works of lionardo, michael angelo, and raphael, when he compared his own with theirs, seemed to crush and overwhelm him. but he painted better for his visit to rome, even as he had painted better for his intimacy with raphael. nay, it is said raphael himself painted better on account of his brotherly regard for, and confidence in, fra bartolommeo. fra bartolommeo died aged forty-eight years. among his best pupils was a nun of st catherine's, known as suor plautilla. to il frate, as a painter, is attributed great softness and harmony, and even majesty, though, like fra angelico, he was often deficient in strength. he was great in the management of draperies, for the better study of which he is said to have invented the lay figure. he indulged in the introduction into his pictures of rich architecture. he was fond of painting boy-angels--in which he excelled--playing frequently on musical instruments, or holding a canopy over the virgin. very few of his works are out of italy; the most are in florence, especially in the pitti palace. his two greatest works are the madonna della misericordia, or the madonna of mercy, at lucca, where the virgin stands with outstretched arms pleading for the suppliants, whom she shelters under the canopy, and who look to her as she looks to her son,--and the grand single figure of st mark, with his gospel in his hand, in the pitti palace, florence. sir david wilkie said of the madonna of mercy, 'that it contained the merits of raphael, of titian, of rembrandt, and of rubens.' andrea vanucchi, commonly called andrea del sarto, from the occupation of his father, who was a tailor (in italian, _sarto_), was born at florence in . he was first a goldsmith, but soon turned painter, winning early the commendatory title of 'andrea senza errori,' or 'andrea the faultless.' his life is a miserable and tragic history. in the early flush of his genius and industry, with its just crown of fame and success, he conceived a passion for a beautiful but worthless woman, whom, in spite of the opposition of his friends, he married. she rendered his home degraded and wretched, and his friends and scholars fell off from him. in disgust he quitted florence, and entered the service of francis i, of france; but his wife, for whom his regard was a desperate infatuation, imperiously summoned him back to florence, to which he returned, bringing with him a large sum of money, entrusted to him by the king for the purchase of works of art. instigated by his wife, andrea del sarto used this money for his, or rather her, purposes, and dared not return to france. even in his native florence he was loaded with reproach and shame. he died of the plague at the age of fifty-five years, according to tradition, plundered and abandoned in his extremity by the base woman for whom he had sacrificed principle and honour. we may read the grievous story of andrea del sarto, written by one of the greatest of england's modern poets. as may be imagined, andrea del sarto's excellence lay in the charm of his execution. his works were deficient in earnestness and high feeling, and some will have it, that, evilly haunted as he was, he perpetually painted in his madonnas the beautiful but base-souled face of the woman who ruined him. andrea del sarto's best works are in florence, particularly in the cloisters of the convent of the annunziata. in the court of the same convent is his famous riposo (or rest of the holy family on their way to egypt), which is known as the 'madonna of the sack,' from the circumstance of joseph in the picture leaning against a sack. this picture has held a high place in art for hundreds of years. chapter iv. lionardo da vinci, - --michael angelo, - --raphael, - --titian, - . we have arrived at the triumph of art, not, indeed, in unconsciousness and devotion, but in fulness and completeness, as shown in the works of four of the greatest painters and men whom the world ever saw. of the first, lionardo da vinci, born at vinci in the neighbourhood of florence, , it may be said that the many-sidedness which characterized italians--above all italians of his day--reached its height in him. not only was he a painter, a sculptor, an architect, and engineer, but also one of the boldest speculators of the generation which gave birth to columbus, and was not less original and ingenious than he was universally accomplished--an admirable crichton among painters. there is a theory that this many-sidedness is a proof of the greatest men, indicating a man who might have been great in any way, who, had his destiny not found and left him a painter, would have been equally great as a philosopher, a man of science, a poet, or a statesman. it may be so; but the life of lionardo tends also to illustrate the disadvantage of too wide a grasp and diffusion of genius. beginning much and finishing little, not because he was idle or fickle, but because his schemes were so colossal and his aims so high, he spent his time in preparation for the attainment of perfect excellence, which eluded him. lionardo was the pioneer, the teacher of others, rather than the complete fulfiller of his own dreams; and the life of the proud, passionate man was, to him self mortification. this result might, in a sense, have been avoided; but lionardo, great as he was, proved also one of those unfortunate men whose noblest efforts are met and marred by calamities which could have hardly been foreseen or prevented. lionardo da vinci was the son of a notary, and early showed a taste for painting as well as for arithmetic and mathematics. he was apprenticed to a painter, but he also sedulously studied physics. he is said, indeed, to have made marvellous guesses at truth, in chemistry, botany, astronomy, and particularly, as helping him in his art, anatomy. he was, according to other accounts, a man of noble person, like ghirlandajo. and one can scarcely doubt this who looks at lionardo's portrait painted by himself, or at any engraving from it, and remarks the grand presence of the man in his cap and furred cloak; his piercing wistful eyes; stately outline of nose; and sensitive mouth, unshaded by his magnificent flowing beard. he was endowed with surprising bodily strength, and was skilled in the knightly exercises of riding, fencing, and dancing. he was a lover of social pleasure, and inclined to indulge in expensive habits. while a lad he amused himself by inventing machines for swimming, diving, and flying, as well as a compass, a hygrometer, etc. etc. in a combination from the attributes of the toads, lizards, bats, etc. etc., with which his studies in natural history had made him familiar, he painted a nondescript monster, which he showed suddenly to his father, whom it filled with horror. but the horror did not prevent the old lawyer selling the wild phantasmagoria for a large sum of money. as something beyond amusement, lionardo planned a canal to unite florence with pisa (while he executed other canals in the course of his life), and suggested the daring but not impossible idea of raising _en masse_, by means of levers, the old church of san giovanni, florence, till it should stand several feet above its original level, and so get rid of the half-sunken appearance which destroyed the effect of the fine old building. he visited the most frequented places, carrying always with him his sketch-book, in which to note down his observations; he followed criminals to execution in order to witness the pangs of despair; he invited peasants to his house and told them laughable stories, that he might pick up from their faces the essence of comic expression.[ ] a mania for truth--alike in great and little things--possessed him. lionardo entered young into the service of the gonzaga family of milan, being, according to one statement, chosen for the office which he was to fill, as the first singer in _improvisatore_ of his time (among his other inventions he devised a peculiar kind of lyre). he showed no want of confidence in asserting his claims to be elected, for after declaring the various works he would undertake, he added with regard to painting--'i can do what can be done, as well as any man, be he who he may.' he received from the duke a salary of five hundred crowns a year. he was fourteen years at the court of milan, where, among other works, he painted his 'cenacolo,' or 'last supper,' one of the grandest pictures ever produced. he painted it, contrary to the usual practice, in oils upon the plastered walls of the refectory of the dominican convent, milan. the situation was damp, and the material used proved so unsuitable for work on plaster, that, even before it was exposed to the reverses which in the course of a french occupation of milan converted the refectory into a stable, the colours had altogether faded, and the very substance of the picture was crumbling into ruin. the equestrian statue of the old duke of milan by lionardo excited so much delight in its first freshness, that it was carried in triumph through the city, and during the progress it was accidentally broken. lionardo began another, but funds failed for its completion, and afterwards the french used the original clay model as a target for their bowmen. lionardo returned to florence, and found his great rival, michael angelo, already in the field. both of the men, conscious of mighty gifts, were intolerant of rivalry. to lionardo especially, as being much the elder man, the originator and promoter of many of the new views in art which his opponent had adopted, the competition was very distasteful, and to michael angelo he used the bitter sarcasm which has been handed down to us, 'i was famous before you were born.' nevertheless lionardo consented to compete with michael angelo for the painting in fresco of one side of the council-hall, by the order of the gonfaloniere for the year. lionardo chose for his subject a victory of the florentines over the milanese, while michael angelo took a scene from the pisan campaigns. not only was the work never done (some say partly because lionardo _would_ delay in order to make experiments in oils) on account of political troubles, but the very cartoons of the two masters, which all the artists of the day flocked to see, have been broken up, dispersed, and lost; and of one only, that of michael angelo, a small copy remains, while but a fragment from lionardo's was preserved in a copy made by rubens. lionardo went to rome in the pontificate of leo x., but there his quarrel with michael angelo broke out more violently than ever. the pope too, who loved better a gentler, more accommodating spirit, seemed to slight lionardo, and the great painter not only quitted rome in disgust, but withdrew his services altogether from ungrateful italy. at pavia lionardo was presented to francis i, of france, who, zealous in patronizing art, engaged the painter to follow francis's fortunes at a salary of seven hundred crowns a year. lionardo spent the remainder of his life in france. his health had long been declining before he died, aged sixty-seven years, at cloux, near amboise. he had risen high in the favour of francis. from this circumstance, and the generous, chivalrous nature of the king, there doubtless arose the tradition that francis visited lionardo on his death-bed; and that, while in the act of gently assisting him to raise himself, the painter died in the king's arms. court chronicles do their best to demolish this story, by proving francis to have been at st germain on the day when lionardo died at cloux. lionardo was never married, and he left what worldly goods he possessed to a favourite scholar. besides his greater works, he filled many ms. volumes, some with singularly accurate studies and sketches, maps, plans for machines, scores for music (three volumes of these are in the royal library at windsor), and some with writing, which is written--probably to serve as a sort of cipher--from right to left, instead of from left to right. one of his writings is a valuable 'treatise' on painting; other writings are on scientific and philosophic subjects, and in these lionardo is believed to have anticipated some of the discoveries which were reached by lines of close reasoning centuries later. lionardo's genius as a painter was expressed by his uniting, in the very highest degree, truth and imagination. he was the shrewdest observer of ordinary life, and he could also realize the higher mysteries and profounder feelings of human nature. he drew exceedingly well. of transparent lights and shadows, or chiaroscuro, he was the greatest master; but he was not a good colourist. his works are very rare, and many which are attributed to him are the pictures of his scholars, for he founded one of the great schools of milan or lombardy. there is a tradition that he was, as holbein was once believed to be, ambidextrous, or capable of using his left hand as well as his right, and that he painted with two brushes--one in each hand. thus more than fully armed, lionardo da vinci looms out on us like a titan through the mists of centuries, and he preaches to us the simple homily, that not even a titan can command worldly success; that such men must look to ends as the reward of their travail, and before undertaking it they must count the cost, and be prepared to renounce the luxurious tastes which clung to lionardo, and which were not for him or for such men as he was. lionardo's great painting was his 'last supper,' of which, happily, good copies exist, as well as the wreck of the picture itself. the original is now, after it is too late, carefully guarded and protected in its old place in the dominican convent of the madonna della grazia, milan. the assembled company sit at a long table, christ being seated in the middle, the disciples forming two separate groups on each side of the saviour. the gradations of age are preserved, from the tender youth of john to the grey hairs of simon; and all the varied emotions of mind, from the deepest sorrow and anxiety to the eager desire of revenge, are here portrayed. the well-known words of christ, 'one of you shall betray me,' have caused the liveliest emotion. the two groups to the left of christ are full of impassioned excitement, the figures in the first turning to the saviour, those in the second speaking to each other,--horror, astonishment, suspicion, doubt, alternating in the various expressions. on the other hand, stillness, low whispers, indirect observations, are the prevailing expressions in the groups on the right. in the middle of the first group sits the betrayer; a cunning, sharp profile, he looks up hastily to christ, as if speaking the words, 'master, is it i?' while, true to the scriptural account, his left hand and christ's right hand approach, as if unconsciously, the dish that stands before them.[ ] a sketch of the head of christ for the original picture, which has been preserved on a torn and soiled piece of paper at brera, expresses the most elevated seriousness, together with divine gentleness pain on account of the faithless disciple, a full presentiment of his own death, and resignation to the will of the father. it gives a faint idea of what the master may have accomplished in the finished picture. during his stay at florence lionardo painted a portrait of that ginevra benci already mentioned as painted by ghirlandajo; and a still more famous portrait by lionardo was that of mona lisa, the wife of his friend giocondo. this picture is also known as 'la jaconde.' i wish to call attention to it because it is the first of four surpassingly beautiful portraits of women which four great painters gave in succession to the world. the others, to be spoken of afterwards, are raphael's 'fornarina,' titian's 'bella donna,' and rubens' 'straw hat.' about the original of 'la jaconde' there never has been a mystery such as there has been about the others. at this portrait the unsatisfied painter worked at intervals for four years, and when he left it he pronounced it still unfinished. 'la jaconde' is now in the louvre in nearly ruined condition, yet a judge says of it that even now 'there is something in this wonderful head of the ripest southern beauty, with its airy background of a rocky landscape, which exercises a peculiar fascination over the mind.' there is a painting of the madonna and child christ said to be by lionardo, and probably, at least, by one of his school, and which belongs, i think, to the duke of buccleuch, and was exhibited lately among the works of the old masters. the group has at once something touching and exalted in its treatment. the divine child in the mother's arms is strangely attracted by the sight of a cross, and turns towards it with ineffable longing, while the virgin mother, with a pang of foreboding, clasping the child in her arms, seeks to draw him back. the fragment of the cartoon in which lionardo competed with michael angelo, may be held to survive in the fine painting by rubens called 'the battle of the standard.' of a famous madonna and st anne, by lionardo, the original cartoon in black chalk is preserved under glass in our royal academy.[ ] michael angelo buonarroti, born at castel caprese near tuscany, , is the next of these universal geniuses, a term which we are accustomed to hold in contempt, because we have only seen it exemplified in parody. after lionardo, indeed, michael angelo, though he was also painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, poet, musician, might almost be regarded as restricted in his pursuits, yet still so manifold was he, that men have loved to make a play upon his name and call him 'michael the angel,' and to speak of him as of a king among men. michael angelo was of noble descent, and though his ancient house had fallen into comparative poverty, his father was mayor or podesta of chiusi, and governor of the castle of chiusi and caprese. michael angelo was destined for the profession of the law, but so early vindicated his taste for art, that at the age of thirteen years he was apprenticed to ghirlandajo. lorenzo the magnificent was then ruling florence, and he had made a collection of antique models in his palace and gardens, and constituted it an academy for young artists. in this academy michael angelo developed a strong bias for sculpture, and won the direct patronage of the medici. to this period of his life belong two characteristic anecdotes. in a struggle with a fellow-student, michael angelo received a blow from a mallet in his face, which, breaking bone and cartilage, lent to his nose the rugged bend, 'the bar of michael angelo.' an ill-advised member of the medician house, while entertaining a party of guests during a snowstorm, sent out the indignant artist to make a snow man within sight of the palace windows. these anecdotes bear indirectly on the ruling qualities of michael angelo--qualities so integral that they are wrought into his marble and painted on his canvas--proud independence and energy. before going farther i wish to guard against a common misapprehension of michael angelo--that he was a haughty, arrogant man, absolutely narrow in his half-idolatrous, half-human worship of art. michael angelo was severe in place of being sweet; he was impatient of contradiction; he was careless and scornful of ceremony; and in his very wrath at flattery and hypocrisy, he was liable to sin against his own honesty and sincerity. but he was a man with a lofty sense of duty and a profound reverence for god. he was, unlike lionardo, consistently simple, frugal, and temperate, throughout his long life. if he held up a high standard to others, and enforced it on them with hardness, he held up a higher standard to himself, and enforced it on himself more hardly still. he was a thoroughly unworldly man, and actions which had their root in unworldliness have been ascribed unjustly to a kind of lucifer pride. greed, and the meanness of greed, were unknown to him. he worked for the last ten years of his life (under no less than five different popes) at his designs for st peter's, steadfastly refusing pay for the work, saying that he did it for the honour of god and his own honour. he made many enemies and suffered from their enmity, but i cannot learn that, except in one instance, he was guilty of dealing an unworthy blow at his opponents. he was generous to his scholars, and without jealousy of them, suffering them to use his designs for their own purposes. he said, 'i have no friends, i need none, i wish for none;' but that was in feeling himself 'alone before heaven;' and of the friends whom he did possess, he loved them all the more devotedly and faithfully, because they were few in number. one need only be told of his love for his old servant urbino, whom he presented with two thousand crowns to render him independent of service; and when the servant was seized with his last illness michael angelo nursed him tenderly, sleeping in his clothes on a couch that he might be ready to attend his patient. when his cares were ended, michael angelo wrote to a correspondent--'my urbino is dead--to my infinite grief and sorrow. living, he served me truly; and in his death he taught me how to die. of michael angelo's more equal friendship with vittoria colonna i hope my readers will read at leisure for themselves. no nobler, truer friendship ever existed. it began when the high-born and beautiful, gifted, and devout marchesa de pescara--most loyal of wives and widows, was forty-eight, and michael angelo sixty-four years of age. after a few years of privileged intercourse and correspondence, which were the happiest years in michael angelo's life, it ended for this world when he stood mourning by her lifeless clay. 'i was born a rough model, and it was for thee to reform and re-make me,' the great painter had written humbly of himself to his liege lady.[ ] italy, in michael angelo's time, as germany in albert dürer's, was all quickened and astir with the new wave of religious thought which brought about the reformation. ochino and peter martyr, treading in the footsteps of savonarola, had preached to eager listeners, but 'in italy men did not adopt lutheranism, though they approached it;' and in all the crowd of great italian artists of the day, michael angelo shows deepest traces of the conflict--of its trouble, its seriousness, its nobleness. he only, among his brethren, acted out his belief that the things of the world sank into insignificance before those thoughts of god and immortality which were alone fully worthy of the soul. and it was, as to a religious work for which he was fitted, that he at last gave himself up to the raising of st peter's. we shall have next in order the life of a man who had all the winning qualities which michael angelo wanted, but we shall hardly, through the whole range of history, find a nobler man than michael angelo. after his first visit to rome, , michael angelo executed his colossal statue of david. in he entered into the competition with lionardo for the painting of one end of the council-hall, in florence, which has been already mentioned. for this object he drew as his cartoon, 'pisan soldiers surprised while bathing by a sudden trumpet call to arms.' the grand cartoon, of which only a small copy exists, was said to have been torn to pieces as an act of revenge by a fellow-sculptor, whom michael angelo had offended. michael angelo was invited to rome by julius ii. in to aid in erecting the unapproachable monument which the pope projected raising for himself. then commenced a series of contentions and struggles between the imperious and petulant pope and the haughty, uncompromising painter, in which the latter certainly had the best of it. at one time in the course of the quarrel, michael angelo departed from rome without permission or apology, and stoutly refused to return, though followed hotly by no less than five different couriers, armed with threats and promises, and urged to make the reparation by his own gonfaloniere. at last a meeting and a reconciliation between michael angelo and the pope were effected at bologna. michael angelo designed for pope julius ii, not only the statue of pope julius at bologna, which was finally converted into a cannon, and turned against the very man whose effigy it had originally presented, but also for that tomb which was never completed, the famous figure of moses seated, grasping his beard with one hand. while employed at the tomb, michael angelo, then in his fortieth year, was desired by the pope to undertake the decoration of the ceiling of the sistine chapel. here, again, the hand of an enemy is said to have been at work. michael angelo, with the first place as a sculptor, was inexperienced in fresco painting; while raphael, who was taking the place of lionardo as michael angelo's most formidable rival (yet whom it is said michael angelo pointed out as the fittest painter of the ceiling), and who was then engaged in painting the vatican chambers, had already achieved the utmost renown. it was anticipated by secret hostility, so records tradition, that michael angelo would fail signally in the unaccustomed work, and that his merit as an artist would pale altogether before that of raphael's. i need hardly write how entirely malice was balked in the verdict to which posterity has set its seal. michael angelo brought artists from florence to help him in his great undertaking, for over the chapel, whose walls had already been painted by older artists--among them ghirlandajo, was an enormous vault of feet in length by in breadth, which michael angelo was required to cover with designs representing the fall and redemption of man. but the painter was unable to bear what seemed to him the bungling attempts of his assistants; so dismissing them all and destroying their work, he shut himself up, and working in solitude and secrecy, set himself to evolve from his own inner consciousness the gigantic scenes of a tremendous drama. in months (or, as kugler holds, in three years, including the time spent on the designs) he finished gloriously the work, the magnitude of which one must see to comprehend. on all saints' day, , the ceiling was uncovered, and michael angelo was hailed, little though he cared for such clamorous hailing, as a painter indeed. for this piece of work michael angelo received crowns. pope julius died, and was succeeded by leo x. of the medician house, but, in spite of early associations as well as of mother country, michael angelo was no more acceptable to the pope--a brilliantly polished, easy-tempered man of the world, who filled the chair of st peter's, than lionardo had been. leo x, greatly preferred raphael, to whom all manner of pleasantness as well as of courteous deference was natural, to the two others. at the same time, leo employed michael angelo, though it was more as an architect than as a painter, and rather at florence than at rome. at florence michael angelo executed for pope clement vii., another medici, the mortuary chapel of san lorenzo, with its six great statues, those of the cousins lorenzo de medici and giuliano de medici, the first called by the florentines 'il pensièro,' or 'pensive thought,' with the four colossal recumbent figures named respectively the night, the morning, the dawn, and the twilight. in michael angelo was employed by his fellow citizens to fortify his native city against the return of his old patrons the medici, and the city held out for nine months. pope paul iii., an old man when elected to the popedom, but bent on signalizing his pontificate with as splendid works of art as those which had rendered the reigns of his predecessors illustrious, summoned another man, grown elderly, michael angelo, upwards of sixty years, reluctant to accept the commission, to finish the decoration of the sistine chapel; and michael angelo painted on the wall, at the upper end, his painting, 'the last judgment.' the picture is forty-seven feet high by forty-three wide, and it occupied the painter eight years. it was during its progress that michael angelo entered on his friendship with vittoria colonna. for the chapel called the paolina or pauline chapel michael angelo also painted less-known frescoes, but from that time he devoted his life to st peter's. he had said that he would take the old pantheon and 'suspend it in air,' and he did what he said, though he did not live to see the great cathedral completed. his sovereign, the grand duke of florence, endeavoured in vain with magnificent offers to lure the painter back to his native city. michael angelo protested that to leave rome then would be 'a sin and a shame, and the ruin of the greatest religious monument in christian europe.' michael angelo, like lionardo, did not marry; he died at rome in , in his eighty-ninth year. his nephew and principal heir,[ ] by the orders of the grand duke of florence, and it is believed according to michael angelo's own wish, removed the painter's body to florence, where it was buried with all honours in the church of santa croce there. the traits which recall michael angelo personally to us, are the prominent arch of the nose, the shaggy brows, the tangled beard, the gaunt grandeur of a figure like that of one of his prophets. while michael angelo lived, one pope rose on his approach, and seated the painter on his right hand, and another pope declined to sit down in his painter's presence; but the reason given for the last condescension, is that the pope feared that the painter would follow his example. and if the grand duke cosmo uncovered before michael angelo, and stood hat in hand while speaking to him, we may have the explanation in another assertion, that 'sovereigns asked michael angelo to put on his cap, because the painter would do it unasked.' the solitary instance in which michael angelo is represented as taking an unfair advantage of an antagonist, is in connection with the painter's rivalry in his art with raphael. michael angelo undervalued the genius of raphael, and was disgusted by what the older man considered the immoderate admiration bestowed on the younger. a favourite pupil of michael angelo's was sebastian del piombo, who being a venetian by birth was an excellent colourist. for one of his pictures--the very 'raising of lazarus' now in the national gallery, which the pope had ordered at the same time that he had ordered raphael's 'transfiguration'--it is rumoured that michael angelo gave the designs and even drew the figures, leaving sebastian the credit, and trusting that without michael angelo's name appearing in the work, by the help of his drawing in addition to sebastian's superb colouring, raphael would be eclipsed, and that by a painter comparatively obscure. the unwarrantable inference that the whole work was that of one painter, constituted a stratagem altogether unworthy of michael angelo, and if it had any existence, its getting wind disappointed and foiled its authors. when the story was repeated to raphael, his sole protest is said to have been to the effect that he was glad that michael angelo esteemed him so highly as to enter the lists with him. we can judge of michael angelo's attainments as a poet, even without having recourse to the original italian, by wordsworth's translations of some of the italian master's sonnets, and by mr john edward taylor's translations of selections from michael angelo's poems. michael angelo was greater as an architect and a sculptor than as a painter, because his power and delight lay in the mastery of form, and in the assertion, through that mastery, of the idealism of genius. it is not necessary to speak here of the mighty harmonies and the ineffable dignity of simplicity, somewhat marred by the departure from michael angelo's designs, in st peter's. it has been the fashion to praise them to the skies, and it has been a later fashion to decry them, in awarding a preference to the solemn shades and the dim rich dreaminess of gothic architecture. both fashions come to this, after all, that beauty, like these great men of genius of old, is many-sided. in michael angelo's works of sculpture a weird charm attaches to his monuments in honour of the medici in the chapel of san lorenzo, florence. perhaps something of this weirdness has to do with the tragic history of the men, and with a certain mystery which has always shrouded the sculptor's meaning in these monuments. mrs jameson quotes an account of michael angelo at work. an eye-witness has left us a very graphic description of the energy with which, even in old age, michael angelo handled his chisel:--"i can say that i have seen michael angelo at the age of sixty, and, with a body announcing weakness, make more chips of marble fly about in a quarter of an hour than would three of the strongest young sculptors in an hour,--a thing almost incredible to him who has not beheld it. he went to work with such impetuosity and fury of manner, that i feared almost every moment to see the block split into pieces. it would seem as if, inflamed by the idea of greatness which inspired him, this great man attacked with a vigenére." in painting michael angelo regarded colouring as of secondary importance. he is not known to have executed one painting in oil, and he treated oil and easel-painting generally as work only fit for women or idle men. while he approached the sublime in his painting, it was by no means faultless. even in form his efforts were apt to tend to heaviness and exaggeration, and the fascination which robust muscular delineation had for him, betrayed him into materialism. fuseli's criticism of michael angelo's work, that michael angelo's women were female men, and his children diminutive giants, is judged correct. incomparably the greatest painting of michael angelo's is his ceiling of the sistine chapel. it includes upwards of figures, the greater part colossal, as they were to be looked at, in the distance, from below. 'the ceiling of the sistine chapel contains the most perfect works done by michael angelo in his long and active life. here his great spirit appears in noblest dignity, in its highest purity; here the attention is not disturbed by that arbitrary display to which his great power not unfrequently seduced him in other works. the ceiling forms a flattened arch in its section; the central portion, which is a plain surface, contains a series of large and small pictures, representing the most important events recorded in the book of genesis--the creation and fall of man, with its immediate consequences. in the large triangular compartments at the springing of the vault are sitting figures of the prophets and sibyls, as the foretellers of the coming saviour. in the soffits of the recesses between these compartments, and in the arches underneath, immediately above the windows, are the ancestors of the virgin, the series leading the mind directly to the saviour. the external of these numerous representations is formed by an architectural frame-work of peculiar composition, which encloses the single subjects, tends to make the principal masses conspicuous, and gives to the whole an appearance of that solidity and support so necessary, but so seldom attended to in soffit decorations, which may be considered as if suspended. a great number of figures are also connected with the frame-work; those in unimportant situations are executed in the colour of stone or bronze; in the more important, in natural colours. these serve to support the architectural forms, to fill up and to connect the whole. they may be best described as the living and embodied _genii_ of architecture. it required the unlimited power of an architect, sculptor, and painter, to conceive a structural whole of so much grandeur, to design the decorative figures with the significant repose required by the sculpturesque character, and yet to preserve their subordination to the principal subjects, and to keep the latter in the proportions and relations best adapted to the space to be filled.'--_kugler_. the pictures from the old testament, beginning from the altar, are:-- . the separation of light and darkness. . the creation of the sun and moon. . the creation of trees and plants. . the creation of adam. . the creation of eve. . the fall and the expulsion from paradise. . the sacrifice of noah. . the deluge. . the intoxication of noah. 'the scenes from genesis are the most sublime representations of these subjects;--the creating spirit is unveiled before us. the peculiar type which the painter has here given of the form of the almighty father has been frequently imitated by his followers, and even by raphael, but has been surpassed by none. michael angelo has represented him in majestic flight, sweeping through the air, surrounded by _genii_, partly supporting, partly borne along with him, covered by his floating drapery; they are the distinct syllables, the separate virtues of his creating word. in the first (large) compartment we see him with extended hands, assigning to the sun and moon their respective paths. in the second, he awakens the first man to life. adam lies stretched on the verge of the earth in the act of raising himself; the creator touches him with the point of his finger, and appears thus to endow him with feeling and life. this picture displays a wonderful depth of thought in the composition, and the utmost elevation and majesty in the general treatment and execution. the third subject is not less important, representing the fall of man, and his expulsion from paradise. the tree of knowledge stands in the midst; the serpent (the upper part of the body being that of a woman) is twined around the stem; she bends down towards the guilty pair, who are in the act of plucking the forbidden fruit. the figures are nobly graceful, particularly that of eve. close to the serpent hovers the angel with the sword, ready to drive the fallen beings out of paradise. in this double action, this union of two separate moments, there is something peculiarly poetic and significant: it is guilt and punishment in one picture. the sudden and lightning-like appearance of the avenging angel behind the demon of darkness has a most impressive effect.'--_kugler_. the lower portion of the ceiling is divided into triangles, occupied by the prophets and sibyls in solemn contemplation, accompanied by angels and genii. beginning from the left of the entrance their order is-- . joel. . sibylla erythræa. . ezekiel. . sibylla persica. . jonah. . sibylla libyca. . daniel. . sibylla cumæa. . isaiah. . sibylla delphica. 'the prophets and sibyls in the triangular compartments of the curved portion of the ceiling are the largest figures in the whole work; these, too, are among the most wonderful forms that modern art has called into life. they are all represented seated, employed with books or rolled manuscripts; genii stand near or behind them. these mighty beings sit before us pensive, meditative, inquiring, or looking upwards with inspired countenances. their forms and movements, indicated by the grand lines and masses of the drapery, are majestic and dignified. we see in them beings, who, while they feel and bear the sorrows of a corrupt and sinful world, have power to look for consolation into the secrets of the future. yet the greatest variety prevails in the attitudes and expression: each figure is full of individuality. zacharias is an aged man, busied in calm and circumspect investigation; jeremiah is bowed down, absorbed in thought, the thought of deep and bitter grief; ezekiel turns with hasty movements to the genius next to him, who points upwards with joyful expectation, etc. the sibyls are equally characteristic: the persian, a lofty, majestic woman, very aged; the erythræan, full of power, like the warrior goddess of wisdom; the delphic, like cassandra, youthfully soft and graceful, but with strength to bear the awful seriousness of revelation.'--_kugler_. 'the belief of the roman catholic church in the testimony of the sibyl is shown by the well-known hymn, said to have been composed by pope innocent iii, at the close of the thirteenth century, beginning with the verse-- "dies iræ, dies illa, solvet sæclum in favilla teste david cum sibylla." it may be inferred that this hymn, admitted into the liturgy of the roman church, gave sanction to the adoption of the sibyls into christian art. they are seen from this time accompanying the prophets and apostles, in the cyclical decorations of the church.... but the highest honour that art has rendered to the sibyls has been by the hand of michael angelo, on the ceiling of the sistine chapel. here in the conception of a mysterious order of women, placed above and without all considerations of the graceful or the individual, the great master was peculiarly in his element. they exactly fitted his standard, of art, not always sympathetic, nor comprehensible to the average human mind, of which the grand in form and the abstract in expression were the first and last conditions. in this respect, the sibyls on the sistine chapel ceiling are more michael angelesque than their companions the prophets. for these, while types of the highest monumental treatment, are yet men, while the sibyls belong to a distinct class of beings, who convey the impression of the very obscurity in which their history is wrapt--creatures who have lived far from the abodes of men, who are alike devoid of the expression of feminine sweetness, human sympathy, or sacramental beauty; who are neither christians nor jewesses, witches nor graces, yet living, grand, beautiful, and true, according to laws revealed to the great florentine genius only. thus their figures may be said to be unique, as the offspring of a peculiar sympathy between the master's mind and his subject. to this sympathy may be ascribed the prominence and size given them, both prophets and sibyls, as compared to their usual relation to the subjects they environ. they sit here on twelve throne-like niches, more like presiding deities, each wrapt in self-contemplation, than as tributary witnesses to the truth and omnipotence of him they are intended to announce. thus they form a gigantic frame-work round the subjects of the creation, of which the birth of eve, as the type of the nativity, is the intentional centre. for some reason, the twelve figures are not prophets and sibyls alternately--there being only five sibyls to seven prophets,--so that the prophets come together at one angle. books and scrolls are given indiscriminately to them. 'the sibylla persica, supposed to be the oldest of the sisterhood, holds the book close to her eyes, as if from dimness of sight, which fact, contradicted as it is by a frame of obviously herculean strength, gives a mysterious intentness to the action. 'the sibylla libyca, of equally powerful proportions, but less closely draped, is grandly wringing herself to lift a massive volume from a height above her head on to her knees. 'the sibylla cumana, also aged, and with her head covered, is reading with her volume at a distance from her eyes. 'the sibylla delphica, with waving hair escaping from her turban, is a beautiful young being, the most human of all, gazing into vacancy or futurity. she holds a scroll. 'the sibylla erythræa, grand, bare-headed creature, sits reading intently with crossed legs, about to turn over her book. 'the prophets are equally grand in structure, and though, as we have said, not more than men, yet they are the only men that could well bear the juxtaposition with their stupendous female colleagues. ezekiel, between erythræa and persica, has a scroll in his hand that hangs by his side, just cast down, as he turns eagerly to listen to some voice. 'jeremiah, a magnificent figure, with elbow on knee and head on hand, wrapt in meditation appropriate to one called to utter lamentation and woe. he has neither book nor scroll. 'jonah is also without either. his position is strained and ungraceful, looking upwards, and apparently remonstrating with the almighty upon the destruction of the gourd, a few leaves of which are seen above him. his hands are placed together with a strange and trivial action, supposed to denote the counting on his fingers the number of days he was in the fish's belly. a formless marine monster is seen at his side. 'daniel has a book on his lap, with one hand on it. he is young, and a piece of lion's skin seems to allude to his history.'[ ] in the recesses between the prophets and sibyls are a series of lovely family groups, representing the genealogy of the virgin, and expressive of calm expectation of the future. the four corners of the ceiling contain groups illustrative of the power of the lord displayed in the especial deliverances of his chosen people. near the altar are: right, the deliverance of the israelites by the brazen serpent. left, the execution of haman. near the entrance are: right, judith and holofernes. left, david and goliath.[ ] michael angelo was thirty-nine years of age when he painted the ceiling of the sistine. when he began to paint the 'day of judgment' he was above sixty years of age, and his great rival, raphael, had already been dead thirteen years. the picture of the 'day of judgment,' with much that renders it marvellous and awful, has a certain coarseness of conception and execution. the moment chosen is that in which the lord says, 'depart from me, ye cursed,' and the idea and even attributes of the principal figure are taken from orcagna's old painting in the campo santo. but with all michael angelo's advantages, he has by no means improved on the original idea. he has robbed the figure of the lord of its transcendant majesty; he has not been able to impart to the ranks of the blessed the look of blessedness which 'il beato' himself might have conveyed. the chief excellence of the picture is in the ranks of the condemned, who writhe and rebel against their agonies. no wonder that the picture is sombre and dreadful. of the allegorical figures of 'night' and 'morning' in the chapel of san lorenzo, there are casts at the crystal palace. a comparison and a contrast have been instituted between michael angelo and milton, and raphael and shakespeare. there may be something in them, but, as in the case of broken metaphors, they will not bear being pushed to a logical conclusion or picked to pieces. the very transparent comparison which matches michael angelo with his own countryman, dante, is after all more felicitous and truer. michael angelo with lionardo are the great chiefs of the florentine school. raphael sanzio, or santi of urbino, the head of the roman school, was one of those very exceptional men who seem born to happiness, to inspire love and only love, to pass through the world making friends and disarming enemies, who are fully armed to confer pleasure while almost incapable of either inflicting or receiving pain. to this day his exceptional fortune stands raphael's memory in good stead, since for one man or woman who yearns after the austere righteousness and priceless tenderness of michael angelo, there are ten who yield with all their hearts to the gay, sweet gentleness and generosity of raphael. no doubt it was also in his favour as a painter, that though a man of highly cultivated tastes, 'in close intimacy and correspondence with most of the celebrated men of his time, and interested in all that was going forward,' he did not, especially in his youth, spend his strength on a variety of studies, but devoted himself to painting. while he thus vindicated his share of the breadth of genius of his country and time, by giving to the world the loveliest madonnas and child-christs, the most dramatic of battle-pieces, the finest of portraits, his noble and graceful fertility of invention and matchless skill of execution were confined to and concentrated on painting. he did not diverge long or far into the sister arts of architecture and sculpture, though his classic researches in the excavations of rome were keen and zealous; a heap of ruins having given to the world in the group of the that a writer of his day could record that 'raphael had sought and found in rome another rome.' raphael was born in the town of urbino, and was the son of a painter of the umbrian school, who very early destined the boy to his future career, and promoted his destination by all the efforts in giovanni santi's power, including the intention of sending away and apprenticing the little lad to the best master of his time, perugino, so called from the town where he resided, perugia. raphael's mother died when he was only eight years of age, and his father died when he was no more than eleven years, before the plans for his education were put into action. but no stroke of outward calamity, or loss--however severe, could annul raphael's birthright of universal favour. his step-mother, the uncles who were his guardians, his clever, perverse, unscrupulous master, all joined in a common love of raphael and determination to promote his interests. raphael at the age of twelve years went to perugia to work under perugino, and remained with his master till he was nearly twenty years of age. in that interval he painted industriously, making constant progress, always in the somewhat hard, but finished, style of perugino, while already showing a predilection for what was to prove raphael's favourite subject, the madonna and child. at this period he painted his famous _lo sposalizio_ or the 'espousals,' the marriage of the virgin mary with joseph, now at milan. in he visited florence, remaining only for a short time, but making the acquaintance of fra bartolommeo and ghirlandajo, seeing the cartoons of lionardo and michael angelo, and from that time displaying a marked improvement in drawing. indeed nothing is more conspicuous in raphael's genius in contra-distinction to michael angelo's, than the receptive character of raphael's mind, his power of catching up an impression from without, and the candour and humility with which he availed himself unhesitatingly of the assistance lent him by others. returning soon to florence, raphael remained there till , when he was twenty-five years, drawing closer the valuable friendships he had already formed, and advancing with rapid strides in his art, until his renown was spread all over italy, and with reason, since already, while still young, he had painted his 'madonna of the goldfinch,' in the florentine gallery, and his 'la belle jardinière,' or madonna in a garden among flowers, now in the louvre. in his twenty-fifth year raphael was summoned to rome to paint for pope julius ii. my readers will remember that michael angelo in the abrupt severity of his prime of manhood, was soon to paint the ceiling of the sistine chapel for the same despotic and art-loving pope, who had brought raphael hardly more than a stripling to paint the '_camere_' or '_stanze_' chambers of the vatican. the first of the halls which raphael painted (though not the first in order) is called the camera della segnatura (in english, signature), and represents theology, poetry, philosophy, with the sciences, arts, and jurisprudence. the second is the 'stanza d'eliodoro,' or the room of heliodorus, and contains the grandest painting of all, in the expulsion of heliodorus from the temple of jerusalem (taken from maccabees), the miracle of bolsena, attila, king of the huns, terrified by the apparition of st peter and st paul, and st peter delivered from prison. the third stanza painted by raphael is the 'stanza dell' incendio' (the conflagration), so called from the extinguishing of the fire in the borgo by a supposed miracle, being the most conspicuous scene in representations of events taken from the lives of popes leo iii, and iv.; and the fourth chamber, which was left unfinished by raphael, and completed by his scholars, is the 'sala di constantino,' and contains incidents from the life of the emperor constantine, including the splendid battle-piece between constantine and maxentius. at these chambers, or at the designs for them, during the popedoms of julius ii., who died in the course of the painting of the camere, and leo x., for a period of twelve years, till raphael's death in , after which the 'sala di constantino' was completed by his scholars. raphael has also left in the vatican a series of small pictures from the old testament, known as raphael's bible. this series decorates the thirteen cupolas of the 'loggie,' or open galleries, running round three sides of an open court. another work undertaken by raphael should have still more interest for us. leo x., resolving to substitute woven for painted tapestry round the lower walls of the interior of the sistine chapel, commanded raphael to furnish drawings to the flemish weavers, and thence arose eleven cartoons, seven of which have been preserved, have become the property of england, and are the glory of the kensington museum. the subjects of the cartoons in the seven which have been saved, are 'the death of ananias,' 'elymas the sorcerer struck with blindness,' 'the healing of the lame man at the beautiful gate of the temple,' 'the miraculous draught of fishes,' 'paul and barnabas at lystra,' 'st paul preaching at athens,' and 'the charge to st peter.' the four cartoons which are lost, were 'the stoning of st stephen,' 'the conversion of st paul,' 'paul in prison,' and 'the coronation of the virgin.' in those cartoons figures above life-size were drawn with chalk upon strong paper, and coloured in distemper, and raphael received for his work four hundred and thirty gold ducats (about _£ _), while the flemish weavers received for their work in wools, silk, and gold, fifty thousand gold ducats. the designs were cut up in strips for the weavers' use, and while some strips were destroyed, the rest lay in a warehouse at arras, till rubens became aware of their existence, and advised charles i, to buy the set, to be employed in the tapestry manufactory established by james i. at mortlake. brought to this country in the slips which the weavers had copied, the fate of the cartoons was still precarious. cromwell bought them in charles i.'s art collection, and louis xiv, sought, but failed, to re-buy them. they fell into farther neglect, and were well-nigh forgotten, when sir godfrey kneller recalled them to notice, and induced william iii, to have the slips pasted together, and stretched upon linen, and put in a room set apart for them at hampton court, whence they were transferred, within the last ten years, for the greater advantage of artists and the public, to kensington museum. the woven tapestries for which the cartoons were designed had quite as chequered a career. in the two sacks of rome by french soldiers, the tapestries were seized, carried off, and two of them burnt for the bullion in the thread. at last they were restored to the vatican, where they hang in their faded magnificence, a monument of leo x, and of raphael. an additional set of ten tapestry cartoons were supplied to the vatican by raphael's scholars. raphael painted for the chigi family in their palace, which is now the villa farnesina, scenes from the history of cupid and psyche, and the triumph of galatea, subjects which show how the passion for classical mythology that distinguishes the next generation, was beginning to work. to these last years belong his 'madonna di san sisto,' so named from its having been painted for the convent of st sixtus at piacenza, and his last picture, the 'transfiguration,' with which he was still engaged when death met him unexpectedly. raphael, as the italians say, lived more like a '_principe_' (prince) than a '_pittore_' (painter). he had a house in rome, and a villa in the neighbourhood, and on his death left a considerable fortune to his heirs. there has not been wanting a rumour that his life of a principe was a dissipated and prodigal life; but this ugly rumour, even if it had more evidence to support it, is abundantly disproven by the nature of raphael's work, and by the enormous amount of that work, granting him the utmost assistance from his crowd of scholars. he had innumerable commissions, and retained an immense school from all parts of italy, the members of which adored their master. raphael had the additional advantage of having many of his pictures well engraved by a contemporary engraver named raimondi. like giotto, raphael was the friend of the most distinguished italians of his day, including count castiglione, and the poet ariosto. he was notably the warm friend of his fellow-painters both at home and abroad, with the exception of michael angelo. a drawing of his own, which raphael sent, in his kindly interchange of such sketches, to albert dürer, is, i think, preserved at nüremberg. the sovereign princes of italy, above all leo x., were not contented with being munificent patrons to raphael, they treated him with the most marked consideration. the cardinal bibbiena proposed the painter's marriage with his niece, ensuring her a dowry of three thousand gold crowns, but maria di bibbiena died young, ere the marriage could be accomplished; and raphael, who was said to be little disposed to the match, did not long survive her. he caught cold, as some report, from his engrossing personal superintendence of the roman excavations; and, as others declare, from his courtly assiduity in keeping an appointment with the pope, was attacked by fever, and died on his birth-day, april th, , having completed his thirty-seventh year. all rome and italy mourned for him. when his body lay in state, to be looked at and wept over by multitudes, his great unfinished picture of the 'transfiguration' was hung above the bed. he was buried in a spot chosen by himself in his lifetime, and, as it happened, not far from the resting-place of his promised bride. doubts having been raised as to raphael's grave, search was made, and his body was exhumed in , and re-buried with great pomp. raphael's life and that of rubens form the ideal painter's life--bountiful, splendid, unclouded, and terminating ere it sees eclipse or decay--to all in whom the artistic temperament is united to a genial, sensuous, pleasure-loving nature. raphael was not above the middle height, and slightly made. he was sallow in colour, with brown eyes, and a full yet delicate mouth; but his beautiful face, like that of our english shakespeare, is familiar to most of us. with regard to raphael's face, the amount of womanliness in it is a striking characteristic. one hears sometimes that no man's character is complete without its share of womanliness: surely raphael had a double share, for womanliness is the most distinctive quality in his face, along with that vague shade of pensiveness which we find not infrequently, but strangely enough, in those faces which have been associated with the happiest spirits and the brightest fortunes. raphael and his scholars painted and drew about nine hundred pictures and sketches, including a hundred and twenty madonnas, eight of which are in private collections in england. of raphael's greatness, kugler writes that 'it is not so much in kind as in degree. no master left behind _so many_ really excellent works as he, whose days were so early numbered; in none has there been observed so little that is unpleasant.' all authorities agree in ascribing much of raphael's power to his purely unselfish nature and aim. his excellence seems to lie in the nearly perfect expression of material beauty and harmony, together with grandeur of design and noble working out of thought. we shall see that this devotion to material beauty has been made something of a reproach to raphael, as it certainly degenerated into a snare in the hands of his followers, while unquestionably the universal appreciation of raphael's work, distinguished from the partial appreciation bestowed on the great works of others, proceeds from this evident material beauty which is open to all. then, again, raphael, far more than andrea del sarto, deserved to be called 'faultless;' and this general absence of defects and equality of excellence is a great element of raphael's wide popularity; for, as one can observe for one's self, in regarding a work of art, there is always a large proportion of the spectators who will seize on an error, dwell on it, and be incapable of shaking off its influence, and rising into the higher rank of critics, who discover and ponder over beauties. i would have it considered also, that this equality of excellence does not necessarily proceed always from a higher aim, but may arise rather from an unconsciously lower aim. the single reproach brought against raphael as a painter is that--according to some witnesses only, for most deny the implication--raphael so delighted in material beauty that he became enslaved by it, till it diminished his spiritual insight. it is an incontestable truth that in raphael, as in all the great italian painters of his century, there was a falling away from the simple earnestness, the exceeding reverence, the endless patience, the self-abstraction, and self-devotion of the earliest italian and flemish painters. therefore there has been within the last fifty or sixty years that movement in modern art, which is called pre-raphaelitism, and which is, in fact, a revolt against subjection to raphael, and his supposed undue exaltation of material beauty, and subjection of truth to beauty--so called. but we must not fall into the grave mistake of imagining that there was any want of vigour and variety in raphael's grace and tenderness, or that he could not in his greatest works rise into a grandeur in keeping with his subject. tire as we may of hearing raphael called the king of painters, as the greeks tired of hearing aristides called 'the just,' this fact remains: no painter has left behind him such a mass of surpassingly good work; in no other work is there the same charm of greatest beauty and harmony. it is hard for me to give you an idea in so short a space of raphael's work. i must content myself with quoting descriptions of two of his stanze, those of the heliodorus and the segnatura. 'heliodorus driven out of the temple ( maccabees iii.). in the background onias the priest is represented praying for divine interposition;--in the foreground heliodorus, pursued by two avenging angels, is endeavouring to bear away the treasures of the temple. amid the group on the left is seen julius ii., in his chair of state, attended by his secretaries. one of the bearers in front is marc-antonio raimondi, the engraver of raphael's designs. the man with the inscription, "jo petro de folicariis cremonen," was secretary of briefs to pope julius. here you may fancy you hear the thundering approach of the heavenly warrior, and the neighing of his steed; while in the different groups who are plundering the treasures of the temple, and in those who gaze intently on the sudden consternation of heliodorus, without being able to divine its cause, we see the expression of terror, amazement, joy, humility, and every passion to which human nature is exposed.'[ ] 'the stanza della segnatura is so called from a judicial assembly once held here. the frescoes in this chamber are illustrative of the virtues of theology, philosophy, poetry, and jurisprudence, who are represented on the ceiling by raphael, in the midst of arabesques by _sodoma_. the square pictures by raphael refer:--the fall of man to theology; the study of the globe to philosophy; the flaying of marsyas to poetry; and the judgment of solomon to jurisprudence. '_entrance wall_.--"the school of athens." raphael consulted ariosto as to the arrangement of its figures. in the centre, on the steps of a portico, are seen plato and aristotle, plato pointing to heaven and aristotle to earth. on the left is socrates conversing with his pupils, amongst whom is a young warrior, probably alcibiades. lying upon the steps in front is diogenes. to his left, pythagoras is writing on his knee, and near him, with ink and pen, is empedocles. the white mantle is francesco maria della rovere, nephew of julius ii. on the right is archimedes drawing a geometrical problem upon the floor. the young man near him with uplifted hands is federigo ii., duke of mantua. behind these are zoroaster, ptolemy, one with a terrestrial, the other with a celestial globe, addressing two figures, which represent raphael and his master perugino. the drawing in brown upon the socle beneath this fresco, is by _pierino del vaga_, and represents the death of archimedes. '_right wall_.--"parnassus." apollo surrounded by the muses; on his right, homer, virgil, and dante. below on the right, sappho, supposed to be addressing corinna, petrarch, propertius, and anacreon; on the left pindar and horace, sannazzaro, boccaccio, and others. beneath this, in grisaille, are,--alexander placing the poems of homer in the tomb of achilles, and augustus preventing the burning of virgil's Æneid. '_left wall_.--above the window are prudence, fortitude, and temperance. on the left, justinian delivers the pandects to tribonian. on the right, gregory ix. (with the features of julius ii.) delivers the decretals to a jurist;--cardinal de' medici, afterwards leo x., cardinal farnese, afterwards paul iii., and cardinal del monte, are represented near the pope. in the socle beneath is solon addressing the people of athens. '_wall of egress_.--"the disputa." so called from an impression that it represents a dispute upon the sacrament. in the upper part of the composition the heavenly host are present; christ between the virgin and st john the baptist; on the left, st peter, adam, st john, david, st stephen, and another; and on the right, st paul, abraham, st james, moses, st lawrence, and st george. below is an altar surrounded by the latin fathers, gregory, jerome, ambrose, and augustine. near st augustine stand st thomas aquinas, st anacletus, with the palm of a martyr, and cardinal buenaventura reading. those in front are innocent iii., and in the background, dante, near whom a monk in a black hood is pointed out as savonarola. the dominican on the extreme left is supposed to be fra angelico. the other figures are uncertain.' ... 'raphael commenced his work in the vatican by painting the ceiling and the four walls in the room called _della segnatura_, on the surface of which he had to represent four great compositions, which embraced the principal divisions of the encyclopedia of that period; namely, theology, philosophy, poetry, and jurisprudence. 'it will be conceived, that to an artist imbued with the traditions of the umbrian school, the first of these subjects was an unparalleled piece of good fortune: and raphael, long familiar with the allegorical treatment of religious compositions, turned it here to the most admirable account; and, not content with the suggestions of his own genius, he availed himself of all the instruction he could derive from the intelligence of others. from these combined inspirations resulted, to the eternal glory of the catholic faith and of christian art, a composition without a rival in the history of painting, and, we may also add, without a name; for to call it lyric or epic is not enough, unless, indeed, we mean, by using these expressions, to compare it with the allegorical epic of dante, alone worthy to be ranked with this marvellous production of the pencil of raphael. 'let no one consider this praise as idle and groundless, for it is raphael himself who forces the comparison upon us, by placing the figure of dante among the favourite sons of the muses; and, what is still more striking, by draping the allegorical figure of theology in the very colours in which dante has represented beatrice; namely, the white veil, the red tunic, and the green mantle, while on her head he has placed the olive crown. 'of the four allegorical figures which occupy the compartments of the ceiling, and which were all painted immediately after raphael's arrival in rome, theology and poetry are incontestably the most remarkable. the latter would be easily distinguished by the calm inspiration of her glance, even were she without her wings, her starry crown, and her azure robe, all having allusion to the elevated region towards which it is her privilege to soar. the figure of theology is quite as admirably suited to the subject she personifies; she points to the upper part of the grand composition, which takes its name from her, and in which the artist has provided inexhaustible food for the sagacity and enthusiasm of the spectator. 'this work consists of two grand divisions,--heaven and earth--which are united to one another by that mystical bond, the sacrament of the eucharist. the personages whom the church has most honoured for learning and holiness, are ranged in picturesque and animated groups on either side of the altar, on which the consecrated wafer is exposed. st augustine dictates his thoughts to one of his disciples; st gregory, in his pontifical robes, seems absorbed in contemplation of celestial glory; st ambrose, in a slightly different attitude, appears to be chanting the te deum; while st jerome, seated, rests his hands on a large book, which he holds on his knees. pietro lombardo, duns scotus, st thomas aquinas, pope anacletus, st buenaventura, and innocent iii., are no less happily characterized; while, behind all these illustrious men, whom the church and succeeding generations have agreed to honour, raphael has ventured to introduce dante with his laurel crown, and, with still greater boldness, the monk savonarola, publicly burnt ten years before as a heretic. 'in the glory, which forms the upper part of the picture, the three persons of the trinity are represented, surrounded by patriarchs, apostles, and saints: it may, in fact, be considered in some sort as a _resumé_ of all the favourite compositions produced during the last hundred years by the umbrian school. a great number of the types, and particularly those of christ and the virgin, are to be found in the earlier works of raphael himself. the umbrian artists, from having so long exclusively employed themselves on mystical subjects, had certainly attained to a marvellous perfection in the representation of celestial beatitude, and of those ineffable things of which it has been said that the heart of man cannot conceive them, far less, therefore, the pencil of man portray; and raphael, surpassing them in all, and even in this instance, while surpassing himself, appears to have fixed the limits, beyond which christian art, properly so called, has never since been able to advance.'[ ] of raphael's madonnas, i should like to speak of three. the madonna di san sisto: 'it represents the virgin standing in a majestic attitude; the infant saviour _enthroned_ in her arms; and around her head a glory of innumerable cherubs melting into light. kneeling before her we see on one side st sixtus, on the other st barbara, and beneath her feet two heavenly cherubs gaze up in adoration. in execution, as in design, this is probably the most perfect picture in the world. it is painted throughout by raphael's own hand; and as no sketch or study of any part of it was ever known to exist, and as the execution must have been, from the thinness and delicacy of the colours, wonderfully rapid, it is supposed that he painted it at once on the canvas--a _creation_ rather than a picture. in the beginning of the last century the elector of saxony, augustus iii., purchased this picture from the monks of the convent for the sum of sixty thousand florins (about £ ), and it now forms the chief boast and ornament of the dresden gallery'[ ] the madonna del cardellino (our lady of the goldfinch): 'the virgin is sitting on a rock, in a flowery meadow. behind are the usual light and feathery trees, growing on the bank of a stream, which passes off to the left in a rocky bend, and is crossed by a bridge of a single arch. to the right, the opposite bank slopes upward in a gentle glade, across which is a village, backed by two distant mountain-peaks. 'in front of the sitting matronly figure of the virgin are the holy children, our lord and the baptist, one on either side of her right knee. she has been reading, and the approach of st john has caused her to look off her book (which is open in her left hand) at the new comer, which she does with a look of holy love and gentleness, at the same time caressingly drawing him to her with her right hand, which touches his little body under the right arm. in both hands, which rest across the virgin's knee, he holds a captive goldfinch, which he has brought, with childish glee, as an offering to the holy child. the infant jesus, standing between his mother's knees, with one foot placed on her foot, and her hand, with the open book, close above his shoulder, regards the baptist with an upward look of gentle solemnity, at the same time that he holds his bent hand over the head of the bird. 'so much for mere description. the inner feeling of the picture, the motive which has prompted it, has surely hardly ever been surpassed. the blessed virgin, in casting her arm round the infant st john, looks down on him with a holy complacency for the testimony which he is to bear to her son. notice the human boyish glee with which the baptist presents the captured goldfinch, and, on the other hand, the divine look, even of majesty and creative love, with which the infant jesus, laying his hand on the head of the bird, half reproves st john, as it were saying, "love them and hurt them not." notice, too, the unfrightened calm of the bird itself, passive under the hand of its loving creator. all these are features of the very highest power of human art. 'again, in accompaniments, all is as it should be. the virgin, modestly and beautifully draped; st john, girt about the loins, not only in accord with his well-known prophetic costume, but also as partaking of sinful humanity, and therefore needing such cincture: the child redeemer, with a slight cincture, just to suggest motherly care, but not over the part usually concealed, as indeed it never ought to be, seeing that in him was no sin, and that it is this spotless purity which is ever the leading idea in representations of him as an infant. notice, too, his foot, beautifully resting on that of his mother; the unity between them being thus wonderfully though slightly kept up. her eye has just been dwelling on the book of the prophecies open in her hand; and thus the spectator's thought is ruled in accordance with the high mission of the holy one of god, and thrown forward into the grand and blessed future. it is a holy and wonderful picture; i had not seen any in italy which had struck or refreshed me more.'[ ] and allow me to write two or three words with regard to the 'madonna della sedia,' or our lady of the chair, an engraving of which used to charm me when a child. the virgin, very young and simple-looking in her loveliness, is seated on a low chair, clasping the divine child, who is leaning in weariness on her breast. in the original picture, st john with his cross is standing--a boy at the virgin's knee, but he is absent from the old engraving. the meek adoring tenderness in the face of the mother, the holy ingenuousness in that of the child, are expressions to be long studied. of raphael's cartoons, which, so many of us can see for ourselves, i cannot trust myself to do more than to repeat what strikes me as a singularly apt phrase of hazlitt's, given by mrs jameson, that the cartoons are instances in which 'the corruptible has put on incorruption.' that from the very slightness of the materials employed, and the very injuries which the cartoons have sustained, we have the greatest triumph of art, where 'the sense of power supersedes the appearance of effort,' and where the result is the more majestic for being in ruins. 'all other pictures look like oil and varnish, we are stopped and attracted by the colouring, the penciling, the finishing, the instrumentality of art; but the on the canvas.... there is nothing between us and the subject; we look through a frame and see scripture histories, and amidst the wreck of colour and the mouldering of material beauty, nothing is left but a universe of thought, or the broad imminent shadows of calm contemplation and majestic pains.' and that raphael did not neglect the minutest details in these sketches, will be seen by the accompanying note: 'the foreground of raphael's two cartoons, "the miraculous draught of fishes," and "the charge to peter," are covered with plants of the common sea cole-wort, of which the sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have exhausted the patience of any other artist; but have appeared worthy of prolonged and thoughtful labour to the great mind of raphael.'--_ruskin_. whole clusters of anecdotes gather round the cartoons, which, as they have to do with the work and not the worker, i leave untouched, with regret. but i must forewarn my readers by mentioning some of the refuted criticisms which have been applied to the cartoons. reading the criticisms and their answers ought to render us modest and wary in 'picking holes' in great pictures, as forward and flippant critics, old and young, are tempted to pick them. with regard to the 'miraculous draught of fishes,' a great outcry was once set up that raphael had made the boat too little to hold the figures he has placed in it. but raphael made the boat little advisedly; if he had not done so, the picture would have been 'all boat,' a contingency scarcely to be desired; on the other hand, if raphael had diminished the figures to suit the size of the boat, these figures would not have suited those of the other cartoons, and the cartoon would have lost greatly in dignity and effect. in the cartoon of the 'death of ananias,' carping objectors were ready to suggest that raphael had committed an error in time by introducing sapphira in the background counting her ill-gotten gains, at the moment when her no less guilty husband has fallen down in the agonies of death. it was hours afterwards that sapphira entered into the presence of the apostles. but we must know that time and space do not exist for painters, who have to tell their story at one stroke, as it were. in the treating of the 'lame man at the beautiful gate of the temple,' some authorities have found fault with raphael for breaking the composition into parts by the introduction of pillars, and, farther, that the shafts are not straight. yet by this treatment raphael has concentrated the principal action in a sort of frame, and thus has been enabled to give more freedom of action to the remaining figures in the other divisions of the picture. 'it is evident, moreover, that had the shafts been perfectly straight, according to the severest law of good taste in architecture, the effect would have been extremely disagreeable to the eye; by their winding form they harmonize with the manifold forms of the moving figures around, and they illustrate, by their elaborate elegance, the scripture phrase, "the gate which is called beautiful."'--_mrs jameson_. of raphael's portraits i must mention that wonderful portrait of leo x., often reckoned the best portrait in the world for truth of likeness and excellence of painting, and those of the so-called 'fornarina,' or 'baker'. two fornarinas are at rome and one at florence. there is a story that the original of the first two pictures was a girl of the people to whom raphael was attached; and there is this to be said for the tradition, that there is an acknowledged coarseness in the very beauty of the half-draped fornarina of the barberini palace. the 'fornarina' of florence is the portrait of a noble woman, holding the fur-trimming of her mantle with her right hand, and it is said that the picture can hardly represent the same individual as that twice represented in rome. according to one guess the last 'fornarina' is vittoria colonna, the marchesa de pescara, painted by seba piombo, instead of by raphael; and according to another, the roman 'fornarina' is no fornarina beloved by raphael, but beatrice pio, a celebrated improvisatrice of the time. an 'innovation of modern times is to spell raphael's name in england as the modern italians spelt it, _raffaelle_, a word of four syllables, and yet to pronounce this italian word as if it were english, as _raphael_. vasari wrote raffaello; he himself wrote raphael on his pictures, and has signed the only autograph letter we have of his, raphaello.'[ ] titian, or tiziano vecelli, the greatest painter of the venetian school, reckoned worthy to be named with lionardo, michael angelo and raphael, was born of good family at capo del cadore in the venetian state, in . there is a tradition that while other painters made their first essays in art with chalk or charcoal, the boy titian, who lived to be a glorious colourist, made his earliest trials in painting with the juice of flowers. titian studied in venice under the bellini, and had giorgione, who was born in the same year, for his fellow-scholar, at first his friend, later his rival. when a young man titian spent some time in ferrara; there he painted his 'bacchus and ariadne,' and a portrait of lucrezia borgia. in , when titian was thirty-five years of age, he was commissioned by the venetians to continue the works in the great council-hall, which the advanced age of gian bellini kept him from finishing. along with this commission titian was appointed in to the office of la sanseria, which gave him the duty and privilege of painting the portraits of the doges as long as he held the office; coupled with the office was a salary of one hundred and twenty crowns a year. titian lived to paint five doges; two others, his age, equal to that of gian bellini, prevented him from painting. in , titian painted his greatest sacred picture, the 'assumption of the virgin.' in the same year he painted the poet ariosto, who mentions the painter with high honour in his verse. in , titian, a man of fifty-three years, was at bologna, where there was a meeting between charles v, and pope clement vii., when he was presented to both princes. charles v, and philip ii, became afterwards great patrons and admirers of titian, and it is of charles v. and titian that a legend, to which i have already referred, is told. the emperor, visiting the painter while he was at work, stooped down and picked up a pencil, which titian had let fall, to the confusion and distress of the painter, when charles paid the princely compliment, 'titian is worthy of being served by cæsar.' titian painted many portraits of charles v., and of the members of his house. as maximilian had created albrecht dürer a noble of the empire, charles v, created titian a count palatine, and a knight of the order of st iago, with a pension, which was continued by philip ii., of four hundred crowns a year. it is doubtful whether titian ever visited the spain of his patrons, but madrid possesses forty-three of his pictures, among them some of his finest works. titian went to rome in his later years, but declined to abandon for rome the painter's native venice, which had lavished her favours on her son. he lived in great splendour, paying annual summer visits to his birth-place of cadore, and occasionally dwelling again for a time at ferrara, urbino, bologna. in two instances he joined the emperor at augsburgh. when henry iii, of france landed at venice, he was entertained _en grand seigneur_ by titian, then a very old man; and when the king asked the price of some pictures which pleased him, titian at once presented them as a gift to his royal guest. titian married, as has been recently ascertained, and had three children,--two sons, the elder a worthless and scandalous priest; the second a good son and accomplished painter; and a daughter, the beautiful lavinia, so often painted by her father, and whose name will live with his. titian survived his wife thirty-six years; and his daughter, who had married, and was the mother of several children, six years. his second son and fellow-painter died of the same plague which struck down titian, in , at the ripe age of eighty-nine years. titian is said to have been a man of irritable and passionate temper. the hatred between him and the painter, pordenone, was so bitter, that the latter thought his life in danger, and painted with his shield and poniard lying ready to his hand. titian grasped with imperious tenacity his supremacy as a painter, sedulously kept the secrets of his skill, and was most unmagnanimously jealous of the attainments of his scholars. no defect of temper, however, kept titian from having two inseparable convivial companions--one of them the architect, sansovino, and the other the profligate wit, aretino, who was pleased to style himself the 'friend of titian and the scourge of princes.' though titian is said, in the panic of the great plague, to have died not only neglected, but plundered before his eyes, still venice prized him so highly, that she made in his favour the single exception of a public funeral, during the appalling devastation wrought by the pestilence. from an engraving of a portrait of titian by himself, which is before me, i can give the best idea of his person. he looks like one of the merchant princes, whom he painted so often and so well, in richly furred gown, massive chain, and small cap, far off his broad forehead: a stately figure, with a face--in its aquiline nose and keen eyes, full of sagacity and fire, which no years could tame. towards the close of titian's life, there was none who even approached the old venetian painter in the art which he practised freely to the last. painting in italy was everywhere losing its pre-eminence. it had become, even when it was not so nominally, thoroughly secularized;--and with reason, for the painters by their art-creed and by their lives were fitter to represent gods and goddesses, in whom no man believed, than to give earnest expression to a living faith. even titian, great as he was, proved a better painter of heathen mythology than of sacred subjects. but within certain limits and in certain directions, titian stands unequalled. he has a high place for composition and for drawing, and his colouring was, beyond comparison, grand and true. he was great as a landscape painter, and he was the best portrait painter whom the world ever saw. in his painting is seen, not, indeed, the life of the spirit, but the life of the senses 'in its fullest power,' and in titian there was such large mastery of this life, that in his freedom there was no violence, but the calmness of supreme strength, the serenity of perfect satisfaction. his painting was a reflection of the old greek idea of the life of humanity as a joyous existence, so long as the sun of youth, maturity, health, and good fortune shone, without even that strain of foreboding pain, and desperate closing with fate, which troubled the bliss of ancient poet or sculptor. a large proportion of titian's principal pictures are at venice and madrid. among titian's finest sacred pictures, are his 'assumption of the virgin,' now in the academy, venice, where 'the madonna, a powerful figure, is borne rapidly upwards, as if divinely impelled; .., fascinating groups of infant angels surround her, beneath stand the apostles, looking up with solemn gestures;' and his 'entombment of christ,' a picture which is also in venice. titian's madonnas were not so numerous as his venuses, many of which are judged excellent examples of the master. his 'bacchus and ariadne,' in the national gallery, is described by mrs jameson, 'as presenting, on a small scale, an epitome of all the beauties which characterize titian, in the rich, picturesque, animated composition, in the ardour of bacchus, who flings himself from his car to pursue ariadne; the dancing bacchanals, the frantic grace of the bacchante, and the little joyous satyr in front, trailing the head of the sacrifice.' titian's landscapes are the noble backgrounds to many of his pictures. these landscapes were not only free, but full. 'the great masters of italy, almost without exception, and titian, perhaps, more than any other (for he had the highest knowledge of landscape), are in the constant habit of rendering every detail of their foregrounds with the most laborious botanical fidelity; witness the bacchus and ariadne, in which the foreground is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquilegia, and the wild rose; _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the most exquisite accuracy.'--_ruskin_. in portraits, titian conveyed to the sitters and transferred to his canvas, not only a life-likeness, but a positively noble dignity in that likeness. what in van dyck and sir joshua reynolds was the bestowing of high breeding and dainty refinement, became under titian's brush dignity, pure and simple, very quiet, and wonderfully real. there is this peculiarity in connection with the number of portraits which titian executed, that many of them have descended to us without further titles than those of 'a venetian senator,' 'a lady,' etc., etc., yet of the individual life of the originals no one can doubt. with regard to titian's portraits of women, i have already referred to those of his beautiful daughter, lavinia. in one portrait, in the berlin museum, she is holding a plate of fruit; in another, in england, the plate of fruit is changed into a casket of jewels; in a third, at madrid, lavinia is herodias, and bears a charger with the head of john the baptist. a 'violante'--as some say, the daughter of titian's scholar, palma, though dates disprove this--sat frequently to titian, and is said to have been loved by him. i have written, in connection with lionardo's 'jaconde' and raphael's 'fornarina,' of titian's 'bella donna.' he has various 'bellas,' but, as far as i know, this is _the_ 'bella donna,'--'a splendid, serious beauty, in a red and blue silk dress,' in the sciarra gallery, rome. i have read that critics were at one time puzzled by the singular yellow, almost straw colour, appearing profusely in the hair of the women of the venetian painters of this time, and that it was only by consulting contemporary records that it was learnt that the venetian women indulged in the weak and false vanity of dyeing their black hair a pale yellow--a process, in the course of which the women drew the hair through the crown of a broad-brimmed hat, and spreading it over the brim, submitted patiently to bleaching the hair in a southern sun. among titian's portraits of men, those of the 'emperor charles v.' and the 'duke of alva' are among the most famous. titian painted, and painted wonderfully, to the very last. he was eighty-one when he painted the 'martyrdom of st lawrence,' one of his largest and grandest compositions, and in the last year of his life he painted--leaving it not quite completed,--a 'pietà;' showing that his hand owned the weight of years,[ ] but the conception of the subject is still animated and striking, the colours still glowing; while, titian-like, the light still flows around the mighty group in every gradation of tone. chapter v. german art--albrecht dÜrer, - . albrecht dürer carries us to a different country and a different race. and he who has been called the father of german painting is thoroughly german, not only in his saxon honesty, sedateness, and strength, but in the curious mixture of simplicity, subtlety, homeliness, and fantasticalness, which are still found side by side in german genius. albrecht dürer was born at that fittest birth-place for the great german painter, quaint old nuremberg, in . he was the son of a goldsmith, and one of a family of eighteen children; a home school in which he may have learnt early the noble, manly lessons of self-denial and endurance, which he practised long and well. he was trained to his father's trade until the lad's bent became so unmistakable that he was wisely transferred to the studio of a painter to serve his apprenticeship to art. when the nuremberg apprenticeship was completed, albrecht followed the german custom, very valuable to him, of serving another and a 'wandering apprenticeship,' which carried him betimes through germany, the netherlands, and italy, painting and studying as he went. he painted his own portrait about this time, showing himself a comely, pleasant, and pleased young fellow, in a curious holiday suit of plaited low-bodied shirt, jerkin, and mantle across the shoulder, with a profusion of long fair curls, of which he was said to have been vain, arranged elaborately on each side, the blue eyes looking with frank confidence out of the blonde face. he painted himself a little later with the brave kindly face grown mature, and the wisdom of the spirit shining in the eyes, and weighing on the brows. on his return from his travels, albrecht dürer's father arranged his son's marriage with the daughter of a musician in nuremberg. the inducement to the marriage seems to have been, on the father's part, the dowry, and on the son's the beauty of the bride. how unhappy the union proved, without any fault of albrecht's, has been the theme of so many stories, that i am half inclined to think that some of us must be more familiar with albrecht dürer's wedded life than with any other part of his history. it seems to me, that there is considerable exaggeration in these stories, for granted that agnes dürer was a shrew and a miser, was albrecht dürer the man to be entirely, or greatly, at such a woman's mercy? taking matters at their worst, dishonour and disgrace did not come near the great painter. he was esteemed, as he deserved to be; he had a true friend in his comrade pirkheimer; he had his art; he had the peace of a good conscience; he had the highest of all consolations in his faith in heaven. certainly it is not from albrecht himself that the tale of his domestic wretchedness has come. he was as manfully patient and silent as one might have expected in a man upright, firm, and self-reliant as he was tender. i do not think it is good for men, and especially for women, to indulge in egotistical sentimentality, and to believe that such a woman as agnes dürer could utterly thwart and wreck the life of a man like albrecht. it is not true to life, in the first place; and it is dishonouring to the man, in the second; for although, doubtless, there are men who are driven to destruction or heart-broken by even the follies of women, these men have not the stout hearts, the loyal spirits, the manly mould of albrecht dürer. but making every allowance for the high colours with which a tale that has grown stale is apt to be daubed, i am forced to admit the inference that a mean, sordid, contentious woman probably did as much as was in her power to harass and fret one of the best men in germany, or in the world. luckily for himself, albrecht was a severe student, had much engrossing work which carried him abroad, and travelled once at least far away from the harassing and galling home discipline. for anything further, i believe that albrecht loved his greedy, scolding wife, whose fair face he painted frequently in his pictures, and whom he left at last well and carefully provided for, as he bore with her to the end. in albrecht dürer re-visited italy alone, making a stay of eight months in venice, where he formed his friendship with the old gian bellini, and where albrecht had the misfortune to show the proofs and plans of his engravings to the italian engraver, raimondi, who engraved raphael's paintings, and who proved himself base enough to steal and make use of albrecht dürer's designs to the german's serious loss and inconvenience. a little later albrecht dürer, accompanied by his wife, visited the netherlands. the emperor maximilian treated the painter with great favour, and a legend survives of their relations:--dürer was painting so large a subject that he required steps to reach it. the emperor, who was present, required a nobleman of his suite to steady the steps for the painter, an employment which the nobleman declined as unworthy of his rank, when the emperor himself stepped forward and supplied the necessary aid, remarking, 'sir, understand that i can make albrecht a noble like and above you' (maximilian had just raised albrecht dürer to the rank of noble of the empire), 'but neither i nor any one else can make an artist like him.' we may compare this story with a similar and later story of holbein and henry viii., and with another earlier story, having a slight variation, of titian and charles v. the universality of the story shakes one's belief in its individual application, but at least the legend, with different names, remains as an indication of popular homage to genius. while executing a large amount of work for the great towns and sovereign princes of germany, some of whom were said to consult the painter on their military operations, relying on his knowledge of mathematics, and his being able to apply it to military engineering and fortification, albrecht dürer was constantly improving and advancing in his art, laying down his prejudices, and acquiring fresh ideas, as well as fresh information, according to the slow but sure process of the true german mind, till his last work was incomparably his best. germany was then in the terrible throes of the reformation, and albrecht dürer, who has left us the portraits of several of the great reformers, is believed to have been no uninterested spectator of the struggle, and to have held, like his fellow-painter, lucas cranach--though in albrecht dürer's case the change was never openly professed--the doctrines of the reformation. there is a portrait of albrecht dürer, painted by himself, in his later years. (by the way, albrecht was not averse to painting his own portrait as well as that of his friend pirkheimer, and of making the fullest claim to his work by introducing into his religious and historical pictures his own figure holding a flag or tablet, inscribed with his name in the quiet self-assertion of a man who was neither ashamed of himself, nor of anything he did.) in that last portrait, albrecht is a thoughtful, care-worn man, with his fair locks shorn. some will attribute the change to agnes dürer, but i imagine it proceeds simply from the noble scars of work and time; and that when albrecht dürer died in his fifty-seventh year, if it were in sourness and bitterness of spirit, as some of his biographers have stated, that sourness and bitterness were quite as much owing to the grievous troubles of his time and country, which so large-minded a man was sure to lay to heart, as to any domestic trouble. albrecht dürer was greatly beloved by his own city of nuremberg, where his memory continues to be cherished. his quaint house still stands, and his tomb bears the motto 'emigravit,' 'for the great painter never dies.' albrecht dürer's name ranks with the names of the first painters of any time or country, though his work as a painter was, as in the case of william hogarth, subservient to his work as an engraver. with the knowledge of a later generation to that of the earliest italian and flemish painters, albrecht dürer had much of their singleness of purpose, assiduity of application, and profound feeling. he had to labour against a tendency to uncouthness in stiff lines and angular figures; to petty elaboration of details; and to that grotesqueness which, while it suited in some respects his allegorical engravings, marred his historical paintings, so that he was known to regret the wasted fantastic crowding and confusion of his earlier work. from the italians and flemings he learnt simplicity, and a more correct sense of material beauty. the purity, truth, and depth of the man's spirit, from which ideal beauty proceeds, no man could add to. among albrecht dürer's greatest paintings are his 'adoration of the trinity' at vienna, his 'adam and eve' at florence, and that last picture of 'the apostles,' presented by albrecht dürer to his native city, 'in remembrance of his career as an artist, and at the same time as conveying to his fellow-citizens an earnest and lasting exhortation suited to that stormy period.' the prominence given to the bible in the picture, points to it as the last appeal in the great spiritual struggle. with regard to this noble masterly picture, kugler has written, 'well might the artist now close his eyes. he had in this picture attained the summit of art; here he stands side by side with the greatest masters known in history.' but i prefer to say something of albrecht dürer's engravings, which are more characteristic of him and far more widely known than his paintings; and to speak first of those two wonderful and beautiful allegories, 'knight, death, and the devil,' and 'melancolia.' in the first, which is an embodiment of weird german romance as well as of high christian faith, the solitary knight, with his furrowed face and battered armour, rides steadfastly on through the dark glen, unmoved by his grisly companions, skeleton death on the lame horse, and the foul fiend in person. contrast this sketch and its thoughtful touching meaning with the hollow ghastliness of holbein's 'dance of death.' in 'melancolia' a grand winged woman sits absorbed in sorrowful thought, while surrounded by all the appliances of philosophy, science, art, mechanics, all the discoveries made before and in albrecht dürer's day, in the book, the chart, the lever, the crystal, the crucible, the plane, the hammer. the intention of this picture has been disputed, but the best explanation of it is that which regards the woman as pondering on the humanly unsolved and insoluble mystery of the sin and sorrow of life. in three large series of woodcuts, known as the greater and the lesser passion of the lord, and the life of the virgin, and taken partly from sacred history and partly from tradition, albrecht dürer exceeded himself in true beauty, simple majesty, and pathos. photographs have spread widely these fine woodcuts, and there is, at least, one which i think my readers may have seen, 'the bearing of the cross,' in which the blessed saviour sinks under his burden. in the series of the life of the virgin there is a 'repose in egypt,' which has a naïve homeliness in its grace and serenity. the woodcut represents a courtyard with a dwelling built in the ruins of an ancient palace. the virgin sits spinning with a distaff and spindle beside the holy child's cradle, by which beautiful angels worship. joseph is busy at his carpenter's work, and a number of little angels, in merry sport, assist him with his labours.[ ] i shall mention only one more work of albrecht dürer's, that which is known as the emperor maximilian's prayer book. this is pen-and-ink sketches for the borders of a book (as the old missals were illuminated), which are now preserved in the royal library, munich. in these little drawings the fancy of the great artist held high revel, by no means confining itself to serious subjects, such as apostles, monks, or even men in armour, but indulging in the most whimsical vagaries, with regard to little german old women, imps, piping squirrels, with cocks and hens hurrying to listen to the melody. chapter vi. later italian art--giorgione, - --correggio. about - --tintoretto, - --veronese, - . giorgio barbarelli, known as 'giorgione,--in italian, 'big,' or, as i have heard it better translated, 'strapping george'--was born at castelfranco, in treviso, about , the same year in which titian was born. nothing is known of his youth before he came to venice and studied in the school of gian bellini along with titian. the two men were friends in those days, but soon quarrelled, and giorgione's early death completed their separation. titian was impatient and arrogant; giorgione seems to have been one of those proud, shy, sensitive men--possibly morbidly sensitive, with whom it is always difficult to deal; but it is recorded of him, as it is not recorded of his great compeer, that giorgione was frank and friendly as an artist, however moody and fitful he might be as a man. giorgione soon became known. according to one account, he painted the façade of the house which he dwelt in, for an advertisement of his abilities as a painter, a device which was entirely successful in procuring him commissions; but unfortunately for posterity, these were frequently to paint other façades, sometimes in company with titian; grand work, which has inevitably perished, if not by fire, by time and by the sea-damp of venice, for to venice giorgione belonged, and there is no sign that he ever left it. he had no school, and his love of music and society--the last taste found not seldom, an apparent anomaly, in silent, brooding natures--might tend to withdraw him from his art. he has left a trace of his love for music in his pictures of 'concerts' and of 'pastorals,' in which musical performances are made prominent. in giorgione, with his romantic, idealizing temperament, genre[ ] pictures took this form, while he is known to have painted from ovid and from the italian tales of his time. he was employed frequently to paint scenes on panels, for the richly ornamented venetian furniture. giorgione was not without a bent to realism in his very idealism, and is said to have been the first italian painter who 'imitated the real texture of stuffs and painted draperies from the actual material.' giorgione died at the early age of thirty-three years, in . one account represents him as dying of the plague, others attribute his death to a sadder cause. he is said to have had a friend and fellow-painter who betrayed their friendship, and carried off the girl whom giorgione loved. stung to the quick by the double falsehood, the tradition goes on to state that giorgione fell into despair with life and all it held, and so died. a portrait of giorgione is in the munich gallery; it is that of a very handsome beardless lad, 'with a peculiar melancholy in the dark glowing eyes.' giorgione was, like titian, grand and free in drawing and composition, and superb in colour.[ ] mrs jameson has drawn a nice distinction between the two painters as colourists. that the colours of giorgione 'appear as if lighted from within, and those of titian from without;' that 'the epithet glowing applies best to giorgione, that of golden to titian.' giorgione's historic pictures are rare, his sacred pictures rarer still; among the last is a 'finding of moses,' now in milan, thus described by mrs jameson: 'in the centre sits the princess under a tree; she looks with surprise and tenderness on the child, which is brought to her by one of her attendants; the squire, or seneschal, of the princess, with knights and ladies, stand around; on one side two lovers are seated on the grass; on the other are musicians and singers, pages with dogs. all the figures are in the venetian costume; the colouring is splendid, and the grace and harmony of the whole composition is even the more enchanting from the naïveté of the conception. this picture, like many others of the same age and style, reminds us of those poems and tales of the middle ages, in which david and jonathan figure as _preux chevaliers_, and sir alexander of macedon and sir paris of troy fight tournaments in honour of ladies' eyes and the "blessed virgin." they must be tried by their own aim and standard, not by the severity of antiquarian criticism.' in portraits giorgione has only been exceeded by titian. in the national gallery there is an unimportant 'st peter the martyr,' and a finer 'maestro di capella giving a music lesson,' which kugler assigns to giorgione, though it has been given elsewhere to titian. the 'refined voluptuousness and impassioned sombreness' of giorgione's painting have instituted a comparison between him and lord byron as a poet. correggio's real name was antonio allegri, and he has his popular name from his birth-place of correggio, now called reggio; although at one time there existed an impression that correggio meant 'correct,' from the painter's exceedingly clever feats of fore-shortening. his father is believed to have been a well-to-do tradesman, and the lad is said to have had an uncle a painter, who probably influenced his nephew. but correggio had a greater master, though but for a very short time, in andrea mantegna, who died when correggio was still a young boy. mantegna's son kept on his father's school, and from him correggio might have received more regular instruction. he early attained excellence, and in the teeth of the legends which lingered in parma for a full century, his genius received prompt notice and patronage. he married young, and from records which have come to light, he received a considerable portion with his wife. the year after his marriage, when he was no more than six-and-twenty, correggio was appointed to paint in fresco the cupola of the church of san giovanni at parma, and chose for his subject the 'ascension of christ;' for this work and that of the 'coronation of the virgin,' painted over the high altar, correggio got five hundred gold crowns, equivalent to £ . he was invited to mantua, where he painted from the mythology for the duke of mantua. indeed, so far and wide had the preference for mythological subjects penetrated, that one of correggio's earliest works was 'diana returning from the chase;' painted for the decoration of the parlour of the abbess of the convent of san paulo, parma. correggio was a second time called upon to paint a great religious work in parma--this time in the cathedral, for which he selected 'the assumption of the virgin.' a few of the cartoons for these frescoes were discovered thirty or forty years ago, rolled up and lying forgotten in a garret in parma; they, are now in the british museum. in , correggio, then residing in his native town, was one of the witnesses to the marriage of his sovereign, the lord of correggio. in the following year the painter had engaged to paint an altar-piece for an employer, who paid correggio in advance twenty-five gold crowns, but the latter dying very soon afterwards, in the forty-first year of his age, , his father, who was still alive, was in circumstances to repay the advance on the picture, which had not been painted. correggio is said to have been modest and retiring in disposition, and this, together with the fact that, like giorgione, he did not have a school, has been suggested as the source of the traditions which prevailed so long in italy. these traditions described the painter as a man born in indigent circumstances, living obscurely in spite of his genius (there is a picture of correggio's in england, which was said to have been given in payment for his entertainment at an inn), and leading to the end a life of such ill-requited labour, that having been paid for his last picture in copper money, and being under the necessity of carrying it home in order to relieve the destitution of his family, he broke down under the burden, and overcome by heat and weariness, drank a rash draught of water, which caused fever and death. the story, disproven as it is, is often alluded to still, and remains as a foil to those flattering and courtly anecdotes which i have been repeating of royal and imperial homage paid to dürer, titian, and holbein. i fancy the last-mentioned stories may have grown from small beginnings, and circulated purely in the artist world; but that the former is an utterance of the engrained persuasion of the great world without, that art as a means of livelihood is essentially non-remunerative in the sense of money-getting. modest as correggio may have been, he was not without pride in his art. after looking for the first time on the st cecilia of raphael, correggio is reported to have exclaimed with exultation, 'and i too am a painter.' he left behind him on his death a son and a daughter, the former living to be a painter of no great name. in the picture of correggio in the attitude of painting, painted by himself, we see him a handsome spare man with something of a romantic cavalier air, engaged in his chosen art. correggio's pictures go to prove that under his seemingly quiet exterior he was a man of the liveliest sensibilities and the keenest perceptions, his pictures, unlike titian's in their repose, are full of motion and excitement. correggio is spoken of as a painter who delighted 'in the buoyance of childish glee, the bliss of earthly, the fervour of heavenly love,' whose radiant sphere of art sorrow rarely clouded; but when sorrow did enter, it borrowed from the painter's own quivering heart the very sharpness of anguish. the same authority tells us of correggio, that he has painted 'the very heart-throbs of humanity.' but it seems as if such a nature, with its self-conscious veil of forced stillness, must have had a tendency to vehemence and excess; and so we hear that correggio's fore-shortening was sometimes violent, and the energy of his actors spasmodic; thus the cruelly smart contemporary criticism was pronounced on his frescoes of the 'assumption of the virgin,' in which legs and arms in wild play are chiefly conspicuous from below, that correggio had prepared for the parmese 'a fricassée of frogs.' in addition, the great modern critic, mr ruskin, has boldly accused correggio 'both of weakness and meretriciousness,' and there is this to be said of a nature so highly strung as correggio's was strung, that it was not a healthily balanced nature. but if the painter were really inferior in his sense of form and expression to his great predecessors, he was so great in one department, that in it he was held worthy, not only to found the school of parma, but to be classed with the first four painters of italy. that chiarascuro, or treatment of light and shade, in which lionardo and andrea mantegna were no mean proficients, was brought to such perfection by correggio, that, as mrs jameson has sought to illustrate technical expressions, 'you seem to look through. correggio's shadows, and to see beyond them the genuine texture of the flesh.' in undulating grace of motion, in melting softness of outline, fixed on a canvas, he surpassed all rivals, including raphael; and this widely attractive quality ('luscious refinement,' mr ruskin terms it) in connection with correggio's ardent, if undisciplined sensibility, has rendered him one of the most valued of painters; his best paintings being highly prized and costly as the easel pictures attributed to raphael. sir w. stirling maxwell writes that an old duke of modena was suspected of having caused correggio's 'notte' to be stolen from a church at reggio, and that the princes of este were wont to carry 'the magdalene reading' with them on their journeys, while the king of poland kept it under lock and key in a frame of jewelled silver. among correggio's masterpieces, besides his frescoes, there is at parma his picture called 'day,' from the broad flood of daylight in the picture (and doubtless in contrast to his famous 'notte' or 'night,' in the dresden gallery). here is a virgin and child, with st jerome presenting to them his translation of the scriptures, and the magdalene bending to kiss in adoration the feet of the infant saviour. in the dresden gallery in addition to the 'notte' are five pictures, one of the marriage of st catherine as the church--the bride, espoused with a ring to the infant saviour, a favourite subject of italian painters, and a specially favourite subject with correggio; and another, the magdalene reading, half shrouded with her flowing hair, so well known by engravings. i must say a few more words of the 'notte,'--it is a nativity illuminated entirely by the unearthly glory shining from the child christ. virgin and child are bathed and half lost in the fair radiance, which falls softly on a shepherd and maiden, leaving the rest of the figures, the stalled beasts, and the surroundings of the stable, in dim shadow. in our national gallery there are fine specimens of correggio. there is an 'ecce homo': christ crowned with thorns, holding out his bound hands, with a roman soldier softening into pity, pilate hardening in indifference, and the virgin fainting with sorrow. there are also 'the virgin with the basket,' so named from the little basket in front of the picture; and 'a holy family;' and there is a highly-esteemed picture from a mythological subject, 'mercury teaching cupid to read in the presence of venus.' we must return to the venice of titian, and see how his successors, with much more of the true painter in them than the fast degenerating scholars of other italian schools, were mere men, if great men, matched with titian. tintoretto is only tintoretto or tintoret because his father was a dyer, and 'il tintoretto' is in italian, 'the little dyer.' tintoretto's real name was one more in keeping with his pretensions, jacopo robusti. he was born in venice, in , and early fore-shadowed his future career by drawing all kinds of objects on the walls of his father's dye-house, an exercise which did not offend or dismay the elder robusti, but, on the contrary, induced him to put the boy into the school of titian, where tintoretto only remained a short time. titian did not choose to impart what could be imparted of his art to his scholars, and, in all probability, tintoretto was no deferential and submissive scholar. there is a tradition that titian expelled this scholar from his academy, saying of the dyer's son, that 'he would never be anything but a dauber.' tintoret was not to be daunted. he lived to be a bold-tempered, dashing man, and he must have been defiant, even in his boyhood, as he was swaggering in his youth, when he set up an academy of his own, and inscribed above the door, 'the drawing of michael angelo and the colouring of titian.' he had studied and taught himself from casts and theories since he left the school of titian, and then, with worldly wisdom equal to his daring, he commenced his artistic career by accepting every commission, good or bad, and taking what pay he could get for his work; but, unfortunately for him and for the world, he executed his work, as might have been expected, in the same headlong, indiscriminate spirit, acquiring the name of 'il furioso' from the rapidity and recklessness of his manner of painting. often he did not even give himself the trouble of making any sketch or design of his pictures beforehand, but composed as he painted. self-confident to presumption, he took for his inspirations the merest impulses, and considerably marred the effect of his unquestionably grand genius by gross haste and carelessness. he was a successful man in his day, as so energetic and unscrupulous a man was likely enough to be, and his fellow-citizens, who saw principally on the surface,[ ] were charmed beyond measure by his tremendous capacity for invention, his dramatic vigour, his gorgeous, rampant richness and glare; or, by contrast, his dead dulness of ornament and colouring; and were not too greatly offended by his occasional untruthfulness in drawing and colouring, and the inequality of his careless, slovenly, powerful achievements. yet even tintoret's fascinated contemporaries said of him that he 'used three pencils: one gold, one silver, one lead.' naturally tintoretto painted an immense number of pictures, to only three of which, however, he appended his name. these were, 'the crucifixion,' and 'the miracle of the slave,' two of fifty-seven pictures which he painted for the school of st roch alone, in venice; the other was the 'marriage at cana,' in the church of santa maria della saluto, venice. there is an authentic story told of tintoretto in his age, which is in touching contrast to what is otherwise known of the man. dominico, who was a painter, tintoret had a daughter, marietta, very dear to him, who was also a painter--indeed, so gifted a portrait painter, as to have been repeatedly invited to foreign courts to practise her art, invitations which she declined, because she would not be parted from her father. to tintoret's great grief, this daughter died as she was thirty years of age, and her father was in his seventy-eighth year. when her end was unmistakably near, the old man took brush and canvas and struggled desperately to preserve a last impression of the beloved child's face, over which death was casting its shadow. tintoretto died four years later, in . his portrait is that of a man who holds his head high and resolutely; he has, strange to say, a somewhat commonplace face, with its massive nose, full eye, short curly beard and hail. the forehead is not very broad, but the head is 'long,' as scotch people say, and they count long-headedness not only an indication of self-esteem, but of practical shrewdness. tintoret's power was native, and had received little training; it is a proof of the strength of that power that he could not quench it. his faults, as a painter, i have already had to chronicle in the sketch of the man. he was greatest on large canvases, where his recklessness was lost in his strength; and in portraits, where his quickness in seizing striking traits more than equalled that rapidity of conclusion in realizing, and still more notably in classifying, character, which, to say the least, is liable to error. even before tintoretto lived sacred subjects and art had entirely changed places. in the days of fra angelico and the van eycks, art was the means by which painters brought before men sacred subjects, to whose design painters looked with more or less of conviction and feeling. by the time that tintoret painted, sacred subjects were the means by which painters showed their art; means, the design of which was largely lost sight of, and which might be freely tortured and twisted, falsified, well-nigh burlesqued, if, by so doing, painters could better display their originality, skill, and mastery of technicalities. sacred subjects had become more and more human in the lower sense, and less and less divine. a man who had so little reverence as tintoret showed for his own higher self, his fellow-men, and his art, would scarcely seem well qualified to take up sacred subjects. but criticism is entirely and hopelessly divided on the question, for while some authorities hold that he made of the awful scene of the crucifixion a merely historical and decidedly theatrical procession, other authorities maintain that he preserved in that 'great composition' 'repose and dignity, solemnity and reverence.' here is m. charles blanc, the french art critic's opinion of tintoret's largest work, seventy-four feet in length and thirty feet in height: the glory of paradise, in the great hall or throne-room of the doge's palace:-- 'if the shadows had not become so black, such a picture would have had something of sublimity; but that sky, without transparency, the lights of which, even, are of a burnt and baked colour, has rather the air of a lit-up erebus than of a paradise. four hundred figures are in motion in this vast enclosure, some naked, others draped, but draped uniformly in a staring red or a hard blue, which form as many spots, in some sort symmetrical. the manner is quick; a little loose, but confident. the models are neither taken from nature nor from the ideal, they are drawn from practice, and are in general only turns of the head, without beauty and without delicacy. the angels are agitated like demons; and the whole--coarse enough in execution as in thought, is imposing nevertheless by mass, movement, and number. it is the striking image of a multitude in the air, a rout in the heavens, or rather in purgatory.' here, again, is mr ruskin's unequalled estimate of tintoret's works: 'i should exhaust the patience of the reader if ion the various stupendous developments of the imagination of tintoret in the scuola di san rocco alone. i would fain join awhile in that solemn pause of the journey into egypt, where the silver boughs of the shadowy trees lace with their tremulous lines the alternate folds of fair cloud, flushed by faint crimson light, and lie across the streams of blue between those rosy islands like the white wakes of wandering ships; or watch beside the sleep of the disciples among those mossy leaves that lie so heavily on the dead of the night beneath the descent of the angel of the agony, and toss fearfully above the motion of the torches as the troop of the betrayer emerges out of the hollows of the olives; or wait through the hour of accusing beside the judgment-seat of pilate, where all is unseen, unfelt, except the one figure that stands with its head bowed down, pale like the pillar of moonlight, half bathed in the glory of the godhead, half wrapt in the whiteness of the shroud. of these and all other thoughts of indescribable power that are now fading from the walls of those neglected chambers, i may perhaps endeavour at a future time to preserve some image and shadow more faithfully than by words; but i shall at present terminate our series of illustrations by reference to a work of less touching, but more tremendous appeal; the last judgment in the church of santa maria dell' orto.' 'by tintoret only has this unimaginable event been grappled with in its verity; not typically, nor symbolically, but as they may see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. only one traditional circumstance he has received with dante and michael angelo, the boat of the condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the adoption of this image; he has not stopped at the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at the sweeping blow and demon-dragging of the other; but, seized hylas-like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish lethe, nor the fiery lake, that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract; the river of the wrath of god, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling like water-wheels. bat-like, out of the holes, and caverns, and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to the siloam pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the clangour of the trumpets of the armies of god; blinded yet more, as they awake, by the white light of the new heaven, until the great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment-seat; the firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that drifts, and floats, and falls in the interminable, inevitable light; the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow; currents of atom life in the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, and higher and higher still, till the eye and thought can follow no farther, borne up, wingless, by their inward faith, and by the angel powers invisible, now hurled in countless drifts of horror before the breath of their condemnation.' there is only one little work, of small consequence, by tintoretto in the national gallery, but there are nearly a dozen in the royal galleries, as charles i. was an admirer and buyer of 'tintorettos.' two tintorettos which belonged to king charles i, are at hampton court; the one is 'esther fainting before ahasuerus,' and the other the 'nine muses.' with another 'esther' i have been familiar from childhood by an old engraving. in the congenial to tintoret, and he has certainly revelled in the sumptuousness of the mighty eastern tyrant, in royal mantle and ermine tippet, seated on his throne, and stretching his jewelled sceptre to esther, who is in the rich costume of a venetian lady of the period, and sinking into the arms of her watchful maids, with a fair baby face, and little helpless hands, having dainty frills round the wrists, which scarcely answer to our notion of the attributes of the magnanimous, if meek, jewish heroine. paul cágliari of verona is far better known as paul veronese. he was born in verona in , and was the son of a sculptor. he was taught by his father to draw and model, but abandoned sculpture for the sister art of painting, which was more akin to his tastes, and which he followed in the studio of an uncle who was a fair painter. quitting verona, paul veronese repaired to venice, studying the works of titian and tintoret, and settling in their city, finding no want of patronage even in a field so fully appropriated before he came to take his place there. his first great work was the painting of the church of st sebastian, with scenes from the history of esther. whether he chose the subject or whether it was assigned to him, it belonged even more to him than to tintoret, for veronese was the most magnificent of the magnificent venetian painters. from that date he was kept in constant employment by the wealthy and luxurious venetians. he visited rome in the suite of the venetian ambassador in , when he was in his thirty-fourth year, and he was invited to spain to assist in the decoration of the escurial by philip ii., but refused the invitation. veronese is said to have been a man of kindly spirit, generous and devout. in painting for churches and convents, he would consent to receive the smallest remuneration, sometimes not more than the price of his colours and canvas. for his fine picture now in the louvre, the 'marriage of cana,' he is believed not to have had more than forty pounds in our money. he died when he was but fifty-eight years of age, in . he had married and left sons who were painters, and worked with their father. he had a brother, benedotto, who was also a painter, and who is thought to have painted many of the architectural backgrounds to veronese's pictures. veronese's portrait, which he has left us, gives the idea of a more earnest and impressionable man than tintoret. a man in middle age, bald-headed, with a furrowed brow, cheeks a little hollowed, head slightly thrown back, and a somewhat anxious as well as intent expression of face; what of the dress is seen, being a plain doublet with turned-over collar, and a cloak arranged in a fold across the breast, and hanging over the right shoulder like a shepherd's 'maud' or plaid. looking at the engraving, and hearing of paul veronese's amiability and piety, one has little difficulty in thinking of the magnificent painter, as a single-hearted, simple-minded man, neither vain nor boastful, nor masterful save by the gift of genius. i have called paul veronese a magnificent painter, and magnificence is the great attribute of his style; but before going farther into his merits and defects, i should like to quote to you a passage from mr ruskin, the most eloquent and dogmatic of art critics, prefacing the passage with the statement that the true lesson which it teaches is particularly needful for women, who, if they love art at all, are apt to regard it chiefly for its sentiment, and to undervalue such proper painter's work, such breadth and affluence and glory of handling, as are to be met with on the canvases of painters like veronese and rubens. 'but i perceive a tendency among some of the more thoughtful critics of the day to forget the business of a painter is _to paint_, and so altogether to despise those men, veronese and rubens for instance, who were painters, _par excellence_, and in whom the expressional qualities are subordinate. now it is well, when we have strong moral or poetical feeling manifested in painting, to mark this as the best part of the work; but it is not well to consider as a thing of small account the painter's language in which that feeling is conveyed; for if that language be not good and lovely, the man may indeed be a just moralist or a great poet, but he is not a _painter_, and it was wrong of him to paint.' it was said of paul veronese, that while he had not 'the brilliance and depth of titian' or the 'prodigious facility' of tintoret, yet, in some respects, veronese surpassed both. but he was certainly deficient in a sense of suitability and probability. he, of all painters, carried to an outrageous extent the practice, which i have defended in some degree, of painting sacred and historical subjects as if they had happened in his own day and city. he violated taste and even reason in painting every scene, lofty or humble, sacred or profane, alike, with the pomp of splendour and richness of ornament which were the fashion of the time; but he had a vivid perception of character, and a certain greatness of mind which redeemed his plethora of gorgeousness from monotony or vulgarity. veronese is reported to have been far more correct and careful in drawing than was tintoret, while veronese's prodigality of colour was a mellowed version of tintoret's glare or deadness. one of veronese's best pictures is the 'marriage of cana,' painted originally for the refectory of the convent of san giorgio, venice, and now in the louvre. 'it is not less than thirty feet long and twenty feet high, and contains about one hundred and thirty figures, life size. the marriage feast of the galilean citizen is represented with a pomp worthy of "ormuz or of ind." a sumptuous hall of the richest architecture; lofty columns, long lines of marble balustrades rising against the sky; a crowd of guests splendidly attired, some wearing orders of knighthood, are seated at tables covered with gorgeous vases of gold and silver, attended by slaves, jesters, pages, and musicians. in the midst of all this dazzling pomp, this display of festive enjoyment, these moving figures, these lavish colours in glowing approximation, we begin after a while to distinguish the principal personages, our saviour, the virgin mary, the twelve apostles, mingled with venetian senators and ladies, clothed in the rich costume of the sixteenth century; monks, friars, poets, artists, all portraits of personages existing in his own time; while in a group of musicians he has introduced himself and tintoretto playing the violoncello, while titian plays the bass. the bride in this picture is said to be the portrait of eleanor of austria, the sister of charles v, and second wife of francis i.'[ ] though veronese is not greatly esteemed as a portrait painter, it so happens that the highly-prized picture of his in our national gallery, called 'the family of darius before alexander,' is understood to be family portraits of the pisani family in the characters of alexander, the persian queen, etc., etc. another of veronese's pictures in the national gallery is 'the consecration of st nicholas, bishop of myra.' chapter vii. carracci, - --guido reni, - --domenichino, - --salvator rosa, - . in the falling away of the schools of italy, and especially of the followers of michael angelo and raphael, into mannerism and exaggeration, fitly expressed in delineation of heathen gods and goddesses, there arose a cluster of painters in the north of italy who had considerable influence on art. the carracci included a group of painters, the founders of the later bolognese school. lodovico, the elder of the three, was born at bologna, . he was educated as a painter, and was so slow in his education, that he received from his fellow-scholars the nickname of 'il bue' (the ox). but his perseverance surmounted every obstacle. he visited the different italian towns, and studied the works of art which contained, arriving at the conclusion that he might acquire and combine the excellences of each. this combination, which could only be a splendid patch-work without unity, was the great aim of his life, and was the origin of the term _eclectic_ applied to his school. its whole tendency was to technical excellence, and in this tendency, however it might achieve its end, painting showed a marked decline. as an example of the motives and objects supplied by the school, i must borrow some lines from a sonnet of the period written by agostino carracci: 'let him, who a good painter would be, acquire the drawing of rome, venetian action, and venetian shadow, and the dignified colouring of lombardy, the terrible manner of michael angelo, titian's truth and nature, the sovereign purity of correggio's style, and the true symmetry of raphael; * * * * * and a little of parmegiano'a grace, but without so much study and toil, let him only apply himself to imitate the works which our niccolino has left us here.' lodovico opened a school of painting at bologna, in which he was for a time largely assisted by his cousins. he died . agostino carracci, cousin of lodovico, was born at bologna in . his father was a tailor, and agostino himself began life as a jeweller. he became a painter and an engraver in turn, devoting himself chiefly to engraving. towards the beginning of the seventeenth century he was with his more famous brother, annibale, at rome, where he assisted in painting the farnese gallery, designing and executing the two frescoes of galatea and aurora with such success, according to his contemporaries, that it was popularly said that 'the engraver had surpassed the painter in the farnese.' jealousy arose between the brothers in consequence, and they separated, not before annibale had perpetrated upon agostino a small, but malicious, practical joke, which has been handed down to us. agostino was fond of the society of people of rank, and annibale, aware of his brother's weakness, took the opportunity, when agostino was surrounded by some of his aristocratic friends, to present him with a caricature of the two brothers' father and mother, engaged in their tailoring work. agostino died at parma when he was a little over forty, and was buried in the cathedral there, in . annibale, agostino's younger brother, was born in . it was intended by his parents that he should follow their trade and be a tailor, but he was persuaded by his cousin lodovico to become a painter. after visiting parma, venice, and bologna, he worked with his cousin and teacher for ten years. annibale was invited to rome by the cardinal odoardo farnese, to decorate the great hall of his palace in the piazza farnese, with scenes from the heathen mythology, for which work he received a monthly salary of ten scudi, about two guineas, with maintenance for himself and two servants, and a farther gift of five hundred scudi. it was a parsimonious payment, and the parsimony is said to have preyed on the mind and affected the health of annibale, and a visit to naples, where he, in common with not a few artists, suffered from the jealous persecutions of the neapolitan painters, completed the breaking up of his constitution. he painted, with the assistance of albani, the frescoes in the chapel of san diego in san giacomo degli spagnole, and pressed upon his assistant more than half of his pay. annibale's health had already given way, and after a long illness he died, when forty-nine years of age, at rome, , and was buried near raphael in the pantheon. the merit of the carracci lay in their power of execution, and in a certain 'bold naturalism, or rather animalism,' which they added to their able imitations, for their pictures are not so much their own, as 'after titian,' 'after correggio,' etc. in this intent regard to style, and this perfecting of means to an end, thought and in a manner neglected. yet to the carracci, and their school, is owing a certain studied air of solemnity and sadness in 'ecce homos,' and 'pietás,' which, in proportion to its art, has a powerful effect on many beholders, who prefer conventionality to freedom; or rather, who fail to distinguish conventionality in its traces. annibale was the most original while the least learned of the carracci; yet, even of annibale, it could be said that he lacked enthusiasm in his subjects. his best productions are his mythological subjects in the farnese palace. a celebrated picture of his, that of the 'three marys' (a dead christ, the madonna, and the two other marys), is at castle howard, and has been exhibited at manchester, and i think also at leeds. at manchester it attracted the greatest attention and admiration. i believe this was not only because annibale carracci in the 'three marys' does attain to a most piteous mournfulness of sentiment, but because such work as that of the carracci finds readiest acceptance from a general public, which delights in striking, superficial effects. the same reason, in conjunction with the decline of italian art, may account for the great number of the carracci school and followers. annibale carracci was one of the first who practised landscape painting and genre pictures, such as 'the greedy eater,' as separate branches of art. two of annibale's landscapes are in the national gallery. guido reni, commonly called 'guido,' was born at bologna, . his father was a musician, and guido was intended for the same calling, but finally became a painter and student in the school of the carracci. he followed annibale carracci to rome, and dwelt there for twenty years. he obtained great repute and favour, but taking offence at some supposed injustice, he left rome, and settled at last in bologna, where he established a large school. though he made great sums of money, which might have enabled him to live in the splendour which he coveted, on account of his addiction to gambling and his grossly extravagant habits, he was constantly in debt, and driven to tax his genius to the utmost, and to sell its fruits for what they would bring, irrespective of what he owed to himself, his art, and to the giver of all good gifts. he died at bologna, and was buried with much pomp in the church of san dominico, . of guido we hear that he had three styles: the first, after the vigorous manner of michael angelo; the second, in the prevailing ornamental taste of the rome of his day and the carracci. this is considered guido's best style, and is distinguished by its subtle management of light and shade. his third, which is called his 'silvery style,' from its greys, degenerated into insipidity, with little wonder, seeing that at this stage he sold his time at so much per hour to picture-dealers, who stood over him, watch in hand, to see that he fulfilled his bargain, and carried away the saints he manufactured wet from the easel. such manufactory took him only three hours, sometimes less. his charges had risen from five guineas for a head, and twenty guineas for a whole figure, to twenty times that amount. he painted few portraits, but many 'fancy' heads of saints. nearly three hundred pictures by guido are believed to be in existence. guido's individual distinction was his refined sense of beauty, but it was over-ruled by 'cold calculation,' and developed into a mere abstract conception of 'empty grace' without heart or soul. his finest work is the large painting of 'phoebus and aurora' in a pavilion of the rospigliosi palace at rome. in our national gallery there are nine specimens of guido's works, including one of his best 'ecce homos,' which belonged to the collection of samuel rogers. domenico zampieri, commonly called domenichino, was another bolognese painter, and another eminent scholar of the carracci. he was born in , and, after studying under a flemish painter, passed into the school of the carracci. while yet a very young man, domenichino was invited to rome, where he soon earned a high reputation, competing successfully with his former fellow-scholar, guido. domenichino's 'flagellation of st andrew,' and 'communion of st jerome,' in payment of which he only received about five guineas; his 'martyrdom of st sebastian,' and his 'four evangelists,' which are among his masterpieces, were all painted in rome, and remain in rome. domenichino is said to have excited the extreme hostility of rival painters, and to have suffered especially from the malice of the neapolitans, when he was invited to work among them. after a cruel struggle domenichino died in naples, not without a horrible suspicion of having being poisoned, at the age of sixty, in . one of his enemies--a roman on this occasion--destroyed what was left of domenichino's work in naples. the painter's fate was a miserable one, and by a coincidence between his fortune and his taste in subjects, he has identified his name with terrible representations of martyrdoms. kugler writes that martyrdom as a subject for painting, which had been sparingly used by raphael and his scholars, had come into fashion in domenichino's time, for 'painters and poets sought for passionate emotion, and these subjects (martyrdoms) supplied them with plentiful food.' sensationalism is the florid hectic of art's decay, whether in painting or in literature. domenichino is accredited with more taste than fancy. he made free use of the compositions of even contemporary artists, while he individualized these compositions. his good and bad qualities are those of his school, already quoted, and perhaps it is in keeping with these qualities that the excellence of domenichino's works lies in subordinate parts and subordinate characters. there are examples of domenichino in the national gallery. i shall close my long list of the great italian painters of the past with one who was quite apart from and opposed to the carracci school, and whose triumphs and failures were essentially his own. salvator rosa, born in near naples, was the son of an architect. in opposition to his father salvator rosa became a painter. having succeeded in selling his sketches to a celebrated buyer, the bold young neapolitan started for rome at the age of twenty years; and rome, 'the jerusalem of painters,' became thenceforth salvator rosa's head-quarters, though the character of the man was such as to force him to change his quarters not once or twice only in his life, and thus he stayed some time, in turn, at naples, viterbo, volterra, and florence. at volterra the aggressive nature of the painter broke forth in a series of written satires on a medley of subjects--music, poetry (both of which salvator himself cultivated), painting, war, babylon, and envy. these incongruous satires excited the violent indignation of the individuals against whom salvator's wit was aimed, and their efforts at revenge, together with his own turbulent spirit, drove him from place to place. salvator rosa was at naples , and took part in the riots, so famous in song and story, which made masaniello, the young fisherman, for a time captain-general and master of naples, when it was, according to law, a spanish dependency governed by a viceroy. salvator was in the compagnia della morte commanded by falcone, a battle painter, during the troubles, a wild enough post to please the wild painter, even had he not been in addition a personal adherent of the ruling spirit masaniello, whom salvator rosa painted more than once. after so eventful a life, the painter died peaceably enough in his fifty-ninth year, of dropsy, at rome, and left a considerable fortune to his only son. salvator rosa was the incarnation of the arrogant, fickle, fierce neapolitan spirit, and he carried it out sufficiently in an undisciplined, stormy life, without the addition of the popular legend that he had at one time joined a troop of banditti, and indulged in their excesses. the legend seems to have a familiarity with mountain passes, and his love of peopling them appropriately with banditti in action. salvator rosa was a dashing battle painter, a mediocre historical painter, and an excellent portrait painter as well as landscape painter. but it is chiefly by the savage grandeur of his mountain or forest landscapes, with their fitting _dramatis personæ_, that he has won his renown. mr ruskin, while he allows salvator's gift of imagination, denounces him for the reckless carelessness and untruthfulness to nature of his painting. many of salvator rosa's pictures are in the pitti palace in florence, and many are in england. chapter viii. rubens, - --rembrandt, or - --teniers, father and son, - --wouverman, - --cuyp, ; still living, --paul potter, - --cornelius de heem, . a long interval elapsed between the van eycks and quintin matsys, and rubens; but if flemish art was slow of growth and was only developed after long pauses, it made up for its slowness and delays by the burst of triumph into which flemish and dutch art broke forth in rubens and his school, in rembrandt and cuyp and ruysdael. peter paul rubens was born at siegen in westphalia, on the day of st peter and st paul, . but though rubens was born out of antwerp, he was a citizen of antwerp by descent as well as by so many later associations. his father, john rubens, a lawyer, an imprudent, thriftless man in character and habits, had been compelled to leave antwerp in consequence of religious disturbances which broke out there about the time that the northern provinces, more at one and more decided in their union than the southern provinces, established their independence. rubens spent his early boyhood at cologne, but on the death of his father when he was ten years of age, his mother, a good and 'discreet' woman, to whom the painter owed much, and confessed his debt, returned with her family to antwerp. his mother had destined him for his father's profession, but did not oppose her son's preference for art. after studying under two different artists, and becoming a master in the guild of st luke, rubens went to italy in , when he was a young man of three-and-twenty years of age. he was eight years absent, entering the service of the ducal sovereign of mantua, being sent by him on a diplomatic mission to madrid to philip iii, of spain, visiting on his own account rome, where he found the carracci and guido[ ] at the height of their fame, venice and genoa, 'leaving portraits where he went.' with genoa, its architecture, and its situation, rubens was specially charmed, but he quitted it in haste, being summoned home to attend the death-bed of his mother, from whom he had parted eight years before; and arriving too late to see her in life. a man of strong feelings in sorrow as in joy, he withdrew into retirement, and resided for his season of mourning in a religious house. loving italy with a painter's enthusiasm, so that to the latest day of his life he generally wrote in italian, and loved to sign his name 'pietro paolo rubens,' he had intended to return and settle in mantua, but having been named court painter to the governess of the netherlands, clara eugenia, and her husband albert, rubens had sufficient patriotism and sufficient worldly foresight to induce him to relinquish his idea, and establish himself in his native antwerp. he was already a man of eminence in his profession, and a man of mark out of it. go where he would he made friends, and he so recommended himself to his royal patrons by his natural suavity, tact, and sagacity, that he was not only in the utmost favour with them as a right courtly painter, but was employed by them, once and again, on delicate, difficult, private embassies. but it was not only to his patrons that rubens was endeared, he was emphatically what men call 'a good fellow,' alike to superiors, equals, and inferiors; a frank, honest, bountiful, and generous man. his love of courts and their splendour was the chivalrous homage which a man of his cast of mind paid to the dignity and picturesqueness of high estate. he married a year after his mother's death, when he was in his thirty-third year. his first wife, isabella brant, was a connection of his own (and so was his second wife). he built and painted, in fresco, a fine house in antwerp, and laid out a pleasant garden, which contained a rotunda, filled with his collection of pictures by the italian masters, antique gems, etc. etc., already gathered abroad. he set himself to keep house in a liberal fashion, to dispense benefits, and to entertain friends--above all, to paint with might and main in company with his great school, the members of which, like those of raphael's school where raphael was concerned, were, for the most part, rubens' devoted comrades. counting his work not only as the great object, but the great zest of his life, never did painter receive such sweeping and accumulating commissions, and never, even by tintoret, were commissions executed with such undaunted, unhesitating expedition. withal rubens frequently left his studio and went abroad, either to act as an unofficial ambassador, or to paint at the special request of some foreign sovereign. thus he was residing in paris in , planning for marie de medici the series of remarkable pictures which commemorated her marriage with henry iv. (when i was a little girl, i went occasionally to a country house, the show place of the neighbourhood, where there were copies of this series of rubens' pictures. i can remember yet looking at them with utter bewilderment, caused by the dubious taste that impelled rubens to indulge in the oddest mixture of royal personages, high church dignitaries, patron saints, and gods and goddesses.) in rubens was in spain on a mission from his sovereign to her kinsman, philip iv.; in the following year he was in england, on a service of a similar description to charles i., from whom, even as rubens had already received it from king philip, the painter had the honour of knighthood. in the mean time rubens' first wife died, after a union of seventeen years, in ; and four years later, in , the painter, when he was a man of fifty years, re-married another connection of his own, helena fourment, a girl only in her sixteenth year. both of his wives were handsome, fair, full-formed flemish beauties. elizabeth (in spanish, isabella) brant's beauty was of a finer order than that of her successor, expressing larger capacity of affection and intellect. but on helena fourment rubens doted, while to both women he seems to have been affectionately attached. he has painted them so often, that the face of no painter's wife is so familiar to the art world, and even to the greater world without, as are the faces of these two women, and above all, that of helena fourment. he had seven children, who frequently figure in their mothers' portraits. he has left notable portraits of his two sons by his first wife, of his eldest daughter, clara eugenia, when eight years of age, and of his daughter elizabeth, a buxom baby, dressed in velvet and point lace, playing with toys. after a life of unbroken success and the highest honours, the last distinction conferred on rubens was, that he was chosen to arrange the gala, and to be the right-hand man who should conduct the cardinal infant, the successor of clara eugenia, on his first entrance into antwerp. but the hand of premature disease and death, which not even he could resist, was already on the great painter; his constitution had been undermined by repeated attacks of gout, and he died at the age of sixty years, in . he was the possessor of great wealth at the time of his death, and only a part of his collection, which was then sold, brought so large a sum in those days, as twenty thousand pounds. rubens' second wife, helena fourment, to whom he had been married ten years, survived him, a widow at twenty-six years of age rubens' portrait is even better known than those of his wives, for, as i have said of raphael in his popularity, rubens in his life is the beau-ideal of a painter to the many. the portrait is worthy of the man, with something gallant in the manliness, and with thought tempering what might have been too much of bravado and too much of débonnaireté in the traits. his features are handsome in their flemish fulness, and match well with hazel eyes, chestnut hair, and a ruddy complexion; his long moustache is turned up, and he wears the pointed beard which we see so often in the portraits by rubens' scholar, van dyck. the great flapping hat, worn alike by men and women, slightly cocked to one side, is the perfection of picturesque head gear. equally picturesque, and not in the slightest degree effeminate on a man like rubens, is the falling collar of pointed mechlin, just seen above the cloak draped in large folds. in his own day rubens was without a rival as a painter. in a much later day sir joshua reynolds pronounced rubens 'perhaps the greatest master in the mechanical part of the art, _the best workman with his tools_ that ever exercised a pencil.' his consummate excellence lay in his execution and colouring. it is brought as a reproach against his painting, that his noblest characters, even his sacred characters, were but big, brawny, red and white flemings. his imagination only reached a certain height, and yet, if it were a very earthly flemish imagination, it could be grandly, as it was always vigorously, earthly and flemish. at the same time he could be deficient where proportion, and even where all the laws of art, are concerned. it is right that i should, with regret and shame, say this of rubens, whose geniality bordered on joviality, and whose age was a grosser age than our own, that he debased his genius by some foul and revolting pictures. of the general distinction between rubens and some of his predecessors i should like to quote mr ruskin's passage in his defence: 'a man long trained to love the monk's vision of fra angelico, turns in proud and ineffable disgust from the first work of rubens, which he encounters on his return across the alps. but is he right in his indignation? he has forgotten that, while angelico prayed and wept in his _olive shade_, there was different work doing in the dank fields of flanders:--wild seas to be banked out; endless canals to be dug, and boundless marshes to be drained; hard ploughing and harrowing of the frosty clay; careful breeding of the stout horses and cattle; close setting of brick-walls against cold winds and snow; much hardening of hands, and gross stoutening of bodies in all this; gross jovialities of harvest homes, and christmas feasts, which were to be the reward of it; rough affections, and sluggish imaginations; fleshy, substantial, iron-shod humanities, but humanities still,--humanities which god had his eye upon, and which won perhaps, here and there, as much favour in his sight as the wasted aspects of the whispering monks of florence (heaven forbid that it should not be so, since the most of us cannot be monks, but must be ploughmen and reapers still). and are we to suppose there is no nobility in rubens' masculine and universal sympathy with all this, and with his large human rendering of it, gentleman though he was by birth, and feeling, and education, and place, and, when he chose, lordly in conception also? he had his faults--perhaps great and lamentable faults,--though more those of his time and his country than his own; he has neither cloister-breeding nor boudoir-breeding, and is very unfit to paint either in missals or annuals; but he has an open sky and wide-world breeding in him that we may not be offended with, fit alike for king's court, knight's camp, or peasants cottage.' rubens' works are very many, nearly four thousand pictures and sketches being attributed to him and his scholars. many are still at antwerp, many at madrid, but most are at munich, where, in one great saloon and cabinet, there are ninety-five pictures by rubens. in england, at blenheim, there are fifteen pictures by rubens, as the great duchess of marlborough would give any price for his works. i can only indicate a very few examples in the different branches of art which he made his own. first, of his 'descent from the cross:' it is a single large group, distinguished by luminous colouring and correct drawing, and with regard to which the mass of white sheet against which the body of christ is in relief in the picture, has been regarded as a bold artistic venture. an enthusiastic admirer has called it 'a most wonderful monument of the daring genius of the painter. the grandest picture in the world for composition, drawing, and colouring.' its defects are held to be 'the bustle of the incidents and the dreadfully true delineation of merely physical agony--too terrible, real, picturesque, but not sublime--- an earthly tragedy, not a divine mystery.' 'remit the anguish of that lighted stare; close those wan lips! let that thorn-wounded brow stream not with blood.' there is a tradition that an accident happened to the picture while rubens was painting it, and that van dyck remedied the accident by re-painting the cheek and chin of the virgin and the arm of the magdalene. with regard to another picture of rubens at antwerp, 'the assumption of the virgin,' it is said that he painted it in sixteen days, for sixteen hundred florins, his usual terms being a hundred florins a-day. 'the virgin and serpent' (from the th chapter of revelation) in the munich gallery is very splendid. the virgin with the new-born saviour in her arms is mounting on the wings of an eagle, surrounded by a flood of light. the serpent, encircling the moon on which she stands, is writhing beneath her feet. god the father is extending his protecting sceptre over her from above. the archangel, clothed in armour, is in fearful combat with the seven-headed dragon, which is endeavouring to devour the child. although struck by lightning, the dragon is striving to twist his tail round the legs of the angel, and seizes the cloak of the virgin with one of his hands. other infernal monsters are writhing with impotent rage, and falling with the dragon into the abyss.' 'nothing was more characteristic of rubens than his choice of subjects from the mythology of the greeks and the works of the ancient poets; and in nothing did he display more freedom, originality, and poetry.' among his most famous mythological pictures is the 'battle of the amazons,' now at munich. 'the women are driven back by the greeks over the river thermodon; two horses are in savage combat on the bridge; one amazon is torn from her horse; a second is dragged along by a sable steed, and falling headlong into the river, where others are swimming and struggling. no other battle-piece, save that of the amazons, can compare with raphael's "battle of constantine."' another great picture is the 'carrying off of proserpine.' 'pluto in his car is driven by fiery brown steeds, and is bearing away the goddess, resisting and struggling. the picture absolutely glows with genial fire. the forms in it are more slender than is general with rubens. among the companions of proserpine the figure of diana is conspicuous for grace and beauty. the victorious god of love hovers before the chariot, and the blue ocean, warmly tinted with the sunbeams, forms a splendid back-ground.'[ ] rubens was famous for the loveliness and grace of his paintings of children. perhaps the most beautiful is that of 'the infant jesus and john playing with a lamb.' rubens was a great animal painter. one of his celebrated animal pictures is 'daniel in the lions' den,' now at hamilton palace, in which each lion is a king of beasts checked in his fiercest have been painted by rubens in a fit of pique at a false report which had been circulated that he could not paint animals, and that those in his pictures were supplied by the animal-painter, his friend and scholar, schneyders. rubens' landscapes are not the least renowned of his pictures. he gave to his own rich but prosaic flanders, all the breadth and breeziness and matchless aerial effects of a master of painting, and a true lover of nature under every aspect, who can indeed distinguish, under the most ordinary aspect, those hidden treasures which all but a lover and a man of genius would pass by. his 'prairie of laacken,' 'with the sun of flanders piercing the dense yellow clouds with the force of fire,' is of great repute. among his famous portraits i shall mention that called 'the four philosophers' (justus lepsius, hugo grotius, rubens, and his brother), with peaked beards and moustaches, in turned-over collars, ruffs and fur-trimmed robes, having books and pens, a dog, and a classic bust as accessories. the open pillared door is wreathed with a spray from without, and there is a landscape in the background. this portrait is full of power, freedom, and splendid painting. another portrait contains that sweetest of rubens' not often sweet faces, called 'the lady in the straw hat.' rubens himself did not name the picture otherwise in his catalogue. tradition says the original was mdlle lundens, the beauty of the seventeen provinces, and that she died young and unmarried. connoisseurs value the picture because of the triumph of skill by which rubens has painted brilliantly a face so much in the shade; to those who are not connoisseurs i imagine the picture must speak for itself, in its graceful, tender beauty. forming part of the collection of the late sir robert peel (i think he gave three thousand pounds for 'the lady in the straw hat'), which has been bought for the country, this beautiful portrait is now in the national gallery. and now i must speak of the picture of the arundel family. but first, a word about thomas, earl of arundel. it is impossible to write an english work on art and omit a brief account of one of england's greatest art benefactors. thomas, earl of arundel, representing in his day the great house of howard, had a love of art which approached to a mania; and without being so outrageously vain as sir kenelm digby, there is no doubt that the earl counted on his art collection as a source of personal distinction. james i., himself an art collector, so far humoured the earl in his taste as to present him with lord somerset's forfeited collection, valued at a thousand pounds. but charles i, and the earl became rival collectors, and little love was lost between them. the earl of arundel impairing even his great revenues in the pursuit, employed agents and ambassadors--notably petty and evelyn--all over europe, to obtain for him drawings, pictures, ancient marbles, gems, etc., etc. when the civil wars broke out, lord arundel conveyed his priceless collection for safety to antwerp and padua. eventually it was divided among his sons and scattered far and wide. the only portion of it which fell to the nation, in the course of another generation, was the greek marbles, known as the arundel marbles, which were finally presented to the university of oxford. but in rubens' day all this grand collection was intact, and displayed in galleries at arundel house, which the mob thought fit to nickname 'tart hall;' and through these galleries rubens was conducted by the earl. lord arundel desired to have an arundel family portrait painted for him by rubens. the earl was rather given to having arundel family portraits, for there are no less than three in which he figures. one by van somer, in which the hero is pointing somewhat comically with his truncheon to the statues of his collection in the background, and the last one projected by van dyck, but executed by an inferior artist, in which various family pieces of armour, swords, and shields, worn at flodden, or belonging to the poet earl of surrey, are introduced in the hands of the sons of the family. but it is with rubens' 'arundel family,' which, we must remember, ranks second in english family pictures, that we have to do. thomas, earl of arundel, and the lady alathea,[ ] are under a portico with twisted columns, like those in raphael's cartoons; a rich curtain, and a landscape with a large mansion are seen beyond. the countess is seated in a chair of state, with one hand on the head of a white greyhound; she wears a black satin gown, laced ruff, gold bracelets, and pearl necklace. her hair is light, and decked with pearls and plumes. the earl stands behind with a hand on her chair. his head is uncovered, the short hair inclining to grey; the whiskers and beard pointed. his vest is olive-coloured, and he has a brown mantle lined with crimson over the shoulders beneath his ruff. there is a little boy--earl thomas's grandson, philip howard, afterwards cardinal howard, in crimson velvet, trimmed with gold lace, and a dwarf on the other side of the dog, with one hand on its back. among other masterpieces of rubens, including the 'straw hat,' which are in the national gallery, there are the 'rape of the sabines,' and the landscape 'autumn,' which has a view of his country château, de stein, near mechlin. in dulwich gallery there is an interesting portrait by rubens of an elderly lady in a great spanish ruff, which is believed to be the portrait of his mother. rembrandt van rhyn is said to have been born near leyden about or , for there is a doubt as to the exact date. his father was a miller or maltster, and there is a theory that rembrandt acquired some of his effects of light and shade from the impressions made upon him during his life in the mill. he was a pupil at the latin school of leyden, and a scholar in studios both at leyden and amsterdam. in , when rembrandt was a mere lad, he seems to have settled in amsterdam, and married there in , when he was six or eight and twenty years of age, a young dutchwoman possessed of a considerable fortune, which, in case of her death and of rembrandt's re-marriage, was to pass to her children, a provision that in the end wrought rembrandt's ruin. the troubles of his country in the painter's time rendered his prices comparatively small and precarious, and rembrandt, like rubens, without rubens' wealth, was eager in making an art collection and surrounding himself with those very forms of beauty in the great italian masters' works, in the appreciation of which the dutch master--judged by his own works--might have been reckoned deficient. rembrandt's wife died after eight years of marriage, and left him with one surviving son, titus, and rembrandt, having re-married, was called upon to give up the lad's inheritance. this call, together with the expenditure of the sums which rembrandt had lavished on his collection, was too heavy upon funds never very ample, and the painter, after struggling with his difficulties, became a bankrupt in . his son took possession of rembrandt's house, and from the sale of the painter's art collection and other resources eventually recovered his mother's fortune, but rembrandt himself never rose above the misery, degradation, and poverty of this period. he lived thirteen years longer, but it was in obscurity--out of which the only records which reach us, are stories of miserly habits acquired too late to serve their purpose, a desperate resort to low company dating from his first wife's death, and his gradual downfall. rubens and rembrandt have been sometimes contrasted as the painters of light and of darkness; the contrast extended to their lives. it will read like a humorous anti-climax after so sad a history, when i add that no other painter painted his own likeness so often as rembrandt painted his. in the engraving before me the face is heavy and stolid-seeming enough to be that of a typical dutchman. the eye-brows are slightly knit over the broad nose; the full lips are scantily shaded by a moustache; there is no hair on the well-fleshed cheeks and double chin. rembrandt wears a flat cap and ear-rings. he has two rows of a chain across his doublet, and one hand thrust beneath the cloak hanging across his breast. rembrandt's great merits were his strong truthfulness, and his almost equally powerful sense of a peculiar kind of picturesqueness. it seems as if the german weirdness perceptible in albrecht dürer had in rembrandt taken a homelier, but a more comprehensible and effective dutch form. kugler argues, that the long winter, with its short dark days, of northern europe produces in its inhabitants instinctive delight in hearth-warmth and light, and that the pleasure in looking at rembrandt's pictures is traceable to this influence. it is in scenes by fire-light, camp-light, torch-light, that he triumphs, and his somewhat grim but very real romance owes its origin to the endless suggestions of the deep black shadows which belong to these artificial lights. there is this objection to be urged to the theory, that rembrandt was also a good painter of his own flat dutch landscape, painting it, however, rather under the sombre dimness of clouds and tempests than in the brightness of sunshine. but whatever its source, there is a charm so widely felt in that wonderfully perfect surrounding of uncertainty, suspicion, and alarm, with which rembrandt has encompassed so many of his otherwise prosaic, coarse, and sometimes vulgar dutch men and women, that we have coined a new word to express the charm, and speak of groups and incidents being _rembrandtesque_, as we speak of their being picturesque. rembrandt did not always leave the vague thrill of doubt, terror, or even horror, which he sought to produce, to imagination working in the mysterious depths of his shadows. a very famous picture of his is 'dr deeman (an anatomist) demonstrating from a dead subject.' in another picture a man stealing from the gloom is in the act of stabbing in the back the unconscious man in the foreground.[ ] rembrandt's originality is as undoubted as his ability, and he was as great in etching as in painting. his defect as a painter was the frequent absence of any evidence in his work of a sense of refinement, grace, or even beauty; this can be said of him who spent means not his own on gathering together images of beauty and grace produced by the pencils and brushes of others. many of rembrandt's pictures are in the galleries of amsterdam and the hague, and we have many in london. the national gallery has several examples, including two of rembrandt's portraits. passing over van dyck, whom i reserve, as i have reserved holbein, to class among the foreign painters resident in or closely connected with england, i come to the teniers--father and son. david the elder was born at antwerp in , and david the younger also at antwerp, in . david the younger is decidedly the more eminent painter, though the works of the father are often mistaken for those of the son. the two teniers' class of subjects was the same, being ordinarily 'fairs, markets, peasants' merry-makings, beer-houses, guard rooms.' david the younger had great popularity, was court painter to the archduke of austria, and earned such an independence, that he bought for himself a château at the village of perck, not very far from the château de stein of rubens, with whom david teniers was on terms of friendly intimacy. there teniers, like his great associate, lived in the utmost state and bounty, entertaining the noblest of the land. david teniers married twice, his first wife being the daughter of one of a family of flemish painters, who were known, according to their respective proclivities in art, by the names of peasant breughel, velvet breughel, and hell breughel. teniers had many children. the elder teniers died at antwerp in ; the younger died at brussels, and was buried at perck, in . the distinction of the teniers was the extreme fidelity and cleverness with which they copied (but did not explain) the life they knew--the homeliest, humblest aspect of life. they brought out with marvellous accuracy all its traits, except, indeed, the underlying strain of poetry, which, while it redeems plainness, sordidness, and even coarseness, is as true to life as is its veriest prose. with those who ask a literal copy of life, whether high or low, and ask no more, the teniers and their school must always be in the highest favour; and to those who are wearied and sceptical of blunders and failures in seeking that underlying strain of life, the mere rugged genuineness of the teniers' work recommends itself, and is not without its own pathos; while to very many superficial observers the simple homeliness of the life which the teniers chose to represent, prevents the observers from missing what should be present in every life. men and women are only conscious of the defect when the painters wander, now and then, into higher spheres and into sacred subjects, and there is the unavoidable recoil from gross blindness. i have taken the teniers as the representatives of a numerous school of flemish and dutch artists, whose works abound in this country. david teniers the younger appears at his best, several times, in dulwich gallery and the national gallery. philip wouverman was born at haarlem in . he was the son of a painter, able, but unrecognized in his own day. philip wouverman found few patrons, disposed of his pictures by hard bargains to dealers, was tempted by his want of success to abjure his art, and even went so far, according to tradition, as to burn his studies and sketches, in order to prevent his son pursuing the career which had been to him a career of bitter disappointment. he died at haarlem, , when he was no more than forty-eight years of age. yet some nine hundred paintings bear (many of them falsely) wouverman's name. with all the truth and excellent execution of his contemporaries and countrymen', philip wouverman, who had, as he thought, missed his mark, had something which those successful men lacked--he had not only a feeling for grace, but a touch of sentiment. his scenes are commonly 'road-side inns, hunts, fights;' but along with an inclination to adopt a higher class of actors--knights and ladies, instead of peasants--there is a more refined treatment and a dash of tenderness and melancholy--the last possibly born of his own disastrous fortunes. in his love of horses and dogs, as adjuncts to his groups, he had as great a fondness for a special white horse, as paul potter had for black and white cattle. albert cuyp was born at dort in . he was a brewer by trade, and only painted as an amateur. in spite of this, he was a great landscape painter, and has given delight to thousands by his power of expressing his own love of nature. little is known of cuyp's life, and the date of his death is uncertain, farther than it was later than . in affected enthusiasm, cuyp has been called the dutch claude, but in reality, cuyp surpassed, claude in some respects. the distinction, which mr ruskin draws between them, is that, while claude, in the sense of beauty, is the superior to cuyp, in the sense of truth claude is the inferior. besides cuyp's landscapes, he painted portraits, and what is called 'still life' (dead game, fruit or flower pieces, etc.), but cuyp's triumph was found in his skies, with their 'clearness and coolness,' and in 'expressions of yellow sunlight.' mr ruskin admits, while he is proceeding to censure cuyp, parts might be chosen out of the good pictures of cuyp which have never been equalled in art.' on another occasion, mr ruskin has this passage full of dry humour in reference to cuyp: 'again, look at the large cuyp in dulwich gallery, which mr hazlitt considers "finest in the world," and of which he very complimentarily says, "the tender green of the valleys, the gleaming lake, the purple light of the hills" have an effect ought to have apologized before now for not having studied sufficiently in covent garden to be provided with terms of correct and classical criticism. one of my friends begged me to observe, the other day, that claude was "pulpy;" another added the yet more gratifying information that he was "juicy;" and it is now happily discovered that cuyp is "downy." now i dare say that the sky of this first-rate cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine: all that i have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a sky. we may see for ourselves cuyp's lovely landscapes both in the national gallery and at dulwich. paul potter was born at enkhuysen, in north holland, in , and was the son of a painter. paul potter settled, while still very young, at the hague as an animal painter, and died in his thirtieth year, in . his career, which was thus brief, had promised to be very successful, and he had established his fame, while no more than twenty-two years of age, by painting for prince maurice of nassau that which continues his most renowned, though probably not his best picture, his 'young bull,' for some time in the louvre, now restored to the painter's native country, and placed in the museum at the hague. this picture is considered nearly faultless as a vigorous, if somewhat coarse, representation of animal life in the main figure; but paul potter's later pictures, especially his smaller pictures of pastures with cattle feeding, having fine colouring and fine treatment of light, are now regarded as equally good in their essential excellences, and of wider scope. paul potter etched as well as painted. there is no example of paul potter in the national gallery. jan david de heem[ ] and his son cornelius, the father born in , the son in , and maria von oesterwyck, the elder man's pupil, were eminent flemish and dutch flower and fruit painters. the gorgeous bloom and mellow ripeness in some of the flower and fruit pieces of flemish and dutch painters, like those i have mentioned, are beyond description. i would have you look at them for yourselves, where they are well represented, in the dulwich gallery; i would have you notice also how, as travellers declare of the splendour of tropical flowers, that they are deficient in the tender sweetness and grace of our more sober-tinted and less lavishly-blossoming english flowers; so these flemish and dutch full blown flower pieces have not a trace of the sentiment which modern flower painters cannot help seeking, with good result or bad result, to introduce into every tuft of primroses or of violets, if not into every cluster of grapes and bunch of cherries. from a fact which i have already mentioned, that so many flemish and dutch pictures, which we may often come across, are in england, i am sorry that my space will not suffer me to give a few special words to other famous painters of these schools or school, for they merge into one, to snyders, jan steen, gerard dow, ruysdael, hobbema, van de velde, etc., etc. chapter ix. spanish art--velasquez, - --murillo, - . spanish art, from its dawn to the time of velasquez, had been of a 'severely devotional character,' austere and formal; and although one man did not work a revolution by his independent example, he did something to humanize and widen art. in the rich city of seville in , diego rodriguez, de silva y velasquez,--and not, as he is incorrectly called, diego velasquez de silva, was born, and, according to an andalusian fashion, took his mother's name of velasquez, while his father was of the portuguese house de silva. velasquez was gently born, though his father was in no higher position than that of a lawyer in seville. the painter was well educated, though, according to his english biographer (sir w. stirling maxwell), 'he was still more diligent in drawing on his grammars and copybooks than in turning them to their legitimate use.' the lad's evident bent induced his father to painter. he studied in two different spanish studios, and married the daughter of his second master, whom the talents, assiduity, and good qualities of velasquez had already strongly attached to the young painter. from the first, velasquez struck out what was then a new line in spanish art. he gave himself up to the materialistic studies, to which the flemish and dutch painters were prone, painting diligently 'still life' in every form, taking his living subjects from the streets and way-sides, and keeping a peasant lad as an apprentice, 'who served him for a study in different actions and postures (sometimes crying, sometimes laughing), till velasquez had grappled with every variety of expression.' the result of those studies was velasquez's famous picture of the 'aguador,' or water-carrier of seville, which was carried off by joseph buonaparte in his flight from spain, taken in his carriage at vittoria, and finally presented by ferdinand vii, of spain, as a grateful offering to the duke of wellington, in whose gallery at apsley house the picture remains. 'it is a composition of three figures,' sir w. stirling maxwell writes; 'a sunburnt way-worn seller of water, dressed in a tattered brown jerkin, with his huge earthen jars, and two lads, one of whom receives a sparkling glass of the pure element, whilst his companion quenches his thirst from a pipkin. the execution of the heads and all the details is perfect; and the ragged trader dispensing a few maravidi's worth of his simple stock, maintains, during the transaction, a grave dignity of deportment, highly spanish and characteristic, and worthy of an emperor pledging a great vassal in tokay.' just such a group may still be seen, or was to be seen till very lately, in the quaint streets of seville. i have read an anecdote of velasquez and this picture, which is quite probable, though i cannot vouch for its accuracy. it is said that, while painting the water-carrier day after day, when he had been engaged with his work for several hours, velasquez found himself vexed by perceiving, as it were, the effect of a shadow cast by some of the drapery. small flaw as it might have been, it appeared to him to interfere with and spoil the picture. again and again, in endeavouring to do away with this 'shadow,' velasquez undid portions of his work, and had to repeat them next day, but always, towards the end of his task, the invidious shadow stole upon his vision. at last a friend, who was present and full of admiration for the picture, heard velasquez exclaim, 'that shadow again!' and saw him seize a brush and prepare to dash it across the canvas. the friend remonstrated, besought, and by main force held back the painter, and at last induced him to leave the picture untouched till next day, when velasquez discovered, to his great relief, that the shadow had been in his own wearied young eyes, and not in his admirable representation of the 'water-carrier.' velasquez was in madrid in , when he was in his twenty-fifth year, and having been introduced by the prime minister, olivares, to the king of spain, philip iv., a king who was only known to smile once or twice in his lifetime, whose government was careless and blundering, but who had the reputation of being a man of some intelligence and very considerable taste,--velasquez was received into the king's service with a monthly salary of twenty ducats, and employed to paint the royal portrait. from the time that he became court painter, velasquez was largely occupied in painting portraits of members of the royal family, with special repetitions of the likeness of his most catholic majesty. with velasquez's first portrait of philip in armour, mounted on an andalusian charger, the king was so pleased, that he permitted the picture to be publicly exhibited, amidst the plaudits of the spectators, in front of the church of san felipe el real in madrid. nor was the exhibition a barren honour to the painter, for the king not only 'talked of collecting and in future velasquez should have the monopoly of the royal countenance,' he paid three hundred ducats for the picture. about this time our own charles i., then prince of wales, went in his incognito of charles smith to madrid on his romantic adventure of seeking to woo and win, personally, the infanta of spain, and velasquez is said to have gained charles's notice, and to have at least begun a portrait of him. if it were ever completed it has been lost, a misfortune which has caused spurious pictures, purporting to be the real work, to be offered to the public. sir w. stirling maxwell holds, with great show of truth, that this visit of charles to madrid, when its altars were 'glowing' with the pictures of titian, confirmed the unhappy king's taste for art. in rubens came to madrid as an envoy from the governess of the netherlands, and the two painters, who had many points in common, and who had already corresponded, became fast friends. by the advice of rubens, velasquez was induced to put into execution his cherished desire of visiting italy, the king granting his favourite painter leave of absence, the continuance of his salary, and a special sum for his expenses. velasquez went to venice first, and afterwards to rome, where he was offered, and declined, a suite of apartments in the vatican, asking only free access to the papal galleries. there he copied many portions of michael angelo's 'last judgment'--not a hundred years old, and 'yet undimmed by the morning and evening incense of centuries,' and portions of the frescoes of raphael. at rome velasquez found there before him, domenichino, guido reni, alternating 'between the excitements of the gaming table and the sweet creations of his smooth flowing pencil;' 'nicolas poussin, an adventurer fresh from his norman village; and claude gelée, a pastry-cook's runaway apprentice from lorraine.'[ ] velasquez remained a year in rome. besides his studies he painted three original pictures, one of them, 'joseph's coat,' well known among the painter's comparatively rare religious works, and now in the escurial. in this picture his biographer acknowledges, that 'choosing rather to display his unrivalled skill in delineating vulgar forms than to risk his reputation in the pursuit of a more refined and idealized style,' velasquez's 'hebrew patriarchs are swineherds of estramadura or shepherds of the sierra morena.' from rome velasquez proceeded to naples, where he was enabled by his prudence and forbearance to face without injury the disgraceful 'reign of terror' which the neapolitan artists had established in the south of italy. the neapolitan artists more than any other italian artists are believed to have influenced velasquez's style. in velasquez painted his principal religious work, 'the crucifixion,' for the nunnery of san placido in madrid, a painting in which his power has triumphed successfully over his halting imagination. with regard to the many court groups which velasquez was constantly taking, i may quote sir w. stirling maxwell's amusing paragraph about a curious variety of human beings in the court gallery. 'the alcazar of madrid abounded with dwarfs in the days of philip iv., who was very fond of having them about him, and collected curious specimens of the race, like other rarities. the queen of spain's gallery is, in consequence, rich in portraits of these little monsters, executed by velasquez. they are, for the most part, very ugly, displaying, sometimes in an extreme degree, the deformities peculiar to their stunted growth. maria barbola, immortalized by a place in one of velasquez's most celebrated pictures, was a little dame about three feet and a half in height, with the head and shoulders of a large woman, and a countenance much underjawed, and almost ferocious in expression. her companion, nicolasito pertusano, although better proportioned than the lady, and of a more amicable aspect, was very inferior in elegance as a royal plaything to his contemporary, the valiant sir geoffrey hudson; or his successor in the next reign, the pretty luisillo of queen louisa of orleans. velasquez painted many portraits of these little creatures, generally seated on the ground; and there is a large picture in the louvre representing two of them leading by a cord a great spotted hound, to which they bear the same proportion that men of the usual size bear to a horse.' in velasquez again visited italy, sent by the king this time to collect works of art for the royal galleries and the academy about to be founded. velasquez went by genoa, milan, venice (buying there chiefly the works of tintoret), and parma, to rome and naples, returning to rome. at rome velasquez painted his splendidly characteristic portrait of the pope innocent x., 'a man of coarse features and surly expression, and perhaps the ugliest of all the successors of st peter.' back at madrid, philip continued to load velasquez and his family with favours, appointing the painter quarter-master-general of the king's household with a salary of three thousand ducats a year, and the right of carrying at his girdle a key which opened every lock in the palace. philip is said to have raised velasquez to knighthood in a manner as gracious as the manner of charles v, when he lifted up titian's pencil. in painting one of his most renowned pictures, to which i shall refer again, 'the maids of honour,' velasquez included himself at work on a large picture of the royal family. the painter represented himself with the key of his office at his girdle, and on his breast the red cross of the order of santiago. philip, who came every day to see the progress of this picture, remarked in reference to the figure of the artist, that 'one thing was yet wanting, and taking up the brush painted the knightly insignia with his own royal fingers, thus conferring the accolade with a weapon not recognized in chivalry.' as it is believed, velasquez's court office, with all its prestige and influence, helped in causing his death. king philip went in june, , to the isle of pheasants in the river bidassa, where, on ground which was neither spanish nor french, the spanish and french courts were to meet and celebrate with the greatest magnificence the marriage of the grand monarque and the infanta maria teresa. one of velasquez's official duties was to prepare lodgings for the king on his journeys, and in this instance the lodging included not only the decoration of the castle of fuenterrabia, but the erection of a sumptuous pavilion in which the interviews of the assembled kings and queens and their revelries were to be held. velasquez did his part of the preparations, and doubtless shared in the royal festivities, but returned to madrid so worn out by his undertaking, and by constant attendance on his master, that he was seized with tertian fever, of which he died a few days later, while but in his sixty-first year, to the great grief of his countrymen, and above all of his king. velasquez's wife, doña juana, died eight days after her husband, and was buried in his grave. the couple left one surviving child, a daughter, married to a painter. in one picture, now at vienna, velasquez gives a glimpse of his family life at a time when it would seem that he had four sons and two daughters, so that the fortunate painter's home had not been free from one shadow--that of death, which must have robbed him of five of his children. in this pleasant picture, 'his wife dressed in a brown tunic over a red petticoat, sits in the foreground of a large room, with a pretty little girl leaning on her knees, and the rest of her children grouped around her; behind are the men in deep shadow, one of them, perhaps, being mazo, the lover or the husband of the eldest daughter, and a nurse with a child; and in an alcove velasquez himself appears, standing before his easel, at work on a portrait of philip iv. this is one of the most important works of the master out of the peninsula; the faces of the family sparkle on the sober background like gems. as a piece of easy actual life, the composition has never been surpassed, and perhaps it excels even "the meninas," inasmuch as the hoops and dwarfs of the palace have not intruded upon the domestic privacy of the painter's home, in the northern gallery.'[ ] velasquez seems to have been a man of honour and amiability. he filled a difficult office at the most jealous court in europe with credit. he was true to his friends, and helpful to his brother artists. his biographer writes of velasquez as handsome in person, and describes his costume when he appeared for the last time with his king in the galas at pheasants' isle:--'over a dress richly laced with silver he wore the usual castilian ruff, and a short cloak embroidered with the red cross of santiago; the badge of the order, sparkling with brilliants, was suspended from his neck by a gold chain; and the scabbard and hilt of his sword were of silver, exquisitely chased, and of italian workmanship.' in the likeness of velasquez, which is the frontispiece of sir w. stirling maxwell's 'life,' the painter appears as a man of swarthy complexion, with a long compressed upper lip, unconcealed by his long, elaborately trimmed moustache; his hair, or wig, is arranged in two large frizzed bunches on each side of a face which is inclined to be lantern-jawed. he wears a dark doublet with a 'standing white collar.' velasquez's excellence as a painter was to be found, like that of rembrandt, in his truth to nature; but the field of truth presented to the stately spaniard, while it had its own ample share of humour, was a widely different field from that which offered itself to the dutch burgher. together with absolute truth, velasquez had the ease and facility in expressing truth which are only acquired by a great master. like rubens, velasquez made essays in many branches of painting. in sacred art, if we except his 'crucifixion,' he did not attain a high place. with regard to his landscapes, sir david wilkie bore witness:--'titian seems his model, but he has also the breadth and picturesque effect for which claude and salvator rosa are remarkable;' and sir david added of those landscapes, 'they have the very same sun we see, and the air we breathe, the very soul and spirit of nature.' velasquez's _genre_ pictures, to which i shall refer by and by, are excellent, but the fate was kind which confined him largely to portrait painting. it was brought as a reproach against velasquez in his lifetime, that he could paint a head and nothing else, to which he replied with mingled spirit, sense, and good nature, that his detractors flattered him, 'for he knew nobody of whom it could be said that he painted a head thoroughly well.' sir w. stirling maxwell asserts of velasquez's portrait painting, that no artist 'ever followed nature with more catholic fidelity; his cavaliers are as natural as his boors; he neither refined the vulgar, nor vulgarized the refined,' and goes on to quote this among other criticism:--'his portraits baffle description and praise; he drew the minds of men; they live, breathe, and are ready to walk out of the frames.' sir william winds up with the enthusiastic declaration, 'such pictures as these are real history; we know the persons of philip iv, and olivares, as familiarly as if we had paced the avenues of the pardo with digby and howell, and perhaps we think more favourably of their characters.' i shall borrow still further from sir w. stirling maxwell's graphic and entertaining book, descriptions of two of velasquez's _genre_ pictures, 'the maids of honour,' and the more celebrated 'spinners,' both at madrid. 'the scene (of the first) is a long room in a quarter of the old palace which was called the prince's quarter, and the subject, velasquez at work on a large picture of the royal family. to the extreme right of the composition is seen the back of the easel and the canvas on which he is engaged; and beyond it spalette, pausing to converse, and to observe the effect of his performance. in the centre stands the little infanta maria margarita, taking a cup of water from a salver which doña maria augustina sarmiento, maid of honour to the queen, presents kneeling. to the left, doña isabel de velasco, another meniña, seems to be dropping a courtesy; and the dwarfs, maria barbolo and nicolas pertusano, stand in the foreground, the little man putting his foot on the quarters of a great tawny hound, which despises the aggression, and continues in a state of solemn repose. some paces behind these figures, doña marcela de ulloa, a lady of honour in nun-like weeds, and a _guardadimas,_ are seen in conversation; at the far end of the room an open door gives a view of a staircase, up which don josef nieto, queen's apasentador, is retiring; and near this door there hangs on the wall a mirror, which, reflecting the countenance of the king and queen, shows that they form part of the principal group, although placed beyond the bounds of the picture. the room is hung with paintings which palomino assures us are works of rubens; and it is lighted by three windows in the left wall, and by the open door at the end, an arrangement of which an artist will at once comprehend the difficulties. the perfection of art which conceals art, was never better attained than in this picture. velasquez seems to have anticipated the discovery of daguerre, and taking a real room, and real chance grouped people, to have fixed them, as it were by magic, for all time on his canvas. the little fair-haired infanta is a pleasing study of childhood; with the hanging-lip and full cheek of the austrian family, she has a fresh complexion and lovely blue eyes, and gives a promise of beauty which as empress she never fulfilled. her young attendants, girls of thirteen or fourteen, contrast agreeably with the ill-favoured dwarf beside them; they are very pretty, especially doña isabel de velasco, who died a reigning beauty, and their hands are painted with peculiar delicacy. their dresses are highly absurd, their figures being concealed by long stiff corsets and prodigious hoops; for these were the days when the mode was-- "supporters, pooters, fardingales, above the loynes to weare;" and the _guardainfante_, the oval hoop peculiar to spain, was in full blow; and the robes of a dowager might have curtained the tun of heidelberg, and the powers of velasquez were baffled by the perverse fancy of "fribble, the woman's tailor." the gentle and majestic hound, stretching himself and winking drowsily, is admirably painted, and seems a descendant of the royal breed immortalized by titian in portraits of the emperor charles and his son.' 'the spinners:' 'the scene is a large weaving-room, in which an old woman and young one sit, the first at her spinning-wheel, and the second winding yarn, with three girls beside them, one of whom plays with a cat. in the background, standing within an alcove filled with the light from an unseen window, are two other women displaying a large piece of tapestry to a lady customer, whose graceful figure recalls that which has given its name to terburg's picture of "the satin gown." of the composition, the painter mengs observed, "it seemed as if the hand had no part in it, and it had been the work of pure thought."' velasquez, who must have seen many a bull fight, has left the world a fine example of field sports in 'the boar hunt,' in our national gallery, a picture which was bought for two thousand two hundred pounds from lord cowley. when ambassador at the court of spain, it was given to him by ferdinand vii. in a circular pen in the pardo, 'philip iv. and a party of cavaliers display their skill in slaying boars, to a few ladies, who sit secure in heavy old-fashioned blue coaches,' while motley groups of courtiers and peasants, huntsmen and hounds, postilions and their mules fill the foreground. sir edwin landseer remarked of this picture that he had never before seen 'so much large art on so small a scale.' bartolomé estévan murillo was born at seville in , and was therefore nearly twenty years younger than his great countryman velasquez. murillo seems to have been of obscure origin, and to have begun his life in humble circumstances. there are traditions of his being self-taught, of his studying ragged boys, himself little more than a boy, in the gypsy quarter of triana in seville; of his painting in the marketplace, where he probably found the originals of the heads of saints and madonnas (by which he made a little money in selling them for south america) in the peasants who came to seville with their fruit and vegetables. in , murillo, then twenty-four years of age, visited madrid, and was kindly received, and aided in his art by his senior and fellow artist, the court painter, velasquez. it had been murillo's intention to proceed to england to study under van dyck, but the death of the latter put a stop to the project. murillo was prevented from making the painter's pilgrimage to italy by want of means, but the loss of culture was so far supplied by the instructions given to him by velasquez. in , when murillo was twenty-seven years of age, he returned to seville, and settled there, becoming as successful as he deserved; and being acknowledged as the head of the school of seville, where he established the academy of art, and was its first president. murillo married, in , a lady of some fortune, and was accustomed to entertain at his house the most exclusive society of seville. in , murillo was at cadiz painting a picture of the marriage of st catherine in the church of the capuchins there, when, in consequence of the accidental fall of the scaffolding, he received so severe an injury, that he was forced to leave his work incomplete, and to return to seville, where he died within a few weeks, aged sixty-four years. he had two sons, and an only daughter, who was a nun, having taken the veil eight years before her father's death. murillo appears to have been in character a gentle, enthusiastic man, not without a touch of fun and frolic. he would remain for hours in the sacristy of the cathedral of seville before 'the solemn awful picture of the 'deposition from the cross,' by pedro de campana. when murillo was asked by the sacristan why he stood thus gazing there, the painter answered, 'i am waiting till these holy men have finished their work.' by his own desire, murillo was buried before this picture. before another 'too truthful picture of las dos cadaveres' in the small church of the hospital of the caridad, murillo used to hold his nose. one of murillo's pictures has the odd name of 'la virgen sarvilleta,' or the virgin of the napkin. murillo was working at the convento de la merced, which is almost filled with his works, when the cook of the convent begged a memorial of him, offering as the canvas a napkin, on which murillo at once painted a 'brilliant glowing madonna,' with a child, 'which seems quite to bound forward out of the picture.'[ ] murillo's portrait by himself represents him in a dark doublet having wide sleeves and a square collar closed in front. his thumb is in his pallet, and the other hand, with fingers taper and delicate as those of a hand by van dyck, holds one of his brushes. the smooth face, with regular features, is pale and thoughtful, and with the womanliness of the aspect increased from the dark hair, which is divided slightly to one side, being allowed to fall down in long wavy curls on the shoulders. in spite of the naturalistic studies of his early youth, and even of the naturalistic treatment which he gave to his first religious work, murillo was possessed of greater and higher imagination than velasquez could claim, and the longer murillo lived and worked the more refined and exalted his ideas became. unlike velasquez, murillo was a great religious painter, and during the last years of his life he painted sacred subjects almost exclusively. but, like velasquez, murillo was eminently a spanish painter--his virgins are dark-eyed, olive-complexioned maidens, and even his holy child is a spanish babe. without the elevation and the training of the best italian painters, murillo has left abundant proofs of great original genius. the painter's works are widely circulated, but the chief are still in seville. six are in the church of the caridad, and these six include his famous 'moses striking the rock,' and his 'miracle of the loaves and fishes;' seven 'murillos' are in the convento de la merced, among them murillo's own favourite picture, which he called 'mi cicadro' of 'st thomas of villaneuva.' 'st thomas was the favourite preacher of charles v., and was created archbishop of valencia, where he seemed to spend the whole of his revenues in charity, yet never contracted any debt, so that his people used to believe that angels must minister to his temporal wants. he is represented at his cathedral door, distributing alms, robed in black, with a white mitre. a poor cripple kneels at his feet, and other mendicants are grouped around.' in the cathedral, seville, is murillo's 'angel de la guarda,' 'in which a glorious seraph, with spreading wings, leads a little trustful child by the hand, and directs him to look beyond earth into the heavenly light;' and his 'st antonio.' 'the saint is represented kneeling in a cell, of which all the poor details are faithfully given, while the long arcade of the cloister can be seen through the half-open door. above, in a transparent light, which grows from himself, the child jesus appears, and descends, floating through wreaths of angels, drawn down by the power of prayer.'[ ] another of murillo's renowned pictures is that of the patron saints of seville, 'santa rufina and santa justina,' who were stoned to death for refusing to bow down to the image of venus. with regard to murillo's pictures of flower-girls and beggar-boys, i think my readers are sure to have seen an engraving of one of the former, '_the_ flower-girl,' as it is called, with a face as fresh and radiant as her flowers. in the national gallery there is a large holy family of murillo's, and in dulwich gallery there is a laughing boy, an irresistible specimen of brown-cheeked, white-teethed drollery. chapter x. art--nicolas poussin, - --claude[ ] lorraine, - --charles le brun, - --watteau, - --greuze, - . nicolas poussin was born at andely in normandy in . of his parentage little seems to have been ascertained, but it is believed that he was well educated, and his classical learning in after life was reckoned great. he was regularly trained to be a painter under a master in his native town, and afterwards in paris. dissatisfied with the patronage which he received in paris, poussin went to rome when he was about thirty years of age. in rome he is said to have lived on familiar terms with a sculptor whose devotion to antique art influenced his taste, and lent it the strong classical bent which it retained. poussin studied regularly in the school of domenichino. after some delay in attracting public notice, 'the death of germanicus,' and 'the capture of jerusalem,' which poussin painted for cardinal barberini, won general approval. in , when nicolas poussin was in his thirty-fifth year, he married the sister of his pupil, gaspar dughet, who took poussin's name, and is known as a painter, inferior to his master, by the name of gaspar poussin. nicolas poussin returned to paris when he was a middle-aged man, was presented to the king, louis xiii., by cardinal richelieu, and offered apartments in the tuileries, with the title of painter in ordinary, and a salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year. poussin agreed to settle in paris, but on his going back to rome to fetch his wife, and on the king of france's dying, the attractions of the eternal city proved too great for the painter, and in place of removing his home to his native country, he lived for the rest of his years in rome, and died there in , when he was seventy-one years of age. except what can be judged of him from his work, i do not know that much has been gathered of the private character and life of nicolas poussin, notwithstanding that there was a biography written of him fifty years ago by lady calcott, and that his letters have been published in paris. in the absence of conclusive testimony one may conclude with some probability that he was 'quiet,' like his best paintings; a man who minded his own business, and did not trouble the world by astonishing actions, good or bad.[ ] in painting his own picture, from which an engraving has been taken, poussin's classical preferences seem to have passed into the likeness, for in the dress of the seventeenth century, the cloak (not unlike a toga), the massive hand with the heavy signet-ring resting on what looks like a closed portfolio, the painter has something of the severe air and haughty expression of an old roman; still more, perhaps, of the french-romans, if i may call them so, of whom revolutionary times nearly two centuries later, afforded so many examples. this is a handsome, dignified face, with austerity in its pride. the slightly curled hair is thrown back with a certain consciousness from the knit brow, and from the shoulders. there is only the faintest shadow of a moustache over the cleanly cut, firmly closed mouth. poussin painted largely, and his pictures have been often engraved. with harmonious composition, good drawing and colouring, his pictures alike profited and suffered from the classical atmosphere in which they had their being. they gained in that correctness which in its highest form becomes noble truthfulness, but they lost in freedom. the figures in the pictures had frequently the statuesqueness which in sculpture suits the material, but in painting is stiffness. nicolas poussin had an exceptional reputation for a historical painter in his day. as a landscape painter, mr ruskin, while waging war with nicolas poussin's brother-in-law and assumed namesake, gaspar, notably excepts nicolas from his severest strictures, and treats his efforts in landscape painting with marked respect. at the same time, however, the critic censures the painter for a want of thorough acquaintance with nature, and the laws of nature, ignorance not uncommon in any day, and nearly universal in nicolas poussin's day. 'the great master of elevated ideal landscape,' mr ruskin calls nicolas poussin, and illustrates his excellence in one respect, after contrasting it with the slovenliness of sir joshua reynolds, by describing the vine in poussin's 'nursing of jupiter,' in the dulwich gallery, thus:-- 'every vine-leaf, drawn with consummate skill and untiring diligence, produces not only a true group of the most perfect grace and beauty, but one which in its pure and simple truth belongs to every age of nature, and adapts itself to the history of all time.' 'one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced, the work of a really great mind,' mr ruskin distinguishes the 'phocian' of nicolas poussin in the national gallery, before proceeding to point out its faults. again, mr ruskin, writing of the street in the centre of another landscape by nicolas poussin, indicates it with emphasis:--'the street in the centre of the really great landscape of poussin (great in feeling, at least) marked in the dulwich gallery,' the criticism with which mr ruskin follows up this praise is so perfect a bit of word-painting, that i cannot refrain from writing it down here. 'the houses are dead square masses, with a light side and a dark side, and black touches for windows. there is no suggestion of anything in any of the spaces, the light wall is dead grey, the dark wall dead grey, and the windows dead black. how differently would nature have treated us. she would have let us see the indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image of the virgin of the tiled eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles with the doves upon them, and the carved roman capital built into the wall, and the white and blue stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and the flapping corners of the neat blinds. all would have been there; not as such, not like the corn, nor blinds, nor tiles, not to be comprehended nor understood, but a confusion of yellow and black spots and strokes, carried far too fine for the eye to follow; microscopic in its minuteness, and filling every atom and space with mystery, out of which would have arranged itself the general impression of truth and life.' once more, mr ruskin freely admits that 'all the landscape of nicolas poussin is imagination.' mr ruskin's first definition of ideal landscape is in this manner. every different tree and leaf, every bud, has a perfect form, which, were it not for disease or accident, it would have attained; just as every individual human face has an ideal form, which but for sin and suffering it would present: and the ideal landscape-painter has realized the perfect form, and offers it to the world, and that in a sense quite distinct from the fallacy of improving nature. but i wish to take my readers further into imaginative landscape, and to show it to them, if possible, under additional lights. i despair of succeeding if i cannot do it by one or two simple examples. in passing through a gallery we may stop before a picture to be struck, almost startled, by the exact copy which it presents of some scene in nature; how like the clouds in the sky, the leaves on the trees, the very plumage of the birds! but pass on to another picture which may or may not have the same exact likeness, and we are possessed with quite another feeling; instead of being merely surprised by the cleverness of the imitation, we feel a thrill of delight at a reproduction of nature. in this picture there are not only the clouds we remember, but we can almost feel the shadows which they cast, and the air which stirs them. these tree-leaves are not only green, or yellow, or russet, they are tender, or crisp living leaves. one half expects to see the birds' throats swell, and hear the sweetness or the shrillness of their songs. the first picture, with all its correctness, brightness, richness, or delicacy it may be, remains bare, hard, and barren, compared to the second. i cannot explain to my readers the cause of the difference, i can only show it to them as they may see it for themselves, and say that i suppose it proceeds from this--that the second painter has seen farther into the heart of nature than the first, and has been able by subtler touches to make us see with his eyes. but imaginative landscape is much more than this vivid feeling and expression of nature; there is not a cloud, or leaf, or bird too many or out of keeping with the place and the hour. the clouds are the very clouds of sunset, or sunrise, or high noon--clouds differing widely from each other, as you have no doubt observed. the trees are the beeches, or chestnuts, or pines, which would grow on the conformation of rocks, in the sheltered nook, or on the breezy upland; the birds are the linnets or the larks, the thrushes or the lapwings, which frequent these special trees, and may be seen and heard at this particular hour. again, landscape often tells a story, and tells it inimitably. my readers have heard of the ballad of the 'two corbies,' which the writer of the ballad has made to meet and tell gruesomely where and on what carrion their feast has been. suppose the writer of the ballad had been a painter, he might have painted the story as intelligibly by the lone hill-side, the bleaching bones of the faithful hound and gallant grey, the two loathly blue-black birds satiated with their prey. there is a significant old scotch song with a ballad ring, by lady nairne, two verses of which form each a complete picture not only of different seasons, but of different phases of feeling--happiness and misery. 'bonnie ran the burnie down, wandering and winding; sweetly sang the birds aboon, care never minding. 'but now the burn comes down apace, roaring and reaming, and for the wee birdies' sang wild howlets screaming.' imagine these two verses painted, and the painter, from a lack of comprehension, introducing the 'wild howlets screaming' _beside the burnie_, 'wandering and winding,' and the 'wee birdies' foolishly and inconsequently singing with their feeble song drowned in the rush of the burn (no longer a burnie), 'roaring and reaming,' when the 'spate' is spreading desolation on every side. don't you see how the picture would be spoilt, and the story of complete contrast left untold? i have taken advisedly an extreme and, therefore an unlikely case of halting imagination. but in imaginative landscape every 'white flower with its purple stain,' every crushed butterfly, is made to play its part in the whole, and at the same time due proportion is never lost sight of, and the less is always kept subordinate to the greater. i have already had occasion to mention examples of nicolas poussin in the national gallery and in dulwich gallery. claude gelée, better known as claude lorraine, was a native of lorraine, and was born at chateau de chamagne in the vosges, in . his parents were in humble life, and apprenticed claude to a baker and pastry-cook. according to some biographers the cooks of lorraine were in such request that they occasionally repaired to rome with their apprentices in their train to serve the successor of st peter, and claude was thus carried, in the way of trade, to the city which might well have been the goal of his ambition. according to other writers of art histories, claude abandoned the kneading-trough and the oven; and it was as a runaway apprentice that by some occult means he reached rome. and when he had arrived he entered into the service of a landscape painter of good repute, to whom he was colour-boy as well as cook. the last is the account, so far, which claude gave of himself to a friend, and it is hardly likely either that he misrepresented his history, or that his friend invented such details, though lately french authorities have questioned the authenticity of the narrative. claude remained for nearly the entire remainder of a long life in rome. he only once re-visited france, while he was yet a young man, under thirty years of age, in or . he is supposed to have painted his earliest pictures and executed his etchings about this time, and to have painted his best pictures fifteen years later, when he was in the maturity of his life and powers. he was counted successful during his life time, as a landscape painter, but did not amass a larger fortune than about two thousand pounds.[ ] he was a slow and careful painter (working a fortnight at a picture with little apparent progress); his painstaking work, and his custom of keeping a book, in which he verified his pictures, are about the most that i can tell you of the habits of one of the foreign painters, who has been most fully represented in england, and was long in the highest favour with english lovers of art. claude lorraine died at rome in the eighty-third year of his age, in . claude lorraine's name has become a very vexed name with art critics. there was a time when he had an unsurpassed reputation as a landscape painter. the possession of a claude was enough to confer art glory on a country-house, and possibly for this reason england, in public and private collections, has more 'claudes' than are held by any other country. but claude's admirers, among whom sir george beaumont, the great art critic of his generation, took the lead, have had their day, and, if they have not by any means passed away, are on the wane. the wrathful indignation of the english landscape painter, turner, at the praise which was so glibly lavished on claude--an indignation that caused turner to bequeath two of his own landscape paintings to the trustees of the national gallery, on the caustic condition that they should always be placed between the two celebrated 'claudes,' known as 'the marriage of isaac and rebecca' and 'the embarkation of the queen of sheba'--helped to shake the english art world's faith in its former idol. mr ruskin's adoption and proclamation of turner's opinion shook the old faith still further. this reversal of a verdict with regard to claude is peculiar; it is by no means uncommon for the decision of contemporaries to be set aside, and we shall hear of an instance presently, in the case of the painter le brun. in fact, it is often ominous with regard to a man's future fame, when he is 'cried up to the skies' in his own day. the probability may be that his easy success has been won by something superficial and fleeting. but claude's great popularity has been in another generation, and with another nation. english taste may have been in fault; or another explanation seems preferable--that claude's sense of beauty was great, with all its faults of expression, and he gave such glimpses of a beautiful world as the gazers on his pictures were capable of receiving, which to them proved irresistible. while claude adopted an original style as a landscape painter, so far as his contemporaries were concerned, he was to such a degree self taught, and only partially taught, that it is said he never learnt to paint figures--those in his pictures were painted by other painters, and that claude even painted animals badly. mr ruskin has been hard on claude, whether justly or unjustly, i cannot pretend to say. the critic denies the painter not only a sense of truth in art, but all imagination as a landscape painter 'of men of name,' mr ruskin writes, 'perhaps claude is the best instance of a want of imagination, nearly total, borne out by painful but untaught study of nature, and much feeling for abstract beauty of form, with none whatever for harmony of expression.' mr ruskin condemns in the strongest terms 'the mourning and murky olive browns and verdigris greens, in which claude, with the industry and intelligence of a sèvres china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over his childish foreground.' but mr ruskin himself acknowledges, with a reservation, claude's charm in foliage, and pronounces more conditionally his power, when it was at its best, in skies--a region in which the greater, as well as the less, poussin was declared to fail signally; 'a perfectly genuine and untouched sky of claude,' mr ruskin writes, 'is indeed most perfect, and beyond praise, in all qualities of air; though even with him i often feel rather that there is a great deal of pleasant air between me and the firmament, than that the firmament itself is only air.' when all has been said that can be said, let us look at a mellow or a sunny claude on any wall where it may hang, and judge for ourselves of the satisfaction it is calculated to give. claude was fond of painting scenes on the tiber and in the roman campagna, but while he tried to reproduce the hills and woodlands of italy, he did not seek to paint the mountain landscapes of the apennines. besides claude's numerous works in england and scattered through other countries, some of his finest paintings are in the doria and sciarra palaces in rome. he rarely put his name to his works; when he did so he signed it frequently 'claudio,' sometimes 'claudius.' i have spoken of his book of sketches, in which he had been wont to note on the back of the sketch the date of the completed picture, and to whom sold. this book he called the 'libro di verita,' or, book of truth, and its apparent use was to check the sale of spurious paintings in claude's name, even during his lifetime. the 'book of truth' is in possession of the duke of devonshire, and has been employed in recent years with reference to the end for which it seemed designed, so woe to that country-house which has long pride that 'claude' does not happen to have a place in the 'book of truth,' though i do not know that it is at all certain that claude took the precaution of inscribing _every_ painting which he painted after a certain date in the 'book of truth.' claude lorraine is well represented in the national gallery. engravings of his pictures are common. charles le brun was born in paris, in . he was trained to be a painter, and went young to rome, studying there for six years under the guidance of nicolas poussin. le brun returned to paris, and, through the patronage of the chancellor segnier, was introduced to the court, and got the most favourable opportunities of practising his profession with worldly success. he speedily acquired a great name, and was appointed painter to the king, louis xiv. le brun had enough influence with his royal master, and with the great minister colbert, to succeed in establishing, while the painter was yet a young man, the royal academy of art, of which he was the first member, and virtually the head, holding, in his own person, the directorship of the gobelin tapestry works, which was to be the privilege of a member of the academy. le brun continued in the utmost favour with the king, who, not content with employing the painter largely at fontainebleau and in versailles, invested him with the order of st michael, bestowed on him letters of nobility, and visited him frequently at his work, occasions when there were not wanting adroit courtiers to liken the grand monarque to the emperor charles v., and le brun to titian. le brun seems to have been a man of energy, confidence, and industry, neither mentally before nor after his time, and by no means too retiring, meditative, or original, to fail to profit by his outward good fortune. he wrote, as well as painted, artistic treatises, which were received as oracular utterances, and entirely deferred to in the schools of his day. he died at paris in , when he was in his seventieth year. le brun's real merits as a painter were limited to respectable abilities and acquirements, together with florid quickness and ease, and such an eye to what was splendid and scenic as suited admirably a decorator of palaces in an age which prized sumptuousness, and an exaggeration of dramatic effect, over every other quality. nicolas poussin's quiet refinement of style became in le brun what is called academic (conventionally learned), pompous, and grandiose, and men decidedly preferred the degeneration. but later critics, who have not the natural partiality of the french to the old master, return to their first loves, and condemn le brun's swelling violence, both in the tints and poses of his figures. among his most famous works, which have been magnificently engraved, are his 'battles of alexander.' antoine watteau was born at valenciennes in . a very different painter from le brun, he was yet as characteristic of french art in the reign of louis xiv. i think my readers must be familiar with his name, and i dare say they associate it, as i do, not only with the fans which were painted largely after his designs, but with mock pastorals and sèvres china. i don't know if his birth-place at valenciennes, with its chief product of dainty lace, had anything to do with it, but the other items of poor watteau's history are considerably removed from the very artificial grace which one connects with his name. he was the son of a carpenter, and struggled up, by the hard instrumentality of third-rate masters and of picture-dealers, to the rank which he attained among artists, taking his stand from the first, however, as the painter of well-bred, well-apparelled people--the frequenters of _bals masqués,_ and _fêtes champêtres,_ who were only playing at shepherds and shepherdesses. watteau was elected an academician in , when he was thirty-three years of age, and he afterwards came to england, but did not remain there. he died of consumption at nogent-sur-marne in , when he was thirty-six years of age.[ ] watteau's gifts were his grace and brilliance on a small scale. he did not draw well; as to design, his composition may be said to be suited to such a work as the collection of 'fashionable figures,' which he engraved and left behind him. yet, if we were to see at this moment some of his exquisite groups of ladies in sacques and watteau hats, and cavaliers in flowing wigs and lace, cravats, i have no doubt that the most of us would admire them much, for they are exceedingly pretty, and exceeding prettiness is attractive, particularly to women. but i would have my readers to remember that this art is a finical and soulless art, after all. i would fain have them take this as their maxim, 'that the art is greatest which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.' jean baptiste greuze was born at tournus in burgundy in . he studied painting from his youth in the studios of artists at lyons, paris, and rome, and his studies resulted in his being a celebrated genre painter. he only painted one historical picture, but, with the touchy vanity which seemed natural to the man, he ranked his genre pictures as high art; and when he was placed in the ordinary list of genre painters on his election as a member of the french academy of painting, greuze resented the imputation, and withdrew from the academy. he died in , aged seventy-nine years. greuze was a showy, clever, but neither earnest nor truthful painter of domestic subjects and family pictures. his pictures of women and heads of girls, the expression in some of which has been severely condemned, are among his best known works, and by these he is represented in the national gallery.[ ] chapter xi. holbein, - --van dyck, - --lely, - --canaletto, - --kneller, - . hans holbein, sometimes entitled hans the younger, was born at augsburg about or . he was the son of a painter, and belonged to a family of painters, one or more of whom had preceded hans holbein in leaving augsburg, and taking up his residence at basle. there holbein was under the patronage of, and on terms of friendly intercourse with, the great scholar erasmus. one bad result proceeded from this friendly familiarity, that of establishing or originating the charge that holbein, as a young man, at least, was coarse and dissipated in his habits. the evidence is sufficiently curious. there is still in existence the copy of a latin book, called the 'praise of folly,' written by erasmus, which holbein, not being a scholar, could not have read for himself, but which, according to tradition, erasmus himself, or some other friend, read to him, while holbein was so delighted with the satire that he covered the margin of the book with illustrative sketches. (the sketches remain, and are unmistakably holbein's.) opposite a passage, recording the want of common sense and energy in many learned men, holbein had drawn the figure of a student, and written below, '_erasmus_.' the book coming again into the hands of erasmus, he was offended with the liberty taken by the painter., and sought to retaliate in kind by writing below the sketch of a rude boor drinking, '_holbein_.' in spite of the rough jesting, the friendship between scholar and painter was not interrupted. in these early days holbein sometimes practised painting on glass, after the example of some of his kinsmen. at basle, holbein painted what is considered his finest work, the 'meier madonna,' now at darmstadt, with a copy in the dresden gallery, and there he executed the designs for his series of woodcuts of the 'dance of death.' at basle holbein married, while still a young man. the presumption that the painter's marriage, like that of his countryman, albert dürer, was unhappy, has rested on the foundation that he left his wife and her children behind when he repaired to england, and that although he re-visited basle, and saw his wife and family, they did not return with him to england. a fancied confirmation to the unhappiness of the marriage is found in the expression of the wife in a portrait which holbein painted of her and his children when he was at basle. 'cross-looking and red-eyed,' one critic calls the unlucky woman; another describes her as 'a plain, coarse-looking, middle-aged woman,' with an expression 'certainly mysterious and unpleasant.' holbein's latest biographer[ ] has proved that the forsaken wife, elssbeth schmid, was a widow with one son when holbein married her, and has conjectured that she was probably not only older than holbein, but in circumstances which rendered her independent of her husband. so far the critic has done something to clear hans holbein from the miserable accusation often brought against him, that he abandoned his wife and children to starve at basle, while he sunned himself in such court favour as could be found in england. but, indeed, while hans holbein may have been honest and humane enough to have been above such base suspicions, there is no trace of him which survives that goes to disprove the probability that he was a self-willed, not over-scrupulous man, if he was also a vigorous and thorough worker. holbein came to england about or , when he must have been thirty-one or thirty-two years of age, and repaired to chelsea to the house of sir thomas more, to whom the painter brought a letter of introduction, and still better credentials in the present, from erasmus to more, of the portrait of erasmus, painted by hans holbein. there are so many portraits and copies of portraits of erasmus, not only by holbein, but by other painters--for erasmus was painted by albert dürer and quintin matsys,--that this special portrait, like the true holbein family portrait of the more family, remains very much a subject of speculation. most of us must be well acquainted with the delightful account which erasmus gave of sir thomas more's country-house at chelsea, and the life of its occupants. it has been cited hundreds of times as an example of what an english family has been, and what it may be in dutiful discipline, simple industry, and high cultivation, when sir thomas's young daughters repeated psalms in latin to beguile the time in the drudging process of churning the butter. during holbein's residence in or visits to the mores' house at chelsea, he sketched or painted the original of the more family picture. holbein was introduced to henry viii, by sir thomas more, and was immediately taken into favour by the king, and received into his service, with a lodging in the palace, a general salary of thirty pounds a year, and separate payment for his paintings. according to horace walpole, holbein's palace lodging was probably 'the little study called the new library' of square glazed bricks of different colours, designed by the painter at whitehall. (this gateway, with the porch at wilton, were the painter's chief architectural achievements.) by another statement, holbein's house was on london bridge, where it was destroyed in the great fire. i have already alluded to the anecdote of the value which henry viii, put on holbein. it was to this effect: that when an aggrieved courtier complained to the king that the painter had taken precedence of him--a nobleman, the king replied, 'i have many noblemen, but i have only one hans holbein.' in fact, holbein received nothing save kindness from henry viii.; and for that matter, there seemed to be something in common between bluff king hal and the equally bluff german hans. but on one occasion hans holbein was said to have run the risk of forfeiting his imperious master's favour by the too favourable miniature which the painter was accused of painting of anne of cleves. at henry's court holbein painted many a member of the royal family, noble and knight, and english gentleman and lady. his fortune had made him a portrait painter, but he was fully equal to other branches of art, as shown by his 'meier madonna,' and still more by the designs which have been preserved of his famous allegory of 'the triumphs of riches and poverty,' painted for the hall of the easterling steelyard, the quarters of the merchants of allemagne, then traders in london. in addition to painting portraits holbein designed dagger hilts, clasps, cups, as some say after a study of the goldsmith's work of cellini. for a long time it was believed that hans holbein died after mary tudor succeeded to the english throne; indeed, some said that his death had been occasioned or hastened by that change in the affairs of men, which compelled him to quit his lodgings in the palace to make room for 'the new painter,' sir antony more, who came in the suite of mary's well-beloved husband, philip of spain. there was even a theory, creditable to hans holbein, drawn from this conclusion, that he might have adopted the protestant views of his late gracious master, and have stood by them stoutly, and so far forfeited all recognition from the bitter catholic mary. but, unfortunately for the tradition and theory, and for the later pictures attributed to hans holbein, his will has been discovered, and that quite recently, proving, from the date of its administration, his death of the plague (so far only the tradition had been right), when yet only in his forty-eighth year, as early as , four years before the death of henry viii. in spite of court patronage holbein did not die a rich man, and there is an impression that he was recklessly improvident in his habits. holbein had re-visited basle several times, and the council had settled on him a pension of fifty florins a year, provided he would return and reside in basle within two years, while his wife was to receive a pension of forty florins a year during holbein's two years' absence. holbein did not comply with the terms of the settlement. about the time of his death his son philip, then a lad of eighteen, was a goldsmith in paris. of hans holbein's portraits i have two to draw from; one, painted in his youth at basle, shows the painter in an open doublet, and curious stomacher-like shirt, and having on his head a great flapping hat. his face is broad and smooth-skinned, with little hair seen, and the features, the eyes especially, rather small for such an expanse of cheek and chin. the other picture of holbein to which i have referred belongs certainly to a considerably later period of his life, and represents him with short but bushy hair, and short bushy beard and moustache, a man having a broad stout person with a mixture of dauntlessness and _bonhommie_ in his massive face. mr ruskin says of holbein, as a painter, that he was complete in intellect; what he saw he saw with his whole soul, and what he painted he painted with his whole might. in deep and reverential feeling holbein was far behind his countryman albert dürer, but holbein was far more fully furnished than dürer (unless indeed as albrecht dürer showed himself in that last picture of 'the apostles') in the means of his art; he was a better draughtsman in the maturity of his powers, and a far better colourist. for hans holbein was not more famous for the living truthfulness of his likenesses ('a man very excellent in making physiognomies'), than for the 'inimitable bloom' that he imparted to his pictures, which 'he touched, till not a touch became discernible.' yet beneath this bloom, along with his truthfulness, there was a dryness and hardness in holbein's treatment of his subjects, and he is far below titian, rubens, and even rembrandt as a portrait painter. holbein was in the habit of painting his larger portraits on a peculiar green, and his miniatures on a blue background. he drew his portrait sketches with black and red chalk on a paper tinted flesh-colour. it is said, that with the exception, of philip wouwermann, no painter has been so unfortunate in having the works of other painters attributed to him as hans holbein has been, and 'that three out of every four pictures ascribed to him are misnamed.'[ ] the 'meier, or meyer madonna,' is otherwise called 'the meier family adoring the infant christ in the arms of the virgin.' the subject is understood to prove that it must have been painted in holbein's youth, before protestantism was triumphant at basle. the figures are the burgomaster meier and his wife, whom holbein painted twice; their son, with a little boy _nude_ beside him; another woman, elderly, conjectured to be a grandmother of the family, and beside her the young daughter of the house. in the centre on a turkey carpet stands the madonna, holding in her arms an infant stretching out its left hand to the group of worshippers. in course of time, and in its transfer from hand to hand, a doubt has arisen with regard to the subject of this picture. some critics have regarded it as a votive picture dedicated in a private chapel to commemorate the recovery from sickness or the death of a child. this conjecture seems to rest mainly on the fact, that the child in the dresden copy (it is said to be otherwise in the darmstadt picture) is of an aspect so sickly, as to have given rise to the impression that it represented an ailing, or even a dead child, and no glorious child christ. critics have gone still farther, and imagined that the child is a figure of the soul of a dead child (souls were sometimes painted by the old painters as new-born children), or of the soul of the elder and somewhat muffled-up woman who might have been recently dead. mr ruskin regards the picture as an offering for the recovery of a sick child, and thus illustrates it: 'the received tradition respecting the holbein madonna is beautiful, and i believe the interpretation to be true. a father and a mother have prayed to her for the life of their sick child. she appears to them, her own child christ in her arms; she puts down her child beside them, takes their child into her arms instead; it lies down upon her bosom, and stretches its hand to its father and mother, saying farewell.' yet another much more prosaic and less attractive interpretation of the picture has been suggested by holbein's biographer, that the two children may represent the same child. the child standing by his brother may be the boy restored to health, the feeble child in the arms of the virgin may indicate the same child in its sickness, while the extended arm may point to the seat of the disease in an arm broken or injured. after all, the child may simply be a child christ, marred in execution. i have given this dispute at length, because i think it is interesting, and, so far as i know, unique in reference to such a picture. by an odd enough mistake this very picture was once said to be the famous more family picture. the idea of the 'dance of death' did not originate with holbein, neither is he supposed to have done more than touch, if he did touch, the paintings called the 'dance of death,' on the wall of the dominican burial-ground, basle, painted long before holbein's day, by the order of the council after the plague visited basle, and considered to have for its meaning simply a warning of the universality of death. but holbein certainly availed himself of the older painting, to draw from it the grim satire of his woodcuts. of these there are thirty-seven designs, the first, 'the creation;' the second, 'adam and eve in paradise;' the third, 'the expulsion from paradise;' the fourth, 'adam tilling the earth;' the fifth, 'the bones of all people;' till the dance really begins in the sixth. death, a skeleton, as seen through the rest of the designs, sometimes playing on a guitar or lute, sometimes carrying a drum, bagpipes, a dulcimer, or a fiddle, now appearing with mitre on head and crozier in hand to summon the abbot; then marching before the parson with bell, book, and candle; again crowned with ivy, when he seizes the duke, claims his partners, beginning with the pope, going down impartially through emperor of francis i., nobleman, advocate, physician, ploughman, countess, old woman, little child, etc., etc., and leading each unwilling or willing victim in turn to the terrible dance. one woman meets her doom by death in the character of a robber in a wood. another, the duchess, sits up in bed fully dressed, roused from her sleep by two skeletons, one of them playing a fiddle. granting the grotesqueness, freedom, variety, and wonderful precision of these woodcuts, i beg my readers to contrast their spirit with that of albrecht dürer's 'the knight, death, and the devil,' or orcagna's 'triumph of death.' in holbein's designs there is no noble consoling faith; there is but a fierce defiance and wild mockery of inevitable fate, such as goes beyond the levity with which the venetians in the time of the plague retired to their country-houses and danced, sung, and told tales, till the pestilence was upon them. it has a closer resemblance to the piteous madness with which the condemned prisoners during the french reign of terror rehearsed the falling of the guillotine, or the terrible pageant with which the same french, as represented by their parisian brethren, professed to hail the arrival of the cholera. of the 'more family' there are so many duplicates or versions, that, as in the case of erasmus's picture, it is hard to say which is the original picture, or whether holbein did more than sketch the original, or merely sketch the various heads to be afterwards put together by an inferior artist. a singular distribution of the light in the best authenticated picture has been supposed to favour this conjecture. but under any supposition, this, the second of the three noted english family pictures, is of the greatest interest. i shall record a minute and curious description given of this 'more family,' which is still in the possession of a descendant of the mores and ropers. 'the room which is here represented seemed to be a large dining-room. at the upper end of it stands a chamber-organ on a cupboard, with a curtain drawn before it. on each end of the cupboard, which is covered with a carpet of tapestry, stands a flower-pot of flowers, and on the cupboard are laid a lute, a base-viol, a pint pot or ewer covered in part with a cloth folded several times, and _boetius de consolatione philosophiæ_, with two other books upon it. by this cupboard stands a daughter of sir thomas more's, putting on her right-hand glove, and having under her arm a book bound in red turkey leather and gilt, with this inscription round the outside of the cover--_epistolica senecæ_. over her head is written in latin, _elizabeth dancy_, daughter of sir thomas more, aged . 'behind her stands a woman holding a book open with both her hands, over whose head is written _spouse of john clements_.[ ] 'next to mrs dancy is sir john more in his robes as one of the justices of the king's bench, and by him sir thomas in his chancellor's robes, and collar of ss, with a rose pendant before. they are both sitting on a sort of tressel or armed bench, one of the arms and legs and one of the tassels of the cushion appear on the left side of sir thomas. at the feet of sir john lies a cur-dog, and at sir thomas's a bologna shock. over sir john's head is written, _john more, father, aged_ . over sir thomas's, _thomas more, aged_ . between them, behind, stands the wife of john more, sir thomas's son, over whose head is written _anne cresacre, wife of john more, aged_ . behind sir thomas, on his left hand stands his only son, john more, pictured with a very foolish aspect, and looking earnestly in a book which he holds open with both his hands. over his head is written, _john, son of thomas more, aged_ .' (the only and witless son of the family, on whom sir thomas made the comment to his wife:--'you long wished for a boy, and you have got one--for all his life.') 'a little to the left of sir thomas are sitting on low stools his two daughters, cecilia and margaret. next him is cecilia, who has a boot in her lap, clasped. by her side sits her sister margaret, who has likewise a book on her lap, but wide open, in which is written, _l. an. senecæ--oedipus--fata si liceat mihi fingere arbitrio meo, temperem zephyro levi_. on cecilia's petticoat is written, _cecilia heron, daughter of thomas more, aged_ , and on margaret's, _margaret roper_, _daughter of thomas more, aged_ .' (the best beloved, most amiable, and most learned of sir thomas's daughters, who visited him in the tower and encouraged him to remain true to his convictions, while her step-mother urged him to abjure his faith. margaret roper intercepted her father on his return to the tower after his trial, and penetrating the circle of the guards, hung on his neck and bade him farewell. there is a tradition that she caused her father's head to be stolen from the spike of the bridge on which it was exposed, and, getting it preserved, kept it in a casket. she and her husband, william roper, wrote together the biography of her father, sir thomas more.) 'just by mrs roper sits sir thomas's lady in an elbow-chair (?), holding a book open in her hands. about her neck she has a gold chain, with a cross hanging to it before. on her left hand is a monkey chained, and holding part of it with one paw and part of it with the other. over her head is written '_spouse of thomas more, aged_ .' (dame alice more, the second wife of sir thomas more, a foolish and mean-spirited woman.) 'behind her is a large arched window, in which is placed a flower-pot (a vase) of flowers, and a couple of oranges. behind the two ladies stands sir thomas's fool, who, it seems, was bereft of his judgment by distraction. he has his cap on, and in it are stuck a red and white rose, and on the brim of it is a shield with a red cross on it, and a sort of seal pendant. about his neck he wears a black string with a cross hanging before him, and his left thumb is stuck in a broad leathern girdle clasp'd about him. over his head is written _henry pattison, servant_ of thomas more. at the entrance of the room where sir thomas and his family are, stands a man in the portal who has in his left hand a roll of papers or parchments with two seals appendant, as if he was some way belonging to sir thomas as lord chancellor. over his head is written _joannes heresius, thomae mori famulus_. in another room at some distance is seen through the door-case a man standing at a large sleeved gown of a sea-green colour, and under it a garment of a blossom-colour, holding a book open in his hands written or printed in the black letter, and reading very earnestly in it. about the middle of the room, over against sir thomas, hangs a clock with strings and leaden weights without any case.'[ ] it is notable that not one of sir thomas's sons-in-law is in this picture, neither is there a grandchild, though one or more is known to have been born at the date. the miniature of anne of cleves, if it ever existed, is lost; it is probable that what was really referred to was the portrait of anne by holbein in the louvre, where she appears 'as a kindly and comely woman in spite of her broad nose and swarthy complexion, but by no means such a painted venus as might have deceived king hal.'[ ] a well-known portrait by holbein is that of a 'cornish gentleman,' with reddish hair and beard. i saw this portrait not long ago, as it was exhibited among the works of the old masters, and so much did it look as though the figure would step from the frame, that it was hard to believe that more than three hundred years had passed since the original walked the earth.[ ] doubtless the last of holbein's portrait pieces, which it is reported he left uncompleted when he died, is that of the 'barber surgeons,' painted on the occasion of the united company receiving their charter from the king, and including the king's portrait. this picture still hangs in the old company's hall. i have only to say a few more words of those sketches which survive the destruction of the picture--holbein's allegory of the 'triumph of riches,' and the 'triumph of poverty,' and of his portrait sketches. in the 'triumph of riches,' plutus, an old man bent double, drives in a car, drawn by four white horses; before him, fortune, blind, scatters money. the car is followed by croesus, midas, and other noted misers and spendthrifts--for cleopatra, the only woman present, is included in the group. in the 'triumph of poverty,' poverty is an old woman in squalor and rags, who is seated in a shattered vehicle, drawn by asses and oxen, and guided by hope and diligence. the designs are large and bold. in the first, a resemblance to henry viii, is found in croesus. if the resemblance were intentional on holbein's part, it showed the same want of tact and feeling which the painter early betrayed in his caricature of erasmus. but the best of holbein's drawings are his portrait sketches with chalks, on flesh-tinted paper. these sketches have a history of their own, subsequent to their execution by holbein. after being in the possession of the art-loving earl of arundel, and carried to france, they were lost sight of altogether for the space of a century, until they were discovered by queen caroline, wife of george ii., in a bureau at kensington. you will hear a little later that the finest collection of miniatures in england went through the same process of disappearance and recovery.[ ] these original sketches, in addition to their great artistic merit, form a wonderful collection of speaking likenesses, belonging to the court of henry viii.,--likenesses which had been happily identified in time by sir john cheke (in the reign of elizabeth), since the names of the originals have been inscribed on the back of each drawing, as it is believed, by sir john cheke's hand. the collection is now in the queen's library, windsor, with photographs at kensington museum. there are one or two of holbein's reputed portraits at hampton court. i must pass over some painters as not being sufficiently represented for my purpose. among these is sir antony more, philip ii, of spain's friend. it is recorded that philip having rested his hand on the shoulder of more while at work, the bold painter turned round, and daubed the royal hand with vermilion. this gave rise to the courtier-saying that philip 'made slaves of his friends, and friends of his painters.' another is zucchero, one of the painters who was requested by queen elizabeth to paint her picture without shade, the result being 'a woman with a roman nose, a huge ruff and farthingale, and a bushel of pearls.' there are also van somer,--janssens, who painted lady bowyer, named for her exquisite beauty, 'the star of the east,' and susanna lister, the most beautiful woman at court, when presented in marriage to sir geoffrey thornhurst by james i, in person,[ ]--and daniel myttens, all foreigners, flemish or dutch, whom we must thus briefly dismiss. and now we come to van dyck. antony van dyck was born at antwerp, in . his father was a merchant; his mother was famous for painting flowers in small, and for needlework in silk. the fashion of painting 'in small' had prevailed for some time. horace walpole mentions that the mother of lucas de heere, a flemish painter, born in , could paint with such 'diminutive neatness' that she had executed 'a landscape with a windmill, miller, a cart and horse, and passengers,' which half a grain of corn could cover. at ten years of age, van dyck began to study as a painter, and he soon became a pupil, and afterwards a favourite pupil, of rubens. in , when van dyck was but a lad of seventeen years, he was admitted as a master into the painters' guild of st luke. two years later, he was still working with rubens, who, seeing his lameness of invention, counselled him to abide by portrait painting, and to visit italy. a year later, in , when van dyck was twenty years of age, he came to london, already becoming a resort of flemish painters, and lodging with a countryman of his own, worked for a short time in the service of james i. on van dyck's return to flanders, and on the death of his father, he was able to take rubens' advice, and in , when van dyck was still only twenty-two years of age, he set out for venice, the rome of the flemish painters. before quitting antwerp, van dyck, in proof of the friendship which existed between the painters, presented rubens with several of the former's pictures, among them his famous portrait of 'rubens' wife.' as a pendant to this generosity, when van dyck came back to antwerp, and complained to rubens that he--van dyck--could not live on the profits of his painting, rubens went next day and bought every picture of van dyck's which was for sale. van dyck spent five years in italy, visiting venice, florence, rome, and palermo, but residing principally at genoa. in italy, he began to indulge in his love of splendid extravagance, and in the fastidious fickleness which belonged to the evil side of his character. at rome he was called 'the cavalier painter,' yet his first complaint on his return to antwerp was, that he could not live on the profits of his painting! he avoided the society of his homelier countrymen. at palermo, van dyck knew, and according to some accounts, painted the portrait of sophonisba anguisciola, who claimed to be the most eminent portrait painter among women. she was then about ninety years of age, and blind, but she still delighted in having in her house a kind of academy of painting, to which all the painters visiting palermo resorted. van dyck asserted that he owed more to her conversation than to the teaching of all the schools. a book of his sketches, which was recovered, showed many drawings 'after sophonisba anguisciola.' she is said to have been born at cremona, was invited at the age of twenty-six by philip ii, to spain, and was presented by him with a spanish don for a husband, and a pension of a thousand crowns a-year from the customs of palermo. the plague drove van dyck from italy back to flanders, where he painted for a time, and presented his picture of the 'crucifixion' to the dominicans as a memorial gift in honour of his father, but in flanders rubens' fame overshadowed that of every other painter, and van dyck, recalling an invitation which he had received from the countess of arundel while still in italy, came a second time to england, in , when he was about thirty years of age, and lodged again with a fellow-countryman and painter named gildorp. but his sensitive vanity was wounded by his not at once receiving an introduction to the king, or the countenance which the painter considered his due, and the restlessness, which was a prominent feature in his character, being re-awakened, he withdrew once more from england, and returned to the low countries in . at last, a year later, in , van dyck's pride was propitiated by receiving a formal invitation from charles i., through sir kenelm digby, to visit england, and this time the painter had no cause to complain of an unworthy reception. he was lodged by the king among his artists at blackfriars, having no intercourse with the city, save by water. he had the king, with his wife and children, to sit to him, and was granted a pension of two hundred a-year, with the distinction of being named painter to his majesty. a year later van dyck was knighted. royal and noble commissions flowed upon him, and the king, who had a hereditary love of art, visited the painter continually, and spent some of the happiest and most innocent hours of his brief and clouded life in van dyck's company. thus began van dyck's success in england. to give you an example of how often, and in how many different manners, van dyck painted the king and royal family, i shall quote from a list of his pictures-- 'king charles in coronation robes.' 'king charles in armour' (twice). 'king charles in white satin, with his hat on, just descended from his horse; in the distance, view of the isle of wight.' 'king charles in armour, on a white horse; monsieur de st antoine, his equerry, holding the king's helmet.' 'the king and queen sitting; prince charles, very young, standing at the king's side; the duke of york, an infant, on the queen's knee.' 'the king and queen holding a crown of laurel between them.' 'the queen in white.' 'prince charles in armour' (two or three times). 'king, queen, prince charles, and princess mary.' 'queen with her five children.' 'queen with dwarfs,[ ] sir geoffrey hudson having a monkey on his shoulder.' van dyck had several great patrons, after the king. for the earl of arundel, in addition to portraits of the earl and countess, the painter designed a second arundel family picture, which was painted by fruitiers. for george, duke of buckingham, van dyck painted one of his finest double portraits of the duke's two sons, when children. for the northumberland family van dyck painted, besides portraits of henry and algernon, earls of northumberland, another famous picture, that of the two beautiful sisters, lady dorothy percy, afterwards countess of leicester, and her sister, lady lucy percy, afterwards countess of carlisle, whose charms figure frequently in the memoirs of her time. william and philip, earls of pembroke, were also among his patrons, and for the second he painted his great family picture, 'the wilton family.' sir kenelm digby, too, whose wife venitia was more frequently painted than any woman of her day, and was not more distinguished for her beauty than for her lack of nobler qualities. van dyck alone painted her several times, the last after her sudden death, for her vain and eccentric, if gallant, husband, who in the end was no friend to van dyck. but these high names by no means exhaust the list of patrons of a painter who, among various contradictory qualities, was indefatigably industrious. his work is widely distributed among the scotch as well as the english descendants of the nobility whom he painted, so that the possession of at least one ancestral 'van dyck' accompanies very many patents of nobility, and is equivalent to a warrant of gentle birth. the earl of clarendon, in the next reign, had a great partiality for van dyck's pictures, and was said to be courted by gifts of them until his apartments at cornbury were furnished with full-length 'van dycks.' a third of his collection went to kitty hyde, duchess of queensberry, one of the earl's three co-heiresses. through the rich family many of these 'van dycks' passed to taymouth castle, where by a coincidence they were lodged in the company of numerous works of george jamieson of aberdeen, who is said to have been for a short time a fellow-pupil of van dyck's under rubens, who has been called 'the scotch van dyck,' and who is certainly the first native painter who deserves honourable mention. since the death of the last marquis of breadalbane these travelled 'van dycks' have gone back to the english representative of the rich family. van dyck had forty pounds for a half, and sixty pounds for a whole-length picture;--for a large piece of the king, queen, and their children, he had a hundred pounds. for the wilton family picture he had five hundred and twenty-five pounds. but van dyck soon impaired his fortune. he was not content with having a country-house at eltham in kent, where he spent a portion of each summer; he would emulate in his expenditure the most spendthrift noble of that reign. 'he always went magnific so good a table in his apartment that few princes were more visited and better served.' his marriage was not calculated to teach him moderation. in his thirty-ninth year the king gave him the hand of marie ruthven, who was nearly related to the unhappy earl of gowrie. she was his niece, her father having been the scarcely less unhappy younger brother patrick, a physician, who, apprehended when a young man on the charge of being concerned in the treason of his elder brothers, spent his manhood in the tower. he was kept a prisoner there from to , nearly forty years, and was only released in his age and infirmity when his mind was giving way. patrick ruthven's infant daughter had been adopted, either through charity or perversity, by anne of denmark, and brought up first at the court of anne, and afterwards at that of henrietta maria. the assertion that marie ruthven was a very beautiful woman has been contradicted. it was said that 'she was bestowed in marriage on sir antony van dyck as much to humble further the already humbled and still detested family of ruthven, as to honour the painter; but this does not seem consistent with king charles's known favour for van dyck. yet such a view might have been entertained by marie ruthven herself, who, according to tradition, held herself degraded by the marriage, and never forgave the degradation. she was not a loving wife to a man who could hardly have been a very loving or loyal husband. and certainly the marriage did not unite the painter closer to the king. with his professional industry, van dyck combined an equally unquenchable love of pleasure, which, with his luxurious and sedentary habits, induced paroxysms of gout, from which rubens also suffered severely. this must have ultimately disqualified him for good work, and when his debts accumulated in greater proportion even than his receipts, in place of having recourse, like rubens, to his painting-room, van dyck tried a shorter road to get rich, by following the idle example of sir kenelm digby in his pursuit of alchemy and the philosopher's stone. in the year of his marriage, van dyck re-visited flanders, in company with his wife, and then repaired to france, it is understood with the intention of settling there. he was instigated to the step by his wife, and his own ambition of rivalling rubens' triumphs at the luxembourg; but the preference which the french gave to the works of their countryman, nicolas poussin, roused his latent jealousy, and so mortified him as to induce him to renounce his intention. he determined to return to england, and was, to his credit, confirmed in his resolution by the threatening civil war which was to shake his royal master's throne to the foundation, rather than deterred from it. again in england, van dyck employed sir kenelm digby to make an offer on the painter's part that for eight hundred pounds he would paint the history, and a procession of the knights of the garter on the walls of the knights' banqueting-room at whitehall--that palace which was to have surpassed the louvre, the tuileries, and the escurial, and from one of the windows of which charles stepped out on his scaffold. but the proposal was rejected, and immediately afterwards the civil war broke out, and was speedily followed by the death of van dyck, about a year after his marriage, when he was a little over forty years old, at blackfriars, in . he was buried in old st paul's, near the tomb of john of gaunt. his daughter, justiniana, was born a short time--some say only eight days--before her father died, and was baptized on the day of his death. van dyck left effects and sums due to him to the amount of twenty thousand pounds; but the greater part of the debts were found beyond recovery at the close of the civil war. his daughter grew up, and married a mr stepney, 'who rode in king charles's life guards.' his widow re-married; her second husband was a welsh knight. van dyck's contradictory elements. he was actuated by opposite motives which are hard to analyze, and which in their instability have within themselves, whatever their outward advantages, the doom of failure in the highest excellence. he was a proud man, dissatisfied both with himself and his calling, resenting, with less reason than hans holbein showed, that he should be condemned to portrait painting, yet by no means undervaluing or slurring over his work. he 'would detain the persons who sat to him to dinner for an opportunity of studying their countenances and re-touching their pictures,' 'would have a sitter, sitting to him seven entire days, mornings and evenings, and would not once let the man see the picture till it pleased the painter.' van dyck appears to have been a man with the possibilities in him of greater things than he attained, possibilities which were baffled by his weakness and self-indulgence, leaving him with such a sense of this as spoiled his greatest successes. i have the varying indications of two pictures of van dyck from which to get an impression of his personal appearance. the first picture is that of a youthful face, soft, smiling, with dark eyes, finely-formed nose, a slightly open mouth, having a full-cleft under lip, the hair profuse and slightly curled, but short, and no beard or moustache. the dress is an open doublet, without a collar, a lace cravat, and one arm half bare. the second is the picture of van dyck in the louvre, which is judged the best likeness of the painter. in this his person is slender, his complexion fair, his eyes grey, his hair chestnut brown, his beard and whiskers red. he wears a vest of green velvet, with a plain collar. in his art, van dyck, with something of the glow of rubens, and with a delicacy peculiarly his own, was decidedly inferior to his great master, both in power and in fertility of genius. in the superficial refinement which was so essential a part of van dyck, he had the capacity of conferring on his sitters a reflection of his own outward stateliness and grace. when he painted at his best his portraits were solid, true, and masterly, but he has been reproached with sacrificing truth to the refining process which he practised. even in the case of charles i., whose portraits are our most familiar examples of van dyck, and who thus lives in the imagination of most people as the very personification of a noble and handsome cavalier, there have not been wanting critics who have maintained that charles,--the son of a plain uncouth father, and of a mother rather floridly buxom than delicately handsome, and who was in his childhood a sickly rickety child,--was by no means so well endowed in the matter of manly beauty as we have supposed. these students of old gossip and close investigation, have alleged that charles was long and lanky, after he had ceased to be baby charles; that his nose was too large, and, alas! apt to redden; that his eyes were vacillating; and his mouth, the loosely hung mouth of a man who begins by being irresolute, and ends by being obstinate.[ ] again, in the hands of a sitter, which van dyck was supposed to paint with special care and elegance, it has been argued that he copied always the same hand, probably his own, in ignorance, or in defiance of the fact that hands have nearly as much and as varying character as a painter can discover in faces. though van dyck painted many beautiful women, he did not excel in rendering them beautiful on canvas, so that succeeding generations, in gazing on van dyck's versions of venitia, lady digby, and dorothy sydney--waller's sacharissa,--have wondered how sir kenelm, waller, and their contemporaries, could find these ladies so beautiful. van dyck certainly owed something of the charm of his pictures to the dress of the period, with regard to which he received this credit that 'van dyck was the first painter who e'er put ladies' dress into a careless romance.' but in reality never was costume better suited for a painter like van dyck. the hair in the men was allowed to flow to the shoulders or gathered in a love knot, while the whiskers and beard formed a point. in the women the hair was crisped in curls round the face. the ruff in men and women had yielded to the broad, rich, falling collar, with deep scallops of point lace. vest and cloak were of the richest velvet or satin, or else, on the breaking out of the civil war, men appeared in armour. the man's hat was broad and flapping, usually turned up at one side, and having an ostrich feather in the band; his long wide boots were of spanish leather, and he wore gauntlet gloves, and rich ruffles at his wrists. the women wore hoods and mantles, short bodices, ample trains, and wide sleeves terminating in loose ruffles at the elbow, which left half of the arm bare. pearl necklaces and bracelets, round feather fans, and 'knots of flowers,' were the almost universal ornaments of women. another ornament of both men and women, which belonged to the day, and was very common in the quarters i have been referring to, was a miniature enclosed in a small case of ivory or ebony, carved like a rose, and worn on the left side in token of betrothal.[ ] van dyck, along with the appreciation of black draperies which he held in common with rubens, was specially fond of painting white or blue satin. he is said to have used a brown preparation of pounded peach-stones for glazing the hair in his pictures. in the end, with all the aids that critics may have given him, and all the faults they may find in him, van dyck was a great, and in the main an earnest portrait painter. perhaps 'charles in white satin, just descended from his horse,' is the best of the single portraits which were held to be van dyck's forte. i must try to give my readers some idea of van dyck's 'wilton family.' it has been so praised, that some have said 'it might have been covered with gold as a price to obtain it;' on the other hand, it has not escaped censure. one critic asserts that there is no common action uniting the figures, and that the faces are so different in complexion--one yellow-faced boy appearing either jaundiced or burnt by a tropical sun, that the family might have lived in different climates. this is the story of the picture. 'earl philip of pembroke having caused his family to meet, informs them with great emotion of the necessity of his eldest son charles, lord herbert, going into the army of the grand duke of tuscany, there to acquire military honour and experience, notwithstanding his having just married mary, daughter of george, duke of buckingham. lord herbert is receiving the news with ardour, the young bride is turning aside her fair face to hide her tears. (charles lord herbert was married christmas, , went to florence, and died there of small pox, january, .) 'in the pembroke picture (or "wilton family") there are ten figures. the earl and countess are seated on a dais, under a coat of arms. he wears a great lace collar, an order on his breast, a key at his girdle, and has great shoes with roses. she has flowing curls, hanging sleeves, arms crossed, necklace on the bare neck. (the countess of pembroke was the earl's second wife, anne clifford, daughter of george, earl of cumberland, the brave lady who defied cromwell, and was fond of signing her name with the long string of titles derived from her two husbands, "anne dorset, pembroke, montgomery.") robert dormer, earl of carnarvon, is introduced with his wife, lady anne sophia herbert, daughter of earl philip; they are on the countess's left hand. the daughter-in-law, about to be parted from her husband, stands on the lowest step of the dais; she is elegantly dressed, with hanging sleeves knotted with bows from shoulder to elbow. two young men, the bridegroom and his brother, are at their father's right hand; they wear great falling collars and cloaks. there are three half-grown boys in tunics without collars, and great roses in their shoes, with a dare three daughters of the family who died in infancy.' van dyck's finest sacred pictures were his early 'crucifixion,' and a pieta, at antwerp. in these he gave a promise of nobler and deeper pathos than he afterwards fulfilled. his pictures are to be found freely, as i have written, in old english mansions, such as arundel and alnwick castles, knowsley, knole, petworth, etc. a head said to be by van dyck is in the national gallery. van dyck had few pupils: one, an englishman named dobson, earned an honourable reputation as a painter. from sir antony more's time down to that of leíly and kneller, the rage for portraits was continually increasing, and took largely the form of miniatures, which were painted chiefly by foreigners; notably by hilliard and two olivers or oliviers, a father and son of french extraction, and by a swiss named petitot. a collection of miniatures by the oliviers, including no less than six of venitia, lady digby, had a similar fate to that of holbein's drawings. the miniatures had been packed in a wainscot box and conveyed to the country-house in wales of mr watkin williams, who was a descendant of the digby family. in course of time the box with its contents, doubtless forgotten, had been transferred to a garret, where it had lain undiscovered for, it has been supposed, fully a hundred years. it was two hundred years after the date of the painting of the miniatures, that on some turning over of the lumber in the garret, the exquisite miniatures, fresh as on the day when they were painted, were accidentally brought to light.[ ] sir peter lely was born in westphalia in . his real name was vander facs, and his father was a 'captain of foot,' who, having chanced to be born in rooms over a perfumer's shop which bore the sign of a lily, took fantastically enough the name of du lys, or lely, which he transmitted to his son. sir peter lely, after studying in a studio at haarlem, came to england when he was twenty-three years of age, in , and set himself to copy the pictures of van dyck, who died in the year of lely's arrival in england, and whom he succeeded as court painter. lely was knighted by charles ii., married an english woman, and had a son and a daughter, who died young. he made a large fortune, dying at last of apoplexy, with which he was seized as he was painting the duchess of somerset, when he was sixty-two years of age, in . with regard to lely's character, we may safely judge from his works that he was such a man as samuel pepys, 'of easy virtue,' a man holding a low enough standard by which to measure himself and others. mr palgrave quotes from mr leslie the following characteristic anecdote of lely, which seems to prove that he was aware of, and coolly accepted, the decline of art in his generation and person. a nobleman said to lely, 'how is it that you have so great a reputation, when you know, as well as i do, that you are no painter?' 'true, but i am the best you have,' was the answer. lely's punishment followed him into his art, for beginning by copying van dyck, it is said of lely that he degenerated in his work till it bore the very 'stamp of the depravity of the age.' lely's sitters were mostly women. among them was one who deserved a fitter painter, mistress anne killigrew, dryden's-- 'youngest virgin daughter of the skies.' in lely's portrait of her, she is a neat, slightly prim, delicate beauty, with very fine features, and such sleepy eyes, as were probably the gift of lely, since he has bestowed them generally on the women whom he painted. mistress anne killigrew's hair is in curls, piled up in front, but hanging down loosely behind. her bodice is gathered together by a brooch, and she has another brooch on one shoulder. she wears a light pearl necklace, and 'drops' shaped like shamrocks in her ears. lely painted both charles i, and cromwell, who desired his painters to omit 'no pimple or wart,' but to paint his face as they saw it. among less notable personages lely painted monk, duke of albemarle, and his rough duchess, once a camp follower, according to popular rumour, and named familiarly by the contemptuous wits of the day 'nan clarges.' it is with not more honourable originals than poor 'nan clarges' that lely's name as a painter is chiefly associated. we know what an evil time the years after the restoration proved in england, and it was to immortalize, as far as he could, the vain, light women of the generation that lely lent what skill he possessed. there their pictures hang in what has been called 'the beauty room' at hampton court, and no good man or woman can look at them without holding such beauty detestable. at hampton court also there are several of the eleven portraits of admirals whom lely painted for james ii, when duke of york. antonio canal, called canaletto, incorrectly canaletti, was born at venice in . he was the son of a scene painter at the theatre. in his youth he worked under his father; a little later he went to rome, and studied for some time there. then he came to england, where he remained only for two years. i have hesitated about placing his name among those of the foreign painters resident in england, but so many of his works are in this country that he seems to belong to it in an additional sense. he is said to have 'made many pictures and much money.' he died at venice when he was seventy years of age, in . as a painter he was famous for his correctness of perspective and precision of outline (in which it is alleged he aided himself by the use of the camera), qualities specially valuable in the architectural subjects of which he was fond, drawing them principally from his native venice. but his very excellence was mechanical, and he showed so little originality or, for that matter, fidelity of genius, that he painted his landscapes in invariable sunshine. * * * * * the great wood-carver grinling gibbons deserves mention among the artists of this date. he was a native of rotterdam, where he was born in . he came to london with other carvers the year after the great fire of london, and was introduced by evelyn to charles ii., who took him into his employment. 'gibbons was appointed master carver in wood to george i., with a salary of eighteen-pence a day.' he died at his house in bow street in the sixty-third year of his age, in . it is said that no man before gibbons 'gave to wood the lightness of flowers.' for the great houses of burghley, petworth, and chatsworth, gibbons carved exquisite work, in festoons for screens, and chimney-pieces, and panels for pictures, of fruit, flowers, shells, and birds. * * * * * sir godfrey kneller was born at lübeck in , and was the son of an architect. he is said to have studied under rembrandt; but if this be true, it must have been in kneller's early youth. it is more certain that he travelled in italy and returned to settle in hamburg, but changing his plans, he came to england, when he was about thirty years of age, in . london became his home. there he painted portraits with great success; his prices being fifteen guineas for a head, twenty if with one hand, thirty for a half, and sixty for a whole-length portrait. charles ii, sat at the same time to kneller and to lely. not titian himself painted more crowned heads than it fell to the lot of kneller to paint--not less than six reigning kings and queens of england, and, in addition, louis xiv. of france, charles vi, of spain, and the czar peter of russia. william iii, created kneller a knight, and george i, raised the painter's rank to that of a baronet. sir godfrey was notorious for his conceit, irritability, and eccentricity, and for the wit which sparkled more in his conversation than in any originality of observation displayed in his painting. walpole attributes to kneller the opposite qualities of great negligence and great love of money. the negligence or slovenliness, whether in the man or the artist, did not interfere with an immense capacity for work, such as it was, but if horace walpole be right, that kneller employed many flemish painters under him to undertake the wigs, draperies, etc. etc., the amount of work in portrait painting which sir godfrey kneller accomplished is so far explained. he attained the end of being a very rich man, and married an english woman, but left no family to succeed to his wealth and his country-seat of whitton, when he died at his house in london in his seventy-eighth year, in . as a painter sir godfrey kneller showed considerable talent in drawing, and a certain cumbrous dignity of design, but he had much more industry of a certain kind than artistic feeling or taste. when he and lely painted charles ii, together, kneller's application and rapidity of execution were so far before those of lely, who was technically the better painter of the two, that kneller's picture was finished when lely's was dead-coloured only. kneller was highly praised by dryden, addison, prior, and steele. apropos of these writers, among the most famous works of kneller are the forty-three portraits, painted originally for tonson, the bookseller, of the members of the kit cat club, the social and literary club of the day, which got its name from the chance of its holding its meetings in a house the owner of which bore the unique name of christopher cat. another series of portraits by kneller are what ought to be, in their designation, the hampton court beauties. these are still, like the other 'beauties,' at hampton. the second series was proposed by william's queen mary, and included herself, sarah jennings, duchess of marlborough, and mary bentinck. to sarah jennings men did award the palm of beauty, but poor queen mary, who had a modest, simple, comely, english face as a princess, had lost her fresh youthful charm by the time she became queen of england, and was still further disfigured by the swelling of the face to which she was liable. her proposal to substitute the worthier women of her court for the unworthy beauties of her uncle king charles' court was not relished, and helped to render mary unpopular--among the women, at least, of her nobility. neither was sir godfrey kneller qualified to enhance the attractions of mary's maids of honour and ladies in waiting, who, to complete their disadvantages, lived at a period when it had become the fashion for women to crown their persons by an erection on their natural heads of artificial 'edifices of three heads.' to kneller, as i have already written, we owe the preservation of raphael's cartoons. chapter xii.[ ] italian masters from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries--taddeo gaddi, , supposed to have died --fra filippo, - --benozzo gozzoli, - --luca signorelli, , supposed to have died about --botticelli, - --perugino, - --carpaccio, date and place of birth and death unknown--crivelli--filippino lipi, earlier than --antonella da messina, believed to have died at venice, --garopalo, - --luini, date of birth unknown, supposed to have died about --palma, about - --pardenone, - --lo spagna, date of birth unknown, --giulio romano, - --paris bordone, - --il parmigianino, - --baroccio, - --caravaggio, - --lo spagnoletto, - --guercino, - --albano, - --sassoferrato, - --vasari, - --sofonisba anguisciola, , about --lavinia fontana, - . taddeo gaddi, the most important of giotto's scholars, was born in , and was held at the baptismal font by giotto himself. gaddi rather went back on earlier traditions and faults. his excellence lay in his purity and simplicity of feeling. his finest pictures are from the life of the virgin, in s. croce, florence. he was, like his master, a great architect as well as painter. he furnished the plans for the ponte vecchio and campanile, florence, after giotto's death. he was possessed of great activity and industry. he is supposed to have died in , and rests in the scene of his labours, since he was buried in the cloisters of s. croce. fra filippo, - , a carmelite friar. the romantic, scandalous life, including his slavery in barbary, attributed to him by vasari, the great biographer of the early italian painters, has received no corroboration from modern researches. it is rather refuted. he always signed his pictures 'frater filippus,' and his death is entered in the register of the carmine convent as that of 'frater filippus.' in all probability he was from first to last a monk, and not a disreputable one. he describes himself as the poorest friar in florence, with six marriageable nieces dependent on him, and he is said to have been involved in debt. his colouring was 'golden and broad,' in anticipation of that of titian; his draperies were fine. he was wanting in the ideal, but full of human feeling, which was apt to get rude and boisterous; his angels were 'like great high-spirited boys.' withal, his style of composition was stately. among the best examples of his work are scenes from the life of st john the baptist in frescoes in the choir of the duomo at prato. his panel pictures are rather numerous. there are two lunette[ ] pictures by fra filippo in the national gallery. benozzo gozzoli, - , a scholar of fra angelico, but resembling him only in light and cheerful colouring. he is said to have been the first italian painter smitten with the beauty of the natural world. he was the first to create rich landscape backgrounds, and he enlivened his landscapes with animals. he displayed a fine fancy for architectural effects, introducing into his pictures open porticoes, arcades, balconies, and galleries. he liked to have subsidiary groups and circles of spectators about his principal figures. in these groups he introduced portraits of his contemporaries, true to nature and full of expression and delicate feeling. his best work is in the campo santo, pisa, scenes from the history of the old testament, ranging from noah to the queen of sheba. the pisans were so pleased with his work as to present him, in , with a sarcophagus intended to contain his remains when they should be deposited in the campo santo. he survived the gift eighteen years, dying in . his easel pictures are rare, and do not offer good representations of the master. there is one in the national gallery--a virgin and child, with saints and angels. luca d'egidio di ventura, called also luca 'da cortona,' from his birth-place, and luca signorelli, , supposed to have died about . his is a great name in the tuscan school. he played an important part in the painting of the sistine chapel, though he is only represented by one wall picture, the history of moses. at his best he anticipated michael angelo in power and grandeur, but he was given to exaggeration. his fame rests principally on his frescoes at orvieto, where, by a strange chance, he was appointed, after an interval of time, to continue and complete the work begun by fra angelico, the master most opposed to signorelli in style. luca added the great dramatic scenes which include the history of antichrist, executed with a grandeur which 'only lionardo among the painters sharing a realistic tendency could have surpassed.' these scenes, which contain the resurrection, hell, and paradise, bear a strong resemblance to the work of michael angelo. in his fine drawing of the human figure signorelli may be known by 'the squareness of his forms in joints and extremities.' a conspicuous detail in his pictures is frequently a bright-coloured roman scarf. his work is rarely seen north of the alps. sandro filipepi, called botticelli, - . he was an apprentice to a goldsmith, and then became a scholar of filippo lipi's. botticelli was vehement and impetuous, full of passion and poetry, seeking to express movement. he was the most dramatic painter of his school. occasionally he rises to a grandeur that allies him to signorelli and michael angelo. his circular pictures of the madonna and child, with angels, are numerous. like fra filippo, botticelli's angels are noble youths, some of them belonging to the great families of the time. they are prone to be ecstatic with joy or frantic with grief. there is a grand coronation of the virgin, by botticelli at hamilton palace, and a beautiful nativity by the old master belongs to mr fuller maitland. his madonna and child are grand and tragic figures always. botticelli's noble frescoes in the sistine chapel are apt to be overlooked because of michael angelo's 'sublime work' on the ceiling. there has been a revival of botticelli's renown within late years, partly due to the new interest in the earlier italian painters which mr browning has done something to stimulate. i quote some thoughtful remarks on botticelli by w.c. lefroy in _macmillan's magazine_: 'mr ruskin, we know, divides italian art into the art of faith, beginning with giotto, and lasting rather more than years, and the art of unbelief, or at least of cold and inoperative faith, beginning in the middle of raphael's life. but whatever division we adopt, we must remember that the revival of paganism, as a matter of fact, affected men in different ways. right across the schools this new spirit draws its line, but the line is not a hard and sharp one. some men lie wholly on one side of it, with giotto, angelico, and orcagna; some wholly upon the other, with titian and correggio, but there are some on whom it seems to fall as a rainbow falls upon a hill-side. such, for instance, is botticelli. now he tries to paint as men painted in the old days of unpolluted faith, and then again he breaks away and paints like a very heathen. 'the interest which this artist has excited in the present generation has been exaggerated into something like a fashion, and recent criticism has delighted to find or imagine in him the idiosyncrasies of recent thought. to us it may be he does in truth say more than he or his contemporaries dreamed of, but while true criticism will sternly refuse to help us to see in his pictures that which is purely subjective, it will, i think, recognise the fact that a day like ours is capable of reading in the subtle suggestions of ancient art thoughts which have only now come to be frankly defined or exquisitely analysed. to us, moreover, botticelli presents not only the poem of the apparition of the young and beautiful manhood of humanism before the brooding and entranced, yet half expectant, maidenhood of mediævalism, but also the poem of the painter's own peculiar relation to that crisis. for us there is the poetry of the thing itself, and also the poetry of botticelli's attempt to express it. the work of botticelli does not supply a universal utterance for mankind like shakespeare's plays, but when we stand before the screen on which his "nativity" is hung, or contemplate in the adjoining room his two perplexed conceptions of "aphrodite," we are face to face with a genuine outcome of that memorable meeting, mediævalism, humanism, and savonarola, which no generation can afford to ignore, and our own especially delights to contemplate. there has been much dispute about the date of botticelli's "nativity," and some defenders of savonarola have hoped to read in the strange character of its inscription, so that this beautiful picture, standing forth as the work of one for many years under the influence of "the frate," may refute the common calumny that that influence was unfriendly to art. our catalogue, indeed, unhesitatingly asserts of botticelli, that "he became a follower of savonarola and no doubt suffered from it;" but though there seems to be really little doubt that the "nativity" was painted in , the inscription, with its mystic allusion to the apocalypse, and the whole character of the picture, afford unmistakable evidence of the influence of savonarola.' pietro perugino, , died of the plague at frontignano in . perugino is another painter who has been indebted to the last renaissance. his fame, in this country rested chiefly on the circumstance that he was raphael's master, whom the generous prince of painters delighted to honour, till the tide of fashion in art rose suddenly and floated old pietro once more to the front. at his best he had luminous colour, grace, softness, and enthusiastic earnestness, especially in his young heads. his defects were monotony, and formality, together with comparative ignorance of the principles of his art. his conception of his calling in its true dignity was not high. his attempts at expressing ardour degenerated into mannerism, and he acquired habits and tricks of arrangement and style, among which figured his favourite upturned heads, that in the end were ill drawn, and, like every other affectation, became wearisome. in the process of falling off as an artist, when mere manual dexterity took the place of earnest devotion and honest pains, perugino had a large studio where many pupils executed his commissions, and where, working for gain instead of excellence in art, he had the satisfaction, doubtless, of amassing a large fortune. among his finest works is the picture of an enthroned madonna and child in the gallery of the uffizi. another fine madonna with saints is at cremona. his frescoes in the sala del campio at perugia are among his best works. the subjects of these frescoes are partly scriptural; partly mythological. in the execution there is excellence alike in drawing, colouring, and the disposal of drapery. a _chef d'oeuvre_ by the master is the madonna of the certosa at pavia, now in, the national gallery. yet it is said to have been painted at the very period when michael angelo ridiculed perugino's work as 'absurd and antiquated.' vittore carpaccio, date and place of birth unknown, though he is said to have been a native of istria. he was a historical painter of the early venetian school and a follower of the bellini. his romantic _genre_ pictures show the daily life of the venice of his time, and are furnished with landscape and architectural backgrounds. his masterly and rich work is mostly in venice. he introduces animals freely and well in his designs. carlo crivelli was another master of the fifteenth century who deserves notice. he had strong individuality, yet was influenced by the paduan and venetian schools. he displayed an old-fashioned preference for painting in tempera. sometimes his drawing approaches that of mantegna, while he has a gorgeousness of colouring all his own. his pictures occasionally show dignity of composition in combination with grace and daintiness; but he could be guilty of exaggerated vehemence of expression. he frequently introduced fruit, flowers, and birds in his work. he is fully represented in the national gallery, his works there ranging from 'small tender pictures of the dead christ with angels, to a sumptuous altar-piece in numerous compartments.' filippino lipi was an adopted son and probably a relation of fra filippo's, though a scholar's use of his master's name was not uncommon. the date of his birth is earlier than . filippino was also a pupil of botticelli's, while there was a higher sense of beauty and grace in the pupil than in the teacher. among his last works is the vision of st bernard, an easel picture in the badia at florence. the apparition of the madonna in this picture is said to be 'full of charm.' in his larger works he is one of the greatest historical painters of his country. roman antiquities had the same keen interest for him which they held for the greatest of his contemporaries, and he made free use of them in the architecture of his pictures. he has fine work in the carmelite church, florence, and in s. maria sopra minerva, rome. much of some of his pictures is painted over. the national gallery has a picture of filippino's 'of grand execution,' though almost colourless--the madonna and child, with st jerome and st francis. antonella da messina was the neapolitan painter who brought the practice of painting in oils from the netherlands into italy, though it is now believed, from stubborn discrepancies in dates, that the story of his great friendship with jan van eyck, as given by vasari, is apochryphal. very likely hans memling, called also 'john of bruges,' was the real friend and leader of antonella. his best work consisted of portraits. he is believed to have died at venice in . benvenuto tisio, surnamed from the place of his birth garofalo, was born in , and died in . he passed from the early school of ferrara to that of raphael. his conception was apt to be fantastic, while his colouring was vivid to abruptness, and he was deficient in charm of expression. he fell into the fault of monotonous ideality. at the same time his heads are beautiful, and his drapery is classic. his finest work is an 'entombment' in the borghese palace, rome. there is an altar-piece by garofalo, a madonna and child with angels, in the national gallery. bernardo luini, who stands foremost among the scholars of lionardo da vinci, was born by the lago maggiore, the date unknown, came to milan in , was elderly in , and is supposed to have died not long after . his work is chiefly found in milan. his great merit has been only lately acknowledged. he is not 'very powerful or original,' but for 'purity, grace, and spiritual expression,' he ranks very high. he unites the earnestness of the older masters with the prevailing feeling for beauty of the great masters of italian art. his pictures were long mistaken for those of his master, lionardo, though it is said that when the difference between them is once pointed out, it is easily recognised; indeed, the resemblance is confined to a smiling beatific expression in the countenances, which abounds more in luini's pictures. his heads of women, children, and angels present every degree of serenity, sweet cheerfulness and happiness, up to ecstatic rapture. 'christ disputing with the doctors,' in the national gallery, formerly called a lionardo, is now known to be a luini. he painted much, whether in tempera, fresco, or oil. his favourite subjects in oil were the madonna and child, with st john and the lamb, and the marriage of st catherine. probable he appears to greatest advantage in frescoes. he is said to have reached his highest perfection in the figure of st john in a crucifixion in the monasterio maggiore, milan. jacopo palma, called il palma vecchio, was born about near bergamo, and died in . he is believed to have studied under giovanni bellini, while he is also the chief follower of giorgione. his characteristics are ample forms and gorgeous breadth of drapery. his female saints, with their large rounded figures, have a soft yet commanding expression. he had an enchanting feeling for landscape, which seems to have been the birthright of the venetian painters. to palma is owing what are called 'santa conversazione,' where there are numerous groups round the virgin and child, as if they are holding a court in a retired and beautiful country nook. palma rivalled giorgione and titian as a painter of women's portraits. among these is that of his daughter violante, believed to have been loved by titian. 'palma's three daughters,' in the dresden gallery, is a masterpiece of 'fair, full-blown beauty.' the hair of the women is of the curiously bleached yellow tint affected then by the venetian ladies. palma painted many pictures, leaving at his death forty-our unfinished. giovanni antonio da pardenone, born , died . he had many names, 'pardenone' from his birth-place, 'corticellis' from that of his father, and he is believed to have assumed the name 'regillo' after he received knighthood from the king of hungary. he was venetian in his artistic qualities. many of his works are in his native pardetowns near. all have suffered and some are now hidden by whitewash. his chief strength lay in fresco. his scenes from the passion in the cathedral, cremona, are greatly damaged and wretchedly restored, but they still reveal the painter as a great master. they have 'fine drawing, action, excellent colouring, grand management of light and shade, with freedom of hand and dignity of conception.' in the prophets and sibyls around the cupola of the madonna di campagna, piacenza, pardenone's power is fully proven. his immense works in fresco account for the rarity of his oil pictures and their comparative inferiority. there is only one picture, and that a portrait, indisputably assigned to pardenone in england, in the baring collection. giovanni di pietro, known as lo spagna (the spaniard), was a contemporary of raphael's, a fellow-pupil of his under perugino. there is no record of the time and place of lo spagna's birth. he died in . he was a careful, conscientious follower of perugino and raphael, doing finished and delicate work; an 'assumption' in a church at trevi is a fine example of his qualities. his best picture was painted in , and is at assisi. it represents the madonna enthroned with three saints on each side. in his later works he betrayed feebleness. pictures by lo spagna are often attributed to raphael. giulio pippi, surnamed romano, born in , died in , was a very different painter, while he was the most celebrated of raphael's scholars. he had a vigorous, daring spirit, with a free hand and a bold fancy. so long as he painted under raphael, giulio followed his master closely, especially in his study of the antique, but he lacked the purity and grace of his teacher, on whose death, the pupil leaving rome, pursued his own coarser, more vehement impulses. the frescoes in the villa modama, rome, are good examples of his style, so is the altar-piece of the martyrdom of st stephen in s. stefano, genoa. giulio romano was the architect who designed the rebuilding of half mantua. his best easel picture in england is the 'education of jupiter by nymphs and corybantes,' in the national gallery. in raphael's lifetime his principal scholar was accustomed to work on the master's pictures, and on his death giulio, together with another pupil, gianfrancesco penni, were left executors of raphael's will and heirs of his designs. paris bordone was born at treviso in and died in . he was educated in the venetian school, and remained remarkable for delicate rosy colour in his flesh tints and for purple, crimson, and shot hues in his draperies, which were usually small and in crumpled folds. his _chef d'oeuvre_ is in the venetian academy. it is a fisherman presenting a ring to the doge, and is a large and fine picture with many figures. he dealt frequently in mythological or poetic subjects. there is an example of the first in the national gallery. he was great in single female subjects and women's portraits. there is a portrait by bordone of a lovely woman of nineteen belonging to the brignole family, in the national gallery. he had often fine landscape and grand architecture in his pictures. il parmigianino, born , died , was a follower of correggio's. in parmigianino's case the danger of the master's peculiarities became apparent by the lapse into affectation and frivolity. 'his madonnas are empty and condescending, his female saints like ladies in waiting.' still there were certain indestructible beauties of the master which yet clung to the scholar. he had clear warm colouring, decision, and good conception of human life. he was highly successful in portraits. there is a splendid portrait by parmigianino, said to be columbus, in naples. among his celebrated pictures is 'the madonna with the long neck,' in the pitti palace. an altar-piece in the national gallery, which represents a madonna in the clouds with st john the baptist appearing to st jerome, is a good example of parmigianino. it is said that he was engrossed with this picture during the siege of rome in . the soldiers entered the studio intent on pillage, but surprising the master at his work, respected his enthusiasm and protected him. federigo baroccio, of urbino, born in , died in , was also a follower of correggio's, and made a stand against the decline of art in his day. he was tender and idyllic, though apt in his turn to be affected and sentimental. when painting in the vatican, rome, his rivals sought to take his life by poison. the attempt caused baroccio to return to urbino, where he established himself and executed his commissions. amirighi da caravaggio was born at caravaggio in , and died at porto ercole in . he was chief of the naturalistic school, the members of which painted common nature and violent passions in bitter opposition to the eclectics, especially the caracci. the feud was sometimes carried on appositely enough on the side of the naturalistic painters by poison and dagger. caravaggio was distinguished by his wild temper and stormy life, in keeping with his pictures. he resided principally in rome, but dwelt also in naples. he is vulgar but striking, even pathetic in some of his pictures. the 'beheading of john the baptist,' in the cathedral, malta, is one of his masterpieces. his holy families now and then resemble gipsy _ménages_. guiseppe ribiera, a spaniard, and so called lo spagnoletto, was born and died . he followed caravaggio, while he retained reminiscences of the spanish school and of the venetian masters. some of his best pictures, such as 'the pieta with the marys and the disciples,' and his 'last supper,' are in naples. he had a wild fancy with a preference for horrible subjects--executions, tortures--in this respect resembling domenichino. lo spagnoletto is said to be particularly unpleasant in his mythological scenes. many of his pictures have blackened with time. his 'mary of egypt standing by her open grave' is a remarkable picture in the dresden gallery. giovanni francesco barbiera, surnamed guercino da cinto, approached the school of the caracci. in his art he resembled guido reni, with the same sweetness, greater liveliness, and fine chiaroscuro. 'dido's last moments' and 'st peter raising tabitha' in rome and in the pitti palace are fine examples of guercino's work. his later pictures, like guido's, are fascinating in softness, delicate colouring and tender sentiment, degenerating, however, into mannerism and insipidity, while his colouring becomes at last pale and washy. albano, born , died . he had elegance and cheerfulness which hardly rose to grace. he painted mostly scenes from ancient mythology, such as 'venus and her companions.' religious subjects were comparatively rare with him; one, however, often repeated was the 'infant christ sleeping on the cross.' giovanni battista salvi, surnamed from his birth-place sassoferrato, was born in and died in . he followed the scholars of the caracci, but with some independence, returning to older and greater masters. his art was distinguished by a peculiar but slightly affected gentleness of conception, pleasing and sweet--with the sweetness verging on weakness. he finished with minute care. he gave constant representations of the madonna and child and holy families in a domestic character. in one of his pictures in naples the madonna is engaged in sewing. his most celebrated, 'madonna del rosario,' is in s. sabina, rome. the madonna bending in ecstatic worship over an infant christ lying on a cushion is in the dresden gallery. giorgio vasari was born at arezzo in and died at florence in . he was an architect, or jeweller, and a historical painter of heavy crowded pictures. his lives of the early italian painters and sculptors up to his own time, the sixteenth century, though full of traditional gossip, are invaluable as graphic chronicles of much interesting information which would otherwise have been lost. sofonisba anguisciola, born , died about , was a pupil of bernardino campi about the close of the sixteenth century at cremona. she is justly praised by vasari. though her works are rare there are a few in england and scotland. three of her pictures which are mentioned with high commendation by dr. waagen are, 'a nun in the white robes of her order, nobly conceived and delicately coloured,' in lord yarborough's collection; in mr harcourt's collection, 'her own portrait, still very youthful, delicate, charming, and clear;' and in the collection of the late sir w. stirling maxwell, 'another portrait of herself at an easel painting the virgin and child on wood, delicately conceived, clear in colour, and very careful.' lavinia fontana, born in , died , was a daughter of prospero fontana, who belonged to the fast degenerating bolognese artists at the close of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth century. she was a better artist than her fellow painters, worked cleverly and boldly, and showed truth to nature. she has left excellent portraits. in the late sir w. stirling maxwell's collection there is a picture by her, 'two girls in a boat with a youth rowing,' on wood, 'of very graceful motive and careful treatment.' chapter xiii.[ ] german, flemish, and dutch artists from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century--van der weyden, a contemporary of the van eycks, - --van leyden, - --van somer, - --snyders, - --g. honthorst, - --jan steen, - --gerard dow, - --de hooch, dates of birth and death unknown--van ostade, - --maas, - --metzu, , still alive in --terburg, - --netcher, - --bol, - --van der helst, - --ruysdael, (?)- --hobbema, - --berchem, - --both, (?)- (?)--du jardin, - --adrian van de velde, - --van der heyden, - --de witte, - --van der neer, (?)- --william van de velde the younger, - --backhuysen, - --van de capella, about --hondecoeter, - --jan weenix, - --pater segers, - --van huysum, - --van der werff, - --mengs, - . roger van der weyden was a contemporary of the van eycks, born at tournai. his early pictures in brussels are lost. he visited italy in , and was treated with distinction at ferrara. his flemish realistic cast of mind and artistic power remained utterly unaffected by the grand italian pictures with which he came in contact; so did his profound earnestness, which must have been great indeed, since its effects are felt through all impediments down to the present day. his expressive realism chose subjects in which the sentiments of grief and pity could be most fitly shown. he sternly rejected any suggestion to idealise the human form, and paint heads, hands, or feet different from those in ordinary life. 'it is the simplicity with which he gives expression by large and melancholy eyes, thought by projections of the forehead, grief by contracted muscles, and suffering by attenuation of the flesh which touches us.' the deadly earnestness of the man impresses the spectator at this distant date. 'there is no smile in any of his faces, but there is many a face wrung with agony, and there is many a tear.' he objected to shadow in every form, and filled his pictures with an invariable atmosphere and light--those which belong to dawn before sunrise. among his finer works are a triptych[ ] belonging to the duke of westminster, a 'last judgment' in the hospital at bearne, and a large 'descent from the cross' in madrid. in the triptych in the centre is christ with black hair, which is unusual, in his left hand the globe. on his right is the virgin mary, on his left st john the evangelist; on the right wing is st john the baptist, on his left the magdalene. lucas van leyden was born in and died in . he painted both scriptural subjects and everyday scenes, being a man of varied powers. he worked admirably for his time, and added to his art that of an engraver. he followed the van eycks, but lowered their treatment of sacred subjects. in incidents taken from common life he showed himself full of observation, and possessed of some humour. his pictures are rare. a 'last judgment,' in the town house, leyden, is a striking but unpleasant example of lucas van leyden's work. paul van somer was born at antwerp in , and died in . he worked for many years in england, where his best works--portraits--remain. he was truthful, a good colourist, and finished carefully. his portraits of lord bacon at panshanger and of the earl and countess of arundel at arundel castle are well known. frans snyders was born in , and died, at antwerp in . after rubens, snyders was the greatest flemish animal painter. he painted along with rubens often, snyders supplying the animals and rubens the figures. frans snyders paid a visit to italy and rome, from which he seems to have profited, judging by his skill in arrangement. this skill he displayed also in his kitchen-pieces (magnificent shows of fruit, vegetables, game, fish, etc.), which, like his animal pictures, are numerous. in one of these kitchen-pieces in the dresden gallery, rubens and his second wife are said to figure as the cooks. princes and nobles bade for snyders' pictures. there is a famous 'boar hunt' in the louvre, in munich 'lionesses pursuing a roebuck,' in vienna 'boar attacked by nine dogs.' snyders' animal pictures are full of energetic action and fierce passion. to these qualities is frequently added hideous realism in detail. there are many snyders in english galleries. gerard honthorst was born at utrecht in , and died in . he was a follower of caravaggio. he visited italy and found favour in rome, where he got from his night-pieces correggio's name, 'della notte.' honthorst was summoned to england by charles i., for whom he painted several pictures. he entered the service of prince frederick henry of orange, and painted also for the king of denmark. he left an extraordinary number of works, sacred, mythological, historical, and latterly many portraits. he drew well and painted powerfully, but was coarsely realistic in his treatment. at hampton court there are two of his best portraits, those of the unfortunate queen of bohemia and the duke of buckingham and his family. gerard honthorst's younger brother, william, was a portrait painter not unlike the elder brother in style. jan steen was born at leyden in , and died in . he was great as a _genre_ painter. he is said to have been, after rembrandt, the most humorous of dutch painters, full of animal spirits and fun. at his best, composition, colouring, and execution were all in excellent keeping. at his worst, he was vulgar and repulsive in his heads, and careless and faulty in his work. he was very rarely either kindly or reverent in his subjects, though, in spite of what is known to have been his riotous life, he is comparatively free from the grossness which is often the shame of flemish and dutch art. jan steen succeeded his father as a brewer and tavern-keeper at delft. he renounced the brewery, in which he did not succeed, and joined the painters' guild, haarlem; but his position as a tavern-keeper is reflected in his pictures, of which eating and drinking, card-playing, etc., are frequently the _motifs_. his family relations were not conducive to higher principles and tastes. he is said to have been so lost to common feeling as to have painted his first wife when she was in a state of intoxication.[ ] his second wife may have been a worthier woman, but she was drawn from the lowest class, and had been accustomed to sell sheeps' heads and trotters in the butchers' market. without doubt jan steen had extraordinary genius coexisting with his coarse, careless nature and jovial habits, and he must have worked with great facility, since, in spite of his idleness and comparatively early death, he left as many as two hundred pictures, rendered him extremely popular. besides his favourite subjects, such as 'the family jollification,' 'the feast of the bean king,' 'game of skittles,' he has pictures in a slightly higher atmosphere, such as 'a pastor visiting a young girl,' 'the parrot,' 'schoolmaster with unmanageable boys,' 'the pursuit of alchemy.' among the latter a good example is 'the music master' in the national gallery. gerard dow was born in and died in . he was a _genre_ painter of great merit. he belonged to leyden, and was a pupil of rembrandt. he began with portraiture, often painting his own face, and went on to scenes from low and middle-class life, but rarely attempted to represent high society. compared to jan steen, however, he is refined. he had a curious fondness for painting hermits. the lighting of his pictures is frequently by lantern or candle. they are mostly small, and without animated action, but are full of picturesqueness. he was a good colourist, 'with a rare truth to nature and a marvellous distinctness of eye and precision of hand.' minute as his execution was, his touch was 'free and soft.' his best pictures are 'like nature's self seen through the camera obscura.' an instance often given of his exquisite finish is that of a broom in the corner of one of his pictures. some contemporary had remarked how careful and elaborate was the labour bestowed on it, when the painter answered that he was still to give it several hours' work. he must have been exceedingly industrious as well as painstaking, since he left two hundred pictures as his contribution to dutch art. among his finer pictures are 'an old woman reading the bible to her husband,' in the louvre; 'the poulterer's shop,' in the national gallery. his _chef d'oeuvre_, 'the woman sick of the dropsy,' is in the louvre. his candlelight is the finest rendered by any master. there is a good example of it in 'the evening school,' in the amsterdam gallery. peter de hooch--spelt often, de hooge--was the _genre_ painter of full, clear sunlight. the dates of his birth and death can only be guessed by those of his pictures, which extend from to . his groups are generally playing cards, smoking, drinking, or engaged in domestic occupations--almost always in the open air. no other _genre_ painter can compare with him in reproducing the effects of sunlight. his prevailing colour is red, varied and repeated with great delicacy. english lovers of art brought de hooch into favour, and many of his pictures are in england. there are fine examples--'the court of a dutch house' and 'a courtyard'--in the national gallery. adrian van ostade was born at haarlem in and died in his native town in . he has been called 'the rembrandt of _genre_ painters,' and, like rembrandt, he was without the sense of human beauty and grace, for even his children are ugly; yet it is the purer, happier side of national life which he constantly represents, and he had great feeling for nature, with picturesqueness and harmony of design and colouring, as well as mastery of the technique of his art. he suffered many hardships in his youth, and grew up a quiet, industrious, family man. he left a very large number of pictures, nearly four hundred, many of them good, and not a few in england. 'the alchemist'[ ] is in the national gallery. maas, born in , died in , is a much-prized _genre_ painter, whose pictures are rare. he was a pupil of rembrandt. he is said to have treated 'very simple subjects with naïve homeliness and kindly humour.' his pictures are 'well lit, with deep warm harmony, and a vigorous touch.' 'the idle servant-maid,' in the national gallery, is a masterpiece. metzu, like terburg, is _par excellence_ one of the two painters of dutch high life. metzu was born in , and is known to have been alive in . he painted both on a large and a small scale, and occasionally departed from his peculiar province to represent market-scenes, etc. he is the most refined and picturesque of _genre_ painters on a small scale. among his _chefs d'oeuvre_ are a 'lady holding a glass of wine and receiving an officer,' in the louvre; and a 'girl writing, a gentleman leaning on her chair and another girl opposite playing the lute,' in the hague gallery. the fine 'duet,' and the 'music lesson' are both in the national gallery. gerard terburg was born at zwol, in , and died in . he visited germany and italy in his youth. his small groups and single figures, taken from the wealthier classes, with their luxurious surroundings, are 'given with exquisite delicacy and refinement.' included in his masterpieces are a 'girl in white satin (a texture which he rendered marvellously) washing her hands in a basin held before her by a maid-servant,' in the dresden gallery; an 'officer in confidential talk with a young girl, and a trumpeter who has brought him a letter,' in the hague gallery; a 'young lady in white satin sitting playing the lute,' in the chateau of wilhelmshöe, at cassell. there are twenty-three terburgs in england and scotland. caspar netcher, born in , died in . he formed himself upon metzu and terburg. he is the great dutch painter of childhood. his finest works are in the dresden gallery. in the national gallery is his 'children blowing bubbles.' ferdinand bol was born at dordrecht in , and died at amsterdam in . he was a student of rembrandt's, and distinguished himself in sacred and historical pictures, and especially in portraits. he followed his master in his youth, fell off in his art in middle life, but became again excellent in his later years. among his fine pictures are 'david's charge to solomon,' in the dublin national gallery; and 'joseph presenting his father jacob to pharaoh,' in the dresden gallery. his last portraits are considered very fine. they are taken in the fullest light, and have a surprising amount of animation. such a portrait, called 'the astronomer,' is in the national gallery.[ ] jacob ruysdael was born in (?) at haarlem. in he was in amsterdam, and acted as witness to the marriage of hobbema, whose lack of worldly prosperity ruysdael shared. he himself was unmarried, and maintained his father in his old age. in the prime of life jacob ruysdael in turn fell into extreme poverty, and died an inmate of the haarlem almshouse in --a sad record of holland's greatest landscape painter, for 'beyond dispute' ruysdael is the first of the famous dutch landscape painters. 'in no other is there the feeling for the poetry of northern nature united with perfect execution, admirable drawing, great knowledge of chiaroscuro, powerful colouring, and a mastery of the brush which ranged from the minutest touch to broad, free execution.' his prevailing tone of colour is a full, decided green, though age has given many of his pictures a brown tone. a considerable number of his pictures are in a greyish, clear, cool tone (good examples of the last are to be seen in the dresden gallery). he generally painted the flat dutch country in tranquil repose. he dealt usually in heavy clouded skies which told of showers past and coming, and dark sheets of water overshadowed by trees, lending a melancholy sentiment to the picture. he was fond of wide expanses of land and water, fond also of introducing the spires of his native haarlem, touching the horizon line. he has left a few sea-pieces, always with cloudy heavens and heaving or raging seas;[ ] where he has given sketches of sea, and shore, the ærial perspective is rendered in tender gradations 'full of pathos.' he has other pictures representing hilly, even mountainous, landscapes. in these foaming waterfalls form a prominent feature. ruysdael was weak in his drawing of men and animals, in which he was occasionally assisted by fellow-artists, such as berchem and van de velde. among his finest pictures are 'a view of the country round haarlem,' in the museum of the hague; 'a flat country, with a road leading to a village and fields with wheat sheaves,' in the dresden gallery; 'a hilly bare country through which a river runs; the horseman and beggar on a bridge, by wouvermans,' in the louvre. his most remarkable waterfall is in the hague museum. in the dresden gallery there is 'a jewish cemetery,' 'full of melancholy.' three of ruysdael's fine waterfalls are in the national gallery. of two very grand storms which he painted one is in the louvre, the other in the collection of the marquis of lansdowne at bowood. there are many of ruysdael's pictures in england. in the great landscape painter, as in the other renowned dutch artists of the seventeenth century, the influence of rembrandt is marked. meindert hobbema was born in , married in , and died in poverty at amsterdam in . his works, which were neglected in his lifetime, now fetch much more than their weight in gold. sums as large as four thousand pounds have been paid more than once for a hobbema, yet his name was not found in any dictionary of art or artists for more than a century after his death. the english were the first to acknowledge hobbema's merit, and nine-tenths of his works are in england, where he is the most popular dutch landscape painter. but he is said by judges to have less invention and less poetic sensibility than his contemporary and friend ruysdael. hobbema's subjects are usually villages surrounded by trees like those in guelderland, water-mills, a slightly broken country, with groups of trees, wheatfields, meadows, and small pools, more rarely portions of towns, and still more seldom old castles and stately mansions.[ ] he has all the lifelike truthfulness of the dutch artists. in tone he is as warm and golden as ruysdael is cool in his greens. in the national gallery there are excellent specimens of hobbema, such as 'the avenue middelharnis' and 'a landscape in showery weather.' nicolas berchem, often spelt berghem, was born at haarlem in , and died at amsterdam in . he was an excellent dutch landscape painter. he had evidently visited italy, and displayed great fondness for italian subjects. his pictures show 'varied composition, good drawing, fine ærial effects, freedom, playfulness, and spirit.' as a colourist he was unequal, being often warm and harmonious, but at other times heavy and cold. it is clear that he was no student of life, from the monotony of his shepherds and shepherdesses and the sameness of his animals. he was naturally industrious, and was spurred on, as a still greater artist is said to have been, by the greed of his wife. he painted upwards of four hundred pictures, besides doing figures and animals for other painters. the great northern european galleries are rich in his works. one of his best pictures, 'a shepherdess driving her cattle through a ford in a rocky landscape,' where the cool tone of the landscape is contrasted with the golden tone of the cattle, is in the louvre. another fine picture, 'crossing the ford,' is in the national gallery. jan both, born in (?), died in (?), was another dutch landscape painter still more spellbound by italy,[ ] which he visited, and where he fell under the influence of claude lorraine. both devoted himself thenceforth to italian landscape to a greater degree than was practised by any other dutch painter. he was excellent in drawing and skilful in rendering the golden glories of italian sunsets. he painted freely and with solidity. the figures of men and animals in his pictures were often introduced by his brother andreas. jan both excelled both in large and small pictures, but he was most uninterestingly uniform in design. he had generally a foreground of lofty trees, and for a background a range of mountains rising step by step, with a wide plain at their feet. sometimes he introduced a waterfall or a lake. he rarely painted particular points in a landscape. his life was not a long one, so that his pictures do not number more than a hundred and fifty. occasionally his warm tone of colouring degenerates to a foxy red. one of both's best pictures--a landscape in which the fresh light of morning is apparent--is in the national gallery. karil du jardin, born in , died in , is a third great dutch landscape painter, whose fancy italy laid hold of, so that he settled in the country, dying at venice. he was, it is said, a pupil of berchem's, from whom he may have first drawn his italian proclivities. he has more truth and feeling for animated nature than berchem. indeed, in this respect du jardin followed paul potter. according to contemporary accounts, du jardin, who had his share of the national humour, wasted his time in the pursuit of pleasure, and did not leave more pictures behind him than both left. du jardin's best works are in the louvre, but there are also many of his pictures in england. among his masterpieces, 'cattle of all kinds in a meadow surrounded by rocks, and watered by a cascade; a horseman giving alms to a peasant boy;' and his celebrated 'charlatan,' full of observation and humour, are in the louvre. a fine picture, 'figures of animals under the shade of a tree,' is in the national gallery. adrian van de velde, born in , died in , the younger brother of a great marine painter, ranks almost as high as paul potter in cattle painting. if 'inferior in modelling and solidity' to his rival, adrian van de velde is superior in variety, taste, and feeling. like the great english animal painter, landseer, van de velde was a distinguished artist when a mere boy of fourteen. like his compatriot, paul potter, van de velde died young, at the age of thirty-two. he generally disposed of his cattle among broken ground with trees and pools of water. sometimes he has a herdsman or a shepherdess, sometimes there is a hunting party passing. his scenery is reckoned masterly. it is mostly taken from the coast of scheveningen. he often painted in men, horses, and dogs for other painters. he must have been very industrious, with great facility in his work, since, in spite of his premature death, he had painted nearly two hundred pictures. 'a brown cow grazing and a grey cow resting,' which is in the berlin museum, was done at the age of sixteen, yet it is full of observation, delicacy, and execution. 'cattle grazing before a peasant's cottage,' which is in the dresden gallery, is considered very fine. a fine 'winter landscape,' and a 'farm cottage,' are in the national gallery. some of adrian van de velde's best work, as well as his brother's, is in england. jan van der heyden, 'the gerard dow of architectural painters,' was born in and died in . he combined an unspeakable minuteness of detail with the closest observation of nature. his subjects, which he selected with great taste, were chiefly well-known buildings, palaces, churches, and canal banks in holland and belgium. he painted in a warm transparent tone, with close application of the laws of perspective. the figures in his pictures, in excellent keeping, were often introduced by adrian van de velde. van der heyden's productiveness as a painter was lessened by the circumstance that his mechanical talent led him to make an invention by which the construction of the fire-engines of his day was greatly improved. in consequence he was placed by the magistrates of amsterdam at the head of their fire-engine establishment, which had thus many claims on his time. a beautiful 'street in cologne' is in the national gallery. emanuel de witte, born in , died in , was great in architectural interiors, especially in churches of italian architecture. he stood to this branch of dutch art in the same relation that ruysdael did to landscape and william van de velde to seascape. aart van der neer was born in (?), died in . he is famous for his canal banks by moonlight, and fine disposal of broad masses of shadow. after his moonlights come his sunsets, conflagrations, and winter scenes. he rarely painted full daylight. he sometimes painted on the same van der neer in the national gallery. many of his works are in england. william van de velde the younger, the elder brother of adrian van de velde, the cattle painter, was born at amsterdam in , and died at greenwich in . his early life was spent in holland. he followed his father, william van de velde, a painter also, to england, where, under the patronage of charles ii, and james ii., william the younger painted the naval victories of the english over the dutch, just as in holland he had already painted the naval victories of the dutch over the english. he was a greater and more consistent artist than he was a patriot. without question he is the first marine painter of the dutch school. he was untiring in his study of nature, so that his perfect knowledge of perspective and the incomparable mastery of technical qualities which he inherited from his school, enabled him to render sea and sky under every aspect. his vessels 'were drawn with a knowledge which extended to every rope.' he has been an exceedingly popular painter both with the dutch and the english. of upwards of three hundred pictures left by him many are in holland and still more in england, where in his lifetime he was largely employed by the english nobility and gentry. william van de velde has a great picture in the amsterdam museum, where the english flag-ship, the _princess royal_, is represented as striking her colours to the dutch fleet in . in the companion picture, also by van de velde, 'four english men-of-war brought in as prizes,' the painter introduces himself in the small boat from which he witnessed the fight. william van de velde's triumphs in calm seas are seen especially in his pictures at the hague and in munich. some of van de velde's best works are in the national gallery. backhuysen born in , died at amsterdam in , was another admirable marine painter. he did not study painting till he had followed a trade up to the age of eighteen years; he then gave himself with ardour to art, making many studies of skies, coasts, and vessels. he was inferior to william van de velde in his colouring, which was heavy, with a cold effect. but he had in full a dutch painter's truthfulness, while his 'stormy waves and rent clouds' are given with poetic feeling. he was an industrious and successful man, painting nearly two hundred pictures, and receiving many commissions from the king of prussia, grand duke of tuscany, etc. one of his finest works, 'a view of the river from the landing-place called the mosselsteiger,' is in amsterdam museum. in the louvre is 'a view of the mouth of the texel, with ten men-of-war sailing before a fresh wind.' 'dutch shipping' is in the national gallery. van de capella is another capital marine painter, though little is known of him. he was a native of amsterdam about . his favourite subject is a quiet sea in sunny weather. his work bears some resemblance to that of cuyp. his best pictures are in england. 'a calm at low water' is in the national gallery. melchior de hondecoeter, born in , died in , chose the feathered tribe for his subjects. he has been called 'the raphael of bird painters.' he painted especially poultry, peacocks, turkeys, and pigeons, which he usually represented alive, and treated with great truthfulness and picturesque feeling. among his best pictures are 'the floating feather,' a feather given with singular lightness drifting in a pool, with different birds on the water and the shore--a pelican prominent--in amsterdam museum, and 'a hen defending her chickens against the attacks of a pea-hen, with a peacock, a pigeon, a cassowary, and a crane,' also in amsterdam. jan weenix, born in , died in . he was a painter of 'still life,' and was especially famous for his dead hares, 'which in form and colour, down to the rendering of every hair, are marvels of execution.' he painted sometimes, though rarely, a living dog in his pieces. a fine weenix sometimes painted flower pieces.[ ] pater segers, so called because he was a father in a jesuit convent, which he entered at twenty-four years of age. he was born in , and died in the jesuit convent, antwerp, . he was a famous flower painter, but did not paint flowers by themselves; he painted them in conjunction with the historical and sacred subjects of other painters. he added many a wreath to the virgin and child. he worked in this fashion with rubens, but painted more frequently along with painters of a lower rank in art. pater segers' flowers are finely drawn and tastefully arranged. the red of his roses has remained unchanged by years, while the roses of other painters have become violet or faded altogether. he had endless royal commissions. there are six of his pictures of much merit in the dresden gallery. besides the elder and younger de heem and maria von oesterwyck mentioned at page , jan van huysum, - , was great in flower painting, choosing flowers rather than fruit for his brush. if de heem has been called the titian, van huysum has been defined as the correggio, of flowers and fruit. he reversed the ordinary course of artists by beginning in a broad style, and progressing into an execution of the finest details. in masterly drawing and truthfulness he was not inferior to de heem, though hardly reckoned his equal in other respects. even in van huysum's lifetime there was an eager demand for his pictures, of which he left more than a hundred. there is an excellent fruit and flower piece by him in dulwich gallery, and a masterpiece, 'a vase with flowers,' is in the national gallery. andrian van der werff was born in , and died in . he is honourably distinguished for his pursuit of the ideal, in which he stood alone among the dutch artists of his day. he showed much sense of beauty and elegance of form with great finish, but he had more than counterbalancing faults. his grouping was artificial, his heads monotonous, his colouring 'cold and heavy,' with 'a frosty feeling' in his pictures. his flesh tints resembled ivory, yet his elegance was so highly prized that he had many royal and noble patrons, for whom he executed sculptural and mythological pieces. many of his pictures are in the munich gallery. anton raphael mengs was born in bohemia , and died in rome . his father was a distinguished miniature painter, and gave his son a careful education, training him to copy the masterpieces of michael angelo and raphael from his twelfth year. unfortunately he remained a copyist and an eclectic. he drew well, learnt chiaroscuro from studying correggio, and colouring from analysing titian. he was acquainted with the best technical processes in oil and fresco. all that teaching could do for a man was done, and to a great extent in vain. for though he worked with great conscientiousness, fancy and feeling were either originally lacking, or they were overlaid and stifled by his excess of culture and severe education. the most successful of his works are portraits, in which masterly treatment makes up to some extent for the absence of originality and subtle sympathy. but in his day, and with some reason, raphael mengs was greatly prized, since he figured among a host of ignorant, careless, and conceited painters. at the age of seventeen he was appointed court painter to king augustus of saxony. he was summoned to spain by charles iii., who gave him a high salary. among his good works is an 'assumption' on the high altar of the catholic church, dresden. an allegorical subject in fresco on the ceiling of the camera de papini in the vatican has 'beauty of form, delicate observation, and masterly modelling.' mengs wrote well on art, though in his writing also his eclecticism comes out. note to page . 'i have been told that i have not done justice to lionardo in this short sketch. i give in an abridged form the accurate appreciative analysis of the man and his work in sir c, and lady eastlake.'--kugler. it is stated that the versatility of lionardo was against him. he attempted too much for one man and one life. an additional impediment was produced by his temperament, 'dreamy, perfidious, procrastinating,' withal desirous of shining in society. his ideal of the lord's head is the highest that art has realised. the apostles' heads are among the truest and noblest. the countenances of his madonnas are full of ineffable sweetness and pathos. 'at the same time he analysed the monstrous and misshapen, and has left us caricatures in which he seems to have gloated over hideousness half human, half brute. he altered and retouched without ceasing, always deferring the conclusion of the task which he executed with untiring labour and ceaseless dissatisfaction.' the wonder is not that he should have left so little, but that he left enough to prove the transcendent nature of his art. 'there is nothing stranger in history than the fact that his great fame rests on one single picture--long reduced to a shadow--on half-a-dozen pictures for which his hand is alternately claimed and denied, and on unfinished fragments which he himself condemned.' lionardo was too universal to be of any school. index. page albino angelico, fra anguisciola backhuysen baroccio bartolommeo, fra bellini, the berchem bol bordone both botticelli canaletto capella, van de caravaggio carpaccio carracci, the cellini claude loraine correggio crivelli cuyp domenichino dow du jardin dürer eycks, the van filippo, fra fontana francia, il gaddi garofalo ghiberti ghirlandajo gibbons, grinling giorgione giotto gozzoli greuze guercino guido heem, de helst, van der heyden, van der hobbema holbein hondecoeter honthorst hooch huysum, van kneller le brun lely leyden, van lionardo da vinci lipi luini maas mabuse mantegna masaccio matsys memling mengs messina, da metzu , michael angelo murillo netcher orcagna ostade, van palma pardenone parmigianino perugino pisano potter poussin raphael rembrandt romano rubens ruysdael salvator rosa sarto, del sassa errato segers signorelli snyders somer, van spagna spagnoletto steen teniers, father and son terburg , tintoretto titian van dyck vasari velasquez velde, van de velde, van de, the younger veronese watteau wouvermans footnotes: [ ] it is in their unconsciousness and earnestness that a parallel is drawn between the first italian painters and the elizabethean poets. in other respects the comparison may be reversed, for the early italian painters, from their restriction to religious painting, with even that treated according to tradition, were as destitute of the breadth of scope and fancy attained by their successors, as the elizabethean poets were distinguished by the exuberant freedom which failed in the more formal scholars of anne's reign. [ ] kugler's handbook of art. [ ] while writing of goldsmiths that became painters, i may say a word of a goldsmith who, without quitting his trade, was an unrivalled artist in his line. i mean benvenuto cellini, -- , a man of violent passions and little principle, who led a wild troubled life, of which he has left an account as shameless as his character, in an autobiography. cellini was the most distinguished worker in gold and silver of his day, and his richly chased dishes, goblets, and salt cellars, are still in great repute. [ ] kugler's _handbook of painting_. [ ] kugler's _handbook of painting_. [ ] see note, page . [ ] mrs roscoe's _life of vittoria colonna_ [ ] michael angelo's will was very simple. 'i bequeath my soul to god, my body to the earth, and my possessions to my nearest relations.' [ ] lady eastlake, _history of our lord_. [ ] hare, _walks in rome_. [ ] lanzi, in hare's _walks in rome_. [ ] rio. _poetry of christian art_, in hare's _walks in rome._ [ ] mrs jameson. [ ] dean alford. [ ] _imperial biographical dictionary_. [ ] titian's age is variously given; some authorities make it ninety-nine years, placing the date of his death in or . [ ] kugler. [ ] the term originated in the french expression, '_du genre bas_.' [ ] he had a peculiar fondness for blue and bronze hues. [ ] it is due to tintoret to say, that there are modern critics, who look below the surface, and are at this date deeply enamoured of his pictures. tintoret's name now stands very high in art. [ ] mrs jameson. [ ] guido said of rubens: 'does this painter mix blood with his colours?' [ ] _life of rubens_. [ ] if i mistake not, this is the same countess of arundel who, in her widowhood, resided in italy in order to be near her young sons then at padua. having provoked the suspicion of the doge and council of venice, she was arrested by them on a charge of treason, and brought before the tribunal, where she successfully pled her own cause, and obtained her release, the only woman who ever braved triumphantly the terrible 'ten.' [ ] here is the description of a very different rembrandt which appears in this year's exhibition of the works by old masters: 'there is no portrait here which equals rembrandt's picture, from windsor, "a lady opening a casement;" a not particularly appropriate name, because the picture represents no such action. the lady is simply looking from an open window, her left hand raised and resting at the side of the opening. we believe there is nothing left to tell who this lady was, with the grave, sad eyes, and lips that seem to quiver with a trouble hardly yet assuaged collar, almost a tippet, for it falls below her shoulders, together with lace cuffs. a triple band of large pearls goes about her neck, and she has similar ornaments round each wrist. she wears a mourning robe and black jewellery.... this picture, which resembles in most of its qualities a pair, of somewhat larger size, which were here last year, and also came from the royal collection, is signed and dated "rembrandt, f. ." it is, therefore, a late work of his. what wonderful harmony is here, of light, of colour, of tone. how nearly perfect is the keeping of the whole picture; as a whole, and also in respect of part to part. could anything be truer than the breadth of the chiaroscuro? notice how beautifully, and with what subtle gradations, the light reflected from her white collar strikes on her slightly faded cheek; how tenderly it seems to play among the soft tangles of the hair that time has thinned.'--_athenæum_. [ ] he had been called the titian of flower and fruit painters. he preferred fruit for his subject. his works are not common in england. his masterpiece, 'the chalice of the sacrament,' crowned with a stately wreath, and sheaves of corn and bunches of grapes among the flowers, is at vienna. [ ] sir w. stirling maxwell. [ ] sir w. stirling maxwell. [ ] hare, _wanderings in spain_. [ ] hare's _wanderings in spain_. [ ] the spelling is an english corruption of the french claude. [ ] poussin had a villa near ponte molle, and the road by which he used to go to it is still called in rome 'poussin's walk.' [ ] claude's summer villa is still pointed out near rome. [ ] _imperial biographical dictionary_. [ ] madame le brun, whose maiden name was vigée, born , died , was an excellent portrait painter. [ ] wornum. [ ] wornum. [ ] supposed to be a niece of sir thomas more's. [ ] rev. j. lewis, . [ ] wornum. [ ] a still more famous picture by holbein is that called 'the two ambassadors,' and believed to represent sir thomas wyatt and his secretary. [ ] walpole. [ ] walpole. [ ] dwarfs figured at charles's court, as at the court of philip iv. of spain. [ ] the notion that van dyck sacrificed truth to grace is absolutely contradicted by certain critics, who bring forward as a proof of their contradiction what they consider the 'over-true' picture of the queen henrietta maria, shown at the last exhibition of the works of old masters. the picture seems hardly to warrant the strong opinion of the critics. [ ] walpole. [ ] walpole. [ ] lady eastlake and dr. waagen's works on italian, flemish, and dutch art, modelled on kugler. [ ] a lunette is a small picture, generally semicircular, surmounting the main picture in an altar-piece. [ ] the dutch still more than the italian artists belonged largely to families of artists bearing the same surnames. [ ] a picture with one door of two panels is called a diptych, with two doors of three panels a triptych, with many doors and panels a polyptych. [ ] fairholt's 'homes and haunts of foreign artists.' [ ] alchemists, like hermits, still existed in the seventeenth century. [ ] bartholomew van der helst, - , was another great dutch portrait painter. his portrait pieces with many figures are famous. an 'archery festival,' commemorating the peace of westphalia, includes twenty-four figures full of individuality and finely drawn and coloured. one of his best works is 'in the workhouse,' at amsterdam. two women and two men are conversing together in the foreground. there is a man with a book, and a preacher delivering a sermon in the background. [ ] it may be that ruysdael's straggling life was reflected in his lowering skies and stormy seas. [ ] other eminent painters, such as van de velde, wouvermans, and berchem often supplied cattle and figures to hobbema's landscapes. [ ] was the apparently greater success of these partly denaturalised dutch landscape painters, as contrasted with the adversity of ruysdael and hobbema, due to the classic mania? 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[illustration: william hogarth.] the works of william hogarth; in a series of engravings: with descriptions, and a comment on their moral tendency, by the rev. john trusler. to which are added, anecdotes of the author and his works, by j. hogarth and j. nichols. london: published by jones and co. temple of the muses, (late lackington's,) finsbury square. . c. baynes, printer, duke street, lincoln's inn fields. the life of hogarth. william hogarth is said to have been the descendant of a family originally from kirby thore, in westmorland. his grandfather was a plain yeoman, who possessed a small tenement in the vale of bampton, a village about fifteen miles north of kendal, in that county; and had three sons. the eldest assisted his father in farming, and succeeded to his little freehold. the second settled in troutbeck, a village eight miles north west of kendal, and was remarkable for his talent at provincial poetry. richard hogarth, the third son, who was educated at st. bees, and had kept a school in the same county, appears to have been a man of some learning. he came early to london, where he resumed his original occupation of a schoolmaster, in ship-court in the old bailey, and was occasionally employed as a corrector of the press. mr. richard hogarth married in london; and our artist, and his sisters, mary and anne, are believed to have been the only product of the marriage. william hogarth was born november , and baptised nov. , , in the parish of st. bartholomew the great, in london; to which parish, it is said, in the biographia britannica, he was afterwards a benefactor. the school of hogarth's father, in , was in the parish of st. martin, ludgate. in the register of that parish, therefore, the date of his death, it was natural to suppose, might be found; but the register has been searched to no purpose. hogarth seems to have received no other education than that of a mechanic, and his outset in life was unpropitious. young hogarth was bound apprentice to a silversmith (whose name was gamble) of some eminence; by whom he was confined to that branch of the trade, which consists in engraving arms and cyphers upon the plate. while thus employed, he gradually acquired some knowledge of drawing; and, before his apprenticeship expired, he exhibited talent for caricature. "he felt the impulse of genius, and that it directed him to painting, though little apprised at that time of the mode nature had intended he should pursue." the following circumstance gave the first indication of the talents with which hogarth afterwards proved himself to be so liberally endowed. during his apprenticeship, he set out one sunday, with two or three companions, on an excursion to highgate. the weather being hot, they went into a public-house; where they had not long been, before a quarrel arose between some persons in the same room; from words they soon got to blows, and the quart pots being the only missiles at hand, were sent flying about the room in glorious confusion. this was a scene too laughable for hogarth to resist. he drew out his pencil, and produced on the spot one of the most ludicrous pieces that ever was seen; which exhibited likenesses not only of the combatants engaged in the affray, but also of the persons gathered round them, placed in grotesque attitudes, and heightened with character and points of humour. on the expiration of his apprenticeship, he entered into the academy in st. martin's lane, and studied drawing from the life: but in this his proficiency was inconsiderable; nor would he ever have surpassed _mediocrity_ as a painter, if he had not penetrated through external form to character and manners. "it was character, passions, the soul, that his genius was given him to copy." the engraving of arms and shop-bills seems to have been his first employment by which to obtain a decent livelihood. he was, however, soon engaged in decorating books, and furnished sets of plates for several publications of the time. an edition of _hudibras_ afforded him the first subject suited to his genius: yet he felt so much the shackles of other men's ideas, that he was less successful in this task than might have been expected. in the mean time, he had acquired the use of the brush, as well as of the pen and graver; and, possessing a singular facility in seizing a likeness, he acquired considerable employment as a portrait-painter. shortly after his marriage, he informs us that he commenced painter of small conversation pieces, from twelve to fifteen inches in height; the novelty of which caused them to succeed for a few years. one of the earliest productions of this kind, which distinguished him as a painter, is supposed to have been a representation of wanstead assembly; the figures in it were drawn from the life, and without burlesque. the faces were said to bear great likenesses to the persons so drawn, and to be rather better coloured than some of his more finished performances. grace, however, was no attribute of his pencil; and he was more disposed to aggravate, than to soften the harsh touches of nature. a curious anecdote is recorded of our artist during the early part of his practice as a portrait painter. a nobleman, who was uncommonly ugly and deformed, sat for his picture, which was executed in his happiest manner, and with singularly rigid fidelity. the peer, disgusted at this counterpart of his dear self, was not disposed very readily to pay for a reflector that would only insult him with his deformities. after some time had elapsed, and numerous unsuccessful applications had been made for payment, the painter resorted to an expedient, which he knew must alarm the nobleman's pride. he sent him the following card:--"mr. hogarth's dutiful respects to lord----; finding that he does not mean to have the picture which was drawn for him, is informed again of mr. hogarth's pressing necessities for the money. if, therefore, his lordship does not send for it in three days, it will be disposed of, with the addition of a tail and some other appendages, to _mr. hare, the famous wild beast man_; mr. h. having given that gentleman a conditional promise on his lordship's refusal." this intimation had its desired effect; the picture was paid for, and committed to the flames. hogarth's talents, however, for original comic design, gradually unfolded themselves, and various public occasions produced displays of his ludicrous powers. in the year , he clandestinely married the only daughter of sir james thornhill, the painter, who was not easily reconciled to her union with an obscure artist, as hogarth then comparatively was. shortly after, he commenced his first great series of moral paintings, "the harlot's progress:" some of these were, at lady thornhill's suggestion, designedly placed by mrs. hogarth in her father's way, in order to reconcile him to her marriage. being informed by whom they were executed, sir james observed, "the man who can produce such representations as these, can also maintain a wife without a portion." he soon after, however, relented, and became generous to the young couple, with whom he lived in great harmony until his death, which took place in . in his genius became conspicuously known. the third scene of "the harlot's progress" introduced him to the notice of the great: at a board of treasury, (which was held a day or two after the appearance of that print), a copy of it was shown by one of the lords, as containing, among other excellences, a striking likeness of sir john gonson, a celebrated magistrate of that day, well known for his rigour towards women of the town. from the treasury each lord repaired to the print-shop for a copy of it, and hogarth rose completely into fame. upwards of twelve hundred subscribers entered their names for the plates, which were copied and imitated on fan mounts, and in a variety of other forms; and a pantomime taken from them was represented at the theatre. this performance, together with several subsequent ones of a similar kind, have placed hogarth in the rare class of original geniuses and inventors. he may be said to have created an entirely new species of painting, which may be termed the _moral comic_; and may be considered rather as a writer of comedy with a pencil, than as a painter. if catching the manners and follies of an age, _living as they rise_--if general satire on vices,--and ridicule familiarised by strokes of nature, and heightened by wit,--and the whole animated by proper and just expressions of the passions,--be comedy, hogarth composed comedies as much as moliere. soon after his marriage, hogarth resided at south lambeth; and being intimate with mr. tyers, the then spirited proprietor of vauxhall gardens, he contributed much to the improvement of those gardens; and first suggested the hint of embellishing them with paintings, some of which were the productions of his own comic pencil. among the paintings were "the four parts of the day," either by hogarth, or after his designs. two years after the publication of his "harlot's progress," appeared the "rake's progress," which, lord orford remarks, (though perhaps superior,) "had not so much success, for want of notoriety: nor is the print of the arrest equal in merit to the others." the curtain, however, was now drawn aside, and his genius stood displayed in its full lustre. the rake's progress was followed by several works in series, viz. "marriage a-la-mode, industry and idleness, the stages of cruelty, and election prints." to these may be added, a great number of single comic pieces, all of which present a rich source of amusement:--such as, "the march to finchley, modern midnight conversation, the sleeping congregation, the gates of calais, gin lane, beer street, strolling players in a barn, the lecture, laughing audience, enraged musician," &c. &c. which, being introduced and described in the subsequent part of this work, it would far exceed the limits, necessarily assigned to these brief memoirs, _here_ minutely to characterise. all the works of this original genius are, in fact, lectures of morality. they are satires of particular vices and follies, expressed with such strength of character, and such an accumulation of minute and appropriate circumstances, that they have all the truth of nature heightened by the attractions of wit and fancy. nothing is without a meaning, but all either conspires to the great end, or forms an addition to the lively drama of human manners. his single pieces, however, are rather to be considered as studies, not perhaps for the professional artist, but for the searcher into life and manners, and for the votaries of true humour and ridicule. no _furniture_ of the kind can vie with hogarth's prints, as a fund of inexhaustible amusement, yet conveying at the same time lessons of morality. not contented, however, with the just reputation which he had acquired in his proper department, hogarth attempted to shine in the highest branch of the art,--serious history-painting. "from a contempt," says lord orford, "of the ignorant virtuosi of the age, and from indignation at the impudent tricks of picture dealers, whom he saw continually recommending and vending vile copies to bubble collectors, and from having never studied, or indeed having seen, few good pictures of the great italian masters, he persuaded himself that the praises bestowed on those glorious works were nothing but the effects of prejudice. he talked this language till he believed it; and having heard it often asserted (as is true) that time gives a mellowness to colours, and improves them, he not only denied the proposition, but maintained that pictures only grew black and worse by age, not distinguishing between the degrees in which the proposition might be true or false. he went farther: he determined to rival the ancients, and unfortunately chose one of the finest pictures in england as the object of his competition. this was the celebrated sigismonda of sir luke schaub, now in the possession of the duke of newcastle, said to be painted by correggio, probably by furino."--"it is impossible to see the picture," (continues his lordship,) "or read dryden's inimitable tale, and not feel that the same soul animated both. after many essays, hogarth at last produced _his_ sigismonda,--but no more like sigismonda than i to hercules." notwithstanding hogarth professed to decry literature, he felt an inclination to communicate to the public his ideas on a topic connected with his art. his "analysis of beauty" made its appearance in one volume quarto, in the year . its leading principle is, that beauty fundamentally consists in that union of uniformity which is found in the curve or waving line; and that round swelling figures are most pleasing to the eye. this principle he illustrates by many ingenious remarks and examples, and also by some plates characteristic of his genius. in the year , his brother-in-law, mr. thornhill, resigned his office of king's serjeant-painter in favour of hogarth, who received his appointment on the th of june, and entered on his functions on the th of july, both in the same year. this place was re-granted to him by a warrant of george the third, which bears date the th october, , with a salary of ten pounds per annum, payable quarterly. this connexion with the court probably induced hogarth to deviate from the strict line of party neutrality which he had hitherto observed, and to engage against mr. wilkes and his friends, in a print published in september, , entitled _the times_. this publication provoked some severe strictures from wilkes's pen, in a north briton (no. .) hogarth replied by a caricature of the writer: a rejoinder was put in by churchill, in an angry epistle to hogarth (not the brightest of his works); and in which the severest strokes fell on a defect the painter had not caused, and could not amend--his age; which, however, was neither remarkable nor decrepit; much less had it impaired his talents: for, only six months before, he had produced one of his most capital works. in revenge for this epistle, hogarth caricatured churchill, under the form of a canonical bear, with a club and a pot of porter. during this period of warfare (so virulent and disgraceful to all the parties), hogarth's health visibly declined. in , he complained of an internal pain, the continuance of which produced a general decay of the system, that proved incurable; and, on the th of october, , (having been previously conveyed in a very weak and languid state from chiswick to leicester fields,) he died suddenly, of an aneurism in his chest, in the sixty-seventh or sixty-eighth year of his age. his remains were interred at chiswick, beneath a plain but neat mausoleum, with the following elegant inscription by his friend garrick:-- "farewell, great painter of mankind, who reach'd the noblest point of art; whose pictured morals charm the mind, and through the eye correct the heart. if genius fire thee, reader, stay; if nature touch thee, drop a tear: if neither move thee, turn away, for hogarth's honour'd dust lies here." list of engravings. vol. i. rake's progress. page plate heir taking possession " surrounded by artists " tavern scene " arrested for debt " marries an old maid " gaming house " prison scene " mad house the distressed poet the bench the laughing audience gate of calais the politician taste in high life harlot's progress. plate " " " " " the lecture the chorus columbus breaking the egg modern midnight conversation consultation of physicians portrait of daniel lock, esq. the enraged musician masquerades and operas times of the day. morning noon evening night sigismonda portrait of martin fowkes, esq. the cockpit captain thomas coram country inn yard industry and idleness. plate " " " " " " " " " " " southwark fair. garrick as richard iii. france and england. plate france " england hogarth's works. the rake's progress. of all the follies in human life, there is none greater than that of extravagance, or profuseness; it being constant labour, without the least ease or relaxation. it bears, indeed, the colour of that which is commendable, and would fain be thought to take its rise from laudable motives, searching indefatigably after true felicity; now as there can be no true felicity without content, it is this which every man is in constant pursuit of; the learned, for instance, in his industrious quest after knowledge; the merchant, in his dangerous voyages; the ambitious, in his passionate pursuit of honour; the conqueror, in his earnest desire of victory; the politician, in his deep-laid designs; the wanton, in his pleasing charms of beauty; the covetous, in his unwearied heaping-up of treasure; and the prodigal, in his general and extravagant indulgence.--thus far it may be well;--but, so mistaken are we in our road, as to run on in the very opposite tract, which leads directly to our ruin. whatever else we indulge ourselves in, is attended with some small degree of relish, and has some trifling satisfaction in the enjoyment, but, in this, the farther we go, the more we are lost; and when arrived at the mark proposed, we are as far from the object we pursue, as when we first set out. here then, are we inexcusable, in not attending to the secret dictates of reason, and in stopping our ears at the timely admonitions of friendship. headstrong and ungovernable, we pursue our course without intermission; thoughtless and unwary, we see not the dangers that lie immediately before us; but hurry on, even without sight of our object, till we bury ourselves in that gulf of woe, where perishes at once, health, wealth and virtue, and whose dreadful labyrinths admit of no return. struck with the foresight of that misery, attendant on a life of debauchery, which is, in fact, the offspring of prodigality, our author has, in the scenes before us, attempted the reformation of the worldling, by stopping him as it were in his career, and opening to his view the many sad calamities awaiting the prosecution of his proposed scheme of life; he has, in hopes of reforming the prodigal, and at the same time deterring the rising generation, whom providence may have blessed with earthly wealth, from entering into so iniquitous a course, exhibited the life of a young man, hurried on through a succession of profligate pursuits, for the few years nature was able to support itself; and this from the instant he might be said to enter into the world, till the time of his leaving it. but, as the vice of avarice is equal to that of prodigality, and the ruin of children is often owing to the indiscretion of their parents, he has opened the piece with a scene, which, at the same time that it exposes the folly of the youth, shews us the imprudence of the father, who is supposed to have hurt the principles of his son, in depriving him of the necessary use of some portion of that gold, he had with penurious covetousness been hoarding up, for the sole purpose of lodging in his coffers. plate i. the young heir taking possession. oh, vanity of age untoward! ever spleeny, ever froward! why these bolts and massy chains, squint suspicions, jealous pains? why, thy toilsome journey o'er, lay'st thou up an useless store? _hope_, along with _time_ is flown; nor canst thou reap the field thou'st sown. hast thou a son? in time be wise; he views thy toil with other eyes. needs must thy kind paternal care, lock'd in thy chests, be buried there? whence, then, shall flow that friendly ease, that social converse, heartfelt peace, familiar duty without dread, instruction from example bred, which youthful minds with freedom mend, and with the _father_ mix the _friend_? uncircumscribed by prudent rules, or precepts of expensive schools; abused at home, abroad despised, unbred, unletter'd, unadvised; the headstrong course of life begun, what comfort from thy darling son? hoadley. the history opens, representing a scene crowded with all the monuments of avarice, and laying before us a most beautiful contrast, such as is too general in the world, to pass unobserved; nothing being more common than for a son to prodigally squander away that substance his father had, with anxious solicitude, his whole life been amassing.--here, we see the young heir, at the age of nineteen or twenty, raw from the university, just arrived at home, upon the death of his father. eager to know the possessions he is master of, the old wardrobes, where things have been rotting time out of mind, are instantly wrenched open; the strong chests are unlocked; the parchments, those securities of treble interest, on which this avaricious monster lent his money, tumbled out; and the bags of gold, which had long been hoarded, with griping care, now exposed to the pilfering hands of those about him. to explain every little mark of usury and covetousness, such as the mortgages, bonds, indentures, &c. the piece of candle stuck on a save-all, on the mantle-piece; the rotten furniture of the room, and the miserable contents of the dusty wardrobe, would be unnecessary: we shall only notice the more striking articles. from the vast quantity of papers, falls an old written journal, where, among other memorandums, we find the following, viz. "may the th, . put off my bad shilling." hence, we learn, the store this penurious miser set on this trifle: that so penurious is the disposition of the miser, that notwithstanding he may be possessed of many large bags of gold, the fear of losing a single shilling is a continual trouble to him. in one part of the room, a man is hanging it with black cloth, on which are placed escutcheons, by way of dreary ornament; these escutcheons contain the arms of the covetous, _viz._ three vices, hard screwed, with the motto, "beware!" on the floor, lie a pair of old shoes, which this sordid wretch is supposed to have long preserved for the weight of iron in the nails, and has been soling with leather cut from the covers of an old family bible; an excellent piece of satire, intimating, that such men would sacrifice even their god to the lust of money. from these and some other objects too striking to pass unnoticed, such as the gold falling from the breaking cornice; the jack and spit, those utensils of original hospitality, locked up, through fear of being used; the clean and empty chimney, in which a fire is just now going to be made for the first time; and the emaciated figure of the cat, strongly mark the natural temper of the late miserly inhabitant, who could starve in the midst of plenty.--but see the mighty change! view the hero of our piece, left to himself, upon the death of his father, possessed of a goodly inheritance. mark how his mind is affected!--determined to partake of the mighty happiness he falsely imagines others of his age and fortune enjoy; see him running headlong into extravagance, withholding not his heart from any joy; but implicitly pursuing the dictates of his will. to commence this delusive swing of pleasure, his first application is to the tailor, whom we see here taking his measure, in order to trick out his pretty person. in the interim, enters a poor girl (with her mother), whom our hero has seduced, under professions of love and promises of marriage; in hopes of meeting with that kind welcome she had the greatest reason to expect; but he, corrupted with the wealth of which he is now the master, forgets every engagement he once made, finds himself too rich to keep his word; and, as if gold would atone for a breach of honour, is offering money to her mother, as an equivalent for the non-fulfilling of his promise. not the sight of the ring, given as a pledge of his fidelity; not a view of the many affectionate letters he at one time wrote to her, of which her mother's lap is full; not the tears, nor even the pregnant condition of the wretched girl, could awaken in him one spark of tenderness; but, hard hearted and unfeeling, like the generality of wicked men, he suffers her to weep away her woes in silent sorrow, and curse with bitterness her deceitful betrayer. one thing more we shall take notice of, which is, that this unexpected visit, attended with abuse from the mother, so engages the attention of our youth, as to give the old pettifogger behind him an opportunity of robbing him. hence we see that one ill consequence is generally attended with another; and that misfortunes, according to the old proverb, seldom come alone. mr. ireland remarks of this plate--"he here presents to us the picture of a young man, thoughtless, extravagant, and licentious; and, in colours equally impressive, paints the destructive consequences of his conduct. the first print most forcibly contrasts two opposite passions; the unthinking negligence of _youth_, and the sordid avaricious rapacity of age. it brings into one point of view what mr. pope so exquisitely describes in his epistle to lord bathurst-- 'who sees pale _mammon_ pine amidst his store, sees but a backward steward for the poor; this year a reservoir, to keep and spare; the next a fountain, spouting through his heir.' the introduction to this history is well delineated, and the principal figure marked with that easy, unmeaning vacancy of face, which speaks him formed by nature for a dupe. ignorant of the value of money, and negligent in his nature, he leaves his bag of untold gold in the reach of an old and greedy pettifogging attorney, who is making an inventory of bonds, mortgages, indentures, &c. this man, with the rapacity so natural to those who disgrace the profession, seizes the first opportunity of plundering his employer. hogarth had, a few years before, been engaged in a law suit, which gave him some experience of the practice of those pests of society." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . the young hero takes possession of the miser's effects.] plate ii. surrounded by artists and professors. _prosperity_ (with harlot's smiles, most pleasing when she most beguiles), how soon, great foe, can all thy train of false, gay, frantic, loud, and vain, enter the unprovided mind, and memory in fetters bind? load faith and love with golden chain, and sprinkle _lethe_ o'er the brain! _pleasure_, on her silver throne, smiling comes, nor comes alone; _venus_ comes with her along, and smooth _lyæus_, ever young; and in their train, to fill the press, come _apish dance_ and _swoln excess_, mechanic _honour_, vicious _taste_, and _fashion_ in her changing vest. hoadley. we are next to consider our hero as launched into the world, and having equipped himself with all the necessaries to constitute him a man of taste, he plunges at once into all the fashionable excesses, and enters with spirit into the character he assumes. the avarice of the penurious father then, in this print, is contrasted by the giddy profusion of his prodigal son. we view him now at his levee, attended by masters of various professions, supposed to be here offering their interested services. the foremost figure is readily known to be a dancing-master; behind him are two men, who at the time when these prints were first published, were noted for teaching the arts of defence by different weapons, and who are here drawn from the life; one of whom is a frenchman, teacher of the small-sword, making a thrust with his foil; the other an englishman, master of the quarter-staff; the vivacity of the first, and the cold contempt visible in the face of the second, beautifully describe the natural disposition of the two nations. on the left of the latter stands an improver of gardens, drawn also from the life, offering a plan for that purpose. a taste for gardening, carried to excess, must be acknowledged to have been the ruin of numbers, it being a passion that is seldom, if ever, satisfied, and attended with the greatest expense. in the chair sits a professor of music, at the harpsichord, running over the keys, waiting to give his pupil a lesson; behind whose chair hangs a list of the presents, one farinelli, an italian singer, received the next day after his first performance at the opera house; amongst which, there is notice taken of one, which he received from the hero of our piece, thus: "a gold snuff-box, chased, with the story of orpheus charming the brutes, by j. rakewell, esq." by these mementos of extravagance and pride, (for gifts of this kind proceed oftener from ostentation than generosity,) and by the engraved frontispiece to a poem, dedicated to our fashionable spendthrift, lying on the floor, which represents the ladies of britain sacrificing their hearts to the idol farinelli, crying out, with the greatest earnestness, "one g--d, one farinelli," we are given to understand the prevailing dissipation and luxury of the times. near the principal figure in this plate is that of him, with one hand on his breast, the other on his sword, whom we may easily discover to be a bravo; he is represented as having brought a letter of recommendation, as one disposed to undertake all sorts of service. this character is rather italian than english; but is here introduced to fill up the list of persons at that time too often engaged in the service of the votaries of extravagance and fashion. our author would have it imagined in the interval between the first scene and this, that the young man whose history he is painting, had now given himself up to every fashionable extravagance; and among others, he had imbibed a taste for cock-fighting and horse-racing; two amusements, which, at that time, the man of fashion could not dispense with. this is evident, from his rider bringing in a silver punch-bowl, which one of his horses is supposed to have won, and his saloon being ridiculously ornamented with the portraits of celebrated cocks. the figures in the back part of this plate represent tailors, peruke-makers, milliners, and such other persons as generally fill the antichamber of a man of quality, except one, who is supposed to be a poet, and has written some panegyric on the person whose levee he attends, and who waits for that approbation he already vainly anticipates. upon the whole, the general tenor of this scene is to teach us, that the man of fashion is too often exposed to the rapacity of his fellow creatures, and is commonly a dupe to the more knowing part of the world. "how exactly," says mr. ireland, "does bramston describe the character in his _man of taste_:-- 'without italian, and without an ear, to bononcini's music i adhere.---- to boon companions i my time would give, with players, pimps, and parasites i'd live; i would with jockeys from newmarket dine, and to rough riders give my choicest wine. my evenings all i would with sharpers spend, and make the thief-taker my bosom friend; in figg, the prize-fighter, by day delight, and sup with colley cibber every night.' "of the expression in this print, we cannot speak more highly than it deserves. every character is marked with its proper and discriminative stamp. it has been said by a very judicious critic (the rev. mr. gilpin) from whom it is not easy to differ without being wrong, that the hero of this history, in the first plate of the series, is _unmeaning_, and in the second _ungraceful_. the fact is admitted; but, for so delineating him, the author is entitled to our praise, rather than our censure. rakewell's whole conduct proves he was a fool, and at that time he had not learned how to perform an artificial character; he therefore looks as he is, unmeaning, and uninformed. but in the second plate he is _ungraceful_.--granted. the ill-educated son of so avaricious a father could not have been introduced into very good company; and though, by the different teachers who surround him, it evidently appears that he wishes to _assume_ the character of a gentleman, his internal feelings tell him he has not attained it. under that consciousness, he is properly and naturally represented as ungraceful, and embarrassed in his new situation." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . surrounded by artists & professors.] plate iii. the tavern scene. "o vanity of youthful blood, so by misuse to poison good! woman, framed for social love, fairest gift of powers above, source of every household blessing; all charms in innocence possessing: but, turn'd to vice, all plagues above; foe to thy being, foe to love! guest divine, to outward viewing; ablest minister of ruin? and thou, no less of gift divine, sweet poison of misused wine! with freedom led to every part, and secret chamber of the heart, dost thou thy friendly host betray, and shew thy riotous gang the way to enter in, with covert treason, o'erthrow the drowsy guard of reason, to ransack the abandon'd place, and revel there with wild excess?" mr. ireland having, in his description of this plate, incorporated whatever is of value in dr. trusler's text, with much judicious observation and criticism of his own, the editor has taken the former _verbatim_. "this plate exhibits our licentious prodigal engaged in one of his midnight festivities: forgetful of the past, and negligent of the future, he riots in the present. having poured his libation to bacchus, he concludes the evening orgies in a sacrifice at the cyprian shrine; and, surrounded by the votaries of venus, joins in the unhallowed mysteries of the place. the companions of his revelry are marked with that easy, unblushing effrontery, which belongs to the servants of all work in the isle of paphos;--for the maids of honour they are not sufficiently elevated. "he may be supposed, in the phrase of the day, to have beat the rounds, overset a constable, and conquered a watchman, whose staff and lantern he has brought into the room, as trophies of his prowess. in this situation he is robbed of his watch by the girl whose hand is in his bosom; and, with that adroitness peculiar to an old practitioner, she conveys her acquisition to an accomplice, who stands behind the chair. "two of the ladies are quarrelling; and one of them _delicately_ spouts wine in the face of her opponent, who is preparing to revenge the affront with a knife, which, in a posture of threatening defiance, she grasps in her hand. a third, enraged at being neglected, holds a lighted candle to a map of the globe, determined to _set the world on fire, though she perish in the conflagration_! a fourth is undressing. the fellow bringing in a pewter dish, as part of the apparatus of this elegant and attic entertainment, a blind harper, a trumpeter, and a ragged ballad-singer, roaring out an obscene song, complete this motley group. "this design may be a very exact representation of what were then the nocturnal amusements of a brothel;--so different are the manners of former and present times, that i much question whether a similar exhibition is now to be seen in any tavern of the metropolis. that we are less licentious than our predecessors, i dare not affirm; but we are certainly more delicate in the pursuit of our pleasures. "the room is furnished with a set of roman emperors,--they are not placed in their proper order; for in the mad revelry of the evening, this family of frenzy have decollated all of them, except nero; and his manners had too great a similarity to their own, to admit of his suffering so degrading an insult; their reverence for _virtue_ induced them to spare his head. in the frame of a _cæsar_ they have placed a portrait of _pontac_, an eminent cook, whose great talents being turned to heightening sensual, rather than mental enjoyments, he has a much better chance of a votive offering from this company, than would either vespasian or trajan. "the shattered mirror, broken wine-glasses, fractured chair and cane; the mangled fowl, with a fork stuck in its breast, thrown into a corner, and indeed every accompaniment, shews, that this has been a night of riot without enjoyment, mischief without wit, and waste without gratification. "with respect to the drawing of the figures in this curious female coterie, hogarth evidently intended several of them for beauties; and of vulgar, uneducated, prostituted beauty, he had a good idea. the hero of our tale displays all that careless jollity, which copious draughts of maddening wine are calculated to inspire; he laughs the world away, and bids it pass. the poor dupe, without his periwig, in the back-ground, forms a good contrast of character: he is maudlin drunk, and sadly sick. to keep up the spirit of unity throughout the society, and not leave the poor african girl entirely neglected, she is making signs to her friend the porter, who perceives, and slightly returns, her love-inspiring glance. this print is rather crowded,--the subject demanded it should be so; some of the figures, thrown into shade, might have helped the general effect, but would have injured the characteristic expression." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . tavern scene.] plate iv. arrested for debt. "o, vanity of youthful blood, so by misuse to poison good! reason awakes, and views unbarr'd the sacred gates he wish'd to guard; approaching, see the harpy _law_, and _poverty_, with icy paw, ready to seize the poor remains that vice has left of all his gains. cold _penitence_, lame _after-thought_, with fear, despair, and horror fraught, call back his guilty pleasures dead, whom he hath wrong'd, and whom betray'd." the career of dissipation is here stopped. dressed in the first style of the ton, and getting out of a sedan-chair, with the hope of shining in the circle, and perhaps forwarding a former application for a place or a pension, he is arrested! to intimate that being plundered is the certain consequence of such an event, and to shew how closely one misfortune treads upon the heels of another, a boy is at the same moment stealing his cane. the unfortunate girl whom he basely deserted, is now a milliner, and naturally enough attends in the crowd, to mark the fashions of the day. seeing his distress, with all the eager tenderness of unabated love, she flies to his relief. possessed of a small sum of money, the hard earnings of unremitted industry, she generously offers her purse for the liberation of her worthless favourite. this releases the captive beau, and displays a strong instance of female affection; which, being once planted in the bosom, is rarely eradicated by the coldest neglect, or harshest cruelty. the high-born, haughty welshman, with an enormous leek, and a countenance keen and lofty as his native mountains, establishes the chronology, and fixes the day to be the first of march; which being sacred to the titular saint of wales, was observed at court. mr. nichols remarks of this plate:--"in the early impressions, a shoe-black steals the rake's cane. in the modern ones, a large group of sweeps, and black-shoe boys, are introduced gambling on the pavement; near them a stone inscribed _black's_, a contrast to _white's_ gaming-house, against which a flash of lightning is pointed. the curtain in the window of the sedan-chair is thrown back. this plate is likewise found in an intermediate state; the sky being made unnaturally obscure, with an attempt to introduce a shower of rain, and lightning very aukwardly represented. it is supposed to be a first proof after the insertion of the group of blackguard gamesters; the window of the chair being only marked for an alteration that was afterwards made in it. hogarth appears to have so far spoiled the sky, that he was obliged to obliterate it, and cause it to be engraved over again by another hand." mr. gilpin observes:--"very disagreeable accidents often befal gentlemen of pleasure. an event of this kind is recorded in the fourth print, which is now before us. our hero going, in full dress, to pay his compliments at court on st. david's day, was accosted in the rude manner which is here represented.--the composition is good. the form of the group, made up of the figures in action, the chair, and the lamplighter, is pleasing. only, here we have an opportunity of remarking, that a group is disgusting when the extremities of it are heavy. a group in some respects should resemble a tree. the heavier part of the foliage (the cup, as the landscape-painter calls it) is always near the middle; the outside branches, which are relieved by the sky, are light and airy. an inattention to this rule has given a heaviness to the group before us. the two bailiffs, the woman, and the chairman, are all huddled together in that part of the group which should have been the lightest; while the middle part, where the hand holds the door, wants strength and consistence. it may be added too, that the four heads, in the form of a diamond, make an unpleasing shape. all regular figures should be studiously avoided.--the light had been well distributed, if the bailiff holding the arrest, and the chairman, had been a little lighter, and the woman darker. the glare of the white apron is disagreeable.--we have, in this print, some beautiful instances of expression. the surprise and terror of the poor gentleman is apparent in every limb, as far as is consistent with the fear of discomposing his dress. the insolence of power in one of the bailiffs, and the unfeeling heart, which can jest with misery, in the other, are strongly marked. the self-importance, too, of the honest cambrian is not ill portrayed; who is chiefly introduced to settle the chronology of the story.--in pose of grace, we have nothing striking. hogarth might have introduced a degree of it in the female figure: at least he might have contrived to vary the heavy and unpleasing form of her drapery.--the perspective is good, and makes an agreeable shape." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . arrested for debt as going to court.] plate v. marries an old maid. "new to the school of hard _mishap_, driven from the ease of fortune's lap. what schemes will nature not embrace t' avoid less shame of drear distress? _gold_ can the charms of youth bestow, and mask deformity with shew: gold can avert the sting of shame, in winter's arms create a flame: can couple youth with hoary age, and make antipathies engage." to be thus degraded by the rude enforcement of the law, and relieved from an exigence by one whom he had injured, would have wounded, humbled, i had almost said reclaimed, any man who had either feeling or elevation of mind; but, to mark the progression of vice, we here see this depraved, lost character, hypocritically violating every natural feeling of the soul, to recruit his exhausted finances, and marrying an old and withered sybil, at the sight of whom nature must recoil. the ceremony passes in the old church, mary-le-bone, which was then considered at such a distance from london, as to become the usual resort of those who wished to be privately married; that such was the view of this prostituted young man, may be fairly inferred from a glance at the object of his choice. her charms are heightened by the affectation of an amorous leer, which she directs to her youthful husband, in grateful return for a similar compliment which she supposes paid to herself. this gives her face much meaning, but meaning of such a sort, that an observer being ask, "_how dreadful must be this creature's hatred?_" would naturally reply, "_how hateful must be her love!_" in his demeanor we discover an attempt to appear at the altar with becoming decorum: but internal perturbation darts through assumed tranquillity, for though he is _plighting his troth_ to the old woman, his eyes are fixed on the young girl who kneels behind her. the parson and clerk seem made for each other; a sleepy, stupid solemnity marks every muscle of the divine, and the nasal droning of the _lay brother_ is most happily expressed. accompanied by her child and mother, the unfortunate victim of his seduction is here again introduced, endeavouring to enter the church, and forbid the banns. the opposition made by an old pew-opener, with her bunch of keys, gave the artist a good opportunity for indulging his taste in the burlesque, and he has not neglected it. a dog (trump, hogarth's favorite), paying his addresses to a one-eyed quadruped of his own species, is a happy parody of the unnatural union going on in the church. the commandments are broken: a crack runs near the tenth, which says, _thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife;_ a prohibition in the present case hardly necessary. the creed is destroyed by the damps of the church; and so little attention has been paid to the poor's box, that it is covered with a _cobweb_! these three high-wrought strokes of satirical humour were perhaps never equalled by any exertion of the pencil; excelled they cannot be. on one of the pew doors is the following curious specimen of church-yard poetry, and mortuary orthography. these : pewes : vnscrud : and tane : in : svnder in : stone : thers : grauen : what : is : vnder to : wit : a valt : for : burial : there : is which : edward : forset : made : for : him : and : his. this is a correct copy of the inscription. part of these lines, in raised letters, now form a pannel in the wainscot at the end of the right-hand gallery, as the church is entered from the street. the mural monument of the taylor's, composed of lead, gilt over, is still preserved: it is seen in hogarth's print, just under the window. a glory over the bride's head is whimsical. the bay and holly, which decorate the pews, give a date to the period, and determine this preposterous union of january with june, to have taken place about the time of christmas; "when winter linger'd in her icy veins." addison would have classed her among the evergreens of the sex. it has been observed, that "the church is too small, and the wooden post, which seems to have no use, divides the picture very disagreeably." this cannot be denied: but it appears to be meant as an accurate representation of the place, and the artist delineated what he saw. the grouping is good, and the principal figure has the air of a gentleman. the light is well distributed, and the scene most characteristically represented. the commandments being represented as broken, might probably give the hint to a lady's reply, on being told that thieves had the preceding night broken into the church, and stolen the communion-plate, and the ten commandments. "i suppose," added the informant, "that they may melt and sell the plate; but can you divine for what possible purpose they could steal the commandments?"--"to _break_ them, to be sure," replied she;--"to _break_ them." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . marries an old maid.] plate vi. scene in a gaming house. "_gold_, thou bright son of phoebus, source of universal intercourse; of weeping virtue soft redress: and blessing those who live to bless: yet oft behold this sacred trust, the tool of avaricious lust; no longer bond of human kind, but bane of every virtuous mind. what chaos such misuse attends, friendship stoops to prey on friends; health, that gives relish to delight, is wasted with the wasting night; doubt and mistrust is thrown on _heaven_, and all its power to chance is given. sad purchase of repentant tears, } of needless quarrels, endless fears, } of hopes of moments, pangs of years! } sad purchase of a tortured mind, to an imprison'd body join'd." though now, from the infatuated folly of his antiquated wife, in possession of a fortune, he is still the slave of that baneful vice, which, while it enslaves the mind, poisons the enjoyments, and sweeps away the possessions of its deluded votaries. destructive as the earthquake which convulses nature, it overwhelms the pride of the forest, and engulfs the labours of the architect. newmarket and the cockpit were the scenes of his early amusements; to crown the whole, he is now exhibited at a gaming-table, where all is lost! his countenance distorted with agony, and his soul agitated almost to madness, he imprecates vengeance upon his own head. "in heartfelt bitter anguish he appears, and from the blood-shot ball gush purpled tears! he beats his brow, with rage and horror fraught; his brow half bursts with agony of thought!" that he should be deprived of all he possessed in such a society as surround him, is not to be wondered at. one of the most conspicuous characters appears, by the pistol in his pocket, to be a highwayman: from the profound stupor of his countenance, we are certain he also is a losing gamester; and so absorbed in reflection, that neither the boy who brings him a glass of water, nor the watchman's cry of "fire!" can arouse him from his reverie. another of the party is marked for one of those well-dressed continental adventurers, who, being unable to live in their own country, annually pour into this, and with no other requisites than a quick eye, an adroit hand, and an undaunted forehead, are admitted into what is absurdly enough called _good_ company. at the table a person in mourning grasps his hat, and hides his face, in the agony of repentance, not having, as we infer from his weepers, received that legacy of which he is now plundered more than "a little month." on the opposite side is another, on whom fortune has severely frowned, biting his nails in the anguish of his soul. the fifth completes the climax; he is frantic; and with a drawn sword endeavours to destroy a _pauvre miserable_ whom he supposes to have cheated him, but is prevented by the interposition of one of those staggering votaries of bacchus who are to be found in every company where there is good wine; and gaming, like the rod of moses, so far swallows up every other passion, that the actors, engrossed by greater objects, willingly leave their wine to the audience. in the back-ground are two collusive associates, eagerly dividing the profits of the evening. a nobleman in the corner is giving his note to an usurer. the lean and hungry appearance of this cent. per cent. worshipper of the golden calf, is well contrasted by the sleek, contented vacancy of so well-employed a legislator of this great empire. seated at the table, a portly gentleman, of whom we see very little, is coolly sweeping off his winnings. so engrossed is every one present by his own situation, that the flames which surround them are disregarded, and the vehement cries of a watchman entering the room, are necessary to rouse their attention to what is generally deemed the first law of nature, self-preservation. mr. gilpin observes:--"the fortune, which our adventurer has just received, enables him to make one push more at the gaming-table. he is exhibited, in the sixth print, venting curses on his folly for having lost his last stake.--this is, upon the whole, perhaps, the best print of the set. the horrid scene it describes, was never more inimitably drawn. the composition is artful, and natural. if the shape of the whole be not quite pleasing, the figures are so well grouped, and with so much ease and variety, that you cannot take offence. "the expression, in almost every figure, is admirable; and the whole is a strong representation of the human mind in a storm. three stages of that species of madness which attends gaming, are here described. on the first shock, all is inward dismay. the ruined gamester is represented leaning against a wall, with his arms across, lost in an agony of horror. perhaps never passion was described with so much force. in a short time this horrible gloom bursts into a storm of fury: he tears in pieces what comes next him; and, kneeling down, invokes curses upon himself. he next attacks others; every one in his turn whom he imagines to have been instrumental in his ruin.--the eager joy of the winning gamesters, the attention of the usurer, the vehemence of the watchman, and the profound reverie of the highwayman, are all admirably marked. there is great coolness, too, expressed in the little we see of the fat gentleman at the end of the table." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . gaming house scene.] plate vii. prison scene. "happy the man whose constant thought, (though in the school of hardship taught,) can send remembrance back to fetch treasures from life's earliest stretch; who, self-approving, can review scenes of past virtues, which shine through the gloom of age, and cast a ray to gild the evening of his day! not so the guilty wretch confined: no pleasures meet his conscious mind; no blessings brought from early youth, but broken faith, and wrested truth; talents idle and unused, and every trust of heaven abused. in seas of sad reflection lost, from horrors still to horrors toss'd, _reason_ the vessel leaves to steer, and gives the helm to mad _despair_." by a very natural transition mr. hogarth has passed his hero from a gaming house into a prison--the inevitable consequence of extravagance. he is here represented in a most distressing situation, without a coat to his back, without money, without a friend to help him. beggared by a course of ill-luck, the common attendant on the gamester, having first made away with every valuable he was master of, and having now no other resource left to retrieve his wretched circumstances, he at last, vainly promising himself success, commences author, and attempts, though inadequate to the task, to write a play, which is lying on the table, just returned with an answer from the manager of the theatre, to whom he had offered it, that his piece would by no means do. struck speechless with this disastrous occurrence, all his hopes vanish, and his most sanguine expectations are changed into dejection of spirit. to heighten his distress, he is approached by his wife, and bitterly upbraided for his perfidy in concealing from her his former connexions (with that unhappy girl who is here present with her child, the innocent offspring of her amours, fainting at the sight of his misfortunes, being unable to relieve him farther), and plunging her into those difficulties she never shall be able to surmount. to add to his misery, we see the under-turnkey pressing him for his prison fees, or garnish-money, and the boy refusing to leave the beer he ordered, without being first paid for it. among those assisting the fainting mother, one of whom we observe clapping her hand, another applying the drops, is a man crusted over, as it were, with the rust of a gaol, supposed to have started from his dream, having been disturbed by the noise at a time when he was settling some affairs of state; to have left his great plan unfinished, and to have hurried to the assistance of distress. we are told, by the papers falling from his lap, one of which contains a scheme for paying the national debt, that his confinement is owing to that itch of politics some persons are troubled with, who will neglect their own affairs, in order to busy themselves in that which noways concerns them, and which they in no respect understand, though their immediate ruin shall follow it: nay, so infatuated do we find him, so taken up with his beloved object, as not to bestow a few minutes on the decency of his person. in the back of the room is one who owes his ruin to an indefatigable search after the philosopher's stone. strange and unaccountable!--hence we are taught by these characters, as well as by the pair of human wings on the tester of the bed, that scheming is the sure and certain road to beggary: and that more owe their misfortunes to wild and romantic notions, than to any accident they meet with in life. in this upset of his life, and aggravation of distress, we are to suppose our prodigal almost driven to desperation. now, for the first time, he feels the severe effects of pinching cold and griping hunger. at this melancholy season, reflection finds a passage to his heart, and he now revolves in his mind the folly and sinfulness of his past life;--considers within himself how idly he has wasted the substance he is at present in the utmost need of;--looks back with shame on the iniquity of his actions, and forward with horror on the rueful scene of misery that awaits him; until his brain, torn with excruciating thought, loses at once its power of thinking, and falls a sacrifice to merciless despair. mr. ireland remarks, on the plate before us:--"our improvident spendthrift is now lodged in that dreary receptacle of human misery,--a prison. his countenance exhibits a picture of despair; the forlorn state of his mind is displayed in every limb, and his exhausted finances, by the turnkey's demand of prison fees, not being answered, and the boy refusing to leave a tankard of porter, unless he is paid for it. "we see by the enraged countenance of his wife, that she is violently reproaching him for having deceived and ruined her. to crown this catalogue of human tortures, the poor girl whom he deserted, is come with her child--perhaps to comfort him,--to alleviate his sorrows, to soothe his sufferings:--but the agonising view is too much for her agitated frame; shocked at the prospect of that misery which she cannot remove, every object swims before her eyes,--a film covers the sight,--the blood forsakes her cheeks--her lips assume a pallid hue,--and she sinks to the floor of the prison in temporary death. what a heart-rending prospect for him by whom this is occasioned! "the wretched, squalid inmate, who is assisting the fainting female, bears every mark of being naturalised to the place; out of his pocket hangs a scroll, on which is inscribed, 'a scheme to pay the national debt, by j. l. now a prisoner in the fleet.' so attentive was this poor gentleman to the debts of the nation, that he totally forgot his own. the cries of the child, and the good-natured attentions of the women, heighten the interest, and realise the scene. over the group are a large pair of wings, with which some emulator of _dedalus_ intended to escape from his confinement; but finding them inadequate to the execution of his project, has placed them upon the tester of his bed. they would not exalt him to the regions of air, but they o'ercanopy him on earth. a chemist in the back-ground, happy in his views, watching the moment of projection, is not to be disturbed from his dream by any thing less than the fall of the roof, or the bursting of his retort;--and if his dream affords him felicity, why should he be awakened? the bed and gridiron, those poor remnants of our miserable spendthrift's wretched property, are brought here as necessary in his degraded situation; on one he must try to repose his wearied frame, on the other, he is to dress his scanty meal." [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . prison scene.] plate viii. scene in a madhouse. "_madness!_ thou chaos of the brain, } what art, that pleasure giv'st and pain? } tyranny of fancy's reign! mechanic _fancy!_ that can build vast labyrinths and mazes wild, with rude, disjointed, shapeless measure, fill'd with _horror_, fill'd with _pleasure_! shapes of _horror_, that would even cast doubt of mercy upon heaven; shapes of _pleasure_, that but seen, would split the shaking sides of _spleen_. "o vanity of age! here see the stamp of heaven effaced by thee! the headstrong course of youth thus run, what comfort from this darling son? his rattling chains with terror hear, behold death grappling with despair! see him by thee to ruin sold, and curse _thyself_, and curse thy _gold_!" see our hero then, in the scene before us, raving in all the dismal horrors of hopeless insanity, in the hospital of bethlehem, the senate of mankind, where each man may find a representative; there we behold him trampling on the first great law of nature, tearing himself to pieces with his own hands, and chained by the leg to prevent any further mischief he might either do to himself or others. but in this scene, dreary and horrid as are its accompaniments, he is attended by the faithful and kind-hearted female whom he so basely betrayed. in the first plate we see him refuse her his promised hand. in the fourth, she releases him from the harpy fangs of a bailiff; she is present at his marriage; and in the hope of relieving his distress, she follows him to a prison. our artist, in this scene of horror, has taken an opportunity of pointing out to us the various causes of mental blindness; for such, surely, it may be called, when the intuitive faculties are either destroyed or impaired. in one of the inner rooms of this gallery is a despairing wretch, imploring heaven for mercy, whose brain is crazed with lip-labouring superstition, the most dreadful enemy of human kind; which, attended with ignorance, error, penance and indulgence, too often deprives its unhappy votaries of their senses. the next in view is one man drawing lines upon a wall, in order, if possible, to find out the longitude; and another, before him, looking through a paper, by way of a telescope. by these expressive figures we are given to understand that such is the misfortune of man, that while, perhaps, the aspiring soul is pursuing some lofty and elevated conception, soaring to an uncommon pitch, and teeming with some grand discovery, the ferment often proves too strong for the feeble brain to support, and lays the whole magazine of notions and images in wild confusion. this melancholy group is completed by the crazy tailor, who is staring at the mad astronomer with a sort of wild astonishment, wondering, through excess of ignorance, what discoveries the heavens can possibly afford; proud of his profession, he has fixed a variety of patterns in his hat, by way of ornament; has covered his poor head with shreds, and makes his measure the constant object of his attention. behind this man stands another, playing on the violin, with his book upon his head, intimating that too great a love for music has been the cause of his distraction. on the stairs sits another, crazed by love, (evident from the picture of his beloved object round his neck, and the words "charming betty careless" upon the bannisters, which he is supposed to scratch upon every wall and every wainscot,) and wrapt up so close in melancholy pensiveness, as not even to observe the dog that is flying at him. behind him, and in the inner room, are two persons maddened with ambition. these men, though under the influence of the same passion, are actuated by different notions; one is for the papal dignity, the other for regal; one imagines himself the pope, and saying mass; the other fancies himself a king, is encircled with the emblem of royalty, and is casting contempt on his imaginary subjects by an act of the greatest disdain. to brighten this distressful scene, and draw a smile from him whose rigid reasoning might condemn the bringing into public view this blemish of humanity, are two women introduced, walking in the gallery, as curious spectators of this melancholy sight; one of whom is supposed, in a whisper, to bid the other observe the naked man, which she takes an opportunity of doing by a leer through the sticks of her fan. thus, imagining the hero of our piece to expire raving mad, the story is finished, and little else remains but to close it with a proper application. reflect then, ye parents, on this tragic tale; consider with yourselves, that the ruin of a child is too often owing to the imprudence of a father. had the young man, whose story we have related, been taught the proper use of money, had his parent given him some insight into life, and graven, as it were, upon his heart, the precepts of religion, with an abhorrence of vice, our youth would, in all probability, have taken a contrary course, lived a credit to his friends, and an honour to his country. [illustration: the rake's progress. plate . scene in bedlam.] the distressed poet. this plate describes, in the strongest colours, the distress of an author without friends to patronise him. seated upon the side of his bed, without a shirt, but wrapped in an old night-gown, he is now spinning a poem upon "riches:" of their _use_ he probably knoweth little; and of their _abuse_,--if judgment can be formed from externals,--_certes_, he knoweth less. enchanted, impressed, inspired with his subject, he is disturbed by a nymph of the _lactarium_. her shrill-sounding voice awakes one of the _little loves_, whose _chorus_ disturbs his meditations. a link of the golden chain is broken!--a thought is lost!--to recover it, his hand becomes a substitute for the barber's comb:--enraged at the noise, he tortures his head for the fleeting idea; but, ah! no thought is there! proudly conscious that the lines already written are sterling, he possesses by anticipation the mines of peru, a view of which hangs over his head. upon the table we see "byshe's art of poetry;" for, like the pack-horse, who cannot travel without his _bells_, he cannot climb the hill of parnassus without his _jingling-book_. on the floor lies the "grub-street journal," to which valuable repository of genius and taste he is probably a contributor. to show that he is a master of the profound, and will envelope his subject in a cloud, his pipe and tobacco-box, those friends to cogitation deep, are close to him. his wife, mending that part of his dress, in the pockets of which the affluent keep their gold, is worthy of a better fate. her figure is peculiarly interesting. her face, softened by adversity, and marked with domestic care, is at this moment agitated by the appearance of a boisterous woman, insolently demanding payment of the milk-tally. in the excuse she returns, there is a mixture of concern, complacency, and mortification. as an addition to the distresses of this poor family, a dog is stealing the remnant of mutton incautiously left upon a chair. the sloping roof, and projecting chimney, prove the throne of this inspired bard to be high above the crowd;--it is a garret. the chimney is ornamented with a _dare for larks_, and a book; a loaf, the tea-equipage, and a saucepan, decorate the shelf. before the fire hangs half a shirt, and a pair of ruffled sleeves. his sword lies on the floor; for though our professor of poetry waged no war, except with words, a sword was, in the year , a necessary appendage to every thing which called itself "gentleman." at the feet of his domestic seamstress, the full-dress coat is become the resting-place of a cat and two kittens: in the same situation is one stocking, the other is half immersed in the washing-pan. the broom, bellows, and mop, are scattered round the room. the open door shows us that their cupboard is unfurnished, and tenanted by a hungry and solitary mouse. in the corner hangs a long cloak, well calculated to conceal the threadbare wardrobe of its fair owner. mr. hogarth's strict attention to propriety of scenery, is evinced by the cracked plaistering of the walls, broken window, and uneven floor, in the miserable habitation of this poor weaver of madrigals. when this was first published, the following quotation from pope's "dunciad" was inscribed under the print: "studious he sate, _with all his books_ around, sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound: plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there; then wrote and flounder'd on, in mere despair." _all his books_, amounting to _only four_, was, i suppose, the artist's reason for erasing the lines. [illustration: the distressed poet.] the bench. character, caricatura, and outre. it having been universally acknowledged that mr. hogarth was one of the most ingenious painters of his age, and a man possessed of a vast store of humour, which he has sufficiently shown and displayed in his numerous productions; the general approbation his works receive, is not to be wondered at. but, as owing to the false notions of the public, not thoroughly acquainted with the true art of painting, he has been often called a _caricaturer_; when, in reality, _caricatura_ was no part of his profession, he being a true copier of nature; to set this matter right, and give the world a just definition of the words, _character_, _caricatura_, and _outré_, in which humorous painting principally consists, and to show their difference of meaning, he, in the year , published this print; but, as it did not quite answer his purpose, giving an illustration of the word _character_ only, he added, in the year , the group of heads above, which he never lived to finish, though he worked upon it the day before his death. the lines between inverted commas are our author's own words, and are engraved at the bottom of the plate. "there are hardly any two things more essentially different than _character_ and _caricatura_; nevertheless, they are usually confounded, and mistaken for each other; on which account this explanation is attempted. "it has ever been allowed, that when a _character_ is strongly marked in the living face, it may be considered as an index of the mind, to express which, with any degree of justness, in painting, requires the utmost efforts of a great master. now that, which has of late years got the name of _caricatura_, is, or ought to be, totally divested of every stroke that hath a tendency to good drawing; it may be said to be a species of lines that are produced, rather by the hand of chance, than of skill; for the early scrawlings of a child, which do but barely hint the idea of a human face, will always be found to be like some person or other, and will often form such a comical resemblance, as, in all probability, the most eminent _caricaturers_ of these times will not be able to equal, with design; because their ideas of objects are so much more perfect than children's, that they will, unavoidably, introduce some kind of drawing; for all the humorous effects of the fashionable manner of _caricaturing_, chiefly depend on the surprise we are under, at finding ourselves caught with any sort of similitude in objects absolutely remote in their kind. let it be observed, the more remote in their nature, the greater is the excellence of these pieces. as a proof of this, i remember a famous _caricatura_ of a certain italian singer, that struck at first sight, which consisted only of a straight perpendicular stroke, with a dot over. as to the french word _outré_, it is different from the rest, and signifies nothing more than the exaggerated outlines of a figure, all the parts of which may be, in other respects, a perfect and true picture of nature. a giant or a dwarf may be called a common man, _outré_. so any part, as a nose, or a leg, made bigger, or less than it ought to be, is that part _outré_, which is all that is to be understood by this word, injudiciously used to the prejudice of _character_."--analysis of beauty, chap. vi. to prevent these distinctions being looked upon as dry and unentertaining, our author has, in this group of faces, ridiculed the want of capacity among some of our judges, or dispensers of the law, whose shallow discernment, natural disposition, or wilful inattention, is here perfectly described in their faces. one is amusing himself in the course of trial, with other business; another, in all the pride of self-importance, is examining a former deposition, wholly inattentive to that before him; the next is busied in thoughts quite foreign to the subject; and the senses of the last are locked fast in sleep. the four sages on the bench, are intended for lord chief justice sir john willes, the principal figure; on his right hand, sir edward clive; and on his left, mr. justice bathurst, and the hon. william noel. [illustration: the bench.] the laughing audience. "let him laugh now, who never laugh'd before; and he who always laugh'd, laugh now the more." "from the first print that hogarth engraved, to the last that he published, i do not think," says mr. ireland, "there is one, in which character is more displayed than in this very spirited little etching. it is much superior to the more delicate engravings from his designs by other artists, and i prefer it to those that were still higher finished by his own burin. "the prim coxcomb with an enormous bag, whose favours, like those of hercules between virtue and vice, are contended for by two rival orange girls, gives an admirable idea of the dress of the day; when, if we may judge from this print, our grave forefathers, defying nature, and despising convenience, had a much higher rank in the temple of folly than was then attained by their ladies. it must be acknowledged that, since that period, the softer sex have asserted their natural rights; and, snatching the wreath of fashion from the brow of presuming man, have tortured it into such forms that, were it possible, which _certes_ it is not, to disguise a beauteous face----but to the high behest of fashion all must bow. "governed by this idol, our beau has a cuff that, for a modern fop, would furnish fronts for a waistcoat, and a family fire-screen might be made of his enormous bag. his bare and shrivelled neck has a close resemblance to that of a half-starved greyhound; and his face, figure, and air, form a fine contrast to the easy and degagée assurance of the grisette whom he addresses. "the opposite figure, nearly as grotesque, though not quite so formal as its companion, presses its left hand upon its breast, in the style of protestation; and, eagerly contemplating the superabundant charms of a beauty of rubens's school, presents her with a pinch of comfort. every muscle, every line of his countenance, is acted upon by affectation and grimace, and his queue bears some resemblance to an ear-trumpet. "the total inattention of these three polite persons to the business of the stage, which at this moment almost convulses the children of nature who are seated in the pit, is highly descriptive of that refined apathy which characterises our people of fashion, and raises them above those mean passions that agitate the groundlings. "one gentleman, indeed, is as affectedly unaffected as a man of the first world. by his saturnine cast of face, and contracted brow, he is evidently a profound critic, and much too wise to laugh. he must indisputably be a very great critic; for, like _voltaire's poccocurante_, nothing can please him; and, while those around open every avenue of their minds to mirth, and are willing to be delighted, though they do not well know why, he analyses the drama by the laws of aristotle, and finding those laws are violated, determines that the author ought to be hissed, instead of being applauded. this it is to be so excellent a judge; this it is which gives a critic that exalted gratification which can never be attained by the illiterate,--the supreme power of pointing out faults, where others discern nothing but beauties, and preserving a rigid inflexibility of muscle, while the sides of the vulgar herd are shaking with laughter. these merry mortals, thinking with plato that it is no proof of a good stomach to nauseate every aliment presented them, do not inquire too nicely into causes, but, giving full scope to their risibility, display a set of features more highly ludicrous than i ever saw in any other print. it is to be regretted that the artist has not given us some clue by which we might have known what was the play which so much delighted his audience: i should conjecture that it was either one of shakespear's comedies, or a modern tragedy. sentimental comedy was not the fashion of that day. "the three sedate musicians in the orchestra, totally engrossed by minims and crotchets, are an admirable contrast to the company in the pit." [illustration: the laughing audience.] gate of calais. o, the roast beef of old england! "'twas at the gate of calais, hogarth tells, where sad despair and famine always dwells; a meagre frenchman, madame grandsire's cook, as home he steer'd, his carcase that way took, bending beneath the weight of famed sirloin, on whom he often wish'd in vain to dine; good father dominick by chance came by, with rosy gills, round paunch, and greedy eye; and, when he first beheld the greasy load, his benediction on it he bestow'd; and while the solid fat his fingers press'd, he lick'd his chops, and thus the knight address'd: 'o rare roast beef, lov'd by all mankind, was i but doom'd to have thee, well dress'd, and garnish'd to my mind, and swimming in thy gravy; not all thy country's force combined, should from my fury save thee! 'renown'd sirloin! oft times decreed the theme of english ballad, e'en kings on thee have deign'd to feed, unknown to frenchman's palate; then how much must thy taste exceed soup-meagre, frogs, and salad!'" the thought on which this whimsical and highly-characteristic print is founded, originated in calais, to which place mr. hogarth, accompanied by some of his friends, made an excursion, in the year . extreme partiality for his native country was the leading trait of his character; he seems to have begun his three hours' voyage with a firm determination to be displeased at every thing he saw out of old england. for a meagre, powdered figure, hung with tatters, _a-la-mode de paris_, to affect the airs of a coxcomb, and the importance of a sovereign, is ridiculous enough; but if it makes a man happy, why should he be laughed at? it must blunt the edge of ridicule, to see natural hilarity defy depression; and a whole nation laugh, sing, and dance, under burthens that would nearly break the firm-knit sinews of a briton. such was the picture of france at that period, but it was a picture which our english satirist could not contemplate with common patience. the swarms of grotesque figures who paraded the streets excited his indignation, and drew forth a torrent of coarse abusive ridicule, not much to the honour of his liberality. he compared them to callot's beggars--lazarus on the painted cloth--the prodigal son--or any other object descriptive of extreme contempt. against giving way to these effusions of national spleen in the open street, he was frequently cautioned, but advice had no effect; he treated admonition with scorn, and considered his monitor unworthy the name of englishman. these satirical ebullitions were at length checked. ignorant of the customs of france, and considering the gate of calais merely as a piece of ancient architecture, he began to make a sketch. this was soon observed; he was seized as a spy, who intended to draw a plan of the fortification, and escorted by a file of musqueteers to m. la commandant. his sketch-book was examined, leaf by leaf, and found to contain drawings that had not the most distant relation to tactics. notwithstanding this favourable circumstance, the governor, with great politeness, assured him, that had not a treaty between the nations been actually signed, he should have been under the disagreeable necessity of hanging him upon the ramparts: as it was, he must be permitted the privilege of providing him a few military attendants, who should do themselves the honour of waiting upon him, while he resided in the dominions of "the grande monarque." two sentinels were then ordered to escort him to his hotel, from whence they conducted him to the vessel; nor did they quit their prisoner, until he was a league from shore; when, seizing him by the shoulders, and spinning him round upon the deck, they said he was now at liberty to pursue his voyage without further molestation. so mortifying an adventure he did not like to hear recited, but has in this print recorded the circumstance which led to it. in one corner he has given a portrait of himself, making the drawing; and to shew the moment of arrest, the hand of a serjeant is upon his shoulder. the french sentinel is so situated, as to give some idea of a figure hanging in chains: his ragged shirt is trimmed with a pair of paper ruffles. the old woman, and a fish which she is pointing at, have a striking resemblance. the abundance of parsnips, and other vegetables, indicate what are the leading articles in a lenten feast. mr. pine, the painter, sat for the friar, and from thence acquired the title of father pine. this distinction did not flatter him, and he frequently requested that the countenance might be altered, but the artist peremptorily refused. [illustration: gate of calais. "o the roast beef of old england."] the politician. "a politician should (as i have read) be furnish'd in the first place with a head." one of our old writers gives it as his opinion, that "there are onlie two subjects which are worthie the studie of a wise man," i.e. religion and politics. for the first, it does not come under inquiry in this print,--but certain it is, that too sedulously studying the second, has frequently involved its votaries in many most tedious and unprofitable disputes, and been the source of much evil to many well-meaning and honest men. under this class comes the quidnunc here pourtrayed; it is said to be intended for a mr. tibson, laceman, in the strand, who paid more attention to the affairs of europe, than to those of his own shop. he is represented in a style somewhat similar to that in which schalcken painted william the third,--holding a candle in his right hand, and eagerly inspecting the gazetteer of the day. deeply interested in the intelligence it contains, concerning the flames that rage on the continent, he is totally insensible of domestic danger, and regardless of a flame, which, ascending to his hat,-- "threatens destruction to his three-tail'd wig." from the tie-wig, stockings, high-quartered shoes, and sword, i should suppose it was painted about the year , when street robberies were so frequent in the metropolis, that it was customary for men in trade to wear swords, not to preserve their religion and liberty from foreign invasion, but to defend their own pockets from "domestic collectors." the original sketch hogarth presented to his friend forrest; it was etched by sherwin, and published in . [illustration: the politician.] taste in high life, in the year . the picture from which this print was copied, hogarth painted by the order of miss edwards, a woman of large fortune, who having been laughed at for some singularities in her manners, requested the artist to recriminate on her opponents, and paid him sixty guineas for his production. it is professedly intended to ridicule the reigning fashions of high life, in the year : to do this, the painter has brought into one group, an old beau and an old lady of the chesterfield school, a fashionable young lady, a little black boy, and a full-dressed monkey. the old lady, with a most affected air, poises, between her finger and thumb, a small tea-cup, with the beauties of which she appears to be highly enamoured. the gentleman, gazing with vacant wonder at that and the companion saucer which he holds in his hand, joins in admiration of its astonishing beauties! "each varied colour of the brightest hue, the green, the red, the yellow, and the blue, in every part their dazzled eyes behold, here streak'd with silver--there enrich'd with gold." this gentleman is said to be intended for lord portmore, in the habit he first appeared at court, on his return from france. the cane dangling from his wrist, large muff, long queue, black stock, feathered chapeau, and shoes, give him the air of "an old and finish'd fop, all cork at heel, and feather all at top." the old lady's habit, formed of stiff brocade, gives her the appearance of a squat pyramid, with a grotesque head at the top of it. the young one is fondling a little black boy, who on his part is playing with a petite pagoda. this miniature othello has been said to be intended for the late ignatius sancho, whose talents and virtues were an honour to his colour. at the time the picture was painted, he would have been rather older than the figure, but as he was then honoured by the partiality and protection of a noble family, the painter might possibly mean to delineate what his figure had been a few years before. the little monkey, with a magnifying glass, bag-wig, solitaire, laced hat, and ruffles, is eagerly inspecting a bill of fare, with the following articles _pour diner_; cocks' combs, ducks' tongues, rabbits' ears, fricasee of snails, _grande d'oeufs buerre_. in the centre of the room is a capacious china jar; in one corner a tremendous pyramid, composed of packs of cards, and on the floor close to them, a bill, inscribed "lady basto, d^{r} to john pip, for cards,--£ ." the room is ornamented with several pictures; the principal represents the medicean venus, on a pedestal, in stays and high-heeled shoes, and holding before her a hoop petticoat, somewhat larger than a fig-leaf; a cupid paring down a fat lady to a thin proportion, and another cupid blowing up a fire to burn a hoop petticoat, muff, bag, queue wig, &c. on the dexter side is another picture, representing monsieur desnoyer, operatically habited, dancing in a grand ballet, and surrounded by butterflies, insects evidently of the same genus with this deity of dance. on the sinister, is a drawing of exotics, consisting of queue and bag-wigs, muffs, solitaires, petticoats, french heeled shoes, and other fantastic fripperies. beneath this is a lady in a pyramidical habit walking the park; and as the companion picture, we have a blind man walking the streets. the fire-screen is adorned with a drawing of a lady in a sedan-chair-- "to conceive how she looks, you must call to your mind the lady you've seen in a lobster confined, or a pagod in some little corner enshrined." as hogarth made this design from the ideas of miss edwards, it has been said that he had no great partiality for his own performance, and that, as he never would consent to its being engraved, the drawing from which the first print was copied, was made by the connivance of one of her servants. be that as it may, his ridicule on the absurdities of fashion,--on the folly of collecting old china,--cookery,--card playing, &c. is pointed, and highly wrought. at the sale of miss edwards's effects at kensington, the original picture was purchased by the father of mr. birch, surgeon, of essex-street, strand. [illustration: taste in high life.] the harlot's progress. plate i. "the snares are set, the plot is laid, ruin awaits thee,--hapless maid! seduction sly assails thine ear, and _gloating, foul desire_ is near; baneful and blighting are their smiles, destruction waits upon their wiles; alas! thy guardian angel sleeps, vice clasps her hands, and virtue weeps." the general aim of historical painters, says mr. ireland, has been to emblazon some signal exploit of an exalted and distinguished character. to go through a series of actions, and conduct their hero from the cradle to the grave, to give a history upon canvass, and tell a story with the pencil, few of them attempted. mr. hogarth saw, with the intuitive eye of genius, that one path to the temple of fame was yet untrodden: he took nature for his guide, and gained the summit. he was the painter of nature; for he gave, not merely the ground-plan of the countenance, but marked the features with every impulse of the mind. he may be denominated the biographical dramatist of domestic life. leaving those heroic monarchs who have blazed through their day, with the destructive brilliancy of a comet, to their adulatory historians, he, like lillo, has taken his scenes from humble life, and rendered them a source of entertainment, instruction, and morality. this series of prints gives the history of a prostitute. the story commences with her arrival in london, where, initiated in the school of profligacy, she experiences the miseries consequent to her situation, and dies in the morning of life. her variety of wretchedness, forms such a picture of the way in which vice rewards her votaries, as ought to warn the young and inexperienced from entering this path of infamy. the first scene of this domestic tragedy is laid at the bell inn, in wood-street, and the heroine may possibly be daughter to the poor old clergyman who is reading the direction of a letter close to the york waggon, from which vehicle she has just alighted. in attire--neat, plain, unadorned; in demeanor--artless, modest, diffident: in the bloom of youth, and more distinguished by native innocence than elegant symmetry; her conscious blush, and downcast eyes, attract the attention of a female fiend, who panders to the vices of the opulent and libidinous. coming out of the door of the inn, we discover two men, one of whom is eagerly gloating on the devoted victim. this is a portrait, and said to be a strong resemblance of colonel francis chartres. the old procuress, immediately after the girl's alighting from the waggon, addresses her with the familiarity of a friend, rather than the reserve of one who is to be her mistress. had her father been versed in even the first rudiments of physiognomy, he would have prevented her engaging with one of so decided an aspect: for this also is the portrait of a woman infamous in her day: but he, good, easy man, unsuspicious as fielding's parson adams, is wholly engrossed in the contemplation of a superscription to a letter, addressed to the bishop of the diocese. so important an object prevents his attending to his daughter, or regarding the devastation occasioned by his gaunt and hungry rozinante having snatched at the straw that packs up some earthenware, and produced "the wreck of flower-pots, and the crash of pans!" from the inn she is taken to the house of the procuress, divested of her home-spun garb, dressed in the gayest style of the day; and the tender native hue of her complexion incrusted with paint, and disguised by patches. she is then introduced to colonel chartres, and by artful flattery and liberal promises, becomes intoxicated with the dreams of imaginary greatness. a short time convinces her of how light a breath these promises were composed. deserted by her keeper, and terrified by threats of an immediate arrest for the pompous paraphernalia of prostitution, after being a short time protected by one of the tribe of levi, she is reduced to the hard necessity of wandering the streets, for that precarious subsistence which flows from the drunken rake, or profligate debauchee. here her situation is truly pitiable! chilled by nipping frost and midnight dew, the repentant tear trickling on her heaving bosom, she endeavours to drown reflection in draughts of destructive poison. this, added to the contagious company of women of her own description, vitiates her mind, eradicates the native seeds of virtue, destroys that elegant and fascinating simplicity, which gives additional charms to beauty, and leaves, in its place, art, affectation, and impudence. neither the painter of a sublime picture, nor the writer of an heroic poem, should introduce any trivial circumstances that are likely to draw the attention from the principal figures. such compositions should form one great whole: minute detail will inevitably weaken their effect. but in little stories, which record the domestic incidents of familiar life, these accessary accompaniments, though trifling in themselves, acquire a consequence from their situation; they add to the interest, and realise the scene. in this, as in almost all that were delineated by mr. hogarth, we see a close regard paid to things as they then were; by which means his prints become a sort of historical record of the manners of the age. [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . ensnared by a procuress.] the harlot's progress. plate ii. "ah! why so vain, though blooming in thy spring, thou shining, frail, adorn'd, but wretched thing old age will come; disease may come before, and twenty prove as fatal as threescore!" entered into the path of infamy, the next scene exhibits our young heroine the mistress of a rich jew, attended by a black boy,[ ] and surrounded with the pompous parade of tasteless profusion. her mind being now as depraved, as her person is decorated, she keeps up the spirit of her character by extravagance and inconstancy. an example of the first is exhibited in the monkey being suffered to drag her rich head-dress round the room, and of the second in the retiring gallant. the hebrew is represented at breakfast with his mistress; but, having come earlier than was expected, the favourite has not departed. to secure his retreat is an exercise for the invention of both mistress and maid. this is accomplished by the lady finding a pretence for quarrelling with the jew, kicking down the tea-table, and scalding his legs, which, added to the noise of the china, so far engrosses his attention, that the paramour, assisted by the servant, escapes discovery. the subjects of two pictures, with which the room is decorated, are david dancing before the ark, and jonah seated under a gourd. they are placed there, not merely as circumstances which belong to jewish story, but as a piece of covert ridicule on the old masters, who generally painted from the ideas of others, and repeated the same tale _ad infinitum_. on the toilet-table we discover a mask, which well enough intimates where she had passed part of the preceding night, and that masquerades, then a very fashionable amusement, were much frequented by women of this description; a sufficient reason for their being avoided by those of an opposite character. under the protection of this disciple of moses she could not remain long. riches were his only attraction, and though profusely lavished on this unworthy object, her attachment was not to be obtained, nor could her constancy be secured; repeated acts of infidelity are punished by dismission; and her next situation shows, that like most of the sisterhood, she had lived without apprehension of the sunshine of life being darkened by the passing cloud, and made no provision for the hour of adversity. in this print the characters are marked with a master's hand. the insolent air of the harlot, the astonishment of the jew, eagerly grasping at the falling table, the start of the black boy, the cautious trip of the ungartered and barefooted retreating gallant, and the sudden spring of the scalded monkey, are admirably expressed. to represent an object in its descent, has been said to be impossible; the attempt has seldom succeeded; but, in this print, the tea equipage really appears falling to the floor; and, in rembrandt's abraham's offering, in the houghton collection, now at petersburg, the knife dropping from the hand of the patriarch, appears in a falling state. quin compared garrick in othello to the black boy with the tea-kettle, a circumstance that by no means encouraged our roscius to continue acting the part. indeed, when his face was obscured, his chief power of expression was lost; and then, and not till then, was he reduced to a level with several other performers. it has been remarked, however, that garrick said of himself, that when he appeared in othello, quin, he supposed, would say, "here's pompey! where's the tea-kettle?" footnote: [ ] the attendant black boy gave the foundation of an ill-natured remark by quin, when garrick once attempted the part of othello. "he pretend to play othello!" said the surly satirist; "he pretend to play othello! he wants nothing but the tea-kettle and lamp, to qualify him for hogarth's pompey!" [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . quarrels with her jew protector.] the harlot's progress. plate iii. "reproach, scorn, infamy, and hate, on all thy future steps shall wait; thy furor be loath'd by every eye, and every foot thy presence fly." we here see this child of misfortune fallen from her high estate! her magnificent apartment is quitted for a dreary lodging in the purlieus of drury-lane; she is at breakfast, and every object exhibits marks of the most wretched penury: her silver tea-kettle is changed for a tin pot, and her highly decorated toilet gives place to an old leaf table, strewed with the relics of the last night's revel, and ornamented with a broken looking-glass. around the room are scattered tobacco-pipes, gin measures, and pewter pots; emblems of the habits of life into which she is initiated, and the company which she now keeps: this is farther intimated by the wig-box of james dalton, a notorious street-robber, who was afterwards executed. in her hand she displays a watch, which might be either presented to her, or stolen from her last night's gallant. by the nostrums which ornament the broken window, we see that poverty is not her only evil. the dreary and comfortless appearance of every object in this wretched receptacle, the bit of butter on a piece of paper, the candle in a bottle, the basin upon a chair, the punch-bowl and comb upon the table, and the tobacco-pipes, &c. strewed upon the unswept floor, give an admirable picture of the style in which this pride of drury-lane ate her matin meal. the pictures which ornament the room are, abraham offering up isaac, and a portrait of the virgin mary; dr. sacheverell and macheath the highwayman, are companion prints. there is some whimsicality in placing the two ladies under a canopy, formed by the unnailed valance of the bed, and characteristically crowned by the wig-box of a highwayman. when theodore, the unfortunate king of corsica, was so reduced as to lodge in a garret in dean-street, soho, a number of gentlemen made a collection for his relief. the chairman of their committee informed him, by letter, that on the following day, at twelve o'clock, two of the society would wait upon his majesty with the money. to give his attic apartment an appearance of royalty, the poor monarch placed an arm-chair on his half-testered bed, and seating himself under the scanty canopy, gave what he thought might serve as the representation of a throne. when his two visitors entered the room, he graciously held out his right hand, that they might have the honour of--kissing it! a magistrate, cautiously entering the room, with his attendant constables, commits her to a house of correction, where our legislators wisely suppose, that being confined to the improving conversation of her associates in vice, must have a powerful tendency towards the reformation of her manners. sir john gonson, a justice of peace, very active in the suppression of brothels, is the person represented. in _a view of the town in _, by t. gilbert, fellow of peterhouse, cambridge, are the following lines: "though laws severe to punish crimes were made, what honest man is of these laws afraid? all felons against judges will exclaim, as harlots tremble at a gonson's name." pope has noticed him in his imitation of dr. donne, and loveling, in a very elegant latin ode. thus, between the poets and the painter, the name of this harlot-hunting justice, is transmitted to posterity. he died on the th of january, . [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . apprehended by a magistrate.] the harlot's progress. plate iv. with pallid cheek and haggard eye, and loud laments, and heartfelt sigh, unpitied, hopeless of relief, she drinks the bitter cup of grief. in vain the sigh, in vain the tear, compassion never enters here; but justice clanks her iron chain, and calls forth shame, remorse, and pain. the situation, in which the last plate exhibited our wretched female, was sufficiently degrading, but in this, her misery is greatly aggravated. we now see her suffering the chastisement due to her follies; reduced to the wretched alternative of beating hemp, or receiving the correction of a savage task-master. exposed to the derision of all around, even her own servant, who is well acquainted with the rules of the place, appears little disposed to show any return of gratitude for recent obligations, though even her shoes, which she displays while tying up her garter, seem by their gaudy outside to have been a present from her mistress. the civil discipline of the stern keeper has all the severity of the old school. with the true spirit of tyranny, he sentences those who will not labour to the whipping-post, to a kind of picketing suspension by the wrists, or having a heavy log fastened to their leg. with the last of these punishments he at this moment threatens the heroine of our story, nor is it likely that his obduracy can be softened except by a well applied fee. how dreadful, how mortifying the situation! these accumulated evils might perhaps produce a momentary remorse, but a return to the path of virtue is not so easy as a departure from it. to show that neither the dread, nor endurance, of the severest punishment, will deter from the perpetration of crimes, a one-eyed female, close to the keeper, is picking a pocket. the torn card may probably be dropped by the well-dressed gamester, who has exchanged the dice-box for the mallet, and whose laced hat is hung up as a companion trophy to the hoop-petticoat. one of the girls appears scarcely in her teens. to the disgrace of our police, these unfortunate little wanderers are still suffered to take their nocturnal rambles in the most public streets of the metropolis. what heart, so void of sensibility, as not to heave a pitying sigh at their deplorable situation? vice is not confined to colour, for a black woman is ludicrously exhibited, as suffering the penalty of those frailties, which are imagined peculiar to the fair. the figure chalked as dangling upon the wall, with a pipe in his mouth, is intended as a caricatured portrait of sir john gonson, and probably the production of some would-be artist, whom the magistrate had committed to bridewell, as a proper academy for the pursuit of his studies. the inscription upon the pillory, "better to work than stand thus;" and that on the whipping-post near the laced gambler, "the reward of idleness," are judiciously introduced. in this print the composition is good: the figures in the back-ground, though properly subordinate, are sufficiently marked; the lassitude of the principal character, well contrasted by the austerity of the rigid overseer. there is a fine climax of female debasement, from the gaudy heroine of our drama, to her maid, and from thence to the still object, who is represented as destroying one of the plagues of egypt. such well dressed females, as our heroine, are rarely met with in our present houses of correction; but her splendid appearance is sufficiently warranted by the following paragraph in the grub-street journal of september th, . "one mary moffat, a woman of great note in the hundreds of drury, who, about a fortnight ago, was committed to hard labour in tothill-fields bridewell, by nine justices, brought his majesty's writ of _habeas corpus_, and was carried before the right honourable the lord chief justice raymond, expecting to have been either bailed or discharged; but her commitment appearing to be legal, his lordship thought fit to remand her back again to her former place of confinement, where she is now beating hemp in a gown very richly laced with silver." [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . scene in bridewell.] the harlot's progress. plate v. with keen remorse, deep sighs, and trembling fears repentant groans, and unavailing tears, this child of misery resigns her breath, and sinks, despondent, in the arms of death. released from bridewell, we now see this victim to her own indiscretion breathe her last sad sigh, and expire in all the extremity of penury and wretchedness. the two quacks, whose injudicious treatment, has probably accelerated her death, are vociferously supporting the infallibility of their respective medicines, and each charging the other with having poisoned her. the meagre figure is a portrait of dr. misaubin, a foreigner, at that time in considerable practice. these disputes, it has been affirmed, sometimes happen at a consultation of regular physicians, and a patient has been so unpolite as to die before they could determine on the name of his disorder. "about the symptoms how they disagree, but how unanimous about the fee!" while the maid servant is entreating them to cease quarrelling, and assist her dying mistress, the nurse plunders her trunk of the few poor remains of former grandeur. her little boy, turning a scanty remnant of meat hung to roast by a string; the linen hanging to dry; the coals deposited in a corner; the candles, bellows, and gridiron hung upon nails; the furniture of the room; and indeed every accompaniment; exhibit a dreary display of poverty and wretchedness. over the candles hangs a cake of jew's bread, once perhaps the property of her levitical lover, and now used as a fly-trap. the initials of her name, m. h. are smoked upon the ceiling as a kind of _memento mori_ to the next inhabitant. on the floor lies a paper inscribed "anodyne necklace," at that time deemed a sort of charm against the disorders incident to children; and near the fire, a tobacco-pipe, and paper of pills. a picture of general, and at this awful moment, indecent confusion, is admirably represented. the noise of two enraged quacks disputing in bad english; the harsh, vulgar scream of the maid servant; the table falling, and the pot boiling over, must produce a combination of sounds dreadful and dissonant to the ear. in this pitiable situation, without a friend to close her dying eyes, or soften her sufferings by a tributary tear; forlorn, destitute, and deserted, the heroine of this eventful history expires! her premature death, brought on by a licentious life, seven years of which had been devoted to debauchery and dissipation, and attended by consequent infamy, misery, and disease. the whole story affords a valuable lesson to the young and inexperienced, and proves this great, this important truth, that a deviation from virtue is a departure from happiness. the emaciated appearance of the dying figure, the boy's thoughtless inattention, and the rapacious, unfeeling eagerness of the old nurse, are naturally and forcibly delineated. the figures are well grouped; the curtain gives depth, and forms a good back-ground to the doctor's head; the light is judiciously distributed, and each accompaniment highly appropriate. [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . expires while the doctors are disputing.] the harlot's progress. plate vi. "no friend's complaint, no kind domestic tear, pleas'd thy pale ghost, or grac'd thy mournful bier: by harlots' hands thy dying eyes were clos'd; by harlots' hands thy decent limbs compos'd; by harlots' hands thy humble grave adorn'd; by harlots honour'd, and by harlots mourn'd." the adventures of our heroine are now concluded. she is no longer an actor in her own tragedy; and there are those who have considered this print as a farce at the end of it: but surely such was not the author's intention. the ingenious writer of tristram shandy begins the life of his hero before he is born; the picturesque biographer of mary hackabout has found an opportunity to convey admonition, and enforce his moral, after her death. a wish usually prevails, even among those who are most humbled by their own indiscretion, that some respect should be paid to their remains; that their eyes should be closed by the tender hand of a surviving friend, and the tear of sympathy and regret shed upon the sod which covers their grave; that those who loved them living, should attend their last sad obsequies; and a sacred character read over them the awful service which our religion ordains, with the solemnity it demands. the memory of this votary of prostitution meets with no such marks of social attention, or pious respect. the preparations for her funeral are as licentious as the progress of her life, and the contagion of her example seems to reach all who surround her coffin. one of them is engaged in the double trade of seduction and thievery; a second is contemplating her own face in a mirror. the female who is gazing at the corpse, displays some marks of concern, and feels a momentary compunction at viewing the melancholy scene before her: but if any other part of the company are in a degree affected, it is a mere maudlin sorrow, kept up by glasses of strong liquor. the depraved priest does not seem likely to feel for the dead that hope expressed in our liturgy. the appearance and employment of almost every one present at this mockery of woe, is such as must raise disgust in the breast of any female who has the least tincture of delicacy, and excite a wish that such an exhibition may not be displayed at her own funeral. in this plate there are some local customs which mark the manners of the times when it was engraved, but are now generally disused, except in some of the provinces very distant from the capital; sprigs of rosemary were then given to each of the mourners: to appear at a funeral without one, was as great an indecorum as to be without a white handkerchief. this custom might probably originate at a time when the plague depopulated the metropolis, and rosemary was deemed an antidote against contagion. it must be acknowledged that there are also in this print some things which, though they gave the artist an opportunity of displaying his humour, are violations of propriety and customs: such is her child, but a few removes from infancy, being habited as chief mourner, to attend his parent to the grave; rings presented, and an escutcheon hung up, in a garret, at the funeral of a needy prostitute. the whole may be intended as a burlesque upon ostentatious and expensive funerals, which were then more customary than they are now. mr. pope has well ridiculed the same folly; "when hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend the wretch who, living, sav'd a candle's end." the figures have much characteristic discrimination; the woman looking into the coffin has more beauty than we generally see in the works of this artist. the undertaker's gloating stare, his companion's leer, the internal satisfaction of the parson and his next neighbour, are contrasted by the irish howl of the woman at the opposite side, and evince mr. hogarth's thorough knowledge of the operation of the passions upon the features. the composition forms a good shape, has a proper depth, and the light is well managed. sir james thornhill's opinion of this series may be inferred from the following circumstance. mr. hogarth had without consent married his daughter: sir james, considering him as an obscure artist, was much displeased with the connexion. to give him a better opinion of his son-in-law, a common friend, one morning, privately conveyed the six pictures of the harlot's progress into his drawing-room. the veteran painter eagerly inquired who was the artist; and being told, cried out, "very well! very well indeed! the man who can paint such pictures as these, can maintain a wife without a portion." this was the remark of the moment; but he afterwards considered the union of his daughter with a man of such abilities an honour to his family, was reconciled, and generous. when the publication was advertised, such was the expectation of the town, that above twelve hundred names were entered in the subscription book. when the prints appeared, they were beheld with astonishment. a subject so novel in the idea, so marked with genius in the execution, excited the most eager attention of the public. at a time when england was coldly inattentive to every thing which related to the arts, so desirous were all ranks of people of seeing how this little domestic story was delineated, that there were eight piratical imitations, besides two copies in a smaller size than the original, published, by permission of the author, for thomas bakewell. the whole series were copied on fan-mounts, representing the six plates, three on one side, and three on the other. it was transferred from the copper to the stage, in the form of a pantomime, by theophilus cibber; and again represented in a ballad opera, entitled, the jew decoyed; or, the harlot's progress. [illustration: the harlot's progress. plate . the funeral.] the lecture. datur vacuum. "no wonder that science, and learning profound, in oxford and cambridge so greatly abound, when so many take thither a little each day, and we see very few who bring any away." i was once told by a fellow of a college, says mr. ireland, that he disliked hogarth, because he had in this print ridiculed one of the universities. i endeavoured to defend the artist, by suggesting that this was not intended as a picture of what oxford is now, but of what it was in days long past: that it was that kind of general satire with which no one should be offended, &c. &c. his reply was too memorable to be forgotten. "sir, the theatre, the bench, the college of physicians, and the foot guards, are fair objects of satire; but those venerable characters who have devoted their whole lives to feeding the lamp of learning with hallowed oil, are too sacred to be the sport of an uneducated painter. their unremitting industry embraced the whole circle of the sciences, and in their logical disputations they displayed an acuteness that their followers must contemplate with astonishment. the present state of oxford it is not necessary for me to analyze, as you contend that the satire is not directed against that." in answer to this observation, which was uttered with becoming gravity, a gentleman present remarked, as follows. "for some of the ancient customs of this seminary of learning, i have much respect, but as to their dry treatises on logic, immaterial dissertations on materiality, and abstruse investigations of useless subjects, they are mere literary legerdemain. their disputations being usually built on an undefinable chimera, are solved by a paradox. instead of exercising their power of reason they exert their powers of sophistry, and divide and subdivide every subject with such casuistical minuteness, that those who are not convinced, are almost invariably confounded. this custom, it must be granted, is not quite so prevalent as it once was: a general spirit of reform is rapidly diffusing itself; and though i have heard cold-blooded declaimers assert, that these shades of science are become the retreats of ignorance, and the haunts of dissipation, i consider them as the great schools of urbanity, and favourite seats of the _belles lettres_. by the _belles lettres_, i mean history, biography, and poetry; that all these are universally cultivated, i can exemplify by the manner in which a highly accomplished young man, who is considered as a model by his fellow-collegians, divides his hours. "at breakfast i found him studying the marvellous and eventful history of baron munchausen; a work whose periods are equally free from the long-winded obscurity of tacitus, and the asthmatic terseness of sallust. while his hair was dressing, he enlarged his imagination and improved his morals by studying doctor what's his name's abridgement of chesterfield's principles of politeness. to furnish himself with biographical information, and add to his stock of useful anecdote, he studied the lives of the highwaymen; in which he found many opportunities of exercising his genius and judgment in drawing parallels between the virtues and exploits of these modern worthies, and those dignified, and almost deified ancient heroes whose deeds are recorded in plutarch and nepos. "with poetical studies, he is furnished by the english operas, which, added to the prologues, epilogues, and odes of the day, afford him higher entertainment than he could find in homer or virgil: he has not stored his memory with many epigrams, but of puns has a plentiful stock, and in _conundra_ is a wholesale dealer. at the same college i know a most striking contrast, whose reading"--but as his opponent would hear no more, my advocate dropped the subject; and i will follow his example. it seems probable, that when the artist engraved this print, he had only a general reference to an university lecture; the words _datur vacuum_ were an after-thought. some prints are without the inscription, and in some of the early impressions it is written with a pen. the scene is laid at oxford, and the person reading, universally admitted to be a mr. fisher, of jesus college, _registrat_ of the university, with whose consent this portrait was taken, and who lived until the th of march, . that he should wish to have such a face handed down to posterity, in such company, is rather extraordinary, for all the band, except one man, have been steeped in the stream of stupidity. this gentleman has the profile of penetration; a projecting forehead, a roman nose, thin lips, and a long pointed chin. his eye is bent on vacancy: it is evidently directed to the moon-faced idiot that crowns the pyramid, at whose round head, contrasted by a cornered cap, he with difficulty suppresses a laugh. three fellows on the right hand of this fat, contented "first-born transmitter of a foolish face," have most degraded characters, and are much fitter for the stable than the college. if they ever read, it must be in bracken's farriery, or the country gentleman's recreation. two square-capped students a little beneath the top, one of whom is holding converse with an adjoining profile, and the other lifting up his eyebrows, and staring without sight, have the same misfortune that attended our first james--their tongues are rather too large. a figure in the left-hand corner has shut his eyes to think; and having, in his attempt to separate a syllogism, placed the forefinger of his right hand upon his forehead, has fallen asleep. the professor, a little above the book, endeavours by a projection of his under lip to assume importance; such characters are not uncommon: they are more solicitous to look wise, than to be so. of mr. fisher it is not necessary to say much: he sat for his portrait, for the express purpose of having it inserted in the lecture!--we want no other testimony of his talents. [illustration: the lecture.] the chorus. rehearsal of the oratorio of judith. "o _cara, cara!_ silence all that train, joy to great _chaos!_ let division reign." the oratorio of judith, mr. ireland observes, was written by esquire william huggins, honoured by the music of william de fesch, aided by new painted scenery and _magnifique_ decoration, and in the year brought upon the stage. as de fesch[ ] was a german and a genius, we may fairly presume it was well set; and there was at that time, as at this, a sort of musical mania, that paid much greater attention to sounds than to sense; notwithstanding all these points in her favour, when the jewish heroine had made her theatrical _début_, and so effectually smote holofernes, ----"as to sever his head from his great trunk for ever and for ever." the audience compelled her to make her exit. to set aside this partial and unjust decree, mr. huggins appealed to the public, and printed his oratorio. though it was adorned with a frontispiece designed by hogarth, and engraved by vandergucht, the world could not be compelled to read, and the unhappy writer had no other resource than the consolatory reflection, that his work was superlatively excellent, but unluckily printed in a tasteless age; a comfortable and solacing self-consciousness, which hath, i verily believe, prevented many a great genius from becoming his own executioner. to paint a sound is impossible; but as far as art can go towards it, hogarth has gone in this print. the tenor, treble, and bass of these ear-piercing choristers are so decisively discriminated, that we all but hear them. the principal figure, whose head, hands, and feet are in equal agitation, has very properly tied on his spectacles; it would have been prudent to have tied on his periwig also, for by the energy of his action he has shaken it from his head, and, absorbed in an eager attention to true time, is totally unconscious of his loss. a gentleman--pardon me, i meant a singer--in a bag wig, immediately beneath his uplifted hand, i suspect to be of foreign growth. it has the engaging air of an importation from italy. the little figure in the sinister corner, is, it seems, intended for a mr. tothall, a woollen-draper, who lived in tavistock-court, and was hogarth's intimate friend. the name of the performer on his right hand, ----"whose growling bass would drown the clarion of the braying ass," i cannot learn, nor do i think that this group were meant for particular portraits, but a general representation of the violent distortions into which these crotchet-mongers draw their features on such solemn occasions. even the head of the bass-viol has air and character: by the band under the chin, it gives some idea of a professor, or what is, i think, called a mus. d. the words now singing, "the world shall bow to the assyrian throne," are extracted from mr. huggins' oratorio; the etching is in a most masterly style, and was originally given as a subscription ticket to the modern midnight conversation. i have seen a small political print on sir robert walpole's administration, entitled, "excise, a new ballad opera," of which this was unquestionably the basis. beneath it is the following learned and poetical motto: "_experto crede roberto._" "mind how each hireling songster tunes his throat, and the vile knight beats time to every note: so nero sung while rome was all in flames, but time shall brand with infamy their names." footnote: [ ] he was a respectable performer on the violin, some years chapel-master at antwerp, and several seasons leader of the band at marybone gardens. he published a collection of musical compositions, to which was annexed a portrait of himself, characterised by three lines from milton: "thou honour'dst verse, and verse must lend her wing to honour thee, the priest of phoebus' quire, that tun'st her happiest lines in hymn or song." he died in , aged seventy years, and gives one additional name to a catalogue i have somewhere seen of very old professors of music, who, saith my author, "generally live unto a greater age than persons in any other way of life, from their souls being so attuned unto harmony, that they enjoy a perpetual peace of mind." it has been observed, and i believe justly, that thinking is a great enemy to longevity, and that, consequently, they who think least will be likely to live longest. the quantity of thought necessary to make an adept in this divine science, must be determined by those who have studied it.--it would seem by this remark, that mr. ireland was not aware that to acquire proficiency in the divine science to which he so pleasantly alludes, requires great application and study. [illustration: the chorus.] columbus breaking the egg. by the success of columbus's first voyage, doubt had been changed into admiration; from the honours with which he was rewarded, admiration degenerated into envy. to deny that his discovery carried in its train consequences infinitely more important than had resulted from any made since the creation, was impossible. his enemies had recourse to another expedient, and boldly asserted that there was neither wisdom in the plan, nor hazard in the enterprise. when he was once at a spanish supper, the company took this ground, and being by his narrative furnished with the reflections which had induced him to undertake his voyage, and the course that he had pursued in its completion, sagaciously observed, that "it was impossible for any man, a degree above an idiot, to have failed of success. the whole process was so obvious, it must have been seen by a man who was half blind! nothing could be so easy!" "it is not difficult now i have pointed out the way," was the answer of columbus: "but easy as it will appear, when you are possessed of my method, i do not believe that, without such instruction, any person present could place one of these eggs upright on the table." the cloth, knives, and forks were thrown aside, and two of the party, placing their eggs as required, kept them steady with their fingers. one of them swore there could be no other way. "we will try," said the navigator; and giving an egg, which he held in his hand, a smart stroke upon the table, it remained upright. the emotions which this excited in the company are expressed in their countenances. in the be-ruffed booby at his left hand it raises astonishment; he is a dear me! man, of the same family with sterne's simple traveller, and came from amiens only yesterday. the fellow behind him, beating his head, curses his own stupidity; and the whiskered ruffian, with his fore-finger on the egg, is in his heart cursing columbus. as to the two veterans on the other side, they have lived too long to be agitated with trifles: he who wears a cap, exclaims, "is this all!" and the other, with a bald head, "by st. jago, i did not think of that!" in the face of columbus there is not that violent and excessive triumph which is exhibited by little characters on little occasions; he is too elevated to be overbearing; and, pointing to the conical solution of his problematical conundrum, displays a calm superiority, and silent internal contempt. two eels, twisted round the eggs upon the dish, are introduced as specimens of the line of beauty; which is again displayed on the table-cloth, and hinted at on the knife-blade. in all these curves there is peculiar propriety; for the etching was given as a receipt-ticket to the analysis, where this favourite undulating line forms the basis of his system. in the print of columbus, there is evident reference to the criticisms on what hogarth called his own discovery; and in truth the connoisseurs' remarks on the painter were dictated by a similar spirit to those of the critics on the navigator: they first asserted there was no such line, and when he had proved that there was, gave the honour of discovery to lomazzo, michael angelo, &c. &c. [illustration: columbus breaking the egg.] a midnight modern conversation. "think not to find one meant resemblance there; we lash the vices, but the persons spare. prints should be priz'd, as authors should be read, who sharply smile prevailing folly dead. so rabelais laugh'd, and so cervantes thought; so nature dictated what art has taught." notwithstanding this inscription, which was engraved on the plate some time after its publication, it is very certain that most of these figures were intended for individual portraits; but mr. hogarth, not wishing to be considered as a personal satirist, and fearful of making enemies among his contemporaries, would never acknowledge who were the characters. some of them the world might perhaps mistake; for though the author was faithful in delineating whatever he intended to portray, complete intoxication so far caricatures the countenance, that, according to the old, though trite proverb, "the man is not himself." his portrait, though given with the utmost fidelity, will scarcely be known by his most intimate friends, unless they have previously seen him in this degrading disguise. hence, it becomes difficult to identify men whom the painter did not choose to point out at the time; and a century having elapsed, it becomes impossible, for all who composed the group, with the artist by whom it was delineated, shake hands with dust, and call the worm their kinsman. mrs. piozzi was of opinion that the divine with a cork-screw, occasionally used as a tobacco-stopper, hanging upon his little finger, was the portrait of parson ford, dr. johnson's uncle; though, upon the authority of sir john hawkins, of anecdotish memory, it has been generally supposed to be intended for orator henley. as both these worthies were distinguished by that rubicundity of face with which it is marked, the reader may decree the honour of a sitting to which he pleases. the roaring bacchanalian who stands next him, waving his glass in the air, has pulled off his wig, and, in the zeal of his friendship, crowns the divine's head. he is evidently drinking destruction to fanatics, and success to mother church, or a mitre to the jolly parson whom he addresses. the lawyer, who sits near him, is a portrait of one kettleby, a vociferous bar-orator, who, though an utter barrister, chose to distinguish himself by wearing an enormous full-bottom wig, in which he is here represented. he was farther remarkable for a diabolical squint, and a satanic smile. a poor maudlin miserable, who is addressing him, when sober, must be a fool; but, in this state, it would puzzle lavater to assign him a proper class. he seems endeavouring to demonstrate to the lawyer, that, in a poi--poi--point of law, he has been most cruelly cheated, and lost a cau--cau--cause, that he ought to have got,--and all this was owing to his attorney being an infernal villain. this may very probably be true; for the poor man's tears show that, like the person relieved by the good samaritan, he has been among thieves. the barrister grins horribly at his misfortunes, and tells him he is properly punished for not employing a gentleman. next to him sits a gentleman in a black periwig. he politely turns his back to the company, that he may have the pleasure of smoking a sociable pipe. the justice, "in fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,"--the justice, having hung up his hat, wig, and cloak, puts on his nightcap, and, with a goblet of superior capacity before him, sits in solemn cogitation. his left elbow, supported by the table, and his right by a chair, with a pipe in one hand, and a stopper in the other, he puffs out the bland vapour with the dignity of an alderman, and fancies himself as great as jupiter, seated upon the summit of mount olympus, enveloped by the thick cloud which his own breath has created. with folded arms and open mouth, another leans back in his chair. his wig is dropped from his head, and he is asleep; but though speechless, he is sonorous; for you clearly perceive that, where nasal sounds are the music, he is qualified to be leader of the band. the fallen hero, who with his chair and goblet has tumbled to the floor, by the cockade in his hat, we suppose to be an officer. his forehead is marked, perhaps with honourable scars. to wash his wounds, and cool his head, the staggering apothecary bathes it with brandy. a gentleman in the corner, who, from having the craftsman and london evening in his pocket, we determine to be a politician, very unluckily mistakes his ruffle for the bowl of his pipe, and sets fire to it. the person in a bag-wig and solitaire, with his hand upon his head, would not now pass for a fine gentleman, but in the year was a complete beau. unaccustomed to such joyous company, he appears to have drank rather more than agrees with him. the company consists of eleven, and on the chimney-piece, floor, and table, are three and twenty empty flasks. these, added to a bottle which the apothecary holds in his hand, prove that this select society have not lost a moment. the overflowing bowl, full goblets, and charged glasses, prove that they think, "'tis too early to part," though the dial points to four in the morning. the different degrees of drunkenness are well discriminated, and its effects admirably described. the poor simpleton, who is weeping out his woes to honest lawyer kettleby, it makes mawkish; the beau it makes sick; and the politician it stupifies. one is excited to roaring, and another lulled to sleep. it half closes the eyes of justice, renders the footing of physic unsure, and lays prostrate the glory of his country, and the pride of war. [illustration: a midnight modern conversation.] consultation of physicians--the undertakers' arms. this plate is designed, with much humour, according to the rules of heraldry, and is called the undertakers' arms, to show us the connexion between death and the quack doctor, as are also those cross-bones on the outside of the escutcheon. when an undertaker is in want of business, he cannot better apply than to some of those gentlemen of the faculty, who are, for the most part, so charitably disposed, as to supply the necessities of these sable death-hunters, and keep them from starving in a healthy time. by the tenour of this piece, mr. hogarth would intimate the general ignorance of such of the medical tribe, and teach us that they possess little more knowledge than their voluminous wigs and golden-headed canes. they are represented in deep consultation upon the contents of an urinal. our artist's own illustration of this coat of arms, as he calls it, is as follows: "the company of undertakers beareth, sable, an urinal, proper between twelve quack heads of the second, and twelve cane heads, or, consultant. on a chief, _nebulæ_, ermine, one complete doctor, issuant, checkie, sustaining in his right hand a baton of the second. on the dexter and sinister sides, two demi-doctors, issuant of the second, and two cane heads, issuant of the third; the first having one eye, couchant, towards the dexter side of the escutcheon; the second faced, per pale, proper, and gules guardant. with this motto, _et plurima mortis imago_. the general image of death." it has been said of the ancients, that they began by attempting to make physic a science, and failed; of the moderns, that they began by attempting to make it a trade, and succeeded. this company are moderns to a man, and, if we may judge of their capacities by their countenances, are indeed a most sapient society. their practice is very extensive, and they go about, taking guineas, far as the weekly bills can reach around, from kent-street end, to fam'd st. giles's pound. many of them are unquestionably portraits, but as these grave and sage descendants of galen are long since gone to that place where they before sent their patients, we are unable to ascertain any of them, except the three who are, for distinction, placed in the chief, or most honourable part of the escutcheon. those who, from their exalted situation, we may naturally conclude the most distinguished and sagacious leeches of their day, have marks too obtrusive to be mistaken. he towards the dexter side of the escutcheon, is determined by an eye in the head of his cane to be the all-accomplished chevalier taylor, in whose marvellous and surprising history, written by his own hand, and published in , is recorded such events relative to himself and others, as have excited more astonishment than that incomparable romance, don belianis of greece, the arabian nights, or sir john mandeville's travels. the centre figure, arrayed in a harlequin jacket, with a bone, or what the painter denominates a baton, in the right hand, is generally considered designed for mrs. mapp, a masculine woman, daughter to one wallin, a bone-setter at hindon, in wiltshire. this female thalestris, incompatible as it may seem with her sex, adopted her father's profession, travelled about the country, calling herself crazy sally; and, like another hercules, did wonders by strength of arm. on the sinister side is dr. ward, generally called spot ward, from his left cheek being marked with a claret colour. this gentleman was of a respectable family, and though not highly educated, had talents very superior to either of his coadjutors. for the chief, this must suffice; as for the twelve quack heads, and twelve cane heads, or, consultant, united with the cross bones at the corners, they have a most mortuary appearance, and do indeed convey a general image of death. in the time of lucian, a philosopher was distinguished by three things,--his avarice, his impudence, and his beard. in the time of hogarth, medicine was a mystery, and there were three things which distinguished the physician,--his gravity, his cane-head, and his periwig. with these leading requisites, this venerable party are most amply gifted. to specify every character is not necessary; but the upper figure on the dexter side, with a wig like a weeping willow, should not be overlooked. his lemon-like aspect must curdle the blood of all his patients. in the countenances of his brethren there is no want of acids; but, however sour, each individual was in his day, ----------------a doctor of renown, to none but such as rust in health unknown; and, save or slay, this privilege they claim, or death, or life, the bright reward's the same. [illustration: consultation of physicians.] daniel lock, esq. f.a.s. daniel lock was an architect of some eminence. he retired from business with an ample fortune, lived in surrey-street, and was buried in the chapel of trinity college, cambridge. this portrait was originally engraved by j. m'ardell from a painting by hogarth, and is classed among the productions of our artist that are of uncertain date. [illustration: daniel lock, esq. f.a.s.] the enraged musician. "with thundering noise the azure vault they tear, and rend, with savage roar, the echoing air: the sounds terrific he with horror hears; his fiddle throws aside,--and stops his ears." we have seen displayed the distress of a poet; in this the artist has exhibited the rage of a musician. our poor bard bore his misfortunes with patience, and, rich in his muse, did not much repine at his poverty. not so this master of harmony, of heavenly harmony! to the evils of poverty he is now a stranger; his _adagios_ and _cantabiles_ have procured him the protection of nobles; and, contrary to the poor shirtless mendicant of the muses that we left in a garret, he is arrayed in a coat decorated with frogs, a bag-wig, solitaire, and ruffled shirt. waiting in the chamber of a man of fashion, whom he instructs in the divine science of music, having first tuned his instrument, he opens his crotchet-book, shoulders his violin, flourishes his fiddle-stick, and, softly sweet, in lydian measure, soon he soothes his soul to pleasure. rapt in elysium at the divine symphony, he is awakened from his beatific vision, by noises that distract him. ----------an universal hubbub wild, of stunning sounds, and voices all confus'd, assails his ears with loudest vehemence. confounded with the din, and enraged by the interruption, our modern terpander starts from his seat, and opens the window. this operates as air to a kindling fire; and such a combination of noises burst upon the auricular nerve, that he is compelled to stop his ears,--but to stop the torrent is impossible! a louder yet, and yet a louder strain, break his bands of thought asunder! and rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder; at the horrible sound he has rais'd up his head, as awak'd from the dead, and amazed he stares all around. in this situation he is delineated; and those who for a moment contemplate the figures before him, cannot wonder at his rage. a crew of hell-hounds never ceasing bark, with wide cerberean mouth, full loud, and ring a hideous peal. of the _dramatis personæ_ who perform the vocal parts, the first is a fellow, in a tone that would rend hell's concave, bawling, "dust, ho! dust, ho! dust!" next to him, an amphibious animal, who nightly pillows his head on the sedgy bosom of old thames, in a voice that emulates the rush of many waters, or the roaring of a cataract, is bellowing "flounda,a,a,ars!" a daughter of may-day, who dispenses what in london is called milk, and is consequently a milk-maid, in a note pitched at the very top of her voice, is crying, "be-louw!" while a ballad-singer dolefully drawls out the ladie's fall, an infant in her arms joins its treble pipe in chorus with the screaming parrot, which is on a lamp-iron over her head. on the roof of an opposite house are two cats, performing what an amateur of music might perhaps call a bravura duet; near them appears a sweep, shrill twittering on the chimney-top. a little french drummer, singing to his rub-a-dub, and the agreeable yell of a dog, complete the vocal performers. of the instrumental, a fellow blowing a horn, with a violence that would have almost shaken down the walls of jericho, claims the first notice; next to him, the dustman rattles his bell with ceaseless clangour, until the air reverberates the sound. the intervals are filled up by a paviour, who, to every stroke of his rammer, adds a loud, distinct, and echoing, haugh! the pedestrian cutler is grinding a butcher's cleaver with such earnestness and force, that it elicits sparks of fire. this, added to the agonizing howls of his unfortunate dog, must afford a perfect specimen of the ancient chromatic. the poor animal, between a man and a monkey, piping harsh discords upon a hautboy, the girl whirling her _crepitaculum_, or rattle, and the boy beating his drum, conclude the catalogue of this harmonious band. this delineation originated in a story which was told to hogarth by the late mr. john festin, who is the hero of the print. he was eminent for his skill in playing upon the german flute and hautboy, and much employed as a teacher of music. to each of his scholars he devoted one hour each day. "at nine o'clock in the morning," said he, "i once waited upon my lord spencer, but his lordship being out of town, from him i went to mr. v----n. it was so early that he was not arisen. i went into his chamber, and, opening a shutter, sat down in the window-seat. before the rails was a fellow playing upon the hautboy. a man with a barrow full of onions offered the piper an onion if he would play him a tune. that ended, he offered a second onion for a second tune; the same for a third, and was going on: but this was too much; i could not bear it; it angered my very soul--'zounds!' said i, 'stop here! this fellow is ridiculing my profession; he is playing on the hautboy for onions!'" the whole of this bravura scene is admirably represented. a person quaintly enough observed, that it deafens one to look at it. [illustration: the enraged musician.] masquerades and operas. burlington gate. this print appeared in . of the three small figures in the centre the middle one is lord burlington, a man of considerable taste in painting and architecture, but who ranked mr. kent, an indifferent artist, above his merit. on one side of the peer is mr. campbell, the architect; on the other, his lordship's postilion. on a show-cloth in this plate is also supposed to be the portrait of king george ii. who gave _l._ towards the masquerade; together with that of the earl of peterborough, who offers cuzzoni, the italian singer, _l._ and she spurns at him. mr. heidegger, the regulator of the masquerade, is also exhibited, looking out of a window, with the letter h under him. the substance of the foregoing remarks is taken from a collection lately belonging to captain baillie, where it is said that they were furnished by an eminent connoisseur. a board is likewise displayed, with the words, "long room. fawks's dexterity of hand." it appears from the following advertisement that this was a man of great consequence in his profession: "whereas the town hath been lately alarmed, that the famous fawks was robbed and murdered, returning from performing at the duchess of buckingham's house at chelsea; which report being raised and printed by a person to gain money to himself, and prejudice the above-mentioned mr. fawks, whose unparalleled performance has gained him so much applause from the greatest of quality, and most curious observers: we think, both in justice to the injured gentleman, and for the satisfaction of his admirers, that we cannot please our readers better than to acquaint them he is alive, and will not only perform his usual surprising dexterity of hand, posture-master, and musical clock: but, for the greater diversion of the quality and gentry, has agreed with the famous powell of the bath for the season, who has the largest, richest, and most natural figures, and finest machines in england, and whose former performances in covent garden were so engaging to the town, as to gain the approbation of the best judges, to show his puppet-plays along with him, beginning in the christmas holidays next, at the old tennis-court, in james's-street, near the haymarket; where any incredulous persons may be satisfied he is not left this world, if they please to believe their hands, though they can't believe their eyes."--"may ," indeed, " , died mr. fawks, famous for his dexterity of hand, by which he had honestly acquired a fortune of , _l._ being no more than he really deserved for his great ingenuity, by which he had surpassed all that ever pretended to that art." this satirical performance of hogarth, however, was thought to be invented and drawn at the instigation of sir james thornhill, out of revenge, because lord burlington had preferred mr. kent before him to paint for the king at his palace at kensington. dr. faustus was a pantomime performed to crowded houses throughout two seasons, to the utter neglect of plays, for which reason they are cried about in a wheel-barrow. [illustration: masquerades and operas, burlington gate.] morning. keen blows the blast, and eager is the air; with flakes of feather'd snow the ground is spread; to step, with mincing pace, to early prayer, our clay-cold vestal leaves her downy bed. and here the reeling sons of riot see, after a night of senseless revelry. poor, trembling, old, her suit the beggar plies; but frozen chastity the little boon denies. this withered representative of miss bridget alworthy, with a shivering foot-boy carrying her prayer-book, never fails in her attendance at morning service. she is a symbol of the season.-- -------------chaste as the icicle that's curdled by the frost from purest snow, and hangs on dian's temple she looks with scowling eye, and all the conscious pride of severe and stubborn virginity, on the poor girls who are suffering the embraces of two drunken beaux that are just staggered out of tom king's coffee-house. one of them, from the basket on her arm, i conjecture to be an orange girl: she shows no displeasure at the boisterous salute of her hibernian lover. that the hero in a laced hat is from the banks of the shannon, is apparent in his countenance. the female whose face is partly concealed, and whose neck has a more easy turn than we always see in the works of this artist, is not formed of the most inflexible materials. an old woman, seated upon a basket; the girl, warming her hands by a few withered sticks that are blazing on the ground, and a wretched mendicant,[ ] wrapped in a tattered and parti-coloured blanket, entreating charity from the rosy-fingered vestal who is going to church, complete the group. behind them, at the door of tom king's coffee-house, are a party engaged in a fray, likely to create business for both surgeon and magistrate: we discover swords and cudgels in the combatants' hands. on the opposite side of the print are two little schoolboys. that they have shining morning faces we cannot positively assert, but each has a satchel at his back, and according with the description given by the poet of nature, is creeping, like snail, unwillingly to school. the lantern appended to the woman who has a basket on her head, proves that these dispensers of the riches of pomona rise before the sun, and do part of their business by an artificial light. near her, that immediate descendant of paracelsus, dr. rock, is expatiating to an admiring audience, on the never-failing virtues of his wonder-working medicines. one hand holds a bottle of his miraculous panacea, and the other supports a board, on which is the king's arms, to indicate that his practice is sanctioned by royal letters patent. two porringers and a spoon, placed on the bottom of an inverted basket, intimate that the woman seated near them, is a vender of rice-milk, which was at that time brought into the market every morning. a fatigued porter leans on a rail; and a blind beggar is going towards the church: but whether he will become one of the congregation, or take his stand at the door, in the hope that religion may have warmed the hearts of its votaries to "pity the sorrows of a poor blind man," is uncertain. snow on the ground, and icicles hanging from the penthouse, exhibit a very chilling prospect; but, to dissipate the cold, there is happily a shop where spirituous liquors are sold _pro bono publico_, at a very little distance. a large pewter measure is placed upon a post before the door, and three of a smaller size hang over the window of the house. the character of the principal figure is admirably delineated. she is marked with that prim and awkward formality which generally accompanies her order, and is an exact type of a hard winter; for every part of her dress, except the flying lappets and apron, ruffled by the wind, is as rigidly precise as if it were frozen. it has been said that this incomparable figure was designed as the representative of either a particular friend, or a relation. individual satire may be very gratifying to the public, but is frequently fatal to the satirist. churchill, by the lines, ----------------fam'd vine-street, where heaven, the kindest wish of man to grant, gave me an old house, and an older aunt, lost a considerable legacy; and it is related that hogarth, by the introduction of this withered votary of diana into this print, induced her to alter a will which had been made considerably in his favour: she was at first well enough satisfied with her resemblance, but some designing people taught her to be angry. extreme cold is very well expressed in the slip-shod footboy, and the girl who is warming her hands. the group of which she is a part, is well formed, but not sufficiently balanced on the opposite side. the church dial, a few minutes before seven; marks of little shoes and pattens in the snow, and various productions of the season in the market, are an additional proof of that minute accuracy with which this artist inspected and represented objects, which painters in general have neglected. govent garden is the scene, but in the print every building is reversed. this was a common error with hogarth; not from his being ignorant of the use of the mirror, but from his considering it as a matter of little consequence. footnote: [ ] "what signifies," says some one to dr. johnson, "giving halfpence to common beggars? they only lay them out in gin or tobacco." "and why," replied the doctor, "should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence? it is surely very savage to shut out from them every possible avenue to those pleasures reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. life is a pill which none of us can swallow without gilding, yet for the poor we delight in stripping it still more bare, and are not ashamed to show even visible marks of displeasure, if even the bitter taste is taken from their mouths." [illustration: morning.] noon. hail, gallia's daughters! easy, brisk, and free; good humour'd, _débonnaire_, and _dégagée_: though still fantastic, frivolous, and vain, let not their airs and graces give us pain: or fair, or brown, at toilet, prayer, or play, their motto speaks their manners--toujours gai. but for that powder'd compound of grimace, that capering he-she thing of fringe and lace; with sword and cane, with bag and solitaire, vain of the full-dress'd dwarf, his hopeful heir, how does our spleen and indignation rise, when such a tinsell'd coxcomb meets our eyes, among the figures who are coming out of church, an affected, flighty frenchwoman, with her fluttering fop of a husband, and a boy, habited _à-la-mode de paris_, claim our first attention. in dress, air, and manner, they have a national character. the whole congregation, whether male or female, old or young, carry the air of their country in countenance, dress, and deportment. like the three principal figures, they are all marked with some affected peculiarity. affectation, in a woman, is supportable upon no other ground than that general indulgence we pay to the omnipotence of beauty, which in a degree sanctifies whatever it adopts. in a boy, when we consider that the poor fellow is attempting to copy what he has been taught to believe praiseworthy, we laugh at it; the largest portion of ridicule falls upon his tutors; but in a man, it is contemptible! the old fellow, in a black periwig, has a most vinegar-like aspect, and looks with great contempt at the frippery gentlewoman immediately before him. the woman, with a demure countenance, seems very piously considering how she can contrive to pick the embroidered beau's pocket. two old sybils joining their withered lips in a chaste salute, is nauseous enough, but, being a national custom, must be forgiven. the divine seems to have resided in this kingdom long enough to acquire a roast-beef countenance. a little boy, whose woollen nightcap is pressed over a most venerable flowing periwig, and the decrepit old man, leaning upon a crutch-stick, who is walking before him, "i once considered," says mr. ireland, "as two vile caricatures, out of nature, and unworthy the artist. since i have seen the peasantry of flanders, and the plebeian youth of france, i have in some degree changed my opinion, but still think them rather _outré_." under a sign of the baptist's head is written, good eating; and on each side of the inscription is a mutton chop. in opposition to this head without a body, unaccountably displayed as a sign at an eating-house, there is a body without a head, hanging out as the sign of a distiller's. this, by common consent, has been quaintly denominated the good woman. at a window above, one of the softer sex proves her indisputable right to the title by her temperate conduct to her husband, with whom having had a little disagreement, she throws their sunday's dinner into the street. a girl, bringing a pie from the bakehouse, is stopped in her career by the rude embraces of a blackamoor, who eagerly rubs his sable visage against her blooming cheek. good eating is carried on to the lower part of the picture. a boy, placing a baked pudding upon a post, with rather too violent an action, the dish breaks, the fragments fall to the ground, and while he is loudly lamenting his misfortune, and with tears anticipating his punishment, the smoking remnants are eagerly snatched up by a poor girl. not educated according to the system of jean jacques rousseau, she feels no qualms of conscience about the original proprietor, and, destitute of that fastidious delicacy which destroys the relish of many a fine lady, eagerly swallows the hot and delicious morsels, with all the concomitants. the scene is laid at the door of a french chapel in hog-lane; a part of the town at that time almost wholly peopled by french refugees, or their descendants. by the dial of st. giles's church, in the distance, we see that it is only half past eleven. at this early hour, in those good times, there was as much good eating as there is now at six o'clock in the evening. from twenty pewter measures, which are hung up before the houses of different distillers, it seems that good drinking was considered as equally worthy of their serious attention. the dead cat, and choked kennels, mark the little attention shown to the streets by the scavengers of st. giles's. at that time noxious effluvia was not peculiar to this parish. the neighbourhood of fleet-ditch, and many other parts of the city, were equally polluted. even at this refined period, there would be some use in a more strict attention to the medical police of a city so crowded with inhabitants. we ridicule the people of paris and edinburgh for neglecting so essential and salutary a branch of delicacy, while the kennels of a street in the vicinity of st. paul's church are floated with the blood of slaughtered animals every market-day. moses would have managed these things better: but in those days there was no physician in israel! [illustration: noon.] evening. one sultry sunday, when no cooling breeze was borne on zephyr's wing, to fan the trees; one sultry sunday, when the torrid ray o'er nature beam'd intolerable day; when raging sirius warn'd us not to roam, and galen's sons prescrib'd cool draughts at home; one sultry sunday, near those fields of fame where weavers dwell, and spital is their name, a sober wight, of reputation high for tints that emulate the tyrian dye, wishing to take his afternoon's repose, in easy chair had just began to doze, when, in a voice that sleep's soft slumbers broke, his oily helpmate thus her wishes spoke: "why, spouse, for shame! my stars, what's this about? you's ever sleeping; come, we'll all go out; at that there garden, pr'ythee, do not stare! we'll take a mouthful of the country air; in the yew bower an hour or two we'll kill; there you may smoke, and drink what punch you will. sophy and billy each shall walk with me, and you must carry little emily. veny is sick, and pants, and loathes her food; the grass will do the pretty creature good. hot rolls are ready as the clock strikes five-- and now 'tis after four, as i'm alive!" the mandate issued, see the tour begun, and all the flock set out for islington. now the broad sun, refulgent lamp of day, to rest with thetis, slopes his western way; o'er every tree embrowning dust is spread, and tipt with gold is hampstead's lofty head. the passive husband, in his nature mild, to wife consigns his hat, and takes the child; but she a day like this hath never felt, "oh! that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew." such monstrous heat! dear me! she never knew. adown her innocent and beauteous face, the big, round, pearly drops each other chase; thence trickling to those hills, erst white as snow, that now like Ã�tna's mighty mountains glow, they hang like dewdrops on the full blown rose, and to the ambient air their sweets disclose. fever'd with pleasure, thus she drags along; nor dares her antler'd husband say 'tis wrong. the blooming offspring of this blissful pair, in all their parents' attic pleasures share. sophy the soft, the mother's earliest joy, demands her froward brother's tinsell'd toy; but he, enrag'd, denies the glittering prize, and rends the air with loud and piteous cries. thus far we see the party on their way-- what dire disasters mark'd the close of day, 'twere tedious, tiresome, endless to obtrude; imagination must the scene conclude. it is not easy to imagine fatigue better delineated than in the appearance of this amiable pair. in a few of the earliest impressions, mr. hogarth printed the hands of the man in blue, to show that he was a dyer, and the face and neck of the woman in red, to intimate her extreme heat. the lady's aspect lets us at once into her character; we are certain that she was born to command. as to her husband, god made him, and he must pass for a man: what his wife has made him, is indicated by the cow's horns; which are so placed as to become his own. the hopes of the family, with a cockade in his hat, and riding upon papa's cane, seems much dissatisfied with female sway. a face with more of the shrew in embryo than that of the girl, it is scarcely possible to conceive. upon such a character the most casual observer pronounces with the decision of a lavater. nothing can be better imagined than the group in the alehouse. they have taken a refreshing walk into the country, and, being determined to have a cooling pipe, seat themselves in a chair-lumbered closet, with a low ceiling; where every man, pulling off his wig, and throwing a pocket-handkerchief over his head, inhales the fumes of hot punch, the smoke of half a dozen pipes, and the dust from the road. if this is not rural felicity, what is? the old gentleman in a black bag-wig, and the two women near him, sensibly enough, take their seats in the open air. from a woman milking a cow, we conjecture the hour to be about five in the afternoon: and, from the same circumstance, i am inclined to think this agreeable party is going to their pastoral bower, rather than returning from it. the cow and dog appear as much inconvenienced by heat as any of the party: the former is whisking off the flies; and the latter creeps unwillingly along, and casts a longing look at the crystal river, in which he sees his own shadow. a remarkably hot summer is intimated by the luxuriant state of a vine, creeping over an alehouse window. on the side of the new river, where the scene is laid, lies one of the wooden pipes employed in the water-works. opposite sadler's wells there still remains the sign of sir hugh middleton's head, which is here represented; but how changed the scene from what is here represented! [illustration: evening.] night. now burst the blazing bonfires on the sight, through the wide air their corruscations play; the windows beam with artificial light, and all the region emulates the day. the moping mason, from yon tavern led, in mystic words doth to the moon complain that unsound port distracts his aching head, and o'er the waiter waves his clouded cane. mr. walpole very truly observes, that this print is inferior to the three others; there is, however, broad humour in some of the figures. the wounded free-mason, who, in zeal of brotherly love, has drank his bumpers to the craft till he is unable to find his way home, is under the guidance of a waiter. this has been generally considered as intended for sir thomas de veil, and, from an authenticated portrait which i have seen, i am, says mr. ireland, inclined to think it is, notwithstanding sir john hawkins asserts, that "he could discover no resemblance." when the knight saw him in his magisterial capacity, he was probably sober and sedate; here he is represented a little disguised. the british xantippe showering her favours from the window upon his head, may have its source in that respect which the inmates of such houses as the rummer tavern had for a justice of peace. on the resignation of mr. horace walpole, in february, , de veil was appointed inspector-general of the imports and exports, and was so severe against the retailers of spirituous liquors, that one allen headed a gang of rioters for the purpose of pulling down his house, and bringing to a summary punishment two informers who were there concealed. allen was tried for this offence, and acquitted, upon the jury's verdict declaring him lunatic. the waiter who supports his worship, seems, from the patch upon his forehead, to have been in a recent affray; but what use he can have for a lantern, it is not easy to divine, unless he is conducting his charge to some place where there is neither moonlight nor illumination. the salisbury flying coach oversetting and broken, by passing through the bonfire, is said to be an intended burlesque upon a right honourable peer, who was accustomed to drive his own carriage over hedges, ditches, and rivers; and has been sometimes known to drive three or four of his maid servants into a deep water, and there leave them in the coach to shift for themselves. the butcher, and little fellow, who are assisting the terrified passengers, are possibly free and accepted masons. one of them seems to have a mop in his hand;--the pail is out of sight. to crown the joys of the populace, a man with a pipe in his mouth is filling a capacious hogshead with british burgundy. the joint operation of shaving and bleeding, performed by a drunken 'prentice on a greasy oilman, does not seen a very natural exhibition on a rejoicing night. the poor wretches under the barber's bench display a prospect of penury and wretchedness, which it is to be hoped is not so common now, as it was then. in the distance is a cart laden with furniture, which some unfortunate tenant is removing out of the reach of his landlord's execution. there is humour in the barber's sign and inscription; "shaving, bleeding, and teeth drawn with a touch. ecce signum!" by the oaken boughs on the sign, and the oak leaves in the free-masons' hats, it seems that this rejoicing night is the twenty-ninth of may, the anniversary of our second charles's restoration; that happy day when, according to our old ballad, "the king enjoyed his own again." this might be one reason for the artist choosing a scene contiguous to the beautiful equestrian statue of charles the first. in the distance we see a house on fire; an accident very likely to happen on such a night as this. on this spot once stood the cross erected by edward the first, as a memorial of affection for his beloved queen eleanor, whose remains were here rested on their way to the place of sepulture. it was formed from a design by cavalini, and destroyed by the religious fury of the reformers. in its place, in the year , was erected the animated equestrian statue which now remains. it was cast in brass, in the year , by le soeur; i think by order of that munificent encourager of the arts, thomas howard, earl of arundel. the parliament ordered it to be sold, and broken to pieces; but john river, the brazier who purchased it, having more taste than his employers, seeing, with the prophetic eye of good sense, that the powers which were would not remain rulers very long, dug a hole in his garden in holborn, and buried it unmutilated. to prove his obedience to their order, he produced to his masters several pieces of brass, which he told them were parts of the statue. m. de archenholtz adds further, that the brazier, with the true spirit of trade, cast a great number of handles for knives and forks, and offered them for sale, as composed of the brass which had formed the statue. they were eagerly sought for, and purchased,--by the loyalists from affection to their murdered monarch,--by the other party, as trophies of triumph. the original pictures of morning and noon were sold to the duke of ancaster for fifty-seven guineas; evening and night to sir william heathcote, for sixty-four guineas. [illustration: night.] sigismonda ----------------let the picture rust, perhaps time's price-enhancing dust,-- as statues moulder into earth, when i'm no more, may mark its worth; and future connoisseurs may rise, honest as ours, and full as wise, to puff the piece, and painter too, and make me then what guido's now. hogarth's epistle. a competition with either guido, or furino, would to any modern painter be an enterprise of danger: to hogarth it was more peculiarly so, from the public justly conceiving that the representation of elevated distress was not his _forte_, and his being surrounded by an host of foes, who either dreaded satire, or envied genius. the connoisseurs, considering the challenge as too insolent to be forgiven, before his picture appeared, determined to decry it. the painters rejoiced in his attempting what was likely to end in disgrace; and to satisfy those who had formed their ideas of sigismonda upon the inspired page of dryden, was no easy task. the bard has consecrated the character, and his heroine glitters with a brightness that cannot be transferred to the canvass. mr. walpole's description, though equally radiant, is too various, for the utmost powers of the pencil. hogarth's sigismonda, as this gentleman poetically expresses it, "has none of the sober grief, no dignity of suppressed anguish, no involuntary tear, no settled meditation on the fate she meant to meet, no amorous warmth turned holy by despair; in short, all is wanting that should have been there, all is there that such a story would have banished from a mind capable of conceiving such complicated woe; woe so sternly felt, and yet so tenderly." this glowing picture presents to the mind a being whose contending passions may be felt, but were not delineated even by corregio. had his tints been aided by the grace and greatness of raphael, they must have failed. the author of the mysterious mother sought for sublimity, where the artist strictly copied nature, which was invariably his archetype, but which the painter, who soars into fancy's fairy regions, must in a degree desert. considered with this reference, though the picture has faults, mr. walpole's satire is surely too severe. it is built upon a comparison with works painted in a language of which hogarth knew not the idiom,--trying him before a tribunal, whose authority he did not acknowledge, and from the picture having been in many respects altered after the critic saw it, some of the remarks become unfair. to the frequency of these alterations we may attribute many of the errors: the man who has not confidence in his own knowledge of the leading principles on which his work ought to be built, will not render it perfect by following the advice of his friends. though messrs. wilkes and churchill dragged his heroine to the altar of politics, and mangled her with a barbarity that can hardly be paralleled, except in the history of her husband,--the artist retained his partiality; which seems to have increased in exact proportion to their abuse. the picture being thus contemplated through the medium of party prejudice, we cannot wonder that all its imperfections were exaggerated. the painted harlot of babylon had not more opprobrious epithets from the first race of reformers than the painted sigismonda of hogarth from the last race of patriots. when a favourite child is chastised by his preceptor, a partial mother redoubles her caresses. hogarth, estimating this picture by the labour he had bestowed upon it, was certain that the public were prejudiced, and requested, if his wife survived him, she would not sell it for less than five hundred pounds. mrs. hogarth acted in conformity to his wishes, but after her death the painting was purchased by messrs. boydell, and exhibited in the shakspeare gallery. the colouring, though not brilliant, is harmonious and natural: the attitude, drawing, etc. may be generally conceived by the print. i am much inclined to think, that if some of those who have been most severe in their censures, had consulted their own feelings, instead of depending upon connoisseurs, poor sigismonda would have been in higher estimation. it has been said that the first sketch was made from mrs. hogarth, at the time she was weeping over the corse of her mother. hogarth once intended to have appealed from the critics' fiat to the world's opinion, and employed mr. basire to make an engraving, which was begun, but set aside for some other work, and never completed. [illustration: sigismonda, with the heart of her husband.] martin folkes, esq. martin folkes was a mathematician and antiquary of much celebrity in the philosophical annals of this country. he was at the early age of twenty-four admitted a member of the royal society, where he was greatly distinguished. two years afterwards he was chosen one of the council, and was named by sir isaac newton himself as vice president: he was afterwards elected president, and held this high office till a short time before his death, when he resigned it on account of ill-health. in the philosophical transactions are numerous memoirs of this learned man: his knowledge in coins, ancient and modern, was very extensive: and the last work he produced was concerning the english silver coin from the conquest to his own time. he was president of the society of antiquaries at the time of his death, which happened on the th of june, , at the age of sixty-four. a few days before his death he was struck with a fit of the palsy, and never spoke after this attack. [illustration: portrait of martin folkes, esq.] the cockpit. the scene is probably laid at newmarket, and in this motley group of peers,--pick-pockets,--butchers,--jockies,--rat-catchers,--gentlemen, --gamblers of every denomination, lord albemarle bertie, being the principal figure, is entitled to precedence. in the march to finchley, we see him an attendant at a boxing match; and here he is president of a most respectable society assembled at a cockpit. what rendered his lordship's passion for amusements of this nature very singular, was his being totally blind. in this place he is beset by seven steady friends, five of whom at the same instant offer to bet with him on the event of the battle. one of them, a lineal descendant of filch, taking advantage of his blindness and negligence, endeavours to convey a bank note, deposited in our dignified gambler's hat, to his own pocket. of this ungentlemanlike attempt his lordship is apprised by a ragged post-boy, and an honest butcher: but he is so much engaged in the pronunciation of those important words, done! done! done! done! and the arrangement of his bets, that he cannot attend to their hints; and it seems more than probable that the stock will be transferred, and the note negociated in a few seconds. a very curious group surround the old nobleman, who is adorned with a riband, a star, and a pair of spectacles. the whole weight of an overgrown carpenter being laid upon his shoulder, forces our illustrious personage upon a man beneath; who being thus driven downward, falls upon a fourth, and the fourth, by the accumulated pressure of this ponderous trio, composed of the upper and lower house, loses his balance, and tumbling against the edge of the partition, his head is broke, and his wig, shook from the seat of reason, falls into the cockpit. a man adjoining enters into the spirit of the battle,--his whole soul is engaged. from his distorted countenance, and clasped hands, we see that he feels every stroke given to his favourite bird in his heart's core,--ay, in his heart of hearts! a person at the old peer's left hand is likely to be a loser. ill-humour, vexation, and disappointment are painted in his countenance. the chimney-sweeper above, is the very quintessence of affectation. he has all the airs and graces of a boarding-school miss. the sanctified quaker adjoining, and the fellow beneath, who, by the way, is a very similar figure to captain stab, in the rake's progress, are finely contrasted. a french marquis on the other side, astonished at this being called amusement, is exclaiming sauvages! sauvages! sauvages!--engrossed by the scene, and opening his snuff-box rather carelessly, its contents fall into the eyes of a man below, who, sneezing and swearing alternately, imprecates bitter curses on this devil's dust, that extorts from his inflamed eyes, "a sea of melting pearls, which some call tears." adjoining is an old cripple, with a trumpet at his ear, and in this trumpet a person in a bag-wig roars in a manner that cannot much gratify the auricular nerves of his companions; but as for the object to whom the voice is directed, he seems totally insensible to sounds, and if judgment can be formed from appearances, might very composedly stand close to the clock of st. paul's cathedral, when it was striking twelve. the figure with a cock peeping out of a bag, is said to be intended for jackson, a jockey; the gravity of this experienced veteran, and the cool sedateness of a man registering the wagers, are well opposed by the grinning woman behind, and the heated impetuosity of a fellow, stripped to his shirt, throwing his coin upon the cockpit, and offering to back ginger against pye for a guinea. on the lower side, where there is only one tier of figures, a sort of an apothecary, and a jockey, are stretching out their arms, and striking together the handles of their whips, in token of a bet. an hiccuping votary of bacchus, displaying a half-emptied purse, is not likely to possess it long, for an adroit professor of legerdemain has taken aim with a hooked stick, and by one slight jerk, will convey it to his own pocket. the profession of a gentleman in a round wig is determined by a gibbet chalked upon his coat. an enraged barber, who lifts up his stick in the corner, has probably been refused payment of a wager, by the man at whom he is striking. a cloud-capt philosopher at the top of the print, coolly smoking his pipe, unmoved by this crash of matter, and wreck of property, must not be overlooked: neither should his dog be neglected; for the dog, gravely resting his fore paws upon the partition, and contemplating the company, seems more interested in the event of the battle than his master. like the tremendous gog, and terrific magog, of guildhall, stand the two cock-feeders; a foot of each of these consequential purveyors is seen at the two extremities of the pit. as to the birds, whose attractive powers have drawn this admiring throng together, they deserved earlier notice: each hero burns to conquer or to die, what mighty hearts in little bosoms lie! having disposed of the substances, let us now attend to the shadow on the cockpit, and this it seems is the reflection of a man drawn up to the ceiling in a basket, and there suspended, as a punishment for having betted more money than he can pay. though suspended, he is not reclaimed; though exposed, not abashed; for in this degrading situation he offers to stake his watch against money, in another wager on his favourite champion. the decorations of this curious theatre are, a portrait of nan rawlins, and the king's arms. in the margin at the bottom of the print is an oval, with a fighting cock, inscribed royal sport. of the characteristic distinctions in this heterogeneous assembly, it is not easy to speak with sufficient praise. the chimney-sweeper's absurd affectation sets the similar airs of the frenchman in a most ridiculous point of view. the old fellow with a trumpet at his ear, has a degree of deafness that i never before saw delineated; he might have lived in the same apartment with xantippe, or slept comfortably in alexander the copper-smith's first floor. as to the nobleman in the centre, in the language of the turf, he is a mere pigeon; and the peer, with a star and garter, in the language of cambridge, we must class as--a mere quiz. the man sneezing,--you absolutely hear; and the fellow stealing a bank note,--has all the outward and visible marks of a perfect and accomplished pick-pocket; mercury himself could not do that business in a more masterly style. tyers tells us that "pope, while living with his father at chiswick, before he went to binfield, took great delight in cock-fighting, and laid out all his school-boy money, and little perhaps it was, in buying fighting cocks." lord orrery observes, "if we may judge of mr. pope from his works, his chief aim was to be esteemed a man of virtue." when actions can be clearly ascertained, it is not necessary to seek the mind's construction in the writings: and we must regret being compelled to believe that some of mr. pope's actions, at the same time that they prove him to be querulous and petulant, lead us to suspect that he was also envious, malignant, and cruel. how far this will tend to confirm the assertion, that when a boy, he was an amateur of this royal sport, i do, says mr. ireland, not pretend to decide: but were a child, in whom i had any interest, cursed with such a propensity, my first object would be to correct it: if that were impracticable, and he retained a fondness for the cockpit, and the still more detestable amusement of shrove tuesday, i should hardly dare to flatter myself that he could become a merciful man.--the subject has carried me farther than i intended: i will, however, take the freedom of proposing one query to the consideration of the clergy,--might it not have a tendency to check that barbarous spirit, which has more frequently its source in an early acquired habit, arising from the prevalence of example, than in natural depravity, if every divine in great britain were to preach at least one sermon every twelve months, on our universal insensibility to the sufferings of the brute creation? wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods, draw near them then in being merciful; sweet mercy is nobility's true badge. [illustration: the cock pit.] captain thomas coram. captain coram was born in the year , bred to the sea, and passed the first part of his life as master of a vessel trading to the colonies. while he resided in the vicinity of rotherhithe, his avocations obliging him to go early into the city and return late, he frequently saw deserted infants exposed to the inclemencies of the seasons, and through the indigence or cruelty of their parents left to casual relief, or untimely death. this naturally excited his compassion, and led him to project the establishment of an hospital for the reception of exposed and deserted young children; in which humane design he laboured more than seventeen years, and at last, by his unwearied application, obtained the royal charter, bearing date the th of october, , for its incorporation. he was highly instrumental in promoting another good design, viz. the procuring a bounty upon naval stores imported from the colonies to georgia and nova scotia. but the charitable plan which he lived to make some progress in, though not to complete, was a scheme for uniting the indians in north america more closely with the british government, by an establishment for the education of indian girls. indeed he spent a great part of his life in serving the public, and with so total a disregard to his private interest, that in his old age he was himself supported by a pension of somewhat more than a hundred pounds a year, raised for him at the solicitation of sir sampson gideon and dr. brocklesby, by the voluntary subscriptions of public-spirited persons, at the head of whom was the prince of wales. on application being made to this venerable and good old man, to know whether a subscription being opened for his benefit would not offend him, he gave this noble answer: "i have not wasted the little wealth of which i was formerly possessed in self-indulgence or vain expenses, and am not ashamed to confess, that in this my old age i am poor." this singularly humane, persevering, and memorable man died at his lodgings near leicester-square, march , , and was interred, pursuant to his own desire, in the vault under the chapel of the foundling hospital, where an historic epitaph records his virtues, as hogarth's portrait has preserved his honest countenance. "the portrait which i painted with most pleasure," says hogarth, "and in which i particularly wished to excel, was that of captain coram for the foundling hospital; and if i am so wretched an artist as my enemies assert, it is somewhat strange that this, which was one of the first i painted the size of life, should stand the test of twenty years' competition, and be generally thought the best portrait in the place, notwithstanding the first painters in the kingdom exerted all their talents to vie with it. "for the portrait of mr. garrick in richard iii. i was paid two hundred pounds, (which was more than any english artist ever received for a single portrait,) and that too by the sanction of several painters who had been previously consulted about the price, which was not given without mature consideration. "notwithstanding all this, the current remark was, that portraits were not my province; and i was tempted to abandon the only lucrative branch of my art, for the practice brought the whole nest of phyzmongers on my back, where they buzzed like so many hornets. all these people have their friends, whom they incessantly teach to call my women harlots, my essay on beauty borrowed, and my composition and engraving contemptible. "this so much disgusted me, that i sometimes declared i would never paint another portrait, and frequently refused when applied to; for i found by mortifying experience, that whoever would succeed in this branch, must adopt the mode recommended in one of gay's fables, and make divinities of all who sit to him. whether or not this childish affectation will ever be done away is a doubtful question; none of those who have attempted to reform it have yet succeeded; nor, unless portrait painters in general become more honest, and their customers less vain, is there much reason to expect they ever will." though thus in a state of warfare with his brother artists, he was occasionally gratified by the praise of men whose judgment was universally acknowledged, and whose sanction became a higher honour, from its being neither lightly nor indiscriminately given. [illustration: captain thomas coram.] the country inn yard; or, the stage coach. the poet's adage, all the world's a stage, has stood the test of each revolving age; another simile perhaps will bear, 'tis a stage coach, where all must pay the fare; where each his entrance and his exit makes, and o'er life's rugged road his journey takes. some unprotected must their tour perform, and bide the pelting of the pitiless storm; while others, free from elemental jars, by fortune favour'd and propitious stars, secure from storms, enjoy their little hour, despise the whirlwind, and defy the shower. such is our life--in sunshine or in shade, from evil shelter'd, or by woe assay'd: whether we sit, like niobe, all tears, or calmly sink into the vale of years; with houseless, naked edgar sleep on straw, or keep, like cæsar, subject worlds in awe-- to the same port our devious journeys tend, where airy hopes and sickening sorrows end; sunk every eye, and languid every breast, each wearied pilgrim sighs and sinks to rest. e. among the writers of english novels, henry fielding holds the first rank; he was the novelist of nature, and has described some scenes which bear a strong resemblance to that which is here delineated. the artist, like the author, has taken truth for his guide, and given such characters as are familiar to all our minds. the scene is a country inn yard, at the time passengers are getting into a stage-coach, and an election procession passing in the back-ground. nothing can be better described; we become of the party. the vulgar roar of our landlady is no less apparent than the grave, insinuating, imposing countenance of mine host. boniface solemnly protests that a bill he is presenting to an old gentleman in a laced hat is extremely moderate. this does not satisfy the paymaster, whose countenance shows that he considers it as a palpable fraud, though the act against bribery, which he carries in his pocket, designates him to be of a profession not very liable to suffer imposition. they are in general less sinned against than sinning. an ancient lady, getting into the coach, is from her breadth a very inconvenient companion in such a vehicle; but to atone for her rotundity, an old maid of a spare appearance, and in a most grotesque habit, is advancing towards the steps. a portly gentleman, with a sword and cane in one hand, is deaf to the entreaties of a poor little deformed postilion, who solicits his customary fee. the old woman smoking her short pipe in the basket, pays very little attention to what is passing around her: cheered by the fumes of her tube, she lets the vanities of the world go their own way. two passengers on the roof of the coach afford a good specimen of french and english manners. ben block, of the centurion, surveys the subject of la grande monarque with ineffable contempt. in the window are a very curious pair; one of them blowing a french-horn, and the other endeavouring, but without effect, to smoke away a little sickness, which he feels from the fumes of his last night's punch. beneath them is a traveller taking a tender farewell of the chambermaid, who is not to be moved by the clangour of the great bar bell, or the more thundering sound of her mistress's voice. the back-ground is crowded with a procession of active citizens; they have chaired a figure with a horn-book, a bib, and a rattle, intended to represent child, lord castlemain, afterwards lord tylney, who, in a violent contest for the county of essex, opposed sir robert abdy and mr. bramston. the horn-book, bib, and rattle are evidently displayed as punningly allusive to his name.[ ] some pains have been taken to discover in what part of essex this scene is laid; but from the many alterations made by rebuilding, removal, &c. it has not been positively ascertained, though it is probably chelmsford. [illustration: country inn yard.] footnote: [ ] at this election a man was placed on a bulk, with a figure representing a child in his arms: as he whipped it he exclaimed, "what, you little child, must you be a member?" this election being disputed, it appeared from the register-book of the parish where lord castlemain was born, that he was but twenty years of age when he offered himself a candidate. industry and idleness. as our future welfare depends, in a great measure, on our own conduct in the outset of life, and as we derive our best expectations of success from our own attention and exertion, it may, with propriety, be asserted, that the good or ill-fortune of mankind is chiefly attributable to their own early diligence or sloth; either of which becomes, through habit in the early part of life, both familiar and natural. this mr. hogarth has made appear in the following history of the two apprentices, by representing a series of such scenes as naturally result from a course of industry or idleness, and which he has illustrated with such texts of scripture as teach us their analogy with holy writ. now, as example is far more convincing and persuasive than precept, these prints are, undoubtedly, an excellent lesson to such young men as are brought up to business, by laying before them the inevitable destruction that awaits the slothful, and the reward that generally attends the diligent, both appropriately exemplified in the conduct of these two fellow-'prentices; where the one, by taking good courses, and pursuing those purposes for which he was put apprentice, becomes a valuable man, and an ornament to his country; the other, by giving way to idleness, naturally falls into poverty, and ends fatally, as shown in the last of these instructive prints. in the chamber of the city of london, where apprentices are bound and enrolled, the twelve prints of this series are introduced, and, with great propriety, ornament the room. plate i. the fellow-'prentices at their looms. "the drunkard shall come to poverty, and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags." proverbs, chap. xxiii. verse . "the hand of the diligent maketh rich."--proverbs, chap. x. verse . the first print presents us with a noble and striking contrast in two apprentices at the looms of their master, a silk-weaver of spitalfields: in the one we observe a serene and open countenance, the distinguishing mark of innocence; and in the other a sullen, down-cast look, the index of a corrupt mind and vicious heart. the industrious youth is diligently employed at his work, and his thoughts taken up with the business he is upon. his book, called the "'prentice's guide," supposed to be given him for instruction, lies open beside him, as if perused with care and attention. the employment of the day seems his constant study; and the interest of his master his continual regard. we are given to understand, also, by the ballads of the london 'prentice, whittingham the mayor, &c. that hang behind him, that he lays out his pence on things that may improve his mind, and enlighten his understanding. on the contrary, his fellow-'prentice, with worn-out coat and uncombed hair, overpowered with beer, indicated by the half-gallon pot before him, is fallen asleep; and from the shuttle becoming the plaything of the wanton kitten, we learn how he slumbers on, inattentive alike to his own and his master's interest. the ballad of moll flanders, on the wall behind him, shows that the bent of his mind is towards that which is bad; and his book of instructions lying torn and defaced upon the ground, manifests how regardless he is of any thing tending to his future welfare. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the fellow 'prentices at their looms.] plate ii. the industrious 'prentice performing the duty of a christian. "o how i love thy law; it is my meditation all the day."--psalm cxix. verse . this plate displays our industrious young man attending divine service in the same pew with his master's daughter, where he shows every mark of decent and devout attention. mr. hogarth's strong bias to burlesque was not to be checked by time or place. it is not easy to imagine any thing more whimsically grotesque than the female falstaff. a fellow near her, emulating the deep-toned organ, and the man beneath, who, though asleep, joins his sonorous tones in melodious chorus with the admirers of those two pre-eminent poets, hopkins and sternhold. the pew-opener is a very prominent and principal figure; two old women adjoining miss west's seat are so much in shadow, that we are apt to overlook them: they are, however, all three making the dome ring with their exertions. ah! had it been king david's fate to hear them sing---- the preacher, reader, and clerk, with many of the small figures in the gallery and beneath, are truly ludicrous, and we regret their being on so reduced a scale, that they are scarce perceptible to the naked eye. it was necessary that the artist should exhibit a crowded congregation; but it must be acknowledged he has neglected the rules of perspective. the print wants depth. in the countenance of miss west and her lover there is a resemblance. their faces have not much expression; but this is atoned for by a natural and pleasing simplicity. character was not necessary. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice performing the duty of a christian.] industry and idleness. plate iii. the idle 'prentice at play in the church-yard during divine service. "judgments are prepared for scorners, and stripes for the back of fools." proverbs, chap. xix. verse . as a contrast to the preceding plate, of the industrious young man performing the duties of a christian, is this, representing the idle 'prentice at play in the church-yard during divine service. as an observance of religion is allowed to be the foundation of virtue, so a neglect of religious duties has ever been acknowledged the forerunner of every wickedness; the confession of malefactors at the place of execution being a melancholy confirmation of this truth. here we see him, while others are intent on the holy service, transgressing the laws both of god and man, gambling on a tomb-stone with the off-scouring of the people, the meanest of the human species, shoe-blacks, chimney-sweepers, &c. for none but such would deign to be his companions. their amusement seems to be the favourite old english game of hustle-cap, and our idle and unprincipled youth is endeavouring to cheat, by concealing some of the half-pence under the broad brim of his hat. this is perceived by the shoe-black, and warmly resented by the fellow with the black patch over his eye, who loudly insists on the hat's being fairly removed. the eager anxiety which marks these mean gamblers, is equal to that of two peers playing for an estate. the latter could not have more solicitude for the turn of a die which was to determine who was the proprietor of ten thousand acres, than is displayed in the countenance of young idle. indeed, so callous is his heart, so wilfully blind is he to every thing tending to his future welfare, that the tombs, those standing monuments of mortality, cannot move him: even the new-dug grave, the sculls and bones, those lively and awakening monitors, cannot rouse him from his sinful lethargy, open his eyes, or pierce his heart with the least reflection; so hardened is he with vice, and so intent on the pursuit of his evil course. the hand of the boy, employed upon his head, and that of the shoe-black, in his bosom, are expressive of filth and vermin; and show that our hero is within a step of being overspread with the beggarly contagion. his obstinate continuance in his course, until awakened by the blows of the watchful beadle, point out to us, that "stripes are prepared for the backs of fools;" that disgrace and infamy are the natural attendants of the slothful and the scorner; and that there are but little hopes of his alteration, until he is overtaken in his iniquity, by the avenging hand of omnipotence, and feels with horror and amazement, the unexpected and inevitable approach of death. thus do the obstinate and incorrigible shut their ears against the alarming calls of providence, and sin away even the possibility of salvation. the figures in this print are admirably grouped, and the countenances of the gamblers and beadle strikingly characteristic. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice at play in the church yard.] industry and idleness. plate iv. the industrious 'prentice a favourite and intrusted by his master. "well done, thou good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, i will make thee ruler over many things." matthew, chap. xxv. verse . the industrious apprentice, by a discreet and steady conduct, attracts the notice of his master, and becomes a favourite: accordingly, we behold him here (exquisitely continued from the first and second prints) in the counting-house (with a distant view of the looms, and of the quilsters, winding quills for the shuttles, from whence he was removed) entrusted with the books, receiving and giving orders, (the general reward of honesty, care, and diligence,) as appears from the delivery of some stuffs by a city porter, from blackwell-hall. by the keys in one hand and the bag in the other, we are shown that he has behaved himself with so much prudence and discretion, and given such proofs of fidelity, as to become the keeper of untold gold: the greatest mark of confidence he could be favoured with. the integrity of his heart is visible in his face. the modesty and tranquillity of his countenance tell us, that though the great trust reposed in him is an addition to his happiness, yet, that he discharges his duty with such becoming diffidence and care, as not to betray any of that pride which attends so great a promotion. the familiar position of his master, leaning on his shoulder, is a further proof of his esteem, declaring that he dwells, as it were, in his bosom, and possesses the utmost share of his affection; circumstances that must sweeten even a state of servitude, and make a pleasant and lasting impression on the mind. the head-piece to the london almanack, representing industry taking time by the fore-lock, is not the least of the beauties in this plate, as it intimates the danger of delay, and advises us to make the best use of time, whilst we have it in our power; nor will the position of the gloves, on the flap of the escritoire, be unobserved by a curious examiner, being expressive of that union that subsists between an indulgent master and an industrious apprentice. the strong-beer nose and pimpled face of the porter, though they have no connexion with the moral of the piece, are a fine caricatura, and show that our author let slip no opportunity of ridiculing the vices and follies of the age, and particularly here, in laying before us the strange infatuation of this class of people, who, because a good deal of labour requires some extraordinary refreshment, will even drink to the deprivation of their reason, and the destruction of their health. the surly mastiff, keeping close to his master, and quarrelling with the house-cat for admittance, though introduced to fill up the piece, represents the faithfulness of these animals in general, and is no mean emblem of the honesty and fidelity of the porter. in this print, neither the cat, dog, nor the porter are well drawn, nor is much regard paid to perspective; but the general design is carried on by such easy and natural gradations, and the consequent success of an attentive conduct displayed in colours so plain and perspicuous, that these little errors in execution will readily be overlooked. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice a favourite, and entrusted by his master.] industry and idleness. plate v. the idle 'prentice turned away and sent to sea. "a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother." proverbs, chap. x. verse . corrupted by sloth and contaminated by evil company, the idle apprentice, having tired the patience of his master, is sent to sea, in the hope that the being removed from the vices of the town, and the influence of his wicked companions, joined with the hardships and perils of a seafaring life, might effect that reformation of which his friends despaired while he continued on shore. see him then in the ship's boat, accompanied by his afflicted mother, making towards the vessel in which he is to embark. the disposition of the different figures in the boat, and the expression of their countenances, tell us plainly, that his evil pursuits and incorrigible wickedness are the subjects of their discourse. the waterman significantly directs his attention to a figure on a gibbet, as emblematical of his future fate, should he not turn from the evil of his ways; and the boy shows him a cat-o'-nine-tails, expressive of the discipline that awaits him on board of ship; these admonitions, however, he notices only by the application of his fingers to his forehead, in the form of horns, jestingly telling them to look at cuckold's point, which they have just passed; he then throws his indentures into the water with an air of contempt, that proves how little he is affected by his present condition, and how little he regards the persuasions and tears of a fond mother, whose heart seems ready to burst with grief at the fate of her darling son, and perhaps her only stay; for her dress seems to intimate that she is a widow. well then might solomon say, that "a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother;" for we here behold her who had often rejoiced in the prospect of her child being a prop to her in the decline of life, lamenting his depravity, and anticipating with horror the termination of his evil course. one would naturally imagine, from the common course of things, that this scene would have awakened his reflection, and been the means of softening the ruggedness of his disposition,--that some tender ideas would have crossed his mind and melted the obduracy of his heart; but he continues hardened and callous to every admonition. the group of figures composing this print has been copied by the ingenious lavater; with whose appropriate remarks we conclude our present description. "observe," says this great analyst of the human countenance, "in the annexed group, that unnatural wretch, with the infernal visage, insulting his supplicating mother; the predominant character on the three other villain-faces, though all disfigured by effrontery, is cunning and ironical malignity. every face is a seal with this truth engraved on it: 'nothing makes a man so ugly as vice; nothing renders the countenance so hideous as villainy.'" [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice turned away and sent to sea.] industry and idleness. plate vi. the industrious 'prentice out of his time, and married to his master's daughter. "the virtuous woman is a crown to her husband." proverbs, chap. xiii. verse . the reward of industry is success. our prudent and attentive youth is now become partner with his master, and married to his daughter. the sign, by which this circumstance is intimated, was at first inscribed goodchild and west. some of mr. hogarth's city friends informing him that it was usual for the senior partner's name to precede, it was altered. to show that plenty reigns in this mansion, a servant distributes the remains of the table to a poor woman, and the bridegroom pays one of the drummers, who, according to ancient custom, attend with their thundering gratulations the day after a wedding. a performer on the bass viol, and a herd of butchers armed with marrow-bones and cleavers, form an english concert. (madame pompadour, in her remarks on the english taste for music, says, they are invariably fond of every thing that is full in the mouth.) a cripple with the ballad of jesse, or the happy pair, represents a man known by the name of philip in the tub, who had visited ireland and the united provinces; and, in the memory of some persons now living, was a general attendant at weddings. from those votaries of hymen who were honoured with his epithalamiums, he received a small reward. to show that messrs. west and goodchild's habitation is near the monument, the base of that stately column appears in the back-ground. the inscription which until lately graced this structure, used to remind every reader of pope's lines, where london's column, pointing to the skies, like a tall bully, rears its head, and lies, &c. the duke of buckingham's epigram on this magnificent pillar is not so generally known: here stand i, the lord knows why; but if i fall-- have at ye all! a footman and butcher, at the opposite corner, compared with the other figures, are gigantic; they might serve for the gog and magog of guildhall. it has been said that the thoughts in this print are trite, and the actions mean, which must be in part acknowledged, but they are natural, and appropriate to the rank and situation of the parties, and to the fashions of the time at which it was published. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice out of his time & married to his master's daughter.] industry and idleness. plate vii. the idle 'prentice returned from sea, and in a garret with a common prostitute. "the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase him." leviticus, chap. xxvi. verse . the idle apprentice, as appears by this print, is advancing with rapid strides towards his fate. we are to suppose him returned from sea after a long voyage; and to have met with such correction abroad for his obstinacy, during his absence from england, that though it was found insufficient to alter his disposition, yet it determined him to pursue some other way of life; and what he entered on is here but too evident (from the pistols by the bed-side, and the trinkets his companion is examining, in order to strip him of) to be that of the highway. he is represented in a garret, with a common prostitute, the partaker of his infamy, awaking, after a night spent in robbery and plunder, from one of those broken slumbers which are ever the consequences of a life of dishonesty and debauchery. though the designs of providence are visible in every thing, yet they are never more conspicuous than in this,--that whatever these unhappy wretches possess by wicked and illegal means, they seldom comfortably enjoy. in this scene we have one of the finest pictures imaginable of the horrors of a guilty conscience. though the door is fastened in the strongest manner with a lock and two bolts, and with the addition of some planks from the flooring, so as to make his retreat as secure as possible; though he has attempted to drive away thought by the powerful effects of spirituous liquors, plain from the glass and bottle upon the floor, still he is not able to brave out his guilt, or steel his breast against reflection. behold him roused by the accidental circumstance of a cat's coming down the chimney, and the falling of a few bricks, which he believes to be the noise of his pursuers! observe his starting up in bed, and all the tortures of his mind imprinted in his face! he first stiffens into stone, then all his nerves and muscles relax, a cold sweat seizes him, his hair stands on end, his teeth chatter, and dismay and horror stalk before his eyes. how different is the countenance of his wretched bed-fellow! in whom unconcern and indifference to every thing but the plunder are plainly apparent. she is looking at an ear-ring, which, with two watches, an etwee, and a couple of rings, are spread upon the bed, as part of last night's plunder. the phials on the mantel-piece show that sickness and disease are ever attendant on prostitution; and the beggarly appearance of the room, its wretched furniture, the hole by way of window, (by the light of which she is examining her valuable acquisition, and against which she had hung her old hoop-petticoat in order to keep out the cold,) and the rat's running across the floor, are just and sufficient indications that misery and want are the constant companions of a guilty life. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice returned from sea, and in the a garret with a prostitute.] industry and idleness. plate viii. the industrious 'prentice grown rich, and sheriff of london. 'with all thy gettings get understanding. exalt her and she shall promote thee; she shall bring thee to honour, when thou dost embrace her.' proverbs, chap. iv. verse , . from industry become opulent, from integrity and punctuality respectable, our young merchant is now sheriff of london, and dining with the different companies in guildhall. a group on the left side are admirably characteristic; their whole souls seem absorbed in the pleasures of the table. a divine, true to his cloth, swallows his soup with the highest _goût_. not less gratified is the gentleman palating a glass of wine. the man in a black wig is a positive representative of famine; and the portly and oily citizen, with a napkin tucked in his button-hole, has evidently burnt his mouth by extreme eagerness. the backs of those in the distance, behung with bags, major perukes, pinners, &c. are most laughably ludicrous. every person present is so attentive to business, that one may fairly conclude they live to eat, rather than eat to live. but though this must be admitted to be the case with this party, the following instance of city temperance proves that there are some exceptions. when the lord mayor, sheriffs, aldermen, chamberlain, &c. of the city of london were once seated round the table at a public and splendid dinner at guildhall, mr. chamberlain wilkes lisped out, "mr. alderman b----, shall i help you to a plate of turtle, or a slice of the haunch,--i am within reach of both, sir?" "neither one nor t'other, i thank you, sir," replied the alderman, "i think i shall dine on the beans and bacon which are at this end of the table." "mr. alderman a----," continued the chamberlain, "which would you choose, sir?" "sir, i will not trouble you for either, for i believe i shall follow the example of my brother b----, and dine on beans and bacon," was the reply. on this second refusal the old chamberlain rose from his seat, and, with every mark of astonishment in his countenance, curled up the corners of his mouth, cast his eyes round the table, and in a voice as loud and articulate as he was able, called "silence!" which being obtained, he thus addressed the pretorian magistrate, who sat in the chair: "my lord mayor, the wicked have accused us of intemperance, and branded us with the imputation of gluttony; that they may be put to open shame, and their profane tongues be from this day utterly silenced, i humbly move, that your lordship command the proper officer to record in our annals, that two aldermen of the city of london prefer beans and bacon to either turtle soup or venison." notwithstanding all this, there are men, who, looking on the dark side, and perhaps rendered splenetic, and soured by not being invited to these sumptuous entertainments, have affected to fear, that their frequent repetition would have a tendency to produce a famine, or at least to check the increase, if not extirpate the species, of those birds, beasts, and fish, with which the tables of the rich are now so plentifully supplied. but these half reasoners do not take into their calculation the number of gentlemen so laudably associated for encouraging cattle being fed so fat that there is no lean left; or that more ancient association, sanctioned and supported by severe acts of parliament, for the preservation of the game. from the exertions of these and similar societies, we may reasonably hope there is no occasion to dread any such calamity taking place; though the guildhall tables often groaning under such hecatombs as are recorded in the following account, may make a man of weak nerves and strong digestion, shake his head, and shudder a little. "on the th october, , when george ii. and queen caroline honoured the city with their presence at guildhall, there were tables, covered with dishes. the whole expense of this entertainment to the city was _l._ _s._" to return to the print;--a self-sufficient and consequential beadle, reading the direction of a letter to francis goodchild, esq. sheriff of london, has all the insolence of office. the important and overbearing air of this dignified personage is well contrasted by the humble simplicity of the straight-haired messenger behind the bar. the gallery is well furnished with musicians busily employed in their vocation. music hath charms to sooth the savage breast, and therefore proper at a sheriff's feast. besides a portrait of william the third, and a judge, the hall is ornamented with a full length of that illustrious hero sir william walworth, in commemoration of whose valour the weapon with which he slew wat tyler was introduced into the city arms. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice grown rich, and sheriff of london.] industry and idleness. plate ix. the idle 'prentice betrayed by a prostitute, and taken in a night cellar with his accomplice. "the adulteress will hunt for precious life." proverbs, chap. vi. verse . from the picture of the reward of diligence, we return to take a further view of the progress of sloth and infamy; by following the idle 'prentice a step nearer to the approach of his unhappy end. we see him in the third plate herding with the worst of the human species, the very dregs of the people; one of his companions, at that time, being a one-eyed wretch, who seemed hackneyed in the ways of vice. to break this vile connexion he was sent to sea; but, no sooner did he return, than his wicked disposition took its natural course, and every day he lived served only to habituate him to acts of greater criminality. he presently discovered his old acquaintance, who, no doubt, rejoiced to find him so ripe for mischief: with this worthless, abandoned fellow, he enters into engagements of the worst kind, even those of robbery and murder. thus blindly will men sometimes run headlong to their own destruction. about the time when these plates were first published, which was in the year , there was a noted house in chick lane, smithfield, that went by the name of the blood-bowl house, so called from the numerous scenes of blood that were almost daily carried on there; it being a receptacle for prostitutes and thieves; where every species of delinquency was practised; and where, indeed, there seldom passed a month without the commission of some act of murder. to this subterraneous abode of iniquity (it being a cellar) was our hero soon introduced; where he is now represented in company with his accomplice, and others of the same stamp, having just committed a most horrid act of barbarity, (that of killing a passer-by, and conveying him into a place under ground, contrived for this purpose,) dividing among them the ill-gotten booty, which consists of two watches, a snuff-box, and some other trinkets. in the midst of this wickedness, he is betrayed by his strumpet (a proof of the treachery of such wretches) into the hands of the high constable and his attendants, who had, with better success than heretofore, traced him to this wretched haunt. the back-ground of this print serves rather as a representation of night-cellars in general, those infamous receptacles for the dissolute and abandoned of both sexes, than a further illustration of our artist's chief design; however, as it was mr. hogarth's intention, in the history before us, to encourage virtue and expose vice, by placing the one in an amiable light, and exhibiting the other in its most heightened scenes of wickedness and impiety, in hopes of deterring the half-depraved youth of this metropolis, from even the possibility of the commission of such actions, by frightening them from these abodes of wretchedness; as this was manifestly his intention, it cannot be deemed a deviation from the subject. by the skirmish behind, the woman without a nose, the scattered cards upon the floor, &c. we are shown that drunkenness and riot, disease, prostitution, and ruin are the dreadful attendants of sloth, and the general fore-runners of crimes of the deepest die; and by the halter suspended from the ceiling, over the head of the sleeper, we are to learn two things--the indifference of mankind, even in a state of danger, and the insecurity of guilt in every situation. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice betrayed by a prostitute.] industry and idleness. plate x. the industrious 'prentice alderman of london; the idle one brought before him, and impeached by his accomplice. "thou shalt do no unrighteousness in judgment." leviticus, chap. xix. verse . "the wicked is snared in the work of his own hands." psalms, chap. ix. verse . imagine now this depraved and atrocious youth hand-cuffed, and dragged from his wicked haunt, through the streets to a place of security, amidst the scorn and contempt of a jeering populace; and thence brought before the sitting magistrate, (who, to heighten the scene and support the contrast, is supposed to be his fellow-'prentice, now chosen an alderman,) in order to be dealt with according to law. see him then at last having run his course of iniquity, fallen into the hands of justice, being betrayed by his accomplice; a further proof of the perfidy of man, when even partners in vice are unfaithful to each other. this is the only print among the set, excepting the first, where the two principal characters are introduced; in which mr. hogarth has shown his great abilities, as well in description, as in a particular attention to the uniformity and connexion of the whole. he is now at the bar, with all the marks of guilt imprinted on his face. how, if his fear will permit him to reflect, must he think on the happiness and exaltation of his fellow-'prentice on the one hand, and of his own misery and degradation on the other! at one instant, he condemns the persuasions of his wicked companions; at another, his own idleness and obstinacy: however, deeply smitten with his crime, he sues the magistrate, upon his knees, for mercy, and pleads in his cause the former acquaintance that subsisted between them, when they both dwelt beneath the same roof, and served the same common master: but here was no room for lenity, murder was his crime, and death must be his punishment; the proofs are incontestable, and his mittimus is ordered, which the clerk is drawing out. let us next turn our thoughts upon the alderman, in whose breast a struggle between mercy and justice is beautifully displayed. who can behold the magistrate, here, without praising the man? how fine is the painter's thoughts of reclining the head on one hand, while the other is extended to express the pity and shame he feels that human nature should be so depraved! it is not the golden chain or scarlet robe that constitutes the character, but the feelings of the heart. to show us that application for favour, by the ignorant, is often idly made to the servants of justice, who take upon themselves on that account a certain state and consequence, not inferior to magistracy, the mother of our delinquent is represented in the greatest distress, as making interest with the corpulent self-swoln constable, who with an unfeeling concern seems to say, "make yourself easy, for he must be hanged;" and to convince us that bribery will even find its way into courts of judicature, here is a woman feeing the swearing clerk, who has stuck his pen behind his ear that his hands might be both at liberty; and how much more his attention is engaged to the money he is taking, than to the administration of the oath, may be known from the ignorant, treacherous witness being suffered to lay his left hand upon the book; strongly expressive of the sacrifice, even of sacred things, to the inordinate thirst of gain. from newgate (the prison to which he was committed; where, during his continuance he lay chained in a dismal cell, deprived of the cheerfulness of light, fed upon bread and water, and left without a bed to rest on) the prisoner was removed to the bar of judgment, and condemned to die by the laws of his country. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice alderman of london. the idle one impeached before him by his accomplice.] industry and idleness. plate xi. the idle 'prentice executed at tyburn. "when fear cometh as desolation, and their destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress cometh upon them, then shall they call upon god, but he will not answer." proverbs, chapter i. verse , . thus, after a life of sloth, wretchedness, and vice, does our delinquent terminate his career. behold him, on the dreadful morn of execution, drawn in a cart (attended by the sheriff's officers on horseback, with his coffin behind him) through the public streets to tyburn, there to receive the just reward of his crimes,--a shameful ignominious death. the ghastly appearance of his face, and the horror painted on his countenance, plainly show the dreadful situation of his mind; which we must imagine to be agitated with shame, remorse, confusion, and terror. the careless position of the ordinary at the coach window is intended to show how inattentive those appointed to that office are of their duty, leaving it to others, which is excellently expressed by the itinerant preacher in the cart, instructing from a book of wesley's. mr. hogarth has in this print, digressing from the history and moral of the piece, taken an opportunity of giving us a humorous representation of an execution, or a tyburn fair: such days being made holidays, produce scenes of the greatest riot, disorder, and uproar; being generally attended by hardened wretches, who go there, not so much to reflect upon their own vices, as to commit those crimes which must in time inevitably bring them to the same shameful end. in confirmation of this, see how earnestly one boy watches the motions of the man selling his cakes, while he is picking his pocket; and another waiting to receive the booty! we have here interspersed before us a deal of low humour, but such as is common on occasions like this. in one place we observe an old bawd turning up her eyes and drinking a glass of gin, the very picture of hypocrisy; and a man indecently helping up a girl into the same cart; in another, a soldier sunk up to his knees in a bog, and two boys laughing at him, are well imagined. here we see one almost squeezed to death among the horses; there, another trampled on by the mob. in one part is a girl tearing the face of a boy for oversetting her barrow; in another, a woman beating a fellow for throwing down her child. here we see a man flinging a dog among the crowd by the tail; there a woman crying the dying speech of thomas idle, printed the day before his execution; and many other things too minute to be pointed out: two, however, we must not omit taking notice of, one of which is the letting off a pigeon, bred at the gaol, fly from the gallery, which hastes directly home; an old custom, to give an early notice to the keeper and others, of the turning off or death of the criminal; and that of the executioner smoking his pipe at the top of the gallows, whose position of indifference betrays an unconcern that nothing can reconcile with the shocking spectacle, but that of use having rendered his wretched office familiar to him; whilst it declares a truth, which every character in this plate seems to confirm, that a sad and distressful object loses its power of affecting by being frequently seen. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the idle 'prentice executed at tyburn.] industry and idleness. plate xii. the industrious 'prentice lord mayor of london. "length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand riches and honour." proverbs, chap. iii. ver. . having seen the ignominious end of the idle apprentice, nothing remains but to represent the completion of the other's happiness; who is now exalted to the highest honour, that of lord mayor of london; the greatest reward that ancient and noble city can bestow on diligence and integrity. our artist has here, as in the last plate, given a loose to his humour, in representing more of the low part of the lord mayor's show than the magnificent; yet the honour done the city, by the presence of the prince and princess of wales, is not forgotten. the variety of comic characters in this print serves to show what generally passes on such public processions as these, when the people collect to gratify their childish curiosity, and indulge their wanton disposition, or natural love of riot. the front of this plate exhibits the oversetting of a board, on which some girls had stood, and represents them sprawling upon the ground; on the left, at the back of the scaffold, is a fellow saluting a fair nymph, and another enjoying the joke: near him is a blind man straggled in among the crowd, and joining in the general halloo: before him is a militia-man, so completely intoxicated as not to know what he is doing; a figure of infinite humour. though mr. hogarth has here marked out two or three particular things, yet his chief intention was to ridicule the city militia, which was at this period composed of undisciplined men, of all ages, sizes, and height; some fat, some lean, some tall, some short, some crooked, some lame, and in general so unused to muskets, that they knew not how to carry them. one, we observe, is firing his piece and turning his head another way, at whom the man above is laughing, and at which the child is frightened. the boy on the right, crying, "a full and true account of the ghost of thomas idle," which is supposed to have appeared to the mayor, preserves the connexion of the whole work. the most obtrusive figure in his lordship's coach is mr. swordbearer, in a cap like a reversed saucepan, which this great officer wears on these grand occasions. the company of journeymen butchers, with their marrow-bones and cleavers, appear to be the most active, and are by far the most noisy of any who grace this solemnity. numberless spectators, upon every house and at every window, dart their desiring eyes on the procession; so great indeed was the interest taken by the good citizens of london in these civic processions that, formerly, it was usual in a london lease to insert a clause, giving a right to the landlord and his friends to stand in the balcony, during the time of "the shows or pastimes, upon the day commonly called the lord mayor's day." thus have we seen, by a series of events, the prosperity of the one and the downfall of the other; the riches and honour that crown the head of industry, and the ignominy and destruction that await the slothful. after this it would be unnecessary to say which is the most eligible path to tread. lay the roads but open to the view, and the traveller will take the right of course; give but the boy this history to peruse, and his future welfare is almost certain. [illustration: industry and idleness. plate . the industrious 'prentice lord mayor of london.] southwark fair. the subject of the plate under consideration is that of the borough fair; a fair held some time since in the borough of southwark, though now suppressed. this fair was attended, generally, by the inhabitants of town and country, and, therefore, was one that afforded great variety; especially as, before its suppression, it was devoted to every thing loose and irregular. a view of the scene, of which the following print is a faithful representation, will affirm this truth. the principal view upon the left represents the fall of a scaffold, on which was assembled a strolling company, pointed out, by the paper lantern hanging in front, to be that belonging to cibber and bullock, ready dressed to exhibit "the fall of bajazet." here we see merry-andrews, monkeys, queens and emperors, sinking in one general confusion; and, that the crash may appear the greater, the stand beneath is humorously supposed to consist of earthenware and china. notwithstanding this fatal overthrow, few below are seen to notice it; witness the boys and woman gambling at the box and dice, the upright monkey, and the little bag-piper dancing his wooden figures. above this scaffold hangs a painting, the subject of which is the stage mutiny; whose figures are as follow:--on one side is pistol, (strutting and crying out, "pistol's alive,") falstaff, justice shallow, and many other characters of shakspeare. on the other, the manager bearing in his hand a paper, on which is written, "it cost _l._" a scene-painter, who has laid his brushes aside, and taken up a cudgel; and a woman holding an ensign, bearing the words, "we'll starve 'em out." in the corner is a man, quiet and snug, hugging a bag of money, laughing at the folly of the rest; and behind, a monkey, perched upon a sign iron, supposed to be that of the rose tavern in drury-lane, squeaking out, "i am a gentleman." these paintings are in general designed to show what is exhibited within; but this alludes to a dispute that arose at the time when this print was published, which was in the year , between the players and the patentee of drury-lane theatre, when young cibber, the son of the laureate, was at the head of the faction. above, on one side, is an equilibrist swinging on a slack rope; and on the other, a man flying from the tower to the ground, by means of a groove fastened to his breast, slipping over a line strained from one place to the other. at the back of this plate is lee and harper's great booth, where, by the picture of the wooden horse, we are told, is represented "the siege of troy." the next paintings consist of the fall of adam and eve, and a scene in punch's opera. beneath is a mountebank, exalted on a stage, eating fire to attract the public attention; while his merry-andrew behind is distributing his medicines. further back is a shift and hat, carried upon poles, designed as prizes for the best runner or wrestler. in front is a group of strollers parading the fair, in order to collect an audience for their next exhibition; in which is a female drummer, at that time well known, and remarked for her beauty, which we observe has caught the eye of two countrymen, the one old, the other young. behind these men is a buskined hero, beset by a marshalsea court officer and his follower. to the right is a savoyard exhibiting her farthing show; and behind, a player at back sword riding a blind horse round the fair triumphantly, in all the boast of self-important heroism, affecting terror in his countenance, glorying in his scars, and challenging the world to open combat: a folly for which the english were remarkable. to this man a fellow is directing the attention of a country gentleman, while he robs him of his handkerchief. next him is an artful villain decoying a couple of unthinking country girls to their ruin. further back is a man kissing a wench in the crowd; and above, a juggler performing some dexterity of hand. indeed it would be tedious to enter into an enumeration of the various matter of this plate; it is sufficient to remark that it presents us with an endless collection of spirited and laughable characters, in which is strikingly portrayed the character of the times. [illustration: southwark fair.] garrick in the character of richard iii. give me another horse,--bind up my wounds,-- have mercy, jesu!--soft; i did but dream.-- o coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!-- the lights burn blue!--is it not dead midnight? cold, fearful drops hang on my trembling flesh.-- such is the exclamation of richard, and such is the disposition of his mind at the moment of this delineation. the lamp, diffusing a dim religious light through the tent, the crucifix placed at his head, the crown, and unsheathed sword at his hand, and the armour lying on the ground, are judicious and appropriate accompaniments. those who are acquainted with this prince's history, need not be told that he was naturally bold, courageous, and enterprising; that when business called him to the field, he shook off every degree of indulgence, and applied his mind to the management of his affairs. this may account for his being stripped no otherwise than of his armour, having retired to his tent in order to repose himself upon his bed, and lessen the fatigues of the preceding day. see him then hastily rising, at dead of night, in the utmost horror from his own thoughts, being terrified in his sleep by the dreadful phantoms of an affrighted imagination, seizing on his sword, by way of defence against the foe his disordered fancy presents to him. so great is his agitation, that every nerve and muscle is in action, and even the ring is forced from his finger. when the heart is affected, how great is its influence on the human frame!--it communicates its sensibility to the extreme parts of the body, from the centre to the circumference; as distant water is put in motion by circles, spreading from the place of its disturbance. the paper on the floor containing these words, jockey of norfolk, be not so bold, for dicken thy master is bought and is sold, brought him by the duke of norfolk, saying he found it in his tent, and lying here unattended to, as a mark of contempt, plainly informs us that however a man may attempt to steel himself against the arrows of conscience, still they will find a way to his breast, and shake the sinner even in his greatest security. and indeed we cannot wonder, when we reflect on the many murders he was guilty of, deserving the severest punishment; for providence has wisely ordained that sin should be its own tormentor, otherwise, in many cases, the offender would, in this life, escape unpunished, and the design of heaven be frustrated. but richard, though he reached a throne, and by that means was exempt from the sufferings of the subject, yet could not divest himself of his nature, but was forced to give way to the workings of the heart, and bear the tortures of a distracted mind. the expression in his face is a master-piece of execution, and was a great compliment paid by mr. hogarth to his friend garrick; yet not unmerited, as all that have seen him in the part must acknowledge the greatness of the actor. the figures in the distance, two of whom, like sacrifices by their fires of watch, with patience sit, and inly ruminate the morning's danger, are properly introduced, and highly descriptive. the tents of richmond are so near that the fix'd sentinels almost receive the secret whispers of each other's watch. considered as a whole, the composition is simple, striking, and original, and the figures well drawn. the whole moral tenour of the piece informs us that conscience is armed with a thousand stings, from which royalty itself is not secure; that of all tormentors, reflection is the worst; that crowns and sceptres are baubles, compared with self-approbation; and that nought is productive of solid happiness, but inward peace and serenity of mind. [illustration: garrick. in the character of richard the third.] the invasion; or, france and england. in the two following designs, mr. hogarth has displayed that partiality for his own country and contempt for france, which formed a strong trait in his character. he neither forgot nor forgave the insults he suffered at calais, though he did not recollect that this treatment originated in his own ill humour, which threw a sombre shade over every object that presented itself. having early imbibed the vulgar prejudice that one englishman was a match for four frenchmen, he thought it would be doing his country a service to prove the position. how far it is either useful or politic to depreciate the power, or degrade the character of that people with whom we are to contend, is a question which does not come within the plan of this work. in some cases it may create confidence, but in others lead to the indulgence of that negligent security by which armies have been slaughtered, provinces depopulated, and kingdoms changed their rulers. plate i. france. with lantern jaws and croaking gut, see how the half-star'd frenchmen strut, and call us english dogs: but soon we'll teach these bragging foes that beef and beer give heavier blows than soup and roasted frogs. the priests, inflam'd with righteous hopes, prepare their axes, wheels, and ropes, to bend the stiff-neck'd sinner; but should they sink in coming over, old nick may fish 'twixt france and dover, and catch a glorious dinner. the scenes of all mr. hogarth's prints, except the gate of calais, and that now under consideration, are laid in england. in this, having quitted his own country, he seems to think himself out of the reach of the critics, and, in delineating a frenchman, at liberty to depart from nature, and sport in the fairy regions of caricature. were these gallic soldiers naked, each of them would appear like a forked radish, with a head fantastically carved upon it with a knife: so forlorn! that to any thick sight he would be invisible. to see this miserable woe-begone refuse of the army, who look like a group detached from the main body and put on the sick list, embarking to conquer a neighbouring kingdom, is ridiculous enough, and at the time of publication must have had great effect. the artist seemed sensible that it was necessary to account for the unsubstantial appearance of these shadows of men, and has hinted at their want of solid food, in the bare bones of beef hung up in the window, the inscription on the alehouse sign, "_soup maigre au sabot royal_," and the spider-like officer roasting four frogs which he has impaled upon his sword. such light and airy diet is whimsically opposed by the motto on the standard, which two of the most valorous of this ghastly troop are hailing with grim delight and loud exultation. it is, indeed, an attractive motto, and well calculated to inspire this famishing company with courage:--"_vengeance, avec la bonne bière, et bon boeuf d'angleterre._" however meagre the military, the church militant is in no danger of starving. the portly friar is neither emaciated by fasting nor weakened by penance. anticipating the glory of extirpating heresy, he is feeling the sharp edge of an axe, to be employed in the decollation of the enemies to the true faith. a sledge is laden with whips, wheels, ropes, chains, gibbets, and other inquisitorial engines of torture, which are admirably calculated for the propagation of a religion that was established in meekness and mercy, and inculcates universal charity and forbearance. on the same sledge is an image of st. anthony, accompanied by his pig, and the plan of a monastery to be built at black friars. in the back-ground are a troop of soldiers so averse to this english expedition, that their serjeant is obliged to goad them forward with his halberd. to intimate that agriculture suffers by the invasion having engaged the masculine inhabitants, two women, ploughing a sterile promontory in the distance, complete this catalogue of wretchedness, misery, and famine. [illustration: france.] the invasion. plate ii. england. see john the soldier, jack the tar, with sword and pistol arm'd for war, should mounseer dare come here; the hungry slaves have smelt our food, they long to taste our flesh and blood, old england's beef and beer. britons to arms! and let 'em come, be you but britons still, strike home, and, lion-like, attack 'em, no power can stand the deadly stroke that's given from hands and hearts of oak, with liberty to back 'em. from the unpropitious regions of france our scene changes to the fertile fields of england. england! bound in with the triumphant sea, whose rocky shores beat back the envious siege of wat'ry neptune. instead of the forlorn and famished party who were represented in the last plate, we here see a company of well-fed and high-spirited britons, marked with all the hardihood of ancient times, and eager to defend their country. in the first group a young peasant, who aspires to a niche in the temple of fame, preferring the service of mars to that of ceres, and the dignified appellation of soldier to the plebeian name of farmer, offers to enlist. standing with his back against the halberd to ascertain his height, and, finding he is rather under the mark, he endeavours to reach it by rising on tiptoe. this artifice, to which he is impelled by towering ambition, the serjeant seems disposed to connive at--and the serjeant is a hero, and a great man in his way; "your hero always must be tall, you know." to evince that the polite arts were then in a flourishing state, and cultivated by more than the immediate professors, a gentleman artist, who to common eyes must pass for a grenadier, is making a caricature of _le grand monarque_, with a label from his mouth worthy the speaker and worthy observation, "you take a my fine ships; you be de pirate; you be de teef: me send my grand armies, and hang you all." the action is suited to the word, for with his left hand this most christian potentate grasps his sword, and in his right poises a gibbet. the figure and motto united produce a roar of approbation from the soldier and sailor, who are criticising the work. it is so natural that the helen and briseis of the camp contemplate the performance with apparent delight, and, while one of them with her apron measures the breadth of this herculean painter's shoulders, the other, to show that the performance has some point, places her forefinger against the prongs of a fork. the little fifer, playing that animated and inspiring tune, "god save the king," is an old acquaintance: we recollect him in the march to finchley. in the back-ground is a serjeant, teaching a company of young recruits their manual exercise. this military meeting is held at the sign of the gallant duke of cumberland, who is mounted upon a prancing charger, as if an angel dropp'd down from the clouds, to turn and wield a fiery pegasus, and witch the world with noble horsemanship. underneath is inscribed "roast and boiled every day," which, with the beef and beverage upon the table, forms a fine contrast to the _soup maigre_, bare bones, and roasted frogs, in the last print. the bottle painted on the wall, foaming with liquor, which, impatient of imprisonment, has burst its cerements, must be an irresistible invitation to a thirsty traveller. the soldier's sword laid upon the round of beef, and the sailor's pistol on the vessel containing the ale, intimate that these great bulwarks of our island are as tenacious of their beef and beer, as of their religion and liberty. these two plates were published in ; but in the london chronicle for october , , is the following advertisement: "this day are republished, two prints designed and etched by william hogarth, one representing the preparations on the french coast for an intended invasion; the other, a view of the preparations making in england to oppose the wicked designs of our enemies; proper to be stuck up in public places, both in town and country, at this juncture." the verses which were inserted under each print, and subjoined to this account, are, it must be acknowledged, coarse enough. they were, however, written by david garrick. [illustration: england.] transcriber's note. the following words were inconsistently hyphenated in the original text: down-cast / downcast footboy / foot-boy fore-finger / forefinger half-pence / halfpence the orthography of the original text has been preserved. in particular the following words are as they appear in the original: antichamber aukwardly corruscations corse govent martin fowkes negociated pannel plaistering pourtrayed sculls stupifies tenour vender the following words were inconsistently accented in the original text: a-la-mode / à-la-mode degagée / dégagée six centuries of painting [illustration; vittore pisano (called pisanello) st anthony and st george _national gallery, london_] six centuries of painting by randall davies [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack long acre, w.c., and edinburgh contents tuscan schools-- page i. giovanni cimabue ii. giotto di bondone iii. the earlier quattrocentists iv. the later quattrocentists v. leonardo da vinci vi. michelangelo buonarroti vii. raffaello di santi venetian schools-- i. the vivarini and bellini ii. tiziano vecellio iii. paolo veronese and il tintoretto spanish school flemish school-- i. hubert and jan van eyck ii. peter paul rubens iii. the pupils of rubens dutch school-- i. frans hals ii. rembrandt van ryn iii. painters of _genre_ iv. painters of animals v. painters of landscape german schools french school-- i. the seventeenth century ii. the eighteenth century the english school-- i. the early portrait painters ii. william hogarth iii. sir joshua reynolds and thomas gainsborough iv. the close of the eighteenth century the nineteenth century-- i. the spirit of revolt ii. eugÈne delacroix iii. ruskin against the philistines iv. manet and whistler against the world v. the royal academy index list of illustrations vittore pisano (called pisanello)--st anthony and st george _frontispiece_ national gallery, london plate facing page i. filippo lippi--the annunciation national gallery, london ii. sandro botticelli(?)--the virgin and child national gallery, london iii. sandro botticelli--portrait of a young man national gallery, london iv. sandro botticelli--the nativity national gallery, london v. leonardo da vinci--the virgin of the rocks national gallery, london vi. pietro perugino--central portion of altar-piece national gallery, london vii. raphael--the ansidei madonna national gallery, london viii. raphael--la belle jardinière louvre, paris ix. raphael--portrait of baldassare castiglione louvre, paris x. correggio--mercury, cupid, and venus national gallery, london xi. andrea mantegna--the madonna della vittoria louvre, paris xii. giovanni bellini--the doge loredano national gallery, london xiii. giorgione--venetian pastoral louvre, paris xiv. titian--portrait said to be of ariosto national gallery, london xv. titian--the holy family national gallery, london xvi. titian--the entombment louvre, paris xvii. tintoretto--st george and the dragon national gallery, london xviii. velazquez--the infante philip prosper imperial gallery, vienna xix. velazquez--the rokeby venus national gallery, london xx. murillo--a boy drinking national gallery, london xxi. jan van eyck--jan arnolfini and his wife national gallery, london xxii. jan van eyck--portrait of the painter's wife town gallery, bruges xxiii. jan mabuse--portrait of jean carondelet louvre, paris xxiv. sir peter paul rubens--portrait of hélène fourment, the artist's second wife, and two of her children louvre, paris xxv. frans hals--portrait of a lady louvre, paris xxvi. rembrandt--portrait of hendrickje stoffels louvre, paris xxvii. rembrandt--portrait of an old lady national gallery, london xxviii. terborch--the concert louvre, paris xxix. gabriel metsu--the music lesson national gallery, london xxx. pieter de hooch--interior of a dutch house national gallery, london xxxi. jan vermeer--the lace maker louvre, paris xxxii. "the master of st bartholomew"--two saints national gallery, london xxxiii. hans holbein--portrait of christina, duchess of milan national gallery, london xxxiv. antoine watteau--l'indifférent louvre, paris xxxv. jean-baptiste greuze--the broken pitcher louvre, paris xxxvi. jean honorÉ fragonard--l'Étude louvre, paris xxxvii. hans holbein--anne of cleves louvre, paris xxxviii. william hogarth--the shrimp girl national gallery, london xxxix. sir joshua reynolds--lady cockburn and her children national gallery, london xl. sir joshua reynolds--the age of innocence national gallery, london xli. thomas gainsborough--the market cart national gallery, london xlii. george romney--the parson's daughter national gallery, london xliii. george romney--mrs robinson--"perdita" hertford house, london xliv. jacques louis david--portrait of mme. récamier louvre, paris xlv. eugÈne delacroix--dante and virgil louvre, paris xlvi. john constable--the hay wain national gallery, london xlvii. j. m. w. turner--crossing the brook national gallery of british art, london xlviii. Édouard manet--olympia louvre, paris xlix. j. m. whistler--lillie in our alley in the possession of john j. cowan, esq. _introductory_ so far as it concerns pictures painted upon panel or canvas in tempera or oils, the history of painting begins with cimabue, who worked in florence during the latter half of the thirteenth century. that the art was practised in much earlier times may readily be admitted, and the life-like portraits in the vestibule at the national gallery taken from greek tombs of the second or third century are sufficient proofs of it; but for the origin of painting as we are now generally accustomed to understand the term we need go no further back than to cimabue and his contemporaries, from whose time the art has uninterruptedly developed throughout europe until the present day. oddly enough it is to the christian church, whose early fathers put their heaviest ban upon all forms of art, that this development is almost wholly due. the reaction against paganism began to die out when the christian religion was more firmly established, and representations of christ and the saints executed in mosaic became more and more to be regarded as a necessary, or at any rate a regular embellishment of the numerous churches which were built. for these mosaics panel paintings began in time to be substituted; but it was long before any of the human feeling of art was to be found in them. the influence of s. francis of assisi was needed to prepare the way, and it was only towards the close of the thirteenth century that the breath of life began to be infused into these conventional representations, and painting became a living art. as it had begun in italy, under the auspices of the church, so it chiefly developed in that country; at first in florence and siena, later in rome, whither its greatest masters were summoned by the pope, and in venice, where, farther from the ecclesiastical influence, it flourished more exuberantly, and so became more capable of being transplanted to other countries. in germany, however, and the low countries it had appeared early enough to be considered almost as an independent growth, though not till considerably later were the northern schools capable of sustaining the reputation given them by the van eycks and roger van der weyden. but for the effects of the renaissance in italy in the fifteenth century it is questionable whether painting would ever have spread as it did in the sixteenth and seventeenth to spain and france. but by the close of the fifteenth century such enormous progress had been made by the italian painters towards the realisation of human action and emotion in pictures, that from being merely an accessory of religious establishments, painting had become as much a part of the recognised means of intellectual enjoyment of everyday life as music, sculpture, or even the refinements of food and clothing. portraiture, in particular, had gradually advanced to a foremost place in painting. originally it was used exclusively for memorials of the dead--as we have seen in the case of the paintings from the greek tombs--and on coins and medals. but gradually the practice arose, as painters became more skilful in representing the appearance of the model, of introducing the features and figures of actual personages into religious pictures, in the character of "donors," and as these increased in importance, the sacred personages were gradually relegated to the background, and ultimately dispensed with altogether. at the beginning of the sixteenth century we find hans holbein (as an example) recommended by erasmus to sir thomas more as a portrait painter who wished to try his fortunes in england; and during the rest of his life painting practically nothing but portraits. by the end of the sixteenth century, if not earlier, painting had become almost as much a business as an art, not only in italy but in most other countries in europe, and was established in each country more or less independently. so that making every allowance for the various foreign influences that affected each different country, it is convenient to trace the development of painting in each country separately, and we arrange our chapters accordingly under the titles of tuscan and venetian (the two main divisions of italian painting), spanish, flemish, dutch, german, french, and british schools. in each country, as might be expected--and especially in italy--there are subdivisions; but, broadly speaking, the lover of pictures will be quite well enough equipped for the enjoyment of them if he is able to recognise their country, and roughly their period, without troubling about the particular district or personal influence of their origin. for while it is undoubtedly true that the more one knows about the history of painting in general the greater will be the appreciation of the various excellences which tend to perfection, it is absolutely ridiculous to suppose that only the learned in such matters are capable of deriving enjoyment from a beautiful picture, or of expressing an opinion upon it. in the first place, the picture is intended for the public, and the public have therefore the best right to say whether it pleases them or not--and why. and it may be noted as a positive fact that whenever the public, in any country, have a free choice in matters of art, that choice generally turns out to be right, and is ultimately endorsed by the best critics. most of the vulgar art to be found in advertisements and the illustrated papers is put there by ignorant and vulgar providers, who imagine that the whole public are as ignorant and vulgar as themselves; whereas whenever a better standard of taste is given an opportunity, it never fails to find a welcome. until sir henry wood inaugurated the present régime, the promenade concerts at covent garden were popularly supposed to represent the national taste in music. until the temple classics and every man's library were published it was commonly supposed that the people at large cared for nothing but bow bells, the penny novelette, or such unclassical if alluring provender. in the domain of painting, the royal academy has such a firm and ancient hold on the popular imagination of the english that its influence is difficult to dispel; but there are many signs that its baneful ascendency is at length on the decline; and it is well known that the national gallery is attracting more and more visitors and burlington house less and less as the years go on. in the following attempt at a general survey of the history of painting--imperfect or ill-proportioned as it may appear to this or that specialist or lover of any particular school--i have thought it best to assume a fair amount of ignorance of the subject on the part of the reader, though without, i hope, taking any advantage of it, even if it exists; and i have therefore drawn freely upon several old histories and handbooks for both facts and opinions concerning the old masters and their works. in some cases, i think, a dead lion is decidedly better than a live dog. r. d. chelsea, . _tuscan schools_ i giovanni cimabue by the will of god, in the year , we are told by vasari, giovanni cimabue, of the noble family of that name, was born in the city of florence, to give the first light to the art of painting. vasari's "lives of the painters" was first published in florence in , and with all its defects and all its inaccuracies, which have afforded so much food for contention among modern critics, it is still the principal source of our knowledge of the earlier history of painting as it was revived in italy in the thirteenth century. making proper allowance for vasari's desire to glorify his own city, and to make a dignified commencement to his work by attributing to cimabue more than was possibly his due, we need not be deterred by the very latest dicta of the learned from accepting the outlines of his life of cimabue as an embodiment of the tradition of the time in which he lived--two centuries and a quarter after cimabue--and, until contradicted by positive evidence, as worthy of general credence. in the popular mind cimabue still remains "the father of modern painting," and though his renown may have attracted more pictures and more legends to his name than properly belong to him, it is certain that dante, his contemporary, wrote of him thus:-- credette cimabue nella pintura tener lo campo, ed ora ha giotto il grido si che la fama di colui s'oscura. this is at least as important as anything written by a contemporary of william shakespeare; and even if we are required to believe that some of his most important works are by another hand, his influence on the history of art is beyond question. let us then follow vasari a little further, and we shall find, at any rate, what is typical of the development of genius. "this youth," vasari continues, "being considered by his father and others to give proof of an acute judgment and a clear understanding, was sent to santa maria novella to study letters under a relation who was then master in grammar to the novices of that convent. but cimabue, instead of devoting himself to letters, consumed the whole day in drawing men, horses, houses, and other various fancies on his books and different papers--an occupation to which he felt himself impelled by nature." this is exactly what is recorded of reynolds, it may be noted, and very much the same as in the case of gainsborough, benjamin west--and many a modern painter. "this natural inclination was favoured by fortune, for the governors of the city had invited certain greek (probably byzantine) painters to florence, for the purpose of restoring the art of painting, which had not merely degenerated but was altogether lost. these artists, among other works, began to paint the chapel of the gondi in santa maria novella, and cimabue, often escaping from the school, and having already made a commencement of the art he was so fond of, would stand watching these masters at their work. his father, and the artists themselves, therefore concluded that he must be well endowed for painting, and thought that much might be expected from him if he devoted himself to it. giovanni was accordingly, much to his delight, placed with these masters, whom he soon greatly surpassed both in design and colouring. for they, caring little for the progress of art, executed their works not in the excellent manner of the ancient greeks, but in the rude modern style of their own day. wherefore, though cimabue imitated them, he very much improved the art, relieving it greatly from their uncouth manner and doing honour to his country by the name that he acquired and by the works which he performed. of this we have evidence in florence from the pictures which he painted there--as for example the front of the altar of saint cecilia and a picture of the virgin, in santa croce, which was and still is (_i.e._ in ) attached to one of the pilasters on the right of the choir." unfortunately the very first example cited pulls us up short alongside the official catalogue of the uffizi gallery (where the picture was placed in ), in which it is catalogued (no. ) as "unknown ... vasari erroneously attributes it to cimabue." tiresome as it may seem to be thus distracted, at the very outset, by the question of authenticity, it is nevertheless desirable to start with a clear understanding that in surveying in a general way the history and development of painting, it will be quite hopeless to wait for the final word on the supposed authorship of every picture mentioned. in this instance, as it happens, there is no reason to question the modern catalogue, though that is by no means the same thing as denying that cimabue painted the picture which existed in the church of s. cecilia in vasari's time. is it more likely, it may be asked, that vasari, who is accused of unduly glorifying cimabue, would attribute to him a work not worthy of his fame, or that during the three centuries since vasari wrote a substitution was effected? the other picture, the _madonna and child enthroned_, which found its way into our national gallery in , is still officially catalogued as the work of cimabue, and it is to be hoped that this precious relic, together with the madonnas in the louvre, the florence academy, and in the lower church at assisi, may be long spared to us by the authority of the critics as "genuine productions" of the beloved master. on the general question, however, let me reassure the reader by stating that so far as possible i have avoided the mention of any pictures, in the following pages, about which there is any grave doubt, save in a few cases where tradition is so firmly established that it seems heartless to disturb it until final judgment is entered--of which the following examples of cimabue's reputed work may be taken as types. the latest criticism seeks to deprive him of every single existing picture he is believed to have painted; those mentioned by vasari which have perished may be considered equally unauthentic, but, as before mentioned, his account of them gives us as well as anything else the story of the beginnings of the art. having afterwards undertaken, vasari continues, to paint a large picture in the abbey of the santa trinità in florence for the monks of vallombrosa, he made great efforts to justify the high opinion already formed of him and showed greater powers of invention, especially in the attitude of the virgin, whom he depicted with the child in her arms and numerous angels around her, on a gold ground. this is the picture now in the accademia in florence. the frescoes next described are no longer in existence:-- "cimabue next painted in fresco at the hospital of the porcellana at the corner of the via nuova which leads into the borgo ogni santi. on the front of this building, which has the principal door in the centre, he painted the virgin receiving the annunciation from the angel, on one side, and christ with cleophas and luke on the other, all the figures the size of life. in this work he departed more decidedly from the dry and formal manner of his instructors, giving more life and movement to the draperies, vestments and other accessories, and rendering all more flexible and natural than was common to the manner of those greeks whose work were full of hard lines and sharp angles as well in mosaic as in painting. and this rude unskilful manner the greeks had acquired not so much from study or settled purpose as from having servilely followed certain fixed rules and habits transmitted through a long series of years by one painter to another, while none ever thought of the amelioration of his design, the embellishment of his colouring, or the improvement of his invention." after describing cimabue's activities at pisa and assisi with equal circumstance, vasari passes to the famous _rucellai madonna_, now supposed to be by the hand of duccio of siena. however doubtful the story may appear in the light of modern criticism, historical or artistic, it certainly forms part of the history of painting--for its spirit if not for its accuracy--and as such it can never be too often quoted:-- "he afterwards painted the picture of the virgin for the church of santa maria novella, where it is suspended on high between the chapel of the rucellai family and that of the bardi. this picture is of larger size than any figure that had been painted down to those times, and the angels surrounding it make it evident that although cimabue still retained the greek manner, he was nevertheless gradually approaching the mode of outline and general method of modern times. thus it happened that this work was an object of so much admiration to the people of that day--they having never seen anything better--that it was carried in solemn procession, with the sound of trumpets and other festal demonstration, from the house of cimabue to the church, he himself being highly rewarded and honoured for it. it is further reported, and may be read in certain records of old painters, that while cimabue was painting this picture in a garden near the gate of s. pietro, king charles the elder of anjou passed through florence, and the authorities of the city, among other marks of respect, conducted him to see the picture of cimabue. when this work was thus shown to the king, it had not before been seen by anyone; wherefore all the men and women of florence hastened in great crowds to admire it, making all possible demonstration of delight." now whether or not vasari was right in crediting cimabue with these honours in florence instead of duccio in siena, makes little difference in the story of the origin and early development of the art of painting. one may doubt the accuracy of the mosaic account of the creation, the authorship of the fourth gospel or the shakespearean poems, or the list of names of the normans who are recorded to have fought with william the conqueror. but what if one may? the creation, the poems and plays of shakespeare and the battle of hastings are all of them historic facts, and neither science, nor literature, nor history is a penny the worse for the loose though perfectly understandable conditions under which these facts have been handed down to us. when we come down to times nearer to our own the accuracy of data is more easily ascertainable, though the confusion arising out of them often obscures their real significance; but in looking for origins we are content to ignore the details, provided we can find enough general information on which to form an idea of them. to these first chapters of vasari, then, we need not hesitate to resort for the main sources of the earlier history of painting. even so far as we have gone we have learnt several important facts as to the nature of the foundations on which the glorious structure was to be raised. first of all, it is apparent that the practice of painting, though strictly forbidden by the earliest fathers of the church, was used by the faithful in the eastern churches for purposes of decoration, and was introduced into italy--we may safely say tuscany--for the same purpose. second, that being transplanted into this new soil, it put forth such wonderful blossoms that it came to be cultivated with much more regard; and from being merely a necessary or conventional ornament of certain portions of the church, was soon accounted its greatest glory. third, that it was accorded popular acclamation. fourth, that its most attractive feature in the eyes of beholders was its life-like representation of the human form and other natural objects. prosaic as these considerations may appear, they are nevertheless the fundamental principles that underlie the whole of the subsequent development of painting; and unless every picture in the world were destroyed, and the art of painting wholly lost for at least a thousand years, there could not be another picture produced which would not refer back through continuous tradition to one or every one of them. first, the basis of religion. second, the development peculiar to the soil. third, the imitation of nature. fourth, the approbation of the public--there we have the four cardinal points in the chart of painting. it would be easy enough to contend that painting had nothing whatever to do with religion--if only by reference to the godless efforts of some of the modernists; but such a contention could only be based on the imperfect recognition of what religion actually means. in italy in the thirteenth century, as in spain in the seventeenth, it meant the church of rome. in germany of the sixteenth, as in england in the eighteenth, it meant something totally different. to put it a little differently, all painting that is worth so calling has been done to the glory of god; and after making due allowance for human frailties of every variety, it is hard to say that among all the hundreds of great and good painters there has ever been one who was not a good man. as for the influence of environment, or nationality, this is so universally recognised that the term "school" more often means locality than tuition. we talk generally of the french, english, or dutch schools, and more particularly of the paduan, venetian, or florentine. it is only when we hesitate to call our national treasure a botticelli or a bellini that we add the words "school of" to the name of the master who is fondly supposed to have inspired its author. the difference between a wood block of the early eighteenth century executed in england and japan respectively may be cited as an extreme instance of the effect of locality on idea, when the method is identical. with reference to the imitation of nature, at the mere mention of which modernists become so furious, it is worth recalling that the earliest story about painting relates to zeuxis, who is said to have painted a bunch of grapes with such skill that the birds ignored the fruit and pecked at the picture. in later times we hear of rembrandt being the butt of his pupils, who, knowing his love of money, used to paint coins on the floor; and there are plenty of stories of people painting flies and other objects so naturally as to deceive the unwary spectator. vasari is continually praising his compatriots for painting "like the life." lastly, the approbation, or if possible the acclamation, of the public has seldom if ever been unconsidered by the artist. where it has, it has only been the greatest genius that has been able to exist without it. a man who has anything to say must have somebody to say it to; and though a painter may seem to be wasting the best part of his life in trying to make the people understand what he has to say in his language instead of talking to them in their own common tongue, it is rarely that he fails in the end, even if, alas for him, the understanding comes too late to be of any benefit to himself. cimabue's last work is said to be a figure, which was left unfinished, of s. john, in mosaic, for the duomo at pisa. this was in , which is supposed to be the date of his death, though vasari puts it two years earlier, at the time he was engaged with the architect arnolfo lapi in superintending the building of the duomo in florence, where he is buried. ii giotto di bondone while according all due honour, and probably more, to cimabue as the originator of modern painting, it is to his pupil, giotto, that we are accustomed to look for the first developments of its possibilities. had cimabue's successors been as conservative as his instructors, we might still be not very much better off than if he had never lived. for much as there is to admire in cimabue's painting, it is only the first flush of the dawn which it heralded, and though containing the germ of the future development of the art, is yet without any of the glory which in the fulness of time was to result from it. to giotto, vasari considers, "is due the gratitude which the masters in painting owe to nature, seeing that he alone succeeded in resuscitating art and restoring her to a path that may be called the true one; and that the art of design, of which his contemporaries had little if any knowledge, was by his means effectually recalled to life." this seems to detract in some degree from his eulogies of cimabue; but it is to the last sentence that our attention should be directed, which implies that in profiting by the master's example he succeeded in extending the possibilities of the new art beyond its first limits. cimabue, we may believe, drew his virgins and saints from living models, whereas his predecessors had merely repeated formulas laid down for them by long tradition. giotto went further, and extended his scope to the world at large. for the plain gold background he substituted the landscape, thus breaking down, as it were, a great wall, and seeing beyond it. nor was this innovation merely a technical one--it was the man's nature that effected it and made his art a living thing. giotto, who was born in , was the son of a simple husbandman, who lived at vespignano, about fourteen miles from florence. cimabue chanced upon the boy when he was only about ten years old, tending his father's sheep, and was astonished to find that he was occupied in making a drawing of one of them upon a smooth piece of rock with a sharp stone. he was so pleased with this that he asked to be allowed to take him back to florence, and the boy proved so apt a pupil that before very long he was regularly employed in painting. his influence was not confined to florence, or even to tuscany, but the whole of italy was indebted to him for a new impulse in art, and he is said to have followed pope clement v. to avignon and executed many pictures there. giotto was not only a painter, but his name is also famous in the history of architecture: the wonderful campanile adjoining the duomo in florence was designed by him, and the foundations laid and the building erected under his instructions. on sculpture too he exercised a considerable influence, as may be seen in the panels and statues which adorn the lower part of the tower, suggested if not actually designed by giotto, and carved by andrea pisano. chief of the earlier works of giotto are his frescoes in the under church at assisi, and in these may be seen the remarkable fertility of invention with which he endowed his successors. instead of the conventional madonna and child, and groups of saints and angels, we have here whole legends represented in a series of pictures of almost dramatic character. in the four triangular compartments of the groined vaulting are the three vows of the franciscan order, namely, poverty, chastity, and obedience, and in the fourth the glorification of the saint. in the first, the vow of poverty, it is significant to find that he has taken his subject from dante. poverty appears as a woman whom christ gives in marriage to s. francis: she stands among thorns; in the foreground are two youths mocking her, and on either side a group of angels as witnesses of the holy union. on the left is a youth, attended by an angel, giving his cloak to a poor man; on the right are the rich and great, who are invited by an angel to approach, but turn scornfully away. the other designs appear to be giotto's own invention. chastity, as a young woman, sits in a fortress surrounded by walls, and angels pay her devotion. on one side are laymen and churchmen led forward by s. francis, and on the other penance, habited as a hermit, driving away earthly love and impurity. s. francis in glory is more conventional, as might be expected from the nature of the subject. in the ancient basilica of s. peter in rome giotto made the celebrated mosaic of the _navicella_, which is now in the vestibule of s. peter's. it represents a ship, in which are the disciples, on a stormy sea. according to the early christian symbolisation the ship denoted the church. in the foreground on the right the saviour, walking on the waves, rescues peter. opposite sits a fisherman in tranquil expectation, typifying the confident hope of the simple believer. this mosaic has frequently been moved, and has undergone so much restoration that only the composition can be attributed to giotto. of the paintings of scriptural history attributed to giotto very few remain, and the greater part of those have in recent times been pronounced to be the work of his followers. foremost, however, among the undoubted examples are paintings in the chapel of the madonna dell'arena at padua, which was erected in . in thirty-eight pictures, extending in three rows along the wall, is contained the life of the virgin. the ground of the vaulting is blue studded with gold stars, among which appear the heads of christ and the prophets, while above the arch of the choir is the saviour in a glory of angels. combined with these sacred scenes and personages are introduced fitting allusions to the moral state of man, the lower part of the side walls containing, in medallions painted in monochrome, allegorical figures of the virtues and vices--the former feminine and ideal, the latter masculine and individual--while the entrance wall is covered with the wonderful _last judgment_. here, as in his allegorical pieces, giotto appears as a great innovator, a number of situations suggested by the scriptures being now either represented for the first time or seen in a totally new form. well-known subjects are enriched with numerous subordinate figures, making the picture more truthful and more intelligible; as in the flight into egypt, where the holy family is accompanied by a servant, and three other figures are introduced to complete the composition. in the raising of lazarus, too, the disciples behind the saviour on the one side and the astonished multitude on the other form two choruses, an arrangement which is followed, but with considerable modification, in ouwater's unique picture of the same subject now in the kaiser friedrich museum at berlin. this approach to dramatic reality sometimes assumes a character which, as kugler puts it, oversteps the strict limits of the higher ecclesiastical style. it is worth noting, however, that the early netherlandish school--as we shall see in a later chapter--developed this characteristic to a far greater extent, continuing the tradition handed down, quite independently of giotto, through illuminated manuscripts, and with less of that expression of the highest religious or moral feeling which is so evident in giotto. the few existing altar-pieces of giotto are less important than his frescoes, inasmuch as they do not admit of the exhibition of his higher and most original gifts. two signed examples are a _coronation of the virgin_ in santa croce at florence, and a _madonna_, with saints and angels on the side panels, originally in s. maria degli angeli at bologna, and now in the brera at milan. the latter, however, is not now recognised as his. the earliest authentic example is the so-called stefaneschi altar-piece, painted in for the same patron who commissioned the _navicella_. giotto's highest merit consists especially in the number of new subjects which he introduced, in the life-like and spiritual expression with which he heightened all familiar occurrences and scenes, and in the choice of the moment of representation. in all these no earlier christian painter can be compared with him. another and scarcely less important quality he possessed is in the power of conveying truth of character. the faces introduced into some of his compositions bear an inward guarantee of their lively resemblance to some living model, and this characteristic seems to have been eagerly seized upon by his immediate followers for emulation, as is noticeable in two of the principal works--in the bargello at florence, and in the church of the incoronata at naples--formerly attributed to him but now relegated to his pupils. the portrait of dante in a fresco on the wall of the bargello shows a deep and penetrating mind, and in the _sacraments_ at naples we find heads copied from life with obvious fidelity and such a natural conception of particular scenes as brings them to the mind of the spectator with extraordinary distinctness. of giotto's numerous followers in the fourteenth century it is impossible in the present work to give any particular account, but of his influence at large on the practice as on the treatment and conception of painting at this stage of its development, one or two examples may be cited as typical of the progress he urged, such as the frescoes in the campo santo at pisa. this wonderful cloister, which measures four hundred feet in length and over a hundred in width--traditionally the dimensions of noah's ark--was founded by the archbishop ubaldo, before , on his return from palestine bringing fifty-three ships laden with earth from the holy land. on this soil it was erected, and surrounded by high walls in . the whole of these walls were afterwards adorned with paintings, in two tiers. so far as concerns the history of painting, the question of the authorship of these frescoes--which are by several distinct hands--is altogether subordinate to that of the subjects depicted and the manner in which they are treated, and we shall learn more from a general survey of them than by following out the fortunes of particular painters. the earliest are those on the east side, near the chapel, but more important are those on the north, of about the middle of the fourteenth century, which show a decided advance, both in feeling and execution, beyond giotto. the first is _the triumph of death_, in which the supernatural is tempered with representations of what is mortal to an extent that already shows that painting was not to be confined to religious uses alone. all the pleasures and sorrows of life are here represented, on the earth; it is only in the sky that we see the demons and angels. on one side is a festive company of ladies and cavaliers, with hawks and dogs, seated under orange trees, with rich carpets at their feet, all splendidly dressed. a troubadour and a singing girl amuse them with songs, _amorini_ flutter around them and wave their torches. on the other side is another group, also a hunting party, on splendidly caparisoned horses, and accompanied by a train of attendants. on the mountains in the background are several hermits, who in contrast to the votaries of pleasure have attained in a life of contemplation and abstinence the highest term of human existence. many of the figures are traditionally supposed to be portraits. the centre foreground is devoted to the less fortunate on earth, the beggars and cripples, and also corpses of the mighty; and with these we may turn to the allegorical treatment of the subject. to the first group descends the angel of death, swinging a scythe, and to her the unfortunate are stretching out their arms in supplication for an end to their sorrows. the second group, it will be seen, are tracing a path which leads to three open coffins in which lie the bodies of three princes in different stages of decay, while a monk on crutches--intended for s. macarius--is pointing to them. the air is filled with angels and demons, some of whom receive the souls of the dead. a second picture is _the last judgment_, and a third _hell_, the resemblance between which and the great altar-piece in the strozzi chapel in santa maria novella at florence, painted by andrea orcagna in , was formerly considered proof of the same authorship. they are now attributed to an unknown disciple of pietro lorenzetti, who was painting in siena between and , and is assumed to have been a pupil of duccio. the fourth picture, apparently by another hand--possibly that of lorenzetti himself--is _the life of the hermits_ in the wilderness of thebais, composed of a number of single groups in which the calm life of contemplation is represented in the most varied manner. in front flows the nile, and a number of hermits are seen on its banks still subjected to earthly occupations; they catch fish, hew wood, carry burdens to the city, etc. higher up, in the mountains, they are more estranged from the world, but the tempter follows them in various disguises, sometimes frightful, sometimes seducing. as a whole this composition is constructed in the ancient manner--as in byzantine art--several series rising one above the other, each of equal size, and without any pretension to perspective: the single groups, at the same time, are executed with much grace and feeling. next to this are six pictures of the history of s. ranieri, and as many of the lives of s. efeso and s. potito. the latter are known to have been painted in by spinello of arezzo, or spinello aretino as he is called, of whose work we have some fragments in the national gallery--alas too few! two of these fragments are from his large fresco _the fall of the rebellious angels_, painted for the church of s. maria degli angeli at arezzo, which after being whitewashed over were rescued on the conversion of the church to secular uses. vasari relates that when spinello had finished this work the devil appeared to him in the night as horrible and deformed as in the picture, and asked him where he had seen him in so frightful a form, and why he had treated him so ignominiously. spinello awoke from his dream with horror, fell into a state of abstraction, and soon afterwards died. on the third part of the south wall is represented the history of job, in a series of paintings which were formerly attributed to giotto himself, though it is now recognised that they cannot be of an earlier date than about . the _temptation of job_ is by taddeo gaddi, and the others, painted in , are probably by francesco da volterra--not to be confused with the sixteenth century painter daniele da volterra. the paintings on the west wall are of inferior workmanship, while those on the north were the crowning achievement of benozzo gozzoli a century later. iii the earlier quattrocentists coming to the second period in the development of the new art--roughly, that is to say, from to --vasari observes that even where there is no great facility displayed, yet the works evince great care and thought; the manner is more free and graceful, the colouring more varied and pleasing; more figures are employed in the compositions, and the drawing is more correct inasmuch as it is closer to nature. it was masaccio, he says, who during this period superseded the manner of giotto in regard to the painting of flesh, draperies, buildings, etc., and also restored the practice of foreshortening and brought to light that modern manner which has been followed by all artists. more natural attitudes, and more effectual expression of feeling in the gestures and movements of the body resulted, as art seeking to approach the truth of nature by more correct drawing and to exhibit so close a resemblance to the face of the living person that each figure might at once be recognised. _thus these masters constantly endeavoured to reproduce what they beheld in nature and no more; their works became consequently more carefully considered and better understood._ this gave them courage to lay down rules for perspective and to carry the foreshortenings precisely to the point which gives an exact imitation of the relief apparent in nature and the real form. minute attention to the effects of light and shade and to various technical difficulties ensued, and efforts were made towards a better order of composition. landscapes also were attempted; tracts of country, trees, shrubs, flowers, clouds, the air, and other natural objects were depicted with some resemblance to the realities represented; insomuch that the art might be said not only to have become ennobled, but to have attained to that flower of youth from which the fruit afterwards to follow might reasonably be looked for. foremost among the painters of this period was fra angelico, or to give him his proper title, frate giovanni da fiesole, who was born in not far from florence, and died in . when he was twenty years old he joined the order of the preaching friars, and all his painting is devoted to religious subjects. he was a man of the utmost simplicity, and most holy in every act of his life. he disregarded all worldly advantages. kindly to all, and temperate in all his habits, he used to say that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and should live without cares and anxious thoughts; adding that he who would do the work of christ should perpetually remain with christ. he was most humble and modest, and in his painting he gave evidence of piety and devotion as well as of ability, and the saints that he painted have more of the air of sanctity than have those of any other master. it was the custom of fra angelico to abstain from retouching or improving any painting once finished. he altered nothing, but left all as it was done the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the will of god. it is also affirmed that he would never take his brushes in hand until he had first offered a prayer, and he is said never to have painted a crucifix without tears streaming from his eyes, and in the countenance and attitude of his figures it is easy to perceive proof of his sincerity, his goodness, and the depth of his devotion to the religion of christ. this is well seen in the picture of the _coronation of the virgin_, which is now in the louvre (no. ). "superior to all his other works," vasari says of this masterpiece, "and one in which he surpassed himself, is a picture in the church of san domenico at fiesole; in this work he proves the high quality of his powers as well as the profound intelligence he possessed of the art he practised. the subject is the coronation of the virgin by jesus christ; the principal figures are surrounded by a choir of angels, among whom are a vast number of saints and holy personages, male and female. these figures are so numerous, so well executed in attitudes, so various, and with expressions of the head so richly diversified, that one feels infinite pleasure and delight in regarding them. nay, one is convinced that those blessed spirits can look no otherwise in heaven itself, or, to speak under correction, could not if they had forms appear otherwise; for all the saints male and female assembled here have not only life and expression most delicately and truly rendered, but the colouring also of the whole work would seem to have been given by the hand of a saint or of an angel like themselves. it is not without sufficient reason therefore that this excellent ecclesiastic is always called frate giovanni angelico. the stories from the life of our lady and of san domenico which adorn the predella, moreover, are in the same divine manner; and i for myself can affirm with truth that i never see this work but it appears something new, nor can i ever satisfy myself with the sight of it or have enough of beholding it." no less beautiful are the five compartments of the predella to the altar-piece still in san domenico at fiesole--which were purchased for the national gallery in at the then alarming price of £ --with no less than two hundred and sixty little figures of saintly personages, "so beautiful," as vasari says, "that they appear to be truly beings of paradise." fra filippo lippi, born in florence about , and dying there in , was the exact antithesis of fra angelico, both in his private life and in the method of his painting. he was just as earthly in both respects as fra angelico was heavenly. as a child he was put with the carmelites, and as he showed an inclination for drawing rather than for study, he was allowed every facility for studying the newly painted chapel of the branacci, and followed the manner of masaccio so closely that it was said that the spirit of that master had entered into his body. it is only fair to masaccio to add that this means his artistic spirit, for filippo's moral character was by no means exemplary. the story of one of his best-known works, _the nativity_, which is now in the louvre (no. ), is thus related by vasari:--"having received a commission from the nuns of santa margherita, at prato, to paint a picture for the high altar of their church, he chanced one day to see the daughter of francesco buti, a citizen of florence, who had been sent to the convent as a novice. filippo, after a glance at lucrezia--for that was her name--was so taken with her beauty that he prevailed upon the nuns to allow him to paint her as the virgin. this resulted in his falling so violently in love with her that he induced her to run away with him. resisting every effort of her father and of the nuns to make her leave filippo, she remained with him, and bore him a son who lived to be almost as famous a painter as his father. he was called filippino lippi." the picture of s. john and six saints in the national gallery (no. ) also recalls the story of his wildness, inasmuch as it came from the palazzo medici, where filippo worked for the great cosimo di medici. it was well known that filippo paid no attention to his work when he was engaged in the pursuit of his pleasures, and so cosimo shut him up in the palace so that he might not waste his time in running about while working for him. but filippo after a couple of days' confinement made a rope out of his bed clothes, and let himself down from the window, and for several days gave himself up to his own amusements. when cosimo found that he had disappeared, he had search made for him, and at last filippo returned; after which cosimo was afraid to shut him up again in view of the risk he had run in descending from the window. vasari considers that filippo excelled in his smaller pictures--"in these he surpassed himself, imparting to them a grace and beauty than which nothing finer could be imagined. examples of this may be seen in the predellas of all the works painted by him. he was indeed an [illustration: plate i.--filippo lippi the annunciation _national gallery, london_] artist of such power that in his own time he was surpassed by none; therefore it is that he has not only been always praised by michelangelo, but in many particulars has been imitated by him." as a contributor to the progress of the art of painting he is credited by vasari with two innovations, which may be seen in his paintings in the church of san domenico at prato, namely ( ) the figures being larger than life, and thereby forming an example to later artists for giving true grandeur to large figures; and ( ) certain figures clothed in vestments but little used at that time, whereby the minds of other artists were awakened and began to depart from that sameness which should rather be called obsolete monotony than antique simplicity. it is noticeable that despite his bad character--which is said to have been the cause of his death by poison--all his work was in religious subjects. he was painting the chapel in the church of our lady at spoleto when, in , he died. paolo uccello, as he was called, was born at florence in , and died there in . his real name was paolo di dono, but he was so fond of painting animals and birds--especially the latter--that he officially signed himself as paolo uccello. he devoted so much of his time, however, to the study of perspective, that both his life and his work suffered thereby. his wife used to relate that he would stand the whole night through beside his writing table, and when she entreated him to come to bed, would only say, "oh, what a delightful thing is this perspective!" donatello, the sculptor, is said to have told him that in his ceaseless study of perspective he was leaving the substance for the shadow; but donatello was not a painter. before his time the painters had not studied the question of perspective scientifically. giotto had made no attempt at it, and masaccio only came nearer to realising it by chance. brunelleschi, the architect, laid down its first principles, but it was uccello who first put these principles into practice in painting, and thereby paved the way for his successors to walk firmly upon. how he struggled with the difficulties of this vitally important subject may be seen in the large battle-piece at the national gallery, and however crude and absurd this fine composition may seem at first sight to those who are only accustomed to looking at modern pictures, it must be remembered that uccello is here struggling, as it were, with a savage monster which to succeeding painters has, through his efforts, been a submissive slave. this picture is one of four panels executed for the bartolini family. one of the others is in the louvre, and a third in the uffizi. another--or indeed almost the only other--work of uccello which is now to be seen is the colossal painting in monochrome (_terra-verde_) on the wall of the cathedral at florence. strangely enough, this equestrian portrait commemorates an englishman, sir john hawkwood, whose name is italianized in the inscription into giovanni acuto. he was born at sible hedingham in essex, the son of a tanner, and adventuring under edward iii. into france, found his way to florence, where he served the state so well that they interred him, on his death in , at the public expense, and subsequently commissioned uccello to execute his monument. with all his devotion to science, the artist has committed the strange mistake of making the horse stand on two legs on the same side, the other two being lifted. to masaccio, born in or about , and dying in , we owe a great step in art towards realism. it was he, says vasari, who first attained the clear perception that _painting is only the close imitation, by drawing and colouring simply, of all the forms presented by nature showing them as they are produced by her, and that whoever shall most perfectly effect this may be said to have most nearly approached the summit of excellence_. the conviction of this truth, he adds, was the cause of masaccio's attaining so much knowledge by means of perpetual study that he may be accounted among the first by whom art was in a measure delivered from rudeness and hardness; it was he who led the way to the realisation of beautiful attitudes and movements which were never exhibited by any painter before his day, while he also imparted a life and force to his figures, with a certain roundness and relief which render them truly characteristic and natural. possessing great correctness of judgment, masaccio perceived that all figures not sufficiently foreshortened to appear standing firmly on the plane whereon they are placed, but reared up on the points of their feet, must needs be deprived of all grace and excellence in the most important essentials. it is true that uccello, in his studies of perspective, had helped to lessen this difficulty, but masaccio managed his foreshortenings with much greater skill (though doubtless with less science) and succeeded better than any artist before him. moreover, he imparted extreme softness and harmony to his paintings, and was careful to have the carnations of the heads and other nude parts in accordance with the colours of the draperies, which he represented with few and simple folds as they are seen in real life. masaccio's principal remaining works are his frescoes in the famous branacci chapel at the carmine convent in florence. the work of decorating the chapel was begun by masolino, but finished by masaccio and filippo lippi. vasari states it as a fact that all the most celebrated sculptors and painters had become excellent and illustrious by studying masaccio's work in this chapel, and there is good reason to believe that michelangelo and raphael profited by their studies there, without mentioning all the names enumerated by vasari. seeing how important the influence of masaccio was destined to become, i have ventured to italicise vasari's opinions on the causes which operated in creating the florentine style and in raising the art of painting to heights undreamt of by its earliest pioneers. iv the later quattrocentists three names stand out conspicuously from the ranks of florentine painters in the latter half of the fifteenth century. but progress being one of the essential characteristics of the art at this period, as in all others, it is not surprising that the order of their fame coincides (inversely) pretty nearly with that of their date. first, antonio pollaiuolo; second, sandro botticelli; and lastly, leonardo da vinci. it is important to note that pollaiuolo was first apprenticed to a goldsmith, and attained such proficiency in that craft that he was employed by lorenzo ghiberti in the carving of the gates of the baptistry, and subsequently set up a workshop for himself. in competition with finiguerra he "executed various stories," says vasari, "wherein he fully equalled his competitor in careful execution, while he surpassed him in beauty of design. the guild of merchants, being convinced [illustration: plate ii.--sandro botticelli (?) the virgin and child _national gallery, london_] of his ability, resolved to employ him to execute certain stories in silver for the altar of san giovanni, and he performed them so excellently that they were acknowledged to be the best of all those previously executed by various masters.... in other churches also in florence and rome, and other parts of italy, his miraculous enamels are to be seen." now whether or not antonio, like others, continued to exercise this craft, the account given by vasari, as follows, of his learning to paint is extremely significant as showing how painting was regarded in relation to the kindred arts so widely practised in florence:--"eventually, considering that this craft did not secure a long life to the work of its masters, antonio, desiring for his labours a more enduring memory, resolved to devote himself to it no longer; and his brother piero being a painter, he joined himself to him for the purpose of learning the modes of proceeding in painting. he then found this to be an art so different from that of the goldsmith that he wished he had never addressed himself to it. but being impelled by shame rather than any advantage to be obtained, he acquired a knowledge of the processes used in painting in the course of a few months, and became an excellent master." as early as he had painted the three large canvases of _hercules_ for lorenzo de'medici, now no longer existing, but probably reflected in the two small panels of the same subject in the uffizi. these alone are enough to mark him as one of the greatest artists of his time. the magnificent _david_, at berlin, soon followed, and the little _daphne and apollo_ in our national gallery. these were all accomplished unaided, but a little later he worked in concert with his brother piero, to whom we are told to attribute parts of the painting of the large _s. sebastian_ in the national gallery, painted in for antonio pucci, from whose descendant it was purchased. "for the chapel of the pucci in the church of san sebastian," says vasari, "antonio painted the altar-piece--a remarkable and wonderfully executed work with numerous horses, many nude figures, and singularly beautiful foreshortenings. also the portrait of s. sebastian taken from life, that is to say, from gino di ludovico capponi. this picture has been more extolled than any by antonio. he has evidently copied nature to the utmost of his power, as we see more especially in one of the archers, who, bending towards the ground, and resting his bow against his breast, is employing all his force to prepare it for action; the veins are swelling, the muscles strained, and the man holds his breath as he applies all his strength to the effort. all the other figures in the diversity of their attitudes clearly prove the artist's ability and the labour he has bestowed on the work." it is in his superb rendering of the figure, especially in the nude, that antonio pollaiuolo marks a decisive step in the progress of painting, and is entitled to be regarded as "the first modern artist to master expression of the human form, its spirit, and its action." but for him we should miss much of the strength and vigour that distinguishes the real from the false botticelli. "in the same time with the illustrious lorenzo de medici, the elder," vasari writes, "which was truly an age of gold for men of talent, there flourished a certain alessandro, called after our custom sandro, and further named di botticello, for a reason which we shall presently see. his father, mariano filipepi, a florentine citizen, brought him up with care; but although the boy readily acquired whatever he had a mind to learn, [illustration: plate iii.--sandro botticelli portrait of a young man _national gallery, london_] yet he was always discontented, nor would he take any pleasure in reading, writing, or accounts; so that his father turned him over in despair to a friend of his called botticello, who was a goldsmith. "there was at that time a close connection and almost constant intercourse between the goldsmiths and the painters, wherefore sandro, who had remarkable talent and was strongly disposed to the arts of design, became enamoured of painting and resolved to devote himself entirely to that vocation. he acknowledged his purpose forthwith to his father, who accordingly took him to fra filippo. devoting himself entirely to the vocation he had chosen, sandro so closely followed the directions and imitated the manner of his master, that filippo conceived a great love for him, and instructed him so effectually that sandro rapidly attained a degree in art that none could have predicted for him." the influence of the giottesque tradition which was thus handed on to the youthful botticelli by filippo lippi is traceable in the beautiful little _adoration of the magi_--the oblong, not the _tondo_--in the national gallery (no. ). this was formerly attributed to filippino lippi, but is now universally recognised as one of sandro's very earliest productions, when still under the immediate influence of filippo, and prior to the _fortitude_, painted before , which is now in the uffizi, and is the first picture mentioned by vasari, thus--"while still a youth he painted the figure of fortitude among those pictures of the virtues which antonio and pietro pollaiuolo were executing in the mercatanzia or tribunal of commerce in florence. in santo spirito (vasari continues, naming a picture which is probably _the virgin enthroned_, now at berlin (no. )), he painted a picture for the bardi family; this work he executed with great diligence, and finished it very successfully, depicting the olive and palm trees with extraordinary care." the influence of pollaiuolo is more evident in his two next productions, the two small panels of _holofernes_ and the _portrait of a man with a medal_, in the uffizi, and again in the _s. sebastian_ now at berlin, which was painted in . about the second _adoration of the magi_ in the national gallery was painted, and a year or two later the famous and more splendid picture of the same subject which is in the uffizi. with this he established his reputation, showing himself unmistakably as an artist of profound feeling and noble character besides being a skilful painter. it was commissioned for the church of santa maria novella. "in the face of the oldest of the kings," says vasari, "there is the most lively expression of tenderness as he kisses the foot of the saviour, and of satisfaction at the attainment of the purpose for which he had undertaken his long journey. this figure is the portrait of cosimo de'medici, the most faithful and animated likeness of all now known of him. the second of the kings is the portrait of giuliano de' medici, father of pope clement vii., and he is presenting his gift with an expression of the most devout sincerity. the third, who is likewise kneeling, seems to be offering thanksgiving as well as adoration; this is the likeness of giovanni, the son of cosimo. "the beauty which sandro has imparted to these heads cannot be adequately described; all the figures are in different attitudes, some seen full face, others in profile, some almost entirely turned away, others bent down; and to all the artist has given an appropriate expression, whether old or young, showing numerous peculiarities, which prove the mastery he possessed over his art. he has even distinguished the followers of each king, so that one can see which belong to one and which to another. it is indeed a most wonderful work; the composition, the colouring, and the design are so beautiful that every artist to-day is amazed at it, and at the time it acquired so great a fame for sandro that pope sixtus iv. appointed him superintendent of the painting of the chapel he had built in rome." the visit to rome was in , and meantime botticelli had produced the wayward _primavera_, and the more stern and harsh _s. augustine_ in the church of ognissanti. of his frescoes in the pope's chapel nearly all have survived, including _moses slaying the egyptian_, _the temptation_, and _the destruction of korah's company_, besides such of the heads of the popes as were not painted by domenico ghirlandaio and his other assistants in the work. returning to florence in , he was for twenty years without a rival in the city--after the departure of leonardo to milan--and he appears to have been subjected to no new influences, but steadily to have developed the immense forces within him. before may be dated the two examples in the national gallery, the _portrait of a youth_ and the fascinating _mars and venus_, which was probably intended as a decoration for some large piece of furniture. the beautiful and extraordinarily life-like frescoes in the louvre (the only recognised works of the master in that gallery) from the villa lemmi, representing giovanna tornabuoni with venus and the graces, and lorenzo tornabuoni with the liberal arts, are assigned to . of this period are also the more familiar _birth of venus_; _the tondo of the pomegranate_ and the _annunciation_ in the uffizi, and the san marco altar-piece, the _coronation of the virgin_ in the florence academy. to the influence of savonarola, however great or little that may have been, is attributed the seriousness of his latest work. professor muther characterises botticelli as "the jeremiah of the renaissance," but whether or not this is a rhetorical overstatement, the "tendency to impassioned and feverish action, so evident in the famous _calumny of apelles_, reflects, no doubt, the agitation of his spiritual stress."[ ] this is the latest of sandro's works which are in public galleries, and there is every probability that the last years of his life were not very productive. "this master is said to have had an extraordinary love for those whom he knew to be zealous students in art," vasari tells us, "and is affirmed to have gained considerable sums of money, but being a bad manager and very careless, all came to nothing. finally, having become old, unfit for work, and helpless, he was obliged to go on crutches, being unable to stand upright, and so died, after long illness and decrepitude, in his seventy-eighth year. he was buried at florence, in the church of ognissanti in the year ." the large and beautiful _assumption of the virgin_, with the circles of saints and angels, in the national gallery, which has only of late years been taken out of the catalogue of botticelli's works, is now said to have been executed by his early pupil francesco botticini (_c._ - ) in or thereabouts. "in the church of san pietro," vasari writes of botticelli, "he executed a picture for matteo palmieri, with a very large number of figures. the subject is the assumption of our lady, and the zones or circles of heaven are [illustration: plate iv.--sandro botticelli the nativity _national gallery, london_] there painted in their order. the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, evangelists, martyrs, confessors, doctors, virgins, and the hierarchies; all of which was executed by sandro according to the design furnished to him by matteo, who was a very learned and able man. the whole work was conducted and finished with the most wonderful skill and care; at the foot were the portraits of matteo and his wife kneeling. but although this picture is exceedingly beautiful, and ought to have put envy to shame, yet there were certain malevolent and censorious persons who, not being able to fix any other blame upon it, declared that matteo and sandro had fallen into grievous heresy." it is apparent that the picture has suffered intentional injury, and it is known that in consequence of this supposed heresy the altar which it adorned was interdicted and the picture covered up. in view of all the circumstances it is certain that it was designed by botticelli, and very possibly executed under his immediate supervision and with some assistance from him. if we do not see the real botticelli in it, we see his influence and his power far more clearly than in the numerous _tondi_ of madonna and child that have been assigned to him in less critical ages than our own. for the real botticelli was something very real indeed, and though it was easy enough to imitate his mannerisms, neither the style nor the spirit of his work were ever within reach of his closest followers. v leonardo da vinci twelve years younger than botticelli was leonardo da vinci ( - ), whose career as a painter commenced in the workshop of andrea verrocchio, goldsmith, painter, and sculptor. that so extraordinary a genius should have fixed upon painting for his means of expression rather than any of his other natural gifts is the most telling evidence of the pre-eminence earned for that art by the efforts of those whose works we have been considering. for once we may go all the way with vasari, and accept his estimate of him as even moderate in comparison with those of modern writers. "the richest gifts," he writes, "are sometimes showered, as by celestial influence, on human creatures, and we see beauty, grace, and talent so united in a single person that whatever the man thus favoured may turn to, his every action is so divine as to leave all other men far behind him, and to prove that he has been specially endowed by the hand of god himself, and has not obtained his pre-eminence by human teaching. this was seen and acknowledged by all men in the case of leonardo da vinci, in whom, to say nothing of the beauty of his person, which was such that it could never be sufficiently extolled, there was a grace beyond expression which was manifested without thought or effort in every act and deed, and who besides had so rare a gift of talent and ability that to whatever subject he turned, however difficult, he presently made himself absolute master of it. extraordinary strength was in him joined with remarkable facility, a mind of regal boldness and magnanimous daring. his gifts were such that his fame extended far and wide, and he was held in the highest estimation not in his own time only, but also and even to a greater extent after his death; and this will continue to be in all succeeding ages. truly wonderful indeed and divinely gifted was leonardo." to his activities in directions other than painting, i need not allude except to say that they account in a great measure for the scarcity of the pictures he has left us, and to emphasise the significance of his having painted at all. to a man of such supreme genius the circumstances in which he found himself, rather than any particular technical facility, determined the course of his career, and in another age and another country he might have been a pheidias or a newton, a shakespeare or a beethoven. but if the pictures he has left us are few in number--according to the present estimate not more than a dozen--they are altogether greater than anything else in the realm of painting, and with their marvellous beauty and subtlety have probably had a wider influence, both on painters and on lovers of painting, than those of any other master. they seem to be endowed with a spirit of something beyond painting itself, and in the presence of _the last supper_ or the _mona lisa_ the babble of conflicting opinions on questions of style, technique, and what not is silenced. similarly, in writing of leonardo's pictures, every one of which is a masterpiece, it seems superfluous to say even a word about what the whole world already knows so well. all that can be usefully added is a little of the tradition, where it is sufficiently authenticated, relating to the circumstances under which they came into existence, and such of the circumstances of his life as concern their production. when still quite a youth leonardo was apprenticed to andrea verrocchio, and the story goes that it was the marvellous painting of the angel, by the pupil, in the master's _baptism_ in the academy at florence, that induced verrocchio to abandon painting and devote himself entirely to sculpture. this angel has been attributed to the hand of leonardo from the earliest times, but can hardly be taken, at any rate in its present condition, as a decided proof of the genius that was to be displayed in manhood. more certain are the _s. jerome_ in the vatican, and the _adoration of the kings_ in the uffizi, though neither is carried beyond the earlier stages of "under-painting." a few finished portraits are now assigned with tolerable certainty to his earlier years; but for his famous masterpieces we must jump to the year , when he left florence and went to milan, where for the next sixteen years he was intermittently engaged in the execution of the great equestrian statue, which was destroyed by the french mercenaries before it was actually completed. it appears that he was recommended by lorenzo de'medici to lodovico il moro, duke of milan, probably for the very purpose of executing this statue. however that may be, it is now certain that in he was commissioned by the franciscan monks to paint a picture of the virgin and child for their church of the conception, and that between and leonardo and his assistant, ambrogio di predis, petitioned the duke for an arbitration as to price. this was the famous _virgin of the rocks_, now in the louvre, and the similar, and though not precisely identical, composition in our national gallery is generally supposed to be a replica, painted by ambrogio under the supervision of, and possibly with some assistance from, leonardo himself. between and leonardo was engaged on the painting of _the last supper_. in the forster library at the victoria and albert museum is a notebook which contains his first memoranda for the wonderful design of this masterpiece. at windsor are studies for the heads of s. matthew, s. philip, and [illustration: plate v.--leonardo da vinci the virgin of the rocks _national gallery, london_] judas, and for the right arm of s. peter. that of the head of the christ in the brera at milan has been so much "restored" that it can hardly be regarded as leonardo's work. vasari's account of the delays in the completion of the painting is better known, and probably less trustworthy, than one or two notices of about the same date, quoted by mr h. p. horne, in translating and commenting on vasari. in june , when the work had been in progress over two years, duke lodovico wrote to his secretary "to urge leonardo, the florentine, to finish the work of the refectory which he has begun, ... and that articles subscribed by his hand shall be executed which shall oblige him to finish the work within the time that shall be agreed upon." matteo bandello, in the prologue to one of his _novelle_, describes how he saw him actually at work--"leonardo, as i have more than once seen and observed him, used often to go early in the morning and mount the scaffolding (for _the last supper_ is somewhat raised above the ground), and from morning till dusk never lay the brush out of his hand, but, oblivious of both eating and drinking, paint without ceasing. after that, he would remain two, three, or four days without touching it: yet he always stayed there, sometimes for one or two hours, and only contemplated, considered, and criticised, as he examined with himself the figures he had made." vasari's story of the prior's head serving for that of judas is related with less colour, but probably more truth, in the discourses of g. b. giraldi, who says that when leonardo had finished the painting with the exception of the head of judas, the friars complained to the duke that he had left it in this state for more than a year. leonardo replied that for more than a year he had gone every morning and evening into the borghetto, where all the worst sort of people lived, yet he could never find a head sufficiently evil to serve for the likeness of judas: but he added, "if perchance i shall not find one, i will put there the head of this father prior who is now so troublesome to me, which will become him mightily." in leonardo was back again in florence, and his next important work was the designing, though probably not the actual painting, of the beautiful picture in the louvre, _the virgin and child with s. anne_, the commission for which had been given to filippino lippi, but resigned by him on leonardo's return. in isabella d'este wrote to know whether leonardo was still in florence, and what he was doing, as she wished him to paint a picture for her in the palace at mantua, and in the reply of the vicar-general of the carmelites we have a valuable account of the artist and his work. "as far as i can gather," he writes, "the life of leonardo is extremely variable and undetermined. since his arrival here he has only made a sketch in a cartoon. it represents a christ as a little child of about a year old, reaching forward out of his mother's arms towards a lamb. the mother, half rising from the lap of s. anne, catches at the child as though to take it away from the lamb, the animal of sacrifice signifying the passion. s. anne, also rising a little from her seat, seems to wish to restrain her daughter from separating the child from the lamb; which perhaps is intended to signify the church, that would not wish that the passion of christ should be hindered. these figures are as large as life, but they are all contained in a small cartoon, since all of them sit or are bent; the figure of the virgin is somewhat in front of the other, turned towards the left. this sketch is not yet finished. he has not executed any other work, except that his two assistants paint portraits and he, at times, lends a hand to one or another of them. he gives profound study to geometry, and grows most impatient of painting." the history of this cartoon--as indeed of the louvre picture--is somewhat obscure, but it is certain that the beautiful cartoon of the same subject in the possession of the royal academy is not the one above described. lastly, there is the famous--or, may we say, now more famous than ever--portrait of _mona lisa_. "whoever wishes to know how far art can imitate nature," vasari writes, "may do so in this head, wherein every detail that could be depicted by the brush has been faithfully reproduced. the eyes have the lustrous brightness and watery sheen that is seen in life, and around them are all those rosy and pearly tints which, like the eyelashes too, can only be rendered by means of the deepest subtlety; the eyebrows also are painted with the closest exactitude, where fuller and where more thinly set, in a manner that could not be more natural. the nose, with its beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils, seems to be alive. the mouth, wonderful in its outline, shows the lips perfectly uniting the rose tints of their colour with that of the face, and the carnation of the cheek appears rather to be flesh and blood than only painted. looking at the pit of the throat one can hardly believe that one cannot see the beating of the pulse, and in truth it may be said that the whole work is painted in a manner well calculated to make the boldest master tremble. "mona lisa was exceedingly beautiful, and while leonardo was painting her portrait he kept someone constantly near her to sing or play, to jest or otherwise amuse her, so that she might continue cheerful, and keep away the melancholy that painters are apt to give to their portraits. in this picture there is a smile so pleasing that the sight of it is a thing that appears more divine than human, and it has ever been considered a marvel that it is not actually alive." it is worth observing that while these rapturous expressions of wonder at the life-like qualities of the portrait may seem somewhat tame and childish in comparison with the appreciation accorded to leonardo's work in these times--notably that of walter pater in this case--they are in reality at the root of all criticism. if vasari, as i have already pointed out, pitches upon this quality of life-likeness and direct imitation of nature for his particular admiration, it is only because the first and foremost object of the earlier painters was in fact to represent the life; and though in the rarefied atmosphere of modern talk about art these naïve criticisms may seem out of date, it is significant that between vasari and ourselves there is little, if any, difference of opinion as to which masters were the great ones, and which were not. "truly divine" is a phrase in which he sums up the impressions created in his mind by the less material qualities of some of the greatest, but before even the greatest could create such an impression they must have learnt the rudiments of the art in the school of nature. vi michelangelo buonarroti in the opening years of the sixteenth century the art of painting had attained such a pitch of excellence that unless carried onward by a supreme genius it could hardly hope to escape from the common lot of all things in nature, and begin to decline. after botticelli and leonardo, the works of andrea del sarto, "the perfect painter" as he has been called, fall rather flat; and no less a prodigy than michelangelo was capable of excelling his marvellous predecessors, or than raphael of rivalling them. vasari prefaces his life to andrea del sarto ( - ) with something more definite than his usual rhetorical flourishes. "at length we have come," he says, "after having written the lives of many artists distinguished for colour, for design, or for invention, to that of the truly excellent andrea del sarto, in whom art and nature combined to show all that may be done in painting when design, colouring, and invention unite in one and the same person. had he possessed a somewhat bolder and more elevated mind, had he been distinguished for higher qualifications as he was for genius and depth of judgment in the art he practised, he would beyond all doubt have been without an equal. but there was in his nature a certain timidity of mind, a sort of diffidence and want of strength, which prevented those evidences of ardour and animation which are proper to the highest characters from ever appearing in him which, could they have been added to his natural advantages, would have made him truly a divine painter, so that his works are wanting in that grandeur, richness, and force which are so conspicuous in those of many other masters. "his figures are well drawn, and entirely free from errors, and perfect in all their proportions, and for the most part are simple and chaste. his airs of heads are natural and graceful in women and children, while both in youth and old men they are full of life and animation. his draperies are marvellously beautiful. his nudes are admirably executed, simple in drawing, exquisite in colouring--nay, they are truly divine." and yet? well, let us turn to michelangelo. "while the best and most industrious artists," says vasari, "were labouring by the light of giotto and his followers to give the world examples of such power as the benignity of their stars and the varied character of their fantasies enabled them to command, and while desirous of imitating the perfection of nature by the excellence of art, they were struggling to attain that high comprehension which many call intelligence, and were universally toiling, but for the most part in vain, the ruler of heaven was pleased to turn the eyes of his clemency towards earth, and perceiving the fruitlessness of so many labours, the ardent studies pursued without any result, and the presumptuous self-sufficiency of men which is farther from truth than is darkness from light, he resolved, by way of delivering us from such great errors, to send to the world a spirit endowed with universality of power in each art, and in every profession, one capable of showing by himself alone what is the perfection of art in the sketch, the outline, the shadows, or the lights; one who could give relief to painting and with an upright judgment could operate as perfectly in sculpture; nay, who was so highly accomplished in architecture also, that he was able to render our habitations secure and commodious, healthy and cheerful, well-proportioned, and enriched with the varied ornaments of art." a more prosaic passage follows presently, occasioned by the innuendoes of condivi as to vasari's intimacy with michelangelo and his knowledge of the facts of his life at first hand. vasari meets this accusation by quoting the following document relating to the apprenticeship of michelangelo to domenico ghirlandaio when fourteen years old. " . i acknowledge and record this first day of april that i, lodovico di buonarroti, have engaged michelangelo my son to domenico and david di tommaso di currado for the three years next to come, under the following conditions: that the said michelangelo shall remain with the above named all the said time, to the end that they may teach him to paint and to exercise their vocation, and that the above named shall have full command over him paying him in the course of these three years twenty-four florins as wages...." besides this teaching in his earliest youth, it is considered probable that in , when he visited bologna, he came under influences which resulted in the execution at about that time of the unfinished _entombment_ and the _holy family_, which are two of our greatest treasures in the national gallery. as he took to sculpture, however, before he was out of ghirlandaio's hands, there are few traces of any activity in painting until , when he was engaged on the designs for the great battle-piece for the council hall at florence. the one easel picture of which vasari makes any mention, the _tondo_ in the uffizi, is the only one besides those already noted which is known to exist. "the florentine citizen, angelo doni," vasari says, "desired to have some work from his hand as he was his friend; wherefore michelangelo began a circular painting of our lady for him. she is kneeling, and presents the divine child to joseph. here the artist has finely expressed the delight with which the mother regards the beauty of her son, as is clearly manifest in the turn of her head and fixedness of her gaze; equally evident is her wish that this contentment shall be shared by that pious old man who receives the babe with infinite tenderness and reverence. nor was this enough for michelangelo, since the better to display his art he has grouped several undraped figures in the background, some upright, some half recumbent, and others seated. the whole work is executed with so much care and finish that of all his pictures, which indeed are but few, this is considered the best." after relating the story of the artist's quarrel with his friend over the price of this masterpiece (for which he at first only asked sixty ducats), vasari goes on to describe the now lost cartoons for the great fresco in the council hall at florence, in substance as follows:-- "when leonardo was painting in the great hall of the council, piero soderini, who was then gonfaloniere, moved by the extraordinary ability which he perceived in michelangelo [he calls him in a letter a young man who stands above all his calling in italy; nay, in all the world], caused him to be entrusted with a portion of the work, and our artist began a very large cartoon representing the battle of pisa. it represented a vast number of nude figures bathing in the arno, as men do on hot days, when suddenly the enemy is heard to be attacking the camp. the soldiers spring forth in haste to arm themselves. one is an elderly man, who to shelter himself from the heat has wreathed a garland of ivy round his head, and, seated on the ground, is labouring to draw on his hose, hindered by his limbs being wet. hearing the sound of the drums and the cries of the soldiers he struggles violently to get on one of his stockings; the action of the muscles and distortion of the mouth evince the zeal of his efforts. drummers and others hasten to the camp with their clothes in their arms, all in the most singular attitudes; some standing, others kneeling or stooping; some falling, others springing high into the air and exhibiting the most difficult foreshortenings.... the artists were amazed as they realised that the master had in this cartoon laid open to them the very highest resources of art; nay, there are some who still declare that they have never seen anything to equal it, either from his hand or any other, and they do not believe that genius will ever more attain to such perfection. nor is this an exaggeration, for all who have designed from it and copied it--as it was the habit for both natives and strangers to do--have become excellent in art, amongst whom were raphael, andrea del sarto, franciabigio, pontormo, and piero del vaga." in michelangelo began to prepare the cartoons for the ceiling of the sistine chapel. space forbids me to attempt any description of these, but the story of their completion as related by vasari can hardly be omitted. "when half of them were nearly finished," he says, "pope julius, who had gone more than once to see the work--mounting the ladders with the artist's help--insisted on having them opened to public view without waiting till the last touches were given, and the chapel was no sooner open than all rome hastened thither, the pope being first, even before the dust caused by removing the scaffold had subsided. then it was that raphael, who was very prompt in imitation, changed his manner, and to give proof of his ability immediately executed the frescoes with the prophets and sibyls in the church of the pace. bramante (the architect) also laboured to convince the pope that he would do well to entrust the second half to raphael.... but julius, who justly valued the ability of michelangelo, commanded that he should continue the work, judging from what he saw of the first half that he would be able to improve the second. michelangelo accordingly finished the whole in twenty months, without help. it is true that he often complained that he was prevented from giving it the finish he would have liked owing to the pope's impatience, and his constant inquiries as to when it would be finished, and on one occasion he answered, "it will be finished when i shall have done all that i believe necessary to satisfy art." "and we command," replied julius, "that you satisfy our wish to have it done quickly," adding finally that if it were not at once completed he would have michelangelo thrown headlong from the scaffolding. hearing this, the artist, without taking time to add what was wanting, took down the remainder of the scaffolding, to the great satisfaction of the whole city, on all saints' day, when the pope went into his chapel to sing mass." michelangelo had much wished to retouch some portions of the work _a secco_, as had been done by the older masters who had painted the walls; and to add a little ultramarine to some of the draperies, and gild other parts, so as to give a richer and more striking effect. the pope, too, would now have liked these additions to be made, but as michelangelo thought it would take too long to re-erect the scaffolding, the pictures remained as they were. the pope would sometimes say to him, "let the chapel be enriched with gold and bright colours; it looks poor." to which michelangelo would reply, "holy father, the men of those days did not adorn themselves with gold; those who are painted here less than any; for they were none too rich. besides, they were holy men, and must have despised riches and ornaments." vii raffaello di santi the character and the influence of raphael are well expressed in the following sentences with which vasari concludes his biography:--"o happy and blessed spirit! every one speaks with interest of thee; celebrates thy deeds; admires thee in thy works! well might painting die when this noble artist ceased to live; for when his eyes were closed she remained in darkness. for us who survive him it remains to imitate the excellent method which he has left for our guidance; and as his great qualities deserve, and our duty bids us, to cherish his memory in our hearts, and keep it alive in our discourse by speaking of him with the high respect which is his due. for through him we have the art in all its extent carried to a perfection which could hardly have been looked for; and in this universality let no human being ever hope to surpass him. and, beside this benefit which he conferred on art as her true friend, he neglected not to show us how every man should conduct himself in all the relations of life. among his rare gifts there is one which especially excites my wonder; i mean, that heaven should have granted him to infuse a spirit among those who lived around him so contrary to that which is prevalent among professional men. the painters--i do not allude to the humble-minded only, but to those of an ambitious turn, and many of this sort there are--the painters who worked in company with raphael lived in perfect harmony, as if all bad feelings were extinguished in his presence, and every base, unworthy thought had passed from their minds. this was because the artists were at once subdued by his obliging manners and by his surpassing merit, but more than all by the spell of his natural character, which was so full of affectionate kindness, that not only men, but even the very brutes, respected him. he always had a great number of artists employed for him, helping them and teaching them with the kindness of a father to his children, rather than as a master directing his scholars. for which reason it was observed he never went to court without being accompanied from his very door by perhaps fifty painters who took pleasure in thus attending him to do him honour. in short, he lived more as a sovereign than as a painter. and thus, o art of painting! thou too, then, could account thyself most happy, since an artist was thine, who, by his skill and by his moral excellence exalted thee to the highest heaven!" raphael was the son of giovanni sanzio, or di santi, of urbino. he received his first education as an artist from his father, whom, however, he lost in his eleventh year. as early as probably, he entered the school of pietro perugino, at perugia, where he remained till about his twentieth year. the "umbrian school," in which raphael received his first education, and in which he is accordingly placed, is distinguished from the florentine, of which it may be said to have been an offshoot, by several well-defined characteristics. chief of these are, first, the more sentimental expression of religious feeling, and second, the greater attention paid to distance as compared with the principal figures; both of which are explainable on the ground of local circumstances. they reflect the difference between the bustling intellectual activity of florence and the dreamy existence but broader horizon of the dwellers in the upper valley of the tiber. in the beautiful _nativity_ of piero della francesca (no. in the national gallery) we see something akin to the florentine pictures, and yet something more besides. piero shared with paolo uccello the eager desire to discover the secrets of perspective; but in addition he seems to have been influenced by the study of nature herself, in the open air, as uccello never was. his pupil, luca signorelli ( - ), was more formal and less naturalistic, as may be seen by a comparison between the _circumcision_ (no. in the national gallery) and piero's _baptism of christ_ on the opposite wall. pietro perugino ( - )--his real name was vannucci--was influenced both by signorelli and by verrocchio. in the studio of the latter he had probably worked with leonardo and lorenzo di credi, so that in estimating the influences which went to form the art of raphael we need not insist too strongly on the distinction between "umbrian" and "florentine." raphael's first independent works (about ) are entirely in perugino's style. they bear the general stamp of the umbrian school, but in its highest beauty. his youthful efforts are essentially youthful, and seem to contain the earnest of a high development. two are in the berlin museum. in the one (no. ) called the _madonna solly_, the madonna reads in a book; the child on her lap holds a goldfinch. the other (no. ), with heads of s. francis and s. jerome, is better. similar to it, but much more finished and developed, is a small round picture, the _madonna casa connestabile_, now at st. petersburg. a more important picture of this time is the _coronation of the virgin_, painted for the church of s. francesco at perugia in , but now in the vatican. in the upper part, christ and the madonna are throned on clouds and surrounded by angels with musical instruments; underneath, the disciples stand around the empty tomb. in this lower part of the picture there is a very evident attempt to give the figures more life, motion, and enthusiastic expression than was before attempted in the school. after this, raphael appears to have quitted the school of perugino, and to have commenced an independent career: he executed at this time some pictures in the neighbouring town of città di castello. with all the features of the umbrian school, they already show the freer impulse of his own mind,--a decided effort to individualize. the most excellent of these, and the most interesting example of this first period of raphael's development, is the _marriage of the virgin_ (lo sposalizio), inscribed with his name and the date , now in the brera at milan. with much of the stiffness and constraint of the old school, the figures are noble and dignified; the countenances, of the sweetest style of beauty, are expressive of a tender, enthusiastic melancholy, which lends a peculiar charm to this subject. in raphael painted the two little pictures in the louvre, _s. george_ and _s. michael_ (nos. - ) for the duke of urbino. _the knight dreaming_, a small picture, now in the national gallery (no. ), is supposed to have been painted a year earlier. in the autumn of raphael went to florence. tuscan art had now attained its highest perfection, and the most celebrated artists were there contending for the palm. from this period begins his emancipation [illustration: plate vi.--pietro perugino central portion of altar-piece _national gallery, london_] from the confined manner of perugino's school; the youth ripens into manhood and acquires the free mastery of form. to this time belong the celebrated _madonna del granduca_, now in the pitti gallery, and another formerly belonging to the duke of terra nuova, and now at berlin (no. a). in the next year we find him employed on several large works in perugia; these show for the first time the influence of florentine art in the purity, fullness, and intelligent treatment of form; at the same time many of the motives of the peruginesque school are still apparent. the famous _cowper madonna_, recently sold to an american for £ , , also belongs to the year , when the blending of the two influences resulted in a picture which has been extolled by the sanest of critics as "the loveliest of raphael's virgins." an altar-piece, executed for the church of the serviti at perugia, inscribed with the date , is the famous _madonna dei ansidei_, purchased for the national gallery from the duke of marlborough. besides the dreamy religious feeling of the school of perugia, we perceive here the aim at a greater freedom, founded on deeper study. raphael was soon back in florence, where he remained until . the early paintings of this period betray, as might be expected, many reminiscences of the peruginesque school, both in conception and execution; the later ones follow in all essential respects the general style of the florentines. one of the earliest is the _virgin in the meadow_, in the belvedere gallery at vienna. two others show a close affinity with this composition; one is the _madonna del cardellino_, in the tribune of the uffizi, in which s. john presents a goldfinch to the infant christ. the other is the so-called _belle jardinière_, inscribed , in the louvre. it is interesting to observe raphael's progress in the smaller pictures which he painted in florence--half-figures of the madonna and child. here again the earliest are characterised by the tenderest feeling, while a freer and more cheerful enjoyment of life is apparent in the later ones. the _madonna della casa tempi_, at munich, is the first of this series. in the picture from the colonna palace at rome, now in the berlin museum (no. ), the same childlike sportiveness, the same maternal tenderness, are developed with more harmonious refinement. a larger picture, belonging to the middle time of his florentine period, is in the munich gallery--the _madonna canignani_, which presents a peculiar study of artificial grouping, in a pyramidal shape. among the best pictures of the latter part of this florentine period are the _s. catherine_, now in the national gallery, formerly in the aldobrandini gallery at rome, and two large altar-pieces. one of these is the _madonna del baldacchino_, in the pitti gallery. the other, _the entombment_, painted for the church of s. francesco at perugia, is now in the borghese gallery at rome. this is the first of raphael's compositions in which an historical subject is dramatically developed; but in this respect the task exceeded his powers. the composition lacks repose and unity of effect; the movements are exaggerated and mannered; but the figure of the saviour is extremely beautiful, and may be placed among the greatest of the master's creations. about the middle of the year , when only in his twenty-fifth year, raphael was invited by pope [illustration: plate vii.--raphael the ansidei madonna _national gallery, london_] [illustration: plate viii.--raphael la belle jardiniÈre _louvre, paris_] julius ii. to decorate the state apartments in the vatican. with these works commences the third period of his development, and in these he reached his highest perfection. the subjects, more important than any in which he had hitherto been occupied, gave full scope to his powers; and the proximity of michelangelo, who at this time began the painting of the sistine chapel, excited his emulation. at this period, just before the reformation, the papal power had reached its proudest elevation. to glorify this power--to represent rome as the centre of spiritual culture--were the objects of the paintings in the vatican. they cover the ceilings and walls of three chambers and a large saloon, which now bear the name of the "stanze of raphael." the execution of these paintings principally occupied raphael to the time of his death, and were only completed by his scholars. in and raphael also executed designs for the ten tapestries intended to adorn the sistine chapel, representing events from the lives of the apostles. seven of these magnificent cartoons are now in the south kensington museum. beside these important commissions executed for the papal court, during twelve years, many claims were made on him by private persons. two frescoes executed for roman churches may be mentioned. one, in s. maria della pace, represents four sibyls surrounded by angels, which it is interesting to compare with the sibyls of michelangelo. in each we find the peculiar excellence of the two great masters; michelangelo's figures are grand, sublime, profound, while the fresco of the pace exhibits raphael's serene and ingenious grace. in a second fresco, the prophet isaiah and two angels, in the church of s. agostino at rome, the comparison is less favourable to raphael, the effort to rival the powerful style of michelangelo being rather too obvious. like all other artists, raphael is at his best when, undisturbed by outside influences, he follows the free original impulse of his own mind. his peculiar element was grace and beauty of form, in so far as these are the expression of high moral purity. the following works of his third period are especially deserving of mention. the _aldobrandini madonna_, now in the national gallery--in which the madonna is sitting on a bench, and bends down to the little s. john, her left arm round him. the _madonna of the duke of alba_, in the hermitage at st. petersburg. _la vierge au voile_, in the louvre; the madonna is seated in a kneeling position, lifting the veil from the sleeping child in order to show him to the little s. john. the _madonna della seggiola_, in the pitti at florence (painted about ), a circular picture. the _madonna della tenda_ at munich; a composition similar to the last, except that the child is represented in more lively action, and looking upwards. a series of similar, but in some instances more copious compositions, belong to a still later period; they are in a great measure the work of his scholars, painted after his drawings, and only partly worked upon by raphael himself. indeed many pictures of this class should perhaps be considered altogether as the productions of his school, at a time when that school was under his direct superintendence, and when it was enabled to imitate his finer characteristics in a remarkable degree. in this class are the _madonna dell'impannata_, in the pitti, which takes its name from the oiled-paper window in the background. the large picture of a _holy family_ in the louvre, painted in , for francis i., is peculiarly excellent. the whole has a character of cheerfulness and joy: an easy and delicate play of graceful lines, which unite in an intelligible and harmonious whole. giulio romano assisted in the execution. with regard to the large altar-pieces of his later period in which several saints are assembled round the madonna, it is to be observed that raphael has contrived to place them in reciprocal relation to each other, and to establish a connection between them; while the earlier masters either ranged them next to one another in simple symmetrical repose, or disposed them with a view to picturesque effect. of these the _madonna di foligno_, in the vatican, is the earliest. in the upper part of the picture is the madonna with the child, enthroned on the clouds in a glory, surrounded by angels. underneath, on one side, kneels the donor, behind him stands s. jerome. on the other side is s. francis, kneeling, while he points with one hand out of the picture to the people, for whom he entreats the protection of the mother of grace; behind him is s. john the baptist, who points to the madonna, while he looks at the spectator as if inviting him to worship her. the second, the _madonna del pesce_ has much more repose and grandeur as whole, and unites the sublime and abstract character of sacred beings with the individuality of nature in the happiest manner. it is now in madrid, but was originally painted for s. domenico at naples, about . it represents the madonna and child on a throne; on one side is s. jerome; on the other the guardian angel with the young tobias who carries a fish (whence the name of the picture). the artist has imparted a wonderfully poetic character to the subject. s. jerome, kneeling on the steps of the throne, has been reading from a book to the virgin and child, and appears to have been interrupted by the entrance of tobias and the angel. the infant christ turns towards them, but at the same time lays his hand on the open book, as if to mark the place. the virgin turns towards the angel, who introduces tobias; while the latter dropping on his knees, looks up meekly to the divine infant. s. jerome looks over the book to the new-comers, as if ready to proceed with his occupation after the interruption. but the most important is the famous _madonna di san sisto_, at dresden. here the madonna appears as the queen of the heavenly host, in a brilliant glory of countless angel-heads, standing on the clouds, with the eternal son in her arms; s. sixtus and s. barbara kneel at the sides. both of them seem to connect the picture with the real spectators. this is a rare example of a picture of raphael's later time, executed entirely by his own hand. two large altar pictures still claim our attention; they also belong to raphael's later period. one is the _christ bearing the cross_, in madrid, known by the name of _lo spasimo di sicilia_, from the convent of santa maria dello spasimo at palermo, for which it was painted. here, as in the tapestries, we again find a finely conceived development of the event, and an excellent composition. the other is the _transfiguration_, now in the vatican, formerly in s. pietro at montorio. [illustration: plate ix.--raphael portrait of baldassare castiglione _louvre, paris_] this was the last work of the master (left unfinished at his death); the one which was suspended over his coffin, a trophy of his fame, for public homage. "i cannot believe myself in rome," wrote count castiglione, on the death of the master, "now that my poor raphael is no longer here." men regarded his works with religious veneration as if god had revealed himself through raphael as in former days through the prophets. his remains were publicly laid out on a splendid catafalque, while his last work, the _transfiguration_, was suspended over his head. he was buried in the pantheon, under an altar adorned by a statue of the holy virgin, a consecration offering from raphael himself. doubts having been raised as to the precise spot, a search was made in the pantheon in , and raphael's bones were found; the situation agreeing exactly with vasari's description of the place of interment. on the th of october, in the same year, the relics were reinterred in the same spot with great solemnities. * * * * * the schools of lombardy and the emilia, which derive their characteristics from florentine rather than from venetian influences, may here be briefly mentioned before turning to the consideration of the venetian school. in , it will be remembered, leonardo went to milan, where he remained till the end of the century; and the extent of his influence may be judged from many of the productions of bernadino luini ( - ) and giovanni antonio bazzi, known as sodoma ( - ). of ambrogio di predis we have already heard in connection with the painting of our version of leonardo's _virgin of the rocks_. giovanni antonio boltraffio ( - ) was a pupil of vincenzo foppa, but he soon abandoned the manner of the old lombard school, and came under the influence of the great florentine, of whom he became a most enthusiastic disciple. more independent--indeed, he is officially characterised as "an isolated phenomenon in italian art"--was antonio allegri, commonly called correggio, from the place of his birth. in he settled at parma, where he remained till , so that he is usually catalogued as of the school of parma, which for an isolated phenomenon serves as well as any other. of late years his popularity has been somewhat diminished by the increasing demands of private collectors for works which are purchasable, and most of correggio's are in public galleries. at dresden are some of the most famous, notably the _nativity_, called "la notte," from its wonderful scheme of illumination, and two or three large altar-pieces. the _venus mercury and cupid_ in our national gallery, though sadly injured, is still one of his masterpieces. it was purchased by charles i. with the famous collection of the duke of mantua. our _ecce homo_ is entitled to rank with it, as is also the little _madonna of the basket_. [illustration: plate x.--correggio mercury, cupid, and venus _national gallery, london_] _venetian schools_ i the vivarini and bellini in venice the byzantine style appears to have offered a more stubborn resistance to the innovators than in tuscany, or, in fact, in any other part of italy. few, if any, of the allegorical subjects with which giotto and his scholars decorated whole buildings are to be found here, and the altar pictures retain longer than anywhere else the gilt canopied compartments and divisions, and the tranquil positions of single figures. it was not until a century after the death of cimabue and duccio that the real development of the venetian school was manifested, so that when things did begin to move the conditions were not the same, and the results accordingly were something substantially different. the influence of the byzantine style still hangs heavily over the work of nicolo semitecolo, who was working in venice in the middle of the fourteenth century, as may be seen in the great altar-piece ascribed to him in the academy--the coronation of the virgin with fourteen scenes from the life of christ. in this work there is little of the general advancement visible in other parts of italy. it corresponds most nearly with the work of duccio of siena, though without attaining his excellence; while the gold hatchings and olive brown tones are still byzantine. an altar-piece, by michele giambono, also in the academy, painted during the first half of the fifteenth century, shows a more decided advance, and even anticipates some of the later excellences of the venetian school. the drapery is in the long and easy lines which we see in the tuscan pictures of the period, and what is especially significant, in view of the subsequent development of venetian painting, the colouring is rich, deep, and transparent, and the flesh tints unusually soft and warm. this is signed by giambono, and is one of his most important works, as well as the most complete, as it exists in its original state as an _ancona_ or altar-piece divided into compartments by canopies of joiners' work. it is unusual in form, inasmuch as the central panel, though slightly larger than the pair on either side, contains but a single figure. this figure was generally supposed to be the saviour, but it has recently been pointed out that it is s. james the great, the others being ss. john the evangelist, philip benizi, michael, and louis of toulouse. some of giambono's finest work was in mosaic, and the walls and roof of the cappella de'mascoli in s. mark's may be regarded as the highest achievement in mosaic of the early venetian school. while this species of decoration had given place to fresco painting elsewhere, it was here, in , brought to a pitch of perfection by giambono which entitles this work to a prominent place in the history of painting. but the two chief pioneers of the early fifteenth century were giovanni, or johannes alamanus, and antonio da murano. the former appears from his surname to have been of german origin, the latter belonged to the family of vivarini, and they used to work together on the same pictures. two excellent examples of this combination are in the academy at venice. the one, dated , is a coronation of the virgin, with many figures, including several boys, and numerous saints seated. in the heads of the saints we may trace the hand of alamanus, in the germanic type of countenance which recalls the style of stephen of cologne. a repetition of this, if it is not actually the original, is in s. pantalone at venice. the other picture, dated , of enormous dimensions, represents the virgin enthroned, beneath a canopy sustained by angels, with the four fathers of the church at her side. the colouring is fully as flowing and splendid as that of giambono. we do not recognise here, as kugler rightly observes, the influence of the school of giotto, but rather the types of the germanic style gradually assuming a new character, possibly owing to the social condition of venice itself. there was something perhaps in the nature of a rich commercial aristocracy of the middle ages calculated to encourage that species of art which offered the greatest splendour and elegance to the eye; and this also, if possible, in a portable form; thus preferring the domestic altar or the dedication picture to wall decorations in churches. the contemporary flemish paintings, under similar conditions, exhibit analogous results. with regard to colour, the depth and transparency observable in the works of the old venetian school had long been a distinguishing feature in the byzantine paintings on wood, and may therefore be traceable to this source without assuming an influence on the part of padua, or from the north through giovanni alamanus. the two side panels of an altar-piece, representing severally ss. peter and jerome, and ss. francis and mark, now in the national gallery (nos. and ), are ascribed to antonio vivarini alone, though the centre panel, the virgin and child, now in the poldi pezzoli collection at milan is said to be the joint work of alamanus and antonio. however that may be, there is no longer any dispute about the fascinating adoration of the kings in the kaiser friedrich museum at berlin, formerly supposed to be the work of gentile da fabriano, but now catalogued as that of antonio. in the name of alamanus disappears altogether, and that of bartolommeo vivarini, antonio's younger brother, replaces it in an inscription upon the great altar-piece commissioned by pope nicholas v. in commemoration of cardinal albergati, now in the pinacoteca of bologna. the change is noticeable as introducing the paduan influence of squarcione, under whom bartolommeo had studied, instead of the northern influence of alamanus, into antonio's workshop, and while this work of , as might be supposed, bears a general resemblance to that of , the change of partnership is at least perceptible, and had a determining influence on the development of the venetian style. a slightly earlier work of bartolommeo alone is a madonna and child belonging to sir hugh lane, signed and dated . an altar-piece in the venice academy is dated , a madonna and four saints, in the frari, , and s. barbara, in the academy, . bartolommeo is supposed to have died in . alvise, or luigi, vivarini was the son of antonio, and though he worked under him and his uncle bartolommeo, as well as under giovanni bellini, the paduan influence is apparent in his work. he was born in , and his first dated work is an altar-piece at montefiorentino, in . in the academy at venice is a madonna dated , and at naples a madonna with ss. francis and bernard, . another madonna at vienna is dated , and the large altar-piece in the basilica at the kaiser friedrich museum in berlin is assigned to about the same time. this is the first of his works in which the influence of bellini rather than that of his family is traceable, while of the "redentore" madonna at venice, of about five years later, mr bernhard bernson says that, "as a composition no work of the kind by giovanni bellini even rivals it." in he had advanced so far as to be spoken of as anticipating giorgione and titian, in the effect of light and in the roundness and softness of the figures of the _resurrection_, at bragora. his last work, the altar-piece at the frari, was completed after his death in by his pupil basaiti. bartolommeo montagna, jacopo da valenza and lorenzo lotto were the chief of his other pupils. in connection with the vivarini must be mentioned carlo crivelli, who studied with bartolommeo under antonio and squarcione. but there was something fierce and uncongenial about crivelli which takes him out of the main body of venetian painters, and seems to have given him more pride in being made a knight than in his pictorial achievements, remarkable as they were. in his ornamentation of every detail with gold and jewels he recalls the style of antonio vivarini, but while the master used it as accessory merely, crivelli positively revelled in it. an inventory of the precious stones, ornaments, fruits and flowers, and other detached items in the great "demidoff altar-piece" in the national gallery would fill several pages. of the eight examples in this gallery the earliest is probably the _dead christ_, presumably painted in . the demidoff altar-piece is dated . the _annunciation_ (no. ), which may be considered his masterpiece, was ten years later. in crivelli was knighted by prince ferdinand of capua, and from that date onward he was careful to add to his signature the title _miles_--as appears in our _madonna and child enthroned_, with ss. jerome and sebastian--called the madonna della rondine:---- carolus crivellus venetus miles pinxit. this was painted for the odoni chapel in s. francesco at matelica, the coat of arms of the family being painted on the step. our _annunciation_ was executed for the convent of the santissima annunziata at ascoli, and is dated . three coats of arms on the front of the step at the bottom of the picture are those of the bishop of ascoli, pope innocent vii., the reigning pontiff, and the city of ascoli. between these are the words _libertas ecclesiastica_, in allusion to the charter of self-government given in by the pope to the citizens of ascoli. the patron saint of the city, s. emidius, is represented as a youth kneeling beside the archangel, holding in his hands a model of it. the virgin is seen through the open door of a house, and in an open loggia above are peacocks and other birds. amid all the rich detail, the significance of the group of figures at the top of a flight of steps must not be missed, amongst which a child and a poet are the only two who are represented as noticing the mystic event. another painter of the earlier half of the fourteenth century may be mentioned here, though as he was more famous as a medallist his influence on the main course of painting is not observable. vittore pisano, called pisanello, was born in verona before , and died in . of the few pictures attributed to him we are fortunate in having two such beautiful examples as the _ss. anthony and george_ and _the vision of s. eustace_ in the national gallery. both exhibit his two most noticeable characteristics, namely, the minute care and exquisite feeling that made him the most famous of medallists, and his wonderful drawing of animals. the latter, it is worth remarking, was attributed by a former owner to albert dürer. the other is signed "pisanus"; in the frame are inserted casts of two of his medals, representing leonello d'este, his patron, and a profile of himself. another very considerable factor in the development of venetian painting was the influence of gentile da fabriano (_c._ - ), who settled in venice in the latter part of his life, and there formed the closest intimacy with antonio vivarini. the remarkable _adoration of the kings_ in the berlin museum was until lately given to gentile, though it is now catalogued as the work of antonio. of gentile's education little is known, and of the numerous works which he executed at fabriano, in rome and in venice very few have survived. from those that exist, however, we can form an estimate of his talents and of the difference between his earlier and later styles. to the first belong a fresco of the madonna in the cathedral at orvieto, and the beautiful picture of the madonna and saints which is now in the kaiser friedrich museum at berlin. also the fine _adoration of the kings_, inscribed with his name and the date , formerly in the sacristy of s. trinità at florence, and now in the accademia. this, his masterpiece, is one of the finest conceptions of the subject as well as one of the most excellent productions of the schools descended from giotto. of his later period the _coronation of the virgin_ (called the _quadro della romita_) in the brera gallery at milan is one of the finest. in many respects his work is like that of fra angelico, and was aptly characterised by michelangelo when he said that "gentile's pictures were like his name." apart from the influence of the paduan school, which will next be noticed, the venetian owed most to gentile da fabriano, if only as the master of jacopo bellini, whose son, giovanni bellini, may be regarded as the real head of the venetian school as developed by his pupils giorgione and titian at the opening of the sixteenth century. whether or not giotto left any actual pupils in padua after completing the frescoes in the chapel of the arena there, it must be admitted that the older school of painting in padua, which centred round the church containing the body of s. anthony, was an offshoot of the florentine, and that as giotto was the great leader in florence he must be considered the same here; though his followers differ so much from each other in style that beyond their indebtedness to their founder they have no distinctive feature in common. but with the opening of the fifteenth century one particular tendency was developed under the fostering influence of francesco squarcione, born in , which affected in a very sensible degree the style of the great painters of the next generation in venice. this, in a word, was the cult of the antique. among the florentines, as we have seen, the study of form was chiefly pursued on the principle of direct reference to nature, the especial object in view being an imitation in two dimensions of the actual appearances and circumstances of life existing in three. in the paduan school it now came to be very differently developed, namely, by the study of the masterpieces of antique sculpture, in which the common forms of nature were already raised to a high ideal of beauty. this school has consequently the merit, as kugler points out, of applying the rich results of an earlier, long-forgotten excellence in art to modern practice. of a real comprehension of the idealising principle of classic art there does not appear any trace; what the paduans borrowed from the antique was limited primarily to mere outward beauty. accordingly in the earliest examples we find the drapery treated according to the antique costume, and the general arrangement more resembling bas-relief than rounded groups. the accessories display in like manner a special attention to antique models, particularly in the architecture, and the frequent introduction of festoons of fruit; while the exaggerated sharpness in the marking of the forms due to the combined influence of the study of the antique and the naturalising tendency of the time, sometimes borders on excess. the immediate cause of this almost sudden outbreak of the cult of the antique--whatever natural forces were behind it--was the visit of squarcione to greece, and southern italy, to collect specimens of the remains of ancient art. on his return to padua his collection soon attracted a great number of pupils anxious to avail themselves of the advantages it offered; and by these pupils, who poured in from all parts of italy, the manner of the school was afterwards spread throughout a great portion of the country. squarcione himself is better known as a teacher than as an artist, the few of his remaining works being of no great importance. there is no example in the national gallery, but of the work of his great pupil, mantegna, we have as much, at any rate, as will serve to commemorate the master. andrea mantegna was born at vicenza in , and when no more than ten years old was inscribed in the guild of padua as pupil and adopted son of squarcione. as early as he had painted an altar-piece for santa sophia, now lost, and in the fresco in san antonio. in he was engaged with nicolo pizzolo (donatello's assistant), and others, on the six frescoes in the eremitani church at padua. the whole of the left side of the chapel of ss. james and christopher--the life of s. james--and the martyrdom of s. christopher are his, and in these, his earliest remaining works, we already see the result of pedantic antiquarianism combined with his extraordinary individuality. in he went to mantua, where he remained for the greater part of his life, visiting florence in and rome in . among his earlier works are the small _adoration of the kings_ in the uffizi at florence, the _death of the virgin_ and the _s. george_ in the venice academy. from to he was intermittently engaged on the nine great cartoons of _the triumph of cæsar_, which are now at hampton court, having been acquired by charles i. with many other gems from the duke of mantua's collection. on the completion of these he painted the celebrated _madonna della vittoria_, now in the louvre--a large altar-piece representing a madonna surrounded by saints, with francesco gonzaga, duke of mantua, and his wife, kneeling at her feet. it is a dedication picture for a victory obtained over charles viii. of france in . it is no less remarkable for its superb execution than for a softer treatment of the flesh than is usual in mantegna's work. two other pictures in the louvre are, however, distinguished by similar qualities--the _parnassus_, painted in , and the _triumph of virtue_. [illustration: plate xi.--andrea mantegna the madonna della vittoria _louvre, paris_] in our own collection we have _the agony in the garden_, painted in --to which i shall refer presently--two monochrome paintings (nos. and ), the beautiful _virgin and child enthroned_, with ss. mary magdalen and john the baptist, which is comparable with the more famous louvre _madonna_, and, lastly, the _triumph of scipio_, in monochrome, painted for francesco cornaro, a venetian nobleman, completed in , only a few months before the painter's death. in this we see that mantegna's antiquarianism was not simply a youthful phase, but lasted till the very end of his career. the subject is the reception of the phrygian mother of the gods among the recognised divinities of the roman state, as is indicated on the plinth by the inscription. in the centre is claudia quinta about to kneel before the bust of the goddess. behind is scipio, and in the background are monuments to his family. the composition includes twenty-two figures. it is significant that the subject and its treatment are so entirely classic as only to be appreciated by references to latin literature. another significance attaches to the _agony in the garden_ above mentioned, which is one of the very earliest, as the _scipio_ is the very latest, of mantegna's pictures, being painted before he left padua to go to mantua. in this we find that the original suggestion for the design appears to have been taken from a drawing in the sketch-book of his father-in-law, jacopo bellini, which is now in the british museum; and the same design appears to have served giovanni bellini in the composition of the picture in our gallery (no. ). this takes us back to venice, and accounts for the paduan influence traceable in the works of the bellini family and their pupils. jacopo bellini, whose considerable talents have been somewhat obscured by the fame of his two sons, gentile and giovanni, was originally a pupil of gentile da fabriano, after whom he named his eldest son. he was working in padua in the middle of the fifteenth century, in rivalry with squarcione, and in his daughter nicolosia married andrea mantegna. thus it happened that both of his sons came under the influence of mantegna, and evidently, too, of the sculptor donatello, when working at padua between and . very few authentic pictures by jacopo are known to us. _a crucifixion_ (much repainted) was in the sacristy of the episcopal palace at verona; and another, which recalls the treatment of his master, gentile da fabriano, at lovere, near bergamo. in the sketch-book above mentioned, the contents of which consist of sacred subjects, and studies from the antique, both in architecture and in costume, we see the peculiar tendency of the paduan school expressed in the most complete and comprehensive manner. these drawings constitute the most remarkable link of connection between mantegna and the sons of jacopo bellini, all three of whom must have studied from them. the book was inherited by gentile on his mother's death, and bequeathed by him to his brother on condition that he should finish the picture of _s. mark_, on which gentile was engaged at the time of his death. giovanni bellini was born in or and lived to . albert dürer, writing from venice in , says that "he is very old, but is still the best in painting." the greater number of bellini's pictures are to be found in the galleries and churches in venice, all of those which are dated being the work of his old age. of his earlier pictures we are fortunate in having two fine examples in the national gallery, _christ's agony in the garden_ (no. ) and _the blood of the redeemer_ (no. ). in both of these the influence of his famous brother-in-law andrea mantegna, is traceable,--the former being till lately attributed to him. both giovanni and gentile worked in padua, where mantegna was established, in or thereabouts, and where another influence, that of the sculptor donatello, must have had its effect on the young brothers. similar in character, and even more beautiful in some respects, is the _redeemer_, a single half figure in a landscape, recently acquired for the louvre--the first authentic example of the master in that collection. in , giovanni had returned to venice, and it was some years before the severe paduan influence melted before "the sensuous feeling of the true venetian temperament." in , however, the arrival of antonello da messina in venice, bringing with him the practice of painting in oil, effected a revolution, in which giovanni, if not one of the foremost, was certainly one of the most successful in adopting the new method. his later works, so far from showing any diminution of power, may be said to anticipate the venetian style of the sixteenth century in the clearest manner. one of the chief, dated , is the large altar-piece in the sacristy of s. maria di frari, a _madonna enthroned_ with two angels and four saints. the two little angels are of the utmost beauty; the one is playing on a lute, and listens with head inclined to hear whether the instrument is in tune; the other is blowing a pipe. the whole is perfectly finished and of a splendid effect of colour. to the year belongs a _madonna enthroned with six saints_, now in the academy at venice. the famous head of the doge loredano in the national gallery must have been painted in or after . in , he completed the large picture of _s. mark preaching at alexandria_, now in the brera gallery at milan, begun by his brother gentile. within three years of his death, namely in , he could produce such a masterwork as the altar-piece in s. giovanni crisostomo. his last work, the landscape in which was finished by titian, is dated . this is the famous _bacchanal_ now in the collection of the duke of northumberland. the influence of bellini on the venetian school was paramount, and his noble example helped more than anything else to develop the excellences observable in the works of cimada conegliano, vincenzo catena, lorenzo lotto, palma vecchio and basaiti, to say nothing of his great pupils titian and giorgione. it is impossible to conjecture what course the genius of this younger generation would have taken without his guidance, but when we consider that in bellini was seventy years old, and had stored within his mind the experience of his early association with his brother-in-law andrea mantegna in padua, the introduction of the use of oil paints by antonello da messina in , since which date he had sedulously developed the new practice; when we also take into account the dignity and gravity of his own works, and the indication they afford of the man himself, it is not difficult to judge how much his pupils and successors owed to him. the works of gentile bellini, the elder brother of giovanni, are of less importance, but of considerable interest, especially in view of his journey to constantinople in at the request of the sultan, whose portrait he painted there in the following year. a replica [illustration: plate xii.--giovanni bellini the doge loredano _national gallery, london_] of this portrait has been bequeathed to the national gallery by sir henry layard, and it is to be hoped that the difficulties raised by the italian government as to its removal from venice will shortly be overcome. the picture of _s. mark preaching at alexandria_ already mentioned as having been finished by giovanni, is remarkable for the oriental costumes of all the figures in it. gentile's pictures are often ascribed to his brother; in two examples at the national gallery (nos. and ) there is actually a false signature on a cartellino. in the latter instance messrs ludwig and molmenti are still of opinion that the picture is the work of giovanni. vincenzo catena (_c._ - ) is not known to have been a pupil of bellini, but he began by so modelling his style upon him that one of his works in the national gallery was until quite lately officially ascribed to him, namely the _s. jerome in his study_. another, a later work, _a warrior adoring the infant christ_ was similarly ascribed to giorgione. this is a proof that catena was very susceptible to various influences, and was "an artist of extraordinary suppleness of mind, never too old to learn or to appreciate new ideals and new sentiments." in a manner more his own is the _madonna with four saints_ in the berlin gallery (no. ). the _s. jerome_ and the _warrior_ are among the most popular pictures in the national gallery--partly perhaps on account of their supposed illustrious parentage, but by no means entirely. a painter who could so absorb the characteristics of two such masters must needs be a master himself. cima da conegliano, so called from his birthplace in friuli--the rocky height of which serves as a background in some of his pictures--settled in venice in , when he was about thirty years old. the influence of bellini may be seen in the temperamental as well as the technical qualities of his work, which is distinguished by sound drawing and proportion, fine and brilliant colour, as well as by sympathetic types of countenance. one of his best and earliest pictures is the _s. john the baptist_ with four other saints, in santa maria del orto in venice. another is the _madonna with s. jerome and s. louis_, now in the vienna gallery. a smaller but peculiarly attractive piece is the _s. anianus of alexandria_ healing a shoemaker's wounded hand, at berlin, distinguished for its beautiful clear colours and the life-like character of the heads. andrea previtali, born in bergamo in , came to venice to study under bellini, whom he succeeded in imitating with remarkable success. _the mystic marriage of s. catherine_ (no. ) in the national gallery was formerly attributed to bellini. if he had not the originality to carry the art any farther, his pictures are nevertheless a decided and very agreeable proof of the advance that was being made in it at the beginning of the sixteenth century, before the full splendour of giorgione and titian had unfolded. marco basaiti, though probably not a pupil of bellini, nevertheless acquired many of his characteristics. the picture in the national gallery known as _the madonna of the meadow_ was until lately assigned to bellini, and another of his, in the giovanelli palace at venice, which is identical in technique, tone, and general effect with this one, is still so ascribed. whether or not he learnt from bellini, he was certainly an assistant to alvise vivarini, on whose death he completed the large altar-piece in the church of s. maria de friari at venice, representing _s. ambrose surrounded by saints_. his _christ on the mount of olives_ and _the calling of zebedee_, both dated , are now in the academy at venice, and together with the _portrait of a man_, dated , in the bergamo gallery, and _the assumption_ in s. pietro martire at murano, may be considered his best performances. more remote from bellini, yet not so far as to be entirely free from his influence in some of their more important compositions, was the school formed by lazzaro di bastiani or sebastiani, of which the chief ornament was vittore carpaccio, and among the lesser ones giovanni mansueti and benedetto diana. the history of this independent group of painters has only of late years been elucidated; kugler, after a page devoted to carpaccio, dismissed them with the remark that mansueti and bastiani were both pupils of carpaccio, and that benedetto diana was "less distinguished." our national collection was without any example until , when mansueti's _symbolic representation of the crucifixion_ was purchased. in the national art-collections fund secured bastiani's _virgin and child_, and in sir claude phillips presented diana's _christ blessing_. alas! that we are still without anything from the hand of vittore carpaccio. seven portraits by moroni do not fill a gap like this. the name of lazzaro de bastiani first occurs in venice as a witness to his brother's will in , and as early as he was painting an altar-piece for the church of san samuele. ten years later, the brothers of the scuolo di san marco ordered a picture of the _story of david_ from him, promising him the same payment as they gave to jacobo bellini, who had been working for them with his two sons gentile and giovanni. in , another proof of his rank and repute as a painter is afforded by a letter from a gentleman in constantinople, asking for a picture by him, but that giovanni bellini should paint it in the event of bastiani being already dead. he was thus, it would seem, preferred to bellini, though it will be remembered that five years later, when the sultan expressed the wish that a distinguished portrait-painter should be sent him from venice, it was gentile bellini who was nominated. all the same, gentile was a portrait-painter, and bastiani was not; and it is fairly evident that the latter was at least in the front rank. one of his best-known pictures the _vergine dai begli occhi_ in the ducal palace at venice used to be attributed to giovanni bellini; but though he appears to have drawn inspiration for his larger and more important compositions from jacobo bellini, his style was chiefly developed through that of giambono. his most important work is now in the academy at vienna--an altar-piece painted for the church of corpus domini, venice, _s. veneranda enthroned_. in the imperial gallery at vienna are a _last communion_ and _funeral of s. girolamo_. in the academy at venice are _s. anthony of padua_, seated between the branches of a walnut-tree, with cardinal bonaventura and brother leo on either side, a large picture of a _miracle of the holy cross_, and a remarkable rendering of _the madonna kneeling_, the child being laid under an elaborate canopy. an _entombment_ in the church of s. antonino at venice is reminiscent of giovanni bellini at his best. in , the name of vittore carpaccio occurs with that of bastiani in connection with the frescoes of giorgione upon the façade of the fondaco de tedeschi, about which there was a dispute. to carpaccio we are indebted for the most vivid realization of the contemporary life of venice; for although his subjects were nominally taken from sacred history or legend, they are treated in a thoroughly secular fashion, giving the clearest idea of the buildings, people, and costume of the venice of his time, with the greatest variety and richest development. his object is not only to represent single events, but a complete scene, and while we observe this characteristic in one or two pictures by the bellini, carpaccio not only shows it much oftener, but carries it to a much fuller development--possibly influenced by the netherlandish masters. many of his works are in the academy at venice; eight large pictures, painted between and , represent the history of s. ursula and the eleven thousand virgins. such a wealth of charming material might have embarrassed a less capable painter, but "the monotonous incident which forms the groundwork of many of them," as kugler coldly puts it, "is throughout varied and elevated by a free style of grouping and by happy moral allusions." another series is that of the _miracles of the holy cross_, among which may be especially noticed the cure of a man possessed by a devil; the scene is laid in the loggia of a venetian palace, and is watched from below by a varied group of figures on the canal and its banks. larger and broader treatment may be seen in the _presentation in the temple_, painted in , which is also in the academy, and in the altar-piece of _s. vitale_, dated . this last brings carpaccio into closer comparison with the later venetian painters, being in the nature of a _santa conversazione_, where the holy personages are grouped in some definite relation to each other, and not independent figures. palma vecchio ( - ), so called to distinguish him from giacomo palma the younger--palma giovane,--was so much influenced by giorgione and titian that his indebtedness to bellini appears to have been comparatively slight. the beautiful _portrait of a poet_ in the national gallery has been attributed both to giorgione and to titian. the number of pictures which are now permitted by the experts to be called giorgione's is so small, that we may learn more about him as an influence on the work of other painters--especially titian--than from the meagre materials available for his own biography. the only unquestioned examples of his work are three pictures at the uffizi, _the trial of moses_, _the judgment of solomon_, and _the knight of malta_; the _venus_ at dresden; _the three philosophers_ at vienna; and the famous _concert champêtre_ in the louvre. but until the critics deprive him even of these, we are able to agree that "his capital achievement was the invention of the modern spirit of lyrical passion and romance in pictorial art, and his magical charm has never been equalled." ii tiziano vecellio titian occupies almost, if not quite, as important a place in the history of painting as does shakespeare in that of literature. his fame, his popularity, the wide range as well as the immense quantity of his works, entitle him to be ranked with our poet, if only for the [illustration: plate xiii.--giorgione venetian pastoral _louvre, paris_] enormous influence they have both exercised on posterity: and without carrying the parallel farther than the limits imposed by the difference of their circumstances and their method of expression, it may fairly be said that titian, in painting, stands for us to-day much as shakespeare stands for in letters. "titian," says m. caro delvaille,[ ] "is the father of modern painting. as the blood of the patriarchs of old infused the veins of a whole race, so the genius of the most productive of painters was destined to infuse those of artists through all the ages even to the present day. he bequeathed, in his enormous _oeuvre_, a heritage in which generations of painters have participated." not only was he the father of modern painting, but he was himself the first modern painter, just as shakespeare was, to all present intents and purposes, the first modern writer. among a thousand readers of shakespeare, there is possibly not more than one who has ever read a line of chaucer, or who has ever heard of any of his other predecessors. so it is with titian. to the connoisseur, titian is one of the latest painters; to the public he is the earliest. "in certain of his portraits," we read in the national gallery catalogue, "he ranks with the supreme masters; in certain other aspects he is seen as the greatest academician, as perhaps he was the first." as it happens, too, titian stands in much the same relation to giorgione as shakespeare did to marlowe. giorgione was really the great innovator, and giorgione died young, leaving titian to carry on the work. it has always been supposed that titian and giorgione, like marlowe and shakespeare, were born within the same year; but in this respect the parallel is no longer admissible, as mr herbert cook has shown to the verge of actual proof that the story of titian being born in , and having lived to be ninety-nine years old, is unworthy of acceptance. if this were merely a question of biography, it would not be worth dwelling upon; but as it seriously affects the whole study of early venetian painting, it is necessary to point out that the probability, according to a critical study of all the evidence available, is that titian was not born till or , and was thus really the pupil rather than the contemporary of giorgione, and therefore more slightly influenced by giovanni bellini than has been generally supposed. without going into all the evidence adduced by mr cook (_reviews and appreciations,_ heinemann, ) it is nevertheless pretty evident that in the account given by his friend and contemporary, lodovico dolce, published in , we have the most authentic story of titian's early years, and from this it is quite clear that titian was considerably younger than giorgione. "being born at cadore," he writes, "of honourable parents, he was sent, when a child of nine years old, by his father to venice, to the house of his father's brother, in order that he might be put under some proper master to study painting; his father having perceived in him even at that tender age strong marks of genius towards the art.... his uncle directly carried the child to the house of sebastanio, father of the _gentilissimo_ valerio and of francesco zuccati (distinguished masters of the art of mosaic, ...) to learn the principles of the art. from them he was removed to gentile bellini, brother of giovanni, but much inferior to him, who at that time was at work with his brother in the grand council chamber. but titian, impelled by nature to greater excellence and perfection in his art, could not endure following the dry and laboured manner of gentile, but designed with boldness and expedition. whereupon gentile told him he would make no progress in painting because he diverged so much from the old style. thereupon titian left the stupid gentile and found means to attach himself to giovanni bellini; but not perfectly pleased with his manner, he chose giorgio da castel franco. titian, then, drawing and painting with giorgione, as he was called, became in a short time so accomplished in art that when giorgione was painting (in - ) the façade of the fondaco de'tedeschi, or exchange of the german merchants, which looks towards the grand canal, titian was allotted the other side which faces the market place, being at the time scarcely twenty years old. here he represented a judith of wonderful design and colour, so remarkable indeed, that when the work came to be uncovered it was commonly thought to be the work of giorgione, and all the latter's friends congratulated him (giorgione) as being by far the best thing he had produced. whereupon giorgione, in great displeasure, replied that the work was from the hand of his pupil, who showed already how he could surpass his master and (what is more) giorgione shut himself up for some days at home, as if in despair, seeing that a young (_i.e._ younger) man knew more than he did." again, in speaking of the famous altar-piece--the _assumption_, now in the academy at venice--painted by titian in , dolce mentions him twice as "giovinetto." "not long afterwards he was commissioned to paint a large picture for the high altar of the church of the frate minori, where titian, quite a young man, painted in oil the virgin ascending to heaven.... this was the first public work which he painted in oil, and he did it in a very short time, and while still a young man." vasari's account of titian's early years is substantially the same, but unfortunately opens with the statement that he was "born in the year ." this might easily have been a slip of the pen or a printer's mistake for or , and subsequent passages in the life bear out this supposition. but partly because titian was a venetian and not a florentine, and partly, no doubt, because he was still alive, and had been producing picture after picture for over sixty years at the time vasari published his second edition in , the whole account is so confused and inaccurate that its credit has been severely shaken by modern critics, with the result that it is hardly nowadays considered authentic in any respect. the following extracts, however, there seems no reason to question:---- "about the year , giorgione not being satisfied [with the old-fashioned methods of bellini and others] began to give his works an unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner." and a little later "having seen the manner of giorgione, titian early resolved to abandon that of gian bellino, although well grounded therein. he now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a short time so closely imitated giorgione that his pictures were sometimes taken for those of this master, as will be related below. increasing in age, judgment and facility of hand, our young artist executed numerous works in fresco.... at the time when he began to adopt the manner of giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the portrait of a gentleman of the barberigo family, who was his friend, and this was considered very beautiful, the colouring being true and natural, the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted, as might also the stitches in a satin doublet painted in the same work; in a word, it was so well and carefully done that it would have been taken for a work of giorgione if titian had not written his name on the dark ground." with this we may leave the question of titian's birth date, and consider the exceptional interest attaching to the question of this barberigo portrait. according to mr. cook, and also, under reserve, to several other eminent authorities, it is no other than the so-called _ariosto_, which was purchased for the national gallery in . the chief difficulties in deciding the question are, first, whether it is possible that a youth of eighteen could have painted such a masterpiece, second, that the signature _titianus_ is supposed not to have been used by the artist before about , and lastly, that the head, at any rate, is decidedly more in the manner of giorgione than that of titian. this last, of course, did not trouble vasari, and his testimony is therefore all the more valuable; but all difficulties vanish if we accept mr. cook's theory that the portrait was begun by giorgione in , was left incomplete at his sudden death in , and finished by titian in . that is to say, the head and general design is that of giorgione, the marvellous finish of the sleeve and other parts that of titian. of works left unfinished at a master's death and completed by a pupil there are numerous instances; the famous _bacchanal_ at alnwick is one which takes us a step further in titian's career. this was begun by giovanni bellini, and titian was invited by the duke of ferrara, in , to finish it. the landscape is entirely his. to complete the decoration of the apartment in which the picture was hung, he was called upon to paint two others of the same size, one the _triumph of bacchus_, or as it is usually called _bacchus and ariadne_ (now in the national gallery) and the other a similar subject, the _bacchanal_, now in the prado (no. , formerly ). ridolfi, in his life of titian characterises our picture as one to whose unparalleled merits he is inadequate to do justice; "there is," he says, "such a graceful expression in the figure of ariadne, such beauty in the children--so strongly marked both in the looks and attitudes is the joyous character of the licentious votaries of bacchus--the roundness and correct drawing of the man entwined with snakes, the magnificence of the sky and landscape, the sporting play of the leaves and branches of the most vivid tints, and the detailed herbage on the ground tending to enliven the scene, and the rich tone of colour throughout, form altogether such a whole that hardly any other work of titian can stand in competition with it." in the composition of the second picture, _the bacchanal_ at madrid, a number of the votaries of bacchus are assembled on the bank of a rivulet, flowing with red wine from a hill in the distance; some of them are distributing the liquor to their associates, while a nymph and two men are dancing. the nymph is supposed to be a portrait of violante, titan's mistress, as he has painted, in allusion to her name, a violet on her breast and his own name round her arm. her light drapery is raised by the breeze, and discovers the beautiful form and _morbidezza_ of her limbs. in the foreground ariadne lies asleep, her head resting on a rich vase in place of a pillow.[ ] [illustration: plate xiv.--titian portrait said to be of ariosto _national gallery, london_] cumberland says that raphael mengs, who lived long at madrid at the time when this picture was in the reception room of the new palace, was of opinion that titian's superior taste was nowhere more strikingly displayed, and remarks that he himself could never pass by it without surprise and admiration, more particularly excited by the beauty of the sleeping ariadne in the foreground. respecting the merits of both pictures the testimony of agostino carracci should not be omitted; when he viewed them in the possession of the duke of ferrara he declared that he considered them the first in the world, and that no one could say he was acquainted with the most marvellous works of art without having seen them. commenting upon another picture of titian's early period, sir joshua reynolds delivers himself of the following criticisms on titian as compared with raphael, "it is to titian that we must turn," he says, "to find excellence in regard to colour, and light and shade in the highest degree. he was both the first and the greatest master of this art; by a few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of whatever object he attempted, and produced by this alone a truer representation of nature than his master, giovanni bellini, or any of his predecessors, who finished every hair. his greatest object was to express the general colour, to preserve the masses of light and shade, and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable from natural objects.... "raphael and titian seemed to have looked at nature for different purposes; they both had the power of extending their view to the whole, but one looked only at the general effect as produced by form, the other as produced by colour. we cannot refuse titian the merit of attending to the general form of the object, as well as colour; but his deficiency lay--a deficiency at least when he is compared with raphael--in not possessing the power, like him, of correcting the form of his model by any general idea of beauty in his own mind. of this his _st. sebastian with other saints_ (in the vatican) is a particular instance. this figure appears to be a most exact representation both of the form and colour of the model which he then happened to have before him, and has all the force of nature, and the colouring of flesh itself; but unluckily the model was of a bad form, especially the legs. titian has with much care preserved these defects, as he has imitated the beauty and brilliancy of the colouring...." of the sebastian, vasari says very much the same as reynolds. "he is nude," he writes, "and has been exactly copied from the life without the slightest admixture of art, no efforts for the sake of beauty have been sought in any part--trunk or limbs; all is as nature left it, so that it might seem to be a sort of cast from the life. it is nevertheless considered very fine, and the figure of our lady with the infant in her arms, whom all the other figures are looking at, is also accounted most beautiful." two more of the pictures of titian's earliest period are in the national gallery--the _christ appearing to mary magdalen_ (no. ), and the _holy family_ (no. ). the former is ascribed to about the year , partly on the ground that the group of buildings in the landscape is identical, line for line, with that in the dresden _venus_ painted by giorgione but completed by titian after his death. the same landscape also occurs in the beautiful little _cupid_ in the vienna [illustration: plate xv.--titian the holy family _national gallery, london_] academy, and, as mr herbert cook suggests, possibly represents some cherished spot in titian's memory connected with his mountain home at pieve di cadore. the _holy family_, above mentioned, is a most charming example of the _sacra conversazione_ as developed by titian from the somewhat formal and austere conception of bellini and his contemporaries into something eminently characteristic of the secular side of his genius. the very titles of two of his most beautiful and most famous pictures of this sort proclaim the hold they have taken on the popular mind. the one is the _madonna of the cherries_, in the vienna gallery. the other is the _madonna with the rabbit_, in the louvre. in our picture the distinguishing feature is the kneeling shepherd, with his little water-cask slung on his belt, who puts us at once in touch with the whole scene by the simple appeal to our common human experience. raphael could move our religious feelings to revere the godhead in the child, but could seldom, like titian, stir our human emotions and bring home to us that christ was born on earth for our sakes. if this particular characteristic of titian were confined to the pastoral setting of these holy conversations, it might be taken as merely accidental, and without further significance than should be accorded to a youthful fancy. but in the wonderful _entombment_, now in the louvre, in which he displays "the full splendour of his early maturity," the human element is such an important factor in the presentment of the divine tragedy that even a painter, m. caro-delvaille, must postpone his description of the picture to sentences like these:--"sur un ciel tourmenté," he writes, in phrases which it is impossible to render adequately in english, "se profile le groupe tragique. aucun geste superflu; le drame est intérieur. la douleur plane dans l'air alourdi du crépuscule, comme une aile fatale--jésus est mort! le grand cadavre livide, que les apôtres angoissés soutiennent, n'a rien dans sa robustesse inerte de la dépouille émaciée des christs mystiques. le fils de dieu semble un patriarche douloureusement frappé par le décret d'en haut. "une âpreté primitive, où les larmes se cachent comme une faiblesse, communique a l'oeuvre un pathétique si poignant que le mystère de la mort s'étend jusqu'à nous. "la vierge et la madeleine sont là. elle, la mère, doute de la réalité, tant elle souffre! son regard fixe sur le corps chéri, elle ne peut croire que tout est consommé. la pécheresse pitoyable la prend dans ses bras pour essayer de l'arracher à l'horreur de cette vision. "drame humain et divin! ne sont-ce point des fils qui ramènent le cadavre de leur père à la poussière? tous ceux qui passèrent par ces épreuves se souviennent de ce deuil qui semble se prolonger dans la nature entière." titian's first period may be said to end in , by which time he had completed the famous _peter martyr_, which was destroyed by fire in . in , too, titian's wife died. this event of itself need not be supposed to have greatly influenced his career, as there is no evidence of her having appealed to his artistic nature as did his daughter lavinia. as it happened, however, a more certain influence was nearly coincident with this event--the arrival in venice of the notorious aretine, who, chiefly as it appears, with an eye to business, entered into the most intimate relations with titian. the accession of the sculptor [illustration: plate xvi.--titian the entombment _louvre, paris_] sansovino to the comradeship earned for the group the name of the triumvirate. so far from titian being corrupted by the society of aretine, there is direct evidence in one of the poet's letters to him that he was not. "you must come to our feast to-night," he writes, "but i may as well warn you that you had better leave early, as i know how particular you are about certain things." nor is there anything in the artist's works of this next period--which we may roughly date from to , that betrays a more serious devotion to the sensual side of life than can be accounted for by the demands of the high and mighty patrons that aretine was soon to find for him. as an artist he looked upon woman as a beautiful creature, as a man he most probably never troubled about her, or was troubled by her. there is no proof that any of his pictures are rightly called "titian's mistress," and we may conclude that he was as good a husband and a father as was rubens, who revelled in painting woman, or velasquez, who seems to have frankly disliked it. like rowlandson, whom the general public only know as a caricaturist, but who when he once got away from london was the most pure minded and poetical artist, so titian, when once dissociated from the demands of corrupt patrons, like philip ii., never reveals himself as having fallen under the influence of aretine--if indeed at all. the _danaë_ and the _venus and a musician_ at the prado are the only examples it is possible to cite--unless it be the _venus_, to which popular opinion would hardly deny its place of honour in the tribune at the uffizi. at the same time the difference in circumstances, the fuller, richer life that he must have led in these years of patronage and prosperity, accounts for a certain "shallowness and complacency" which distinguishes his work during this period as sharply from that which preceded as from that which followed it; and fine as is his accomplishment during these years, especially in portraiture, it includes fewer of those masterpieces which appeal to the heart as much as to the eye. to belongs the large and beautiful picture of the _presentation of the virgin mary in the temple_, painted for the scuola della carità in venice, which is now occupied by the academy, where it still hangs, as is said, in its original place. it is twenty-two feet in length, and contains several portraits, among which are those of his daughter lavinia (the virgin, as is supposed), andrea franchescini, grand chancellor of venice, in a scarlet robe; next him, in black, lazzaro crasso, a lawyer, and certain monks of the convent following them. we now find titian employed by the duke of urbino on some of the principal works of this period. among these were the uffizi _venus_, said to be a portrait of the duchess herself. the _girl in a fur mantle_ at vienna, portraits of the duke and of the duchess ( ), and the so-called _la bella_ at the uffizi. the so-called _duke of norfolk_ at the pitti, supposed to represent the young duke guidobaldo of urbino. also the _isabella d'este_ at vienna, and somewhat earlier, the _cardinal ippolito_ in hungarian dress, at the pitti; and the _daughter of robert strozzi_, at berlin. the large _ecce homo_ in the vienna gallery, dated , measuring ft. in. by ft. in. was for some years in london, and with better fortune might still be in this country if not in our national collection. it was one of the nineteen pictures by titian in the wonderful collection of rubens, which the duke of buckingham persuaded him to sell to him for a fabulous price. the collection was shipped to england in , when the pictures were taken to york house in the strand, and the statues and gems to chelsea. in a portion of the collection was sold at brussels, and the _ecce homo_ was purchased there by the archduke leopold for his gallery at prague, which now forms part of that at vienna. the earl of arundel offered the duke of buckingham £ for it--an unheard of price, especially when we remember the greater value of money at that time. with another masterpiece--fortunately still preserved in the prado, though not entirely uninjured by fire--we may close the second period. this is the magnificent equestrian portrait of _the emperor charles v._ which was painted at augsburg in . a few years later the emperor abdicated in favour of his egregious son, philip ii., of whom titian painted three portraits in succession. the second of these, now in the prado, has an especial interest for us, inasmuch as it was painted for the benefit or the enticement of queen mary before her marriage to philip. as might be expected, it is a highly flattering likeness,--in white and gold, in half armour. to quote m. caro-delvaille, this king of _auto da fés_ and sunken galleys is here nothing more than a gallant cavalier--neurasthenic but elegant. for england was also painted the _venus and adonis_, in ; but unfortunately the original is now in madrid, and only a copy in our national gallery. however, the remains of philip are there too, and not in westminster abbey! a copy of another famous picture painted by titian for the emperor charles v. was also in the collection of the duke of buckingham, who probably brought it with him when he returned from his madcap expedition with prince charles to madrid. it is described in his catalogue as "one great piece of the emperor charles, a copy called titian's glory, being the principal in spain, now in the escurial." this was the great _paradise_, or apotheosis of charles v. which charles took with him into spain at the time of his abdication and placed in the monastery of st. juste, in estramadura, to which he retired. after his death it was removed by philip ii. to madrid. of the two versions of _the crowning with thorns_, the earlier one at the louvre, painted in , is more familiar to, and probably more popular with, the general public than the much later one at munich painted in . but for the real merits of the two we need not hesitate to accept m. caro-delvaille's judgment, since if he had any bias it would be in favour of his own country's treasure. the former he characterises as an incoherent composition, in which useless gesticulation diminishes the dramatic effect, while striving to force it; and adds that all the false romanticism of painting comes from this sort of theatrical pathos. of the other he writes "it was the picture at the louvre which shocked me with its violent declamation and its forced blows that never hit anything. but here at munich a mystery so profound broods over the drama that the melodramatic element disappears. the scene becomes tragic, lamentable, hopelessly sad. the great artist with a brush that trembles in his aged hands paints but the sentiment of it, to exhale from his work like a plaintive sigh. the veil of death descends and spreads over life.... titian might seem to have painted it as an offering to rembrandt when he, too, should feel the approach of death." another of his latest pictures, the _adam and eve in paradise_, is in the prado (no. , formerly ). this was copied, or one might almost say travestied, by rubens when he was at madrid in , and his work was hung in the same room with it. as the colouring is of a lower tone than is usual with titian, and the attitudes of the figures extremely simple and natural, the contrast is all the more marked, and was well expressed by cumberland, who said that "when we contemplate titian's picture of adam and eve we are convinced they never wore clothes; turn to the copy, and the same persons seem to have laid theirs aside." a more generous comparison between these two painters is made by reynolds in a note on du fresnoy's poem on painting respecting the qualities of regularity and uniformity. "an instance occurs to me where those two qualities are separately exhibited by two great painters, rubens and titian: the picture of rubens is in the church of s. augustine at antwerp, the subject (if that may be called a subject where no story is represented) is the virgin and infant christ placed high in the picture on a pedestal with many saints about them and as many below them, with others on the steps to serve as a link to unite the upper and lower part of the picture. the composition of this picture is perfect in its kind; the artist has shown the greatest skill in composing and contrasting more than twenty figures without confusion and without crowding; the whole appearing as much animated and in motion as it is possible where nothing is to be done. "the picture of titian which we would oppose to this is in the church of the s. frari at venice (the "pesaro madonna," where the two donors kneel below the virgin enthroned). one peculiar character of this piece is grandeur and simplicity, which proceed in a great measure from the regularity of the composition, two of the principal figures being represented kneeling directly opposite to each other, and nearly in the same attitude. this is what few painters would have had the courage to venture; rubens would certainly have rejected so unpicturesque a mode of composition had it occurred to him. both these pictures are excellent in their kind, and may be said to characterize their respective authors. there is a bustle and animation in the work of rubens, a quiet solemn majesty in that of titian. the excellence of rubens is the picturesque effect he produces; the superior merit of titian is in the appearance of being above seeking after any such "artificial excellence." the most important artist besides titian who was a pupil of giorgione was sebastiano del piombo, as he was called--his father's name was luciani. but as two other notable influences determined his career, he is not to be taken as typical of the venetian school in general or that of giorgione in particular. born in venice about the year , he first studied under giovanni bellini, as appears from the signature as well as from the style of a _pietà_ by him in the layard collection, which we may hope soon to see in the national gallery. of his giorgionesque period there is only one important picture known to us, the beautiful altar-piece in s. giovanni crisostomo in venice, which is not far removed from the richness of titian's earlier work. the picture represents the mild and dignified s. chrysostom seated, reading aloud at a desk in an open hall; s. john the baptist leaning on his cross is looking attentively at him; behind him are two male and on the left two female saints listening devoutly, and in the foreground the virgin looking majestically out of the picture at the spectator--a splendid type of the full and grand venetian ideal of female beauty of that time. the true expression of a _santa conversazione_ could not be more worthily given than in the relation in which the listeners stand to the reader, and in glow of colour this work is not inferior to the best of giorgione's or titian's. as early as , however, he not only left venice, but also his venetian manner. he was invited to rome by the rich banker and patron of the arts, agostino chigi, where he met raphael, and with astonishing versatility succeeded as well in emulating the excellences of that master as he had those of bellini and giorgione. the half-length _daughter of herodias_ bequeathed to the national gallery by george salting is dated , and in he painted the famous _fornarina_ in the uffizi, which until the middle of the last century was supposed to be a _chef d'oeuvre_ of raphael. to this period also belongs the _s. john in the desert_, at the louvre. within the next seven years a still mightier influence found him, that of michelangelo, and how far he was capable of responding to it may be judged by our great _raising of lazarus_, painted at rome in - for giulio de'medici, afterwards pope clement vii., to be placed with raphael's _transfiguration_ in the cathedral of narbonne. both pictures were publicly exhibited in rome, and by some people sebastiano's was preferred to raphael's. according to waagen the whole composition was designed by michelangelo, with whom sebastiano had entered into the closest intimacy; and kugler states that the group of lazarus and those around him was actually drawn by the master. however that may be, we can hardly fail to see how entirely the venetian influence is obscured by that of the great florentine, and to recognise the extraordinary genius of a painter who could do something more than imitate from such masters as bellini, giorgione, raphael and michelangelo. the last traces of the vivarini influence are to be seen in the earlier works of lorenzo lotto( - ), who was a pupil of alvise, though his pictures after , when he had left venice, treviso and reccanti, where he had been employed, show the effect of his changed surroundings. to this date is assigned the _portrait of a young man_, at hampton court. at rome in he was painting with raphael in the vatican, and in his next dated work, the _entombment_, at jesi, the echoes of raphael's disputation and the _school of athens_ are clear. the dresden _madonna and child with s. john_ was probably painted at bergamo in , and the _madonna and saints_, lately bequeathed to the national gallery, is dated . at madrid is a picture by him of _a bride and bridegroom_ dated , to which year probably belongs the _family group_ in the national gallery. these are early instances of the comparatively rare inclusion of more than a single figure in a pure portrait. in our example the father and mother and two children are composed into a delightful picture, in which for once we may see the actual people of the time in something like their natural surroundings, instead of being posed, however effectively, to assist in the representation of some historic or legendary scene. in lotto was back again in venice, and was probably influenced by palma vecchio when he painted the superb portrait of the sculptor _odoni_, which is at hampton court. a little later the influence of titian is more visible. two other portraits are in our national gallery, those of the protonotary juliano and of agostino and niccolo della torre. bonifazio di pitati ( - ), sometimes called bonifazio veronese or veneziano, was born at verona, but studied in venice under palma vecchio. the influence of his native city distinguishes his work in some degree from the pure venetian, as it did that of the more famous paolo in later years; but the atmosphere created by giorgione was so strong as to cause bonifazio's masterpiece (if we except the _dives and lazarus_ at the academy in venice) to be attributed until quite lately to giorgione. it is thus described by kugler:--"a picture in the brera in milan, very deserving of notice, is perhaps one of giorgione's most beautiful works; it is historic in subject, but romantic in conception. the subject is the finding of moses; all the figures are in the rich costume of giorgione's time. in the centre the princess sits under a tree, and looks with surprise at the child who is brought to her by a servant. the seneschal of the princess, with knights and ladies, stand around. on one side are seated two lovers on the grass, on the other side musicians and singers, pages with dogs, a dwarf with an ape, etc. it is a picture in which the highest earthly splendour and enjoyment are brought together, and the incident from scripture only gives it a more pleasing interest. the costume, however inappropriate to the story, disturbs the effect as little as in other venetian pictures of the same period, since it refers more to a poetic than to a mere historic truth, and the period itself was rich in poetry; its costume too assists the display of a romantic splendour. this picture, with all its glow of colour, is softer than the earlier works of the master, and reminds us of titian...." the beautiful _santa conversazione_ in the national gallery, again, which was formerly in the casa terzi at bergamo, was there attributed to palma vecchio. here the virgin in a rose-coloured mantle is the centre of the composition, with the child on her knee, whose foot the little s. john is bending to kiss. on the right is s. catherine and on the left s. james the less and s. jerome. in the landscape are seen a shepherd lying beside his flock, while other shepherds are fleeing from a lion who has seized their dog. a copy of this composition is in the academy at venice. oddly enough it was a pupil of bonifazio who employed the grand venetian manner in the humbler and more commonplace walks of life, and neglecting alike the _sacra conversazione_ and the pompous scenes of festivity, developed into the first italian painter of _genre_. this was jacopo da ponte, called from his birthplace bassano, who was working in venice under bonifazio as early as . he afterwards returned to bassano, and selecting those scenes in which he could most extensively introduce cottages, peasants, and animals, he connected them with events from sacred history or mythology. a peculiar feature by which his pictures may be known is the invariable and apparently intentional hiding of the feet of his figures, for which purpose sheep and cattle and household utensils are introduced. he confines himself to a bold, straightforward imitation of familiar objects, united, however, with pleasing composition, colour, and chiaroscuro. his colours, indeed, sparkle like gems, particularly the greens, in which he displays a brilliancy quite peculiar to himself. his lights are boldly infringed on the objects, and are seldom introduced except on prominent parts of the figures. in accordance with this treatment his handling is spirited and peculiar, somewhat in the manner of rembrandt; and what on close inspection appears dark and confused, forms at a distance the very strength and magic of his colouring. the picture of the _good samaritan_ in the national gallery is a good example, and was formerly in the collection of reynolds, who it is said always kept it in his studio. the _portrait of a man_ (no. ) is excelled by that of an _old man_ at berlin. iii paolo veronese and il tintoretto it cannot be said that the venetian artists of the second half of the sixteenth century equalled in their collective excellence the great masters of the first, but in single instances they are frequently entitled to rank beside them. at the head of these is jacopo robusti ( - ), called il tintoretto (the dyer), in allusion to his father's trade. he was one of the most vigorous painters in all the history of art; one who sought rather than avoided the greatest difficulties, and who possessed a true feeling for animation and grandeur. if his works do not always charm, it should be imputed to the foreign and non-venetian element which he adopted, but never completely mastered; and also to the times in which he lived, when venetian art had fallen somewhat into the mistaken way of colossal and rapid productiveness. his off-hand style, as kugler calls it, is always full of grand and significant detail, and with a few patches of colour he sometimes achieves the liveliest forms and expressions. but he fails in that artistic arrangement of the whole and in that nobility of motives in the parts which are necessary exponents of a really high ideal. his compositions are achieved less by finely studied degrees of participation in the principal action than by great masses of light and shade. attitudes and movements are taken immediately from common life, not chosen from the best models. with titian the highest ideal of earthly happiness in existence is expressed by beauty; with tintoretto in mere animal strength, sometimes of an almost rude character. for a short time he was a pupil of titian, but for some unknown reason he soon left him, and struck out for himself. in the studio which he occupied in his youth he had inscribed, as a definition of the style he professed, "the drawing of michelangelo, the colouring of titian." he copied the works of the latter, and also designed from casts of florentine and antique sculpture, particularly by lamplight--as did romney a couple of centuries later--to exercise himself in a more forcible style of relief. he also made models for his works, which he lighted artificially, or hung up in his room, in order to master perspective. by these means he united great strength of shadow with the venetian colouring, which gives a peculiar character to his pictures, and is very successful when limited to the direct imitation of nature. but apart from the impossibility of combining two such totally different excellences as the colouring of titian and the drawing of michelangelo, it appears that tintoretto's acquaintance with the works of the latter only developed his tendency to a naturalistic style. that which with michelangelo was the symbol of a higher power in nature was adopted by tintoretto in its literal form. most of his defects, it is probable, arose from his indefatigable vigour, which earned for him the nickname of _il furioso_. sebastian del piombo said that tintoretto could paint as much in two days as would occupy him two years. other sayings were that he had three brushes, one of gold, one of silver, and a third of brass, and that if he was sometimes equal to titian he was often inferior to tintoretto! in this last category kugler puts two of his earliest works, the enormous _last judgment_, and _the golden calf_, in the church of s. maria dell'orto, while on his much later _last supper_ he is still more severe. "nothing more utterly derogatory," he writes, "both to the dignity of art and to the nature of the subject can be imagined. s. john is seen with folded arms, fast asleep, while others of the apostles with the most burlesque gestures are asking, 'lord, is it i?' another apostle is uncovering a dish which stands on the floor without remarking that a cat has stolen in and is eating from it. a second is reaching towards a flask; a beggar sits by, eating. attendants fill up the picture. to judge from an overthrown chair the scene appears to have been a revel of the lowest description. it is strange that a painter should venture on such a representation of this subject scarcely a hundred years after the creation of leonardo da vinci's _last supper_." it was in , when but thirty years old, that tintoretto first became famous, with the large _miracle of s. mark_, now in the venice academy. this is perhaps his finest as well as his most celebrated work; but the greatest monument to his industry and general ability is the scuola di'san rocco, where he began to work in under a contract to produce three pictures a year for an annuity of a hundred ducats. in all there are sixty-two of his pictures in this building, the greater part of them very large, the figures throughout being of the size of life. _the crucifixion_, painted in , is the most extensive of them, and on the whole the most perfect. in , four years before his death, he completed the enormous _paradise_ in the sala del gran consiglio, measuring seventy-four feet in length and thirty in height. in the national gallery we have three characteristic examples, fortunately on a smaller scale, namely, the _s. george_ on a white horse, which, with its greyish flesh tones and the blue of the princess's mantle, is cooler in tone than the generality of his pictures; _christ washing the disciples' feet_, and the very beautiful and radiant _origin of the milky way_, purchased from lord darnley in . at hampton court a still finer example, _the nine muses_, is so discoloured by age and hung in such a difficult light that it is impossible to enjoy its full beauty. paolo caliari, better known as veronese, was born ten years later than tintoretto, and died six years before him ( - ). he studied in his native city of verona till he was twenty, and after working for some time at mantua he came to venice in , where he was quickly recognised by titian and by sansovino, the sculptor and director of public buildings, and was commissioned in that year to paint a _coronation of the virgin_ and other works in the church of s. sebastian. the _martyrdom of s. giustino_, now in the uffizi, and the _madonna and child_ in the louvre are also among his earlier works. as early as he was at work on the enormous _feast at cana_, now in the louvre, and a similar work at dresden is of the same date. in he went to rome, where he studied the works of raphael and michelangelo. on his return to venice in [illustration: plate xvii.--tintoretto st george and the dragon _national gallery, london_] --after visiting verona, where he painted in his parish church, and also married--he was employed to decorate the ducal palace, but much of his best work there was destroyed by fire. two of his most important works completed before are in the academy at venice, _the battle of lepanto_ and the _feast in the house of levi_. in this last he incurred strictures from the inquisition more severe than those of kugler upon tintoretto's _last supper_, and possibly with as much reason, it being objected that the introduction of german soldiery, buffoons, and a parrot was "irreligious." his _family of darius_, now in the national gallery, was one of his latest works. veronese, even more than titian, whom in colouring he sought to emulate, and tintoretto, whom in this respect he certainly excelled, expresses the spirit of the venetians of his time--a powerful and noble race of human beings, as kugler calls them, elate with the consciousness of existence, and in full enjoyment of all that renders earth attractive. by the splendour of his colour, assisted by rich draperies and other materials, by a very clear and transparent treatment of the shadows, he infused a magic into his great canvases which surpasses almost all the other masters of the venetian school. never had the pomp of colour, on a large scale, been so exalted and glorified as in his works. this, his peculiar quality, is most decidedly and grandly developed in scenes of worldly splendour; he loved to paint festive subjects for the refectories of rich convents, suggested of course from particular passages in the scriptures, but treated with the greatest freedom, especially as regards the costume, which is always of his own time. instead, therefore, of any religious sentiment, we are presented with a display of the most cheerful human scenes and the richest worldly splendour. that which distinguishes him from tintoretto, and which in his later period, after the death of titian and michelangelo, earned for him the rank of the first living master, was that beautiful vitality, that poetic feeling, which as far as it was possible he infused into a declining period of art. at the same time it becomes more and more evident, as our attention is turned to the deeper and nobler spirit of the earlier masters in venice, that the beauty of his figures is more addressed to the senses than to the soul, and that his naturalistic tendencies are often allowed to run wild. the most celebrated, and as it happens the most historically interesting, of his great pictures is the _feast at cana_, in the louvre, measuring thirty feet wide and twenty feet high. this was formerly in the refectory of s. giorgio maggiore in venice. the scene is a brilliant atrium, surrounded by majestic pillars. the tables at which the guests are seated form three sides of a parallelogram. the guests are supposed to be almost entirely contemporary portraits, so that the figures of christ and his mother, of themselves insignificant enough, lose even more in the general interest of the subject. servants occupy the foreground, while on the raised balustrades and the balconies of distant houses are innumerable onlookers. the most remarkable feature of the whole composition is a group of musicians in the centre of the foreground, which are portraits of the artist himself and tintoretto, playing on violon-cellos, and titian, in a red robe, with the contra-bass. _christ in the house of simon_, the magdalen washing his feet, is another scarcely less gigantic picture in the louvre; but it is much simpler in arrangement, and is distinguished by the fineness of the heads, especially that of the christ. an interesting piece of technical criticism on the _feast at cana_ occurs in reynolds's eighth discourse:-- "another instance occurs to me," he says, "where equal liberty may be taken in regard to the management of light. though the general practice is to make a large mass about the middle of the picture surrounded by shadow, the reverse may be practised, and the spirit of rule may still be preserved.... in the great composition of paul veronese, the _marriage at cana_, the figures are for the most part in half shadow; the great light is in the sky; and indeed the general effect of this picture, which is so striking, is no more than what we often see in landscapes, in small pictures of fairs and country feasts; but those principles of light and shadow, being transferred to a large scale, to a space containing near a hundred figures as large as life, and conducted to all appearance with as much facility and with an attention as steadily fixed upon the _whole together_ as if it were a small picture immediately under the eye, the work justly excites our admiration; the difficulty being increased as the extent is enlarged." * * * * * with the death of the great venetians, titian, tintoretto, and paul veronese, in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the history of italian painting of the first rank comes to an end. in florence, the imitation of michelangelo was the chief object striven after, and, as might be expected, the attempt was not eminently successful. the greater number of the italian painters of the early seventeenth century who attained any fame are known by the name of eclectics, from their having endeavoured, instead of imitating any one of their great predecessors, to select and unite the best qualities of each, without, however, excluding the direct study of nature. the fallacy of this aim, when carried to an extreme, is, of course, that the greatness of the earlier masters consisted really in their individual and peculiar qualities, and to endeavour to unite characteristics essentially different involves a contradiction. the most important of the eclectic schools was that of the carracci, at bologna, which was founded by lodovico carracci (_c_. - ), a scholar of prospero fontana and passignano at florence. in his youth he was nicknamed "the ox," partly from his slowness, but possibly also for his study of long-forgotten methods, by which he arrived at the decision that reform was necessary to counteract the independence of the mannerists. he therefore obtained the assistance of his two nephews, agostino and annibale carracci, sons of a tailor, and in concert with them opened an academy at bologna in . this he furnished with casts, drawings, and engravings, and provided living models and gave instruction in perspective, anatomy, etc. in spite of opposition this academy became more and more popular, and before long all the other schools of art in bologna were closed. the principles of their teaching was succinctly expressed in a sonnet written by agostino, in substance as follows:--"let him who wishes to be a good painter acquire the design of rome, venetian action and chiaroscuro, the dignified colouring of lombardy (that is to say, of leonardo da vinci), the terrible manner of michelangelo, titian's truth and nature, the sovereign purity of correggio, and the perfect symmetry of raphael. the decorum and well-grounded study of tibaldi, the invention of the learned primaticcio, and a _little_ of the grace of parmigiano." this "patchwork ideal," as kugler calls it, was, however, but a transition step in the history of the carracci and their art. in the prime of their activity they threw off a great deal of their eclecticism, and attained an independence of their own. the merit of lodovico is chiefly that of a reformer and a teacher, and the pictures by agostino are few and of no great account. but in annibale we find much more than imitation of the characteristics of great masters. in his earlier works there are rather obvious traces of correggio and paul veronese, but under the influence of the works of raphael and michelangelo and of the antique, as he understood it, he developed a style of his own. though in recent years he is a little out of fashion with the public, there is no question about his having a place among the greater artists. to show how opinion can change, i venture to quote a passage from a letter written to me on the subject of carracci's _the three maries_, lately presented to the national gallery by the countess of carlisle:--"i saw the gallery at castle howard in . _the three maries_ was then still regarded as one of _the_ great pictures of the world; and they told the story of how lord carlisle and lord ellesmere and lord----, who shared the paris purchases [after the peace of ] between them, had to cast lots for this, because it was thought to be worth more than all the rest of the spoil." the most important, or at any rate one of the most popular, of the pupils of carracci was domenico zampieri, commonly called domenichino ( - ). if we are less enthusiastic about him at the present, it may still be remembered that constable particularly admired him, but it is significant that the four examples in the national gallery are numbered , , and --there is no more recent acquisition. he had great facility, and his compositions--not always original--are treated with great charm if with no real depth. his most famous picture, the _communion of s. jerome_, now in the vatican, is closely imitated from agostino carracci's. guido reni ( - ), even more popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries than domenichino, was as skilful in some respects, but hardly as admirable. the _ecce homo_, bequeathed by samuel rogers to the national gallery, is an excellent example of his ability to charm the sentimentalist, and if ever there should be a popular revival of taste in the direction of the now neglected school of the carracci, he will possibly resume all the honour formerly paid to him. the same can hardly be predicted for the far inferior carlo maratti, guercino, and carlo dolce. space forbids me more than the bare mention in these pages of the brilliant revival of painting in venice during the earlier part of the eighteenth century by antonio canale ( - ), giovanni battista tiepolo ( - ), pietro longhi ( - ), and francesco guardi ( - ). charming as their excellent accomplishments were, they must give place to more important claims awaiting our attention in other countries. _spanish school_ one of the sensations of the exhibition of spanish old masters at the grafton gallery in the autumn of was an altar panel, dated , which was acquired by mr roger fry in paris, and catalogued as of the "early catalan school." in view of the fact that this picture is "certainly to be regarded as one of the very oldest of primitive pictures painted on wood in any country ... a decade earlier than the picture by margaritone in the national gallery," it seems somewhat dogmatic to assert that while retaining a strongly byzantine character "the style is distinctly that of catalonia." what was the style of catalonia? so far as the history of the art is concerned, the chapter on spain is, with one exception, a very short and a singularly uninteresting one, whether mr fry's panel was painted in catalonia or whether it was not; and in spite of every effort to find in this uncongenial country that expansion of painting that might reasonably have been expected to flow from italy and moisten its barren soil for the production of so wonderful a genius as velasquez, there is positively nothing earlier than velasquez, and not very much after him, that has more than what we may call a documentary interest. while in italy or the netherlands the names of scores of painters earlier than the seventeenth century are endeared to us by the recollection of the works they have left us, the enumeration of those of the few spaniards of whom we have any knowledge awakens no such thrill, and if we have ever heard of them, their works mean little more to us than their names. only when we come within touch of velasquez does our interest awaken--as in the case of ribera and zurbaran--and that is less because of them than because of velasquez. el greco was not a spaniard by birth, but a cretan; and if he were ranged with the italians, to whom he more properly belongs, he would scarcely be more famous than some bolognese masters whose names are now--or perhaps we ought to say, at the present moment--almost forgotten. the announcement that one of his portraits has been sold to an american for £ , is of commercial rather than of artistic interest. if one had to sum up the career and the art of velasquez in a sentence, it might be done by calling him a court painter who never flattered. after recording his life from the time when he left his master pacheco to enter the service of philip iv. to the day that he died in it, we shall find that only a bare percentage of his work was not commissioned by the king; and in all his pictures which were not simply portraits there is little if anything to be found which is not as literal and truthful a presentment of the model in front of him as the life-like representations of philip and those about his court, of which the supreme quality is that of living resemblance, or to put it in more general terms, vivid realism. gifted as he must have been with an extraordinary vision and a still rarer, if not unique, ability to put down on canvas what he saw, he confined himself entirely within the limits of actuality, and thereby attained to heights which his great contemporaries rubens and rembrandt in their noblest flights of imagination never reached. velasquez was baptised on the th of june , in the church of s. peter at seville. he was the son of well-to-do parents; his father, a native of seville, was named juan rodriguez de silva, his mother geronima velasquez. at thirteen years old he had displayed so strong an inclination towards painting that he was put to study under francisco de herrera, then the most considerable painter in spain (his son, also francisco, was the painter of the _christ disputing with the doctors_, in the national gallery), but owing to herrera's violent temper velasquez was shortly transferred to the studio of francisco pacheco, whose daughter he eventually married. pacheco who was, besides being an accomplished artist, a man of literary tastes, and much sought after in seville by the more intellectual class of society, was exceedingly proud of his pupil, and said of him that he was induced to bestow the hand of his daughter upon him "by the rectitude of his conduct, the purity of his morals, and his great talents, and from the high expectation he entertained of his natural abilities and transcendent genius," adding that the honour of having been his instructor was far greater than that of being his father-in-law, and that he felt it no demerit to be surpassed by so brilliant a pupil. in pacheco published a book on painting, in which we are told that the first attempts of velasquez were studies in still life, or simple compositions of actual figures, called _bodegones_ in spanish, of which we have a fair example at the national gallery in the _christ at the house of martha_. sir frederick cook, at richmond, has another, an _old woman frying eggs_, and the duke of wellington two more, of which _the water carrier of seville_ is probably the summit of the young painter's achievement before he left seville, in , and entered the service of philip iv. as court painter. his first portrait of the king was the magnificent whole length in the prado gallery, now numbered , standing in front of a table with a letter in his right hand. no. is the head of the same portrait, possibly done as a study for it. philip was so pleased with this that he ordered all existing portraits of himself to be removed from the palace, and appointed velasquez exclusively as his painter. another of his earliest successes at court was the whole length portrait of the king's brother, don carlos, holding a glove in his right hand; and the picture now in the museum at rouen of _a geographer_ is probably of this date. in , when velasquez was still quite young, and had fallen under no influence save that of pacheco and the school of seville, he was charged by the king to entertain rubens, who came to the spanish court on a diplomatic mission, and show him all the treasures in the palace. if any one could influence velasquez, we might suppose it would have been rubens, who was not only a great painter, but a man of the most captivating manners and disposition, ever ready to help younger artists. but not only did he have no perceptible effect on the style of velasquez, but in the picture of _the topers_, which must have been painted while rubens was at madrid, or very shortly after he left, we can almost see a determination not to be influenced by him; for the subject was a favourite one of rubens's, and yet there is nothing in this most realistic presentment of [illustration: plate xviii.--velazquez the infante philip prosper _imperial gallery, vienna_] actual figures under the title of bacchus and his votaries which has anything at all in common with the florid and imaginative compositions of the flemish painter. velasquez had begun as a realist, and a realist he was to continue till the end of his days. shortly after painting this picture he left his native country for the first time, and visited venice and rome. at venice he made copies of tintoretto's _last supper_ and _crucifixion_; but little if any of tintoretto's influence is to be seen in the two pictures he painted in rome--_the forge of vulcan_ and _joseph's coat_, both of which are still as realistic as ever in treatment, though showing great advances in technical skill. soon after his return to spain in , he probably painted the magnificent whole length _philip iv._ in the national gallery, which compares so well, on examination with the more popular and showy _admiral pulido pareja_ purchased some years ago from longford castle. senor beruete, who has studied the work of velasquez more closely and more intelligently than any one else, considers that whereas there is not a single touch upon the former that is not from the brush of velasquez, the latter cannot be properly attributed to him at all--any more than can another popular favourite, the _alexandro del borro_ in the berlin gallery, now given to bernard strozzi. to this period may be also assigned the _christ at the column_ in the national gallery, a picture which though not at first sight attractive, is nevertheless as fine in technique, and in sentiment, as any other picture in the spanish room, and deserves far more attention than is usually given to it. its simple realism and its pathetic sweetness are qualities which are wanting in many a more showy or sensational composition, and the more it is studied the nearer we find we are getting to the real excellences that distinguish velasquez from any painter who has ever lived. the _crucifixion_ at the prado is perhaps more wonderful, but the familiar subject helps the imagination of the spectator to admire it, whereas the unfamiliar setting of our picture is apt at first sight to repel. the most important composition undertaken by velasquez in this middle period of his career--that is to say between his two visits to italy in and --is the famous _surrender of breda_, or, as it is sometimes called, _the lances_. soon after his arrival in madrid he had once painted an historical subject, _the expulsion of the moors_, in competition with his rivals who had asserted that he could paint nothing but heads. in this competition the prize was awarded to him, but as the picture has perished we are unable to judge of its merits for ourselves. but apart from this, and such unimportant groups of figures as we have mentioned, he had been occupied wholly in painting single portraits, and it is a marvellous proof of his genius that he should produce such a masterpiece of composition as _the lances_ with so little practice in this branch of his art. here, at least, we might have expected to trace the influence of rubens, but there is actually no sign of it; and if he sought any inspiration at all from other painters, it was from what he recalled of tintoretto's work which he had seen and studied in venice. in the king's eldest boy, _baltazar carlos_, who was born in , velasquez found a model for two or three of his most charming pictures. one is at castle howard; a second the equestrian portrait, on a galloping pony, at the prado; and a third the full length hunting portrait, also at the prado, in which we see the little prince standing under a tree, gun in hand, with an enormous dog lying beside him. another is at vienna, representing him as of about eleven years old, full length, with his hand resting on the back of a chair. all of these owe some of their charm to the youth and attractive personality of the subject; but if we want to see the power of velasquez without any outside element to help us to appreciate it, there is the portrait of the sculptor _martinez montanes_ at the prado. "the head is wonderful in its colour and its modelling," writes senor beruete; "and what a lesson in technique! the eyes, lightly touched with colour, are set deep in their sockets, and surmounted by a strongly marked forehead. the high lights are of a rich _impasto_, manipulated with extraordinary skill; the greyer tones of the flesh, so true and so delicate, are painted in a way that brings out with marvellous truth, both the soft parts of the cheeks and the harder structure of the face, under which one can follow the bones of the nose and forehead.... everything in the picture is spontaneous, and one can see that it is a pledge of friendship given by one artist to another; there is nothing here of that artificial arrangement that spoils commissioned portraits even when they are the work of a painter as independent as velasquez was. one feels here the assurance of an artist who knows that his work will be understood by his friend in the spirit in which it was executed." m. lefort, the french critic, is even more enthusiastic. "ah! these redoubtable neighbours," he exclaims, seeing it surrounded by the works of other painters at the prado. "this canvas makes them look like mere imitations--dead conventional likenesses. van dyck is dull, rubens oily, tintoret yellow; it is velasquez alone who can give us the illusion of life in all its fulness!" in velasquez paid his second visit to rome, where he painted the famous portrait of his holiness, _pope innocent x._ which is now in the doria palace. this is exceptional in treatment, inasmuch as it is the only portrait by velasquez in which the subject is seated--excepting of course equestrian portraits--and instead of the usual quiet tones of grey and brown which he was so fond of employing, the picture of the pope is a radiant harmony of rose red and white. in its realism it is even more surprising than most of the other portraits, considering how ugly the face had to be made to resemble nature, although the sitter was of a still higher rank than velasquez's royal master. returning to madrid in , velasquez never again left spain, and the remaining twenty years of his life may be considered the third period of his artistic development, inasmuch as no special influence was exerted upon him outside the ordinary and somewhat tedious course of his employment at the court. to this period are assigned twenty-six pictures--senor beruete only admits the authenticity of eighty-three in all, it may be mentioned--twelve of which are royal portraits, seven those of buffoons and dwarfs, three mythological and two sacred subjects, and the two famous pieces of real life, _las meninas_ and _las hilanderas_. of the royal portraits those of the _infanta margarita_ are among the most fascinating, no less from their technical excellence than on account of the youthful charm of the little princess. the one at vienna represents her as about three years old, dressed in red, standing by a little table. of this, senor beruete says that it is "one of the most beautiful inspirations of velasquez, and perhaps one that reveals better than any other his power as a colourist; it is a flower, perfumed with every infantine grace." another standing portrait, though only a half length, when she was not many years older, is that in the salon carré at the louvre, which is more familiar to us being nearer home and more often reproduced. m. de wyczewa praises it thus:--"the perfect _chefs-d'oeuvre_ collected in this glorious salon pale in the presence of this child portrait; not one of them can bear comparison with this simple yet powerful painting, which seems to aim only at external resemblance and without other effort to attain a mysterious beauty of form and colour." at frankfort again is a charming picture of the little princess, whole length, at the age of six or seven--a replica of which is at vienna. she is dressed in greyish white with trimmings of black, and her hoop skirt is so enormous that her arms have to be stretched out straight to allow her hands to reach the edge of her coat. of the three mythological subjects two are in the prado, namely the _mars_ and the _mercury and argus_, while the third and most beautiful is the _venus at the mirror_ recently purchased for our national collection. these were all of them painted for the decoration of the royal palaces, and we may therefore suppose that the artist was not entirely at liberty either in the choice of his subject or in his method of treating it. certainly he does not seem to have been fond of painting the nude, unless with men, and it is noticeable that he has posed his model in this case with more modesty and reserve than is to be observed in the pictures of rubens and titian. the holy church was sternly averse to this class of painting, in which, accordingly, none of the spanish school indulged; but at the same time the royal galleries did not exclude the most exuberant fancies of rubens, titian, tintoretto, and others, and velasquez was in all probability commissioned by philip to paint this venus--and another which has perished--along with the mars and mercury without regard to the ecclesiastical authorities. but it is hardly surprising if velasquez availed himself less fully of the privilege than a flemish or italian painter would no doubt have done, and has given us so chaste and beautiful a realisation of the goddess. having regard to the scepticism with which this masterpiece was received in england at the time of its purchase for the nation it is worth quoting senor beruete's remarks upon it in that connection. "the authenticity of this work," he writes "has found numerous doubters in spain, less on account of its subject--being the only nude female figure in the whole _oeuvre_ of velasquez--than because so few people ever suspected its existence; but after it was exhibited at manchester in and in london in , it was recognised that its attribution to velasquez was well founded. at the sight of the canvas all doubt vanishes. there, indeed, is the style, the inimitable technique of velasquez." this, from the connoisseur who has devoted years of study to the work of the master, and who rejects such well established examples as the dulwich _philip iv._ and the _admiral pulido pareja_, is surely more conclusive than the academic pedantry of ignorance masquerading as authority. * * * * * bartolomÉ estÉban murillo ( - ) has always been accounted the most popular of the spanish painters, and it is only in recent times that his popularity has faded into comparative insignificance on the fuller recognition and understanding of the genius of velasquez. the intensely anglican feeling in this country during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries [illustration: plate xix.--velazquez the rokeby venus _national gallery, london_] seems to have found peculiar relief in the sentimental aspirations of the followers of raphael in the rendering of religious subjects from the romish point of view. at the present time we are readier to estimate murillo's justly high place in the annals of painting by such a picture as his own portrait, lent by lord spencer to the recent exhibition, than to allow it on the strength of our recollection of the madonnas and holy families, immaculate conceptions and assumptions, of which there exist so many copies in the dining rooms of country rectories. the _boy drinking_, which is here reproduced, if it is the least "important" of the four examples in the national gallery, is certainly not the least excellent. from the miserable state into which spain had fallen by the end of the seventeenth century, it could hardly be expected that anything further in the nature of art would result, and it was not until towards the end of the eighteenth that another genius arose, in the person of francisco goya ( - ). of this extraordinary phenomenon in the firmament of art it is impossible to say more than a very few words in this place. like a meteor, he is rather to be pointed at than talked about, when there are so many stars and planets whose regular courses have to be observed and recorded. he was like a sharp knife drawn across the face of spain, gashing it here and there, but for the most part just touching it lightly enough to sting and to leave a mark. as a court painter he was an unqualified success, his salary under charles iv. rising in ten years from , to , reals; but his official productions are not the less devoid of interest on that account, and are sometimes the more satirical from the necessity for concealment. in his more outspoken works, such as the _disasters of war_, and the series of prints called _los caprichos_ and _tauromachia_, he is too brutal not to affect the ordinary observer's judgment upon his artistic qualities. velasquez himself could scarcely stop short enough, when painting dwarfs and idiots and cripples, to let us admire his genius unhampered by shivers of repulsion. goya, being exactly the opposite of velasquez in temperament, had no scruples about expressing the utmost of his subject; and even in decorating a church was reproved for "falling short of the standard of chastity" required. but between the extremes of brutality and conventionalism there is such a wide expanse of pure joy of painting that nothing can diminish the reputation of goya, however much it is likely to be enhanced. to the modern spanish painter he is probably as fixed a beacon as velasquez. [illustration: plate xx.--murillo a boy drinking _national gallery, london_] _flemish school_ i hubert and jan van eyck in , on the death of louis de maele, his son-in-law philip the hardy, duke of burgundy, assumed the government of flanders. in the same year philip founded the carthusian convent at dijon and employed a flemish painter named melchin broederlam to embellish two great shrines within it. to the strong-handed policy of philip and his successors during the ensuing century may be attributed the rise of netherlandish art which, though existing before their time, required their vigorous repression of intestine feuds to give it an opportunity of developing. under louis and his predecessors flanders and its cities had risen to great commercial importance, but its rulers had neither the strength nor the prestige to keep the turbulent spirit of their subjects in due bounds. the school of painting which now arose so rapidly to perfection under the dukes of burgundy thus owed a portion of its progress to the wealth and independence of the commercial classes. the taste, power, and cultivation of a court gave it an additional spur; and the clergy throwing in their weight, added their support in aid of art. two wings of one of the dijon shrines are still preserved in the museum there, and in these messrs crowe and cavalcaselle observe the characteristics of much that was to follow:--"although melchior's style was founded on the study of the painters of the rhine, his composition was similar to the later productions of the flemish school. a tendency to realism already marks this early fleming, and is the distinctive feature of a manner in which the painter strives to imitate nature in its most material forms. idealism and noble forms are lacking, but broederlam is a fair imitator of the truth. distinctive combination and choice of colours in draperies, and vigorous tone, characterise him as they do the early works at bruges and other cities of the netherlands which may be judged by his standard." and again, "the painter evidently struggled between the desire to give a material imitation, and the inspirations of graceful teachers like those of cologne.... penetrated with similar ideas the early flemings might under similar circumstances have risen to a sweet and dignified conception of nature; and if we fail to discover that they attained this aim we must attribute the failure to causes peculiar to flanders. amongst these we may class the social status of the flemish painters, whose positions in the household of princes subjected them perhaps to caprices unfavourable to the development of high aspirations, or the contemplation and free communion with self which are the soul of art." it is interesting to compare these observations, so far as they refer to the realism which characterises netherlandish painting, with those of dr waagen, who it will be seen explains it on the broader grounds of national temperament. "early netherlandish painting," he contends, "in its freedom from all foreign influence, exhibits the contrast between the natural feeling of the greek and the german races respectively in the department of art--these two races being the chief representatives of the cultivation of the ancient and the modern world. in this circumstance consists the high significance of this school when considered in reference to the general history of art. while it is characteristic of the greek feeling--from which was derived the italian--to idealise,--and to idealise, be it observed, not only the conceptions of the ideal world but even such material objects as portraits,--by the simplification of forms and the prominence given to the more important parts of a work of art, the early netherlanders, on the other hand, conferred a portrait-like character upon the most ideal personifications of the virgin, the apostles, prophets, and martyrs, and in actual portraiture aimed at rendering even the most accidental peculiarities of nature, like warts and wrinkles, with excruciating fidelity. "while the greeks expressed the various features of outward nature--such as rivers, fountains, hills, trees, etc.--under abstract human forms, the netherlanders endeavoured to express them as they had seen them in nature, and with a truth which extended to the smallest details. "in opposition to the ideal, and what may be called the personifying tendency of the greeks, the netherlanders developed a purely realistic and landscape school. "in this respect the other teutonic nations are found to approach them most nearly, the germans first, and then the english." but whatever may have been the causes which produced the distinguishing features of netherlandish painting, we have still to enquire the origin from which the practice of painting in northern europe proceeded. for in taking melchior broederlam as a starting-point we are only going as far back--with the exception of certain rude wall paintings--as the earliest examples take us; and having seen how in italy the whole history of the art is traceable to cimabue, duccio, and giotto, through the byzantines, at least a century before broederlam comes under our notice, we might naturally conclude that it was from italy that it spread to cologne, and from cologne to the netherlands. so far as is known, however, this was not the case, and we must look elsewhere than to italy for the influences which formed this school. nevertheless it was a collateral branch of the same stock--byzantine art--and the family resemblance comes out none the less strongly from the two branches having developed under different circumstances. in italy, as we have seen, the byzantine seed, sown in such fertile soil, attained suddenly a great luxuriance. in the north, transplanted by charlemagne to aix-la-chapelle in the ninth century, it grew slowly and more timidly, but none the less surely, under the cover of monasticism, in the manuscripts illuminated with miniatures; and thus when it did burst forth into fuller blossom, the boldness of the italian masters, who worked at large in fresco, was wanting, and a detailed and almost meticulous realism was its chief characteristic. another point worth noticing is that though primarily introduced for religious purposes, as in italy, namely the decoration of the cathedral erected by charlemagne at aix-la-chapelle, the paintings in his palace showed forth events in his own life, such as his campaigns in spain, seiges of towns and feats of arms by frankish warriors. at upper ingelheim, likewise, his chapel was adorned with scenes from the old and new testaments, while the banqueting hall exhibited on one wall the deeds of great pagan rulers, such as cyrus, hannibal, and alexander, and on the other those of constantine and theodosius, the seizure of acquitaine by pepin, and charlemagne's own conquest over the saxons and finally himself enthroned as conqueror. although no trace remains of these paintings, contemporary manuscripts executed by his order are still in existence in the libraries of paris, trèves, and elsewhere from which we can form some idea of the style in which they were rendered and of the source from which they were derived. of these we need only mention the vulgate decorated by john of bruges, painter to king charles v. of france, in , which contains a portrait of the king in profile with a figure kneeling before him, and a few small historical subjects. from these it is evident that the art of painting, at any rate in little, had made considerable progress in the netherlands at that date, and the express designation of _pictor_ applied to john of bruges, while the ordinary miniaturist was called _illuminator_, shows the probability of his having painted pictures on a larger scale. the high development of realistic feeling as it first appears to us in the pictures of hubert and jan van eyck is thus partly accounted for, especially when we also consider the wholesale destruction of larger works of art that took place in the disturbed condition of the netherlands in the sixteenth century. the main points, however, to be borne in mind is that whereas cimabue and duccio started painting on walls under the influence of byzantine teachers, hubert van eyck, a century later, began painting on wooden panels under that of illuminators and painters in books. to these, nevertheless, there must be added another scarcely less important, namely, that the early italians were ignorant of the use of what we now call oil paints, and worked entirely in tempera--that is to say, there was no admixture of oil or varnish with their pigments. to hubert van eyck is attributed the invention of the modern practice, as vasari relates with more colour than historic truth in his life of antonello da messina, who is supposed to have carried it into italy. be that as it may, the works of the van eycks and their successors are all in oils, and there is no doubt that the employment of this medium from the first considerably influenced the style, colour, and execution of all the works of this school. hubert van eyck who according to the common acceptation was born in the year at maaseyck, a small town not far from maestricht, must have been settled before the year in bruges, when we hear of him as a member of the brotherhood of the virgin with rays. there can be little doubt that hubert van eyck was acquainted with the work of this john of bruges, and that it had a considerable influence on him. but while on the one hand he carried the realistic tendencies of such works to an extraordinary pitch of excellence, it is evident that in many essential respects he was actuated by a more ideal feeling and imparted to the realism of his contemporaries, by means of his far richer powers of representation, greater distinctness, truth to nature, and variety of expression. throughout his works is seen an elevated and highly energetic conception of the stern import of his labours in the service of the church. the prevailing arrangement of his subjects is symmetrical, holding fast to the earliest rules of ecclesiastical art. his heads appear to aim at an ideal beauty and dignity only combined with actual truth to nature. his draperies exhibit the purest taste and softness of folds, the realistic principle being apparent in that greater attention to detail which a delicate indication of the material of the drapery necessitates. nude figures are studied from nature with the utmost fidelity; undraped portions of figures are also given with much truth, especially the hands. but what is the principal distinguishing characteristic of his art is the hitherto unprecedented power, depth, transparency and harmony of his colouring. whatever want of exact truth there may be in the story as related by vasari's story of the discovery of oil painting, there is no doubt that hubert van eyck succeeded in preparing so transparent a varnish that he could apply it without disadvantage to all colours. the chief work by hubert van eyck is the large altar-piece painted for the cathedral of s. bavon at ghent;--parts of this have been removed and are now in the berlin gallery, and supplemented with excellent copies of the rest, the whole of the wonderful composition may there be well studied; a large photograph of the whole altar piece may also be seen in the library at the victoria and albert museum, which shows how the work was originally designed. it was painted for jodocus vyts, burgomaster of ghent, and his wife elizabeth, for their mortuary chapel in the cathedral. the subject of the three central panels of the upper portion is the deity seated between _the virgin and s. john the baptist_. underneath these, of the same width, is the famous _adoration of the lamb_. these together formed the back of the altar-piece, and were covered by wings which opened out on hinges on either side. the three large figures of the upper part are designed with all the dignity and statuesque repose belonging to an earlier style, and they are painted on a ground of gold and tapestry, as was constantly the practice in earlier times: but united with the traditional type we already find a successful representation of life and nature in all their truth. they stand as it were on the frontier of two different styles, and from the excellence of both form a wonderful and most impressive whole. the heavenly father sits directly fronting the spectator, in all the solemnity of ancient dignity, his right hand raised to give the benediction to the lamb and to all the multitude of figures below; in his left hand is a crystal sceptre; on his head the triple crown, the emblem of the trinity. the features are such as are ascribed to christ by the traditions of the church, but noble and well proportioned; the expression is forcible, though passionless. the tunic and the mantle of this figure are of a deep red, the latter being fastened over the breast by a clasp, and falling down in ample folds over the feet. behind, as high as the head, is a hanging of green tapestry which is ornamented with a golden pelican--a symbol of the redeemer. behind the head the ground is gold, and on it in a semicircle are three inscriptions describing the trinity as almighty, all-good, and all-bountiful. the figures of s. john and of the virgin display equal majesty; both are reading holy books, as they turn towards the centre figure. the countenance of s. john expresses ascetic seriousness, but in that of the virgin we find a serene grace and a purity of form which approach very nearly to the happier effects of italian art. the arrangement of the lower central picture, the worship of the lamb, is strictly symmetrical, as the mystic nature of the allegorical subject might seem to [illustration: plate xxi.--jan van eyck jan arnolfini and his wife _national gallery, london_] have demanded; but there is such beauty in the landscape, in the pure atmosphere, in the bright green of the grass, in the masses of trees and flowers--even in single figures which stand out from the four principal groups--that we no longer perceive either hardness or severity in this symmetry. the landscape of this composition and that part of it containing the patriarchs and prophets are generally supposed to have been completed by jan van eyck (_c._ - ), whose name till within a comparatively recent period had almost obscured that of hubert. for although there is little doubt that the elder brother was the first to develop the new method of painting, yet the fame of it did not extend beyond belgium and across the alps until after the death of hubert, when the celebrity it so speedily acquired throughout europe was transferred to jan van eyck. within fifteen years after his death, , jan was commemorated in italy as the greatest painter of the century, while the name of hubert was not even mentioned. it was jan van eyck to whom antonello da messina is said by vasari to have resorted in bruges in order to learn the new style of painting; he alone also is mentioned in vasari's first edition of , hubert not until the second edition in , and then only incidentally. fortunately there are in existence various authentic pictures by jan van eyck in which his original powers are more easily recognised than in the part he took in the execution of the great altar-piece at ghent, in which he doubtless accommodated himself with proper fraternal piety both to the composition and to the style of his elder brother--who was also his master. in these we can see that he possessed neither the enthusiasm for the rich imagery and symbolism of the ecclesiastical art of the middle ages, nor that feeling for beauty in human forms or in drapery which belonged to his elder brother. his feeling, on the other hand, led him to the closest and truest conception of individual nature. where he had to paint portraits only--a task which was most congenial to the tendency of his mind--he attained a life-like truth of form and colouring in every part, extending even to the minutest details, such as no other artist of his time could rival, and which art in general has seldom produced. in his actual brush work he shows greater facility than was ever attained by hubert, by which he was enabled to render the material of every substance with marvellous fidelity. what little we know of the personal history of jan van eyck is of exceptional interest, inasmuch as we find him employed on diplomatic errands to foreign countries, like his great successor rubens; and as it happens he landed in england, though not intentionally, in the course of one of these voyages, being driven into shoreham and falmouth by adverse weather. it was in that he was taken into the service of philip iii., duke of burgundy, as painter and "varlet de chambre," shortly after which he went to lille. in the following year he was sent on a pilgrimage as the duke's proxy, and again on two secret missions. in he went with the duke's embassy to the king of portugal which was to sue for the hand of isabella, the portuguese princess. it was on this occasion that he was driven on to our shores. arriving at lisbon he painted two portraits of isabella, one of which was sent home by sea and the other overland. after a happy and successful career he died in at bruges, where he had married and settled down on his return from portugal. the most beautiful example of jan van eyck's work in england is the portrait of jean arnolfini and jeanne de chenany his wife, now in the national gallery (no. ). this is dated with the charming inscription, "johannes de eyck fuit hic "--that is to say, instead of simply signing the picture, he writes, "jan van eyck was here, ." no other picture shows so high a development of the master's extraordinary power and charm. besides every other quality peculiar to him, we observe here a perfection of tone and of chiaroscuro which no other specimen of this whole period affords. it is recorded that princess mary, sister of charles v. and governess of the netherlands, purchased this picture from a barber to whom it belonged at the price of a post worth a hundred gulden a year. among its subsequent possessors were don diego de guevara, majordomo of joan, queen of castile, by whom it was presented to margaret of austria. in it was acquired by mary of hungary, and later it returned to spain. in it was in the palace at madrid, and soon after it was taken by one of the french generals, in whose quarters major-general hay found it after the battle of waterloo. two other portraits in the national gallery bear the signature of jan van eyck. no. , an elderly man, head and shoulders, on the frame of which is the painter's motto, "als ich can," and his signature, "johannes de eyck me fecit anno , octobris." the other, no. , is a younger man, half length, standing inside an open window, on the sill of which is inscribed "[greek: timotheos]," and "léal souvenir," and below the date and signature, "actum anno domini , die octobris a iohanne de eyck." among the netherlandish scholars and followers of the van eycks of whom any record has been preserved some appear to have been gifted with considerable powers, though none attained the excellence of their great precursors. although a number of works representing this school still exist in the various countries of europe, yet compared with the actual abundance of them at one time they constitute but a scanty remnant. though not actually a pupil of jan van eyck, roger van der weyden acquired after him the greatest celebrity. as early as he filled the honourable post of official painter to the city of brussels. the chief work executed by him in this capacity was an altar-piece for the chamber of justice in hôtel de ville. according to the custom of the time, it set forth in the most realistic fashion examples of stern observance of the law for the admonition of those placed in authority. the principal picture showed how herkenbald, a judge in the eleventh century, executed his own nephew (convicted of a grave crime, but who would otherwise have escaped the penalty of the law) with his own hands; and how the sacramental wafer which, on the plea of murder, was denied to him by the priest, reached the lips of the upright judge by means of a miracle. the wings contained an example of the justice of the emperor trajan. these pictures are unfortunately no longer in existence, having probably been burned when brussels was besieged in . in the museum of the hospital at beaune is one of the most important of his works still in existence, _the last judgment_, though in this it is generally supposed he was assisted by dirk bouts and hans memling. it contains several portraits, notably those of the pope, eugenius iv., who stands behind the apostles in the right wing, and next to him philip the good. the crowned female in the opposite wing is probably philip's [illustration: plate xxii.--jan van eyck portrait of the painter's wife _town gallery, bruges_] second wife, isabella of portugal, whose portrait jan van eyck went to lisbon to paint before her marriage. on the outer sides are excellently painted portraits of the founder of the hospital, nicolas rolin, and his wife. this work has been classed with the van eycks' _adoration of the lamb_, and the _adoration of the shepherds_ by hugo van der goes, as crystallizing the finest expression of early northern painting. in he visited italy, where he painted the beautiful little altar-piece which is now in the städel institute at frankfort, for piero and giovanni de'medici. another very fine example of his work is the triptych, now in the berlin museum, executed for pierre bladelin. in the centre is the nativity, with a portrait of bladelin kneeling, and angels. on the one side is the annunciation of the redeemer to the ruler of the west--the emperor augustus--by the agency of the tiburtine sibyl; on the other to those of the east--the three kings--who are keeping watch on a mountain, where the child appears to them in a star. one of the largest as well as of the finest of the master's works is a triptych in the munich gallery--the _adoration of the kings_, with the _annunciation_ and the _presentation in the temple_ in the wings. the figure of the virgin in the _presentation_ is particularly pleasing for its simple and unaffected realism. _s. luke painting the virgin_, also in the munich gallery, is ascribed to roger. no painter of this school, the van eycks even not excepted, exercised so great and widely extended an influence as roger van der weyden. not only were hans memling--the greatest master of the next generation in belgium--and his own son, also named roger, his pupils, but innumerable works other than pictures were produced, such as miniatures, block-books, and engravings, in which his form of art is recognisable. it was under his auspices that the realistic tendency of the van eycks pervaded all germany; for it was only after the death of jan van eyck, in , that the widespread fame of roger van der weyden induced germans to visit his studio at brussels. martin schongauer, one of the greatest german masters of the sixteenth century, is known to have been his pupil, and it is certain that there must have been many others. it is in hans memling (_c._ - ), whom vasari states to have been the pupil of roger, that the early netherlandish school attains the highest delicacy of artistic development. his poetical and profoundly human qualities had a special attraction for the "pre-raphaelite brotherhood" inaugurated by rossetti and holman hunt in the middle of the nineteenth century. this unusual tenderness of feeling is probably also the origin of the legend that memling was taken into the hospital of s. john at bruges--where he painted most of his masterpieces--as a sick soldier after the battle of nancy. in feeling for beauty and grace he was more gifted than any painter except hubert van eyck, and this quality, conspicuous amid the somewhat ugly realism of most of his contemporaries, has ensured him perhaps a little more popularity than is rightly his share. compared with the works of his master, roger van der weyden, his figures are certainly of better proportions and less meagreness of form; his hands and feet truer to nature; the heads of his women are sweeter, and those of his men less severe. his outlines are softer, and in the modelling of his flesh parts more delicacy of half tones is observable. his colours are still more luminous and transparent. on the other hand he is inferior to van der weyden in the carrying out of detail, such as the materials of his draperies or the rendering of the full brilliancy of gold. in memling was a master painter at bruges, and painted the portrait of the medallist, nicolas spinelli, which is now in the royal museum at antwerp, and a small altar-piece now at chatsworth. his most famous works, those in the hospital at bruges, belong to a somewhat later date, the _shrine of s. ursula_ not being completed till . the _adoration of the kings_ and the altar-piece were some ten years earlier. the famous shrine of s. ursula is about four feet in length, and the whole of the outside is adorned with painting. on each side of the cover are three medallions, a large one in the centre and two smaller at the sides. the latter contain angels playing on musical instruments; in the centre on one side is a coronation of the virgin, on the other the glorification of s. ursula and her companions, with two figures of bishops. on the gable-ends are the virgin and child with two sisters of the hospital kneeling before them, and s. ursula with the arrow, the instrument of her martyrdom, and virgins seeking protection under her mantle. on the longer sides of the reliquary itself, in six rather larger compartments, is painted the history of s. ursula. of about the same period, possibly a little earlier, is the _marriage of s. catherine_, which is also in s. john's hospital at bruges. the central figure is that of the virgin, seated under a porch, with tapestry hanging down behind it; two angels hold a crown over her head: beside her is s. catherine kneeling, whose head is one of the finest ever painted by memling. behind her is an angel playing on the organ, and further back s. john the baptist. on the other side kneels s. barbara, reading: behind her another angel holds a book to the virgin, and still further back is s. john the evangelist, a figure of great beauty, and of a singularly mild and thoughtful character. through the arcades of the porch we look out, on either side of the throne, on a rich landscape, in which are represented scenes from the lives of the two s. johns. the panel on the right contains the beheading of the baptist, on the left the evangelist in the isle of patmos, where the vision of the apocalypse appears to him--the almighty on a throne in a glory of dazzling light, encompassed with a rainbow. the whole forms a work strikingly poetical and most impressive in character; it is highly finished, both in drawing and composition. ian gossaert (_c._ - ), called jan van mabuse from his native town of maubeuge, was the son of a bookbinder who worked for the abbey of sainte-aldegonde. it is possible therefore that he might have formed an early acquaintance with illuminated manuscripts before studying the art of painting in the studio of a master. memling, gerard, david, and quentin massys have been suggested as his instructors, but it is not known for certain that he was actually a pupil of any of them. in he went to italy, where he appears to have been greatly influenced both by the work of the renaissance painters and by the antique. the _adoration of the kings_, which was lately purchased from castle howard for the national gallery for £ , , was painted before he went to italy. towards the end of the fifteenth century, in consequence of the transfer of commerce from bruges to antwerp, this latter city first became and long continued the centre of art, and especially of netherlandish painting. here it is that we find quentin massys, the greatest belgian painter of this later time. he was born [illustration: plate xxiii.--jan mabuse portrait of jean carondelet _louvre, paris_] probably in . his father is said to have been a blacksmith and clockmaker, and there is a tradition that quentin only forsook the hammer for the brush at instigation of a tender passion for a beautiful lady. be that as it may, he is an important figure in the history of belgian art. he distinguishes, broadly speaking, the close of the last period and the beginning of the next. a number of pictures representing sacred subjects exhibit, with little feeling for real beauty of form, such delicacy of features, beauty and earnestness of feeling, tenderness and clearness of colouring and skill in finish, as worthily recall the religious painting of the middle ages, though at the very end of them. in his draperies, especially, we observe a charm which is peculiar to massys. at the same time, in the subordinate figures introduced into sacred subjects, such as the executioners, etc., he seems to take pleasure in coarse and tasteless caricatures. in subjects taken from common life, such as money changers, loving couples, or ugly old women, he uses his brush with evident zest, and with great success. the pictures of his later period are also distinguished from those of other painters by the large size of the figures, which for the first time in his country are of three-quarters or even actual life size. among his most original and attractive pictures are the half-length figures of christ and the virgin. these must have been very popular in his own time, for he has left several repetitions of them. two heads of this class are at antwerp, and two others of equal beauty are in the national gallery in one frame (no. ). the most celebrated of his subject pictures is that known by the name of _the misers_, or _the money changers_, at windsor castle--of which there are numerous copies, and this is not supposed to be the original. _the money changer and his wife_ at the louvre is undoubtedly his. lucas van leyden, as he was called (his real name being luc jacobez), was born in , and died in . he was a pupil of a little known artist, cornelis engelbrechstein, who was a follower if not a pupil of memling. lucas was an artist of multifarious powers and very early development. he painted admirably--though his authenticated works are very scarce--drew, and engraved. he pursued the path of realism in the treatment of sacred subjects, but with less beauty or elevation of mind. his heads are generally of a very ugly character. at the same time his form of expression found sympathy in the feeling of the period, and by the skill with which it was expressed, especially in his engravings, attracted a number of followers. in scenes from common life he is full of truth and delicate observation of nature, though showing now and then a somewhat coarse sense of humour. one of his most important works is a large composition of _the last judgment_, which is at leyden. very early in the sixteenth century--beginning in fact, as we have seen, with jan mabuse in --the netherlandish and german artists made it the fashion to repair to italy, attracted by the reputation of the great masters; so that from this time onwards their work ceases to exhibit the purely northern characteristics of their predecessors. for it appears that precisely those qualities most opposed to their own native feeling for art made the deepest impression on their minds; more especially such general qualities as grandeur, beauty, simplicity of forms, drawing of the nude, unrestrained freedom, boldness, and grace of movement--in short, all that is comprised in art under the term "ideal." but the attempt to appropriate all these qualities could lead to no successful result. being based on no inherent want on the part of their own original feeling for art, it became only the outward imitation of something foreign to themselves, and they never therefore succeeded in mastering the complete understanding of form, or in adopting the true feeling for beauty of line or grace of movement; and in aiming at them they only degenerated into artificiality, exaggeration in drawing, and violence in attitude. the pictures of this class, even of religious subjects, have accordingly but little to attract the eye, and when they selected scenes from ancient mythology, and allegories decked out with an ostentation of learning, the result is positively disagreeable. the most satisfactory productions of this period will be found in the department of portrait painting, which, by its nature, threw the artist upon the exercise of his own original feeling for art. as in every other respect this epoch is far more important as a link in the chain of history than from any pleasure arising from its own works, it will be sufficient to mention only the more important painters and a few of their principal pictures. the first painter who deserted his native style of art was, as before mentioned, jan mabuse. after the large _adoration of the kings_ in the national gallery the most important picture of his pre-italian period is the _christ in the garden of gethsemane_ at berlin. nearly all his works subsequent to , by which time he had settled in brussels, are characterised by all the faults above mentioned. their redeeming quality is their masterly treatment. among those of religious subjects the smallest are as a rule the best. the _ecce homo_ at antwerp, so frequently copied by contemporary painters, is a specimen of masterly modelling and vigorous colour. he is less successful with his life-size _adam and eve_, of which there are repetitions at brussels, hatfield, hampton court and berlin. but his most unpleasing efforts are the mythological subjects such as the _danaë_ at munich, and the _neptune and amphitrite_ at berlin. on the other hand, his portraits are attractive both from being more original, and less influenced by his acquired mannerisms of style four of these are in the national gallery, and the _girl weighing gold pieces_, in the berlin gallery, is also worthy of mention. bernard van orley, born at brussels in , is characterised in the catalogue of the national gallery as "taking his place after massys and mabuse on the downward slope of netherlandish painting." he has been immortalised by the fine portrait head of him by albert dürer which is now in the dresden gallery. he was court painter to margaret of austria, governess of the low countries, and retained the same post under her successor, mary of hungary. he is said to have visited rome in , and there made the acquaintance of raphael, whose influence is certainly apparent, though hardly his inspiration, in the _holy family_ in the louvre. a more netherlandish work, both in feeling and in treatment, is the _pietà_ in the gallery at brussels. ian scorel, born in , was a pupil of mabuse, and appears to have been the first to introduce the italian style into his native country--holland. when on a pilgrimage to palestine he happened to pass through rome at the time his countryman was raised to the papal dignity as adrian vi., and after painting his portrait he was appointed overseer of the art treasures of the vatican. returning to utrecht, where he died, he painted the picture of the _virgin and child_, with donors, which is now in the town hall. a fine portrait by scorel of cornelius aerntz van der dussen is in the berlin gallery. the decided and strongly realistic style in which quentin massys had painted scenes from common life, as for instance the misere or money changers, became the model for various painters in their treatment of similar subjects. first among these was his son, jan massys, born about , who followed closely but rather clumsily in his father's footsteps, and need only be mentioned for carrying on the tradition. more interesting were the breughels, namely, pieter breughel the elder, born about , called peasant breughel, and his two sons pieter and jan. old breughel is best studied at vienna, where there are good examples of his various subjects, notably a _crucifixion_ and _the tower of babel_--both dated --and secular scenes like _a peasant wedding_ and a _fight between carnival and lent_, which are full of clever and droll invention. his elder son, pieter, was called hell breughel, from his choice of subject. he is far inferior to his father or to his younger brother jan, called velvet breughel, born in . though more especially a landscape painter, jan also takes an important place in the development of subject pictures, which, though seldom rising above a somewhat coarse reality, are of a lively character, and worthy forerunners of the more accomplished productions of teniers, ostade, and brouwer. it is in portrait painting, however, that the netherlandish school chiefly distinguished itself during its decline in the seventeenth century, and had all its sons remained in the country to enhance its glory, it is probable that the effect on the general practice of painting would have been more than beneficial. but portrait painters have not always been content to sit at home and wait for sitters to come to them, especially when the state of society in which they happen to find themselves makes waiting rather a long and tedious process. from the reformation onwards, for over two centuries, there was a steady demand for portrait painters in england, and after the foundation of a really english school of painting by reynolds in the middle of the eighteenth century, the stream of foreign, especially netherlandish, talent never entirely ceased to flow. but confining ourselves for the present to the sixteenth century, we find that all the considerable netherlandish portrait painters were employed for the most part outside their own country. typical of these is joos van cleef, of antwerp, who died in . according to vasari he visited spain and painted portraits for the court of france. at all events it is certain that he worked for a time in england, where the great success of sir antonio mor is said to have disordered his brain. the few pictures that can be assigned to him with any certainty thoroughly justify the high reputation he enjoyed in his time--the two male portraits for example at berlin and munich, the portraits of himself and his wife at windsor, and his own at althorp. his style may be classed as between that of holbein and antonio mor. his well-drawn forms are decided without being hard, and his warm and transparent colouring recalls the great masters of the venetian school. ii peter paul rubens dr waagen thus summarises the history of painting in the netherlands during the interval of about a century and a half that elapsed between the death of jan van eyck in and the birth of peter paul rubens in . "the great school of the brothers van eyck," he writes, "which united with a profound and genuine enthusiasm for religious subjects a pure and healthy feeling for nature, and a talent for portraying her minutest details with truth and fidelity, had continued till the end of the fifteenth century, and in some instances even later, to produce the most admirable works, combining the utmost technical perfection in touch and finish with most vivid and beautiful colouring. to this original school, however, had succeeded a perverted rage for imitating the italian masters, which had been introduced into the netherlands by a few painters of talent, particularly by jean mabuse and bernard van orley. to display their science by throwing their figures into forced and difficult positions and strongly marking the muscles, by which they thought to emulate the grandeur of michel angelo, and to exhibit their learning by the choice of mythological and allegorical subjects, became the aim of succeeding painters, and before these false and artificial views of art, the spirit of religious enthusiasm and the pure, naïve perception of the truth and beauty of nature gradually disappeared. "in proportion as the flemish painters lost the proper conception of form, and the feeling for delicacy and beauty of outline, it followed of course that they became more and more removed from nature in their desire to rival each other in the forced attitudes of their figures, and in the exhibition of nudity, until at last such disgusting caricatures were produced as we find in the works of martin heemskirk or franz floris, artists who were even deficient in good colouring, the old inheritance of the school. "some few painters, however, whose feeling for truth and nature repelled them instinctively from a path so far removed from both, took to portraying scenes of real life with considerable humour and vivacity; or they delineated nature in her commonest aspects with great minuteness of detail; and thus _tableaux de genre_ and landscape originated. although a few isolated efforts to introduce a better state of things were visible towards the end of the sixteenth century, it was reserved for a mind of no common power to bring about a complete revolution." that rubens was possessed of a "mind of no common power" will be readily admitted. he was an extraordinary person, in whom were combined such a variety of excellent qualities that there seems to have been no room left in him for any of the inferior ones which are usually necessary, as one must almost admit, for an alloy that will harden the finer metal for the practical purposes of success. with all his feeling for religion, he was seldom prudish; his amazing vitality never led him into excess or intemperance. his intense patriotism was all for peace; classical learning never made him dry or bumptious, nor the favour of kings servile. as fine a gentleman as buckingham, he had no enemies. something more than temperament and natural ability, however, was necessary to make rubens exactly what he turned out to be, and that was environment. had he remained in flanders all his life we should have been deprived of much that is most characteristic in his art. he was too big, that is to say, for the flower pot. he needed to be bedded out, so that his exuberant natural genius might have the proper opportunities for expanding under suitable conditions. it was in venice and mantua, in florence and rome that he found himself, and took his measure from the giants. rubens was born in at cologne, where his father, a jurist of considerable attainments, had taken refuge from the disturbances at antwerp in . he was christened peter paul in honour of the saints on whose festival his birthday fell-- th june. at the age of sixteen he was placed as a page in the household of the widowed countess of lalaing, but as he showed a remarkable love for drawing he was apprenticed first to tobias verhaegt, a landscape painter, and then to adam van oort. the latter was so unsuitable a master, however, that rubens was soon committed to the care of otto vennius, at that time court painter to the infanta isabella and the archduke albert, her husband; he prospered so well that in vennius advised him to go to italy to finish his education as a painter. rubens was now in his twenty-third year, and besides being proficient in painting he was so well grounded in the classics and in general education and manners that he was recommended by the archduke to vincenzio, duke of gonzaga, whose palace at mantua was famous for containing an immense collection of art treasures, a great part of which within the next quarter of a century were purchased by king charles, the duke of buckingham, and the earl of arundel. the influence exerted on the young painter by surroundings like these is exemplified in a note by waagen:-- "rubens during his residence at mantua was so pleased with the _triumph of julius cæsar_ by mantegna (the large cartoons now at hampton court palace), that he made a free copy of one of them. his love for the fantastic and pompous led him to choose that with the elephants carrying the candelabra; but his ardent imagination, ever directed to the dramatic, could not be contented with this. instead of a harmless sheep, which, in mantegna, is walking by the side of the foremost elephant, rubens has introduced a lion and a lioness, which growl angrily at the elephant. the latter is looking furiously round, and is on the point of striking the lion a blow with his trunk." that rubens should have been so specially attracted by mantegna may seem a little surprising, until we remember that both were lovers and students of classical antiquities--a fact that is often forgotten in recalling only the principal achievements of either. but it is important to know what sort of foundations underlie the most splendid erections if we wish to understand how they came into existence and what their place is in the history of the arts. a glance through lemprière's _dictionary_ may furnish a modern academician with a subject for a popular picture,--but that is stucco rather than foundation. the roots of tall trees go deep. rubens when he was in rome studied the antiquities of the place with the utmost diligence and zeal, as is evidenced by a book published by his brother philip in . it was in the autumn of this year that he received the news, when at genoa, of his mother's illness, which induced him to return to antwerp forthwith. on his arrival he found she had died before the messenger had reached genoa. after four months of mourning he was ready to return to flanders; his sojourn of eight years in italy had so far influenced him that he might have remained there indefinitely had it not been for the archduke and the infanta pressing him to remain at brussels and attach himself to their court. another circumstance may possibly have weighed with him; for within a year we find him married to elizabeth brant, the daughter of a magistrate of antwerp, and it was not at brussels, but at antwerp, that he took up his quarters. here he proceeded to build a wonderful house--said to have cost him , florins--after designs of his own in the italian style, which he filled with the treasures he had collected in italy. rubens's first pictures were nearly all of them religious subjects. before he went to italy he had painted an _adoration of the kings_, a _holy trinity_, and the _dead christ in the arms of god the father_, which was engraved by bolswert. when vincenzio sent him to rome to copy pictures there for him, he found time to execute a commission which he received from the archduke albert to paint three pictures for the church of santa croce di gerusalamme, namely, the _crowning with thorns_, the _crucifixion_, and the _finding of the cross_. a year later--after returning from a journey to madrid--he painted the altar-piece for the church of santa maria in vallicella, in which the influence of paul veronese is conspicuous. at genoa, he painted the circumcision and s. ignatius for the church of the jesuits. one of the first pictures which he painted on his return to antwerp was an altar-piece for the private chapel of the archduke albert, of the holy family. this picture was so much admired that the members of the fraternity of s. ildefonso, at the head of which was the archduke albert, commissioned him to paint an altar-piece for the chapel of the order of s. james near brussels. this picture, which is now at vienna, represents the virgin enthroned, surrounded by four female saints, putting the cloak of the order on the shoulders of s. ildefonso. on the wings are the portraits of the archduke and isabella, with their patron saints. thus we find that, like the earliest painters in his own country as well as in italy, the beginning of rubens's art was under the influence of the church. further, we find that the most celebrated work of his earlier period, the _descent from the cross_, in the cathedral at antwerp, was undertaken in circumstances which abundantly show how thoroughly he was imbued with the principles of the religion he professed. the story is that when preparing the foundations of his new house he had unwittingly trespassed upon a piece of ground belonging to the company of arquebusiers at antwerp. a lawsuit was threatened, and rubens, with all the vivacity of his nature, prepared measures of resistance. but when his friend rockox, a lawyer, had proved him that he was in the wrong, he immediately drew back, and offered to paint a picture by way of compensation. the offer was accepted, and the arquebusiers asked for a representation of their patron, s. christopher, to be placed in his chapel in the cathedral. in the magnificent spirit which always distinguished the man, he presented to his adversaries not merely the figure of the great saint, but an elaborate and significant illustration of his name (christ-bearer). thus, in the centre, the disciples are lifting the saviour from the cross; in the wings the visitation--s. simeon with christ in his arms, s. christopher with christ on his shoulders, and an old hermit bearing a light. among the earlier examples of secular pictures one of the most famous is the portrait of himself and his bride, which is now in the munich gallery. this was painted in , when rubens was over thirty years old. in rubens went to madrid on a diplomatic errand, but still as a painter, as we shall see when discussing his relations with velasquez. towards the end of the year he was sent on another diplomatic mission, this time to england. the choice of an ambassador could not have fallen on anyone better calculated to suit the personal character of charles i., who was a passionate lover of art and easily captivated by men of cultivated intellect and refined manners. rubens therefore, in whom the most admirable and attractive qualities were united to the rarest genius as an artist, soon succeeded in winning the attention and regard of the king. at paris, too, rubens had made friends with buckingham, who had purchased his whole collection of statues, paintings, and other works of art for about ten thousand pounds. it was during his stay in london that he painted the picture now in the national gallery, called _peace and war_ (no. ). this was intended as an allegory representing the blessings of peace and the horrors of war, which he presented to the king as a tangible recommendation of the pacific measures which he had come to propose. after the dispersion of the royal collection during the commonwealth this picture was acquired by the doria family at genoa, where it was called, oddly enough, _rubens's family_. as a matter of fact the children are those of balthazar gerbier. he also painted the _s. george and the dragon_, which is now at windsor castle, and made the sketches for the nine pictures on the ceiling of the banqueting hall--now the united service institution museum--in whitehall. it was on this occasion, too, that he received the honour of knighthood from charles i., who is said to have presented him with his own sword. in the following year, , rubens married his second wife, helena fourment, who was only sixteen years old--he was now fifty-two or fifty-three. she belonged to one of the richest and most respectable families in antwerp, and was by no means unworthy of the compliment of being painted in the character of the virgin receiving instruction from s. anne, in the picture which is still at antwerp. in his painting was again interrupted by a diplomatic mission, this time to holland; and his remaining years were subject to more distressing interruptions, from the gout, to which he finally succumbed in . when we come to consider the english school of painting we shall see how much of its revival in the middle of the eighteenth century was due to the personality as well as to the genius of sir joshua reynolds. in the netherlands, likewise, it was not merely a great painter that was required to raise the art to life, but a great personality as well; and to the influence of rubens may be attributed much if not all of the extraordinary fertility of the flemish and dutch schools of the seventeenth century. making every allowance for the difference in the times in which the van eycks and rubens were working, there is no doubt that the former lived in too rarefied an atmosphere ever to influence their fellows, and with the exception of hans memling they left no [illustration: plate xxiv.--rubens portrait of hÉlÈne fourment, the artist's second wife, and two children _louvre, paris_] one worthy to carry on their tradition. rubens showed his contemporaries that art was a mistress who could be served in many ways that were yet unthought of, and that she did not by any means disdain the tribute of other than religious votaries. beginning, as we have pointed out, with sacred subjects, rubens soon turned to the study of the classics, and found in them not so much the classical severity that mantegna had sought for as the pagan spirit of fulness and freedom. "i am convinced that to reach the highest perfection as a painter," he himself writes "it is necessary, not only to be acquainted with the ancient statues, but we must be inwardly imbued with the thorough comprehension of them. an insight into the laws which pertain to them is necessary before they can be turned to any real account in painting. this will prevent the artist from transferring to the canvas that which in sculpture is dependent on the material employed--marble, for instance. many inexperienced and indeed experienced painters do not distinguish the material from the form which it expresses--the stone from the figure which is carved in it; that which the artist forces from the dead marble, from the universal laws of art which are independent of it. "one leading rule may be laid down, that inasmuch as the best statues of antiquity are of great value for the painter, the inferior ones are not only worthless but mischievous: for while beginners fancy they can perform wonders if they can borrow from these statues, and transfer something hard, heavy, with sharp outlines and an exaggerated anatomy to their canvas, this can only be done by outraging the truth of nature, since instead of representing flesh with colours, they do but give colour to marble. "in studying even the best of the antique statues, the painter must consider and avoid many things which are not connected with the art of the sculptor, but solely with the material in which he worked. i may mention particularly the difference in the shading. in nature, owing to the transparency of the flesh, the skin, and the cartilages, the shading of many parts is moderated, which in sculpture appear hard and abrupt, for the shadows become doubled, as it were, owing to the natural and unavoidable thickness of the stone. to this must be added that certain less important parts which lie on the surface of the human body, as the veins, folds of the skin, etc., which change their appearance with every movement, and which owing to the pliancy of the skin become easily extended or contracted, are not expressed at all in the works of sculptors in general--though it is true that sculptors of high talent have marked them in some degree. the painter, however, must never omit to introduce them--with proper discretion. "in the manner in which lights fall, too, statues are totally different from nature; for the natural brilliancy of marble, and its own light, throws out the surface far more strongly than in nature, and even dazzles the eye." i have quoted rather more of this passage (from mrs jameson's translation) than i at first intended, because it discloses one of the most important secrets of the successful painting of figures, by other artists besides rubens himself--george romney for example. the advantages of a "classical education" at our english public schools and universities are questioned, and there can be no doubt that for the bulk of the pupils they are questionable. but rubens shows that the case is exactly the same for painters studying classical art as for scholars acquainting themselves with classical literature. a superficial study of the antique, just because it is antique, is of no use at all, but rather a hindrance. but if the study is properly undertaken, there is no surer foundation, in art or literature, on which to build. it makes no difference what is built; the foundation is there, beneath the surface, and whatever is placed upon it will stand for all time. the remarkable freedom and originality of rubens's treatment of classical subjects is thus accounted for. under the surface is his familiarity with the antique, but instead of carrying this above ground, he builds on it a palace in accordance with the times and circumstances in which he lived. the principles of classical art underlie the modern structure. among his numerous works of classical mythology the picture at munich of _castor and pollux_ carrying off the daughters of leucippus is worthy of being first mentioned. the dioscuri mounted on spirited steeds, one of which is wildly rearing, are in the act of capturing the two damsels. the calm expression of strength in the male, and the violent but fruitless resistance of the female figures, form a striking contrast. although the former are merely represented as two coarse and powerful men, and the women have only common and rather redundant forms and flemish faces, yet the picture produces as a whole such a striking effect, owing to the admirable manner in which the subject is conceived, the power of imagination which it displays, and the exquisite colouring and tone, that it would never occur to any unprejudiced spectator to regret the absence of antique forms and character. two other pictures of this class are singled out for description by waagen as masterpieces. one is the _rape of proserpine_, at blenheim,--pluto in his car, drawn by fiery brown steeds, is carrying off the goddess, who is struggling in his arms. the other is the _battle of the amazons_, in the munich gallery, which was painted by rubens for van der geest. with great judgment he has chosen the moment when the amazons are driven back by the greeks over the river thermodon: the battle takes place upon a bridge, and thus the horror of the scene is carried to the highest pitch. both in flanders and in italy rubens had been brought into close contact with all the magnificence and splendour which belonged to those gorgeous times, and he delighted in representing the pomp of worldly state and everything connected with it. of all sacred subjects none afforded such a rich field for display as the _adoration of the kings_; he has painted this subject no less than twelve times, and his fancy appears quite inexhaustible in the invention of the rich offerings of the eastern sages. among the subjects of a secular character the history of marie de'medici, the triumph of the emperor charles v., and the sultan at the head of his army, gave him abundant opportunities of portraying oriental and european pageantry, with rich arms and regalia, and all the pomp and circumstance of war. profusion--pouring forth of abundance, that was one of rubens's most salient characteristics. exuberance, plenty, fatness. as a painter of animals, again, rubens opened out a new field for the energy of his fellow-countrymen, which was tilled so industriously by frans snyders and jan fyt, and in a lesser degree by the dutchmen jan weenix, father and son, and hondecoeter. that the naïve instincts, agility, and vivacity of animals must have had a great attraction for rubens is easily understood. those which are remarkable for their courage, strength, intelligence, swiftness--as lions, tigers, wild boars, wolves, horses, dogs--particularly interested him. he paid special attention to animals, seized every opportunity of studying them from nature, and attained the most wonderful skill and facility in painting them. it is related that he had a remarkably fine and powerful lion brought to his house in order to study him in every variety of attitude, and that on one occasion observing him yawn, he was so pleased with the action that he wished to paint it. he therefore desired the keeper to tickle the animal under the chin to make him repeatedly open his jaws: at length the lion became savage at this treatment, and cast such furious glances at his keeper, that rubens attended to his warning and had the beast removed. the keeper is said to have been torn to pieces by the lion shortly afterwards: apparently the animal had never forgotten the affront put upon him. by such means--though it is to be hoped not always with such lamentable results--rubens succeeded in seizing and portraying the peculiar character and instinct of animals--their quick movements and manifestations of strength--with such perfect truth and energy that not one among the modern painters has approached him in this respect--certainly not landseer, as mrs jameson would ask us to believe. the celebrated _wolf hunt_, in the collection of lord ashburton, was one of the earliest, painted in for the spanish general legranes only three years after rubens's return from italy. in this picture, his bold creative fancy and dramatic turn of mind are remarkably conspicuous--even at this early stage in his career. catherine brant, his first wife, on a brown horse, with a falcon in her hand, is near her husband; a second huntsman on horseback, three on foot, another old wolf and three young ones, with several dogs, complete the composition, which is most carefully painted in a clear and powerful tone throughout. of scenes of peasant life, one of his earliest, and yet the most famous, is the _kermesse_, which is now in the louvre. a boisterous, merry party of about seventy persons are assembled in front of a country ale-house; several are wildly dancing in a circle, others are drinking and shouting; others, again, are making love. _the garden of love_, equally famous, was one of rubens's latest pictures. of this there are several versions in existence, of which those at dresden and madrid may be considered as originals. several loving couples in familiar conversation are lingering before the entrance of a grotto, the front of which is ornamented with a rustic portico. amongst them we recognise the portraits of rubens and his second wife, his pupil van dyck, and simon de vos. as rubens united to such great and various knowledge the disposition to communicate it to others in the most friendly and candid manner, it was natural that young painters of talent who were admitted into his atelier should soon attain a high degree of skill and cultivation. at "the house in the wood," not far from the hague, there is a salon decorated entirely by the pupils of rubens. the principal picture, which is one of the largest oil paintings in the world, is by jacob jordaens, and represents the triumph of prince frederick henry--the object of the whole scheme being the glorification of the house of orange, in . most of the other pictures are of theodore van thulden, who in these works has emulated his illustrious master in the force and brilliance of his colouring. but it is not in any particular salon or palace that we must look for the effects of rubens' influence; it was far wider than to be able to be contained within four walls. in portraiture he gave us van dyck; in historical subjects, jacob jordaens; in animal painting and still life, frans snyders, jan fyt, and the brothers weenix. in pictures of everyday life he gave us adrian brouwer and david teniers; in landscape, everdingen, ruisdael and waterloo. "thus was the art of painting in the netherlands remodelled in every department," says waagen in the concluding sentence of his memoir, "by the energies of a single great and gifted mind. thus was rubens the originator of its second great epoch, to which we are indebted for such numerous and masterly performances in every branch of the art." iii the pupils of rubens david teniers the elder, who was born at antwerp in , received the first rudiments of his art from rubens, who soon perceived in him the happy advances towards excelling in his profession that raised him to the head of his school. the prejudice in favour of his son, david teniers the younger, is so great that the father is generally esteemed but a middling painter; and his pictures not worth the inquiry of a collector. his hand is so little distinguished, however, that the paintings of the father are often taken for those of the son. the father was certainly the inventor of the manner, which the son, who was his pupil, only improved with what little was wanting to perfection. rubens was astonished at his early success, and though he followed the manner of adrian brouwer, looked on him as his most deserving pupil by the brightness of genius that he showed. he soon saved enough money to undertake the journey to italy, and when at rome he established himself with adam elsheimer, who was then in great vogue. in elsheimer's manner he soon became a perfect master, without neglecting at the same time the study of other and greater masters, endeavouring to penetrate into the deepest mysteries of their practice. an abode of ten years in italy, and the influence of elsheimer combined with that of rubens, formed him into what he became. when he returned to his own country he employed himself entirely in painting small pictures filled with figures of people drinking and merry-making, and numbers of peasants and country women. he displayed so much taste in these that the demand for them was universal. even rubens thought them an ornament to his collection. teniers drew his own character in his pictures, and in the subjects he usually expressed everything tends to joy and pleasure. always employed in copying after nature whatsoever presented itself, he taught his two sons, david and abraham, to follow his example, and accustomed them to paint nothing but from that infallible model, by which means they both became excellent painters. these were his only disciples, and he died at antwerp in . the only distinction between his works and those of his son, david teniers the younger, is that in the latter you discover a finer touch, a fresher brush, a greater choice of attitudes, and a better disposition of the figures. the father, too, retained something of the tone of italy in his colouring, which was stronger than his son's; but his pictures have less harmony and union--though to tell the truth, when the father took pains to finish his picture, he very nearly resembled his son. the latter, david teniers the younger, was born in . he was nicknamed the ape of painting, from his powers of imitation. the archduke leopold william made him a gentleman of his bedchamber, and he made copies of all his pictures. he came to england to buy several italian pictures for count fuensaldegna, who on his return heaped favours upon him. don john of austria and the king of spain set so great a value upon his pictures that they built a gallery set apart to preserve them--there are no less than fifty-two in the prado gallery to-day. his principal talent was landscape adorned with small figures. he painted men drinking and smoking, alchemists, corps de garde, temptations of s. anthony, and country fairs and merry-makings. his small pictures are superior to his large ones. his execution displays the greatest ease; the leafing of his trees is light, his skies are admirable: his small figures have an exquisite expression and a most lively touch, and the characters are marked out with the greatest truth. from the thinness of the colours his works seem to have been finished at once; they are generally clear in all their parts, and teniers had the art, without dark shades, to relieve his lights by other lights, so well managed as to produce the effect he wanted, an art which few besides himself have attained. he died at antwerp in . frans snyders was born at antwerp in the year , ten years later, that is to say, than rubens. he received his first instruction in the art of painting from henry van balen. his genius at first displayed itself only in painting fruit. he afterwards attempted animals, in which kind of study he succeeded so well that he surpassed all that had ever excelled before him. he stayed for some time in italy, and the works he met with there by castiglione proved a spur to his genius to attempt outdoing him in painting animals. when he returned to flanders he fixed his ordinary abode at brussels, where he was made painter to the archduke and duchess, and became attached to the house of spain. twenty-two of his pictures are in the prado gallery. when snyders required large figures in his compositions both rubens and jordaens took pleasure in assisting him, and rubens in turn borrowed the assistance of snyders to paint the ground of his pictures; thus they mutually assisted each other in their labours, while snyders' manly and vigorous manner was quite able to hold its own even when joined with that of the great master. anthony van dyck was born at antwerp in , less than three months before velasquez at seville. both became so famous in their capacity of court painters that the rest of their achievement is popularly regarded as little more than a bye-product. in the case of van dyck there is the more excuse for the english public, inasmuch as, like holbein before him, he was exclusively employed while in this country in the production of portraits; and as "his works are so frequent in england," as horace walpole observes in the opening sentence of his memoir in the "anecdotes of painting," "that the generality of our people can scarce avoid thinking him their countryman," it is easy enough to forget that he only spent the last nine years of his life here. again, the insatiable craze of the english and american public for portraits has helped to obscure the extent of van dyck's capabilities in other directions, and while the national gallery contains not a single subject-piece from his hand, more and more thousands are continually spent in the acquisition of more and more portraits. the bewitching _cupid and psyche_ in queen mary's closet at hampton court, painted a year before his death, is scarcely known to exist! at the same time it would be useless to deny that van dyck's principal claim to his place among the greatest masters rests chiefly upon portraiture. the point i wish to make is that portrait painting never yet made a great master, but that none but a great master ever became a great portrait painter; and so long as we are only permitted to see the particular achievement of the artist in our public galleries, so long is it likely that we shall continue to be flooded with mediocre likenesses of fashionable people by painters whose highest or whose only achievement they constitute. anyone can write a "short story" for the cheaper sort of modern journal; only writers like hardy, stevenson, or kipling can give us a masterpiece in little. it was said that rubens advised van dyck to devote himself to portraiture out of jealousy: but that is hardly in accordance with what we know of his generous nature. if the advice was given at all we may be sure that it was given in a friendly spirit. but there was something in the temperament of van dyck which peculiarly fitted him for the court, apart from any question as to his excellence in any particular branch of his art, and it is evident that the personality of rubens, and his connection with the rich and mighty of the earth, influenced him almost as much as did his art. how much he owed to rubens, and how much rubens owed to him in painting is a matter that is arguable. he had been several years with van balen before he entered the studio of rubens, when eighteen years old, not as a pupil but as an assistant. here he not only had the practical task of painting rubens's compositions for him, in company with numerous others, but had also the advantage of studying the works of titian and other of the great italian masters in rubens's famous collection. if the hand of van dyck is traceable in some of the pictures of rubens at this period, so the spirit of rubens is very obvious in those of van dyck. the chief thing to be remembered is that in these early days he was not painting portraits. his earliest works, in which the influence of titian is perceptible as well as that of rubens, are the _christ bearing the cross_, in s. paul's at antwerp, painted in ; the _s. sebastian_ at munich, and the _christ mocked_, at berlin. the familiar portrait of _cornelius van der geest_ in the national gallery, is one of his very earliest, probably before . again, on his first visit to genoa, in , on the advice of rubens, his ambition was not to paint portraits, as on his second visit some years later, but to rival rubens in the composition of great historical pieces. it was not until , when he left behind him in genoa the superb series of balbi, brignole-sala, cattaneo, and lomellini portraits, and returned to antwerp to undertake those such as the _le roys_ at hertford house, or the _beatrice de cusance_ at windsor, that he had really become a portrait painter. even then, he was still determined not to yield to rubens at antwerp, and painted, amongst other subjects, the _rinaldo and armida_ for charles i. it was only at the solicitation of george geldorp, a schemer as well as a painter, that he consented at length, in , to come to england; and it was only the welcome afforded to him by charles that induced him to settle here. two considerations of personal vanity may be suggested as actuating charles to be specially indulgent to van dyck--an indulgence of which the results posterity should not omit to credit to the sad account of the martyr--first, that his father had failed to retain the painter in his service, and second, that velasquez, who had made a sketch of him on his mad visit to madrid in , was then immortalising philip. velasquez being out of the question, why not van dyck! an excellent idea! especially when instead of dwarfs, buffoons, and idiots, the english court contained some exceedingly fine material besides the royal family for the artist to exercise his talent upon. after this, flanders knew van dyck no more, save for a year or two's sojourn from - when he painted one or two magnificent portraits, and then returned to england, where he died in . with the death of rubens the year before, flemish painting had suffered another eclipse; and though snyders lived till , and jordaens and the younger teniers continued till late in the century, no fresh seedlings appeared, and the soil again became barren. rubens and van dyck were both too big for the little garden--their growth overspread europe. _dutch school_ i frans hals meantime we must turn our attention to holland, where frans hals, who was born only three years later than rubens, namely in , was the forerunner of rembrandt, van der helst, bol, lely, and a host more of greater or less painters, who made their country as famous in the seventeenth century for art as their fathers had made it in the sixteenth for arms. without going into the complications of the political history of the netherlands at this period, it is important nevertheless to remember that while the flemish provinces remained catholic under spain, the northern states, after heroic struggles, formed themselves into a republic; so that while it is difficult to draw a hard and fast line between what was dutch and what was flemish in estimating the influence of one particular painter upon another, there is no question at all as to vital difference between the conditions which led to the production of the pictures of the two schools. the flemish pictures were for the church and for the court, the dutch for the house, the guildhall, or the bourgeoisie. the former were aristocratic, the latter democratic. rubens and van dyck were aristocrats, hals and rembrandt democrats. rubens painted altar-pieces, for the great churches or cathedrals or for the chapels of his patrons. rembrandt painted bible stories for whoever would purchase them. van dyck painted the portraits of kings and nobles. hals painted the rough soldiers and sailors, singly, or in the great groups into which they formed themselves as guilds. for the first time in the history of painting, neither church nor court were its patrons. in any age or under any circumstances frans hals would have seemed a remarkable painter, but to measure his extraordinary genius to its full height we must try to realise what those times and those circumstances were. in florence and venice, as we have seen, there were great schools of painting, and in florence especially, the whole city existed in an atmosphere of art. there was no escape from it. in haarlem, where hals spent his youth (he was born in antwerp), there was no such state of affairs. there were no chapels to be decorated, no courtiers to be flattered. the country was seething with the effects of war, and the whole population were ready for it again at a moment's notice. there were plenty of heroes--every man was one--but not of the romantic sort. they were all bluff, hardy fellows, who wanted to get on with their business. who would have thought that they wanted to have their portraits painted? and who, accordingly, could have induced them to do so except a bluff, roystering genius like hals, who slashed them down on canvas before they had time to stop him? once it got wind that hals was such a good fellow, and that he dashed off a portrait to the life in as little time as it took to pass the time of day with him, he had plenty of business, and from painting single portraits he was commissioned to glorify the guilds by depicting their banquets, which he did with almost as much speed and considerably more fidelity than the limelight man at a city dinner in these times. his first great group--_the archers of s. george_, at haarlem--has all the appearance of being painted instantaneously as the banqueters stood around the table before dispersing. when we think of the cultured rubens, brought up in the atmosphere of courts, and studying for years among the finest paintings and painters in italy, and compare him with this low, ignorant fellow, who had never been outside the netherlands, do we not find his genius still more amazing? nowadays we see a portrait by hals surrounded with the finest works of the greatest painters in all times and in all lands, and see how well it stands the comparison. but our admiration must be increased a hundredfold, when we know that he was without any of the training or tradition of a great artist, and that it must have been by sheer character and genius alone that he forced his art upon his commercial, though heroic public. one thing especially it is interesting to notice about the dutch portraits of the early republican period, namely, that they are obviously inspired by the pleasure of having a living, speaking likeness rather than by pride and ostentation. bluff and swaggering as some of hals's portraits of men appear to be--notably _the laughing cavalier_, at hertford house--that is only because the subjects were bluff and swaggering fellows--swaggering, that is to say, in the consciousness of their ability and their readiness to defend their country and their homes again, if need be, against the tyrant. but these swaggerers are the exception, and the prevailing impression conveyed is that of honest, if determined, bluffness. they are not posing, these jolly dutchmen, they are sitting or standing, for hals to paint them just as they would sit or stand to be measured for a suit of clothes. look at the heads of the man and the woman in the national gallery. could anything be more natural and unassuming? look at the _laughing cavalier_, and ask if it is not the man himself, as hals saw and knew him, not a faked up hero? hals caught him in his best clothes, that is all. he did not put them on to be painted in--he was out on a jaunt. look at hals's women, how pleased they are to be painted, just as they are. poor hals, he was a good, honest fellow, though sadly given to drink and low company. but for sheer genius he has never had an equal. the vast number of his paintings--many of which now only exist in copies--shows that with every predilection to ease and comfort, he could not help painting--it simply welled out of him. it was a natural gift which seems to have needed no labour and no study. it is certain that this fecundity was a very potent factor in the development of the dutch school of painting. had hals confined his talent to painting the portraits of the highest in the land, which would never have been seen by the public at large, it is improbable that such a business-like community would have produced many painters. but hals must have popularised painting much more than we generally suppose. an example occurs to me in the picture of _the rommelpot player_, of which no less than thirteen versions are enumerated by de groot, none of which can claim to be the original. one is at wilton, another in sir frederick cook's gallery at richmond, and a third at arthingworth hall in northamptonshire. [illustration: plate xxv.--frans hals portrait of a lady _louvre, paris_] the subject is an old beggar man playing in front of the door of a cottage on a ridiculous instrument consisting of an earthen pot covered over like a jampot with a lid of parchment, on which he makes a rude noise with a stick, to the intense delight of a group of children. a picture like this, then, it is evident, instead of hanging in solitary confinement in the house of a great person, was so widely popular that it was copied on all sides, and must have been seen by thousands of people. next to hals, in point of time, was hendrik gerritz pot, who was born, probably at haarlem, in . it is to him rather than to ostade, who was a quarter of a century later, that we must trace the origin of smaller _genre_ pictures of the dutch school which in later years became its principal product. pot's works are neither very important nor very numerous, but as a portrait painter he is represented in the louvre by a portrait of charles i., which was probably painted when he was in england in or thereabouts; while at hampton court is a beautiful little piece by him which is catalogued under the title of _a startling introduction_. this belonged to charles i., for his cypher is branded on the back of the panel on which it is painted, and it was sold by the commonwealth as "a souldier making a strange posture to a dutch lady by bott." the painter's monogram h.p. appears on the large chimney piece before which the "soldier" is standing. gerard honthorst, born at utrecht in , can hardly be said to belong to the dutch school at all. when he was only twenty he went to rome, where his devotion to painting effects of candle-light earned him the sobriquet of "gherardo della notte." in he was elected dean of the guild of st. luke at utrecht, but he was in no sense a national painter, and neither took nor gave anything in the way of national influence. he was in england for a few months in , to which chance we are indebted for the picture of the duke of buckingham and his family which is in the national portrait gallery, and another group of the cavendish family which is at chatsworth. pictures of the nobility, or of celebrities like harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, were more in his line than those of his republican patriots, and consequently he plays no part in the development of the school we are now considering. bartholomew van der helst, born in amsterdam, , died there . he is by far the most renowned of the dutch portrait-painters of this period. although nothing is known as regards the master under whom he studied, it is probable that if hals was not actually his teacher, his works were the models whence van der helst formed himself. we see this in the portrait of vice-admiral kortenaar at amsterdam, where the conception of forms, and the unscumbled character of the strokes of the brush, recall hals. the same may be observed in two larger pictures with archers in the town hall at haarlem, where the inartistic arrangement and monotony of the otherwise warm flesh tones point to the earlier time of the painter. by about the year his character was more fully developed. his arrangement of portrait-pieces with numerous figures became very artistic and easy, his tone excellent, and his drawing masterly. this standard of excellence he retained till about . the following are principal pictures of this period:--a scene from the archery guild of amsterdam in , including thirty figures. the celebrated picture inscribed , an archery festival commemorating the peace of westphalia, and consisting of a party of twenty-four persons, at amsterdam. the chief charm of this work consists in the strong and truthful individuality of every part, both in form and colour; in the capital drawing, which is especially conspicuous in the hands; in the powerful and clear colouring; and finally, in a kind of execution which observes a happy medium between decision and softness. in he executed the picture of the archery guild known by the name "het doelenstück" at amsterdam gallery. this work represents three of the overseers of the guild, with golden prize vases, and a fourth supposed to be the painter himself. it is almost surpassed by a replica on a smaller scale executed in the following year, which is now in the louvre. at all events, this picture is in better preservation, and offers one of the most typical examples of portrait-painting that the dutch school produced. ii rembrandt van ryn but the greatest of all the dutch painters, in some ways the greatest painter that has ever lived, was rembrandt van ryn ( - ). beside him all the rest seem merely commonplace, and their works the product of this or that demand, according to their different times and circumstances, executed with more or less skill. for rembrandt there seems no place among them all--he must stand somewhere alone; and there is no standard by which to judge his perfections and imperfections except the man himself. perhaps the greatest difference between rembrandt and any other painter is that he never seems to have tried to please the public, but only painted to please himself. it is for this reason, no doubt, that he was never popular with the public, and is never likely to be; but just as beethoven is only understandable by the really musical soul, so rembrandt's appeal is to those who have the feeling for something in painting beyond the mere representation of familiar or heroic scenes and persons on canvas. for the public it is enough that one of his landscapes should be sold for £ , , and they all flock to see it; but put a fine rembrandt portrait in a shop-window without a name to it, and there would be little fear of the pavement being blocked. this failure of rembrandt to please the public of his own day brings out the truth that the practice of painting had up to then subsisted only so long as it supplied a popular demand; and when we come to consider what that demand was, we find that it is for nothing else but a pleasing representation of natural objects, which may or may not embody some sentimental or historical association, but must first and foremost be a fair representation of more or less familiar things. the oldest story about pictures is that of zeuxis and the bunch of grapes, which relates that he painted the fruit so like nature that the birds came and pecked at the painting--some versions, i believe, adding that the fruit itself was there but they preferred the painting. similar stories with innumerable variations are told of later artists. rembrandt himself is said to have been deceived by his pupils who, knowing he was careful about collecting money in small quantities, however extravagant he might be in spending it, painted coins on the floor of the studio, and enjoyed the joke of seeing him stoop to pick them up. we have heard, too, of flies painted with surprising skill in conspicuous places to deceive the unwary. but apart from these little pleasantries, one has only to remember how the earlier writers on painting have expressed themselves to see how much importance, consciously or unconsciously, was attached to life-like resemblance to the object painted. vasari is constantly using phrases in which he extols the painter for having made a figure look like the life, as though that were the real thing to be aimed at. we remember ben jonson's lines under shakespeare's portrait---- "wherein the graver had a strife with nature to outdo the life." and though ben jonson was not a critic, and if he had been there was little enough art in his time in england for him to criticize, still he expresses the general feeling of the public for any work of art. with the dutch people this was most certainly the case, and the popularity of the painters of scenes of everyday life is a proof of it. that hals, brouwer, or ostade were great painters was not half so important to them, if indeed they thought of it all, as that they were capable of turning out pictures which reflected their everyday life like a mirror. so long as rembrandt painted portraits like those of the pellicornes and their offspring--the two pictures at hertford house--or a plain straightforward group like dr tulp's _anatomy lesson_ (though in this he was already getting away from convention), he was tolerated. and it was not so much his freedom in living and his extravagant notions of the pleasures of life that brought about his downfall, as his failure to realize that when he took the money subscribed for the group of captain banning cocq's company, the subscribers expected something else for their money than a picture (_the night watch_) which might be a masterpiece according to the painter's notions, but was certainly not a portrait group of the subscribers. here, then, for the first time in the history of painting, we find an artist definitely at issue with the public. i do not say that this was the first time that an artist had failed to please the public, but it is the first occasion on which it was decided that if a painter was to undertake commissions, he must consider the wishes of the patron, or starve. it was something new for a painter of rembrandt's repute to be told that not he, but the persons who commissioned the work, were to be the judges of whether or not it was satisfactory. the consequences were important. for rembrandt, instead of taking the matter as a man of business, devoted the rest of his life to being an artist, and leaving the business of painting to men like backer, helst, and others, betook himself seriously to developing his art irrespective of what the public might or might not think of it. as a result, we have in the later work of rembrandt something that the world--i mean the artistic part of it--would be very sorry to do without. now the meaning of this is, not that rembrandt was ill-advised in deserting his patrons, or in suffering them to desert him, but that for the first time in the history of painting an artist had the personality--i will not say the conscious determination--to realize that his art was something quite apart from the affairs of this world, and that what he could express on canvas was _not_ merely a representation of natural objects designed to please his contemporaries, but something more than human, something that would appeal to humanity for all time. that many before him had felt that of their art, to a lesser or greater degree, is unquestionable--but none of them had ever realised it. dürer, certainly, may be cited as an exception, especially when contrasted with his phlegmatic and business-like compatriot holbein. but then dürer, a century before, and in totally different circumstances, was never assured of regular patronage as was rembrandt. rembrandt was the son of a miller named harmann geritz, who called himself van ryn, from the hamlet on the arm of the rhine which runs through leyden. his mother was the daughter of a baker. he was entered as a student at the university of leyden, his parents being comfortably off; but he showed so little taste for the study of the law, for which they intended him, that he was allowed to follow his own bent of painting, in the studio of a now forgotten painter, jacob van swanenburg. here he studied for about three years, after which he went to amsterdam and was for a short time with another painter named lastman, who was a clever but superficial imitator of the italian school then flourishing in rome. returning to leyden, rembrandt set up his easel and remained there painting till , when he went to amsterdam. his works during this first period are not very well known in this country, but at windsor and at edinburgh are portraits of his mother, which must belong to it. the next decade was the happiest and most prosperous in rembrandt's career. at amsterdam he soon found favour with wealthy patrons, and his happiness and success were completed by his marrying saskia van ulenburgh, the sister of a wealthy connoisseur and art dealer, with whom rembrandt had formed an intimate friendship. to this period belong the numerous portraits of himself and saskia, alone or together, most of which are characterized by a barbaric splendour of costume, utterly different from the profusion of rubens, but far more intense. living among the wealthiest jews in amsterdam, he seems to have been strongly attracted by their orientalism, and while rubens gloried in natural abundance of every sort, and painted the bounty of nature in the full sunlight, rembrandt chose out the treasures of art, and painted costume and jewels gleaming out of the darkness. the portraits of himself in a cap at hertford house (no. ), and of the old lady in the national gallery (no. ), both painted in , are notable examples of this period, though they have none of the orientalism to be seen in the various portraits of saskia, or in _the turk_ at munich. the two double portraits at hertford house of jean pellicorne and his wife with their son and daughter respectively, were among the commissions which he received after he set up at amsterdam, and are therefore less interesting as self-revelations. prosperity is not always the best condition under which to produce the highest work, and the temperament of rembrandt was so peculiar that there is little wonder that the prim dutchmen were not entirely captivated by his exuberant sensuality, or that we ourselves reserve our admiration principally for the more sombre and mysterious products of his later years after misfortune began to fall upon him. [illustration: plate xxvi.--rembrandt portrait of hendrickje stoffels _louvre, paris_] in the beloved saskia died, leaving an only child, titus, whose features are familiar to us in the portrait at hertford house. as though this were not affliction enough, rembrandt had the mortification of offending his patrons over the commission to paint captain banning cocq's company. from this time onward, as the world and rembrandt drifted farther and farther apart, his work becomes more and more wonderful. dr muther, in his _history of painting_, observes that perhaps it is only possible to understand rembrandt by interpreting his pictures not as paintings but as psychological documents. "a picture by rembrandt in the dresden gallery," he says, "represents _samson putting riddles to the philistines_; and rembrandt's entire activity, a riddle to the philistines of his time, has remained puzzling to the present day.... as no other man bore his name, so the artist, too, is something unique, mocks every historical analysis, and remains what he was, a puzzling, intangible, hamlet nature--rembrandt." the author's theory of the psychological document is hardly a solution of the admitted puzzle, though it is interesting to follow him in tracing it out in rembrandt's religious pictures, from the _samson_ already mentioned to his last dated work, in , the darmstadt _crucifixion_. what distinguishes rembrandt from all painters up to, and considerably later than his time, and in particular from those of his own school, is the mental, as compared with the physical activity that his pictures represent. perhaps this is only another way of stating dr muther's theory of the psychological documents, but it enables us to test that theory by comparing his work with that of others. in technical skill beruete claims a far higher place for velasquez, going so far as to say that the _lesson in anatomy_ is not a lesson in painting. but the difference between the two is not as great as that in technique, though infinitely wider in the mental process which led to the production of a picture. a reproduction of the _portrait of an old pole_, at s. petersburg, is in front of me, as it happens, as i am writing; and i see in this no inferiority in firmness and precision, in truth and vigour, to any portrait by velasquez. in their technical ability to present the life-like portrait of a real man, we can place rembrandt, velasquez, hals, and van dyck on pretty much of a level; if we had _van der geest_, _montanes_, the _old pole_ and the _laughing cavalier_ all in a row, we should find there was not much to choose between them for downright realization. but while in the work of velasquez we see the working of a fine and sensitive appreciation of his friend's personality, and the most exquisite realization of what was before him, in that of rembrandt we seem to see less of the pole and more of rembrandt himself. it is as though he were singing softly to himself while he was painting, thinking his own thoughts: while velasquez was simply concerned with the appearance and the thoughts of his model. that rembrandt's pictures are self-revelations, or psychological documents, is certainly true; and a proof of it is in the extraordinary number of portraits of himself. the famous dresden picture of himself with saskia on his knee can only be regarded in that light, and that brings into the category all the numerous pictures of saskia and of hendrike stoffels, who formed so great a part of his life. if to these we add, with dr muther, his biblical subjects, we find that there is not so very much left, and when we turn to the life's work of rubens, titian, velasquez, or in fact any of the great painters, the difference is at once apparent. so that in the pictures of rembrandt we may expect to find less of what we look for in those of others in the way of display, but infinitely more of the qualities which, to whatever extent they exist in other artists, are bound to be sacrificed to display. when we are asked to a feast, we find the room brilliantly lit, and our host the centre of an assemblage for whom he has felt it his duty to make a display consistent with his means and his station. if we were to peep into his house one night we might find him in a room illumined only with his reading-lamp, absorbed in his favourite study; but instead of only exchanging a few conventional phrases with him, and passing on to mingle with his guests and to enjoy his hospitality, we might sit and talk with him into the small hours. that is the difference between the success of hals with his _feast of s. george_, and the failure of rembrandt with _the night watch_. hals was at the feast, and of it. rembrandt was wrapped up in himself, and didn't enter into the spirit of the company--he was carried away by his own. that is why his pictures are so dark--not of deliberate technical purpose, like those of the _tenebrosi_, but because to him a subject was felt within him rather than seen as a picture on so many square feet of canvas. when we call up in our own minds the recollection of some event of more than usually deep significance in our past, we only see the deathbed, the two combatants, the face of the beloved, or whatever it may be; the accessories are nothing, unless our imagination is stronger than the sentiment evoked, and sets to work to supply them. it is this characteristic which so sharply distinguishes the work of rembrandt from that of his closest imitators. there is a large picture in the national gallery, _christ blessing the children_, catalogued as "school of rembrandt," in which we see as near an approach to his manner as to justify the attribution, but that is all. i do not know why it has never been suggested that this is the work of nicolas maes, who was actually his pupil, and who was one of the few dutch artists to paint life-sized groups, as he is known to have done in his earlier days when still under the influence of rembrandt. _the card players_, close beside it, has marked affinities in style, and especially in the very natural characterization of the faces, which is also apparent in that of the child in the other picture, and another on the extreme left of the picture. that it cannot be rembrandt's is quite evident; the grouping and the lighting of it proclaim the picture seen on the canvas, and not felt within the artist's own consciousness. the realistic tendency which, as has already been pointed out, was so characteristic of the whole art of the netherlands, showed the most remarkable and original results in the work of an idealist like rembrandt. sandrart, one of the earliest writers on painting, says that rembrandt "usually painted things of a simple and not thoughtful character, but which were pleasing to the eyes, and picturesque"--_schilderachtig_, as the netherlanders called it. this combination of realism and picturesqueness, assisted by his marvellous technical power, put him far above and apart from all his compeers. in the absence of any pictures by his masters van swanenburg and pinas, it is difficult to ascertain what, if anything, he learnt from them. from peter lastman we may be sure he learnt nothing in the way of technique. kugler--who in these paragraphs is my principal authority--suggests that it is highly probable that in this respect he formed himself from the pictures of frans hals, with which he must have been early acquainted in the neighbouring town of haarlem. at all events unexampled freedom, spirit, and breadth of his manner is comparable with that of no other earlier dutch master. but all these admirable qualities would offer no sufficient compensation for the ugly and often vulgar character of his heads and figures, and for the total subversion of all the traditional rules of art in costume and accessory, and would fail to account for the great admiration which his works enjoy, if he had not been possessed, besides, of an intensely artistic individuality. in his earliest pictures his touch is already masterly and free, but still careful, while the colour of the flesh is warm and clear and the light full. _dr tulp's anatomy_, painted in , is the most famous of this period. in _the night watch_, at amsterdam, dated , the light is already restricted, falling only on isolated objects; the local tone of the flesh is more golden; the touch more spirited and distinct. later, that is to say from about onwards, the golden flesh tones become still more intense, passing sometimes into a brown of less transparency, and accompanied frequently with grey and blackish shadows and sometimes with rather cool lights. the chief picture of this epoch, dated , is _the syndics_, also at amsterdam, a group of six men. this, in the depth of the still transparent golden tone, in the animation of the heads, and in body and breadth of handling, is a true masterpiece. with respect to his treatment of biblical subjects, two older writers, kolloff and guhl, accord him an honour which, as we shall see, kugler gives to dürer a century earlier, namely that of being the painter of the true spirit of the reformed church. though it is certain, kugler admits, that no other school of painting in rembrandt's time--neither that of rubens, nor that of the carracci, nor the french nor spanish schools--rendered the spiritual import of biblical subjects with the purity and depth exhibited by the great dutch master. here the kindly element of deep sentiment combines most happily with his feeling for composition, as in the _descent from the cross_, at munich, in _the holy family_, in the louvre, and above all in _the woman taken in adultery_, in the national gallery. in this last, a touching truthfulness and depth of feeling, with every other grand quality peculiar to rembrandt, are seen in their highest perfection. of hardly less excellence, also, is our _descent from the cross_. endowed with so many admirable qualities, it follows that rembrandt was a portrait painter of the highest order, while his peculiar style of lighting, his colouring and treatment, distinguish his portraits from those by all other masters. even the works of his most successful pupils, who followed his style in this respect, are far behind him in energy of conception and execution. the number of his admirable portraits is so large that it is difficult to know which to mention as most characteristic. no other artist ever painted his own portrait so frequently, and some of these may first be mentioned. that in the louvre, dated , represents him in youthful years, fresh and full of hope. it is spiritedly painted in the bright tone of his earlier period. another in the same gallery, of the year , painted with extraordinary breadth and certainty of hand of that later period, shows a man weighed down with the cares of life, with grey hair and deeply furrowed forehead. [illustration: plate xxvii.--rembrandt portrait of an old lady _national gallery, london_] the one at hertford house, already mentioned, and two in the national gallery, fall between these extremes. of other portraits we have already mentioned the two pellicorne groups in the wallace collection; and another of this earliest period, the very popular _old woman_, in the national gallery, dated . this is of greater interest as showing, if anything does, whether it is fair to attribute any of his training to the influence of hals. at any rate this picture is a highly important proof that at the early age of twenty-six, the painter was already in the full possession of that energy and animation of conception, and of that decision of the "broad and marrowy touch" which are so characteristic of him. of his later period--probably about --a fine example is _the jewish rabbi_, and of his latest the _old man_, both in the national gallery. iii painters of genre the painters of _genre_, by the number, quality, and diversity of whose pictures the dutch school is specially distinguished, may be roughly divided into three classes; namely, those who studied the upper, the middle, and the lower classes respectively. but as holland was a republic, and the great stream of its art welled up from the earth and was not showered upon it from above, it will be found convenient to reverse the social order in considering them, and begin with the immediate successors of frans hals, whose influence was without doubt a very considerable factor in the development of adrian brouwer and adrian and isaac ostade. adrian brouwer, now generally classed under the flemish school, was born at oudenarde in . but he went early to haarlem, and it was not until about that he settled at antwerp, where he died in . he was a pupil of frans hals, and acquired from him not only his spirited and free touch, but also a similar mode of life. his pictures, which for the most part represent the lower orders eating and drinking, often in furious strife, are extraordinary true and life-like in character, and display a singularly delicate and harmonious colouring, which inclines to the cool scale, an admirable individuality, and a _sfumato_ of surface in which he is unrivalled; so that we can well understand the high esteem in which rubens held them. owing to his mode of life, and to its early close, the number of his works is not large, and they are now seldom met with. no gallery is so rich in them as munich, which possesses nine, six of which are masterpieces. _a party of peasants at a game of cards_, affords an example of the brightness and clearness of those cool tones in which he evidently became the model of teniers. _spanish soldiers throwing dice_, is equally harmonious, in a subdued brownish tone. _a surgeon removing the plaster from the arm of a peasant_ is not only most masterly and animated in expression, but is a type of his bright, clear, and golden tone, and is singularly free and light in touch. _card-players fighting_, is in every respect one of his best pictures. the momentary action in each figure, all of them being individualized with singular accuracy even as regards the kind of complexion, is incomparable, the tenderness of the harmony astonishing, and the execution of extraordinary delicacy. the only example in the national gallery is the _three boors drinking_, bequeathed by george salting in ; and at hertford house the _boor asleep_, though of this we may without hesitation accept the description in the catalogue, "our painting is of the highest quality, and in the audacity of its realism rises almost to grandeur." adrian van ostade, said to have been born at lubeck, was baptized in at haarlem, where he studied under frans hals, and he formed a very good taste in colouring. nature guided his brush in everything he undertook; he devoted himself almost entirely to painting peasants and drunkards, whose gestures and most trifling actions were the subject of his most serious meditation. the subjects of his little pictures are not more elevated than those of brouwer, and considerably less than those of teniers--they are nearly always alehouses or kitchens. he is perhaps one of the dutch masters who best understood chiaroscuro. his figures are very lively, and he sometimes put them into the pictures of the best painters among his countrymen. nothing can excel his pictures of stables, in which the light is spread so judiciously that all one could wish is a lighter touch in his drawing, and a little more height in his figures. many of his brother isaak's pictures are improperly attributed to him, which, though painted in the same manner, are never of the real excellence of adrian's. the _interior with peasants_ at hertford house, and _the alchymist_ at the national gallery are a characteristic pair of his pictures, which were sold in the collection of m. de jully in for £ , the former being purchased by the third marquess of hertford and the latter passing into the peel collection. _buying fish_, at hertford house, dated --when the artist was nearly sixty years old, is remarkable for its breadth of effect and brilliancy of colour. jan steen, born at leyden about the year , died . he first received instruction under nicolas knupler; and afterwards it is said worked with jan van goyen, whose daughter he married. an extraordinary genius for painting was unfortunately co-existent in jan steen with jovial habits of no moderate kind. the position of tavern-keeper in which he was placed by his family, gave both the opportunity of indulging his propensities and also that of depicting the pleasures of eating and drinking, of song, card-playing and love-making directly from nature. he must have worked with amazing facility, for in spite of the time consumed in this mode of life, to which his comparatively early death may be attributed, the number of his pictures is very great. his favourite subjects were groups like the _family jollification_; the _feast of the bean king_; and that form of diversion illustrating the proverb, "_so wie die alten sungen, so pfeifen auch die jungen_"; fairs, weddings, etc.; he also treated other scenes, such as the doctor's visit, the schoolmaster with a generally very unmanageable set of boys--of which is a charming example at dublin. the ludicrous ways of children seem especially to have attracted him; accordingly, he depicts with great zest the old dutch custom on st. nicholas's day, september rd, of rewarding the good, and punishing the naughty child; or shows a mischievous little urchin teasing the cat, or stealing money from the pockets of their, alas!--drunken progenitors. jan steen is the most genial painter of the whole dutch school. his humour has made him so popular with the english, that at least two-thirds of his pictures are in their possession. a peculiar cluster of masters, belonging to the dutch [illustration: plate xxviii.--terborch the concert _louvre, paris_] school, was formed by gerard dou. however careful in execution were such painters as terburg, metsu, and netscher, yet gerard dou and his scholars and imitators surpassed them in the development of that technical finish with which they rendered the smallest detail with meticulous exactitude. gerard dou was born at leyden on the th april , died there . he entered rembrandt's school at fifteen years of age, and in three years had attained the position of an independent artist. he devoted himself at first to portraiture, and, like his master, made his own face frequently his subject. afterwards he treated scenes from the life chiefly of the middle classes. he took particular pleasure in the representation of hermits; he also painted scriptural events and occasionally still life. his lighting is frequently that of lanterns and candles. most of his pictures contain only from one to three figures, and do not exceed about ft. high and ft. in. wide, being often smaller. his pictures seldom attain even an animated moral import, and may be said to be limited usually to a certain kindliness of sentiment. on the other hand, he possessed a trace of his master's feeling for the picturesque, and for chiaroscuro. notwithstanding the incalculable minuteness of his execution, the touch of his brush is free and soft, and his best pictures look like nature seen through the camera-obscura. his works were so highly estimated in his own time, that the president van spiring, at the hague, offered him florins a year for the right of pre-emption of his pictures. considering the time which such finish required, and the early age at which he died, the number of his pictures--smith enumerates about --is remarkable. in the louvre are the following:--an old woman seated at a window, reading the bible to her husband; this is one of the best among the many representations by dou of a similar kind, being of warm sunny effect, and marvellous finish. also the _woman with the dropsy_, which is accounted his _chef-d'oeuvre_. among the scholars of gerard dou, frans van mieris, born at leyden , died , takes the first place. in chiaroscuro, and in delicacy of execution he is not inferior to his master. although his pictures are generally very small, yet with their extraordinary minuteness of execution it is surprising that, in a life extended only to forty-six years, he should have produced so many. the munich gallery has most, then dresden, vienna, florence, and st. petersburg. the date, , on a picture in the vienna gallery, _the doctor_, shows the painter to have attained the summit of his art at twenty-one years of age. another dated , in the same gallery, executed for the archduke leopold, is one of his best. the scene is a shop with a young woman showing a gentleman, who has taken her by the chin, various handkerchiefs and stuffs. in the munich gallery is _a soldier_, dated , of admirable transparency and softness. also _a lady_ in a yellow satin dress fainting in the presence of the doctor. in the hague gallery is _a boy blowing soap-bubbles_, dated . this is a charming little picture of great depth of the brownish tone. also _the painter and his wife_, whose little shock dog he is teasing; very naïve and lively in the heads, and most delicately treated in a subdued but clear tone. in the dresden gallery are mieris again and his wife before her portrait. this is one of his most successful pictures for chiaroscuro, tone, and spirited handling. nicolas maes, already mentioned, born at [illustration: plate xxix.--gabriel metsu the music lesson _national gallery, london_] dordrecht , died , was actually a pupil of rembrandt. his much prized and rare _genre_ pictures treat very simple subjects, and consist seldom of more than two or three figures, generally of women. the naïvete and homeliness of his feeling, with the addition sometimes of a trait of kindly humour; the admirable lighting, and a touch resembling rembrandt in impasto and vigour, render his pictures very attractive. in the national gallery, besides _the card players_, are _the cradle_, _the dutch ménage_, dated ; and _the idle servant_: all these are admirable, and the last-named a _chef-d'oeuvre_. peter de hoogh ( - ) decidedly belongs to the numerous artistic posterity of rembrandt, possibly through karel fabritius, and stands nearer to vermeer and to maes, than to any other painter. his biography can only be gathered from the occasional dates on his pictures, extending from to . although he impresses the eye by the same effects as maes, yet he is also very different from him. he has not his humour, and seldom his kindliness, and his figures, which are either playing cards, smoking or drinking, or engaged in the transaction of some household duty,--with faces that say but little--have generally only the interest of a peaceful or jovial existence. if maes takes the lead in warm lighting, peter de hoogh may be considered _par excellence_ the painter of full and clear sunlight. if, again, maes shows us his figures almost exclusively in interiors, peter de hoogh places them most frequently in the open air--in courtyards. in the representation of the poetry of light, and in that marvellous brilliancy and clearness with which he calls it forth in various distances till the background is reached, which is generally illumined by a fresh beam, no other master can compare with him. his prevailing local colour is red, repeated with greater delicacy in various planes of distance. this colour fixes the rest of the scale. his touch is of great delicacy; his impasto admirable. gerard terburg, born at zwol , died , learned painting under his father, and when still young visited germany and italy, painting numerous portraits on a small scale, and occasionally the size of life. but his place in the history of art is owing principally to a number of pictures, seldom representing more than three, and often only one figure, taken from the wealthier classes, in which great elegance of costume, and of all accompanying circumstances, is rendered with the finest keeping, and with a highly delicate but by no means over-smooth execution. he may be considered as the originator of this class of pictures, in which, after his example, several other dutch painters distinguished themselves. with him the chief mass of light is generally formed by the white satin dress of a lady, which gives the tone for the prevailing cool harmony of the picture. among his pictures we occasionally find some which, taken successively, represent several different moments of one scene. thus in the dresden gallery, there are two good pictures: the one of an officer writing a letter, while a trumpter waits for it; the other of a girl in white satin washing her hands in a basin held before her by a maid-servant; while at munich, is another fine work, in which the trumpeter is offering the young lady the letter, who owing to the presence of the maid, who evidently disapproves, is uncertain whether to take the missive. finally, in the amsterdam gallery, the celebrated picture known by the title of _conseil paternel_, furnishes [illustration: plate xxx.--pieter de hooch interior of a dutch house _national gallery, london_] the closing scene. the maid has betrayed the affair to the father, and he is delivering a lecture to the young lady, in whom by turning her back on the spectator, the painter has happily expressed the feeling of shame; good repetitions are in the berlin museum, and in the bridgewater gallery. but terburg's perfection as regards the clearness and harmony of his silvery tone is shown in a picture at cassel, representing a young lady in white satin sitting playing the lute at a table. jan vermeer of delft ( - ) was certainly a pupil of fabritius, and thus "grandson" of rembrandt. to class him with painters of _genre_ seems almost a profanation of the exquisite sense of beauty with which, almost alone among the dutch painters, he seems to have been endowed. it is like classing walter pater with art critics. but as vermeer had to express himself in some form, it is perhaps fortunate that the school had developed this kind of poetic portraiture, under terburg, metsu and others, to a point where a genius like vermeer could use it as the vehicle of his fascinating self-revelations. in landscape we have the _view of delft_, at the hague, which has shown the nineteenth century painters more than they could ever see in their more famous predecessors; but it is in the simple compositions like _the letter reader_ at amsterdam, _the proposal_, at dresden, or the _lady at the virginals_, in the national gallery, that he displays his greatest power and charm. iv painters of animals as a link between the painters of _genre_ and the landscapists, we may here mention some of the numerous artists who either made landscape the background for groups of figures and animals, or peopled their landscapes with groups--it matters not which way we put it. among these we shall find several of the most famous, or at any rate the most popular artists of the dutch school. philips wouverman ( - ), whose reputation during the last century was greater than that of almost any of the dutch painters except rembrandt and dou, is said to have studied under hals, but it is more certain that the master from whom he learnt most, if not all, was jan wynants at haarlem, whose whole manner in landscape he quickly succeeded in acquiring, and surpassed him in his facility with horsemen and other figures. wouverman's works have all the excellences that may be expected from high finishing, correctness, agreeable composition and colouring. it does not appear that he was ever in italy, or even quitted the city of haarlem, though it would seem probable that his more elaborate compositions owed something to other influences than those of hals or wynants. in his earlier pictures there are no horses, but later in his career he generally subordinated his landscapes to the groups or subjects for which he is most famous. in the national gallery, among eleven examples, are a _halt of officers_, _interior of a stable_, _a battle_, _the bohemians_, and _shoeing a horse_, all of which contain numerous figures, mounted and unmounted--and there is nearly always a white horse. with all his success, he died a poor man, and it is related that in his last hours he burned a box filled with his studies and drawings, saying, "i have been so ill repaid for all my labours, that i would not have [illustration: plate xxxi.--jan vermeer the lace maker _louvre, paris_] those designs engage my son to embrace so miserable a profession as mine." this son followed his advice, and became a chartreux friar. peter and jan wouverman were his brothers. the former painted hawking scenes, and his horses, though well designed, were not equal to those of philips. the latter is represented in the national gallery by a landscape in which the spirit of wynant's, rather than that of philips's, is discernible. at hertford house, out of seven examples, two are of more than usual excellence, and well represent his earlier and later manners. _the afternoon landscape with a white horse_ (no. in room xiii), which smith (in his catalogue raisonné), characterizes as possessing unusual freedom of pencilling, and powerful effect, dates from the transition from the early to the middle period, and is a very effective picture, as well as being very characteristic. the _horse fair_ (no. , in room xvi), is not only much larger than the other--it measures x inches--but is a really important picture. lord hertford paid £ for it in . it was engraved by moyrean, for his series of a hundred prints after wouverman, under the title of _le grand marché aux chevaux_. it is thus described by smith:--"this very capital picture exhibits an open country divided in the middle distance by a river whose course is lost among the distant mountains. the principal scene of activity is represented along the front and second grounds, on which may be numbered about twenty-four horses, exhibiting that noble animal in every variety of action, and nearly fifty persons. on the right of the picture is a coach, drawn by four fine grey horses, and in front of this object are a grey and a bay horse, on the latter of which are mounted a man and a boy. in advance of them is a group of four horses and several persons, among whom may be noticed a cavalier and a lady observing the paces of a horse which a jockey and his master are showing off. a gentleman on a black horse seems also to be watching the action of the animal. near this person is a mare lying down, and a foal standing by it which a boy is approaching. on the opposite side of the picture is a gentleman on a cream-coloured horse, near two spirited greys, one of which is kicking, and a woman, a man and a boy are escaping from its heels. from thence the eye looks over an open space occupied by men and horses, receding in succession to the bank of the river, along which are houses and tents concealed in part by trees. this picture is painted throughout with great care and delicacy in what is termed the last manner of the master, remarkable for the prevalent grey or silvery hues of colouring." albert cuyp, born at dortrecht , died there about . of the life of this great painter little more is known with any certainty than that he was the scholar of his father, jacob gerritsz cuyp. cattle form a prominent feature in many of his works, though never so highly finished as in those of paul potter or adrian van de velde; indeed, in many of cuyp's pictures, they are quite subordinate. his favourite subjects, a landscape with a river, with cattle lying or standing on its banks, and landscapes with horsemen in the foreground, were suggested to him no doubt by the country about dortrecht and the river maas: but he also painted winter landscapes, and especially views of rivers where the broad extent of water is animated by vessels. sometimes, too, with great perfection, fowls as large as life, hens, ducks, etc., and still life. he also painted portraits, though less successfully. however great the skill displayed in the composition of his works, their principal charm lies in the beauty and truthfulness of their peculiar lighting. no other painter, with the exception of claude, has so well understood the cool freshness of morning, the bright but misty light of a hot noon, or the warm glow of a clear sunset. the effect of his pictures is further enhanced by the skill with which he avails himself of the aid of contrasts; as for example, dark, rich colours of the reposing cattle as seen against the bright sky. in his own country no picture of his, till the year , ever sold for more than thirty florins. indeed, kugler was informed by a dutch friend, that in past times, when a picture found no bidder, the auctioneer would offer to throw in "a little cuyp" in order to induce a sale. the merit of having first given him his due rank belongs to the english, who as early as , gave at the sale of linden van slingelandt's collection at dortrecht high prices for cuyp's works; about nine-tenths of his pictures are consequently to be found in england. one of his finest works is the landscape, in bright, warm, morning light, with two cows reposing in the foreground, and a woman conversing with a horseman, in the national gallery (no. ). the whole picture breathes a cheerful and rural tranquillity. in his mature time, these admirable qualities are seen in higher development. in the louvre (no. ), is another fine example--a scene with six cows, a shepherd blowing the horn, and two children listening to him. this is admirably arranged, of greater truthfulness as regards the form and colouring of the cattle than usual, and with the warm lighting of the sky executed with equal decision and softness. this picture is one of the master's chief productions, being also about ft. high by ft. wide. another with three horsemen, and a servant carrying partridges, and in the centre a meadow with cattle, is also in the louvre. this is less attractive in subject, but ranks equally high as a work of art. in buckingham palace are two pictures, one with three cows reposing, and one standing by a clear stream, near them a herdsman and a woman; other cows are in water near the ruins of a castle. in this picture, we see cuyp in every respect at his culminating point of excellence. not less fine, and of singular force of colour, is the landscape, with a broad river running through it, and a horseman under a tree in conversation with a countryman. paul potter, born at enckhuysen , died at amsterdam . although the scholar of his father, pieter potter, who was but a mediocre painter, he made such astonishing progress as to rank at the age of as a finished artist. he removed very early to the hague, where his talents met with universal recognition, including that of prince maurice of orange, and where he married. in the year , however, he removed to amsterdam at the instance of one of his chief patrons, the burgomaster tulp. of the masters who have striven pre-eminently after truth he is, beyond all question, one of the greatest that ever lived. in order to succeed in this aim, he acquired a correctness of drawing, a kind of modelling which imparts an almost plastic effect to his animals, an extraordinary execution of detail in the most solid impasto, and a truth of colouring which harmonises astonishingly with the time of day. in his landscapes, which generally consist of a few willows in the foreground, and of a wide view over meadows, the most delicate graduation of aërial perspective is seen. with few exceptions, his animals are small, and his pictures proportionately moderate in size. by the year he had attained his full perfection. of this date is the celebrated group called _the young bull_, in the hague gallery. all the figures in this are as large as life, and so extraordinarily true to nature as not only to appear real at a certain distance, but even to keep up the illusion when seen near. a picture dated , now in buckingham palace, of two cows and a young bull in a pasture, combines with his customary fidelity to nature a more than common power of effect, and breadth and freedom of treatment. to the same year belongs also the _farmyard_, formerly in the cassel gallery, now in that of s. petersburg, which, according to smith, fully deserves its celebrity both for the clearness and warmth of the sunset effect, as well as for its masterly execution. to belongs the picture of _orpheus_, charming the animal world by the strains of his lyre, in the amsterdam museum. here we see that the master had also studied wild animals. he is most successful in the bear. in the same gallery is another _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the same year--a hilly landscape with a shepherdess singing to her child, a shepherd playing on the bagpipe, and oxen, sheep, and goats around. the names of weenix and hondecoeter are so inseparably associated in the popular mind as painters of birds, whose respective works are not readily distinguishable moreover by the casual observer, that a short excursion into their family histories is advisable, for the purpose of showing how it was that this particular branch of the art was so successfully practised by the two. moreover, as there were three hondecoeters and two weenixes who were painters, it is necessary to say something about each of them. melchior hondecoeter, the best known, was of an ancient and noble family. he was instructed till the age of seventeen by his father gysbert, who was a tolerable painter. giles hondecoeter, his grandfather, painted live birds admirably, but chiefly cocks and hens in the taste of savery and vincaboom. melchior was born in , and studied for a time with his father; but meantime his aunt josina had married jan baptist weenix, and a son was born to them, jan weenix, who inherited from old giles hondecoeter, his grandfather, his talent for painting poultry, and from his father, jan baptist weenix, he acquired the benefit of several influences which were not shared by his cousin melchior. jan baptist weenix, who was nicknamed "rattle," was born at amsterdam about . his father was an architect, who bred his son up to that profession, but he was afterwards put to study painting under abraham bloemart. soon after his marriage with josina he was seized with the desire to visit italy, and he set off alone to rome, promising to return in four months. in rome, however, he was so well received that he stayed there four years, and italianized himself to an extent that may be seen in a picture in the wallace collection, a _coast scene with classic ruins_, which he signs _gio. batta. weenix_. though he returned to holland and settled near utrecht, his manner was sensibly modified by his sojourn in rome. jan weenix, who was born at amsterdam in , though he succeeded in so far assimilating his father's style that his earlier works are often confused with those of "giovanni battista," did not acquire the energy or the dramatic force displayed by melchior hondecoeter in representing live birds and animals, though he sometimes surpassed him in the finish and the harmony of his decorative arrangements of dead game and still life. accordingly the one usually painted dead and the latter live birds. in other respects there is not much to distinguish their works. nicholas berchem was the only other pupil of jan baptist weenix of whom we know anything. berchem had other masters, beginning with his father, who was a painter of fish and tables covered with plates, china dishes, and such like. having given his son the first rudiments of his art he found himself unequal to the task of cultivating the excellent disposition he observed in him, and therefore placed him with van goyen, nicholas moyaert, peter grebber, jan wils, and lastly with jan baptist weenix, all of whom had the honour of assisting to form so excellent a painter. indefatigable at his easel, berchem acquired a manner both easy and expeditious; to see him work, painting appeared a mere diversion to him. his wife was the daughter of his instructor, jan wils, and was so avaricious that she allowed him no rest. busy as he was by nature, she used to sit under his studio, and when she neither heard him sing nor stir, she struck upon the ceiling to rouse him. she got from him all the money he earned by his labour, so that he was obliged to borrow from his scholars when he wanted money to buy prints that were offered him, which was the only pleasure he had. _the musical shepherdess_ at hertford house is a good example of his style, and the description of it in smith's catalogue shows in what estimation the artist was held in early victorian days:--"this beautiful pastoral scene represents a bold rocky coast under the appearance of the close of day. the rustics have ended their labours and are recreating with music and dancing. a group composed of two peasants and a like number of women occupies the foreground; one of the latter, attired in a blue mantle, is gaily striking a tambourine, and dancing to the music; her companion in a yellow dress sits near her; the shepherds also are seated, and one of them appears to have just ceased playing a pipe which he holds. the goats are browsing near them. painted in the artist's most fascinating style." that berchem had been to italy is pretty certain, and though no authentic account of his visit is recorded, there is a story that when jacob ruisdael went to rome as a young man, nicholas berchem was the first acquaintance he met, and that their friendship was of long standing. their frequent walks round about rome gave them the opportunity of working together from nature, and one day a cardinal seeing them at work, inquired what they were doing. his eminence was agreeably impressed with their drawings, and invited them to visit him in rome. the painters returned to their work, where they met with a second _rencontre_ of a very different nature; a gang of thieves robbed and stripped them of their clothes. they returned in their shirts to the city, and called on the cardinal, who took pity upon them, ordered them clothes, and afterwards employed them in several considerable works in his palace. berchem at one time took up his abode in the castle of bentheim, and as both he and ruisdael have left several pictures of this castle it may be inferred that they worked there together, as at rome. apart from personal friendship there is nothing to connect berchem with ruisdael, the popularity of the former being derived from qualities of a totally different nature from those which raise ruisdael far above any of his contemporaries as a landscape painter. jan van huysum was born at amsterdam in . his father, justus van huysum, who dealt in pictures, was himself a middling painter in most kinds of painting. he taught his son to paint screens, figures and vases on wood, landscape, and sometimes flowers; but the son being arrived at a reasoning age perceived that to work in every branch of his art was the way to excel in none, therefore he confined himself to flowers, fruit, and landscape, and quitting his father's school set up for himself. no one before van huysum attained so perfect a manner of representing the beauty of flowers and the down and bloom of fruit; for he painted with greater freedom than velvet breughel and mignon, with more tenderness and nature than mario di fiori, andrea belvedere, michel de campidoglio or daniel seghers; with more mellowness than de heem, and with more vigour of colouring than baptist monoyer. his pictures of flowers and fruit pleasing an english gentleman, he introduced them into his own country, where they came into vogue and yielded a high price. to express the motions of the smallest insects with justice he used to contemplate them through the microscope with great attention. at the times of the year when the flowers were in bloom, and the fruit in perfection, he used to design them in his own garden, and the sieur gulet and voorhelm sent him the most beautiful productions in those kinds they could pick up. his reputation rose to such a height that all the curious in painting sought his works with great eagerness, which encouraged him to raise his prices so high that his pictures at last grew out of the reach of any but princes and men of the greatest fortune. he was the first flower painter that ever thought of laying them on light grounds, which requires much greater art than to paint them on dark ones. van huysum died at amsterdam in . he never had any pupil but a young woman named haverman, and his brother michael. two other brothers have distinguished themselves in painting, one named justus, who painted battles, and died at twenty-two years old, the other named james, who ended his days in england in . he copied the pictures of his brother john so well as to deceive the connoisseurs: he had usually £ for each copy. for the originals, it may be noted, from a thousand to fourteen hundred florins was paid. v painters of landscape coming now to the landscape painters we find that jan van goyen, born at leyden in , was destined to exert a really powerful influence, inasmuch as he was the founder, as is generally acknowledged, of the dutch school of homely native landscape. beginning with figure subjects, he discovered in their landscape backgrounds his real _métier_, and seems only to have realized his great gifts when he looked further into nature than was possible when painting a foreground picture. he appears to have been by nature or by inclination long-sighted, and he is never so happy as when painting distance, either along the banks of a river or looking out to sea. this extended gaze taught him something of atmosphere that few painters beside himself ever acquired, and helped him to the mastery of tone which appears to have influenced so many of his followers, as for example van de velde in the painting of sea-pieces. jan wynants, born at haarlem about , and still living in , was the first master who applied all the developed qualities of the dutch school to the treatment of landscape painting. in general his prevailing tone is clear and bright, more especially in the green of his trees and plants, which in many cases, merges into blue. one of his characteristics is a fallen tree trunk in the foreground, as may be seen in three out of the six examples in the national gallery. the carefulness of his execution explains how it was that in so long a life he only produced a moderate number of pictures. smith's catalogue contains about . these differ much according to their different periods. in his first manner peasants' cottages or ruins play an important part, and the view is more or less shut in by trees of a heavy dark green, the execution solid and careful. in his middle time he generally paints open views of a rather uneven country, diversified by wood and water. that wynants retained his full skill even in advanced life is proved by a picture dated , in the munich gallery, representing a road leading to a fenced wood and a sandhill, near which in the foreground are some cows (by lingelbach) being driven along. in his last manner a heavy uniformly brown tone is often observable. it is his genuine feeling for nature that makes wynant's pictures so popular in england, where we meet with a considerable number of his best works. jacob ruisdael (born at haarlem , died there ) is supposed to have developed under the influence of a school there that was opposing van goyen's tone treatment by local colour. though not always the most charming, ruisdael is certainly the greatest and the most profound of the dutch landscape painters. his wide expanses of sky, earth or sea, with their tender gradations of aërial perspective, diversified here and there by alternations of sunshine and shadow, attract us as much by the pathos as by the picturesqueness of their character. his scenes of mountainous districts with foaming waterfalls; or bare piles of rock and sombre lakes are imbued with a feeling of melancholy. ruisdael's work may be well studied in the six examples at hertford house, and the fourteen in the national gallery. among his finer works in continental collections the following are some of those selected by kugler for description. at the hague is one of his wide expanses--a view of the country around haarlem, the town itself looking small on the horizon, under a lofty expanse of cloudy sky in the foreground a bleaching-ground and some houses reminding us, by the manner in which they are introduced, of hobbema. the prevailing tone is cool, the sky singularly beautiful, and the execution wonderfully delicate. a flat country with a road leading to a village, and fields with wheatsheaves, is in the dresden gallery. this is temperate in colouring and beautifully lighted. equally fine is an extensive view over a hilly but bare country, through which a river runs; in the louvre. the horseman and beggar on a bridge are by wouvermans: here the grey-greenish harmony of the tone is in fine accordance with the poetic grandeur of the subject. a hill covered with oak woods, with a peasant hastening to a hut to escape the gathering shower, is in the munich gallery. the golden warmth of the trees and ground, and the contrast between the deep clear chiaroscuro and soft rain-clouds, and the bright gleam of sunshine, render this picture one of the finest by this master. the peculiar charm which is seen in holland by the combination of lofty trees and calm water is fully represented in the following works:--_the chase_; in the dresden gallery. here in the still water in the foreground--through which a stag-hunt (by adrian van de velde) is passing--clouds, warm with morning sunlight, appear reflected. in this picture, remarkable as it is for size, being ft. - / in. high, by ft. in. wide, the sense even of the fresh morning is not without a tinge of gentle melancholy. a noble wood of oaks, beeches and elms, about the size of the last-mentioned picture, is in the louvre. in the centre, through an opening in the woods, are seen distant hills. the cattle and figures upon a flooded road are by berchem. in power, warmth, and treatment, this is also nearly allied to the preceding work. of his waterfalls, the most remarkable are--a picture at the hague, which is particularly striking for its warm lighting, and careful execution. another with bentheim castle, so often repeated by ruisdael, is at amsterdam. in the same collection is a landscape, with rocks, woods, and a larger waterfall. this has a grandly poetic character which, with the broad and solid handling, plainly shows the influence of everdingen. the same remark may be applied to the waterfall, no. , in the munich gallery. here the dark, rainy sky, enhances the sublime impression made by the foaming torrent that rushes down the rocky masses. another work worthy to rank with the fore-going is _the jewish cemetry_, in the dresden gallery: a pallid sunbeam lights up some of the tombstones, between which a torrent impetuously flows. the _landscape with waterfall_ at hertford house is a good example; the _landscape with a farm_ in the same collection is another, though in this the figures and cattle are by adrian van der velde. ostade and wouverman are also said to have helped him with his figures, and it is possible that one or other of them ought to have some of the credit for the beautiful _view on the shore at scheveningen_ in the national gallery (no. ). the _landscape with ruins_ (no. ) is perhaps the finest of the others there. willem van de velde, the younger, born at amsterdam , died at greenwich . his first master was his father, willem van de velde the elder, but his principal instructor was simon de vlieger. the earlier part of his professional life was spent in holland, where, besides numerous pictures of the various aspects of marine scenery, he painted several well-known sea-fights in which the dutch had obtained the victory over the english. he afterwards followed his father to england, where he was greatly patronized by charles ii. and james ii. for whom, in turn, he painted the naval victories of the english over the dutch. he was also much employed by amateurs of art among the english nobility and gentry. there is no question that willem van de velde the younger is the greatest marine painter of the whole dutch school. his perfect knowledge of lineal and aërial perspective, and the incomparable technique which he inherited from his school, enabled him to represent the sea and the sky with the utmost truth of form, atmosphere and colour, and to enliven the scene with the purest feeling for the picturesque, with the most natural incidents of sea-faring life. two of his pictures at amsterdam are particularly remarkable; representing the english flagship _the prince royal_ striking her colours in the fight with the dutch fleet of ; and its companion, four english men-of-war brought in as prizes at the same fight. here the painter has represented himself in a small boat, from which he actually witnessed the battle. this accounts for the extraordinary truth with which every particular of the scene is rendered in such small pictures, which, combined with their delicate greyish tone, and the mastery of the execution, render them two of his finest works. a view of the city of amsterdam, dated , taken from the river, is an especially good specimen of his large pictures. it is about ft. high by ft. wide. the vessels in the river are arranged with great feeling for the picturesque, and the treatment of details is admirable. his greatest successes, however, are in the representation of calm seas, as may be seen in a small picture at munich. in the centre of the middle distance is a frigate, and in the foreground smaller vessels. the fine silvery tone in which the whole is kept finds a sufficient counter-balance of colour in the yellowish sun-lit clouds, and in the brownish vessels and their sails. nothing can be more exquisite than the tender reflections of these in the water. of almost similar beauty is a picture of about the same size, with four vessels, in the cassel gallery, which is signed and dated . as a contrast to this class of works, may be mentioned _the gathering tempest_, in the munich gallery. this is brilliantly lighted, and of great delicacy of tone in the distance, though the foreground has somewhat darkened. meindert hobbema ( - ) was a friend as well as a pupil of jacob ruisdael. the fact that such distinguished painters as adrian van de velde, wouvermans, berchem, and lingelbach, executed the figures and animals in his pictures proves the esteem in which he was held by his contemporaries; nevertheless it is evident that the public was slow in conceding to him the rank which he deserved, for his name is not found for more than a century after his death in any even of the most elaborate dictionaries of art, while the catalogues of the most important picture sales in holland make no mention of him at all up to the year ; when a picture by him, although much extolled, was sold for only florins, and even in one of his masterpieces only fetched florins. the english were the first to discover his merits. the peculiar characteristics of this master, who next to ruisdael, is confessedly at the head of landscape painters of the dutch school, will be best appreciated by comparing him with his rival. in two most important qualities--fertility of inventive genius, and poetry of feeling--he is decidedly inferior: the range of his subjects being far narrower. his most frequent scenes are villages surrounded by trees, such as are frequently met with in the districts of guelderland, with winding pathways leading from house to house. a water-mill occasionally forms a prominent feature. often, too, he represents a slightly uneven country, diversified by groups or rows of trees, wheat-fields, meadows, and small pools. occasionally he gives us a view of part of a town, with its gates, canals with sluices, and quays with houses; more rarely, the ruins of an old castle, with an extensive view of a flat country, or some stately residence. in the composition of all these pictures, however, we do not find that elevated and picturesque taste which characterises ruisdael; on the contrary they have a thoroughly portrait-like appearance, decidedly prosaic, but always surprizingly truthful. the greater number of hobbema's pictures are as much characterized by a warm and golden tone as those of ruisdael by the reverse; his greens being yellowish in the lights and brownish in the shadows--both of singular transparency. in pictures of this kind the influence of rembrandt is perhaps perceptible, and they are superior in brilliancy to any work by ruisdael. while these works chiefly present us with the season of harvest and sunset-light, there are others in a cool, silvery, morning lighting, and with the bright green of spring, that surpass ruisdael's in clearness. his woods also, owing to the various lights that fall on them, are of greater transparency. as almost all the galleries on the continent were formed at a period when the works of hobbema were little prized (ticcozzi's _dictionary_, in , does not include his name), they either possess no specimens, or some of an inferior class, so that no adequate idea can be formed of him. the most characteristic example to be met with on the continent is a landscape in the berlin museum, no. , an oak wood, with scattered lights, a calm piece of water in the foreground, and a sun-lit village in the distance. of the eight pictures in the national gallery from his hand, most are good, and one world-famous--_the avenue, middelharnis_, which may be called his masterpiece. this was painted in , when he had reached the age of fifty. his diploma picture, painted in , is at hertford house, together with four other interesting examples, all of which repay careful study. german schools the origins of the german schools of painting are obscure, but it is fairly certain that cologne was the first place in which the art was soonest established to any considerable extent. here, as in the netherlands, we cannot find any traces of immediate italian influences. the first painter who can be identified with any certainty is wilhelm von herle, called meister wilhelm, whose activity is not traceable earlier than about . most of the pictures formerly attributed to him have, however, been assigned to his pupil hermann wynrich von wesel, who on the death of his master in married his widow and continued his practice, until his death somewhere about . his most important works were six panels of the high altar of the cathedral, the so-called _madonna of the pea blossoms_ and two _crucifixions_ at cologne, and the _s. veronica_ at munich, dated . more important was stephen lochner, who died at cologne in . his influence was widespread and his school apparently numerous, until, in , roger van der weyden, returning from italy, stopped at cologne and painted his large triptych, which eclipsed lochner. from this time onwards the school of cologne is represented by painters whose names are not known, and who are accordingly distinguished by the subjects of their works; such as _the master of the glorification of the virgin_, _the master of s. bartholomew_, etc., until we come to bartel bruyn (_c._ - ), a portrait painter who is represented at berlin, and by a picture of dr fuchsius bequeathed to the national gallery by george salting. in other parts of germany, particularly in nuremberg, ulm, augsburg, and basle, various names of painters of the latter half of the fourteenth century have survived, but their works are of little interest except to the connoisseur as showing the influence under which the two great artists of the sixteenth century, albert dürer and hans holbein, and one or two lesser lights like lucas cranach, albert altdorfer, and adam elsheimer, were formed. in germany the taste for the fantastic in art peculiar to the middle ages, though it engendered clever and spirited works such as those of quentin massys and lucas van leyden, was still unfavourable to the cultivation of pure beauty, scenes from the apocalypse, dances of death, etc., being among the favourite subjects for art. on the other hand, the pictorial treatment of antique literature, a world so suggestive of beautiful forms, was so little comprehended by the german mind that they only sought to express it through the medium of those fantastic ideas with very childish and even tasteless results. we must also remember that that average education of the various classes of society which the fine arts require for their protection stood on a very low footing in germany. in italy the favour with which works of art was regarded was far more widely extended. this again gave rise to a more elevated personal position on the part of the artist, which in italy was not only one of more consideration, but of incomparably greater independence. in this latter respect germany was so [illustration: plate xxxii. "the master of st bartholomew" two saints _national gallery, london_] deficient that the genius of albert dürer and holbein was miserably cramped and hindered in development by the poverty and littleness of surrounding circumstances. it is known that of all the german princes no one but the elector frederick the wise ever gave albert dürer a commission for pictures, while a writing addressed by the great painter to the magistracy of nuremberg tells us that his native city never gave him employment even to the value of florins. at the same time his pictures were so meanly paid, that for the means of subsistence, as he says himself, he was compelled to devote himself to engraving. how far more such a man as dürer would have been appreciated in italy or in the netherlands is further evidenced in the above-mentioned writing, where he states that he was offered ducats a year in venice and philips-gulden in antwerp, if he would settle in either of those cities. and holbein fared still worse: there is no evidence whatever that any german prince ever troubled himself at all about the great painter while at basle, and his art was so little cared for that necessity compelled him to go to england, where a genius fitted for the highest undertakings of historical painting was limited to the sphere of portraiture. the crowning impediments finally, which hindered the progress of german art, and perverted it from its true aim, were the reformation, which narrowed the sphere of ecclesiastical works, and the pernicious imitation of the great italian masters which ensued. lucas cranach, born in , received his first instructions in art from his father, his later teaching probably from matthew grunewald. in some instances he attained to the expression of dignity, earnestness and feeling, but generally his characteristics are a naïve and childlike cheerfulness and a gentle and almost timid grace. the impression produced by his style of representation reminds one of the "volksbücher" and "volkslieder." many of his church pictures have a very peculiar significance: in these he stands forth properly speaking as the painter of the reformation. intimate both with luther and melanchthon, he seizes on the central aim of their doctrine, viz., the insufficiency of good works and the sole efficacy of faith. his mythological subjects appeal directly to the eye like real portraits; and sometimes also by means of a certain grace and naïveté of motive. we may cite as an instance the diana seated on a stag in a small picture at berlin, no. . _the fountain of youth_, also at berlin, no. , is a picture of peculiar character; a large basin surrounded by steps and with a richly adorned fountain forms the centre. on one side, where the country is stony and barren, a multitude of old women are dragged forward on horses, waggons or carriages, and with much trouble are got into the water. on the other side of the fountain they appear as young maidens splashing about and amusing themselves with all kinds of playful mischief; close by is a large pavilion into which a herald courteously invites them to enter and where they are arrayed in costly apparel. a feast is prepared in a smiling meadow, which seems to be followed by a dance; the gay crowd loses itself in a neighbouring grove. the men unfortunately have not become young, and retain their grey beards. the picture is of the year , the seventy-fourth of cranach's age. albert altdorfer was born at altdorf, near landshuth, in bavaria, and settled at ratisbon, where he died . he invested the fantastic tendency of the time with a poetic feeling--especially in landscape--and he developed it so as to attain a perfection in this sort of romantic painting that no other artist had reached. in his later period he was strongly influenced by italian art. altdorfer's principal work is in the munich gallery, and is thus described by schlegel:-- "it represents the victory of alexander the great over darius; the costume is that of the artist's own day, as it would be treated in the chivalrous poems of the middle ages--man and horse are sheathed in plate and mail, with surcoats of gold or embroidery; the chamfrons upon the heads of the horses, the glittering lances and stirrups, and the variety of the weapons, form altogether a scene of indescribable splendour and richness.... it is, in truth, a little world on a few square feet of canvas; the hosts of combatants who advance on all sides against each other are innumerable, and the view into the background appears interminable. in the distance is the ocean, with high rocks and a rugged island between them; ships of war appear in the offing and a whole fleet of vessels--on the left the moon is setting--on the right the sun rising--both shining through the opening clouds--a clear and striking image of the events represented. the armies are arranged in rank and column without the strange attitudes, contrasts, and distortions generally exhibited in so-called battle-pieces. how indeed would this have been possible with such a vast multitude of figures? the whole is in the plain and severe, or it may be the stiff manner of the old style. at the same time the character and execution of these little figures is most masterly and profound. and what variety, what expression there is, not merely in the character of the single warriors and knights, but in the hosts themselves! here crowds of black archers rush down troop after troop from the mountain with the rage of a foaming torrent; on the other side high upon the rocks in the far distance a scattered crowd of flying men are turning round in a defile. the point of the greatest interest stands out brilliantly from the centre of the whole--alexander and darius both in armour of burnished gold; alexander on bucephalus with his lance in rest advances before his men and presses on the flying darius, whose charioteer has already fallen on his white horses, and who looks back upon his conqueror with all the despair of a vanquished monarch." albert dÜrer ( - ), by his overpowering genius, may be called the sole representative of german art of his period. he was gifted with a power of conception which traced nature through all her finest shades, and with a lively sense, as well for the solemn and the sublime, as for simple grace and tenderness; above all, he had an earnest and truthful feeling in art united with a capacity for the most earnest study. these qualities were sufficient to place him by the side of the greatest artists whom the world has ever seen. one of the earliest portraits by albert dürer known to us is that of his father, albert dürer, the goldsmith, dated , in our national gallery. in the year , another version of this picture, which was engraved by hollar, was in the collection of the earl of arundel, and is now in that of the duke of northumberland, at syon house. of about the same time--that is to say, before --are the portraits of oswald krell, at munich, of frederick the wise, at berlin, and of himself, at the prado. several of albert dürer's pictures of the year are known to us. the first and most important is his own portrait in the munich gallery, which represents him full face with his hand laid on the fur trimming of his robe. his finest picture of the year is an _adoration of the kings_, originally painted for frederick the wise, elector of saxony, subsequently presented by the elector christian ii. to the emperor rudolph ii., and finally, on the occasion of an exchange of pictures, transferred from vienna to florence, where it now hangs in the tribune of the uffizi. the heads are of thoroughly realistic treatment; the virgin a portrait from some model of no attractive character; the second king a portrait of the painter himself. the landscape background exactly resembles that in the well-known engraving of s. eustace, the period of which is thus pretty nearly defined. it is carefully painted in a fine body of colour. in dürer made a second journey into upper italy, and remained a considerable time at venice. of his occupations in this city the letters written to his friend wilibald pirckheimer which have come down to us give many interesting particulars. he there executed for the german company a picture known as _the feast of rose garlands_, which brought him great fame, and by its brilliant colouring silenced the assertion of his envious adversaries "that he was a good engraver, but knew not how to deal with colours." in the centre of a landscape is the virgin seated with the child and crowned by two angels; on her right is a pope with priests kneeling; on her left the emperor maximilian i. with knights; various members of the german company are also kneeling; all are being crowned with garlands of roses by the virgin, the child, s. dominick--who stands behind the virgin--and by angels. the painter and his friend pirckheimer are seen standing in the background on the right; the painter holds a tablet with the inscription, "albertus dürer germanus, mdvi." this picture, which is one of his largest and finest, was purchased from the church at a high price by the emperor rudolph ii. for his gallery at prague, where it remained until sold in by the emperor joseph ii. it then became the property of the præmonstratensian monastery of stratow at prague, where it still exists, though in very injured condition and greatly over-painted. in the imperial gallery at vienna may be seen an old copy which conveys a better idea of the picture than the original. with these productions begins the zenith of this master's fame, in which a great number of works follow one another within a short period. of these we first notice a picture of , in the imperial gallery at vienna, painted for duke frederick of saxony, and which afterwards adorned the gallery of the emperor rudolph ii. it represents _the martyrdom of the ten thousand saints_. in the centre of the picture stand the master and his friend pirckheimer as spectators, both in black dresses. dürer has a mantle thrown over his shoulder in the italian fashion, and stands in a firm attitude. he folds his hands and holds a small flag, on which is inscribed, "iste faciebat anno domini albertus dürer alemanus." there are a multitude of single groups exhibiting every species of martyrdom, but there is a want of general connection of the whole. the scenes in the background, where the christians are led naked up the rocks, and are precipitated down from the top, are particularly excellent. the whole is very minute and miniature-like; the colouring is beautifully brilliant, and it is painted (the accessories particularly) with extraordinary care. to belongs also one of his most celebrated pictures, _the adoration of the trinity_, which is also at vienna, painted for the chapel of the landauer brüderhaus in nuremberg. above in the centre of the picture are seen the first person, who holds the saviour in his arms, while the holy spirit is seen above; some angels spread out the priestly mantle of the almighty, whilst others hover near with the instruments of christ's passion. on the left hand a little lower down is a choir of females with the virgin at their head; on the right are the male saints with st john the baptist. below all these kneel a host of the blessed of all ranks and nations extending over the whole of this part of the picture. underneath the whole is a beautiful landscape, and in a corner of the picture the artist himself richly clothed in a fur mantle, with a tablet next him with the words, "albertus dürer noricus faciebat anno a virginis partu, ." it may be assumed beyond doubt that he held in particular esteem those pictures into which he introduced his own portrait. in the vienna gallery is also a picture of the year , the virgin holding the naked child in her arms. she has a veil over her head and blue drapery. her face is of the form usual with albert dürer, but of a soft and maidenly character; the child is beautiful--the countenance particularly so. it is painted with exceeding delicacy of finish. two altar-pieces of his earliest period must be mentioned. one is in the dresden gallery, consisting of three pictures painted in tempera on canvas, representing the virgin, s. anthony, and s. sebastian respectively. although this is probably one of his very earliest works, it is remarkable for the novelty of its treatment and its independence of tradition. the other, a little later, is in the munich gallery (nos. - ), painted at the request of the paumgartner family, for s. catherine's church at nuremberg, was brought to munich in by maximilian i. the subject of the middle picture is the nativity; the child is in the centre, surrounded by little angels, whilst the virgin and joseph kneel at the side. the wings contain portraits of the two donors under the form of s. george and s. eustace represented as knights in steel armour, each with his standard, and the former holding the slain dragon. the year was distinguished by the two pictures of the four apostles: john and peter, mark and paul; the figures are the size of life. these, which are the master's grandest work, and the last of importance executed by him, are now in the munich gallery. we know with certainty that they were presented by albert dürer himself to the council of his native city in remembrance of his career as an artist, and at the same time as conveying to his fellow-citizens an earnest and lasting exhortation suited to that stormy period. in the year , however, the pictures were allowed to pass into the hands of the elector maximilian i. of bavaria. the inscriptions selected by the painter himself might have given offence to a catholic prince, and were therefore cut off and joined to the copies by john fischer, which were intended to indemnify the city of nuremberg for the loss of the originals. these copies are still in the collection of the landauer brüderhaus at nuremberg. these pictures are the fruit of the deepest thought which then stirred the mind of albert dürer, and are executed with overpowering force. finished as they are, they form the first complete work of art produced by protestantism. as the inscription taken from the gospels and epistles of the apostles contains pressing warnings not to swerve from the word of god, nor to believe in the doctrines of false prophets, so the figures themselves represent the steadfast and faithful guardians of that holy scripture which they bear in their hands. there is also an old tradition, handed down from the master's own times, that these figures represent the four temperaments. this is confirmed by the pictures themselves; and though at first sight it may appear to rest on a mere accidental combination, it serves to carry out more completely the artist's thought, and gives to the figures greater individuality. it shows how every quality of the human mind may be called into the service of the divine word. thus in the first picture, we see the whole force of the mind absorbed in contemplation, and we are taught that true watchfulness in behalf of the scripture must begin by devotion to its study. s. john stands in front, the open book in his hand; his high forehead and his whole countenance bear the impress of earnest and deep thought. this is the melancholic temperament, which does not shrink from the most profound inquiry. behind him s. peter bends over the book, and gazes earnestly at its contents--a hoary head, full of meditative repose. this figure represents the phlegmatic temperament, which reviews its own thoughts in tranquil reflection. the second picture shows the outward operation of the conviction thus attained and its relation to daily life. s. mark in the background is the man of sanguine temperament; he looks boldly round, and appears to speak to his hearers with animation, earnestly urging them to share those advantages which he has himself derived from the holy scriptures. s. paul, on the contrary, in the foreground, holds the book and sword in his hands; he looks angrily and severely over his shoulder, ready to defend the word, and to annihilate the blasphemer with the sword of god's power. he is the representative of the choleric temperament. we know of no important work of a later date than that just described. his portrait in a woodcut of the year represents him earnest and serious in demeanour, as would naturally follow from his advancing age and the pressure of eventful times. his head is no longer adorned with those richly flowing locks, on which in his earlier days he had set so high a value, as we learn from his pictures and from jests still recorded of him. with the departure of hans holbein to england in and the death of albert dürer in the same year, that excellence to which they had raised german art passed away, and centuries saw no sign of its revival. of hans holbein, born at augsburg in , we shall have more to say in a later chapter, when considering the origins of english portraiture. but as in the case of van dyck, and in fact of every great portrait painter, his excellence in this particular branch of his art was but one result of his being a born artist and first exercising his talents in a much wider field. in holbein the realistic tendency of the german school attained its highest development, and he may, next to dürer, be pronounced the greatest master in it. while dürer's art exhibits a close affinity with the religious ideas of the middle ages, holbein appears to have been imbued with more modern and more material sentiments, and accordingly we find him excelling dürer in closeness and delicacy of observation in the delineation of nature. a proof of this is afforded by the evidence of erasmus, who said that as regards the portraits painted of him by both these artists, that by holbein was the most like. in feeling for beauty of form, also in grace of movement, in colouring, and in the actual art of painting--in which his father had thoroughly instructed him--holbein is to be placed above dürer. that he did not rival the great italians of his time in "historical" painting can only be ascribed to the circumstances of his life in germany, where such subjects were not in fashion. of his pictures executed before he left his native country the greater number are at basle and augsburg, and are therefore less familiar to the general public than his later works. a notable exception is the famous _meyer madonna_, the original of which is at darmstadt, but a version now relegated, somewhat harshly, to the "copyist" is in the dresden gallery, and certainly exhibits as much of the spirit of the master as will serve for an example of his powers. it represents the virgin as queen of heaven, standing in a niche, with the child in her arms, and with the family of the burgomaster jacob meyer of basle kneeling on either side of her. with the utmost life and truth to nature, which brings these kneeling figures actually into our presence, says kugler, there is combined in a most exquisite degree an expression of great earnestness, as if the mind were fixed on some lofty object. this is shown not merely by the introduction of divine beings into the circle of human sympathies, but particularly in the relation so skilfully indicated between the holy virgin and her worshippers, and in her manifest desire to communicate to those who are around her the sacred peace and tranquillity expressed in her own countenance and attitude, and implied in the infantine grace of the saviour. in the direct union of the divine with the human, and in their reciprocal harmony, there is involved a devout and earnest purity of feeling such as only the older masters were capable of representing. another of his most beautiful pictures painted in germany is the portrait of erasmus, dated . this was sent by erasmus to sir thomas more, at chelsea, with a letter recommending holbein to his care, and as it is still in this country--in the collection of the earl of radnor at longford castle--it is not perhaps too much to hope that it may one of these days find its way into the national gallery--perhaps when the alterations to the front entrance are completed. this picture has for a very long time been regarded as one of holbein's very finest portraits. mr w. barclay squire, in the sumptuous catalogue of the radnor collection compiled by him, quotes the opinion of sir william musgrave, written in , "i am not sure whether it is not the finest i have seen"; and that of dr waagen, "alone worth a pilgrimage to longford. seldom has a painter so fully succeeded in bringing to view the whole character of so original a mind as in this instance. in the mouth and small eyes may be seen the unspeakable studies of a long life ... the face also expresses the sagacity and knowledge of a life gained by long experience ... the masterly and careful execution extends to every portion ... yet the face surpasses everything else in delicacy of modelling." cruel, indeed, was england to have transplanted the one artist who might have saved germany from the artistic destitution from which she has suffered ever since! [illustration: plate xxxiii.--hans holbein portrait of christina, duchess of milan _national gallery, london_] _french school_ i the seventeenth century when we consider the peculiar beauty of the architecture and ecclesiastical sculpture in france during the middle ages and the period of the renaissance, and of the enamels, ivories, and other small works of art, it is wrong to regret that painting was not also practised by the french as assiduously as it was in italy. for there can be no doubt that in being confined to one channel the artistic impulses of a people cut deeper than if dissipated in various directions. we may suppose, indeed, that if those of the french had found their outlet in painting alone, we should have pictures of wonderful beauty, of a beauty moreover of a markedly different kind from that of the italian or spanish or netherlandish pictures. but on the other hand we should have perhaps lost the amazing fascination of chartres, and the delights of limoges enamel and ivories. as it happens, the earliest mention to be made of painting in france is the arrival of leonardo da vinci at amboise in , whither he had come from milan in the train of the young king françois i. unfortunately he was by this time sixty-four years old, and in less than three years he died. at about the same time there was a court painter in the employment of françois--under the official designation of _varlet de chambre_--named jehan clouet, who is supposed to have been of flemish extraction. nothing very definite is known about him or his work, but he had a son franÇois clouet, who seems to have been born at about the time of leonardo's arrival, and who succeeded to his father's office. at the funeral of françois i. in he was ordered to make an _effige du dict feu roy_, and he continued to be the official court painter to henri ii. (whose posthumous portrait he was also ordered to paint), françois ii., and charles ix. he died in . every portrait of this period is attributed to him, just as was the case with holbein in england. neither of the two examples at the national gallery can be safely ascribed to him. the little head of the emperor charles v., king of spain, at hereford house, is identical in style and in dimensions with that of francis i., king of france, in the museum at lyons, which is attributed to jean clouet. both may have been painted when charles v. passed through paris in , but whether by jean or one of his disciples cannot be said with certainty. not until the very end of the sixteenth century were born claude gellée and nicholas poussin, the only two frenchmen who were painters of considerable importance before the close of the seventeenth. nor did either of these two contribute anything to the glory of their country by practice or by precept within its confines, both of them passing most of their lives and painting their best works in italy and under italian influence. nicholas poussin was born at villiers near les andelys on the banks of the seine, in , where he studied for some time under quentin varin till he was eighteen. after this he was in paris, but in he went to rome where he lived with du quesnoy. his first success was obtained by the execution of two historical pieces which were commissioned by cardinal barberini on his return from an embassy to france. these were _the death of germanicus_ and _the capture of jerusalem_. his next works were _the martyrdom of s. erasmus_, _the plague at ashdod_, of which a replica is in the national gallery, and _the seven sacraments_ now at belvoir castle. by these he acquired such fame that on his return to paris in , louis xiii. appointed him royal painter, and in order to keep him at home provided him with apartments in the tuileries and a salary of £ a year. within two years, however, poussin was back in rome, and after twenty-three years' unbroken success died there in in his seventy-second year. poussin was a most conscientious painter, devoting himself seriously in his earlier years to the study both of the antique and of practical anatomy. besides being the intimate friend of du quesnoy, he was a devout pupil of domenichino, for whom he had the greatest reverence. it is not surprising therefore to find in his earlier works, such as the _plague at ashdod_, a certain academic dulness and lack of spontaneity. he was not the forerunner of a new epoch, but one of the last upholders of the old. he was trying to arrest decay, to infuse a healthier spirit into a declining art, so that he errs on the side of correctness. the influence of titian, however, was too strong for him to remain long within the narrowest limits, as may be seen in the _bacchanalian dance_, no. in the national gallery, which was probably one of a series painted for cardinal richelieu during the short time that poussin was in paris in . in this and in no. , the _bacchanalian festival_ as well as in _the shepherds in arcadia_, in the louvre, we get a surprisingly strong reminiscence of titian, more especially in the brown tones of the flesh and the deep blue of the sky. as the result of conscientious study of the human body the figures in these pictures are full of life--for correctness of drawing is the first requisite of lively painting without which all the others are useless. the fact that over two hundred prints have been engraved after his pictures is a proof of his popularity at one time or another, and though at the present time his reputation is not as widely recognised as in former years, it is certainly as high among those whose judgment is independent of passing fashions. as evidence of the soundness of his principles, the following is perhaps worth quoting:-- "there are nine things in painting," poussin wrote in a letter to m. de chambrai, the author of a treatise on painting, "which can never be taught and which are essential to that art. to begin with, the subject of it should be noble, and receive no quality from the person who treats it; and to give opportunity to the painter to show his talents and his industry it must be chosen as capable of receiving the most excellent form. a painter should begin with disposition (or as we should say, composition), the ornament should follow, their agreement of the parts, beauty, grace, spirit, costume, regard to nature and probability; and above all, judgment. this last must be in the painter himself and cannot be taught. it is the golden bough of virgil that no one can either find or pluck unless his lucky star conducts him to it." gaspar poussin, whose name was really gaspard dughet, was brother-in-law of nicholas, and acquired his name from being his pupil. he was nineteen years his junior, and survived him by ten years. he was born in rome of french parents, and died there in , and though he travelled a good deal in italy he never appears to have visited france. his italian landscapes are very beautiful, and we are fortunate in the possession of one which is considered his best, no. in the national gallery, _landscape with figures_, _abraham and isaac_. scarcely less fine is the _calling of abraham_, no. , especially in the middle and far distance. the sacred figures, it may as well be said, are of little concern in the compositions, though useful for purposes of identifying the pictures. claude gellÉe, nowadays usually spoken of as claude, was born at chamagne in lorraine in . accordingly he has been styled claude lorraine, le lorraine, de lorrain, lorrain, or claudio lorrenese with wonderful persistency through the ages, though there was no mystery about his surname and it would have served just as well. he was brought up in his father's profession of pastrycook, and in that capacity he went to rome seeking for employment. as it happened he found it in the house of a landscape painter, agostino tassi, who had been a pupil of paul bril, and he not only cooked for him but mixed his colours as well, and soon became his pupil. later he was studying under a german painter, gottfried wals, at naples. a more important influence on him, however, was that of joachim sandrart, one of the best of the later german painters, whom he met in rome. claude's earliest pictures of any importance were two which were painted for pope urban vii. in , when he was just upon forty years old. these are the _village dance_ and the _seaport_, now in the louvre. the _seaport at sunset_ and _narcissus and echo_ in the national gallery (nos. and ) are dated --the former on the canvas and the latter on the sketch for it in the _liber veritatis_, where it is stated that it was painted for an english patron. the _liber veritatis_, it should be observed, is the title given to a portfolio of over two hundred drawings in pen and bistre, or indian ink, which is now in the possession of the duke of devonshire. most of these were made from pictures which had been painted, not as sketches or designs preparatory to painting them, and in some instances there are notes on the back of them giving the date, purchaser, and other particulars relating to them. so great was the vogue for claude's landscapes in england during the eighteenth century that as early as or a good many of his drawings, which had been collected by jonathan richardson, dr. mead and others, were engraved by arthur pond and john knapton; and in a series of about two hundred of the duke of devonshire's drawings was published by alderman boydell, which had been etched and mezzotinted by richard earlom, under the title of _liber veritatis_. this was the model on which turner founded the publication of his own sketches under the title of _liber studiorum_. thus, if claude exerted little influence on the art of his own country, it can hardly be said that he exerted none elsewhere, for turner was by no means the first englishman to fall under his spell. richard wilson, the first english landscape painter, was undoubtedly influenced by him, both from an acquaintance with his drawings in english collections and from the study of his works when in rome. in this connection we may consider the two landscapes, numbered and in the national gallery catalogue, as our most important examples by this master, for turner bequeathed to the nation his two most important pictures _the sun rising through a vapour_ and _dido building carthage_, on condition that they should be hung between these two by claude. the court of chancery could annul the condition, but they could not nullify the effect of claude's influence on turner or alter the judgment of posterity with regard to the relations of the two painters to each other and to art in general, and the director has wisely observed the wishes of turner in still hanging the four pictures together, the court of chancery notwithstanding. both of claude's are inscribed, besides being signed and dated, as follows: no. . mariage d'isaac avec rebeca, claudio gil. inv. romae . no. . la reine de saba va trover salomon. clavde gil. inv. faict pour son altesse le duc de buillon à roma . both pictures are familiar in various engravings of them, and though the present fashion leads many people in other directions, there can be no doubt that the appreciation of claude in this country is never likely to die out, and is only waiting for a turn of the wheel to revive with increased vigour. meantime, however, france was not entirely destitute of painters, and though without claude, poussin or dughet, who preferred to exercise their art in rome, she anticipated england by over a century in that most important step, the foundation of an academy of painting. not many of the names of its original members ever became famous--as may be said in our own country--but among them was sebastien bourdon ( - ), whose work was so much admired by sir joshua reynolds. bourdon, also, wandered away from france; within four years after the foundation of the academy, namely, in , he went to stockholm, and was appointed principal painter to queen christina. on her abdication, however, in , he returned to paris, and enjoyed a great success in painting landscapes, and historical subjects. _the return of the ark from captivity_, no. in the national gallery catalogue, was presented by that distinguished patron of the arts, sir george beaumont, to whom it was bequeathed by sir joshua reynolds, as being one of his most treasured possessions. "i cannot quit this subject," he writes in the fourteenth discourse, alluding to poetry in landscape, "without mentioning two examples, which occur to me at present, in which the poetical style of landscape may be seen happily executed; the one is _jacob's dream_, by salvator rosa, and the other, _the return of the ark from captivity_, by sebastian bourdon. with whatever dignity those histories are presented to us in the language of scripture, this style of painting possesses the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur and sublimity, and is able to communicate them to subjects which appear by no means adapted to receive them. a ladder against the sky has no very promising appearance of possessing a capacity to excite any heroic ideas, and the ark in the hands of a second-rate master would have little more effect than a common waggon on the highway; yet those subjects are so poetically treated throughout, the parts have such a correspondence with each other, and the whole and every part of the scene is so visionary, that it is impossible to look at them without feeling in some measure the enthusiasm which seems to have inspired the painters." eustache le sueur, born in the same year as sebastien bourdon ( ), was another of the original members of the academy, and was employed by the king at the louvre. his most famous work was the decorations of the cloister at the monastery of la chartreuse (now in the louvre) of which horace walpole speaks so ecstatically in the preface to the last volume of the _anecdotes of painting_. "the last scene of s. bruno expiring" (he writes) "in which are expressed all the stages of devotion from the youngest mind impressed with fear to the composed resignation of the prior, is perhaps inferior to no single picture of the greatest master. if raphael died young, so did le sueur; the former had seen the antique, the latter only prints from raphael; yet in the chartreuse, what airs of heads! what harmony of colouring! what aërial perspective! how grecian the simplicity of architecture and drapery! how diversified a single quadrangle though the life of a hermit be the only subject, and devotion the only pathetic!" philippe de champaigne was another of the original members. he was born at brussels in , and did not come to paris till , where he was soon afterwards employed in the decoration of the luxembourg palace. but he was chiefly a portrait painter, his principal works being the fine full-length of cardinal richelieu, and another of his daughter as a nun of port royal, both of which are in the louvre. there are four in the wallace collection, but perhaps the most familiar to the english public is the canvas at the national gallery (no. ), painted for the roman sculptor mocchi, to make a bust from, with a full face and two profiles of richelieu. as a portrait this is exceedingly interesting, the more so from having an inscription over one of the heads, "de ces deux profiles cecy est le meilleur." the full length of the cardinal presented by mr. charles butler in (no. ), is a good example, which cannot however but suffer by juxtaposition with more accomplished works. but it was not until the close of the seventeenth century that portrait painting in france became anything like a fine art, and even then it did not get beyond being formal and magnificent. the two principal exponents were hyacinthe rigaud and nicolas largilliÈre, both of whose works have a sort of grandeur but little subtlety or charm. rigaud was born in , at perpignan in the extreme south of france, and studied at montpelier in his youth, then at lyons on his way to paris--much as a scottish artist might have studied first at glasgow, then at birmingham on his way to london. on the advice of lebrun he devoted himself specially to portrait painting, which he did with such success that in he was elected a member of the academy. he painted louis xiv. more often than largillière or any other painter, and in his later years (he lived till ) louis xv. his great-grandson. he is said to have shared with kneller the distinction, such as it may be, of having painted at least five monarchs. rigaud is best known in these days by the fine prints after his portraits by the french engravers. of his brushwork we are only able to judge by the two doubtful versions at the national gallery and the wallace collection respectively, of the fine portrait at versailles of _cardinal fleury_. the group of _lulli and the musicians of the french court_, which was purchased for the national gallery in is not by him, and it is difficult to understand why the public money should have been wasted on it, or at least on the inscription attributing it to him. nicolas de largillière was three years older than rigaud and survived him by another three. he was born in paris in and died six months before completing his ninetieth year. early in life he went as a pupil to antwerp, under antoine goubeau, and he is said to have worked in england as an assistant to sir peter lely during the later years of that master. on his return to france he was received into the royal academy--in . in the wallace collection is an interesting example of his work, the large group of the french royal family, in which four living generations are portrayed and the bronze effigies of two more. henri iv. and louis xiii., the grandfather and father of the reigning monarch, louis xiv., the dauphin his son, the duc de bourgogne his grandson, and the duc d'anjou, his great-grandson--afterwards louis xv., are all included in this formal group, which is a useful lesson in history as well as in painting. ii the eighteenth century antoine watteau was born at valenciennes in , and died near there about thirty-seven years later of consumption. valenciennes really belonged to flanders, and had only lately been annexed to france, so that watteau owed something of his art to flemish rather than to french sources. at the same time it cannot be said that his development would have been the same if he had gone to brussels or antwerp instead of to paris to study, for though the works of rubens and van dyck were from his earliest years his chief attraction, the influence of the french artist claude gillot, as well as that of audran, the keeper of the luxembourg palace, without doubt exerted a very decided help in determining the future course of his work. when living with audran, watteau had every opportunity for studying the works of the older masters, especially those of rubens, whose decorations, executed for marie de medici, had not at that time been removed to the louvre. besides copying from these older pictures, watteau was employed by audran in the execution of designs for wall decorations, etc. watteau's two earliest pictures still in existence are supposed to be the _départ de troupe_ and the _halte d'armée_, which were the first of a series of military pictures on a small scale. to an early period also belong the _accordée de village_, at the soane museum in lincoln's inn fields, the _mariée de village_ at potsdam, and the _wedding festivities_ in the dublin national gallery. in other influences began to work upon him. in this year he came into contact with crozat, the famous collector, in whose house he became familiar with a fresh batch of the flemish and italian masterpieces. it was at this time that he was approved by the royal academy, though he took five years over his diploma picture, "_embarquement pour l'Île de cythère_," which is now in the louvre. meantime the influence of rubens and the italian masters--especially the venetians, had greatly widened and deepened his art, and these influences, acting on his peculiarly sensitive temperament and poetical spirit, had a magical effect, transforming the actual scenes of paris and versailles, which he painted into enchanted places in [illustration: plate xxxiv.--antoine watteau l'indiffÉrent _louvre, paris_] fairyland, as he transformed the formal actual painting of the period of louis xiv. into the romantic school of the eighteenth century in france. the setting of the famous pictures in the wallace collection, catalogued as _the music-party_ or _les charnes de la vie_ (no. ), is a view of the champs elysées taken from the gallery of the tuileries. who would have thought it? and what does it matter, except to show how entirely watteau revolutionized the pompous and prosaic methods of his time by investing the actual with poetry and romance. two other pictures at hertford house, nos. and , were painted in the champs elysées, and the figures are, for the most part, the same in both, all three of these pictures are fine examples of the artist's power of broad and spirited treatment, combined with extreme delicacy and refinement of conception. three other pictures at hertford house are equally delightful examples of another class of subject, namely groups of figures dressed in the parts of actors in italian comedy. from a note in the catalogue we learn that a company of italian comedians were in paris in the sixteenth century, but were banished by louis quatorze in for a supposed affront to madame de maintenon. in , however, they were recalled by the regent, the duc d'orléans, and became once more the delight of paris. several of the figures in the italian comedy had already passed into french popular drama, and in watteau's time there seems to have been a fluctuating company, according as one actor or actress or another developed a part, and to pantalone, arlecchino, dottore and columbina were now added pierrot--or gilles--mezetin, a sort of double of pierrot, scaramouche and scapin. the vague web of courtship, dalliance, intrigue and jealousy called up by these characters attracted watteau to employ them in his compositions, and to make them also the medium of the more sincere sentiments of conjugal love and friendship,--as in _the music lesson_, _gilles and his family_ and _harlequin and columbine_, at hertford house. all of these three were engraved in watteau's life-time or shortly after his death, and the verses sub-joined to the engravings are a charming rendering of the sentiment underlying the pictures. in _the music lesson_ we see the half length figures of a lady, seated, reading a music book, and of a man playing a lute opposite to her. another man looks at the book over the lady's shoulder, and two little children's faces appear at her knee. the verses are as follows:-- pour nous prouver que cette belle trouve l'hymen un noeud fort doux le peintre nous la peint fidelle À suivre le ton d'un Époux. les enfants qui sont autour d'elle sont les fruits de son tendre amour dont ce beau joueur de prunelle pouvait bien goûter quelque jour. in _gilles and his family_ we have a three-quarter length full-face portrait of le sieur de sirois, a friend of watteau, with these verses under the engraving:-- sous un habit de mezzetin ce gros brun au riant visage sur la guitarre avec sa main fait un aimable badinage. par les doux accords de sa voix enfants d'une bouche vermeille du beau sexe tant à la fois il charme les yeux et l'oreille. in the little _lady at her toilet_ (no. ) we see the influence of paul veronese, though it is probable that this was not painted until he visited london in the later part of his short life. for there is a similar piece called _la toilette du matin_ which was engraved by a french artist who had settled in england, philip mercier, and on whose work the influence of watteau is very noticeable. _le rendez-vous de chasse_ (no. ), which is of the same size, and in character similar to _les amusements champêtres_ (no. ), is the last by watteau of which we have any certain knowledge. it was painted in , the year before his death, when his health prevented him from making any sustained effort. it is said to have been a commission from his friends m. and mme. de julienne, in whose shooting-box at saint maur, between the woods of vincennes and the river, he went to repose from time to time. nicholas lancret was only by six years watteau's junior, so that he can hardly be considered as a pupil or even a disciple, but only as an imitator of watteau. he was the pupil of claude gillot, and afterwards his assistant, and it was not unnatural that a close friendship should have been formed between lancret and watteau, or that it should have been dissolved by the deliberate imitation by the former of the latter's style--seeing how successful the imitation was. two of the pictures by lancret at hertford house, nos. , _conversation galante_ and , _fête in a wood_, are fair examples of how close, at one period of his career, the imitation became. the latter is the _bal dans un bois_ which was exhibited at the place dauphiné, and was complained of by watteau on account of its close resemblance to his own work. another in the wallace collection belongs to the same early period of watteau's influence. the _italian comedians by a fountain_ (no. ), being attributed to watteau in the sale, in , at which it was bought for lord hertford. his lordship was particularly anxious to secure this picture, "between _you_ and _i_," he writes, with the quaint regardlessness of grammar peculiar to the victorian nobility, "(and to no other person but you should i make this _confidence_), i must have the lancret called watteau in the standish collection. so i depend upon you for _getting it for me_. i need not beg you not to mention a word about this to _anybody_, either _before_ or _after_ the sale." and again, "i _depend_ upon your getting the lancret (watteau in the catalogue) for me. i have no doubt it will sell for a good sum, most likely more than it is worth, but we _must_ have it ... i leave it to you, but i must have it, unless by some unheard of chance it was to go beyond guineas." he was fortunate indeed in getting it for £ . _mademoiselle camargo dancing_ (no. ), and _la belle grecque_ (no. ), in the wallace collection, are good examples of the comedian motive treated with more actuality, yet with no less grace. the four little allegorical pieces in the national gallery, _the four ages of man_, are more lively if less romantic, being composed more for the characters illustrating the subject than for poetical setting. jean baptise joseph pater was actually a pupil of watteau. he was ten years his junior, but was equally unhappy on account of his health, and died at forty. like lancret, he incurred watteau's displeasure for a similar reason, though in his case it was rather the fear of what he would do than what he did that was the cause of watteau's displeasure. at the same time, the names of both lancret and pater are inseparable from that of watteau in the history of painting, and, both in their choice of subject and their treatment of it, they are hardly distinguishable to the casual observer. watteau, it need hardly be said, was far above the other two, but it was fortunate indeed that his romantic genius had two such gifted imitators as lancret and pater--or to put it the other way, that they had such a master to imitate, without whom neither their work nor their influence would have been nearly as great as it was. franÇois boucher, though doubtless influenced by watteau, more especially at the outset of his brilliant career, was nevertheless independent of him in carrying forward the art painting in his country, choosing rather to revert to the patronage of the court like his predecessors le brun, rigaud, and largillière than to devote himself to the expression of his own ideas and feelings. being a pupil of françois le moine, whose principal work was the decoration of versailles, it is not unnatural that boucher should have succumbed to the influence of royalty, especially when exerted in his favour by as charming and as powerful an agent as madame de pompadour. another early influence which shaped his artistic tendencies as well as his fortunes was that of carle van loo, in whose honour his countrymen coined the verb _vanlotiser_--to frivol agreeably--- on account of the popularity which he achieved as a painter of elegant trifles. there is a picture by carle van loo in the wallace collection entitled _the grand turk giving a concert to his mistress_ (no. ), painted in , which is a fair example of his proficiency in this direction, and there are one or two portraits scattered about the country which he painted when over here for a few months towards the end of his life. he died in paris on the th july , and boucher was immediately appointed his successor as principal painter to louis xv. madame de pompadour was more than a patron to him, she was a matron! she made an intimate friend and adviser of him, and it is to her that he owed most of his advancement at court, which continued after her death. the full-length portrait of her at hertford house (no. ) was commissioned by her in , and remained in her possession till her death in . it was purchased by lord hertford in for , francs. in the jones collection at the south kensington museum is another portrait of her, and a third in the national gallery at edinburgh, not to mention those in private collections. the two magnificent cartoons on the staircase at hertford house, called the _rising and setting of the sun_, she begged from the king. these were ordered in as designs to be executed in tapestry at the manufacture royale des gobelins, by cozette and audran, according to the catalogue of the salon in when they were exhibited. they are characterised by the brothers de goncourt as _le plus grand effort du peintre, les deux grandes machines de son oeuvre_; and the writer of the catalogue of madame de pompadour's pictures when they were sold in testifies thus to the artist's own opinion of them: "j'ai entendu plusieurs fois dire par l'auteur qu'ils étaient du nombre de ceux dont il était le plus satisfait." they were then sold for livres, and lord hertford paid , francs for them in . even without these _chefs d'oeuvre_ the wallace collection is richer than any other gallery in the works of boucher, with twenty-four examples (in all), of which few if any are of inferior quality. but it must be confessed that the abundance of boucher's work does not enhance its artistic value, and we have to think of him, in comparison with watteau and his school, rather as a great decorator than a great painter. with all his skill and charm, that is to say, there is not one of his canvases that we could place beside a picture by watteau on anything like equal terms. superficially it may be equally or possibly more attractive, but inwardly there is no comparison. let us hear what sir joshua reynolds has to say of him:-- "our neighbours, the french, are much in this practice of extempore invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished pictures! the late director of their academy, boucher, was eminent in this way. when i visited him some years since in france, i found him at work on a very large picture without drawings or models of any kind. on my remarking this particular circumstance, he said, when he was young, studying his art, he found it necessary to use models, but he had left them off for many years.... however, in justice, i cannot quit this painter without adding that in the former part of his life, when he was in the habit of having recourse to nature, he was not without a considerable degree of merit--enough to make half the painters of his country his imitators: he had often grace and beauty, and good skill in composition, but i think all under the influence of a bad taste; his imitators are, indeed, abominable." twenty-one years elapsed between the birth of boucher and the next painter of anything like his ability, namely, jean baptiste greuze. he was a native of tournous, near macon, and lived to see the century out, dying in , at the age of seventy-eight. his popularity is nowadays due chiefly to his heads of young girls, which he painted in his later life with admirable skill, but with a sentimentality that almost repels. the famous example in the national gallery is more free from the sickly sweetness that spoils most of them, and reminds us that he could paint more serious works, and paint them exceedingly well. he first came into notice by pictures like _la lecture du bible_, _la malédiction paternelle_, or _le fils puni_, which are now to be seen--though generally passed by--at the louvre, and his style was imitated in later years in england by wheatley and others of that school with more or less success. it was a great blow to him, and one which seriously affected his career when the academy censured his diploma picture, _the emperor severus reproaching caracalla_. but for this we might have had more than these sentimental young ladies from a hand that was undoubtedly worthy of better things. however, as lord hertford admired them sufficiently to include no less than twenty-one of them in his collection, we ought not to be severe in criticising them, and we may quote the description of _the souvenir_ (no. ) given by john smith, in his catalogue raisonné in , as showing the esteem in which it was held. "_the souvenir._ an interesting female, about fifteen years of age, pressing fondly to her bosom a little red and white spaniel dog; the pet animal appears to remind her of some favourite object, for whose safety and return she is breathing an earnest wish; her fair oval countenance and melting eyes are directed upwards, and her ruby lips are slightly open; her light hair falls negligently on her shoulder, and is tastefully braided [illustration: plate xxxv.--jean-baptiste greuze the broken pitcher _louvre, paris_] with a crimson riband and pearls. she is attired in a morning dress, consisting of a loose gown and a brownish scarf, the latter of which hangs across her arm. upon a tree behind her is inscribed the name of the painter. this beautiful production of art abounds in every attractive charm which gives interest to the master's works." very different, and far superior to greuze, was jean honorÉ fragonard, born at grasse, in the alpes maritimes, in . in england his name was almost unknown until within quite recent years, and the national gallery has only one picture by him, which was bequeathed by george salting in . fortunately he is well represented in the wallace collection, three at least of the nine examples being in his most brilliant manner. fragonard's father was a glover. in the family moved to paris, and the boy was put into a notary's office. the usual signs of disinclination for office work and a passion for art having duly appeared, he was sent to boucher, who advised him to go and study under chardin. this he did for a short time, but finding it dull--for chardin was not as great a teacher as he was a painter--he went back to boucher as an assistant. in he won the prix de rome, although he had never attended the academy schools, and in started for italy. reynolds had just returned from rome at the date of fragonard's capture of the opportunity of going there, and we know from the _discourses_ how he spent his time there and what direction his studies took. fragonard pursued an exactly opposite course, being advised thereto by boucher, who said to him, "if you take michelangelo and raphael seriously, you are lost." feeling that the advice was suitable to himself, if not sound on general principles, fragonard devoted himself to the lighter and more sparkling works of tiepolo and others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. he also made a tour in south italy and sicily with hubert robert, the landscape painter, and the abbé saint non, the latter of whom published a number of etchings he made after fragonard's drawings, under the title of _voyages de naples et de sicile_. on returning to paris in his first success was the large composition of _callirhoé and coresus_, which was exhibited at the salon in , and is now in the louvre. but he soon abandoned the grand style, chiefly, it is probable, owing to the patronage of the idle or industrious rich who showered commissions upon him, for smaller and more sociable pictures with which to adorn and enliven their houses. the beautiful, but exceedingly improper picture at hertford house, called _the swing_--or in french, _les hazards heureux de l'escarpolette_, appears to have been commissioned by the baron de st. julien, within the next year or two, for in the memoirs of cotté a conversation is recorded which shows that the baron had asked another painter, doyen, to paint it. "who would have believed," says the indignant doyen, "that within a few days of my picture of ste. geneviéve being exhibited at the salon, a nobleman would have sent for me to order a picture on a subject like this." he then goes on to relate how the baron explained to him exactly what he required. we cannot entirely acquit fragonard of all blame in accepting such a commission, but he was a young man, just starting as a professional artist, with the example of boucher before him, and it would hardly have seemed wise to begin his career by offending a noble patron. the whole incident throws a glaring light on the conditions under which the art of france flourished in the louis quinze period, when boucher was everybody and chardin nobody. for the real fragonard we may turn to _le chiffre d'amour_, or the "lady carving an initial," as the prosaic diction of the wallace collection has it (no. ). in this the equal delicacy of the sentiment and of the painting combine to effect a little masterpiece of louis quinze art. it is simple and natural, and entirely free from the besetting sins of so slight a picture triviality, affectation, empty prettiness, or simply silliness. in its way it is perfect, and for that perfection is for ever reserved the popularity which we find temporarily accorded to pictures like frith's _dolly varden_ or millais' _bubbles_. another of the hertford house examples, the portrait of a boy as pierrot, is equally entitled to be popular for all time, and like reynolds's _strawberry girl_, might well be called "one of the half-dozen original things" which no artist ever exceeded in his life's work. a comparison between the two pictures, which were probably painted within a few years of each other, will serve to show the difference between the english and french schools at this period. on the one hand--to put it very shortly indeed--we see fragonard influenced by tiepolo, france, and louis xv.; on the other, sir joshua, influenced by michelangelo and raphael, england, and george iii. the mention of jean baptiste simeon chardin among this brilliant and frivolous galaxy seems almost out of place. "he is not so much an eighteenth-century french artist," lady dilke says of him, "as a french artist of pure race and type. though he treated subjects of the humblest and most unpretentious class, he brought to their rendering not only deep feeling and a penetration which divined the innermost truths of the simplest forms of life, but a perfection of workmanship by which everything he handled was clothed with beauty." that the wallace collection includes no work from his hand is perhaps regrettable, but truly chardin was someone apart from all the magnificence that dazzles us there. his was the treasure of the humble. the effects of the revolution upon french painting were as surprising as they were great. that the gay and frivolous art of boucher and fragonard should have suddenly ceased might have been considered inevitable; but whereas in holland, when the spanish yoke had been thrown off, and a republic proclaimed, a vigorous democratic school arose under frans hals; and in england during the commonwealth the artistic influence which was beginning to be spread by charles i. and buckingham utterly ceased; in france an artistic dictator arose, as we may well call him, in the person of jacques louis david, who not only made painting a part of the revolutionary propaganda, but succeeded under the emperor napoleon also in maintaining his position as painter to the government, and thereby imposing on his country a style of art which had a great influence on the whole course of french painting for many years to come. but the most remarkable thing was that it was to the classics that this revolutioniser went for inspiration. the explanation is to be found in the fact that he was bitterly aggrieved by the attitude of the academy to him as a young man, and in the accident of his famous picture of brutus synchronising with the events of . he was at once hailed as a deliverer, and made, as it were, painter to the revolution. [illustration: plate xxxvi.--fragonard l'Étude _louvre, paris_] but what was even more important in the influence he exerted at this time was his actual appointment as president of the convention, which gave him the power to revenge himself upon the academy, which he did by extinguishing it in , and to remove any inconvenient rivals by indicting them as aristocrats. of the older painters, fragonard and greuze were the only important ones left, and as they could not under the altered circumstances be considered as rivals to the classical david, they both saw the century out. fragonard simply ceased painting for want of patrons, and david was good enough to procure him a post in the museum des arts, or he would have starved. unfortunately he attempted to adapt himself to the new style, and was promptly ejected from his post--ostensibly on his previous connection with royalty--and was wise enough to fly to his native town in the south. during the first quarter of the nineteenth century the dictatorship of david was supreme. how it was finally overthrown we shall see in another chapter. _the english school_ i the early portrait painters in the preface to the _anecdotes of painting_ written in , horace walpole observes that this country had not a single volume to show on the works of its painters. "in truth," he continues, "it has very rarely given birth to a genius in that profession. flanders and holland have sent us the greatest men that we can boast. this very circumstance may with reason prejudice the reader against a work, the chief business of which must be to celebrate the art of a country which has produced so few good artists. this objection is so striking, that instead of calling it _the lives of english painters_, i have simply given it the title of _anecdotes of painting in england_." as walpole's work was merely a compilation from the voluminous notes of george vertue, a painstaking antiquary who had collected every scrap of information he could acquire in the early years of the eighteenth century, his conclusions can hardly be questioned, and the foundation of the english school of painting is therefore generally assumed to have been effected by reynolds. but as wren's cathedral replaced an older one which was destroyed by the fire of london, and as that was reared on the foundation of a roman temple, so we find that the art of painting in england was certainly practised in earlier times, and but for certain circumstances much more of it would have survived than is now to be found. in other countries, as we have seen, the church was in earlier times the greatest if not the only patron of the arts, and there is plenty of evidence to show that in england, too, from the reign of henry iii. onwards till the reformation, our churches were decorated with frescoes. this evidence is of two kinds; first, entries in royal and other accounts, directing payment for specified work; and secondly, the remains of fresco painting in our cathedrals and churches. the former is of little interest except to the antiquary. the latter has suffered so much from neglect or actual destruction as to be considered unworthy of the attention of either the artist in search of inspiration or the critic in pursuit of anything to criticise; but when every inconsiderable production in the little world of english art has had its bulky quarto written upon it, it is curious that no one has yet discovered what a splendid harvest awaits the investigation of these old frescoes all over the country. as it is, we have only to note that as religion was so important an influence on painting in other countries so was it in england, only unfortunately as a destroying and not a cherishing influence. granting the probability that there were few, if any, of our english frescoes which would be comparable in artistic interest with those in italy, where the art was so sedulously cultivated, it must nevertheless be remembered that only a fragment remains here and there out of all the work which must have been produced, and that after the reformation even those works which did survive were treated with positive as well as negative obloquy, so that where they have been preserved at all it is only by having been whitewashed over or otherwise hidden and damaged. even worse than the reformation in , was the puritan outburst a century later, which not only destroyed works of art, but extinguished all hope of their being created. is it to be wondered at, then, that the foundation of the english school of painting should have been postponed for a century more? at the same time it is interesting to note that the little painting which did creep into england in the sixteenth century, was of the very kind that formed the chief feature of the english school when it was finally established, namely portraiture. here again we see the influence of religion; for to the reformed church, at least as interpreted by the english temperament, the second commandment was and is still second only in number, not in importance. to protestant or puritan the idea of a picture in a church was anathema. as late as , when benjamin west offered to decorate st. paul's cathedral with a painting of moses receiving the tables of the law on mount sinai, the bishop exclaimed, "i have heard of the proposition, and as i am head of the cathedral of the metropolis, i will not suffer the doors to be opened to introduce popery." the painting of a portrait, however, was a very different matter, and from the earliest times appears to have appealed with peculiar strength to the vanity of britons. loudly as they protested against the iniquity of bowing down to and worshipping the likeness of anything in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters under the earth, they were never averse to giving others an opportunity of bowing down to and worshipping the likenesses of themselves; and while religion fostered the arts in other countries, self-importance kept them alive in this. the portrait of richard ii. in westminster abbey, if not actually an instance of this, certainly happens to seem like one. with the exception of jan de mabuse, who is said to have been in england for a short time during the reign of henry vii., the first painter of any importance in this country was hans holbein. hearing that money was to be made by painting portraits at the english court, he forsook his native town, his religious art, and his wife, and came to stay with sir thomas more at chelsea, with an introduction from erasmus. arriving in , he started business by making a sketch in pen and ink of more's entire family, with which marvellous work, still preserved in the museum at basle, the history of modern english painting may fairly be said to have begun; for though it was long before a native of england was forthcoming who was of sufficient force to carry on the tradition, the seed was sown, and in due course the plant appeared, and after many vicissitudes, at last flourished. the immediate effect may be noted by mentioning here the names of guillim streetes, who was possibly english born, and john bettes who certainly was. to the former is attributed the large whole-length portrait at hampton court of thomas howard, earl of surrey, in a suit of bright red. another portrait of howard belongs to the duke of norfolk, having been presented to his ancestor by sir robert walpole. both were exhibited at the tudor exhibition in . streetes was painter to king edward vi., and according to stype he was paid fifty marks, in , "for recompense of three great tables whereof two were the pictures of his highness sent to sir thomas hoby and sir john mason (ambassadors abroad), the third a picture of the late earl of surrey attainted, and by the councils' commandment fetched from the said guillim's house." horace walpole was under the impression that this was the duke of norfolk's picture, but the hampton court catalogue claims the other one as the work of streetes. in the national gallery is a bust portrait of edmund butts, physician to henry viii., which is inscribed _faict par johan bettes anglois_, and with the date . in this the influence of holbein is certainly discernible, though not all pervading. there were two brothers, thomas and john bettes who are mentioned by meres with several other english painters in _palladis tamia_, published in --"as greece had moreover their painters, so in england we have also these, william and francis segar, brethren, thomas and john bettes, lockie, lyne, peake, peter cole, arnolde, marcus (mark garrard)," etc. walpole, quoting this, adds, "i quote this passage to prove to those who learn one or two names by rote that every old picture you see is not by holbein." at the same time it must be admitted that until some considerable fund of information concerning these early days of painting is brought to light, there is very little to be said about any one except holbein till almost the end of the sixteenth century. that holbein was "a wonderful artist," as more wrote to erasmus, is not to be denied. but in placing him among the very greatest, we must not forget that his range was somewhat limited. we might nowadays call him a specialist, for in england he painted nothing but portraits, and very few of his pictures contained anything besides the single figure, or head, of the subject. the famous exception is the large picture called _the ambassadors_, which was purchased at an enormous price from the longford castle collection, and is now in the national gallery. important and interesting as this is as showing us how holbein could fill a large canvas, there is no doubt that he is far happier in simple portraiture, and that the £ , expended on _christina duchess of milan_ was, relatively, a better investment for the nation. in the famous half-lengths like the _george gisze_ at berlin (which was painted in london) and the _man with the hawk_, where the portrait is surrounded by accessories, holbein is perhaps at his very best; but it is as a painter of heads, simply, that he influenced the english school, and set an example which, alas! has never been attainable since. for one thing, which is apart altogether from talent or genius, holbein's method was never followed in later times, namely, the practice of making carefully finished drawings in crayon before painting a portrait in oils. he was a wonderful draughtsman, and in the series of over eighty drawings at windsor we have even more life-like images of the persons represented than their finished portraits. i am not aware that any portrait drawings exists of holbein's contemporaries or successors in england earlier than one or two by van dyck. there are a good many belonging to the seventeenth century, but with one or two exceptions they are little more than sketches. and though sketches have only survived by accident, as it were, not being intended for anything more than the artist's own purposes, finished drawings would have been kept, like holbein's, with much greater care. in a word, then, holbein's first and chief business was in rendering the likeness of the sitter. being a [illustration: plate xxxvii.--hans holbein anne of cleves _louvre, paris_] born genius, he accomplished far more than this; but it is important in tracing the development of the english school of painting to remember that its origin was not in the idealization of religious sentiment, but in the realization of the human features. from the time of the first great genius to that of the next, exactly a century later, there is hardly a portrait in existence that is valued for anything but its historic or personal interest. between holbein and van dyck is a great gap, in which the only names of englishmen are those of the miniaturists, hilliard and oliver, who were veritably of the seed of holbein, but only in little. van dyck struck deeper into the english soil, and loosened it sufficiently for the growth of larger stuff, if still somewhat coarse, like the work of william dobson and robert walker. to van dyck succeeded peter lely, who boldly and worthily assumed the mantle of van dyck, and kept english portraiture alive throughout the dismal period of the commonwealth. after the restoration he was still in power, and under him flourished one or two painters of english birth, like greenhill and riley, who in turn gave way to others under kneller without ceding the monopoly to foreigners. from these came jervas, richardson, and, most important, hudson, who was reynolds's master, and so we arrive at the beginning of what is now generally known as the english school. another source, however, must here be mentioned as joining the main stream, and contributing a solid body of water to it, chiefly below the surface, namely the art of william hogarth. being essentially english, and without any artistic forefathers, it is not surprising that he left less perceptible impressions on his immediate successors than the more accomplished and educated reynolds; but the solid force of his character, as exemplified in his career and his works, is hardly a less important factor in the development of the english school, while from his outspoken opinions on the state of the arts in his time he is one of the most valuable sources of its history. ii william hogarth william hogarth occupies a curious position in the history of english painting. there was nothing ever quite like him in any country--except greuze in france; for though a comparison between two such opposites, seems at first sight absurd, it must be remembered that french and english painting in the middle of the eighteenth century were no less far apart. both greuze and hogarth, in their own fashion, tried to preach moral lessons in paint, the one in the over-refined atmosphere of french surroundings, the other in the coarse language of england in his time. hogarth's chief characteristic was his blunt, honest, bull-dog englishness, which at the particular moment of his appearance on the artistic stage was a quality which was eminently serviceable to english painting. though of humble parents, his honest and forceful character won for him the daughter of sir james thornhill in marriage (by elopement) and his sturdy talent in painting secured for him his father-in-law's forgiveness and encouragement. thornhill came of a good, old wiltshire family, and had been knighted by george i. for his sterling merits as much as for his skill in painting and decorating the royal palaces and the houses of noblemen. his place among english artists is not a very high one, but he deserves the credit of having stood out against the monopoly that was being established by foreigners in this country in every department of artistic work, and in this sense he is a still earlier forerunner of the great english painters, than his more forcible son-in-law. if hogarth had been content to follow the beaten track of portraiture as his main pursuit, and let the country's morals take care of themselves, he would in all probability have attained much greater heights as a painter. but his nature would not allow him to do this. his character was too strong and his originality too uncontrollable. there is enough evidence among the works which have survived him, especially in those which were never finished, to show that his accomplishments in oil painting were of a very high order indeed. i need only refer to the famous head in the national gallery known as _the shrimp girl_ to explain what i mean. in this surprisingly vivacious and charming sketch we see something that is not inferior to hals, in its broad truth and its quick seizure of the essentials of what had to be rendered. in another unfinished piece, which is now in the south london art gallery at camberwell, we see the same powerful qualities differently exhibited, for it is not a single head this time, but a sketch of a ballroom where everybody is dancing, except one gentleman who is even more vivid than the rest, in the act of mopping his head at the open window. there is nothing grotesque in this picture, but it is all perfectly life-like and wonderfully sketched in. in his finished pictures hogarth does not appear to such great advantage--i mean as a painter; but it must be remembered that in his day there was little example for him to follow in the higher departments of his art. nor had he ever been out of england to see fine pictures on the continent. not only this, but as his work was intended especially to appeal to ordinary people, it is hardly to be expected that he would express himself in terms other than might most quickly appeal to them. his most famous works, indeed, were executed as well as designed for the engraver, namely _the harlot's progress_, _the rake's progress_, _marriage à la mode_, and _the election_, each of which consisted of a series of several minutely finished pictures. in portraiture he showed finer qualities, it is true; but even in these he was thinking more of getting the most out of his model, according to his forcible character, than of any technical refinements for which he might be handed down to posterity as a great painter. it was easy enough for reynolds to sneer at hogarth for his vulgarity, when he was trying to impress upon his pupils the importance of painting in the grand style. "as for the various departments of painting," he says in his third discourse, "which do not presume to make such high pretensions, they are many. none of them are without their merit, though none enter into competition with this universal presiding idea of the art. the painters who have applied themselves more particularly to low and vulgar characters, and who express with precision the various shades of passion as they are exhibited by vulgar minds (such as we see in the works of hogarth), deserve great praise; but as their genius has been employed on low and confined subjects, the praise which we must give must be as limited as its object." and yet it was in following an example set by hogarth in portrait painting that reynolds gained his [illustration: plate xxxviii.--william hogarth the shrimp girl _national gallery, london_] first success in that art. i mean the full-length portrait of captain keppel, painted in . this originality and boldness in disregarding the tame but universal convention in posing the sitter was peculiarly hogarth's own. with him it amounted almost to perverseness. he would not let anybody "sit" to him, if he could help it. when he did, as in the portraits of quinn, the actor, and hoadly, bishop of winchester, in the national gallery, the result is not the happiest; for, with all their force, these portraits lack the grace that a conventional pose requires to render it acceptable in the terms of its convention. if a man must put on the accepted evening dress of his time, he must see that it conforms in the spirit as well as in the letter of the fashion, or he will only look like a dressed-up greengrocer. hogarth was too sturdy and too wilful to put on court clothes. if he had to, he struggled with them. hogarth's father was a man of literary tastes, and a scholar. he had written a supplement to littleton's latin dictionary, but was unable to get it published. "i saw the difficulties," writes the artist, "under which my father laboured; the many inconveniences he endured from his dependence, living chiefly on his pen, and the cruel treatment he met with from booksellers and printers. i had before my eyes the precarious situation of men of classical education; it was therefore conformable to my wishes that i was taken from school and served a long apprenticeship to a silver-plate engraver." this is printed in allan cunningham's _life of hogarth_, together with many more extracts from autobiographical memoranda, from which we may learn at first hand a great deal of information bearing on the state of painting at this period, and the circumstances under which it received such a stimulus from hogarth, before the sun had fully risen (in the person of reynolds) to illumine the whole period of british art. "as i had naturally a good eye and fondness for drawing," hogarth continues, "_shows_ of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when young, and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me. an early access to a neighbouring painter drew my attention from play, and i was at every possible opportunity engaged in making drawings.... my exercises at school were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them than for the exercise itself. in the former i soon found that blockheads with better memories would soon surpass me, but for the latter i was particularly distinguished. "the painting of st. paul's and greenwich hospital, which were at that time going on, ran in my head, and i determined that silver-plate engraving should be followed no longer than necessity obliged me to it. engraving on copper was, at twenty years of age, my utmost ambition. to attain that it was necessary that i should learn to draw objects something like nature, instead of the monsters of heraldry, and the common methods of study were much too tedious for one who loved his pleasure and came so late to it.... this led me to consider whether a shorter road than that usually travelled was not to be found.... i had learned by practice to copy with tolerable correctness in the ordinary way, but it occurred to me that there were many disadvantages attending this method of study, as having faulty originals, etc.; and even when the prints or pictures to be imitated were by the best masters, it was little more than pouring water out of one vessel into another. many reasons led me to wish that i could find a shorter path--fix forms and characters in my mind--and, instead of copying the lines, try to read the language, and if possible find the grammar of the art, by bringing into one focus the various observations i had made, and then trying by my power on the canvas how far my plan enabled me to combine and apply them to practice.... "i had one material advantage over my competitors, viz., the early habit i acquired of retaining in my mind's eye, without coldly copying on the spot, whatever i intended to imitate.... instead of burdening the memory with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged pictures, i have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest way of obtaining knowledge in my art...." "i entertained some thoughts," he writes again, "of succeeding in what the puffers in books call the great style of history painting, so that, without having had a stroke of this grand business before, i quitted small portraits and familiar conversations, and with a smile at my own temerity commenced history painter, and on a great staircase at st. bartholomew's hospital painted two scripture stories, _the pool of bethesda_ and _the good samaritan_, with figures seven feet high. these i presented to the charity, and thought that they might serve as a specimen to show that, were there an inclination in england for encouraging historical pictures, such a first essay might prove the painting them more easily attainable than is generally imagined. but as religion, the great promoter of this style in other countries, rejected it in england, and i was unwilling to sink into a portrait-manufacturer--and still ambitious of being singular, i soon dropped all expectations of advantage from that source, and returned to the pursuit of my former dealings with the public at large." few seemed disposed to recognise, in any of hogarth's works, a higher aim than that of raising a laugh. somerville, the poet, dedicated his _rural games_ to hogarth in these words--"permit me, sir, to make choice of you for my patron, being the greatest master in the burlesque way. your province is the town--leave me a small outride in the country, and i shall be content." fielding had a different opinion of his merits: "he who would call the ingenious hogarth a burlesque painter would in my opinion do him very little honour, for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of man on canvas. it hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures seem to breathe, but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause that they appear to think." in answer to criticism of his _analysis of beauty_, hogarth writes: "among other crimes of which i am accused, it is asserted that i have abused the 'great masters'; this is far from being just. so far from attempting to lower the ancients, i have always thought, and it is universally admitted, that they knew some fundamental principles in nature which enabled them to produce works that have been the admiration of succeeding ages; but i have not allowed this merit to those leaden-headed imitators, who, having no consciousness of either symmetry or propriety, have attempted to mend nature, and in their truly ideal figures, gave similar proportions to a mercury and a hercules." another and a better spirit influenced him in the following passage--he is proposing to seek the principles of beauty in nature instead of looking for them in mere learning. his words are plain, direct, and convincing. "nature is simple, plain, and true in all her works, and those who strictly adhere to her laws, and closely attend to her appearances in their infinite varieties are guarded against any prejudicial bias from truth; while those who have seen many things that they cannot well understand, and read many books which they do not fully comprehend, notwithstanding all their parade of knowledge, are apt to wander about it and about it; perplexing themselves and their readers with the various opinions of other men. as to those painters who have written treatises on painting, they were in general too much taken up with giving rules for the operative part of the art, to enter into physical disquisitions on the nature of the objects." after this it would be unfair to withhold the praise of benjamin west (who succeeded reynolds as president of the royal academy)--a painter, prudent in speech, and frugal in commendation. "i remember, when i was a lad," says smith, in his account of nollekens, "asking the late venerable president west what he thought of hogarth's _analysis of beauty_, and his answer was, 'it is a work of the highest value to everyone studying the art. hogarth was a strutting consequential little man, and made himself many enemies by that book; but now that most of them are dead, it is examined by disinterested readers, unbiassed by personal animosities, and will be more and more read, studied and understood.'" in his memoranda respecting the establishment of an academy of art in england, hogarth writes well and wisely. voltaire asserts that after the establishment of the french academy not one work of genius appeared, for all the painters became mannerists and imitators. hogarth agrees with him, declaring that "the institution will serve to raise and pension a few bustling and busy men, whose whole employment will be to tell a few simple students when a leg is too long, or an arm too short. more will flock to the study of art than genius sends; the hope of profit, or the thirst of distinction, will induce parents to push their offspring into the lecture-room, and many will appear and but few be worthy. the paintings of italy form a sort of ornamental fringe to their gaudy religion, and rome is the general storeshop of europe. the arts owe much to popery, and popery owes much of its universality to the arts. the french have attained to a sort of foppish magnificence in art; in holland, selfishness is the ruling passion, and in england vanity is united with selfishness. portrait-painting, therefore, has succeeded, and ever will succeed better in england than in any other country, and the demand will continue as new faces come into the market. "portrait painting is one of the ministers of vanity, and vanity is a munificent patroness; historical painting seeks to revive the memory of the dead, and the dead are very indifferent paymasters. paintings are plentiful enough in england to keep us from the study of nature; but students who confine their studies to the works of the dead, need never hope to live themselves; they will learn little more than the names of the painters: true painting can only be learnt in one school, and that is kept by nature." hogarth disliked a formal school, says cunningham, because he was the pupil of nature, and foresaw that students would flock to it from the feeling of trade rather than the impulse of genius, and that it become a manufactory for conventional forms and hereditary graces. opulent collectors were filling their galleries with the religious paintings of the romish church, and vindicating their purchases by representing these works as the only patterns of all that is noble in art and worthy of imitation. hogarth perceived that all this was not according to the natural spirit of the nation; he well knew that our island had not yet poured out its own original mind in art, as it had done in poetry; and he felt assured that such a time would come, if native genius were not overlaid systematically by mock patrons and false instructors. "as a painter," says walpole, "hogarth has slender merit." "what is the merit of a painter?" cunningham concludes. "if it be to represent life--to give us an image of man--to exhibit the workings of his heart--to record the good and evil of his nature--to set in motion before us the very beings with whom earth is peopled--to shake us with mirth--to sadden us with woeful reflection--to please us with natural grouping, vivid action, and vigorous colouring--hogarth has done all this--and if he that has done so be not a painter, who will show us one?" iii sir joshua reynolds and thomas gainsborough whether or not sir joshua reynolds is entitled to be ranked among the very greatest painters, there can be no question that he has a place among the most famous, not only on account of his actual painting, but also because of the influence exerted by his whole-hearted devotion to his art, and his strong character in forming, out of such unpromising elements, a really vigorous school of painting in this country. the example he set in the strenuous exercise of his profession, the precepts he laid down for the guidance of students, and the dignity with which he invested the whole practice of painting which, until he came, had degenerated into a mere business, were of incalculable benefit to his own and succeeding ages, and edmund burke was paying him no empty compliment but only stating the bare truth when he said that sir joshua reynolds was the first englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. joshua reynolds was born at plympton in devonshire on the th july ; the son of the rev. samuel reynolds and his wife theophila potter. he was on every side connected with the church, for both his father and his grandfather were in holy orders, his mother was the daughter of a clergyman, and his maternal grandmother also. his father's elder brother, too, was a clergyman, a fellow of eton college and canon of st. peter's, exeter. so that here, as in italy, we start with a basis of religion. the young artist's first essays were made in copying several little things done by his elder sisters, and he afterwards took great delight in copying such prints as he met with in his father's books, particularly those in plutarch's _lives_, and in jacob cats's _book of emblems_, which his great-grandmother by his father's side, a dutch woman, had brought from holland. when he was only eight years old he read with great avidity a book called _the jesuits perspective_, an architectural, not a religious work, and made himself so completely master of it that he never afterwards had occasion to study any other treatise on the subject. in fact, a drawing which he then made of plympton school so filled his father with wonder that he said to him, "now this exemplifies what the author of the _perspective_ says in his preface--that by observing the rules laid down in his book a man may do wonders, for this is wonderful!" from these attempts he proceeded to draw likenesses of his friends and relations with tolerable success. but what most strongly confirmed him in his love of the art was richardson's _treatise on painting_, the perusal of which so delighted and inflamed his mind, that raphael appeared to him superior to the most illustrious names of ancient or modern times--a notion which he loved to indulge all the rest of his life. before he was eighteen years old his father placed him as a pupil with thomas hudson, who was then the most distinguished portrait-painter in england; but having some disagreement with his master, the young man returned to devonshire, where he practised portrait painting with more or less success until in he accompanied admiral keppel to the mediterranean, and remained for two or three years studying the old masters in italy. as this period of reynold's career had so determining an influence not only on himself but on the whole course of the history of painting in england--inasmuch as it formed the greater part of the groundwork of his discourses when president of the royal academy, it is worth having an account of it at first hand from the painter himself. "it has frequently happened," he says, "as i was informed by the keeper of the vatican, that many of those whom he had conducted through the various apartments of that edifice when about to be dismissed, have asked for the works of raphael, and would not believe that they had already passed through the room where they are preserved, so little impression had those performances made on them. one of the first painters now in france once told me that this circumstance happened to himself, though he now looks on raphael with that veneration which he deserves from all painters and lovers of the art. i remember very well my own disappointment when i first visited the the vatican: but on confessing my feelings to a brother student, of whose ingenuousness i had a high opinion, he acknowledged that the works of raphael had the same effect on him, or rather that they did not produce the effect which he expected. this was a great relief to my mind, and on inquiry further of other students i found that those persons only who from natural imbecility appeared to be incapable of ever relishing those divine performances, made pretensions to instantaneous raptures on first beholding them. "in justice to myself, however, i must add that though disappointed and mortified at not finding myself enraptured with the works of this great master, i did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their reputation to the ignorance and prejudice of mankind; on the contrary, my not relishing them as i was conscious i ought to have done was one of the most humiliating circumstances that ever happened to me. i found myself in the midst of works executed upon principles with which i was unacquainted: i felt my ignorance, and stood abashed. all the indigested notions of painting which i had brought with me from england where the art was in the lowest state it had ever been in (it could not indeed be lower) were to be totally done away and eradicated from my mind. it was necessary, as it is expressed on a very solemn occasion, that i should become _as a little child_. "notwithstanding my disappointment, i proceeded to copy some of those excellent works. i viewed them again and again; i even affected to feel their merit and to admire them more than i really did. in a short time a new taste and new perceptions began to dawn upon me, and i was convinced that i had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection of art, and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he holds in the estimation of the world." "when i was at venice," he writes in a note on du fresnoy's _art of painting_ about the chiaroscuro of titian, paul veronese and tintoretto, "the method i took to avail myself of their principles was this. when i observed an extraordinary effect of light and shade in any picture, i took a leaf of my pocket-book and darkened every part of it in the same gradation of light and shade as the picture, leaving the white paper untouched to represent the light, and this without any attention to the subject or to the drawing of the figures. after a few experiments i found the paper blotted nearly alike; their general practice appeared to be to allow not above a quarter of the picture for the light, including in this portion both the principal and secondary lights; another quarter to be as dark as possible, and the remaining half kept in mezzotint or half shadow. "rubens appears to have admitted rather more light than a quarter, and rembrandt much less, scarce an eighth; by this conduct rembrandt's light is extremely brilliant, but it costs too much, the rest of the picture is sacrificed to this one object." the results of these studies in rome and venice were at once observable on his return to england in the beautiful portrait of _giuseppe marchi_, one of the treasures belonging to the royal academy. it was altogether too much for the ignorant british artists, and it excited lively comment. what chiefly attracted the public notice, however, was the whole-length portrait which he painted of his friend and patron admiral keppel. on the appearance of this reynolds was not only universally acknowledged to be at the head of his profession, but to be the greatest painter that england had seen since van dyck. the whole interval, as malone observes, between the time of charles i. and the conclusion of the reign of george ii. seemed to be annihilated, and the only question was whether the new painter or van dyck were the more excellent. reynolds very soon saw how much animation might be obtained by deviating from the insipid manner of his immediate predecessors, and instead of confining himself to mere likeness he dived, as it were, into the minds and habits and manners of those who sat to him, and accordingly the majority of his portraits are so appropriate and characteristic that the many illustrious persons whom he has delineated are almost as well known to us as if we had seen and conversed with them. very soon after his return from italy his acquaintance with dr johnson commenced, and their intimacy continued uninterrupted to the time of johnson's death. how much he profited thereby, especially in the practice of art, he has recorded in a paper which was intended to form a part of one of his discourses. "i remember," he writes, "mr burke speaking of the _essays_ of sir francis bacon, said he thought them the best of his works. dr johnson was of opinion 'that their excellence and their value consisted in being the observations of a strong mind operating upon life; and in consequence you find there what you seldom find in other books,' it is this kind of excellence which gives a value to the performances of artists also.... the observations which he made on poetry, on life, and on everything about us, i applied to our art; with what success others must judge. perhaps an artist in his studies should pursue the same conduct, and instead of patching up a particular work on the narrow plan of imitation, rather endeavour to acquire the art and power of thinking." in another passage from his memoranda, quoted by malone, sir joshua lets us into some more of the secrets of his pre-eminence in his art, both of painter and preceptor: for we are to remember that the british school of painting owes more to the influence of reynolds than perhaps any other school to the example of one man:-- "i considered myself as playing a great game," he writes, "and instead of beginning to save money, i laid it out faster than i got it in, purchasing the best examples of art that could be procured; for i even borrowed money for this purpose. the possessing portraits by titian, van dyck, rembrandt, etc., i considered as the best kind of wealth. by studying carefully the works of great masters, this advantage is obtained--we find that certain niceties of expression are capable of being executed, which otherwise we might suppose beyond the reach of art. this gives us a confidence in ourselves, and we are thus incited to endeavour at not only the same happiness of execution but also at other congenial excellencies. study indeed consists in learning to see nature, and may be called the art of using other men's minds. by this kind of contemplation and exercise we are taught to think in their way, and sometimes to attain their excellence. thus, for instance, if i had never seen any of the works of correggio, i should never perhaps have remarked in nature the expression which i find in one of his pieces; or if i had remarked it i might have thought it too difficult, or perhaps impossible to be executed. "my success and continual improvement in my art (if i may be allowed that expression), may be ascribed in a good measure to a principle which i will boldly recommend to imitation; i mean the principle of honesty; which in this as in all other instances is according to the vulgar proverb certainly the best policy: i always endeavoured to do my best. "my principal labour was employed on the whole together, and i was never weary of changing and trying different modes and different effects. i had always some scheme in my mind, and a perpetual desire to advance. by constantly endeavouring to do my best, i acquired a power of doing that with spontaneous facility that which at first was the effort of my whole mind." "i had not an opportunity of being early initiated in the principles of colouring"; he continues, "no man indeed could teach me. if i have never been settled with respect to colouring, let it at the same time be remembered that my unsteadiness in this respect proceeded from an inordinate desire to possess every kind of excellence that i ever saw in the works of others, without considering that there are in colouring, as in style, excellencies which are incompatible with each other.... i tried every effect of colour, and by leaving out every colour in its turn, showed every colour that i could do without it. as i alternately left out every [illustration: plate xxxix.--sir joshua reynolds lady cockburn and her children _national gallery, london_] colour, i tried every new colour; and often, as is well known, failed.... my fickleness in the mode of colouring arose from an eager desire to attain the highest excellence." in the year reynolds began to write, and three of his essays were printed in the _idler_, which was conducted by dr. johnson. northcote records that at the same time he committed to paper a variety of remarks which afterwards served him as hints for his discourses. one or two of these will give us as good an idea as we are likely to get from elsewhere of what are the first requisites of a successful painter. "it is absolutely necessary that a painter, as the first requisite, should endeavour as much as possible to form to himself an idea of perfection not only of beauty, but of what is perfection in a picture. this conception he should always have fixed in his view, and unless he has this view we shall never see any approaches towards perfection in his works; for it will not come by chance. "if a man has nothing of that which is called genius, that is, if he is not carried away, if i may so say, by the animation, the fire of enthusiasm, all the rules in the world will never make him a painter. "he who possesses genius is enabled to see a real value in those things which others disregard and overlook. he perceives a difference in cases where inferior capacities see none; as the fine ear for music can distinguish an evident variation in sounds which to another ear more dull seem to be the same. this example will also apply to the eye in respect to colouring." in the beginning of the year , reynolds moved into the house on the west side of leicester square which he occupied for the rest of his life. it is now tenanted by messrs. puttick & simpson, the auctioneers. northcote has usefully recorded the following details his studio. his painting-room was of an octagonal form, about twenty feet long and about sixteen in breath. the window which gave the light to this room was square, and not much larger than one half the size of a common window in a private house, whilst the lower part of this window was nine feet four inches from the floor. the chair for his sitters was raised eighteen inches from the floor, and turned round on castors. his palettes were those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. the sticks of his pencils (brushes) were long, measuring about nineteen inches. he painted in that part of the room nearest the window, and never sat down when he worked. as the actual methods of a great artist are possibly of more value in a history of painting than the subjects, or even the prices, of his pictures, i venture to quote the following extracts from various parts of sir joshua's own memoranda:-- never give the least touch with your pencil (_i.e._ brush) till you have present in your mind a perfect idea of your future work. paint at the greatest possible distance from your sitter, and place the picture ... near to the sitter, or sometimes under him, so as to see both together. in beautiful faces keep the whole circumference about the eye in a mezzotinto, as seen in the works of guido and the best of carlo maratti. endeavour to look at the subject or sitter from which you are painting, as if it was a picture. this will in some degree render it more easy to be copied. in painting consider the object before you, whatever it may be, as more made out by light and shadow than by lines. a student should begin his career by a careful finishing and making out the parts; as practice will give him freedom and facility of hand: a bold and unfinished manner is commonly the habit of old age. on painting a head-- let those parts which turn or retire from the eye be of broken or mixed colours, as being less distinguished and nearer the borders. let all your shadows be of one colour: glaze them till they are so. use red colours in the shadows of the most delicate complexions, but with discretion. contrive to have a screen with red or yellow colour on it, to reflect the light on the shaded part of the sitter's face. avoid the chalk, the brick dust, and the charcoal, and think on a pearl and a ripe peach. avoid long continued lines in the eyes, and too many sharp ones. take care to give your figure a sweep or sway. outlines in waves, soft, and almost imperceptible against the background. never make the contour too coarse. avoid also those outlines and lines which are equal, which make parallels, triangles, etc. the parts which are nearest to the eye appear most enlightened, deeper shadowed, and better seen. keep broad lights and shadows, and also principal lights and shadows. where there is the deepest shadow it is accompanied by the brightest light. let nothing start out or be too strong for its place. squareness has grandeur; it gives firmness to the forms; a serpentine line in comparison appears feeble and tottering. * * * * * one is apt to forget in these enlightened days how greatly the art of painting benefited by the establishment of public exhibitions. farington's observations on this point, occasioned by the inauguration of the exhibitions at the society of arts from , until the foundation of the royal academy in , are both instructive and amusing. "the history of our exhibitions," he says "affords the strongest evidence of their impressive effect upon public taste. at their commencement, though men of enlightened minds could distinguish and appreciate what was excellent, the admiration of the _many_ was confined to subjects either gross or puerile, and commonly to the meanest efforts of intellect; whereas at this time ( ) the whole train of subjects most popular in the earlier exhibitions have disappeared. the loaf and cheese that could provoke hunger, the cat and canary bird, and the dead mackerel on a deal board, have long ceased to produce astonishment and delight; while truth of imitation now finds innumerable admirers though combined with the highest qualities of beauty, grandeur and taste. "to our public exhibitions, and to arrangements that followed in consequence of their introduction this change must be chiefly attributed. the present generation appears to be composed of a new and, at least with respect to the arts, a superior order of beings. generally speaking, their thoughts, their feelings and language, differ entirely from what they were sixty years ago. the state of the public mind, incapable of discriminating excellence from inferiority proved incontrovertibly that a right sense of art in the spectator can only be acquired by long and frequent observation, and that without proper opportunities to improve the mind and the eye, a nation would continue insensible of the true value of the fine arts." in view of these very pertinent observations it is worth inquiring a little as to the origin of exhibitions in england, and the stimulus given by them to british art before the institution of the royal academy. from the introduction to book written by edward edwards, in continuation of walpole's "anecdotes of painters," and published in , i extract the following account of them, as far as possible using his own quaint phraseology. although the study of the human form had long been cultivated and encouraged in italy and france by national schools or academies, yet in england until the eighteenth century such seminaries were unknown; and it is therefore difficult to trace the origin or ascertain the precise period when those nurseries of art were first attempted in this country, especially as every establishment of that kind was, at first, of a private and temporary nature, depending chiefly upon the protection of some artist of rank and reputation in his day. the first attempt towards the establishment of an academy is mentioned by walpole as having been formed by several artists under sir godfrey kneller in . afterwards we find, by other accounts in the same author, which are corroborated by authentic information, that sir james thornhill formed an academy in his own house, in the piazza, covent garden. but this was not of long duration, for it commenced in and died in ; which reduced the artists again to seek some new seminary; for the public of that day were so little acquainted with the use of such schools, that they were even suspected of being held for immoral purposes. after the death of thornhill a few of the artists (chiefly foreigners), finding themselves without the necessary example of the living model, formed a small society and established their regular meetings of study in a convenient apartment in greyhound court, arundel street. the principal conductor of this school was michael moser, who when the royal academy was established was appointed keeper. here they were visited by artists such as hogarth, wills, and ellis, who were so well pleased with the propriety of their conduct, and so thoroughly convinced of the utility of the institution, that a general union took place, and the members thereby becoming numerous, they required and sought for a more convenient situation and accommodation for their school. by the year they were settled in peter's court, st martin's lane, where the study of the human figure was carried on till , when they removed to pall mall. but a permanent and conspicuous establishment was still wanting, and on this account the principal artists had several meetings with a view to forming a public academy. this they did not succeed in doing; but they were so far from being discouraged that they continued their meetings and their studies, and the next effort they made towards acquiring the attention of the public was connected with the foundling hospital. this institution was incorporated in , and a few years later the present building was erected; but as the income of the charity could not, with propriety, be expended upon decorations, many of the principal artists of that day voluntarily exerted their talents for the purpose of ornamenting several apartments of the hospital which otherwise must have remained without decoration. the pictures thus produced, and generously given, were permitted to be seen by any visitor upon proper application. the spectacle was so new that it made a considerable impression upon the public, and the favourable reception these works experienced impressed the artists with an idea of forming a public exhibition, which scheme was carried into full effect with the help of the society for the encouragement of arts, manufactures and commerce, who lent their great room for the purpose. the success of this, the first, public display of art was more than equal to the general expectation. yet there were some circumstances, consequent to the arrangement of the pictures, with which the artists were very justly dissatisfied; they were occasioned by the following improprieties. the society in the same year had offered premiums for the best painting of history and landscape, and it was one of the conditions that the pictures produced by the candidates should remain in their great room for a certain time; consequently they were blended with the rest, and formed part of the exhibition. as soon as it was known which performances had obtained the premiums, it was naturally supposed, by such persons who were deficient in judgment, that those pictures were the best in the room, and consequently deserved the chief attention. this partial, though unmerited, selection gave displeasure to the artists in general. nor were they pleased with the mode of admitting the spectators, for every member of the society had the discretionary privilege of introducing as many persons as he chose, by means of gratuitous tickets; and consequently the company was far from being select, or suited to the wishes of the exhibition. these circumstances, together with the interference of the society in the concern of the exhibition, determined the principal artists to withdraw themselves, which they did in the next year. encouraged by the success of their first attempt, they engaged the great room in spring garden, and their first exhibition at that place opened on the th may . here they found it necessary to change their mode of admission, which they did by making the catalogue the ticket of admission; consequently one catalogue would admit a whole family in succession, for a shilling, which was its price; but this mode of admittance was still productive of crowd and disorder, and it was therefore altered the next year. this exhibition, which was the second in this country, contained several works of the best english artists, among which many of the pictures were equal to any masters then living in europe; and so strikingly conspicuous were their merits, and so forcible was the effect of this display of art, that it drew from the pen of roubilliac, the sculptor, the following lines, which were stuck up in the exhibition room, and were also printed in the _st james's chronicle_:-- prétendu connoiseur qui sur l'antique glose, idolatrant le hom, sans connoitre la chose, vrai peste des beaux arts, sans gout sans equité, quitez ce ton pedant, ce mépris affecté, pour tout ce que le tems n'a pas encore gaté. ne peus tu pas, en admirant les maitres de la grece, ceux d l'italie rendre justice également a ceux qu'a nourris ta patrie? vois ce salon, et tu perdras cette prévention injuste, et bien étonné conviendras qu'il ne faut pas qu'un mecenas pour revoir le siècle d'auguste. "in the following season," says edwards, "they ventured to fix the price of _admission_ at one shilling each person, but had the precaution to affix a conciliatory preface to their catalogue, which was given gratis," as it is becoming more and more usual of late years to preface a catalogue with a signed article, or, as in a recent instance, a facsimile letter, it is interesting to know that this "conciliatory preface" was written by dr johnson. as a document its value in the history of the british school of painting demands its reproduction here in full:-- "the public may justly require to be informed of the nature and extent of every design for which the favour of the public is openly solicited. the artists who were themselves the first promoters of an exhibition in this nation, and who have now contributed to the following catalogue, think it therefore necessary to explain their purpose, and justify their conduct. an exhibition of the works of art being a spectacle new in this kingdom, has raised various opinions and conjectures among those who are unacquainted with the practice in foreign nations. those who set their performances to general view, have been too often considered as the rivals of each other; as men actuated, if not by avarice, at least by vanity, and contending for superiority of fame, though not for a pecuniary prize. it cannot be denied or doubted, that all who offer themselves to criticism are desirous of praise; this desire is not only innocent but virtuous, while it is undebased by artifice, and unpolluted by envy; and of envy or artifice those men can never be accused, who already enjoying all the honours and profits of their profession are content to stand candidates for public notice, with genius yet unexperienced, and diligence yet unrewarded; who without any hope of increasing their own reputation or interest, expose their names and their works, only that they may furnish an opportunity of appearance to the young, the diffident, and the neglected. the purpose of this exhibition is not to enrich the artist, but to advance the art; the eminent are not flattered with preference, nor the obscure insulted with contempt; whoever hopes to deserve public favour, is here invited to display his merit. of the price put upon this exhibition some account may be demanded. whoever sets his work to be shewn, naturally desires a multitude of spectators; but his desire defeats its own end, when spectators assemble in such numbers as to obstruct one another. "though we are far from wishing to diminish the pleasures, or to depreciate the sentiments of any class of the community, we know, however, what every one knows, that all cannot be judges or purchasers of works of art. yet we have already found by experience, that all are desirous to see an exhibition. when the terms of admission were low, our room was throng'd with such multitudes, as made access dangerous, and frightened away those, whose approbation was most desired. "yet because it is seldom believed that money is got but for the love of money, we shall tell the use which we intend to make of our expected profits. many artists of great abilities are unable to sell their works for their due price; to remove this inconvenience, an annual sale will be appointed, to which every man may send his works, and send them, if he will, without his name. these works will be reviewed by the committee that conduct the exhibition; a price will be secretly set on every piece, and registered by the secretary; if the piece exposed for sale is sold for more, the whole price shall be the artist's; but if the purchasers value it at less than [illustration: plate xl.--sir joshua reynolds the age of innocence _national gallery, london_] the committee, the artist shall be paid the deficiency from the profits of the exhibition." * * * * * this mode of admission was found to answer all the wished-for purposes, and the visitors, who were highly respectable, were also perfectly gratified with the display of art, which, for the first time, they beheld with ease and pleasure to themselves. the exhibition, thus established, continued at spring garden room, under the direction and management of the principal artists by whom it was first promoted, and they were soon also joined by many of those who had continued to exhibit in the strand (_i.e._ at the society of arts, etc.), which party being mostly composed of young men, and others who chose to become candidates for the premiums given by the society, thought it prudent to remain under their protection. but the society finding that those who continued with them began to diminish in their numbers, and that the exhibition interfered with their own concerns, no longer indulged them with the use of their room, and the exhibitions at that place terminated in . these artists, who were mostly the younger part of the profession at that time, thereupon engaged a large room in maiden lane, where they exhibited in and . but this situation not being favourable, they engaged with mr christie, in building his room near pall mall, and the agreement was that they should have it for their use during one month every year, in the spring. here they contrived to support a feeble exhibition for eight years, when their engagements interfering with mr christie's auctions, he purchased their share of the premises, and they made their last removal to a room in s. alban's street, where they exhibited the next season, but never after attempted to attract public notice. it may be observed that while this society continued there were annually three exhibitions of the works of english artists, namely, the royal academy, the chartered society, and that last mentioned, the members of which styled themselves the free society of artists. their exhibition was considerably inferior to those of their rivals. by the chartered society, edwards means the artists who formed the exhibition at the spring garden room, who in obtained a charter from the king. owing partly to internal disagreements, but more no doubt to the foundation of the royal academy in , this society gradually diminished in importance, until edwards could write of their exhibition in that "the articles they had then collected were very insignificant, most of which could not be considered as works of art; such as pieces of needlework, subjects in human hair, cut paper, and such similar productions as deserve not the recommendation of a public exhibition," * * * * * to the first exhibition of the royal academy, which was opened on the nd of january , reynolds sent three pictures:-- _the duchess of manchester and her son, as diana disarming cupid._ _lady blake, as juno receiving the cestus of venus._ _miss morris as hope nursing love._ that all of them were, so to speak, "fancy portraits" is not entirely without significance. portraiture, the painters bread and butter, was apparently deemed hardly suitable for the occasion, and among a list of the pictures which attracted most attention northcote only includes the portraits of the _king and queen_ by nathaniel dance, _lady molyneux_ by gainsborough, and the _duke of gloucester_ by cotes. the rest are as follows:--_the departure of regulus from rome_, and _venus lamenting the death of adonis_, by benjamin west; _hector and andromache_, and _venus directing aeneas and achates_, by angelica kauffmann; _a piping boy_, and _a candlelight piece_, by nathaniel hone; _an altar-piece_ of the annunciation by cipriani; _hebe_, and _a boy playing cricket_, by cotes; a landscape by barrett, and _shakespeare's black-smith_, by penny. in all, reynolds exhibited two hundred and fifty-two pictures during the thirty-two years of his life in which exhibitions existed, namely from to ; of which two hundred and twenty-eight went to the royal academy. of these, or most of them, ample records and criticisms may be found in the copious literature which has grown up around his name. for our present purpose a glance at his influence, his methods, and his circumstances has seemed to me to be more in point, and as a succinct estimate of the man and his work from one of his most illustrious contemporaries, the following passage may be added by way of conclusion:-- "sir joshua reynolds," wrote edmund burke six years after the painter's death, "was on very many accounts one of the most memorable men of his time. he was the first englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. in taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the great masters of the renowned ages. in portraiture he went beyond them, for he communicated to that description of the art, in which english artists are the most engaged, a fancy and a dignity derived from the higher branches, which even those who professed, them in a superior manner, did not always preserve when they delineated individual nature. his portraits remind the spectator of the invention of history and the amenity of landscape. in painting portraits he appeared not to be raised upon that platform, but to descend to it from a higher sphere. his paintings illustrate his lessons, and his lessons seem to be derived from his paintings. he possessed the theory as perfectly as the practice of his art. to be such a painter, he was a profound and penetrating philosopher." * * * * * thomas gainsborough ( - ), whose name we can seldom help thinking of whenever we hear that of reynolds, was in many ways the very antithesis of his more illustrious rival. in his private life he most certainly was, and so far as his practical influence on his contemporaries is concerned, he is altogether overshadowed by the first president of the royal academy. with respect to their works there is a diversity of opinion, and it is largely a matter of personal feeling whether we prefer those of the one or of the other. both were great artists, and on the common ground of portraiture they contended so equally, and in some cases with such similarity of method, that it is impossible to say impartially which was the greater. how is it possible to decide except on the ground of individual taste, as to whether we would rather lose gainsborough or reynolds as a portrait painter, without considering for a moment that the former was a great landscape painter as well? and, putting aside wilson, whose landscape was essentially italian, whether executed in italy or not, the first landscape painter in england was gainsborough. we are so accustomed to bracket him with reynolds as a great portrait painter, so thrilled over the sale of a gainsborough portrait for many thousands of pounds, that we are apt to forget him altogether as a landscape painter. and yet two or three of his best works in the national gallery are landscapes, and two of them at least famous ones--_the market cart_ and _the watering place_. how many more beautiful landscapes by him there must be in existence it is impossible to say, but there can be no doubt that there are not a few which are only waiting their turn for a fashionable market, but are now reposing unappreciated in private hands. in the metropolitan museum at new york is a splendid example, the like of which i have never seen in this country, but which is so much closer in feeling to his numerous drawings and sketches in chalk or pencil that it is impossible to believe that no similar examples exist. if we could only bring them to light! the fact is that the state of society in the middle of the eighteenth century was, with all its brilliance and intellect, the cause of hampering the natural development of the three great painters of that period. reynolds came back from his stay in italy an ardent disciple of the grand style, burning to follow the example of raphael and michelangelo. romney, too, was all for italian art, but looked further back, and worshipped the classics. gainsborough was a born landscape painter, and his whole time was devoted, when he was not executing commissions for portraits, to making sketches and studies of woods and valleys and trees. but so bent on having their likenesses handed about were the brilliant personages of their time, that reynolds, gainsborough and romney were compelled in spite of themselves to turn their attention to portraiture, to the exclusion of every other branch of their art, and as portrait painters they have made themselves and their country famous. in the numerous sketches and studies that gainsborough has left us, we can see how much we have lost in gaining his wonderful portraits. he loved landscape, from his earliest youth to his dying day. loved it for itself. for among all the drawings of his which i have ever seen, i do not remember one which can be identified as any particular place. in the eighteenth century there was a perfect mania among the smaller fry for making topographical drawings, in pencil or water-colour, views of some town or mountain or castle. but with gainsborough the place was nothing--it was the spirit of it that charmed him. a cottage in a wood, a glade, a country road, a valley, was to him a beautiful scene, whatever it was called or wherever it happened to be, and out of it accordingly he made a beautiful picture, or at least a drawing. that his pictures of landscape are so extraordinarily few while his drawings are so numerous, may be accounted for in a great measure by the exigences of portrait painting, but not entirely; and the probability is that there are many more which are now forgotten. for an estimate of thomas gainsborough both in regard to his place in the story of the english school and to the abilities and methods by which he attained it, it is needless to look elsewhere than to that of sir joshua reynolds, contained in the discourse delivered shortly after gainsborough's death:-- "when such a man as gainsborough rises to great fame without the assistance of an academical education, without travelling to italy, or any of those preparatory studies which have been so often recommended, he is produced [illustration: plate xli.--thomas gainsborough the market cart _national gallery, london_] as an instance how little such studies are necessary, since so great excellence may be acquired without them. this is an inference not warranted by the success of any individual, and i trust that it will not be thought that i wish to make this use of it. "it must be remembered that the style and department of art which gainsborough chose, and in which he so much excelled, did not require that he should go out of his own country for the objects of his study; they were everywhere about him; he found them in the streets, and in the fields; and from the models thus accidentally found he selected with great judgment such as suited his purpose. as his studies were directed to the living world principally, he did not pay a general attention to the works of the various masters, though they are, in my opinion, always of great use even when the character of our subject requires us to depart from some of their principles. it cannot be denied that excellence in the department of the art which he professed may exist without them, that in such subjects and in the manner that belongs to them the want of them is supplied, and more than supplied, by natural sagacity and a minute observation of particular nature. if gainsborough did not look at nature with a poet's eye, it must be acknowledged that he saw her with the eye of a painter; and gave a faithful, if not a poetical, representation of what he had before him. "though he did not much attend to the works of the great historical painters of former ages, yet he was well aware that the language of the art--the art of imitation--must be learned somewhere; and as he knew he could not learn it in an equal degree from his contemporaries, he very judiciously applied himself to the flemish school, who are undoubtedly the greatest masters of one necessary branch of art, and he did not need to go out of his country for examples of that school; from _that_ he learned the harmony of colouring, the management and disposition of light and shadow, and every means of it which the masters practised to ornament and give splendour to their works. and to satisfy himself, as well as others, how well he knew the mechanism and artifice which they employed to bring out that tone of colour which we so much admire in their works, he occasionally made copies from rubens, teniers and van dyck, which it would be no disgrace to the most accurate connoisseur to mistake at the first sight for the works of those masters. what he thus learned he applied to the originals of nature, which he saw with his own eyes, and imitated not in the manner of those masters but in his own. "whether he most excelled in portraits, landscapes, or fancy pictures, it is difficult to determine; whether his portraits were most admirable for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like representation of nature, such as we see in the works of rubens, ruisdael, or others of those schools. in his fancy pictures, when he had fixed on his object of imitation, whether it was the mean and vulgar form of the woodcutter, or a child of an interesting character, as he did not attempt to raise the one, so neither did he lose any of the natural grace and elegance of the other; such a grace and such an elegance as are more frequently found in cottages than in courts. this excellence was his own, the result of his particular observation and taste; for this he was certainly not indebted to the flemish school, nor indeed to any school; for his grace was not academic, or antique, but selected by himself from the great school of nature.... "upon the whole we may justly say that whatever he attempted he carried to a high degree of excellence. it is to the credit of his good sense and judgment that he never did attempt that style of historical painting for which his previous studies had made no preparation. "the peculiarity of his manner or style," reynolds continues a little later, "or we may call it the language in which he expressed his ideas, has been considered by many as his greatest defect.... a novelty and peculiarity of manner, as it is often a cause of our approbation, so likewise it is often a ground of censure, as being contrary to the practice of other painters, in whose manner we have been initiated, and in whose favour we have perhaps been prepossessed from our infancy: for fond as we are of novelty, we are upon the whole creatures of habit. however, it is certain that all those odd scratches and marks which on a close examination are so observable in gainsborough's pictures, and which even to experienced painters appear rather the effect of accident than design; this chaos, this uncouth and shapeless appearance, by a kind of magic, at a certain distance assumes form, and all the parts seem to drop into their proper places; so that we can hardly refuse acknowledging the full effect of diligence under the appearance of chance and hasty negligence. "that gainsborough himself considered this peculiarity in his manner, and the power it possesses of exciting surprise, as a beauty in his works, i think may be inferred from the eager desire which we know he always expressed, that his pictures at the exhibition should be seen near as well as at a distance. "the slightness which we see in his best works cannot always be imputed to negligence. however they may appear to superficial observers, painters know very well that a steady attention to the general effect takes up more time and is much more laborious to the mind than any mode of high finishing or smoothness without such attention. his handling, the manner of leaving the colours, or, in other words, the methods he used for producing the effect, had very much the appearance of the work of an artist who had never learnt from others the usual and regular practice belonging to the art; but still, like a man of strong intuitive perception of what was required, he found a way of his own to accomplish his purpose." to reynolds's opinion of this technique as applied to portraits, we may listen with even more attention. "it must be allowed," he continues, "that this hatching manner of gainsborough did very much contribute to the lightness of effect which is so eminent a beauty in his pictures; as, on the contrary, much smoothness and uniting the colours is apt to produce heaviness. every artist must have remarked how often that lightness of hand which was in his dead-colour (or first painting) escaped in the finishing when he had determined the parts with more precision; and another loss which he often experiences, which is of greater consequence: while he is employed in the detail, the effect of the whole together is either forgotten or neglected. the likeness of a portrait, as i have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of the features or any of the particular parts. now, gainsborough's portraits were often little more in regard to finishing or determining the form of the features, than what generally attends a first painting; but as he was always attentive to the general effect, or whole together, i have often imagined that this unfinished manner contributed even to that striking resemblance for which his portraits are so remarkable." iv the close of the eighteenth century not until the year of gainsborough's death, , was there born another landscape painter. this was john crome, and he too came from the east of england, nearest to holland, being born in norfolk, the neighbouring county to gainsborough's native suffolk. within ten years more, two still greater landscapists were born, also in the east, constable in essex, still closer to sudbury, and turner in london. john crome--old crome, as he is usually called to distinguish him from his less distinguished son, john bernay crome--was born at norwich, and had to support himself most of his life by teaching drawing, not to professional pupils unfortunately; but incidentally he founded "the norwich school" of landscape painters, who loyally carried forward the traditions he had inculcated. but having to spend his time as a drawing-master, he was not free like the old dutch painters to put out pictures when and as often as he would, and his work in oils is therefore comparatively scarce. the three examples at the national gallery are typical of his varied powers, _the slate quarries_, _household heath_, and _porringland oak_ are all of them masterpieces. john sell cotman, born in , was, after crome, the most considerable of the norwich school. he, too, was compelled to earn a livelihood by being a drawing-master, for there was not as yet a sufficient market, nor for some time later, for landscape pictures, to support existence, however humble. cotman devoted much of his energies to water-colours, and he is better known in this branch of the art than in painting; that is the only excuse for the national gallery in having purchased as his the very inferior picture called _a galliot in a gale_. the other example, _wherries on the yare_, is more worthy of him, though it by no means exhibits all his wonderful power and fascination. in george morland ( - ) we have something more and something less than a landscape painter. landscape to him was not what it was to wilson, gainsborough or crome,--the only end in view; nor was it merely a background for his subjects. but, as it generally happened, it was both. to morland, the landscape and the figures were one and the same thing. out of the fulness of his heart he painted pictures of _boys robbing an orchard_, _horses in a stable_, or a _farmer on horseback_ staying to talk to a group of gypsies beside a wood, and whether or not the picture might be classed as a landscape depended entirely on the nature of the scene itself. whatever he saw or chose to see he painted with equal skill and with equal charm; and as his choice of vision lay in the simple everyday life that surrounded him, his variety is not the least of his attractions. the fact that his mother was a frenchwoman (his father was henry morland, the painter of the delightful pair of half-lengths, _the laundry maids_) suggests to my mind the wild surmise that she may have been the daughter of chardin. for in the technique as well as in the temperament of morland,--making allowance for difference of circumstances,--there is something remarkably akin to those of the great frenchman. both eschewed the temptation to become fashionable, both painted the humble realities of middle-class life with a zest that could not possibly have been affected, and both painted them with much the same extraordinary charm. at his best, morland is not much inferior to chardin, and but for his unfortunate wildness and his susceptibility to the temptations of strong drink, he might easily have excelled the other. the feeling exhibited in two such different subjects as lord glenconner's _boys robbing an orchard_, and _the interior of a stable_, in the national gallery, certainly equals that of chardin's most famous pieces, i mean the feeling for the particular scene he is depicting. the nearest, in fact the only, approach that morland made to portrait painting was in such pieces as _the fortune teller_ in the national gallery, which brings to mind the "conversation pieces," introduced by hogarth and highmore into english painting, but which were never widely attempted. in the portfolio monograph "english society in the eighteenth century" i tried to collect as many examples as i could of this form of art, but found it difficult to fill even a small volume, so entirely was the single figure portrait the vogue. a few notable instances are worth mentioning, if only as exceptions to the general rule. gainsborough's _ladies walking in the mall_, belonging to sir audley neeld; reynolds's large group of _the marlborough family_ at blenheim, and a very early group of _the elliott family_, consisting of eleven figures, belonging to lord st germans; john singleton copley's _children of francis sitwell, esq._, at renishaw; and lastly zoffany's _family party_, at panshanger. for life-like representation of the english people we look to hogarth and morland, and yet nothing could be more different than the motives which inspired the two, and the way they went to work upon their subject. hogarth was above all things theatrical, morland natural. hogarth first conceived his idea, then laid his scene, and lastly peopled it with actual characters as they appeared--individually--before him. morland simply looked about him and painted what he happened to see at the precise moment when what he saw coincided with his natural inclination, or we may even say inspiration, to paint it. it was much the same difference as between the work of zola and that of thomas hardy. the one had a moral to preach, the other a story to tell. * * * * * when the most we hear of george romney nowadays is the price that has been paid for one of his portraits at christie's, it is refreshing as well as informative to turn to the criticism of one of his greatest though not in these times so highly priced contemporaries, i mean john flaxman. "when romney first began to paint," he writes, "he had seen no gallery of pictures nor the fine productions of ancient sculpture; but then women and children were his statues, and all objects under the canopy of heaven formed his school of painting. the rainbow, the purple distance, or the silver lake, taught him colouring; the various actions and passions of the human figure, with the forms of clouds, woods, and mountains or valleys, afforded him studies of composition. indeed, his genius bore a strong resemblance to the scenes he was born in; like them, it partook of the grand and beautiful; and like them also, the bright sunshine and enchanting prospects of his fancy were occasionally overspread with mist and gloom. on his arrival in italy he was witness to new scenes of art and sources of study of which he could only have supposed previously that something [illustration: plate xlii.--george romney the parson's daughter _national gallery, london_] of the kind might exist; for he there contemplated the purity and perfection of ancient sculpture, the sublimity of michelangelo's sistine chapel, and the simplicity of cimabue and giotto's schools. he perceived those qualities distinctly, and judiciously used them in viewing and imitating nature; and thus his quick perception and unwearied application enabled him, by a two years' residence abroad, to acquire as great a proficiency in art as is usually attained by foreign studies of a much longer duration. "after his return, the novelty and sentiment of his original subjects were universally admired. most of these were of the delicate class, and each had its peculiar character. titania with her indian votaries was arch and sprightly; milton dictating to his daughters, solemn and interesting. several pictures of wood nymphs and bacchantes charmed by their rural beauty, innocence, and simplicity. the most pathetic, perhaps, of all his works was never finished--ophelia with the flowers she had gathered in her hand, sitting on the branch of a tree, which was breaking under her, whilst the moody distraction in her lovely countenance accounts for the insensibility to danger. few painters have left so many examples in their works of the tender and delicate affections; and several of his pictures breathe a kindred spirit with the _sigismonda_ of correggio. his cartoons, some of which have unfortunately perished, were examples of the sublime and terrible, at that time perfectly new in english art. as romney was gifted with peculiar powers for historical and ideal painting, so his heart and soul were engaged in the pursuit of it whenever he could extricate himself from the importunate business of portrait painting. it was his delight by day and study by night, and for this his food and rest were often neglected. his compositions, like those of the ancient pictures and basso-relievos, told their story by a single group of figures in the front, whilst the background is made the simplest possible, rejecting all unnecessary episode and trivial ornament, either of secondary groups or architectural subdivision. in his compositions the beholder was forcibly struck by the sentiment at the first glance: the gradations and varieties of which he traced through several characters, all conceived in an elevated spirit of dignity and beauty, with a lively expression of nature in all the parts. his heads were various--the male were decided and grand, the female lovely. his figures resembled the antique--the limbs were elegant and finely formed. his drapery was well understood, either forming the figure into a mass with one or two deep folds only, or by its adhesion and transparency discovering the form of the figure, the lines of which were finely varied with the union or expansion of spiral or cascade folds, composing with or contrasting the outline and chiaroscuro. few artists since the fifteenth century have been able to do so much in so many different branches; for besides his beautiful compositions and pictures, which have added to the knowledge and celebrity of the english school, he modelled like a sculptor, carved ornaments in wood with great delicacy, and could make an architectural design in a fine taste, as well as construct every part of the building." after the death of reynolds and the retirement of romney, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, the field of portraiture was left vacant--in london at least--for john hoppner, whose name is now generally included with those of lawrence and raeburn among the first six portrait painters of the british [illustration: plate xliii.--george romney mrs robinson--"perdita" _hertford house, london_] school. his fame in recent years has certainly exceeded his merits, but it is due to him to say that he was a conscientious artist, and a firm upholder of the tradition of reynolds, so far as in him lay. the old king had always disliked reynolds, and hoppner was not well enough advised to hold his tongue on the subject of the master: worse than this, he openly accepted the patronage of the prince of wales, and by so doing opened the door for the admission of lawrence as royal painter much sooner than was at all necessary. the story of their rivalry is thus--in substance--sketched by allan cunningham, their contemporary:--the light of the prince of wales's countenance was of itself sufficient to guide the courtly and beautiful to hoppner's easel. suffice it to say that before he was forty years of age (he was born in ), he had been enabled to exhibit no less than fifteen ladies of quality--for so are they named in the catalogues--a score of ladies of lower degree, and noblemen unnumbered. but by this time another star had arisen, destined to outshine that of hoppner; though some at that period, willing to flatter the older practitioner, called it a meteor that would but flash and disappear--we allude to lawrence. urged upon the academy by the king and queen, and handed up to public notice by royal favour, this new aspirant rose rapidly in the estimation of the public; and by the most delicate flattery, both with tongue and pencil, became a formidable rival to the painter whom it was the prince's pleasure to befriend. the factions of reynolds and romney seemed revived in those of hoppner and lawrence. if hoppner resided in charles street, at the gates of carlton house, and wrote himself "portrait painter to the prince of wales," lawrence likewise had his residence in the court end of the town, and proudly styled himself--and that when only twenty-three years old--"portrait painter in ordinary to his majesty." in other respects, too, were honours equally balanced between them; they were both made royal academicians, but in this, youth had the start of age--lawrence obtained that distinction first. nature, too, had been kind--some have said prodigal--to both; they were men of fine address, and polished by early intercourse with the world and by their trade of portrait painting could practise all the delicate courtesies of drawing-room and boudoir; but in that most fascinating of all flattery, the art of persuading, with brushes and fine colours, very ordinary mortals that beauty and fine expression were their portions, lawrence was soon without a rival. the preference of the king and queen for lawrence was for a time balanced by the affection of the prince of wales for hoppner; the prince was supposed to have the best taste, and as he kept a court of his own filled with the young nobility, and all the wits of that great faction known by the name of whig, hoppner had the youth and beauty of the land for a time; and it cannot be denied that he was a rival in every way worthy of contending with any portrait-painter of his day. the bare list of his exhibited portraits will show how and by whom he was supported. it is well said by williams, in his _life of lawrence_, that "the more sober and homely ideas of the king were not likely to be a passport for any portrait-painter to the variety of ladies, and hence mr. hoppner for a long time almost monopolised the female beauty and young fashion of the country." this rivalry continued for a time in the spirit of moderation--but only for a time. lawrence, the gentler and the smoother of the two, kept silence longest; the warm nature of hoppner broke out at last. "the ladies of lawrence," he said, "show a gaudy dissoluteness of taste, and sometimes trespass on moral as well as professional decorum." for his own he claimed, by implication, purity of look as well as purity of style. this sarcastic remark found wings in a moment, and flew through all the coteries and through both courts; it did most harm to him who uttered it; all men laughed, and then began to wonder how lawrence, limner to perhaps the purest court in europe, came to bestow indecorous looks on the meek and sedate ladies of quality of st. james's and windsor, while hoppner, limner to the court of a gallant young prince, who loved mirth and wine, the sound of the lute and the music of ladies' feet in the dance, should to some of its gayest and giddiest ornaments give the simplicity of manner and purity of style which pertained to the quaker like sobriety of the other. nor is it the least curious part of the story that the ladies, from the moment of the sarcasm of hoppner, instead of crowding to the easel of him who dealt in the loveliness of virtue, showed a growing preference for the rival who "trespassed on moral as well as on professional decorum." after this, lawrence had plenty of the fairest sitters. _the nineteenth century_ i the spirit of revolt in the preceding chapters we have traced the development of painting for five centuries--from the beginning of the fourteenth, that is to say, to the end of the eighteenth--in italy, in the netherlands, in germany, in spain, and lastly in france and england. in the nineteenth the story is confined to the last two alone, as with one or two minute exceptions the art of painting had by this time entirely ceased to be worth consideration in any of the others. only in france and england, where it had been most recently established, was it to continue; and besides continuing, reach out with the most astonishing vigour to snatch at and grasp fruits that no one before would have dreamt of being within its reach. between france and england--if by the latter we may be taken to mean great britain, and include within its artists those who have acclimatised themselves within her shores--the honours of the achievement are pretty equally divided, though it will have to be left to individual choice to decide exactly on which side the balance of credit is due. a mere list of the greatest names is not sufficient to apportion the praise, though as a preliminary step it may be of value in clearing the issue. let us take a dozen on either side, and see how they look. _england._ lawrence. constable. turner. de wint. nasmyth. stevens. whistler. cotman. cox. watts. rossetti. hunt. _france._ david. géricault. ingres. delacroix. corot. millet. daubigny. courbet. daumier. decamps. manet. degas. among these turner stands out conspicuously from the rest, and he would be included by anyone in a list of twenty, or perhaps a dozen, of the greatest painters in the world. but oddly enough his influence on the art in general has been comparatively small, if we are to judge by its effects on other painters up to the present, while that of constable has been considerably greater. manet, again, and delacroix, have accomplished far more for the history of painting than any other two in our lists--and yet their names are scarcely known outside the circle of those who know anything at all about painting. for the english public at large an entirely different list would probably prove the superiority of their own race to their complete satisfaction--in spite of meissonier, doré, and bouguereau on the other side. but that is only because the british public, owing to the monopoly [illustration: plate xliv.--jacques louis david portrait of mme. rÉcamier _louvre, paris_] enjoyed by the royal academy, have never had a chance of judging for themselves what they approve of and what they do not, and their taste has been vitiated for generations by the exhibition of what this self-constituted authority, no doubt unconsciously, conceives to be best for them--and which, as might be expected, is usually found to coincide pretty nearly with the sort of thing they are capable of producing themselves. hogarth's predictions at the time the academy was instituted have in a great measure come perfectly true, and the only benefit that it has been to the english school of painting is that it has kept it going. how far this may be called a benefit is at least arguable, but in the main it is probable that if so many bad pictures had not been painted, there would not have been so many good ones. on the other hand, the removal of a man like sir lawrence alma-tadema from his native sphere of influence is quite enough to account for the unlooked-for flowering of blossoms like the brothers maris, bosboom, israels, and mauve in the dutch garden, and if that is so, one need not grudge him his interment amongst nelson, wellington, and other heroes of our own. in a word, the history of painting in the nineteenth century is revolt. what it is going to be in the twentieth i am fortunately not called upon to say; but if i may throw out an opinion based upon what is already happening, i should say that no word has yet been coined which will adequately express it. in the last century the issues were simple, and can be easily expressed. on the one side was the complacent body of practitioners following to the best of their ability the practice of painting as handed down to them in a variety of different forms, just as the byzantine craftsmen earned their living when they were so rudely disturbed by cimabue and his school. on the other was a small but ever-increasing number of individuals who, like cimabue, began to think things out for themselves, but, unlike him, did not succeed in effecting a popular triumph without--if at all--first raising both the painters and the public to a pitch of fury. it is indeed curious to read vasari and modern historians side by side, and to wonder if, after all, vasari knew or told everything, in his desire to glorify the art, or whether giotto and other innovators were not in fact burnt at the stake. probably not. gallileo, as we know, and savonarola suffered for their crimes. but they were working against the church, and the artists were working for it. in the nineteenth century, painting had altogether broken away from the church, and so it had to fight its own battles out in the street, or in the law courts. that is what has given it such a swagger and strength. it no longer looks to its protector, it will hit you in the face before you know where you are. the feeble kind, only, looks to academies for support, and thereby becomes feebler still. in the present chapter, accordingly, we shall hear no more of the madonnas, the holy families, and all the sacred and profane subjects on which the old masters exercised their genius. five centuries of painting had established the art in a position of independence; and in a sixth--that is to say, the nineteenth--it began to assert itself, and to prove that its education was not in itself an end, but only a means to various ends. instead of following out the fortunes of each painter, therefore, and attempting to set in any sort of order the reputations of artists before sufficient time has elapsed for them to cool, i propose to confine myself in the remaining pages to the broad issues raised during this period between the painters, the critics, and the public. ii eugÈne delacroix the man who began all this street fighting was a frenchman--eugène delacroix. while still a youth he was bullied, and the bully was such a redoubtable giant that it took somebody with the grit and genius of delacroix to tackle him, but tackle him he did. the story of the fight, which is a long and glorious one, is so admirably told in madame bussy's life of delacroix, that i have obtained permission to give the essence of it in her own words. in the salon of was exhibited delacroix's picture of _dante and virgil_, which is now in the louvre, and evoked the first of those clamours of abuse which were barely stilled before the artist's death. for nearly thirty years all french painters, with the exception of gros and prudhon; had shown themselves unquestioning disciples of the school founded by jacques louis david, whose masterful character and potent personality had reduced all art to a system; and delacroix himself spoke of him with sympathy and admiration. the chief dogma of david's school was that the nearest approach to the _beau ideal_ permitted to the human race had been attained by the greeks, and that all art must conform as closely as possible to theirs. unfortunately, the chief specimens of greek art known at that time were those belonging to a decadent period--neither the elgin marbles nor the venus of milo were accessible before --so that the works from which they drew their inspiration were without character in themselves, or merely the feeble and attenuated copies of ancient rome. in the pictures of this school, accordingly, we find only the monotonous perfection of rounded and well-modelled limbs, classical features and straight noses. colour, to the sincere davidian, was a vain and frivolous accessory, serving only to distract attention from the real purpose of the work, which was to aim at moral elevation as well as at ideal beauty. everything in the picture was to be equally dwelt upon; there was no sacrifice, no mystery. "these pictures," says delacroix, "have no epidermis ...they lack the atmosphere, the lights, the reflections which blend into an harmonious whole, objects the most dissimilar in colour." by the untimely death of géricault, whose _raft of the medusa_ had already caused a flutter in , delacroix was left at the head of the revolt against this pseudo-classicism; and amid the storm that greeted the _dante and virgil_ it is interesting to find thiers writing of him in the following strain:--"it seems to me that no picture [in the salon] reveals the future of a great painter better than m. delacroix's, in which we see an outbreak of talent, a burst of rising superiority which revives the hopes that had been slightly discouraged by the too moderate merits of all the rest.... i think i am not mistaken; m. delacroix has genius; let him go on with confidence, and devote himself to immense labour, the indispensable condition of talent." delécluze, by the by, the critic-in-chief of the davidian school, had characterised the picture as _une véritable tartouillade_. in the salon included two pictures which may be regarded as important documents in the history of painting. one of these was constable's _hay wain_--now [illustration: plate xlv.--eugÈne delacroix dante and virgil _louvre, paris_] in our national gallery--which had been purchased by a frenchman; the other was delacroix's _massacre of scio_, the first to receive the enlightenment afforded by the englishman's methods, which spread so widely over the french school. it was said that delacroix entirely repainted his picture on seeing constable's; but his pupil, lassalle bordes, is probably nearer the truth in saying that the master being dissatisfied with its general tone, which was too chalky, transformed it by means of violent glazings. the critics were no less noisy over this picture than the last. "a painter has been revealed to us," said one, "but he is a man who runs along the housetops." "yes," answered baudelaire, "but for that one must have a sure foot, and an eye guided by an inward light." when the salon opened again in , after an interval of three years, the public were astonished to find how large a number of painters had abandoned davidism and openly joined the ranks of the enemy. delacroix himself exhibited the _marino faliero_ (now at hertford house) and eleven others. the gauntlet was flung down, and war began in deadly earnest between the opposing parties. it was at this time that the terms romanticism and romantic came into common use. delacroix always resented being labelled as a romantic, and would only acknowledge that the term might be justly applied to him when used in its widest signification. "if by my romanticism," he wrote, "is meant the free expression of my personal impressions, my aversion from the stereotypes invariably produced in the schools, and my repugnance to academic receipts, then i must admit i am romantic." here we have the plain truth about the painting of the nineteenth century--and after! the critics were unanimous in their violent condemnation of delacroix's works: "the compositions of a sick man in delirium," "the fanaticism of ugliness," "barbarous execution," "an intoxicated broom"--such are some of the terms of abuse showered upon him. the gentlest among them commiserate the talent which here and there can be seen "struggling with the systematic _bizarrerie_ and the disordered technique of the artist, just as gleams of reason and sometimes flashes of genius may be seen pitiably shining through the speech of a madman." the final touch to delacroix's disgrace was given by the directeur des beaux arts sending for him and recommending him to study drawing from casts, warning him at the same time that unless he could change his style he must expect neither commissions nor recognition from the state! the year has given its name to that brilliant generation of poets, novelists, painters and philosophers which, as théophile gautier says with just pride, "will make its mark on the future and be spoken of as one of the climacteric epochs of the human mind." the revolution of july inspired delacroix with one of his most interesting pictures. _le juillet_ is the only one of his works in which he depicts modern life, and was a striking refutation to those who complained that modern costume is too ugly or prosaic to be treated in painting. "every old master," baudelaire usefully pointed out, "has been modern in his day. the greater number of fine portraits of former times are dressed in the costume of their period. they are perfectly harmonious because the costumes, the hair, and even the attitude and expression (each period has its own), form a whole of complete vitality." _le juillet_ gives us the very breath and spirit of modern street fighting. though the public [illustration: plate xlvi.--john constable the hay wain _national gallery, london_] remained hostile and the jury bestowed none of its prizes, as before, the government acknowledged the artist's talent and politics by making him a chevalier of the legion of honour. further, from to he was intermittently employed in decorating the chamber of deputies, the senate, and other public buildings. in he showed at the great exhibition a series of thirty-five of his most important pictures, the effect of which was immense. for the first and only time in his life he enjoyed a triumph, none the less great because his life-long rival ingres also took the opportunity of exhibiting a selection of his works in the same building. but in spite of this success, and in spite of his being elected an academician in , the critics remained incorrigible. his pictures in the salon of once more called forth one of those storms of abuse that delacroix had the gift of arousing. weary and disheartened--"all my life long i have been livré aux bêtes," was his bitter exclamation--he vowed to exhibit no more, and kept his word. iii ruskin against the philistines in england, meantime, great things were being accomplished amid peaceful surroundings. in portraiture lawrence soon became supreme, and what excellence he possessed was accentuated on his death in by the appointment of sir martin archer shee as his successor in the presidency of the royal academy. that was the end of portraiture in england until a new school arose. but it was in landscape that our country occupied the field in the first half of the nineteenth century, and tilled it with the astonishing results that are usually the effect of doing much and saying little. the work accomplished by turner, constable, and cotman, in the first half of the century, to say nothing of crome and one or two of the older men who were still alive, has never been equalled in any country, and yet less was heard about the execution of it than would keep a modern journalist in bread and cheese for a week. turner, who wouldn't sell his pictures, and constable, who couldn't, between them filled up the measure of english art without any other aid than that of the materials with which they recorded their gorgeous communion with nature. when ruskin stepped in with the "modern painters," originally designed as a vindication of turner against certain later-day critics, turner's comment was, "he knows a great deal more about my pictures than i do. he puts things into my head and points out meanings in them that i never intended." that was in , when turner was well on in his third manner--within eight years of his death. but let us go back to the beginning. until he developed his latest manner, turner was about the most popular artist that ever lived. his pictures were not above the comprehension of the public, educated or otherwise, and no effort was either needed or demanded to understand them. in the diary of a provincial amateur, thomas greene, are recorded an impression of turner's work as early as :--"visited the royal exhibition. particularly struck with a sea-view by turner ...the whole composition bold in design and masterly in execution. i am entirely unacquainted with the artist, but if he proceeds as he has begun, he cannot fail to become the first in his department." and again in :--"was again struck and delighted with turner's landscapes.... turner's views are not mere ordinary transcripts of nature,--he always throws some peculiar and striking _character_ into the scene he represents." brought up as a topographical draughtsman, he made no departure till quite late in life from the conventional method of depicting scenery; but being a supremely gifted artist, he was capable of utilising this method as no other before or since has ever succeeded in doing. the accepted method was good enough for him, and he laid his paint upon the canvas as anybody else had done before him, and as many of our present-day painters would do well to do after him--if only they had the genius in them to "make the instrument speak." the impressions created on our mind by turner's earlier pictures are not conveyed by dots, cubes, streaks, or any device save that of pigment laid upon the canvas in such a manner as seemed to the artist to reproduce what he saw in nature. that he did this with surprising and altogether exceptional skill is the proof of his genius. unflagging energy and devotion to his art enabled him to realise, not all, but a wonderful number of the beauties he saw in the world, with an experience that few beside him have ever taken the trouble to acquire. when barely thirty years old--in --he was already considered as the first of living landscape painters, and was thus noticed by edward dayes (the teacher of girtin):--"turner may be considered as a striking instance of how much may be gained by industry, if accompanied with perseverance, even without the assistance of a master. the way he acquired his professional powers was by borrowing when he could a drawing or picture to copy; or by making a sketch of any one in the exhibition early in the morning and finishing it up at home. by such practice, and a patient perseverance, he has overcome all the difficulties of the art." turner himself used to say that his best academy was "the fields and dr monro's parlour"--where girtin and other young artists met and sketched and copied the drawings in the doctor's collection. burnet, in his notice of "turner and his works," suggests that john robert cozens had paved the way for both girtin and turner in striking out a broad effect of light and shade. "the early pictures of turner," he observes, "possess the breadth, but are destitute of the brilliant power of light and colour afterwards pervading his works, and ultimately carried to the greatest extreme in his last pictures. breadth of light seems to have been latterly his chief aim, supported by the contrast of hot and cold colour; two of his unfinished pictures exemplified the principle; they were divided into large masses of blue where the water or sky was to come and the other portions laid out in broad orange yellow, falling into delicate brown where the trees and landscapes were to be placed. this preparation, while it secured the greatest breadth, would have shone through the other colours when finished, giving the luminous quality observable in his pictures. in many instances his works sent for exhibition to the british institution had little more than this brilliant foundation, which was worked into detail and completed in the varnishing days, turner being the first in the morning and the last to leave; his certainty in the command over his colour, and the dexterity in his handling, seemed to convert in a few hours 'an unsubstantial pageant' into a finished landscape. these _ad captandum_ effects, however, are not what his fame will depend on for perpetuity; his finest pictures are the production of great study in their composition, careful and repeated painting in the detail, and [illustration: plate xlvii.--j. m. w. turner crossing the brook _national gallery of british art, london_] a natural arrangement of the colour and breadth of the chiaroscuro." whether or not we agree with all of burnet's opinions, we shall be more likely to learn the truth about turner from prosaic contemporaries of his earlier years than from all the rhapsodies of later days. how significant, when stripped of its amusing circumstances, is the simple fact related thus by leslie:--"in , when constable exhibited his _opening of waterloo bridge_, it was placed in one of the small rooms next to a sea-piece by turner--a grey picture, beautiful and true, but with no positive colour in any part of it. constable's picture seemed as if painted with liquid gold and silver, and turner came several times while he was heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of the city barges. turner stood behind him looking from the _waterloo bridge_ to his own picture, and at last brought his palette from the great room where he was touching another picture, and putting a round daub of red lead, somewhat bigger than a shilling, on his grey sea, went away without saying a word. the intensity of this red lead, made more vivid by the coolness of his picture, caused even the vermilion and lake of constable to look weak. i came into the room just after turner had left it. "he has been here," said constable, "and fired a gun." on the opposite wall was a picture by jones of shadrach meshach and abednego in the furnace. "a coal," said cooper, "has bounced across the room from jones's picture and set fire to turner's sea." turner did not come in again for a day and a half, and then in the last moment allowed for painting, he glazed the scarlet seal he had put on his picture, and shaped it into a buoy." it was in , after an unbroken popular triumph lasting over thirty years, that the critics openly rounded on him. the occasion seized by _blackwood's magazine_ was the exhibition of his first venetian picture exhibited in that year--it is now in the metropolitan museum in new york. "what is venice in this picture?" wrote blackwood's critic. "a flimsy, whitewashed, meagre assemblage of architecture, starting off ghost-like into unnatural perspective, as if frightened at the affected blaze of some dogger vessels (the only attempt at richness in the picture). the greater part of the picture is white, disagreeable white, without light or transparency, and the boats with their red worsted masts are as gewgaw as a child's toy which he may have cracked to see what it is made of. as to venice, nothing can be more unlike its character." ruskin was then only sixteen years old, but eight years later appeared in print the first volume of "modern painters," "by an undergraduate of oxford," as the result of his growing indignation at this and subsequent attacks on turner. without following ruskin into the dubious regions whither the pursuit of his romantic fancies ultimately led him, we may in fairness quote the opening sentence of his second chapter, "of truth of colour," which will help us, moreover, in understanding the conditions under which painting was being conducted at this period. "there is nothing so high in art," he says, "but that a scurrile jest can reach at, and often the greater the work the easier it is to turn it into ridicule. to appreciate the science of turner's colour would require the study of a life; but to laugh at it requires little more than the knowledge that the yolk of egg is yellow and spinage green; a fund of critical information on which the remarks of most of our leading periodicals have been of late years exclusively based. we shall, however, in spite of the sulphur and treacle criticisms of our scotch connoisseurs, and the eggs and spinage of our english ones, endeavour to test the works of this great colourist by a knowledge of nature somewhat more extensive than is to be gained by an acquaintance, however formed, with the apothecary's shop or the dinner table." so much for the critics. for the artist, if ruskin said more than turner himself could understand, he has summed up his achievement in a few passages which may possibly outlast the works themselves. "there has been marked and constant progress in his mind; he has not, like some few artists, been without childhood; his course of study has been as evidently as it has been swiftly progressive; and in different stages of the struggle, sometimes one order of truth, sometimes another, has been aimed at or omitted. but from the beginning to the present height of his career he has never sacrificed a greater truth to a less. as he advanced, the previous knowledge or attainment was absorbed in what succeeded, or abandoned only if incompatible, and never abandoned without a gain: and his present works present the sum and perfection of his accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of one who feels too much, and has too little time to say it in, to pause for expression or ponder over his syllables." and again of his latest works--"there is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the instinctive and burning language, which would express less if it uttered more; which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with its abundant meaning. he feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness of sense, too bitterly, the impotence of the hand and the vainness of the colour to catch one shadow or one image of the glory which god has revealed to him. he has dwelt and communed with nature all the days of his life: he knows her now too well, he cannot falter over the material littlenesses of her outward form: he must give her soul, or he has done nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, the earth, and the oil. 'i cannot gather the beams out of the east, or i would make _them_ tell you what i have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us remember together. i cannot gather the gloom out of the night sky, or i would make that teach you what i have seen; but read this, interpret this, and let us feel together. and if you have not that within you which i can summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in your spirit, and the passion in your heart, which my words may awaken, though they be indistinct and swift, leave me; for i will give you no patient mockery, no laborious insult of that glorious nature, whose i am and whom i serve. let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their master, while they forget his message. hear that message from me; but remember that the teaching of divine truth must still be a mystery.'" within a very few years ruskin was performing a more useful service for the english school of painting than that of gilding the fine gold of its greatest genius. whether or not he was aware of the fact, young holman hunt had borrowed a copy of "modern painters," which, he says, entirely changed his opinions as to the views held by society at large concerning art, and in there were exhibited hunt's _rienzi_, rossetti's _girlhood of mary virgin_, and millais' _lorenzo and isabella_, each inscribed with the mystic letters "p.r.b.," meaning "pre-raphaelite brotherhood." it is interesting to note that this alliance was formed when the three young artists were looking over a book of engravings of the frescoes in the campo santo at pisa. in the following year hunt exhibited the _british family_, millais, _the carpenter's shop_, and rossetti the _ecce ancilla domini_, and in were hunt's _two gentlemen of verona_ and three by millais. the fury of the critics had now reached a point at which some notice had to be taken of it--as of a man in an apopleptic fit. that of the times in particular:--"these young artists have unfortunately become notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style, false perspective, and crude colour of remote antiquity. we want not to see what fuseli termed drapery "snapped instead of folded," faces bloated into apoplexy, or extenuated into skeletons; colour borrowed from the jars in a druggist's shop, and expression forced into caricature. that morbid infatuation which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere eccentricity deserves no quarter at the hands of the public." it was in disapproval of the tone of this outburst that the author of "modern painters" addressed his famous and useful letter to the _times_, vindicating the artists, and following it up with another in which he wishes them all "heartily good speed, believing in sincerity that if they temper the courage and energy which they have shown in the adoption of their systems with patience and discretion in framing it, and if they do not suffer themselves to be driven by harsh and careless criticism into rejection of the ordinary means of obtaining influence over the minds of others, they may, as they gain experience, lay in our england the foundation of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for three hundred years." if any one of this strenuous young band had been a painter of the first rank, this prediction might have been abundantly verified. but it must be owned that none of them was. holman hunt came nearest to being, and millais probably thought he was, when he had abandoned his early principles and shaped for the presidency of the academy. rossetti had more genius in him than the others, but it came out in poetry as well as in painting, and perhaps in more lasting form. as it was, the effects of the revolution were widespread and entirely beneficial; but those effects must not be looked for in the works of any one particular artist, but rather in the general aspect of english art in the succeeding half century, and perhaps to-day. it broke up the soil. the flowers that came up were neither rare nor great, but they were many, varied, and pleasing, and in every respect an improvement on the evergreens and hardy annuals with which the english garden had become more and more encumbered from want of intelligent cultivation. more than this, the freedom engendered of revolt had now encouraged the young artist to feel that he was no longer bound to paint in any particular fashion. people's eyes were opened to possibilities as well as to actualities; and though they were prone to close again under the soporific influence of what was regular and conventional, they were capable of opening again, perhaps with a start, but without the necessity for a surgical operation. in , for example, george frederick watts had offered to adorn, free of charge, the booking-hall of euston station, and had been refused--watts, by the by, was quite independent of the pre-raphaelites--whereas in the benchers of lincoln's inn accepted his _school of legislature_, and in he was elected an academician. two somewhat remarkable effects of the movement are attributed to it by mr edmund gosse (in a note on the work of alfred hunt, written in ), which are probably typical of many more. the liverpool academy, founded in , had an annual grant of £ from the corporation. in it gave a prize to millais' _blind girl_ in preference to the most popular picture of the year (abraham solomon's _waiting for the verdict_), and so great was the public indignation that pressure was brought to bear on the corporation, the grant was withdrawn, and the academy ruined. in the other instance we may not go the whole way with mr gosse, when in speaking of the pre-raphaelite principle he says that "the school of turnerian landscape was fatally affected by them," or that all the landscape painters, except alfred hunt, "accepted the veto which the pre-raphaelites had tacitly laid upon composition or a striving after an artificial harmony of forms in landscape." but to a certain extent their influence undoubtedly was prejudicial in that respect. in suggesting another reason for the cessation of turner s influence he is quite as near the mark, namely, the action of the royal academy in admitting no landscape painters to membership. at turner's death in there were only three, among whom was creswick. "this popular artist," says mr gosse, "was the upas tree under whose shadow the academical patronage of landscape died in england. from his election as an associate in to that of vicat cole in , no landscape painter entered the doors of the royal academy." of this august body we shall have something to say later on. iv manet and whistler against the world let us now cross the channel again, and see what is going on there, in . evidently there is something on, or there would not be so much excitement. as we approach the capital we are aware of one name being prominent in the general uproar--that of Édouard manet. manet's revolt against tradition began before he became an artist, as was in fact necessary, or he would never have been allowed to become one. the traditions of the bourgoisie were sacred, and their power and importance since the revolution of not to be lightly set aside. but young manet was so determined that he was at last allowed by his bourgeois parents to have his way, and was sent to study under that very rough diamond couture. now again his "revolting" qualities showed themselves, this time in the life class. théodore duret, his friend and biographer, puts it so amusingly that a quotation, untranslated, is imperative:--"cette repulsion qui se développe chez manet pour l'art de la tradition," he says, "se manifeste surtout par le mépris qu'il témoigne aux modèles posant dans l'atelier et à l'étude du nu telle qu'elle était alors conduite. le culte de l'antique comme on le comprenait dans la première moitié du xixe siècle parmi les peintres avait amené la recherche de modèles speciaux. on leur demandait des formes pleines. les hommes en particulier devaient avoir une poitrine large et bombée, un torse puissant, des membres musclés. les individus doués des qualités requises qui posaient alors dans les ateliers, s'etaient habitués à prendre des attitudes prétendues expressive et heroïques, mais toujours tendues et conventionelles, d'où l'imprévu était banni. manet, porté vers le naturel et épris de recherches, s'irritait de ces poses d'un type fixe et toujours les mêmes. aussi faisait-il tres mauvais ménage avec les modèles. il cherchait à en obtenir des poses contraires à leurs habitudes, auxquelles ils se refusaient. les modèles connus qui avaient vu les morceaux faits d'après leurs torses conduire certains élèves à l'école de rome, alors la suprême récompense, et qui dans leur orgueil s'attribuaient presqu'une part du succès, se revoltaient de voir un tout jeune homme ne leur témoigner aucun respect. il paraît que fatigué de l'eternelle étude du nu, manet aurait essayé de draper et même d'habiller les modèles, ce qui aurait causé parmi eux une véritable indignation." it was in that the storm of popular fury burst over manet's head, on the exhibition of his first important picture, painted three years before, generally known as _le déjeuner sur l'herbe_. this wonderful canvas was something so new and so surprising that it was rejected by the jury of the salon. but in company with less conspicuous though equally unacceptable pieces by such men as bracquemond, cazin, fantin-latour, harpignies, jongkind, j. p. laurens, le gros, pissarro, vollon, and whistler, it was accorded an exhibition, alongside the official salon, which was called _le salon des refusés_. being the largest and most conspicuous work shown, it attracted no less attention than if it had been officially hung, and probably much more. "ainsi ce déjeuner sur l'herbe," says m. duret, "venait-il faire comme une énorme tache. il donnait la sensation de quelquechose outré. il heurtait la vision. il produisait, sur les yeux du public de ce temps, l'effet de la pleine lumière sur les yeux du hibou." there was more than one reason for this remarkable picture surprising and shocking the sensibilities of the public. it represents a couple of men in everyday bourgeois costume, one sitting and the other reclining on the grass under trees, while next to one of them is seated a young woman, her head turned to the spectator, in no costume at all. a profusion of _articles de déjeuner_ is beside her, and it is evident that they are only waiting to arrange the meal till a second young woman, who is seen bathing in the near background, is ready to join them. the subject and composition are reminiscent of giorgione's beautiful and famous _fête champêtre_, in the louvre, and manet quite frankly and in quite good faith pleaded giorgione as his precedent when assailed on grounds of good taste. but unfortunately he had not put his male figures in "fancy dress," and the public could hardly be expected to realise that giorgione had not, either. as for the painting, it was a revelation. he had broken every canon of tradition--and yet it was a marvellous success! another outburst greeted the appearance of the wonderful _olympia_ in , this time in the official catalogue. this is now enshrined in the louvre. it was painted in , but fortunately, perhaps, manet had not the courage to exhibit it then--for who can tell to what length the fury of the philistines might not have been goaded by two such shocks? as it was, this second violation of the sacred traditions of the nude, which had been exclusively reserved for allegorical subjects, was considered an outrage; and the innocent, natural model, of by no means voluptuous appearance, was regarded as a disgraceful intrusion into the chaste category of nymphs and goddesses. as a painter, however, manet had shown himself unmistakably as the great figure of [illustration: plate xlviii.--Édouard manet olympia _louvre, paris_] the age, and if we have to go to paris or to new york to catch a glimpse of any of his work, it is partly because we are too backward in seizing opportunities so eagerly snapped up by others. the next great storm in the artistic world followed in the wake of one of manet's companions in adversity at the _salon des refusés_--james m'neill whistler, who left paris and settled with his mother in chelsea in the late 'sixties. that he should have existed for fifteen whole years without breaking forth into strife is so extraordinary that we are almost tempted to attribute it to the influence of his mother, who used to bring him to the old church on sundays, as the present writer dimly remembers. in this case it was not the public, but the critic, john ruskin, who so deftly dropped the fat into the fire. having, as we saw, taken up the cudgels for poor turner against the public in , and for the pre-raphaelite brotherhood in , he now, in , ranged himself on the other side, and accused whistler of impertinence in "flinging a pot of paint in the face of the public." the action for libel which whistler commenced in the following year resulted in strict fact in a verdict of one farthing damages for the libelled one; but in reality the results were much farther reaching. the artist had vindicated not only himself, but his art, from the attacks of the ignorant and bumptious. "poor art!" whistler wrote, "what a sad state the slut is in, an these gentlemen shall help her. the artist alone, by the way, is to no purpose and remains unconsulted; his work is explained and rectified without him, by the one who was never in it--but upon whom god, always good though sometimes careless, has thrown away the knowledge refused to the author, poor devil!" this recalls turner's comment on ruskin's eulogies--which whistler had probably never heard of--and making every allowance for whistler's fiery, combative nature, and sharp pen, there is much truth, and truth that needed telling, in his contention. "art," he continues, "that for ages has hewn its own history in marble, and written its own comments on canvas, shall it suddenly stand still, and stammer, and wait for wisdom from the passer-by? for guidance from the hand that holds neither brush nor chisel? out upon the shallow conceit!" of the hopeless banality of the critics during this period there are plenty of examples to be found without looking very far. several of the most amusing have been embodied in a little volume of "whistler stories," lately compiled by mr don c. seitz of new york. here we find _the standard's_ little joke about whistler paying his costs in the action--apart from those allowed on taxation, that is to say--"but he has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it 'knock off' three or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'--or perhaps he might try his hand at a set of quadrilles in peacock blue?--and a week's labour will set all square." then there is this priceless revelation of his art when questioning his class in paris. "do you know what i mean when i say tone, value, light, shade, quality, movement, construction, etc.?" _chorus_, "oh, yes, mr whistler!" "i'm glad, for it's more than i do myself." more serious was the verdict of sir george scharf, keeper of the national gallery, when (in ) there was a proposal to purchase the portrait of carlyle. "well," he said, icily, on looking at the picture, "and has painting come to this!" high place, it would seem, did not always conduce to an appreciation of high art. here is the opinion of sir charles eastlake, f.r.i.b.a., also keeper of the [illustration: plate xlix.--j. m. whistler lillie in our alley _in the possession of john j. cowan, esq._] national gallery, published in , on one of rembrandt's pictures in the louvre:-- "_the bath_, a very ugly and offensive picture, in which the principal object is the ill-proportioned figure of a naked woman, distinguished by flesh tones whose colour suggests the need of a bath rather than the fact that it has been taken. the position of the old servant wiping the woman's feet is not very intelligible, and the drawing of the bather's legs is distinctly defective. the light and shade of the picture, though obviously untrue to natural effect, are managed with the painter's usual dexterity." v the royal academy the last revolt of the nineteenth century was effected in a peaceable and business-like, but none the less successful manner, by the establishment, in , of the new english art club as a means of defence against the mighty _vis inertiæ_ of the royal academy. as an example of the disadvantage under which any artist laboured who did not bow down to the great idol, i venture to quote a few sentences from the report of the select committee of the house of lords appointed to inquire into the administration of the chantrey trust, in :---- "with five exceptions, all the works in the collection have been bought from summer exhibitions of the royal academy." "it is admitted by those most friendly to the present system that the chantrey collection regarded as a national gallery of modern british art is incomplete, and in a large degree unrepresentative. the works of many of the most brilliant and capable artists who worked in the last quarter of the nineteenth century are missing from the gallery, and the endeavour to account for these omissions has formed one main branch of the inquiry." "it has been stated that while containing some fine works of art, it is lacking in variety and interest, and while failing to give expression to much of the finest artistic feeling of its period, it includes not a few works of minor importance. full consideration of the evidence has led the committee to regard this view as approximately correct." up to , when the collection was handed over to the nation, little short of £ , had been spent upon it. and with five exceptions, amounting to less than £ , the whole of that money had been expended on such works alone as were permitted by the academy to be exhibited on their walls. of the £ , it may be noted, £ was well laid out on watts's _psyche_; but with regard to the very first purchase made, in , for £ ,--hilton's _christ mocked_, which had been painted as an altar-piece for s. peter's, eaton square, in , the following question and answer are full of bitter significance for the poor artist of the time:---- lord ribblesdale.--was mr hilton's picture offered by the vicar and churchwardens? the secretary to the royal academy.--yes, it was offered by them--one of the churchwardens was the late lord maghermorne--he was then sir james m'garrell hogg--he was a great friend of sir francis grant who was the president, and he offered it to him for the chantrey collection. when repeatedly pressed by the committee for the reasons why so few purchases were made outside the academy exhibitions, the president, sir edward poynter, repeatedly pleaded the impossibility of a council of ten, all of whom must see pictures before they are bought, travelling about in search of them. in view of this apparent--but obviously unreal--difficulty, the following questions were then put by the earl of lytton:---- . without actually changing the terms of the will, has the question of employing an agent for the purpose of finding out what pictures were available and giving advice upon them ever been suggested?--no. . that would come within the term of the will, would it not, the final voting being, as it is now, in the hands of the academy; it would be open to the council to appoint an agent, as was suggested just now, of going to scotland, and going about the country making suggestions as to pictures which in his opinion might be bought?--the question has never arisen. . but that could be done, could it not?--i suppose that could be done under the terms of the will, but i do not suppose that the academy would ever do it. as a comment on this let us turn to the "autobiography of w. p. frith r. a." (chapter xl.):--"a portion of the year ... was spent in the service of the winter exhibition of old masters. my duties took me into strange places.... one of my first visits was paid to a huge mansion in the north.... i visited thirty-eight different collections of old masters and named for selection over three hundred pictures.... the pictures of reynolds are so much desired for the winter exhibition that neither trouble nor expense are spared in searching for them; so hearing of one described to me as of unusual splendour, i made a journey into wales with the solitary reynolds for its object." here, where it is not a question of a trust for the benefit of the public and for the encouragement of artists, there appears to have been no trouble or expense spared. but the real reason for the academic selection leapt naïvely from the mouth of the president a little later, in reply to question .--"the best artists come into the academy ultimately. i do not say that there have been no exceptions, but as a general rule all the best artists ultimately become academicians. it is natural, if we want the best pictures that we should go to the best artists." on this point the answer to a question put by lord lytton to one of the forty, sir william richmond, k.c.b., is of value, as showing that the grievances of "the outsiders" were not imaginary:-- . i just want to ask you one more question. when you said that in your opinion the walls of the academy have had priority of claim in the past, have you any particular reason for that statement?--yes. i may mention this to show that i am consistent. before i was an associate of the royal academy, i fought hard for what are called, in rather undignified language, the outsiders, and i was anxious that men should be elected associates of the royal academy not necessarily because they exhibit on the royal academy walls, but because they are competent painters. that was my fight upon which i stood; and i refused to send a picture to the royal academy on the understanding that if i did i should probably be elected associate that year, and also that my picture would be bought by the chantrey fund. my answer to that was, "if my picture is good enough to be purchased for the chantrey bequest my picture can be purchased from the walls of the grosvenor gallery as well as from the walls of the royal academy. that seems to me to be justice." the "new english," then, had some justification for their establishment; and although they did not make very much headway before the close of the nineteenth century, they find themselves at the opening of the twentieth in a position to determine to a very considerable extent what the future of english painting is to be, just as the academy succeeded in determining it before they came into existence. for the academy everything that was vital in english art in the last half century had no existence--was simply ignored. for the new english, it was the seed that flowered, under their gentle influence, into the many varieties of blossoms with which our garden is already filled. to the academy there was no such thing as change or development--their ears were deaf to any innovation, their eyes were blind to any fresh beauty. to others, every new movement foretold its significance, and the century closed with the recognition of the fact that art must live and develop if it is to be anything but a comfortable means of subsistence for a self-constituted authority of forty and their friends. let me be allowed to conclude this chapter, and my imperfect efforts to indicate the energies of six centuries of art in so small a space, with a passage from a lecture delivered in by mr selwyn image, now slade professor at oxford, which embodies the spirit in the air at that time, and foreshadows what was to come. "i do not feel that we have come here to sing a requiem for art this afternoon," he said. "as a giant it will renew its strength and rejoice to run its course. i am not a prophet, i cannot tell you just what that course is going to be. nor is it possible to estimate what is around us with the same security, with the same value, that we estimate what has passed--you must be at a certain distance to take things in. but in contemporary art we can notice some characteristics, which are quite at one with what we call the modern spirit; and extremely suggestive--for they seem to indicate movement, and therefore life, in this imaginative sphere, just as there is movement and life in the sphere of science or of social interests. for instance, in modern representative work ... i think anyone comparing it as a whole with the work of the old masters, will be struck as against their distinctness, containedness, simplicity and serenity; with its complexity, restlessness, and vagueness, and emotion, and suggestiveness in place of delineation, and impressionism in place of literal transcription--and this alike in execution and motive. i do not mean to say that these qualities are better than the qualities that preceded them, or worse--but only that they are different, only that they are of the modern spirit--only that they indicate movement and life; and so far that is hopeful--is it not?" the end _index_ academy of painting, the french, ---- the royal, , , - alamanus, giovanni or johannes, , allegri, antonio, or correggio, alma-tadema, sir lawrence, altdorfer, albert, , - angelico, fra, animal painters, , - aretino, spinello, arnolde, backer, balen, henry van, , barret, basaiti, marco, , bassano, jacopo da, - bastiani, lazzaro di, - baudelaire, , bazzi, giovanni antonio (sodoma), bellini, gentile, , - , , ---- giovanni, , , , - , , , , , ---- jacopo, , , , belvedere, andrea, berchem, nicholas, - , , beruete, senor, quoted, , , , , bettes, john, , ---- thomas, bol, boltraffio, giovanni antonio, bonifazio veronese or veneziano, - bordes, lassalle, bosboom, botticelli, sandro, , - , botticini, francesco, boucher, françois, - , , , , bouguereau, bourdon, sebastien, - bouts, dirk, bracquemond, bril, paul, broederlam, melchior, , , brouwer, adrian, , , , - brueghel, jan, or velvet brueghel, , ----- pieter (or peasant), ---- ---- his son, brun, le, - bruyn, bartel, buonarroti. _see_ michelangelo burnet, on turner, byzantine art, , caliari, paolo, - campidoglio, michel de, canale, antonio, caro-delvaille, quoted, , , , carpaccio, vittore, , - carracci, the, , ---- agostino, , , ---- annibale, , ---- lodovico, , catalonia, school of, catena, vincenzo, , cazin, champaigne, philippe de, - chantrey trust, the, chardin, , , , chartered society, the, cimabue, giovanni, - , , , , , claude (or claude lorraine, or gellée), , - cleef, joos van, clouet, françois, ---- jehan or jean, cole, peter, ---- vicat, conegliano, cima da, , - constable, , , , , cook, herbert, quoted, , , copley, john singleton, corot, correggio, cotes, cotman, john sell, - , , courbet, couture, cox, cozens, john robert, cranach, lucas, , - credi, lorenzo di, creswick, crivelli, carlo, , crome, john, or old crome, , ---- john bernay, his son, crowe and cavalcaselle, quoted, cunningham, allan, "life of hogarth," , , , cuyp, albert, - ---- jacob gerritz, dance, nathaniel, daubigny, daumier, david, jacques louis, , , , dayes, edward, quoted, on turner, decamps, degas, delacroix, eugène, , - diana, benedetto, dilke, lady, quoted, dobson, william, dolce, carlo, ---- ludovico, on titian, , domenichino, - , donatello, , doré, dou, gerard, , , doyen, duccio of siena, , , , , dürer, albert, , , , , , , - , duret, théodore, quoted, on manet, - dyck, anthony van, , , - , , , , , ---- ---- in england, - dutch school, - eclectics, the, edwards, edward, quoted, on art exhibitions, elsheimer, adam, , emilia, schools of, english school, early portrait painters of, - ---- in eighteenth century, - ---- spirit of revolt in nineteenth century, _et seq._ everdingen, , exhibitions of painting, eyck, hubert van, , , , , , ---- jan van, , , - , , , fabriano, gentile da, , fabritius, karel, fantin-latour, fiori, mario di, flaxman, john, on romney, - flemish school, - floris, franz, foppa, vincenzo, fragonard, jean honoré, , , francesco, piero della, franciabigio, free society of artists, french academy of painting, french school in seventeenth century, - ---- in eighteenth century, - ---- in nineteenth century, frith, w. p., quoted, fyt, jan, , gaddi, taddeo, gainsborough, thomas, , - , garrard, mark, gellée, claude, or claude, , - genre painters of dutch school, - géricault, , german schools, - ghirlandaio, domenico, , giambono, michele, , gillot, claude, , giorgione, , , , , , , giotto di bondone, - , , , , girtin, , gossaert, jan, or mabuse, , , , , gosse, edmund, quoted, , goubeau, antoine, goya, francisco, - goyen, jan van, , , - , grebber, peter, greco, el, greene, thomas, quoted, on turner, greenhill, gros, le, , greuze, jean baptiste, - , , gruenewald, matthew, guardi, francesco, guercino, hals, frans, - , , , , , , , , harpignies, heem, de, heemskirk, martin, helst, bartholomew van der, , - , herle, wilhelm van, or meister wilhelm, herrera, francisco de, highmore, hilliard, hobbema, meindert, - hogarth, william, , - , , , , holbein, hans, , , , - ---- in england, hondecoeter, giles, , ---- gysbert, ---- melchior, , , hone, nathaniel, honthorst, gerard, - hoogh, peter de, , hudson, thomas, , hunt, alfred, ---- holman, , , , , huysum, james van, ---- jan van, - ---- justus van, ---- michael van, image, mr selwyn, quoted, ingres, israels, jervas, john of bruges, , jongkind, jordaens, jacob, , , , kauffmann, angelica, kneller, sir godfrey, , , knupler, nicolas, kugler, quoted, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , lancret, nicholas, - , landscape, painters of, - largillière, nicholas, , , lastman, peter, laurens, j. p., lawrence, , - , , le brun, , le gros, , le moine, françois, le sueur, eustache, - lefort, quoted, on velasquez, lely, sir peter, , , leyden, lucas van, , lingelbach, , lippi, fra filippo, , , ---- filippino, lochner, stephen, lockie, lombardy, schools of, longhi, pietro, loo, carle van, lorenzetti, pietro, lorraine, claude, , - lotto, lorenzo, , , - luini, bernardino, lyne, mabuse, jan van, , , , , maes, nicolas, , - manet, Édouard, , - mansueti, giovanni, mantegna, andrea, - , , , , maratti, carlo, maris, the brothers, masaccio, , , - masolino, massys, jan, ---- quentin, - , , mauve, meissonier, memling, hans, , - , mengs, raphael, messina, antonello da, , , , metsu, michelangelo, , - , , , mieris, frans van, millais, , , , millet, moine, françois le, monoyer, baptiste, montagna, bartolommeo, mor, sir antonio, morland, george, - ---- henry, his father, moroni, moser, michael, moyaert, nicholas, murano, antonio da, murillo, bartolomé estéban, - muther, dr, quoted, , , nasmyth, new english art club, , norwich school, oil painting, introduction of, oliver, oort, adam van, orcagna, andrea, orley, bernard van, , ostade, adrian van, , , , ---- isaac van, , ouwater, pacheco, - padua, school of, palma, giovane, ---- vecchio, , , parma, school of, pater, jean baptiste joseph, - peake, penny, perugian or umbrian school, , , perugino, pietro, , pinas, piombo, sebastiano del, - pisanello, vittore, , pissarro, pollaiuolo, antonio, - , pontormo, pot, hendrik gerritz, potter, paul, ---- pieter, poussin, gaspard (gaspard dughet), - , ---- nicholas, - poynter, sir edward, predis, ambrogio di, , pre-raphaelite brotherhood, , , , previtali, andrea, prudhon, quattrocentists, the earlier, - ---- the later, _et seq._ raeburn, raphael, , , - ---- sir joshua reynolds on, , rembrandt van ryn, , , - , reni, guido, reynolds, sir joshua, - , - , ---- quoted, on boucher, ---- ---- on bourdon, , ---- ---- on gainsborough, - ---- ---- on hogarth, ---- ---- on rubens and titian, - ---- ---- on titian and raphael, ---- ---- on veronese, ---- revival of english school due to, ---- _refs._ to, , , , , , , , ribera, richardson, ridolfi, quoted, rigaud, hyacinthe, , riley, robert, hubert, robusti, jacopo. _see_ tintoretto romano, giulio, romney, george, , , , - , rossetti, , , , rowlandson, royal academy, the, - ---- foundation of, , rubens, peter paul, - ---- and van dyck, - ---- and velasquez, , ---- pupils of, - ---- _refs._ to, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , rucellai madonna, the, ruisdael, jacob, , , - , , ruskin against the philistines, - ---- on whistler, sandrart, joachim, ---- quoted, sansovino, , sarto, andrea del, , scharf, sir george, schlegel, on altdorfer, schongauer, martin, scorel, jan, sebastiani, lazzaro di. _see_ bastiani segar, francis, ---- william, seghers, daniel, semitecolo, nicolo, shee, sir martin archer, signorelli, luca, smith, john, catalogue raisonné, quoted, , , , snyders, frans, , , - , sodoma, spanish school, - spinello of arezzo, or aretino, squarcione, francesco, , , - , steen, jan, - stevens, streetes, guillim, , strozzi, bernard, sueur, eustache le, - swanenburg, jacob van, , tassi, agostino, teniers, abraham, ---- david, the elder, , ---- ---- the younger, , , , , terburg, gerard, - thornhill, sir james, , thulden, theodore van, tiepolo, giovanni battista, tintoretto, il, - , , , , , , titian, - , , , , , , , turner, , , - , , ---- claude's influence on, , tuscan schools, - uccello, paolo, - , umbrian or perugian school, , , vaga, piero del, van balen, henry, , van cleef, joos, van de velde, adrian, , , ---- willem, the elder, ---- ---- the younger, - van der helst, bartholomew, , - , van der weyden, roger, - , van dyck, anthony, , , - , , , , , ---- ---- in england, , van eyck, hubert, , , , , , ---- jan, , , , , , , van goyen, jan, , , - , van huysum, james, ---- jan, - ---- justus, ---- michael, van leyden, lucas, , van loo, carle, van mabuse, jan, , , , , van mieris, frans, van oort, adam, van orley, bernard, , van ostade, adrian, , , , ---- isaac, , van swanenburg, jacob, , van thulden, theodore, vasari, quoted, on andrea del sarto, ---- on botticelli, , , ---- on cimabue, , , , , , ---- on fra angelico, ---- on fra filippo lippi, , , ---- on giotto, ---- on introduction of oil painting, , , ---- on leonardo da vinci, , , , ---- on masaccio, , ---- on michelangelo, , , , ---- on pollaiuolo, , , ---- on the quattrocentists, ---- on raphael, ---- on spinello of aretino, , ---- on titian, , ---- _refs._ to, , vecellio, tiziano. _see_ titian velasquez, , , - , , , , venetian schools, - verhaegt, tobias, vermeer of delft, jan, , veronese, paolo, - , verrocchio, andrea, , , vertue, george, vinci, leonardo da, , - , , , vivarini family, the, , ---- antonio, , , ---- bartolommeo, ---- luigi, or alvise, vlieger, simon de, vollon, volterra, daniele da, ---- francesco da, vos, simon de, waagen, dr, quoted, , - , , , , , walker, robert, walpole, quoted, , , wals, gottfried, watteau, antoine, - , , watts, george frederick, , weenix, jan baptist, , , , ---- ---- his son, , wesel, hermann wynrich von, west, benjamin, , , weyden, roger van der, - , whistler, james m'neill, , , wilhelm, meister, wills, wils, jan, wilson, richard, , , wint, peter de, wouvermans, philip, - , , , wyczewa, m. de, quoted, wynants, jan, , - zampieri, domenico, or domenichino, - zoffany, zurbaran, footnotes: [ ] national gallery catalogue. [ ] "titien," par henry caro-delvaille. librairie félix alcan. [ ] an old copy of this picture is in the edinburgh gallery. illustration: _hans holbein the younger_ _coloured chalks. basel museum_ little books on art general editor: cyril davenport holbein by beatrice fortescue with forty-six illustrations methuen & co. essex street w.c. london _first published in _ contents chapter i holbein's period, parentage, and early work historical epoch and antecedents--special conditions and character of early christian art--ideals and influence of the monk--holbein's relation to mediæval schools--his father, uncle, and augsburg home--probable dates for his birth and his father's death--troubles and dispersion of the augsburg household--from augsburg to basel--his brother ambrose--erasmus and the _praise of folly_; some erroneous impressions of both--erasmus and holbein no protestants at heart--holbein and the bible--illustrated vernacular bibles in circulation before luther and holbein were born--holbein's earliest basel oil-paintings--direct and indirect education--historical, geographical, and scientific revolutions of his day--beginning of his connection with the burgomaster of basel--jacob meyer zum hasen--holbein's woodcuts--his studies from nature--sudden visit to lucerne--italian influence on his art--work for the burgomaster of lucerne chapter ii holbein basiliensis ( - ) _holbein basiliensis_--enters the painters' guild--bonifacius amerbach and his portrait--the last supper and its judas--the so-called "fountain of life" at lisbon--genius for design and symbolism in architecture--versatility, humour, fighting scenes--holbein becomes a citizen and marries--basel in --froben's circle--tremendous events and issues of the time--holbein's religious works--the nativity and adoration at freiburg--hans oberriedt--the basel passion in eight panels--passion drawings--christ in the tomb--christ and mary magdalen at the door of the sepulchre--rathaus wall-paintings--birth of holbein's eldest child--the solothurn madonna: its discovery and rescue--holbein's wife and her portraits--suggested solutions of some biographical enigmas--title pages--portraits of erasmus--journey to france, probably to lyons and avignon--publishers and pictures of the so-called "dance of death"--dorothea offenburg as venus and laïs corinthiaca--triumph of the protestant party--holbein decides to leave basel for a time--the meyer-madonna of darmstadt and dresden, and its portraits chapter iii chances and changes ( - ) first visit to england--sir thomas more: his home and portraits--the windsor drawings--bishop fisher--archbishop warham--bishop stokesley--sir henry guildford and his portrait--nicholas kratzer--sir bryan tuke--holbein's return to basel--portrait-group of his wife and two eldest children; two versions--holbein's children, and families claiming descent from him--iconoclastic fury--ruined arts--death of meyer zum hasen--another meyer commissions the last paintings for basel--return to england--description of the steelyard--portraits of its members--george gysze--basel council summons holbein home--"the ambassadors" at the national gallery; accepted identification--coronation of queen anne boleyn--lost paintings for the guildhall of the steelyard; the triumphs of riches and poverty--the great morett portrait; identifications--holbein's industry and fertility--designs for metal-work and other drawings--solomon and the queen of sheba chapter iv painter royal ( - ) queen jane seymour--death of erasmus, and title-page portrait--the whitehall painting of henry viii.--munich drawing of henry viii.--birth of an heir and the "jane seymour cup"--death of the queen--christina, duchess of milan--secret service for the king--flying visit to basel and arrangements for a permanent return--apprentices his son philip at paris--portrait of the prince of wales and the king's return gift--anne of cleves--thomas howard, duke of norfolk--catherine howard--lapse of holbein's basel citizenship--irregularities--provision for wife and children--residence in london--execution of queen catherine howard--marriage of catherine parr--dr. chamber--unfinished work for the barber-surgeons' hall--death of holbein--his will--place of burial--holbein's genius: its true character and greatness catalogue of principal existing works references index list of illustrations . holbein _frontispiece_ self portrait. from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . "prosy" and "hans" holbein drawn by their father, hans holbein the elder. silver-point. (berlin cabinet.) . schoolmaster's signboard oils. (basel museum.) . jacob meyer (zum hasen) oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . dorothea meyer (née kannegiesser) oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . bonifacius amerbach oils. (basel museum.) . fight of landsknechte washed drawing. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . the nativity oils. (university chapel, freiburg cathedral.) from a photograph by g. röbke, freiburg. . the passion i. gethsemane. ii. the kiss of judas. iii. before pontius pilate. iv. the scourging. v. the mocking. vi. the way to calvary. vii. "it is finished." viii. the entombment. eight-panelled altar-piece. (basel museum.) . christ in the grave oils. (basel museum.) . the risen christ oils. (hampton court gallery.) . the solothurn, or zetter'sche, madonna oils. (solothurn museum.) from a photograph by braun, clement, and cie., paris. . unnamed portrait-study; not catalogued as holbein's silver-point and indian ink. (louvre collection. believed by the writer to be holbein's drawing of his wife before her first marriage, and the model for the solothurn madonna.) from a photograph by braun, clement, and cie., paris. . erasmus oils. (the louvre.) from a photograph by a. giraudon, paris. . the ploughman; the priest "images of death." woodcut series. . dorothea offenburg as the goddess of love oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . dorothea offenburg as laÏs corinthiaca oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . the meyer-madonna oils. (grand ducal collection, darmstadt.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . the meyer-madonna (later version. held by many to be a copy.) oils. (dresden gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . sir thomas more chalks. (windsor castle.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . john fisher, bishop of rochester chalks. (windsor castle.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . sir henry guildford oils. (windsor castle.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . nicholas kratzer oils. (the louvre.) . sir bryan tuke oils. (munich gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . elsbeth, holbein's wife, with their two eldest children oils. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . "behold to obey is better than sacrifice." samuel denouncing saul washed drawing. (basel museum.) from a photograph in the rischgitz collection. . jÖrg (or george) gyze oils. (berlin museum.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . "the ambassadors" oils. (national gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . the morett portrait oils. (dresden gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . queen jane seymour oils. (vienna gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . king henry viii. and his father fragment of cartoon used for the whitehall wall-painting. (duke of devonshire's collection.) . king henry viii. (life study; probably for the whitehall painting.) chalks. (munich collection.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . design for the "jane seymour cup" (bodleian library.) . christina of denmark, duchess of milan oils. (national gallery.) lent by the duke of norfolk. . anne of cleves oils. (the louvre.) from a photograph by a. giraudon, paris. . thomas howard, third duke of norfolk oils. (windsor castle.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. . catherine howard chalk drawing. (windsor castle.) . dr. chamber oils. (vienna gallery.) from a photograph by f. hanfstaengl. holbein[ ] chapter i holbein's period, parentage, and early work historical epoch and antecedents--special conditions and character of early christian art--ideals and influence of the monk--holbein's relation to mediæval schools--his father, uncle, and augsburg home--probable dates for his birth and his father's death--troubles and dispersion of the augsburg household--from augsburg to basel--his brother ambrose--erasmus and the _praise of folly_; some erroneous impressions of both--erasmus and holbein no protestants at heart--holbein and the bible--illustrated vernacular bibles in circulation before luther and holbein were born--holbein's earliest basel oil paintings--direct and indirect education--historical, geographical, and scientific revolutions of his day--beginning of his connection with the burgomaster of basel--jacob meyer zum hasen--holbein's woodcuts--his studies from nature--sudden visit to lucerne--italian influence on his art--work for the burgomaster of lucerne. the eighty-three years stretching from to --between the probable year of the elder hans holbein's birth and that in which the younger, the great holbein, died--constitute one of those periods which rightly deserve the much-abused name of an epoch. the christian era of itself had known many: the yellow-danger of the fifth century making one hideous smear across europe; the _hic jacet_ with which this same century entombed an empire three continents could not content; the new impulse which charlemagne and alfred had given to progress in the ninth century; the triumphant establishment of papal supremacy, that napoleonic idea of gregory vii.--_sanctus satanas_, of the eleventh, and grand architect in a vaster roman empire which still "humanly contends for glory"; and lastly, at the very threshold of the holbeins, the invention of movable printing types about , and the fall of constantinople in , which combined to drive the prodigies and potencies of greek genius through the world. each of these had done its own special work for the advancement of man--as for that matter all things must, whether by help or helplessness. not less than elijah did the wretched priests of baal serve those slow, sure, eternal purposes, which include an ahab and all the futile fury of his little life as the sun includes its "spots." but although the stream of history is one, and its every succeeding curve only an expansion of the first, there has probably been no century of our era when this stream has been so suddenly enlarged, or bent so sharply toward fresh constellations as in that of the holbeins,--when religion and art, as well as science, saw a new world upon its astonished horizon. so that we properly call it a transition period, and its representative men "transitional." yet we shall never get near to these real men, to their real world, unless we can forget all about the pose of this or the other zeitgeist--that tale _told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing._ for we must keep constantly in mind that what we call the middle ages or--worse yet--the dark ages, made up the yesterday of the holbeins and was the flesh and blood transmitted to them as their own flesh and blood with all its living bonds toward the old and all its living impulses toward the new. a now famous new zealander is, we know, to sketch our own "mediævalism" with contemptuous pity for its darkness. but until his day comes, our farthing-dips seem to make a gaudy illumination. and, meantime, we are alive; we walk about; we, too, can swell the chorus which the initiated chant in every century with the same fond confidence: "we alone enjoy the holy light." the new is ever becoming old; the old ever changing into new. and if we ask why each waxes or wanes just when it does and as it does, there is, in the last analysis, no better answer than aurora's explanation for chancing on the poets-- _because the time was ripe._ and the holbein century is one of stupendous transitions because the time was ripe; and not simply because printing was invented, or greek scholars were driven from constantinople to scatter abroad in europe, or ferdinand and isabella wanted a direct route to cathay, or friar martin nailed ninety-five theses to the door of wittenberg's church, and built himself thereby an everlasting name as luther. and because the time was ripe for a new art, even more than because this or that great painter entrained it, it also had its transition period, and holbein is set down in manuals as a transitional painter. teutonic, too; because all christian art is either byzantine or italian or teutonic in its type. when it first crept from the catacombs under the protection of the constantinople court it could but be byzantine; that strange composite obtained by stripping the greek "beast" of every pagan beauty and then decking it out with crude oriental ornament. but who that prizes the peculiar product of that fanaticism would have had its cradle without this sleepless terror, lest for the whole world of classic heathendom it should lose the dear-bought soul of purely christian ideals? or who, remembering that in thus relentlessly sacrificing its entire heritage of pagan accumulation it put back the clock of art to the stone age, and had to begin all over again in the helpless bewilderment of untaught childish effort,--could find twice ten centuries too long for the astounding feat it achieved? ten centuries, after all, make but a marvellous short course betwixt the archaic compositions of the third century and the compositions of giotto or wilhelm meister. a great deal of nonsense is talked about the "tyrannies" which the monastic age inflicted on art. of course, monasticism fostered fanaticism. it does not need the luminous genius that said it, to teach us that "whatever is necessary to what we make our sole object is sure, in some way or in some time or other, to become our master." and with the monk, the true monk in his day of usefulness, every knowledge and every art was good or bad according as it served monastic ideals. but it is absurd to say that the monk--_qua_ monk--"put the intellect in chains." the whole body of his oppression was not so paralysing as the iron little finger of malherbe and his school of "classic" despots. to charge upon the monk the limitations of his crude thought and cruder methods is about as intelligent as it would be to fall foul of shakespeare because boys played his women's parts. the springs of helicon were the monk's also, as witness tuotilo and bernard of clairvaux; but it was by the waters of jordan that his miracles were wrought. as johnson somewhere says of watts, "every kind of knowledge was by the piety of his mind converted into theology." and for the rest,--by the labour of his hands, by his fasting from the things of the flesh, by his lofty faith--however erring or forgotten or betrayed, in individual cases,--by every impressive lesson of a hard life lived unto others and a hard death died unto himself, century after century it was the monk who taught and helped the barbarian of every land to turn the desolate freedom of the wild ass into a smiling homestead and the savage africa of his own heart into at least a better place. the marvel is that he could at the same time find room or energy to make his monastery also a laboratory, a library, and a studio. and yet he did. to say that he abhorred greek ideals is to say that the shepherd abhors the wolf. his life was one long fight with the insidious poison of the greek. he did not,--at any rate in his best days--believe at all in art for art's sake; and had far too intimate an acquaintance with the "natural man" to do him even justice. what he wanted was to do away with him. yet with all its repellent features, it is to this unflinching exclusiveness of the monkish ideal that we owe one of the most exquisite blossoms on the stock of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,--their innocent and appealing art; an art as original and as worthy of reverence, within its own peculiar province, as the masterpieces of greece or italy. you must turn from the beauty of antinous to the beauty of, say, the saint veronica, among the works of the cologne school at munich, before you can estimate the gulf of many things besides time which for ever divides the world of the one from the world of the other. and then you must essay to embody the visions of patmos with a child's colour-box and brushes, before you can compare the achievements--the amazing achievements--of the monkish ideal with the achievements of classic paganism. with the school of wilhelm meister this tremendous revolution had accomplished itself; and solely through the indomitable will of the monk. the ideal of greece had been to show how gods walk the earth. this christian ideal was to show how devout men and women walk with god. their ineffable heavenly faces look out from their golden world-- _inviolate, unwearied, divinest, sweetest, best,_ upon this far-off, far other world, where nothing is inviolate, and divinest things must come at last to tears and ashes. but the monk had had his day as well as his way. the so-called gothic architecture had expressed its uttermost of aspiration and tenuity; and painting had fulfilled its utmost accommodation to the ever more slender wall-spaces and forms which this architecture necessitated. and once again, in the fifteenth century, the time was ripe for a new transition. art was now to reveal the realities of this world, and to concern itself with man among them. and just as the law of reaction flung the mind into religious revolt from the outworn dogmas and overgrown pretensions of the monkish ideal, so did it drive the healthy reaction of art into its own extravagances of protest. and we shall see how even a genius like holbein's was unable to entirely free itself from this reactionary defect. for with all his astonishing powers, imaginative and technical, he never wholly overcame that defect of making his figures too short and too thick-set for grace, which amounted to a deformity in the full-length figures of his early work, and was due to his fierce revolt from the unnaturally elongated forms of an earlier period. yet we should make a grave mistake if we were to regard holbein as cut off by this reaction from all affinities with the monkish ideals of the cologne school. on the contrary. we shall see, especially in his religious pictures, how many of those ideals had fed the very springs of his imagination and sunk deep into his art; only expressing themselves in his own symbolism and in forms unlike theirs. * * * * * in the augsburg gallery there is a painting by holbein's father, the "basilica of st. paul," in which there is a group introduced after the fashion of the period, which has a special biographical interest. this group, in the baptism of st. paul, is believed by many authorities to be a portrait-group of the painter himself,--hans holbein the elder, and his two young sons, ambrose (or amprosy, as it was often written) and johannes, or "hanns." the portrait of the father is certainly like holbein's own drawing of him in the duke d'aumale's collection, which sandrart engraved in his account of the younger holbein; while the heads of the two boys are very like those which we shall find later in a drawing in the berlin gallery. from the pronounced way in which his father's hand rests on little hans' head, while the left points him out,--and even his elder brother "prosy" shows by his attitude the special notice to be taken of hans,--it is clear that if this is a portrait-group either it was painted when the boys were actually older, or the younger had already given some astonishing proof of that precocity which his early works display; for in this group the younger boy cannot be more than eight or nine years old. hans holbein the elder, who stands here with his long brown hair and beard falling over his fur gown, was a citizen of augsburg, living for a while in the same street with the honoured augsburg painter, hans burgkmair, and occasionally working with him on large commissions. that he was a native of augsburg, and the son--as is generally believed--of "michel holbain" (augsburg commonly spelt _holbein_ with an _a_), leather-dresser--i myself cannot feel so sure as others do. there is no documentary evidence to prove that the michael holbein of augsburg ever had a son, and there is both documentary and circumstantial evidence to prove that the descendants of hans holbein the elder claimed a different origin. that a man was a "citizen," or burgher, of any town, of course proves nothing. it was a period when painters especially learned their trades and practised it in many centres. and this, when guilds were all-powerful and no one could either join one without taking citizenship with it, or pursue its calling in any given place without association with the guild of that place, often involved a series of citizenships. the elder holbein was himself a burgher of ulm at one time, if not of other cities in which he worked. but that augsburg was his fixed home for the greater part of his life is certain; and the rate-books show that after the leather-dresser had disappeared from their register of residents in the retail business quarter of the city, in the neighbourhood of the lech canals, hans holbein the elder was, in , a householder in this very place. for some years the name of "sigmund, his brother," is bracketed with his; but about sigmund holbein established himself in berne, where he accumulated a very respectable competence, which, at his death in , he bequeathed to his "dear nephew, hans holbein, the painter," at that time a citizen of basel. sigmund also was a painter, but no unquestioned work of his is known. there is nothing to show who was the wife of sigmund holbein's elder brother, hans. but by this elder hans had either a child or children mentioned with him (_sein kind_, applying equally to one or more). in all probability this is the earliest discoverable record of hans holbein the younger, and his elder brother ambrose. in all probability, too, hans was then about two years old, and "prosy" a year or two older. at one time it was vaguely thought that the elder hans had three sons; and prosy, or "brosie," as it was sometimes written, got converted into a "bruno" holbein. but no vestige of an actual bruno is to be found. and as ambrose holbein's trail, whether in rate-books or art-records, utterly vanishes after , it will be seen that for the most part of the younger holbein's life he had no brother. hence it is easy to understand how his uncle sigmund's will speaks only of "my dear nephew." hans the elder lived far on in his younger son's life. his works attest that he had talents and ideals of no mean order. but i do not propose to enter here upon the vexed question as to how far the "renaissance" characteristics of the later works attributed to his hand are his own or his son's. learned and exhaustive arguments have by turns consigned the best of these works to the father, to the son, and back again to the father. in at least one instance of high authority the same writer has, at different periods, held a brief for both sides and for opposite opinions! in this connection, as on the battlefield of some of the son's greatest paintings, the single-minded student of holbein may not unprofitably draw three conclusions from the copious literature on the subject:--first, that a working hypothesis is not of necessity the right one; secondly, that in the matter of his pronouncements the critical expert also may occasionally be regarded as _un animal qui s'habille, déshabille et babille toujours;_ and thirdly, that in default of incontestable documentary proofs the modest "so far as i have been able to discover" of holbein's first biographer, van mander, is a capital anchor to windward, and is at any rate preferable to driving forth upon the howling waters of classification, like constance upon the sea of greece, "alle sterelesse, god wot." but my chief reason for not pursuing the protean phantom of holbein's augsburg period is that,--apart from my own disagreement with many accepted views about the works it includes, and the utter lack of data or determining any position irrefutably,--it is comparatively unimportant to the purpose of this little book. for wherever the younger painter was born,--whether at augsburg or ulm or elsewhere,--and whatever i believe to be his rightful claim to such paintings as the st. elizabeth and st. barbara of the st. sebastian altar-piece at munich, fame, like van mander, has rightly written him down holbein _basiliensis_. it is true that his father's brushes were his alphabet. it may be true, though i doubt it, that his father's teaching was his only technical school. but if he was, as to the last he gloried in being, the child of the old period, he was much more truly the immediate pupil of the van eycks than of his father's irresolute ideals; while basel was his university. and whatever may have been his debt to those childish years when the little iulus followed his father with trembling steps, his debt to basel was immensely greater. the door-sill of johann froben's printing-house was the threshold of his earthly immortality. when he turned his back on the low-vaulted years of augsburg, it was because for him also the time was ripe. the old period had cast his genius; the new was to expand it to new powers and purposes. _still, as the spiral grew, he left the past year's dwelling for the new; stole with soft step its shining archway through, built up its idle door, stretch'd in his last-found home and knew the old no more._ * * * * * it may easily have been the elder hans' continuous troubles, whether due to his fault or his misfortune it is idle now to inquire, which made his sons leave augsburg. certain it is that he but escaped from the clutches of one suit for debt after another in order to tumble into some fresh disaster of the sort, until his own brother sigmund appears among his exasperated creditors. after hans holbein the elder vanishes from the records. probably, therefore, it was at about this date that he paid,--heaven and himself only knowing how willingly,--the one debt which every man pays at the last. at all events his sons did leave augsburg about ; or, at any rate, hans did, since there is a naïve little virgin and child in the basel museum, dated , which must have been painted in the neighbourhood of constance in this year,--probably for the village church where it was discovered. as everything points to the conclusion that holbein was born in , he would have been some seventeen years old at this time, and "prosy" eighteen or nineteen. substantially, therefore, they must have looked pretty much as in the drawing which their father had made of them three years before; that precious drawing in silver-point which is now in the berlin collection (plate ). over the elder, still with the curly locks of the group in the "st. paul basilica," is written _prosy_; over the younger, _hanns_. the age of the latter, fourteen, may still be deciphered above his portrait, but that of ambrose has quite vanished. between the two is the family name, written in augsburg fashion, holbain. at the top of the sheet stands the year of the drawing, almost illegible, but believed to be . illustration: plate "prosy" and "hanns" _holbain_ [_drawn by their father, hans holbein the elder_] _silver-point. berlin cabinet_ of the elder brother all that is certainly known may be said here once for all. in he entered the painters' guild at basel, where he is called "ambrosius holbein, citizen of augsburg." he made a number of designs for wood-engraving, title-pages, and ornaments, for the printers of basel--all of fair merit. he may also have worked in the studio of hans herbster, a basel painter of considerable note. herbster's portrait in oils, long held to be a fine work of the younger brother,--now that it has passed from the earl of northbrook's collection to that of the basel museum, is attributed to ambrose holbein. but little else is known of him; and after , as has been said, the absence of any record of him among the living suggests that he died in that year. in the late summer of came that momentous trifle which has for ever linked the name of young hans holbein with that of erasmus. whether, as some say, the scholar gave him the order, or, as seems more likely, some friend of both had the copy, now in the basel museum, on the margins of which the lad drew his spirited pen-and-ink sketches,--it is on record that they were made before the end of december, and that erasmus himself was delighted with their wit and vigour. and, in truth, they are exceedingly clever, both in the art with which a few strokes suggest a picture, and in that by which the picture emphasises every telling point in the satire. but a great deal too much has been built upon both the satire and the sketches; a great deal, also, falsely built upon them. they have been made to do duty, in default of all genuine proofs, as supports to the theory by which protestant writers have claimed both erasmus and holbein as followers of luther in their hearts, without sufficient courage or zeal to declare themselves such. i confess that, though myself no less ardent as a protestant than as an admirer of holbein, i cannot, for the life of me, see any justification for either the claim or its implied charge of timorousness. erasmus's _praise of folly_--like so many a paradox started as a joke,--had no notion of being serious at all until it was seriously attacked. some four years before its illustrations riveted the name of a stripling artist to that of the world-renowned scholar, erasmus had fallen ill while a guest in the sunny bucklersbury home where three tiny daughters and a baby son were the darlings of sir thomas more and his wife. to beguile the tedium of convalescence the invalid had scribbled off a jeu d'esprit, with its punning play on more's name, _encomium moriæ_, in which every theme for laughter, in a far from squeamish day, was collected under that title. read aloud to more and his friends, it was declared much too good to be limited to private circulation; and accordingly, with some revision and expansion, it was printed. that it scourged with its mockery those things in both church and state which erasmus and more and many another fervent churchman hated,--such as the crying evils which called aloud for reformation in the highest places, and above all, that it lashed the detested friars whom the best churchmen most loathed,--these things were foregone conclusions in such a composition. but a laugh, even a satirical laugh, at the expense of excrescences or follies in one's camp, is a very far cry from going over to its foes. as a huge joke erasmus wrote the _praise of folly_; as such more and all his circle lauded it; as such froben reprinted it; and as such young holbein pointed all its laughing gibes. and it was part and parcel of the joke that he launched his own sly arrow at the author himself. erasmus could but laugh at the adroitness with which the young man from augsburg had drawn a reverend scholar writing away at his desk, among the votaries of folly, and written _erasmus_ over his head. but it was hardly to be expected that he should altogether relish the witty implication, or the presumption of the unknown painter who had ventured to make it. nor did he. turning over a page he also contrived to turn the laugh yet once again, this time against the too-presuming artist. finding, perhaps, the coarsest of the sketches, one in keeping with the "fat and splendid pig from the drove of epicurus," he in his turn wrote the name of _holbein_ above the wanton boor at his carousals. it was a reprisal not more delicate than the spirit with which subjects too sacred to have been named in the same breath with folly,--the very words of our lord himself,--had been dragged into such company. but though it, too, was a joke, this little slap of wounded amour propre has found writers to draw from it an entire theory that holbein led a life of debauchery! yet even this feat of deduction is surpassed by that which argues that because erasmus and holbein lashed bad prelates and vicious monks with satire, therefore they detested the whole hierarchy of rome and loathed all monks, good or bad. "erasmus laid the egg which luther hatched" is the oft-repeated cry; forgetting or ignoring the plain fact that erasmus eyed the lutheran egg with no little mistrust in its shell and with unequivocal disgust in its full-feathered development. "what connection have i with luther," he writes some three years after holbein illustrated stultitia's worshippers, "or what recompense have i to expect from him that i should join with him to oppose the church of rome, which i take to be the true part of the church catholic, or to oppose the roman pontiff who is the head of the catholic church? i am not so impious as to dissent from the church nor so ungrateful as to dissent from leo, from whom i have received uncommon favour and indulgence." as to holbein's "protestant sympathies"--using the name for the whole lutheran movement in which protestantism had its rise,--the assertions are even less grounded in fact, if that be possible. if he had it not already in his heart, through erasmus and amerbach and froben and more and every other great influence to which he yielded himself at all, he early acquired a deep and devout sense of the need of reform _within_ the church. like all these lifelong friends, he wanted to see the church of rome return to her purer days and cast off the corruptions of a profligate idleness. like them he couched his lance against the unworthy priest, the gluttonous or licentious monk, the wolves in sheep's clothing that were destroying the fold from within. like them, as they re-echoed colet--the saintly dean of st. paul's,--he passionately favoured the translation of the scriptures into the vernacular and placing them in the hands, or at any rate bringing them to the familiar knowledge, of peasant as well as prelate. but surely one must know very little of the teachings of the stoutest churchmen of holbein's day and acquaintance not to know also that they encouraged if they did not plant these opinions in his mind. "dürer's woodcuts and engravings, especially his various scenes from the passion," writes even woltmann, the biographer to whom every student of holbein owes so grateful a debt, "had prepared the soil among the people for luther's translation of the bible. holbein's pictures from the old testament followed in their wake, and helped forward the work." yet it seems difficult to suppose that woltmann could have been ignorant of the facts of the case. so far were holbein's, or any other artist's, bible illustrations or bible pictures from arguing a "lutheran" monopoly in the vernacular bible, that in germany alone there were fifteen translated and illustrated editions of the bible before luther's appeared; and of these fifteen some half-dozen were published before luther was born. quentell, at cologne, for instance, published a famous translation with exceedingly good woodcuts in ,--three years before luther's birth. while some nine years before quentell's german translation, the abbot niccolo malermi published his _biblia vulgare_ in the italian vernacular, which went through twenty editions in less than a century: one of which,--brought out at venice in by the giunta brothers,--was illustrated by woodcuts of the greatest beauty. so widespread was the demand for this "malermi bible" that another edition, with new illustrations of almost equal merit, was produced at venice in , by the printer known as _anima mia_. all of these were vernacular bibles; all illustrated; all widely known throughout italy and germany before holbein was born or luther was in his tenth year. and certainly it has not yet been suggested by the most rabid protestantism that either these or any of the many other illustrated vernacular bibles printed long before luther's great translation,--a translation with a special claim to immortality because it may be said to have set the standard for modern german,--were anything but roman catholic bibles. they were translated and illustrated in behalf of no doctrine which protestantism does not hold in common with the church of rome. to lose hold of these things, to lose sight of the true attitude of holbein in his bible woodcuts and his "images of death," or of either erasmus or holbein in their satires on the flagrant abuses within their church, and their unwavering devotion to that church,--is to deliberately throw away the clue to the most vital qualities in the work of either, and to the whole course and character of holbein himself, no less than to that of his lifelong friend and benefactor. * * * * * in the young painter who had come to basel to better his fortunes painted a table for hans bär's wedding. the bridegroom marched away, carrying the basel colours, to the bloody field of marignano (or melegnano) in this same year, and never came back to sit with his smiling bride around holbein's most amusing conceits--where "saint nobody" was depicted among all the catastrophes of which he is the scapegoat, and a few ordinary trifles--a letter, a pair of spectacles, etc.--were marvellously represented, as if dropped by chance above the painted decorations, so that people were always attempting to pick them up. but hans bär's sister had been the first wife of a certain brave comrade--meyer "of the hare," who did come back and played an important part in young holbein's career. long lost among forgotten rubbish, hans bär's table has been unearthed, and is now preserved in the town library at zurich. but although holbein had got his foot on the ladder of fame in this year's beginning of his connection with froben, he was as yet very thankful to accept any commission, however humble. and as a human document there is a touch of peculiar, almost pathetic interest about the schoolmaster's signboard preserved by bonifacius amerbach, and now with his collection in the basel museum (plate ). it is a simple thing, with no pretension to a place among "works of art"--this bit of flotsam from , when it was painted. originally the two views, the infant class and the adult class, were on opposite sides of the sign; but they have been carefully split apart so as to be seen side by side. in the one is the quaint but usual dame's school of the period; in the other the public is informed how the adults of basel may retrieve the lack of such early opportunities. the inscription above each sets forth how whosoever wishes to do so can be taught to read and write correctly, and be furnished with all the essentials of a decent education at a very moderate cost; "children on the usual terms." and there is a delightful clause to say that "if anyone is too dull-witted to learn at all, no payment will be accepted, be it burger or apprentice, wife or maid." somehow, looking at the young fellow at the right of the table, in the adult class, sitting facing the anxious schoolmaster, with his own brow all furrowed by the effort to follow him and his mouth doggedly set to succeed,--while the late, low sun of a summer afternoon streams in through the leaded window,--one muses on the chance that so may the young painter from augsburg, now but nineteen, himself have sat upon this very bench and leaned across this very table, in a like determination to widen out his small store of book-learning. he could have had little opportunity to do so in the ever-shifting, bailiff-haunted home of his boyhood. and somewhere he certainly learned to write quite as well as even the average gentleman of his day; witness the notes on his drawings. illustration: plate schoolmaster's signboard _oils. basel museum_ somewhere, too, and no later than these first basel years, he acquired the power to read and appreciate even the niceties of latin, though he probably could not have done more than make these out to his own satisfaction. all his work of illustration is too original, too spontaneous, too full of flashes of subtle personal sympathy with the text, to have emanated from an interpreter, or been dictated by another mind than his own. and this very signboard may have paid for lessons which he could not otherwise afford. for if there is any force in circumstantial evidence it is certain that holbein not only wrote, but read and pondered and thought for himself in these years when he doubtless had many more hours of leisure than he desired, from a financial standpoint. and the greatest pages of his autobiography, written with his brush, will be only so many childish rebuses if we forget what astounding pages of history and argument were turned before him. in augsburg he had seen the emperor maximilian riding in state more than once, and heard much talk about that emperor's interests and schemes and fears; and of thrones and battlefields engaged with or against these. augsburg was in closest ties of commerce with venice; and the tides of many a tremendous issue of civilisation rolled to and fro through the gates of the free swabian city. child and lad, his was a precocious intelligence; and it had been fed upon meat for strong men. he had heard of alexander vi.'s colossal infamies, and those of cæsar borgia as well; and of the kingdoms ranging to this or that standard after the death of pope and prince. he was nine years old then. old enough, too, to drink in the wonderful hero-tales of one christopher columbus of genoa, whose fame was running through the whispering gallery of europe, while he himself lay dying at valladolid--ill, heartbroken, poor, disgraced,--yet proudly confident that he had demonstrated, past all denial, the truth of his own conviction, and touched the shores of cathay, sailing westward from spain. da gama, vespucci, balboa, magellan,--theirs were indeed names and deeds to set the heart of youth leaping, between its cradle and its twenty-fifth year. holbein was twelve when augsburg heard that england had a young king, whom it crowned as henry viii. he was setting out from his home, such as it was, to fight his own boyish battle of life, when the news spread of flodden's field. none of these things would let such an one as he was rest content to apprehend them as a yokel. from either the honest dominie of the signboard or some other, we may be sure he sought the means to read and digest them for himself. and if he learnt some smattering of the geography of the earth and the heavens after the crude notions of an older day, he could have done no other, at that time, in the most enlightened universities. ptolemy's _geographia_ was still the text-book, and the so-called "ptolemaic theory" still the astronomical creed of scholars. copernicus was, indeed, a man of forty when holbein was painting this signboard in . but copernicus was still interluding the active duties of frauenburg's highly successful governor, tax-collector, judge, and vicar-general,--to say nothing of his brilliant essays on finance,--with those studies in his watch-tower which were to revolutionise the astronomical conceptions of twenty centuries and wheel the earth around the sun instead of the sun around the earth. but his system was not actually published until its author was on his death-bed, in the year of holbein's own death. so that these stupendous new ideas were only the unpublished rumours and discussions of circles like that of froben and erasmus, when holbein first entered it. but it is no insignificant sidelight on the history of this circle and this period to recall that the subversive theories of copernicus,--far as even he was from anticipating how a kepler and a newton should one day shatter the "crystalline spheres," and relegate to the dustheap of antiquity the "epicycles," to which he still clung,--had their only generous hearing from influential churchmen of rome. luther recoiled from them as the blasphemies of "an arrogant fool"; and even melanchthon urged that they should be "suppressed by the secular arm." nor let it be forgotten that these matters were never a far cry from those basel printing-presses where the greatest master-printers were themselves thorough and eager scholars; "men of letters," in the noblest sense of the word. and the discussion of all these high concerns of history and letters was as much a part of the daily life surging around their printing-presses as the roar of the rhine was in the air of basel. illustration: plate jacob meyer (zum hasen) _oils. basel museum_ illustration: plate dorothea meyer (_née_ kannegiesser) _oils. basel museum_ as has been said, the sister of that hans bär for whom holbein painted the "st. nobody" table had been the first wife, magdalena bär--a widow with one daughter, when she married him--of jacob meyer,[ ] "of the hare" (_zum hasen_). magdalena died in , and about meyer zum hasen married dorothea kannegiesser. and now in , a memorable year to holbein on account of this influential patron, the young stranger was commissioned to paint the portraits of meyer (plate ) and his second wife, dorothea (plate ). these oil paintings, and the drawings for them, are now in the basel museum. and no one can examine them, remembering that the painter was but nineteen, without echoing the exclamation of a brilliant french writer: "holbein ira beaucoup plus loin dans son art, mais déjà il est superbe." these warm translucent browns are instinct with life and beauty. against the rich renaissance architecture and the blue of the sky-vista the massive head of meyer and the blonde one of his young wife,--the latter so expressive of half-proud, half-shy consciousness,--stand out in wonderful vigour. from the scarlet cap on his thickly curling brown hair to the piece of money between his thumb and finger, the burgomaster's picture is a virile and masterly portrait. and just as forcefully is the charm of his pretty wife,--with all her bravery of scarlet frock, gold embroidery, head-dress and chains,--her own individual charm. they are both as much themselves in this fine architectural setting as in their own good house "of the hare" which adjoined the rising glories of the new renaissance "council hall" (_rathaus_) in which meyer was to preside so often. in he had just been elected mayor for the first time; but after this he had many consecutive re-elections in the alternate years which permitted this. for no burgomaster could hold office for two years in actual succession. previous to being mayor he had been an eminent personage as master of the guilds. and both before and after his mayoralty he was a distinguished soldier,--rising from ensign to captain in the basel contingent which served at different times among the auxiliaries of france and of the pope. but what made this election of a civic epoch was that meyer zum hasen (there were many unrelated meyers in basel, and two among holbein's patrons, who must be carefully distinguished according to the name of the house each occupied) was the first burgomaster ever elected in this city from below the knightly rank. while the piece of money in his hand, far from fulfilling the absurd purpose sometimes suggested,--that of showing his claim to wealth!--marks another civic event of this year. for it was on the th of january, , that the emperor maximilian had just issued the charter which gave to basel the right to mint her own gold coins. in the painting the pose of meyer's right hand has been altered, and the position which holbein originally gave it can still be made out. the monogram and date are on the background. in accordance with his invariable rule for portraits in oils, holbein first made a careful drawing of each head on the same scale as the finished picture, carrying it out with great freedom but at the same time with astonishing care and finish. so that his studies for portraits are themselves works of art, sometimes invested with even more spirit than the oil painting, which was never made direct from the living model,--at any rate, until ready for the finishing touches. drawn with a point which could give a line as bold or as almost impalpable as he wished, and modelled to the very texture of the surfaces, the carnations are so sufficiently indicated or rendered with red chalk as to serve every purpose. sometimes notes are also added. thus in the upper corner of the drawing for meyer's head the artist has noted "eyebrows lighter than the hair" in his microscopic yet firm writing. with these fine portraits, painted as if united by the same architectural background, holbein began a friendship of many years. after some four centuries it is not possible to produce written records of such ties except in occasional corroborative details. but neither is it possible to mistake the painted records of repeated commissions. while as the lifelong leader of the catholic party in basel, it was natural that meyer zum hasen should have much in common with a painter who all his life held firmly to his friendships with the most conspicuous champions of that party. johann froben was another of these; and from until froben's death eleven years later holbein had more and more to do for this printer. occasionally, too, he drew for other basel printers; but not often. the eighty-two sketches on the margins of that priceless copy of the _praise of folly_, which basel preserves in her museum, had been suited to their company. admirable, though unequal, as are their merits, they _are_ sketches, whose chief beauty is their happy spontaneity. such things are among the trifles of art, and are not to be put into the scales at all with the finished perfection of his serious designs for wood engraving. these were drawn on the block; and even these cannot properly represent the drawing itself except when cut by some such master hand as his own. since in preparing the design for printing the background is cut away, leaving the composition itself in lines of relief,--it follows that everything, so far as the reproduction is concerned, must depend upon the cleanness and delicacy of the actual cutting. a clouded eye, a fumbling touch, and the most ethereal idea becomes its travesty--the purest line debased. hence the necessity for taking the knife into consideration in judging such work. this is not the place for any fraction of that hot debate which kugler ironically styles "the great question of the sixteenth century"; the debate as to whether holbein himself did or did not cut any of his own blocks. assuredly he could do so. the exquisite adjustment of every line to its final purpose, the masterly understanding of the proper limitations and field of every effect, all prove that he had an unerring knowledge of the craft no less than of the art of illustration. but in his day that craft, like every other, had its own guild; and it would not have been likely to tolerate any intrusion on its rights. we know, too, that those woodcuts which most attest holbein's genius were engraved by that mysterious "hans lützelburger, form-cutter, called franck" (_hans lützelburger, formschnider, genannt franck_), who still remains, after all the researches of enthusiastic admirers, a hand and a name, and beyond this--nothing. but it is when holbein's designs are engraved with lützelburger's astonishingly beautiful cutting that we can appreciate how wonderful was the design itself. to compare these fairy pictures with the painter's large cartoons is to get some conception of the arc his powers described. it seems incredible that the same hand could hang an equal majesty on the wall of a tiny shell and on that of a king's palace, and with equal justness of eye. yet it is done. he will ride a donkey or an elephant with the like mastery; but you will never find holbein saddling the donkey with a howdah. it is not always possible to subscribe to ruskin's flowing judgments; but i gratefully borrow the one with which he sums up thus, in a lecture on wood-engraving: holbein does not give many gradations of light, the speaker says, "but not because holbein cannot give chiaroscuro if he chooses. he is twenty times a stronger master of it than rembrandt; but therefore he knows exactly when and how to use it, and that wood-engraving is not the proper means for it. the quantity of it which is needful for his story he will give, and that with an unrivalled subtlety." and the student of holbein's art can but feel that ruskin has here touched upon a characteristic of the painter's peculiar power in every phase of it;--the power to be cæsar within himself; to say to his hand, "thus far," to say to his fancy, "no farther." those who have come to know holbein something more than superficially, or as a mere maker of portraits, will smile at the dictum of some very recent "authority" which pronounces him wanting in imagination; or at the hasty conclusion that what he _would_ not, that he could not. he has given us, for instance, no animal paintings or landscapes pure and simple, or, at least, none such have come down to us. and yet what gems of landscape he has touched into his backgrounds here and there! and what drawings of animal life he made! there are two, for instance, in the basel museum which could not be surpassed; studies in silver-point and water-colours of lambs and a bat outstretched. no reproduction could give the exquisite texture of the bat's wings, the wandering red veins, the almost diaphanous membrane, the furry body,--a miracle of patience and softness. it is all purest nature. like topsy one can but "'spec' it growed" rather than was created. and they are not only beautiful in themselves but full of living meanings. many an hour the young painter enjoyed while he made such studies as his lambs on the pleasant slopes about basel; the mountains scalloping the horizon, and all the sweet fresh winds vocal with tinkling bells or the chant of the deep-throated rhine. many of "the long, long thoughts" of youth,--those thoughts that ring like happy bells or sweep like rushing rivers, kept him company as he laid these delicate strokes and washes that seem to exhale the very breath of morning across four hundred years. in the next year after painting the portraits of meyer and his wife there is a sudden break in the painter's story which has always puzzled his biographers. after such a brilliant start in basel it is perplexing to find the young man, instead of proceeding to join the painters' guild and take the necessary citizenship, suddenly turn his back on all these encouragements and leave the town for a long absence and remote journeys. as will be seen when we come to consider the story of holbein's married life, however, i have a theory that the influence which sent him south in such an unexpected fashion was apart from professional affairs. whether this is a good shot or no, certain it is that he did now go far south,--as distances were in those days; and that, paying his way as he went by his brush, he went first to lucerne, where the evidence goes to show that he apparently thought of settling instead of at basel,--and then on beyond it. and it seems highly probable that at this time he pushed on over the alps and made his way into italy,--already the mecca of every artist. here he could not now, in , have hoped to see either bramante or leonardo da vinci in person. the former had died at rome two years before; but, without getting even as far as pavia, milan could show some splendid monuments to his sojourn within her walls; characteristic examples of that architecture of the closing fifteenth century which holbein loved as bramante himself. leonardo was now in france; but in the refectory of the santa maria monastery was his immortal, though, alas! not imperishable, masterpiece--"the last supper." time had not yet taught leonardo, much less holbein, the fleeting nature of mural oil-painting; the only so-called "fresco" painting which the latter ever attempted, so far as is known. but the great supper was still glowing in all the splendour of its original painting, and would impress itself indelibly on an eye such as holbein's. in more than one cathedral, too, as he wandered in such a holiday, he would have noted how mantegna had made its architecture the background for his own individual genius. at any rate each of these, somehow and somewhere, set its own seal upon the reverent heart of holbein at about this time. whether through their original works or copies of them,--already familiar to augsburg as well as lucerne,--the lad sat humbly at the feet of both leonardo and mantegna. by the first, beside many a loftier lesson, he was confirmed and strengthened in his native respect for accurate studies of the living world around him. from the second he learned a still deeper scorn of "pretty" art. yet though he sat at their feet, it was as no servile disciple. he would fain be taught by them; fain follow them in all humility and frankness. but it was in order to expand his own powers, not to surrender them; to speak his own thoughts the better, not theirs, nor another's. and, in any event, on such a journey lucerne must come first. and that he thought of making some long stay here when he returned is shown by his having joined in this year , the guild of st. luke, the painters' guild of lucerne, then but newly organised. "master hans holbein has given one gulden," reads the old entry. two other items of this visit give us glimpses of its flesh-and-blood realities, perhaps of its unrest. the first, that he also joined a local company of archers, the militia of his day, seems to bring his living footfall very close. a resonant, manly, wholesome footfall it is, too! this broad-shouldered young fellow is as ready to draw a good stout bow among mountain-marksmen as a lamb among its daffodils. the second item makes it still clearer that he had other elements as well as the pastoral in his blood. on the th of december he got himself fined for his share in a street-scrimmage, where he would seem to have decidedly preferred the livelier to the "better part" of valour. and then he would appear to have shaken the dust, or more likely the snows, of lucerne off his feet for the road to italy, if not for italy itself. whatever his objective, he got, at any rate, well on toward the pass of the st. gothard. the scanty clues of such works as have remained on record prove that he reached altdorf. but there the actual trail is altogether lost. if he spent the entire interval brush in hand, or if--as i believe--he treated himself to a bit of a holiday beyond the alps, can be but a guess in the dark. by this time the new year of , then falling in march, could not have been far off, before or behind him. and in holbein executed the commission which must have been the envy of every local artist. jacob von hertenstein, burgomaster of lucerne, had now got his fine new house ready for decoration; and it was to holbein that he gave the splendid commission to decorate it to his fancy,--the interior as well as the façade. and a renowned triumph the painter made of it; a triumph such as, perhaps, no other artist north of italy could then have equalled. it is idle now to dwell upon the religious subjects of one room, the genre paintings in another, the battle scenes of a third, and so on through those five famous rooms which were still in existence and fair preservation so late as , but are now for ever lost; to say nothing of the painted renaissance architecture and the historic legends which looked like solid realities when the façade was studied. but "mizraim is become merchandise"; and all that is now left of what should have been a treasured and priceless heirloom is but a monument to the shame of that citizen, a banker, who could condemn such a thing to destruction as indifferently as if it had been a cowshed, and to the shame of the municipality which, at any cost, did not prevent it. some hasty sketches--due to individual enterprise and a sense of the dignity of holbein's fame--an original drawing for one of the façade-paintings, and a few fragments of the interior paintings, which still show themselves, by chance, in the banker's _stable wall_--these are all that remain to speak of what must have been the enthusiastic labour of the greater part of holbein's twenty-first year! chapter ii holbein basiliensis - _holbein basiliensis_--enters the painters' guild--bonifacius amerbach and his portrait--the last supper and its judas--the so-called "fountain of life" at lisbon--genius for design and symbolism in architecture--versatility, humour, fighting scenes--holbein becomes a citizen and marries--basel in --froben's circle--tremendous events and issues of the time--holbein's religious works--the nativity and adoration at freiburg--hans oberriedt--the basel passion in eight panels--passion drawings--christ in the tomb--christ and mary magdalen at the door of the sepulchre--rathaus wall-paintings--birth of holbein's eldest child--the solothurn madonna: its discovery and rescue--holbein's wife and her portraits--suggested solutions of some biographical enigmas--title pages--portraits of erasmus--journey to france, probably to lyons and avignon--publishers and pictures of the so-called "dance of death"--dorothea offenburg as venus and laïs corinthiaca--triumph of the protestant party--holbein decides to leave basel for a time--the meyer-madonna of darmstadt and dresden, and its portraits. and now it is , and with it the true hour of holbein's destiny is striking. take away the coming seven years and you will still have what holbein is too often thought to be only--a great portrait-painter. no greater ever etched the soul of a man on his mask. his previous and his after achievements would still amply justify the honour of centuries. but add these seven years, from to , and dull indeed must be the intelligence that cannot recognise the great master, without qualification and in the light of any thoughtful comparison with the very greatest. his basel career may be said to begin here; his earlier work furnishing the prologue. on the th september, , when he was about two-and-twenty, he joined the basel guild of painters; that same "guild of heaven" (_zunft zum himmel_) which his brother ambrose had joined two years earlier and from which he seems to have passed to the veritable guild of heaven at about this latter date. and hardly is the ink dry upon the record of his membership than holbein painted one of the most beautiful of his portraits--that of bonifacius amerbach (plate ). he stands beside a tree on which is hung an inscription. behind him is holbein's favourite early background,--the blue of the sky, here broken by the warm brown and green of the branch, and the faint glimpse of far-away mountains. under his soft cap, with a cross for badge, his intensely gleaming blue eyes look out beneath grave brows. the lips are softly yet firmly set; the mouth framed by the sunny beard which repeats the red-brown of his hair. the black scholar's gown, with its trimming of black fur, discloses his rich damask doublet and white collar. illustration: plate bonifacius amerbach _oils. basel museum_ well may the inscription assert--above the signature, the name of the sitter and the date th october, -- _"though but a painted face i am not far removed from life; but rather, by truthful lines, the noble image of my possessor. as he accomplishes eight times three years, so faithfully in me also is nature's work proclaimed by the work of art."_ for here in truth is a work of nature which is no less a work of art. this is the amerbach who began and inspired his son basilius (so named after bonifacius's brother) to complete the holbein collection, which the basel museum bought long afterwards. and such was the love of both that they included, perhaps deliberately, much that has small probability of claim to be holbein's work. they would reject nothing attributed to him; thinking a bushel of chaff well worth housing if it might yield one genuine grain. and in view of these expressive facts, it is hardly necessary to argue in behalf of the tradition that more than a conventional friendship bound the two young men together,--printer's son and painter's son, musician-scholar and scholar-painter, churchman and churchman; the one twenty-four, the other twenty-two. bonifacius was the youngest of johann amerbach's three gifted sons. as all the world knows, johann had been also a scholar as well as a printer, and great in both capacities. the most eminent scholars of his day gravitated as naturally to this noble personality as they afterwards did to that of his protégé and successor, johann froben. he had educated his sons, too, to worthily continue his life-work and maintain his devout principles. bonifacius was the darling of more than one heart not given to softness. he had been more the friend than the pupil of ulrich zasius at the university of freiburg, before he went to avignon to complete his legal studies under alciat. five years after this portrait was painted he became professor of law in the basel university. "i am ready to die," writes erasmus of him, "when i shall have seen any young man purer or kinder or more sincere than this one." very possibly it was for bonifacius himself that holbein painted his own portrait about this time (plate , frontispiece). it is a worthy mate, at all events. in the amerbach catalogue it was simply called "holbein's counterfeit, in dry colour" (_ein conterfehung holbein's mit trocken farben_); the frame, too, was catalogued, though the painting was kept in a cabinet separately when the basel museum acquired it with the collection. the vigour and finish of this portrait on vellum, done in crayons or body-colour, make it a gem of the first water. the drawing was done in black chalk, and the tints have been rubbed in with coloured crayons or given with the point where lines of colour were required. the work has the delicacy of a water-colour and the strength of oils. the broad, soft, red hat, though so fine a bit of colour, is clearly worn as part of a simple everyday habit. there is no suggestion of studying for effect, or even caring at all about it. he wears his hat pulled soberly down over his brown hair exactly as when he wore it thus about the business of the day. the plastic modelling of the puckered brow and the mobile mouth is beautifully indicated. the bluish tone left by the razor is just hinted. in his drab coat with its black velvet bands, with his shirt, on which the high lights have been applied, slightly open at the throat, holbein himself seems to stand before one as in life. among the "early works" of the amerbach catalogue there is one which shows strong traces of leonardo's and even more of mantegna's influence on him at this time. it is a last supper, painted in oils on wood. but it was so mutilated in the iconoclastic fury of , and has been so cobbled, re-broken, re-set, and "restored" generally, that it can no longer be called holbein's work without many reservations. there is also another last supper, one of a coarsely painted set on canvas, which is attributed to him on much more doubtful grounds, to judge by the composition and colouring. myself i should be inclined to see the inferior hand of ambrose, hans the elder, or perhaps even sigmund holbein in these, if they are genuine holbein works at all. but there are still to be seen the traces of his own hand and mind in the last supper in oils on wood. st. john's head must originally have been very beautiful; very manly, too,--dark with sudden anguish and recoil. there is a separate head of st. john, in oils, in the same collection, which shows how fixed was this noble originality of type in holbein's conception of "the beloved apostle." but it is in judas that the patient student will find, perhaps, most of holbein's peculiar cast of thought, when once the initial repulsion is overcome. by a very natural arrangement he is brought into the immediate foreground and sits there, already isolated, already damned, in such a torment of body and soul as haunts the spectator who has had the courage to reconsider the dictum of authorities who call him "a jew of frightful vulgarity." frightful he may be; but it is a strange judgment which can find him vulgar. unfortunately, the painting is no longer in a condition to justify reproduction; but such as study this yellow-robed, emaciated, shivering, fever-consumed judas will, i venture to assert, find food for thought in it even under all the injuries the work has undergone. it is a demon-driven soul if ever there was one. he is in the very act of springing to his feet and rushing away anywhere, anywhere out of this presence;--no more concerned about his money-bag than about the food he loathes. thirty pieces of silver! if the priests have lied, if this is in very truth the messiah his heart still half believes him, will thirty pieces of silver buy his soul from the avenger? is there time still to escape? what if he break the promise given when he was over-persuaded in the market-place the other day? but did not the high priest himself declare that this is beelzebub in person,--this fair, false, dear,--oh! still too dear illusion? up! let him be gone out of this!--from the sound of that voice, from the sight of that face, get the thing over and done, done--done one way or another! if god's work, as the priests swear, well and good. he will have earned the pity of god himself. if the devil's, as his heart whispers, well, too! let him take his price and buy himself a rope long enough to house his soul in any hell, rather than sit on in this one! it is all painted, or was once; all written on that sunken cheek, that matted hair and clammy brow; in that cavernous socket, that eye of lurid despair; on the whole anatomy of a lost soul. the hand that did it was very young, very immature; but it had the youth and the immaturity of a master. there is another and a very different work, an oil painting, in the royal collection at lisbon, signed ioannes holbein fecit , which, if by the younger hans, would almost put the question as to whether the painter knew the landscapes of italy, beyond doubt; so southern is the type of its background. the work, however, has been rejected by woltmann, on the strength of an old photograph not quite perfect. he held the signature to be spurious, and attributed the picture to the school of gerard david. and he gave to the work the name by which it is now generally styled in english works: "the fountain of life" (_der brunnen des lebens_[ ]). he did so from the inscription within the rim of the well immediately in the foreground; but a literal translation of this inscription, pvtevs aqvarvm vivencivm, is, i think, to be preferred: _the well of living waters_. the majority of those competent to form a judgment in such matters are inclined to attribute the work to hans holbein the elder, who did not die until some years later, and who made use of a very similar form of signature. and for myself i find it hard to see how anyone familiar with hans the younger could accept it as his work at any period of his career; least of all at the date given in the signature. so that equally whether woltmann is right in believing the signature itself spurious, or those are right who hold it to be the genuine signature of hans the elder,--a more detailed description of the composition does not fall within the scope of this little volume. but the whole matter is most clearly set forth, and a very beautiful reproduction in colours given of the painting itself, in herr seeman's article upon it, which will be found in the appended list of references. * * * * * considerably before , as has been said, holbein had begun to develop his special genius for design, and to apply it to glass or window-paintings, as well as to metal and wood-engravings. the beautiful drawings, whether washed, or etched with the point, in chalks or indian ink, of which examples may be seen in almost every great collection, private as well as public, that year after year were created by that fertile brain and ever more masterly hand, constitute an art in themselves. and since so many (perhaps the greater number as well as the greater in subject) of his paintings have perished, it is chiefly in his drawings that the progression of his powers can be followed, or the plane and scope of his imagination recognised at all. there is seldom a date on them; but they will be found to date themselves pretty accurately by certain features. in his earliest, for instance, that defect of which mention has been made,--the short thick figures due to the energy of his rebound from gothic attenuation is a grave fault. there is a virgin and child among his washed drawings for glass-paintings in the basel museum, for example, which, when you cut it off at the knees, is one of the most charming pictures of mother and child to be found in any painter's treatment of this subject. and behind them is a gem of landscape. yet the whole, as it stands, is utterly marred by the virgin's dwarfed limbs. but although holbein never entirely overcame this fault, he did very greatly do so, as the years passed. his architectural settings, too, tended to greater simplicity in his later years. yet this is not a safe guide. some early designs have simple forms; some comparatively late ones, a very ornate architecture. for the truth is that these architectural backgrounds and settings remained, so long as his fancy had any free field for disporting itself, an integral part of his conception. but only as inseparable from the symbolism, the under-tow, of his imagination. to my thinking, at any rate, they make a gravid mistake who look for "realism" in these things. his stately pillars and arches, his fluid forms of ornament, are not his idea of the actual surroundings of the characters he portrays, any more than they are your idea, or mine, of those surroundings. is it to be supposed that he thought the dwellings of our lord were palaces? or that he could not paint a stable? those who maintain that holbein was a realist in the modern sense of the word must reconcile as best they can the theory with the facts. but when we see the stage set with every stately circumstance,--the babe amid the fading splendours of earthly palaces, our lord mocked by matter as well as man,--i dare to think that we shall do well to cease from insisting on an adobe wall, and to study those "incongruous" circumstances to which the will and not the poverty of holbein consents. we shall, at least, no longer be dull to "the tears of things" as he saw them. but it would be no less a mistake to think of holbein as one without a sense of laughter as well. his drawings of open-mouthed peasants gossiping in a summer's nooning, or dancing in some uncouth frolic,--and still more his romping children, dancing children, and the chase of the fox running off with the goose,--all of these are full of boyish fun. would that they could be given here without usurping the place of more important works! but that is impossible. and so, too, with the costume-figures of basel, among which is the charming back view of a citizen's wife, with all the women bent far backward in the odd carriage that was then "the latest fashion" among them. he was particularly happy, also, in his drawings of the _landsknechte_, those famous mercenaries of "blut und eisen"; always ready to drink a good glass, and a-many; to love a good lass after the same liberal fashion; to troll a good song or fight a good fight; and all with equal zest. he had not mixed with these masterful gentry for nothing; nor they with him to wholly die. there are a number of drawings where they are engaged in combat, too, which show that holbein's heart leapt to the music of sword and spear as blithely as does scott's or dumas's--as blithely as did the hearts of the _reisläufer_ themselves. look at the mad rush, the hand-to-hand grapple, in a drawing of the basel collection, for instance (plate ). the blood-lust, the heroism, the savagery, the thrust, the oath, the dust-choked prayer, the forgotten breathing clay under the bloodstained foot; the very clash and din of the fray;--all is told with the brush. and yet not one unnecessary detail squandered. it is as if one watched it from some palpitating refuge, just near enough to see the forefront figures distinctly and to make out the interlocked hubbub and fury where the ranks have been broken through. it would be a great day for art could we but chance upon some lost painting for which such a study had served its completed purpose. * * * * * on the rd of july, , holbein fulfilled what was then the requirement of almost every guild, and purchased his citizenship; a citizenship to reflect unfading honour on basel, and of which she has ever been justly proud. and somewhere about the same time he married elsbeth schmidt, a tanner's widow, who had one child, franz. illustration: plate fight of landsknechte _washed drawing. basel museum_ for the past four or five years basel had been steadily becoming more and more democratic. and at a period when its _élite_ were scholars and printers and civic officials of every origin,--when the illegitimate son of a rotterdam doctor was the true prince, and beatus rhenanus, the grandson of a butcher, was his worthy second in the reverence of basel,--the widow and son of a reputable tanner and a rising young artist, who had already the suffrages of the most influential citizens, would find no doors closed to them on the score of social disabilities. the friendship of such men as erasmus, froben, bonifacius amerbach, and the mayor,--all conspicuous stars in the church party,--would have ennobled a man of less genius than holbein in the eyes of his fellow-citizens; and rightly. but as to the exact locality in which holbein set up his first married roof-tree--that bethel of sacred or saddest dreams--no documentary evidence has yet come to light. circumstantial evidence, however, amounts to a strong probability in favour of the _rheinhalde_ of great-basel. if there was an emblem peculiarly abhorrent to the basilisk (the device of basel) it was the crescent-and-star. but nothing could better serve to recall the rough outline of basel in holbein's day than this very emblem. as the rhine suddenly swerves from its first wild rush westward and races away, northerly, to the german ocean, it shapes the hollow of the crescent in which little-basel (_klein-basel_) nestled as the star; and, appropriately enough, since it was here that the catholic's star of faith rallied when overcome across the river, where curved the crescent of great-basel (_gross-basel_). and the relative proportions of the two would be fairly enough represented by the symbols respectively used. great-basel's northern face was protected by the rhine, while the stout city wall secured its convex curve. of this wall the eastern horn was st. alban's gate; its north-west was st. john's gate (_st. johann thor_); beside which stood the decaying commandery of the knights of malta, which had contributed a large sum toward the expanded wall, in order to be included within it. and just as these spots still mark the horns of the old crescent, the _spalen thor_ shows where it had its greatest depth, midway between the other two. a straight line running due north-east from this spalen-thor would cross the big square of the fish-market (_fischmarktplatz_) pretty nearly as the uncovered stream of the birsig, or "little birs," did before the quaint little bridge, which then united the two halves of the fischmarkt, was absorbed in the paving over of stream and square before holbein's day. this same straight line would of itself draw the "old bridge" (_alte brücke_) with approximate exactness, the even then ancient bridge which centred the star of klein-basel to its crescent. and in the historical museum, where the barefooted friars worshipped then, we may still see the grotesque piece of clockwork, the wooden "stammering king" (_lällenkönig_), that for centuries used hourly to roll great eyes and stick out its tongue a foot long across the river from the gross-basel end of the bridge. it is often said that this monster was set up as a public token of the hatred which the triumphant protestantism of the south bank felt for the stubborn catholicism of klein-basel. but the thing was a famous ancient joke before party feeling turned it into a gibe. bonifacius amerbach's home, the "emperor's seat" (_kaiserstuhl_, now , rheingasse), was in klein-basel. johann amerbach had bought it, near to his beloved friends, the carthusians. in the good old man had slept for six years in the cloisters of the monastery; where to-day the children of the orphan asylum play above his grave. but all the conditions of holbein's daily life would lead him to prefer basel proper, and to choose the quarter in which he bought a home eight years later. this was then the western quarter of gross-basel, along the river-face of which ran the high southern and western bank of the rhine, the _rheinhalde_, now _st. johann vorstadt_. about where the present _blumenrain_ ends stood the arch, or _schwibbogen_. further on still stood the "gate of the cross" (_kreuzthor_), by the house of the brothers of st. anthony, the ancient _klösterli_ of basel. before the commandery of st. john got themselves included within the city wall the kreuzthor was its western gate. the whole district of _ze crüze_, so called because its boundaries were crosses before towers replaced them, has however become absorbed in the st. johann vorstadt, while the kreuzthor has disappeared altogether. the quarter was a favourite one with members of the fishers' guild and with decent folk of small mean s. as early as the fishers' company had extended itself so greatly as to become a notable institution of the vorstadt, including many members from klein-basel also; while its military record was a proud one. but it was in this year, while holbein was making his visit to lucerne and beyond, that this guild took the more truly descriptive name which it bears to this day, that of the "vorstadt association" (_vorstadtgesellschaft_). and to this association, which in after years gave him a famous banquet, holbein, we know, belonged later on, if not now. every day would take him to the fischmarkt,--the great square humming with activity, crowded with inns, public-houses, shops, booths, dwelling-houses,--the trade mart of every nationality. the cornmarkt near by, now the _marktplatz_, with its almost finished rathaus, was the centre of official civic life. when the great bell clanged on the rathaus, and its flag was flung out, not only every professional soldier, but every guild and every male above fourteen, knew his appointed place at the wall, and took it. but every day, and all day, the fischmarkt flung out its peaceful standards, or rallied men to this side or to that with the tocsin of its presses,--the old amerbach printing-house "of the settle" (_zum sessel_), which was johann froben's home and printing-house in . morning after morning, and year upon year, holbein turned his back upon st. johannthor, and walked eastward along the rheinhalde;--the river racing toward him on his left hand, the university rising in front of him beyond the bridge, and the delicate cathedral towers beyond the university. for the basel minster was still the cathedral of the great see of basel. passing the wall of the dominican cemetery, on which was painted the ancient dance of death with which his own after-creations were so often to be confused, holbein must many a time have studied the famous old copy. for though the dominican painting was then nearly a century old, it was a copy of a still older original in the klein-basel nunnery of _klingenthal_, a community under dominican direction. but he would pass another spot--one day to be of far more living importance to him. in it was a corn warehouse, known by the name of _ze crüz_, which belonged to adam petri, the printer, who had inherited it from his uncle, the famous printer johann petri, by whose ingenious improvements the art of printing was so greatly facilitated. two years later, in , froben bought this granary, ze crüz, and converted it into the book-magazine which was known all over europe as "froben's book-house." and in this latter year adam petri, greatly to luther's disgust, pirated luther's translation of the new testament, which had appeared three months before. holbein drew a superb title-page, ante-dated , for this "enterprise" of petri--the new testament "now right faithfully rendered into german,"--with the symbols of the evangelists at the four corners, the arms of basel at the top, the device of the printer at the foot, and the noble figures of st. paul and st. peter on either side; figures which will bear comparison with dürer's "four temperaments" of a later date. later still he designed another striking title-page for thomas wolff's translation; and his beautiful title-pages and ornaments for froben, with whom his connection was not a temporary matter such as these others, would need a volume to themselves. holbein's only rival, if he could be called such, in work of this sort was the talented goldsmith, urs graf, who, as an exceedingly loose fish, lived most appropriately in the fischmarkt in his own house near the old birsig bridge, when he was not in the lock-up for one or another of his constant brawls and scandals. but to compare the best work of both is to recognise a difference in kind as well as degree: the essential difference between even negligent genius and the most elaborate talent. high talent urs graf had unquestionably; though stamped,--i think,--with the lawless caprices of his own character. holbein's every design has not only what urs graf lacked--that ordered imagination which is style--but over and above all, the subtle expression of power. many a time, too, just where he would turn away from the rhine for the business centre of gross-basel, the artist would make some little pause at the old "flower" inn (_zur blume_), which gave its name to the blumenplatz, and is still commemorated in the greatly extended blumenrain of to-day. all the world now knows the famous hotel of "the three kings"; and where it reaches nearest to the old bridge stood the "blume" of holbein's time, even then the oldest of the basel inns. this blume, not to be confused with later inns of the same name, shared with its no less famous contemporary,--"the stork," in the fischmarkt,--the special patronage of the chief printers. basilius amerbach, for instance, the brother of holbein's friend bonifacius, lived at the blume; and often the painter must have turned in for a friendly glass with him and a chat about bonifacius, away at his law studies in avignon. as for the stork, its very rooms were named in remembrance of the envoys and merchant traders who flocked to it on all great occasions. there was a "cologne room," for instance, and a "venetian room," among many others. the men of venice, indeed, had a particular affection for it. here holbein met with all nationalities, and learned much of the great centres of other countries. here came all the basel magnates and printers. and here, a few years later on, came that bizarre personage who was for a very brief time basel's "town physician," the paracelsus theophrastus bombastus to whom we owe our word _bombastic_. holbein was on a visit to england during the latter's short tenure of office, when the combined scholarship and poverty of oporinus made him the hack of paracelsus and the victim of many a petty tyranny. at that time oporinus,--the son of that hans herbster, painter, whose portrait is now attributed to ambrose holbein,--was glad to place his remarkable knowledge of greek at froben's service. he was not yet a printer, as later when holbein drew a clever device for him. and neither he nor the painter could know that one day the daughter of bonifacius amerbach should marry him out of sheer pity for his unhappy old age,--somewhat as he himself, when but a lad of twenty, married an aged xantippe from gratitude. but in , when holbein was just married, oporinus was still a student and bonifacius unmarried. erasmus, too, did not permanently take up his home with froben until the following year, and was now at louvain. yet what a true university was that little house _zum sessel_ (now , todtengässlein, the little lane where the old post-office stood) to an intelligence such as holbein's! and what a circle was that of froben's staff! from froben himself, above whom erasmus alone could tower in scholarship, down through every member to the youngest, and from such men as gerard lystrius on the one hand and the literally "beatus" rhenanus on the other, what things were not to be learned! and what discussions those were that drew each man to give of his best in the common talk! venice sent news of the "unspeakable" turk, whom she had such good cause to watch and dread. for fifty years his name had ceased to blanch the cheek of other nations; but now it was said, and said truly, that the dying selim, "the grim," had forged a thunderbolt which suleyman ii. would not be slow to hurl. no man could know the worst or dared predict the end, as to that yellow terror of holbein's time. and closer still, to keen eyes, were the threats of the coming peasant terror. wurtemberg had battened down the flames, it is true; but the deck of europe was hot under foot with the passions that were soon to make the turks' atrocities seem gentle in comparison. the death of maximilian and the election of charles v. were a year old now. but none knew better than the basel printers how much the league of swabia and the swiss confederation had weighed in the close contest of claims between those three strangely youthful competitors for the emperor's crown;--charles, but nineteen; francis i., one-and-twenty; and henry viii., not twenty-five. basel also knew that charles had only bought his triumph by swearing to summon the diet of worms. all the more, therefore, was she intensely alive to the possible issues of the arabian-nights-entertainment which had but just concluded on the dreary calais flats when holbein became one of basel's citizens. erasmus had come back full of it. marco polo's best wonders made but a dingy show beside the "field of the cloth of gold," where in this june the two defeated candidates for imperial honours had kissed each other midway between the ruined moat of guisnes and the rased battlements of arde. then, on top of this, came the rumours of the english king's undertaking to answer luther's most formidable attack on rome. it was in , the year after his great disputation with eck at leipzig, that luther published his cataclysmic addresses: "to the christian nobles of germany" and "on the babylonian captivity,"--the latter of which itself contains the whole protestant reformation in embryo. "would to god," exclaimed erasmus of it, "that he had followed my counsel and abstained from odious and seditious proceedings!" bishop tunstall, then in worms, had also written of it:--"i pray god keep that book out of england!" but before the year was out "that book" had reached england, and henry viii. had sworn to annihilate its arguments and to triumphantly defend the dogmas of rome. the eagerly-awaited "defence" did not get printed, and would remain in pope leo's hands for a year yet. but basel knew, through more and erasmus,--whose canny smile probably discounted its critical quality,--pretty much its line of defence. nor was froben's circle one whit more surprised than its royal author when its immediate reward was that formal style and title--_defender of the faith_,--to which a few years more were to lend so different a significance. by this latter date ulrich von hutten had fled to basel, only to find that his violent "heresies" had completely estranged erasmus, and closed froben's door, as well as all other roman catholic doors, against him for ever. he lodged, therefore, at the blume until the basel council requested him to leave the town, a little before his death, in . but in hutten was still at sickingen's fortress, digging with fierce ardour the impassable gulf between him and the band of friends and churchmen among whom holbein ever ranged himself. * * * * * among the five lost works which patin says holbein painted, there was a "nativity" and an "adoration of the kings." it is impossible now to say what resemblances, if any, existed between these and the same subjects, executed not much later, which are now in the university chapel, freiburg minster. these latter are the only known works of holbein that still hang in a sacred edifice. they were evidently designed to fold in upon a central altar-piece with an arched top, thus making, when open, the usual triptych; but the central painting has vanished. this large work was a gift to the carthusian monastery in klein-basel; and the arms of the donor, hans oberriedt, are displayed below the nativity, as well as the portraits of himself and his six sons. below the corresponding right wing, the adoration, are the arms of his wife and her portrait, with her four daughters. in both wings what i can only describe as the atmosphere of infancy,--and a touching atmosphere it is too--is strengthened by keeping all the figures small and heightening this suggestion by contrast with a grandiose architecture. in both, too, the sacred scenes reveal themselves like visions unseen by the oberriedt family, who face outward toward the altar and are supposed to be lighted by the actual lights of the church. the whole work must once have been a glorious creation, with its rich colours, its beautiful architectural forms, and its mingling of purest imagination with realism. what would one not give to see the lost work these wings covered? illustration: plate the nativity _oils. university chapel, freiburg cathedral_ in the left wing, the nativity (plate ), holbein has remarkably anticipated the lighting of correggio's famous masterpiece, not finished until years after this must have been painted, by the conditions of oberriedt's history and basel's as well. the light that is to light the world lights up the scene with an exquisite enchanting softness,--yet so brilliantly that the very lights of heaven seem dimmed in comparison. the moon, in holbein's deliberate audacity, seems but a disc as she bows her face, too, in worship. shining by some compulsion of purest nature, the divine radiance glows on the ecstatic mother; and away above and beyond her--"how far that little candle shines," and shines, and shines again amid the shadows! it illumines the beautiful face of the virgin, touches the reverent awe of st. joseph, plays over marble arch and pillar, discovers the wondering shepherd peering from behind the pillar on the left, and irradiates the angel in the distance, hastening to carry the "glad tidings." the happy cherubs behind the child rejoice in it; and as they spring forward one notices how holbein has boldly discarded the conventional, and attached their pinions as if these were a natural development of the arm instead of a separate member. the same union of unfettered fancy symbolism and realism displays itself throughout the right wing,--where the virgin is enthroned in front of crumbling palaces. the sun's rays form a great star, of such dazzling light that one of the attendants shades his eyes to look upward, and an old man with a noble head, wearing an ermine cape, presents his offering as the chief of the three kings; while a moorish sovereign, dressed in white, makes a splendid figure as he waits to kneel with his gift, and his greyhound stands beside him. the colouring of both paintings must have had an extraordinary beauty when the painter laid down his brush. to carp at such conceptions because their architecture is as imaginative and as deeply symbolical as the action, is to demand that holbein shall be someone else. these pictures, beyond the portraits below them, are the farthest possible from aiming at what we demand of realism, though their own realism is astonishing. holbein all too seldom sounds them, but when he does choose to stir only a joyous elation in the heart he rings a peal of silver bells. here all is glad thanksgiving. the divine has come into a sick and sorry world; and, behold, all is changed! nothing sordid, nothing shabby, consists with the _meaning_ of this miracle. therefore it is not here. all is transformed; all is a new jerusalem--splendour, peace, ineffable and mysterious beauty. with the dominance of the anti-catholic party, which unseated meyer zum hasen in , his friend oberriedt also fell into trouble. and soon after erasmus and bonifacius amerbach,--disgusted with the iconoclast fanaticism of and ,--took refuge in catholic freiburg-in-the-breisgau, oberriedt also left basel for that city. he took these wings with him to save them from the destruction which probably overtook the central work. the latter was, perhaps, too large to conceal or get away. during the thirty years' war they were again removed, and safeguarded at schaffhausen. and so great was their fame that they were twice expressly commanded to be brought before a sovereign; once to munich, to be seen by maximilian of bavaria; and again to ratisbon for the emperor ferdinand iii. in they were looted by the french, and were only restored to freiburg in . illustration: plate the passion _eight-panelled altar-piece oils. basel museum_ i _gethsemane_ ii _the kiss of judas_ iii _before pontius pilate_ iv _the scourging_ v _the mocking_ vi _the way to calvary_ vii _"it is finished"_ viii _the entombment_ another great religious picture, once no less renowned than oberriedt's altar-paintings, has suffered a worse fate. this is the eight-panelled altar-piece of the passion, now in the basel museum (plate ). so far back as is known it was preserved, probably after being hidden from the fury that attacked all church pictures, in the rathaus. maximilian i., of bavaria, the zealous collector of dürer's works, offered almost any price for this altar-piece by dürer's great contemporary. but basel, unlike nüremberg, was not to be bribed; and the world-famous painting remained to draw art-lovers from every country in europe. nor did the most competent judges fail to envy basel her jewel, and to eulogise its perfections. painters such as sandrart, looking at it after it had survived a hundred and fifty years of vicissitude, could exclaim: "it is a work in which the utmost that our art is capable of may be found; yielding the palm to none, whether of germany or italy, and justly wearing the laurel-wreath among the works of former times." alas! this laurel, too, has been filched from holbein's fame. in the altar-piece was consigned to the collection where it now is; and it was then decided to gild the gold and paint the lily. the work was subjected to one of those crude "restorations" which respect nothing save the frame. and no monarch will ever again compete for its possession. red is over red and blue over blue, doubtless; but in place of holbein's rich harmony a jangle of gaudy conflicting colours now sets one's teeth on edge. so that only in a photograph can one even enjoy the composition--all that is left of the master. but here it can be seen with what art the painter has so combined eight separate and distinct pictures, each a gem, into one, by such a distribution and balance that the whole is as integral as a pearl. the scene on the mount of olives, which a great critic once pronounced worthy to compare with correggio's work, is only to be surpassed by the entombment. and in every scene--what freedom, action, verve! from the first to the last all passes with the swift step of calamity, yet all with noble dignity. the basel museum possesses also a set of ten washed drawings in indian ink,--scenes of the passion designed for glass-painting,--which must be conned and conned again before one can "know" holbein at all in his deepest moods. they are a great testament, though they seem unbearably harsh at a superficial glance. but put aside your own ideas and humbly study the ideas of holbein,--sure that they must be well worth the reverence of yours or mine,--and little by little you will be made free of that underworld where holbein's true self has its home; you will pierce its gloom and find its clue and understand its tongue. it is a small matter whether you and i find ourselves in sympathy with that world, or can never be acclimatised. the great matter, the only matter, is to understand it; to see in its skeletons something more than lively bones, in its graves something besides horror. without mastering the logical sequence of these ten drawings,--where scene by scene the divine recedes before our eyes, and the son of man assumes more and more the whole burden of sin and death,--it is inevitable that the life-size painting of christ in the grave, also in the basel museum (plate ), should seem just a ghastly and "unpardonable" piece of realism. realism of the most ghastly truthfulness, as to a corpse in the grave, it certainly is. but although it may be questioned whether such a picture should ever be painted, no one who looks through the form to the thought that shapes it would pronounce even this awful utterance "unpardonable." there have been those who could see in this dead christ,--lying rigid in a green sarcophagus that throws over the waxen flesh the ghastly threat of that decay which would follow if no miracle intervened,--there have been those, i say, who could see in it only superb technique. and others see only the negation of all idealism, if not of all faith. illustration: plate christ in the grave _oils. basel museum_ yet put this painting,--the acme of technical beauty as well as of ruthless realism,--at the close of the ten passion drawings, and i venture to believe that the one coherent conception that runs through them all will legitimately find its conclusion here. here he lies that surrendered himself to the punishment of sin and the penalty of death--for all men and all time. his pale lips are set with the superhuman agony of the cry with which he paid the uttermost farthing of that bond. man has died for man, martyrs for faith; here god has died unto himself, for us. there has been no playing at death. all the pitiless terrors of the grave are here, with him who for love of us has chosen to know mortality "like at all points" with mortal men. what he bore for us, shall we shrink from so much as realising? the great eyes are fixed in a look whose penetrating, almost liquid sweetness not even the rigor of the final anguish could obliterate. divine devotion,--devotion more than mortal,--still lingers in those sockets. the heart may well dilate before this sight; the soul fall on its knees. by each of those bloodstained steps, by the sting of this death, we have been paid for. here, here only,--as holbein saw it,--is the leverage the heathen philosopher vainly sighed for to move the world; god's leverage, infinite love. this is anything but a theological tangent. a great artist has bequeathed us his beliefs,--drawn and painted in many works, with every patient, virile, expressive power at his command. there has been enough and to spare of shrieks or scoffs. a little humility and a little study is in place, too. for the rest, let us not forget that this large painting was made for some altar; and that many a weeping penitent, many a devout heart, has been pierced with its message. on the edge of the stone coffin, which is tinted a warm green within, and lit by some opening at the foot, is the inscription in gold letters: "jesus nazarenus rex judÆorum." the stigmata are painted with unsparing truth. the work is dated . there is in the hampton court gallery a little painting which has only comparatively recently been recognised as holbein's, but which forms the beautiful and fitting close of this set of religious pictures. as is the case with so many of his works, the critics are not unanimous upon it. but the authorities who have no doubts as to its being a genuine holbein of this period are so weighty that i need not argue the point in support of my own convictions. in the hampton court catalogue it is styled "mary magdalen at our lord's sepulchre," but i prefer to call it the risen christ (plate ). it must once have been supremely beautiful; for even now its ideal loveliness shines through all the evil fortunes which have once again defaced the handiwork of holbein. the type of christ, and indeed the work throughout, bears a marked resemblance to the eight-panelled basel altar-piece. the painter has chosen the moment recorded in the twentieth chapter of st. john. in that early dawn, "when it was yet dark," mary has brought spikenard in a marble cup, if not to anoint the sacred dead at least to pour it on the threshold of the sealed tomb, with tears and prayers. she has fled to tell st. john and st. peter of the sacrilege of the open tomb,--has followed them back, still mechanically clasping her useless spikenard,--has seen them go in where her trembling knees refused to follow, and then go homeward, as we can see them in the distance, arguing the almost incredible fact. poor mary has had no heart for discussion. she has stayed weeping by the empty grave until two pitying angels have appeared to recall her from despair, and she has "turned herself back,"--too frightened to stay for comfort. and then she has seen near her a face, a form, she was too dazed to recognise until the unforgettable voice has thrilled through her, and she has flung herself forward with the old, instinctive cry, "master!" to touch, to clasp that hand, so dear, so familiar, so all-protecting, and find it a reality. it is this tremendous moment that holbein has seized. and with what exquisite feeling for every detail of the scene, every great emotion! had the painting been preserved, as it deserved to be, surely it too could claim a part of that laurel wreath which sandrart averred could not be torn from the basel altar-piece by any rival, whether italian or german. illustration: plate the risen christ _oils. hampton court gallery_ the misty landscape, with the crosses of golgotha and the eastern hills catching the first brightness of the new day dawning over mortality; the broken clouds of night, scattered like the conquered horrors of the grave, and the illuminated tomb where hope and faith henceforth ask us why we weep; the hurrying agitation of st. peter and the trusting serenity of st. john, expressed in every gesture; the dusky trees; mary's quivering doubt and rapture, touched with some new awe; and the simple majesty with which our lord stays that unconscious innocent presumption, _touch me not_. what forbidding tenderness in that face lighted by the grave he has passed through! what a subtle yet eloquent suggestion of the eternal difference, henceforth, between love and love is in these mortal lineaments that have evermore resumed their divinity! no face, no type, no art, can ever realise christ; yet when this little painting was first added to the great roll of holbein _basiliensis_, it must have gone as near to realising its subject as the colours of earth can go. but every man, happily for himself, has a material as well as an immaterial world with which he must be concerned. to transpose bagehot's profound little saying,--each man dines in a room apart, but we all go down to dinner together. and though holbein knew the pinch of narrow means, he had no lack of good cheer as well as austere food in his art. on march th, , the great council held its first meeting in the new rathaus; and meyer zum hasen, who presided over it as burgomaster, entrusted to his protégé the enviable task of decorating the council chamber. fifty-six years after holbein's work was completed these wall-paintings were described as "representations of the noblest subjects--done by the german apelles." by this title the painter was everywhere recognised throughout the greater part of his lifetime. in all, there would seem to have been six large pictures or set pieces; but two were not done until years later. one wall being too broken up by windows to be suitable, there remained three,--of which "the back wall" adjoining meyer's house was not touched at this time. ostensibly the reason was want of funds; but as a matter of fact the protestant party (to anticipate this name), which grew strong enough to unseat meyer before the year was out, was at this time indifferent to art when not positively inimical to it. whether treating a façade or an interior it was holbein's custom to make a flat wall-space assume the most solid-looking forms of renaissance architecture. iselin once said of a façade of holbein's, that there was a dog painted on it so naturally that the dogs in the street would run up and bark at it. and so astounding was the realism with which he threw out balconies, and added windows, cornices, and statues, and the richest carvings, pillars, arches, and vistas of every sort, that no eye could credit them with illusion. horses neighed in the courtyards, flowers bloomed in the gardens, dogs leaped beside master or mistress, and children played in the spacious balconies, or moved to and fro between the splendid marble pillars and the distant wall. to study the copies that remain of such works is to be astounded by their feats of perspective. inside would be kindred illusions. large pictures would seem to be actually taking place without, and beheld through beautifully carved archways or windows; while the apparent walls would have niches filled with superb marble statues and the ceiling be supported by pillars, behind which people walked and talked or leaned out to watch the chief scenes. and so it was with the council chamber. but nothing now remains of these works except fragments and a few drawings for the principal features. so far as can be judged, each wall had two large scenes; the four pictures of this period being chosen from the heroic legends of the _gesta romanorum_; the two painted later, from the old testament. but while these large works were going forward holbein was busy with many others; private commissions for froben, occasionally for other printers, and for altar-pieces or portraits. all through his life his industry and accomplishment left him small time for leisure or the dissipations of leisure. nor is there any year of his life when his work does not attest a clear eye and a firm hand. these things are their own certificate of conduct; at any rate, of "worldly" conduct. * * * * * in occurred two important events in his life. his first child, the son he called philip, was born; and he painted an altar-piece which is in some respects the most beautiful of his extant works. the latter--now in the solothurn museum, and therefore called the "solothurn madonna" (plate )--has had one of the most extraordinary histories to be found in the records of art. illustration: plate the solothurn, or zetter'sche, madonna _oils. solothurn museum_ the background of this picture,--a massive arch of grey sandstone supported by iron stanchions,--was evidently designed to suit the surrounding architecture of some grey-walled ancient structure. on a daïs covered with a green carpet, patterned in white and red and emblazoned with the arms of the donor and his wife, sits the lovely madonna with the child held freely yet firmly in two of the most exquisite hands which even holbein ever painted. her dress is a rich rose-red; her symbolical mantle of universal motherhood, or "grace," is a most beautiful ultramarine, loaded in the shadows and like a sapphire in its lights. the flowing gold of her hair shimmers under its filmy veil, and the jewels in her gold crown flash below the great white pearls that tip its points. where the sky-background approaches mother and child, its azure tone is lost in a pure effulgence of light; as if the very ether were suffused with the sense of the divine. the child is drawn and painted superbly. the carnations are exquisite; the gravity of infancy is not exaggerated, yet fittingly enforces the gesture of benediction. the left hand is turned outward in a movement so peculiar to happy, vigorous babyhood that it is a marvel of observation and nature. the little foot is admirably foreshortened, and the wrinkled sole a bit of inimitable painting. but perhaps most wonderful of all is the art with which, amid so many splendid details, the child is the centre of interest as well as of the picture. how it is so, is holbein's own secret. to right and left of the virgin stand two fine types of spiritual and temporal authority. behind and at her right, almost hidden by the amplitude of her mantle, kneels a poor wretch who is introduced here by some necessity of the commission itself, but is skilfully prevented from obtruding his needs on the serene beauty of the scene. dropping gold into his alms-bowl with a hand effectively contrasted with his brown thumb, stands "the sinner's saint"--the good bishop of tours; while some other condition of the work has embroidered st. martin's red mitre with the figure of st. nicholas. there is one other striking circumstance about st. martin; and that is that, although he is in the virgin's presence, he wears the violet chasuble of an intercessor. the chasuble is lined with red, and it and the rich vestments, on which scenes of the passion are displayed, are the patient verisimilitude of ancient vestments. in st. martin's gloved left hand is his crozier and the right glove, which he has drawn off to bestow his alms. opposite to him stands the patron-saint of solothurn,--st. ursus, a hero of the theban legend,--dressed from head to foot in a suit of magnificently painted armour. his left hand grasps his sword-hilt; his right supports the great red flag with its white cross. nor is that flag of the year the least interesting detail of this work. with the crimson reflections of the flag streaking the cold gleams of his glittering armour, his stern dark face and the white plumes tossing to his shoulder, st. ursus is a figure that may well leave historical accuracy to pedants. below his foot are the initials h.h., and the date, ; as if cut into the stone. this work was commissioned by hans gerster, for many years town archivist of basel, in which capacity he had to convey important state papers to other councils with which that of basel had negotiations. from this it came about that from the year when basel entered the swiss confederation, in , gerster was almost as much at home in the "city of ambassadors" as in his own, and the dean or _probst_ of the solothurn cathedral--the "cathedral of st. ursus and st. victor"--became not only his spiritual director, but one of his most intimate friends. many circumstances which cannot be given here make it pretty evident that in gerster, probably under the advice of the probst, the coadjutor nicholas von diesbach, made this picture an _expiatory_ offering for some secret sin of grave proportions. there are hints that point to treachery to the basel troops, in the imperial interests, sympathy with which finally cost him, as well as his friend meyer zum hasen, his official position. gerster himself was not a native of basel, although his wife, barbara guldenknopf, was. be this as it may, it is apparently in direct connection with this confessed sin that "the sinner's saint," st. martin of tours, is chosen as intercessor for gerster, wearing the prescribed chasuble for this office. and it seems likely that the addition to his mitre of the figure of st. nicholas was gerster's wish, in order to specially associate the name-saint of his friend--nicholas von diesbach--with this intercession. it is assumed by those who have patiently unearthed these details of circumstantial evidence, that the beggar is introduced to mark the identity of the boundlessly charitable bishop of tours. but i venture to suggest still another reason: this is, that in the uplifted, pleading face of the mendicant, whose expression of appeal and humility is a striking bit of realism in these ideal surroundings, we may have the actual portrait of the donor, hans gerster himself. that this should be so would be in strict accord with the methods of the period. there is a striking parallel which will occur to all who are familiar with the st. elizabeth in the st. sebastian altar-piece at munich. here the undoubted portrait of hans holbein the elder is seen as the beggar in the background. it is, as has been said, a marvellous story by which this glorious painting,--in which the introduction of the patron-saint of solothurn proves that it was created for one of her own altars,--was completely lost to her, and to the very histories of art, and then returned to the city for which it was originally destined; all by a chain of seemingly unrelated accidents. but only the skeleton of that story can be given here.[ ] in all probability this madonna was executed for the altar of the ancient lady chapel of the solothurn cathedral. a hundred and twenty-six years after it was painted, this chapel was pulled down, to be replaced by a totally different style of architecture; and as the picture was then smoke-stained and "old-fashioned" it would in all likelihood drop into some lumber-room. at all events, it must have become the property of the cathedral choirmaster,--one hartmann,--after another five-and-thirty years. for at this time he built, and soon after endowed, the little village church of allerheiligen, on the outskirts of the industrial town of grenchen, which lies at the southern foot of the jura. _facilis descensus!_ another turn of the centuries' wheel and the gift of this chapel's founder was once again thought unworthy of the altar to which it had been presented. when herr zetter of solothurn first saw it in the queer little allerheiligen chapel, it hung high up on the choir wall; blackened, worm-eaten, without a frame, suspended by a string passed through two holes which had been bored through the painted panel itself. yet his acute eye was greatly interested by it. and when, during an official visit in , he heard that the chapel was undergoing a drastic renovation, he was concerned for the fate of the discoloured old painting. at first it could not be discovered at all. finally he found it, face downward, spotted all over with whitewash, under the rough boards that served for the workmen's platform. a few hours later and it, too, would have been irrevocably gone; carted away with the "old rubbish"! he examined it, made out the signature, knew that this might mean either any one of a number of painters who used it, or a clumsy copy or forgery, yet had the courage of his conviction that it was holbein's genuine work. he bought it of the responsible authority, who was glad to be rid of four despised paintings, for the cost of all the new decorations. he had expert opinion, which utterly discouraged his belief; but stuck to it, took the risks of having it three long years (so rotten was its whole condition) under repairs which might at any moment collapse with it, yet leave their tremendous expenses behind to be settled just the same; and finally found himself the possessor of a perfectly restored chef-d'oeuvre of holbein's brush, which, from the first, herr zetter devoted to the museum (now a fine new one) of solothurn. to-day this work, which some forty years ago no one dreamed had ever existed, smiles in all the beauty of its first painting; a monument to the insight and generous enthusiasm of the gentleman whose name is rightly connected with its own in its official title--"the zetter-madonna of solothurn." and it smiles with holbein's own undebased handiwork throughout. _pace_ woltmann's blunder,--its network of fine cracks, even over the virgin's face, attests that it has suffered no over-painting. the work has been mounted on a solid back, the greatest fissures and the holes filled up to match their surroundings, the stains and defacements of neglect cleared away, and the triumph is complete. it might well be the "swan song" of a veteran artist at such work. whatever the mistakes of eigener's career, the restoration of the solothurn madonna was a flawless achievement for himself and his associates. this work, too, is the most precious of all that have come down to us of holbein's imaginative compositions, from the fact that his first-born, philip, who was born about , was the model for the child, and that a portrait of elsbeth, his wife, served as a study for the virgin. this portrait is an unnamed and unsigned drawing in silver-point and indian ink, heightened with touches of red chalk, now in the louvre collection. (plate .) illustration: plate unnamed portrait-study: not catalogued as holbein's _silver-point and indian-ink. louvre collection_ _believed by the writer to be holbein's drawing of his wife before her first marriage, and the model for the solothurn madonna_ that this is a portrait of holbein's wife any careful comparison with her portrait at basel must establish. feature for feature, allowing for the changes of sufficient years, the two faces are one and the same. the very line of the shoulder, setting of the head, and even the outline of the fashion in which the low dress is cut, is alike in both. and equally unmistakable is the relation between this louvre drawing and the madonna of solothurn. yet i am unable to accept woltmann's theory that the drawing was made in "for" the virgin. he assumes that the lettering which borders the bodice in this drawing--als. in. ern. als. in....--and the braids in which the hair is worn are simply some "fancy" dress. but surely if ever hair bore the stamp of unstudied, even ugly custom, it does so here. then, too, woltmann himself, as are all who adopt this explanation, is unable to reconcile the oldest age which can be assigned to this sitter with the youngest that can be assumed for the basel painting of upon a hypothesis of only seven years' interval. temperament and trouble can do much in seven years; but not so much as this. i say _temperament_ advisedly; because all the evidence of holbein's life substantiates the assertion of van mander, who had it from holbein's own circle of contemporaries,--that the painter's life was made wretched by her violent temper. we shall find him far from blameless in later years; but though it may not excuse him, his unhappy home must largely explain his alienation. yet that it can explain such an alteration as that between the louvre drawing and the basel portrait i do not believe. nor could i persuade myself either that any married woman of the sixteenth century wore her hair in that most exclusive and invariable of teuton symbols--"maiden" plaits;--or that any husband ever thought it necessary to advertise upon a picture of his wife that he held her "in all honour." myself, i must believe, then, that this portrait was made years before ; probably in the young painter's first months in basel, in ; and thus some fourteen years before the basel group of was painted. it may well have been that some serious misunderstanding between them was at the bottom of that otherwise inexplicable departure in , and the two years' absence in lucerne and still more southern cities. of course this is mere guesswork; so is every hypothesis until it is proved. but all the simple commonplaces of first love, estrangement, separation, and a renewed betrothal after elsbeth's early widowhood with one child, could easily have run a natural course between and their marriage, somewhere about . as for the inscription,--it is a detail that woltmann thinks represents a repetition of the one phrase, and that i imagine to have suggested what for some reason holbein did not wish to proclaim:--"in all honour. [in all love.]" but nothing can shake my conviction that in it we hear the faint far-off echoes from some belfry in holbein's own city of Îs. the realities of that chime are buried,--whether well or ill,--four hundred years deep in the seas that roll over that submerged world of his youth and passion. but living emotion, we may be sure, went to the writing and the treasuring of this pledge to elsbeth or himself; a pledge redeemed when she became his wife. thus for the altar-piece of there would be this portrait of elsbeth in her girlhood ready to his hand. but even so, see how he has idealised it, made a new creature of it, all compact of exquisite ideals! he has eliminated the subtle sensuousness which has its own allure in the drawing. every trait is refined, purified, vivified, raised to another plane of character. genius has put the inferior elements into its retort, and transmuted them to some heavenly metal far enough from holbein's home-life. throughout all these years, as has been said, he was busy for the printers also. in he drew the noble title-page for petri's edition of luther's new testament, with the figures of st. peter and st. paul at either side, of which mention has been made. and in thomas wolff's edition of there is a series of his designs. his alphabets, borders, illustrations of all sorts, continued to enrich the basel press from this date, and were often borrowed by printers in other cities. in there came to basel that masterly wood-cutter who has been already referred to,--hans lützelburger. and from this time on, therefore, holbein's designs may be seen in their true beauty. he had painted, besides portraits of froben and others, at least three portraits of erasmus by . for in june of this year the latter writes to his friend pirkheimer, at nürnberg, to say that he has sent two of these portraits by the "most accomplished painter" to england; while the artist himself, he adds, has conveyed still a third to france. the smaller of the two sent to england, two-thirds the size of life, is probably the one now in the louvre (plate ). it is a masterpiece of penetration and technique. erasmus is here seen in the most unaffected simplicity of dress and pose; in profile against a dark-green tapestry patterned with light green, and red and white flowers. the usual scholar's cap covers his grey hair. the blue-grey eyes are glancing down at his writing. studies for the marvellously painted hands are among the louvre drawings. the very self of the man--the lean, strong, _thinking_ countenance,--the elusive smile, shrewd, ironical, yet kindly, stealing out on his lips,--is alive here by some necromancy of art. illustration: plate erasmus _oils. the louvre_ the portrait now in the basel museum, in oils on paper, afterwards fastened to the panel, is in all likelihood that third portrait which erasmus told pirkheimer the painter himself had taken to france. so that holbein must have painted it for, and carried it to, bonifacius amerbach, who was then, in , finishing a renewed course of study at avignon. probably it was during this visit to france, too, that he made the spirited sketches of monuments at bourges. in that case it would seem that he struck across by way of dijon to the cathedral city, in connection with some matter not now to be discovered, and from there took the great highway to avignon by way of lyons; carrying with him the gift of his sketches from the monuments of duke jehan of berri and his wife. these were treasured in amerbach's collection. whatever the reason that sent him abroad on this journey,--whether unhappiness at home or the troubled state of public affairs during the peasants' war of and ,--or whether he simply had business in france which delayed him there for a year or two--at all events, all records fail as to his wanderings or work in this long interval. and many circumstances go to show that it was at this time that he entered upon the immortal work which was published at lyons, by the trechsel brothers, many years later;--those "images of death" which have borrowed the old name in popular parlance, and are generally called holbein's "dance" of death. just why the trechsels did not issue the publication until it is impossible to say. as one of the largest catholic publishing-houses of france, they would be governed by circumstances entirely outside of holbein's history or control. but more than one circumstance presses the conclusion that the designs were made between and . and there is a certain amount of evidence for the belief that they may have been first struck off in germany, possibly by some one of the multifarious connections of the trechsels, as early as . but this is a large subject, not to be dealt with as an aside. all the world knows these wonderful designs; their beauty of line, power of expression, and sparkling fancy. among them all there are only two where death is a figure of violence; and but one,--the knight, transfixed by one fell, malignant stroke from behind--where death exhibits positive ferocity. in both of these,--the count, beaten down by his own great coat-of-arms, is the other,--it is easy to read a reflection of the actualities of the peasants' war then raging. for the rest, the grim skeleton wears no unkind smile; though that he _is_ death makes it look a ghastly-enough pleasantry. but toward the poor and the aged he is better than merry; he is kind. his fleshless hand is raised in benediction over the aged woman; and the bent patriarch leans on his arm, listening to death's attendant playing the sweet old melodies of long-ago as he stands on the verge of the great silence. but where a selection must be made, there are two drawings with their own special claim to consideration. these are the ploughman and the priest (plates and ). the former has been cited by ruskin as an example of a perfect design for wood-engraving; but even higher than its art, to my thinking, is its feeling. to the labourer of this sort,--poor, patient, toilworn,--holbein's heart is very gentle. and so is death--who muffles up his harsh features and speeds the heavy plough with a step like that of hope. and at the end of the long, last uphill furrow, see how the setting sun shines on "god's acre!" illustration: plate the ploughman _"images of death" woodcut series_ the priest _"images of death" woodcut series_ the second selection, the priest, is its own proof, if any were needed, of how sharply holbein distinguished cloth from cloth. in it, nearly a decade after he had pointed erasmus's satire on the unworthy prelate or the unclean friar, may plainly be read that reverence for the true priest which holbein shared with all his best friends. in the quaint, quiet street this solemn procession is too familiar a sight to draw any spectator from the hearth where the fire of the living is blazing so cheerily. the good father, very lovingly drawn, casts his kind glance around as he passes on his office with the veiled pyx carried reverently. before him goes death, his server, hastening the last mercy with eager steps. under his arm is the tiny glass that has measured the whole of a mortality; the sands have lost their moving charm, and all their dazzle makes but a little shadow now. in his hand is the bell that sounds take heed, take heed, to the careless; and pardon, peace, to dying ears that strain to hear it. but largest of all his symbols is the lamp in his right hand; his own lamp, the lamp that dissipates earth's last shadows--the light of death. holbein must have had his own solemn memories of the last office as he drew this picture of the good parish priest. for it was just about this time that the viaticum must have been administered to his father. in the then burgomaster of basel wrote to the monastery at issenheim, where hans holbein the elder had left his painting implements behind him years before, in which he recalls to the fathers how vainly and how often "our citizen," hans the younger, had applied to get these costly materials restored to their owner during his life; or to himself as his father's heir afterwards. this application was no more successful than holbein's own, apparently; and the painter was told to seek his father's gold and pigments among the peasants who had pillaged the monastery. by holbein was back in basel; but two works of this year would go to show that he was little less separated from his wife in basel than when away. the first of these, about one-third life-size, is a portrait of a woman with a child beside her who grasps an arrow to suggest the goddess of love attended by a wingless cupid (plate ). the little red-haired child does not do much to realise the ideal; but the woman, though not an ideal venus, might nevertheless well pose as a man's goddess. a "fair" woman in more senses than her colouring. her dark-red velvet dress slashed with white; wide sleeves of dusky gold-coloured silk; her close-fitting black head-dress embroidered with gold; the soft seduction of her look; the welcoming gesture of that pretty palm flung outward as if to embrace; these are all in keeping. illustration: plate dorothea offenburg as the goddess of love _oils. basel museum_ this was a lady whose past career might have warned a lover that whatever she might prove as a goddess, she could play but a fallen angel's part. the annals of basel knew her only too well. this was dorothea, the daughter of a knight of good old lineage,--hans von offenburg. but the knight died while she was quite young, and her mother, better famed for looks than conduct, married the girl to a debauched young aristocrat,--joachim von sultz. his own record is hardly less shameless than dorothea's soon became,--though the latter is chiefly in archives of the "unspeakable" sort. at the time when this picture was painted she must have been about two-and-twenty. unhappy holbein, indeed! the temper of xantippe herself, if she be but the decent mother of one's children, might work less havoc with a life than this embroidered cestus. but "the german apelles" was no greek voluptuary, ambitious in heathen vices, such as that other apelles whose painting of venus was said to be his masterpiece. and when holbein inscribed his second portrait of dorothea with the words laÏs corinthiaca, the midsummer madness must have been already a matter of scorn and wonder to himself. his whole life and the works of his life are the negation of the groves of corinth. the paint was not long dry on the goddess of love--at any rate, her dress was not worn out--before he had seen her in her true colours; "the daughter of the horse-leech, crying give, give." and so he painted her in (plate ); to scourge himself, surely, since she was too notoriously infamous to be affected by it. as if in stern scorn of every beauty, every allure, he set himself to record them in detail: something in the spirit with which macaulay set himself, "by the blessing of god," to do "full justice" to the poems of montgomery. laïs is far more beautiful, and far more beautifully painted, than venus. no emotion has hurried the painter's hand or confused his eye this time. in vain she wears such sadness in her eyes, such pensive dignity of attitude, such a wistful smile on her lips. he knows them, now, for false lights on the wrecker's coast. no faltering; no turning back. he can even fit a new head-dress on the lovely hair, and add the puffed sleeves below the short ones. he is a painter now; not a lover. and lest there should be one doubt as to his purpose, he flings a heap of gold where "cupid's" little hand would now seem desecrated, and inscribes beneath it the name that fits her beauty and his contempt. the plague was raging in basel all through that spring and summer, but i doubt if holbein shuddered at its contact as at the loveliness he painted. the brand he placed upon it is proof of that--laïs corinthiaca, the infamous mistress of the greek apelles. illustration: plate dorothea offenburg as laÏs corinthiaca _oils. basel museum_ but in men sat among the ashes of far goodlier palaces and larger interests than personal ones. the party in power was not friendlier to art than to the church of rome. in january the painters' guild had presented a petition to the council,--humbly praying that its members, "who had wives and children depending on their work," might be allowed to pursue it in basel! and so hard was holbein himself hit by the fanatical excitement of the time that the council's account-books show the paltry wage he was glad to earn for painting a few shields on some official building "in the borough of waldenburg." small wonder that an artist such as holbein should feel his heart grow sick within him, and should turn his thoughts with increasing determination to some fresh field. even without the bitterness that now must have edged the tongue of a wronged wife, or the bitterer taste of dead sea fruit in his own mouth,--he must have been driven to try his luck elsewhere. and of all the invitations urged upon him, the chances which erasmus's introductions could give him in england would probably offer the greatest promise. but before he set out with these letters, in the late summer of , he executed yet one more great commission for his old friend, jacob meyer zum hasen, now leader of the catholic party in opposition. this was the work known now to all the civilised world as "the meyer madonna." for centuries the beautiful picture which bears this name in the dresden gallery has been cited by every expert authority and critic as this work. but since the mysterious appearance of the darmstadt painting, which suddenly turned up in a paris art collector's possession, from no one knows where in , the tide of belief has slowly receded from the dresden painting. until now there are only a few judges who do not hold--especially since the public comparison of the two works at dresden in --that the dresden picture is "a copy by an inferior hand." unquestionably the painting now in the schloss at darmstadt is the earlier version. and unquestionably, too, the changes introduced in the dresden copy,--the elevated architecture, slenderer figures, and less happy child,--are so great as to lend weight to the arguments of those who still claim that no copyist would ever have made them. but, as has been said, the contention that the dresden work is a replica by holbein of the older darmstadt altar-piece, is now maintained by only a very small minority of judges. the painting of the darmstadt work is admitted by all to be more uniformly admirable, more completely carried out; the details more finished (except in the case of the virgin), and the colours richer and more harmonious. yet both works should be studied to appreciate fully their claims and differences (plates and ). illustration: plate the meyer-madonna _oils. grand ducal collection, darmstadt_ illustration: plate the meyer-madonna [_later version. held by many to be a copy_] _oils. dresden gallery_ in the darmstadt work the virgin's dress is wholly different in tone from her robe at dresden; otherwise the colouring aims to be the same in each. here, in the original altar-piece, it is a greenish-blue. the lower sleeves are golden, a line of white at the wrist, and a filmier one within the bodice. her girdle is a rich red; her mantle a greenish-grey. over this latter her fair hair streams like softest sunshine. above her noble, pity-full face sits her crown of fine gold and pearls. the woman kneeling nearest to the madonna is commonly believed to be meyer's first wife, who had died in , the mother of one child--a daughter--by a previous husband. between this stepdaughter and meyer there was considerable litigation over her property. the younger woman, whose chin-cloth is dropped in the painting though worn like the others in the drawing for her portrait, is meyer's second wife, dorothea kannegiesser, whom he married about , and with whom he was painted by holbein in . the sombre garments of both women are echoed by the black of meyer's hair and coat, the latter lined with light-brown fur. meyer's face, in its manly intensity of devotional feeling, is a wonderful piece of psychology in the darmstadt picture. in the drawing for the young girl, anna meyer, who kneels beside her mother with a red rosary in her hands, she has her golden-brown hair hanging loose down her back, as befits a girl of thirteen. but in the painting it is coiled in glossy braids beneath some ceremonial head-dress; this is richly embroidered with pearls, with red silk tassel and a wreath of red and white flowers above it. this head-dress is painted with much more beautiful precision in the older work, and the expression of the girl's face is much more deeply devout; her hands, too, are decidedly superior to those of the dresden work. this is true also of the carpet, patterned in red and green, with touches of white and black, on a ground of deep yellow. the dresden carpet is conspicuously inferior in finish and colour to that of darmstadt, so much so that waagen and others, who believe the former a replica, think a pupil or assistant may have been responsible for this and other details, which for some reason holbein himself was unable to finish. the elder boy, with the tumbled brown hair, dressed in a light-brown coat trimmed with red-brown velvet, and hose of cinnabar-red, with decorations of gold clasps and tags on fine blue cords, has a yellowish-green portemonnaie, with tassels of dull blue hanging from his girdle. all the carnations are superb, and in the darmstadt picture the infant christ wears a sweet and happy smile. in that of dresden he looks sad and ill; a fact which has given rise to the theory ruskin adopted--that the virgin had put down the divine child and taken up meyer's ailing one. but the absence of wonder on the faces of meyer's family, and, indeed, the familiar affection of the elder boy, would of itself negative this theory. i have my own ideas as to this point, but it would serve no useful purpose to go into them in this place. of these two sons of meyer there is no other record. anna alone survived her mother, who married again after meyer's death. anna's daughter married burgomaster remigius fäsch, or fesch, whose grandson--remigius fäsch, counsellor-at-law--was the well-known art collector whose collection and manuscript are also in the basel museum, where there is an oil-copy of the dresden meyer-madonna. even the cool eye of walpole was warmed by this great work of , as he saw it in the dresden painting then hanging in the palazzo delfino at venice. "for the colouring," he exclaims, "it is beautiful beyond description; and the carnations have that enamelled bloom so peculiar to holbein, who touched his works till not a touch remained discernible." twenty years earlier edward wright had written of meyer's youngest boy--"the little naked boy could hardly have been outdone, if i may dare to say such a word, by raphael himself." and in our own day that fine and measured critic, mrs. jameson, has spoken for generation upon generation who have thought the same thought before the meyer-madonna of dresden, when she says of it: "in purity, dignity, humility and intellectual grace this exquisite madonna has never been surpassed; not even by raphael. the face, once seen, haunts the memory." when wright and walpole saw this dresden work at venice, it was supposed to be "the family of sir thomas more"--_meier_ having slipped into "more" in the course of centuries, which had retained only the vivid impression of holbein's association with the latter, and knew that the painter had drawn him in the midst of his family. that living association was now, late in the summer of this year, about to begin. chapter iii chances and changes - first visit to england--sir thomas more; his home and portraits--the windsor drawings--bishop fisher--archbishop warham--bishop stokesley--sir henry guildford and his portrait--nicholas kratzer--sir bryan tuke--holbein's return to basel--portrait-group of his wife and two eldest children; two versions--holbein's children, and families claiming descent from him--iconoclastic fury--ruined arts--death of meyer zum hasen--another meyer commissions the last paintings for basel--return to england--description of the steelyard--portraits of its members--george gysze--basel council summons holbein home--"the ambassadors" at the national gallery; accepted identification--coronation of queen anne boleyn--lost paintings for the guildhall of the steelyard; the triumphs of riches and poverty--the great morett portrait; identifications--holbein's industry and fertility--designs for metal-work and other drawings--solomon and the queen of sheba. two years earlier erasmus had evidently thought that london was the true stage for such a genius as holbein's, and more had written that he would gladly do all he could to further the painter's success if he should decide to visit england. more himself called holbein "a marvellous artist" for his portrait of erasmus, and could not but be delighted with the beautiful little woodcut which opened froben's edition of his own _utopia_. this illustration represents more and his only son seated with Ægidius, or peter gillis, in the latter's own garden at antwerp, listening to the tale of _utopia_ from the ancient comrade of amerigo vespucci. and very likely holbein himself sat in this garden, in the late summer of , when he was passing through antwerp to england. he had a letter of introduction from erasmus to Ægidius, as also to the host who was expecting him in england--sir thomas more. van mander says that long before this the earl of arundel, when pausing at basel, had been so much pleased with holbein's works in that city that he had urged the painter to forsake it for london. but it would pretty surely have been the promise of more's influence which actually induced him to try his fortune so far afield. and by the autumn of he was one of that happy company which the genial soul of more drew around him in his new home in "chelsea village," where beaufort row now has its north end. here the master's love of every art, and aptitude in affairs, filled his hospitable mansion with wit and music and joyous strenuousness. here he was the idol of his family, as well as the king's friend. henry himself must surely have shuddered could he have pictured that face, over which thought and humour were ever chasing one another like sun and shadow on the lawn, black above london bridge and flung at last from it into the thames only a few years hence. now it turned to his own all life and loyalty, as he laid his arm around more's shoulders while they wandered between the garden beds of chelsea. early in , probably, holbein had finished the fine portrait of his host, which is now in mr. huth's collection. the study for this oil painting is among the windsor drawings (plate ), as also one for the large family picture now lost, if indeed it was ever completed by holbein; a matter of some doubt, notwithstanding van mander's account of it in the possession of the art-collector van loo. an outline sketch of it, or for it, he certainly made. and that precious pen-and-ink outline,--with the name of each written above or below the figure in more's hand, and notes as to alterations to be made in the final composition in holbein's hand,--is now in the basel museum; having come into amerbach's possession as the heir of erasmus. illustration: plate sir thomas more _chalks. windsor castle_ in mr. huth's oil portrait more is wearing a dark-green coat trimmed with fur, and showing the purple sleeves of his doublet beneath. his eyes are grey-blue. he never wore a beard, made the fashion by henry viii. at the same time that the head was "polled,"--a singularly ugly combination,--until he was in the tower and grew that beard which he smilingly swept away from the path of the executioner's axe. "it," he said with astonishing self-possession, could be "accused of no treason." in , however, no shadow of tragedy seemed possible unless the suspicion of it slept in more's own heart when he said to his son-in-law, in answer to some flattering congratulation on the king's favour, "son roper, if my head could win him a castle in france, my head should fall." but for these superb drawings in the royal collection at windsor, we should know nothing at all of many a portrait holbein painted--all among the immediate friends of more and erasmus on this first visit to england; nor, for that matter, of many a portrait painted in later years. and how little these can be trusted to tell the whole tale of achievement is shown by the fact that they include no studies for a number of oil paintings that are still in existence. illustration: plate john fisher, bishop of rochester _chalks. windsor castle_ of the drawings which represent a lost painting, there is a noble one of bishop fisher, whose execution preceded more's by only a few weeks. a literally venerable head it was (plate ), to be the shuttlecock of papal defiance and royal determination not to be defied with impunity. for assuredly if the life of the bishop of rochester hung in the balance, as it did, in may, , it was paul iii.'s mad effrontery in making him a cardinal while he was actually in the tower under his sovereign's displeasure which heated the king's anger to white-hot brutality. "let the pope send him a hat," he thundered, "but i will so provide that he shall wear it on his shoulders, for head he shall have none to set it on!" and on the th of that june he made good the savage oath. yet the painter, after all, has been more potent than the king. for here lives fisher. bishop or cardinal this is the man, as more loved him. a striking and richly painted oil portrait of erasmus's "mæcenas," archbishop warham, is in the louvre; of which there are a number of copies, as well as a replica, at lambeth palace. the latter was exhibited at manchester in . the study for these portraits is among the windsor drawings. the painting in the louvre has more vividness in the carnations, and the impasto is thicker than at lambeth; otherwise the two are identical. but for myself i find a more seizing quality in the chalk drawing than in either. there is something in its sunken fading eyes that speaks of the majesty of office as well as its burdens. holbein painted a prelate of a very different sort in the oil portrait of john stokesley, bishop of london, which is preserved at windsor castle. and yet he dared to paint the truth--now as always. the painting is a masterpiece of modelling and soft transparency of light and shade. but the truculent, lowering countenance leaves small doubt that the sitter was a gentleman pre-eminently "gey ill to live wi'." there is another oil painting at windsor which has not escaped the injuries of time, but is none the less a splendid survival of . this is the portrait of sir henry guildford, master of the horse to henry viii., and holder of many another office of trust (plate ). it has sometimes been thought that the yellow tone of the complexion was due to over-painting, but the chalk drawing shows that it was a personal peculiarity. sir henry, a warm friend to both more and erasmus, was forty-nine when he sat for this portrait. under his black fur-trimmed surcoat he wears a doublet of gold brocade. in his hand is the wand of office as chamberlain, and he is decorated with the collar and badge of the garter. he was always a great favourite with the king from the time when the latter came to the throne and young guildford, then twenty, was one of the gayest, bravest, most loyal spirits about it. always as ready for a real battle as a mimic one; as clever at writing plays for the king's amusement as at acting in them; as good in a revel as at a piece of diplomacy; it is not much wonder that his knighthood in should but have been the prelude to a long series of promotions. illustration: plate sir henry guildford _oils. windsor castle_ the affection of master and man, too, was singularly sincere for a court. sir henry loyally supported the king's demand for a divorce, but he was by no means ready to support a second marriage without the papal preliminary. hence he was not a persona grata to anne boleyn. nor would he stoop to curry favour at the expense of an honest conviction. when anne warned him that he was likely to lose his office as soon as she became queen, he promptly replied that he would spare her all concern about that, and went straight to the king to resign the office of controller. the latter showed the depth of his affection by urging sir henry, twice, to reconsider his determination. but he wisely preferred to quit his apartments under the king's roof,--without, however, breaking the bond of mutual attachment. five years after this picture was painted he died; in may, . holbein also painted lady guildford's portrait; an oil painting in mr. frewer's collection. and sir henry selected him as one of the chief artists commissioned to decorate the interior of the banqueting hall specially erected for the celebration of the french alliance in . by all of which it would seem that in securing a new patron the painter had once more made a friend. erasmus had asked Ægidius to assist holbein's success in any way he could. and it was probably owing to a letter from the antwerp scholar that a friendship of many years sprang up between the painter and nicholas kratzer of munich, then astronomer-royal at the court of henry viii. it began with what was once a fine portrait. but the oil painting, now in the louvre (plate ), has suffered such severe injuries as to be but a poor ghost of what it was originally. only the composition, and the fidelity with which all his friend's scientific instruments are drawn attest holbein. he never adds a detail for merely pictorial purposes; and never shuffles one that concerns the personality of a sitter. no biographer with his pen sets every straw to show the winds of character and circumstance more deliberately than does this historian with his brush. something of kratzer's shrewd wit,--for he was a "character"--can still be read in his half-destroyed picture. years later we shall see the intimate friend of both him and his painter writing of the astronomer as a man "brim-full" of humour and fancy. and once, we may be sure, it sparkled in the eyes of kratzer's portrait as brilliantly as in his own. illustration: plate nicholas kratzer _oils. the louvre_ in the munich gallery there is another portrait in oils which has undergone, if possible, still more atrocious treatment than kratzer's; yet, like it, still keeps enough of its original charm to rivet attention in any company. this latter is one of the most striking of the half-dozen portraits of sir bryan tuke, which all claim, with more or less of probability, to be paintings by holbein. and certainly in the years when sir bryan was treasurer of the king's household it would be natural that the painter, whose salary he regularly disbursed, should gladly oblige him to his utmost. but the munich portrait also shows a far deeper bond of interests than one of money. the undercurrent of their natures ran in a groove of more than common sympathy; and to an analyst, such as holbein was, the reflections behind these inscrutable eyes were full of unusual attraction. myself, i feel convinced, for more than one reason, that it is a work of some years later. but as a consensus of authorities places it during this visit, the picture is noticed here. it gains rather than loses by reproduction;--since the painting now shows a strange disagreeable colour most unlike the carnations of holbein. but the composition is unmistakable (plate ). between the sitter and the green-curtained background stands perhaps the ghastliest of all holbein's skeletons,--one hand on his scythe, the other grimly pointing at the nearly-spent sands of the hour-glass. below the latter is a tablet on which, in latin, are the words of job: "my short life, does it not come to an end soon?" and the signature without the date. sir bryan wears a fur-trimmed doublet with gold buttons; the gold-patterned sleeves revealed by the black silk gown, also trimmed with fur. on a massive gold chain he wears a cross of great richness, enamelled with the pierced hands and feet. fine lawn is at throat and wrists; and in one hand he holds his gloves. illustration: plate sir bryan tuke _oils. munich gallery_ * * * * * before the researches of eduard his, it used to be sometimes said that holbein had virtually deserted his family when he left basel in . we know now, however, that whatever were the moral wrongs which he suffered or committed, he never forsook the duty of providing for his wife and children in no ungenerous proportion to his means. the records show that the fruit of his two years' industry was used to acquire a comfortable home which remained the property of his wife. and the inventory of its contents at elsbeth's death, some six years after holbein's death, proves that this home was to the full as well furnished and comfortable as was usual with people of similar condition. in the summer of the painter bade farewell for ever to sir thomas more's gracious chelsea home. he took with him the pen-and-ink sketch for a large picture of more in the midst of his family, which has been already referred to. this was for erasmus, who had temporarily abandoned basel,--now so utterly unlike the basel of former years,--and had sought the more sympathetic atmosphere of freiburg. bonifacius amerbach, from the same causes, was here with erasmus for some time. so that something like the old froben days must have seemed still about them as the three friends sat together and talked of all that had come and gone. but by the latter part of august holbein was back in that now sadly-altered basel whence his best friends were reft by trouble or death. and on the th of august, , he bought the house next to froben's _buchhaus_, the deed attesting that he did so in person, in company with elsbeth. the price, guldens or florins, was by no means the small one it now seems, nor could the painter pay the whole sum at once. he paid down one-third, and secured the rest by a mortgage. the site of this house is now occupied by st. johann vorstadt. three years later, march th, , holbein bought out a disagreeable neighbour; and thus added to his two-storied house overlooking the rhine the little one-storied cottage which cost him only seventy guldens. the factory at no. now partially covers this latter site. fifty years ago both of the original houses were still standing; quaint, crumbling, affecting monuments of days when holbein's voice and holbein's step rang through their rooms, when frau elsbeth swept and garnished them; and when four children added their links to the chain of a marriage which holbein was now manfully trying to make the best of. it must have been in the year after the purchase of the larger house that he painted the group of his wife and the two children she had then borne him. this life-size group, done in oils on paper, is now in the basel museum (plate ). the stoical sincerity with which they are represented, and the hard outline produced by cutting out the work to mount it on its wood panel, makes a somewhat repellent impression at the first glance. and this is in no way dispersed by studying elsbeth's traits. but the painting itself is a tour-de-force. by sheer quality holbein has invested these portraits,--a middle-aged, coarse-figured, unamiable-looking woman, a very commonplace infant, and a bright-faced boy,--with the prestige inseparable from an achievement of a high order. illustration: plate elsbeth, holbein's wife, with their two eldest children _oils. basel museum_ clearly elsbeth holbein was not one to give up the costume of her youth simply because she would have been well advised to do so; and the cut and fashion of her dress remains almost identical with the drawing in the louvre. her lustreless light-brown hair is covered with a gauzy veil and a reddish-brown cap. her brown stuff upper garment, trimmed with thin fur, shows a dark-green dress beneath it. the baby wears a gown of undyed woollen material, and the boy a jacket of dark bluish green. out of such unpromising materials has the painter made a picture that would challenge attention among any. if we knew nothing as to the identity of this woman, sitting oblivious of the children at her knee, wrapped in her own dark thoughts, we should certainly want to know something of her story and of the story of the little fellow whose eyes are breathlessly intent upon some purer, sweeter vision. there is at cologne, in a private collection, a deeply interesting duplicate of this work; also on paper afterwards mounted on wood, but not cut out. unfortunately this latter has suffered such irremediable injuries that it is quite impossible now to pronounce upon its claim to be either the earlier example or a replica; but good judges have believed it to be by holbein. its chief interest, however, from a biographical point of view, may be said to lie in the sixteenth-century writing pasted on at the top. literally translated, this runs-- "love towards god consists in charity. who hath this love can feel no hate."[ ] it is difficult to see on what grounds woltmann, who was inclined to accept the picture as genuine, should hold the inscription to have been added by someone desirous of increasing the value of the work by representing it to be an allegorical picture of charity. there was never a time when the allegory, if accepted, could have carried the same value as the portraits. and surely the second line is utterly inconsistent with the theory. original or not, it has a very startling likeness to a plea which holbein himself must have urged more than once, to soften a bitterness his own errors could not have tended to cure. when the basel painting was cut out to be mounted, the last numeral was lost; so that it now stands dated -. but all the other facts put it beyond question that the picture could not have been done before . the baby of was now the boy of seven, and his successor would seem to have been born during the first months of its father's visit to england, and to be now some eighteen months old. it may be as well to say here, once for all, as much as need be said of holbein's family. as already stated, his wife survived him by six years, dying at basel in . by her first marriage she had one son, franz schmidt--who seems to have been a worthy and successful man of trade. she was the mother of four children by her marriage with holbein;--philip, born ; katharina, ; jacob, about ; and künegoldt, about . some years before the painter's death he took philip holbein to paris, and there apprenticed him to the eminent goldsmith, jerome david, with whom he remained until a couple of years after holbein's death. later, he somehow drifted to lisbon, where he followed his trade until he settled in the old home of his grandfather and great-grandfather, augsburg. in his son, philip holbein, junior, then "imperial court jeweller" at augsburg, petitioned the emperor matthias for letters patent to "confirm" his right to certain noble arms. the claims put forward in this document are utterly at variance with the received belief in holbein's humble augsburg origin. yet the most expert investigators who have carefully studied this subject agree in thinking that this grandson based the genealogical tree on mythical foundations, and therefore planted it remote from augsburg itself. but be this as it may--and it seems hard to reconcile such discrepancies within a century of the time when both hans holbein the elder and his son were well-known citizens of augsburg,--the application was successful. mechel says that this philip, who claims descent from the renowned "painter of basel," lived in vienna during his later years; and that a descendant of his again got their patent "confirmed" in , with the right to carry the surname of _holbeinsberg_; also that this latter descendant was made a knight of the empire in , as the noble _von holbeinsberg_. so much for the eldest branch, that of philip holbein. the younger boy, jacob, was a goldsmith in london after holbein's death. the evidence seems to show that he was never here previous to that event,--which of itself may have first occasioned his coming, though hardly at the time, as jacob was not more than thirteen at his father's death. a document in existence proves that he also died in london, about , and apparently unmarried; at which time his elder brother, philip, was still in lisbon. katharina, the elder daughter, the baby of the basel painting, seems to have left no descendants. she married a butcher of basel and died in . and in the same year, very likely from one of the frequent epidemics so fatal to basel, died künegoldt, elsbeth's youngest child. the merian family of frankfurt-am-main claims an hereditary right to the artistic gifts of its famous copper-engraver, mathew merian, as descendants of holbein through this daughter künegoldt, who, when she died, was the wife of andreas syff, a miller, of basel. according to the greatest authority on this subject, eduard his, to whose exhaustive researches we owe almost all that is known of holbein's family, the merian claims have not, so far, been proved by actual archives; but he is of opinion that there is considerable circumstantial evidence to support their claim to be lineal descendants of holbein through the female line. but in , when the family group was painted, neither jacob nor künegoldt were yet born; and the painter was much more concerned with the anxieties of a living father than with the shadowy cares of an ancestor. and dark enough was the outlook in basel, where the lutheran agitation had, as erasmus said, "frozen the arts." before holbein came back from england many churches had abjured all pictures. the tide of religious antagonism had, as we know, driven both erasmus and bonifacius amerbach for a time to a catholic stronghold; and had driven their old friend meyer to do literal battle on behalf of the church. altar paintings were out of the question. and holbein could but devote himself to designs for the printers and for goldsmiths. many beautiful compositions for both crafts remain to testify of his matured powers and constant industry. the exquisite designs for dagger-sheaths, in particular, are rightly counted among the treasures of art. but in the summer of came a commission for the painter's last great work in basel. this was the long-delayed order for the decoration of that vacant wall in the council hall, which adjoined the house _zum hasen_. oddly enough, this commission also came officially through a burgomaster, jacob meyer. but the meyer of , meyer "of-the-stag" (_zum hirten_), had neither blood nor sentiments in common with the meyer under whom holbein had done his first work in the rathaus. each headed a party at deadly issue. for the past year meyer-of-the-hare had vainly tried to turn back the clock or to stay the iconoclastic fury of the hour. religious fanaticism had wrecked him as well as every beautiful piece of art on which it could lay its hands. and now at last it mattered nothing any more so far as he was concerned. the dreadful harvests that had brought virtual famine, the earthquake shocks which had unsettled many a mental as well as material foundation, the flooding devastations of the birsig, the rage of canton against canton, the civil war ready to begin, pope or luther come by his own,--it was all one at last to meyer zum hasen, who died just as his protégé of earlier years was commissioned to paint the blank wall. but something of his spirit, something of what he himself had been preaching to basel in warning and threat for years, seems to have passed on into the pictures holbein set before the council. the paintings, alas! are no more. but a fragment or two and the drawings for them show how truly grand the two works were which holbein had probably already intended should be his swan-song as holbein _basiliensis_. he chose for his subjects rehoboam's answer to the suffering israelites: "my little finger shall be thicker than my father's loins; my father hath chastised you with whips, but i will chastise you with scorpions"; and samuel prophesying to saul how dearly he shall learn that "rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness as an iniquity and idolatry." both subjects are treated in the great manner. rehoboam, leaning forward from his throned seat with flashing eyes, and his little finger seeming actually to quiver in the air, is wonderfully conceived. but the meeting of samuel and saul (plate ) most splendidly demonstrates how far holbein towered above mere portraiture when he had the opportunity. to picture this drawing in all the beauty of colour is to realise what we have lost, and what his just fame has lost, with the utter destruction of such works. illustration: plate _behold to obey is better than sacrifice_ samuel denouncing saul _washed drawing. basel museum_ not the greatest of the italians could have improved upon the distribution and balance of this composition. the blazing background, the sense of a densely crowded host beyond what the eye can grasp, of captives and captors--all the stupendous crackle and roar and shout and sudden strained silence of saul's immediate followers--is amply matched by those two typical protagonists, just then repeating the old drama with varying fortunes on the world's new stage. the secular arm has been short in the service of god, as interpreted by his vicar; it has thought, in saul's person, to win the cause, yet spare its enemies. vain is it for him to run with humility, to tell what he has won and what overcome and done. he has not destroyed all--root and branch. for reasons of personal policy, he has given quarter. and the priest, for god, will have none of his well-meaning excuses, of his good intentions, his policy, his burnt offerings of half-way measures;--"behold to obey is better than sacrifice," begins his fierce anathema, "and to hearken than the fat of rams." doubtless the protestant party read its own meanings into these texts, when once the pictures were painted and paid for with seventy-two good guldens. but two very significant facts form their own commentary. one is that the only employment he received from the council afterward was to redecorate the old lällenkönig monstrosity on the bridge!--and the other, that as soon as holbein got his pay for this disgraceful commission, a pay he was now much too hard pressed to refuse, he quietly slipped away from basel without taking the council into his confidence. judging from his after conduct to his family, he probably left the seventy-two guldens to support his wife and children--now four little ones--until such time as he could send them more from england; and took his way once more, in the late autumn of , with knapsack and paint-brushes for the journey, to a city that might give him few walls to cover, but would certainly not set him to painting the town clock. * * * * * things had changed in london also, and gravely, holbein found, since he had quitted sir thomas more's home at chelsea with the sketch for erasmus, in the summer of . he had barely settled himself, in the city this time, before the struggle between henry viii. and the english clergy ended in that convocation when the latter made its formal "submission." and in the same month that this took place, sir henry guildford died. then the three great acts of parliament, which swept away the crying abuses of "benefit of clergy," resurrected the "dead" lands (so called because perpetually _aliened in mortmain_) by restoring them to the national circulation of the sovereign-will, and turned the rich stream of annates or "first-fruits" of the bishoprics from the pope's coffers to the king's,--were passed in this year. this legislation was followed by the solemn protest and then the death of archbishop warham. so that now of that great and close quartet of friends,--colet, warham, more, and erasmus,--there were two on either shore of the last crossing. and more could already see the dark river ahead. his eye marked the consequences of the acts as keenly as his aged friend warham had discerned them on his death-bed; and shortly after the "submission," more resigned his great office as chancellor. these seem matters too high to twist the threads of a poor painter's life. but in reality holbein's career was shaped, from many a year back, by such events as rarely touch the humble individual directly. all his friends and all his patrons in this country were carried far out of reach by ; and he must sink or swim, as they in darker waters, according to his own powers. that under such unexpected ill-fortune he did not immediately sink was due to two things--the greatness of his powers, and the circumstance that a trading-company of continentals, chiefly german, was seated in london with immense wealth and immense influence at its disposal, and that they were men who knew how to appreciate holbein at his worth. the roots of the steelyard (_stahlhof_), or "stilyard," as it is often called in early dramatists, go far back to the legendary centuries of english history. from before the time of alfred the great, traders from germany had clustered together on the bank of the thames, close to where cannon street station now stands. amalgamation with the hanseatic league, and the necessities and gratitude of more than one king of england--but especially of edward iv.--had made of the steelyard a company such as only the east india company of later centuries may be compared to. with the world's new geography and new commercial conditions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, its methods and its monopoly of the seas were gradually superseded by the great seamen of the elizabethan era. but in holbein's time, though already some of the hanseatic ships were too overgrown to pass london bridge and cast anchor at their own docks just above it, there was scarce a cloud upon the colossal prosperity of the steelyard. its walled and turreted enclosure, able to withstand the fiercest assaults of wat tyler's men, stretched from the river northward to thames street, and from allhallows street on the east to dowgate street on the west; and it might well have been described as a german city and port situated in the heart of the city of london. its massive front in thames street, where were its three portcullised and fortified gateways with german inscriptions above and the imperial double-eagle high over all, was one of the sights of london. and the steelyard tavern was a famous resort. when holbein knew it well the greatest prelates and nobles and all the court crowd,--which stretched its gardens and great houses from the stream of the fleet, just west of the city wall, to westminster abbey,--used to flock to this thames street corner of the steelyard to drink rhenish wine and eat smoked reindeer-tongue and caviar. within the gates stood the big guildhall, which answered both for its councils and its noted banquets. the high carved mantelpieces and wainscotting served admirably to display the glittering plate and strange souvenirs of every known land and sea. on the walls which holbein's works were so to enrich hung portraits of eminent members of the guild. the hall was flanked by the huge stone kitchen and by a strong-tower for the safeguarding of special valuables. in the open space between the hall and the west wall of the enclosure was the garden, where trees and flowers and a greenery of vines had been planted in exact imitation of the gardens of the fatherland. and here sat holbein among the associates, many a time, over their good cheer,--as in the old basel gardens of the blume or the stork in other years, and heard only the german tongue or the songs of home around him. away down to the docks ran the lanes of warehouses; shops and booths where every german trader or craftsman in london had his place; and where the merchandise of the world--the greater part of it destined for lübeck as a centre of european distribution--might be sampled. here were choicest specimens of the then costly spices of cathay, or the famous falcons of norway and livonia, for which english sportsmen were willing to pay fabulous prices. as in other guilds, the government of this cosmopolitan beehive was that of a despotic democracy. all the inmates of the precincts were subjected to a rule little short of monastic in its strict discipline. the penalties for any infringement, for drunkenness or dicing or even for an abusive epithet, were very severe. the civic duties of the corporation, too, were sharply defined. in case of war every member had his appointed post in the defence of london. every "master" had to keep the prescribed accoutrements and arms ready for immediate use, and the repairs and maintenance of the bishop's gate were at the sole cost of the steelyard. no chapel was erected within its enclosure, the guild preferring to be incorporated with the adjoining parish of allhallows. whether or not there is any truth at the bottom of the ancient tradition that this church had been originally founded by germans, the guild maintained its own altar in it in holbein's time, where masses were said on its own special days and festivals. so far are the facts from the common supposition that the doctrines of luther would find natural favour in such a community, that the latter only gradually came into the "church of england" by the same slow processes which transformed the whole parish around it. and when more, who was anything but _utopian_ himself in the practice of tolerating "heresy" during his chancellorship, headed a domiciliary visit in search of lutheran writings, he could find nothing but orthodox german prayer-books and the scriptures, whose use among laymen he always strenuously advocated; while every member of the community was able to make honest and hearty oath at st. paul's cross that no heretic or heretical doctrine would be tolerated amongst them. here, then, in this staunch citadel of his own faith, holbein naturally found a new circle of friends among whom it must have been strangely easy to fancy himself back in the fischmarkt of his young years, with froben and erasmus and amerbach and meyer zum hasen. the curtain rings up on his work for the steelyard,--work which covered many years and more fine paintings than could even be enumerated here--with a superlative exhibition of all his powers. the oil portrait of georg gyze, or george gisze, as it is often written, now in the berlin gallery (plate ), inscribed , has called forth the enthusiastic eulogies of every competent judge. by a piece of rare good fortune it is in perfect preservation. the black of the surcoat alone has lost a little of its first lustre; all the rest is as though it had left the easel but the other day. illustration: plate jÖrg (or george) gyze _oils. berlin museum_ the young merchant is seated among his daily surroundings in the steelyard. he is in the act of leisurely opening a letter addressed, "to the hand of the honourable jörg gyze, my brother, in london, england" (_dem ersamen herrn jörg gyzen zu lunden in engelant meinem broder to henden_). the merchant's motto, "no pleasure without care," is chalked up in latin on the background, with his signature beneath it. written on a paper stuck higher up is a latin verse in praise of the portrait; also the date, and the sitter's age--thirty-four. on the racks and shelves are documents, books, keys, a watch and seals, and a pair of scales. a gold ball is hanging from above with a lovely chasing in blue enamel; a miracle of painting in itself, to say nothing of the exquisite venetian glass, filled with water and carnation-pinks. this flower has its own meaning, and is introduced in more than one of holbein's portraits. on the rich oriental table-cloth are writing materials also, with account-books, seal and scissors. gyze himself is a fair-haired man, wearing a brilliant red silk doublet beneath his black cloak. and the amazing thing is that amidst this bewildering array of pictures--for every article is such in itself, owing to the perfection of its painting--gyze is not lost or overridden for a moment. it is unmistakably _his_ picture; and he dominates the accessories as much as he did in reality. the man, the whole man, is there; and the things are there around him; that is all. but that the eye recognises this is the demonstration of the painter's own mastership. it is as much holbein's peculiar secret as are the cool shadows, the luminous glow, the astounding elaboration, all made to express the dignity of one, and but one, theme. as has been said, the steelyard portraits are too many to even catalogue here, covering many years. but gyze's may be taken as their high-water mark. for that matter it could not, in its own way, be surpassed by any portrait. holbein himself greatly surpassed it in the matter of subtle and noble simplicity, in his two greatest extant pieces of portraiture--the morett of dresden and the duchess of milan, now in our national gallery. but in technical powers, and the power of subordinating their very virtuosity to the requirement of a true picture, this was a superlative expression of his matured method. in the midst of all his fresh london successes came a summons from basel, which must have made the painter smile a little grimly. it had slowly dawned on the council that holbein--whose renown they well knew was a feather in basel's cap--was proposing to make a prolonged absence. the result was a decision which the burgomaster officially conveyed to him. jacob meyer zum hirten wrote to say that holbein was desired to return immediately to resume the duties of a citizen-artist, and that the council, anxious to assist him in the support of his family, had resolved to allow him an annuity of thirty guldens yearly "until something better" could be afforded. whether he replied in evasive terms, or whether he let the lällenkönig speak for him, is not on record. by the time holbein received this letter, written late in the autumn of , he was plunged into a year of almost incredible activity. the whole of it would hardly seem too long for one such painting as the life-size double portrait--his largest extant portrait-painting--that now belongs to the national gallery: "the ambassadors" (plate ). at the extremities of a heavy table, something like a rude dinner-waggon, are two full-length figures which show a curious reflection of his early defect in their want of sufficient height. at the spectator's left stands a richly-costumed individual, whose stalwart proportions, ruddy complexion, and boldly ardent eye denote the perfection of vigorous health, and are in striking contrast to the physique, colouring, and expression of his companion. the former wears a black velvet doublet, which reveals an under-garment of gleaming rose-red satin. over all is a black velvet mantle lined and trimmed with white fur. on his black cap is a silver brooch which displays a skull. he wears a gold badge exhibiting a mailed figure spearing a dragon suspended by a heavy gold chain. the hilt of his sword is seen at his left hand, and his right grasps a gold-sheathed dagger. on this latter is the inscription: Æt. svÆ. ; and from it depends a massive green-and-gold silk tassel, incomparably painted. illustration: plate "the ambassadors" _oils. national gallery_ as has been noted, the complexion of the man at our right is singularly pallid; the eyes mournfully listless; the skin of his knuckles drawn into the wrinkles of wasting tissues. he wears a scholar's cap and gown; the latter of some chocolate-brown pile, richly patterned, and lined with brown fur. he holds his gloves in his right hand and leans this arm on a closed book, on the edges of which is the lettering: Ætatis svÆ . an oriental cover is spread on the table, and upon it are a number of the scientific instruments common to astrology and to the uses of astronomers like kratzer, in whose portrait at the louvre they are also to be seen. on the lower shelf are mathematical and musical instruments and books. the two latter are opened to display their text conspicuously. near the man at our left, and kept open by a t-square, is the arithmetic which peter apian, astronomer and globe-maker, published in . it is opened at a page in division, with its german text plainly legible and identical with the actual page, as seen in the british museum's copy of this edition. the book nearest the man at our right, lying beneath the lute, has been also identified as luther's psalm-book with music,--in which the german text is by himself and the music by johann walther--first published in . mr. barclay squire has shown that the two hymns could not, however, have faced each other in reality, as they do in the painting, without the intervening leaves having been purposely suppressed to gain this end. these hymns are "come holy ghost" (_kom heiliger geyst herregott_) and "mortal, wouldst thou live blessedly?" (_mensch wiltu leben seliglich_). in each case the entire verse is given. the background is a green-diapered damask curtain most significantly drawn aside to show a silver crucifix high up in the left-hand corner, above the man with the dagger and sword. on the beautiful mosaic pavement is an ugly object that looks like some dried fish. but experiments have shown that the french sale-catalogues in which this work first appears in the eighteenth century--first, that is, so far as we can trace it by any records now known--were right in calling this a "skull in perspective"; _i.e._ a skull painted as seen distorted in a convex mirror. some hint of its true character can be gathered, though not much, by looking at this object from the lower left-hand corner of the painting, when the exaggerated length will be seen to be reduced to something more nearly approaching the height of the usual "death's head." according to the views which are now officially accepted by the national gallery, the persons of this picture are two french catholics. the one at our left is jean de dinteville, seigneur of polisy, bailly of troyes and knight of the french order of st. michael, of which he wears the badge without the splendid collar--as was permitted, by a special statute, to persons in the field, on a journey, or in a privacy that would not require the full dress of a state occasion. jean de dinteville was french ambassador at the court of henry viii. in ; born in , he was then twenty-nine. he died in . the man in the scholar's cap and gown is george de selve, privately associated with de dinteville's mission for a few weeks in the spring of . he was born in , nominated bishop of lavaur in , and confirmed in that office in , in which year he was french ambassador at the court of charles v. he was twenty-five in , and died in . for myself, holding convictions concerning these portraits utterly at variance with any published opinions--and that in more than one vital respect--i am compelled to limit my account to the bare record of its appearance and catalogued description, until prepared to submit other facts and conclusions to a verdict. two portraits in the hague gallery, each with a falcon hooded on the wrist, show to how much purpose holbein had studied these birds in the steelyard. the one of robert cheseman, done in this year, is especially fine, with a strange, elusive suggestion of something kindred in the nature of man and bird. in , also, the steelyard placed its contribution to the celebration of anne boleyn's coronation in the painter's hands. and the result was, as stow tells us, "a costly and marvellous cunning pageant by the merchants of the stilyard, wherein was the mount parnassus, with the fountaine of helicon, which was of white marble; and four streams without pipe did rise an ell high and mette together in a little cup above the fountaine; which fountaine ran abundantly with rhenish wine till night. on the mountaine sat apollo, and at his feet sat calliope; and on every side of the mountaine sate four muses, playing on severell sweet instruments." but of more importance to his living fame were the two large oil paintings--the triumph of riches and the triumph of poverty--which he executed for the hall of the steelyard. in their day they were renowned far and wide; but they also have slipped into some abyss of oblivion, perhaps to be yet recovered as miraculously as was the solothurn madonna. when the guild was compelled to abandon the steelyard, in queen elizabeth's reign, the hall stood so long unguarded and uncared for that when it regained possession, under james i., everything was in a sad state of neglect. and when the association finally dissolved not long after, the hanseatic league agreed to present these paintings to henry prince of wales, known, like charles i., to be a lover of art. if they passed to the possession of the latter, he must have exchanged them with, or presented them to, the earl of arundel. for in sandrart saw them in the collection of the latter, like his father an enthusiastic admirer of holbein's work. after this, one or two vague notices suggest that they somehow drifted to flanders, and thence to paris. but there every trace of them is lost. federigo zucchero thought they yielded to no work of the kind, even among italian masters; and copied them from pure admiration. holbein's drawing for the triumph of riches is in the louvre collection. that he ever painted anne boleyn, unless in miniature, seems doubtful. the portrait among the windsor drawings which has been labelled with her name agrees with no description of her in any single respect. but in he painted one whose destiny was closely linked to hers--thomas cromwell, then master of the jewel house. and it was probably about this time that he painted what is in some respects the greatest of all his portraits--one of the galaxy of supreme works of all portraiture--the oil painting of morett, or morette, so long regarded as a triumph of leonardo da vinci's art. the world knows it well in the dresden gallery (plate ). the figure is life-size. the pose, even the costume in its feasible essentials, strikingly repeats the whitehall portrait of henry viii., as copies show this to have been completed in the wall painting. the background is a green curtain. illustration: plate the morett portrait _oils. dresden gallery_ the sitter wears neither velvet nor cloth-of-gold, nor order of any sort; but his costume is rich black satin, the sleeves puffed with white, the broad fur collar of sable. in his cap is a cameo brooch. his buttons are gold; and a gold locket hangs from a plain, heavy chain of the same metal. his right hand carries his gloves, his left rests on the gold sheath of the dagger that hangs from his waist. his auburn hair and beard is streaked with grey. no words, no reproduction, can hope to express the qualities of such a painting. neither can show the mastery or the spell by which the green background, the hair, the cool transparent flesh-tones, the fur, the satin, the gold, are all woven into a witchery as virile as it is penetrating. this is another work which has undergone more than one transformation in the course of its records. as late as it was correctly ascribed to holbein in the modena collection. but the first syllable of the sitter's name has been its only constant. in time morett slipped into moretta, and then--like _meier_ in the madonna picture--into morus. so far it seems to have clung to some english tradition. but when morus got changed to moro it was but natural for an italian to think of ludovico sforza, "il moro." long before this holbein had become olbeno; and thereafter a puzzle. when the portrait was labelled sforza, however, who could its obviously great painter be but leonardo? _et voilà!_ thus the work passed to the gallery and catalogue of the royal collection at dresden. and thus it long remained, as if to attest the true level of holbein's genius. but when the gallery also acquired the drawing of the arundel collection, labelled "mr. morett" in hollar's engraving from it, the painting was held to be unquestionably identified by it as hubert morett, goldsmith to henry viii. nor is there anything incongruous in this belief. such a master goldsmith was no tradesman, in our sense of the word. he was often much more like one of our merchant princes. the merchants of the steelyard were frequently the royal bankers, and many times were employed on high and delicate diplomatic missions to other courts. neither is there anything in the sitter's dress to forbid it to a man of this stamp, even after the sumptuary laws of henry viii. were passed; while there is much, very much, to suggest an english origin. on the other hand, m. larpent has now shown that the arundel drawing was down in a catalogue of - as: "one holbein, sieur de moret, one of the french hostage in england"; and also that a "chas. sieur de morette" is recorded among the four french hostages sent to england in . it would thus appear that the painting is a portrait of charles de solier, seigneur de morette; an eminent soldier and diplomatist of france; born in , ambassador to england more than once, and finally, in . besides all the portraits of holbein's english period, many of them scattered throughout the collections of all europe, and many others now lost, it must not be forgotten that he was at the same time pouring forth miniature paintings, designs for engraving, designs for the goldsmith, and conceptions of every sort--from a carved chimney-piece to a woman's jewelled trinket; and all designed with the same exquisite precision and felicity. in the british museum as on the continent these drawings are an education in themselves. and besides the portrait studies in the windsor collection there is a sketch for a large painting which, if ever executed, is lost: "the queen of sheba visiting king solomon." chapter iv painter royal - queen jane seymour--death of erasmus, and title-page portrait--the whitehall painting of henry viii.--munich drawing of henry viii.--birth of an heir and the "jane seymour cup"--death of the queen--christina, duchess of milan--secret service for the king--flying visit to basel and arrangements for a permanent return--apprentices his son philip at paris--portrait of the prince of wales and the king's return gift--anne of cleves--thomas howard, duke of norfolk--catherine howard--lapse of holbein's basel citizenship--irregularities--provision for wife and children--residence in london--execution of queen catherine howard--marriage of catherine parr--dr. chamber--unfinished work for the barber-surgeons' hall--death of holbein--his will--place of burial--holbein's genius; its true character and greatness. these were years of pleasant friendships, too, as well as work and cares. nicholas bourbon, scholar and poet, after his sojourn in london, writes back in : "greet in my name as heartily as you can all with whom you know me to be connected by intercourse and friendship." and after mentioning high dignitaries who had followed the king's example of showing special courtesies to bourbon, he adds: "mr. cornelius heyss, my host, the king's goldsmith; mr. nicolaus kratzer, the king's astronomer, a man who is brimful of wit, jest, and humorous fancies; and mr. hans, the royal painter, the apelles of our time. i wish them from my heart all joy and happiness." this little pen-picture of holbein's intimate circle is a beautiful break in the mists of centuries--and shows us what manner of men they were among whom he had made for himself an honoured place. we could ill spare it from the few and meagre records of his life. it is also the very earliest documentary evidence of his being in the king's immediate service. it was in this very year, , that he received his commission to paint anne boleyn's successor, jane seymour, then on the throne the block had left vacant. the vienna gallery possesses this painting, of which another version is at woburn abbey, and the chalk drawing at windsor (plate ). illustration: plate queen jane seymour _oils. vienna gallery_ the queen was noted for her milk-white fairness, and holbein has borrowed the pearly shadows of the lily in rendering it. the figure is a little under life-size. her head-dress and robes of silver brocade and royal velvet are studded with splendid rubies and pearls to match the jewels on her neck and breast. the hands are as full of character as of art. the queen's portrait may properly be said to belong to the great wall painting which holbein finished in for the royal palace at whitehall. but before that date the painter's inner life had suffered one more great wrench. at midnight of july th, , erasmus died in the home that had been his own, except for the freiburg interval, ever since john froben's death in ; a death that had probably had much to do with holbein's first departure from basel. that event had uprooted the scholar from the old house _zum sessel_, in the fischmarkt, and transplanted him to the home of froben's son, hieronymus. the latter house, then known as _zum luft_, is now no. , bäumleingasse. and it was here that erasmus passed away, his mind keeping to the last its humour and its interests in all around him. but no one, remembering how fisher and more had died in the preceding year, can doubt but that the good old man was very willing to be gone, away from changed faces and changed ways--though bonifacius amerbach and young froben were as sons to him. basel, for all her differences with him, buried erasmus with great honours. but no tablet could so commemorate him as the noble monument which holbein built to him in the title-page he designed for hieronymus froben's edition of erasmus's _works_, published in . it is a woodcut of extraordinary beauty. the full-length figure of the scholar stands in cap and gown, with one hand resting lightly on the bust of the god terminus (the god of immovable boundary lines, significantly conjoined to erasmus's chosen motto: _concedo nulli_) and the other calling attention to this significant emblem of fixed convictions. not even the louvre oil painting expresses the whole erasmus quite so completely or so nobly as this little drawing of the man whom holbein had loved and revered for twenty years; and to whom he owed, in the first place, the splendid opportunities of his career in england. and as he drew it, what ghosts of his own past must have clustered around the lean little figure! what echoes and visions! the rhine, the gardens, the clang of the press, the fischmarkt, the friendly smiles at froben's and meyer's firesides; his marriage; the stars and dews and perfume of all his dreams in the years--those matchless years of a man's young manhood--when he had walked with angels as well as peasants, had seen the way of the cross, the christ in the grave, and the risen lord even more clearly than the faces of flesh and blood. _eheu fugaces!_ "god help thee, elia, how art thou sophisticated." * * * * * ah, well! those years, and the darker, sadder years that had led far from them, were now like his oldest friends--dead and buried. the holbein of was painting the king of england on the wall of his privy chamber. there was a place for honest pride as well as for honest regret in his thoughts. this painting perished with the palace in the fire of . charles ii., however, had a small copy of it made by leemput. and a portion of holbein's original cartoon (plate ) in chalk and indian ink, is in the possession of the duke of devonshire--the face much washed out by cleaning, and the outline pricked for transferring to the wall. the figures are life-size, but walpole has already noticed how the massive proportions and solidly-planted pose of the king heighten the illusion of a colossus. behind him stands the admirably contrasted figure of henry vii. the whole composition consisted of four portraits; queen jane seymour opposite her husband, and the king's mother opposite to, and on a level with, henry vii., who stands on the elevation of the background. illustration: plate king henry viii and his father (_fragment of cartoon used for the whitehall wall-painting_) _duke of devonshire's collection_ the pose and costume of henry viii. in the cartoon were, as leemput's copy shows, faithfully carried out in the painting; but in the latter the face was afterwards turned to the full front view familiar to us in the many copies of the king's portrait which so long passed as works of holbein, on the strength of reproducing his own painting. there is no evidence that he ever again painted henry viii. or that he executed any replica of this portrait. the old copy at windsor castle serves, however, to recall its details of costume; such as his brown doublet stiff with gold brocade and scintillating with the gleams of splendid jewels, his coat of royal red embroidered with gold thread and lined with ermine to match the wide collar; his plumed and jewelled cap; as also the huge gems on collar, pendant, rings, and the gold-hilted dagger in its blue velvet sheath. but holbein's own portrait of henry viii.--as shown by the original chalk study from life now in the munich gallery (plate )--may in all sobriety of speech be called a stupendous work. looking at this marvellous drawing and picturing to one's self those cheeks informed with pulsing blood, those lips with breath, those eyes with blue gleams,--it is easy to understand that van mander was using no hyperbole when he said that the painting on the wall of the privy chamber made the stoutest knees to tremble. it was literally, as he said, "a terrible painting," of which none of the stupidly-heavy copies that have for the most part travestied holbein's work give any true conception. many a man could paint cloth-of-gold and gems; but only once and again in the centuries comes a man who can thus paint, not alone the mane and stride of the lion, but the fires that light his glance, the roar rushing to his lips. to look long into these eyes that holbein had the genius to read and the firmness to draw, is to feel one's self in the grip of an insatiable, implacable, yet leonine soul; a being who, to borrow the matchless description of burke's political career, is "parted asunder in his works like some vast continent severed by a convulsion of nature; each portion peopled by its own giant race of opinions, differing altogether in features and language, and committed in eternal hostility with one another." and so long as the great drama of tudor england enthrals the minds of men, hard by shakespeare's supreme name must be read the name of the painter in whose pages the actors in that drama have been compelled themselves to declare themselves. illustration: plate king henry viii (_life-study; probably for the whitehall painting_) _chalks. munich collection_ to crown the king's pride, and to the no less intense delight of the whole nation which saw in this event the rainbow of every promise, at hampton court, on the th of october, , queen jane seymour gave birth to the son who was to reign so briefly as edward vi. and it was doubtless in connection with this happy circumstance that the king commissioned holbein's design for a truly royal piece of goldsmith's work. this drawing, generally known as "the jane seymour cup," is at oxford, in the bodleian library (plate ). no sketch of the artist's powers would be even barely complete without a realising sense of their versatility. and in this design holbein has more than equalled the highest achievement of his great contemporary, benvenuto cellini, at this time in the service of the french court. the initials of the king and queen, h. and j., and the exceedingly judicious motto of the latter--"bound to obey and to serve"--are recurring devices. but it is in the originality and unflawed beauty of the whole--the springing grace of outline, the taste and cunning with which flowers of gold naturally bloom into gems and pearls, the combination of freest, richest fancy with every restraint of a pure taste--that the perfection of this little masterpiece consists. illustration: plate design for "the jane seymour cup" _bodleian library_ in the midst of all the public rejoicings, the te deums, feasts, and bonfires, came the thunderclap of the young mother's death. some negligence had permitted her to take cold, and on the twelfth day after his coveted heir was born, henry viii. was once again a widower. the court went into deepest mourning until the rd of february. but thomas cromwell was very shortly authorised to take secret steps to ascertain what princess might most suitably fill the late queen's vacant place and strengthen the assurance of an unbroken succession. choice fell at first on a roman catholic--christina, the sixteen-year-old widow of francis sforza duke of milan, who had died in the autumn of . the upshot of private inquiries was that holbein was sent over to brussels in march, , to bring back a portrait of this daughter of christian of denmark and niece of charles v. and although the painter had but three hours in which to do it, he did make what hutton described as her "very perffight" image; besides which, said the envoy, the portrait previously despatched, though painted in all her state finery, "was but slobbered." from this "perffight" painting, which could not have been more than one of his portrait studies, he afterwards completed that full-length oil painting which is worthy to rank with his great morett portrait. by the kindness of the duke of norfolk, who has lent it, this beautiful work is now in the national gallery (plate ). but unhappily for its best appreciation, to my thinking at least, it hangs at one side and in too close proximity to the bold colouring of "the ambassadors"; so that its own subtle, yet reticent superiority is well-nigh shouted down by its lusty neighbour. it is a picture to be seen by itself; as it must stand by itself in the usual inane gallery of women's portraits. hutton tells us that the painter who "slobbered" christina's portrait had painted her in full dress. but holbein's eye was quick to recognise the values of her everyday dress--the widow's costume of italy--in enhancing the distinction of her face and the stately slenderness of her figure. and so he drew her as she stood, with a hint of bending forward, her gloves being restlessly fingered in a shy yet proud embarrassment, in the first moments when he saw her. illustration: plate christina of denmark, duchess of milan _oils. national gallery_ [_lent by the duke of norfolk_] the portrait is nearly life-size. over a plain black satin dress she wears a gown of the same material, lined with yellow sable. her hair is entirely concealed by a black hood. at her throat and wrists are plain cambric frills. the ranging scale of tawny tones--in the floor, the gloves, the fur, the golden glint in her brown eyes--and the one ruby, on her hand, are the only colours, except those of her fresh young lips and skin and the black and white of her costume. "she is not so white as the late queen," wrote hutton, "but she hath a singular good countenance, and when she chanceth to smile there appeareth two pits in her cheeks and one in her chin, the which becometh her excellently well." it is easy to believe that they did, but her dimples did not chance for henry viii. whether she really sent him, along with her picture, the witty refusal credited to her--that she had but one head; had she two, one should be at his majesty's service--or whether it was the emperor's doing entirely that his niece married the duke of lorraine instead of the man whose first wife had been charles v.'s aunt, there is, at all events, a soft lurking devil in the demure little face which seems to whisper that the answer was one which she could have made an' she would. van mander heard from holbein's circle a story which modern pedantry is inclined to flout. this is, that when an irate nobleman wanted the painter punished for an affront, the king hotly exclaimed:--"understand, my lord, that i can make seven earls out of as many hinds, any day; but out of seven earls i could not make one such painter as this holbein." an eminently ben-trovato story, at all events. and certain it is that the painter stood sufficiently high in the royal favour to be despatched on some special private mission for the king in the summer of , of which the secret was so well kept that nothing beyond the record of payment for it has ever transpired. from this date holbein's name is regularly down in the royal accounts. the amounts drawn total, it has been computed, about £ in present value, and would make an agreeable annual addition to his other earnings. so that it is little wonder he was not tempted by the small sum offered by the basel council in . but in the council greatly increased the old offer, and was so anxious to have him among her citizens that the painter seized the opportunity of his secret mission to upper burgundy, whatever it was, to pay a flying visit to basel in the interests of his family. * * * * * his old companions of the guild of st. johann vorstadt made this visit--when holbein was back among them, as was noted, "in silk and velvet"--the occasion of a grand banquet in his honour. but the real motive for his visit was to arrange upon what terms he could meet the council's wishes. the terms were far from ungenerous, as is shown by the contract which followed him back to london. in this the council bound itself, in consideration of the great honour of retaining in their city a painter "famous beyond all other painters on account of the riches of his art," and in further consideration of his promise to make no absence from basel more prolonged than should be really necessary to carry his foreign commissions to their destination and receive his pay for them--to give him an annuity of fifty guldens, equally whether holbein should be ill or well, but only during his own life. in addition to this, they granted him permission to make short visits to specified art-centres, of which milan was one, "once, twice, or thrice, every year." and recognising the impossibility of his freeing himself from his english engagements in less than two years, they also granted him this interval before he need resume his residence at basel; and engaged to pay forty guldens yearly to his wife, on his behalf, for each of these two years. there is every probability that holbein himself took a goodly sum to basel to invest for his family's permanent benefit in one way and another. for it could only have been as a part of this gleaning for them that he drew--as the account books show that he did just at this juncture--a whole year's salary in advance from the royal exchequer; seeing that the same books prove that he was liberally paid for all his own expenses on the king's service, in addition to his regular salary. part of the sum he collected to take with him was doubtless used to apprentice his son philip, now sixteen, to the goldsmith's trade. and that the father chose paris for this purpose, where he left philip on his return journey, might well be due either to his own estimation of jerome david, to whom philip was indentured, or to the fact that benvenuto cellini's presence at paris afforded some advantage; or that his own promised return to basel would make it preferable to have the lad on the same side of the channel as all his family. and that holbein fully intended to make the necessary and obvious sacrifice involved in exchanging london for basel is also proved by a contemporary account. "his intention was," says his fellow-townsman, "had god lengthened his life, to paint many of his pictures again at his own expense, as well as the hall in the rathaus. the paintings on the _haus zum tanz_ he pronounced 'pretty good.'" but it was not to be. his new year's offering to the king on the opening of was a portrait, probably the oil painting in the hague gallery, of the infant prince of wales. it was a spirited picture of the royal baby with his gold rattle in his chubby little fist, such as might have delighted a father less doting than henry viii., whose return gift is recorded: "to hans holbyne, paynter, a gilte cruse with a cover, weighing x oz. quarter." the cruse was made by a friend of the painter; that cornelius hayes, goldsmith, whom bourbon's letter mentioned in connection with him in . all these months the negotiations for the hand of the duchess of milan had fluctuated with the varying fortunes of the king's relations with her uncle, charles v. but at last they had altogether collapsed with what seemed to henry viii. the threatening attitude assumed by the emperor and the pope. hereupon followed that historical chapter, so full of fatal consequences to cromwell, and no less big with shame for the king's own story: the pitiful chapter of anne of cleves. her brother, the duke of cleves, was at this time a troublesome foe to the emperor; while the fact that she was a protestant was a "roland" for the imperial and papal "oliver." so holbein was again posted off to bring back a counterfeit of anne, and to carry to her a miniature of the king. and by the st september he had acquitted himself of the new mission. there is not an iota of historical or other evidence for that "flanders mare" anecdote, which seems to have had a gratuitous as well as spontaneous origin in bishop burnet's seventeenth-century brain, to the effect that the king was the victim of a flattering portrait by holbein, and cruelly undeceived by the actual looks of his bride. in the first place his agents wrote to him frankly that the princess was of no great beauty, though not uncomely, and "never from the ellebowe of the ladye duchesse her mother," who was said to be most unwilling to part with her (as a mother might well be, for the husband in question). the king was also told that she was quite unskilled in languages or music, and held, with her mother, that it was "for a rebuke and an occasion of lightenesse that great ladyes shuld be lernyd or have enye knowledge of musike." and in the next place even a superficial knowledge of holbein would disprove any tradition of "flattery" from his unflinching, almost brutally truthful brush. it was hardly likely that the painter who would not stoop to flatter bishop stokesley, or henry viii. himself, would be swerved from his good faith by anne of cleves. illustration: plate anne of cleves _oils. the louvre_ on the contrary, the painting, in oils on vellum and mounted on a panel, now in the louvre (plate ), is the very embodiment of contemporary accounts of this princess. her fair-skinned, commonplace, yet "not uncomely" face looks out placidly at you from the quaint flemish head-dress of fine gauze and jewelled cloth-of-gold. her inert hands (holbein's hands belong to his truth-telling revelations), jewelled even on the thumb, are listlessly clasped upon each other; her crimson-velvet dress is heavily banded with gold and pearl embroidery. no venus certainly, and perhaps somewhat heavily handicapped by the maternal "elbowe." but still perfectly in keeping with her descriptions and making no denial to the french ambassador's statement that she was "the gentlest and kindest" of queens; or to an english eye-witness who writes that at her coronation the people all applauded her for being "so fayre a ladye, of so goodly a stature and so womanly a countenance, and in especial of so good qualities." the fact is that the king's very cruelty to this poor girl--torn from her mother's side and her protestant home in dürren to be the pawn of an unscrupulous diplomacy--was based on grounds, at least, less infamous than that of a slave-buyer. after both cromwell and holbein had been well rewarded for their services, the former lost his head and the queen her crown on considerations that took no more account of her looks than her feelings. the catholic glass had risen; the king himself was not ashamed to avow it; and the protestant alliance was therefore an incubus. after some two months of a queen's and wife's estate, poor anne of cleves was bid to pack her belongings and take up a separate establishment as an unmarried woman. no wonder she fainted when first informed of such an infamy. but there was no law in england save the _fiat_ of henry viii. the marriage was pronounced "null and void," and anne retired into private life, on the rigid condition that she would make no attempt to ever quit england, with an allowance of £ , a year, and the formal title of the king's "sister." there was no help for her. never again for her would there be the austere joys of dürren--her mother's side, her own timid dreams of other companionship, and never the price at which she had lost them. at the head of the triumphant anti-protestant, anti-cromwell party stood thomas howard, third duke of norfolk, whose portrait, in the royal collection at windsor, holbein painted about this time (plate ). the lean face and the figure clothed in red stand out strikingly from the plain green background, although the painting has suffered not a little injury. the robe is lined and trimmed with ermine, and over it is the collar and badge of the order of the garter. in his right hand he holds the gold baton of his office as earl marshal, and in his left the white staff of the lord chamberlain. illustration: plate thomas howard, third duke of norfolk _oils. windsor castle_ according to roper, norfolk, then earl of surrey, was a great friend of sir thomas more. but it would be hard to imagine a greater contrast than the records of the two men. the latter a pattern of personal purity and lofty ideals; the former as venal as the king's parliaments, and as unscrupulous in pursuit of his passions as the king himself. norfolk's star of influence had already waxed and waned with the evil destinies of one niece, before it arose anew with the fortunes of another only to plunge sharply after them into the gulf of ruin. for the present he and gardiner, restored to favour with him, were all-powerful. their calculations seemed to prosper, too, beyond their most ambitious dreams, when, instead of ruling through a rival to anne who should be the king's mistress, they were to rule through a legal successor. for the king was nothing if not technically correct; and from the moment when the fatal royal glance flamed on catherine howard when gardiner was entertaining him, nothing would do but she should become his wife. and thus once more the wild wheel of fortune was to make norfolk uncle to a queen of england. anne was divorced on the th of july, , and on the th of the same month, on the very day when thomas cromwell was beheaded, the king married anne boleyn's cousin, catherine howard. on the th of august she was proclaimed queen, and on the th of that month she was publicly prayed for as such in all the churches of the realm. well might she be! dry your outraged tears, anne of cleves, and give thanks to god that you are well out of it! there is a miniature in the windsor collection now believed to be holbein's portrait of catherine howard. until recently it was held to be the portrait of catherine parr. but there is a larger portrait of the former among the windsor drawings, a study evidently made for an oil painting (plate ). by this it seems that she had auburn hair, hazel eyes, a fair complexion, and a piquant smile. there is a painting which accords with this drawing in the duke of buccleuch's collection, but it is said to be by a french artist. illustration: plate catherine howard _chalk drawing. windsor castle_ in the autumn of this year, , the two years of absence expired which had been granted to holbein by his contract with the basel council. but he had now formed ties which were too powerful to yield to basel's. those plans of painting again the walls by which coming generations would judge him, the resolve to try again if he and elsbeth might not manage to live in peace under one roof where the children, who were strangers to him, should come to know and be known by him in something more than name, were all relinquished. they must certainly have been relinquished on some definite mutual understanding, and at a "compensation" agreed upon between him and elsbeth and his step-son, franz schmidt; because it must have been holbein himself who enabled franz, acting on his mother's behalf, to take over as he did the entire legacy--a snug little competency in itself--to which holbein fell heir in this autumn by the bequest of his uncle, sigmund holbein, citizen of berne. philip having been launched by his father in the goldsmith's craft, there only remained the second son and two daughters at home. thus so far as mere money went, holbein might now think himself discharged from the support of his family, and free to divert his future earnings from them. and, as has been said, the will and inventory proved at elsbeth's death, six years after her husband's, that he had made no bad provision for them in the matter of material comforts, however remiss his conduct in its moral aspects. the royal accounts break off in , but the subsidy roll for the city of london has a very precious item for holbein's biography in the october of this year. this announces that "hanns holbene" is among the "straungers" then residing in "the parisshe of saint andrew undershafte," and that he is assessed as such. not only the windsor chalk drawings, but the paintings at vienna, berlin, and other continental galleries, show the pressure, as well as the high level of quality, at which he was now working. these portraits are among almost his very best, while the one shortly to be mentioned is quite among them. by the summer of the tragedy of catherine howard was over. that royal progress, like more than one of its forerunners, had become the royal shame. this time it was a shame so black and so wide that within two years, after madness and death had purged the complicity of many, there still remained so many more involved in the sins and follies of norfolk's niece that the ordinary prisons were unable to contain all that were arraigned; a shame so bitter that when the proofs of it were first laid before henry viii. the privy council quaked to see him shed tears. it was, they said with awe, "a strange thing in his courage!" the guilty woman had her own tears to shed in expiation; but in the dawn of february th, , she walked to the block as full of wilful, cheerful audacity, and as careful of her toilet, as she had ever gone to meet her royal lover. and so the auburn head of the king's fifth wife rolled from the axe that had severed her guilty cousin's. on july th, , the "next" year as it then began, the king married catherine parr. she had been twice widowed and was about to marry sir thomas seymour when the king interfered, and she became his wife instead; though one can well credit the story that she tremblingly told him, "it were better to be his mistress." she was a good woman, a generous stepmother, and a good wife. but there is plenty of probability for the assertion that her own death had been debated with the king when her wit delayed it, and his death set her free to marry at last the man from whom the king had snatched her. it was formerly believed, as has been said, that holbein had painted her miniature--the one at windsor, now declared to be the portrait of catherine howard. about this time he must have painted the great portrait of which mention has been made. this is the oil portrait of dr. chamber, the king's physician, now in the vienna gallery (plate ). the sitter was, as the inscription shows, eighty-eight years old; and the strong, stern face is full of that "inward" look which comes to the faces of men whose meat and drink has been a lifetime of heavy responsibilities. he had been associated with the charter of the college of physicians in , and was also instrumental in that of the guild of "barbers and surgeons," in . and it was probably through him and dr. butts, another physician to the king whom holbein had painted and who was likewise a master of the new guild, that he undertook to paint a large work for their hall--henry viii. granting their charter to the master-surgeons kneeling before him. illustration: plate dr. chamber _oils. vienna gallery_ this work holbein did not live to finish; and it is to-day exceedingly doubtful as to how much of the smoke-blackened painting is by him. the very drawing has a woodenness foreign to his compositions, and much of the painting is by an evidently inferior hand. but good judges hold some of the heads to be undoubtedly his work. however this may be, with the autumn of holbein's life came to a sudden close. van mander, wrong as to the date by eleven years which have fathered a host of spurious _holbeins_ on the histories of art, is apparently right as to the cause of death--"the plague." by the great discovery of hans holbein's will, found by mr. black in among the archives of st. paul's cathedral, it is proved that the painter made his will on october th, and must have died between this and november th, , when administration was granted to one of his executors (the other would seem to have perished, meanwhile, from the same epidemic). this surviving executor was an old friend of the artist, whose portrait, in the windsor gallery, he had painted eleven years before--hans of antwerp, a master-goldsmith of the steelyard. the will bears about it evident signs of having been made in great haste and mental disturbance. but it accomplished all that holbein probably had at heart; that is, the ensuring that whatsoever moneys could be collected from his accounts, or by the sale of "all my goodes and also my horse," should first be applied to clear a couple of specified debts, and the rest be managed for the sole benefit of "my two chylder which be at nurse." from the very fact that nothing as to the identity or whereabouts of these babies is mentioned, it is clear that holbein relied on the verbal instructions which he had given to his trusted friends and to their complete understanding of all the circumstances as well as of his wishes. he was only concerned, apparently, that such small means as could thus be saved for them should not be permitted to pass to his legal heirs. no other heirs are mentioned; no other legacy is made. from the will alone one who did not know otherwise would suppose that he had no other family or relatives in existence. the plague left no man in its neighbourhood much leisure for explanations. stowe records that the one of that autumn was such "a great death" that the law courts had to be transferred to st. albans. but two things seem to speak in this curt document. first, that by the transference of his uncle sigmund's little fortune to franz schmidt (as trustee for elsbeth and the children of her marriage with holbein), which the archives prove took place three years earlier, and by his other arrangements for his family at basel and for philip at paris, holbein held himself free of any further responsibility for their support, and, indeed, determined that they should not obtain possession of the residue in london. secondly, that if the mother of his two illegitimate children had lived with him in london as his wife, she must have just died--perhaps in childbed, perhaps of the plague. she is not in any way referred to. and there is something in the very signs of confusion and distress throughout the wording of the will which seems to exhale a far-away anguish--sudden parting, sad apprehensions, keenest anxiety for "my two chylder which be at nurse." there comes before the eye a picture of the five grave men--holbein, his two executors, the one a goldsmith, the other an armourer, and his two witnesses, a "merchaunte" and a "paynter"--hurrying along the plague-infected streets to get this document legalised as some protection for two motherless babies, in the event of their father's death. no man knew whose turn would come within the hour. and by november th holbein's had come, and one executor's also, apparently. the latin record of administration on this date is that it has been consigned to john anwarpe (johann or hans of antwerp), and accepted by him in accordance with "the last will of john, alias hans holbein, recently deceased in the parish of saint andrew undershaft." it would seem probable, then, that the painter was buried in this church rather than in the closely adjoining church of saint catharine-cree to which tradition assigned his body. but the horrors of such an epidemic as that in which the painter was swept suddenly away make it easy to understand how even such a man as he had now become could die unnoticed and be buried in an unrecorded grave. when the earl of arundel, a few years later, sought to learn where he might set up a monument to one he so greatly admired, there was only this vague and uncorroborated rumour that the painter was buried in saint catharine-cree. and so no monument was built to mark the spot where holbein's "measure of sliding sand" had been spilled at last. but, as they ran, those sands had measured more than "_a great portrait-painter_." they had measured greatness; greatness which is not to be delimited by the wanton outrages of man or the accidents of time. both have had their share in the judgments of generations that have lost all his greatest and nearly all his imaginative creations. and what the spoiler has spared, the self-styled restorer has too often ruined. self-love, on the other hand, and family pride have been engaged to preserve those portraits by which it is now the fashion to mulct him of his far larger dues. of his mysticism, of the symbolism in which his "journal intime" is written in his own firm cipher, this little book is not the place to speak; though for those who have once come to know the true holbein these have a spell, a stern, inexhaustible enchantment all their own. but study the few fortunate survivals of his imaginative works, study even more the wrecks and skeletons of his loftier conceptions, and ask yourself if it could be by only a quick eye and a clever hand (and he had both, assuredly) that holbein caught up the dying ember of the van eycks' torch and fanned it by his originality, his fancy, his winged realism, until its light lit up the dim ways of man with a clairvoyance far beyond theirs. this eye, this mind, flung its gleaming penetration into every covert of the soul and deep, deep, deep into the most shrouded, the most shuddering secrets of mortality. was it by virtue of a mere portrait-painter's powers that the son of the augsburg bohemian came to lay his finger upon the very core and composition of perhaps the haughtiest, the subtlest, the most dread despot since the cæsars? henry viii. and fisher; the laïs corinthiaca, the duchess of milan, his brooding wife; dancing children, and dancing death; christ on the cross, christ in the grave, christ arisen; lambs in the fields, woods and hills, gaping peasants, wild battle;--put them side by side, the poor ghosts of them left to us, and compute the range of art--"the majestic range" that framed them all. let us be just. let us forget for a moment the chirp of the family housekeeper over her gods. let us gather up the broken fragments that are more than the meal, and humbly own the miracle that created them. it is idle to argue with the intelligence that can see "a want of imagination" in holbein. but we can find proof and to spare that it is not so; that his so-called "limitations"--apart from method, which is a matter of epoch--are due to a creed we may or may not agree with, but surely must respect. the creed that beauty is the framework, the ornament, rather than the substance of things; the pleasure, not the purpose of "this mortal"; and that the sweetest flower that blows is but an exquisite moment of transfigured clay. he smells the mould above the rose; yet how he draws the rose! the brazen arrogance of pomp, the pearl on a woman's neck, the shimmer of a breaking bubble, the wrinkles in a baby's foot, the beauty of life, the pathos of life, the irony and the lust of life,--he has painted them all, as he saw them all, in the phantasmagoric procession of being betwixt garret and throne. he has painted each, too, with that genius for seizing the essential quality which _is_ the thing, that never forsook him from augsburg to saint andrew's undershaft; that singular, vivid, original genius which can well afford to let his grave be forgotten, whose works build for him, as hans holbein-- _one of the few, the immortal names that were not born to die._ footnotes. : the name used thus, without further identification, is to be taken throughout these pages to mean hans holbein the _younger_. : variously written meyer, meier, mejer, meiger, or megger. bär is also written _ber_, or _berin_. : i am deeply indebted to the personal kindness and trouble of sir martin gosselin, k.c.m.g., british minister at the court of portugal, for greatly facilitating my own study of this interesting picture. : i am indebted to the personal kindness of the discoverer's son, herr direktor zetter-collin of the solothurn museum, for these details. but the whole story, as well as herr zetter-collin's contributions to the history of the work, should be read in his own absorbingly interesting monograph:--"_die zetter'sche madonna von solothurn. (...) ihre geschichte, etc._" . : _"die liebe zu gott heist charite. wer liebe hat der tragt kein hass."_ a catalogue of the principal existing works of hans holbein the younger arranged, so far as can be known, in chronological sequence ** signifies--_superlative qualities._ * signifies--_of some particular importance._ ? signifies--_authorities differ._ held by some (and by the writer) to have been, in its original condition, the work of holbein's own hand. i. earliest individual works (before going to basel) ? st. elizabeth of hungary and st. barbara. oils. (wings of the st. sebastian altar-piece.) munich gallery. virgin and child. oils. basel museum. (earliest signed work known. dated .) ii. first basel period ( , , - ) illustrations to erasmus's _praise of folly_. eighty-two pen-and-ink sketches on the margins. original copy, basel museum. portrait of an unknown young man. oils. grand-ducal museum, darmstadt. jacob meyer _zum hasen_ and his second wife, dorothea kannegiesser. [plates and .] oils. basel museum. bonifacius amerbach. [plate .] oils. basel museum. portrait of himself. [frontispiece.] coloured chalks. basel museum. * studies from nature. (a bat outspread and a lamb.) drawings in water-colour and silver-point. basel museum. designs for armorial windows. (more especially those with _landsknechte_ and one with three peasants gossiping.) washed drawings. basel museum and print cabinet, berlin. _landsknechte_ in a hand-to-hand fight. [plate .] washed drawing. basel museum. others in various collections. design for the wings of an organ-case. washed drawings. basel museum. head of st. john the evangelist. oils. basel museum. the last supper. (on wood; ruined fragment.) oils. basel museum. the nativity [plate .] and the adoration. oils. freiburg cathedral. (wings of a lost altar-piece.) holy family. washed drawing. basel museum. (also other drawings of the virgin and child.) the passion. eight-panelled altar-piece. [plate .] oils. basel museum. (utterly ruined by over-painting.) * the passion. a series of ten designs for glass-painting. washed drawings. basel museum. (a set of seven reversed impressions in the british museum.) the man of sorrows and the mater dolorosa. oils, in tones of brown. basel museum. christ borne to the ground by the weight of the cross. a washed drawing and a * woodcut (unique impression). basel museum. * christ in the grave. [plate .] oils. basel museum. ? the risen christ and mary magdalen at the sepulchre. [plate .] oils. hampton court gallery. (very much injured.) st. george. oils. kunsthalle, karlsruhe. st. ursula. oils. kunsthalle, karlsruhe. ? portrait of a young girl. [plate .] drawing in chalk and silver-point. jabach collection. the louvre. ** the solothurn madonna. [plate .] oils. solothurn museum. ("die zetter'sche madonna von solothurn," of which the remarkable history is given in the text; together with the evident relationship of plate and the hypothesis of the present writer in that connection.) ** portrait of erasmus. [plate .] oils. the louvre. a citizen's wife, and others, in the dress of the time. washed drawings. basel museum. the table of cebes. border for title-page. woodcut. royal print cabinet, berlin. st. peter and st. paul; on the title-page of adam petri's reprint of luther's translation of the new testament. alphabet of "the dance of death." woodcuts. proof-impressions in the basel museum, the british museum, and the dresden royal collection. bible pictures: illustrating old testament. woodcuts. ** "images of death." [two shown at plates and .] proof-impressions, some sets incomplete, in the basel museum, british museum and the national print collections of paris, vienna, berlin, dresden, karlsruhe, and the bodleian library. (this is the immortal series of woodcuts, often called "the dance of death," done for the trechsel brothers of lyons, but not published there until many years later.) dorothea offenburg as the goddess of love. [plate .] oils. basel museum. the above as laïs corinthiaca. oils. basel museum. ** the meyer madonna. [plates and .] oils. grand-ducal collection, darmstadt (superbly restored); and ?dresden gallery. (notwithstanding the many and eminent authorities who hold this to be a copy, there still remain a sufficiency of no less eminent authorities to warrant the present writer in her unshaken opinion that, at any rate in its first estate and in the main, this dresden version--revered for more than one century as such by the highest authorities--was the creation of holbein's own hand.) iii. first london period ( - ) portrait of sir thomas more. oils. mr. huth's collection. chalk drawing at windsor. [plate .] (also a drawing of sir john more, father of the above.) ** john fisher, bishop of rochester. [plate .] chalk drawing. windsor castle. (another in the british museum.) archbishop warham. oils. the louvre, and lambeth palace. ? john stokesley, bishop of london. oils. windsor castle. sir henry guildford. [plate .] oils. windsor castle. lady guildford. oils. mr. frewen's collection. sir thomas godsalve and his son john. oils. dresden gallery. chalk drawing of sir john godsalve. windsor castle. nicholas kratzer, astronomer royal to king henry viii. [plate .] oils. the louvre. sir henry wyat. oils. the louvre. sir bryan tuke, treasurer of the household to king henry viii. oils. munich gallery. [plate .] also at grosvenor house. (as stated in the text, the writer holds that the portraits of sir bryan tuke should properly be classed with those of a later period. but they are given here in accordance with opinions which obtain at present.) iv. last basel period ( - ) ** portrait group of holbein's wife, elsbeth, and his two eldest children. [plate .] oils, on paper. basel museum. (outline hard from having been cut out and mounted.) king rehoboam replying to his people, and ** samuel denouncing saul. [plate .] two washed drawings. basel museum. (these are the designs for "the back wall" of the basel council chamber.) "portrait of an english lady" (unknown). chalk drawing. basel museum. ** portrait of an unknown young man in a broad-brimmed hat. chalk drawing. basel museum. (this is one of the most beautiful of holbein's portrait studies. there is a soft, yet virile, witchery about it which haunts the memory.) round portrait of erasmus. (bust, / view.) oils. basel museum. designs for dagger-sheaths and other goldsmith's work. washed drawings. basel museum, british museum, etc. (more especially the "dance of death"; a chef-d'oeuvre.) a ship making sail. washed drawing. städel institut. frankfurt. v. last period; london ( - ) ** portrait of jörg gyze. [plate .] oils. berlin gallery. portrait of an unknown man. oils. schönborn gallery, vienna. johann or hans of antwerp. oils. windsor castle. (holbein's friend and executor.) derich tybis of duisburg. oils. imperial gallery, vienna. derich born. oils. munich gallery, and windsor castle. derich berck. oils. petworth. unknown man. oils. prado gallery, madrid. the triumph of riches. drawing. the louvre. (copies of this and the pendant design, the triumph of poverty, in the british museum and in the collection of lady eastlake.) the queen of sheba before solomon. washed drawing, heightened with gold and colours. windsor castle. robert cheseman, with falcon. oils. hague gallery. * "the ambassadors." [plate .] oils. national gallery. (a double portrait, life size. formerly supposed to be sir thomas wyatt and a scholar; now officially held to be jean de dinteville, bailli de troyes, and george de selve, bishop of lavaur. as stated in the text, the present writer differs from any identification of either figure yet published, but is not prepared to put forward her own views for the present.) nicholas bourbon de vandoeuvre, scholar and poet. chalk drawing. windsor castle. (an intimate friend of holbein, kratzer, and their circle. recently identified as the man in the scholar's gown, in "the ambassadors," and so given by mr. lionel cust, in the _dictionary of national biography_, in his article upon holbein.) **the morett portrait. [plate .] oils. dresden gallery. (long believed to be a triumph of leonardo da vinci's art, and the portrait of ludovico sforza, "il moro." at one time held to be henry brandon, duke of suffolk. afterwards "established" and catalogued as hubert morett, goldsmith to king henry viii. following m. larpent's suggestion, however, it is now supposed to be the portrait of charles solier, sieur de morette. but as to this the last word may yet remain to be said. the drawing which the majority of authorities hold to be the study for this painting now hangs near it.) thomas cromwell. oils. tittenhanger. ** miniature portrait of henry brandon, son of the duke of suffolk. windsor castle. title-page used in coverdale's bible. woodcut. q. jane seymour. [plate .] oils. imperial gallery, vienna. ** portrait of erasmus, full length, in scholar's robes, with his hand on the head of the god terminus. woodcut. frontispiece to hieronymus froben's edition of erasmus's works, published in . (commonly known as "erasmus in a surround," or niche.) fragment of the cartoon [plate ] used for the four royal portraits in the wall-painting at whitehall. the fragment shows only the figures of king henry viii. and his father. hardwick hall. (remigius van leemput's copy of the wall-painting shows that the position of the king's head was changed, in the completed work, to the full-face view so familiar in the oil-painting at windsor castle. the latter is one of the many copies of holbein's original portrait of henry viii. which long passed muster as genuine _holbeins_.) ** portrait study of the face of king henry viii. [plate .] chalk drawing. royal print cabinet, munich. (probably the life-study for the whitehall painting. if nothing else remained, this mask alone would incontestably rank holbein among the masters of all time. to the writer's thinking, at any rate, it stands among the very few works of art which it would be difficult to match, and impossible to surpass in its own colossal qualities.) ** design for "the jane seymour cup." [plate .] bodleian library. ** christina of denmark, duchess of milan. [plate .] oils. national gallery; lent from arundel castle. edward vi., when infant prince of wales. oils. hanover gallery, and lord yarborough's collection. anne of cleves. [plate .] oils on vellum. the louvre. thomas howard, third duke of norfolk. [plate .] oils. windsor castle, and arundel castle. catherine howard. [plate .] chalk drawing. windsor castle. (the miniature at windsor castle, formerly said to be holbein's portrait of catherine parr, is now said to be catherine howard. if so, it is somewhat difficult to reconcile it with the drawing, which latter seems much more in keeping with the descriptions of her traits.) title-page used in cranmer's bible. woodcut. (this is the title-page from which cromwell's arms are erased in the second edition.) sir nicholas carew. oils. dalkeith palace. chalk drawing. basel museum. simon george of cornwall. oils. städel institut, frankfurt. miniature portrait of charles brandon, son of the duke of suffolk. windsor castle. lady; unknown. oils. imperial gallery, vienna. also a fine portrait of an unknown man. oils. same gallery. sir richard southwell. oils. uffizi gallery, florence. chalk drawing. windsor castle. john reskymeer. oils. hampton court gallery. nicholas poyntz. oils. de la rosière collection, paris. chalk drawing. windsor castle. sir john russell. oils. woburn abbey. chalk drawing. windsor castle. three portraits; men unknown. oils. berlin gallery. designs for jewelry, ornamental panels, clocks, chimney-piece, etc., etc. washed drawings. british museum, basel museum, etc. many fine portraits of which no versions in oils are known. chalk drawings. windsor castle. among these one of edward vi. as boy prince of wales, the duchess of suffolk, sir thomas wyatt, etc., etc. dr. john chamber, or chambers. oils. imperial gallery, vienna. also many other oil-portraits, more or less genuine, in various collections. references the literature of holbein's life, much more of his works, is far too extensive to admit of a bibliography in a volume of this sort. but the following list will be found to contain (or themselves refer the reader to) all that is of essential importance to even the most complete study of this master. carel van mander, _het schilder-boeck_, etc., . the above translated into french, and admirably edited by m. henri hyman. tom., . alfred woltmann, _holbein und seine zeit. zweite umgearbeitete auflage_, . bde. there is an english translation of the first edition of , by f. e. bunnètt; but unfortunately its views on many vital points are reversed by woltmann himself in his latest edition. r. n. wornum, _some account of the life and works of hans holbein_, . corrected in many respects by the author in a monograph on "the meier madonna," . paul mantz, _hans holbein_. paris, . h. knackfuss, _holbein_. leipzig, . english translation of the above by mr. campbell dodgson. eduard his, _die basler archive über hans holbein den jungern_. in zahn's _jahrbücher für kunstwissenschaft_, . francis douce, _the dance of death_, . j. r. smith, _holbein's dance of death_, . (especially fine reproductions.) h. n. humphreys, _holbein's dance of death_, . g. th. fechner, _Über die deutungsfrage der holbein'schen madonna._ _die älteste historische quelle über die holbein'sche madonna_. both in _archiv für die zeichnenden künste_, , i., . these give all the known facts of the history of the meyer madonnas of darmstadt and dresden. s. larpent, _sur le portrait de morett_. christiania, . mary f. s. hervey, _holbein's "ambassadors,"_ . this volume also embodies, and gives the references to, the original identifications of professor sidney colvin, and the suggested identifications of mr. c. l. eastlake; as well as to the contribution concerning the hymn-book by mr. barclay squire. w. f. dickes, _holbein's "ambassadors" unriddled_, . f. a. zetter-collin, _die zetter'sche madonna von solothurn. ihre geschichte aus originalquellen_, etc. in _festschrift des kunst-vereins der stadt solothurn_, . artur seeman, _der brunnen des lebens, von h. holbein_. in _zeitschrift für bildende kunst_. mai, . with a superb illustration in colour. index "adoration," painting, "ambassadors, the," painting, - , amerbach, basilius, bonifacius, , - , , johann, , anne, of cleves, queen, - antwerp, johann or hans of, arundel, henry fitzalan, earl of, thomas howard, earl of, william fitzalan, earl of, augsburg, , , bär, hans, , magdalena, first wife of meyer zum hasen, barber-surgeons, guild of, basel, description of, - decoration of the rathhaus by holbein, - , , , decoration of the lällenkönig by holbein, offers of an annuity to holbein, , , , , basel, banquet to holbein, beatus rhenanus, berne, bible, translations before the reformation, , boleyn, anne, queen, , bourbon, nicholas, , , bourges, burgkmair, hans, butts, sir william, cellini, benvenuto, - chamber, john, cheseman, robert, "christ in the grave," painting, - christ in holbein's art, - christina, duchess of milan, , - colet, john, dean of st. paul's, , cromwell, thomas, earl of essex, "dance of death," - darmstadt, "meyer-madonna" at, - david, gerard, david, jerome, diesbach, nicholas von, , dinteville, jean de, dresden, "meyer-madonna" at, - dürer, albrecht, edward vi., king, , elizabeth of york, queen, erasmus, desiderius, - , , , portraits of, , , eyck, h. and j. van, , fäsch, remigius, fisher, john, bishop of rochester, "fountain of life," painting, , froben, hieronymus, froben, johann, , , , , , , gardiner, stephen, bishop of winchester, gerster, hans, , glass-painting, designs for, , "goddess of love," painting, gold-work, designs for, graf, urs, , guildford, sir henry, - lady, gyze, georg, - hayes, cornelius, henry vii., king, portrait, henry viii., king, portrait, - , new year present to holbein, henry, prince of wales, hertenstein, jacob von, holbein, ambrose, , , , bruno, elsbeth, , - , , , , - , - hans, the elder, , , , , , the younger, birth ( ), at basel ( - ), at lucerne ( - ), , a citizen of basel ( - ), - marriage, wife and children, - , , - , , , first visit to england ( - ), - last years in basel ( - ), - purchase of basel house ( ), , final return to london ( ), mention of, by nicholas bourbon, official income, will and death, - place of interment, illegitimate children, as a designer and engraver, - greatness of, - religious ideals and sympathies, - , - jacob, - katharina, - künegoldt, wife of andreas syff, - michael, philip, son of hans the younger, , , , , philip, grandson of hans the younger, sigmund, , howard, catherine, queen, thomas, duke of norfolk, hutten, ulrich von, hyss, cornelius, "jane seymour cup," kratzer, nicholas, , , laïs corinthiaca, painting, , landsknechte, drawings, , "last supper," paintings, - leemput, remi von, leonardo da vinci, , lisbon, painting, the "fountain of life" at, , lucerne, , lützelburger, hans, , lystrius, gerard, mantegna, andrea, , , "mary magdalen at the sepulchre," painting, - merian, family of, at frankfurt, meyer, anna, , dorothea, née kannegiesser, - , jacob zum hasen, - , , , jacob zum hirten, , magdalena, née bär, "meyer-madonna" (darmstadt and dresden), - milan, monasticism and art, - more, sir thomas, , - , morett, hubert, or morette, charles de solier, portrait, , , "nativity," paintings, - oberriedt, hans, , oporinus, joannes, , paracelsus, parr, catherine, , passion, eight-panelled altar-piece, - drawings, , plague (in ), saint andrew undershaft, london, , , saint catharine cree, london, schmidt, franz, , schoolmaster's sign-board, paintings, , selve, georges de, bishop of lavaur, seymour, jane, queen, , , , , "sheba, queen of, visiting solomon," drawing, solier, charles de, seigneur de morette, solothurn madonna, painting and its history, - steelyard, the, london, - stokesley, john, bishop of london, sultz, dorothea von, née offenburg, - title-pages, woodcuts, , , , "triumph of riches and of poverty," drawings, tuke, sir bryan, , ulm, utopia, woodcut title-page, "virgin and child," drawings, paintings by holbein, - , - warham, william, archbishop of canterbury, , , wilhelm meister, school of, windsor, portrait, drawings at, zetter, "madonna" at solothurn, - little books on art _demy mo. s. d. net._ =subjects= miniatures. alice corkran bookplates. edward almack greek art. h. b. walters roman art. h. b. walters the arts of japan. mrs. c. m. salwey jewellery. c. davenport christ in art. mrs. h. jenner our lady in art. mrs. h. jenner christian symbolism. h. jenner illuminated mss. j. w. bradley enamels. mrs. nelson dawson furniture. egan mew =artists= romney. george paston dÜrer. l. jessie allen reynolds. j. sime watts. miss r. e. d. sketchley hoppner. h. p. k. skipton turner. frances tyrrell-gill hogarth. egan mew burne-jones. fortunée de lisle leighton. alice corkran rembrandt. mrs. e. a. sharp velasquez. wilfrid wilberforce and a. r. gilbert vandyck. m. g. smallwood david cox. arthur tomson holbein. beatrice fortescue corot. ethel birnstingl and mrs. a. pollard millet. netta peacock claude. e. dillon greuze and boucher. eliza f. pollard raphael. a. r. dryhurst plymouth william brendon and son printers transcriber's note contemporary spellings have generally been retained even when inconsistent. a small number of obvious typographical errors have been corrected and some names regularised; missing punctuation has been silently added. advertising material has been moved to the end. the following additional changes have been made: to away with him to _do_ away with him and in pope leo's hands for a and _would remain_ in pope leo's year yet for a year yet die zetter'schen madonna die _zetter'sche_ madonna vow solothurn _von_ solothurn that i imagine it to have that i imagine to have mecænas mæcenas at basel ( - ) at basel ( -_ _) transcriber's note: a few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text. chapter headings were originally constructed as side-notes. they were placed here at the head of their respective paragraphs, and moved to paragraph's start where given at paragraph's middle. see html version for the original headers placement. library edition the complete works of john ruskin poetry of architecture seven lamps modern painters volume i national library association new york chicago the complete works of john ruskin volume ii modern painters volume i modern painters. by a graduate of oxford. vol. i. part i--ii. to the landscape artists of england this work is respectfully dedicated by their sincere admirer, _the author_ preface to the first edition. the work now laid before the public originated in indignation at the shallow and false criticism of the periodicals of the day on the works of the great living artist to whom it principally refers. it was intended to be a short pamphlet, reprobating the matter and style of those critiques, and pointing out their perilous tendency, as guides of public feeling. but, as point after point presented itself for demonstration, i found myself compelled to amplify what was at first a letter to the editor of a review, into something very like a treatise on art, to which i was obliged to give the more consistency and completeness, because it advocated opinions which, to the ordinary connoisseur, will sound heretical. i now scarcely know whether i should announce it is an essay on landscape painting, and apologize for its frequent reference to the works of a particular master; or, announcing it as a critique on particular works, apologize for its lengthy discussion of general principles. but of whatever character the work may be considered, the motives which led me to undertake it must not be mistaken. no zeal for the reputation of any individual, no personal feeling of any kind, has the slightest weight or influence with me. the reputation of the great artist to whose works i have chiefly referred, is established on too legitimate grounds among all whose admiration is honorable, to be in any way affected by the ignorant sarcasms of pretension and affectation. but when _public_ taste seems plunging deeper and deeper into degradation day by day, and when the press universally exerts such power as it possesses to direct the feeling of the nation more completely to all that is theatrical, affected, and false in art; while it vents its ribald buffooneries on the most exalted truth, and the highest ideal of landscape, that this or any other age has ever witnessed, it becomes the imperative duty of all who have any perception or knowledge of what is really great in art, and any desire for its advancement in england, to come fearlessly forward, regardless of such individual interests as are likely to be injured by the knowledge of what is good and right, to declare and demonstrate, wherever they exist, the essence and the authority of the beautiful and the true. whatever may seem invidious or partial in the execution of my task is dependent not so much on the tenor of the work, as on its incompleteness. i have not entered into systematic criticism of all the painters of the present day; but i have illustrated each particular excellence and truth of art by the works in which it exists in the highest degree, resting satisfied that if it be once rightly felt and enjoyed in these, it will be discovered and appreciated wherever it exists in others. and although i have never suppressed any conviction of the superiority of one artist over another, which i believed to be grounded on truth, and necessary to the understanding of truth, i have been cautious never to undermine positive rank, while i disputed relative rank. my uniform desire and aim have been, not that the present favorite should be admired less, but that the neglected master should be admired more. and i know that an increased perception and sense of truth and beauty, though it may interfere with our estimate of the comparative rank of painters, will invariably tend to increase our admiration of all who are really great; and he who now places stanfield and callcott above turner, will admire stanfield and callcott more than he does now, when he has learned to place turner far above them both. in three instances only have i spoken in direct depreciation of the works of living artists, and these are all cases in which the reputation is so firm and extended, as to suffer little injury from the opinion of an individual, and where the blame has been warranted and deserved by the desecration of the highest powers. of the old masters i have spoken with far greater freedom; but let it be remembered that only a portion of the work is now presented to the public, and it must not be supposed, because in that particular portion, and with reference to particular excellencies, i have spoken in constant depreciation, that i have no feeling of other excellencies of which cognizance can only be taken in future parts of the work. let me not be understood to mean more than i have said, nor be made responsible for conclusions when i have only stated facts. i have said that the old masters did not give the truth of nature; if the reader chooses, thence, to infer that they were not masters at all, it is his conclusion, not mine. whatever i have asserted throughout the work, i have endeavored to ground altogether on demonstrations which must stand or fall by their own strength, and which ought to involve no more reference to authority or character than a demonstration in euclid. yet it is proper for the public to know, that the writer is no mere theorist, but has been devoted from his youth to the laborious study of practical art. whatever has been generally affirmed of the old schools of landscape-painting is founded on familiar acquaintance with every important work of art, from antwerp to naples. but it would be useless, where close and immediate comparison with works in our own academy is desirable, to refer to the details of pictures at rome or munich; and it would be impossible to speak at once with just feeling, as regarded the possessor, and just freedom, as regarded the public, of pictures in private galleries. whatever particular references have been made for illustration, have been therefore confined, as far as was in my power, to works in the national and dulwich galleries. finally, i have to apologize for the imperfection of a work which i could have wished not to have executed, but with years of reflection and revisal. it is owing to my sense of the necessity of such revisal, that only a portion of the work is now presented to the public; but that portion is both complete in itself, and is more peculiarly directed against the crying evil which called for instant remedy. whether i ever completely fulfil my intention, will partly depend upon the spirit in which the present volume is received. if it be attributed to an invidious spirit, or a desire for the advancement of individual interests, i could hope to effect little good by farther effort. if, on the contrary, its real feeling and intention be understood, i shall shrink from no labor in the execution of a task which may tend, however feebly, to the advancement of the cause of real art in england, and to the honor of those great living masters whom we now neglect or malign, to pour our flattery into the ear of death, and exalt, with vain acclamation, the names of those who neither demand our praise, nor regard our gratitude. the author. preface to the second edition. it is allowed by the most able writers on naval and military tactics, that although the attack by successive divisions absolutely requires in the attacking party such an inherent superiority in quality of force, and such consciousness of that superiority, as may enable his front columns, or his leading ships, to support themselves for a considerable period against overwhelming numbers; it yet insures, if maintained with constancy, the most total ruin of the opposing force. convinced of the truth, and therefore assured of the ultimate prevalence and victory of the principles which i have advocated, and equally confident that the strength of the cause must give weight to the strokes of even the weakest of its defenders, i permitted myself to yield to a somewhat hasty and hot-headed desire of being, at whatever risk, in the thick of the fire, and began the contest with a part, and that the weakest and least considerable part, of the forces at my disposal. and i now find the volume thus boldly laid before the public in a position much resembling that of the royal sovereign at trafalgar, receiving, unsupported, the broadsides of half the enemy's fleet, while unforeseen circumstances have hitherto prevented, and must yet for a time prevent, my heavier ships of the line from taking any part in the action. i watched the first moments of the struggle with some anxiety for the solitary vessel,--an anxiety which i have now ceased to feel,--for the flag of truth waves brightly through the smoke of the battle, and my antagonists, wholly intent on the destruction of the leading ship, have lost their position, and exposed themselves in defenceless disorder to the attack of the following columns. if, however, i have had no reason to regret my hasty advance, as far as regards the ultimate issue of the struggle, i have yet found it to occasion much misconception of the character, and some diminution of the influence, of the present essay. for though the work has been received as only in sanguine moments i had ventured to hope, though i have had the pleasure of knowing that in many instances its principles have carried with them a strength of conviction amounting to a demonstration of their truth, and that, even where it has had no other influence, it has excited interest, suggested inquiry, and prompted to a just and frank comparison of art with nature; yet this effect would have been greater still, had not the work been supposed, as it seems to have been by many readers, a completed treatise, containing a systematized statement of the whole of my views on the subject of modern art. considered as such, it surprises me that the book should have received the slightest attention. for what respect could be due to a writer who pretended to criticise and classify the works of the great painters of landscape, without developing, or even alluding to, one single principle of the beautiful or sublime? so far from being a completed essay, it is little more than the introduction to the mass of evidence and illustration which i have yet to bring forward; it treats of nothing but the initiatory steps of art, states nothing but the elementary rules of criticism, touches only on merits attainable by accuracy of eye and fidelity of hand, and leaves for future consideration every one of the eclectic qualities of pictures, all of good that is prompted by feeling, and of great that is guided by judgment; and its function and scope should the less have been mistaken, because i have not only most carefully arranged the subject in its commencement, but have given frequent references throughout to the essays by which it is intended to be succeeded, in which i shall endeavor to point out the signification and the value of those phenomena of external nature which i have been hitherto compelled to describe without reference either to their inherent beauty, or to the lessons which may be derived from them. yet, to prevent such misconception in future, i may perhaps be excused for occupying the reader's time with a fuller statement of the feelings with which the work was undertaken, of its general plan, and of the conclusions and positions which i hope to be able finally to deduce and maintain. nothing, perhaps, bears on the face of it more appearance of folly, ignorance, and impertinence, than any attempt to diminish the honor of those to whom the assent of many generations has assigned a throne; for the truly great of later times have, almost without exception, fostered in others the veneration of departed power which they felt themselves, satisfied in all humility to take their seat at the feet of those whose honor is brightened by the hoariness of time, and to wait for the period when the lustre of many departed days may accumulate on their own heads, in the radiance which culminates as it recedes. the envious and incompetent have usually been the leaders of attack, content if, like the foulness of the earth, they may attract to themselves notice by their noisomeness, or, like its insects, exalt themselves by virulence into visibility. while, however, the envy of the vicious, and the insolence of the ignorant, are occasionally shown in their nakedness by _futile_ efforts to degrade the dead, it is worthy of consideration whether they may not more frequently escape detection in _successful_ efforts to degrade the living,--whether the very same malice may not be gratified, the very same incompetence demonstrated in the unjust lowering of present greatness, and the unjust exaltation of a perished power, as, if exerted and manifested in a less safe direction, would have classed the critic with nero and caligula, with zoilus and perrault. be it remembered, that the spirit of detraction is detected only when unsuccessful, and receives least punishment where it effects the greatest injury; and it cannot but be felt that there is as much danger that the rising of new stars should be concealed by the mists which are unseen, as that those throned in heaven should be darkened by the clouds which are visible. there is, i fear, so much malice in the hearts of most men, that they are chiefly jealous of that praise which can give the greatest pleasure, and are then most liberal of eulogium when it can no longer be enjoyed. they grudge not the whiteness of the sepulchre, because by no honor they can bestow upon it can the senseless corpse be rendered an object of envy; but they are niggardly of the reputation which contributes to happiness, or advances to fortune. they are glad to obtain credit for generosity and humility by exalting those who are beyond the reach of praise, and thus to escape the more painful necessity of doing homage to a living rival. they are rejoiced to set up a standard of imaginary excellence, which may enable them, by insisting on the inferiority of a contemporary work to the things that have been, to withdraw the attention from its superiority to the things that are. the same undercurrent of jealousy operates in our reception of animadversion. men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts than in that which is innocuous, and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes, than of that which falls impotently on the grave. and thus well says the good and deep-minded richard hooker: "to the best and wisest, while they live, the world is continually a froward opposite; and a curious observer of their defects and imperfections, their virtues afterwards it as much admireth. and for this cause, many times that which deserveth admiration would hardly be able to find favor, if they which propose it were not content to profess themselves therein scholars and followers of the ancient. for the world will not endure to hear that we are wiser than any have been which went before."--book v. ch. vii. . he therefore who would maintain the cause of contemporary excellence against that of elder time, must have almost every class of men arrayed against him. the generous, because they would not find matter of accusation against established dignities; the envious, because they like not the sound of a living man's praise; the wise, because they prefer the opinion of centuries to that of days; and the foolish, because they are incapable of forming an opinion of their own. obloquy so universal is not lightly to be risked, and the few who make an effort to stem the torrent, as it is made commonly in favor of their own works, deserve the contempt which is their only reward. nor is this to be regretted, in its influence on the progress and preservation of things technical and communicable. respect for the ancients is the salvation of art, though it sometimes blinds us to its _ends_. it increases the power of the painter, though it diminishes his liberty; and if it be sometimes an incumbrance to the essays of invention, it is oftener a protection from the consequences of audacity. the whole system and discipline of art, the collected results of the experience of ages, might, but for the fixed authority of antiquity, be swept away by the rage of fashion, or lost in the glare of novelty; and the knowledge which it had taken centuries to accumulate, the principles which mighty minds had arrived at only in dying, might be overthrown by the frenzy of a faction, and abandoned in the insolence of an hour. neither, in its general application, is the persuasion of the superiority of former works less just than useful. the greater number of them are, and must be, immeasurably nobler than any of the results of present effort, because that which is best of the productions of four thousand years must necessarily be in its accumulation, beyond all rivalry from the works of any given generation; but it should always be remembered that it is improbable that many, and impossible that all, of such works, though the greatest yet produced, should approach abstract perfection; that there is certainly something left for us to carry farther, or complete; that any given generation has just the same chance of producing some individual mind of first-rate calibre, as any of its predecessors; and that if such a mind _should_ arise, the chances are, that with the assistance of experience and example, it would, in its particular and chosen path, do greater things than had been before done. we must therefore be cautious not to lose sight of the real use of what has been left us by antiquity, nor to take that for a model of perfection which is, in many cases, only a guide to it. the picture which is looked to for an interpretation of nature is invaluable, but the picture which is taken as a substitute for nature, had better be burned; and the young artist, while he should shrink with horror from the iconoclast who would tear from him every landmark and light which has been bequeathed him by the ancients, and leave him in a liberated childhood, may be equally certain of being betrayed by those who would give him the power and the knowledge of past time, and then fetter his strength from all advance, and bend his eyes backward on a beaten path--who would thrust canvas between him and the sky, and tradition between him and god. and such conventional teaching is the more to be dreaded, because all that is highest in art, all that is creative and imaginative, is formed and created by every great master for himself, and cannot be repeated or imitated by others. we judge of the excellence of a rising writer, not so much by the resemblance of his works to what has been done before, as by their difference from it; and while we advise him, in his first trials of strength, to set certain models before him with respect to inferior points,--one for versification, another for arrangement, another for treatment,--we yet admit not his greatness until he has broken away from all his models, and struck forth versification, arrangement, and treatment of his own. three points, therefore, i would especially insist upon as necessary to be kept in mind in all criticism of modern art. first, that there are few, very few of even the best productions of antiquity, which are not visibly and palpably imperfect in some kind or way, and conceivably improvable by farther study; that every nation, perhaps every generation, has in all probability some peculiar gift, some particular character of mind, enabling it to do something different from, or something in some sort better than what has been before done; and that therefore, unless art be a trick, or a manufacture, of which the secrets are lost, the greatest minds of existing nations, if exerted with the same industry, passion, and honest aim as those of past time, have a chance in their particular walk of doing something as great, or, taking the advantage of former example into account, even greater and better. it is difficult to conceive by what laws of logic some of the reviewers of the following essay have construed its first sentence into a denial of this principle,--a denial such as their own conventional and shallow criticism of modern works invariably implies. i have said that "nothing has been for centuries consecrated by public admiration without possessing in a _high_ degree _some_ species of sterling excellence." does it thence follow that it possesses in the _highest_ degree _every_ species of sterling excellence? "yet thus," says the sapient reviewer, "he admits the fact against which he mainly argues,--namely, the superiority of these time-honored productions." as if the possession of an abstract excellence of some kind necessarily implied the possession of an incomparable excellence of every kind! there are few works of man so perfect as to admit of no conception of their being excelled,[a]--there are thousands which have been for centuries, and will be for centuries more, consecrated by public admiration, which are yet imperfect in many respects, and have been excelled, and may be excelled again. do my opponents mean to assert that nothing good can ever be bettered, and that what is best of past time is necessarily best of all time? perugino, i suppose, possessed some species of sterling excellence, but perugino was excelled by raffaelle; and so claude possesses some species of sterling excellence, but it follows not that he may not be excelled by turner. the second point on which i would insist is that if a mind _were_ to arise of such power as to be capable of equalling or excelling some of the greatest works of past ages, the productions of such a mind would, in all probability, be totally different in manner and matter from all former productions; for the more powerful the intellect, the less will its works resemble those of other men, whether predecessors or contemporaries. instead of reasoning, therefore, as we commonly do, in matters of art, that because such and such a work does not resemble that which has hitherto been a canon, therefore it _must_ be inferior and wrong in principle; let us rather admit that there is in its very dissimilarity an increased chance of its being itself a new, and perhaps, a higher canon. if any production of modern art can be shown to have the authority of nature on its side, and to be based on eternal truths, it is all so much more in its favor, so much farther proof of its power, that it is totally different from all that have been before seen.[b] the third point on which i would insist, is that if such a mind were to arise, it would necessarily divide the world of criticism into two factions; the one, necessarily the largest and loudest, composed of men incapable of judging except by precedent, ignorant of general truth, and acquainted only with such particular truths as may have been illustrated or pointed out to them by former works, which class would of course be violent in vituperation, and increase in animosity as the master departed farther from their particular and preconceived canons of right,--thus wounding their vanity by impugning their judgment; the other, necessarily narrow of number, composed of men of general knowledge and unbiassed habits of thought, who would recognize in the work of the daring innovator a record and illustration of facts before unseized, who would justly and candidly estimate the value of the truths so rendered, and would increase in fervor of admiration as the master strode farther and deeper, and more daringly into dominions before unsearched or unknown; yet diminishing in multitude as they increased in enthusiasm: for by how much their leader became more impatient in his step--more impetuous in his success--more exalted in his research, by so much must the number capable of following him become narrower, until at last, supposing him never to pause in his advance, he might be left in the very culminating moment of his consummate achievement, with but a faithful few by his side, his former disciples fallen away, his former enemies doubled in numbers and virulence, and the evidence of his supremacy only to be wrought out by the devotion of men's lives to the earnest study of the new truths he had discovered and recorded. such a mind has arisen in our days. it has gone on from strength to strength, laying open fields of conquest peculiar to itself. it has occasioned such schism in the schools of criticism as was beforehand to be expected, and it is now at the zenith of its power, and, _consequently_, in the last phase of declining popularity. this i know, and can prove. no man, says southey, was ever yet convinced of any momentous truth without feeling in himself the power, as well as the desire of communicating it. in asserting and demonstrating the supremacy of this great master, i shall both do immediate service to the cause of right art, and shall be able to illustrate many principles of landscape painting which are of general application, and have hitherto been unacknowledged. for anything like immediate effect on the public mind, i do not hope. "we mistake men's diseases," says richard baxter, "when we think there needeth nothing to cure them of their errors but the evidence of truth. alas! there are many distempers of mind to be removed before they receive that evidence." nevertheless, when it is fully laid before them, my duty will be done. conviction will follow in due time. i do not consider myself as in any way addressing, or having to do with, the ordinary critics of the press. their writings are not the guide, but the expression, of public opinion. a writer for a newspaper naturally and necessarily endeavors to meet, as nearly as he can, the feelings of the majority of his readers; his bread depends on his doing so. precluded by the nature of his occupations from gaining any knowledge of art, he is sure that he can gain credit for it by expressing the opinions of his readers. he mocks the picture which the public pass, and bespatters with praise the canvas which a crowd concealed from him. writers like the present critic of blackwood's magazine[c] deserve more respect--the respect due to honest, hopeless, helpless imbecility. there is something exalted in the innocence of their feeblemindedness: one cannot suspect them of partiality, for it implies feeling; nor of prejudice, for it implies some previous acquaintance with their subject. i do not know that even in this age of charlatanry, i could point to a more barefaced instance of imposture on the simplicity of the public, than the insertion of these pieces of criticism in a respectable periodical. we are not insulted with opinions on music from persons ignorant of its notes; nor with treatises on philology by persons unacquainted with the alphabet; but here is page after page of criticism, which one may read from end to end, looking for something which the writer knows, and finding nothing. not his own language, for he has to look in his dictionary, by his own confession, for a word[d] occurring in one of the most important chapters of his bible; not the commonest traditions of the schools, for he does not know why poussin was called "learned;"[e] not the most simple canons of art, for he prefers lee to gainsborough;[f] not the most ordinary facts of nature, for we find him puzzled by the epithet "silver," as applied to the orange blossom,--evidently never having seen anything silvery about an orange in his life, except a spoon. nay, he leaves us not to conjecture his calibre from internal evidence; he candidly tells us (oct. ) that he has been studying trees only for the last week, and bases his critical remarks chiefly on his practical experience of birch. more disinterested than our friend sancho, he would disenchant the public from the magic of turner by virtue of his own flagellation; xanthias-like, he would rob his master of immortality by his own powers of endurance. what is christopher north about? does he receive his critiques from eaton or harrow--based on the experience of a week's birds'-nesting and its consequences? how low must art and its interests sink, when the public mind is inadequate to the detection of this effrontery of incapacity! in all kindness to maga, we warn her, that, though the nature of this work precludes us from devoting space to the exposure, there may come a time when the public shall be themselves able to distinguish ribaldry from reasoning, and may require some better and higher qualifications in their critics of art, than the experience of a school-boy, and the capacities of a buffoon. it is not, however, merely to vindicate the reputation of those whom writers like these defame, which would but be to anticipate by a few years the natural and inevitable reaction of the public mind, that i am devoting years of labor to the development of the principles on which the great productions of recent art are based. i have a higher end in view--one which may, i think, justify me, not only in the sacrifice of my own time, but in calling on my readers to follow me through an investigation far more laborious than could be adequately rewarded by mere insight into the merits of a particular master, or the spirit of a particular age. it is a question which, in spite of the claims of painting to be called the sister of poetry, appears to me to admit of considerable doubt, whether art has ever, except in its earliest and rudest stages, possessed anything like efficient moral influence on mankind. better the state of rome when "magnorum artificum frangebat pocula miles, ut phaleris gauderet equus," than when her walls flashed with the marble and the gold, "nec cessabat luxuria id agere, ut quam plurimum incendiis perdat." better the state of religion in italy, before giotto had broken on one barbarism of the byzantine schools, than when the painter of the last judgment, and the sculptor of the perseus, sat revelling side by side. it appears to me that a rude symbol is oftener more efficient than a refined one in touching the heart, and that as pictures rise in rank as works of art, they are regarded with less devotion and more curiosity. but, however this may be, and whatever influence we may be disposed to admit in the great works of sacred art, no doubt can, i think, be reasonably entertained as to the utter inutility of all that has been hitherto accomplished by the painters of landscape. no moral end has been answered, no permanent good effected, by any of their works. they may have amused the intellect, or exercised the ingenuity, but they never have spoken to the heart. landscape art has never taught us one deep or holy lesson; it has not recorded that which is fleeting, nor penetrated that which was hidden, nor interpreted that which was obscure; it has never made us feel the wonder, nor the power, nor the glory, of the universe; it has not prompted to devotion, nor touched with awe; its power to move and exalt the heart has been fatally abused, and perished in the abusing. that which ought to have been a witness to the omnipotence of god, has become an exhibition of the dexterity of man, and that which should have lifted our thoughts to the throne of the deity, has encumbered them with the inventions of his creatures. if we stand for a little time before any of the more celebrated works of landscape, listening to the comments of the passers-by, we shall hear numberless expressions relating to the skill of the artist, but very few relating to the perfection of nature. hundreds will be voluble in admiration, for one who will be silent in delight. multitudes will laud the composition, and depart with the praise of claude on their lips,--not one will feel as if it were _no_ composition, and depart with the praise of god in his heart. these are the signs of a debased, mistaken, and false school of painting. the skill of the artist, and the perfection of his art, are never proved until both are forgotten. the artist has done nothing till he has concealed himself,--the art is imperfect which is visible,--the feelings are but feebly touched, if they permit us to reason on the methods of their excitement. in the reading of a great poem, in the hearing of a noble oration, it is the subject of the writer, and not his skill,--his passion, not his power, on which our minds are fixed. we see as he sees, but we see not him. we become part of him, feel with him, judge, behold with him; but we think _of_ him as little as of ourselves. do we think of Ã�schylus while we wait on the silence of cassandra,[g] or of shakspeare, while we listen to the wailing of lear? not so. the power of the masters is shown by their self-annihilation. it is commensurate with the degree in which they themselves appear not in their work. the harp of the minstrel is untruly touched, if his own glory is all that it records. every great writer may be at once known by his guiding the mind far from himself, to the beauty which is not of his creation, and the knowledge which is past his finding out. and must it ever be otherwise with painting, for otherwise it has ever been. her subjects have been regarded as mere themes on which the artist's power is to be displayed; and that power, be it of imitation, composition, idealization, or of whatever other kind, is the chief object of the spectator's observation. it is man and his fancies, man and his trickeries, man and his inventions,--poor, paltry, weak, self-sighted man,--which the connoisseur forever seeks and worships. among potsherds and dunghills, among drunken boors and withered beldames, through every scene of debauchery and degradation, we follow the erring artist, not to receive one wholesome lesson, not to be touched with pity, nor moved with indignation, but to watch the dexterity of the pencil, and gloat over the glittering of the hue. i speak not only of the works of the flemish school--i wage no war with their admirers; they may be left in peace to count the spiculæ of haystacks and the hairs of donkeys--it is also of works of real mind that i speak,--works in which there are evidences of genius and workings of power,--works which have been held up as containing all of the beautiful that art can reach or man conceive. and i assert with sorrow, that all hitherto done in landscape, by those commonly conceived its masters, has never prompted one holy thought in the minds of nations. it has begun and ended in exhibiting the dexterities of individuals, and conventionalities of systems. filling the world with the honor of claude and salvator, it has never once tended to the honor of god. does the reader start in reading these last words, as if they were those of wild enthusiasm,--as if i were lowering the dignity of religion by supposing that its cause could be advanced by such means? his surprise proves my position. it _does_ sound like wild, like absurd enthusiasm, to expect any definite moral agency in the painters of landscape; but ought it so to sound? are the gorgeousness of the visible hue, the glory of the realized form, instruments in the artist's hand so ineffective, that they can answer no nobler purpose than the amusement of curiosity, or the engagement of idleness? must it not be owing to gross neglect or misapplication of the means at his command, that while words and tones (means of representing nature surely less powerful than lines and colors) can kindle and purify the very inmost souls of men, the painter can only hope to entertain by his efforts at expression, and must remain forever brooding over his incommunicable thoughts? the cause of the evil lies, i believe, deep-seated in the system of ancient landscape art; it consists, in a word, in the painter's taking upon him to modify god's works at his pleasure, casting the shadow of himself on all he sees, constituting himself arbiter where it is honor to be a disciple, and exhibiting his ingenuity by the attainment of combinations whose highest praise is that they are impossible. we shall not pass through a single gallery of old art, without hearing this topic of praise confidently advanced. the sense of artificialness, the absence of all appearance of reality, the clumsiness of combination by which the meddling of man is made evident, and the feebleness of his hand branded on the inorganization of his monstrous creature, is advanced as a proof of inventive power, as an evidence of abstracted conception;--nay, the violation of specific form, the utter abandonment of all organic and individual character of object, (numberless examples of which from the works of the old masters are given in the following pages,) is constantly held up by the unthinking critic as the foundation of the grand or historical style, and the first step to the attainment of a pure ideal. now, there is but one grand style, in the treatment of all subjects whatsoever, and that style is based on the _perfect_ knowledge, and consists in the simple, unencumbered rendering, of the specific characters of the given object, be it man, beast, or flower. every change, caricature, or abandonment of such specific character, is as destructive of grandeur as it is of truth, of beauty as of propriety. every alteration of the features of nature has its origin either in powerless indolence or blind audacity, in the folly which forgets, or the insolence which desecrates, works which it is the pride of angels to know, and their privilege to love. we sometimes hear such infringement of universal laws justified on the plea, that the frequent introduction of mythological abstractions into ancient landscape requires an imaginary character of form in the material objects with which they are associated. something of this kind is hinted in reynolds's th discourse; but nothing can be more false than such reasoning. if there be any truth or beauty in the original conception of the spiritual being so introduced, there must be a true and real connection between that abstract idea[h] and the features of nature as she was and is. the woods and waters which were peopled by the greek with typical life were not different from those which now wave and murmur by the ruins of his shrines. with their visible and actual forms was his imagination filled, and the beauty of its incarnate creatures can only be understood among the pure realities which originally modelled their conception. if divinity be stamped upon the features, or apparent in the form of the spiritual creature, the mind will not be shocked by its appearing to ride upon the whirlwind, and trample on the storm; but if mortality, no violation of the characters of the earth will forge one single link to bind it to the heaven. is there then no such thing as elevated ideal character of landscape? undoubtedly; and sir joshua, with the great master of this character, nicolo poussin, present to his thoughts, ought to have arrived at more true conclusions respecting its essence than, as we shall presently see, are deducible from his works. the true ideal of landscape is precisely the same as that of the human form; it is the expression of the specific--not the individual, but the specific--characters of every object, in their perfection; there is an ideal form of every herb, flower, and tree: it is that form to which every individual of the species has a tendency to arrive, freed from the influence of accident or disease. every landscape painter should know the specific characters of every object he has to represent, rock, flower, or cloud; and in his highest ideal works, all their distinctions will be perfectly expressed, broadly or delicately, slightly or completely, according to the nature of the subject, and the degree of attention which is to be drawn to the particular object by the part it plays in the composition. where the sublime is aimed at, such distinctions will be indicated with severe simplicity, as the muscular markings in a colossal statue; where beauty is the object, they must be expressed with the utmost refinement of which the hand is capable. this may sound like a contradiction of principles advanced by the highest authorities; but it is only a contradiction of a particular and most mistaken application of them. much evil has been done to art by the remarks of historical painters on landscape. accustomed themselves to treat their backgrounds slightly and boldly, and feeling (though, as i shall presently show, only in consequence of their own deficient powers) that any approach to completeness of detail therein, injures their picture by interfering with its principal subject, they naturally lose sight of the peculiar and intrinsic beauties of things which to them are injurious, unless subordinate. hence the frequent advice given by reynolds and others, to neglect _specific_ form in landscape, and treat its materials in large masses, aiming only at general truths,--the flexibility of foliage, but not its kind; the rigidity of rock, but not its mineral character. in the passage more especially bearing on this subject (in the eleventh lecture of sir j. reynolds), we are told that "the landscape painter works not for the virtuoso or the naturalist, but for the general observer of life and nature." this is true, in precisely the same sense that the sculptor does not work for the anatomist, but for the common observer of life and nature. yet the sculptor is not, for this reason, permitted to be wanting either in knowledge or expression of anatomical detail; and the more refined that expression can be rendered, the more perfect is his work. that which, to the anatomist, is the end,--is, to the sculptor, the means. the former desires details, for their own sake; the latter, that by means of them, he may kindle his work with life, and stamp it with beauty. and so in landscape;--botanical or geological details are not to be given as matter of curiosity or subject of search, but as the ultimate elements of every species of expression and order of loveliness. in his observations on the foreground of the st. pietro martire, sir joshua advances, as matter of praise, that the plants are discriminated "just as much as was necessary for variety, and no more." had this foreground been occupied by a group of animals, we should have been surprised to be told that the lion, the serpent, and the dove, or whatever other creatures might have been introduced, were distinguished from each other just as much as was necessary for variety, and no more. yet is it to be supposed that the distinctions of the vegetable world are less complete, less essential, or less divine in origin, than those of the animal? if the distinctive forms of animal life are meant for our reverent observance, is it likely that those of vegetable life are made merely to be swept away? the latter are indeed less obvious and less obtrusive; for which very reason there is less excuse for omitting them, because there is less danger of their disturbing the attention or engaging the fancy. but sir joshua is as inaccurate in fact, as false in principle. he himself furnishes a most singular instance of the very error of which he accuses vaseni,--the seeing what he expects; or, rather, in the present case, not seeing what he does not expect. the great masters of italy, almost without exception, and titian perhaps more than any, (for he had the highest knowledge of landscape,) are in the constant habit of rendering every detail of their foregrounds with the most laborious botanical fidelity: witness the "bacchus and ariadne," in which the foreground is occupied by the common blue iris, the aquilegia, and the wild rose; _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the most exquisite accuracy. the foregrounds of raffaelle's two cartoons,--"the miraculous draught of fishes" and "the charge to peter,"--are covered with plants of the common sea colewort, (_crambe maritima_,) of which the sinuated leaves and clustered blossoms would have exhausted the patience of any other artist; but have appeared worthy of prolonged and thoughtful labor to the great mind of raffaelle. it appears then, not only from natural principles, but from the highest of all authority, that thorough knowledge of the lowest details is necessary and full expression of them right, even in the highest class of historical painting; that it will not take away from, nor interfere with, the interest of the figures; but, rightly managed, must add to and elucidate it; and, if further proof be wanting, i would desire the reader to compare the background of sir joshua's "holy family," in the national gallery, with that of nicolo poussin's "nursing of jupiter," in the dulwich gallery. the first, owing to the utter neglect of all botanical detail, has lost every atom of ideal character, and reminds us of nothing but an english fashionable flower garden;--the formal pedestal adding considerably to the effect. poussin's, in which every vine leaf is drawn with consummate skill and untiring diligence, produces not only a tree group of the most perfect grace and beauty, but one which, in its pure and simple truth, belongs to every age of nature, and adapts itself to the history of all time. if, then, such entire rendering of specific character be necessary to the historical painter, in cases where these lower details are entirely subordinate to his human subject, how much more must it be necessary in landscape, where they themselves constitute the subject, and where the undivided attention is to be drawn to them. there is a singular sense in which the child may peculiarly be said to be father of the man. in many arts and attainments, the first and last stages of progress--the infancy and the consummation--have many features in common; while the intermediate stages are wholly unlike either, and are farthest from the right. thus it is in the progress of a painter's handling. we see the perfect child,--the absolute beginner, using of necessity a broken, imperfect, inadequate line, which, as he advances, becomes gradually firm, severe, and decided. yet before he becomes a perfect artist, this severity and decision will again be exchanged for a light and careless stroke, which in many points will far more resemble that of his childhood than of his middle age--differing from it only by the consummate effect wrought out by the apparently inadequate means. so it is in many matters of opinion. our first and last coincide, though on different grounds; it is the middle stage which is farthest from the truth. childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain,--which it is the pride of utmost age to recover. perhaps this is in no instance more remarkable than in the opinion we form upon the subject of detail in works of art. infants in judgment, we look for specific character, and complete finish--we delight in the faithful plumage of the well-known bird--in the finely drawn leafage of the discriminated flower. as we advance in judgment, we scorn such detail altogether; we look for impetuosity of execution, and breadth of effect. but, perfected in judgment, we return in a great measure to our early feelings, and thank raffaelle for the shells upon his sacred beach, and for the delicate stamens of the herbage beside his inspired st. catherine.[i] of those who take interest in art, nay, even of artists themselves, there are an hundred in the middle stage of judgment, for one who is in the last; and this not because they are destitute of the power to discover, or the sensibility to enjoy the truth, but because the truth bears so much semblance of error--the last stage of the journey to the first,--that every feeling which guides to it is checked in its origin. the rapid and powerful artist necessarily looks with such contempt on those who seek minutiæ of detail _rather_ than grandeur of impression, that it is almost impossible for him to conceive of the great last step in art, by which both become compatible. he has so often to dash the delicacy out of the pupil's work, and to blot the details from his encumbered canvas; so frequently to lament the loss of breadth and unity, and so seldom to reprehend the imperfection of minutiæ, that he necessarily looks upon complete _parts_ as the very sign of error, weakness, and ignorance. thus, frequently to the latest period of his life, he separates, like sir joshua, as chief enemies, the details and the whole, which an artist cannot be great unless he reconciles; and because details alone, and unreferred to a final purpose, are the sign of a tyro's work, he loses sight of the remoter truth, that details perfect in unity, and, contributing to a final purpose, are the sign of the production of a consummate master. it is not, therefore, detail sought for its own sake,--not the calculable bricks of the dutch house-painters, nor the numbered hairs and mapped wrinkles of denner, which constitute great art,--they are the lowest and most contemptible art; but it is detail referred to a great end,--sought for the sake of the inestimable beauty which exists in the slightest and least of god's works, and treated in a manly, broad, and impressive manner. there may be as much greatness of mind, as much nobility of manner in a master's treatment of the smallest features, as in his management of the most vast; and this greatness of manner chiefly consists in seizing the specific character of the object, together with all the great qualities of beauty which it has in common with higher orders of existence,[j] while he utterly rejects the meaner beauties which are accidentally peculiar to the object, and yet not specifically characteristic of it. i cannot give a better instance than the painting of the flowers in titian's picture above mentioned. while every stamen of the rose is given, because this was necessary to mark the flower, and while the curves and large characters of the leaves are rendered with exquisite fidelity, there is no vestige of particular texture, of moss, bloom, moisture, or any other accident--no dew-drops, nor flies, nor trickeries of any kind; nothing beyond the simple forms and hues of the flowers,--even those hues themselves being simplified and broadly rendered. the varieties of aquilegia have, in reality, a grayish and uncertain tone of color; and, i believe, never attain the intense purity of blue with which titian has gifted his flower. but the master does not aim at the particular color of individual blossoms; he seizes the type of all, and gives it with the utmost purity and simplicity of which color is capable. these laws being observed, it will not only be in the power, it will be the duty,--the imperative duty,--of the landscape painter, to descend to the lowest details with undiminished attention. every herb and flower of the field has its specific, distinct, and perfect beauty; it has its peculiar habitation, expression, and function. the highest art is that which seizes this specific character, which develops and illustrates it, which assigns to it its proper position in the landscape, and which, by means of it, enhances and enforces the great impression which the picture is intended to convey. nor is it of herbs and flowers alone that such scientific representation is required. every class of rock, every kind of earth, every form of cloud, must be studied with equal industry, and rendered with equal precision. and thus we find ourselves unavoidably led to a conclusion directly opposed to that constantly enunciated dogma of the parrot-critic, that the features of nature must be "generalized,"--a dogma whose inherent and broad absurdity would long ago have been detected, if it had not contained in its convenient falsehood an apology for indolence, and a disguise for incapacity. generalized! as if it were possible to generalize things generically different. of such common cant of criticism i extract a characteristic passage from one of the reviews of this work, that in this year's athenæum for february th: "he (the author) would have geological landscape painters, dendrologic, meteorologic, and doubtless entomologic, ichthyologic, every kind of physiologic painter united in the same person; yet, alas, for true poetic art among all these learned thebans! no; landscape painting must not be reduced to mere portraiture of inanimate substances, denner-like portraiture of the earth's face. * * * * * ancient landscapists took a broader, deeper, higher view of their art; they neglected particular traits, and gave only general features. thus they attained mass and force, harmonious union and simple effect, the elements of grandeur and beauty." to all such criticism as this (and i notice it only because it expresses the feelings into which many sensible and thoughtful minds have been fashioned by infection) the answer is simple and straightforward. it is just as impossible to generalize granite and slate, as it is to generalize a man and a cow. an animal must be either one animal or another animal; it cannot be a general animal, or it is no animal; and so a rock must be either one rock or another rock; it cannot be a general rock, or it is no rock. if there were a creature in the foreground of a picture, of which he could not decide whether it were a pony or a pig, the athenæum critic would perhaps affirm it to be a generalization of pony and pig, and consequently a high example of "harmonious union and simple effect." but _i_ should call it simple bad drawing. and so when there are things in the foreground of salvator of which i cannot pronounce whether they be granite or slate, or tufa, i affirm that there is in them neither harmonious union nor simple effect, but simple monstrosity. there is no grandeur, no beauty of any sort or kind; nothing but destruction, disorganization, and ruin, to be obtained by the violation of natural distinctions. the elements of brutes can only mix in corruption, the elements of inorganic nature only in annihilation. we may, if we choose, put together centaur monsters; but they must still be half man, half horse; they cannot be both man and horse, nor either man or horse. and so, if landscape painters choose, they may give us rocks which shall be half granite and half slate; but they cannot give us rocks which shall be either granite or slate, nor which shall be both granite and slate. every attempt to produce that which shall be _any_ rock, ends in the production of that which is _no_ rock. it is true that the distinctions of rocks and plants and clouds are less conspicuous, and less constantly subjects of observation than those of the animal creation; but the difficulty of observing them proves not the merit of overlooking them. it only accounts for the singular fact, that the world has never yet seen anything like a perfect school of landscape. for just as the highest historical painting is based on perfect knowledge of the workings of the human form, and human mind, so must the highest landscape painting be based on perfect cognizance of the form, functions, and system of every organic or definitely structured existence which it has to represent. this proposition is self-evident to every thinking mind; and every principle which appears to contradict it is either misstated or misunderstood. for instance, the athenæum critic calls the right statement of generic difference "_denner_-like portraiture." if he can find anything like denner in what i have advanced as the utmost perfection of landscape art--the recent works of turner--he is welcome to his discovery and his theory. no; denner-like portraiture would be the endeavor to paint the separate crystals of quartz and felspar in the granite, and the separate flakes of mica in the mica slate,--an attempt just as far removed from what i assert to be great art, (the bold rendering of the generic characters of form in both rocks,) as modern sculpture of lace and button-holes is from the elgin marbles. martin has attempted this denner-like portraiture of sea-foam with the assistance of an acre of canvas--with what success, i believe the critics of his last year's canute had, for once, sense enough to decide. again, it does not follow that because such accurate knowledge is _necessary_ to the painter that it should constitute the painter, nor that such knowledge is valuable in itself, and without reference to high ends. every kind of knowledge may be sought from ignoble motives, and for ignoble ends; and in those who so possess it, it is ignoble knowledge; while the very same knowledge is in another mind an attainment of the highest dignity, and conveying the greatest blessing. this is the difference between the mere botanist's knowledge of plants, and the great poet's or painter's knowledge of them. the one notes their distinctions for the sake of swelling his herbarium, the other, that he may render them vehicles of expression and emotion. the one counts the stamens, and affixes a name, and is content; the other observes every character of the plant's color and form; considering each of its attributes as an element of expression, he seizes on its lines of grace or energy, rigidity or repose; notes the feebleness or the vigor, the serenity or tremulousness of its hues; observes its local habits, its love or fear of peculiar places, its nourishment or destruction by particular influences; he associates it in his mind with all the features of the situations it inhabits, and the ministering agencies necessary to its support. thenceforward the flower is to him a living creature, with histories written on its leaves, and passions breathing in its motion. its occurrence in his picture is no mere point of color, no meaningless spark of light. it is a voice rising from the earth,--a new chord of the mind's music,--a necessary note in the harmony of his picture, contributing alike to its tenderness and its dignity, nor less to its loveliness than its truth. the particularization of flowers by shakspeare and shelley affords us the most frequent examples of the exalted use of these inferior details. it is true that the painter has not the same power of expressing the thoughts with which his symbols are connected; he is dependent in some degree on the knowledge and feeling of the spectator; but, by the destruction of such details, his foreground is not rendered more intelligible to the ignorant, although it ceases to have interest for the informed. it is no excuse for illegible writing that there are persons who could not have read it had it been plain. i repeat then, generalization, as the word is commonly understood, is the act of a vulgar, incapable, and unthinking mind. to see in all mountains nothing but similar heaps of earth; in all rocks, nothing but similar concretions of solid matter; in all trees, nothing but similar accumulations of leaves, is no sign of high feeling or extended thought. the more we know, and the more we feel, the more we separate; we separate to obtain a more perfect unity. stones, in the thoughts of the peasant, lie as they do on his field, one is like another, and there is no connection between any of them. the geologist distinguishes, and in distinguishing connects them. each becomes different from its fellow, but in differing from, assumes a relation to its fellow; they are no more each the repetition of the other,--they are parts of a system, and each implies and is connected with the existence of the rest. that generalization then is right, true, and noble, which is based on the knowledge of the distinctions and observance of the relations of individual kinds. that generalization is wrong, false, and contemptible, which is based on ignorance of the one, and disturbance of the other. it is indeed no generalization, but confusion and chaos; it is the generalization of a defeated army into indistinguishable impotence--the generalization of the elements of a dead carcass into dust. let us, then, without farther notice of the dogmata of the schools of art, follow forth those conclusions to which we are led by observance of the laws of nature. i have just said that every class of rock, earth and cloud, must be known by the painter, with geologic and meteorologic accuracy.[k] nor is this merely for the sake of obtaining the character of these minor features themselves, but more especially for the sake of reaching that simple, earnest, and consistent character which is visible in the _whole_ effect of every natural landscape. every geological formation has features entirely peculiar to itself; definite lines of fracture, giving rise to fixed resultant forms of rock and earth; peculiar vegetable products, among which still farther distinctions are wrought out by variations of climate and elevation. from such modifying circumstances arise the infinite varieties of the orders of landscape, of which each one shows perfect harmony among its several features, and possesses an ideal beauty of its own; a beauty not distinguished merely by such peculiarities as are wrought on the human form by change of climate, but by generic differences the most marked and essential; so that its classes cannot be generalized or amalgamated by any expedients whatsoever. the level marshes and rich meadows of the tertiary, the rounded swells and short pastures of the chalk, the square-built cliffs and cloven dells of the lower limestone, the soaring peaks and ridgy precipices of the primaries, having nothing in common among them--nothing which is not distinctive and incommunicable. their very atmospheres are different--their clouds are different--their humors of storm and sunshine are different--their flowers, animals and forests are different. by each order of landscape--and its orders, i repeat, are infinite in number, corresponding not only to the several species of rock, but to the particular circumstances of the rocks' deposition or after treatment, and to the incalculable varieties of climate, aspect, and human interference:--by each order of landscape, i say, peculiar lessons are intended to be taught, and distinct pleasures to be conveyed; and it is as utterly futile to talk of generalizing their impressions into an ideal landscape, as to talk of amalgamating all nourishment into one ideal food, gathering all music into one ideal movement, or confounding all thought into one ideal idea. there is, however, such a thing as composition of different orders of landscape, though there can be no generalization of them. nature herself perpetually brings together elements of various expression. her barren rocks stoop through wooded promontories to the plain; and the wreaths of the vine show through their green shadows the wan light of unperishing snow. the painter, therefore, has the choice of either working out the isolated character of some one distinct class of scene, or of bringing together a multitude of different elements, which may adorn each other by contrast. i believe that the simple and uncombined landscape, if wrought out with due attention to the ideal beauty of the features it includes, will always be the most powerful in its appeal to the heart. contrast increases the splendor of beauty, but it disturbs its influence; it adds to its attractiveness, but diminishes its power. on this subject i shall have much to say hereafter; at present i merely wish to suggest the possibility, that the single-minded painter, who is working out on broad and simple principles, a piece of unbroken, harmonious landscape character, may be reaching an end in art quite as high as the more ambitious student who is always "within five minutes' walk of everywhere," making the ends of the earth contribute to his pictorial guazzetto;[l] and the certainty, that unless the composition of the latter be regulated by severe judgment, and its members connected by natural links, it must become more contemptible in its motley, than an honest study of roadside weeds. let me, at the risk of tediously repeating what is universally known, refer to the common principles of historical composition, in order that i may show their application to that of landscape. the merest tyro in art knows that every figure which is unnecessary to his picture, is an encumbrance to it, and that every figure which does not sympathize with the action, interrupts it. he that gathereth not with me, scattereth,--is, or ought to be, the ruling principle of his plan: and the power and grandeur of his result will be exactly proportioned to the unity of feeling manifested in its several parts, and to the propriety and simplicity of the relations in which they stand to each other. all this is equally applicable to the materials of inanimate nature. impressiveness is destroyed by a multitude of contradictory facts, and the accumulation, which is not harmonious, is discordant. he who endeavors to unite simplicity with magnificence, to guide from solitude to festivity, and to contrast melancholy with mirth, must end by the production of confused inanity. there is a peculiar spirit; possessed by every kind of scene; and although a point of contrast may sometimes enhance and exhibit this particular feeling more intensely, it must be only a point, not an equalized opposition. every introduction of new and different feeling weakens the force of what has already been impressed, and the mingling of all emotions must conclude in apathy, as the mingling of all colors in white. let us test by these simple rules one of the "ideal" landscape compositions of claude, that known to the italians as "il mulino." the foreground is a piece of very lovely and perfect forest scenery, with a dance of peasants by a brookside; quite enough subject to form, in the hands of a master, an impressive and complete picture. on the other side of the brook, however, we have a piece of pastoral life, a man with some bulls and goats tumbling headforemost into the water, owing to some sudden paralytic affection of all their legs. even this group is one too many; the shepherd had no business to drive his flock so near the dancers, and the dancers will certainly frighten the cattle. but when we look farther into the picture, our feelings receive a sudden and violent shock, by the unexpected appearance, amidst things pastoral and musical, of the military: a number of roman soldiers riding in on hobby-horses, with a leader on foot, apparently encouraging them to make an immediate and decisive charge on the musicians. beyond the soldiers is a circular temple, in exceedingly bad repair, and close beside it, built against its very walls, a neat water-mill in full work. by the mill flows a large river, with a weir all across it. the weir has not been made for the mill, (for that receives its water from the hills by a trough carried over the temple,) but it is particularly ugly and monotonous in its line of fall, and the water below forms a dead-looking pond, on which some people are fishing in punts. the banks of this river resemble in contour the later geological formations around london, constituted chiefly of broken pots and oyster-shells. at an inconvenient distance from the water-side stands a city, composed of twenty-five round towers and a pyramid. beyond the city is a handsome bridge; beyond the bridge, part of the campagna, with fragments of aqueducts; beyond the campagna, the chain of the alps; on the left, the cascades of tivoli. this is, i believe, a fair example of what is commonly called an "ideal landscape," _i.e._, a group of the artist's studies from nature, individually spoiled, selected with such opposition of character as may insure their neutralizing each other's effect, and united with sufficient unnaturalness and violence of association to insure their producing a general sensation of the impossible. let us analyze the separate subjects a little in this ideal work of claude's. perhaps there is no more impressive scene on earth than the solitary extent of the campagna of rome under evening light. let the reader imagine himself for a moment withdrawn from the sounds and motion of the living world, and sent forth alone into this wild and wasted plain. the earth yields and crumbles beneath his foot, tread he never so lightly, for its substance is white, hollow, and carious, like the dusty wreck of the bones of men.[m] the long knotted grass waves and tosses feebly in the evening wind, and the shadows of its motion shake feverishly along the banks of ruin that lift themselves to the sunlight. hillocks of mouldering earth heave around him, as if the dead beneath were struggling in their sleep; scattered blocks of black stone, four-square, remnants of mighty edifices, not one left upon another, lie upon them to keep them down. a dull purple, poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests like dying fire on defiled altars. the blue ridge of the alban mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories, of the apennines. from the plain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral mourners, passing from a nation's grave. let us, with claude, make a few "ideal" alterations in this landscape. first, we will reduce the multitudinous precipices of the apennines to four sugar-loaves. secondly, we will remove the alban mount, and put a large dust-heap in its stead. next, we will knock down the greater part of the aqueducts, and leave only an arch or two, that their infinity of length may no longer be painful from its monotony. for the purple mist and declining sun, we will substitute a bright blue sky, with round white clouds. finally, we will get rid of the unpleasant ruins in the foreground; we will plant some handsome trees therein, we will send for some fiddlers, and get up a dance, and a picnic party. it will be found, throughout the picture, that the same species of improvement is made on the materials which claude had ready to his hand. the descending slopes of the city of rome, towards the pyramid of caius cestius, supply not only lines of the most exquisite variety and beauty, but matter for contemplation and reflection in every fragment of their buildings. this passage has been idealized by claude into a set of similar round towers, respecting which no idea can be formed but that they are uninhabitable, and to which no interest can be attached, beyond the difficulty of conjecturing what they could have been built for. the ruins of the temple are rendered unimpressive by the juxtaposition of the water-mill, and inexplicable by the introduction of the roman soldiers. the glide of the muddy streams of the melancholy tiber and anio through the campagna, is impressive in itself, but altogether ceases to be so, when we disturb their stillness of motion by a weir, adorn their neglected flow with a handsome bridge, and cover their solitary surface with punts, nets, and fishermen. it cannot, i think, be expected, that landscapes like this should have any effect on the human heart, except to harden or to degrade it; to lead it from the love of what is simple, earnest and pure, to what is as sophisticated and corrupt in arrangement, as erring and imperfect in detail. so long as such works are held up for imitation, landscape painting must be a manufacture, its productions must be toys, and its patrons must be children. my purpose then, in the present work, is to demonstrate the utter falseness both of the facts and principles; the imperfection of material, and error of arrangement, on which works such as these are based; and to insist on the necessity, as well as the dignity, of an earnest, faithful, loving, study of nature as she is, rejecting with abhorrence all that man has done to alter and modify her. and the praise which, in this first portion of the work, is given to many english artists, would be justifiable on this ground only, that although frequently with little power and desultory effort, they have yet, in an honest and good heart, received the word of god from clouds, and leaves, and waves, and kept it,[n] and endeavored in humility to render to the world that purity of impression which can alone render the result of art an instrument of good, or its labor deserving of gratitude. if, however, i shall have frequent occasion to insist on the necessity of this heartfelt love of, and unqualified submission to, the teaching of nature, it will be no less incumbent upon me to reprobate the careless rendering of casual impression, and the mechanical copyism of unimportant subject, which are too frequently visible in our modern school.[o] their lightness and desultoriness of intention, their meaningless multiplication of unstudied composition, and their want of definiteness and loftiness of aim, bring discredit on their whole system of study, and encourage in the critic the unhappy prejudice that the field and the hill-side are less fit places of study than the gallery and the garret. not every casual idea caught from the flight of a shower or the fall of a sunbeam, not every glowing fragment of harvest light, nor every flickering dream of copsewood coolness, is to be given to the world as it came, unconsidered, incomplete, and forgotten by the artist as soon as it has left his easel. that only should be considered a picture, in which the spirit, (not the materials, observe,) but the animating emotion of many such studies is concentrated, and exhibited by the aid of long-studied, painfully-chosen forms; idealized in the right sense of the word, not by audacious liberty of that faculty of degrading god's works which man calls his "imagination," but by perfect assertion of entire knowledge of every part and character and function of the object, and in which the details are completed to the last line compatible with the dignity and simplicity of the whole, wrought out with that noblest industry which concentrates profusion into point, and transforms accumulation into structure; neither must this labor be bestowed on every subject which appears to afford a capability of good, but on chosen subjects in which nature has prepared to the artist's hand the purest sources of the impression he would convey. these may be humble in their order, but they must be perfect of their kind. there is a perfection of the hedgerow and cottage, as well as of the forest and the palace, and more ideality in a great artist's selection and treatment of roadside weeds and brook-worn pebbles, than in all the struggling caricature of the meaner mind which heaps its foreground with colossal columns, and heaves impossible mountains into the encumbered sky. finally, these chosen subjects must not be in any way repetitions of one another, but each founded on a new idea, and developing a totally distinct train of thought; so that the work of the artist's life should form a consistent series of essays, rising through the scale of creation from the humblest scenery to the most exalted; each picture being a necessary link in the chain, based on what preceded, introducing to what is to follow, and all, in their lovely system, exhibiting and drawing closer the bonds of nature to the human heart. since, then, i shall have to reprobate the absence of study in the moderns nearly as much as its false direction in the ancients, my task will naturally divide itself into three portions. in the first, i shall endeavor to investigate and arrange the facts of nature with scientific accuracy; showing as i proceed, by what total neglect of the very first base and groundwork of their art the idealities of some among the old masters are produced. this foundation once securely laid, i shall proceed, in the second portion of the work, to analyze and demonstrate the nature of the emotions of the beautiful and sublime; to examine the particular characters of every kind of scenery, and to bring to light, as far as may be in my power, that faultless, ceaseless, inconceivable, inexhaustible loveliness, which god has stamped upon all things, if man will only receive them as he gives them. finally, i shall endeavor to trace the operation of all this on the hearts and minds of men; to exhibit the moral function and end of art, to prove the share which it ought to have in the thoughts, and influence on the lives of all of us; to attach to the artist the responsibility of a preacher, and to kindle in the general mind that regard which such an office must demand. it must be evident that the first portion of this task, which is all that i have yet been enabled to offer to the reader, cannot but be the least interesting and the most laborious, especially because it is necessary that it should be executed without reference to any principles of beauty or influences of emotion. it is the hard, straightforward classification of material things, not the study of thought or passion; and therefore let me not be accused of the feelings which i choose to repress. the consideration of the high qualities of art must not be interrupted by the work of the hammer and the eudiometer. again, i would request that the frequent passages of reference to the great masters of the italian school may not be looked upon as mere modes of conventional expression. i think there is enough in the following pages to prove that i am not likely to be carried away by the celebrity of a name; and therefore that the devoted love which i profess for the works of the great historical and sacred painters is sincere and well-grounded. and indeed every principle of art which i may advocate, i shall be able to illustrate by reference to the works of men universally allowed to be the masters of masters; and the public, so long as my teaching leads them to higher understanding and love of the works of buonaroti, leonardo, raffaelle, titian, and cagliari, may surely concede to me without fear, the right of striking such blows as i may deem necessary to the establishment of my principles, at gasper poussin, or vandevelde. indeed, i believe there is nearly as much occasion, at the present day, for advocacy of michael angelo against the pettiness of the moderns, as there is for support of turner against the conventionalities of the ancients. for, though the names of the fathers of sacred art are on all our lips, our faith in them is much like that of the great world in its religion--nominal, but dead. in vain our lecturers sound the name of raffaelle in the ears of their pupils, while their own works are visibly at variance with every principle deducible from his. in vain is the young student compelled to produce a certain number of school copies of michael angelo, when his bread must depend on the number of gewgaws he can crowd into his canvas. and i could with as much zeal exert myself against the modern system of english historical art, as i have in favor of our school of landscape, but that it is an ungrateful and painful task to attack the works of living painters, struggling with adverse circumstances of every kind, and especially with the false taste of a nation which regards matters of art either with the ticklishness of an infant, or the stolidity of a megatherium. i have been accused, in the execution of this first portion of my work, of irreverent and scurrile expression towards the works which i have depreciated. possibly i may have been in some degree infected by reading those criticisms of our periodicals, which consist of nothing else; but i believe in general that my words will be found to have sufficient truth in them to excuse their familiarity; and that no other weapons could have been used to pierce the superstitious prejudice with which the works of certain painters are shielded from the attacks of reason. my answer is that given long ago to a similar complaint, uttered under the same circumstances by the foiled sophist:--"[greek: (hos d'estin ho anthrôpos; hôs apaideutos tis, os ouiô phaula onomata onomazein tolma en semnô pragmati.) toioutos tis, ô hippia, ouden allo phrontizôn ê to alêthes]." it is with more surprise that i have heard myself accused of thoughtless severity with respect to the works of contemporary painters, for i fully believe that whenever i attack them, i give myself far more pain than i can possibly inflict; and, in many instances, i have withheld reprobation which i considered necessary to the full understanding of my work, in the fear of grieving or injuring men of whose feelings and circumstances i was ignorant. indeed, the apparently false and exaggerated bias of the whole book in favor of modern art, is in great degree dependent on my withholding the animadversions which would have given it balance, and keeping silence where i cannot praise. but i had rather be a year or two longer in effecting my purposes, than reach them by trampling on men's hearts and hearths; and i have permitted myself to express unfavorable opinions only where the popularity and favor of the artist are so great as to render the opinion of an individual a matter of indifference to him. and now--but one word more. for many a year we have heard nothing with respect to the works of turner but accusations of their want of _truth_. to every observation on their power, sublimity, or beauty, there has been but one reply: they are not like nature. i therefore took my opponents on their own ground, and demonstrated, by thorough investigation of actual facts, that turner _is_ like nature, and paints more of nature than any man who ever lived. i expected this proposition (the foundation of all my future efforts) would have been disputed with desperate struggles, and that i should have had to fight my way to my position inch by inch. not at all. my opponents yield me the field at once. one (the writer for the athenæum) has no other resource than the assertion, that "he disapproves the natural style in painting. if people want to see _nature_, let them go and look at herself. why should they see her at second-hand on a piece of canvas?" the other, (blackwood,) still more utterly discomfited, is reduced to a still more remarkable line of defence. "it is not," he says, "what things in all respects really are, but how they are convertible by the mind into what they are _not_, that we have to consider." (october, , p. .) i leave therefore the reader to choose whether, with blackwood and his fellows, he will proceed to consider how things are convertible by the mind into what they are _not_, or whether, with me, he will undergo the harder, but perhaps on the whole more useful, labor of ascertaining--what they are. footnotes [a] one or two fragments of greek sculpture, the works of michael angelo, considered with reference to their general conception and power, and the madonna di st. sisto, are all that i should myself put into such a category, not that even these are without defect, but their defects are such as mortality could never hope to rectify. [b] this principle is dangerous, but not the less true, and necessary to be kept in mind. there is scarcely any truth which does not admit of being wrested to purposes of evil, and we must not deny the desirableness of originality, because men may err in seeking for it, or because a pretence to it may be made, by presumption, a cloak for its incompetence. nevertheless, originality is never to be sought for its own sake--otherwise it will be mere aberration--it should arise naturally out of hard, independent study of nature; and it should be remembered that in many things technical, it is impossible to alter without being inferior, for therein, as says spencer, "truth is one, and right is ever one;" but wrongs are various and multitudinous. "vice," says byron, in marino faliero, "must have variety; but virtue stands like the sun, and all which rolls around drinks life from her aspect." [c] it is with regret that, in a work of this nature, i take notice of criticisms, which, after all, are merely intended to amuse the careless reader, and be forgotten as soon as read; but i do so in compliance with wishes expressed to me since the publication of this work, by persons who have the interests of art deeply at heart, and who, i find, attach more importance to the matter than i should have been disposed to do. i have, therefore, marked two or three passages which _may_ enable the public to judge for themselves of the quality of these critiques; and this i think a matter of justice to those who might otherwise have been led astray by them--more than this i cannot consent to do. i should have but a hound's office if i had to tear the tabard from every rouge sanglier of the arts--with bell and bauble to back him. [d] chrysoprase, (vide no. for october, , p. .) [e] every school-boy knows that this epithet was given to poussin in allusion to the profound classical knowledge of the painter. the reviewer, however, (september, ,) informs us that the expression refers to his skill in "composition." [f] critique on royal academy, . "he" (mr. lee) "often reminds us of gainsborough's best manner; but he is _superior_ to him always in subject, composition, and variety."--shade of gainsborough!--deep-thoughted, solemn gainsborough,--forgive us for re-writing this sentence; we do so to gibbet its perpetrator forever,--and leave him swinging in the winds of the fool's paradise. it is with great pain that i ever speak with severity of the works of living masters, especially when, like mr. lee's, they are well-intentioned, simple, free from affectation or imitation, and evidently painted with constant reference to nature. but i believe that these qualities will always secure him that admiration which he deserves--that there will be many unsophisticated and honest minds always ready to follow his guidance, and answer his efforts with delight; and therefore, that i need not fear to point out in him the want of those technical qualities which are more especially the object of an artist's admiration. gainsborough's power of color (it is mentioned by sir joshua as his peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside that of rubens; he is the purest colorist--sir joshua himself not excepted--of the whole english school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not now in europe. evidence enough will be seen in the following pages of my devoted admiration of turner; but i hesitate not to say, that in management and quality of single and particular tint, in the purely technical part of painting, turner is a child of gainsborough. now, mr. lee never aims at color; he does not make it his object in the slightest degree--the spring green of vegetation is all that he desires; and it would be about as rational to compare his works with studied pieces of coloring, as the modulation of the calabrian pipe to the harmony of a full orchestra. gainsborough's hand is as light as the sweep of a cloud--as swift as the flash of a sunbeam; lee's execution is feeble and spotty. gainsborough's masses are as broad as the first division in heaven of light from darkness; lee's (perhaps necessarily, considering the effects of flickering sunlight at which he aims) are as fragmentary as his leaves, and as numerous. gainsborough's forms are grand, simple, and ideal; lee's are small, confused, and unselected. gainsborough never loses sight of his picture as a whole; lee is but too apt to be shackled by its parts. in a word, gainsborough is an immortal painter; and lee, though on the right road, is yet in the early stages of his art; and the man who could imagine any resemblance or point of comparison between them, is not only a novice in art, but has not capacity ever to be anything more. he may be pardoned for not comprehending turner, for long preparation and discipline are necessary before the abstract and profound philosophy of that artist can be met; but gainsborough's excellence is based on principles of art long acknowledged, and facts of nature universally apparent; and i insist more particularly on the reviewer's want of feeling for his works, because it proves a truth of which the public ought especially to be assured that those who lavish abuse on the great men of modern times, are equally incapable of perceiving the real excellence of established canons, are ignorant of the commonest and most acknowledged principia of the art, blind to the most palpable and comprehensible of its beauties, incapable of distinguishing, if left to themselves, a master's work from the vilest school copy, and founding their applause of those great works which they praise, either in pure hypocrisy, or in admiration of their defects. [g] there is a fine touch in the frogs in aristophanes, alluding probably to this part of the agamemnon. "[greek: ego d' hechairon tê siôpê kai me tout' heterpeu ouk hêttou ê nun hoi lalountes]." the same remark might be well applied to the seemingly vacant or incomprehensible portions of turner's canvas. in their mysterious, and intense fire, there is much correspondence between the mind of Ã�schylus and that of our great painter. they share at least one thing in common--unpopularity. [greek: 'ho dêmos aneboa krisin poiein, xa. o tôn panourgôn; ai. nê di, ouranion g' hoson. xa. met' aischylou ho ouk êsan heteroi symmachoi; ai. oligon to chrêston estin]. [h] i do not know any passage in ancient literature in which this connection is more exquisitely illustrated than in the lines, burlesque though they be, descriptive of the approach of the chorus in the clouds of aristophanes,--a writer, by the way, who, i believe, knew and felt more of the noble landscape character of his country than any whose works have come down to us except homer. the individuality and distinctness of conception--the visible cloud character which every word of this particular passage brings out into more dewy and bright existence, are to me as refreshing as the real breathing of mountain winds. the line "[greek: dia tôn koilôn kai tôn daseôn, plagiai]," could have been written by none but an ardent lover of hill scenery--one who had watched, hour after hour, the peculiar oblique, sidelong action of descending clouds, as they form along the hollows and ravines of the hills. there are no lumpish solidities--no pillowy protuberances here. all is melting, drifting, evanescent,--full of air, and light, and dew. [i] let not this principle be confused with fuseli's, "love for what is called deception in painting marks either the infancy or decrepitude of a nation's taste." realization to the mind necessitates not deception of the eye. [j] i shall show, in a future portion of the work, that there are principles of universal beauty common to all the creatures of god; and that it is by the greater or less share of these that one form becomes nobler or meaner than another. [k] is not this--it may be asked--demanding more from him than life can accomplish? not one whit. nothing more than knowledge of external characteristics is absolutely required; and even if, which were more desirable, thorough scientific knowledge had to be attained, the time which our artists spend in multiplying crude sketches, or finishing their unintelligent embryos of the study, would render them masters of every science that modern investigations have organized, and familiar with every form that nature manifests. martin, if the time which he must have spent on the abortive bubbles of his canute had been passed in working on the seashore, might have learned enough to enable him to produce, with a few strokes, a picture which would have smote like the sound of the sea, upon men's hearts forever. [l] "a green field is a sight which makes us pardon the absence of that more sublime construction which mixes up vines, olive, precipices, glaciers, volcanoes, oranges, and ices." _don juan._ [m] the vegetable soil of the campagna is chiefly formed by decomposed lavas, and under it lies a bed of white pumice, exactly resembling remnants of bones. [n] the feelings of constable with respect to his art might be almost a model for the young student, were it not that they err a little on the other side, and are perhaps in need of chastening and guiding from the works of his fellow-men. we should use pictures not as authorities, but as comments on nature, just as we use divines, not as authorities, but as comments on the bible. constable, in his dread of saint-worship, excommunicates himself from all benefit of the church, and deprives himself of much instruction from the scripture to which he holds, because he will not accept aid in the reading of it from the learning of other men. sir george beaumont, on the contrary, furnishes, in the anecdotes given of him in constable's life, a melancholy instance of the degradation into which the human mind may fall, when it suffers human works to interfere between it and its master. the recommending the color of an old cremona fiddle for the prevailing tone of everything, and the vapid inquiry of the conventionalist, "where do you put your brown tree?" show a prostration of intellect so laughable and lamentable, that they are at once, on all, and to all, students of the gallery, a satire and a warning. art so followed is the most servile indolence in which life can be wasted. there are then two dangerous extremes to be shunned,--forgetfulness of the scripture, and scorn of the divine--slavery on the one hand, free-thinking on the other. the mean is nearly as difficult to determine or keep in art as in religion, but the great danger is on the side of superstition. he who walks humbly with nature will seldom be in danger of losing sight of art. he will commonly find in all that is truly great of man's works, something of their original, for which he will regard them with gratitude, and sometimes follow them with respect; while he who takes art for his authority may entirely lose sight of all that it interprets, and sink at once into the sin of an idolater, and the degradation of a slave. [o] i should have insisted more on this fault (for it is a fatal one) in the following essay, but the cause of it rests rather with the public than with the artist, and in the necessities of the public as much as in their will. such pictures as artists themselves would wish to paint, could not be executed under very high prices; and it must always be easier, in the present state of society, to find ten purchasers of ten-guinea sketches, than one purchaser for a hundred-guinea picture. still, i have been often both surprised and grieved to see that any effort on the part of our artists to rise above manufacture--any struggle to something like completed conception--was left by the public to be its own reward. in the water-color exhibition of last year there was a noble work of david cox's, ideal in the right sense--a forest hollow with a few sheep crushing down through its deep fern, and a solemn opening of evening sky above its dark masses of distance. it was worth all his little bits on the walls put together. yet the public picked up all the little bits--blots and splashes, ducks, chickweed, ears of corn--all that was clever and petite; and the real picture--the full development of the artist's mind--was left on his hands. how can i, or any one else, with a conscience, advise him after this to aim at anything more than may be struck out by the cleverness of a quarter of an hour. cattermole, i believe, is earthed and shackled in the same manner. he began his career with finished and studied pictures, which, i believe, never paid him--he now prostitutes his fine talent to the superficialness of public taste, and blots his way to emolument and oblivion. there is commonly, however, fault on both sides; in the artist for exhibiting his dexterity by mountebank tricks of the brush, until chaste finish, requiring ten times the knowledge and labor, appears insipid to the diseased taste which he has himself formed in his patrons, as the roaring and ranting of a common actor will oftentimes render apparently vapid the finished touches of perfect nature; and in the public, for taking less real pains to become acquainted with, and discriminate, the various powers of a great artist, than they would to estimate the excellence of a cook or develop the dexterity of a dancer. preface to the third edition. it is with much regret, and partly against my own judgment, that i republish the following chapters in their present form. the particular circumstances (stated in the first preface) under which they were originally written, have rendered them so unfit for the position they now hold as introductory to a serious examination of the general functions of art, that i should have wished first to complete the succeeding portions of the essay, and then to write another introduction of more fitting character. but as it may be long before i am able to do this, and as i believe what i have already written may still be of some limited and partial service, i have suffered it to reappear, trusting to the kindness of the reader to look to its intention rather than its temper, and forgive its inconsideration in its earnestness. thinking it of too little substance to bear mending, wherever i have found a passage which i thought required modification or explanation, i have cut it out; what i have left, however imperfect, cannot i think be dangerously misunderstood: something i have added, not under the idea of rendering the work in any wise systematic or complete, but to supply gross omissions, answer inevitable objections, and give some substance to passages of mere declamation. whatever inadequacy or error there may be, throughout, in materials or modes of demonstration, i have no doubt of the truth and necessity of the main result; and though the reader may, perhaps, find me frequently hereafter showing other and better grounds for what is here affirmed, yet the point and bearing of the book, its determined depreciation of claude, salvator, gaspar, and canaletto, and its equally determined support of turner as the greatest of all landscape painters, and of turner's recent works as his finest, are good and right; and if the prevalence throughout of attack and eulogium be found irksome or offensive, let it be remembered that my object thus far has not been either the establishment or the teaching of any principles of art, but the vindication, most necessary to the prosperity of our present schools, of the uncomprehended rank of their greatest artist, and the diminution, equally necessary as i think to the prosperity of our schools, of the unadvised admiration of the landscape of the seventeenth century. for i believe it to be almost impossible to state in terms sufficiently serious and severe the depth and extent of the evil which has resulted (and that not in art alone, but in all other matters with which the contemplative faculties are concerned) from the works of those elder men. on the continent all landscape art has been utterly annihilated by them, and with it all sense of the power of nature. we in england have only done better because our artists have had strength of mind enough to form a school withdrawn from their influence. these points are somewhat farther developed in the general sketch of ancient and modern landscape, which i have added to the first section of the second part. some important additions have also been made to the chapters on the painting of sea. throughout the rest of the text, though something is withdrawn, little is changed; and the reader may rest assured that if i were now to bestow on this feeble essay the careful revision which it much needs, but little deserves, it would not be to alter its tendencies, or modify its conclusions, but to prevent indignation from appearing virulence on the one side, and enthusiasm partisanship on the other. preface to new edition ( ). i have been lately so often asked by friends on whose judgment i can rely, to permit the publication of another edition of "modern painters" in its original form, that i have at last yielded, though with some violence to my own feelings; for many parts of the first and second volumes are written in a narrow enthusiasm, and the substance of their metaphysical and religious speculation is only justifiable on the ground of its absolute honesty. of the third, fourth, and fifth volumes i indeed mean eventually to rearrange what i think of permanent interest, for the complete edition of my works, but with fewer and less elaborate illustrations: nor have i any serious grounds for refusing to allow the book once more to appear in the irregular form which it took as it was written, since of the art-teaching and landscape description it contains i have little to retrench, and nothing to retract. this final edition must, however, be limited to a thousand copies, for some of the more delicate plates are already worn, that of the mill stream in the fifth volume, and of the loire side very injuriously; while that of the shores of wharfe had to be retouched by an engraver after the removal of the mezzotint for reprinting. but mr. armytage's, mr. cousen's, and mr. cuff's magnificent plates are still in good state, and my own etchings, though injured, are still good enough to answer their purpose. synopsis of contents. part i. of general principles. section i. of the nature of the ideas conveyable by art. chapter i.--introductory. page § . public opinion no criterion of excellence, except after long periods of time. § . and therefore obstinate when once formed. § . the author's reasons for opposing it in particular instances. § . but only on points capable of demonstration. § . the author's partiality to modern works excusable. chapter ii.--definition of greatness in art. § . distinction between the painter's intellectual power and technical knowledge. § . painting, as such, is nothing more than language. § . "painter," a term corresponding to "versifier." § . example in a painting of e. landseer's. § . difficulty of fixing an exact limit between language and thought. § . distinction between decorative and expressive language. § . instance in the dutch and early italian schools. § . yet there are certain ideas belonging to language itself. § . the definition. chapter iii.--of ideas of power. § . what classes of ideas are conveyable by art. § . ideas of power vary much in relative dignity. § . but are received from whatever has been the subject of power. the meaning of the word "excellence." § . what is necessary to the distinguishing of excellence. § . the pleasure attendant on conquering difficulties is right. chapter iv.--of ideas of imitation. § . false use of the term "imitation" by many writers on art. § . real meaning of the term. § . what is requisite to the sense of imitation. § . the pleasure resulting from imitation the most contemptible that can be derived from art. § . imitation is only of contemptible subjects. § . imitation is contemptible because it is easy. § . recapitulation. chapter v.--of ideas of truth. § . meaning of the word "truth" as applied to art. § . first difference between truth and imitation. § . second difference. § . third difference. § . no accurate truths necessary to imitation. § . ideas of truth are inconsistent with ideas of imitation. chapter vi.--of ideas of beauty. § . definition of the term "beautiful." § . definition of the term "taste." § . distinction between taste and judgment. § . how far beauty may become intellectual. § . the high rank and function of ideas of beauty. § . meaning of the term "ideal beauty." chapter vii.--of ideas of relation. § . general meaning of the term. § . what ideas are to be comprehended under it. § . the exceeding nobility of these ideas. § . why no subdivision of so extensive a class is necessary. section ii. of power. chapter i.--general principles respecting ideas of power. § . no necessity for detailed study of ideas of imitation. § . nor for separate study of ideas of power. § . except under one particular form. § . there are two modes of receiving ideas of power, commonly inconsistent. § . first reason of the inconsistency. § . second reason for the inconsistency. § . the sensation of power ought not to be sought in imperfect art. § . instances in pictures of modern artists. § . connection between ideas of power and modes of execution. chapter ii.--of ideas of power, as they are dependent upon execution. § . meaning of the term "execution." § . the first quality of execution is truth. § . the second, simplicity. § . the third, mystery. § . the fourth, inadequacy; and the fifth, decision. § . the sixth, velocity. § . strangeness an illegitimate source of pleasure in execution. § . yet even the legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are inconsistent with each other. § . and fondness for ideas of power leads to the adoption of the lowest. § . therefore perilous. § . recapitulation. chapter iii.--of the sublime. § . sublimity is the effect upon the mind of anything above it. § . burke's theory of the nature of the sublime incorrect, and why. § . danger is sublime, but not the fear of it. § . the highest beauty is sublime. § . and generally whatever elevates the mind. § . the former division of the subject is therefore sufficient. part ii. of truth. section i. general principles respecting ideas of truth. chapter i.--of ideas of truth in their connection with those of beauty and relation. § . the two great ends of landscape painting are the representation of facts and thoughts. § . they induce a different choice of material subjects. § . the first mode of selection apt to produce sameness and repetition. § . the second necessitating variety. § . yet the first is delightful to all. § . the second only to a few. § . the first necessary to the second. § . the exceeding importance of truth. § . coldness or want of beauty no sign of truth. § . how truth may be considered a just criterion of all art. chapter ii.--that the truth of nature is not to be discerned by the uneducated senses. § . the common self-deception of men with respect to their power of discerning truth. § . men usually see little of what is before their eyes. § . but more or less in proportion to their natural sensibility to what is beautiful. § . connected with a perfect state of moral feeling. § . and of the intellectual powers. § . how sight depends upon previous knowledge. § . the difficulty increased by the variety of truths in nature. § . we recognize objects by their least important attributes. compare part i. sect. i. chap. . chapter iii.--of the relative importance of truths:--first, that particular truths are more important than general ones. § . necessity of determining the relative importance of truths. § . misapplication of the aphorism: "general truths are more important than particular ones." § . falseness of this maxim, taken without explanation. § . generality important in the subject, particularity in the predicate. § . the importance of truths of species is not owing to their generality. § . all truths valuable as they are characteristic. § . otherwise truths of species are valuable, because beautiful. § . and many truths, valuable if separate, may be objectionable in connection with others. § . recapitulation. chapter iv.--of the relative importance of truths:--secondly, that rare truths are more important than frequent ones. § . no accidental violation of nature's principles should be represented. § . but the cases in which those principles have been strikingly exemplified. § . which are comparatively rare. § . all repetition is blamable. § . the duty of the painter is the same as that of a preacher. chapter v.--of the relative importance of truths:--thirdly, that truths of color are the least important of all truths. § . difference between primary and secondary qualities in bodies. § . the first are fully characteristic, the second imperfectly so. § . color is a secondary quality, therefore less important than form. § . color no distinction between objects of the same species. § . and different in association from what it is alone. § . it is not certain whether any two people see the same colors in things. § . form, considered as an element of landscape, includes light and shade. § . importance of light and shade in expressing the character of bodies, and unimportance of color. § . recapitulation. chapter vi.--recapitulation. § . the importance of historical truths. § . form, as explained by light and shade, the first of all truths. tone, light, and color, are secondary. § . and deceptive chiaroscuro the lowest of all. chapter vii.--general application of the foregoing principles. § . the different selection of facts consequent on the several aims at imitation or at truth. § . the old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation. § . what truths they gave. § . the principles of selection adopted by modern artists. § . general feeling of claude, salvator, and g. poussin, contrasted with the freedom and vastness of nature. § . inadequacy of the landscape of titian and tintoret. § . causes of its want of influence on subsequent schools. § . the value of inferior works of art, how to be estimated. § . religious landscape of italy. the admirableness of its completion. § . finish, and the want of it, how right--and how wrong. § . the open skies of the religious schools, how valuable. mountain drawing of masaccio. landscape of the bellinis and giorgione. § . landscape of titian and tintoret. § . schools of florence, milan, and bologna. § . claude, salvator, and the poussins. § . german and flemish landscape. § . the lower dutch schools. § . english school, wilson and gainsborough. § . constable, callcott. § . peculiar tendency of recent landscape. § . g. robson, d. cox. false use of the term "style." § . copley fielding. phenomena of distant color. § . beauty of mountain foreground. § . de wint. § . influence of engraving. j. d. harding. § . samuel prout. early painting of architecture, how deficient. § . effects of age upon buildings, how far desirable. § . effects of light, how necessary to the understanding of detail. § . architectural painting of gentile bellini and vittor carpaccio. § . and of the venetians generally. § . fresco painting of the venetian exteriors. canaletto. § . expression of the effects of age on architecture by s. prout. § . his excellent composition and color. § . modern architectural painting generally. g. cattermole. § . the evil in an archæological point of view of misapplied invention, in architectural subject. § . works of david roberts: their fidelity and grace. § . clarkson stanfield. § . j. m. w. turner. force of national feeling in all great painters. § . influence of this feeling on the choice of landscape subject. § . its peculiar manifestation in turner. § . the domestic subjects of the liber studiorum. § . turner's painting of french and swiss landscape. the latter deficient. § . his rendering of italian character still less successful. his large compositions how failing § . his views of italy destroyed by brilliancy and redundant quantity. § . changes introduced by him in the received system of art. § . difficulties of his later manner. resultant deficiencies. § . reflection of his very recent works. § . difficulty of demonstration in such subjects. section ii. of general truths. chapter i.--of truth of tone. § . meanings of the word "tone:"--first, the right relation of objects in shadow to the principal light. § . secondly, the quality of color by which it is felt to owe part of its brightness to the hue of light upon it. § . difference between tone in its first sense and aerial perspective. § . the pictures of the old masters perfect in relation of middle tints to light. § . and consequently totally false in relation of middle tints to darkness. § . general falsehood of such a system. § . the principle of turner in this respect. § . comparison of n. poussin's "phocion." § . with turner's "mercury and argus." § . and with the "datur hora quieti." § . the second sense of the word "tone." § . remarkable difference in this respect between the paintings and drawings of turner. § . not owing to want of power over the material § . the two distinct qualities of light to be considered § . falsehoods by which titian attains the appearance of quality in light. § . turner will not use such means. § . but gains in essential truth by the sacrifice. § . the second quality of light. § . the perfection of cuyp in this respect interfered with by numerous solecisms. § . turner is not so perfect in parts--far more so in the whole. § . the power in turner of uniting a number of tones. § . recapitulation. chapter ii.--of truth of color. § . observations on the color of g. poussin's la riccia. § . as compared with the actual scene. § . turner himself is inferior in brilliancy to nature. § . impossible colors of salvator, titian. § . poussin, and claude. § . turner's translation of colors. § . notice of effects in which no brilliancy of art can even approach that of reality. § . reasons for the usual incredulity of the observer with respect to their representation § . color of the napoleon. § . necessary discrepancy between the attainable brilliancy of color and light. § . this discrepancy less in turner than in other colorists. § . its great extent in a landscape attributed to rubens. § . turner scarcely ever uses pure or vivid color. § . the basis of gray, under all his vivid hues. § . the variety and fulness even of his most simple tones. § . following the infinite and unapproachable variety of nature. § . his dislike of purple, and fondness for the opposition of yellow and black. the principles of nature in this respect. § . his early works are false in color. § . his drawings invariably perfect. § . the subjection of his system of color to that of chiaroscuro. chapter iii.--of truth of chiaroscuro. § . we are not at present to examine particular effects of light. § . and therefore the distinctness of shadows is the chief means of expressing vividness of light. § . total absence of such distinctness in the works of the italian school. § . and partial absence in the dutch. § . the perfection of turner's works in this respect. § . the effect of his shadows upon the light. § . the distinction holds good between almost all the works of the ancient and modern schools. § . second great principle of chiaroscuro. both high light and deep shadow are used in equal quantity, and only in points. § . neglect or contradiction of this principle by writers on art. § . and consequent misguiding of the student. § . the great value of a simple chiaroscuro. § . the sharp separation of nature's lights from her middle tint. § . the truth of turner. chapter iv.--of truth of space:--first, as dependent on the focus of the eye. § . space is more clearly indicated by the drawing of objects than by their hue. § . it is impossible to see objects at unequal distances distinctly at one moment. § . especially such as are both comparatively near. § . in painting, therefore, either the foreground or distance must be partially sacrificed. § . which not being done by the old masters, they could not express space. § . but modern artists have succeeded in fully carrying out this principle. § . especially of turner. § . justification of the want of drawing in turner's figures. chapter v.--of truth of space:--secondly, as its appearance is dependent on the power of the eye. § . the peculiar indistinctness dependent on the retirement of objects from the eye. § . causes confusion, but not annihilation of details. § . instances in various objects. § . two great resultant truths; that nature is never distinct, and never vacant. § . complete violation of both these principles by the old masters. they are either distinct or vacant. § . instances from nicholas poussin. § . from claude. § . and g. poussin. § . the imperative necessity, in landscape painting, of fulness and finish. § . breadth is not vacancy. § . the fulness and mystery of turner's distances. § . farther illustrations in architectural drawing. § . in near objects as well as distances. § . vacancy and falsehood of canaletto. § . still greater fulness and finish in landscape foregrounds. § . space and size are destroyed alike by distinctness and by vacancy. § . swift execution best secures perfection of details. § . finish is far more necessary in landscape than in historical subjects. § . recapitulation of the section. section iii. of truth of skies. chapter i.--of the open sky. § . the peculiar adaptation of the sky to the pleasing and teaching of man. § . the carelessness with which its lessons are received. § . the most essential of these lessons are the gentlest. § . many of our ideas of sky altogether conventional. § . nature, and essential qualities of the open blue. § . its connection with clouds. § . its exceeding depth. § . these qualities are especially given by modern masters. § . and by claude. § . total absence of them in poussin. physical errors in his general treatment of open sky. § . errors of cuyp in graduation of color. § . the exceeding value of the skies of the early italian and dutch schools. their qualities are unattainable in modern times. § . phenomena of visible sunbeams. their nature and cause. § . they are only illuminated mist, and cannot appear when the sky is free from vapor, nor when it is without clouds. § . erroneous tendency in the representation of such phenomena by the old masters. § . the ray which appears in the dazzled eye should not be represented. § . the practice of turner. his keen perception of the more delicate phenomena of rays. § . the total absence of any evidence of such perception in the works of the old masters. § . truth of the skies of modern drawings. § . recapitulation. the best skies of the ancients are, in _quality_, inimitable, but in rendering of various truth, childish. chapter ii.--of truth of clouds:--first, of the region of the cirrus. § . difficulty of ascertaining wherein the truth of clouds consists. § . variation of their character at different elevations. the three regions to which they may conveniently be considered as belonging. § . extent of the upper region. § . the symmetrical arrangement of its clouds. § . their exceeding delicacy. § . their number. § . causes of their peculiarly delicate coloring. § . their variety of form. § . total absence of even the slightest effort at their representation, in ancient landscape. § . the intense and constant study of them by turner. § . his vignette, sunrise on the sea. § . his use of the cirrus in expressing mist. § . his consistency in every minor feature. § . the color of the upper clouds. § . recapitulation. chapter iii.--of truth of clouds:--secondly, of the central cloud region. § . extent and typical character of the central cloud region. § . its characteristic clouds, requiring no attention nor thought for their representation, are therefore favorite subjects with the old masters. § . the clouds of salvator and poussin. § . their essential characters. § . their angular forms and general decision of outline. § . the composition of their minor curves. § . their characters, as given by s. rosa. § . monotony and falsehood of the clouds of the italian school generally. § . vast size of congregated masses of cloud. § . demonstrable by comparison with mountain ranges. § . and consequent divisions and varieties of feature. § . not lightly to be omitted. § . imperfect conceptions of this size and extent in ancient landscape. § . total want of transparency and evanescence in the clouds of ancient landscape. § . farther proof of their deficiency in space. § . instance of perfect truth in the sky of turner's babylon. § . and in his pools of solomon. § . truths of outline and character in his como. § . association of the cirrostratus with the cumulus. § . the deep-based knowledge of the alps in turner's lake of geneva. § . farther principles of cloud form exemplified in his amalfi. § . reasons for insisting on the _infinity_ of turner's works. infinity is almost an unerring test of _all_ truth. § . instances of the total want of it in the works of salvator. § . and of the universal presence of it in those of turner. the conclusions which may be arrived at from it. § . the multiplication of objects, or increase of their size, will not give the impression of infinity, but is the resource of novices. § . farther instances of infinity in the gray skies of turner. § . the excellence of the cloud-drawing of stanfield. § . the average standing of the english school. chapter iv.--of truth of clouds:--thirdly, of the region of the rain-cloud. § . the apparent difference in character between the lower and central clouds is dependent chiefly on proximity. § . their marked differences in color. § . and in definiteness of form. § . they are subject to precisely the same great laws. § . value, to the painter, of the rain-cloud. § . the old masters have not left a single instance of the painting of the rain-cloud, and very few efforts at it. gaspar poussin's storms. § . the great power of the moderns in this respect. § . works of copley fielding. § . his peculiar truth. § . his weakness, and its probable cause. § . impossibility of reasoning on the rain-clouds of turner from engravings. § . his rendering of fielding's particular moment in the jumieges. § . illustration of the nature of clouds in the opposed forms of smoke and steam. § . moment of retiring rain in the llanthony. § . and of commencing, chosen with peculiar meaning for loch coriskin. § . the drawing of transparent vapor in the land's end. § . the individual character of its parts. § . deep-studied form of swift rain-cloud in the coventry. § . compared with forms given by salvator. § . entire expression of tempest by minute touches and circumstances in the coventry. § . especially by contrast with a passage of extreme repose. § . the truth of this particular passage. perfectly pure blue sky only seen after rain, and how seen. § . absence of this effect in the works of the old masters. § . success of our water-color artists in its rendering. use of it by turner. § . expression of near rain-cloud in the gosport, and other works. § . contrasted with gaspar poussin's rain-cloud in the dido and Ã�neas. § . turner's power of rendering mist. § . his effects of mist so perfect, that if not at once understood, they can no more be explained or reasoned on than nature herself. § . various instances. § . turner's more violent effects of tempest are never rendered by engravers. § . general system of landscape engraving. § . the storm in the stonehenge. § . general character of such effects as given by turner. his expression of falling rain. § . recapitulation of the section. § . sketch of a few of the skies of nature, taken as a whole, compared with the works of turner and of the old masters. morning on the plains. § . noon with gathering storms. § . sunset in tempest. serene midnight. § . and sunrise on the alps. chapter v.--effects of light rendered by modern art. § . reasons for merely, at present, naming, without examining the particular effects of light rendered by turner. § . hopes of the author for assistance in the future investigation of them. section iv. of truth of earth. chapter i.--of general structure. § . first laws of the organization of the earth, and their importance in art. § . the slight attention ordinarily paid to them. their careful study by modern artists. § . general structure of the earth. the hills are its action, the plains its rest. § . mountains come out from underneath the plains, and are their support. § . structure of the plains themselves. their perfect level, when deposited by quiet water. § . illustrated by turner's marengo. § . general divisions of formation resulting from this arrangement. plan of investigation. chapter ii.--of the central mountains. § . similar character of the central peaks in all parts of the world. § . their arrangements in pyramids or wedges, divided by vertical fissures. § . causing groups of rock resembling an artichoke or rose. § . the faithful statement of these facts by turner in his alps at daybreak. § . vignette of the andes and others. § . necessary distance, and consequent aerial effect on all such mountains. § . total want of any rendering of their phenomena in ancient art. § . character of the representations of alps in the distances of claude. § . their total want of magnitude and aerial distance. § . and violation of specific form. § . even in his best works. § . farther illustration of the distant character of mountain chains. § . their excessive appearance of transparency. § . illustrated from the works of turner and stanfield. the borromean islands of the latter. § . turner's arona. § . extreme distance of large objects always characterized by very sharp outline. § . want of this decision in claude. § . the perpetual rendering of it by turner. § . effects of snow, how imperfectly studied. § . general principles of its forms on the alps. § . average paintings of switzerland. its real spirit has scarcely yet been caught. chapter iii.--of the inferior mountains. § . the inferior mountains are distinguished from the central, by being divided into beds. § . farther division of these beds by joints. § . and by lines of lamination. § . variety and seeming uncertainty under which these laws are manifested. § . the perfect expression of them in turner's loch coriskin. § . glencoe and other works. § . especially the mount lebanon. § . compared with the work of salvator. § . and of poussin. § . effects of external influence on mountain form. § . the gentle convexity caused by aqueous erosion. § . and the effect of the action of torrents. § . the exceeding simplicity of contour caused by these influences. § . and multiplicity of feature. § . both utterly neglected in ancient art. § . the fidelity of treatment in turner's daphne and leucippus. § . and in the avalanche and inundation. § . the rarity among secondary hills of steep slopes or high precipices. § . and consequent expression of horizontal distance in their ascent. § . full statement of all these facts in various works of turner.--caudebec, etc. § . the use of considering geological truths. § . expression of retiring surface by turner contrasted with the work of claude. § . the same moderation of slope in the contours of his higher hills. § . the peculiar difficulty of investigating the more essential truths of hill outline. § . works of other modern artists.--clarkson stanfield. § . importance of particular and individual truth in hill drawing. § . works of copley fielding. his high feeling. § . works of j. d. harding and others. chapter iv.--of the foreground. § . what rocks were the chief components of ancient landscape foreground. § . salvator's limestones. the real characters of the rock. its fractures, and obtuseness of angles. § . salvator's acute angles caused by the meeting of concave curves. § . peculiar distinctness of light and shade in the rocks of nature. § . peculiar confusion of both in the rocks of salvator. § . and total want of any expression of hardness or brittleness. § . instances in particular pictures. § . compared with the works of stanfield. § . their absolute opposition in every particular. § . the rocks of j. d. harding. § . characters of loose earth and soil. § . its exceeding grace and fulness of feature. § . the ground of teniers. § . importance of these minor parts and points. § . the observance of them is the real distinction between the master and the novice. § . ground of cuyp. § . and of claude. § . the entire weakness and childishness of the latter. § . compared with the work of turner. § . general features of turner's foreground. § . geological structure of his rocks in the fall of the tees. § . their convex surfaces and fractured edges. § . and perfect unity. § . various parts whose history is told us by the details of the drawing. § . beautiful instance of an exception to general rules in the llanthony. § . turner's drawing of detached blocks of weathered stone. § . and of complicated foreground. § . and of loose soil. § . the unison of all in the ideal foregrounds of the academy pictures. § . and the great lesson to be received from all. section v. of truth of water. chapter i.--of water, as painted by the ancients. § . sketch of the functions and infinite agency of water. § . the ease with which a common representation of it may be given. the impossibility of a faithful one. § . difficulty of properly dividing the subject. § . inaccuracy of study of water-effect among all painters. § . difficulty of treating this part of the subject. § . general laws which regulate the phenomena of water. first, the imperfection of its reflective surface. § . the inherent hue of water modifies dark reflections, and does not affect right ones. § . water takes no shadow. § . modification of dark reflections by shadow. § . examples on the waters of the rhone. § . effect of ripple on distant water. § . elongation of reflections by moving water. § . effect of rippled water on horizontal and inclined images. § . to what extent reflection is visible from above. § . deflection of images on agitated water. § . necessity of watchfulness as well as of science. licenses, how taken by great men. § . various licenses or errors in water painting of claude, cuyp, vandevelde. § . and canaletto. § . why unpardonable. § . the dutch painters of sea. § . ruysdael, claude, and salvator. § . nicolo poussin. § . venetians and florentines. conclusion. chapter ii.--of water, as painted by the moderns. § . general power of the moderns in painting quiet water. the lakes of fielding. § . the calm rivers of de wint, j. holland, &c. § . the character of bright and violent falling water. § . as given by nesfield. § . the admirable water-drawing of j. d. harding. § . his color; and painting of sea. § . the sea of copley fielding. its exceeding grace and rapidity. § . its high aim at character. § . but deficiency in the requisite quality of grays. § . variety of the grays of nature. § . works of stanfield. his perfect knowledge and power. § . but want of feeling. general sum of truth presented by modern art. chapter iii.--of water, as painted by turner. § . the difficulty of giving surface to smooth water. § . is dependent on the structure of the eye, and the focus by which the reflected rays are perceived. § . morbid clearness occasioned in painting of water by distinctness of reflections. § . how avoided by turner. § . all reflections on distant water are distinct. § . the error of vandevelde. § . difference in arrangement of parts between the reflected object and its image. § . illustrated from the works of turner. § . the boldness and judgment shown in the observance of it. § . the _texture_ of surface in turner's painting of calm water. § . its united qualities. § . relation of various circumstances of past agitation, &c., by the most trifling incidents, as in the cowes. § . in scenes on the loire and seine. § . expression of contrary waves caused by recoil from shore. § . various other instances. § . turner's painting of distant expanses of water.--calm, interrupted by ripple. § . and rippled, crossed by sunshine. § . his drawing of distant rivers. § . and of surface associated with mist. § . his drawing of falling water, with peculiar expression of weight. § . the abandonment and plunge of great cataracts. how given by him. § . difference in the action of water, when continuous and when interrupted. the interrupted stream fills the hollows of its bed. § . but the continuous stream takes the shape of its bed. § . its exquisite curved lines. § . turner's careful choice of the historical truth. § . his exquisite drawing of the continuous torrent in the llanthony abbey. § . and of the interrupted torrent in the mercury and argus. § . various cases. § . sea painting. impossibility of truly representing foam. § . character of shore-breakers, also inexpressible. § . their effect how injured when seen from the shore. § . turner's expression of heavy rolling sea. § . with peculiar expression of weight. § . peculiar action of recoiling waves. § . and of the stroke of a breaker on the shore. § . general character of sea on a rocky coast given by turner in the land's end. § . open seas of turner's earlier time. § . effect of sea after prolonged storm. § . turner's noblest work, the painting of the deep open sea in the slave ship. § . its united excellences and perfection as a whole. section vi. of truth of vegetation.--conclusion. chapter i.--of truth of vegetation. § . frequent occurrence of foliage in the works of the old masters. § . laws common to all forest trees. their branches do not taper, but only divide. § . appearance of tapering caused by frequent buds. § . and care of nature to conceal the parallelism. § . the degree of tapering which may be represented as continuous. § . the trees of gaspar poussin. § . and of the italian school generally, defy this law. § . the truth, as it is given by j. d. harding. § . boughs, in consequence of this law, _must_ diminish where they divide. those of the old masters often do not. § . boughs must multiply as they diminish. those of the old masters do not. § . bough-drawing of salvator. § . all these errors especially shown in claude's sketches, and concentrated in a work of g. poussin's. § . impossibility of the angles of boughs being taken out of them by wind. § . bough-drawing of titian. § . bough-drawing of turner. § . leafage. its variety and symmetry. § . perfect regularity of poussin. § . exceeding intricacy of nature's foliage. § . how contradicted by the tree-patterns of g. poussin. § . how followed by creswick. § . perfect unity in nature's foliage. § . total want of it in both and hobbima. § . how rendered by turner. § . the near leafage of claude. his middle distances are good. § . universal termination of trees in symmetrical curves. § . altogether unobserved by the old masters. always given by turner. § . foliage painting on the continent. § . foliage of j. d. harding. its deficiencies. § . his brilliancy of execution too manifest. § . his bough-drawing, and choice of form. § . local color, how far expressible in black and white, and with what advantage. § . opposition between great manner and great knowledge. § . foliage of cox, fielding, and cattermole. § . hunt and creswick. green, how to be rendered expressive of light, and offensive if otherwise. § . conclusion. works of j. linnel and s. palmer. chapter ii.--general remarks respecting the truth of turner. § . no necessity of entering into discussion of architectural truth. § . extreme difficulty of illustrating or explaining the highest truth. § . the _positive_ rank of turner is in no degree shown in the foregoing pages, but only his relative rank. § . the exceeding refinement of his truth. § . there is nothing in his works which can be enjoyed without knowledge. § . and nothing which knowledge will not enable us to enjoy. § . his former rank and progress. § . standing of his present works. their mystery is the consequence of their fulness. chapter iii.--conclusion.--modern art and modern criticism. § . the entire prominence hitherto given to the works of one artist caused only by our not being able to take cognizance of _character_. § . the feelings of different artists are incapable of full comparison. § . but the fidelity and truth of each are capable of real comparison. § . especially because they are equally manifested in the treatment of all subjects. § . no man draws one thing well, if he can draw nothing else. § . general conclusions to be derived from our past investigation. § . truth, a standard of all excellence. § . modern criticism. changefulness of public taste. § . yet associated with a certain degree of judgment. § . duty of the press. § . qualifications necessary for discharging it. § . general incapability of modern critics. § . and inconsistency with themselves. § . how the press may really advance the cause of art. § . morbid fondness at the present day for unfinished works. § . by which the public defraud themselves. § . and in pandering to which, artists ruin themselves. § . necessity of finishing works of art perfectly. § . _sketches_ not sufficiently encouraged. § . brilliancy of execution or efforts at invention not to be tolerated in young artists. § . the duty and after privileges of all students. § . necessity among our greater artists of more singleness of aim. § . what should be their general aim. § . duty of the press with respect to the works of turner. list of plates to volume i. _page._ casa contarini fasan, venice from a drawing by ruskin. the dogana, and santa maria della salute, venice from a painting by turner. okehampton castle from a painting by turner. port ruysdael from a painting by turner. modern painters. part i of general principles. section i. of the nature of the ideas conveyable by art. chapter i. introductory. § . public opinion no criterion of excellence, except after long periods of time. if it be true, and it can scarcely be disputed, that nothing has been for centuries consecrated by public admiration, without possessing in a high degree some kind of sterling excellence, it is not because the average intellect and feeling of the majority of the public are competent in any way to distinguish what is really excellent, but because all erroneous opinion is inconsistent, and all ungrounded opinion transitory; so that while the fancies and feelings which deny deserved honor and award what is undue have neither root nor strength sufficient to maintain consistent testimony for a length of time, the opinions formed on right grounds by those few who are in reality competent judges, being necessarily stable, communicate themselves gradually from mind to mind, descending lower as they extend wider, until they leaven the whole lump, and rule by absolute authority, even where the grounds and reasons for them cannot be understood. on this gradual victory of what is consistent over what is vacillating, depends the reputation of all that is highest in art and literature. for it is an insult to what is really great in either, to suppose that it in any way addresses itself to mean or uncultivated faculties. it is a matter of the simplest demonstration, that no man can be really appreciated but by his equal or superior. his inferior may over-estimate him in enthusiasm; or, as is more commonly the case, degrade him, in ignorance; but he cannot form a grounded and just estimate. without proving this, however--which it would take more space to do than i can spare--it is sufficiently evident that there is no process of amalgamation by which opinions, wrong individually, can become right merely by their multitude.[ ] if i stand by a picture in the academy, and hear twenty persons in succession admiring some paltry piece of mechanism or imitation in the lining of a cloak, or the satin of a slipper, it is absurd to tell me that they reprobate collectively what they admire individually: or, if they pass with apathy by a piece of the most noble conception or most perfect truth, because it has in it no tricks of the brush nor grimace of expression, it is absurd to tell me that they collectively respect what they separately scorn, or that the feelings and knowledge of such judges, by any length of time or comparison of ideas, could come to any right conclusion with respect to what is really high in art. the question is not decided by them, but for them;--decided at first by few: by fewer in proportion as the merits of the work are of a higher order. from these few the decision is communicated to the number next below them in rank of mind, and by these again to a wider and lower circle; each rank being so far cognizant of the superiority of that above it, as to receive its decision with respect; until, in process of time, the right and consistent opinion is communicated to all, and held by all as a matter of faith, the more positively in proportion as the grounds of it are less perceived.[ ] § . and therefore obstinate when once formed. § . the author's reasons for opposing it in particular instances. § . but only on points capable of demonstration. but when this process has taken place, and the work has become sanctified by time in the minds of men, it is impossible that any new work of equal merit can be impartially compared with it, except by minds not only educated and generally capable of appreciating merit, but strong enough to shake off the weight of prejudice and association, which invariably incline them to the older favorite. it is much easier, says barry, to repeat the character recorded of phidias, than to investigate the merits of agasias. and when, as peculiarly in the case of painting, much knowledge of what is technical and practical is necessary to a right judgment, so that those alone are competent to pronounce a true verdict who are themselves the persons to be judged, and who therefore can give no opinion, centuries may elapse before fair comparison can be made between two artists of different ages; while the patriarchal excellence exercises during the interval a tyrannical--perhaps, even a blighting, influence over the minds, both of the public and of those to whom, properly understood, it should serve for a guide and example. in no city of europe where art is a subject of attention, are its prospects so hopeless, or its pursuits so resultless, as in rome; because there, among all students, the authority of their predecessors in art is supreme and without appeal, and the mindless copyist studies raffaelle, but not what raffaelle studied. it thus becomes the duty of every one capable of demonstrating any definite points of superiority in modern art, and who is in a position in which his doing so will not be ungraceful, to encounter without hesitation whatever opprobrium may fall upon him from the necessary prejudice even of the most candid minds, and from the far more virulent opposition of those who have no hope of maintaining their own reputation for discernment but in the support of that kind of consecrated merit which may be applauded without an inconvenient necessity for reasons. it is my purpose, therefore, believing that there are certain points of superiority in modern artists, and especially in one or two of their number, which have not yet been fully understood, except by those who are scarcely in a position admitting the declaration of their conviction, to institute a close comparison between the great works of ancient and modern landscape art, to raise, as far as possible, the deceptive veil of imaginary light through which we are accustomed to gaze upon the patriarchal work, and to show the real relations, whether favorable or otherwise, subsisting between it and our own. i am fully aware that this is not to be done lightly or rashly; that it is the part of every one proposing to undertake such a task strictly to examine, with prolonged doubt and severe trial, every opinion in any way contrary to the sacred verdict of time, and to advance nothing which does not, at least in his own conviction, rest on surer ground than mere feeling or taste. i have accordingly advanced nothing in the following pages but with accompanying demonstration, which may indeed be true or false--complete or conditional, but which can only be met on its own grounds, and can in no way be borne down or affected by mere authority of great names. yet even thus i should scarcely have ventured to speak so decidedly as i have, but for my full conviction that we ought not to class the historical painters of the fifteenth, and landscape painters of the seventeenth, centuries, together, under the general title of "old masters," as if they possessed anything like corresponding rank in their respective walks of art. i feel assured that the principles on which they worked are totally opposed, and that the landscape painters have been honored only because they exhibited in mechanical and technical qualities some semblance of the manner of the nobler historical painters, whose principles of conception and composition they entirely reversed. the course of study which has led me reverently to the feet of michael angelo and da vinci, has alienated me gradually from claude and gaspar--i cannot at the same time do homage to power and pettiness--to the truth of consummate science, and the mannerism of undisciplined imagination. and let it be understood that whenever hereafter i speak depreciatingly of the old masters as a body, i refer to none of the historical painters, for whom i entertain a veneration, which though i hope reasonable in its grounds, is almost superstitious in degree. neither, unless he be particularly mentioned, do i intend to include nicholas poussin, whose landscapes have a separate and elevated character, which renders it necessary to consider them apart from all others. speaking generally of the older masters, i refer only to claude, gaspar poussin, salvator rosa, cuyp, berghem, both, ruysdael, hobbima, teniers, (in his landscapes,) p. potter, canaletti, and the various van somethings, and back somethings, more especially and malignantly those who have libelled the sea. it will of course be necessary for me in the commencement of the work to state briefly those principles on which i conceive all right judgment of art must be founded. these introductory chapters i should wish to be read carefully, because all criticism must be useless when the terms or grounds of it are in any degree ambiguous; and the ordinary language of connoisseurs and critics, granting that they understand it themselves, is usually mere jargon to others, from their custom of using technical terms, by which everything is meant, and nothing is expressed. § . the author's partiality to modern works excusable. and if, in the application of these principles, in spite of my endeavor to render it impartial, the feeling and fondness which i have for some works of modern art escape me sometimes where it should not, let it be pardoned as little more than a fair counterbalance to that peculiar veneration with which the work of the older master, associated as it has ever been in our ears with the expression of whatever is great or perfect, must be usually regarded by the reader. i do not say that this veneration is wrong, nor that we should be less attentive to the repeated words of time: but let us not forget, that if honor be for the dead, gratitude can only be for the living. he who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent _there_ are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant's pleasure to the pulseless heart, or atone in the lowest measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart, which can only be discharged to the dust. but the lesson which men receive as individuals, they do not learn as nations. again and again they have seen their noblest descend into the grave, and have thought it enough to garland the tombstone when they had not crowned the brow, and to pay the honor to the ashes, which they had denied to the spirit. let it not displease them that they are bidden, amidst the tumult and the dazzle of their busy life, to listen for the few voices, and watch for the few lamps, which god has toned and lighted to charm and to guide them, that they may not learn their sweetness by their silence, nor their light by their decay. footnotes [ ] the opinion of a majority is right only when it is more probable with each individual that he should be right than that he should be wrong, as in the case of a jury. where it is more probable, with respect to each individual, that he should be wrong than right, the opinion of the minority is the true one. thus it is in art. [ ] there are, however, a thousand modifying circumstances which render this process sometimes unnecessary,--sometimes rapid and certain--sometimes impossible. it is unnecessary in rhetoric and the drama, because the multitude is the only proper judge of those arts whose end is to move the multitude (though more is necessary to a fine play than is essentially dramatic, and it is only of the dramatic part that the multitude are cognizant). it is unnecessary, when, united with the higher qualities of a work, there are appeals to universal passion, to all the faculties and feelings which are general in man as an animal. the popularity is then as sudden as it is well grounded,--it is hearty and honest in every mind, but it is based in every mind on a different species of excellence. such will often be the case with the noblest works of literature. take don quixote for example. the lowest mind would find in it perpetual and brutal amusement in the misfortunes of the knight, and perpetual pleasure in sympathy with the squire. a mind of average feeling would perceive the satirical meaning and force of the book, would appreciate its wit, its elegance, and its truth. but only elevated and peculiar minds discover, in addition to all this, the full moral beauty of the love and truth which are the constant associates of all that is even most weak and erring in the character of its hero, and pass over the rude adventure and scurrile jest in haste--perhaps in pain, to penetrate beneath the rusty corselet, and catch from the wandering glance the evidence and expression of fortitude, self-devotion, and universal love. so, again, with the works of scott and byron; popularity was as instant as it was deserved, because there is in them an appeal to those passions which are universal in all men, as well as an expression of such thoughts as can be received only by the few. but they are admired by the majority of their advocates for the weakest parts of their works, as a popular preacher by the majority of his congregation for the worst part of his sermon. the process is rapid and certain, when, though there may be little to catch the multitude at once, there is much which they can enjoy when their attention is authoritatively directed to it. so rests the reputation of shakspeare. no ordinary mind can comprehend wherein his undisputed superiority consists, but there is yet quite as much to amuse, thrill, or excite,--quite as much of what is, in the strict sense of the word, dramatic, in his works as in any one else's. they were received, therefore, when first written, with average approval, as works of common merit: but when the high decision was made, and the circle spread, the public took up the hue and cry conscientiously enough. let them have daggers, ghosts, clowns, and kings, and with such real and definite sources of enjoyment, they will take the additional trouble to learn half a dozen quotations, without understanding them, and admit the superiority of shakspeare without further demur. nothing, perhaps, can more completely demonstrate the total ignorance of the public of all that is great or valuable in shakspeare than their universal admiration of maclise's hamlet. the process is impossible when there is in the work nothing to attract and something to disgust the vulgar mind. neither their intrinsic excellence, nor the authority of those who can judge of it, will ever make the poems of wordsworth or george herbert popular, in the sense in which scott and byron are popular, because it is to the vulgar a labor instead of a pleasure to read them; and there are parts in them which to such judges cannot but be vapid or ridiculous. most works of the highest art,--those of raffaelle, m. angelo, or da vinci,--stand as shakspeare does,--that which is commonplace and feeble in their excellence being taken for its essence by the uneducated, imagination assisting the impression, (for we readily fancy that we feel, when feeling is a matter of pride or conscience,) and affectation and pretension increasing the noise of the rapture, if not its degree. giotto, orgagna, angelico, perugino, stand, like george herbert, only with the few. wilkie becomes popular, like scott, because he touches passions which all feel, and expresses truths which all can recognize. chapter ii. definition of greatness in art. § . distinction between the painter's intellectual power and technical knowledge. in the th lecture of sir joshua reynolds, incidental notice is taken of the distinction between those excellences in the painter which belong to him _as such_, and those which belong to him in common with all men of intellect, the general and exalted powers of which art is the evidence and expression, not the subject. but the distinction is not there dwelt upon as it should be, for it is owing to the slight attention ordinarily paid to it, that criticism is open to every form of coxcombry, and liable to every phase of error. it is a distinction on which depend all sound judgment of the rank of the artist, and all just appreciation of the dignity of art. § . painting, as such, is nothing more than language. painting, or art generally, as such, with all its technicalities, difficulties, and particular ends, is nothing but a noble and expressive language, invaluable as the vehicle of thought, but by itself nothing. he who has learned what is commonly considered the whole art of painting, that is, the art of representing any natural object faithfully, has as yet only learned the language by which his thoughts are to be expressed. he has done just as much towards being that which we ought to respect as a great painter, as a man who has learned how to express himself grammatically and melodiously has towards being a great poet. the language is, indeed, more difficult of acquirement in the one case than in the other, and possesses more power of delighting the sense, while it speaks to the intellect, but it is, nevertheless, nothing more than language, and all those excellences which are peculiar to the painter as such, are merely what rhythm, melody, precision and force are in the words of the orator and the poet, necessary to their greatness, but not the tests of their greatness. it is not by the mode of representing and saying, but by what is represented and said, that the respective greatness either of the painter or the writer is to be finally determined. § . "painter," a term corresponding to "versifier." speaking with strict propriety, therefore, we should call a man a great painter only as he excelled in precision and force in the language of lines, and a great versifier, as he excelled in precision or force in the language of words. a great poet would then be a term strictly, and in precisely the same sense applicable to both, if warranted by the character of the images or thoughts which each in their respective languages convey. § . example in a painting of e. landseer's. take, for instance, one of the most perfect poems or pictures (i use the words as synonymous) which modern times have seen:--the "old shepherd's chief-mourner." here the exquisite execution of the glossy and crisp hair of the dog, the bright sharp touching of the green bough beside it, the clear painting of the wood of the coffin and the folds of the blanket, are language--language clear and expressive in the highest degree. but the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood, the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total powerlessness of the head laid, close and motionless, upon its folds, the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no motion nor change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck on the coffin-lid, the quietness and gloom of the chamber, the spectacles marking the place where the bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has been the life--how unwatched the departure of him who is now laid solitary in his sleep;--these are all thoughts--thoughts by which the picture is separated at once from hundreds of equal merit, as far as mere painting goes, by which it ranks as a work of high art, and stamps its author, not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the man of mind. § . difficulty of fixing an exact limit between language and thought. it is not, however, always easy, either in painting or literature, to determine where the influence of language stops, and where that of thought begins. many thoughts are so dependent upon the language in which they are clothed, that they would lose half their beauty if otherwise expressed. but the highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled, are in exact proportion to its independency of language or expression. a composition is indeed usually most perfect, when to such intrinsic dignity is added all that expression can do to attract and adorn; but in every case of supreme excellence this all becomes as nothing. we are more gratified by the simplest lines or words which can suggest the idea in its own naked beauty, than by the robe or the gem which conceal while they decorate; we are better pleased to feel by their absence how little they would bestow, than by their presence how much they can destroy. § . distinction between decorative and expressive language. there is therefore a distinction to be made between what is ornamental in language and what is expressive. that part of it which is necessary to the embodying and conveying the thought is worthy of respect and attention as necessary to excellence, though not the test of it. but that part of it which is decorative has little more to do with the intrinsic excellence of the picture than the frame or the varnishing of it. and this caution in distinguishing between the ornamental and the expressive is peculiarly necessary in painting; for in the language of words it is nearly impossible for that which is not expressive to be beautiful, except by mere rhythm or melody, any sacrifice to which is immediately stigmatized as error. but the beauty of mere language in painting is not only very attractive and entertaining to the spectator, but requires for its attainment no small exertion of mind and devotion of time by the artist. hence, in art, men have frequently fancied that they were becoming rhetoricians and poets when they were only learning to speak melodiously, and the judge has over and over again advanced to the honor of authors those who were never more than ornamental writing-masters. § . instance in the dutch and early italian schools. most pictures of the dutch school, for instance, and excepting always those of rubens, vandyke, and rembrandt, are ostentatious exhibitions of the artist's power of speech, the clear and vigorous elocution of useless and senseless words: while the early efforts of cimabue and giotto are the burning messages of prophecy, delivered by the stammering lips of infants. it is not by ranking the former as more than mechanics, or the latter as less than artists, that the taste of the multitude, always awake to the lowest pleasures which art can bestow, and blunt to the highest, is to be formed or elevated. it must be the part of the judicious critic carefully to distinguish what is language, and what is thought, and to rank and praise pictures chiefly for the latter, considering the former as a totally inferior excellence, and one which cannot be compared with nor weighed against thought in any way nor in any degree whatsoever. the picture which has the nobler and more numerous ideas, however awkwardly expressed, is a greater and a better picture than that which has the less noble and less numerous ideas, however beautifully expressed. no weight, nor mass, nor beauty of execution can outweigh one grain or fragment of thought. three penstrokes of raffaelle are a greater and a better picture than the most finished work that ever carlo dolci polished into inanity. a finished work of a great artist is only better than its sketch, if the sources of pleasure belonging to color and realization--valuable in themselves,--are so employed as to increase the impressiveness of the thought. but if one atom of thought has vanished, all color, all finish, all execution, all ornament, are too dearly bought. nothing but thought can pay for thought, and the instant that the increasing refinement or finish of the picture begins to be paid for by the loss of the faintest shadow of an idea, that instant all refinement or finish is an excrescence, and a deformity. § . yet there are certain ideas belonging to language itself. § . the definition. yet although in all our speculations on art, language is thus to be distinguished from, and held subordinate to, that which it conveys, we must still remember that there are certain ideas inherent in language itself, and that strictly speaking, every pleasure connected with art has in it some reference to the intellect. the mere sensual pleasure of the eye, received from the most brilliant piece of coloring, is as nothing to that which it receives from a crystal prism, except as it depends on our perception of a certain meaning and intended arrangement of color, which has been the subject of intellect. nay, the term idea, according to locke's definition of it, will extend even to the sensual impressions themselves as far as they are "things which the mind occupies itself about in thinking," that is, not as they are felt by the eye only, but as they are received by the mind through the eye. so that, if i say that the greatest picture is that which conveys to the mind of the spectator the greatest number of the greatest ideas, i have a definition which will include as subjects of comparison every pleasure which art is capable of conveying. if i were to say, on the contrary, that the best picture was that which most closely imitated nature, i should assume that art could only please by imitating nature, and i should cast out of the pale of criticism those parts of works of art which are not imitative, that is to say, intrinsic beauties of color and form, and those works of art wholly, which, like the arabesques of raffaelle in the loggias, are not imitative at all. now i want a definition of art wide enough to include all its varieties of aim: i do not say therefore that the art is greatest which gives most pleasure, because perhaps there is some art whose end is to teach, and not to please. i do not say that the art is greatest which teaches us most, because perhaps there is some art whose end is to please, and not to teach. i do not say that the art is greatest which imitates best, because perhaps there is some art whose end is to create, and not to imitate. but i say that the art is greatest, which conveys to the mind of the spectator, by any means whatsoever, the greatest number of the greatest ideas, and i call an idea great in proportion as it is received by a higher faculty of the mind, and as it more fully occupies, and in occupying, exercises and exalts, the faculty by which it is received. if this then be the definition of great art, that of a great artist naturally follows. he is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas. chapter iii. of ideas of power. the definition of art which i have just given, requires me to determine what kinds of ideas can be received from works of art, and which of these are the greatest, before proceeding to any practical application of the test. § . what classes of ideas are conveyable by art. i think that all the sources of pleasure, or any other good, to be derived from works of art, may be referred to five distinct heads. i. ideas of power.--the perception or conception of the mental or bodily powers by which the work has been produced. ii. ideas of imitation.--the perception that the thing produced resembles something else. iii. ideas of truth.--the perception of faithfulness in a statement of facts by the thing produced. iv. ideas of beauty.--the perception of beauty, either in the thing produced, or in what it suggests or resembles. v. ideas of relation.--the perception of intellectual relations, in the thing produced, or in what it suggests or resembles. i shall briefly distinguish the nature and effects of each of these classes of ideas. § . ideas of power vary much in relative dignity. i. ideas of power.--these are the simple perception of the mental or bodily powers exerted in the production of any work of art. according to the dignity and degree of the power perceived is the dignity of the idea; but the whole class of ideas is received by the intellect, and they excite the best of the moral feelings, veneration, and the desire of exertion. as a species, therefore, they are one of the noblest connected with art; but the differences in degree of dignity among themselves are infinite, being correspondent with every order of power,--from that of the fingers to that of the most exalted intellect. thus, when we see an indian's paddle carved from the handle to the blade, we have a conception of prolonged manual labor, and are gratified in proportion to the supposed expenditure of time and exertion. these are, indeed, powers of a low order, yet the pleasure arising from the conception of them enters very largely indeed into our admiration of all elaborate ornament, architectural decoration, etc. the delight with which we look on the fretted front of rouen cathedral depends in no small degree on the simple perception of time employed and labor expended in its production. but it is a right, that is, an ennobling pleasure, even in this its lowest phase; and even the pleasure felt by those persons who praise a drawing for its "finish," or its "work," which is one precisely of the same kind, would be right, if it did not imply a want of perception of the higher powers which render work unnecessary. if to the evidence of labor be added that of strength or dexterity, the sensation of power is yet increased; if to strength and dexterity be added that of ingenuity and judgment, it is multiplied tenfold, and so on, through all the subjects of action of body or mind, we receive the more exalted pleasure from the more exalted power. § . but are received from whatever has been the subject of power. the meaning of the word "excellence." so far the nature and effects of ideas of power cannot but be admitted by all. but the circumstance which i wish especially to insist upon, with respect to them, is one which may not, perhaps, be so readily allowed, namely, that they are independent of the nature or worthiness of the object from which they are received, and that whatever has been the subject of a great power, whether there be intrinsic and apparent worthiness in itself or not, bears with it the evidence of having been so, and is capable of giving the ideas of power, and the consequent pleasures, in their full degree. for observe, that a thing is not properly said to have been the result of a great power, on which only some part of that power has been expended. a nut may be cracked by a steam-engine, but it has not, in being so, been the subject of the power of the engine. and thus it is falsely said of great men, that they waste their lofty powers on unworthy objects: the object may be dangerous or useless, but, as far as the phrase has reference to difficulty of performance, it cannot be unworthy of the power which it brings into exertion, because nothing can become a subject of action to a greater power which can be accomplished by a less, any more than bodily strength can be exerted where there is nothing to resist it. so then, men may let their great powers lie dormant, while they employ their mean and petty powers on mean and petty objects; but it is physically impossible to employ a great power, except on a great object. consequently, wherever power of any kind or degree has been exerted, the marks and evidence of it are stamped upon its results: it is impossible that it should be lost or wasted, or without record, even in the "estimation of a hair:" and therefore, whatever has been the subject of a great power bears about with it the image of that which created it, and is what is commonly called "excellent." and this is the true meaning of the word excellent, as distinguished from the terms, "beautiful," "useful," "good," etc.; and we shall always, in future, use the word excellent, as signifying that the thing to which it is applied required a great power for its production.[ ] § . what is necessary to the distinguishing of excellence. the faculty of perceiving what powers are required for the production of a thing, is the faculty of perceiving excellence. it is this faculty in which men, even of the most cultivated taste, must always be wanting, unless they have added practice to reflection; because none can estimate the power manifested in victory, unless they have personally measured the strength to be overcome. though, therefore, it is possible, by the cultivation of sensibility and judgment, to become capable of distinguishing what is beautiful, it is totally impossible, without practice and knowledge, to distinguish or feel what is excellent. the beauty or the truth of titian's flesh-tint may be appreciated by all; but it is only to the artist, whose multiplied hours of toil have not reached the slightest resemblance of one of its tones, that its _excellence_ is manifest. § . the pleasure attendant on conquering difficulties is right. wherever, then, difficulty has been overcome, there is excellence: and therefore, in order to prove excellent, we have only to prove the difficulty of its production: whether it be useful or beautiful is another question; its excellence depends on its difficulty alone. for is it a false or diseased taste which looks for the overcoming of difficulties, and has pleasure in it, even without any view to resultant good. it has been made part of our moral nature that we should have a pleasure in encountering and conquering opposition, for the sake of the struggle and the victory, not for the sake of any after result; and not only our own victory, but the perception of that of another, is in all cases the source of pure and ennobling pleasure. and if we often hear it said, and truly said, that an artist has erred by seeking rather to show his skill in overcoming technical difficulties, than to reach a great end, be it observed that he is only blamed because he has sought to conquer an inferior difficulty rather than a great one; for it is much easier to overcome technical difficulties than to reach a great end. whenever the visible victory over difficulties is found painful or in false taste, it is owing to the preference of an inferior to a great difficulty, or to the false estimate of what is difficult and what is not. it is far more difficult to be simple than to be complicated; far more difficult to sacrifice skill and cease exertion in the proper place, than to expend both indiscriminately. we shall find, in the course of our investigation, that beauty and difficulty go together; and that they are only mean and paltry difficulties which it is wrong or contemptible to wrestle with. be it remembered then--power is never wasted. whatever power has been employed, produces excellence in proportion to its own dignity and exertion; and the faculty of perceiving this exertion, and appreciating this dignity, is the faculty of perceiving excellence. footnotes [ ] of course the word "excellent" is primarily a mere synonym with "surpassing," and when applied to persons, has the general meaning given by johnson--"the state of abounding in any good quality." but when applied to things it has always reference to the power by which they are produced. we talk of excellent music or poetry, because it is difficult to compose or write such, but never of excellent flowers, because all flowers being the result of the same power, must be equally excellent. we distinguish them only as beautiful or useful, and therefore, as there is no other one word to signify that quality of a thing produced by which it pleases us merely as the result of power, and as the term "excellent" is more frequently used in this sense than in any other, i choose to limit it at once to this sense, and i wish it, when i use it in future, to be so understood. chapter iv. of ideas of imitation. § . false use of the term "imitation" by many writers of art. fuseli, in his lectures, and many other persons of equally just and accurate habits of thought, (among others, s. t. coleridge,) make a distinction between imitation and copying, representing the first as the legitimate function of art--the latter as its corruption; but as such a distinction is by no means warranted, or explained by the common meaning of the words themselves, it is not easy to comprehend exactly in what sense they are used by those writers. and though, reasoning from the context, i can understand what ideas those words stand for in their minds, i cannot allow the terms to be properly used as symbols of those ideas, which (especially in the case of the word imitation) are exceedingly complex, and totally different from what most people would understand by the term. and by men of less accurate thought, the word is used still more vaguely or falsely. for instance, burke (treatise on the sublime, part i. sect. ) says, "when the object represented in poetry or painting is such as we could have no desire of seeing in the reality, then we may be sure that its power in poetry or painting is owing to the power of _imitation_." in which case the real pleasure may be in what we have been just speaking of, the dexterity of the artist's hand; or it may be in a beautiful or singular arrangement of colors, or a thoughtful chiaroscuro, or in the pure beauty of certain forms which art forces on our notice, though we should not have observed them in the reality; and i conceive that none of these sources of pleasure are in any way expressed or intimated by the term "imitation." but there is one source of pleasure in works of art totally different from all these, which i conceive to be properly and accurately expressed by the word "imitation:" one which, though constantly confused in reasoning, because it is always associated in fact, with other means of pleasure, is totally separated from them in its nature, and is the real basis of whatever complicated or various meaning may be afterwards attached to the word in the minds of men. § . real meaning of the term. § . what is requisite to the sense of imitation. i wish to point out this distinct source of pleasure clearly at once, and only to use the word "imitation" in reference to it. whenever anything looks like what it is not, the resemblance being so great as _nearly_ to deceive, we feel a kind of pleasurable surprise, an agreeable excitement of mind, exactly the same in its nature as that which we receive from juggling. whenever we perceive this in something produced by art, that is to say, whenever the work is seen to resemble something which we know it is not, we receive what i call an idea of imitation. _why_ such ideas are pleasing, it would be out of our present purpose to inquire; we only know that there is no man who does not feel pleasure in his animal nature from gentle surprise, and that such surprise can be excited in no more distinct manner than by the evidence that a thing is not what it appears to be.[ ] now two things are requisite to our complete and more pleasurable perception of this: first, that the resemblance be so perfect as to amount to a deception; secondly, that there be some means of proving at the same moment that it _is_ a deception. the most perfect ideas and pleasures of imitation are, therefore, when one sense is contradicted by another, both bearing as positive evidence on the subject as each is capable of alone; as when the eye says a thing is round, and the finger says it is flat; they are, therefore, never felt in so high a degree as in painting, where appearance of projection, roughness, hair, velvet, etc., are given with a smooth surface, or in wax-work, where the first evidence of the senses is perpetually contradicted by their experience; but the moment we come to marble, our definition checks us, for a marble figure does not look like what it is not: it looks like marble, and like the form of a man, but then it _is_ marble, and it _is_ the form of a man. it does not look like a man, which it is not, but like the form of a man, which it is. form is form, _bona fide_ and actual, whether in marble or in flesh--not an imitation or resemblance of form, but real form. the chalk outline of the bough of a tree on paper, is not an imitation; it looks like chalk and paper--not like wood, and that which it suggests to the mind is not properly said to be _like_ the form of a bough, it _is_ the form of a bough. now, then, we see the limits of an idea of imitation; it extends only to the sensation of trickery and deception occasioned by a thing's intentionally seeming different from what it is; and the degree of the pleasure depends on the degree of difference and the perfection of the resemblance, not on the nature of the thing resembled. the simple pleasure in the imitation would be precisely of the same degree, (if the accuracy could be equal,) whether the subject of it were the hero or his horse. there are other collateral sources of pleasure, which are necessarily associated with this, but that part of the pleasure which depends on the imitation is the same in both. § . the pleasure resulting from imitation the most contemptible that can be derived from art. ideas of imitation, then, act by producing the simple pleasure of surprise, and that not of surprise in its higher sense and function, but of the mean and paltry surprise which is felt in jugglery. these ideas and pleasures are the most contemptible which can be received from art; first, because it is necessary to their enjoyment that the mind should reject the impression and address of the thing represented, and fix itself only upon the reflection that it is not what it seems to be. all high or noble emotion or thought are thus rendered physically impossible, while the mind exults in what is very like a strictly sensual pleasure. we may consider tears as a result of agony or of art, whichever we please, but not of both at the same moment. if we are surprised by them as an attainment of the one, it is impossible we can be moved by them as a sign of the other. § . imitation is only of contemptible subjects. ideas of imitation are contemptible in the second place, because not only do they preclude the spectator from enjoying inherent beauty in the subject, but they can only be received from mean and paltry subjects, because it is impossible to imitate anything really great. we can "paint a cat or a fiddle, so that they look as if we could take them up;" but we cannot imitate the ocean, or the alps. we can imitate fruit, but not a tree; flowers, but not a pasture; cut-glass, but not the rainbow. all pictures in which deceptive powers of imitation are displayed are therefore either of contemptible subjects, or have the imitation shown in contemptible parts of them, bits of dress, jewels, furniture, etc. § . imitation is contemptible because it is easy. thirdly, these ideas are contemptible, because no ideas of power are associated with them; to the ignorant, imitation, indeed, seems difficult, and its success praiseworthy, but even they can by no possibility see more in the artist than they do in a juggler, who arrives at a strange end by means with which they are unacquainted. to the instructed, the juggler is by far the more respectable artist of the two, for they know sleight of hand to be an art of immensely more difficult acquirement, and to imply more ingenuity in the artist than a power of deceptive imitation in painting, which requires nothing more for its attainment than a true eye, a steady hand, and moderate industry--qualities which in no degree separate the imitative artist from a watch-maker, pin-maker, or any other neat-handed artificer. these remarks do not apply to the art of the diorama, or the stage, where the pleasure is not dependent on the imitation, but is the same which we should receive from nature herself, only far inferior in degree. it is a noble pleasure; but we shall see in the course of our investigation, both that it is inferior to that which we receive when there is no deception at all, and why it is so. § . recapitulation. whenever then in future, i speak of ideas of imitation, i wish to be understood to mean the immediate and present perception that something produced by art is not what it seems to be. i prefer saying "that it is not what it seems to be," to saying "that it seems to be what it is not," because we perceive at once what it seems to be, and the idea of imitation, and the consequent pleasure, result from the subsequent perception of its being something else--flat, for instance, when we thought it was round. footnotes [ ] [greek: syllogismos ettig, hoti touto ekeino].--arist. rhet. , , . chapter v. of ideas of truth. the word truth, as applied to art, signifies the faithful statement, either to the mind or senses, of any fact of nature. § . meaning of the word "truth" as applied to art. we receive an idea of truth, then, when we perceive the faithfulness of such a statement. the difference between ideas of truth and of imitation lies chiefly in the following points. § . first difference between truth and imitation. first,--imitation can only be of something material, but truth has reference to statements both of the qualities of material things, and of emotions, impressions, and thoughts. there is a moral as well as material truth,--a truth of impression as well as of form,--of thought as well as of matter; and the truth of impression and thought is a thousand times the more important of the two. hence, truth is a term of universal application, but imitation is limited to that narrow field of art which takes cognizance only of material things. § . second difference. secondly,--truth may be stated by any signs or symbols which have a definite signification in the minds of those to whom they are addressed, although such signs be themselves no image nor likeness of anything. whatever can excite in the mind the conception of certain facts, can give ideas of truth, though it be in no degree the imitation or resemblance of those facts. if there be--we do not say there is--but if there be in painting anything which operates, as words do, not by resembling anything, but by being taken as a symbol and substitute for it, and thus inducing the effect of it, then this channel of communication can convey uncorrupted truth, though it do not in any degree resemble the facts whose conception it induces. but ideas of imitation, of course, require the likeness of the object. they speak to the perceptive faculties only: truth to the conceptive. § . third difference. thirdly,--and in consequence of what is above stated, an idea of truth exists in the statement of _one_ attribute of anything, but an idea of imitation requires the resemblance of as many attributes as we are usually cognizant of in its real presence. a pencil outline of the bough of a tree on white paper is a statement of a certain number of facts of form. it does not yet amount to the imitation of anything. the idea of that form is not given in nature by lines at all, still less by black lines with a white space between them. but those lines convey to the mind a distinct impression of a certain number of facts, which it recognizes as agreeable with its previous impressions of the bough of a tree; and it receives, therefore, an idea of truth. if, instead of two lines, we give a dark form with the brush, we convey information of a certain relation of shade between the bough and sky, recognizable for another idea of truth; but we have still no imitation, for the white paper is not the least like air, nor the black shadow like wood. it is not until after a certain number of ideas of truth have been collected together, that we arrive at an idea of imitation. § . no accurate truths necessary to imitation. hence it might at first sight appear, that an idea of imitation, inasmuch as several ideas of truth were united in it, was nobler than a simple idea of truth. and if it were necessary that the ideas of truth should be perfect, or should be subjects of contemplation _as such_, it would be so. but, observe, we require to produce the effect of imitation only so many and such ideas of truth as the _senses_ are usually cognizant of. now the senses are not usually, nor unless they be especially devoted to the service, cognizant, with accuracy, of any truths but those of space and projection. it requires long study and attention before they give certain evidence of even the simplest truths of form. for instance, the quay on which the figure is sitting, with his hand at his eyes, in claude's seaport, no. , in the national gallery, is egregiously out of perspective. the eye of this artist, with all his study, had thus not acquired the power of taking cognizance of the apparent form even of a simple parallelopiped. how much less of the complicated forms of boughs, leaves, or limbs? although, therefore, something resembling the real form is necessary to deception, this something is not to be called a _truth_ of form; for, strictly speaking, there are no degrees of truth, there are only degrees of approach to it; and an approach to it, whose feebleness and imperfection would instantly offend and give pain to a mind really capable of distinguishing truth, is yet quite sufficient for all the purposes of deceptive imagination. it is the same with regard to color. if we were to paint a tree sky-blue, or a dog rose-pink, the discernment of the public would be keen enough to discover the falsehood; but, so that there be just so much approach to truth of color as may come up to the common idea of it in men's minds, that is to say, if the trees be all bright green, and flesh unbroken buff, and ground unbroken brown, though all the real and refined truths of color be wholly omitted, or rather defied and contradicted, there is yet quite enough for all purposes of imitation. the only facts then, which we are usually and certainly cognizant of, are those of distance and projection, and if these be tolerably given, with something like truth of form and color to assist them, the idea of imitation is complete. i would undertake to paint an arm, with every muscle out of its place, and every bone of false form and dislocated articulation, and yet to observe certain coarse and broad resemblances of true outline, which, with careful shading, would induce deception, and draw down the praise and delight of the discerning public. the other day at bruges, while i was endeavoring to set down in my note-book something of the ineffable expression of the madonna in the cathedral, a french amateur came up to me, to inquire if i had seen the modern french pictures in a neighboring church. i had not, but felt little inclined to leave my marble for all the canvas that ever suffered from french brushes. my apathy was attacked with gradually increasing energy of praise. rubens never executed--titian never colored anything like them. i thought this highly probable, and still sat quiet. the voice continued at my ear. "parbleu, monsieur, michel ange n'a rien produit de plus beau!" "de plus _beau_?" repeated i, wishing to know what particular excellences of michael angelo were to be intimated by this expression. "monsieur, on ne pent plus--c'est un tableau admirable--inconcevable: monsieur," said the frenchman, lifting up his hands to heaven, as he concentrated in one conclusive and overwhelming proposition the qualities which were to outshine rubens and overpower buonaroti--"monsieur, il sort!" this gentleman could only perceive two truths--flesh color and projection. these constituted his notion of the perfection of painting; because they unite all that is necessary for deception. he was not therefore cognizant of many ideas of truth, though perfectly cognizant of ideas of imitation. § . ideas of truth are inconsistent with ideas of imitation. we shall see, in the course of our investigation of ideas of truth, that ideas of imitation not only do not imply their presence, but even are inconsistent with it; and that pictures which imitate so as to deceive, are never true. but this is not the place for the proof of this; at present we have only to insist on the last and greatest distinction between ideas of truth and of imitation--that the mind, in receiving one of the former, dwells upon its own conception of the fact, or form, or feeling stated, and is occupied only with the qualities and character of that fact or form, considering it as real and existing, being all the while totally regardless of the signs or symbols by which the notion of it has been conveyed. these signs have no pretence, nor hypocrisy, nor legerdemain about them;--there is nothing to be found out, or sifted, or surprised in them;--they bear their message simply and clearly, and it is that message which the mind takes from them and dwells upon, regardless of the language in which it is delivered. but the mind, in receiving an idea of imitation, is wholly occupied in finding out that what has been suggested to it is not what it appears to be: it does not dwell on the suggestion, but on the perception that it is a false suggestion: it derives its pleasure, not from the contemplation of a truth, but from the discovery of a falsehood. so that the moment ideas of truth are grouped together, so as to give rise to an idea of imitation, they change their very nature--lose their essence as ideas of truth--and are corrupted and degraded, so as to share in the treachery of what they have produced. hence, finally, ideas of truth are the foundation, and ideas of imitation the destruction, of all art. we shall be better able to appreciate their relative dignity after the investigation which we propose of the functions of the former; but we may as well now express the conclusion to which we shall then be led--that no picture can be good which deceives by its imitation, for the very reason that nothing can be beautiful which is not true. chapter vi. of ideas of beauty. § . definition of the term "beautiful." any material object which can give us pleasure in the simple contemplation of its outward qualities without any direct and definite exertion of the intellect, i call in some way, or in some degree, beautiful. why we receive pleasure from some forms and colors, and not from others, is no more to be asked or answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood. the utmost subtilty of investigation will only lead us to ultimate instincts and principles of human nature, for which no farther reason can be given than the simple will of the deity that we should be so created. we may, indeed, perceive, as far as we are acquainted with his nature, that we have been so constructed as, when in a healthy and cultivated state of mind, to derive pleasure from whatever things are illustrative of that nature; but we do not receive pleasure from them _because_ they are illustrative of it, nor from any perception that they are illustrative of it, but instinctively and necessarily, as we derive sensual pleasure from the scent of a rose. on these primary principles of our nature, education and accident operate to an unlimited extent; they may be cultivated or checked, directed or diverted, gifted by right guidance with the most acute and faultless sense, or subjected by neglect to every phase of error and disease. he who has followed up these natural laws of aversion and desire, rendering them more and more authoritative by constant obedience, so as to derive pleasure always from that which god originally intended should give him pleasure, and who derives the greatest possible sum of pleasure from any given object, is a man of taste. § . definition of the term "taste." this, then, is the real meaning of this disputed word. perfect taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection. he who receives little pleasure from these sources, wants taste; he who receives pleasure from any other sources, has false or bad taste. § . distinction between taste and judgment. and it is thus that the term "taste" is to be distinguished from that of "judgment," with which it is constantly confounded. judgment is a general term, expressing definite action of the intellect, and applicable to every kind of subject which can be submitted to it. there may be judgment of congruity, judgment of truth, judgment of justice, and judgment of difficulty and excellence. but all these exertions of the intellect are totally distinct from taste, properly so called, which is the instinctive and instant preferring of one material object to another without any obvious reason, except that it is proper to human nature in its perfection so to do. § . how far beauty may become intellectual. observe, however, i do not mean by excluding direct exertion of the intellect from ideas of beauty, to assert that beauty has no effect upon nor connection with the intellect. all our moral feelings are so in-woven with our intellectual powers, that we cannot affect the one without in some degree addressing the other; and in all high ideas of beauty, it is more than probable that much of the pleasure depends on delicate and untraceable perceptions of fitness, propriety, and relation, which are purely intellectual, and through which we arrive at our noblest ideas of what is commonly and rightly called "intellectual beauty." but there is yet no immediate _exertion_ of the intellect; that is to say, if a person receiving even the noblest ideas of simple beauty be asked _why_ he likes the object exciting them, he will not be able to give any distinct reason, nor to trace in his mind any formed thought, to which he can appeal as a source of pleasure. he will say that the thing gratifies, fills, hallows, exalts his mind, but he will not be able to say why, or how. if he can, and if he can show that he perceives in the object any expression of distinct thought, he has received more than an idea of beauty--it is an idea of relation. § . the high rank and function of ideas of beauty. ideas of beauty are among the noblest which can be presented to the human mind, invariably exalting and purifying it according to their degree; and it would appear that we are intended by the deity to be constantly under their influence, because there is not one single object in nature which is not capable of conveying them, and which, to the rightly perceiving mind, does not present an incalculably greater number of beautiful than of deformed parts; there being in fact scarcely anything, in pure, undiseased nature, like positive deformity, but only degrees of beauty, or such slight and rare points of permitted contrast as may render all around them more valuable by their opposition, spots of blackness in creation, to make its colors felt. § . meaning of the term "ideal beauty." but although everything in nature is more or less beautiful, every species of object has its own kind and degree of beauty; some being in their own nature more beautiful than others, and few, if any, individuals possessing the utmost degree of beauty of which the species is capable. this utmost degree of specific beauty, necessarily coexistent with the utmost perfection of the object in other respects, is the ideal of the object. ideas of beauty, then, be it remembered, are the subjects of moral, but not of intellectual perception. by the investigation of them we shall be led to the knowledge of the ideal subjects of art. chapter vii. of ideas of relation. § . general meaning of the term. i use this term rather as one of convenience than as adequately expressive of the vast class of ideas which i wish to be comprehended under it, namely, all those conveyable by art, which are the subjects of distinct intellectual perception and action, and which are therefore worthy of the name of thoughts. but as every thought, or definite exertion of intellect, implies two subjects, and some connection or relation inferred between them, the term "ideas of relation" is not incorrect, though it is inexpressive. § . what ideas are to be comprehended under it. under this head must be arranged everything productive of expression, sentiment, and character, whether in figures or landscapes, (for there may be as much definite expression and marked carrying out of particular thoughts in the treatment of inanimate as of animate nature,) everything relating to the conception of the subject and to the congruity and relation of its parts; not as they enhance each other's beauty by known and constant laws of composition, but as they give each other expression and meaning, by particular application, requiring distinct thought to discover or to enjoy: the choice, for instance, of a particular lurid or appalling light, to illustrate an incident in itself terrible, or of a particular tone of pure color to prepare the mind for the expression of refined and delicate feeling; and, in a still higher sense, the invention of such incidents and thoughts as can be expressed in words as well as on canvas, and are totally independent of any means of art but such as may serve for the bare suggestion of them. the principal object in the foreground of turner's "building of carthage" is a group of children sailing toy boats. the exquisite choice of this incident, as expressive of the ruling passion, which was to be the source of future greatness, in preference to the tumult of busy stone-masons or arming soldiers, is quite as appreciable when it is told as when it is seen,--it has nothing to do with the technicalities of painting; a scratch of the pen would have conveyed the idea and spoken to the intellect as much as the elaborate realizations of color. such a thought as this is something far above all art; it is epic poetry of the highest order. claude, in subjects of the same kind, commonly introduces people carrying red trunks with iron locks about, and dwells, with infantine delight, on the lustre of the leather and the ornaments of the iron. the intellect can have no occupation here; we must look to the imitation or to nothing. consequently, turner rises above claude in the very first instant of the conception of his picture, and acquires an intellectual superiority which no powers of the draughtsman or the artist (supposing that such existed in his antagonist) could ever wrest from him. § . the exceeding nobility of these ideas. such are the function and force of ideas of relation. they are what i have asserted in the second chapter of this section to be the noblest subjects of art. dependent upon it only for expression, they cause all the rest of its complicated sources of pleasure to take, in comparison with them, the place of mere language or decoration; nay, even the noblest ideas of beauty sink at once beside these into subordination and subjection. it would add little to the influence of landseer's picture above instanced, chap. ii., § , that the form of the dog should be conceived with every perfection of curve and color which its nature was capable of, and that the ideal lines should be carried out with the science of a praxiteles; nay, the instant that the beauty so obtained interfered with the impression of agony and desolation, and drew the mind away from the feeling of the animal to its outward form, that instant would the picture become monstrous and degraded. the utmost glory of the human body is a mean subject of contemplation, compared to the emotion, exertion and character of that which animates it; the lustre of the limbs of the aphrodite is faint beside that of the brow of the madonna; and the divine form of the greek god, except as it is the incarnation and expression of divine mind, is degraded beside the passion and the prophecy of the vaults of the sistine. § . why no subdivision of so extensive a class is necessary. ideas of relation are of course, with respect to art generally, the most extensive as the most important source of pleasure; and if we proposed entering upon the criticism of historical works, it would be absurd to attempt to do so without further subdivision and arrangement. but the old landscape painters got over so much canvas without either exercise of, or appeal to, the intellect, that we shall be little troubled with the subject as far as they are concerned; and whatever subdivision we may adopt, as it will therefore have particular reference to the works of modern artists, will be better understood when we have obtained some knowledge of them in less important points. by the term "ideas of relation," then, i mean in future to express all those sources of pleasure, which involve and require, at the instant of their perception, active exertion of the intellectual powers. section ii. of power. chapter i. general principles respecting ideas of power. § . no necessity for detailed study of ideas of imitation. we have seen in the last section, what classes of ideas may be conveyed by art, and we have been able so far to appreciate their relative worth as to see, that from the list, as it is to be applied to the purposes of legitimate criticism, we may at once throw out the ideas of imitation; first, because, as we have shown, they are unworthy the pursuit of the artist; and secondly, because they are nothing more than the result of a particular association of ideas of truth. in examining the truth of art, therefore, we shall be compelled to take notice of those particular truths, whose association gives rise to the ideas of imitation. we shall then see more clearly the meanness of those truths, and we shall find ourselves able to use them as tests of vice in art, saying of a picture,--"it deceives, therefore it must be bad." § . nor for separate study of ideas of power. ideas of power, in the same way, cannot be completely viewed as a separate class; not because they are mean or unimportant, but because they are almost always associated with, or dependent upon, some of the higher ideas of truth, beauty, or relation, rendered with decision or velocity. that power which delights us in the chalk sketch of a great painter is not one of the fingers, not like that of the writing-master, mere dexterity of hand. it is the accuracy and certainty of the knowledge, rendered evident by its rapid and fearless expression, which is the real source of pleasure; and so upon each difficulty of art, whether it be to know, or to relate, or to invent, the sensation of power is attendant, when we see that difficulty totally and swiftly vanquished. hence, as we determine what is otherwise desirable in art, we shall gradually develop the sources of the ideas of power; and if there be anything difficult which is not otherwise desirable, it must be afterwards considered separately. § . except under one particular form. but it will be necessary at present to notice a particular form of the ideas of power, which is partially independent of knowledge of truth, or difficulty, and which is apt to corrupt the judgment of the critic, and debase the work of the artist. it is evident that the conception of power which we receive from a calculation of unseen difficulty, and an estimate of unseen strength, can never be so impressive as that which we receive from the present sensation or sight of the one resisting, and the other overwhelming. in the one case the power is imagined, and in the other felt. § . there are two modes of receiving ideas of power, commonly inconsistent. there are thus two modes in which we receive the conception of power; one, the most just, when by a perfect knowledge of the difficulty to be overcome, and the means employed, we form a right estimate of the faculties exerted; the other, when without possessing such intimate and accurate knowledge, we are impressed by a sensation of power in visible action. if these two modes of receiving the impression agree in the result, and if the sensation be equal to the estimate, we receive the utmost possible idea of power. but this is the case perhaps with the works of only one man out of the whole circle of the fathers of art, of him to whom we have just referred, michael angelo. in others, the estimate and the sensation are constantly unequal, and often contradictory. § . first reason of the inconsistency. the first reason of this inconsistency is, that in order to receive a _sensation_ of power, we must see it in operation. its victory, therefore, must not be achieved, but achieving, and therefore imperfect. thus we receive a greater sensation of power from the half-hewn limbs of the twilight to the day of the cappella de' medici, than even from the divine inebriety of the bacchus in the gallery--greater from the life dashed out along the friezes of the parthenon, than from the polished limbs of the apollo,--greater from the ink sketch of the head of raffaelle's st. catherine, than from the perfection of its realization. § . second reason for the inconsistency. another reason of the inconsistency is, that the sensation of power is in proportion to the apparent inadequacy of the means to the end; so that the impression is much greater from a partial success attained with slight effort, than from perfect success attained with greater proportional effort. now, in all art, every touch or effort does individually less in proportion as the work approaches perfection. the first five chalk touches bring a head into existence out of nothing. no five touches in the whole course of the work will ever do so much as these, and the difference made by each touch is more and more imperceptible as the work approaches completion. consequently, the ratio between the means employed and the effect produced is constantly decreasing, and therefore the least sensation of power is received from the most perfect work. § . the sensation of power ought not to be sought in imperfect art. it is thus evident that there are sensations of power about imperfect art, so that it be right art as far as it goes, which must always be wanting in its perfection; and that there are sources of pleasure in the hasty sketch and rough hewn block, which are partially wanting in the tinted canvas and the polished marble. but it is nevertheless wrong to prefer the sensation of power to the intellectual perception of it. there is in reality greater power in the completion than in the commencement; and though it be not so manifest to the senses, it ought to have higher influence on the mind; and therefore in praising pictures for the ideas of power they convey, we must not look to the keenest sensation, but to the highest estimate, accompanied with as much of the sensation as is compatible with it; and thus we shall consider those pictures as conveying the highest ideas of power which attain the most _perfect_ end with the slightest possible means; not, observe, those in which, though much has been done with little, all has not been done, but from the picture, in which _all_ has been done, and yet not a touch thrown away. the quantity of work in the sketch is necessarily less in proportion to the effect obtained than in the picture; but yet the picture involves the greater power, if out of all the additional labor bestowed on it, not a touch has been lost. § . instances in pictures of modern artists. for instance, there are few drawings of the present day that involve greater sensations of power than those of frederick tayler. every dash tells, and the quantity of effect obtained is enormous, in proportion to the apparent means. but the effect obtained is not complete. brilliant, beautiful, and right, as a sketch, the work is still far from perfection, as a drawing. on the contrary, there are few drawings of the present day that bear evidence of more labor bestowed, or more complicated means employed, than those of john lewis. the result does not, at first, so much convey an impression of inherent power as of prolonged exertion; but the result is complete. water-color drawing can be carried no farther; nothing has been left unfinished or untold. and on examination of the means employed, it is found and felt that not one touch out of the thousands employed has been thrown away;--that not one dot nor dash could be spared without loss of effect;--and that the exertion has been as swift as it has been prolonged--as bold as it has been persevering. the power involved in such a picture is of the highest order, and the enduring pleasure following on the estimate of it pure. § . connection between ideas of power and modes of execution. but there is still farther ground for caution in pursuing the sensation of power, connected with the particular characters and modes of execution. this we shall be better able to understand by briefly reviewing the various excellences which may belong to execution, and give pleasure in it; though the full determination of what is desirable in it, and the critical examination of the execution of different artists, must be deferred, as will be immediately seen, until we are more fully acquainted with the principles of truth. chapter ii. of ideas of power, as they are dependent upon execution. § . meaning of the term "execution." by the term "execution," i understand the right mechanical use of the means of art to produce a given end. § . the first quality of execution is truth. all qualities of execution, properly so called, are influenced by, and in a great degree dependent on, a far higher power than that of mere execution,--knowledge of truth. for exactly in proportion as an artist is certain of his end, will he be swift and simple in his means; and, as he is accurate and deep in his knowledge, will he be refined and precise in his touch. the first merit of manipulation, then, is that delicate and ceaseless expression of refined truth which is carried out to the last touch, and shadow of a touch, and which makes every hairsbreadth of importance, and every gradation full of meaning. it is not, properly speaking, execution; but it is the only source of difference between the execution of a commonplace and of a perfect artist. the lowest draughtsman, if he have spent the same time in handling the brush, may be equal to the highest in the other qualities of execution (in swiftness, simplicity, and decision;) but not in truth. it is in the perfection and precision of the instantaneous line that the claim to immortality is laid. and if this truth of truths be present, all the other qualities of execution may well be spared; and to those artists who wish to excuse their ignorance and inaccuracy by a species of execution which is a perpetual proclamation, "qu'ils n'ont demeuré qu'un quart d'heure a le faire," we may reply with the truthful alceste, "monsieur, le temps ne fait rien a l'affaire." § . the second, simplicity. the second quality of execution is simplicity. the more unpretending, quiet, and retiring the means, the more impressive their effect. any ostentation, brilliancy, or pretension of touch,--any exhibition of power or quickness, merely as such, above all, any attempt to render lines attractive at the expense of their meaning, is vice. § . the third mystery. the third is mystery. nature is always mysterious and secret in the use of her means; and art is always likest her when it is most inexplicable. that execution which is the most incomprehensible, and which therefore defies imitation, (other qualities being supposed alike,) is the best. § . the fourth, inadequacy; and the fifth, decision. the fourth is inadequacy. the less sufficient the means appear to the end, the greater (as has been already noticed) will be the sensation of power. the fifth is decision: the appearance, that is, that whatever is done, has been done fearlessly and at once; because this gives us the impression that both the fact to be represented, and the means necessary to its representation, were perfectly known. § . the sixth, velocity. the sixth is velocity. not only is velocity, or the appearance of it, agreeable as decision is, because it gives ideas of power and knowledge; but of two touches, as nearly as possible the same in other respects, the quickest will invariably be the best. truth being supposed equally present in the shape and direction of both, there will be more evenness, grace and variety, in the quick one than in the slow one. it will be more agreeable to the eye as a touch or line, and will possess more of the qualities of the lines of nature--gradation, uncertainty, and unity. § . strangeness an illegitimate source of pleasure in execution. these six qualities are the only perfectly legitimate sources of pleasure in execution; but i might have added a seventh--strangeness, which in many cases is productive of a pleasure not altogether mean or degrading, though scarcely right. supposing the other higher qualities first secured, it adds in no small degree to our impression of the artist's knowledge, if the means used be such as we should never have thought of, or should have thought adapted to a contrary effect. let us, for instance, compare the execution of the bull's head in the left hand lowest corner of the adoration of the magi, in the museum at antwerp, with that in berghem's landscape, no. in the dulwich gallery. rubens first scratches horizontally over his canvas a thin grayish brown, transparent and even, very much the color of light wainscot; the horizontal strokes of the bristles being left so evident, that the whole might be taken for an imitation of wood, were it not for its transparency. on this ground the eye, nostril, and outline of the cheek are given with two or three rude, brown touches, (about three or four minutes' work in all,) though the head is colossal. the background is then laid in with thick, solid, warm white, actually projecting all round the head, leaving it in dark intaglio. finally, five thin and scratchy strokes of very cold bluish white are struck for the high light on the forehead and nose, and the head is complete. seen within a yard of the canvas, it looks actually transparent--a flimsy, meaningless, distant shadow; while the background looks solid, projecting and near. from the right distance, (ten or twelve yards off, whence alone the whole of the picture can be seen,) it is a complete, rich, substantial, and living realization of the projecting head of the animal; while the background falls far behind. now there is no slight nor mean pleasure in perceiving such a result attained by means so strange. by berghem, on the other hand, a dark background is first laid in with exquisite delicacy and transparency, and on this the cow's head is actually modelled in luminous white, the separate locks of hair projecting from the canvas. no surprise, nor much pleasure of any kind, would be attendant on this execution, even were the result equally successful; and what little pleasure we had in it, vanishes, when on retiring from the picture, we find the head shining like a distant lantern, instead of substantial or near. yet strangeness is not to be considered as a legitimate source of pleasure. that means which is most conducive to the end, should always be the most pleasurable; and that which is most conducive to the end, can be strange only to the ignorance of the spectator. this kind of pleasure is illegitimate, therefore, because it implies and requires, in those who feel it, ignorance of art. § . yet even the legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are inconsistent with each other. § . and fondness for ideas of power leads to the adoption of the lowest. § . therefore perilous. the legitimate sources of pleasure in execution are therefore truth, simplicity, mystery, inadequacy, decision, and velocity. but of these, be it observed, some are so far inconsistent with others, that they cannot be united in high degrees. mystery with inadequacy, for instance; since to see that the means are inadequate, we must see what they are. now the first three are the great qualities of execution, and the last three are the attractive ones, because on them are chiefly attendant the ideas of power. by the first three the attention is withdrawn from the means and fixed on the result: by the last three, withdrawn from the result and fixed on the means. to see that execution is swift or that it is decided, we must look away from its creation to observe it in the act of creating; we must think more of the pallet than of the picture, but simplicity and mystery compel the mind to leave the means and fix itself on the conception. hence the danger of too great fondness for those sensations of power which are associated with the three last qualities of execution; for although it is most desirable that these should be present as far as they are consistent with the others, and though their visible absence is always painful and wrong, yet the moment the higher qualities are sacrificed to them in the least degree, we have a brilliant vice. berghem and salvator rosa are good instances of vicious execution dependent on too great fondness for sensations of power, vicious because intrusive and attractive in itself, instead of being subordinate to its results and forgotten in them. there is perhaps no greater stumbling-block in the artist's way, than the tendency to sacrifice truth and simplicity to decision and velocity,[ ] captivating qualities, easy of attainment, and sure to attract attention and praise, while the delicate degree of truth which is at first sacrificed to them is so totally unappreciable by the majority of spectators, so difficult of attainment to the artist, that it is no wonder that efforts so arduous and unrewarded should be abandoned. but if the temptation be once yielded to, its consequences are fatal; there is no pause in the fall. i could name a celebrated modern artist--once a man of the highest power and promise, who is a glaring instance of the peril of such a course. misled by the undue popularity of his swift execution, he has sacrificed to it, first precision, and then truth, and her associate, beauty. what was first neglect of nature, has become contradiction of her; what was once imperfection, is now falsehood; and all that was meritorious in his manner, is becoming the worst, because the most attractive of vices; decision without a foundation, and swiftness without an end. § . recapitulation. such are the principal modes in which the ideas of power may become a dangerous attraction to the artist--a false test to the critic. but in all cases where they lead us astray it will be found that the error is caused by our preferring victory over a small _apparent_ difficulty to victory over a great, but concealed one; and so that we keep this distinction constantly in view, (whether with reference to execution or to any other quality of art,) between the sensation and the intellectual estimate of power, we shall always find the ideas of power a just and high source of pleasure in every kind and grade of art. footnotes [ ] i have here noticed only noble vices, the sacrifices of one excellence to another legitimate but inferior one. there are, on the other hand, qualities of execution which are often sought for and praised, though scarcely by the class of persons for whom i am writing, in which everything is sacrificed to illegitimate and contemptible sources of pleasure, and these are vice throughout, and have no redeeming quality nor excusing aim. such is that which is often thought so desirable in the drawing-master, under the title of boldness, meaning that no touch is ever to be made less than the tenth of an inch broad; such, on the other hand, the softness and smoothness which are the great attraction of carlo dolci, and such the exhibition of particular powers and tricks of the hand and fingers, in total forgetfulness of any end whatsoever to be attained thereby, which is especially characteristic of modern engraving. compare sect. ii. chap. ii. § . note. chapter iii. of the sublime. it may perhaps be wondered that in the division we have made of our subject, we have taken no notice of the sublime in art, and that in our explanation of that division we have not once used the word. § . sublimity is the effect upon the mind of anything above it. the fact is, that sublimity is not a specific term,--not a term descriptive of the effect of a particular class of ideas. anything which elevates the mind is sublime, and elevation of mind is produced by the contemplation of greatness of any kind; but chiefly, of course, by the greatness of the noblest things. sublimity is, therefore, only another word for the effect of greatness upon the feelings. greatness of matter, space, power, virtue, or beauty, are thus all sublime; and there is perhaps no desirable quality of a work of art, which in its perfection is not, in some way or degree, sublime. § . burke's theory of the nature of the sublime incorrect, and why. § . danger is sublime, but not the fear of it. § . the highest beauty is sublime. § . and generally whatever elevates the mind. i am fully prepared to allow of much ingenuity in burke's theory of the sublime, as connected with self-preservation. there are few things so great as death; and there is perhaps nothing which banishes all littleness of thought and feeling in an equal degree with its contemplation. everything, therefore, which in any way points to it, and, therefore, most dangers and powers over which we have little control, are in some degree sublime. but it is not the fear, observe, but the contemplation of death; not the instinctive shudder and struggle of self-preservation, but the deliberate measurement of the doom, which are really great or sublime in feeling. it is not while we shrink, but while we defy, that we receive or convey the highest conceptions of the fate. there is no sublimity in the agony of terror. whether do we trace it most in the cry to the mountains, "fall on us," and to the hills, "cover us," or in the calmness of the prophecy--"and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh i shall see god?" a little reflection will easily convince any one, that so far from the feelings of self-preservation being necessary to the sublime, their greatest action is totally destructive of it; and that there are few feelings less capable of its perception than those of a coward. but the simple conception or idea of greatness of suffering or extent of destruction is sublime, whether there be any connection of that idea with ourselves or not. if we were placed beyond the reach of all peril or pain, the perception of these agencies in their influence on others would not be less sublime, not because peril or pain are sublime in their own nature, but because their contemplation, exciting compassion or fortitude, elevates the mind, and renders meanness of thought impossible. beauty is not so often felt to be sublime; because, in many kinds of purely material beauty there is some truth in burke's assertion, that "littleness" is one of its elements. but he who has not felt that there may be beauty without littleness, and that such beauty is a source of the sublime, is yet ignorant of the meaning of the ideal in art. i do not mean, in tracing the source of the sublime to greatness, to hamper myself with any fine-spun theory. i take the widest possible ground of investigation, that sublimity is found wherever anything elevates the mind; that is, wherever it contemplates anything above itself, and perceives it to be so. this is the simple philological signification of the word derived from _sublimis_; and will serve us much more easily, and be a far clearer and more evident ground of argument, than any mere metaphysical or more limited definition, while the proof of its justness will be naturally developed by its application to the different branches of art. § . the former division of the subject is therefore sufficient. as, therefore, the sublime is not distinct from what is beautiful, nor from other sources of pleasure in art, but is only a particular mode and manifestation of them, my subject will divide itself into the investigation of ideas of truth, beauty, and relation; and to each of these classes of ideas i destine a separate part of the work. the investigation of ideas of truth will enable us to determine the relative rank of artists as followers and historians of nature. that of ideas of beauty will lead us to compare them in their attainment, first of what is agreeable in technical matters, then in color and composition, finally and chiefly, in the purity of their conceptions of the ideal. and that of ideas of relation will lead us to compare them as originators of just thought. part ii. of truth. section i. general principles respecting ideas of truth. chapter i. of ideas of truth in their connection with those of beauty and relation. § . the two great ends of landscape painting are the representation of facts and thoughts. it cannot but be evident from the above division of the ideas conveyable by art, that the landscape painter must always have two great and distinct ends; the first, to induce in the spectator's mind the faithful conception of any natural objects whatsoever; the second, to guide the spectator's mind to those objects most worthy of its contemplation, and to inform him of the thoughts and feelings with which these were regarded by the artist himself. in attaining the first end, the painter only places the spectator where he stands himself; he sets him before the landscape and leaves him. the spectator is alone. he may follow out his own thoughts as he would in the natural solitude, or he may remain untouched, unreflecting and regardless, as his disposition may incline him. but he has nothing of thought given to him, no new ideas, no unknown feelings, forced on his attention or his heart. the artist is his conveyance, not his companion,--his horse, not his friend. but in attaining the second end, the artist not only _places_ the spectator, but _talks_ to him; makes him a sharer in his own strong feelings and quick thoughts; hurries him away in his own enthusiasm; guides him to all that is beautiful; snatches him from all that is base, and leaves him more than delighted,--ennobled and instructed, under the sense of having not only beheld a new scene, but of having held communion with a new mind, and having been endowed for a time with the keen perception and the impetuous emotion of a nobler and more penetrating intelligence. § . they induce a different choice of material subjects. each of these different aims of art will necessitate a different system of choice of objects to be represented. the first does not indeed imply choice at all, but it is usually united with the selection of such objects as may be naturally and constantly pleasing to all men, at all times; and this selection, when perfect and careful, leads to the attainment of the pure ideal. but the artist aiming at the second end, selects his objects for their meaning and character, rather than for their beauty; and uses them rather to throw light upon the particular thought he wishes to convey, than as in themselves objects of unconnected admiration. § . the first mode of selection apt to produce sameness and repetition. now, although the first mode of selection, when guided by deep reflection, may rise to the production of works possessing a noble and ceaseless influence on the human mind, it is likely to degenerate into, or rather, in nine cases out of ten, it never goes beyond, a mere appeal to such parts of our animal nature as are constant and common--shared by all, and perpetual in all; such, for instance, as the pleasure of the eye in the opposition of a cold and warm color, or of a massy form with a delicate one. it also tends to induce constant repetition of the same ideas, and reference to the same principles; it gives rise to those _rules_ of art which properly excited reynolds's indignation when applied to its higher efforts; it is the source of, and the apology for, that host of technicalities and absurdities which in all ages have been the curse of art and the crown of the connoisseur. § . the second necessitating variety. but art, in its second and highest aim, is not an appeal to constant animal feelings, but an expression and awakening of individual thought: it is therefore as various and as extended in its efforts as the compass and grasp of the directing mind; and we feel, in each of its results, that we are looking, not at a specimen of a tradesman's wares, of which he is ready to make us a dozen to match, but at one coruscation of a perpetually active mind, like which there has not been, and will not be another. § . yet the first is delightful to all. § . the second only to a few. hence, although there can be no doubt which of these branches of art is the highest, it is equally evident that the first will be the most generally felt and appreciated. for the simple statement of the truths of nature must in itself be pleasing to every order of mind; because every truth of nature is more or less beautiful; and if there be just and right selection of the more important of these truths--based, as above explained, on feelings and desires common to all mankind--the facts so selected must, in some degree, be delightful to all, and their value appreciable by all: more or less, indeed, as their senses and instinct have been rendered more or less acute and accurate by use and study; but in some degree by all, and in the same way by all. but the highest art, being based on sensations of peculiar minds, sensations occurring to _them_ only at particular times, and to a plurality of mankind perhaps never, and being expressive of thoughts which could only rise out of a mass of the most extended knowledge, and of dispositions modified in a thousand ways by peculiarity of intellect--can only be met and understood by persons having some sort of sympathy with the high and solitary minds which produced it--sympathy only to be felt by minds in some degree high and solitary themselves. he alone can appreciate the art, who could comprehend the conversation of the painter, and share in his emotion, in moments of his most fiery passion and most original thought. and whereas the true meaning and end of his art must thus be sealed to thousands, or misunderstood by them; so also, as he is sometimes obliged, in working out his own peculiar end, to set at defiance those constant laws which have arisen out of our lower and changeless desires, that whose purpose is unseen, is frequently in its means and parts displeasing. § . the first necessary to the second. § . the exceeding importance of truth. but this want of extended influence in high art, be it especially observed, proceeds from no want of truth in the art itself, but from a want of sympathy in the spectator with those feelings in the artist which prompt him to the utterance of one truth rather than of another. for (and this is what i wish at present especially to insist upon) although it is possible to reach what i have stated to be the first end of art, the representation of facts, without reaching the second, the representation of thoughts, yet it is altogether impossible to reach the second without having previously reached the first. i do not say that a man cannot think, having false basis and material for thought; but that a false thought is worse than the want of thought, and therefore is not art. and this is the reason why, though i consider the second as the real and only important end of all art, i call the representation of facts the first end; because it is necessary to the other, and must be attained before it. it is the foundation of all art; like real foundations it may be little thought of when a brilliant fabric is raised on it; but it must be there: and as few buildings are beautiful unless every line and column of their mass have reference to their foundation, and are suggestive of its existence and strength, so nothing can be beautiful in art which does not in all its parts suggest and guide to the foundation, even where no undecorated portion of it is visible; while the noblest edifices of art are built of such pure and fine crystal that the foundation may all be seen through them; and then many, while they do not see what is built upon that first story, yet much admire the solidity of its brickwork; thinking they understand all that is to be understood of the matter; while others stand beside them, looking not at the low story, but up into the heaven at that building of crystal in which the builder's spirit is dwelling. and thus, though we want the thoughts and feelings of the artist as well as the truth, yet they must be thoughts arising out of the knowledge of truth, and feelings raising out of the contemplation of truth. we do not want his mind to be as badly blown glass, that distorts what we see through it; but like a glass of sweet and strange color, that gives new tones to what we see through it; and a glass of rare strength and clearness too, to let us see more than we could ourselves, and bring nature up to us and near to us. nothing can atone for the want of truth, not the most brilliant imagination, the most playful fancy, the most pure feeling, (supposing that feeling _could_ be pure and false at the same time;) not the most exalted conception, nor the most comprehensive grasp of intellect, can make amends for the want of truth, and that for two reasons; first, because falsehood is in itself revolting and degrading; and secondly, because nature is so immeasurably superior to all that the human mind can conceive, that every departure from her is a fall beneath her, so that there can be no such thing as an ornamental falsehood. all falsehood must be a blot as well as a sin, an injury as well as a deception. § . coldness or want of beauty no sign of truth. we shall, in consequence, find that no artist can be graceful, imaginative, or original, unless he be truthful; and that the pursuit of beauty, instead of leading us away from truth, increases the desire for it and the necessity of it tenfold; so that those artists who are really great in imaginative power, will be found to have based their boldness of conception on a mass of knowledge far exceeding that possessed by those who pride themselves on its accumulation without regarding its use. coldness and want of passion in a picture, are not signs of the accuracy, but of the paucity of its statements; true vigor and brilliancy are not signs of audacity, but of knowledge. § . how truth may be considered a just criterion of all art. hence it follows that it is in the power of all, with care and time, to form something like a just judgment of the relative merits of artists; for although with respect to the feeling and passion of pictures, it is often as impossible to criticise as to appreciate, except to such as are in some degree equal in powers of mind, and in some respects the same in modes of mind, with those whose works they judge; yet, with respect to the representation of facts, it is possible for all, by attention, to form a right judgment of the respective powers and attainments of every artist. truth is a bar of comparison at which they may all be examined, and according to the rank they take in this examination, will almost invariably be that which, if capable of appreciating them in every respect, we should be just in assigning them; so strict is the connection, so constant the relation between the sum of knowledge and the extent of thought, between accuracy of perception and vividness of idea. i shall endeavor, therefore, in the present portion of the work, to enter with care and impartiality into the investigation of the claims of the schools of ancient and modern landscape to faithfulness in representing nature. i shall pay no regard whatsoever to what may be thought beautiful, or sublime, or imaginative. i shall look only for truth; bare, clear, downright statement of facts; showing in each particular, as far as i am able, what the truth of nature is, and then seeking for the plain expression of it, and for that alone. and i shall thus endeavor, totally regardless of fervor of imagination or brilliancy of effect, or any other of their more captivating qualities, to examine and to judge the works of the great living painter, who is, i believe, imagined by the majority of the public to paint more falsehood and less fact than any other known master. we shall see with what reason. chapter ii. that the truth of nature is not to be discerned by the uneducated senses. § . the common self-deception of men with respect to their power of discerning truth. it may be here inquired by the reader, with much appearance of reason, why i think it necessary to devote a separate portion of the work to the showing of what is truthful in art. "cannot we," say the public, "see what nature is with our own eyes, and find out for ourselves what is like her?" it will be as well to determine this question before we go farther, because if this were possible, there would be little need of criticism or teaching with respect to art. now i have just said that it is possible for all men, by care and attention, to form a just judgment of the fidelity of artists to nature. to do this, no peculiar powers of mind are required, no sympathy with particular feelings, nothing which every man of ordinary intellect does not in some degree possess,--powers, namely, of observation and intelligence, which by cultivation may be brought to a high degree of perfection and acuteness. but until this cultivation has been bestowed, and until the instrument thereby perfected has been employed in a consistent series of careful observation, it is as absurd as it is audacious to pretend to form any judgment whatsoever respecting the truth of art: and my first business, before going a step farther, must be to combat the nearly universal error of belief among the thoughtless and unreflecting, that they know either what nature is, or what is like her, that they can discover truth by instinct, and that their minds are such pure venice glass as to be shocked by all treachery. i have to prove to them that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in their philosophy, and that the truth of nature is a part of the truth of god; to him who does not search it out, darkness, as it is to him who does, infinity. § . men usually see little of what is before their eyes. the first great mistake that people make in the matter, is the supposition that they must _see_ a thing if it be before their eyes. they forget the great truth told them by locke, book ii. chap. , § :--"this is certain, that whatever alterations are made in the body, if they reach not the mind, whatever impressions are made on the outward parts, if they are not taken notice of within, there is no perception. fire may burn our bodies, with no other effect than it does a billet, unless the motion be continued to the brain, and there the sense of heat or idea of pain be produced in the mind, wherein consists actual perception. how often may a man observe in himself, that while his mind is intently employed in the contemplation of some subjects and curiously surveying some ideas that are there, it takes no notice of impressions of sounding bodies, made upon the organ of hearing, with the same attention that uses to be for the producing the ideas of sound! a sufficient impulse there may be on the organ, but it not reaching the observation of the mind, there follows no perception, and though the motion that uses to produce the idea of sound be made in the ear, yet no sound is heard." and what is here said, which all must feel by their own experience to be true, is more remarkably and necessarily the case with sight than with any other of the senses, for this reason, that the ear is not accustomed to exercise constantly its functions of hearing; it is accustomed to stillness, and the occurrence of a sound of any kind whatsoever is apt to awake attention, and be followed with perception, in proportion to the degree of sound; but the eye, during our waking hours, exercises constantly its function of seeing; it is its constant habit; we always, as far as the _bodily_ organ is concerned, see something, and we always see in the same degree, so that the occurrence of sight, as such, to the eye, is only the continuance of its necessary state of action, and awakes no attention whatsoever, except by the particular nature and quality of the sight. and thus, unless the minds of men are particularly directed to the impressions of sight, objects pass perpetually before the eyes without conveying any impression to the brain at all; and so pass actually unseen, not merely unnoticed, but in the full, clear sense of the word, unseen. and numbers of men being pre-occupied with business or care of some description, totally unconnected with the impressions of sight, such is actually the case with them, they receiving from nature only the inevitable sensations of blueness, redness, darkness, light, etc., and except at particular and rare moments, no more whatsoever. § . but more or less in proportion to their natural sensibility to what is beautiful. § . connected with a perfect state of moral feeling. the degree of ignorance of external nature in which men may thus remain, depends, therefore, partly on the number and character of the subjects with which their minds may be otherwise occupied, and partly on a natural want of sensibility to the power of beauty of form, and the other attributes of external objects. i do not think that there is ever such absolute incapacity in the eye for distinguishing and receiving pleasure from certain forms and colors, as there is in persons who are technically said to have no ear, for distinguishing notes, but there is naturally every degree of bluntness and acuteness, both for perceiving the truth of form, and for receiving pleasure from it when perceived. and although i believe even the lowest degree of these faculties can be expanded almost unlimitedly by cultivation, the pleasure received rewards not the labor necessary, and the pursuit is abandoned. so that while in those whose sensations are naturally acute and vivid, the call of external nature is so strong that it must be obeyed, and is ever heard louder as the approach to her is nearer,--in those whose sensations are naturally blunt, the call is overpowered at once by other thoughts, and their faculties of perception, weak originally, die of disuse. with this kind of bodily sensibility to color and form is intimately connected that higher sensibility which we revere as one of the chief attributes of all noble minds, and as the chief spring of real poetry. i believe this kind of sensibility may be entirely resolved into the acuteness of bodily sense of which i have been speaking, associated with love, love i mean in its infinite and holy functions, as it embraces divine and human and brutal intelligences, and hallows the physical perception of external objects by association, gratitude, veneration, and other pure feelings of our moral nature. and although the discovery of truth is in itself altogether intellectual, and dependent merely on our powers of physical perception and abstract intellect, wholly independent of our moral nature, yet these instruments (perception and judgment) are so sharpened and brightened, and so far more swiftly and effectively used, when they have the energy and passion of our moral nature to bring them into action--perception is so quickened by love, and judgment so tempered by veneration, that, practically, a man of deadened moral sensation is always dull in his perception of truth, and thousands of the highest and most divine truths of nature are wholly concealed from him, however constant and indefatigable may be his intellectual search. thus, then, the farther we look, the more we are limited in the number of those to whom we should choose to appeal as judges of truth, and the more we perceive how great a number of mankind may be partially incapacitated from either discovering or feeling it. § . and of the intellectual powers. § . how sight depends upon previous knowledge. next to sensibility, which is necessary for the perception of facts, come reflection and memory, which are necessary for the retention of them, and recognition of their resemblances. for a man may receive impression after impression, and that vividly and with delight, and yet, if he take no care to reason upon those impressions and trace them to their sources, he may remain totally ignorant of the facts that produced them; nay, may attribute them to facts with which they have no connection, or may coin causes for them that have no existence at all. and the more sensibility and imagination a man possesses, the more likely will he be to fall into error; for then he will see whatever he expects, and admire and judge with his heart, and not with his eyes. how many people are misled, by what has been said and sung of the serenity of italian skies, to suppose they must be more _blue_ than the skies of the north, and think that they see them so; whereas, the sky of italy is far more dull and gray in color than the skies of the north, and is distinguished only by its intense repose of light. and this is confirmed by benvenuto cellini, who, i remember, on his first entering france, is especially struck with the clearness of the sky, as contrasted with the _mist_ of italy. and what is more strange still, when people see in a painting what they suppose to have been the source of their impressions, they will affirm it to be truthful, though they feel no such impression resulting from it. thus, though day after day they may have been impressed by the tone and warmth of an italian sky, yet not having traced the feeling to its source, and supposing themselves impressed by its _blueness_, they will affirm a blue sky in a painting to be truthful, and reject the most faithful rendering of all the real attributes of italy as cold or dull. and this influence of the imagination over the senses, is peculiarly observable in the perpetual disposition of mankind to suppose that they _see_ what they _know_, and _vice versa_ in their not seeing what they do not know. thus, if a child be asked to draw the corner of a house, he will lay down something in the form of the letter t. he has no conception that the two lines of the roof, which he knows to be level, produce on his eye the impression of a slope. it requires repeated and close attention before he detects this fact, or can be made to feel that the lines on his paper are false. and the chinese, children in all things, suppose a good perspective drawing to be as false as we feel their plate patterns to be, or wonder at the strange buildings which come to a point at the end. and all the early works, whether of nations or of men, show, by their want of _shade_, how little the eye, without knowledge, is to be depended upon to discover truth. the eye of a red indian, keen enough to find the trace of his enemy or his prey, even in the unnatural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet so blunt to the impressions of shade, that mr. catlin mentions his once having been in great danger from having painted a portrait with the face in half-light, which the untutored observers imagined and affirmed to be the painting of half a face. barry, in his sixth lecture, takes notice of the same want of actual _sight_ in the early painters of italy. "the imitations," he says, "of early art are like those of children--nothing is seen in the spectacle before us, unless it be previously known and sought for; and numberless observable differences between the age of ignorance and that of knowledge, show how much the contraction or extension of our sphere of vision depends upon other considerations than the mere returns of our natural optics." and the deception which takes place so broadly in cases like these, has infinitely greater influence over our judgment of the more intricate and less tangible truths of nature. we are constantly supposing that we see what experience only has shown us, or can show us, to have existence, constantly missing the sight of what we do not know beforehand to be visible: and painters, to the last hour of their lives, are apt to fall in some degree into the error of painting what exists, rather than what they can see. i shall prove the extent of this error more completely hereafter. § . the difficulty increased by the variety of truths in nature. be it also observed, that all these difficulties would lie in the way, even if the truths of nature were always the same, constantly repeated and brought before us. but the truths of nature are one eternal change--one infinite variety. there is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush;--there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike. and out of this mass of various, yet agreeing beauty, it is by long attention only that the conception of the constant character--the ideal form--hinted at by all, yet assumed by none, is fixed upon the imagination for its standard of truth. it is not singular, therefore, nor in any way disgraceful, that the majority of spectators are totally incapable of appreciating the truth of nature, when fully set before them; but it is both singular and disgraceful that it is so difficult to convince them of their own incapability. ask the connoisseur, who has scampered over all europe, the shape of the leaf of an elm, and the chances are ninety to one that he cannot tell you; and yet he will be voluble of criticism on every painted landscape from dresden to madrid, and pretend to tell you whether they are like nature or not. ask an enthusiastic chatterer in the sistine chapel how many ribs he has, and you get no answer; but it is odds that you do not get out of the door without his informing you that he considers such and such a figure badly drawn! § . we recognize objects by their least important attributes. compare part i., sect. i., chap. . a few such interrogations as these might indeed convict, if not convince the mass of spectators of incapability, were it not for the universal reply, that they can recognize what they cannot describe, and feel what is truthful, though they do not know what is truth. and this is, to a certain degree, true: a man may recognize the portrait of his friend, though he cannot, if you ask him apart, tell you the shape of his nose or the height of his forehead; and every one could tell nature herself from an imitation; why not then, it will be asked, what is like her from what is not? for this simple reason, that we constantly recognize things by their least important attributes, and by help of very few of those, and if these attributes exist not in the imitation, though there may be thousands of others far higher and more valuable, yet if those be wanting, or imperfectly rendered, by which we are accustomed to recognize the object, we deny the likeness; while if these be given, though all the great and valuable and important attributes may be wanting, we affirm the likeness. recognition is no proof of real and intrinsic resemblance. we recognize our books by their bindings, though the true and essential characteristics lie inside. a man is known to his dog by the smell--to his tailor by the coat--to his friend by the smile: each of these know him, but how little, or how much, depends on the dignity of the intelligence. that which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man, is known only to god. one portrait of a man may possess exact accuracy of feature, and no atom of expression; it may be, to use the ordinary terms of admiration bestowed on such portraits by those whom they please, "as like as it can stare." everybody, down to his cat, would know this. another portrait may have neglected or misrepresented the features, but may have given the flash of the eye, and the peculiar radiance of the lip, seen on him only in his hours of highest mental excitement. none but his friends would know this. another may have given none of his ordinary expressions, but one which he wore in the most excited instant of his life, when all his secret passions and all his highest powers were brought into play at once. none but those who had then seen him might recognize _this_ as like. but which would be the most truthful portrait of the _man_? the first gives the accidents of body--the sport of climate, and food, and time--which corruption inhabits, and the worm waits for. the second gives the stamp of the soul upon the flesh; but it is the soul seen in the emotions which it shares with many--which may not be characteristic of its essence--the results of habit, and education, and accident--a gloze, whether purposely worn or unconsciously assumed, perhaps totally contrary to all that is rooted and real in the mind that it conceals. the third has caught the trace of all that was most hidden and most mighty, when all hypocrisy, and all habit, and all petty and passing emotion--the ice, and the bank, and the foam of the immortal river--were shivered, and broken, and swallowed up in the awakening of its inward strength; when the call and claim of some divine motive had brought into visible being those latent forces and feelings which the spirit's own volition could not summon, nor its consciousness comprehend; which god only knew, and god only could awaken, the depth and the mystery of its peculiar and separating attributes. and so it is with external nature: she has a body and a soul like man; but her soul is the deity. it is possible to represent the body without the spirit; and this shall be like to those whose senses are only cognizant of body. it is possible to represent the spirit in its ordinary and inferior manifestations; and this shall be like to those who have not watched for its moments of power. it is possible to represent the spirit in its secret and high operations; and this shall be like only to those to whose watching they have been revealed. all these are truth; but according to the dignity of the truths he can represent or feel, is the power of the painter,--the justice of the judge. chapter iii. of the relative importance of truths:--first, that particular truths are more important than general ones. § . necessity of determining the relative importance of truths. i have in the last chapter affirmed that we usually recognize objects by their least essential characteristics. this very naturally excites the inquiry what i consider their important characteristics, and why i call one truth more important than another. and this question must be immediately determined, because it is evident, that in judging of the truth of painters, we shall have to consider not only the accuracy with which individual truths are given, but the relative importance of the truths themselves; for as it constantly happens that the powers of art are unable to render _all_ truths, that artist must be considered the most truthful who has preserved the most important at the expense of the most trifling. § . misapplication of the aphorism: "general truths are more important than particular ones." § . falseness of this maxim taken without explanation. § . generality important in the subject, particularity in the predicate. now if we are to begin our investigation in aristotle's way, and look at the [greek: phainomena] of the subject, we shall immediately stumble over a maxim which is in everybody's mouth, and which, as it is understood in practice, is true and useful, as it is usually applied in argument, false and misleading. "general truths are more important than particular ones." often, when in conversation, i have been praising turner for his perpetual variety, and for giving so particular and separate a character to each of his compositions, that the mind of the painter can only be estimated by seeing all that he has ever done, and that nothing can be prophesied of a picture coming into existence on his easel, but that it will be totally different in idea from all that he has ever done before; and when i have opposed this inexhaustible knowledge or imagination, whichever it may be, to the perpetual repetition of some half-dozen conceptions by claude and poussin, i have been met by the formidable objection, enunciated with much dignity and self-satisfaction on the part of my antagonist--"that is not painting general truths, that is painting particular truths." now there must be something wrong in that application of a principle which would make the variety and abundance which we look for as the greatest sign of intellect in the writer, the greatest sign of error in the painter; and we shall accordingly see, by an application of it to other matters, that, taken without limitation, the whole proposition is utterly false. for instance, mrs. jameson somewhere mentions the exclamation of a lady of her acquaintance, more desirous to fill a pause in conversation than abundant in sources of observation: "what an excellent book the bible is!" this was a very general truth indeed, a truth predicable of the bible in common with many other books, but it certainly is neither striking nor important. had the lady exclaimed--"how evidently is the bible a divine revelation!" she would have expressed a particular truth, one predicable of the bible only; but certainly far more interesting and important. had she, on the contrary, informed us that the bible was a book, she would have been still more general, and still less entertaining. if i ask any one who somebody else is, and receive for answer that he is a man, i get little satisfaction for my pains; but if i am told that he is sir isaac newton, i immediately thank my neighbor for his information. the fact is, and the above instances may serve at once to prove it if it be not self-evident, that generality gives importance to the _subject_, and limitation or particularity to the _predicate_. if i say that such and such a man in china is an opium-eater, i say nothing very interesting, because my subject (such a man) is particular. if i say that all men in china are opium-eaters, i say something interesting, because my subject (all men) is general. if i say that all men in china eat, i say nothing interesting, because my predicate (eat) is general. if i say that all men in china eat opium, i say something interesting, because my predicate (eat opium) is particular. now almost everything which (with reference to a given subject) a painter has to ask himself whether he shall represent or not, is a predicate. hence in art, particular truths are usually more important than general ones. how is it then that anything so plain as this should be contradicted by one of the most universally received aphorisms respecting art? a little reflection will show us under what limitations this maxim may be true in practice. § . the importance of truths of species is not owing to their generality. § . all truths valuable as they are characteristic. it is self-evident that when we are painting or describing anything, those truths must be the most important which are most characteristic of what is to be told or represented. now that which is first and most broadly characteristic of a thing, is that which distinguishes its genus, or which makes it what it is. for instance, that which makes drapery _be_ drapery, is not its being made of silk or worsted or flax, for things are made of all these which are not drapery, but the ideas peculiar to drapery; the properties which, when inherent in a thing, make it drapery, are extension, non-elastic flexibility, unity and comparative thinness. everything which has these properties, a waterfall, for instance, if united and extended, or a net of weeds over a wall, is drapery, as much as silk or woollen stuff is. so that these ideas separate drapery in our minds from everything else; they are peculiarly characteristic of it, and therefore are the most important group of ideas connected with it; and so with everything else, that which makes the thing what it is, is the most important idea, or group of ideas connected with the thing. but as this idea must necessarily be common to all individuals of the species it belongs to, it is a general idea with respect to that species; while other ideas, which are not characteristic of the species, and are therefore in reality general, (as black or white are terms applicable to more things than drapery,) are yet particular with respect to that species, being predicable only of certain individuals of it. hence it is carelessly and falsely said, that general ideas are more important than particular ones; carelessly and falsely, i say, because the so-called general idea is important, not because it is common to all the individuals of that species, but because it separates that species from everything else. it is the distinctiveness, not the universality of the truth, which renders it important. and the so-called particular idea is unimportant, not because it is not predicable of the whole species, but because it _is_ predicable of things out of that species. it is not its individuality, but its generality which renders it unimportant. so, then, truths are important just in proportion as they are characteristic, and are valuable, primarily, as they separate the species from all other created things secondarily, as they separate the individuals of that species from one another: thus "silken" or "woollen" are unimportant ideas with respect to drapery, because they neither separate the species from other things, nor even the individuals of that species from one another, since, though not common to the whole of it, they are common to indefinite numbers of it; but the particular folds into which any piece of drapery may happen to fall, being different in many particulars from those into which any other piece of drapery will fall, are expressive not only of the characters of the species, flexibility, (non-elasticity, etc.,) but of individuality and definite character in the case immediately observed, and are consequently most important and necessary ideas. so in a man, to be short-legged or long-nosed or anything else of accidental quality, does not distinguish him from other short-legged or long-nosed animals; but the important truths respecting a man are, first, the marked development of that distinctive organization which separates him as man from other animals, and secondly, that group of qualities which distinguish the individual from all other men, which make him paul or judas, newton or shakspeare. § . otherwise truths of species are valuable because beautiful. such are the real sources of importance in truths as far as they are considered with reference merely to their being general, or particular; but there are other sources of importance which give farther weight to the ordinary opinion of the greater value of those which are general, and which render this opinion right in practice; i mean the intrinsic beauty of the truths themselves, a quality which it is not here the place to investigate, but which must just be noticed, as invariably adding value to truths of species rather than to those of individuality. the qualities and properties which characterize man or any other animal as a species, are the perfection of his or its form of mind, almost all individual differences arising from imperfections; hence a truth of species is the more valuable to art, because it must always be a beauty, while a truth of individuals is commonly, in some sort or way, a defect. § . and many truths, valuable if separate, may be objectionable in connection with others. again, a truth which may be of great interest, when an object is viewed by itself, may be objectionable when it is viewed in relation to other objects. thus if we were painting a piece of drapery as our whole subject, it would be proper to give in it every source of entertainment, which particular truths could supply, to give it varied color and delicate texture; but if we paint this same piece of drapery, as part of the dress of a madonna, all these ideas of richness or texture become thoroughly contemptible, and unfit to occupy the mind at the same moment with the idea of the virgin. the conception of drapery is then to be suggested by the simplest and slightest means possible, and all notions of texture and detail are to be rejected with utter reprobation; but this, observe, is not because they are particular or general or anything else, with respect to the drapery itself, but because they draw the attention to the dress instead of the saint, and disturb and degrade the imagination and the feelings; hence we ought to give the conception of the drapery in the most unobtrusive way possible, by rendering those essential qualities distinctly, which are necessary to the very existence of drapery, and not one more. with these last two sources of the importance of truths, we have nothing to do at present, as they are dependent upon ideas of beauty and relation: i merely allude to them now, to show that all that is alleged by sir j. reynolds and other scientific writers respecting the kind of truths proper to be represented by the painter or sculptor is perfectly just and right; while yet the principle on which they base their selection (that general truths are more important than particular ones) is altogether false. canova's perseus in the vatican is entirely spoiled by an unlucky _tassel_ in the folds of the mantle (which the next admirer of canova who passes would do well to knock off;) but it is spoiled not because this is a particular truth, but because it is a contemptible, unnecessary, and ugly truth. the button which fastens the vest of the sistine daniel is as much a particular truth as this, but it is a necessary one, and the idea of it is given by the simplest possible means; hence it is right and beautiful. § . recapitulation. finally, then, it is to be remembered that all truths as far as their being particular or general affects their value at all, are valuable in proportion as they are particular, and valueless in proportion as they are general; or to express the proposition in simpler terms, every truth is valuable in proportion as it is characteristic of the thing of which it is affirmed. chapter iv. of the relative importance of truths:--secondly, that rare truths are more important than frequent ones. § . no accidental violation of nature's principles should be represented. it will be necessary next for us to determine how far frequency or rarity can affect the importance of truths, and whether the artist is to be considered the most truthful who paints what is common or what is unusual in nature. now the whole determination of this question depends upon whether the unusual fact be a violation of nature's general principles, or the application of some of those principles in a peculiar and striking way. nature sometimes, though very rarely, violates her own principles; it is her principle to make everything beautiful, but now and then, for an instant, she permits what, compared with the rest of her works, might be called ugly; it is true that even these rare blemishes are permitted, as i have above said, for a good purpose, (part i. sec. i. chap. ,) they are valuable in nature, and used as she uses them, are equally valuable (as instantaneous discords) in art; but the artist who should seek after these exclusively, and paint nothing else, though he might be able to point to something in nature as the original of every one of his uglinesses, would yet be, in the strict sense of the word, false,--false to nature, and disobedient to her laws. for instance, it is the practice of nature to give character to the outlines of her clouds, by perpetual angles and right lines. perhaps once in a month, by diligent watching, we might be able to see a cloud altogether rounded and made up of curves; but the artist who paints nothing but curved clouds must yet be considered thoroughly and inexcusably false. § . but the cases in which those principles have been strikingly exemplified. § . which are comparatively rare. § . all repetition is blamable. § . the duty of the painter is the same as that of a preacher. but the case is widely different, when instead of a principle violated, we have one extraordinarily carried out or manifested under unusual circumstances. though nature is constantly beautiful, she does not exhibit her highest powers of beauty constantly, for then they would satiate us and pall upon our senses. it is necessary to their appreciation that they should be rarely shown. her finest touches are things which must be watched for; her most perfect passages of beauty are the most evanescent. she is constantly doing something beautiful for us, but it is something which she has not done before and will not do again; some exhibition of her general powers in particular circumstances which, if we do not catch at the instant it is passing, will not be repeated for us. now they are these evanescent passages of perfected beauty, these perpetually varied examples of utmost power, which the artist ought to seek for and arrest. no supposition can be more absurd than that effects or truths frequently exhibited are more characteristic of nature than those which are equally necessary by her laws, though rarer in occurrence. both the frequent and the rare are parts of the same great system; to give either exclusively is imperfect truth, and to repeat the same effect or thought in two pictures is wasted life. what should we think of a poet who should keep all his life repeating the same thought in different words? and why should we be more lenient to the parrot-painter who has learned one lesson from the page of nature, and keeps stammering it out with eternal repetition without turning the leaf? is it less tautology to describe a thing over and over again with lines, than it is with words? the teaching of nature is as varied and infinite as it is constant; and the duty of the painter is to watch for every one of her lessons, and to give (for human life will admit of nothing more) those in which she has manifested each of her principles in the most peculiar and striking way. the deeper his research and the rarer the phenomena he has noted, the more valuable will his works be; to repeat himself, even in a single instance, is treachery to nature, for a thousand human lives would not be enough to give one instance of the perfect manifestation of each of her powers; and as for combining or classifying them, as well might a preacher expect in one sermon to express and explain every divine truth which can be gathered out of god's revelation, as a painter expect in one composition to express and illustrate every lesson which can be received from god's creation. both are commentators on infinity, and the duty of both is to take for each discourse one essential truth, seeking particularly and insisting especially on those which are less palpable to ordinary observation, and more likely to escape an indolent research; and to impress that, and that alone, upon those whom they address, with every illustration that can be furnished by their knowledge, and every adornment attainable by their power. and the real truthfulness of the painter is in proportion to the number and variety of the facts he has so illustrated; those facts being always, as above observed, the realization, not the violation of a general principle. the quantity of truth is in proportion to the number of such facts, and its value and instructiveness in proportion to their rarity. all really great pictures, therefore, exhibit the general habits of nature, manifested in some peculiar, rare, and beautiful way. chapter v. of the relative importance of truths:--thirdly, that truths of color are the least important of all truths. § . difference between primary and secondary qualities in bodies. in the two last chapters, we have pointed out general tests of the importance of all truths, which will be sufficient at once to distinguish certain classes of properties in bodies, as more necessary to be told than others, because more characteristic, either of the particular thing to be represented, or of the principles of nature. according to locke, book ii. chap. , there are three sorts of qualities in bodies: first, the "bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of their solid parts: those that are in them, whether we perceive them or not." these he calls primary qualities. secondly, "the power that is in any body to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses," (sensible qualities.) and thirdly, "the power that is in any body to make such a change in another body as that it shall operate on our senses differently from what it did before: these last being usually called _powers_." § . the first are fully characteristic, the second imperfectly so. hence he proceeds to prove that those which he calls primary qualities are indeed part of the essence of the body, and characteristic of it; but that the two other kinds of qualities which together he calls secondary, are neither of them more than _powers_ of producing on other objects, or in us, certain effects and sensations. now a power of influence is always equally characteristic of two objects--the active and passive; for it is as much necessary that there should be a power in the object suffering to receive the impression, as in the object acting to give the impression. (compare locke, book ii. chap. , sect. .) for supposing two people, as is frequently the case, perceive different scents in the same flower, it is evident that the power in the flower to give this or that depends on the nature of their nerves, as well as on that of its own particles; and that we are as correct in saying it is a power in us to perceive, as in the object to impress. every power, therefore, being characteristic of the nature of two bodies, is imperfectly and incompletely characteristic of either separately; but the primary qualities, being characteristic only of the body in which they are inherent, are the most important truths connected with it. for the question, what the thing _is_, must precede, and be of more importance than the question, what can it do. § . color is a secondary quality, therefore less important than form. now by locke's definition above given, only bulk, figure, situation, and motion or rest of solid parts, are primary qualities. hence all truths of color sink at once into the second rank. he, therefore, who has neglected a truth of form for a truth of color, has neglected a greater truth for a less one. § . color no distinction between objects of the same species. and that color is indeed a most unimportant characteristic of objects, will be farther evident on the slightest consideration. the color of plants is constantly changing with the season, and of everything with the quality of light falling on it; but the nature and essence of the thing are independent of these changes. an oak is an oak, whether green with spring or red with winter; a dahlia is a dahlia, whether it be yellow or crimson; and if some monster-hunting botanist should ever frighten the flower blue, still it will be a dahlia; but let one curve of the petals--one groove of the stamens be wanting, and the flower ceases to be the same. let the roughness of the bark and the angles of the boughs be smoothed or diminished, and the oak ceases to be an oak; but let it retain its inward structure and outward form, and though its leaves grew white, or pink, or blue, or tri-color, it would be a white oak, or a pink oak, or a republican oak, but an oak still. again, color is hardly ever even a _possible_ distinction between two objects of the same species. two trees, of the same kind, at the same season, and of the same age, are of absolutely the same color; but they are not of the same form, nor anything like it. there can be no difference in the color of two pieces of rock broken from the same place; but it is impossible they should be of the same form. so that form is not only the chief characteristic of species, but the only characteristic of individuals of a species. § . and different in association from what it is alone. again, a color, in association with other colors, is different from the same color seen by itself. it has a distinct and peculiar power upon the retina dependent on its association. consequently, the color of any object is not more dependent upon the nature of the object itself, and the eye beholding it, than on the color of the objects near it; in this respect also, therefore, it is no characteristic. § . it is not certain whether any two people see the same color in things. and so great is the uncertainty with respect to those qualities or powers which depend as much on the nature of the object suffering as of the object acting, that it is totally impossible to prove that one man sees in the same thing the same color that another does though he may use the same name for it. one man may see yellow where another sees blue, but as the effect is constant, they agree in the term to be used for it, and both call it blue, or both yellow, having yet totally different ideas attached to the term. and yet neither can be said to see falsely, because the color is not in the thing, but in the thing and them together. but if they see forms differently, one must see falsely, because the form is positive in the object. my friend may see boars blue for anything i know, but it is impossible he should see them with paws instead of hoofs, unless his eyes or brain are diseased. (compare locke, book ii. chap. xxxii. § .) but i do not speak of this uncertainty as capable of having any effect on art, because, though perhaps landseer sees dogs of the color which i should call blue, yet the color he puts on the canvas, being in the same way blue to him, will still be brown or dog-color to me; and so we may argue on points of color just as if all men saw alike, as indeed in all probability they do; but i merely mention this uncertainty to show farther the vagueness and unimportance of color as a characteristic of bodies. § . form considered as an element of landscape, includes light and shade. § . importance of light and shade in expressing the character of bodies and unimportance of color. before going farther, however, i must explain the sense in which i have used the word "form," because painters have a most inaccurate and careless habit of confining the term to the _outline_ of bodies, whereas it necessarily implies light and shade. it is true that the outline and the chiaroscuro must be separate subjects of investigation with the student; but no form whatsoever can be known to the eye in the slightest degree without its chiaroscuro; and, therefore, in speaking of form generally as an element of landscape, i mean that perfect and harmonious unity of outline with light and shade, by which all the parts and projections and proportions of a body are fully explained to the eye, being nevertheless perfectly independent of sight or power in other objects, the presence of light upon a body being a positive existence, whether we are aware of it or not, and in no degree dependent upon our senses. this being understood, the most convincing proof of the unimportance of color lies in the accurate observation of the way in which any material object impresses itself on the mind. if we look at nature carefully, we shall find that her colors are in a state of perpetual confusion and indistinctness, while her forms, as told by light and shade, are invariably clear, distinct, and speaking. the stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from the boughs above; the bushes receive grays and yellows from the ground; every hairbreadth of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue of the sky or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the local color; this local color, changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and modified by the hue of the light, or quenched in the gray of the shadow; and the confusion and blending of tint is altogether so great, that were we left to find out what objects were by their colors only, we would scarcely in places distinguish the boughs of a tree from the air beyond them, or the ground beneath them. i know that people unpractised in art will not believe this at first; but if they have accurate powers of observation, they may soon ascertain it for themselves; they will find that, while they can scarcely ever determine the _exact_ hue of anything, except when it occurs in large masses, as in a green field or the blue sky, the form, as told by light and shade, is always decided and evident, and the source of the chief character of every object. light and shade indeed so completely conquer the distinctions of local color, that the difference in hue between the illumined parts of a white and black object is not so great as the difference (in sunshine) between the illumined and dark side of either separately. § . recapitulation. we shall see hereafter, in considering ideas of beauty, that color, even as a source of pleasure, is feeble compared to form; but this we cannot insist upon at present; we have only to do with simple truth, and the observations we have made are sufficient to prove that the artist who sacrifices or forgets a truth of form in the pursuit of a truth of color, sacrifices what is definite to what is uncertain, and what is essential to what is accidental. chapter vi. recapitulation. § . the importance of historical truths. it ought farther to be observed respecting truths in general, that those are always most valuable which are most historical, that is, which tell us most about the past and future states of the object to which they belong. in a tree, for instance, it is more important to give the appearance of energy and elasticity in the limbs which is indicative of growth and life, than any particular character of leaf, or texture of bough. it is more important that we should feel that the uppermost sprays are creeping higher and higher into the sky, and be impressed with the current of life and motion which is animating every fibre, than that we should know the exact pitch of relief with which those fibres are thrown out against the sky. for the first truths tell us tales about the tree, about what it has been, and will be, while the last are characteristic of it only in its present state, and are in no way talkative about themselves. talkative facts are always more interesting and more important than silent ones. so again the lines in a crag which mark its stratification, and how it has been washed and rounded by water, or twisted and drawn out in fire, are more important, because they tell more than the stains of the lichens which change year by year, and the accidental fissures of frost or decomposition; not but that both of these are historical, but historical in a less distinct manner, and for shorter periods. § . form, as explained by light and shade, the first of all truths. tone, light and color are secondary. hence in general the truths of specific form are the first and most important of all; and next to them, those truths of chiaroscuro which are necessary to make us understand every quality and part of forms, and the relative distances of objects among each other, and in consequence their relative bulks. altogether lower than these, as truths, though often most important as beauties, stand all effects of chiaroscuro which are productive merely of imitations of light and tone, and all effects of color. to make us understand the _space_ of the sky, is an end worthy of the artist's highest powers; to hit its particular blue or gold is an end to be thought of when we have accomplished the first, and not till then. § . and deceptive chiaroscuro the lowest of all. finally, far below all these come those particular accuraciesor tricks of chiaroscuro which cause objects to look projecting from the canvas, not worthy of the name of truths, because they require for their attainment the sacrifice of all others; for not having at our disposal the same intensity of light by which nature illustrates her objects, we are obliged, if we would have perfect deception in one, to destroy its relation to the rest. (compare sect. ii. chap. v.) and thus he who throws one object out of his picture, never lets the spectator into it. michael angelo bids you follow his phantoms into the abyss of heaven, but a modern french painter drops his hero out of the picture frame. this solidity or projection then, is the very lowest truth that art can give; it is the painting of mere matter, giving that as food for the eye which is properly only the subject of touch; it can neither instruct nor exalt, nor please except as jugglery; it addresses no sense of beauty nor of power; and wherever it characterizes the general aim of a picture, it is the sign and the evidence of the vilest and lowest mechanism which art can be insulted by giving name to. chapter vii. general application of the foregoing principles. § . the different selection of facts consequent on the several aims at imitation or at truth. we have seen, in the preceding chapters, some proof of what was before asserted, that the truths necessary for deceptive imitation are not only few, but of the very lowest order. we thus find painters ranging themselves into two great classes; one aiming at the development of the exquisite truths of specific form, refined color, and ethereal space, and content with the clear and impressive suggestion of any of these, by whatsoever means obtained; and the other casting all these aside, to attain those particular truths of tone and chiaroscuro, which may trick the spectator into a belief of reality. the first class, if they have to paint a tree, are intent upon giving the exquisite designs of intersecting undulation in its boughs, the grace of its leafage, the intricacy of its organization, and all those qualities which make it lovely or affecting of its kind. the second endeavor only to make you believe that you are looking at wood. they are totally regardless of truths or beauties of form; a stump is as good as a trunk for all their purposes, so that they can only deceive the eye into the supposition that it _is_ a stump and not canvas. § . the old masters, as a body, aim only at imitation. § . what truths they gave. to which of these classes the great body of the old landscape painters belonged, may be partly gathered from the kind of praise which is bestowed upon them by those who admire them most, which either refers to technical matters, dexterity of touch, clever oppositions of color, etc., or is bestowed on the power of the painter to _deceive_. m. de marmontel, going into a connoisseur's gallery, pretends to mistake a fine berghem for a window. this, he says, was affirmed by its possessor to be the greatest praise the picture had ever received. such is indeed the notion of art which is at the bottom of the veneration usually felt for the old landscape painters; it is of course the palpable, first idea of ignorance; it is the only notion which people unacquainted with art can by any possibility have of its ends; the only test by which people unacquainted with nature can pretend to form anything like judgment of art. it is strange that, with the great historical painters of italy before them, who had broken so boldly and indignantly from the trammels of this notion, and shaken the very dust of it from their feet, the succeeding landscape painters should have wasted their lives in jugglery: but so it is, and so it will be felt, the more we look into their works, that the deception of the senses was the great and first end of all their art. to attain this they paid deep and serious attention to effects of light and tone, and to the exact degree of relief which material objects take against light and atmosphere; and sacrificing every other truth to these, not necessarily, but because they required no others for deception, they succeeded in rendering these particular facts with a fidelity and force which, in the pictures that have come down to us uninjured, are as yet unequalled, and never can be surpassed. they painted their foregrounds with laborious industry, covering them with details so as to render them deceptive to the ordinary eye, regardless of beauty or truth in the details themselves; they painted their trees with careful attention to their pitch of shade against the sky, utterly regardless of all that is beautiful or essential in the anatomy of their foliage and boughs: they painted their distances with exquisite use of transparent color and aerial tone, totally neglectful of all facts and forms which nature uses such color and tone to relieve and adorn. they had neither love of nature, nor feeling of her beauty; they looked for her coldest and most commonplace effects, because they were easiest to imitate; and for her most vulgar forms, because they were most easily to be recognized by the untaught eyes of those whom alone they could hope to please; they did it, like the pharisee of old, to be seen of men, and they had their reward. they do deceive and delight the unpractised eye; they will to all ages, as long as their colors endure, be the standards of excellence with all, who, ignorant of nature, claim to be thought learned in art. and they will to all ages be, to those who have thorough love and knowledge of the creation which they libel, instructive proofs of the limited number and low character of the truths which are necessary, and the accumulated multitude of pure, broad, bold falsehoods which are admissible in pictures meant only to deceive. there is of course more or less accuracy of knowledge and execution combined with this aim at effect, according to the industry and precision of eye possessed by the master, and more or less of beauty in the forms selected, according to his natural taste; but both the beauty and truth are sacrificed unhesitatingly where they interfere with the great effort at deception. claude had, if it had been cultivated, a fine feeling for beauty of form, and is seldom ungraceful in his foliage; but his picture, when examined with reference to essential truth, is one mass of error from beginning to end. cuyp, on the other hand, could paint close truth of everything, except ground and water, with decision and success, but he has no sense of beauty. gaspar poussin, more ignorant of truth than claude, and almost as dead to beauty as cuyp, has yet a perception of the feeling and moral truth of nature which often redeems the picture; but yet in all of them, everything that they can do is done for deception, and nothing for the sake or love of what they are painting. § . the principles of selection adopted by modern artists. modern landscape painters have looked at nature with totally different eyes, seeking not for what is easiest to imitate, but for what is most important to tell. rejecting at once all idea of _bona fide_ imitation, they think only of conveying the impression of nature into the mind of the spectator. and there is, in consequence, a greater sum of valuable, essential, and impressive truth in the works of two or three of our leading modern landscape painters, than in those of all the old masters put together, and of truth too, nearly unmixed with definite or avoidable falsehood; while the unimportant and feeble truths of the old masters are choked with a mass of perpetual defiance of the most authoritative laws of nature. § . general feeling of claude, salvator, and g. poussin, contrasted with the freedom and vastness of nature. i do not expect this assertion to be believed at present; it must rest for demonstration on the examination we are about to enter upon; yet, even without reference to any intricate or deep-laid truths, it appears strange to me, that any one familiar with nature, and fond of her, should not grow weary and sick at heart among the melancholy and monotonous transcripts of her which alone can be received from the old school of art. a man accustomed to the broad, wild seashore, with its bright breakers, and free winds, and sounding rocks, and eternal sensation of tameless power, can scarcely but be angered when claude bids him stand still on some paltry, chipped and chiselled quay with porters and wheelbarrows running against him, to watch a weak, rippling bound and barriered water, that has not strength enough in one of its waves to upset the flower-pots on the wall, or even to fling one jet of spray over the confining stone. a man accustomed to the strength and glory of god's mountains, with their soaring and radiant pinnacles, and surging sweeps of measureless distance, kingdoms in their valleys, and climates upon their crests, can scarcely but be angered when salvator bids him stand still under some contemptible fragment of splintery crag, which an alpine snow-wreath would smother in its first swell, with a stunted bush or two growing out of it, and a volume of manufactory smoke for a sky. a man accustomed to the grace and infinity of nature's foliage, with every vista a cathedral, and every bough a revelation, can scarcely but be angered when poussin mocks him with a black round mass of impenetrable paint, diverging into feathers instead of leaves, and supported on a stick instead of a trunk. the fact is, there is one thing wanting in all the doing of these men, and that is the very virtue by which the work of human mind chiefly rises above that of the daguerreotype or calotype, or any other mechanical means that ever have been or may be invented, love: there is no evidence of their ever having gone to nature with any thirst, or received from her such emotion as could make them, even for an instant, lose sight of themselves; there is in them neither earnestness nor humility; there is no simple or honest record of any single truth; none of the plain words nor straight efforts that men speak and make when they once feel. § . inadequacy of the landscape of titian and tintoret. nor is it only by the professed landscape painters that the great verities of the material world are betrayed: grand as are the motives of landscape in the works of the earlier and mightier men, there is yet in them nothing approaching to a general view nor complete rendering of natural phenomena; not that they are to be blamed for this; for they took out of nature that which was fit for their purpose, and their mission was to do no more; but we must be cautious to distinguish that imaginative abstraction of landscape which alone we find in them, from the entire statement of truth which has been attempted by the moderns. i have said in the chapter on symmetry in the second volume, that all landscape grandeur vanishes before that of titian and tintoret; and this is true of whatever these two giants touched;--but they touched little. a few level flakes of chestnut foliage; a blue abstraction of hill forms from cadore or the euganeans; a grand mass or two of glowing ground and mighty herbage, and a few burning fields of quiet cloud were all they needed; there is evidence of tintoret's having felt more than this, but it occurs only in secondary fragments of rock, cloud, or pine, hardly noticed among the accumulated interest of his human subject. from the window of titian's house at venice, the chain of the tyrolese alps is seen lifted in spectral power above the tufted plain of treviso; every dawn that reddens the towers of murano lights also a line of pyramidal fires along that colossal ridge; but there is, so far as i know, no evidence in any of the master's works of his ever having beheld, much less felt, the majesty of their burning. the dark firmament and saddened twilight of tintoret are sufficient for their end; but the sun never plunges behind san giorgio in aliga without such retinue of radiant cloud, such rest of zoned light on the green lagoon, as never received image from his hand. more than this, of that which they loved and rendered much is rendered conventionally; by noble conventionalities indeed, but such nevertheless as would be inexcusable if the landscape became the principal subject instead of an accompaniment. i will instance only the san pietro martire, which, if not the most perfect, is at least the most popular of titian's landscapes; in which, to obtain light on the flesh of the near figures the sky is made as dark as deep sea, the mountains are laid in with violent and impossible blue, except one of them on the left, which, to connect the distant light with the foreground, is thrown into light relief, unexplained by its materials, unlikely in its position, and in its degree impossible under any circumstances. § . causes of its want of influence on subsequent schools. i do not instance these as faults in the picture: there are no works of very powerful color which are free from conventionality concentrated or diffused, daring or disguised; but as the conventionality of this whole picture is mainly thrown into the landscape, it is necessary, while we acknowledge the virtue of this distance as a part of the great composition, to be on our guard against the license it assumes and the attractiveness of its overcharged color. fragments of far purer truth occur in the works of tintoret; and in the drawing of foliage, whether rapid or elaborate, of masses or details, the venetian painters, taken as a body, may be considered almost faultless models. but the whole field of what they have done is so narrow, and therein is so much of what is only relatively right, and in itself false or imperfect, that the young and inexperienced painter could run no greater risk than the too early taking them for teachers; and to the general spectator their landscape is valuable rather as a means of peculiar and solemn emotion than as ministering to, or inspiring the universal love of nature. hence while men of serious mind, especially those whose pursuits have brought them into continued relations with the peopled rather than the lonely world, will always look to the venetian painters as having touched those simple chords of landscape harmony which are most in unison with earnest and melancholy feeling; those whose philosophy is more cheerful and more extended, as having been trained and colored among simple and solitary nature, will seek for a wider and more systematic circle of teaching: they may grant that the barred horizontal gloom of the titian sky, and the massy leaves of the titian forest are among the most sublime of the conceivable forms of material things; but they know that the virtue of these very forms is to be learned only by right comparison of them with the cheerfulness, fulness and comparative inquietness of other hours and scenes; that they are not intended for the continual food, but the occasional soothing of the human heart; that there is a lesson of not less value in its place, though of less concluding and sealing authority, in every one of the more humble phases of material things: and that there are some lessons of equal or greater authority which these masters neither taught nor received. and until the school of modern landscape arose art had never noted the links of this mighty chain; it mattered not that a fragment lay here and there, no heavenly lightning could descend by it; the landscape of the venetians was without effect on any contemporary in subsequent schools; it still remains on the continent as useless as if it had never existed; and at this moment german and italian landscapes, of which no words are scornful enough to befit the utter degradation, hang in the venetian academy in the next room to the desert of titian and the paradise of tintoret.[ ] § . the value of inferior works of art how to be estimated. that then which i would have the reader inquire respecting every work of art of undetermined merit submitted to his judgment, is not whether it be a work of especial grandeur, importance, or power; but whether it have _any_ virtue or substance as a link in this chain of truth, whether it have recorded or interpreted anything before unknown, whether it have added one single stone to our heaven-pointing pyramid, cut away one dark bough, or levelled one rugged hillock in our path. this, if it be an honest work of art, it must have done, for no man ever yet worked honestly without giving some such help to his race. god appoints to every one of his creatures a separate mission, and if they discharge it honorably, if they quit themselves like men and faithfully follow that light which is in them, withdrawing from it all cold and quenching influence, there will assuredly come of it such burning as, in its appointed mode and measure, shall shine before men, and be of service constant and holy. degrees infinite of lustre there must always be, but the weakest among us has a gift, however seemingly trivial, which is peculiar to him, and which worthily used will be a gift also to his race forever-- "fool not," says george herbert, "for all may have, if they dare choose, a glorious life or grave." if, on the contrary, there be nothing of this freshness achieved, if there be neither purpose nor fidelity in what is done, if it be an envious or powerless imitation of other men's labors, if it be a display of mere manual dexterity or curious manufacture, or if in any other mode it show itself as having its origin in vanity,--cast it out. it matters not what powers of mind may have been concerned or corrupted in it, all have lost their savor, it is worse than worthless;--perilous--cast it out. works of art are indeed always of mixed kind, their honesty being more or less corrupted by the various weaknesses of the painter, by his vanity, his idleness, or his cowardice; (the fear of doing right has far more influence on art than is commonly thought,) that only is altogether to be rejected which is altogether vain, idle, and cowardly. of the rest the rank is to be estimated rather by the purity of their metal than the coined value of it. § . religious landscape of italy. the admirableness of its completion. keeping these principles in view, let us endeavor to obtain something like a general view of the assistance which has been rendered to our study of nature by the various occurrences of landscape in elder art, and by the more exclusively directed labors of modern schools. to the ideal landscape of the early religious painters of italy i have alluded in the concluding chapter of the second volume. it is absolutely right and beautiful in its peculiar application; but its grasp of nature is narrow and its treatment in most respects too severe and conventional to form a profitable example when the landscape is to be alone the subject of thought. the great virtue of it is its entire, exquisite, and humble realization of those objects it selects; in this respect differing from such german imitations of it as i have met with, that there is no effort of any fanciful or ornamental modifications, but loving fidelity to the thing studied. the foreground plants are usually neither exaggerated nor stiffened; they do not form arches or frames or borders; their grace is unconfined, their simplicity undestroyed. cima da conegliano, in his picture in the church of the madonna dell' orto at venice, has given us the oak, the fig, the beautiful "erba della madonna" on the wall, precisely such a bunch of it as may be seen growing at this day on the marble steps of that very church; ivy and other creepers, and a strawberry plant in the foreground, with a blossom and a berry just set, and one half ripe and one ripe, all patiently and innocently painted from the real thing, and therefore most divine. fra angelico's use of the oxalis acetosella is as faithful in representation as touching in feeling.[ ] the ferns that grow on the walls of fiesole may be seen in their simple verity on the architecture of ghirlandajo. the rose, the myrtle, and the lily, the olive and orange, pomegranate and vine, have received their fairest portraiture where they bear a sacred character; even the common plantains and mallows of the waysides are touched with deep reverence by raffaelle; and indeed for the perfect treatment of details of this kind, treatment as delicate and affectionate as it is elevated and manly, it is to the works of these schools alone that we can refer. and on this their peculiar excellence i should the more earnestly insist, because it is of a kind altogether neglected by the english school, and with most unfortunate result, many of our best painters missing their deserved rank solely from the want of it, as gainsborough; and all being more or less checked in their progress or vulgarized in their aim. § . finish, and the want of it, how right and how wrong. it is a misfortune for all honest critics, that hardly any quality of art is independently to be praised, and without reference to the motive from which it resulted, and the place in which it appears; so that no principle can be simply enforced but it shall seem to countenance a vice; while the work of qualification and explanation both weakens the force of what is said, and is not perhaps always likely to be with patience received: so also those who desire to misunderstand or to oppose have it always in their power to become obtuse listeners or specious opponents. thus i hardly dare insist upon the virtue of completion, lest i should be supposed a defender of wouvermans or gerard dow; neither can i adequately praise the power of tintoret, without fearing to be thought adverse to holbein or perugino. the fact is, that both finish and impetuosity, specific minuteness, or large abstraction, may be the signs of passion, or of its reverse; may result from affection or indifference, intellect or dulness. some men finish from intense love of the beautiful in the smallest parts of what they do; others in pure incapability of comprehending anything but parts; others to show their dexterity with the brush, and prove expenditure of time. some are impetuous and bold in their handling, from having great thoughts to express which are independent of detail; others because they have bad taste or have been badly taught; others from vanity, and others from indolence. (compare vol. ii. chap. ix. § .) now both the finish and incompletion are right where they are the signs of passion or of thought, and both are wrong, and i think the finish the more contemptible of the two, when they cease to be so. the modern italians will paint every leaf of a laurel or rose-bush without the slightest feeling of their beauty or character; and without showing one spark of intellect or affection from beginning to end. anything is better than this; and yet the very highest schools _do_ the same thing, or nearly so, but with totally different motives and perceptions, and the result is divine. on the whole, i conceive that the extremes of good and evil lie with the finishers, and that whatever glorious power we may admit in men like tintoret, whatever attractiveness of method to rubens, rembrandt, or, though in far less degree, our own reynolds, still the thoroughly great men are those who have done everything thoroughly, and who, in a word, have never despised anything, however small, of god's making. and this is the chief fault of our english landscapists, that they have not the intense all-observing penetration of well-balanced mind; they have not, except in one or two instances, anything of that feeling which wordsworth shows in the following lines:-- "so fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive;-- would that the little flowers were born to live conscious of half the pleasure which they give. that to this mountain daisy's self were known _the beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown on the smooth surface of this naked stone._" that is a little bit of good, downright, foreground painting--no mistake about it; daisy, and shadow, and stone texture and all. our painters must come to this before they have done their duty; and yet, on the other hand, let them beware of finishing, for the sake of finish, all over their picture. the ground is not to be all over daisies, nor is every daisy to have its star-shaped shadow; there is as much finish in the right concealment of things as in the right exhibition of them; and while i demand this amount of specific character where nature shows it, i demand equal fidelity to her where she conceals it. to paint mist rightly, space rightly, and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint nothing else rightly, but the rule is simple for all that; if the artist is painting something that he knows and loves, as he knows it because he loves it, whether it be the fair strawberry of cima, or the clear sky of francia, or the blazing incomprehensible mist of turner, he is all right; but the moment he does anything as he thinks it ought to be, because he does not care about it, he is all wrong. he has only to ask himself whether he cares for anything except himself; so far as he does he will make a good picture; so far as he thinks of himself a vile one. this is the root of the viciousness of the whole french school. industry they have, learning they have, power they have, feeling they have, yet not so much feeling as ever to force them to forget themselves even for a moment; the ruling motive is invariably vanity, and the picture therefore an abortion. § . the open skies of the religious schools, how valuable. mountain drawing of masaccio. landscape of the bellinis and giorgione. returning to the pictures of the religious schools, we find that their open skies are also of the highest value. their preciousness is such that no subsequent schools can by comparison be said to have painted sky at all, but only clouds, or mist, or blue canopies. the golden sky of marco basaiti in the academy of venice altogether overpowers and renders valueless that of titian beside it. those of francia in the gallery of bologna are even more wonderful, because cooler in tone and behind figures in full light. the touches of white light in the horizon of angelico's last judgment are felt and wrought with equal truth. the dignified and simple forms of cloud in repose are often by these painters sublimely expressed, but of changeful cloud form they show no examples. the architecture, mountains, and water of these distances are commonly conventional; motives are to be found in them of the highest beauty, and especially remarkable for quantity and meaning of incident; but they can only be studied or accepted in the particular feeling that produced them. it may generally be observed that whatever has been the result of strong emotion is ill seen unless through the medium of such emotion, and will lead to conclusions utterly false and perilous, if it be made a subject of cold-hearted observance, or an object of systematic imitation. one piece of genuine mountain drawing, however, occurs in the landscape of masaccio's tribute money. it is impossible to say what strange results might have taken place in this particular field of art, or how suddenly a great school of landscape might have arisen, had the life of this great painter been prolonged. of this particular fresco i shall have much to say hereafter. the two brothers bellini gave a marked and vigorous impulse to the landscape of venice, of gentile's architecture i shall speak presently. giovanni's, though in style less interesting and in place less prominent, occurring chiefly as a kind of frame to his pictures, connecting them with the architecture of the churches for which they were intended, is in refinement of realization, i suppose, quite unrivalled, especially in passages requiring pure gradation, as the hollows of vaultings. that of veronese would look ghostly beside it; that of titian lightless. his landscape is occasionally quaint and strange like giorgione's, and as fine in color, as that behind the madonna in the brera gallery at milan; but a more truthful fragment occurs in the picture in san francesco della vigna at venice; and in the picture of st. jerome in the church of san grisostomo, the landscape is as perfect and beautiful as any background may legitimately be, and finer, as far as it goes, than anything of titian's. it is remarkable for the absolute truth of its sky, whose blue, clear as crystal, and though deep in tone bright as the open air, is gradated to the horizon with a cautiousness and finish almost inconceivable; and to obtain light at the horizon without contradicting the system of chiaroscuro adopted in the figures which are lighted from the right hand, it is barred across with some glowing white cirri which, in their turn, are opposed by a single dark horizontal line of lower cloud; and to throw the whole farther back, there is a wreath of rain cloud of warmer color floating above the mountains, lighted on its under edge, whose faithfulness to nature, both in hue and in its light and shattering form, is altogether exemplary; the wandering of the light among the hills is equally studied, and the whole is crowned by the grand realization of the leaves of the fig-tree alluded to (vol. ii. part iii. chap. ,) as well as of the herbage upon the rocks. considering that with all this care and completeness in the background, there is nothing that is not of meaning and necessity in reference to the figures, and that in the figures themselves the dignity and heavenliness of the highest religious painters are combined with a force and purity of color, greater i think than titian's, it is a work which may be set before the young artist as in every respect a nearly faultless guide. giorgione's landscape is inventive and solemn, but owing to the rarity even of his nominal works i dare not speak of it in general terms. it is certainly conventional, and is rather, i imagine, to be studied for its color and its motives than its details. § . landscape of titian and tintoret. of titian and tintoret i have spoken already. the latter is every way the greater master, never indulging in the exaggerated color of titian, and attaining far more perfect light; his grasp of nature is more extensive, and his view of her more imaginative, (incidental notices of his landscape will be found in the chapter on imagination penetrative, of the second volume,) but he is usually too impatient to carry his thoughts as far out, or to realize with as much substantiality as titian. in the st. jerome of the latter in the gallery of the brera, there is a superb example of the modes in which the objects of landscape may be either suggested or elaborated according to their place and claim. the larger features of the ground, foliage, and drapery, as well as the lion in the lower angle, are executed with a slightness which admits not of close examination, and which, if not in shade, would be offensive to the generality of observers. but on the rock above the lion, where it turns towards the light, and where the eye is intended to dwell, there is a wreath of ivy of which every leaf is separately drawn with the greatest accuracy and care, and beside it a lizard, studied with equal earnestness, yet always with that right grandeur of manner to which i have alluded in the preface. tintoret seldom reaches or attempts the elaboration in substance and color of these objects, but he is even more truth-telling and certain in his rendering of all the great characters of specific form, and as the painter of space he stands altogether alone among dead masters; being the first who introduced the slightness and confusion of touch which are expressive of the effects of luminous objects seen through large spaces of air, and the principles of aerial color which have been since carried out in other fields by turner. i conceive him to be the most powerful painter whom the world has seen, and that he was prevented from being also the most perfect, partly by untoward circumstances in his position and education, partly by the very fulness and impetuosity of his own mind, partly by the want of religious feeling and its accompanying perception of beauty; for his noble treatment of religious subject, of which i have given several examples in the third part, appears to be the result only of that grasp which a great and well-toned intellect necessarily takes of any subject submitted to it, and is wanting in the signs of the more withdrawn and sacred sympathies. but whatever advances were made by tintoret in modes of artistical treatment, he cannot be considered as having enlarged the sphere of landscape conception. he took no cognizance even of the materials and motives, so singularly rich in color, which were forever around him in his own venice. all portions of venetian scenery introduced by him are treated conventionally and carelessly; the architectural characters lost altogether, the sea distinguished from the sky only by a darker green, while of the sky itself only those forms were employed by him which had been repeated again and again for centuries, though in less tangibility and completion. of mountain scenery he has left, i believe, no example so far carried as that of john bellini above instanced. § . schools of florence, milan, and bologna. the florentine and ambrian schools supply us with no examples of landscape, except that introduced by their earliest masters, gradually overwhelmed under renaissance architecture. leonardo's landscape has been of unfortunate effect on art, so far as it has had effect at all. in realization of detail he verges on the ornamental, in his rock outlines he has all the deficiencies and little of the feeling of the earlier men. behind the "sacrifice for the friends" of giotto at pisa, there is a sweet piece of rock incident, a little fountain breaking out at the mountain foot, and trickling away, its course marked by branches of reeds, the latter formal enough certainly, and always in triplets, but still with a sense of nature pervading the whole which is utterly wanting to the rocks of leonardo in the holy family in the louvre. the latter are grotesque without being ideal, and extraordinary without being impressive. the sketch in the uffizii of florence has some fine foliage, and there is of course a certain virtue in all the work of a man like leonardo which i would not depreciate, but our admiration of it in this particular field must be qualified, and our following cautious. no advances were made in landscape, so far as i know, after the time of tintoret; the power of art ebbed gradually away from the derivative schools; various degrees of cleverness or feeling being manifested in more or less brilliant conventionalism. i once supposed there was some life in the landscape of domenichino, but in this i must have been wrong. the man who painted the madonna del rosario and martyrdom of st. agnes in the gallery of bologna, is palpably incapable of doing anything good, great, or right in any field, way, or kind, whatsoever.[ ] § . claude, salvator, and the poussins. though, however, at this period the general grasp of the schools was perpetually contracting, a gift was given to the world by claude, for which we are perhaps hardly enough grateful, owing to the very frequency of our after enjoyment of it. he set the sun in heaven, and was, i suppose, the first who attempted anything like the realization of actual sunshine in misty air. he gives the first example of the study of nature for her own sake, and allowing for the unfortunate circumstances of his education, and for his evident inferiority of intellect, more could hardly have been expected from him. his false taste, forced composition, and ignorant rendering of detail have perhaps been of more detriment to art than the gift he gave was of advantage. the character of his own mind is singular; i know of no other instance of a man's working from nature continually with the desire of being true, and never attaining the power of drawing so much as a bough of a tree rightly. salvator, a man originally endowed with far higher power of mind than claude, was altogether unfaithful to his mission, and has left us, i believe, no gift. everything that he did is evidently for the sake of exhibiting his own dexterity; there is no love of any kind for anything; his choice of landscape features is dictated by no delight in the sublime, but by mere animal restlessness or ferocity, guided by an imaginative power of which he could not altogether deprive himself. he has done nothing which others have not done better, or which it would not have been better not to have done; in nature, he mistakes distortion for energy, and savageness for sublimity; in man, mendicity for sanctity, and conspiracy for heroism. the landscape of nicolo poussin shows much power, and is usually composed and elaborated on right principles, (compare preface to second edition,) but i am aware of nothing that it has attained of new or peculiar excellence; it is a graceful mixture of qualities to be found in other masters in higher degrees. in finish it is inferior to leonardo's, in invention to giorgione's, in truth to titian's, in grace to raffaelle's. the landscapes of gaspar have serious feeling and often valuable and solemn color; virtueless otherwise, they are full of the most degraded mannerism, and i believe the admiration of them to have been productive of extensive evil among recent schools. § . german and flemish landscape. the development of landscape north of the alps, presents us with the same general phases under modifications dependent partly on less intensity of feeling, partly on diminished availableness of landscape material. that of the religious painters is treated with the same affectionate completion; but exuberance of fancy sometimes diminishes the influence of the imagination, and the absence of the italian force of passion admits of more patient and somewhat less intellectual elaboration. a morbid habit of mind is evident in many, seeming to lose sight of the balance and relations of things, so as to become intense in trifles, gloomily minute, as in albert durer; and this mingled with a feverish operation of the fancy, which appears to result from certain habitual conditions of bodily health rather than of mental culture, (and of which the sickness without the power is eminently characteristic of the modern germans;) but with all this there are virtues of the very highest order in those schools, and i regret that my knowledge is insufficient to admit of my giving any detailed account of them. in the landscape of rembrandt and rubens, we have the northern parallel to the power of the venetians. among the etchings and drawings of rembrandt, landscape thoughts may be found not unworthy of titian, and studies from nature of sublime fidelity; but his system of chiaroscuro was inconsistent with the gladness, and his peculiar modes of feeling with the grace, of nature; nor from my present knowledge can i name any work on canvas in which he has carried out the dignity of his etched conceptions, or exhibited any perceptiveness of new truths. not so rubens, who perhaps furnishes us with the first instances of complete unconventional unaffected landscape. his treatment is healthy, manly, and rational, not very affectionate, yet often condescending to minute and multitudinous detail; always as far as it goes pure, forcible, and refreshing, consummate in composition, and marvellous in color. in the pitti palace, the best of its two rubens landscapes has been placed near a characteristic and highly-finished titian, the marriage of st. catherine. but for the grandeur of line and solemn feeling in the flock of sheep, and the figures of the latter work, i doubt if all its glow and depth of tone could support its overcharged green and blue against the open breezy sunshine of the fleming. i do not mean to rank the art of rubens with that of titian, but it is always to be remembered that titian hardly ever paints sunshine, but a certain opalescent twilight which has as much of human emotion as of imitative truth in it,-- "the clouds that gather round the setting sun do take a sober coloring from an eye that hath kept watch o'er man's mortality:" and that art of this kind must always be liable to some appearance of failure when compared with a less pathetic statement of facts. it is to be noted, however, that the licenses taken by rubens in particular instances are as bold as his general statements are sincere. in the landscape just instanced the horizon is an oblique line; in the sunset of our own gallery many of the shadows fall at right angles to the light; and in a picture in the dulwich gallery a rainbow is seen by the spectator at the side of the sun. these bold and frank licenses are not to be considered as detracting from the rank of the painter; they are usually characteristic of those minds whose grasp of nature is so certain and extensive as to enable them fearlessly to sacrifice a truth of actuality to a truth of feeling. yet the young artist must keep in mind that the painter's greatness consists not in his taking, but in his atoning for them. § . the lower dutch schools. among the professed landscapists of the dutch school, we find much dexterous imitation of certain kinds of nature, remarkable usually for its persevering rejection of whatever is great, valuable, or affecting in the object studied. where, however, they show real desire to paint what they saw as far as they saw it, there is of course much in them that is instructive, as in cuyp and in the etchings of waterloo, which have even very sweet and genuine feeling; and so in some of their architectural painters. but the object of the great body of them is merely to display manual dexterities of one kind or another, and their effect on the public mind is so totally for evil, that though i do not deny the advantage an artist of real judgment may derive from the study of some of them, i conceive the best patronage that any monarch could possibly bestow upon the arts, would be to collect the whole body of them into a grand gallery and burn it to the ground. § . english school, wilson and gainsborough. passing to the english school, we find a connecting link between them and the italians formed by richard wilson. had this artist studied under favorable circumstances, there is evidence of his having possessed power enough to produce an original picture; but, corrupted by study of the poussins, and gathering his materials chiefly in their field, the district about rome--a district especially unfavorable, as exhibiting no pure or healthy nature, but a diseased and overgrown flora among half-developed volcanic rocks, loose calcareous concretions, and mouldering wrecks of buildings--and whose spirit, i conceive, to be especially opposed to the natural tone of the english mind, his originality was altogether overpowered, and, though he paints in a manly way and occasionally reaches exquisite tones of color, as in the small and very precious picture belonging to mr. rogers, and sometimes manifests some freshness of feeling, as in the villa of mæcenas of our national gallery, yet his pictures are in general mere diluted adaptations from poussin and salvator, without the dignity of the one or the fire of the other. not so gainsborough, a great name his whether of the english or any other school. the greatest colorist since rubens, and the last, i think, of legitimate colorists; that is to say, of those who were fully acquainted with the power of their material; pure in his english feeling, profound in his seriousness, graceful in his gayety, there are nevertheless certain deductions to be made from his worthiness which yet i dread to make, because my knowledge of his landscape works is not extensive enough to justify me in speaking of them decisively; but this is to be noted of all that i know, that they are rather motives of feeling and color than earnest studies; that their execution is in some degree mannered, and always hasty; that they are altogether wanting in the affectionate detail of which i have already spoken; and that their color is in some measure dependent on a bituminous brown and conventional green which have more of science than of truth in them. these faults may be sufficiently noted in the magnificent picture presented by him to the royal academy, and tested by a comparison of it with the turner (llanberis,) in the same room. nothing can be more attractively luminous or aerial than the distance of the gainsborough, nothing more bold or inventive than the forms of its crags and the diffusion of the broad distant light upon them, where a vulgar artist would have thrown them into dark contrast. but it will be found that the light of the distance is brought out by a violent exaggeration of the gloom in the valley; that the forms of the green trees which bear the chief light are careless and ineffective; that the markings of the crags are equally hasty; and that no object in the foreground has realization enough to enable the eye to rest upon it. the turner, a much feebler picture in its first impression, and altogether inferior in the quality and value of its individual hues, will yet be found to the end more forcible, because unexaggerated; its gloom is moderate and aerial, its light deep in tone, its color entirely unconventional, and the forms of its rocks studied with the most devoted care. with gainsborough terminates the series of painters connected with the elder schools. by whom, among those yet living or lately lost, the impulse was first given to modern landscape, i attempt not to decide. such questions are rather invidious than interesting; the particular tone or direction of any school seems to me always to have resulted rather from certain phases of national character, limited to particular periods, than from individual teaching; and, especially among moderns, what has been good in each master has been commonly original. § . constable, calcott. i have already alluded to the simplicity and earnestness of the mind of constable; to its vigorous rupture with school laws, and to its unfortunate error on the opposite side. unteachableness seems to have been a main feature of his character, and there is corresponding want of veneration in the way he approaches nature herself. his early education and associations were also against him; they induced in him a morbid preference of subjects of a low order. i have never seen any work of his in which there were any signs of his being able to draw, and hence even the most necessary details are painted by him inefficiently. his works are also eminently wanting both in rest and refinement, and fuseli's jesting compliment is too true; for the showery weather in which the artist delights, misses alike the majesty of storm and the loveliness of calm weather: it is great-coat weather, and nothing more. there is strange want of depth in the mind which has no pleasure in sunbeams but when piercing painfully through clouds, nor in foliage but when shaken by the wind, nor in light itself but when flickering, glistening, restless, and feeble. yet, with all these deductions, his works are to be deeply respected as thoroughly original, thoroughly honest, free from affectation, manly in manner, frequently successful in cool color, and especially realizing certain motives of english scenery with perhaps as much affection as such scenery, unless when regarded through media of feeling derived from higher sources, is calculated to inspire. on the works of calcott, high as his reputation stands, i should look with far less respect; i see not any preference or affection in the artist; there is no tendency in him with which we can sympathize, nor does there appear any sign of aspiration, effort, or enjoyment in any one of his works. he appears to have completed them methodically, to have been content with them when completed, to have thought them good, legitimate, regular pictures; perhaps in some respects better than nature. he painted everything tolerably, and nothing excellently; he has given us no gift, struck for us no light, and though he has produced one or two valuable works, of which the finest i know is the marine in the possession of sir j. swinburne, they will, i believe, in future have no place among those considered representative of the english school. § . peculiar tendency of recent landscape. throughout the range of elder art it will be remembered we have found no instance of the faithful painting of mountain scenery, except in a faded background of masaccio's: nothing more than rocky eminences, undulating hills, or fantastic crags, and even these treated altogether under typical forms. the more specific study of mountains seems to have coincided with the most dexterous practice of water-color; but it admits of doubt whether the choice of subject has been directed by the vehicle, or whether, as i rather think, the tendency of national feeling has been followed in the use of the most appropriate means. something is to be attributed to the increased demand for slighter works of art, and much to the sense of the quality of objects now called picturesque, which appears to be exclusively of modern origin. from what feeling the character of middle-age architecture and costume arose, or with what kind of affection their forms were regarded by the inventors, i am utterly unable to guess; but of this i think we may be assured, that the natural instinct and child-like wisdom of those days were altogether different from the modern feeling, which appears to have taken its origin in the absence of such objects, and to be based rather on the strangeness of their occurrence than on any real affection for them; and which is certainly so shallow and ineffective as to be instantly and always sacrificed by the majority to fashion, comfort, or economy. yet i trust that there is a healthy though feeble love of nature mingled with it, nature pure, separate, felicitous, which is also peculiar to the moderns; and as signs of this feeling, or ministers to it, i look with veneration upon many works which, in a technical point of view, are of minor importance. § . g. robson, d. cox. false use of the term "style." i have been myself indebted for much teaching and more delight to those of the late g. robson. weaknesses there are in them manifold, much bad drawing, much forced color, much over finish, little of what artists call composition; but there is thorough affection for the thing drawn; they are serious and quiet in the highest degree, certain qualities of atmosphere and texture in them have never been excelled, and certain facts of mountain scenery never but by them expressed, as, for instance, the stillness and depth of the mountain tarns, with the reversed imagery of their darkness signed across by the soft lines of faintly touching winds; the solemn flush of the brown fern and glowing heath under evening light; the purple mass of mountains far removed, seen against clear still twilight. with equal gratitude i look to the drawings of david cox, which, in spite of their loose and seemingly careless execution, are not less serious in their meaning, nor less important in their truth. i must, however, in reviewing those modern works in which certain modes of execution are particularly manifested, insist especially on this general principle, applicable to all times of art; that what is usually called the style or manner of an artist is, in all good art, nothing but the best means of getting at the particular truth which the artist wanted; it is not a mode peculiar to himself of getting at the same truths as other men, but the _only_ mode of getting the particular facts he desires, and which mode, if others had desired to express those facts, they also must have adopted. all habits of execution persisted in under no such necessity, but because the artist has invented them, or desires to show his dexterity in them, are utterly base; for every good painter finds so much difficulty in reaching the end he sees and desires, that he has no time nor power left for playing tricks on the road to it; he catches at the easiest and best means he can get; it is possible that such means may be singular, and then it will be said that his _style_ is strange; but it is not a style at all, it is the saying of a particular thing in the only way in which it possibly can be said. thus the reed pen outline and peculiar touch of prout, which are frequently considered as mere manner, are in fact the only means of expressing the crumbling character of stone which the artist loves and desires. that character never has been expressed except by him, nor will it ever be expressed except by his means. and it is of the greatest importance to distinguish this kind of necessary and virtuous manner from the conventional manners very frequent in derivative schools, and always utterly to be contemned, wherein an artist, desiring nothing and feeling nothing, executes everything in his own particular mode, and teaches emulous scholars how to do with difficulty what might have been done with ease. it is true that there are sometimes instances in which great masters have employed different means of getting at the same end, but in these cases their choice has been always of those which to them appeared the shortest and most complete; their practice has never been prescribed by affectation or continued from habit, except so far as must be expected from such weakness as is common to all men; from hands that necessarily do most readily what they are most accustomed to do, and minds always liable to prescribe to the hands that which they can do most readily. the recollection of this will keep us from being offended with the loose and blotted handling of david cox. there is no other means by which his object could be attained. the looseness, coolness, and moisture of his herbage; the rustling crumpled freshness of his broad-leaved weeds; the play of pleasant light across his deep heathered moor or plashing sand; the melting of fragments of white mist into the dropping blue above; all this has not been fully recorded except by him, and what there is of accidental in his mode of reaching it, answers gracefully to the accidental part of nature herself. yet he is capable of more than this, and if he suffers himself uniformly to paint beneath his capability, that which began in feeling must necessarily end in manner. he paints too many small pictures, and perhaps has of late permitted his peculiar execution to be more manifest than is necessary. of this, he is himself the best judge. for almost all faults of this kind the public are answerable, not the painter. i have alluded to one of his grander works--such as i should wish always to see him paint--in the preface; another, i think still finer, a red sunset on distant hills, almost unequalled for truth and power of color, was painted by him several years ago, and remains, i believe, in his own possession. § . copley fielding. phenomena of distant color. the deserved popularity of copley fielding has rendered it less necessary for me to allude frequently to his works in the following pages than it would otherwise have been, more especially as my own sympathies and enjoyments are so entirely directed in the channel which his art has taken, that i am afraid of trusting them too far. yet i may, perhaps, be permitted to speak of myself so far as i suppose my own feelings to be representative of those of a class; and i suppose that there are many who, like myself, at some period of their life have derived more intense and healthy pleasure from the works of this painter than of any other whatsoever; healthy, because always based on his faithful and simple rendering of nature, and that of very lovely and impressive nature, altogether freed from coarseness, violence, or vulgarity. various references to that which he has attained will be found subsequently: what i am now about to say respecting what he has _not_ attained, is not in depreciation of what he has accomplished, but in regret at his suffering powers of a high order to remain in any measure dormant. he indulges himself too much in the use of crude color. pure cobalt, violent rose, and purple, are of frequent occurrence in his distances; pure siennas and other browns in his foregrounds, and that not as expressive of lighted but of local color. the reader will find in the following chapters that i am no advocate for subdued coloring; but crude color is not bright color, and there was never a noble or brilliant work of color yet produced, whose real form did not depend on the subduing of its tints rather than the elevation of them. it is perhaps one of the most difficult lessons to learn in art, that the warm colors of distance, even the most glowing, are subdued by the air so as in no wise to resemble the same color seen on a foreground object; so that the rose of sunset on clouds or mountains has a gray in it which distinguishes it from the rose color of the leaf of a flower; and the mingling of this gray of distance, without in the slightest degree taking away the expression of the intense and perfect purity of the color in and by itself, is perhaps the last attainment of the great landscape colorist. in the same way the blue of distance, however intense, is not the blue of a bright blue flower, and it is not distinguished from it by different texture merely, but by a certain intermixture and under current of warm color, which is altogether wanting in many of the blues of fielding's distances; and so of every bright distant color; while in foreground where colors may be, and ought to be, pure, yet that any of them are expressive of light is only to be felt where there is the accurate fitting of them to their relative shadows which we find in the works of giorgione, titian, tintoret, veronese, turner, and all other great colorists in proportion as they are so. of this fitting of light to shadow fielding is altogether regardless, so that his foregrounds are constantly assuming the aspect of overcharged local color instead of sunshine, and his figures and cattle look transparent. § . beauty of mountain foreground. again, the finishing of fielding's foregrounds, as regards their drawing, is minute without accuracy, multitudinous without thought, and confused without mystery. where execution is seen to be in measure accidental, as in cox, it may be received as representative of what is accidental in nature; but there is no part of fielding's foreground that is accidental; it is evidently worked and reworked, dotted, rubbed, and finished with great labor, and where the virtue, playfulness, and freedom of accident are thus removed, one of two virtues must be substituted for them. either we must have the deeply studied and imaginative foreground, of which every part is necessary to every other, and whose every spark of light is essential to the well-being of the whole, of which the foregrounds of turner in the liber studiorum are the most eminent examples i know, or else we must have in some measure the botanical faithfulness and realization of the early masters. neither of these virtues is to be found in fielding's. its features, though grouped with feeling, are yet scattered and inessential. any one of them might be altered in many ways without doing harm; there is no proportioned, necessary, unalterable relation among them; no evidence of invention or of careful thought, while on the other hand there is no botanical or geological accuracy, nor any point on which the eye may rest with thorough contentment in its realization. it seems strange that to an artist of so quick feeling the details of a mountain foreground should not prove irresistibly attractive, and entice him to greater accuracy of study. there is not a fragment of its living rock, nor a tuft of its heathery herbage, that has not adorable manifestations of god's working thereupon. the harmonies of color among the native lichens are better than titian's; the interwoven bells of campanula and heather are better than all the arabesques of the vatican; they need no improvement, arrangement, nor alteration, nothing but love, and every combination of them is different from every other, so that a painter need never repeat himself if he will only be true; yet all these sources of power have been of late entirely neglected by fielding; there is evidence through all his foregrounds of their being mere home inventions, and like all home inventions they exhibit perpetual resemblances and repetitions; the painter is evidently embarrassed without his rutted road in the middle, and his boggy pool at the side, which pool he has of late painted in hard lines of violent blue: there is not a stone, even of the nearest and most important, which has its real lichens upon it, or a studied form or anything more to occupy the mind than certain variations of dark and light browns. the same faults must be found with his present painting of foliage, neither the stems nor leafage being ever studied from nature; and this is the more to be regretted, because in the earlier works of the artist there was much admirable drawing, and even yet his power is occasionally developed in his larger works, as in a bolton abbey on canvas, which was,--i cannot say, exhibited,--but was in the rooms of the royal academy in .[ ] i should have made the preceding remarks with more hesitation and diffidence, but that, from a comparison of works of this kind with the slighter ornaments of the water-color rooms, it seems evident that the painter is not unaware of the deficiencies of these latter, and concedes something of what he would himself desire to what he has found to be the feeling of a majority of his admirers. this is a dangerous modesty, and especially so in these days when the judgment of the many is palpably as artificial as their feeling is cold. § . de wint. there is much that is instructive and deserving of high praise in the sketches of de wint. yet it is to be remembered that even the pursuit of truth, however determined, will have results limited and imperfect when its chief motive is the pride of being true; and i fear that these works, sublime as many of them have unquestionably been, testify more accuracy of eye and experience of color than exercise of thought. their truth of effect is often purchased at too great an expense by the loss of all beauty of form, and of the higher refinements of color; deficiencies, however, on which i shall not insist, since the value of the sketches, as far as they go, is great; they have done good service and set good example, and whatever their failings may be, there is evidence in them that the painter has always done what he believed to be right. § . influence of engraving. j. d. harding. the influence of the masters of whom we have hitherto spoken is confined to those who have access to their actual works, since the particular qualities in which they excel, are in no wise to be rendered by the engraver. those of whom we have next to speak are known to the public in a great measure by the help of the engraver; and while their influence is thus very far extended, their modes of working are perhaps, in some degree modified by the habitual reference to the future translation into light and shade; reference which is indeed beneficial in the care it induces respecting the arrangement of the chiaroscuro and the explanation of the forms, but which is harmful, so far as it involves a dependence rather on quantity of picturesque material than on substantial color or simple treatment, and as it admits of indolent diminution of size and slightness of execution. we should not be just to the present works of j. d. harding unless we took this influence into account. some years back none of our artists realized more laboriously, nor obtained more substantial color and texture; a large drawing in the possession of b. g. windus, esq., of tottenham, is of great value as an example of his manner at the period; a manner not only careful, but earnest, and free from any kind of affectation. partly from the habit of making slight and small drawings for engravers, and partly also, i imagine, from an overstrained seeking after appearances of dexterity in execution, his drawings have of late years become both less solid and less complete; not, however, without attaining certain brilliant qualities in exchange which are very valuable in the treatment of some of the looser portions of subject. of the extended knowledge and various powers of this painter, frequent instances are noted in the following pages. neither, perhaps, are rightly estimated among artists, owing to a certain coldness of sentiment in his choice of subject, and a continual preference of the picturesque to the impressive; proved perhaps in nothing so distinctly as in the little interest usually attached to his skies, which, if aerial and expressive of space and movement, content him, though destitute of story, power, or character: an exception must be made in favor of the very grand sunrise on the swiss alps, exhibited in , wherein the artist's real power was in some measure displayed, though i am convinced he is still capable of doing far greater things. so in his foliage he is apt to sacrifice the dignity of his trees to their wildness, and lose the forest in the copse, neither is he at all accurate enough in his expression of species or realization of near portions. these are deficiencies, be it observed, of sentiment, not of perception, as there are few who equal him in rapidity of seizure of material truth. § . samuel prout. early painting of architecture, how deficient. very extensive influence in modern art must be attributed to the works of samuel prout; and as there are some circumstances belonging to his treatment of architectural subject which it does not come within the sphere of the following chapters to examine, i shall endeavor to note the more important of them here. let us glance back for a moment to the architectural drawing of earlier times. before the time of the bellinis at venice, and of ghirlandajo at florence, i believe there are no examples of anything beyond conventional representation of architecture, often rich, quaint, and full of interest, as memmi's abstract of the duomo at florence at s^ta. maria novella; but not to be classed with any genuine efforts at representation. it is much to be regretted that the power and custom of introducing well-drawn architecture should have taken place only when architectural taste had been itself corrupted, and that the architecture introduced by bellini, ghirlandajo, francia, and the other patient and powerful workmen of the fifteenth century, is exclusively of the renaissance styles; while their drawing of it furnishes little that is of much interest to the architectural draughtsman as such, being always governed by a reference to its subordinate position, so that all forceful shadow and play of color are (most justly) surrendered for quiet and uniform hues of gray and chiaroscuro of extreme simplicity. whatever they chose to do they did with consummate grandeur, (note especially the chiaroscuro of the square window of ghirlandajo's which so much delighted vasari in s^ta. maria novella; and the daring management of a piece of the perspective in the salutation, opposite where he has painted a flight of stairs descending in front, though the picture is twelve feet above the eye); and yet this grandeur, in all these men, results rather from the general power obtained in their drawing of the figure than from any definite knowledge respecting the things introduced in these accessory parts; so that while in some points it is impossible for any painter to equal these accessories, unless he were in all respects as great as ghirlandajo or bellini, in others it is possible for him, with far inferior powers, to attain a representation both more accurate and more interesting. in order to arrive at the knowledge of these, we must briefly take note of a few of the modes in which architecture itself is agreeable to the mind, especially of the influence upon the character of the building which is to be attributed to the signs of age. § . effects of age upon buildings, how far desirable. it is evident, first, that if the design of the building be originally bad, the only virtue it can ever possess will be in signs of antiquity. all that in this world enlarges the sphere of affection or imagination is to be reverenced, and all those circumstances enlarge it which strengthen our memory or quicken our conception of the dead; hence it is no light sin to destroy anything that is old, more especially because, even with the aid of all obtainable records of the past, we, the living, occupy a space of too large importance and interest in our own eyes; we look upon the world too much as our own, too much as if we had possessed it and should possess it forever, and forget that it is a mere hostelry, of which we occupy the apartments for a time, which others better than we have sojourned in before, who are now where we should desire to be with them. fortunately for mankind, as some counterbalance to that wretched love of novelty which originates in selfishness, shallowness, and conceit, and which especially characterizes all vulgar minds, there is set in the deeper places of the heart such affection for the signs of age that the eye is delighted even by injuries which are the work of time; not but that there is also real and absolute beauty in the forms and colors so obtained, for which the original lines of the architecture, unless they have been very grand indeed, are well exchanged, so that there is hardly any building so ugly but that it may be made an agreeable object by such appearances. it would not be easy, for instance, to find a less pleasing piece of architecture than the portion of the front of queen's college, oxford, which has just been restored; yet i believe that few persons could have looked with total indifference on the mouldering and peeled surface of the oolite limestone previous to its restoration. if, however, the character of the building consist in minute detail or multitudinous lines, the evil or good effect of age upon it must depend in great measure on the kind of art, the material, and the climate. the parthenon, for instance, would be injured by any markings which interfered with the contours of its sculptures; and any lines of extreme purity, or colors of original harmony and perfection are liable to injury, and are ill exchanged for mouldering edges or brown weatherstains. but as all architecture is, or ought to be, meant to be durable, and to derive part of its glory from its antiquity, all art that is liable to mortal injury from effects of time is therein out of place, and this is another reason for the principle i have asserted in the second part, page . i do not at this instant recollect a single instance of any very fine building which is not improved up to a certain period by all its signs of age, after which period, like all other human works, it necessarily declines, its decline being in almost all ages and countries accelerated by neglect and abuse in its time of beauty, and alteration or restoration in its time of age. thus i conceive that all buildings dependent on color, whether of mosaic or painting, have their effect improved by the richness of the subsequent tones of age; for there are few arrangements of color so perfect but that they are capable of improvement by some softening and blending of this kind: with mosaic, the improvement may be considered as proceeding almost so long as the design can be distinctly seen; with painting, so long as the colors do not change or chip off. again, upon all forms of sculptural ornament, the effect of time is such, that if the design be poor, it will enrich it; if overcharged, simplify it; if harsh and violent, soften it; if smooth and obscure, exhibit it; whatever faults it may have are rapidly disguised, whatever virtue it has still shines and steals out in the mellow light; and this to such an extent, that the artist is always liable to be tempted to the drawing of details in old buildings as of extreme beauty, which look cold and hard in their architectural lines; and i have never yet seen any restoration or cleaned portion of a building whose effect was not inferior to the weathered parts, even to those of which the design had in some parts almost disappeared. on the front of the church of san michele at lucca, the mosaics have fallen out of half the columns, and lie in weedy ruin beneath; in many, the frost has torn large masses of the entire coating away, leaving a scarred unsightly surface. two of the shafts of the upper star window are eaten entirely away by the sea wind, the rest have lost their proportions, the edges of the arches are hacked into deep hollows, and cast indented shadows on the weed-grown wall. the process has gone too far, and yet i doubt not but that this building is seen to greater advantage now than when first built, always with exception of one circumstance, that the french shattered the lower wheel window, and set up in front of it an escutcheon with "libertas" upon it, which abomination of desolation, the lucchese have not yet had human-heartedness enough to pull down. putting therefore the application of architecture as an accessory out of the question, and supposing our object to be the exhibition of the most impressive qualities of the building itself, it is evidently the duty of the draughtsman to represent it under those conditions, and with that amount of age-mark upon it which may best exalt and harmonize the sources of its beauty: this is no pursuit of mere picturesqueness, it is true following out of the ideal character of the building; nay, far greater dilapidation than this may in portions be exhibited, for there are beauties of other kinds, not otherwise attainable, brought out by advanced dilapidation; but when the artist suffers the mere love of ruinousness to interfere with his perception of the _art_ of the building, and substitutes rude fractures and blotting stains for all its fine chiselling and determined color, he has lost the end of his own art. § . effects of light, how necessary to the understanding of detail. so far of aging; next of effects of light and color. it is, i believe, hardly enough observed among architects that the same decorations are of totally different effect according to their position and the time of day. a moulding which is of value on a building facing south, where it takes deep shadows from steep sun, may be utterly ineffective if placed west or east; and a moulding which is chaste and intelligible in shade on a north side, may be grotesque, vulgar, or confused when it takes black shadows on the south. farther, there is a time of day in which every architectural decoration is seen to best advantage, and certain times in which its peculiar force and character are best explained; of these niceties the architect takes little cognizance, as he must in some sort calculate on the effect of ornament at all times; but to the artist they are of infinite importance, and especially for this reason, that there is always much detail on buildings which cannot be drawn as such, which is too far off, or too minute, and which must consequently be set down in short-hand of some kind or another; and, as it were, an abstract, more or less philosophical, made of its general heads. of the style of this abstract, of the lightness, confusion, and mystery necessary in it, i have spoken elsewhere; at present i insist only on the arrangement and matter of it. all good ornament and all good architecture are capable of being put into short-hand; that is, each has a perfect system of parts, principal and subordinate, of which, even when the complemental details vanish in distance, the system and anatomy yet remain visible so long as anything is visible; so that the divisions of a beautiful spire shall be known as beautiful even till their last line vanishes in blue mist, and the effect of a well-designed moulding shall be visibly disciplined, harmonious, and inventive, as long as it is seen to be a moulding at all. now the power of the artist of marking this character depends not on his complete knowledge of the design, but on his experimental knowledge of its salient and bearing parts, and of the effects of light and shadow, by which their saliency is best told. he must therefore be prepared, according to his subject, to use light, steep or level, intense or feeble, and out of the resulting chiaroscuro select those peculiar and hinging points on which the rest are based, and by which all else that is essential may be explained. the thoughtful command of all these circumstances constitutes the real architectural draughtsman; the habits of executing everything either under one kind of effect or in one manner, or of using unintelligible and meaningless abstracts of beautiful designs, are those which must commonly take the place of it and are the most extensively esteemed.[ ] § . architectural painting of gentile bellini and vittor carpaccio; let us now proceed with our review of those artists who have devoted themselves more peculiarly to architectural subject. foremost among them stand gentile bellini and vittor carpaccio, to whom we are indebted for the only existing faithful statements of the architecture of old venice, and who are the only authorities to whom we can trust in conjecturing the former beauty of those few desecrated fragments, the last of which are now being rapidly swept away by the idiocy of modern venetians. nothing can be more careful, nothing more delicately finished, or more dignified in feeling than the works of both these men; and as architectural evidence they are the best we could have had, all the gilded parts being gilt in the picture, so that there can be no mistake or confusion of them with yellow color or light, and all the frescoes or mosaics given with the most absolute precision and fidelity. at the same time they are by no means examples of perfect architectural drawing; there is little light and shade in them of any kind, and none whatever of the thoughtful observance of temporary effect of which we have just been speaking; so that, in rendering the character of the relieved parts, their solidity, depth, or gloom, the representation fails altogether, and it is moreover lifeless from its very completion, both the signs of age and the effects of use and habitation being utterly rejected; rightly so, indeed, in these instances, (all the architecture of these painters being in background to religious subject,) but wrongly so, if we look to the architecture alone. neither is there anything like aerial perspective attempted; the employment of actual gold in the decoration of all the distances, and the entire realization of their details, as far as is possible on the scale compelled by perspective, being alone sufficient to prevent this, except in the hands of painters far more practised in effect than either gentile or carpaccio. but with all these discrepancies, gentile bellini's church of st. mark's is the best church of st. mark's that has ever been painted, so far as i know; and i believe the reconciliation of true aerial perspective and chiaroscuro with the splendor and dignity obtained by the real gilding and elaborate detail, is a problem yet to be accomplished. with the help of the daguerreotype, and the lessons of color given by the later venetians, we ought now to be able to accomplish it, more especially as the right use of gold has been shown us by the greatest master of effect whom venice herself produced, tintoret, who has employed it with infinite grace on the steps ascended by the young madonna, in his large picture in the church of the madonna dell' orto. perugino uses it also with singular grace, often employing it for golden light on distant trees, and continually on the high light of hair, and that without losing relative distances. § . and of the venetians generally. the great group of venetian painters who brought landscape art, for that time, to its culminating point, have left, as we have already seen, little that is instructive in architectural painting. the causes of this i cannot comprehend, for neither titian nor tintoret appears to despise anything that affords them either variety of form or of color, the latter especially condescending to very trivial details,--as in the magnificent carpet painting of the doge mocenigo; so that it might have been expected that in the rich colors of st. mark's, and the magnificent and fantastic masses of the byzantine palaces, they would have found where-upon to dwell with delighted elaboration. this is, however, never the case, and although frequently compelled to introduce portions of venetian locality in their backgrounds, such portions are always treated in a most hasty and faithless manner, missing frequently all character of the building, and never advanced to realization. in titian's picture of faith, the view of venice below is laid in so rapidly and slightly, the houses all leaning this way and that, and of no color, the sea a dead gray green, and the ship-sails mere dashes of the brush, that the most obscure of turner's venices would look substantial beside it; while in the very picture of tintoret in which he has dwelt so elaborately on the carpet, he has substituted a piece of ordinary renaissance composition for st. mark's, and in the background has chosen the sansovino side of the piazzetta, treating even that so carelessly as to lose all the proportion and beauty of its design, and so flimsily that the line of the distant sea which has been first laid in, is seen through all the columns. evidences of magnificent power of course exist in whatever he touches, but his full power is never turned in this direction. more space is allowed to his architecture by paul veronese, but it is still entirely suggestive, and would be utterly false except as a frame or background for figures. the same may be said with respect to raffaelle and the roman school. § . fresco painting of the venetian exteriors. canaletto. if, however, these men laid architecture little under contribution to their own art, they made their own art a glorious gift to architecture, and the walls of venice, which before, i believe, had received color only in arabesque patterns, were lighted with human life by giorgione, titian, tintoret, and veronese. of the works of tintoret and titian, nothing now, i believe, remains; two figures of giorgione's are still traceable on the fondaco de' tedeschi, one of which, singularly uninjured, is seen from far above and below the rialto, flaming like the reflection of a sunset. two figures of veronese were also traceable till lately, the head and arms of one still remain, and some glorious olive-branches which were beside the other; the figure having been entirely effaced by an inscription in large black letters on a whitewash tablet which we owe to the somewhat inopportunely expressed enthusiasm of the inhabitants of the district in favor of their new pastor.[ ] judging, however, from the rate at which destruction is at present advancing, and seeing that, in about seven or eight years more, venice will have utterly lost every external claim to interest, except that which attaches to the group of buildings immediately around st. mark's place, and to the larger churches, it may be conjectured that the greater part of her present degradation has taken place, at any rate, within the last forty years. let the reader with such scraps of evidence as may still be gleaned from under the stucco and paint of the italian committees of taste, and from among the drawing-room innovations of english and german residents restore venice in his imagination to some resemblance of what she must have been before her fall. let him, looking from lido or fusina, replace in the forest of towers those of the hundred and sixty-six churches which the french threw down; let him sheet her walls with purple and scarlet, overlay her minarets with gold,[ ] cleanse from their pollution those choked canals which are now the drains of hovels, where they were once vestibules of palaces, and fill them with gilded barges and bannered ships; finally, let him withdraw from this scene, already so brilliant, such sadness and stain as had been set upon it by the declining energies of more than half a century, and he will see venice as it was seen by canaletto; whose miserable, virtueless, heartless mechanism, accepted as the representation of such various glory, is, both in its existence and acceptance, among the most striking signs of the lost sensation and deadened intellect of the nation at that time; a numbness and darkness more without hope than that of the grave itself, holding and wearing yet the sceptre and the crown like the corpses of the etruscan kings, ready to sink into ashes at the first unbarring of the door of the sepulchre. [illustration: casa contarini fasan, venice. from a drawing by ruskin.] the mannerism of canaletto is the most degraded that i know in the whole range of art. professing the most servile and mindless imitation, it imitates nothing but the blackness of the shadows; it gives no one single architectural ornament, however near, so much form as might enable us even to guess at its actual one; and this i say not rashly, for i shall prove it by placing portions of detail accurately copied from canaletto side by side with engravings from the daguerreotype; it gives the buildings neither their architectural beauty nor their ancestral dignity, for there is no texture of stone nor character of age in canaletto's touch; which is invariably a violent, black, sharp, ruled penmanlike line, as far removed from the grace of nature as from her faintness and transparency; and for his truth of color, let the single fact of his having omitted _all record, whatsoever, of the frescoes_ whose wrecks are still to be found at least on one half of the unrestored palaces, and, with still less excusableness, all record of the magnificent colored marbles of many whose greens and purples are still undimmed upon the casa dario, casa bianca capello, and multitudes besides, speak for him in this respect. let it be observed that i find no fault with canaletto, for his want of poetry, of feeling, of artistical thoughtfulness in treatment, or of the various other virtues which he does not so much as profess. he professes nothing but colored daguerreotypeism. let us have it: most precious and to be revered it would be: let us have fresco where fresco was, and that copied faithfully; let us have carving where carving is, and that architecturally true. i have seen daguerreotypes in which every figure and rosette, and crack and stain, and fissure are given on a scale of an inch to canaletto's three feet. what excuse is there to be offered for his omitting, on that scale, as i shall hereafter show, all statement of such ornament whatever? among the flemish schools, exquisite imitations of architecture are found constantly, and that not with canaletto's vulgar, black exaggeration of shadow, but in the most pure and silvery and luminous grays. i have little pleasure in such pictures; but i blame not those who have more; they are what they profess to be, and they are wonderful and instructive, and often graceful, and even affecting, but canaletto possesses no virtue except that of dexterous imitation of commonplace light and shade, and perhaps, with the exception of salvator, no artist has ever fettered his unfortunate admirers more securely from all healthy or vigorous perception of truth, or been of more general detriment to all subsequent schools. § . expression of the effects of age on architecture by s. prout. neither, however, by the flemings, nor by any other of the elder schools, was the effect of age or of human life upon architecture ever adequately expressed. what ruins they drew looked as if broken down on purpose, what weeds they put on seemed put on for ornament. their domestic buildings had never any domesticity, the people looked out of their windows evidently to be drawn, or came into the street only to stand there forever. a peculiar studiousness infected all accident; bricks fell out methodically, windows opened and shut by rule; stones were chipped at regular intervals; everything that happened seemed to have been expected before; and above all, the street had been washed and the houses dusted expressly to be painted in their best. we owe to prout, i believe, the first perception, and certainly the only existing expression of precisely the characters which were wanting to old art, of that feeling which results from the influence among the noble lines of architecture, of the rent and the rust, the fissure, the lichen, and the weed, and from the writing upon the pages of ancient walls of the confused hieroglyphics of human history. i suppose, from the deserved popularity of the artist, that the strange pleasure which i find myself in the deciphering of these is common to many; the feeling has been rashly and thoughtlessly contemned as mere love of the picturesque; there is, as i have above shown, a deeper moral in it, and we owe much, i am not prepared to say how much, to the artist by whom pre-eminently it has been excited. for, numerous as have been his imitators, extended as his influence, and simple as his means and manner, there has yet appeared nothing at all to equal him; there is _no_ stone drawing, _no_ vitality of architecture like prout's. i say not this rashly, i have mackenzie in my eye and many other capital imitators; and i have carefully reviewed the architectural work of the academicians, often most accurate and elaborate. i repeat, there is nothing but the work of prout which is true, living, or right in its general impression, and nothing, therefore, so inexhaustibly agreeable. faults he has, manifold, easily detected, and much declaimed against by second-rate artists; but his excellence no one has ever touched, and his lithographic work, (sketches in flanders and germany,) which was, i believe, the first of the kind, still remains the most valuable of all, numerous and elaborate as its various successors have been. the second series (in italy and switzerland) was of less value, the drawings seemed more laborious, and had less of the life of the original sketches, being also for the most part of subjects less adapted for the development of the artist's peculiar powers; but both are fine, and the brussels, louvain, cologne, and nuremberg, subjects of the one, together with the tours, amboise, geneva, and sion of the other, exhibit substantial qualities of stone and wood drawing, together with an ideal appreciation of the present active vital being of the cities, such as nothing else has ever approached. their value is much increased by the circumstance of their being drawn by the artist's own hand upon the stone, and by the consequent manly recklessness of subordinate parts, (in works of this kind, be it remembered, much _is_ subordinate,) which is of all characters of execution the most refreshing. note the scrawled middle tint of the wall behind the gothic well at ratisbonne, and compare this manly piece of work with the wretched smoothness of recent lithography. let it not be thought that there is any inconsistency between what i say here and what i have said respecting finish. this piece of dead wall is as much finished in relation to its _function_ as a wall of ghirlandajo's or leonardo's in relation to theirs, and the refreshing quality is the same in both, and manifest in _all_ great masters, without exception, that of the utter regardlessness of the means so that their end be reached. the same kind of scrawling occurs often in the shade of raffaelle. § . his excellent composition and color. it is not only, however, by his peculiar stone touch nor perception of human character that he is distinguished. he is the most dexterous of all our artists in a certain kind of composition. no one can place figures like him, except turner. it is one thing to know where a piece of blue or white is wanted, and another to make the wearer of the blue apron or white cap come there, and not look as if it were against her will. prout's streets are the only streets that are accidentally crowded, his markets are the only markets where one feels inclined to get out of the way. with others we feel the figures so right where they are, that we have no expectation of their going anywhere else, and approve of the position of the man with the wheelbarrow, without the slightest fear of his running against our legs. one other merit he has, far less generally acknowledged than it should be: he is among our most sunny and substantial colorists. much conventional color occurs in his inferior pictures (for he is very unequal) and some in all; but portions are always to be found of quality so luminous and pure that i have found these works the only ones capable of bearing juxtaposition with turner and hunt, who invariably destroy everything else that comes within range of them. his most beautiful tones occur in those drawings in which there is prevalent and powerful warm gray, his most failing ones in those of sandy red. on his deficiencies i shall not insist, because i am not prepared to say how far it is possible for him to avoid them. we have never seen the reconciliation of the peculiar characters he has obtained with the accurate following out of architectural detail. with his present modes of execution, farther fidelity is impossible, nor has any other mode of execution yet obtained the same results; and though much is unaccomplished by him in certain subjects, and something of over-mannerism may be traced in his treatment of others, as especially in his mode of expressing the decorative parts of greek or roman architecture, yet in his own peculiar gothic territory, where the spirit of the subject itself is somewhat rude and grotesque, his abstract of decoration has more of the spirit of the reality than far more laborious imitation. the spirit of the flemish hotel de ville and decorated street architecture has never been even in the slightest degree felt or conveyed except by him, and by him, to my mind, faultlessly and absolutely; and though his interpretation of architecture that contains more refined art in its details is far less satisfactory, still it is impossible, while walking on his favorite angle of the piazzetta at venice, either to think of any other artist than prout or _not_ to think of _him_. § . modern architectural painting generally. g. cattermole. many other dexterous and agreeable architectural artists we have of various degrees of merit, but of all of whom, it may be generally said, that they draw hats, faces, cloaks, and caps much better than prout, but figures not so well; that they draw walls and windows but not cities, mouldings and buttresses but not cathedrals. joseph nash's work on the architecture of the middle ages is, however, valuable, and i suppose that haghe's works may be depended on for fidelity. but it appears very strange that a workman capable of producing the clever drawings he has, from time to time, sent to the new society of painters in water colors, should publish lithographs so conventional, forced, and lifeless. it is not without hesitation, that i mention a name respecting which the reader may already have been surprised at my silence, that of g. cattermole. there are signs in his works of very peculiar gifts, and perhaps also of powerful genius; their deficiencies i should willingly attribute to the advice of ill-judging friends, and to the applause of a public satisfied with shallow efforts, if brilliant; yet i cannot but think it one necessary characteristic of all true genius to be misled by no such false fires. the antiquarian feeling of cattermole is pure, earnest, and natural; and i think his imagination originally vigorous, certainly his fancy, his grasp of momentary passion considerable, his sense of action in the human body vivid and ready. but no original talent, however brilliant, can sustain its energy when the demands upon it are constant, and all legitimate support and food withdrawn. i do not recollect in any, even of the most important of cattermole's works, so much as a fold of drapery studied out from nature. violent conventionalism of light and shade, sketchy forms continually less and less developed, the walls and the faces drawn with the same stucco color, alike opaque, and all the shades on flesh, dress, or stone, laid in with the same arbitrary brown, forever tell the same tale of a mind wasting its strength and substance in the production of emptiness, and seeking, by more and more blindly hazarded handling, to conceal the weakness which the attempt at finish would betray. this tendency of late, has been painfully visible in his architecture. some drawings made several years ago for an annual illustrative of scott's works were for the most part pure and finely felt--(though irrelevant to our present subject, a fall of the clyde should be noticed, admirable for breadth and grace of foliage, and for the bold sweeping of the water, and another subject of which i regret that i can only judge by the engraving; glendearg at twilight--the monk eustace chased by christie of the clint hill--which i think must have been one of the sweetest pieces of simple border hill feeling ever painted)--and about that time his architecture, though always conventionally brown in the shadows, was generally well drawn, and always powerfully conceived. since then, he has been tending gradually through exaggeration to caricature, and vainly endeavoring to attain by inordinate bulk of decorated parts, that dignity which is only to be reached by purity of proportion and majesty of line. § . the evil in an archæological point of view of misapplied invention in architectural subject. it has pained me deeply, to see an artist of so great original power indulging in childish fantasticism and exaggeration, and substituting for the serious and subdued work of legitimate imagination, monstre machicolations and colossal cusps and crockets. while there is so much beautiful architecture daily in process of destruction around us, i cannot but think it treason to _imagine_ anything; at least, if we must have composition, let the design of the artist be such as the architect would applaud. but it is surely very grievous, that while our idle artists are helping their vain inventions by the fall of sponges on soiled paper, glorious buildings with the whole intellect and history of centuries concentrated in them, are suffered to fall into unrecorded ruin. a day does not now pass in italy without the destruction of some mighty monument; the streets of all her cities echo to the hammer, half of her fair buildings lie in separate stones about the places of their foundation; would not time be better spent in telling us the truth about these perishing remnants of majestic thought, than in perpetuating the ill-digested fancies of idle hours? it is, i repeat, treason to the cause of art for any man to invent, unless he invents something better than has been invented before, or something differing in kind. there is room enough for invention in the pictorial treatment of what exists. there is no more honorable exhibition of imaginative power, than in the selection of such place, choice of such treatment, introduction of such incident, as may produce a noble picture without deviation from one line of the actual truth; and such i believe to be, indeed, in the end the most advantageous, as well as the most modest direction of the invention, for i recollect no single instance of architectural composition by any men except such as leonardo or veronese, who could design their architecture thoroughly before they painted it, which has not a look of inanity and absurdity. the best landscapes and the best architectural studies have been views; and i would have the artist take shame to himself in the exact degree in which he finds himself obliged in the production of his picture to lose any, even of the smallest parts or most trivial hues which bear a part in the great impression made by the reality. the difference between the drawing of the architect and artist[ ] ought never to be, as it now commonly is, the difference between lifeless formality and witless license; it ought to be between giving the mere lines and measures of a building, and giving those lines and measures with the impression and soul of it besides. all artists should be ashamed of themselves when they find they have not the power of being true; the right wit of drawing is like the right wit of conversation, not hyperbole, not violence, not frivolity, only well expressed, laconic truth. § . works of david roberts: their fidelity and grace. among the members of the academy, we have at present only one professedly architectural draughtsman of note, david roberts, whose reputation is probably farther extended on the continent than that of any other of our artists, except landseer. i am not certain, however, that i have any reason to congratulate either of my countrymen upon this their european estimation; for i think it exceedingly probable that in both instances it is exclusively based on their defects; and in the case of mr. roberts, in particular, there has of late appeared more ground for it than is altogether desirable in a smoothness and over-finish of texture which bears dangerous fellowship with the work of our gallic neighbors. the fidelity of intention and honesty of system of roberts have, however, always been meritorious; his drawing of architecture is dependent on no unintelligible lines, or blots, or substituted types: the main lines of the real design are always there, and its hollowness and undercuttings given with exquisite feeling; his sense of solidity of form is very peculiar, leading him to dwell with great delight on the roundings of edges and angles; his execution is dexterous and delicate, singularly so in oil, and his sense of chiaroscuro refined. but he has never done himself justice, and suffers his pictures to fall below the rank they should assume, by the presence of several marring characters, which i shall name, because it is perfectly in his power to avoid them. in looking over the valuable series of drawing of the holy land, which we owe to mr. roberts, we cannot but be amazed to find how frequently it has happened that there was something very white immediately in the foreground, and something very black exactly behind it. the same thing happens perpetually with mr. roberts's pictures; a white column is always coming out of a blue mist, or a white stone out of a green pool, or a white monument out of a brown recess, and the artifice is not always concealed with dexterity. this is unworthy of so skilful a composer, and it has destroyed the impressiveness as well as the color of some of his finest works. it shows a poverty of conception, which appears to me to arise from a deficient habit of study. it will be remembered that of the sketches for this work, several times exhibited in london, every one was executed in the same manner, and with about the same degree of completion: being all of them accurate records of the main architectural lines, the shapes of the shadows, and the remnants of artificial color, obtained, by means of the same grays, throughout, and of the same yellow (a singularly false and cold though convenient color) touched upon the lights. as far as they went, nothing could be more valuable than these sketches, and the public, glancing rapidly at their general and graceful effects, could hardly form anything like an estimate of the endurance and determination which must have been necessary in such a climate to obtain records so patient, entire, and clear, of details so multitudinous as (especially) the hieroglyphics of the egyptian temples; an endurance which perhaps only artists can estimate, and for which we owe a debt of gratitude to mr. roberts most difficult to discharge. but if these sketches were all that the artist brought home, whatever value is to be attached to them as statements of fact, they are altogether insufficient for the producing of pictures. i saw among them no single instance of a downright study; of a study in which the real hues and shades of sky and earth had been honestly realized or attempted; nor were there, on the other hand, any of those invaluable-blotted-five-minutes works which record the unity of some single and magnificent impressions. hence the pictures which have been painted from these sketches have been as much alike in their want of impressiveness as the sketches themselves, and have never borne the living aspect of the egyptian light; it has always been impossible to say whether the red in them (not a pleasant one) was meant for hot sunshine or for red sandstone--their power has been farther destroyed by the necessity the artist seems to feel himself under of eking out their effect by points of bright foreground color, and thus we have been encumbered with caftans, pipes, scymetars, and black hair, when all that we wanted was a lizard, or an ibis. it is perhaps owing to this want of earnestness in study rather than to deficiency of perception, that the coloring of this artist is commonly untrue. some time ago when he was painting spanish subjects, his habit was to bring out his whites in relief from transparent bituminous browns, which though not exactly right in color, were at any rate warm and agreeable; but of late his color has become cold, waxy, and opaque, and in his deep shades he sometimes permits himself the use of a violent black which is altogether unjustifiable. a picture of roslin chapel exhibited in , showed this defect in the recess to which the stairs descend, in an extravagant degree; and another exhibited in the british institution, instead of showing the exquisite crumbling and lichenous texture of the roslin stone, was polished to as vapid smoothness as every french historical picture. the general feebleness of the effect is increased by the insertion of the figures as violent pieces of local color unaffected by the light and unblended with the hues around them, and bearing evidence of having been painted from models or draperies in the dead light of a room instead of sunshine. on these deficiencies i should not have remarked, but that by honest and determined painting from and of nature, it is perfectly in the power of the artist to supply them; and it is bitterly to be regretted that the accuracy and elegance of his work should not be aided by that genuineness of hue and effect which can only be given by the uncompromising effort to paint not a fine picture but an impressive and known _verity_. the two artists whose works it remains for us to review, are men who have presented us with examples of the treatment of every kind of subject, and among the rest with portions of architecture which the best of our exclusively architectural draughtsmen could not excel. § . clarkson stanfield. the frequent references made to the works of clarkson stanfield throughout the subsequent pages render it less necessary for me to speak of him here at any length. he is the leader of the english realists, and perhaps among the more remarkable of his characteristics is the look of common-sense and rationality which his compositions will always bear when opposed to any kind of affectation. he appears to think of no other artist. what he has learned, has been from his own acquaintance with and affection for the steep hills and the deep sea; and his modes of treatment are alike removed from sketchiness or incompletion, and from exaggeration or effort. the somewhat over-prosaic tone of his subjects is rather a condescension to what he supposes to be public feeling, than a sign of want of feeling in himself; for in some of his sketches from nature or from fancy, i have seen powers and perceptions manifested of a far higher order than any that are traceable in his academy works, powers which i think him much to be blamed for checking. the portion of his pictures usually most defective in this respect is the sky, which is apt to be cold and uninventive, always well drawn, but with a kind of hesitation in the clouds whether it is to be fair or foul weather; they having neither the joyfulness of rest, nor the majesty of storm. their color is apt also to verge on a morbid purple, as was eminently the case in the large picture of the wreck on the coast of holland exhibited in , a work in which both his powers and faults were prominently manifested, the picture being full of good painting, but wanting in its entire appeal. there was no feeling of wreck about it; and, but for the damage about her bowsprit, it would have been impossible for a landsman to say whether the hull was meant for a wreck or a guardship. nevertheless, it is always to be recollected, that in subjects of this kind it is probable that much escapes us in consequence of our want of knowledge, and that to the eye of the seaman much may be of interest and value which to us appears cold. at all events, this healthy and rational regard of things is incomparably preferable to the dramatic absurdities which weaker artists commit in matters marine; and from copper-colored sunsets on green waves sixty feet high, with cauliflower breakers, and ninepin rocks; from drowning on planks, and starving on rafts, and lying naked on beaches, it is really refreshing to turn to a surge of stanfield's true salt, serviceable, unsentimental sea. it would be well, however, if he would sometimes take a higher flight. the castle of ischia gave him a grand subject, and a little more invention in the sky, a little less muddiness in the rocks, and a little more savageness in the sea, would have made it an impressive picture; it just misses the sublime, yet is a fine work, and better engraved than usual by the art union. one fault we cannot but venture to find, even in our own extreme ignorance, with mr. stanfield's boats; they never look weather-beaten. there is something peculiarly precious in the rusty, dusty, tar-trickled, fishy, phosphorescent brown of an old boat, and when this has just dipped under a wave and rises to the sunshine it is enough to drive giorgione to despair. i have never seen any effort at this by stanfield; his boats always look new painted and clean; witness especially the one before the ship in the wreck picture above noticed; and there is some such absence of a right sense of color in other portions of his subject; even his fishermen have always clean jackets and unsoiled caps, and his very rocks are lichenless. and, by the way, this ought to be noted respecting modern painters in general, that they have not a proper sense of the value of dirt; cottage children never appear but in fresh got-up caps and aprons, and white-handed beggars excite compassion in unexceptionable rags. in reality, almost all the colors of things associated with human life derive something of their expression and value from the tones of impurity, and so enhance the value of the entirely pure tints of nature herself. of stanfield's rock and mountain drawing enough will be said hereafter. his foliage is inferior; his architecture admirably drawn, but commonly wanting in color. his picture of the doge's palace at venice was quite clay-cold and untrue. of late he has shown a marvellous predilection for the realization, even to actually relieved texture, of old worm-eaten wood; we trust he will not allow such fancies to carry him too far. § . j. m. w. turner. force of national feeling in all great painters. the name i have last to mention is that of j. m. w. turner. i do not intend to speak of this artist at present in general terms, because my constant practice throughout this work is to say, when i speak of an artist at all, the very truth of what i believe and feel respecting him; and the truth of what i believe and feel respecting turner would appear in this place, unsupported by any proof, mere rhapsody. i shall therefore here confine myself to a rapid glance at the relations of his past and present works, and to some notice of what he has failed of accomplishing: the greater part of the subsequent chapters will be exclusively devoted to the examination of the new fields over which he has extended the range of landscape art. it is a fact more universally acknowledged than enforced or acted upon, that all great painters, of whatever school, have been great only in their rendering of what they had seen and felt from early childhood; and that the greatest among them have been the most frank in acknowledging this their inability to treat anything successfully but that with which they had been familiar. the madonna of raffaelle was born on the urbino mountains, ghirlandajo's is a florentine, bellini's a venetian; there is not the slightest effort on the part of any one of these great men to paint her as a jewess. it is not the place here to insist farther on a point so simple and so universally demonstrable. expression, character, types of countenance, costume, color, and accessories are with all great painters whatsoever those of their native land, and that frankly and entirely, without the slightest attempt at modification; and i assert fearlessly that it is impossible that it should ever be otherwise, and that no man ever painted or ever will paint well anything but what he has early and long seen, early and long felt, and early and long loved. how far it is possible for the mind of one nation or generation to be healthily modified and taught by the work of another, i presume not to determine; but it depends upon whether the energy of the mind which receives the instruction be sufficient, while it takes out of what it feeds upon that which is universal and common to all nature, to resist all warping from national or temporary peculiarities. nino pisano got nothing but good, the modern french nothing but evil, from the study of the antique; but nino pisano had a god and a character. all artists who have attempted to assume, or in their weakness have been affected by, the national peculiarities of other times and countries, have instantly, whatever their original power, fallen to third-rate rank, or fallen altogether, and have invariably lost their birthright and blessing, lost their power over the human heart, lost all capability of teaching or benefiting others. compare the hybrid classification of wilson with the rich english purity of gainsborough; compare the recent exhibition of middle-age cartoons for the houses of parliament with the works of hogarth; compare the sickly modern german imitations of the great italians with albert durer and holbein; compare the vile classicality of canova and the modern italians with mino da fiesole, luca della robbia, and andrea del verrocchio. the manner of nicolo poussin is said to be greek--it may be so; this only i know, that it is heartless and profitless. the severity of the rule, however, extends not in full force to the nationality, but only to the visibility of things; for it is very possible for an artist of powerful mind to throw himself well into the feeling of foreign nations of his own time. thus john lewis has been eminently successful in his seizing of spanish character. yet it may be doubted if the seizure be such as spaniards themselves would acknowledge; it is probably of the habits of the people more than their hearts; continued efforts of this kind, especially if their subjects be varied, assuredly end in failure; lewis, who seemed so eminently penetrative in spain, sent nothing from italy but complexions and costumes, and i expect no good from his stay in egypt. english artists are usually entirely ruined by residence in italy, but for this there are collateral causes which it is not here the place to examine. be this as it may, and whatever success may be attained in pictures of slight and unpretending aim, of genre, as they are called, in the rendering of foreign character, of this i am certain, that whatever is to be truly great and affecting must have on it the strong stamp of the native land; not a law this, but a necessity, from the intense hold on their country of the affections of all truly great men; all classicality, all middle-age patent reviving, is utterly vain and absurd; if we are now to do anything great, good, awful, religious, it must be got out of our own little island, and out of this year , railroads and all: if a british painter, i say this in earnest seriousness, cannot make historical characters out of the british house of peers, he cannot paint history; and if he cannot make a madonna of a british girl of the nineteenth century, he cannot paint one at all. § . influence of this feeling on the choice of landscape subject. the rule, of course, holds in landscape; yet so far less authoritatively, that the material nature of all countries and times is in many points actually, and in all, in principle, the same; so that feelings educated in cumberland, may find their food in switzerland, and impressions first received among the rocks of cornwall, be recalled upon the precipices of genoa. add to this actual sameness, the power of every great mind to possess itself of the spirit of things once presented to it, and it is evident, that little limitation can be set to the landscape painter as to the choice of his field; and that the law of nationality will hold with him only so far as a certain joyfulness and completion will be by preference found in those parts of his subject which remind him of his own land. but if he attempt to impress on his landscapes any other spirit than that he has felt, and to make them landscapes of other times, it is all over with him, at least, in the degree in which such reflected moonshine takes place of the genuine light of the present day. the reader will at once perceive how much trouble this simple principle will save both the painter and the critic; it at once sets aside the whole school of common composition, and exonerates us from the labor of minutely examining any landscape which has nymphs or philosophers in it. it is hardly necessary for us to illustrate this principle by any reference to the works of early landscape painters, as i suppose it is universally acknowledged with respect to them; titian being the most remarkable instance of the influence of the native air on a strong mind, and claude, of that of the classical poison on a weak one; but it is very necessary to keep it in mind in reviewing the works of our great modern landscape painter. § . its peculiar manifestation in turner. i do not know in what district of england turner first or longest studied, but the scenery whose influence i can trace most definitely throughout his works, varied as they are, is that of yorkshire. of all his drawings, i think, those of the yorkshire series have the most heart in them, the most affectionate, simple, unwearied, serious finishing of truth. there is in them little seeking after effect, but a strong love of place, little exhibition of the artist's own powers or peculiarities, but intense appreciation of the smallest local minutiæ. these drawings have unfortunately changed hands frequently, and have been abused and ill treated by picture dealers and cleaners; the greater number of them, are now mere wrecks. i name them not as instances, but as proofs of the artist's study in this district; for the affection to which they owe their excellence, must have been grounded long years before. it is to be traced, not only in these drawings of the places themselves, but in the peculiar love of the painter for rounded forms of hills; not but that he is right in this on general principles, for i doubt not, that, with his peculiar feeling for beauty of line, his hills would have been rounded still, even if he had studied first among the peaks of cadore; but rounded to the same extent and with the same delight in their roundness, they would not have been. it is, i believe, to those broad wooded steeps and swells of the yorkshire downs that we in part owe the singular massiveness that prevails in turner's mountain drawing, and gives it one of its chief elements of grandeur. let the reader open the liber studiorum, and compare the painter's enjoyment of the lines in the ben arthur, with his comparative uncomfortableness among those of the aiguilles about the mer de glace. great as he is, those peaks would have been touched very differently by a savoyard as great as he. i am in the habit of looking to the yorkshire drawings, as indicating one of the culminating points in turner's career. in these he attained the highest degree of what he had up to that time attempted, namely, finish and quantity of form united with expression of atmosphere, and light without color. his early drawings are singularly instructive in this definiteness and simplicity of aim. no complicated or brilliant color is ever thought of in them; they are little more than exquisite studies in light and shade, very green blues being used for the shadows, and golden browns for the lights. the difficulty and treachery of color being thus avoided, the artist was able to bend his whole mind upon the drawing, and thus to attain such decision, delicacy, and completeness as have never in any wise been equalled, and as might serve him for a secure foundation in all after experiments. of the quantity and precision of his details, the drawings made for hakewill's italy, are singular examples. the most perfect gem in execution is a little bit on the rhine, with reeds in the foreground, in the possession of b. g. windus, esq., of tottenham; but the yorkshire drawings seem to be on the whole the most noble representatives of his art at this period. about the time of their production, the artist seems to have felt that he had done either all that could be done, or all that was necessary, in that manner, and began to reach after something beyond it. the element of color begins to mingle with his work, and in the first efforts to reconcile his intense feeling for it with his careful form, several anomalies begin to be visible, and some unfortunate or uninteresting works necessarily belong to the period. the england drawings, which are very characteristic of it, are exceedingly unequal,--some, as the oakhampton, kilgarren, alnwick, and llanthony, being among his finest works; others, as the windsor from eton, the eton college, and the bedford, showing coarseness and conventionality. § . the domestic subjects of the liber studiorum. i do not know at what time the painter first went abroad, but among the earliest of the series of the liber studiorum (dates , ,) occur the magnificent mont st. gothard, and little devil's bridge. now it is remarkable that after his acquaintance with this scenery, so congenial in almost all respects with the energy of his mind, and supplying him with materials of which in these two subjects, and in the chartreuse, and several others afterwards, he showed both his entire appreciation and command, the proportion of english to foreign subjects should in the rest of the work be more than two to one; and that those english subjects should be--many of them--of a kind peculiarly simple, and of every-day occurrence, such as the pembury mill, the farm yard composition with the white horse, that with the cocks and pigs, hedging and ditching, watercress gatherers (scene at twickenham,) and the beautiful and solemn rustic subject called a watermill; and that the architectural subjects instead of being taken, as might have been expected of an artist so fond of treating effects of extended space, from some of the enormous continental masses are almost exclusively british; rivaulx, holy island, dumblain, dunstanborough, chepstow, st. catherine's, greenwich hospital, an english parish church, a saxon ruin, and an exquisite reminiscence of the english lowland castle in the pastoral, with the brook, wooden bridge, and wild duck, to all of which we have nothing foreign to oppose but three slight, ill-considered, and unsatisfactory subjects, from basle, lauffenbourg, and another swiss village; and, further, not only is the preponderance of subject british, but of affection also; for it is strange with what fulness and completion the home subjects are treated in comparison with the greater part of the foreign ones. compare the figures and sheep in the hedging and ditching, and the east gate winchelsea, together with the near leafage, with the puzzled foreground and inappropriate figures of the lake of thun; or the cattle and road of the st. catherine's hill, with the foreground of the bonneville; or the exquisite figure with the sheaf of corn, in the watermill, with the vintages of the grenoble subject. in his foliage the same predilections are remarkable. reminiscences of english willows by the brooks, and english forest glades mingle even with the heroic foliage of the �sacus and hesperie, and the cephalus; into the pine, whether of switzerland or the glorious stone, he cannot enter, or enters at his peril, like ariel. those of the valley of chamounix are fine masses, better pines than other people's, but not a bit like pines for all that; he feels his weakness, and tears them off the distant mountains with the mercilessness of an avalanche. the stone pines of the two italian compositions are fine in their arrangement, but they are very pitiful pines; the glory of the alpine rose he never touches; he munches chestnuts with no relish; never has learned to like olives; and, by the vine, we find him in the foreground of the grenoble alps laid utterly and incontrovertibly on his back. i adduce these evidences of turner's nationality (and innumerable others might be given if need were) not as proofs of weakness but of power; not so much as testifying want of perception in foreign lands, as strong hold on his own will; for i am sure that no artist who has not this hold upon his own will ever get good out of any other. keeping this principle in mind, it is instructive to observe the depth and solemnity which turner's feeling received from the scenery of the continent, the keen appreciation up to a certain point of all that is locally characteristic, and the ready seizure for future use of all valuable material. § . turner's painting of french and swiss landscape. the latter deficient. of all foreign countries he has most entirely entered into the spirit of france; partly because here he found more fellowship of scene with his own england, partly because an amount of thought which will miss of italy or switzerland, will fathom france; partly because there is in the french foliage and forms of ground, much that is especially congenial with his own peculiar choice of form. to what cause it is owing i cannot tell, nor is it generally allowed or felt; but of the fact i am certain, that for grace of stem and perfection of form in their transparent foliage, the french trees are altogether unmatched; and their modes of grouping and massing are so perfectly and constantly beautiful that i think of all countries for educating an artist to the perception of grace, france bears the bell; and that not romantic nor mountainous france, not the vosges, nor auvergne, nor provence, but lowland france, picardy and normandy, the valleys of the loire and seine, and even the district, so thoughtlessly and mindlessly abused by english travellers, as uninteresting, traversed between calais and dijon; of which there is not a single valley but is full of the most lovely pictures, nor a mile from which the artist may not receive instruction; the district immediately about sens being perhaps the most valuable from the grandeur of its lines of poplars and the unimaginable finish and beauty of the tree forms in the two great avenues without the walls. of this kind of beauty turner was the first to take cognizance, and he still remains the only, but in himself the sufficient painter of french landscape. one of the most beautiful examples is the drawing of trees engraved for the keepsake, now in the possession of b. g. windus, esq.; the drawings made to illustrate the scenery of the rivers of france supply instances of the most varied character. the artist appears, until very lately, rather to have taken from switzerland thoughts and general conceptions of size and of grand form and effect to be used in his after compositions, than to have attempted the seizing of its actual character. this was beforehand to be expected from the utter physical impossibility of rendering certain effects of swiss scenery, and the monotony and unmanageableness of others. the valley of chamounix in the collection of walter fawkes, esq., i have never seen; it has a high reputation; the hannibal passing the alps in its present state exhibits nothing but a heavy shower and a crowd of people getting wet; another picture in the artist's gallery of a land-fall is most masterly and interesting, but more daring than agreeable. the snowstorm, avalanche, and inundation, is one of his mightiest works, but the amount of mountain drawing in it is less than of cloud and effect; the subjects in the liber studiorum are on the whole the most intensely felt, and next to them the vignettes to rogers's poems and italy. of some recent drawings of swiss subject i shall speak presently. § . his rendering of italian character still less successful. his large compositions how failing. the effect of italy upon his mind is very puzzling. on the one hand, it gave him the solemnity and power which are manifested in the historical compositions of the liber studiorum, more especially the rizpah, the cephalus, the scene from the fairy queen, and the �sacus and hesperie: on the other, he seems never to have entered thoroughly into the spirit of italy, and the materials he obtained there were afterwards but awkwardly introduced in his large compositions. of these there are very few at all worthy of him; none but the liber studiorum subjects are thoroughly great, and these are great because there is in them the seriousness without the materials of other countries and times. there is nothing particularly indicative of palestine in the barley harvest of the rizpah, nor in those round and awful trees; only the solemnity of the south in the lifting of the near burning moon. the rocks of the jason may be seen in any quarry of warwickshire sandstone. jason himself has not a bit of greek about him--he is a simple warrior of no period in particular, nay, i think there is something of the nineteenth century about his legs. when local character of this classical kind is attempted, the painter is visibly cramped: awkward resemblances to claude testify the want of his usual forceful originality: in the tenth plague of egypt, he makes us think of belzoni rather than of moses; the fifth is a total failure, the pyramids look like brick-kilns, and the fire running along the ground bears brotherly resemblance to the burning of manure. the realization of the tenth plague now in his gallery is finer than the study, but still uninteresting; and of the large compositions which have much of italy in them, the greater part are overwhelmed with quantity and deficient in emotion. the crossing the brook is one of the best of these hybrid pictures; incomparable in its tree drawing, it yet leaves us doubtful where we are to look and what we are to feel; it is northern in its color, southern in its foliage, italy in its details, and england in its sensations, without the grandeur of the one, or the healthiness of the other. the two carthages are mere rationalizations of claude, one of them excessively bad in color, the other a grand thought, and yet one of the kind which does no one any good, because everything in it is reciprocally sacrificed; the foliage is sacrificed to the architecture, the architecture to the water, the water is neither sea, nor river, nor lake, nor brook, nor canal, and savors of regent's park; the foreground is uncomfortable ground,--let on building leases. so the caligula's bridge, temple of jupiter, departure of regulus, ancient italy, cicero's villa, and such others, come they from whose hand they may, i class under the general head of "nonsense pictures." there never can be any wholesome feeling developed in these preposterous accumulations, and where the artist's feeling fails, his art follows; so that the worst possible examples of turner's color are found in pictures of this class; in one or two instances he has broken through the conventional rules, and then is always fine, as in the hero and leander; but in general the picture rises in value as it approaches to a view, as the fountain of fallacy, a piece of rich northern italy, with some fairy waterworks; this picture was unrivalled in color once, but is now a mere wreck. so the rape of proserpine, though it is singular that in his academy pictures even his simplicity fails of reaching ideality; in this picture of proserpine the nature is not the grand nature of all time, it is indubitably modern,[ ] and we are perfectly electrified at anybody's being carried away in the corner except by people with spiky hats and carabines. this is traceable to several causes; partly to the want of any grand specific form, partly to the too evident middle-age character of the ruins crowning the hills, and to a multiplicity of minor causes which we cannot at present enter into. § . his views of italy destroyed by brilliancy and redundant quantity. neither in his actual views of italy has turner ever caught her true spirit, except in the little vignettes to rogers's poems. the villa of galileo, the nameless composition with stone pines, the several villa moonlights, and the convent compositions in the voyage of columbus, are altogether exquisite; but this is owing chiefly to their simplicity and perhaps in some measure to their smallness of size. none of his large pictures at all equal them; the bay of baiæ is encumbered with material, it contains ten times as much as is necessary to a good picture, and yet is so crude in color as to look unfinished. the palestrina is fall of raw white, and has a look of hampton court about its long avenue; the modern italy is purely english in its near foliage; it is composed from tivoli material enriched and arranged most dexterously, but it has the look of a rich arrangement, and not the virtue of the real thing. the early tivoli, a large drawing taken from below the falls, was as little true, and still less fortunate, the trees there being altogether affected and artificial. the florence engraved in the keepsake is a glorious drawing, as far as regards the passage with the bridge and sunlight on the arno, the cascine foliage, and distant plain, and the towers of the fortress on the left; but the details of the duomo and the city are entirely missed, and with them the majesty of the whole scene. the vines and melons of the foreground are disorderly, and its cypresses conventional; in fact, i recollect no instance of turner's drawing a cypress except in general terms. the chief reason of these failures i imagine to be the effort of the artist to put joyousness and brilliancy of effect upon scenes eminently pensive, to substitute radiance for serenity of light, and to force the freedom and breadth of line which he learned to love on english downs and highland moors, out of a country dotted by campaniles and square convents, bristled with cypresses, partitioned by walls, and gone up and down by steps. in one of the cities of italy he had no such difficulties to encounter. at venice he found freedom of space, brilliancy of light, variety of color, massy simplicity of general form; and to venice we owe many of the motives in which his highest powers of color have been displayed after that change in his system of which we must now take note. § . changes introduced by him in the received system of art. among the earlier paintings of turner, the culminating period, marked by the yorkshire series in his drawings, is distinguished by great solemnity and simplicity of subject, prevalent gloom in light and shade, and brown in the hue, the drawing manly but careful, the minutiæ sometimes exquisitely delicate. all the finest works of this period are, i believe, without exception, views, or quiet single thoughts. the calder bridge, belonging to e. bicknell, esq., is a most pure and beautiful example. the ivy bridge i imagine to be later, but its rock foreground is altogether unrivalled and remarkable for its delicacy of detail; a butterfly is seen settled on one of the large brown stones in the midst of the torrent. two paintings of bonneville, in savoy, one in the possession of abel allnutt, esq., the other, and, i think, the finest, in a collection at birmingham, show more variety of color than is usual with him at the period, and are in every respect magnificent examples. pictures of this class are of peculiar value, for the larger compositions of the same period are all poor in color, and most of them much damaged, but the smaller works have been far finer originally, and their color seems secure. there is nothing in the range of landscape art equal to them in their way, but the full character and capacity of the painter is not in them. grand as they are in their sobriety, they still leave much to be desired; there is great heaviness in their shadows, the material is never thoroughly vanquished, (though this partly for a very noble reason, that the painter is always thinking of and referring to nature, and indulges in no artistical conventionalities,) and sometimes the handling appears feeble. in warmth, lightness, and transparency they have no chance against gainsborough; in clear skies and air tone they are alike unfortunate when they provoke comparison with claude; and in force and solemnity they can in no wise stand with the landscape of the venetians. the painter evidently felt that he had farther powers, and pressed forward into the field where alone they could be brought into play. it was impossible for him, with all his keen and long-disciplined perceptions, not to feel that the real color of nature had never been attempted by any school; and that though conventional representations had been given by the venetians of sunlight and twilight, by invariably rendering the whites golden and the blues green, yet of the actual, joyous, pure, roseate hues of the external world no record had ever been given. he saw also that the finish and specific grandeur of nature had been given, but her fulness, space, and mystery never; and he saw that the great landscape painters had always sunk the lower middle tints of nature in extreme shade, bringing the entire melody of color as many degrees down as their possible light was inferior to nature's; and that in so doing a gloomy principle had influenced them even in their choice of subject. for the conventional color he substituted a pure straightforward rendering of fact, as far as was in his power; and that not of such fact as had been before even suggested, but of all that is _most_ brilliant, beautiful, and inimitable; he went to the cataract for its iris, to the conflagration for its flames, asked of the sea its intensest azure, of the sky its clearest gold. for the limited space and defined forms of elder landscape, he substituted the quantity and the mystery of the vastest scenes of earth; and for the subdued chiaroscuro he substituted first a balanced diminution of oppositions throughout the scale, and afterwards, in one or two instances, attempted the reverse of the old principle, taking the lowest portion of the scale truly, and merging the upper part in high light. § . difficulties of his later manner. resultant deficiencies. innovations so daring and so various could not be introduced without corresponding peril: the difficulties that lay in his way were more than any human intellect could altogether surmount. in his time there has been no one system of color generally approved; every artist has his own method and his own vehicle; how to do what gainsborough did, we know not; much less what titian; to invent a new system of color can hardly be expected of those who cannot recover the old. to obtain perfectly satisfactory results in color under the new conditions introduced by turner, would at least have required the exertion of all his energies in that sole direction. but color has always been only his second object. the effects of space and form, in which he delights, often require the employment of means and method totally at variance with those necessary for the obtaining of pure color. it is physically impossible, for instance, rightly to draw certain forms of the upper clouds with the brush; nothing will do it but the pallet knife with loaded white after the blue ground is prepared. now it is impossible that a cloud so drawn, however glazed afterwards, should have the virtue of a thin warm tint of titian's, showing the canvas throughout. so it happens continually. add to these difficulties, those of the peculiar subjects attempted, and to these again, all that belong to the altered system of chiaroscuro, and it is evident that we must not be surprised at finding many deficiencies or faults in such works, especially in the earlier of them, nor even suffer ourselves to be withdrawn by the pursuit of what seems censurable from our devotion to what is mighty. notwithstanding, in some chosen examples of pictures of this kind, i will name three: juliet and her nurse; the old temeraire, and the slave ship: i do not admit that there are at the time of their first appearing on the walls of the royal academy, any demonstrably avoidable faults. i do not deny that there may be, nay, that it is likely there are; but there is no living artist in europe whose judgment might safely be taken on the subject, or who could without arrogance affirm of any part of such a picture, that it was _wrong_; i am perfectly willing to allow, that the lemon yellow is not properly representative of the yellow of the sky, that the loading of the color is in many places disagreeable, that many of the details are drawn with a kind of imperfection different from what they would have in nature, and that many of the parts fail of imitation, especially to an uneducated eye. but no living authority is of weight enough to prove that the virtues of the picture could have been obtained at a less sacrifice, or that they are not worth the sacrifice; and though it is perfectly possible that such may be the case, and that what turner has done may hereafter in some respects be done better, i believe myself that these works are at the time of their first appearing as perfect as those of phidias or leonardo; that is to say, incapable in their way, of any improvement conceivable by human mind. also, it is only by comparison with such that we are authorized to affirm definite faults in any of his others, for we should have been bound to speak, at least for the present, with the same modesty respecting even his worst pictures of this class, had not his more noble efforts given us canons of criticism. but, as was beforehand to be expected from the difficulties he grappled with, turner is exceedingly unequal; he appears always as a champion in the thick of fight, sometimes with his foot on his enemies' necks, sometimes staggered or struck to his knee; once or twice altogether down. he has failed most frequently, as before noticed, in elaborate compositions, from redundant quantity; sometimes, like most other men, from over-care, as very signally in a large and most labored drawing of bamborough; sometimes, unaccountably, his eye for color seeming to fail him for a time, as in a large painting of rome from the forum, and in the cicero's villa, building of carthage, and the picture of this year in the british institution; and sometimes i am sorry to say, criminally, from taking licenses which he must know to be illegitimate, or indulging in conventionalities which he does not require. [illustration: the dogana, and santa maria della salute, venice. from a painting by turner.] § . reflection of his very recent works. on such instances i shall not insist, for the finding fault with turner is not, i think, either decorous in myself or like to be beneficial to the reader.[ ] the greater number of failures took place in the transition period, when the artist was feeling for the new qualities, and endeavoring to reconcile them with more careful elaboration of form than was properly consistent with them. gradually his hand became more free, his perception and grasp of the new truths more certain, and his choice of subject more adapted to the exhibition of them. but his powers did not attain their highest results till towards the year , about which period they did so suddenly, and with a vigor and concentration which rendered his pictures at that time almost incomparable with those which had preceded them. the drawings of nemi, and oberwesel, in the possession of b. g. windus, esq., were among the first evidences of this sudden advance; only the foliage in both of these is inferior; and it is remarkable that in this phase of his art, turner has drawn little foliage, and that little badly--the great characteristic of it being its power, beauty, and majesty of color, and its abandonment of all littleness and division of thought to a single impression. in the year , he made some drawings from recent sketches in switzerland; these, with some produced in the following years, all of swiss subject, i consider to be, on the whole, the most characteristic and perfect works he has ever produced. the academy pictures were far inferior to them; but among these examples of the same power were not wanting, more especially in the smaller pictures of venice. the sun of venice, going to sea; the san benedetto, looking towards fusina; and a view of murano, with the cemetery, were all faultless: another of venice, seen from near fusina, with sunlight and moonlight mixed ( ) was, i think, when i first saw it, (and it still remains little injured,) the most perfectly _beautiful_ piece of color of all that i have seen produced by human hands, by any means, or at any period. of the exhibition of , i have only seen a small venice, (still i believe in the artist's possession,) and the two whaling subjects. the venice is a second-rate work, and the two others altogether unworthy of him. in conclusion of our present sketch of the course of landscape art, it may be generally stated that turner is the only painter, so far as i know, who has ever drawn the sky, (not the clear sky, which we before saw belonged exclusively to the religious schools, but the various forms and phenomena of the cloudy heavens,) all previous artists having only represented it typically or partially; but he absolutely and universally: he is the only painter who has ever drawn a mountain, or a stone; no other man ever having learned their organization, or possessed himself of their spirit, except in part and obscurely, (the one or two stones noted of tintoret's, (vol. ii., part iii. ch. ,) are perhaps hardly enough on which to found an exception in his favor.) he is the only painter who ever drew the stem of a tree, titian having come the nearest before him, and excelling him in the muscular development of the larger trunks, (though sometimes losing the woody strength in a serpent-like flaccidity,) but missing the grace and character of the ramifications. he is the only painter who has ever represented the surface of calm, or the force of agitated water; who has represented the effects of space on distant objects, or who has rendered the abstract beauty of natural color. these assertions i make deliberately, after careful weighing and consideration, in no spirit of dispute, or momentary zeal; but from strong and convinced feeling, and with the consciousness of being able to prove them. § . difficulty of demonstration in such subjects. this proof is only partially and incidentally attempted in the present portion of this work, which was originally written, as before explained, for a temporary purpose, and which, therefore, i should have gladly cancelled, but that, relating as it does only to simple matters of fact and not to those of feeling, it may still, perhaps, be of service to some readers who would be unwilling to enter into the more speculative fields with which the succeeding sections are concerned. i leave, therefore, nearly as it was originally written, the following examination of the relative truthfulness of elder and of recent art; always requesting the reader to remember, as some excuse for the inadequate execution, even of what i have here attempted, how difficult it is to express or explain, by language only, those delicate qualities of the object of sense, on the seizing of which all refined truth of representation depends. try, for instance, to explain in language the exact qualities of the lines on which depend the whole truth and beauty of expression about the half-opened lips of raffaelle's st. catherine. there is, indeed, nothing in landscape so ineffable as this; but there is no part nor portion of god's works in which the delicacy appreciable by a cultivated eye, and necessary to be rendered in art, is not beyond all expression and explanation; i cannot tell it you, if you do not see it. and thus i have been entirely unable, in the following pages, to demonstrate clearly anything of really deep and perfect truth; nothing but what is coarse and commonplace, in matters to be judged of by the senses, is within the reach of argument. how much or how little i have done must be judged of by the reader: how much it is impossible to do i have more fully shown in the concluding section. i shall first take into consideration those general truths, common to all the objects of nature, which are productive of what is usually called "effect," that is to say, truths of tone, general color, space, and light. i shall then investigate the truths of specific form and color, in the four great component parts of landscape--sky, earth, water, and vegetation. footnotes [ ] not the large paradise, but the fall of adam, a small picture chiefly in brown and gray, near titian's assumption. its companion, the death of abel, is remarkable as containing a group of trees which turner, i believe accidentally, has repeated nearly mass for mass in the "marly." both are among the most noble works of this or any other master, whether for preciousness of color or energy of thought. [ ] the triple leaf of this plant, and white flower, stained purple, probably gave it strange typical interest among the christian painters. angelico, in using its leaves mixed with daisies in the foreground of his crucifixion had, i imagine, a view also to its chemical property. [ ] this is no rash method of judgment, sweeping and hasty as it may appear. from the weaknesses of an artist, or failures, however numerous, we have no right to conjecture his total inability; a time may come when he may rise into sudden strength, or an instance occur when his efforts shall be successful. but there are some pictures which rank not under the head of failures, but of perpetrations or commissions; some things which a man cannot do nor say without sealing forever his character and capacity. the angel holding the cross with his finger in his eye, the roaring red-faced children about the crown of thorns, the blasphemous (i speak deliberately and determinedly) head of christ upon the handkerchief, and the mode in which the martyrdom of the saint is exhibited (i do not choose to use the expressions which alone could characterize it) are perfect, sufficient, incontrovertible proofs that whatever appears good in any of the doings of such a painter must be deceptive, and that we may be assured that our taste is corrupted and false whenever we feel disposed to admire him. i am prepared to support this position, however uncharitable it may seem; a man may be tempted into a gross sin by passion, and forgiven; and yet there are some kinds of sins into which only men of a certain kind can be tempted, and which cannot be forgiven. it should be added, however, that the artistical qualities of these pictures are in every way worthy of the conceptions they realize; i do not recollect any instances of color or execution so coarse and feelingless. [ ] it appears not to be sufficiently understood by those artists who complain acrimoniously of their positions on the academy walls, that the academicians have in their own rooms a right to the line and the best places near it; in their taking this position there is no abuse nor injustice; but the academicians should remember that with their rights they have their duties, and their duty is to determine among the works of artists not belonging to their body those which are most likely to advance public knowledge and judgment, and to give these the best places next their own; neither would it detract from their dignity if they occasionally ceded a square even of their own territory, as they did gracefully and rightly, and, i am sorry to add, disinterestedly, to the picture of paul de la roche in . now the academicians know perfectly well that the mass of portrait which encumbers their walls at half height is worse than useless, seriously harmful to the public taste, and it was highly criminal (i use the word advisedly) that the valuable and interesting work of fielding, of which i have above spoken, should have been placed where it was, above three rows of eye-glasses and waistcoats. a very beautiful work of harding's was treated either in the same or the following exhibition with still greater injustice. fielding's was merely put out of sight; harding's where its faults were conspicuous and its virtues lost. it was an alpine scene, of which the foreground, rocks, and torrents were painted with unrivalled fidelity and precision; the foliage was dexterous, the aerial gradations of the mountains tender and multitudinous, their forms carefully studied and very grand. the blemish of the picture was a buff-colored tower with a red roof; singularly meagre in detail, and conventionally relieved from a mass of gloom. the picture was placed where nothing but this tower could be seen. [ ] i have not given any examples in this place, because it is difficult to explain such circumstances of effect without diagrams: i purpose entering into fuller discussion of the subject with the aid of illustration. [ ] the inscription is to the following effect,--a pleasant thing to see upon the walls, were it but more innocently placed:-- campo. di. s. maurizio ______ d i o conservi a noi. lungamente lo zelantis. e. reverendis d. luigi. piccini. nostro n o v e l l o p i e v a n o. ______ g l i e s u l t a n t. parrocchiani [ ] the quantity of gold with which the decorations of venice were once covered could not now be traced or credited without reference to the authority of gentile bellini. the greater part of the marble mouldings have been touched with it in lines and points, the minarets of st. mark's, and all the florid carving of the arches entirely sheeted. the casa d'oro retained it on its lions until the recent commencement of its restoration. [ ] indeed there should be no such difference at all. every architect ought to be an artist; every very great artist is necessarily an architect. [ ] this passage seems at variance with what has been said of the necessity of painting present times and objects. it is not so. a great painter makes out of that which he finds before him something which is independent of _all_ time. he can only do this out of the materials ready to his hand, but that which he builds has the dignity of dateless age. a little painter is annihilated by an anachronism, and is conventionally antique, and involuntarily modern. [ ] one point, however, it is incumbent upon me to notice, being no question of art but of material. the reader will have observed that i strictly limited the perfection of turner's works to the time of their first appearing on the walls of the royal academy. it bitterly grieves me to have to do this, but the fact is indeed so. no _picture_ of turner's is seen in perfection a month after it is painted. the walhalla cracked before it had been eight days in the academy rooms; the vermilions frequently lose lustre long before the exhibition is over; and when all the colors begin to get hard a year or two after the picture is painted, a painful deadness and opacity comes over them, the whites especially becoming lifeless, and many of the warmer passages settling into a hard valueless brown, even if the paint remains perfectly firm, which is far from being always the case. i believe that in some measure these results are unavoidable, the colors being so peculiarly blended and mingled in turner's present manner as almost to necessitate their irregular drying; but that they are not necessary to the extent in which they sometimes take place, is proved by the comparative safety of some even of the more brilliant works. thus the old temeraire is nearly safe in color, and quite firm; while the juliet and her nurse is now the ghost of what it was; the slaver shows no cracks, though it is chilled in some of the darker passages, while the walhalla and several of the recent venices cracked in the royal academy. it is true that the damage makes no further progress after the first year or two, and that even in its altered state the picture is always valuable and records its intention; but it is bitterly to be regretted that so great a painter should not leave a single work by which in succeeding ages he might be estimated. the fact of his using means so imperfect, together with that of his utter neglect of the pictures in his own gallery, are a phenomenon in human mind which appears to me utterly inexplicable; and both are without excuse. if the effects he desires cannot be to their full extent produced except by these treacherous means, one picture only should be painted each year as an exhibition of immediate power, and the rest should be carried out, whatever the expense of labor and time in safe materials, even at the risk of some deterioration of immediate effect. that which is greatest in him is entirely independent of means; much of what he now accomplishes illegitimately might without doubt be attained in securer modes--what cannot should without hesitation be abandoned. fortunately the drawings appear subject to no such deterioration. many of them are now almost destroyed, but this has been i think always through ill treatment, or has been the case only with very early works. i have myself known no instance of a drawing properly protected, and not rashly exposed to light suffering the slightest change. the great foes of turner, as of all other great colorists especially, are the picture cleaner and the mounter. section ii. of general truths. chapter i. of truth of tone. § . meaning of the word "tone:" first, the right relation of objects in shadow to the principal light. as i have already allowed, that in effects of tone, the old masters have never yet been equalled; and as this is the first, and nearly the last, concession i shall have to make to them, i wish it at once to be thoroughly understood how far it extends. § . secondly, the quality of color by which it is felt to owe part of its brightness to the hue of light upon it. i understand two things by the word "tone:"--first, the exact relief and relation of objects against and to each other in substance and darkness, as they are nearer or more distant, and the perfect relation of the shades of all of them to the chief light of the picture, whether that be sky, water, or anything else. secondly, the exact relation of the colors to the shadows to the colors of the lights, so that they may be at once felt to be merely different degrees of the same light; and the accurate relation among the illuminated parts themselves, with respect to the degree in which they are influenced by the color of the light itself, whether warm or cold; so that the whole of the picture (or, where several tones are united, those parts of it which are under each,) may be felt to be in one climate, under one kind of light, and in one kind of atmosphere; this being chiefly dependent on that peculiar and inexplicable quality of each color laid on, which makes the eye feel both what is the actual color of the object represented, and that it is raised to its apparent pitch by illumination. a very bright brown, for instance, out of sunshine, may be precisely of the same shade of color as a very dead or cold brown in sunshine, but it will be totally different in _quality_; and that quality by which the illuminated dead color would be felt in nature different from the unilluminated bright one, is what artists are perpetually aiming at, and connoisseurs talking nonsense about, under the name of "tone." the want of tone in pictures is caused by objects looking bright in their own positive hue, and not by illumination, and by the consequent want of sensation of the raising of their hues by light. § . difference between tone in its first sense and aerial perspective. the first of these meanings of the word "tone" is liable to be confounded with what is commonly called "aerial perspective." but aerial perspective is the expression of space, by any means whatsoever, sharpness of edge, vividness of color, etc., assisted by greater pitch of shadow, and requires only that objects should be detached from each other, by degrees of intensity in _proportion_ to their distance, without requiring that the difference between the farthest and nearest should be in positive quantity the same that nature has put. but what i have called "tone" requires that there should be the same sum of difference, as well as the same division of differences. § . the pictures of the old masters perfect in relation of middle tints to light. now the finely toned pictures of the old masters are, in this respect, some of the notes of nature played two or three octaves below her key; the dark objects in the middle distance having precisely the same relation to the light of the sky which they have in nature, but the light being necessarily infinitely lowered, and the mass of the shadow deepened in the same degree. i have often been struck, when looking at a camera-obscuro on a dark day, with the exact resemblance the image bore to one of the finest pictures of the old masters; all the foliage coming dark against the sky, and nothing being seen in its mass but here and there the isolated light of a silvery stem or an unusually illumined cluster of leafage. § . and consequently totally false in relation of middle tints to darkness. now if this could be done consistently, and all the notes of nature given in this way an octave or two down, it would be right and necessary so to do: but be it observed, not only does nature surpass us in power of obtaining light as much as the sun surpasses white paper, but she also infinitely surpasses us in her power of shade. her deepest shades are void spaces from which no light whatever is reflected to the eye; ours are black surfaces from which, paint as black as we may, a great deal of light is still reflected, and which, placed against one of nature's deep bits of gloom, would tell as distinct light. here we are then, with white paper for our highest light, and visible illumined surface for our deepest shadow, set to run the gauntlet against nature, with the sun for her light, and vacuity for her gloom. it is evident that _she_ can well afford to throw her material objects dark against the brilliant aerial tone of her sky, and yet give in those objects themselves a thousand intermediate distances and tones before she comes to black, or to anything like it--all the illumined surfaces of her objects being as distinctly and vividly brighter than her nearest and darkest shadows, as the sky is brighter than those illumined surfaces. but if we, against our poor, dull obscurity of yellow paint, instead of sky, insist on having the same relation of shade in material objects, we go down to the bottom of our scale at once; and what in the world are we to do then? where are all our intermediate distances to come from?--how are we to express the aerial relations among the parts themselves, for instance, of foliage, whose most distant boughs are already almost black?--how are we to come up from this to the foreground, and when we have done so, how are we to express the distinction between its solid parts, already as dark as we can make them, and its vacant hollows, which nature has marked sharp and clear and black, among its lighted surfaces? it cannot but be evident at a glance, that if to any one of the steps from one distance to another, we give the same quantity of difference in pitch of shade which nature does, we must pay for this expenditure of our means by totally missing half a dozen distances, not a whit less important or marked, and so sacrifice a multitude of truths, to obtain one. and this, accordingly was the means by which the old masters obtained their (truth?) of tone. they chose those steps of distance which are the most conspicuous and noticeable--that for instance from sky to foliage, or from clouds to hills--and they gave these their precise pitch of difference in shade with exquisite accuracy of imitation. their means were then exhausted, and they were obliged to leave their trees flat masses of mere filled-up outline, and to omit the truths of space in every individual part of their picture by the thousand. but this they did not care for; it saved them trouble; they reached their grand end, imitative effect; they thrust home just at the places where the common and careless eye looks for imitation, and they attained the broadest and most faithful appearance of truth of tone which art can exhibit. § . general falsehood of such a system. but they are prodigals, and foolish prodigals, in art; they lavish their whole means to get one truth, and leave themselves powerless when they should seize a thousand. and is it indeed worthy of being called a truth, when we have a vast history given us to relate, to the fulness of which neither our limits nor our language are adequate, instead of giving all its parts abridged in the order of their importance, to omit or deny the greater part of them, that we may dwell with verbal fidelity on two or three? nay, the very truth to which the rest are sacrificed is rendered falsehood by their absence, the relation of the tree to the sky is marked as an impossibility by the want of relation of its parts to each other. § . the principle of turner in this respect. turner starts from the beginning with a totally different principle. he boldly takes pure white (and justly, for it is the sign of the most intense sunbeams) for his highest light, and lampblack for his deepest shade; and between these he makes every degree of shade indicative of separate degree of distance,[ ] giving each step of approach, not the exact difference in pitch which it would have in nature, but a difference bearing the same proportion to that which his sum of possible shade bears to the sum of nature's shade; so that an object half way between his horizon and his foreground, will be exactly in half tint of force, and every minute division of intermediate space will have just its proportionate share of the lesser sum, and no more. hence where the old masters expressed one distance, he expresses a hundred; and where they said furlongs, he says leagues. which of these modes of procedure be most agreeable with truth, i think i may safely leave the reader to decide for himself. he will see in this very first instance, one proof of what we above asserted, that the deceptive imitation of nature is inconsistent with real truth; for the very means by which the old masters attained the apparent accuracy of tone which is so satisfying to the eye, compelled them to give up all idea of real relations of retirement, and to represent a few successive and marked stages of distance, like the scenes of a theatre, instead of the imperceptible, multitudinous, symmetrical retirement of nature, who is not more careful to separate her nearest bush from her farthest one, than to separate the nearest bough of that bush from the one next to it. § . comparison of n. poussin's "phocion," take for instance, one of the finest landscapes that ancient art has produced--the work of a really great and intellectual mind, the quiet nicholas poussin, in our own national gallery, with the traveller washing his feet. the first idea we receive from this picture is, that it is evening, and all the light coming from the horizon. not so. it is full moon, the light coming steep from the left, as is shown by the shadow of the stick on the right-hand pedestal,--(for if the sun were not very high, that shadow could not lose itself half way down, and if it were not lateral, the shadow would slope, instead of being vertical.) now, ask yourself, and answer candidly, if those black masses of foliage, in which scarcely any form is seen but the outline, be a true representation of trees under noonday sunlight, sloping from the left, bringing out, as it necessarily would do, their masses into golden green, and marking every leaf and bough with sharp shadow and sparkling light. the only truth in the picture is the exact pitch of relief against the sky of both trees and hills, and to this the organization of the hills, the intricacy of the foliage, and everything indicative either of the nature of the light, or the character of the objects, are unhesitatingly sacrificed. so much falsehood does it cost to obtain two apparent truths of tone. or take, as a still more glaring instance, no. in the dulwich gallery, where the trunks of the trees, even of those farthest off, on the left, are as black as paint can make them, and there is not, and cannot be, the slightest increase of force, or any marking whatsoever of distance by color, or any other means, between them and the foreground. § . with turner's "mercury and argus." compare with these, turner's treatment of his materials in the mercury and argus. he has here his light actually coming from the distance, the sun being nearly in the centre of the picture, and a violent relief of objects against it would be far more justifiable than in poussin's case. but this dark relief is used in its full force only with the nearest _leaves_ of the nearest group of foliage overhanging the foreground from the left; and between these and the more distant members of the same group, though only three or four yards separate, distinct aerial perspective and intervening mist and light are shown; while the large tree in the centre, though very dark, as being very near, compared with all the distance, is much diminished in intensity of shade from this nearest group of leaves, and is faint compared with all the foreground. it is true that this tree has not, in consequence, the actual pitch of shade against the sky which it would have in nature; but it has precisely as much as it possibly can have, to leave it the same proportionate relation to the objects near at hand. and it cannot but be evident to the thoughtful reader, that whatever trickery or deception may be the result of a contrary mode of treatment, this is the only scientific or essentially truthful system, and that what it loses in tone it gains in aerial perspective. § . and with the "datur hora quieti." compare again the last vignette in rogers's poems, the "datur hora quieti," where everything, even the darkest parts of the trees, is kept pale and full of graduation; even the bridge where it crosses the descending stream of sunshine, rather lost in the light than relieved against it, until we come up to the foreground, and then the vigorous local black of the plough throws the whole picture into distance and sunshine. i do not know anything in art which can for a moment be set beside this drawing for united intensity of light and repose. observe, i am not at present speaking of the beauty or desirableness of the system of the old masters; it may be sublime, and affecting, and ideal, and intellectual, and a great deal more; but all i am concerned with at present is, that it is not _true_; while turner's is the closest and most studied approach to truth of which the materials of art admit. § . the second sense of the word "tone." § . remarkable difference in this respect between the paintings and drawings of turner. § . not owing to want of power over the material. it was not, therefore, with reference to this division of the subject that i admitted inferiority in our great modern master to claude or poussin, but with reference to the second and more usual meaning of the word "tone"--the exact relation and fitness of shadow and light, and of the hues of all objects under them; and more especially that precious quality of each color laid on, which makes it appear a quiet color illuminated, not a bright color in shade. but i allow this inferiority only with respect to the paintings of turner, not to his drawings. i could select from among the works named in chap. vi. of this section, pieces of tone absolutely faultless and perfect, from the coolest grays of wintry dawn to the intense fire of summer noon. and the difference between the prevailing character of these and that of nearly all the paintings, (for the early oil pictures of turner are far less perfect in tone than the most recent,) it is difficult to account for, but on the supposition that there is something in the material which modern artists in general are incapable of mastering, and which compels turner himself to think less of tone in oil color, than of other and more important qualities. the total failures of callcott, whose struggles after tone ended so invariably in shivering winter or brown paint, the misfortune of landseer with his evening sky in , the frigidity of stanfield, and the earthiness and opacity which all the magnificent power and admirable science of etty are unable entirely to conquer, are too fatal and convincing proofs of the want of knowledge of means, rather than of the absence of aim, in modern artists as a body. yet, with respect to turner, however much the want of tone in his early paintings (the fall of carthage, for instance, and others painted at a time when he was producing the most exquisite hues of light in water-color) might seem to favor such a supposition, there are passages in his recent works (such, for instance, as the sunlight along the sea, in the slaver) which directly contradict it, and which prove to us that where he now errs in tone, (as in the cicero's villa,) it is less owing to want of power to reach it, than to the pursuit of some different and nobler end. i shall therefore glance at the particular modes in which turner manages his tone in his present academy pictures; the early ones must be given up at once. place a genuine untouched claude beside the crossing the brook, and the difference in value and tenderness of tone will be felt in an instant, and felt the more painfully because all the cool and transparent qualities of claude would have been here desirable, and in their place, and appear to have been aimed at. the foreground of the building of carthage, and the greater part of the architecture of the fall, are equally heavy and evidently paint, if we compare them with genuine passages of claude's sunshine. there is a very grand and simple piece of tone in the possession of j. allnutt, esq., a sunset behind willows, but even this is wanting in refinement of shadow, and is crude in its extreme distance. not so with the recent academy pictures; many of their passages are absolutely faultless; all are refined and marvellous, and with the exception of the cicero's villa, we shall find few pictures painted within the last ten years which do not either present us with perfect tone, or with some higher beauty, to which it is necessarily sacrificed. if we glance at the requirements of nature, and her superiority of means to ours, we shall see why and how it is sacrificed. § . the two distinct qualities of light to be considered. light, with reference to the tone it induces on objects, is either to be considered as neutral and white, bringing out local colors with fidelity; or colored, and consequently modifying these local tints, with its own. but the power of pure white light to exhibit local color is strangely variable. the morning light of about nine or ten is usually very pure; but the difference of its effect on different days, independently of mere brilliancy, is as inconceivable as inexplicable. every one knows how capriciously the colors of a fine opal vary from day to day, and how rare the lights are which bring them fully out. now the expression of the strange, penetrating, deep, neutral light, which, while it _alters_ no color, brings every color up to the highest possible pitch and key of pure, harmonious intensity, is the chief attribute of finely-toned pictures by the great _colorists_ as opposed to pictures of equally high tone, by masters who, careless of color, are content, like cuyp, to lose local tints in the golden blaze of absorbing light. § . falsehoods by which titian attains the appearance of quality in light. falsehood, in this neutral tone, if it may be so called, is a matter far more of feeling than of proof, for any color is _possible_ under such lights; it is meagreness and feebleness only which are to be avoided; and these are rather matters of sensation than of reasoning. but it is yet easy enough to prove by what exaggerated and false means the pictures most celebrated for this quality are endowed with their richness and solemnity of color. in the bacchus and ariadne of titian, it is difficult to imagine anything more magnificently impossible than the blue of the distant landscape;--impossible, not from its vividness, but because it is not faint and aerial enough to account for its purity of color; it is too dark and blue at the same time; and there is indeed so total a want of atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it would be impossible to tell the mountains (intended to be ten miles off) from the robe of ariadne close to the spectator. yet make this blue faint, aerial, and distant--make it in the slightest degree to resemble the truth of nature's color--and all the tone of the picture, all its intensity and splendor, will vanish on the instant. so again, in the exquisite and inimitable little bit of color, the europa in the dulwich gallery; the blue of the dark promontory on the left is thoroughly absurd and impossible, and the warm tones of the clouds equally so, unless it were sunset; but the blue especially, because it is nearer than several points of land which are equally in shadow, and yet are rendered in warm gray. but the whole value and tone of the picture would be destroyed if this blue were altered. § . turner will not use such means. § . but gains in essential truth by the sacrifice. § . the second quality of light. now, as much of this kind of richness of tone is always given by turner as is compatible with truth of aerial effect; but he will not sacrifice the higher truths of his landscape to mere pitch of color as titian does. he infinitely prefers having the power of giving extension of space, and fulness of form, to that of giving deep melodies of tone; he feels too much the incapacity of art, with its feeble means of light, to give the abundance of nature's gradations; and therefore it is, that taking pure white for his highest expression of light, that even pure yellow may give him one more step in the scale of shade, he becomes necessarily inferior in richness of effect to the old masters of tone, (who always used a golden highest light,) but gains by the sacrifice a thousand more essential truths. for, though we all know how much more like light, in the abstract, a finely-toned warm hue will be to the feelings than white, yet it is utterly impossible to mark the same number of gradations between such a sobered high light and the deepest shadow, which we can between this and white; and as these gradations are absolutely necessary to give the facts of form and distance, which, as we have above shown, are more important than any truths of tone,[ ] turner sacrifices the richness of his picture to its completeness--the manner of the statement to its matter. and not only is he right in doing this for the sake of space, but he is right also in the abstract question of color; for as we observed above (sect. ,) it is only the white light--the perfect unmodified group of rays--which will bring out local color perfectly; and if the picture, therefore, is to be complete in its system of color, that is, if it is to have each of the three primitives in their purity, it _must_ have white for its highest light, otherwise the purity of one of them at least will be impossible. and this leads us to notice the second and more frequent quality of light, (which is assumed if we make our highest representation of it yellow,) the positive hue, namely, which it may itself possess, of course modifying whatever local tints it exhibits, and thereby rendering certain colors necessary, and certain colors impossible. under the direct yellow light of a descending sun, for instance, pure white and pure blue are both impossible; because the purest whites and blues that nature could produce would be turned in some degree into gold or green by it; and when the sun is within half a degree of the horizon, if the sky be clear, a rose light supersedes the golden one, still more overwhelming in its effect on local color. i have seen the pale fresh green of spring vegetation in the gardens of venice, on the lido side, turned pure russet, or between that and crimson, by a vivid sunset of this kind, every particle of green color being absolutely annihilated. and so under all colored lights, (and there are few, from dawn to twilight, which are not slightly tinted by some accident of atmosphere,) there is a change of local color, which, when in a picture it is so exactly proportioned that we feel at once both what the local colors are in themselves, and what is the color and strength of the light upon them, gives us truth of tone. § . the perfection of cuyp in this respect interfered with by numerous solecisms. for expression of effects of yellow sunlight, parts might be chosen out of the good pictures of cuyp, which have never been equalled in art. but i much doubt if there be a single _bright_ cuyp in the world, which, taken as a whole, does not present many glaring solecisms in tone. i have not seen many fine pictures of his, which were not utterly spoiled by the vermilion dress of some principal figure, a vermilion totally unaffected and unwarmed by the golden hue of the rest of the picture; and, what is worse, with little distinction, between its own illumined and shaded parts, so that it appears altogether out of sunshine, the color of a bright vermilion in dead, cold daylight. it is possible that the original color may have gone down in all cases, or that these parts may have been villanously repainted: but i am the rather disposed to believe them genuine, because even throughout the best of his pictures there are evident recurrences of the same kind of solecism in other colors--greens for instance--as in the steep bank on the right of the largest picture in the dulwich gallery; and browns, as in the lying cow in the same picture, which is in most visible and painful contrast with the one standing beside it, the flank of the standing one being bathed in breathing sunshine, and the reposing one laid in with as dead, opaque, and lifeless brown as ever came raw from a novice's pallet. and again, in that marked , while the figures on the right are walking in the most precious light, and those just beyond them in the distance leave a furlong or two of pure visible sunbeams between us and them, the cows in the centre are entirely deprived, poor things, of both light and air. and these failing parts, though they often escape the eye when we are near the picture and able to dwell upon what is beautiful in it, yet so injure its whole effect that i question if there be many cuyps in which vivid colors occur, which will not lose their effect, and become cold and flat at a distance of ten or twelve paces, retaining their influence only when the eye is close enough to rest on the right parts without including the whole. take, for instance, the large one in our national gallery, seen from the opposite door, where the black cow appears a great deal nearer than the dogs, and the golden tones of the distance look like a sepia drawing rather than like sunshine, owing chiefly to the utter want of aerial grays indicated through them. § . turner is not so perfect in parts--far more so in the whole. now, there is no instance in the works of turner of anything so faithful and imitative of sunshine as the best parts of cuyp; but at the same time, there is not a single vestige of the same kind of solecism. it is true, that in his fondness for color, turner is in the habit of allowing excessively cold fragments in big warmest pictures; but these are never, observe, warm colors with no light upon them, useless as contrasts while they are discords in the tone; but they are bits of the very coolest tints, partially removed from the general influence, and exquisitely valuable as color, though, with all deference be it spoken, i think them sometimes slightly destructive of what would otherwise be perfect tone. for instance, the two blue and white stripes on the drifting flag of the slave ship, are, i think, the least degree too purely cool. i think both the blue and white would be impossible under such a light; and in the same way the white parts of the dress of the napoleon interfered by their coolness with the perfectly managed warmth of all the rest of the picture. but both these lights are reflexes, and it is nearly impossible to say what tones may be assumed even by the warmest light reflected from a cool surface; so that we cannot actually convict these parts of falsehood, and though we should have liked the _tone_ of the picture better had they been slightly warmer, we cannot but like the _color_ of the picture better with them as they are; while cuyp's failing portions are not only evidently and demonstrably false, being in direct light, but are as disagreeable in color as false in tone, and injurious to everything near them. and the best proof of the grammatical accuracy of the tones of turner is in the perfect and unchanging influence of all his pictures at any distance. we approach only to follow the sunshine into every cranny of the leafage, and retire only to feel it diffused over the scene, the whole picture glowing like a sun or star at whatever distance we stand, and lighting the air between us and it; while many even of the best pictures of claude must be looked close into to be felt, and lose light every foot that we retire. the smallest of the three seaports in the national gallery is valuable and right in tone when we are close to it; but ten yards off, it is all brick-dust, offensively and evidently false in its whole hue. § . the power in turner of uniting a number of tones. the comparison of turner with cuyp and claude may sound strange in most ears; but this is chiefly because we are not in the habit of analyzing and dwelling upon those difficult and daring passages of the modern master which do not at first appeal to our ordinary notions of truth, owing to his habit of uniting two, three, or even more separate tones in the same composition. in this also he strictly follows nature, for wherever climate changes, tone changes, and the climate changes with every feet of elevation, so that the upper clouds are always different in tone from the lower ones, these from the rest of the landscape, and in all probability, some part of the horizon from the rest. and when nature allows this in a high degree, as in her most gorgeous effects she always will, she does not herself impress at once with intensity of tone, as in the deep and quiet yellows of a july evening, but rather with the magnificence and variety of associated color, in which, if we give time and attention to it, we shall gradually find the solemnity and the depth of twenty tones instead of one. now in turner's power of associating cold with warm light, no one has ever approached, or even ventured into the same field with him. the old masters, content with one simple tone, sacrificed to its unity all the exquisite gradations and varied touches of relief and change by which nature unites her hours with each other. they gave the warmth of the sinking sun, overwhelming all things in its gold; but they did not give those gray passages about the horizon where, seen through its dying light, the cool and the gloom of night gather themselves for their victory. whether it was in them impotence or judgment, it is not for me to decide. i have only to point to the daring of turner in this respect, as something to which art affords no matter of comparison, as that in which the mere attempt is, in itself, superiority. take the evening effect with the temeraire. that picture will not, at the first glance, deceive as a piece of actual sunlight; but this is because there is in it more than sunlight, because under the blazing veil of vaulted fire which lights the vessel on her last path, there is a blue, deep, desolate hollow of darkness, out of which you can hear the voice of the night wind, and the dull boom of the disturbed sea; because the cold, deadly shadows of the twilight are gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by moment as you look, you will fancy some new film and faintness of the night has risen over the vastness of the departing form. § . recapitulation. and if, in effects of this kind, time be taken to dwell upon the individual tones, and to study the laws of their reconcilement, there will be found in the recent academy pictures of this great artist a mass of various truth to which nothing can be brought for comparison, which stands not only unrivalled, but uncontended with, and which, when in carrying out it may be inferior to some of the picked passages of the old masters, is so through deliberate choice rather to suggest a multitude of truths than to imitate one, and through a strife with difficulties of effect of which art can afford no parallel example. nay, in the next chapter, respecting color, we shall see farther reason for doubting the truth of claude, cuyp, and poussin, in tone,--reason so palpable that if these were all that were to be contended with, i should scarcely have allowed any inferiority in turner whatsoever;[ ] but i allow it, not so much with reference to the deceptive imitations of sunlight, wrought out with desperate exaggerations of shade, of the professed landscape painters, as with reference to the glory of rubens, the glow of titian, the silver tenderness of cagliari, and perhaps more than all to the precious and pure passages of intense feeling and heavenly light, holy and undefiled, and glorious with the changeless passion of eternity, which sanctify with their shadeless peace the deep and noble conceptions of the early school of italy,--of fra bartolomeo, perugino, and the early mind of raffaelle. footnotes [ ] of course i am not speaking here of treatment of chiaroscuro, but of that quantity of depth of shade by which, _coeteris paribus_, a near object will exceed a distant one. for the truth of the systems of turner and the old masters, as regards chiaroscuro, vide chapter iii. of this section, § . [ ] more important, observe, _as matters of truth or fact_. it may often chance that, as a matter of feeling, the tone is the more important of the two; but with this we have here no concern. [ ] we must not leave the subject of tone without alluding to the works of the late george barrett, which afford glorious and exalted passages of light; and john varley, who, though less truthful in his aim, was frequently deep in his feeling. some of the sketches of de wint are also admirable in this respect. as for our oil pictures, the less that is said about them the better. callcott has the truest aim; but not having any eye for color, it is impossible for him to succeed in tone. chapter ii. of truth of color. § . observations on the color of g. poussin's la riccia. there is, in the first room of the national gallery, a landscape attributed to gaspar poussin, called sometimes aricia, sometimes le or la riccia, according to the fancy of catalogue printers. whether it can be supposed to resemble the ancient aricia, now la riccia, close to albano, i will not take upon me to determine, seeing that most of the towns of these old masters are quite as like one place as another; but, at any rate, it is a town on a hill, wooded with two-and-thirty bushes, of very uniform size, and possessing about the same number of leaves each. these bushes are all painted in with one dull opaque brown, becoming very slightly greenish towards the lights, and discover in one place a bit of rock, which of course would in nature have been cool and gray beside the lustrous hues of foliage, and which, therefore, being moreover completely in shade, is consistently and scientifically painted of a very clear, pretty, and positive brick-red, the only thing like color in the picture. the foreground is a piece of road, which in order to make allowance for its greater nearness, for its being completely in light, and, it may be presumed, for the quantity of vegetation usually present on carriage-roads, is given in a very cool green gray, and the truth of the picture is completed by a number of dots in the sky on the right, with a stalk to them, of a sober and similar brown. § . as compared with the actual scene. not long ago, i was slowly descending this very bit of carriage-road, the first turn after you leave albano, not a little impeded by the worthy successors of the ancient prototypes of veiento.[ ] it had been wild weather when i left rome, and all across the campagna the clouds were sweeping in sulphurous blue, with a clap of thunder or two, and breaking gleams of sun along the claudian aqueduct lighting up the infinity of its arches like the bridge of chaos. but as i climbed the long slope of the alban mount, the storm swept finally to the north, and the noble outline of the domes of albano and graceful darkness of its ilex grove rose against pure streaks of alternate blue and amber, the upper sky gradually flushing through the last fragments of rain-cloud in deep, palpitating azure, half ether and half dew. the noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of la riccia, and its masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. i cannot call it color, it was conflagration. purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of god's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. far up into the recesses of the valley, the green vistas arched like the hollows of mighty waves of some crystalline sea, with the arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and silver flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around them, breaking over the gray walls of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them fall. every glade of grass burned like the golden floor of heaven, opening in sudden gleams as the foliage broke and closed above it, as sheet-lightning opens in a cloud at sunset; the motionless masses of dark rock--dark though flushed with scarlet lichen,--casting their quiet shadows across its restless radiance, the fountain underneath them filling its marble hollow with blue mist and fitful sound, and over all--the multitudinous bars of amber and rose, the sacred clouds that have no darkness, and only exist to illumine, were seen in fathomless intervals between the solemn and orbed repose of the stone pines, passing to lose themselves in the last, white, blinding lustre of the measureless line where the campagna melted into the blaze of the sea. § . turner himself is inferior in brilliancy to nature. tell me who is likest this, poussin or turner? not in his most daring and dazzling efforts could turner himself come near it; but you could not at the time have thought or remembered the work of any other man as having the remotest hue or resemblance of what you saw. nor am i speaking of what is uncommon or unnatural; there is no climate, no place, and scarcely an hour, in which nature does not exhibit color which no mortal effort can imitate or approach. for all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; the green of a growing leaf, the scarlet of a fresh flower, no art nor expedient can reach; but in addition to this, nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy, while the painter, deprived of this splendid aid, works still with what is actually a gray shadow compared to the force of nature's color. take a blade of grass and a scarlet flower, and place them so as to receive sunlight beside the brightest canvas that ever left turner's easel, and the picture will be extinguished. so far from out-facing nature, he does not, as far as mere vividness of color goes, one-half reach her;--but does he use this brilliancy of color on objects to which it does not properly belong? let us compare his works in this respect with a few instances from the old masters. § . impossible colors of salvator, titian; there is, on the left hand side of salvator's mercury and the woodman in our national gallery, something, without doubt intended for a rocky mountain, in the middle distance, near enough for all its fissures and crags to be distinctly visible, or, rather, for a great many awkward scratches of the brush over it to be visible, which, though not particularly representative either of one thing or another, are without doubt intended to be symbolical of rocks. now no mountain in full light, and near enough for its details of crag to be seen, is without great variety of delicate color. salvator has painted it throughout without one instant of variation; but this, i suppose, is simplicity and generalization;--let it pass: but what is the color? _pure sky blue_, without one grain of gray, or any modifying hue whatsoever;--the same brush which had just given the bluest parts of the sky, has been more loaded at the same part of the pallet, and the whole mountain thrown in with unmitigated ultramarine. now mountains only can become pure blue when there is so much air between us and them that they become mere flat, dark shades, every detail being totally lost: they become blue when they become air, and not till then. consequently this part of salvator's painting, being of hills perfectly clear and near, with all their details visible, is, as far as color is concerned, broad, bold falsehood--the direct assertion of direct impossibility. in the whole range of turner's works, recent or of old date, you will not find an instance of anything near enough to have details visible, painted in sky blue. wherever turner gives blue, there he gives atmosphere; it is air, not object. blue he gives to his sea; so does nature;--blue he gives, sapphire-deep, to his extreme distance; so does nature;--blue he gives to the misty shadows and hollows of his hills; so does nature: but blue he gives _not_, where detail and illumined surface are visible; as he comes into light and character, so he breaks into warmth and varied hue; nor is there in one of his works, and i speak of the academy pictures especially, one touch of cold color which is not to be accounted for, and proved right and full of meaning. i do not say that salvator's distance is not artist-like; both in that, and in the yet more glaringly false distances of titian above alluded to, and in hundreds of others of equal boldness of exaggeration, i can take delight, and perhaps should be sorry to see them other than they are; but it is somewhat singular to hear people talking of turner's exquisite care and watchfulness in color as false, while they receive such cases of preposterous and audacious fiction with the most generous and simple credulity. § . poussin, and claude. again, in the upper sky of the picture of nicolas poussin, before noticed, the clouds are of a very fine clear olive-green, about the same tint as the brightest parts of the trees beneath them. they cannot have altered, (or else the trees must have been painted in gray,) for the hue is harmonious and well united with the rest of the picture, and the blue and white in the centre of the sky are still fresh and pure. now a green sky in open and illumined distance is very frequent, and very beautiful; but rich olive-green clouds, as far as i am acquainted with nature, are a piece of color in which she is not apt to indulge. you will be puzzled to show me such a thing in the recent works of turner.[ ] again, take any important group of trees, i do not care whose--claude's, salvator's, or poussin's--with lateral light (that in the marriage of isaac and rebecca, or gaspar's sacrifice of isaac, for instance:) can it be seriously supposed that those murky browns and melancholy greens are representative of the tints of leaves under full noonday sun? i know that you cannot help looking upon all these pictures as pieces of dark relief against a light wholly proceeding from the distances; but they are nothing of the kind--they are noon and morning effects with full lateral light. be so kind as to match the color of a leaf in the sun (the darkest you like) as nearly as you can, and bring your matched color and set it beside one of these groups of trees, and take a blade of common grass, and set it beside any part of the fullest light of their foregrounds, and then talk about the truth of color of the old masters! and let not arguments respecting the sublimity or fidelity of _impression_ be brought forward here. i have nothing whatever to do with this at present. i am not talking about what is sublime, but about what is true. people attack turner on this ground;--they never speak of beauty or sublimity with respect to him, but of nature and truth, and let them support their own favorite masters on the same grounds. perhaps i may have the very deepest veneration for the _feeling_ of the old masters, but i must not let it influence me now--my business is to match colors, not to talk sentiment. neither let it be said that i am going too much into details, and that general truths may be obtained by local falsehood. truth is only to be measured by close comparison of actual facts; we may talk forever about it in generals, and prove nothing. we cannot tell what effect falsehood may produce on this or that person, but we can very well tell what is false and what is not, and if it produce on our senses the effect of truth, that only demonstrates their imperfection and inaccuracy, and need of cultivation. turner's color is glaring to one person's sensations, and beautiful to another's. this proves nothing. poussin's color is right to one, soot to another. this proves nothing. there is no means of arriving at any conclusion but close comparison of both with the known and demonstrable hues of nature, and this comparison will invariably turn claude or poussin into blackness, and even turner into gray. whatever depth of gloom may seem to invest the objects of a real landscape, yet a window with that landscape seen through it, will invariably appear a broad space of light as compared with the shade of the room walls; and this single circumstance may prove to us both the intensity and the diffusion of daylight in open air, and the necessity, if a picture is to be truthful in effect of color, that it should tell as a broad space of graduated illumination--not, as do those of the old masters, as a patch-work of black shades. their works are nature in mourning weeds,--[greek: oud hen hêliô katharô tethrammenoi, all hypo symmigei skia]. § . turner's translation of colors. it is true that there are, here and there, in the academy pictures, passages in which turner has translated the unattainable intensity of one tone of color, into the attainable pitch of a higher one: the golden green for instance, of intense sunshine on verdure, into pure yellow, because he knows it to be impossible, with any mixture of blue whatsoever, to give faithfully its relative intensity of light, and turner always will have his light and shade right, whatever it costs him in color. but he does this in rare cases, and even then over very small spaces; and i should be obliged to his critics if they would go out to some warm, mossy green bank in full summer sunshine, and try to reach its tone; and when they find, as find they will, indian yellow and chrome look dark beside it, let them tell me candidly which is nearest truth, the gold of turner, or the mourning and murky olive browns and verdigris greens in which claude, with the industry and intelligence of a sevres china painter, drags the laborious bramble leaves over his childish foreground. § . notice of effects in which no brilliancy of art can even approach that of reality. § . reasons for the usual incredulity of the observer with respect to their representation. § . color of the napoleon. but it is singular enough that the chief attacks on turner for overcharged brilliancy, are made, not when there could by any possibility be any chance of his outstepping nature, but when he has taken subjects which no colors of earth could ever vie with or reach, such, for instance, as his sunsets among the high clouds. when i come to speak of skies, i shall point out what divisions, proportioned to their elevation, exist in the character of clouds. it is the highest region,--that exclusively characterized by white, filmy, multitudinous, and quiet clouds, arranged in bars, or streaks, or flakes, of which i speak at present, a region which no landscape painters have ever made one effort to represent, except rubens and turner--the latter taking it for his most favorite and frequent study. now we have been speaking hitherto of what is constant and necessary in nature, of the ordinary effects of daylight on ordinary colors, and we repeat again, that no gorgeousness of the pallet can reach even these. but it is a widely different thing when nature herself takes a coloring fit, and does something extraordinary, something really to exhibit her power. she has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability of color are in these sunsets among the high clouds. i speak especially of the moment before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-color, and when this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which would in common daylight be pure snow white, and which give therefore fair field to the tone of light. there is then no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity of the hues assumed. the whole sky from the zenith to the horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless, crimson, and purple, and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language, and no ideas in the mind,--things which can only be conceived while they are visible,--the intense hollow blue of the upper sky melting through it all,--showing here deep, and pure, and lightless, there, modulated by the filmy, formless body of the transparent vapor, till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold. now there is no connection, no one link of association or resemblance, between those skies and the work of any mortal hand but turner's. he alone has followed nature in these her highest efforts; he follows her faithfully, but far behind; follows at such a distance below her intensity that the napoleon of last year's exhibition, and the temeraire of the year before, would look colorless and cold if the eye came upon them after one of nature's sunsets among the high clouds. but there are a thousand reasons why this should not be believed. the concurrence of circumstances necessary to produce the sunsets of which i speak does not take place above five or six times in the summer, and then only for a space of from five to ten minutes, just as the sun reaches the horizon. considering how seldom people think of looking for sunset at all, and how seldom, if they do, they are in a position from which it can be fully seen, the chances that their attention should be awake, and their position favorable, during these few flying instants of the year, is almost as nothing. what can the citizen, who can see only the red light on the canvas of the wagon at the end of the street, and the crimson color of the bricks of his neighbor's chimney, know of the flood of fire which deluges the sky from the horizon to the zenith? what can even the quiet inhabitant of the english lowlands, whose scene for the manifestation of the fire of heaven is limited to the tops of hayricks, and the rooks' nests in the old elm-trees, know of the mighty passages of splendor which are tossed from alp to alp over the azure of a thousand miles of champaign? even granting the constant vigor of observation, and supposing the possession of such impossible knowledge, it needs but a moment's reflection to prove how incapable the memory is of retaining for any time the distinct image of the sources even of its most vivid impressions. what recollection have we of the sunsets which delighted us last year? we may know that they were magnificent, or glowing, but no distinct image of color or form is retained--nothing of whose _degree_ (for the great difficulty with the memory is to retain, not facts, but _degrees_ of fact) we could be so certain as to say of anything now presented to us, that it is like it. if we did say so, we should be wrong; for we may be quite certain that the energy of an impression fades from the memory, and becomes more and more indistinct every day; and thus we compare a faded and indistinct image with the decision and certainty of one present to the senses. how constantly do we affirm that the thunder-storm of last week was the most terrible one we ever saw in our lives, because we compare it, not with the thunder-storm of last year, but with the faded and feeble recollection of it. and so, when we enter an exhibition, as we have no definite standard of truth before us, our feelings are toned down and subdued to the quietness of color which is all that human power can ordinarily attain to; and when we turn to a piece of higher and closer truth, approaching the pitch of the color of nature, but to which we are not guided, as we should be in nature, by corresponding gradations of light everywhere around us, but which is isolated and cut off suddenly by a frame and a wall, and surrounded by darkness and coldness, what can we expect but that it should surprise and shock the feelings? suppose, where the napoleon hung in the academy last year, there could have been left, instead, an opening in the wall, and through that opening, in the midst of the obscurity of the dim room and the smoke-laden atmosphere, there could suddenly have been poured the full glory of a tropical sunset, reverberated from the sea: how would you have shrunk, blinded, from its scarlet and intolerable lightnings! what picture in the room would not have been blackness after it? and why then do you blame turner because he dazzles you? does not the falsehood rest with those who do _not_? there was not one hue in this whole picture which was not far below what nature would have used in the same circumstances, nor was there one inharmonious or at variance with the rest;--the stormy blood-red of the horizon, the scarlet of the breaking sunlight, the rich crimson browns of the wet and illumined sea-weed; the pure gold and purple of the upper sky, and, shed through it all, the deep passage of solemn blue, where the cold moonlight fell on one pensive spot of the limitless shore--all were given with harmony as perfect as their color was intense; and if, instead of passing, as i doubt not you did, in the hurry of your unreflecting prejudice, you had paused but so much as one quarter of an hour before the picture, you would have found the sense of air and space blended with every line, and breathing in every cloud, and every color instinct and radiant with visible, glowing, absorbing light. § . necessary discrepancy between the attainable brilliancy of color and light. it is to be observed, however, in general, that wherever in brilliant effects of this kind, we approach to anything like a true statement of nature's color, there must yet be a distinct difference in the impression we convey, because we cannot approach her _light_. all such hues are usually given by her with an accompanying intensity of sunbeams which dazzles and overpowers the eye, so that it cannot rest on the actual colors, nor understand what they are; and hence in art, in rendering all effects of this kind, there must be a want of the ideas of _imitation_, which are the great source of enjoyment to the ordinary observer; because we can only give one series of truths, those of color, and are unable to give the accompanying truths of light, so that the more true we are in color, the greater, ordinarily, will be the discrepancy felt between the intensity of hue and the feebleness of light. but the painter who really loves nature will not, on this account, give you a faded and feeble image, which indeed may appear to you to be right, because your feelings can detect no discrepancy in its parts, but which he knows to derive its apparent truth from a systematized falsehood. no; he will make you understand and feel that art _cannot_ imitate nature--that where it appears to do so, it must malign her, and mock her. he will give you, or state to you, such truths as are in his power, completely and perfectly; and those which he cannot give, he will leave to your imagination. if you are acquainted with nature, you will know all he has given to be true, and you will supply from your memory and from your heart that light which he cannot give. if you are unacquainted with nature, seek elsewhere for whatever may happen to satisfy your feelings; but do not ask for the truth which you would not acknowledge and could not enjoy. § . this discrepancy less in turner than in other colorists. § . its great extent in a landscape attributed to rubens. nevertheless the aim and struggle of the artist must always be to do away with this discrepancy as far as the powers of art admit, not by lowering his color, but by increasing his light. and it is indeed by this that the works of turner are peculiarly distinguished from those of all other colorists, by the dazzling intensity, namely, of the light which he sheds through every hue, and which, far more than their brilliant color, is the real source of their overpowering effect upon the eye, an effect so _reasonably_ made the subject of perpetual animadversion, as if the sun which they represent were quite a quiet, and subdued, and gentle, and manageable luminary, and never dazzled anybody, under any circumstances whatsoever. i am fond of standing by a bright turner in the academy, to listen to the unintentional compliments of the crowd--"what a glaring thing!" "i declare i can't look at it!" "don't it hurt your eyes?"--expressed as if they were in the constant habit of looking the sun full in the face, with the most perfect comfort and entire facility of vision. it is curious after hearing people malign some of turner's noble passages of light, to pass to some really ungrammatical and false picture of the old masters, in which we have color given _without_ light. take, for instance, the landscape attributed to rubens, no. , in the dulwich gallery. i never have spoken, and i never will speak of rubens but with the most reverential feeling; and whatever imperfections in his art may have resulted from his unfortunate want of seriousness and incapability of true passion, his calibre of mind was originally such that i believe the world may see another titian and another raffaelle, before it sees another rubens. but i have before alluded to the violent license he occasionally assumes; and there is an instance of it in this picture apposite to the immediate question. the sudden streak and circle of yellow and crimson in the middle of the sky of that picture, being the occurrence of a fragment of a sunset color in pure daylight, and in perfect isolation, while at the same time it is rather darker, when translated into light and shade, than brighter than the rest of the sky, is a case of such bold absurdity, come from whose pencil it may, that if every error which turner has fallen into in the whole course of his life were concentrated into one, that one would not equal it; and as our connoisseurs gaze upon this with never-ending approbation, we must not be surprised that the accurate perceptions which thus take delight in pure fiction, should consistently be disgusted by turner's fidelity and truth. § . turner scarcely ever uses pure or vivid color. hitherto, however, we have been speaking of vividness of pure color, and showing that it is used by turner only where nature uses it, and in no less degree. but we have hitherto, therefore, been speaking of a most limited and uncharacteristic portion of his works; for turner, like all great colorists, is distinguished not more for his power of dazzling and overwhelming the eye with intensity of effect, than for his power of doing so by the use of subdued and gentle means. there is no man living more cautious and sparing in the use of pure color than turner. to say that he never perpetrates anything like the blue excrescences of foreground, or hills _shot_ like a housekeeper's best silk gown, with blue and red, which certain of our celebrated artists consider the essence of the sublime, would be but a poor compliment. i might as well praise the portraits of titian because they have not the grimace and paint of a clown in a pantomime; but i do say, and say with confidence, that there is scarcely a landscape artist of the present day, however sober and lightless their effects may look, who does not employ more pure and raw color than turner; and that the ordinary tinsel and trash, or rather vicious and perilous stuff, according to the power of the mind producing it, with which the walls of our academy are half covered, disgracing, in weak hands, or in more powerful, degrading and corrupting our whole school of art, is based on a system of color beside which turner's is as vesta to cotytto--the chastity of fire to the foulness of earth. every picture of this great colorist has, in one or two parts of it, (key-notes of the whole,) points where the system of each individual color is concentrated by a single stroke, as pure as it can come from the pallet; but throughout the great space and extent of even the most brilliant of his works, there will not be found a raw color; that is to say, there is no warmth which has not gray in it, and no blue which has not warmth in it; and the tints in which he most excels and distances all other men, the most cherished and inimitable portions of his color, are, as with all perfect colorists they must be, his grays. it is instructive in this respect, to compare the sky of the mercury and argus with the various illustrations of the serenity, space, and sublimity naturally inherent in blue and pink, of which every year's exhibition brings forward enough and to spare. in the mercury and argus, the pale and vaporous blue of the heated sky is broken with gray and pearly white, the gold color of the light warming it more or less as it approaches or retires from the sun; but throughout, there is not a grain of pure blue; all is subdued and warmed at the same time by the mingling gray and gold, up to the very zenith, where, breaking through the flaky mist, the transparent and deep azure of the sky is expressed with a single crumbling touch; the key-note of the whole is given, and every part of it passes at once far into glowing and aerial space. the reader can scarcely fail to remember at once sundry works in contradistinction to this, with great names attached to them, in which the sky is a sheer piece of plumber's and glazier's work, and should be valued per yard, with heavy extra charge for ultramarine. § . the basis of gray, under all his vivid hues. throughout the works of turner, the same truthful principle of delicate and subdued color is carried out with a care and labor of which it is difficult to form a conception. he gives a dash of pure white for his highest light; but all the other whites of his picture are pearled down with gray or gold. he gives a fold of pure crimson to the drapery of his nearest figure; but all his other crimsons will be deepened with black, or warmed with yellow. in one deep reflection of his distant sea, we catch a trace of the purest blue; but all the rest is palpitating with a varied and delicate gradation of harmonized tint, which indeed looks vivid blue as a mass, but is only so by opposition. it is the most difficult, the most rare thing, to find in his works a definite space, however small, of unconnected color; that is, either of a blue which has nothing to connect it with the warmth, or of a warm color which has nothing to connect it with the grays of the whole; and the result is, that there is a general system and undercurrent of gray pervading the whole of his color, out of which his highest lights, and those local touches of pure color, which are, as i said before, the key-notes of the picture, flash with the peculiar brilliancy and intensity in which he stands alone. § . the variety and fulness even of his most simple tones. § . following the infinite and unapproachable variety of nature. intimately associated with this toning down and connection of the colors actually used, is his inimitable power of varying and blending them, so as never to give a quarter of an inch of canvas without a change in it, a melody as well as a harmony of one kind or another. observe, i am not at present speaking of this as artistical or desirable in itself, not as a characteristic of the great colorist, but as the aim of the simple follower of nature. for it is strange to see how marvellously nature varies the most general and simple of her tones. a mass of mountain seen against the light, may, at first, appear all of one blue; and so it is, blue as a whole, by comparison with other parts of the landscape. but look how that blue is made up. there are black shadows in it under the crags, there are green shadows along the turf, there are gray half-lights upon the rocks, there are faint touches of stealthy warmth and cautious light along their edges; every bush, every stone, every tuft of moss has its voice in the matter, and joins with individual character in the universal will. who is there who can do this as turner will? the old masters would have settled the matter at once with a transparent, agreeable, but monotonous gray. many among the moderns would probably be equally monotonous with absurd and false colors. turner only would give the uncertainty--the palpitating, perpetual change--the subjection of all to a great influence, without one part or portion being lost or merged in it--the unity of action with infinity of agent. and i wish to insist on this the more particularly, because it is one of the eternal principles of nature, that she will not have one line nor color, nor one portion nor atom of space without a change in it. there is not one of her shadows, tints, or lines that is not in a state of perpetual variation: i do not mean in time, but in space. there is not a leaf in the world which has the _same color_ visible over its whole surface; it has a white high light somewhere; and in proportion as it curves to or from that focus, the color is brighter or grayer. pick up a common flint from the roadside, and count, if you can, its changes and hues of color. every bit of bare ground under your feet has in it a thousand such--the gray pebbles, the warm ochre, the green of incipient vegetation, the grays and blacks of its reflexes and shadows, might keep a painter at work for a month, if he were obliged to follow them touch for touch: how much more, when the same infinity of change is carried out with vastness of object and space. the extreme of distance may appear at first monotonous; but the least examination will show it to be full of every kind of change--that its outlines are perpetually melting and appearing again--sharp here, vague there--now lost altogether, now just hinted and still confused among each other--and so forever in a state and necessity of change. hence, wherever in a painting we have unvaried color extended even over a small space, there is falsehood. nothing can be natural which is monotonous; nothing true which only tells one story. the brown foreground and rocks of claude's sinon before priam are as false as color can be: first, because there never was such a brown under sunlight, for even the sand and cinders (volcanic tufa) about naples, granting that he had studied from these ugliest of all formations, are, where they are fresh fractured, golden and lustrous in full light compared to these ideals of crag, and become, like all other rocks, quiet and gray when weathered; and secondly, because no rock that ever nature stained is without its countless breaking tints of varied vegetation. and even stanfield, master as he is of rock form, is apt in the same way to give us here and there a little bit of mud, instead of stone. § . his dislike of purple and fondness for the opposition of yellow and black. the principles of nature in this respect. what i am next about to say with respect to turner's color, i should wish to be received with caution, as it admits of dispute. i think that the first approach to viciousness of color in any master is commonly indicated chiefly by a prevalence of purple, and an absence of yellow. i think nature mixes yellow with almost every one of her hues, never, or very rarely, using red without it, but frequently using yellow with scarcely any red; and i believe it will be in consequence found that her favorite opposition, that which generally characterizes and gives tone to her color, is yellow and black, passing, as it retires, into white and blue. it is beyond dispute that the great fundamental opposition of rubens is yellow and black; and that on this, concentrated in one part of the picture, and modified in various grays throughout, chiefly depend the tones of all his finest works. and in titian, though there is a far greater tendency to the purple than in rubens, i believe no red is ever mixed with the pure blue, or glazed over it, which has not in it a modifying quantity of yellow. at all events, i am nearly certain that whatever rich and pure purples are introduced locally, by the great colorists, nothing is so destructive of all fine color as the slightest tendency to purple in general tone; and i am equally certain that turner is distinguished from all the vicious colorists of the present day, by the foundation of all his tones being black, yellow, and the intermediate grays, while the tendency of our common glare-seekers is invariably to pure, cold, impossible purples. so fond indeed is turner of black and yellow, that he has given us more than one composition, both drawings and paintings, based on these two colors alone, of which the magnificent quilleboeuf, which i consider one of the most perfect pieces of simple color existing, is a most striking example; and i think that where, as in some of the late venices, there has been something like a marked appearance of purple tones, even though exquisitely corrected by vivid orange and warm green in the foreground, the general color has not been so perfect or truthful: my own feelings would always guide me rather to the warm grays of such pictures as the snow storm, or the glowing scarlet and gold of the napoleon and slave ship. but i do not insist at present on this part of the subject, as being perhaps more proper for future examination, when we are considering the ideal of color. § . his early works are false in color. the above remarks have been made entirely with reference to the recent academy pictures, which have been chiefly attacked for their color. i by no means intend them to apply to the early works of turner, those which the enlightened newspaper critics are perpetually talking about as characteristic of a time when turner was "really great." he is, and was, really great, from the time when he first could hold a brush, but he never was so great as he is now. the crossing the brook, glorious as it is as a composition, and perfect in all that is most desirable and most ennobling in art, is scarcely to be looked upon as a piece of color; it is an agreeable, cool, gray rendering of space and form, but it is not color; if it be regarded as such, it is thoroughly false and vapid, and very far inferior to the tones of the same kind given by claude. the reddish brown in the foreground of the fall of carthage, with all diffidence be it spoken, is, as far as my feelings are competent to judge, crude, sunless, and in every way wrong; and both this picture and the building of carthage, though this latter is far the finer of the two, are quite unworthy of turner as a colorist. § . his drawings invariably perfect. not so with the drawings; these, countless as they are, from the earliest to the latest, though presenting an unbroken chain of increasing difficulty overcome, and truth illustrated, are all, according to their aim, equally faultless as to color. whatever we have hitherto said, applies to them in its fullest extent; though each, being generally the realization of some effect actually seen, and realized but once, requires almost a separate essay. as a class, they are far quieter and chaster than the academy pictures, and, were they better known, might enable our connoisseurs to form a somewhat more accurate judgment of the intense study of nature on which all turner's color is based. § . the subjection of his system of color to that of chiaroscuro. one point only remains to be noted respecting his system of color generally--its entire subordination to light and shade, a subordination which there is no need to prove here, as every engraving from his works--and few are unengraved--is sufficient demonstration of it. i have before shown the inferiority and unimportance in nature of color, as a truth, compared with light and shade. that inferiority is maintained and asserted by all really great works of color; but most by turner's as their color is most intense. whatever brilliancy he may choose to assume, is subjected to an inviolable law of chiaroscuro, from which there is no appeal. no richness nor depth of tint is considered of value enough to atone for the loss of one particle of arranged light. no brilliancy of hue is permitted to interfere with the depth of a determined shadow. and hence it is, that while engravings from works far less splendid in color are often vapid and cold, because the little color employed has not been rightly based on light and shade, an engraving from turner is always beautiful and forcible in proportion as the color of the original has been intense, and never in a single instance has failed to express the picture as a perfect composition.[ ] powerful and captivating and faithful as his color is, it is the least important of all his excellences, because it is the least important feature of nature. he paints in color, but he thinks in light and shade; and were it necessary, rather than lose one line of his forms, or one ray of his sunshine, would, i apprehend, be content to paint in black and white to the end of his life. it is by mistaking the shadow for the substance, and aiming at the brilliancy and the fire, without perceiving of what deep-studied shade and inimitable form it is at once the result and the illustration, that the host of his imitators sink into deserved disgrace. with him, as with all the greatest painters, and in turner's more than all, the hue is a beautiful auxiliary in working out the great impression to be conveyed, but is not the source nor the essence of that impression; it is little more than a visible melody, given to raise and assist the mind in the reception of nobler ideas--as sacred passages of sweet sound, to prepare the feelings for the reading of the mysteries of god. footnotes [ ] "cæcus adulator-- dignus aricinos qui mendicaret ad axes, blandaque devexæ iactaret basia rhedæ." [ ] there is perhaps nothing more characteristic of a great colorist than his power of using greens in strange places without their being felt as such, or at least than a constant preference of green gray to purple gray. and this hue of poussin's clouds would have been perfectly agreeable and allowable, had there been gold or crimson enough in the rest of the picture to have thrown it into gray. it is only because the lower clouds are pure white and blue, and because the trees are of the same color as the clouds, that the cloud color becomes false. there is a fine instance of a sky, green in itself, but turned gray by the opposition of warm color, in turner's devonport with the dockyards. [ ] this is saying too much; for it not unfrequently happens that the light and shade of the original is lost in the engraving, the effect of which is afterwards partially recovered, with the aid of the artist himself, by introductions of new features. sometimes, when a drawing depends chiefly on color, the engraver gets unavoidably embarrassed, and must be assisted by some change or exaggeration of the effect; but the more frequent case is, that the engraver's difficulties result merely from his inattention to, or wilful deviations from his original; and that the artist is obliged to assist him by such expedients as the error itself suggests. not unfrequently in reviewing a plate, as very constantly in reviewing a picture after some time has elapsed since its completion, even the painter is liable to make unnecessary or hurtful changes. in the plate of the old temeraire, lately published in finden's gallery, i do not know whether it was turner or the engraver who broke up the water into sparkling ripple, but it was a grievous mistake, and has destroyed the whole dignity and value of the conception. the flash of lightning in the winchelsea of the england series does not exist in the original; it is put in to withdraw the attention of the spectator from the sky which the engraver destroyed. there is an unfortunate persuasion among modern engravers that color can be expressed by particular characters of line; and in the endeavor to distinguish by different lines, different colors of equal depth, they frequently lose the whole system of light and shade. it will hardly be credited that the piece of foreground on the left of turner's modern italy, represented in the art-union engraving as nearly coal black, is in the original of a pale warm gray, hardly darker than the sky. all attempt to record color in engraving, is heraldry out of its place: the engraver has no power beyond that of expressing transparency or opacity by greater or less openness of line, (for the same depth of tint is producible by lines with very different intervals.) texture of surface is only in a measure in the power of the steel, and ought not to be laboriously sought after; nature's surfaces are distinguished more by form than texture; a stone is often smoother than a leaf; but if texture is to be given, let the engraver at least be sure that he knows what the texture of the object actually is, and how to represent it. the leaves in the foreground of the engraved mercury and argus have all of them three or four black lines across them. what sort of leaf texture is supposed to be represented by these? the stones in the foreground of turner's llanthony received from the artist the powdery texture of sandstone; the engraver covered them with contorted lines and turned them into old timber. a still more fatal cause of failure is the practice of making out or finishing what the artist left incomplete. in the england plate of dudley, there are two offensive blank windows in the large building with the chimney on the left. these _are_ engraver's improvements; in the original they are barely traceable, their lines being excessively faint and tremulous as with the movement of heated air between them and the spectator: their vulgarity is thus taken away, and the whole building left in one grand unbroken mass. it is almost impossible to break engravers of this unfortunate habit. i have even heard of their taking journeys of some distance in order to obtain knowledge of the details which the artist intentionally omitted; and the evil will necessarily continue until they receive something like legitimate artistical education. in one or two instances, however, especially in small plates, they have shown great feeling; the plates of miller (especially those of the turner illustrations to scott) are in most instances perfect and beautiful interpretations of the originals; so those of goodall in rogers's works, and cousens's in the rivers of france; those of the yorkshire series are also very valuable, though singularly inferior to the drawings. but none even of these men appear capable of producing a large plate. they have no knowledge of the means of rendering their lines vital or valuable; cross-hatching stands for everything; and inexcusably, for though we cannot expect every engraver to etch like rembrandt or albert durer, or every wood-cutter to draw like titian, at least something of the system and power of the grand works of those men might be preserved, and some mind and meaning stolen into the reticulation of the restless modern lines. chapter iii. of truth of chiaroscuro. § . we are not at present to examine particular effects of light. it is not my intention to enter, in the present portion of the work, upon any examination of turner's particular effects of light. we must know something about what is beautiful before we speak of these. at present i wish only to insist upon two great principles of chiaroscuro, which are observed throughout the works of the great modern master, and set at defiance by the ancients--great general laws, which may, or may not, be sources of beauty, but whose observance is indisputably necessary to truth. go out some bright sunny day in winter, and look for a tree with a broad trunk, having rather delicate boughs hanging down on the sunny side, near the trunk. stand four or five yards from it, with your back to the sun. you will find that the boughs between you and the trunk of the tree are very indistinct, that you confound them in places with the trunk itself, and cannot possibly trace one of them from its insertion to its extremity. but the shadows which they cast upon the trunk, you will find clear, dark, and distinct, perfectly traceable through their whole course, except when they are interrupted by the crossing boughs. and if you retire backwards, you will come to a point where you cannot see the intervening boughs at all, or only a fragment of them here and there, but can still see their shadows perfectly plain. now, this may serve to show you the immense prominence and importance of shadows where there is anything like bright light. they are, in fact, commonly far more conspicuous than the thing which casts them, for being as large as the casting object, and altogether made up of a blackness deeper than the darkest part of the casting object, (while that object is also broken up with positive and reflected lights,) their large, broad, unbroken spaces, tell strongly on the eye, especially as all form is rendered partially, often totally invisible within them, and as they are suddenly terminated by the sharpest lines which nature ever shows. for no outline of objects whatsoever is so sharp as the edge of a close shadow. put your finger over a piece of white paper in the sun, and observe the difference between the softness of the outline of the finger itself and the decision of the edge of the shadow. and note also the excessive gloom of the latter. a piece of black cloth, laid in the light, will not attain one-fourth of the blackness of the paper under the shadow. § . and therefore the distinctness of shadows is the chief means of expressing vividness of light. § . total absence of such distinctness in the works of the italian school. § . and partial absence in the dutch. hence shadows are in reality, when the sun is shining, the most conspicuous thing in a landscape, next to the highest lights. all forms are understood and explained chiefly by their agency: the roughness of the bark of a tree, for instance, is not seen in the light, nor in the shade: it is only seen between the two, where the shadows of the ridges explain it. and hence, if we have to express vivid light, our very first aim must be to get the shadows sharp and visible; and this is not to be done by blackness, (though indeed chalk on white paper is the only thing which comes up to the intensity of real shadows,) but by keeping them perfectly flat, keen, and even. a very pale shadow, if it be quite flat--if it conceal the details of the objects it crosses--if it be gray and cold compared to their color, and very sharp edged, will be far more conspicuous, and make everything out of it look a great deal more like sunlight, than a shadow ten times its depth, shaded off at the edge, and confounded with the color of the objects on which it falls. now the old masters of the italian school, in almost all of their works, directly reverse this principle: they blacken their shadows till the picture becomes quite appalling, and everything in it invisible; but they make a point of losing their edges, and carrying them off by gradation; in consequence utterly destroying every appearance of sunlight. all their shadows are the faint, secondary darknesses of mere _daylight_; the sun has nothing whatever to do with them. the shadow between the pages of the book which you hold in your hand is distinct and visible enough, (though you are, i suppose, reading it by the ordinary daylight of your room,) out of the sun; and this weak and secondary shadow is all that we ever find in the italian masters, as indicative of sunshine. even cuyp and berghem, though they know thoroughly well what they are about in their foregrounds, forget the principle in their distances; and though in claude's seaports, where he has plain architecture to deal with, he gives us something like real shadows along the stones, the moment we come to ground and foliage with lateral light, away go the shadows and the sun together. in the marriage of isaac and rebecca, in our own gallery, the trunks of the trees between the water-wheel and the white figure in the middle distance, are dark and visible; but their shadows are scarcely discernible on the ground, and are quite vague and lost in the building. in nature, every bit of the shadow would have been darker than the darkest part of the trunks, and both on the ground and building would have been defined and conspicuous; while the trunks themselves would have been faint, confused, and indistinguishable, in their illumined parts, from the grass or distance. so in poussin's phocion, the shadow of the stick on the stone in the right-hand corner, is shaded off and lost, while you see the stick plain all the way. in nature's sunlight it would have been the direct reverse--you would have seen the shadow black and sharp all the way down, but you would have had to look for the stick, which in all probability would in several places have been confused with the stone behind it. and so throughout the works of claude, poussin, and salvator, we shall find, especially in their conventional foliage, and unarticulated barbarisms of rock, that their whole sum and substance of chiaroscuro is merely the gradation and variation which nature gives in the _body_ of her shadows, and that all which they do to express sunshine, she does to vary shade. they take only one step, while she always takes two; marking, in the first place, with violent decision, the great transition from sun to shade, and then varying the shade itself with a thousand gentle gradations and double shadows, in themselves equivalent, and more than equivalent, to all that the old masters did for their entire chiaroscuro. § . the perfection of turner's works in this respect. now if there be one principle, or secret more than another, on which turner depends for attaining brilliancy of light, it is his clear and exquisite drawing of the _shadows_. whatever is obscure, misty, or undefined in his objects or his atmosphere, he takes care that the shadows be sharp and clear--and then he knows that the light will take care of itself, and he makes them clear, not by blackness, but by excessive evenness, unity, and sharpness of edge. he will keep them clear and distinct, and make them felt as shadows, though they are so faint, that, but for their decisive forms, we should not have observed them for darkness at all. he will throw them one after another like transparent veils, along the earth and upon the air, till the whole picture palpitates with them, and yet the darkest of them will be a faint gray, imbued and penetrated with light. the pavement on the left of the hero and leander, is about the most thorough piece of this kind of sorcery that i remember in art; but of the general principle, not one of his works is without constant evidence. take the vignette of the garden opposite the title-page of rogers's poems, and note the drawing of the nearest balustrade on the right. the balusters themselves are faint and misty, and the light through them feeble; but the shadows of them are sharp and dark, and the intervening light as intense as it can be left. and see how much more distinct the shadow of the running figure is on the pavement, than the checkers of the pavement itself. observe the shadows on the trunk of the tree at page , how they conquer all the details of the trunk itself, and become darker and more conspicuous than any part of the boughs or limbs, and so in the vignette to campbell's beechtree's petition. take the beautiful concentration of all that is most characteristic of italy as she is, at page of rogers's italy, where we have the long shadows of the trunks made by far the most conspicuous thing in the whole foreground, and hear how wordsworth, the keenest-eyed of all modern poets for what is deep and essential in nature, illustrates turner here, as we shall find him doing in all other points. "at the root of that tall pine, the shadow of whose bare and slender stem, while here i sit at eve, oft stretches tow'rds me, like a long straight path, traced faintly in the greensward." excursion, book vi § . the effect of his shadows upon the light. so again in the rhymer's glen, (illustrations to scott,) note the intertwining of the shadows across the path, and the checkering of the trunks by them; and again on the bridge in the armstrong's tower; and yet more in the long avenue of brienne, where we have a length of two or three miles expressed by the playing shadows alone, and the whole picture filled with sunshine by the long lines of darkness cast by the figures on the snow. the hampton court in the england series, is another very striking instance. in fact, the general system of execution observable in all turner's drawings, is to work his grounds richly and fully, sometimes stippling, and giving infinity of delicate, mysterious, and ceaseless detail; and on the ground so prepared to cast his shadows with one dash of the brush, leaving an excessively sharp edge of watery color. such at least is commonly the case in such coarse and broad instances as those i have above given. words are not accurate enough, nor delicate enough to express or trace the constant, all-pervading influence of the finer and vaguer shadows throughout his works, that thrilling influence which gives to the light they leave, its passion and its power. there is not a stone, not a leaf, not a cloud, over which light is not felt to be actually passing and palpitating before our eyes. there is the motion, the actual wave and radiation of the darted beam--not the dull universal daylight, which falls on the landscape without life, or direction, or speculation, equal on all things and dead on all things; but the breathing, animated, exulting light, which feels, and receives, and rejoices, and acts--which chooses one thing and rejects another--which seeks, and finds, and loses again--leaping from rock to rock, from leaf to leaf, from wave to wave,--glowing, or flashing, or scintillating, according to what it strikes, or in its holier moods, absorbing and enfolding all things in the deep fulness of its repose, and then again losing itself in bewilderment, and doubt, and dimness; or perishing and passing away, entangled in drifting mist, or melted into melancholy air, but still,--kindling, or declining, sparkling or still, it is the living light, which breathes in its deepest, most entranced rest, which sleeps, but never dies. § . the distinction holds good between almost all the works of the ancient and modern schools. i need scarcely insist farther on the marked distinction between the works of the old masters and those of the great modern landscape-painters in this respect. it is one which the reader can perfectly well work out for himself, by the slightest systematic attention,--one which he will find existing, not merely between this work and that, but throughout the whole body of their productions, and down to every leaf and line. and a little careful watching of nature, especially in her foliage and foregrounds, and comparison of her with claude, gaspar poussin, and salvator, will soon show him that those artists worked entirely on conventional principles, not representing what they saw, but what they thought would make a handsome picture; and even when they went to nature, which i believe to have been a very much rarer practice with them than their biographers would have us suppose, they copied her like children, drawing what they knew to be there, but not what they saw there.[ ] i believe you may search the foregrounds of claude, from one end of europe to another, and you will not find the shadow of one leaf cast upon another. you will find leaf after leaf painted more or less boldly or brightly out of the black ground, and you will find dark leaves defined in perfect form upon the light; but you will not find the form of a single leaf disguised or interrupted by the shadow of another. and poussin and salvator are still farther from anything like genuine truth. there is nothing in their pictures which might not be manufactured in their painting-room, with a branch or two of brambles and a bunch or two of weeds before them, to give them the form of the leaves. and it is refreshing to turn from their ignorant and impotent repetitions of childish conception, to the clear, close, genuine studies of modern artists; for it is not turner only, (though here, as in all other points, the first,) who is remarkable for fine and expressive decision of chiaroscuro. some passages by j. d. harding are thoroughly admirable in this respect, though this master is getting a little too much into a habit of general keen execution, which prevents the parts which ought to be especially decisive from being felt as such, and which makes his pictures, especially the large ones, look a little thin. but some of his later passages of rock foreground have, taken in the abstract, been beyond all praise, owing to the exquisite forms and firm expressiveness of their shadows. and the chiaroscuro of stanfield is equally deserving of the most attentive study. § . second great principle of chiaroscuro. both high light and deep shadow are used in equal quantity and only in points. the second point to which i wish at present to direct attention has reference to the _arrangement_ of light and shade. it is the constant habit of nature to use both her highest lights and deepest shadows in exceedingly small quantity; always in points, never in masses. she will give a large mass of tender light in sky or water, impressive by its quantity, and a large mass of tender shadow relieved against it, in foliage, or hill, or building; but the light is always subdued if it be extensive--the shadow always feeble if it be broad. she will then fill up all the rest of her picture with middle tints and pale grays of some sort or another, and on this quiet and harmonious whole, she will touch her high lights in spots--the foam of an isolated wave--the sail of a solitary vessel--the flash of the sun from a wet roof--the gleam of a single whitewashed cottage--or some such sources of local brilliancy, she will use so vividly and delicately as to throw everything else into definite shade by comparison. and then taking up the gloom, she will use the black hollows of some overhanging bank, or the black dress of some shaded figure, or the depth of some sunless chink of wall or window, so sharply as to throw everything else into definite light by comparison; thus reducing the whole mass of her picture to a delicate middle tint, approaching, of course, here to light, and there to gloom; but yet sharply separated from the utmost degrees either of the one or the other. § . neglect or contradiction of this principle by writers on art. § . and consequent misguiding of the student. now it is a curious thing that none of our writers on art seem to have noticed the great principle of nature in this respect. they all talk of deep shadow as a thing that may be given in quantity,--one fourth of the picture, or, in certain effects, much more. barry, for instance, says that the practice of the great painters, who "best understood the effects of chiaroscuro," was, for the most part, to make the mass of middle tint larger than the light, and the mass of dark larger than the masses of light and middle tint together, _i.e._, occupying more than one-half of the picture. now i do not know what we are to suppose is meant by "understanding chiaroscuro." if it means being able to manufacture agreeable patterns in the shape of pyramids, and crosses, and zigzags, into which arms and legs are to be persuaded, and passion and motion arranged, for the promotion and encouragement of the cant of criticism, such a principle may be productive of the most advantageous results. but if it means, being acquainted with the deep, perpetual, systematic, unintrusive simplicity and unwearied variety of nature's chiaroscuro--if it means the perception that blackness and sublimity are not synonymous, and that space and light may possibly be coadjutors--then no man, who ever advocated or dreamed of such a principle, is anything more than a novice, blunderer and trickster in chiaroscuro. and my firm belief is, that though color is inveighed against by all artists, as the great circe of art--the great transformer of mind into sensuality--no fondness for it, no study of it, is half so great a peril and stumbling-block to the young student, as the admiration he hears bestowed on such artificial, false, and juggling chiaroscuro, and the instruction he receives, based on such principles as that given us by fuseli--that "mere natural light and shade, however separately or individually true, is not always legitimate chiaroscuro in art." it may not always be _agreeable_ to a sophisticated, unfeeling, and perverted mind; but the student had better throw up his art at once, than proceed on the conviction that any other can ever be _legitimate_. i believe i shall be perfectly well able to prove, in following parts of the work, that "mere natural light and shade" is the only fit and faithful attendant of the highest art; and that all tricks--all visible, intended arrangement--all extended shadows and narrow lights--everything in fact, in the least degree artificial, or tending to make the mind dwell upon light and shade as such, is an injury, instead of an aid, to conceptions of high ideal dignity. i believe i shall be able also to show, that nature manages her chiaroscuro a great deal more neatly and cleverly than people fancy;--that "mere natural light and shade" is a very much finer thing than most artists can put together, and that none think they can improve upon it but those who never understood it. § . the great value of a simple chiaroscuro. but however this may be, it is beyond dispute that every permission given to the student to amuse himself with painting one figure all black, and the next all white, and throwing them out with a background of nothing--every permission given to him to spoil his pocketbook with sixths of sunshine and sevenths of shade, and other such fractional sublimities, is so much more difficulty laid in the way of his ever becoming a master; and that none are in the right road to real excellence, but those who are struggling to render the simplicity, purity, and inexhaustible variety of nature's own chiaroscuro in open, cloudless daylight, giving the expanse of harmonious light--the speaking, decisive shadow--and the exquisite grace, tenderness, and grandeur of aerial opposition of local color and equally illuminated lines. no chiaroscuro is so difficult as this; and none so noble, chaste, or impressive. on this part of the subject, however, i must not enlarge at present. i wish now only to speak of those great principles of chiaroscuro, which nature observes, even when she is most working for effect--when she is playing with thunder-clouds and sunbeams, and throwing one thing out and obscuring another, with the most marked artistical feeling and intention;--even then, she never forgets her great rule, to give precisely the same quantity of deepest shade which she does of highest light, and no more; points of the one answering to points of the other, and both vividly conspicuous and separated from all the rest of the landscape. § . the sharp separation of nature's lights from her middle tint. and it is most singular that this separation, which is the great source of brilliancy in nature, should not only be unobserved, but absolutely forbidden by our great writers on art, who are always talking about connecting the light with the shade by _imperceptible gradations_. now so surely as this is done, all sunshine is lost, for imperceptible gradation from light to dark is the characteristic of objects seen out of sunshine, in what is, in landscape, shadow. nature's principle of getting light is the direct reverse. she will cover her whole landscape with middle tint, in which she will have as many gradations as you please, and a great many more than you can paint; but on this middle tint she touches her extreme lights, and extreme darks, isolated and sharp, so that the eye goes to them directly, and feels them to be key-notes of the whole composition. and although the dark touches are less attractive than the light ones, it is not because they are less distinct, but because they exhibit nothing; while the bright touches are in parts where everything is seen, and where in consequence the eye goes to rest. but yet the high lights do not exhibit anything in themselves, they are too bright and dazzle the eye; and having no shadows in them, cannot exhibit form, for form can only be seen by shadow of some kind or another. hence the highest lights and deepest darks agree in this, that nothing is seen in either of them; that both are in exceedingly small quantity, and both are marked and distinct from the middle tones of the landscape--the one by their brilliancy, the other by their sharp edges, even though many of the more energetic middle tints may approach their intensity very closely. § . the truth of turner. i need scarcely do more than tell you to glance at any one of the works of turner, and you will perceive in a moment the exquisite observation of all these principles; the sharpness, decision, conspicuousness, and excessively small quantity, both of extreme light and extreme shade, all the mass of the picture being graduated and delicate middle tint. take up the rivers of france, for instance, and turn over a few of the plates in succession. . chateau gaillard (vignette.)--black figures and boats, points of shade; sun-touches on castle, and wake of boat, of light. see how the eye rests on both, and observe how sharp and separate all the lights are, falling in spots, edged by shadow, but not melting off into it. . orleans.--the crowded figures supply both points of shade and light. observe the delicate middle tint of both in the whole mass of buildings, and compare this with the blackness of canaletto's shadows, against which neither figures nor anything else can ever tell, as points of shade. . blois.--white figures in boats, buttresses of bridge, dome of church on the right, for light; woman on horseback, heads of boats, for shadow. note especially the isolation of the light on the church dome. . chateau de blois.--torches and white figures for light, roof of chapel and monks' dresses for shade. . beaugency.--sails and spire opposed to buoy and boats. an exquisite instance of brilliant, sparkling, isolated touches of morning light. . amboise.--white sail and clouds; cypresses under castle. . chateau of amboise.--the boat in the centre, with its reflections, needs no comment. note the glancing lights under the bridge. this is a very glorious and perfect instance. . st. julien, tours.--especially remarkable for its preservation of deep points of gloom, because the whole picture is one of extended shade. i need scarcely go on. the above instances are taken as they happen to come, without selection. the reader can proceed for himself. i may, however, name a few cases of chiaroscuro more especially deserving of his study. scene between quilleboeuf and villequier,--honfleur,--light towers of the héve,--on the seine between mantes and vernon,--the lantern at st. cloud,--confluence of seine and marne,--troyes,--the first and last vignette, and those at pages , , , , , , of rogers's poems; the first and second in campbell, st. maurice in the italy, where note the black stork; brienne, skiddaw, mayburgh, melrose, jedburgh, in the illustrations to scott, and the vignettes to milton, not because these are one whit superior to others of his works, but because the laws of which we have been speaking are more strikingly developed in them, and because they have been well engraved. it is impossible to reason from the larger plates, in which half the chiaroscuro is totally destroyed by the haggling, blackening, and "making out" of the engravers. footnotes [ ] compare sect. ii. chap. ii. § . chapter iv. of truth of space:--first as dependent on the focus of the eye.[ ] § . space is more clearly indicated by the drawing of objects than by their hue. in the first chapter of this section i noticed the distinction between real aerial perspective, and that overcharged contrast of light and shade by which the old masters obtained their deceptive effect; and i showed that, though inferior to them in the precise quality or tone of aerial color, our great modern master is altogether more truthful in the expression of the proportionate relation of all his distances to one another. i am now about to examine those modes of expressing space, both in nature and art by far the most important, which are dependent, not on the relative hues of objects, but on the _drawing_ of them: by far the most important, i say, because the most constant and certain; for nature herself is not always aerial. local effects are frequent which interrupt and violate the laws of aerial tone, and induce strange deception in our ideas of distance. i have often seen the summit of a snowy mountain look nearer than its base, owing to the perfect clearness of the upper air. but the _drawing_ of objects, that is to say, the degree in which their details and parts are distinct or confused, is an unfailing and certain criterion of their distance; and if this be rightly rendered in a painting, we shall have genuine truth of space, in spite of many errors in aerial tone; while, if this be neglected, all space will be destroyed, whatever dexterity of tint may be employed to conceal the defective drawing. § . it is impossible to see objects at unequal distances distinctly at one moment. first, then, it is to be noticed, that the eye, like any other lens, must have its focus altered, in order to convey a distinct image of objects at different distances; so that it is totally impossible to see distinctly, at the same moment, two objects, one of which is much farther off than another. of this, any one may convince himself in an instant. look at the bars of your window-frame, so as to get a clear image of their lines and form, and you cannot, while your eye is fixed on them, perceive anything but the most indistinct and shadowy images of whatever objects may be visible beyond. but fix your eyes on those objects, so as to see them clearly, and though they are just beyond and apparently beside the window-frame, that frame will only be felt or seen as a vague, flitting, obscure interruption to whatever is perceived beyond it. a little attention directed to this fact will convince every one of its universality, and prove beyond dispute that objects at unequal distances cannot be seen together, not from the intervention of air or mist, but from the impossibility of the rays proceeding from both, converging to the same focus, so that the whole impression, either of one or the other, must necessarily be confused, indistinct, and inadequate. § . especially such as are both comparatively near. but, be it observed (and i have only to request that whatever i say may be tested by immediate experiment,) the difference of focus necessary is greatest within the first five hundred yards, and therefore, though it is totally impossible to see an object ten yards from the eye, and one a quarter of a mile beyond it, at the same moment, it is perfectly possible to see one a quarter of a mile off, and one five miles beyond it, at the same moment. the consequence of this is, practically, that in a real landscape, we can see the whole of what would be called the middle distance and distance together, with facility and clearness; but while we do so we can see nothing in the foreground beyond a vague and indistinct arrangement of lines and colors; and that if, on the contrary, we look at any foreground object, so as to receive a distinct impression of it, the distance and middle distance become all disorder and mystery. § . in painting, therefore, either the foreground or distance must be partially sacrificed. and therefore, if in a painting our foreground is anything, our distance must be nothing, and _vice versa_; for if we represent our near and distant objects as giving both at once that distinct image to the eye, which we receive in nature from each, when we look at them separately;[ ] and if we distinguish them from each other only by the air-tone; and indistinctness dependent on positive distance, we violate one of the most essential principles of nature; we represent that as seen at once which can only be seen by two separate acts of seeing, and tell a falsehood as gross as if we had represented four sides of a cubic object visible together. § . which not being done by the old masters, they could not express space. § . but modern artists have succeeded in fully carrying out this principle. § . especially of turner. now, to this fact and principle, no landscape painter of the old school, as far as i remember, ever paid the slightest attention. finishing their foregrounds clearly and sharply, and with vigorous impression on the eye, giving even the leaves of their bushes and grass with perfect edge and shape, they proceeded into the distance with equal attention to what they could see of its details--they gave all that the eye can perceive in a distance, when it is fully and entirely devoted to it, and therefore, though masters of aerial tone, though employing every expedient that art could supply to conceal the intersection of lines, though caricaturing the force and shadow of near objects to throw them close upon the eye, they _never_ succeeded in truly representing space. turner introduced a new era in landscape art, by showing that the foreground might be sunk for the distance, and that it was possible to express immediate proximity to the spectator, without giving anything like completeness to the forms of the near objects. this is not done by slurred or soft lines, observe, (always the sign of vice in art,) but by a decisive imperfection, a firm, but partial assertion of form, which the eye feels indeed to be close home to it, and yet cannot rest upon, or cling to, nor entirely understand, and from which it is driven away of necessity, to those parts of distance on which it is intended to repose. and this principle, originated by turner, though fully carried out by him only, has yet been acted on with judgment and success by several less powerful artists of the english school. some six years ago, the brown moorland foregrounds of copley fielding were very instructive in this respect. not a line in them was made out, not a single object clearly distinguishable. wet broad sweeps of the brush, sparkling, careless, and accidental as nature herself, always truthful as far as they went, implying knowledge, though not expressing it, suggested everything, while they represented nothing. but far off into the mountain distance came the sharp edge and the delicate form; the whole intention and execution of the picture being guided and exerted where the great impression of space and size was to be given. the spectator was compelled to go forward into the waste of hills--there, where the sun broke wide upon the moor, he must walk and wander--he could not stumble and hesitate over the near rocks, nor stop to botanize on the first inches of his path.[ ] and the impression of these pictures was always great and enduring, as it was simple and truthful. i do not know anything in art which has expressed more completely the force and feeling of nature in these particular scenes. and it is a farther illustration[ ] of the principle we are insisting upon, that where, as in some of his later works, he has bestowed more labor on the foreground, the picture has lost both in space and sublimity. and among artists in general, who are either not aware of the principle, or fear to act upon it, (for it requires no small courage, as well as skill, to treat a foreground with that indistinctness and mystery which they have been accustomed to consider as characteristic of distance,) the foreground is not only felt, as every landscape painter will confess, to be the most embarrassing and unmanageable part of the picture, but, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, will go near to destroy the effect of the rest of the composition. thus callcott's trent is severely injured by the harsh group of foreground figures; and stanfield very rarely gets through an academy picture without destroying much of its space, by too much determination of near form; while harding constantly sacrifices his distance, and compels the spectator to dwell on the foreground altogether, though indeed, with such foregrounds as he gives us, we are most happy so to do. but it is in turner only that we see a bold and decisive choice of the distance and middle distance, as his great object of attention; and by him only that the foreground is united and adapted to it, not by any want of drawing, or coarseness, or carelessness of execution, but by the most precise and beautiful indication or suggestion of just so much of even the minutest forms as the eye can see when its focus is not adapted to them. and herein is another reason for the vigor and wholeness of the effect of turner's works at any distance; while those of almost all other artists are sure to lose space as soon as we lose sight of the details. § . justification of the want of drawing in turner's figures. and now we see the reason for the singular, and to the ignorant in art, the offensive execution of turner's figures. i do not mean to assert that there is any reason whatsoever, for _bad_ drawing, (though in landscape it matters exceedingly little;) but that there is both reason and necessity for that _want_ of drawing which gives even the nearest figures round balls with four pink spots in them instead of faces, and four dashes of the brush instead of hands and feet; for it is totally impossible that if the eye be adapted to receive the rays proceeding from the utmost distance, and some partial impression from all the distances, it should be capable of perceiving more of the forms and features of near figures than turner gives. and how absolutely necessary to the faithful representation of space this indecision really is, might be proved with the utmost ease by any one who had veneration enough for the artist to sacrifice one of his pictures to his fame; who would take some one of his works in which the figures were most incomplete, and have them painted in by any of our delicate and first-rate figure-painters, absolutely preserving every color and shade of turner's group, so as not to lose one atom of the composition, but giving eyes for the pink spots, and feet for the white ones. let the picture be so exhibited in the academy, and even novices in art would feel at a glance that its truth of space was gone, that every one of its beauties and harmonies had undergone decomposition, that it was now a grammatical solecism, a painting of impossibilities, a thing to torture the eye, and offend the mind. footnotes [ ] i have left this chapter in its original place, because i am more than ever convinced of the truth of the position advanced in the th paragraph; nor can i at present assign any other cause, than that here given, for what is there asserted; and yet i cannot but think that i have allowed far too much influence to a change so slight as that which we insensibly make in the focus of the eye; and that the real justification of turner's practice, with respect to some of his foregrounds, is to be elsewhere sought. i leave the subject, therefore, to the reader's consideration. [ ] this incapacity of the eye must not be confounded with its incapability to comprehend a large portion of _lateral_ space at once. we indeed can see, at any one moment, little more than one point, the objects beside it being confused and indistinct; but we need pay no attention to this in art, because we can see just as little of the picture as we can of the landscape without turning the eye, and hence any slurring or confusing of one part of it, laterally, more than another, is not founded on any truth of nature, but is an expedient of the artist--and often an excellent and desirable one--to make the eye rest where he wishes it. but as the touch expressive of a distant object is as near upon the canvas as that expressive of a near one, both are seen distinctly and with the same focus of the eye, and hence an immediate contradiction of nature results, unless one or other be given with an artificial and increased indistinctness, expressive of the appearance peculiar to the unadapted focus. on the other hand, it must be noted that the greater part of the effect above described is consequent not on variation of focus, but on the different angle at which near objects are seen by each of the two eyes, when both are directed towards the distance. [ ] there is no inconsistency, observe, between this passage and what was before asserted respecting the necessity of botanical fidelity--where the foreground is the object of attention. compare part ii. sect. i. chap. vii. § :--"to paint mist rightly, space rightly, and light rightly, it may be often necessary to paint _nothing else_ rightly." [ ] hardly. it would have been so only had the recently finished foregrounds been as accurate in detail as they are abundant: they are painful, i believe, not from their finish, but their falseness. chapter v. of truth of space:--secondly, as its appearance is dependent on the power of the eye. § . the peculiar indistinctness dependent on the retirement of objects from the eye. in the last chapter, we have seen how indistinctness of individual distances becomes necessary in order to express the adaptation of the eye to one or other of them; we have now to examine that kind of indistinctness which is dependent on real retirement of the object even when the focus of the eye is fully concentrated upon it. the first kind of indecision is that which belongs to all objects which the eye is not adapted to, whether near or far off: the second is that consequent upon the want of power in the eye to receive a clear image of objects at a great distance from it, however attentively it may regard them. draw on a piece of white paper, a square and a circle, each about a twelfth or eighth of an inch in diameter, and blacken them so that their forms may be very distinct; place your paper against the wall at the end of the room, and retire from it a greater or less distance according as you have drawn the figures larger or smaller. you will come to a point where, though you can see both the spots with perfect plainness, you cannot tell which is the square and which the circle. § . causes confusion, but not annihilation of details. now this takes place of course with every object in a landscape, in proportion to its distance and size. the definite forms of the leaves of a tree, however sharply and separately they may appear to come against the sky, are quite indistinguishable at fifty yards off, and the form of everything becomes confused before we finally lose sight of it. now if the character of an object, say the front of a house, be explained by a variety of forms in it, as the shadows in the tops of the windows, the lines of the architraves, the seams of the masonry, etc.; these lesser details, as the object falls into distance, become confused and undecided, each of them losing their definite forms, but all being perfectly visible as something, a white or a dark spot or stroke, not lost sight of, observe, but yet so seen that we cannot tell what they are. as the distance increases, the confusion becomes greater, until at last the whole front of the house becomes merely a flat, pale space, in which, however, there is still observable a kind of richness and checkering, caused by the details in it, which, though totally merged and lost in the mass, have still an influence on the texture of that mass; until at last the whole house itself becomes a mere light or dark spot which we can plainly see, but cannot tell what it is, nor distinguish it from a stone or any other object. § . instances in various objects. now what i particularly wish to insist upon, is the state of vision in which all the details of an object are seen, and yet seen in such confusion and disorder that we cannot in the least tell what they are, or what they mean. it is not mist between us and the object, still less is it shade, still less is it want of character; it is a confusion, a mystery, an interfering of undecided lines with each other, not a diminution of their number; window and door, architrave and frieze, all are there: it is no cold and vacant mass, it is full and rich and abundant, and yet you cannot see a single form so as to know what it is. observe your friend's face as he is coming up to you; first it is nothing more than a white spot; now it is a face, but you cannot see the two eyes, nor the mouth, even as spots; you see a confusion of lines, a something which you know from experience to be indicative of a face, and yet you cannot tell how it is so. now he is nearer, and you can see the spots for the eyes and mouth, but they are not blank spots neither; there is detail in them; you cannot see the lips, nor the teeth, nor the brows, and yet you see more than mere spots; it is a mouth and an eye, and there is light and sparkle and expression in them, but nothing distinct. now he is nearer still, and you can see that he is like your friend, but you cannot tell whether he is or not; there is a vagueness and indecision of line still. now you are sure, but even yet there are a thousand things in his face which have their effect in inducing the recognition, but which you cannot see so as to know what they are. § . two great resultant truths; that nature is never distinct, and never vacant. changes like these, and states of vision corresponding to them, take place with each and all of the objects of nature, and two great principles of truth are deducible from their observation. first, place an object as close to the eye as you like, there is always something in it which you _cannot_ see, except in the hinted and mysterious manner above described. you can see the texture of a piece of dress, but you cannot see the individual threads which compose it, though they are all felt, and have each of them influence on the eye. secondly, place an object as far from the eye as you like, and until it becomes itself a mere spot, there is always something in it which you _can_ see, though only in the hinted manner above described. its shadows and lines and local colors are not lost sight of as it retires; they get mixed and indistinguishable, but they are still there, and there is a difference always perceivable between an object possessing such details and a flat or vacant space. the grass blades of a meadow a mile off, are so far discernible that there will be a marked difference between its appearance and that of a piece of wood painted green. and thus nature is never distinct and never vacant, she is always mysterious, but always abundant; you always see something, but you never see all. and thus arise that exquisite finish and fulness which god has appointed to be the perpetual source of fresh pleasure to the cultivated and observant eye,--a finish which no distance can render invisible, and no nearness comprehensible; which in every stone, every bough, every cloud, and every wave is multiplied around us, forever presented, and forever exhaustless. and hence in art, every space or touch in which we can see everything, or in which we can see nothing, is false. nothing can be true which is either complete or vacant; every touch is false which does not suggest more than it represents, and every space is false which represents nothing. § . complete violation of both these principles by the old masters. they are either distinct or vacant. now, i would not wish for any more illustrative or marked examples of the total contradiction of these two great principles, than the landscape works of the old masters, taken as a body:--the dutch masters furnishing the cases of seeing everything, and the italians of seeing nothing. the rule with both is indeed the same, differently applied. "you shall see the bricks in the wall, and be able to count them, or you shall see nothing but a dead flat;" but the dutch give you the bricks, and the italians the flat. nature's rule being the precise reverse--"you shall never be able to count the bricks, but you shall never see a dead space." § . instances from nicholas poussin. take, for instance, the street in the centre of the really great landscape of poussin (great in feeling at least) marked in the dulwich gallery. the houses are dead square masses with a light side and a dark side, and black touches for windows. there is no suggestion of anything in any of the spaces, the light wall is dead gray, the dark wall dead gray, and the windows dead black. how differently would nature have treated us. she would have let us see the indian corn hanging on the walls, and the image of the virgin at the angles, and the sharp, broken, broad shadows of the tiled eaves, and the deep ribbed tiles with the doves upon them, and the carved roman capital built into the wall, and the white and blue stripes of the mattresses stuffed out of the windows, and the flapping corners of the mat blinds. all would have been there; not as such, not like the corn, nor blinds, nor tiles, not to be comprehended nor understood, but a confusion of yellow and black spots and strokes, carried far too fine for the eye to follow, microscopic in its minuteness, and filling every atom and part of space with mystery, out of which would have arranged itself the general impression of truth and life. § . from claude. again, take the distant city on the right bank of the river in claude's marriage of isaac and rebecca, in the national gallery. i have seen many cities in my life, and drawn not a few; and i have seen many fortifications, fancy ones included, which frequently supply us with very new ideas indeed, especially in matters of proportion; but i do not remember ever having met with either a city or a fortress _entirely_ composed of round towers of various heights and sizes, all facsimiles of each other, and absolutely agreeing in the number of battlements. i have, indeed, some faint recollection of having delineated such an one in the first page of a spelling-book when i was four years old; but, somehow or other, the dignity and perfection of the ideal were not appreciated, and the volume was not considered to be increased in value by the frontispiece. without, however, venturing to doubt the entire sublimity of the same ideal as it occurs in claude, let us consider how nature, if she had been fortunate enough to originate so perfect a conception, would have managed it in its details. claude has permitted us to see every battlement, and the first impulse we feel upon looking at the picture is to count how many there are. nature would have given us a peculiar confused roughness of the upper lines, a multitude of intersections and spots, which we should have known from experience was indicative of battlements, but which we might as well have thought of creating as of counting. claude has given you the walls below in one dead void of uniform gray. there is nothing to be seen, nor felt, nor guessed at in it; it is gray paint or gray shade, whichever you may choose to call it, but it is nothing more. nature would have let you see, nay, would have compelled you to see, thousands of spots and lines, not one to be absolutely understood or accounted for, but yet all characteristic and different from each other; breaking lights on shattered stones, vague shadows from waving vegetation, irregular stains of time and weather, mouldering hollows, sparkling casements--all would have been there--none, indeed, seen as such, none comprehensible or like themselves, but all visible; little shadows, and sparkles, and scratches, making that whole space of color a transparent, palpitating, various infinity. § . and g. poussin. or take one of poussin's extreme distances, such as that in the sacrifice of isaac. it is luminous, retiring, delicate and perfect in tone, and is quite complete enough to deceive and delight the careless eye to which all distances are alike; nay, it is perfect and masterly, and absolutely right if we consider it as a sketch,--as a first plan of a distance, afterwards to be carried out in detail. but we must remember that all these alternate spaces of gray and gold are not the landscape itself, but the treatment of it--not its substance, but its light and shade. they are just what nature would cast over it, and write upon it with every cloud, but which she would cast in play, and without carefulness, as matters of the very smallest possible importance. all her work and her attention would be given to bring out from underneath this, and through this, the forms and the material character which this can only be valuable to illustrate, not to conceal. every one of those broad spaces she would linger over in protracted delight, teaching you fresh lessons in every hairsbreadth of it, and pouring her fulness of invention into it, until the mind lost itself in following her,--now fringing the dark edge of the shadow with a tufted line of level forest--now losing it for an instant in a breath of mist--then breaking it with the white gleaming angle of a narrow brook--then dwelling upon it again in a gentle, mounded, melting undulation, over the other side of which she would carry you down into a dusty space of soft, crowded light, with the hedges, and the paths, and the sprinkled cottages and scattered trees mixed up and mingled together in one beautiful, delicate, impenetrable mystery--sparkling and melting, and passing away into the sky, without one line of distinctness, or one instant of vacancy. § . the imperative necessity, in landscape painting, of fulness and finish. now it is, indeed, impossible for the painter to follow all this--he cannot come up to the same degree and order of infinity--but he can give us a lesser kind of infinity. he has not one-thousandth part of the space to occupy which nature has; but he can, at least, leave no part of that space vacant and unprofitable. if nature carries out her minutiæ over miles, he has no excuse for generalizing in inches. and if he will only give us all he can, if he will give us a fulness as complete and as mysterious as nature's, we will pardon him for its being the fulness of a cup instead of an ocean. but we will not pardon him, if, because he has not the mile to occupy, he will not occupy the inch, and because he has fewer means at his command, will leave half of those in his power unexerted. still less will we pardon him for mistaking the sport of nature for her labor, and for following her only in her hour of rest, without observing how she has worked for it. after spending centuries in raising the forest, and guiding the river, and modelling the mountain, she exults over her work in buoyancy of spirit, with playful sunbeam and flying cloud; but the painter must go through the same labor, or he must not have the same recreation. let him chisel his rock faithfully, and tuft his forest delicately, and then we will allow him his freaks of light and shade, and thank him for them; but we will not be put off with the play before the lesson--with the adjunct instead of the essence--with the illustration instead of the fact. § . breadth is not vacancy. i am somewhat anticipating my subject here, because i can scarcely help answering the objections which i know must arise in the minds of most readers, especially of those who are _partially_ artistical, respecting "generalization," "breadth," "effect," etc. it were to be wished that our writers on art would not dwell so frequently on the necessity of breadth, without explaining what it means; and that we had more constant reference made to the principle which i can only remember having seen once clearly explained and insisted on,--that breadth is not vacancy. generalization is unity, not destruction of parts; and composition is not annihilation, but arrangement of materials. the breadth which unites the truths of nature with her harmonies, is meritorious and beautiful; but the breadth which annihilates those truths by the million, is not painting nature, but painting over her. and so the masses which result from right concords and relations of details, are sublime and impressive; but the masses which result from the eclipse of details are contemptible and painful.[ ] and we shall show, in following parts of the work, that distances like those of poussin are mere meaningless tricks of clever execution, which, when once discovered, the artist may repeat over and over again, with mechanical contentment and perfect satisfaction, both to himself and to his superficial admirers, with no more exertion of intellect nor awakening of feeling than any tradesman has in multiplying some ornamental pattern of furniture. be this as it may, however, (for we cannot enter upon the discussion of the question here,) the falsity and imperfection of such distances admit of no dispute. beautiful and ideal they may be; true they are not: and in the same way we might go through every part and portion of the works of the old masters, showing throughout, either that you have every leaf and blade of grass staring defiance to the mystery of nature, or that you have dead spaces of absolute vacuity, equally determined in their denial of her fulness. and even if we ever find (as here and there, in their better pictures, we do) changeful passages of agreeable playing color, or mellow and transparent modulations of mysterious atmosphere, even here the touches, though satisfactory to the eye, are suggestive of nothing,--they are characterless,--they have none of the peculiar expressiveness and meaning by which nature maintains the variety and interest even of what she most conceals. she always tells a story, however hintedly and vaguely; each of her touches is different from all the others; and we feel with every one, that though we cannot tell what it is, it cannot be _anything_; while even the most dexterous distances of the old masters pretend to secrecy without having anything to conceal, and are ambiguous, not from the concentration of meaning, but from the want of it. § . the fulness and mystery of turner's distances. and now, take up one of turner's distances, it matters not which, or of what kind,--drawing or painting, small or great, done thirty years ago, or for last year's academy, as you like; say that of the mercury and argus, and look if every fact which i have just been pointing out in nature be not carried out in it. abundant, beyond the power of the eye to embrace or follow, vast and various, beyond the power of the mind to comprehend, there is yet not one atom in its whole extent and mass which does not suggest more than it represents; nor does it suggest vaguely, but in such a manner as to prove that the conception of each individual inch of that distance is absolutely clear and complete in the master's mind, a separate picture fully worked out: but yet, clearly and fully as the idea is formed, just so much of it is given, and no more, as nature would have allowed us to feel or see; just so much as would enable a spectator of experience and knowledge to understand almost every minute fragment of separate detail, but appears, to the unpractised and careless eye, just what a distance of nature's own would appear, an unintelligible mass. not one line out of the millions there is without meaning, yet there is not one which is not affected and disguised by the dazzle and indecision of distance. no form is made out, and yet no form is unknown. § . farther illustrations in architectural drawing. perhaps the truth of this system of drawing is better to be understood by observing the distant character of rich architecture, than of any other object. go to the top of highgate hill on a clear summer morning at five o'clock, and look at westminster abbey. you will receive an impression of a building enriched with multitudinous vertical lines. try to distinguish one of those lines all the way down from the one next to it: you cannot. try to count them: you cannot. try to make out the beginning or end of any one of them: you cannot. look at it generally, and it is all symmetry and arrangement. look at in its parts, and it is all inextricable confusion. am not i, at this moment, describing a piece of turner's drawing, with the same words by which i describe nature? and what would one of the old masters have done with such a building as this in his distance? either he would only have given the shadows of the buttresses, and the light and dark sides of the two towers, and two dots for the windows; or if more ignorant and more ambitious, he had attempted to render some of the detail, it would have been done by distinct lines,--would have been broad caricature of the delicate building, felt at once to be false, ridiculous, and offensive. his most successful effort would only have given us, through his carefully toned atmosphere, the effect of a colossal parish church, without one line of carving on its economic sides. turner, and turner only, would follow and render on the canvas that mystery of decided line,--that distinct, sharp, visible, but unintelligible and inextricable richness, which, examined part by part, is to the eye nothing but confusion and defeat, which, taken as a whole, is all unity, symmetry, and truth.[ ] § . in near objects as well as distances. § . vacancy and falsehood of canaletto. nor is this mode of representation true only with respect to distances. every object, however near the eye, has something about it which you cannot see, and which brings the mystery of distance even into every part and portion of what we suppose ourselves to see most distinctly. stand in the piazza di st. marco at venice, as close to the church as you can, without losing sight of the top of it. look at the capitals of the columns on the second story. you see that they are exquisitely rich, carved all over. tell me their patterns: you cannot. tell me the direction of a single line in them: you cannot. yet you see a multitude of lines, and you have so much feeling of a certain tendency and arrangement in those lines, that you are quite sure the capitals are beautiful, and that they are all different from each other. but i defy you to make out one single line in any one of them. now go to canaletto's painting of this church, in the palazzo manfrini, taken from the very spot on which you stood. how much has he represented of all this? a black dot under each capital for the shadow, and a yellow one above it for the light. there is not a vestige nor indication of carving or decoration of any sort or kind. very different from this, but erring on the other side, is the ordinary drawing of the architect, who gives the principal lines of the design with delicate clearness and precision, but with no uncertainty or mystery about them; which mystery being removed, all space and size are destroyed with it, and we have a drawing of a model, not of a building. but in the capital lying on the foreground in turner's daphne hunting with leucippus, we have the perfect truth. not one jag of the acanthus leaves is absolutely visible, the lines are all disorder, but you feel in an instant that all are there. and so it will invariably be found through every portion of detail in his late and most perfect works. § . still greater fulness and finish in landscape foregrounds. but if there be this mystery and inexhaustible finish merely in the more delicate instances of architectural decoration, how much more in the ceaseless and incomparable decoration of nature. the detail of a single weedy bank laughs the carving of ages to scorn. every leaf and stalk has a design and tracery upon it,--every knot of grass an intricacy of shade which the labor of years could never imitate, and which, if such labor could follow it out even to the last fibres of the leaflets, would yet be falsely represented, for, as in all other cases brought forward, it is not clearly seen, but confusedly and mysteriously. that which is nearness for the bank, is distance for its details; and however near it may be, the greater part of those details are still a beautiful incomprehensibility.[ ] § . space and size are destroyed alike by distinctness and by vacancy. hence, throughout the picture, the expression of space and size is dependent upon obscurity, united with, or rather resultant from, exceeding fulness. we destroy both space and size, either by the vacancy, which affords us no measure of space, or by the distinctness, which gives us a false one. the distance of poussin, having no indication of trees, nor of meadows, nor of character of any kind, may be fifty miles off, or may be five; we cannot tell--we have no measure, and in consequence, no vivid impression. but a middle distance of hobbima's involves a contradiction in terms; it states a distance by perspective, which it contradicts by distinctness of detail. § . swift execution best secures perfection of details. § . finish is far more necessary in landscape than in historical subjects. a single dusty roll of turner's brush is more truly expressive of the infinity of foliage, than the niggling of hobbima could have rendered his canvas, if he had worked on it till doomsday. what sir j. reynolds says of the misplaced labor of his roman acquaintance on separate leaves of foliage, and the certainty he expresses that a man who attended to general character would in five minutes produce a more faithful representation of a tree, than the unfortunate mechanist in as many years, is thus perfectly true and well founded; but this is not because details are undesirable, but because they are best given by swift execution, and because, individually, they cannot be given at all. but it should be observed (though we shall be better able to insist upon this point in future) that much of harm and error has arisen from the supposition and assertions of swift and brilliant historical painters, that the same principles of execution are entirely applicable to landscape, which are right for the figure. the artist who falls into extreme detail in drawing the human form, is apt to become disgusting rather than pleasing. it is more agreeable that the general outline and soft hues of flesh should alone be given, than its hairs, and veins, and lines of intersection. and even the most rapid and generalizing expression of the human body, if directed by perfect knowledge, and rigidly faithful in drawing, will commonly omit very little of what is agreeable or impressive. but the exclusively generalizing landscape painter omits the whole of what is valuable in his subject,--omits thoughts, designs, and beauties by the million, everything, indeed, which can furnish him with variety or expression. a distance in lincolnshire, or in lombardy, might both be generalized into such blue and yellow stripes as we see in poussin; but whatever there is of beauty or character in either, depends altogether on our understanding the details, and feeling the difference between the morasses and ditches of the one, and the rolling sea of mulberry trees of the other. and so in every part of the subject. i have no hesitation in asserting that it is _impossible_ to go too fine, or think too much about details in landscape, so that they be rightly arranged and rightly massed; but that it is equally impossible to render anything like the fulness or the space of nature, except by that mystery and obscurity of execution which she herself uses, and in which turner only has followed her. § . recapitulation of the section. we have now rapidly glanced at such general truths of nature as can be investigated without much knowledge of what is beautiful. questions of arrangement, massing, and generalization, i prefer leaving untouched, until we know something about details, and something about what is beautiful. all that is desirable, even in these mere technical and artificial points, is based upon truths and habits of nature; but we cannot understand those truths until we are acquainted with the specific forms and minor details which they affect, or out of which they arise. i shall, therefore, proceed to examine the invaluable and essential truths of specific character and form--briefly and imperfectly, indeed, as needs must be, but yet at length sufficient to enable the reader to pursue, if he will, the subject for himself. footnotes [ ] of course much depends upon the kind of detail so lost. an artist may generalize the trunk of a tree, where he only loses lines of bark, and do us a kindness; but he must not generalize the details of a champaign, in which there is a history of creation. the full discussion of the subject belongs to a future part of our investigation. [ ] vide, for illustration, fontainebleau, in the illustrations to scott; vignette at opening of human life, in rogers's poems; venice, in the italy; chateau de blois; the rouen, and pont neuf, paris, in the rivers of france. the distances of all the academy pictures of venice, especially the shylock, are most instructive. [ ] it is to be remembered, however, that these truths present themselves in all probability under very different phases to individuals of different powers of vision. many artists who appear to generalize rudely or rashly are perhaps faithfully endeavoring to render the appearance which nature bears to sight of limited range. others may be led by their singular keenness of sight into inexpedient detail. works which are painted for effect at a certain distance must be always seen at disadvantage by those whose sight is of different range from the painter's. another circumstance to which i ought above to have alluded is the scale of the picture; for there are different degrees of generalization, and different necessities of symbolism, belonging to every scale: the stipple of the miniature painter would be offensive on features of the life size, and the leaves with tintoret may articulate on a canvas of sixty feet by twenty-five, must be generalized by turner on one of four by three. another circumstance of some importance is the assumed distance of the foreground; many landscape painters seem to think their nearest foreground is always equally near, whereas its distance from the spectator varies not a little, being always at least its own calculable breadth from side to side as estimated by figures or any other object of known size at the nearest part of it. with claude almost always; with turner often, as in the daphne and leucippus, this breadth is forty or fifty yards; and as the nearest foreground object _must_ then be at least that distance removed, and _may_ be much more, it is evident that no completion of close detail is in such cases allowable, (see here another proof of claude's erroneous practice;) with titian and tintoret, on the contrary, the foreground is rarely more than five or six yards broad, and its objects therefore being only five or six yards distant are entirely detailed. none of these circumstances, however, in any wise affect the great principle, the confusion of detail taking place sooner or later in all cases. i ought to have noted, however, that many of the pictures of turner in which the confused drawing has been least understood, have been luminous _twilights_; and that the uncertainty of twilight is therefore added to that of general distance. in the evenings of the south it not unfrequently happens that objects touched with the reflected light of the western sky, continue even for the space of half an hour after sunset, glowing, ruddy, and intense in color, and almost as bright as if they were still beneath actual sunshine, even till the moon begins to cast a shadow: but in spite of this brilliancy of color all the details become ghostly and ill-defined. this is a favorite moment of turner's, and he invariably characterizes it, not by gloom, but by uncertainty of detail. i have never seen the effect of clear twilight thoroughly rendered by art; that effect in which all details are lost, while intense clearness and light are still felt in the atmosphere, in which nothing is distinctly seen, and yet it is not darkness, far less mist, that is the cause of concealment. turner's efforts at rendering this effect (as the wilderness of engedi, assos, chateau de blois, caerlaverock, and others innumerable,) have always some slight appearance of mistiness, owing to the indistinctness of details; but it remains to be shown that any closer approximation to the effect is possible. section iii. of truth of skies. chapter i. of the open sky. § . the peculiar adaptation of the sky to the pleasing and teaching of man. § . the carelessness with which its lessons are received. § . the most essential of these lessons are the gentlest. § . many of our ideas of sky altogether conventional. it is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. it is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works, and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. there are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered, if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great ugly black rain cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with perhaps a film of morning and evening mist for dew. and instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. and every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. the noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them, he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel them if he be always with them; but the sky is for all; bright as it is, it is not "too bright, nor good, for human nature's daily food;" it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and exalting of the heart, for the soothing it and purifying it from its dross and dust. sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, sometimes awful, never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us, is as distinct, as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is mortal is essential. and yet we never attend to it, we never make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations; we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the supreme, that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. if in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of? one says it has been wet, and another it has been windy, and another it has been warm. who, among the whole chattering crowd, can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday? who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their summits until they melted and mouldered away in a dust of blue rain? who saw the dance of the dead clouds when the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves? all has passed, unregretted as unseen; or if the apathy be ever shaken off, even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary; and yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, not in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. god is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice. they are but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be addressed through lampblack and lightning. it is in quiet and subdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep, and the calm, and the perpetual,--that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood,--things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally, which are never wanting, and never repeated, which are to be found always yet each found but once; it is through these that the lesson of devotion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given. these are what the artist of highest aim must study; it is these, by the combination of which his ideal is to be created; these, of which so little notice is ordinarily taken by common observers, that i fully believe, little as people in general are concerned with art, more of their ideas of sky are derived from pictures than from reality, and that if we could examine the conception formed in the minds of most educated persons when we talk of clouds, it would frequently be found composed of fragments of blue and white reminiscences of the old masters. i shall enter upon the examination of what is true in sky at greater length, because it is the only part of a picture of which all, if they will, may be competent judges. what i may have to assert respecting the rocks of salvator, or the boughs of claude, i can scarcely prove, except to those whom i can immure for a month or two in the fastnesses of the apennines, or guide in their summer walks again and again through the ravines of sorrento. but what i say of the sky can be brought to an immediate test by all, and i write the more decisively, in the hope that it may be so. § . nature and essential qualities of the open blue. § . its connection with clouds. § . its exceeding depth. § . these qualities are especially given by modern masters. § . and by claude. § . total absence of them in poussin. physical errors in his general treatment of open sky. § . errors of cuyp in graduation of color. let us begin then with the simple open blue of the sky. this is of course the color of the pure atmospheric air, not the aqueous vapor, but the pure azote and oxygen, and it is the total color of the whole mass of that air between us and the void of space. it is modified by the varying quantity of aqueous vapor suspended in it, whose color, in its most imperfect, and therefore most visible, state of solution, is pure white, (as in steam,) which receives, like any other white, the warm hues of the rays of the sun, and, according to its quantity and imperfect solution, makes the sky paler, and at the same time more or less gray, by mixing warm tones with its blue. this gray aqueous vapor, when very decided, becomes mist, and when local, cloud. hence the sky is to be considered as a transparent blue liquid, in which, at various elevations, clouds are suspended, those clouds being themselves only particular visible spaces of a substance with which the whole mass of this liquid is more or less impregnated. now, we all know this perfectly well, and yet we so far forget it in practice, that we little notice the constant connection kept up by nature between her blue and her clouds, and we are not offended by the constant habit of the old masters, of considering the blue sky as totally distinct in its nature, and far separated from the vapors which float in it. with them, cloud is cloud, and blue is blue, and no kind of connection between them is ever hinted at. the sky is thought of as a clear, high material dome, the clouds as separate bodies, suspended beneath it, and in consequence, however delicate and exquisitely removed in tone their skies may be, you always look _at_ them, not _through_ them. now, if there be one characteristic of the sky more valuable or necessary to be rendered than another, it is that which wordsworth has given in the second book of the excursion:-- "the chasm of sky above my head is heaven's profoundest azure. no domain for fickle, short-lived clouds, to occupy, or to pass through;--but rather an _abyss_ in which the everlasting stars abide, and whose soft gloom, and boundless depth, might tempt the curious eye to look for them by day." and, in his american notes, i remember dickens notices the same truth, describing himself as lying drowsily on the barge deck, looking not at, but _through_ the sky. and if you look intensely at the pure blue of a serene sky, you will see that there is a variety and fulness in its very repose. it is not flat dead color, but a deep, quivering, transparent body of penetrable air, in which you trace or imagine short, falling spots of deceiving light, and dim shades, faint, veiled vestiges of dark vapor; and it is this trembling transparency which our great modern master has especially aimed at and given. his blue is never laid on in smooth coats, but in breaking, mingling, melting hues, a quarter of an inch of which, cut off from all the rest of the picture, is still _spacious_, still infinite and immeasurable in depth. it is a painting of the air, something into which you can see, through the parts which are near you into those which are far off; something which has no surface, and through which we can plunge far and farther, and without stay or end, into the profundity of space;--whereas, with all the old landscape painters, except claude, you may indeed go a long way before you come to the sky, but you will strike hard against it at last. a perfectly genuine and untouched sky of claude is indeed most perfect, and beyond praise, in all qualities of air; though even with him, i often feel rather that there is a great deal of pleasant air between me and the firmament, than that the firmament itself is only air. i do not mean, however, to say a word against such skies as that of the enchanted castle, or that marked in the national gallery, or one or two which i remember at rome; but how little and by how few these fine passages of claude are appreciated, is sufficiently proved by the sufferance of such villainous and unpalliated copies as we meet with all over europe, like the marriage of isaac, in our own gallery, to remain under his name. in fact, i do not remember above ten pictures of claude's, in which the skies, whether repainted or altogether copies, or perhaps from claude's hand, but carelessly laid in, like that marked , dulwich gallery, were not fully as feelingless and false as those of other masters; while, with the poussins, there are no favorable exceptions. their skies are systematically wrong; take, for instance, the sky of the sacrifice of isaac. it is here high noon, as is shown by the shadow of the figures; and what sort of color is the sky at the top of the picture? is it pale and gray with heat, full of sunshine, and unfathomable in depth? on the contrary, it is of a pitch of darkness which, except on the mont blanc or chimborazo, is as purely impossible as color can be. he might as well have painted it coal black; and it is laid on with a dead coat of flat paint, having no one quality or resemblance of sky about it. it cannot have altered, because the land horizon is as delicate and tender in tone as possible, and is evidently unchanged; and to complete the absurdity of the whole thing, this color holds its own, without graduation or alteration, to within three or four degrees of the horizon, where it suddenly becomes bold and unmixed yellow. now the horizon at noon may be yellow when the whole sky is covered with dark clouds, and only _one_ open streak of light left in the distance from which the whole light proceeds; but with a clear, open sky, and opposite the sun, at noon, such a yellow horizon as this is physically impossible. even supposing that the upper part of the sky were pale and warm, and that the transition from the one hue to the other were effected imperceptibly and gradually, as is invariably the case in reality, instead of taking place within a space of two or three degrees;--even then, this gold yellow would be altogether absurd; but as it is, we have in this sky (and it is a fine picture--one of the best of gaspar's that i know,) a notable example of the truth of the old masters--two impossible colors impossibly united! find such a color in turner's noonday zenith as the blue at the top, or such a color at a noonday horizon as the yellow at the bottom, or such a connection of any colors whatsoever as that in the centre, and then you may talk about his being false to nature if you will. nor is this a solitary instance; it is gaspar poussin's favorite and characteristic effect. i remember twenty such, most of them worse than this, in the downright surface and opacity of blue. again, look at the large cuyp in the dulwich gallery, which mr. hazlitt considers the "finest in the world," and of which he very complimentarily says, "the tender green of the valleys, the gleaming lake, the purple light of the hills, have an effect like the _down_ on an unripe nectarine!" i ought to have apologized before now, for not having studied sufficiently in covent garden to be provided with terms of correct and classical criticism. one of my friends begged me to observe, the other day, that claude was "pulpy;" another added the yet more gratifying information that he was "juicy;" and it is now happily discovered that cuyp is "downy." now i dare say that the sky of this first-rate cuyp is very like an unripe nectarine: all that i have to say about it is, that it is exceedingly unlike a sky. the blue remains unchanged and ungraduated over three-fourths of it, down to the horizon; while the sun, in the left-hand corner, is surrounded with a halo, first of yellow, and then of crude pink, both being separated from each other, and the last from the blue, as sharply as the belts of a rainbow, and both together not ascending ten degrees in the sky. now it is difficult to conceive how any man calling himself a painter could impose such a thing on the public, and still more how the public can receive it, as a representation of that sunset purple which invariably extends its influence to the zenith, so that there is no pure blue anywhere, but a purple increasing in purity gradually down to its point of greatest intensity, (about forty-five degrees from the horizon,) and then melting imperceptibly into the gold, the three colors extending their influence over the whole sky; so that throughout the whole sweep of the heaven, there is no one spot where the color is not in an equal state of transition--passing from gold into orange, from that into rose, from that into purple, from that into blue, with absolute equality of change, so that in no place can it be said, "here it changes," and in no place, "here it is unchanging." this is invariably the case. there is no such thing--there never was, and never will be such a thing, while god's heaven remains as it is made--as a serene, sunset sky, with its purple and rose in _belts_ about the sun. § . the exceeding value of the skies of the early italian and dutch schools. their qualities are unattainable in modern times. such bold, broad examples of ignorance as these would soon set aside all the claims of the professed landscape painters to truth, with whatever delicacy of color or manipulation they may be disguised. but there are some skies, of the dutch school, in which clearness and coolness have been aimed at, instead of depth; and some introduced merely as backgrounds to the historical subjects of the older italians, which there is no matching in modern times; one would think angels had painted them, for all is now clay and oil in comparison. it seems as if we had totally lost the art, for surely otherwise, however little our painters might aim at it or feel it, they would touch the chord sometimes by accident; but they never do, and the mechanical incapacity is still more strongly evidenced by the muddy struggles of the unhappy germans, who have the feeling, partially strained, artificial, and diseased, indeed, but still genuine enough to bring out the tone, if they had the mechanical means and technical knowledge. but, however they were obtained, the clear tones of this kind of the older italians are glorious and enviable in the highest degree; and we shall show, when we come to speak of the beautiful, that they are one of the most just grounds of the fame of the old masters. § . phenomena of visible sunbeams. their nature and cause. but there is a series of phenomena connected with the open blue of the sky, which we must take especial notice of, as it is of constant occurrence in the works of turner and claude, the effects, namely, of visible sunbeams. it will be necessary for us thoroughly to understand the circumstances under which such effects take place. aqueous vapor or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes visible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. in the shadows you not only cannot see the dust itself, because unillumined, but you can see other objects through the dust without obscurity, the air being thus actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light. where a sunbeam enters, every particle of dust becomes visible, and a palpable interruption to the sight, so that a transverse sunbeam is a real obstacle to the vision, you cannot see things clearly through it. in the same way, wherever vapor is illuminated by transverse rays, there it becomes visible as a whiteness more or less affecting the purity of the blue, and destroying it exactly in proportion to the degree of illumination. but where vapor is in shade, it has very little effect on the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper and grayer than it otherwise would be, but not itself, unless very dense, distinguishable or felt as mist. § . they are only illuminated mist, and cannot appear when the sky is free from vapor, nor when it is without clouds. the appearance of mist or whiteness in the blue of the sky, is thus a circumstance which more or less accompanies sunshine, and which, supposing the quantity of vapor constant, is greatest in the brightest sunlight. when there are no clouds in the sky, the whiteness, as it affects the whole sky equally, is not particularly noticeable. but when there are clouds between us and the sun, the sun being low, those clouds cast shadows along and through the mass of suspended vapor. within the space of these shadows, the vapor, as above stated, becomes transparent and invisible, and the sky appears of a pure blue. but where the sunbeams strike, the vapor becomes visible in the form of the beams, occasioning those radiating shafts of light which are one of the most valuable and constant accompaniments of a low sun. the denser the mist, the more distinct and sharp-edged will these rays be; when the air is very clear, they are mere vague, flushing, gradated passages of light; when it is very thick, they are keen-edged and decisive in a high degree. we see then, first, that a quantity of mist dispersed through the whole space of the sky, is necessary to this phenomenon; and secondly, that what we usually think of as beams of greater brightness than the rest of the sky, are in reality only a part of that sky in its natural state of illumination, cut off and rendered brilliant by the shadows from the clouds,--that these shadows are in reality the source of the appearance of beams,--that, therefore, no part of the sky can present such an appearance, except when there are broken clouds between it and the sun; and lastly, that the shadows cast from such clouds are not necessarily gray or dark, but very nearly of the natural pure blue of a sky destitute of vapor. § . erroneous tendency in the representation of such phenomena by the old masters. § . the ray which appears in the dazzled eye should not be represented. § . the practice of turner. his keen perception of the more delicate phenomena of rays. § . the total absence of any evidence of such perception in the works of the old masters. now, as it has been proved that the appearance of beams can only take place in a part of the sky which has clouds between it and the sun, it is evident that no appearance of beams can ever begin from the orb itself, except when there is a cloud or solid body of some kind between us and it; but that such appearances will almost invariably begin on the dark side of some of the clouds around it, the orb itself remaining the centre of a broad blaze of united light. wordsworth has given us in two lines, the only circumstances under which rays can ever appear to have origin in the orb itself:-- "but rays of light, now _suddenly_ diverging from the orb, _retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled by the dense air_, shot upwards." excursion, book ix. and turner has given us the effect magnificently in the dartmouth of the river scenery. it is frequent among the old masters, and constant in claude; though the latter, from drawing his beams too fine, represents the effect upon the dazzled eye rather than the light which actually exists, and approximates very closely to the ideal which we see in the sign of the rising sun; nay, i am nearly sure that i remember cases in which he has given us the diverging beam, without any cloud or hill interfering with the orb. it may, perhaps, be somewhat difficult to say how far it is allowable to represent that kind of ray which is seen by the dazzled eye. it is very certain that we never look towards a bright sun without seeing glancing rays issue from it; but it is equally certain that those rays are no more real existences than the red and blue circles which we see after having been so dazzled, and that if we are to represent the rays we ought also to cover our sky with pink and blue circles. i should on the whole consider it utterly false in principle to represent the visionary beam, and that we ought only to show that which has actual existence. such we find to be the constant practice of turner. even where, owing to interposed clouds, he has beams appearing to issue from the orb itself, they are broad bursts of light, not spiky rays; and his more usual practice is to keep all near the sun in one simple blaze of intense light, and from the first clouds to throw beams to the zenith, though he often does not permit any appearance of rays until close to the zenith itself. open at the th page of the illustrated edition of rogers's poems. you have there a sky blazing with sunbeams; but they all begin a long way from the sun, and they are accounted for by a mass of dense clouds surrounding the orb itself. turn to the th page. behind the old oak, where the sun is supposed to be, you have only a blaze of undistinguished light; but up on the left, over the edge of the cloud, on its dark side, the sunbeam. turn to page ,--blazing rays again, but all beginning where the clouds do, not one can you trace to the sun; and observe how carefully the long shadow on the mountain is accounted for by the dim dark promontory projecting out near the sun. i need not multiply examples; you will find various modifications and uses of these effects throughout his works. but you will not find a single trace of them in the old masters. they give you the rays issuing from behind black clouds, and because they are a coarse and common effect which could not possibly escape their observation, and because they are easily imitated. they give you the spiky shafts issuing from the orb itself, because these are partially symbolical of light, and assist a tardy imagination, as two or three rays scratched round the sun with a pen would, though they would be rays of darkness instead of light.[ ] but of the most beautiful phenomenon of all, the appearance of the delicate ray far in the sky, threading its way among the thin, transparent clouds, while all around the sun is unshadowed fire, there is no record nor example whatsoever in their works. it was too delicate and spiritual for them; probably their blunt and feelingless eyes never perceived it in nature, and their untaught imaginations were not likely to originate it in the study. § . truth of the skies of modern drawings. little is to be said of the skies of our other landscape artists. in paintings, they are commonly toneless, crude, and wanting in depth and transparency; but in drawings, some very perfect and delicate examples have been produced by various members of the old water color society, and one or two others; but with respect to the qualities of which we are at present speaking, it is not right to compare drawings with paintings, as the wash or spunging, or other artifices peculiar to water color, are capable of producing an appearance of quality which it needs much higher art to produce in oils. § . recapitulation. the best skies of the ancients are, in quality, inimitable, but in rendering of various truth, childish. taken generally, the open skies of the moderns are inferior in quality to picked and untouched skies of the greatest of the ancients, but far superior to the average class of pictures which we have every day fathered upon their reputation. nine or ten skies of claude might be named which are not to be contended with, in their way, and as many of cuyp. teniers has given some very wonderful passages, and the clearness of the early italian and dutch schools is beyond all imitation. but the common blue daubing which we hear every day in our best galleries attributed to claude and cuyp, and the genuine skies of salvator, and of both the poussins, are not to be compared for an instant with the best works of modern times, even in quality and transparency; while in all matters requiring delicate observation or accurate science,--in all which was not attainable by technicalities of art, and which depended upon the artist's knowledge and understanding of nature, all the works of the ancients are alike the productions of mere children, sometimes manifesting great sensibility, but proving at the same time, feebly developed intelligence and ill-regulated observation. footnotes [ ] i have left this passage as it stood originally, because it is right as far as it goes; yet it speaks with too little respect of symbolism, which is often of the highest use in religious art, and in some measure is allowable in all art. in the works of almost all the greatest masters there are portions which are explanatory rather than representative, and typical rather than imitative; nor could these be parted with but at infinite loss. note, with respect to the present question, the daring black sunbeams of titian, in his woodcut of st. francis receiving the stigmata, and compare here part iii. sect. ii. chap. iv. § ; chap. v. § . and though i believe that i am right in considering all such symbolism as out of place in pure landscape, and in attributing that of claude to ignorance or inability, and not to feeling, yet i praise turner not so much for his absolute refusal to represent the spiky ray about the sun, as for his perceiving and rendering that which claude never perceived, the multitudinous presence of radiating light in the upper sky and on all its countless ranks of subtile cloud. chapter ii. of truth of clouds:--first, of the region of the cirrus. § . difficulty of ascertaining wherein the truth of clouds consists. our next subject of investigation must be the specific character of clouds, a species of truth which is especially neglected by artists; first, because as it is within the limits of possibility that a cloud may assume almost any form, it is difficult to point out and not always easy to feel, where in error consists; and secondly, because it is totally impossible to study the forms of clouds from nature with care and accuracy, as a change in the subject takes place between every touch of the following pencil, and parts of an outline sketched at different instants cannot harmonize, nature never having intended them to come together. still if artists were more in the habit of sketching clouds rapidly, and as accurately as possible in the outline, from nature, instead of daubing down what they call "effects" with the brush, they would soon find there is more beauty about their forms than can be arrived at by any random felicity of invention, however brilliant, and more essential character than can be violated without incurring the charge of falsehood,--falsehood as direct and definite, though not as traceable as error in the less varied features of organic form. § . variation of their character at different elevations. the three regions to which they may conveniently be considered as belonging. the first and most important character of clouds, is dependent on the different altitudes at which they are formed. the atmosphere may be conveniently considered as divided into three spaces, each inhabited by clouds of specific character altogether different, though, in reality there is no distinct limit fixed between them by nature, clouds being formed at _every_ altitude, and partaking according to their altitude, more or less of the characters of the upper or lower regions. the scenery of the sky is thus formed of an infinitely graduated series of systematic forms of cloud, each of which has its own region in which alone it is formed, and each of which has specific characters which can only be properly determined by comparing them as they are found clearly distinguished by intervals of considerable space. i shall therefore consider the sky as divided into three regions--the upper region, or region of the cirrus; the central region, or region of the stratus; the lower region, or the region of the rain-cloud. § . extent of the upper region. § . the symmetrical arrangement of its clouds. the clouds which i wish to consider as included in the upper region, never touch even the highest mountains of europe, and may therefore be looked upon as never formed below an of at least , feet; they are the motionless multitudinous lines of delicate vapor with which the blue of the open sky is commonly streaked or speckled after several days of fine weather. i must be pardoned for giving a detailed description of their specific characters as they are of constant occurrence in the works of modern artists, and i shall have occasion to speak frequently of them in future parts of the work. their chief characters are--first, symmetry: they are nearly always arranged in some definite and evident order, commonly in long ranks reaching sometimes from the zenith to the horizon, each rank composed of an infinite number of transverse bars of about the same length, each bar thickest in the middle, and terminating in a traceless vaporous point at each side; the ranks are in the direction of the wind, and the bars of course at right angles to it; these latter are commonly slightly bent in the middle. frequently two systems of this kind, indicative of two currents of wind, at different altitudes intersect one another, forming a network. another frequent arrangement is in groups of excessively fine, silky, parallel fibres, commonly radiating, or having a tendency to radiate, from one of their extremities, and terminating in a plumy sweep at the other:--these are vulgarly known as "mares' tails." the plumy and expanded extremity of these is often bent upwards, sometimes back and up again, giving an appearance of great flexibility and unity at the same time, as if the clouds were tough, and would hold together however bent. the narrow extremity is invariably turned to the wind, and the fibres are parallel with its direction. the upper clouds always fall into some modification of one or other of these arrangements. they thus differ from all other clouds, in having a plan and system; whereas other clouds, though there are certain laws which they cannot break, have yet perfect freedom from anything like a relative and general system of government. the upper clouds are to the lower, what soldiers on parade are to a mixed multitude; no men walk on their heads or their hands, and so there are certain laws which no clouds violate; but there is nothing except in the upper clouds resembling symmetrical discipline. § . their exceeding delicacy. secondly, sharpness of edge: the edges of the bars of the upper clouds which are turned to the wind, are often the sharpest which the sky shows; no outline whatever of any other kind of cloud, however marked and energetic, ever approaches the delicate decision of these edges. the outline of a black thunder-cloud is striking, from the great energy of the color or shade of the general mass; but as a line, it is soft and indistinct, compared with the edge of the cirrus, in a clear sky with a brisk breeze. on the other hand, the edge of the bar turned away from the wind is always soft, often imperceptible, melting into the blue interstice between it and its next neighbor. commonly the sharper one edge is, the softer is the other, and the clouds look flat, and as if they slipped over each other like the scales of a fish. when both edges are soft, as is always the case when the sky is clear and windless, the cloud looks solid, round, and fleecy. § . their number. thirdly, multitude: the delicacy of these vapors is sometimes carried into such an infinity of division, that no other sensation of number that the earth or heaven can give is so impressive. number is always most felt when it is symmetrical, (vide burke on "sublime," part ii. sect. ,) and, therefore, no sea-waves nor fresh leaves make their number so evident or so impressive as these vapors. nor is nature content with an infinity of bars or lines alone--each bar is in its turn severed into a number of small undulatory masses, more or less connected according to the violence of the wind. when this division is merely effected by undulation, the cloud exactly resembles sea-sand ribbed by the tide; but when the division amounts to real separation we have the mottled or mackerel skies. commonly, the greater the division of its bars, the broader and more shapeless is the rank or field, so that in the mottled sky it is lost altogether, and we have large irregular fields of equal size, masses like flocks of sheep; such clouds are three or four thousand feet below the legitimate cirrus. i have seen them cast a shadow on the mont blanc at sunset, so that they must descend nearly to within fifteen thousand feet of the earth. § . causes of their peculiarly delicate coloring. fourthly, purity of color: the nearest of these clouds--those over the observer's head, being at least three miles above him, and nearly all entering the ordinary sphere of vision, farther from him still,--their dark sides are much grayer and cooler than those of other clouds, owing to their distance. they are composed of the purest aqueous vapor, free from all foulness of earthy gases, and of this in the lightest and most ethereal state in which it can be, to be visible. farther, they receive the light of the sun in a state of far greater intensity than lower objects, the beams being transmitted to them through atmospheric air far less dense, and wholly unaffected by mist, smoke, or any other impurity. hence their colors are more pure and vivid, and their white less sullied than those of any other clouds. § . their variety of form. lastly, variety: variety is never so conspicuous, as when it is united with symmetry. the perpetual change of form in other clouds, is monotonous in its very dissimilarity, nor is difference striking where no connection is implied; but if through a range of barred clouds, crossing half the heaven, all governed by the same forces and falling into one general form, there be yet a marked and evident dissimilarity between each member of the great mass--one more finely drawn, the next more delicately moulded, the next more gracefully bent--each broken into differently modelled and variously numbered groups, the variety is doubly striking, because contrasted with the perfect symmetry of which it forms a part. hence, the importance of the truth, that nature never lets one of the members of even her most disciplined groups of cloud be like another; but though each is adapted for the same function, and in its great features resembles all the others, not one, out of the millions with which the sky is checkered, is without a separate beauty and character, appearing to have had distinct thought occupied in its conception, and distinct forces in its production; and in addition to this perpetual invention, visible in each member of each system, we find systems of separate cloud intersecting one another, the sweeping lines mingled and interwoven with the rigid bars, these in their turn melting into banks of sand-like ripple and flakes of drifted and irregular foam; under all, perhaps the massy outline of some lower cloud moves heavily across the motionless buoyancy of the upper lines, and indicates at once their elevation and their repose. § . total absence of even the slightest effort at their representation, in ancient landscape. such are the great attributes of the upper cloud region; whether they are beautiful, valuable, or impressive, it is not our present business to decide, nor to endeavor to discover the reason of the somewhat remarkable fact, that the whole field of ancient landscape art affords, as far as we remember, but one instance of any effort whatever to represent the character of this cloud region. that one instance is the landscape of rubens in our own gallery, in which the mottled or fleecy sky is given with perfect truth and exquisite beauty. to this should perhaps be added, some of the backgrounds of the historical painters, where horizontal lines were required, and a few level bars of white or warm color cross the serenity of the blue. these, as far as they go, are often very perfect, and the elevation and repose of their effect might, we should have thought, have pointed out to the landscape painters that there was something (i do not say much, but certainly something) to be made out of the high clouds. not one of them, however, took the hint. to whom, among them all, can we look for the slightest realization of the fine and faithful descriptive passage of the "excursion," already alluded to:-- "but rays of light, now suddenly diverging from the orb, retired behind the mountain tops, or veiled by the dense air, shot upwards to the crown of the blue firmament--aloft--and wide: and multitudes of little floating clouds, ere we, who saw, of change were conscious, pierced through their ethereal texture, had become vivid as fire,--clouds separately poised, innumerable multitude of forms scattered through half the circle of the sky; and giving back, and shedding each on each, with prodigal communion, the bright hues which from the unapparent fount of glory they had imbibed, and ceased not to receive. that which the heavens displayed the liquid deep repeated, but with unity sublime." § . the intense and constant study of them by turner. there is but one master whose works we can think of while we read this; one alone has taken notice of the neglected upper sky; it is his peculiar and favorite field; he has watched its every modification, and given its every phase and feature; at all hours, in all seasons, he has followed its passions and its changes, and has brought down and laid open to the world another apocalypse of heaven. there is scarcely a painting of turner's, in which serenity of sky and intensity of light are aimed at together, in which these clouds are not used, though there are not two cases in which they are used altogether alike. sometimes they are crowded together in masses of mingling light, as in the shylock; every part and atom sympathizing in that continuous expression of slow movement which shelley has so beautifully touched:-- "underneath the young gray dawn a multitude of dense, white fleecy clouds, were wandering in thick flocks along the mountains, _shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind_." at other times they are blended with the sky itself, felt only here and there by a ray of light calling them into existence out of its misty shade, as in the mercury and argus; sometimes, where great repose is to be given, they appear in a few detached, equal, rounded flakes, which seem to hang motionless, each like the shadow of the other, in the deep blue of the zenith, as in the acro-corinth; sometimes they are scattered in fiery flying fragments, each burning with separate energy, as in the temeraire; sometimes woven together with fine threads of intermediate darkness, melting into the blue as in the napoleon. but in all cases the exquisite manipulation of the master gives to each atom of the multitude its own character and expression. though they be countless as leaves, each has its portion of light, its shadow, its reflex, its peculiar and separating form. § . his vignette, sunrise on the sea. take for instance the illustrated edition of rogers's poems,[ ] and open it at the th page, and observe how every attribute which i have pointed out in the upper sky, is there rendered with the faithfulness of a mirror; the long lines of parallel bars, the delicate curvature from the wind, which the inclination of the sail shows you to be from the west; the excessive sharpness of every edge which is turned to the wind, the faintness of every opposite one, the breaking up of each bar into rounded masses, and finally, the inconceivable variety with which individual form has been given to every member of the multitude, and not only individual form, but roundness and substance even where there is scarcely a hairbreadth of cloud to express it in. observe, above everything, the varying indication of space and depth in the whole, so that you may look through and through from one cloud to another, feeling not merely how they retire to the horizon, but how they melt back into the recesses of the sky; every interval being filled with absolute air, and all its spaces so melting and fluctuating, and fraught with change as with repose, that as you look, you will fancy that the rays shoot higher and higher into the vault of light, and that the pale streak of horizontal vapor is melting away from the cloud that it crosses. now watch for the next barred sunrise, and take this vignette to the window, and test it by nature's own clouds, among which you will find forms and passages, i do not say merely _like_, but apparently the actual originals of parts of this very drawing. and with whom will you do this, except with turner? will you do it with claude, and set that blank square yard of blue, with its round, white, flat fixtures of similar cloud, beside the purple infinity of nature, with her countless multitude of shadowy lines, and flaky waves, and folded veils of variable mist? will you do it with poussin, and set those massy steps of unyielding solidity, with the chariot-and-four driving up them, by the side of the delicate forms which terminate in threads too fine for the eye to follow them, and of texture so thin woven that the earliest stars shine through them? will you do it with salvator, and set that volume of violent and restless manufactory smoke beside those calm and quiet bars, which pause in the heaven as if they would never leave it more? § . his use of the cirrus in expressing mist. now we have just seen how turner uses the sharp-edged cirri when he aims at giving great transparency of air. but it was shown in the preceding chapter that sunbeams, or the appearance of them, are always sharper in their edge in proportion as the air is more misty, as they are most defined in a room where there is most dust flying about in it. consequently, in the vignette we have been just noticing, where transparency is to be given, though there is a blaze of light, its beams are never edged; a tendency to rays is visible, but you cannot in any part find a single marked edge of a rising sunbeam, the sky is merely more flushed in one place than another. now let us see what turner does when he wants mist. turn to the alps at daybreak, page , in the same book. here we have the cirri used again, but now they have no sharp edges, they are all fleecy and mingling with each other, though every one of them has the most exquisite indication of individual form, and they melt back, not till they are lost in exceeding light, as in the other plate, but into a mysterious, fluctuating, shadowy sky, of which, though the light penetrates through it all, you perceive every part to be charged with vapor. notice particularly the half-indicated forms even where it is most serene, behind the snowy mountains. and now, how are the sunbeams drawn? no longer indecisive, flushing, palpitating, every one is sharp and clear, and terminated by definite shadow; note especially the marked lines on the upper cloud; finally, observe the difference in the mode of indicating the figures, which are here misty and indistinguishable, telling only as shadows, though they are near and large, while those in the former vignette came clear upon the eye, though they were so far off as to appear mere points. § . his consistency in every minor feature. now is this perpetual consistency in all points, this concentration of every fact which can possibly bear upon what we are to be told, this watchfulness of the entire meaning and system of nature, which fills every part and space of the picture with coincidences of witness, which come out upon us, as they would from the reality, more fully and deeply in proportion to the knowledge we possess and the attention we give, admirable or not? i could go on writing page after page on every sky of turner's, and pointing out fresh truths in every one. in the havre, for instance, of the rivers of france we have a new fact pointed out to us with respect to these cirri, namely, their being so faint and transparent as not to be distinguishable from the blue of the sky, (a frequent case,) except in the course of a sunbeam, which, however, does not illumine their edges, they being not solid enough to reflect light, but penetrates their whole substance, and renders them flat, luminous forms in its path, instantly and totally lost at its edge. and thus a separate essay would be required by every picture, to make fully understood the new phenomena which it treated and illustrated. but after once showing what are the prevailing characteristics of these clouds, we can only leave it to the reader to trace them wherever they occur. there are some fine and characteristic passages of this kind of cloud given by stanfield, though he dares not use them in multitude, and is wanting in those refined qualities of form which it is totally impossible to explain in words, but which, perhaps, by simple outlines, on a large scale, selected from the cloud forms of various artists, i may in following portions of the work illustrate with the pencil. § . the color of the upper clouds. of the colors of these clouds i have spoken before, (sec. i. chap. ii.;) but though i then alluded to their purity and vividness, i scarcely took proper notice of their variety; there is indeed in nature variety in all things, and it would be absurd to insist on it in each case, yet the colors of these clouds are so marvellous in their changefulness, that they require particular notice. if you watch for the next sunset, when there are a considerable number of these cirri in the sky, you will see, especially at the zenith, that the sky does not remain of the same color for two inches together; one cloud has a dark side of cold blue, and a fringe of milky white; another, above it, has a dark side of purple and an edge of red; another, nearer the sun, has an under-side of orange and an edge of gold; these you will find mingled with, and passing into the blue of the sky, which in places you will not be able to distinguish from the cool gray of the darker clouds, and which will be itself full of gradation, now pure and deep, now faint and feeble; and all this is done, not in large pieces, nor on a large scale, but over and over again in every square yard, so that there is no single part nor portion of the whole sky which has not in itself variety of color enough for a separate picture, and yet no single part which is like another, or which has not some peculiar source of beauty, and some peculiar arrangement of color of its own. now, instead of this, you get in the old masters--cuyp, or claude, or whoever they may be--a field of blue, delicately, beautifully, and uniformly shaded down to the yellow sun, with a certain number of similar clouds, each with a dark side of the same gray, and an edge of the same yellow. i do not say that nature never does anything like this, but i say that her _principle_ is to do a great deal more, and that what she does more than this,--what i have above described, and what you may see in nine sunsets out of ten,--has been observed, attempted, and rendered by turner only, and by him with a fidelity and force which presents us with more essential truth, and more clear expression and illustration of natural laws, in every wreath of vapor, than composed the whole stock of heavenly information, which lasted cuyp and claude their lives. § . recapitulation. we close then our present consideration of the upper clouds, to return to them when we know what is beautiful; we have at present only to remember that of these clouds, and the truths connected with them, none before turner had taken any notice whatsoever; that had they therefore been even feebly and imperfectly represented by him, they would yet have given him a claim to be considered more extended and universal in his statement of truths than any of his predecessors; how much more when we find that deep fidelity in his studied and perfect skies which opens new sources of delight to every advancement of our knowledge, and to every added moment of our contemplation. footnotes [ ] i use this work frequently for illustration, because it is the only one i know in which the engraver has worked with delicacy enough to give the real forms and touches of turner. i can reason from these plates, (in questions of form only,) nearly as well as i could from the drawings. chapter iii. of truth of clouds:--secondly, of the central cloud region. § . extent and typical character of the central cloud region. we have next to investigate the character of the central cloud region, which i consider as including all clouds which are the usual characteristic of ordinary serene weather, and which touch and envelop the mountains of switzerland, but never affect those of our own island; they may therefore be considered as occupying a space of air ten thousand feet in height, extending from five to fifteen thousand feet above the sea. § . its characteristic clouds, requiring no attention nor thought for their representation, are therefore favorite subjects with the old masters. these clouds, according to their elevation, appear with great variety of form, often partaking of the streaked or mottled character of the higher region, and as often, when the precursors of storm, manifesting forms closely connected with the lowest rain clouds; but the species especially characteristic of the central region is a white, ragged, irregular, and scattered vapor, which has little form and less color, and of which a good example may be seen in the largest landscape of cuyp, in the dulwich gallery. when this vapor collects into masses, it is partially rounded, clumsy, and ponderous, as if it would tumble out of the sky, shaded with a dull gray, and totally devoid of any appearance of energy or motion. even in nature, these clouds are comparatively uninteresting, scarcely worth raising our heads to look at; and on canvas, valuable only as a means of introducing light, and breaking the monotony of blue; yet they are, perhaps, beyond all others the favorite clouds of the dutch masters. whether they had any motive for the adoption of such materials, beyond the extreme facility with which acres of canvas might thus be covered without any troublesome exertion of thought; or any temptation to such selections beyond the impossibility of error where nature shows no form, and the impossibility of deficiency where she shows no beauty, it is not here the place to determine. such skies are happily beyond the reach of criticism, for he who tells you nothing cannot tell you a falsehood. a little flake-white, glazed with a light brush over the carefully toned blue, permitted to fall into whatever forms chance might determine, with the single precaution that their edges should be tolerably irregular, supplied, in hundreds of instances, a sky quite good enough for all ordinary purposes--quite good enough for cattle to graze, or boors to play at nine-pins under--and equally devoid of all that could gratify, inform, or offend. § . the clouds of salvator and poussin. but although this kind of cloud is, as i have said, typical of the central region, it is not one which nature is fond of. she scarcely ever lets an hour pass without some manifestation of finer forms, sometimes approaching the upper cirri, sometimes the lower cumulus. and then in the lower outlines, we have the nearest approximation which nature ever presents to the clouds of claude, salvator, and poussin, to the characters of which i must request especial attention, as it is here only that we shall have a fair opportunity of comparing their skies with those of the modern school. i shall, as before, glance rapidly at the great laws of specific form, and so put it in the power of the reader to judge for himself of the truth of representation. § . their essential characters. § . their angular forms and general decision of outline. clouds, it is to be remembered, are not so much local vapor, as vapor rendered locally visible by a fall of temperature. thus a cloud, whose parts are in constant motion, will hover on a snowy mountain, pursuing constantly the same track upon its flanks, and yet remaining of the same size, the same form, and in the same place, for half a day together. no matter how violent or how capricious the wind may be, the instant it approaches the spot where the chilly influence of the snow extends, the moisture it carries becomes visible, and then and there the cloud forms on the instant, apparently maintaining its form against the wind, though the careful and keen eye can see all its parts in the most rapid motion across the mountain. the outlines of such a cloud are of course not determined by the irregular impulses of the wind, but by the fixed lines of radiant heat which regulate the temperature of the atmosphere of the mountain. it is terminated, therefore, not by changing curves, but by steady right lines of more or less decision, often exactly correspondent with the outline of the mountain on which it is formed, and falling therefore into grotesque peaks and precipices. i have seen the marked and angular outline of the grandes jorasses, at chamounix, mimicked in its every jag by a line of clouds above it. another resultant phenomenon is the formation of cloud in the calm air to leeward of a steep summit; cloud whose edges are in rapid motion, where they are affected by the current of the wind above, and stream from the peak like the smoke of a volcano, yet always vanish at a certain distance from it as steam issuing from a chimney. when wet weather of some duration is approaching, a small white spot of cloud will sometimes appear low on the hill flanks; it will not move, but will increase gradually for some little time, then diminish, still without moving; disappear altogether, reappear ten minutes afterwards, exactly in the same spot; increase to a greater extent than before, again disappear, again return, and at last permanently; other similar spots of cloud forming simultaneously, with various fluctuations, each in its own spot, and at the same level on the hill-side, until all expand, join together, and form an unbroken veil of threatening gray, which darkens gradually into storm. what in such cases takes place palpably and remarkably, is more or less a law of formation in all clouds whatsoever; they being bounded rather by lines expressive of changes of temperature in the atmosphere, than by the impulses of the currents of wind in which those changes take place. even when in rapid and visible motion across the sky, the variations which take place in their outlines are not so much alterations of position and arrangement of parts, as they are the alternate formation and disappearance of parts. there is, therefore, usually a parallelism and consistency in their great outlines, which give system to the smaller curves of which they are composed; and if these great lines be taken, rejecting the minutiæ of variation, the resultant form will almost always be angular, and full of character and decision. in the flock-like fields of equal masses, each individual mass has the effect, not of an ellipse or circle, but of a rhomboid; the sky is crossed and checkered, not honeycombed; in the lower cumuli, even though the most rounded of all clouds, the groups are not like balloons or bubbles, but like towers or mountains. and the result of this arrangement in masses more or less angular, varied with, and chiefly constructed of, curves of the utmost freedom and beauty, is that appearance of exhaustless and fantastic energy which gives every cloud a marked character of its own, suggesting resemblances to the specific outlines of organic objects. i do not say that such accidental resemblances are a character to be imitated; but merely that they bear witness to the originality and vigor of separate conception in cloud forms, which give to the scenery of the sky a force and variety no less delightful than that of the changes of mountain outline in a hill district of great elevation; and that there is added to this a spirit-like feeling, a capricious, mocking imagery of passion and life, totally different from any effects of inanimate form that the earth can show. § . the composition of their minor curves. the minor contours, out of which the larger outlines are composed, are indeed beautifully curvilinear; but they are never monotonous in their curves. first comes a concave line, then a convex one, then an angular jag, breaking off into spray, then a downright straight line, then a curve again, then a deep gap, and a place where all is lost and melted away, and so on; displaying in every inch of the form renewed and ceaseless invention, setting off grace with rigidity, and relieving flexibility with force, in a manner scarcely less admirable, and far more changeful than even in the muscular forms of the human frame. nay, such is the exquisite composition of all this, that you may take any single fragment of any cloud in the sky, and you will find it put together as if there had been a year's thought over the plan of it, arranged with the most studied inequality--with the most delicate symmetry--with the most elaborate contrast, a picture in itself. you may try every other piece of cloud in the heaven, and you will find them every one as perfect, and yet not one in the least like another. § . their characters, as given by s. rosa. now it may perhaps, for anything we know, or have yet proved, be highly expedient and proper, in art, that this variety, individuality, and angular character should be changed into a mass of convex curves, each precisely like its neighbor in all respects, and unbroken from beginning to end;--it may be highly original, masterly, bold, whatever you choose to call it; but it is _false_. i do not take upon me to assert that the clouds which in ancient germany were more especially and peculiarly devoted to the business of catching princesses off desert islands, and carrying them to enchanted castles, might not have possessed something of the pillowy organization which we may suppose best adapted for functions of such delicacy and dispatch. but i do mean to say that the clouds which god sends upon his earth as the ministers of dew, and rain, and shade, and with which he adorns his heaven, setting them in its vault for the thrones of his spirits, have not in one instant or atom of their existence, one feature in common with such conceptions and creations. and there are, beyond dispute, more direct and unmitigated falsehoods told, and more laws of nature set at open defiance in _one_ of the "rolling" skies of salvator, such as that marked in the dulwich gallery, than were ever attributed, even by the ignorant and unfeeling, to all the wildest flights of turner put together. § . monotony and falsehood of the clouds of the italian school generally. and it is not as if the error were only occasional. it is systematic and constant in all the italian masters of the seventeenth century, and in most of the dutch. they looked at clouds as at everything else which did not particularly help them in their great end of deception, with utter carelessness and bluntness of feeling,--saw that there were a great many rounded passages in them,--found it much easier to sweep circles than to design beauties, and sat down in their studies, contented with perpetual repetitions of the same spherical conceptions, having about the same relation to the clouds of nature, that a child's carving of a turnip has to the head of the apollo. look at the round things about the sun in the bricky claude, the smallest of the three seaports in the national gallery. they are a great deal more like half-crowns than clouds. take the ropy, tough-looking wreath in the sacrifice of isaac, and find one part of it, if you can, which is not the repetition of every other part of it, all together being as round and vapid as the brush could draw them; or take the two cauliflower-like protuberances in no. of the dulwich gallery, and admire the studied similarity between them; you cannot tell which is which; or take the so-called nicholas poussin, no. , dulwich gallery, in which, from the brown trees to the right-hand side of the picture, there is not one line which is not physically impossible. § . vast size of congregated masses of cloud. § . demonstrable by comparison with mountain ranges. but it is not the outline only which is thus systematically false. the drawing of the solid form is worse still, for it is to be remembered that although clouds of course arrange themselves more or less into broad masses, with a light side and dark side, both their light and shade are invariably composed of a series of divided masses, each of which has in its outline as much variety and character as the great outline of the cloud; presenting, therefore, a thousand times repeated, all that i have described as characteristic of the general form. nor are these multitudinous divisions a truth of slight importance in the character of sky, for they are dependent on, and illustrative of, a quality which is usually in a great degree overlooked,--the enormous retiring spaces of solid clouds. between the illumined edge of a heaped cloud, and that part of its body which turns into shadow, there will generally be a clear distance of several miles, more or less of course, according to the general size of the cloud, but in such large masses as in poussin and others of the old masters, occupy the fourth or fifth of the visible sky; the clear illumined breadth of vapor, from the edge to the shadow, involves at least a distance of five or six miles. we are little apt, in watching the changes of a mountainous range of cloud, to reflect that the masses of vapor which compose it, are huger and higher than any mountain range of the earth; and the distances between mass and mass are not yards of air traversed in an instant by the flying form, but valleys of changing atmosphere leagues over; that the slow motion of ascending curves, which we can scarcely trace, is a boiling energy of exulting vapor rushing into the heaven a thousand feet in a minute; and that the toppling angle whose sharp edge almost escapes notice in the multitudinous forms around it, is a nodding precipice of storms, feet from base to summit. it is not until we have actually compared the forms of the sky with the hill ranges of the earth, and seen the soaring alp overtopped and buried in one surge of the sky, that we begin to conceive or appreciate the colossal scale of the phenomena of the latter. but of this there can be no doubt in the mind of any one accustomed to trace the forms of clouds among hill ranges--as it is there a demonstrable and evident fact, that the space of vapor visibly extended over an ordinarily cloudy sky, is not less, from the point nearest to the observer to the horizon, than twenty leagues; that the size of every mass of separate form, if it be at all largely divided, is to be expressed in terms of _miles_; and that every boiling heap of illuminated mist in the nearer sky, is an enormous mountain, fifteen or twenty thousand feet in height, six or seven miles over an illuminated surface, furrowed by a thousand colossal ravines, torn by local tempests into peaks and promontories, and changing its features with the majestic velocity of the volcano. § . and consequent divisions and varieties of feature. to those who have once convinced themselves of these proportions of the heaven, it will be immediately evident, that though we might, without much violation of truth, omit the minor divisions of a cloud four yards over, it is the veriest audacity of falsehood to omit those of masses where for yards we have to read miles; first, because it is physically impossible that such a space should be without many and vast divisions; secondly, because divisions at such distances must be sharply and forcibly marked by aerial perspective, so that not only they must be there, but they must be visible and evident to the eye; and thirdly, because these multitudinous divisions are absolutely necessary, in order to express this space and distance, which cannot but be fully and imperfectly felt, even with every aid and evidence that art can give of it. § . not lightly to be omitted. now if an artist taking for his subject a chain of vast mountains, several leagues long, were to unite all their varieties of ravine, crag, chasm, and precipice, into one solid, unbroken mass, with one light side and one dark side, looking like a white ball or parallelopiped two yards broad, the words "breadth," "boldness," or, "generalization," would scarcely be received as a sufficient apology for a proceeding so glaringly false, and so painfully degrading. but when, instead of the really large and simple forms of mountains, united, as they commonly are, by some great principle of common organization, and so closely resembling each other as often to correspond in line, and join in effect; when instead of this, we have to do with spaces of cloud twice as vast, broken up into a multiplicity of forms necessary to, and characteristic of, their very nature--those forms subject to a thousand local changes, having no association with each other, and rendered visible in a thousand places by their own transparency or cavities, where the mountain forms would be lost in shade,--that this far greater space, and this far more complicated arrangement, should be all summed up into one round mass, with one swell of white, and one flat side of unbroken gray, is considered an evidence of the sublimest powers in the artist of generalization and breadth. now it may be broad, it may be grand, it may be beautiful, artistical, and in every way desirable. i don't say it is not--i merely say it is a concentration of every kind of falsehood: it is depriving heaven of its space, clouds of their buoyancy, winds of their motion, and distance of its blue. § . imperfect conceptions of this size and extent in ancient landscape. this is done, more or less, by all the old masters, without an exception.[ ] their idea of clouds was altogether similar; more or less perfectly carried out, according to their power of hand and accuracy of eye, but universally the same in conception. it was the idea of a comparatively small, round, puffed-up white body, irregularly associated with other round and puffed-up white bodies, each with a white light side, and a gray dark side, and a soft reflected light, floating a great way below a blue dome. such is the idea of a cloud formed by most people; it is the first, general, uncultivated notion of what we see every day. people think of the clouds as about as large as they look--forty yards over, perhaps; they see generally that they are solid bodies subject to the same laws as other solid bodies, roundish, whitish, and apparently suspended a great way under a high blue concavity. so that these ideas be tolerably given with smooth paint, they are content, and call it nature. how different it is from anything that nature ever did, or ever will do, i have endeavored to show; but i cannot, and do not, expect the contrast to be fully felt, unless the reader will actually go out on days when, either before or after rain, the clouds arrange themselves into vigorous masses, and after arriving at something like a conception of their distance and size, from the mode in which they retire over the horizon, will for himself trace and watch their varieties of form and outline, as mass rises over mass in their illuminated bodies. let him climb from step to step over their craggy and broken slopes, let him plunge into the long vistas of immeasurable perspective, that guide back to the blue sky; and when he finds his imagination lost in their immensity, and his senses confused with their multitude, let him go to claude, to salvator, or to poussin, and ask them for a like space, or like infinity. § . total want of transparency and evanescence in the clouds of ancient landscape. but perhaps the most grievous fault of all, in the clouds of these painters, is the utter want of transparency. not in her most ponderous and lightless masses will nature ever leave us without some evidence of transmitted sunshine; and she perpetually gives us passages in which the vapor becomes visible only by the sunshine which it arrests and holds within itself, not caught on its surface, but entangled in its mass--floating fleeces, precious with the gold of heaven; and this translucency is especially indicated on the dark sides even of her heaviest wreaths, which possess opalescent and delicate hues of partial illumination, far more dependent upon the beams which pass through them than on those which are reflected upon them. nothing, on the contrary, can be more painfully and ponderously opaque than the clouds of the old masters universally. however far removed in aerial distance, and however brilliant in light, they never appear filmy or evanescent, and their light is always on them, not in them. and this effect is much increased by the positive and persevering determination on the part of their outlines not to be broken in upon, nor interfered with in the slightest degree, by any presumptuous blue, or impertinent winds. there is no inequality, no variation, no losing or disguising of line, no melting into nothingness, nor shattering into spray; edge succeeds edge with imperturbable equanimity, and nothing short of the most decided interference on the part of tree-tops, or the edge of the picture, prevents us from being able to follow them all the way round, like the coast of an island. § . farther proof of their deficiency in space. § . instance of perfect truth in the sky of turner's babylon. and be it remembered that all these faults and deficiencies are to be found in their drawing merely of the separate masses of the solid cumulus, the easiest drawn of all clouds. but nature scarcely ever confines herself to such masses; they form but the thousandth part of her variety of effect. she builds up a pyramid of their boiling volumes, bars this across like a mountain with the gray cirrus, envelops it in black, ragged, drifting vapor, covers the open part of the sky with mottled horizontal fields, breaks through these with sudden and long sunbeams, tears up their edges with local winds, scatters over the gaps of blue the infinity of multitude of the high cirri, and melts even the unoccupied azure into palpitating shades. and all this is done over and over again in every quarter of a mile. where poussin or claude have three similar masses, nature has fifty pictures, made up each of millions of minor thoughts--fifty aisles penetrating through angelic chapels to the shechinah of the blue--fifty hollow ways among bewildered hills--each with their own nodding rocks, and cloven precipices, and radiant summits, and robing vapors, but all unlike each other, except in beauty, all bearing witness to the unwearied, exhaustless operation of the infinite mind. now, in cases like these especially, as we observed before of general nature, though it is altogether hopeless to follow out in the space of any one picture this incalculable and inconceivable glory, yet the painter can at least see that the space he has at his command, narrow and confined as it is, is made complete use of, and that no part of it shall be without entertainment and food for thought. if he could subdivide it by millionths of inches, he could not reach the multitudinous majesty of nature; but it is at least incumbent upon him to make the most of what he has, and not, by exaggerating the proportions, banishing the variety and repeating the forms of his clouds, to set at defiance the eternal principles of the heavens--fitfulness and infinity. and now let us, keeping in memory what we have seen of poussin and salvator, take up one of turner's skies, and see whether _he_ is as narrow in his conception, or as niggardly in his space. it does not matter which we take, his sublime babylon[ ] is a fair example for our present purpose. ten miles away, down the euphrates, where it gleams last along the plain, he gives us a drift of dark elongated vapor, melting beneath into a dim haze which embraces the hills on the horizon. it is exhausted with its own motion, and broken up by the wind in its own body into numberless groups of billowy and tossing fragments, which, beaten by the weight of storm down to the earth, are just lifting themselves again on wearied wings, and perishing in the effort. above these, and far beyond them, the eye goes back to a broad sea of white, illuminated mist, or rather cloud melted into rain, and absorbed again before that rain has fallen, but penetrated throughout, whether it be vapor or whether it be dew, with soft sunshine, turning it as white as snow. gradually as it rises, the rainy fusion ceases, you cannot tell where the film of blue on the left begins--but it is deepening, deepening still,--and the cloud, with its edge first invisible, then all but imaginary, then just felt when the eye is _not_ fixed on it, and lost when it is, at last rises, keen from excessive distance, but soft and mantling in its body, as a swan's bosom fretted by faint wind, heaving fitfully against the delicate deep blue, with white waves, whose forms are traced by the pale lines of opalescent shadow, shade only because the light is within it, and not upon it, and which break with their own swiftness into a driven line of level spray, winnowed into threads by the wind, and flung before the following vapor like those swift shafts of arrowy water which a great cataract shoots into the air beside it, trying to find the earth. beyond these, again, rises a colossal mountain of gray cumulus, through whose shadowed sides the sunbeams penetrate in dim, sloping, rain-like shafts; and over which they fall in a broad burst of streaming light, sinking to the earth, and showing through their own visible radiance the three successive ranges of hills which connect its desolate plain with space. above, the edgy summit of the cumulus, broken into fragments, recedes into the sky, which is peopled in its serenity with quiet multitudes of the white, soft, silent cirrus; and under these again, drift near the zenith, disturbed and impatient shadows of a darker spirit, seeking rest and finding none. § . and in his pools of solomon. now this is nature! it is the exhaustless living energy with which the universe is filled; and what will you set beside it of the works of other men? show me a single picture, in the whole compass of ancient art, in which i can pass from cloud to cloud, from region to region, from first to second and third heaven, as i can here, and you may talk of turner's want of truth. turn to the pools of solomon, and walk through the passages of mist as they melt on the one hand into those stormy fragments of fiery cloud, or, on the other, into the cold solitary shadows that compass the sweeping hill, and when you find an inch without air and transparency, and a hairbreadth without changefulness and thought; and when you can count the torn waves of tossing radiance that gush from the sun, as you can count the fixed, white, insipidities of claude; or when you can measure the modulation and the depth of that hollow mist, as you can the flourishes of the brush upon the canvas of salvator, talk of turner's want of truth! but let us take up simpler and less elaborate works, for there is too much in these to admit of being analyzed. § . truths of outline and character in his como. in the vignette of the lake of como, in rogers's italy, the space is so small that the details have been partially lost by the engraver; but enough remain to illustrate the great principles of cloud from which we have endeavored to explain. observe first the general angular outline of the volumes on the left of the sun. if you mark the points where the direction of their outline changes, and connect those points by right lines, the cloud will touch, but will not cut, those lines throughout. yet its contour is as graceful as it is full of character--toppling, ready to change--fragile as enormous--evanescent as colossal. observe how, where it crosses the line of the sun, it becomes luminous, illustrating what has been observed of the visibility of mist in sunlight. observe, above all, the multiplicity of its solid form, the depth of its shadows in perpetual transition: it is not round and swelled, half light and half dark, but full of breaking irregular shadow and transparency--variable as the wind, and melting imperceptibly above into the haziness of the sunlighted atmosphere, contrasted in all its vast forms with the delicacy and the multitude of the brightly touched cirri. nothing can surpass the truth of this; the cloud is as gigantic in its simplicity as the alp which it opposes; but how various, how transparent, how infinite in its organization! § . association of the cirrostratus with the cumulus. i would draw especial attention, both here and in all other works of turner, to the beautiful use of the low horizontal bars or fields of cloud, (cirrostratus,) which associate themselves so frequently--more especially before storms--with the true cumulus, floating on its flanks, or capping it, as if it were a mountain, and seldom mingling with its substance, unless in the very formation of rain. they supply us with one of those beautiful instances of natural composition, by which the artist is superseded and excelled--for, by the occurrence of these horizontal flakes, the rolling form of the cumulus is both opposed in its principal lines, and gifted with an apparent solidity and vastness, which no other expedient could have exhibited, and which far exceed in awfulness the impression of the noblest mountains of the earth. i have seen in the evening light of italy, the alps themselves out-towered by ranges of these mighty clouds, alternately white in the starlight, and inhabited by fire. § . the deep-based knowledge of the alps in turner's lake of geneva. turn back to the first vignette in the italy. the angular outlines and variety of modulation in the clouds above the sail, and the delicate atmosphere of morning into which they are dissolved about the breathing hills, require no comment; but one part of this vignette demands especial notice; it is the repetition of the outline of the snowy mountain by the light cloud above it. the cause of this i have already explained (vide page ,) and its occurrence here is especially valuable as bearing witness to the thorough and scientific knowledge thrown by turner into his slightest works. the thing cannot be seen once in six months; it would not have been noticed, much less introduced by an ordinary artist, and to the public it is a dead letter, or an offence. ninety-nine persons in a hundred would not have observed this pale wreath of parallel cloud above the hill, and the hundredth in all probability says it is unnatural. it requires the most intimate and accurate knowledge of the alps before such a piece of refined truth can be understood. § . further principles of cloud form exemplified in his amalfi. at the th page we have another and a new case, in which clouds in perfect repose, unaffected by wind, or any influence but that of their own elastic force, boil, rise, and melt in the heaven with more approach to globular form than under any other circumstances is possible. i name this vignette, not only because it is most remarkable for the buoyancy and elasticity of inward energy, indicated through the most ponderous forms, and affords us a beautiful instance of the junction of the cirrostratus with the cumulus, of which we have just been speaking (§ ,) but because it is a characteristic example of turner's use of one of the facts of nature not hitherto noticed, that the edge of a partially transparent body is often darker than its central surface, because at the edge the light penetrates and passes through, which from the centre is reflected to the eye. the sharp, cutting edge of a wave, if not broken into foam, frequently appears for an instant almost black; and the outlines of these massy clouds, where their projecting forms rise in relief against the light of their bodies, are almost always marked clearly and firmly by very dark edges. hence we have frequently, if not constantly, multitudinous forms indicated only by outline, giving character and solidity to the great masses of light, without taking away from their breadth. and turner avails himself of these boldly and constantly,--outlining forms with the brush of which no other indication is given. all the grace and solidity of the white cloud on the right-hand side of the vignette before us, depends upon such outlines. § . reasons for insisting on the _infinity_ of turner's works. infinity is almost an unerring test of _all_ truth. as i before observed of mere execution, that one of the best tests of its excellence was the expression of _infinity_; so it may be noticed with respect to the painting of details generally, that more difference lies between one artist and another, in the attainment of this quality, than in any other of the efforts of art; and that if we wish, without reference to beauty of composition, or any other interfering circumstances, to form a judgment of the truth of painting, perhaps the very first thing we should look for, whether in one thing or another--foliage, or clouds, or waves--should be the expression of _infinity_ always and everywhere, in all parts and divisions of parts. for we may be quite sure that what is not infinite, cannot be true; it does not, indeed, follow that what is infinite, always is true, but it cannot be altogether false, for this simple reason; that it is impossible for mortal mind to compose an infinity of any kind for itself, or to form an idea of perpetual variation, and to avoid all repetition, merely by its own combining resources. the moment that we trust to ourselves, we repeat ourselves, and therefore the moment we see in a work of any kind whatsoever, the expression of infinity, we may be certain that the workman has gone to nature for it; while, on the other hand, the moment we see repetition, or want of infinity, we may be certain that the workman has _not_ gone to nature for it. § . instances of the total want of it in the works of salvator. § . and of the universal presence of it in those of turner. the conclusions which may be arrived at from it. § . the multiplication of objects, or increase of their size, will not give the impression of infinity, but is the resource of novices. for instance, in the picture of salvator before noticed, no. in the dulwich gallery, as we see at once that the two masses of cloud absolutely repeat each other in every one of their forms, and that each is composed of about twelve white sweeps of the brush, all forming the same curve, and all of the same length; and as we can count these, and measure their common diameter, and by stating the same to anybody else, convey to him a full and perfect idea and knowledge of that sky in all its parts and proportions,--as we can do this, we may be absolutely certain, without reference to the real sky, or to any other part of nature, without even knowing what the white things were intended for, we may be certain that they cannot possibly resemble _anything_; that whatever they were meant for, they can be nothing but a violent contradiction of all nature's principles and forms. when, on the other hand, we take up such a sky as that of turner's rouen, seen from st. catherine's hill, in the rivers of france, and find, in the first place, that he has given us a distance over the hills in the horizon, into which, when we are tired of penetrating, we must turn and come back again, there being not the remotest chance of getting to the end of it; and when we see that from this measureless distance up to the zenith, the whole sky is one ocean of alternate waves of cloud and light, so blended together that the eye cannot rest on any one without being guided to the next, and so to a hundred more, till it is lost over and over again in every wreath--that if it divides the sky into quarters of inches, and tries to count or comprehend the component parts of any single one of those divisions, it is still as utterly defied and defeated by the part as by the whole--that there is not one line out of the millions there which repeats another, not one which is unconnected with another, not one which does not in itself convey histories of distance and space, and suggest new and changeful form; then we may be all but certain, though these forms are too mysterious and too delicate for us to analyze--though all is so crowded and so connected that it is impossible to test any single part by particular laws--yet without any such tests, we may be sure that this infinity can only be based on truth--that it _must_ be nature, because man could not have originated it, and that every form must be faithful, because none is like another. and therefore it is that i insist so constantly on this great quality of landscape painting, as it appears in turner; because it is not merely a constant and most important truth in itself, but it almost amounts to a demonstration of every other truth. and it will be found a far rarer attainment in the works of other men than is commonly supposed, and the sign, wherever it is really found, of the very highest art. for we are apt to forget that the greatest _number_ is no nearer infinity than the least, if it be definite number; and the vastest bulk is no nearer infinity than the most minute, if it be definite bulk; so that a man may multiply his objects forever and ever, and be no nearer infinity than he had reached with one, if he do not vary them and confuse them; and a man may reach infinity in every touch and line, and part, and unit, if in these he be truthfully various and obscure. and we shall find, the more we examine the works of the old masters, that always, and in all parts, they are totally wanting in every feeling of infinity, and therefore in _all_ truth: and even in the works of the moderns, though the aim is far more just, we shall frequently perceive an erroneous choice of means, and a substitution of mere number or bulk for real infinity. § . farther instances of infinity in the gray skies of turner. and therefore, in concluding our notice of the central cloud region, i should wish to dwell particularly on those skies of turner's, in which we have the whole space of the heaven covered with the delicate dim flakes of gathering vapor, which are the intermediate link between the central region and that of the rain-cloud, and which assemble and grow out of the air; shutting up the heaven with a gray interwoven veil, before the approach of storm, faint, but universal, letting the light of the upper sky pass pallidly through their body, but never rending a passage for the ray. we have the first approach and gathering of this kind of sky most gloriously given in the vignette at page of rogers's italy, which is one of the most perfect pieces of feeling (if i may transgress my usual rules for an instant) extant in art, owing to the extreme grandeur and stern simplicity of the strange and ominous forms of level cloud behind the building. in that at page , there are passages of the same kind, of exceeding perfection. the sky through which the dawn is breaking in the voyage of columbus, and that with the moonlight under the rialto, in rogers's poems, the skies of the bethlehem, and the pyramids in finden's bible series, and among the academy pictures, that of the hero and leander, and flight into egypt, are characteristic and noble examples, as far as any individual works can be characteristic of the universality of this mighty mind. i ought not to forget the magnificent solemnity and fulness of the wreaths of gathering darkness in the folkestone. § . the excellence of the cloud-drawing of stanfield. § . the average standing of the english school. we must not pass from the consideration of the central cloud region without noticing the general high quality of the cloud-drawing of stanfield. he is limited in his range, and is apt in extensive compositions to repeat himself, neither is he ever very refined; but his cloud-form is firmly and fearlessly chiselled, with perfect knowledge, though usually with some want of feeling. as far as it goes, it is very grand and very tasteful, beautifully developed in the space of its solid parts and full of action. next to turner, he is incomparably the noblest master of cloud-form of all our artists; in fact, he is the only one among them who really can _draw_ a cloud. for it is a very different thing to rub out an irregular white space neatly with the handkerchief, or to leave a bright little bit of paper in the middle of a wash, and to give the real anatomy of cloud-form with perfect articulation of chiaroscuro. we have multitudes of painters who can throw a light bit of straggling vapor across their sky, or leave in it delicate and tender passages of breaking light; but this is a very different thing from taking up each of those bits or passages, and giving it structure, and parts, and solidity. the eye is satisfied with exceedingly little, as an indication of cloud, and a few clever sweeps of the brush on wet paper may give all that it requires; but this is not _drawing_ clouds, nor will it ever appeal fully and deeply to the mind, except when it occurs only as a part of a higher system. and there is not one of our modern artists, except stanfield, who can do much more than this. as soon as they attempt to lay detail upon their clouds, they appear to get bewildered, forget that they are dealing with forms regulated by precisely the same simple laws of light and shade as more substantial matter, overcharge their color, confuse their shadows and dark sides, and end in mere ragged confusion. i believe the evil arises from their never attempting to render clouds except with the brush; other objects, at some period of study, they take up with the chalk or lead, and so learn something of their form; but they appear to consider clouds as altogether dependent on cobalt and camel's hair, and so never understand anything of their real anatomy. but whatever the cause, i cannot point to any central clouds of the moderns, except those of turner and stanfield, as really showing much knowledge of, or feeling for, nature, though _all_ are superior to the conventional and narrow conceptions of the ancients. we are all right as far as we go, our work may be incomplete, but it is not false; and it is far better, far less injurious to the mind, that we should be little attracted to the sky, and taught to be satisfied with a light suggestion of truthful form, than that we should be drawn to it by violently pronounced outline and intense color, to find in its finished falsehood everything to displease or to mislead--to hurt our feelings, if we have foundation for them, and corrupt them, if we have none. footnotes [ ] here i include even the great ones--even titian and veronese,--excepting only tintoret and the religious schools. [ ] engraved in findel's bible illustrations. chapter iv. of truth of clouds: thirdly, of the region of the rain-cloud. § . the apparent difference in character between the lower and central clouds is dependent chiefly on proximity. the clouds which i wish to consider as characteristic of the lower, or rainy region, differ not so much in their real nature from those of the central and uppermost regions, as in appearance, owing to their greater nearness. for the central clouds, and perhaps even the high cirri, deposit moisture, if not distinctly rain, as is sufficiently proved by the existence of snow on the highest peaks of the himaleh; and when, on any such mountains, we are brought into close contact with the central clouds,[ ] we find them little differing from the ordinary rain-cloud of the plains, except by being slightly less dense and dark. but the apparent differences, dependent on proximity, are most marked and important. § . their marked difference in color. in the first place, the clouds of the central region have, as has been before observed, pure and aerial grays for their dark sides, owing to their necessary distance from the observer; and as this distance permits a multitude of local phenomena capable of influencing color, such as accidental sunbeams, refractions, transparencies, or local mists and showers, to be collected into a space comparatively small, the colors of these clouds are always changeful and palpitating; and whatever degree of gray or of gloom may be mixed with them is invariably pure and aerial. but the nearness of the rain-cloud rendering it impossible for a number of phenomena to be at once visible, makes its hue of gray monotonous, and (by losing the blue of distance) warm and brown compared to that of the upper clouds. this is especially remarkable on any part of it which may happen to be illumined, which is of a brown, bricky, ochreous tone, never bright, always coming in dark outline on the lights of the central clouds. but it is seldom that this takes place, and when it does, never over large spaces, little being usually seen of the rain-cloud but its under and dark side. this, when the cloud above is dense, becomes of an inky and cold gray, and sulphureous and lurid if there be thunder in the air. § . and in definiteness of form. § . they are subject to precisely the same great laws. with these striking differences in color, it presents no fewer nor less important in form, chiefly from losing almost all definiteness of character and outline. it is sometimes nothing more than a thin mist, whose outline cannot be traced, rendering the landscape locally indistinct or dark; if its outline be visible, it is ragged and torn; rather a spray of cloud, taken off its edge and sifted by the wind, than an edge of the cloud itself. in fact, it rather partakes of the nature, and assumes the appearance, of real water in the state of spray, than of elastic vapor. this appearance is enhanced by the usual presence of formed rain, carried along with it in a columnar form, ordinarily, of course, reaching the ground like a veil, but very often suspended with the cloud, and hanging from it like a jagged fringe, or over it in light, rain being always lighter than the cloud it falls from. these columns, or fringes, of rain are often waved and bent by the wind, or twisted, sometimes even swept upwards from the cloud. the velocity of these vapors, though not necessarily in reality greater than that of the central clouds, appears greater, owing to their proximity, and, of course, also to the usual presence of a more violent wind. they are also apparently much more in the power of the wind, having less elastic force in themselves; but they are precisely subject to the same great laws of form which regulate the upper clouds. they are not solid bodies borne about with the wind, but they carry the wind with them, and cause it. every one knows, who has ever been out in a storm, that the time when it rains heaviest is precisely the time when he cannot hold up his umbrella; that the wind is carried with the cloud, and lulls when it has passed. every one who has ever seen rain in a hill country, knows that a rain-cloud, like any other, may have all its parts in rapid motion, and yet, as a whole, remain in one spot. i remember once, when in crossing the tête noire, i had turned up the valley towards trient, i noticed a rain-cloud forming on the glacier de trient. with a west wind, it proceeded towards the col de balme, being followed by a prolonged wreath of vapor, always forming exactly at the same spot over the glacier. this long, serpent-like line of cloud went on at a great rate till it reached the valley leading down from the col de balme, under the slate rocks of the croix de fer. there it turned sharp round, and came down this valley, at right angles to its former progress, and finally directly contrary to it, till it came down within five hundred feet of the village, where it disappeared; the line behind always advancing, and always disappearing, at the same spot. this continued for half an hour, the long line describing the curve of a horseshoe; always coming into existence, and always vanishing at exactly the same places; traversing the space between with enormous swiftness. this cloud, ten miles off, would have looked like a perfectly motionless wreath, in the form of a horseshoe, hanging over the hills. § . value, to the painter, of the rain-cloud. § . the old masters have not left a single instance of the painting of the rain-cloud, and very few efforts at it. gaspar poussin's storms. to the region of the rain-cloud belong also all those phenomena of drifted smoke, heat-haze, local mists in the morning or evening; in valleys, or over water, mirage, white steaming vapor rising in evaporation from moist and open surfaces, and everything which visibly affects the condition of the atmosphere without actually assuming the form of cloud. these phenomena are as perpetual in all countries as they are beautiful, and afford by far the most effective and valuable means which the painter possesses, for modification of the forms of fixed objects. the upper clouds are distinct and comparatively opaque, they do not modify, but conceal; but through the rain-cloud, and its accessory phenomena, all that is beautiful may be made manifest, and all that is hurtful concealed; what is paltry may be made to look vast, and what is ponderous, aerial; mystery may be obtained without obscurity, and decoration without disguise. and, accordingly, nature herself uses it constantly, as one of her chief means of most perfect effect; not in one country, nor another, but everywhere--everywhere; at least, where there is anything worth calling landscape. i cannot answer for the desert of the sahara, but i know that there can be no greater mistake, than supposing that delicate and variable effects of mist and rain-cloud are peculiar to northern climates. i have never seen in any place or country effects of mist more perfect than in the campagna of rome, and among the hills of sorrento. it is therefore matter of no little marvel to me, and i conceive that it can scarcely be otherwise to any reflecting person, that throughout the whole range of ancient landscape art, there occurs no instance of the painting of a real rain-cloud, still less of any of the more delicate phenomena characteristic of the region. "storms" indeed, as the innocent public persist in calling such abuses of nature and abortions of art as the two windy gaspars in our national gallery, are common enough; massive concretions of ink and indigo, wrung and twisted very hard, apparently in a vain effort to get some moisture out of them; bearing up courageously and successfully against a wind, whose effects on the trees in the foreground can be accounted for only on the supposition that they are all of the india-rubber species. enough of this in all conscience, we have, and to spare; but for the legitimate rain-cloud, with its ragged and spray-like edge, its veilly transparency, and its columnar burden of blessing, neither it, nor anything like it, or approaching it, occurs in any painting of the old masters that i have ever seen; and i have seen enough to warrant my affirming that if it occur anywhere, it must be through accident rather than intention. nor is there stronger evidence of any perception, on the part of these much respected artists, that there were such things in the world as mists or vapors. if a cloud under their direction ever touches a mountain, it does it effectually and as if it meant to do it. there is no mystifying the matter; here is a cloud, and there is a hill; if it is to come on at all, it comes on to some purpose, and there is no hope of its ever going off again. we have, therefore, little to say of the efforts of the old masters, in any scenes which might naturally have been connected with the clouds of the lowest region, except that the faults of form specified in considering the central clouds, are, by way of being energetic or sublime, more glaringly and audaciously committed in their "storms;" and that what is a wrong form among clouds possessing form, is there given with increased generosity of fiction to clouds which have no form at all. § . the great power of the moderns in this respect. § . works of copley fielding. § . his peculiar truth. § . his weakness and its probable cause. supposing that we had nothing to show in modern art, of the region of the rain-cloud, but the dash of cox, the blot of de wint, or even the ordinary stormy skies of the body of our inferior water-color painters, we might yet laugh all efforts of the old masters to utter scorn. but one among our water-color artists, deserves especial notice--before we ascend the steps of the solitary throne--as having done in his peculiar walk, what for faithful and pure truth, truth indeed of a limited range and unstudied application, but yet most faithful and most pure, will remain unsurpassed if not unrivalled,--copley fielding. we are well aware how much of what he has done depends in a great degree upon particular tricks of execution, or on a labor somewhat too mechanical to be meritorious; that it is rather the _texture_ than the _plan_ of his sky which is to be admired, and that the greater part of what is pleasurable in it will fall rather under the head of dexterous imitation than of definite thought. but whatever detractions from his merit we may be compelled to make on these grounds, in considering art as the embodying of beauty, or the channel of mind, it is impossible, when we are speaking of truth only, to pass by his down scenes and moorland showers, of some years ago, in which he produced some of the most perfect and faultless passages of mist and rain-cloud which art has ever seen. wet, transparent, formless, full of motion, felt rather by their shadows on the hills than by their presence in the sky, becoming dark only through increased depth of space, most translucent where most sombre, and light only through increased buoyancy of motion, letting the blue through their interstices, and the sunlight through their chasms, with the irregular playfulness and traceless gradation of nature herself, his skies will remain, as long as their colors stand, among the most simple, unadulterated, and complete transcripts of a particular nature which art can point to. had he painted five instead of five hundred such, and gone on to other sources of beauty, he might, there can be little doubt, have been one of our greatest artists. but it often grieves us to see how his power is limited to a particular moment, to that easiest moment for imitation, when knowledge of form may be superseded by management of the brush, and the judgment of the colorist by the manufacture of a color; the moment when all form is melted down and drifted away in the descending veil of rain, and when the variable and fitful colors of the heaven are lost in the monotonous gray of its storm tones.[ ] we can only account for this by supposing that there is something radically wrong in his method of study; for a man of his evident depth of feeling and pure love of truth ought not to be, cannot be, except from some strange error in his mode of out-of-door practice, thus limited in his range, and liable to decline of power. we have little doubt that almost all such failures arise from the artist's neglecting the use of the chalk, and supposing that either the power of drawing forms, or the sense of their beauty, can be maintained unweakened or unblunted, without constant and laborious studies in simple light and shade, of form only. the brush is at once the artist's greatest aid and enemy; it enables him to make his power available, but at the same time, it undermines his power, and unless it be constantly rejected for the pencil, never can be rightly used. but whatever the obstacle be, we do not doubt that it is one which, once seen, may be overcome or removed; and we are in the constant hope of seeing this finely-minded artist shake off his lethargy, break the shackles of habit, seek in extended and right study the sources of real power, and become, what we have full faith in his capability of being, one of the leading artists of his time. § . impossibility of reasoning on the rain-clouds of turner from engravings. in passing to the works of our greatest modern master, it must be premised that the qualities which constitute a most essential part of the truth of the rain-cloud, are in no degree to be rendered by engraving. its indefiniteness of torn and transparent form is far beyond the power of even our best engravers: i do not say beyond their _possible_ power, if they would make themselves artists as well as workmen, but far beyond the power they actually possess; while the depth and delicacy of the grays which turner employs or produces, as well as the refinement of his execution, are, in the nature of things, utterly beyond all imitation by the opaque and lifeless darkness of the steel. what we say of his works, therefore, must be understood as referring only to the original drawings; though we may name one or two instances in which the engraver has, to a certain degree, succeeded in distantly following the intention of the master. § . his rendering of fielding's particular moment in the jumieges. § . illustration of the nature of clouds in the opposed forms of smoke and steam. jumieges, in the rivers of france, ought perhaps, after what we have said of fielding, to be our first object of attention, because it is a rendering by turner of fielding's particular moment, and the only one existing, for turner never repeats himself. one picture is allotted to one truth; the statement is perfectly and gloriously made, and he passes on to speak of a fresh portion of god's revelation.[ ] the haze of sunlit rain of this most magnificent picture, the gradual retirement of the dark wood into its depth, and the sparkling and evanescent light which sends its variable flashes on the abbey, figures, foliage, and foam, require no comment--they speak home at once. but there is added to this noble composition an incident which may serve us at once for a farther illustration of the nature and forms of cloud, and for a final proof how deeply and philosophically turner has studied them. we have on the right of the picture, the steam and the smoke of a passing steamboat. now steam is nothing but an artificial cloud in the process of dissipation; it is as much a cloud as those of the sky itself, that is, a quantity of moisture rendered visible in the air by imperfect solution. accordingly, observe how exquisitely irregular and broken are its forms, how sharp and spray-like; but with all the facts observed which were pointed out in chap. ii. of this section, the convex side to the wind, the sharp edge on that side, the other soft and lost. smoke, on the contrary, is an actual substance existing independently in the air, a solid opaque body, subject to no absorption nor dissipation but that of tenuity. observe its volumes; there is no breaking up nor disappearing here; the wind carries its elastic globes before it, but does not dissolve nor break them.[ ] equally convex and void of angles on all sides, they are the exact representatives of the clouds of the old masters, and serve at once to show the ignorance and falsehood of these latter, and the accuracy of study which has guided turner to the truth. § . moment of retiring rain in the llanthony. from this picture we should pass to the llanthony,[ ] which is the rendering of the moment immediately following that given in the jumieges. the shower is here half exhausted, half passed by, the last drops are rattling faintly through the glimmering hazel boughs, the white torrent, swelled by the sudden storm, flings up its hasty jets of springing spray to meet the returning light; and these, as if the heaven regretted what it had given, and were taking it back, pass, as they leap, into vapor, and fall not again, but vanish in the shafts of the sunlight[ ]--hurrying, fitful, wind-woven sunlight--which glides through the thick leaves, and paces along the pale rocks like rain; half conquering, half quenched by the very mists which it summons itself from the lighted pastures as it passes, and gathers out of the drooping herbage and from the streaming crags; sending them with messages of peace to the far summits of the yet unveiled mountains whose silence is still broken by the sound of the rushing rain. § . and of commencing, chosen with peculiar meaning for loch coriskin. with this noble work we should compare one of which we can better judge by the engraving--the loch coriskin, in the illustrations to scott, because it introduces us to another and a most remarkable instance of the artist's vast and varied knowledge. when rain falls on a mountain composed chiefly of barren rocks, their surfaces, being violently heated by the sun, whose most intense warmth always precedes rain, occasion sudden and violent evaporation, actually converting the first shower into steam. consequently, upon all such hills, on the commencement of rain, white volumes of vapor are instantaneously and universally formed, which rise, are absorbed by the atmosphere, and again descend in rain, to rise in fresh volumes until the surfaces of the hills are cooled. where there is grass or vegetation, this effect is diminished; where there is foliage it scarcely takes place at all. now this effect has evidently been especially chosen by turner for loch coriskin, not only because it enabled him to relieve its jagged forms with veiling vapor, but to tell the tale which no pencilling could, the story of its utter absolute barrenness of unlichened, dead, desolated rock:-- "the wildest glen, but this, can show some touch of nature's genial glow, on high benmore green mosses grow, and heath-bells bud in deep glencoe. and copse on cruchan ben; but here, above, around, below, on mountain, or in glen, nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower, nor aught of vegetative power, the wearied eye may ken; but all its rocks at random thrown, black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone." lord of the isles, canto iii here, again, we see the absolute necessity of scientific and entire acquaintance with nature, before this great artist can be understood. that which, to the ignorant, is little more than an unnatural and meaningless confusion of steam-like vapor, is to the experienced such a full and perfect expression of the character of the spot, as no means of art could have otherwise given. § . the drawing of transparent vapor in the land's end. § . the individual character of its parts. in the long ships lighthouse, land's end, we have clouds without rain--at twilight--enveloping the cliffs of the coast, but concealing nothing, every outline being visible through their gloom; and not only the outline--for it is easy to do this--but the _surface_. the bank of rocky coast approaches the spectator inch by inch, felt clearer and clearer as it withdraws from the garment of cloud--not by edges more and more defined, but by a surface more and more unveiled. we have thus the painting, not of a mere transparent veil, but of a solid body of cloud, every inch of whose increasing distance is marked and felt. but the great wonder of the picture is the intensity of gloom which is attained in pure warm gray, without either blackness or blueness. it is a gloom, dependent rather on the enormous space and depth indicated, than on actual pitch of color, distant by real drawing, without a grain of blue, dark by real substance, without a stroke of blackness; and with all this, it is not formless, but full of indications of character, wild, irregular, shattered, and indefinite--full of the energy of storm, fiery in haste, and yet flinging back out of its motion the fitful swirls of bounding drift, of tortured vapor tossed up like men's hands, as in defiance of the tempest, the jets of resulting whirlwind, hurled back from the rocks into the face of the coming darkness; which, beyond all other characters, mark the raised passion of the elements. it is this untraceable, unconnected, yet perpetual form--this fulness of character absorbed in the universal energy--which distinguish nature and turner from all their imitators. to roll a volume of smoke before the wind, to indicate motion or violence by monotonous similarity of line and direction, is for the multitude; but to mark the independent passion, the tumultuous separate existence of every wreath of writhing vapor, yet swept away and overpowered by one omnipotence of storm, and thus to bid us "be as a presence or a motion--one among the many there----while the mists flying, and rainy vapors, call out shapes and phantoms from the crags and solid earth, as fast as a musician scatters sounds out of an instrument,"-- this belongs only to nature and to him. § . deep studied form of swift rain-cloud in the coventry. § . compared with forms given by salvator. the drawing of coventry may be particularized as a farther example of this fine suggestion of irregularity and fitfulness, through very constant parallelism of direction, both in rain and clouds. the great mass of cloud, which traverses the whole picture, is characterized throughout by severe right lines, nearly parallel with each other, into which every one of its wreaths has a tendency to range itself; but no one of these right lines is actually and entirely parallel to any other, though all have a certain tendency, more or less defined in each, which impresses the mind with the most distinct _idea_ of parallelism. neither are any of the lines actually straight and unbroken; on the contrary, they are all made up of the most exquisite and varied curves, and it is the imagined line which joins the apices of these--a tangent to them all, which is in reality straight.[ ] they are suggested, not represented, right lines; but the whole volume of cloud is visibly and totally bounded by them; and, in consequence, its whole body is felt to be dragged out and elongated by the force of the tempest which it carries with it, and every one of its wreaths to be (as was before explained) not so much something borne _before_ or _by_ the wind, as the visible form and presence of the wind itself. we could not possibly point out a more magnificent piece of drawing as a contrast to such works of salvator as that before alluded to ( dulwich gallery). both are rolling masses of connected cloud; but in turner's, there is not one curve that repeats another, nor one curve in itself monotonous, nor without character, and yet every part and portion of the cloud is rigidly subjected to the same forward, fierce, inevitable influence of storm. in salvator's, every curve repeats its neighbor, every curve is monotonous in itself, and yet the whole cloud is curling about hither and thither, evidently without the slightest notion where it is going to, and unregulated by any general influence whatsoever. i could not bring together two finer or more instructive examples, the one of everything that is perfect, the other of everything that is childish or abominable, in the representation of the same facts. § . entire expression of tempest by minute touches and circumstances in the coventry. but there is yet more to be noticed in this noble sky of turner's. not only are the lines of the rolling cloud thus irregular in their parallelism, but those of the falling rain are equally varied in their direction, indicating the gusty changefulness of the wind, and yet kept so straight and stern in their individual descent, that we are not suffered to forget its strength. this impression is still farther enhanced by the drawing of the smoke, which blows every way at once, yet turning perpetually in each of its swirls back in the direction of the wind, but so suddenly and violently, as almost to assume the angular lines of lightning. farther, to complete the impression, be it observed that all the cattle, both upon the near and distant hill-side, have left off grazing, and are standing stock still and stiff, with their heads down and their backs to the wind; and finally, that we may be told not only what the storm is, but what it has been, the gutter at the side of the road is gushing in a complete torrent, and particular attention is directed to it by the full burst of light in the sky being brought just above it, so that all its waves are bright with the reflection. § . especially by contrast with a passage of extreme repose. but i have not quite done with this noble picture yet. impetuous clouds, twisted rain, flickering sunshine, fleeting shadow, gushing water, and oppressed cattle, all speak the same story of tumult, fitfulness, power, and velocity. only one thing is wanted, a passage of repose to contrast with it all, and it is given. high and far above the dark volumes of the swift rain-cloud, are seen on the left, through their opening, the quiet, horizontal, silent flakes of the highest cirrus, resting in the repose of the deep sky. of all else that we have noticed in this drawing, some faint idea can be formed from the engraving: but not the slightest of the delicate and soft forms of these pausing vapors, and still less of the exquisite depth and palpitating tenderness of the blue with which they are islanded. engravers, indeed, invariably lose the effect of all passages of cold color, under the mistaken idea that it is to be kept _pale_ in order to indicate distance; whereas it ought commonly to be darker than the rest of the sky. § . the truth of this particular passage. perfectly pure blue sky only seen after rain, and how seen. § . absence of this effect in the works of the old masters. to appreciate the full truth of this passage, we must understand another effect peculiar to the rain-cloud, that its openings exhibit the purest blue which the sky ever shows. for, as we saw in the first chapter of this section, that aqueous vapor always turns the sky more or less gray, it follows that we never can see the azure so intense as when the greater part of this vapor has just fallen in rain. then, and then only, pure blue sky becomes visible in the first openings, distinguished especially by the manner in which the clouds melt into it; their edges passing off in faint white threads and fringes, through which the blue shines more and more intensely, till the last trace of vapor is lost in its perfect color. it is only the upper white clouds, however, which do this, or the last fragments of rain-clouds, becoming white as they disappear, so that the blue is never _corrupted_ by the cloud, but only paled and broken with pure white, the purest white which the sky ever shows. thus we have a melting and palpitating color, never the same for two inches together, deepening and broadening here and there into intensity of perfect azure, then drifted and dying away through every tone of pure pale sky, into the snow white of the filmy cloud. over this roll the determined edges of the rain-clouds, throwing it all far back, as a retired scene, into the upper sky. of this effect the old masters, as far as i remember, have taken no cognizance whatsoever; all with them is, as we partially noticed before, either white cloud or pure blue: they have no notion of any double-dealing or middle measures. they bore a hole in the sky, and let you up into a pool of deep, stagnant blue, marked off by the clear round edges of imperturbable, impenetrable cloud on all sides--beautiful in positive color, but totally destitute of that exquisite gradation and change, that fleeting, panting, hesitating effort, with which the first glance of the natural sky is shed through the turbulence of the earth-storm. § . success of our water-color artists in its rendering. use of it by turner. they have some excuse, however, for not attempting this, in the nature of their material, as one accidental dash of the brush with water-color on a piece of wet or damp paper, will come nearer the truth and transparency of this rain-blue than the labor of a day in oils; and the purity and felicity of some of the careless, melting water-color skies of cox and tayler may well make us fastidious in all effects of this kind. it is, however, only in the drawings of turner that we have this perfect transparency and variation of blue, given in association with the perfection of considered form. in tayler and cox the forms are always partially accidental and unconsidered, often essentially bad, and always incomplete; in turner the dash of the brush is as completely under the rule of thought and feeling as its slowest line; all that it does is perfect, and could not be altered, even in a hairbreadth, without injury; in addition to this, peculiar management and execution are used in obtaining quality in the color itself, totally different from the manipulation of any other artist; and none, who have ever spent so much as one hour of their lives over his drawing, can forget those dim passages of dreamy blue, barred and severed with a thousand delicate and soft and snowy forms, which, gleaming in their patience of hope between the troubled rushing of the racked earth-cloud, melt farther and farther back into the height of heaven, until the eye is bewildered and the heart lost in the intensity of their peace. i do not say that this is beautiful--i do not say it is ideal, nor refined--i only ask you to watch for the first opening of the clouds after the next south rain, and tell me if it be not _true_? § . expression of near rain-cloud in the gosport, and other works. § . contrasted with gaspar poussin's rain-cloud in the dido and �neas. the gosport affords us an instance more exquisite even than the passage above named in the coventry, of the use of this melting and dewy blue, accompanied by two distances of rain-cloud, one towering over the horizon, seen blue with excessive distance through crystal atmosphere; the other breaking overhead in the warm, sulphurous fragments of spray, whose loose and shattering transparency, being the most essential characteristic of the near rain-cloud, is precisely that which the old masters are sure to contradict. look, for instance, at the wreaths of _cloud_? in the dido and �neas of gaspar poussin, with their unpleasant edges cut as hard and solid and opaque and smooth as thick black paint can make them, rolled up over one another like a dirty sail badly reefed; or look at the agreeable transparency and variety of the cloud-edge where it cuts the mountain in n. poussin's phocion, and compare this with the wreaths which float across the precipice in the second vignette in campbell, or which gather around the ben lomond, the white rain gleaming beneath their dark transparent shadows; or which drift up along the flanks of the wooded hills, called from the river by the morning light, in the oakhampton; or which island the crags of snowdon in the llanberis, or melt along the cumberland hills, while turner leads us across the sands of morecambe bay. this last drawing deserves especial notice; it is of an evening in spring, when the south rain has ceased at sunset, and through the lulled and golden air, the confused and fantastic mists float up along the hollows of the mountains, white and pure, the resurrection in spirit of the new-fallen rain, catching shadows from the precipices, and mocking the dark peaks with their own mountain-like but melting forms till the solid mountains seem in motion like those waves of cloud, emerging and vanishing as the weak wind passes by their summits; while the blue, level night advances along the sea, and the surging breakers leap up to catch the last light from the path of the sunset. [illustration: okehampton castle. from a painting by turner.] § . turner's power of rendering mist. § . his effects of mist so perfect, that if not at once understood, they can no more be explained or reasoned on than nature herself. i need not, however, insist upon turner's peculiar power of rendering _mist_, and all those passages of intermediate mystery, between earth and air, when the mountain is melting into the cloud, or the horizon into the twilight; because his supremacy in these points is altogether undisputed, except by persons to whom it would be impossible to prove anything which did not fall under the form of a rule of three. nothing is more natural than that the studied form and color of this great artist should be little understood, because they require for the full perception of their meaning and truth, such knowledge and such time as not one in a thousand possesses, or can bestow; but yet the truth of them for that very reason is capable of demonstration, and there is hope of our being able to make it in some degree felt and comprehended even by those to whom it is now a dead letter, or an offence. but the aerial and misty effects of landscape, being matters of which the eye should be simply cognizant, and without effort of thought, as it is of light, must, where they are exquisitely rendered, either be felt at once, or prove that degree of blindness and bluntness in the feelings of the observer which there is little hope of ever conquering. of course for persons who have never seen in their lives a cloud vanishing on a mountain-side, and whose conceptions of mist or vapor are limited to ambiguous outlines of spectral hackney-coaches and bodiless lamp-posts, discern through a brown combination of sulphur, soot, and gaslight, there is yet some hope; we cannot, indeed, tell them what the morning mist is like in mountain air, but far be it from us to tell them that they are incapable of feeling its beauty if they will seek it for themselves. but if you have ever in your life had one opportunity with your eyes and heart open, of seeing the dew rise from a hill-pasture, or the storm gather on a sea-cliff, and if you have yet no feeling for the glorious passages of mingled earth and heaven which turner calls up before you into breathing, tangible being, there is indeed no hope for your apathy--art will never touch you, nor nature inform. § . various instances. it would be utterly absurd, among the innumerable passages of this kind given throughout his works, to point to one as more characteristic or more perfect than another. the simmer lake, near askrig, for expression of mist pervaded with sunlight,--the lake lucerne, a recent and unengraved drawing, for the recession of near mountain form, not into dark, but into _luminous_ cloud, the most difficult thing to do in art,--the harlech, for expression of the same phenomena, shown over vast spaces in distant ranges of hills, the ehrenbreitstein, a recent drawing, for expression of mist, rising from the surface of water at sunset,--and, finally, the glorious oberwesel and nemi,[ ] for passages of all united, may, however, be named, as noble instances, though in naming five works i insult five hundred. § . turner's more violent effects of tempest are never rendered by engravers. § . general system of landscape engraving. § . the storm in the stonehenge. one word respecting turner's more violent storms, for we have hitherto been speaking only of the softer rain-clouds, associated with gusty tempest, but not of the thunder-cloud and the whirlwind. if there be any one point in which engravers disgrace themselves more than in another, it is in their rendering of dark and furious storm. it appears to be utterly impossible to force it into their heads, that an artist does _not_ leave his color with a sharp edge and an angular form by accident, or that they may have the pleasure of altering it and improving upon it; and equally impossible to persuade them that energy and gloom may in _some_ circumstances be arrived at without any extraordinary expenditure of ink. i am aware of no engraver of the present day whose ideas of a storm-cloud are not comprised under two heads, roundness and blackness; and, indeed, their general principles of translation (as may be distinctly gathered from their larger works) are the following: . where the drawing is gray, make the paper black. . where the drawing is white, cover the page with zigzag lines. . where the drawing has particularly tender tones, cross-hatch them. . where any outline is particularly angular, make it round. . where there are vertical reflections in water, express them with very distinct horizontal lines. . where there is a passage of particular simplicity, treat it in sections. . where there is anything intentionally concealed, make it out. yet, in spite of the necessity which all engravers impose upon themselves, of rigidly observing this code of general laws, it is difficult to conceive how such pieces of work, as the plates of stonehenge and winchelsea, can ever have been presented to the public, as in any way resembling, or possessing even the most fanciful relation to the turner drawings of the same subjects. the original of the stonehenge is perhaps the standard of storm-drawing, both for the overwhelming power and gigantic proportions and spaces of its cloud-forms, and for the tremendous qualities of lurid and sulphurous colors which are gained in them. all its forms are marked with violent angles, as if the whole muscular energy--so to speak--of the cloud, were writhing in every fold, and their fantastic and fiery volumes have a peculiar horror--an awful life--shadowed out in their strange, swift, fearful outlines, which oppress the mind more than even the threatening of their gigantic gloom. the white lightning, not as it is drawn by less observant or less capable painters, in zigzag fortifications, but in its own dreadful irregularity of streaming fire, is brought down, not merely over the dark clouds, but through the full light of an illumined opening to the blue, which yet cannot abate the brilliancy of its white line; and the track of the last flash along the ground is fearfully marked by the dog howling over the fallen shepherd, and the ewe pressing her head upon the body of her dead lamb. § . general character of such effects given by turner. his expression of falling rain. i have not space, however, to enter into examination of turner's storm-drawing; i can only warn the public against supposing that its effect is ever rendered by engravers. the great principles of turner are angular outline, vastness and energy of form, infinity of gradation, and depth without blackness. the great principles of the engravers (_vide_ pæstum, in rogers's italy, and the stonehenge, above alluded to) are rounded outline, no edges, want of character, equality of strength, and blackness without depth. § . recapitulation of the section. i have scarcely, i see, on referring to what i have written, sufficiently insisted on turner's rendering of the rainy _fringe_, whether in distances, admitting or concealing more or less of the extended plain, as in the waterloo, and richmond (with the girl and dog in the foreground,) or as in the dunstaffnage, glencoe, st. michael's mount, and slave ship, not reaching the earth, but suspended in waving and twisted lines from the darkness of the zenith. but i have no time for farther development of particular points; i must defer discussion of them until we take up each picture to be viewed as a whole; for the division of the sky which i have been obliged to make, in order to render fully understood the peculiarities of character in the separate cloud regions, prevents my speaking of any one work with justice to its concentration of various truth. be it always remembered that we pretend not, at present, to give any account or idea of the sum of the works of any painter, much less of the universality of turner's; but only to explain in what real truth, as far as it is explicable, consists, and to illustrate it by those pictures in which it most distinctly occurs, or from which it is most visibly absent. and it will only be in the full and separate discussion of individual works, when we are acquainted also with what is beautiful, that we shall be completely able to prove or disprove the presence of the truth of nature. the conclusion, then, to which we are led by our present examination of the truth of clouds, is, that the old masters attempted the representation of only one among the thousands of their systems of scenery, and were altogether false in the little they attempted; while we can find records in modern art of every form or phenomenon of the heavens, from the highest film that glorifies the ether to the wildest vapor that darkens the dust, and in all these records we find the most clear language and close thought, firm words, and true message, unstinted fulness and unfailing faith. § . sketch of a few of the skies of nature, taken as a whole, compared with the works of turner and of the old masters. morning on the plains. § . noon with gathering storms. § . sunset in tempest. serene midnight. § . and sunrise on the alps. and indeed it is difficult for us to conceive how, even without such laborious investigation as we have gone through, any person can go to nature for a single day or hour, when she is really at work in any of her nobler spheres of action, and yet retain respect for the old masters; finding, as find he will, that every scene which rises, rests, or departs before him, bears with it a thousand glories of which there is not one shadow, one image, one trace or line, in any of their works; but which will illustrate to him, at every new instant, some passage which he had not before understood in the high works of modern art. stand upon the peak of some isolated mountain at daybreak, when the night mists first rise from off the plains, and watch their white and lake-like fields as they float in level bays and winding gulfs about the islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts and passes away; and down under their depths, the glittering city and green pasture lie like atlantis, between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten their gray shadows upon the plain. has claude given this? wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light,[ ] upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back and back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, lost in its lustre, to appear again above, in the serene heaven, like a wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless and inaccessible, their very bases vanishing in the unsubstantial and mocking blue of the deep lake below.[ ] has claude given this? wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every instant higher and higher into the sky,[ ] and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapors,[ ] which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their gray network, and take the light off the landscape with an eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds and the motion of the leaves together; and then you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and lurid wreaths create themselves, you know not how, along the shoulders of the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to a place which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipices, as a hawk pauses over his prey.[ ] has claude given this? and then you will hear the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those watch-towers of vapor swept away from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to the valleys, swinging from the burdened clouds in black, bending fringes,[ ] or pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. and then, as the sun sinks, you shall see the storm drift for an instant from on the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking, and loaded yet with snow-white torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered again;[ ] while the smouldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red-hot ball beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with blood.[ ] has claude given this? and then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills,[ ] brighter--brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds,[ ] step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable, fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move together, hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion, that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. ask claude, or his brethren, for that. and then wait yet for one hour until the east again becomes purple,[ ] and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the mountains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes by, until the whole heaven--one scarlet canopy,--is interwoven with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels; and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed down with fear and love of the maker and doer of this, tell me who has best delivered this his message unto men! footnotes [ ] i am unable to say to what height the real rain-cloud may extend; perhaps there are no mountains which rise altogether above storm. i have never been in a violent storm at a greater height than between and feet above the level of the sea. there the rain-cloud is exceedingly light, compared to the ponderous darkness of the lower air. [ ] i ought here, however, to have noted another effect of the rain-cloud, which, so far as i know, has been rendered only by copley fielding. it is seen chiefly in clouds gathering for rain, when the sky is entirely covered with a gray veil rippled or waved with pendent swells of soft texture, but excessively hard and liny in their edges. i am not sure that this is an agreeable or impressive form of the rain-cloud, but it is a frequent one, and it is often most faithfully given by fielding; only in some cases the edges becoming a little doubled and harsh have given a look of failure or misadventure to some even of the best studied passages; and something of the same hardness of line is occasionally visible in his drawing of clouds by whose nature it is not warranted. [ ] compare sect. i. chap. iv. § . [ ] it does not do so until the volumes lose their density by inequality of motion, and by the expansion of the warm air which conveys them. they are then, of course, broken into forms resembling those of clouds. [ ] no conception can be formed of this picture from the engraving. it is perhaps the most marvellous piece of execution and of gray color existing, except perhaps the drawing presently to be noticed, land's end. nothing else can be set beside it, even of turner's own works--much less of any other man's. [ ] i know no effect more strikingly characteristic of the departure of a storm than the _smoking_ of the mountain torrents. the exhausted air is so thirsty of moisture, that every jet of spray is seized upon by it, and converted into vapor as it springs; and this vapor rises so densely from the surface of the stream as to give it the exact appearance of boiling water. i have seen the whole course of the arve at chamonix one line of dense cloud, dissipating as soon as it had risen ten or twelve feet from the surface, but entirely concealing the water from an observer placed above it. [ ] note especially the dark uppermost outline of the mass. [ ] in the possession of b. g. windus, esq. of tottenham. [ ] i have often seen the white thin, morning cloud, edged with the seven colors of the prism. i am not aware of the cause of this phenomenon, for it takes place not when we stand with our backs to the sun, but in clouds near the sun itself, irregularly and over indefinite spaces, sometimes taking place in the body of the cloud. the colors are distinct and vivid, but have a kind of metallic lustre upon them. [ ] lake lucerne. [ ] st. maurice (rogers's italy). [ ] vignette, the great st. bernard. [ ] vignette of the andes. [ ] st. michael's mount--england series. [ ] illustration to the antiquary. goldeau, a recent drawing of the highest order. [ ] vignette to campbell's last man. [ ] caerlaverock. [ ] st. denis. [ ] alps at daybreak (rogers's poems:) delphi, and various vignettes. chapter v. effects of light rendered by modern art. § . reasons for merely at present naming, without examining the particular effects of light rendered by turner. § . hopes of the author for assistance in the future investigation of them. i have before given my reasons (sect. ii. chap. iii.) for not wishing at present to enter upon the discussion of particular effects of light. not only are we incapable of rightly viewing them, or reasoning upon them, until we are acquainted with the principles of the beautiful; but, as i distinctly limited myself, in the present portion of the work, to the examination of _general_ truths, it would be out of place to take cognizance of the particular phases of light, even if it were possible to do so, before we have some more definite knowledge of the material objects which they illustrate. i shall therefore, at present, merely set down a rough catalogue of the effects of light at different hours of the day, which turner has represented: naming a picture or two, as an example of each, which we will hereafter take up one by one, and consider the physical science and the feeling together. and i do this, in the hope that, in the mean time, some admirer of the old masters will be kind enough to select from the works of any one of them, a series of examples of the same effects, and to give me a reference to the pictures, so that i may be able to compare each with each; for, as my limited knowledge of the works of claude or poussin does not supply me with the requisite variety of effect, i shall be grateful for assistance. the following list, of course, does not name the hundredth part of the effects of light given by turner; it only names those which are distinctly and markedly separate from each other, and representative each of an entire class. ten or twelve examples, often many more, might be given of each; every one of which would display the effects of the same hour and light, modified by different circumstances of weather, situation, and character of objects subjected to them, and especially by the management of the sky; but it will be generally sufficient for our purposes to examine thoroughly one good example of each. the prefixed letters express the direction of the light. f. front light (the sun in the centre, or near the top of the picture;) l. lateral light, the sun out of the picture on the right or left of the spectator; l. f. the light partly lateral, partly fronting the spectator, as when he is looking south, with the sun in the south-west; l. b. light partly lateral, partly behind the spectator, as when he is looking north, with the sun in the south-west. morning. effects. names of pictures. l. an hour before sunrise in winter. violent | lowestoffe, suffolk. storm, with rain, on the sea. light-houses | seen through it. | | f. an hour before sunrise. serene sky, with | vignette to voyage light clouds. dawn in the distance. | of columbus. | l. ten minutes before sunrise. violent | fowey harbor. storm. torchlight. | | f. sunrise. sun only half above the horizon. | vignette to human clear sky, with light cirri. | life. | f. sun just disengaged from horizon. misty, | alps at daybreak. with light cirri. | | f. sun a quarter of an hour risen. sky covered | castle upnor. with scarlet clouds. | | l.f. serene sky. sun emerging from a bank | orford, suffolk. of cloud on horizon, a quarter of an hour | risen. | | l.f. same hour. light mists in flakes on | skiddaw. hill-sides. clear air. | | l.f. light flying rain-clouds gathering in | oakhampton. valleys. same hour. | | l.b. same hour. a night storm rising off the | lake of geneva. mountains. dead calm. | | l. sun half an hour risen. cloudless sky. | beaugency. | l. same hour. light mists lying in the valleys. | kirby lonsdale. | f. same hour. bright cirri. sun dimly seen | hohenlinden. through battle smoke, with conflagration. | | l. sun an hour risen. cloudless and clear. | buckfastleigh. noon and afternoon. effects. names of pictures. l.b. midday. dead calm, with heat. cloudless. | corinth. | l. same hour. serene and bright, with | lantern at streaky clouds. | st. cloud. | l. same hour. serene, with multitudes of | shylock, and other the high cirrus. | venices. | l. bright sun, with light wind and clouds. | richmond, middlesex. | f. two o'clock. clouds gathering for rain, with | warwick. blenheim. heat. | | f. rain beginning, with light clouds and wind. | piacenza. | l. soft rain, with heat. | caldron snout fall. | l.f. great heat. thunder gathering. | malvern. | l. thunder breaking down, after intense heat, | winchelsea. with furious wind. | | l. violent rain and wind, but cool. | llamberis, coventry, | &c. | l.f. furious storm, with thunder. | stonehenge, pæstum, | &c. | l.b. thunder retiring, with rainbow. dead calm, | nottingham. with heat. | | l. about three o'clock, summer. air very | bingen. cool and clear. exhausted thunder-clouds | low on hills. | | f. descending sunbeams through soft clouds, | carew castle. after rain. | | l. afternoon, very clear, after rain. a few | saltash. clouds still on horizon. dead calm. | | f. afternoon of cloudless day, with heat. | mercury and argus. | oberwesel. nemi. evening. effects. names of pictures. l. an hour before sunset. cloudless. | trematon castle. | f. half an hour before sunset. light clouds. | lake albano. misty air. | florence. | f. within a quarter of an hour of sunset. | dater hora quieti. mists rising. light cirri. | | l.f. ten minutes before sunset. quite cloudless. | durham. | f. same hour. tumultuous spray of illumined | solomon's pools. rain-cloud. | slave ship. | f. five minutes before sunset. sky covered | temeraire. napoleon. with illumined cirri. | various vignettes. | l.b. same hour. serene sky. full moon rising. | kenilworth. | f. sun setting. detached light cirri and clear | amboise. air. | | l. same hour. cloudless. new moon. | troyes. | l.f. same hour. heavy storm clouds. moonrise. | first vignette. | pleasures of | memory. | l.b. sun just set. sky covered with clouds. new | caudebec. moon setting. | | l.b. sun five minutes set. strong twilight, | wilderness of engedi. with storm clouds. full moonrise. | assos. | l.b. same hour. serene, with light clouds. | montjan. | l.b. same hour. serene. new moon. | pyramid of caius | cestius. | l.b. sun a quarter of an hour set. cloudless. | chateau de blois. | l.f. sun half an hour set. light cirri. | clairmont. | f. same hour. dead calm at sea. new moon and | cowes. evening star. | | f. sun three quarters of an hour set. moon | folkestone. struggling through storm clouds, over | heavy sea. | night. effects. names of pictures. f. an hour after sunset. no moon. torchlight. | st. julien. tours. | f. same hour. moon rising. fire from furnaces. | dudley. | l.f. same hour, with storm clouds. moon | nantes. rising. | | l. same hour, with light of rockets and fire. | juliet and her nurse. | f. midnight. moonless, with light-houses. | calais. same hour, with fire-light. | burning of | parliament houses. | f. ditto. full moon. clear air, with delicate | towers of the hevé. clouds. light-houses. | | f. ditto, with conflagration, battle smoke, and | waterloo. storm. | | f. ditto. moonlight through mist. buildings | vignette. st. illuminated in interior. | herbert's isle. | f. ditto. full moon with halo. light | st. denis. rain-clouds. | | f. full moon. perfectly serene. sky covered | alnwick. vignette of with white cirri. | rialto, and bridge. | of sighs section iv. of truth of earth. chapter i. of general structure. § . first laws of the organization of the earth, and their importance in art. by truth of earth, we mean the faithful representation of the facts and forms of the bare ground, considered as entirely divested of vegetation, through whatever disguise, or under whatever modification the clothing of the landscape may occasion. ground is to the landscape painter what the naked human body is to the historical. the growth of vegetation, the action of water, and even of clouds upon it and around it, are so far subject and subordinate to its forms, as the folds of the dress and the fall of the hair are to the modulation of the animal anatomy. nor is this anatomy always so concealed, but in all sublime compositions, whether of nature or art, it must be seen in its naked purity. the laws of the organization of the earth are distinct and fixed as those of the animal frame, simpler and broader, but equally authoritative and inviolable. their results may be arrived at without knowledge of the interior mechanism; but for that very reason ignorance of them is the more disgraceful, and violation of them more unpardonable. they are in the landscape the foundation of all other truths--the most necessary, therefore, even if they were not in themselves attractive; but they are as beautiful as they are essential, and every abandonment of them by the artist must end in deformity as it begins in falsehood. § . the slight attention ordinarily paid to them. their careful study by modern artists. that such abandonment is constant and total in the works of the old masters, has escaped detection, only because of persons generally cognizant of art, few have spent time enough in hill countries to perceive the certainty of the laws of hill anatomy; and because few, even of those who possess such opportunities, ever think of the common earth beneath their feet, as anything possessing specific form, or governed by steadfast principles. that such abandonment should have taken place cannot be surprising, after what we have seen of their fidelity to skies. those artists who, day after day, could so falsely represent what was forever before their eyes, when it was to be one of the most important and attractive parts of their picture, can scarcely be expected to give with truth what they could see only partially and at intervals, and what was only to be in their picture a blue line in the horizon, or a bright spot under the feet of their figures. that such should be all the space allotted by the old landscape painters to the most magnificent phenomena of nature; that the only traces of those apennines, which in claude's walks along the brow of the pincian, forever bounded his horizon with their azure wall, should, in his pictures, be a cold white outline in the extreme of his tame distance; and that salvator's sojourns among their fastnesses should only have taught him to shelter his banditti with such paltry morsels of crag as an alpine stream would toss down before it like a foam-globe; though it may indeed excite our surprise, will, perhaps, when we have seen how these slight passages are executed, be rather a subject of congratulation than of regret. it might, indeed, have shortened our labor in the investigation of mountain truth, had not modern artists been so vast, comprehensive, and multitudinous in their mountain drawings, as to compel us, in order to form the slightest estimate of their knowledge, to enter into some examination of every variety of hill scenery. we shall first gain some general notion of the broad organization of large masses, and then take those masses to pieces, until we come down to the crumbling soil of the foreground. § . general structure of the earth. the hills are its action, the plains its rest. mountains are, to the rest of the body of the earth, what violent muscular action is to the body of man. the muscles and tendons of its anatomy are, in the mountain, brought out with fierce and convulsive energy, full of expression, passion, and strength; the plains and the lower hills are the repose and the effortless motion of the frame, when its muscles lie dormant and concealed beneath the lines of its beauty, yet ruling those lines in their every undulation. this, then, is the first grand principle of the truth of the earth. the spirit of the hills is action; that of the lowlands, repose; and between these there is to be found every variety of motion and of rest; from the inactive plain, sleeping like the firmament, with cities for stars, to the fiery peaks, which, with heaving bosoms and exulting limbs, with the clouds drifting like hair from their bright foreheads, lift up their titan hands to heaven, saying, "i live forever!" § . mountains come out from underneath the plains, and are their support. but there is this difference between the action of the earth, and that of a living creature, that while the exerted limb marks its bones and tendons through the flesh, the excited earth casts off the flesh altogether, and its bones come out from beneath. mountains are the bones of the earth, their highest peaks are invariably those parts of its anatomy which in the plains lie buried under five and twenty thousand feet of solid thickness of superincumbent soil, and which spring up in the mountain ranges in vast pyramids or wedges, flinging their garment of earth away from them on each side. the masses of the lower hills are laid over and against their sides, like the masses of lateral masonry against the skeleton arch of an unfinished bridge, except that they slope up to and lean against the central ridge: and, finally, upon the slopes of these lower hills are strewed the level beds of sprinkled gravel, sand, and clay, which form the extent of the champaign. here then is another grand principle of the truth of earth, that the mountains must come from under all, and be the support of all; and that everything else must be laid in their arms, heap above heap, the plains being the uppermost. opposed to this truth is every appearance of the hills being laid upon the plains, or built upon them. nor is this a truth only of the earth on a large scale, for every minor rock (in position) comes out from the soil about it as an island out of the sea, lifting the earth near it like waves beating on its sides. § . structure of the plains themselves. their perfect level, when deposited by quiet water. such being the structure of the framework of the earth, it is next to be remembered that all soil whatsoever, wherever it is accumulated in greater quantity than is sufficient to nourish the moss of the wallflower, has been so, either by the direct transporting agency of water, or under the guiding influence and power of water. all plains capable of cultivation are deposits from some kind of water--some from swift and tremendous currents, leaving their soil in sweeping banks and furrowed ridges--others, and this is in mountain districts almost invariably the case, by slow deposit from a quiet lake in the mountain hollow, which has been gradually filled by the soil carried into it by streams, which soil is of course finally left spread at the exact level of the surface of the former lake, as level as the quiet water itself. hence we constantly meet with plains in hill districts, which fill the hollows of the hills with as perfect and faultless a level as water, and out of which the steep rocks rise at the edge with as little previous disturbance, or indication of their forms beneath, as they do from the margin of a quiet lake. every delta--and there is one at the head of every lake in every hill-district--supplies an instance of this. the rocks at altorf plunge beneath the plain, which the lake has left, at as sharp an angle as they do into the lake itself beside the chapel of tell. the plain of the arve, at sallenche, is terminated so sharply by the hills to the south-east, that i have seen a man sleeping with his back supported against the mountain, and his legs stretched on the plain; the slope which supported his back rising feet above him, and the couch of his legs stretched for five miles before him. in distant effect these champaigns lie like deep, blue, undisturbed water, while the mighty hills around them burst out from beneath, raging and tossing like a tumultuous sea. the valleys of meyringen, interlachen, altorf, sallenche, st. jean de maurienne; the great plain of lombardy itself, as seen from milan or padua, under the alps, the euganeans, and the apennines; and the campo felice under vesuvius, are a few, out of the thousand instances, which must occur at once to the mind of every traveller. § . illustrated by turner's marengo. let the reader now open rogers's italy, at the seventeenth page, and look at the vignette which heads it of the battle of marengo. it needs no comment. it cannot but carry with it, after what has been said, the instant conviction that turner is as much of a geologist as he is of a painter. it is a summary of all we have been saying, and a summary so distinct and clear, that without any such explanation it must have forced upon the mind the impression of such facts--of the plunging of the hills underneath the plain--of the perfect level and repose of this latter laid in their arms, and of the tumultuous action of the emergent summits. § . general divisions of formation resulting from this arrangement. plan of investigation. we find, according to this its internal structure, which, i believe, with the assistance of turner, can scarcely now be misunderstood, that the earth may be considered as divided into three great classes of formation, which geology has already named for us. primary--the rocks, which, though in position lower than all others, rise to form the central peaks, or interior nuclei of all mountain ranges. secondary--the rocks which are laid in beds above these, and which form the greater proportion of all hill scenery. tertiary--the light beds of sand, gravel, and clay, which are strewed upon the surface of all, forming plains and habitable territory for man. we shall find it convenient, in examining the truth of art, to adopt, with a little modification, the geological arrangement, considering first, the formation and character of the highest or central peaks; then the general structure of the lower mountains, including in this division those composed of the various slates which a geologist would call primary; and, lastly, the minutiæ and most delicate characters of the beds of these hills, when they are so near as to become foreground objects, and the structure of the common soil which usually forms the greater space of an artist's foreground. hence our task will arrange itself into three divisions--the investigation of the central mountains, of the interior mountains, and of the foreground. chapter ii. of the central mountains. § . similar character of the central peaks in all parts of the world. it does not always follow, because a mountain is the highest of its group, that it is in reality one of the central range. the jungfrau is only surpassed in elevation, in the chain of which it is a member, by the schreckhorn and finster-aarhorn; but it is entirely a secondary mountain. but the central peaks are usually the highest, and may be considered as the chief components of all mountain scenery in the snowy regions. being composed of the same rocks in all countries, their external character is the same everywhere. its chief essential points are the following. § . their arrangements in pyramids or wedges, divided by vertical fissures. their summits are almost invariably either pyramids or wedges. domes may be formed by superincumbent snow, or appear to be formed by the continuous outline of a sharp ridge seen transversely, with its precipice to the spectator; but wherever a rock appears, the uppermost termination of that rock will be a steep edgy ridge, or a sharp point, very rarely presenting even a gentle slope on any of its sides, but usually inaccessible unless encumbered with snow. these pyramids and wedges split vertically, or nearly so, giving smooth faces of rock, either perpendicular or very steeply inclined, which appear to be laid against the central wedge or peak, like planks upright against a wall. the surfaces of these show close parallelism; their fissures are vertical, and cut them smoothly, like the edges of shaped planks. often groups of these planks, if i may so call them, rise higher than those between them and the central ridge, forming detached ridges inclining towards the central one. the planks are cut transversely, sometimes by graceful curvilinear fissures; sometimes by straight fissures, which are commonly parallel to the slope of one of the sides of the peak, while the main direction of the planks or leaves is parallel to that of its other side, or points directly to its summit. but the _universal_ law of fracture is--first, that it is clean and sharp, having a perfectly smooth surface, and a perfectly sharp edge to all the fissures; secondly, that every fissure is steeply inclined, and that a horizontal line, or one approaching to it, is an impossibility, except in some turn of a curve. § . causing groups of rock resembling an artichoke or rose. hence, however the light may fall, these peaks are seen marked with sharp and defined shadows, indicating the square edges of the planks of which they are made up, which shadows sometimes are vertical, pointing to the summit; but are oftener parallel to one of the sides of the peak, and intersected by a second series, parallel to the other side. where there has been much disintegration, the peak is often surrounded with groups of lower ridges or peaks, like the leaves of an artichoke or a rose, all evidently part and parcel of the great peak; but falling back from it, as if it were a budding flower, expanding its leaves one by one. § . the faithful statement of these facts by turner in his alps at daybreak. now, if i were giving a lecture on geology, and were searching for some means of giving the most faithful idea possible of the external appearance caused by this structure of the primary hills, i should throw my geological outlines aside, and take up turner's vignette of the alps at daybreak. after what has been said, a single glance at it will be enough. observe the exquisite decision with which the edge of the uppermost plank of the great peak is indicated by its clear dark side and sharp shadow; then the rise of the second low ridge on its side, only to descend again precisely in the same line; the two fissures of this peak, one pointing to its summit, the other rigidly parallel to the great slope which descends towards the sun; then the sharp white _aiguille_ on the right, with the great fissure from its summit, rigidly and severely square, as marked below, where another edge of rock is laid upon it. but this is not all; the black rock in the foreground is equally a member of the mass, its chief slope parallel with that of the mountain, and all its fissures and lines inclined in the same direction; and, to complete the mass of evidence more forcibly still, we have the dark mass on the left articulated with absolute right lines, as parallel as if they had been drawn with a ruler, indicating the tops of two of these huge plates or planks, pointing, with the universal tendency, to the great ridge, and intersected by fissures parallel to it. throughout the extent of mountain, not one horizontal line, nor an approach to it, is discernible. this cannot be chance--it cannot be composition--it may not be beautiful--perhaps nature is very wrong to be so parallel, and very disagreeable in being so straight;--but this _is_ nature, whether we admire it or not. § . vignette of the andes and others. in the vignette illustration to jacqueline, we have another series of peaks, whose structure is less developed, owing to their distance, but equally clear and faithful in all points, as far as it is given. but the vignette of aosta, in italy, is perhaps more striking than any that could be named for its rendering of the perfect parallelism of the lower and smaller peaks with the great lines of the mass they compose; and that of the andes, the second in campbell, for its indication of the multitudes of the vertical and plank-like beds arranged almost like the leaves of a flower. this last especially, one of the very noblest, most faithful, most scientific statements of mountain form which even turner has ever made, can leave little more to be said or doubted. § . necessary distance, and consequent aerial effect on all such mountains. now, whenever these vast peaks, rising from , to , feet above the sea, form part of anything like a landscape, that is to say, whenever the spectator beholds them from the region of vegetation, or even from any distance at which it is possible to get something like a view of their whole mass, they must be at so great a distance from him as to become aerial and faint in all their details. their summits, and all those higher masses of whose character we have been speaking, can by no possibility be nearer to him than twelve or fifteen miles; to approach them nearer he must climb--must leave the region of vegetation, and must confine his view to a part, and that a very limited one, of the mountain he is ascending. whenever, therefore, these mountains are seen over anything like vegetation, or are seen in mass, they _must_ be in the far distance. most artists would treat an horizon fifteen miles off very much as if it were mere air; and though the greater clearness of the upper air permits the high summits to be seen with extraordinary distinctness, yet they never can by any possibility have dark or deep shadows, or intense dark relief against a light. clear they may be, but faint they must be, and their great and prevailing characteristic, as distinguished from other mountains, is want of apparent solidity. they rise in the morning light rather like sharp shades, cast up into the sky, than solid earth. their lights are pure, roseate, and cloud-like--their shadows transparent, pale, and opalescent, and often indistinguishable from the air around them, so that the mountain-top is seen in the heaven only by its flakes of motionless fire. § . total want of any rendering of their phenomena in ancient art. now, let me once more ask, though i am sufficiently tired of asking, what record have we of anything like this in the works of the old masters? there is no vestige in any existing picture of the slightest effort to represent the high hill ranges; and as for such drawing of their forms as we have found in turner, we might as well look for them among the chinese. very possibly it may be all quite right,--very probably these men showed the most cultivated taste, the most unerring judgment, in filling their pictures with mole-hills and sand-heaps. very probably the withered and poisonous banks of avernus, and the sand and cinders of the campagna, are much more sublime things than the alps; but still what limited truth it is, if truth it be, when through the last fifty pages we have been pointing out fact after fact, scene after scene, in clouds and hills, (and not individual facts nor scenes, but great and important classes of them,) and still we have nothing to say when we come to the old masters; but, "they are not here." yet this is what we hear so constantly called painting "general" nature. § . character of the representations of alps in the distances of claude. § . their total want of magnitude and aerial distance. although, however, there is no vestige among the old masters of any effort to represent the attributes of the higher mountains seen in comparative proximity, we are not altogether left without evidence of their having thought of them as sources of light in the extreme distance, as for example, in that of the reputed claude in our national gallery, called the marriage of isaac and rebecca. i have not the slightest doubt of its being a most execrable copy; for there is not one touch nor line of even decent painting in the whole picture; but as connoisseurs have considered it a claude, as it has been put in our gallery for a claude, and as people admire it every day for a claude, i may at least presume it has those qualities of claude in it which are wont to excite the public admiration, though it possesses none of those which sometimes give him claim to it; and i have so reasoned, and shall continue to reason upon it, especially with respect to facts of form, which cannot have been much altered by the copyist. in the distance of that picture (as well as in that of the sinon before priam, which i have little doubt is at least partially original, and whose central group of trees is a very noble piece of painting) is something white, which i believe must be intended for a snowy mountain, because i do not see that it can well be intended for anything else. now no mountain of elevation sufficient to be so sheeted with perpetual snow, can by any possibility sink so low on the horizon as this something of claude's, unless it be at a distance of from fifty to seventy miles. at such distances, though the outline is invariably sharp and edgy to an excess, yet all the circumstances of aerial perspective, faintness of shadow, and isolation of light, which i have described as characteristic of the alps fifteen miles off, take place, of course, in a threefold degree; the mountains rise from the horizon like transparent films, only distinguishable from mist by their excessively keen edges, and their brilliant flashes of sudden light; they are as unsubstantial as the air itself, and impress their enormous size by means of this aerialness, in a far greater degree at these vast distances, than even when towering above the spectator's head. now, i ask of the candid observer, if there be the smallest vestige of an effort to attain--if there be the most miserable, the most contemptible shadow of attainment of such an effect by claude? does that white thing on the horizon look seventy miles off? is it faint, or fading, or to be looked for by the eye before it can be found out? does it look high? does it look large? does it look impressive? you cannot but feel that there is not a vestige of any kind or species of truth in that horizon; and that, however artistical it may be, as giving brilliancy to the distance, (though, as far as i have any feeling in the matter, it only gives coldness,) it is, in the very branch of art on which claude's reputation chiefly rests, aerial perspective, hurling defiance to nature in her very teeth. § . and violation of specific form. but there are worse failures yet in this unlucky distance. aerial perspective is not a matter of paramount importance, because nature infringes its laws herself and boldly too, though never in a case like this before us; but there are some laws which nature never violates--her laws of form. no mountain was ever raised to the level of perpetual snow, without an infinite multiplicity of form. its foundation is built of a hundred minor mountains, and, from these, great buttresses run in converging ridges to the central peak. there is no exception to this rule; no mountain , feet high is ever raised without such preparation and variety of outwork. consequently, in distant effect, when chains of such peaks are visible at once, the multiplicity of form is absolutely oceanic; and though it is possible in near scenes to find vast and simple masses composed of lines which run unbroken for a thousand feet, or more, it is physically impossible when these masses are thrown seventy miles back, to have simple outlines, for then these large features become mere jags, and hillocks, and are heaped and huddled together with endless confusion. to get a simple form, seventy miles away, mountain lines would be required unbroken for leagues; and this, i repeat, is physically impossible. hence these mountains of claude, having no indication of the steep vertical summits which we have shown to be the characteristic of the central ridges, having soft edges instead of decisive ones, simple forms (one line to the plain on each side) instead of varied and broken ones, and being painted with a crude raw white, having no transparency, nor filminess, nor air in it, instead of rising in the opalescent mystery which invariably characterizes the distant snows, have the forms and the colors of heaps of chalk in a lime-kiln, not of alps. they are destitute of energy, of height, of distance, of splendor, and of variety, and are the work of a man, whether claude or not, who had neither feeling for nature, nor knowledge of art. § . even in his best works. i should not, however, insist upon the faults of this picture, believing it to be a copy, if i had ever seen, even in his most genuine works, an extreme distance of claude with any of the essential characters of nature. but although in his better pictures we have always beautiful drawing of the _air_, which in the copy before us is entirely wanting, the real features of the extreme mountain distance are equally neglected or maligned in all. there is, indeed, air between us and it; but ten miles, not seventy miles, of space. let us observe a little more closely the practice of nature in such cases. § . farther illustration of the distant character of mountain chains. § . their excessive appearance of transparency. the multiplicity of form which i have shown to be necessary in the outline, is not less felt in the body of the mass. for, in all extensive hill ranges, there are five or six lateral chains separated by deep valleys, which rise between the spectator and the central ridge, showing their tops one over another, wave beyond wave, until the eye is carried back to the faintest and highest forms of the principal chain. these successive ridges, and i speak now not merely of the alps, but of mountains generally, even as low as feet above the sea, show themselves in extreme distance merely as vertical shades, with very sharp outlines, detached from one another by greater intensity, according to their nearness. it is with the utmost difficulty that the eye can discern any solidity or roundness in them; the lights and shades of solid form are both equally lost in the blue of the atmosphere, and the mountain tells only as a flat, sharp-edged film, of which multitudes intersect and overtop one another, separated by the greater faintness of the retiring masses. this is the most simple and easily imitated arrangement possible, and yet, both in nature and art, it expresses distance and size in a way otherwise quite unattainable. for thus, the whole mass of one mountain being of one shade only, the smallest possible difference in shade will serve completely to detach it from another, and thus ten or twelve distances may be made evident, when the darkest and nearest is an aerial gray as faint as the sky; and the beauty of such arrangements carried out as nature carries them, to their highest degree, is, perhaps, the most striking feature connected with hill scenery: you will never, by any chance, perceive in extreme distance, anything like solid form or projection of the hills. each is a dead, flat, perpendicular film or shade, with a sharp edge darkest at the summit, and lost as it descends, and about equally dark whether turned towards the light or from it; and of these successive films of mountain you will probably have half a dozen, one behind another, all showing with perfect clearness their every chasm and peak in the outline, and not one of them showing the slightest vestige of solidity, but on the contrary, looking so thoroughly transparent, that if it so happens, as i have seen frequently, that a conical near hill meets with its summit the separation of two distant ones, so that the right-hand slope of the nearer hill forms an apparent continuation of the right-hand slope of the left-hand farther hill, and _vice versa_, it is impossible to get rid of the impression that one or the more distant peaks is seen _through_ the other. § . illustrated from the works of turner and stanfield. the borromean islands of the latter. i may point out in illustration of these facts, the engravings of two drawings of precisely the same chain of distant hills,--stanfield's borromean islands, with the st. gothard in the distance, and turner's arona, also with the st. gothard in the distance. far be it from me to indicate the former of these plates as in any way exemplifying the power of stanfield, or affecting his reputation; it is an unlucky drawing, murdered by the engraver, and as far from being characteristic of stanfield as it is from being like nature, but it is just what i want, to illustrate the particular error of which i speak; and i prefer showing this error where it accidentally exists in the works of a really great artist, standing there alone, to point it out where it is confused with other faults and falsehoods in the works of inferior hands. the former of these plates is an example of everything which a hill distance is not, and the latter of everything which it is. in the former, we have the mountains covered with patchy lights, which being of equal intensity whether near or distant, confuse all the distances together; while the eye, perceiving that the light falls so as to give details of solid form, yet finding nothing but insipid and formless spaces displayed by it, is compelled to suppose that the whole body of the hill is equally monotonous and devoid of character; and the effect upon it is not one whit more impressive and agreeable than might be received from a group of sand-heaps, washed into uniformity by recent rain. § . turner's arona. compare with this the distance of turner in arona. it is totally impossible here to say which way the light falls on the distant hills, except by the slightly increased decision of their edges turned towards it, but the greatest attention is paid to get these edges decisive, yet full of gradation, and perfectly true in character of form. all the rest of the mountain is then indistinguishable haze, and by the bringing of these edges more and more decisively over one another, turner has given us between the right-hand side of the picture and the snow, fifteen distinct distances, yet every one of these distances in itself palpitating, changeful, and suggesting subdivision into countless multitude. something of this is traceable even in the engraving, and all the essential characters are perfectly well marked. i think even the least experienced eye can scarcely but feel the truth of this distance as compared with stanfield's. in the latter, the eye gets something of the form, and therefore wonders it sees no more; the impression on it, therefore, is of hills within distinctly visible distance, indiscernible through want of light or dim atmosphere; and the effect is, of course, smallness of space, with obscurity of light and thickness of air. in turner's the eye gets nothing of the substance, and wonders it sees so much of the outline; the impression is, therefore, of mountains too far off to be ever distinctly seen, rendered clear by brilliancy of light and purity of atmosphere; and the effect, consequently, vastness of space, with intensity of light and crystalline transparency of air. § . extreme distance of large objects always characterized by very sharp outline. these truths are invariably given in every one of turner's distances, that is to say, we have always in them two principal facts forced on our notice; transparency, or filminess of mass, and excessive sharpness of edge. and i wish particularly to insist upon this sharpness of edge, because it is not a casual or changeful habit of nature; it is the unfailing characteristic of all very great distances. it is quite a mistake to suppose that slurred or melting lines are characteristic of distant _large_ objects; they may be so, as before observed, (sec. ii. chap. iv. § ,) when the focus of the eye is not adapted to them; but, when the eye is really directed to the distance, melting lines are characteristic only of thick mist and vapor between us and the object, not of the removal of the object. if a thing has character upon its outline, as a tree for instance, or a mossy stone, the farther it is removed from us, the sharper the outline of the whole mass will become, though in doing so, the particular details which make up the character will become confused in the manner described in the same chapter. a tree fifty yards from us, taken as a mass, has a soft outline, because the leaves and interstices have some effect on the eye. but put it ten miles off against the sky, and its outline will be so sharp that you cannot tell it from a rock. there are three trees on the mont saleve, about five miles from geneva, which from the city, as they stand on the ridge of the hill, are seen defined against the sky. the keenest eye in the world could not tell them from stones. so in a mountain five or six miles off, bushes, and heather, and roughnesses of knotty ground and rock, have still some effect on the eye, and by becoming confused and mingled as before described, soften the outline. but let the mountain be thirty miles off, and its edge will be as sharp as a knife. let it, as in the case of the alps, be seventy or eighty miles off, and though it has become so faint that the morning mist is not so transparent, its outline will be beyond all imitation for excessive sharpness. thus, then, the character of extreme distance is always excessive keenness of edge. if you soften your outline, you either put mist between you and the object, and in doing so diminish, your distance, for it is impossible you should see so far through mist as through clear air; or, if you keep an impression of clear air, you bring the object close to the observer, diminish its size in proportion, and if the aerial colors, excessive blues, etc., be retained, represent an impossibility. § . want of this decision in claude. take claude's distance (in no. , dulwich gallery,)[ ] on the right of the picture. it is as pure blue as ever came from the pallet, laid on thick; you cannot see through it, there is not the slightest vestige of transparency or filminess about it, and its edge is soft and blunt. hence, if it be meant for near hills, the blue is impossible, and the want of details impossible, in the clear atmosphere indicated through the whole picture. if it be meant for extreme distance, the blunt edge is impossible, and the opacity is impossible. i do not know a single distance of the italian school to which the same observation is not entirely applicable, except, perhaps, one or two of nicholas poussin's. they always involve, under any supposition whatsoever, at least two impossibilities. § . the perpetual rendering of it by turner. i need scarcely mention in particular any more of the works of turner, because there is not one of his mountain distances in which these facts are not fully exemplified. look at the last vignette--the farewell, in rogers's italy; observe the excessive sharpness of all the edges, almost amounting to lines, in the distance, while there is scarcely one decisive edge in the foreground. look at the hills of the distance in the dunstaffnage, glencoe, and loch achray, (illustrations to scott,) in the latter of which the left-hand side of the benvenue is actually marked with a dark line. in fact, turner's usual mode of executing these passages is perfectly evident in all his drawings; it is not often that we meet with a very broad dash of wet color in his finished works, but in these distances, as we before saw of his shadows, all the effect has been evidently given by a dash of very moist pale color, probably turning the paper upside down, so that a very firm edge may be left at the top of the mountain as the color dries. and in the battle of marengo we find the principle carried so far as to give nothing more than actual outline for the representation of the extreme distance, while all the other hills in the picture are distinctly darkest at the edge. this plate, though coarsely executed, is yet one of the noblest illustrations of mountain character and magnitude existing. § . effects of snow, how imperfectly studied. such, then, are the chief characteristics of the highest peaks and extreme distances of all hills, as far as the forms of the rocks themselves, and the aerial appearances especially belonging to them, are alone concerned. there is, however, yet another point to be considered--the modification of their form caused by incumbent snow. pictures of winter scenery are nearly as common as moonlights, and are usually executed by the same order of artists, that is to say, the most incapable; it being remarkably easy to represent the moon as a white wafer on a black ground, or to scratch out white branches on a cloudy sky. nevertheless, among flemish paintings several valuable representations of winter are to be found, and some clever pieces of effect among the moderns, as hunt's, for instance, and de wint's. but all such efforts end in effect alone, nor have i ever in any single instance seen a snow _wreath_, i do not say thoroughly, but even decently, drawn. in the range of inorganic nature, i doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snow-drift, seen under warm light.[ ] its curves are of inconceivable perfection and changefulness, its surface and transparency alike exquisite, its light and shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish, the shadows sharp, pale, and of heavenly color, the reflected lights intense and multitudinous, and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted light. no mortal hand can approach the majesty or loveliness of it, yet it is possible by care and skill at least to suggest the preciousness of its forms and intimate the nature of its light and shade; but this has never been attempted; it could not be done except by artists of a rank exceedingly high, and there is something about the feeling of snow in ordinary scenery which such men do not like. but when the same qualities are exhibited on a magnificent alpine scale and in a position where they interfere with no feeling of life, i see not why they should be neglected, as they have hitherto been, unless that the difficulty of reconciling the brilliancy of snow with a picturesque light and shade, is so great that most good artists disguise or avoid the greater part of upper alpine scenery, and hint at the glacier so slightly, that they do not feel the necessity of careful study of its forms. habits of exaggeration increase the evil: i have seen a sketch from nature, by one of the most able of our landscape painters, in which a cloud had been mistaken for a snowy summit, and the hint thus taken exaggerated, as was likely, into an enormous mass of impossible height, and unintelligent form, when the mountain itself, for which the cloud had been mistaken, though subtending an angle of about eighteen or twenty degrees, instead of the fifty attributed to it, was of a form so exquisite that it might have been a profitable lesson truly studied to phidias. nothing but failure can result from such methods of sketching, nor have i ever seen a single instance of an earnest study of snowy mountains by any one. hence, wherever they are introduced, their drawing is utterly unintelligent, the forms being those of white rocks, or of rocks lightly powdered with snow, showing sufficiently that not only the painters have never studied the mountain carefully from below, but that they have never climbed into the snowy region. harding's rendering of the high alps (_vide_ the engraving of chamonix, and of the wengern alp, in the illustrations to byron) is best; but even he shows no perception of the real anatomy. stanfield paints only white rocks instead of snow. turner invariably avoids the difficulty, though he has shown himself capable of grappling with it in the ice of the liber studiorum, (mer de glace,) which is very cold and slippery and very like ice; but of the crusts and wreaths of the higher snow he has taken no cognizance. even the vignettes to rogers's poems fail in this respect. it would be vain to attempt in this place to give any detailed account of the phenomena of the upper snows; but it may be well to note those general principles which every artist ought to keep in mind when he has to paint an alp. § . general principles of its forms on the alps. snow is modified by the under forms of the hill in some sort, as dress is by the anatomy of the human frame. and as no dress can be well laid on without conceiving the body beneath, so no alp can be drawn unless its under form is conceived first, and its snow laid on afterwards. every high alp has as much snow upon it as it can hold or carry. it is not, observe, a mere coating of snow of given depth throughout, but it is snow loaded on until the rocks can hold no more. the surplus does not fall in the winter, because, fastened by continual frost, the quantity of snow which an alp can carry is greater than each single winter can bestow; it falls in the first mild days of spring in enormous avalanches. afterwards the melting continues, gradually removing from all the steep rocks the small quantity of snow which was all they could hold, and leaving them black and bare among the accumulated fields of unknown depth, which occupy the capacious valleys and less inclined superfices of the mountain. hence it follows that the deepest snow does not take nor indicate the actual forms of the rocks on which it lies, but it hangs from peak to peak in unbroken and sweeping festoons, or covers whole groups of peaks, which afford it sufficient hold, with vast and unbroken domes: these festoons and domes being guided in their curves, and modified in size, by the violence and prevalent direction of the winter winds. we have, therefore, every variety of indication of the under mountain form; first, the mere coating, which is soon to be withdrawn, and which shows as a mere sprinkling or powdering after a storm on the higher peaks; then the shallow incrustation on the steep sides glazed by the running down of its frequent meltings, frozen again in the night; then the deep snow more or less cramped or modified by sudden eminences of emergent rock, or hanging in fractured festoons and huge blue irregular cliffs on the mountain flanks, and over the edges and summits of their precipices in nodding drifts, far overhanging, like a cornice, (perilous things to approach the edge of from above;) finally, the pure accumulation of overwhelming depth, smooth, sweeping, and almost cleftless, and modified only by its lines of drifting. countless phenomena of exquisite beauty belong to each of these conditions, not to speak of the transition of the snow into ice at lower levels; but all on which i shall at present insist is that the artist should not think of his alp merely as a white mountain, but conceive it as a group of peaks loaded with an accumulation of snow, and that especially he should avail himself of the exquisite curvatures, never failing, by which the snow unites and opposes the harsh and broken lines of the rock. i shall enter into farther detail on this subject hereafter; at present it is useless to do so, as i have no examples to refer to, either in ancient or modern art. no statement of these facts has hitherto been made, nor any evidence given even of their observation, except by the most inferior painters.[ ] § . average paintings of switzerland. its real spirit has scarcely yet been caught. various works in green and white appear from time to time on the walls of the academy, _like_ the alps indeed, but so frightfully like, that we shudder and sicken at the sight of them, as we do when our best friend shows us into his dining-room, to see a portrait of himself, which "everybody thinks very like." we should be glad to see fewer of these, for switzerland is quite beyond the power of any but first-rate men, and is exceedingly bad practice for a rising artist; but, let us express a hope that alpine scenery will not continue to be neglected as it has been, by those who alone are capable of treating it. we love italy, but we have had rather a surfeit of it lately;--too many peaked caps and flat-headed pines. we should be very grateful to harding and stanfield if they would refresh us a little among the snow, and give us, what we believe them to be capable of giving us, a faithful expression of alpine ideal. we are well aware of the pain inflicted on an artist's mind by the preponderance of black, and white, and green, over more available colors; but there is nevertheless in generic alpine scenery, a fountain of feeling yet unopened--a chord of harmony yet untouched by art. it will be struck by the first man who can separate what is national, in switzerland, from what is ideal. we do not want chalets and three-legged stools, cow-bells and buttermilk. we want the pure and holy hills, treated as a link between heaven and earth. footnotes [ ] one of the most genuine claudes i know. [ ] compare part iii. sect. i. chap. , § . [ ] i hear of some study of alpine scenery among the professors at geneva; but all foreign landscape that i have ever met with has been so utterly ignorant that i hope for nothing except from our own painters. chapter iii. of the inferior mountains. § . the inferior mountains are distinguished from the central by being divided into beds. we have next to investigate the character of those intermediate masses which constitute the greater part of all hill scenery, forming the outworks of the high ranges, and being almost the sole constituents of such lower groups as those of cumberland, scotland, or south italy. all mountains whatsoever, not composed of the granite or gneiss rocks described in the preceding chapter, nor volcanic, (these latter being comparatively rare,) are composed of _beds_, not of homogeneous, heaped materials, but of accumulated layers, whether of rock or soil. it may be slate, sandstone, limestone, gravel, or clay; but whatever the substance, it is laid in layers, not in a mass. these layers are scarcely ever horizontal, and may slope to any degree, often occurring vertical, the boldness of the hill outline commonly depending in a great degree on their inclination. in consequence of this division into beds, every mountain will have two great sets of lines more or less prevailing in its contours--one indicative of the surfaces of the beds, where they come out from under each other--and the other indicative of the extremities or edges of the beds, where their continuity has been interrupted. and these two great sets of lines will commonly be at right angles with each other, or nearly so. if the surface of the bed approach a horizontal line, its termination will approach the vertical, and this is the most usual and ordinary way in which a precipice is produced. § . farther division of these beds by joints. farther, in almost all rocks there is a third division of substance, which gives to their beds a tendency to split transversely in some directions rather than others, giving rise to what geologists call "joints," and throwing the whole rock into blocks more or less rhomboidal; so that the beds are not terminated by torn or ragged edges, but by faces comparatively smooth and even, usually inclined to each other at some definite angle. the whole arrangement may be tolerably represented by the bricks of a wall, whose tiers may be considered as strata, and whose sides and extremities will represent the joints by which those strata are divided, varying, however, their direction in different rocks, and in the same rock under differing circumstances. § . and by lines of lamination. finally, in the slates, grauwackes, and some calcareous beds, in the greater number, indeed, of _mountain_ rocks, we find another most conspicuous feature of general structure--the lines of lamination, which divide the whole rock into an infinite number of delicate plates or layers, sometimes parallel to the direction or "strike" of the strata, oftener obliquely crossing it, and sometimes, apparently, altogether independent of it, maintaining a consistent and unvarying slope through a series of beds contorted and undulating in every conceivable direction. these lines of lamination extend their influence to the smallest fragment, causing it (as, for example, common roofing slate) to break smooth in one direction, and with a ragged edge in another, and marking the faces of the beds and joints with distinct and numberless lines, commonly far more conspicuous in a near view than the larger and more important divisions. § . variety and seeming uncertainty under which these laws are manifested. now, it cannot be too carefully held in mind, in examining the principles of mountain structure, that nearly all the laws of nature with respect to external form are rather universal tendencies, evidenced by a plurality of instances, than imperative necessities complied with by all. for instance, it may be said to be a universal law with respect to the boughs of all trees that they incline their extremities more to the ground in proportion as they are lower on the trunk, and that the higher their point of insertion is, the more they share in the upward tendency of the trunk itself. but yet there is not a single group of boughs in any one tree which does not show exceptions to the rule, and present boughs lower in insertion, and yet steeper in inclination, than their neighbors. nor is this defect or deformity, but the result of the constant habit of nature to carry variety into her very principles, and make the symmetry and beauty of her laws the more felt by the grace and accidentalism with which they are carried out. no one familiar with foliage could doubt for an instant of the necessity of giving evidence of this downward tendency in the boughs; but it would be nearly as great an offence against truth to make the law hold good with every individual branch, as not to exhibit its influence on the majority. now, though the laws of mountain form are more rigid and constant than those of vegetation, they are subject to the same species of exception in carrying out. though every mountain has these great tendencies in its lines, not one in a thousand of those lines is absolutely consistent with and obedient to this universal tendency. there are lines in every direction, and of almost every kind, but the sum and aggregate of those lines will invariably indicate the _universal_ force and influence to which they are all subjected; and of these lines there will, i repeat, be two principal sets or classes, pretty nearly at right angles with each other. when both are inclined, they give rise to peaks or ridges; when one is nearly horizontal and the other vertical, to table-lands and precipices. this then is the broad organization of all hills, modified afterwards by time and weather, concealed by superincumbent soil and vegetation, and ramified into minor and more delicate details in a way presently to be considered, but nevertheless universal in its great first influence, and giving to all mountains a particular cast and inclination; like the exertion of voluntary power in a definite direction, an internal spirit, manifesting itself in every crag, and breathing in every slope, flinging and forcing the mighty mass towards the heaven with an expression and an energy like that of life. § . the perfect expression of them in turner's loch coriskin. now, as in the case of the structure of the central peaks described above, so also here, if i had to give a clear idea of this organization of the lower hills, where it is seen in its greatest perfection, with a mere view to geological truth, i should not refer to any geological drawings, but i should take the loch coriskin of turner. it has luckily been admirably engraved, and for all purposes of reasoning or form, is nearly as effective in the print as in the drawing. looking at any group of the multitudinous lines which make up this mass of mountain, they appear to be running anywhere and everywhere; there are none parallel to each other, none resembling each other for a moment; yet the whole mass is felt at once to be composed with the most rigid parallelism, the surfaces of the beds towards the left, their edges or escarpments towards the right. in the centre, near the top of the ridge, the edge of a bed is beautifully defined, casting its shadow on the surface of the one beneath it; this shadow marking by three jags the chasms caused in the inferior one by three of its parallel joints. every peak in the distance is evidently subject to the same great influence, and the evidence is completed by the flatness and evenness of the steep surfaces of the beds which rise out of the lake on the extreme right, parallel with those in the centre. § . glencoe and other works. § . especially the mount lebanon. turn to glencoe, in the same series (the illustrations to scott). we have in the mass of mountain on the left, the most beautiful indication of vertical beds of a finely laminated rock, terminated by even joints towards the precipice; while the whole sweep of the landscape, as far as the most distant peaks, is evidently governed by one great and simple tendency upwards to the left, those most distant peaks themselves lying over one another in the same direction. in the daphne hunting with leucippus, the mountains on the left descend in two precipices to the plain, each of which is formed by a vast escarpment of the beds whose upper surfaces are shown between the two cliffs, sinking with an even slope from the summit of the lowest to the base of the highest, under which they evidently descend, being exposed in this manner for a length of five or six miles. the same structure is shown, though with more complicated development, on the left of the loch katrine. but perhaps the finest instance, or at least the most marked of all, will be found in the exquisite mount lebanon, with the convent of st. antonio, engraved in finden's bible. there is not one shade nor touch on the rock which is not indicative of the lines of stratification; and every fracture is marked with a straightforward simplicity which makes you feel that the artist has nothing in his heart but a keen love of the pure unmodified truth; there is no effort to disguise the repetition of forms, no apparent aim at artificial arrangement or scientific grouping; the rocks are laid one above another with unhesitating decision; every shade is understood in a moment, felt as a dark side, or a shadow, or a fissure, and you may step from one block or bed to another until you reach the mountain summit. and yet, though there seems no effort to disguise the repetition of forms, see how it _is_ disguised, just as nature would have done it, by the perpetual play and changefulness of the very lines which appear so parallel; now bending a little up, or down, or losing themselves, or running into each other, the old story over and over again,--infinity. for here is still the great distinction between turner's work and that of a common artist. hundreds could have given the parallelism of blocks, but none but himself could have done so without the actual repetition of a single line or feature. § . compared with the work of salvator; now compare with this the second mountain from the left in the picture of salvator, no. in the dulwich gallery. the whole is first laid in with a very delicate and masterly gray, right in tone, agreeable in color, quite unobjectionable for a beginning. but how is this made into rock? on the light side salvator gives us a multitude of touches, all exactly like one another, and therefore, it is to be hoped, quite patterns of perfection in rock-drawing, since they are too good to be even varied. every touch is a dash of the brush, as nearly as possible in the shape of a comma, round and bright at the top, convex on its right side, concave on its left, and melting off at the bottom into the gray. these are laid in confusion one above another, some paler, some brighter, some scarcely discernible, but all alike in shape. now, i am not aware myself of any particular object, either in earth or heaven, which these said touches do at all resemble or portray. i do not, however, assert that they may not resemble something--feathers, perhaps; but i do say, and say with perfect confidence, that they may be chinese for rocks, or sanscrit for rocks, or symbolical of rocks in some mysterious and undeveloped character; but that they are no more _like_ rocks than the brush that made them. the dark sides appear to embrace and overhang the lights; they cast no shadows, are broken by no fissures, and furnish, as food for contemplation, nothing but a series of concave curves. § . and of poussin. yet if we go on to no. , we shall find something a great deal worse. i can believe gaspar poussin capable of committing as much sin against nature as most people; but i certainly do not suspect him of having had any hand in this thing, at least after he was ten years old. nevertheless, it shows what he is supposed capable of by his admirers, and will serve for a broad illustration of all those absurdities which he himself in a less degree, and with feeling and thought to atone for them, perpetually commits. take the white bit of rock on the opposite side of the river, just above the right arm of the niobe, and tell me of what the square green daubs of the brush at its base can be conjectured to be typical. rocks with pale-brown light sides, and rich green dark sides, are a phenomenon perhaps occurring in some of the improved passages of nature among our cumberland lakes; where i remember once having seen a bed of roses, of peculiar magnificence, tastefully and artistically assisted in effect by the rocks above it being painted pink to match; but i do not think that they are a kind of thing which the clumsiness and false taste of nature can be supposed frequently to produce; even granting that these same sweeps of the brush could, by any exercise of the imagination, be conceived representative of a dark, or any other side, which is far more than i am inclined to grant; seeing that there is no east shadow, no appearance of reflected light, of substance, or of character on the edge; nothing, in short, but pure, staring green paint, scratched heavily on a white ground. nor is there a touch in the picture more expressive. all are the mere dragging of the brush here and there and everywhere, without meaning or intention; winding, twisting, zigzagging, doing anything in fact which may serve to break up the light and destroy its breadth, without bestowing in return one hint or shadow of anything like form. this picture is, indeed, an extraordinary case, but the salvator above mentioned is a characteristic and exceedingly favorable example of the usual mode of mountain drawing among the old landscape painters.[ ] their admirers may be challenged to bring forward a single instance of their expressing, or even appearing to have noted, the great laws of structure above explained. their hills are, without exception, irregular earthy heaps, without energy or direction of any kind, marked with shapeless shadows and meaningless lines; sometimes, indeed, where great sublimity has been aimed at, approximating to the pure and exalted ideal of rocks, which, in the most artistical specimens of china cups and plates, we see suspended from aerial pagodas, or balanced upon peacocks' tails, but never warranting even the wildest theorist in the conjecture that their perpetrators had ever seen a mountain in their lives. let us, however, look farther into the modifications of character by which nature conceals the regularity of her first plan; for although all mountains are organized as we have seen, their organization is always modified, and often nearly concealed, by changes wrought upon them by external influence. § . effects of external influence on mountain form. we ought, when speaking of their stratification, to have noticed another great law, which must, however, be understood with greater latitude of application than any of the others, as very far from imperative or constant in particular cases, though universal in its influence on the aggregate of all. it is that the lines by which rocks are terminated, are always steeper and more inclined to the vertical as we approach the summit of the mountain. thousands of cases are to be found in every group, of rocks and lines horizontal at the top of the mountain and vertical at the bottom; but they are still the exceptions, and the average out of a given number of lines in any rock formation whatsoever, will be found increasing in perpendicularity as they rise. consequently the great skeleton lines of rock outline are always concave; that is to say, all distant ranges of rocky mountain approximate more or less to a series of concave curves, meeting in peaks, like a range of posts with chains hanging between. i do not say that convex forms will not perpetually occur, but that the tendency of the majority will always be to assume the form of sweeping, curved valleys, with angular peaks; not of rounded convex summits, with angular valleys. this structure is admirably exemplified in the second vignette in rogers's italy, and in piacenza. § . the gentle convexity caused by aqueous erosion. but although this is the primary form of all hills, and that which will always cut against the sky in every distant range, there are two great influences whose tendency is directly the reverse, and which modify, to a great degree, both the evidences of stratification and this external form. these are aqueous erosion and disintegration. the latter only is to be taken into consideration when we have to do with minor features of crag; but the former is a force in constant action--of the very utmost importance--a force to which one-half of the great outlines of all mountains is entirely owing, and which has much influence upon every one of their details. now the tendency of aqueous action over a large elevated surface is _always_ to make that surface symmetrically and evenly convex and dome-like, sloping gradually more and more as it descends, until it reaches an inclination of about °, at which slope it will descend perfectly straight to the valley; for at that slope the soil washed from above will accumulate upon the hill-side, as it cannot lie in steeper beds. this influence, then, is exercised more or less on all mountains, with greater or less effect in proportion as the rock is harder or softer, more or less liable to decomposition, more or less recent in date of elevation, and more or less characteristic in its original forms; but it universally induces, in the lower parts of mountains, a series of the most exquisitely symmetrical convex curves, terminating, as they descend to the valley, in uniform and uninterrupted slopes; this symmetrical structure being perpetually interrupted by cliffs and projecting masses, which give evidence of the interior parallelism of the mountain anatomy, but which interrupt the convex forms more frequently by rising out of them, than by indentation. § . and the effect of the action of torrents. there remains but one fact more to be noticed. all mountains, in some degree, but especially those which are composed of soft or decomposing substance, are delicately and symmetrically furrowed by the descent of streams. the traces of their action commence at the very summits, fine threads, and multitudinous, like the uppermost branches of a delicate tree. they unite in groups as they descend, concentrating gradually into dark undulating ravines, into which the body of the mountain descends on each side, at first in a convex curve, but at the bottom with the same uniform slope on each side which it assumes in its final descent to the plain, unless the rock be very hard, when the stream will cut itself a vertical chasm at the bottom of the curves, and there will be no even slope.[ ] if, on the other hand, the rock be very soft, the slopes will increase rapidly in height and depth from day to day; washed away at the bottom and crumbling at the top, until, by their reaching the summit of the masses of rock which separate the active torrents, the whole mountain is divided into a series of penthouse-like ridges, all guiding to its summit, and becoming steeper and narrower as they ascend; these in their turn being divided by similar, but smaller ravines--caused in the same manner--into the same kind of ridges; and these again by another series, the arrangement being carried finer and farther according to the softness of the rock. the south side of saddleback, in cumberland, is a characteristic example; and the montagne du tacondy, in chamonix, a noble instance of one of these ridges or buttresses, with all its subdivisions, on a colossal scale. § . the exceeding simplicity of contour caused by these influences. § . and multiplicity of feature. now we wish to draw especial attention to the broad and bold simplicity of mass, and the excessive complication of details, which influences like these, acting on an enormous scale, must inevitably produce in all mountain groups; because each individual part and promontory, being compelled to assume the same symmetrical curves as its neighbors, and to descend at precisely the same slope to the valley, falls in with their prevailing lines, and becomes a part of a great and harmonious whole, instead of an unconnected and discordant individual. it is true that each of these members has its own touches of specific character, its own projecting crags and peculiar hollows; but by far the greater portion of its lines will be such as unite with, though they do not repeat, those of its neighbors, and carry out the evidence of one great influence and spirit to the limits of the scene. this effort is farther aided by the original unity and connection of the rocks themselves, which though it often may be violently interrupted, is never without evidence of existence; for the very interruption itself forces the eye to feel that there is something to be interrupted, a sympathy and similarity of lines and fractures, which, however full of variety and change of direction, never lose the appearance of symmetry of one kind or another. but, on the other hand, it is to be remembered that these great sympathizing masses are not one mountain, but a thousand mountains; that they are originally composed of a multitude of separate eminences, hewn and chiselled indeed into associating form, but each retaining still its marked points and features of character,--that each of these individual members has, by the very process which assimilated it to the rest, been divided and subdivided into equally multitudinous groups of minor mountains; finally, that the whole complicated system is interrupted forever and ever by daring manifestations of the inward mountain will--by the precipice which has submitted to no modulation of the torrent, and the peak which has bowed itself to no terror of the storm. hence we see that the same imperative laws which require perfect simplicity of mass, require infinite and termless complication of detail,--that there will not be an inch nor a hairbreadth of the gigantic heap which has not its touch of separate character, its own peculiar curve, stealing out for an instant and then melting into the common line; felt for a moment by the blue mist of the hollow beyond, then lost when it crosses the enlightened slope,--that all this multiplicity will be grouped into larger divisions, each felt by their increasing aerial perspective, and their instants of individual form, these into larger, and these into larger still, until all are merged in the great impression and prevailing energy of the two or three vast dynasties which divide the kingdom of the scene. § . both utterly neglected in ancient art. there is no vestige nor shadow of approach to such treatment as this in the whole compass of ancient art. whoever the master, his hills, wherever he has attempted them, have not the slightest trace of association or connection; they are separate, conflicting, confused, petty and paltry heaps of earth; there is no marking of distances or divisions in their body; they may have holes in them, but no valleys,--protuberances and excrescences, but no parts; and in consequence are invariably diminutive and contemptible in their whole appearance and impression. § . the fidelity of treatment in turner's daphne and leucippas. but look at the mass of mountain on the right in turner's daphne hunting with leucippus. it is simple, broad, and united as one surge of a swelling sea; it rises in an unbroken line along the valley, and lifts its promontories with an equal slope. but it contains in its body ten thousand hills. there is not a quarter of an inch of its surface without its suggestion of increasing distance and individual form. first, on the right, you have a range of tower-like precipices, the clinging wood climbing along their ledges and cresting their summits, white waterfalls gleaming through its leaves; not, as in claude's scientific ideals, poured in vast torrents over the top, and carefully keeping all the way down on the most projecting parts of the sides; but stealing down, traced from point to point, through shadow after shadow, by their evanescent foam and flashing light,--here a wreath, and there a ray,--through the deep chasms and hollow ravines, out of which rise the soft rounded slopes of mightier mountain, surge beyond surge, immense and numberless, of delicate and gradual curve, accumulating in the sky until their garment of forest is exchanged for the shadowy fold of slumbrous morning cloud, above which the utmost silver peak shines islanded and alone. put what mountain painting you will beside this, of any other artist, and its heights will look like mole-hills in comparison, because it will not have the unity nor the multiplicity which are in nature, and with turner, the signs of size. § . and in the avalanche and inundation. again, in the avalanche and inundation, we have for the whole subject nothing but one vast bank of united mountain, and one stretch of uninterrupted valley. though the bank is broken into promontory beyond promontory, peak above peak, each the abode of a new tempest, the arbiter of a separate desolation, divided from each other by the rushing of the snow, by the motion of the storm, by the thunder of the torrent; the mighty unison of their dark and lofty line, the brotherhood of ages, is preserved unbroken; and the broad valley at their feet, though measured league after league away by a thousand passages of sun and darkness, and marked with fate beyond fate of hamlet and of inhabitant, lies yet but as a straight and narrow channel, a filling furrow before the flood. whose work will you compare with this? salvator's gray heaps of earth, seven yards high, covered with bunchy brambles, that we may be under no mistake about the size, thrown about at random in a little plain, beside a zigzagging river, just wide enough to admit of the possibility of there being fish in it, and with banks just broad enough to allow the respectable angler or hermit to sit upon them conveniently in the foreground? is there more of nature in such paltriness, think you, than in the valley and the mountain which bend to each other like the trough of the sea; with the flank of the one swept in one surge into the height of heaven, until the pine forests lie on its immensity like the shadows of narrow clouds, and the hollow of the other laid league by league into the blue of the air, until its white villages flash in the distance only like the fall of a sunbeam? § . the rarity among secondary hills of steep slopes or high precipices. but let us examine by what management of the details themselves this wholeness and vastness of effect are given. we have just seen (§ ) that it is impossible for the slope of a mountain, not actually a precipice of rock, to exceed ° or among secondary °, and that by far the greater part of all hill-surface is composed of graceful curves of much less degree than this, reaching ° only as their ultimate and utmost inclination. it must be farther observed that the interruptions to such curves, by precipices or steps, are always small in proportion to the slopes themselves. precipices rising vertically more than feet are very rare among the secondary hills of which we are speaking. i am not aware of any cliff in england or wales where a plumb-line can swing clear for feet; and even although sometimes, with intervals, breaks, and steps, we get perhaps feet of a slope of ° or °, yet not only are these cases very rare, but even these have little influence on the great contours of a mountain or feet in elevation, being commonly balanced by intervals of ascent not exceeding ° or °. the result of which is, first, that the peaks and precipices of a mountain appear as little more than jags or steps emerging from its great curves; and, secondly, that the bases of all hills are enormously extensive as compared with their elevation, so that there must be always a horizontal distance between the observer and the summit five or six times exceeding the perpendicular one. § . and consequent expression of horizontal distance in their ascent. now it is evident, that whatever the actual angle of elevation of the mountain may be, every exhibition of this horizontal distance between us and the summit is an addition to its height, and of course to its impressiveness; while every endeavor to exhibit its slope as steep and sudden, is diminution at once of its distance and elevation. in consequence nature is constantly endeavoring to impress upon us this horizontal distance, which, even in spite of all her means of manifesting it, we are apt to forget or underestimate; and all her noblest effects depend on the full measurement and feeling of it. and it is to the abundant and marvellous expression of it by turner, that i would direct especial attention, as being that which is in itself demonstrative of the highest knowledge and power--knowledge, in the constant use of lines of subdued slope in preference to steep or violent ascents, and in the perfect subjection of all such features, when they necessarily occur, to the larger masses; and power, in the inimitable statements of retiring space by mere painting of surface details, without the aid of crossing shadows, divided forms, or any other artifice. § . full statement of all these facts in various works of turner, caudebec, etc. the caudebec, in the rivers of france, is a fine instance of almost every fact which we have been pointing out. we have in it, first, the clear expression of what takes place constantly among hills,--that the river, as it passes through the valley, will fall backwards and forwards from side to side, lying first, if i may so speak, with all its weight against the hills on the one side, and then against those on the other; so that, as here it is exquisitely told, in each of its circular sweeps the whole force of its current is brought deep and close to the bases of the hills, while the water on the side next the plain is shallow, deepening gradually. in consequence of this, the hills are cut away at their bases by the current, so that their slopes are interrupted by precipices mouldering to the water. observe first, how nobly turner has given us the perfect unity of the whole mass of hill, making us understand that every ravine in it has been cut gradually by streams. the first eminence, beyond the city, is not disjointed from, or independent of, the one succeeding, but evidently part of the same whole, originally united, separated only by the action of the stream between. the association of the second and third is still more clearly told, for we see that there has been a little longitudinal valley running along the brow of their former united mass, which, after the ravine had been cut between, formed the two jags which turner has given us at the same point in each of their curves. this great triple group has, however, been originally distinct from those beyond it; for we see that these latter are only the termination of the enormous even slope, which appears again on the extreme right, having been interrupted by the rise of the near hills. observe how the descent of the whole series is kept gentle and subdued, never suffered to become steep except where it has been cut away by the river, the sudden precipice caused by which is exquisitely marked in the last two promontories, where they are defined against the bright horizon; and, finally, observe how, in the ascent of the nearest eminence beyond the city, without one cast shadow or any division of distances, every yard of surface is felt to be retiring by the mere painting of its details,--how we are permitted to walk up it, and along its top, and are carried, before we are half way up, a league or two forward into the picture. the difficulty of doing this, however, can scarcely be appreciated except by an artist. § . the use of considering geological truths. i do not mean to assert that this great painter is acquainted with the geological laws and facts he has thus illustrated; i am not aware whether he be or not; i merely wish to demonstrate, in points admitting of demonstration, that intense observation of, and strict adherence to truth, which it is impossible to demonstrate in its less tangible and more delicate manifestations. however i may _feel_ the truth of every touch and line, i cannot _prove_ truth, except in large and general features; and i leave it to the arbitration of every man's reason, whether it be not likely that the painter who is thus so rigidly faithful in great things that every one of his pictures might be the illustration of a lecture on the physical sciences, is not likely to be faithful also in small. § . expression of retiring surface by turner contrasted with the work of claude. honfleur, and the scene between clairmont and mauves, supply us with farther instances of the same grand simplicity of treatment; and the latter is especially remarkable for its expression of the furrowing of the hills by descending water, in the complete roundness and symmetry of their curves, and in the delicate and sharp shadows which are cast in the undulating ravines. it is interesting to compare with either of these noble works such hills as those of claude, on the left of the picture marked in the dulwich gallery. there is no detail nor surface in one of them; not an inch of ground for us to stand upon; we must either sit astride upon the edge, or fall to the bottom. i could not point to a more complete instance of mountain calumniation; nor can i oppose it more completely, in every circumstance, than with the honfleur of turner, already mentioned; in which there is not one edge nor division admitted, and yet we are permitted to climb up the hill from the town, and pass far into the mist along its top, and so descend mile after mile along the ridge to seaward, until, without one break in the magnificent unity of progress, we are carried down to the utmost horizon. and contrast the brown paint of claude, which you can only guess to be meant for rock or soil because it _is_ brown, with turner's profuse, pauseless richness of feature, carried through all the enormous space--the unmeasured wealth of exquisite detail, over which the mind can dwell, and walk, and wander, and feast forever, without finding either one break in its vast simplicity, or one vacuity in its exhaustless splendor. § . the same moderation of slope in the contours of his higher hills. but these, and hundreds of others which it is sin not to dwell upon--wooded hills and undulating moors of north england--rolling surges of park and forest of the south--soft and vine-clad ranges of french coteaux, casting their oblique shadows on silver leagues of glancing rivers,--and olive-whitened promontories of alp and apennine, are only instances of turner's management of the lower and softer hills. in the bolder examples of his powers, where he is dealing with lifted masses of enormous mountain, we shall still find him as cautious in his use of violent slopes or vertical lines, and still as studied in his expression of retiring surface. we never get to the top of one of his hills without being tired with our walk; not by the steepness, observe, but by the stretch; for we are carried up towards the heaven by such delicate gradation of line, that we scarcely feel that we have left the earth before we find ourselves among the clouds. the skiddaw, in the illustrations to scott, is a noble instance of this majestic moderation. the mountain lies in the morning light, like a level vapor; its gentle lines of ascent are scarcely felt by the eye; it rises without effort or exertion, by the mightiness of its mass; every slope is full of slumber; and we know not how it has been exalted, until we find it laid as a floor for the walking of the eastern clouds. so again in the fort augustus, where the whole elevation of the hills depends on the soft lines of swelling surface which undulate back through leagues of mist carrying us unawares higher and higher above the diminished lake, until, when we are all but exhausted with the endless distance, the mountains make their last spring, and bear us, in that instant of exertion, half way to heaven. § . the peculiar difficulty of investigating the more essential truths of hill outline. i ought perhaps rather to have selected, as instances of mountain form, such elaborate works as the oberwesel or lake of uri, but i have before expressed my dislike of speaking of such magnificent pictures as these by parts. and indeed all proper consideration of the hill drawing of turner must be deferred until we are capable of testing it by the principles of beauty; for, after all, the most essential qualities of line,--those on which all right delineation of mountain character must depend, are those which are only to be explained or illustrated by appeals to our feeling of what is beautiful. there is an expression and a feeling about all the hill lines of nature, which i think i shall be able, hereafter, to explain; but it is not to be reduced to line and rule--not to be measured by angles or described by compasses--not to be chipped out by the geologist, or equated by the mathematician. it is intangible, incalculable--a thing to be felt, not understood--to be loved, not comprehended--a music of the eyes, a melody of the heart, whose truth is known only by its sweetness. § . works of other modern artists. clarkson stanfield. § . importance of particular and individual truth in hill drawing. i can scarcely, without repeating myself to tediousness, enter at present into proper consideration of the mountain drawing of other modern painters. we have, fortunately, several by whom the noble truths which we have seen so fully exemplified by turner are also deeply felt and faithfully rendered; though there is a necessity, for the perfect statement of them, of such an unison of freedom of thought with perfect mastery over the greatest mechanical difficulties, as we can scarcely hope to see attained by more than one man in our age. very nearly the same words which we used in reference to stanfield's drawings of the central clouds, might be applied to his rendering of mountain truth. he occupies exactly the same position with respect to other artists in earth as in cloud. none can be said really to _draw_ the mountain as he will, to have so perfect a mastery over its organic development; but there is, nevertheless, in all his works, some want of feeling and individuality. he has studied and mastered his subject to the bottom, but he trusts too much to that past study, and rather invents his hills from his possessed stores of knowledge, than expresses in them the fresh ideas received from nature. hence, in all that he does, we feel a little too much that the hills are his own. we cannot swear to their being the particular crags and individual promontories which break the cone of ischia, or shadow the waves of maggiore. we are nearly sure, on the contrary, that nothing but the outline is local, and that all the filling up has been done in the study. now, we have already shown (sect. i. chap. iii.) that particular truths are more important than general ones, and this is just one of the cases in which that rule especially applies. nothing is so great a sign of truth and beauty in mountain drawing as the appearance of individuality--nothing is so great a proof of real imagination and invention, as the appearance that nothing has been imagined or invented. we ought to feel of every inch of mountain, that it _must_ have existence in reality, that if we had lived near the place we should have known every crag of it, and that there must be people to whom every crevice and shadow of the picture is fraught with recollections, and colored with associations. the moment the artist can make us feel this--the moment he can make us think that _he_ has done nothing, that nature has done all--that moment he becomes ennobled, he proves himself great. as long as we remember him, we cannot respect him. we honor him most when we most forget him. he becomes great when he becomes invisible. and we may, perhaps, be permitted to express our hope that mr. stanfield will--our conviction that he must--if he would advance in his rank as an artist, attend more to local character, and give us generally less of the stanfield limestone. he ought to study with greater attention the rocks which afford finer divisions and more delicate parts (slates and gneiss;) and he ought to observe more fondly and faithfully those beautiful laws and lines of swell and curvature, by intervals of which nature sets off and relieves the energy of her peaked outlines. he is at present apt to be too rugged, and, in consequence, to lose size. of his best manner of drawing hills, i believe i can scarcely give a better example than the rocks of suli, engraved in finden's illustrations to byron. it is very grand and perfect in all parts and points. § . works of copley fielding. his hill feeling. copley fielding is peculiarly graceful and affectionate in his drawing of the inferior mountains. but as with his clouds so with his hills; as long as he keeps to silvery films of misty outline, or purple shadows mingled with the evening light, he is true and beautiful; but the moment he withdraws the mass out of its veiling mystery, he is lost. his worst drawings, therefore, are those on which he has spent most time; for he is sure to show weakness wherever he gives detail. we believe that all his errors proceed, as we observed before, from his not working with the chalk or pencil; and that if he would paint half the number of pictures in the year which he usually produces, and spend his spare time in hard dry study of forms, the half he painted would be soon worth double the present value of all. for he really has deep and genuine feeling of hill character--a far higher perception of space, elevation, incorporeal color, and all those qualities which are the poetry of mountains, than any other of our water-color painters; and it is an infinite pity that he should not give to these delicate feelings the power of realization, which might be attained by a little labor. a few thorough studies of his favorite mountains, ben-venue or ben-cruachan, in clear, strong, front chiaroscuro, allowing himself neither color nor mist, nor any means of getting over the ground but downright drawing, would, we think, open his eyes to sources of beauty of which he now takes no cognizance. he ought not, however, to repeat the same subjects so frequently, as the casting about of the mind for means of varying them blunts the feelings to truth. and he should remember that an artist, who is not making progress, is nearly certain to be retrograding; and that progress is not to be made by working in the study, or by mere labor bestowed on the repetition of unchanging conceptions. § . works of j. d. harding and others. j. d. harding would paint mountains very nobly, if he made them of more importance in his compositions, but they are usually little more than backgrounds for his foliage or buildings; and it is his present system to make his backgrounds very slight. his color is very beautiful: indeed, both his and fielding's are far more refined than stanfield's. we wish he would oftener take up some wild subject dependent for interest on its mountain forms alone, as we should anticipate the highest results from his perfect drawing; and we think that such an exercise, occasionally gone completely through, would counteract a tendency which we perceive in his present distances, to become a little thin and cutting, if not incomplete. the late g. robson was a man most thoroughly acquainted with all the characteristics of our own island hills; and some of the outlines of john varley showed very grand feeling of energy of form. footnotes [ ] i have above exhausted all terms of vituperation, and probably disgusted the reader; and yet i have not spoken with enough severity: i know not any terms of blame that are bitter enough to chastise justly the mountain drawings of salvator in the pictures of the pitti palace. [ ] some terrific cuts and chasms of this kind occur on the north side of the valais, from sion to briey. the torrent from the great aletsch glacier descends through one of them. elsewhere chasms may be found as narrow, but few so narrow and deep. chapter iv. of the foreground. we have now only to observe the close characteristics of the rocks and soils to which the large masses of which we have been speaking, owe their ultimate characters. § . what rocks were the chief components of ancient landscape foreground. we have already seen that there exists a marked distinction between those stratified rocks whose beds are amorphous and without subdivision, as many limestones and sandstones, and those which are divided by lines of lamination, as all slates. the last kind of rock is the more frequent in nature, and forms the greater part of all hill scenery; it has, however, been successfully grappled with by few, even of the moderns, except turner; while there is no single example of any aim at it or thought of it among the ancients, whose foregrounds, as far as it is possible to guess at their intention through their concentrated errors, are chosen from among the tufa and travertin of the lower apennines, (the ugliest as well as the least characteristic rocks of nature,) and whose larger features of rock scenery, if we look at them with a predetermination to find in them a resemblance of _something_, may be pronounced at least liker the mountain limestone than anything else. i shall glance, therefore, at the general characters of these materials first, in order that we may be able to appreciate the fidelity of rock-drawing on which salvator's reputation has been built. § . salvator's limestones. the real characters of the rock. its fractures and obtuseness of angles. the massive limestones separate generally into irregular blocks, tending to the form of cubes or parallelopipeds, and terminated by tolerably smooth planes. the weather, acting on the edges of these blocks, rounds them off; but the frost, which, while it cannot penetrate nor split the body of the stone, acts energetically on the angles, splits off the rounded fragments, and supplies sharp, fresh, and complicated edges. hence the angles of such blocks are usually marked by a series of steps and fractures, in which the peculiar character of the rock is most distinctly seen; the effect being increased in many limestones by the interposition of two or three thinner beds between the large strata of which the block has been a part; these thin laminæ breaking easily, and supplying a number of fissures and lines at the edge of the detached mass. thus, as a general principle, if a rock have character anywhere, it will be on the angle, and however even and smooth its great planes may be, it will usually break into variety where it turns a corner. in one of the most exquisite pieces of rock truth ever put on canvas, the foreground of the napoleon in the academy, , this principle was beautifully exemplified in the complicated fractures of the upper angle just where it turned from the light, while the planes of the rock were varied only by the modulation they owed to the waves. it follows from this structure that the edges of all rock being partially truncated, first by large fractures, and then by the rounding of the fine edges of these by the weather, perpetually present _convex_ transitions from the light to the dark side, the planes of the rock almost always swelling a little _from_ the angle. § . salvator's acute angles caused by the meeting of concave curves. now it will be found throughout the works of salvator, that his most usual practice was to give a _concave_ sweep of the brush for his first expression of the dark side, leaving the paint darkest towards the light; by which daring and original method of procedure he has succeeded in covering his foregrounds with forms which approximate to those of drapery, of ribbons, of crushed cocked hats, of locks of hair, of waves, leaves, or anything, in short, flexible or tough, but which of course are not only unlike, but directly contrary to the forms which nature has impressed on rocks.[ ] § . peculiar distinctness of light and shade in the rocks of nature. § . peculiar confusion of both in the rocks of salvator. and the circular and sweeping strokes or stains which are dashed at random over their surfaces, only fail of destroying all resemblance whatever to rock structure from their frequent want of any meaning at all, and from the impossibility of our supposing any of them to be representative of shade. now, if there be any part of landscape in which nature develops her principles of light and shade more clearly than another, it is rock; for the dark sides of fractured stone receive brilliant reflexes from the lighted surfaces, on which the shadows are marked with the most exquisite precision, especially because, owing to the parallelism of cleavage, the surfaces lie usually in directions nearly parallel. hence every crack and fissure has its shadow and reflected light separated with the most delicious distinctness, and the organization and solid form of all parts are told with a decision of language, which, to be followed with anything like fidelity, requires the most transparent color, and the most delicate and scientific drawing. so far are the works of the old landscape-painters from rendering this, that it is exceedingly rare to find a single passage in which the shadow can even be distinguished from the dark side--they scarcely seem to know the one to be darker than the other; and the strokes of the brush are not used to explain or express a form known or conceived, but are dashed and daubed about without any aim beyond the covering of the canvas. "a rock," the old masters appear to say to themselves, "is a great irregular, formless, characterless lump; but it must have shade upon it, and any gray marks will do for that shade." § . and total want of any expression of hardness or brittleness. § . instances in particular pictures. finally, while few, if any, of the rocks of nature are untraversed by delicate and slender fissures, whose black sharp lines are the only means by which the peculiar quality in which rocks most differ from the other objects of the landscape, brittleness, can be effectually suggested, we look in vain among the blots and stains with which the rocks of ancient art are loaded, for any vestige or appearance of fissure or splintering. toughness and malleability appear to be the qualities whose expression is most aimed at; sometimes sponginess, softness, flexibility, tenuity, and occasionally transparency. take, for instance, the foreground of salvator, in no. of the dulwich gallery. there is, on the right-hand side of it, an object, which i never walk through the room without contemplating for a minute or two with renewed solicitude and anxiety of mind, indulging in a series of very wild and imaginative conjectures as to its probable or possible meaning. i think there is reason to suppose that the artist intended it either for a very large stone, or for the trunk of a tree; but any decision as to its being either one or the other of these must, i conceive, be the extreme of rashness. it melts into the ground on one side, and might reasonably be conjectured to form a part of it, having no trace of woody structure or color; but on the other side it presents a series of concave curves, interrupted by cogs like those of a water-wheel, which the boldest theorist would certainly not feel himself warranted in supposing symbolical of rock. the forms which this substance, whatever it be, assumes, will be found repeated, though in a less degree, in the foreground of no. , where they are evidently meant for rock. § . compared with the works of stanfield. § . their absolute opposition in every particular. let us contrast with this system of rock-drawing, the faithful, scientific, and dexterous studies of nature which we find in the works of clarkson stanfield. he is a man especially to be opposed to the old masters, because he usually confines himself to the same rock subjects as they--the mouldering and furrowed crags of the secondary formation which arrange themselves more or less into broad and simple masses; and in the rendering of these it is impossible to go beyond him. nothing can surpass his care, his firmness, or his success, in marking the distinct and sharp light and shade by which the form is explained, never confusing it with local color, however richly his surface-texture may be given; while the wonderful play of line with which he will vary, and through which he will indicate, the regularity of stratification, is almost as instructive as that of nature herself. i cannot point to any of his works as better or more characteristic than others; but his ischia, in the present british institution, may be taken as a fair average example. the botallack mine, cornwall, engraved in the coast scenery, gives us a very finished and generic representation of rock, whose primal organization has been violently affected by external influences. we have the stratification and cleavage indicated at its base, every fissure being sharp, angular, and decisive, disguised gradually as it rises by the rounding of the surface and the successive furrows caused by the descent of streams. but the exquisite drawing of the foreground is especially worthy of notice. no huge concave sweeps of the brush, no daubing or splashing here. every inch of it is brittle and splintery, and the fissures are explained to the eye by the most perfect, speaking light and shade,--we can stumble over the edges of them. the east cliff, hastings, is another very fine example, from the exquisite irregularity with which its squareness of general structure is varied and disguised. observe how totally contrary every one of its lines is to the absurdities of salvator. stanfield's are all angular and straight, every apparent curve made up of right lines, while salvator's are all sweeping and flourishing like so much penmanship. stanfield's lines pass away into delicate splintery fissures. salvator's are broad daubs throughout. not one of stanfield's lines is like another. every one of salvator's mocks all the rest. all stanfield's curves, where his universal angular character is massed, as on the left-hand side, into large sweeping forms, are convex. salvator's are every one concave. § . the rocks of j. d. harding. the foregrounds of j. d. harding and rocks of his middle distances are also thoroughly admirable. he is not quite so various and undulating in his line as stanfield, and sometimes, in his middle distances, is wanting in solidity, owing to a little confusion of the dark side and shadow with each other, or with the local color. but his work, in near passages of fresh-broken, sharp-edged rock, is absolute perfection, excelling stanfield in the perfect freedom and facility with which his fragments are splintered and scattered; true in every line without the least apparent effort. stanfield's best works are laborious, but harding's rocks fall from under his hand as if they had just crashed down the hill-side, flying on the instant into lovely form. in color also he incomparably surpasses stanfield, who is apt to verge upon mud, or be cold in his gray. the rich, lichenous, and changeful warmth, and delicate weathered grays of harding's rock, illustrated as they are by the most fearless, firm, and unerring drawing, render his wild pieces of torrent shore the finest things, next to the work of turner, in english foreground art. j. b. pyne has very accurate knowledge of limestone rock, and expresses it clearly and forcibly; but it is much to be regretted that this clever artist appears to be losing all sense of color and is getting more and more mannered in execution, evidently never studying from nature except with the previous determination to pynize everything.[ ] § . characters of loose earth and soil. § . its exceeding grace and fulness of feature. before passing to turner, let us take one more glance at the foregrounds of the old masters, with reference, not to their management of rock, which is comparatively a rare component part of their foregrounds, but to the common soil which they were obliged to paint constantly, and whose forms and appearances are the same all over the world. a steep bank of loose earth of any kind, that has been at all exposed to the weather, contains in it, though it may not be three feet high, features capable of giving high gratification to a careful observer. it is almost a fac-simile of a mountain slope of soft and decomposing rock; it possesses nearly as much variety of character, and is governed by laws of organization no less rigid. it is furrowed in the first place by undulating lines, by the descent of the rain, little ravines, which are cut precisely at the same slope as those of the mountain, and leave ridges scarcely less graceful in their contour, and beautifully sharp in their chiselling. where a harder knot of ground or a stone occurs, the earth is washed from beneath it, and accumulates above it, and there we have a little precipice connected by a sweeping curve at its summit with the great slope, and casting a sharp dark shadow; where the soil has been soft, it will probably be washed away underneath until it gives way, and leaves a jagged, hanging, irregular line of fracture; and all these circumstances are explained to the eye in sunshine with the most delicious clearness; every touch of shadow being expressive of some particular truth of structure, and bearing witness to the symmetry into which the whole mass has been reduced. where this operation has gone on long, and vegetation has assisted in softening the outlines, we have our ground brought into graceful and irregular curves, of infinite variety, but yet always so connected with each other, and guiding to each other, that the eye never feels them as _separate_ things, nor feels inclined to count them, nor perceives a likeness in one to the other; they are not repetitions of each other, but are different parts of one system. each would be imperfect without the one next to it. § . the ground of teniers. now it is all but impossible to express distinctly the particulars wherein this fine character of curve consists, and to show in definite examples, what it is which makes one representation right, and another wrong. the ground of teniers for instance, in no. in the dulwich gallery, is an example of all that is wrong. it is a representation of the forms of shaken and disturbed soil, such as we should see here and there after an earthquake, or over the ruins of fallen buildings. it has not one contour nor character of the soil of nature, and yet i can scarcely tell you why, except that the curves repeat one another, and are monotonous in their flow, and are unbroken by the delicate angle and momentary pause with which the feeling of nature would have touched them, and are disunited; so that the eye leaps from this to that, and does not pass from one to the other without being able to stop, drawn on by the continuity of line; neither is there any undulation or furrowing of watermark, nor in one spot or atom of the whole surface, is there distinct explanation of form to the eye by means of a determined shadow. all is mere sweeping of the brush over the surface with various ground colors, without a single indication of character by means of real shade. § . importance of these minor parts and points. § . the observance of them is the real distinction between the master and the novice. let not these points be deemed unimportant; the truths of form in common ground are quite as valuable, (let me anticipate myself for a moment,) quite as beautiful, as any others which nature presents, and in lowland landscape they present us with a species of line which it is quite impossible to obtain in any other way,--the alternately flowing and broken line of mountain scenery, which, however small its scale, is always of inestimable value, contrasted with the repetitions of organic form which we are compelled to give in vegetation. a really great artist dwells on every inch of exposed soil with care and delight, and renders it one of the most essential, speaking and pleasurable parts of his composition. and be it remembered, that the man who, in the most conspicuous part of his foreground, will violate truth with every stroke of the pencil, is not likely to be more careful in other parts of it; and that in the little bits which i fix upon for animadversion, i am not pointing out solitary faults, but only the most characteristic examples of the falsehood which is everywhere, and which renders the whole foreground one mass of contradictions and absurdities. nor do i myself see wherein the great difference lies between a master and a novice, except in the rendering of the finer truths, of which i am at present speaking. to handle the brush freely, and to paint grass and weeds with accuracy enough to satisfy the eye, are accomplishments which a year or two's practice will give any man; but to trace among the grass and weeds those mysteries of invention and combination, by which nature appeals to the intellect--to render the delicate fissure, and descending curve, and undulating shadow of the mouldering soil, with gentle and fine finger, like the touch of the rain itself--to find even in all that appears most trifling or contemptible, fresh evidence of the constant working of the divine power "for glory and for beauty," and to teach it and proclaim it to the unthinking and the unregardless--this, as it is the peculiar province and faculty of the master-mind, so it is the peculiar duty which is demanded of it by the deity. § . the ground of cuyp. § . and of claude. § . the entire weakness and childishness of the latter. § . compared with the work of turner. it would take me no reasonable nor endurable time, if i were to point out one half of the various kinds and classes of falsehood which the inventive faculties of the old masters succeeded in originating, in the drawing of foregrounds. it is not this man, nor that man, nor one school nor another; all agree in entire repudiation of everything resembling facts, and in the high degree of absurdity of what they substitute for them. even cuyp, who evidently saw and studied _near_ nature, as an artist should do--not fishing for idealities, but taking what nature gave him, and thanking her for it--even he appears to have supposed that the drawing of the earth might be trusted to chance or imagination, and, in consequence, strews his banks with lumps of dough, instead of stones. perhaps, however, the "beautiful foregrounds" of claude afford the most remarkable instances of childishness and incompetence of all. that of his morning landscape, with the large group of trees and high single-arched bridge, in the national gallery, is a pretty fair example of the kind of error which he constantly falls into. i will not say anything of the agreeable composition of the three banks, rising one behind another from the water. i merely affirm that it amounts to a demonstration that all three were painted in the artist's study, without any reference to nature whatever. in fact, there is quite enough intrinsic evidence in each of them to prove this, seeing that what appears to be meant for vegetation upon them, amounts to nothing more than a green stain on their surfaces, the more evidently false because the leaves of the trees twenty yards farther off are all perfectly visible and distinct; and that the sharp lines with which each cuts against that beyond it, are not only such as crumbling earth could never show or assume, but are maintained through their whole progress ungraduated, unchanging, and unaffected by any of the circumstances of varying shade to which every one of nature's lines is inevitably subjected. in fact, the whole arrangement is the impotent struggle of a tyro to express, by successive edges, that approach of earth which he finds himself incapable of expressing by the drawing of the surface. claude wished to make you understand that the edge of his pond came nearer and nearer: he had probably often tried to do this with an unbroken bank, or a bank only varied by the delicate and harmonized anatomy of nature; and he had found that owing to his total ignorance of the laws of perspective, such efforts on his part invariably ended in his reducing his pond to the form of a round o, and making it look perpendicular. much comfort and solace of mind, in such unpleasant circumstances, may be derived from instantly dividing the obnoxious bank into a number of successive promontories, and developing their edges with completeness and intensity. every school-girl's drawing, as soon as her mind has arrived at so great a degree of enlightenment as to perceive that perpendicular water is objectionable, will supply us with edifying instances of this unfailing resource; and this foreground of claude's is only one out of the thousand cases in which he has been reduced to it. and if it be asked, how the proceeding differs from that of nature, i have only to point to nature herself, as she is drawn in the foreground of turner's mercury and argus, a case precisely similar to claude's, of earthy crumbling banks cut away by water. it will be found in this picture (and i am now describing nature's work and turner's with the same words) that the whole distance is given by retirement of solid surface; and that if ever an edge is expressed, it is only felt for an instant, and then lost again; so that the eye cannot stop at it and prepare for a long jump to another like it, but is guided over it, and round it, into the hollow beyond; and thus the whole receding mass of ground, going back for more than a quarter of a mile, is made completely _one_--no part of it is separated from the rest for an instant--it is all united, and its modulations are _members_, not _divisions_ of its mass. but those modulations are countless--heaving here, sinking there--now swelling, now mouldering, now blending, now breaking--giving, in fact, to the foreground of this universal master, precisely the same qualities which we have before seen in his hills, as claude gave to his foreground precisely the same qualities which we had before found in _his_ hills,--infinite unity in the one case, finite division in the other. § . general features of turner's foreground. let us, then, having now obtained some insight into the principles of the old masters in foreground drawing, contrast them throughout with those of our great modern master. the investigation of the excellence of turner's drawing becomes shorter and easier as we proceed, because the great distinctions between his work and that of other painters are the same, whatever the object or subject may be; and after once showing the general characters of the particular specific forms under consideration, we have only to point, in the works of turner, to the same principles of infinity and variety in carrying them out, which we have before insisted upon with reference to other subjects. § . geological structure of his rocks in the fall of the tees. § . their convex surfaces and fractured edges. § . and perfect unity. § . various parts whose history is told us by the details of the drawing. the upper fall of the tees, yorkshire, engraved in the england series, may be given as a standard example of rock-drawing to be opposed to the work of salvator. we have, in the great face of rock which divides the two streams, horizontal lines which indicate the real direction of the strata, and these same lines are given in ascending perspective all along the precipice on the right. but we see also on the central precipice fissures absolutely vertical, which inform us of one series of joints dividing these horizontal strata; and the exceeding smoothness and evenness of the precipice itself inform us that it has been caused by a great separation of substance in the direction of another more important line of joints, running in a direction across the river. accordingly, we see on the left that the whole summit of the precipice is divided again and again by this great series of joints into vertical beds, which lie against each other with their sides towards us, and are traversed downwards by the same vertical lines traceable on the face of the central cliff. now, let me direct especial attention to the way in which turner has marked over this general and grand unity of structure, the modifying effects of the weather and the torrent. observe how the whole surface of the hill above the precipice on the left[ ] is brought into one smooth, unbroken curvature of gentle convexity, until it comes to the edge of the precipice, and then, just on the angle, (compare § ,) breaks into the multiplicity of fissure which marks its geological structure. observe how every one of the separate blocks, into which it divides, is rounded and convex in its salient edges turned to the weather, and how every one of their inward angles is marked clear and sharp by the determined shadow and transparent reflex. observe how exquisitely graceful are all the curves of the convex surfaces, indicating that every one of them has been modelled by the winding and undulating of running water; and how gradually they become steeper as they descend, until they are torn down into the face of the precipice. finally, observe the exquisite variety of all the touches which express fissure or shade; every one in varying directions and with new forms, and yet throughout indicating that perfect parallelism which at once explained to us the geology of the rock, and falling into one grand mass, treated with the same simplicity of light and shade which a great portrait painter adopts in treating the features of the human face; which, though each has its own separate chiaroscuro, never disturb the wholeness and grandeur of the head, considered as one ball or mass. so here, one deep and marked piece of shadow indicates the greatest proximity of the rounded mass; and from this every shade becomes fainter and fainter, until all are lost in the obscurity and dimness of the hanging precipice and the shattering fall. again, see how the same fractures just upon the edge take place with the central cliff above the right-hand fall, and how the force of the water is told us by the confusion of débris accumulated in its channel. in fact, the great quality about turner's drawings which more especially proves their transcendent truth, is the capability they afford us of reasoning on past and future phenomena, just as if we had the actual rocks before us; for this indicates not that one truth is given, nor another, not that a pretty or interesting morsel has been selected here and there, but that the whole truth has been given, with all the relations of its parts; so that we can pick and choose our points of pleasure or of thought for ourselves, and reason upon the whole with the same certainty which we should after having climbed and hammered over the rocks bit by bit. with this drawing before him, a geologist could give a lecture upon the whole system of aqueous erosion, and speculate as safely upon the past and future states of this very spot, as if he were standing and getting wet with the spray. he would tell you, at once, that the waterfall was in a state of rapid recession; that it had once formed a wide cataract just at the spot where the figure is sitting on the heap of débris; and that when it was there, part of it came down by the channel on the left, its bed being still marked by the delicately chiselled lines of fissure. he would tell you that the foreground had also once been the top of the fall, and that the vertical fissures on the right of it were evidently then the channel of a side stream. he would tell you that the fall was then much lower than it is now, and that being lower, it had less force, and cut itself a narrower bed; and that the spot where it reached the higher precipice is marked by the expansion of the wide basin which its increased violence has excavated, and by the gradually increasing concavity of the rocks below, which we see have been hollowed into a complete vault by the elastic bound of the water. but neither he nor i could tell you with what exquisite and finished marking of every fragment and particle of soil or rock, both in its own structure and the evidence it bears of these great influences, the whole of this is confirmed and carried out. § . beautiful instance of an exception to general rules in the llanthony. with this inimitable drawing we may compare the rocks in the foreground of the llanthony. these latter are not divided by joints, but into thin horizontal and united beds, which the torrent in its times of flood has chiselled away, leaving one exposed under another, with the sweeping marks of its eddies upon their edges. and here we have an instance of an exception to a general rule, occasioned by particular and local action. we have seen that the action of water over any surface _universally_, whether falling, as in rain, or sweeping, as a torrent, induces convexity of form. but when we have rocks _in situ_, as here, exposed at their edges to the violent action of an eddy, that eddy will cut a vault or circular space for itself, (as we saw on a large scale with the high waterfall,) and we have a concave curve interrupting the general contours of the rock. and thus turner (while every edge of his masses is rounded, and, the moment we rise above the level of the water, all is convex) has interrupted the great contours of his strata with concave curves, precisely where the last waves of the torrent have swept against the exposed edges of the beds. nothing could more strikingly prove the depth of that knowledge by which every touch of this consummate artist is regulated, that universal command of subject which never acts for a moment on anything conventional or habitual, but fills every corner and space with new evidence of knowledge, and fresh manifestation of thought. § . turner's drawing of detached blocks of weathered stone. the lower fall of the tees, with the chain-bridge, might serve us for an illustration of all the properties and forms of vertical beds of rock, as the upper fall has of horizontal; but we pass rather to observe, in detached pieces of foreground, the particular modulation of parts which cannot be investigated in the grand combinations of general mass. the blocks of stone which form the foreground of the ulleswater are, i believe, the finest example in the world of the finished drawing of rocks which have been subjected to violent aqueous action. their surfaces seem to palpitate from the fine touch of the waves, and every part of them is rising or falling in soft swell or gentle depression, though the eye can scarcely trace the fine shadows on which this chiselling of the surface depends. and with all this, every block of them has individual character, dependent on the expression of the angular lines of which its contours were first formed, and which is retained and felt through all the modulation and melting of the water-worn surface. and what is done here in the most important part of the picture, to be especially attractive to the eye, is often done by turner with lavish and overwhelming power, in the accumulated débris of a wide foreground, strewed with the ruin of ages, as, for instance, in the junction of the greta and tees, where he has choked the torrent bed with a mass of shattered rock, thrown down with the profusion and carelessness of nature herself; and yet every separate block is a study, (and has evidently been drawn from nature,) chiselled and varied in its parts, as if it were to be the chief member of a separate subject; yet without ever losing, in a single instance, its subordinate position, or occasioning, throughout the whole accumulated multitude, the repetition of a single line. § . and of complicated foreground. i consider cases like these, of perfect finish and new conception, applied and exerted in the drawing of every member of a confused and almost countlessly-divided system, about the most wonderful, as well as the most characteristic passages of turner's foregrounds. it is done not less marvellously, though less distinctly, in the individual parts of all his broken ground, as in examples like these of separate blocks. the articulation of such a passage as the nearest bank, in the picture we have already spoken of at so great length, the upper fall of the tees, might serve us for a day's study, if we were to go into it part by part; but it is impossible to do this, except with the pencil; we can only repeat the same general observations, about eternal change and unbroken unity, and tell you to observe how the eye is kept throughout on solid and retiring surfaces, instead of being thrown, as by claude, on flat and equal edges. you cannot find a single edge in turner's work; you are everywhere kept upon round surfaces, and you go back on these you cannot tell how--never taking a leap, but progressing imperceptibly along the unbroken bank, till you find yourself a quarter of a mile into the picture, beside the figure at the bottom of the waterfall. § . and of loose soil. finally, the bank of earth on the right of the grand drawing of penmaen mawr, may be taken as the standard of the representation of soft soil modelled by descending rain; and may serve to show us how exquisite in character are the resultant lines, and how full of every species of attractive and even sublime quality, if we only are wise enough not to scorn the study of them. the higher the mind, it may be taken as a universal rule, the less it will scorn that which appears to be small or unimportant; and the rank of a painter may always be determined by observing how he uses, and with what respect he views the minutiæ of nature. greatness of mind is not shown by admitting small things, but by making small things great under its influence. he who can take no interest in what is small, will take false interest in what is great; he who cannot make a bank sublime, will make a mountain ridiculous. § . the unison of all in the ideal foregrounds of the academy pictures. § . and the great lesson to be received from all. it is not until we have made ourselves acquainted with these simple facts of form, as they are illustrated by the slighter works of turner, that we can become at all competent to enjoy the combination of all, in such works as the mercury and argus, or bay of baiæ, in which the mind is at first bewildered by the abundant outpouring of the master's knowledge. often as i have paused before these noble works, i never felt on returning to them as if i had ever seen them before; for their abundance is so deep and various that the mind, according to its own temper at the time of seeing, perceives some new series of truths rendered in them, just as it would on revisiting a natural scene; and detects new relations and associations of these truths which set the whole picture in a different light at every return to it. and this effect is especially caused by the management of the foreground; for the more marked objects of the picture may be taken one by one, and thus examined and known; but the foregrounds of turner are so united in all their parts that the eye cannot take them by divisions, but is guided from stone to stone, and bank to bank, discovering truths totally different in aspect, according to the direction in which it approaches them, and approaching them in a different direction, and viewing them as a part of a new system, every time that it begins its course at a new point. one lesson, however, we are invariably taught by all, however approached or viewed,--that the work of the great spirit of nature is as deep and unapproachable in the lowest as in the noblest objects,--that the divine mind is as visible in its full energy of operation on every lowly bank and mouldering stone, as in the lifting of the pillars of heaven, and settling the foundation of the earth; and that to the rightly perceiving mind, there is the same infinity, the same majesty, the same power, the same unity, and the same perfection, manifest in the casting of the clay as in the scattering of the cloud, in the mouldering of the dust as in the kindling of the day-star. footnotes [ ] i have cut out a passage in this place which insisted on the _angular_ character of rocks,--not because it was false, but because it was incomplete, and i cannot explain it nor complete it without example. it is not the absence of curves, but the suggestion of _hardness through_ curves, and of the under tendencies of the inward structure, which form the true characteristics of rock form; and salvator, whom neither here nor elsewhere i have abused enough, is not wrong because he paints curved rocks, but because his curves are the curves of ribbons and not of rocks; and the difference between rock curvature and other curvature i cannot explain verbally, but i hope to do it hereafter by illustration; and, at present, let the reader study the rock-drawing of the mont st. gothard subject, in the liber studiorum, and compare it with any examples of salvator to which he may happen to have access. all the account of rocks here given is altogether inadequate, and i only do not alter it because i first wish to give longer study to the subject. [ ] a passage which i happened to see in an essay of mr. pyne's, in the art-union, about nature's "foisting rubbish" upon the artist, sufficiently explains the cause of this decline. if mr. pyne will go to nature, as all great men have done, and as all men who mean to be great must do, that is not merely to be _helped_, but to be _taught_ by her; and will once or twice take her gifts, without looking them in the mouth, he will most assuredly find--and i say this in no unkind or depreciatory feeling, for i should say the same of all artists who are in the habit of only sketching nature, and not studying her--that _her_ worst is better than _his_ best. i am quite sure that if mr. pyne, or any other painter who has hitherto been very careful in his choice of subject, will go into the next turnpike-road, and taking the first four trees that he comes to in the hedge, give them a day each, drawing them leaf for leaf, as far as may be, and even their smallest boughs with as much care as if they were rivers, or an important map of a newly-surveyed country, he will find, when he has brought them all home, that at least three out of the four are better than the best he ever invented. compare part iii. sect. i. chap. iii. § , , (the reference in the note ought to be to chap. xv. § .) [ ] in the light between the waterfall and the large dark mass on the extreme right. section v. of truth of water. chapter i. of water, as painted by the ancients. § . sketch of the functions and infinite agency of water. of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and without assistance or combination, water is the most wonderful. if we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen; then as it exists in the form of the torrent--in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element for glory and for beauty? or how shall we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling? it is like trying to paint a soul. § . the ease with which a common representation of it may be given. the impossibility of a faithful one. to suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water--to lay on canvas as much evidence of surface and reflection as may make us understand that water is meant--is, perhaps, the easiest task of art; and even ordinary running or falling water may be sufficiently rendered, by observing careful curves of projection with a dark ground, and breaking a little white over it, as we see done with judgment and truth by ruysdael. but to paint the actual play of hue on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of water when it begins to show itself--to give the flashing and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision and grace of the sea waves, so exquisitely modelled, though so mockingly transient--so mountainous in its form, yet so cloud-like in its motion--with its variety and delicacy of color, when every ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of reflection upon itself alone, and the radiating and scintillating sunbeams are mixed with the dim hues of transparent depth and dark rock below;--to do this perfectly, is beyond the power of man; to do it even partially, has been granted to but one or two, even of those few who have dared to attempt it. § . difficulty of properly dividing the subject. as the general laws which govern the appearances of water have equal effect on all its forms, it would be injudicious to treat the subject in divisions; for the same forces which govern the waves and foam of the torrent, are equally influential on those of the sea; and it will be more convenient to glance generally at the system of water-painting of each school and artist, than to devote separate chapters to the examination of the lake, river, or sea-painting of all. we shall, therefore, vary our usual plan, and look first at the water-painting of the ancients; then at that of the moderns generally; lastly, at that of turner. § . inaccuracy of study of water-effect among all painters. it is necessary in the outset to state briefly one or two of the optical conditions by which the appearance of the surface of water is affected; to describe them all would require a separate essay, even if i possessed the requisite knowledge, which i do not. the accidental modifications under which general laws come into play are innumerable, and often, in their extreme complexity, inexplicable, i suppose, even by men of the most extended optical knowledge. what i shall here state are a few only of the broadest laws verifiable by the reader's immediate observation, but of which nevertheless, i have found artists frequently ignorant; owing to their habit of sketching from nature without thinking or reasoning, and especially of finishing at home. it is not often, i believe, that an artist draws the reflections in water as he sees them; over large spaces, and in weather that is not very calm, it is nearly impossible to do so; when it is possible, sometimes in haste, and sometimes in idleness, and sometimes under the idea of improving nature, they are slurred or misrepresented; it is so easy to give something like a suggestive resemblance of calm water, that, even when the landscape is finished from nature, the water is merely indicated as something that may be done at any time, and then, in the home work, come the cold leaden grays with some, and the violent blues and greens with others, and the horizontal lines with the feeble, and the bright touches and sparkles with the dexterous, and everything that is shallow and commonplace with all. now, the fact is, that there is hardly a roadside pond or pool which has not as much landscape _in_ it as above it. it is not the brown, muddy, dull thing we suppose it to be; it has a heart like ourselves, and in the bottom of that there are the boughs of the tall trees, and the blades of the shaking-grass, and all manner of hues, of variable, pleasant light out of the sky; nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates over the drain bars, in the heart of the foul city, is not altogether base; down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see the dark, serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure clouds. it is at your own will that you see in that despised stream, either the refuse of the street, or the image of the sky--so it is with almost all other things that we unkindly despise. now, this farseeing is just the difference between the great and the vulgar painter; the common man _knows_ the roadside pool is muddy, and draws its mud; the great painter sees beneath and behind the brown surface what will take him a day's work to follow, but he follows it, cost what it will. and if painters would only go out to the nearest common and take the nearest dirty pond among the furze, and draw that thoroughly, not considering that it is water that they are drawing, and that water must be done in a certain way; but drawing determinedly what they _see_, that is to say, all the trees, and their shaking leaves, and all the hazy passages of disturbing sunshine; and the bottom seen in the clearer little bits at the edge, and the stones of it, and all the sky, and the clouds far down in the middle, drawn as completely, and more delicately they must be, than the real clouds above, they would come home with such a notion of water-painting as might save me and every one else all trouble of writing more about the matter; but now they do nothing of the kind, but take the ugly, round, yellow surface for granted, or else improve it, and, instead of giving that refined, complex, delicate, but saddened and gloomy reflection in the polluted water, they clear it up with coarse flashes of yellow, and green, and blue, and spoil their own eyes, and hurt ours; failing, of course, still more hopelessly in touching the pure, inimitable light of waves thrown loose; and so canaletto is still thought to have painted canals, and vandevelde and backhuysen to have painted sea, and the uninterpreted streams and maligned sea hiss shame upon us from all their rocky beds and hollow shores. § . difficulty of treating this part of the subject. i approach this part of my subject with more despondency than any other, and that for several reasons; first, the water painting of all the elder landscape painters, excepting a few of the better passages of claude and ruysdael, is so execrable, so beyond all expression and explanation bad; claude's and ruysdael's best so cold and valueless, that i do not know how to address those who like such painting; i do not know what their sensations are respecting sea. i can perceive nothing in vandevelde or backhuysen of the lowest redeeming merit; no power, no presence of intellect--or evidence of perception--of any sort or kind; no resemblance--even the feeblest--of anything natural; no invention--even the most sluggish--of anything agreeable. had they given us staring green seas with hatchet edges, such as we see her majesty's ships so-and-so fixed into by the heads or sterns in the first room of the royal academy, the admiration of them would have been comprehensible; there being a natural predilection in the mind of men for green waves with curling tops, but not for clay and wool; so that though i can understand, in some sort, why people admire everything else in old art, why they admire salvator's rocks, and claude's foregrounds, and hobbima's trees, and paul potter's cattle, and jan steen's pans; and while i can perceive in all these likings a root which seems right and legitimate, and to be appealed to; yet when i find they can even _endure_ the _sight_ of a backhuysen on their room walls (i speak seriously) it makes me hopeless at once. i may be wrong, or they may be wrong, but at least i can conceive of no principle or opinion common between us, which either can address or understand in the other; and yet i am wrong in this want of conception, for i know that turner once liked vandevelde, and i can trace the evil influence of vandevelde on most of his early sea painting, but turner certainly could not have liked vandevelde without _some_ legitimate cause. another discouraging point is that i cannot catch a wave, nor daguerreotype it, and so there is no coming to pure demonstration; but the forms and hues of water must always be in some measure a matter of dispute and feeling, and the more so because there is no perfect or even tolerably perfect sea painting to refer to: the sea never has been, and i fancy never will be nor can be painted; it is only suggested by means of more or less spiritual and intelligent conventionalism; and though turner has done enough to suggest the sea mightily and gloriously, after all it is by conventionalism still, and there remains so much that is unlike nature, that it is always possible for those who do not feel his power to justify their dislike, on very sufficient and reasonable grounds; and to maintain themselves obstinately unreceptant of the good, by insisting on the deficiency which no mortal hand can supply, and which commonly is most manifest on the one hand, where most has been achieved on the other. with calm water the case is different. facts are ascertainable and demonstrable there, and by the notice of one or two of the simplest, we may obtain some notion of the little success and intelligence of the elder painters in this easier field, and so prove their probable failure in contending with greater difficulties. § . general laws which regulate the phenomena of water. first, the imperfection of its reflective surface. first: water, of course, owing to its transparency, possesses not a perfectly reflective surface, like that of speculum metal, but a surface whose reflective power is dependent on the angle at which the rays to be reflected fall. the smaller this angle, the greater are the number of rays reflected. now, according to the number of rays reflected is the force of the image of objects above, and according to the number of rays transmitted is the perceptibility of objects below the water. hence the visible transparency and reflective power of water are in inverse ratio. in looking down into it from above, we receive transmitted rays which exhibit either the bottom, or the objects floating in the water; or else if the water be deep and clear, we receive very few rays, and the water looks black. in looking along water we receive reflected rays, and therefore the image of objects above it. hence, in shallow water on a level shore the bottom is seen at our feet, clearly; it becomes more and more obscure as it retires, even though the water do not increase in depth, and at a distance of twelve or twenty yards--more or less according to our height above the water--becomes entirely invisible, lost in the lustre of the reflected surface. § . the inherent hue of water modifies dark reflections, and does not affect bright ones. second: the brighter the objects reflected, the larger the angle at which reflection is visible; it is always to be remembered that, strictly speaking, only light objects are reflected, and that the darker ones are seen only in proportion to the number of rays of light that they can send; so that a dark object comparatively loses its power to affect the surface of water, and the water in the space of a dark reflection is seen partially with the image of the object, and partially transparent. it will be found on observation that under a bank--suppose with dark trees above showing spaces of bright sky, the bright sky is reflected distinctly, and the bottom of the water is in those spaces not seen; but in the dark spaces of reflection we see the bottom of the water, and the color of that bottom and of the water itself mingles with and modifies that of the color of the trees casting the dark reflection. this is one of the most beautiful circumstances connected with water surface, for by these means a variety of color and a grace and evanescence are introduced in the reflection otherwise impossible. of course at great distances even the darkest objects cast distinct images, and the hue of the water cannot be seen, but in near water the occurrence of its own color modifying the dark reflections, while it leaves light ones unaffected, is of infinite value. take, by way of example, an extract from my own diary at venice. "may th, p.m. looking east the water is calm, and reflects the sky and vessels, with this peculiarity; the sky, which is pale blue, is in its reflection of the same kind of blue, only a little deeper; but the _vessels' hulls, which are black, are reflected in pale sea green_, _i.e._, the natural color of the water under sunlight; while the _orange masts_ of the vessels, wet with a recent shower, are reflected _without change of color_, only not quite so bright as above. one ship has a white, another a red stripe," (i ought to have said horizontal along the gunwales,) '_of these the water takes no notice_.' "what is curious, a boat passes across with white and dark figures, the water reflects the dark ones in green, and misses out all the white; this is chiefly owing to the dark images being opposed to the bright reflected sky." i have left the passage about the white and red stripe, because it will be useful to us presently; all that i wish to insist upon here is the showing of the local color (pea green) of the water in the spaces which were occupied by dark reflections, and the unaltered color of the bright ones. § . water takes no shadow. third: clear water takes no shadow, and that for two reasons; a perfect surface of speculum metal takes no shadow, (this the reader may instantly demonstrate for himself,) and a perfectly transparent body as air takes no shadow; hence water, whether transparent or reflective, takes no shadow. but shadows, or the forms of them, appear on water frequently and sharply: it is necessary carefully to explain the causes of these, as they are one of the most eminent sources of error in water painting. first: water in shade is much more reflective than water in sunlight. under sunlight the local color of the water is commonly vigorous and active, and forcibly affects, as we have seen, all the dark reflections, commonly diminishing their depth. under shade, the reflective power is in a high degree increased,[ ] and it will be found most frequently that the forms of shadows are expressed on the surface of water, not by actual shade, but by more genuine reflection of objects above. this is another most important and valuable circumstance, and we owe to it some phenomena of the highest beauty. a very muddy river, as the arno for instance at florence, is seen during sunshine of its own yellow color, rendering all reflections discolored and feeble. at twilight it recovers its reflective power to the fullest extent, and the mountains of carrara are seen reflected in it as clearly as if it were a crystalline lake. the mediterranean, whose determined blue yields to hardly any modifying color in daytime, receives at evening the image of its rocky shores. on our own seas, seeming shadows are seen constantly cast in purple and blue, upon pale green. these are no shadows, but the pure reflection of dark or blue sky above, seen in the shadowed space, refused by the local color of the sea in the sunlighted spaces, and turned more or less purple by the opposition of the vivid green. § . modification of dark reflections by shadow. we have seen, however, above, that the local color of water, while it comparatively refuses dark reflections, accepts bright ones without deadening them. hence when a shadow is thrown across a space of water of strong local color, receiving, alternately, light and dark reflections, it has no power of increasing the reflectiveness of the water in the bright spaces, still less of diminishing it; hence, on all the dark reflections it is seen more or less distinctly, on all the light ones it vanishes altogether. let us take an instance of the exquisite complexity of effect induced by these various circumstances in co-operation. suppose a space of clear water showing the bottom under a group of trees, showing sky through their branches, casting shadows on the surface of the water, which we will suppose also to possess some color of its own. close to us, we shall see the bottom, with the shadows of the trees clearly thrown upon it, and the color of the water seen in its genuineness by transmitted light. farther off, the bottom will be gradually lost sight of, but it will be seen in the dark reflections much farther than in the light ones. at last it ceases to affect even the former, and the pure surface effect takes place. the blue bright sky is reflected truly, but the dark trees are reflected imperfectly, and the color of the water is seen instead. where the shadow falls on these dark reflections a darkness is seen plainly, which is found to be composed of the pure clear reflection of the dark trees; when it crosses the reflection of the sky, the shadow of course, being thus fictitious, vanishes. farther, of course on whatever dust and other foulness may be present in water, real shadow falls clear and dark in proportion to the quantity of solid substance present. on very muddy rivers, real shadow falls in sunlight nearly as sharply as on land; on our own sea, the apparent shadow caused by increased reflection, is much increased in depth by the chalkiness and impurity of the water. farther, when surface is rippled, every ripple, up to a certain variable distance on each side of the spectator, and at a certain angle between him and the sun, varying with the size and shape of the ripples, reflects to him a small image of the sun. hence those dazzling fields of expanding light so often seen upon the sea. any object that comes between the sun and these ripples, takes from them the power of reflecting the sun, and in consequence, all their light; hence any intervening objects cast apparent shadows upon such spaces of intense force, and of the exact shape, and in the exact place of real shadows, and yet which are no more real shadows than the withdrawal of an image of a piece of white paper from a mirror is a shadow on the mirror. farther, in all shallow water, more or less in proportion to its shallowness, but in some measure, i suppose, up to depths of forty or fifty fathoms, and perhaps more, the local color of the water depends in great measure on light reflected from the bottom. this, however, is especially manifest in clear rivers like the rhone, where the absence of the light reflected from below forms an apparent shadow, often visibly detached some distance from the floating object which casts it. § . examples on the water of the rhone. the following extract from my own diary at geneva, with the subsequent one, which is a continuation of that already given in part at venice, will illustrate both this and the other points we have been stating. "geneva, _ st april, morning._ "the sunlight falls from the cypresses of rousseau's island straight towards the bridge. the shadows of the bridge and of the trees fall on the water in leaden purple, opposed to its general hue of aquamarine green. this green color is caused by the light being reflected from the bottom, though the bottom is not seen; as is evident by its becoming paler towards the middle of the river, where the water shoals, on which pale part the purple shadow of the small bridge falls most forcibly, which shadow, however, is still only apparent, being the absence of this reflected light, associated with the increased reflective power of the water, which in those spaces reflects blue sky above. a boat swings in the shoal water; its reflection is cast in a transparent pea-green, which is considerably darker than the pale aquamarine of the surface at the spot. its shadow is detached from it just about half the depth of the reflection; which, therefore, forms a bright green light between the keel of the boat and its shadow; where the shadow cuts the reflection, the reflection is darkest and something like the true color of the boat; where the shadow falls out of the reflection, it is of a leaden purple, pale. the boat is at an angle of about ° below. another boat nearer, in deeper water, shows no shadow, whatsoever, and the reflection is marked by its transparent green, while the surrounding water takes a lightish blue reflection from the sky." the above notes, after what has been said, require no comment; but one more case must be stated belonging to rough water. every large wave of the sea is in ordinary circumstances divided into, or rather covered by, innumerable smaller waves, each of which, in all probability, from some of its edges or surfaces reflects the sunbeams; and hence result a glitter, polish, and vigorous light over the whole flank of the wave, which are, of course, instantly withdrawn within the space of a cast shadow, whose form, therefore, though it does not affect the great body or ground of the water in the least, is sufficiently traceable by the withdrawal of the high lights; also every string and wreath of foam above or within the wave takes real shadow, and thus adds to the impression. i have not stated one-half of the circumstances which produce or influence effects of shadow on water; but lest i should confuse or weary the reader, i leave him to pursue the subject for himself; enough having been stated to establish this general principle, that whenever shadow is seen on clear water, and, in a measure, even on foul water, it is not, as on land, a dark shade subduing where it falls the sunny general hue to a lower tone; but it is a space of an entirely different color, subject itself, by its susceptibility of reflection, to infinite varieties of depth and hue, and liable, under certain circumstances, to disappear altogether; and that, therefore, whenever we have to paint such shadows, it is not only the hue of the water itself that we have to consider, but all the circumstances by which in the position attributed to them such shaded spaces could be affected. § . effect of ripple on distant water. fourth: if water be rippled, the side of every ripple next to us reflects a piece of the sky, and the side of every ripple farthest from us reflects a piece of the opposite shore, or of whatever objects may be beyond the ripple. but as we soon lose sight of the farther sides of the ripples on the retiring surface, the whole rippled space will then be reflective of the sky only. thus, where calm distant water receives reflections of high shores, every extent of rippled surface appears as a bright line interrupting that reflection with the color of the sky. § . elongation of reflections by moving water. fifth: when a ripple or swell is seen at such an angle as to afford a view of its farther side, it carries the reflection of objects farther down than calm water would. therefore all motion in water elongates reflections, and throws them into confused vertical lines. the real amount of this elongation is not distinctly visible, except in the case of very bright objects, and especially of lights, as of the sun, moon, or lamps by a river shore, whose reflections are hardly ever seen as circles or points, which of course they are on perfectly calm water, but as long streams of tremulous light. but it is strange that while we are constantly in the habit of seeing the reflection of the sun, which ought to be a mere circle, elongated into a stream of light extending from the horizon to the shore, the elongation of the reflection of a sail or other object to one-half of this extent is received, if represented in a picture, with incredulity by the greater number of spectators. in one of turner's venices the image of the white lateen-sails of the principal boat is about twice as long as the sails themselves. i have heard the truth of this simple effect disputed over and over again by intelligent persons, and yet on any water so exposed as the lagoons of venice, the periods are few and short when there is so little motion as that the reflection of sails a mile off shall not affect the swell within six feet of the spectator. there is, however, a strange arbitrariness about this elongation of reflection, which prevents it from being truly felt. if we see on an extent of lightly swelling water surface the image of a bank of white clouds, with masses of higher accumulation at intervals, the water will not usually reflect the whole bank in an elongated form, but it will commonly take the eminent parts, and reflect them in long straight columns of defined breadth, and miss the intermediate lower parts altogether; and even in doing this it will be capricious, for it will take one eminence, and miss another, with no apparent reason; and often when the sky is covered with white clouds, some of those clouds will cast long tower-like reflections, and others none, so arbitrarily that the spectator is often puzzled to find out which are the accepted and which the refused. in many cases of this kind it will be found rather that the eye is, from want of use and care, insensible to the reflection than that the reflection is not there; and a little thought and careful observation will show us that what we commonly suppose to be a surface of uniform color is, indeed, affected more or less by an infinite variety of hues, prolonged, like the sun image, from a great distance, and that our apprehension of its lustre, purity, and even of its surface, is in no small degree dependent on our feeling of these multitudinous hues, which the continual motion of that surface prevents us from analyzing or understanding for what they are. § . effect of rippled water on horizontal and inclined images. sixth: rippled water, of which we can see the farther side of the waves, will reflect a perpendicular line clearly, a bit of its length being given on the side of each wave, and easily joined by the eye. but if the line slope, its reflection will be excessively confused and disjointed; and if horizontal, nearly invisible. it was this circumstance which prevented the red and white stripe of the ships at venice, noticed above, from being visible. § . to what extent reflection is visible from above. seventh: every reflection is the image in reverse of just so much of the objects beside the water, as we could see if we were placed as much under the level of the water as we are actually above it. if an object be so far back from the bank, that if we were five feet under the water level we could not see it over the bank, then, standing five feet above the water, we shall not be able to see its image under the reflected bank. hence the reflection of all objects that have any slope back from the water is shortened, and at last disappears as we rise above it. lakes seen from a great height appear like plates of metal set in the landscape, reflecting the sky but none of their shores. § . deflection of images on agitated water. eighth: any given point of the object above the water is reflected, if reflected at all, at some spot in a vertical line beneath it, so long as the plane of the water is horizontal. on rippled water a slight deflection sometimes takes place, and the image of a vertical tower will slope a little away from the wind, owing to the casting of the image on the sloping sides of the ripples. on the sloping sides of large waves the deflection is in proportion to the slope. for rough practice, after the slope of the wave is determined, let the artist turn his paper until it becomes horizontal, and then paint the reflections of any object upon it as on level water, and he will be right. § . necessity of watchfulness as well as of science. licenses, how taken by great men. such are the most common and general optical laws which are to be taken into consideration in the painting of water. yet, in the application of them, as tests of good or bad water painting, we must be cautious in the extreme. an artist may know all these laws, and comply with them, and yet paint water execrably; and he may be ignorant of every one of them, and, in their turn, and in certain places, violate every one of them, and yet paint water gloriously. thousands of exquisite effects take place in nature, utterly inexplicable, and which can be believed only while they are seen; the combinations and applications of the above laws are so varied and complicated that no knowledge or labor could, if applied analytically, keep pace with them. constant and eager watchfulness, and portfolios filled with actual statements of water-effect, drawn on the spot and on the instant, are worth more to the painter than the most extended optical knowledge; without these all his knowledge will end in a pedantic falsehood. with these it does not matter how gross or how daring here and there may be his violations of this or that law; his very transgressions will be admirable. it may be said, that this is a dangerous principle to advance in these days of idleness. i cannot help it; it is true, and must be affirmed. of all contemptible criticism, the most to be contemned is that which punishes great works of art when they fight without armor, and refuses to feel or acknowledge the great spiritual refracted sun of their truth, because it has risen at a false angle, and burst upon them before its appointed time. and yet, on the other hand, let it be observed that it is not feeling, nor fancy, nor imagination, so called, that i have put before science, but watchfulness, experience, affection and trust in nature; and farther let it be observed, that there is a difference between the license taken by one man and another, which makes one license admirable, and the other punishable; and that this difference is of a kind sufficiently discernible by every earnest person, though it is not so explicable as that we can beforehand say where and when, or even to whom, the license is to be forgiven. in the paradise of tintoret, in the academy of venice, the angel is seen in the distance driving adam and eve out of the garden. not, for tintoret, the leading to the gate with consolation or counsel; his strange ardor of conception is seen here as everywhere. full speed they fly, the angel and the human creatures; the angel wrapt in an orb of light floats on, stooped forward in his fierce flight, and does not touch the ground; the chastised creatures rush before him in abandoned terror. all this might have been invented by another, though in other hands it would assuredly have been offensive; but one circumstance which completes the story could have been thought of or dared by none but tintoret. the angel casts a shadow before him towards adam and eve. now that a globe of light should cast a shadow is a license, as far as mere optical matters are concerned, of the most audacious kind. but how beautiful is the circumstance in its application here, showing that the angel, who is light to all else around him, is darkness to those whom he is commissioned to banish forever. i have before noticed the license of rubens in making his horizon an oblique line. his object is to carry the eye to a given point in the distance. the road winds to it, the clouds fly at it, the trees nod to it, a flock of sheep scamper towards it, a carter points his whip at it, his horses pull for it, the figures push for it, and the horizon slopes to it. if the horizon had been horizontal, it would have embarrassed everything and everybody. in turner's pas de calais there is a buoy poised on the ridge of a near wave. it casts its reflection vertically down the flank of the wave, which slopes steeply. i cannot tell whether this is a license or a mistake; i suspect the latter, for the same thing occurs not unfrequently in turner's seas; but i am almost certain that it would have been done wilfully in this case, even had the mistake been pointed out, for the vertical line is necessary to the picture, and the eye is so little accustomed to catch the real bearing of the reflections on the slopes of waves that it does not feel the fault. § . various licenses or errors in water painting of claude, cuyp, vandevelde. in one of the smaller rooms of the uffizii at florence, off the tribune, there are two so-called claudes; one a pretty wooded landscape, i think a copy, the other a marine with architecture, very sweet and genuine. the sun is setting at the side of the picture, it casts a long stream of light upon the water. this stream of light is oblique, and comes from the horizon, where it is under the sun, to a point near the centre of the picture. if this had been done as a license, it would be an instance of most absurd and unjustifiable license, as the fault is detected by the eye in a moment, and there is no occasion nor excuse for it. but i imagine it to be an instance rather of the harm of imperfect science. taking his impression instinctively from nature, claude usually did what is right and put his reflection vertically under the sun; probably, however, he had read in some treatise on optics that every point in this reflection was in a vertical plane between the sun and spectator; or he might have noticed walking on the shore that the reflection came straight from the sun to his feet, and intending to indicate the position of the spectator, drew in his next picture the reflection sloping to the supposed point, the error being excusable enough, and plausible enough to have been lately revived and systematized.[ ] in the picture of cuyp, no. in the dulwich gallery, the post at the end of the bank casts three or four radiating reflections. this is visibly neither license nor half science, but pure ignorance. again, in the picture attributed to paul potter, no. , dulwich gallery, i believe most people must feel, the moment they look at it, that there is something wrong with the water, that it looks odd, and hard, and like ice or lead; and though they may not be able to tell the reason of the impression--for when they go near they will find it smooth and lustrous, and prettily painted--yet they will not be able to shake off the unpleasant sense of its being like a plate of bad mirror set in a model landscape among moss, rather than like a pond. the reason is, that while this water receives clear reflections from the fence and hedge on the left, and is everywhere smooth and evidently capable of giving true images, it yet reflects none of the cows. in the vandevelde ( ) there is not a line of ripple or swell in any part of the sea; it is absolutely windless, and the near boat casts its image with great fidelity, which being unprolonged downwards informs us that the calm is perfect, (rule v.,) and being unshortened informs us that we are on a level with the water, or nearly so. (rule vii.) yet underneath the vessel on the right, the gray shade which stands for reflection breaks off immediately, descending like smoke a little way below the hull, then leaving the masts and sails entirely unrecorded. this i imagine to be not ignorance, but unjustifiable license. vandevelde evidently desired to give an impression of great extent of surface, and thought that if he gave the reflection more faithfully, as the tops of the masts would come down to the nearest part of the surface, they would destroy the evidence of distance, and appear to set the ship above the boat instead of beyond it. i doubt not in such awkward hands that such would indeed have been the case, but he is not on that account to be excused for painting his surface with gray horizontal lines, as is done by nautically-disposed children; for no destruction of distance in the ocean is so serious a loss as that of its liquidity. it is better to feel a want of extent in the sea, than an extent which we might walk upon or play at billiards upon. § . and canaletto. among all the pictures of canaletto, which i have ever seen, and they are not a few, i remember but one or two where there is any variation from one method of treatment of the water. he almost always covers the whole space of it with one monotonous ripple, composed of a coat of well-chosen, but perfectly opaque and smooth sea-green, covered with a certain number, i cannot state the exact average, but it varies from three hundred and fifty to four hundred and upwards, according to the extent of canvas to be covered, of white concave touches, which are very properly symbolical of ripple. and, as the canal retires back from the eye, he very geometrically diminishes the size of his ripples, until he arrives at an even field of apparently smooth water. by our sixth rule, this rippling water as it retires should show more and more of the reflection of the sky above it, and less and less of that of objects beyond it, until, at two or three hundred yards down the canal, the whole field of water should be one even gray or blue, the color of the sky receiving no reflections whatever of other objects. what does canaletto do? exactly in proportion as he retires, he displays _more_ and _more_ of the reflection of objects, and less and less of the sky, until, three hundred yards away, all the houses are reflected as clear and sharp as in a quiet lake. this, again, is wilful and inexcusable violation of truth, of which the reason, as in the last case, is the painter's consciousness of weakness. it is one of the most difficult things in the world to express the light reflection of the blue sky on a distant ripple, and to make the eye understand the cause of the color, and the motion of the apparently smooth water, especially where there are buildings above to be reflected, for the eye never understands the want of the reflection. but it is the easiest and most agreeable thing in the world to give the inverted image: it occupies a vast space of otherwise troublesome distance in the simplest way possible, and is understood by the eye at once. hence canaletto is glad, as any other inferior workman would be, not to say obliged, to give the reflections in the distance. but when he comes up close to the spectator, he finds the smooth surface just as troublesome near, as the ripple would have been far off. it is a very nervous thing for an ignorant artist to have a great space of vacant smooth water to deal with, close to him, too far down to take reflections from buildings, and yet which must be made to look flat and retiring and transparent. canaletto, with his sea-green, did not at all feel himself equal to anything of this kind, and had therefore no resource but in the white touches above described, which occupy the alarming space without any troublesome necessity for knowledge or invention, and supply by their gradual diminution some means of expressing retirement of surface. it is easily understood, therefore, why he should adopt this system, which is just what any awkward workman would naturally cling to, trusting to the inaccuracy of observation of the public to secure him from detection. § . why unpardonable. now in all these cases it is not the mistake or the license itself, it is not the infringement of this or that law which condemns the picture, but it is the spirit and habit of mind in which the license is taken, the cowardice or bluntness of feeling, which infects every part alike, and deprives the whole picture of vitality. canaletto, had he been a great painter, might have cast his reflections wherever he chose, and rippled the water wherever he chose, and painted his sea sloping if he chose, and neither i nor any one else should have dared to say a word against him; but he is a little and a bad painter, and so continues everywhere multiplying and magnifying mistakes, and adding apathy to error, until nothing can any more be pardoned in him. if it be but remembered that every one of the surfaces of those multitudinous ripples is in nature a mirror which catches, according to its position, either the image of the sky or of the silver beaks of the gondolas, or of their black bodies and scarlet draperies, or of the white marble, or the green sea-weed on the low stones, it cannot but be felt that those waves would have something more of color upon them than that opaque dead green. green they are by their own nature, but it is a transparent and emerald hue, mixing itself with the thousand reflected tints without overpowering the weakest of them; and thus, in every one of those individual waves, the truths of color are contradicted by canaletto by the thousand. venice is sad and silent now, to what she was in his time; the canals are choked gradually one by one, and the foul water laps more and more sluggishly against the rent foundations; but even yet, could i but place the reader at the early morning on the quay below the rialto, when the market boats, full laden, float into groups of golden color, and let him watch the dashing of the water about their glittering steely heads, and under the shadows of the vine leaves, and show him the purple of the grapes and the figs, and the glowing of the scarlet gourds carried away in long streams upon the waves, and among them, the crimson fish baskets, plashing and sparkling, and flaming as the morning sun falls on their wet tawny sides, and above, the painted sails of the fishing boats, orange and white, scarlet and blue, and better than all such florid color, the naked, bronzed, burning limbs of the seamen, the last of the old venetian race, who yet keep the right giorgione color on their brows and bosoms, in strange contrast with the sallow sensual degradation of the creatures that live in the cafés of the piazza, he would not be merciful to canaletto any more. § . the dutch painters of sea. yet even canaletto, in relation to the truths he had to paint, is spiritual, faithful, powerful, compared to the dutch painters of sea. it is easily understood why his green paint and concave touches should be thought expressive of the water on which the real colors are not to be discerned but by attention, which is never given; but it is not so easily understood, considering how many there are who love the sea, and look at it, that vandevelde and such others should be tolerated. as i before said, i feel utterly hopeless in addressing the admirers of these men, because i do not know what it is in their works which is supposed to be like nature. foam appears to me to curdle and cream on the wave sides and to fly, flashing from their crests, and not to be set astride upon them like a peruke; and waves appear to me to fall, and plunge, and toss, and nod, and crash over, and not to curl up like shavings; and water appears to me, when it is gray, to have the gray of stormy air mixed with its own deep, heavy, thunderous, threatening blue, and not the gray of the first coat of cheap paint on a deal door; and many other such things appear to me which, as far as i can conjecture by what is admired of marine painting, appear to no one else; yet i shall have something more to say about these men presently, with respect to the effect they have had upon turner; and something more, i hope, hereafter, with the help of illustration. § . ruysdael, claude, and salvator. there is a sea-piece of ruysdael's in the louvre[ ] which, though nothing very remarkable in any quality of art, is at least forceful, agreeable, and, as far as it goes, natural; the waves have much freedom of action, and power of color; the wind blows hard over the shore, and the whole picture may be studied with profit as a proof that the deficiency of color and everything else in backhuysen's works, is no fault of the dutch sea. there is sublimity and power in every field of nature from the pole to the line; and though the painters of one country are often better and greater, universally, than those of another, this is less because the subjects of art are wanting anywhere, than because one country or one age breeds mighty and thinking men, and another none. ruysdael's painting of falling water and brook scenery is also generally agreeable--more than agreeable it can hardly be considered. there appears no exertion of mind in any of his works; nor are they calculated to produce either harm or good by their feeble influence. they are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame. the seas of claude are the finest pieces of water-painting in ancient art. i do not say that i like them, because they appear to me selections of the particular moment when the sea is most insipid and characterless; but i think that they are exceedingly true to the forms and time selected, or at least that the fine instances of them are so, of which there are exceedingly few. on the right hand of one of the marines of salvator, in the pitti palace, there is a passage of sea reflecting the sunrise, which is thoroughly good, and very like turner; the rest of the picture, as the one opposite to it, utterly virtueless. i have not seen any other instance of salvator's painting water with any care, it is usually as conventional as the rest of his work, yet conventionalism is perhaps more tolerable in water-painting than elsewhere; and if his trees and rocks had been good, the rivers might have been generally accepted without objection. § . nicholas poussin. the merits of poussin as a sea or water painter may, i think, be sufficiently determined by the deluge in the louvre, where the breaking up of the fountains of the deep is typified by the capsizing of a wherry over a weir. in the outer porch of st. mark's at venice, among the mosaics on the roof, there is a representation of the deluge. the ground is dark blue; the rain is represented in bright white undulating parallel stripes; between these stripes is seen the massy outline of the ark, a bit between each stripe, very dark and hardly distinguishable from the sky; but it has a square window with a bright golden border, which glitters out conspicuously, and leads the eye to the rest--the sea below is almost concealed with dead bodies. on the font of the church of san frediano at lucca, there is a representation of--possibly--the israelites and egyptians in the red sea. the sea is typified by undulating bands of stone, each band composed of three plies (almost the same type is to be seen in the glass-painting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as especially at chartres). these bands would perhaps be hardly felt as very aqueous, but for the fish which are interwoven with them in a complicated manner, their heads appearing at one side of every band, and their tails at the other. both of these representatives of deluge, archaic and rude as they are, i consider better, more suggestive, more inventive, and more natural, than poussin's. indeed, this is not saying anything very depreciatory, as regards the st. mark's one, for the glittering of the golden window through the rain is wonderfully well conceived, and almost deceptive, looking as if it had just caught a gleam of sunlight on its panes, and there is something very sublime in the gleam of this light above the floating corpses. but the other instance is sufficiently grotesque and imperfect, and yet, i speak with perfect seriousness, it is, i think, very far preferable to poussin's. on the other hand, there is a just medium between the meanness and apathy of such a conception as his, and the extravagance, still more contemptible, with which the subject has been treated in modern days.[ ] i am not aware that i can refer to any instructive example of this intermediate course, for i fear the reader is by this time wearied of hearing of turner, and the plate of turner's picture of the deluge is so rare that it is of no use to refer to it. § . venetians and florentines. conclusion. it seems exceedingly strange that the great venetian painters should have left us no instance, as far as i know, of any marine effects carefully studied. as already noted, whatever passages of sea occur in their backgrounds are merely broad extents of blue or green surface, fine in color, and coming dark usually against the horizon, well enough to be understood as sea, (yet even that not always without the help of a ship,) but utterly unregarded in all questions of completion and detail. the water even in titian's landscape is almost always violently though grandly conventional, and seldom forms an important feature. among the religious schools very sweet motives occur, but nothing which for a moment can be considered as real water-painting. perugino's sea is usually very beautifully felt; his river in the fresco of s^ta. maddalena at florence is freely indicated, and looks level and clear; the reflections of the trees given with a rapid zigzag stroke of the brush. on the whole, i suppose that the best imitations of level water surface to be found in ancient art are in the clear flemish landscapes. cuyp's are usually very satisfactory, but even the best of these attain nothing more than the agreeable suggestion of calm pond or river. of any tolerable representation of water in agitation, or under any circumstances that bring out its power and character, i know no instance; and the more capable of noble treatment the subject happens to be, the more manifest invariably is the painter's want of feeling in every effort, and of knowledge in every line. footnotes [ ] i state this merely as a fact: i am unable satisfactorily to account for it on optical principles, and were it otherwise, the investigation would be of little interest to the general reader, and little value to the artist. [ ] parsey's "convergence of perpendiculars." i have not space here to enter into any lengthy exposure of this mistake, but reasoning is fortunately unnecessary, the appeal to experiment being easy. every picture is the representation, as before stated, of a vertical plate of glass, with what might be seen through it, drawn on its surface. let a vertical plate of glass be taken, and wherever it be placed, whether the sun be at its side or at its centre, the reflection will always be found in a vertical line under the sun, parallel with the side of the glass. the pane of any window looking to sea is all the apparatus necessary for this experiment, and yet it is not long since this very principle was disputed with me by a man of much taste and information, who supposed turner to be wrong in drawing the reflection straight down at the side of his picture, as in his lancaster sands, and innumerable other instances. [ ] in the last edition of this work was the following passage:--"i wish ruysdael had painted one or two rough seas. i believe if he had he might have saved the unhappy public from much grievous victimizing, both in mind and pocket, for he would have shown that vandevelde and backhuysen were not quite sea-deities." the writer has to thank the editor of murray's handbook of painting in italy for pointing out the oversight. he had passed many days in the louvre before the above passage was written, but had not been in the habit of pausing long anywhere except in the last two rooms, containing the pictures of the italian school. the conjecture, however, shows that he had not ill-estimated the power of ruysdael; nor does he consider it as in anywise unfitting him for the task he has undertaken, that for every hour passed in galleries he has passed days on the seashore. [ ] i am here, of course, speaking of the treatment of the subject as a landscape only; many mighty examples of its conception occur where the sea, and all other adjuncts, are entirely subservient to the figures, as with raffaelle and m. angelo. chapter ii. of water, as painted by the moderns. § . general power of the moderns in painting quiet water. the lakes of fielding. there are few men among modern landscape painters, who cannot paint quiet water at least suggestively, if not faithfully. those who are incapable of doing this, would scarcely be considered artists at all; and anything like the ripples of canaletto, or the black shadows of vandevelde, would be looked upon as most unpromising, even in the work of a novice. among those who most fully appreciate and render the qualities of space and surface in calm water, perhaps copley fielding stands first. his expanses of windless lake are among the most perfect passages of his works; for he can give surface as well as depth, and make his lake look not only clear, but, which is far more difficult, lustrous. he is less dependent than most of our artists upon reflections; and can give substance, transparency, and extent, where another painter would be reduced to paper; and he is exquisitely refined in his expression of distant breadth, by the delicate line of ripple interrupting the reflection, and by aerial qualities of color. nothing, indeed, can be purer or more refined than his general feeling of lake sentiment, were it not for a want of simplicity--a fondness for pretty, rather than impressive color, and a consequent want of some of the higher expression of repose. § . the calm rivers of de wint, j. holland, etc. § . the character of bright and violent falling water. § . as given by nesfield. hundreds of men might be named, whose works are highly instructive in the management of calm water. de wint is singularly powerful and certain, exquisitely bright and vigorous in color. the late john varley produced some noble passages. i have seen, some seven years ago, works by j. holland, which were, i think, as near perfection as water-color can be carried--for _bona fide_ truth, refined and finished to the highest degree. but the power of modern artists is not brought out until they have greater difficulties to struggle with. stand for half an hour beside the fall of schaffhausen, on the north side where the rapids are long, and watch how the vault of water first bends, unbroken, in pure, polished velocity, over the arching rocks at the brow of the cataract, covering them with a dome of crystal twenty feet thick--so swift that its motion is unseen except when a foam globe from above darts over it like a falling star; and how the trees are lighted above it under all their leaves, at the instant that it breaks into foam; and how all the hollows of that foam burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how, through the curdling wreaths of the restless, crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white rain-cloud; while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the choking spray and shattered sunshine, hiding itself at last among the thick golden leaves which toss to and fro in sympathy with the wild water; their dripping masses lifted at intervals, like sheaves of loaded corn, by some stronger gush from the cataract, and bowed again upon the mossy rocks as its roar dies away; the dew gushing from their thick branches through drooping clusters of emerald herbage, and sparkling in white threads along the dark rocks of the shore, feeding the lichens which chase and checker them with purple and silver. i believe, when you have stood by this for half an hour, you will have discovered that there is something more in nature than has been given by ruysdael. probably you will not be much disposed to think of any mortal work at the time; but when you look back to what you have seen, and are inclined to compare it with art, you will remember--or ought to remember--nesfield. he is a man of extraordinary feeling, both for the color and the spirituality of a great waterfall; exquisitely delicate in his management of the changeful veil of spray or mist; just in his curves and contours; and unequalled in color except by turner. none of our water-color painters can approach him in the management of the variable hues of clear water over weeded rocks; but his feeling for it often leads him a little too far, and, like copley fielding, he loses sight of simplicity and dignity for the sake of delicacy or prettiness. his waterfalls are, however, unequalled in their way; and, if he would remember, that in all such scenes there is much gloom as well as much splendor, and relieve the lustre of his attractive passages of color with more definite and prevalent grays, and give a little more substance to parts of his picture unaffected by spray, his work would be nearly perfect. his seas are also most instructive; a little confused in chiaroscuro, but refined in form and admirable in color. § . the admirable water-drawing of j. d. harding. § . his color; and painting of sea. j. d. harding is, i think, nearly unequalled in the _drawing_ of running water. i do not know what stanfield would do; i have never seen an important piece of torrent drawn by him; but i believe even he could scarcely contend with the magnificent _abandon_ of harding's brush. there is perhaps nothing which tells more in the drawing of water than decisive and swift execution; for, in a rapid touch the hand naturally falls into the very curve of projection which is the absolute truth; while in slow finish, all precision of curve and character is certain to be lost, except under the hand of an unusually powerful master. but harding has both knowledge and velocity, and the fall of his torrents is beyond praise; impatient, chafing, substantial, shattering, crystalline, and capricious; full of various form, yet all apparently instantaneous and accidental, nothing conventional, nothing dependent upon parallel lines or radiating curves; all broken up and dashed to pieces over the irregular rock, and yet all in unity of motion. the color also of his _falling_ and bright water is very perfect; but in the dark and level parts of his torrents he has taken up a bad gray, which has hurt some of his best pictures. his gray in shadows under rocks or dark reflections is admirable; but it is when the stream is in full light, and unaffected by reflections in distance, that he gets wrong. we believe that the fault is in a want of expression of darkness in the color, making it appear like a positive hue of the water, for which it is much too dead and cold. harding seldom paints sea, and it is well for stanfield that he does not, or the latter would have to look to his crown. all that we have seen from his hand is, as coast sea, quite faultless; we only wish he would paint it more frequently; always, however, with a veto upon french fishing-boats. in the exhibition of , he spoiled one of the most superb pieces of seashore and sunset which modern art has produced, with the pestilent square sail of one of these clumsy craft, which the eye could not escape from. § . the sea of copley fielding. its exceeding grace and rapidity. before passing to our great sea painter, we must again refer to the works of copley fielding. it is with his sea as with his sky, he can only paint one, and that an easy one, but it is, for all that, an impressive and a true one. no man has ever given, with the same flashing freedom, the race of a running tide under a stiff breeze, nor caught, with the same grace and precision, the curvature of the breaking wave, arrested or accelerated by the wind. the forward fling of his foam, and the impatient run of his surges, whose quick, redoubling dash we can almost hear, as they break in their haste upon their own bosoms, are nature itself, and his sea gray or green was, nine years ago, very right, as color; always a little wanting in transparency, but never cold or toneless. since that time, he seems to have lost the sense of greenness in water, and has verged more and more on the purple and black, with unhappy results. his sea was always dependent for effect on its light or dark relief against the sky, even when it possessed color; but it now has lost all local color and transparency together, and is little more than a study of chiaroscuro in an exceedingly ill-chosen gray. besides, the perpetual repetition of the same idea is singularly weakening to the mind. fielding, in all his life, can only be considered as having produced _one_ sea picture. the others are duplicates. he ought to go to some sea of perfect clearness and brilliant color, as that on the coast of cornwall, or of the gulf of genoa, and study it sternly in broad daylight, with no black clouds nor drifting rain to help him out of his difficulties. he would then both learn his strength and add to it. § . its high aim at character. § . but deficiency in the requisite quality of grays. § . variety of the grays of nature. but there is one point in all his seas deserving especial praise--a marked aim at _character_. he desires, especially in his latter works, not so much to produce an agreeable picture, a scientific piece of arrangement, or delightful melody of color, as to make us feel the utter desolation, the cold, withering, frozen hopelessness of the continuous storm and merciless sea. and this is peculiarly remarkable in his denying himself all color, just in the little bits which an artist of inferior mind would paint in sienna and cobalt. if a piece of broken wreck is allowed to rise for an instant through the boiling foam, though the blue stripe of a sailor's jacket, or a red rag of a flag would do all our hearts good, we are not allowed to have it; it would make us too comfortable, and prevent us from shivering and shrinking as we look, and the artist, with admirable intention, and most meritorious self-denial, expresses his piece of wreck with a dark, cold brown. now we think this aim and effort worthy of the highest praise, and we only wish the lesson were taken up and acted on by our other artists; but mr. fielding should remember that nothing of this kind can be done with success unless by the most studied management of the general tones of the picture; for the eye, deprived of all means of enjoying the gray hues, merely as a contrast to bright points, becomes painfully fastidious in the quality of the hues themselves, and demands for its satisfaction such melodies and richness of gray as may in some degree atone to it for the loss of points of stimulus. that gray which would be taken frankly and freely for an expression of gloom, if it came behind a yellow sail or a red cap, is examined with invidious and merciless intentness when there is nothing to relieve it, and, if not able to bear the investigation, if neither agreeable nor variable in its hue, renders the picture weak instead of impressive, and unpleasant instead of awful. and indeed the management of nature might teach him this; for though, when using violent contrasts, she frequently makes her gloom somewhat monotonous, the moment she gives up her vivid color, and depends upon her desolation, that moment she begins to steal the greens into her sea-gray, and the browns and yellows into her cloud-gray, and the expression of variously tinted light through all. nor is mr. fielding without a model in art, for the land's end, and lowestoffe, and snowstorm, (in the academy, ,) of turner, are nothing more than passages of the most hopeless, desolate, uncontrasted grays, and yet are three of the very finest pieces of color that have come from his hand. and we sincerely hope that mr. fielding will gradually feel the necessity of such studied melodies of quiet color, and will neither fall back into the old tricks of contrast, nor continue to paint with purple and ink. if he will only make a few careful studies of gray from the mixed atmosphere of spray, rain, and mist of a gale that has been three days hard at work, not of a rainy squall, but of a persevering and powerful storm, and not where the sea is turned into milk and magnesia by a chalk coast, but where it breaks pure and green on gray slate or white granite, as along the cliffs of cornwall, we think his pictures would present some of the finest examples of high intention and feeling to be found in modern art. § . works of stanfield. his perfect knowledge and power. § . but want of feeling. general sum of truth presented by modern art. the works of stanfield evidently, and at all times, proceed from the hand of a man who has both thorough knowledge of his subject, and thorough acquaintance with all the means and principles of art. we never criticise them, because we feel, the moment we look carefully at the drawing of any single wave, that the knowledge possessed by the master is much greater than our own, and therefore believe that if anything offends us in any part of the work, it is nearly certain to be our fault, and not the painter's. the local color of stanfield's sea is singularly true and powerful, and entirely independent of any tricks of chiaroscuro. he will carry a mighty wave up against the sky, and make its whole body dark and substantial against the distant light, using all the while nothing more than chaste and unexaggerated local color to gain the relief. his surface is at once lustrous, transparent, and accurate to a hairbreadth in every curve; and he is entirely independent of dark skies, deep blues, driving spray, or any other means of concealing want of form, or atoning for it. he fears no difficulty, desires no assistance, takes his sea in open daylight, under general sunshine, and paints the _element_ in its pure color and complete forms. but we wish that he were less powerful, and more interesting; or that he were a little less diogenes-like, and did not scorn all that he does not want. now that he has shown us what he can do without such aids, we wish he would show us what he can do with them. he is, as we have already said, wanting in what we have just been praising in fielding--impressiveness. we should like him to be less clever, and more affecting--less wonderful, and more terrible; and as the very first step towards such an end, to learn how to conceal. we are, however, trenching upon matters with which we have at present nothing to do; our concern is now only with truth, and one work of stanfield alone presents us with as much concentrated knowledge of sea and sky, as, diluted, would have lasted any one of the old masters his life. and let it be especially observed, how extensive and how varied is the truth of our modern masters--how it comprises a complete history of that nature of which, from the ancients, you only here and there can catch a stammering descriptive syllable--how fielding has given us every character of the quiet lake, robson[ ] of the mountain tarn, de wint of the lowland river, nesfield of the radiant cataract, harding of the roaring torrent, fielding of the desolate sea, stanfield of the blue, open, boundless ocean. arrange all this in your mind, observe the perfect truth of it in all its parts, compare it with the fragmentary falsities of the ancients, and then, come with me to turner. footnotes [ ] i ought before to have alluded to the works of the late g. robson. they are a little disagreeable in execution, but there is a feeling of the character of _deep_ calm water in them quite unequalled, and different from the works and thoughts of all other men. chapter iii. of water, as painted by turner. § . the difficulty of giving surface to smooth water. § . is dependent on the structure of the eye, and the focus by which the reflected rays are perceived. i believe it is a result of the experience of all artists, that it is the easiest thing in the world to give a certain degree of depth and transparency to water; but that it is next thing to impossible, to give a full impression of surface. if no reflection be given--a ripple being supposed--the water looks like lead: if reflection be given, it in nine cases out of ten looks _morbidly_ clear and deep, so that we always go down _into_ it, even when the artist most wishes us to glide _over_ it. now, this difficulty arises from the very same circumstance which occasions the frequent failure in effect of the best drawn foregrounds, noticed in section ii. chapter iii., the change, namely, of focus necessary in the eye in order to receive rays of light coming from different distances. go to the edge of a pond, in a perfectly calm day, at some place where there is duckweed floating on the surface,--not thick, but a leaf here and there. now, you may either see in the water the reflection of the sky, or you may see the duckweed; but you cannot, by any effort, see both together. if you look for the reflection, you will be sensible of a sudden change or effort in the eye, by which it adapts itself to the reception of the rays which have come all the way from the clouds, have struck on the water, and so been sent up again to the eye. the focus you adopt is one fit for great distance; and, accordingly, you will feel that you are looking down a great way under the water, while the leaves of the duckweed, though they lie upon the water at the very spot on which you are gazing so intently, are felt only as a vague, uncertain interruption, causing a little confusion in the image below, but entirely indistinguishable as leaves,--and even their color unknown and unperceived. unless you think of them, you will not even feel that anything interrupts your sight, so excessively slight is their effect. if, on the other hand, you make up your mind to look for the leaves of the duckweed, you will perceive an instantaneous change in the effort of the eye, by which it becomes adapted to receive near rays--those which have only come from the surface of the pond. you will then see the delicate leaves of the duckweed with perfect clearness, and in vivid green; but while you do so, you will be able to perceive nothing of the reflections in the very water on which they float--nothing but a vague flashing and melting of light and dark hues, without form or meaning, which, to investigate, or find out what they mean or are, you must quit your hold of the duckweed, and plunge down. § . morbid clearness occasioned in painting of water by distinctness of reflections. § . how avoided by turner. § . all reflections on distant water are distinct. hence it appears, that whenever we see plain reflections of comparatively distant objects, in near water, we cannot possibly see the surface, and _vice versa_; so that when in a painting we give the reflections with the same clearness with which they are visible in nature, we presuppose the effort of the eye to look under the surface, and, of course, destroy the surface, and induce an effect of clearness which, perhaps, the artist has not particularly wished to attain, but which he has found himself forced into, by his reflections, in spite of himself. and the reason of this effect of clearness appearing preternatural is, that people are not in the habit of looking at water with the distant focus adapted to the reflections, unless by particular effort. we invariably, under ordinary circumstances, use the surface focus; and, in consequence, receive nothing more than a vague and confused impression of the reflected colors and lines, however clearly, calmly, and vigorously all may be defined underneath, if we choose to look for them. we do not look for them, but glide along over the surface, catching only playing light and capricious color for evidence of reflection, except where we come to images of objects close to the surface, which the surface focus is of course adapted to receive; and these we see clearly, as of the weeds on the shore, or of sticks rising out of the water, etc. hence, the ordinary effect of water is only to be rendered by giving the reflections of the _margin_ clear and distinct (so clear they usually are in nature, that it is impossible to tell where the water begins;) but the moment we touch the reflection of distant objects, as of high trees or clouds, that instant we must become vague and uncertain in drawing, and, though vivid in color and light as the object itself, quite indistinct in form and feature. if we take such a piece of water as that in the foreground of turner's chateau of prince albert, the first impression from it is,--"what a wide _surface_!" we glide over it a quarter of a mile into the picture before we know where we are, and yet the water is as calm and crystalline as a mirror; but we are not allowed to tumble into it, and gasp for breath as we go down,--we are kept upon the surface, though that surface is flashing and radiant with every hue of cloud, and sun, and sky, and foliage. but the secret is in the drawing of these reflections.[ ] we cannot tell when we look _at_ them and _for_ them, what they mean. they have all character, and are evidently reflections of something definite and determined; but yet they are all uncertain and inexplicable; playing color and palpitating shade, which, though we recognize in an instant for images of something, and feel that the water is bright, and lovely, and calm, we cannot penetrate nor interpret: we are not allowed to go down to them, and we repose, as we should in nature, upon the lustre of the level surface. it is in this power of saying everything, and yet saying nothing too plainly, that the perfection of art here, as in all other cases, consists. but as it was before shown in sect. ii. chap. iii. that the focus of the eye required little alteration after the first half mile of distance, it is evident that on the _distant_ surface of water, _all_ reflections will be seen plainly; for the same focus adapted to a moderate distance of surface will receive with distinctness rays coming from the sky, or from any other distance, however great. thus we always see the reflection of mont blanc on the lake of geneva, whether we take pains to look for it or not, because the water upon which it is cast is itself a mile off; but if we would see the reflection of mont blanc in the lac de chede, which is close to us, we must take some trouble about the matter, leave the green snakes swimming upon the surface, and plunge for it. hence reflections, if viewed collectively, are always clear in proportion to the distance of the water on which they are cast. and now look at turner's ulleswater, or any of his distant lake expanses, and you will find every crag and line of the hills rendered in them with absolute fidelity, while the near surface shows nothing but a vague confusion of exquisite and lustrous tint. the reflections even of the clouds will be given far off, while those of near boats and figures will be confused and mixed among each other, except just at the water-line. § . the error of vandevelde. and now we see what vandevelde _ought_ to have done with the shadow of his ship spoken of in the first chapter of this section. in such a calm, we should in nature, if we had looked for the reflection, have seen it clear from the water-line to the flag on the mainmast; but in so doing, we should have appeared to ourselves to be looking under the water, and should have lost all feeling of surface. when we looked at the surface of the sea,--as we naturally should,--we should have seen the image of the hull absolutely clear and perfect, because that image is cast on distant water; but we should have seen the image of the masts and sails gradually more confused as they descended, and the water close to us would have borne only upon its surface a maze of flashing color and indefinite hue. had vandevelde, therefore, given the perfect image of his ship, he would have represented a truth dependent on a particular effort of the eye, and destroyed his surface. but his business was to give, not a distinct reflection, but the colors of the reflection in mystery and disorder upon his near water, all perfectly vivid, but none intelligible; and had he done so, the eye would not have troubled itself to search them out; it would not have cared whence or how the colors came, but it would have felt them to be true and right, and rested satisfied upon the polished surface of the clear sea. of the perfect truth, the best examples i can give are turner's saltash and castle upnor. § . difference in arrangement of parts between the reflected object and its image. be it next observed that the reflection of all near objects is, by our fifth rule, not an exact copy of the parts of them which we see above the water, but a totally different view and arrangement of them, that which we should get if we were looking at them from beneath. hence we see the dark sides of leaves hanging over a stream, in their reflection, though we see the light sides above, and all objects and groups of objects are thus seen in the reflection under different lights, and in different positions with respect to each other from those which they assume above; some which we see on the bank being entirely lost in their reflection, and others which we cannot see on the bank brought into view. hence nature contrives never to repeat herself, and the surface of water is not a mockery, but a new view of what is above it. and this difference in what is represented, as well as the obscurity of the representation, is one of the chief sources by which the sensation of surface is kept up in the reality. the reflection is not so remarkable, it does not attract the eye in the same degree when it is entirely different from the images above, as when it mocks them and repeats them, and we feel that the space and surface have color and character of their own, and that the bank is one thing and the water another. it is by not making this change manifest, and giving underneath a mere duplicate of what is seen above, that artists are apt to destroy the essence and substance of water, and to drop us through it. § . illustrated from the works of turner. § . the boldness and judgment shown in the observance of it. now one instance will be sufficient to show the exquisite care of turner in this respect. on the left-hand side of his nottingham, the water (a smooth canal) is terminated by a bank fenced up with wood, on which, just at the edge of the water, stands a white sign-post. a quarter of a mile back, the hill on which nottingham castle stands rises steeply nearly to the top of the picture. the upper part of this hill is in bright golden light, and the lower in very deep gray shadow, against which the white board of the sign-post is seen entirely in light relief, though, being turned from the light, it is itself in delicate middle tint, illumined only on the edge. but the image of all this in the canal is very different. first, we have the reflection of the piles of the bank, sharp and clear, but under this we have not what we see above it, the dark _base_ of the hill, (for this being a quarter of a mile back, we could not see over the fence if we were looking from below,) but the golden summit of the hill, the shadow of the under part having no record nor place in the reflection. but this summit, being very distant, cannot be seen clearly by the eye while its focus is adapted to the surface of the water, and accordingly its reflection is entirely vague and confused; you cannot tell what it is meant for, it is mere playing golden light. but the sign-post, being on the bank close to us, will be reflected clearly, and accordingly its distinct image is seen in the midst of this confusion. but it now is relieved, not against the dark base, but against the illumined summit of the hill, and it appears, therefore, instead of a white space thrown out from blue shade, a dark gray space thrown out from golden light. i do not know that any more magnificent example could be given of concentrated knowledge, or of the daring statement of most difficult truth. for who but this consummate artist would have had courage, even if he had perceived the laws which required it, to undertake in a single small space of water, the painting of an entirely new picture, with all its tones and arrangements altered,--what was made above bright by opposition to blue, being underneath made cool and dark by opposition to gold;--or would have dared to contradict so boldly the ordinary expectation of the uncultivated eye, to find in the reflection a mockery for the reality? but the reward is immediate, for not only is the change most grateful to the eye, and most exquisite as composition, but the surface of the water in consequence of it is felt to be as spacious as it is clear, and the eye rests not on the inverted image of the material objects, but on the element which receives them. and we have a farther instance in this passage of the close study which is required to enjoy the works of turner, for another artist might have altered the reflection or confused it, but he would not have reasoned upon it so as to find out _what the exact alteration must be_; and if we had tried to account for the reflection, we should have found it false or inaccurate. but the master mind of turner, without effort, showers its knowledge into every touch, and we have only to trace out even his slightest passages, part by part, to find in them the universal working of the deepest thought, that consistency of every minor truth which admits of and invites the same ceaseless study as the work of nature herself. § . the _texture_ of surface in turner's painting of calm water. there is, however, yet another peculiarity in turner's painting of smooth water, which, though less deserving of admiration, as being merely a mechanical excellence, is not less wonderful than its other qualities, nor less unique--a peculiar texture, namely, given to the most delicate tints of the surface, when there is little reflection from anything except sky or atmosphere, and which, just at the points where other painters are reduced to paper, gives to the surface of turner the greatest appearance of substantial liquidity. it is impossible to say how it is produced; it looks like some modification of body color; but it certainly is not body color used as by other men, for i have seen this expedient tried over and over again without success; and it is often accompanied by crumbling touches of a dry brush, which never could have been put upon body color, and which could not have shown through underneath it. as a piece of mechanical excellence, it is one of the most remarkable things in the works of the master; and it brings the truth of his water-painting up to the last degree of perfection, often rendering those passages of it the most attractive and delightful, which from their delicacy and paleness of tint, would have been weak and papery in the hands of any other man. the best instance of it i can give, is, i think, the distance of the devonport with the dockyards. § . its united qualities. after all, however, there is more in turner's painting of water surface than any philosophy of reflection, or any peculiarity of means, can account for or accomplish; there is a might and wonder about it which will not admit of our whys and hows. take, for instance, the picture of the sun of venice going to sea, of , respecting which, however, there are one or two circumstances which may as well be noted besides its water-painting. the reader, if he has not been at venice, ought to be made aware that the venetian fishing-boats, almost without exception, carry canvas painted with bright colors, the favorite design for the centre being either a cross or a large sun with many rays, the favorite colors being red, orange, and black, blue occurring occasionally. the radiance of these sails and of the bright and grotesque vanes at the mast-heads under sunlight is beyond all painting, but it is strange that, of constant occurrence as these boats are on all the lagoons, turner alone should have availed himself of them. nothing could be more faithful than the boat which was the principal object in this picture, in the cut of the sail, the filling of it, the exact height of the boom above the deck, the quartering of it with color, finally and especially, the hanging of the fish-baskets about the bows. all these, however, are comparatively minor merits, (though not the blaze of color which the artist elicited from the right use of these circumstances,) but the peculiar power of the picture was the painting of the sea surface, where there were no reflections to assist it. a stream of splendid color fell from the boat, but that occupied the centre only; in the distance, the city and crowded boats threw down some playing lines, but these still left on each side of the boat a large space of water reflecting nothing but the morning sky. this was divided by an eddying swell, on whose continuous sides the local color of the water was seen, pure aquamarine, (a beautiful occurrence of closely-observed truth,) but still there remained a large blank space of pale water to be treated, the sky above had no distinct details and was pure faint gray, with broken white vestiges of cloud: it gave no help therefore. but there the water lay, no dead gray flat paint, but downright clear, playing, palpable surface, full of indefinite hue, and retiring as regularly and visibly back and far away, as if there had been objects all over it to tell the story by perspective. now it is the doing of this which tries the painter, and it is his having done this which made me say above that "no man had ever painted the surface of calm water but turner." the san benedetto, looking towards fusina, contained a similar passage, equally fine; in one of the canale della guidecca the specific green color of the water is seen in front, with the shadows of the boats thrown on it in purple; all, as it retires, passing into the pure reflective blue. § . relation of various circumstances of past agitation, etc., by the most trifling incidents, as in the cowes. but turner is not satisfied with this. he is never altogether content unless he can, at the same time that he takes advantage of all the placidity of repose, tell us something either about the past commotion of the water, or of some present stirring of tide or current which its stillness does not show, or give us something or other to think about and reason upon, as well as to look at. take a few instances. his cowes, isle of wight, is a summer twilight about half an hour, or more, after sunset. intensity of repose is the great aim throughout, and the unity of tone of the picture is one of the finest things that turner has ever done. but there is not only quietness, there is the very deepest solemnity in the whole of the light, as well as in the stillness of the vessels; and turner wishes to enhance this feeling by representing not only repose, but _power_ in repose, the emblem, in the sea, of the quiet ships of war. accordingly, he takes the greatest possible pains to get his surface polished, calm, and smooth, but he indicates the reflection of a buoy, floating a full quarter of a mile off, by three black strokes with wide intervals between them, the last of which touches the water within twenty yards of the spectator. now these three reflections can only indicate the farther sides of three rises of an enormous swell, and give by their intervals of separation, a space of from twelve to twenty yards for the breadth of each wave, including the sweep between them, and this swell is farther indicated by the reflection of the new moon falling, in a wide zigzag line. the exceeding majesty which this single circumstance gives to the whole picture, the sublime sensation of power and knowledge of former exertion which we instantly receive from it, if we have but acquaintance with nature enough to understand its language, render this work not only a piece of the most refined truth, (as which i have at present named it,) but to my mind, one of the highest pieces of intellectual art existing. § . in scenes on the loire and seine. again, in the scene on the loire, with the square precipice and fiery sunset, in the rivers of france, repose has been aimed at in the same way, and most thoroughly given; but the immense width of the river at this spot makes it look like a lake or sea, and it was therefore necessary that we should be made thoroughly to understand and feel that this is not the calm of still water, but the tranquillity of a majestic current. accordingly, a boat swings at anchor on the right; and the stream, dividing at its bow, flows towards us in two long, dark waves, especial attention to which is enforced by the one on the left being brought across the reflected stream of sunshine, which it separates, and which is broken in the nearer water by the general undulation and agitation caused by the boat's wake; a wake caused by the waters passing it, not by _its_ going through the water. § . expression of contrary waves caused by recoil from shore. § . various other instances. again, in the confluence of the seine and marne, we have the repose of the wide river stirred by the paddles of the steamboat, (whose plashing we can almost hear, for we are especially compelled to look at them by their being made the central note of the composition--the blackest object in it, opposed to the strongest light,) and this disturbance is not merely caused by the two lines of surge from the boat's wake, for any other painter must have given these, but turner never rests satisfied till he has told you _all_ in his power; and he has not only given the receding surges, but these have gone on to the shore, have struck upon it, and been beaten back from it in another line of weaker contrary surges, whose point of intersection with those of the wake itself is marked by the sudden subdivision and disorder of the waves of the wake on the extreme left, and whose reverted direction is exquisitely given where their lines cross the calm water, close to the spectator, and marked also by the sudden vertical spring of the spray just where they intersect the swell from the boat; and in order that we may fully be able to account for these reverted waves, we are allowed, just at the extreme right-hand limit of the picture, to see the point where the swell from the boat meets the shore. in the chaise de gargantua we have the still water lulled by the dead calm which usually precedes the most violent storms, suddenly broken upon by a tremendous burst of wind from the gathered thunder-clouds, scattering the boats, and raising the water into rage, except where it is sheltered by the hills. in the jumieges and vernon we have farther instances of local agitation, caused, in the one instance, by a steamer, in the other, by the large water-wheels under the bridge, not, observe, a mere splashing about the wheel itself, this is too far off to be noticeable, so that we should not have even known that the objects beneath the bridge were water-wheels, but for the agitation recorded a quarter of a mile down the river, where its current crosses the sunlight. and thus there will scarcely ever be found a piece of quiet water by turner, without some story in it of one kind or another; sometimes a slight, but beautiful incident--oftener, as in the cowes, something on which the whole sentiment and intention of the picture in a great degree depends; but invariably presenting some new instance of varied knowledge and observation, some fresh appeal to the highest faculties of the mind. § . turner's painting of distant expanses of water. calm, interrupted by ripple. § . and ripple, crossed by sunshine. of extended surfaces of water, as rendered by turner, the loch katrine and derwent-water, of the illustrations to scott, and the loch lomond, vignette in rogers's poems, are characteristic instances. the first of these gives us the most distant part of the lake entirely under the influence of a light breeze, and therefore entirely without reflections of the objects on its borders; but the whole near half is untouched by the wind, and on that is cast the image of the upper part of ben-venue and of the islands. the second gives us the surface, with just so much motion upon it as to prolong, but not to destroy, the reflections of the dark woods,--reflections only interrupted by the ripple of the boat's wake. and the third gives us an example of the whole surface so much affected by ripple as to bring into exercise all those laws which we have seen so grossly violated by canaletto. we see in the nearest boat that though the lines of the gunwale are much blacker and more conspicuous than that of the cutwater, yet the gunwale lines, being nearly horizontal, have no reflection whatsoever; while the line of the cutwater, being vertical, has a distinct reflection of three times its own length. but even these tremulous reflections are only visible as far as the islands; beyond them, as the lake retires into distance, we find it receives only the reflection of the gray light from the clouds, and runs in one flat white field up between the hills; and besides all this, we have another phenomenon, quite new, given to us,--the brilliant gleam of light along the centre of the lake. this is not caused by ripple, for it is cast on a surface rippled all over; but it is what we could not have without ripple,--the light of a passage of sunshine. i have already (chap. i., § ) explained the cause of this phenomenon, which never can by any possibility take place on calm water, being the multitudinous reflection of the sun from the sides of the ripples, causing an appearance of local light and shadow; and being dependent, like real light and shadow, on the passage of the clouds, though the dark parts of the water are the reflections of the clouds, not the shadows of them; and the bright parts are the reflections of the sun, and not the light of it. this little vignette, then, will entirely complete the system of turner's universal truth in quiet water. we have seen every phenomenon given by him,--the clear reflection, the prolonged reflection, the reflection broken by ripple, and finally the ripple broken by light and shade; and it is especially to be observed how careful he is, in this last case, when he uses the apparent light and shade, to account for it by showing us in the whiteness of the lake beyond, its universal subjection to ripple. § . his drawing of distant rivers. § . and of surface associated with mist. we have not spoken of turner's magnificent drawing of distant rivers, which, however, is dependent only on more complicated application of the same laws, with exquisite perspective. the sweeps of river in the dryburgh, (illustrations to scott,) and melrose, are bold and characteristic examples, as well as the rouen from st. catherine's hill, and the caudebec, in the rivers of france. the only thing which in these works requires particular attention, is the care with which the height of the observer above the river is indicated by the loss of the reflections of its banks. this is, perhaps, shown most clearly in the caudebec. if we had been on a level with the river, its whole surface would have been darkened by the reflection of the steep and high banks; but being far above it, we can see no more of the image than we could of the hill itself, if it were actually reversed under the water; and therefore we see that turner gives us only a narrow line of dark water, immediately under the precipice, the broad surface reflecting only the sky. this is also finely shown on the left-hand side of the dryburgh. but all these early works of the artist have been eclipsed by some recent drawings of switzerland. these latter are not to be described by any words, but they must be noted here not only as presenting records of lake effect on grander scale, and of more imaginative character than any other of his works, but as combining effects of the surface of mist with the surface of water. two or three of the lake of lucerne, seen from above, give the melting of the mountain promontories beneath into the clear depth, and above into the clouds; one of constance shows the vast lake at evening, seen not as water, but its surface covered with low white mist, lying league beyond league in the twilight like a fallen space of moony cloud; one of goldau shows the lake of zug appearing through the chasm of a thunder-cloud under sunset, its whole surface one blaze of fire, and the promontories of the hills thrown out against it, like spectres; another of zurich gives the playing of the green waves of the river among white streams of moonlight: two purple sunsets on the lake of zug are distinguished for the glow obtained without positive color, the rose and purple tints being in great measure brought by opposition out of browns: finally, a drawing executed in of the town of lucerne from the lake is unique for its expression of water surface reflecting the clear green hue of sky at twilight. § . his drawing of falling water, with peculiar expression of weight. § . the abandonment and plunge of great cataracts. how given by him. it will be remembered that it was said above, that turner was the only painter who had ever represented the surface of calm or the _force_ of agitated water. he obtains this expression of force in falling or running water by fearless and full rendering of its forms. he never loses himself and his subject in the splash of the fall--his presence of mind never fails as he goes down; he does not blind us with the spray, or veil the countenance of his fall with its own drapery. a little crumbling white, or lightly rubbed paper, will soon give the effect of indiscriminate foam; but nature gives more than foam--she shows beneath it, and through it, a peculiar character of exquisitely studied form bestowed on every wave and line of fall; and it is this variety of definite character which turner always aims at, rejecting, as much as possible, everything that conceals or overwhelms it. thus, in the upper fall of the tees, though the whole basin of the fall is blue and dim with the rising vapor, yet the whole attention of the spectator is directed to that which it was peculiarly difficult to render, the concentric zones and delicate curves of the falling water itself; and it is impossible to express with what exquisite accuracy these are given. they are the characteristic of a powerful stream descending without impediment or break, but from a narrow channel, so as to expand as it falls. they are the constant form which such a stream assumes as it descends; and yet i think it would be difficult to point to another instance of their being rendered in art. you will find nothing in the waterfalls even of our best painters, but springing lines of parabolic descent, and splashing, shapeless foam; and, in consequence, though they may make you understand the swiftness of the water, they never let you feel the weight of it; the stream in their hands looks _active_, not _supine_, as if it leaped, not as if it fell. now water will leap a little way, it will leap down a weir or over a stone, but it _tumbles_ over a high fall like this; and it is when we have lost the parabolic line, and arrived at the catenary,--when we have lost the _spring_ of the fall, and arrived at the _plunge_ of it, that we begin really to feel its weight and wildness. where water takes its first leap from the top, it is cool, and collected, and uninteresting, and mathematical, but it is when it finds that it has got into a scrape, and has farther to go than it thought for, that its character comes out; it is then that it begins to writhe, and twist, and sweep out zone after zone in wilder stretching as it falls, and to send down the rocket-like, lance-pointed, whizzing shafts at its sides, sounding for the bottom. and it is this prostration, this hopeless abandonment of its ponderous power to the air, which is always peculiarly expressed by turner, and especially in the case before us; while our other artists, keeping to the parabolic line, where they do not lose themselves in smoke and foam, make their cataract look muscular and wiry, and may consider themselves fortunate if they can keep it from stopping. i believe the majesty of motion which turner has given by these concentric catenary lines must be felt even by those who have never seen a high waterfall, and therefore cannot appreciate their exquisite fidelity to nature. in the chain bridge over the tees, this passiveness and swinging of the water to and fro are yet more remarkable; while we have another characteristic of a great waterfall given to us, that the wind, in this instance coming up the valley against the current, takes the spray up off the edges, and carries it back in little torn, reverted rags and threads, seen in delicate form against the darkness on the left. but we must understand a little more about the nature of running water before we can appreciate the drawing either of this, or any other of turner's torrents. § . difference in the action of water, when continuous and when interrupted. the interrupted stream fills the hollows of its bed. § . but the continuous stream takes the shape of its bed. § . its exquisite curved lines. when water, not in very great body, runs in a rocky bed much interrupted by hollows, so that it can rest every now and then in a pool as it goes along, it does not acquire a continuous velocity of motion. it pauses after every leap, and curdles about, and rests a little, and then goes on again; and if in this comparatively tranquil and rational state of mind it meets with an obstacle, as a rock or stone, it parts on each side of it with a little bubbling foam, and goes round; if it comes to a step in its bed, it leaps it lightly, and then after a little plashing at the bottom, stops again to take breath. but if its bed be on a continuous slope, not much interrupted by hollows, so that it cannot rest, or if its own mass be so increased by flood that its usual resting-places are not sufficient for it, but that it is perpetually pushed out of them by the following current, before it has had time to tranquillize itself, it of course gains velocity with every yard that it runs; the impetus got at one leap is carried to the credit of the next, until the whole stream becomes one mass of unchecked, accelerating motion. now when water in this state comes to an obstacle, it does not part at it, but clears it, like a racehorse; and when it comes to a hollow, it does not fill it up and run out leisurely at the other side, but it rushes down into it and comes up again on the other side, as a ship into the hollow of the sea. hence the whole appearance of the bed of the stream is changed, and all the lines of the water altered in their nature. the quiet stream is a succession of leaps and pools; the leaps are light and springy, and parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing when they tumble into the pool; then we have a space of quiet curdling water, and another similar leap below. but the stream when it has gained an impetus takes the shape of its bed, never stops, is equally deep and equally swift everywhere, goes down into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a swing, not foaming, nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong sea-wave, and comes up again on the other side, over rock and ridge, with the ease of a bounding leopard; if it meet a rock three or four feet above the level of its bed, it will neither part nor foam, nor express any concern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth dome of water, without apparent exertion, coming down again as smoothly on the other side; the whole surface of the surge being drawn into parallel lines by its extreme velocity, but foamless, except in places where the form of the bed opposes itself at some direct angle to such a line of fall, and causes a breaker; so that the whole river has the appearance of a deep and raging sea, with this only difference, that the torrent-waves always break backwards, and sea-waves forwards. thus, then, in the water which has gained an impetus, we have the most exquisite arrangements of curved lines, perpetually changing from convex to concave, and _vice versa_, following every swell and hollow of the bed with their modulating grace, and all in unison of motion, presenting perhaps the most beautiful series of inorganic forms which nature can possibly produce; for the sea runs too much into similar and concave curves with sharp edges, but every motion of the torrent is united, and all its curves are modifications of beautiful line. § . turner's careful choice of the historical truth. § . his exquisite drawing of the continuous torrent in the llanthony abbey. we see, therefore, why turner seizes on these curved lines of the torrent, not only as being among the most beautiful forms of nature, but because they are an instant expression of the utmost power and velocity, and tell us how the torrent has been flowing before we see it. for the leap and splash might be seen in the sudden freakishness of a quiet stream, or the fall of a rivulet over a mill-dam; but the undulating line is the _exclusive_ attribute of the mountain-torrent,[ ] whose fall and fury have made the valleys echo for miles; and thus the moment we see one of its curves over a stone in the foreground, we know how far it has come, and how fiercely. and in the drawing we have been speaking of, the lower fall of the tees, in the foreground of the killiecrankie and rhymer's glen, and of the st. maurice, in rogers's italy, we shall find the most exquisite instances of the use of such lines; but the most perfect of all in the llanthony abbey, which may be considered as the standard of torrent-drawing. the chief light of the picture here falls upon the surface of the stream, swelled by recent rain, and its mighty waves come rolling down close to the spectator, green and clear, but pale with anger, in gigantic, unbroken, oceanic curves, bending into each other without break or foam, though jets of fiery spray are cast into the air along the rocky shore, and rise in the sunshine in dusty vapor. the whole surface is one united race of mad motion; all the waves dragged, as i have described, into lines and furrows by their swiftness, and every one of these fine forms is drawn with the most studied chiaroscuro of delicate color, grays and greens, as silvery and pure as the finest passages of paul veronese, and with a refinement of execution which the eye strains itself in looking into. the rapidity and gigantic force of this torrent, the exquisite refinement of its color, and the vividness of foam which is obtained through a general middle tint, render it about the most perfect piece of painting of running water in existence. § . and of the interrupted torrent in the mercury and argus. now this picture is, as was noticed in our former reference to it, full of expression of every kind of motion: the clouds are in wild haste; the sun is gleaming fast and fitfully through the leaves; the rain drifting away along the hill-side; and the torrent, the principal object, to complete the impression, is made the wildest thing of all and not only wild before us, and with us, but bearing with it in its every motion, from its long course, the record of its rage. observe how differently turner uses his torrent when the spirit of the picture is repose. in the mercury and argus, we have also a stream in the foreground; but, in coming down to us, we see it stopping twice in two quiet and glassy pools, upon which the drinking cattle cast an unstirred image. from the nearest of these, the water leaps in three cascades into another basin close to us; it trickles in silver threads through the leaves at its edge, and falls tinkling and splashing (though in considerable body) into the pool, stirring its quiet surface, at which a bird is stooping to drink, with concentric and curdling ripples which divide round the stone at its farthest border, and descend in sparkling foam over the lip of the basin. thus we find, in every case, the system of turner's truth entirely unbroken, each phase and phenomenon of nature being recorded exactly where it is most valuable and impressive. § . various cases. we have not, however, space to follow out the variety of his torrent-drawing. the above two examples are characteristic of the two great divisions or classes of torrents--that whose motion is continuous, and whose motion is interrupted: all drawing of running water will resolve itself into the representation of one or other of these. the descent of the distant stream in the vignette to the boy of egremond is slight, but very striking; and the junction of the greta and tees, a singular instance of the bold drawing of the complicated forms of a shallow stream among multitudinous rocks. a still finer example occurs in a recent drawing of dazio grande, on the st. gothard, the waves of the toccia, clear and blue, fretting among the granite débris which were brought down by the storm that destroyed the whole road. in the ivy bridge the subject is the rest of the torrent in a pool among fallen rocks, the forms of the stones are seen through the clear brown water, and their reflections mingle with those of the foliage. § . sea painting. impossibility of truly representing foam. more determined efforts have at all periods been made in sea painting than in torrent painting, yet less successful. as above stated, it is easy to obtain a resemblance of broken running water by tricks and dexterities, but the sea _must_ be legitimately drawn; it cannot be given as utterly disorganized and confused, its weight and mass must be expressed, and the efforts at expression of it end in failure with all but the most powerful men; even with these few a partial success must be considered worthy of the highest praise. as the right rendering of the alps depends on power of drawing snow, so the right painting of the sea must depend, at least in all coast scenery, in no small measure on the power of drawing foam. yet there are two conditions of foam of invariable occurrence on breaking waves, of which i have never seen the slightest record attempted; first the thick creamy curdling overlapping massy form which remains for a moment only after the fall of the wave, and is seen in perfection in its running up the beach; and secondly, the thin white coating into which this subsides, which opens into oval gaps and clefts, marbling the waves over their whole surface, and connecting the breakers on a flat shore by long dragging streams of white. it is evident that the difficulty of expressing either of these two conditions must be immense. the lapping and curdling form is difficult enough to catch even when the lines of its undulation alone are considered; but the lips, so to speak, which lie along these lines, are full, projecting, and marked by beautiful light and shade; each has its high light, a gradation into shadow of indescribable delicacy, a bright reflected light and a dark cast shadow; to draw all this requires labor, and care, and firmness of work, which, as i imagine, must always, however skilfully bestowed, destroy all impression of wildness, accidentalism, and evanescence, and so kill the sea. again, the openings in the thin subsided foam in their irregular modifications of circular and oval shapes dragged hither and thither, would be hard enough to draw even if they could be seen on a flat surface; instead of which, every one of the openings is seen in undulation on a tossing surface, broken up over small surges and ripples, and so thrown into perspectives of the most hopeless intricacy. now it is not easy to express the lie of a pattern with oval openings on the folds of drapery. i do not know that any one under the mark of veronese or titian could even do this as it ought to be done, yet in drapery much stiffness and error may be overlooked; not so in sea,--the slightest inaccuracy, the slightest want of flow and freedom in the line, is attached by the eye in a moment of high treason, and i believe success to be impossible. yet there is not a wave or any violently agitated sea on which both these forms do not appear, the latter especially, after some time of storm, extends over their whole surfaces; the reader sees, therefore, why i said that sea could only be painted by means of more or less dexterous conventionalisms, since two of its most enduring phenomena cannot be represented at all. § . character of shore-breakers, also inexpressible. again, as respects the form of breakers on an even shore, there is difficulty of no less formidable kind. there is in them an irreconcilable mixture of fury and formalism. their hollow surface is marked by parallel lines, like those of a smooth mill-weir, and graduated by reflected and transmitted lights of the most wonderful intricacy, its curve being at the same time necessarily of mathematical purity and precision; yet at the top of this curve, when it nods over, there is a sudden laxity and giving way, the water swings and jumps along the ridge like a shaken chain, and the motion runs from part to part as it does through a serpent's body. then the wind is at work on the extreme edge, and instead of letting it fling itself off naturally, it supports it, and, drives it back, or scrapes it off, and carries it bodily away; so that the spray at the top is in a continual transition between forms projected by their own weight, and forms blown and carried off with their weight overcome; then at last, when it has come down, who shall say what shape that may be called, which shape has none of the great crash where it touches the beach. i think it is that last crash which is the great taskmaster. nobody can do anything with it. i have seen copley fielding come very close to the jerk and nod of the lifted threatening edge, curl it very successfully, and without any look of its having been in papers, down nearly to the beach, but the final fall has no thunder in it. turner has tried hard for it once or twice, but it will not do. the moment is given in the sidon of the bible illustrations, and more elaborately in a painting of bamborough; in both these cases there is little foam at the bottom, and the fallen breaker looks like a wall, yet grand always; and in the latter picture very beautifully assisted in expression by the tossing of a piece of cable, which some figures are dragging ashore, and which the breaker flings into the air as it falls. perhaps the most successful rendering of the forms was in the hero and leander, but there the drawing was rendered easier by the powerful effect of light which disguised the foam. § . their effect, how injured when seen from the shore. it is not, however, from the shore that turner usually studies his sea. seen from the land, the curl of the breakers, even in nature, is somewhat uniform and monotonous; the size of the waves out at sea is uncomprehended, and those nearer the eye seem to succeed and resemble each other, to move slowly to the beach, and to break in the same lines and forms. afloat even twenty yards from the shore, we receive a totally different impression. every wave around us appears vast--every one different from all the rest--and the breakers present, now that we see them with their backs towards us, the grand, extended, and varied lines of long curvature, which are peculiarly expressive both of velocity and power. recklessness, before unfelt, is manifested in the mad, perpetual, changeful, undirected motion, not of wave after wave, as it appears from the shore, but of the very same water rising and falling. of waves that successively approach and break, each appears to the mind a separate individual, whose part being performed, it perishes, and is succeeded by another; and there is nothing in this to impress us with the idea of restlessness, any more than in any successive and continuous functions of life and death. but it is when we perceive that it is no succession of wave, but the same water constantly rising, and crashing, and recoiling, and rolling in again in new forms and with fresh fury, that we perceive the perturbed spirit, and feel the intensity of its unwearied rage. the sensation of power is also trebled; for not only is the vastness of apparent size much increased, but the whole action is different; it is not a passive wave rolling sleepily forward until it tumbles heavily, prostrated upon the beach, but a sweeping exertion of tremendous and living strength, which does not now appear to _fall_, but to _burst_ upon the shore; which never perishes, but recoils and recovers. § . turner's expression of heavy rolling sea. § . with peculiar expression of weight. aiming at these grand characters of the sea, turner almost always places the spectator, not on the shore, but twenty or thirty yards from it, beyond the first range of the breakers, as in the land's end, fowey, dunbar, and laugharne. the latter has been well engraved, and may be taken as a standard of the expression of fitfulness and power. the grand division of the whole space of the sea by a few dark continuous furrows of tremendous swell, (the breaking of one of which alone has strewed the rocks in front with ruin,) furnishes us with an estimate of space and strength, which at once reduces the men upon the shore to insects; and yet through this terrific simplicity there is indicated a fitfulness and fury in the tossing of the individual lines, which give to the whole sea a wild, unwearied, reckless incoherency, like that of an enraged multitude, whose masses act together in frenzy, while not one individual feels as another. especial attention is to be directed to the flatness of all the lines, for the same principle holds in sea which we have seen in mountains. all the size and sublimity of nature are given not by the height, but by the breadth of her masses: and turner, by following her in her sweeping lines, while he does not lose the elevation of its surges, adds in a tenfold degree to their power: farther, observe the peculiar expression of _weight_ which there is in turner's waves, precisely of the same kind which we saw in his waterfall. we have not a cutting, springing, elastic line--no jumping or leaping in the waves: _that_ is the characteristic of chelsea reach or hampstead ponds in a storm. but the surges roll and plunge with such prostration and hurling of their mass against the shore, that we feel the rocks are shaking under them; and, to add yet more to this impression, observe how little, comparatively, they are broken by the wind; above the floating wood, and along the shore, we have indication of a line of torn spray; but it is a mere fringe along the ridge of the surge--no interference with its gigantic body. the wind has no power over its tremendous unity of force and weight. finally, observe how, on the rocks on the left, the violence and swiftness of the rising wave are indicated by precisely the same lines which we saw were indicative of fury in the torrent. the water on these rocks is the body of the wave which has just broken, rushing up over them; and in doing so, like the torrent, it does not break, nor foam, nor part upon the rock, but accommodates itself to every one of its swells and hollows, with undulating lines, whose grace and variety might alone serve us for a day's study; and it is only where two streams of this rushing water meet in the hollow of the rock, that their force is shown by the vertical bound of the spray. [illustration: port ruysdael. from a painting by turner.] § . peculiar action of recoiling waves. § . and of the stroke of a breaker on the shore. § . general character of sea on a rocky coast given by turner in the land's end. in the distance of this grand picture, there are two waves which entirely depart from the principle observed by all the rest, and spring high into the air. they have a message for us which it is important that we should understand. their leap is not a preparation for breaking, neither is it caused by their meeting with a rock. it is caused by their encounter with the recoil of the preceding wave. when a large surge, in the act of breaking, just as it curls over, is hurled against the face either of a wall or of a vertical rock, the sound of the blow is not a crash nor a roar; it is a report as loud as, and in every respect similar to, that of a great gun, and the wave is dashed back from the rock with force scarcely diminished, but reversed in direction,--it now recedes from the shore, and at the instant that it encounters the following breaker, the result is the vertical bound of both which is here rendered by turner. such a recoiling wave will proceed out to sea through ten or twelve ranges of following breakers, before it is overpowered. the effect of the encounter is more completely and palpably given in the quilleboeuf, in the rivers of france. it is peculiarly instructive here, as informing us of the nature of the coast, and the force of the waves, far more clearly than any spray about the rocks themselves could have done. but the effect of the blow at the shore itself is given in the land's end, and vignette to lycidas. under favorable circumstances, with an advancing tide under a heavy gale, where the breakers feel the shore underneath them a moment before they touch the rock, so as to nod over when they strike, the effect is nearly incredible except to an eyewitness. i have seen the whole body of the wave rise in one white, vertical, broad fountain, eighty feet above the sea, half of it beaten so fine as to be borne away by the wind, the rest turning in the air when exhausted, and falling back with a weight and crash like that of an enormous waterfall. this is given most completely in the lycidas, and the blow of a less violent wave among broken rocks, not meeting it with an absolute wall, along the shore of the land's end. this last picture is a study of sea whose whole organization has been broken up by constant recoils from a rocky coast. the laugharne gives the surge and weight of the ocean in a gale, on a comparatively level shore; but the land's end, the entire disorder of the surges when every one of them, divided and entangled among promontories as it rolls in, and beaten back part by part from walls of rock on this side and that side, recoils like the defeated division of a great army, throwing all behind it into disorder, breaking up the succeeding waves into vertical ridges, which in their turn, yet more totally shattered upon the shore, retire in more hopeless confusion, until the whole surface of the sea becomes one dizzy whirl of rushing, writhing, tortured, undirected rage, bounding, and crashing, and coiling in an anarchy of enormous power, subdivided into myriads of waves, of which every one is not, be it remembered, a separate surge, but part and portion of a vast one, actuated by internal power, and giving in every direction the mighty undulation of impetuous line which glides over the rocks and writhes in the wind, overwhelming the one, and piercing the other with the form, fury, and swiftness of a sheet of lambent fire. and throughout the rendering of all this, there is not one false curve given, not one which is not the perfect expression of visible motion; and the forms of the infinite sea are drawn throughout with that utmost mastery of art which, through the deepest study of every line, makes every line appear the wildest child of chance, while yet each is in itself a subject and a picture different from all else around. of the color of this magnificent sea i have before spoken; it is a solemn green gray, (with its foam seen dimly through the darkness of twilight,) modulated with the fulness, changefulness, and sadness of a deep, wild melody. § . open seas of turner's earlier times. the greater number of turner's paintings of open sea belong to a somewhat earlier period than these drawings; nor, generally speaking, are they of equal value. it appears to me that the artist had at that time either less knowledge of, or less delight in, the characteristics of deep water than of coast sea, and that, in consequence, he suffered himself to be influenced by some of the qualities of the dutch sea-painters. in particular, he borrowed from them the habit of casting a dark shadow on the near waves, so as to bring out a stream of light behind; and though he did this in a more legitimate way than they, that is to say, expressing the light by touches on the foam, and indicating the shadow as cast on foamy surface, still the habit has induced much feebleness and conventionality in the pictures of the period. his drawing of the waves was also somewhat petty and divided, small forms covered with white flat spray, a condition which i doubt not the artist has seen on some of the shallow dutch seas, but which i have never met with myself, and of the rendering of which therefore i cannot speak. yet even in these, which i think among the poorest works of the painter, the expressions of breeze, motion, and light, are very marvellous; and it is instructive to compare them either with the lifeless works of the dutch themselves, or with any modern imitations of them, as for instance with the seas of callcott, where all the light is white and all the shadows gray, where no distinction is made between water and foam, or between real and reflective shadow, and which are generally without evidence of the artists having ever seen the sea. some pictures, however, belonging to this period of turner are free from the dutch infection, and show the real power of the artist. a very important one is in the possession of lord francis egerton, somewhat heavy in its forms, but remarkable for the grandeur of distance obtained at the horizon; a much smaller, but more powerful example is the port ruysdael in the possession of e. bicknell, esq., with which i know of no work at all comparable for the expression of the white, wild, cold, comfortless waves of northern sea, even though the sea is almost subordinate to the awful rolling clouds. both these pictures are very gray. the pas de calais has more color, and shows more art than either, yet is less impressive. recently, two marines of the same subdued color have appeared ( ) among his more radiant works. one, ostend, somewhat forced and affected, but the other, also called port ruysdael, is among the most perfect sea pictures he has produced, and especially remarkable as being painted without one marked opposition either of color or of shade, all quiet and simple even to an extreme, so that the picture was exceedingly unattractive at first sight. the shadow of the pier-head on the near waves is marked solely by touches indicative of reflected light, and so mysteriously that when the picture is seen near, it is quite untraceable, and comes into existence as the spectator retires. it is thus of peculiar truth and value; and instructive as a contrast to the dark shadows of his earlier time. § . effect of sea after prolonged storm. few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of a powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days and nights, and to those who have not, i believe it must be unimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. the water from its prolonged agitation is beaten, not into mere creaming foam, but into masses of accumulated yeast,[ ] which hang in ropes and wreaths from wave to wave, and where one curls over to break, form a festoon like a drapery, from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses, which make the air white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in their very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the water is under a great cataract; and their masses, being thus half water and half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise, and carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like actual water. add to this, that when the air has been exhausted of its moisture by long rain, the spray of the sea is caught by it as described above, (section iii. chapter vi. § ,) and covers its surface not merely with the smoke of finely divided water, but with boiling mist; imagine also the low rain-clouds brought down to the very level of the sea, as i have often seen them, whirling and flying in rags and fragments from wave to wave; and finally, conceive the surges themselves in their utmost pitch of power, velocity, vastness, and madness, lifting themselves in precipices and peaks, furrowed with their whirl of ascent, through all this chaos; and you will understand that there is indeed no distinction left between the sea and air; that no object, nor horizon, nor any landmark or natural evidence of position is left; that the heaven is all spray, and the ocean all cloud, and that you can see no farther in any direction than you could see through a cataract. suppose the effect of the first sunbeam sent from above to show this annihilation to itself, and you have the sea picture of the academy, --the snowstorm, one of the very grandest statements of sea-motion, mist, and light that has ever been put on canvas, even by turner. of course it was not understood; his finest works never are; but there was some apology for the public's not comprehending this, for few people have had the opportunity of seeing the sea at such a time, and when they have, cannot face it. to hold by a mast or a rock, and watch it, is a prolonged endurance of drowning which few people have courage to go through. to those who have, it is one of the noblest lessons of nature. § . turner's noblest work, the deep open sea in the slave ship. but, i think, the noblest sea that turner has ever painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the slave ship, the chief academy picture of the exhibition of . it is a sunset on the atlantic after prolonged storm; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselves in the hollow of the night. the whole surface of sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high, nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, like the lifting of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm. between these two ridges, the fire of the sunset falls along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light, the intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold and bathes like blood. along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided, lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. they do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and furiously, as the under strength of the swell compels or permits them; leaving between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now flashing back the gold of the declining sun, now fearfully dyed from above with the indistinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them in flakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to the reckless waves the added motion of their own fiery flying. purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hollow breakers are cast upon the mist of the night, which gathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty[ ] ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fearful hue which signs the sky with horror, and mixes its flaming flood with the sunlight,--and cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines the multitudinous sea. § . its united excellences and perfection as a whole. i believe, if i were reduced to rest turner's immortality upon any single work, i should choose this. its daring conception--ideal in the highest sense of the word--is based on the purest truth, and wrought out with the concentrated knowledge of a life; its color is absolutely perfect, not one false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every square inch of canvas is a perfect composition; its drawing as accurate as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion; its tones as true as they are wonderful;[ ] and the whole picture dedicated to the most sublime of subjects and impressions--(completing thus the perfect system of all truth, which we have shown to be formed by turner's works)--the power, majesty, and deathfulness of the open, deep, illimitable sea. footnotes [ ] not altogether. i believe here, as in a former case, i have attributed far too much influence to this change of focus. in turner's earlier works the principle is not found. in the rivers of the yorkshire drawings, every reflection is given clearly, even to the farthest depth, and yet the surface is not lost, and it would deprive the painter of much power if he were not sometimes so to represent them, especially when his object is repose; it being, of course, as lawful for him to choose one adaptation of the sight as another. i have, however, left the above paragraphs as first written, because they are true, although i think they make too much of an unimportant matter. the reader may attribute to them such weight as he thinks fit. he is referred to § of this chapter, and to § of the first chapter of this section. [ ] on a large scale it is so, but the same lines are to be seen for the moment whenever water becomes exceedingly rapid, and yet feels the bottom as it passes, being not thrown up or cast clear of it. in general, the drawing of water fails from being too interrupted, the forms flung hither and thither, and broken up and covered with bright touches, instead of being wrought out in their real unities of curvature. it is difficult enough to draw a curved surface, even when it is rough and has texture; but to indicate the varied and sweeping forms of a crystalline and polished substance, requires far more skill and patience than most artists possess. in some respects, it is impossible. i do not suppose any means of art are capable of rightly expressing the smooth, multitudinous rippling of a rapid rivulet of shallow water, giving its transparency lustre and fully-developed forms; and the greater number of the lines and actions of torrent-waves are equally inexpressible. the effort should, nevertheless, always be made, and whatever is sacrificed in color, freedom, or brightness, the real contours ought always in some measure to be drawn, as a careful draughtsman secures those of flesh, or any other finely-modelled surface. it is better, in many respects, the drawing should miss of being _like_ water, than that it should miss in this one respect the grandeur of water. many tricks of scratching and dashing will bring out a deceptive resemblance; the determined and laborious rendering of contour alone secures sublimity. [ ] the "yesty waves" of shakspeare have made the likeness familiar, and probably most readers take the expression as merely equivalent to "foamy;" but shakspeare knew better. sea-foam does not, under ordinary circumstances, last a moment after it is formed, but disappears, as above described, in a mere white film. but the foam of a prolonged tempest is altogether different; it is "whipped" foam,--thick, permanent, and, in a foul or discolored sea, very ugly, especially in the way it hangs about the tops of the waves, and gathers into clotted concretions before the driving wind. the sea looks truly working or fermenting. the following passage from fenimore cooper is an interesting confirmation of the rest of the above description, which may be depended upon as entirely free from exaggeration:--"for the first time i now witnessed a tempest at sea. gales, and pretty hard ones, i had often seen, but the force of the wind on this occasion as much exceeded that in ordinary gales of wind, as the force of these had exceeded that of a whole-sail breeze. the seas seemed crushed; the pressure of the swooping atmosphere, as the currents of the air went howling over the surface of the ocean, fairly preventing them from rising; or where a mound of water did appear, it was scooped up and borne off in spray, as the axe dubs inequalities from the log. when the day returned, a species of lurid, sombre light was diffused over the watery waste, though nothing was visible but the ocean and the ship. even the sea-birds seemed to have taken refuge in the caverns of the adjacent coast, none reappearing with the dawn. the air was full of spray, and it was with difficulty that the eye could penetrate as far into the humid atmosphere as half a mile,"--_miles wattingford_. half a mile is an over-estimate in coast. [ ] she is a slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. the near sea is encumbered with corpses. [ ] there is a piece of tone of the same kind, equal in one part, but not so united with the rest of the picture, in the storm scene illustrative of the antiquary,--a sunset light on polished sea. i ought to have particularly mentioned the sea in the lowestoffe, as a piece of the cutting motion of shallow water, under storm, altogether in gray, which should be especially contrasted, as a piece of color, with the grays of vandevelde. and the sea in the great yarmouth should have been noticed for its expression of water in violent agitation, seen in enormous extent from a great elevation. there is almost every form of sea in it,--rolling waves dashing on the pier--successive breakers rolling to the shore--a vast horizon of multitudinous waves--and winding canals of calm water along the sands, bringing fragments of bright sky down into their yellow waste. there is hardly one of the views of the southern coast which does not give some new condition or circumstance of sea. section vi. of truth of vegetation.--conclusion. chapter i. of truth of vegetation. § . frequent occurrence of foliage in the works of the old masters. we have now arrived at the consideration of what was, with the old masters, the subject of most serious and perpetual study. if they do not give us truth here, they cannot have the faculty of truth in them; for foliage is the chief component part of all their pictures, and is finished by them with a care and labor which, if bestowed without attaining truth, must prove either their total bluntness of perception, or total powerlessness of hand. with the italian school i can scarcely recollect a single instance in which foliage does not form the greater part of the picture; in fact, they are rather painters of tree-portrait than landscape painters; for rocks, and sky, and architecture are usually mere accessories and backgrounds to the dark masses of laborious foliage, of which the composition principally consists. yet we shall be less detained by the examination of foliage than by our former subjects; since where specific form is organized and complete, and the occurrence of the object universal, it is easy, without requiring any laborious attention in the reader, to demonstrate to him quite as much of the truth or falsehood of various representations of it, as may serve to determine the character and rank of the painter. § . laws common to all forest trees. their branches do not taper, but only divide. it will be best to begin as nature does, with the stems and branches, and then to put the leaves on. and in speaking of trees generally, be it observed, when i say _all_ trees, i mean only those ordinary forest or copse trees of europe, which are the chief subjects of the landscape painter. i do not mean to include every kind of foliage which by any accident can find its way into a picture, but the ordinary trees of europe,--oak, elm, ash, hazel, willow, birch, beech, poplar, chestnut, pine, mulberry, olive, ilex, carubbe, and such others. i do not purpose to examine the characteristics of each tree; it will be enough to observe the laws common to all. first, then, neither the stems nor the boughs of any of the above trees _taper_, except where they fork. wherever a stem sends off a branch, or a branch a lesser bough, or a lesser bough a bud, the stem or the branch is, on the instant, less in diameter by the exact quantity of the branch or the bough they have sent off, and they remain of the same diameter; or if there be any change, rather increase than diminish until they send off another branch or bough. this law is imperative and without exception; no bough, nor stem, nor twig, ever tapering or becoming narrower towards its extremity by a hairbreadth, save where it parts with some portion of its substance at a fork or bud, so that if all the twigs and sprays at the top and sides of the tree, which are, and _have been_, could be united without loss of space, they would form a round log of the diameter of the trunk from which they spring. § . appearance of tapering caused by frequent buds. but as the trunks of most trees send off twigs and sprays of light under foliage, of which every individual fibre takes precisely its own thickness of wood from the parent stem, and as many of these drop off, leaving nothing but a small excrescence to record their existence, there is frequently a slight and delicate appearance of tapering bestowed on the trunk itself; while the same operation takes place much more extensively in the branches, it being natural to almost all trees to send out from their young limbs more wood than they can support, which, as the stem increases, gets contracted at the point of insertion, so as to check the flow of the sap, and then dies and drops off, leaving all along the bough, first on one side, then on another, a series of small excrescences, sufficient to account for a degree of tapering, which is yet so very slight, that if we select a portion of a branch with no real fork or living bough to divide it or diminish it, the tapering is scarcely to be detected by the eye; and if we select a portion without such evidences of past ramification, there will be found none whatsoever. § . and care of nature to conceal the parallelism. but nature takes great care and pains to conceal this uniformity in her boughs. they are perpetually parting with little sprays here and there, which steal away their substance cautiously, and where the eye does not perceive the theft, until, a little way above, it feels the loss; and in the upper parts of the tree, the ramifications take place so constantly and delicately, that the effect upon the eye is precisely the same as if the boughs actually tapered, except here and there, where some avaricious one, greedy of substance, runs on for two or three yards without parting with anything, and becomes ungraceful in so doing. § . the degree of tapering which may be represented as continuous. hence we see that although boughs may, and must be represented as actually tapering, they must only be so when they are sending off foliage and sprays, and when they are at such a distance that the particular forks and divisions cannot be evident to the eye; and farther, even in such circumstances the tapering never can be sudden or rapid. no bough ever, with appearance of smooth tapering, loses more than one tenth of its diameter in a length of ten diameters. any greater diminution than this must be accounted for by visible ramification, and must take place by steps, at each fork. § . the trees of gaspar poussin; and therefore we see at once that the stem of gaspar poussin's tall tree, on the right of the la riccia, in the national gallery, is a painting of a carrot or a parsnip, not of the trunk of a tree. for, being so near that every individual leaf is visible, we should not have seen, in nature, one branch or stem actually tapering. we should have received an _impression_ of graceful diminution; but we should have been able, on examination, to trace it joint by joint, fork by fork, into the thousand minor supports of the leaves. gaspar poussin's stem, on the contrary, only sends off four or five minor branches altogether, and both it and they taper violently, and without showing why or wherefore--without parting with a single twig--without showing one vestige of roughness or excrescence--and leaving, therefore, their unfortunate leaves to hold on as best they may. the latter, however, are clever leaves, and support themselves as swarming bees do, hanging on by each other. § . and of the italian school generally, defy this law. but even this piece of work is a jest to the perpetration of the bough at the left-hand upper corner of the picture opposite to it,--the view near albano. this latter is a representation of an ornamental group of elephants' tusks, with feathers tied to the ends of them. not the wildest imagination could ever conjure up in it the remotest resemblance to the bough of a tree. it might be the claws of a witch--the talons of an eagle--the horns of a fiend; but it is a full assemblage of every conceivable falsehood which can be told respecting foliage--a piece of work so barbarous in every way, that one glance at it ought to prove the complete charlatanism and trickery of the whole system of the old landscape painters. for i will depart for once from my usual plan, of abstaining from all assertion of a thing's being beautiful or otherwise; i will say here, at once, that such drawing as this is as ugly as it is childish, and as painful as it is false; and that the man who could tolerate, much more, who could deliberately set down such a thing on his canvas, had neither eye nor feeling for one single attribute or excellence of god's works. he might have drawn the other stem in excusable ignorance, or under some false impression of being able to improve upon nature; but _this_ is conclusive and unpardonable. again, take the stem of the chief tree in claude's narcissus. it is a very faithful portrait of a large boa-constrictor, with a handsome tail; the kind of trunk which young ladies at fashionable boarding-schools represent with nosegays at the top of them, by way of forest scenery. § . the truth, as it is given by j. d. harding. let us refresh ourselves for a moment, by looking at the truth. we need not go to turner, we will go to the man who, next to him, is unquestionably the greatest master of foliage in europe--j. d. harding. take the trunk of the largest stone-pine, plate , in the park and the forest. for the first nine or ten feet from the ground it does not lose one hairbreadth of its diameter. but the shoot, broken off just under the crossing part of the distant tree, is followed by an instant diminution of the trunk, perfectly appreciable both by the eye and the compasses. again, the stem maintains undiminished thickness, up to the two shoots on the left, from the loss of which it suffers again perceptibly. on the right, immediately above, is the stump of a very large bough, whose loss reduces the trunk suddenly to about two-thirds of what it was at the root. diminished again, less considerably, by the minor branch close to this stump, it now retains its diameter up to the three branches, broken off just under the head, where it once more loses in diameter, and finally branches into the multitude of head-boughs, of which not one will be found tapering in any part, but losing themselves gradually by division among their offshoots and spray. this is nature, and beauty too. § . boughs, in consequence of this law, _must_ diminish where they divide. those of the old masters often do not. but the old masters are not satisfied with drawing carrots for boughs. nature can be violated in more ways than one, and the industry with which they seek out and adopt every conceivable mode of contradicting her is matter of no small interest. it is evident, from what we have above stated of the structure of all trees, that as no boughs diminish where they do not fork, so they cannot fork without diminishing. it is impossible that the smallest shoot can be sent out of a bough without a diminution of the diameter above it; and wherever a branch goes off it must not only be less in diameter than the bough from which it springs, but the bough beyond the fork must be less by precisely the quantity of the branch it has sent off.[ ] now observe the bough underneath the first bend of the great stem in claude's narcissus; it sends off four branches like the ribs of a leaf. the two lowest of these are both quite as thick as the parent stem, and the stem itself is much thicker after it has sent off the first one than it was before. the top boughs of the central tree, in the marriage of isaac and rebecca, ramify in the same scientific way. § . boughs must multiply as they diminish. those of the old masters do not. § . bough-drawing of salvator. but there are further conclusions to be drawn from this great principle in trees. as they only diminish where they divide, their increase of number is in precise proportion to their diminution of size, so that whenever we come to the extremities of boughs, we must have a multitude of sprays sufficient to make up, if they were united, the bulk of that from which they spring. where a bough divides into two equal ramifications, the diameter of each of the two is about two-thirds that of the single one, and the sum of their diameters, therefore, one-fourth greater than the diameter of the single one. hence, if no boughs died or were lost, the quantity of wood in the sprays would appear one-fourth greater than would be necessary to make up the thickness of the trunk. but the lost boughs remove the excess, and therefore, speaking broadly, the diameters of the outer boughs put together would generally just make up the diameter of the trunk. precision in representing this is neither desirable nor possible. all that is required is just so much observance of the general principle as may make the eye feel satisfied that there is something like the same quantity of wood in the sprays which there is in the stem. but to do this, there must be, what there always is in nature, an exceeding complexity of the outer sprays. this complexity gradually increases towards their extremities, of course exactly in proportion to the slenderness of the twigs. the slenderer they become, the more there are of them, until at last, at the extremities of the tree, they form a mass of intricacy, which in winter, when it can be seen, is scarcely distinguishable from fine herbage, and is beyond all power of definite representation; it can only be expressed by a mass of involved strokes. also, as they shoot out in every direction, some are nearer, some more distant; some distinct, some faint; and their intersections and relations of distance are marked with the most exquisite gradations of aerial perspective. now it will be found universally in the works of claude, gaspar, and salvator, that the boughs do _not_ get in the least complex or multiplied towards the extremities--that each large limb forks only into two or three smaller ones, each of which vanishes into the air without any cause or reason for such unaccountable conduct--unless that the mass of leaves transfixed upon it or tied to it, entirely dependent on its single strength, have been too much, as well they may be, for its powers of solitary endurance. this total ignorance of tree structure is shown throughout their works. the sinon before priam is an instance of it in a really fine work of claude's, but the most gross examples are in the works of salvator. it appears that this latter artist was hardly in the habit of studying from nature at all after his boyish ramble among the calabrian hills; and i do not recollect any instance of a piece of his bough-drawing which is not palpably and demonstrably a made-up phantasm of the studio, the proof derivable from this illegitimate tapering being one of the most convincing. the painter is always visibly embarrassed to reduce the thick boughs to spray, and _feeling_ (for salvator naturally had acute feeling for truth) that the bough was wrong when it tapered suddenly, he accomplishes its diminution by an impossible protraction; throwing out shoot after shoot until his branches straggle all across the picture, and at last disappear unwillingly where there is no room for them to stretch any farther. the consequence is, that whatever leaves are put upon such boughs have evidently no adequate support, their power of leverage is enough to uproot the tree; or if the boughs are left bare, they have the look of the long tentacula of some complicated marine monster, or of the waving endless threads of bunchy sea-weed, instead of the firm, upholding, braced, and bending grace of natural boughs. i grant that this is in a measure done by salvator from a love of ghastliness, and that in certain scenes it is in a sort allowable; but it is in a far greater degree done from pure ignorance of tree structure, as is sufficiently proved by the landscape of the pitti palace, peace burning the arms of war; where the spirit of the scene is intended to be quite other than ghastly, and yet the tree branches show the usual errors in an extraordinary degree; every one of their arrangements is impossible, and the trunk of the tree could not for a moment support the foliage it is loaded with. so also in the pictures of the guadagni palace. and even where the skeleton look of branches is justifiable or desirable, there is no occasion for any violation of natural laws. i have seen more spectral character in the real limbs of a blasted oak, than ever in salvator's best monstrosities; more horror is to be obtained by right combination of inventive line, than by drawing tree branches as if they were wing-bones of a pterodactyle. all departure from natural forms to give fearfulness is mere germanism; it is the work of fancy, not of imagination,[ ] and instantly degrades whatever it affects to third-rate level. there is nothing more marked in truly great men, than their power of being dreadful without being false or licentious. in tintoret's murder of abel, the head of the sacrificed firstling lies in the corner of the foreground, obscurely sketched in, and with the light gleaming upon its glazed eyes. there is nothing exaggerated about the head, but there is more horror got out of it, and more of death suggested by its treatment, than if he had turned all the trees of his picture into skeletons, and raised a host of demons to drive the club. § . all these errors especially shown in claude's sketches and concentrated in a work of g. poussin's. § . impossibility of the angles of boughs being taken out of them by wind. it is curious that in salvator's sketches or etchings there is less that is wrong than in his paintings,--there seems a fresher remembrance of nature about them. not so with claude. it is only by looking over his sketches, in the british museum, that a complete and just idea is to be formed of his capacities of error; for the feeling and arrangement of many of them are those of an advanced age, so that we can scarcely set them down for what they resemble--the work of a boy ten years old; and the drawing being seen without any aids of tone or color to set it off, shows in its naked falsehood. the windy landscape of poussin, opposite the dido and �neas, in the national gallery, presents us, in the foreground tree, with a piece of atrocity which i think, to any person who candidly considers it, may save me all farther trouble of demonstrating the errors of ancient art. i do not in the least suspect the picture: the tones of it, and much of the handling, are masterly; yet that foreground tree comprises every conceivable violation of truth which the human hand can commit, or head invent, in drawing a tree--except only, that it is not drawn root uppermost. it has no bark, no roughness nor character of stem; its boughs do not grow out of each other, but are stuck into each other; they ramify without diminishing, diminish without ramifying, are terminated by no complicated sprays, have their leaves tied to their ends, like the heads of dutch brooms; and finally, and chiefly, they are evidently not made of wood, but of some soft elastic substance, which the wind can stretch out as it pleases, for there is not a vestige of an angle in any one of them. now, the fiercest wind that ever blew upon the earth, could not take the angles out of the bough of a tree an inch thick. the whole bough bends together, retaining its elbows, and angles, and natural form, but affected throughout with curvature in each of its parts and joints. that part of it which was before perpendicular being bent aside, and that which was before sloping, being bent into still greater inclination, the angle at which the two parts meet remains the same; or if the strain be put in the opposite direction, the bough will break long before it loses its angle. you will find it difficult to bend the angles out of the youngest sapling, if they be marked; and absolutely impossible, with a strong bough. you may break it, but you will not destroy its angles. and if you watch a tree in the wildest storm, you will find that though all its boughs are bending, none lose their character but the utmost shoots and sapling spray. hence gaspar poussin, by his bad drawing, does not make his storm strong, but his tree weak; he does not make his gust violent, but his boughs of india-rubber. § . bough-drawing of titian. these laws respecting vegetation are so far more imperative than those which were stated respecting water, that the greatest artist cannot violate them without danger, because they are laws resulting from organic structure, which it is always painful to see interrupted; on the other hand, they have this in common with all laws, that they may be observed with mathematical precision, yet with no grateful result; the disciplined eye and the life in the woods are worth more than all botanical knowledge. for there is that about the growing of the tree trunk, and that grace in its upper ramification which cannot be taught, and which cannot even be seen but by eager watchfulness. there is not an exhibition passes, but there appear in it hundreds of elaborate paintings of trees, many of them executed from nature. for three hundred years back, trees have been drawn with affection by all the civilized nations of europe, and yet i repeat boldly, what i before asserted, that no men but titian and turner ever drew the stem of a tree. generally, i think, the perception of the muscular qualities of the tree trunk incomplete, except in men who have studied the human figure, and in loose expression of those characters, the painter who can draw the living muscle seldom fails; but the thoroughly peculiar lines belonging to woody fibre, can only be learned by patient forest study; and hence in all the trees of the merely historical painters, there is fault of some kind or another, commonly exaggeration of the muscular swellings, or insipidity and want of spring in curvature, or fantasticism and unnaturalness of arrangement, and especially a want of the peculiar characters of bark which express the growth and age of the tree; for bark is no mere excrescence, lifeless and external--it is a skin of especial significance in its indications of the organic form beneath; in places under the arms of the tree it wrinkles up and forms fine lines _round_ the trunk, inestimable in their indication of the direction of its surface; in others, it bursts or peels longitudinally, and the rending and bursting of it are influenced in direction and degree by the under-growth and swelling of the woody fibre, and are not a mere roughness and granulated pattern of the hide. where there are so many points to be observed, some are almost always exaggerated, and others missed, according to the predilections of the painter. rembrandt and albert durer have given some splendid examples of woody texture, but both miss the grace of the great lines. titian took a larger view and reached a higher truth, yet (as before noticed) from the habit of drawing the figure, he admits too much flaccidity and bend, and sometimes makes his tree trunks look flexible like sea-weed. there is a peculiar stiffness and spring about the curves of the wood, which separates them completely from animal curves, and which especially defies recollection or invention; it is so subtile that it escapes but too often, even in the most patient study from nature; it lies within the thickness of a pencil line. farther, the modes of ramification of the upper branches are so varied, inventive, and graceful, that the least alteration of them, even in the measure of a hairbreadth, spoils them; and though it is sometimes possible to get rid of a troublesome bough, accidentally awkward, or in some minor respects to assist the arrangement, yet so far as the real branches are copied, the hand libels their lovely curvatures even in its best attempts to follow them. § . bough-drawing of turner. these two characters, the woody stiffness hinted through muscular line, and the inventive grace of the upper boughs, have never been rendered except by turner; he does not merely draw them better than others, but he is the only man who has ever drawn them at all. of the woody character, the tree subjects of the liber studiorum afford marked examples; the cephalus and procris, scenes near the grand chartreuse and blair athol, juvenile tricks, and hedging and ditching, may be particularized; in the england series, the bolton abbey is perhaps a more characteristic and thoroughly turneresque example than any. of the arrangement of the upper boughs, the �sacus and hesperie is perhaps the most consummate example, the absolute truth and simplicity and freedom from anything like fantasticism or animal form being as marked on the one hand, as the exquisite imaginativeness of the lines on the other: among the yorkshire subjects the aske hall, kirby lonsdale churchyard, and brignall church are most characteristic: among the england subjects the warwick, dartmouth cove, durham, and chain bridge over the tees, where the piece of thicket on the right has been well rendered by the engraver, and is peculiarly expressive of the aerial relations and play of light among complex boughs. the vignette at the opening of rogers's pleasures of memory, that of chiefswood cottage in the illustrations to scott's works, and the chateau de la belle gabrielle, engraved for the keepsake, are among the most graceful examples accessible to every one; the crossing the brook will occur at once to those acquainted with the artist's gallery. the drawing of the stems in all these instances, and indeed in all the various and frequent minor occurrences of such subject throughout the painter's works is entirely unique, there is nothing of the same kind in art. § . leafage. its variety and symmetry. § . perfect regularity of poussin. let us, however, pass to the leafage of the elder landscape painters, and see if it atones for the deficiencies of the stems. one of the most remarkable characters of natural leafage is the constancy with which, while the leaves are arranged on the spray with exquisite regularity, that regularity is modified in their actual effect. for as in every group of leaves some are seen sideways, forming merely long lines, some foreshortened, some crossing each other, every one differently turned and placed from all the others, the forms of the leaves, though in themselves similar, give rise to a thousand strange and differing forms in the group; and the shadows of some, passing over the others, still farther disguise and confuse the mass, until the eye can distinguish nothing but a graceful and flexible disorder of innumerable forms, with here and there a perfect leaf on the extremity, or a symmetrical association of one or two, just enough to mark the specific character and to give unity and grace, but never enough to repeat in one group what was done in another--never enough to prevent the eye from feeling that, however regular and mathematical may be the structure of parts, what is composed out of them is as various and infinite as any other part of nature. nor does this take place in general effect only. break off an elm bough, three feet long, in full leaf, and lay it on the table before you, and try to draw it, leaf for leaf. it is ten to one if in the whole bough, (provided you do not twist it about as you work,) you find one form of a leaf exactly like another; perhaps you will not even have _one_ complete. every leaf will be oblique, or foreshortened, or curled, or crossed by another, or shaded by another, or have something or other the matter with it; and though the whole bough will look graceful and symmetrical, you will scarcely be able to tell how or why it does so, since there is not one line of it like another. now go to gaspar poussin, and take one of his sprays where they come against the sky; you may count it all round, one, two, three, four, one bunch; five, six, seven, eight, two bunches; nine, ten, eleven, twelve, three bunches; with four leaves each,--and such leaves! every one precisely the same as its neighbor, blunt and round at the end, (where every forest leaf is sharp, except that of the fig-tree,) tied together by the roots, and so fastened on to the demoniacal claws above described, one bunch to each claw. § . exceeding intricacy of nature's foliage. but if nature is so various when you have a bough on the table before you, what must she be when she retires from you, and gives you her whole mass and multitude? the leaves then at the extremities become as fine as dust, a mere confusion of points and lines between you and the sky, a confusion which you might as well hope to draw sea-sand particle by particle, as to imitate leaf for leaf. this, as it comes down into the body of the tree, gets closer, but never opaque; it is always transparent, with crumbling lights in it letting you through to the sky; then, out of this, come, heavier and heavier, the masses of illumined foliage, all dazzling and inextricable, save here and there a single leaf on the extremities; then, under these, you get deep passages of broken, irregular gloom, passing into transparent, green-lighted, misty hollows; the twisted stems glancing through them in their pale and entangled infinity, and the shafted sunbeams, rained from above, running along the lustrous leaves for an instant; then lost, then caught again on some emerald bank or knotted root, to be sent up again with a faint reflex on the white under-sides of dim groups of drooping foliage, the shadows of the upper boughs running in gray network down the glossy stems, and resting in quiet checkers upon the glittering earth; but all penetrable and transparent, and, in proportion, inextricable and incomprehensible, except where across the labyrinth and the mystery of the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls, close to us, some solitary spray, some wreath of two or three motionless large leaves, the type and embodying of all that in the rest we feel and imagine, but can never see. § . how contradicted by the tree-patterns of g. poussin. now, with thus much of nature in your mind, go to gaspar poussin's view near albano, in the national gallery. it is the very subject to unite all these effects,--a sloping bank shaded with intertwined forest;--and what has gaspar given us? a mass of smooth, opaque, varnished brown, without one interstice, one change of hue, or any vestige of leafy structure in its interior, or in those parts of it, i should say, which are intended to represent interior; but out of it, over it rather, at regular intervals, we have circular groups of greenish touches, always the same in size, shape, and distance from each other, containing so exactly the same number of touches each, that you cannot tell one from another. there are eight or nine and thirty of them, laid over each other like fish-scales; the shade being most carefully made darker and darker as it recedes from each until it comes to the edge of the next, against which it cuts in the same sharp circular line, and then begins to decline again, until the canvas is covered, with about as much intelligence or feeling of art as a house-painter has in marbling a wainscot, or a weaver in repeating an ornamental pattern. what is there in this, which the most determined prejudice in favor of the old masters can for a moment suppose to resemble trees? it is exactly what the most ignorant beginner, trying to make a complete drawing, would lay down,--exactly the conception of trees which we have in the works of our worst drawing-masters, where the shade is laid on with the black-lead and stump, and every human power exerted to make it look like a kitchen-grate well polished. § . how followed by creswick. oppose to this the drawing even of our somewhat inferior tree-painters. i will not insult harding by mentioning his work after it, but take creswick, for instance, and match one of his sparkling bits of green leafage with this tree-pattern of poussin's. i do not say there is not a dignity and impressiveness about the old landscape, owing to its simplicity; and i am very far from calling creswick's good tree-painting; it is false in color and deficient in mass and freedom, and has many other defects, but it is the work of a man who has sought earnestly for truth; and who, with one thought or memory of nature in his heart, could look at the two landscapes, and receive poussin's with ordinary patience? take creswick in black and white, where he is unembarrassed by his fondness for pea-green, the illustrations, for instance, to the nut-brown maid, in the book of english ballads. look at the intricacy and fulness of the dark oak foliage where it bends over the brook, see how you can go through it, and into it, and come out behind it to the quiet bit of sky. observe the gray, aerial transparency of the stunted copse on the left, and the entangling of the boughs where the light near foliage detaches itself. above all, note the forms of the masses of light. not things like scales or shells, sharp at the edge and flat in the middle, but irregular and rounded, stealing in and out accidentally from the shadow, and presenting, as the masses of all trees do, in general outline, a resemblance to the specific forms of the leaves of which they are composed. turn over the page, and look into the weaving of the foliage and sprays against the dark night-sky, how near they are, yet how untraceable; see how the moonlight creeps up underneath them, trembling and shivering on the silver boughs above; note also, the descending bit of ivy on the left, of which only two leaves are made out, and the rest is confusion, or tells only in the moonlight like faint flakes of snow. § . perfect unity in nature's foliage. but nature observes another principle in her foliage more important even than its intricacy. she always secures an exceeding harmony and repose. she is _so_ intricate that her minuteness of parts becomes to the eye, at a little distance, one united veil or cloud of leaves, to destroy the evenness of which is perhaps a greater fault than to destroy its transparency. look at creswick's oak again, in its dark parts. intricate as it is, all is blended into a cloud-like harmony of shade, which becomes fainter and fainter, as it retires, with the most delicate flatness and unity of tone. and it is by this kind of vaporescence, so to speak, by this flat, misty, unison of parts, that nature, and her faithful followers, are enabled to keep the eye in perfect repose in the midst of profusion, and to display beauty of form, wherever they choose, to the greatest possible advantage, by throwing it across some quiet, visionary passage of dimness and rest. § . total want of it in both and hobbima. it is here that hobbima and both fail. they can paint oak leafage faithfully, but do not know where to stop, and by doing too much, lose the truth of all,--lose the very truth of detail at which they aim, for all their minute work only gives two leaves to nature's twenty. they are evidently incapable of even thinking of a tree, much more of drawing it, except leaf by leaf; they have no notion nor sense of simplicity, mass, or obscurity, and when they come to distance, where it is totally impossible that leaves should be separately seen, yet, being incapable of conceiving or rendering the grand and quiet forms of truth, they are reduced to paint their bushes with dots and touches expressive of leaves three feet broad each. nevertheless there is a genuine aim in their works, and their failure is rather to be attributed to ignorance of art, than to such want of sense for nature as we find in claude or poussin; and when they come close home, we sometimes receive from them fine passages of mechanical truth. § . how rendered by turner. but let us oppose to their works the group of trees on the left in turner's marly.[ ] we have there perfect and ceaseless intricacy to oppose to poussin,--perfect and unbroken repose to oppose to hobbima; and in the unity of these the perfection of truth. this group may be taken as a fair standard of turner's tree-painting. we have in it the admirably drawn stems, instead of the claws or the serpents; full, transparent, boundless intricacy, instead of the shell pattern; and misty depth of intermingled light and leafage, instead of perpetual repetition of one mechanical touch. § . the near leafage of claude. his middle distances are good. i have already spoken (section ii. chapter iv. § ,) of the way in which mystery and intricacy are carried even into the nearest leaves of the foreground, and noticed the want of such intricacy even in the best works of the old masters. claude's are particularly deficient, for by representing every particular leaf of them, or trying to do so, he makes nature finite, and even his nearest bits of leafage are utterly false, for they have neither shadows modifying their form, (compare section ii. chapter iii. § ,) nor sparkling lights, nor confused intersections of their own forms and lines; and the perpetual repetition of the same shape of leaves and the same arrangement, relieved from a black ground, is more like an ornamental pattern for dress than the painting of a foreground. nevertheless, the foliage of claude, in his middle distances, is the finest and truest part of his pictures, and, on the whole, affords the best example of good drawing to be found in ancient art. it is always false in color, and has not boughs enough amongst it, and the stems commonly look a great deal nearer than any part of it, but it is still graceful, flexible, abundant, intricate; and, in all but color and connection with stems, very nearly right. of the perfect painting of thick, leafy foreground, turner's mercury and argus, and oakhampton, are the standards.[ ] § . universal termination of trees in symmetrical curves. § . altogether unobserved by the old masters. always given by turner. the last and most important truth to be observed respecting trees, is that their boughs always, in finely grown individuals, bear among themselves such a ratio of length as to describe with their extremities a symmetrical curve, constant for each species; and within this curve all the irregularities, segments, and divisions of the tree are included, each bough reaching the limit with its extremity, but not passing it. when a tree is perfectly grown, each bough starts from the trunk with just so much wood as, allowing for constant ramification, will enable it to reach the terminal line; or if by mistake, it start with too little, it will proceed without ramifying till within a distance where it may safely divide; if on the contrary it start with too much, it will ramify quickly and constantly; or, to express the real operation more accurately, each bough, growing on so as to keep even with its neighbors, takes so much wood from the trunk as is sufficient to enable it to do so, more or less in proportion as it ramifies fast or slowly. in badly grown trees, the boughs are apt to fall short of the curve, or at least, there are so many jags and openings that its symmetry is interrupted; and in young trees, the impatience of the upper shoots frequently breaks the line; but in perfect and mature trees, every bough does its duty completely, and the line of curve is quite filled up, and the mass within it unbroken, so that the tree assumes the shape of a dome, as in the oak, or, in tall trees, of a pear, with the stalk downmost. the old masters paid no attention whatsoever to this great principle. they swing their boughs about, anywhere and everywhere; each stops or goes on just as it likes, nor will it be possible, in any of their works, to find a single example in which any symmetrical curve is indicated by the extremities.[ ] but i need scarcely tell any one in the slightest degree acquainted with the works of turner, how rigidly and constantly he adheres to this principle of nature; taking in his highest compositions the perfect ideal form, every spray being graceful and varied in itself, but inevitably terminating at the assigned limit, and filling up the curve without break or gap; in his lower works, taking less perfect form, but invariably hinting the constant tendency in all, and thus, in spite of his abundant complexity, he arranges his trees under simpler and grander forms than any other artist, even among the moderns. § . foliage painting on the continent. it was above asserted that j. d. harding is, after turner, the greatest master of foliage in europe; i ought, however, to state that my knowledge of the modern landscape of germany is very limited, and that, even with respect to france and italy, i judge rather from the general tendency of study and character of mind visible in the annual exhibition of the louvre, and in some galleries of modern paintings at milan, venice, and florence, than from any detailed acquaintance with the works of their celebrated painters. yet i think i can hardly be mistaken. i have seen nothing to induce me to take a closer survey; no life knowledge or emotion in any quarter; nothing but the meanest and most ignorant copyism of vulgar details, coupled with a style of conception resembling that of the various lithographic ideals on the first leaves of the music of pastoral ballads. an exception ought, however, to be made in favor of french etching; some studies in black and white may be seen in the narrow passages of the louvre of very high merit, showing great skill and delicacy of execution, and most determined industry; (in fact, i think when the french artist fails, it is never through fear of labor;) nay, more than this, some of them exhibit acute perception of landscape character and great power of reaching simple impressions of gloom, wildness, sound, and motion. some of their illustrated works also exhibit these powers in a high degree; there is a spirit, fire, and sense of reality about some of the wood-cuts to the large edition of paul and virginia, and a determined rendering of separate feeling in each, such as we look for in vain in our own ornamental works.[ ] but the french appear to have no teaching such as might carry them beyond this; their entire ignorance of color renders the assumption of the brush instantly fatal, and the false, forced, and impious sentiment of the nation renders anything like grand composition altogether impossible. § . foliage of j. d. harding. its deficiencies. it is therefore only among good artists of our own school that i think any fair comparison can be instituted, and i wish to assert harding's knowledge of foliage more distinctly, because he neither does justice to himself, nor is, i think, rightly estimated by his fellow-artists. i shall not make any invidious remarks respecting individuals, but i think it necessary to state generally, that the style of foliage painting chiefly characteristic of the pictures on the line of the royal academy is of the most degraded kind;[ ] and that, except turner and mulready, we have, as far as i know, no royal academician capable of painting even the smallest portion of foliage in a dignified or correct manner; all is lost in green shadows with glittering yellow lights, white trunks with black patches on them, and leaves of no species in particular. much laborious and clever foliage drawing is to be found in the rooms of the new water-color society; but we have no one in any wise comparable to harding for thorough knowledge of the subject, for power of expression in a sketch from nature, or for natural and unaffected conception in the study. maintaining for him this high position, it is necessary that i should also state those deficiencies which appear to me to conceal his real power, and in no small degree to prevent his progress. § . his brilliancy of execution too manifest. his over-fondness for brilliant execution i have already noticed. he is fonder of seeing something tolerably like a tree produced with few touches, than something very like a tree produced with many. now, it is quite allowable that occasionally, and in portions of his picture, a great artist should indulge himself in this luxury of sketching, yet it is a perilous luxury; it blunts the feeling and weakens the hand. i have said enough in various places respecting the virtues of negligence and of finish, (compare above the chapter on ideas of power in part i. sect. ii., and part iii. sect. i. ch. x. § ,) and i need only say here, therefore, that harding's foliage is never sufficiently finished, and has at its best the look of a rapid sketch from nature touched upon at home. in , (i think,) there was a pretty drawing in the rooms of the water-color society,--the clear green water of a torrent resting among stones, with copse-like wood on each side, a bridge in the distance, a white flower (water-lily?) catching the eye in front; the tops of the trees on the left of this picture were mere broad blots of color dashed upon the sky and connected by stems. i allow the power necessary to attain any look of foliage by such means, but it is power abused: by no such means can any of the higher virtue and impressiveness of foliage be rendered. in the use of body color for near leaves, his execution is also too hasty; often the touches are mere square or round dots, which can be understood only for foliage by their arrangement. this fault was especially marked in the trees of his picture painted for the academy two years ago; they were very nearly shapeless, and could not stand even in courtesy for walnut leaves, for which judging by the make of the tree, they must have been intended. § . his bough-drawing and choice of form. his drawing of boughs is, in all points of demonstrable law, right, and very frequently easy and graceful also; yet it has two eminent faults, the first, that the flow of the bough is sacrificed to its texture, the pencil checking itself and hesitating at dots, and stripes, and knots, instead of following the grand and unbroken tendency of growth: the second, that however good the arrangement may be as far as regards merely flexibility, intricacy, and freedom, there are none of those composed groups of line which are unfailing in nature. harding's work is not grand enough to be natural. the drawings in the park and the forest, are, i believe, almost facsimiles of sketches made from nature; yet it is evident at once that in all of them nothing but the general lie and disposition of the boughs has been taken from the tree, and that no single branch or spray has been faithfully copied or patiently studied. this want of close study necessarily causes several deficiencies of feeling respecting general form. harding's choice is always of tree forms comparatively imperfect, leaning this way and that, and unequal in the lateral arrangements of foliage. such forms are often graceful, always picturesque, but rarely grand; and when systematically adopted, untrue. it requires more patient study to attain just feeling of the dignity and character of a purely formed tree with all its symmetries perfect. § . local color, how far expressible in black and white, and with what advantage. one more cause of incorrectness i may note, though it is not peculiar to the artist's tree-drawing, but attaches to his general system of sketching. in harding's valuable work on the use of the lead pencil, there is one principle advanced which i believe to be false and dangerous, that the local color of objects is not thereby to be rendered. i think the instance given is that of some baskets, whose darkness is occasioned solely by the touches indicating the wicker-work. now, i believe, that an essential difference between the sketch of a great and of a comparatively inferior master is, that the former is conceived entirely in shade and color, and its masses are blocked out with reference to both, while the inferior draughtsman checks at textures and petty characters of object. if rembrandt had had to sketch such baskets, he would have troubled himself very little about the wicker-work; but he would have looked to see where they came dark or light on the sand, and where there were any sparkling points of light on the wet osiers. these darks and lights he would have scratched in with the fastest lines he could, leaving no white paper but at the wet points of lustre; if he had had time, the wicker-work would have come afterwards.[ ] and i think, that the first thing to be taught to any pupil, is neither how to manage the pencil, nor how to attain character of outline, but rather to see where things are light and where they are dark, and to draw them as he sees them, never caring whether his lines be dexterous or slovenly. the result of such study is the immediate substitution of downright drawing for symbolism, and afterwards a judicious moderation in the use of extreme lights and darks; for where local colors are really drawn, so much of what seems violently dark is found to come light against something else, and so much of what seems high light to come dark against the sky, that the draughtsman trembles at finding himself plunged either into blackness or whiteness, and seeks, as he should, for means of obtaining force without either. it is in consequence of his evident habit of sketching more with a view to detail and character than to the great masses, that harding's chiaroscuro is frequently crude, scattered, and petty. black shadows occur under his distant trees, white high lights on his foreground rocks, the foliage and trunks are divided by violent oppositions into separate masses, and the branches lose in spots of moss and furrowings of bark their soft roundings of delicate form, and their grand relations to each other and the sky. § . opposition between great manner and great knowledge. it is owing to my respect for the artist, and my belief in his power and conscientious desire to do what is best, that i have thus extended these somewhat unkind remarks. on the other hand, it is to be remembered, that his knowledge of nature is most extended, and his dexterity of drawing most instructive, especially considering his range of subject; for whether in water, rock, or foliage, he is equally skilful in attaining whatever he desires, (though he does not always desire all that he ought;) and artists should keep in mind, that neither grandeur of manner nor truth of system can atone for the want of this knowledge and this skill. constable's manner is good and great, but being unable to draw even a log of wood, much more a trunk of a tree or a stone, he left his works destitute of substance, mere studies of effect without any expression of specific knowledge; and thus even what is great in them has been productive, i believe, of very great injury in its encouragement of the most superficial qualities of the english school. § . foliage of cox, fielding, and cattermole. the foliage of david cox has been already noticed (preface to second edition.) it is altogether exquisite in color, and in its impressions of coolness, shade, and mass; of its drawing i cannot say anything, but that i should be sorry to see it better. copley fielding's is remarkable for its intricacy and elegance; it is, however, not free from affectation, and, as has been before remarked, is always evidently composed in the study. the execution is too rough and woolly; it is wanting in simplicity, sharpness, and freshness,--above all in specific character: not, however, in his middle distances, where the rounded masses of forest and detached blasted trunks of fir are usually very admirable. cattermole has very grand conceptions of general form, but wild and without substance, and therefore incapable of long maintaining their attractiveness, especially lately, the execution having become in the last degree coarse and affected. this is bitterly to be regretted, for few of our artists would paint foliage better, if he would paint it from nature, and with reverence. § . hunt and creswick. green, how to be rendered expressive of light, and offensive if otherwise. hunt, i think, fails, and fails only, in foliage; fails, as the daguerreotype does, from over-fidelity; for foliage will _not_ be imitated, it must be reasoned out and suggested; yet hunt is the only man we have who can paint the real leaf green under sunlight, and, in this respect, his trees are delicious,--summer itself. creswick has sweet feeling, and tries for the real green too, but, from want of science in his shadows, ends in green paint instead of green light; in mere local color, instead of color raised by sunshine. one example is enough to show where the fault lies. in his picture of the weald of kent, in the british institution this year, there was a cottage in the middle distance with white walls, and a red roof. the dark sides of the white walls and of the roof were of the same color, a dark purple--wrong for both. repeated inaccuracies of this kind necessarily deprive even the most brilliant color of all appearance of sunshine, and they are much to be deprecated in creswick, as he is one of the very few artists who _do_ draw from nature and try for nature. some of his thickets and torrent-beds are most painfully studied, and yet he cannot draw a bough nor a stone. i suspect he is too much in the habit of studying only large views on the spot, and not of drawing small portions thoroughly. i trust it will be seen that these, as all other remarks that i have made throughout this volume on particular works, are not in depreciation of, or unthankfulness for, what the artist has done, but in the desire that he should do himself more justice and more honor. i have much pleasure in creswick's works, and i am glad always to see them admired by others. § . conclusion. works of j. linnell and s. palmer. i shall conclude this sketch of the foliage art of england, by mention of two artists, whom i believe to be representative of a considerable class, admirable in their reverence and patience of study, yet unappreciated by the public, because what they do is unrecommended by dexterities of handling. the forest studies of j. linnell are peculiarly elaborate, and, in many points, most skilful; they fail perhaps of interest, owing to over-fulness of detail and a want of generalization in the effect; but even a little more of the harding sharpness of touch would set off their sterling qualities, and make them felt. a less known artist, s. palmer, lately admitted a member of the old water-color society, is deserving of the very highest place among faithful followers of nature. his studies of foreign foliage especially are beyond all praise for care and fulness. i have never seen a stone pine or a cypress drawn except by him; and his feeling is as pure and grand as his fidelity is exemplary. he has not, however, yet, i think, discovered what is necessary and unnecessary in a great picture; and his works, sent to the society's rooms, have been most unfavorable examples of his power, and have been generally, as yet, in places where all that is best in them is out of sight. i look to him, nevertheless, unless he lose himself in over-reverence for certain conventionalisms of the elder schools, as one of the probable renovators and correctors of whatever is failing or erroneous in the practice of english art. footnotes [ ] it sometimes happens that a morbid direction of growth will cause an exception here and there to this rule, the bough swelling beyond its legitimate size; knots and excrescences, of course, sometimes interfere with the effect of diminution. i believe that in the laurel, when it grows large and old, singular instances may be found of thick upper boughs and over quantity of wood at the extremities. all these accidents or exceptions are felt as such by the eye. they may occasionally be used by the painter in savage or grotesque scenery, or as points of contrast, but are no excuse for his ever losing sight of the general law. [ ] compare part iii. sect. ii. chap. iv. § , . [ ] this group i have before noticed as singularly (but, i doubt not, accidentally, and in consequence of the love of the two great painters for the same grand forms) resembling that introduced by tintoret in the background of his cain and abel. [ ] the above paragraphs i have left as originally written, because they are quite true as far as they reach; but like many other portions of this essay, they take in a very small portion of the truth. i shall not add to them at present, because i can explain my meaning better in our consideration of the laws of beauty; but the reader must bear in mind that what is above stated refers, throughout, to large masses of foliage seen under broad sunshine,--and it has especial reference to turner's enormous scale of scene, and intense desire of light. in twilight, when tree-forms are seen against sky, other laws come into operation, as well as in subject of narrow limits and near foreground. it is, i think, to be regretted that turner does not in his academy pictures sometimes take more confined and gloomy subjects, like that grand one, near the chartreuse, of the liber studiorum, wherein his magnificent power of elaborating close foliage might be developed; but, for the present, let the reader, with respect to what has been here said of close foliage, note the drawing of the leaves in that plate, in the �sacus and hesperie, and the cephalus, and the elaboration of the foregrounds in the yorkshire drawings; let him compare what is said of turner's foliage painting above in part ii. sect. i. chap. vii. § , § , and of titian's previously, as well as part iii. sect. i. chap. viii., and sect. ii. chap. iv. § . i shall hereafter endeavor to arrange the subject in a more systematic manner; but what additional observations i may have to make will none of them be in any wise more favorable to gaspar, salvator, or hobbima, than the above paragraphs. [ ] perhaps in some instances, this may be the case with the trees of nicholas poussin; but even with him the boughs only touch the line of limit with their central _points_ of extremity, and are not _sectors_ of the great curve--forming a part of it with expanded extremities, as in nature. draw a few straight lines, from the centre to the circumference of a circle. the forms included between them are the forms of the individual boughs of a fine tree, with all their ramifications (only the external curve is not a circle, but more frequently two parabolas--which, i believe, it is in the oak--or an ellipse.) but each bough of the old masters is club-shaped, and broadest, not at the outside of the tree, but a little way towards its centre. [ ] on the other hand, nothing can be more exquisitely ridiculous than the french illustrations of a second or third-rate order, as those to the harmonies of lamartine. [ ] of stanfield's foliage i remember too little to enable me to form any definite judgment; it is a pity that he so much neglects this noble element of landscape. [ ] it is true that many of rembrandt's etchings are merely in line, but it may be observed that the subject is universally _conceived_ in light and shade, and that the lines are either merely guides in the arrangement, or an exquisite indication of the key-notes of shade, on which the after-system of it is to be based--portions of fragmentary finish, showing the completeness of the conception. chapter ii. general remarks respecting the truth of turner. § . no necessity of entering into discussion of architectural truth. we have now arrived at some general conception of the extent of turner's knowledge, and the truth of his practice, by the deliberate examination of the characteristics of the four great elements of landscape--sky, earth, water, and vegetation. i have not thought it necessary to devote a chapter to architecture, because enough has been said on this subject in part ii. sect. i. chap. vii.; and its general truths, which are those with which the landscape painter, as such, is chiefly concerned, require only a simple and straightforward application of those rules of which every other material object of a landscape has required a most difficult and complicated application. turner's knowledge of perspective probably adds to his power in the arrangement of every order of subject; but ignorance on this head is rather disgraceful than knowledge meritorious. it is disgraceful, for instance, that any man should commit such palpable and atrocious errors in ordinary perspective as are seen in the quay in claude's sea-piece, no. , national gallery, or in the curved portico of no. ; but still these are not points to be taken into consideration as having anything to do with artistical rank, just as, though we should say it was disgraceful if a great poet could not spell, we should not consider such a defect as in any way taking from his poetical rank. neither is there anything particularly belonging to architecture, as such, which it is any credit to an artist to observe or represent; it is only a simple and clear field for the manifestation of his knowledge of general laws. any surveyor or engineer could have drawn the steps and balustrade in the hero and leander, as well as turner has; but there is no man living but himself who could have thrown the accidental shadows upon them. i may, however, refer for general illustration of turner's power as an architectural draughtsman, to the front of rouen cathedral, engraved in the rivers of france, and to the ely in the england. i know nothing in art which can be set beside the former of these for overwhelming grandeur and simplicity of effect, and inexhaustible intricacy of parts. i have then only a few remarks farther to offer respecting the general character of all those truths which we have been hitherto endeavoring to explain and illustrate. § . extreme difficulty of illustrating or explaining the highest truth. § . the _positive_ rank of turner is in no degree shown in the foregoing pages, but only his relative rank. § . the exceeding refinement of his truth. § . there is nothing in his works which can be enjoyed without knowledge. § . and nothing which knowledge will not enable us to enjoy. the difference in the accuracy of the lines of the torso of the vatican, (the maestro of m. angelo,) from those in one of m. angelo's finest works, could perhaps scarcely be appreciated by any eye or feeling undisciplined by the most perfect and practical anatomical knowledge. it rests on points of such traceless and refined delicacy, that though we feel them in the result, we cannot follow them in the details. yet they are such and so great as to place the torso alone in art, solitary and supreme; while the finest of m. angelo's works, considered with respect to truth alone, are said to be only on a level with antiques of the second class, under the apollo and venus, that is, two classes or grades below the torso. but suppose the best sculptor in the world, possessing the most entire appreciation of the excellence of the torso, were to sit down, pen in hand, to try and tell us wherein the peculiar truth of each line consisted? could any words that he could use make us feel the hairbreadth of depth and distance on which all depends? or end in anything more than bare assertions of the inferiority of this line to that, which, if we did not perceive for ourselves, no explanation could ever illustrate to us? he might as well endeavor to explain to us by words some taste or other subject of sense, of which we had no experience. and so it is with all truths of the highest order; they are separated from those of average precision by points of extreme delicacy, which none but the cultivated eye can in the least feel, and to express which, all words are absolutely meaningless and useless. consequently, in all that i have been saying of the truth of artists, i have been able to point out only coarse, broad, and explicable matters; i have been perfectly unable to express (and indeed i have made no endeavor to express) the finely drawn and distinguished truth in which all the real excellence of art consists. all those truths which i have been able to explain and demonstrate in turner, are such as any artist of ordinary powers of observation ought to be capable of rendering. it is disgraceful to omit them; but it is no very great credit to observe them. i have indeed proved that they have been neglected, and disgracefully so, by those men who are commonly considered the fathers of art; but in showing that they have been observed by turner, i have only proved him to be _above_ other men in knowledge of truth, i have not given any conception of his own positive rank as a painter of nature. but it stands to reason, that the men, who in broad, simple, and demonstrable matters are perpetually violating truth, will not be particularly accurate or careful in carrying out delicate and refined, and undemonstrable matters; and it stands equally to reason, that the man who, as far as argument or demonstration can go, is found invariably truthful, will, in all probability, be truthful to the last line, and shadow of a line. and such is, indeed, the case with every touch of this consummate artist; the essential excellence--all that constitutes the real and exceeding value of his works--is beyond and above expression; it is a truth inherent in every line, and breathing in every hue, too delicate and exquisite to admit of any kind of proof, nor to be ascertained except by the highest of tests--the keen feeling attained by extended knowledge and long study. two lines are laid on canvas; one is right and another wrong. there is no difference between them appreciable by the compasses--none appreciable by the ordinary eye--none which can be pointed out, if it is not seen. one person feels it,--another does not; but the feeling or sight of the one can by no words be communicated to the other: it would be unjust if it could, for that feeling and sight have been the reward of years of labor. and there is, indeed, nothing in turner--not one dot nor line--whose meaning can be understood without knowledge; because he never aims at sensual impressions, but at the deep final truth, which only meditation can discover, and only experience recognize. there is nothing done or omitted by him, which does not imply such a comparison of ends, such rejection of the least worthy, (as far as they are incompatible with the rest,) such careful selection and arrangement of all that can be united, as can only be enjoyed by minds capable of going through the same process, and discovering the reasons for the choice. and, as there is nothing in his works which can be enjoyed without knowledge, so there is nothing in them which knowledge will not enable us to enjoy. there is no test of our acquaintance with nature so absolute and unfailing as the degree of admiration we feel for turner's painting. precisely as we are shallow in our knowledge, vulgar in our feeling, and contracted in our views of principles, will the works of this artist be stumbling-blocks or foolishness to us:--precisely in the degree in which we are familiar with nature, constant in our observation of her, and enlarged in our understanding of her, will they expand before our eyes into glory and beauty. in every new insight which we obtain into the works of god, in every new idea which we receive from his creation, we shall find ourselves possessed of an interpretation and a guide to something in turner's works which we had not before understood. we may range over europe, from shore to shore; and from every rock that we tread upon, every sky that passes over our heads, every local form of vegetation or of soil, we shall receive fresh illustration of his principles--fresh confirmation of his facts. we shall feel, wherever we go, that he has been there before us--whatever we see, that he has seen and seized before us: and we shall at last cease the investigation, with a well-grounded trust, that whatever we have been unable to account for, and what we still dislike in his works, has reason for it, and foundation like the rest; and that even where he has failed or erred, there is a beauty in the failure which none are able to equal, and a dignity in the error which none are worthy to reprove. § . his former rank and progress. § . standing of his present works. their mystery is the consequence of their fullness. there has been marked and constant progress in his mind; he has not, like some few artists, been without childhood; his course of study has been as evidently as it has been swiftly progressive, and in different stages of the struggle, sometimes one order of truth, sometimes another, has been aimed at or omitted. but from the beginning to the present height of his career, he has never sacrificed a greater truth to a less. as he advanced, the previous knowledge or attainment was absorbed in what succeeded, or abandoned only if incompatible, and never abandoned without a gain; and his present works present the sum and perfection of his accumulated knowledge, delivered with the impatience and passion of one who feels too much, and knows too much, and has too little time to say it in, to pause for expression, or ponder over his syllables. there is in them the obscurity, but the truth, of prophecy; the instinctive and burning language, which would express less if it uttered more, which is indistinct only by its fulness, and dark with its abundant meaning. he feels now, with long-trained vividness and keenness of sense, too bitterly the impotence of the hand, and the vainness of the color to catch one shadow or one image of the glory which god has revealed to him. he has dwelt and communed with nature all the days of his life; he knows her now too well, he cannot palter over the material littleness of her outward form; he must give her soul, or he has done nothing, and he cannot do this with the flax, and the earth, and the oil. "i cannot gather the sunbeams out of the east, or i would make _them_ tell you what i have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us remember together. i cannot gather the gloom out of the night-sky, or i would make that teach you what i have seen; but read this, and interpret this, and let us feel together. and if you have not that within you which i can summon to my aid, if you have not the sun in your spirit, and the passion in your heart, which my words may awaken, though they be indistinct and swift, leave me; for i will give you no patient mockery, no laborious insult of that glorious nature, whose i am and whom i serve. let other servants imitate the voice and the gesture of their master, while they forget his message. hear that message from me; but remember, that the teaching of divine truth must still be a mystery." chapter iii. conclusion.--modern art and modern criticism. we have only, in conclusion, to offer a few general remarks respecting modern art and modern criticism. § . the entire prominence hitherto given to the works of one artist caused only by our not being able to take cognizance of character. § . the feelings of different artists are incapable of full comparison. § . but the fidelity and truth of each are capable of real comparison. § . especially because they are equally manifested in the treatment of all subjects. § . no man draws one thing well, if he can draw nothing else. we wish, in the first place, to remove the appearance of invidiousness and partiality which the constant prominence given in the present portion of the work to the productions of one artist, can scarcely fail of bearing in the minds of most readers. when we pass to the examination of what is beautiful and expressive in art, we shall frequently find distinctive qualities in the minds even of inferior artists, which have led them to the pursuit and embodying of particular trains of thought, altogether different from those which direct the compositions of other men, and incapable of comparison with them. now, when this is the case, we should consider it in the highest degree both invidious and illogical, to say of such different modes of exertion of the intellect, that one is in all points greater or nobler than another. we shall probably find something in the working of all minds which has an end and a power peculiar to itself, and which is deserving of free and full admiration, without any reference whatsoever to what has, in other fields, been accomplished by other modes of thought, and directions of aim. we shall, indeed, find a wider range and grasp in one man than in another; but yet it will be our own fault if we do not discover something in the most limited range of mind which is different from, and in its way better than, anything presented to us by the more grasping intellect. we all know that the nightingale sings more nobly than the lark; but who, therefore, would wish the lark not to sing, or would deny that it had a character of its own, which bore a part among the melodies of creation no less essential than that of the more richly-gifted bird? and thus we shall find and feel that whatever difference may exist between the intellectual powers of one artist and another, yet wherever there is any true genius, there will be some peculiar lesson which even the humblest will teach us more sweetly and perfectly than those far above them in prouder attributes of mind; and we should be as mistaken as we should be unjust and invidious, if we refused to receive this their peculiar message with gratitude and veneration, merely because it was a sentence and not a volume. but the case is different when we examine their relative fidelity to given facts. that fidelity depends on no peculiar modes of thought or habits of character; it is the result of keen sensibility, combined with high powers of memory and association. these qualities, as such, are the same in all men; character or feeling may direct their choice to this or that object, but the fidelity with which they treat either the one or the other, is dependent on those simple powers of sense and intellect which are like and comparable in all, and of which we can always say that they are greater in this man, or less in that without reference to the character of the individual. those feelings which direct cox to the painting of wild, weedy banks, and cool, melting skies, and those which directed barret to the painting of glowing foliage and melancholy twilight, are both just and beautiful in their way, and are both worthy of high praise and gratitude, without necessity, nay, without _proper_ possibility of comparing one with the other. but the degree of fidelity with which the leaves of the one and the light of the other are rendered, depends upon faculties of sight, sense, and memory common to both, and perfectly comparable; and we may say fearlessly, and without injustice, that one or the other, as the case may be, is more faithful in that which they have chosen to represent. it is also to be remembered that these faculties of sense and memory are not partial in their effect; they will not induce fidelity in the rendering of one class of object, and fail of doing so in another. they act equally, and with equal results, whatever may be the matter subjected to them; the same delicate sense which perceives the utmost grace of the fibres of a tree, will be equally unerring in tracing the character of cloud; and the quick memory which seizes and retains the circumstances of a flying effect of shadow or color, will be equally effectual in fixing the impression of the instantaneous form of a moving figure or a breaking wave. there are indeed one or two broad distinctions in the nature of the senses,--a sensibility to color, for instance, being very different from a sensibility to form; so that a man may possess one without the other, and an artist may succeed in mere imitation of what is before him, of air, sunlight, etc., without possessing sensibility at all. but wherever we have, in the drawing of any one object, sufficient evidence of real intellectual power, of the sense which perceives the essential qualities of a thing, and the judgment which arranges them so as to illustrate each other, we may be quite certain that the same sense and judgment will operate equally on whatever is subjected to them, and that the artist will be equally great and masterly in his drawing of all that he attempts. hence we may be quite sure that wherever an artist appears to be truthful in one branch of art, and not in another, the apparent truth is either owing to some trickery of imitation, or is not so great as we suppose it to be. in nine cases out of ten, people who are celebrated for drawing only one thing, and _can_ only draw one thing, draw that one thing worse than anybody else. an artist may indeed confine himself to a limited range of subject, but if he be really true in his rendering of this, his power of doing more will be perpetually showing itself in accessories and minor points. there are few men, for instance, more limited in subject than hunt, and yet i do not think there is another man in the old water-color society, with so keen an eye for truth, or with power so universal. and this is the reason for the exceeding prominence which in the foregoing investigation one or two artists have always assumed over the rest, for the habits of accurate observation and delicate powers of hand which they possess, have equal effect, and maintain the same superiority in their works, to whatever class of subject they may be directed. and thus we have been compelled, however unwillingly, to pass hastily by the works of many gifted men, because, however pure their feeling, or original their conceptions, they were wanting in those faculties of the hand and mind which insure perfect fidelity to nature: it will be only hereafter, when we are at liberty to take full cognizance of the thought, however feebly it may be clothed in language, that we shall be able to do real justice to the disciples either of modern or of ancient art. § . general conclusions to be derived from our past investigation. but as far as we have gone at present, and with respect only to the _material_ truth, which is all that we have been able to investigate, the conclusion to which we must be led is as clear as it is inevitable; that modern artists, as a body, are far more just and full in their views of material things than any landscape painters whose works are extant--but that j. m. w. turner is the only man who has ever given an entire transcript of the whole system of nature, and is, in this point of view, the only perfect landscape painter whom the world has ever seen. § . truth, a standard of all excellence. nor are we disposed to recede from our assertion made in sec. i. ch. i. § , that this material truth is indeed a perfect test of the relative rank of painters, though it does not in itself constitute that rank. we shall be able to prove that truth and beauty, knowledge and imagination, invariably are associated in art; and we shall be able to show that not only in truth to nature, but in all other points, turner is the greatest landscape painter who has ever lived. but his superiority is, in matters of feeling, one of kind, not of degree. superiority of degree implies a superseding of others, superiority of kind only sustaining a more important, but not more necessary part, than others. if _truth_ were all that we required from art, all other painters might cast aside their brushes in despair, for all that they have done he has done more fully and accurately; but when we pass to the higher requirements of art, beauty and character, their contributions are all equally necessary and desirable, because different, and however inferior in position or rank, are still perfect of their kind; their inferiority is only that of the lark to the nightingale, or of the violet to the rose. § . modern criticism. changefulness of public taste. § . yet associated with a certain degree of judgment. § . duty of the press. such then is the rank and standing of our modern artists. we have, living with us, and painting for us, the greatest painter of _all_ time; a man with whose supremacy of power no intellect of past ages can be put in comparison for a moment. let us next inquire what is the rank of our critics. public taste, i believe, as far as it is the encourager and supporter of art has been the same in all ages,--a fitful and vacillating current of vague impression, perpetually liable to change, subject to epidemic desires, and agitated by infectious passion, the slave of fashion, and the fool of fancy, but yet always distinguishing with singular clearsightedness, between that which is best and that which is worst of the particular class of food which its morbid appetite may call for; never failing to distinguish that which is produced by intellect, from that which is not, though it may be intellect degraded by ministering to its misguided will. public taste may thus degrade a race of men capable of the highest efforts in art into the portrait painters of ephemeral fashions, but it will yet not fail of discovering who, among these portrait painters, is the man of most mind. it will separate the man who would have become buonaroti from the man who would have become bandinelli, though it will employ both in painting curls, and feathers, and bracelets. hence, generally speaking, there is no _comparative_ injustice done, no false elevation of the fool above the man of mind, provided only that the man of mind will condescend to supply the particular article which the public chooses to want. of course a thousand modifying circumstances interfere with the action of the general rule; but, taking one case with another, we shall very constantly find the price which the picture commands in the market a pretty fair standard of the artist's rank of intellect. the press, therefore, and all who pretend to lead the public taste, have not so much to direct the multitude whom to go to, as what to ask for. their business is not to tell us which is our best painter, but to tell us whether we are making our best painter do his best. § . qualifications necessary for discharging it. § . general incapability of modern critics. § . and inconsistency with themselves. now none are capable of doing this, but those whose principles of judgment are based both on thorough _practical_ knowledge of art, and on broad general views of what is true and right, without reference to what has been done at one time or another, or in one school or another. nothing can be more perilous to the cause of art, than the constant ringing in our painters' ears of the names of great predecessors, as their examples or masters. i had rather hear a great poet, entirely original in his feeling and aim, rebuked or maligned for not being like wordsworth or coleridge, than a great painter criticised for not putting us in mind of claude or poussin. but such references to former excellence are the only refuge and resource of persons endeavoring to be critics without being artists. they cannot tell you whether a thing is right or not; but they can tell you whether it is like something else or not. and the whole tone of modern criticism--as far as it is worthy of being called criticism--sufficiently shows it to proceed entirely from persons altogether unversed in practice, and ignorant of truth, but possessing just enough of feeling to enjoy the solemnity of ancient art, who, not distinguishing that which is really exalted and valuable in the modern school, nor having any just idea of the real ends or capabilities of landscape art, consider nothing right which is not based on the conventional principles of the ancients, and nothing true which has more of nature in it than of claude. but it is strange that while the noble and unequalled works of modern landscape painters are thus maligned and misunderstood, our historical painters--such as we have--are permitted to pander more fatally every year to the vicious english taste, which can enjoy nothing but what is theatrical, entirely unchastised, nay, encouraged and lauded by the very men who endeavor to hamper our great landscape painters with rules derived from consecrated blunders. the very critic who has just passed one of the noblest works of turner--that is to say, a masterpiece of art, to which time can show no parallel--with a ribald jest, will yet stand gaping in admiration before the next piece of dramatic glitter and grimace, suggested by the society, and adorned with the appurtenances of the greenroom, which he finds hung low upon the wall as a brilliant example of the ideal of english art. it is natural enough indeed, that the persons who are disgusted by what is pure and noble, should be delighted with what is vicious and degraded; but it is singular that those who are constantly talking of claude and poussin, should never even pretend to a thought of raffaelle. we could excuse them for not comprehending turner, if they only would apply the same cut-and-dried criticisms where they might be applied with truth, and productive of benefit; but we endure not the paltry compound of ignorance, false taste, and pretension, which assumes the dignity of classical feeling, that it may be able to abuse whatever is above the level of its understanding, but bursts into genuine rapture with all that is meretricious, if sufficiently adapted to the calibre of its comprehension. § . how the press may really advance the cause of art. to notice such criticisms, however, is giving them far more importance than they deserve. they can lead none astray but those whose opinions are absolutely valueless, and we did not begin this chapter with any intent of wasting our time on these small critics, but in the hope of pointing out to the periodical press what kind of criticism is now most required by our school of landscape art, and how it may be in their power, if they will, to regulate its impulses, without checking its energies, and really to advance both the cause of the artist, and the taste of the public. § . morbid fondness at the present day for unfinished works. § . by which the public defraud themselves. § . and in pandering to which, artists ruin themselves. § . necessity of finishing works of art perfectly. one of the most morbid symptoms of the general taste of the present day, is a too great fondness for unfinished works. brilliancy and rapidity of execution are everywhere sought as the highest good, and so that a picture be cleverly handled as far as it is carried, little regard is paid to its imperfection as a whole. hence some artists are permitted, and others compelled, to confine themselves to a manner of working altogether destructive of their powers, and to tax their energies, not to concentrate the greatest quantity of thought on the least possible space of canvas, but to produce the greatest quantity of glitter and claptrap in the shortest possible time. to the idler and the trickster in art, no system can be more advantageous; but to the man who is really desirous of doing something worth having lived for--to a man of industry, energy, or feeling, we believe it to be the cause of the most bitter discouragement. if ever, working upon a favorite subject or a beloved idea, he is induced to tax his powers to the utmost, and to spend as much time upon his picture as he feels necessary for its perfection, he will not be able to get so high a price for the result, perhaps, of a twelvemonth's thought, as he might have obtained for half-a-dozen sketches with a forenoon's work in each, and he is compelled either to fall back upon mechanism, or to starve. now the press should especially endeavor to convince the public, that by this purchase of imperfect pictures they not only prevent all progress and development of high talent, and set tricksters and mechanics on a level with men of mind, but defraud and injure themselves. for there is no doubt whatever, that, estimated merely by the quantity of pleasure it is capable of conveying, a well-finished picture is worth to its possessor half-a-dozen incomplete ones; and that a perfect drawing is, simply as a source of delight, better worth a hundred guineas than a drawing half as finished is worth thirty. on the other hand, the body of our artists should be kept in mind, that by indulging the public with rapid and unconsidered work, they are not only depriving themselves of the benefit which each picture ought to render to them, as a piece of practice and study, but they are destroying the refinement of general taste, and rendering it impossible for themselves ever to find a market for more careful works, supposing that they were inclined to execute them. nor need any single artist be afraid of setting the example, and producing labored works, at advanced prices, among the cheap, quick drawings of the day. the public will soon find the value of the complete work, and will be more ready to give a large sum for that which is inexhaustible, than a quota of it for that which they are wearied of in a month. the artist who never lets the price command the picture, will soon find the picture command the price. and it ought to be a rule with every painter never to let a picture leave his easel while it is yet capable of improvement, or of having more thought put into it. the general effect is often perfect and pleasing, and not to be improved upon, when the details and facts are altogether imperfect and unsatisfactory. it may be difficult--perhaps the most difficult task of art--to complete these details, and not to hurt the general effect; but until the artist can do this, his art is imperfect and his picture unfinished. that only is a complete picture which has both the general wholeness and effect of nature, and the inexhaustible perfection of nature's details. and it is only in the effort to unite these that a painter really improves. by aiming only at details, he becomes a mechanic; by aiming only at generals, he becomes a trickster: his fall in both cases is sure. two questions the artist has, therefore, always to ask himself,--first, "is my whole right?" secondly, "can my details be added to? is there a single space in the picture where i can crowd in another thought? is there a curve in it which i can modulate--a line which i can graduate--a vacancy i can fill? is there a single spot which the eye, by any peering or prying, can fathom or exhaust? if so, my picture is imperfect; and if, in modulating the line or filling the vacancy, i hurt the general effect, my art is imperfect." § . _sketches_ not sufficiently encouraged. but, on the other hand, though incomplete pictures ought neither to be produced nor purchased, careful and real _sketches_ ought to be valued much more highly than they are. studies in chalk, of landscape, should form a part of every exhibition, and a room should be allotted to drawings and designs of figures in the academy. we should be heartily glad to see the room which is now devoted to bad drawings of incorporeal and imaginary architecture--of things which never were, and which, thank heaven! never will be--occupied instead, by careful studies for historical pictures; not blots of chiaroscuro, but delicate outlines with the pen or crayon. § . brilliancy of execution or efforts at invention not to be tolerated in young artists. § . the duty and after privileges of all students. from young artists, in landscape, nothing ought to be tolerated but simple _bona fide imitation_ of nature. they have no business to ape the execution of masters,--to utter weak and disjointed repetitions of other men's words, and mimic the gestures of the preacher, without understanding his meaning or sharing in his emotions. we do not want their crude ideas of composition, their unformed conceptions of the beautiful, their unsystematized experiments upon the sublime. we scorn their velocity; for it is without direction: we reject their decision; for it is without grounds: we contemn their composition; for it is without materials: we reprobate their choice; for it is without comparison. their duty is neither to choose, nor compose, nor imagine, nor experimentalize; but to be humble and earnest in following the steps of nature, and tracing the finger of god. nothing is so bad a symptom, in the work of young artists, as too much dexterity of handling; for it is a sign that they are satisfied with their work, and have tried to do nothing more than they were able to do. their work should be full of failures; for these are the signs of efforts. they should keep to quiet colors--grays and browns; and, making the early works of turner their example, as his latest are to be their object of emulation, should go to nature in all singleness of heart, and walk with her laboriously and trustingly, having no other thoughts but how best to penetrate her meaning, and remember her instruction, rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing; believing all things to be right and good, and rejoicing always in the truth. then, when their memories are stored, and their imaginations fed, and their hands firm, let them take up the scarlet and the gold, give the reins to their fancy, and show us what their heads are made of. we will follow them wherever they choose to lead; we will check at nothing; they are then our masters, and are fit to be so. they have placed themselves above our criticism, and we will listen to their words in all faith and humility; but not unless they themselves have before bowed, in the same submission, to a higher authority and master. § . necessity among our greater artists of more singleness of aim. among our greater artists, the chief want, at the present day, is that of _solemnity_ and definite purpose. we have too much picture-manufacturing, too much making up of lay figures with a certain quantity of foliage, and a certain quantity of sky, and a certain quantity of water,--a little bit of all that is pretty, a little sun, and a little shade,--a touch of pink, and a touch of blue,--a little sentiment, and a little sublimity, and a little humor, and a little antiquarianism,--all very neatly associated in a very charming picture, but not working together for a definite end. or if the aim be higher, as was the case with barrett and varley, we are generally put off with stale repetitions of eternal composition; a great tree, and some goats, and a bridge and a lake, and the temple at tivoli, etc. now we should like to see our artists working out, with all exertion of their concentrated powers, such marked pieces of landscape character as might bear upon them the impression of solemn, earnest, and pervading thought, definitely directed, and aided by every accessory of detail, color, and idealized form, which the disciplined feeling, accumulated knowledge, and unspared labor of the painter could supply. i have alluded, in the second preface, to the deficiency of our modern artists in these great points of earnestness and completeness; and i revert to it, in conclusion, as their paramount failing, and one fatal in many ways to the interests of art. our landscapes are all descriptive, not reflective, agreeable and conversational, but not impressive nor didactic. they have no other foundation than "that vivacious versatility, which many people take for want of heart. they err; 'tis merely what is called "mobility;" a thing of temperament, and _not of art, though seeming so from its supposed facility_. * * * * * this makes your actors, _artists_, and romancers; little that's great--but much of what is clever." only it is to be observed that--in painters--this vivacity is _not_ always versatile. it is to be wished that it were, but it is no such easy matter to be versatile in painting. shallowness of thought insures not its variety, nor rapidity of production its originality. whatever may be the case in literature, facility is in art inconsistent with invention. the artist who covers most canvas always shows, even in the sum of his works, the least expenditure of thought.[ ] i have never seen more than four works of john lewis on the walls of the water-color exhibition; i have counted forty from other hands; but have found in the end that the forty were a multiplication of one, and the four a concentration of forty. and therefore i would earnestly plead with all our artists, that they should make it a law _never_ to repeat themselves; for he who never repeats himself will not produce an inordinate number of pictures, and he who limits himself in number gives himself at least the opportunity of completion. besides, all repetition is degradation of the art; it reduces it from headwork to handwork; and indicates something like a persuasion on the part of the artist that nature is exhaustible or art perfectible; perhaps, even, by him exhausted and perfected. all copyists are contemptible, but the copyist of himself the most so, for he has the worst original. § . what should be their general aim. let then every picture be painted with earnest intention of impressing on the spectator some elevated emotion, and exhibiting to him some one particular, but exalted, beauty. let a real subject be carefully selected, in itself suggestive of, and replete with, this feeling and beauty; let an effect of light and color be taken which may harmonize with both; and a sky, not invented, but recollected, (in fact, all so-called invention is in landscape nothing more than appropriate recollection--good in proportion as it is distinct.) then let the details of the foreground be separately studied, especially those plants which appear peculiar to the place: if any one, however unimportant, occurs there, which occurs not elsewhere, it should occupy a prominent position; for the other details, the highest examples of the ideal forms[ ] or characters which he requires are to be selected by the artist from his former studies, or fresh studies made expressly for the purpose, leaving as little as possible--nothing, in fact, beyond their connection and arrangement--to mere imagination. finally, when his picture is thus perfectly realized in all its parts, let him dash as much of it out as he likes; throw, if he will, mist around it--darkness--or dazzling and confused light--whatever, in fact, impetuous feeling or vigorous imagination may dictate or desire; the forms, once so laboriously realized, will come out whenever they _do_ occur with a startling and impressive truth, which the uncertainty in which they are veiled will enhance rather than diminish; and the imagination, strengthened by discipline and fed with truth, will achieve the utmost of creation that is possible to finite mind. the artist who thus works will soon find that he cannot repeat himself if he would; that new fields of exertion, new subjects of contemplation open to him in nature day by day, and that, while others lament the weakness of their invention, _he_ has nothing to lament but the shortness of life. § . duty of the press with respect to the works of turner. and now but one word more, respecting the great artist whose works have formed the chief subject of this treatise. all the _greatest_ qualities of those works--all that is mental in them, has not yet been so much as touched upon. none but their lightest and least essential excellences have been proved, and, therefore, the enthusiasm with which i speak of them must necessarily appear overcharged and absurd. it, might, perhaps, have been more prudent to have withheld the full expression of it till i had shown the full grounds for it; but once written, such expression must remain till i have justified it. and, indeed, i think there is enough, even in the foregoing pages, to show that these works are, as far as concerns the ordinary critics of the press, above all animadversion, and above all praise; and that, by the public, they are not to be received as in any way subjects or matters of opinion, but of faith. we are not to approach them to be pleased, but to be taught; not to form a judgment, but to receive a lesson. our periodical writers, therefore, may save themselves the trouble either of blaming or praising: their duty is not to pronounce opinions upon the work of a man who has walked with nature threescore years; but to impress upon the public the respect with which they are to be received, and to make request to him, on the part of the people of england, that he would now touch no unimportant work--that he would not spend time on slight or small pictures, but give to the nation a series of grand, consistent, systematic, and completed poems. we desire that he should follow out his own thoughts and intents of heart, without reference to any human authority. but we request, in all humility, that those thoughts may be seriously and loftily given; and that the whole power of his unequalled intellect may be exerted in the production of such works as may remain forever for the teaching of the nations. in all that he says, we believe; in all that he does we trust.[ ] it is therefore that we pray him to utter nothing lightly--to do nothing regardlessly. he stands upon an eminence, from which he looks back over the universe of god, and forward over the generations of men. let every work of his hand be a history of the one, and a lesson to the other. let each exertion of his mighty mind be both hymn and prophecy,--adoration, to the deity,--revelation to mankind. footnotes [ ] of course this assertion does not refer to the differences in mode of execution, which enable one painter to work faster or slower than another, but only to the exertion of mind, commonly manifested by the artist, according as he is sparing or prodigal of production. [ ] "talk of improving nature when it _is_ nature--nonsense."--_e. v. rippingille_. i have not yet spoken of the difference--even in what we commonly call nature--between imperfect and ideal form: the study of this difficult question must, of course, be deferred until we have examined the nature of our impressions of beauty; but it may not be out of place here to hint at the want of care in many of our artists to distinguish between the real work of nature and the diseased results of man's interference with her. many of the works of our greatest artists have for their subjects nothing but hacked and hewn remnants of farm-yard vegetation, branded root and branch, from their birth, by the prong and the pruning-hook; and the feelings once accustomed to take pleasure in such abortions, can scarcely become perceptive of forms truly ideal. i have just said ( ) that young painters should go to nature trustingly,--rejecting nothing, and selecting nothing: so they should; but they must be careful that it _is_ nature to whom they go--nature in her liberty--not as servant-of-all-work in the hands of the agriculturist, nor stiffened into court-dress by the landscape gardener. it must be the pure, wild volition and energy of the creation which they follow--not subdued to the furrow, and cicatrized to the pollard--not persuaded into proprieties, nor pampered into diseases. let them work by the torrent-side, and in the forest shadows; not by purling brooks and under "tonsile shades." it is impossible to enter here into discussion of what man can or cannot do, by assisting natural operations: it is an intricate question: nor can i, without anticipating what i shall have hereafter to advance, show how or why it happens that the racehorse is _not_ the artist's ideal of a horse, nor a prize tulip his ideal of a flower; but so it is. as far as the painter is concerned, man never touches nature but to spoil;--he operates on her as a barber would on the apollo; and if he sometimes increases some particular power or excellence,--strength or agility in the animal--tallness, or fruitfulness, or solidity in the tree,--he invariably loses that _balance_ of good qualities which is the chief sign of perfect specific form; above all, he destroys the appearance of free _volition_ and _felicity_, which, as i shall show hereafter, is one of the essential characters of organic beauty. until, however, i can enter into the discussion of the nature of beauty, the only advice i can safely give the young painter, is to keep clear of clover-fields and parks, and to hold to the unpenetrated forest and the unfurrowed hill. there he will find that every influence is noble, even when destructive--that decay itself is beautiful,--and that, in the elaborate and lovely composition of all things, if at first sight it seems less studied than the works of men, the appearance of art is only prevented by the presence of power. "nature never did betray the heart that loved her: 'tis her privilege, through all the years of this our life, to lead from joy to joy; for she can so inform the mind that is within us, so impress with quietness and beauty, and so feed with lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb our cheerful faith, that all which we behold is full of blessings." wordsworth. [ ] it has been hinted, in some of the reviews of the second volume of this work, that the writer's respect for turner has diminished since the above passage was written. he would, indeed, have been deserving of little attention if, with the boldness manifested on the preceding pages, he had advanced opinions based on so shallow foundation as that the course of three years could effect modification of them. he was justified by the sudden accession of power which the great artist exhibited at the period when this volume was first published, as well as by the low standard of the criticism to which he was subjected, in claiming, with respect to his then works, a submission of judgment, greater indeed than may generally be accorded to even the highest human intellect, yet not greater than such a master might legitimately claim from such critics; and the cause of the peculiar form of advocacy into which the preceding chapters necessarily fell, has been already stated more than once. in the following sections it became necessary, as they treated a subject of intricate relations, and peculiar difficulty, to obtain a more general view of the scope and operation of art, and to avoid all conclusions in any wise referable to the study of particular painters. the reader will therefore find, not that lower rank is attributed to turner, but that he is now compared with the greatest men, and occupies his true position among the most noble of all time. postscript. the above passage was written in the year ; too late. it is true that soon after the publication of this work, the abuse of the press, which had been directed against turner with unceasing virulence during the production of his noblest works, sank into timid animadversion, or changed into unintelligent praise; but not before illness, and, in some degree, mortification, had enfeebled the hand and chilled the heart of the painter. this year ( ) he has no picture on the walls of the academy; and the _times_ of may d says, "we miss those works of inspiration!" we miss! who misses?--the populace of england rolls by to weary itself in the great bazaar of kensington, little thinking that a day will come when those veiled vestals and prancing amazons, and goodly merchandise of precious stones and gold, will all be forgotten as though they had not been, but that the light which has faded from the walls of the academy is one which a million of koh-i-noors could not rekindle, and that the year will in the far future be remembered less for what it has displayed than for what it has withdrawn. denmark hill, _june_, . end of the first volume. * * * * * corrections made to the original text. page xiii: 'attack of the following colums' corrected to 'columns'. page lxiii: (table of contents) § . monotony and falsehood... corrected to . page : 'attained with greater porportional' corrected to 'proportional'. page : 'exquisite truths of specfic' corrected to 'specific'. page : 'things as in the right exhbition' corrected to 'exhibition'. page : 'man's working from nature comtinually' changed to 'continually'. page : 'but i allow this inferiority only with respect to the paintings,' superfluous comma omitted. page : 'but the vignette of aosta, in the italy', 'the' omitted. page : 'lateral chains separated rll' corrected to 'all'. footnote : comma after esq changed to period. footnote : 'is above stated refers, thoughout' changed to 'throughout'. the humanists' library edited by lewis einstein i leonardo da vinci thoughts on art and life thoughts on art and life by leonardo da vinci translated by maurice baring boston the merrymount press copyright, , by d. b. updike a table of contents introduction ix i. thoughts on life ii. thoughts on art iii. thoughts on science iv. bibliographical note v. table of references {ix} introduction * * * the long obscurity of the dark ages lifted over italy, awakening to a national though a divided consciousness. already two distinct tendencies were apparent. the practical and rational, on the one hand, was soon to be outwardly reflected in the burgher-life of florence and the lombard cities, while at rome it had even then created the civil organization of the curia. the novella was its literary triumph. in art it expressed itself simply, directly and with vigour. opposed to this was the other great undercurrent in italian life, mystical, religious and speculative, which had run through the nation from the earliest times, and received fresh volume from mediaeval christianity, encouraging ecstatic mysticism to drive to frenzy the population of its mountain cities. umbrian painting is inspired by it, and the glowing words of jacopone da todi expressed in poetry the same religious fervour which the life of florence and perugia bore witness to in action. italy developed out of the relation and conflict of these two forces the rational with the mystical. their later union in the greater men was to {x} form the art temperament of the renaissance. the practical side gave it the firm foundation of rationalism and reality on which it rested; the mystical guided its endeavour to picture the unreal in terms of ideal beauty. the first offspring of this union was leonardo. since the decay of ancient art no painter had been able to fully express the human form, for imperfect mastery of technique still proved the barrier. leonardo was the first completely to disengage his personality from its constraint, and make line express thought as none before him could do. nor was this his only triumph, but rather the foundation on which further achievement rested. remarkable as a thinker alone, he preferred to enlist thought in the service of art, and make art the handmaid of beauty. leonardo saw the world not as it is, but as he himself was. he viewed it through the atmosphere of beauty which filled his mind, and tinged its shadows with the mystery of his nature. to all this, his birthright as a painter, a different element was added. a keen desire for knowledge, guiding his action in life, spurred him onward. conscious of this dominant impulse, he has fancifully described himself in a platonic allegory. he had passed beneath overhanging cliffs on his way to a great cavern. on bended knees, peering through its darkness, fear and desire had overwhelmed him,--fear for the menacing darkness of the cavern; and desire {xi} to ascertain if there were wonders therein. from his earliest years, the elements of greatness were present in leonardo. but the maturity of his genius came unaffected from without. he barely noticed the great forces of the age which in life he encountered. after the first promise of his boyhood in the tuscan hills, his youth at florence had been spent under verrocchio as a master, in company with those whose names were later to brighten the pages of italian art. he must then have heard savonarola's impassioned sermons, yet, unlike botticelli, remained dumb to his entreaties. he must have seen lorenzo the magnificent. but there was little opening in the medicean circle for the young painter, who had first to gain fame abroad. the splendour of milan under il moro, then the most brilliant court in europe, attracted him. he went there, proclaiming his ability, in a remarkable letter, to accomplish much, but desiring chiefly to erect a great monument to the glory of the sforza. he spent years at that court, taken up by his different ventures,--painting, sculpture, engineering, even arranging festivities--but his greater project was doomed to failure, enmeshed in the downfall of ludovico. even to this he remained impassive. "visconti dragged to prison, his son dead, ... the duke has lost his state, his possessions, his liberty, and has finished nothing he undertook," was his only comment on his patron's end, written on the {xii} margin of a manuscript. after the overthrow of the duke of milan, began his italian wanderings. at one time he contemplated entering the service of an oriental prince. instead, he entered that of caesar borgia, as military engineer, and the greatest painter of the age became inspector of a despot's strongholds. but his restless nature did not leave him long at this. returning to florence he competed with michelangelo; yet the service of even his native city could not retain him. his fame had attracted the attention of a new patron of the arts, prince of the state which had conquered his first master. in this his last venture, he forsook italy, only to die three years later at amboise, in the castle of the french king. the inner nature of leonardo remained as untouched by the men he encountered as by the events which were then stirring europe. alone, he influenced others, remaining the while a mystery to all. the most gifted of nations failed to understand the greatest of her sons. isabella d'este, the first lady of her time, seeking vainly to obtain some product of his brush, was told that his life was changeful and uncertain, that he lived for the day, intent only on his art. his own thoughts reveal him in another light. "i wish to work miracles," he wrote. and elsewhere he exclaimed, "thou, o god, sellest us all benefits, at the cost of our toil.... as a day well spent makes sleep {xiii} seem pleasant, so a life well employed makes death pleasant. a life well spent is long." leonardo's views of aesthetic are all important in his philosophy of life and art. the worker's thoughts on his craft are always of interest. they are doubly so when there is in them no trace of literary self-consciousness to blemish their expression. he recorded these thoughts at the instant of their birth, for a constant habit of observation and analysis had early developed with him into a second nature. his ideas were penned in the same fragmentary way as they presented themselves to his mind, perhaps with no intention of publishing them to the world. but his ideal of art depended intimately, none the less, on the system he had thrown out seemingly in so haphazard a manner. his method gives to his writings their only unity. it was more than a method: it was a permanent expression of his own life, which aided him to construct a philosophy of beauty characteristic of the new age. he had searched to find a scientific basis for art, and discovered it in the imitation of nature, based on rational experience. this idea was, in part, aristotelian, imbibed with the spirit of the time; though in the ordinary acceptance of the word leonardo was no scholar, least of all a humanist. his own innovation in aesthetic was in requiring a rational and critical experience as a necessary {xiv} foundation, the acquisition of which was to result from the permanent condition of the mind. he had trained his own faculties to critically observe all natural phenomena: first try by experience, and then demonstrate why such experiment is forced to operate in the way it does, was his advice. the eye, he gave as an instance, had been defined as one thing; by experience, he had found it to be another. but by imitation in art, leonardo intended no slavish reproduction of nature. when he wrote that "the painter strives and competes with nature," he was on the track of a more aristotelian idea. this he barely developed, using nature only partly in the stagirite's sense, of inner force outwardly exemplified. the idea of imitation, in fad, as it presented itself to his mind, was two-fold. it was not merely the external reproduction of the image, which was easy enough to secure. the real difficulty of the artist lay in reflecting inner character and personality. it was leonardo's firm conviction that each thought had some outward expression by which the trained observer was able to recognize it. every man, he wrote, has as many movements of the body as of varieties of ideas. thought, moreover, expressed itself outwardly in proportion to its power over the individual and his time of life. by thus employing bodily gesture to represent feeling and idea, the painter could affect the spectator whom he {xv} placed in the presence of visible emotion. he maintained that art was of slight use unless able to show what its subject had in mind. painting should aim, therefore, to reproduce the inner mental state by the attitude assumed. this was, in other words, a natural symbolism, in which the symbol was no mere convention, but the actual outward projection of the inner condition of the mind. art here offered an equation of inward purpose and outward expression, neither complete without the other. further than this, influenced by platonic thought, leonardo's conception of painting was, as an intellectual state or condition, outwardly projected. the painter who practised his art without reasoning of its nature was like a mirror unconsciously reflecting what was before it. although without a "manual act" painting could not be realized, its true problems--problems of light, of colour, pose and composition, of primitive and derivative shadow--had all to be grasped by the mind without bodily labour. beyond this, the scientific foundation in art came through making it rest upon an accurate knowledge of nature. even experience was only a step towards attaining this. "there is nothing in all nature without its reason," he wrote. "if you know the reason, you do not need the experience." in the history of art, as well, he urged that nature had been the test of its excellence. a {xvi} natural phenomenon had brought art into existence. the first picture in the world, he remarked in a happy epigram, had been "a line surrounding the shadow of a man, cast by the sun on the wall." he traced the history of painting in italy during its stagnation after the decay of ancient art, when each painter copied only his predecessor, which lasted until giotto, born among barren mountains, drew the movements of the goats he tended, and thus advanced farther than all the earlier masters. but his successors only copied him, and painting sank again until masaccio once more took nature as his guide. a quite different and combative side to leonardo's aesthetic, which forced him to state the broad principles of art, appears in his attacks on poetry and music as inferior to painting. in that age of humanistic triumph, literature had lorded it over the other arts in a manner not free from arrogance. there was still another cause for his onslaught on poetry. leonardo resented the fact that painters, who were rarely men of education, had not defended themselves against the slurs cast on their art. his counter attack may have been intended to hide his own small scholarship. it served another end as well. his conception of the universal principles of beauty was made clear by this defence. his first principle stated broadly that the most useful art was the one which could most easily be communicated. {xvii} painting was communicable to all since its appeal was made to the eye. while the painter proceeded at once to the imitation of nature, the poet's instruments were words which varied in every land. he took the platonic view of poetry as a lying imitation, removed from truth. he called the poet a collector of other men's wares, who decked himself in their plumage. where poetry presented only a shadow to the imagination, painting offered a real image to the eye; and the eye, as the window of the soul through which all earthly beauty was revealed, the sight, he exclaimed, which had discovered navigation, which had impelled men to seek the west, was the noblest of all the senses. painting spoke only by what it accomplished, poetry ended in the very words with which it sang its own praises. if, then, poets called painting dumb poetry, he could retort by dubbing poetry blind painting. in common with his successors, leonardo could not escape from this fallacy, which, in overlooking all save descriptive verse, was destined to burden aesthetic until demolished by lessing. it was the opinion of leonardo that the temporary nature of music caused its inferiority to painting. although durability was in itself no absolute test,--else the work of coppersmiths would be the highest art,--yet in any final scale, permanence could not altogether be disregarded. music perished in the very act of its creation, {xviii} while painting preserved the beautiful from the hand of time. "helen of troy, gazing in a mirror, in her old age, wondered how she had twice been ravished." mortal beauty would thus vanish, if it were not rescued by art from destroying age and death. leonardo contrasted painting with sculpture, for he had practised both, and thought himself peculiarly qualified to judge their merit. he considered the former the nobler art of the two, for sculpture involved bodily toil and fatigue, while by its very nature it lacked perspective and atmosphere, colour, and the feeling of space. painting, on the other hand, caused by an illusion, was in itself the result of deeper thought. an even broader test served to convince him of its final superiority. that art was of highest excellence, he wrote, which possessed most elements of variety and universality. painting contained and reproduced all forms of nature; it made its appeal by the harmonious balance of parts which gratified all the senses. by its very duality it fulfilled the highest purpose. the painter was able to visualize the beauty which enchanted him, to bring to reality the fancy of his dreams, and give outward expression to the ideal within. the genius of leonardo as a painter came through unfolding the mystery of life. like miranda, he had gazed with wonder at the beauty of the world. "look at the grace and sweetness {xix} of men and women in the street," he wrote. the most ordinary functions of life and nature amazed him most. he observed of the eye how in it form and colour, and the entire universe it reflected, were reduced to a single point. "wonderful law of nature, which forced all effects to participate with their cause in the mind of man. these are the true miracles!" elsewhere he wrote again: "nature is full of infinite reasons which have not yet passed into experience." he conceived it to be the painter's duty not only to comment on natural phenomena as restrained by law, but to merge his very mind into that of nature by interpreting its relation with art. resting securely on the reality of experienced truth, he felt the deeper presence of the unreal on every side. in the same way that he visualized the inner workings of the mind, his keen imagination aided him to make outward trifles serve his desire to find mysterious beauty everywhere. oftentimes, in gazing on some ancient, time-stained wall, he describes how he would trace thereon landscapes, with mountains, rivers and valleys. the whole world was full of a mystery to him, which his work reflected. the smile of consciousness, pregnant of that which is beyond, illumines the expression of mona lisa. so, too, in the strange glance of ann, of john the baptist, and of the virgin of the rocks, one realizes that their thoughts dwell in another world. {xx} leonardo had found a refuge in art from the pettiness of material environment. like his own creations, he, too, had learned the secret of the inner life. the painter, he wrote, could create a world of his own, and take refuge in this new realm. but it must not be one of shadows only. the very mystery he felt so keenly had yet to rest on a real foundation; to treat it otherwise would be to plunge into mere vapouring. although attempting to bridge the gulf which separated the real from the unreal, he refused to treat the latter supernaturally. that mystery which lesser minds found in the occult, he saw in nature all about him. he denied the existence of spirits, just as he urged the foolishness of the will-o'-the-wisps of former ages,--alchemy and the black art. in one sentence he destroyed the pretensions of palmistry. "you will see," he wrote, "great armies slaughtered in an hour's time, where in each individual the signs of the hands are different." his art took, thus, its guidance in realism, its purpose in spirituality. the search for truth and the desire for beauty were the twin ideals he strove to attain. the keenness of this pursuit saved him from the blemish of egoism which aloofness from his surroundings would otherwise have forced upon him. for his character presented the anomaly, peculiar to the renaissance, of a lofty idealism coupled in action with {xxi} irresponsibility of duty. he stood on a higher plane, his attitude toward life recognizing no claims on the part of his fellowmen. in his desire to surpass himself, fostered by this isolation of spirit and spurred on by the eager wish to attain universal knowledge, he has been compared to faust; but the likeness is only half correct. he was not blind to the limitations which encompassed him, his very genius making him realize their bounds. of the ancients he said that in attempting to define the nature of the soul, they sought the impossible. he wrote elsewhere, "it is the infinite alone that cannot be attained, for if it could it would become finite." in leonardo's personality was reflected both the strength and weakness of renaissance italy. so, to know him, it is necessary to understand the italy of that age. its brilliancy, its universality, its desire for beauty, are but one side of the medal. on its reverse, italy lacked the solid vigour of a national purpose. the discord of political disunion, reacting on art, laid bare great weakness in the want of any constructive direction, toward which the strength of the renaissance could aim. the energy was there, whether finding an outlet in statecraft or in discovery, in art or in letters. but it laboured for no common end; there was internal unity of force and method, but external divergence of purpose. the tyranny of petty despots could provide no adequate ideal toward {xxii} which to aim. no ruler, and no city save venice, could long symbolize the nation's patriotism. venetian painters alone glorified the state in their work, and thus felt the living force of a national ambition which raised them above themselves. but elsewhere there was little to inspire that devotion for a common country necessary as a background to sustain the greatest work. hence italian art, so living within certain limits, remained stunted beyond these. the conviction that art existed in order to express ideal beauty, that its main purpose was to please the eye and the senses in spite of the result attained, proved inadequate compensation for all that had been withdrawn. the art ideal tended more and more to become a conscience and a purpose in itself, an inward impulse for action and an outward goal. the artist's real greatness will depend at all times on his qualities as a representative. his true merit will arise from giving expression in ideal terms to his nation and to his age. in so far as he has been able to do this and the spirit of his country is reflected in his work, in so far as he has represented what is best therein and most enduring, he will have achieved greatness. not that this is always, or even often, a conscious expression. it is unfair reading to search for deep thought in the work of either painter or poet. neither art {xxiii} offers the best medium to convey the abstractions of the mind, since each has its own method of expression, independent of pure reason. but painter and poet, in the degree they attain greatness, express more than themselves. ariosto, intent only to amuse, reflects with playful wit and skepticism the splendid luxury and joy of living in renaissance court life. the care with which he chiselled each line proves that his real seriousness and conscience lay in his artistic purpose. without ariosto's wit, paolo veronese depicted a similar side in painting, though his venetian birthright made him celebrate the glory of the republic. poet and painter alike expressed far more than either could know. if such a test be applied to the artists of the renaissance, each in turn will respond to it,--just as the weakness of the later bolognese as a school is that, beyond a certain technical merit, they meant and represented so little. but the noblest painters,--michelangelo and raphael, titian and leonardo,--in addition to possessing the solid grasp of technical mastery, reflected some aspect of their nation's life and civilization. in michelangelo was realized the grandeur of italy struggling vainly against crushing oppression. he expressed that which was highest in it, reflecting the loftiest side of its idealism mingled with deep pessimism in his survey over life; for, wrapped in austerity, he saw mankind in heroic terms of sadness. raphael, on the {xxiv} other hand, found only beautiful sweetness everywhere. the tragedies of life failed to touch the young painter, who blotted from view all struggle and sorrow, and, in spite of the misery which had befallen his nation, could still rejoice in the sensuous beauty of the world. there was another side to the renaissance, dependent neither on beauty nor heroic grandeur, yet sharing in both through qualities of its own. titian, who painted the living man of action, the man of parts, susceptible alike to the appreciation of ideal beauty and heroic impulse, but guided withal by expediency, reflected this more practical aspect of life. in his portraiture he expressed the statecraft for which italians found opportunity beyond the alps, since in italy it was denied them; and titian found even venice too narrow for the scope of his art. but before titian, before raphael, before michelangelo, leonardo reflected the rationalism and the mystery, the subtlety and the philosophical speculation, of the age. to find in his work only the individual thought of genius would be to mistake, perhaps, its most important side; for the expression of his mind, both by its brilliancy and its limitations, is typical of the spirit of his time. the italian renaissance was reflected in him as rarely a period has been expressed in the life-work of a single man. he represented its union of practice and theory, of thought placed in the {xxv} service of action. he summed up its different aspects in his own individuality. intellectually, he represented its many-sidedness attained through penetration of thought, and a keenness of observation, profiting from experience, extended into every sphere. as an artist he possessed a vigour of imagination from which sprang his power of creating beauty. but, in spite of his practical nature, he remained a dreamer in an age which had in it more of stern reality than of golden dreams. his very limitations, his excess of individualism, his want of long-continued concentration, his lack of patriotism, his feeling of the superiority of art to nationality, are all characteristic of renaissance italy. the union in leonardo of reality to mystery has often been shared by genius in other fields. his own peculiar greatness sprang from expressing in art the apparent contradiction of attaining the world of mystery through force of reality. like hamlet, it was the union of the real with the unreal which appealed to him, of the world as he saw it and the world as he imagined it to be. it was but another expression of the eternal ideal of truth and beauty. l. e. american embassy london, { } i thoughts on life * * * [sidenote: of the works of leonardo] begun at florence in the house of piero di braccio martelli, on the d day of march, ; and this is to be a collection without order, taken from many papers which i have copied here, hoping to arrange them later, each in its place, according to the various subjects treated. and i think that before i shall have finished this work, it will be necessary for me to repeat the same thing many times over; so, o reader, blame me not, because the subjects are many, and memory cannot retain them and say: this i will not write because i have already written it; and if i did not wish to fall into this error it would be necessary, every time that i wished to copy something, in order not to repeat myself, to read over all the preceding matter, all the more so since the intervals are long between one time of writing and another. [sidenote: his thirst after knowledge] . not louder does the tempestuous sea bellow when the north wind strikes its foaming waves between scylla and charybdis; nor stromboli nor mount etna when the sulphurous flames, { } shattering and bursting open the great mountain with violence, hurl stones and earth through the air with the flame it vomits; nor when the fiery caverns of mount etna, spitting forth the element which it cannot restrain, hurl it back to the place whence it issued, driving furiously before it any obstacle in the way of its vehement fury ... so i, urged by my great desire and longing to see the blending of strange and various shapes made by creating nature, wandered for some time among the dark rocks, and came to the entrance of a great cave, in front of which i long stood in astonishment and ignorance of such a thing. i bent my back into an arch and rested my left hand on my knee, and with my right hand shaded my downcast eyes and contracted eyebrows. i bent down first on one side and then on the other to see whether i could perceive anything, but the thick darkness rendered this impossible; and after having remained there some time, two things arose within me, fear and desire,--fear of the dark and threatening cave, desire to see whether there were anything marvellous within. . i discover for man the origin of the first and perhaps of the second cause of his being. [sidenote: leonardo's studies] . recognizing as i do that i cannot make use of { } subject matter which is useful and delightful, since my predecessors have exhausted the useful and necessary themes, i shall do as the man who by reason of his poverty arrives last at the fair, and cannot do otherwise than purchase what has already been seen by others and not accepted, but rejected by them as being of little value. i shall place this despised and rejected merchandise, which remains over after many have bought, on my poor pack, and i shall go and distribute it, not in the big cities, but in the poor towns, and take such reward as my goods deserve. [sidenote: vain knowledge] . all knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part. . avoid studies the result of which will die together with him who studied. [sidenote: value of knowledge] . the intellect will always profit by the acquisition of any knowledge whatsoever, for thus what is useless will be expelled from it, and what is fruitful will remain. it is impossible either to hate or to love a thing without first acquiring knowledge of it. { } . men of worth naturally desire knowledge. . it is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world. [sidenote: on his contemners] . i know that many will say that this work is useless, and these are they of whom demetrius said recked no more of the breath which made the words proceed from their mouth, than of the wind which proceeded from their body,--men who seek solely after riches and bodily satisfaction, men entirely denuded of that wisdom which is the food and verily the wealth of the soul; because insomuch as the soul is of greater value than the body, so much greater are the riches of the soul than those of the body. and often when i see one of these take this work in his hand, i wonder whether, like a monkey, he will not smell it and ask me if it is something to eat. [sidenote: on the vulgar] . demetrius used to say that there was no difference between the words and the voice of the { } unskilled ignorant and the sounds and noises of a stomach full of superfluous wind. and it was not without reason that he said this, for he considered it to be indifferent whence the utterance of such men proceeded, whether from their mouth or their body; both being of the same substance and value. . i do not consider that men of coarse and boorish habits and of slender parts deserve so fine an instrument nor such a complicated mechanism as men of contemplation and high culture. they merely need a sack in which their food may be held and whence it may issue, since verily they cannot be considered otherwise than as vehicles for food, for they seem to me to have nothing in common with the human race save the shape and the voice; as far as the rest is concerned they are lower than the beasts. . knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man. [sidenote: knowledge the supreme good] . cornelius celsus: knowledge is the supreme good, the supreme evil is physical pain. we are composed of two separate parts, the soul and the the body; the soul is the greater of these two, the body the lesser. knowledge appertains to the { } greater part, the supreme evil belongs to the lesser and baser part. knowledge is an excellent thing for the mind, and pain is the most grievous thing for the body. just as the supreme evil is physical pain, so is wisdom the supreme good of the soul, that is to say of the wise man, and no other thing can be compared with it. [sidenote: life and wisdom] . in the days of thy youth seek to obtain that which shall compensate the losses of thy old age. and if thou understandest that old age is fed with wisdom, so conduct thyself in the days of thy youth that sustenance may not be lacking to thy old age. [sidenote: praise of knowledge] . the fame of the rich man dies with him; the fame of the treasure, and not of the man who possessed it, remains. far greater is the glory of the virtue of mortals than that of their riches. how many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting. how many were those who lived in scarcity of worldly goods in order to grow rich in virtue; and as far as virtue exceeds wealth, even in the same degree the desire of the poor man proved more fruitful than that of the rich man. { } dost thou not see that wealth in itself confers no honour on him who amasses it, which shall last when he is dead, as does knowledge?--knowledge which shall always bear witness like a clarion to its creator, since knowledge is the daughter of its creator, and not the stepdaughter, like wealth. [sidenote: the world] . bountiful nature has provided that in all parts of the world you will find something to imitate. . [sidenote: the beauty of life] consider in the streets at nightfall the faces of men and women when it is bad weather, what grace and sweetness they manifest! . just as iron which is not used grows rusty, and water putrefies and freezes in the cold, so the mind of which no use is made is spoilt. [sidenote: fruitless study] . just as food eaten without appetite is a tedious nourishment, so does study without zeal damage the memory by not assimilating what it absorbs. . truth was the only daughter of time. { } [sidenote: in praise of truth] . so vile a thing is a lie that even if it spoke fairly of god it would take away somewhat from his divinity; and so excellent a thing is truth that if it praises the humblest things they are exalted. there is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects, though not of disorderly minds. but thou who feedest on dreams dost prefer the sophistry and subterfuges in matters of importance and uncertainty to what is certain and natural, though of lesser magnitude. . obstacles in the way of truth are finally punished. [sidenote: versus humanists] . i am well aware that not being a literary man the presumptuous will think that they have the right to blame me on the ground that i am not a man of letters. vainglorious people! know they not that i could make answer as marius did to the roman people, and say: they who make a { } display with the labours of others will not allow me mine? they will say that being unskilled in letters i cannot find true expression for the matters of which i desire to treat; they do not know that in my subjects experience is a truer guide than the words of others, for experience was the teacher of all great writers, and therefore i take her for guide, and i will cite her in all cases. . although i may not be able to quote other authors, as they do, i can quote from a greater and more worthy source, namely, experience,--the teacher of their masters. they go about swelled with pride and pomposity, dressed up and bedight, not with their own labour, but with that of others; and they will not concede me mine. and if they despise me, who am a creator, far more are they, who do not create but trumpet abroad and exploit the works of other men, to be blamed. [sidenote: authority] . he who in reasoning cites authority is making use of his memory rather than of his intellect. [sidenote: on commentators] . men who are creators and interpreters of nature to man, in comparison with boasters and exploiters of the works of others, must be judged { } and esteemed like the object before the mirror as compared with its image reflected in the mirror.--one being something in itself, and the other nothing. little to nature do they owe, since it is merely by chance they wear the human form, and but for it i might include them with herds of cattle. . a well lettered man is so because he is well natured, and just as the cause is more admirable than the effect, so is a good disposition, unlettered, more praiseworthy than a well lettered man who is without natural disposition. . against certain commentators who disparage the inventors of antiquity, the originators of science and grammar, and who attack the creators of antiquity; and because they through laziness and the convenience of books have not been able to create, they attack their masters with false reasoning. . it is better to imitate ancient than modern work. [sidenote: experience] . wisdom is the daughter of experience. [sidenote: experience never errs] . wrongly men complain of experience, which { } with great railing they accuse of falsehood. leave experience alone, and turn your lamentation to your ignorance, which leads you, with your vain and foolish desires, to promise yourselves those things which are not in her power to confer, and to accuse her of falsehood. wrongly men complain of innocent experience, when they accuse her not seldom of false and lying demonstrations. . experience never errs; it is only your judgements that err, ye who look to her for effects which our experiments cannot produce. because given a principle, that which ensues from it is necessarily the true consequence of that principle, unless it be impeded. should there, however, be any obstacle, the effect which should ensue from the aforesaid principle will participate in the impediment as much or as little as the impediment is operative in regard to the aforesaid principle. . experience, the interpreter between creative nature and the human race, teaches the action of nature among mortals: how under the constraint of necessity she cannot act otherwise than as reason, who steers her helm, teaches her to act. . all our knowledge is the offspring of our perceptions. { } [sidenote: origin of knowledge] . the sense ministers to the soul, and not the soul sense; and where the sense which ministers ceases to serve the soul, all the functions of that sense are lacking in life, as is evident in those who are born dumb and blind. [sidenote: testimony of the senses] . and if thou sayest that sight impedes the security and subtlety of mental meditation, by reason of which we penetrate into divine knowledge, and that this impediment drove a philosopher to deprive himself of his sight, i answer that the eye, as lord of the senses, performs its duty in being an impediment to the confusion and lies of that which is not science but discourse, by which with much noise and gesticulation argument is constantly conducted; and hearing should do the same, feeling, as it does, the offence more keenly, because it seeks after harmony which devolves on all the senses. and if this philosopher deprived himself of his sight to get rid of the obstacle to his discourses, consider that his discourses and his brain were a party to the act, because the whole was madness. now could he not have closed his eyes when this frenzy came upon him, and have kept them closed until the frenzy consumed itself? but the man was mad, the discourse insane, and egregious the folly of destroying his eye-sight. { } [sidenote: judgement prone to error] . there is nothing which deceives us as much as our own judgement. . the greatest deception which men incur proceeds from their opinions. . avoid the precepts of those thinkers whose reasoning is not confirmed by experience. [sidenote: intelligence of animals] . man discourseth greatly, and his discourse is for the greater part empty and false; the discourse of animals is small, but useful and true: slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood. . what is an element? it is not in man's power to define the quiddity of the elements, but a great many of their effects are known. . that which is divisible in fact is divisible in potentiality also; but not all quantities which are divisible in potentiality are divisible in fact. [sidenote: infinity incomprehensible] . what is that thing which is not defined and would { } not exist if it were defined? it is infinity, which if it could be defined would be limited and finite, because that which can be defined ends with the limits of its circumference, and that which cannot be defined has no limits. . o contemplators of things, do not pride yourselves for knowing those things which nature by herself and her ordination naturally conduces; but rejoice in knowing the purposes of those things which are determined by your mind. [sidenote: insoluble questions] . consider, o reader, how far we can lend credence to the ancients who strove to define the soul and life,--things which cannot be proved; while those things which can be clearly known and proved by experience remained during so many centuries ignored and misrepresented! the eye, which so clearly demonstrates its functions, has been up to my time defined in one manner by countless authorities; i by experience have discovered another definition. [sidenote: beauty of nature's inventions] . although human ingenuity may devise various inventions which, by the help of various instruments, answer to one and the same purpose, yet { } will it never discover any inventions more beautiful, more simple or more practical than those of nature, because in her inventions there is nothing lacking and nothing superfluous; and she makes use of no counterpoise when she constructs the limbs of animals in such a way as to correspond to the motion of their bodies, but she puts into them the soul of the body. this is not the proper place for this discourse, which belongs rather to the subject of the composition of animated bodies; and the rest of the definition of the soul i leave to the minds of the friars, the fathers of the people, who know all secrets by inspiration. i leave the sacred books alone, because they are the supreme truth. [sidenote: completeness in knowledge] . those who seek to abbreviate studies do injury to knowledge and to love because the love of anything is the daughter of this knowledge. the fervency of the love increases in proportion to the certainty of the knowledge, and the certainty issues from a complete knowledge of all the parts, which united compose the totality of the thing which ought to be loved. of what value, then, is he who abbreviates the details of those matters of which he professes to render a complete account, while he leaves behind the chief part of the things of which the whole is composed? it is true that impatience, the mother of { } stupidity, praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long enough to enable them to acquire a complete knowledge of one subject such as the human body! and then they seek to comprehend the mind of god, in which the universe is included, weighing it and splitting it into infinite particles, as if they had to dissect it! o human folly! dost thou not perceive that thou hast been with thyself all thy life, and thou art not yet aware of the thing which more fully than any other thing thou dost possess, namely, thy own folly? and thou desirest with the multitude of sophists to deceive thyself and others, despising the mathematical sciences in which truth dwells and the knowledge of the things which they contain; and then thou dost busy thyself with miracles, and writest that thou hast attained to the knowledge of those things which the human mind cannot comprehend, which cannot be proved by any instance in nature, and thou deemest that thou hast wrought a miracle in spoiling the work of some speculative mind; and thou perceivest not that thy error is the same as that of a man who strips a plant of the ornament of its branches covered with leaves, mingled with fragrant flowers and fruits. just as justinius did when he abridged the stories written by trogus pompeius, who had written elaborately the noble deeds of his forefathers, which were full of wonderful beauties of style; and thus { } he composed a barren work, worthy only of the impatient spirits who deem that they are wasting the time which they might usefully employ in studying the works of nature and mortal affairs. but let such men remain in company with the beasts; let dogs and other animals full of rapine be their courtiers, and let them be accompanied with these running ever at their heels! and let the harmless animals follow, which in the season of the snows come to the houses begging alms as from their master. [sidenote: nature] . nature is full of infinite causes which are beyond the pale of experience. . nature in creating first gives size to the abode of the intellect (the skull, the head), and then to the abode of the vital spirit (the chest). [sidenote: law of necessity] . necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. necessity is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law. . when anything is the cause of any other thing, and brings about by its movement any effect, { } the movement of the effect necessarily follows the movement of the cause. [sidenote: of lightning in the clouds] . o mighty and once living instrument of creative nature, unable to avail thyself of thy great strength thou must needs abandon a life of tranquillity and obey the law which god and time gave to nature the mother. ah! how often the frighted shoals of dolphins and great tunny fish were seen fleeing before thy inhuman wrath; whilst thou, fulminating with swift beating of wings and twisted tail, raised in the sea a sudden storm with buffeting and sinking of ships and tossing of waves, filling the naked shores with terrified and distracted fishes. [sidenote: the human eye] . since the eye is the window of the soul, the soul is always fearful of losing it, so much so that if a man is suddenly frightened by the motion or an object before him, he does not with his hands protect his heart, the source of all life; nor his head, where dwells the lord of the senses; nor the organs of hearing, smell and taste. but as soon as he feels fright it does not suffice him to close the lids of his eyes, keeping them shut with all his might, but he instantly turns in the opposite direction; and still not feeling secure he covers his eyes with one hand, stretching out the { } other to ward off the danger in the direction in which he suspects it to lie. nature again has ordained that the eye of man shall close of itself, so that remaining during his sleep without protection it shall suffer no hurt. [sidenote: universal law] . every object naturally seeks to maintain itself in itself. . the part always tends to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection; the soul desires to remain with its body, because without the organic instruments of that body it can neither act nor feel. . the lover is moved by the object he loves as the senses are by sensible things; and they unite and become one and the same. the work is the first thing which is born of this union; if the thing loved is base, the lover becomes base. when what is united is in harmony with that which receives it, delight, pleasure and satisfaction ensue. when the lover is united to the beloved he rests there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there. . a natural action is accomplished in the briefest manner. { } [sidenote: nature variable and infinite.] . to such an extent does nature delight and abound in variety that among her trees there is not one plant to be found which is exactly like another; and not only among the plants, but among the boughs, the leaves and the fruits, you will not find one which is exactly similar to another. . if nature had made one rule for the quality of limbs, the faces of men would resemble each other to such a degree that it would not be possible to distinguish one from the other; but she has varied the five features of the face in such a way that, although she has made an almost universal rule with regard to their size, she has not done so with regard to their quality, so that each one can be clearly distinguished from the other. . it is an easy matter for him who knows man to arrive at universal knowledge, since all terrestrial animals are similar in regard to their structure, that is to say, in regard to the muscles and bones, and they do not vary save in height and thickness; then there are the aquatic animals, and i will not persuade the painter that any rule can be made with regard to these because they are of infinite variety--so are the insects. { } . the body of anything which is fed is continually dying and being reborn, since nourishment cannot enter save where the past nourishment is exhausted; and if it is exhausted, it no longer has life, and if you do not furnish it with nourishment equal to that which has been before, you will impair the health of the organism, and if you deprive it of this nourishment, life will be altogether destroyed. but if you supply it with so much as can be consumed in a day, then as much life will be restored as was consumed, like the light of the candle which is furnished to it by the fuel provided by the moisture of the candle, and this light with most speedy succour restores beneath what is consumed above as it dies in dusky smoke; and this death is continuous, likewise the continuity of the smoke is equal to the continuity of the fuel; and in the same moment the light dies and is born again together with the movement of its fuel. . man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others. [sidenote: light] . look on light and consider its beauty. shut your { } eyes, and look again: that which you see was not there before, and that which was, no longer is. who is he who remakes it if the producer is continually dying? . anaxagoras: everything proceeds from everything, and everything becomes everything, because that which exists in the elements is composed of those elements. [sidenote: nature] . nature appears to have been the cruel stepmother rather than the mother of many animals, and in some cases not the stepmother, but the pitying mother. . why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death of the other? nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in continually creating and making lives and forms, because she knows that her earthly materials are thereby augmented, is more willing and swift to create than time is to destroy; and so she has ordained that many animals shall feed on each other. and as even thus her desire is not satisfied, she frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential vapours upon the increasing multitude and congregation of animals, and especially upon men who increase to a great extent, because other animals do not feed on them; and since there is no cause, { } there would follow no effect. this earth, therefore, seeks to lose its [animal] life, desiring only continual reproduction, and as, by the logical demonstration you adduce, effects often resemble their causes, animals are the image of the life of the world. [sidenote: life's philosophy] . now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home to one's former state is like the desire of the moth for the light, and the man who, with constant yearning and joyful expectancy, awaits the new spring and the new summer, and every new month and the new year, and thinks that what he longs for is ever too late in coming, and does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. but this desire is the quintessence, the spirit, of the elements, which, finding itself captive in the soul of the human body, desires always to return to its giver. and i would have you know that this same desire is the quintessence which is inseparable from nature, and that man is the model of the world. and such is the supreme folly of man that he labours so as to labour no more, and life flies from him while he forever hopes to enjoy the goods which he has acquired at the price of great labour. [sidenote: the senses and the soul] . the soul seems to dwell in the intellect, and the intellect appears to dwell in that part where all { } the senses meet which is called the brain, and the brain does not pervade the whole body, as many have thought; on the contrary, it dwells entirely in one part, because if it were all in all and the same in every part, it would not have been necessary for the instruments of the senses to combine among themselves in one single spot; but rather, it would have been sufficient for the eye to fulfil the function of its sensation on the surface without transmitting, by means of the optic nerves, the likeness of its vision to the brain, so that the soul, for the reason given above, might perceive it in the surface of the eye. likewise, with regard to the sense of hearing, it would have been sufficient if the voice had sounded only in the porous cavity of the indurated bone which lies within the ear, without making any further transit from this bone to the brain, which is its destination and where it discourses with common judgement. the sense of smell, too, is likewise compelled by necessity to proceed to the intellect; the sense of touch passes through the nerves and is conveyed to the brain, and these nerves diverge with infinite ramification in the skin, which encloses the limbs of the body and the entrails. the nerves convey volition and sensation to the muscles, and these nerves and the tendons which lie between the muscles and the sinews give movement to them; the muscles and sinews obey, and this obedience takes effect by the decrease { } of their thickness, for in swelling their length is reduced, and the tendons which are interwoven among the particles of the limbs shrink, and as they extend to the tips of the fingers they transmit to the brain the cause of the sense of touch which they feel. the tendons with their muscles obey the nerves as soldiers obey their officers, and the nerves obey the brain as the officers obey their captain; thus the joint of the bones obeys the tendon, and the tendons obey the muscles, and the muscles obey the nerves, and the nerves obey the brain, and the brain is the dwelling of the soul, and the memory is its ammunition and the perception is its refundary. [sidenote: of sensation] . the brain is that which perceives what is transmitted to it by the other senses. the brain moves by means of that which is transmitted to it by the five senses. motion is transmitted to the senses by objects, and these objects, transmitting their images to the five senses, are transferred by them to the perception, and by the perception to the brain; and there they are comprehended and committed to the memory, in which, according to their intensity, they are more or less firmly retained. the thinkers of ancient times concluded that the part of man which constitutes his intellect is caused by an instrument to which the other five { } senses refer everything by means of the perception, and this instrument they have named the "common sense" or brain, and they say that this sense is situated in the centre of the head. and they have given it this name "common sense" solely because it is the common judge of the five other senses, that is to say, sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell. the "common sense" is stirred by means of the perception which is placed between it and the senses. the perception is stirred by means of the images of things conveyed to it by the external instruments to the senses, and these are placed in the centre between the external things and the perception, and the senses likewise are stirred by objects. surrounding objects transmit their images to the senses, and the senses transfer them to the perception, and the perception transfers them to the "common sense" (brain), and by it they are stamped upon the memory, and are there retained in a greater or lesser degree according to the importance and intensity of the impression. the sense which is most closely connected with the perception is the most rapid in action, and this sense is the eye, the highest and chief of the others; of this sense alone we will treat, and we will leave the others in order not to unduly lengthen our matter. [sidenote: automatic movements] . nature has ordained for man the ministering { } muscles which exercise the sinews, and by means of which the limbs can be moved according to the will and desire of the brain, like to officers distributed by a ruler over many provinces and towns, who represent their ruler in these places, and obey his will. and this officer, who will in a single instance have most faithfully obeyed the orders he received from his master by word of mouth, will afterwards, in a similar way, of his own accord fulfil the wishes of his master. an example of this can be frequently seen in the fingers, which learn to perform on an instrument the things which the intellect commands, and the lesson once learnt they will perform it without the aid of the intellect. and do not the muscles which cause the legs to move perform their duty without man being conscious of it? . you will see palsied and shivering persons move, and their trembling limbs, such as their head and hands, quiver, without the permission of the soul, and the soul, though it expend all its might, cannot prevent these limbs from trembling. the same thing occurs in epilepsy or when limbs are partially truncated, as in the case of tails of lizards. [sidenote: intellect] . it happens that our intellect is that which prompts the hand to create the features of figures in { } divine aspects until it finds satisfaction; and since the intellect is one of the tones of our soul, by means of the soul it composes the form of the body where it dwells, according to its volition. and when it has to reproduce a human body, it takes pleasure in repeating the body which it originally created; whence it follows that they who fall in love are prone to become enamoured of what resembles them. [sidenote: of the senses] . there are the four powers: memory, intellect, sensuality and lust. the first two are intellectual, the others sensual. of the five senses, sight, hearing, smell are with difficulty prevented; touch and taste not at all. taste follows smell in the case of dogs and other greedy animals. . why does the eye perceive things more clearly in dreams than with the imagination when one is awake? [sidenote: time] . although time is included among continuous quantities, being indivisible and immaterial it does not altogether fall into the scope of geometry,--by which it is divided into figures and bodies of infinite variety, which are seen to be continuous inasmuch as they are visible and material,--but it agrees only with its first principles, { } i.e. with the point and the line; the point in time may be compared to an instant, and the line to the length of a certain quantity of time. just as the point is the beginning and end of a line, so is an instant the beginning and end of any given space of time; and just as a line is infinitely divisible, so can a given space of time be likewise divided, and as the divisions of the line are in proportion to each other, so likewise are the divisions of time. . in twelve whole figures the cosmography of the miniature world will be shown to you in the same manner as ptolemy in his cosmography. and so i will divide it afterwards into limbs as he divided the world into provinces; then i will explain the function of the parts in every direction, and put before your eyes a description of the whole figure and substance of man as regards his movements by means of his limbs. and thus if it please our great author i will demonstrate the nature of man and his habits in the way i describe his form. [sidenote: on the human body] . and thou, o man, who wilt gaze in this work of mine on the marvellous works of nature, if thou thinkest it would be an act of wickedness to destroy it, think how much more wicked it is to take the life of a man; and if this his structure appears to thee a miraculous work of art, remember that { } it is nothing in comparison with the soul which inhabits this structure; for verily, whatever it may be, it is divine. let it, then, dwell in his work and at his good will, and let not thy rage or malice destroy so great a thing as life, for he who does not value it does not deserve it. [sidenote: the experimental method] . by these rules thou wilt be able to distinguish falsehood from truth by means of which knowledge men aim at possible things with greater moderation; and do not veil thyself in ignorance, for the result of this would be that thou wouldst be ineffectual and fall into melancholy and despair. [sidenote: of navigation below the waters] . how by the aid of a machine many may remain for some time under water. and how and why i do not describe my method of remaining under water and of living long without food; and i do not publish nor divulge these things by reason of the evil nature of man, who would use them for assassinations at the bottom of the sea and to destroy and sink ships, together with the men on board of them; and notwithstanding i will teach other things which are not dangerous.... [sidenote: of physiognomy] . i will not dwell on false physiognomy and chiromancy { } because there is no truth in them, and this is manifest because chimeras of this kind have no scientific foundation. it is true that the lineaments of the face partly reveal the character of men, their vices and temperaments; but in the face: (a) the features which separate the cheeks from the lips, and the nostrils and cavities of the eyes, are strongly marked if they belong to cheerful and good-humoured men, and if they are slightly marked it denotes that the men to whom they belong are given to meditation, (b) those whose features stand out in great relief and depth are brutal and bad-tempered, and reason little, (c) those who have strongly marked lines between the eyebrows are bad-tempered, (d) those who have strongly marked lines on the forehead are men full of concealed or unconcealed bewailing. and we can reason thus about many features. but the hand? you will find that whole armies perished in the same hour by the sword in which no two men had similar marks in their hands, and the same argument applies to a shipwreck. [sidenote: of pain] . nature has placed in the front part of man, as he moves, all those parts which when struck cause him to feel pain; and this is felt in the joints of the legs, the forehead and the nose, and has been so devised for the preservation of man, because { } if such pain were not felt in these limbs they would be destroyed by the many blows they receive. [sidenote: why plants do not feel pain] . while nature has ordained that animals should feel pain in order that the instruments which might be liable to be maimed or marred by motion may be preserved, plants do not come into collision with the objects which are before them; whence pain is not a necessity for them, and therefore when they are broken they do not feel pain, as animals do. . lust is the cause of generation. appetite is the support of life. fear or timidity is the prolongation of life. pain is the preserver of the instrument (of the human frame). [sidenote: fear] . just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard. [sidenote: body and soul] . let him who wishes to see how the soul inhabits its body observe what use the body makes of its daily habitation; that is to say, if the soul is full of confusion and disorder the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by the soul. { } . the soul can never be corrupted with the corruption of the body, but it is like the wind which causes the sound of the organ, and which ceases to produce a good effect when a pipe is spoilt. [sidenote: memory] . every loss which we incur leaves behind it vexation in the memory, save the greatest loss of all, that is, death, which annihilates the memory, together with life. [sidenote: spirit] . our body is subject to heaven, and heaven is subject to the spirit. [sidenote: sense and reason] . the senses are earthly; reason lies outside them when in contemplation. . where most feeling exists, there amongst martyrs is the greatest martyr. . that which can be lost cannot be deemed riches. virtue is our true wealth and the true reward of its possessor; it cannot be lost, it never deserts us until life leaves us. hold property and external riches with fear; they often leave their possessor scorned and mocked at for having lost them. { } [sidenote: flight of time] . men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present. [sidenote: illusions] . our intellect does not judge events which happened at various intervals of time in their true proportion, because many things which happened years ago appear recent and close to the present, and often recent things appear old and seem to belong to our past childhood. the eye does likewise with regard to distant objects which in the light of the sun appear to be close to the eye, and many objects which are close appear to be remote. . let us not lack ways and means of dividing and measuring these our wretched days, which we ought to take pleasure in spending and living not vainly and not without praise, nor without leaving any memory in the minds of men, so that this our miserable existence may not be spent in vain. [sidenote: virtuous life] . the age which flies glides by in stealth and deceives others; and nothing is more swift than the years, and he who sows virtue reaps glory. { } [sidenote: sleep and death] . o sleeper, what is sleep? sleep is like unto death. why dost thou not work in such wise that after death thou mayst have the semblance of perfect life, just as during life thou hast in thy sleep the semblance of the hapless dead? . the water you touch in a river is the last of that which has gone, and the first of that which is coming: so it is with time present. . a long life is a life well spent. [sidenote: life] . as a well spent day affords happy sleep, so does a life profitably employed afford a happy death. [sidenote: time the destroyer] . o time, consumer of things! o envious age! thou dost destroy all things, and consumest all things with the hard teeth of old age, little by little in a slow death. helen, when she looked in her mirror and saw the withered wrinkles made in her face by old age, wept, and wondered why she had twice been ravished. o time, devourer of things! o envious age, by which all is consumed! { } [sidenote: on fault-finders] . there exists among the foolish a certain sect of hypocrites who continually seek to deceive themselves and others, but others more than themselves, though in reality they deceive themselves more than others. and these are they who blame the painters who study on feast-days the things which relate to the true knowledge of the forms of the works of nature, and sedulously strive to acquire knowledge of these things to the best of their ability. but such fault-finders pass over in silence the fact that this is the true manner of knowing the artificer of such great and marvellous things, and that this is the true way in which to love so great an inventor! for great love proceeds from the perfect knowledge of the thing loved; and if you do not know it you can love it but little or not at all; and if you love it for the gain which you anticipate obtaining from it and not for its supreme virtue, you are like the dog which wags its tail and shows signs of joy, leaping towards him who can give him a bone. but if you knew the virtue of a man you would love him more--if that virtue was in its place. [sidenote: prayer] . i obey thee, lord, first for the love which in reason i ought to bear thee; secondly because thou { } hast the power to shorten or prolong the lives of men. . thou, o god, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour. . and many make a trade deceiving the foolish multitude, and if no one comes to unmask their deceits, they punish it. . pharisees,--that is to say, holy friars. . nothing can be written by means of new researches. [sidenote: patience] . patience serves against insults as clothes do against the cold; since if you multiply your clothes as the cold increases, the cold cannot hurt you. similarly, let thy patience increase under great offences, and they will not be able to hurt your feelings. [sidenote: advice to a speaker] . words which do not satisfy the ear of the listener will always weary or annoy him; and you will often see signs of this in such listeners in their frequent yawns. therefore, you who speak before men whose good opinion you seek, when you { } observe such signs of vexation, shorten your speech or vary your argument; and if you do otherwise, then instead of the favour you seek you will incur hate and hostility. and if you would see what gives pleasure to a man speak to him on various themes, and when you see him intent, without yawning, or contracting his brow, or performing other actions, then be certain that the matter of which you are speaking is such as affords him pleasure. [sidenote: advice] . here is a thing which the more it is needed the more it is rejected: and this is advice, which is unwillingly heeded by those who most need it, that is to say, by the ignorant. here is a thing which the more you fear and avoid it the nearer you approach to it, and this is misery; the more you flee from it the more miserable and restless you will become. when the work comes up to the standard of the judgement, this is a bad sign for the judgement; and when the work excels the standard of the judgement, this is the worst sign, as occurs when a man marvels at having worked so well; and when the standard of the judgement exceeds that fulfilled by the work, this is a sign of perfection; and if the man is young and be thus disposed, he will without doubt grow into an excellent workman: he will only accomplish few works. but they will { } be of a quality which will compel men to contemplate their perfection with admiration. [sidenote: proverbs] . nothing should be so greatly feared as empty fame. this empty fame issues from vices. a broken vase of clay can be remodelled, but this is no longer possible when it has been baked. the vow is born when hope dies. the beautiful is not always the good. and the fine talkers labour under this error without any reason. he who wishes to grow rich in a day will be hanged in a year. the memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude. reprove your friend in secret and praise him in public. he who fears dangers will not perish by them. the evil which does me no harm is like the good which in no wise avails me. he who offends others is not himself secure. be not false about the past. folly is the shield of lies, just as unreadiness is the defence of poverty. where there is liberty, there is no rule. { } here is a thing which the more it is heeded the more it is spurned,--advice. it is ill to praise, and worse to blame, the thing which you do not understand. on mount etna the words freeze in your mouth and you make ice of them. threats are the only weapons of the threatened man. ask advice of him who governs himself well. justice needs power, intelligence and will, and is like the queen bee. not to punish evil is equivalent to authorizing it. he who takes the snake by the tail will be bitten by it. the pit will fall in upon him who digs it. he who does not restrain voluptuousness is in the category of the beasts. you can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself. he who thinks little errs much. it is easier to contend at the first than at the last. no counsel is more sincere than that given on ships which are in danger. let him who acts on the advice of the young expect loss. you grow in reputation like bread in the hands of a child. { } cannot beauty and utility be combined--as appears in citadels and men? he who is without fear often incurs great losses, and is often full of regret. if you governed your body according to virtue you would not live in this world. where good fortune enters, envy lays siege to her and attacks her, and when she departs sorrow and regret remain behind. when beauty exists side by side with ugliness, the one seems more powerful, owing to the presence of the other. he who walks straight rarely falls. o miserable race of man! of how many things you make yourself the slave for the sake of money! the worst evil which can befall the artist is that his work should appear good in his own eyes. to speak well of a bad man is the same as speaking ill of a good man. truth ordains that lying tongues shall be punished by the lie. he who does not value life does not deserve it. the beautiful works of mortals pass and do not endure. labour flies with fame almost hidden in its arm. the gold in ingots is refined in the fire. { } the shuttle says: i will continue to move until the cloth is woven. everything that is crooked is straightened. great ruin proceeds from a slight cause. fine gold is recognized when it is tested. the image will correspond to the die. the wall will fall on him who scrapes it. ivy lives long. to the traitor, death is life, because if he makes use of others he is no longer believed. when fortune comes seize her in front firmly, because behind she is bald. constancy means, not he who begins, but he who perseveres. i do not yield to obstacles. every obstacle is overcome by resolve. he who is chained to a star does not change. [sidenote: truth] . fire destroys falsehood,--that is to say, sophistry,--and rehabilitates truth, scattering the darkness. fire must be represented as the consumer of all sophistry and the revealer of truth, because it is light and scatters darkness which conceals all essences. fire destroys all sophistry,--that is to say, deceit,--and preserves truth alone, which is gold. { } truth cannot be concealed in the end, dissimulation is of no avail. dissimulation is frustrated before so great a judge. falsehood puts on a mask. there is nothing hidden under the sun. fire must represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies, and the mask is for sophistry and lies, which conceal truth. . rather privation of limbs than weariness of doing good. the power of using my limbs shall fail me before the power of being useful. rather death than weariness. i cannot be satiated with serving. i do not weary of giving help. no amount of work is sufficient to weary me. this is a carnival motto: "sine lassitudine." hands in which ducats and precious stones abound like snow never grow weary of serving, but such a service is for its utility only and not for our profit. nature has formed me thus. [sidenote: ingratitude] . this shall be placed in the hand of ingratitude: the wood nourishes the fire that consumes it. when the sun, the scatterer of darkness, shines, you put out the light which for you in particular, and for your need and convenience, expelled the darkness. [sidenote: physiological inferiority of man] . i have found that in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of { } animals the senses are less subtle and coarser; it is thus composed of less ingenious machinery and of cells less capable of receiving the power of senses. i have seen that in the lion the sense of smell is connected with the substance of the brain and descends through the nostrils which form an ample receptacle for it; and it enters into a great number of cartilaginous cells which are provided with many passages in order to receive the brain. a large part of the head of the lion is given up to the sockets of the eyes, and the optic nerves are in immediate contact with the brain; the contrary occurs in man, because the sockets of the eyes occupy a small portion of the head, and the optic nerves are subtle and long and weak, and owing to the weakness of their action we see little by day and less at night; and the animals above mentioned see better at night than in the daytime; and the proof of this is that they seek their prey at night and sleep during the daytime, as do also the nocturnal birds. [sidenote: man's ethical inferiority] . thou hast described him king of animals, but i would rather say, king of beasts, thou being the greatest--for hast thou not slain them in order that they may give thee their children to glut thy greed with which thou hast striven to make a sepulchre for all animals? and i would say still more if i might speak the whole truth. but let us { } confine ourselves to human matters, relating one supreme infamy, which is not to be found among the animals of the earth; because among these you will not find animals who eat their young, except when they are utterly foolish (and there are few indeed of such among them), and this occurs only among the beasts of prey, such as the lions, and leopards, panthers, lynxes, cats and the like, which sometimes feed on their young; but thou, besides thy children, dost devour thy father, thy mother, thy brother and thy friends; and not satisfied with this, thou goest forth to hunt on the islands of others, seizing other men and these half naked ... thou fattenest and chasest them down thy own throat. now does not nature produce enough vegetables for thee to satisfy thyself? and if thou art not content with vegetables, canst thou not by a mixture of them make infinite compounds as platina wrote, and other writers on food? [sidenote: man in the animal world] . the description of man, including that of such creatures belonging almost to the same species, such as apes, monkeys and the like, of which there are many. . the way of walking in man is similar in all cases to the universal way of walking in four-footed animals, because, just as they move their feet { } crosswise, like a trotting horse, so man moves his four limbs crosswise, that is to say, in walking he puts forward his right foot simultaneously with his left arm, and so on vice versa. . write a special treatise to describe the movements of four-footed animals, among which is man, who in his childhood also walks on four feet. [sidenote: fragment of a letter] . there is one who having promised me much less than his due, and being disappointed of his presumptuous desire, has tried to deprive me of all my friends; and finding them wise and not pliable to his will, he has threatened me that he would bring accusations against me and alienate my benefactors from me: hence i have informed your lordship of this, so that this man, who wishes to sow the usual scandals, may not find a soil fit for sowing the thoughts and deeds of his evil nature; and that when he tries to make your lordship the tool of his infamous and malicious nature he may be disappointed of his desire. [sidenote: giacomo of pupil of leonardo] . on the d of april, , i began this book; and started again on the horse. giacomo came to live with me on saint mary magdalen's day in ; { } he was ten years old. he was a thief, a liar, obstinate, and a glutton. on the second day i had two shirts made for him, a pair of socks and a jerkin, and when i placed the money aside to pay for these things, he stole it out of the purse and i could never force him to confess the fact, though i was quite certain of it-- lire. on the following day i went to sup with giacomo andrea, and this same giacomo supped for two and did mischief for four, since he broke three bottles, spilled the wine, and after this came to sup where i... item: on the th of september he stole a silver point, worth twelve soldi, from marco, who was living with me, and took it from his studio; and when marco had looked for it for some time he found it hidden in giacomo's box--lire , soldi . item: on the th of the following january, being in the house of messer galeazzo di san severino, in order to arrange the festivity of his joust, and certain henchmen having undressed to try on the costumes of rustics who were to take part in the aforesaid festivity, giacomo took the purse of one of them, which was on the bed with other clothes, and stole the money he found in it-- lire, soldi. item: maestro agostino of padua gave me while i was in the same house a turkish hide to have a pair of shoes made of it, and giacomo stole this from me within a month and sold it to a cobbler for soldi, with which money by his own confession he bought sweets of aniseed. item: { } again, on the d of april, giovanni antonio left a silver point on one of his drawings, and giacomo stole it; it was worth soldi,-- lire, soldi. the first year a cloak, lire; six shirts, lire; three doublets, lire: four pairs of socks, lire, soldi. . and in this case i know that i shall make not a few enemies, since no one will believe what i say of him; because there are but few whom his vices have disgusted, indeed they only disgusted those men whose natures are contrary to such vices; and many hate their fathers and break off friendship with those who reprove their vices, and they will have no examples brought up against them, nor tolerate any advice. and if you meet with any one who is good and virtuous drive him not away from you, do him honour, so that he may not have to flee from you and hide in hermitages, or caverns and other solitary spots, in order to escape from your treachery; and if there be such an one do him honour, because these are your gods upon earth, they deserve statues from you and images ... but remember that you are not to eat their images, as is practised still in some parts of india, where, when images have performed some miracle, the priests cut them in pieces (since they are of wood) and distribute them among the people of the country, not { } without payment, and each one grates his portion very fine and puts it upon the first food he eats; and thus they believe that they have eaten their saint by faith, who will preserve them from all perils. what is thy opinion, o man, of thy own species? art thou so wise as thou believest to be? are these things to be done by men? [sidenote: pleasure and pain] . this represents pleasure together with pain because one is never separated from the other; they are depicted back to back because they are opposed to each other; they are represented in one body because they have the same basis, because the source of pleasure is labour mingled with pain, and the pain issues from the various evil pleasures. and it is therefore represented with a reed in its right hand which is ineffectual and devoid of strength, and the wounds inflicted by it are poisonous. in tuscany such reeds are placed to support beds, to signify that this is the place of idle dreams, that here a great part of life is consumed, here much useful time is wasted, that is, the morning hours when the mind is sober and rested and the body disposed to start on fresh labours; there, again, many vain pleasures are enjoyed by the mind, which pictures to itself impossible things, and by the body, which indulges in those pleasures that are so often the cause of the { } failing of life; and for this reason the reed is used as their support. [sidenote: brain and soul] . the spirit returns to the brain whence it had departed, with a loud voice and uttering these words: o blissful and fortunate spirit, whence comest thou? i have known this man well, against my will. he is a receptacle of villainy, he is a very heap of the highest ingratitude combined with all the other vices. but why should i tire myself with vain words? nothing is to be found in him save the accumulation of all sins, and if there is to be found among them any that possess good, they will not be treated differently than i have been by other men; in short i have come to the conclusion that they are bad if they are enemies, and worse if they are friends. [sidenote: of the eye] . the eye, which reflects the beauty of the universe to those who see, is so excellent a thing that he who consents to its loss deprives himself of the spectacle of the works of nature; and it is owing to this spectacle, effected by means of the eye, which enables the soul to behold the various objects of nature, that the soul is content to remain in the prison of the body; but he who loses his eyesight leaves the soul in a dark prison, where { } all hope of once more beholding the sun, the light of the whole world, is lost.... and how many are they who feel great hatred for the darkness of night, although it is brief. oh! what would they do were they constrained to abide in this darkness during the whole of their life? certainly there is no one who would not rather lose his hearing or his sense of smell than his eyesight, and the loss of hearing includes the loss of all sciences which find expression in words; and this loss a man would incur solely so as not to be deprived of the sight of the beauty of the world which consists in the surfaces of bodies artificial as well as natural, which are reflected in the human eye. [sidenote: the eye in animal life] . animals suffer greater loss in losing their sight than their hearing for many reasons: firstly, because it is by means of their sight that they find the food which is their nourishment, and is necessary for all animals; secondly, because by means of sight the beauty of created things is apprehended, especially those which lead to love, while he who is born blind cannot apprehend such beauty by hearing, because he has never received any knowledge as to what is beauty of any kind. there remains hearing, by which i mean only the human voice and speech; they contain the names of all things whatsoever. it is possible to live happily without the knowledge of these { } words, as is seen in those who are born deaf, that is to say, the dumb, who take delight in drawing. [sidenote: ascension of monte rosa] . i say that the azure we see in the atmosphere is not its true colour, but is caused by warm moisture evaporated in minute and insensible atoms which the solar rays strike, rendering them luminous against the darkness of the infinite night of the fiery region which lies beyond and includes them. and this may be seen, as i saw it, by him who ascends mounboso (monte rosa), a peak of the alps which separates france from italy. the base of this mountain gives birth to the four large rivers which in four different directions water the whole of europe; and no mountain has its base at so great a height as this. it rises to such a height that it almost lifts itself up above the clouds; snow seldom falls on it, but only hail in summer, when the clouds are at their greatest height, and this hail is preserved there so that were it not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not occur twice in an age, a great quantity of ice would be piled up there by the hail, which in the middle of july i found to be very considerable; and i saw above me the dark air, and the sun which struck the mountain shone far lighter than in the plains below, because a lesser quantity of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun. { } [sidenote: prophecies] . men will communicate with each other from the most distant countries, and reply. many will abandon their own habitations and take with them their own goods, and go and inhabit other countries. men will pursue the thing which they most greatly fear; that is to say, they will be miserable in order to avoid falling into misery. men standing in separate hemispheres will converse with each other, embrace each other, and understand each other's language. . we should not desire the impossible. { } ii thoughts on art * * * [sidenote: painting declines when aloof from nature] the painter's work will be of little merit if he takes the painting of others as his standard, but if he studies from nature he will produce good fruits; as is seen in the case of the painters of the age after the romans, who continued to imitate one another and whose art consequently declined from age to age. after these came giotto the florentine, who was born in the lonely mountains, inhabited only by goats and similar animals; and he, being drawn to his art by nature, began to draw on the rocks the doings of the goats of which he was the keeper; and thus he likewise began to draw all the animals which he met with in the country: so that after long study he surpassed not only all the masters of his age, but all those of many past centuries. after him art relapsed once more, because all artists imitated the painted pictures, and thus from century to century it went on declining, until tomaso the florentine, called masaccio, proved by his perfect work that they who set up for themselves a standard other than nature, the mistress of all masters, labour in vain. { } thus i wish to say, in regard to these mathematical matters, that they who merely study the masters and not the works of nature are the grandchildren, and not the children, of nature, the mistress of good masters. i abhor the supreme folly of those who blame the disciples of nature in defiance of those masters who were themselves her pupils. [sidenote: its origin] . the first picture was a single line, drawn round the shadow of a man cast by the sun on the wall. . vastness of the field of painting: all that is visible is included in the science of painting. [sidenote: defence of painting] . with due lamentation painting complains that it has been expelled from the liberal arts, because it is the true daughter of nature and is practised by means of the most worthy of the senses. whence wrongly, o writers, you have excluded painting from the liberal arts, since it not only includes in its range the works of nature, but also infinite things which nature never created. . because writers have had no knowledge of the science of painting, they have not been able to { } describe its gradations and parts, and since painting itself does not reveal itself nor its artistic work in words, it has remained, owing to ignorance, behind the sciences mentioned above, but it has thereby lost nothing of its divinity. and truly it is not without reason that men have failed to honour it, because it does honour to itself without the aid of the speech of others, just as do the excellent works of nature. and if the painters have not described the art of painting, and reduced it to a science, the fault must not be imputed to painting and it is no less noble on that account, since few painters profess a knowledge of letters, as their life would not be long enough for them to acquire such knowledge. therefore we ask, is the virtue of herbs, stones and plants non-existent because men have been ignorant of it? certainly not; but we will say that these herbs remained noble in themselves without the aid of human tongues or letters. [sidenote: painting] . a science is more useful in proportion as its fruits are more widely understood, and thus, on the other hand, it is less useful in proportion as it is less widely understood. the fruits of painting can be apprehended by all the populations of the universe because its results are subject to the power of sight, and it does not pass by the ear to the brain, but by the same channel by which { } sight passes. therefore it needs no interpreters of diverse tongues, as letters do, and it has instantly satisfied the human race in the same manner as the works of nature have done. and not only the human race, but other animals; as was shown in a picture representing the father of a family to whom little children still in the cradle gave caresses, as did the dog and the cat in the same house; and it was a wonderful thing to see such a sight. . the arts which admit of exact reproduction are such that the disciple is on the same level as the creator, and so it is with their fruits. these are useful to the imitator, but are not of such high excellence as those which cannot be transmitted as an inheritance like other substances. among these painting is the first. painting cannot be taught to him on whom nature has not conferred the gift of receiving such knowledge, as mathematics can be taught, of which the disciple receives as much as the master gives him; it cannot be copied, as letters can be, in which the copy equals the original; it cannot be stamped, in the same way as sculpture, in which the impression is in proportion to the source as regards the quality of the work; it does not generate countless children, as do printed books. it alone remains noble, it alone confers honour on its author and remains precious { } and unique, and does not beget children equal to itself. and it is more excellent by reason of this quality than by reason of those which are everywhere proclaimed. now do we not see the great monarchs of the east going about veiled and covered up from the fear of diminishing their glory by the manifestation and the divulgation of their presence? and do we not see that the pictures which represent the divine deity are kept covered up with inestimable veils? their unveiling is preceded by great sacred solemnities with various chants and diverse music, and when they are unveiled, the vast multitude of people who are there flocked together, immediately prostrate themselves and worship and invoke those whom such pictures represent that they may regain their lost holiness and win eternal salvation, just as if the deity were present in the flesh. this does not occur in any other art or work of man. and if you say that is owing to the nature of the subject depicted rather than to the genius of the painter, the answer is that the mind of man could satisfy itself equally well in this case, were the man to remain in bed and not make pilgrimages to places which are perilous and hard of access, as we so often see is the case. but if such pilgrimages continually exist, what is then their unnecessary cause? you will certainly admit that it is an image of this kind, and all the writings in the world could not succeed in representing the { } semblance and the power of such a deity. therefore it appears that this deity takes pleasure in the pictures and is pleased that it should be loved and revered, and takes a greater delight in being worshipped in that rather than in any other semblance of itself, and by reason of this it bestows grace and gifts of salvation according to the belief of those who meet together in such a place. [sidenote: painting excels all the works of man] . the eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the brain can most abundantly and splendidly contemplate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the next in order, which is ennobled by hearing the recital of the things seen by the eye. if you, historians and poets, or mathematicians, had not seen things with the eyes, you could not report of them in writing. if thou, o poet, dost tell a story with thy painting pen, the painter will more easily give satisfaction in telling it with his brush and in a manner less tedious and more easily understood. and if thou callest painting mute poetry, the painter can call poetry blind painting. now consider which is the greater loss, to be blind or dumb? though the poet is as free as the painter in his creations and compositions, they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings, because if poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the very { } semblance of forms in order to represent them. now consider which is nearer to man, the name of man or the image of man? the name of man varies in diverse countries, but death alone changes his form. if thou wast to say that painting is more lasting, i answer that the works of a coppersmith, which time preserves longer than thine or ours, are more eternal still. nevertheless there is but little invention in it, and painting on copper with colours of enamel is far more lasting. we by our art can be called the grandsons of god. if poetry deals with moral philosophy, painting deals with natural philosophy; if poetry describes the action of the contemplative mind, painting represents the effect in motion of the action of the mind; if poetry terrifies people with the pictures of hell, painting does the same by depicting the same things in action. if a poet challenges the painter to represent beauty, fierceness, or an evil, an ugly or a monstrous thing, whatever variety of forms he may produce in his way, the painter will cause greater satisfaction. are there not pictures to be seen so like reality that they deceive men and animals? [sidenote: painting creates reality] . the imagination is to the effect as the shadow to the opaque body which causes the shadow, and the proportion is the same between poetry and painting. because poetry produces its results in the { } imagination of the reader, and painting produces them in a concrete reality outside the eye, so that the eye receives its images just as if they were the works of nature; and poetry produces its results without images, and they do not pass to the brain through the channel of the visual faculty, as in painting. . painting represents to the brain the works of nature with greater truth and accuracy than speech or writing, but letters represent words with greater truth, which painting does not do. but we say that the science which represents the works of nature is more wonderful than that which represents the works of the artificer, that is to say, the works of man, which consist of words--such as poetry and the like--which issue from the tongue of man. [sidenote: the painter goes to nature] . painting ministers to a nobler sense than poetry, depicts the forms of the works of nature with greater truth than poetry; and the works of nature are nobler than the words which are the works of man, because there is the same proportion between the works of man and those of nature as there is between man and god. therefore it is a more worthy thing to imitate the works of nature, which are the true images embodied in reality, than to imitate the actions and the words of men. { } and if thou, o poet, wishest to describe the works of nature by thine unaided art, and dost represent various places and the forms of diverse objects, the painter surpasses thee by an infinite degree of power; but if thou wishest to have recourse to the aid of other sciences, apart from poetry, they are not thy own; for instance, astrology, rhetoric, theology, philosophy, geometry, arithmetic and the like. thou art not then a poet any longer. thou transformest thyself, and art no longer that of which we are speaking. now seest thou not that if thou wishest to go to nature, thou reachest her by the means of science, deduced by others from the effects of nature? and the painter, through himself alone, without the aid of aught appertaining to the various sciences, or by any other means, achieves directly the imitation of the things of nature. by painting, lovers are attracted to the images of the beloved to converse with the depicted semblance. by painting whole populations are led with fervent vows to seek the image of the deities, and not to see the books of poets which represent the same deities in speech; by painting animals are deceived. i once saw a picture which deceived a dog by the image of its master, which the dog greeted with great joy; and likewise i have seen dogs bark at and try to bite painted dogs; and a monkey make a number of antics in front of a painted monkey. i have seen swallows fly and alight on painted { } iron-works which jut out of the windows of buildings. [sidenote: superiority of painting to philosophy] . painting includes in its range the surface, colour and shape of anything created by nature; and philosophy penetrates into the same bodies and takes note of their essential virtue, but it is not satisfied with that truth, as is the painter, who seizes hold of the primary truth of such bodies because the eye is less prone to deception. [sidenote: painting & poetry] . poetry surpasses painting in the representation of words, and in the representation of actions painting excels poetry; and painting is to poetry as actions are to words, because actions depend on the eye and words on the ear; and thus the senses are in the same proportion one to another as the objects on which they depend; and on this account i consider painting to be superior to poetry. but since those who practised painting were for long ignorant as to how to explain its theory, it lacked advocates for a considerable time; because it does not speak itself, but reveals itself and ends in action, and poetry ends in words, which in its vainglory it employs for self-praise. [sidenote: painting is mute poetry] . what poet will place before thee in words, o { } lover, the true semblance of thy idea with such truth as will the painter? who is he who will show thee rivers, woods, valleys and plains, which will recall to thee the pleasures of the past, with greater truth than the painter? and if thou sayest that painting is mute poetry in itself, unless there be some one to speak for it and tell what it represents--seest thou not, then, that thy book is on a lower plane? because even if it have a man to speak for it, nothing of the subject which is related can be seen, as it is seen when a picture is explained. and the pictures, if the action represented and the mental attributes of the figures are in the true proportion one to another, will be understood in the same way as if they spoke. . painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting. therefore these two forms of poetry, or rather these two forms of painting, have exchanged the senses through which they should reach the intellect. because if they are both of them painting, they must reach the brain by the noblest sense, namely, the eye; if they are both of them poetry, they must reach the brain by the less noble sense, that is, the hearing. therefore we will appoint the man born deaf to be judge of painting, and the man born blind to be judge of poetry; and if in the painting the movements are appropriate { } to the mental attributes of the figures which is are engaged in any kind of action, there is no doubt that the deaf man will understand the action and intentions of the figures, but the blind man will never understand what the poet shows, and what constitutes the glory of the poetry; since one of the noblest functions of its art is to describe the deeds and the subjects of stories, and adorned and delectable places with transparent waters in which the green recesses of their course can be seen as the waves disport themselves over meadows and fine pebbles, and the plants which are mingled with them, and the gliding fishes, and similar descriptions, which might just as well be made to a stone as to a man born blind, since he has never seen that which composes the beauty of the world, that is, light, darkness, colour, body, shape, place, distance, propinquity, motion and rest, which are the ten ornaments of nature. but the deaf man, lacking the less noble sense, although he has at the same time lost the gift of speech, since never having heard words spoken he never has been able to learn any language, will nevertheless perfectly understand every attribute of the human body better than a man who can speak and hear; and likewise he will know the works of painters and what is represented in them, and the action which is appropriate to such figures. { } [sidenote: painting is mute poetry] . painting is mute poetry, and poetry is blind painting, and both imitate nature to the best of their powers, and both can demonstrate moral principles, as apelles did in his calumny. and since painting ministers to the most noble of the senses, the eye, a harmonious proportion ensues from it, that is to say, that just as from the concord of many diverse voices at the same moment there ensues a well-proportioned harmony which will please the sense of hearing to such an extent that the listeners in dizzy admiration are like men half ravished of their senses, still greater will be the effect of the beautiful proportions of a celestial face in a picture from whose proportions a harmonious concord will ensue, which delights the eye in one moment, just as music delights the ear. and if this harmonious beauty is shown to one who is the lover of the woman from whom such great beauty has been copied, he will most certainly be struck dizzy with admiration and incomparable joy superior to that afforded by all the other senses. but with regard to poetry, which in order to afford the representation of a perfect beauty is obliged to describe each separate part in detail,--a representation which in painting produces the harmony described above,--no further charm is produced than would occur in music if each voice { } were to be heard separately at various intervals of time, whence no concord would ensue; just as if we wished to show a countenance bit by bit, always covering up the parts already shown, forgetfulness would prevent the production of any harmonious concord, since the eye could not apprehend the parts with its visual faculty at the same moment. the same thing occurs in the beauty of any object created by the poet, for as its parts are related separately, at separate times the memory receives no harmony from it. [sidenote: the impression of painting] . painting reveals itself immediately to thee with the semblance given it by its creator, and affords to the chief of the senses as great a delight as any object created by nature. and the poet in this case reveals the same objects to the brain by the channel of the hearing, the inferior sense, and affords the eye no more pleasure than it derives from anything which is related. now consider what a difference there is between hearing the recital of a thing which in the course of time gives pleasure to the eye, and perceiving it with the same velocity with which we apprehend the works of nature. and in addition to the fact that a long interval of time is necessary to read the works of the poets, it often occurs that they are not understood, and it is necessary to make diverse { } comments on them, and it is exceedingly rare that the commentators are agreed as to the meaning of the poet; and often the readers peruse but a small portion of their works, owing to lack of time. but the works of the painter are immediately understood by those who behold them. . painting manifests its essence to thee in an instant of time,--its essence by the visual faculty, the very means by which the perception apprehends natural objects, and in the same duration of time,--and in this space of time the sense-satisfying harmony of the proportion of the parts composing the whole is formed. and poetry apprehends the same things, but by a sense inferior to that of the eyesight, which bears the images of the objects named to the perception with greater confusion and less speed. not in such wise acts the eye (the true intermediary between the object and the perception), for it immediately communicates the true semblance and image of what is represented before it with the greatest accuracy; whence that proportion arises called harmony, which with sweet concord delights the sense in the same way as the harmony of diverse voices delights the ear; and this harmony is less worthy than that which delights the eye, because for every part of it that is born a part dies, and it dies as fast as it is born. this { } cannot occur in the case of the eye; because if thou presentest a beautiful living mortal to the eye, composed of a harmony of fair limbs, its beauty is not so transient nor so quickly destroyed as that of music; on the contrary it has permanent duration, and allows thee to behold and consider it; and it is not reborn as in the case of music which is played many times over, nor will it weary thee: on the contrary, thou becomest enamoured with it, and the result it produces is that all the senses, together with the eye, would wish to possess it, and it seems that they would wish to compete with the eye: it appears that the mouth desires it for itself, if the mouth can be considered as a sense; the ear takes pleasure in hearing its beauty; the sense of touch would like to penetrate into all its pores; the nose also would like to receive the air it exhales. time in a few years destroys this harmony, but this does not occur in the case of beauty depicted by the painter, because time preserves it for long; and the eye, as far as its function is concerned, receives as much pleasure from the depicted as from the living beauty; touch alone is lacking to the painted beauty,--touch, which is the elder brother of sight; which after it has attained its purpose does not prevent the reason from considering the divine beauty. and in this case the picture copied from the living beauty acts for the greater part as a substitute; and the { } description of the poet cannot accomplish this.--the poet who is now set up as a rival to the painter, but does not perceive that time sets a division between the words in which he describes the various parts of the beauty, and that forgetfulness intervenes and divides the proportions which he cannot name without great prolixity; he cannot compose the harmonious concord which is formed of divine proportions. and on this account beauty cannot be described in the same space of time in which a painted beauty can be seen, and it is a sin against nature to attempt to transmit by the ear that which should be transmitted by the eye. what prompts thee, o man, to abandon thy habitations in the city, to leave thy parents and friends, and to seek rural spots in the mountains and valleys, if it be not the natural beauty of the world, which, if thou reflectest, thou dost enjoy solely by means of the sense of sight? and if the poet wishes to be called a painter in this connection also, why didst thou not take the descriptions of places made by the poet and remain at home without exposing thyself to the heat of the sun? oh! would not this have been more profitable and less fatiguing to thee, since this can be done in the cool without motion and danger of illness? but the soul could not enjoy the benefit of the eyes, the windows of its dwelling, and it could not note the character of joyous { } places; it could not see the shady valleys watered by the sportiveness of the winding rivers; it could not see the various flowers, which with their colours make a harmony for the eye, and all the other objects which the eye can apprehend. but if the painter in the cold and rigorous season of winter can evoke for thee the landscapes, variegated and otherwise, in which thou didst experience thy happiness; if near some fountain thou canst see thyself, a lover with thy beloved, in the flowery fields, under the soft shadow of the budding boughs, wilt thou not experience a greater pleasure than in hearing the same effect described by the poet? here the poet answers, admitting these arguments; but he maintains that he surpasses the painter, because he causes men to speak and reason in diverse fictions, in which he invents things which do not exist, and that he will incite men to take arms, and describe the heavens, the stars, nature, and the arts and everything. to which we reply that none of these things of which he speaks is his true profession; but if he wishes to speak and make orations, it can be shown that he is surpassed by the orator in this province; and if he speaks of astrology, that he has stolen the subject of the astrologer; and in the case of philosophy, of the philosopher; and that in reality poetry has no true position and merits no more consideration than a shopkeeper { } who collects goods made by various workmen. as soon as the poet ceases to represent by means of words the phenomena of nature, he then ceases to act as a painter, because if the poet leaves such representation and describes the flowery and persuasive speech of him to whom he wishes to give speech, he then becomes an orator, and neither a poet nor a painter; and if he speaks of the heavens he becomes an astrologer, and a philosopher and a theologian if he discourses of nature or god; but if he returns to the description of any object he would rival the painter, if with words he could satisfy the eye as the painter does. but the spirit of the science of painting deals with all works, human as well as divine, which are terminated by their surfaces, that is, the lines of the limits of bodies by means of which the sculptor is required to achieve perfection in his art. she with her fundamental rules, i.e. drawing, teaches the architect how to work so that his building may be pleasant to the eye; she teaches the makers of diverse vases, the goldsmiths, weavers, embroiderers; she has found the characters with which diverse languages find expression; she has given symbols to the mathematicians; she has taught geometry its figures, and instructed the astrologers, the makers of machines and engineers. [sidenote: poet and painter] . the poet says that his science consists of { } invention and rhythm, and this is the simple body of poetry, invention as regards the subject matter and rhythm as regards the verse, which he afterwards clothes with all the sciences. to which the painter rejoins that he is governed by the same necessities in the science of painting, that is to say, invention and measure (fancy as regards the subject matter which he must invent, and measure as regards the matters painted), so that they may be in proportion, but that he does not make use of three sciences; on the contrary it is rather the other sciences that make use of painting, as, for instance, astrology, which effects nothing without the aid of perspective, the principal link of painting,--that is, mathematical astronomy and not fallacious astrology (let those who by reason of the existence of fools make a profession of it, forgive me). the poet says he describes an object, that he represents another full of beautiful allegory; the painter says he is capable of doing the same, and in this respect he is also a poet. and if the poet says he can incite men to love, which is the most important fact among every kind of animal, the painter can do the same, all the more so because he presents the lover with the image of his beloved; and the lover often does with it what he would not do with the writer's delineation of the same charms, i.e. talk with it and kiss it; so great is the painter's influence on the minds of men that he incites them to love and { } become enamoured of a picture which does not represent any living woman. and if the poet pleases the sense by means of the ear, the painter does so by the eye, which is the superior sense. i will enlarge no further on this theme save to say that if a good painter were to represent the fury of a battle, and if the poet were to describe one, and both representations were put before the public together, you will see before which of the two most of the spectators will stop, to which of the two they will pay most attention, which of the two will be the most praised and give the greater satisfaction. without any doubt, the painting, being infinitely the most beautiful and useful, will please the most. write the name of god in some spot, and set up his image opposite, and you will see which will be the most reverenced. while painting embraces in itself all the forms of nature, you have nothing save words, which are not universal, like forms. if you have the effects of the representation, we have the representation of the effects. take a poet who describes the charms of a woman to her lover, and a painter who represents her, and you will see whither nature leads the enamoured critic. certainly the proof should rest on the verdict of experience. you have classed painting among the mechanical arts, but, truly, if painters were as apt at praising their own works in writing as you are, it would not lie under the stigma { } of so unhonoured an name. if you call it mechanical because it is by manual work and that the hand represents the conception of the imagination, you writers put down with the pen the conceptions of your mind. and if you say that it is mechanical because it is done for money, who is more guilty of this error--if error it can be called--than you? if you lecture in the schools, do you not go to whomsoever rewards you most? do you perform any work without some pay? although i do not say this to blame such opinions, because all labour expects its reward; and if a poet were to say: "i will devise with my fancy a work which shall be pregnant with meaning," the painter can do the same, as apelles did when he painted the calumny. [sidenote: king matthias & the poet] . on the birthday of king matthias, a poet brought him a work made in praise of the royal birthday for the benefit of the world, and a painter presented him with a portrait of his lady-love. the king immediately shut the book of the poet and turned to the picture, and remained gazing on it with profound admiration. then the poet, greatly slighted, said: "o king, read, read, and thou wilt hear something of far greater substance than a dumb picture!" then the king, hearing himself blamed for contemplating a mute object, said: "o poet, be silent, thou knowest not what thou { } sayest; this picture gratifies a nobler sense than thy work, which is for the blind. give me an object which i can see and touch and not only hear, and blame not my choice in having placed thy work beneath my elbow, while i hold the work of the painter with both my hands before my eyes, because my very hands have chosen to serve a worthier sense than that of hearing. "and as for my self i consider that the same proportion exists between the art of the painter and that of the poet as that which exists between the two senses on which they respectively depend. "knowest thou not that our soul is composed of harmony, and harmony can only be begotten in the moments when the proportions of objects are simultaneously visible and audible? seest thou not that in thine art there is no harmony created in a moment, and that, on the contrary, each part follows from the other in succession, and the second is not born before its predecessor dies. for this reason i consider thy creation to be considerably inferior to that of the painter, simply because no harmonious concord ensues from it. it does not satisfy the mind of the spectator or the listener, as the harmony of the perfect features which compose the divine beauty of this face which is before me; for the features united all together simultaneously afford me a pleasure which i consider to be unsurpassed by any other thing on the earth which is made by man." { } [sidenote: value of the visible universe] . there is no one so foolish who if offered the choice between everlasting blindness and deafness would not immediately elect to lose both his hearing and sense of smell rather than to be blind. since he who loves his sight is deprived of the beauty of the world and all created things, and the deaf man loves only the sound made by the percussion of the air, which is an insignificant thing in the world. thou sayest that science increases in nobility in proportion as the subjects with which it deals are more elevated, and, for this reason, a false rendering of the being of god is better than the portrayal of a less worthy object; and on this account we will say that painting, which deals alone with the works of god, is worth more than poetry, which deals solely with the lying imaginings of human devices. [sidenote: poet and painter] . thou sayest, o painter, that worship is paid to thy work, but impute not this power to thyself, but to the subject which such a picture represents. here the painter makes answer: o thou poet, who sayest that thou also art an imitator, why dost thou not represent with thy words objects of such a nature that thy writings which contain these words may be worshipped also? but nature has favoured the painter more than the poet, { } and it is fair that the works of the more greatly favoured one should be more honoured than those of the less favoured one. therefore let us praise him who with words satisfies the hearing, and him who by painting affords perfect content to the eyes; but let the praise given to the worker in words be less, inasmuch as they are accidental and created by a less worthy author than the works of nature of which the painter is the imitator. and the existence of these works is confined within the forms of their surfaces. . since we have concluded that the utmost extent of the comprehension of poetry is for the blind, and that of painting for the deaf, we will say that the value of painting exceeds that of poetry in proportion as painting gratifies a nobler sense than poetry does, and this nobility has been proved to be equal to that of three other senses, because we elect to lose our sense of hearing, smell and touch rather than our eyesight. for he who loses his sight is deprived of the beauty of the universe, and is like to one who is confined during his lifetime in a tomb, in which he enjoys life and motion. now seest thou not that the eye comprehends the beauty of the whole world? it is the head of astrology; it creates cosmography; it gives counsel and correction to all the human arts; it impels { } men to seek diverse parts of the world; it is the principle of mathematics; its science is most certain; it has measured the height and the magnitude of the stars; it has discovered the elements and their abodes; it has been able to predict the events of the future, owing to the course of the stars; it has begotten architecture and perspective and divine painting. o most excellent above all the things created by god! what praise is there which can express thy nobility? what peoples, what tongues, are they who can perfectly describe thy true working? it is the window of the human body, through which the soul gazes and feasts on the beauty of the world; by reason of it the soul is content with its human prison, and without it this human prison is its torment; and by means of it human diligence has discovered fire by which the eye wins back what the darkness has stolen from it. it has adorned nature with agriculture and pleasant gardens. but what need is there for me to indulge in long and elevated discourse? what thing is there which acts not by reason of the eye? it impels men from the east to the west; it has discovered navigation; and in this it excels nature, because the simple products of the earth are finite and the works which the eye makes over to the hands are infinite, as the painter shows in his portrayal of countless forms of animals, herbs, plants and places. { } [sidenote: music the sister of painting] . music should be given no other name than the sister of painting, inasmuch as it is subject to the hearing,--a sense inferior to the eye,--and it produces harmony by the unison of its proportioned parts, which are brought into operation at the same moment and are constrained to come to life and die in one or more harmonic times; and time is, as it were, the circumference of the parts which constitute the harmony, in the same way as the outline constitutes the circumference of limbs whence human beauty emanates. but painting excels and lords over music because it does not die as soon as it is born, as occurs with music, the less fortunate; on the contrary, it continues to exist and reveals itself to be what it is, a single surface. o marvellous science, thou givest lasting life to the perished beauty of mortals, which are thus made more enduring than the works of nature, for these undergo forever the changes of time, and time leads them to inevitable old age! and this science is to divine nature as its works are to the works of nature, and on this account it is worshipped. [sidenote: painting & music] . the most worthy thing is that which satisfies the most worthy sense; therefore painting, which satisfies the sense of sight, is more worthy than { } music, which merely satisfies the hearing. the most worthy thing is that which endures longest; therefore music, which is continually dying as soon as it is born, is less worthy than painting, which lasts eternally with the colours of enamel. the most excellent thing is that which is the most universal and contains the greatest variety of things; therefore painting must be set above all other arts, because it contains all the forms which exist and also those which are not in nature, and it should be glorified and exalted more than music, which deals with the voice only. with it images are made to the gods; around it divine worship is conducted, of which music is a subservient ornament; by means of it pictures are given to lovers of their beloved; by it the beauties are preserved which time, and nature the mother, render fitful; by it we retain the images of famous men. and if thou wert to say that by committing music to writing you render it eternal, we do the same with letters. therefore, since thou hast included music among the liberal arts, thou must either exclude it, or include the art of letters. and if thou wast to say: painting is used by base men, in the same way is music spoilt by him who knows it not. if thou sayest that sciences which are not mechanical are mental, i will answer that painting is mental. and just as music and geometry deal with the proportions of continuous quantities, and { } arithmetic deals with discontinuous quantities, painting deals with all quantities and the qualities of the proportions of shadows, lights and distances, in its perspective. [sidenote: painter and musician] . the musician says that his art can be compared with that of the painter because by the art of the painter a body of many members is composed, and the spectator apprehends its grace in as many harmonious rhythms ... as there are times in which it lives and dies; and by these rhythms ... its grace plays with the soul, which dwells in the body of the spectator. but the painter replies that the body composed of human limbs does not afford the delectable harmonious rhythms in which beauty must live and die, but renders it permanent for many years, and is of such great excellence that it preserves the life of this harmony of concordant limbs which nature with all her force could not preserve. how many pictures have preserved the semblance of divine beauty of which time or death had in a brief space destroyed the living example: and the work of the painter has become more honoured than that of nature, his master! if thou, o musician, sayest that painting is mechanical because it is wrought by the work of the hands, music is wrought by the mouth, but { } not by the tasting faculties of the mouth; just and as the hand is employed indeed in the case of painting, but not for its faculties of touch. words are less worthy than actions. but thou, writer of science, dost thou not copy with thy hand, and write what is in thy mind, as the painter does? and if thou wast to say that music is formed of proportion, by proportion have i wrought painting, as thou shalt see. [sidenote: poet painter and musician] . there is the same difference between the representation of the embodied works of the painter and those of the poet as there is between complete and dismembered bodies, because the poet in describing the beauty or the ugliness of any body reveals it to you limb by limb and at diverse times, and the painter shows the whole at the same time. the poet cannot express in words the true likeness of the limbs which compose a whole, as can the painter, who places it before you with the truth of nature. and the same thing befalls the poet as the musician, who sings by himself a song composed for four singers; and he sings the treble first, then the tenor, then the alto and then the bass, whence there results no grace of harmonious concord such as harmonious rhythms produce. and the poet is like a beautiful countenance which reveals itself to you feature by feature, that by so doing you may never be { } satisfied by its beauty, which consists of the divine proportion of the limbs united one with another, and these compose of themselves and at one time the divine harmony of this union of limbs, and often deprives the gazer of his liberty. music, again, by its harmonious rhythm, produces the sweet melodies formed by its various voices, and their harmonious division is lacking to the poet; and although poetry enters into the abode of the intellect by the channel of the hearing, as does music, the poet cannot describe the harmony of music, because it is not in his power to say various things in one and the same moment as can the harmonious concord of painting, which is composed of various members which exist simultaneously, and the beauty of these parts is apprehended at the same time, individually and collectively,--collectively with regard to the whole, individually with regard to the component parts of which the whole is formed; and for this reason the poet is, as far as the representation of bodily things is concerned, greatly inferior to the painter, and as far as invisible things are concerned he is far behind the musician. but if the poet borrows the aid of the other sciences, he can appear at the fair like the other merchants, bearers of divers goods made by many artificers; and the poet does this when he borrows the science of others, such as that of the orator, the philosopher, the astrologer, the cosmographer and { } the like; and these sciences are altogether alien to the poet. therefore he is an agent who brings together diverse persons in order to strike a bargain; and if you wish to know the true function of the poet, you will find that he is no other than an assembler of goods stolen from other sciences, with which he makes a deceptive mixture, or more honestly said, a fictitious mixture. and with regard to this fiction the poet is free to compete with the painter, since it constitutes the least part of the painting. . the painter emulates and competes with nature. [sidenote: painting a second creation] . he who blames painting blames nature, because the works of the painter represent the works of nature, and for this reason he who blames in this fashion lacks feeling. [sidenote: the painter lord of all] . if the painter wishes to see beautiful things which will enchant him he is able to beget them; if he wishes to see monstrous things which terrify, or grotesque and laughable things, or truly piteous things, he can dispose of all these; if he wishes to evoke places and deserts, shady or dark retreats in the hot season, he represents them, and likewise warm places in the cold season. if he wishes valleys, if he wishes to descry a great { } plain from the high summits of the mountains, and if he wishes after this to see the horizon of the sea, he can do so; and from the low valleys he can gaze on the high mountains, or from the high mountains he can scan the low valleys and shores; and in truth all quantities of things that exist in the universe, either real or imaginary, he has first in his mind and then in his hands; and these things are of so great excellence that they beget a harmonious concord in one glance, as do the things of nature. . we can safely say that those people are under a delusion who call that painter a good master who can only draw well a head or a figure. certainly there is no great merit if, after studying a single thing during a whole lifetime, you attain to a certain degree of perfection in it. but knowing, as we do, that painting includes and comprehends all the works produced by nature, or brought about by the fortuitous action of man, and in fact everything that the eye can see, he seems to me to be a poor master who can only do one thing well. now seest thou not how many and diverse acts are performed by men? seest thou not how many various animals there are, and likewise trees, plants and flowers; what a variety of mountainous or level places, fountains, rivers, cities, public and private buildings, { } instruments suitable for human use; how many diverse costumes and ornaments and arts? all these things should be considered of equal effect and value when used by the man who can be called a good painter. [sidenote: painting and nature] . if you despise painting, which is the only imitator of the visible works of nature, you will certainly despise a subtle invention which with philosophy and subtle speculation apprehends the qualities of forms, backgrounds, places, plants, animals, herbs and flowers, which are surrounded by light and shade. and truly this is knowledge and the legitimate offspring of nature, because painting is begotten by nature. but to be correct, we will say that it is the grandchild of nature, because all visible things are begotten by nature, and these her children have begotten painting. therefore we shall rightly say that painting is the grandchild of nature and related to god. . were a master to boast that he could remember all the forms and effects of nature, he would certainly appear to me to be graced with great ignorance, inasmuch as these effects are infinite and our memory is not sufficiently capacious to retain them. therefore, o painter, beware lest in thee the lust of gain should overcome the honour of thy art, for the acquisition of honour is a much { } greater thing than the glory of wealth. thus, for this and for other reasons which could be given, first strive in drawing to express to the eye in a manifest shape the idea and the fancy originally devised by thy imagination; then go on adding or removing until thou art satisfied; then arrange men as models, clothed or nude, according to the intention of thy work, and see that, as regards dimension and size, in accordance with perspective there is no portion of the work which is not in harmony with reason and natural effects, and this will be the way to win honour in thy art. [sidenote: painting & sculpture] . i have myself practised the art of sculpture as well as that of painting, and i have practised both arts in the same degree. i think, therefore, that i can give an impartial opinion as to which of the two is the most difficult: the most perfect requires the greater talent, and is to be preferred. in the first place sculpture requires a certain light, that is to say, a light from above, and painting carries everywhere with it its light and shade; sculpture owes its importance to light and shade. the sculptor is aided in this by the relief which is inherent in sculpture, and the painter places the light and shade, by the accidental quality of his art, in the places where nature would naturally produce it. the sculptor cannot diversify his work by the various colours of objects; painting { } is complete in every respect. the perspective of the sculptor appears to be altogether untrue; that of the painter can give the idea of a distance of a hundred miles beyond the picture. the sculptors have no aerial perspective; they can neither represent transparent bodies nor reflections, nor bodies as lustrous as mirrors, and other translucent objects, neither mists nor dark skies, nor an infinity of objects which it would be tedious to enumerate. the advantage [of sculpture] is that it is provided with a better defence against the ravages of time, although a picture painted on thick copper and covered over with white enamel, painted with enamel colours and then put in the fire again and baked, is equally resistant. such a work as far as permanence is concerned exceeds sculpture. they may say that where an error is made it is not easy to correct it. it is poor reasoning to try and prove that the irremediability of an oversight renders the work more honourable. but i say to you that it will prove more difficult to mend the mind of the master who commits such errors than to repair the work he has spoilt. we know well that an experienced and competent artist will not make mistakes of this kind; on the contrary, acting on sound rules, he will remove so little at a time that his work will be brought to a successful close. again, the sculptor, if he works in clay or wax, can remove and add, and when the work is finished it can be easily { } cast in bronze, and this is the last and most permanent operation of sculpture, inasmuch as that which is merely of marble is liable to destruction, but this is not the case with bronze. therefore the picture painted on copper, which with the methods of painting can be reduced or added to, is like bronze, which when it was in the state of a wax model could be reduced or added to. and if sculpture in bronze is durable, this copper and enamel work is more imperishable still; and while the bronze remains black and ugly, this is full of various and delectable colours of infinite variety, as we have described above. if you wish to confine the discussion to painting on panel i am content to pronounce between it and sculpture, saying, that painting is the more beautiful, the more imaginative and the more copious, and that sculpture is more durable, but has no other advantage. sculpture with little labour shows what in painting seems to be a miraculous thing to do: to make impalpable objects appear palpable, to give the semblance of relief to flat objects, and distance to objects that are near. in fact painting is full of infinite resources of which sculpture cannot dispose. . sculpture is not a science, but a mechanical art, because it causes the brow of the artist who practises it to sweat, and wearies his body; and for { } such an artist the simple proportions of the limbs, and the nature of movements and attitudes, are all that is essential, and there it ends, and shows to the eye what it is, and it does not cause the spectator to wonder at its nature, as painting does, which in a plane by its science shows vast countries and far-off horizons. . the only difference between painting and sculpture is that the sculptor accomplishes his work with the greater bodily fatigue, and the painter with the greater mental fatigue. this is proved by the fact that the sculptor in practising his art is obliged to exert his arms and to strike and shatter the marble or other stone, which remains over and above what is needed for the figure which it contains, by manual exercise, accompanied often by profuse sweating, mingled with dust and transforming itself into dirt; and his face is plastered and powdered with the dust of the marble, so that he has the appearance of a baker, and he is covered with minute chips, and it appears as if snow had fallen on him, and his dwelling is dirty and full of chips and the dust of stone. the contrary occurs in the case of the painter,--we are speaking of excellent painters and sculptors,--since the painter with great leisure sits before his work well clothed, and handles the light brush dipped in lovely colours. he wears { } what garments he pleases; his dwelling is full of beautiful pictures, and it is clean; sometimes he has music or readers of diverse and pleasant works, which, without any noise of hammers or other confused sounds, are heard with great pleasure. . there can be no comparison between the talent, art and theory of painting and that of sculpture, which leaves perspective out of account,--perspective which is produced by the quality of the material and not of the artist. and if the sculptor says that he cannot restore the superabundant substance which has once been removed from his work, i answer that he who removes too much has but little understanding and is no master. because if he has mastered the proportions he will not remove anything unnecessarily; therefore we will say that this disadvantage is inherent in the artist and not in the material. but i will not speak of such men, for they are spoilers of marble and not artists. artists do not trust to the judgement of the eye, because it is always deceptive, as is proved by him who wishes to divide a line into two equal parts by the eye, and is often deceived in the experiment; wherefore the good judges always fear--a fear which is not shared by the ignorant--to trust to their own judgement, and on this account they proceed by continually checking the { } height, thickness and breadth of each part, and by so doing accomplish no more than their duty. but painting is marvellously devised of most subtle analyses, of which sculpture is altogether devoid, since its range is of the narrowest. to the sculptor who says that his science is more lasting than that of painting, i answer that this permanence is due to the quality of the material and not to that of the sculptor, and the sculptor has no right to give himself the credit for it, but he should let it redound to nature which created the material. . painting has a wider intellectual range and is more wonderful and greater as regards its artistic resources than sculpture, because the painter is by necessity constrained to amalgamate his mind with the very mind of nature and to be the interpreter between nature and art, making with art a commentary on the causes of nature's manifestations which are the inevitable result of its laws; and showing in what way the likenesses of objects which surround the eye correspond with the true images of the pupil of the eye, and showing among objects of equal size which of them will appear more or less dark, or more or less clear; and among objects equally low which of them will appear more or less low; or among those of the same height which of them will appear more or less high; or among objects of equal size { } placed at various distances one from the other, why some will appear more clearly than others. and this art embraces and comprehends within itself all visible things, which sculpture in its poverty cannot do: that is, the colours of all objects and their gradations; it represents transparent objects, and the sculptor will show thee natural objects without the painter's devices; the painter will show thee various distances with the gradations of colour producing interposition of the air between the objects and the eye; he will show thee the mists through which the character of objects is with difficulty descried; the rains which clouded mountains and valleys bring with them; the dust which is inherent to and follows the contention between these forces; the rivers which are great or small in volume; the fishes disporting themselves on the surface or at the bottom of these waters; the polished pebbles of various colours which are collected on the washed sands at bottom of rivers surrounded by floating plants beneath the surface of the water; the stars at diverse heights above us; and in the same manner other innumerable effects to which sculpture cannot attain. . sculpture lacks the beauty of colours, the perspective of colours; it lacks perspective and it confuses the limits of objects remote from the { } eye, inasmuch as it represents the limits of objects that are near in the same way as those of distant objects; it does not represent the air which, interposed between the eye and the remote object, conceals that object but as the veils in draped figures, which reveal the naked flesh beneath them; it cannot represent the small pebbles of various colours beneath the surface of the transparent waters. [sidenote: to the painter] . and thou, painter, who desirest to achieve the highest excellence in practice, understand that unless thou build it on the solid foundations of nature, thou shalt reap but scant honour and gain by thy work; and if thy foundation is sound, thy works shall be many and good, and bring great honour to thee, and be of great profit. . when the work exceeds the ideal of the artist, the artist makes scant progress; and when the work falls short of his ideal it never ceases to improve, unless avarice be an obstacle. . he is a poor disciple who does not surpass his master. [sidenote: counsels] . he is a poor master whose work is exalted in his { } own opinion, and he is on the road to perfection in art whose work falls short of his ideal. . small rooms or dwellings help the mind to concentrate itself; large rooms are a source of distraction. . the painter should be solitary, and take note of what he sees and reason with himself, making a choice of the more excellent details of the character of any object he sees; he should be like unto the mirror, which takes the colours of the objects it reflects. and this proceeding will seem to him to be a second nature. [sidenote: the painter in his studio] . in order that the favourable disposition of the mind may not be injured by that of the body, the painter or the draughtsman should be solitary, and especially when he is occupied with those speculations and thoughts which continually rise up before the eye, and afford materials to be treasured by the memory. if thou art alone, thou wilt belong to thyself only: if thou hast but one companion, thou wilt only half belong to thyself, and ever less in proportion to the indiscretion of his conduct; and if thou hast many companions, thou wilt encounter { } the same disadvantage. and if thou shouldst say: "i will follow my own inclination, i will withdraw into seclusion in order the better to study the forms of natural objects"--i say thou wilt with difficulty be able to do this, because thou wilt not be able to refrain from constantly listening to their chatter; and, not being able to serve two masters, thou wilt play the part of a companion ill, and still worse will be the evil effect on thy studies in art. and if thou sayest: "i will withdraw myself, so that their words cannot reach and disturb me"--i, with regard to this, say thou wilt be regarded as a madman; but seest thou not that by so doing thou wilt be alone also? [sidenote: advice to the painter] . the mind of the painter must be like unto a mirror, which ever takes the colour of the object it reflects, and contains as many images as there are objects before it. therefore realize, o painter, that thou canst not succeed unless thou art the universal master of imitating by thy art every variety of nature's forms, and this thou canst not do save by perceiving them and retaining them in thy mind; wherefore when thou walkest in the country let thy mind play on various objects, observe now this thing and now that thing, making a store of various objects selected and chosen from those of lesser value. and thou shalt not do as some painters, who, when weary of plying { } their fancy, dismiss their work from their mind and take exercise in walking for relaxation, but retain fatigue in the mind, which, though they see various objects, does not apprehend them, but often when they meet friends and relations and are saluted by them, they are no more conscious of them than if they had met empty air. [sidenote: precepts] . and thou, o painter, seek to bring about that thy works may attract those who gaze upon them and arrest them with great admiration and delight; and so that they may not attract and forthwith repel them, as the air does to him who in the night season leaps naked from his bed to gaze upon the cloudy and serene sky and forthwith is driven back by the cold, and returns to the bed whence he rose. but let thy works be like the air which draws men from their beds in the hot season, and retains them to taste with delight the cool of the summer; and he who will do well by his art will not strive to be more skilful than learned, nor let greed get the better of glory. seest thou not among human beauties that it is the beautiful faces which stop the passers-by, and not the richness of their ornaments? and this i say to thee who adornest thy figures with gold and other rich ornaments: seest thou not splendid, youthful beauties, who diminish their excellence by the excess and elaboration of their { } ornaments? hast thou not seen women of the mountains dressed in rough and poor clothes richer in beauty than those who are adorned? make no use of the affected arrangements and headdresses such as those adopted by loutish maids, who, by placing one lock of hair more on one side than the other, credit themselves with having committed a great enormity, and think that the bystanders will forget their own thoughts to talk of them alone, and to blame them. for such persons have always the looking-glass and the comb, and the wind, which ruffles elaborate headdresses, is their worst enemy. in thy heads let the hair sport with the wind thou depictest around youthful countenances, and adorn them gracefully with various turns, and do not as those who plaster their faces with gum and make the faces seem as if they were of glass. this is a human folly which is always on the increase, and the mariners do not satisfy it who bring arabic gums from the east, so as to prevent the smoothness of the hair from being ruffled by the wind,--but they pursue their investigations still further in this direction. . i cannot but mention among these precepts a new means of study, which, although it may seem trivial and almost ridiculous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to { } various inventions. it is as follows: when you look at walls mottled with various stains or stones made of diverse substances, if you have to invent some scene, you may discover on them the likeness of various countries, adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, great valleys and hills in diverse arrangement; again, you may be able to see battles and figures in action and strange effects of physiognomy and costumes, and infinite objects which you could reduce to complete and harmonious forms. and the effect produced by these mottled walls is like that of the sound of bells, in the vibrating of which you may recognize any name or word you choose to imagine. i have seen blots in the clouds and in mottled walls which have stimulated me to the invention of various objects, and although the blots themselves were altogether devoid of perfection in any one of their parts, they lacked not perfection in their movement and circumstance. . obtain knowledge first, and then proceed to practice, which is born of knowledge. [sidenote: theory and practice] . knowledge is the captain, and practice the soldiers. . the painter who draws by practice and by the { } eye, without the guide of reason, is like the mirror, which reflects all the objects which are placed before it and knows not that they exist. . many will consider they can reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are contrary to the authority of many men held in great esteem by their inexperienced judgements: overlooking the fact that my works are solely and simply the offspring of experience, which is the veritable master. . they who are enamoured of practice without knowledge are like the mariner who puts to sea in a vessel without rudder or compass, and who navigates without a course. practice should always be based on sound theory; perspective is the guide and the portal of theory, and without it nothing can be well done in the art of painting. [sidenote: course of study] . the youth should first learn perspective, and then the measurements of every object; he should then copy from some good master to accustom himself to well-drawn forms, then from nature to acquire confirmation of the theories he has learnt; then he should study for a time the works of various masters, and finally attain the { } habit of putting into practice and producing his art. . mathematics, such as appertain to painting, are necessary to the painter, also the absence of companions who are alien to his studies: his brain must be versatile and susceptible to the variety of objects which it encounters, and free from distracting cares. and if in the contemplation and definition of one subject a second subject intervenes,--as happens when the mind is filled with an object,--in such cases he must decide which of the two objects is the more difficult of definition, and pursue that one until he arrives at perfect clearness of definition, and then turn to the definition of the other. and above all things his mind should be like the surface of the mirror, which shows as many colours as there are objects it reflects; and his companions should study in the same manner, and if such cannot be found he should meditate in solitude with himself, and he will not find more profitable company. [sidenote: perspective & mathematics] . in the study of natural causes and reasons light affords the greatest pleasure to the student; among the great facts of mathematics the certainty of demonstration most signally elevates the mind of the student. perspective must therefore be { } placed at the head of all human study and discipline, in the field of which the radiant line is rendered complex by the methods of demonstration; in it resides the glory of physics as well as of mathematics, and it is adorned with flowers of both these sciences. the laws of those sciences which are capable of extensive analysis i will confine in brief conclusions, and according to the nature of the material i will interweave mathematical demonstrations, at times deducing results from causes, and at times tracing causes by results. i will add to my conclusions some which are not contained in these, but which can be deduced from them, if the lord, the supreme light, illuminates me, so that i may treat of light. [sidenote: of the method of learning] . when you will have thoroughly mastered perspective and have learnt by heart the parts and forms of objects, strive when you go about to observe. note and consider the circumstances and the actions or men, as they talk, dispute, laugh or fight together, and not only the behaviour of the men themselves, but that of the bystanders who separate them or look on at these things; and make a note of them, in this way, with slight marks in your little note-book. and you should always carry this note-book with you, and it should be of coloured paper, so that what you { } write may not be rubbed out; but (when it is used up) change the old for a new one, since these things should not be rubbed out, but preserved with great care, because such is the infinity of the forms and circumstances of objects, that the memory is incapable of retaining them; wherefore keep these sketches as your guides and masters. . these rules are only to be used in correcting the figures, since every man makes some mistakes in his first composition, and he who is not aware of them cannot correct them; but thou being conscious of thine errors wilt correct thy work and amend errors where thou findest them, and take care not to fall into them again. but if thou attemptest to apply these rules in composition thou wilt never finish anything, and confusion will enter into thy work. through these rules thou shalt acquire a free and sound judgement, since sound judgement and thorough understanding proceed from reason arising from sound rules, and sound rules are the offspring of sound experience, the common mother of all the sciences and arts. hence if thou bearest in mind the precepts of my rules thou shalt be able, merely by thy corrected judgement, to judge and recognize any lack of proportion in a work, in perspective, in figures or anything else. { } [sidenote: again of the method of learning] . i say that the first thing which should be learnt is the mechanism of the limbs, and when this knowledge has been acquired their actions should come next, according to the external circumstances of man, and thirdly the composition of subjects, which should be taken from natural actions, made fortuitously according to circumstances; and pay attention to them in the streets and public places and fields, and note them with a brief indication of outlines; that is to say, for a head make an o, and for an arm a straight or a bent line, and the same for the legs and body; and when thou returnest home work out these notes in a complete form. the adversary says that to acquire practice and to do a great deal of work, it is better that the first course of study should be employed in copying diverse compositions done on paper or on walls by various masters, and that thus rapidity of practice and a good method is acquired; to which i reply that this method will be good if it is based on works which are well composed by competent masters; and since such masters are so rare that but few of them are to be found, it is safer to go to nature, than to what to its deterioration is imitated from nature, and to fall into bad habits, since he who can go to the fountain does not go to the water-vessel. { } [sidenote: counsel to the painter] . every bough and every fruit is born above the insertion of its leaf, which serves it as a mother, giving it water from the rain and moisture from the dew which falls on it from above in the night, and often it shields them from the heat of the sun's rays. therefore, o painter, who lackest such rules, be desirous, in order to escape the blame of those who know, of copying every one of thy objects from nature, and despise not study after the manner of those who work for gain. [sidenote: on anatomy] . and you who say that it would be better to see practical anatomy than drawings of it, would be right if it were possible to see all the things which are shown in such drawings in a single drawing, in which you, with all your skill, will not see nor obtain knowledge of more than a few veins; and to obtain true and complete knowledge of these veins i have destroyed more than ten human bodies, destroying all the other limbs, and removing, down to its minutest particles, the whole of the flesh which surrounds these veins, without letting them bleed save for the insensible bleeding of the capillary veins. and as one body did not suffice for so long a time i had to proceed with several bodies by degrees until i finished by acquiring perfect knowledge, and this i { } repeated twice to see the differences. and if you have a love for such things you may be prevented by disgust, and if this does not prevent you, you may be prevented by fear of living at night in company with such corpses, which are cut up and flayed and fearful to see; and if this does not prevent, you may not have a sufficient mastery of drawing for such a demonstration, and if you have the necessary mastery of drawing, it may not be combined with the knowledge of perspective; and if it were you might lack the power of geometrical demonstration, and the calculation of forces, and of the strength of the muscles, and perhaps you will lack patience and consequently diligence. as to whether these qualities are to be found in me or not the hundred and twenty books i have composed will pronounce the verdict yes or no. neither avarice nor negligence, but time has hindered me in these. farewell. [sidenote: on study] . i have myself proved that it is useful when you are in bed in the dark to work with the imagination, summing up the external outlines of the forms previously studied or other noteworthy things apprehended by subtle speculation; and this is a laudable practice and useful in impressing objects on the memory. { } [sidenote: on judging pictures] . we are well aware that faults are more easily recognized in the works of others than in our own, and often in blaming the small faults of others thou wilt ignore great ones in thyself. and to avoid such ignorance see that in the first place thy perspective be sound, then acquire a complete knowledge of the measurements of man and other animals, and of good architecture; that is to say, as far as the forms of buildings and other objects which are on the earth are concerned, and these are infinite in number. the more of them that thou knowest, the more praiseworthy will be thy work; and in cases where thou hast no experience do not refuse to draw them from nature. [sidenote: advice to the painter] . certainly while a man is painting he should not be loth to hear every opinion: since we know well that a man, although he be not a painter, is cognizant of the forms of another man, and will be able to judge them, whether he is hump-backed or has a shoulder too high or too low, or whether he has a large mouth or nose, or other defects. and if we know that men are capable of giving a correct judgement on the works of nature, much more ought we to acknowledge their competence to judge our faults, since we know how greatly a man may be deceived in { } his own work; and if thou art not conscious of this in thyself, study it in others and thou wilt profit by their faults. therefore be desirous to bear with patience the opinions of others, and consider and reflect well whether he who blames has good ground or not to blame thee, and if thou thinkest that he has, amend thy work; and if not, act as though thou hadst not heard him, and if he should be a man thou esteemest show him by reasoning where his mistake lies. . there is a certain generation of painters who, owing to the scantiness of their studies, must needs live up to the beauty of gold and azure, and with supreme folly declare that they will not give good work for poor payment, and that they could do as well as others if they were well paid. now consider, foolish people! cannot such men reserve some good work and say, "this is costly; this is moderate, and this is cheap work," and show that they have work at every price? [sidenote: the painter and the mirror] . when thou wishest to see whether thy picture corresponds entirely with the objects thou hast drawn from nature, take a mirror and let the living reality be reflected in it, and compare the reflection with thy picture, and consider well { } whether the subject of the two images are in harmony one with another. and above all thou shouldst take the mirror for thy master,--a flat mirror, since on its surface the objects in many respects have the same appearance as in painting. for thou seest that a painting done on a flat surface reveals objects which appear to be in relief, and the mirror consisting of a flat surface produces the same effect; the painting consists of one plane surface and the mirror likewise; the picture is impalpable, in so far as that which appears to be round and prominent cannot be grasped by the hands, and it is the same with the mirror; the mirror and the painting reveal the semblance of objects surrounded by light and shade; each of them appears to be at a distance from its surface. and if thou dost recognize that the mirror by means of outlines, lights and shadows gives relief to objects, and since thou hast in thy colours lights and shadows stronger than those of the mirror, there is no doubt that if thou composest thy picture well, it will also have the appearance of nature when it is reflected in a large mirror. [sidenote: the painter's mind] . the mind of the painter should continually transmute the figure of the notable objects which come before him into so many discourses; and imprint them in his memory and classify them { } and deduce rules from them, taking the place, the circumstances, the light and the shade into consideration. [sidenote: the variety of nature] . i say that the universal proportions must be observed in the height of figures and not in their size, because in the admirable and marvellous things which appear in the works of nature there is no work of whatsoever character in which one detail is exactly similar to another; therefore, o thou imitator of nature, pay heed to the variety of features. . radically wrong is the procedure of some masters who are in the habit of repeating the same themes in the same episodes, and whose types of beauty are likewise the same, for in nature they are never repeated, so that if all the beauties of equal excellence were to come to life again they would compose a larger population than that now existing in our century, and since in the present century no one person is precisely similar to another, so would it be among the beauties mentioned above. . you must depict your figures with gestures which will show what the figure has in his mind, otherwise your art will not be praiseworthy. { } [sidenote: mind and expression] . no figure will be admirable if the gesture which expresses the passion of the soul is not visible in it. the most admirable figure is that which best expresses the passion of its mind. . the good painter has two principal things to depict: man and the purpose of his mind. the first is easy, the second is difficult, since he must do it by the gestures and movements of the limbs, and this is to be learnt from the dumb, who more than all other men excel in it. [sidenote: the dumb man guides the painter] . the figures of men have gestures which correspond to what they are doing, so that in seeing them you understand what they are thinking of and saying; and these will be learned well by him who will copy the gestures of the dumb, for they speak by the gestures of their hands, their eyes, their brows and their whole person, when they wish to express the purpose of their mind. and do not mock me because i suggest a dumb teacher for the teaching of an art of which he is himself ignorant, because he will teach you better by his gestures than all the others with their words. and despise not such advice because they are the masters of gesture, and understand at a { } distance what a man is talking of if he suits the actions of the hands to the words. [sidenote: advice to the painter] . it is a great fault in painters to repeat the same movements, the same faces and manners of stuffs in one subject, and to let the greater part of his faces resemble their creator; and this has often been a source of wonder to me, for i have known some who in all their figures seem to have depicted themselves. and in the figures the actions and ways of the painter were visible. and if they are prompt in action and in their ways the figures are likewise prompt; and if the painter is pious, the figures with their twisted necks appear pious likewise, and if the painter is lazy the figures seem like laziness personified, and if the painter is deformed so are his figures, and if he is mad it is amply visible in figures of his subjects, which are devoid of intention and appear to be heedless of their action, some looking in one direction, some in another, as though they were dreaming; and therefore every manifestation in the picture corresponds to a peculiarity in the painter. and as i have often thought over the cause of this fault, it seems to me that we must conclude that the spirit which directs and governs everybody is that which forms our intellect, or rather, it is our intellect itself. it has { } devised the whole figure of man according as it has thought fit that it should be, either with long or a short and turned-up nose, and thus it has determined its height and figure; and so powerful is the intellect that it gives motion to the arms of the painter and causes him to reproduce himself, since it appears to the spirit that this is the true method of portraying man, and he that does otherwise is in error. and should this spirit find any one who resembles its body, which it has formed, it loves it and becomes enamoured with it, and for this reason many men fall in love and marry wives which resemble themselves, and often the children which are born of the issue resemble their parents. . the painter should portray his figure according to the measurements of a natural body, which shall be of universal proper proportions; in addition to this he should measure himself and see in which part his own figure varies greatly or less from the aforesaid pattern of excellence, and when he has ascertained this he should try his utmost to avoid the defects which exist in his own person in the figures he portrays. and know that thou must contend with all thy might against this fault inasmuch as it is a defect which originated with the intellect; because the { } spirit which governs thy body is that which is thine own intellect, and it is inclined to take pleasure in works similar to that which it accomplished in forming its body. and this is the reason that there is no woman, however ugly, who does not find a lover, unless she be monstrous. so remember to ascertain the defects of thy person and to avoid reproducing them in the figures thou dost compose. . that painter who has coarse hands will portray the like in his works, and the same thing will occur in every limb unless he avoids this pitfall by long study. therefore, o painter, look well on that part of thy person which is most ugly, and by thy study make ample reparation for it, because if thou art bestial, bestial and without intellect will be thy figures, and similarly both the good and ill which thou hast in thee will be partially visible in thy compositions. . men and words are already made, and thou, painter, who knowest not how to make thy figures move, art like the orator who knows not how to employ his words. . the movements of men are as varied as the { } circumstances which pass through their minds; and men will be more or less actuated by every circumstance in itself according as they are more or less powerful and according to age; because in the same circumstance an old man or a youth will make a different movement. [sidenote: power of expression in painting] . the imagination does not perceive such excellent things as the eye, because the eye receives the images or semblances from objects, and transmits them to the perception, and from thence to the brain; and there they are comprehended. but the imagination does not issue forth from the brain, with the exception of that part of it which is transmitted to the memory, and in the brain it remains and dies, if the thing imagined is not of high quality. and in this case poetry is formed in the mind or in the imagination of the poet, who depicts the same objects as the painter, and by reason of the work of his fancy he wishes to rival the painter, but in reality he is greatly inferior to him, as we have shown above. therefore with regard to the work of fancy we will say that there is the same proportion between the art of painting and that of poetry as exists between the body and the shadow proceeding from it, and the proportion is still greater, inasmuch as the shadow of such a body at least penetrates to { } the brain through the eye, but the imaginative embodiment of such a body does not enter into the eye, but is born in the dark brain. ah! what difference there is between imagining such a light in the darkness of the brain and seeing it in concrete shape set free from all darkness. if thou, o poet, dost represent the battle and its bloodshed enveloped by the obscure and dark air, amid the smoke of the terrifying and deadly engines, together with the thick dust which darkens the air, and the flight in terror of wretches panic-stricken by horrible death; in this case the painter will surpass thee, because thy pen will be used up before thou hast scarcely begun to describe what the art of the painter represents for thee immediately. and thy tongue shall be parched with thirst and thy body worn out with weariness and hunger before thou canst show what the painter will reveal in an instant of time. and in this painting there lacks nothing save the soul of the things depicted, and every body is represented in its entirety as far as it is visible in one aspect; and it would be a long and most tedious matter for poetry to enumerate all the movements of each soldier in such a war, and the parts of their limbs and their ornaments which the finished picture places before you with great accuracy and brevity; and to such a representation nothing is wanting save the noise of the engines, and the cries of the terrifying victors, { } and the screams and lamentations of those awe-stricken; neither again can the poet convey these things to the hearing. we will say, therefore, that poetry is an art which is supremely potent for the blind, and the painting has the same result on the deaf. painting, therefore, excels poetry in proportion as the sense to which it ministers is the nobler. the only true function of the poet is to represent the words of people who talk among each other, and these alone he represents to the hearing as if they were natural, because they are natural in themselves and created by the human voice; and in all other respects he is surpassed by the painter. still more, incomparably greater is the width of range of painting than that of speech, because the painter can accomplish an infinity of things which speech will not be able to name for want of the appropriate terms. and seest thou not that if the painter wishes to depict animals and devils in hell with what richness of invention he proceeds? and i once chanced to paint a picture which represented a divine subject, and it was bought by the lover of her whom it represented, and he wished to strip it of its divine character so as to be able to kiss it without offence. but finally his conscience overcame his desire and his lust and he was compelled to remove the picture from his house. now go thou, poet, and describe a beautiful woman without giving the semblance of { } the living thing, and with it arouse such desire in men! if thou sayest: i will describe then hell and paradise and other delights and terrors,--the painter will surpass thee, because he will set before thee things which in silence will [make thee] give utterance to such delight, and so terrify thee as to cause thee to wish to take flight. painting stirs the senses more readily than poetry. and if thou sayest that by speech thou canst convulse a crowd with laughter or tears, i rejoin that it is not thou who stirrest the crowd, it is the pathos of the orator, and his mirth. a painter once painted a picture which caused everybody who saw it to yawn, and this happened every time the eye fell on the picture, which represented a person yawning. others have painted libidinous acts of such sensuality that they have incited those who gazed on them to similar acts, and poetry could not do this. and if you write the description of certain deities the description will not be held in the same veneration as the picture of the deity, because prayers and votive offerings will always be made to the picture, and many peoples from diverse countries and from across the eastern seas will flock to it. and they will invoke the picture, and not the writing, for succour. who is he who would not lose hearing, smell and touch rather than sight? because he who loses his sight is like the man who is driven from the world, because { } he sees neither it nor anything else any longer. and this life becomes the sister of death. [sidenote: landscapes] . i have been to see a variety of cloud effects, and lately over milan towards lake maggiore i saw a cloud in the form of a huge mountain full of fiery scales, because the rays of the sun, which was already reddening and close to the horizon, tinged the cloud with its own colour. and this cloud attracted to it all the lesser clouds which were around it; and the great cloud did not move from its place, but on the contrary retained on its summit the light of the sun till an hour and a half after nightfall, such was its immense size; and about two hours after nightfall a great, an incredibly tremendous wind arose. [sidenote: vegetation of a hill] . the grasses and plants will be paler in proportion as the soil which nourishes them is leaner and devoid of moisture; the earth is leaner and less rich in moisture on the rocks of which the mountains are formed. and the trees will be smaller and thinner in proportion as they are nearer to the summit of the mountain; and the soil is leaner in proportion as it is nearer to the said summit, and it is richer in proportion as it is nearer the hollow valleys. therefore, o painter, { } thou shalt represent rocks on the summits of the mountains--for they are composed of rocks--for the greater part devoid of soil, and the plants which grow there are small and lean and for the greater part withered and dry from lack of moisture, and the sandy and lean earth is seen through the faded plants; and the small plants are stunted and aged, exiguous in size, with short and thick boughs and few leaves; they cover for the greater part the rust-coloured and dry roots, and are interwoven in the strata and the fissures of the rugged rocks, and issue from trunks maimed by men or by the winds; and in many places you see the rocks surmounting the summits of the high mountains, covered with a thin and faded moss; and in some places their true colour is laid bare and made visible owing to the percussion of the lightnings of heaven, whose course is often obstructed to the damage of these rocks. and in proportion as you descend towards the base of the mountains the plants are more vigorous and their boughs and foliage are denser; and their vegetation varied according to the various species of the plants of which such woods are composed, and their boughs are of diverse arrangement and diverse amplitude of foliage, various in shape and size; and some have straight boughs like the cypress, and some have widely scattered and spreading boughs like the oak and the chestnut tree, and the like; some have very { } small leaves, others have a spare foliage like the juniper and the plane tree, and others; some plants born at the same time are divided by wide spaces, and others are united with no division of space between them. [sidenote: how to represent night] . that which is entirely devoid of light is all darkness; as the night is like this and you wish to represent a night subject, represent a great fire, so that the object which is nearest to the fire may be tinged with its colour, since the object which is nearest the fire will participate most in its nature. and as you will make the fire red, all the objects which it illumines must be red also, and those which are farther off from the fire will be dyed to a greater extent by the dark colour of night. the figures which are between you and the fire appear dark from the obscurity of the night, not from the glow of the firelight, and those which are at the side are half dark and half ruddy, and those which are visible beyond the edge of the flames will be altogether lighted up by the red glow against a black background. as to their action, make those which are near shield themselves with their hands and cloaks against the intense heat with averted faces as though about to flee; with regard to those who are farther off, represent them chiefly in the act of raising their hands to their eyes, dazzled by the intense glare. { } [sidenote: how to represent storm] . if you wish to represent well a storm, consider and weigh its effects when the wind, blowing across the surface of the sea and the earth, removes and carries with it those things which are not stable in the universal drift. and in order to represent this storm adequately, you must in the first place represent tattered and rent clouds rushing with the rushing wind, accompanied by sandy dust caught up from the seashores, and boughs and leaves torn up by the force and fury of the wind, and dispersed in the air with many other light objects. the trees and the plants bent towards the earth almost seem as though they wished to follow the rushing wind, with their boughs wrenched from their natural direction and their foliage all disordered and distorted. of the men who are to be seen, some are fallen and entangled in their clothes and almost unrecognizable on account of the dust, and those who remain standing may be behind some tree, clutching hold of it so that the wind may not tear them away; others, with their hands over their eyes on account of the dust, stoop towards the ground, with their clothes and hair streaming to the wind. the sea should be rough and tempestuous, and full of swirling eddies and foam among the high waves, and the wind hurls the spray through the tumultuous air like a thick and swathing mist. { } as regards the ships that are there, you will depict some with torn sails and tattered shreds fluttering through the air with shattered rigging; some of the masts will be split and fallen, and the ship lying down and wrecked in the raging waves; some men will be shrieking and clinging to the remnants of the vessel. you will make the clouds driven by the fury of the winds and hurled against the high summits of the mountains, and eddying and torn like waves beaten against rocks; the air shall be terrible owing to deep darkness caused by the dust and the mist and the dense clouds. [sidenote: how to describe a battle] . in the first place you must represent the smoke of the artillery mingled with the air, and the dust, and tossed up by the stampede of the horses and the combatants. and you must treat this confusion in this way: dust being an earthly thing has weight, and although owing to its fineness it is easily lifted up and mingled with the air, it nevertheless falls readily to the earth again, and it is its finest part which rises highest, therefore that part will be the least visible and will seem to be almost of the same colour as the air; the higher the smoke, which is mingled with the dusty air, rises towards a certain height, the more it will seem like a dark cloud, and at the summit the smoke will be more visible than the dust. { } the smoke will assume a bluish colour, and the dust will retain its colour: this mixture of air, smoke and dust will seem much brighter on the side whence the light proceeds than on the opposite side; the more densely the combatants are enveloped in this confusion the less distinctly will their lights and shadows be visible. you must cast a glowing light on the countenances and the figures, the atmosphere, the musketeers and those who are near them, and this light diminishes in proportion as the distance between it and its cause increases; and the figures which are between you and the light will appear dark against a bright background, and their legs will be less visible in proportion as they are nearer to the earth, because the dust there is coarsest and thickest. and if you depict horses galloping beyond the crowd, make little clouds of dust, distant one from the other in proportion to the strides made by the horses, and the cloud which is farthest away from the horse will be the least visible; it must be high, scattered and thin, and the nearer clouds will be more conspicuous, smaller and denser. the air must be full of arrows falling in every direction: some flying upwards, some falling, some on the level plane; and smoke should trail after the flight of the cannon-balls. the foremost figures should have their hair and eyebrows clotted with dust; dust must be on every flat portion they offer capable of retaining it. { } the conquerors you should make as they charge, with their hair and the other light things appertaining to them streaming to the wind, their brows contracted and the limbs thrust forward inversely, that is, if the right foot is thrust forward the left arm must be thrust forward also. and if you portray a fallen man you must show where he has slipped and been dragged through the blood-stained mud, and around in the wet earth you must show the imprint of the feet of men and the hoofs of horses that have passed there. you will also represent a horse dragging its dead master, and in the wake of the body its track, as it has been dragged along through the dust and the mud; you must make the vanquished and beaten pale, their brows knit and the skin surmounting the brow furrowed with lines of pain. on the sides of the nose there must be wrinkles forming an arch from the nostrils to the eyes and terminating at the commencement of the latter; the nostrils should be drawn up, whence the wrinkles mentioned above; the arched lips show the upper row of teeth. the teeth should be apart, as with crying and lamentation. one hand shields the frightened eyes, the palm being held towards the enemy; the other [hand] rests on the ground to sustain the raised body. you shall portray others shouting in flight with their mouths wide open; you must depict many kinds of weapons lying at the feet of the { } combatants, such as broken shields, lances, shattered swords and other similar objects; you must portray dead men, some half covered, some entirely covered, by the dust which is mingled with the spilt blood and converted into red mud, and the blood is seen by its colour flowing in a sinuous stream from the body to the dust; others in their death-agony are grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes and clenching their fists against their bodies and their distorted legs. some might be represented disarmed and thrown by the enemy, turning upon him with teeth and nails to wreak cruel and sharp revenge; a riderless horse might be represented charging with his mane streaming to the wind amidst the enemy, and inflicting great damage with his hoofs. some maimed man might be seen fallen to the earth and protecting himself with his shield, while the enemy, bending over him, tries to kill him. you might show a number of men fallen together over a dead horse. you would see some of the conquerors leaving the battle and issuing from the crowd, clearing with their hands their eyes and cheeks of the mud made by the watering of their dust-bespattered eyes. you would see the reserves standing full of hope and caution, with brows alert, shading them with their hands and gazing through the thick and confused darkness, attentive to the orders of their captain; and likewise the captain, with his staff raised, is rushing towards these { } reserves and points out to them the spot where they are needed; and you may add a river with horses charging into it and stirring up the water all round them into seething waves of mixed foam and water, which is spurted into the air and among the legs and bodies of the horses. and there must not be a level place that is not trampled with gory footsteps. [sidenote: envy] . envy offends with false infamy, that is to say, by detraction which frightens virtue. envy must be represented with the hands raised to heaven in contempt, because if she could she would use her power against god. make her face covered with a goodly mark; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth offend her. draw many thunderbolts proceeding from her as a symbol of her evil-speaking. make her lean and shrivelled up, because she is continual dissolution. make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent. make her a quiver full of tongues for arrows, because she often offends with these. make her a leopard's skin, because the leopard kills the lion through envy and by deceit. place a vase in her hand full of flowers, and let it be full also of scorpions, toads and other reptiles. let her ride death, because envy, which is undying, never wearies of sovereignty. { } make her a bridle loaded with divers arms, because her weapons are all deadly. as soon as virtue is born it begets envy which attacks it; and sooner will there exist a body without a shadow than virtue unaccompanied by envy. [sidenote: fame] . fame alone rises towards heaven, because god looks with favour on virtuous things; infamy must be represented upside down, because its works are contrary to god and move towards hell. fame should be depicted covered with tongues instead of with feathers and in the form of a bird. [sidenote: the expressive picture] . a picture or a representation of human figures should be done in such a way that the spectator can easily recognize the purpose that is in their minds by their attitudes. if you have to represent a man of high character, let his gestures be such as harmonize with fair words; likewise, if you have to represent a man of low character, let his gestures be fierce, let him thrust his arms towards the listener, and let his head and chest be thrust forward in front of his feet, following the hands of the speaker. it is thus with a dumb man, who seeing two speakers, although he is deprived of hearing, nevertheless, owing to the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, understands the subject of their argument. i once saw at florence a man who had become deaf by an accident, who, if you spoke loud to him, did not understand you, but if you spoke gently, without making any noise, he understood you merely by the movement of the lips. now you can say, does not one who talks loudly move his lips like one who talks softly? in regard to this i leave experiment to decide: make a man speak gently to you and note his lips. [sidenote: the ages of man] . how the ages of man should be depicted: that is, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, decrepitude. how old men should be depicted with lazy and slow movements, their legs bent at the knees when they stand still, and their feet placed parallel and apart, their backs bent, their heads leaning forward and their arms only slightly extended. how women should be represented in modest attitudes, their legs close together, their arms folded together, their heads bent and inclined to one side. how old women should be represented with eager, vehement and angry gestures, like the furies of hades; the movement of the arms and the head should be more violent than that of the legs. little children with ready and twisted movements when sitting, and when standing up in shy and timid attitudes. { } . you will do as follows if you wish to represent a man talking to a number of people: you must consider the matter which he has to treat, and suit his action to the subject; that is to say, if the matter is persuasive, let his action be appropriate to it; if the matter is argumentative, let the speaker hold one finger of the left hand with two fingers of the right hand, closing the two smaller ones, and with his face turned towards the people and his mouth half open, let him seem to be about to speak, and if he is sitting let him appear as though about to rise, with his head forward; if you represent him standing up, let him lean slightly forward, with his body and head towards the people. you must represent the people silent and attentive, looking at the orator's face with gestures of admiration, and depict some old men with the corners of their mouths pulled down in astonishment at what they hear, their cheeks drawn in and full of lines, their eyebrows raised, and thus causing a number of wrinkles on the forehead; again, some must be sitting with the fingers of their hands clasped and resting on their knee; another, a bowed old man, with one knee crossed over the other, and on the knee let him hold his hand, and let his other elbow rest on his hand, and let the hand support his bearded chin. { } . you must represent an angry man holding some one by the ear, beating his head against the ground, with one knee on his ribs, his right arm raising his fist in the air; his hair must be dishevelled, his eyebrows low and narrow, his teeth clenched and the two corners of his mouth set, his neck swelled and [his brow] wrinkled and bent forward as he leans over his enemy. . the desperate man must hold a knife and must have torn open his garments, and with one hand he must be tearing open the wound; and you must represent him with extended feet and the legs slightly bent and his body leaning towards the earth, his hair flying and dishevelled. [sidenote: notes on the last supper] . one who was in the act of drinking leaves his glass in its place, and turns his head towards the speaker. another, twisting the fingers of his hands together, turns with stern brows to his companions. another, with his hands spread out, shows their palms, and shrugs his shoulders towards his ears; his mouth expresses amazement. another speaks in the ear of his neighbour, and he, as he listens to him, turns towards him, lending him his ear, while he holds a knife in one hand and { } a piece of bread in the other, half cut through by the knife. another, in turning with a knife in his hand, has upset a glass on the table. another lays his hands on the table and looks fixedly. another puffs out his cheeks, his mouth full. another leans forward to see the speaker, shading his eyes with his hand. another draws back behind him who is leaning forward and sees the speaker between the wall and the man who is leaning forward. { } iii thoughts on science * * * [sidenote: necessity of experience in science] there is no human experience that can be termed true science unless it can be mathematically demonstrated. and if thou sayest that the sciences which begin and end in the mind are true, this cannot be conceded, but must be denied for many reasons, and firstly because in such mental discourses experience is eliminated, and without experience there can be no certainty. [sidenote: theory and practice] . you must first propound the theory and then explain the practice. . let no man who is not a mathematician read the principles of my work. . in the course of scientific exposition the demonstration of a general rule derived from a previous conclusion is not to be censured. { } [sidenote: certainty of mathematics] . he who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion and will never be able to silence the contradictions or sophistical sciences which lead to an everlasting clamour. [sidenote: of science] . there is no certainty [in science] where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or in those [sciences] which are not in harmony with mathematics. [sidenote: from leonardo's dictionary] . syllogism: to speak doubtfully. sophism: to speak confusedly; falsehood for truth. theory: knowledge without practice. [sidenote: definition of science] . science is that discourse of the mind which derives its origin from ultimate principles beyond which nothing in nature can be found which forms a part of that science: as in the continued quantity, that is to say, the science of geometry, which, starting from the surfaces of bodies, has its origin in the line, which is the end of the superficies; and we are not satisfied by this, because we know that the line terminates in the point, and the point is that which is the least of things. therefore the point is the first principle of geometry, and nothing else can exist either { } in nature or in the human mind from which the point can issue. because if you say that the contact between a surface and the extreme point of an iron instrument is the creation of the point, it is not true; but let us say that this point of contact is a superficies which surrounds its centre, and in the centre the point dwells. and such a point is not a part of the substance of the superficies, neither it nor all the points of the universe can, even if combined,--it being granted that they could be combined,--compose any part of a superficies. and granted, as you imagined, a whole composed of a thousand points, if we divide any part of this quantity of a thousand, we can very well say that this part shall equal its whole; and this we can prove by zero, or naught, that is, the tenth figure of arithmetic, which is represented by a cipher as being nothing, and placed after unity it will signify , and if two ciphers are placed after unity it will signify , and thus the number will go on increasing by ten to infinity whenever a cipher is added, and the cipher in itself is worth nothing more than naught, and all the naughts in the universe are equal to one naught alone, in regard to their substance and value. [sidenote: true science based on the testimony of the senses] . knowledge which is the issue of experience is termed mechanical; that which is born and ends { } in the mind is termed scientific; that which issues from science and ends in manual work is termed semi-mechanical. but i consider vain and full of error that science which is not the offspring of experience, mother of all certitude, and which does not result in established experience, that is to say, whose origin, middle and end do not pass through any of the five senses. and if we doubt of everything we perceive by the senses, should we not doubt much more of what is contrary to the senses, such as the existence of god and of the soul, and similar matters constantly under dispute and contention? and it is truly the case that where reason is lacking it is supplemented by noise, which never happens in matters of certainty. on account of this we will say that where there is noise there is no true science, because truth has one end only, which, when it is made known, eternally silences controversy, and should controversy come to life again, it is lying and confused knowledge which is reborn, and not certainty. but true science is that which has penetrated into the senses through experience and silenced the tongue of the disputers, and which does not feed those who investigate it with dreams, but proceeds from the basis of primary truths and established principles successively and by true sequence to the end; as, for instance, what comes under the heading of elementary mathematics, { } that is, numeration and measurement, termed arithmetic and geometry, which treat with the highest truth of the discontinued and continued quantity. here there will be no dispute as to whether twice three make more or less than six, nor whether two angles of a triangle are less than two right angles, but eternal silence shall ignore all controversy, and the devotees of the true science will finish their studies in peace, which the lying mental sciences cannot do. and if thou sayest that true and established science of this kind is a species of mechanics, because they can only be completed by the hand, i will say the same of all the arts, such as that which passes through the hand of the sculptor, which is a kind of drawing, a part of painting; and astrology and the other sciences pass through manual operation, but they are mental in the first place, as painting, which first of all exists in the mind of the composer, and cannot attain to fulfilment without manual labour. with regard to painting, its true and scientific principles must be established: what constitutes a shaded body, what constitutes a primary shade, a derivative shade, what constitutes light: that is, darkness, light, colour, size, shape, position, distance, propinquity, motion, rest, which are comprehended by the mind only, and without manual labour. and this is the science of painting which remains in the mind of those who meditate on it, from which { } issues the work in due time, and is infinitely superior to the aforesaid contemplation or science. [sidenote: mechanics] . mechanics are the paradise of scientific mathematics, because with them we arrive at the fruits of mathematics. [sidenote: mechanics and experience] . experience is indispensable for the making of any instrument. . proportion is not only to be found in figures and measurements, but also in sound, weight, time and position, and in whatever power which exists. [sidenote: reason and experience] . the power of the projecting force increases in proportion as the object projected is smaller; the acceleration of the motion increases to infinity proportionately to this diminution. it would follow that an atom would be almost as rapid as the imagination or the eye, which in a moment attains to the height of the stars, and consequently its voyage would be infinite, because the thing which can be infinitely diminished would have an infinite velocity and would travel on an infinite course (because every continuous quantity is divisible to infinity). and this opinion is { } condemned by reason and consequently by experience. thus, you who observe rely not on authors who have merely by their imagination wished to be interpreters between nature and man, but on those alone who have applied their minds not to the hints of nature but to the results of their experience. and you must realize the deceptiveness of experiments; because those which often appear to be one and the same are often different, as is shown here. [sidenote: effects correspond to the force of their cause] . a spherical body which possesses a dense and resisting superficies will move as much in the rebound resulting from the resistance of a smooth and solid plane as it would if you threw it freely through the air, if the force applied be equal in both cases. oh, admirable justice of thine, thou first mover! thou hast not permitted that any tone should fail to produce its necessary effects, either as regards order or quantity. seeing that a force impels an object which it overcomes a distance of one hundred arms' length, and if in obeying this law it meets with resistance, thou hast ordained that the force of the shock will cause afresh a further movement, which in its various bounds recuperates the whole sum of the distance it should have travelled. and if you measure the distance { } accomplished by the aforesaid bounds you will find that they equal the length of distance through which a similar object set in motion by an equal force would travel freely through the air. . every action must be caused by motion. . motion is the cause of all life. [sidenote: of force] . what is force? force, i say, is a spiritual virtue, an invisible power, which by accidental external violence is caused by motion, and communicated and infused into bodies which are inert by nature, giving them an active life of marvellous power. . what is force? i say that force is a spiritual, incorporate and invisible power, which for a brief duration is produced in bodies that by accidental violence are displaced from their natural state of inertia. [sidenote: origin of force] . force arises from dearth or abundance; it is the child of physical motion and the grandchild of spiritual motion, and the mother and origin of gravity. gravity is confined to the elements of { } water and earth, and this force is infinite, because infinite worlds could be moved by it if instruments could be made by which the force could be generated. force, with physical motion, and gravity, with resistance, are the four accidental powers by which all mortal things live and die. force has its origin in spiritual motion, and this motion, flowing through the limbs of sentient animals, enlarges their muscles, and thus enlarged the muscles are shrunk in length and contract the tendons with which they are connected, and this is the cause of the strength in human limbs. the quality and quantity of the strength of a man can generate a further force, which will increase in proportion to the duration of the motions produced by them. [sidenote: aspects of force] . gravity, force and casual motion together with resistance are the four external powers by which all the visible actions of man live and die. [sidenote: of inertia] . a motion tends to be continuous; a body set in motion continues to move as long as the impression of the motive power lasts in it. [sidenote: can man imitate a bird's flight?] . the bird is an instrument which operates by mathematical laws, and man can reproduce all { } the movements of this instrument, but cannot attain to the intensity of its power; and can only succeed in acquiring balance. thus we will say that such an instrument constructed by man lacks only the soul of the bird, and the soul of man must counterfeit the soul of the bird. the spirit in the frame of the bird doubtless would respond to needs of that frame better than would the spirit of man, whose frame is different, more especially in the almost insensible motions of balance; and since we see the bird make provision for the many sensible varieties of movement, we can conclude by such experience that man can acquire knowledge of the more markedly sensible of these movements, and that he will be able to make ample provision against the destruction of that instrument of which he has made himself the spirit and the guide. [sidenote: of inertia] . a natural and continuous motion seeks to preserve its course along the line of its starting-point, that is to say, let us call starting-point whatever place in which it varies. . everything maintains itself by motion. and if it were possible to describe a diameter of air on the sphere of the earth, like to a well, which would extend from one superficies to the other, { } and if a weighty body were dropped into this well, the body would seek to remain stationary at the centre, but so strong would be the impetus that for many years it would prevent it from so doing. [sidenote: transmission of motion] . impetus is a virtue created by motion and communicated by the motive force to the object moved, and this object acquires motion in proportion to the energy of the impetus. [sidenote: matter is inert] . no lifeless matter moves of itself, but its motion is caused from without. . all elements displaced from their natural place seek to return to it, and more especially fire, water and earth. . all matter universally seeks to maintain itself in its natural state; hence, water in motion seeks to maintain its course according to the force by which it is propelled, and if it meets with opposition it finishes the length of the course it began in a circular and reflex motion. [sidenote: conception of energy] . impetus is the impression of motion conveyed by the motive power to the object moved. every { } impression tends to permanence or seeks to attain permanence. that every impression seeks after permanence is proved by the impression made by the sun on the eye which regards it, and in the impression of sound made by the hammer which strikes a bell. every impression seeks after permanence, as is shown in the image of impetus communicated to the object moved. . a weight seeks to fall to the centre of the earth by the most direct way. [sidenote: in praise of the sun] . if you look at the stars, warding off the rays (as may be done by looking through a small hole made by the extreme point of a fine needle placed so as almost to touch the eye), they will appear so small as to seem as though nothing could be smaller; it is owing to their great distance that they appear so small, for many of them are very many times larger than the star which is the earth with its water. now reflect what appearance this our star must have from so great a distance, and then consider how many stars might be placed--both in longitude and latitude--between those stars which are sown in the dark space. i can never refrain from blaming many of the ancients who said that the size of the sun was no greater than { } it appears; among whom was epicurus. i believe he founded his reasoning on a light placed in our atmosphere equidistant from the centre of the earth, which, to any one looking at it, never appears to diminish in size from whatever distance it is seen. . i shall reserve the reasons of its size and power for later. but i greatly marvel that socrates should have depreciated such a body, and that he should have said that it resembled an incandescent stone; and he who opposed him as regards this error acted rightly. but i wish i had words to blame those who seek to exalt the worship of men more than that of the sun, since in the universe there is no body of greater magnitude and power to be seen than the sun. and its light illumines all the celestial bodies which are distributed throughout the universe; and the vital spark descends from it, because the heat which is in living beings comes from the soul, and there is no other centre of heat and light in the universe, as will be shown later; and it is certain that those who have elected to worship men as gods--as jupiter, saturn, mars, &c.--have fallen into a profound error, since even if a man were as great as our earth, he would have the appearance of a little star, which appears like a dot in the universe; and moreover these men are mortal, and decay and corrupt in their sepulchres. { } . epicurus perhaps saw the shadows of columns on the walls in front of them equal to the diameter of the column which cast the shadow; and since the breadth of the shadows are parallel from beginning to end he considered that he might infer that the sun also was directly opposite to this parallel, and consequently no broader than the column; and he did not perceive that the diminution of the shadow was insensibly small owing to the great distance of the sun. if the sun were smaller than the earth, the stars in a great portion of our hemisphere would be without light--in contradiction to epicurus, who says the sun is only as large as it appears to be. . epicurus says the sun is the size it seems to be; hence, as it seems to be a foot in breadth, we must consider that to be its size. it follows that when the moon eclipses the sun, the sun ought not to appear the larger, as it does; hence, the moon being smaller than the sun, the moon must be less than a foot in breadth, and consequently when the earth eclipses the moon it must be less than a foot by a finger's breadth; inasmuch as if the sun is a foot in breadth, and the earth casts a conical shadow on the moon, it is inevitable that the luminous cause of the conical shadow { } must be greater than the opaque body which causes it. . measure how many times the diameter of the sun will go into its course in twenty-four hours. and thus we can see whether epicurus was correct in saying the sun was only as large as it appeared to be; for as the apparent diameter of the sun is about a foot, and as the sun would go a thousand times into its course in twenty-four hours, it would have travelled a thousand feet, that is, three hundred arms' length, which is the sixth of a mile. thus the course of the sun during twenty-four hours would have been the sixth part of a mile, and this venerable snail, the sun, would have travelled twenty-five arms' length in an hour. [sidenote: the sun's heat] . they say that the sun is not hot because it is not the colour of fire but whiter and clearer. and the answer to this is that when molten bronze is hottest it resembles the colour of the sun, and when it is less hot it has the colour of fire. . it is proved that the sun is by nature hot and not cold, as has already been stated. if rays of fire play on a concave mirror when it is cold, the rays refracted by the mirror will be hotter than { } the fire. the rays emitted from a sphere of glass filled with cold water, which are reflected from a fire, will be warmer than the fire. it follows from these two experiments that the heat of the rays reflected by the mirror or the sphere of cold water are hot by virtue, and not because the mirror or the sphere is hot; and in this case it occurs that the sun, passing through these bodies, heats them by its virtue. and owing to this they have inferred that the sun is not hot,--which by the aforesaid experiments has been proved to be exceedingly hot, by the experiment of the mirror and the sphere, which are cold in themselves, and reflect the hot rays of the fire and render them hotter, because the first cause is hot; and the same thing occurs as regards the sun, which, being hot in itself, and passing through these cold mirrors, refracts great heat. it is not the light of the sun which gives warmth, but its natural heat. [sidenote: rays of the sun] . the rays of the sun pass through the cold region of the air without any change being effected in their nature, they pass through glasses full of cold water without suffering change; through whatever transparent spot they pass, it is as though they passed through so much air. [sidenote: light of the stars] . some writers allege that the stars shine of { } themselves, saying that if venus and mercury did not shine of themselves, when their light comes between them and the sun they would darken as much of the sun as they could hide from our eye; this is false, because it is proved that a dark body placed against a luminous body is enveloped and altogether covered by the lateral rays of the remaining part of that body, and thus remains invisible; as may be proved when the sun is seen through the boughs of a leafless tree at a long distance, the boughs do not hide any portion of the sun from our eyes. the same thing occurs with the above-mentioned planets, which, though they have no light in themselves, do not, as has been said, hide any portion of the sun from our eyes. second proof. they say that the stars shine most brightly at night in proportion as they are high; and that, if they did not shine of themselves, the shadow cast by the earth between them and the sun would darken them, since they would not see nor be seen by the sun. but these have not taken into consideration that the conical shadow of the moon does not reach many of the stars, and even for those it does reach the shadow is diminished to such an extent that it covers very little of the star, and the remaining part is illumined by the sun. { } [sidenote: on the nature of the moon] . the moon having density and gravity, how does it stand? . i. no very light object is opaque. ii. nothing light can remain beneath that which is heavier. iii. whether the moon is the centre of its elements or not. and if it has no fixed position like the earth in the centre of its elements, why does it not fall to the centre of our elements? and if the moon is not in the centre of its elements and does not fall, it must then be lighter than any other element. and if the moon is lighter than the other elements, why is it opaque and not transparent? . no body which has density is lighter than the air. having proved that the part of the moon which shines consists of water which mirrors the body of the sun and reflects for us the splendour it receives from the sun, and that if there were no waves in these waters, it would appear small, but almost as bright as the sun--it must now be shown whether the moon is a heavy or a light body; if it is a heavy body--admitting that from the earth upwards with every grade of distance lightness must increase, so that water is lighter than earth, air is lighter than water, and { } fire lighter than air, and so on in succession--it would seem that if the moon had density, as it has, it must have gravity, and if it has gravity the space in which it lies could not contain it, and consequently it would fall towards the centre of the universe and be joined to the earth, or if not the moon itself, its waters would fall from the moon and strip it and fall towards the centre, leaving the moon bare and lustreless; whence, as this could not happen, as reason would tell us, it is manifest that the moon is surrounded by its elements, that is to say, water, air and fire, and thus it sustains itself by itself in that space as our earth is suspended with its elements in this part of space; heavy bodies act in their elements there just as other heavy bodies act in ours. [sidenote: on the harmony of the spheres] . a sound is produced by the movement of the air in friction against a dense body, and should it be produced by two weighty bodies it is owing to the atmosphere which surrounds them, and this friction consumes the bodies, so that it follows that the spheres in their friction, owing to there being no atmosphere between them, do not generate sound. and if this friction were a fact, during the many centuries the spheres have revolved they would be consumed by the immense velocity expended daily; and even if they produce sound, the sound could not travel, { } because the sound caused by percussion under water is scarcely noticeable, and it would be less than noticeable in the case of dense bodies. the friction of polished bodies produces no sound, and similar result would be produced in the contact or friction of the spheres; and if the spheres are not polished in their contact and friction, it follows that they are rough. again, their contact is not continuous; this being the case a vacuum is produced, which it has been proved does not exist in nature. therefore we conclude that friction would have consumed the ends of each sphere, and in proportion as a sphere has a greater velocity in the centre than at the poles, it would be consumed to a higher degree at the centre than at the poles; and then the friction would cease, and the sound would cease also, and the spheres would cease to revolve unless one sphere revolved eastward and the other northward. . worlds gravitate in the midst of their own elements. the yellow or yolk of an egg remains in the middle of the albumen without moving on either side, and is lighter or heavier or equal to this albumen; and if it is lighter it ought to rise above all the albumen and stop in contact with the shell of the egg; and if it is heavier it ought { } to sink; and if it is equal to it, it can stand at one of the ends as well as in the centre or below. [sidenote: the earth appears a star] . the object of my book is to prove that the ocean, with the other seas, by means of the sun causes our world to shine like the moon and to appear as a star to other worlds; and this i will prove. [sidenote: the earth a star] . in your discourse you must prove that the earth is a star like the moon, and thus you will bear witness to the glory of our universe! and thus you must discourse on the size of many stars. . how the earth is a star. the earth, in the midst of the sphere of water which clothes the greater part of it, taking its light from the sun and shining in the universe like the other stars, shows itself to be a star as well. [sidenote: to prove the earth a star] . first of all define the eye; then show how the twinkling of a star exists really in the eye, and why one star should twinkle more than another, and how the rays of the stars are born in the eye. say, that if the twinkling of the stars were, as it appears to be, really in the stars, that this { } twinkling appears to extend in proportion to the body of the star. the star, therefore, being larger than the earth, this motion made in an instant of time would in its velocity double the size of the star. then prove that the surface of the atmosphere, contiguous to fire and the surface of fire, where it ends, is the point in which the rays of the sun penetrate and bear the image of the celestial bodies which are large when they rise and set, and small when they are on the meridian. [sidenote: earth not the center of universe] . the earth is not the centre of the orbit of the sun, nor the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements and united with them; and if any one were to stand on the moon when the moon and the sun are beneath us, our earth, with its element of water, would appear and shine for him just as the moon appears and shines for us. . the earth, shining like the moon, has lost a great part of its ancient splendour by the decrease of the waters. . nothing is generated in a place where is no sentient vegetable and rational life; feathers grow on birds and change every year; coats grow on animals and are changed every year, with some { } exceptions, like the lion's beard and the cat's fur, and such; grass grows in the fields and leaves on the trees; and every year they are renewed in great part. thus we can say that the spirit of growth is the soul of the earth, the soil its flesh, the ordered arrangement of rocks its bones, of which mountains are formed, the tufa its tendons; its blood the veins of water which surround its heart, which is the ocean; its breathing and increase and decrease of blood in the pulses the ebb and flood of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is fire which pervades the earth, and the vital soul dwells in the fires which from various apertures of the earth issue in springs and sulphur minerals and volcanoes, as at mount etna in sicily and in many other places. . the ancients called man the world in miniature, and certainly the name is a happy one, because man being composed of earth, water, air and fire, the body of the earth resembles the body of man. as man has in him bones for the support and framework of his flesh, likewise in the world the rocks are the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in their breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean which rises and falls every six hours as if the world breathed; as from the aforesaid pool of blood veins issue which { } ramify throughout the human body, so does the ocean fill the body of the earth with innumerable veins of water. the body of the earth lacks sinews, which do not exist because sinews are made for movement, and the world being in perpetual stability no movement occurs, and there being no movement, sinews are not necessary; but in all other points they resemble each other greatly. . water is the driver of nature. [sidenote: experience the basis of science] . in explaining the action of water remember to cite experience first and then reason. . do not forget that you must put forward propositions adducing the above-mentioned facts as illustrations, not as propositions,--that would be too simple. . water in itself has no stability and cannot move of its own accord, save to descend. water of its own accord does not cease to move unless it is shut in. . the body of the earth, like the body of animals, is intersected with ramifying veins, which are all { } united and constructed for the nourishment and life of the earth and of its creatures. [sidenote: water is the blood of the world] . the water which rises in the mountains is the blood which keeps the mountain alive, and through this conduit or vein, nature, the helper of her creatures, prompt in the desire to repair the loss of the moisture expended, proffers the desired aid abundantly; just as in a stricken spot in man you will see, owing to the aid which is brought, the blood abound under the skin in a swelling, so as to succour the spot which has been stricken; likewise, in the case of the vine, when it is cut at its extremity, nature causes its moisture to rise from the lowest root to the end of the extremity which has been cut, and when this moisture has been expended nature ceases not to supply it with vital moisture to the end of its life. . water is that which is given to supply vital moisture to this arid earth; and the cause which propels it through its ramifications against the natural course of weighty matter is the same which stirs the humours in every kind of animal body. [sidenote: water on mountains] . water, the vital moisture of the earthly machine, moves by reason of its natural heat. { } [sidenote: on the water of rivers] . rivers, with their ruinous inundations, seem to me the most potent of all causes of terrestrial losses, and not fire, as some have maintained; because the violence of fire is exhausted where there is nothing forthcoming to feed it. the flowing of water, which is maintained by sloping valleys, ends and dies at the lowest depth of the valley; but fire is caused by fuel and the movement of water by incline. the fuel of fire is disunited, and its damage is disunited and isolated, and fire dies where there is no fuel. the incline of valleys is united, and damage caused by water is collective, along with the ruinous course of the river, until with its valley it winds into the sea, the universal base and sole haven of the wandering waters of rivers. but what voice or words shall i find to express the disastrous ravages, the incredible upheavals, the insatiable rapacity, caused by the headstrong rivers? what can i say? certainly i do not feel myself equal to such a demonstration, yet by experience i will try to relate the process of ruin of the rivers which destroy their banks and against which no mortal bastion can prevail. . the recesses of the bottom of the sea are perennial, the summits of mountains are transitory, whence it follows that the earth will become { } spherical and covered with waters, and will be uninhabitable. [sidenote: transformations in past and future] . the shores of the sea continually increase in soil, towards the middle of the sea; the cliffs and promontories of the sea are continually being ruined and consumed; the mediterranean seas will dry up and all that will remain will be the channel of the greatest river which enters into them; this will flow to the ocean and pour out its waters together with that of all the rivers which are its tributaries. [sidenote: on the earth's vibration] . the subterranean courses of water, like those which are made between the air and the earth, are those which continually consume and deepen the beds of their currents. the earth which is carried by rivers is discharged at the end of their course, that is to say, the earth carried from the highest part of the river's course is discharged at the lowest depth of its course. where fresh water arises in the sea, the miracle of the creation of an island is manifest, which will be discovered sooner or later in proportion as the quantity of water is greater or less. and an island of this kind is formed by the deposit of earth and stones made by the subterranean current of water in the channels through which it passes. { } [sidenote: nature's law] . nature never breaks her laws. . nature is constrained by the cause of her laws which dwells inborn in her. . without reason no effect is produced in nature; understand the reason and you will not need experience. [sidenote: cause discovered by effect] . before i proceed further i will make some experiments, because it is my intention to cite the experiment first and then to demonstrate by reasoning how such an experiment must necessarily take effect in such a manner. and this is the true rule by which investigations of natural phenomena must proceed; and although nature herself begins from the reason and ends in the result, we must pursue the contrary course and begin, as i said above, from experience and by it seek out the reason. [sidenote: repetition of experiment] . before deducing a general rule from this case repeat the experiment two or three times and see if the same results are produced. { } [sidenote: example of preceding rule] . it several bodies of equal weight and shape are dropped one after another at equal intervals of time, the distances between each successive body will be equally increased. the experiment to prove the above-mentioned theorem respecting motion must be made thus: take two balls of equal weight and shape and let them fall from a great height so that when they start falling they touch one another, and let the investigator stand on the ground and watch whether the contact is maintained during their fall. this experiment must be repeated several times, so that the trial may not be marred by any accident and the experiment vitiated and the spectator deceived. [sidenote: necessity of analysis] . we know definitely that sight is infinitely swift and in an instant of time perceives countless shapes, nevertheless it only sees one object at a time. let us take an example. you, o reader, will see the whole of this written page at a glance, and you will instantly realize that it is full of various letters, but you will not realize at that moment what these letters are nor what they signify; wherefore you will have to proceed word by word and line by line to take cognizance of these letters. again, if you wish to reach the summit of a building you must mount step by step, { } otherwise it will be impossible for you to reach the summit. and therefore i say to you whom nature has drawn to this art, if you wish to attain to a thorough knowledge of the forms of objects, you will begin by studying the details, and not proceed to the second until you have committed the first to memory and mastered it in practice, and if you do otherwise you will be wasting your time and protracting your studies. and remember first of all to acquire diligence, which signifies speed. [sidenote: vision] . of the nature of the eye. here are the forms, here the colours, here the form of every part of the universe are concentrated in a point, and that point is so great a marvel! o marvellous and stupendous necessity! thou dost compel by thy law, and by the most direct path, every effect to proceed from its cause. these things are verily miracles! i wrote in my anatomy how in so small a space the visual faculty can be reproduced and formed again in its whole expanse. . in many cases one and the same thing is attracted by two violent forces,--necessity and power. the water falls in rain and by necessity the earth absorbs the humidity; the sun causes it to evaporate, not of necessity, but by power. { } [sidenote: unconscious reasoning] . the pupil of the eye in the air expands and contracts according to every degree of motion made by the sun. and with every dilation or contraction the same object will appear of a different size, although frequently the relative scale of surrounding circumstances does not allow us to perceive these variations in any single object we look at. [sidenote: the eye] . the pupil of the eye dilates and contracts in proportion to the variety of bright and dark objects which are reflected in it. in this case nature has afforded compensation to the visual faculty by contracting the pupil of the eye when it is offended by excess of light and by causing it to dilate when offended by excess of darkness, like the opening of the purse. and nature here behaves like the man who has too much light in his house and closes half the window, or more or less of it according to need; and when night comes he opens the window altogether so as to see better inside his house, and nature here adopts a continued process of compensation, by continually regulating and readjusting the expansion and contracting of the pupil, in proportion to the aforesaid obscurity and light which are continually reflected in it. { } [sidenote: water surrounding the globe spherical] . when you collect facts relating to the science of the motion of water, remember to place under every proposition the uses to which it may be applied, in order that this knowledge may not be fruitless. . this is a difficult question to answer, but i will nevertheless state my opinion. water, which is clothed with air, desires naturally to cleave to its sphere because in this position it is without gravity. this gravity is twofold,--the gravity of the whole which tends to the centre of the elements, and the gravity which tends to the centre of the waters of the spherical orb; if this were not so the water would form a half sphere only, which is the sphere described from the centre upwards. but i see no means in the human mind of acquiring knowledge with regard to this. we must say, as we say of the magnet which attracts iron, that such a virtue is an occult property of which there is an infinite quantity in nature. . in the motion of earth against earth the repercussion of the portion struck is slight. water struck by water, eddies in circles around the spot where the shock has taken place. the reverberation of the voice continues for a { } great distance through the air; for a greater distance through fire. the mind travels for a still greater distance through the universe; but since it is finite it does not penetrate into infinity. . if the water which rises on the summits of the mountains comes from the sea, whence it is propelled by its weight to a greater height than that of the mountains, why has this portion of the element of water the power to elevate itself to such an altitude and to penetrate the earth by so great an expenditure of labour and time, when the residue of the element of water, whose only obstacle is the air which does not impede it, is not able to raise itself to a similar altitude? and thou who didst devise this theory, go and study nature, so that thou mayst cease to acquire such opinions of which thou hast made so great a collection, together with the capital and interest which thou dost possess. [sidenote: on the law of gravity] . the sphere of the earth has gravity which increases in proportion to the lightness of the element which contains it. fire is light in its sphere and its lightness increases in proportion to the weight of the element which contains it. { } no primary element has gravity or lightness in its own sphere. . the motion made by bodies which possess gravity to the common centre is not produced by the tendency of the body to find this centre, nor is it caused by attraction made by the centre, as by a magnet, drawing the weight towards it. . why does not the weight remain in its place? it does not remain because it has no resistance. and whither will it tend? it will tend to the centre of the earth. and why not along other lines? because the weight which meets with no resistance will descend by the shortest way to the lowest depth, and the lowest depth is the centre of the earth. and how does a weight find the centre of the earth with such directness? because it does not proceed at random, wandering by diverse courses. [sidenote: phenomena governed by mechanical laws] . instrumental science, that is to say, mechanics, is the most noble and most useful of sciences, inasmuch as by means of it all living bodies which have movement act; and this movement has { } its origin in the centre of gravity which is placed in the middle, dividing unequal weights, and it has dearth and wealth of muscles and lever also and counter-lever. . since these things are far more ancient than letters, it is no wonder if in our day no records exist to tell how these seas filled so many countries. but if some record had existed, conflagrations, floods, wars, changes of tongues and laws have consumed all that is ancient; sufficient for us is the testimony of objects born in the salt waters and found again in the high mountains far off from the seas of those times. [sidenote: heat the vital principle] . heat causes moisture to move, and cold arrests it; as is seen in a cold country which arrests the motion of the clouds in the air. where there is life there is heat, where there is vital heat there is movement of moisture. [sidenote: against those desiring to correct nature] . the act of cutting out the nostrils of a horse is a piece of ludicrous folly. and the foolish indulge in this practice as though they considered nature had failed to supply necessary wants, and man had therefore to supplement her work. nature made two apertures in the nose, which each in { } itself is half as large as the lung pipe whence breath proceeds, and if these apertures did not exist the mouth would abundantly suffice for breathing purposes. and if you said to me, why has nature thus provided animals with nostrils if respiration through the mouth is sufficient?--i would answer that nostrils are made to be used when the mouth is employed in masticating its food. [sidenote: of trees] . if a tree has been stripped of its bark in some spot, nature makes provision for this and gives a greater supply of nourishing sap to the stripped portion than to any other, so that in place of what has been taken away the bark grows thicker than in any other spot. and so impetuous is the motion of the sap that when it reaches the spot which is to be healed, it rises higher like a bounding ball, in bubbles, not unlike boiling water. [sidenote: the leaves of plants] . nature has so placed the leaves of the latest shoots of many trees that the sixth leaf is always above the first, and thus in continued succession unless the rule is obstructed. and this she has done for two useful purposes in the plant: firstly, since the branches and the fruit of the following year spring from the bud or eye which is above and in contact with the juncture of the leaves, { } the water which feeds the shoot may be able to run down and nourish the bud, through the drop being caught in the hollow whence the leaf springs. and the second advantage is that as these buds shoot in the following year, one will not be covered by the other, since the five shoots spring on five different sides. [sidenote: from known to unknown] . in order to arrive at knowledge of the motions of birds in the air, it is first necessary to acquire knowledge of the winds, which we will prove by the motions of water in itself, and this knowledge will be a step enabling us to arrive at the knowledge of beings that fly between the air and the wind. [sidenote: on the flight of birds] . the reason of this is that small birds being without down cannot support the intense cold of the high altitudes in which the vultures and eagles or and other great birds, well supplied with down and clothed with many kinds of feathers, [fly]. again, the small birds, having delicate and thin wings, support themselves in the low air, which is denser, and they could not bear up in the rarer air, which affords slighter resistance. [sidenote: on the structure of wings] . the shafts formed in the shoulders of the wings of birds have been so devised by ingenious nature { } as to occasion a convenient pliancy in the direct impetus which often occurs in the swift flight of birds, since she found it more practical to bend a small part of the wing in the direct flight than the whole of it. [sidenote: on a fossil fish] . o time! swift devourer of all created things! how many kings, how many nations, thou hast overthrown, how great changes of kingdoms and diverse vicissitudes have succeeded one another, since the marvellous body of this fish, which perished in the caverns and intricate recesses [of the mountain]. now undone by time, thou liest patient in this confined spot; with thy fleshless and bare bones thou hast built the framework and the support of the mountain that is above thee. [sidenote: we live by others' death] . unconscious life remains in what is dead, which when reunited to the stomach of living men, reacquires sentient and conscious life. [sidenote: against doctors] . men are chosen to be physicians in order to minister to diseases of which they are ignorant. . every man wishes to amass money in order to give it to the physicians who are the destroyers of life; they ought therefore to be rich. { } . take pains to preserve thy health; and thou wilt all the more easily do this if thou avoidest physicians, because their drugs are a kind of alchemy, and there are as many books on this subject as there are on medicine. . oh! meditators on perpetual motion, how many vain projects of similar character you have devised! go and join the seekers of gold. [sidenote: against the seekers of perpetual motion] . the water which flows in a river moves either because it is summoned or driven, or because it moves of its own accord. if it is summoned,--and i mean sought after,--who is the seeker? if it is driven, who is the driver? if it moves of its own accord, it gives evidence of reasoning; and reasoning in bodies which continually change their shape is impossible, because in such bodies there is no consciousness. [sidenote: against occult sciences] . i wish to work miracles. i may have less than other and less energetic men; and those who wish to grow rich in a day live a long time in great poverty, as happens, and will always happen, to alchemists, who seek to make gold and silver, and to the engineers who wish from still { } water to obtain life and perpetual motion, and to the supreme fool,--the necromancer and the magician. [sidenote: of astrology] . there is no part of astronomy which does not depend on the visual lines and on perspective, the daughter of painting; because the painter is he who by the necessity of his art has begotten perspective, and it is impossible to do without lines which include all the various figures of the bodies begotten by nature and without which the art of geometry is blind. and while the geometrist reduces every surface surrounded by lines to a square, and each body to the figure of the cube, and mathematics do the same with their cube roots and square roots, these two sciences deal only with the continuous and discontinuous quantity, but they do not deal with the quality which constitutes the beauty of the works of nature and the ornament of the world. . here the adversary will say that he does not want so much knowledge, and the mere skill of depicting nature will suffice him. to which i make reply that there is no greater error than to trust to our judgement without other reasoning, as experience, the enemy of alchemists, necromancers and other foolish intellects, has in all times proved. { } [sidenote: against alchemists] . the lying interpreters of nature affirm that quicksilver is the common seed of all metals. they do not bear in mind that nature raises substances according to the diversity of things which she wishes to produce in the world. [sidenote: against necromancy] . the belief in necromancy is reputed to be the most foolish of all human opinions. it is the sister of alchemy which gives birth to simple and natural things; but it is all the more reprehensible than alchemy, inasmuch as it brings forth nothing but what is like itself, that is, lies. this is not the case with alchemy, which is confined to the simple products of nature, and whose function cannot be performed by nature herself, because in it there are no organic instruments with which it can work, such as the hands are to man and which have enabled him to make glass, &c. but necromancy, the flag and flying banner, blown hither and thither by the winds, is the guide of the silly multitude, which constantly bears witness with gaping wonder to the countless effects of this art; and whole books are written which declare that incantations and spirits are efficacious and speak without tongues and without vocal organs, without which it is impossible to speak, and carry the heaviest weights, raising tempests and rain and { } transforming men into cats, wolves and other beasts, although they who affirm such things are the first to be transformed into beasts. and certainly if such necromancy existed, as is believed by lower intellects, there is nothing on the earth which would be so effectual both as regards the service and detriment of man; because if it is true that this art has the power to disturb the calm serenity of the atmosphere, changing it into night and producing sparks and winds, with fearful thunder and lightnings that fly through the darkness, and overthrowing high buildings with violent winds and uprooting forests and striking armies and shattering and overwhelming them, and producing, in addition to this, devastating storms which rob the peasants of the fruits of their toil, what kind of warfare is there so deadly to the enemy? who in naval warfare can be compared with him who commands the winds and generates storms which ruin and sink any fleet whatsoever? certainly he who could dispose of such violent forces would be the lord of nations, and no human skill could resist his deadly power. the hidden treasures and gems concealed in the body of the earth would be manifest unto him. he would let himself be borne through the air from the east to the west, and through all the opposed regions of the universe. but why should i proceed further? what thing is there which could not be effected by such an art? nothing, save { } the discovery of immortality. and if it is true, why has it not remained among men who so greatly desired it, and led them to disregard any deity? and i know that there are many who to satisfy a whim would destroy god and the universe. and if necromancy has not remained with man in spite of its being so necessary to him it can never have existed, nor will it ever exist according to the definition of the spirit which is invisible in the body, for in the elements there are no incorporate things, for where there is no body there is a vacuum, and a vacuum cannot exist in the elements because it would be immediately filled by them. [sidenote: deceptiveness of the senses] . the eye in its given distances and by its given means deceives itself in the performance of its functions less than any other sense, because it sees in straight lines which form a cone, the base of which is the object it perceives, and transmits it to the eye, as i intend to prove. but the ear greatly deceives itself as to the position and distance of the objects it apprehends, because the sonorous waves do not reach it in straight lines, like those of the eye, but by tortuous and reflex lines, and often the most remote seem to be nearest, owing to the peregrinations of such waves, although the voice of the echo is transmitted to the sense by straight lines only. the smell is less certain of the spot whence the odour arises, but { } taste and touch alone come into direct contact with the object which they apprehend. [sidenote: on the conception of nothingness] . the smallest natural point is larger than all mathematical points, and the proof of this is that the natural point has continuity, and everything which has continuity is infinitely divisible; but the mathematical point is indivisible because it is not a quantity. every continuous quantity is mentally infinitely divisible. among the magnitude of things which are among us, the chief of all is nothingness; and its function extends to matter that does not exist, and its essence is in time in the past or in the future, and it has nothing of the present. this nothingness has its part equal to the whole and the whole to the part, and the divisible to the indivisible, and produces the same result by addition or subtraction, or if it be divided or multiplied,--as is proved by arithmeticians by their tenth character, which represents nothing. and its power does not extend to the things of nature. that which is called nothingness is found only in time and in words: in time it is found in the past and future, and not in the present; and thus in words among things which are said to be nonexistent or impossible. in time nothingness dwells in the past and the future, and not at all in the present, and in nature it resides among the things { } which are impossible. whence from that which has been said, it has no being, because where there is nothingness there would be a vacuum. [sidenote: on spirits] . with regard to this matter, we have said on the previous page that the definition of a spirit is a power united with a body, because it cannot move of its own accord nor acquire any kind of motion. and if you say that it moves itself, this cannot be within the elements, because if the spirit is an incorporate quantity this quantity is a vacuum and the vacuum does not exist in nature, and if it did exist it would be immediately filled by the rushing in of the element in which the vacuum was formed. so according to the definition of weight which runs: "gravity is an accidental power created by one element attracted to or suspended in another," it follows that no element, weighing nothing in its own element, can have weight in the element which is above it and lighter than it; for instance, no one part of water has no more gravity or lightness than any other part, but if you were to draw it up into the air, it would acquire weight, and this weight cannot sustain itself by itself; and it must therefore inevitably fall, and thus wherever there is a vacuum in water it will fall in. the same thing would happen with a spirit among the elements where it would continuously generate a vacuum { } in whatever element it might find itself, for which reason it is inevitable that it would move in a constant flight to the sky until it had quitted these elements. [sidenote: has the spirit a body?] . we have proved that a spirit cannot exist in the elements without a body, nor move of itself by voluntary motion unless it be to rise upwards. but now we will say that if such a spirit took a body made of air it would inevitably melt into air, because if it remained united it would be separated and fall and form a vacuum, as we have described above. therefore if it desired to remain in the air it is necessary that it should blend with a quantity of air, and if it were united with the air, two difficulties arise: that is, that it will rarefy that portion of air with which it is mingled, and this rarefied air will fly upwards and will not remain in the air which is heavier than itself; and besides this the ethereal spiritual essence is disunited, and its nature is changed, for which reason that nature loses some of its first virtue. there is in addition to these a third difficulty, and this is that a body of this kind, made of air and assumed by the spirits, is exposed to the penetrating winds which continually sunder and scatter the united portions of the air, eddying and whirling amidst the rest of the atmosphere; therefore the spirit who would pervade { } this air would be dismembered or rent and broken up with the rending of the air of which it formed part. . it is impossible that the spirit, incorporated with a certain quantity of air, should move this air; and this is proved by the passage where it is said that "the spirit rarefies that portion of the air with which it is mingled." this air therefore will rise high above the other air, and the air will be set in motion by its own lightness and not by the volition of the spirit, and if this air encounters a wind, the air will be moved by the wind and not by the spirit which is incorporated in it. [sidenote: can the spirit speak?] . in order to show whether the spirit can speak or not it is first necessary to define the voice and the manner of its origin. the following will be our definition: the voice is the movement of air in friction against a dense body, or a dense body in friction against the air (which is the same idea), and by this friction of the dense and the rare what is rare is condensed, and resistance is caused; and again, when the rare in swift motion and the rare in slow motion come into contact, they condense one another and produce sound, and a great noise is made. the sound or murmur made by the rare moving through the rare { } with slow motion is like the great flame whence sounds issue in the air; the exceedingly great noise made by the rare, when the air which is rare and swift mingles with that which is rare and in [slow] motion, is like the flame of fire issuing from a great gun and striking against the air; likewise the flame when it issues from a cloud strikes the air as it begets the thunderbolt. therefore we will say that the spirit cannot produce a voice unless the air be set in motion, but since there is no air within, it cannot discharge what it does not possess; and if it wishes to move that air in which it is incorporated, it is necessary that the spirit should multiply itself; but that which has no quantity cannot be multiplied. in the fourth place it is said, that no rare body can move if it has not a stable spot whence it may take its motion, and more especially is this the case when an element must move in its own element, which does not move of itself, excepting by uniform evaporation at the centre of the thing evaporated; as occurs in the case of the sponge squeezed in the hand under water, whence the water escapes in every direction with equal motion through the spaces between the fingers of the hand which squeezes it. as to whether the spirit has an articulate voice and can be heard, and as to what are hearing and sight--the wave of the voice travels through the air as the images of objects travel to the eye. { } . o mathematicians, clear up this error! the spirit cannot have a voice, for where there is a voice there is a body, and where there is a body there is occupation of space, which prevents the eye seeing what is behind that space; therefore a body fills all the surrounding air, that is to say, with its own image. . there can be no voice where there is no motion or percussion of the air, there can be no percussion of the air where there is no instrument, there can be no such thing as an immaterial instrument; and this being so, a spirit can have neither voice, nor shape, nor force; and if it assumes a shape it can neither penetrate nor enter where the issues are closed. if any one were to say that a spirit may take bodies of various shapes by means of concentrated and compressed air, and by means of this instrument speak and move with force--i reply to this argument that where there are no nerves or bones, no force can be expended in any movement made by these imaginary spirits. { } bibliographical note and table of references bibliographical note * * * only of late years have the manuscripts of leonardo da vinci seen the light and the many difficulties been overcome which long proved an obstacle to their publication. the labour of editing, deciphering and translating his many scattered and fragmentary codices was beyond the efforts of any single man. the gratitude of the cultivated world is therefore due to those who, like j. p. richter, c. kavaisson-mollien, luca beltrami, piumati, sabachnikoff, and, last but not least, the scholars of the academia del lincei, have so faithfully devoted themselves to this task, which alone has made possible the present little work. it was unavoidable that the form in which these manuscripts have been published should practically restrict their possession to the great libraries. but an excellent volume of selections from the writings of leonardo, which are found in so haphazard a manner scattered through his codices and intermingled with his drawings and diagrams, has been published in italy (leonardo da vinci: frammenti letterari e storici, florence, ). by kind permission of its editor, dr. solmi, this has served as a basis for the text of the present translation. the references, however, have { } been verified with the complete editions of leonardo's works, while a different arrangement has been made of the text. l. e. [sidenote: table of references] table of references [a] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. le manuscrit a de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. i. paris, . [ash i] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. les manuscrits h de la bibliothèque de l'institut; (ash i) et (ash ii) de la bibliotheque nationale. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. vi. paris, . [ash ii] idem. [b] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. les manuscrits b et d de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. ii. paris, . [c] les manuscrits de leonard de vinci. les manuscrits c, e et k de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. iii. paris, . [c a] il codice atlantico di léonardo da vinci nella biblioteca ambrosiana di milano. rome; milan, . (still in course of publication.) [d] see b. [e] see c. [f] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. les manuscrits f et i de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. iv. paris, . { } [g] les manuscrits de léonard de vinci. les manuscrits g, l et m de la bibliothèque de l'institut. edit. ravaisson-mollien, vol. v. paris, . [h] see ash i. [i] see f. [l] see g. [lu] léonardo da vinci: das buch vom malerei. herausgegeben v. h. ludwig. vols. berlin, . [m] see g. [r] the literary works of leonardo da vinci. compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by j. p. richter. vols. london, . [s] leonardo da vinci: frammenti letterari e filosofici. trasceiti dal dr. edmondo solmi. florence, . [t] il codice di léonardo da vinci nella biblioteca del principe trivulzio. edit. l. beltrami. milan, . [v u] leonardo da vinci. il codice del volo degli uccelli ed altre materie. edit. sabachnikoff e piumati. paris, . [sidenote: on life] thoughts on life page. no. reference. page. no. reference. r ca r r lu r r { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. s r c a r lu c a v lu c a r s s b v r f v s c a r t v s c a r s l lu g r s c a v l s l r s r r ll i r m v s v u r r s c a v c a r s c a r s c a r ash ii r c a r c a r c a r t r f v g v s s r s c a r s c a r h v c a r s t v f v { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. s c a v r c a r r c a v r s r t r c a r t r c a v t r r c a r lu lu t v r s r r s r t s l t v c a r c v r g r lu s s h passim h r ll s h r h v s s l c a r r s r h v r l s s t v s t v s ash i v c v c a r r { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. s r r s lu s lu [sidenote: on art] thoughts on art c a v lu s lu lu lu lu lu lu s lu lu lu lu ash ii v s lu ash ii r lu ash ii r lu ash ii r v lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu lu s lu s lu lu r lu lu lu ash ii v lu lu { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. r lu r s lu s ash ii v s lu s i v lu c a v lu c a v a r g v k v ash ii v s c a v lu , s r s lu s ash i v s ash i r g r v ash i v r s l ash ii r ash ii v ash ii r s ash ii r s ash ii r s ash ii v s lu s s s [sidenote: on science] thoughts on science lu r r r { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. r f r g v f r t r f v lu g r lu f v e v s r s k r s i r, v s a r s s r l t v s t v s h r s e r s i r s r s f r s s c a r s l h r b r h r s s c v f v a r r s r c v h r r r s r s f v { } page. no. reference. page. no. reference. g v s k e r s c a v s e v c a v s e v s s s m r s r s c a v r t r k v i r d r lu f v s c a v s h v r f v s f v ash iii v s s c a v r v u v r r c a v s s c a r b v c a r of this volume translated by maurice baring and edited by lewis einstein with types & decorations by herbert p. horne ccciii copies were printed optimum vix satis by d. b. updike at the merrymount press boston massachusetts in the month of september mcm vi transcriber's notes: a few typographical errors have been corrected: they are listed at the end of the text. chapter headings were originally constructed as side-notes. they were placed here at the head of their respective paragraphs, and moved to paragraph's start where given at paragraph's middle. see html version for the original headers placement. [illustration: landscape from a painting by j. m. w. turner] library edition the complete works of john ruskin modern painters volume ii--of truth and theoretic faculties _volume iii_--of many things national library association new york chicago modern painters. volume ii., containing part iii., sections i. and ii. of the imaginative and theoretic faculties. synopsis of contents. part iii. of ideas of beauty. section i. of the theoretic faculty. chapter i.--of the rank and relations of the theoretic faculty. page § . with what care the subject is to be approached. § . and of what importance considered. § . the doubtful force of the term "utility". § . its proper sense. § . how falsely applied in these times. § . the evil consequences of such interpretation. how connected with national power. § . how to be averted. § . division of the pursuits of men into subservient and objective. § . their relative dignities. § . how reversed through erring notions of the contemplative and imaginative faculties. § . object of the present section. chapter ii.--of the theoretic faculty as concerned with pleasures of sense. § . explanation of the term "theoretic". § . of the differences of rank in pleasures of sense. § . use of the terms temperate and intemperate. § . right use of the term "intemperate". § . grounds of inferiority in the pleasures which are subjects of intemperance. § . evidence of higher rank in pleasures of sight and hearing. § . how the lower pleasures may be elevated in rank. § . ideas of beauty how essentially moral. § . how degraded by heartless reception. § . how exalted by affection. chapter iii.--of accuracy and inaccuracy in impressions of sense. § . by what test is the health of the perceptive faculty to be determined? § . and in what sense may the terms right and wrong be attached to its conclusions? § . what power we have over impressions of sense. § . depends on acuteness of attention. § . ultimate conclusions universal. § . what duty is attached to this power over impressions of sense. § . how rewarded. § . especially with respect to ideas of beauty. § . errors induced by the power of habit. § . the necessity of submission in early stages of judgment. § . the large scope of matured judgment. § . how distinguishable from false taste. § . the danger of a spirit of choice. § . and criminality. § . how certain conclusions respecting beauty are by reason demonstrable. § . with what liabilities to error. § . the term "beauty" how limitable in the outset. divided into typical and vital. chapter iv.--of false opinions held concerning beauty. § . of the false opinion that truth is beauty, and vice versa. § . of the false opinion that beauty is usefulness. compare chap. xii. § . § . of the false opinion that beauty results from custom. compare chap. vi. § . § . the twofold operation of custom. it deadens sensation, but confirms affection. § . but never either creates or destroys the essence of beauty. § . instances. § . of the false opinion that beauty depends on the association of ideas. § . association. is, st, rational. it is of no efficiency as a cause of beauty. § . association accidental. the extent of its influence. § . the dignity of its function. § . how it is connected with impressions of beauty. § . and what caution it renders necessary in the examination of them. chapter v.--of typical beauty:--first, of infinity, or the type of divine incomprehensibility. § . impossibility of adequately treating the subject. § . with what simplicity of feeling to be approached. § . the child instinct respecting space. § . continued in after life. § . whereto this instinct is traceable. § . infinity how necessary in art. § . conditions of its necessity. § . and connected analogies. § . how the dignity of treatment is proportioned to the expression of infinity. § . examples among the southern schools. § . among the venetians. § . among the painters of landscape. § . other modes in which the power of infinity is felt. § . the beauty of curvature. § . how constant in external nature. § . the beauty of gradation. § . how found in nature. § . how necessary in art. § . infinity not rightly implied by vastness. chapter vi.--of unity, or the type of the divine comprehensiveness. § . the general conception of divine unity. § . the glory of all things is their unity. § . the several kinds of unity. subjectional. original. of sequence, and of membership. § unity of membership. how secured. § . variety. why required. § . change, and its influence on beauty. § . the love of change. how morbid and evil. § . the conducing of variety towards unity of subjection. § . and towards unity of sequence. § . the nature of proportion. st, of apparent proportion. § . the value of apparent proportion in curvature. § . how by nature obtained. § . apparent proportion in melodies of line. § . error of burke in this matter. § . constructive proportion. its influence in plants. § . and animals. § . summary. chapter vii.--of repose, or the type of divine permanence. § . universal feeling respecting the necessity of repose in art. its sources. § . repose how expressed in matter. § . the necessity to repose of an implied energy. § . mental repose, how noble. § . its universal value as a test of art. § . instances in the laocoon and theseus. § . and in altar tombs. chapter viii.--of symmetry, or the type of divine justice. § . symmetry, what and how found in organic nature. § . how necessary in art. § . to what its agreeableness is referable. various instances. § . especially in religious art. chapter ix.--of purity, or the type of divine energy. § . the influence of light as a sacred symbol. § . the idea of purity connected with it. § . originally derived from conditions of matter. § . associated ideas adding to the power of the impression. influence of clearness. § . perfect beauty of surface, in what consisting. § . purity only metaphorically a type of sinlessness. § . energy, how expressed by purity of matter. § . and of color. § . spirituality, how so expressed. chapter x.--of moderation, or the type of government by law. § . meaning of the terms chasteness and refinement. § . how referable to temporary fashions. § . how to the perception of completion. § . finish, by great masters esteemed essential. § . moderation, its nature and value. § . it is the girdle of beauty. § . how found in natural curves and colors. § . how difficult of attainment, yet essential to all good. chapter xi.--general inferences respecting typical beauty. § . the subject incompletely treated, yet admitting of general conclusions. § . typical beauty not created for man's sake. § . but degrees of it for his sake admitted. § . what encouragement hence to be received. chapter xii.--of vital beauty:--first, as relative. § . transition from typical to vital beauty. § . the perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with vital beauty, is charity. § . only with respect to plants, less affection than sympathy. § . which is proportioned to the appearance of energy in the plants. § . this sympathy is unselfish, and does not regard utility. § . especially with respect to animals. § . and it is destroyed by evidences of mechanism. § . the second perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with life is justice of moral judgment. § . how impeded. § . the influence of moral signs in expression. § . as also in plants. § . recapitulation. chapter xiii.--of vital beauty:--secondly, as generic. § . the beauty of fulfilment of appointed function in every animal. § . the two senses of the word "ideal." either it refers to action of the imagination. § . or to perfection of type. § . this last sense how inaccurate, yet to be retained. § . of ideal form. first, in the lower animals. § . in what consistent. § . ideal form in vegetables. § . the difference of position between plants and animals. § . admits of variety in the ideal of the former. § . ideal form in vegetables destroyed by cultivation. § . instance in the soldanella and ranunculus. § . the beauty of repose and felicity, how consistent with such ideal. § . the ideality of art. § . how connected with the imaginative faculties. § . ideality, how belonging to ages and conditions. chapter xiv.--of vital beauty:--thirdly, in man. § . condition of the human creature entirely different from that of the lower animals. § . what room here for idealization. § . how the conception of the bodily ideal is reached. § . modifications of the bodily ideal owing to influence of mind. first, of intellect. § . secondly, of the moral feelings. § . what beauty is bestowed by them. § . how the soul culture interferes harmfully with the bodily ideal. § . the inconsistency among the effects of the mental virtues on the form. § . is a sign of god's kind purpose towards the race. § . consequent separation and difference of ideals. § . the _effects_ of the adamite curse are to be distinguished from signs of its immediate activity. § . which latter only are to be banished from ideal form. § . ideal form is only to be obtained by portraiture. § . instances among the greater of the ideal masters. § . evil results of opposite practice in modern times. § . the right use of the model. § . ideal form to be reached only by love. § . practical principles deducible. § . expressions chiefly destructive of ideal character. st, pride. § . portraiture ancient and modern. § . secondly, sensuality. § . how connected with impurity of color. § . and prevented by its splendor. § . or by severity of drawing. § . degrees of descent in this respect: rubens, correggio, and guido. § . and modern art. § . thirdly, ferocity and fear. the latter how to be distinguished from awe. § . holy fear, how distinct from human terror. § . ferocity is joined always with fear. its unpardonableness. § . such expressions how sought by painters powerless and impious. § . of passion generally. § . it is never to be for itself exhibited--at least on the face. § . recapitulation. chapter xv.--general conclusions respecting the theoretic faculty. § . there are no sources of the emotion of beauty more than those found in things visible. § . what imperfection exists in visible things. how in a sort by imagination removable. § . which however affects not our present conclusions. § . the four sources from which the pleasure of beauty is derived are all divine. § . what objections may be made to this conclusion. § . typical beauty may be æsthetically pursued. instances. § . how interrupted by false feeling. § . greatness and truth are sometimes by the deity sustained and spoken in and through evil men. § . the second objection arising from the coldness of christian men to external beauty. § . reasons for this coldness in the anxieties of the world. these anxieties overwrought and criminal. § . evil consequences of such coldness. § . theoria the service of heaven. section ii. of the imaginative faculty. chapter i.--of the three forms of imagination. § . a partial examination only of the imagination is to be attempted. § . the works of the metaphysicians how nugatory with respect to this faculty. § . the definition of d. stewart, how inadequate. § . this instance nugatory. § . various instances. § . the three operations of the imagination. penetrative, associative, contemplative. chapter ii.--of imagination associative. § . of simple conception. § . how connected with verbal knowledge. § . how used in composition. § . characteristics of composition. § . what powers are implied by it. the first of the three functions of fancy. § . imagination not yet manifested. § . imagination is the correlative conception of imperfect component parts. § . material analogy with imagination. § . the grasp and dignity of imagination. § . its limits. § . how manifested in treatment of uncertain relations. its deficiency illustrated. § . laws of art, the safeguard of the unimaginative. § . are by the imaginative painter despised. tests of imagination. § . the monotony of unimaginative treatment. § . imagination never repeats itself. § . relation of the imaginative faculty to the theoretic. § . modification of its manifestation. § . instances of absence of imagination.--claude, gaspar poussin. § . its presence.--salvator, nicolo poussin, titian, tintoret. § . and turner. § . the due function of associative imagination with respect to nature. § . the sign of imaginative work is its appearance of absolute truth. chapter iii.--of imagination penetrative. § . imagination penetrative is concerned not with the combining but apprehending of things. § . milton's and dante's description of flame. § . the imagination seizes always by the innermost point. § . it acts intuitively and without reasoning. § . signs of it in language. § . absence of imagination, how shown. § . distinction between imagination and fancy. § . fancy how involved with imagination. § . fancy is never serious. § . want of seriousness the bar to high art at the present time. § . imagination is quiet; fancy, restless. § . the detailing operation of fancy. § . and suggestive, of the imagination. § . this suggestiveness how opposed to vacancy. § . imagination addresses itself to imagination. instances from the works of tintoret. § . the entombment. § . the annunciation. § . the baptism of christ. its treatment by various painters. § . by tintoret. § . the crucifixion. § . the massacre of innocents. § . various works in the scuola di san rocco. § . the last judgment. how treated by various painters. § . by tintoret. § . the imaginative verity, how distinguished from realism. § . the imagination how manifested in sculpture. § . bandinelli, canova, mino da fiesole. § . michael angelo. § . recapitulation. the perfect function of the imagination is the intuitive perception of ultimate truth. § . imagination how vulgarly understood. § . how its cultivation is dependent on the moral feelings. § . on independence of mind. § . and on habitual reference to nature. chapter iv.--of imagination contemplative. § . imagination contemplative is not part of the essence, but only a habit or mode of the faculty. § . the ambiguity of conception. § . is not in itself capable of adding to the charm of fair things. § . but gives to the imagination its regardant power over them. § . the third office of fancy distinguished from imagination contemplative. § . various instances. § . morbid or nervous fancy. § . the action of contemplative imagination is not to be expressed by art. § . except under narrow limits.-- st. abstract rendering of form without color. § . of color without form. § . or of both without texture. § . abstraction or typical representation of animal form. § . either when it is symbolically used. § . or in architectural decoration. § . exception in delicate and superimposed ornament. § . abstraction necessary from imperfection of materials. § . abstractions of things capable of varied accident are not imaginative. § . yet sometimes valuable. § . exaggeration. its laws and limits. first, in scale of representation. § . secondly, of things capable of variety of scale. § . thirdly, necessary in expression of characteristic features on diminished scale. § . recapitulation. chapter v.--of the superhuman ideal. § . the subject is not to be here treated in detail. § . the conceivable modes of manifestation of spiritual beings are four. § . and these are in or through creature forms familiar to us. § . supernatural character may be impressed on these either by phenomena inconsistent with their common nature (compare chap. iv. § ). § . or by inherent dignity. § . st. of the expression of inspiration. § . no representation of that which is more than creature is possible. § . supernatural character expressed by modification of accessories. § . landscape of the religious painters. its character is eminently symmetrical. § . landscape of benozzo gozzoli. § . landscape of perugino and raffaelle. § . such landscape is not to be imitated. § . color, and decoration. their use in representations of the supernatural. § . decoration so used must be generic. § . and color pure. § . ideal form of the body itself, of what variety susceptible. § . anatomical development how far admissible. § . symmetry. how valuable. § . the influence of greek art, how dangerous. § . its scope, how limited. § . conclusion. addenda. list of plates to volume ii. _page._ court of the ducal palace, venice from a drawing by ruskin. tomb of the ilaria di caretto, lucca from a photograph. the adoration of the magi from a painting by ruskin, after tintoret. study of stone pine, at sestri from a drawing by ruskin. part iii. of ideas of beauty. section i. of the theoretic faculty. chapter i. of the rank and relations of the theoretic faculty. § . with what care the subject is to be approached. although the hasty execution and controversial tone of the former portions of this essay have been subjects of frequent regret to the writer, yet the one was in some measure excusable in a work referred to a temporary end, and the other unavoidable, in one directed against particular opinions. nor are either of any necessary detriment to its availableness as a foundation for more careful and extended survey, in so far as its province was confined to the assertion of obvious and visible facts, the verification of which could in no degree be dependent either on the care with which they might be classed, or the temper in which they were regarded. not so with respect to the investigation now before us, which, being not of things outward, and sensibly demonstrable, but of the value and meaning of mental impressions, must be entered upon with a modesty and cautiousness proportioned to the difficulty of determining the likeness, or community of such impressions, as they are received by different men, and with seriousness proportioned to the importance of rightly regarding those faculties over which we have moral power, and therefore in relation to which we assuredly incur a moral responsibility. there is not the thing left to the choice of man to do or not to do, but there is some sort of degree of duty involved in his determination; and by how much the more, therefore, our subject becomes embarrassed by the cross influences of variously admitted passion, administered discipline, or encouraged affection, upon the minds of men, by so much the more it becomes matter of weight and import to observe by what laws we should be guided, and of what responsibilities regardful, in all that we admit, administer, or encourage. § . and of what importance considered. nor indeed have i ever, even in the preceding sections, spoken with levity, though sometimes perhaps with rashness. i have never treated the subject as other than demanding heedful and serious examination, and taking high place among those which justify as they reward our utmost ardor and earnestness of pursuit. that it justifies them must be my present task to prove; that it demands them has never been doubted. art, properly so called, is no recreation; it cannot be learned at spare moments, nor pursued when we have nothing better to do. it is no handiwork for drawing-room tables; no relief of the ennui of boudoirs; it must be understood and undertaken seriously or not at all. to advance it men's lives must be given, and to receive it their hearts. "le peintre rubens s'amuse à être ambassadeur," said one with whom, but for his own words, we might have thought that effort had been absorbed in power, and the labor of his art in its felicity.--"e faticoso lo studio della pittura, et sempre si fa il mare maggiore," said he, who of all men was least likely to have left us discouraging report of anything that majesty of intellect could grasp, or continuity of labor overcome.[ ] but that this labor, the necessity of which in all ages has been most frankly admitted by the greatest men, is justifiable in a moral point of view, that it is not the pouring out of men's lives upon the ground, that it has functions of usefulness addressed to the weightiest of human interests, and that the objects of it have calls upon us which it is inconsistent alike with our human dignity and our heavenward duty to disobey--has never been boldly asserted nor fairly admitted; least of all is it likely to be so in these days of dispatch and display, where vanity, on the one side, supplies the place of that love of art which is the only effective patronage, and on the other, of the incorruptible and earnest pride which no applause, no reprobation, can blind to its shortcomings nor beguile of its hope. and yet it is in the expectation of obtaining at least a partial acknowledgment of this, as a truth influential both of aim and conduct, that i enter upon the second division of my subject. the time i have already devoted to the task i should have considered altogether inordinate, and that which i fear may be yet required for its completion would have been cause to me of utter discouragement, but that the object i propose to myself is of no partial nor accidental importance. it is not now to distinguish between disputed degrees of ability in individuals, or agreeableness in canvases, it is not now to expose the ignorance or defend the principles of party or person. it is to summon the moral energies of the nation to a forgotten duty, to display the use, force, and function of a great body of neglected sympathies and desires, and to elevate to its healthy and beneficial operation that art which, being altogether addressed to them, rises or falls with their variableness of vigor,--now leading them with tyrtæan fire, now singing them to sleep with baby murmurings. § . the doubtful force of the term "utility." only as i fear that with many of us the recommendation of our own favorite pursuits is rooted more in conceit of ourselves, than affection towards others, so that sometimes in our very pointing of the way, we had rather that the intricacy of it should be admired than unfolded, whence a natural distrust of such recommendation may well have place in the minds of those who have not yet perceived any value in the thing praised, and because also, men in the present century understand the word useful in a strange way, or at least (for the word has been often so accepted from the beginning of time) since in these days, they act its more limited meaning farther out, and give to it more practical weight and authority, it will be well in the outset that i define exactly what kind of utility i mean to attribute to art, and especially to that branch of it which is concerned with those impressions of external beauty whose nature it is our present object to discover. § . its proper sense. that is to everything created, pre-eminently useful, which enables it rightly and fully to perform the functions appointed to it by its creator. therefore, that we may determine what is chiefly useful to man, it is necessary first to determine the use of man himself. man's use and function (and let him who will not grant me this follow me no farther, for this i purpose always to assume) is to be the witness of the glory of god, and to advance that glory by his reasonable obedience and resultant happiness. whatever enables us to fulfil this function, is in the pure and first sense of the word useful to us. pre-eminently therefore whatever sets the glory of god more brightly before us. but things that only help us to exist, are in a secondary and mean sense, useful, or rather, if they be looked for alone, they are useless and worse, for it would be better that we should not exist, than that we should guiltily disappoint the purposes of existence. § . how falsely applied in these times. and yet people speak in this working age, when they speak from their hearts, as if houses, and lands, and food, and raiment were alone useful, and as if sight, thought, and admiration,[ ] were all profitless, so that men insolently call themselves utilitarians, who would turn, if they had their way, themselves and their race into vegetables; men who think, as far as such can be said to think, that the meat is more than the life, and the raiment than the body, who look to the earth as a stable, and to its fruit as fodder; vinedressers and husbandmen, who love the corn they grind, and the grapes they crush, better than the gardens of the angels upon the slopes of eden; hewers of wood and drawers of water, who think that the wood they hew and the water they draw, are better than the pine-forests that cover the mountains like the shadow of god, and than the great rivers that move like his eternity. and so comes upon us that woe of the preacher, that though god "hath made everything beautiful in his time, also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that god maketh from the beginning to the end." § . the evil consequences of such interpretation. how connected with national power. this nebuchadnezzar curse, that sends us to grass like oxen, seems to follow but too closely on the excess or continuance of national power and peace. in the perplexities of nations, in their struggles for existence, in their infancy, their impotence, or even their disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler passions. out of the suffering comes the serious mind; out of the salvation, the grateful heart; out of the endurance, the fortitude; out of the deliverance, the faith; but now when they have learned to live under providence of laws, and with decency and justice of regard for each other; and when they have done away with violent and external sources of suffering, worse evils seem arising out of their rest, evils that vex less and mortify more, that suck the blood though they do not shed it, and ossify the heart though they do not torture it. and deep though the causes of thankfulness must be to every people at peace with others and at unity in itself, there are causes of fear also, a fear greater than of sword and sedition; that dependence on god may be forgotten because the bread is given and the water is sure, that gratitude to him may cease because his constancy of protection has taken the semblance of a natural law, that heavenly hope may grow faint amidst the full fruition of the world, that selfishness may take place of undemanded devotion, compassion be lost in vain-glory, and love in dissimulation,[ ] that enervation may succeed to strength, apathy to patience, and the noise of jesting words and foulness of dark thoughts, to the earnest purity of the girded loins and the burning lamp. about the river of human life there is a wintry wind, though a heavenly sunshine; the iris colors its agitation, the frost fixes upon its repose. let us beware that our rest become not the rest of stones, which so long as they are torrent-tossed, and thunder-stricken, maintain their majesty, but when the stream is silent, and the storm passed, suffer the grass to cover them and the lichen to feed on them, and are ploughed down into dust. § . how to be averted. and though i believe that we have salt enough of ardent and holy mind amongst us to keep us in some measure from this moral decay, yet the signs of it must be watched with anxiety, in all matter however trivial, in all directions however distant. and at this time, when the iron roads are tearing up the surface of europe, as grapeshot do the sea, when their great sagene is drawing and twitching the ancient frame and strength of england together, contracting all its various life, its rocky arms and rural heart, into a narrow, finite, calculating metropolis of manufactures, when there is not a monument throughout the cities of europe, that speaks of old years and mighty people, but it is being swept away to build cafés and gaming-houses;[ ] when the honor of god is thought to consist in the poverty of his temple, and the column is shortened, and the pinnacle shattered, the color denied to the casement, and the marble to the altar, while exchequers are exhausted in luxury of boudoirs, and pride of reception-rooms; when we ravage without a pause all the loveliness of creation which god in giving pronounced good, and destroy without a thought all those labors which men have given their lives, and their sons' sons' lives to complete, and have left for a legacy to all their kind, a legacy of more than their hearts' blood, for it is of their souls' travail, there is need, bitter need, to bring back, if we may, into men's minds, that to live is nothing, unless to live be to know him by whom we live, and that he is not to be known by marring his fair works, and blotting out the evidence of his influences upon his creatures, not amid the hurry of crowds and crash of innovation, but in solitary places, and out of the glowing intelligences which he gave to men of old. he did not teach them how to build for glory and for beauty, he did not give them the fearless, faithful, inherited energies that worked on and down from death to death, generation after generation, that we, foul and sensual as we are, might give the carved work of their poured-out spirit to the axe and the hammer; he has not cloven the earth with rivers, that their white wild waves might turn wheels and push paddles, nor turned it up under as it were fire, that it might heat wells and cure diseases; he brings not up his quails by the east wind, only to let them fall in flesh about the camp of men: he has not heaped the rocks of the mountain only for the quarry, nor clothed the grass of the field only for the oven. § . division of the pursuits of men into subservient and objective. all science and all art may be divided into that which is subservient to life, and which is the object of it. as subservient to life, or practical, their results are, in the common sense of the word, useful. as the object of life or theoretic, they are, in the common sense, useless; and yet the step between practical and theoretic science is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apothecary and the chemist; and the step between practical and theoretic art is that between the bricklayer and the architect, between the plumber and the artist, and this is a step allowed on all hands to be from less to greater; so that the so-called useless part of each profession does by the authoritative and right instinct of mankind assume the superior and more noble place, even though books be sometimes written, and that by writers of no ordinary mind, which assume that a chemist is rewarded for the years of toil which have traced the greater part of the combinations of matter to their ultimate atoms, by discovering a cheap way of refining sugar, and date the eminence of the philosopher, whose life has been spent in the investigation of the laws of light, from the time of his inventing an improvement in spectacles. but the common consent of men proves and accepts the proposition, that whatever part of any pursuit ministers to the bodily comforts, and admits of material uses, is ignoble, and whatsoever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble; and that geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron; astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven than in teaching navigation; botany better in displaying structure than in expressing juices; surgery better in investigating organization than in setting limbs; only it is ordained that, for our encouragement, every step we make in the more exalted range of science adds something also to its practical applicabilities; that all the great phenomena of nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us partly, as it reveals to farther vision the being and the glory of him in whom they rejoice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences and so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire as the imperfection of their nature may admit;[ ] that the strong torrents which, in their own gladness fill the hills with hollow thunder and the vales with winding light, have yet their bounden charge of field to feed and barge to bear; that the fierce flames to which the alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for us the metal vein and quickening spring; and that for our incitement, i say not our reward, for knowledge is its own reward, herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and stars their times. § . their relative dignities. § . how reversed through erring notions of the contemplative and imaginative faculties. it would appear, therefore, that those pursuits which are altogether theoretic, whose results are desirable or admirable in themselves and for their own sake, and in which no farther end to which their productions or discoveries are referred, can interrupt the contemplation of things as they are, by the endeavor to discover of what selfish uses they are capable (and of this order are painting and sculpture), ought to take rank above all pursuits which have any taint in them of subserviency to life, in so far as all such tendency is the sign of less eternal and less holy function.[ ] and such rank these two sublime arts would indeed assume in the minds of nations, and become objects of corresponding efforts, but for two fatal and widespread errors respecting the great faculties of mind concerned in them. the first of these, or the theoretic faculty, is concerned with the moral perception and appreciation of ideas of beauty. and the error respecting it is the considering and calling it æsthetic, degrading it to a mere operation of sense, or perhaps worse, of custom, so that the arts which appeal to it sink into a mere amusement, ministers to morbid sensibilities, ticklers and fanners of the soul's sleep. the second great faculty is the imaginative, which the mind exercises in a certain mode of regarding or combining the ideas it has received from external nature, and the operations of which become in their turn objects of the theoretic faculty to other minds. [illustration: court of the ducal palace, venice. from a drawing by ruskin.] and the error respecting this faculty is, that its function is one of falsehood, that its operation is to exhibit things as they are _not_, and that in so doing it mends the works of god. § . object of the present section. now, as these are the two faculties to which i shall have occasion constantly to refer during that examination of the ideas of beauty and relation on which we are now entering, because it is only as received and treated by these, that those ideas become exalted and profitable, it becomes necessary for me, in the outset, to explain their power and define their sphere, and to vindicate, in the system of our nature, their true place for the intellectual lens and moral retina by which and on which our informing thoughts are concentrated and represented. footnotes [ ] tintoret. (ridolfi. vita.) [ ] we live by admiration, hope, and love. (excursion, book iv.) [ ] rom. xii. . [ ] the extent of ravage among works of art, or of historical interest, continually committing throughout the continent may, perhaps, be in some measure estimated from the following facts, to which the experience of every traveller may add indefinitely: at beauvois--the magnificent old houses supported on columns of workmanship (so far as i recollect) unique in the north of france, at the corner of the market-place, have recently been destroyed for the enlarging of some ironmongery and grocery warehouses. the arch across the street leading to the cathedral has been destroyed also, for what purpose, i know not. at rouen--the last of the characteristic houses on the quay is now disappearing. when i was last there, i witnessed the destruction of the noble gothic portal of the church of st. nicholas, whose position interfered with the courtyard of an hotel; the greater part of the ancient churches are used as smithies, or warehouses for goods. so also at tours (st. julien). one of the most interesting and superb pieces of middle-age domestic architecture in europe, opposite the west front of the cathedral, is occupied as a café, and its lower story concealed by painted wainscotings; representing, if i recollect right, twopenny rolls surrounded by circles of admiring cherubs. at geneva--the wooden projections or loggias which were once the characteristic feature of the city, have been entirely removed within the last ten years. at pisa--the old baptistery is at this present time in process of being "restored," that is, dashed to pieces, and common stone painted black and varnished, substituted for its black marble. in the campo santo, the invaluable frescoes, which might be protected by merely glazing the arcades, are left exposed to wind and weather. while i was there last year i saw a monument put up against the lower part of the wall, to some private person; the bricklayers knocked out a large space of the lower brickwork, with what beneficial effect to the loose and blistered stucco on which the frescoes are painted above, i leave the reader to imagine; inserted the tablet, and then plastered over the marks of the insertion, destroying a portion of the border of one of the paintings. the greater part of giotto's "satan before god," has been destroyed by the recent insertion of one of the beams of the roof. the tomb of antonio puccinello, which was the last actually put up against the frescoes, and which destroyed the terminal subject of the giotto series, bears date . it has been proposed (or at least it is so reported) that the church of la spina should be destroyed in order to widen the quay. at florence--one of its most important and characteristic streets, that in which stands the church of or san michele, has been within the last five years entirely destroyed and rebuilt in the french style; consisting now almost exclusively of shops of bijouterie and parfumerie. owing to this direction of public funds, the fronts of the duomo, santa croce, st. lorenzo, and half the others in florence remain in their original bricks. the old refectory of santa croce, containing an invaluable cenacolo, if not by giotto, at least one of the finest works of his school, is used as a carpet manufactory. in order to see the fresco, i had to get on the top of a loom. the _cenacolo_ (of raffaelle?) recently discovered, i saw when the refectory it adorns was used as a coach-house. the fresco, which gave raffaelle the idea of the christ of the transfiguration, is in an old wood shed at san miniato, concealed behind a heap of faggots. in june, last year, i saw gentile da fabriano's picture of the adoration of the magi, belonging to the academy of florence, put face upmost in a shower of rain in an open cart; on my suggesting the possibility of the rain hurting it, an old piece of matting was thrown over its face, and it was wheeled away "per essere pulita." what fate this signified, is best to be discovered from the large perugino in the academy; whose divine distant landscape is now almost concealed by the mass of french ultramarine, painted over it apparently with a common house brush, by the picture cleaner. not to detain the reader by going through the cities of italy, i will only further mention, that at padua, the rain beats through the west window of the arena chapel, and runs down _over_ the frescoes. that at venice, in september last, i saw three buckets set in the scuola di san rocco to catch the rain which came _through_ the _canvases_ of tintoret on the roof; and that while the old works of art are left thus unprotected, the palaces are being restored in the following modes. the english residents knock out bow windows to see up and down the canal. the italians paint all the _marble_ white or cream color, stucco the fronts, and paint them in blue and white stripes to imitate alabaster. (this has been done with danieli's hotel, with the north angle of the church of st. mark, there replacing the real alabasters which have been torn down, with a noble old house in st. mark's place, and with several in the narrow canals.) the marbles of st. mark's, and carvings, are being _scraped_ down to make them look bright--the lower arcade of the doge's palace is whitewashed--the entrance porch is being restored--the operation having already proceeded so far as the knocking off of the heads of the old statues--an iron railing painted black and yellow has been put round the court. faded tapestries, and lottery tickets (the latter for the benefit of charitable institutions) are exposed for sale in the council chambers. [ ] hooker, eccl. pol. book i. chap. ii. § . [ ] i do not assert that the accidental utility of a theoretic pursuit, as of botany for instance, in any way degrades it, though it cannot be considered as elevating it. but essential utility, a purpose to which the pursuit is in some measure referred, as in architecture, invariably degrades, because then the theoretic part of the art is comparatively lost sight of; and thus architecture takes a level below that of sculpture or painting, even when the powers of mind developed in it are of the same high order. when we pronounce the name of giotto, our venerant thoughts are at assisi and padua, before they climb the campanile of santa maria del fiore. and he who would raise the ghost of michael angelo, must haunt the sistine and st. lorenzo, not st. peter's. chapter ii. of the theoretic faculty as concerned with pleasures of sense. § . explanation of the term "theoretic." i proceed therefore first, to examine the nature of what i have called the theoretic faculty, and to justify my substitution of the term "theoretic" for æsthetic, which is the one commonly employed with reference to it. now the term "æsthesis" properly signifies mere sensual perception of the outward qualities and necessary effects of bodies, in which sense only, if we would arrive at any accurate conclusions on this difficult subject, it should always be used. but i wholly deny that the impressions of beauty are in any way sensual,--they are neither sensual nor intellectual, but moral, and for the faculty receiving them, whose difference from mere perception i shall immediately endeavor to explain, no term can be more accurate or convenient than that employed by the greeks, "theoretic," which i pray permission, therefore, always to use, and to call the operation of the faculty itself, theoria. § . of the differences of rank in pleasures of sense. let us begin at the lowest point, and observe, first, what differences of dignity may exist between different kinds of æsthetic or sensual pleasure, properly so called. now it is evident that the being common to brutes, or peculiar to man, can alone be no rational test of inferiority, or dignity in pleasures. we must not assume that man is the nobler animal, and then deduce the nobleness of his delights; but we must prove the nobleness of the delights, and thence the nobleness of the animal. the dignity of affection is no way lessened because a large measure of it may be found in lower animals, neither is the vileness of gluttony and lust abated because they are common to men. it is clear, therefore, that there is a standard of dignity in the pleasures and passions themselves, by which we also class the creatures capable of, or suffering them. § . use of the terms temperate and intemperate. the first great distinction, we observe, is that noted of aristotle, that men are called temperate and intemperate with regard to some, and not so with respect to others, and that those, with respect to which they are so called, are, by common consent, held to be the vilest. but aristotle, though exquisitely subtle in his notation of facts, does not frequently give us satisfactory account of, or reason for them. content with stating the fact of these pleasures being held the lowest, he shows not why this estimation of them is just, and confuses the reader by observing casually respecting the higher pleasures, what is indeed true, but appears at first opposed to his own position, namely, that "men may be conceived, as also in these taking pleasure, either rightly, or more or less than is right."[ ] which being so, and evident capability of excess or defect existing in pleasures of this higher order, we ought to have been told how it happens that men are not called intemperate when they indulge in excess of this kind, and what is that difference in the nature of the pleasure which diminishes the criminality of its excess. this let us attempt to ascertain. § . right use of the term "intemperate." men are held intemperate ([greek: akolastoi]) only when their desires overcome or prevent the action of their reason, and they are indeed intemperate in the exact degree in which such prevention or interference takes place, and so are actually [greek: akolastoi], in many instances, and with respect to many resolves, which lower not the world's estimation of their temperance. for so long as it can be supposed that the reason has acted imperfectly owing to its own imperfection, or to the imperfection of the premises submitted to it, (as when men give an inordinate preference to their own pursuits, because they cannot, in the nature of things, have sufficiently experienced the goodness and benefit of others,) and so long as it may be presumed that men have referred to reason in what they do, and have not suffered its orders to be disobeyed through mere impulse and desire, (though those orders may be full of error owing to the reason's own feebleness,) so long men are not held intemperate. but when it is palpably evident that the reason cannot have erred but that its voice has been deadened or disobeyed, and that the reasonable creature has been dragged dead round the walls of his own citadel by mere passion and impulse,--then, and then only, men are of all held intemperate. and this is evidently the case with respect to inordinate indulgence in pleasures of touch and taste, for these, being destructive in their continuance not only of all other pleasures, but of the very sensibilities by which they themselves are received, and as this penalty is actually known and experienced by those indulging in them, so that the reason cannot but pronounce right respecting their perilousness, there is no palliation of the wrong choice; and the man, as utterly incapable of will,[ ] is called intemperate, or [greek: akolastos]. it would be well if the reader would for himself follow out this subject, which it would be irrelevant here to pursue farther, observing how a certain degree of intemperance is suspected and attributed to men with respect to higher impulses; as, for instance, in the case of anger, or any other passion criminally indulged, and yet is not so attributed, as in the case of sensual pleasures; because in anger the reason is supposed not to have had time to operate, and to be itself affected by the presence of the passion, which seizes the man involuntarily and before he is aware; whereas, in the case of the sensual pleasures, the act is deliberate, and determined on beforehand, in direct defiance of reason. nevertheless, if no precaution be taken against immoderate anger, and the passions gain upon the man, so as to be evidently wilful and unrestrained, and admitted contrary to all reason, we begin to look upon him as, in the real sense of the word, intemperate, or [greek: akolastos], and assign to him, in consequence, his place among the beasts, as definitely as if he had yielded to the pleasurable temptations of touch or taste. § . grounds of inferiority in the pleasures which are subjects of intemperance. we see, then, that the primal ground of inferiority in these pleasures is that which _proves_ their indulgence to be contrary to reason; namely their destructiveness upon prolongation, and their incapability of co-existing continually with other delights or perfections of the system. and this incapability of continuance directs us to the second cause of their inferiority; namely, that they are given to us as subservient to life, as instruments of our preservation--compelling us to seek the things necessary to our being, and that, therefore, when this their function is fully performed, they ought to have an end; and can be only artificially, and under high penalty, prolonged. but the pleasures of sight and hearing are given as gifts. they answer not any purposes of mere existence, for the distinction of all that is useful or dangerous to us might be made, and often is made, by the eye, without its receiving the slightest pleasure of sight. we might have learned to distinguish fruits and grain from flowers, without having any superior pleasure in the aspect of the latter. and the ear might have learned to distinguish the sounds that communicate ideas, or to recognize intimations of elemental danger without perceiving either music in the voice, or majesty in the thunder. and as these pleasures have no function to perform, so there is no limit to their continuance in the accomplishment of their end, for they are an end in themselves, and so may be perpetual with all of us--being in no way destructive, but rather increasing in exquisiteness by repetition. § . evidence of higher rank in pleasures of sight and hearing. herein, then, we find very sufficient ground for the higher estimation of these delights, first, in their being eternal and inexhaustible, and secondly, in their being evidently no means or instrument of life, but an object of life. now in whatever is an object of life, in whatever may be infinitely and for itself desired, we may be sure there is something of divine, for god will not make anything an object of life to his creatures which does not point to, or partake of, himself. and so, though we were to regard the pleasures of sight merely as the highest of sensual pleasures, and though they were of rare occurrence, and, when occurring, isolated and imperfect, there would still be a supernatural character about them, owing to their permanence and self-sufficiency, where no other sensual pleasures are permanent or self-sufficient. but when, instead of being scattered, interrupted, or chance-distributed, they are gathered together, and so arranged to enhance each other as by chance they could not be, there is caused by them not only a feeling of strong affection towards the object in which they exist, but a perception of purpose and adaptation of it to our desires; a perception, therefore, of the immediate operation of the intelligence which so formed us, and so feeds us. out of which perception arise joy, admiration, and gratitude. now the mere animal consciousness of the pleasantness i call æsthesis; but the exulting, reverent, and grateful perception of it i call theoria. for this, and this only, is the full comprehension and contemplation of the beautiful as a gift of god, a gift not necessary to our being, but added to, and elevating it, and twofold, first of the desire, and secondly of the thing desired. § . how the lower pleasures may be elevated in rank. and that this joyfulness and reverence are a necessary part of theoretic pleasure is very evident when we consider that, by the presence of these feelings, even the lower and more sensual pleasures may be rendered theoretic. thus aristotle has subtly noted, that "we call not men intemperate so much with respect to the scents of roses or herb-perfumes as of ointments and of condiments," (though the reason that he gives for this be futile enough.) for the fact is, that of scents artificially prepared the extreme desire is intemperance, but of natural and god-given scents, which take their part in the harmony and pleasantness of creation, there can hardly be intemperance; not that there is any absolute difference between the two kinds, but that these are likely to be received with gratitude and joyfulness rather than those, so that we despise the seeking of essences and unguents, but not the sowing of violets along our garden banks. but all things may be elevated by affection, as the spikenard of mary, and in the song of solomon, the myrrh upon the handles of the lock, and that of isaac concerning his son. and the general law for all these pleasures is, that when sought in the abstract and ardently, they are foul things, but when received with thankfulness and with reference to god's glory, they become theoretic; and so i can find something divine in the sweetness of wild fruits, as well as in the pleasantness of the pure air, and the tenderness of its natural perfumes that come and go as they list. § . ideas of beauty how essentially moral. it will be understood why i formerly said in the chapter respecting ideas of beauty, that those ideas were the subject of moral and not of intellectual, nor altogether of sensual perception; and why i spoke of the pleasures connected with them as derived from "those material sources which are agreeable to our moral nature in its purity and perfection." for, as it is necessary to the existence of an idea of beauty, that the sensual pleasure which may be its basis, should be accompanied first with joy, then with love of the object, then with the perception of kindness in a superior intelligence, finally with thankfulness and veneration towards that intelligence itself, and as no idea can be at all considered as in any way an idea of beauty, until it be made up of these emotions, any more than we can be said to have an idea of a letter of which we perceive the perfume and the fair writing, without understanding the contents of it, or intent of it; and as these emotions are in no way resultant from, nor obtainable by, any operation of the intellect, it is evident that the sensation of beauty is not sensual on the one hand, nor is it intellectual on the other, but is dependent on a pure, right, and open state of the heart, both for its truth and for its intensity, insomuch that even the right after action of the intellect upon facts of beauty so apprehended, is dependent on the acuteness of the heart feeling about them; and thus the apostolic words come true, in this minor respect as in all others, that men are alienated from the life of god, through the ignorance that is in them, having the understanding darkened because of the hardness of their hearts, and so being past feeling, give themselves up to lasciviousness; for we do indeed see constantly that men having naturally acute perceptions of the beautiful, yet not receiving it with a pure heart, nor into their hearts at all, never comprehend it, nor receive good from it, but make it a mere minister to their desires, and accompaniment and seasoning of lower sensual pleasures, until all their emotions take the same earthly stamp, and the sense of beauty sinks into the servant of lust. § . how degraded by heartless reception. § . how exalted by affection. nor is what the world commonly understands by the cultivation of taste, anything more or better than this, at least in times of corrupt and over-pampered civilization, when men build palaces and plant groves and gather luxuries, that they and their devices may hang in the corners of the world like fine-spun cobwebs, with greedy, puffed-up, spider-like lusts in the middle. and this, which in christian times is the abuse and corruption of the sense of beauty, was in that pagan life of which st. paul speaks, little less than the essence of it, and the best they had; for i know not that of the expressions of affection towards external nature to be found among heathen writers, there are any of which the balance and leading thought cleaves not towards the sensual parts of her. her beneficence they sought, and her power they shunned, her teaching through both, they understood never. the pleasant influences of soft winds and ringing streamlets, and shady coverts; of the violet couch, and plane-tree shade,[ ] they received, perhaps, in a more noble way than we, but they found not anything except fear, upon the bare mountain, or in the ghostly glen. the hybla heather they loved more for its sweet hives than its purple hues. but the christian theoria seeks not, though it accepts, and touches with its own purity, what the epicurean sought, but finds its food and the objects of its love everywhere, in what is harsh and fearful, as well as what is kind, nay, even in all that seems coarse and commonplace; seizing that which is good, and delighting more sometimes at finding its table spread in strange places, and in the presence of its enemies, and its honey coming out of the rock, than if all were harmonized into a less wondrous pleasure; hating only what is self-sighted and insolent of men's work, despising all that is not of god, unless reminding it of god, yet able to find evidence of him still, where all seems forgetful of him, and to turn that into a witness of his working which was meant to obscure it, and so with clear and unoffended sight beholding him forever, according to the written promise,--blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see god. footnotes [ ] [greek: hôs dei, kai kath' hyperbolên kai elleipsin.] [ ] comp. hooker, eccl. pol. book i. chap. . [ ] plato, phædrus, § . chapter iii. of accuracy and inaccuracy in impressions of sense. § . by what test is the health of the perceptive faculty to be determined? hitherto we have observed only the distinctions of dignity among pleasures of sense, considered merely as such, and the way in which any of them may become theoretic in being received with right feeling. but as we go farther, and examine the distinctive nature of ideas of beauty, we shall, i believe, perceive something in them besides æsthetic pleasure, which attests a more important function belonging to them than attaches to other sensual ideas, and exhibits a more exalted character in the faculty by which they are received. and this was what i alluded to, when i said in the chapter already referred to (§ ), that "we may indeed perceive, as far as we are acquainted with the nature of god, that we have been so constructed as in a healthy state of mind to derive pleasure from whatever things are illustrative of that nature." this point it is necessary now farther to develop. our first inquiry must evidently be, how we are authorized to affirm of any man's mind, respecting impressions of sight, that it is in a healthy state or otherwise. what canon or test is there by which we may determine of these impressions that they are or are not _rightly_ esteemed beautiful? to what authority, when men are at variance with each other on this subject, shall it be deputed to judge which is right? or is there any such authority or canon at all? for it does not at first appear easy to prove that men ought to like one thing rather than another, and although this is granted generally by men's speaking of bad or good taste, it is frequently denied when we pass to particulars, by the assertion of each individual that he has a right to his opinion--a right which is sometimes claimed even in moral matters, though then palpably without foundation, but which does not appear altogether irrational in matters æsthetic, wherein little operation of voluntary choice is supposed possible. it would appear strange, for instance, to assert, respecting a particular person who preferred the scent of violets to roses, that he had no right to do so. and yet, while i have said that the sensation of beauty is intuitive and necessary, as men derive pleasure from the scent of a rose, i have assumed that there are some sources from which it is rightly derived, and others from which it is wrongly derived, in other words that men have no right to think some things beautiful, and no right to remain apathetic with regard to others. § . and in what sense may the terms right and wrong be attached to its conclusions? hence then arise two questions, according to the sense in which the word right is taken; the first, in what way an impression of sense may be deceptive, and therefore a conclusion respecting it untrue; and the second, in what way an impression of sense, or the preference of one, may be a subject of will, and therefore of moral duty or delinquency. to the first of these questions, i answer that we cannot speak of the immediate impression of sense as false, nor of its preference to others as mistaken, for no one can be deceived respecting the actual sensation he perceives or prefers. but falsity may attach to his assertion or supposition, either that what he himself perceives is from the same object perceived by others, or is always to be by himself perceived, or is always to be by himself preferred; and when we speak of a man as wrong in his impressions of sense, we either mean that he feels differently from all, or a majority, respecting a certain object, or that he prefers at present those of his impressions, which ultimately he will not prefer. to the second i answer, that over immediate impressions and immediate preferences we have no power, but over ultimate impressions, and especially ultimate preferences we have; and that, though we can neither at once choose whether we shall see an object, red, green, or blue, nor determine to like the red better than the blue, or the blue better than the red, yet we can, if we choose, make ourselves ultimately susceptible of such impressions in other degrees, and capable of pleasures in them in different measure; and because, wherever power of any kind is given, there is responsibility attached, it is the duty of men to prefer certain impressions of sense to others, because they have the power of doing so, this being precisely analogous to the law of the moral world, whereby men are supposed not only capable of governing their likes and dislikes, but the whole culpability or propriety of actions is dependent upon this capability, so that men are guilty or otherwise, not for what they do, but for what they desire, the command being not, thou shalt obey, but thou shalt love, the lord thy god, which, if men were not capable of governing and directing their affections, would be the command of an impossibility. § . what power we have over impressions of sense. i assert, therefore, that even with respect to impressions of sense, we have a power of preference, and a corresponding duty, and i shall show first the nature of the power, and afterwards the nature of the duty. let us take an instance from one of the lowest of the senses, and observe the kind of power we have over the impressions of lingual taste. on the first offering of two different things to the palate, it is not in our power to prevent or command the instinctive preference. one will be unavoidably and helplessly preferred to the other. but if the same two things be submitted to judgment frequently and attentively, it will be often found that their relations change. the palate, which at first perceived only the coarse and violent qualities of either, will, as it becomes more experienced, acquire greater subtilty and delicacy of discrimination, perceiving in both agreeable or disagreeable qualities at first unnoticed, which on continued experience will probably become more influential than the first impressions; and whatever this final verdict may be, it is felt by the person who gives it, and received by others as a more correct one than the first. § . depends on acuteness of attention. so, then, the power we have over the preference of impressions of taste is not actual nor immediate, but only a power of testing and comparing them frequently and carefully, until that which is the more permanent, the more consistently agreeable, be determined. but when the instrument of taste is thus in some degree perfected and rendered subtile, by its being practised upon a single object, its conclusions will be more rapid with respect to others, and it will be able to distinguish more quickly in other things, and even to prefer at once, those qualities which are calculated finally to give it most pleasure, though more capable with respect to those on which it is more frequently exercised; whence people are called judges with respect to this or that particular object of taste. § . ultimate conclusions universal. now that verdicts of this kind are received as authoritative by others, proves another and more important fact, namely, that not only changes of opinion take place in consequence of experience, but that those changes are from variation of opinion to unity of opinion; and that whatever may be the differences of estimate among unpractised or uncultivated tastes, there will be unity of taste among the experienced. and that therefore the operation of repeated trial and experience is to arrive at principles of preference in some sort common to all, and which are a part of our nature. i have selected the sense of taste for an instance, because it is the least favorable to the position i hold, since there is more latitude allowed, and more actual variety of verdict in the case of this sense than of any other; and yet, however susceptible of variety even the ultimate approximations of its preferences may be, the authority of judges is distinctly allowed, and we hear every day the admission, by those of unpractised palate, that they are, or may be wrong in their opinions respecting the real pleasurableness of things either to themselves, or to others. § . what duty is attached to this power over impressions of sense. the sense, however, in which they thus use the word "wrong" is merely that of falseness or inaccuracy in conclusion, not of moral delinquency. but there is, as i have stated, a duty, more or less imperative, attached to every power we possess, and therefore to this power over the lower senses as well as to all others. and this duty is evidently to bring every sense into that state of cultivation, in which it shall both form the truest conclusions respecting all that is submitted to it, and procure us the greatest amount of pleasure consistent with its due relation to other senses and functions. which three constituents of perfection in sense, true judgment, maximum sensibility, and right relation to others, are invariably co-existent and involved one by the other, for the true judgment is the result of the high sensibility, and the high sensibility of the right relation. thus, for instance, with respect to pleasures of taste, it is our duty not to devote such inordinate attention to the discrimination of them as must be inconsistent with our pursuit, and destructive of our capacity of higher and preferable pleasures, but to cultivate the sense of them in that way which is consistent with all other good, by temperance, namely, and by such attention as the mind at certain resting moments may fitly pay even to so ignoble a source of pleasure as this, by which discipline we shall bring the faculty of taste itself to its real maximum of sensibility; for it may not be doubted but that health, hunger, and such general refinement of bodily habits as shall make the body a perfect and fine instrument in all respects, are better promoters of actual sensual enjoyment of taste, than the sickened, sluggish, hard-stimulated fastidiousness of epicurism. § . how rewarded. so also it will certainly be found with all the senses, that they individually receive the greatest and purest pleasure when they are in right condition and degree of subordination to all the rest; and that by the over cultivation of any one, (for morbid sources of pleasure and correspondent temptations to irrational indulgence, confessedly are attached to all,) we shall add more to their power as instruments of punishment than of pleasure. we see then, in this example of the lowest sense, that the power we have over sensations and preferences depends mainly on the exercise of attention through certain prolonged periods, and that by this exercise, we arrive at ultimate, constant, and common sources of agreeableness, casting off those which are external, accidental, and individual. § . especially with respect to ideas of beauty. that then which is required in order to the attainment of accurate conclusions respecting the essence of the beautiful, is nothing more than earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to our impressions of it, by which those which are shallow, false, or peculiar to times and temperaments, may be distinguished from those that are eternal. and this dwelling upon, and fond contemplation of them, (the anschauung of the germans,) is perhaps as much as was meant by the greek theoria; and it is indeed a very noble exercise of the souls of men, and one by which they are peculiarly distinguished from the anima of lower creatures, which cannot, i think, be proved to have any capacity of contemplation at all, but only a restless vividness of perception and conception, the "fancy" of hooker (eccl. pol. book i. chap. vi. ). and yet this dwelling upon them comes not up to that which i wish to express by the word theoria, unless it be accompanied by full perception of their being a gift from and manifestation of god, and by all those other nobler emotions before described, since not until so felt is their essential nature comprehended. § . errors induced by the power of habit. but two very important points are to be observed respecting the direction and discipline of the attention in the early stages of judgment. the first, that, for many beneficent purposes, the nature of man has been made reconcilable by custom to many things naturally painful to it, and even improper for it, and that therefore, though by continued experience, united with thought, we may discover that which is best of several, yet if we submit ourselves to authority or fashion, and close our eyes, we may be by custom made to tolerate, and even to love and long for, that which is naturally painful and pernicious to us, whence arise incalculable embarrassments on the subject of art. § . the necessity of submission in early stages of judgment. the second, that, in order to the discovery of that which is best of two things, it is necessary that both should be equally submitted to the attention; and therefore that we should have so much faith in authority as shall make us repeatedly observe and attend to that which is said to be right, even though at present we may not feel it so. and in the right mingling of this faith with the openness of heart, which proves all things, lies the great difficulty of the cultivation of the taste, as far as the spirit of the scholar is concerned, though even when he has this spirit, he may be long retarded by having evil examples submitted to him by ignorant masters. the temper, therefore, by which right taste is formed, is first, patient. it dwells upon what is submitted to it, it does not trample upon it lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks, it is a good ground, soft, penetrable, retentive, it does not send up thorns of unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed, it is hungry and thirsty too, and drinks all the dew that falls on it, it is an honest and good heart, that shows no too ready springing before the sun be up, but fails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready to believe and to try all things, and yet so trustful of itself, that it will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything without trying. and that pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and good, is so great that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks of fashion, nor diseases of vanity, it cannot be cramped in its conclusions by partialities and hypocrisies, its visions and its delights are too penetrating, too living, for any whitewashed object or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. it clasps all that it loves so hard, that it crushes it if it be hollow. § . the large scope of matured judgment. now, the conclusions of this disposition are sure to be eventually right, more and more right according to the general maturity of all the powers, but it is sure to come right at last, because its operation is in analogy to, and in harmony with, the whole spirit of the christian moral system, and that which it will ultimately love and rest in, are great sources of happiness common to all the human race, and based on the relations they hold to their creator. these common and general sources of pleasure are, i believe, a certain seal, or impress of divine work and character, upon whatever god has wrought in all the world; only, it being necessary for the perception of them, that their contraries should also be set before us, these divine qualities, though inseparable from all divine works, are yet suffered to exist in such varieties of degree, that their most limited manifestation shall, in opposition to their most abundant, act as a foil or contrary, just as we conceive of cold as contrary to heat, though the most extreme cold we can produce or conceive is not inconsistent with an unknown amount of heat in the body. § . how distinguishable from false taste. our purity of taste, therefore, is best tested by its universality, for if we can only admire this thing or that, we may be sure that our cause for liking is of a finite and false nature. but if we can perceive beauty in everything of god's doing, we may argue that we have reached the true perception of its universal laws. hence, false taste may be known by its fastidiousness, by its demands of pomp, splendor, and unusual combination, by its enjoyment only of particular styles and modes of things, and by its pride also, for it is forever meddling, mending, accumulating, and self-exulting, its eye is always upon itself, and it tests all things around it by the way they fit it. but true taste is forever growing, learning, reading, worshipping, laying its hand upon its mouth because it is astonished, casting its shoes from off its feet because it finds all ground holy, lamenting over itself and testing itself by the way that it fits things. and it finds whereof to feed, and whereby to grow, in all things, and therefore the complaint so often made by young artists that they have not within their reach materials, or subjects enough for their fancy, is utterly groundless, and the sign only of their own blindness and inefficiency; for there is that to be seen in every street and lane of every city, that to be felt and found in every human heart and countenance, that to be loved in every road-side weed and moss-grown wall, which in the hands of faithful men, may convey emotions of glory and sublimity continual and exalted. § . the danger of a spirit of choice. let therefore the young artist beware of the spirit of choice,[ ] it is an insolent spirit at the best and commonly a base and blind one too, checking all progress and blasting all power, encouraging weaknesses, pampering partialities, and teaching us to look to accidents of nature for the help and the joy which should come from our own hearts. he draws nothing well who thirsts not to draw _every_thing; when a good painter shrinks, it is because he is humbled, not fastidious, when he stops, it is because he is surfeited, and not because he thinks nature has given him unkindly food, or that he fears famine.[ ] i have seen a man of true taste pause for a quarter of an hour to look at the channellings that recent rain had traced in a heap of cinders. § . and criminality. and here is evident another reason of that duty which we owe respecting impressions of sight, namely, to discipline ourselves to the enjoyment of those which are eternal in their nature, not only because these are the most acute, but because they are the most easily, constantly, and unselfishly attainable. for had it been ordained by the almighty that the highest pleasures of sight should be those of most difficult attainment, and that to arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces tower over tower, and pile artificial mountains around insinuated lakes, there would have been a direct contradiction between the unselfish duties and inherent desires of every individual. but no such contradiction exists in the system of divine providence, which, leaving it open to us, if we will, as creatures in probation, to abuse this sense like every other, and pamper it with selfish and thoughtless vanities as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, until the appetite of tasteful cruelty is lost in its sickened satiety, incapable of pleasure unless, caligula like, it concentrate the labor of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour, leaves it also open to us, by humble and loving ways, to make ourselves susceptible of deep delight from the meanest objects of creation, and of a delight which shall not separate us from our fellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but which shall bind us closer to men and to god, and be with us always, harmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging and eternal. § . how certain conclusions respecting beauty are by reason demonstrable. seeing then that these qualities of material objects which are calculated to give us this universal pleasure, are demonstrably constant in their address to human nature, they must belong in some measure to whatever has been esteemed beautiful throughout successive ages of the world (and they are also by their definition common to all the works of god). therefore it is evident that it must be possible to reason them out, as well as to feel them out; possible to divest every object of that which makes it accidentally or temporarily pleasant, and to strip it bare of distinctive qualities, until we arrive at those which it has in common with all other beautiful things, which we may then safely affirm to be the cause of its ultimate and true delightfulness. § . with what liabilities to error. now this process of reasoning will be that which i shall endeavor to employ in the succeeding investigations, a process perfectly safe, so long as we are quite sure that we are reasoning concerning objects which produce in us one and the same sensation, but not safe if the sensation produced be of a different nature, though it may be equally agreeable; for what produces a different sensation must be a different cause. and the difficulty of reasoning respecting beauty arises chiefly from the ambiguity of the word, which stands in different people's minds for totally different sensations, for which there can be no common cause. when, for instance, mr. alison endeavors to support his position that "no man is sensible to beauty in those objects with regard to which he has not previous ideas," by the remark that "the beauty of a theory, or of a relic of antiquity, is unintelligible to a peasant," we see at once that it is hopeless to argue with a man who, under his general term beauty, may, for anything we know, be sometimes speaking of mathematical demonstrability and sometimes of historical interest; while even if we could succeed in limiting the term to the sense of external attractiveness, there would be still room for many phases of error; for though the beauty of a snowy mountain and of a human cheek or forehead, so far as both are considered as mere matter, is the same, and traceable to certain qualities of color and line, common to both, and by reason extricable, yet the flush of the cheek and moulding of the brow, as they express modesty, affection, or intellect, possess sources of agreeableness which are not common to the snowy mountain, and the interference of whose influence we must be cautious to prevent in our examination of those which are material and universal.[ ] § . the term "beauty" how limitable in the outset. divided into typical and vital. the first thing, then, that we have to do, is accurately to discriminate and define those appearances from which we are about to reason as belonging to beauty, properly so called, and to clear the ground of all the confused ideas and erroneous theories with which the misapprehension or metaphorical use of the term has encumbered it. by the term beauty, then, properly are signified two things. first, that external quality of bodies already so often spoken of, and which, whether it occur in a stone, flower, beast, or in man, is absolutely identical, which, as i have already asserted, may be shown to be in some sort typical of the divine attributes, and which, therefore, i shall, for distinction's sake, call typical beauty; and, secondarily, the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things, more especially of the joyful and right exertion of perfect life in man. and this kind of beauty i shall call vital beauty. any application of the word beautiful to other appearances or qualities than these, is either false or metaphorical, as, for instance, to the splendor of a discovery, the fitness of a proportion, the coherence of a chain of reasoning, or the power of bestowing pleasure which objects receive from association, a power confessedly great, and interfering, as we shall presently find, in a most embarrassing way with the attractiveness of inherent beauty. but in order that the mind of the reader may not be biassed at the outset by that which he may happen to have received of current theories respecting beauty, founded on the above metaphorical uses of the word, (theories which are less to be reprobated as accounting falsely for the sensations of which they treat, than as confusing two or more pleasurable sensations together,) i shall briefly glance at the four erroneous positions most frequently held upon this subject, before proceeding to examine those typical and vital properties of things, to which i conceive that all our original conceptions of beauty may be traced. footnotes [ ] "nothing comes amiss,-- a good digestion turneth all to health."--g. herbert. [ ] yet note the difference between the choice that comes of pride, and the choice that comes of love, and compare chap. xv. § . [ ] compare spenser. (hymn to beauty.) "but ah, believe me, there is more than so, that works such wonders in the minds of men." chapter iv. of false opinions held concerning beauty. § . of the false opinion that truth is beauty, and vice versa. i purpose at present to speak only of four of the more current opinions respecting beauty, for of the errors connected with the pleasurableness of proportion, and of the expression of right feelings in the countenance, i shall have opportunity to treat in the succeeding chapters; (compare ch. vi. ch. xvi.) those erring or inconsistent positions which i would at once dismiss are, the first, that the beautiful is the true, the second, that the beautiful is the useful, the third, that it is dependent on custom, and the fourth, that it is dependent on the association of ideas. to assert that the beautiful is the true, appears, at first, like asserting that propositions are matter, and matter propositions. but giving the best and most rational interpretation we can, and supposing the holders of this strange position to mean only that things are beautiful which appear what they indeed are, and ugly which appear what they are not, we find them instantly contradicted by each and every conclusion of experience. a stone looks as truly a stone as a rose looks a rose, and yet is not so beautiful; a cloud may look more like a castle than a cloud, and be the more beautiful on that account. the mirage of the desert is fairer than its sands; the false image of the under heaven fairer than the sea. i am at a loss to know how any so untenable a position could ever have been advanced; but it may, perhaps, have arisen from some confusion of the beauty of art with the beauty of nature, and from an illogical expansion of the very certain truth, that nothing is beautiful in art, which, professing to be an imitation, or a statement, is not as such in some sort true. § . of the false opinion that beauty is usefulness. compare chap. xii. § . that the beautiful is the useful, is an assertion evidently based on that limited and false sense of the latter term which i have already deprecated. as it is the most degrading and dangerous supposition which can be advanced on the subject, so, fortunately, it is the most palpably absurd. it is to confound admiration with hunger, love with lust, and life with sensation; it is to assert that the human creature has no ideas and no feelings, except those ultimately referable to its brutal appetites. it has not a single fact nor appearance of fact to support it, and needs no combating, at least until its advocates have obtained the consent of the majority of mankind, that the most beautiful productions of nature are seeds and roots; and of art, spades and millstones. § . of the false opinion that beauty results from custom. compare chap. vi. § . somewhat more rational grounds appear for the assertion that the sense of the beautiful arises from familiarity with the object, though even this could not long be maintained by a thinking person. for all that can be alleged in defence of such a supposition is, that familiarity deprives some objects which at first appeared ugly, of much of their repulsiveness, whence it is as rational to conclude that familiarity is the cause of beauty, as it would be to argue that because it is possible to acquire a taste for olives, therefore custom is the cause of lusciousness in grapes. nevertheless, there are some phenomena resulting from the tendency of our nature to be influenced by habit of which it may be well to observe the limits. § . the twofold operation of custom. it deadens sensation, but confirms affection. § . but never either creates or destroys the essence of beauty. custom has a twofold operation: the one to deaden the frequency and force of repeated impressions, the other to endear the familiar object to the affections. commonly, where the mind is vigorous, and the power of sensation very perfect, it has rather the last operation than the first; with meaner minds, the first takes place in the higher degree, so that they are commonly characterized by a desire of excitement, and the want of the loving, fixed, theoretic power. but both take place in some degree with all men, so that as life advances, impressions of all kinds become less rapturous owing to their repetition. it is however beneficently ordained that repulsiveness shall be diminished by custom in a far greater degree than the sensation of beauty, so that the anatomist in a little time loses all sense of horror in the torn flesh, and carous bone, while the sculptor ceases not to feel to the close of his life, the deliciousness of every line of the outward frame. so then as in that with which we are made familiar, the repulsiveness is constantly diminishing, and such claims as it may be able to put forth on the affections are daily becoming stronger, while in what is submitted to us of new or strange, that which may be repulsive is felt in its full force, while no hold is as yet laid on the affections, there is a very strong preference induced in most minds for that to which they are not accustomed over that they know not, and this is strongest in those which are least open to sensations of positive beauty. but however far this operation may be carried, its utmost effect is but the deadening and approximating the sensations of beauty and ugliness. it never mixes nor crosses, nor in any way alters them; it has not the slightest connection with nor power over their nature. by tasting two wines alternately, we may deaden our perception of their flavor; nay, we may even do more than can ever be done in the case of sight, we may confound the two flavors together. but it will hardly be argued therefore that custom is the cause of either flavor. and so, though by habit we may deaden the effect of ugliness or beauty, it is not for that reason to be affirmed that habit is the cause of either sensation. we may keep a skull beside us as long as we please, we may overcome its repulsiveness, we may render ourselves capable of perceiving many qualities of beauty about its lines, we may contemplate it for years together if we will, it and nothing else, but we shall not get ourselves to think as well of it as of a child's fair face. § . instances. it would be easy to pursue the subject farther, but i believe that every thoughtful reader will be perfectly well able to supply farther illustrations, and sweep away the sandy foundations of the opposite theory, unassisted. let it, however, be observed, that in spite of all custom, an englishman instantly acknowledges, and at first sight, the superiority of the turban to the hat, or of the plaid to the coat, that whatever the dictates of immediate fashion may compel, the superior gracefulness of the greek or middle age costumes is invariably felt, and that, respecting what has been asserted of negro nations looking with disgust on the white face, no importance whatever is to be attached to the opinions of races who have never received any ideas of beauty whatsoever, (these ideas being only received by minds under some certain degree of cultivation,) and whose disgust arises naturally from what they may suppose to be a sign of weakness or ill health. it would be futile to proceed into farther detail. i pass to the last and most weighty theory, that the agreeableness in objects which we call beauty is the result of the association with them of agreeable or interesting ideas. § . of the false opinion that beauty depends on the association of ideas. frequent has been the support, and wide the acceptance of this supposition, and yet i suppose that no two consecutive sentences were ever written in defence of it, without involving either a contradiction or a confusion of terms. thus alison, "there are scenes undoubtedly more beautiful than runnymede, yet to those who recollect the great event that passed there, there is no scene perhaps which so strongly seizes on the imagination." here we are wonder-struck at the audacious obtuseness which would prove the power of imagination by its overcoming that very other power (of inherent beauty) whose existence the arguer denies. for the only logical conclusion which can possibly be drawn from the above sentence is, that imagination is _not_ the source of beauty, for although no scene seizes so strongly on the imagination, yet there are scenes "more beautiful than runnymede." and though instances of self-contradiction as laconic and complete as this are to be found in few writers except alison, yet if the arguments on the subject be fairly sifted from the mass of confused language with which they are always encumbered and placed in logical form, they will be found invariably to involve one of these two syllogisms, either, association gives pleasure, and beauty gives pleasure, therefore association is beauty. or, the power of association is stronger than the power of beauty, therefore the power of association _is_ the power of beauty. § . association. is, st, rational. it is of no efficiency as a cause of beauty. nevertheless it is necessary for us to observe the real value and authority of association in the moral system, and how ideas of actual beauty may be affected by it, otherwise we shall be liable to embarrassment throughout the whole of the succeeding argument. association is of two kinds. rational and accidental. by rational association i understand the interest which any object may bear historically as having been in some way connected with the affairs or affections of men; an interest shared in the minds of all who are aware of such connection: which to call beauty is mere and gross confusion of terms, it is no theory to be confuted, but a misuse of language to be set aside, a misuse involving the positions that in uninhabited countries the vegetation has no grace, the rock no dignity, the cloud no color, and that the snowy summits of the alps receive no loveliness from the sunset light, because they have not been polluted by the wrath, ravage, and misery of men. § . association accidental. the extent of its influence. by accidental association, i understand the accidental connection of ideas and memories with material things, owing to which those material things are regarded as agreeable or otherwise, according to the nature of the feelings or recollections they summon; the association being commonly involuntary and oftentimes so vague as that no distinct image is suggested by the object, but we feel a painfulness in it or pleasure from it, without knowing wherefore. of this operation of the mind (which is that of which i spoke as causing inextricable embarrassments on the subject of beauty) the experience is constant, so that its more energetic manifestations require no illustration. but i do not think that the minor degrees and shades of this great influence have been sufficiently appreciated. not only all vivid emotions and all circumstances of exciting interest leave their light and shadow on the senseless things and instruments among which or through whose agency they have been felt or learned, but i believe that the eye cannot rest on a material form, in a moment of depression or exultation, without communicating to that form a spirit and a life, a life which will make it afterwards in some degree loved or feared, a charm or a painfulness for which we shall be unable to account even to ourselves, which will not indeed be perceptible, except by its delicate influence on our judgment in cases of complicated beauty. let the eye but rest on a rough piece of branch of curious form during a conversation with a friend, rest, however, unconsciously, and though the conversation be forgotten, though every circumstance connected with it be as utterly lost to the memory as though it had not been, yet the eye will, through the whole life after, take a certain pleasure in such boughs which it had not before, a pleasure so slight, a trace of feeling so delicate as to leave us utterly unconscious of its peculiar power, but undestroyable by any reasoning, a part, thenceforward, of our constitution, destroyable only by the same arbitrary process of association by which it was created. reason has no effect upon it whatsoever. and there is probably no one opinion which is formed by any of us, in matters of taste, which is not in some degree influenced by unconscious association of this kind. in many who have no definite rules of judgment, preference is decided by little else, and thus, unfortunately, its operations are mistaken for, or rather substituted for, those of inherent beauty, and its real position and value in the moral system is in a great measure overlooked. § . the dignity of its function. for i believe that mere pleasure and pain have less associative power than duty performed or omitted, and that the great use of the associative faculty is not to add beauty to material things, but to add force to the conscience. but for this external and all-powerful witness, the voice of the inward guide might be lost in each particular instance, almost as soon as disobeyed; the echo of it in after time, whereby, though perhaps feeble as warning, it becomes powerful as punishment, might be silenced, and the strength of the protection pass away in the lightness of the lash. therefore it has received the power of enlisting external and unmeaning things in its aid, and transmitting to all that is indifferent, its own authority to reprove or reward, so that, as we travel the way of life, we have the choice, according to our working, of turning all the voices of nature into one song of rejoicing, and all her lifeless creatures into a glad company, whereof the meanest shall be beautiful in our eyes, by its kind message, or of withering and quenching her sympathy into a fearful, withdrawn, silence of condemnation, or into a crying out of her stones, and a shaking of her dust against us. nor is it any marvel that the theoretic faculty should be overpowered by this momentous operation, and the indifferent appeals and inherent glories of external things in the end overlooked, when the perfection of god's works is felt only as the sweetness of his promises, and their admirableness only as the threatenings of his power. § . how it is connected with impressions of beauty. but it is evident that the full exercise of this noble function of the associative faculty is inconsistent with absolute and incontrovertible conclusions on subjects of theoretic preference. for it is quite impossible for any individual to distinguish in himself the unconscious underworking of indefinite association, peculiar to him individually, from those great laws of choice under which he is comprehended with all his race. and it is well for us that it is so, the harmony of god's good work is not in us interrupted by this mingling of universal and peculiar principles; for by these such difference is secured in the feelings as shall make fellowship itself more delightful, by its inter-communicate character, and such variety of feeling also in each of us separately as shall make us capable of enjoying scenes of different kinds and orders, instead of morbidly seeking for some perfect epitome of the beautiful in one; and also that deadening by custom of theoretic impressions to which i have above alluded, is counterbalanced by the pleasantness of acquired association; and the loss of the intense feeling of the youth, which "had no need of a remoter charm, by thought supplied, or any interest, unborrowed from the eye," is replaced by the gladness of conscience, and the vigor of the reflecting and imaginative faculties, as they take their wide and aged grasp of the great relations between the earth and its dead people. § . and what caution it renders necessary in the examination of them. in proportion therefore to the value, constancy, and efficiency of this influence, we must be modest and cautious in the pronouncing of positive opinions on the subject of beauty. for every one of us has peculiar sources of enjoyment necessarily opened to him in certain scenes and things, sources which are sealed to others, and we must be wary on the one hand, of confounding these in ourselves with ultimate conclusions of taste, and so forcing them upon all as authoritative, and on the other of supposing that the enjoyments of others which we cannot share are shallow or unwarrantable, because incommunicable. i fear, for instance, that in the former portion of this work i may have attributed too much community and authority to certain affections of my own for scenery inducing emotions of wild, impetuous, and enthusiastic characters, and too little to those which i perceive in others for things peaceful, humble, meditative, and solemn. so also between youth and age there will be found differences of seeking, which are not wrong, nor of false choice in either, but of different temperament, the youth sympathizing more with the gladness, fulness, and magnificence of things, and the gray hairs with their completion, sufficiency and repose. and so, neither condemning the delights of others, nor altogether distrustful of our own, we must advance, as we live on, from what is brilliant to what is pure, and from what is promised to what is fulfilled, and from what is our strength to what is our crown, only observing in all things how that which is indeed wrong, and to be cut up from the root, is dislike, and not affection. for by the very nature of these beautiful qualities, which i have defined to be the signature of god upon his works, it is evident that in whatever we altogether dislike, we see not all; that the keenness of our vision is to be tested by the expansiveness of our love, and that as far as the influence of association has voice in the question, though it is indeed possible that the inevitable painfulness of an object, for which we can render no sufficient reason, may be owing to its recalling of a sorrow, it is more probably dependent on its accusation of a crime. chapter v. of typical beauty:--first, of infinity, or the type of divine incomprehensibility. § . impossibility of adequately treating the subject. the subject being now in some measure cleared of embarrassment, let us briefly distinguish those qualities or types on whose combination is dependent the power of mere material loveliness. i pretend neither to enumerate nor perceive them all, for it may be generally observed that whatever good there may be, desirable by man, more especially good belonging to his moral nature, there will be a corresponding agreeableness in whatever external object reminds him of such good, whether it remind him by arbitrary association or by typical resemblance, and that the infinite ways, whether by reason or experience discoverable, by which matter in some sort may remind us of moral perfections, are hardly within any reasonable limits to be explained, if even by any single mind they might all be traced. yet certain palpable and powerful modes there are, by observing which, we may come at such general conclusions on the subject as may be practically useful, and more than these i shall not attempt to obtain. § . with what simplicity of feeling to be approached. and first, i would ask of the reader to enter upon the subject with me, as far as may be, as a little child, ridding himself of all conventional and authoritative thoughts, and especially of such associations as arise from his respect for pagan art, or which are in any way traceable to classical readings. i recollect that mr. alison traces his first perceptions of beauty in external nature to this most corrupt source, thus betraying so total and singular a want of natural sensibility as may well excuse the deficiencies of his following arguments. for there was never yet the child of any promise (so far as the theoretic faculties are concerned) but awaked to the sense of beauty with the first gleam of reason; and i suppose there are few, among those who love nature otherwise than by profession and at second-hand, who look not back to their youngest and least-learned days as those of the most intense, superstitious, insatiable, and beatific perception of her splendors. and the bitter decline of this glorious feeling, though many note it not, partly owing to the cares and weight of manhood, which leave them not the time nor the liberty to look for their lost treasure, and partly to the human and divine affections which are appointed to take its place, yet has formed the subject not indeed of lamentation, but of holy thankfulness for the witness it bears to the immortal origin and end of our nature, to one whose authority is almost without appeal in all questions relating to the influence of external things upon the pure human soul. "heaven lies about us in our infancy,-- shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy. but he beholds the light, and whence it flows he sees it in his joy. the youth, who daily farther from the east must travel, still is nature's priest, and by the vision splendid is on his way attended. at length the man perceives it die away and fade into the light of common day." and if it were possible for us to recollect all the unaccountable and happy instincts of the careless time, and to reason upon them with the maturer judgment, we might arrive at more rapid and right results than either the philosophy or the sophisticated practice of art have yet attained. but we lose the perceptions before we are capable of methodizing or comparing them. § . the child instinct respecting space. § . continued in after life. one, however, of these child instincts, i believe that few forget; the emotion, namely, caused by all open ground, or lines of any spacious kind against the sky, behind which there might be conceived the sea. it is an emotion more pure than that caused by the sea itself, for i recollect distinctly running down behind the banks of a high beach to get their land line cutting against the sky, and receiving a more strange delight from this than from the sight of the ocean: i am not sure that this feeling is common to all children, (or would be common if they were all in circumstances admitting it), but i have ascertained it to be frequent among those who possess the most vivid sensibilities for nature; and i am certain that the modification of it, which belongs to our after years, is common to all, the love, namely, of a light distance appearing over a comparatively dark horizon. this i have tested too frequently to be mistaken, by offering to indifferent spectators forms of equal abstract beauty in half tint, relieved, the one against dark sky, the other against a bright distance. the preference is invariably given to the latter, and it is very certain that this preference arises not from any supposition of there being greater truth in this than the other, for the same preference is unhesitatingly accorded to the same effect in nature herself. whatever beauty there may result from effects of light on foreground objects, from the dew of the grass, the flash of the cascade, the glitter of the birch trunk, or the fair daylight hues of darker things, (and joyfulness there is in all of them), there is yet a light which the eye invariably seeks with a deeper feeling of the beautiful, the light of the declining or breaking day, and the flakes of scarlet cloud burning like watch-fires in the green sky of the horizon; a deeper feeling, i say, not perhaps more acute, but having more of spiritual hope and longing, less of animal and present life, more manifest, invariably, in those of more serious and determined mind, (i use the word serious, not as being opposed to cheerful, but to trivial and volatile;) but, i think, marked and unfailing even in those of the least thoughtful dispositions. i am willing to let it rest on the determination of every reader, whether the pleasure which he has received from these effects of calm and luminous distance be not the most singular and memorable of which he has been conscious, whether all that is dazzling in color, perfect in form, gladdening in expression, be not of evanescent and shallow appealing, when compared with the still small voice of the level twilight behind purple hills, or the scarlet arch of dawn over the dark, troublous-edged sea. § . whereto this instinct is traceable. let us try to discover that which effects of this kind possess or suggest, peculiar to themselves, and which other effects of light and color possess not. there _must_ be something in them of a peculiar character, and that, whatever it be, must be one of the primal and most earnest motives of beauty to human sensation. do they show finer characters of form than can be developed by the broader daylight? not so; for their power is almost independent of the forms they assume or display; it matters little whether the bright clouds be simple or manifold, whether the mountain line be subdued or majestic, the fairer forms of earthly things are by them subdued and disguised, the round and muscular growth of the forest trunks is sunk into skeleton lines of quiet shade, the purple clefts of the hill-side are labyrinthed in the darkness, the orbed spring and whirling wave of the torrent have given place to a white, ghastly, interrupted gleaming. have they more perfection or fulness of color? not so; for their effect is oftentimes deeper when their hues are dim, than when they are blazoned with crimson and pale gold; and assuredly, in the blue of the rainy sky, in the many tints of morning flowers, in the sunlight on summer foliage and field, there are more sources of mere sensual color-pleasure than in the single streak of wan and dying light. it is not then by nobler form, it is not by positiveness of hue, it is not by intensity of light, (for the sun itself at noonday is effectless upon the feelings,) that this strange distant space possesses its attractive power. but there is one thing that it has, or suggests, which no other object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that is,--infinity. it is of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature of god, the most suggestive of the glory of his dwelling-place. for the sky of night, though we may know it boundless, is dark, it is a studded vault, a roof that seems to shut us in and down, but the bright distance has no limit, we feel its infinity, as we rejoice in its purity of light. § . infinity how necessary in art. now not only is this expression of infinity in distance most precious wherever we find it, however solitary it may be, and however unassisted by other forms and kinds of beauty, but it is of that value that no such other forms will altogether recompense us for its loss; and much as i dread the enunciation of anything that may seem like a conventional rule, i have no hesitation in asserting, that no work of any art, in which this expression of infinity is possible, can be perfect, or supremely elevated without it, and that in proportion to its presence, it will exalt and render impressive even the most tame and trivial themes. and i think if there be any one grand division, by which it is at all possible to set the productions of painting, so far as their mere plan or system is concerned, on our right and left hands, it is this of light and dark background, of heaven light or of object light. for i know not any truly great painter of any time, who manifests not the most intense pleasure in the luminous space of his backgrounds, or who ever sacrifices this pleasure where the nature of his subject admits of its attainment, as on the other hand i know not that the habitual use of dark backgrounds can be shown as having ever been co-existent with pure or high feeling, and, except in the case of rembrandt, (and then under peculiar circumstances only,) with any high power of intellect. it is however necessary carefully to observe the following modifications of this broad principle. § . conditions of its necessity. the absolute necessity, for such indeed i consider it, is of no more than such a mere luminous distant point as may give to the feelings a species of escape from all the finite objects about them. there is a spectral etching of rembrandt, a presentation of christ in the temple, where the figure of a robed priest stands glaring by its gems out of the gloom, holding a crosier. behind it there is a subdued window light seen in the opening between two columns, without which the impressiveness of the whole subject would, i think, be incalculably brought down. i cannot tell whether i am at present allowing too much weight to my own fancies and predilections, but without so much escape into the outer air and open heaven as this, i can take permanent pleasure in no picture. § . and connected analogies. and i think i am supported in this feeling by the unanimous practice, if not the confessed opinion, of all artists. the painter of portrait is unhappy without his conventional white stroke under the sleeve, or beside the arm-chair; the painter of interiors feels like a caged bird, unless he can throw a window open, or set the door ajar; the landscapist dares not lose himself in forest without a gleam of light under its farthest branches, nor ventures out in rain, unless he may somewhere pierce to a better promise in the distance, or cling to some closing gap of variable blue above;--escape, hope, infinity, by whatever conventionalism sought, the desire is the same in all, the instinct constant, it is no mere point of light that is wanted in the etching of rembrandt above instanced, a gleam of armor or fold of temple curtain would have been utterly valueless, neither is it liberty, for though we cut down hedges and level hills, and give what waste and plain we choose, on the right hand and the left, it is all comfortless and undesired, so long as we cleave not a way of escape forward; and however narrow and thorny and difficult the nearer path, it matters not, so only that the clouds open for us at its close. neither will any amount of beauty in nearer form, make us content to stay with it, so long as we are shut down to that alone, nor is any form so cold or so hurtful but that we may look upon it with kindness, so only that it rise against the infinite hope of light beyond. the reader can follow out the analogies of this unassisted. § . how the dignity of treatment is proportioned to the expression of infinity. but although this narrow portal of escape be all that is absolutely necessary, i think that the dignity of the painting increases with the extent and amount of the expression. with the earlier and mightier painters of italy, the practice is commonly to leave their distance of pure and open sky, of such simplicity, that it in nowise shall interfere with or draw the attention from the interest of the figures, and of such purity, that especially towards the horizon, it shall be in the highest degree expressive of the infinite space of heaven. i do not mean to say that they did this with any occult or metaphysical motives. they did it, i think, with the child-like, unpretending simplicity of all earnest men; they did what they loved and felt; they sought what the heart naturally seeks, and gave what it most gratefully receives; and i look to them as in all points of principle (not, observe, of knowledge or empirical attainment) as the most irrefragable authorities, precisely on account of the child-like innocence, which never deemed itself authoritative, but acted upon desire, and not upon dicta, and sought for sympathy, not for admiration. § . examples among the southern schools. and so we find the same simple and sweet treatment, the open sky, the tender, unpretending, horizontal white clouds, the far winding and abundant landscape, in giotto, taddeo gaddi, laurati, angelico, benozzo, ghirlandajo, francia, perogino, and the young raffaelle, the first symptom of conventionality appearing in perugino, who, though with intense feeling of light and color he carried the glory of his luminous distance far beyond all his predecessors, began at the same time to use a somewhat morbid relief of his figures against the upper sky. thus in the assumption of the florentine academy, in that of l'annunziata; and of the gallery of bologna, in all which pictures the lower portions are incomparably the finest, owing to the light distance behind the heads. raffaelle, in his fall, betrayed the faith he had received from his father and his master, and substituted for the radiant sky of the madonna del cardellino, the chamber-wall of the madonna della sediola--and the brown wainscot of the baldacchino. yet it is curious to observe how much of the dignity even of his later pictures, depends on such portions as the green light of the lake, and sky behind the rocks, in the st. john of the tribune, and how the repainted distortion of the madonna dell' impannata, is redeemed into something like elevated character, merely by the light of the linen window from which it takes its name. § . among the venetians. that which by the florentines was done in pure simplicity of heart, was done by the venetians with intense love of the color and splendor of the sky itself, even to the frequent sacrificing of their subject to the passion of its distance. in carpaccio, john bellini, giorgione, titian, veronese, and tintoret, the preciousness of the luminous sky, so far as it might be at all consistent with their subject, is nearly constant; abandoned altogether in portraiture only, seldom even there, and never with advantage. titian and veronese, who had less exalted feeling than the others, affording a few instances of exception, the latter overpowering his silvery distances with foreground splendor, the other sometimes sacrificing them to a luscious fulness of color, as in the flagellation in the louvre, by a comparison of which with the unequalled majesty of the entombment opposite, the whole power and applicability of the general principle may at once be tested. § . among the painters of landscape. but of the value of this mode of treatment there is a farther and more convincing proof than its adoption either by the innocence of the florentine or the ardor of the venetian, namely, that when retained or imitated from them by the landscape painters of the seventeenth century, when appearing in isolation from all other good, among the weaknesses and paltrinesses of claude, the mannerisms of gaspar, and the caricatures and brutalities of salvator, it yet redeems and upholds all three, conquers all foulness by its purity, vindicates all folly by its dignity, and puts an uncomprehended power of permanent address to the human heart, upon the lips of the senseless and the profane.[ ] § . other modes in which the power of infinity is felt. § . the beauty of curvature. now, although i doubt not that the general value of this treatment will be acknowledged by all lovers of art, it is not certain that the point to prove which i have brought it forward, will be as readily conceded, namely, the inherent power of all representations of infinity over the human heart; for there are, indeed, countless associations of pure and religious kind, which combine with each other to enhance the impression, when presented in this particular form, whose power i neither deny nor am careful to distinguish, seeing that they all tend to the same divine point, and have reference to heavenly hopes; delights they are in seeing the narrow, black, miserable earth fairly compared with the bright firmament, reachings forward unto the things that are before, and joyfulness in the apparent though unreachable nearness and promise of them. but there are other modes in which infinity may be represented, which are confused by no associations of the kind, and which would, as being in mere matter, appear trivial and mean, but for their incalculable influence on the forms of all that we feel to be beautiful. the first of these is the curvature of lines and surfaces, wherein it at first appears futile to insist upon any resemblance or suggestion of infinity, since there is certainly in our ordinary contemplation of it, no sensation of the kind. but i have repeated again and again that the ideas of beauty are instinctive, and that it is only upon consideration, and even then in doubtful and disputable way, that they appear in their typical character; neither do i intend at all to insist upon the particular meaning which they appear to myself to bear, but merely on their actual and demonstrable agreeableness, so that, in the present case, while i assert positively, and have no fear of being able to prove, that a curve of any kind is more beautiful than a right line, i leave it to the reader to accept or not, as he pleases, that reason of its agreeableness, which is the only one that i can at all trace, namely, that every curve divides itself infinitely by its changes of direction. § . how constant in external nature. that all forms of acknowledged beauty are composed exclusively of curves will, i believe, be at once allowed; but that which there will be need more especially to prove, is the subtilty and constancy of curvature in all natural forms whatsoever. i believe that, except in crystals, in certain mountain forms admitted for the sake of sublimity or contrast, (as in the slope of debris,) in rays of light, in the levels of calm water and alluvial land, and in some few organic developments, there are no lines nor surfaces of nature without curvature, though as we before saw in clouds, more especially in their under lines towards the horizon, and in vast and extended plains, right lines are often suggested which are not actual. without these we could not be sensible of the value of the contrasting curves, and while, therefore, for the most part, the eye is fed in natural forms with a grace of curvature which no hand nor instrument can follow, other means are provided to give beauty to those surfaces which are admitted for contrast, as in water by its reflection of the gradations which it possesses not itself. in freshly-broken ground, which nature has not yet had time to model, in quarries and pits which are none of her cutting, in those convulsions and evidences of convulsion, of whose influence on ideal landscape i shall presently have occasion to speak, and generally in all ruin and disease, and interference of one order of being with another, (as in the cattle line of park trees,) the curves vanish, and violently opposed or broken and unmeaning lines take their place. § . the beauty of gradation. what curvature is to lines, gradation is to shades and colors. it is _there_ infinity, and divides them into an infinite number of degrees. absolutely, without gradation no natural surface can possibly be, except under circumstances of so rare conjunction as to amount to a lusus naturæ; for we have seen that few surfaces are without curvature, and every curved surface must be gradated by the nature of light, which is most intense when it impinges at the highest angle, and for the gradation of the few plane surfaces that exist, means are provided in local color, aerial perspective, reflected lights, etc., from which it is but barely conceivable that they should ever escape. hence for instances of the complete absence of gradation we must look to man's work, or to his disease and decrepitude. compare the gradated colors of the rainbow with the stripes of a target, and the gradual concentration of the youthful blood in the cheek with an abrupt patch of rouge, or with the sharply drawn veining of old age. § . how found in nature. gradation is so inseparable a quality of all natural shade and color that the eye refuses in art to understand anything as either, which appears without it, while on the other hand nearly all the gradations of nature are so subtile and between degrees of tint so slightly separated, that no human hand can in any wise equal, or do anything more than suggest the idea of them. in proportion to the space over which gradation extends, and to its invisible subtilty, is its grandeur, and in proportion to its narrow limits and violent degrees, its vulgarity. in correggio, it is morbid and vulgar in spite of its refinement of execution, because the eye is drawn to it, and it is made the most observable and characteristic part of the picture; whereas natural gradation is forever escaping observation to that degree that the greater part of artists in working from nature see it not, (except in certain of its marked developments,) but either lay down such continuous lines and colors, as are both disagreeable and impossible, or, receiving the necessity of gradation as a principle instead of a fact, use it in violently exaggerated measure, and so lose both the dignity of their own work, and by the constant dwelling of their eyes upon exaggerations, their sensibility to that of the natural forms. so that we find the majority of painters divided between the two evil extremes of insufficiency and affectation, and only a few of the greatest men capable of making gradation constant and yet extended over enormous spaces and within degrees of narrow difference, as in the body of a high light. § . how necessary in art. from the necessity of gradation results what is commonly given as a rule of art, though its authority as a rule obtains only from its being a fact of nature, that the extremes of high light and pure color, can exist only in points. the common rules respecting sixths and eighths, held concerning light and shade, are entirely absurd and conventional; according to the subject and the effect of light, the greater part of the picture will be or ought to be light or dark; but that principle which is not conventional, is that of all light, however high, there is some part that is higher than the rest, and that of all color, however pure, there is some part that is purer than the rest, and that generally of all shade, however deep, there is some part deeper than the rest, though this last fact is frequently sacrificed in art, owing to the narrowness of its means. but on the right gradation or focussing of light and color depends in great measure, the value of both. of this, i have spoken sufficiently in pointing out the singular constancy of it in the works of turner. part ii. sect. ii. chap. ii. § . and it is generally to be observed that even raw and valueless color, if rightly and subtilely gradated will in some measure stand for light, and that the most transparent and perfect hue will be in some measure unsatisfactory, if entirely unvaried. i believe the early skies of raffaelle owe their luminousness more to their untraceable and subtile gradation than to inherent quality of hue. § . infinity not rightly implied by vastness. such are the expressions of infinity which we find in creation, of which the importance is to be estimated, rather by their frequency than their distinctness. let, however, the reader bear constantly in mind that i insist not on his accepting any interpretation of mine, but only on his dwelling so long on those objects, which he perceives to be beautiful, as to determine whether the qualities to which i trace their beauty, be necessarily there or no. farther expressions of infinity there are in the mystery of nature, and in some measure in her vastness, but these are dependent on our own imperfections, and therefore, though they produce sublimity, they are unconnected with beauty. for that which we foolishly call vastness is, rightly considered, not more wonderful, not more impressive, than that which we insolently call littleness, and the infinity of god is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable, not concealed, but incomprehensible: it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearchable sea. footnotes [ ] in one of the smaller rooms of the pitti palace, over the door, is a temptation of st. anthony, by salvator, wherein such power as the artist possessed is fully manifested, with little, comparatively, that is offensive. it is a vigorous and ghastly thought, in that kind of horror which is dependent on scenic effect, perhaps unrivalled, and i shall have occasion to refer to it again in speaking of the powers of imagination. i allude to it here, because the sky of the distance affords a remarkable instance of the power of light at present under discussion. it is formed of flakes of black cloud, with rents and openings of intense and lurid green, and at least half of the impressiveness of the picture depends on these openings. close them, make the sky one mass of gloom, and the spectre will be awful no longer. it owes to the light of the distance both its size and its spirituality. the time would fail me if i were to name the tenth part of the pictures which occur to me, whose vulgarity is redeemed by this circumstance alone, and yet let not the artist trust to such morbid and conventional use of it as may be seen in the common blue and yellow effectism of the present day. of the value of moderation and simplicity in the use of this, as of all other sources of pleasurable emotion, i shall presently have occasion to speak farther. chapter vi. of unity, or the type of the divine comprehensiveness. § . the general conception of divine unity. "all things," says hooker, "(god only excepted,) besides the nature which they have in themselves, receive externally some perfection from other things." hence the appearance of separation or isolation in anything, and of self-dependence, is an appearance of imperfection: and all appearances of connection and brotherhood are pleasant and right, both as significative of perfection in the things united, and as typical of that unity which we attribute to god, and of which our true conception is rightly explained and limited by dr. brown in his xcii. lecture; that unity which consists not in his own singleness or separation, but in the necessity of his inherence in all things that be, without which no creature of any kind could hold existence for a moment. which necessity of divine essence i think it better to speak of as comprehensiveness, than as unity, because unity is often understood in the sense of oneness or singleness, instead of universality, whereas the only unity which by any means can become grateful or an object of hope to men, and whose types therefore in material things can be beautiful, is that on which turned the last words and prayer of christ before his crossing of the kidron brook. "neither pray i for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word. that they all may be one, as thou, father, art in me, and i in thee." § . the glory of all things is their unity. and so there is not any matter, nor any spirit, nor any creature, but it is capable of an unity of some kind with other creatures, and in that unity is its perfection and theirs, and a pleasure also for the beholding of all other creatures that can behold. so the unity of spirits is partly in their sympathy, and partly in their giving and taking, and always in their love; and these are their delight and their strength, for their strength is in their co-working and army fellowship, and their delight is in the giving and receiving of alternate and perpetual currents of good, their inseparable dependency on each other's being, and their essential and perfect depending on their creator's: and so the unity of earthly creatures is their power and their peace, not like the dead and cold peace of undisturbed stones and solitary mountains, but the living peace of trust, and the living power of support, of hands that hold each other and are still: and so the unity of matter is, in its noblest form, the organization of it which builds it up into temples for the spirit, and in its lower form, the sweet and strange affinity, which gives to it the glory of its orderly elements, and the fair variety of change and assimilation that turns the dust into the crystal, and separates the waters that be above the firmament from the waters that be beneath, and in its lowest form; it is the working and walking and clinging together that gives their power to the winds, and its syllables and soundings to the air, and their weight to the waves, and their burning to the sunbeams, and their stability to the mountains, and to every creature whatsoever operation is for its glory and for others good. now of that which is thus necessary to the perfection of all things, all appearance, sign, type, or suggestion must be beautiful, in whatever matter it may appear. and so to the perfection of beauty in lines, or colors, or forms, or masses, or multitudes, the appearance of some species of unity is in the most determined sense of the word essential. § . the several kinds of unity. subjectional. original. of sequence, and of membership. but of the appearances of unity, as of unity itself, there are several kinds which it will be found hereafter convenient to consider separately. thus there is the unity of different and separate things, subjected to one and the same influence, which may be called subjectional unity, and this is the unity of the clouds, as they are driven by the parallel winds, or as they are ordered by the electric currents, and this the unity of the sea waves, and this of the bending and undulation of the forest masses, and in creatures capable of will it is the unity of will or of inspiration. and there is unity of origin, which we may call original unity, which is of things arising from one spring and source, and speaking always of this their brotherhood, and this in matter is the unity of the branches of the trees, and of the petals and starry rays of flowers, and of the beams of light, and in spiritual creatures it is their filial relation to him from whom they have their being. and there is unity of sequence, which is that of things that form links in chains, and steps in ascent, and stages in journeys, and this, in matter, is the unity of communicable forces in their continuance from one thing to another, and it is the passing upwards and downwards of beneficent effects among all things, and it is the melody of sounds, and the beauty of continuous lines, and the orderly succession of motions and times. and in spiritual creatures it is their own constant building up by true knowledge and continuous reasoning to higher perfection, and the singleness and straight-forwardness of their tendencies to more complete communion with god. and there is the unity of membership, which we may call essential unity, which is the unity of things separately imperfect into a perfect whole, and this is the great unity of which other unities are but parts and means, it is in matter the harmony of sounds and consistency of bodies, and among spiritual creatures, their love and happiness and very life in god. § . unity of membership. how secured. now of the nature of this last kind of unity, the most important whether in moral or in those material things with which we are at present concerned, there is this necessary to be observed, that it cannot exist between things similar to each other. two or more equal and like things cannot be members one of another, nor can they form one, or a whole thing. two they must remain, both in nature and in our conception, so long as they remain alike, unless they are united by a third different from both. thus the arms, which are like each other, remain two arms in our conception. they could not be united by a third arm, they must be united by something which is not an arm, and which, imperfect without them as they without it, shall form one perfect body; nor is unity even thus accomplished, without a difference and opposition of direction in the setting on of the like members. therefore among all things which are to have unity of membership one with another, there must be difference or variety; and though it is possible that many like things may be made members of one body, yet it is remarkable that this structure appears characteristic of the lower creatures, rather than the higher, as the many legs of the caterpillar, and the many arms and suckers of the radiata, and that, as we rise in order of being, the number of similar members becomes less, and their structure commonly seems based on the principle of the unity of two things by a third, as plato has it in the timæus, § ii. § . variety. why required. hence, out of the necessity of unity, arises that of variety, a necessity often more vividly, though never so deeply felt, because lying at the surfaces of things, and assisted by an influential principle of our nature, the love of change, and the power of contrast. but it is a mistake which has led to many unfortunate results, in matters respecting art, to insist on any inherent agreeableness of variety, without reference to a farther end. for it is not even true that variety as such, and in its highest degree, is beautiful. a patched garment of many colors is by no means so agreeable as one of a single and continuous hue; the splendid colors of many birds are eminently painful from their violent separation and inordinate variety, while the pure and colorless swan is, under certain circumstances, the most beautiful of all feathered creatures.[ ] a forest of all manner of trees is poor, if not disagreeable in effect,[ ] a mass of one species of tree is sublime. it is therefore only harmonious and chordal variety, that variety which is necessary to secure and extend unity, (for the greater the number of objects, which by their differences become members of one another, the more extended and sublime is their unity,) which is rightly agreeable, and so i name not variety as essential to beauty, because it is only so in a secondary and casual sense.[ ] § . change, and its influence on beauty. § . the love of change. how morbid and evil. of the love of change as a principle of human nature, and the pleasantness of variety resulting from it, something has already been said, (ch. iv. § ,) only as there i was opposing the idea that our being familiar with objects was the cause of our delight in them, so here, i have to oppose the contrary position, that their strangeness is the cause of it. for neither familiarity nor strangeness have more operation on, or connection with, impressions of one sense than of another, and they have less power over the impressions of sense generally, than over the intellect in its joyful accepting of fresh knowledge, and dull contemplation of that it has long possessed. only in their operation on the senses they act contrarily at different times, as for instance the newness of a dress or of some kind of unaccustomed food may make it for a time delightful, but as the novelty passes away, so also may the delight, yielding to disgust or indifference, which in their turn, as custom begins to operate, may pass into affection and craving, and that which was first a luxury, and then a matter of indifference, becomes a necessity:[ ] whereas in subjects of the intellect, the chief delight they convey is dependent upon their being newly and vividly comprehended, and as they become subjects of contemplation they lose their value, and become tasteless and unregarded, except as instruments for the reaching of others, only that though they sink down into the shadowy, effectless, heap of things indifferent, which we pack, and crush down, and stand upon, to reach things new, they sparkle afresh at intervals as we stir them by throwing a new stone into the heap, and letting the newly admitted lights play upon them. and both in subjects of the intellect and the senses it is to be remembered, that the love of change is a weakness and imperfection of our nature, and implies in it the state of probation, and that it is to teach us that things about us here are not meant for our continual possession or satisfaction, that ever such passion of change was put in us as that "custom lies upon us with a weight, heavy as frost, and deep almost as life," and only such weak back and baby grasp given to our intellect as that "the best things we do are painful, and the exercise of them grievous, being continued without intermission, so as in those very actions whereby we are especially perfected in this life we are not able to persist." and so it will be found that they are the weakest-minded and the hardest-hearted men that most love variety and change, for the weakest-minded are those who both wonder most at things new, and digest worst things old, in so far that everything they have lies rusty, and loses lustre for want of use; neither do they make any stir among their possessions, nor look over them to see what may be made of them, nor keep any great store, nor are householders with storehouses of things new and old, but they catch at the new-fashioned garments, and let the moth and thief look after the rest; and the hardest-hearted men are those that least feel the endearing and binding power of custom, and hold on by no cords of affection to any shore, but drive with the waves that cast up mire and dirt. and certainly it is not to be held that the perception of beauty and desire of it, are greatest in the hardest heart and weakest brain; but the love of variety is so, and therefore variety can be no cause of the beautiful, except, as i have said, when it is necessary for the perception of unity, neither is there any better test of that which is indeed beautiful than its surviving or annihilating the love of change; and this is a test which the best judges of art have need frequently to use; and the wisest of them will use it always, for there is much in art that surprises by its brilliancy, or attracts by its singularity, that can hardly but by course of time, though assuredly it will by course of time, be winnowed away from the right and real beauty whose retentive power is forever on the increase, a bread of the soul for which the hunger is continual. § . the conducting of variety towards unity of subjection. receiving, therefore, variety only as that which accomplishes unity, or makes it perceived, its operation is found to be very precious, both in that which i have called unity of subjection, and unity of sequence, as well as in unity of membership; for although things in all respects the same may, indeed, be subjected to one influence, yet the power of the influence, and their obedience to it, is best seen by varied operation of it on their individual differences, as in clouds and waves there is a glorious unity of rolling, wrought out by the wild and wonderful differences of their absolute forms, which, if taken away, would leave in them only multitudinous and petty repetition, instead of the majestic oneness of shared passion. and so in the waves and clouds of human multitude when they are filled with one thought, as we find frequently in the works of the early italian men of earnest purpose, who despising, or happily ignorant of, the sophistications of theories, and the proprieties of composition, indicated by perfect similarity of action and gesture on the one hand, and by the infinite and truthful variation of expression on the other, the most sublime strength because the most absorbing unity, of multitudinous passion that ever human heart conceived. hence, in the cloister of st. mark's, the intense, fixed, statue-like silence of ineffable adoration upon the spirits in prison at the feet of christ, side by side, the hands lifted, and the knees bowed, and the lips trembling together;[ ] and in st. domenico of fiesole,[ ] that whirlwind rush of the angels and the redeemed souls round about him at his resurrection, so that we hear the blast of the horizontal trumpets mixed with the dying clangor of their ingathered wings. the same great feeling occurs throughout the works of the serious men, though most intensely in angelico, and it is well to compare with it the vileness and falseness of all that succeeded, when men had begun to bring to the cross foot their systems instead of their sorrow. take as the most marked and degraded instance, perhaps, to be anywhere found, bronzino's treatment of the same subject (christ visiting the spirits in prison,) in the picture now in the tuscan room of the uffizii, which, vile as it is in color, vacant in invention, void in light and shade, a heap of cumbrous nothingnesses, and sickening offensivenesses, is of all its voids most void in this, that the academy models therein huddled together at the bottom, show not so much unity or community of attention to the academy model with the flag in its hand above, as a street crowd would be to a fresh-staged charlatan. some _point_ to the god who has burst the gates of death, as if the rest were incapable of distinguishing him for themselves, and others turn their backs upon him, to show their unagitated faces to the spectator. § . and towards unity of sequence. in unity of sequence, the effect of variety is best exemplified by the melodies of music, wherein by the differences of the notes, they are connected with each other in certain pleasant relations. this connection taking place in quantities is proportion, respecting which certain general principles must be noted, as the subject is one open to many errors, and obscurely treated of by writers on art. § . the nature of proportion. st, of apparent proportion. proportion is of two distinct kinds. apparent: when it takes place between qualities for the sake of connection only, without any ultimate object or casual necessity; and constructive: when it has reference to some function to be discharged by the quantities, depending on their proportion. from the confusion of these two kinds of proportion have arisen the greater part of the erroneous conceptions of the influence of either. apparent proportion, or the sensible relation of quantities, is one of the most important means of obtaining unity between things which otherwise must have remained distinct in similarity, and as it may consist with every other kind of unity, and persist when every other means of it fails, it may be considered as lying at the root of most of our impressions of the beautiful. there is no sense of rightness, or wrongness connected with it, no sense of utility, propriety, or expediency. these ideas enter only where the proportion of quantities has reference to some function to be performed by them. it cannot be asserted that it is right or that it is wrong that a should be to b, as b to c; unless a, b, and c have some desirable operation dependent on that relation. but nevertheless it may be highly agreeable to the eye that a, b, and c, if visible things, should have visible connection of ratio, even though nothing be accomplished by such connection. on the other hand, constructive proportion, or the adaptation of quantities to functions, is agreeable not to the eye, but to the mind, which is cognizant of the function to be performed. thus the pleasantness or rightness of the proportions of a column depends not on the mere relation of diameter and height, (which is not proportion at all, for proportion is between three terms at least,) but on three other involved terms, the strength of materials, the weight to be borne, and the scale of the building. the proportions of a wooden column are wrong in a stone one, and of a small building wrong in a large one,[ ] and this owing solely to mechanical considerations, which have no more to do with ideas of beauty, than the relation between the arms of a lever, adapted to the raising of a given weight; and yet it is highly agreeable to perceive that such constructive proportion has been duly observed, as it is agreeable to see that anything is fit for its purpose or for ours, and also that it has been the result of intelligence in the workman of it, so that we sometimes feel a pleasure in apparent non-adaptation, if it be a sign of ingenuity; as in the unnatural and seemingly impossible lightness of gothic spires and roofs. now, the errors against which i would caution the reader in this matter are three. the first, is the overlooking or denial of the power of apparent proportion, of which power neither burke nor any other writer whose works i have met with, take cognizance. the second, is the attribution of _beauty_ to the appearances of constructive proportion. the third, the denial with burke of _any_ value or agreeableness in constructive proportion. § . the value of apparent proportion in curvature. now, the full proof of the influence of apparent proportion, i must reserve for illustration by diagram; one or two instances however may be given at present for the better understanding of its nature. we have already asserted that all curves are more beautiful than right lines. all curves, however, are not equally beautiful, and their differences of beauty depend on the different proportions borne to each other by those infinitely small right lines of which they may be conceived as composed. when these lines are equal and contain equal angles, there can be no connection or unity of sequence in them. the resulting curve, the circle, is therefore the least beautiful of all curves. when the lines bear to each other some certain proportion; or when, the lines remaining equal, the angles vary; or when by any means whatsoever, and in whatever complicated modes, such differences as shall imply connection are established between the infinitely small segments, the resulting curves become beautiful. the simplest of the beautiful curves are the conic, and the various spirals; but it is as rash as it is difficult to endeavor to trace any ground of superiority or inferiority among the infinite numbers of the higher curves. i believe that almost all are beautiful in their own nature, and that their comparative beauty depends on the constant quantities involved in their equations. of this point i shall speak hereafter at greater length. § . how by nature obtained. the universal forces of nature, and the individual energies of the matter submitted to them, are so appointed and balanced, that they are continually bringing out curves of this kind in all visible forms, and that circular lines become nearly impossible under any circumstances. the gradual acceleration, for instance, of velocity, in streams that descend from hill-sides, as it gradually increases their power of erosion increases in the same gradual degree the rate of curvature in the descent of the slope, until at a certain degree of steepness this descent meets, and is concealed by the right line of the detritus. the junction of this right line with the plain is again modified by the farther bounding of the larger blocks, and by the successively diminishing proportion of landslips caused by erosion at the bottom, so that the whole line of the hill is one of curvature, first, gradually increasing in rapidity to the maximum steepness of which the particular rock is capable, and then decreasing in a decreasing ratio, until it arrives at the plain level. this type of form, modified of course more or less by the original boldness of the mountain, and dependent both on its age, its constituent rock, and the circumstances of its exposure, is yet in its general formula applicable to all. so the curves of all things in motion, and of all organic forms, most rudely and simply in the shell spirals, and in their most complicated development in the muscular lines of the higher animals. this influence of apparent proportion, a proportion, be it observed, which has no reference to ultimate ends, but which is itself, seemingly, the end and object of operation in many of the forces of nature, is therefore at the root of all our delight in any beautiful form whatsoever. for no form can be beautiful which is not composed of curves whose unity is secured by relations of this kind. § . apparent proportion in melodies of line. not only however in curvature, but in all associations of lines whatsoever, it is desirable that there should be reciprocal relation, and the eye is unhappy without perception of it. it is utterly vain to endeavor to reduce this proportion to finite rules, for it is as various as musical melody, and the laws to which it is subject are of the same general kind, so that the determination of right or wrong proportion is as much a matter of feeling and experience as the appreciation of good musical composition; not but that there is a science of both, and principles which may not be infringed, but that within these limits the liberty of invention is infinite, and the degrees of excellence infinite also, whence the curious error of burke in imagining that because he could not fix upon some one given proportion of lines as better than any other, therefore proportion had no value nor influence at all, which is the same as to conclude that there is no such thing as melody in music, because there are melodies more than one. § . error of burke in this matter. the argument of burke on this subject is summed up in the following words:--"examine the head of a beautiful horse, find what proportion that bears to his body and to his limbs, and what relations these have to each other, and when you have settled these proportions, as a standard of beauty, then take a dog or cat, or any other animal, and examine how far the same proportions between their heads and their necks, between those and the body, and so on, are found to hold; i think we may safely say, that they differ in every species, yet that there are individuals found in a great many species, so differing, that have a very striking beauty. now if it be allowed that very different, and even contrary forms and dispositions, are consistent with beauty, it amounts, i believe, to a concession, that no certain measures operating from a natural principle are necessary to produce it, at least so far as the brute species is concerned." in this argument there are three very palpable fallacies: the first is the rough application of measurement to the heads, necks, and limbs, without observing the subtile differences of proportion and position of parts in the members themselves, for it would be strange if the different adjustment of the ears and brow in the dog and horse, did not require a harmonizing difference of adjustment in the head and neck. the second fallacy is that above specified, the supposition that proportion cannot be beautiful if susceptible of variation, whereas the whole meaning of the term has reference to the adjustment and functional correspondence of infinitely variable quantities. and the third error is the oversight of the very important fact, that, although "different and even contrary forms and dispositions are consistent with beauty," they are by no means consistent with equal _degrees_ of beauty, so that, while we find in all the presence of such proportion and harmony of form, as gifts them with positive agreeableness consistent with the station and dignity of each, we perceive, also, such superiority of proportion in some (as the horse, eagle, lion, and man for instance) as may best be in harmony with the nobler functions and more exalted powers of the animals. § . constructive proportion. its influence in plants. and this allowed superiority of some animal forms to others is, in itself argument against the second error above named, that of attributing the sensation of beauty to the perception of expedient or constructive proportion. for everything that god has made is equally well constructed with reference to its intended functions. but all things are not equally beautiful. the megatherium is absolutely as well proportioned, with the view of adaptation of parts to purposes, as the horse or the swan; but by no means so handsome as either. the fact is, that the perception of expediency of proportion can but rarely affect our estimates of beauty, for it implies a knowledge which we very rarely and imperfectly possess, and the want of which we tacitly acknowledge. let us consider that instance of the proportion of the stalk of a plant to its head, given by burke. in order to judge of the expediency of this proportion, we must know, first, the scale of the plant (for the smaller the scale, the longer the stem may safely be). secondly, the toughness of the materials of the stem and the mode of their mechanical structure. thirdly, the specific gravity of the head. fourthly, the position of the head which the nature of fructification requires. fifthly, the accidents and influences to which the situation for which the plant was created is exposed. until we know all this, we cannot say that proportion or disproportion exists, and because we cannot know all this, the idea of expedient proportion enters but slightly into our impression of vegetable beauty, but rather, since the existence of the plant proves that these proportions have been observed, and we know that nothing but our own ignorance prevents us from perceiving them, we take the proportion on credit, and are delighted by the variety of results which the divine intelligence has attained in the various involutions of these quantities, and perhaps most when, to outward appearance, such proportions have been violated; more by the slenderness of the campanula than the security of the pine. § . and animals. what is obscure in plants, is utterly incomprehensible in animals, owing to the greater number of means employed and functions performed. to judge of expedient proportion in them, we must know all that each member has to do, all its bones, all its muscles, and the amount of nervous energy communicable to them; and yet, forasmuch as we have more experience and instinctive sense of the strength of muscles than of wood, and more practical knowledge of the use of a head or a foot than of a flower or a stem, we are much more likely to presume upon our judgment respecting proportions here, we are very apt to assert that the plesiosaurus and camelopard have necks too long, that the turnspit has legs too short, and the elephant a body too ponderous. but the painfulness arising from the idea of this being the case is occasioned partly by our sympathy with the animal, partly by our false apprehension of incompletion in the divine work,[ ] nor in either case has it any connection with impressions of that typical beauty of which we are at present speaking; though some, perhaps, with that vital beauty which will hereafter come under discussion. § . summary. i wish therefore the reader to hold, respecting proportion generally. first, that apparent proportion, or the melodious connection of quantities, is a cause of unity, and therefore one of the sources of all beautiful form. secondly, that constructive proportion is agreeable to the mind when it is known or supposed, and that its seeming absence is painful in a like degree, but that this pleasure and pain have nothing in common with those dependent on ideas of beauty. farther illustrations of the value of unity i shall reserve for our detailed examination, as the bringing them forward here would interfere with the general idea of the subject-matter of the theoretic faculty which i wish succinctly to convey. footnotes [ ] compare chap. ix. § , note. [ ] spenser's various forest is the forest of error. [ ] it must be matter of no small wonderment to practical men to observe how grossly the nature and connection of unity and variety have been misunderstood and misstated, by those writers upon taste, who have been guided by no experience of art; most singularly perhaps by mr. alison, who, confounding unity with uniformity, and leading his readers through thirty pages of discussion respecting uniformity and variety, the intelligibility of which is not by any means increased by his supposing uniformity to be capable of existence in single things; at last substitutes for these two terms, sufficiently contradictory already, those of similarity and dissimilarity, the reconciliation of which opposites in one thing we must, i believe, leave mr. alison to accomplish. [ ] [greek: kai to tauta prattein pollakis hêdy;--to gar synêthes hêdy ên; kai to metaballein hêdy; eis physin gar gignetai metaballein.]--arist. rhet. i. ii. . [ ] fra angelico's fresco, in a cell of the upper cloister. he treated the subject frequently. another characteristic example occurs in the vita di christo of the academy, a series now unfortunately destroyed by the picture cleaners. simon memmi in santa maria novella (chapelle des espagnols) has given another very beautiful instance. in giotto the principle is universal, though his multitudes are somewhat more dramatically and powerfully varied in gesture than angelico's. in mino da fiesole's altar-piece in the church of st. ambrogiot at florence, close by cosimo rosselli's fresco, there is a beautiful example in marble. [ ] the predella of the picture behind the altar. [ ] it seems never to have been rightly understood, even by the more intelligent among our architects, that proportion is in any way connected with positive size; it seems to be held among them that a small building may be expanded to a large one merely by proportionally expanding all its parts: and that the harmony will be equally agreeable on whatever scale it be rendered. now this is true of apparent proportion, but utterly false of constructive; and, as much of the value of architectural proportion is constructive, the error is often productive of the most painful results. it may be best illustrated by observing the conditions of proportion in animals. many persons have thoughtlessly claimed admiration for the strength--supposed gigantic--of insects and smaller animals; because capable of lifting weights, leaping distances, and surmounting obstacles, of proportion apparently overwhelming. thus the formica herculanea will lift in its mouth, and brandish like a baton, sticks thicker than itself and six times its length, all the while scrambling over crags of about the proportionate height of the cliffs of dover, three or four in a minute. there is nothing extraordinary in this, nor any exertion of strength necessarily greater than human, in proportion to the size of the body. for it is evident that if the size and strength of any creature be expanded or diminished in proportion to each other, the distance through which it can leap, the time it can maintain exertion, or any other third term resultant, remains constant; that is, diminish weight of powder and of ball proportionately, and the distance carried is constant or nearly so. thus, a grasshopper, a man, and a giant feet high, supposing their muscular strength equally proportioned to their size, can or could all leap, not proportionate distance, but the same or nearly the same distance--say, four feet the grasshopper, or forty-eight times his length; six feet the man or his length exactly; ten feet the giant or the tenth of his length. hence all small animals can, _coeteris paribus_, perform feats of strength and agility, exactly so much greater than those to be executed by large ones, as the animals themselves are smaller; and to enable an elephant to leap like a grasshopper, he must be endowed with strength a million times greater in _proportion_ to his size. now the consequence of this general mechanical law is, that as we increase the scale of animals, their means of power, whether muscles of motion or bones of support, must be increased in a more than proportionate degree, or they become utterly unwieldy, and incapable of motion;--and there is a limit to this increase of strength. if the elephant had legs as long as a spider's, no combination of animal matter that could be hide-bound would have strength enough to move them: to support the megatherium, we must have a humerus a foot in diameter, though perhaps not more than two feet long, and that in a vertical position under him, while the gnat can hang on the window frame, and poise himself to sting, in the middle of crooked stilts like threads; stretched out to ten times the breadth of his body on each side. increase the size of the megatherium a little more, and no phosphate of lime will bear him; he would crush his own legs to powder. (compare sir charles bell, "bridgewater treatise on the hand," p. , and the note.) hence there is not only a limit to the size of animals, in the conditions of matter, but to their activity also, the largest being always least capable of exertion; and this would be the case to a far greater extent, but that nature beneficently alters her proportions as she increases her scale; giving, as we have seen, long legs and enormous wings to the smaller tribes, and short and thick proportion to the larger. so in vegetables--compare the stalk of an ear of oat, and the trunk of a pine, the mechanical relations being in both the same. so also in waves, of which the large never can be mere exaggerations of the small, but have different slopes and curvatures: so in mountains and all things else, necessarily, and from ordinary mechanical laws. whence in architecture, according to the scale of the building, its proportions must be altered; and i have no hesitation in calling that unmeaning exaggeration of parts in st. peter's, of flutings, volutes, friezes, etc., in the proportions of a smaller building, a vulgar blunder, and one that destroys all the majesty that the building ought to have had--and still more i should so call all imitations and adaptations of large buildings on a small scale. the true test of right proportion is that it shall itself inform us of the scale of the building, and be such that even in a drawing it shall instantly induce the conception of the actual size, or size intended. i know not what fuseli means by that aphorism of his:-- "disproportion of parts is the element of hugeness--proportion, of grandeur. all gothic styles of architecture are huge. the greek alone is grand." when a building _is_ vast, it ought to look so; and the proportion is right which exhibits its vastness. nature loses no size by her proportion; her buttressed mountains have more of gothic than of greek in them. [ ] for the just and severe reproof of which, compare sir charles bell, (on the hand,) pp. , . chapter vii. of repose, or the type of divine permanence. § . universal feeling respecting the necessity of repose in art. its sources. there is probably no necessity more imperatively felt by the artist, no test more unfailing of the greatness of artistical treatment, than that of the appearance of repose, and yet there is no quality whose semblance in mere matter is more difficult to define or illustrate. nevertheless, i believe that our instinctive love of it, as well as the cause to which i attribute that love, (although here also, as in the former cases, i contend not for the interpretation, but for the fact,) will be readily allowed by the reader. as opposed to passion, changefulness, or laborious exertion, repose is the especial and separating characteristic of the eternal mind and power; it is the "i am" of the creator opposed to the "i become" of all creatures; it is the sign alike of the supreme knowledge which is incapable of surprise, the supreme power which is incapable of labor, the supreme volition which is incapable of change; it is the stillness of the beams of the eternal chambers laid upon the variable waters of ministering creatures; and as we saw before that the infinity which was a type of the divine nature on the one hand, became yet more desirable on the other from its peculiar address to our prison hopes, and to the expectations of an unsatisfied and unaccomplished existence, so the types of this third attribute of the deity might seem to have been rendered farther attractive to mortal instinct, through the infliction upon the fallen creature of a curse necessitating a labor once unnatural and still most painful, so that the desire of rest planted in the heart is no sensual nor unworthy one, but a longing for renovation and for escape from a state whose every phase is mere preparation for another equally transitory, to one in which permanence shall have become possible through perfection. hence the great call of christ to men, that call on which st. augustine fixed essential expression of christian hope, is accompanied by the promise of rest;[ ] and the death bequest of christ to men is peace. § . repose how expressed in matter. repose, as it is expressed in material things, is either a simple appearance of permanence and quietness, as in the massy forms of a mountain or rock, accompanied by the lulling effect of all mighty sight and sound, which all feel and none define, (it would be less sacred if more explicable,) [greek: heudousin dioreôn koruphai te kai pharanges], or else it is repose proper, the rest of things in which there is vitality or capability of motion actual or imagined; and with respect to these the expression of repose is greater in proportion to the amount and sublimity of the action which is not taking place, as well as to the intensity of the negation of it. thus we speak not of repose in a stone, because the motion of a stone has nothing in it of energy nor vitality, neither its repose of stability. but having once seen a great rock come down a mountain side, we have a noble sensation of its rest, now bedded immovably among the under fern, because the power and fearfulness of its motion were great, and its stability and negation of motion are now great in proportion. hence the imagination, which delights in nothing more than the enhancing of the characters of repose, effects this usually by either attributing to things visibly energetic an ideal stability, or to things visibly stable an ideal activity or vitality. hence wordsworth, of the cloud, which in itself having too much of changefulness for his purpose, is spoken of as one "that heareth not the loud winds when they call, and moveth altogether, if it move at all." and again of children, which, that it may remove from them the child restlessness, the imagination conceives as rooted flowers "beneath an old gray oak, as violets, lie." on the other hand, the scattered rocks, which have not, as such, vitality enough for rest, are gifted with it by the living image: they "lie couched around us like a flock of sheep." § . the necessity to repose of an implied energy. thus, as we saw that unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its contrary (variety) so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite, energy, and this even in its lower manifestations, in rocks and stones and trees. by comparing the modes in which the mind is disposed to regard the boughs of a fair and vigorous tree, motionless in the summer air, with the effect produced by one of these same boughs hewn square and used for threshold or lintel, the reader will at once perceive the connection of vitality with repose, and the part they both bear in beauty. § . mental repose, how noble. but that which in lifeless things ennobles them by seeming to indicate life, ennobles higher creatures by indicating the exaltation of their earthly vitality into a divine vitality; and raising the life of sense into the life of faith--faith, whether we receive it in the sense of adherence to resolution, obedience to law, regardfulness of promise, in which from all time it has been the test as the shield of the true being and life of man, or in the still higher sense of trustfulness in the presence, kindness, and word of god; in which form it has been exhibited under the christian dispensation. for whether in one or other form, whether the faithfulness of men whose path is chosen and portion fixed, in the following and receiving of that path and portion, as in the thermopylæ camp; or the happier faithfulness of children in the good giving of their father, and of subjects in the conduct of their king, as in the "stand still and see the salvation of god" of the red sea shore, there is rest and peacefulness, the "standing still" in both, the quietness of action determined, of spirit unalarmed, of expectation unimpatient: beautiful, even when based only as of old, on the self-command and self-possession, the persistent dignity or the uncalculating love of the creature,[ ] but more beautiful yet when the rest is one of humility instead of pride, and the trust no more in the resolution we have taken, but in the hand we hold. § . its universal value as a test of art. hence i think that there is no desire more intense or more exalted than that which exists in all rightly disciplined minds for the evidences of repose in external signs, and what i cautiously said respecting infinity, i say fearlessly respecting repose, that no work of art can be great without it, and that all art is great in proportion to the appearance of it. it is the most unfailing test of beauty, whether of matter or of motion, nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not, and in strict proportion to its appearance in the work is the majesty of mind to be inferred in the artificer. without regard to other qualities, we may look to this for our evidence, and by the search for this alone we may be led to the rejection of all that is base, and the accepting of all that is good and great, for the paths of wisdom are all peace. we shall see by this light three colossal images standing up side by side, looming in their great rest of spirituality above the whole world horizon, phidias, michael angelo, and dante; and then, separated from their great religious thrones only by less fulness and earnestness of faith, homer, and shakspeare; and from these we may go down step by step among the mighty men of every age, securely and certainly observant of diminished lustre in every appearance of restlessness and effort, until the last trace of true inspiration vanishes in the tottering affectations or the tortured insanities of modern times. there is no art, no pursuit, whatsoever, but its results may be classed by this test alone; everything of evil is betrayed and winnowed away by it, glitter and confusion and glare of color, inconsistency or absence of thought, forced expression, evil choice of subject, over accumulation of materials, whether in painting or literature, the shallow and unreflecting nothingness of the english schools of art, the strained and disgusting horrors of the french, the distorted feverishness of the german:--pretence, over decoration, over division of parts in architecture, and again in music, in acting, in dancing, in whatsoever art, great or mean, there are yet degrees of greatness or meanness entirely dependent on this single quality of repose. § . instances in the laocoon and theseus. particular instances are at present both needless and cannot but be inadequate; needless, because i suppose that every reader, however limited his experience of art, can supply many for himself, and inadequate, because no number of them could illustrate the full extent of the influence of the expression. i believe, however, that by comparing the disgusting convulsions of the laocoon, with the elgin theseus, we may obtain a general idea of the effect of the influence, as shown by its absence in one, and presence in the other, of two works which, as far as artistical merit is concerned, are in some measure parallel, not that i believe, even in this respect, the laocoon justifiably comparable with the theseus. i suppose that no group has exercised so pernicious an influence on art as this, a subject ill chosen, meanly conceived and unnaturally treated, recommended to imitation by subtleties of execution and accumulation of technical knowledge.[ ] § . and in altar tombs. in christian art, it would be well to compare the feeling of the finer among the altar tombs of the middle ages, with any monumental works after michael angelo, perhaps more especially with works of roubilliac or canova. in the cathedral of lucca, near the entrance door of the north transept, there is a monument of jacopo della quercia's to ilaria di caretto, the wife of paolo guinigi. i name it not as more beautiful or perfect than other examples of the same period, but as furnishing an instance of the exact and right mean between the rigidity and rudeness of the earlier monumental effigies, and the morbid imitation of life, sleep, or death, of which the fashion has taken place in modern times.[ ] she is lying on a simple couch, with a hound at her feet, not on the side, but with the head laid straight and simply on the hard pillow, in which, let it be observed, there is no effort at deceptive imitation of pressure. it is understood as a pillow, but not mistaken for one. the hair is bound in a flat braid over the fair brow, the sweet and arched eyes are closed, the tenderness of the loving lips is set and quiet, there is that about them which forbids breath, something which is not death nor sleep, but the pure image of both. the hands are not lifted in prayer, neither folded, but the arms are laid at length upon the body, and the hands cross as they fall. the feet are hidden by the drapery, and the forms of the limbs concealed, but not their tenderness. if any of us, after staying for a time beside this tomb, could see through his tears, one of the vain and unkind encumbrances of the grave, which, in these hollow and heartless days, feigned sorrow builds to foolish pride, he would, i believe, receive such a lesson of love as no coldness could refuse, no fatuity forget, and no insolence disobey. footnotes [ ] matt. xi. . [ ] "the universal instinct of repose, the longing for confirmed tranquillity inward and outward, humble, yet sublime. the life where hope and memory are as one. earth quiet and unchanged; the human soul consistent in self-rule; and heaven revealed to meditation, in that quietness." wordsworth. excursion, book iii. but compare carefully (for this is put into the mouth of one diseased in thought and erring in seeking) the opening of the ninth book; and observe the difference between the mildew of inaction,--the slumber of death; and the patience of the saints--the rest of the sabbath eternal. (rev. xiv. .) compare also, chap. i. § . [ ] i would also have the reader compare with the meagre lines and contemptible tortures of the laocoon, the awfulness and quietness of m. angelo's treatment of a subject in most respects similar, (the plague of the fiery serpents,) but of which the choice was justified both by the place which the event holds in the typical system he had to arrange, and by the grandeur of the plague itself, in its multitudinous grasp, and its mystical salvation; sources of sublimity entirely wanting to the slaughter of the dardan priest. it is good to see how his gigantic intellect reaches after repose, and truthfully finds it, in the falling hand of the near figure, and in the deathful decline of that whose hands are held up even in their venom coldness to the cross; and though irrelevant to our present purpose, it is well also to note how the grandeur of this treatment results, not merely from choice, but from a greater knowledge and more faithful rendering of truth. for whatever knowledge of the human frame there may be in the laocoon, there is certainly none of the habits of serpents. the fixing of the snake's head in the side of the principal figure is as false to nature, as it is poor in composition of line. a large serpent never wants to bite, it wants to hold, it seizes therefore always where it can hold best, by the extremities, or throat, it seizes once and forever, and that before it coils, following up the seizure with the twist of its body round the victim, as invisibly swift as the twist of a whip lash round any hard object it may strike, and then it holds fast, never moving the jaws or the body, if its prey has any power of struggling left, it throws round another coil, without quitting the hold with the jaws; if laocoon had had to do with real serpents, instead of pieces of tape with heads to them, he would have been held still, and not allowed to throw his arms or legs about. it is most instructive to observe the accuracy of michael angelo in the rendering of these circumstances; the binding of the arms to the body, and the knotting of the whole mass of agony together, until we hear the crashing of the bones beneath the grisly sliding of the engine folds. note also the expression in all the figures of another circumstance, the torpor and cold numbness of the limbs induced by the serpent venom, which, though justifiably overlooked by the sculptor of the laocoon, as well as by virgil--in consideration of the rapidity of the death by crushing, adds infinitely to the power of the florentine's conception, and would have been better hinted by virgil, than that sickening distribution of venom on the garlands. in fact, virgil has missed both of truth and impressiveness every way--the "morsu depascitur" is unnatural butchery--the "perfusus veneno" gratuitous foulness--the "clamores horrendos," impossible degradation; compare carefully the remarks on this statue in sir charles bell's essay on expression, (third edition, p. ) where he has most wisely and uncontrovertibly deprived the statue of all claim to expression of energy and fortitude of mind, and shown its common and coarse intent of mere bodily exertion and agony, while he has confirmed payne knight's just condemnation of the passage in virgil. if the reader wishes to see the opposite or imaginative view of the subject, let him compare winkelmann; and schiller, letters on Æsthetic culture. [ ] whenever, in monumental work, the sculptor reaches a deceptive appearance of life or death, or of concomitant details, he has gone too far. the statue should be felt for such, not look like a dead or sleeping body; it should not convey the impression of a corpse, nor of sick and outwearied flesh, but it should be the marble _image_ of death or weariness. so the concomitants should be distinctly marble, severe and monumental in their lines, not shroud, not bedclothes, not actual armor nor brocade, not a real soft pillow, not a downright hard stuffed mattress, but the mere type and suggestion of these: a certain rudeness and incompletion of finish is very noble in all. not that they are to be unnatural, such lines as are given should be pure and true, and clear of the hardness and mannered rigidity of the strictly gothic types, but lines so few and grand as to appeal to the imagination only, and always to stop short of realization. there is a monument put up lately by a modern italian sculptor in one of the side chapels of santa croce, the face fine and the execution dexterous. but it looks as if the person had been restless all night, and the artist admitted to a faithful study of the disturbed bedclothes in the morning. chapter viii. of symmetry, or the type of divine justice. § . symmetry, what and how found in organic nature. § . how necessary in art. we shall not be long detained by the consideration of this, the fourth constituent of beauty, as its nature is universally felt and understood. in all perfectly beautiful objects, there is found the opposition of one part to another and a reciprocal balance obtained; in animals the balance being commonly between opposite sides, (note the disagreeableness occasioned by the exception in flat fish, having the eyes on one side of the head,) but in vegetables the opposition is less distinct, as in the boughs on opposite sides of trees, and the leaves and sprays on each side of the boughs, and in dead matter less perfect still, often amounting only to a certain tendency towards a balance, as in the opposite sides of valleys and alternate windings of streams. in things in which perfect symmetry is from their nature impossible or improper, a balance must be at least in some measure expressed before they can be beheld with pleasure. hence the necessity of what artists require as opposing lines or masses in composition, the propriety of which, as well as their value, depends chiefly on their inartificial and natural invention. absolute equality is not required, still less absolute similarity. a mass of subdued color may be balanced by a point of a powerful one, and a long and latent line overpowered by a short and conspicuous one. the only error against which it is necessary to guard the reader with respect to symmetry, is the confounding it with proportion, though it seems strange that the two terms could ever have been used as synonymous. symmetry is the _opposition_ of _equal_ quantities to each other. proportion the _connection_ of _unequal_ quantities with each other. the property of a tree in sending out equal boughs on opposite sides is symmetrical. its sending out shorter and smaller towards the top, proportional. in the human face its balance of opposite sides is symmetry, its division upwards, proportion. [illustration: tomb of the ilaria di caretto, lucca. from a photograph.] § . to what its agreeableness is referable. various instances. § . especially in religious art. whether the agreeableness of symmetry be in any way referable to its expression of the aristotelian [greek: isotês], that is to say of abstract justice, i leave the reader to determine; i only assert respecting it, that it is necessary to the dignity of every form, and that by the removal of it we shall render the other elements of beauty comparatively ineffectual: though, on the other hand, it is to be observed that it is rather a mode of arrangement of qualities than a quality itself; and hence symmetry has little power over the mind, unless all the other constituents of beauty be found together with it. a form may be symmetrical and ugly, as many elizabethan ornaments, and yet not so ugly as it had been if unsymmetrical, but bettered always by increasing degrees of symmetry; as in star figures, wherein there is a circular symmetry of many like members, whence their frequent use for the plan and ground of ornamental designs; so also it is observable that foliage in which the leaves are concentrically grouped, as in the chestnuts, and many shrubs--rhododendrons for instance--(whence the perfect beauty of the alpine rose)--is far nobler in its effect than any other, so that the sweet chestnut of all trees most fondly and frequently occurs in the landscape of tintoret and titian, beside which all other landscape grandeur vanishes: and even in the meanest things the rule holds, as in the kaleidoscope, wherein agreeableness is given to forms altogether accidental merely by their repetition and reciprocal opposition; which orderly balance and arrangement are essential to the perfect operation of the more earnest and solemn qualities of the beautiful, as being heavenly in their nature, and contrary to the violence and disorganization of sin, so that the seeking of them and submission to them is always marked in minds that have been subjected to high moral discipline, constant in all the great religious painters, to the degree of being an offence and a scorn to men of less tuned and tranquil feeling. equal ranks of saints are placed on each side of the picture, if there be a kneeling figure on one side, there is a corresponding one on the other, the attendant angels beneath and above are arranged in like order. the raffaelle at blenheim, the madonna di st. sisto, the st. cicilia, and all the works of perugino, francia, and john bellini present some such form, and the balance at least is preserved even in pictures of action necessitating variety of grouping, as always by giotto; and by ghirlandajo in the introduction of his chorus-like side figures, and by tintoret most eminently in his noblest work, the crucifixion, where not only the grouping but the arrangement of light is absolutely symmetrical. where there is no symmetry, the effects of passion and violence are increased, and many very sublime pictures derive their sublimity from the want of it, but they lose proportionally in the diviner quality of beauty. in landscape the same sense of symmetry is preserved, as we shall presently see, even to artificialness, by the greatest men, and it is one of the principal sources of deficient feeling in the landscapes of the present day, that the symmetry of nature is sacrificed to irregular picturesqueness. of this, however, hereafter. chapter ix. of purity, or the type of divine energy. § . the influence of light as a sacred symbol. it may at first appear strange that i have not in my enumeration of the types of divine attributes, included that which is certainly the most visible and evident of all, as well as the most distinctly expressed in scripture; god is light, and in him is no darkness at all. but i could not logically class the presence of an actual substance or motion with mere conditions and modes of being, neither could i logically separate from any of these, that which is evidently necessary to the perception of all. and it is also to be observed, that though the love of light is more instinctive in the human heart than any other of the desires connected with beauty, we can hardly separate its agreeableness in its own nature from the sense of its necessity and value for the purposes of life, neither the abstract painfulness of darkness from the sense of danger and incapacity connected with it; and note also that it is not _all_ light, but light possessing the universal qualities of beauty, diffused or infinite rather than in points, tranquil, not startling and variable, pure, not sullied or oppressed, which is indeed pleasant and perfectly typical of the divine nature. § . the idea of purity connected with it. observe, however, that there is one quality, the idea of which had been just introduced in connection with light, which might have escaped us in the consideration of mere matter, namely purity, and yet i think that the original notion of this quality is altogether material, and has only been attributed to color when such color is suggestive of the condition of matter from which we originally received the idea. for i see not in the abstract how one color should be considered purer than another, except as more or less compounded, whereas there is certainly a sense of purity or impurity in the most compound and neutral colors, as well as in the simplest, a quality difficult to define, and which the reader will probably be surprised by my calling the type of energy, with which it has certainly little traceable connection in the mind. § . originally derived from conditions of matter. § . associated ideas adding to the power of the impression. influence of clearness. § . perfect beauty of surface, in what consisting. i believe however if we carefully analyze the nature of our ideas of impurity in general, we shall find them refer especially to conditions of matter in which its various elements are placed in a relation incapable of healthy or proper operation; and most distinctly to conditions in which the negation of vital or energetic action is most evident, as in corruption and decay of all kinds, wherein particles which once, by their operation on each other, produced a living and energetic whole, are reduced to a condition of perfect passiveness, in which they are seized upon and appropriated, one by one, piecemeal, by whatever has need of them, without any power of resistance or energy of their own. and thus there is a peculiar painfulness attached to any associations of inorganic with organic matter, such as appear to involve the inactivity and feebleness of the latter, so that things which are not felt to be foul in their own nature, yet become so in association with things of greater inherent energy; as dust or earth, which in a mass excites no painful sensation, excites a most disagreeable one when strewing or staining an animal's skin, because it implies a decline and deadening of the vital and healthy power of the skin. but all reasoning about this impression is rendered difficult, by the host of associated ideas connected with it; for the ocular sense of impurity connected with corruption is infinitely enhanced by the offending of other senses and by the grief and horror of it in its own nature, as the special punishment and evidence of sin, and on the other hand, the ocular delight in purity is mingled, as i before observed, with the love of the mere element of light, as a type of wisdom and of truth; whence it seems to me that we admire the transparency of bodies, though probably it is still rather owing to our sense of more perfect order and arrangement of particles, and not to our love of light, that we look upon a piece of rock crystal as purer than a piece of marble, and on the marble as purer than a piece of chalk. and let it be observed also that the most lovely objects in nature are only partially transparent. i suppose the utmost possible sense of beauty is conveyed by a feebly translucent, smooth, but not lustrous surface of white, and pale warm red, subdued by the most pure and delicate grays, as in the finer portions of the human frame; in wreaths of snow, and in white plumage under rose light,[ ] so viola of olivia in twelfth night, and homer of atrides wounded.[ ] and i think that transparency and lustre, both beautiful in themselves, are incompatible with the highest beauty because they destroy form, on the full perception of which more of the divinely character of the object depends than upon its color. hence, in the beauty of snow and of flesh, so much translucency is allowed as is consistent with the full explanation of the forms, while we are suffered to receive more intense impressions of light and transparency from other objects which, nevertheless, owing to their necessarily unperceived form, are not perfectly nor affectingly beautiful. a fair forehead outshines its diamond diadem. the sparkle of the cascade withdraws not our eyes from the snowy summits in their evening silence. § . purity only metaphorically a type of sinlessness. it may seem strange to many readers that i have not spoken of purity in that sense in which it is most frequently used, as a type of sinlessness. i do not deny that the frequent metaphorical use of it in scripture may have and ought to have much influence on the sympathies with which we regard it, and that probably the immediate agreeableness of it to most minds arises far more from this source than from that to which i have chosen to attribute it. but, in the first place, if it be indeed in the signs of divine and not of human attributes that beauty consists, i see not how the idea of sin can be formed with respect to the deity, for it is an idea of a relation borne by us to him, and not in any way to be attached to his abstract nature. and if the idea of sin is incapable of being formed with respect to him, so also is its negative, for we cannot form an idea of negation, where we cannot form an idea of presence. if for instance one could conceive of taste or flavor in a proposition of euclid, so also might we of insipidity, but if not of the one, then not of the other. so that, in speaking of the goodness of god, it cannot be that we mean anything more than his love, mercifulness, and justice, and these attributes i have shown to be expressed by other qualities of beauty, and i cannot trace any rational connection between them and the idea of spotlessness in matter. neither can i trace any more distinct relation between this idea, and any of the virtues which make up the righteousness of man, except perhaps those of truth and openness, of which i have already spoken as more expressed by the transparency than the mere purity of matter. so that i conceive the whole use of the terms purity, spotlessness, etc., in moral subjects, to be merely metaphorical, and that it is rather that we illustrate these virtues by the desirableness of material purity, than that we desire material purity because it is illustrative of these virtues. § . energy, how expressed by purity of matter. i repeat, then, that the only idea which i think can be legitimately connected with purity of matter, is this of vital and energetic connection among its particles, and that the idea of foulness is essentially connected with dissolution and death. thus the purity of the rock, contrasted with the foulness of dust or mould, is expressed by the epithet "living," very singularly given in the rock, in almost all languages; singularly i say, because life is almost the last attribute one would ascribe to stone, but for this visible energy and connection of its particles: and so of water as opposed to stagnancy. and i do not think that, however pure a powder or dust may be, the idea of beauty is ever connected with it, for it is not the mere purity, but the _active_ condition of the substance which is desired, so that as soon as it shoots into crystals, or gathers into efflorescence, a sensation of _active_ or real purity is received which was not felt in the calcined caput mortuum. § . and of color. § . spirituality, how so expressed. and again in color. i imagine that the quality of it which we term purity is dependent on the full energizing of the rays that compose it, whereof if in compound hues any are overpowered and killed by the rest, so as to be of no value nor operation, foulness is the consequence; while so long as all act together, whether side by side, or from pigments seen one through the other, so that all the coloring matter employed comes into play in the harmony desired, and none be quenched nor killed, purity results. and so in all cases i suppose that pureness is made to us desirable, because expressive of the constant presence and energizing of the deity in matter, through which all things live and move, and have their being, and that foulness is painful as the accompaniment of disorder and decay, and always indicative of the withdrawal of divine support. and the practical analogies of life, the invariable connection of outward foulness with mental sloth and degradation, as well as with bodily lethargy and disease, together with the contrary indications of freshness and purity belonging to every healthy and active organic frame, (singularly seen in the effort of the young leaves when first their inward energy prevails over the earth, pierces its corruption, and shakes its dust away from their own white purity of life,) all these circumstances strengthen the instinct by associations countless and irresistible. and then, finally, with the idea of purity comes that of spirituality, for the essential characteristic of matter is its inertia, whence, by adding to it purity or energy, we may in some measure spiritualize even matter itself. thus in the descriptions of the apocalypse it is its purity that fits it for its place in heaven; the river of the water of life, that proceeds out of the throne of the lamb, is clear as crystal, and the pavement of the city is pure gold, like unto clear glass.[ ] footnotes [ ] the reader will observe that i am speaking at present of mere material qualities. if he would obtain perfect ideas respecting loveliness of luminous surface, let him closely observe a swan with its wings expanded in full light five minutes before sunset. the human cheek or the rose leaf are perhaps hardly so pure, and the forms of snow, though individually as beautiful, are less exquisitely combined. [ ] [greek: hôs d' ote tis t' elephanta gynê phoiniki miênê mêonis.] so spenser of shamefacedness, an exquisite piece of glowing color--and sweetly of belphoebe--(so the roses and lilies of all poets.) compare the making of the image of florimell. "the substance whereof she the body made was purest snow, in massy mould congealed, which she had gathered in a shady glade of the riphoean hills. the same she tempered with fine mercury, and mingled them with perfect vermily." with una he perhaps overdoes the white a little. she is two degrees of comparison above snow. compare his questioning in the hymn to beauty, about that mixture made of colors fair; and goodly temperament, of pure complexion. "hath white and red in it such wondrous power that it can pierce through the eyes into the heart?" where the distinction between typical and vital beauty is very gloriously carried out. [ ] i have not spoken here of any of the associations connected with warmth or coolness of color, they are partly connected with vital beauty, compare chap. xiv. § , , and partly with impressions of the sublime, the discussion of which is foreign to the present subject; purity, however, it is which gives value to both, for neither warm nor cool color, can be beautiful, if impure. neither have i spoken of any questions relating to melodies of color, a subject of separate science--whose general principle has been already stated in the seventh chapter respecting unity of sequence. those qualities only are here noted which give absolute beauty, whether to separate color or to melodies of it--for all melodies are not beautiful, but only those which are expressive of certain pleasant or solemn emotions; and the rest startling, or curious, or cheerful, or exciting, or sublime, but not beautiful, (and so in music.) and all questions relating to this grandeur, cheerfulness, or other characteristic impression of color must be considered under the head of ideas of relation. chapter x. of moderation, or the type of government by law. § . meaning of the terms chasteness and refinement. of objects which, in respect of the qualities hitherto considered, appear to have equal claims to regard, we find, nevertheless, that certain are preferred to others in consequence of an attractive power, usually expressed by the terms "chasteness, refinement, or elegance," and it appears also that things which in other respects have little in them of natural beauty, and are of forms altogether simple and adapted to simple uses, are capable of much distinction and desirableness in consequence of these qualities only. it is of importance to discover the real nature of the ideas thus expressed. § . how referable to temporary fashions. something of the peculiar meaning of the words is referable to the authority of fashion and the exclusiveness of pride, owing to which that which is the mode of a particular time is submissively esteemed, and that which by its costliness or its rarity is of difficult attainment, or in any way appears to have been chosen as the best of many things, (which is the original sense of the words elegant and exquisite,) is esteemed for the witness it bears to the dignity of the chooser. but neither of these ideas are in any way connected with eternal beauty, neither do they at all account for that agreeableness of color and form which is especially termed chasteness, and which it would seem to be a characteristic of rightly trained mind in all things to prefer, and of common minds to reject. § . how to the perception of completion. § . finish, by great masters esteemed essential. there is however another character of artificial productions, to which these terms have partial reference, which it is of some importance to note, that of finish, exactness, or refinement, which are commonly desired in the works of men, owing both to their difficulty of accomplishment and consequent expression of care and power (compare chapter on ideas of power, part i. sect, i.,) and from their greater resemblance to the working of god, whose "absolute exactness," says hooker, "all things imitate, by tending to that which is most exquisite in every particular." and there is not a greater sign of the imperfection of general taste, than its capability of contentment with forms and things which, professing completion, are yet not exact nor complete, as in the vulgar with wax and clay and china figures, and in bad sculptors with an unfinished and clay-like modelling of surface, and curves and angles of no precision or delicacy; and in general, in all common and unthinking persons with an imperfect rendering of that which might be pure and fine, as church-wardens are content to lose the sharp lines of stone carving under clogging obliterations of whitewash, and as the modern italians scrape away and polish white all the sharpness and glory of the carvings on their old churches, as most miserably and pitifully on st. mark's at venice, and the baptisteries of pistoja and pisa, and many others; so also the delight of vulgar painters in coarse and slurred painting, merely for the sake of its coarseness,[ ] as of spagnoletto, salvator, or murillo, opposed to the divine finish which the greatest and mightiest of men disdained not, but rather wrought out with painfulness and life spending; as leonardo and michael angelo, (for the latter, however many things he left unfinished, did finish, if at all, with a refinement that the eye cannot follow, but the feeling only, as in the pieta of genoa,) and perugino always, even to the gilding of single hairs among his angel tresses, and the young raffaelle, when he was heaven taught, and angelico, and pinturicchio, and john bellini, and all other such serious and loving men. only it is to be observed that this finish is not a part or constituent of beauty, but the full and ultimate rendering of it, so that it is an idea only connected with the works of men, for all the works of the deity are finished with the same, that is, infinite care and completion: and so what degrees of beauty exist among them can in no way be dependent upon this source, inasmuch as there are between them no degrees of care. and therefore, as there certainly is admitted a difference of degree in what we call chasteness, even in divine work, (compare the hollyhock or the sunflower with the vale lily,) we must seek for it some other explanation and source than this. § . moderation, its nature and value and if, bringing down our ideas of it from complicated objects to simple lines and colors, we analyze and regard them carefully, i think we shall be able to trace them to an under-current of constantly agreeable feeling, excited by the appearance in material things of a self-restrained liberty, that is to say, by the image of that acting of god with regard to all his creation, wherein, though free to operate in whatever arbitrary, sudden, violent, or inconstant ways he will, he yet, if we may reverently so speak, restrains in himself this his omnipotent liberty, and works always in consistent modes, called by us laws. and this restraint or moderation, according to the words of hooker, ("that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a law,") is in the deity not restraint, such as it is said of creatures, but, as again says hooker, "the very being of god is a law to his working," so that every appearance of painfulness or want of power and freedom in material things is wrong and ugly; for the right restraint, the image of divine operation, is both in them, and in men, a willing and not painful stopping short of the utmost degree to which their power might reach, and the appearance of fettering or confinement is the cause of ugliness in the one, as the slightest painfulness or effort in restraint is a sign of sin in the other. § . it is the girdle of beauty. § . how found in natural curves and colors. § . how difficult of attainment, yet essential to all good. i have put this attribute of beauty last, because i consider it the girdle and safeguard of all the rest, and in this respect the most essential of all, for it is possible that a certain degree of beauty may be attained even in the absence of one of its other constituents, as sometimes in some measure without symmetry or without unity. but the least appearance of violence or extravagance, of the want of moderation and restraint, is, i think, destructive of all beauty whatsoever in everything, color, form, motion, language, or thought, giving rise to that which in color we call glaring, in form inelegant, in motion ungraceful, in language coarse, in thought undisciplined, in all unchastened; which qualities are in everything most painful, because the signs of disobedient and irregular operation. and herein we at last find the reason of that which has been so often noted respecting the subtilty and almost invisibility of natural curves and colors, and why it is that we look on those lines as least beautiful which fall into wide and far license of curvature, and as most beautiful which approach nearest (so that the curvilinear character be distinctly asserted) to the government of the right line, as in the pure and severe curves of the draperies of the religious painters; and thus in color it is not red, but rose-color which is most beautiful, neither such actual green as we find in summer foliage partly, and in our painting of it constantly; but such gray green as that into which nature modifies her distant tints, or such pale green and uncertain as we see in sunset sky, and in the clefts of the glacier and the chrysoprase, and the sea-foam; and so of all colors, not that they may not sometimes be deep and full, but that there is a solemn moderation even in their very fulness, and a holy reference beyond and out of their own nature to great harmonies by which they are governed, and in obedience to which is their glory. whereof the ignorance is shown in all evil colorists by the violence and positiveness of their hues, and by dulness and discordance consequent, for the very brilliancy and real power of all color is dependent on the chastening of it, as of a voice on its gentleness, and as of action on its calmness, and as all moral vigor on self-command. and therefore as that virtue which men last, and with most difficulty attain unto, and which many attain not at all, and yet that which is essential to the conduct and almost to the being of all other virtues, since neither imagination, nor invention, nor industry, nor sensibility, nor energy, nor any other good having, is of full avail without this of self-command, whereby works truly masculine and mighty are produced, and by the signs of which they are separated from that lower host of things brilliant, magnificent and redundant, and farther yet from that of the loose, the lawless, the exaggerated, the insolent, and the profane, i would have the necessity of it foremost among all our inculcating, and the name of it largest among all our inscribing, in so far that, over the doors of every school of art, i would have this one word, relieved out in deep letters of pure gold,--moderation. footnotes [ ] it is to be carefully noted that when rude execution is evidently not the result of imperfect feeling and desire (as in these men above named, it is) but of thought; either impatient, which there was necessity to note swiftly, or impetuous, which it was well to note in mighty manner, as pre-eminently and in both kinds the case with tintoret, and often with michael angelo, and in lower and more degraded modes with rubens, and generally in the sketches and first thoughts of great masters; there is received a very noble pleasure, connected both with ideas of power (compare again part i. sect. ii. chap. i.) and with certain actions of the imagination of which we shall speak presently. but this pleasure is not received from the beauty of the work, for nothing can be perfectly beautiful unless complete, but from its simplicity and sufficiency to its immediate purpose, where the purpose is not of beauty at all, as often in things rough-hewn, pre-eminently for instance in the stones of the foundations of the pitti and strozzi palaces, whose noble rudeness is to be opposed both to the useless polish, and the barbarous rustications of modern times, (although indeed this instance is not without exception to be received, for the majesty of these rocky buildings depends also in some measure upon the real beauty and finish of the natural curvilinear fractures, opposed to the coarseness of human chiselling,) and again, as it respects works of higher art, the pleasure of their hasty or imperfect execution is not indicative of their beauty, but of their majesty and fulness of thought and vastness of power. shade is only beautiful when it magnifies and sets forth the forms of fair things, so negligence is only noble when it is, as fuseli hath it, "the shadow of energy." which that it may be, secure the substance and the shade will follow, but let the artist beware of stealing the manner of giant intellects when he has not their intention, and of assuming large modes of treatment when he has little thoughts to treat. there is large difference between indolent impatience of labor and intellectual impatience of delay, large difference between leaving things unfinished because we have more to do, or because we are satisfied with what we have done. tintoret, who prayed hard, and hardly obtained, that he might be permitted, the charge of his colors only being borne, to paint a new built house from base to battlement, was not one to shun labor, it is the pouring in upon him of glorious thoughts in inexpressible multitude that his sweeping hand follows so fast. it is as easy to know the slightness of earnest haste from the slightness of blunt feeling, indolence, or affectation, as it is to know the dust of a race, from the dust of dissolution. chapter xi. general inferences respecting typical beauty. § . the subject incompletely treated, yet admitting of general conclusions. i have now enumerated, and in some measure explained those characteristics of mere matter by which i conceive it becomes agreeable to the theoretic faculty, under whatever form, dead, organized, or animated, it may present itself. it will be our task in the succeeding volume to examine, and illustrate by examples, the mode in which these characteristics appear in every division of creation, in stones, mountains, waves, clouds, and all organic bodies; beginning with vegetables, and then taking instances in the range of animals from the mollusc to man; examining how one animal form is nobler than another, by the more manifest presence of these attributes, and chiefly endeavoring to show how much there is of admirable and lovely, even in what is commonly despised. at present i have only to mark the conclusions at which we have as yet arrived respecting the rank of the theoretic faculty, and then to pursue the inquiry farther into the nature of vital beauty. as i before said, i pretend not to have enumerated all the sources of material beauty, nor the analogies connected with them; it is probable that others may occur to many readers, or to myself as i proceed into more particular inquiry, but i am not careful to collect all conceivable evidence on the subject. i desire only to assert and prove some certain principles, and by means of these to show, in some measure, the inherent worthiness and glory of god's works and something of the relations they bear to each other and to us, leaving the subject to be fully pursued, as it only can be, by the ardor and affection of those whom it may interest. § . typical beauty not created for man's sake. § . but degrees of it for his sake admitted. § . what encouragement hence to be received. the qualities above enumerated are not to be considered as stamped upon matter for our teaching or enjoyment only, but as the necessary consequence of the perfection of god's working, and the inevitable stamp of his image on what he creates. for it would be inconsistent with his infinite perfection to work imperfectly in any place, or in any matter; wherefore we do not find that flowers and fair trees, and kindly skies, are given only where man may see them and be fed by them, but the spirit of god works everywhere alike, where there is no eye to see, covering all lonely places with an equal glory, using the same pencil and outpouring the same splendor, in the caves of the waters where the sea-snakes swim, and in the desert where the satyrs dance, among the fir-trees of the stork, and the rocks of the conies, as among those higher creatures whom he has made capable witnesses of his working. nevertheless, i think that the admission of different degrees of this glory and image of himself upon creation, has the look of something meant especially for us; for although, in pursuance of the appointed system of government by universal laws, these same degrees exist where we cannot witness them, yet the existence of degrees at all seems at first unlikely in divine work, and i cannot see reason for it unless that palpable one of increasing in us the understanding of the sacred characters by showing us the results of their comparative absence. for i know not that if all things had been equally beautiful, we could have received the idea of beauty at all, or if we had, certainly it had become a matter of indifference to us, and of little thought, whereas through the beneficent ordaining of degrees in its manifestation, the hearts of men are stirred by its occasional occurrence in its noblest form, and all their energies are awakened in the pursuit of it, and endeavor to arrest it or recreate it for themselves. but whatever doubt there may be respecting the exact amount of modification of created things admitted reference to us, there can be none respecting the dignity of that faculty by which we receive the mysterious evidence of their divine origin. the fact of our deriving constant pleasure from whatever is a type or semblance of divine attributes, and from nothing but that which is so, is the most glorious of all that can be demonstrated of human nature; it not only sets a great gulf of specific separation between us and the lower animals, but it seems a promise of a communion ultimately deep, close, and conscious, with the being whose darkened manifestations we here feebly and unthinkingly delight in. probably to every order of intelligence more of his image becomes palpable in all around them, and the glorified spirits and the angels have perceptions as much more full and rapturous than ours, as ours than those of beasts and creeping things. and receiving it, as we must, for an universal axiom that "no natural desire can be entirely frustrate," and seeing that these desires are indeed so unfailing in us that they have escaped not the reasoners of any time, but were held divine of old, and in even heathen countries,[ ] it cannot be but that there is in these visionary pleasures, lightly as we now regard them, cause for thankfulness, ground for hope, anchor for faith, more than in all the other manifold gifts and guidances, wherewith god crowns the years, and hedges the paths of men. footnotes [ ] [greek: hê dè teleía eudaimonía theôrêtikê tís eotin henérgeia. * * tois mèn gàr theois apas ho bios makarios, tois d anthrôpois, eph hoson homoiôma ti tês toiantês henergeias hupárchei. tôn d hallôn zôôn oudèn èudaimonei. hepeidê oudamê koinônei theôrias.]--arist. eth. lib. th. the concluding book of the ethics should be carefully read. it is all most valuable. chapter xii. of vital beauty. first, as relative. § . transition from typical to vital beauty. i proceed more particularly to examine the nature of that second kind of beauty of which i spoke in the third chapter, as consisting in "the appearance of felicitous fulfilment of function in living things." i have already noticed the example of very pure and high typical beauty which is to be found in the lines and gradations of unsullied snow: if, passing to the edge of a sheet of it, upon the lower alps, early in may, we find, as we are nearly sure to find, two or three little round openings pierced in it, and through these emergent, a slender, pensive, fragile flower[ ] whose small dark, purple-fringed bell hangs down and shudders over the icy cleft that it has cloven, as if partly wondering at its own recent grave, and partly dying of very fatigue after its hard won victory; we shall be, or we ought to be, moved by a totally different impression of loveliness from that which we receive among the dead ice and the idle clouds. there is now uttered to us a call for sympathy, now offered to us an image of moral purpose and achievement, which, however unconscious or senseless the creature may indeed be that so seems to call, cannot be heard without affection, nor contemplated without worship, by any of us whose heart is rightly tuned, or whose mind is clearly and surely sighted. throughout the whole of the organic creation every being in a perfect state exhibits certain appearances, or evidences, of happiness, and besides is in its nature, its desires, its modes of nourishment, habitation, and death, illustrative or expressive of certain moral dispositions or principles. now, first, in the keenness of the sympathy which we feel in the happiness, real or apparent, of all organic beings, and which, as we shall presently see, invariably prompts us, from the joy we have in it, to look upon those as most lovely which are most happy; and secondly, in the justness of the moral sense which rightly reads the lesson they are all intended to teach, and classes them in orders of worthiness and beauty according to the rank and nature of that lesson, whether it be of warning or example, of those that wallow or of those that soar, of the fiend-hunted swine by the gennesaret lake, or of the dove returning to its ark of rest; in our right accepting and reading of all this, consists, i say, the ultimately perfect condition of that noble theoretic faculty, whose place in the system of our nature i have already partly vindicated with respect to typical, but which can only fully be established with respect to vital beauty. § . the perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with vital beauty, is charity. its first perfection, therefore, relating to vital beauty, is the kindness and unselfish fulness of heart, which receives the utmost amount of pleasure from the happiness of all things. of which in high degree the heart of man is incapable, neither what intense enjoyment the angels may have in all that they see of things that move and live, and in the part they take in the shedding of god's kindness upon them, can we know or conceive: only in proportion as we draw near to god, and are made in measure like unto him, can we increase this our possession of charity, of which the entire essence is in god only. wherefore it is evident that even the ordinary exercise of this faculty implies a condition of the whole moral being in some measure right and healthy, and that to the entire exercise of it there is necessary the entire perfection of the christian character, for he who loves not god, nor his brother, cannot love the grass beneath his feet and the creatures that fill those spaces in the universe which he needs not, and which live not for his uses; nay, he has seldom grace to be grateful even to those that love him and serve him, while, on the other hand, none can love god nor his human brother without loving all things which his father loves, nor without looking upon them every one as in that respect his brethren also, and perhaps worthier than he, if in the under concords they have to fill, their part is touched more truly. wherefore it is good to read of that kindness and humbleness of st. francis of assisi, who spoke never to bird nor to cicala, nor even to wolf and beast of prey, but as his brother; and so we find are moved the minds of all good and mighty men, as in the lesson that we have from the mariner of coleridge, and yet more truly and rightly taught in the heartleap well, "never to blend our pleasure, or our pride, with sorrow of the meanest thing that feels," and again in the white doe of rylstone, with the added teaching of that gift, which we have from things beneath us, in thanks for the love they cannot equally return; that anguish of our own, "is tempered and allayed by sympathies, aloft ascending and descending deep, even to the inferior kinds," so that i know not of anything more destructive of the whole theoretic faculty, not to say of the christian character and human intellect, than those accursed sports in which man makes of himself, cat, tiger, serpent, chaetodon, and alligator in one, and gathers into one continuance of cruelty for his amusement all the devices that brutes sparingly and at intervals use against each other for their necessities.[ ] § . only with respect to plants, less affection than sympathy. as we pass from those beings of whose happiness and pain we are certain to those in which it is doubtful or only seeming, as possibly in plants, (though i would fain hold, if i might, "the faith that every flower, enjoys the air it breathes," neither do i ever crush or gather one without some pain,) yet our feeling for them has in it more of sympathy than of actual love, as receiving from them in delight far more than we can give; for love, i think, chiefly grows in giving, at least its essence is the desire of doing good, or giving happiness, and we cannot feel the desire of that which we cannot conceive, so that if we conceive not of a plant as capable of pleasure, we cannot desire to give it pleasure, that is, we cannot love it in the entire sense of the term. nevertheless, the sympathy of very lofty and sensitive minds usually reaches so far as to the conception of life in the plant, and so to love, as with shelley, of the sensitive plant, and shakspeare always, as he has taught us in the sweet voices of ophelia and perdita, and wordsworth always, as of the daffodils, and the celandine. "it doth not love the shower, nor seek the cold. this neither is its courage, nor its choice, but its necessity in being old,"-- and so all other great poets (that is to say, great seers;[ ]) nor do i believe that any mind, however rude, is without some slight perception or acknowledgment of joyfulness in breathless things, as most certainly there are none but feel instinctive delight in the appearances of such enjoyment. § . which is proportioned to the appearance of energy in the plants. for it is matter of easy demonstration, that setting the characters of typical beauty aside, the pleasure afforded by every organic form is in proportion to its appearance of healthy vital energy; as in a rose-bush, setting aside all considerations of gradated flushing of color and fair folding of line, which it shares with the cloud or the snow-wreath, we find in and through all this, certain signs pleasant and acceptable as signs of life and enjoyment in the particular individual plant itself. every leaf and stalk is seen to have a function, to be constantly exercising that function, and as it seems _solely_ for the good and enjoyment of the plant. it is true that reflection will show us that the plant is not living for itself alone, that its life is one of benefaction, that it gives as well as receives, but no sense of this whatsoever mingles with our perception of physical beauty in its forms. those forms which appear to be necessary to its health, the symmetry of its leaflets, the smoothness of its stalks, the vivid green of its shoots, are looked upon by us as signs of the plant's own happiness and perfection; they are useless to us, except as they give us pleasure in our sympathizing with that of the plant, and if we see a leaf withered or shrunk or worm-eaten, we say it is ugly, and feel it to be most painful, not because it hurts _us_, but because it seems to hurt the plant, and conveys to us an idea of pain and disease and failure of life in _it_. that the amount of pleasure we receive is in exact proportion to the appearance of vigor and sensibility in the plant, is easily proved by observing the effect of those which show the evidences of it in the least degree, as, for instance, any of the cacti not in flower. their masses are heavy and simple, their growth slow, their various parts jointed on one to another, as if they were buckled or pinned together instead of growing out of each other, (note the singular imposition in many of them, the prickly pear for instance, of the fruit upon the body of the plant, so that it looks like a swelling or disease,) and often farther opposed by harsh truncation of line as in the cactus truncatophylla. all these circumstances so concur to deprive the plant of vital evidences, that we receive from it more sense of pain than of beauty; and yet even here, the sharpness of the angles, the symmetrical order and strength of the spines, the fresh and even color of the body, are looked for earnestly as signs of healthy condition, our pain is increased by their absence, and indefinitely increased if blotches, and other appearances of bruise and decay interfere with that little life which the plant seems to possess. the same singular characters belong in animals to the crustacea, as to the lobster, crab, scorpion, etc., and in great measure deprive them of the beauty which we find in higher orders, so that we are reduced to look for their beauty to single parts and joints, and not to the whole animal. § . this sympathy is unselfish, and does not regard utility. now i wish particularly to impress upon the reader that all these sensations of beauty in the plant arise from our unselfish sympathy with its happiness, and not from any view of the qualities in it which may bring good to us, nor even from our acknowledgment in it of any moral condition beyond that of mere felicity; for such an acknowledgment, belongs to the second operation of the theoretic faculty (compare § ,) and not to the sympathetic part which we are at present examining; so that we even find that in this respect, the moment we begin to look upon any creature as subordinate to some purpose out of itself, some of the sense of organic beauty is lost. thus, when we are told that the leaves of a plant are occupied in decomposing carbonic acid, and preparing oxygen for us, we begin to look upon it with some such indifference as upon a gasometer. it has become a machine; some of our sense of its happiness is gone; its emanation of inherent life is no longer pure. the bending trunk, waving to and fro in the wind above the waterfall, is beautiful because it is happy, though it is perfectly useless to us. the same trunk, hewn down and thrown across the stream, has lost its beauty. it serves as a bridge,--it has become useful; it lives not for itself, and its beauty is gone, or what it retains is purely typical, dependent on its lines and colors, not on its functions. saw it into planks, and though now adapted to become permanently useful, its whole beauty is lost forever, or to be regained only in part when decay and ruin shall have withdrawn it again from use, and left it to receive from the hand of nature the velvet moss and varied lichen, which may again suggest ideas of inherent happiness, and tint its mouldering sides with hues of life. there is something, i think, peculiarly beautiful and instructive in this unselfishness of the theoretic faculty, and in its abhorrence of all utility which is based on the pain or destruction of any creature, for in such ministering to each other as is consistent with the essence and energy of both, it takes delight, as in the clothing of the rock by the herbage, and the feeding of the herbage by the stream. § . especially with respect to animals. § . and it is destroyed by evidences of mechanism. but still more distinct evidence of its being indeed the expression of happiness to which we look for our first pleasure in organic form, is to be found in the way in which we regard the bodily frame of animals: of which it is to be noted first, that there is not anything which causes so intense and tormenting a sense of ugliness as any scar, wound, monstrosity, or imperfection which seems inconsistent with the animal's ease and health; and that although in vegetables, where there is no immediate sense of pain, we are comparatively little hurt by excrescences and irregularities, but are sometimes even delighted with them, and fond of them, as children of the oak-apple, and sometimes look upon them as more interesting than the uninjured conditions, as in the gnarled and knotted trunks of trees; yet the slightest approach to anything of the kind in animal form is regarded with intense horror, merely from the sense of pain it conveys. and, in the second place, it is to be noted that whenever we dissect the animal frame, or conceive it as dissected, and substitute in our ideas the neatness of mechanical contrivance for the pleasure of the animal; the moment we reduce enjoyment to ingenuity, and volition to leverage, that instant all sense of beauty disappears. take, for instance, the action of the limb of the ostrich, which is beautiful so long as we see it in its swift uplifting along the desert sands, and trace in the tread of it her scorn of the horse and his rider, but would infinitely lose of its impressiveness, if we could see the spring ligament playing backwards and forwards in alternate jerks over the tubercle at the hock joint. take again the action of the dorsal fin of the shark tribe. so long as we observe the uniform energy of motion in the whole frame, the lash of the tail, bound of body, and instantaneous lowering of the dorsal, to avoid the resistance of the water as it turns, there is high sense of organic power and beauty. but when we dissect the dorsal, and find that its superior ray is supported in its position by a peg in a notch at its base, and that when the fin is to be lowered, the peg has to be taken out, and when it is raised put in again; although we are filled with wonder at the ingenuity of the mechanical contrivance, all our sense of beauty is gone, and not to be recovered until we again see the fin playing on the animal's body, apparently by its own will alone, with the life running along its rays. it is by a beautiful ordinance of the creator that all these mechanisms are concealed from sight, though open to investigation, and that in all which is outwardly manifested we seem to see his presence rather than his workmanship, and the mysterious breath of life, rather than the manipulation of matter. as, therefore, it appears from all evidence that it is the sense of felicity which we first desire in organic form, it is evident from reason, as demonstrable by experience, that those forms will be the most beautiful (always, observe, leaving typical beauty out of the question) which exhibit most of power, and seem capable of most quick and joyous sensation. hence we find gradations of beauty from the apparent impenetrableness of hide and slow motion of the elephant and rhinoceros, from the foul occupation of the vulture, from the earthy struggling of the worm, to the brilliancy of the butterfly, the buoyancy of the lark, the swiftness of the fawn and the horse, the fair and kingly sensibility of man. § . the second perfection of the theoretic faculty as concerned with life is justice of moral judgment. thus far then, the theoretic faculty is concerned with the happiness of animals, and its exercise depends on the cultivation of the affections only. let us next observe how it is concerned with the moral functions of animals, and therefore how it is dependent on the cultivation of every moral sense. there is not any organic creature, but in its history and habits it shall exemplify or illustrate to us some moral excellence or deficiency, or some point of god's providential government, which it is necessary for us to know. thus the functions and the fates of animals are distributed to them, with a variety which exhibits to us the dignity and results of almost every passion and kind of conduct, some filthy and slothful, pining and unhappy; some rapacious, restless, and cruel; some ever earnest and laborious, and, i think, unhappy in their endless labor, creatures, like the bee, that heap up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them, and others employed like angels in endless offices of love and praise. of which when, in right condition of mind, we esteem those most beautiful, whose functions are the most noble, whether as some, in mere energy, or as others, in moral honor, so that we look with hate on the foulness of the sloth, and the subtlety of the adder, and the rage of the hyena: with the honor due to their earthly wisdom we invest the earnest ant and unwearied bee; but we look with full perception of sacred function to the tribes of burning plumage and choral voice.[ ] and so what lesson we might receive for our earthly conduct from the creeping and laborious things, was taught us by that earthly king who made silver to be in jerusalem as stones (yet thereafter was less rich towards god). but from the lips of an heavenly king, who had not where to lay his head, we were taught what lesson we have to learn from those higher creatures who sow not, nor reap, nor gather into barns, for their heavenly father feedeth them. § . how impeded. § . the influence of moral signs in expression. there is much difficulty in the way of our looking with this rightly balanced judgment on the moral functions of the animal tribes, owing to the independent and often opposing characters of typical beauty, which are among them, as it seems, arbitrarily distributed, so that the most fierce and cruel are often clothed in the liveliest colors, and strengthened by the noblest forms, with this only exception, that so far as i know, there is no high beauty in any slothful animal, but even among those of prey, its characters exist in exalted measure upon those that range and pursue, and are in equal degree withdrawn from those that lie subtly and silently in the covert of the reed and fens. but that mind only is fully disciplined in its theoretic power, which can, when it chooses, throwing off the sympathies and repugnancies with which the ideas of destructiveness or of innocence accustom us to regard the animal tribes, as well as those meaner likes and dislikes which arise, i think, from the greater or less resemblance of animal powers to our own, can pursue the pleasures of typical beauty down to the scales of the alligator, the coils of the serpent, and the joints of the beetle; and again, on the other hand, regardless of the impressions of typical beauty, accept from each creature, great or small, the more important lessons taught by its position in creation as sufferer or chastiser, as lowly or having dominion, as of foul habit or lofty aspiration, and from the several perfections which all illustrate or possess, courage, perseverance, industry, or intelligence, or, higher yet, of love and patience, and fidelity and rejoicing, and never wearied praise. which moral perfections that they indeed are productive, in proportion to their expression, of instant beauty instinctively felt, is best proved by comparing those parts of animals in which they are definitely expressed, as for instance the eye, of which we shall find those ugliest which have in them no expression nor life whatever, but a corpse-like stare, or an indefinite meaningless glaring, as in some lights, those of owls and cats, and mostly of insects and of all creatures in which the eye seems rather an external, optical instrument than a bodily member through which emotion and virtue of soul may be expressed, (as pre-eminently in the chameleon,) because the seeming want of sensibility and vitality in a living creature is the most painful of all wants. and next to these in ugliness come the eyes that gain vitality indeed, but only by means of the expression of intense malignity, as in the serpent and alligator; and next to these, to whose malignity is added the virtue of subtlety and keenness, as of the lynx and hawk; and then, by diminishing the malignity and increasing the expressions of comprehensiveness and determination, we arrive at those of the lion and eagle, and at last, by destroying malignity altogether, at the fair eye of the herbivorous tribes, wherein the superioity of beauty consists always in the greater or less sweetness and gentleness primarily, as in the gazelle, camel, and ox, and in the greater or less intellect, secondarily, as in the horse and dog, and finally, in gentleness and intellect both in man. and again, taking the mouth, another source of expression, we find it ugliest where it has none, as mostly in fish, or perhaps where without gaining much in expression of any kind, it becomes a formidable destructive instrument, as again in the alligator, and then, by some increase of expression, we arrive at birds' beaks, wherein there is more obtained by the different ways of setting on the mandibles than is commonly supposed, (compare the bills of the duck and the eagle,) and thence we reach the finely developed lips of the carnivora, which nevertheless lose that beauty they have, in the actions of snarling and biting, and from these we pass to the nobler because gentler and more sensible, of the horse, camel, and fawn, and so again up to man, only there is less traceableness of the principle in the mouths of the lower animals, because they are in slight measure only capable of expression, and chiefly used as instruments, and that of low function, whereas in man the mouth is given most definitely as a means of expression, beyond and above its lower functions. compare the remarks of sir charles bell on this subject in his essay on expression, and compare the mouth of the negro head given by him (p. , third edition) with that of raffaelle's st. catherine. i shall illustrate the subject farther hereafter by giving the mouth of one of the demons of orcagna's inferno, with projecting incisors, and that of a fish and a swine, in opposition to pure graminivorous and human forms; but at present it is sufficient for my purpose to insist on the single great principle, that, wherever expression is possible, and uninterfered with by characters of typical beauty, which confuse the subject exceedingly as regards the mouth, (for the typical beauty of the carnivorous lips is on a grand scale, while it exists in very low degree in the beaks of birds,) wherever, i say, these considerations do not interfere, the beauty of the animal form is in exact proportion to the amount of moral or intellectual virtue expressed by it; and wherever beauty exists at all, there is some kind of virtue to which it is owing, as the majesty of the lion's eye is owing not to its ferocity, but to its seriousness and seeming intellect, and of the lion's mouth to its strength and sensibility, and not its gnashing of teeth, nor wrinkling in its wrath; and farther be it noted, that of the intellectual or moral virtues, the moral are those which are attended with most beauty, so that the gentle eye of the gazelle is fairer to look upon than the more keen glance of men, if it be unkind. § . as also in plants. of the parallel effects of expression upon plants there is little to be noted, as the mere naming of the subject cannot but bring countless illustrations to the mind of every reader: only this, that, as we saw they were less susceptible of our sympathetic love, owing to the absence in them of capability of enjoyment, so they are less open to the affections based upon the expression of moral virtue, owing to their want of volition; so that even on those of them which are deadly and unkind we look not without pleasure, the more because this their evil operation cannot be by them outwardly expressed, but only by us empirically known; so that of the outward seemings and expressions of plants, there are few but are in some way good and therefore beautiful, as of humility, and modesty, and love of places and things, in the reaching out of their arms, and clasping of their tendrils; and energy of resistance, and patience of suffering, and beneficence one towards another in shade and protection, and to us also in scents and fruits (for of their healing virtues, however important to us, there is no more outward sense nor seeming than of their properties mortal or dangerous). § recapitulation. whence, in fine, looking to the whole kingdom of organic nature, we find that our full receiving of its beauty depends first on the sensibility and then on the accuracy and touchstone faithfulness of the heart in its moral judgments, so that it is necessary that we should not only love all creatures well, but esteem them in that order which is according to god's laws and not according to our own human passions and predilections, not looking for swiftness, and strength, and cunning, rather than for patience and kindness, still less delighting in their animosity and cruelty one towards another, neither, if it may be avoided, interfering with the working of nature in any way, nor, when we interfere to obtain service, judging from the morbid conditions of the animal or vegetable so induced; for we see every day the theoretic faculty entirely destroyed in those who are interested in particular animals, by their delight in the results of their own teaching, and by the vain straining of curiosity for new forms such as nature never intended, as the disgusting types for instance, which we see earnestly sought for by the fanciers of rabbits and pigeons, and constantly in horses, substituting for the true and balanced beauty of the free creature some morbid development of a single power, as of swiftness in the racer, at the expense, in certain measure, of the animal's healthy constitution and fineness of form; and so the delight of horticulturists in the spoiling of plants; so that in all cases we are to beware of such opinions as seem in any way referable to human pride, or even to the grateful or pernicious influence of things upon ourselves, and to cast the mind free, and out of ourselves, humbly, and yet always in that noble position of pause above the other visible creatures, nearer god than they, which we authoritatively hold, thence looking down upon them, and testing the clearness of our moral vision by the extent, and fulness, and constancy of our pleasure in the light of god's love as it embraces them, and the harmony of his holy laws, that forever bring mercy out of rapine, and religion out of wrath. footnotes [ ] soldanella alpina. [ ] i would have mr. landseer, before he gives us any more writhing otters, or yelping packs, reflect whether that which is best worthy of contemplation in a hound be its ferocity, or in an otter its agony, or in a human being its victory, hardly achieved even with the aid of its more sagacious brutal allies over a poor little fish-catching creature, a foot long. [ ] compare milton. "they at her coming sprung and touched by her fair tendance, gladlier grew" [ ] "type of the wise--who soar, but never roam, true to the kindred points of heaven and home." (wordsworth.--to the skylark.) chapter xiii. of vital beauty.--secondly as generic. § . the beauty of fulfilment of appointed function in every animal. hitherto we have observed the conclusions of the theoretic faculty with respect to the relations of happiness, and of more or less exalted function existing between different orders of organic being. but we must pursue the inquiry farther yet, and observe what impressions of beauty are connected with more or less perfect fulfilment of the appointed function by different individuals of the same species. we are now no longer called to pronounce upon worthiness of occupation or dignity of disposition; but both employment and capacity being known, and the animal's position and duty fixed, we have to regard it in that respect alone, comparing it with other individuals of its species, and to determine how far it worthily executes its office; whether, if scorpion, it hath poison enough, or if tiger, strength enough, or if dove, innocence enough, to sustain rightly its place in creation, and come up to the perfect idea of dove, tiger, or scorpion. in the first or sympathetic operation of the theoretic faculty, it will be remembered, we receive pleasure from the signs of mere happiness in living things. in the second theoretic operation of comparing and judging, we constituted ourselves such judges of the lower creatures as adam was made by god when they were brought to him to be named, and we allowed of beauty in them as they reached, more or less, to that standard of moral perfection by which we test ourselves. but, in the third place, we are to come down again from the judgment seat, and taking it for granted that every creature of god is in some way good, and has a duty and specific operation providentially accessory to the well-being of all, we are to look in this faith to that employment and nature of each, and to derive pleasure from their entire perfection and fitness for the duty they have to do, and in their entire fulfilment of it: and so we are to take pleasure and find beauty in the magnificent binding together of the jaws of the ichthyosaurus for catching and holding, and in the adaptation of the lion for springing, and of the locust for destroying, and of the lark for singing, and in every creature for the doing of that which god has made it to do. which faithful pleasure in the perception of the perfect operation of lower creatures i have placed last among the perfections of the theoretic faculty concerning them, because it is commonly last acquired, both owing to the humbleness and trustfulness of heart which it demands, and because it implies a knowledge of the habits and structure of every creature, such as we can but imperfectly possess. § . the two senses of the word "ideal." either it refers to action of the imagination. the perfect _idea_ of the form and condition in which all the properties of the species are fully developed, is called the ideal of the species. the question of the nature of ideal conception of species, and of the mode in which the mind arrives at it, has been the subject of so much discussion, and source of so much embarrassment, chiefly owing to that unfortunate distinction between idealism and realism which leads most people to imagine the ideal opposed to the real, and therefore _false_, that i think it necessary to request the reader's most careful attention to the following positions. any work of art which represents, not a material object, but the mental conception of a material object, is, in the primary sense of the word ideal; that is to say, it represents an idea, and not a thing. any work of art which represents or realizes a material object, is, in the primary sense of the term, unideal. ideal works of art, therefore, in this first sense, represent the result of an act of imagination, and are good or bad in proportion to the healthy condition and general power of the imagination, whose acts they represent. unideal works of art (the studious production of which is termed realism) represent actual existing things, and are good or bad in proportion to the perfection of the representation. all entirely bad works of art may be divided into those which, professing to be imaginative, bear no stamp of imagination, and are therefore false, and those which, professing to be representative of matter, miss of the representation and are therefore nugatory. it is the habit of most observers to regard art as representative of matter, and to look only for the entireness of representation; and it was to this view of art that i limited the arguments of the former sections of the present work, wherein having to oppose the conclusions of a criticism entirely based upon the realist system, i was compelled to meet that criticism on its own grounds. but the greater part of works of art, more especially those devoted to the expression of ideas of beauty, are the results of the agency of imagination, their worthiness depending, as above stated, on the healthy condition of the imagination. hence it is necessary for us, in order to arrive at conclusions respecting the worthiness of such works, to define and examine the nature of the imaginative faculty, and to determine first what are the signs or conditions of its existence at all; and secondly, what are the evidences of its healthy and efficient existence, upon which examination i shall enter in the second section of the present part. § . or to perfection of type. but there is another sense of the word ideal besides this, and it is that with which we are here concerned. it is evident that, so long as we use the word to signify that art which represents ideas and not things, we may use it as truly of the art which represents an idea of caliban, and not real caliban, as of the art which represents an idea of antinous, and not real antinous. for that is as much imagination which conceives the monster as which conceives the man. if, however, caliban and antinous be creatures of the same species, and the form of the one contain not the fully developed types or characters of the species, while the form of the other presents the greater part of them, then the latter is said to be a form more ideal than the other, as a nearer approximation to the general idea or conception of the species. § . this last sense how inaccurate, yet to be retained. now it is evident that this use of the word ideal is much less accurate than the other, from which it is derived, for it rests on the assumption that the assemblage of all the characters of a species in their perfect development cannot exist but in the imagination. for if it can actually and in reality exist, it is not right to call it ideal or imaginary; it would be better to call it characteristic or general, and to reserve the word ideal for the results of the operation of the imagination, either on the perfect or imperfect forms. nevertheless, the word ideal has been so long and universally accepted in this sense, that i think it better to continue the use of it, so only that the reader will be careful to observe the distinction in the sense, according to the subject matter under discussion. at present then, using it as expressive of the noble generic form which indicates the full perfection of the creature in all its functions, i wish to examine how far this perception exists or may exist in nature, and if not in nature, how it is by us discoverable or imaginable. § . of ideal form. first, in the lower animals. now it is better, when we wish to arrive at truth, always to take familiar instances, wherein the mind is not likely to be biassed by any elevated associations or favorite theories. let us ask therefore, first, what kind of ideal form may be attributed to a limpet or an oyster, that is to say, whether all oysters do or do not come up to the entire notion or idea of an oyster. i apprehend that, although in respect of size, age, and kind of feeding, there may be some difference between them, yet of those which are of full size and healthy condition there will be found many which fulfil the conditions of an oyster in every respect, and that so perfectly, that we could not, by combining the features of two or more together, produce a more perfect oyster than any that we see. i suppose also, that, out of a number of healthy fish, birds, or beasts of the same species, it would not be easy to select an individual as superior to _all_ the rest; neither by comparing two or more of the nobler examples together, to arrive at the conception of a form superior to that of either; but that, though the accidents of more abundant food or more fitting habitation may induce among them some varieties of size, strength, and color, yet the entire generic form would be presented by many, neither would any art be able to add to or diminish from it. § . in what consistent. it is, therefore, hardly right to use the word ideal of the generic forms of these creatures, of which we see actual examples; but if we are to use it, then be it distinctly understood that their ideality consists in the full development of all the powers and properties of the creature as such, and is inconsistent with accidental or imperfect developments, and even with great variation from average size, the ideal size being neither gigantic nor diminutive, but the utmost grandeur and entireness of proportion at a certain point above the mean size; for as more individuals always fall short of generic size than rise above it, the generic is above the average or mean size. and this perfection of the creature invariably involves the utmost possible degree of all those properties of beauty, both typical and vital, which it is appointed to possess. § . ideal form in vegetables. let us next observe the conditions of ideality in vegetables. out of a large number of primroses or violets, i apprehend that, although one or two might be larger than all the rest, the greater part would be very sufficient primroses and violets. and that we could, by no study nor combination of violets, conceive of a better violet than many in the bed. and so generally of the blossoms and separate members of all vegetables. but among the entire forms of the complex vegetables, as of oak-trees, for instance, there exists very large and constant difference, some being what we hold to be fine oaks, as in parks, and places where they are taken care of, and have their own way, and some are but poor and mean oaks, which have had no one to take care of them, but have been obliged to maintain themselves. that which we have to determine is, whether ideality be predicable of the fine oaks only, or whether the poor and mean oaks also may be considered as ideal, that is, coming up to the conditions of oak, and the general notion of oak. § . the difference of position between plants and animals. now there is this difference between the positions held in creation by animals and plants, and thence in the dispositions with which we regard them; that the animals, being for the most part locomotive, are capable both of living where they choose, and of obtaining what food they want, and of fulfilling all the conditions necessary to their health and perfection. for which reason they are answerable for such health and perfection, and we should be displeased and hurt if we did not find it in one individual as well as another. § . admits of variety in the ideal of the former. but the case is evidently different with plants. they are intended fixedly to occupy many places comparatively unfit for them, and to fill up all the spaces where greenness, and coolness, and ornament, and oxygen are wanted, and that with very little reference to their comfort or convenience. now it would be hard upon the plant if, after being tied to a particular spot, where it is indeed much wanted, and is a great blessing, but where it has enough to do to live, whence it cannot move to obtain what it wants or likes, but must stretch its unfortunate arms here and there for bare breath and light, and split its way among rocks, and grope for sustenance in unkindly soil; it would be hard upon the plant, i say, if under all these disadvantages, it were made answerable for its appearance, and found fault with because it was not a fine plant of the kind. and so we find it ordained that in order that no unkind comparisons may be drawn between one and another, there are not appointed to plants the fixed number, position, and proportion of members which are ordained in animals, (and any variation from which in these is unpardonable,) but a continually varying number and position, even among the more freely growing examples, admitting therefore all kinds of license to those which have enemies to contend with, and that without in any way detracting from their dignity and perfection. so then there is in trees no perfect form which can be fixed upon or reasoned out as ideal; but that is always an ideal oak which, however poverty-stricken, or hunger-pinched, or tempest-tortured, is yet seen to have done, under its appointed circumstances, all that could be expected of oak. the ideal, therefore, of the park oak is that to which i alluded in the conclusion of the former part of this work, full size, united terminal curve, equal and symmetrical range of branches on each side. the ideal of the mountain oak may be anything, twisting, and leaning, and shattered, and rock-encumbered, so only that amidst all its misfortunes, it maintain the dignity of oak; and, indeed, i look upon this kind of tree as more ideal than the other, in so far as by its efforts and struggles, more of its nature, enduring power, patience in waiting for, and ingenuity in obtaining what it wants, is brought out, and so more of the essence of oak exhibited, than under more fortunate conditions. § . ideal form in vegetables destroyed by cultivation. and herein, then, we at last find the cause of that fact which we have twice already noted, that the exalted or seemingly improved condition, whether of plant or animal, induced by human interference, is not the true and artistical ideal of it.[ ] it has been well shown by dr. herbert,[ ] that many plants are found alone on a certain soil or subsoil in a wild state, not because such soil is favorable to them, but because they alone are capable of existing on it, and because all dangerous rivals are by its inhospitality removed. now if we withdraw the plant from this position, which it hardly endures, and supply it with the earth, and maintain about it the temperature that it delights in; withdrawing from it at the same time all rivals which, in such conditions nature would have thrust upon it, we shall indeed obtain a magnificently developed example of the plant, colossal in size, and splendid in organization, but we shall utterly lose in it that moral ideal which is dependent on its right fulfilment of its appointed functions. it was intended and created by the deity for the covering of those lonely spots where no other plant could live; it has been thereto endowed with courage, and strength, and capacities of endurance unequalled; its character and glory are not therefore in the gluttonous and idle feeling of its own over luxuriance, at the expense of other creatures utterly destroyed and rooted out for its good alone, but in its right doing of its hard duty; and forward climbing into those spots of forlorn hope where it alone can bear witness to the kindness and presence of the spirit that cutteth out rivers among the rocks, as it covers the valleys with corn: and there, in its vanward place, and only there, where nothing is withdrawn for it, nor hurt by it, and where nothing can take part of its honor, nor usurp its throne, are its strength, and fairness, and price, and goodness in the sight of god, to be truly esteemed. § . instance in the soldanella and ranunculus. the first time that i saw the soldanella alpina, before spoken of, it was growing, of magnificent size, on a sunny alpine pasture, among bleating of sheep and lowing of cattle, associated with a profusion of geum montanum, and ranunculus pyrenæus. i noticed it only because new to me, nor perceived any peculiar beauty in its cloven flower. some days after, i found it alone, among the rack of the higher clouds, and howling of glacier winds, and, as i described it, piercing through an edge of avalanche, which in its retiring had left the new ground brown and lifeless, and as if burned by recent fire; the plant was poor and feeble, and seemingly exhausted with its efforts, but it was then that i comprehended its ideal character, and saw its noble function and order of glory among the constellations of the earth. the ranunculus glacialis might perhaps, by cultivation, be blanched from its wan and corpse-like paleness to purer white, and won to more branched and lofty development of its ragged leaves. but the ideal of the plant is to be found only in the last, loose stones of the moraine, alone there; wet with the cold, unkindly drip of the glacier water, and trembling as the loose and steep dust to which it clings yields ever and anon, and shudders and crumbles away from about its root. § . the beauty of repose and felicity, how consistent with such ideal. and if it be asked how this conception of the utmost beauty of ideal form is consistent with what we formerly argued respecting the pleasantness of the appearance of felicity in the creature, let it be observed, and forever held, that the right and true happiness of every creature, is in this very discharge of its function, and in those efforts by which its strength and inherent energy are developed: and that the repose of which we also spoke as necessary to all beauty, is, as was then stated, repose not of inanition, nor of luxury, nor of irresolution, but the repose of magnificent energy and being; in action, the calmness of trust and determination; in rest, the consciousness of duty accomplished and of victory won, and this repose and this felicity can take place as well in the midst of trial and tempest, as beside the waters of comfort; they perish only when the creature is either unfaithful to itself, or is afflicted by circumstances unnatural and malignant to its being, and for the contending with which it was neither fitted nor ordained. hence that rest which is indeed glorious is of the chamois couched breathless on his granite bed, not of the stalled ox over his fodder, and that happiness which is indeed beautiful is in the bearing of those trial tests which are appointed for the proving of every creature, whether it be good, or whether it be evil; and in the fulfilment to the uttermost of every command it has received, and the out-carrying to the uttermost of every power and gift it has gotten from its god. § . the ideality of art. therefore the task of the painter in his pursuit of ideal form is to attain accurate knowledge, so far as may be in his power, of the character, habits, and peculiar virtues and duties of every species of being; down even to the stone, for there is an ideality of stones according to their kind, an ideality of granite and slate and marble, and it is in the utmost and most exalted exhibition of such individual character, order, and use, that all ideality of art consists. the more cautious he is in assigning the right species of moss to its favorite trunk, and the right kind of weed to its necessary stone, in marking the definite and characteristic leaf, blossom, seed, fracture, color, and inward anatomy of everything, the more truly ideal his work becomes. all confusion of species, all careless rendering of character, all unnatural and arbitrary association, is vulgar and unideal in proportion to its degree. § . how connected with the imaginative faculties. it is to be noted, however, that nature sometimes in a measure herself conceals these generic differences, and that when she displays them it is commonly on a scale too small for human hand to follow. the pursuit and seizure of the generic differences in their concealment, and the display of them on a larger and more palpable scale, is one of the wholesome and healthy operations of the imagination of which we are presently to speak.[ ] generic differences being commonly exhibited by art in different manner and way from that of their natural occurrence, are in this respect more strictly and truly ideal in art than in reality. § . ideality, how belonging to ages and conditions. this only remains to be noted, that, of all creatures whose existence involves birth, progress, and dissolution, ideality is predicable all through their existence, so that they be perfect with reference to their supposed period of being. thus there is an ideal of infancy, of youth, of old age, of death, and of decay. but when the ideal form of the species is spoken of or conceived in general terms, the form is understood to be of that period when the generic attributes are perfectly developed, and previous to the commencement of their decline. at which period all the characters of vital and typical beauty are commonly most concentrated in them, though the arrangement and proportion of these characters varies at different periods, youth having more of the vigorous beauty, and age of the reposing; youth of typical outward fairness, and age of expanded and etherealized moral expression; the babe, again, in some measure atoning in gracefulness for its want of strength, so that the balanced glory of the creature continues in solemn interchange, perhaps even "filling more and more with crystal light, as pensive evening deepens into night." hitherto, however, we have confined ourselves to the examination of ideal form in the lower animals, and we have found that, to arrive at it, no combination of forms nor exertion of fancy is required, but only simple choice among those naturally presented, together with careful investigation and anatomizing of the habits of the creatures. i fear we shall arrive at a very different conclusion, in considering the ideal form of man. footnotes [ ] i speak not here of those conditions of vegetation which have especial reference to man, as of seeds and fruits, whose sweetness and farina seem in great measure given, not for the plant's sake, but for his, and to which therefore the interruption in the harmony of creation of which he was the cause is extended, and their sweetness and larger measure of good to be obtained only by his redeeming labor. his curse has fallen on the corn and the vine, and the wild barley misses of its fulness, that he may eat bread by the sweat of his brow. [ ] journal of the horticultural society. part i. [ ] compare sect. ii. chap. iv. chapter xiv. of vital beauty.--thirdly, in man. § . condition of the human creature entirely different from that of the lower animals. having thus passed gradually through all the orders and fields of creation, and traversed that goodly line of god's happy creatures who "leap not, but express a feast, where all the guests sit close, and nothing wants," without finding any deficiency which human invention might supply, nor any harm which human interference might mend, we come at last to set ourselves face to face with ourselves, expecting that in creatures made after the image of god we are to find comeliness and completion more exquisite than in the fowls of the air and the things that pass through the paths of the sea. but behold now a sudden change from all former experience. no longer among the individuals of the race is there equality or likeness, a distributed fairness and fixed type visible in each, but evil diversity, and terrible stamp of various degradation; features seamed with sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded with remorse; bodies consumed with sloth, broken down by labor, tortured by disease, dishonored in foul uses; intellects without power, hearts without hope, minds earthly and devilish; our bones full of the sin of our youth, the heaven revealing our iniquity, the earth rising up against us, the roots dried up beneath, and the branch cut off above; well for us only, if, after beholding this our natural face in a glass, we desire not straightway to forget what manner of men we be. § . what room here for idealization. herein there is at last something, and too much, for that short stopping intelligence and dull perception of ours to accomplish, whether in earnest fact, or in the seeking for the outward image of beauty:--to undo the devil's work, to restore to the body the grace and the power which inherited disease has destroyed, to return to the spirit the purity, and to the intellect the grasp that they had in paradise. now, first of all, this work, be it observed is in no respect a work of imagination. wrecked we are, and nearly all to pieces; but that little good by which we are to redeem ourselves is to be got out of the old wreck, beaten about and full of sand though it be; and not out of that desert island of pride on which the devils split first, and we after them: and so the only restoration of the body that we can reach is not to be coined out of our fancies, but to be collected out of such uninjured and bright vestiges of the old seal as we can find and set together, and so the ideal of the features, as the good and perfect soul is seen in them, is not to be reached by imagination, but by the seeing and reaching forth of the better part of the soul to that of which it must first know the sweetness and goodness in itself, before it can much desire, or rightly find, the signs of it in others. i say much desire and rightly find, because there is not any soul so sunk but that it shall in some measure feel the impression of mental beauty in the human features, and detest in others its own likeness, and in itself despise that which of itself it has made. § . how the conception of the bodily ideal is reached. now, of the ordinary process by which the realization of ideal bodily form is reached, there is explanation enough in all treatises on art, and it is so far well comprehended that i need not stay long to consider it. so far as the sight and knowledge of the human form, of the purest race, exercised from infancy constantly, but not excessively in all exercises of dignity, not in twists and straining dexterities, but in natural exercises of running, casting, or riding; practised in endurance, not of extraordinary hardship, for that hardens and degrades the body, but of natural hardship, vicissitudes of winter and summer, and cold and heat, yet in a climate where none of these are severe; surrounded also by a certain degree of right luxury, so as to soften and refine the forms of strength; so far as the sight of all this could render the mental intelligence of what is right in human form so acute as to be able to abstract and combine from the best examples so produced, that which was most perfect in each, so far the greek conceived and attained the ideal of bodily form: and on the greek modes of attaining it, as well as on what he produced, as a perfect example of it, chiefly dwell those writers whose opinions on this subject i have collected; wholly losing sight of what seems to me the most important branch of the inquiry, namely, the influence for good or evil of the mind upon the bodily shape, the wreck of the mind itself, and the modes by which we may conceive of its restoration. § . modifications of the bodily ideal owing to influence of mind. first, of intellect. now, the operation of the mind upon the body, and evidence of it thereon, may be considered under the following three general heads. first, the operation of the intellectual powers upon the features, in the fine cutting and chiselling of them, and removal from them of signs of sensuality and sloth, by which they are blunted and deadened, and substitution of energy and intensity for vacancy and insipidity, (by which wants alone the faces of many fair women are utterly spoiled and rendered valueless,) and by the keenness given to the eye and fine moulding and development to the brow, of which effects sir charles bell has well noted the desirableness and opposition to brutal types, (p. , third edition;) only this he has not sufficiently observed, that there are certain virtues of the intellect in measure inconsistent with each other, as perhaps great subtlety with great comprehensiveness, and high analytical with high imaginative power, or that at least, if consistent and compatible, their signs upon the features are not the same, so that the outward form cannot express both, without in a measure expressing neither; and so there are certain separate virtues of the outward form correspondent with the more constant employment or more prevailing capacity of the brain, as the piercing keenness, or open and reflective comprehensiveness of the eye and forehead, and that all these virtues of form are ideal, only those the most so which are the signs of the worthiest powers of intellect, though which these be, we will not at present stay to inquire. § . secondly, of the moral feelings. § . what beauty is bestowed by them the second point to be considered in the influence of mind upon body, is the mode of operation and conjunction of the moral feelings on and with the intellectual powers, and then their conjoint influence on the bodily form. now, the operation of the right moral feelings on the intellect is always for the good of the latter, for it is not possible that selfishness should reason rightly in any respect, but must be blind in its estimation of the worthiness of all things, neither anger, for that overpowers the reason or outcries it, neither sensuality, for that overgrows and chokes it, neither agitation, for that has no time to compare things together, neither enmity, for that must be unjust, neither fear, for that exaggerates all things, neither cunning and deceit, for that which is voluntarily untrue will soon be unwittingly so: but the great reasoners are self-command, and trust unagitated, and deep-looking love, and faith, which as she is above reason, so she best holds the reins of it from her high seat: so that they err grossly who think of the right development even of the intellectual type as possible, unless we look to higher sources of beauty first. nevertheless, though in their operation _upon_ them the moral feelings are thus elevatory of the mental faculties, yet in their conjunction _with_ them they seem to occupy, in their own fulness, such room as to absorb and overshadow all else, so that the simultaneous exercise of both is in a sort impossible; for which cause we occasionally find the moral part in full development and action, without corresponding expanding of the intellect (though never without healthy condition of it,) as in that of wordsworth, "in such high hour of visitation from the living god, thought was not;" only i think that if we look far enough, we shall find that it is not intelligence itself, but the immediate act and effort of a laborious, struggling, and imperfect intellectual faculty, with which high moral emotion is inconsistent; and that though we cannot, while we feel deeply, reason shrewdly, yet i doubt if, _except_ when we feel deeply, we can ever comprehend fully; so that it is only the climbing and mole-like piercing, and not the sitting upon their central throne, nor emergence into light, of the intellectual faculties which the full heart feeling allows not. hence, therefore, in the indications of the countenance, they are only the hard cut lines, and rigid settings, and wasted hollows, that speak of past effort and painfulness of mental application, which are inconsistent with expression of moral feeling, for all these are of infelicitous augury; but not the full and serene development of habitual command in the look, and solemn thought in the brow, only these, in their unison with the signs of emotion, become softened and gradually confounded with a serenity and authority of nobler origin. but of the sweetness which that higher serenity (of happiness,) and the dignity which that higher authority (of divine law, and not human reason,) can and must stamp on the features, it would be futile to speak here at length, for i suppose that both are acknowledged on all hands, and that there is not any beauty but theirs to which men pay long obedience: at all events, if not by sympathy discovered, it is not in words explicable with what divine lines and lights the exercise of godliness and charity will mould and gild the hardest and coldest countenance, neither to what darkness their departure will consign the loveliest. for there is not any virtue the exercise of which, even momentarily, will not impress a new fairness upon the features, neither on them only, but on the whole body, both the intelligence and the moral faculties have operation, for even all the movement and gestures, however slight, are different in their modes according to the mind that governs them, and on the gentleness and decision of just feeling there follows a grace of action, and through continuance of this a grace of form, which by no discipline may be taught or attained. § . how the soul culture interferes harmfully with the bodily ideal. the third point to be considered with respect to the corporeal expression of mental character is, that there is a certain period of the soul culture when it begins to interfere with some of the characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and that there is, in this indication of subduing of the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. we conceive, i think, more nobly of the weak presence of paul, than of the fair and ruddy countenance of daniel. § . the inconsistency among the effects of the mental virtues on the form. § . is a sign of god's kind purpose towards the race. § . consequent separation and difference of ideals. now, be it observed that in our consideration of these three directions of mental influence, we have several times been compelled to stop short of definite conclusions owing to the apparent inconsistency of certain excellences and beauties to which they tend, as, first, of different kinds of intellect with each other; and secondly, of the moral faculties with the intellectual, (and if we had separately examined the moral emotions, we should have found certain inconsistencies among them also,) and again of the soul culture generally with the bodily perfections. such inconsistencies we should find in the perfections of no other animal. the strength or swiftness of the dog are not inconsistent with his sagacity, nor is bodily labor in the ant or bee destructive of their acuteness of instinct. and this peculiarity of relation among the perfections of man is no result of his fall or sinfulness, but an evidence of his greater nobility, and of the goodness of god towards him. for the individuals of each race of lower animals, being not intended to hold among each other those relations of charity which are the privilege of humanity, are not adapted to each other's assistance, admiration, or support, by differences of power and function. but the love of the human race is increased by their individual differences, and the unity of the creature, as before we saw of all unity, made perfect by each having something to bestow and to receive, bound to the rest by a thousand various necessities and various gratitudes, humility in each rejoicing to admire in his fellow that which he finds not in himself, and each being in some respect the complement of his race. therefore, in investigating the signs of the ideal or perfect type of humanity, we must not presume on the singleness of that type, and yet, on the other hand, we must cautiously distinguish between differences conceivably existing in a perfect state, and differences resulting from immediate and present operation of the adamite curse. of which the former are differences that bind, and the latter that separate. for although we can suppose the ideal or perfect human heart, and the perfect human intelligence, equally adapted to receive every right sensation and pursue every order of truth, yet as it is appointed for some to be in authority and others in obedience, some in solitary functions and others in relative ones, some to receive and others to give, some to teach and some to discover; and as all these varieties of office are not only conceivable as existing in a perfect state of man, but seem almost to be implied by it, and at any rate cannot be done away with but by a total change of his constitution and dependencies, of which the imagination can take no hold; so there are habits and capacities of expression induced by these various offices, which admit of many separate ideals of equal perfection, according to the functions of the creatures, so that there is an ideal of authority, of judgment, of affection, of reason, and of faith; neither can any combination of these ideals be attained, not that the just judge is to be supposed incapable of affection, nor the king incapable of obedience, but as it is impossible that any essence short of the divine should at the same instant be equally receptive of all emotions, those emotions which, by right and order, have the most usual victory, both leave the stamp of their habitual presence on the body, and render the individual more and more susceptible of them in proportion to the frequency of their prevalent recurrence; added to which causes of distinctive character are to be taken into account the differences of age and sex, which, though seemingly of more finite influence, cannot be banished from any human conception. david, ruddy and of a fair countenance, with the brook stone of deliverance in his hand, is not more ideal than david leaning on the old age of barzillai, returning chastened to his kingly home. and they who are as the angels of god in heaven, yet cannot be conceived as so assimilated that their different experiences and affections upon earth shall then be forgotten and effectless: the child taken early to his place cannot be imagined to wear there such a body, nor to have such thoughts, as the glorified apostle who has finished his course and kept the faith on earth. and so whatever perfections and likeness of love we may attribute to either the tried or the crowned creatures, there is the difference of the stars in glory among them yet; differences of original gifts, though not of occupying till their lord come, different dispensations of trial and of trust, of sorrow and support, both in their own inward, variable hearts, and in their positions of exposure or of peace, of the gourd shadow and the smiting sun, of calling at heat of day or eleventh hour, of the house unroofed by faith, and the clouds opened by revelation: differences in warning, in mercies, in sicknesses, in signs, in time of calling to account; like only they all are by that which is not of them, but the gift of god's unchangeable mercy. "i will give unto this last even as unto thee." § . the _effects_ of the adamite curse are to be distinguished from signs of its immediate activity. § . which latter only are to be banished from ideal form. hence, then, be it observed, that what we must determinedly banish from the human form and countenance in our seeking of its ideal, is not everything which can be ultimately traced to the adamite fall for its cause, but only the immediate operation and presence of the degrading power or sin. for there is not any part of our feeling of nature, nor can there be through eternity, which shall not be in some way influenced and affected by the fall, and that not in any way of degradation, for the renewing in the divinity of christ is a nobler condition than ever that of paradise, and yet throughout eternity it must imply and refer to the disobedience, and the corrupt state of sin and death, and the suffering of christ himself, which can we conceive of any redeemed soul as for an instant forgetting, or as remembering without sorrow? neither are the alternations of joy and such sorrow as by us is inconceivable, being only as it were a softness and silence in the pulse of an infinite felicity, inconsistent with the state even of the unfallen, for the angels who rejoice over repentance cannot but feel an uncomprehended pain as they try and try again in vain, whether they may not warm hard hearts with the brooding of their kind wings. so that we have not to banish from the ideal countenance the evidences of sorrow, nor of past suffering, nor even of past and conquered sin, but only the immediate operation of any evil, or the immediate coldness and hollowness of any good emotion. and hence in that contest before noted, between the body and the soul, we may often have to indicate the body as far conquered and outworn, and with signs of hard struggle and bitter pain upon it, and yet without ever diminishing the purity of its ideal; and because it is not in the power of any human imagination to reason out or conceive the countless modifications of experience, suffering, and separated feeling, which have modelled and written their indelible images in various order upon every human countenance, so no right ideal can be reached by any combination of feature nor by any moulding and melting of individual beauties together, and still less without model or example conceived; but there is a perfect ideal to be wrought out of _every_ face around us that has on its forehead the writing and the seal of the angel ascending from the east,[ ] by the earnest study and penetration of the written history thereupon, and the banishing of the blots and stains, wherein we still see in all that is human, the visible and instant operation of unconquered sin. § . ideal form is only to be obtained by portraiture. now i see not how any of the steps of the argument by which we have arrived at this conclusion can be evaded, and yet it would be difficult to state anything more directly opposite to the usual teaching and practice of artists. it is usual to hear portraiture opposed to the pursuit of ideality, and yet we find that no face can be ideal which is not a portrait. of this general principle, however, there are certain modifications which we must presently state; let us first, however, pursue it a little farther, and deduce its practical consequences. § . instances among the greater of the ideal masters. these are, first, that the pursuit of idealism in humanity, as of idealism in lower nature, can be successful only when followed through the most constant, patient, and humble rendering of actual models, accompanied with that earnest mental as well as ocular study of each, which can interpret all that is written upon it, disentangle the hieroglyphics of its sacred history, rend the veil of the bodily temple, and rightly measure the relations of good and evil contending within it for mastery,[ ] that everything done without such study must be shallow and contemptible, that generalization or combination of individual character will end less in the mending than the losing of it, and, except in certain instances of which we shall presently take note, is valueless and vapid, even if it escape being painful from its want of truth, which in these days it often in some measure does, for we indeed find faces about us with want enough of life or wholesome character in them to justify anything. and that habit of the old and great painters of introducing portrait into all their highest works, i look to, not as error in them, but as the very source and root of their superiority in all things, for they were too great and too humble not to see in every face about them that which was above them, and which no fancies of theirs could match nor take place of, wherefore we find the custom of portraiture constant with them, both portraiture of study and for purposes of analysis, as with leonardo; and actual, professed, serviceable, hardworking portraiture of the men of their time, as with raffaelle, and titian, and tintoret; and portraiture of love, as with fra bartolomeo of savonarola, and simon memmi of petrarch, and giotto of dante, and gentile bellini of a beloved imagination of dandolo, and with raffaelle constantly; and portraiture in real downright necessity of models, even in their noblest works, as was the practice of ghirlandajo perpetually, and masaccio and raffaelle, and manifestly of the men of highest and purest ideal purpose, as again, giotto, and in his characteristic monkish heads, angelico, and john bellini, (note especially the st. christopher at the side of that mighty picture of st. jerome, at venice,) and so of all: which practice had indeed a perilous tendency for men of debased mind, who used models such as and where they ought not, as lippi and the corrupted raffaelle; and is found often at exceeding disadvantage among men who looked not at their models with intellectual or loving penetration, but took the outside of them, or perhaps took the evil and left the good, as titian in that academy study at venice which is called a st. john, and all workers whatsoever that i know of, after raffaelle's time, as guido and the caracci, and such others: but it is nevertheless the necessary and sterling basis of all ideal art, neither has any great man ever been able to do without it, nor dreamed of doing without it even to the close of his days. § . evil results of opposite practice in modern times. and therefore there is not any greater sign of the utter want of vitality and hopefulness in the schools of the present day than that unhappy prettiness and sameness under which they mask, or rather for which they barter, in their lentile thirst, all the birthright and power of nature, which prettiness, wrought out and spun fine in the study, out of empty heads, till it hardly betters the blocks on which dresses and hair are tried in barbers' windows and milliners' books, cannot but be revolting to any man who has his eyes, even in a measure, open to the divinity of the immortal seal on the common features that he meets in the highways and hedges hourly and momentarily, outreaching all efforts of conception as all power of realization, were it raffaelle's three times over, even when the glory of the wedding garment is not there. § . the right use of the model. so far, then, of the use of the model and the preciousness of it in all art, from the highest to the lowest. but the use of the model is not all. it must be used in a certain way, and on this choice of right or wrong way all our ends are at stake, for the art, which is of no power without the model, is of pernicious and evil power if the model be wrongly used. what the right use is, has been at least established, if not fully explained, in the argument by which we arrived at the general principle. the right ideal is to be reached, we have asserted, only by the banishment of the immediate signs of sin upon the countenance and body. how, therefore, are the signs of sin to be known and separated? § . ideal form to be reached only by love. no intellectual operation is here of any avail. there is not any reasoning by which the evidences of depravity are to be traced in movements of muscle or forms of feature; there is not any knowledge, nor experience, nor diligence of comparison that can be of avail. here, as throughout the operation of the theoretic faculty, the perception is altogether moral, an instinctive love and clinging to the lines of light. nothing but love can read the letters, nothing but sympathy catch the sound, there is no pure passion that can be understood or painted except by pureness of heart; the foul or blunt feeling will see itself in everything, and set down blasphemies; it will see beelzebub in the casting out of devils, it will find its god of flies in every alabaster box of precious ointment. the indignation of zeal towards god (nemesis) it will take for anger against man, faith and veneration it will miss of, as not comprehending, charity it will turn into lust, compassion into pride, every virtue it will go over against, like shimei, casting dust. but the right christian mind will in like manner find its own image wherever it exists, it will seek for what it loves, and draw it out of all dens and caves, and it will believe in its being, often when it cannot see it, and always turn away its eyes from beholding vanity; and so it will lie lovingly over all the faults and rough places of the human heart, as the snow from heaven does over the hard, and black, and broken mountain rocks, following their forms truly, and yet catching light for them to make them fair, and that must be a steep and unkindly crag indeed which it cannot cover. § . practical principles deducible. now of this spirit there will always be little enough in the world, and it cannot be given nor taught by men, and so it is of little use to insist on it farther, only i may note some practical points respecting the ideal treatment of human form, which may be of use in these thoughtless days. there is not the face, i have said, which the painter may not make ideal if he choose, but that subtile feeling which shall find out all of good that there is in any given countenance is not, except by concern for other things than art, to be acquired. but certain broad indications of evil there are which the bluntest feeling may perceive, and which the habit of distinguishing and casting out would both ennoble the schools of art, and lead in time to greater acuteness of perception with respect to the less explicable characters of soul beauty. § . expressions chiefly destructive of ideal character. st. pride. those signs of evil which are commonly most manifest on the human features are roughly divisible into these four kinds, the signs of pride, of sensuality, of fear, and of cruelty. any one of which will destroy the ideal character of the countenance and body. § . portraiture ancient and modern. now of these, the first, pride, is perhaps the most destructive of all the four, seeing it is the undermost and original story of all sin; and it is base also from the necessary foolishness of it, because at its best, that is when grounded on a just estimation of our own elevation or superiority above certain others, it cannot but imply that our eyes look downward only, and have never been raised above our own measure, for there is not the man so lofty in his standing nor capacity but he must be humble in thinking of the cloud habitation and far sight of the angelic intelligences above him, and in perceiving what infinity there is of things he cannot know nor even reach unto, as it stands compared with that little body of things he can reach, and of which nevertheless he can altogether understand not one; not to speak of that wicked and fond attributing of such excellency as he may have to himself, and thinking of it as his own getting, which is the real essence and criminality of pride, nor of those viler forms of it, founded on false estimation of things beneath us and irrational contemning of them: but taken at its best, it is still base to that degree that there is no grandeur of feature which it cannot destroy and make despicable, so that the first step towards the ennobling of any face is the ridding it of its vanity; to which aim there cannot be anything more contrary than that principle of portraiture which prevails with us in these days, whose end seems to be the expression of vanity throughout, in face and in all circumstances of accompaniment, tending constantly to insolence of attitude, and levity and haughtiness of expression, and worked out farther in mean accompaniments of worldly splendor and possession, together with hints or proclamations of what the person has done or supposes himself to have done, which, if known, it is gratuitous in the portrait to exhibit, and if unknown, it is insolent in the portrait to proclaim; whence has arisen such a school of portraiture as must make the people of the nineteenth century the shame of their descendants, and the butt of all time. to which practices are to be opposed both the glorious severity of holbein, and the mighty and simple modesty of raffaelle, titian, giorgione, and tintoret, with whom armor does not constitute the warrior, neither silk the dame. and from what feeling the dignity of that portraiture arose is best traceable at venice, where we find their victorious doges painted neither in the toil of battle nor the triumph of return, nor set forth with thrones and curtains of state, but kneeling always crownless, and returning thanks to god for his help, or as priests, interceding for the nation in its affliction. which feeling and its results have been so well traced out by rio,[ ] that i need not speak of it farther. § . secondly, sensuality. § . how connected with impurity of color. § . and prevented by its splendor. § . or by severity of drawing. that second destroyer of ideal form, the appearance of sensual character, though not less fatal in its operation on modern art, is more difficult to trace, owing to its peculiar subtlety. for it is not possible to say by what minute differences the right conception of the human form is separated from that which is luscious and foul: for the root of all is in the love and seeking of the painter, who, if of impure and feeble mind, will cover all that he touches with clay staining, as bandinelli puts a foul scent of human flesh about his marble christ, and as many whom i will not here name, among moderns; but if of mighty mind or pure, may pass through all places of foulness, and none will stay upon him, as michael angelo, or he will baptize all things and wash them with pure water, as our own stothard. now, so far as this power is dependent on the seeking of the artist, and is only to be seen in the work of good and spiritually-minded men, it is vain to attempt to teach or illustrate it, neither is it here the place to take note of the way in which it belongs to the representation of the mental image of things, instead of things themselves, of which we are to speak in treating of the imagination; but thus much may here be noted of broad, practical principle, that the purity of flesh painting depends in very considerable measure on the intensity and warmth of its color. for if it be opaque, and clay cold, and colorless, and devoid of all the radiance and value of flesh, the lines of its true beauty, being severe and firm, will become so hard in the loss of the glow and gradation by which nature illustrates them, that the painter will be compelled to sacrifice them for a luscious fulness and roundness, in order to give the conception of flesh; which, being done, destroys ideality of form as of color, and gives all over to lasciviousness of surface; showing also that the painter sought for this, and this only, since otherwise he had not taken a subject in which he knew himself compelled to surrender all sources of dignity. whereas, right splendor of color both bears out a nobler severity of form, and is in itself purifying and cleansing, like fire, furnishing also to the painter an excuse for the choice of his subject, seeing that he may be supposed as not having painted it but in the admiration of its abstract glory of color and form, and with no unworthy seeking. but the mere power of perfect and glowing color will in some sort redeem even a debased tendency of mind itself, as eminently the case with titian, who, though of little feeling, and often treating base subjects, or elevated subjects basely, as in the disgusting magdalen of the pitti palace, and that of the barberigo at venice, yet redeems all by his glory of hue, so that he cannot paint altogether coarsely; and with giorgione, who had nobler and more serious intellect, the sense of nudity is utterly lost, and there is no need nor desire of concealment any more, but his naked figures move among the trees like fiery pillars, and lie on the grass like flakes of sunshine.[ ] with the religious painters on the other hand, such nudity as they were compelled to treat is redeemed as much by severity of form and hardness of line as by color, so that generally their draped figures are preferable, as in the francia of our own gallery. but these, with michael angelo and the venetians, except titian, form a great group, pure in sight and aim, between which and all other schools by which the nude has been treated, there is a gulf fixed, and all the rest, compared with them, seem striving how best to illustrate that of spenser. "of all god's works, which doe this worlde adorn, there is no one more faire, and excellent than is man's body both for power and forme whiles it is kept in sober government. but none than it more foul and indecent distempered through misrule and passions bace." § . degrees of descent in this respect: rubens, correggio, and guido. § . and modern art. of these last, however, with whom ideality is lost, there are some worthier than others, according to that measure of color they reach, and power they possess, whence much may be forgiven to rubens, (as to our own etty,) less, as i think, to correggio, who with less apparent and evident coarseness has more of inherent sensuality, wrought out with attractive and luscious refinement, and that alike in all subjects, as in the madonna of the incoronazione, over the high altar of san giovanni at parma, of which the head and upper portion of the figure, now preserved in the library, might serve as a model of attitude and expression to a ballet figurante:[ ] and again in the lascivious st. catherine of the giorno, and in the charioted diana, (both at parma,) not to name any of his works of aim more definitely evil. beneath which again will fall the works devoid alike of art and decency, as that susannah of guido, in our own gallery, and so we may descend to the absolute clay of the moderns, only noticing in all how much of what is evil and base in subject or tendency, is redeemed by what is pure and right in hue, so that i do not assert that the purpose and object of many of the grander painters of the nude, as titian for instance, was always elevated, but only that we, who cannot paint the lamp of fire within the earthen pitcher, must take other weapons in our left hands. and it is to be noted, also, that in climates where the body can be more openly and frequently visited by sun and weather, the nude both comes to be regarded in a way more grand and pure, as necessarily awakening no ideas of base kind, (as pre-eminently with the greeks,) and also from that exposure receives a firmness and sunny elasticity very different from the silky softness of the clothed nations of the north, where every model necessarily looks as if accidentally undressed; and hence from the very fear and doubt with which we approach the nude, it becomes expressive of evil, and for that daring frankness of the old men, which seldom missed of human grandeur, even when it failed of holy feeling, we have substituted a mean, carpeted, gauze-veiled, mincing sensuality of curls and crisping pins, out of which i believe nothing can come but moral enervation and mental paralysis. § . thirdly, ferocity and fear. the latter how to be distinguished from awe. § . holy fear, how distinct from human terror. § . ferocity is joined always with fear. its unpardonableness. respecting those two other vices of the human face, the expressions of fear and ferocity, there is less to be noted, as they only occasionally enter into the conception of character; only it is most necessary to make careful distinction between the conception of power, destructiveness, or majesty, in matter, influence, or agent, and the actual fear of any of these, for it is possible to conceive of terribleness, without being in a position obnoxious to the danger of it, and so without fear, and the feeling arising from this contemplation of dreadfulness, ourselves being in safety, as of a stormy sea from the shore, is properly termed awe, and is a most noble passion; whereas fear mortal and extreme, may be felt respecting things ignoble, as the falling from a window, and without any conception of terribleness or majesty in the thing, or the accident dreaded; and even when fear is felt respecting things sublime, as thunder, or storm of battle, yet the tendency of it is to destroy all power of contemplation of their majesty, and to freeze and shrink all the intellect into a shaking heap of clay, for absolute acute fear is of the same unworthiness and contempt from whatever source it arise, and degrades the mind and the outward bearing of the body alike, even though it be among hail of heaven and fire running along the ground. and so among the children of god, while there is always that fearful and bowed apprehension of his majesty, and that sacred dread of all offence to him, which is called the fear of god, yet of real and essential fear there is not any but clinging of confidence to him, as their rock, fortress, and deliverer, and perfect love, and casting out of fear, so that it is not possible that while the mind is rightly bent on him, there should be dread of anything either earthly or supernatural, and the more dreadful seems the height of his majesty, the less fear they feel that dwell in the shadow of it, ("of whom shall i be afraid?") so that they are as david was, devoted to his fear; whereas, on the other hand, those who, if they may help it, never conceive of god, but thrust away all thought and memory of him, and in his real terribleness and omnipresence fear him not nor know him, yet are of real, acute, piercing, and ignoble fear, haunted for evermore; fear inconceiving and desperate that calls to the rocks, and hides in the dust; and hence the peculiar baseness of the expression of terror, a baseness attributed to it in all times, and among all nations, as of a passion atheistical, brutal, and profane. so also, it is always joined with ferocity, which is of all passions the least human; for of sensual desires there is license to men, as necessity; and of vanity there is intellectual cause, so that when seen in a brute it is pleasant and a sign of good wit; and of fear there is at times necessity and excuse, as being allowed for prevention of harm; but of ferocity there is no excuse nor palliation, but it is pure essence of tiger and demon, and it casts on the human face the paleness alike of the horse of death, and the ashes of hell. § . such expressions how sought by painters powerless and impious. wherefore, of all subjects that can be admitted to sight, the expressions of fear and ferocity are the most foul and detestable, and so there is in them i know not what sympathetic attractiveness for minds cowardly and base, as the vulgar of most nations, and forasmuch as they are easily rendered by men who can render nothing else, they are often trusted in by the herd of painters incapable and profane, as in that monstrous abortion of the first room of the louvre, called the deluge, whose subject is pure, acute, mortal fear; and so generally the senseless horrors of the modern french schools, spawn of the guillotine: also there is not a greater test of grandeur or meanness of mind than the expressions it will seek for and develop in the features and forms of men in fierce strife, whether determination and devotion, and all the other attributes of that unselfishness which constitutes heroism, as in the warrior of agasias; and distress not agitated nor unworthy, though mortal, as in the dying gladiator, or brutal ferocity and butchered agony, of which the lowest and least palliated examples are those battles of salvator rosa, which none but a man, base-born and thief-bred, could have dwelt upon for an instant without sickening, of which i will only name that example in the pitti palace, wherein the chief figure in the foreground is a man with his arm cut off at the shoulder, run through the other hand into the breast with a lance.[ ] and manifold instances of the same feeling are to be found in the repainting of the various representations of the inferno, so common through italy, more especially that of orcagna's in the campo santo, wherein the few figures near the top that yet remain untouched are grand in their severe drawing and expressions of enduring despair, while those below, repainted by solazzino, depend for their expressiveness upon torrents of blood; so in the inferno of santa maria novella, and of the arena chapel, not to speak of the horrible images of the passion, by which vulgar romanism has always striven to excite the languid sympathies of its untaught flocks. of which foulness let us reason no farther, the very image and memory of them being pollution, only noticing this, that there has always been a morbid tendency in romanism towards the contemplation of bodily pain, owing to the attribution of saving power to it, which, like every other moral error, has been of fatal effect in art, leaving not altogether without the stain and blame of it, even the highest of the pure romanist painters; as fra angelico, for instance, who, in his passion subjects, always insists weakly on the bodily torture, and is unsparing of blood; and giotto, though his treatment is usually grander, as in that crucifixion over the door of the convent of st. mark's, where the blood is hardly actual, but issues from the feet in a typical and conventional form, and becomes a crimson cord which is twined strangely beneath about a skull; only that which these holy men did to enhance, even though in their means mistaken, the impression and power of the sufferings of christ, or of his saints, is always in a measure noble, and to be distinguished with all reverence from the abominations of the irreligious painters following, as of camillo procaccini, in one of his martyrdoms in the gallery of the brera, at milan, and other such, whose names may be well spared to the reader. § . of passion generally. § . it is never to be for itself exhibited--at least on the face. these, then, are the four passions whose presence in any degree on the human face is degradation. but of all passion it is to be generally observed, that it becomes ignoble either when entertained respecting unworthy objects, and therefore shallow or unjustifiable, or when of impious violence, and so destructive of human dignity. thus grief is noble or the reverse, according to the dignity and worthiness of the object lamented, and the grandeur of the mind enduring it. the sorrow of mortified vanity or avarice is simply disgusting, even that of bereaved affection may be base if selfish and unrestrained. all grief that convulses the features is ignoble, because it is commonly shallow and certainly temporary, as in children, though in the shock and shiver of a strong man's features under sudden and violent grief there may be something of sublime. the grief of guercino's hagar, in the brera gallery at milan, is partly despicable, partly disgusting, partly ridiculous; it is not the grief of the injured egyptian, driven forth into the desert with the destiny of a nation in her heart, but of a servant of all work, turned away for stealing tea and sugar. common painters forget that passion is not absolutely and in itself great or violent, but only in proportion to the weakness of the mind it has to deal with; and that in exaggerating its outward signs, they are not exalting the passion, but evaporating the hero.[ ] they think too much of passions as always the same in their nature, forgetting that the love of achilles is different from the love of paris, and of alcestis from that of laodamia. the use and value of passion is not as a subject in contemplation in itself, but as it breaks up the fountains of the great deep of the human mind, or displays its mightiness and ribbed majesty, as mountains are seen in their stability best among the coil of clouds; whence, in fine, i think it is to be held that all passion which attains overwhelming power, so that it is not as resisting, but as conquered, that the creature is contemplated, is unfit for high art, and destructive of the ideal character of the countenance: and in this respect, i cannot but hold raffaelle to have erred in his endeavor to express passion of such acuteness in the human face; as in the fragment of the massacre of the innocents in our own gallery, (wherein, repainted though it be, i suppose the purpose of the master is yet to be understood,) for if such subjects are to be represented at all, their entire expression may be given without degrading the face, as we shall presently see done with unspeakable power by tintoret,[ ] and i think that all subjects of the kind, all human misery, slaughter, famine, plague, peril, and crime, are better in the main avoided, as of unprofitable and hardening influence, unless so far as out of the suffering, hinted rather than expressed, we may raise into nobler relief the eternal enduring of fortitude and affection, of mercy and self-devotion, or when, as by the threshing-floor of ornan, and by the cave of lazarus, the angel of the lord is to be seen in the chastisement, and his love to be manifested to the despair of men. § . recapitulation thus, then, we have in some sort enumerated those evil signs which are most necessary to be shunned in the seeking of ideal beauty,[ ] though it is not the knowledge of them, but the dread and hatred of them, which will effectually aid the painter; as on the other hand it is not by mere admission of the loveliness of good and holy expression that its subtile characters are to be traced. raffaelle himself, questioned on this subject, made doubtful answer; he probably could not trace through what early teaching, or by what dies of emotion the image had been sealed upon his heart. our own bacon, who well saw the impossibility of reaching it by the combination of many separate beauties, yet explains not the nature of that "kind of felicity" to which he attributes success. i suppose those who have conceived and wrought the loveliest things, have done so by no theorizing, but in simple labor of love, and could not, if put to a bar of rationalism, defend all points of what they had done, but painted it in their own delight, and to the delight of all besides, only always with that respect of conscience and "fear of swerving from that which is right, which maketh diligent observers of circumstances the loose regard whereof is the nurse of vulgar folly, no less than solomon's attention thereunto was of natural furtherances the most effectual to make him eminent above others, for he gave good heed, and pierced everything to the very ground."[ ] with which good heed, and watching of the instants when men feel warmly and rightly, as the indians do for the diamond in their washing of sand, and that with the desire and hope of finding true good in men, and not with the ready vanity that sets itself to fiction instantly, and carries its potter's wheel about with it always, (off which there will come only clay vessels of regular shape after all,) instead of the pure mirror that can show the seraph standing by the human body--standing as signal to the heavenly land:[ ] with this heed and this charity, there are none of us that may not bring down that lamp upon his path of which spenser sang:-- "that beauty is not, as fond men misdeem an outward show of things, that only seem; but that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray that light proceeds, which kindleth lover's fire, shall never be extinguished nor decay. but when the vital spirits do expire, unto her native planet shall retire, for it is heavenly born and cannot die, being a parcel of the purest sky." footnotes [ ] rev. vii. . [ ] compare part ii. sec. i. chap. iii § . [ ] de la poësie chrétienne. forme de l'art. chap. viii. [ ] as in the noble louvre picture. [ ] the madonna turns her back to christ, and bends her head over her shoulder to receive the crown, the arms being folded with studied grace over the bosom. [ ] compare michelet, (du prêtre, de la femme, de la famille,) chap. iii. note. he uses language too violent to be quoted; but excuses salvator by reference to the savage character of the thirty years' war. that this excuse has no validity may be proved by comparing the painter's treatment of other subjects. see sec. ii. chap. iii. § , note. [ ] "the fire, that mounts the liquor, till it run o'er in seeming to augment it, wastes it." henry viii. [ ] sect. ii. chap. iii. § . [ ] let it be observed that it is always of beauty, not of human character in its lower and criminal modifications, that we have been speaking. that variety of character, therefore, which we have affirmed to be necessary, is the variety of giotto and angelico, not of hogarth. works concerned with the exhibition of general character, are to be spoken of in the consideration of ideas of relation. [ ] hooker, book v. chap. i. § . [ ] "each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, and by the holy rood, a man all light, a seraph man by every corse there stood. this seraph band, each waved his hand, it was a heavenly sight; they stood as signals to the land, each one a lovely light." ancient mariner chapter xv. general conclusions respecting the theoretic faculty. § . there are no sources of the emotion of beauty more than those found in things visible. § . what imperfection exists in visible things. how in a sort by imagination removable. § . which however affects not our present conclusions. of the sources of beauty open to us in the visible world, we have now obtained a view which, though most feeble in its grasp and scanty in its detail, is yet general in its range. of no other sources than these visible can we, by any effort in our present condition of existence, conceive. for what revelations have been made to humanity inspired, or caught up to heaven of things to the heavenly region belonging, have been either by unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter, or else by their very nature incommunicable, except in types and shadows; and ineffable by words belonging to earth, for of things different from the visible, words appropriated to the visible can convey no image. how different from earthly gold that clear pavement of the city might have seemed to the eyes of st. john, we of unreceived sight cannot know; neither of that strange jasper and sardine can we conceive the likeness which he assumed that sat on the throne above the crystal sea; neither what seeming that was of slaying that the root of david bore in the midst of the elders; neither what change it was upon the form of the fourth of them that walked in the furnace of dura, that even the wrath of idolatry knew for the likeness of the son of god. the knowing that is here permitted to us is either of things outward only, as in those it is whose eyes faith never opened, or else of that dark part that her glass shows feebly, of things supernatural, that gleaming of the divine form among the mortal crowd, which all may catch if they will climb the sycamore and wait; nor how much of god's abiding at the house may be granted to those that so seek, and how much more may be opened to them in the breaking of bread, cannot be said; but of that only we can reason which is in a measure revealed to all, of that which is by constancy and purity of affection to be found in the things and the beings around us upon earth. now among all those things whose beauty we have hitherto examined, there has been a measure of imperfection. either inferiority of kind, as the beauty of the lower animals, or resulting from degradation, as in man himself; and although in considering the beauty of human form, we arrived at some conception of restoration, yet we found that even the restoration must be in some respect imperfect, as incapable of embracing all qualities, moral and intellectual, at once, neither to be freed from all signs of former evil done or suffered. consummate beauty, therefore, is not to be found on earth, though often such intense measure of it as shall drown all capacity of receiving; neither is it to be respecting humanity legitimately conceived. but by certain operations of the imagination upon ideas of beauty received from things around us, it is possible to conceive respecting superhuman creatures (of that which is more than creature, no creature ever conceived) a beauty in some sort greater than we see. of this beauty, however, it is impossible to determine anything until we have traced the imaginative operations to which it owes its being, of which operations this much may be prematurely said, that they are not creative, that no new ideas are elicited by them, and that their whole function is only a certain dealing with, concentrating or mode of regarding the impressions received from external things, that therefore, in the beauty to which they will conduct us, there will be found no new element, but only a peculiar combination or phase of those elements that we now know, and that therefore we may at present draw all the conclusions with respect to the rank of the theoretic faculty, which the knowledge of its subject matter can warrant. § . the four sources from which the pleasure of beauty is derived are all divine. we have seen that this subject matter is referable to four general heads. it is either the record of conscience, printed in things external, or it is a symbolizing of divine attributes in matter, or it is the felicity of living things, or the perfect fulfilment of their duties and functions. in all cases it is something divine, either the approving voice of god, the glorious symbol of him, the evidence of his kind presence, or the obedience to his will by him induced and supported. all these subjects of contemplation are such as we may suppose will remain sources of pleasure to the perfected spirit throughout eternity. divine in their nature, they are addressed to the immortal part of men. § . what objections may be made to this conclusion. there remain, however, two points to be noticed before i can hope that this conclusion will be frankly accepted by the reader. if it be the moral part of us to which beauty addresses itself, how does it happen, it will be asked, that it is ever found in the works of impious men, and how is it possible for such to desire or conceive it? on the other hand, how does it happen that men in high state of moral culture are often insensible to the influence of material beauty, and insist feebly upon it as an instrument of soul culture. these two objections i shall endeavor briefly to answer, not that they can be satisfactorily treated without that detailed examination of the whole body of great works of art, on which i purpose to enter in the following volume. for the right determination of these two questions is indeed the whole end and aim of my labor, (and if it could be here accomplished, i should bestow no effort farther,) namely, the proving that no supreme power of art can be attained by impious men; and that the neglect of art, as an interpreter of divine things, has been of evil consequence to the christian world. at present, however, i would only meet such objections as must immediately arise in the reader's mind. § . typical beauty may be æsthetically pursued. instances. § . how interrupted by false feeling. and first, it will be remembered that i have, throughout the examination of typical beauty, asserted its instinctive power, the moral meaning of it being only discoverable by faithful thought. now this instinctive sense of it varies in intensity among men, being given, like the hearing ear of music, to some more than to others: and if those to whom it is given in large measure be unfortunately men of impious or unreflecting spirit, it is very possible that the perceptions of beauty should be by them cultivated on principles merely æsthetic, and so lose their hallowing power; for though the good seed in them is altogether divine, yet, there being no blessing in the springing thereof, it brings forth wild grapes in the end. and yet these wild grapes are well discernible, like the deadly gourds of gilgal. there is in all works of such men a taint and stain, and jarring discord, blacker and louder exactly in proportion to the moral deficiency, of which the best proof and measure is to be found in their treatment of the human form, (since in landscape it is nearly impossible to introduce definite expression of evil,) of which the highest beauty has been attained only once, and then by no system taught painter, but by a most holy dominican monk of fiesole; and beneath him all stoop lower and lower in proportion to their inferior sanctity, though with more or less attainment of that which is noble, according to their intellectual power and earnestness, as raffaelle in his st. cecilia, (a mere study of a passionate, dark-eyed, large formed italian model,) and even perugino, in that there is about his noblest faces a shortcoming, indefinable; an absence of the full outpouring of the sacred spirit that there is in angelico; traceable, i doubt not, to some deficiencies and avaricious flaws of his heart, whose consequences in his conduct were such as to give vasari hope that his lies might stick to him (for the contradiction of which in the main, if there be not contradiction enough in every line that the hand of perugino drew, compare rio, de la poësie chrétienne, and note also what rio has singularly missed observing, that perugino, in his portrait of himself in the florence gallery, has put a scroll into the hand, with the words "timete deum," thus surely indicating that which he considered his duty and message:) and so all other even of the sacred painters, not to speak of the lower body of men in whom, on the one hand, there is marked sensuality and impurity in all that they seek of beauty, as in correggio and guido, or, on the other, a want in measure of the sense of beauty itself, as in rubens and titian, showing itself in the adoption of coarse types of feature and form; sometimes also (of which i could find instances in modern times,) in a want of evidence of delight in what they do; so that, after they have rendered some passage of exceeding beauty, they will suffer some discordant point to interfere with it, and it will not hurt them, as if they had no pleasure in that which was best, but had done it in inspiration that was not profitable to them, as deaf men might touch an instrument with a feeling in their heart, which yet returns not outwardly upon them, and so know not when they play false: and sometimes by total want of choice, for there is a choice of love in all rightly tempered men, not that ignorant and insolent choice which rejects half nature as empty of the right, but that pure choice that fetches the right out of everything; and where this is wanting, we may see men walking up and down in dry places, finding no rest, ever and anon doing something noble, and yet not following it up, but dwelling the next instant on something impure or profitless with the same intensity and yet impatience, so that they are ever wondered at and never sympathized with, and while they dazzle all, they lead none; and then, beneath these again, we find others on whose works there are definite signs of evil mind, ill-repressed, and then inability to avoid, and at last perpetual seeking for and feeding upon horror and ugliness, and filthiness of sin, as eminently in salvator and caravaggio, and the lower dutch schools, only in these last less painfully as they lose the villanous in the brutal, and the horror of crime in its idiocy. § . greatness and truth are sometimes by the deity sustained and spoken in and through evil men. but secondly, it is to be noted that it is neither by us uncertainable what moments of pure feeling or aspiration may occur to men of minds apparently cold and lost, nor by us to be pronounced through what instruments, and in what strangely occurrent voices, god may choose to communicate good to men. it seems to me that much of what is great, and to all men beneficial, has been wrought by those who neither intended nor knew the good they did, and that many mighty harmonies have been discoursed by instruments that had been dumb or discordant, but that god knew their stops. the spirit of prophecy consisted with the avarice of balaam, and the disobedience of saul. could we spare from its page that parable, which he said, who saw the vision of the almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open, though we know that the sword of his punishment was then sharp in its sheath beneath him in the plains of moab? or shall we not lament with david over the shield cast away on the gilboa mountains, of him to whom god gave _another heart_ that day when he turned his back to go from samuel? it is not our part to look hardly, nor to look always, to the character or the deeds of men, but to accept from all of them, and to hold fast that which we can prove good, and feel to be ordained for us. we know that whatever good there is in them is itself divine, and wherever we see the virtue of ardent labor and self-surrendering to a single purpose, wherever we find constant reference made to the written scripture of natural beauty, this at least we know is great and good, this we know is not granted by the counsel of god, without purpose, nor maintained without result: their interpretation we may accept, into their labor we may enter, but they themselves must look to it, if what they do has no intent of good, nor any reference to the giver of all gifts. selfish in their industry, unchastened in their wills, ungrateful for the spirit that is upon them, they may yet be helmed by that spirit whithersoever the governor listeth; involuntary instruments they may become of others' good; unwillingly they may bless israel, doubtingly discomfit amalek, but shortcoming there will be of their glory, and sure, of their punishment. § . the second objection arising from the coldness of christian men to external beauty. i believe i shall be able, incidentally, in succeeding investigations, to prove this shortcoming, and to examine the sources of it, not absolutely indeed, (seeing that all reasoning on the characters of men must be treacherous, our knowledge on this head being as corrupt as it is scanty, while even in living with them it is impossible to trace the working, or estimate the errors of great and self-secreted minds,) but at least enough to establish the general principle upon such grounds of fact as may satisfy those who demand the practical proof (often in a measure impossible) of things which can hardly be doubted in their rational consequence. at present, it would be useless to enter on an examination for which we have no materials; and i proceed, therefore, to notice that other and opposite error of christian men in thinking that there is little use or value in the operation of the theoretic faculty, not that i at present either feel myself capable, or that this is the place for the discussion of that vast question of the operation of taste (as it is called) on the minds of men, and the national value of its teaching, but i wish shortly to reply to that objection which might be urged to the real moral dignity of the faculty, that many christian men seem to be in themselves without it, and even to discountenance it in others. it has been said by schiller, in his letters on æsthetic culture, that the sense of beauty never farthered the performance of a single duty. § . reasons for this coldness in the anxieties of the world. these anxieties overwrought and criminal. § . evil consequences of such coldness. § . theoria the service of heaven. although this gross and inconceivable falsity will hardly be accepted by any one in so many terms, seeing that there are few so utterly lost but that they receive, and know that they receive, at certain moments, strength of some kind, or rebuke from the appealings of outward things; and that it is not possible for a christian man to walk across so much as a rood of the natural earth, with mind unagitated and rightly poised, without receiving strength and hope from some stone, flower, leaf, or sound, nor without a sense of a dew falling upon him out of the sky; though, i say, this falsity is not wholly and in terms admitted, yet it seems to be partly and practically so in much of the doing and teaching even of holy men, who in the recommending of the love of god to us, refer but seldom to those things in which it is most abundantly and immediately shown; though they insist much on his giving of bread, and raiment, and health, (which he gives to all inferior creatures,) they require us not to thank him for that glory of his works which he has permitted us alone to perceive: they tell us often to meditate in the closet, but they send us not, like isaac, into the fields at even, they dwell on the duty of self-denial, but they exhibit not the duty of delight. now there are reasons for this, manifold, in the toil and warfare of an earnest mind, which, in its efforts at the raising of men from utter loss and misery, has often but little time or disposition to take heed of anything more than the bare life, and of those so occupied it is not for us to judge, but i think, that, of the weaknesses, distresses, vanities, schisms, and sins, which often even in the holiest men, diminish their usefulness, and mar their happiness, there would be fewer if, in their struggle with nature fallen, they sought for more aid from nature undestroyed. it seems to me that the real sources of bluntness in the feelings towards the splendor of the grass and glory of the flower, are less to be found in ardor of occupation, in seriousness of compassion, or heavenliness of desire, than in the turning of the eye at intervals of rest too selfishly within; the want of power to shake off the anxieties of actual and near interest, and to leave results in god's hands; the scorn of all that does not seem immediately apt for our purposes, or open to our understanding, and perhaps something of pride, which desires rather to investigate than to feel. i believe that the root of almost every schism and heresy from which the christian church has ever suffered, has been the effort of men to earn, rather than to receive, their salvation; and that the reason that preaching is so commonly ineffectual is, that it calls on men oftener to work for god, than to behold god working for them. if, for every rebuke that we utter of men's vices, we put forth a claim upon their hearts; if for every assertion of god's demands from them, we could substitute a display of his kindness to them; if side by side with every warning of death, we could exhibit proofs and promises of immortality; if, in fine, instead of assuming the being of an awful deity, which men, though they cannot and dare not deny, are always unwilling, sometimes unable, to conceive, we were to show them a near, visible, inevitable, but all beneficent deity, whose presence makes the earth itself a heaven, i think there would be fewer deaf children sitting in the market-place. at all events, whatever may be the inability in this present life to mingle the full enjoyment of the divine works with the full discharge of every practical duty, and confessedly in many cases this must be, let us not attribute the inconsistency to any indignity of the faculty of contemplation, but to the sin and the suffering of the fallen state, and the change of order from the keeping of the garden to the tilling of the ground. we cannot say how far it is right or agreeable with god's will, while men are perishing round about us, while grief, and pain, and wrath, and impiety, and death, and all the powers of the air, are working wildly and evermore, and the cry of blood going up to heaven, that any of us should take hand from the plough; but this we know, that there will come a time when the service of god shall be the beholding of him; and though in these stormy seas, where we are now driven up and down, his spirit is dimly seen on the face of the waters, and we are left to cast anchors out of the stern, and wish for the day, that day will come, when, with the evangelists on the crystal and stable sea, all the creatures of god shall be full of eyes within, and there shall be "no more curse, but his servants shall serve him, and shall see his face." section ii. of the imaginative faculty. chapter i. of the three forms of imagination. § . a partial examination only of the imagination is to be attempted. we have hitherto been exclusively occupied with those sources of pleasure which exist in the external creation, and which in any faithful copy of it must to a certain extent exist also. these sources of beauty, however, are not presented by any very great work of art in a form of pure transcript. they invariably receive the reflection of the mind under whose shadow they have passed, and are modified or colored by its image. this modification is the work of imagination. as, in the course of our succeeding investigation, we shall be called upon constantly to compare sources of beauty existing in nature with the images of them presented by the human mind, it is very necessary for us shortly to review the conditions and limits of the imaginative faculty, and to ascertain by what tests we may distinguish its sane, healthy, and profitable operation, from that which is erratic, diseased, and dangerous. it is neither desirable nor possible here to examine or illustrate in full the essence of this mighty faculty. such an examination would require a review of the whole field of literature, and would alone demand a volume. our present task is not to explain or exhibit full portraiture of this function of the mind in all its relations, but only to obtain some certain tests by which we may determine whether it be very imagination or no, and unmask all impersonations of it, and this chiefly with respect to art, for in literature the faculty takes a thousand forms, according to the matter it has to treat, and becomes like the princess of the arabian tale, sword, eagle, or fire, according to the war it wages, sometimes piercing, sometimes soaring, sometimes illumining, retaining no image of itself, except its supernatural power, so that i shall content myself with tracing that particular form of it, and unveiling those imitations of it only, which are to be found, or feared, in painting, referring to other creations of mind only for illustration. § . the works of the metaphysicians how nugatory with respect to this faculty. unfortunately, the works of metaphysicians will afford us in this most interesting inquiry no aid whatsoever. they who are constantly endeavoring to fathom and explain the essence of the faculties of mind, are sure in the end to lose sight of all that cannot be explained, (though it may be defined and felt,) and because, as i shall presently show, the essence of the imaginative faculty is utterly mysterious and inexplicable, and to be recognized in its results only, or in the negative results of its absence, the metaphysicians, as far as i am acquainted with their works, miss it altogether, and never reach higher than a definition of fancy by a false name. what i understand by fancy will presently appear, not that i contend for nomenclature, but only for distinction between two mental faculties, by whatever name they be called, one the source of all that is great in the poetic arts; the other merely decorative and entertaining, but which are often confounded together, and which have so much in common as to render strict definition of either difficult. § . the definition of d. stewart, how inadequate. dugald stewart's meagre definition may serve us for a starting point. "imagination," he says, "includes conception or simple apprehension, which enables us to form a notion of those former objects of perception or of knowledge, out of which we are to make a selection; abstraction, which separates the selected materials from the qualities and circumstances which are connected with them in nature; and judgment or taste, which selects the materials and directs their combination. to these powers we may add that particular habit of association to which i formerly gave the name of fancy, as it is this which presents to our choice all the different materials which are subservient to the efforts of imagination, and which may therefore be considered as forming the ground-work of poetical genius." (by fancy in this passage, we find on referring to the chapter treating of it, that nothing more is meant than the rapid occurrence of ideas of sense to the mind.) now, in this definition, the very point and purpose of all the inquiry is missed. we are told that judgment or taste "directs the combination." in order that anything may be directed, an end must be previously determined: what is the faculty that determines this end? and of what frame and make, how boned and fleshed, how conceived or seen, is the end itself? bare judgment, or taste, cannot approve of what has no existence; and yet by dugald stewart's definition we are left to their catering among a host of conceptions, to produce a combination which, as they work for, they must see and approve before it exists. this power of prophecy is the very essence of the whole matter, and it is just that inexplicable part which the metaphysician misses. § . this instance nugatory. as might be expected from his misunderstanding of the faculty, he has given an instance entirely nugatory.[ ] it would be difficult to find in milton a passage in which less power of imagination was shown, than the description of eden, if, as i suppose, this be the passage meant, at the beginning of the fourth book, in which i can find three expressions only in which this power is shown, the "_burnished_ with golden rind, hung amiable" of the hesperian fruit, the "_lays forth_ her purple grape" of the vine and the "_fringed_ bank with myrtle crowned," of the lake, and these are not what stewart meant, but only that accumulation of bowers, groves, lawns, and hillocks, which is not imagination at all, but composition, and that of the commonest kind. hence, if we take any passage in which there is real imagination, we shall find stewart's hypothesis not only inefficient and obscure, but utterly inapplicable. § . various instances. take one or two at random. "on the other side, incensed with indignation, satan stood unterrified, and like a comet burned that fires the length of ophiuchus huge in the arctic sky, and from his horrid hair shakes pestilence and war." (note that the word incensed is to be taken in its literal and material sense, set on fire.) what taste or judgment was it that directed this combination? or is there nothing more than taste or judgment here? "ten paces huge he back recoiled; the tenth on bended knee his massy spear upstaid, as if on earth winds under ground, or waters forcing way _sidelong had pushed a mountain from his seat half-sunk with all his pines._ "together both ere the high lawns appeared _under the opening eyelids_ of the morn, we drove a field, and both together heard what time the gray-fly winds her _sultry_ horn. "missing thee, i walk unseen on the dry smooth shaven green. to behold the wandering moon riding near her highest noon, _like one that had been led astray_, through the heavens' wide pathless way, and oft _as if her head she bowed_ stooping through a fleecy cloud." it is evident that stewart's explanation utterly fails in all these instances, for there is in them no "combination" whatsoever, but a particular mode of regarding the qualities or appearances of a single thing, illustrated and conveyed to us by the image of another; and the act of imagination, observe, is not the selection of this image, but the mode of regarding the object. but the metaphysician's definition fails yet more utterly, when we look at the imagination neither as regarding, nor combining, but as penetrating. "my gracious silence, hail: wouldst thou have laughed, had i come coffin'd home that weep'st to see me triumph. ah! my dear, such eyes the widows in corioli wear, and mothers that lack sons." how did shakspeare _know_ that virgilia could not speak? this knowledge, this intuitive and penetrative perception, is still one of the forms, the highest, of imagination, but there is no combination of images here. § . the three operations of the imagination. penetrative, associative, contemplative. we find, then, that the imagination has three totally distinct functions. it combines, and by combination creates new forms; but the secret principle of this combination has not been shown by the analysts. again, it treats or regards both the simple images and its own combinations in peculiar ways; and, thirdly, it penetrates, analyzes, and reaches truths by no other faculty discoverable. these its three functions, i shall endeavor to illustrate, but not in this order: the most logical mode of treatment would be to follow the order in which commonly the mind works; that is, penetrating first, combining next, and treating or regarding, finally; but this arrangement would be inconvenient, because the acts of penetration and of regard are so closely connected, and so like in their relations to other mental acts, that i wish to examine them consecutively, and the rather, because they have to do with higher subject matter than the mere act of combination, whose distinctive nature, that property which makes it imagination and not composition, it will i think be best to explain at setting out, as we easily may, in subjects familiar and material. i shall therefore examine the imaginative faculty in these three forms; first, as combining or associative; secondly, as analytic or penetrative; thirdly, as regardant or contemplative. footnotes [ ] he continues thus, "to illustrate these observations, let us consider the steps by which milton must have proceeded, in creating his imaginary garden of eden. when he first proposed to himself that subject of description, it is reasonable to suppose that a variety of the most striking scenes which he had seen, crowded into his mind. the association of ideas suggested them and the power of conception placed each of them before him with all its beauties and imperfections. in every natural scene, if we destine it for any particular purpose, there are defects and redundancies, which art may sometimes, but cannot always correct. but the power of imagination is unlimited. she can create and annihilate, and dispose at pleasure her woods, her rocks, and her rivers. milton, accordingly, would not copy his eden from any one scene, but would select from each the features which were most eminently beautiful. the power of abstraction enabled him to make the separation, and taste directed him in the selection." chapter ii. of imagination associative. § . of simple conception. in order to render our inquiry as easy as possible, we shall consider the dealing of the associative imagination with the simplest possible matter, that is,--with conceptions of material things. first, therefore, we must define the nature of these conceptions themselves. after beholding and examining any material object, our knowledge respecting it exists in two different forms. some facts exist in the brain in a verbal form, as known, but not conceived, as, for instance, that it was heavy or light, that it was eight inches and a quarter long, etc., of which length we cannot have accurate conception, but only such a conception as might attach to a length of seven inches or nine; and which fact we may recollect without any conception of the object at all. other facts respecting it exist in the brain in a visible form, not always visible, but voluntarily visible, as its being white, or having such and such a complicated shape, as the form of a rose-bud, for instance, which it would be difficult to express verbally, neither is it retained by the brain in a verbal form, but a visible one, that is, when we wish for knowledge of its form for immediate use, we summon up a vision or image of the thing; we do not remember it in words, as we remember the fact that it took so many days to blow, or that it was gathered at such and such a time. the knowledge of things retained in this visible form is called conception by the metaphysicians, which term i shall retain; it is inaccurately called imagination by taylor, in the passage quoted by wordsworth in the preface to his poems, not but that the term imagination is etymologically and rightly expressive of it, but we want that term for a higher faculty. § . how connected with verbal knowledge. there are many questions respecting this faculty of conception of very great interest, such as the exact amount of aid that verbal knowledge renders so visible, (as, for instance, the verbal knowledge that a flower has five, or seven, or ten petals, or that a muscle is inserted at such and such a point of the bone, aids the conception of the flower or the limb;) and again, what amount of aid the visible knowledge renders to the verbal, as for instance, whether any one, being asked a question about some animal or thing, which instantly and from verbal knowledge he cannot answer, may have such power of summoning up the image of the animal or thing as to ascertain the fact, by actual beholding, (which i do not assert, but can conceive to be possible;) and again, what is that indefinite and subtile character of the conception itself in most men, which admits not of being by themselves traced or realized, and yet is a sure test of likeness in any representation of the thing; like an intaglio, with a front light on it, whose lines cannot be seen, and yet they will fit one definite form only, and that accurately; these and many other questions it is irrelevant at present to determine,[ ] since to forward our present purpose, it will be well to suppose the conception, aided by verbal knowledge, to be absolutely perfect, and we will suppose a man to retain such clear image of a large number of the material things he has seen, as to be able to set down any of them on paper with perfect fidelity and absolute memory[ ] of their most minute features. in thus setting them down on paper, he works, i suppose, exactly as he would work from nature, only copying the remembered image in his mind, instead of the real thing. he is, therefore, still nothing more than a copyist. there is no exercise of imagination in this whatsoever. § . how used in composition. but over these images, vivid and distinct as nature herself, he has a command which over nature he has not. he can summon any that he chooses, and if, therefore, any group of them which he received from nature be not altogether to his mind, he is at liberty to remove some of the component images, add others foreign, and re-arrange the whole. let us suppose, for instance, that he has perfect knowledge of the forms of the aiguilles verte and argentière, and of the great glacier between them at the upper extremity of the valley of chamonix. the forms of the mountains please him, but the presence of the glacier suits not his purpose. he removes the glacier, sets the mountains farther apart, and introduces between them part of the valley of the rhone. this is composition, and is what dugald stewart mistook for imagination, in the kingdom of which noble faculty it has no part nor lot. § . characteristics of composition. the essential characters of composition, properly so called, are these. the mind which desires the new feature summons up before it those images which it supposes to be of the kind wanted, of these it takes the one which it supposes to be fittest, and tries it: if it will not answer, it tries another, until it has obtained such an association as pleases it. in this operation, if it be of little sensibility, it regards only the absolute beauty or value of the images brought before it; and takes that or those which it thinks fairest or most interesting, without any regard to their sympathy with those for whose company they are destined. of this kind is all vulgar composition; the "mulino" of claude, described in the preface to the first part, being a characteristic example. if the mind be of higher feeling, it will look to the sympathy or contrast of the features, to their likeness or dissimilarity; it will take, as it thinks best, features resembling or discordant, and if when it has put them together, it be not satisfied, it will repeat the process on the features themselves, cutting away one part and putting in another, so working more and more delicately down to the lowest details, until by dint of experiment, of repeated trials and shiftings, and constant reference to principles, (as that two lines must not mimic one another, that one mass must not be equal to another,) etc., it has morticed together a satisfactory result. § . what powers are implied by it. the first of the three functions of fancy. this process will be more and more rapid and effective, in proportion to the artist's powers of conception and association, these in their turn depending on his knowledge and experience. the distinctness of his powers of conception will give value, point, and truth to every fragment that he draws from memory. his powers of association, and his knowledge of nature will pour out before him in greater or less number and appositeness the images from which to choose. his experience guides him to quick discernment in the combination, when made, of the parts that are offensive and require change. the most elevated power of mind of all these, is that of association, by which images apposite or resemblant, or of whatever kind wanted, are called up quickly and in multitudes. when this power is very brilliant, it is called fancy, not that this is the only meaning of the word fancy, but it is the meaning of it in relation to that function of the imagination which we are here considering; for fancy has three functions; one subordinate to each of the three functions of the imagination. great differences of power are manifested among artists in this respect, some having hosts of distinct images always at their command, and rapidly discerning resemblance or contrast; others having few images, and obscure, at their disposal, nor readily governing those they have. where the powers of fancy are very brilliant, the picture becomes highly interesting; if her images are systematically and rightly combined, and truthfully rendered, it will become even impressive and instructive; if wittily and curiously combined, it will be captivating and entertaining. § . imagination not yet manifested. but all this time the imagination has not once shown itself. all this (except the gift of fancy) may be taught, all this is easily comprehended and analyzed; but imagination is neither to be taught, nor by any efforts to be attained, nor by any acuteness of discernment dissected or analyzed. we have seen that in composition the mind can only take cognizance of likeness or dissimilarity, or of abstract beauty among the ideas it brings together. but neither likeness nor dissimilarity secures harmony. we saw in the chapter on unity that likeness destroyed harmony or unity of membership, and that difference did not necessarily secure it, but only that particular imperfection in each of the harmonizing parts which can only be supplied by its fellow part. if, therefore, the combination made is to be harmonious, the artist must induce in each of its component parts (suppose two only, for simplicity's sake,) such imperfection as that the other shall put it right. if one of them be perfect by itself, the other will be an excrescence. both must be faulty when separate, and each corrected by the presence of the other. if he can accomplish this, the result will be beautiful; it will be a whole, an organized body with dependent members;--he is an inventor. if not, let his separate features be as beautiful, as apposite, or as resemblant as they may, they form no whole. they are two members glued together. he is only a carpenter and joiner. § . imagination is the correlative conception of imperfect component parts. now, the conceivable imperfections of any single feature are infinite. it is impossible, therefore, to fix upon a form of imperfection in the one, and try with this all the forms of imperfection of the other until one fits; but the two imperfections must be corelatively and simultaneously conceived. this is imagination, properly so called, imagination associative, the grandest mechanical power that the human intelligence possesses, and one which will appear more and more marvellous the longer we consider it. by its operation, two ideas are chosen out of an infinite mass, (for it evidently matters not whether the imperfections be conceived out of the infinite number conceivable, or selected out of a number recollected,) two ideas which are separately wrong, which together shall be right, and of whose unity, therefore, the idea must be formed at the instant they are seized, as it is only in that unity that either are good, and therefore only the _conception of that unity can prompt the preference_. now, what is that prophetic action of mind, which, out of an infinite mass of things that cannot be tried together, seizes, at the same instant two that are fit for each other, together right; yet each disagreeable alone. § . material analogy with imagination. this operation of mind, so far as i can see, is absolutely inexplicable, but there is something like it in chemistry. "the action of sulphuric acid on metallic zinc affords an instance of what was once called disposing affinity. zinc decomposes pure water at common temperatures with extreme slowness; but as soon as sulphuric acid is added, decomposition of the water takes place rapidly, though the acid merely unites with oxide of zinc. the former explanation was, that the affinity of the acid for oxide of zinc disposed the metal to unite with oxygen, and thus enabled it to decompose water; that is, the oxide of zinc was supposed to produce an effect previous to its existence. the obscurity of this explanation arises from regarding changes as consecutive, which are in reality simultaneous. there is no succession in the process, the oxide of zinc is not formed previously to its combination with the acid, but at the same instant. there is, as it were, but one chemical change, which consists in the combination at one and the same moment of zinc with oxygen, and of oxide of zinc with the acid; and this change occurs because these two affinities, acting together, overcome the attraction of oxygen and hydrogen for one another."[ ] now, if the imaginative artist will permit us, with all deference, to represent his combining intelligence under the figure of sulphuric acid; and if we suppose the fragment of zinc to be embarrassed among infinitely numerous fragments of diverse metals, and the oxygen dispersed and mingled among gases countless and indistinguishable, we shall have an excellent type in material things of the action of the imagination on the immaterial. both actions are, i think, inexplicable, for however simultaneous the chemical changes may be, yet the causing power is the affinity of the acid for what has no existence. it is neither to be explained how that affinity operates on atoms uncombined, nor how the artist's desire for an unconceived whole prompts him to the selection of necessary divisions. § . the grasp and dignity of imagination. now, this operation would be wonderful enough, if it were concerned with two ideas only. but a powerfully imaginative mind seizes and combines at the same instant, not only two, but all the important ideas of its poem or picture, and while it works with any one of them, it is at the same instant working with and modifying all in their relations to it, never losing sight of their bearings on each other; as the motion of a snake's body goes through all parts at once, and its volition acts at the same instant in coils that go contrary ways. this faculty is indeed something that looks as if man were made after the image of god. it is inconceivable, admirable, altogether divine; and yet wonderful as it may seem, it is palpably evident that no less an operation is necessary for the production of any great work, for, by the definition of unity of membership, (the essential characteristic of greatness,) not only certain couples or groups of parts, but _all_ the parts of a noble work must be separately imperfect; each must imply, and ask for all the rest, and the glory of every one of them must consist in its relation to the rest, neither while so much as one is wanting can any be right. and it is evidently impossible to conceive in each separate feature, a certain want or wrongness which can only be corrected by the other features of the picture, (not by one or two merely, but by all,) unless together with the want, we conceive also of what is wanted, that is of all the rest of the work or picture. hence fuseli:-- "second thoughts are admissible in painting and poetry only as dressers of the first conception; no great idea was ever formed in fragments." "he alone can conceive and compose who sees the whole at once before him." § . its limits. there is, however, a limit to the power of all human imagination. when the relations to be observed are absolutely necessary, and highly complicated, the mind cannot grasp them, and the result is a total deprivation of all power of imagination associative in such matter. for this reason, no human mind has ever conceived a new animal. for as it is evident that in an animal, every part implies all the rest; that is, the form of the eye involves the form of the brow and nose, these the form of the forehead and lip, these of the head and chin, and so on, so that it is physically impossible to conceive of any one of these members, unless we conceive the relation it bears to the whole animal; and as this relation is necessary, certain, and complicated, allowing of no license or inaccuracy, the intellect utterly fails under the load, and is reduced to mere composition, putting the bird's wing on men's shoulders, or half the human body to half the horse's, in doing which there is no action of imagination, but only of fancy; though in the treatment and contemplation of the compound form there may be much imagination, as we shall presently see. (chap. iii. § .) § . how manifested in treatment of uncertain relations. its deficiency illustrated. the matter, therefore, in which associative imagination can be shown is that which admits of great license and variety of arrangements, and in which a certain amount of relation only is required; as especially in the elements of landscape painting, in which best it may be illustrated. when an unimaginative painter is about to draw a tree, (and we will suppose him, for better illustration of the point in question, to have good feeling and correct knowledge of the nature of trees,) he probably lays on his paper such a general form as he knows to be characteristic of the tree to be drawn, and such as he believes will fall in agreeably with the other masses of his picture, which we will suppose partly prepared. when this form is set down, he assuredly finds it has done something he did not intend it to do. it has mimicked some prominent line, or overpowered some necessary mass. he begins pruning and changing, and after several experiments, succeeds in obtaining a form which does no material mischief to any other. to this form he proceeds to attach a trunk, and having probably a received notion or rule (for the unimaginative painter never works without a principle) that tree trunks ought to lean first one way and then the other as they go up, and ought not to stand under the middle of the tree, he sketches a serpentine form of requisite propriety; when it has gone up far enough, that is till it begins to look disagreeably long, he will begin to ramify it, and if there be another tree in the picture with two large branches, he knows that this, by all laws of composition, ought to have three or four, or some different number; one because he knows that if three or four branches start from the same point they will look formal, therefore he makes them start from points one above another, and because equal distances are improper, therefore they shall start at unequal distances. when they are fairly started, he knows they must undulate or go backwards and forwards, which accordingly he makes them do at random; and because he knows that all forms ought to be contrasted, therefore he makes one bend down while the other three go up. the three that go up he knows must not go up without interfering with each other, and so he makes two of them cross. he thinks it also proper that there should be variety of character in them, so he makes the one that bends down graceful and flexible, and of the two that cross, he splinters one and makes a stump of it. he repeats the process among the more complicated minor boughs, until coming to the smallest, he thinks farther care unnecessary, but draws them freely, and by chance. having to put on the foliage, he will make it flow properly in the direction of the tree's growth, he will make all the extremities graceful, but will be grievously plagued by finding them come all alike, and at last will be obliged to spoil a number of them altogether, in order to obtain opposition. they will not, however, be united in this their spoliation, but will remain uncomfortably separate and individually ill-tempered. he consoles himself by the reflection that it is unnatural for all of them to be equally perfect. § . laws of art, the safeguard of the unimaginative. now i suppose that through the whole of this process he has been able to refer to his definite memory or conception of nature for every one of the fragments he has successively added, that the details, color, fractures, insertions, etc., of his boughs, are all either actual recollections or based on secure knowledge of the tree, (and herein i allow far more than is commonly the case with unimaginative painters.) but as far as the process of combination is concerned, it is evident that from beginning to end his laws have been his safety, and his plague has been his liberty. he has been compelled to work at random, or under the guidance of feeling only, whenever there was anything left to his own decision. he has never been decided in anything except in what he _must_ or _must not_ do. he has walked as a drunken man on a broad road, his guides are the hedges; and between these limits, the broader the way, the worse he gets on. § . are by the imaginative painter despised. tests of imagination. the advance of the imaginative artist is precisely the reverse of this. he has no laws. he defies all restraint, and cuts down all hedges. there is nothing within the limits of natural possibility that he dares not do, or that he allows the necessity of doing. the laws of nature he knows, are to him no restraint. they are his own nature. all other laws or limits he sets at utter defiance, his journey is over an untrodden and pathless plain. but he sees his end over the waste from the first, and goes straight at it, never losing sight of it, nor throwing away a step. nothing can stop him, nothing turn him aside; falcons and lynxes are of slow and uncertain sight compared with his. he saw his tree, trunk, boughs, foliage and all, from the first moment; not only the tree but the sky behind it; not only that tree or sky, but all the other great features of his picture: by what intense power of instantaneous selection and amalgamation cannot be explained, but by this it may be proved and tested, that if we examine the tree of the unimaginative painter, we shall find that on removing any part or parts of it, the rest will indeed suffer, as being deprived of the proper development of a tree, and as involving a blank space that wants occupation; but the portions left are not made discordant or disagreeable. they are absolutely and in themselves as valuable as they can be, every stem is a perfect stem, and every twig a graceful twig, or at least as perfect and as graceful as they were before the removal of the rest. but if we try the same experiment on the imaginative painter's work, and break off the merest stem or twig of it, it all goes to pieces like a prince rupert's drop. there is not so much as a seed of it but it lies on the tree's life, like the grain upon the tongue of chaucer's sainted child. take it away, and the boughs will sing to us no longer. all is dead and cold. § . the monotony of unimaginative treatment. this then is the first sign of the presence of real imagination as opposed to composition. but here is another not less important. § . imagination never repeats itself. we have seen that as each part is selected and fitted by the unimaginative painter, he renders it, in itself, as beautiful as he is able. if it be ugly, it remains so, he is incapable of correcting it by the addition of another ugliness, and therefore he chooses all his features as fair as they may be (at least if his object be beauty.) but a small proportion only of the ideas he has at his disposal will reach his standard of absolute beauty. the others will be of no use to him, and among those which he permits himself to use, there will be so marked a family likeness, that he will be more and more cramped, as his picture advances, for want of material, and tormented by multiplying resemblances, unless disguised by some artifice of light and shade or other forced difference, and with all the differences he can imagine, his tree will yet show a sameness and sickening repetition in all its parts, and all his trees will be like one another, except so far as one leans east and another west, one is broadest at the top and another at the bottom, while through all this insipid repetition, the means by which he forces contrast, dark boughs opposed to light, rugged to smooth, etc., will be painfully evident, to the utter destruction of all dignity and repose. the imaginative work is necessarily the absolute opposite of all this. as all its parts are imperfect, and as there is an unlimited supply of imperfection, (for the ways in which things may be wrong are infinite,) the imagination is never at a loss, nor ever likely to repeat itself; nothing comes amiss to it, but whatever rude matter it receives, it instantly so arranges that it comes right; all things fall into their place and appear in that place perfect, useful, and evidently not to be spared, so that of its combinations there is endless variety, and every intractable and seemingly unavailable fragment that we give to it, is instantly turned to some brilliant use, and made the nucleus of a new group of glory; however poor or common the gift, it will be thankful for it, treasure it up, and pay in gold, and it has that life in it and fire, that wherever it passes, among the dead bones and dust of things, behold a shaking, and the bones come together, bone to his bone. § . relation of the imaginative faculty to the theoretic. and now we find what noble sympathy and unity there is between the imaginative and theoretic faculties. both agree in this, that they reject nothing, and are thankful for all; but the theoretic faculty takes out of everything that which is beautiful, while the imaginative faculty takes hold of the very imperfections which the theoretic rejects, and by means of these angles and roughnesses, it joints and bolts the separate stones into a mighty temple, wherein the theoretic faculty in its turn, does deepest homage. thus sympathetic in their desires, harmoniously diverse in their operation, each working for the other with what the other needs not, all things external to man are by one or other turned to good. § . modification of its manifestation. now we have hitherto, for the sake of clearness, opposed the total absence of imagination to the perfect presence of it, in order to make the difference between composition and imagination thoroughly understood. but if we are to give examples of either the want or the presence of the power, it is necessary to note the circumstances by which both are modified. in the first place, few artists of any standing are totally devoid of this faculty, some small measure of it most of them possess, though of all the forms of intellect, this, and its sister, penetrative imagination, are the rarest and most precious; but few painters have reached eminence without some leaven of it, whether it can be increased by practice i doubt. on the other hand, fewer still are possessed of it in very high degree, and even with the men of most gigantic power in this respect, of whom, i think, tintoret stands far the head, there are evident limits to its exercise, and portions to be found in their works that have not been included in the original grasp of them, but have been suggested and incorporated during their progress, or added in decoration; and with the great mass of painters there are frequent flaws and failures in the conception, so that, when they intend to produce a perfect work they throw their thought into different experimental forms, and decorate it and discipline it long before realizing it, so that there is a certain amount of mere composition in the most imaginative works; and a grain or two of imagination commonly in the most artificial. and again, whatever portions of a picture are taken honestly and without alteration from nature, have, so far as they go, the look of imagination, because all that nature does is imaginative, that is, perfect as a whole, and made up of imperfect features; so that the painter of the meanest imaginative power may yet do grand things, if he will keep to strict portraiture, and it would be well if all artists were to endeavor to do so, for if they have imagination, it will force its way in spite of them, and show itself in their every stroke, and if not, they will not get it by leaving nature, but only sink into nothingness. § . instances of absence of imagination.--claude, gaspar poussin. keeping these points in view, it is interesting to observe the different degrees and relations of the imagination, as accompanied with more or less feeling or desire of harmony, vigor of conception, or constancy of reference to truth. of men of name, perhaps claude is the best instance of a want of imagination, nearly total, borne out by painful but untaught study of nature, and much feeling for abstract beauty of form, with none whatever for harmony of expression. in gaspar poussin, we have the same want of imagination disguised by more masculine qualities of mind, and grander reachings after sympathy. thus in the sacrifice of isaac in our own gallery, the spirit of the composition is solemn and unbroken; it would have been a grand picture if the forms of the mass of foliage on the right, and of the clouds in the centre, had not been hopelessly unimaginative. the stormy wind of the picture of dido and eneas blows loudly through its leaves, but the total want of invention in the cloud forms bears it down beyond redemption. the foreground tree of the la riccia (compare part ii. sec. vi. chap. i., § .) is another characteristic instance of absolute nullity of imagination. [illustration: the adoration of the magi. from a painting by ruskin, after tintoret.] § . its presence.--salvator, nicolo poussin, titian, tintoret. in salvator, the imagination is vigorous, the composition dextrous and clever, as in the st. jerome of the brera gallery, the diogenes of the pitti, and the pictures of the guadagni palace. all are rendered valueless by coarseness of feeling and habitual non-reference to nature. all the landscape of nicolo poussin is imaginative, but the development of the power in tintoret and titian is so unapproachably intense that the mind unwillingly rests elsewhere. the four landscapes which occur to me as the most magnificently characteristic are, first, the flight into egypt, of the scuola di san rocco (tintoret;) secondly, the titian of the camuccini collection at rome, with the figures by john bellini; thirdly, titian's st. jerome, in the brera gallery at milan; and fourthly, the st. pietro martire, which i name last, in spite of its importance, because there is something unmeaning and unworthy of titian about the undulation of the trunks, and the upper part of it is destroyed by the intrusion of some dramatic clouds of that species which i have enough described in our former examination of the central cloud region, § . i do not mean to set these four works above the rest of the landscape of these masters; i name them only because the landscape is in them prominent and characteristic. it would be well to compare with them the other backgrounds of tintoret in the scuola, especially that of the temptation and the agony in the garden, and the landscape of the two large pictures in the church of la madonna dell' orto. § . and turner. but for immediate and close illustration, it is perhaps best to refer to a work more accessible, the cephalus and procris of turner, in liber studiorum. i know of no landscape more purely or magnificently imaginative or bearing more distinct evidence of the relative and simultaneous conception of the parts. let the reader first cover with his hand the two trunks that rise against the sky on the right, and ask himself how any termination of the central mass so _ugly_ as the straight trunk which he will then painfully see, could have been conceived or admitted without simultaneous conception of the trunks he has taken away on the right? let him again conceal the whole central mass, and leave these two only, and again ask himself whether anything so ugly as that bare trunk in the shape of a y, could have been admitted without reference to the central mass? then let him remove from this trunk its two arms, and try the effect; let him again remove the single trunk on the extreme right; then let him try the third trunk without the excrescence at the bottom of it; finally, let him conceal the fourth trunk from the right, with the slender boughs at the top; he will find in each case that he has destroyed a feature on which everything else depends, and if proof be required of the vital power of still smaller features, let him remove the sunbeam that comes through beneath the faint mass of trees on the hill in the distance.[ ] it is useless to enter into farther particulars; the reader may be left to his own close examination of this and of the other works of turner, in which he will always find the associative imagination developed in the most profuse and marvellous modes, especially in the drawing of foliage and skies, in both of which the presence or absence of the associative power may best be tested in all artists. i have, however, confined my present illustrations chiefly to foliage, because other operations of the imagination besides the associative, interfere extensively in the treatment of sky. § . the due function of associative imagination with respect to nature. there remains but one question to be determined relating to this faculty, what operation, namely, supposing it possessed in high degree, it has or ought to have in the artist's treatment of natural scenery. i have just said that nature is always imaginative, but it does not follow that her imagination is always of high subject, or that the imagination of all the parts is of a like and sympathetic kind; the boughs of every bramble bush are imaginatively arranged, so are those of every oak and cedar; but it does not follow that there is imaginative sympathy between bramble and cedar. there are few natural scenes whose harmonies are not conceivably improvable either by banishment of some discordant point, or by addition of some sympathetic one; it constantly happens that there is a profuseness too great to be comprehended, or an inequality in the pitch, meaning, and intensity of different parts. the imagination will banish all that is extraneous, it will seize out of the many threads of different feeling which nature has suffered to become entangled, one only, and where that seems thin and likely to break, it will spin it stouter, and in doing this, it never knots, but weaves in the new thread, so that all its work looks as pure and true as nature itself, and cannot be guessed from it but by its exceeding simplicity, (_known_ from it, it cannot be,) so that herein we find another test of the imaginative work, that it looks always as if it had been gathered straight from nature, whereas the unimaginative shows its joints and knots, and is visibly composition. § . the sign of imaginative work is its appearance of absolute truth. and here then we arrive at an important conclusion (though one somewhat contrary to the positions commonly held on the subject,) namely, that if anything looks unnatural, there can be no imagination in it (at least not associative.) we frequently hear works that have no truth in them, justified or elevated on the score of being imaginative. let it be understood once for all, that imagination never designs to touch anything but truth, and though it does not follow that where there is the appearance of truth, there has been imaginative operation, of this we may be assured, that where there is appearance of falsehood, the imagination has had no hand.[ ] for instance, the landscape above mentioned of titian's st. jerome may, for aught i know, be a pure transcript of a rocky slope covered with chestnuts among his native mountains. it has all the look of a sketch from nature; if it be not, the imagination developed in it is of the highest order; if it be, the imagination has only acted in the suggestion of the dark sky, of the shape of the flakes of solemn cloud, and of the gleam of russet light along the distant ground.[ ] again, it is impossible to tell whether the two nearest trunks of the Æsacus and hesperie of the liber studiorum, especially the large one on the right with the ivy, have been invented, or taken straight from nature, they have all the look of accurate portraiture. i can hardly imagine anything so perfect to have been obtained except from the real thing; but we know that the imagination must have begun to operate somewhere, we cannot tell where, since the multitudinous harmonies of the rest of the picture could hardly in any real scene have continued so inviolately sweet. the final tests, therefore, of the work of associative imagination are its intense simplicity, its perfect harmony, and its absolute truth. it may be a harmony, majestic, or humble, abrupt, or prolonged, but it is always a governed and perfect whole, evidencing in all its relations the weight, prevalence, and universal dominion of an awful, inexplicable power; a chastising, animating, and disposing mind. footnotes [ ] compare chapter iv. of this section. [ ] on the distinction rightly made by the metaphysicians between conception absolute and conception accompanied by reference to past time, (or memory,) it is of no necessity here to insist. [ ] elements of chemistry, by the late edward turner, m.d. part ii. sec. iv. [ ] this ray of light, however, has an imaginative power of another kind presently to be spoken of. compare chap. iv. § . [ ] compare chap. iii. § . [ ] it is said at venice that titian took the trees of the st. pietro martiere out of his garden opposite murano. i think this unlikely; there is something about the lower trunks that has a taint of composition: the thought of the whole, however, is thoroughly fine. the backgrounds of the frescoes at padua are also very characteristic, and the well-known woodcut of st. francis receiving the stigmata, one of the mightiest of existing landscape thoughts; and yet it is pure portraiture of pine and spanish chestnut. chapter iii. of imagination penetrative. § . imagination penetrative is concerned not with the combining but apprehending of things. thus far we have been defining that combining operation of the imagination, which appears to be in a sort mechanical, yet takes place in the same inexplicable modes, whatever be the order of conception submitted to it, though i chose to illustrate it by its dealings with mere matter before taking cognizance of any nobler subjects of imagery. we must now examine the dealing of the imagination with its separate conceptions, and endeavor to understand not only its principles of selection, but its modes of apprehension with respect to what it selects. § . milton's and dante's description of flame. when milton's satan first "rears from off the pool, his mighty stature," the image of leviathan before suggested not being yet abandoned, the effect on the fire-wave is described as of the upheaved monster on the ocean stream. "on each hand the flames, driven backwards, slope their pointing spires, and rolled in billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale." and then follows a fiercely restless piece of volcanic imagery. "as when the force of subterranean wind transports a hill torn from pelorus, or the shattered side of thundering Ætna, whose combustible and fuell'd entrails thence conceiving fire, sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, and leave a singed bottom, all involved with stench and smoke; such resting found the sole of unblest feet." yet i think all this is too far detailed, and deals too much with externals; we feel rather the form of the fire-waves than their fury, we walk upon them too securely, and the fuel, sublimation, smoke, and singeing, seem to me images only of partial combustion; they vary and extend the conception, but they lower the thermometer. look back, if you will, and add to the description the glimmering of the livid flames; the sulphurous hail and red lightning; yet altogether, however they overwhelm us with horror, fail of making us thoroughly, unendurably hot. the intense essence of flame has not been given. now hear dante:-- "feriami 'l sole in su l'omero destro che già raggiando tutto l'occidente _mutava in bianco aspetto di eilestro. ed io_ facea _con l'ombra più rovente parer la flamma_." that is a slight touch; he has not gone to Ætna nor pelorus for fuel; but we shall not soon recover from it--he has taken our breath away and leaves us gasping. no smoke nor cinders there. pure, white, hurtling, formless flame; very fire crystal, we cannot make spires nor waves of it, nor divide it, nor walk on it, there is no question about singeing soles of feet. it is lambent annihilation. § . the imagination seizes always by the innermost point. such is always the mode in which the highest imaginative faculty seizes its materials. it never stops at crusts or ashes, or outward images of any kind, it ploughs them all aside, and plunges into the very central fiery heart, nothing else will content its spirituality, whatever semblances and various outward shows and phases its subject may possess, go for nothing, it gets within all fence, cuts down to the root, and drinks the very vital sap of that it deals with: once there it is at liberty to throw up what new shoots it will, so always that the true juice and sap be in them, and to prune and twist them at its pleasure, and bring them to fairer fruit than grew on the old tree; but all this pruning and twisting is work that it likes not, and often does ill; its function and gift are the getting at the root, its nature and dignity depend on its holding things always by the heart. take its hand from off the beating of that, and it will prophesy no longer; it looks not in the eyes, it judges not by the voice, it describes not by outward features, all that it affirms, judges, or describes, it affirms from within. § . it acts intuitively and without reasoning. it may seem to the reader that i am incorrect in calling this penetrating, possession-taking faculty, imagination. be it so, the name is of little consequence; the faculty itself, called by what name we will, i insist upon as the highest intellectual power of man. there is no reasoning in it, it works not by algebra, nor by integral calculus, it is a piercing, pholas-like mind's tongue that works and tastes into the very rock heart, no matter what be the subject submitted to it, substance or spirit, all is alike, divided asunder, joint and marrow, whatever utmost truth, life, principle, it has, laid bare, and that which has no truth, life, nor principle, dissipated into its original smoke at a touch. the whispers at men's ears it lifts into visible angels. vials that have lain sealed in the deep sea a thousand years it unseals, and brings out of them genii. every great conception of poet or painter is held and treated by this faculty. every character that is so much as touched by men like Æschylus, homer, dante, or shakspeare, is by them held by the heart; and every circumstance or sentence of their being, speaking, or seeming, is seized by process from within, and is referred to that inner secret spring of which the hold is never lost for an instant; so that every sentence, as it has been thought out from the heart, opens for us a way down to the heart, leads us to the centre, and then leaves us to gather what more we may; it is the open sesame of a huge, obscure, endless cave, with inexhaustible treasure of pure gold scattered in it: the wandering about and gathering the pieces may be left to any of us, all can accomplish that; but the first opening of that invisible door in the rock is of the imagination only. § . signs of it in language. hence there is in every word set down by the imaginative mind an awful under-current of meaning, and evidence and shadow upon it of the deep places out of which it has come. it is often obscure, often half told, for he who wrote it, in his clear seeing of the things beneath, may have been impatient of detailed interpretation, but if we choose to dwell upon it and trace it, it will lead us always securely back to that metropolis of the soul's dominion from which we may follow out all the ways and tracks to its farthest coasts. i think the "quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante" of francesca di rimini, and the "he has no children" of macduff are as fine instances as can be given, but the sign and mark of it are visible on every line of the four great men above instanced. § . absence of imagination, how shown. the imaginative writer, on the other hand, as he has never pierced to the heart, so he can never touch it: if he has to paint a passion, he remembers the external signs of it, he collects expressions of it from other writers, he searches for similes, he composes, exaggerates, heaps term on term, figure on figure, till we groan beneath the cold, disjointed heap; but it is all faggot and no fire, the life breath is not in it, his passion has the form of the leviathan, but it never makes the deep boil, he fastens us all at anchor in the scaly rind of it, our sympathies remain as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean. and that virtue of originality that men so strain after, is not newness, as they vainly think, (there is nothing new,) it is only genuineness; it all depends on this single glorious faculty of getting to the spring of things and working out from that; it is the coolness, and clearness, and deliciousness of the water fresh from the fountain head, opposed to the thick, hot, unrefreshing drainage from other men's meadows. § . distinction between imagination and fancy. this freshness, however, is not to be taken for an infallible sign of imagination, inasmuch as it results also from a vivid operation of fancy, whose parallel function to this division of the imaginative faculty it is here necessary to distinguish. i believe it will be found that the entirely unimaginative mind _sees_ nothing of the object it has to dwell upon or describe, and is therefore utterly unable, as it is blind itself, to set anything before the eyes of the reader.[ ] the fancy sees the outside, and is able to give a portrait of the outside, clear, brilliant, and full of detail.[ ] the imagination sees the heart and inner nature, and makes them felt, but is often obscure, mysterious, and interrupted, in its giving of outer detail. take an instance. a writer with neither imagination nor fancy, describing a fair lip, does not see it, but thinks about it, and about what is said of it, and calls it well-turned, or rosy, or delicate, or lovely, or afflicts us with some other quenching and chilling epithet. now hear fancy speak,-- "her lips were red, and one was thin, compared with that was next her chin, some bee had stung it newly."[ ] the real, red, bright being of the lip is there in a moment but it is all outside; no expression yet, no mind. let us go a step farther with warner, of fair rosamond struck by eleanor. "with that she dashed her on the lips so dyed double red; hard was the heart that gave the blow, soft were those lips that bled." the tenderness of mind begins to mingle with the outside color, the imagination is seen in its awakening. next shelley,-- "lamp of life, thy lips are burning through the veil that seems to hide them, as the radiant lines of morning through thin clouds, ere they divide them." there dawns the entire soul in that morning; yet we may stop if we choose at the image still external, at the crimson clouds. the imagination is contemplative rather than penetrative. last, hear hamlet,-- "here hung those lips that i have kissed, i know not how oft. where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar?" there is the essence of lip, and the full power of the imagination. again, compare milton's flowers in lycidas with perdita's. in milton it happens, i think, generally, and in the case before us most certainly, that the imagination is mixed and broken with fancy, and so the strength of the imagery is part of iron and part of clay. "bring the rathe primrose, that forsaken dies (imagination) the tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, (nugatory) the white pink, and the pansy freaked with jet,-- (fancy) the glowing violet, (imagination) the musk rose, and the well-attired woodbine, (fancy, vulgar) with cowslips wan, that hang the pensive head, (imagination) and every flower that sad embroidery wears." (mixed) then hear perdita:-- "o, proserpina, for the flowers now, that frighted thou let'st fall from dis's wagon. daffodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of march with beauty. violets, dim, but sweeter than the lids of juno's eyes or cytherea's breath; pale primroses that die unmarried, ere they can behold bright phoebus in his strength, a malady most incident to maids." observe how the imagination in these last lines goes into the very inmost soul of every flower, after having touched them all at first with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of proserpine's; and gilded them with celestial gathering, and never stops on their spots, or their bodily shape, while milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy freak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of paper-staining would have been the most precious to us of all. "there is pansies, that's for thoughts." § . fancy how involved with imagination. so i believe it will be found throughout the operation of the fancy, that it has to do with the outsides of things, and is content therewith: of this there can be no doubt in such passage as that description of mab, so often given as an illustration of it, and many other instances will be found in leigh hunt's work already referred to. only some embarrassment is caused by passages in which fancy is seizing the outward signs of emotion, understanding them as such, and yet, in pursuance of her proper function, taking for her share, and for that which she chooses to dwell upon, the outside sign rather than the emotion. note in macbeth that brilliant instance. "where the norweyan banners flout the sky and fan our people cold." the outward shiver and coldness of fear is seized on, and irregularly but admirably attributed by the fancy to the drift of the banners. compare solomon's song where the imagination stays not at the outside, but dwells on the fearful emotion itself? "who is she that looketh forth as the morning; fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?" § . fancy is never serious now, if this be the prevailing characteristic of the two faculties, it is evident that certain other collateral differences will result from it. fancy, as she stays at the externals, can never feel. she is one of the hardest hearted of the intellectual faculties, or rather one of the most purely and simply intellectual. she cannot be made serious,[ ] no edge-tools but she will play with; whereas the imagination is in all things the reverse. she cannot be but serious; she sees too far, too darkly, too solemnly, too earnestly, ever to smile. there is something in the heart of everything, if we can reach it, that we shall not be inclined to laugh at. the [greek: anêrithmon gelasma] of the sea is on its surface, not in the deep. § . want of seriousness the bar to high art at the present time. and thus there is reciprocal action between the intensity of moral feeling and the power of imagination; for, on the one hand, those who have keenest sympathy are those who look closest and pierce deepest, and hold securest; and, on the other, those who have so pierced and seen the melancholy deeps of things, are filled with the most intense passion and gentleness of sympathy. hence, i suppose that the powers of the imagination may always be tested by accompanying tenderness of emotion, and thus, (as byron said,) there is no tenderness like dante's, neither any intensity nor seriousness like his, such seriousness that it is incapable of perceiving that which is commonplace or ridiculous, but fuses all down into its white-hot fire; and, on the other hand, i suppose the chief bar to the action of imagination, and stop to all greatness in this present age of ours, is its mean and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any good and lofty work a flaw or failing, or undipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, and pointed at, and buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken seriously nor as it was meant, but always, if it may be, turned the wrong way, and misunderstood; and while this is so, there is not, nor cannot be any hope of achievement of high things; men dare not open their hearts to us, if we are to broil them on a thorn-fire. § . imagination is quiet; fancy, restless. this, then, is one essential difference between imagination and fancy, and another is like it and resultant from it, that the imagination being at the heart of things, poises herself there, and is still, quiet, and brooding; comprehending all around her with her fixed look, but the fancy staying at the outside of things, cannot see them all at once, but runs hither and thither, and round and about to see more and more, bounding merrily from point to point, and glittering here and there, but necessarily always settling, if she settle at all, on a point only, never embracing the whole. and from these single points she can strike out analogies and catch resemblances, which, so far as the point she looks at is concerned, are true, but would be false, if she could see through to the other side. this, however, she cares not to do, the point of contact is enough for her, and even if there be a gap left between the two things and they do not quite touch, she will spring from one to the other like an electric spark, and be seen brightest in her leaping. § . the detailing operation of fancy. now these differences between the imagination and the fancy hold, not only in the way they lay hold of separate conceptions, but even in the points they occupy of time, for the fancy loves to run hither and thither in time, and to follow long chains of circumstances from link to link; but the imagination, if it may, gets holds of a moment or link in the middle that implies all the rest, and fastens there. hence fuseli's aphorism, "invention never suffers the action to expire, nor the spectator's fancy to consume itself in preparation, or stagnate into repose. it neither begins from the egg, nor coldly gathers the remains." in retsch's illustrations to schiller's kampf mit dem drachen, we have an instance, miserably feeble indeed, but characteristic, and suited to our present purpose, of the detailing, finishing action of the fancy. the dragon is drawn from head to tail, vulture eyes, serpent teeth, forked tongue, fiery crest, armor, claws and coils as grisly as may be; his den is drawn, and all the dead bones in it, and all the savage forest-country about it far and wide; we have him from the beginning of his career to the end, devouring, rampant, victorious over whole armies, gorged with death; we are present at all the preparations for his attack, see him receive his death-wound, and our anxieties are finally becalmed by seeing him lie peaceably dead on his back. § . and suggestive, of the imagination. all the time we have never got into the dragon heart, we have never once felt real pervading horror, nor sense of the creature's being; it is throughout nothing but an ugly composition of claw and scale. now take up turner's jason, liber studiorum, and observe how the imagination can concentrate all this, and infinitely more, into one moment. no far forest country, no secret paths, nor cloven hills, nothing but a gleam of pale horizontal sky, that broods over pleasant places far away, and sends in, through the wild overgrowth of the thicket, a ray of broken daylight into the hopeless pit. no flaunting plumes nor brandished lances, but stern purpose in the turn of the crestless helmet, visible victory in the drawing back of the prepared right arm behind the steady point. no more claws, nor teeth, nor manes, nor stinging tails. we have the dragon, like everything else, by the middle. we need see no more of him. all his horror is in that fearful, slow, grinding upheaval of the single coil. spark after spark of it, ring after ring, is sliding into the light, the slow glitter steals along him step by step, broader and broader, a lighting of funeral lamps one by one, quicker and quicker; a moment more, and he is out upon us, all crash and blaze among those broken trunks;--but he will be nothing then to what he is now. § . this suggestiveness how opposed to vacancy. now, it is necessary here very carefully to distinguish between that character of the work which depends on the imagination of the beholder, and that which results from the imagination of the artist, for a work is often called imaginative when it merely leaves room for the action of the imagination; whereas though nearly all imaginative works do this, yet it may be done also by works that have in them no imagination at all. a few shapeless scratches or accidental stains on a wall; or the forms of clouds, or any other complicated accidents, will set the imagination to work to coin something out of them, and all paintings in which there is much gloom or mystery, possess therein a certain sublimity owing to the play given to the beholder's imagination, without, necessarily, being in the slightest degree imaginative themselves. the vacancy of a truly imaginative work results not from absence of ideas, or incapability of grasping and detailing them, but from the painter having told the whole pith and power of his subject and disdaining to tell more, and the sign of this being the case is, that the imagination of the beholder is forced to act in a certain mode, and feels itself overpowered and borne away by that of the painter, and not able to defend itself, nor go which way it will, and the value of the work depends on the truth, authority, and inevitability of this suggestiveness, and on the absolute right choice of the critical moment. now observe in this work of turner's, that the whole value of it depends on the character of curve assumed by the serpent's body; for had it been a mere semicircle, or gone down in a series of smaller coils, it would have been in the first case, ridiculous, as false and unlike a serpent, and in the second, disgusting, nothing more than an exaggerated viper, but it is that _coming straight_ at the right hand which suggests the drawing forth of an enormous weight, and gives the bent part its springing look, that frightens us. again, remove the light trunk[ ] on the left, and observe how useless all the gloom of the picture would have been, if this trunk had not given it depth and _hollowness_. finally and chiefly, observe that the painter is not satisfied even with all the suggestiveness thus obtained, but to make sure of us, and force us, whether we will or no, to walk his way, and not ours, the trunks of the trees on the right are all cloven into yawning and writhing heads and bodies, and alive with dragon energy all about us, note especially the nearest with its gaping jaws and claw-like branch at the seeming shoulder; a kind of suggestion which in itself is not imaginative, but merely fanciful, (using the term fancy in that third sense not yet explained, corresponding to the third office of imagination;) but it is imaginative in its present use and application, for the painter addresses thereby that morbid and fearful condition of mind which he has endeavored to excite in the spectator, and which in reality would have seen in every trunk and bough, as it penetrated into the deeper thicket, the object of its terror. § . imagination addresses itself to imagination. instances from the works of tintoret. it is nevertheless evident, that however suggestive the work or picture may be, it cannot have effect unless we are ourselves both watchful of its very hint, and capable of understanding and carrying it out, and although i think that this power of continuing or accepting the direction of feeling given is less a peculiar gift, like that of the original seizing, than a faculty dependent on attention, and improvable by cultivation; yet, to a certain extent, the imaginative work will not, i think, be rightly esteemed except by a mind of some corresponding power; not but that there is an intense enjoyment in minds of feeble yet light conception in the help and food they get from those of stronger thought; but a certain imaginative susceptibility is at any rate necessary, and above all things, earnestness and feeling, so that assuredly a work of high conceptive dignity will be always incomprehensible and valueless except in those who go to it in earnest and give it time; and this is peculiarly the case when the imagination acts not merely on the immediate subject, nor in giving a fanciful and peculiar character to prominent objects, as we have just seen, but busies itself throughout in expressing occult and far-sought sympathies in every minor detail, of which action the most sublime instances are found in the works of tintoret, whose intensity of imagination is such that there is not the commonest subject to which he will not attach a range of suggestiveness almost limitless, nor a stone, leaf, or shadow, nor anything so small, but he will give it meaning and oracular voice. § . the entombment. in the centre of the gallery at parma, there is a canvas of tintoret's, whose sublimity of conception and grandeur of color are seen in the highest perfection, by their opposition to the morbid and vulgar sentimentalism of correggio. it is an entombment of christ, with a landscape distance, of whose technical composition and details i shall have much to say hereafter, at present i speak only of the thought it is intended to convey. an ordinary or unimaginative painter would have made prominent, among his objects of landscape, such as might naturally be supposed to have been visible from the sepulchre, and shown with the crosses of calvary, some portion of jerusalem, or of the valley of jehoshaphat. but tintoret has a far higher aim. dwelling on the peculiar force of the event before him, as the fulfilment of the final prophecy respecting the passion, "he made his grave with the wicked and with the _rich_ in his death," he desires to direct the mind of the spectator to this receiving of the body of christ, in its contrast with the houseless birth and the desert life. and, therefore, behind the ghastly tomb-grass that shakes its black and withered blades above the rocks of the sepulchre, there is seen, not the actual material distance of the spot itself, (though the crosses are shown faintly,) but that to which the thoughtful spirit would return in vision, a desert place, where the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, and against the barred twilight of the melancholy sky are seen the mouldering beams and shattered roofing of a ruined cattle-shed, the canopy of the nativity. § . the annunciation. let us take another instance. no subject has been more frequently or exquisitely treated by the religious painters than that of the annunciation, though as usual, the most perfect type of its pure ideal has been given by angelico, and by him with the most radiant consummation (so far as i know) in a small reliquary in the sacristy of st^a. maria novella. the background there, however, is altogether decorative; but in the fresco of the corridor of st. mark's, the concomitant circumstances are of exceeding loveliness. the virgin sits in an open loggia, resembling that of the florentine church of l'annunziata. before her is a meadow of rich herbage, covered with daisies. behind her is seen through the door at the end of the loggia, her chamber with its single grated window, through which a star-like beam of light falls into the silence. all is exquisite in feeling, but not inventive nor imaginative. severe would be the shock and painful the contrast, if we could pass in an instant from that pure vision to the wild thought of tintoret. for not in meek reception of the adoring messenger, but startled by the rush of his horizontal and rattling wings, the virgin sits, not in the quiet loggia, not by the green pasture of the restored soul, but houseless, under the shelter of a palace vestibule ruined and abandoned, with the noise of the axe and the hammer in her ears, and the tumult of a city round about her desolation. the spectator turns away at first, revolted, from the central object of the picture, forced painfully and coarsely forward, a mass of shattered brickwork, with the plaster mildewed away from it, and the mortar mouldering from its seams; and if he look again, either at this or at the carpenter's tools beneath it, will perhaps see in the one and the other, nothing more than such a study of scene as tintoret could but too easily obtain among the ruins of his own venice, chosen to give a coarse explanation of the calling and the condition of the husband of mary. but there is more meant than this. when he looks at the composition of the picture, he will find the whole symmetry of it depending on a narrow line of light, the edge of a carpenter's square, which connects these unused tools with an object at the top of the brickwork, a white stone, four square, the corner-stone of the old edifice, the base of its supporting column. this, i think, sufficiently explains the typical character of the whole. the ruined house is the jewish dispensation, that obscurely arising in the dawning of the sky is the christian; but the corner-stone of the old building remains, though the builder's tools lie idle beside it, and the stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the corner. § . the baptism of christ. its treatment by various painters. in this picture, however, the force of the thought hardly atones for the painfulness of the scene and the turbulence of its feeling. the power of the master is more strikingly shown in his treatment of a subject which, however important, and however deep in its meaning, supplies not to the ordinary painter material enough ever to form a picture of high interest; the baptism of christ. from the purity of giotto to the intolerable, inconceivable brutality of salvator,[ ] every order of feeling has been displayed in its treatment; but i am aware of no single case, except this of which i am about to speak, in which it has formed an impressive picture. giotto's, in the academy of florence, engraved in the series just published, (galleria delle belle arti,) is one of the most touching i know, especially in the reverent action of the attendant angels, and leonardo's angel in that of andrea del verrocchio is very beautiful, but the event is one whose character and importance are ineffable upon the features: the descending dove hardly affects us, because its constant symbolical occurrence hardens us, and makes us look on it as a mere type or letter, instead of the actual presence of the spirit; and by all the sacred painters the power that might be put into the landscape is lost, for though their use of foliage and distant sky or mountain is usually very admirable, as we shall see in the fifth chapter, yet they cannot deal with near water or rock, and the hexagonal and basaltic protuberances of their river shore are i think too painful to be endured even by the most acceptant mind, as eminently in that of angelico, in the vita di christo, which, as far as i can judge, is a total failure in action, expression, and all else; and in general it is in this subject especially, that the greatest painters show their weakness. for this reason, i suppose, and feeling the difficulty of it, tintoret has thrown into it his utmost strength, and it becomes noble in his hands by his most singularly imaginative expression, not only of the immediate fact, but of the whole train of thought of which it is suggestive; and by his considering the baptism not only as the submission of christ to the fulfilment of all righteousness, but as the opening of the earthly struggle with the prince of the powers of the air, which instantly beginning in the temptation, ended only on the cross. § . by tintoret. the river flows fiercely under the shadow of a great rock. from its opposite shore, thickets of close, gloomy foliage rise against the rolling chasm of heaven, through which breaks the brightness of the descending spirit. across these, dividing them asunder, is stretched a horizontal floor of flaky cloud, on which stand the hosts of heaven. christ kneels upon the water, and does not sink; the figure of st. john is indistinct, but close beside his raised right arm there is a spectre in the black shade; the fiend, harpy-shaped, hardly seen, glares down upon christ with eyes of fire, waiting his time. beneath this figure there comes out of the mist a dark hand, the arm unseen, extended to a net in the river, the spars of which are in the shape of a cross. behinds this the roots and under stems of the trees are cut away by the cloud, and beneath it, and through them, is seen a vision of wild, melancholy, boundless light, the sweep of the desert, and the figure of christ is seen therein alone, with his arms lifted as in supplication or ecstacy, borne of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. there are many circumstances which combine to give to this noble work a more than usually imaginative character. the symbolical use of the net, which is the cross net still used constantly in the canals of venice, and common throughout italy, is of the same character as that of the carpenter's tools in the annunciation; but the introduction of the spectral figure is of bolder reach, and yet more, that vision of the after temptation which is expressly indicated as a subject of thought rather than of sight, because it is in a part of the scene, which in _fact_ must have been occupied by the trunks of the trees whose tops are seen above; and another circumstance completes the mystic character of the whole, that the flaky clouds which support the angelic hosts take on the right, where the light first falls upon them, the shape of the head of a fish, the well-known type both of the baptismal sacrament, and of christ. § . the crucifixion. but the most exquisite instance of this imaginative power occurs in an incident in the background of the crucifixion. i will not insult this marvellous picture by an effort at a verbal account of it. i would not whitewash it with praise, and i refer to it only for the sake of two thoughts peculiarly illustrative of the intellectual faculty immediately under discussion. in the common and most catholic treatment of the subject, the mind is either painfully directed to the bodily agony, coarsely expressed by outward anatomical signs, or else it is permitted to rest on that countenance inconceivable by man at any time, but chiefly so in this its consummated humiliation. in the first case, the representation is revolting; in the second, inefficient, false, and sometimes blasphemous. none even of the greatest religious painters have ever, so far as i know, succeeded here; giotto and angelico were cramped by the traditional treatment, and the latter especially, as before observed, is but too apt to indulge in those points of vitiated feeling which attained their worst development among the byzantines: perugino fails in his christ in almost every instance (of other men than these after them we need not speak.) but tintoret here, as in all other cases, penetrating into the root and deep places of his subject, despising all outward and bodily appearances of pain, and seeking for some means of expressing, not the rack of nerve or sinew, but the fainting of the deserted son of god before his eloi cry, and yet feeling himself utterly unequal to the expression of this by the countenance, has on the one hand filled his picture with such various and impetuous muscular exertion that the body of the crucified is, by comparison, in perfect repose, and on the other has cast the countenance altogether into shade. but the agony is told by this, and by this only, that though there yet remains a chasm of light on the mountain horizon where the earthquake darkness closes upon the day, the broad and sunlike glory about the head of the redeemer has become wan, and of the color of ashes.[ ] but the great painter felt he had something more to do yet. not only that agony of the crucified, but the tumult of the people, that rage which invoked his blood upon them and their children. not only the brutality of the soldier, the apathy of the centurion, nor any other merely instrumental cause of the divine suffering, but the fury of his own people, the noise against him of those for whom he died, were to be set before the eye of the understanding, if the power of the picture was to be complete. this rage, be it remembered, was one of disappointed pride; and the disappointment dated essentially from the time, when but five days before, the king of zion came, and was received with hosannahs, riding upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an ass. to this time, then, it was necessary to direct the thoughts, for therein are found both the cause and the character, the excitement of, and the witness against, this madness of the people. in the shadow behind the cross, a man, riding on an ass colt, looks back to the multitude, while he points with a rod to the christ crucified. the ass is feeding on the _remnants_ of _withered palm-leaves_. with this master-stroke i believe i may terminate all illustration of the peculiar power of the imagination over the feelings of the spectator, by the elevation into dignity and meaning of the smallest accessory circumstances. but i have not yet sufficiently dwelt on the fact from which this power arises, the absolute truth of statement of the central fact as it was, or must have been. without this truth, this awful first moving principle, all direction of the feelings is useless. that which we cannot excite, it is of no use to know how to govern. § . the massacre of innocents. i have before alluded, sect. i. chap. xiv., to the painfulness of raffaelle's treatment of the massacre of the innocents. fuseli affirms of it that, "in dramatic gradation he disclosed all the mother through every image of pity and of terror." if this be so, i think the philosophical spirit has prevailed over the imaginative. the imagination never errs, it sees all that is, and all the relations and bearings of it, but it would not have confused the mortal frenzy of maternal terror with various development of maternal character. fear, rage, and agony, at their utmost pitch, sweep away all character: humanity itself would be lost in maternity, the woman would become the mere personification of animal fury or fear. for this reason all the ordinary representations of this subject are, i think, false and cold: the artist has not heard the shrieks, nor mingled with the fugitives, he has sat down in his study to twist features methodically, and philosophize over insanity. not so tintoret. knowing or feeling, that the expression of the human face was in such circumstances not to be rendered, and that the effort could only end in an ugly falsehood, he denies himself all aid from the features, he feels that if he is to place himself or us in the midst of that maddened multitude, there can be no time allowed for watching expression. still less does he depend on details of murder or ghastliness of death; there is no blood, no stabbing or cutting, but there is an awful substitute for these in the chiaroscuro. the scene is the outer vestibule of a palace, the slippery marble floor is fearfully barred across by sanguine shadows, so that our eyes seem to become bloodshot and strained with strange horror and deadly vision; a lake of life before them, like the burning seen of the doomed moabite on the water that came by the way of edom; a huge flight of stairs, without parapet, descends on the left; down this rush a crowd of women mixed with the murderers; the child in the arms of one has been seized by the limbs, she hurls herself over the edge, and falls head downmost, dragging the child out of the grasp by her weight;--she will be dashed dead in a second: two others are farther in flight, they reach the edge of a deep river,--the water is beat into a hollow by the force of their plunge;--close to us is the great struggle, a heap of the mothers entangled in one mortal writhe with each other and the swords, one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a woman's naked hand; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child just torn away from a death grasp and clasped to her breast with the grip of a steel vice, falls backwards helplessly over the heap, right on the sword points; all knit together and hurled down in one hopeless, frenzied, furious abandonment of body and soul in the effort to save. their shrieks ring in our ears till the marble seems rending around us, but far back, at the bottom of the stairs, there is something in the shadow like a heap of clothes. it is a woman, sitting quiet,--quite quiet--still as any stone, she looks down steadfastly on her dead child, laid along on the floor before her, and her hand is pressed softly upon her brow. § . various works in the scuola di san rocco. § . the last judgment. how treated by various painters. this, to my mind, is the only imaginative; that is, the only true, real, heartfelt representation of the being and actuality of the subject in existence.[ ] i should exhaust the patience of the reader if i were to dwell at length on the various stupendous developments of the imagination of tintoret in the scuola di san rocco alone. i would fain join a while in that solemn pause of the journey into egypt, where the silver boughs of the shadowy trees lace with their tremulous lines the alternate folds of fair clouds, flushed by faint crimson light, and lie across the streams of blue between those rosy islands, like the white wakes of wandering ships; or watch beside the sleep of the disciples among those massy leaves that lie so heavily on the dead of the night beneath the descent of the angel of the agony, and toss fearfully above the motion of the torches as the troop of the betrayer emerges out of the hollows of the olives; or wait through the hour of accusing beside the judgment seat of pilate, where all is unseen, unfelt, except the one figure that stands with its head bowed down, pale like a pillar of moonlight, half bathed in the glory of the godhead, half wrapt in the whiteness of the shroud. of these and all the other thoughts of indescribable power that are now fading from the walls of those neglected chambers, i may perhaps endeavor at some future time to preserve some image and shadow more faithfully than by words; but i shall at present terminate our series of illustrations by reference to a work of less touching, but more tremendous appeal, the last judgment in the church of santa maria dell' orto. in this subject, almost all realizing or local statement had been carefully avoided by the most powerful painters, they judging it better to represent its chief circumstances as generic thoughts, and present them to the mind in a typical or abstract form. in the judgment of angelico the treatment is purely typical, a long campo santo, composed of two lines of graves, stretches away into the distance; on the left side of it rise the condemned; on the right the just. with giotto and orcagna, the conception, though less rigid, is equally typical, no effort being made at the suggestion of space, and only so much ground represented as is absolutely necessary to support the near figures and allow space for a few graves. michael angelo in no respect differs in his treatment, except that his figures are less symmetrically grouped, and a greater conception of space is given by their various perspective. no interest is attached to his background in itself. fra bartolomeo, never able to grapple with any species of sublimity except that of simple religious feeling, fails most signally in this mighty theme.[ ] his group of the dead, including not more than ten or twelve figures, occupies the foreground only, behind them a vacant plain extends to the foot of a cindery volcano, about whose mouth several little black devils like spiders are skipping and crawling. the judgment of quick and dead is thus expressed as taking place in about a rood square, and on a dozen of people at a time; the whole of the space and horizon of the sky and land being left vacant, and the presence of the judge of all the earth made more finite than the sweep of a whirlwind or a thunder-storm. § . by tintoret. by tintoret only has this unimaginable event been grappled with in its verity; not typically nor symbolically, but as they may see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. only one traditional circumstance he has received with dante and michael angelo, the boat of the condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the adoption of this image, he has not stopped at the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at the sweeping blow and demon dragging of the other, but, seized hylas-like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish lethe, nor the fiery lake that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract, the river of the wrath of god, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water-wheels. bat like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of the earth, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to siloam pool; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the clangor of the trumpets of the armies of god, blinded yet more, as they awake, by the white light of the new heaven, until the great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment seat: the firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that drifts, and floats, and falls in the interminable, inevitable light; the bright clouds are darkened with them as with thick snow, currents of atom life in the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, farther, and higher, and higher still, till the eye and the thought can follow no farther, borne up, wingless, by their inward faith and by the angel powers invisible, now hurled in countless drifts of horror before the breath of their condemnation. § . the imaginative verity, how distinguished from realism. now, i wish the reader particularly to observe throughout all these works of tintoret, the distinction of the imaginative verity from falsehood on the one hand, and from realism on the other. the power of every picture depends on the penetration of the imagination into the true nature of the thing represented, and on the utter scorn of the imagination for all shackles and fetters of mere external fact that stand in the way of its suggestiveness. in the baptism it cuts away the trunks of trees as if they were so much cloud or vapor, that it may exhibit to the thought the completed sequency of the scene;[ ] in the massacre, it covers the marble floor with visionary light, that it may strike terror into the spectator without condescending to butchery; it defies the bare fact, but creates in him the fearful feeling; in the crucifixion it annihilates locality, and brings the palm-leaves to calvary, so only that it may bear the mind to the mount of olives, as in the entombment it brings the manger to jerusalem, that it may take the heart to bethlehem; and all this it does in the daring consciousness of its higher and spiritual verity, and in the entire knowledge of the fact and substance of all that it touches. the imaginary boat of the demon angel expands the rush of the visible river into the descent of irresistible condemnation; but to make that rush and roar felt by the eye and heard by the ear, the rending of the pine branches above the cataract is taken directly from nature; it is an abstract of alpine storm. hence while we are always placed face to face with whatever is to be told, there is in and beyond its reality a voice supernatural; and that which is doubtful in the vision has strength, sinew, and assuredness, built up in it by fact. § . the imagination how manifested in sculpture. let us, however, still advance one step farther, and observe the imaginative power deprived of all aid from chiaroscuro, color, or any other means of concealing the frame-work of its thoughts. it was said by michael angelo that "non ha l'ottimo scultore alcun concetto, ch'un marmo solo in se non circoscriva," a sentence which, though in the immediate sense intended by the writer it may remind us a little of the indignation of boileau's pluto, "il s'ensuit de la que tout ce qui se peut dire de beau, est dans les dictionnaires,--il n'y a que les paroles qui sont transposées," yet is valuable, because it shows us that michael angelo held the imagination to be entirely expressible in rock, and therefore altogether independent, in its own nature, of those aids of color and shade by which it is recommended in tintoret, though the sphere of its operation is of course by these incalculably extended. but the presence of the imagination may be rendered in marble as deep, thrilling, and awful as in painting, so that the sculptor seek for the soul and govern the body thereby. § . bandinelli, canova, mino da fiesole. § . michael angelo. of unimaginative work, bandinelli and canova supply us with characteristic instances of every kind, the hercules and cacus of the former, and its criticism by cellini, will occur at once to every one; the disgusting statue now placed so as to conceal giotto's important tempera picture in santa croce is a better instance, but a still more impressive lesson might be received by comparing the inanity of canova's garland grace, and ball-room sentiment with the intense truth, tenderness, and power of men like mino da fiesole, whose chisel leaves many a hard edge, and despises down and dimple, but it seems to cut light and carve breath, the marble burns beneath it, and becomes transparent with very spirit. yet mino stopped at the human nature; he saw the soul, but not the ghostly presences about it; it was reserved for michael angelo to pierce deeper yet, and to see the indwelling angels. no man's soul is alone: laocoon or tobit, the serpent has it by the heart or the angel by the hand, the light or the fear of the spiritual things that move beside it may be seen on the body; and that bodily form with buonaroti, white, solid, distinct material, though it be, is invariably felt as the instrument or the habitation of some infinite, invisible power. the earth of the sistine adam that begins to burn; the woman embodied burst of adoration from his sleep; the twelve great torrents of the spirit of god that pause above us there, urned in their vessels of clay; the waiting in the shadow of futurity of those through whom the promise and presence of god went down from the eve to the mary, each still and fixed, fixed in his expectation, silent, foreseeing, faithful, seated each on his stony throne, the building stones of the word of god, building on and on, tier by tier, to the refused one, the head of the corner; not only these, not only the troops of terror torn up from the earth by the four quartered winds of the judgment, but every fragment and atom of stone that he ever touched became instantly inhabited by what makes the hair stand up and the words be few; the st. matthew, not yet disengaged from his sepulchre, bound hand and foot by his grave clothes, it is left for us to loose him; the strange spectral wreath of the florence pieta, casting its pyramidal, distorted shadow, full of pain and death, among the faint purple lights that cross and perish under the obscure dome of st^a. maria del fiore, the white lassitude of joyous limbs, panther like, yet passive, fainting with their own delight, that gleam among the pagan formalisms of the uffizii, far away, showing themselves in their lustrous lightness as the waves of an alpine torrent do by their dancing among the dead stones, though the stones be as white as they:[ ] and finally, and perhaps more than all, those four ineffable types, not of darkness nor of day--not of morning nor evening, but of the departure and the resurrection, the twilight and the dawn of the souls of men--together with the spectre sitting in the shadow of the niche above them;[ ] all these, and all else that i could name of his forming, have borne, and in themselves retain and exercise the same inexplicable power--inexplicable because proceeding from an imaginative perception almost superhuman, which goes whither we cannot follow, and is where we cannot come; throwing naked the final, deepest root of the being of man, whereby he grows out of the invisible, and holds on his god home.[ ] § . recapitulation. the perfect function of the imagination is the intuitive perception of ultimate truth. now, in all these instances, let it be observed, for it is to that end alone that i have been arguing all along, that the virtue of the imagination is its reaching, by intuition and intensity of gaze, (not by reasoning, but by its authoritative opening and revealing power,) a more essential truth than is seen at the surface of things. i repeat that it matters not whether the reader is willing call this faculty imagination or no, i do not care about the name; but i would be understood when i speak of imagination hereafter, to mean this, the true foundation of all art which exercises eternal authority over men's minds; (all other imagination than this is either secondary and contemplative, or utterly spurious;) the base of whose authority and being is its perpetual thirst of truth and purpose to be true. it has no food, no delight, no care, no perception, except of truth; it is forever looking under masks, and burning up mists; no fairness of form, no majesty of seeming will satisfy it; the first condition of its existence is incapability of being deceived; and though it sometimes dwells upon and substantiates the fictions of fancy, yet its own operation is to trace to their farthest limit the true laws and likelihoods even of the fictitious creation. this has been well explained by fuseli, in his allusion to the centaur of zeuxis; and there is not perhaps a greater exertion of imaginative power than may be manifested in following out to their farthest limits the necessary consequences of such arbitrary combination; but let not the jests of the fancy be confounded with that after serious work of the imagination which gives them all the nervous verity and substance of which they are capable. let not the monsters of chinese earthenware be confounded with the faun, satyr, or centaur. § . imagination now vulgarly understood. how different this definition of the imagination may be from the idea of it commonly entertained among us, i can hardly say, because i have a very indistinct idea of what is usually meant by the term. i hear modern works constantly praised as being imaginative, in which i can trace no virtue of any kind; but simple, slavish, unpalliated falsehood and exaggeration; i see not what merit there can be in pure, ugly, resolute fiction; it is surely easy enough to be wrong; there are many ways of being unlike nature. i understand not what virtue that is which entitles one of these ways to be called imaginative, rather than another; and i am still farther embarrassed by hearing the portions of those works called especially imaginative in which there is the most effort at minute and mechanical statement of contemptible details, and in which the artist would have been as actual and absolute in imitation as an echo, if he had known how. against convictions which i do not understand, i cannot argue; but i may warn the artist that imagination of this strange kind, is not capable of bearing the time test; nothing of its doing ever has continued its influence over men; and if he desires to take place among the great men of older time, there is but one way for it; and one kind of imagination that will stand the immortal light: i know not how far it is by effort cultivable; but we have evidence enough before us to show in what direction that effort must be made. § . how its cultivation is dependent on the moral feelings. we have seen (§ ) that the imagination is in no small degree dependent on acuteness of moral emotion; in fact, all moral truth can only thus be apprehended--and it is observable, generally, that all true and deep emotion is imaginative, both in conception and expression; and that the mental sight becomes sharper with every full beat of the heart; and, therefore, all egotism, and selfish care, or regard, are in proportion to their constancy, destructive of imagination; whose play and power depend altogether on our being able to forget ourselves and enter like possessing spirits into the bodies of things about us. § . on independence of mind. again, as the life of imagination is in the discovering of truth, it is clear it can have no respect for sayings or opinions: knowing in itself when it has invented truly--restless and tormented except when it has this knowledge, its sense of success or failure is too acute to be affected by praise or blame. sympathy it desires--but can do without; of opinions it is regardless, not in pride, but because it has no vanity, and is conscious of a rule of action and object of aim in which it cannot be mistaken; partly, also, in pure energy of desire and longing to do and to invent more and more, which suffer it not to suck the sweetness of praise--unless a little, with the end of the rod in its hand, and without pausing in its march. it goes straight forward up the hill; no voices nor mutterings can turn it back, nor petrify it from its purpose.[ ] § . and on habitual reference to nature. finally, it is evident, that like the theoretic faculty, the imagination must be fed constantly by external nature--after the illustrations we have given, this may seem mere truism, for it is clear that to the exercise of the penetrative faculty a subject of penetration is necessary; but i note it because many painters of powerful mind have been lost to the world by their suffering the restless writhing of their imagination in its cage to take place of its healthy and exulting activity in the fields of nature. the most imaginative men always study the hardest, and are the most thirsty for new knowledge. fancy plays like a squirrel in its circular prison, and is happy; but imagination is a pilgrim on the earth--and her home is in heaven. shut her from the fields of the celestial mountains--bar her from breathing their lofty, sun-warmed air; and we may as well turn upon her the last bolt of the tower of famine, and give the keys to the keeping of the wildest surge that washes capraja and gorgona. footnotes [ ] compare arist. rhet. iii. . [ ] for the distinction between fancy and simple conception; see chap. iv. § . [ ] i take this and the next instance from leigh hunt's admirable piece of criticism, "imagination and fancy," which ought to be read with care, and to which, though somewhat loosely arranged, i may refer for all the filling up and illustration that the subject requires. with respect to what has just been said respecting want of imagination, compare his criticism of addison's cato, p. . i cannot, however, confirm his judgment, nor admit his selection of instances, among painters: he has looked to their manner only and habitual choice of subject, without feeling their power; and has given work to the coarseness, mindlessness, and eclecticism of guido and the carracci, which in its poetical demand of tenderness might have foiled pinturicchio; of dignity, leonardo; and of color, giorgione. [ ] fancy, in her third function may, however, become serious, and gradually rise into imagination in doing so. compare chap. iv. § . [ ] i am describing from a proof: in bad impressions this trunk is darkened. [ ] the picture is in the guadagni palace. it is one of the most important landscapes salvator ever painted. the figures are studied from street beggars. on the one side of the river, exactly opposite the point where the baptism of christ takes place, the painter, with a refinement of feeling peculiarly his own, has introduced some ruffians stripping off their shirts to bathe. he is fond of this incident. it occurs again in one of the marines of the pitti palace, with the additional interest of a foreshortened figure, swimming on its back, feet foremost, exactly in the stream of light to which the eye is principally directed. [ ] this circumstance, like most that lie not at the surface, has escaped fuseli, though his remarks on the general tone of the picture are very good, as well as his opposition of it to the treatment of rubens. (lecture ix.) [ ] note the shallow and uncomprehending notice of this picture by fuseli. his description of the treatment of it by other painters is however true, terse, and valuable. [ ] fresco in an out-house of the ospedale st^a. maria nuova at florence. [ ] the same thing is done yet more boldly in the large composition of the ceiling; the plague of fiery serpents; a part of the host, and another sky horizon are seen through an opening in the ground. [ ] the bacchus. there is a small statue opposite it also--unfinished, but "a spirit still." [ ] i would have insisted more on the ghostly vitality of this dreadful statue; but the passage referring to it in rogers's italy supersedes all further description. i suppose most lovers of art know it by heart. "nor then forget that chamber of the dead, where the gigantic shapes of night and day, turned into stone, rest everlastingly; yet still are breathing, and shed round at noon a twofold influence,--only to be felt-- a light, a darkness, mingling each with each; both, and yet neither. there, from age to age, two ghosts are sitting on their sepulchres. that is the duke lorenzo. mark him well. he meditates, his head upon his hand. what from beneath his helm-like bonnet scowls? is it a face, or but an eyeless skull? 'tis lost in shade; yet, like the basilisk, it fascinates, and is intolerable. his mien is noble, most majestical! then most so, when the distant choir is heard at morn or eve--nor fail thou to attend on that thrice-hallowed day, when all are there; when all, propitiating with solemn songs, visit the dead. then wilt thou feel his power!" it is strange that this should be the only written instance (as far as i recollect) of just and entire appreciation of michael angelo's spiritual power. it is perhaps owing to the very intensity of his imagination that he has been so little understood--for, as i before said, imagination can never be met by vanity, nor without earnestness. his florentine followers saw in him an anatomist and posture-master--and art was finally destroyed by the influence over admiring idiocy of the greatest mind that art ever inspired. [ ] i have not chosen to interrupt the argument respecting the essence of the imaginative faculty by any remarks on the execution of the imaginative hand; but we can hardly leave tintoret and michael angelo without some notice of the pre-eminent power of execution exhibited by both of them, in consequence of their vigor and clearness of conception; nor without again warning the lower artist from confounding this velocity of decision and impatience with the velocity of affectation or indolence. every result of real imagination we have seen to be a truth of some sort; and it is the characteristic of truth to be in some way tangible, seizable, distinguishable, and clear, as it is of falsehood to be obscure, confused, and confusing. not but that many, if not most truths have a dark side, a side by which they are connected with mysteries too high for us,--nay, i think it is commonly but a poor and miserable truth which the human mind can walk all round, but at all events they have one side by which we can lay hold of them, and feel that they are downright adamant, and that their form, though lost in cloud here and there, is unalterable and real, and not less real and rocky because infinite, and joined on, st. michael's mount-like to a far mainland. so then, whatever the real imagination lays hold of, as it is a truth, does not alter into anything else as the imaginative part works at it and feels over it and finds out more of it, but comes out more and more continually, all that is found out pointing to and indicating still more behind, and giving additional stability and reality to that which is discovered already. but if it be fancy or any other form of pseudo-imagination which is at work, then that which it gets hold of may not be a truth, but only an idea, which will keep giving way as soon as we try to take hold of it and turning into something else, so that as we go on copying it, every part will be inconsistent with all that has gone before, and at intervals it will vanish altogether, and leave blanks which must be filled up by any means at hand. and in these circumstances, the painter, unable to seize his thought, because it has not substance nor bone enough to bear grasping, is liable to catch at every line that he lays down, for help and suggestion, and to be led away by it to something else, which the first effort to realize dissipates in like manner, placing another phantom in its stead, until out of the fragments of these successive phantoms he has glued together a vague, mindless, involuntary whole, a mixture of all that was trite or common in each of the successive conceptions, for that is necessarily what is first caught a heap of things with the bloom off and the chill on, laborious, unnatural, inane, with its emptiness disguised by affectation, and its tastelessness salted by extravagance. necessarily, from these modes of conception, three vices of execution must result; and these are necessarily found in all those parts of the work where any trust has been put in conception, and only to be avoided in portions of actual portraiture (for a thoroughly unimaginative painter can make no use of a study--all his studies are guesses and experiments, all are equally wrong, and so far felt to be wrong by himself, that he will not work by any of them, but will always endeavor to improve upon them in the picture, and so lose the use of them). these three vices of execution are then--first, feebleness of handling, owing to uncertainty of intention; secondly, intentional carelessness of handling, in the hope of getting by accident something more than was meant; and lastly, violence and haste of handling, in the effort to secure as much as possible of the obscure image of which the mind feels itself losing hold. (i am throughout, it will be observed, attributing right feeling to the unimaginative painter; if he lack this, his execution may be cool and determined, as he will set down falsehood without blushing, and ugliness without suffering.) added to these various evidences of weakness, will be the various vices assumed for the sake of concealment; morbid refinements disguising feebleness--or insolence and coarseness to cover desperation. when the imagination is powerful, the resulting execution is of course the contrary of all this: its first steps will commonly be impetuous, in clearing its ground and getting at its first conception--as we know of michael angelo in his smiting his blocks into shape, (see the passage quoted by sir charles clarke in the essay on expression, from blaise de vigenere,) and as it is visible in the handling of tintoret always: as the work approaches completion, the stroke, while it remains certain and firm, because its end is always known, may frequently become slow and careful, both on account of the difficulty of following the pure lines of the conception, and because there is no fear felt of the conception's vanishing before it can be realized; but generally there is a certain degree of impetuosity visible in the works of all the men of high imagination, when they are not working from a study, showing itself in michael angelo by the number of blocks he left unfinished, and by some slight evidences in those he completed of his having worked painfully towards the close; so that, except the duke lorenzo, the bacchus of the florentine gallery, and the pieta of genoa, i know not any of his finished works in which his mind is as mightily expressed as in his marble sketches; only, it is always to be observed that impetuosity or rudeness of hand is not necessarily--and, if imaginative, is never--carelessness. in the two landscapes at the end of the scuola di san rocco, tintoret has drawn several large tree trunks with two strokes of his brush--one for the dark, and another for the light side; and the large rock at the foot of the picture of the temptation is painted with a few detached touches of gray over a flat brown ground; but the touches of the tree-trunks have been followed by the mind as they went down with the most painful intensity through their every undulation; and the few gray strokes on the stone are so considered that a better stone cone could not be painted if we took a month to it: and i suppose, generally, it would be utterly impossible to give an example of execution in which less was left to accident, or in which more care was concentrated in every stroke, than the seemingly regardless and impetuous handling of this painter. on the habit of both tintoret and michael angelo to work straight forward from the block and on the canvas, without study or model, it is needless to insist; for though this is one of the most amazing proofs of their imaginative power, it is a dangerous precedent. no mode of execution ought ever to be taught to a young artist as better than another; he ought to understand the truth of what he has to do, felicitous execution will follow as a matter of course; and if he feels himself capable of getting at the right at once, he will naturally do so without reference to precedent. he ought to hold always that his duty is to attain the highest result he can,--but that no one has any business with the means or time he has taken. if it can be done quickly, let it be so done; if not, let it be done at any rate. for knowing his way he is answerable, and therefore must not walk _doubtingly_; but no one can blame him for walking _cautiously_, if the way be a narrow one, with a slip on each side. he may pause, but he must not hesitate,--and tremble, but must not vacillate. [ ] that which we know of the lives of m. angelo and tintoret is eminently illustrative of this temper. chapter iv. of imagination contemplative. § . imagination contemplative is not part of the essence, but only a habit or mode of the faculty. we have, in the two preceding chapters, arrived at definite conclusions respecting the power and essence of the imaginative faculty. in these two acts of penetration and combination, its separating and characteristic attributes are entirely developed; it remains for us only to observe a certain habit or mode of operation in which it frequently delights, and by which it addresses itself to our perceptions more forcibly, and asserts its presence more distinctly than in those mighty but more secret workings wherein its life consists. in our examination of the combining imagination, we chose to assume the first or simple conception to be as clear in the absence as in the presence of the object of it. this, i suppose, is in point of fact never the case, nor is an approximation to such distinctness of conception always a characteristic of the imaginative mind. many persons have thorough and felicitous power of drawing from memory, yet never originate a thought, nor excite an emotion. § . the ambiguity of conception. § . is not in itself capable of adding to the charm of fair things. the form in which conception actually occurs to ordinary minds appears to derive value and preciousness from that indefiniteness which we alluded to in the second chapter, (§ ,) for there is an unfailing charm in the memory and anticipation of things beautiful, more sunny and spiritual than attaches to their presence; for with their presence it is possible to be sated, and even wearied, but with the imagination of them never; in so far that it needs some self-discipline to prevent the mind from falling into a morbid condition of dissatisfaction with all that it immediately possesses, and continual longing for things absent; and yet i think this charm is not justly to be attributed to the mere vagueness and uncertainty of the conception, except thus far, that of objects whose substantial presence was ugly or painful the sublimity and impressiveness, if there were any, is retained in the conception, while the sensual offensiveness is withdrawn; thus circumstances of horror may be safely touched in verbal description, and for a time dwelt upon by the mind, as often by homer and spenser, (by the latter frequently with too much grossness, as in the description of the combat of the red-cross knight with errour,) which could not for a moment be regarded or tolerated in their reality, or on canvas; and besides this mellowing and softening operation on those it retains, the conceptive faculty has the power of letting go many of them altogether out of its groups of ideas, and retaining only those where the meminisse juvabit will apply; and in this way the entire group of memories becomes altogether delightful; but of those parts of anything which are in themselves beautiful, i think the indistinctness no benefit, but that the brighter they are the better; and that the peculiar charm we feel in conception results from its grasp and blending of ideas rather than from their obscurity, for we do not usually recall, as we have seen, one part at a time only of a pleasant scene, one moment only of a happy day; but together with each single object we summon up a kind of crowded and involved shadowing forth of all the other glories with which it was associated, and into every moment we concentrate an epitome of the day; and it will happen frequently that even when the visible objects or actual circumstances are not in numbers remembered; yet the feeling and joy of them is obtained we know not how or whence, and so with a kind of conceptive burning glass we bend the sunshine of all the day, and the fulness of all the scene upon every point that we successively seize; and this together with more vivid action of fancy, for i think that the wilful and playful seizure of the points that suit her purpose and help her springing, whereby she is distinguished from simple conception, takes place more easily and actively with the memory of things than in presence of them. but, however this be, and i confess that there is much that i cannot satisfactorily to myself unravel with respect to the nature of simple conception; it is evident that this agreeableness, whatever it be, is not by art attainable, for all art is in some sort realization; it may be the realization of obscurity or indefiniteness, but still it must differ from the mere conception of obscurity and indefiniteness; so that whatever emotions depend absolutely on imperfectness of conception, as the horror of milton's death, cannot be rendered by art, for art can only lay hold of things which have shape, and destroys by its touch the fearfulness or pleasurableness of those which shape have none. § . but gives to the imagination its regardant power over them. but on this indistinctness of conception, itself comparatively valueless and unaffecting, is based the operation of the imaginative faculty with which we are at present concerned, and in which its glory is consummated: whereby, depriving the subject of material and bodily shape, and regarding such of its qualities only as it chooses for particular purpose, it forges these qualities together in such groups and forms as it desires, and gives to their abstract being consistency and reality, by striking them as it were with the die of an image belonging to other matter, which stroke having once received, they pass current at once in the peculiar conjunction and for the peculiar value desired. thus, in the description of satan quoted in the first chapter, "and like a comet burned," the bodily shape of the angel is destroyed, the inflaming of the formless spirit is alone regarded; and this, and his power of evil associated in one fearful and abstract conception are stamped to give them distinctness and permanence with the image of the comet, "that fires the length of ophiuchus huge." yet this could not be done, but that the image of the comet itself is in a measure indistinct, capable of awful expansion, and full of threatening and fear. again, in his fall, the imagination binds up the thunder, the resistance, the massy prostration, separates them from the external form, and binds them together by the help of that image of the mountain half sunk; which again would be unfit but for its own indistinctness, and for that glorious addition "with all his pines," whereby a vitality and spear-like hostility are communicated to its falling form, and the fall is marked as not utter subversion, but sinking only, the pines remaining in their uprightness, and unity, and threatening of darkness upon the descended precipice: and again in that yet more noble passage at the close of the fourth book, where almost every operation of the contemplative imagination is concentrated; the angelic squadron first gathered into one burning mass by the single expression "sharpening in mooned horns," then told out in their unity and multitude and stooped hostility, by the image of the wind upon the corn; satan endowed with godlike strength and endurance in that mighty line, "like teneriffe or atlas, unremoved," with infinitude of size the next instant, and with all the vagueness and terribleness of spiritual power, by the "horror plumed," and the "_what seemed_ both spear and shield." § . the third office of fancy distinguished from imagination contemplative. the third function of fancy, already spoken of as subordinate to this of the imagination, is the highest of which she is capable; like the imagination, she beholds in the things submitted to her treatment things different from the actual; but the suggestions she follows are not in their nature essential in the object contemplated; and the images resulting, instead of illustrating, may lead the mind away from it, and change the current of contemplative feeling; for as in her operation parallel to imagination penetrative, we saw her dwelling upon external features, while the nobler sister, faculty, entered within, so now, when both, from what they see and know in their immediate object, are conjuring up images illustrative or elevatory of it, the fancy necessarily summons those of mere external relationship, and therefore of unaffecting influence; while the imagination, by every ghost she raises, tells tales about the prison-house, and therefore never loses her power over the heart, nor her unity of emotion. on the other hand, the regardant or contemplative action of fancy is in this different from, and in this nobler, than that mere seizing and likeness-catching operation we saw in her before; that when contemplative, she verily believes in the truth of the vision she has summoned, loses sight of actuality, and beholds the new and spiritual image faithfully and even seriously; whereas before, she summoned no spiritual image, but merely caught the vivid actuality, or the curious resemblance of the real object; not that these two operations are separate, for the fancy passes gradually from mere vivid right of reality, and witty suggestion of likeness, to a ghostly sight of what is unreal; and through this, in proportion as she begins to feel, she rises towards and partakes of imagination itself, for imagination and fancy are continually united, and it is necessary, when they are so, carefully to distinguish the feelingless part which is fancy's, from the sentient part, which is imagination's. let us take a few instances. here is fancy, first, very beautiful, in her simple capacity of likeness-catching:-- "to-day we purpose--aye, this hour we mount to spur three leagues towards the apennine. come down, we pray thee, ere the _hot sun count his dewy rosary_ on the eglantine." seizing on the outside resemblances of bead form, and on the slipping from their threading bough one by one, the fancy is content to lose the heart of the thing, the solemnity of prayer: or perhaps i do the glorious poet wrong in saying this, for the sense of a sun worship and orison in beginning its race, may have been in his mind; and so far as it was so, the passage is imaginative and not fanciful. but that which most readers would accept from it, is the mere flash of the external image, in whose truth the fancy herself does not yet believe and therefore is not yet contemplative. here, however, is fancy believing in the images she creates:-- "it feeds the quick growth of the serpent-vine, and the dark linked ivy tangling wild and budding, blown, or odor faded blooms, which _star the winds with points of colored light_ as they rain through them; and _bright golden globes of fruit suspended in their own green heaven_." it is not, observe, a mere likeness that is caught here; but the flowers and fruit are entirely deprived by the fancy of their material existence, and contemplated by her seriously and faithfully as stars and worlds; yet it is only external likeness that she catches; she forces the resemblance, and lowers the dignity of the adopted image. next take two delicious stanzas of fancy regardant, (believing in her creations,) followed by one of heavenly imagination, from wordsworth's address to the daisy:-- "a nun demure--of lowly port; or sprightly maiden--of love's court, in thy simplicity the sport of all temptations. a queen in crown of rubies drest, a starveling in a scanty vest, are all as seems to suit thee best,-- thy appellations. i see thee glittering from afar, and then thou art a pretty star,-- not quite so fair as many are in heaven above thee. yet like a star, with glittering crest, self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest;-- may peace come never to his nest who shall reprove thee. sweet flower--for by that name at last, when all my reveries are past, i call thee, and to that cleave fast. sweet silent creature, that breath'st with me, in sun and air, do thou, as thou art wont, repair my heart with gladness, and a share of thy meek nature." § . various instances. observe how spiritual, yet how wandering and playful the fancy is in the first two stanzas, and how far she flies from the matter in hand, never stopping to brood on the character of any one of the images she summons, and yet for a moment truly seeing and believing in them all; while in the last stanza the imagination returns with its deep feeling to the heart of the flower, and "_cleaves fast_" to that. compare the operation of the imagination in coleridge, on one of the most trifling objects that could possibly have been submitted to its action. "the thin blue flame lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not: only that film which fluttered on the grate still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. methinks its motion in this hush of nature gives it dim sympathies with me, who live, making it a companionable form, whose puny flaps and freaks the idling spirit by its own moods interprets; everywhere, echo or mirror seeking of itself, and makes a toy of thought." lastly, observe the sweet operation of fancy regardant, in the following well-known passage from scott, where both her beholding and transforming powers are seen in their simplicity. "the rocky summits--split and rent, formed turret, dome, or battlement.-- or seemed fantastically set with cupola or minaret. nor were these earth-born castles bare, nor lacked they many a banner fair, for from their shivered brows displayed, far o'er th' unfathomable glade, all twinkling with the dew-drop sheen, the brier-rose fell, in streamers green,-- and creeping shrubs of thousand dyes waved in the west wind's summer sighs." let the reader refer to this passage, with its pretty tremulous conclusion above the pine tree, "where glistening streamers waved and danced," and then compare with it the following, where the imagination operates on a scene nearly similar. "gray rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemm'd the struggling brook; tall spires of windle strae threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, and nought but knarled roots of ancient pines, branchless and blasted, clench'd with grasping roots th' unwilling soil. . . . . . . . . . a gradual change was here, yet ghastly. for, _as fast years flow away, the smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin and white; and where irradiate dewy eyes had shone, gleam stony orbs; so from his steps bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade of the green groves, with all their odorous winds and musical motions._ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . where the pass extends its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks. and seems with its accumulated crags to overhang the world; for wide expand beneath the wan stars, and descending moon, islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, _dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom of leaden-colored even_, and _fiery hills mingling their flames with twilight_ on the verge of the remote horizon. the near scene in naked, and severe simplicity made contrast with the universe. a pine rock-rooted, stretch'd athwart the vacancy its swinging boughs, to each _inconstant blast yielding one only response at each pause_, in most familiar cadence, with the howl, the thunder, and the hiss of _homeless_ streams, mingling its solemn song." [illustration: study of stone pine, at sestri. from a drawing by ruskin.] in this last passage, the mind never departs from its solemn possession of the solitary scene, the imagination only giving weight, meaning, and strange human sympathies to all its sights and sounds. in that from scott,[ ]--the fancy, led away by the outside resemblance of floating form and hue to the banners, loses the feeling and possession of the scene, and places herself in circumstances of character completely opposite to the quietness and grandeur of the natural objects; this would have been unjustifiable, but that the resemblance occurs to the mind of the monarch, rather than to that of the poet; and it is that, which of all others, would have been the most likely to occur at the time; in this point of view it has high imaginative propriety. of the same fanciful character is that transformation of the tree trunks into dragons noticed before in turner's jason; and in the same way this becomes imaginative as it exhibits the effect of fear in disposing to morbid perception. compare with it the real and high action of the imagination on the same matter in wordsworth's yew trees (which i consider the most vigorous and solemn bit of forest landscape ever painted):-- "each particular trunk a growth of intertwisted fibres serpentine, up coiling and inveterately convolved, _nor uninformed with phantasy, and looks that threaten the profane_." it is too long to quote, but the reader should refer to it: let him note especially, if painter, that pure touch of color, "by sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged." in the same way, the blasted trunk on the left, in turner's drawing of the spot where harold fell at the battle of hastings, takes, where its boughs first separate, the shape of the head of an arrow; this, which is mere fancy in itself, is imagination as it supposes in the spectator an excited condition of feeling dependent on the history of the spot. § . morbid or nervous fancy. i have been led perhaps into too great detail in illustrating these points; but i think it is of no small importance to prove how in all cases the imagination is based upon, and appeals to, a deep heart feeling; and how faithful and earnest it is in contemplation of the subject matter, never losing sight of it, or disguising it, but depriving it of extraneous and material accidents, and regarding it in its disembodied essence. i have not, however, sufficiently noted in opposition to it, that diseased action of the fancy which depends more on nervous temperament than intellectual power; and which, as in dreaming, fever, insanity, and other morbid conditions of mind is frequently a source of daring and inventive conception; and so the visionary appearances resulting from various disturbances of the frame by passion, and from the rapid tendency of the mind to invest with shape and intelligence the active influences about it, as in the various demons, spirits, and fairies of all imaginative nations; which, however, i consider are no more to be ranked as right creations of fancy or imagination than things actually seen and heard; for the action of the nerves is i suppose the same, whether externally caused, or from within, although very grand imagination may be shown by the intellectual anticipation and realization of such impressions; as in that glorious vignette of turner's to the voyage of columbus. "slowly along the evening sky they went." note especially therein, how admirably true to the natural form, and yet how suggestive of the battlement he has rendered the level flake of evening cloud. § . the action of contemplative imagination is not to be expressed by art. i believe that it is unnecessary for me to enter into farther detail of illustration respecting these points; for fuller explanation of the operations of the contemplative faculty on things verbally expressible, the reader may be referred to wordsworth's preface to his poems; it only remains for us, here, to examine how far this imaginative or abstract conception is to be conveyed by the material art of the sculptor or the painter. now, it is evident that the bold action of either the fancy or the imagination, dependent on a bodiless and spiritual image of the object, is not to be by lines or colors represented. we cannot, in the painting of satan fallen, suggest any image of pines or crags,--neither can we assimilate the brier and the banner, nor give human sympathy to the motion of the film, nor voice to the swinging of the pines. § . except under narrow limits.-- st. abstract rendering of form without color. yet certain powers there are, within due limits, of marking the thing represented with an ideal character; and it was to these powers that i alluded in defining the meaning of the term ideal, in the thirteenth chapter of the preceding section. for it is by this operation that the productions of high art are separated from those of the realist. and, first, there is evidently capability of separating color and form, and considering either separately. form we find abstractedly considered by the sculptor, how far it would be possible to advantage a statue by the addition of color, i venture not to affirm; the question is too extensive to be here discussed. high authorities and ancient practice, are in favor of color; so the sculpture of the middle ages: the two statues of mino da fiesole in the church of st^a. caterina at pisa have been colored, the irises of the eyes painted dark, and the hair gilded, as also i think the madonna in st^a. maria della spina; the eyes have been painted in the sculptures of orcagna in or san michele, but it looks like a remnant of barbarism, (compare the pulpit of guida da como, in the church of san bartolomeo at pistoja,) and i have never seen color on any solid forms, that did not, to my mind, neutralize all other power; the porcelains of luca della robbia are painful examples, and in lower art, florentine mosaic in relief; gilding is more admissible, and tells sometimes sweetly upon figures of quaint design, as on the pulpit of st^a. maria novella, while it spoils the classical ornaments of the mouldings. but the truest grandeur of sculpture i believe to be in the white form; something of this feeling may be owing to the difficulty, or rather the immediately, of obtaining truly noble color upon it, but if we could color the elgin marbles with the flesh tint of giorgione, i had rather not have it done. § . of color without form. color, without form, is less frequently obtainable, and it may be doubted whether it be desirable: yet i think that to the full enjoyment of it, a certain abandonment of form is necessary; sometimes by reducing it to the shapeless glitter of the gem, as often tintoret and bassano; sometimes by loss of outline and blending of parts, as turner; sometimes by flatness of mass, as often giorgione and titian. how far it is possible for the painter to represent those mountains of shelley as the poet sees them, "mingling _their flames_ with twilight," i cannot say; but my impression is, that there is no true abstract mode of considering color; and that all the loss of form in the works of titian or turner, is not ideal, but the representation of the natural conditions under which bright color is seen; for form is always in a measure lost by nature herself when color is very vivid. § . or of both without texture. again, there is capability of representing the essential character, form, and color of an object, without external texture. on this point much has been said by reynolds and others, and it is, indeed, perhaps the most unfailing characteristic of great manner in painting. compare a dog of edwin landseer with a dog of paul veronese. in the first, the outward texture is wrought out with exquisite dexterity of handling, and minute attention to all the accidents of curl and gloss which can give appearance of reality, while the hue and power of the sunshine, and the truth of the shadow on all these forms is necessarily neglected, and the large relations of the animal as a mass of color to the sky or ground, or other parts of the picture, utterly lost. this is realism at the expense of ideality, it is treatment essentially unimaginative.[ ] with veronese, there is no curling nor crisping, no glossiness nor sparkle, hardly even hair, a mere type of hide, laid on with a few scene-painter's touches. but the essence of dog is there, the entire magnificent, generic animal type, muscular and living, and with broad, pure, sunny daylight upon him, and bearing his true and harmonious relation of color to all color about him. this is ideal treatment. the same treatment is found in the works of all the greatest men, they all paint the lion more than his mane, and the horse rather than his hide; and i think also they are more careful to obtain the right expression of large and universal light and color, than local tints; for the warmth of sunshine, and the force of sunlighted hue are always sublime on whatever subject they may be exhibited; and so also are light and shade, if grandly arranged, as may be well seen in an etching of rembrandt's of a spotted shell, which he has made altogether sublime by broad truth and large ideality of light and shade; and so i have seen frequent instances of very grand ideality in treatment of the most commonplace still life, by our own hunt, where the petty glosses and delicacies, and minor forms, are all merged in a broad glow of suffused color; so also in pieces of the same kind by etty, where, however, though the richness and play of color are greater, and the arrangement grander, there is less expression of light, neither is there anything in modern art that can be set beside some choice passages of hunt in this respect. § . abstraction or typical representation of animal form. again, it is possible to represent objects capable of various accidents in generic or symbolical form. § . either when it is symbolically used. how far this may be done with things having necessary form, as animals, i am not prepared to say. the lions of the egyptian room in the british museum, and the fish beside michael angelo's jonah, are instances; and there is imaginative power about both which we find not in the more perfectly realized florentine boar, nor in raffaelle's fish of the draught. and yet the propriety and nobility of these types depend on the architectural use and character of the one, and on the typical meaning of the other: we should be grieved to see the forms of the egyptian lion substituted for those of raffaelle's in its struggle with samson, nor would the whale of michael angelo be tolerated in the nets of gennesaret. so that i think it is only when the figure of the creature stands not for any representation of vitality, but merely for a letter or type of certain symbolical meaning, or else is adopted as a grand form of decoration or support in architecture, that such generalization is allowable, and in such circumstances i think it necessary, always provided it be based, as in the instances given i conceive it to be, upon thorough knowledge of the creature symbolized and wrought out by a master hand; and these conditions being observed, i believe it to be right and necessary in architecture to modify all animal forms by a severe architectural stamp, and in symbolical use of them, to adopt a typical form, to which practice the contrary, and its evil consequences are ludicrously exhibited in the st. peter of carlo dolci in the pitti palace, which owing to the prominent, glossy-plumed and crimson-combed cock, is liable to be taken for the portrait of a poulterer, only let it be observed that the treatment of the animal form here is offensive, not only from its realization, but from the pettiness and meanness of its realization; for it might, in other hands but carlo dolci's, have been a sublime cock, though a real one, but in his, it is fit for nothing but the spit. compare as an example partly of symbolical treatment, partly of magnificent realization, that supernatural lion of tintoret, in the picture of the doge loredano before the madonna, with the plumes of his mighty wings clashed together in cloudlike repose, and the strength of the sea winds shut within their folding. and note farther the difference between the typical use of the animal, as in this case, and that of the fish of jonah, (and again the fish before mentioned whose form is indicated in the clouds of the baptism), and the actual occurrence of the creature itself, with concealed meaning, as the ass colt of the crucifixion, which it was necessary to paint as such, and not as an ideal form. § . or in architectural decoration. § . exception in delicate and superimposed ornament. i cannot enter here into the question of the exact degree of severity and abstraction necessary in the forms of living things architecturally employed; my own feeling on the subject is, though i dare not lay it down as a principle, (with the parthenon pediment standing against me like the shield of ajax,) that no perfect representation of animal form is right in architectural decoration. for my own part, i had much rather see the metopes in the elgin room of the british museum, and the parthenon without them, than have them together, and i would not surrender, in an architectural point of view, one mighty line of the colossal, quiet, life-in-death statue mountains in egypt with their narrow fixed eyes and hands on their rocky limbs, nor one romanesque façade with its porphyry mosaic of indefinable monsters, nor one gothic moulding of rigid saints and grinning goblins, for ten parthenons; and, i believe, i could show some rational ground for this seeming barbarity if this were the place to do so, but at present i can only ask the reader to compare the effect of the so-called barbarous ancient mosaics on the front of st. mark's, as they have been recorded, happily, by the faithfulness of the good gentile bellini, in one of his pictures now in the venice gallery, with the veritably barbarous pictorial substitutions of the fifteenth century, (one only of the old mosaics remains, or did remain till lately, over the northern door, but it is probably by this time torn down by some of the venetian committees of taste,) and also i would have the old portions of the interior ceiling, or of the mosaics of murano and torcello, and the glorious cimabue mosaic of pisa, and the roof of the baptistery at parma, (that of the florence baptistery is a bad example, owing to its crude whites and complicated mosaic of small forms,) all of which are as barbarous as they can well be, in a certain sense, but mighty in their barbarism, with any architectural decorations whatsoever, consisting of professedly perfect animal forms, from the vile frescoes of federigo zuccaro at florence to the ceiling of the sistine, and again compare the professedly perfect sculpture of milan cathedral with the statues of the porches of chartres; only be it always observed that it is not rudeness and ignorance of art, but intellectually awful abstraction that i uphold, and also be it noted that in all ornament, which takes place in the general effect merely as so much fretted stone, in capitals and other pieces of minute detail, the forms may be, and perhaps ought to be, elaborately imitative; and in this respect again the capitals of st. mark's church, and of the doge's palace at venice may be an example to the architects of all the world, in their boundless inventiveness, unfailing elegance, and elaborate finish; there is more mind poured out in turning a single angle of that church than would serve to build a modern cathedral;[ ] and of the careful finish of the work, this may serve for example, that one of the capitals of the doge's palace is formed of eight heads of different animals, of which one is a bear's with a honeycomb in the mouth, whose carved _cells_ are _hexagonal_. § . abstraction necessary from imperfection of materials. § . abstractions of things capable of varied accident are not imaginative. § . yet sometimes valuable. so far, then, of the abstraction proper to architecture, and to symbolical uses, of which i shall have occasion to speak hereafter at length, referring to it only at present as one of the operations of imagination contemplative; other abstractions there are which are necessarily consequent on the imperfection of materials, as of the hair in sculpture, which is necessarily treated in masses that are in no sort imitative, but only stand for hair, and have the grace, flow, and feeling of it without the texture or division, and other abstractions there are in which the form of one thing is fancifully indicated in the matter of another; as in phantoms and cloud shapes, the use of which, in mighty hands, is often most impressive, as in the cloudy charioted apollo of nicolo poussin in our own gallery, which the reader may oppose to the substantial apollo, in wilson's niobe, and again the phantom vignette of turner already noticed; only such operations of the imagination are to be held of lower kind and dangerous consequence, if frequently trusted in, for those painters only have the right imaginative power who can set the supernatural form before us fleshed and boned like ourselves.[ ] other abstractions occur, frequently, of things which have much accidental variety of form, as of waves, on greek sculptures in successive volutes, and of clouds often in supporting volumes in the sacred pictures; but these i do not look upon as results of imagination at all, but mere signs and letters; and whenever a very highly imaginative mind touches them, it always realizes as far as may be. even titian is content to use at the top of his st. pietro martiri, the conventional, round, opaque cloud, which cuts his trees open like a gouge; but tintoret, in his picture of the golden calf, though compelled to represent the sinai under conventional form, in order that the receiving of the tables might be seen at the top of it, yet so soon as it is possible to give more truth, he is ready with it; he takes a grand fold of horizontal cloud straight from the flanks of the alps, and shows the forests of the mountains through its misty volume, like sea-weed through deep sea.[ ] nevertheless, when the realization is impossible, bold symbolism is of the highest value, and in religious art, as we shall presently see, even necessary, as of the rays of light in the titian woodcut of st. francis before noticed; and sometimes the attention is directed by some such strange form to the meaning of the image, which may be missed if it remains in its natural purity, (as, i suppose, few in looking at the cephalus and procris of turner, note the sympathy of those faint rays that are just drawing back and dying between the trunks of the far-off forest, with the ebbing life of the nymph; unless, indeed, they happen to recollect the same sympathy marked by shelley in the alastor;) but the imagination is not shown in any such modifications; however, in some cases they may be valuable (in the cephalus they would be utterly destructive,) and i note them merely in consequence of their peculiar use in religious art, presently to be examined. § . exaggeration. its laws and limits. first, in scale of representation. the last mode we have here to note in which the imagination regardant may be expressed in art is exaggeration, of which, as it is the vice of all bad artists, may be constantly resorted to without any warrant of imagination, it is necessary to note strictly the admissible limits. in the first place, a colossal statue is necessarily no more an exaggeration of what it represents than a miniature is a diminution, it need not be a representation of a giant, but a representation, on a large scale, of a man; only it is to be observed, that as any plane intersecting the cone of rays between us and the object, must receive an image smaller than the object; a small image is rationally and completely expressive of a larger one; but not a large of a small one. hence i think that all statues above the elgin standard, or that of michael angelo's night and morning, are, in a measure, taken by the eye for representations of giants, and i think them always disagreeable. the amount of exaggeration admitted by michael angelo is valuable because it separates the emblematic from the human form, and gives greater freedom to the grand lines of the frame; for notice of his scientific system of increase of size i may refer the reader to sir charles bell's remarks on the statues of the medici chapel; but there is one circumstance which sir charles has not noticed, and in the interpretation of which, therefore, it is likely i may be myself wrong; that the extremities are singularly small in proportion to the limbs, by which means there is an expression given of strength and activity greater than in the ordinary human type, which appears to me to be an allowance for that alteration in proportion necessitated by increase of size, of which we took note in chap. vi. of the first section, § , note; not but that michael angelo always makes the extremities comparatively small, but smallest, comparatively, in his largest works; so i think, from the size of the head, it may be conjectured respecting the theseus of the elgins. such adaptations are not necessary when the exaggerated image is spectral; for as the laws of matter in that case can have no operation, we may expand the form as far as we choose, only let careful distinction be made between the size of the thing represented, and the scale of the representation. the canvas on which fuseli has stretched his satan in the schools of the royal academy is a mere concession to inability. he might have made him look more gigantic in one of a foot square. § . secondly. of things capable of variety of scale. another kind of exaggeration is of things whose size is variable to a size or degree greater than that usual with them, as in waves and mountains; and there are hardly any limits to this exaggeration so long as the laws which nature observes in her increase be observed. thus, for instance: the form and polished surface of a breaking ripple three inches high, are not representation of either the form or the surface of the surf of a storm, nodding ten feet above the beach; neither would the cutting ripple of a breeze upon a lake if simply exaggerated, represent the forms of atlantic surges; but as nature increases her bulk, she diminishes the angles of ascent, and increases her divisions; and if we would represent surges of size greater than ever existed, which it is lawful to do, we must carry out these operations to still greater extent. thus, turner, in his picture of the slave ship, divides the whole sea into two masses of enormous swell, and conceals the horizon by a gradual slope of only two or three degrees. this is intellectual exaggeration. in the academy exhibition of , there was, in one of the smaller rooms, a black picture of a storm, in which there appeared on the near sea, just about to be overwhelmed by an enormous breaker, curling right over it, an object at first sight liable to be taken for a walnut shell, but which, on close examination, proved to be a ship with mast and sail, with christ and his twelve disciples in it. this is childish exaggeration, because it is impossible, by the laws of matter and motion, that such a breaker should ever exist. again in mountains, we have repeatedly observed the necessary building up and multitudinous division of the higher peaks, and the smallness of the slopes by which they usually rise. we may, therefore, build up the mountain as high as we please, but we must do it in nature's way, and not in impossible peaks and precipices; not but that a daring feature is admissible here and there, as the matterhorn is admitted by nature; but we must not compose a picture out of such exceptions; we may use them, but they must be as exceptions exhibited. i shall have much to say, when we come to treat of the sublime, of the various modes of treating mountain form, so that at present i shall only point to an unfortunate instance of inexcusable and effectless exaggeration in the distance of turner's vignette to milton, (the temptation on the mountain,) and desire the reader to compare it with legitimate exaggeration, in the vignette to the second part of jacqueline, in rogers's poems. § . thirdly, necessary in expression of characteristic features on diminished scale. another kind of exaggeration is necessary to retain the characteristic impressions of nature on reduced scale, it is not possible, for instance, to give the leafage of trees in its proper proportion, when the trees represented are large, without entirely losing their grace of form and curvature; of this the best proof is found in the calotype or daguerreotype, which fail in foliage, not only because the green rays are ineffective, but because, on the small scale of the image, the reduced leaves lose their organization, and look like moss attached to sticks. in order to retain, therefore, the character of flexibility and beauty of foliage, the painter is often compelled to increase the proportionate size of the leaves, and to arrange them in generic masses. of this treatment compare the grand examples throughout the liber studiorum. it is by such means only that the ideal character of objects is to be preserved; as we before observed in the th chapter of the first section. in all these cases exaggeration is only lawful as the sole means of arriving at truth of impression when strict fidelity is out of the question. other modes of exaggeration there are, on which i shall not at present farther insist, the proper place for their discussion being in treating of the sublime, and these which i have at present instanced are enough to establish the point at issue, respecting imaginative verity, inasmuch as we find that exaggeration itself, if imaginative, is referred to principles of truth, and of actual being. § . recapitulation. we have now, i think, reviewed the various modes in which imagination contemplative may be exhibited in art, and arrived at all necessary certainties respecting the essence of the faculty: which we have found in all its three functions, associative of truth, penetrative of truth, and contemplative of truth; and having no dealings nor relations with any kind of falsity. one task, however, remains to us, namely, to observe the operation of the theoretic and imaginative faculties together, in the attempt at realization to the bodily sense of beauty supernatural and divine. footnotes [ ] let it not be supposed that i mean to compare the sickly dreaming of shelley over clouds and waves with the masculine and magnificent grasp of men and things which we find in scott; it only happens that these two passages are more illustrative, by the likeness of the scenery they treat, than any others i could have opposed; and that shelley is peculiarly distinguished by the faculty of contemplative imagination. scott's healthy and truthful feeling would not allow him to represent the benighted hunter provoked by loss of game, horse, and way at once, as indulging in any more exalted flights of imagination than those naturally consequent on the contrast between the night's lodging he expected, and that which befitted him. [ ] i do not mean to withdraw the praise i have given, and shall always be willing to give such pictures as the old shepherd's chief mourner, and to all in which the character and inner life of animals are developed. but all lovers of art must regret to find mr. landseer wasting his energies on such inanities as the "shoeing," and sacrificing color, expression, and action, to an imitation of glossy hide. [ ] i have not brought forward any instances of the imaginative power in architecture, as my object is not at present to exhibit its operation in all matter, but only to define its essence; but it may be well to note, in our own new houses of parliament, how far a building approved by a committee of taste, may proceed without manifestation either of imagination or composition; it remains to be seen how far the towers may redeem it; and i allude to it at present unwillingly, and only in the desire of influencing, so far as i may, those who have the power to prevent the adoption of a design for a bridge to take place of westminster, which was exhibited in at the royal academy, professing to be in harmony with the new building, but which was fit only to carry a railroad over a canal. [ ] comp. ch. v. § . [ ] all the clouds of tintoret are sublime; the worst that i know in art are correggio's, especially in the madonna della scudella, and dome of parma. chapter v. of the superhuman ideal. § . the subject is not to be here treated in detail. in our investigation in the first section of the laws of beauty, we confined ourselves to the observation of lower nature, or of humanity. we were prevented from proceeding to deduce conclusions respecting divine ideality by our not having then established any principles respecting the imaginative faculty, by which, under the discipline of the theoretic, such ideality is conceived. i had purposed to conclude the present section by a careful examination of this subject; but as this is evidently foreign to the matter immediately under discussion, and involves questions of great intricacy respecting the development of mind among those pagan nations who are supposed to have produced high examples of spiritual ideality, i believe it will be better to delay such inquiries until we have concluded our detailed observation of the beauty of visible nature; and i shall therefore at present take notice only of one or two broad principles, which were referred to, or implied, in the chapter respecting the human ideal, and without the enunciation of which, that chapter might lead to false conclusions. § . the conceivable modes of manifestation of spiritual beings are four. there are four ways in which beings supernatural may be conceived as manifesting themselves to human sense. the first, by external types, signs, or influences; as god to moses in the flames of the bush, and to elijah in the voice of horeb. the second, by the assuming of a form not properly belonging to them; as the holy spirit of that of a dove, the second person of the trinity of that of a lamb; and so such manifestations, under angelic or other form, of the first person of the trinity, as seem to have been made to abraham, moses, and ezekiel. the third, by the manifestation of a form properly belonging to them, but not necessarily seen; as of the risen christ to his disciples when the doors were shut. and the fourth, by their operation on the human form, which they influence or inspire, as in the shining of the face of moses. § . and these are in or through creature forms familiar to us. it is evident that in all these cases, wherever there is form at all, it is the form of some creature to us known. it is no new form peculiar to spirit nor can it be. we can conceive of none. our inquiry is simply, therefore, by what modifications those creature forms to us known, as of a lamb, a bird, or a human creature, may be explained as signs or habitations of divinity, or of angelic essence, and not creatures such as they seem. § . supernatural character may be impressed on these either by phenomena inconsistent with their common nature, (compare chap. , § ). this may be done in two ways. first, by effecting some change in the appearance of the creature inconsistent with its actual nature, as by giving it colossal size, or unnatural color, or material, as of gold, or silver, or flame, instead of flesh, or by taking away its property of matter altogether, and forming it of light or shade, or in an intermediate step, of cloud, or vapor; or explaining it by terrible concomitant circumstances, as of wounds in the body, or strange lights and seemings round about it; or by joining of two bodies together as in angels' wings. of all which means of attaining supernatural character (which though, in their nature ordinary and vulgar, are yet effective and very glorious in mighty hands) we have already seen the limits in speaking of the imagination. § . or by inherent dignity. but the second means of obtaining supernatural character is that with which we are now concerned, namely, retaining the actual form in its full and material presence, and without aid from any external interpretation whatsoever, to raise that form by mere inherent dignity to such a pitch of power and impressiveness as cannot but assert and stamp it for superhuman. on the north side of the campo santo at pisa, are a series of paintings from the old testament history by benozzo gozzoli. in the earlier of these, angelic presences, mingled with human, occur frequently, illustrated by no awfulness of light, nor incorporeal tracing. clear revealed they move, in human forms, in the broad daylight and on the open earth, side by side, and hand in hand with men. but they never miss of the angel. he who can do this has reached the last pinnacle and utmost power of ideal, or any other art. he stands in no need thenceforward, of cloud, nor lightning, nor tempest, nor terror of mystery. his sublime is independent of the elements. it is of that which shall stand when they shall melt with fervent heat, and light the firmament when the sun is as sackcloth of hair. § . st. of the expression of inspiration. let us consider by what means this has been effected, so far as they are by analysis traceable; and that is not far, for here, as always, we find that the greater part of what has been rightly accomplished has been done by faith and intense feeling, and cannot, by aid of any rules or teaching, be either tried, estimated, or imitated. and first, of the expression of supernatural influence on forms actually human, as of sibyl or prophet. it is evident that not only here is it unnecessary, but we are not altogether at liberty to trust for expression to the utmost ennobling of the human form: for we cannot do more than this, when that form is to be the actual representation, and not the recipient of divine presence. hence, in order to retain the actual humanity definitely, we must leave upon it such signs of the operation of sin and the liability to death as are consistent with human ideality, and often more than these, definite signs of immediate and active evil, when the prophetic spirit is to be expressed in men such as were saul and balaam; neither may we ever, with just discrimination, touch the utmost limits of beauty in human form when inspiration is to be expressed, and not angelic or divine being; of which reserve and subjection the most instructive instances are found in the works of angelico, who invariably uses inferior types for the features of humanity, even glorified, (excepting always the madonna,) nor ever exerts his full power of beauty either in feature or expression, except in angels or in the madonna or in christ. now the expression of spiritual influence without supreme elevation of the bodily type we have seen to be a work of imagination penetrative, and we found it accomplished by michael angelo; but i think by him only. i am aware of no one else who, to my mind, has expressed the inspiration of prophet or sibyl; this, however, i affirm not, but shall leave to the determination of the reader, as the principles at present to be noted refer entirely to that elevation of the creature form necessary when it is actually representative of a spiritual being. § . no representation of that which is more than creature is possible. i have affirmed in the conclusion of the first section that "of that which is more than creature, no creature ever conceived." i think this almost self-evident, for it is clear that the illimitableness of divine attributes cannot be by matter represented, (though it may be typefied,) and i believe that all who are acquainted with the range of sacred art will admit, not only that no representation of christ has ever been even partially successful, but that the greatest painters fall therein below their accustomed level; perugino and fra angelico especially; leonardi has i think done best, but perhaps the beauty of the fragment left at milan, (for in spite of all that is said of repainting and destruction, that cenacolo is still the finest in existence) is as much dependent on the very untraceableness resulting from injury as on its original perfection. of more daring attempts at representation of divinity we need not speak; only this is to be noted respecting them, that though by the ignorant romanists many such efforts were made under the idea of actual representation, (note the way in which cellini speaks of the seal made for the pope,) by the nobler among them i suppose they were intended, and by us at any rate they may always be received, as mere symbols, the noblest that could be employed, but as much symbols still as a triangle, or the alpha and omega; nor do i think that the most scrupulous amongst christians ought to desire to exchange the power obtained by the use of this symbol in michael angelo's creation of adam and of eve for the effect which would be produced by the substitution of a triangle or any other sign in place of it. of these efforts then we need reason no farther, but may limit ourselves to considering the purest modes of giving a conception of superhuman but still creature form, as of angels; in equal rank with whom, perhaps, we may without offence place the mother of christ: at least we must so regard the type of the madonna in receiving it from romanist painters.[ ] § . supernatural character expressed by modification of accessories. and first, much is to be done by right modification of accessory circumstances, so as to express miraculous power exercised over them by the spiritual creature. there is a beautiful instance of this in john bellini's picture of st. jerome at venice. the saint sits upon a rock, his grand form defined against clear green open sky; he is reading, a noble tree springs out of a cleft in the rock, bends itself suddenly back to form a rest for the volume, then shoots up into the sky. there is something very beautiful in this obedient ministry of the lower creature; but be it observed that the sweet feeling of the whole depends upon the service being such as is consistent with its nature. it is not animated, it does not _listen_ to the saint, nor bend itself towards him as if in affection, this would have been mere fancy, illegitimate and effectless. but the simple bend of the trunk to receive the book is miraculous subjection of the true nature of the tree; it is therefore imaginative, and very touching. § . landscape of the religious painters. its character is eminently symmetrical. it is not often however that the religious painters even go this length; they content themselves usually with impressing on the landscape perfect symmetry and order, such as may seem consistent with, or induced by the spiritual nature they would represent. all signs of decay, disturbance, and imperfection, are also banished; and in doing this it is evident that some unnaturalness and singularity must result, inasmuch as there are no veritable forms of landscape but express or imply a state of progression or of imperfection all mountain forms are seen to be produced by convulsion and modelled by decay; the finer forms of cloud have stories in them about storm; all forest grouping is wrought out with varieties of strength and growth among its several members, and bears evidences of struggle with unkind influences. all such appearances are banished in the supernatural landscape; the trees grow straight, equally branched on each side, and of such slight and feathery frame as shows them never to have encountered blight or frost or tempest. the mountains stand up in fantastic pinnacles; there is on them no trace of torrent, no scathe of lightning; no fallen fragments encumber their foundations, no worn ravines divide their flanks; the seas are always waveless, the skies always calm, crossed only by fair, horizontal, lightly wreathed, white clouds. § . landscape of benozzo gozzoli. in some cases these conditions result partly from feeling, partly from ignorance of the facts of nature, or incapability of representing them, as in the first type of the treatment found in giotto and his school; in others they are observed on principle, as by benozzo gozzoli, perugino, and raffaelle. there is a beautiful instance by the former in the frescoes of the ricardi palace, where behind the adoring angel groups the landscape is governed by the most absolute symmetry; roses and pomegranates, their leaves drawn to the last rib and vein, twine themselves in fair and perfect order about delicate trellises; broad stone pines and tall cypresses overshadow them, bright birds hover here and there in the serene sky, and groups of angels, hand joined with hand, and wing with wing, glide and float through the glades of the unentangled forest. but behind the human figures, behind the pomp and turbulence of the kingly procession descending from the distant hills the spirit of the landscape is changed. severer mountains rise in the distance, ruder prominences and less flowery vary the nearer ground, and gloomy shadows remain unbroken beneath the forest branches. § . landscape of perugino and raffaelle. the landscape of perugino, for grace, purity and as much of nature as is consistent with the above-named conditions, is unrivalled; and the more interesting because in him certainly whatever limits are set to the rendering of nature proceed not from incapability. the sea is in the distance almost always, then some blue promontories and undulating dewy park ground, studded with glittering trees; in the landscape of the fresco in st^a. maria maddalena at florence there is more variety than is usual with him; a gentle river winds round the bases of rocky hills, a river like our own wye or tees in their loveliest reaches; level meadows stretch away on its opposite side; mounds set with slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer ground, a small village with its simple spire peeps from the forest at the bend of the valley, and it is remarkable that in architecture thus employed neither perugino nor any other of the ideal painters ever use italian forms but always transalpine, both of church and castle. the little landscape which forms the background of his own portrait in the uffizii is another highly finished and characteristic example. the landscape of raffaelle was learned from his father, and continued for some time little modified, though expressed with greater refinement. it became afterwards conventional and poor, and in some cases altogether meaningless. the haystacks and vulgar trees behind the st. cecilia at bologna form a painful contrast to the pure space of mountain country in the perugino opposite.[ ] § . such landscape is not to be imitated. in all these cases, while i would uphold the landscape thus employed and treated, as worthy of all admiration, i should be sorry to advance it for imitation. what is right in its mannerism arose from keen feeling in the painter: imitated without the same feeling, it would be painful; the only safe mode of following in such steps is to attain perfect knowledge of nature herself, and then to suffer our own feelings to guide us in the selection of what is fitting for any particular purpose. every painter ought to paint what he himself loves, not what others have loved; if his mind be pure and sweetly toned, what he loves will be lovely; if otherwise, no example can guide his selection, no precept govern his hand; and farther let it be distinctly observed, that all this mannered landscape is only right under the supposition of its being a background to some supernatural presence; behind mortal beings it would be wrong, and by itself, as landscape, ridiculous; and farther, the chief virtue of it results from the exquisite refinement of those natural details consistent with its character from the botanical drawing of the flowers and the clearness and brightness of the sky. § . color, and decoration. their use in representations of the supernatural. another mode of attaining supernatural character is by purity of color almost shadowless, no more darkness being allowed than is absolutely necessary for the explanation of the forms, and the vividness of the effect enhanced as far as may be by use of gilding, enamel, and other jewellery. i think the smaller works of angelico are perfect models in this respect; the glories about the heads being of beaten rays of gold, on which the light plays and changes as the spectator moves; (and which therefore throw the purest flesh color out in dark relief) and such color and light being obtained by the enamelling of the angel wings as of course is utterly unattainable by any other expedient of art; the colors of the draperies always pure and pale; blue, rose, or tender green, or brown, but never dark or gloomy; the faces of the most celestial fairness, brightly flushed: the height and glow of this flush are noticed by constantin as reserved by the older painters for spiritual beings, as if expressive of light seen through the body. i cannot think it necessary while i insist on the value of all these seemingly childish means when in the hands of a noble painter, to assert also their futility and even absurdity if employed by no exalted power. i think the error has commonly been on the side of scorn, and that we reject much in our foolish vanity, which if wiser and more earnest we should delight in. but two points it is very necessary to note in the use of such accessories. § . decoration so used must be generic. the first that the ornaments used by angelico, giotto, and perugino, but especially by angelico, are always of a generic and abstract character. they are not diamonds, nor brocades, nor velvets, nor gold embroideries; they are mere spots of gold or of color, simple patterns upon _textureless_ draperies; the angel wings burn with transparent crimson and purple and amber, but they are not set forth with peacock's plumes; the golden circlets gleam with changeful light, but they are not beaded with elaborate pearls nor set with studied sapphires. in the works of filippino lippi, mantegna, and many other painters following, interesting examples may be found of the opposite treatment; and as in lippi the heads are usually very sweet, and the composition severe, the degrading effect of the realized decorations and imitated dress may be seen in him simply, and without any addition of painfulness from other deficiencies of feeling. the larger of the two pictures in the tuscan room of the uffizii, but for this defect, would have been a very noble ideal work. § . and color pure. the second point to be observed is that brightness of color is altogether inadmissible without purity and harmony; and that the sacred painters must not be followed in their frankness of unshadowed color unless we can also follow them in its clearness. as far as i am acquainted with the modern schools of germany, they seem to be entirely ignorant of the value of color as an assistant of feeling, and to think that hardness, dryness, and opacity are its virtues as employed in religious art; whereas i hesitate not to affirm that in such art more than in any other, clearness, luminousness and intensity of hue are essential to right impression; and from the walls of the arena chapel in their rainbow play of brilliant harmonies, to the solemn purple tones of perugino's fresco in the albizzi palace, i know not any great work of sacred art which is not as precious in color as in all other qualities (unless indeed it be a crucifixion of fra angelico in the florence academy, which has just been glazed and pumiced and painted and varnished by the picture-cleaners until it glares from one end of the picture gallery to the other;) only the pure white light and delicate hue of the idealists, whose colors are by preference such as we have seen to be the most beautiful in the chapter on purity are carefully to be distinguished from the golden light and deep pitched hue of the school of titian whose virtue is the grandeur of earthly solemnity, not the glory of heavenly rejoicing. § . ideal form of the body itself, of what variety susceptible. but leaving these accessory circumstances and touching the treatment of the bodily form, it is evident in the first place that whatever typical beauty the human body is capable of possessing must be bestowed upon it when it is understood as spiritual. and therefore those general proportions and types which are deducible from comparison of the nobler individuals of the race, must be adopted and adhered to; admitting among them not, as in the human ideal, such varieties as result from past suffering, or contest with sin, but such only as are consistent with sinless nature or are the signs of instantly or continually operative affections; for though it is conceivable that spirit should suffer, it is inconceivable that spiritual frame should retain like the stamped inelastic human clay, the brand of sorrow past, unless fallen. "his face, deep scars of thunder had entrenched, and care sat on his faded cheek." yet so far forth the angelic ideal is diminished, nor could this be suffered in pictorial representation. § . anatomical development how far admissible. again, such muscular development as is necessary to the perfect beauty of the body, is to be rendered. but that which is necessary to strength, or which appears to have been the result of laborious exercise, is inadmissible. no herculean form is spiritual, for it is degrading the spiritual creature to suppose it operative through impulse of bone and sinew; its power is immaterial and constant, neither dependent on, nor developed by exertion. generally, it is well to conceal anatomical development as far as may be; even michael angelo's anatomy interferes with his divinity; in the hands of lower men the angel becomes a preparation. how far it is possible to subdue or generalize the naked form i venture not to affirm, but i believe that it is best to conceal it as far as may be, not with draperies light and undulating, that fall in with, and exhibit its principal lines, but with draperies severe and linear, such as were constantly employed before the time of raffaelle. i recollect no single instance of a naked angel that does not look boylike or child-like, and unspiritualized; even fra bartolomeo's might with advantage be spared from the pictures at lucca, and, in the hands of inferior men, the sky is merely encumbered with sprawling infants; those of domenichino in the madonna del rosario, and martyrdom of st. agnes, are peculiarly offensive, studies of bare-legged children howling and kicking in volumes of smoke. confusion seems to exist in the minds of subsequent painters between angels and cupids. § . symmetry. how valuable. farther, the qualities of symmetry and repose are of peculiar value in spiritual form. we find the former most earnestly sought by all the great painters in the arrangement of the hair, wherein no loosely flowing nor varied form is admitted, but all restrained in undisturbed and equal ringlets; often, as in the infant christ of fra angelico, supported on the forehead in forms of sculpturesque severity. the angel of masaccio, in the deliverance of peter, grand both in countenance and motion, loses much of his spirituality because the painter has put a little too much of his own character into the hair, and left it disordered. § . the influence of greek art, how dangerous. § . its scope, how limited. of repose, and its exalting power, i have already said enough for our present purpose, though i have not insisted on the peculiar manifestation of it in the christian ideal as opposed to the pagan. but this, as well as other questions relating to the particular development of the greek mind, is foreign to the immediate inquiry, which therefore i shall here conclude in the hope of resuming it in detail after examining the laws of beauty in the inanimate creation; always, however, holding this for certain, that of whatever kind or degree the short coming may be, it is not possible but that short coming should be visible in every pagan conception, when set beside christian; and believing, for my own part, that there is not only deficiency, but such difference in kind as must make all greek conception full of danger to the student in proportion to his admiration of it; as i think has been fatally seen in its effect on the italian schools, when its pernicious element first mingled with their solemn purity, and recently in its influence on the french historical painters: neither can i from my present knowledge fix upon an ancient statue which expresses by the countenance any one elevated character of soul, or any single enthusiastic self-abandoning affection, much less any such majesty of feeling as might mark the features for supernatural. the greek could not conceive a spirit; he could do nothing without limbs; his god is a finite god, talking, pursuing, and going journeys;[ ] if at any time he was touched with a true feeling of the unseen powers around him, it was in the field of poised battle, for there is something in the near coming of the shadow of death, something in the devoted fulfilment of mortal duty, that reveals the real god, though darkly; that pause on the field of platæa was not one of vain superstition; the two white figures that blazed along the delphic plain, when the earthquake and the fire led the charge from olympus, were more than sunbeams on the battle dust; the sacred cloud, with its lance light and triumph singing, that went down to brood over the masts of salamis, was more than morning mist among the olives; and yet what were the greek's thoughts of his god of battle? no spirit power was in the vision; it was a being of clay strength and human passion, foul, fierce, and changeful; of penetrable arms and vulnerable flesh. gather what we may of great, from pagan chisel or pagan dream, and set it beside the orderer of christian warfare, michael the archangel: not milton's "with hostile brow and visage all inflamed," not even milton's in kingly treading of the hills of paradise, not raffaelle's with the expanded wings and brandished spear, but perugino's with his triple crest of traceless plume unshaken in heaven, his hand fallen on his crossleted sword, the truth girdle binding his undinted armor; god has put his power upon him, resistless radiance is on his limbs, no lines are there of earthly strength, no trace on the divine features of earthly anger; trustful and thoughtful, fearless, but full of love, incapable except of the repose of eternal conquest, vessel and instrument of omnipotence, filled like a cloud with the victor light, the dust of principalities and powers beneath his feet, the murmur of hell against him heard by his spiritual ear like the winding of a shell on the far-off sea-shore. § . conclusion. it is vain to attempt to pursue the comparison; the two orders of art have in them nothing common, and the field of sacred history, the intent and scope of christian feeling, are too wide and exalted to admit of the juxtaposition of any other sphere or order of conception; they embrace all other fields like the dome of heaven. with what comparison shall we compare the types of the martyr saints, the st. stephen of fra bartolomeo, with his calm forehead crowned by the stony diadem, or the st. catherine of raffaelle looking up to heaven in the dawn of the eternal day, with her lips parted in the resting from her pain? or with what the madonnas of francia and pinturicchio, in whom the hues of the morning and the solemnity of the eve, the gladness in accomplished promise, and sorrow of the sword-pierced heart, are gathered into one human lamp of ineffable love? or with what the angel choirs of angelico, with the flames on their white foreheads waving brighter as they move, and the sparkles streaming from their purple wings like the glitter of many suns upon a sounding sea, listening, in the pauses of alternate song, for the prolonging of the trumpet blast, and the answering of psaltery and cymbal, throughout the endless deep and from all the star shores of heaven? footnotes [ ] i take no note of the representation of evil spirits, since throughout we have been occupied in the pursuit of beauty; but it may be observed generally that there is great difficulty to be overcome in attempts of this kind, because the elevation of the form necessary to give it spirituality destroys the appearance of evil; hence even the greatest painters have been reduced to receive aid from the fancy, and to eke out all they could conceive of malignity by help of horns, hoofs, and claws. giotto's satan in the campo santo, with the serpent gnawing the heart, is fine; so many of the fiends of orcagna, and always those of michael angelo. tintoret in the temptation, with his usual truth of invention, has represented the evil spirit under the form of a fair angel, the wings burning with crimson and silver, the face sensual and treacherous. it is instructive to compare the results of imagination associated with powerful fancy in the demons of these great painters, or even in such nightmares as that of salvator already spoken of, sect. i. chap. v. § (note,) with the simple ugliness of idiotic distortion in the meaningless terrorless monsters of bronzino in the large picture of the uffizii, where the painter, utterly uninventive, having assembled all that is abominable of hanging flesh, bony limbs, crane necks, staring eyes, and straggling hair, cannot yet by the sum and substance of all obtain as much real fearfulness as an imaginative painter could throw into the turn of a lip or the knitting of a brow. [ ] i have not thought it necessary to give farther instances at present, since i purpose hereafter to give numerous examples of this kind of ideal landscape. of true and noble landscape, as such, i am aware of no instances except where least they might have been expected, among the sea-bred venetians. ghirlandajo shows keen, though prosaic, sense of nature in that view of venice behind an adoration of magi in the uffizii, but he at last walled himself up among gilded entablatures. masaccio indeed has given one grand example in the fresco of the tribute money, but its color is now nearly lost. [ ] i know not anything in the range of art more unspiritual than the apollo belvidere; the raising of the fingers of the right hand in surprise at the truth of the arrow is altogether human, and would be vulgar in a prince, much more in a deity. the sandals destroy the divinity of the foot, and the lip is curled with mortal passion. addenda. although the plan of the present portion of this work does not admit of particular criticism, it will neither be useless nor irrelevant to refer to one or two works, lately before the public, in the exhibitions of the royal academy, which either illustrate, or present exceptions to, any of the preceding statements. i would first mention, with reference to what has been advanced respecting the functions of associative imagination, the very important work of mr. linnell, the "eve of the deluge;" a picture upheld by its admirers (and these were some of the most intelligent judges of the day) for a work of consummate imaginative power; while it was pronounced by the public journals to be "a chaos of unconcocted color." if the writers for the press had been aware of the kind of study pursued by mr. linnell through many laborious years, characterized by an observance of nature scrupulously and minutely patient, directed by the deepest sensibility, and aided by a power of drawing almost too refined for landscape subjects, and only to be understood by reference to his engravings after michael angelo, they would have felt it to be unlikely that the work of such a man should be entirely undeserving of respect. on the other hand, the grounds of its praise were unfortunately chosen; for, though possessing many merits, it had no claim whatever to be ranked among productions of creative art. it would perhaps be difficult to point to a work so exalted in feeling, and so deficient in invention. the sky had been strictly taken from nature, this was evident at a glance; and as a study of sky it was every way noble. to the purpose of the picture it hardly contributed; its sublimity was that of splendor, not of terror; and its darkness that of retreating, not of gathering, storm. the features of the landscape were devoid alike of variety and probability; the division of the scene by the central valley and winding river at once theatrical and commonplace; and the foreground, on which the light was intense, alike devoid of dignity in arrangement, and of interest in detail. the falseness or deficiency of color in the works of mr. landseer has been remarked above. the writer has much pleasure in noticing a very beautiful exception in the picture of the "random shot," certainly the most successful rendering he has ever seen of the hue of snow under warm but subdued light. the subtlety of gradation from the portions of the wreath fully illumined, to those which, feebly tinged by the horizontal rays, swelled into a dome of dim purple, dark against the green evening sky; the truth of the blue shadows, with which this dome was barred, and the depth of delicate color out of which the lights upon the footprints were raised, deserved the most earnest and serious admiration; proving, at the same time, that the errors in color, so frequently to be regretted in the works of the painter, are the result rather of inattention than of feeble perception. a curious proof of this inattention occurs in the disposition of the shadows in the background of the "old cover hack," no. . one of its points of light is on the rusty iron handle of a pump, in the shape of an s. the sun strikes the greater part of its length, illuminating the perpendicular portion of the curve; yet shadow is only cast on the wall behind by the returning portion of the lower extremity. a smile may be excited by the notice of so trivial a circumstance; but the simplicity of the error renders it the more remarkable, and the great masters of chiaroscuro are accurate in all such minor points; a vague sense of greater truth results from this correctness, even when it is not in particulars analyzed or noted by the observer. in the small but very valuable paul potter in lord westminster's collection, the body of one of the sheep under the hedge is for the most part in shadow, but the sunlight touches the extremity of the back. the sun is low, and the shadows feeble and distorted; yet that of the sunlighted fleece is cast exactly in its true place and proportion beyond that of the hedge. the spectator may not observe this; yet, unobserved, it is one of the circumstances which make him feel the picture to be full of sunshine. as an example of perfect color, and of the most refined handling ever perhaps exhibited in animal painting, the butcher's dog in the corner of mr. mulready's "butt," no. , deserved a whole room of the academy to himself. this, with the spaniel in the "choosing the wedding gown," and the two dogs in the hayfield subject (burchell and sophia), displays perhaps the most wonderful, because the most dignified, finish in the expression of anatomy and covering--of muscle and hide at once, and assuredly the most perfect unity of drawing and color, which the entire range of ancient and modern art can exhibit. albert durer is indeed the only rival who might be suggested; and, though greater far in imagination, and equal in draughtsmanship, albert durer was less true and less delicate in hue. in sculpturesque arrangement both masters show the same degree of feeling: any of these dogs of mulready might be taken out of the canvas and cut in alabaster, or, perhaps better, struck upon a coin. every lock and line of the hair has been grouped as it is on a greek die; and if this not always without some loss of ease and of action, yet this very loss is ennobling, in a period when all is generally sacrificed to the great coxcombry of art, the affectation of ease. yet mr. mulready himself is not always free from affectation of some kind; mannerism, at least, there is in his treatment of tree trunks. there is a ghastliness about his labored anatomies of them, as well as a want of specific character. why need they be always flayed? the hide of a beech tree, or of a birch or fir, is nearly as fair a thing as an animal's; glossy as a dove's neck barred with black like a zebra, or glowing in purple grey and velvet brown like furry cattle in sunset. why not paint these as mr. mulready paints other things, as they are? that simplest, that deepest of all secrets, which gives such majesty to the ragged leaves about the edges of the pond in the "gravel-pit." (no. .), and imparts a strange interest to the grey ragged urchins disappearing behind the bank, that bank so low, so familiar, so sublime! what a contrast between the deep sentiment of that commonest of all common, homeliest of all homely, subjects, and the lost sentiment of mr. stanfield's "amalfi" the chief landscape of the year, full of exalted material, and mighty crags, and massy seas, grottoes, precipices, and convents, fortress-towers and cloud-capped mountains, and all in vain, merely because that same simple secret has been despised; because nothing there is painted as it is! the picture was a most singular example of the scenic assemblage of contradictory theme which is characteristic of picturesque, as opposed to poetical, composition. the lines chosen from rogers for a titular legend were full of summer, glowing with golden light, and toned with quiet melancholy: "to him who sails under the shore, a few white villages, scattered above, below, some in the clouds, some on the margin of the dark blue sea, and glittering thro' their lemon groves, announce the region of amalfi. then, half-fallen, a lonely watch-tower on the precipice, their ancient landmark, comes--long may it last! and to the seaman, in a distant age, though now he little thinks how large his debt, serve for their monument." prepared by these lines for a dream upon deep, calm waters, under the shadow and scent of the close lemon leaves, the spectator found himself placed by the painter, wet through, in a noisy fishing boat, on a splashing sea, with just as much on his hands as he could manage to keep her gunwale from being stove in against a black rock; and with a heavy grey squall to windward. (this squall, by the by, was the very same which appeared in the picture of the magra of , and so were the snowy mountains above; only the squall at amalfi entered on the left, and at the magra on the right.) now the scenery of amalfi is impressive alike in storm or calm, and the writer has seen the mediterranean as majestic and as southern-looking in its rage as in its rest. but it is treating both the green water and woods unfairly to destroy their peace without expressing their power; and withdraw from them their sadness and their sun, without the substitution of any effect more terrific than that of a squall at the nore. the snow on the distant mountains chilled what it could not elevate, and was untrue to the scene besides; there is no snow on the monte st. angelo in summer except what is kept for the neapolitan confectioners. the great merit of the picture was its rock-painting; too good to have required the aid of the exaggeration of forms which satiated the eye throughout the composition. mr. f. r. pickersgill's "contest of beauty" (no. .), and mr. uwins's "vineyard scene in the south of france," were, after mr. mulready's works, among the most interesting pieces of color in the exhibition. the former, very rich and sweet in its harmonies, and especially happy in its contrasts of light and dark armor; nor less in the fancy of the little love who, losing his hold of the orange boughs, was falling ignominiously without having time to open his wings. the latter was a curious example of what i have described as abstraction of color. strictly true or possible it was not; a vintage is usually a dusty and dim-looking procedure; but there were poetry and feeling in mr. uwins's idealization of the sombre black of the veritable grape into a luscious ultramarine purple, glowing among the green leaves like so much painted glass. the figures were bright and graceful in the extreme and most happily grouped. little else that could be called color was to be seen upon the walls of the exhibition, with the exception of the smaller works of mr. etty. of these, the single head, "morning prayer," (no. .), and the "still life" (no. .), deserved, allowing for their peculiar aim, the highest praise. the larger subjects, more especially the st. john, were wanting in the merits peculiar to the painter; and in other respects it is alike painful and useless to allude to them. a very important and valuable work of mr. harding was placed, as usual, where its merits could be but ill seen, and where its chief fault, a feebleness of color in the principal light on the distant hills, was apparent. it was one of the very few views of the year which were transcripts, nearly without exaggeration, of the features of the localities. among the less conspicuous landscapes, mr. w. e. dighton's "hay meadow corner" deserved especial notice; it was at once vigorous, fresh, faithful, and unpretending, the management of the distance most ingenious, and the painting of the foreground, with the single exception of mr. mulready's above noticed, unquestionably the best in the room. i have before had occasion to notice a picture by this artist, "a hayfield in a shower," exhibited in the british institution in , and this year ( ) in the scottish academy, whose sky, in qualities of rainy, shattered, transparent grey, i have seldom seen equalled; nor the mist of its distance, expressive alike of previous heat and present heat of rain. i look with much interest for other works by this painter. a hurried visit to scotland in the spring of this year, while it enables the writer to acknowledge the ardor and genius manifested in very many of the works exhibited in the scottish academy, cannot be considered as furnishing him with sufficient grounds for specific criticism. he cannot, however, err in testifying his concurrence in the opinion expressed to him by several of the most distinguished members of that academy, respecting the singular merit of the works of mr. h. drummond. a cabinet picture of "banditti on the watch," appeared to him one of the most masterly, unaffected, and sterling pieces of quiet painting he has ever seen from the hand of a living artist; and the other works of mr. drummond were alike remarkable for their manly and earnest finish, and their sweetness of feeling. * * * * * corrections made to the original text. page : 'wherein the superioity' corrected to superiority. page : 'convent of st. marks' corrected to mark's page : 'had not been hoplessly' corrected to hopelessly. page : 'in the landscape of the fresco in st^a.' originally s^ta. page : 'alike devoid of dignity in arrangement' originally arrangemen footnote : 'de la poësie chrétienne', accented to be in accordance with text. library edition the complete works of john ruskin stones of venice volume iii giotto lectures on architecture harbours of england a joy forever national library association new york chicago the complete works of john ruskin volume x giotto and his works lectures on architecture the harbors of england political economy of art (a joy forever) giotto and his works in padua being an explanatory notice of the series of woodcuts executed for the arundel society after the frescos in the arena chapel advertisement. the following notice of giotto has not been drawn up with any idea of attempting a history of his life. that history could only be written after a careful search through the libraries of italy for all documents relating to the years during which he worked. i have no time for such search, or even for the examination of well-known and published materials; and have therefore merely collected, from the sources nearest at hand, such information as appeared absolutely necessary to render the series of plates now published by the arundel society intelligible and interesting to those among its members who have not devoted much time to the examination of mediæval works. i have prefixed a few remarks on the relation of the art of giotto to former and subsequent efforts; which i hope may be useful in preventing the general reader from either looking for what the painter never intended to give, or missing the points to which his endeavours were really directed. j.r. giotto and his works in padua. towards the close of the thirteenth century, enrico scrovegno, a noble paduan, purchased, in his native city, the remains of the roman amphitheatre or arena from the family of the delesmanini, to whom those remains had been granted by the emperor henry iii. of germany in . for the power of making this purchase, scrovegno was in all probability indebted to his father, reginald, who, for his avarice, is placed by dante in the seventh circle of the _inferno_, and regarded apparently as the chief of the usurers there, since he is the only one who addresses dante.[ ] the son, having possessed himself of the roman ruin, or of the site which it had occupied, built himself a fortified palace upon the ground, and a chapel dedicated to the annunciate virgin. [footnote : "noting the visages of some who lay beneath the pelting of that dolorous fire, one of them all i knew not; but perceived that pendent from his neck each bore a pouch, with colours and with emblems various marked, on which it seemed as if their eye did feed. and when amongst them looking round i came, a yellow purse i saw, with azure wrought, that wore a lion's countenance and port. then, still my sight pursuing its career, another i beheld, than blood more red, a goose display of whiter wing than curd. _and one who bore a fat and azure swine pictured on his white scrip, addressed me thus:_ what dost thou in this deep? go now and know, since yet thou livest, that my neighbour here, vitaliano, on my left shall sit. a paduan with these florentines am i. ofttimes they thunder in mine ears, exclaiming, oh! haste that noble knight, he who the pouch with the three goats will bring. this said, he writhed the mouth, and lolled the tongue out, like an ox that licks his nostrils." _canto_ xvii. this passage of cary's dante is not quite so clear as that translator's work usually is. "one of them all i knew not" is an awkward periphrasis for "i knew none of them." dante's indignant expression of the effect of avarice in withering away distinctions of character, and the prophecy of scrovegno, that his neighbor vitaliano, then living, should soon be with him, to sit on his left hand, is rendered a little obscure by the transposition of the word "here." cary has also been afraid of the excessive homeliness of dante's imagery; "whiter wing than curd" being in the original "whiter than butter." the attachment of the purse to the neck, as a badge of shame, in the _inferno_, is found before dante's time; as, for instance, in the windows of bourges cathedral (see plate iii. of mm. martin and cahier's beautiful work). and the building of the arena chapel by the son, as a kind of atonement for the avarice of the father, is very characteristic of the period, in which the use of money for the building of churches was considered just as meritorious as its unjust accumulation was criminal. i have seen, in a ms. church-service of the thirteenth century, an illumination representing church-consecration, illustrating the words, "fundata est domus domini supra verticem montium," surrounded for the purpose of contrast, by a grotesque, consisting of a picture of a miser's death-bed, a demon drawing his soul out of his mouth, while his attendants are searching in his chests for his treasures.] this chapel, built in or about the year ,[ ] appears to have been intended to replace one which had long existed on the spot; and in which, from the year , an annual festival had been held on lady-day, in which the annunciation was represented in the manner of our english mysteries (and under the same title: "una sacra rappresentazione di quel _mistero_"), with dialogue, and music both vocal and instrumental. scrovegno's purchase of the ground could not be allowed to interfere with the national custom; but he is reported by some writers to have rebuilt the chapel with greater costliness, in order, as far as possible, to efface the memory of his father's unhappy life. but federici, in his history of the cavalieri godenti, supposes that scrovegno was a member of that body, and was assisted by them in decorating the new edifice. the order of cavalieri godenti was instituted in the beginning of the thirteenth century, to defend the "existence," as selvatico states it, but more accurately the dignity, of the virgin, against the various heretics by whom it was beginning to be assailed. her knights were first called cavaliers of st. mary; but soon increased in power and riches to such a degree, that, from their general habits of life, they received the nickname of the "merry brothers." federici gives forcible reasons for his opinion that the arena chapel was employed in the ceremonies of their order; and lord lindsay observes, that the fulness with which the history of the virgin is recounted on its walls, adds to the plausibility of his supposition. [footnote : for these historical details i am chiefly indebted to the very careful treatise of selvatico, _sulla cappellina degli scrovegni nell'arena di padova_. padua, .] enrico scrovegno was, however, towards the close of his life, driven into exile, and died at venice in . but he was buried in the chapel he had built; and has one small monument in the sacristy, as the founder of the building, in which he is represented under a gothic niche, standing, with his hands clasped and his eyes raised; while behind the altar is his tomb, on which, as usual at the period, is a recumbent statue of him. the chapel itself may not unwarrantably be considered as one of the first efforts of popery in resistance of the reformation: for the reformation, though not victorious till the sixteenth, began in reality in the thirteenth century; and the remonstrances of such bishops as our own grossteste, the martyrdoms of the albigenses in the dominican crusades, and the murmurs of those "heretics" against whose aspersions of the majesty of the virgin this chivalrous order of the cavalieri godenti was instituted, were as truly the signs of the approach of a new era in religion, as the opponent work of giotto on the walls of the arena was a sign of the approach of a new era in art. the chapel having been founded, as stated above, in , giotto appears to have been summoned to decorate its interior walls about the year ,--summoned, as being at that time the acknowledged master of painting in italy. by what steps he had risen to this unquestioned eminence it is difficult to trace; for the records of his life, strictly examined, and freed from the verbiage and conjecture of artistical history, nearly reduce themselves to a list of the cities of italy where he painted, and to a few anecdotes, of little meaning in themselves, and doubly pointless in the fact of most of them being inheritances of the whole race of painters, and related successively of all in whose biographies the public have deigned to take an interest. there is even question as to the date of his birth; vasari stating him to have been born in , while baldinucci, on the internal evidence derived from vasari's own narrative, throws the date back ten years.[ ] i believe, however, that vasari is most probably accurate in his first main statement; and that his errors, always numerous, are in the subsequent and minor particulars. it is at least undoubted truth that giotto was born, and passed the years of childhood, at vespignano, about fourteen miles north of florence, on the road to bologna. few travellers can forget the peculiar landscape of that district of the apennine. as they ascend the hill which rises from florence to the lowest break in the ridge of fiesole, they pass continually beneath the walls of villas bright in perfect luxury, and beside cypress-hedges, enclosing fair terraced gardens, where the masses of oleander and magnolia, motionless as leaves in a picture, inlay alternately upon the blue sky their branching lightness of pale rose-colour, and deep green breadth of shade, studded with balls of budding silver, and showing at intervals through their framework of rich leaf and rubied flower, the far-away bends of the arno beneath its slopes of olive, and the purple peaks of the carrara mountains, tossing themselves against the western distance, where the streaks of motionless cloud burn above the pisan sea. the traveller passes the fiesolan ridge, and all is changed. the country is on a sudden lonely. here and there indeed are seen the scattered houses of a farm grouped gracefully upon the hill-sides,--here and there a fragment of tower upon a distant rock; but neither gardens, nor flowers, nor glittering palace-walls, only a grey extent of mountain-ground, tufted irregularly with ilex and olive: a scene not sublime, for its forms are subdued and low; not desolate, for its valleys are full of sown fields and tended pastures; not rich nor lovely, but sunburnt and sorrowful; becoming wilder every instant as the road winds into its recesses, ascending still, until the higher woods, now partly oak and partly pine, drooping back from the central crest of the apennine, leave a pastoral wilderness of scathed rock and arid grass, withered away here by frost, and there by strange lambent tongues of earth-fed fire.[ ] giotto passed the first ten years of his life, a shepherd-boy, among these hills; was found by cimabue near his native village, drawing one of his sheep upon a smooth stone; was yielded up by his father, "a simple person, a labourer of the earth," to the guardianship of the painter, who, by his own work, had already made the streets of florence ring with joy; attended him to florence, and became his disciple. [footnote : lord lindsay, _christian art_, vol. ii. p. .] [footnote : at pietra mala. the flames rise two or three feet above the stony ground out of which they spring, white and fierce enough to be visible in the intense rays even of the morning sun.] we may fancy the glance of the boy, when he and cimabue stood side by side on the ridge of fiesole, and for the first time he saw the flowering thickets of the val d'arno; and deep beneath, the innumerable towers of the city of the lily, the depths of his own heart yet hiding the fairest of them all. another ten years passed over him, and he was chosen from among the painters of italy to decorate the vatican. the account given us by vasari of the mode of his competition on this occasion, is one of the few anecdotes of him which seem to be authentic (especially as having given rise to an italian proverb), and it has also great point and value. i translate vasari's words literally. "this work (his paintings in the campo santo of pisa) acquired for him, both in the city and externally, so much fame, that the pope, benedict ix., sent a certain one of his courtiers into tuscany, to see what sort of a man giotto was, and what was the quality of his works, he (the pope) intending to have some paintings executed in st. peter's; which courtier, coming to see giotto, and hearing that there were other masters in florence who excelled in painting and in mosaic, spoke, in siena, to many masters; then, having received drawings from them, he came to florence; and having gone one morning into giotto's shop as he was at work, explained the pope's mind to him, and in what way he wished to avail himself of his powers, and finally requested from him a little piece of drawing to send to his holiness. giotto, who was most courteous, took a leaf (of vellum?), and upon this, with a brush dipped in red, fixing his arm to his side, to make it as the limb of a pair of compasses, and turning his hand, made a circle so perfect in measure and outline, that it was a wonder to see: which having done, he said to the courtier, with a smile, 'there is the drawing.' he, thinking himself mocked, said, 'shall i have no other drawing than this?' 'this is enough, and too much,' answered giotto; 'send it with the others: you will see if it will be understood.' the ambassador, seeing that he could not get any thing else, took his leave with small satisfaction, doubting whether he had not been made a jest of. however, when he sent to the pope the other drawings, and the names of those who had made them, he sent also that of giotto, relating the way in which he had held himself in drawing his circle, without moving his arm, and without compasses. whence the pope, and many intelligent courtiers, knew how much giotto overpassed in excellence all the other painters of his time. afterwards, the thing becoming known, the proverb arose from it: 'thou art rounder than the o of giotto;' which it is still in custom to say to men of the grosser clay; for the proverb is pretty, not only on account of the accident of its origin, but because it has a double meaning, 'round' being taken in tuscany to express not only circular form, but slowness and grossness of wit." such is the account of vasari, which, at the first reading, might be gravely called into question, seeing that the paintings at pisa, to which he ascribes the sudden extent of giotto's reputation, have been proved to be the work of francesco da volterra;[ ] and since, moreover, vasari has even mistaken the name of the pope, and written boniface ix. for boniface viii. but the story itself must, i think, be true; and, rightly understood, it is singularly interesting. i say, rightly understood; for lord lindsay supposes the circle to have been mechanically drawn by turning the sheet of vellum under the hand, as now constantly done for the sake of speed at schools. but neither do vasari's words bear this construction, nor would the drawing so made have borne the slightest testimony to giotto's power. vasari says distinctly, "and turning his hand" (or, as i should rather read it, "with a sweep of his hand") not "turning the vellum;" neither would a circle produced in so mechanical a manner have borne distinct witness to any thing except the draughtsman's mechanical ingenuity; and giotto had too much common sense, and too much courtesy, to send the pope a drawing which did not really contain the evidence he required. lord lindsay has been misled also by his own careless translation of "pennello tinto di rosso" ("a _brush_ dipped in red,") by the word "crayon." it is easy to draw the mechanical circle with a crayon, but by no means easy with a brush. i have not the slightest doubt that giotto drew the circle as a painter naturally would draw it; that is to say, that he set the vellum upright on the wall or panel before him, and then steadying his arm firmly against his side, drew the circular line with one sweeping but firm revolution of his hand, holding the brush long. such a feat as this is completely possible to a well-disciplined painter's hand, but utterly impossible to any other; and the circle so drawn, was the most convincing proof giotto could give of his decision of eye and perfectness of practice. [footnote : at least lord lindsay seems to consider the evidence collected by förster on this subject conclusive. _christian art_, vol. ii. p. .] still, even when thus understood, there is much in the anecdote very curious. here is a painter requested by the head of the church to execute certain religious paintings, and the only qualification for the task of which he deigns to demonstrate his possession is executive skill. nothing is said, and nothing appears to be thought, of expression, or invention, or devotional sentiment. nothing is required but firmness of hand. and here arises the important question: did giotto know that this was all that was looked for by his religious patrons? and is there occult satire in the example of his art which he sends them?--or does the founder of sacred painting mean to tell us that he holds his own power to consist merely in firmness of hand, secured by long practice? i cannot satisfy myself on this point: but yet it seems to me that we may safely gather two conclusions from the words of the master, "it is enough, and more than enough." the first, that giotto had indeed a profound feeling of the value of _precision_ in all art; and that we may use the full force of his authority to press the truth, of which it is so difficult to persuade the hasty workmen of modern times, that the difference between right and wrong lies within the breadth of a line; and that the most perfect power and genius are shown by the accuracy which disdains error, and the faithfulness which fears it. and the second conclusion is, that whatever giotto's imaginative powers might be, he was proud to be a good _workman_, and willing to be considered by others only as such. there might lurk, as has been suggested, some satire in the message to the pope, and some consciousness in his own mind of faculties higher than those of draughtsmanship. i cannot tell how far these hidden feelings existed; but the more i see of living artists, and learn of departed ones, the more i am convinced that the highest strength of genius is generally marked by strange unconsciousness of its own modes of operation, and often by no small scorn of the best results of its exertion. the inferior mind intently watches its own processes, and dearly values its own produce; the master-mind is intent on other things than itself, and cares little for the fruits of a toil which it is apt to undertake rather as a law of life than a means of immortality. it will sing at a feast, or retouch an old play, or paint a dark wall, for its daily bread, anxious only to be honest in its fulfilment of its pledges or its duty, and careless that future ages will rank it among the gods. i think it unnecessary to repeat here any other of the anecdotes commonly related of giotto, as, separately taken, they are quite valueless. yet much may be gathered from their general _tone_. it is remarkable that they are, almost without exception, records of good-humoured jests, involving or illustrating some point of practical good sense; and by comparing this general colour of the reputation of giotto with the actual character of his designs, there cannot remain the smallest doubt that his mind was one of the most healthy, kind, and active, that ever informed a human frame. his love of beauty was entirely free from weakness; his love of truth untinged by severity; his industry constant, without impatience; his workmanship accurate, without formalism; his temper serene, and yet playful; his imagination exhaustless, without extravagance; and his faith firm, without superstition. i do not know, in the annals of art, such another example of happy, practical, unerring, and benevolent power. i am certain that this is the estimate of his character which must be arrived at by an attentive study of his works, and of the few data which remain respecting his life; but i shall not here endeavour to give proof of its truth, because i believe the subject has been exhaustively treated by rumohr and förster, whose essays on the works and character of giotto will doubtless be translated into english, as the interest of the english public in mediæval art increases. i shall therefore here only endeavour briefly to sketch the relation which giotto held to the artists who preceded and followed him, a relation still imperfectly understood; and then, as briefly, to indicate the general course of his labours in italy, as far as may be necessary for understanding the value of the series in the arena chapel. the art of europe, between the fifth and thirteenth centuries, divides itself essentially into great branches, one springing from, the other grafted on, the old roman stock. the first is the roman art itself, prolonged in a languid and degraded condition, and becoming at last a mere formal system, centered at the feet of eastern empire, and thence generally called byzantine. the other is the barbarous and incipient art of the gothic nations, more or less coloured by roman or byzantine influence, and gradually increasing in life and power. generally speaking, the byzantine art, although manifesting itself only in perpetual repetitions, becoming every day more cold and formal, yet preserved reminiscences of design originally noble, and traditions of execution originally perfect. generally speaking, the gothic art, although becoming every day more powerful, presented the most ludicrous experiments of infantile imagination, and the most rude efforts of untaught manipulation. hence, if any superior mind arose in byzantine art, it had before it models which suggested or recorded a perfection they did not themselves possess; and the superiority of the individual mind would probably be shown in a more sincere and living treatment of the subjects ordained for repetition by the canons of the schools. in the art of the goth, the choice of subject was unlimited, and the style of design so remote from all perfection, as not always even to point out clearly the direction in which advance could be made. the strongest minds which appear in that art are therefore generally manifested by redundance of imagination, and sudden refinement of touch, whether of pencil or chisel, together with unexpected starts of effort or flashes of knowledge in accidental directions, gradually forming various national styles. of these comparatively independent branches of art, the greatest is, as far as i know, the french sculpture of the thirteenth century. no words can give any idea of the magnificent redundance of its imaginative power, or of the perpetual beauty of even its smallest incidental designs. but this very richness of sculptural invention prevented the french from cultivating their powers of painting, except in illumination (of which art they were the acknowledged masters), and in glass-painting. their exquisite gift of fretting their stone-work with inexhaustible wealth of sculpture, prevented their feeling the need of figure-design on coloured surfaces. the style of architecture prevalent in italy at the same period, presented, on the contrary, large blank surfaces, which could only be rendered interesting by covering them with mosaic or painting. the italians were not at the time capable of doing this for themselves, and mosaicists were brought from constantinople, who covered the churches of italy with a sublime monotony of byzantine traditions. but the gothic blood was burning in the italian veins; and the florentines and pisans could not rest content in the formalism of the eastern splendour. the first innovator was, i believe, giunta of pisa, the second cimabue, the third giotto; the last only being a man of power enough to effect a complete revolution in the artistic principles of his time. he, however, began, like his master cimabue, with a perfect respect for his byzantine models; and his paintings for a long time consisted only of repetitions of the byzantine subjects, softened in treatment, enriched in number of figures, and enlivened in gesture. afterwards he invented subjects of his own. the manner and degree of the changes which he at first effected could only be properly understood by actual comparison of his designs with the byzantine originals;[ ] but in default of the means of such a comparison, it may be generally stated that the innovations of giotto consisted in the introduction, a, of gayer or lighter colours; b, of broader masses; and, c, of more careful imitation of nature than existed in the works of his predecessors. [footnote : it might not, i think, be a work unworthy of the arundel society, to collect and engrave in outline the complete series of these byzantine originals of the subjects of the arena chapel, in order to facilitate this comparison. the greek mss. in the british museum would, i think, be amply sufficient; the harleian ms. numbered alone furnishing a considerable number of subjects, and especially a death of the virgin, with the st. john thrown into the peculiar and violent gesture of grief afterwards adopted by giotto in the entombment of the arena chapel.] a. _greater lightness of colour._ this was partly in compliance with a tendency which was beginning to manifest itself even before giotto's time. over the whole of northern europe, the colouring of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries had been pale: in manuscripts, principally composed of pale red, green, and yellow, blue being sparingly introduced (earlier still, in the eighth and ninth centuries, the letters had often been coloured with black and yellow only). then, in the close of the twelfth and throughout the thirteenth century, the great system of perfect colour was in use; solemn and deep; composed strictly, in all its leading masses, of the colours revealed by god from sinai as the noblest;--blue, purple, and scarlet, with gold (other hues, chiefly green, with white and black, being used in points or small masses, to relieve the main colours). in the early part of the fourteenth century the colours begin to grow paler; about the style is already completely modified; and at the close of the fourteenth century the colour is quite pale and delicate. i have not carefully examined the colouring of early byzantine work; but it seems always to have been comparatively dark, and in manuscripts is remarkably so; giotto's paler colouring, therefore, though only part of the great european system, was rendered notable by its stronger contrast with the byzantine examples. b. _greater breadth of mass._ it had been the habit of the byzantines to break up their draperies by a large number of minute folds. norman and romanesque sculpture showed much of the same character. giotto melted all these folds into broad masses of colour; so that his compositions have sometimes almost a titianesque look in this particular. this innovation was a healthy one, and led to very noble results when followed up by succeeding artists: but in many of giotto's compositions the figures become ludicrously cumbrous, from the exceeding simplicity of the terminal lines, and massiveness of unbroken form. the manner was copied in illuminated manuscripts with great disadvantage, as it was unfavourable to minute ornamentation. the french never adopted it in either branch of art, nor did any other northern school; minute and sharp folds of the robes remaining characteristic of northern (more especially of flemish and german) design down to the latest times, giving a great superiority to the french and flemish illuminated work, and causing a proportionate inferiority in their large pictorial efforts. even rubens and vandyke cannot free themselves from a certain meanness and minuteness in disposition of drapery. c. _close imitation of nature._ in this one principle lay giotto's great strength, and the entire secret of the revolution he effected. it was not by greater learning, not by the discovery of new theories of art, not by greater taste, nor by "ideal" principles of selection, that he became the head of the progressive schools of italy. it was simply by being interested in what was going on around him, by substituting the gestures of living men for conventional attitudes, and portraits of living men for conventional faces, and incidents of every-day life for conventional circumstances, that he became great, and the master of the great. giotto was to his contemporaries precisely what millais is to _his_ contemporaries,--a daring naturalist, in defiance of tradition, idealism, and formalism. the giottesque movement in the fourteenth, and pre-raphaelite movement in the nineteenth centuries, are precisely similar in bearing and meaning: both being the protests of vitality against mortality, of spirit against letter, and of truth against tradition: and both, which is the more singular, literally links in one unbroken chain of feeling; for exactly as niccola pisano and giotto were helped by the classical sculptures discovered in their time, the pre-raphaelites have been helped by the works of niccola and giotto at pisa and florence: and thus the fiery cross of truth has been delivered from spirit to spirit, over the dust of intervening generations. but what, it may be said by the reader, is the use of the works of giotto to _us_? they may indeed have been wonderful for their time, and of infinite use in that time; but since, after giotto, came leonardo and correggio, what is the use of going back to the ruder art, and republishing it in the year ? why should we fret ourselves to dig down to the root of the tree, when we may at once enjoy its fruit and foliage? i answer, first, that in all matters relating to human intellect, it is a great thing to have hold of the root: that at least we ought to see it, and taste it, and handle it; for it often happens that the root is wholesome when the leaves, however fair, are useless or poisonous. in nine cases out of ten, the first expression of an idea is the most valuable: the idea may afterward be polished and softened, and made more attractive to the general eye; but the first expression of it has a freshness and brightness, like the flash of a native crystal compared to the lustre of glass that has been melted and cut. and in the second place, we ought to measure the value of art less by its executive than by its moral power. giotto was not indeed one of the most accomplished painters, but he was one of the greatest men, who ever lived. he was the first master of his time, in architecture as well as in painting; he was the friend of dante, and the undisputed interpreter of religious truth, by means of painting, over the whole of italy. the works of such a man may not be the best to set before children in order to teach them drawing; but they assuredly should be studied with the greatest care by all who are interested in the history of the human mind. one point more remains to be noticed respecting him. as far as i am aware, he never painted profane subjects. all his important existing works are exclusively devoted to the illustration of christianity. this was not a result of his own peculiar feeling or determination; it was a necessity of the period. giotto appears to have considered himself simply as a workman, at the command of any employer, for any kind of work, however humble. "in the sixty-third novel of franco sacchetti we read that a stranger, suddenly entering giotto's study, threw down a shield, and departed, saying, 'paint me my arms on that shield.' giotto looking after him, exclaimed, 'who is he? what is he? he says, "paint me my arms," as if he was one of the bardi. what arms does he bear?'"[ ] but at the time of giotto's eminence, art was never employed on a great scale except in the service of religion; nor has it ever been otherwise employed, except in declining periods. i do not mean to draw any severe conclusion from this fact; but it is a fact nevertheless, which ought to be very distinctly stated, and very carefully considered. all _progressive_ art hitherto has been religious art; and commencements of the periods of decline are accurately marked, in illumination, by its employment on romances instead of psalters; and in painting, by its employment on mythology or profane history instead of sacred history. yet perhaps i should rather have said, on _heathen mythology_ instead of _christian mythology_; for this latter term--first used, i believe, by lord lindsay--is more applicable to the subjects of the early painters than that of "sacred _history_." of all the virtues commonly found in the higher orders of human mind, that of a stern and just respect for truth seems to be the rarest; so that while self-denial, and courage, and charity, and religious zeal, are displayed in their utmost degrees by myriads of saints and heroes, it is only once in a century that a man appears whose word may be implicitly trusted, and who, in the relation of a plain fact, will not allow his prejudices or his pleasure to tempt him to some colouring or distortion of it. hence the portions of sacred history which have been the constant subjects of fond popular contemplation have, in the lapse of ages, been encumbered with fictitious detail; and their various historians seem to have considered the exercise of their imagination innocent, and even meritorious, if they could increase either the vividness of conception or the sincerity of belief in their readers. a due consideration of that well-known weakness of the popular mind, which renders a statement credible in proportion to the multitude of local and circumstantial details which accompany it, may lead us to look with some indulgence on the errors, however fatal in their issue to the cause they were intended to advance, of those weak teachers, who thought the acceptance of their general statements of christian doctrine cheaply won by the help of some simple (and generally absurd) inventions of detail respecting the life of the virgin or the apostles. [footnote : notes to rogers' _italy_.] indeed, i can hardly imagine the bible to be ever read with true interest, unless, in our reading, we feel some longing for further knowledge of the minute incidents of the life of christ,--for some records of those things, which "if they had been written every one," the world could not have contained the books that should be written: and they who have once felt this thirst for further truth, may surely both conceive and pardon the earnest questioning of simple disciples (who knew not, as we do, how much had been indeed revealed), and measure with some justice the strength of the temptation which betrayed these teachers into adding to the word of revelation. together with this specious and subtle influence, we must allow for the instinct of imagination exerting itself in the acknowledged embellishment of beloved truths. if we reflect how much, even in this age of accurate knowledge, the visions of milton have become confused in the minds of many persons with scriptural facts, we shall rather be surprised, that in an age of legends so little should be added to the bible, than that occasionally we should be informed of important circumstances in sacred history with the collateral warning, "this moses spake not of."[ ] [footnote : these words are gravely added to some singular particulars respecting the life of adam, related in a ms. of the sixteenth century preserved in the herald's college.] more especially in the domain of painting, it is surprising to see how strictly the early workmen confined themselves to representations of the same series of scenes; how little of pictorial embellishment they usually added; and how, even in the positions and gestures of figures, they strove to give the idea rather of their having seen the _fact_, than imagined a picturesque treatment of it. often, in examining early art, we mistake conscientiousness for servility, and attribute to the absence of invention what was indeed the result of the earnestness of faith. nor, in a merely artistical point of view, is it less important to note, that the greatest advance in power was made when painters had few subjects to treat. the day has perhaps come when genius should be shown in the discovery of perpetually various interest amidst the incidents of actual life; and the absence of inventive capacity is very assuredly proved by the narrow selection of subjects which commonly appear on the walls of our exhibitions. but yet it is to be always remembered, that more originality may be shown in giving interest to a well-known subject than in discovering a new one; that the greatest poets whom the world has seen have been contented to retouch and exalt the creations of their predecessors; and that the painters of the middle ages reached their utmost power by unweariedly treading a narrow circle of sacred subjects. nothing is indeed more notable in the history of art than the exact balance of its point of excellence, in all things, midway between servitude and license. thus, in choice and treatment of subject it became paralysed among the byzantines, by being mercilessly confined to a given series of scenes, and to a given mode of representing them. giotto gave it partial liberty and incipient life; by the artists who succeeded him the range of its scenery was continually extended, and the severity of its style slowly softened to perfection. but the range was still, in some degree, limited by the necessity of its continual subordination to religious purposes; and the style, though softened, was still chaste, and though tender, self-restrained. at last came the period of license: the artist chose his subjects from the lowest scenes of human life, and let loose his passions in their portraiture. and the kingdom of art passed away. as if to direct us to the observation of this great law, there is a curious visible type of it in the progress of ornamentation in manuscripts, corresponding with the various changes in the higher branch of art. in the course of the th and early th centuries, the ornamentation, though often full of high feeling and fantasy, is sternly enclosed within limiting border-lines;--at first, severe squares, oblongs, or triangles. as the grace of the ornamentation advances, these border-lines are softened and broken into various curves, and the inner design begins here and there to overpass them. gradually this emergence becomes more constant, and the lines which thus escape throw themselves into curvatures expressive of the most exquisite concurrence of freedom with self-restraint. at length the restraint vanishes, the freedom changes consequently into license, and the page is covered with exuberant, irregular, and foolish extravagances of leafage and line. it only remains to be noticed, that the circumstances of the time at which giotto appeared were peculiarly favourable to the development of genius; owing partly to the simplicity of the methods of practice, and partly to the naïveté with which art was commonly regarded. giotto, like all the great painters of the period, was merely a travelling decorator of walls, at so much a day; having at florence a _bottega_, or workshop, for the production and sale of small tempera pictures. there were no such things as "studios" in those days. an artist's "studies" were over by the time he was eighteen; after that he was a _lavoratore_, "labourer," a man who knew his business, and produced certain works of known value for a known price; being troubled with no philosophical abstractions, shutting himself up in no wise for the reception of inspirations; receiving, indeed, a good many, as a matter of course,--just as he received the sunbeams which came in at his window, the light which he worked by;--in either case, without mouthing about it, or much concerning himself as to the nature of it. not troubled by critics either; satisfied that his work was well done, and that people would find it out to be well done; but not vain of it, nor more profoundly vexed at its being found fault with, than a good saddler would be by some one's saying his last saddle was uneasy in the seat. not, on the whole, much molested by critics, but generally understood by the men of sense, his neighbours and friends, and permitted to have his own way with the walls he had to paint, as being, on the whole, an authority about walls; receiving at the same time a good deal of daily encouragement and comfort in the simple admiration of the populace, and in the general sense of having done good, and painted what no man could look upon without being the better for it. thus he went, a serene labourer, throughout the length and breadth of italy. for the first ten years of his life, a shepherd; then a student, perhaps for five or six; then already in florence, setting himself to his life's task; and called as a master to rome when he was only twenty. there he painted the principal chapel of st. peter's, and worked in mosaic also; no handicrafts, that had colour or form for their objects, seeming unknown to him. then returning to florence, he painted dante, about the year ,[ ] the th year of dante's life, the th of his own; and designed the façade of the duomo, on the death of its former architect, arnolfo. some six years afterwards he went to padua, there painting the chapel which is the subject of our present study, and many other churches. thence south again to assisi, where he painted half the walls and vaults of the great convent that stretches itself along the slopes of the perugian hills, and various other minor works on his way there and back to florence. staying in his native city but a little while, he engaged himself in other tasks at ferrara, verona, and ravenna, and at last at avignon, where he became acquainted with petrarch--working there for some three years, from to ;[ ] and then passed rapidly through florence and orvieto on his way to naples, where "he received the kindest welcome from the good king robert. the king, ever partial to men of mind and genius, took especial delight in giotto's society, and used frequently to visit him while working in the castello dell'uovo, taking pleasure in watching his pencil and listening to his discourse; 'and giotto,' says vasari, 'who had ever his repartee and bon-mot ready, held him there, fascinated at once with the magic of his pencil and pleasantry of his tongue.' we are not told the length of his sojourn at naples, but it must have been for a considerable period, judging from the quantity of works he executed there. he had certainly returned to florence in ." there he was immediately appointed "chief master" of the works of the duomo, then in progress, "with a yearly salary of one hundred gold florins, and the privilege of citizenship." he designed the campanile, in a more perfect form than that which now exists; for his intended spire, feet in height, never was erected. he, however, modelled the bas-reliefs for the base of the building, and sculptured two of them with his own hand. it was afterwards completed, with the exception of the spire, according to his design; but he only saw its foundations laid, and its first marble story rise. he died at florence, on the th of january, , full of honour; happy, perhaps, in departing at the zenith of his strength, when his eye had not become dim, nor his natural force abated. he was buried in the cathedral, at the angle nearest his campanile; and thus the tower, which is the chief grace of his native city, may be regarded as his own sepulchral monument. [footnote : lord lindsay's evidence on this point (_christian art_, vol. ii. p. ) seems quite conclusive. it is impossible to overrate the value of the work of giotto in the bargello, both for its own intrinsic beauty, and as being executed in this year, which is not only that in which the divina commedia opens, but, as i think, the culminating period in the history of the art of the middle ages.] [footnote : _christian art_, vol. ii. p. .] i may refer the reader to the close of lord lindsay's letter on giotto,[ ] from which i have drawn most of the particulars above stated, for a very beautiful sketch of his character and his art. of the real rank of that art, in the abstract, i do not feel myself capable of judging accurately, having not seen his finest works (at assisi and naples), nor carefully studied even those at florence. but i may be permitted to point out one or two peculiar characteristics in it which have always struck me forcibly. [footnote : _christian art_, p. .] in the first place, giotto never finished highly. he was not, indeed, a loose or sketchy painter, but he was by no means a delicate one. his lines, as the story of the circle would lead us to expect, are always firm, but they are never fine. even in his smallest tempera pictures the touch is bold and somewhat heavy: in his fresco work the handling is much broader than that of contemporary painters, corresponding somewhat to the character of many of the figures, representing plain, masculine kind of people, and never reaching any thing like the ideal refinement of the conceptions even of benozzo gozzoli, far less of angelico or francia. for this reason, the character of his painting is better expressed by bold wood-engravings than in general it is likely to be by any other means. again, he was a very noble colourist; and in his peculiar feeling for breadth of hue resembled titian more than any other of the florentine school. that is to say, had he been born two centuries later, when the art of painting was fully known, i believe he would have treated his subjects much more like titian than like raphael; in fact, the frescoes of titian in the chapel beside the church of st. antonio at padua, are, in all technical qualities, and in many of their conceptions, almost exactly what i believe giotto would have done, had he lived in titian's time. as it was, he of course never attained either richness or truth of colour; but in serene brilliancy he is not easily rivalled; invariably massing his hues in large fields, limiting them firmly, and then filling them with subtle gradation. he had the venetian fondness for bars and stripes, not unfrequently casting barred colours obliquely across the draperies of an upright figure, from side to side (as very notably in the dress of one of the musicians who are playing to the dancing of herodias' daughter, in one of his frescoes at santa croce); and this predilection was mingled with the truly mediæval love of _quartering_.[ ] the figure of the madonna in the small tempera pictures in the academy at florence is always completely divided into two narrow segments by her dark-blue robe. [footnote : i use this heraldic word in an inaccurate sense, knowing no other that will express what i mean,--the division of the picture into quaint segments of alternating colour, more marked than any of the figure outlines.] and this is always to be remembered in looking at any engravings from the works of giotto; for the injury they sustain in being deprived of their colour is far greater than in the case of later designers. all works produced in the fourteenth century agree in being more or less decorative; they were intended in most instances to be subservient to architectural effect, and were executed in the manner best calculated to produce a striking impression when they were seen in a mass. the painted wall and the painted window were part and parcel of one magnificent whole; and it is as unjust to the work of giotto, or of any contemporary artist, to take out a single feature from the series, and represent it in black and white on a separate page, as it would be to take out a compartment of a noble coloured window, and engrave it in the same manner. what is at once refined and effective, if seen at the intended distance in unison with the rest of the work, becomes coarse and insipid when seen isolated and near; and the more skilfully the design is arranged, so as to give full value to the colours which are introduced in it, the more blank and cold will it become when it is deprived of them. in our modern art we have indeed lost sight of one great principle which regulated that of the middle ages, namely, that chiaroscuro and colour are incompatible in their highest degrees. wherever chiaroscuro enters, colour must lose some of its brilliancy. there is no _shade_ in a rainbow, nor in an opal, nor in a piece of mother-of-pearl, nor in a well-designed painted window; only various hues of perfect colour. the best pictures, by subduing their colour and conventionalising their chiaroscuro, reconcile both in their diminished degrees; but a perfect light and shade cannot be given without considerable loss of liveliness in colour. hence the supposed inferiority of tintoret to titian. tintoret is, in reality, the greater colourist of the two; but he could not bear to falsify his light and shadow enough to set off his colour. titian nearly strikes the exact mean between the painted glass of the th century and rembrandt; while giotto closely approaches the system of painted glass, and hence his compositions lose grievously by being translated into black and white. but even this chiaroscuro, however subdued, is not without a peculiar charm; and the accompanying engravings possess a marked superiority over all that have hitherto been made from the works of this painter, in rendering this chiaroscuro, as far as possible, together with the effect of the local colours. the true appreciation of art has been retarded for many years by the habit of trusting to outlines as a sufficient expression of the sentiment of compositions; whereas in all truly great designs, of whatever age, it is never the outline, but the disposition of the masses, whether of shade or colour, on which the real power of the work depends. for instance, in plate iii. (the angel appears to anna), the interest of the composition depends entirely upon the broad shadows which fill the spaces of the chamber, and of the external passage in which the attendant is sitting. this shade explains the whole scene in a moment: gives prominence to the curtain and coverlid of the homely bed, and the rude chest and trestles which form the poor furniture of the house; and conducts the eye easily and instantly to the three figures, which, had the scene been expressed in outline only, we should have had to trace out with some care and difficulty among the pillars of the loggia and folds of the curtains. so also the relief of the faces in light against the dark sky is of peculiar value in the compositions no. x. and no. xii. the _drawing_ of giotto is, of course, exceedingly faulty. his knowledge of the human figure is deficient; and this, the necessary drawback in all works of the period, occasions an extreme difficulty in rendering them faithfully in an engraving. for wherever there is good and legitimate drawing, the ordinary education of a modern draughtsman enables him to copy it with tolerable accuracy; but when once the true forms of nature are departed from, it is by no means easy to express _exactly_ the error, and _no more than_ the error, of his original. in most cases modern copyists try to modify or hide the weaknesses of the old art,--by which procedure they very often wholly lose its spirit, and only half redeem its defects; the results being, of course, at once false as representations, and intrinsically valueless. and just as it requires great courage and skill in an interpreter to speak out honestly all the rough and rude words of the first speaker, and to translate deliberately and resolutely, in the face of attentive men, the expressions of his weakness or impatience; so it requires at once the utmost courage and skill in a copyist to trace faithfully the failures of an imperfect master, in the front of modern criticism, and against the inborn instincts of his own hand and eye. and let him do the best he can, he will still find that the grace and life of his original are continually flying off like a vapour, while all the faults he has so diligently copied sit rigidly staring him in the face,--a terrible _caput mortuum_. it is very necessary that this should be well understood by the members of the arundel society, when they hear their engravings severely criticised. it is easy to produce an agreeable engraving by graceful infidelities; but the entire endeavour of the draughtsmen employed by this society has been to obtain accurately the character of the original: and he who never proposes to himself to rise _above_ the work he is copying, must most assuredly often fall beneath it. such fall is the inherent and inevitable penalty on all absolute copyism; and wherever the copy is made with sincerity, the fall must be endured with patience. it will never be an utter or a degrading fall; that is reserved for those who, like vulgar translators, wilfully quit the hand of their master, and have no strength of their own. lastly. it is especially to be noticed that these works of giotto, in common with all others of the period, are independent of all the inferior sources of pictorial interest. they never show the slightest attempt at imitative realisation: they are simple suggestions of ideas, claiming no regard except for the inherent value of the thoughts. there is no filling of the landscape with variety of scenery, architecture, or incident, as in the works of benozzo gozzoli or perugino; no wealth of jewellery and gold spent on the dresses of the figures, as in the delicate labours of angelico or gentile da fabriano. the background is never more than a few gloomy masses of rock, with a tree or two, and perhaps a fountain; the architecture is merely what is necessary to explain the scene; the dresses are painted sternly on the "heroic" principle of sir joshua reynolds--that drapery is to be "drapery, and nothing more,"--there is no silk, nor velvet, nor distinguishable material of any kind: the whole power of the picture is rested on the three simple essentials of painting--pure colour, noble form, noble thought. we moderns, educated in reality far more under the influence of the dutch masters than the italian, and taught to look for realisation in all things, have been in the habit of casting scorn on these early italian works, as if their simplicity were the result of ignorance merely. when we know a little more of art in general, we shall begin to suspect that a man of giotto's power of mind did not altogether suppose his clusters of formal trees, or diminutive masses of architecture, to be perfect representations of the woods of judea, or of the streets of jerusalem: we shall begin to understand that there is a symbolical art which addresses the imagination, as well as a realist art which supersedes it; and that the powers of contemplation and conception which could be satisfied or excited by these simple types of natural things, were infinitely more majestic than those which are so dependent on the completeness of what is presented to them as to be paralysed by an error in perspective, or stifled by the absence of atmosphere. nor is the healthy simplicity of the period less marked in the selection than in the treatment of subjects. it has in these days become necessary for the painter who desires popularity to accumulate on his canvas whatever is startling in aspect or emotion, and to drain, even to exhaustion, the vulgar sources of the pathetic. modern sentiment, at once feverish and feeble, remains unawakened except by the violences of gaiety or gloom; and the eye refuses to pause, except when it is tempted by the luxury of beauty, or fascinated by the excitement of terror. it ought not, therefore, to be without a respectful admiration that we find the masters of the fourteenth century dwelling on moments of the most subdued and tender feeling, and leaving the spectator to trace the under-currents of thought which link them with future events of mightier interest, and fill with a prophetic power and mystery scenes in themselves so simple as the meeting of a master with his herdsmen among the hills, or the return of a betrothed virgin to her house. [illustration] it is, however, to be remembered that this quietness in character of subject was much more possible to an early painter, owing to the connection in which his works were to be seen. a modern picture, isolated and portable, must rest all its claims to attention on its own actual subject: but the pictures of the early masters were nearly always parts of a consecutive and stable series, in which many were subdued, like the connecting passages of a prolonged poem, in order to enhance the value or meaning of others. the arrangement of the subjects in the arena chapel is in this respect peculiarly skilful; and to that arrangement we must now direct our attention. [illustration: interior of the arena chapel, padua, looking eastward.] it was before noticed that the chapel was built between and . the architecture of italy in the beginning of the fourteenth century is always pure, and often severe; but this chapel is remarkable, even among the severest forms, for the absence of decoration. its plan, seen in the marginal figure on p. , is a pure oblong, with a narrow advanced tribune, terminating in a trilateral apse. selvatico quotes from the german writer stieglitz some curious observations on the apparent derivation of its proportions, in common with those of other buildings of the time, from the number of sides of its apse. without entering into these particulars, it may be noted that the apse is just one-half the width of the body of the chapel, and that the length from the extremity of the tribune to the west end is just seven times the width of the apse. the whole of the body of the chapel was painted by giotto; the walls and roof being entirely covered either with his figure-designs, or with various subordinate decorations connecting and enclosing them. the woodcut on p. represents the arrangement of the frescoes on the sides, extremities, and roof of the chapel. the spectator is supposed to be looking from the western entrance towards the tribune, having on his right the south side, which is pierced by six tall windows, and on which the frescoes are therefore reduced in number. the north side is pierced by no windows, and on it therefore the frescoes are continuous, lighted from the south windows. the several spaces numbered to are occupied by a continuous series of subjects, representing the life of the virgin and of christ; the narrow panels below, marked _a_, _b_, _c_, &c., are filled by figures of the cardinal virtues and their opponent vices: on the lunette above the tribune is painted a christ in glory, and at the western extremity the last judgment. thus the walls of the chapel are covered with a continuous meditative poem on the mystery of the incarnation, the acts of redemption, the vices and virtues of mankind as proceeding from their scorn or acceptance of that redemption, and their final judgment. the first twelve pictures of the series are exclusively devoted to the apocryphal history of the birth and life of the virgin. this the protestant spectator will observe, perhaps, with little favour, more especially as only two compartments are given to the ministry of christ, between his baptism and entry into jerusalem. due weight is, however, to be allowed to lord lindsay's remark, that the legendary history of the virgin was of peculiar importance in this chapel, as especially dedicated to her service; and i think also that giotto desired to unite the series of compositions in one continuous action, feeling that to have enlarged on the separate miracles of christ's ministry would have interrupted the onward course of thought. as it is, the mind is led from the first humiliation of joachim to the ascension of christ in one unbroken and progressive chain of scenes; the ministry of christ being completely typified by his first and last conspicuous miracle: while the very unimportance of some of the subjects, as for instance that of the watching the rods, is useful in directing the spectator rather to pursue the course of the narrative, than to pause in satisfied meditation upon any single incident. and it can hardly be doubted that giotto had also a peculiar pleasure in dwelling on the circumstances of the shepherd life of the father of the virgin, owing to its resemblance to that of his own early years. the incidents represented in these first twelve paintings are recorded in the two apocryphal gospels known as the "protevangelion" and "gospel of st. mary."[ ] but on comparing the statements in these writings (which, by the by, are in nowise consistent with each other) with the paintings in the arena chapel, it appeared to me that giotto must occasionally have followed some more detailed traditions than are furnished by either of them; seeing that of one or two subjects the apocryphal gospels gave no distinct or sufficient explanation. fortunately, however, in the course of some other researches, i met with a manuscript in the british museum (harl. ,) containing a complete "history of the most holy family," written in northern italian of about the middle of the th century; and appearing to be one of the forms of the legend which giotto has occasionally followed in preference to the statements of the protevangelion. i have therefore, in illustration of the paintings, given, when it seemed useful, some portions of this manuscript; and these, with one or two verses of the commonly received accounts, will be found generally enough to interpret sufficiently the meaning of the painter. [footnote : it has always appeared strange to me, that ecclesiastical history should possess no more authentic records of the life of the virgin, before the period at which the narrative of st. luke commences, than these apocryphal gospels, which are as wretched in style as untrustworthy in matter; and are evidently nothing more than a collection, in rude imitation of the style of the evangelists, of such floating traditions as became current among the weak christians of the earlier ages, when their inquiries respecting the history of mary were met by the obscurity under which the divine will had veiled her humble person and character. there must always be something painful, to those who are familiar with the scriptures, in reading these feeble and foolish mockeries of the manner of the inspired writers; but it will be proper, nevertheless, to give the exact words in which the scenes represented by giotto were recorded to _him_.] the following complete list of the subjects will at once enable the reader to refer any of them to its place in the series, and on the walls of the building; and i have only now to remind him in conclusion, that within those walls the greatest painter and greatest poet of mediæval italy held happy companionship during the time when the frescoes were executed. "it is not difficult," says the writer already so often quoted, lord lindsay, "gazing on these silent but eloquent walls, to repeople them with the group once, as we know, five hundred years ago, assembled within them: giotto intent upon his work, his wife ciuta admiring his progress; and dante, with abstracted eye, alternately conversing with his friend, and watching the gambols of the children playing on the grass before the door." * * * * * series of subjects. . the rejection of joachim's offering. . joachim retires to the sheepfold. . the angel appears to anna. . the sacrifice of joachim. . the vision of joachim. . the meeting at the golden gate. . the birth of the virgin. . the presentation of the virgin. . the rods are brought to the high priest. . the watching of the rods. . the betrothal of the virgin. . the virgin returns to her house. . the angel gabriel. . the virgin annunciate. . the salutation. . the angel appearing to the shepherds. . the wise men's offering. . the presentation in the temple. . the flight into egypt. . the massacre of the innocents. . the young christ in the temple. . the baptism of christ. . the marriage in cana. . the raising of lazarus. . the entry into jerusalem. . the expulsion from the temple. . the hiring of judas. . the last supper. . the washing of the feet. . the kiss of judas. . christ before caiaphas. . the scourging of christ. . christ bearing his cross. . the crucifixion. . the entombment. . the resurrection. . the ascension. . the descent of the holy spirit. * * * * * i. the rejection of joachim's offering. "at that time, there was a man of perfect holiness, named joachim, of the tribe of juda, and of the city of jerusalem. and this joachim had in contempt the riches and honours of the world; and for greater despite to them, he kept his flocks, with his shepherds. "... and he, being so holy and just, divided the fruits which he received from his flocks into three parts: a third part--wool, and lambs, and such like--he gave to god, that is to say, to those who served god, and who ministered in the temple of god; another third part he gave to widows, orphans, and pilgrims; the remaining third he kept for himself and his family. and he persevering in this, god so multiplied and increased his goods that there was no man like him in the land of israel.... and having come to the age of twenty years, he took to wife anna, the daughter of ysaya, of his own tribe, and of the lineage of david. "this precious st. anna had always persevered in the service of god with great wisdom and sincerity; ... and having received joachim for her husband, was subject to him, and gave him honour and reverence, living in the fear of god. and joachim having lived with his wife anna for twenty years, yet having no child, and there being a great solemnity in jerusalem, all the men of the city went to offer in the temple of god, which solomon had built; and joachim entering the temple with (incense?) and other gifts to offer on the altar, and joachim having made his offering, the minister of the temple, whose name was issachar, threw joachim's offering from off the altar, and drove joachim out of the temple, saying, 'thou, joachim, art not worthy to enter into the temple, seeing that god has not added his blessing to you, as in your life you have had no seed.' thus joachim received a great insult in the sight of all the people; and he being all ashamed, returned to his house, weeping and lamenting most bitterly." (ms. harl.) the gospel of st. mary differs from this ms. in its statement of the respective cities of joachim and anna, saying that the family of the virgin's father "was of galilee and of the city of nazareth, the family of her mother was of bethlehem." it is less interesting in details; but gives a better, or at least more graceful, account of joachim's repulse, saying that issachar "despised joachim and his offerings, and asked him why he, who had no children, would presume to appear among those who had: adding, that his offerings could never be acceptable to god, since he had been judged by him unworthy to have children; the scripture having said, cursed is every one who shall not beget a male in israel." giotto seems to have followed this latter account, as the figure of the high priest is far from being either ignoble or ungentle. the temple is represented by the two most important portions of a byzantine church; namely, the ciborium which covered the altar, and the pulpit or reading desk; with the low screen in front of the altar enclosing the part of the church called the "cancellum." lord lindsay speaks of the priest within this enclosure as "confessing a young man who kneels at his feet." it seems to me, rather, that he is meant to be accepting the offering of another worshipper, so as to mark the rejection of joachim more distinctly. * * * * * ii. joachim retires to the sheepfold. "then joachim, in the following night, resolved to separate himself from companionship; to go to the desert places among the mountains, with his flocks; and to inhabit those mountains, in order not to hear such insults. and immediately joachim rose from his bed, and called about him all his servants and shepherds, and caused to be gathered together all his flocks, and goats, and horses, and oxen, and what other beasts he had, and went with them and with the shepherds into the hills; and anna his wife remained at home disconsolate, and mourning for her husband, who had departed from her in such sorrow." (ms. harl.) "but upon inquiry, he found that all the righteous had raised up seed in israel. then he called to mind the patriarch abraham,--how that god in the end of his life had given him his son isaac: upon which he was exceedingly distressed, and would not be seen by his wife; but retired into the wilderness and fixed his tent there, and fasted forty days and forty nights, saying to himself, 'i will not go down to eat or drink till the lord my god shall look down upon me; but prayer shall be my meat and drink.'" (protevangelion, chap. i.) giotto seems here also to have followed the ordinary tradition, as he has represented joachim retiring unattended,--but met by two of his shepherds, who are speaking to each other, uncertain what to do or how to receive their master. the dog hastens to meet him with joy. the figure of joachim is singularly beautiful in its pensiveness and slow motion; and the ignobleness of the herdsmen's figures is curiously marked in opposition to the dignity of their master. * * * * * iii. the angel appears to anna. "afterwards the angel appeared to anna his wife, saying, 'fear not, neither think that which you see is a spirit. for i am that angel who hath offered up your prayers and alms before god, and am now sent to tell you that a daughter will be born unto you.... arise, therefore, and go up to jerusalem; and when you shall come to that which is called the golden gate (because it is gilt with gold), as a sign of what i have told you, you shall meet your husband, for whose safety you have been so much concerned.'" (gospel of st. mary, chap. iii. - .) the accounts in the protevangelion and in the harleian ms. are much expanded: relating how anna feared her husband was dead, he having been absent from her five months; and how judith, her maid, taunted her with her childlessness; and how, going then into her garden, she saw a sparrow's nest, full of young, upon a laurel-tree, and mourning within herself, said, "i am not comparable to the very beasts of the earth, for even they are fruitful before thee, o lord.... i am not comparable to the very earth, for the earth produces its fruits to praise thee. then the angel of the lord stood by her," &c. both the protevangelion and harleian ms. agree in placing the vision in the garden; the latter adding, that she fled "into her chamber in great fear, and fell upon her bed, and lay as in a trance all that day and all that night, but did not tell the vision to her maid, because of her bitter answering." giotto has deviated from both accounts in making the vision appear to anna in her chamber, while the maid, evidently being considered an important personage, is at work in the passage. apart from all reference to the legends, there is something peculiarly beautiful in the simplicity of giotto's conception, and in the way in which he has shown the angel entering at the window, without the least endeavour to impress our imagination by darkness, or light, or clouds, or any other accessory; as though believing that angels might appear any where, and any day, and to all men, as a matter of course, if we would ask them, or were fit company for them. * * * * * iv. the sacrifice of joachim. the account of this sacrifice is only given clearly in the harleian ms.; but even this differs from giotto's series in the order of the visions, as the subject of the _next_ plate is recorded first in this ms., under the curious heading, "_disse sancto theofilo_ como l'angelo de dio aperse a joachim lo qual li anuntia la nativita della vergene maria;" while the record of this vision and sacrifice is headed, "como l'angelo de dio aparse _anchora_ a joachim." it then proceeds thus: "at this very moment of the day" (when the angel appeared to anna), "there appeared a most beautiful youth (_unno belitissimo zovene_) among the mountains there, where joachim was, and said to joachim, 'wherefore dost thou not return to thy wife?' and joachim answered, 'these twenty years god has given me no fruit of her, wherefore i was chased from the temple with infinite shame.... and, as long as i live, i will give alms of my flocks to widows and pilgrims.'... and these words being finished, the youth answered, 'i am the angel of god who appeared to thee the other time for a sign; and appeared to thy wife anna, who always abides in prayer, weeping day and night; and i have consoled her; wherefore i command thee to observe the commandments of god, and his will, which i tell you truly, that of thee shall be born a daughter, and that thou shalt offer her to the temple of god, and the holy spirit shall rest upon her, and her blessedness shall be above the blessedness of all virgins, and her holiness so great that human nature will not be able to comprehend it.'...[ ] [footnote : this passage in the old italian of the ms. may interest some readers: "e complice queste parole lo zovene respoxe, dignando, io son l'angelo de dio, lo quale si te aparse l'altra fiada, in segno, e aparse a toa mulier anna che sempre sta in oration plauzando di e note, e si lo consolada; unde io te comando che tu debie observare li comandimenti de dio, ela soua volunta che io te dico veramente, che de la toa somenza insera una fiola, e questa offrila al templo de dio, e lo spirito santo reposera in ley, ela soa beatitudine sera sovera tute le altre verzene, ela soua santita sera si grande che natura humana non la pora comprendere."] "then joachim fell upon the earth, saying, 'my lord, i pray thee to pray god for me, and to enter into this my tabernacle, and bless me, thy servant.' the angel answered, 'we are all the servants of god: and know that my eating would be invisible, and my drinking could not be seen by all the men in the world; but of all that thou wouldest give to me, do thou make sacrifice to god.' then joachim took a lamb without spot or blemish ...; and when he had made sacrifice of it, the angel of the lord disappeared and ascended into heaven; and joachim fell upon the earth in great fear, and lay from the sixth hour until the evening." this is evidently nothing more than a very vapid imitation of the scriptural narrative of the appearances of angels to abraham and manoah. but giotto has put life into it; and i am aware of no other composition in which so much interest and awe has been given to the literal "burnt sacrifice." in all other representations of such offerings which i remember, the interest is concentrated in the _slaying_ of the victim. but giotto has fastened on the _burning_ of it; showing the white skeleton left on the altar, and the fire still hurtling up round it, typical of the divine wrath, which is "as a consuming fire;" and thus rendering the sacrifice a more clear and fearful type not merely of the outward wounds and death of christ, but of his soul-suffering. "all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels."[ ] [footnote : (note by a friend):--"to me the most striking part of it is, that the skeleton is _entire_ ('a bone of him shall not be broken'), and that the head stands up still looking to the skies: is it too fanciful to see a meaning in this?"] the hand of the deity is seen in the heavens--the sign of the divine presence. * * * * * v. the angel (raphael) appears to joachim. "now joachim being in this pain, the lord god, father of mercy, who abandons not his servants, nor ever fails to console them in their distresses, if they pray for his grace and pity, had compassion on joachim, and heard his prayer, and sent the angel raphael from heaven to earth to console him, and announce to him the nativity of the virgin mary. therefore the angel raphael appeared to joachim, and comforted him with much peace, and foretold to him the birth of the virgin in that glory and gladness, saying, 'god save you, o friend of god, o joachim! the lord has sent me to declare to you an everlasting joy, and a hope that shall have no end.'... and having finished these words, the angel of the lord disappeared from him, and ascended into the heaven." (ms. harl.) the passage which i have omitted is merely one of the ordinary romanist accounts of the immaculate conception of the virgin, put into the form of prophecy. there are no sufficient details of this part of the legend either in the protevangelion or gospel of st. mary; but it is quite clear that giotto followed it, and that he has endeavoured to mark a distinction in character between the angels gabriel and raphael[ ] in the two subjects,--the form of raphael melting back into the heaven, and being distinctly recognised as angelic, while gabriel appears invested with perfect humanity. it is interesting to observe that the shepherds, who of course are not supposed to see the form of the angel (his manifestation being only granted to joachim during his sleep), are yet evidently under the influence of a certain degree of awe and expectation, as being conscious of some presence other than they can perceive, while the animals are unconscious altogether. [footnote : the ms. makes the angel raphael the only messenger. giotto clearly adopts the figure of gabriel from the protevangelion.] * * * * * vi. the meeting at the golden gate. "and joachim went down with the shepherds, and anna stood by the gate, and saw joachim coming with the shepherds. and she ran, and hanging about his neck, said, 'now i know that the lord hath greatly blessed me.'" (protevangelion, iv. , .) this is one of the most celebrated of giotto's compositions, and deservedly so, being full of the most solemn grace and tenderness. the face of st. anna, half seen, is most touching in its depth of expression; and it is very interesting to observe how giotto has enhanced its sweetness, by giving a harder and grosser character than is usual with him to the heads of the other two principal female figures (not but that this cast of feature is found frequently in the figures of somewhat earlier art), and by the rough and weather-beaten countenance of the entering shepherd. in like manner, the falling lines of the draperies owe a great part of their value to the abrupt and ugly oblongs of the horizontal masonry which adjoins them. * * * * * vii. the birth of the virgin. "and joachim said, 'now i know that the lord is propitious to me, and hath taken away all my sins.' and he went down from the temple of the lord justified, and went to his own house. "and when nine months were fulfilled to anna, she brought forth, and said to the midwife, 'what have i brought forth?' and she told her, a girl. "then anna said, 'the lord hath this day magnified my soul.' and she laid her in the bed." (protevangelion, v. - .) the composition is very characteristic of giotto in two respects: first, in its natural homeliness and simplicity (in older designs of the same subject the little madonna is represented as born with a golden crown on her head); and secondly, in the smallness of the breast and head of the sitting figure on the right,--a fault of proportion often observable in giotto's figures of children or young girls. for the first time, also, in this series, we have here two successive periods of the scene represented simultaneously, the babe being painted twice. this practice was frequent among the early painters, and must necessarily become so wherever painting undertakes the task of lengthened narrative. much absurd discussion has taken place respecting its propriety; the whole question being simply whether the human mind can or cannot pass from the contemplation of one event to that of another, without reposing itself on an intermediate gilt frame. * * * * * viii. the presentation of the virgin. "and when three years were expired, and the time of her weaning complete, they brought the virgin to the temple of the lord with offerings. "and there were about the temple, according to the fifteen psalms of degrees, fifteen stairs to ascend. "the parents of the blessed virgin and infant mary put her upon one of these stairs; but while they were putting off their clothes in which they had travelled, in the meantime, the virgin of the lord in such a manner went up all the stairs, one after another, without the help of any one to lead her or lift her, that any one would have judged from hence that she was of perfect age." (gospel of st. mary, iv. - .) there seems nothing very miraculous in a child's walking up stairs at three years old; but this incident is a favourite one among the roman-catholic painters of every period: generally, however, representing the child as older than in the legend, and dwelling rather on the solemn feeling with which she presents herself to the high-priest, than on the mere fact of her being able to walk alone. giotto has clearly regarded the incident entirely in this light; for st. anna touches the child's arm as if to support her; so that the so-called miraculous walking is not even hinted at. lord lindsay particularly notices that the virgin is "a dwarf woman instead of a child; the delineation of childhood was one of the latest triumphs of art." even in the time of those latest triumphs, however, the same fault was committed in another way; and a boy of eight or ten was commonly represented--even by raffaelle himself--as a dwarf hercules, with all the gladiatorial muscles already visible in stunted rotundity. giotto probably felt he had not power enough to give dignity to a child of three years old, and intended the womanly form to be rather typical of the virgin's advanced mind, than an actual representation of her person. * * * * * ix. the rods are brought to the high-priest. "then he (the high-priest) appointed that all the men of the house and family of david who were marriageable, and not married, should bring their several rods to the altar. and out of whatsoever person's rod, after it was brought, a flower should bud forth, and on the top of it the spirit of the lord should sit in the appearance of a dove, he should be the man to whom the virgin should be given, and be betrothed to her." (gospel of st. mary, v. , .) there has originally been very little interest in this composition; and the injuries which it has suffered have rendered it impossible for the draughtsman to distinguish the true folds of the draperies amidst the defaced and worn colours of the fresco, so that the character of the central figure is lost. the only points requiring notice are, first, the manner in which st. joseph holds his rod, depressing and half-concealing it,[ ] while the other suitors present theirs boldly; and secondly, the graceful though monotonous grouping of the heads of the crowd behind him. this mode of rendering the presence of a large multitude, showing only the crowns of the heads in complicated perspective, was long practised in mosaics and illuminations before the time of giotto, and always possesses a certain degree of sublimity in its power of suggesting perfect unity of feeling and movement among the crowd. [footnote : in the next chapter, it is said that "joseph drew back his rod when every one else presented his."] * * * * * x. the watching of the rods at the altar. "after the high-priest had received their rods, he went into the temple to pray. "and when he had finished his prayer, he took the rods and went forth and distributed them; and there was no miracle attended them. "the last rod was taken by joseph; and, behold, a dove proceeded out of the rod, and flew upon the head of joseph." (protevangelion, viii. - .) this is among the least graceful designs of the series; though the clumsiness in the contours of the leading figures is indeed a fault which often occurs in the painter's best works, but it is here unredeemed by the rest of the composition. the group of the suitors, however, represented as waiting at the outside of the temple, is very beautiful in its earnestness, more especially in the passionate expression of the figure in front. it is difficult to look long at the picture without feeling a degree of anxiety, and strong sympathy with the silent watching of the suitors; and this is a sign of no small power in the work. the head of joseph is seen far back on the extreme left; thus indicating by its position his humility, and desire to withdraw from the trial. * * * * * xi. the betrothal of the virgin. there is no distinct notice of this event in the apocryphal gospel: the traditional representation of it is nearly always more or less similar. lord lindsay's account of the composition before us is as follows: "the high-priest, standing in front of the altar, joins their hands; behind the virgin stand her bridesmaids; behind st. joseph the unsuccessful suitors, one of whom steps forward to strike him, and another breaks his rod on his knee. joseph bears his own rod, on the flower of which the holy spirit rests in the semblance of a dove." the development of this subject by perugino (for raffaelle's picture in the brera is little more than a modified copy of perugino's, now at caen,) is well known; but notwithstanding all its beauty, there is not, i think, any thing in the action of the disappointed suitors so perfectly true or touching as that of the youth breaking his rod in this composition of giotto's; nor is there among any of the figures the expression of solemn earnestness and intentness on the event which is marked among the attendants here, and in the countenances of the officiating priests. * * * * * xii. the virgin mary returns to her house. "accordingly, the usual ceremonies of betrothing being over, he (joseph) returned to his own city of bethlehem to set his house in order, and to make the needful provisions for the marriage. but the virgin of the lord, mary, with seven other virgins of the same age, who had been weaned at the same time, and who had been appointed to attend her by the priest, returned to her parents' house in galilee." (gospel of st. mary, vi. , .) of all the compositions in the arena chapel i think this the most characteristic of the noble time in which it was done. it is not so notable as exhibiting the mind of giotto, which is perhaps more fully seen in subjects representing varied emotion, as in the simplicity and repose which were peculiar to the compositions of the early fourteenth century. in order to judge of it fairly, it ought first to be compared with any classical composition--with a portion, for instance, of the elgin frieze,--which would instantly make manifest in it a strange seriousness and dignity and slowness of motion, resulting chiefly from the excessive simplicity of all its terminal lines. observe, for instance, the pure wave from the back of the virgin's head to the ground; and again, the delicate swelling line along her shoulder and left arm, opposed to the nearly unbroken fall of the drapery of the figure in front. it should then be compared with an egyptian or ninevite series of figures, which, by contrast, would bring out its perfect sweetness and grace, as well as its variety of expression: finally, it should be compared with any composition subsequent to the time of raffaelle, in order to feel its noble freedom from pictorial artifice and attitude. these three comparisons cannot be made carefully without a sense of profound reverence for the national spirit[ ] which could produce a design so majestic, and yet remain content with one so simple. [footnote : _national_, because giotto's works are properly to be looked on as the _fruit_ of their own age, and the _food_ of that which followed.] the small _loggia_ of the virgin's house is noticeable, as being different from the architecture introduced in the other pictures, and more accurately representing the italian gothic of the dwelling-house of the period. the arches of the windows have no capitals; but this omission is either to save time, or to prevent the background from becoming too conspicuous. all the real buildings designed by giotto have the capital completely developed. * * * * * xiii. the annunciation.--the angel gabriel. this figure is placed on one side of the arch at the east end of the body of the chapel; the corresponding figure of the virgin being set on the other side. it was a constant practice of the mediæval artists thus to divide this subject; which, indeed, was so often painted, that the meaning of the separated figures of the angel and mary was as well understood as when they were seen in juxtaposition. indeed, on the two sides of this arch they would hardly be considered as separated, since very frequently they were set to answer to each other from the opposite extremities of a large space of architecture.[ ] [footnote : as, for instance, on the two opposite angles of the façade of the cathedral of rheims.] the figure of the angel is notable chiefly for its serenity, as opposed to the later conceptions of the scene, in which he sails into the chamber upon the wing, like a stooping falcon. the building above is more developed than in any other of the arena paintings; but it must always remain a matter of question, why so exquisite a designer of architecture as giotto should introduce forms so harsh and meagre into his backgrounds. possibly he felt that the very faults of the architecture enhanced the grace and increased the importance of the figures; at least, the proceeding seems to me inexplicable on any other theory.[ ] [footnote : (note by a friend:) "i suppose you will not admit as an explanation, that he had not yet turned his mind to architectural composition, the campanile being some thirty years later?"] * * * * * xiv. the annunciation.--the virgin mary. vasari, in his notice of one of giotto's annunciations, praises him for having justly rendered the _fear_ of the virgin at the address of the angel. if he ever treated the subject in such a manner, he departed from all the traditions of his time; for i am aware of no painting of this scene, during the course of the thirteenth and following centuries, which does not represent the virgin as perfectly tranquil, receiving the message of the angel in solemn thought and gentle humility, but without a shadow of fear. it was reserved for the painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to change angelic majesty into reckless impetuosity, and maiden meditation into panic dread. the face of the virgin is slightly disappointing. giotto never reached a very high standard of beauty in feature; depending much on distant effect in all his works, and therefore more on general arrangement of colour and sincerity of gesture, than on refinement of drawing in the countenance. * * * * * xv. the salutation. this picture, placed beneath the figure of the virgin annunciate at the east end of the chapel, and necessarily small, (as will be seen by the plan), in consequence of the space occupied by the arch which it flanks, begins the second or lower series of frescoes; being, at the same time, the first of the great chain of more familiar subjects, in which we have the power of comparing the conceptions of giotto not only with the designs of earlier ages, but with the efforts which subsequent masters have made to exalt or vary the ideas of the principal scenes in the life of the virgin and of christ. the two paintings of the angel gabriel and the virgin annunciate hardly provoke such a comparison, being almost statue-like in the calm subjection of all dramatic interest to the symmetrical dignity and beauty of the two figures, leading, as they do, the whole system of the decoration of the chapel; but this of the salutation is treated with no such reference to the architecture, and at once challenges comparison with the works of later masters. nor is the challenge feebly maintained. i have no hesitation in saying, that, among all the renderings of this scene which now exist, i remember none which gives the pure depth and plain facts of it so perfectly as this of giotto's. of majestic women bowing themselves to beautiful and meek girls, both wearing gorgeous robes, in the midst of lovely scenery, or at the doors of palladian palaces, we have enough; but i do not know any picture which seems to me to give so truthful an idea of the action with which elizabeth and mary must actually have met,--which gives so exactly the way in which elizabeth would stretch her arms, and stoop and gaze into mary's face, and the way in which mary's hand would slip beneath elizabeth's arms, and raise her up to kiss her. i know not any elizabeth so full of intense love, and joy, and humbleness; hardly any madonna in which tenderness and dignity are so quietly blended. she not less humble, and yet accepting the reverence of elizabeth as her appointed portion, saying, in her simplicity and truth, "he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his name." the longer that this group is looked upon, the more it will be felt that giotto has done well to withdraw from it nearly all accessories of landscape and adornment, and to trust it to the power of its own deep expression. we may gaze upon the two silent figures until their silence seems to be broken, and the words of the question and reply sound in our ears, low as if from far away: "whence is this to me, that the mother of my lord should come to me?" "my soul doth magnify the lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in god my saviour." * * * * * xvi. the nativity. i am not sure whether i shall do well or kindly in telling the reader anything about this beautiful design. perhaps the less he knows about early art or early traditions, the more deeply he will feel its purity and truth; for there is scarcely an incident here, or anything in the manner of representing the incidents, which is not mentioned or justified in scripture. the bold, hilly background reminds us that bethlehem was in the hill-country of judah. but it may seem to have two purposes besides this literal one: the first, that it increases the idea of _exposure_ and loneliness in the birth of christ; the second that the masses of the great hills, with the angels floating round them in the horizontal clouds, may in some sort represent to our thoughts the power and space of that heaven and earth whose lord is being laid in the manger-cradle. there is an exquisite truth and sweetness in the way the virgin turns upon the couch, in order herself to assist in laying the child down. giotto is in this exactly faithful to the scriptural words: "_she_ wrapped the child in swaddling-clothes, and _laid_ him in a manger." joseph sits beneath in meditation; above, the angels, all exulting, and, as it were, confused with joy, flutter and circle in the air like birds,--three looking up to the father's throne with praise and thankfulness, one stooping to adore the prince of peace, one flying to tell the shepherds. there is something to me peculiarly affecting in this disorder of theirs; even angels, as it were, breaking their ranks with wonder, and not knowing how to utter their gladness and passion of praise. there is noticeable here, as in all works of this early time, a certain confidence in the way in which the angels trust to their wings, very characteristic of a period of bold and simple conception. modern science has taught us that a wing cannot be anatomically joined to a shoulder; and in proportion as painters approach more and more to the scientific, as distinguished from the contemplative state of mind, they put the wings of their angels on more timidly, and dwell with greater emphasis upon the human form, and with less upon the wings, until these last become a species of decorative appendage,--a mere _sign_ of an angel. but in giotto's time an angel was a complete creature, as much believed in as a bird; and the way in which it would or might cast itself into the air, and lean hither and thither upon its plumes, was as naturally apprehended as the manner of flight of a chough or a starling. hence dante's simple and most exquisite synonym for angel, "bird of god;" and hence also a variety and picturesqueness in the expression of the movements of the heavenly hierarchies by the earlier painters, ill replaced by the powers of foreshortening, and throwing naked limbs into fantastic positions, which appear in the cherubic groups of later times. it is needless to point out the frank association of the two events,--the nativity, and appearance of the angel to the shepherds. they are constantly thus joined; but i do not remember any other example in which they are joined so boldly. usually the shepherds are seen in the distance, or are introduced in some ornamental border, or other inferior place. the view of painting as a mode of suggesting relative or consecutive thoughts, rather than a realisation of any one scene, is seldom so fearlessly asserted, even by giotto, as here, in placing the flocks of the shepherds at the foot of the virgin's bed. this bed, it will be noticed, is on a shelf of rock. this is in compliance with the idea founded on the protevangelion and the apocryphal book known as the gospel of infancy, that our saviour was born in a cave, associated with the scriptural statement that he was laid in a manger, of which the apocryphal gospels do not speak. the vain endeavour to exalt the awe of the moment of the saviour's birth has turned, in these gospels, the outhouse of the inn into a species of subterranean chapel, full of incense and candles. "it was after sunset, when the old woman (the midwife), and joseph with her, reached the cave; and they both went into it. and behold, it was all filled with light, greater than the light of lamps and candles, and greater than the light of the sun itself." (infancy, i. .) "then a bright cloud overshadowed the cave, and the midwife said: this day my soul is magnified." (protevangelion, xiv. .) the thirteenth chapter of the protevangelion is, however, a little more skilful in this attempt at exaltation. "and leaving her and his sons in the cave, joseph went forth to seek a hebrew midwife in the village of bethlehem. but as i was going, said joseph, i looked up into the air, and i saw the clouds astonished, and the fowls of the air stopping in the midst of their flight. and i looked down towards the earth and saw a table spread, and working-people sitting around it; but their hands were on the table, and they did not move to eat. but all their faces were fixed upwards." (protevangelion, xiii. - .) it would, of course, be absurd to endeavour to institute any comparison between the various pictures of this subject, innumerable as they are; but i must at least deprecate lord lindsay's characterising this design of giotto's merely as the "byzantine composition." it contains, indeed, nothing more than the materials of the byzantine composition; but i know no byzantine nativity which at all resembles it in the grace and life of its action. and, for full a century after giotto's time, in northern europe, the nativity was represented in a far more conventional manner than this; usually only the heads of the ox and ass are seen, and they are arranging, or holding with their mouths, the drapery of the couch of the child; who is not being laid in it by the virgin, but raised upon a kind of tablet high above her in the centre of the group. all these early designs, without exception, however, agree in expressing a certain degree of languor in the figure of the virgin, and in making her recumbent on the bed. it is not till the fifteenth century that she is represented as exempt from suffering, and immediately kneeling in adoration before the child. * * * * * xvii. the wise men's offering. this is a subject which has been so great a favourite with the painters of later periods, and on which so much rich incidental invention has been lavished, that giotto's rendering of it cannot but be felt to be barren. it is, in fact, perhaps the least powerful of all the series; and its effect is further marred by what lord lindsay has partly noted, the appearance--perhaps accidental, but if so, exceedingly unskilful--of matronly corpulence in the figure of the madonna. the unfortunate failure in the representation of the legs and chests of the camels, and the awkwardness of the attempt to render the action of kneeling in the foremost king, put the whole composition into the class--not in itself an uninteresting one--of the slips or shortcomings of great masters. one incident in it only is worth observing. in other compositions of this time, and in many later ones, the kings are generally presenting their offerings themselves, and the child takes them in his hand, or smiles at them. the painters who thought this an undignified conception left the presents in the hands of the attendants of the magi. but giotto considers how presents would be received by an actual king; and as what has been offered to a monarch is delivered to the care of his attendants, giotto puts a waiting angel to receive the gifts, as not worthy to be placed in the hands of the infant. * * * * * xviii. the presentation in the temple. this design is one of those which are peculiarly characteristic of giotto as the head of the naturalisti.[ ] no painter before his time would have dared to represent the child jesus as desiring to quit the arms of simeon, or the virgin as in some sort interfering with the prophet's earnest contemplation of the child by stretching her arms to receive him. the idea is evidently a false one, quite unworthy of the higher painters of the religious school; and it is a matter of peculiar interest to see what must have been the strength of giotto's love of plain facts, which could force him to stoop so low in the conception of this most touching scene. the child does not, it will be observed, merely stretch its arm to the madonna, but is even struggling to escape, violently raising the left foot. but there is another incident in the composition, witnessing as notably to giotto's powerful grasp of all the facts of his subject as this does to his somewhat hard and plain manner of grasping them;--i mean the angel approaching simeon, as if with a message. the peculiar interest of the presentation is for the most part inadequately represented in painting, because it is impossible to imply the fact of simeon's having waited so long in the hope of beholding his lord, or to inform the spectator of the feeling in which he utters the song of hope fulfilled. giotto has, it seems to me, done all that he could to make us remember this peculiar meaning of the scene; for i think i cannot be deceived in interpreting the flying angel, with its branch of palm or lily, to be the angel of death, sent in visible fulfilment of the thankful words of simeon: "lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." the figure of anna is poor and uninteresting; that of the attendant, on the extreme left, very beautiful, both in its drapery and in the severe and elevated character of the features and head-dress. [footnote : see account of his principles above, p. , head c.] * * * * * xix. the flight into egypt. giotto again shows, in his treatment of this subject, a juster understanding of the probable facts than most other painters. it becomes the almost universal habit of later artists to regard the flight as both sudden and secret, undertaken by joseph and mary, unattended, in the dawn of the morning, or "by night," so soon as joseph had awaked from sleep. (matt. ii. .) without a continuous miracle, which it is unnecessary in this case to suppose, such a lonely journey would have been nearly impracticable. nor was instant flight necessary; for herod's order for the massacre could not be issued until he had been convinced, by the protracted absence of the wise men, that he was "mocked of them." in all probability the exact nature and extent of the danger was revealed to joseph; and he would make the necessary preparations for his journey with such speed as he could, and depart "by night" indeed, but not in the instant of awakening from his dream. the ordinary impression seems to have been received from the words of the gospel of infancy: "go into egypt _as soon as the cock crows_." and the interest of the flight is rendered more thrilling, in late compositions, by the introduction of armed pursuers. giotto has given a far more quiet, deliberate, and probable character to the whole scene, while he has fully marked the fact of divine protection and command in the figure of the guiding angel. nor is the picture less interesting in its marked expression of the night. the figures are all distinctly seen, and there is no broad distribution of the gloom; but the vigorous blackness of the dress of the attendant who holds the bridle, and the scattered glitter of the lights on the madonna's robe, are enough to produce the required effect on the mind. the figure of the virgin is singularly dignified: the broad and severe curves traced by the hem and deepest folds of her dress materially conducing to the nobleness of the group. the child is partly sustained by a band fastened round the madonna's neck. the quaint and delicate pattern on this band, together with that of the embroidered edges of the dress, is of great value in opposing and making more manifest the severe and grave outlines of the whole figure, whose impressiveness is also partly increased by the rise of the mountain just above it, like a tent. a vulgar composer would have moved this peak to the right or left, and lost its power. this mountain background is also of great use in deepening the sense of gloom and danger on the desert road. the trees represented as growing on the heights have probably been rendered indistinct by time. in early manuscripts such portions are invariably those which suffer most; the green (on which the leaves were once drawn with dark colours) mouldering away, and the lines of drawing with it. but even in what is here left there is noticeable more careful study of the distinction between the trees with thick spreading foliage, the group of two with light branches and few leaves, and the tree stripped and dead at the bottom of the ravine, than an historical painter would now think it consistent with his dignity to bestow. * * * * * xx. massacre of the innocents. of all the series, this composition is the one which exhibits most of giotto's weaknesses. all early work is apt to fail in the rendering of violent action: but giotto is, in this instance, inferior not only to his successors, but to the feeblest of the miniature-painters of the thirteenth century; while his imperfect drawing is seen at its worst in the nude figures of the children. it is, in fact, almost impossible to understand how any italian, familiar with the eager gesticulations of the lower orders of his countrywomen on the smallest points of dispute with each other, should have been incapable of giving more adequate expression of true action and passion to the group of mothers; and, if i were not afraid of being accused of special pleading, i might insist at some length on a dim faith of my own, that giotto thought the actual agony and strivings of the probable scene unfit for pictorial treatment, or for common contemplation; and that he chose rather to give motionless types and personifications of the soldiers and women, than to use his strength and realistic faculty in bringing before the vulgar eye the unseemly struggle or unspeakable pain. the formal arrangement of the heap of corpses in the centre of the group; the crowded standing of the mothers, as in a choir of sorrow; the actual presence of herod, to whom some of them appear to be appealing,--all seem to me to mark this intention; and to make the composition only a symbol or shadow of the great deed of massacre, not a realisation of its visible continuance at any moment. i will not press this conjecture; but will only add, that if it be so, i think giotto was perfectly right; and that a picture thus conceived might have been deeply impressive, had it been more successfully executed; and a calmer, more continuous, comfortless grief expressed in the countenances of the women. far better thus, than with the horrible analysis of agony, and detail of despair, with which this same scene, one which ought never to have been made the subject of painting at all, has been gloated over by artists of more degraded times. * * * * * xxi. the young christ in the temple. this composition has suffered so grievously by time, that even the portions of it which remain are seen to the greatest disadvantage. little more than various conditions of scar and stain can be now traced, where were once the draperies of the figures in the shade, and the suspended garland and arches on the right hand of the spectator; and in endeavouring not to represent more than there is authority for, the draughtsman and engraver have necessarily produced a less satisfactory plate than most others of the series. but giotto has also himself fallen considerably below his usual standard. the faces appear to be cold and hard; and the attitudes are as little graceful as expressive either of attention or surprise. the madonna's action, stretching her arms to embrace her son, is pretty; but, on the whole, the picture has no value; and this is the more remarkable, as there were fewer precedents of treatment in this case than in any of the others; and it might have been anticipated that giotto would have put himself to some pains when the field of thought was comparatively new. the subject of christ teaching in the temple rarely occurs in manuscripts; but all the others were perpetually repeated in the service-books of the period. * * * * * [illustration] xxii. the baptism of christ. this is a more interesting work than the last; but it is also gravely and strangely deficient in power of entering into the subject; and this, i think, is common with nearly all efforts that have hitherto been made at its representation. i have never seen a picture of the baptism, by any painter whatever, which was not below the average power of the painter; and in this conception of giotto's, the humility of st. john is entirely unexpressed, and the gesture of christ has hardly any meaning: it neither is in harmony with the words, "suffer it to be so now," which must have been uttered before the moment of actual baptism, nor does it in the slightest degree indicate the sense in the redeemer of now entering upon the great work of his ministry. in the earlier representations of the subject, the humility of st. john is never lost sight of; there will be seen, for instance, an effort at expressing it by the slightly stooping attitude and bent knee, even in the very rude design given in outline on the opposite page. i have thought it worth while to set before the reader in this outline one example of the sort of traditional representations which were current throughout christendom before giotto arose. this instance is taken from a large choir-book, probably of french, certainly of northern execution, towards the close of the thirteenth century;[ ] and it is a very fair average example of the manner of design in the illuminated work of the period. the introduction of the scroll, with the legend, "this is my beloved son," is both more true to the scriptural words, "lo, a voice from heaven," and more reverent, than giotto's introduction of the visible figure, as a type of the first person of the trinity. the boldness with which this type is introduced increases precisely as the religious sentiment of art decreases; in the fifteenth century it becomes utterly revolting. [footnote : the exact date, , is given in the title-page of the volume.] i have given this woodcut for another reason also: to explain more clearly the mode in which giotto deduced the strange form which he has given to the stream of the jordan. in the earlier northern works it is merely a green wave, rising to the saviour's waist, as seen in the woodcut. giotto, for the sake of getting standing-ground for his figures, gives _shores_ to this wave, retaining its swelling form in the centre,--a very painful and unsuccessful attempt at reconciling typical drawing with laws of perspective. or perhaps it is less to be regarded as an effort at progress, than as an awkward combination of the eastern and western types of the jordan. in the difference between these types there is matter of some interest. lord lindsay, who merely characterises this work of giotto's as "the byzantine composition," thus describes the usual byzantine manner of representing the baptism: "the saviour stands immersed to the middle in jordan (_flowing between two deep and rocky banks_), on one of which stands st. john, pouring the water on his head, and on the other two angels hold his robes. the holy spirit descends upon him as a dove, in a stream of light, from god the father, usually represented by a hand from heaven. two of john's disciples stand behind him as spectators. frequently _the river-god of jordan_ reclines with his oars in the corner.... in the baptistery at ravenna, the rope is supported, not by an angel, but by the river-deity _jordann_ (iordanes?), who holds in his left hand a reed as his sceptre." now in this mode of representing rivers there is something more than the mere pagan tradition lingering through the wrecks of the eastern empire. a river, in the east and south, is necessarily recognised more distinctly as a beneficent power than in the west and north. the narrowest and feeblest stream is felt to have an influence on the life of mankind; and is counted among the possessions, or honoured among the deities, of the people who dwell beside it. hence the importance given, in the byzantine compositions, to the name and specialty of the jordan stream. in the north such peculiar definiteness and importance can never be attached to the name of any single fountain. water, in its various forms of streamlet, rain, or river, is felt as an universal gift of heaven, not as an inheritance of a particular spot of earth. hence, with the gothic artists generally, the personality of the jordan is lost in the green and nameless wave; and the simple rite of the baptism is dwelt upon, without endeavouring, as giotto has done, to draw the attention to the rocky shores of bethabara and Ænon, or to the fact that "there was much water there." * * * * * xxiii. the marriage in cana. it is strange that the sweet significance of this first of the miracles should have been lost sight of by nearly all artists after giotto; and that no effort was made by them to conceive the circumstances of it in simplicity. the poverty of the family in which the marriage took place,--proved sufficiently by the fact that a carpenter's wife not only was asked as a chief guest, but even had authority over the servants,--is shown further to have been distressful, or at least embarrassed, poverty by their want of wine on such an occasion. it was not certainly to remedy an accident of careless provision, but to supply a need sorrowfully betraying the narrow circumstances of his hosts, that our lord wrought the beginning of miracles. many mystic meanings have been sought in the act, which, though there is no need to deny, there is little evidence to certify: but we may joyfully accept, as its first indisputable meaning, that of simple kindness; the wine being provided here, when needed, as the bread and fish were afterwards for the hungry multitudes. the whole value of the miracle, in its serviceable tenderness, is at once effaced when the marriage is supposed, as by veronese and other artists of later times, to have taken place at the house of a rich man. for the rest, giotto sufficiently implies, by the lifted hand of the madonna, and the action of the fingers of the bridegroom, as if they held sacramental bread, that there lay a deeper meaning under the miracle for those who could accept it. how all miracle _is_ accepted by common humanity, he has also shown in the figure of the ruler of the feast, drinking. this unregarding forgetfulness of present spiritual power is similarly marked by veronese, by placing the figure of a fool with his bauble immediately underneath that of christ, and by making a cat play with her shadow in one of the wine-vases. it is to be remembered, however, in examining all pictures of this subject, that the miracle was not made manifest to all the guests;--to none indeed, seemingly, except christ's own disciples: the ruler of the feast, and probably most of those present (except the servants who drew the water), knew or observed nothing of what was passing, and merely thought the good wine had been "kept until now." * * * * * xxiv. the raising of lazarus. in consequence of the intermediate position which giotto occupies between the byzantine and naturalist schools, two relations of treatment are to be generally noted in his work. as compared with the byzantines, he is a realist, whose power consists in the introduction of living character and various incidents, modifying the formerly received byzantine symbols. so far as he has to do this, he is a realist of the purest kind, endeavoring always to conceive events precisely as they were likely to have happened; not to idealise them into forms artfully impressive to the spectator. but in so far as he was compelled to retain, or did not wish to reject, the figurative character of the byzantine symbols, he stands opposed to succeeding realists, in the quantity of meaning which probably lies hidden in any composition, as well as in the simplicity with which he will probably treat it, in order to enforce or guide to this meaning: the figures being often letters of a hieroglyphic, which he will not multiply, lest he should lose in force of suggestion what he gained in dramatic interest. none of the compositions display more clearly this typical and reflective character than that of the raising of lazarus. later designers dwell on vulgar conditions of wonder or horror, such as they could conceive likely to attend the resuscitation of a corpse; but with giotto the physical reanimation is the type of a spiritual one, and, though shown to be miraculous, is yet in all its deeper aspects unperturbed, and calm in awfulness. it is also visibly gradual. "his face was bound about with a napkin." the nearest apostle has withdrawn the covering from the face, and looks for the command which shall restore it from wasted corruption, and sealed blindness, to living power and light. nor is it, i believe, without meaning, that the two apostles, if indeed they are intended for apostles, who stand at lazarus' side, wear a different dress from those who follow christ. i suppose them to be intended for images of the christian and jewish churches in their ministration to the dead soul: the one removing its bonds, but looking to christ for the word and power of life; the other inactive and helpless--the veil upon its face--in dread; while the principal figure fulfils the order it receives in fearless simplicity. * * * * * xxv. the entry into jerusalem. this design suffers much from loss of colour in translation. its decorative effect depends on the deep blue ground, relieving the delicate foliage and the local colours of dresses and architecture. it is also one of those which are most directly opposed to modern feeling: the sympathy of the spectator with the passion of the crowd being somewhat rudely checked by the grotesque action of two of the foremost figures. we ought, however, rather to envy the deep seriousness which could not be moved from dwelling on the real power of the scene by any ungracefulness or familiarity of circumstance. among men whose minds are rightly toned, nothing is ludicrous: it must, if an act, be either right or wrong, noble or base; if a thing seen, it must either be ugly or beautiful: and what is either wrong or deformed is not, among noble persons, in anywise subject for laughter; but, in the precise degree of its wrongness or deformity, a subject of horror. all perception of what, in the modern european mind, falls under the general head of the ludicrous, is either childish or profane; often healthy, as indicative of vigorous animal life, but always degraded in its relation to manly conditions of thought. it has a secondary use in its power of detecting vulgar imposture; but it only obtains this power by denying the highest truths. * * * * * xxvi. the expulsion from the temple. more properly, the expulsion from the outer court of the temple (court of gentiles), as giotto has indicated by placing the porch of the temple itself in the background. the design shows, as clearly as that of the massacre of the innocents, giotto's want of power, and partly of desire, to represent rapid or forceful action. the raising of the right hand, not holding any scourge, resembles the action afterwards adopted by oreagna, and finally by michael angelo in his last judgment: and my belief is, that giotto considered this act of christ's as partly typical of the final judgment, the pharisees being placed on the left hand, and the disciples on the right. from the faded remains of the fresco, the draughtsman could not determine what animals are intended by those on the left hand. but the most curious incident (so far as i know, found only in this design of the expulsion, no subsequent painter repeating it), is the sheltering of the two children, one of them carrying a dove, under the arm and cloak of two disciples. many meanings might easily be suggested in this; but i see no evidence for the adoption of any distinct one. * * * * * xxvii. the hiring of judas. the only point of material interest presented by this design is the decrepit and distorted shadow of the demon, respecting which it may be well to remind the reader that all the great italian thinkers concurred in assuming decrepitude or disease, as well as ugliness, to be a characteristic of all natures of evil. whatever the extent of the power granted to evil spirits, it was always abominable and contemptible; no element of beauty or heroism was ever allowed to remain, however obscured, in the aspect of a fallen angel. also, the demoniacal nature was shown in acts of betrayal, torture, or wanton hostility; never in valiancy or perseverance of contest. i recollect no mediæval demon who shows as much insulting, resisting, or contending power as bunyan's apollyon. they can only cheat, undermine, and mock; never overthrow. judas, as we should naturally anticipate, has not in this scene the nimbus of an apostle; yet we shall find it restored to him in the next design. we shall discover the reason of this only by a careful consideration of the meaning of that fresco. * * * * * xxviii. the last supper. i have not examined the original fresco with care enough to be able to say whether the uninteresting quietness of its design is redeemed by more than ordinary attention to expression; it is one of the least attractive subjects in the arena chapel, and always sure to be passed over in any general observation of the series: nevertheless, however unfavourably it may at first contrast with the designs of later masters, and especially with leonardo's, the reader should not fail to observe that giotto's aim, had it been successful, was the higher of the two, as giving truer rendering of the probable fact. there is no distinct evidence, in the sacred text, of the annunciation of coming treachery having produced among the disciples the violent surprise and agitation represented by leonardo. naturally, they would not at first understand what was meant. they knew nothing distinctly of the machinations of the priests; and so little of the character or purposes of judas, that even after he had received the sop which was to point him out to the others as false;--and after they had heard the injunction, "that thou doest, do quickly,"--the other disciples had still no conception of the significance, either of the saying, or the act: they thought that christ meant he was to buy something for the feast. nay, judas himself, so far from starting, as a convicted traitor, and thereby betraying himself, as in leonardo's picture, had not, when christ's first words were uttered, any immediately active intention formed. the devil had not entered into him until he received the sop. the passage in st. john's account is a curious one, and little noticed; but it marks very distinctly the paralysed state of the man's mind. he had talked with the priests, covenanted with them, and even sought opportunity to bring jesus into their hands; but while such opportunity was wanting, the act had never presented itself fully to him for adoption or rejection. he had toyed with it, dreamed over it, hesitated, and procrastinated over it, as a stupid and cowardly person would, such as traitors are apt to be. but the way of retreat was yet open; the conquest of the temper not complete. only after receiving the sop the idea _finally_ presented itself clearly, and was accepted, "to-night, while he is in the garden, i can do it; and i will." and giotto has indicated this distinctly by giving judas still the apostle's nimbus, both in this subject and in that of the washing of the feet; while it is taken away in the previous subject of the hiring, and the following one of the seizure: thus it fluctuates, expires, and reillumines itself, until his fall is consummated. this being the general state of the apostles' knowledge, the words, "one of you shall betray me," would excite no feeling in their minds correspondent to that with which we now read the prophetic sentence. what this "giving up" of their master meant became a question of bitter and self-searching thought with them,--gradually of intense sorrow and questioning. but had they understood it in the sense we now understand it, they would never have each asked, "lord, is it i?" peter believed himself incapable even of _denying_ christ; and of giving him up to death for money, every one of his true disciples _knew_ themselves incapable; the thought never occurred to them. in slowly-increasing wonder and sorrow ([greek: êrxanto lupeisthai], mark xiv. ), not knowing what was meant, they asked one by one, with pauses between, "is it i?" and another, "is it i?" and this so quietly and timidly that the one who was lying on christ's breast never stirred from his place; and peter, afraid to speak, signed to him to ask who it was. one further circumstance, showing that this was the real state of their minds, we shall find giotto take cognisance of in the next fresco. * * * * * xxix. the washing of the feet. in this design, it will be observed, there are still the twelve disciples, and the nimbus is yet given to judas (though, as it were, setting, his face not being seen). considering the deep interest and importance of every circumstance of the last supper, i cannot understand how preachers and commentators pass by the difficulty of clearly understanding the periods indicated in st. john's account of it. it seems that christ must have risen while they were still eating, must have washed their feet as they sate or reclined at the table, just as the magdalen had washed his own feet in the pharisee's house; that, this done, he returned to the table, and the disciples continuing to eat, presently gave the sop to judas. for st. john says, that he having received the sop, went _immediately_ out; yet that christ had washed his feet is certain, from the words, "ye are clean, but not all." whatever view the reader may, on deliberation, choose to accept, giotto's is clear, namely, that though not cleansed by the baptism, judas was yet capable of being cleansed. the devil had not entered into him at the time of the washing of the feet, and he retains the sign of an apostle. the composition is one of the most beautiful of the series, especially owing to the submissive grace of the two standing figures. * * * * * xxx. the kiss of judas. for the first time we have giotto's idea of the face of the traitor clearly shown. it is not, i think, traceable through any of the previous series; and it has often surprised me to observe how impossible it was in the works of almost any of the sacred painters to determine by the mere cast of feature which was meant for the false apostle. here, however, giotto's theory of physiognomy, and together with it his idea of the character of judas, are perceivable enough. it is evident that he looks upon judas mainly as a sensual dullard, and foul-brained fool; a man in no respect exalted in bad eminence of treachery above the mass of common traitors, but merely a distinct type of the eternal treachery to good, in vulgar men, which stoops beneath, and opposes in its appointed measure, the life and efforts of all noble persons, their natural enemies in this world; as the slime lies under a clear stream running through an earthy meadow. our careless and thoughtless english use of the word into which the greek "diabolos" has been shortened, blinds us in general to the meaning of "deviltry," which, in its essence, is nothing else than slander, or traitorhood;--the accusing and giving up of good. in particular it has blinded us to the meaning of christ's words, "have not i chosen you twelve, and one of you is a traitor and accuser?" and led us to think that the "one of you is a devil" indicated some greater than human wickedness in judas; whereas the practical meaning of the entire fact of judas' ministry and fall is, that out of any twelve men chosen for the forwarding of any purpose,--or, much more, out of any twelve men we meet,--one, probably, is or will be a judas. the modern german renderings of all the scenes of christ's life in which the traitor is conspicuous are very curious in their vulgar misunderstanding of the history, and their consequent endeavours to represent judas as more diabolic than selfish, treacherous, and stupid men are in all their generations. they paint him usually projected against strong effects of light, in lurid chiaroscuro;--enlarging the whites of his eyes, and making him frown, grin, and gnash his teeth on all occasions, so as to appear among the other apostles invariably in the aspect of a gorgon. how much more deeply giotto has fathomed the fact, i believe all men will admit who have sufficient purity and abhorrence of falsehood to recognise it in its daily presence, and who know how the devil's strongest work is done for him by men who are too bestial to understand what they betray. * * * * * xxxi. christ before caiaphas. little is to be observed in this design of any distinctive merit; it is only a somewhat completer version of the ordinary representation given in illuminated missals and other conventual work, suggesting, as if they had happened at the same moment, the answer, "if i have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil," and the accusation of blasphemy which causes the high-priest to rend his clothes. apparently distrustful of his power of obtaining interest of a higher kind, giotto has treated the enrichments more carefully than usual, down even to the steps of the high-priest's seat. the torch and barred shutters conspicuously indicate its being now dead of night. that the torch is darker than the chamber, if not an error in the drawing, is probably the consequence of a darkening alteration in the yellow colours used for the flame. * * * * * xxxii. the scourging of christ. it is characteristic of giotto's rational and human view of all subjects admitting such aspect, that he has insisted here chiefly on the dejection and humiliation of christ, making no attempt to suggest to the spectator any other divinity than that of patience made perfect through suffering. angelico's conception of the same subject is higher and more mystical. he takes the moment when christ is blindfolded, and exaggerates almost into monstrosity the vileness of feature and bitterness of sneer in the questioners, "prophesy unto us, who is he that smote thee;" but the bearing of the person of christ is entirely calm and unmoved; and his eyes, open, are seen through the binding veil, indicating the ceaseless omniscience. this mystical rendering is, again, rejected by the later realistic painters; but while the earlier designers, with giotto at their head, dwelt chiefly on the humiliation and the mockery, later painters dwelt on the physical pain. in titian's great picture of this subject in the louvre, one of the executioners is thrusting the thorn-crown down upon the brow with his rod, and the action of christ is that of a person suffering extreme physical agony. no representations of the scene exist, to my knowledge, in which the mockery is either sustained with indifference, or rebuked by any stern or appealing expression of feature; yet one of these two forms of endurance would appear, to a modern habit of thought, the most natural and probable. * * * * * xxxiii. christ bearing his cross. this design is one of great nobleness and solemnity in the isolation of the principal figure, and removal of all motives of interest depending on accessories, or merely temporary incidents. even the virgin and her attendant women are kept in the background; all appeal for sympathy through physical suffering is disdained. christ is not represented as borne down by the weight of the cross, nor as urged forward by the impatience of the executioners. the thing to be shown,--the unspeakable mystery,--is the simple fact, the bearing of the cross by the redeemer. it would be vain to compare the respective merits or value of a design thus treated, and of one like veronese's of this same subject, in which every essential accessory and probable incident is completely conceived. the abstract and symbolical suggestion will always appeal to one order of minds, the dramatic completeness to another. unquestionably, the last is the greater achievement of intellect, but the manner and habit of thought are perhaps loftier in giotto. veronese leads us to perceive the reality of the act, and giotto to understand its intention. * * * * * xxxiv. the crucifixion. the treatment of this subject was, in giotto's time, so rigidly fixed by tradition that it was out of his power to display any of his own special modes of thought; and, as in the bearing of the cross, so here, but yet more distinctly, the temporary circumstances are little regarded, the significance of the event being alone cared for. but even long after this time, in all the pictures of the crucifixion by the great masters, with the single exception perhaps of that by tintoret in the church of san cassano at venice, there is a tendency to treat the painting as a symmetrical image, or collective symbol of sacred mysteries, rather than as a dramatic representation. even in tintoret's great crucifixion in the school of st. roch, the group of fainting women forms a kind of pedestal for the cross. the flying angels in the composition before us are thus also treated with a restraint hardly passing the limits of decorative symbolism. the fading away of their figures into flame-like cloud may perhaps be founded on the verse, "he maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flame of fire" (though erroneously, the right reading of that verse being, "he maketh the winds his messengers, and the flaming fire his servant"); but it seems to me to give a greater sense of possible truth than the entire figures, treading the clouds with naked feet, of perugino and his successors. * * * * * xxxv. the entombment. i do not consider that in fulfilling the task of interpreter intrusted to me, with respect to this series of engravings, i may in general permit myself to unite with it the duty of a critic. but in the execution of a laborious series of engravings, some must of course be better, some worse; and it would be unjust, no less to the reader than to giotto, if i allowed this plate to pass without some admission of its inadequacy. it may possibly have been treated with a little less care than the rest, in the knowledge that the finished plate, already in the possession of the members of the arundel society, superseded any effort with inferior means; be that as it may, the tenderness of giotto's composition is, in the engraving before us, lost to an unusual degree. it may be generally observed that the passionateness of the sorrow both of the virgin and disciples, is represented by giotto and all great following designers as reaching its crisis at the entombment, not at the crucifixion. the expectation that, after experiencing every form of human suffering, christ would yet come down from the cross, or in some other visible and immediate manner achieve for himself the victory, might be conceived to have supported in a measure the minds of those among his disciples who watched by his cross. but when the agony was closed by actual death, and the full strain was put upon their faith, by their laying in the sepulchre, wrapped in his grave-clothes, him in whom they trusted, "that it had been he which should have redeemed israel," their sorrow became suddenly hopeless; a gulf of horror opened, almost at unawares, under their feet; and in the poignancy of her astonied despair, it was no marvel that the agony of the madonna in the "pietà" became subordinately associated in the mind of the early church with that of their lord himself;--a type of consummate human suffering. * * * * * xxxvi. the resurrection. quite one of the loveliest designs of the series. it was a favourite subject with giotto; meeting, in all its conditions, his love of what was most mysterious, yet most comforting and full of hope, in the doctrines of his religion. his joy in the fact of the resurrection, his sense of its function, as the key and primal truth of christianity, was far too deep to allow him to dwell on any of its minor circumstances, as later designers did, representing the moment of bursting the tomb, and the supposed terror of its guards. with giotto the leading thought is not of physical reanimation, nor of the momentarily exerted power of breaking the bars of the grave; but the consummation of christ's work in the first manifesting to human eyes, and the eyes of one who had loved him and believed in him, his power to take again the life he had laid down. this first appearance to her out of whom he had cast seven devils is indeed the very central fact of the resurrection. the keepers had not seen christ; they had seen only the angel descending, whose countenance was like lightning: for fear of him they became as dead; yet this fear, though great enough to cause them to swoon, was so far conquered at the return of morning, that they were ready to take money-payment for giving a false report of the circumstances. the magdalen, therefore, is the first witness of the resurrection; to the love, for whose sake much had been forgiven, this gift is also first given; and as the first witness of the truth, so she is the first messenger of the gospel. to the apostles it was granted to proclaim the resurrection to all nations; but the magdalen was bidden to proclaim it to the apostles. in the chapel of the bargello, giotto has rendered this scene with yet more passionate sympathy. here, however, its significance is more thoughtfully indicated through all the accessories, down even to the withered trees above the sepulchre, while those of the garden burst into leaf. this could hardly escape notice when the barren boughs were compared by the spectator with the rich foliage of the neighbouring designs, though, in the detached plate, it might easily be lost sight of. * * * * * xxxvii. the ascension. giotto continues to exert all his strength on these closing subjects. none of the byzantine or earlier italian painters ventured to introduce the entire figure of christ in this scene: they showed the feet only, concealing the body; according to the text, "a cloud received him out of their sight." this composition, graceful as it is daring, conveys the idea of ascending motion more forcibly than any that i remember by other than venetian painters. much of its power depends on the continuity of line obtained by the half-floating figures of the two warning angels. i cannot understand why this subject was so seldom treated by religious painters: for the harmony of christian creed depends as much upon it as on the resurrection itself; while the circumstances of the ascension, in their brightness, promise, miraculousness, and direct appeal to all the assembled apostles, seem more fitted to attract the joyful contemplation of all who received the faith. how morbid, and how deeply to be mourned, was the temper of the church which could not be satisfied without perpetual representation of the tortures of christ; but rarely dwelt on his triumph! how more than strange the concessions to this feebleness by its greatest teachers; such as that of titian, who, though he paints the assumption of the madonna rather than a pietà, paints the scourging and the entombment of christ, with his best power,--but never the ascension! * * * * * xxxviii. the descent of the holy spirit. this last subject of the series, the quietest and least interesting in treatment, yet illustrates sadly, and forcibly, the vital difference between ancient and modern art. the worst characters of modern work result from its constant appeal to our desire of change, and pathetic excitement; while the best features of the elder art appealed to love of contemplation. it would appear to be the object of the truest artists to give permanence to images such as we should always desire to behold, and might behold without agitation; while the inferior branches of design are concerned with the acuter passions which depend on the turn of a narrative, or the course of an emotion. where it is possible to unite these two sources of pleasure, and, as in the assumption of titian, an action of absorbing interest is united with perfect and perpetual elements of beauty, the highest point of conception would appear to have been touched: but in the degree in which the interest of action _supersedes_ beauty of form and colour, the art is lowered; and where real deformity enters, in any other degree than as a momentary shadow or opposing force, the art is illegitimate. such art can exist only by accident, when a nation has forgotten or betrayed the eternal purposes of its genius, and gives birth to painters whom it cannot teach, and to teachers whom it will not hear. the best talents of all our english painters have been spent either in endeavours to find room for the expression of feelings which no master guided to a worthy end, or to obtain the attention of a public whose mind was dead to natural beauty, by sharpness of satire, or variety of dramatic circumstance. the work to which england is now devoting herself withdraws her eyes from beauty, as her heart from rest; nor do i conceive any revival of great art to be possible among us while the nation continues in its present temper. as long as it can bear to see misery and squalor in its streets, it can neither invent nor accept human beauty in its pictures; and so long as in passion of rivalry, or thirst of gain, it crushes the roots of happiness, and forsakes the ways of peace, the great souls whom it may chance to produce will all pass away from it helpless, in error, in wrath, or in silence. amiable visionaries may retire into the delight of devotional abstraction, strong men of the world may yet hope to do service by their rebuke or their satire; but for the clear sight of love there will be no horizon, for its quiet words no answer; nor any place for the art which alone is faithfully religious, because it is lovely and true. * * * * * the series of engravings thus completed, while they present no characters on which the members of the arundel society can justifiably pride themselves, have, nevertheless, a real and effective value, if considered as a series of maps of the arena frescoes. few artists of eminence pass through padua without making studies of detached portions of the decoration of this chapel, while no artist has time to complete drawings of the whole. such fragmentary studies might now at any time be engraved with advantage, their place in the series being at once determinable by reference to the woodcuts; while qualities of expression could often be obtained in engravings of single figures, which are sure to be lost in an entire subject. the most refined character is occasionally dependent on a few happy and light touches, which, in a single head, are effective, but are too feeble to bear due part in an entire composition, while, in the endeavour to reinforce them, their vitality is lost. i believe the members of the arundel society will perceive, eventually, that no copies of works of great art are worthily representative of them but such as are made freely, and for their own purposes, by great painters: the best results obtainable by mechanical effort will only be charts or plans of pictures, not mirrors of them. such charts it is well to command in as great number as possible, and with all attainable completeness; but the society cannot be considered as having entered on its true functions until it has obtained the hearty co-operation of european artists, and by the increase of its members, the further power of representing the subtle studies of masterly painters by the aid of exquisite engraving. [illustration: _portrait of a lady._ _from the painting, possibly by verrocchio, in the poldi museum at milan._] the florentine painters of the renaissance with an index to their works by bernhard berenson author of "venetian painters of the renaissance," "lorenzo lotto," "central italian painters of the renaissance" third edition, revised and enlarged g. p. putnam's sons new york and london the knickerbocker press copyright, by g. p. putnam's sons _entered at stationers' hall, london_ * * * * * copyright, by g. p. putnam's sons (for revised edition) made in the united states of america preface to third edition years have passed since the second edition of this book. but as most of this time has been taken up with the writing of my "drawings of the florentine painters," it has, in a sense, been spent in preparing me to make this new edition. indeed, it is to that bigger work that i must refer the student who may wish to have the reasons for some of my attributions. there, for instance, he will find the intricate carli question treated quite as fully as it deserves. jacopo del sellajo is inserted here for the first time. ample accounts of this frequently entertaining tenth-rate painter may be found in articles by hans makowsky, mary logan, and herbert horne. the most important event of the last ten years, in the study of italian art, has been the rediscovery of an all but forgotten great master, pietro cavallini. the study of his fresco at s. cecilia in rome, and of the other works that readily group themselves with it, has illuminated with an unhoped-for light the problem of giotto's origin and development. i felt stimulated to a fresh consideration of the subject. the results will be noted here in the inclusion, for the first time, of cimabue, and in the lists of paintings ascribed to giotto and his immediate assistants. b. b. _boston, november, ._ preface to the second edition the lists have been thoroughly revised, and some of them considerably increased. botticini, pier francesco fiorentino, and amico di sandro have been added, partly for the intrinsic value of their work, and partly because so many of their pictures are exposed to public admiration under greater names. botticini sounds too much like botticelli not to have been confounded with him, and pier francesco has similarly been confused with piero della francesca. thus, botticini's famous "assumption," painted for matteo palmieri, and now in the national gallery, already passed in vasari's time for a botticelli, and the attribution at karlsruhe of the quaint and winning "nativity" to the sublime, unyielding piero della francesca is surely nothing more than the echo of the real author's name. most inadequate accounts, yet more than can be given here, of pier francesco, as well as of botticini, will be found in the italian edition of cavalcaselle's _storia della pittura in italia_, vol. vii. the latter painter will doubtless be dealt with fully and ably in mr. herbert p. horne's forthcoming book on botticelli, and in this connection i am happy to acknowledge my indebtedness to mr. horne for having persuaded me to study botticini. of amico di sandro i have written at length in the _gazette des beaux arts_, june and july, . fiesole, november, . contents. page the florentine painters of the renaissance index to the works of the principal florentine painters index of places the florentine painters of the renaissance i. florentine painting between giotto and michelangelo contains the names of such artists as orcagna, masaccio, fra filippo, pollaiuolo, verrocchio, leonardo, and botticelli. put beside these the greatest names in venetian art, the vivarini, the bellini, giorgione, titian, and tintoret. the difference is striking. the significance of the venetian names is exhausted with their significance as painters. not so with the florentines. forget that they were painters, they remain great sculptors; forget that they were sculptors, and still they remain architects, poets, and even men of science. they left no form of expression untried, and to none could they say, "this will perfectly convey my meaning." painting, therefore, offers but a partial and not always the most adequate manifestation of their personality, and we feel the artist as greater than his work, and the man as soaring above the artist. [page heading: manysidedness of the painters] the immense superiority of the artist even to his greatest achievement in any one art form, means that his personality was but slightly determined by the particular art in question, that he tended to mould it rather than let it shape him. it would be absurd, therefore, to treat the florentine painter as a mere link between two points in a necessary evolution. the history of the art of florence never can be, as that of venice, the study of a placid development. each man of genius brought to bear upon his art a great intellect, which, never condescending merely to please, was tirelessly striving to reincarnate what it comprehended of life in forms that would fitly convey it to others; and in this endeavour each man of genius was necessarily compelled to create forms essentially his own. but because florentine painting was pre-eminently an art formed by great personalities, it grappled with problems of the highest interest, and offered solutions that can never lose their value. what they aimed at, and what they attained, is the subject of the following essay. ii. the first of the great personalities in florentine painting was giotto. although he affords no exception to the rule that the great florentines exploited all the arts in the endeavour to express themselves, he, giotto, renowned as architect and sculptor, reputed as wit and versifier, differed from most of his tuscan successors in having peculiar aptitude for the essential in painting _as an art_. but before we can appreciate his real value, we must come to an agreement as to what in the art of figure-painting--the craft has its own altogether diverse laws--_is_ the essential; for figure-painting, we may say at once, was not only the one pre-occupation of giotto, but the dominant interest of the entire florentine school. [page heading: imagination of touch] psychology has ascertained that sight alone gives us no accurate sense of the third dimension. in our infancy, long before we are conscious of the process, the sense of touch, helped on by muscular sensations of movement, teaches us to appreciate depth, the third dimension, both in objects and in space. in the same unconscious years we learn to make of touch, of the third dimension, the test of reality. the child is still dimly aware of the intimate connection between touch and the third dimension. he cannot persuade himself of the unreality of looking-glass land until he has touched the back of the mirror. later, we entirely forget the connection, although it remains true, that every time our eyes recognise reality, we are, as a matter of fact, giving tactile values to retinal impressions. now, painting is an art which aims at giving an abiding impression of artistic reality with only two dimensions. the painter must, therefore, do consciously what we all do unconsciously,--construct his third dimension. and he can accomplish his task only as we accomplish ours, by giving tactile values to retinal impressions. his first business, therefore, is to rouse the tactile sense, for i must have the illusion of being able to touch a figure, i must have the illusion of varying muscular sensations inside my palm and fingers corresponding to the various projections of this figure, before i shall take it for granted as real, and let it affect me lastingly. it follows that the essential in the art of painting--as distinguished from the art of colouring, i beg the reader to observe--is somehow to stimulate our consciousness of tactile values, so that the picture shall have at least as much power as the object represented, to appeal to our tactile imagination. [page heading: giotto] well, it was of the power to stimulate the tactile consciousness--of the essential, as i have ventured to call it, in the art of painting--that giotto was supreme master. this is his everlasting claim to greatness, and it is this which will make him a source of highest æsthetic delight for a period at least as long as decipherable traces of his handiwork remain on mouldering panel or crumbling wall. for great though he was as a poet, enthralling as a story-teller, splendid and majestic as a composer, he was in these qualities superior in degree only, to many of the masters who painted in various parts of europe during the thousand years that intervened between the decline of antique, and the birth, in his own person, of modern painting. but none of these masters had the power to stimulate the tactile imagination, and, consequently, they never painted a figure which has artistic existence. their works have value, if at all, as highly elaborate, very intelligible symbols, capable, indeed, of communicating something, but losing all higher value the moment the message is delivered. giotto's paintings, on the contrary, have not only as much power of appealing to the tactile imagination as is possessed by the objects represented--human figures in particular--but actually more, with the necessary result that to his contemporaries they conveyed a _keener_ sense of reality, of life-likeness than the objects themselves! we whose current knowledge of anatomy is greater, who expect more articulation and suppleness in the human figure, who, in short, see much less naïvely now than giotto's contemporaries, no longer find his paintings more than life-like; but we still feel them to be intensely real in the sense that they still powerfully appeal to our tactile imagination, thereby compelling us, as do all things that stimulate our sense of touch while they present themselves to our eyes, to take their existence for granted. and it is only when we can take for granted the existence of the object painted that it can begin to give us pleasure that is genuinely artistic, as separated from the interest we feel in symbols. [page heading: analysis of enjoyment of painting] at the risk of seeming to wander off into the boundless domain of æsthetics, we must stop at this point for a moment to make sure that we are of one mind regarding the meaning of the phrase "artistic pleasure," in so far at least as it is used in connection with painting. what is the point at which ordinary pleasures pass over into the specific pleasures derived from each one of the arts? our judgment about the merits of any given work of art depends to a large extent upon our answer to this question. those who have not yet differentiated the specific pleasures of the art of painting from the pleasures they derive from the art of literature, will be likely to fall into the error of judging the picture by its dramatic presentation of a situation or its rendering of character; will, in short, demand of the painting that it shall be in the first place a good _illustration_. those others who seek in painting what is usually sought in music, the communication of a pleasurable state of emotion, will prefer pictures which suggest pleasant associations, nice people, refined amusements, agreeable landscapes. in many cases this lack of clearness is of comparatively slight importance, the given picture containing all these pleasure-giving elements in addition to the qualities peculiar to the art of painting. but in the case of the florentines, the distinction is of vital consequence, for they have been the artists in europe who have most resolutely set themselves to work upon the specific problems of the art of figure-painting, and have neglected, more than any other school, to call to their aid the secondary pleasures of association. with them the issue is clear. if we wish to appreciate their merit, we are forced to disregard the desire for pretty or agreeable types, dramatically interpreted situations, and, in fact, "suggestiveness" of any kind. worse still, we must even forego our pleasure in colour, often a genuinely artistic pleasure, for they never systematically exploited this element, and in some of their best works the colour is actually harsh and unpleasant. it was in fact upon form, and form alone, that the great florentine masters concentrated their efforts, and we are consequently forced to the belief that, in their pictures at least, form is the principal source of our æsthetic enjoyment. now in what way, we ask, can form in painting give me a sensation of pleasure which differs from the ordinary sensations i receive from form? how is it that an object whose recognition in nature may have given me no pleasure, becomes, when recognised in a picture, a source of æsthetic enjoyment, or that recognition pleasurable in nature becomes an enhanced pleasure the moment it is transferred to art? the answer, i believe, depends upon the fact that art stimulates to an unwonted activity psychical processes which are in themselves the source of most (if not all) of our pleasures, and which here, free from disturbing physical sensations, never tend to pass over into pain. for instance: i am in the habit of realising a given object with an intensity that we shall value as . if i suddenly realise this familiar object with an intensity of , i receive the immediate pleasure which accompanies a doubling of my mental activity. but the pleasure rarely stops here. those who are capable of receiving direct pleasure from a work of art, are generally led on to the further pleasures of self-consciousness. the fact that the psychical process of recognition goes forward with the unusual intensity of to , overwhelms them with the sense of having twice the capacity they had credited themselves with: their whole personality is enhanced, and, being aware that this enhancement is connected with the object in question, they for some time after take not only an increased interest in it, but continue to realise it with the new intensity. precisely this is what form does in painting: it lends a higher coefficient of reality to the object represented, with the consequent enjoyment of accelerated psychical processes, and the exhilarating sense of increased capacity in the observer. (hence, by the way, the greater pleasure we take in the object painted than in itself.) and it happens thus. we remember that to realise form we must give tactile values to retinal sensations. ordinarily we have considerable difficulty in skimming off these tactile values, and by the time they have reached our consciousness, they have lost much of their strength. obviously, the artist who gives us these values more rapidly than the object itself gives them, gives us the pleasures consequent upon a more vivid realisation of the object, and the further pleasures that come from the sense of greater psychical capacity. furthermore, the stimulation of our tactile imagination awakens our consciousness of the importance of the tactile sense in our physical and mental functioning, and thus, again, by making us feel better provided for life than we were aware of being, gives us a heightened sense of capacity. and this brings us back once more to the statement that the chief business of the figure painter, as an artist, is to stimulate the tactile imagination. the proportions of this small book forbid me to develop further a theme, the adequate treatment of which would require more than the entire space at my command. i must be satisfied with the crude and unillumined exposition given already, allowing myself this further word only, that i do not mean to imply that we get no pleasure from a picture except the tactile satisfaction. on the contrary, we get much pleasure from composition, more from colour, and perhaps more still from movement, to say nothing of all the possible associative pleasures for which every work of art is the occasion. what i do wish to say is that _unless_ it satisfies our tactile imagination, a picture will not exert the fascination of an ever-heightened reality; first we shall exhaust its ideas, and then its power of appealing to our emotions, and its "beauty" will not seem more significant at the thousandth look than at the first. my need of dwelling upon this subject at all, i must repeat, arises from the fact that although this principle is important indeed in other schools, it is all-important in the florentine school. without its due appreciation it would be impossible to do justice to florentine painting. we should lose ourselves in admiration of its "teaching," or perchance of its historical importance--as if historical importance were synonymous with artistic significance!--but we should never realise what artistic idea haunted the minds of its great men, and never understand why at a date so early it became academic. [page heading: giotto and values of touch] let us now turn back to giotto and see in what way he fulfils the first condition of painting as an art, which condition, as we agreed, is somehow to stimulate our tactile imagination. we shall understand this without difficulty if we cover with the same glance two pictures of nearly the same subject that hang side by side in the florence academy, one by "cimabue," and the other by giotto. the difference is striking, but it does not consist so much in a difference of pattern and types, as of realisation. in the "cimabue" we patiently decipher the lines and colours, and we conclude at last that they were intended to represent a woman seated, men and angels standing by or kneeling. to recognise these representations we have had to make many times the effort that the actual objects would have required, and in consequence our feeling of capacity has not only not been confirmed, but actually put in question. with what sense of relief, of rapidly rising vitality, we turn to the giotto! our eyes scarcely have had time to light on it before we realise it completely--the throne occupying a real space, the virgin satisfactorily seated upon it, the angels grouped in rows about it. our tactile imagination is put to play immediately. our palms and fingers accompany our eyes much more quickly than in presence of real objects, the sensations varying constantly with the various projections represented, as of face, torso, knees; confirming in every way our feeling of capacity for coping with things,--for life, in short. i care little that the picture endowed with the gift of evoking such feelings has faults, that the types represented do not correspond to my ideal of beauty, that the figures are too massive, and almost unarticulated; i forgive them all, because i have much better to do than to dwell upon faults. but how does giotto accomplish this miracle? with the simplest means, with almost rudimentary light and shade, and functional line, he contrives to render, out of all the possible outlines, out of all the possible variations of light and shade that a given figure may have, only those that we must isolate for special attention when we are actually realising it. this determines his types, his schemes of colour, even his compositions. he aims at types which both in face and figure are simple, large-boned, and massive,--types, that is to say, which in actual life would furnish the most powerful stimulus to the tactile imagination. obliged to get the utmost out of his rudimentary light and shade, he makes his scheme of colour of the lightest that his contrasts may be of the strongest. in his compositions, he aims at clearness of grouping, so that each important figure may have its desired tactile value. note in the "madonna" we have been looking at, how the shadows compel us to realise every concavity, and the lights every convexity, and how, with the play of the two, under the guidance of line, we realise the significant parts of each figure, whether draped or undraped. nothing here but has its architectonic reason. above all, every line is functional; that is to say, charged with purpose. its existence, its direction, is absolutely determined by the need of rendering the tactile values. follow any line here, say in the figure of the angel kneeling to the left, and see how it outlines and models, how it enables you to realise the head, the torso, the hips, the legs, the feet, and how its direction, its tension, is always determined by the action. there is not a genuine fragment of giotto in existence but has these qualities, and to such a degree that the worst treatment has not been able to spoil them. witness the resurrected frescoes in santa croce at florence! [page heading: symbolism of giotto] the rendering of tactile values once recognised as the most important specifically artistic quality of giotto's work, and as his personal contribution to the art of painting, we are all the better fitted to appreciate his more obvious though less peculiar merits--merits, i must add, which would seem far less extraordinary if it were not for the high plane of reality on which giotto keeps us. now what is back of this power of raising us to a higher plane of reality but a genius for grasping and communicating real significance? what is it to render the tactile values of an object but to communicate its material significance? a painter who, after generations of mere manufacturers of symbols, illustrations, and allegories had the power to render the material significance of the objects he painted, must, as a man, have had a profound sense of the significant. no matter, then, what his theme, giotto feels its real significance and communicates as much of it as the general limitations of his art, and of his own skill permit. when the theme is sacred story, it is scarcely necessary to point out with what processional gravity, with what hieratic dignity, with what sacramental intentness he endows it; the eloquence of the greatest critics has here found a darling subject. but let us look a moment at certain of his symbols in the arena at padua, at the "inconstancy," the "injustice," the "avarice," for instance. "what are the significant traits," he seems to have asked himself, "in the appearance and action of a person under the exclusive domination of one of these vices? let me paint the person with these traits, and i shall have a figure that perforce must call up the vice in question." so he paints "inconstancy" as a woman with a blank face, her arms held out aimlessly, her torso falling backwards, her feet on the side of a wheel. it makes one giddy to look at her. "injustice," is a powerfully built man in the vigour of his years dressed in the costume of a judge, with his left hand clenching the hilt of his sword, and his clawed right hand grasping a double hooked lance. his cruel eye is sternly on the watch, and his attitude is one of alert readiness to spring in all his giant force upon his prey. he sits enthroned on a rock, overtowering the tall waving trees, and below him his underlings are stripping and murdering a wayfarer. "avarice" is a horned hag with ears like trumpets. a snake issuing from her mouth curls back and bites her forehead. her left hand clutches her money-bag, as she moves forward stealthily, her right hand ready to shut down on whatever it can grasp. no need to label them: as long as these vices exist, for so long has giotto extracted and presented their visible significance. [page heading: giotto] still another exemplification of his sense for the significant is furnished by his treatment of action and movement. the grouping, the gestures never fail to be just such as will most rapidly convey the meaning. so with the significant line, the significant light and shade, the significant look up or down, and the significant gesture, with means technically of the simplest, and, be it remembered, with no knowledge of anatomy, giotto conveys a complete sense of motion such as we get in his paduan frescoes of the "resurrection of the blessed," of the "ascension of our lord," of the god the father in the "baptism," or the angel in "zacharias' dream." this, then, is giotto's claim to everlasting appreciation as an artist: that his thorough-going sense for the significant in the visible world enabled him so to represent things that we realise his representations more quickly and more completely than we should realise the things themselves, thus giving us that confirmation of our sense of capacity which is so great a source of pleasure. iii. [page heading: followers of giotto] for a hundred years after giotto there appeared in florence no painter equally endowed with dominion over the significant. his immediate followers so little understood the essence of his power that some thought it resided in his massive types, others in the swiftness of his line, and still others in his light colour, and it never occurred to any of them that the massive form without its material significance, its tactile values, is a shapeless sack, that the line which is not functional is mere calligraphy, and that light colour by itself can at the best spot a surface prettily. the better of them felt their inferiority, but knew no remedy, and all worked busily, copying and distorting giotto, until they and the public were heartily tired. a change at all costs became necessary, and it was very simple when it came. "why grope about for the significant, when the obvious is at hand? let me paint the obvious; the obvious always pleases," said some clever innovator. so he painted the obvious,--pretty clothes, pretty faces, and trivial action, with the results foreseen: he pleased then, and he pleases still. crowds still flock to the spanish chapel in s. maria novella to celebrate the triumph of the obvious, and non-significant. pretty faces, pretty colour, pretty clothes, and trivial action! is there a single figure in the fresco representing the "triumph of st. thomas" which incarnates the idea it symbolises, which, without its labelling instrument, would convey any meaning whatever? one pretty woman holds a globe and sword, and i am required to feel the majesty of empire; another has painted over her pretty clothes a bow and arrow, which are supposed to rouse me to a sense of the terrors of war; a third has an organ on what was intended to be her knee, and the sight of this instrument must suffice to put me into the ecstasies of heavenly music; still another pretty lady has her arm akimbo, and if you want to know what edification she can bring, you must read her scroll. below these pretty women sit a number of men looking as worthy as clothes and beards can make them; one highly dignified old gentleman gazes with all his heart and all his soul at--the point of his quill. the same lack of significance, the same obviousness characterise the fresco representing the "church militant and triumphant." what more obvious symbol for _the_ church than _a_ church? what more significant of st. dominic than the refuted paynim philosopher who (with a movement, by the way, as obvious as it is clever) tears out a leaf from his own book? and i have touched only on the value of these frescoes as allegories. not to speak of the emptiness of the one and the confusion of the other, as compositions, there is not a figure in either which has tactile values,--that is to say, artistic existence. while i do not mean to imply that painting between giotto and masaccio existed in vain--on the contrary, considerable progress was made in the direction of landscape, perspective, and facial expression,--it is true that, excepting the works of two men, no masterpieces of art were produced. these two, one coming in the middle of the period we have been dwelling upon, and the other just at its close, were andrea orcagna and fra angelico. [page heading: orcagna] of orcagna it is difficult to speak, as only a single fairly intact painting of his remains, the altar-piece in s. maria novella. here he reveals himself as a man of considerable endowment: as in giotto, we have tactile values, material significance; the figures artistically exist. but while this painting betrays no peculiar feeling for beauty of face and expression, the frescoes in the same chapel, the one in particular representing paradise, have faces full of charm and grace. i am tempted to believe that we have here a happy improvement made by the recent restorer. but what these mural paintings must always have had is real artistic existence, great dignity of slow but rhythmic movement, and splendid grouping. they still convince us of their high purpose. on the other hand, we are disappointed in orcagna's sculptured tabernacle at or sammichele, where the feeling for both material and spiritual significance is much lower. [page heading: fra angelico] we are happily far better situated toward fra angelico, enough of whose works have come down to us to reveal not only his quality as an artist, but his character as a man. perfect certainty of purpose, utter devotion to his task, a sacramental earnestness in performing it, are what the quantity and quality of his work together proclaim. it is true that giotto's profound feeling for either the materially or the spiritually significant was denied him--and there is no possible compensation for the difference; but although his sense for the real was weaker, it yet extended to fields which giotto had not touched. like all the supreme artists, giotto had no inclination to concern himself with his attitude toward the significant, with his feelings about it; the grasping and presentation of it sufficed him. in the weaker personality, the significant, vaguely perceived, is converted into emotion, is merely felt, and not realised. over this realm of feeling fra angelico was the first great master. "god's in his heaven--all's right with the world" he felt with an intensity which prevented him from perceiving evil anywhere. when he was obliged to portray it, his imagination failed him and he became a mere child; his hells are bogy-land; his martyrdoms are enacted by children solemnly playing at martyr and executioner; and he nearly spoils one of the most impressive scenes ever painted--the great "crucifixion" at san marco--with the childish violence of st. jerome's tears. but upon the picturing of blitheness, of ecstatic confidence in god's loving care, he lavished all the resources of his art. nor were they small. to a power of rendering tactile values, to a sense for the significant in composition, inferior, it is true, to giotto's, but superior to the qualifications of any intervening painter, fra angelico added the charm of great facial beauty, the interest of vivid expression, the attraction of delicate colour. what in the whole world of art more rejuvenating than angelico's "coronation" (in the uffizi)--the happiness on all the faces, the flower-like grace of line and colour, the childlike simplicity yet unqualifiable beauty of the composition? and all this in tactile values which compel us to grant the reality of the scene, although in a world where real people are standing, sitting, and kneeling we know not, and care not, on what. it is true, the significance of the event represented is scarcely touched upon, but then how well angelico communicates the feeling with which it inspired him! yet simple though he was as a person, simple and one-sided as was his message, as a product he was singularly complex. he was the typical painter of the transition from mediæval to renaissance. the sources of his feeling are in the middle ages, but he _enjoys_ his feelings in a way which is almost modern; and almost modern also are his means of expression. we are too apt to forget this transitional character of his, and, ranking him with the moderns, we count against him every awkwardness of action, and every lack of articulation in his figures. yet both in action and in articulation he made great progress upon his precursors--so great that, but for masaccio, who completely surpassed him, we should value him as an innovator. moreover, he was not only the first italian to paint a landscape that can be identified (a view of lake trasimene from cortona), but the first to communicate a sense of the pleasantness of nature. how readily we feel the freshness and spring-time gaiety of his gardens in the frescoes of the "annunciation" and the "noli me tangere" at san marco! iv. [page heading: masaccio] giotto born again, starting where death had cut short his advance, instantly making his own all that had been gained during his absence, and profiting by the new conditions, the new demands--imagine such an avatar, and you will understand masaccio. giotto we know already, but what were the new conditions, the new demands? the mediæval skies had been torn asunder and a new heaven and a new earth had appeared, which the abler spirits were already inhabiting and enjoying. here new interests and new values prevailed. the thing of sovereign price was the power to subdue and to create; of sovereign interest all that helped man to know the world he was living in and his power over it. to the artist the change offered a field of the freest activity. it is always his business to reveal to an age its ideals. but what room was there for sculpture and painting,--arts whose first purpose it is to make us realise the material significance of things--in a period like the middle ages, when the human body was denied all intrinsic significance? in such an age the figure artist can thrive, as giotto did, only in spite of it, and as an isolated phenomenon. in the renaissance, on the contrary, the figure artist had a demand made on him such as had not been made since the great greek days, to reveal to a generation believing in man's power to subdue and to possess the world, the physical types best fitted for the task. and as this demand was imperative and constant, not one, but a hundred italian artists arose, able each in his own way to meet it,--in their combined achievement, rivalling the art of the greeks. in sculpture donatello had already given body to the new ideals when masaccio began his brief career, and in the education, the awakening, of the younger artist the example of the elder must have been of incalculable force. but a type gains vastly in significance by being presented in some action along with other individuals of the same type; and here donatello was apt, rather than to draw his meed of profit, to incur loss by descending to the obvious--witness his _bas-reliefs_ at siena, florence, and padua. masaccio was untouched by this taint. types, in themselves of the manliest, he presents with a sense for the materially significant which makes us realise to the utmost their power and dignity; and the spiritual significance thus gained he uses to give the highest import to the event he is portraying; this import, in turn, gives a higher value to the types, and thus, whether we devote our attention to his types or to his action, masaccio keeps us on a high plane of reality and significance. in later painting we shall easily find greater science, greater craft, and greater perfection of detail, but greater reality, greater significance, i venture to say, never. dust-bitten and ruined though his brancacci chapel frescoes now are, i never see them without the strongest stimulation of my tactile consciousness. i feel that i could touch every figure, that it would yield a definite resistance to my touch, that i should have to expend thus much effort to displace it, that i could walk around it. in short, i scarcely could realise it more, and in real life i should scarcely realise it so well, the attention of each of us being too apt to concentrate itself upon some dynamic quality, before we have at all begun to realise the full material significance of the person before us. then what strength to his young men, and what gravity and power to his old! how quickly a race like this would possess itself of the earth, and brook no rivals but the forces of nature! whatever they do--simply because it is they--is impressive and important, and every movement, every gesture, is world-changing. compared with his figures, those in the same chapel by his precursor, masolino, are childish, and those by his follower, filippino, unconvincing and without significance, because without tactile values. even michelangelo, where he comes in rivalry, has, for both reality and significance, to take a second place. compare his "expulsion from paradise" (in the sixtine chapel) with the one here by masaccio. michelangelo's figures are more correct, but far less tangible and less powerful; and while he represents nothing but a man warding off a blow dealt from a sword, and a woman cringing with ignoble fear, masaccio's adam and eve stride away from eden heart-broken with shame and grief, hearing, perhaps, but not seeing, the angel hovering high overhead who directs their exiled footsteps. masaccio, then, like giotto a century earlier,--himself the giotto of an artistically more propitious world--was, as an artist, a great master of the significant, and, as a painter, endowed to the highest degree with a sense of tactile values, and with a skill in rendering them. in a career of but few years he gave to florentine painting the direction it pursued to the end. in many ways he reminds us of the young bellini. who knows? had he but lived as long, he might have laid the foundation for a painting not less delightful and far more profound than that of venice. as it was, his frescoes at once became, and for as long as there were real artists among them remained, the training-school of florentine painters. v. masaccio's death left florentine painting in the hands of three men older, and two somewhat younger than himself, all men of great talent, if not of genius, each of whom--the former to the extent habits already formed would permit, the latter overwhelmingly, felt his influence. the older, who, but for masaccio, would themselves have been the sole determining personalities in their art, were fra angelico, paolo uccello, and andrea del castagno; the younger, domenico veneziano and fra filippo. as these were the men who for a whole generation after masaccio's death remained at the head of their craft, forming the taste of the public, and communicating their habits and aspirations to their pupils, we at this point can scarcely do better than try to get some notion of each of them and of the general art tendencies they represented. [page heading: paolo uccello] fra angelico we know already as the painter who devoted his life to picturing the departing mediæval vision of a heaven upon earth. nothing could have been farther from the purpose of uccello and castagno. different as these two were from each other, they have this much in common, that in their works which remain to us, dating, it is true, from their years of maturity, there is no touch of mediæval sentiment, no note of transition. as artists they belonged entirely to the new era, and they stand at the beginning of the renaissance as types of two tendencies which were to prevail in florence throughout the whole of the fifteenth century, partly supplementing and partly undoing the teaching of masaccio. uccello had a sense of tactile values and a feeling for colour, but in so far as he used these gifts at all, it was to illustrate scientific problems. his real passion was perspective, and painting was to him a mere occasion for solving some problem in this science, and displaying his mastery over its difficulties. accordingly he composed pictures in which he contrived to get as many lines as possible leading the eye inward. prostrate horses, dead or dying cavaliers, broken lances, ploughed fields, noah's arks, are used by him with scarcely an attempt at disguise, to serve his scheme of mathematically converging lines. in his zeal he forgot local colour--he loved to paint his horses green or pink--forgot action, forgot composition, and, it need scarcely be added, significance. thus in his battle-pieces, instead of adequate action of any sort, we get the feeling of witnessing a show of stuffed figures whose mechanical movements have been suddenly arrested by some clog in their wires; in his fresco of the "deluge," he has so covered his space with demonstrations of his cleverness in perspective and foreshortening that, far from bringing home to us the terrors of a cataclysm, he at the utmost suggests the bursting of a mill-dam; and in the neighbouring fresco of the "sacrifice of noah," just as some capitally constructed figures are about to enable us to realise the scene, all possibility of artistic pleasure is destroyed by our seeing an object in the air which, after some difficulty, we decipher as a human being plunging downward from the clouds. instead of making this figure, which, by the way, is meant to represent god the father, plunge toward us, uccello deliberately preferred to make it dash inward, away from us, thereby displaying his great skill in both perspective and foreshortening, but at the same time writing himself down as the founder of two families of painters which have flourished ever since, the artists for dexterity's sake--mental or manual, it scarcely matters--and the naturalists. as these two clans increased rapidly in florence, and, for both good and evil, greatly affected the whole subsequent course of florentine painting, we must, before going farther, briefly define to ourselves dexterity and naturalism, and their relation to art. [page heading: art for dexterity's sake] the essential in painting, especially in figure-painting, is, we agreed, the rendering of the tactile values of the forms represented, because by this means, and this alone, can the art make us realise forms better than we do in life. the great painter, then, is, above all, an artist with a great sense of tactile values and great skill in rendering them. now this sense, though it will increase as the man is revealed to himself, is something which the great painter possesses at the start, so that he is scarcely, if at all, aware of possessing it. his conscious effort is given to the means of rendering. it is of means of rendering, therefore, that he talks to others; and, because his triumphs here are hard-earned and conscious, it is on his skill in rendering that he prides himself. the greater the painter, the less likely he is to be aware of aught else in his art than problems of rendering--but all the while he is communicating what the force of his genius makes him feel without his striving for it, almost without his being aware of it, the material and spiritual significance of forms. however--his intimates hear him talk of nothing but skill; he seems to think of nothing but skill; and naturally they, and the entire public, conclude that his skill is his genius, and that skill _is_ art. this, alas, has at all times been the too prevalent notion of what art is, divergence of opinion existing not on the principle, but on the kind of dexterity to be prized, each generation, each critic, having an individual standard, based always on the several peculiar problems and difficulties that interest them. at florence these inverted notions about art were especially prevalent because it was a school of art with a score of men of genius and a thousand mediocrities all egging each other on to exhibitions of dexterity, and in their hot rivalry it was all the great geniuses could do to be faithful to their sense of significance. even masaccio was driven to exhibit his mere skill, the much admired and by itself wonderfully realised figure of a naked man trembling with cold being not only without real significance, but positively distracting, in the representation of a baptism. a weaker man like paolo uccello almost entirely sacrificed what sense of artistic significance he may have started with, in his eagerness to display his skill and knowledge. as for the rabble, their work has now the interest of prize exhibitions at local art schools, and their number merely helped to accelerate the momentum with which florentine art rushed to its end. but out of even mere dexterity a certain benefit to art may come. men without feeling for the significant may yet perfect a thousand matters which make rendering easier and quicker for the man who comes with something to render, and when botticelli and leonardo and michelangelo appeared, they found their artistic patrimony increased in spite of the fact that since masaccio there had been no man at all approaching their genius. this increase, however, was due not at all so much to the sons of dexterity, as to the intellectually much nobler, but artistically even inferior race of whom also uccello was the ancestor--the naturalists. [page heading: naturalism in art] what is a naturalist? i venture upon the following definition:--a man with a native gift for science who has taken to art. his purpose is not to extract the material and spiritual significance of objects, thus communicating them to us more rapidly and intensely than we should perceive them ourselves, and thereby giving us a sense of heightened vitality; his purpose is research, and his communication consists of nothing but facts. from this perhaps too abstract statement let us take refuge in an example already touched upon--the figure of the almighty in uccello's "sacrifice of noah." instead of presenting this figure as coming toward us in an attitude and with an expression that will appeal to our sense of solemnity, as a man whose chief interest was artistic would have done--as giotto, in fact, did in his "baptism"--uccello seems to have been possessed with nothing but the scientific intention to find out how a man swooping down head-foremost would have looked if at a given instant of his fall he had been suddenly congealed and suspended in space. a figure like this may have a mathematical but certainly has no psychological significance. uccello, it is true, has studied every detail of this phenomenon and noted down his observations, but because his notes happen to be in form and colour, they do not therefore constitute a work of art. wherein does his achievement differ in quality from a coloured map of a country? we can easily conceive of a relief map of cadore or giverny on so large a scale, and so elaborately coloured, that it will be an exact reproduction of the physical aspects of those regions, but never for a moment should we place it beside a landscape by titian or monet, and think of it as a work of art. yet its relation to the titian or monet painting is exactly that of uccello's achievement to giotto's. what the scientist who paints--the naturalist, that is to say,--attempts to do is not to give us what art alone can give us, the life-enhancing qualities of objects, but a reproduction of them as they are. if he succeeded, he would give us the exact visual impression of the objects themselves, but art, as we have already agreed, must give us not the mere reproductions of things but a quickened sense of capacity for realising them. artistically, then, the naturalists, uccello and his numerous successors, accomplished nothing. yet their efforts to reproduce objects as they are, their studies in anatomy and perspective, made it inevitable that when another great genius did arise, he should be a leonardo or a michelangelo, and not a giotto. [page heading: andrea del castagno] uccello, as i have said, was the first representative of two strong tendencies in florentine painting--of art for dexterity's sake, and art for scientific purposes. andrea del castagno, while also unable to resist the fascination of mere science and dexterity, had too much artistic genius to succumb to either. he was endowed with great sense for the significant, although, it is true, not enough to save him completely from the pitfalls which beset all florentines, and even less from one more peculiar to himself--the tendency to communicate at any cost a feeling of power. to make us feel power as masaccio and michelangelo do at their best is indeed an achievement, but it requires the highest genius and the profoundest sense for the significant. the moment this sense is at all lacking, the artist will not succeed in conveying power, but such obvious manifestations of it as mere strength, or, worse still, the insolence not infrequently accompanying high spirits. now castagno, who succeeds well enough in one or two such single figures as his cumæan sibyl or his farinata degli uberti, which have great, if not the greatest, power, dignity, and even beauty, elsewhere condescends to mere swagger,--as in his pipo spano or niccolo di tolentino--or to mere strength, as in his "last supper," or, worse still, to actual brutality, as in his santa maria nuova "crucifixion." nevertheless, his few remaining works lead us to suspect in him the greatest artist, and the most influential personality among the painters of the first generation after masaccio. vi. [page heading: domenico veneziano] to distinguish clearly, after the lapse of nearly five centuries, between uccello and castagno, and to determine the precise share each had in the formation of the florentine school, is already a task fraught with difficulties. the scantiness of his remaining works makes it more than difficult, makes it almost impossible, to come to accurate conclusions regarding the character and influence of their somewhat younger contemporary, domenico veneziano. that he was an innovator in technique, in affairs of vehicle and medium, we know from vasari; but as such innovations, indispensable though they may become to painting as a craft, are in themselves questions of theoretic and applied chemistry, and not of art, they do not here concern us. his artistic achievements seem to have consisted in giving to the figure movement and expression, and to the face individuality. in his existing works we find no trace of sacrifice made to dexterity and naturalism, although it is clear that he must have been master of whatever science and whatever craft were prevalent in his day. otherwise he would not have been able to render a figure like the st. francis in his uffizi altar-piece, where tactile values and movement expressive of character--what we usually call individual _gait_--were perhaps for the first time combined; or to attain to such triumphs as his st. john and st. francis, at santa croce, whose entire figures express as much fervour as their eloquent faces. as to his sense for the significant in the individual, in other words, his power as a portrait-painter, we have in the pitti one or two heads to witness, perhaps, the first great achievements in this kind of the renaissance. [page heading: fra filippo lippi] no such difficulties as we have encountered in the study of uccello, castagno, and veneziano meet us as we turn to fra filippo. his works are still copious, and many of them are admirably preserved; we therefore have every facility for judging him as an artist, yet nothing is harder than to appreciate him at his due. if attractiveness, and attractiveness of the best kind, sufficed to make a great artist, then filippo would be one of the greatest, greater perhaps than any other florentine before leonardo. where shall we find faces more winsome, more appealing, than in certain of his madonnas--the one in the uffizi, for instance--more momentarily evocative of noble feeling than in his louvre altar-piece? where in florentine painting is there anything more fascinating than the playfulness of his children, more poetic than one or two of his landscapes, more charming than is at times his colour? and with all this, health, even robustness, and almost unfailing good-humour! yet by themselves all these qualities constitute only a high-class illustrator, and such by native endowment i believe fra filippo to have been. that he became more--very much more--is due rather to masaccio's potent influence than to his own genius; for he had no profound sense of either material or spiritual significance--the essential qualifications of the real artist. working under the inspiration of masaccio, he at times renders tactile values admirably, as in the uffizi madonna--but most frequently he betrays no genuine feeling for them, failing in his attempt to render them by the introduction of bunchy, billowy, calligraphic draperies. these, acquired from the late giottesque painter (probably lorenzo monaco) who had been his first master, he seems to have prized as artistic elements no less than the tactile values which he attempted to adopt later, serenely unconscious, apparently, of their incompatibility. filippo's strongest impulse was not toward the pre-eminently artistic one of re-creation, but rather toward expression, and within that field, toward the expression of the pleasant, genial, spiritually comfortable feelings of ordinary life. his real place is with the _genre_ painters; only his _genre_ was of the soul, as that of others--of benozzo gozzoli, for example--was of the body. hence a sin of his own, scarcely less pernicious than that of the naturalists, and cloying to boot--expression at any cost. vii. [page heading: naturalism in florentine art] from the brief account just given of the four dominant personalities in florentine painting from about to about , it results that the leanings of the school during this interval were not artistic and artistic alone, but that there were other tendencies as well, tendencies on the one side, toward the expression of emotion (scarcely less literary because in form and colour than if in words), and, on the other, toward the naturalistic reproduction of objects. we have also noted that while the former tendency was represented by filippo alone, the latter had paolo uccello, and all of castagno and veneziano that the genius of these two men would permit them to sacrifice to naturalism and science. to the extent, however, that they took sides and were conscious of a distinct purpose, these also sided with uccello and not with filippo. it may be agreed, therefore, that the main current of florentine painting for a generation after masaccio was naturalistic, and that consequently the impact given to the younger painters who during this period were starting, was mainly toward naturalism. later, in studying botticelli, we shall see how difficult it was for any one young at the time to escape this tide, even if by temperament farthest removed from scientific interests. meanwhile we must continue our study of the naturalists, but now of the second generation. their number and importance from to is not alone due to the fact that art education toward the beginning of this epoch was mainly naturalistic, but also to the real needs of a rapidly advancing craft, and even more to the character of the florentine mind, the dominant turn of which was to science and not to art. but as there were then no professions scientific in the stricter sense of the word, and as art of some form was the pursuit of a considerable proportion of the male inhabitants of florence, it happened inevitably that many a lad with the natural capacities of a galileo was in early boyhood apprenticed as an artist. and as he never acquired ordinary methods of scientific expression, and never had time for occupations not bread-winning, he was obliged his life long to make of his art both the subject of his strong instinctive interest in science, and the vehicle of conveying his knowledge to others. [page heading: alessio baldovinetti] this was literally the case with the oldest among the leaders of the new generation, alessio baldovinetti, in whose scanty remaining works no trace of purely artistic feeling or interest can be discerned; and it is only less true of alessio's somewhat younger, but far more gifted contemporaries, antonio pollaiuolo and andrea verrocchio. these also we should scarcely suspect of being more than men of science, if pollaiuolo once or twice, and verrocchio more frequently, did not dazzle us with works of almost supreme art, which, but for our readiness to believe in the manifold possibilities of florentine genius, we should with exceeding difficulty accept as their creation--so little do they seem to result from their conscious striving. alessio's attention being largely devoted to problems of vehicle--to the side of painting which is scarcely superior to cookery--he had time for little else, although that spare time he gave to the study of landscape, in the rendering of which he was among the innovators. andrea and antonio set themselves the much worthier task of increasing on every side the effectiveness of the figure arts, of which, sculpture no less than painting, they aimed to be masters. [page heading: pollaiuolo and verrocchio] to confine ourselves, however, as closely as we may to painting, and leaving aside for the present the question of colour, which, as i have already said, is, in florentine art, of entirely subordinate importance, there were three directions in which painting as pollaiuolo and verrocchio found it had greatly to advance before it could attain its maximum of effectiveness: landscape, movement, and the nude. giotto had attempted none of these. the nude, of course, he scarcely touched; movement he suggested admirably, but never rendered; and in landscape he was satisfied with indications hardly more than symbolical, although quite adequate to his purpose, which was to confine himself to the human figure. in all directions masaccio made immense progress, guided by his never failing sense for material significance, which, as it led him to render the tactile values of each figure separately, compelled him also to render the tactile values of groups as wholes, and of their landscape surroundings--by preference, hills so shaped as readily to stimulate the tactile imagination. for what he accomplished in the nude and in movement, we have his "expulsion" and his "man trembling with cold" to witness. but in his works neither landscape nor movement, nor the nude, are as yet distinct sources of artistic pleasure--that is to say, in themselves life-enhancing. although we can well leave the nude until we come to michelangelo, who was the first to completely realise its distinctly artistic possibilities, we cannot so well dispense with an enquiry into the sources of our æsthetic pleasure in the representation of movement and of landscape, as it was in these two directions--in movement by pollaiuolo especially, and in landscape by baldovinetti, pollaiuolo, and verrocchio--that the great advances of this generation of florentine painters were made. viii. [page heading: representation of movement] turning our attention first to movement--which, by the way, is not the same as motion, mere change of place--we find that we realise it just as we realise objects, by the stimulation of our tactile imagination, only that here touch retires to a second place before the muscular feelings of varying pressure and strain. i see (to take an example) two men wrestling, but unless my retinal impressions are immediately translated into images of strain and pressure in my muscles, of resistance to my weight, of touch all over my body, it means nothing to me in terms of vivid experience--not more, perhaps, than if i heard some one say "two men are wrestling." although a wrestling match may, in fact, contain many genuinely artistic elements, our enjoyment of it can never be quite artistic; we are prevented from completely realising it not only by our dramatic interest in the game, but also, granting the possibility of being devoid of dramatic interest, by the succession of movements being too rapid for us to realise each completely, and too fatiguing, even if realisable. now if a way could be found of conveying to us the realisation of movement without the confusion and the fatigue of the actuality, we should be getting out of the wrestlers more than they themselves can give us--the heightening of vitality which comes to us whenever we keenly realise life, such as the actuality itself would give us, _plus_ the greater effectiveness of the heightening brought about by the clearer, intenser, and less fatiguing realisation. this is precisely what the artist who succeeds in representing movement achieves: making us realise it as we never can actually, he gives us a heightened sense of capacity, and whatever is in the actuality enjoyable, he allows us to enjoy at our leisure. in words already familiar to us, he _extracts the significance of movements_, just as, in rendering tactile values, the artist extracts the corporeal significance of objects. his task is, however, far more difficult, although less indispensable:--it is not enough that he should extract the values of what at any given moment is an actuality, as is an object, but what at no moment really is--namely movement. he can accomplish his task in only one way, and that is by so rendering the one particular movement that we shall be able to realise all other movements that the same figure may make. "he is grappling with his enemy now," i say of my wrestler. "what a pleasure to be able to realise in my own muscles, on my own chest, with my own arms and legs, the life that is in him as he is making his supreme effort! what a pleasure, as i look away from the representation, to realise in the same manner, how after the contest his muscles will relax, and rest trickle like a refreshing stream through his nerves!" all this i shall be made to enjoy by the artist who, in representing any one movement, can give me the logical sequence of visible strain and pressure in the parts and muscles. it is just here that the scientific spirit of the florentine naturalists was of immense service to art. this logic of sequence is to be attained only by great, although not necessarily more than empiric, knowledge of anatomy, such perhaps as the artist pure would never be inclined to work out for himself, but just such as would be of absorbing interest to those scientists by temperament and artists by profession whom we have in pollaiuolo and, to a less extent, in verrocchio. we remember how giotto contrived to render tactile values. of all the possible outlines, of all the possible variations of light and shade that a figure may have, he selected those that we must isolate for special attention when we are actually realising it. if instead of figure, we say figure in movement, the same statement applies to the way pollaiuolo rendered movement--with this difference, however, that he had to render what in actuality we never can perfectly isolate, the line and light and shade most significant of any given action. this the artist must construct himself out of his dramatic feeling for pressure and strain and his ability to articulate the figure in all its logical sequences, for, if he would convey a sense of movement, he must give the line and the light and shade which will best render not tactile values alone, but the sequences of articulations. [page heading: "battle of the nudes"] it would be difficult to find more effective illustration of all that has just been said about movement than one or two of pollaiuolo's own works, which, in contrast to most of his achievements, where little more than effort and research are visible, are really masterpieces of life-communicating art. let us look first at his engraving known as the "battle of the nudes." what is it that makes us return to this sheet with ever renewed, ever increased pleasure? surely it is not the hideous faces of most of the figures and their scarcely less hideous bodies. nor is it the pattern as decorative design, which is of great beauty indeed, but not at all in proportion to the spell exerted upon us. least of all is it--for most of us--an interest in the technique or history of engraving. no, the pleasure we take in these savagely battling forms arises from their power to directly communicate life, to immensely heighten our sense of vitality. look at the combatant prostrate on the ground and his assailant bending over, each intent on stabbing the other. see how the prostrate man plants his foot on the thigh of his enemy, and note the tremendous energy he exerts to keep off the foe, who, turning as upon a pivot, with his grip on the other's head, exerts no less force to keep the advantage gained. the significance of all these muscular strains and pressures is so rendered that we cannot help realising them; we imagine ourselves imitating all the movements, and exerting the force required for them--and all without the least effort on our side. if all this without moving a muscle, what should we feel if we too had exerted ourselves! and thus while under the spell of this illusion--this hyperæsthesia not bought with drugs, and not paid for with cheques drawn on our vitality--we feel as if the elixir of life, not our own sluggish blood, were coursing through our veins. [page heading: "hercules strangling david"] let us look now at an even greater triumph of movement than the nudes, pollaiuolo's "hercules strangling antæus." as you realise the suction of hercules' grip on the earth, the swelling of his calves with the pressure that falls on them, the violent throwing back of his chest, the stifling force of his embrace; as you realise the supreme effort of antæus, with one hand crushing down upon the head and the other tearing at the arm of hercules, you feel as if a fountain of energy had sprung up under your feet and were playing through your veins. i cannot refrain from mentioning still another masterpiece, this time not only of movement, but of tactile values and personal beauty as well--pollaiuolo's "david" at berlin. the young warrior has sped his stone, cut off the giant's head, and now he strides over it, his graceful, slender figure still vibrating with the rapidity of his triumph, expectant, as if fearing the ease of it. what lightness, what buoyancy we feel as we realise the movement of this wonderful youth! ix. [page heading: verrocchio and landscape] in all that concerns movement, verrocchio was a learner from pollaiuolo, rather than an initiator, and he probably never attained his master's proficiency. we have unfortunately but few terms for comparison, as the only paintings which can be with certainty ascribed to verrocchio are not pictures of action. a drawing however like that of his angel, in the british museum, which attempts as much movement as the hercules by pollaiuolo, in the same collection, is of obviously inferior quality. yet in sculpture, along with works which are valuable as harbingers of leonardo rather than for any intrinsic perfection, he created two such masterpieces of movement as the "child with the dolphin" in the courtyard of the palazzo vecchio, and the colleoni monument at venice--the latter sinning, if at all, by an over-exuberance of movement, by a step and swing too suggestive of drums and trumpets. but in landscape verrocchio was a decided innovator. to understand what new elements he introduced, we must at this point carry out our determination to enquire into the source of our pleasure in landscape painting; or rather--to avoid a subject of vast extent for which this is not the place--of landscape painting as practised by the florentines. [page heading: landscape painting] before verrocchio, his precursors, first alessio baldovinetti and then pollaiuolo, had attempted to treat landscape as naturalistically as painting would permit. their ideal was to note it down with absolute correctness from a given point of view; their subject almost invariably the valdarno; their achievement, a bird's-eye view of this tuscan paradise. nor can it be denied that this gives pleasure, but the pleasure is only such as is conveyed by tactile values. instead of having the difficulty we should have in nature to distinguish clearly points near the horizon's edge, we here see them perfectly and without an effort, and in consequence feel great confirmation of capacity for life. now if landscape were, as most people vaguely believe, a pleasure coming through the eyes alone, then the pollaiuolesque treatment could be equalled by none that has followed, and surpassed only by rogier van der weyden, or by the quaint german "master of the lyversberg passion," who makes us see objects miles away with as great a precision and with as much intensity of local colour as if we were standing off from them a few feet. were landscape really this, then nothing more inartistic than gradation of tint, atmosphere, and _plein air_, all of which help to make distant objects less clear, and therefore tend in no way to heighten our sense of capacity. but as a matter of fact the pleasure we take in actual landscape is only to a limited extent an affair of the eye, and to a great extent one of unusually intense well-being. the painter's problem, therefore, is not merely to render the tactile values of the visible objects, but to convey, more rapidly and unfailingly than nature would do, _the consciousness_ of an unusually intense degree of well-being. this task--the communication by means purely visual of feelings occasioned chiefly by sensations non-visual--is of such difficulty that, until recently, successes in the rendering of what is peculiar to landscape as an art, and to landscape alone, were accidental and sporadic. only now, in our own days, may painting be said to be grappling with this problem seriously; and perhaps we are already at the dawn of an art which will have to what has hitherto been called landscape, the relation of our music to the music of the greeks or of the middle ages. [page heading: verrocchio's landscapes] verrocchio was, among florentines at least, the first to feel that a faithful reproduction of the contours is not landscape, that the painting of nature is an art distinct from the painting of the figure. he scarcely knew where the difference lay, but felt that light and atmosphere play an entirely different part in each, and that in landscape these have at least as much importance as tactile values. a vision of _plein air_, vague i must grant, seems to have hovered before him, and, feeling his powerlessness to cope with it in full effects of light such as he attempted in his earlier pictures, he deliberately chose the twilight hour, when, in tuscany, on fine days, the trees stand out almost black against a sky of light opalescent grey. to render this subduing, soothing effect of the coolness and the dew after the glare and dust of the day--the effect so matchlessly given in gray's "elegy"--seemed to be his first desire as a painter, and in presence of his "annunciation" (in the uffizi), we feel that he succeeded as only one other tuscan succeeded after him, that other being his own pupil leonardo. x. [page heading: genre artists] it is a temptation to hasten on from pollaiuolo and verrocchio to botticelli and leonardo, to men of genius as artists reappearing again after two generations, men who accomplished with scarcely an effort what their precursors had been toiling after. but from these it would be even more difficult than at present to turn back to painters of scarcely any rank among the world's great artists, and of scarcely any importance as links in a chain of evolution, but not to be passed by, partly because of certain qualities they do possess, and partly because their names would be missed in an account, even so brief as this, of florentine painting. the men i chiefly refer to, one most active toward the middle and the other toward the end of the fifteenth century, are benozzo gozzoli and domenico ghirlandaio. although they have been rarely coupled together, they have much in common. both were, as artists, little more than mediocrities with almost no genuine feeling for what makes painting a great art. the real attractiveness of both lies entirely outside the sphere of pure art, in the realms of _genre_ illustration. and here the likeness between them ends; within their common ground they differed widely. [page heading: benozzo gozzoli] benozzo was gifted with a rare facility not only of execution but of invention, with a spontaneity, a freshness, a liveliness in telling a story that wake the child in us, and the lover of the fairy tale. later in life, his more precious gifts deserted him, but who wants to resist the fascination of his early works, painted, as they seem, by a fra angelico who had forgotten heaven and become enamoured of the earth and the spring-time? in his riccardi palace frescoes, he has sunk already to portraying the florentine apprentice's dream of a holiday in the country on st. john's day; but what a _naïf_ ideal of luxury and splendour it is! with these, the glamour in which he saw the world began to fade away from him, and in his pisan frescoes we have, it is true, many a quaint bit of _genre_ (superior to teniers only because of superior associations), but never again the fairy tale. and as the better recedes, it is replaced by the worse, by the bane of all _genre_ painting, non-significant detail, and positive bad taste. have london or new york or berlin worse to show us than the jumble of buildings in his ideal of a great city, his picture of babylon? it may be said he here continues mediæval tradition, which is quite true, but this very fact indicates his real place, which, in spite of his adopting so many of the fifteenth-century improvements, is not with the artists of the renaissance, but with the story-tellers and costumed fairy-tale painters of the transition, with spinello aretino and gentile da fabriano, for instance. and yet, once in a while, he renders a head with such character, or a movement with such ease that we wonder whether he had not in him, after all, the making of a real artist. [page heading: ghirlandaio] ghirlandaio was born to far more science and cunning in painting than was current in benozzo's early years, and all that industry, all that love of his occupation, all that talent even, can do for a man, they did for him; but unfortunately he had not a spark of genius. he appreciated masaccio's tactile values, pollaiuolo's movement, verrocchio's effects of light, and succeeded in so sugaring down what he adopted from these great masters that the superior philistine of florence could say: "there now is a man who knows as much as any of the great men, but can give me something that i can really enjoy!" bright colour, pretty faces, good likenesses, and the obvious everywhere--attractive and delightful, it must be granted, but, except in certain single figures, never significant. let us glance a moment at his famous frescoes in santa maria novella. to begin with, they are so undecorative that, in spite of the tone and surface imparted to them by four centuries, they still suggest so many _tableaux vivants_ pushed into the wall side by side, and in tiers. then the compositions are as overfilled as the sheets of an illustrated newspaper--witness the "massacre of the innocents," a scene of such magnificent artistic possibilities. finally, irrelevant episodes and irrelevant groups of portraits do what they can to distract our attention from all higher significance. look at the "birth of john"; ginevra dei benci stands there, in the very foreground, staring out at you as stiff as if she had a photographer's iron behind her head. an even larger group of florentine housewives in all their finery disfigures the "birth of the virgin," which is further spoiled by a _bas relief_ to show off the painter's acquaintance with the antique, and by the figure of the serving maid who pours out water, with the rush of a whirlwind in her skirts--this to show off skill in the rendering of movement. yet elsewhere, as in his "epiphany" in the uffizi, ghirlandaio has undeniable charm, and occasionally in portraits his talent, here at its highest, rises above mediocrity, in one instance, the fresco of sassetti in santa trinità, becoming almost genius. xi. [page heading: leonardo] all that giotto and masaccio had attained in the rendering of tactile values, all that fra angelico or filippo had achieved in expression, all that pollaiuolo had accomplished in movement, or verrocchio in light and shade, leonardo, without the faintest trace of that tentativeness, that painfulness of effort which characterised his immediate precursors, equalled or surpassed. outside velasquez, and perhaps, when at their best, rembrandt and degas, we shall seek in vain for tactile values so stimulating and so convincing as those of his "mona lisa"; outside degas, we shall not find such supreme mastery over the art of movement as in the unfinished "epiphany" in the uffizi; and if leonardo has been left far behind as a painter of light, no one has succeeded in conveying by means of light and shade a more penetrating feeling of mystery and awe than he in his "virgin of the rocks." add to all this, a feeling for beauty and significance that have scarcely ever been approached. where again youth so poignantly attractive, manhood so potently virile, old age so dignified and possessed of the world's secrets! who like leonardo has depicted the mother's happiness in her child and the child's joy in being alive; who like leonardo has portrayed the timidity, the newness to experience, the delicacy and refinement of maidenhood; or the enchantress intuitions, the inexhaustible fascination of the woman in her years of mastery? look at his many sketches for madonnas, look at his profile drawing of isabella d'este, or at the _belle joconde_, and see whether elsewhere you find their equals. leonardo is the one artist of whom it may be said with perfect literalness: nothing that he touched but turned into a thing of eternal beauty. whether it be the cross-section of a skull, the structure of a weed, or a study of muscles, he, with his feeling for line and for light and shade, forever transmuted it into life-communicating values; and all without intention, for most of these magical sketches were dashed off to illustrate purely scientific matter, which alone absorbed his mind at the moment. and just as his art is life-communicating as is that of scarcely another, so the contemplation of his personality is life-enhancing as that of scarcely any other man. think that great though he was as a painter, he was no less renowned as a sculptor and architect, musician and improviser, and that all artistic occupations whatsoever were in his career but moments snatched from the pursuit of theoretical and practical knowledge. it would seem as if there were scarcely a field of modern science but he either foresaw it in vision, or clearly anticipated it, scarcely a realm of fruitful speculation of which he was not a freeman; and as if there were hardly a form of human energy which he did not manifest. and all that he demanded of life was the chance to be useful! surely, such a man brings us the gladdest of all tidings--the wonderful possibilities of the human family, of whose chances we all partake. painting, then, was to leonardo so little of a preoccupation that we must regard it as merely a mode of expression used at moments by a man of universal genius, who recurred to it only when he had no more absorbing occupation, and only when it could express what nothing else could, the highest spiritual through the highest material significance. and great though his mastery over his craft, his feeling for significance was so much greater that it caused him to linger long over his pictures, labouring to render the significance he felt but which his hand could not reproduce, so that he rarely finished them. we thus have lost in quantity, but have we lost in quality? could a mere painter, or even a mere artist, have seen and felt as leonardo? we may well doubt. we are too apt to regard a universal genius as a number of ordinary brains somehow conjoined in one skull, and not always on the most neighbourly terms. we forget that genius means mental energy, and that a leonardo, for the self-same reason that prevents his being merely a painter--the fact that it does not exhaust a hundredth part of his energy--will, when he does turn to painting, bring to bear a power of seeing, feeling, and rendering, as utterly above that of the ordinary painter as the "mona lisa" is above, let us say, andrea del sarto's "portrait of his wife." no, let us not join in the reproaches made to leonardo for having painted so little; because he had much more to do than to paint, he has left all of us heirs to one or two of the supremest works of art ever created. xii. [page heading: botticelli] never pretty, scarcely ever charming or even attractive; rarely correct in drawing, and seldom satisfactory in colour; in types, ill-favoured; in feeling acutely intense and even dolorous--what is it then that makes sandro botticelli so irresistible that nowadays we may have no alternative but to worship or abhor him? the secret is this, that in european painting there has never again been an artist so indifferent to representation and so intent upon presentation. educated in a period of triumphant naturalism, he plunged at first into mere representation with almost self-obliterating earnestness; the pupil of fra filippo, he was trained to a love of spiritual _genre_; himself gifted with strong instincts for the significant, he was able to create such a type of the thinker as in his fresco of st. augustin; yet in his best years he left everything, even spiritual significance, behind him, and abandoned himself to the presentation of those qualities alone which in a picture are _directly_ life-communicating, and life-enhancing. those of us who care for nothing in the work of art but what it represents, are either powerfully attracted or repelled by his unhackneyed types and quivering feeling; but if we are such as have an imagination of touch and of movement that it is easy to stimulate, we feel a pleasure in botticelli that few, if any, other artists can give us. long after we have exhausted both the intensest sympathies and the most violent antipathies with which the representative elements in his pictures may have inspired us, we are only on the verge of fully appreciating his real genius. this in its happiest moments is an unparalleled power of perfectly combining values of touch with values of movement. look, for instance, at botticelli's "venus rising from the sea." throughout, the tactile imagination is roused to a keen activity, by itself almost as life heightening as music. but the power of music is even surpassed where, as in the goddess' mane-like tresses of hair fluttering to the wind, not in disorderly rout but in masses yielding only after resistance, the movement is directly life-communicating. the entire picture presents us with the quintessence of all that is pleasurable to our imagination of touch and of movement. how we revel in the force and freshness of the wind, in the life of the wave! and such an appeal he always makes. his subject may be fanciful, as in the "realm of venus" (the "spring"); religious, as in the sixtine chapel frescoes or in the "coronation of the virgin"; political, as in the recently discovered "pallas taming a centaur"; or even crudely allegorical, as in the louvre frescoes,--no matter how unpropitious, how abstract the idea, the vivid appeal to our tactile sense, the life-communicating movement is always there. indeed, at times it seems that the less artistic the theme, the more artistic the fulfilment, the painter being impelled to give the utmost values of touch and movement to just those figures which are liable to be read off as mere empty symbols. thus, on the figure representing political disorder--the centaur--in the "pallas," botticelli has lavished his most intimate gifts. he constructs the torso and flanks in such a way that every line, every indentation, every boss appeals so vividly to the sense of touch that our fingers feel as if they had everywhere been in contact with his body, while his face gives to a still heightened degree this convincing sense of reality, every line functioning perfectly for the osseous structure of brow, nose, and cheeks. as to the hair--imagine shapes having the supreme life of line you may see in the contours of licking flames, and yet possessed of all the plasticity of something which caresses the hand that models it to its own desire! [page heading: lineal decoration] in fact, the mere subject, and even representation in general, was so indifferent to botticelli, that he appears almost as if haunted by the idea of communicating the _unembodied_ values of touch and movement. now there is a way of rendering even tactile values with almost no body, and that is by translating them as faithfully as may be into values of movement. for instance:--we want to render the roundness of a wrist without the slightest touch of either light or shade; we simply give the movement of the wrist's outline and the movement of the drapery as it falls over it, and the roundness is communicated to us almost entirely in terms of movement. but let us go one step further. take this line that renders the roundness of the wrist, or a more obvious example, the lines that render the movements of the tossing hair, the fluttering draperies, and the dancing waves in the "birth of venus"--take these lines alone with all their power of stimulating our imagination of movement, and what do we have? pure values of movement abstracted, unconnected with any representation whatever. this kind of line, then, being the quintessence of movement, has, like the essential elements in all the arts, a power of stimulating our imagination and of directly communicating life. well! imagine an art made up entirely of these quintessences of movement-values, and you will have something that holds the same relation to representation that music holds to speech--and this art exists, and is called lineal decoration. in this art of arts sandro botticelli may have had rivals in japan and elsewhere in the east, but in europe never. to its demands he was ready to sacrifice everything that habits acquired under filippo and pollaiuolo,--and his employers!--would permit. the representative element was for him a mere _libretto_: he was happiest when his subject lent itself to translation into what may be called a lineal symphony. and to this symphony everything was made to yield; tactile values were translated into values of movement, and, for the same reason--to prevent the drawing of the eye inward, to permit it to devote itself to the rhythm of the line--the backgrounds were either entirely suppressed or kept as simple as possible. colour also, with almost a contempt for its representative function, botticelli entirely subordinated to his lineal scheme, compelling it to draw attention to the line, rather than, as is usual, away from it. this is the explanation of the value put upon botticelli's masterpieces. in some of his later works, such as the dresden _predelle_, we have, it is true, bacchanals rather than symphonies of line, and in many of his earlier paintings, in the "_fortezza_," for instance, the harness and trappings have so disguised pegasus that we scarcely know him from a cart horse. but the painter of the "venus rising from the sea," of the "spring," or of the villa lemmi frescoes is the greatest artist of lineal design that europe has ever had. xiii. [page heading: popularisers of art] leonardo and botticelli, like michelangelo after them, found imitators but not successors. to communicate more material and spiritual significance than leonardo, would have taken an artist with deeper feeling for significance; to get more music out of design than botticelli, would have required a painter with even greater passion for the re-embodiment of the pure essences of touch and movement. there were none such in florence, and the followers of botticelli--leonardo's were all milanese, and do not here concern us--could but imitate the patterns of their master: the patterns of the face, the patterns of the composition, and the patterns of the line; dragging them down to their own level, sugaring them down to their own palate, slowing them down to their own insensitiveness for what is life-communicating. and although their productions, which were nothing but translations of great man's art into average man's art, became popular, as was inevitable, with the average man of their time, (who comprehended them better and felt more comfortable in their presence than in that of the originals which he respectfully admired but did not so thoroughly enjoy), nevertheless we need not dwell on these popularisers nor on their popularisations--not even on filippino, with his touch of consumptive delicacy, nor raffaelino del garbo, with his glints of never-to-be-fulfilled promise. [page heading: fra bartolommeo] before approaching the one man of genius left in florence after botticelli and leonardo, before speaking of michelangelo, the man in whom all that was most peculiar and much that was greatest in the striving of florentine art found its fulfilment, let us turn for a moment to a few painters who, just because they were men of manifold talent, might elsewhere almost have become masters. fra bartolommeo, andrea del sarto, pontormo, and bronzino were perhaps no less gifted as artists than palma, bonifazio veronese, lotto, and tintoretto; but their talents, instead of being permitted to flower naturally, were scorched by the passion for showing off dexterity, blighted by academic ideals, and uprooted by the whirlwind force of michelangelo. fra bartolommeo, who in temperament was delicate, refined, graceful, and as a painter had a miniaturist's feeling for the dainty, was induced to desert his lovely women, his exquisite landscape, and his gentleness of expression for figures constructed mechanically on a colossal scale, or for effects of the round at any cost. and as evil is more obvious than good, bartolommeo, the painter of that masterpiece of colour and light and shade, of graceful movement and charming feeling, the "madonna with the baptist and st. stephen" in the cathedral at lucca, bartolommeo, the dainty deviser of mr. mond's tiny "nativity," bartolommeo, the artificer of a hundred masterpieces of pen drawing, is almost unknown; and to most people fra bartolommeo is a sort of synonym for pomposity. he is known only as the author of physically colossal, spiritually insignificant prophets and apostles, or, perchance, as the painter of pitch-dark altar-pieces: this being the reward of devices to obtain mere relief. [page heading: andrea del sarto] andrea del sarto approached perhaps as closely to a giorgione or a titian as could a florentine, ill at ease in the neighbourhood of leonardo and michelangelo. as an artist he was, it is true, not endowed with the profoundest sense for the significant, yet within the sphere of common humanity who has produced anything more genial than his "portrait of a lady"--probably his wife--with a petrarch in her hands? where out of venetia can we find portraits so simple, so frank, and yet so interpretive as his "sculptor," or as his various portraits of himself--these, by the way, an autobiography as complete as any in existence, and tragic as few? almost venetian again is his "st. james" caressing children, a work of the sweetest feeling. even in colour effect, and technique, how singularly close to the best venetian painting in his "dispute about the trinity"--what blacks and whites, what greys and purplish browns! and in addition, tactile values peculiar to florence--what a back st. sebastian's! but in a work of scarcely less technical merit, the "madonna of the harpies," we already feel the man not striving to get the utmost out of himself, but panting for the grand and magnificent. even here, he remains almost a great artist, because his natural robustness comes to his rescue; but the "madonna" is too obviously statuesque, and, good saints, pray why all these draperies? the obviously statuesque and draperies were andrea's devices for keeping his head above water in the rising tide of the michelangelesque. as you glance in sequence at the annunziata frescoes, on the whole so full of vivacity, gaiety, and genuine delight in life, you see from one fresco to another the increased attention given to draperies. in the scalzo series, otherwise masterpieces of tactile values, the draperies do their utmost to smother the figures. most of these paintings are closed in with ponderous forms which have no other purpose than to serve as a frame, and as clothes-horses for draperies: witness the scene of zacharias in the temple, wherein none of the bystanders dare move for fear of disturbing their too obviously arranged folds. thus by constantly sacrificing first spiritual, and then material significance to pose and draperies, andrea loses all feeling for the essential in art. what a sad spectacle is his "assumption," wherein the apostles, the virgin herself, have nothing better to do than to show off draperies! instead of feeling, as in the presence of titian's "assunta," wrapt to heaven, you gaze at a number of tailor's men, each showing how a stuff you are thinking of trying looks on the back, or in a certain effect of light. but let us not end on this note; let us bear in mind that, despite all his faults, andrea painted the one "last supper" which can be looked at with pleasure after leonardo's. [page heading: pontormo] pontormo, who had it in him to be a decorator and portrait-painter of the highest rank, was led astray by his awe-struck admiration for michelangelo, and ended as an academic constructor of monstrous nudes. what he could do when expressing _himself_, we see in the lunette at poggio a caiano, as design, as colour, as fancy, the freshest, gayest, most appropriate mural decoration now remaining in italy; what he could do as a portrait-painter, we see in his wonderfully decorative panel of cosimo dei medici at san marco, or in his portrait of a "lady with a dog" (at frankfort), perhaps the first portrait ever painted in which the sitter's social position was insisted upon as much as the personal character. what pontormo sank to, we see in such a riot of meaningless nudes, all caricatures of michelangelo, as his "martyrdom of forty saints." [page heading: bronzino] bronzino, pontormo's close follower, had none of his master's talent as a decorator, but happily much of his power as a portrait-painter. would he had never attempted anything else! the nude without material or spiritual significance, with no beauty of design or colour, the nude simply because it was the nude, was bronzino's ideal in composition, and the result is his "christ in limbo." but as a portrait-painter, he took up the note struck by his master and continued it, leaving behind him a series of portraits which not only had their effect in determining the character of court painting all over europe, but, what is more to the point, a series of portraits most of which are works of art. as painting, it is true, they are hard, and often timid; but their air of distinction, their interpretive qualities, have not often been surpassed. in his uffizi portraits of eleanora di toledo, of prince ferdinand, of the princess maria, we seem to see the prototypes of velasquez' queens, princes, and princesses: and for a fine example of dignified rendering of character, look in the sala baroccio of the uffizi at a bust of a young woman with a missal in her hand. xiv. [page heading: michelangelo] the great florentine artists, as we have seen, were, with scarcely an exception, bent upon rendering the material significance of visible things. this, little though they may have formulated it, was the conscious aim of most of them; and in proportion as they emancipated themselves from ecclesiastical dominion, and found among their employers men capable of understanding them, their aim became more and more conscious and their striving more energetic. at last appeared the man who was the pupil of nobody, the heir of everybody, who felt profoundly and powerfully what to his precursors had been vague instinct, who saw and expressed the meaning of it all. the seed that produced him had already flowered into a giotto, and once again into a masaccio; in him, the last of his race, born in conditions artistically most propitious, all the energies remaining in his stock were concentrated, and in him florentine art had its logical culmination. [page heading: anthropomorphism in art] michelangelo had a sense for the materially significant as great as giotto's or masaccio's, but he possessed means of rendering, inherited from donatello, pollaiuolo, verrocchio and leonardo,--means that had been undreamt of by giotto or even by masaccio. add to this that he saw clearly what before him had been felt only dimly, that there was no other such instrument for conveying material significance as the human nude. this fact is as closely dependent on the general conditions of realising objects as tactile values are on the psychology of sight. we realise objects when we perfectly translate them into terms of our own states, our own feelings. so obviously true is this, that even the least poetically inclined among us, because we keenly realise the movement of a railway train, to take one example out of millions, speak of it as _going_ or _running_, instead of _rolling on its wheels_, thus being no less guilty of anthropomorphising than the most unregenerate savages. of this same fallacy we are guilty every time we think of anything whatsoever with the least warmth--we are lending this thing some human attributes. the more we endow it with human attributes, the less we merely know it, the more we realise it, the more does it approach the work of art. now there is one and only one object in the visible universe which we need not anthropomorphise to realise--and that is man himself. his movements, his actions, are the only things we realise without any myth-making effort--directly. hence, there is no visible object of such artistic possibilities as the human body; nothing with which we are so familiar; nothing, therefore, in which we so rapidly perceive changes; nothing, then, which if represented so as to be realised more quickly and vividly than in life, will produce its effect with such velocity and power, and so strongly confirm our sense of capacity for living. [page heading: value of the nude in art] values of touch and movement, we remember, are the specifically artistic qualities in figure painting (at least, as practised by the florentines), for it is through them chiefly that painting directly heightens life. now while it remains true that tactile values can, as giotto and masaccio have forever established, be admirably rendered on the draped figure, yet drapery is a hindrance, and, at the best, only a way out of a difficulty, for we _feel_ it masking the really significant, which is _the form underneath_. a mere painter, one who is satisfied to reproduce what everybody sees, and to paint for the fun of painting, will scarcely comprehend this feeling. his only significant is the obvious--in a figure, the face and the clothing, as in most of the portraits manufactured nowadays. the artist, even when compelled to paint draped figures, will force the drapery to render the nude, in other words the material significance of the human body. but how much more clearly will this significance shine out, how much more convincingly will the character manifest itself, when between its perfect rendering and the artist nothing intervenes! and this perfect rendering is to be accomplished with the nude only. if draperies are a hindrance to the conveyance of tactile values, they make the perfect rendering of movement next to impossible. to realise the play of muscle everywhere, to get the full sense of the various pressures and resistances, to receive the direct inspiration of the energy expended, we must have the nude; for here alone can we watch those tautnesses of muscle and those stretchings and relaxings and ripplings of skin which, translated into similar strains on our own persons, make us fully realise movement. here alone the translation, owing to the multitude and the clearness of the appeals made, is instantaneous, and the consequent sense of increased capacity almost as great as can be attained; while in the draped figure we miss all the appeal of visible muscle and skin, and realise movement only after a slow translation of certain functional outlines, so that the sense of capacity which we receive from the perception of movement is increased but slightly. we are now able to understand why every art whose chief preoccupation is the human figure must have the nude for its chief interest; why, also, the nude is the most absorbing problem of classic art at all times. not only is it the best vehicle for all that in art which is directly life-confirming and life-enhancing, but it is itself the most significant object in the human world. the first person since the great days of greek sculpture to comprehend fully the identity of the nude with great figure art, was michelangelo. before him, it had been studied for scientific purposes--as an aid in rendering the draped figure. he saw that it was an end in itself, and the final purpose of his art. for him the nude and art were synonymous. here lies the secret of his successes and his failures. [page heading: michelangelo] first, his successes. nowhere outside of the best greek art shall we find, as in michelangelo's works, forms whose tactile values so increase our sense of capacity, whose movements are so directly communicated and inspiring. other artists have had quite as much feeling for tactile values alone,--masaccio, for instance; others still have had at least as much sense of movement and power of rendering it,--leonardo, for example; but no other artist of modern times, having at all his control over the materially significant, has employed it as michelangelo did, on the one subject where its full value can be manifested--the nude. hence of all the achievements of modern art, his are the most invigorating. surely not often is our imagination of touch roused as by his adam in the "creation," by his eve in the "temptation," or by his many nudes in the same ceiling of the sixtine chapel,--there for no other purpose, be it noted, than their direct tonic effect! nor is it less rare to quaff such draughts of unadulterated energy as we receive from the "god creating adam," the "boy angel" standing by isaiah, or--to choose one or two instances from his drawings (in their own kind the greatest in existence)--the "gods shooting at a mark" or the "hercules and the lion." and to this feeling for the materially significant and all this power of conveying it, to all this more narrowly artistic capacity, michelangelo joined an ideal of beauty and force, a vision of a glorious but possible humanity, which, again, has never had its like in modern times. manliness, robustness, effectiveness, the fulfilment of our dream of a great soul inhabiting a beautiful body, we shall encounter nowhere else so frequently as among the figures in the sixtine chapel. michelangelo completed what masaccio had begun, the creation of the type of man best fitted to subdue and control the earth, and, who knows! perhaps more than the earth. [page heading: last works of michelangelo] but unfortunately, though born and nurtured in a world where his feeling for the nude and his ideal of humanity could be appreciated, he passed most of his life in the midst of tragic disasters, and while yet in the fulness of his vigour, in the midst of his most creative years, he found himself alone, perhaps the greatest, but alas! also the last of the giants born so plentifully during the fifteenth century. he lived on in a world he could not but despise, in a world which really could no more employ him than it could understand him. he was not allowed, therefore, to busy himself where he felt most drawn by his genius, and, much against his own strongest impulses, he was obliged to expend his energy upon such subjects as the "last judgment." his later works all show signs of the altered conditions, first in an overflow into the figures he was creating of the scorn and bitterness he was feeling, then in the lack of harmony between his genius and what he was compelled to execute. his passion was the nude, his ideal power. but what outlet for such a passion, what expression for such an ideal could there be in subjects like the "last judgment," or the "crucifixion of peter"--subjects which the christian world imperatively demanded should incarnate the fear of the humble and the self-sacrifice of the patient? now humility and patience were feelings as unknown to michelangelo as to dante before him, or, for that matter, to any other of the world's creative geniuses at any time. even had he felt them, he had no means of expressing them, for his nudes could convey a sense of power, not of weakness; of terror, not of dread; of despair, but not of submission. and terror the giant nudes of the "last judgment" do feel, but it is not terror of the judge, who, being in no wise different from the others, in spite of his omnipotent gesture, seems to be _announcing_ rather than _willing_ what the bystanders, his fellows, could not _unwill_. as the representation of the moment before the universe disappears in chaos--gods huddling together for the _götterdämmerung_--the "last judgment" is as grandly conceived as possible: but when the crash comes, none will survive it, no, not even god. michelangelo therefore failed in his conception of the subject, and could not but fail. but where else in the whole world of art shall we receive such blasts of energy as from this giant's dream, or, if you will, nightmare? for kindred reasons, the "crucifixion of peter" is a failure. art can be only life-communicating and life-enhancing. if it treats of pain and death, these must always appear as manifestations and as results only of living resolutely and energetically. what chance is there, i ask, for this, artistically the only possible treatment, in the representation of a man crucified with his head downwards? michelangelo could do nothing but make the bystanders, the executioners, all the more life-communicating, and therefore inevitably more sympathetic! no wonder he failed here! what a tragedy, by the way, that the one subject perfectly cut out for his genius, the one subject which required none but genuinely artistic treatment, his "bathers," executed forty years before these last works, has disappeared, leaving but scant traces! yet even these suffice to enable the competent student to recognise that this composition must have been the greatest masterpiece in figure art of modern times. that michelangelo had faults of his own is undeniable. as he got older, and his genius, lacking its proper outlets, tended to stagnate and thicken, he fell into exaggerations--exaggerations of power into brutality, of tactile values into feats of modelling. no doubt he was also at times as indifferent to representation as botticelli! but while there is such a thing as movement, there is no such thing as tactile values without representation. yet he seems to have dreamt of presenting nothing but tactile values: hence his many drawings with only the torso adequately treated, the rest unheeded. still another result from his passion for tactile values. i have already suggested that giotto's types were so massive because such figures most easily convey values of touch. michelangelo tended to similar exaggerations, to making shoulders, for instance, too broad and too bossy, simply because they make thus a more powerful appeal to the tactile imagination. indeed, i venture to go even farther, and suggest that his faults in all the arts, sculpture no less than painting, and architecture no less than sculpture, are due to this self-same predilection for salient projections. but the lover of the figure arts for what in them is genuinely artistic and not merely ethical, will in michelangelo, even at his worst, get such pleasures as, excepting a few, others, even at their best, rarely give him. * * * * * [page heading: constant aims of florentine art] in closing, let us note what results clearly even from this brief account of the florentine school, namely that, although no florentine merely took up and continued a predecessor's work, nevertheless all, from first to last, fought for the same cause. there is no opposition between giotto and michelangelo. the best energies of the first, of the last, and of all the intervening great florentine artists were persistently devoted to the rendering of tactile values, or of movement, or of both. now successful grappling with problems of form and of movement is at the bottom of all the higher arts; and because of this fact, florentine painting, despite its many faults, is, after greek sculpture, the most serious figure art in existence. index to the works of the principal florentine painters. note. the following lists make no claim to absolute completeness, but no genuine work by the painters mentioned, found in the better known public or private collections, has been omitted. with the exception of three or four pictures, which he knows only in the photographs, the author has seen and carefully studied every picture indicated, and is alone responsible for the attributions, although he is happy to acknowledge his indebtedness to the writings of signor cavalcaselle, of the late giovanni morelli, of signor gustavo frizzoni, and of dr. j. p. richter. for the convenience of students, lists of the sculptures, but the more important only, have been appended to the lists of pictures by those artists who have left sculptures as well as paintings. public galleries are mentioned first, then private collections, and churches last. the principal public gallery is always understood after the simple mention of a city or town. thus, paris means paris, louvre, london means london, national gallery, etc. an interrogation point after the title of a picture indicates that its attribution to the given painter is doubtful. distinctly early or late works are marked e. or l. it need scarcely be said that the attributions here given are not based on official catalogues, and are often at variance with them. mariotto albertinelli. - . pupil of cosimo rosselli and pier di cosimo; influenced by lorenzo di credi; worked in partnership with fra bartolommeo. agram (croatia). strossmayer collection. adam and eve driven from paradise. e. bergamo. lochis, . crucifixion. morelli, . st. john and the magdalen. e. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum, . madonna and infant john. . chartres. musÉe. tabernacle: madonna and saints, crucifixion, etc. e. florence. academy, . trinity. . madonna and four saints. . annunciation. . pitti, . holy family. uffizi, . last judgment (begun in by fra bartolommeo). . visitation, with _predella_. . corsini, . holy family (in part). . certosa (near florence). crucifixion. . geneva. musÉe. annunciation. . gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry, . nativity. . scenes from the creation. e. the hague. . holy family with infant john (on fra bartolommeo's cartoon). madrid. duke of alba. madonna. milan. poldi-pezzoli, . triptych. . munich. . annunciation and the two saints. new york. mr. samuel untermeyer. female saint. paris. . madonna and saints (begun by filippino, who laid in the st. jerome. albertinelli was assisted by bugiardini in the execution of the rest, especially in the child and landscape). . pisa. s. caterina. madonna and saints (on fra bartolommeo's cartoon). . rome. borghese, . madonna and infant john (on fra bartolommeo's cartoon). . . head of christ. scotland. gosford house, earl of wemyss. madonna. siena. . st. catherine. . . the magdalen. . stuttgart. , , . coronation and two _putti_ (top of fra bartolommeo's altar-piece at besançon). . venice. seminario, . madonna. volterra. duomo. annunciation. e. alunno di domenico. descriptive name for florentine painter whose real name appears to have been bartolommeo di giovanni. flourished last two decades of fifteenth century. assistant of ghirlandajo; influenced by amico di sandro. aix-en-provence. musÉe. madonna and infant john adoring child. arezzo. museo, sala ii, . tabernacle: magdalen and st. antony at foot of cross. dresden. and . _tondi_: ss. michael and raphael. florence. academy, . _pietà_ and stories of saints. . st. thomas aquinas, gabriel, and a prophet. . madonna with st. dominic and a prophet. . st. jerome. . st. francis receiving the stigmata. . entombment. uffizi, . _tondo_: madonna and infant john. . st. benedict and two monks. museo di san marco, small refectory. crucifixion with ss. peter, andrew, the magdalen, and two other saints. marchese manelli riccardi. _pietà_. innocenti, gallery, - . seven _predelle_ to ghirlandajo's altarpiece in church, in which he painted also the "massacre of the innocents." . horsmonden (kent). capel manor, mrs. austen. two _cassone_-fronts: centaurs and lapithæ. liverpool. walker art gallery, . martyrdom of st. sebastian. . bishop dining with a woman. london. mr. brinsley marlay. four _cassone_-fronts: stories of joseph and of the taking of troy. sir kenneth muir mackenzie. madonna and infant john. longleat (warminster). marquess of bath. two _cassone_-fronts: feast and flight. lovere (lago d'iseo). galleria tadini, . madonna and infant john. milan. borromeo. _pietà_ narni. municipio. two compartments of the _predelle_ to ghirlandajo's coronation of virgin: ss. francis and jerome. . new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . st. jerome. oxford. christ church library, . madonna and infant john. palermo. baron chiaramonte-bordonaro, . st. jerome. paris. a. marriage of peleus and thetis. b. triumph of venus. m. jean dollfus, . frame to a trecento madonna. m. joseph spiridon. scene from the tale of nastagio degli onesti. . rome. colonna, . reconciliation between romans and sabines. . rape of sabines. scotland. langton (near duns), hon. mrs. baillie-hamilton. _cassone_-front: story of io. vienna. dr. a. figdor. large cross with ss. jerome and francis. count lanckoronski. several martyrdoms, including the decapitation of the baptist beside a well. warwick castle. earl of warwick. two small _tondi_: st. stephen; a bishop. amico di sandro. an artistic personality between botticelli and filippino lippi. altenburg. lindenau museum, . profile portrait of caterina sforza. bergamo. morelli, . profile portrait of giuliano de' medici. berlin. . madonna. herr edward simon. bust of young man. budapest. . madonna in landscape with st. antony of padua and kneeling monk. chantilly. musÉe condÉ. _cassone_-front: story of esther. florence. pitti, . "_la bella simonetta._" . death of lucretia. uffizi, . madonna and three angels (from s. maria nuova). e. . madonna adoring child. cenacolo di foligno (via faenza), . madonna and infant john adoring child. corsini gallery, . the five virtues. horsmonden (kent). capel manor, mrs. austen. madonna and angel (version of lost original by botticelli). e. london. . adoration of magi. . madonna and infant john. victoria and albert museum, ionides bequest. portrait of esmeralda bandinelli. e. mr. robert benson. tobias and the angel. meiningen. grand ducal palace. nativity. milan. prince trivulzio. profile of lady. naples. madonna and two angels. e. museo filangieri, bis. portrait of young man. oxford. christ church library, , . two panels with sibyls in niches. paris. a. _cassone_-front: death of virginia. . portrait of young man. comte pastre: _cassone_-front: story of esther. baron schlichting. madonna (version of filippo's madonna at munich). philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. portrait of man. rome. count gregori stroganoff. two angels swinging censers. scotland. newbattle abbey (dalkeith), marquess of lothian. coronation of virgin (lunette). st. petersburg. stroganoff collection. nativity and angels in landscape. turin. . tobias and the three archangels. vienna. prince liechtenstein. bust of young man. two _cassone_ panels with story of esther. andrea (vanucci) del sarto. - . pupil of pier di cosimo; influenced by fra bartolommeo and michelangelo. berlin. . bust of his wife. . madonna and saints. . dresden. . marriage of st. catherine. e. . sacrifice of isaac. florence. academy, . two angels. . . fresco: dead christ. . four saints. . . _predelle_ to . pitti, . deposition. . . portrait of young man. . holy family. , . life of joseph. . . annunciation. . dispute over the trinity. . . portrait of young man. . assumption. . . assumption. . . the baptist. . madonna. uffizi, . "noli me tangere." e. . portrait of his wife. . fresco: portrait of himself. . "madonna dell' arpie." . . portrait of himself. . portrait of lady. . st. james. corsini gallery. apollo and daphne. e. chiostro dello scalzo. monochrome frescoes: charity, - . preaching of baptist, finished . justice, . st. john baptising, . baptist made prisoner, . faith, . dance of salome, . annunciation to zacharias, . decapitation of baptist, . feast of herod, . hope, . visitation, . birth of baptist, . ss. annunziata, entrance court. frescoes: five to l. with the story of st. filippo benizzi, - . r., adoration of magi, . birth of virgin, . chapel to l. of entrance. head of christ. inner cloister, over door. fresco: "madonna del sacco." . s. salvi. fresco: four evangelists. . fresco: last supper, begun in . poggio a cajano (royal villa near florence). fresco: cæsar receiving tribute. (finished by a. allori). london. . portrait of a sculptor. hertford house. madonna and angels. mr. robert benson. _tondo_: madonna with infant john. l. mr. leopold de rothschild. madonna and infant john. madrid. . portrait of his wife. . holy family and angel. . sacrifice of isaac. . naples. copy of raphael's leo x. paris. . charity. . . holy family. petworth house (sussex). lord leconfield, . madonna with infant john and three angels (?). e. rome. borghese, . madonna and infant john. e. st. petersburg. . madonna with ss. elizabeth and catherine. . vienna. . _pietà_. . tobias and angel with st. leonard and donor. e. . madonna and infant john (in part). windsor castle. bust of woman. fra angelico da fiesole. - . influenced by lorenzo monaco and masaccio. agram (croatia). strossmayer collection, st. francis receiving stigmata; death of st. peter martyr. altenburg. lindenau museum, . st. francis before the sultan. berlin. . madonna and saints. a. last judgment. l. . ss. dominic and francis. . glory of st. francis. (magazine.) head of saint. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. death and assumption of virgin. brant broughton (lincolnshire). rev. arthur f. sutton. a bishop. cortona. s. domenico, over entrance. fresco: madonna and saints. gesÙ. annunciation. e. two _predelle_. e. triptych: madonna with four saints, etc. düsseldorf. akademie, . head of baptist. florence. academy, . deposition (three pinnacles by lorenzo monaco). . madonna and six saints. - . fourteen scenes from life of christ. . . madonna enthroned (but not the trinity above). . story of ss. cosmas and damian (in part). . entombment. . crucifixion. . coronation of virgin. - , sixteen scenes from life of christ and virgin, except the "legge d'amore." . . martyrdom of ss. cosmas and damian. . madonna with six saints and two angels. . last judgment (not the damned nor the inferno). . madonna and eight saints and eight angels. (ruined). . _predella_: _pietà_ and saints. l. (ruined). uffizi, . triptych: madonna with saints and angels; _predella_. . . _predella_ to no. : birth of john. . _predella_ to no. : _sposalizio_. . _predella_ to no. : dormition. . coronation of virgin. . tabernacle: madonna, saints, and angels. . museo di san marco. frescoes, all painted from between about to no later than . cloister. st. peter martyr; st. dominic at foot of cross; st. dominic (ruined); _pietà_; christ as pilgrim with two dominicans; st. thomas aquinas. chapter house. large crucifixion. upper floor, walls. annunciation; st. dominic at foot of cross; madonna with eight saints. rooms, no. . "noli me tangere." . entombment. . annunciation. . crucifixion. . nativity. . transfiguration. . ecce homo. . resurrection. . coronation of virgin. . presentation in temple. . madonna and saints. - . crucifixions (some ruined). . baptism. . crucifixion. . _pietà_. . christ bearing cross. . descent to limbo. . sermon on the mount. . betrayal of judas. panels: small madonna and angels; small coronation. . agony in garden. panel: small annunciation. . institution of the eucharist. . nailing to cross. . crucifixion. . adoration of magi, and _pietà_. , . crucifixions. s. domenico di fiesole (near florence) madonna and saints (architecture and landscape by lorenzo di credi). sacristy of adjoining monastery. fresco: crucifixion. frankfort a./m. herr adolf schaeffer. madonna enthroned and four angels. london. . paradise. mrs. j. e. taylor. small panel. lyons. m. edouard aynard. madonna with ss. peter, paul, and george, with angels and kneeling donor. madrid. prado, . annunciation. duke of alba. madonna and angels. munich. - . legends of saints. . entombment. orvieto. duomo, chapel of s. brizio. ceiling frescoes: christ as judge; prophets (assisted by benozzo gozzoli). . paris. . coronation of virgin. . martyrdom of ss. cosmas and damian. . fresco: crucifixion. m. georges chalandon. meeting of francis and dominic. m. noel valois. crucifixion with cardinal (probably) john torquemada, as donor. l. parma. . madonna and four saints. perugia. sala v, - . altarpiece in many parts. pisa. sala vi, . salvator mundi. rome. corsini, sala vii, . pentecost. . last judgment. . ascension. vatican, pinacoteca. madonna; two _predelle_ with legend of st. nicholas. museo cristiano, case q. v. st. francis receiving stigmata. chapel of nicholas v. frescoes: lives of ss. stephen and lawrence. - . count gregori stroganoff. small tabernacle. st. petersburg. hermitage, . fresco: madonna with ss. dominic and thomas aquinas. turin. , . adoring angels. vienna. baron tucher. annunciation (in part). bacchiacca (francesco ubertini). about - . pupil of perugino and franciabigio; influenced by andrea del sarto and michelangelo. asolo. canonica della parrocchia. madonna with st. elizabeth. bergamo. morelli, . death of abel. berlin. . baptism. a. portrait of young woman. (magazine.) decapitation of baptist. herr eugen schweizer. leda and the swan. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. head of woman. brocklesby (lincolnshire). earl of yarborough. madonna and st. anne. budapest. . preaching of baptist. cassel. . old man seated. dijon. musée, donation jules maciet. resurrection. dresden. . legendary subject. . florence. pitti, . the magdalen. uffizi, . descent from cross. . _predelle_: life of st. ascanius. . tobias and angel. corsini gallery, . madonna, infant john, and sleeping child. . portrait of man. . conte niccolini (via dei servi). madonna with st. anne and infant john. conte serristori. madonna with st. anne and infant john. locko park (near derby). mr. drury lowe, . christ bearing cross. london. , . story of joseph. . marcus curtius. mr. charles butler. portrait of young man. mr. frederick a. white. birth plate. milan. comm. benigno crespi. adoration of magi; madonna. dr. gustavo frizzoni. adam and eve. munich. . madonna and infant john. oxford. christ church library, . "noli me tangere." . resurrection of lazarus. richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook. holy family; last supper; crucifixion. two _grisailles_: apollo and cupid; apollo and daphne. rome. borghese, . madonna. , , , , . life of joseph. miss hertz. bust of magdalen. troyes. musÉe. tobias and angel. venice. seminario, . madonna. prince giovanelli. moses striking rock. wiesbaden. nassauisches kunstverein, . madonna and infant john. alesso baldovinetti. - . pupil of domenico veneziano; influenced by paolo uccello. bergamo. morelli, . fresco: portrait of himself (fragment from s. trinita, florence). berlin. . profile of young woman. (?) florence. academy, . trinity. . . marriage of cana; baptism; transfiguration. . uffizi, . annunciation. . madonna and saints. mr. b. berenson. madonna. e. s. ambrogio. baptist with ss. catherine, stephen, ambrose, and angels, - . ss. annunziata, entrance court. fresco: nativity. - . duomo, sacristy. intarsias (after his cartoons): nativity, . circumcision. s. marco, courtyard. crucifixion with s. antonino. s. miniato, portuguese chapel. annunciation. . frescoes in cupola and spandrils: prophets. begun . s. pancrazio, ruccellai chapel. fresco: resurrected christ. . pazzi chapel (beside s. croce). window in choir (after his design): st. andrew. s. trinita, choir. frescoes: begun in : ceiling. noah; moses; abraham; david. lunettes: fragment of sacrifice of isaac; slight fragment of moses receiving the tables of the law. paris. a. madonna in landscape. e. mme. edouard andrÉ. madonna in landscape. fra bartolommeo (baccio delta porta). - . pupil of pier di cosimo; influenced by leonardo and michelangelo. ashridge park (berkhampstead). earl brownlow, madonna. l. berlin. . assumption (upper part by albertinelli). probably, . besançon. cathedral. madonna in glory, saints, and ferry carondolet as donor. cambridge (u. s. a.). fogg museum. sacrifice of abel. florence. academy, . st. vincent ferrer. . vision of st. bernard. . . heads in fresco. . fresco: madonna. . portrait of savonarola. . fresco: madonna. pitti, . deposition. . st. mark. . . christ and the four evangelists. . . madonna and saints. . . holy family. . fresco: ecce homo. uffizi, . fresco: last judgment. begun , finished by albertinelli. . isaiah. . job. . small diptych. e. . underpainting for altarpiece (from his cartoons). - . museo di san marco, savonarola's cell. fresco: madonna, . profile of savonarola. e. fresco: christ at emmaus. s. marco, d altar r. madonna and saints. . pian di mugnone (near florence). s. maddalena. frescoes: annunciation. ; "noli me tangere." . grenoble. musÉe, . madonna. london. . madonna in landscape. col. g. l. holford, dorchester house. madonna (in part). mr. ludwig mond. holy family; small nativity. earl of north brook. holy family (finished by albertinelli). lucca. "madonna della misericordia." . god adored by saints. . duomo, chapel l. of choir. madonna and saints. . naples. assumption of virgin (in great part). . panshanger (hertford). holy family. burial and ascension of s. antonino. paris. . "noli me tangere." . . annunciation. . . madonna and saints. . philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. adam and eve (unfinished). richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook, octagon room, . madonna with st. elizabeth and children. . rome. corsini gallery, . holy family. . lateran, . st. peter (finished by raphael). . st. paul. marchese visconti venosta. _tondo_: holy family. st. petersburg. madonna and three angels. . vienna. . madonna. . madonna and saints (assisted by albertinelli). . . circumcision. . benozzo gozzoli. - . pupil possibly of giuliano pesello, and of the bicci; assistant and follower of fra angelico. berlin. b. madonna, saints, and angels. miracle of s. zanobi. . béziers. musÉe, . st. rose and the magdalen. cambridge (u. s. a.). fogg museum. madonna. castelfiorentino (near empoli). cappella di s. chiara. tabernacle with frescoes (in great part). madonna della tosse (on way to castelnuovo). frescoes (in great part). . certaldo. cappella del ponte dell' agliena. tabernacle with frescoes. . cologne. . madonna and saints. . florence. academy, . pilaster with ss. bartholomew, james, and john the baptist (execution probably by giusto d'andrea). uffizi, . _predella_: _pietà_ and saints. palazzo riccardi. frescoes: procession of magi; angels. . palazzo alessandri. four _predelle_: miracle of st. zanobi; totila before st. benedict; fall of simon magus; conversion of st. paul. e. mr. herbert p. horne. large crucifixion. l. locko park (near derby). mr. drury lowe. crucifixion. e. london. . madonna, saints, and angels. . h. m. the king, buckingham palace. death of simon magus. . mr. c. n. robinson. madonna and angels. meiningen. grand ducal palace. st. ursula. milan. brera, . st. dominic restoring child to life. . montefalco. pinacoteca (s. francesco). bay to r. of entrance. various frescoes, . choir. frescoes: scenes from life of st. francis, etc. finished, . s. fortunato, over entrance. fresco: madonna, saints, and angels. . r. wall. fresco: madonna and angel, . second altar r. fresco: s. fortunato enthroned. . narni. municipio. annunciation. paris. . triumph of st. thomas aquinas. baronne d'adelsward. four saints. . perugia. sala vii, . madonna and saints. . philadelphia. mr. peter widener. raising of lazarus. pisa. sala vi. madonna, saints, and angels. madonna and st. anna. campo santo. series of frescoes from old testament; also an annunciation. - . ricovero per mendicitÀ (ancient refectory of s. domenico). frescoes: crucifixion and saints; st. dominic and two angels (in part). l. universitÀ dei cappellani (piazza del duomo). madonna, saints, and donors. . rome. lateran, . polyptych. . vatican, museo cristiano, case s, xii. small _pietà_. aracoeli, third chapel l. fresco: st. antony, donors, and angels. san gemignano. municipio. restoration of lippo memmi's fresco, and two figures to r. added, . fresco: crucifixion. s. agostino, choir. frescoes: life of st. augustine (the children's heads in the purely ornamental parts are by assistants). . second altar l. fresco; st. sebastian. . s. andrea (three miles out of town). madonna. . collegiata, choir. madonna and saints. . entrance wall. st. sebastian and other frescoes. . monte oliveto. fresco: crucifixion. . sermoneta. parish church. madonna and angels. e. terni. biblioteca. madonna with angels and five saints. . vienna. . madonna and saints. e. baron tucher. madonna and cherubim. volterra. duomo, cappella del nome di gesÙ. fresco background to a della robbia nativity: procession of magi. botticelli (alessandro di mariano filipepi). - . pupil of fra filippo; influenced early by the pollajuoli. bergamo. morelli, . story of virginia. l. berlin. . madonna and saints. . . st. sebastian. . von kaufmann collection. judith (in part). l. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. madonna with angel offering ears of wheat to child. e. death of lucretia. l. dresden. . scenes from life of s. zanobi. l. florence. academy, . coronation. (virgin and god the father by inferior hand). probably, . . _predelle_ to above. . "primavera." . madonna, saints, and angels. , , , . _predelle_ to : dead christ; death of st. ignatius; salome; vision of st. augustine. uffizi, . birth of venus. . portrait of giovanni di cosimo de' medici. e. . judith. e. . holofernes. e. . st. augustine. . calumny. l. bis. _tondo_: "magnificat." . adoration of magi. . _tondo_: madonna and angels ("madonna of the pomegranate"). . "fortezza." . . adoration of magi (only laid in by botticelli). palazzo capponi, marchese farinola. last communion of st. jerome. palazzo pitti. pallas subduing a centaur. ognissanti. fresco: st. augustine. . corbignano. (near florence, towards settignano), cappella vanella. repainted fresco: madonna. e. london. . adoration of magi (earliest extant work). . portrait of young man. . mars and venus. . _tondo_: adoration of magi. e. . nativity. . mr. j. p. heseltine. madonna and infant john (in small part). mr. ludwig mond. scenes from life of s. zanobi (two panels). l. milan. ambrosiana, . _tondo_: madonna and angels. poldi-pezzoli, . madonna. paris. . fresco: giovanna tornabuoni with venus and the graces. . . fresco: lorenzo tornabuoni introduced into the circle of the sciences. . rome. vatican, sixtine chapel. frescoes: moses and the daughters of jethro; destruction of the children of korah; christ tempted on roof of temple. - . among the single figures of popes: most of stephen and marcellinus, and heads of cornelius, lucius, and sixtus ii, and probably euaristus. - . st. petersburg. hermitage, . adoration of magi. probably . francesco botticini. - . pupil of neri di bicci; influenced by castagno; worked under and was formed by cosimo rosselli and verrocchio; influenced later by amico di sandro. bergamo. morelli, . tobias and the angel. berlin. a. crucifixion and saints, . . coronation of the virgin. e. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. madonna in landscape. chicago (u. s. a.). mr. martin ryerson. _tondo_: adoration of magi. cleveland (u. s. a.). holden collection, . madonna adoring child (?). . madonna. empoli. opera del duomo, . annunciation. towards . tabernacle for sacrament, with st. andrew and baptist; _predelle_: last supper; martyrdom of two saints. - . tabernacle for sculptured st. sebastian with two angels and donors; _predelle_: story of st. sebastian. towards . florence. academy, . st. vincent ferrer. . st. augustine. . st. monica. . tobias and the three archangels. . tobias and the angel, with youthful donor. martyrdom of st. andrew. pitti, . madonna, infant john, and angels worshipping child. uffizi, . madonna. s. appolonia. deposition with magdalen and ss. sebastian and bernard. duca di brindisi. two _cassone_-panels: story of virginia. marchese pio strozzi. madonna with ss. antony abbot and donato. s. spirito, r. transept. altarpiece with _predelle_: st. monica and nuns. . brozzi (near florence). s. andrea, r. wall. madonna and saints. . (the fresco above, with god, the father, is school work.) göttingen. university gallery, . madonna and infant john. london. . st. jerome with other saints and donors. . assumption of virgin. before . earl of ashburnham. madonna adoring child. mr. robert benson. _tondo_: madonna in landscape. madonna with four rose-crowned angels and two cherubim. mr. c. brinsley marlay. madonna adoring child. mr. charles butler. bishop enthroned, with four female saints. modena. . madonna and angels adoring child. montefortino (near amandola, abruzzi). municipio. madonna adoring child. palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro. ss. nicholas and roch. panzano (near greve). s. maria, third altar l. angels and saints around old picture. parcieux (near trévoux). la grange blanche, m. henri chalandon. nativity. paris. . madonna in glory, and saints. mme. edouard andrÉ. madonna and four saints; a version of fra filippo's uffizi madonna; _pietà_ with ss. nicholas, james, dominic, and louis. comtesse arconati-visconti. _tondo_: madonna adoring child. m. henri heugel. madonna adoring child. prato. madonna and four saints. richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook, museum. bust of young man. scotland. gosford house. earl of wemyss. profile of youth. stockholm. royal palace. bust of youth. turin. . coronation of virgin. wigan. haigh hall, earl crawford. madonna, enthroned with st. francis, donor, tobias, and angel. bronzino (angelo allori). (?)- . pupil of pontormo; influenced by michelangelo. bergamo. morelli, . portrait of alessandro de' medici. berlin. . portrait of youth. a. portrait of ugolino martelli. b. portrait of eleonora da toledo. simon collection, . bust of youth. herr edward simon. portrait of bearded man. besançon. musÉe, . deposition. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. portrait of a medici princess. budapest. . venus and cupid (in part). . adoration of shepherds. cassel. portrait of duke cosimo de' medici in armour, holding myrtle-branch. florence. pitti, . holy family. . portrait of duke cosimo i. . portrait of the architect luca martini. uffizi, . lucrezia panciatichi. . descent from cross. . . bartolommeo panciatichi. . eleonora da toledo and don garzia. . portrait of young woman. . don garzia. . maria de' medici. . man in armour. . dead christ. . allegory of happiness. . portrait of sculptor. . christ in limbo. . . don ferdinand. . maria de' medici. miniatures: . don garzia. . don ferdinand. . maria de' medici. . francesco de' medici. . duke cosimo i. . alessandro de' medici. magazine. annunciation. palazzo vecchio, chapel of eleonora da toledo. frescoes. . s. lorenzo, l. wall. fresco: martyrdom of st. lawrence. the hague. . portrait of lady. london. . allegory. . piero de' medici il gottoso. lucca. don ferdinand. don garzia. milan. brera, . portrait of andrea doria as neptune. new york. mrs. gould. portrait of woman and child. havemeyer collection. youth in black. paris. . "noli me tangere." . portrait of sculptor. pisa. s. stefano. nativity. . rome. borghese gallery, . st. john the baptist. colonna gallery, . venus, cupid, and satyr. corsini gallery, . portrait of stefano colonna. . prince doria. portrait of giannottino doria. turin. . portrait of giovanni delle bande nere. venice. seminario, . portrait of child. vienna. . portrait of man. l. . holy family. bugiardini. - . pupil of ghirlandajo and pier di cosimo; assistant of albertinelli; influenced by perugino, michelangelo, francesco francia, and franciabigio. agram. strossmayer gallery. madonna seated in a loggia looking down towards infant john (?). berlin. , . _cassone_-panels: story of tobias. . madonna and saints. museum of industrial art. _cassone_-front: story of st. felicitas. palace of emperor william i. _cassone_-front: story of tobias. bologna. . st. john in desert. . madonna enthroned with ss. catherine, antony of padua, and infant john. . _tondo_: madonna. bonn. university gallery, . madonna with infant john. bowood park (calne). marquess of lansdowne. copy of perugino's madonna in louvre (no. ). budapest. . "_volto santo di luca_" (?). dijon. musÉe. . madonna and infant john. figline (near florence). s. piero al terreno, high altar. madonna with ss. peter, paul, francis, and jerome. florence. pitti, . portrait of lady. uffizi, . _tondo_: madonna and infant john (?). e. . madonna. . madonna and infant john. . museo di s. marco, anticamera of refectory, . madonna adored by st. francis and the magdalen. s. croce, refectory, . st. nicholas. . the baptist. . st. paul. . st. jerome. s. maria novella, r. transept. martyrdom of st. catherine. london. . madonna, infant john, and angels (michelangelo's suggestion). earl of northbrook. baptist in desert drinking. milan. s. maria delle grazie. the baptist. modena. . madonna and infant john. mombello (near milan). prince pio di savoia. madonna. newport (u. s. a.). mr. theodore m. davis, the reef. madonna, infant john, and angel. new york. metropolitan museum. madonna and infant john (?). olantigh towers (wye, kent). mr. erle-drax, . madonna and infant john. oldenburg. , st. sebastian. paris. . bust of youth. musÉe des arts decoratifs, salle, . bust of woman with prayer-book. mme. edouard andrÉ. portrait of lady. philadelphia. mr. peter widener. . _tondo_: madonna and infant john (?). rome. borghese gallery, . marriage of st. catherine. . madonna and infant john (?). colonna gallery, . madonna. corsini gallery, . madonna (?) . . leo x. (variation of raphael's portrait in pitti). prince colonna. _tondo_: madonna and infant john. contessa spaletti. _tondo_: madonna and infant john. scotland, langton (duns). hon. mrs. baillie-hamilton. madonna and infant john. siena. palazzo saracini, . holy family in landscape. st. petersburg. _tondo_: holy family with infant john asleep. strasburg. university gallery, . presentation. stuttgart. . _tondo_: holy family. turin. . madonna and infant john. museo civico. madonna and infant john. venice. baron giorgio franchetti. venus asleep and cupid. vienna. . rape of dinah. . academy, . _tondo_: madonna with infant john (michelangelo's suggestion). raffaelle dei carli (or croli). -after . started under influence of ghirlandajo and credi, later became almost umbrian, and at one time was in close contact with garbo, whom he may have assisted. berlin. von kaufmann collection. three half-length figures of saints in small ovals. dresden. . madonna and two saints. düsseldorf. . _tondo_: madonna, with child blessing. eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset. altarpiece: madonna and saints. esher. mr. herbert f. cook, copseham. israelites crossing red sea. the golden calf. florence. uffizi, . madonna appearing to four saints. madonna, two saints, and two donors (probably painted in garbo's studio). the four evangelists (framed above triptych ascribed to spinello aretino) (?). magazine. annunciation. mr. b. berenson. christ in tomb between mary and john. duca di brindisi. combat of marine deities. mr. h. w. cannon, villa doccia (near fiesole), chapel in woods. fresco. corsini gallery. madonna with two saints and two angels. via conservatorio capponi, i. tabernacle: madonna and two angels. via delle colonne, scuola elementare. fresco: miracle of loaves and fishes. . mrs. ross, poggio gherardo. madonna in glory, and two bishops. s. ambrogio, first altar r. st. ambrogio and other saints; annunciation in lunette. s. maria maddalena dei pazzi. st. roch. st. ignatius. s. procolo. altar r. visitation with saints and angels. s. spirito, south transept. madonna and evangelist with ss. stephen, lawrence, and bernard. . madonna with evangelist, st. bartholomew, and two angels. e. madonna with two angels and ss. nicholas and bartholomew, and busts of jerome and another saint. brozzi (near florence). s. andrea, r. wall. fresco in lunette: ss. albert and sigismund. le mans. musÉe, . madonna. locko park (near derby). mr. drury lowe. deposition. the baptist. london. mr. robert benson. mass of st. gregory. . lucca. sala iv, . polyptych. milan. poldi-pezzoli, . madonna and infant john. montepulciano. municipio, . _tondo_: madonna in landscape. olantigh towers (wye). mr. erle-drax. _pietà_. oxford. christ church library. the magdalen. paris. . coronation and four saints. baron michele lazzaroni. resurrection, with kneeling donors. m. eugÈne richtemberger. _tondo_: madonna and two angels. l. pisa. museo civico, . madonna and four saints. sala vi, . god appearing to kneeling company. s. matteo, l. wall. _predelle_ to no. in museo. poggibonsi. s. lucchese, r. wall. "noli me tangere." prato. municipio, . madonna and infant john. san miniato del tedeschi. s. domenico. madonna with st. andrew and baptist(?). . siena. s. maria degli angeli, high altar. madonna in glory, and saints. . vallombrosa. pieve. s. giovanni gualberto enthroned between four saints. . venice. academy, . madonna and two saints, e. volterra. municipio, anticamera. fresco: madonna. museo. madonna, saints, and angels. e. weston birt (tetbury). captain g. l. holford. nativity. andrea del castagno. died rather young in . influenced by donatello and paolo uccello. florence. uffizi, third tuscan room. . fresco: crucifixion and saints. s. appolonia, refectory. frescoes: last supper; crucifixion; entombment; resurrection. soon after . (nine figures) boccaccio; petrarch; dante; queen thomyris; cumæan sibyl; niccolò acciajuoli; farinati degli uberti; filippo scolari ("pippo spano"); esther. l.--frieze of _putti_ with garlands. cloister. fresco: dead christ and angels. soon after . hospital ( via degli alfani), court. fresco: crucifixion. ss. annunziata, first altar l. fresco: christ and st. julian. l. (invisible.) second altar l. fresco: trinity with st. jerome and other saints. l. (invisible.) duomo, wall r. of entrance: fresco: equestrian portrait of niccolò da tolentino. . window in drum of cupola (from his design). deposition. . locko park (near derby). mr. drury lowe. david (painted on a shield). l. london. . small crucifixion. mr. j. pierpont morgan. bust of man. cimabue. about -about . the following works are all by the same hand, probably cimabue's. assisi. s. francesco, upper church, choir and transepts. frescoes. lower church, r. transept. fresco: madonna and angels with st. francis. florence. academy, . madonna, angels, and four prophets. paris. . madonna and angels. cosimo, see pier di cosimo. lorenzo di credi. - . pupil of verrocchio. berlin. . bust of young woman (?). e. . madonna. . st. mary of egypt. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum, . st. sebastian (the saint only). carlsruhe. . madonna and infant john adoring child. castiglione fiorentino. collegiata, altar r. of high altar. nativity. l. cleveland (u. s. a.). holden collection, . madonna. dresden. . madonna and infant john. e. . nativity (in part). . madonna and saints. florence. academy, . adoration of shepherds. . nativity (in great part). uffizi, . _tondo_: madonna (in part). . portrait of young man. . annunciation. e. . portrait of verrocchio. . madonna and evangelist. . "noli me tangere." . annunciation. . annunciation. . venus. e. _tondo_: madonna and angel adoring child (in part). marchese pucci. portrait of lady. s. domenico (near fiesole), first altar r. baptism. duomo, sacristy. st. michael. . or san michele, pillar. st. bartholomew. s. spirito, apse. madonna with st. jerome and an apostle. e. scandicci (near florence), comtesse de turenne. portrait of youth. forlì. . portrait of lady. e. glasgow. mr. william beattie. portrait of the artist. . göttingen. university museum, . crucifixion. hamburg. weber collection. _tondo_: ascension of youthful saint accompanied by two angels. hanover. kestner museum, . bust of youth. london. . madonna. . madonna adoring child. mr. charles butler. madonna. earl of rosebery. st. george. longleat (warminster). marquess of bath. madonna. mayence. . madonna. e. milan. conte casatti. madonna and infant john. munich. a. madonna (?) (done in verrocchio's studio). naples. nativity. l. oxford. university galleries, . madonna (?). paris. . madonna and two saints. , or later. . "noli me tangere." m. gustave dreyfus. madonna (done in verrocchio's studio). pistoia. duomo, chapel l. of high altar. madonna and saints (done in verrocchio's studio. - ). madonna del letto. virgin, st. jerome, and baptist. . rome. borghese, . madonna and infant john. scotland. (cf. glasgow.) strasburg. university gallery, . madonna. e. turin. . madonna. e. . madonna (in part). venice. querini-stampalia, sala iii, . madonna and infant john. domenico, see veneziano. filippino and filippo, see lippi. franciabigio. - . pupil of pier di cosimo and albertinelli; worked with and was influenced by andrea del sarto. barnard castle. bowes museum, . bust of young man. berlin. . portrait of man. . portrait of man writing. . a. portrait of youth in landscape. herr eugen schweizer. madonna with infant john. bologna. . madonna. brussels. . leda and her children. musÉe de la ville. profile of old man. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . bust of man. cracow. potocki collection. madonna with infant john (?). dijon. musÉe, donation jules maciet. bust of youth. dresden. . bathsheba. . florence. pitti, . portrait of man. . . calumny. e. uffizi, . _tondo_: madonna and infant john, e. . temple of hercules. . _tondo_: holy family and infant john. . madonna with job and baptist. e. chiostro dello scalzo. monochrome frescoes: baptist leaving his parents, - . baptism, . meeting of christ and baptist, - . ss. annunziata, entrance court, r. fresco: sposalizio. . la calza. (porta romana). fresco: last supper. poggio a cajano (royal villa near florence). fresco: triumph of cæsar. . hamburg. weber collection, . bust of young man. london. . portrait of young man. mr. robert benson. portrait of young man. earl of northbrook. head of young man. mr. t. vasel. bust of young man. earl of yarborough. bust of a jeweller. . modena. . birth of baptist. e. new york. mr. rutherford stuyvesant. portrait of man. nîmes. , , . small _tondi_: trinity, ss. peter and paul. oxford. mr. t. w. jackson. legend of a saint. paris. a. portrait of andrea fausti. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. bust of christ blessing (?). pinerolo (piedmont). villa lamba doria. portrait of young man. rome. barberini gallery. portrait of young man. borghese gallery, . madonna and infant john. e. corsini gallery, . madonna holding child on parapet. portrait of man with book. turin. . annunciation. e. vienna. . holy family. . madonna and infant john in landscape. count lanckoronski. man with cap and feathers. l. christ saving man from drowning (?). prince liechtenstein. bust of young man. . madonna and infant john. wiesbaden. nassauisches kunstverein, . _cassone_ picture. windsor castle. portrait of man ("gardener of pier francesco dei medici"). raffaelino del garbo. - (?). pupil of botticelli and filippino lippi; influenced by ghirlandajo and perugino. berlin. . bust of man. . profile of young woman. . _tondo_: madonna and angels. simon collection, i. _tondo_: madonna and angels. e. dresden. . madonna and infant john. florence. academy, . resurrection. glasgow. corporation gallery. madonna with infant john. london. mr. robert benson. _tondo_: madonna and angels. col. g. l. holford, dorchester house. madonna and angel. mr. charles ricketts. madonna in landscape. sir henry samuelson. _tondo_: madonna with magdalen and st. catherine. lyons. m. edouard aynard. profile bust of baptist. munich. . _pietà_. naples. _tondo_: madonna and infant john. paris. m. henri heugel. _tondo_: madonna and two angels. e. baron edouard de rothschild. profile bust of young lady. parma. . madonna giving girdle to st. thomas. venice. lady layard. portrait of man. domenico ghirlandajo. - . pupil of baldovinetti; influenced slightly by botticelli and more strongly by verrocchio. florence. academy, . madonna and saints. . adoration of shepherds. . uffizi, . madonna and saints. . portrait of giovanni bicci de' medici. . adoration of magi. . madonna, saints, and angels. museo di san marco, small refectory. fresco: last supper. palazzo vecchio, flag room. fresco: triumph of s. zanobi. - . duomo, over n. door. mosaic: annunciation. . innocenti, high altar. adoration of magi (the episode of the "massacre of the innocents" painted by alunno di domenico). . s. maria novella, choir. frescoes: lives of the virgin and baptist, etc. (execution, save certain portrait heads, chiefly by david, mainardi, and other assistants). begun , finished . ognissanti, l. wall. fresco: st. augustine. . altar r. fresco: madonna della misericordia (in part). e. refectory. fresco: last supper. . s. trinita. chapel r. of choir. frescoes: life of st. francis. - . over arch. fresco: augustus and sibyl (in part). same date. badia di passignano (tavernelle, near florence), refectory. frescoes: last supper, etc. . london. . portrait of young man (repainted). mr. robert benson. francesco sassetti and his son. mr. ludwig mond. madonna. mr. j. pierpont morgan. profile of giovanna tornabuoni. . mr. george salting. madonna and infant john. bust of costanza de' medici. lucca. duomo, sacristy. madonna and saints, with _pietà_ in lunette. narni. municipio. coronation of virgin (in part). . new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . fresco: head of woman (cf. woman to extreme l. in "visitation" at s. maria novella, florence). paris. . visitation (in part). . old man and boy. pisa. museo civico, sala vi, . ss. sebastian and roch (in part). virgin with st. anne and saints (in part). rome. vatican, sixtine chapel. frescoes: calling of peter and andrew. . single figures of popes: anacletus, iginius, clement, and pius. . san gemignano. collegiata, chapel of s. fina. frescoes: life of the saint. about . vercelli. museo borgogna. madonna adoring infant. e. volterra. municipio. christ in glory adored by two saints and don guido bonvicini (in part). . ridolfo ghirlandajo. to . pupil of granacci, and eclectic imitator of most of his important contemporaries. bergamo. morelli, . bust of man. berlin. . nativity. budapest. . nativity. . chatsworth. duke of devonshire. bust of man (?). l. colle di val d'elsa. s. agostino, third altar r. _pietà_. . florence. academy, , . panels with three angels each. e. pitti, . portrait of a goldsmith. e. . portrait of a lady. . uffizi, , . miracles of s. zanobi. . bigallo. _predelle_. . palazzo vecchio, cappella dei priori. frescoes. . corsini gallery, . portrait of man. palazzo torrigiani. portrait of ardinghelli. la quiete. st. sebastian. glasgow. mr. william beattie. portrait of man (?). london. . procession to calvary. e. mr. george salting. portrait of girolamo beniviene. lucardo (near certaldo). high altar. madonna with ss. peter, martin, justus, and the baptist. e. milan. comm. benigno crespi. small triptych. nativity and saints. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . madonna and saints. paris. . coronation of virgin. . philadelphia. elkins park, mr. peter widener, . bust of lucrezia summaria, e. pistoia. s. pietro maggiore. madonna and saints. . prato. duomo. madonna giving girdle to st. thomas. . reigate (surrey). the priory, mr. somers somerset. portrait of girolamo beniviene. st. petersburg. . portrait of old man. wantage. lockinge house, lady wantage. youngish man looking up from letter. giotto. - . follower of pietro cavallini; influenced by giovanni pisano. assisi. s. francesco, lower church, chapel of the magdalen: frescoes: feast in the house of simon (in great part); raising of lazarus; "noli me tangere," (in part); magdalen and donor (in part)(?). (the remaining frescoes in this chapel are by assistants.) before . upper church. ii-xix of frescoes recounting the life of st. francis (with occasional aid of a). e. west wall. fresco: madonna. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner: presentation of christ in the temple. l. florence. academy, . madonna enthroned and angels. s. croce, bardi chapel. frescoes: life of st. francis, etc. (little more than the compositions are now giotto's.) not earlier than . peruzzi chapel. frescoes: lives of the baptist and st. john the evangelist (considerably repainted). l. munich. . last supper. padua. arena chapel. frescoes: lives of christ and his mother; last judgment; symbolical figures. about - . sacristy. painted crucifix. about - . rome. s. giovanni laterano, pillar r. aisle. fragment of fresco: boniface viii proclaiming the jubilee. . giotto's assistants. [an attempt to distinguish in the mass of work usually ascribed to giotto the different artistic personalities engaged as his most immediate followers and assistants.] a. assisi. s. francesco, upper church. xx-xxv and first of frescoes recounting the life of st. francis, done perhaps under giotto's directions. xxvi-xxviii of same series done more upon his own responsibility. lower church, chapel of the sacrament. frescoes: legend of st. nicholas; christ with ss. francis and nicholas and donors, etc. (?). before . madonna between ss. francis and nicholas (?). before . florence. uffizi, . altarpiece of st. cecily. e. s. margherita a montici (beyond torre del gallo). madonna. e. altarpiece with st. margaret. e. s. miniato: altarpiece with s. miniato. e. b. assisi. s. francesco, lower church, over tomb of saint. frescoes: allegories of poverty, chastity, and obedience, and triumph of st. francis. (the francis between the two angels in the "obedience" and nearly all of the "triumph" were executed by another hand, probably c.) r. transept. frescoes: bringing to life of child fallen from window; francis and a crowned skeleton; two scenes (one on either side of arch leading to the chapel of the sacrament) representing the bringing to life of a boy killed by a falling house; (above these) annunciation; (next to cimabue's madonna) crucifixion (with the aid of c). florence. s. croce, cappella medici. baroncelli polyptych: coronation of virgin, saints and angels (?). c. assisi. s. francesco, lower church, r. transept. frescoes: eight scenes from the childhood of christ. berlin. a. crucifixion. florence. bargello chapel. fresco: paradise (?). (cf. also under b for assistance rendered by c.) various. bologna. pinacoteca, . polyptych: madonna and saints. florence. s. felice. painted crucifix. munich. . crucifixion (?). paris. . st. francis receiving stigmata. rome. st. peter's, sagrestia dei canonici. stefaneschi polyptych (suggests bernardo daddi). strasburg. . crucifixion. gozzoli, see benozzo. francesco granacci. - . pupil first of credi, and then of ghirlandajo, whom he assisted; influenced by botticelli, michelangelo fra bartolommeo, and pontormo. berlin. and . ss. vincent and antonino (in ghirlandajo's studio). soon after . . madonna and four saints (kneeling figures and landscape his own cartoons, the rest ghirlandajesque design). . madonna with baptist and archangel michael, e. . the trinity. budapest. . st. john at patmos. . madonna and infant john (?) cassel. . _tondo_: madonna holding child on parapet. . crucifixion. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . madonna (from ghirlandajo's studio) (?). città di castello. pinacoteca. coronation of virgin (in part; done in ghirlandajo's studio). darmstadt. small crucifixion. l. dublin. . holy family. florence. academy, . assumption of virgin. . madonna. - . stories of saints. l. pitti, . holy family. uffizi, , . life of joseph. portrait of lucrezia del fede. covoni altarpiece, madonna and saints. istituto dei minorenni corrigendi (via della scala.) altarpiece: madonna with ss. sebastian and julian (?). brozzi (near florence). s. andrea. l. wall. frescoes: baptism, madonna enthroned between ss. dominic and sebastian (ghirlandajo's designs). quintole (near florence). s. pietro. _pietà_. l. villamagna (near florence), church. madonna with ss. gherardo and donnino. glasgow. mr. james mann. madonna (?). e. london. victoria and albert museum. _tondo_: madonna. mr. robert benson. god the father sending holy spirit to christ kneeling, the virgin recommending donor, who has his family present, and below a saint pointing to a scroll (?). e. duke of buccleugh, . madonna and infant john. lucca. marchese mansi (s. maria forisportam). _tondo_: madonna and two angels. milan. comm. benigno crespi. entry of charles viii into florence. munich. . madonna in glory and four saints (ghirlandajo's design). soon after . - . panels with a saint in each. l. . holy family. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . _pietà_. l. oxford. christ church library. st. francis. university museum, . st. antony of padua and an angel. panshanger (near hertford). portrait of lady. paris. m. jean dollfus. madonna and saints (?). m. d'eichtal. bust of lady. m. eugÈne richtemberger. nativity. m. joseph spiridon. bust of young woman in red. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. _pietà_ in landscape (?). e. reigate (surrey). the priory, mr. somers somerset. madonna giving girdle to st. thomas. rome. borghese, . maddalena strozzi as st. catherine. corsini, . hebe. scotland. (glasgow, cf. glasgow). rossie priory (inchture, perthshire), lord kinnaird. st. lucy before her judges. l. st. petersburg. hermitage, . nativity with ss. francis and jerome. vienna. count lanckoronski. preaching of st. stephen. herr carl wittgenstein. bust of woman in green. (?). warwick castle. earl of warwick. assumption of virgin, and four saints. l. leonardo da vinci. - . pupil of verrocchio. florence. uffizi, . adoration of magi (unfinished). begun in . london. burlington house, diploma gallery. large cartoon for madonna with st. anne. milan. s. maria delle grazie, refectory. fresco: last supper. paris. . annunciation. e. . madonna with st. anne (unfinished). . "la vierge aux rochers." . "la gioconda." rome. vatican, pinacoteca. st. jerome, (unfinished). note:--an adequate conception of leonardo as an artist can be obtained only by an acquaintance with his drawings, many of the best of which are reproduced in dr. j. p. richter's "literary works of leonardo da vinci," and in b. berenson's "drawings of the florentine painters." filippino lippi - . pupil of botticelli; influenced by amico di sandro, and very slightly by piero di cosimo. berlin. a. allegory of music. l. . crucifixion with virgin and st. francis. l. . madonna. fragment of fresco: head of youth in black cap, with brown curls. bologna. s. domenico, chapel r. of high altar. marriage of st. catherine. . copenhagen. meeting of joachim and anne. l. florence. academy, . st. mary of egypt. . st. jerome. . the baptist. . deposition (finished by perugino). pitti, . allegorical subject. uffizi, . fresco: portrait of himself. e. . fresco: old man. e. . adoration of magi. . . madonna and saints. . palazzo corsini. _tondo_: madonna and angels. e. mr. herbert p. horne. christ on cross. l. palazzo torrigiani. bust of youth. s. ambrogio, niche l. monochromes: angels, and medallions in _predella_. l. badia. vision of st. bernard with piero di francesco del pugliese as donor. soon after . carmine, brancacci chapel. completion of masaccio's frescoes. . angel delivering st. peter; paul visiting peter in prison; peter and paul before the proconsul; martyrdom of peter; (in the "raising of the king's son") the group of four men on the extreme l.; the boy; and eight men and a child in a row. s. maria novella, strozzi chapel. frescoes: episodes from lives of evangelist and st. philip, etc. finished . s. spirito. madonna and saints, with tanai di nerli and his wife. villa reale di poggio a cajano (near florence), porch. fragment of fresco. genoa. palazzo bianco, sala v, . madonna and saints. . kiel. prof. martius. madonna. lewes (sussex). mr. e. p. warren. _tondo_: holy family and st. margaret. london. . madonna with ss. jerome and dominic. . angel adoring. mr. robert benson. dead christ. sir henry samuelson. moses striking the rock. adoration of golden calf. sir julius wernher. madonna. l. lucca. s. michele, first altar r. ss. helena, jerome, sebastian, and roch. e. naples. annunciation, with baptist and st. andrew. e. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . christ on cross. oxford. christ church library. centaur; on back, unfinished allegorical figures. prato. municipio, . madonna with baptist and st. stephen. . fresco in tabernacle on street corner: madonna and saints. . rome. s. maria sopra minerva, caraffa chapel. annunciation. frescoes: triumph of st. thomas aquinas; assumption of virgin. - . st. petersburg. stroganoff collection. annunciation. l. strasburg. university gallery, . head of angel (a fragment). venice. seminario, . christ and the samaritan woman. . "noli me tangere." vienna. herr eugen von miller aicholz. christ on cross. fra filippo lippi. - . pupil of lorenzo monaco and follower of masaccio; influenced by fra angelico. ashridge park (berkhampstead). earl brownlow. madonna. berlin. . madonna. . madonna adoring child. . "madonna della misericordia." b. _predella_: miraculous infancy of a saint. florence. academy, . madonna and saints. . coronation of virgin. . . virgin adoring child. . nativity. e. . _predelle_: s. frediano changing the course of the serchio; virgin receiving the announcement of her death; st. augustine in his study. . gabriel and baptist. . madonna and st. antony abbot. pitti, . madonna. . uffizi, . madonna. palazzo alessandri. st. antony abbot and a bishop. ss. lawrence, cosmas, and damian and donors. palazzo riccardi (prefecture). madonna. s. lorenzo, martelli chapel. annunciation, and _predelle_. london. . vision of st. bernard. . . annunciation. e. . seven saints. e. lyons. m. edouard aynard. _predella_: st. benedict and novice. munich. . annunciation. e. . madonna. oxford. university galleries, . meeting of joachim and anne. paris. . madonna and angels. . prato. duomo, choir. frescoes: lives of st. stephen and the baptist (assisted by fra diamante). - . r. transept. fresco: death of st. bernard (the upper part by fra diamante). ordered . richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook. _tondo_: adoration of magi. e. ss. michael and antony abbot. . rome. lateran, . triptych: coronation, saints and donors (the angels are, in execution at least, by another hand, probably fra diamante's). prince doria. annunciation. mr. ludwig mond. annunciation and donors. spoleto. duomo, apse. frescoes: life of virgin (chiefly by fra diamante). left unfinished at death. turin. accademia albertina, , . the four church fathers. lorenzo monaco. about - . follower of agnolo gaddi and the sienese. altenburg. lindenau museum, . crucifixion with ss. francis, benedict, and romuald. e. . flight into egypt. bergamo. morelli, . dead christ. berlin. . madonna with baptist and st. nicholas. e. print room. illuminations: visitation. journey of magi. von kaufmann collection. st. jerome. nativity. brant broughton (lincolnshire). rev. arthur f. sutton. miracles of st. benedict. brunswick. ss. stephen, dominic, francis, and lawrence. e. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum, . madonna and two angels. cassel. . king david. copenhagen. thorwaldsen museum, i. madonna. empoli. opera del duomo, . triptych. . fiesole. s. ansano (to be transferred to museo). christ on cross between mary, john, and francis. florence. academy, . annunciation. . life of st. onofrio. . nativity. . life of st. martin. . three pinnacles above fra angelico's deposition. bargello. codex x, miniatures. - . uffizi, . adoration of magi (annunciation and prophets in frame by cosimo rosselli). . _pietà_. . . triptych: madonna and saints. . . madonna with baptist and st. paul. . coronation and saints. . museo di san marco. , , . crucifixion with mary and john. biblioteca laurenziana. miniatures. . hospital (s. maria nuova), over door in a corridor. fresco: fragment of a _pietà_. e. mr. charles loeser. crucifixion. s. croce, refectory, . st. james enthroned. s. giovanni dei cavalieri. crucifix; mary; john. s. giuseppe. crucifix. chiostro degli oblati ( via s. egidio). frescoes: _pietà_, with symbols of passion; christ and apostles; agony in garden. s. trinita, bartolini chapel. altarpiece: annunciation and _predelle_. l. frescoes: life of virgin. l. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry, . adoration of magi; visitation. london. , . various saints. . coronation of virgin. mr. henry wagner. legend of s. giovanni gualberto. milan. comm. benigno crespi. small shrine with madonna and saints. cav. aldo noseda. madonna. . munich. lotzbeck collection, . st. peter enthroned. e. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . crucifixion. parcieux (near trévoux). la grange blanche, m. henri chalandon. three panels with saint and prophet in each. paris. . agony in garden; three marys at tomb. . posen. raczynski collection. adoration of magi. richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook. madonna. rome. vatican, museo cristiano, case c, ii. crucifixion. case s, iii. fragment of _predella_: st. antony abbot visited by madonna. xi. benedict calling a dead friar to life, and demon tempting another friar. siena. . triptych: madonna and saints. e. turin. museo civico, . madonna with baptist and old saint (on glass). . washington (u. s. a.). mr. victor g. fischer. madonna and two angels. e. bastiano mainardi. about - . pupil and imitator of his brother-in-law, domenico ghirlandajo. altenburg. lindenau museum, . bust of woman. berlin. . madonna. . portrait of young woman. . portrait of a cardinal. . portrait of young man. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. quincy a. shaw. madonna adoring child. cologne. . madonna and five saints. dresden. _tondo_: nativity. florence. uffizi, . st. peter martyr between ss. james and peter. bargello, chapel. fresco: madonna. . palazzo torrigiani. _tondo_: madonna and two angels. s. croce, baroncelli chapel. fresco: virgin giving girdle to st. thomas. chiesa di orbetello, r. wall. fresco: madonna and two cherubim (ss. andrew and dionysus, etc., by another ghirlandajesque hand). brozzi (near florence), fattoria orsini. frescoes: nativity (cf. dresden ); saints. hamburg. weber collection, . madonna. hildesheim. . _tondo_: madonna. locko park (near derby). mr. drury-lowe. replicas of berlin portraits, nos. and . london. . bust of young woman. sir henry howorth. madonna and three angels adoring child. mr. george salting. bust of young man. longleat (warminster). marquess of bath. madonna, four saints, _putti_, and angels. lyons. m. edouard aynard. st. stephen. milan. comm. benigno crespi. two panels with men and women worshippers. munich. , . ss. lawrence and catherine of siena (soon after ). . madonna and donor. . ss. george and sebastian. münster i./w. kunstverein, . marriage of st. catherine. oxford. university museum, . ss. bartholomew and julian. palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro, . madonna with ss. paul and francis. . paris. . _tondo_: madonna with infant john and angels. comtesse arconati-visconti. busts of man and woman (free replicas of berlin, nos. and ). philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. madonna with ss. sebastian and appolonia. rome. vatican, museo cristiano, case o, xvi. _tondo_: nativity. count gregori stroganoff. three saints. san gemignano. municipio, and . _tondi_: madonnas. ospedale di s. fina. frescoes in vaulting. via s. giovanni. fresco: madonna and cherubim. s. agostino, r. wall. ss. nicholas of bari, lucy, and augustine. ceiling. frescoes: the four church fathers. l. wall. frescoes for tomb of fra domenico strambi. . collegiata, chapel of s. fina. frescoes in ceiling. chapel of s. giovanni. annunciation. . sacristy. madonna in glory, and saints. monte oliveto, chapel r. madonna with ss. bernard and jerome. . siena. palazzo saracini, . bust of young woman in red. vienna. harrach collection, . nativity (replica of dresden, ). prince liechtenstein. madonna and infant john. masaccio. - . pupil of masolino; influenced by brunellesco and donatello. berlin. a. adoration of magi. probably . b. martyrdom of st. peter and baptist. probably . c. a birth plate. d. four saints. probably . boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. profile of young man. brant broughton (lincolnshire). rev. arthur f. sutton. madonna enthroned on high seat with two angels below worshipping and two others seated playing on lutes. probably . florence. academy, . madonna with st. anne. e. carmine, brancacci chapel. frescoes: expulsion from paradise; tribute money; ss. peter and john healing the sick with their shadows; st. peter baptising; ss. peter and john distributing alms; raising of the king's son (except the son, a child, and eight figures of same group, as well as four figures on extreme left, all of which are by filippino lippi, while the fourth head of this group is again by masaccio). s. maria novella, wall r. of entrance. fresco: trinity with virgin and st. john and donor and his wife. montemarciano (val d'arno superiore). oratorio. fresco: madonna with michael and baptist. e. naples. crucifixion. probably . pisa. sala vi, . st. paul. probably . strasburg. university gallery, . resurrected christ (?). e. vienna. count lanckoronski. st. andrew. probably . masolino. -after . bremen. kunsthalle, . madonna. . castiglione d'olona. church. frescoes: life of virgin. baptistery. frescoes: life of baptist. palazzo castiglione. frescoes: a landscape and friezes. empoli. duomo, baptistery. fresco: _pietà_. s. stefano. fresco in an arch: madonna and angels. probably . florence. carmine, brancacci chapel. frescoes: preaching of st. peter; raising of tabitha and healing of cripple; fall of adam and eve. munich. . madonna and angels. naples. christ receiving virgin in paradise. founding of s. maria maggiore. rome. vatican, museo cristiano, case p, v. _predella_: dormition (?). case r, ii. crucifixion (in part?). s. clemente. frescoes: episodes from lives of ss. ambrose and catherine of alexandria; crucifixion (some of these frescoes are completely repainted). scotland. gosford house, earl of wemyss. annunciation. todi. s. fortunato, fourth chapel r. fresco: madonna with two angels. michelangelo buonarroti. - . pupil of ghirlandaio; influenced by the works of jacopo della quercia, donatello, and signorelli. florence. uffizi, . _tondo_: holy family. london. . deposition (unfinished). rome. vatican, sixtine chapel. frescoes: on ceiling, - . w. wall. last judgment. - . cappella paolina. frescoes: conversion of paul; martyrdom of st. peter. l. sculpture. berlin. small marble apollo. bologna. s. domenico. s. petronio; an angel (for ark of st. dominic). . bruges. notre dame. madonna. finished before august, . florence. academy. david. . life size model of reclining male figure. court. st. matthew. . bargello. bacchus. e. bust of brutus. _tondo_, relief: madonna. apollo. court. victory. boboli gardens, grotto. four unfinished figures. casa buonarroti. reliefs: centaurs and lapithæ. e. madonna. e. duomo, behind high altar. _pietà_. l. s. lorenzo, new sacristy. madonna; tombs of lorenzo dei medici, duke of urbino, and giuliano, duke of nemours. left unfinished . london. burlington house, diploma gallery. _tondo_, relief: madonna. victoria and albert museum. cupid. beit collection. young athlete (bronze). milan. prince trivulzio. small slave (bronze). paris. room of renaissance sculpture. two slaves. rome. palazzo rondanini. _pietà_ (unfinished). l. s. maria sopra minerva. christ with cross. finished . st. peter's. _pietà_. . s. pietro in vincoli. moses, rachel, and leah. st. petersburg. crouching boy. monaco see lorenzo. andrea orcagna and his brothers. andrea, (?)- . pupil of andrea pisano; follower of giotto; influenced by ambrogio lorenzetti of siena. of the brothers, nardo, who died in , was scarcely his inferior. the only painting certainly from andrea's hand is the altarpiece at s. maria novella. the frescoes in the same church are probably by nardo. budapest. . madonna and angels. florence. academy, . vision of st. bernard and saints. . trinity with evangelist and st. romuald. . uffizi, . st. bartholomew and angel (?). e. . coronation of the virgin. third tuscan room. . st. matthew triptych. begun in . mr. b. berenson. st. benedict receiving a novice. badia, cappella bonsi. descent of holy spirit. s. croce, sacristy. madonna with ss. gregory and job. . s. maria novella, l. transept. altarpiece. . frescoes: paradise; last judgment; hell. cloister. frescoes: annunciation to joachim and anne; meeting of same; birth of virgin; presentation of virgin in temple; full length figures of saints. certosa (near florence), chapel. madonna. london. - . coronation and saints, with nine smaller panels representing the trinity, angels, and gospel scenes. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . baptist. . st. peter. palermo. baron chiaramonte-bordonaro. madonna. sculpture (by andrea). berlin. von kaufmann collection. head of female saint. florence. bargello. . angel playing viol. or san michele. tabernacle. finished . francesco pesellino. - . pupil possibly of his grandfather, giuliano pesello; follower of fra angelico, masaccio and domenico veneziano, but chiefly of fra filippo lippi. altenburg. lindenau museum, . ss. jerome and francis. bergamo. morelli, . florentine arraigned before a judge. . story of griselda. berlin. small crucifixion. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. two _cassone_ panels: triumphs of petrarch. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . madonna and saints. . adoration of magi. (?). empoli. opera del duomo, . madonna and saints. florence. academy, . _predelle_: nativity; martyrdom of ss. cosmas and damian; miracle of st. antony of padua. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry, . annunciation. london. col. g. l. holford, dorchester house. madonna and saints. milan. poldi-pezzoli, . annunciation (early xvi century copy). . _pietà_. paris. . _predelle_: miracle of ss. cosmas and damian; st. francis receiving the stigmata. rome. prince doria. _predelle_: pope sylvester before constantine; pope sylvester subduing dragon. wantage. lockinge house, lady wantage. two _cassone_ panels: story of david. pier di cosimo. - . pupil of cosimo rosselli; influenced by verrocchio, signorelli, filippino, leonardo, and credi. berlin. . venus, cupid, and mars. . adoration of shepherds. von kaufmann collection. prometheus myth (cf. strasburg). borgo san lorenzo (mugello). chiesa del crocifisso. madonna with st. thomas and baptist. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . "la bella simonetta." dresden. . holy family and angels. dulwich. head of young man. fiesole. s. francesco. coronation of virgin (in part). l. florence. pitti, . head of a saint. uffizi. immaculate conception. , , . story of perseus and andromeda. . rescue of andromeda. . portrait of "caterina sforza" (?). magazine. _tondo_: madonna with infant john. l. innocenti, gallery. holy family and saints. s. lorenzo, r. transept. madonna and saints adoring child. glasgow. mr. william beattie. _tondo_: madonna with the two holy children embracing. the hague. , . giuliano di sangallo and his father. harrow-on-the-hill. rev. j. stogdon. large nativity with three saints and three donors (?). e. _tondo_: madonna and angels. london. . death of procris. . portrait of man in armour. hertford house. triumph of venus (?). mr. robert benson. hylas and the nymphs. e. portrait of clarissa orsini (?). earl of plymouth. head of young man. mr. charles ricketts. combat of centaurs and lapithæ (cf. new york). mr. a. e. street. _tondo_: madonna adoring child. lyons. m. edouard aynard. _tondo_: madonna with lamb. milan. borromeo. madonna. l. prince trivulzio. madonna and angels. l. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . lady holding rabbit. newlands manor (hampshire). col. cornwallis west. visitation. new york. metropolitan museum. the hunt. return from the hunt (cf. mr. ricketts, london). oxford. christ church library, . _tondo_: _pietà_. l. paris. . the young baptist. . coronation of virgin. l. . madonna. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. bust of physician. portrait of man. . madonna (fragment). rome. borghese. . judgment of solomon. . holy family l. (?). . _tondo_: madonna and angels adoring child. corsini. magdalen. _pietà_. vatican, sixtine chapel. fresco: destruction of pharaoh. . scotland. (glasgow, cf. glasgow). cawder house (bishopbriggs, near glasgow), capt. archibald stirling. madonna and infant john. gosford house, earl of wemyss. bust of man. newbattle abbey (dalkeith), marquess of lothian. mythological scene. siena. monastero del santuccio, altar l. nativity. stockholm. royal gallery. madonna. strasburg. university gallery, a. madonna. b. prometheus myth (cf. von kaufmann collection, berlin). vienna. harrach collection, . holy family and angels. l. prince liechtenstein. madonna and infant john. l. _tondo_: landscape with water, etc. worksop (nottinghamshire). clumber park, duke of newcastle. altarpiece with _predelle_: madonna with st. peter and baptist and kneeling ecclesiastic. pier francesco fiorentino. known to have been active during the last three decades of the fifteenth century. pupil possibly of fra angelico or benozzo gozzoli; influenced by neri di bicci; eclectic imitator of alesso baldovinetti, fra filippo, and pesellino. some of the best of the following are copies of the two last and of compagno di pesellino. altenburg. lindenau museum, . madonna with infant john. bergamo. morelli, . ss. jerome and francis (version of pesellino at altenburg). berlin. a. madonna against rose-hedge (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino). brussels. madonna. budapest. . madonna and infant john. cambridge (u. s. a.). fogg museum. madonna. castelnuovo di val d'elsa. s. barbara, high altar. madonna and saints surrounded by frescoes. first altar r. madonna and saints. certaldo. palazzo dei priori, lower floor. fresco: _pietà_. . fresco: incredulity of thomas. upper floor. fresco: madonna. . cappella del ponte d'agliena. frescoes: tobias and angel. st. jerome. cleveland (u. s. a.). holden collection, . madonna adoring child. colle di val d'elsa. palazzo antico del comune. altarpiece: madonna and four saints, _predelle_, etc. madonna with ss. bernardino, antony abbot, magdalen, and catherine. via gozzina. tabernacle, fresco: madonna and two bishops. via s. lucia. frescoes in tabernacle: annunciation and various fragments. detroit (u. s. a.). . madonna adoring child. dijon. donation jules maciet. madonna and infant john. eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset. madonna against rose-hedge (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino at lyons). empoli. opera del duomo, . madonna and four saints. . madonna. englewood (new jersey, u. s. a.). mr. d. f. platt. madonna with angel and infant john. florence. uffizi, . madonna and angels (copied from compagno di pesellino formerly in hainauer collection, berlin). bargello, carrand collection, . madonna with infant john. cenacolo di s. appolonia. nativity. mr. edmund houghton. madonna adoring child. conte serristori. madonna. s. francesco delle stimate. madonna. s. giovannino dei cavalieri, sacristy. madonna. frankfort a./m. stÄdelinstitut, . madonna and angels. frome (somerset). mells park, lady horner. madonna, saints, and angels. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry. . madonna with infant john (cf. herr brachts' compagno di pesellino, berlin). . madonna, with two angels. göttingen. university gallery, . copy of fra filippo's annunciation (in the doria gallery, rome). gubbio. pinacoteca, . madonna and infant john. hamburg. weber collection, . madonna and st. catherine against rose-hedge. harrow-on-the-hill. rev. j. stogdon. madonna and infant john (after fra filippo). hatfield. warren wood, mr. charles butler. two madonnas. le mans. musÉe, . madonna. lille. musÉe, . madonna and angel. . procris and cephalus (?). . scene in temple (?). liverpool. walker art gallery, . head of woman (possibly copy of lost portrait of lucrezia buti by fra filippo). . madonna and angels. london. . madonna, infant john, and angels. victoria and albert museum. fresco: baptist and st. dorothy. ionides bequest. madonna (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino at lyons). mr. charles butler. madonna. mr. william e. grey. madonna and infant john (after fra filippo). mrs. louisa herbert. madonna in landscape. lady horner. nativity. montefortino (near amandola, marches). municipio. madonna with tobias and two archangels. . narbonne. musÉe, . _tondo_: madonna and angels adoring child. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection. . madonna; st. catherine, and angels (perhaps after a lost filippo). palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro, . madonna and angels. parcieux (near trévoux). la grange blanche, m. henri chalandon. madonna and two angels. paris. mme. edouard andrÉ. madonna with baptist and angels. painted flower background to desideriesque gesso relief of madonna. m. lÉon bonnat. madonna and angels. m. henri heugel. madonna and infant john (after fra filippo). pavia. galleria malaspina, . madonna with ss. catherine and antony abbot. perugia. marchese meniconi bracceschi. madonna and infant john (after fra filippo). philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. madonna with two angels. madonna against rose-hedge (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino at lyons). elkins park, mr. peter widener. madonna against rose-hedge (version of m. aynard's compagno di pesellino at lyons). richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook. madonna. san gemignano. municipio, pinacoteca. madonna between two kneeling saints. . sala del giudice conciliatore. fresco: trinity and small scenes from sacred legends. . tower. fresco: madonna. s. agostino, first altar r. madonna and saints. . collegiata, nave. monochrome frescoes: ten disciples in medallions, and two smaller busts; decoration of _putti_ and garlands. - . over triumphal arch. fresco: dead christ. - . l. aisle, spandrils of arches. frescoes: abraham and six prophets. l. wall. fresco: adam and eve driven forth from paradise (original fresco of taddeo di bartolo restored by pier francesco). cloister. fresco: dead christ. . s. jacopo, pillar r. fresco: st. james. s. lucia, behind high altar. fresco: crucifixion. e. cappella di monte (near san gemignano). madonna with ss. antony abbot and bartholomew. . s. maria assunta a pancole (near san gemignano). madonna. pieve di ulignano (near san gemignano). madonna with ss. stephen and bartholomew. siena. - . triumphs of petrarch. . nativity. sinalunga (val di chiana). s. martino, sacristy. _tondo_: madonna and infant john. todi. pinacoteca. madonna. vienna. faniteum (Über st. veit). fresco: madonna with bishop and st. christina. . count lanckoronski. madonna against rose-hedge. volterra. municipio. fresco: crucifixion. oratorio di s. antonio. nativity. the pollajuoli. antonio. - . pupil of donatello and andrea del castagno; strongly influenced by baldovinetti. sculptor as well as painter. piero. - . pupil of baldovinetti; worked mainly on his brother's designs. (where the execution can be clearly distinguished as of either of the brothers separately, the fact is indicated). berlin. . annunciation (piero). a. david (antonio). boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner. profile of lady (antonio). florence. uffizi, . portrait of galeazzo sforza. . hope. . justice. . temperance. (the execution of these three was perhaps largely the work of pupils.) . faith (piero). . cartoon for "charity" (on back of picture, the execution of which is studio work). (antonio). . . hercules and the hydra; hercules and antæus (antonio). . ss. eustace, james, and vincent (piero). . . prudence (piero). . . miniature profile of lady (piero). torre di gallo (arcetri). fresco (discovered in and since then entirely repainted): dance of nudes (antonio). s. miniato, portuguese chapel. fresco (around window): flying angels (executed probably ). (antonio). s. niccolÒ. fresco: assumption of virgin (piero). e. london. . st. sebastian (antonio). . . apollo and daphne (antonio). new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . hercules and nessus (antonio). new york. metropolitan museum, . fresco; st. christopher (piero). paris. a. madonna (piero) (?). san gemignano. collegiata, choir. coronation of virgin (piero). . staggia (near siena). s. maria assunta, r. transept. st. mary of egypt upborne by angels (design antonio, execution piero). strasburg. a. madonna enthroned (piero). turin. . tobias and the angel. sculpture, etc. assisi. s. francesco. altar-frontal embroidered probably from designs by piero. florence. bargello. bust of young warrior (terra-cotta). hercules and antæus (bronze). opera del duomo. enamels in pedestal of silver crucifix. finished . birth of baptist (relief in silver). twenty-seven scenes from life of baptist (embroideries after antonio's designs). - . london. victoria and albert museum. "discord" (relief in gesso). rome. st. peter's, chapel of sacrament. tomb of sixtus iv (bronze). finished . l. aisle. tomb of innocent viii (bronze). finished . pontormo (jacopo carucci). - . pupil of andrea del sarto; influenced by michelangelo. bergamo. morelli, . portrait of baccio bandinelli. berlin. portrait of andrea del sarto (not exhibited). herr von dirksen. portrait of a lady seated. borgo san sepolcro. municipio. st. quentin in the pillory (in part). carmignano (near florence). parish church. visitation. dzikow (poland). m. zanislas tarnowski. full face bust of oldish lady in velvet, lace, and pearls. florence. academy, . _pietà_. l. . christ at emmaus. . fresco (behind the giotto): hospital of s. matteo, e. pitti, . portrait of man in armour with dog (?). . martyrdom of forty saints. . st. antony. l. . portrait of man. . adoration of magi. uffizi, . madonna with ss. francis and jerome. . martyrdom of s. maurizio. . birth plate: birth of st. john. . portrait of man. . cosimo del medici. . cosimo i, duke of florence. . venus and cupid (designed by michelangelo). collegio militare, pope's chapel. frescoes. . museo di s. marco, room . portrait of cosimo dei medici. palazzo capponi, marchese farinola. madonna and infant john. corsini gallery, . madonna and infant john. . madonna and infant john. ss. annunziata, cloister r. fresco: visitation. . cappella di s. luca. fresco: madonna and saints. e. s. felicitÀ, chapel r. altarpiece: deposition. frescoes: annunciation; medallions of prophets. s. michele visdomini. holy family and saints. . certosa (near florence). cloister. fresco: christ before pilate. . poggio a cajano (royal villa near florence). decorative fresco around window: vertumnus, pomona, diana, and other figures. . frankfort a./m. stÄdelinstitut, a. portrait of lady with dog. genoa. palazzo bianco. portrait of youth. palazzo brignole-sale. man in red with sword. hatfield. warren wood, mr. charles butler. birth plate. london. . joseph and his kindred in egypt. e. mr. ludwig mond. a conversation. earl of plymouth. portrait of youth. lucca. sala i, . portrait of youth. milan. prince trivulzio. portrait of rinuccini lady. portrait of youth holding book. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . cosimo dei medici. l. . bust of lady. l. oldenburg. . portrait of lady. palermo. . judith. l. panshanger (hertford). portrait of youth. two panels with story of joseph. e. paris. . holy family and saints. . . portrait of engraver of precious stones. pontormo (near empoli). parish church. ss. john the evangelist and michael. e. rome. barberini gallery, . pygmalion and galatea. borghese gallery, . lucretia (?). . tobias and angel. l. . portrait of cardinal. corsini gallery, . bust of man. scotland. keir (dunblane), captain archibald stirling. portrait of bartolommeo compagni. newbattle abbey (dalkeith), marquess of lothian. portrait of youth. turin. . portrait of lady. vienna. . portrait of lady. l. . portrait of lady. l. . young man with letter (?). cosimo rosselli. - . pupil of neri di bicci; influenced by benozzo gozzoli and alesso baldovinetti. agram (croatia). strossmayer collection. madonna and two angels. amsterdam. dr. otto lanz. madonna with st. joseph and two angels adoring child. berlin. . madonna, saints, and angels. l. a. glory of st. anne. . (magazine.) . entombment. breslau. schlesisches museum. . madonna and infant john. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum, . madonna and four saints. . cologne. . madonna, saints, and innocents. e. cortona. signor colonnesi. madonna with ss. jerome and antony of padua. düsseldorf. akademie, . madonna adoring child (?). eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset. madonna with ss. sebastian and michael. empoli. opera del duomo, . holy family and infant john. fiesole. duomo, salutati chapel. frescoes: various saints. florence. academy, . ss. barbara, john, and matthew. e. . nativity. . moses and abraham. . david and noah. uffizi, . coronation of virgin. . madonna adored by two angels. . adoration of magi. e. . (from s. m. nuova). madonna in clouds. bis. madonna, saints, and angels. . via ricasoli. fresco in shrine: madonna enthroned and two angels. mr. b. berenson. madonna. corsini gallery, . _tondo_: madonna and angels adoring child. mme. finali, villa landau. preaching of st. bernardino. signor angelo orvieto. nativity. s. ambrogio, third altar l. assumption and _predella_. . chapel of sacrament. frescoes: miraculous chalice, etc. . ss. annunziata, l. cloister. fresco: st. filippo benizzi taking servite habit. . s. croce, cappella medicea, over door. lunette: god and cherubim (?) s. maria maddalena dei pazzi. coronation of virgin. . genoa. palazzo adorno. small triumphs. lille. . st. mary of egypt. liverpool. walker art gallery, . st. lawrence. london. . combat of love and chastity. mr. charles butler. st. catherine of siena instituting her order. madonna and cherubs. lucca. duomo, wall l. of entrance. fresco: story of true cross. s francesco. frescoes: presentation of virgin, etc. milan. conte casatti. nativity. münster i./w. kunstverein, . madonna with gabriel and infant john. paris. . annunciation and saints. . musÉe des arts decoratifs. legs m. peyre, . madonna and two angels. mme. edouard andrÉ. madonna and angels adoring child. m. joseph spiridon. portrait of man. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. madonna with child holding bird and pomegranate. e. reigate. the priory, mr. somers somerset. small descent from cross. rome. vatican, sixtine chapel. frescoes: christ preaching. moses destroying the tables of the law. last supper (but not the scenes visible through painted windows). all . mr. ludwig mond. madonna and angel adoring child. turin. . triumph of chastity. rosso fiorentino. - . pupil of andrea del sarto; influenced by pontormo and michelangelo. arezzo. sala ii, . christ bearing cross. borgo san sepolcro. orfanelle. deposition. città di castello. duomo. transfiguration. finished . dijon. . bust of baptist. florence. pitti, . three fates. . madonna and saints. uffizi, . angel playing guitar. madonna and four saints with two _putti_ reading, . bargello, della robbia room. fresco: justice. ss. annunziata, r. cloister. fresco: assumption. s. lorenzo. _sposalizio_. frankfort a./m. stÄdelinstitut, . madonna. paris. . _pietà_. . challenge of the pierides. siena. portrait of young man. turin. armeria reale, f. . designs for buckler with wars of jugurtha and marius. venice. academy, . profile bust of man in red cloak and hat. vienna. count lanckoronski. madonna. e. two naked _putti_. volterra. municipio. deposition. . sarto _see_ andrea. jacopo del sellajo. or - . pupil of fra filippo; influenced slightly by castagno's works; imitated most of his florentine contemporaries, especially botticelli, ghirlandajo, and amico di sandro. altenburg. lindenau museum, . adoration of magi. . madonna with tobias and john. . st. jerome. arezzo. sala ii, . madonna against rose-hedge. bergamo. carrara, . bust of christ holding head of lance. berlin. . meeting of young christ and baptist. . _pietà_. . , . death of julius cæsar. herr eugen schweizer. nativity with infant john. bonn. university gallery, . st. jerome. bordeaux. musÉe, . ecce homo. brandenburg a./h. wredowsche zeichnenschule, . adoration. breslau. schlesisches museum, . st. jerome. budapest. . esther before ahasuerus. (magazine) . st. jerome. . st. jerome. caen. musÉe, . madonna with infant john and angel. castiglione fiorentino. pinacoteca, . pool of bethesda. chantilly. musÉe condÉ, . madonna in landscape. dijon. musÉe, donation maciet. small adoration of magi, with ss. andrew and catherine (?). eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset. madonna and saints. empoli. opera del duomo, . madonna and infant john. . madonna in glory with ss. peter martyr and nicholas. englewood (new jersey, u. s. a.). mr. d. f. platt. st. jerome. fiesole. s. ansano (to be transferred to museo). four triumphs of petrarch. florence. academy, . _pietà_. pitti, . madonna and infant john adoring child. uffizi, - . story of esther. . _pietà_. bigallo. _tondo_: madonna, saints, and angels. cenacolo di s. appolonia. entombment. adoration of magi. museo di san marco, ospizio, . annunciation. mr. herbert p. horne. st. jerome. s. frediano, sacristy. christ on cross and saints. s. jacopo sopra arno, sacristy. _pietà_. s. lucia de' magnoli ("tra le rovinate"), first altar l. annunciation. la quiete. adoration of magi, with trinity and angels above. s. spirito. antependium: st. lawrence. gangalandi (between florence and signa), s. martino, r. wall. madonna, with eternal in lunette. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry. . madonna and st. peter martyr adoring child. . head of angel. göttingen. university gallery, . meeting of young christ and john. hanover. provinzialmuseum. _pietà_ and other scenes. ince blundell hall (blundellsands, lancashire). mr. charles weld blundell. nativity. lille. musÉe, . madonna. liverpool. walker art gallery, . adventures of ulysses. london. . venus and cupids. mr. brinsley marlay. _cassone_-front: cupid and psyche. mr. charles butler. _cassone_-front: cupid and psyche. earl crawford. brutus and portia. st. mary of egypt. st. jerome. baptist. earl of ilchester. ecce homo. madonna. mr. charles ricketts. madonna and infant john. mr. george salting. _tondo_: madonna and angels adoring child. mr. vernon watney. marriage feast of nastagio degli onesti. . lyons. musÉe, . deposition. m. edouard aynard. epiphany. _pietà_. marseilles. musÉe. madonna and angels (copy of lost amico di sandro). milan. conti bagati valsecchi. _cassone_-front: story of griselda. prince trivulzio. young baptist. madonna in niche (?). munich. . st. sebastian. . adoration of magi. . annunciation. e. münster i./w. kunstverein, . tobias and the angel. nantes. musÉe des beaux arts, . madonna (?). . madonna. musÉe dobret, . crucifixion. new haven (u. s. a.). jarves collection, . madonna adoring child. . st. jerome. . madonna in clouds with cherubim (version of picture by rosselli in uffizi). . st. sebastian. . . diana and actæon. . creation of adam and eve. new york. james collection. _cassone_-front: story of actæon. mr. stanley mortimer. madonna adoring child. oxford. christ church library, . madonna adoring child. mr. t. w. jackson. madonna and infant john. palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro, . _tondo_: nativity. paris. . venus and cupids. a. madonna and two angels (copy of lost amico di sandro; cf. marseilles). . st. jerome. story of esther. m. lÉon bonnat. madonna and infant john. m. gustave dreyfus. madonna and infant john (?). baron michele lazzaroni. _pietà_. panel for story of esther. m. eugÈne richtemberger. nativity. peace dale (rhode island, u. s. a.). mrs. bacon, the acorns. madonna adoring child. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson. battle piece. madonna and angels against hedge of pinks. story of nastagio degli onesti. madonna adoring child. david. poitiers. hÔtel de ville, . madonna. rome. count gregori stroganoff. head of virgin. san giovanni valdarno. oratorio di s. maria delle grazie. annunciation. . scotland. newbattle abbey. (dalkeith), marquess of lothian. entombment. vienna. count lanckoronski. orpheus. st. sigismund and kneeling youth. e. prince liechtenstein. _tondo_: madonna and angels. wiesbaden. nassauisches kunstverein, . adoration of magi. paolo uccello. - . influenced by donatello. florence. uffizi, . battle of s. romano. duomo, wall above entrance. fresco; four heads of prophets. wall l. of entrance. fresco: equestrian portrait of sir john hawkwood. . windows in drum of cupola (from his designs). resurrection; nativity; ascension; annunciation. . s. maria novella, cloister. frescoes: creation of adam; creation of animals; creation and temptation of eve. e. the flood; sacrifice of noah. london. . battle of s. romano. . profile of lady (?). new york. metropolitan museum, marquand collection. profiles of woman and man of portinari family. oxford. university museum, . a hunt. paris. . portraits of giotto, uccello, donatello, brunelleschi, and antonio manetti. l. . battle of s. romano. mme. edouard andrÉ. st. george and the dragon. urbino. ducal palace, . story of the jew and the host. . vienna. count lanckoronski. st. george and the dragon. domenico veneziano. about - . probably acquired his rudiments at venice; formed under the influence of donatello, masaccio, and fra angelico. berlin. . martyrdom of st. lucy. florence. uffizi, . madonna and four saints. s. croce, r. wall. fresco: the baptist and st. francis. l. london. , . frescoes: heads of monks. . fresco transferred to canvas: madonna enthroned. andrea verrocchio. - . pupil of donatello and alesso baldovinetti, influenced by pesellino. berlin. a. madonna and angel. e. florence. academy, . baptism (in great part). uffizi, . profile of lady (?). . annunciation (possibly with assistance of credi). london. . madonna and two angels (designed and superintended by verrocchio). e. milan. poldi-pezzoli, . profile of young woman (?). e. paris. baron arthur schickler. madonna (designed and superintended by verrocchio). sheffield. ruskin museum. madonna adoring child (designed by verrocchio). vienna. prince liechtenstein, . portrait of lady. sculptures. berlin. . sleeping youth (terra-cotta). a. entombment (terra-cotta). florence. bargello. david (bronze). bust of woman (marble). opera del duomo. decapitation of baptist (silver relief). . uffizi. madonna and child (terra-cotta). palazzo vecchio, courtyard. boy with dolphin (bronze). s. lorenzo, sacristy. tomb of cosimo de' medici (bronze). . inner sacristy. lavabo (marble) (in part). or san michele, outside: christ and st. thomas (bronze). finished . paris. m. gustave dreyfus. bust of lady (marble). venice. piazza ss. giovanni e paolo. equestrian monument of bartolommeo colleoni (bronze). left unfinished at death. vinci see leonardo index of places. agram (croatia). strossmayer collection: albertinelli, fra angelico, bugiardini, cosimo rosselli. aix-en-provence. musÉe: alunno di domenico. altenburg. lindenau museum: amico di sandro, fra angelico, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, pesellino, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. amsterdam. dr. otto lanz: cosimo rosselli. arezzo. alunno di domenico, rosso, sellajo. ashridge park (berkhampstead). earl brownlow: fra bartolommeo, fra filippo. asolo. canonica della parrocchia: bacchiacca. assisi. s. francesco: cimabue, giotto and assistants, pollajuolo. barnard castle. bowes museum: franciabigio. bergamo. carrara: sellajo. lochis: albertinelli. morelli: albertinelli, amico di sandro, bacchiacca, baldovinetti, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, ridolfo ghirlandajo, lorenzo monaco, pesellino, pier francesco fiorentino, pontormo. berlin. amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, bacchiacca, baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, carli, credi, franciabigio, garbo, ridolfo ghirlandajo, assistant of giotto, granacci, filippino lippi, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, masaccio, michelangelo, pesellino, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, the pollajuoli, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, sellajo, domenico veneziano, verrocchio. simon collection: amico di sandro, bronzino, garbo. museum of industrial art: bugiardini. palace of emperor william i: bugiardini. herr von dirksen: pontormo. von kaufmann collection: botticelli, carli, lorenzo monaco, orcagna, pier di cosimo. herr eugen schweizer: bacchiacca, franciabigio, sellajo. herr edward simon: amico di sandro. besançon. musÉe: bronzino. cathedral: fra bartolommeo. béziers. musÉe: benozzo. bologna. bugiardini, franciabigio, assistant of giotto. s. domenico: filippino lippi, michelangelo. bonn. university gallery: bugiardini, sellajo. bordeaux. musÉe: sellajo. borgo san lorenzo (mugello). chiesa del crocifisso: pier di cosimo. borgo san sepolcro. municipio: pontormo. orfanelle: rosso. boston (u. s. a.). mrs. j. l. gardner: fra angelico, bacchiacca, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, giotto, masaccio, pesellino, antonio pollajuolo. mrs. quincy a. shaw: mainardi. bowood park (calne). marquess of lansdowne: bugiardini. brandenburg a./h. wredowsche zeichnenschule: sellajo. brant broughton (lincolnshire). rev. arthur f. sutton: fra angelico, lorenzo monaco, masaccio. bremen. kunsthalle: masolino. breslau. schlesisches museum: cosimo rosselli, sellajo. brocklesby (lincolnshire). earl of yarborough: bacchiacca. bruges. notre dame. michelangelo. brunswick. lorenzo monaco. brussels. franciabigio, pier francesco fiorentino. musÉe de la ville: franciabigio. budapest. amico di sandro, bacchiacca, bronzino, bugiardini, ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, orcagna, pier francesco fiorentino. caen. musÉe: sellajo. cambridge. fitzwilliam museum: albertinelli, credi, lorenzo monaco, cosimo rosselli. cambridge (u. s. a.). fogg museum: fra bartolommeo, benozzo, pier francesco fiorentino. carlsruhe. credi. carmignano (near florence). parish church. pontormo. cassel. bacchiacca, bronzino, granacci, lorenzo monaco. castel fiorentino. cappella di s. chiara: benozzo. madonna della tosse: benozzo. castelnuovo di val d'elsa. s. barbara: pier francesco fiorentino. castiglione d'olona (varesotto). palazzo castiglione: masolino. church: masolino. baptistery: masolino. castiglione fiorentino. pinacoteca: sellajo. collegiata: credi. certaldo. palazzo dei priori: pier francesco fiorentino. cappella del ponte d'agliena: benozzo, pier francesco fiorentino. chantilly. musÉe condÉ: amico di sandro, franciabigio, granacci, pesellino, pier di cosimo, sellajo. chartres. musÉe: albertinelli. chatsworth. duke of devonshire: ridolfo ghirlandajo. chicago. mr. martin ryerson: botticini. città di castello. granacci. duomo: rosso. cleveland (u. s. a.). holden collection: botticini, credi, pier francesco fiorentino. colle di val d'elsa. palazzo antico del comune: pier francesco fiorentino. via gozzino: pier francesco fiorentino. via s. lucia: pier francesco fiorentino. s. agostino: ridolfo ghirlandajo. cologne. benozzo, mainardi, cosimo rosselli. copenhagen. thorwaldsen museum: filippino lippi, lorenzo monaco. cortona. signor colonnesi: cosimo rosselli. s. domenico: fra angelico. gesÙ: fra angelico. cracow. potocki collection: franciabigio. darmstadt. granacci. detroit (u. s. a.). pier francesco fiorentino. dijon. musÉe: bacchiacca, bugiardini, franciabigio, pier francesco fiorentino, rosso, sellajo. dresden. alunno di domenico, andrea del sarto, bacchiacca, botticelli, carli, credi, franciabigio, garbo, mainardi, pier di cosimo. dublin. national gallery: granacci. dulwich (near london). pier di cosimo. düsseldorf. academy: fra angelico, carli, cosimo rosselli. dzikow (poland). m. zanislas tarnowski: pontormo. eastnor castle (ledbury). lady henry somerset: carli, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. empoli. opera del duomo: botticini, lorenzo monaco, pesellino, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. baptistery: masolino. s. stefano: masolino. englewood (new jersey, u. s. a.). mr. daniel fellows platt: pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. esher. mr. herbert f. cook: carli. fiesole. s. ansano (to be transferred to museo): lorenzo monaco, sellajo. duomo: cosimo rosselli. s. francesco: pier di cosimo. figline (val d'arno superiore). s. piero al terreno: bugiardini. florence. academy: albertinelli, alunno di domenico, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, cimabue, credi, franciabigio, garbo, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, giotto, granacci, filippino lippi, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, masaccio, michelangelo, orcagna, pesellino, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, sellajo, verrocchio. bargello: assistant of giotto, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, michelangelo, orcagna, pier francesco fiorentino, antonio pollajuolo, rosso, verrocchio. pitti: albertinelli, amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, bacchiacca, fra bartolommeo, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, franciabigio, ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, filippino lippi, fra filippo lippi, pier di cosimo, pontormo, rosso, sellajo. uffizi: albertinelli, alunno di domenico, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, carli, castagno, credi, franciabigio, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, assistant of giotto, granacci, leonardo, filippino lippi, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, michelangelo, orcagna, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, the pollajuoli, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, rosso, sellajo, paolo uccello, domenico veneziano, verrocchio. biblioteca laurenziana: lorenzo monaco. bigallo: ridolfo ghirlandajo, sellajo. boboli gardens: michelangelo. casa buonarroti: michelangelo. cenacolo di s. appolonia: botticini, castagno, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. cenacolo di foligno: amico di sandro. chiostro dello scalzo: andrea del sarto, franciabigio. collegio militare: pontormo. hospital: castagno, lorenzo monaco. innocenti, gallery: alunno di domenico, pier di cosimo. istituto dei minorenni corrigendi: granacci. san lorenzo, new sacristy: michelangelo. museo di san marco: alunno di domenico, fra angelico, fra bartolommeo, bugiardini, domenico ghirlandajo, lorenzo monaco, pontormo, sellajo. opera del duomo: antonio pollajuolo, verrocchio. palazzo riccardi: benozzo, fra filippo lippi. palazzo vecchio: bronzino, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, verrocchio. (pitti, see above). san salvi: andrea del sarto. scuole elementare (via della colonna): carli. (uffizi, see above). via conservatorio capponi, no. ii.: carli. via ricasoli: cosimo rosselli. palazzo alessandri: benozzo, fra filippo lippi. mr. b. berenson: baldovinetti, bronzino, carli, orcagna, cosimo rosselli. duca di brindisi: botticini, carli. mr. henry white cannon, villa doccia: carli. palazzo capponi, marchese farinola: botticelli, pontormo. palazzo corsini: albertinelli, amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, bacchiacca, carli, ridolfo ghirlandajo, filippino lippi, pontormo, cosimo rosselli. mme. finali, villa landau: cosimo rosselli. mr. herbert p. horne: benozzo, filippino lippi, pier di cosimo, sellajo. mr. edmund houghton: pier francesco fiorentino. contessa lardarel: botticini. mr. charles loeser: lorenzo monaco. conte niccolini: bacchiacca. conte fernando dei nobili: pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. signor angelo orvieto: cosimo rosselli. palazzo pitti: botticelli. palazzo pucci: credi. marchese manelli riccardi: alunno di domenico. mrs. ross, poggio gherardo: carli. conte serristori: bacchiacca, pier francesco fiorentino. marchese pio strozzi: botticini. palazzo torrigiani: ridolfo ghirlandajo, filippino lippi, mainardi. torre del gallo (villino): antonio pollajuolo. s. ambrogio: baldovinetti, carli, filippino lippi, cosimo rosselli. ss. annunziata: andrea del sarto, baldovinetti, castagno, franciabigio, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, rosso. badia: filippino lippi, orcagna. la calza (porta romana): franciabigio. carmine: filippino lippi, masaccio, masolino. s. croce: bugiardini, giotto and assistants, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, orcagna, cosimo rosselli, domenico veneziano. s. domenico di fiesole: fra angelico, credi. duomo: baldovinetti, castagno, credi, domenico ghirlandajo, michelangelo, paolo uccello. s. felice: assistant of giotto. s. felicita: pontormo. s. francesco delle stimmate: pier francesco fiorentino. s. frediano: sellajo. s. giovannino dei cavalieri: lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. s. giuseppe: lorenzo monaco. innocenti (church): alunno di domenico, domenico ghirlandajo, s. jacopo sopra arno: sellajo. s. lorenzo: bronzino, fra filippo lippi, pier di cosimo, rosso, verrocchio. s. lucia de' magnoli (tra le rovinate): sellajo. s. marco: baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo. s. m. maddalena dei pazzi: carli, cosimo rosselli. s. m. novella: bugiardini, domenico ghirlandajo, filippino lippi, masaccio, orcagna, paolo uccello. s. margherita a montici: assistant of giotto. s. michele visdomini: pontormo. s. miniato: baldovinetti, assistant of giotto, antonio pollajuolo. s. niccolÒ: piero pollajuolo. chiostro degli oblati ( via s. egidio): lorenzo monaco. ognissanti: botticelli, domenico ghirlandajo. chiesa di orbetello: mainardi. or san michele: credi, orcagna, verrocchio. s. pancrazio: baldovinetti. pazzi chapel: baldovinetti. s. procolo: carli. la quiete: ridolfo ghirlandajo, sellajo. s. spirito: botticini, carli, credi, filippino lippi, sellajo. s. trinita: baldovinetti, domenico ghirlandajo, lorenzo monaco. places near florence: brozzi, fattoria orsini: mainardi. s. andrea: botticini, carli. certosa: albertinelli, orcagna, pontormo. corbignano (near settignano), cappella vanella: botticelli. gangalandi (between florence and signa), s. martino: sellajo. badia di passignano (tavernelle), refectory: domenico ghirlandajo. pian di mugnone, s. m. maddalena: fra bartolommeo. poggio a cajano (royal villa): andrea del sarto, franciabigio, filippino lippi, pontormo. quintole, s. pietro: granacci. scandicci, comtesse de turenne: credi. villamagna, s. donnino: granacci. forlì. credi. frankfort a./m. stÄdelinstitut: pier francesco fiorentino, pontormo, rosso. frome (somerset). lady horner, mells park: pier francesco fiorentino. geneva. musÉe: albertinelli. genoa. palazzo adorno: cosimo rosselli. palazzo bianco: filippino lippi, pontormo. palazzo brignole-sale: pontormo. glasgow. corporation gallery: garbo. mr. william beattie: credi, ridolfo ghirlandajo, pier di cosimo. mr. james mann: granacci. gloucester. highnam court, sir hubert parry: albertinelli, credi, lorenzo monaco, pesellino, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. göttingen. university gallery: botticini, credi, pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. grenoble. musÉe: fra bartolommeo. gubbio. pier francesco fiorentino. the hague. albertinelli, bronzino, pier di cosimo. hamburg. weber collection: credi, franciabigio, mainardi, pier francesco fiorentino. hanover. kestner museum: credi. provinzialmuseum: sellajo. harrow-on-the-hill. rev. j. stogdon: pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino. hatfield. mr. charles butler, warren wood: pier francesco fiorentino, pontormo. hildesheim. mainardi. horsmonden (kent). mrs. austen, capel manor: alunno di domenico, amico di sandro. ince blundell hall (lancashire). mr. charles weld blundell: sellajo. kiel. prof. martius: filippino lippi. le mans. musÉe: carli, pier francesco fiorentino. lewes. mr. e. p. warren, lewes house: filippino lippi. lille. musÉe: pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. liverpool. walker art gallery: alunno di domenico, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. locko park (near derby). mr. charles drury-lowe: bacchiacca, benozzo, carli, castagno, mainardi. london. amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, bacchiacca, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, castagno, credi, franciabigio, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, filippino and fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, michelangelo, orcagna, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, antonio pollajuolo, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, sellajo, paolo uccello, domenico veneziano, verrocchio. h. m. the king, buckingham palace: benozzo. burlington house, diploma gallery: leonardo, michelangelo. hertford house: andrea del sarto, pier di cosimo. victoria and albert museum: amico di sandro, benozzo, granacci, michelangelo, pier francesco fiorentino, antonio pollajuolo. beit collection: michelangelo. mr. robert benson: amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, botticini, carli, franciabigio, garbo, domenico ghirlandajo, granacci, filippino lippi, pier di cosimo. mr. charles brinsley marlay: alunno di domenico, botticini, sellajo. duke of buccleugh: granacci. mr. charles butler: bacchiacca, botticini, credi, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. earl crawford: sellajo. mr. william e. grey: pier francesco fiorentino. mrs. louisa herbert: pier francesco fiorentino. mr. j. p. heseltine: botticelli. col. g. l. holford, dorchester house: fra bartolommeo, garbo, pesellino. lady horner: pier francesco fiorentino. sir h. howorth: mainardi. earl of ilchester, holland house: sellajo. sir kenneth muir mackenzie: alunno di domenico. mr. ludwig mond: fra bartolommeo, botticelli, domenico ghirlandajo, pontormo. mr. j. pierpont morgan: castagno, domenico ghirlandajo. earl of northbrook: fra bartolommeo, bugiardini, franciabigio. earl of plymouth: pier di cosimo, pontormo. mr. charles ricketts: garbo, pier di cosimo, sellajo. mr. c. n. robinson: benozzo. earl of rosebery: credi. mr. leopold de rothschild: andrea del sarto. mr. george salting: domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, mainardi, sellajo. sir henry samuelson: garbo, filippino lippi. mr. a. e. street: pier di cosimo. mrs. j. e. taylor: fra angelico. mr. t. vasel: franciabigio. mr. henry wagner: lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino. mr. vernon watney: sellajo. sir julius wernher: filippino lippi. mr. frederick a. white: bacchiacca. earl of yarborough: franciabigio. longleat (warminster). marquess of bath: alunno di domenico, credi, mainardi. lovere. galleria tadini: alunno di domenico. lucardo (near certaldo). parish church: ridolfo ghirlandajo. lucca. fra bartolommeo, bronzino, carli, pontormo. marchese mansi (s. m. forisportam): granacci. duomo: fra bartolommeo, domenico ghirlandajo, cosimo rosselli. s. francesco: cosimo rosselli. s. michele: filippino lippi. lyons. musÉe: sellajo. m. edouard aynard: fra angelico, garbo, fra filippo lippi, mainardi, pier di cosimo, sellajo. madrid. musÉe del prado: andrea del sarto, fra angelico. duke of alba: albertinelli, fra angelico. marseilles. musÉe: sellajo. mayence. credi. meiningen. grand ducal palace: amico di sandro, benozzo. milan. ambrosiana: botticelli. borromeo: alunno di domenico, pier di cosimo. brera: benozzo, bronzino. poldi-pezzoli: albertinelli, alunno di domenico, botticelli, carli, pesellino, sellajo, verrocchio. conti bagati valsecchi: sellajo. conte casatti: credi, cosimo rosselli. comm. benigno crespi: bacchiacca, ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, lorenzo monaco, mainardi. dr. gustavo frizzoni: bacchiacca. cav. aldo noseda: lorenzo monaco. prince trivulzio: amico di sandro, michelangelo, pier di cosimo, pontormo, sellajo. s. maria delle grazie: bugiardini, leonardo. modena. botticini, bugiardini, franciabigio. mombello (near milan). prince pio di savoia: bugiardini. montefalco. pinacoteca (s. francesco): benozzo. s. fortunato: benozzo. montefortino (near amandola, marches). municipio: botticini, pier francesco fiorentino. montemarciano (val d'arno superiore). masaccio. montepulciano. carli. munich. alte pinakotek: albertinelli, fra angelico, bacchiacca, credi, garbo, giotto and assistant, granacci, fra filippo lippi, mainardi, masolino, sellajo. lotzbeck collection: lorenzo monaco. münster i./w. kunstverein: mainardi, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. nantes. musÉe des beaux arts: sellajo. musÉe dobret: sellajo. naples. amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, fra bartolommeo, garbo, filippino lippi, masaccio, masolino. museo filangieri: amico di sandro. narbonne. musÉe: pier francesco fiorentino. narni. municipio: alunno di domenico, benozzo, domenico ghirlandajo. new haven (conn., u. s. a.). jarves collection: alunno di domenico, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, filippino lippi, lorenzo monaco, orcagna, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, antonio pollajuolo, pontormo, sellajo. newlands manor (hampshire). col. cornwallis west: pier di cosimo. newport. (u. s. a.). mr. theodore m. davis, the reef: bugiardini. new york. metropolitan museum: bugiardini, pier di cosimo, piero pollajuolo, paolo uccello. mrs. gould: bronzino. havemeyer collection: bronzino. james collection: sellajo. mr. stanley mortimer: sellajo. mr. rutherford stuyvesant: franciabigio. mr. samuel untermeyer: albertinelli. nîmes. gower collection: franciabigio. olantigh towers (wye). mr. erle-drax: bugiardini, carli. oldenburg. bugiardini, pontormo. orvieto. duomo: fra angelico. oxford. christ church library: alunno di domenico, amico di sandro, bacchiacca, carli, granacci, filippino lippi, pier di cosimo, sellajo. university galleries: bronzino, credi, granacci, fra filippo lippi, mainardi, paolo uccello. mr. t. w. jackson: franciabigio, sellajo. padua. arena chapel: giotto. palermo. baron chiaramonte bordonaro: alunno di domenico, botticini, mainardi, orcagna, pier francesco fiorentino, pontormo, sellajo. panshanger (hertford). fra bartolommeo, granacci, pontormo. panzano (between florence and siena). s. maria: botticini. parcieux (near trévoux). la grange blanche, m. henri chalandon: botticini, lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino. paris. louvre: albertinelli, alunno di domenico, amico di sandro, andrea del sarto, fra angelico, baldovinetti, fra bartolommeo, benozzo, botticelli, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, carli, cimabue, credi, franciabigio, domenico and ridolfo ghirlandajo, assistant of giotto, leonardo, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, michelangelo, pesellino, pier di cosimo, piero pollajuolo, pontormo, cosimo rosselli, rosso, sellajo, paolo uccello. musÉe des arts decoratifs: bugiardini, cosimo rosselli. baronne d'adelsward: benozzo. mme. edouard andrÉ: baldovinetti, botticini, bugiardini, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, paolo uccello. comtesse arconati-visconti: botticini, mainardi. m. lÉon bonnat: pier francesco fiorentino, sellajo. m. georges chalandon: fra angelico. m. jean dollfus: alunno di domenico, granacci. m. gustave dreyfus: credi, mainardi, sellajo, verrocchio. m. henri heugel: botticini, garbo, pier francesco fiorentino. baron michele lazzaroni: carli, sellajo. comte pastre: amico di sandro. m. emile richtemberger: carli, granacci, sellajo. baron edouard de rothschild: garbo. baron arthur schickler: verrocchio. baron schlichting: amico di sandro. m. joseph spiridon: alunno di domenico, granacci, cosimo rosselli. m. noel valois: fra angelico. parma. fra angelico, garbo. pavia. galleria malaspina: pier francesco fiorentino. peace dale (rhode island, u. s. a.). mrs. bacon, the acorns: sellajo. périgueux. musÉe: amico di sandro. perugia. fra angelico, benozzo. marchese meniconi bracceschi: pier francesco fiorentino. petworth house (sussex). lord leconfield: andrea del sarto. philadelphia. mr. john g. johnson: amico di sandro, fra bartolommeo, franciabigio, granacci, mainardi, pier di cosimo, pier francesco fiorentino, cosimo rosselli, sellajo. mr. peter widener: benozzo, bugiardini, ridolfo ghirlandajo, pier francesco fiorentino. pinerolo (piedmont). villa lamba doria: franciabigio. pisa. museo civico: fra angelico, benozzo, carli, domenico ghirlandajo, masaccio. campo santo: benozzo. ricovero: benozzo. universitÀ dei cappellani: benozzo. s. caterina: albertinelli. duomo: andrea del sarto. s. matteo: carli. s. stefano: bronzino. pistoia. duomo: credi, verrocchio. madonna del letto: credi. s. pietro maggiore: ridolfo ghirlandajo. poggibonsi. s. lucchese: carli. poitiers. hÔtel de ville: sellajo. pontormo (near empoli). parish church: pontormo. posen. raczynski collection: lorenzo monaco. prato. botticini, carli, filippino lippi, lorenzo monaco. tabernacle in street: filippino lippi. duomo: ridolfo ghirlandajo, fra filippo lippi. reigate. the priory, mr. somers somerset: ridolfo ghirlandajo, cosimo rosselli. richmond (surrey). sir frederick cook: bacchiacca, fra bartolommeo, botticini, fra filippo lippi, lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino. rome. barberini gallery: franciabigio, pontormo. borghese gallery: albertinelli, andrea del sarto, bacchiacca, bronzino, bugiardini, credi, franciabigio, granacci, pier di cosimo, pontormo. colonna gallery: alunno di domenico, bronzino, bugiardini. corsini gallery: fra angelico, fra bartolommeo, bronzino, bugiardini, franciabigio, granacci, pier di cosimo, pontormo. doria gallery: bronzino. lateran (presently to be united with the vatican): fra bartolommeo, benozzo, fra filippo lippi. vatican, pinacoteca: fra angelico, leonardo. museo cristiano (presently to be united with the pinacoteca): fra angelico, benozzo, lorenzo monaco, mainardi, masolino. chapel of nicholas v: fra angelico. cappella paolina: michelangelo. sixtine chapel: botticelli, domenico ghirlandajo, michelangelo, pier di cosimo, cosimo rosselli. prince colonna: bugiardini. prince doria: bronzino, fra filippo lippi, pesellino. miss hertz: bacchiacca. mr. ludwig mond: fra filippo lippi, cosimo rosselli. palazzo rondanini: michelangelo. prince rospigliosi: bronzino. contessa spaletti: bugiardini. count gregori stroganoff: amico di sandro, fra angelico, mainardi, sellajo. marchese visconti venosta: fra bartolommeo. aracoeli: benozzo. s. clemente: masolino. s. giovanni laterano: giotto. s. maria sopra minerva: filippino lippi, michelangelo. st. peter's: assistant of giotto, michelangelo, antonio pollajuolo. s. pietro in vincoli: michelangelo. san gemignano. municipio: benozzo, mainardi, pier francesco fiorentino. ospedale di s. fina: mainardi. s. giovanni: mainardi. s. agostino: benozzo, mainardi, pier francesco fiorentino. s. andrea: benozzo. cappella di monte: pier francesco fiorentino. collegiata: benozzo, domenico ghirlandajo, mainardi, pier francesco fiorentino, piero pollajuolo. s. jacopo: pier francesco fiorentino. s. lucia: pier francesco fiorentino. monte oliveto: benozzo, mainardi. pancole (near san gemignano), s. maria assunta: pier francesco fiorentino. pieve di ulignano (near san gemignano), s. bartolommeo: pier francesco fiorentino. san giovanni valdarno. oratorio di s. m. delle grazie: sellajo. san miniato al tedesco (val d'arno). s. domenico: carli. scotland. cawder house, (bishopbriggs) capt. archibald stirling: pier di cosimo. (glasgow, cf. under g.) gosford house earl of wemyss: albertinelli, botticini, masolino, pier di cosimo. kier (dunblane), capt. archibald stirling: pontormo. langton (duns), hon. mrs. baillie-hamilton: alunno di domenico, bugiardini. newbattle abbey (dalkeith), marquess of lothian: amico di sandro, pier di cosimo, pontormo, sellajo. rossie priory (inchture, perthshire), lord kinnaird: granacci. sermoneta. parish church: benozzo. sheffield. ruskin museum: verrocchio. siena. albertinelli, lorenzo monaco, pier francesco fiorentino, rosso. palazzo saracini: bugiardini, mainardi. s. maria degli angeli: carli. monastero del santuccio: pier di cosimo. sinalunga (val di chiana). s. martino: pier francesco fiorentino. spoleto. duomo: fra filippo lippi. staggia (near siena). s. maria assunta: the pollajuoli. stockholm. royal palace: botticini, pier di cosimo. st. petersburg. hermitage: andrea del sarto, fra angelico, fra bartolommeo, botticelli, bugiardini, ridolfo ghirlandajo, granacci, michelangelo. palais stroganoff: amico di sandro, filippino lippi. strasburg. university gallery: bugiardini, credi, assistant of giotto, masaccio, pier di cosimo, piero pollajuolo. stuttgart. albertinelli, bugiardini. terni. biblioteca: benozzo. todi. municipio: pier francesco fiorentino. s. fortunato: masolino. troyes. musÉe: bacchiacca. turin. amico di sandro, fra angelico, botticini, bronzino, bugiardini, credi, franciabigio, pier francesco fiorentino, the pollajuoli, pontormo, cosimo roselli. accademia albertina: fra filippo lippi. armeria reale: rosso. museo civico: bugiardini, lorenzo monaco. urbino. ducal palace: paolo uccello. vallombrosa. pieve carli. venice. academy: carli, rosso. querini stampalia gallery: credi. seminario: albertinelli, bacchiacca, bronzino, carli, filippino lippi. baron giorgio franchetti: bugiardini. prince giovanelli: bacchiacca. lady layard: garbo. piazza ss. giovanni e paolo: verrocchio. vercelli. museo borgogna: domenico ghirlandajo. vienna. andrea del sarto, fra bartolommeo benozzo, bronzino, bugiardini, franciabigio, pontormo. academy: bugiardini. herr eugen von miller aicholz: filippino lippi. dr. a. figdor: alunno di domenico. harrach collection: mainardi, pier di cosimo. count lanckoronski: alunno di domenico, franciabigio, granacci, masaccio, pier francesco fiorentino, rosso, sellajo, paolo uccello. prince liechtenstein: amico di sandro, credi, franciabigio, mainardi, pier di cosimo, sellajo, verrocchio. baron tucher: fra angelico benozzo. herr carl wittgenstein: granacci. volterra. municipio: carli, domenico ghirlandajo, pier francesco fiorentino, rosso. oratorio di s. antonio: pier francesco fiorentino. duomo: albertinelli, benozzo. wantage. lockinge house, lady wantage: ridolfo ghirlandajo, pesellino. warwick castle. earl of warwick: alunno di domenico, granacci. washington. mr. victor fischer: carli, lorenzo monaco, mainardi. weston birt (tetbury). col. g. l. holford: carli. wiesbaden. nassauisches kunstverein: bacchiacca, franciabigio, sellajo. wigan. haigh hall, earl crawford: botticini. windsor castle. andrea del sarto, franciabigio. worksop (nottinghamshire). clumber park, duke of newcastle: pier di cosimo. little journeys to the homes of the great, volume (of ) little journeys to the homes of eminent painters elbert hubbard memorial edition printed and made into a book by the roycrofters, who are in east aurora, erie county, new york new york contents michelangelo rembrandt rubens meissonier titian anthony van dyck fortuny ary scheffer francois millet joshua reynolds landseer gustave dore michelangelo how can that be, lady, which all men learn by long experience? shapes that seem alive, wrought in hard mountain marble, will survive their maker, whom the years to dust return! thus to effect, cause yields. art hath her turn, and triumphs over nature. i, who strive with sculpture, know this well: her wonders live in spite of time and death, those tyrants stern. so i can give long life to both of us in either way, by color or by stone, making the semblance of thy face and mine. centuries hence when both are buried, thus thy beauty and my sadness shall be shown, and men shall say, "for her 'twas wise to pine." --_sonnets of michelangelo_ [illustration: michelangelo] "call me by my pet name," wrote elizabeth barrett browning, in one of those incomparable sonnets of which the portuguese never heard. and the task yet remains for some psychologist to tell us why, when we wish to bestow the highest honor, coupled with familiar affection, we call the individual by a given name. young men and maidens will understand my allusion; and i hope this book will not suffer the dire fate of falling into the hands of any one who has forgotten the days of his youth. in addressing the one we truly revere, we drop all prefix and titles. soldiers marching under the banner of a beloved leader ever have for him a name of their own. what honor and trust were once compressed into the diminutive, "little corporal" or kipling's "bobs"; or, to come down to something even more familiar to us, say, "old abe" and "little phil"! the earth is a vast graveyard where untold millions of men lie buried, but out of the myriads who pass into forgetfulness every decade, the race holds a few names embalmed in undying amber. lovers of art, the round world over, carry in their minds one character, so harmoniously developed on every side of his nature that we say twenty centuries have never produced his equal. we call him "leonardo"--the one ideal man. leonardo da vinci was painter, poet, sculptor, architect, mathematician, politician, musician, man of science, and courtier. his disposition was so joyous, his manner so captivating, his form and countenance so beautiful, that wherever he went all things were his. and he was so well ballasted with brains, and so acute in judgment, that flattery spoiled him not. his untiring industry and transcendent talent brought him large sums of money, and he spent them like a king. so potent was his personality that wherever he made his home there naturally grew up around him a court of learning, and his pupils and followers were counted by the score. to the last of his long life he carried with him the bright, expectant animation of youth; and to all who knew him he was "leonardo--the only leonardo." but great as was leonardo, we call the time in which he lived, the age of michelangelo. when leonardo was forty, and at the very height of his power, michel agnola buonarroti, aged twenty, liberated from the block a marble cupid that was so exquisite in its proportions that it passed for an antique, and men who looked upon it exclaimed, "phidias!" michel agnola became michelangelo, that is to say, "michel the angel," in a day. the name thrown at him by an unknown admirer stuck, and in his later years when all the world called him "angelo" he cast off the name his parents had given him and accepted the affectionate pet name that clung like the love of woman. michelangelo was born in a shabby little village but a few miles from florence. in another village near by was born leonardo. "great men never come singly," says emerson. and yet angelo and leonardo exercised no influence upon each other that we can trace. the younger man never came under the spell of the older one, but moved straight on to his destiny, showing not the slightest arc in his orbit in deference to the great luminary of his time. the handsome leonardo was social: he loved women, and music, and festivals, and gorgeous attire, and magnificent equipage. his life was full of color and sweeping, joyous, rainbow tints. michelangelo was homely in feature, and the aspect of his countenance was mutilated by a crashing blow from a rival student's mallet that flattened his nose to his face. torrigiano lives in history for this act alone, thus proving that there are more ways than one to gain immortality. angelo was proud, self-centered, independent, and he sometimes lashed the critics into a buzzing, bluebottle fury by his sarcastic speech. "he affronted polite society, conformed to no one's dictates, lived like an ascetic and worked like a packmule," says a contemporary. vasari, who among his many other accomplishments seems to have been the boswell of his time, compares leonardo and michelangelo. he says, "angelo can do everything that leonardo can, although he does it differently." further, he adds, "angelo is painter, sculptor, engineer, architect and poet." "but," adds this versatile italian samuel pepys, somewhat sorrowfully, "he is not a gentleman." it is to be regretted that signor vasari did not follow up his remarks with his definition of the term "gentleman." leonardo was more of a painter than a sculptor. his pictures are full of rollicking mirth, and the smile on the faces of his women is handed down by imitation even to this day. the joyous freedom of animal life beckons from every leonardo canvas; and the backgrounds fade off into fleecy clouds and shadowy, dreamy, opiate odor of violets. michelangelo, however, is true to his own life as leonardo was to his--for at the last the artist only reproduces himself. he never painted a laugh, for life to him was serious and full of sober purpose. we can not call his work somber--it does not depress--for it carries with it a poise and a strength that is sufficient unto itself. it is all heroic, and there is in it a subtle quality that exorcises fear and bids care begone. no man ever portrayed the human figure with the same fidelity that angelo has. the naked adam, when the finger of the almighty touched him into life, gives one a thrill of health to look upon, even after these four hundred years have struggled to obliterate the lines. his figures of women shocked the artistic sense of his time, for instead of the greek idealization of beauty he carved the swelling muscles and revealed the articulations of form as no artist before him had ever dared. his women are never young, foolish, timid girls--they are amazons; and his men are the kind that lead nations out of captivity. the soft, the pretty, the yielding, were far from him. there is never a suggestion of taint or double meaning; all is frank, open, generous, honest and fearless. his figures are nude, but never naked. he began his artistic work when fourteen years old, and he lived to be eighty-nine; and his years did not outlast his zeal and zest. he was above the medium size, an athlete in his lean and sinewy strength, and the whipcord quality of his body mirrored the silken strength of his will. in his old age the king arose when michelangelo entered the council-chamber, and would not sit until he was seated at the right hand of the throne; the pope would not allow him to kneel before him; when he walked through the streets of rome the people removed their hats as he passed; and today we who gaze upon his work in the eternal city stand uncovered. * * * * * michelangelo was the firstborn in a large family. simone buonarroti, his father, belonged to an ebbtide branch of the nobility that had lost everything but the memory of great ancestors turned to dust. this father had ambitions for his boy; ambitions in the line of the army or a snug office under the wing of the state, where he might, by following closely the beck and nod of the prince in power, become a magistrate or a keeper of customs. but no boy ever disappointed a proud father more. when great men in gilt and gold braid, with scarlet sashes across their breasts, and dangling swords that clicked and clanged on the stone pavement, strode by, rusty, dusty little michel refused to take off his cap and wish them "long life and god's favor," as his father ordered. instead, he hid behind his mother's gown and made faces. his father used to say he was about as homely as he could be without making faces, and if he didn't watch out he would get his face crooked some day and couldn't get it back. simone buonarroti had qualities very micawber-like mixed in his clay, and the way he cringed and crawled may have had something to do with setting the son on the other tack. the mother was only nineteen when michel was born, and although the moralists talk much about woman's vanity and extravagance, the theory gets no backing from this quarter. she was a plain woman in appearance, quiet and self-contained, with no nerves to speak of, a sturdy, physical endowment, and commonsense enough for two. when scarcely out of dresses the boy began to draw pictures. he drew with charcoal on the walls, or with a stick in the sand, and shaped curious things out of mud in the gutters. it was an age of creative art, and most of the work being in the churches the common people had their part in it. in fact, the common people were the artists. and when simone buonarroti found his twelve-year-old boy haunting the churches to watch the workmen, and also discovered that he was consorting with the youths who studied drawing in the atelier of ghirlandajo, he was displeased. painters, to this erstwhile nobleman, were simply men in blue blouses who worked for low wages on high scaffolds, and occasionally spattered color on the good clothes of ladies and gentlemen who were beneath. he didn't really hate painters, he simply waived them; and to his mind there was no difference between an artisan and an artist. the mother, however, took a secret pride in her boy's drawings, as mothers always do in a son's accomplishments. doubtless she knew something of the art of decoration, too, for she had brothers who worked as day laborers on high scaffolds. yet she didn't say much about it, for women then didn't have so much to say about anything as now. but i can imagine that this good woman, as she went daily to church to pray, the year before her first child was born, watched the work of the men on the scaffolds, and observed that day by day the pictures grew; and as she looked, the sun streamed through stained windows and revealed to her the miracles of form and color, and the impressions of "the annunciation," "mary's visit to elizabeth" and "the babe in the manger" filled her wondering soul with thoughts and feelings too great for speech. to his mother was michelangelo indebted for his leaning toward art. his father opposed such a plebeian bent vigorously: "bah! to love beautiful things is all right, but to wish to devote all of one's time to making them, just for others--ouch! it hurts me to think of it!" the mother was lenient and said, "but if our child can not be anything more than a painter--why, we must be content, and god willing, let us hope he will be a good one." ghirlandajo's was practically a school where, for a consideration, boys were taught the secrets of fresco. the master always had contracts of his own on hand and by using 'prentice talent made both ends meet. young michel made it his lounging-place and when he strayed from home his mother always knew where to find him. the master looked upon him as a possible pupil, and instead of ordering him away, smiled indulgently and gave him tasks of mixing colors and making simple lines. and the boy showed such zest and comprehension that in a short time he could draw freehand with a confidence that set the brightest scholar in the background. such a pupil, so alert, so willing, so anxious, is the joy of a teacher's heart. ghirlandajo must have him--he would inspire the whole school! so the master went to the father, but the father demurred, and his scruples were only overcome when ghirlandajo offered to reverse the rule, and pay the father the sum that parents usually paid the master. a cash payment down caused pater to capitulate, and the boy went to work--aged fourteen. the terms of his apprenticeship called for three years, but after he had been at work a year, the ability of the youth made such an impression on the master that he took him to lorenzo, lorenzo the magnificent, who then ruled over florence. lorenzo had him draw a few sketches, and he was admitted to the academy. this "academy" was situated in the palace of lorenzo, and in the gardens was a rich collection of antique marbles: busts, columns, and valuable fragments that had come down from the days when pericles did for athens what lorenzo was then doing for florence. the march of commerce has overrun the garden, but in the uffizi gallery are to be seen today most of the curios that lorenzo collected. by introducing the lad to lorenzo, ghirlandajo lost his best helper, but so unselfish was this excellent master that he seemed quite willing to forego his own profit that the boy might have the best possible advantages. and i never think of ghirlandajo without mentally lifting my hat. at the academy, michelangelo ceased to paint and draw, and devoted all his energies to modeling in clay. so intent was his application that in a few weeks he had mastered technicalities that took others years to comprehend. one day the father came and found the boy in a blouse at work with mallet and chisel on a block of marble. "and is it a stone-mason you want to make of my heir and firstborn?" asked the fond father. it was explained that there were stone-masons and stone-masons. a stone-mason of transcendent skill is a sculptor, just as a painter who can produce a beautiful picture is an artist. simone buonarroti acknowledged he had never looked at it just in that way, but still he would not allow his son to remain at the trade unless--unless he himself had an office under the government. lorenzo gave him the desired office, and took the young stone-mason as one of the medici family, and there the boy lived in the palace, and lorenzo acted toward him as though he were his son. the favor with which he was treated excited the envy of some of the other pupils, and thus it was that in sudden wrath torrigiano struck him that murderous blow with the mallet. torrigiano paid for his fierce temper, not only by expulsion from the academy, but by banishment from florence. michelangelo was the brightest of the hundred young men who worked and studied at the medici palace. but when this head scholar was eighteen lorenzo died. the son of lorenzo continued his father's work in a feeble way, for piero de medici was a good example of the fact that great men seldom reproduce themselves after the flesh. piero had about as much comprehension of the beautiful as the elder buonarroti. he thought that all these young men who were being educated at the academy would eventually be valuable adjuncts to the state, and as such it was a good scheme to give each a trade--besides, it kept them off the street; and then the work was amusing, a diversion to the nobility when time hung heavy. once there came a heavy snowstorm, and snow being an unusual thing in florence, piero called a lot of his friends together in the gardens, and summoning michelangelo, ordered him to make a snow image for the amusement of the guests, just as piero at other times had a dog jump through a hoop. "what shall it be?" asked michelangelo. "oh, anything you please," replied piero; "only don't keep us waiting here in the cold all day!" young angelo cast one proud look of contempt toward the group and set to work making a statue. in ten minutes he had formed a satyr that bore such a close resemblance to piero that the guests roared with laughter. "that will do," called piero; "like deity, you make things in your own image." some of the company tossed silver coin at the young man, but he let the money lie where it fell. michel at this time was applying himself to the study of anatomy, and giving his attention to literature under the tutorship of the famous poet and scholar, poliziano, who resided at the court. so filled was the young man's mind with his work that he was blind to the discontent arising in the state. to the young, governments and institutions are imperishable. piero by his selfish whims had been digging the grave of the medici. from sovereignty they were flung into exile. the palace was sacked, the beautiful gardens destroyed, and michelangelo, being regarded as one of the family, was obliged to flee for his life. he arrived in bologna penniless and friendless, and applied to a sculptor for work. "what can you do?" the old sculptor asked. for answer, michelangelo silently took a crayon and sketched a human hand on the wall. marvelous were the lines! the master put his arms around the boy and kissed his cheek. this new-found friend took him into his house, and placed him at his own table. michelangelo was led into the library and workrooms, and told that all was his to use as he liked. the two years he remained at bologna were a great benefit to the young man. the close contact with cultured minds, and the encouragement he received, spurred his spirit to increased endeavor. it was here that he began that exquisite statue of a cupid that passed for an antique, and found its way into the cabinet of the duchess of mantua. before long the discovery was made that the work was done by a young man only a little past twenty, and cardinal san giorgio sent a message inviting him to rome. * * * * * rome had long been the mecca of the boy's ambitions, and he joyously accepted the invitation. at rome he was lodged in the vatican, and surrounded by that world of the beautiful, he went seriously about his life's work. the church must have the credit for being the mother of modern art. not only did she furnish the incentive, but she supplied the means. she gave security from the eternal grind of material wants and offered men undying fame as reward for noble effort. the letter of religion was nothing to michelangelo, but the eternal spirit of truth that broods over and beyond all forms and ceremonies touched his soul. his heart was filled with the poetry of pagan times. the gods of ancient greece on high olympus for him still sang and feasted, still lived and loved. but to the art of the church he devoted his time and talents. he considered himself a priest and servant to the cause of christ. established at rome in the palace of the pope, michelangelo felt secure. he knew his power. he knew he could do work that would for generations move men to tears, and in his prophetic soul was a feeling that his name would be inseparably linked with rome. his wanderings and buffetings were things of the past--he was necessary to the church, and his position was now secure and safe. the favor of princes lasts but for a day, but the church is eternal. the church should be his bride; to her and to her alone would he give his passionate soul. thus mused michelangelo, aged twenty-two. his first work at rome was a statue of bacchus, done it seems for an exercise to give cardinal giorgio a taste of his quality, just as he had drawn the human hand on the wall for his bologna protector; for this fine and lofty pride in his power was a thing that clung to michelangelo from rosy youth to hoary age. the "bacchus," which is now in the national museum at florence, added to his reputation; and the little world of art, whose orbit was the vatican, anxiously awaited a more serious attempt, just as we crane our necks when the great violinist about to play awakens expectation by a few preliminary flourishes. his first great work at rome was the "pieta." we see it today in saint peter's at the first chapel to the right as we enter, in a long row of commonplace marbles, in all its splendid beauty and strength. it represents the mother of christ, supporting in her arms the dead body just after it was lowered from the cross. in most of michelangelo's work there is a heroic quality in the figures and a muscular strength that in a degree detracts from the spirit of sympathy that might otherwise come over us. it is admiration that seizes us, not sympathy. but this early work is the flower of michelangelo's genius, round and full and complete. the later work may be different, but it is not better. when this group was unveiled in fourteen hundred ninety-eight it was the sensation of the year. old and young, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, flocked to see it, and the impression it made was most profound. if the catholic church has figured on the influence of statuary and painting on the superstitious, as has been tauntingly said, she has reckoned well. the story of steadfast love and loyalty is masterly told in that first great work of michelangelo. the artist himself often mingled with the crowds that surrounded his speaking marble, and the people who knelt before it assured him by their reverence that his hand had wrought well. and once he heard two able doctors disputing as to who the artist was. they were lavish in their praise, and one insisted that the work was done by the great sculptor at bologna, and he named the master who had befriended michelangelo. the artist stood by and heard the argument put forth that no mere youth could conceive such a work, much less execute it. that night he stole into the church and by the wan light of a lantern carved his name deep on the girdle of the virgin, and there do we read it today. the pride of the artist, however, afterward took another turn, for he never thereafter placed his name on a piece. "my work is unlike any other--no lover of the beautiful can mistake it," he proudly said. he worked away with untiring industry and the church paid him well. but many of his pieces have been carried from rome, and as they were not signed and scores of imitations sprang up, it can not always be determined now what is his work and what not. he toiled alone, and allowed no 'prentice hand to use the chisel, and unlike the sculptors of our day, did not work from a clay model, but fell upon the block direct. "i caught sight of michelangelo at work, but could not approach for the shower of chips," writes a visitor at rome in the year fifteen hundred one. * * * * * perfect peace is what michelangelo expected to find in the palace of the pope. later he came to know that life is unrest, and its passage at best a zigzag course, that only straightens to a direct line when viewed across the years. if a man does better work than his fellows he must pay the penalty. personality is an offense. in rome there was a small army of painters and sculptors, each eager and anxious for the sole favor of the powers. they quibbled, quarreled, bribed, cajoled, and even fair women used their influence with cardinals and bishops in favor of this artist or that. michelangelo was never a favorite in society; simpering beauty peeked at him from behind feather fans and made jokes concerning his appearance. yet walter pater thought he found evidence that at this time michelangelo was beloved by a woman, and that the artist reproduced her face and form, and indirectly pictured her in poems. in feature she was as plain as he; but her mind matched his, and was of a cast too high and excellent to allow him to swerve from his high ideals. yet the love ended unhappily, and in some mysterious way gave a tinge of melancholy and a secret spring of sorrow to the whole long life of the artist. jealous competitors made their influence felt. michelangelo found his work relegated to corners and his supplies cut short. at this time an invitation came from florence for him to come and make use of a gigantic block of marble that had lain there at the city gate, blackening in the dirt, for a century. the florence that had banished him, now begged him to come back. "those who once leave florence always sigh to return," says dante. he returned, and at once began work on the "david." the result was the heroic statue that stood for three hundred years at the entrance to the palazzo vecchio, only a hundred feet from where savonarola was hanged and burned. the "david" is now in the belle d' arte, and if the custodian will allow you to climb up on a ladder you will see that the top of the head shows the rough unfinished slab, just as it was taken from the quarry. any one but a master would have finished the work. this magnificent statue took nearly two years to complete. as a study of growing youth, boldly recognizing all that is awkward and immature, it has never ceased to cause wordy warfare to reign in the camp of the critics. "the feet, hands and head are all too large," the athenians say. but linger around the "old swimmin'-hole" any summer day, and you will see tough, bony, muscular boys that might have served as a model for the "david." the heads of statues made by the greeks are small in proportion to the body. the "gladiator" wears a number six hat, and the "discobolus" one size smaller; yet the figures represent men weighing one hundred eighty pounds each. the greeks aimed to satisfy the eye, and as the man is usually seen clothed, they reduced the size of the head when they showed the nude figure. but michelangelo was true to nature, and the severest criticism ever brought against him is that he is absolutely loyal to truth. he was the first man ever to paint or model the slim, slender form of a child that has left its round baby shape behind and is shooting up like a lily-stalk. a nude, hardy boy six years old reveals ankle-bones, kneecap, sharp hips, ribs, collar-bone and shoulder-blade with startling fidelity. and why, being nature's work, it is any less lovely than a condition of soft, cushioned adipose, we must let the critics tell, but michelangelo thought it wasn't. from fourteen hundred ninety-six, when michelangelo first arrived in rome, to fifteen hundred four, he worked at nothing but sculpture. but now a change came over his restless spirit, for an invitation had come from the gonfaloniere of florence to decorate one of the rooms of the town hall, in competition with leonardo da vinci--the only leonardo. he painted that strong composition showing florentine soldiers bathing in the arno. the scene depicts the surprise of the warriors as a trumpet sounds, calling them to battle with the enemy that is near at hand. the subject was chosen because it gave opportunity for exploiting the artist's marvelous knowledge of anatomy. thirty figures are shown in various attitudes. nearly all are nude, and as they scramble up the bank, buckling on their armor as they rush forward, eager for the fight, we see the wild, splendid swell of muscle and warm, tense, pulsing flesh. as an example of michelangelo's consummate knowledge of form it was believed to be his finest work. but it did not last long; the jealous bandinelli made a strong bid for fame by destroying it. and thus do bandinelli and torrigiano go clattering down the corridors of time hand in hand. yet we know what the picture was, for various men who saw it recorded their impressions; but although many of the younger artists of italy flocked to florence to see it, and many copied it, only one copy has come down to us--the one in the collection of the earl of leicester, at holkham. so even beautiful florence could not treat her gifted son with impartiality, and when a call came from pope julius the second, who had been elected in fifteen hundred three, to return to rome, the summons was promptly obeyed. * * * * * julius was one of the most active and vigorous rulers the earth has known. he had positive ideas on many subjects and like napoleon "could do the thinking for a world." the first work he laid out for michelangelo was a tomb, three stories high, with walls eighteen feet thick at the base, surrounded with numerous bas-reliefs and thirty heroic statues. it was to be a monument on the order of those worked out by the great rameses, only incorporating the talent of greece with that of ancient and modern rome. michelangelo spent nearly a year at the carrara quarries, getting out materials and making plans for forwarding the scheme. but gradually it came over him that the question of economy, which was deeply rooted in the mind of julius, forbade the completion of such a gigantic and costly work. had julius given michelangelo "carte-blanche" orders on the treasury, and not meddled with the plans, this surpassing piece of architecture might have found form. but the fiery julius, aged seventy-four, was influenced by the architect bramante to demand from michelangelo a bill of expense and definite explanation as to details. very shortly after, michelangelo quit work and sent a note to the pope to the effect that the tomb was in the mountain of carrara, with many beautiful statues, and if he wanted them he had better look for some one to get them out. as for himself, his address was florence. the pope sent couriers after him, one after another until five had been dispatched, but neither pleading, bribes nor threats could induce him to return. as the scientist constructs the extinct animal from a thigh-bone, so we can guess the grandeur of what the tomb might have been from the single sample that has come down to us. the one piece of work that was completed for this tomb is the statue of "moses." if the reputation of michelangelo rested upon nothing else than this statue, it would be sufficient for undying fame. the "moses" probably is better known than any other piece of michelangelo's work. copies of it exist in all important galleries; there are casts of it in fifty different museums in america, and pictures of it are numberless. there it stands in the otherwise obscure church of saint pietro in vincolo today, one hand grasping the flowing beard, and the other sustaining the tables of the law--majesty, strength, wisdom beaming in every line. as mr. symonds has said, "it reveals the power of pope julius and michelangelo fused into a jove." and so the messengers and messages were in vain, and even when the pope sent an order to the gonfaloniere soderini, the actual ruler of florence, to return the artist on pain of displeasure, the matter still rested--michelangelo said he was neither culprit nor slave, and would live where he wished. at length the matter got so serious that it threatened the political peace of florence, and in the goodly company of cardinals, bishops and chief citizens, michelangelo was induced to go to bologna and make peace with the pope. his first task now was a bronze statue of julius, made, it is stated, as a partial reproduction of the "moses." descriptions of it declare it was even finer than the "moses," but alas! it only endured four years, for a mob evolved it into a cannon to shoot stones, and at the same time ousted julius from bologna. michelangelo very naturally seconded the anathematization of the bolognese by julius, not so much for the insult to the pope as for the wretched lack of taste they had shown in destroying a work of art. had they left the beautiful statue there on its pedestal, bologna would now on that account alone be a place of pilgrimage. the cannon they made is lost and forgotten--buried deep in the sand by its own weight--for mein herr krupp can make cannon; but, woe betide us! who can make a statue such as michelangelo made? michelangelo now followed the pope to rome and began a work that none other dare attempt, but which today excites the jealous admiration of every artist soul who views it--the ceiling of the sistine chapel. ghirlandajo, perugino, botticelli and luca signorelli had worked on the walls with good effect, but to lie on one's back and paint overhead so as to bring out a masterly effect when viewed from seventy feet below was something they dare not attempt. michelangelo put up his scaffolds, drew designs, and employed the best fresco artists in italy to fill in the color. but as they used their brushes he saw that the designs became enfeebled under their attempts--they did not grasp the conception--and in wrath he discharged them all. he then obliterated all they had done, and shutting out the ceiling from every one but himself, worked alone. often for days he would not leave the building, for fear some one would meddle with the work. he drew up food by a string and slept on the scaffold without changing his clothes. after a year of intense application, no one but the artist had viewed the work. the pope now demanded that he should be allowed to see it. a part of the scaffolding was struck, and the delight of the old pope was unbounded. this was in fifteen hundred nine, but the completed work was not shown to the public until all souls' day, fifteen hundred twelve. the guides at the vatican tell us this ceiling was painted in twenty-two months, but the letters of michelangelo, recently published, show that he worked on it over four years. it contains over three hundred figures, all larger than life, and some are fifteen feet long. a complete description of the work michelangelo did in this private chapel of the pope would require a book, and in fact several books have been written with this ceiling as a subject. the technical obstacles to overcome in painting scenes and figures on an overhead surface can only be appreciated by those who have tried it. we can better appreciate the difficulties when we think that, in order even to view the decorations with satisfaction, large mirrors must be used, or one must lie prone on his back. in the ability to foreshorten and give harmonious perspective--supplying the effect of motion, distance, upright movement, coming toward you or moving away--all was worked out in this historic chapel in a way that has excited the wondering admiration of artists for three hundred years. when the scaffolding was at last removed, the artist thought for a time he had done his last work. the unnatural positions he had been obliged to take had so strained the muscles of his neck that on the street he had often to look straight up at the sky to rest himself, and things on a straight line in front he could not distinguish. eyes, muscles, hands, refused to act normally. "my life is there on the ceiling of the chapel of sixtus," he said. he was then thirty-nine years old. fifty eventful years of life and work were yet before him. * * * * * when pope julius died, in fifteen hundred thirteen, leo the tenth, a son of lorenzo the magnificent, was called to take his place. we might suppose that leo would have remembered with pride the fact that it was his father who gave michelangelo his first start in life, and have treated the great artist in the way lorenzo would, were he then alive. but the retiring, abstemious habits of michelangelo did not appeal to leo. the handsome and gracious raphael was his favorite, and at the expense of michelangelo, raphael was petted, feted and advanced. hence arose that envious rivalry between these two great men, which reveals each in a light far from pleasant--just as if rome were not big enough for both. the pontificate of leo the tenth lasted just ten years. on account of the lack of encouragement michelangelo received, it seems the most fruitless season of his whole life. clement the seventh, another member of the medici family, succeeded leo. clement was too sensible of michelangelo's merit to allow him to rust out his powers in petty tasks. he conceived the idea of erecting a chapel to be attached to the church of san lorenzo, at florence, to be the final resting-place of the great members of the medici family. michelangelo planned and built the chapel and for it wrought six great pieces of art. these are the statues of lorenzo de medici, father of catherine de medici (who was such a large, black blot on the page of history); a statue of giuliano de medici (whose name lives now principally because michelangelo made this statue); and the four colossal reclining figures known as "night," "morning," "dawn" and "twilight." this chapel is now open to the public, and no visitor at florence should miss seeing it. the statue of lorenzo must ever rank as one of the world's masterpieces. the italians call it "il pensiero." the sullen strength of the attitude gives one a vague ominous impulse to get away. some one has said that it fulfils milton's conception of satan brooding over his plans for the ruin of mankind. in fifteen hundred twenty-seven, while michelangelo was working on the chapel, florence was attacked and sacked by the constable de bourbon. the medici family was again expelled, and from the leisurely decoration of a church in honor of the gentle christ, the artist was called upon to build barricades to protect his native city. his ingenuity as an engineer was as consummate as his exquisite idea of harmony, and for nine months the city was defended. through treachery the enemy was then allowed to enter and michelangelo fled. riots and wars seem as natural as thunderstorms to the latin people; but after a year the clouds rolled by, michelangelo was pardoned, and went back to his work of beautifying the chapel of san lorenzo. in fifteen hundred thirty-four, pope clement was succeeded by paul the third. paul was seventy years old, but the vigor of his mind was very much like that of the great julius. his first desire was to complete the decoration of the sistine chapel, so that the entire interior should match the magnificence of the ceiling, and to the task he summoned michelangelo. the great artist hesitated. the ceiling was his supreme work as a painter, and he knew down deep in his heart that he could not hope to surpass it, and the risk of not equaling it was too great for him to run. the matter was too delicately personal to explain--only an artist could understand. michelangelo made excuses to the pope and declared he had forgotten how to use a brush, that his eyesight was bad, and that the only thing he could do was to carve. but paul was not to be turned aside, and reluctantly michelangelo went back to the sistine, that he had left over twenty years before. then it was that he painted "the last judgment" on the wall of the upper end of the chapel. hamerton calls this the grandest picture ever executed, at the same time acknowledging its faults in taste. but it must be explained that the design was the conception of julius, endorsed by pope paul, and it surely mirrors the spiritual qualities (or lack of them) in these men better than any biography possibly could. the merciful redeemer is shown as a muscular athlete, full of anger and the spirit of revenge--proud, haughty, fierce. the condemned are ranged before him--a confused mass of naked figures, suspended in all attitudes of agony and terrible foreboding. the "saved" are ranged on one side, and do not seem to be of much better intellectual and spiritual quality than the damned; very naturally they are quite pleased to think that it is the others who are damned, and not they. the entire conception reveals that masterly ability to portray the human figure in every attitude of fear or passion. a hundred years after the picture was painted, some dignitary took it into his head that portions of the work were too "daring"; and a painter was set at work robing the figures. his fussy attempts are quite apparent. michelangelo's next work was to decorate the paolina chapel. as in his last work on the sistine, he was constantly interrupted and advised and criticized. as he worked, cardinals, bishops and young artists watched and suggested, but still the "conversion of saint paul" and the "crucifixion of saint peter," in the paolina, must ever rank as masterly art. the frescoes in the paolina chapel occupied seven years and ended the great artist's career as a painter. he was seventy-three years old. pope paul then made him chief architect of saint peter's. michelangelo knew the difficulties to be encountered--the bickerings, jealousies and criticisms that were inseparable from the work--and was only moved to accept the place on pope paul's declaration that no one else could do as well, and that it was the will of god. michelangelo looked upon the performance as a duty and accepted the task, refusing to take any recompense for his services. he continued to discharge the duties of the office under the direction of popes paul, pius the fourth and pius the fifth. in all he worked under the pontificates of seven different popes. the dome of saint peter's, soaring to the skies, is his finest monument. the self-sustaining, airy quality in this stupendous structure hushes the beholder into silence; and yet that same quality of poise, strength and sufficiency marks all of the work of this colossus, whether it be painting, architecture or sculpture. america has paid tribute to michelangelo's genius by reproducing the dome of saint peter's over the capitol at washington. michelangelo died at rome, aged eighty-nine, working and planning to the last. his sturdy frame showed health in every part, and he ceased to breathe just as a clock runs down. his remains were secretly taken to florence and buried in the church of santa croce. a fine bust marks the spot, but the visitor can not help feeling a regret that the dust of this marvelous man does not rest beneath the zenith of the dome of saint peter's at rome. * * * * * sitting calmly in this quiet corner, and with closed eyes, viewing michelangelo's life as a whole, the impression is one of heroic strength, battling with fierce passions, and becoming victor over them by working them up into art. the mold of the man was masculine, and the subdued sorrow that flavors his whole career never degenerates into sickly sentimentality or repining. the sonnets of michelangelo, recently given to the world, were written when he was nearly seventy years old. several of the sonnets are directly addressed to vittoria colonna, and no doubt she inspired the whole volume. a writer of the time has mentioned his accidentally finding michelangelo and vittoria colonna seated side by side in the dim twilight of a deserted church, "talking soft and low." deserted churches have ever been favorite trysting-places for lovers; and one is glad for this little glimpse of quiet and peace in the tossing, troubled life-journey of this tireless man. in fact, the few years of warm friendship with vittoria colonna is a charmed and temperate space, without which the struggle and unrest would be so ceaseless as to be appalling. sweet, gentle and helpful was their mutual friendship. at this period of michelangelo's life we know that the vehemence of his emotions subsided, and tranquility and peace were his for the rest of his life, such as he had never known before. the woman who stepped out of high society and won the love of this stern yet gentle old man must have been of a mental and spiritual quality to command our highest praise. the world loves vittoria colonna because she loved michelangelo, and led him away from strife and rivalry and toil. rembrandt the eyes and the mouth are the supremely significant features of the human face. in rembrandt's portraits the eye is the center wherein life, in its infinity of aspect, is most manifest. not only was his fidelity absolute, but there is a certain mysterious limpidity of gaze that reveals the soul of the sitter. a "rembrandt" does not give up its beauties to the casual observer--it takes time to know it, but once known, it is yours forever. --_emile michel_ [illustration: rembrandt] swimming uneasily in my ink-bottle is a small preachment concerning names, and the way they have been evolved, and lost, or added to. some day i will fish this effusion out and give it to a waiting world. those of us whose ancestors landed at plymouth or jamestown are very proud of our family names, and even if we trace quite easily to castle garden we do not always discard the patronymic. harmen gerritsz was a young man who lived in the city of leyden, holland, in the latter part of the sixteenth century. the letters "sz" at the end of his name stood for "szoon" and signified that he was the szoon of mynheer gerrit. now harmen gerritsz duly served an apprenticeship with a miller, and when his time expired, being of an ambitious nature, he rented a mill on the city wall, and started business for himself. shortly after he very naturally married the daughter of a baker. all of mr. harmen gerritsz's customers called him harmen, and when they wished to be exact they spoke of him as harmen van ryn--that is to say, harmen of the rhine, for his mill was near the river. "out west," even now, if you call a man mister, he will probably inquire what it is you have against him. mr. and mrs. harmen lived in the mill, and as years went by were blessed with a nice little family of six children. the fifth child is the only one that especially interests us. they named him rembrandt. rembrandt harmenszoon van ryn, he called himself when he entered at the grammar-school at leyden, aged fourteen. his father's first name being harmen, he simply took that, and discarded the gerrit entirely, according to the custom of the time. in fact, all our johnsons are the sons of john, and the names peterson, thompson and wilson, in feudal times, had their due and proper significance. then when we find names with a final ending of "s," such as robbins, larkins and perkins, we are to understand that the owner is the son of his father. and so we find rembrandt harmenszoon in his later years writing his name harmensz and then simply harmens. mynheer harmen gerritszoon's windmill ground exceeding small, and the product found a ready market. there were no servants in the miller's family--everybody worked at the business. in holland people are industrious. the leisurely ways of the dutch can, i think, safely be ascribed to their environment, and here is an argument buckle might have inserted in his great book, but did not, and so i will write it down. there are windmills in holland (i trust the fact need not longer be concealed) and these windmills are used for every possible mechanical purpose. now the wind blows only a part of the time--except in chicago--and there may be whole days when not a windmill turns in all holland. the men go out in the morning and take due note of the wind, and if there is an absolute calm many of them go back to bed. i have known the wind to die down during the day and the whole force of a windmill troop off to a picnic, as a matter of course. so the elements in holland set man the example--he will not rush himself to death when not even the wind does. then another thing: holland has many canals. farmers load their hay on canal-boats and take it to the barn, women go to market in boats, lovers sail, seemingly, right across the fields--canals everywhere. traveling by canal is not rapid transit. so the people of holland have plenty of precedent for moving at a moderate speed. there are no mountains in holland, so water never runs; it may move, but the law of gravitation there only acts to keep things quiet. the dutch never run footraces--neither do they scorch. in amsterdam i have seen a man sit still for an hour, and this with a glass of beer before him, gazing off into space, not once winking, not even thinking. you can not do that in america, where trolley-cars whiz and blizzards blow--there is no precedent for it in things animate or inanimate. in the united states everything is on the jump, art included. rembrandt harmens worked in his father's mill, but never strained his back. he was healthy, needlessly healthy, and was as smart as his brothers and sisters, but no smarter, and no better looking. he was exceedingly self-contained, and would sit and dream at his desk in the grammar-school, looking out straight in front of him--just at nothing. the master tried flogging, and the next day found a picture of himself on the blackboard, his face portrayed as anything but lovely. young rembrandt was sent home to fetch his father. the father came. "look at that!" said the irate teacher; "see what your son did; look at that!" mynheer harmen sat down and looked at the picture in his deliberate dutch way, and after about fifteen minutes said, "well, it does look like you!" then he explained to the schoolmaster that the lad was sent to school because he would not do much around the mill but draw pictures in the dust, and it was hoped that the schoolmaster could teach him something. the schoolmaster decided that it was a hopeless case, and the miller went home to report to the boy's mother. now, whenever a dutchman is confronted by a problem too big to solve, or a task too unpleasant for him to undertake, he shows his good sense by turning it over to his wife. "you are his mother, anyway," said harmen van ryn, reproachfully. the mother simply waived the taunt and asked, "do you tell me the schoolmaster says he will not do anything but draw pictures?" "not a tap will he do but make pictures--he can not multiply two by one." "well," said the mother, "if he will not do anything but draw pictures, i think we'd better let him draw pictures." * * * * * at that early age i do not think rembrandt was ambitious to be a painter. good healthy boys of fourteen are not hampered and harassed by ambition--ambition, like love, camps hot upon our trail later. ambition is the concomitant of rivalry, and sex is its chief promoter--it is a secondary sex manifestation. the boy simply had a little intuitive skill in drawing, and the exercise of the talent was a gratification. it pleased him to see the semblance of face or form unfold before him. it was a kind of play, a working off of surplus energy. had the lad's mind at that time been forcibly diverted to books or business, it is very probable that today the catalogs would be without the name of rembrandt. but mothers have ambitions, even if boys have not--they wish to see their children do things that other women's children can not do. among wild animals the mother kills, when she can, all offspring but her own. darwin refers to mother-love as, "that instinct in the mind of the female which causes her to exaggerate the importance of her offspring--often protecting them to the death." through this instinct of protection is the species preserved. in human beings mother-love is well flavored with pride, prejudice, jealousy and ambition. this is because the mother is a woman. and this is well--god made it all, and did he not look upon his work and pronounce it good? the mother of rembrandt knew that in leyden there were men who painted beautiful pictures. she had seen these pictures at the university, and in the town hall and in the churches; and she had overheard men discussing and criticizing the work. she herself was poor and uneducated, her husband was only a miller, with no recreation beyond the beer-garden and a clicking reluctantly off to church in his wooden shoes on sunday. they had no influential friends, no learned patrons--the men at the university never so much as nodded to millers. her lot was lowly, mean, obscure, and filled with drudgery and pettiness. and now some one was saying her boy rembrandt was lazy; he would neither work nor study. the taunt stung her mother-pride--"he will do nothing but make pictures!" ah! a great throb came to her heart. her face flushed, she saw it all--all in prophetic vision stood out like an etching on the blankness of the future. "he will do nothing but draw pictures? very well then, he shall draw pictures! he will draw so well that they shall adorn the churches of leyden, and the town hall, and yes! even the churches of amsterdam. holland shall be proud of my boy! he will teach other men to draw, his pictures will command fabulous prices, and his name shall be honored everywhere! yes, my boy shall draw pictures! this day will i take him to mynheer jacob van swanenburch, who was a pupil of the great rubens, and who has scholars even from antwerpen. i will take him to the master, and i will say: 'mynheer, i am only a poor woman, the daughter of an honest baker. my husband is a miller. this is my son. he will do nothing but draw pictures. here is a bag of gold--not much, but it is all good gold; there are no bad coins in this bag; i've been ten years in saving them. take this bag--it is yours--now teach my son to paint. teach him as you taught valderschoon and those others--my memory is bad, i can not remember the names--i'm only a poor woman. show my boy how to paint. and when i am dead, and you are dead, men will come to your grave and say, "it is here that he rests, here--the man who first taught rembrandt harmenszoon to use a brush!" do you hear, mynheer van swanenburch? the gold--it is yours--and this is my boy!'" * * * * * the van swanenburches were one of the most aristocratic families of leyden. jacob van swanenburch's father had been burgomaster, and he himself occupied from time to time offices of importance. he was not a great painter, although several specimens of his work still adorn the town hall of his native city. rembrandt was not very anxious to attend swanenburch's classes. he was a hesitating, awkward youth, and on this account was regarded as unsocial. for a year the boy looked on, listened, and made straight marks and curves and all that. he did not read, and the world of art was a thing unknown to him. there are two kinds of people to be found in all studios: those who talk about art, and the fellows who paint the pictures. however, rembrandt was an exception, and for a time would do neither. he would not paint, because he said he could not--anyway he would not; but no doubt he did a deal of thinking. this habit of reticence kept him in the background, and even the master had suspicions that he was too beefy to hold a clear mental conception. the error of the swanenburch atelier lay in the fact that quiet folks are not necessarily stupid. it is doubtless true, however, that stupid men by remaining quiet may often pass for men of wisdom: this is because no man can really talk as wisely as he can look. young rembrandt was handicapped by a full-moon face, and small gray eyes that gave no glint, and his hair was so tousled and unruly that he could not wear a hat. so the sons of aristocrats who cracked sly jokes at the miller's boy had their fun. rembrandt usually came in late, after the master had begun his little morning lecture. the lad was barefoot, having left his wooden shoon in the hallway "so as not to wear out the floor." he would bow awkwardly to the professor, fall over a chair or two that had been slyly pushed in his way, and taking his seat chew the butt end of a brush. "why are you always late?" asked the master one day. "oh, i was working at home and forgot the time." "and what are you working at?" "me? i'm--i'm drawing a little," and he colored vermilion to the back of his neck. "well, bring your work here so we can profit by it," exclaimed a joker, and the class guffawed. the next morning the lad brought his picture--a woman's face--a picture of a face, homely, wrinkled, weather-beaten, but with a look of love and patience and loyalty beaming out of the quiet eyes. "who did this?" demanded the teacher. rembrandt hesitated, stuttered, stammered, and then confessed that he did it himself--he could not tell a lie. he was sure the picture would be criticized and ridiculed, but he had decided to face it out. it was a picture of his mother, and he had sketched her just as she looked. he would let them laugh, and then at noon he would wait outside the door and smash the boy who laughed loudest over the head with a wooden shoe--and let it go at that. but the scholars did not laugh, for jacob van swanenburch took the boy by the hand and leading him out before the class told those young men to look upon their master. from that time forth rembrandt was regarded by the little art world of leyden as a prodigy. like william cullen bryant, who wrote "thanatopsis" when scarcely eighteen, and writing for sixty years thereafter never equaled it, or dante gabriel rossetti, who wrote "the blessed damozel" at the same age, rembrandt sprang into life full-armed. it is probably true that he could not then have produced an elaborate composition, but his faces were rembrandtesque from the very first. rembrandt is the king of light and shade. you never mistake his work. as the years passed, around him clustered a goodly company of pupils, hundreds in all, who diligently worked to catch the trick, but rembrandt stands alone. "he is the only artist who could ever paint a wrinkle," says ruskin. all his portraits have the warts on. and the thought has often come to me that only a rembrandt--the only rembrandt--could have portrayed the face of lincoln. plain, homely, awkward, eyes not mates, sunken cheeks, leathery skin, moles, uncombed hair, neckcloth askew; but over and above and beyond all a look of power--and the soul! that look of haunting sorrow and the great, gentle, compassionate soul within! and so there is a picture of rembrandt's mother which this son painted that must ever stand out as one of the world's masterpieces. let who will, declare that the portrait by richter in the gallery at cologne, of queen louise, is the handsomest portrait ever painted; yet the depth of feeling, the dignity and love in the homely old mother's face, pale not in comparison, but are things to which the proud and beautiful queen herself paid homage. rembrandt painted nearly a hundred pictures of his mother that we can trace. in most of them she holds in her hands a little bible, and thus did the son pay tribute to her devoted piety. she was a model of which he never tired. he painted her in court dress, and various other fantastic garbs, that she surely never wore. he painted her as a nun, as a queen, a court beauty, a plain peasant, a musician; and in various large pictures her face and form are introduced. and most of these pictures of his mother are plainly signed with his monogram. he also painted his sister as the madonna, and this is signed; but although he doubtless painted his father's face, yet he did not sign such pictures, so their authenticity is a hazard. this fact gives a clue to his affections which each can work out for himself. rembrandt remained with swanenburch for three years, and the master proved his faithful friend. he gave him an introduction into the aristocratic art world which otherwise might have barred its doors against so profound a genius, as aristocracy has done time and again. the best artists are not necessarily the best teachers. if a man has too much skill along a certain line he will overpower and kill the individuality in his pupil. there are teachers who smother a pupil with their own personality, and thus it often happens that the strongest men are not the most useful as instructors. the ideal teacher is not the one who bends all minds to match his own; but the one who is able to bring out and develop the good that is in the pupil--him we will crown with laurel. swanenburch was pretty nearly the ideal teacher. his good nature, the feminine quality of sympathy in his character, his freedom from all petty, quibbling prejudice, and his sublime patience all worked to burst the tough husk, and develop that shy and sensitive, yet uncouth and silent youth, bringing out the best that was in him. a wrong environment in those early years might easily have shaped rembrandt into a morose and resentful dullard: the good in his nature, thrown back upon itself, would have been turned to gall. * * * * * the little business on the city wall had prospered, and harmen van ryn moved, with his family, out of the old mill into a goodly residence across the street. he was carrying his head higher, and the fact that his son rembrandt was being invited to the homes of the professors at the university was incidentally thrown off, until the patrons at the beer-garden grew aweary and rapped their glasses on the table as a signal for silence. swanenburch had given a public exhibition of the work of his pupils, at which young rembrandt had been pushed forward as an example of what right methods in pedagogics could do. "well, why can not all your scholars draw like that, then?" asked a broad-beamed dutchman. "they certainly could, if they would follow the principles i lay down," answered the master severely. but admiration did not spoil rembrandt. his temperature was too low for ebullition--he took it all quite as a matter of course. his work was done with such ease that he was not aware it was extraordinary in quality; and when swanenburch sold several of his sketches at goodly prices and put the silver in the lad's hand, he asked who the blockheads were who had invested. swanenburch taught his pupils the miracle of spreading a thin coat of wax on a brass plate, and drawing a picture in the wax with a sharp graver; then acid was poured over it and the acid ate into the brass so as to make a plate from which you could print. etching was a delight to rembrandt. expert illustrators of books were in demand at leyden, for it was then the bookmaking center of northern europe. the elzevirs were pushing the plantins of antwerp hard for first place. so skilfully did rembrandt sketch, that one of the great printers made a proposition to his father to take the boy until he was twenty-one, and pay the father a thousand florins a year for the lad's services as an illustrator. the father accepted the proposition; and the next day brought around another harmenszoon, who he declared was just as good. but the bookmaker was stubborn and insisted on having a certain one or none. so the bargain fell through. it was getting near four years since swanenburch had taken rembrandt into his keeping, and now he went to the boy's parents and said: "i have given all i have to offer to your son. he can do all i can, and more. there is only one man who can benefit him and that is pieter lastman, of amsterdam. he must go and study with the great lastman--i myself will take him." lastman had spent four years in italy, and had come back full to overflowing with classic ideas. his family was one of the most aristocratic in amsterdam, and whatever he said concerning art was quoted as final. he was the court of last appeal. his rooms were filled with classic fragments, and on his public days visitors flocked to hear what he might have to say about the wonders of venice, florence and rome. for in those days men seldom traveled out of their own countries, and those who did had strange tales to tell the eager listeners when they returned. lastman was handsome, dashing, popular. his pictures were in demand, principally because they were lastman's. proud ladies came from afar and begged the privilege of sitting as his model. in italy, lastman had found that many painters employed 'prentice talent. the great man would sketch out the pictures, and the boys would fill in the color. lastman would go off about his business, and perhaps drop in occasionally during the day to see how the boys got on, adding a few touches here and there, and gently rebuking those who showed too much genius. lastman believed in genius, of course; but only his own genius filled his ideal. as a consequence all of lastman's pictures are alike--they are all equally bad. they represent neither the italian school nor the dutch, being hybrids: italian skies and holland backgrounds; dutchmen dressed as dagoes. lastman was putting money in his purse. he closely studied public tastes, and conformed thereto. he was popular, and there is in america today a countryman of his, of like temperament, who is making much moneys out of literature by similar methods. into lastman's keeping came the young man, rembrandt harmens. lastman received him cordially, and set him to work. but the boy proved hard to manage: he had his own ideas about how portraits should be painted. lastman tried to unlearn him. the master was patient, and endeavored hard to make the young man paint as he should--that is, as lastman did; but the result was not a success. the lastman intellect felt sure that rembrandt had no talent worth encouraging. lastman produced a great number of pictures, and his name can be found in the catalogs of the galleries of amsterdam, munich, berlin and antwerp; and his canvases are in many of the old castles and palaces of germany. in recent years they have been enjoying a vogue, simply because it was possible that rembrandt had worked on them. all the "lastmans" have been gotten out and thoroughly dusted by the connoisseurs, in a frantic search for earmarks. the perfect willingness of lastman to paint a picture on any desired subject, and have it ready saturday night, all in the colors the patron desired, with a guarantee that it would give satisfaction, filled the heart of rembrandt with loathing. at the end of six months, when he signified a wish to leave, it was a glad relief to the master. lastman had tried to correct rembrandt's vagaries as to chiaroscuro, but without success. so he wrote an ambiguous letter certifying to the pupil's "having all his future before him," gave him a present of ten florins in jingling silver, and sent him back to his folks. * * * * * rembrandt had been disillusioned by his stay in the fashionable art-world of amsterdam. some of his idols had crumbled, and there came into his spirit a goodly dash of pessimism. his father was disappointed and suggested that he get a place as illustrator at the bookmakers, before some one else stepped in and got the job. but rembrandt was not ambitious. he decided he would not give up painting, at least not yet--he would keep at it and he would paint as he pleased. he had lost faith in teachers. he moped around the town, and made the acquaintance of the painter engelbrechtsz and his talented pupil, lucas van leyden. their work impressed him greatly, and he studied out every detail on the canvases until he had absorbed the very spirit of the artist. then, when he painted, he very naturally took their designs, and treated them in his own way. indeed, the paucity in invention of those early days must ever impress the student of art. in visiting the galleries of europe, i made it my business to secure a photograph of every "madonna and babe" of note that i could find. my collection now numbers over one hundred copies, with no two alike. the madonna, of course, is the extreme example; but there are dozens of "the last supper," "abraham's sacrifice," "the final judgment," "the brazen serpent," "raising of lazarus," "the annunciation," "rebekah at the well" and so on. if one painter produced a notable picture, all the other artists in the vicinity felt it their duty to treat the same subject; in fact, their honor was at stake--they just had to, in order to satisfy the clamor of their friends, and meet the challenges of detractors. this "progressive sketching" was kept up, each man improving, or trying to improve, on the attempts of the former, until a leonardo struck twelve and painted his "last supper," or a rubens did his "descent from the cross"--then competitors grew pale, and tried their talent on a lesser theme. one of the most curious examples of the tendency to follow a bellwether is found in the various pictures called "the anatomy lesson." when venice was at its height, in the year fourteen hundred ninety-two--a date we can easily remember--an unknown individual drew a picture of a professor of anatomy; on a table in the center is a naked human corpse, while all around are ranged the great doctor's pupils. dissection had just been introduced into venice at that time, and in a treatise on the subject by andrea vesali, i find that it became quite the fad. the lecture-rooms were open to the public, and places were set apart for women visitors and the nobility, while all around the back were benches for the plain people. on the walls were skeletons, and in cases were arranged saws, scalpels, needles, sponges and various other implements connected with the cheerful art. the unknown's picture of this scene made a sensation. and straightway other painters tried their hands at it, the unclothed form of the corpse affording a fine opportunity for the "classic touch." paul veronese tried it, and so did the bellinis--titian also. then a century passed, as centuries do, and the glory of venice drifted to amsterdam--commercially and artistically. amsterdam painters used every design that the venetians had, and some of their efforts were sorry attempts. in sixteen hundred twenty, following venetian precedent, dissection became a fad in leyden and amsterdam. swanenburch engraved a picture of the leyden dissecting-room, with a brace of gallant doctors showing some fair ladies the beauties of the place. the dutch were ambitious--the young men, rembrandt included, drew pictures entitled, "the lesson in anatomy." doctors who were getting on in the world gave orders for portraits, showing themselves as about to begin work on a subject. one physician, with intent to get even with his rival, had the artist picture the rival in the background as a pupil. then the rival ordered a picture of himself, proud and beautiful, giving a lesson in anatomy, armed and equipped for business, and the cadaver was--the other doctor. at the chicago fair, in eighteen hundred ninety-three, there was shown a most striking "anatomy lesson" from the brush of a young new york artist. it pictures the professor removing the sheet from the face of the corpse, and we behold the features of a beautiful young woman. some day i intend to write a book entitled, "the evolution and possibilities of the anatomy lesson." keep your eye on the subject--we are not yet through with it. swanenburch offered to give rembrandt a room in his own house, but he preferred the old mill, and a wheat-bin was fitted up for a private studio. the fittings of the studio must have cost fully two dollars, according to all accounts; there were a three-legged stool, an easel, a wooden chest, and a straw bed in the corner. only one window admitted the light, and this was so high up that the occupant was not troubled by visitors looking in. our best discoveries are the result of accident. this single window, eight feet from the ground, allowed the rays of light to enter in a stream. on cloudy days and early in the mornings or in the evenings, rembrandt noted that when the light fell on the face of the visitor the rest of the body was wholly lost in the shadow. he placed a curtain over the window with a varying aperture cut in it, and with his mother as model made numerous experiments in the effects of light and shade. he seems to have been the very first artist who could draw a part of the form, leaving all the rest in absolute blackness, and yet give the impression to the casual onlooker that he sees the figure complete. plain people with no interest in the technique of art will look upon a "rembrandt," and go away and describe things in the picture that are not there. they will declare to you that they saw them--those obvious things which one fills in at once with his inward eye. for instance, there is a portrait of a soldier, by rembrandt, in the louvre, and above the soldier's head you see a tall cockade. you assume at once that this cockade is in the soldier's hat, but no hat is shown--not the semblance nor the outline of a hat. there is a slight line that might be the rim of a hat, or it might not. but not one person out of a thousand, looking upon the picture, but would go away and describe the hat, and be affronted if you should tell them there is no hat in the picture. given a cockade, we assume a hat. by the use of shadows rembrandt threw the faces into relief; he showed the things he wished to show and emphasized one thing by leaving all else out. the success of art depends upon what you omit from your canvas. this masterly effect of illusion made the son of the miller stand out in the leyden art-world like one of his own etchings. curiously enough, the effect of a new model made rembrandt lose his cunning; with strangers he was self-conscious and ill at ease. his mother was his most patient model; his father and sisters took their turn; and then there was another model who stood rembrandt in good stead. and that was himself. we have all seen children stand before a mirror and make faces. rembrandt very early contracted this habit, and it evidently clung to him through life. he has painted his own portrait with expressions of hate, fear, pride, mirth, indifference, hope and wrath shown on his plastic features. there is also an old man with full white beard and white hair that rembrandt has pictured again and again. this old man poses for "lot," "abraham," "moses," "a beggar," "a king," and once he even figures as "the almighty." who he was we do not know, and surely he did not realize the honor done him, or he would have written a proud word of explanation to be carved on his tomb. * * * * * in the stuttgart museum is a picture entitled, "saint paul in prison," signed by rembrandt, with the date sixteen hundred twenty-seven. "the money-changers" in the berlin gallery bears the same signature and date. rembrandt was then twenty years of age, and we see that he was doing good work. we also know that there was a certain market for his wares. when twenty-two years of age his marvelous effects of light and shade attracted people who were anxious to learn how to do it. according to report he had sixteen pupils in sixteen hundred twenty-eight, each of whom paid him the fixed sum of one hundred florins. this was not much, but it gave him an income equal to that of his father, and tended to confirm his faith in his own powers. his energy was a surprise to all who had known him, for besides teaching his classes he painted, sketched and etched. most of his etchings were of his own face--not intended as portraits, for they are often purposely disguised. it seemed to be the intent of the artist to run the whole gamut of the passions, portraying them on the human face. six different etchings done in the year sixteen hundred twenty-eight are to be seen in the british museum. his most intimate friend at this time was jan lievens. the bond that united them was a mutual contempt for lastman of amsterdam. in fact, they organized a club, the single qualification required of each candidate for admittance being a hatred for lastman. this club met weekly at a beer-hall, and each member had to relate an incident derogatory to the lastman school. at the close of each story, all solemnly drank eternal perdition to lastman and his ilk. finally, lastman was invited to join; and in reply he wrote a gracious letter of acceptance. this surely shows that lastman was pretty good quality, after all. rembrandt was making money. his pupils spread his praise, and so many new ones came that he took the old quarters of swanenburch. in sixteen hundred thirty-one, there came to him a young man who was to build a deathless name for himself--gerard dou. then to complete the circle came joris van vliet, whose reputation as an engraver must ever take a first rank. van vliet engraved many of rembrandt's pictures, and did it so faithfully and with such loving care that copies today command fabulous prices among the collectors. indeed, we owe to van vliet a debt for preserving many of rembrandt's pictures, the originals of which have disappeared. with the help of van vliet the elzevirs accomplished their wishes, and so made use of the talent of rembrandt. rembrandt lived among the poor, as a matter of artistic policy, mingling with them on an absolute equality. he considered their attitudes simpler, more natural, and their conduct less artificial, than the manners of those in higher walks. about sixteen hundred twenty-nine, there came into his hands a set of callot's engravings, and the work produced on his mind a profound impression. callot's specialty was beggardom. he pictured decrepit beggars, young beggars, handsome girl-beggars, and gallant old beggars who wore their fluttering rags with easy grace. the man who could give the phlegmatic rembrandt a list to starboard must have carried considerable ballast. straightway on making callot's acquaintance he went forth with bags of coppers and made the acquaintance of beggars. he did not have to travel far--"the greeks were at his door." the news spread, and each morning, the truthful orles has told us, "there were over four hundred beggars blocking the street that led to his study," all willing to enlist in the cause of art. for six months rembrandt painted little beside "the ragged gentry." but he gradually settled down on about ten separate and distinct types of abject picturesqueness. ten years later, when he pictured the "healing christ," he introduced the leyden beggars, and these fixed types that he carried hidden in the cells of his brain he introduced again and again in various pictures. in this respect he was like all good illustrators: he had his properties, and by new combinations made new pictures. who has not noticed that every painter carries in his kit his own distinct types--sealed, certified to, and copyrighted by popular favor as his own personal property? can you mistake kemble's "coons," denslow's dandies, remington's horses, giannini's indians, or gibson's "summer girl"? these men may not be rembrandts, but when we view the zigzag course art has taken, who dare prophesy that this man's name is writ in water and that man's carved in the granite of a mountain-side! contemporary judgments usually have been wrong. did the chief citizens of leyden in the year sixteen hundred thirty regard rembrandt's beggars as immortal? not exactly! * * * * * in sixteen hundred thirty-one, rembrandt concluded that his reputation in the art-world of holland was sufficient for him to go to amsterdam and boldly pit himself against de keyser, hals, lastman and the rest. he had put forth his "lesson in anatomy," and the critics and connoisseurs who had come from the metropolis to see it were lavish in their praise. later we find him painting the subject again with another doctor handling the tweezers and scalpel. rembrandt started for amsterdam the second time--this time as a teacher, not as a scholar. he rented an old warehouse on the canal for a studio. it was nearly as outlandish a place as his former quarters in the mill at leyden. but it gave him plenty of room, was secluded, and afforded good opportunity for experiments in light and shade. he seemed to have gotten over his nervousness in working with strange models; for new faces now begin to appear. one of these is that of a woman, and it would have been well for his art had he never met her. we see her face quite often, and in the "diana bathing" we behold her altogether. rembrandt shows small trace of the classic instinct, for classic art is founded on poetic imagination. rembrandt painted what he saw; the greeks portrayed that which they felt; and when rembrandt paints a dutch wench and calls her "diana," he unconsciously illustrates the difference between the naked and the nude. rembrandt painted this same woman, wearing no clothes to speak of, lolling on a couch; and evidently considering the subject a little risky, thought to give it dignity by a biblical title: "potiphar's wife." one good look at this picture, and the precipitate flight of joseph is fully understood. we feel like following his example. rembrandt had simply haunted the dissecting-rooms of the university at leyden a little too long. the study of these viragos scales down our rating of the master. still, i suppose every artist has to go through this period--the period when he thinks he is called upon to portray the feminine form divine--it is like the mumps and the measles. after a year of groping for he knew not what, with money gone, and not much progress made, rembrandt took a reef in his pride and settled down to paint portraits, and to do a little good honest teaching. scholars came to him, and commissions for portraits began to arrive. he renounced the freaks of costume, illumination and attitude, and painted the customer in plain, simple dutch dress. he let "diana" go, and went soberly to work to make his fortune. holland was prosperous. her ships sailed every sea, and brought rich treasures home. the prosperous can afford to be generous. philanthropy became the fad. charity was in the air, and hospitals, orphanages and homes for the aged were established. the rich merchants felt it an honor to serve on the board of managers of these institutions. in each of the guildhalls were parlors set apart for deliberative gatherings; and it became the fashion to embellish these rooms with portraits of the managers, trustees and donors. rembrandt's portraits were finding their way to the guilds. they attracted much attention, and orders came--orders for more work than the artist could do. he doubled his prices in the hope of discouraging applicants. studio gossip and society chatter seemed to pall on young rembrandt. it is said that when a 'bus-driver has a holiday he always goes and rides with the man who is taking his place; but when rembrandt had a holiday he went away from the studio, not towards it. he would walk alone, off across the meadows, and along the canals, and once we find him tramping thirty miles to visit cousins who were fishermen on the seacoast. happy fisher-folk! but rembrandt took few play-spells; he broke off entirely from his tavern companions and lived the life of an ascetic and recluse, seeing no society except the society that came to his studio. his heart was in his art, and he was intent on working while it was called the day. about this time there came to him cornelis sylvius, the eminent preacher, to sit for a picture that was to adorn the seaman's orphanage, of which sylvius was director. it took a good many sittings to bring out a rembrandt portrait. on one of his visits the clergyman was accompanied by a young woman--his ward--by name, saskia van ulenburgh. the girl was bright, animated and intelligent, and as she sat in the corner the painter sort of divided his attention between her and the clergyman. then the girl got up, walked about a bit, looking at the studio properties, and finally stood behind the young painter, watching him work. this was one of the things rembrandt could never, never endure. it paralyzed his hand, and threw all his ideas into a jumble. it was the law of his studio that no one should watch him paint--he had secrets of technique that had cost him great labor. "you do not mind my watching you work?" asked the ingenuous girl. "oh, not in the least!" "you are quite sure my presence will not make you nervous, then?" rembrandt said something to the effect that he rather liked to have some one watch him when he worked; it depended, of course, on who it was--and asked the sitter to elevate his chin a little and not look so cross. next day saskia came again to watch the transfer of the good uncle's features to canvas. the young artist was first among the portrait-painters of amsterdam, and had a long waiting-list on his calendar, but we find he managed to paint a portrait of saskia about that time. we have the picture now and we also have four or five other pictures of her that rembrandt produced that year. he painted her as a queen, as a court lady and as a flower-girl. the features may be disguised a little, but it is the same fine, bright, charming, petite young woman. before six months had passed he painted several more portraits of saskia; and in one of these she has a sprig of rosemary--the emblem of betrothal--held against her heart. and then we find an entry at the register's to the effect that they were married on june twenty-fourth, sixteen hundred thirty-four. rembrandt's was a masterly nature: strong, original and unyielding. but the young woman had no wish that was not his, and her one desire was to make her lover happy. she was not a great woman, but she was good, which is better, and she filled her husband's heart to the brim. those first few years of their married life read like a fairy-tale. he bought her jewels, laces, elegant costumes, and began to fill their charming home with many rare objects of art. all was for saskia--his life, his fortune, his work, his all. as the years go by we shall see that it would have been better had he saved his money and builded against the coming of the storm; but even though saskia protested mildly against his extravagance, the master would have his way. his was a tireless nature: he found his rest in change. he usually had some large compositions on hand and turned to this for pastime when portraits failed. then saskia was ever present, and if there was a holiday he painted her as the "jewish bride," "the gypsy queen," or in some other fantastic garb. we have seen that in those early years at leyden he painted himself, but now it was only saskia--she was his other self. all those numerous pictures of himself were drawn before he knew saskia--or after she had gone. their paradise continued nine years--and then saskia died. rembrandt was not yet forty when desolation settled down upon him. * * * * * saskia was the mother of five children; four of them had died, and the babe she left, titus by name, was only eight months old when she passed away. for six months we find that rembrandt did very little. he was stunned, and his brain and hand refused to co-operate. the first commission he undertook was the portrait of the wife of one of the rich merchants of the city. when the work was done, the picture resembled the dead saskia so much more than it did the sitter that the patron refused to accept it. the artist saw only saskia and continued to portray her. but work gave him rest, and he began a series of biblical studies--serious, sober scenes fitted to his mood. his hand had not lost its cunning, for there is a sureness and individuality shown in his work during the next few years that stamps him as the master. but his rivals raised a great clamor against his style. they declared that he trampled on all precedent and scorned the laws on which true art is built. however, he had friends, and they, to help him, went forth and secured the commission--the famous "night-watch," now in the ryks museum at amsterdam. the production of this fine picture resulted in a comedy of errors, that shaded off into a tragedy for poor rembrandt. the original commission for this picture came from thirty-seven prominent citizens, who were to share the expense equally among them. the order was for the portraits of the eminent men to appear on one canvas, the subjects to be grouped in an artistic way according to the artist's own conceit. rembrandt studied hard over the matter, as he was not content to execute a picture of a mass of men doing nothing but pose. it took a year to complete the picture. the canvas shows a band of armed men, marching forth to the defense of the city in response to a sudden night alarm. two brave men lead the throng and the others shade off into mere rembrandt shadows, and you only know there are men there by the nodding plumes, banners and spearheads that glisten in the pale light of the torches. when the picture was unveiled, the rich donors looked for themselves on the canvas, and some looked in vain. only two men were satisfied, and these were the two who marched in the vanguard. "where am i?" demanded a wealthy shipowner of rembrandt as the canvas was scanned in a vain search for his proud features. "you see the palace there in the picture, do you not?" asked the artist petulantly. "yes, i see that," was the answer. "well, you are behind that palace." the company turned on rembrandt, and forbade the hanging of any more of his pictures in the municipal buildings. rembrandt shrugged his shoulders. but as the year passed and orders dropped away, he found how unwise a thing it is to affront the public. men who owed him refused to pay, and those whom he owed demanded their money. he continued doggedly on his course. some years before he had bought a large house and borrowed money to pay for it, and had further given his note at hand to various merchants and dealers in curios. as long as he was making money no one cared for more than the interest, but now the principal was demanded. so sure had rembrandt been of his powers that he did not conceive that his income could drop from thirty thousand florins a year to scarcely a fifth of that. then his relations with hendrickje stoffels had displeased society. she was his housekeeper, servant and model--a woman without education or refinement, we are told. but she was loyal, more than loyal, to rembrandt: she lived but to serve him and sought to protect his interests in every way. when summoned before the elders of the church to answer for her conduct, she appeared, pleaded guilty and shocked the company by declaring, "i would rather go to hell with rembrandt harmens than play a harp in heaven, surrounded by such as you!" the remark was bruited throughout the city and did rembrandt no good. his rivals combined to shut his work out of all exhibitions, and several made it their business to buy up the overdue claims against him. then officers came and took possession of his house, and his splendid collections of jewels, laces, furniture, curios and pictures were sold at auction. the fine dresses that once belonged to saskia were seized: they even took her wedding-gown: and wanton women bid against the nobility for the possession of these things. rembrandt was stripped of his sketches, and these were sold in bundles--the very sweat of his brain for years. then he was turned into the streets. but hendrickje stoffels still clung to him, his only friend. rembrandt's proud heart was broken. he found companionship at the taverns; and to get a needful loaf of bread for hendrickje and his boy, made sketches and hawked them from house to house. fashions change and art is often only a whim. people wondered why they had ever bought those dark, shadowy things made by that leyden artist, what's-his-name! one man utilized the frames which contained "rembrandts" by putting other canvases right over in front of them. rembrandt's son titus tried his skill at art, but with indifferent success. he died while yet a youth. then hendrickje passed away, and rembrandt was alone--a battered derelict on the sea of life. he lost his identity under an assumed name, and sketched with chalk on tavern-walls and pavement for the amusement of the crowd. he died in sixteen hundred sixty-nine, and the expense of his burial was paid by the hands of charity. the cost of the funeral was seven dollars and fifty cents. in eighteen hundred ninety-seven, there was sold in london a small portrait by rembrandt for a sum equal to a trifle more than thirty-one thousand dollars. but even this does not represent the true value of one of his pictures--for connoisseurs regard a painting by rembrandt as priceless. there is a law in holland forbidding any one on serious penalty to remove a "rembrandt" from the country. if any one of the men who combined to work his ruin is mentioned in history, it is only to say, "he lived in the age of rembrandt." rubens i was admitted to the duke of lerma's presence, and took part in the embassy. the duke exhibited great satisfaction at the excellence and number of the pictures, which surely have acquired a certain fair appearance of antiquity (by means of my retouching), in spite even of the damage they had undergone. they are held and accepted by the king and queen as originals, without there being any doubt on their side, or assertion on ours, to make them believe them to be such. --_letter from rubens at madrid, to chieppo, secretary of the duke of mantua_ [illustration: rubens] the father of peter paul rubens was a lawyer, a man of varied attainments and marked personality. in statecraft he showed much skill, and by his ability in business management served william the silent, prince of orange, in good stead. but jan rubens had a bad habit of thinking for himself. the habit grew upon him until the whisper was passed from this one to that, that he was becoming decidedly atheistic. spain held a strong hand upon antwerp, and the policy of philip the second was to crush opposition in the bud. jan rubens had criticized spanish rule, and given it as his opinion that the latin race would not always push its domination upon the people of the north. at this time spain was so strong that she deemed herself omnipotent, and was looking with lustful eyes towards england. drake and frobisher and walter raleigh were learning their lessons in seafaring; elizabeth was queen; while up at warwickshire a barefoot boy named william shakespeare was playing in the meadows, and romping in the lanes and alleys of stratford. all this was taking place at the time when jan rubens was doing a little thinking on his own account. on reading the history of europe, flanders seems to one to have been a battle-ground from the dawn of history up to the night of june eighteenth, eighteen hundred fifteen, with a few incidental skirmishes since, for it is difficult to stop short. and it surely was meet that napoleon should have gone up there to receive his waterloo, and charge his cavalry into a sunken roadway, making a bridge across with a mingled mass of men and horses; upon which site now is a huge mound thrown up by the english, surmounted by a gigantic bronze lion cast from the captured cannon of the french. napoleon belonged to the latin race: he pushed his rule north into flanders, and there his prowess ended--there at the same place where spanish rule had been throttled and turned back upon itself. "thus far, and no farther." jan rubens was right. but he paid dearly for his prophecy. when william the silent was away on his many warfaring expeditions, the man who had charge of certain of his affairs was jan rubens. naturally this brought rubens into an acquaintanceship with the wife of the silent prince. rubens was a handsome man, ready in speech, and of the kind that makes friends easily. and if the wife of the prince of orange liked the vivacious rubens better than the silent warrior (who won his sobriquet, they do say, through density of emotion and lack of ideas), why, who can blame her! but rubens had a wife of his own, to whom he was fondly attached; and this wife was also the close and trusted friend of the woman whose husband was off to the wars. and yet when this dense and silent man came back from one of his expeditions, it was only publicly to affront and disgrace his wife, and to cast jan rubens into a dungeon. no doubt the prince was jealous of the courtly rubens--and the iagos are a numerous tribe. but othello's limit had been reached. he damned the innocent woman to the lowest pit, and visited his wrath on the man. of course i know full well that all northern europe once rang with shrill gossip over the affair, and as usual the woman was declared the guilty party. even yet, when topics for scandal in belgium run short, this old tale is revived and gone over--sides being taken. i've gone over it, too, and although i may be in the minority, just as i possibly am as to the "guilt" of eve, yet i stand firm on the side of the woman. i give the facts just as they appear, having canvassed the whole subject, possibly a little more than was good for me. republics may be ungrateful, but the favor of princes is fickle as the east wind. we make a fine hullabaloo nowadays because france or russia occasionally tries and sentences a man without giving him an opportunity of defense; but in the sixteenth century the donjon-keeps of hundreds of castles in europe were filled with prisoners whose offense consisted in being feared or disliked by some whimsical local ruler. jan rubens was sent on an official errand to dillenburg, and arriving there was seized and thrown into prison, without trial or the privilege of communicating with his friends. months of agonizing search on the part of his wife failed to find him, and the prince only broke the silence long enough to usurp a woman's privilege by telling a lie, and declaring he did not know where rubens was, "but i believe he has committed suicide through remorse." the distracted wife made her way alone from prison to prison, and finally, by bribing an official, found her husband was in an underground cell in the fortress at dillenburg. it was a year before she was allowed to communicate with or see him. but maria rubens was a true diplomat. you move a man not by going to him direct, but by finding out who it is that has a rope tied to his foot. she secured the help of the discarded wife of the prince, and these two managed to interest a worthy bishop, who brought his influence to bear on count john of nassau. this man had jurisdiction of the district in which the fortress where rubens was confined was located; and he agreed to release the prisoner on parole on condition that a deposit of six thousand thalers be left with him, and an agreement signed by the prisoner that he would give himself up when requested; and also, further, that he would acknowledge before witnesses that he was guilty of the charges made against him. the latter clause was to justify the prince of orange in his actions toward him. rubens refused to plead guilty, even for the sake of sweet liberty, on account of the smirch to the name of the princess. but on the earnest request of both his wife and the "co-respondent," he finally accepted the terms in the same manner that galileo declared the earth stood still. rubens got his liberty, was loyal to his parole, but john of nassau kept the six thousand thalers for "expenses." so much for the honor of princes; but in passing it is worthy of recall that jan rubens pleaded guilty of disloyalty to his wife, on request of said wife, in order that he might enjoy the society of said wife--and cast a cloud on the good name of another woman on said woman's request. so here is a plot for a play: a tale of self-sacrifice and loyalty on the part of two women that puts to shame much small talk we hear from small men concerning the fickleness and selfishness of woman's love. "brief as woman's love!" said hamlet--but then, hamlet was crazy. jan rubens died in cologne, march eighteenth, fifteen hundred eighty-seven, and lies buried in the church of saint peter. above the grave is a slab containing this inscription: "sacred to the memory of jan rubens, of antwerp, who went into voluntary exile and retired with his family to cologne, where he abode for nineteen years with his wife maria, who was the mother of his seven children. with this his only wife maria he lived happily for twenty-six years without any quarrel. this monument is erected by said maria pypelings rubens to her sweetest and well-deserved husband." of course, no one knew then that one of the seven--the youngest son of jan and maria--was to win deathless fame, or that might have been carved on the slab, too, even if something else had to be omitted. but maria need not have added that last clause, stating who it was that placed the tablet: as it stands we should all have known that it was she who dictated the inscription. epitaphs are proverbially untruthful; hence arose the saying, "he lies like an epitaph." the woman who can not evolve a good lie in defense of the man she loves is unworthy of the name of wife. the lie is the weapon of defense that kind providence provides for the protection of the oppressed. "women are great liars," said mahomet; "allah in his wisdom made them so." hail, maria rubens! turned to dust these three hundred years, what star do you now inhabit? or does your avatar live somewhere here in this world? at the thought of your unselfish loyalty and precious fibbing, an army of valiant, ghostly knights will arise from their graves, and rusty swords leap from their scabbards if aught but good be said against thee. "ho, ho! and wasn't your husband really guilty, and didn't you know it all the time?" i'll fling my glove full in the face of any man who dare ask you such a question. beloved and loving wife for six-and-twenty years, and mother of seven, looking the world squarely in the eye and telling a large and beautiful untruth, carving it in marble to protect your husband's name, i kiss my hand to you! * * * * * in the doorpost of a queer little stone house in cologne is carved an inscription to the effect that peter paul rubens was born there on june twenty-ninth, fifteen hundred seventy-seven. it is probably true that the parents of rubens lived there, but peter paul was born at siegen, under the shadow of a prison from which his father was paroled. after a few years the discipline relaxed, for there were new prisoners coming along, and maria and jan were given permission to move to cologne. peter paul was ten years of age when his father died. the next year the widow moved with her little brood back to antwerp, back to the city from which her husband had been exiled just twenty years before. five years previous the prince of orange, who had exiled her husband, was himself sent on a journey, via the dagger of an assassin. as the chief enemy of jan rubens was dead, it was the hope of the widow to recover their property that had been confiscated. maria rubens was a good catholic; and she succeeded in making the authorities believe that her husband had been, too, for the home that royalty had confiscated was returned to her. the mother of peter paul loved the dim twilight mysteries of the church, and accepted every dogma and edict as the literal word of god. it is easier and certainly safer to leave such matters to the specialists. she was a born diplomat. she recognized the power of the church and knew that to win one must go with the current, not against it. to have doubts, when the church is willing to bear the whole burden, she thought very foolish. had she been a man she would have been a leader among the jesuits. the folly of opposition had been shown her most vividly in her husband's career. what could he not have been had he been wise and patient and ta'en the tide at its flood! and this was the spirit that she inculcated in the minds of her children. little peter paul was a handsome lad--handsome as his father--with big, dark brown eyes and clustering curls. he was bright, intelligent, and blessed with a cheerful, obliging disposition. he came into the world a welcome child, carrying the beauty of the morning in his face, and form, and spirit. no wonder is it that the countess de lalaing desired the boy for a page as soon as she saw him. his mother embraced the opportunity to let her favorite child see court life, and so at the early age of twelve, at a plunge, he began that career in polite diplomacy that was to continue for half a century. the countess called herself his "other mother," and lavished upon him all the attention that a childless woman had to bestow. the mornings were sacred to his lessons, which were looked after by a jesuit priest; and in the afternoon, another priest came to give the ladies lessons in the languages, and at these circles young peter paul was always present as one of the class. indeed, the earliest accomplishment of peter paul was his polyglot ability. when he arrived at antwerp, a mere child, he spoke german, flemish and french. such a favorite did little peter paul become with his "other mother," and her ladies of the court, that his sure-enough mother grew a bit jealous, and feared they would make a hothouse plant of her boy, and so she took him away. the question was, for what profession should he be educated? that he should serve the church and state was already a settled fact in the mother's mind: to get on in the world you must cultivate and wisely serve those who are in power--that is, those who have power to bestow. priests were plentiful as blackberries, and politicians were on every corner, and many of the priests and officeseekers had no special talent to recommend them. they were simply timeservers. maria knew this: to get on you must have several talents, otherwise people will tire of you. in cologne, maria rubens had met returned pilgrims from rome and they had told her of that trinity of giants, michelangelo, raphael and leonardo; and how these men had been the peers of prince and pope, because they had the ability to execute marvelous works of beauty. this extraordinary talent called attention to themselves, so they were summoned out of the crowd and became the companions and friends of the greatest names of their time. and then, how better can one glorify his maker than by covering the sacred walls of temples with rich ornament! the boy entered into the project, and the mother's ambition that he should retrieve his father's fortune fired his heart. thus does the failure in life of a parent often give incentive to the genius of a son. tobias verhaecht was the man who taught rubens the elements of drawing, and inculcated in him that love of nature which was to be his lifelong heritage. the word "landscape" is flemish, and it was the dutch who carried the term and the art into england. verhaecht was among the very first of landscape-painters. he was a specialist: he could draw trees and clouds, and a winding river, but could not portray faces. and so he used to call in a worthy portrait-painter, by the name of franck, to assist him whenever he had a canvas on the easel that demanded the human form. then when franck wanted background and perspective, verhaecht would go over with a brush and a few pots of paint and help him out. at fifteen, the keen, intuitive mind of rubens had fathomed the talents of those two worthies, verhaecht and franck. his mind was essentially feminine: he absorbed ideas in the mass. soon he prided himself on being able to paint alone as good a picture as the two collaborators could together. yet he was too wise to affront them by the boast. the bent of his talent he thought was toward historical painting; and more than this, he knew that only epic art would open the churches for a painter. and so he next became a pupil under adam van noort. this man was a rugged old character, who worked out things in his own way and pushed the standard of painting full ten points to the front. his work shows a marked advance over that of his contemporaries and over the race of painters that preceded him. every great artist is the lingering representative of an age that is dead, or else he is the prophet and forerunner of a golden age to come. when i visited the church of saint jaques in antwerp, where rubens lies buried, the good old priest who acted as guide called my attention to a picture by van noort, showing peter finding the money in the mouth of the fish. "a close study of that picture will reveal to you the germ of the rubens touch," said the priest, and he was surely right: its boldness of drawing, the strong, bright colors and the dexterity in handling all say, "rubens." rubens builded on the work of van noort. twenty years after rubens had left the studio of van noort he paid tribute to his old master by saying, "had van noort visited italy and caught the spirit of the classicists, his name would stand first among flemish artists." rubens worked four years with van noort and then entered the studio of otto van veen. this man was not a better painter than van noort, but he occupied a much higher social position, and peter paul was intent on advancing his skirmish-line. he never lost ground. van veen was court painter, and on friendly terms with the archduke albert, and isabella, his wife, daughter of philip the second, king of spain. van veen took very few pupils--only those who had the ability to aid him in completing his designs. to have worked with this master was an introduction at once into the charmed circle of royalty. rubens was in no haste to branch out on his own account: he was quite content to know that he was gaining ground, making head upon the whole. he won the confidence of van veen at once by his skill, his cheerful presence, and ability to further the interests of his master and patrons. in fifteen hundred ninety-nine, when rubens was twenty-two, he was enrolled as a free master at the guild of saint luke on the nomination of van veen, who also about this time introduced the young artist to albert and isabella. but the best service that van veen did for rubens was in taking him into his home and giving him free access to the finest collection of italian art in the netherlands. these things filled the heart of rubens with a desire to visit italy, and there to dive deeply into the art spirit of that land from which all our art has sprung. to go abroad then and gain access to the art treasures of the world was not a mere matter of asking for a passport, handing out a visiting-card, and paying your way. young men who wished to go abroad to study were required to pass a stiff examination. if it was believed that they could not represent their own country with honor, their passports were withheld. and to travel without a passport was to run the risk of being arrested as an absconder. but rubens' place in society was already secure. instead of applying for his passports personally and undergoing the usual catechization, his desires were explained to van veen, and all technicalities were waived, as they always are when you strike the right man. not only were the passports forthcoming, but albert and isabella wrote a personal note to viccuzo gonzaga, the duke of mantua, commending the young painter to the duke's good offices. van veen further explained to rubens that to know the duke of mantua might mean either humiliation or crowning success. to attain the latter through the duke of mantua, it was necessary to make a good impression on annibale chieppo, the duke's minister of state. chieppo had the keeping of the ducal conscience as well as the key to the strong-box. the duke of mantua was one of those strange loaded dice that fate occasionally flings upon this checkerboard of time: one of those characters whose feverish faculties border on madness, yet who do the world great good by breaking up its balances, preventing social ankylosis, and eventually forcing upon mankind a new deal. but in the train of these vagrant stars famine and pestilence follow. the duke of mantua was brother in spirit to the man who made versailles--and making versailles undid france. versailles is a dream: no language that the most enthusiastic lovers of the beautiful may utter, can exaggerate the wonders of those acres of palaces and miles of gardens. the magnificence of the place makes the ready writer put up his pencil, and go away whipped, subdued and crestfallen to think that here are creations that no one pen can even catalog. louis the grand, we are told, had thirty-six thousand men and six thousand horses at work here at one time. no wonder madame de maintenon was oppressed by the treasures that were beyond the capacity of man to contemplate; and so off in the woods was built that lover's retreat, "the trianon." and out there today, hidden in the forest, we behold the second trianon, built by marie antoinette, and we also see those straw-thatched huts where the ladies of her court played at peasant life. louis the fourteenth builded so well that he discouraged his successor from doing anything but play keep-house, and so extensively that france was rent in twain, and so mightily that even napoleon bonaparte was staggered at the thought of maintaining versailles. "it's too much for any man to enjoy--i give it up!" said the little man, perplexed, and ordered every door locked and every window tightly shuttered. then he placed a thousand men to guard the place and went about his business. but today versailles belongs to the people of france; more, it belongs to the people of earth: all is free and you may carry away all the beauty of the place that your soul can absorb. now, who shall say that louis the fourteenth has not enriched the world? the duke of mantua was sumptuous in his tastes, liberal, chivalrous, voluptuous, extravagant. at the same time he had a cultivated mind, an eye for proportion, and an ear for harmony. he was even pious at times, and like all debauchees had periods of asceticism. he was much given to gallantry, and his pension-list of beautiful women was not small. he was a poet and wrote some very good sonnets; he was a composer who sang, from his own compositions, after the wine had gone round; he was an orator who committed to memory and made his own the speeches that his secretary wrote. he traveled much, and in great state, with a retinue of servants, armed guards, outriders and guides. wherever he went he summoned the local poet, or painter, or musician, and made a speech to him, showing that he was familiar with his work by humming a tune or quoting a stanza. then he put a chain of gold around the poor embarrassed fellow's neck, and a purse in his hands, and the people cheered. when he visited a town, cavalcades met him afar out, and as he approached, little girls in white and boys dressed in velvet ran before and strewed flowers in front of his carriage. oh, the duke of mantua was a great man! in his retinue was a troop of comedians, a court fool, two dwarfs for luck, seven cooks, three alchemists and an astrologer. like the old woman who lived in a shoe, he had so many children he didn't know what to do. one of his sons married a princess of the house of saxony, another son was a cardinal, and a daughter married into the house of lorraine. he had alliances and close relations with every reigning family of europe. the sister of his wife, marie de medici, became "king of france," as talleyrand avers, and had a mad, glad, sad, bad, jolly time of it. wherever the duke of mantua went, there too went annibale chieppo, the minister of state. this man had a calm eye, a quiet pulse, and could locate any man or woman in his numerous retinue at any hour of the day or night. he was a diplomat, a soldier, a financier. you could not reach the duke until you had got past chieppo. and the duke of mantua had much commonsense--for in spite of envy and calumny and threat he never lost faith in annibale chieppo. no success in life is possible without a capable first mate. chieppo was king of first mates. he was subtle as richelieu and as wise as wolsey. when peter paul rubens, aged twenty-three, arrived at venice, the duke of mantua and his train were there. rubens presented his credentials to chieppo, and the minister of state read them, looked upon the handsome person of the young man, proved for himself he had decided talent as a painter, put him through a civil-service examination--and took him into favor. such a young man as this, so bright, so courtly, so talented, must be secured. he would give the entire court a new thrill. "tomorrow," said the minister of state, "tomorrow you shall be received by the duke of mantua and his court!" * * * * * the ducal party remained at venice for several weeks, and when it returned to mantua, rubens went along quite as a matter of course. from letters that he wrote to his brother philip, as well as from many other sources, we know that the art collection belonging to the duke of mantua was very rich. it included works by the bellinis, correggio, leonardo da vinci, andrea del sarto, tintoretto, titian, paoli veronese, and various others whose names have faded away like their colors. rubens had long been accustomed to the ways of polite society. the magnificence of his manner, and the fine egotism he showed in his work, captivated the court. the duke was proud of his ward and paraded him before his artistic friends as the coming man, incidentally explaining that it was the duke of mantua who had made him and not he himself. it was then the custom of those who owned masterpieces to have copies made and present them to various other lovers of the beautiful. if an honored guest was looking through your gallery, and expressed great pleasure in a certain canvas, the correct thing was to say, "i'll have my best painter make a copy of it, and send it to you"--and a memorandum was made on an ivory tablet. this gracious custom seems to have come down from the time when the owners of precious books constantly employed scribes and expert illuminators in making copies for distribution. the work done in the scriptoriums of the monasteries, we know, was sent away as presents, or in exchange for other volumes. rubens set diligently to work copying in the galleries of mantua; and whether the duke was happier because he had discovered rubens than rubens was because he had found the duke, we do not know. anyway, all that the young painter had hoped and prayed for had been sent him. here was work from the very hands of the masters he had long worshiped from afar. his ambition was high and his strong animal spirits and tireless energy were a surprise to the easy-going italians. the galleries were his without let or hindrance, save that he allow the ladies of the court to come every afternoon and watch him work. this probably did not disturb him; but we find the experienced duke giving the young fleming some good advice, thus: "you must admire all these ladies in equal portion. should you show favoritism for one, the rest will turn upon you; and to marry any one of them would be fatal to your art." rubens wrote the advice home to his mother, and the good mother viseed it and sent it back. after six months of diligent work at mantua we find rubens starting for rome with letters from the duke to cardinal montalto, highly recommending him to the good graces of the cardinal, and requesting, "that you will be graciously so good as to allow our fleming to execute and make copies for us of such paintings as he may deem worthy." cardinal montalto was a nephew of pope sixtus, and the strongest man, save the pope, in rome. he had immense wealth, great learning, and rare good sense in matters of art. he was a close friend of the duke of mantua; and to come into personal relations with such a man was a piece of rare good fortune for any man. the art world of rome now belonged to rubens--all doors opened at his touch. "our fleming" knew the value of his privileges. "if i do not succeed," he writes to his mother, "it will be because i have not improved my opportunities." the word fail was not in his lexicon. his industry never relaxed. in walpole's "anecdotes of painting," an account is given of a sketchbook compiled by rubens at this time. the original was in the possession of maurice johnson, of spalding, england, in eighteen hundred forty-five, at which time it was exhibited in london and attracted much attention. i have seen a copy of the book with its hundred or more sketches of the very figures that we now see and admire in the uffizi and pitti galleries and in the vatican. eight generations of men have come and gone since rubens sketched from the old masters, but there today stand the chiseled shapes, which were then centuries old, and there today are the "titians" and the "raphaellos" just as the exuberant fleming saw them. surely this must show us how short are the days of man! "open then the door; you know how little while we have to stay!" the two figures that seemed to impress rubens most, as shown in the sketchbook, are the farnese "hercules" and michelangelo's "david." he shows the foot of the "hercules," and the hand of the "david," and gives front, back and side views with comments and criticisms. then after a few pages have been covered by other matter he goes back again to the "hercules"--the subject fascinates him. when we view "the crucifixion," in the cathedral at antwerp, we conclude that he admired the "hercules" not wisely but too well, for the muscles stand out on all the figures, even of the savior, in pure farnese style. two years after that picture was painted, he did his masterpiece, "the descent from the cross," and we behold with relief the change that had come over the spirit of his dreams. mere pride in performing a difficult feat had given place to a higher motive. there is no reason to suppose that the apostles had trained to perform the twelve labors of hercules, or that the two marys were amazons. but the burly roman forms went back to flanders, and for many years staid citizens were slipped into classic attitudes to do duty as disciples, elders, angels--all with swelling biceps, knotted muscles, and necks like the emperor vespasian. the mantuan envoy at rome had private orders from chieppo to see that the fleming was well treated. the envoy was further requested to report to the secretary how the painter spent his time, and also how he was regarded by cardinal montalto. thus we see the wily secretary set one servant watching another, and kept in close touch with all. the reports, however, all confirmed the secretary in his belief that the fleming was a genius, and, moreover, worthy of all the encouragement that was bestowed upon him. the secretary sent funds from time to time to the painter, with gentle hints that he should pay due attention to his behavior, and also to his raiment, for the apparel oft doth proclaim the man. the duke of mantua seems to have regarded rubens as his own private property, and rubens had too much sense to do anything by word or deed that might displease his patron. when he had gotten all that italy could give, or more properly all he could absorb, his intent was to follow his heart and go straight back to flanders. three years had passed since rubens had arrived in venice--years of profit to both spirit and purse. he had painted pictures that placed him in the rank of acknowledged artists, and the duke of mantua had dropped all patronizing airs. with the ducal party rubens had visited verona, florence, pisa and padua. his fame was more than local. the painter hinted to chieppo that he would like to return to antwerp, but the secretary objected--he had important work for him. * * * * * rubens was from flanders, and flanders was a spanish possession: then the fleming knew the daughter of the king of spain. no man was so well fitted to go on a delicate diplomatic mission to spain as the flemish painter. "you are my heart's jewel," said the duke of mantua to the prime minister, when the minister suggested it. the duke wished private information as to certain things spanish, and was also preparing the way to ask for sundry favors. the court at madrid was artistic in instinct; so was the mantuan court. to recognize the esthetic side of your friend's nature, when your friend is secretly not quite sure but that he is more worldly than spiritual, is a stroke of diplomacy. spain was not really artistic, but there were stirrings being felt, and velasquez and murillo were soon to appear. the duke of mantua wished to present the king of spain with certain pictures; his mind was filled with a lively sense of anticipation of future favors to be received--which feeling we are told is gratitude. the entire ceremony must be carried out appropriately--the poetic unities being fully preserved. therefore a skilful painter must be sent with the pictures, in order to see that they were safely transported, properly unpacked, and rightly hung. instructions were given to peter paul rubens, the artistic ambassador, at great length, as to how he should proceed. he was to make himself agreeable to the king, and to one greater than the king--the man behind the throne--the duke of lerma; and to several fair ladies as well. the pictures were copies of the masters--"titians," "raphaellos," "tintorettos" and "leonardos." they were copied with great fidelity, even to the signature and private marks of the original artist. in fact, so well was the work done that if the recipient inclined to accept them as originals, his mind must not be disabused. further, the envoy was not supposed to know whether they were originals or not (even though he had painted them), and if worse came to worst he must say, "well, surely they are just as good as the originals, if not better." presents were taken for a dozen or more persons. those who were not so very artistic were to have gifts of guns, swords and precious stones. the ambassador was to travel in a new carriage, drawn by six horses and followed by wagons carrying the art treasures. all this so as to make the right impression and prove to madrid that mantua was both rich and generous. and as a capsheaf to it all, the painter must choose an opportune moment and present his beautiful carriage and horses to the king, for the belief was rife that the king of spain was really more horsey than artistic. the pictures were selected with great care, and the finest horses to be found were secured, regardless of cost. several weeks were consumed in preparations, and at last the cavalcade started away, with rubens in the carriage and eleven velvet suits in his chest, as he himself has told us. it was a long, hard journey to madrid. there were encounters with rapacious landlords, and hairbreadth escapes in the imminent deadly custom-house. but in a month the chromatic diplomat arrived and entered madrid at the head of his company, wearing one of the velvet suits, and riding a milk-white charger. rubens followed orders and wrote signor chieppo at great length, giving a minute account of every incident and detail of the journey and of his reception at madrid. while at the court he kept a daily record of happenings, which was also forwarded to the secretary. these many letters have recently been given to the public. they are in italian, with a sprinkling here and there of good honest dutch. all is most sincere, grave and explicit. rubens deserved great credit for all these letters, for surely they were written with sweat and lamp-smoke. the work of the toiler is over all, but we must remember that at that time he had been studying italian only about a year. the literary style of rubens was johnsonese all his life, and he made his meaning plain only by repetitions and many rhetorical flounderings. like the average sixteen-year-old boy who sits himself down and takes his pen in hand, all his sprightliness of imagination vanished at sight of an ink-bottle. with a brush his feelings were fluid, and in a company grace dwelt upon his lips; but when asked to write it out he gripped the pen as though it were a crowbar instead of a crow's-quill. but chieppo received his reports; and we know the embassy was a success--a great success. the debonair fleming surprised the king by saying, "your majesty, it is like this"--and then with a few bold strokes drew a picture. he modestly explained that he was not much of a painter--"merely used a brush for his own amusement"--and then made a portrait for the minister of state that exaggerated all of that man's good points, and ignored all his failings. there was a cast in the minister's eye, but rubens waived it. the minister was delighted, and so was the king. he then made a portrait of the king that was as flattering as portraits should be that are painted for monarchs. among his other accomplishments the fleming was a skilful horseman; he rode with such grace and dash that the king took him on his drives, rubens riding by the side of the carriage, gaily conversing as they rode. and so with the aid of his many talents he won the confidence of the king and court and was initiated into the inner life of spanish royalty in a way that iberta, the mantuan resident, never had been. the king liked rubens, and so did the man behind the throne. mortals do not merely like each other because they like each other; such a bond is tenuous as a spider's thread. i love you because you love the things that i love. one woman won my heart by her subtle appreciation of "the dipsy chanty." men meet on a horse basis, a book basis, a religious basis, or some other mutual leaning; sometimes we find them uniting on a mutual dislike for something. for instance, i have a friend to whom i am bound by the tie of oneness because we dislike olives, and have a mutual indifference to the pretended claims of the unpronounceable pole who wrote "quo vadis." the discovery was accidentally made in a hotel dining-room: we clasped hands across the board, and since then have been as brothers. the more points at which you touch humanity the more friends you have--the greater your influence. rubens was an artist, a horseman, a musician, a politician and a gourmet. when conceptions in the kitchen were vague, he would send for the cook and explain to him how to do it. he possessed a most discriminating palate and a fine appreciation of things drinkable. these accomplishments secured him a well-defined case of gout while yet a young man. he taught the spanish court how to smoke, having himself been initiated by an englishman, who was a companion of sir walter raleigh, and showed them how to roll a cigarette while engaged in ardent conversation. and the spaniards have not yet lost the art, for once in cadiz i saw a horse running away, and the driver rolled and lighted a cigarette before trying to stop the mad flight of the frantic brute. in the royal gallery at madrid are several large paintings by rubens that were doubtless done at this time. they are religious subjects; but worked in, after the manner of a true diplomat, are various portraits of brave men and handsome women. to pose a worthy senator as saint paul, and a dashing lady of the court as the holy virgin, was most gratifying to the phrenological development of approbativeness of the said senator and lady. then, as the painter had pictured one, he must do as much for others, so there could be no accusation of favoritism. thus the months passed rapidly. the duke of lerma writes to chieppo, "we desire your gracious permission to keep the fleming another month, as very special portraits are required from his brush." the extra month extended itself to three; and when at last rubens started back for mantua it was after a full year's absence. the embassy was a most complete success. the diplomat well masked his true errand with the artist's garb: and who of all men was ever so well fitted by nature to play the part as rubens? yet he came near overdoing the part at least once. it was in this wise: he really was not sure that the honors paid him were on account of his being a painter or a courtier. but like comedians who think their forte is tragedy, so the part of courtier was more pleasing to rubens than that of painter, because it was more difficult. he painted with such ease that he set small store on the talent: it was only a makeshift for advancement. don john, duke of braganza, afterward king of portugal, was a lover of art, and desired to make the acquaintance of the painter. so he wrote to rubens at madrid, inviting him to villa vitiosa, his place of residence. rubens knew how the duke of mantua did these things--he decided to follow suit. with a numerous train, made up from the fringe of the madrid court, with hired horsemen going before, and many servants behind, the retinue started away. coming within five miles of the villa of don john, word was sent that rubens and his retinue awaited his embassy. now don john was a sure-enough duke and could muster quite a retinue of his own on occasion, yet he had small taste for tinsel parades. men who have a real good bank-balance do not have to wear fashionable clothes. don john was a plain, blunt man who liked books and pictures. he wanted to see the painter, not a courtier: and when he heard of the style in which the artist was coming, he just put a boy on a donkey and sent word out that he was not at home. and further, to show the proud painter his place, he sent along a small purse of silver to pay the artist for the trouble to which he had been. the rebuke was so delicate that it was altogether lost on rubens--he was simply enraged. * * * * * in all, rubens spent eight years in the service of the duke of mantua. he had visited the chief cities of italy, and was familiar with all the art of the golden ages that had gone before. when he left italy he had to take advantage of the fact that the duke was in france, for every time before, when he had suggested going, he was questioned thus: "why, have you not all you wish? what more can be done for you? name your desire and you shall have it." but rubens wanted home: antwerp, his mother, brothers, sister, the broad river scheldt, and the good old flemish tongue. soon after arriving in antwerp he was named as court painter by albert and isabella. thus he was the successor of his old master, van veen. he was now aged thirty-two, in possession of an income from the state, and a fame and name to be envied. he was rich in money, jewels and art treasures brought from italy, for he had the thrifty instincts of a true dutchman. and it was a gala day for all antwerp when the bells rang and the great organ in the cathedral played the wedding-march when peter paul rubens and isabella brandt were married, on the thirteenth of october, sixteen hundred nine. never was there a happier mating. that fine picture at munich of rubens and his wife tells of the sweet comradeship that was to be theirs for many years. he opened a school, and pupils flocked to him from all europe; commissions for work came and orders for altar-pieces from various churches. an order was issued by the archduke that he should not leave holland, and a copy of the order was sent to the duke of mantua, to shut off his importunities. among the pupils of rubens we find the name of jordaens (whom he had first known in italy), de crayer, anthony van dyck, franz snyder and many others who achieved distinction. rubens was a positive leader; so animated was his manner that his ambition was infectious. all his young men painted just as he did. his will was theirs. from now on, out of the thousands of pictures signed "p. p. rubens," we can not pick out a single picture and say, "rubens did this." he drew outlines and added the finishing touches; and surely would not have signed a canvas of which he did not approve. in his great studio at antwerp, at various times, fully a hundred men worked to produce the pictures we call "rubens." those glowing canvases in the "rubens gallery" of the louvre, showing the history and apotheosis of marie de medici, were painted at antwerp. the joyous, exuberant touch of rubens is over all, even though the work was done by 'prentice hands. peaceful lives make dull biographies, and in prosperity is small romance. we may search long before finding a life so full to overflowing of material good things as that of rubens. all he touched turned to gold. from the time he returned to antwerp in sixteen hundred eight to his death in sixteen hundred forty, his life-journey was one grand triumphal march. his many diplomatic missions were simply repetitions of his first spanish embassy, with the don john incident left out, for don john seems to have been the only man who was not at home to the gracious rubens. mr. ruskin has said: "rubens was a great painter, but he lacked that last undefinable something which makes heart speak to heart. you admire, but you never adore. no real sorrow ever entered his life." perhaps we get a valuable clue in that last line. great art is born of feeling, and the heart of rubens was never touched by tragedy, nor the rocky fastnesses of his tears broken in upon by grief. in many ways his was the spirit of a child: he had troubles, but not sufficient to prevent refreshing sleep, and when he awoke in the morning the trials of yesterday were gone. even when the helpful, faithful and loving isabella brandt was taken away from him by death, there soon came other joys to take the place of those that were lost. we have full fifty pictures of his second wife: she looks down at us--smiling, buxom, content--from every gallery-wall in europe. rubens was fifty-three and she was sixteen when they were married; and were it not for a twinge of gout now and then, he would have been as young as she. when rubens went to england on "an artistic commission," we see that he captured charles the first just as he captured the court of spain. he painted five portraits of the king that we can trace. the mild-mannered charles was greatly pleased with the fine portrait of himself bestriding the prancing cream-colored charger. several notable artists, sir joshua reynolds among them, have complimented the picture by taking the horse, background and pose, and placing another man in the saddle--or more properly, taking off the head of charles the first and putting on the head of any bold patron who would furnish the price. in looking through the galleries of europe, keep your eye out for equestrian portraits, and you will be surprised to see on your tab, when you have made the rounds, how many painters have borrowed that long-maned, yellow horse that still rears in the national gallery in london, smelling the battle afar off--as charles himself preferred to smell it. rubens had a good time in england, although his patience was severely tried by being kept at painting for months, awaiting an opportune time to give king charles some good advice on matters political. english ways were very different from those of the continent, but rubens soon spoke the language with fluency, even if not with precision. rubens spoke seven languages, and to speak seven languages is to speak no one well. on this point we have a little comment from high authority. said charles the first, writing to buckingham, "the fleming painter prides himself on being able to pass for an englishman, but his english is so larded with french, dutch and italian that we think he must have been employed on the tower of babel." while painting the ceiling of the banqueting-room at whitehall (where a dutchman was later to be crowned king of england), he discussed politics with the duke of buckingham and the king, from the scaffold. some years after we find buckingham visiting rubens at his home in antwerp, dickering for his fine collection of curios and paintings. the duke afterwards bought the collection and paid rubens ten thousand pounds in gold for it. every one complimented rubens on his shrewdness in getting so much money for the wares, and rubens gave a banquet to his friends in token of the great sale to the britisher. it was a lot of money, to be sure, but the englishman realized the worth of the collection better than did rubens. we have a catalog of the collection. it includes nineteen titians, thirteen paul veroneses, seventeen tintorettos, three leonardos, three raphaels and thirteen pictures by rubens himself. a single one of the titians, if sold at auction today, would bring more than the duke paid for the entire collection. james mcneil whistler has said, "there may be a doubt about rubens having been a great artist; but he surely was an industrious person." there is barely enough truth in mr. whistler's remark, taken with its dash of wit, to save it; but philip gilbert hamerton's sober estimate is of more value: "the influence of rubens for good can not be overestimated. he gave inspiration to all he met, and his example of industry, vivid imagination, good-cheer and good taste have had an incalculable influence on art. we have more canvases from his hand than from the hand of any other master. and these pictures are a quarry to which every artist of today, consciously or unconsciously, is indebted." meissonier i never hesitate about scraping out the work of days, and beginning afresh, so as to satisfy myself, and try to do better. ah! that "better" which one feels in one's soul, and without which no true artist is ever content! others may approve and admire; but that counts for nothing, compared with one's own feeling of what ought to be. --_meissonier's conversations_ [illustration: meissonier] life in this world is a collecting, and all the men and women in it are collectors. the question is, what will you collect? most men are intent on collecting dollars. their waking-hours are taken up with inventing plans, methods, schemes, whereby they may secure dollars from other men. to gather as many dollars as possible, and to give out as few, is the desideratum. but when you collect one thing you always incidentally collect others. the fisherman who casts his net for shad usually secures a few other fish, and once in a while a turtle, which enlarges the mesh to suit, and gives sweet liberty to the shad. to focus exclusively on dollars is to secure jealousy, fear, vanity, and a vaulting ambition that may claw its way through the mesh and let your dollars slip into the yeasty deep. ragged haggard and his colleague, cave-of-the-winds, collect bacteria; while the fashionable young men of the day, with a few exceptions, are collecting headaches, regrets, weak nerves, tremens, paresis--death. of course we shall all die (i will admit that), and further, we may be a long time dead (i will admit that), and moreover, we may be going through the world for the last time--as to that i do not know; but while we are here it seems the part of reason to devote our energies to collecting that which brings as much quiet joy to ourselves, and as little annoyance to others, as possible. my heart goes out to the collector. in the soul of the collector of old books, swords, pistols, brocades, prints, clocks and bookplates, there is only truth. if he gives you his friendship, it is because you love the things that he loves; he has no selfish wish to use your good name to further his own petty plans--he only asks that you shall behold, and beholding, your eye shall glow, and your heart warm within you. inasmuch as we live in the age of the specialist, one man often collects books on only one subject, dante for instance; another, nothing but volumes printed at venice; another, works concerning the stage; and still another devotes all his spare time to securing tobacco-pipes. and i am well aware that the man who for a quarter of a century industriously collects snuffboxes has a supreme contempt for the man who collects both snuffboxes and clocks. and in this does the specialist reveal that his normal propensity to collect has degenerated. that is to say, it has refined itself into an abnormality, and from the innocent desire to collect, has shifted off into a selfish wish to outrival. the man who collects many things, with easy, natural leanings toward, say, spoons, is pure in heart and free from guile; but when his soul centers on spoons exclusively, he has fallen from his high estate and is simply possessed of a lust for ownership--he wants to own more peculiar spoons than any other man on earth. such a one stirs up wrath and rivalry, and is the butt and byword of all others who collect spoons. prosperous, practical, busy people sometimes wonder why other folks build cabinets with glass fronts and strong locks and therein store postage-stamps, bits of old silks, autographs and books that are very precious only when their leaves are uncut; and so i will here endeavor to explain. at the same time i despair of making my words intelligible to any but those who are collectors, or mayhap to those others who are in the varioloid stage. then possibly you say i had better not waste good paper and ink by recording the information, since collectors know already, and those who are without the pale have neither eyes to see nor hearts to incline. but the simple fact is, the proposition that you comprehend on first hearing was yours already; for how can you recognize a thing as soon as it comes into view if you have never before seen it? you have thought my thought yourself, or else your heart would not beat fast and your lips say, "yes, yes!" when i voice it. truth is in the air, and when your head gets up into the right stratum of atmosphere you breathe it in. you may not know that you have breathed it in until i come along and write it out on this blank sheet, and then you read it and say, "yes--your hand! that is surely so; i knew it all along!" and so then if i tell you a thing you already know, i confer on you the great blessing of introducing you to yourself and of giving you the consciousness that you know. and to know you know is power. and to feel the sense of power is to feel a sense of oneness with the source of power. let's see--what was it, then, that we were talking about? oh, yes! collectors and collecting. men collect things because these things stir imagination and link them with the people who once possessed and used these things. thus, through imagination, is the dead past made again to live and throb and pulse with life. man is not the lonely creature that those folks with bad digestions sometimes try to have us believe. we are brothers not only to all who live, but to all who have gone before. and so we collect the trifles that once were valuables for other men, and by the possession of these trifles are we bounden to them. these things stimulate imagination, stir the sympathies, and help us forget the cramping bounds of time and space that so often hedge us close around. the people near us may be sordid, stupid, mean; or more likely they are weary and worn with the battle for mere food, shelter and raiment; or they are depressed by that undefined brooding fear which civilization exacts as payment for benefits forgot--so their better selves are subdued. but through fancy's flight we can pick our companions out of the company of saints and sinners who have long turned to dust. i have the bookplates of holbein and hogarth, and i have a book once owned by rembrandt, and so i do not say holbein and hogarth and rembrandt were--i say they are. and thus the collector confuses the glorious dead and the living in one fairy company; and although he may detect varying degrees of excellence, for none does he hold contempt, of none is he jealous, none does he envy. from them he asks nothing, upon him they make no demands. in the collector's cast of mind there is something very childlike and ingenuous. my little girl has a small box of bright bits of silk thread that she hoards very closely; then she possesses certain pieces of calico, nails, curtain-rings, buttons, spools and fragments of china--all of which are very dear to her heart. and why should they not be? for with them she creates a fairy world, wherein are only joy, and peace, and harmony, and light--quite an improvement on this! yes, dearie, quite. * * * * * ernest meissonier, the artist, began collecting very early. he has told us that he remembers, when five years of age, of going with his mother to market and collecting rabbits' ears and feet, which he would take home, and carefully nail up on the wall of the garret. and it may not be amiss to explain here that the rabbit's foot as an object of superstitious veneration has no real place outside of the united states of america, and this only south of mason and dixon's line. the meissonier lad's collection of rabbits' ears increased until he had nearly colors enough to run the chromatic scale. then he collected pigeons' wings in like manner, and if you have ever haunted french market-places you know how natural a thing this would be for a child. the boy's mother took quite an interest in his amusements, and helped him to spread the wings out and arrange the tails fan-shape on the walls. they had long strings of buttons and boxes of spools in partnership; and when they would go up the seine on little excursions on sunday afternoons, they would bring back rich spoils in the way of swan feathers, butterflies, "snake-feeders" and tiny shells. then once they found a bird's nest, and as the mother bird had deserted it, they carried it home. that was a red-letter day, for the garret collection had increased to such an extent that a partition was made across the corner of a room by hanging up a strip of cloth. and all the things in that corner belonged to ernest--his mother said so. ernest's mother seems to have had a fine, joyous, childlike nature, so she fully entered into the life of her boy. he wanted no other companion. in fact, this mother was little better herself than a child in years--she was only sixteen when she bore him. they lived at lyons then, but three years later moved to paris. her temperament was poetic, religious, and her spirit had in it a touch of superstition--which is the case with all really excellent women. but this sweet playtime was not for long--the mother died in eighteen hundred twenty-five, aged twenty-four years. i suppose there is no greater calamity that can befall a child than to lose his mother. still, nature is very kind, and for ernest meissonier there always remained firm, clear-cut memories of a slight, fair-haired woman, with large, open, gray eyes, who held him in her arms, sang to him, and rocked him to sleep each night as the darkness gathered. he lived over and over again those few sunshiny excursions up the river; and he knew all the reeds and flowers and birds she liked best, and the places where they had landed from the boat and lunched together were forever to him sacred spots. but the death of his mother put a stop for a time to his collecting. the sturdy housekeeper who came to take the mother's place, speedily cleared "the truck" out of the corner, and forbade the bringing of any more feathers and rabbits' feet into her house--well, i guess so! the birds' nests, long grasses, reeds, shells and pigeons' wings were tossed straightway into the fireplace, and went soaring up the chimney in smoke. the destruction of the collection didn't kill the propensity to collect, however, any more than you can change a man's opinions by burning his library. it only dampened the desire for a time. it broke out again after a few years and continued for considerably more than half a century. there was a house at poissy "full to the roof-tiles" of books, marbles, bronzes and innumerable curios, gathered from every corner of the earth; and a palace at paris filled in like manner, for which ernest meissonier had expended more than a million francs. in the palace at paris, when the owner was near his threescore years and ten, he took from a locker a morocco case, and opening it, showed his friend, dumas, a long curl of yellow hair; and then he brought out a curious old white-silk dress, and said to the silent dumas, "this curl was cut from my mother's head after her death, and this dress was her wedding-gown." a few days after this meissonier wrote these words in his journal: "it is the twentieth of february--the morning of my seventieth birthday. what a long time to look back upon! this morning, at the hour when my mother gave me birth, i wished my first thoughts to be of her. dear mother, how often have the tears risen to my eyes at the remembrance of you! it was your absence--the longing i had for you--that made you so dear to me. the love of my heart goes out to you! do you hear me, mother, calling and crying for you? how sweet it must be to have a mother, i say to myself." * * * * * "i would have every man rich," said emerson, "that he might know the worthlessness of riches." every man should have a college education, in order to show him how little the thing is really worth. the intellectual kings of the earth have seldom been college-bred. napoleon ever regretted the lack of instruction in his early years; and in the minds of such men as abraham lincoln and ernest meissonier there usually lingers the suspicion that they have dropped something out of their lives. "i'm not a college man--ask seward," said lincoln, when some one questioned him as to the population of alaska. the remark was merry jest, of course, but as in all jest there lurks a grain of truth, so did there here. at the height of meissonier's success, when a canvas from his hand commanded a larger price than the work of any other living artist, he exclaimed, "oh, if only i had been given the advantages of a college training!" if he had, it is quite probable that he never would have painted better than his teacher. discipline might have reduced his daring genius to neutral salts, and taken all that fine audacity from his brush. he was a natural artist: he saw things clearly and in detail; he had the heart to feel, and he longed for the skill to express that which he saw and felt. and when the desire is strong enough it brings the thing--and thus is prayer answered. meissonier while but a child set to work making pictures--he declared he would be an artist. and in spite of his father's attempts to shame him out of his whim, and to starve him into a more practical career, his resolution stuck. he worked in a drugstore and drew on the wrapping-paper; then with this artist a few days, and then with that. he tried illustrating, and finally a bold stand was made and a little community formed that decided on storming the salon. there is something pathetic in that brotherhood of six young men, binding themselves together, swearing they would stand together and aid each other in producing great art. the dead seriousness of the scheme has a peculiar sophomore quality. there were steinheil, trimolet, daumier, daubigny, deschaumaes and meissonier, all aged about twenty, strong, sturdy, sincere and innocently ignorant--all bound they would be artists. two of these young men were sign-painters, the others did odd jobs illustrating, and filled in the time at anything which chance offered. when one got an invitation out to dinner he would go, and furtively drop biscuit and slices of meat into his lap, and then slyly transfer them to his waistcoat-pockets, so as to take them to his less fortunate brethren. they haunted the galleries, made themselves familiar with catalogs, criticized without stint, knew all about current prices, and were able to point out the great artists of paris when they passed proudly up the street. they sketched eternally, formed small wax models, and made great preparations for masterpieces. the reason they did not produce the masterpieces was because they did not have money to buy brushes, paints and canvas. neither did they have funds to purchase food to last until the thing was done; and it is difficult to produce great art on half-rations. so they formed the brotherhood, and one midnight swore eternal fealty. they were to draw lots: the lucky member was to paint and the other five were to support him for a month. he was to be supplied his painting outfit and to be absolutely free from all responsibility as to the bread-and-butter question for a whole month. trimolet was the first lucky man. he set diligently to work, and dined each evening on a smoking mutton-chop with a bottle of wine, at a respectable restaurant. the five stood outside and watched him through the window--they dined when and where they could. his picture grew apace, and in three weeks was completed. it was entitled, "sisters of charity giving out soup to the poor." the work was of a good machine-made quality, not good enough to praise nor bad enough to condemn: it was like tomlinson of berkeley square. on account of the peculiar subject with which it dealt, it found favor with a worthy priest, who bought it and presented it to a convent. this so inflated trimolet that he suggested it would be a good plan to keep right on with the arrangement, but the five objected. steinheil was next appointed to feed the vestal fire. his picture was so-so, but would not sell. daubigny came next, and lived so high that inspiration got clogged, fatty degeneration of the cerebrum set in, and after a week he ceased to paint--doing nothing but dream. when the turn of the fourth man came, meissonier had concluded that the race must be won by one and one, and his belief in individualism was further strengthened by an order for a group of family portraits, with a goodly retainer in advance. straightway he married steinheil's sister, with whom he had been some weeks in love, and the others feeling aggrieved that an extra mouth to feed, with danger of more, had been added to the "commune," declared the compact void. trimolet still thought well of the arrangement, though, and agreed, if meissonier would support him, to secure fame and fortune for them both. meissonier declined the offer with thanks, and struck boldly out on his own account. the woman who had so recklessly agreed to share his poverty must surely have had faith in him--or are very young people who marry incapable of either faith or reason? never mind; she did not hold the impulsive young man back. she couldn't--nothing but death could have stayed such ambition. his will was unbending and his ambition never tired. he was an athlete in strength, and was fully conscious that to be a good animal is the first requisite. he swam, rowed, walked, and could tire out any of his colleagues at swordplay or skittles. but material things were scarce those first few years of married life, and once when the table had bread, but no meat nor butter, he took the entire proceeds of a picture and purchased a suit of clothing of the time of louis the grand: not to wear, of course--simply to put in the "collection." small wonder is it that, for some months after, when he would walk out alone the fond wife would caution him thus: "now ernest, do not go through that old-clothes market--you know your weakness." "i have no money, so you need not worry," he would gaily reply. of those times of pinching want he has written, "as to happiness--is it possible to be wretched at twenty, when one has health, a passion for art, free passes for the louvre, an eye to see, a heart to feel, and sunshine gratis?" but poverty did not last long. pictures such as this young man produced must attract attention anywhere. he belonged to no school, but simply worked away after his own fashion; what he was bound to do was to produce a faithful picture--sure, clear, strong, vivid. he saw things clearly and his sympathies were acute, as is shown in every canvas he produced. meissonier had the true artistic conscience--he was incapable of putting out an average, unobjectionable picture--it must have positive excellence. "there is a difference," said he, "between a successful effort and a work of love." he painted only in the loving mood. no greater blessing than the artistic conscience can come to any worker in art, be he sculptor, writer, singer or painter. hold fast to it, and it shall be your compass in time when the sun is darkened. to please the public is little, but to satisfy your other self, that self that leans over your shoulder and watches your every thought and deed, is much. no artistic success worth having is possible unless you satisfy that other self. but like the moral conscience it can be dallied with until the grieved spirit turns away, and the wretch is left to his fate. meissonier never hesitated to erase a whole picture when it did not satisfy his inward sense--customers might praise and connoisseurs offer to buy, it made no difference. "i have some one who is more difficult to please than you," he would say; "i must satisfy myself." the fine intoxication that follows good artistic work is the highest joy that mortals ever know. but once let a creative artist lower his standard and give the world the mere product of his brain, with heart left out, that man will hate himself for a year and a day. he has sold his soul for a price: joy has flown, and bitterness is his portion. meissonier never trifled with his compass. to the last he headed for the polestar. * * * * * the early domestic affairs of meissonier can best be guessed from his oft-repeated assertion that the artist should never marry. "to produce great work, art must be your mistress," he said. "you must be married to your work. a wife demands unswerving loyalty as her right, and a portion of her husband's time she considers her own. this is proper with every profession but that of art. the artist must not be restrained, nor should even a wife come between him and his art. the artist must not be judged by the same standards that are made for other men. why? simply because when you begin to tether him you cramp his imagination and paralyze his hand. the priest and artist must not marry, for it is too much to expect any woman to follow them in their flight, and they have no moral right to tie themselves to a woman and then ask her to stay behind." from this and many similar passages in the "conversations" it is clear that meissonier had no conception of the fact that a woman may possibly keep step with her mate. he simply never considered such a thing. a man's opinions concerning womankind are based upon the knowledge of the women he knows best. we can not apply hamerton's remark concerning turner to meissonier. hamerton said that throughout turner's long life he was lamentably unfortunate in that he never came under the influence of a strong and good woman. meissonier associated with good women, but he never knew one with a spread of spiritual wing sufficient to fit her to be his companion. there is a minor key of loneliness and heart hunger running through his whole career. possibly, in the wisdom of providence, this was just what he needed to urge him on to higher and nobler ends. he never knew peace, and the rest for which he sighed slipped him at the very last. "i'm tired, so tired," he sighed again and again in those later years, when he had reached the highest pinnacle. and still he worked--it was his only rest! meissonier painted very few pictures of women, and in some miraculous way skipped that stage in esthetic evolution wherein most artists affect the nude. in his whole career he never produced a single "diana," nor a "susanna at the bath." he had no artistic sympathy with "leda and the swan," and once when delaroche chided him for painting no pictures of women, he was so ungallant as to say, "my dear fellow, men are much more beautiful than women!" during the last decade of his life meissonier painted but one portrait of a woman, and to america belongs the honor. the sitter was mrs. j. w. mackay, of california. as all the world knows, mrs. mackay refused to accept the canvas. she declared the picture was no likeness, and further, she would not have it for a gift. "so you do not care for the picture?" asked the great artist. "me? well, i guess not--not that picture!" "very well, madam. i think--i think i'll keep it for myself. i'll place it on exhibition!" and the great artist looked out of the window in an absent-minded way, and hummed a tune. this put another phase on the matter. mrs. mackay winced, and paid the price, which rumor says was somewhere between ten and twenty-five thousand dollars. she took the little canvas in her carriage and drove away with it, and what became of the only portrait of a woman painted by meissonier during his later years, nobody knew but mrs. mackay, and mrs. mackay never told. meissonier once explained to a friend that his offense consisted in producing a faithful likeness of the customer. the mackay incident did not end when the lady paid the coin and accepted the goods. meissonier, by the haughtiness of his manner, his artistic independence, and most of all, by his unpardonable success, had been sowing dragons' teeth for half a century. and now armed enemies sprang up, and sided with the woman from california. they made it an international episode: less excuses have involved nations in war in days agone. but the enemies of meissonier did not belong alone to america, although here every arm was braced and every tongue wagged to vindicate the cause of our countrywoman. in paris the whole art world was divided into those who sided with meissonier and those who were against him. cafes echoed with the sounds of wordy warfare; the columns of all magazines and newspapers bulged with heated argument; newsboys cried extras on the street, and bands of students paraded the boulevards singing songs in praise of mrs. mackay and in dishonor of meissonier, "the pretender." the assertion was made again and again that meissonier had fed sham art upon the public, and by means of preposterous prices and noisy puffing had hypnotized a world. they called him the artist of the infinitely little, king of lilliput, and challenged any one to show where he had thrown heart and high emotion into his work. studies of coachmen, smokers, readers, soldiers, housemaids, chess-players, cavaliers and serenaders were not enough upon which to base an art reputation--the man must show that he had moved men to high endeavor, said the detractors. a fund was started to purchase the mackay portrait, so as to do the very thing that meissonier had threatened to do, but dare not: place the picture on exhibition. to show the picture, the enemy said, would be to prove the artist's commonplace quality, and not only this, but it would prove the man a rogue. they declared he was incapable of perceiving the good qualities in a sitter, and had consented for a price to portray a person whom he disliked; and as a result, of course, had produced a caricature; and then had blackmailed his patron into paying an outrageous sum to keep the picture from the public. the argument sounded plausible. and so the battle raged, just as it has since in reference to zola. the tide of meissonier's prosperity began to ebb: prospective buyers kept away; those who had given commissions canceled them. meissonier's friends saw that something must be done. they inaugurated a "meissonier vindication," by making an exhibition of one hundred fifty-five "meissoniers"--and the public was invited to come and be the jury. art-lovers from england went in bodies, and all paris filed through the gallery, as well as a goodly portion of provincial france. by the side of each canvas stood a gendarme to protect it from a possible fanatic whose artistic hate could not be restrained. to a great degree this exhibition brought feeling to a normal condition. meissonier was still a great artist, yet he was human and his effects were now believed to be gotten by natural methods. but there was a lull in the mad rush to secure his wares. the vanderbilts grew lukewarm; titled connoisseurs from england were not so anxious; and mrs. mackay sat back and smiled through her tears. meissonier had expended over a million francs on his house in the boulevard malesherbes in paris, and nearly as much on the country-seat at poissy. these places were kingly in their appointments and such as only the state should attempt to maintain. for a single man, by the work of his right hand, to keep them up was too much to expect. meissonier's success had been too great. as a collector he had overdone the thing. only poor men, or those of moderate incomes, should be collectors, for then the joy of sacrifice is theirs. charles lamb's covetous looking on the book when it was red, daily for months, meanwhile hoarding his pay, and at last one saturday night swooping down and carrying the volume home to bridget in triumph, is the true type. but money had come to meissonier by hundreds of thousands of francs, and often sums were forced upon him as advance payments. he lived royally and never imagined that his hand and brain could lose their cunning, or the public be fickle. the fact that a "vindication" had been necessary was galling: the great man grew irritable and his mood showed itself in his work: his colors grew hard and metallic, and there were angles in his lines where there should have been joyous curves. debts began to press. he painted less and busied his mind with reminiscence--the solace of old age. and then it was that he dictated to his wife the "conversations." the book reveals the quality of his mind with rare fidelity--and shows the power of this second wife fully to comprehend him. thus did she disprove some of the unkind philosophy given to the world by her liege. but the talk in the "conversations" is of an old man in whose heart was a tinge of bitterness. yet the thought is often lofty and the comment clear and full of flashing insight. it is the book of ecclesiastes over again, written in a minor key, with a little harmless gossip added for filling. meissonier died in paris on the twenty-first of january, eighteen hundred ninety-one, aged seventy-six years. * * * * * the canvas known as "eighteen hundred seven," which is regarded as meissonier's masterpiece, has a permanent home in the metropolitan museum of art in new york. the central figure is napoleon, at whose shrine the great artist loved to linger. the "eighteen hundred seven" occupied the artist's time and talent for fifteen years, and was purchased by a. t. stewart for sixty thousand dollars. after mr. stewart's death his art treasures were sold at auction, and this canvas was bought by judge henry hilton and presented to the city of new york. there are in all about seventy-five pictures by meissonier owned in america. several of his pieces are in the vanderbilt collection, others are owned by collectors in chicago, cleveland and saint louis. there are various glib sayings to the effect that the work of great men is not appreciated until after they are dead. this may be so and it may not. it depends upon the man and the age. meissonier enjoyed full half a century of the highest and most complete success that was ever bestowed upon an artist. the strong intellect and marked personality of the man won him friends wherever he chose to make them; and it probably would have been better for his art if a degree of public indifference had been his portion in those earlier years. his success was too great: the calm judgment of posterity can never quite endorse the plaudits paid the living man. he is one of the greatest artists the nineteenth century has produced, but that his name can rank among the great artists of all time is not at all probable. william michael rossetti has summed the matter up well by saying: "perfection is so rare in this world that when we find it we must pause and pay it the tribute of our silent admiration. it is very easy to say that meissonier should have put in this and omitted that. had he painted differently he would have been some one else. the work is faultless, and such genius as he showed must ever command the homage of those who know by experience the supreme difficulty of having the hand materialize the conceptions of the mind. and yet meissonier's conceptions outmatched his brush: he was greater than his work. he was a great artist, and better still, a great man--proud, frank, fearless and conscientious." titian titian by a few strokes of the brush knew how to make the general image and character of whatever object he attempted. his great care was to preserve the masses of light and of shade, and to give by opposition the idea of that solidity which is inseparable from natural objects. he was the greatest of the venetians, and deserves to rank with raphael and michelangelo. --_sir joshua reynolds_ [illustration: titian] the march of progress and the rage for improvement make small impression on venice. the cabmen have not protested against horsecars as they did in rome, tearing up the tracks, mobbing the drivers, and threatening the passengers; neither has the cable superseded horses as a motor power, and the trolley then rendered the cable obsolete. in short, there never was a horse in venice, save those bronze ones over the entrance to saint mark's, and the one napoleon rode to the top of the campanile. but there are lions in venice--stone lions--you see them at every turn. "did you ever see a live horse?" asked a ten-year-old boy of me, in saint mark's square. "yes," said i; "several times." "are they fierce?" he asked after a thoughtful pause. and then i explained that a thousand times as many men are killed by horses every year as by lions. four hundred years have made no change in the style of gondolas, or anything else in venice. the prow of the venetian gondola made today is of the same height as that prescribed by tommaso mocenigo, doge in the year fourteen hundred. the regulated height of the prow is to insure protection for the passengers when going under bridges, but its peculiar halberd shape is a thing not one of the five thousand gondoliers in venice can explain. if you ask your gondolier he will swear a pious oath, shrug his fine shoulders, and say, "mon dieu, signore! how should i know?--it has always been so." the ignorance and superstition of the picturesque gondolier, with his fluttering blue hatband and gorgeous sash, are most enchanting. his lack of knowledge is like the ignorance of childhood, when life has neither beginning nor end; when ways and means present no vexatious problems; when if food is not to be had for the simple asking, it can surely be secured by coaxing; when the day is for frolic and play, and the night for dreams and sleep. but although your gondolier may not be able to read or write, he yet has his preferences in music and art, and possesses definite ideas as to the eternal fitness of things. in italy, many of the best paintings being in churches, and all the galleries being free on certain days, the common people absorb a goodly modicum of art education without being aware of it. i have heard market-women compare the merits of tintoretto and paul veronese, and stupid indeed is the boat "hooker" in venice who would not know a "titian" on sight. but the chronology of art is all a jumble to this indolent, careless, happy people. these paintings were in the churches when their fathers and mothers were alive, they are here now, and no church has been built in venice for three hundred years. the history of venice is nothing to a gondolier. "why, signore! how should i know? venice always has been," explained enrico, when i asked him how old the city was. when i hired enrico i thought he was a youth. he wore such a dandy suit of pure white, and his hatband so exactly matched his sash, that i felt certain i was close upon some tender romance, for surely it was some dark-eyed lacemaker who had embroidered this impossible hatband and evolved the improbable sash! the exercise of rowing a gondola is of the sort that gives a splendid muscular development. men who pull oars have round shoulders, but the gondolier does not pull an oar, he pushes it, and as a result has a flat back and brawny chest. enrico had these, and as he had no nerves to speak of, the passing years had taken small toll. enrico was sixty. once he ran alongside another gondola and introduced me to the gondolier, who was his son. they were both of one age. then one day i went with enrico to his home--two whitewashed rooms away up under the roof of an old palace on the rialto--and there met his wife. mona lisa showed age more than enrico. she had crouched over a little wooden frame making one pattern of lace for thirty years, so her form was bent and her eyesight faulty. yet she proudly explained that years and years ago she was a model for a painter, and in the della salute i could see her picture, posed as magdalen. she got fourteen cents a day for her work, and had been at it so long she had no desire to quit. she took great pride in enrico's white-duck suits and explained to me that she never let him wear one suit more than two days without its being washed and starched; and she always pipeclayed his shoes and carefully inspected him each morning before sending him forth to his day's work. "men are so careless, you know," she added by way of apology. there was no furniture in the rooms worth mentioning--italians do not burden themselves with things--but on the wall i caught sight of a bright-colored unfinished sketch of the bridge of sighs. it was little more than an outline, and probably did not represent ten minutes' work, but the lines seemed so firm and sure that i at once asked who did it. "an american did it, signore, an american painter; he comes here every year; our son is his gondolier and shows him all the best places to paint, and takes him there when the light is good and keeps the people back so the artist can work--you understand? a shower came up just as his excellency, the american, began on this, and it got wet and so he gave it to my son and he gave it to me." "what is the painter's name?" i asked. enrico could not remember, but mona lisa said his name was signore hopsmithiziano, or something like that. there were several little plaster images on the walls, and through the open door that led to the adjoining room i saw a sort of an improvised shrine, with various little votive offerings grouped about an unframed canvas. the picture was a crude attempt at copying that grand figure in titian's "assumption." "and who painted that?" i asked. enrico crossed himself in silence, and mona lisa's subdued voice answered: "our other son did that. he was only nineteen. he was a mosaicist and was studying to be a painter; he was drowned at the lido." the old woman made the sign of the cross, her lips moved, and a single big tear stood on her leathery cheek. i changed the painful subject, and soon found excuse to slip away. that evening as the darkness gathered and twinkling lights began to appear like fireflies, up and down the grand canal, i sat in a little balcony of my hotel watching the scene. a serenading party, backing their boats out into the stream, had formed a small blockade, and in the group of gondolas that awaited the unraveling of the tangle i spied enrico. he had a single passenger, a lady in the inevitable black mantilla, holding in her hands the inevitable fan. a second glance at the lady--and sure enough! it was mona lisa. i ran downstairs, stepped out across the moored line of gondolas, took up a hook, and reaching over gently pulled enrico's gondola over so i could step aboard. mona lisa was crooning a plaintive love-song and her gondolier was coming in occasionally with bars of melodious bass. i felt guilty for being about to break in upon such a sentimental little scene, and was going to retreat, but enrico and mona lisa spied me and both gave a little cry of surprise and delight. "where have you been?" i asked--"you fine old lovers!" and then they explained that it was a holy day and they had been over to the church of san giorgio, and were now on their way to santa maria de' frari. "it is a very special mass, by torchlight, and is for the repose of the soul of titian, who is buried there. you may never have an opportunity to see such a sight again--come with us," and enrico held out his strong brown hand. i stepped aboard, the boats opened out to the left and to the right, and we passed with that peculiar rippling sound, across the water that reflected the lights as of a myriad stars. * * * * * titian was born one hundred years before rubens, and died just six months before rubens' birth. on the one hundred twenty-second anniversary of the birth of titian, rubens knelt at his grave, there in the church of santa maria de' frari, and vowed he would follow in the footsteps of the illustrious master. and the next day he wrote to his mother describing the incident. thousands of other sentimental and impulsive youth have stood before that little slab of black marble on which is carved the simple legend, "tiziano vecellio," and vowed as rubens did, but out of the throng not one rendered such honor to the master as did the brilliant fleming. the example of titian was a lifelong inspiration to rubens; and to all his pupils he held up titian as the painter par excellence. in the rubens studio titian was the standard by which all art was gauged. when rubens returned to flanders from italy he carried with him twenty-one pictures done by the hand of the master. titian was born at the little village of cadore, a few miles north of venice. when ten years of age his father took him down to the city and apprenticed him to a worker in mosaic, the intent of the fond parent probably being to get the youngster out of the way, more than anything else. the setting together of the little bits of colored glass, according to a pattern supplied, is a task so simple that children can do it about as well as grown folks. they do the work there today just exactly as they did four hundred years ago, when little tiziano vecellio came down from cadore and worked, getting his ears pinched when he got sleepy, or carelessly put in the red glass when he should have used the blue. an inscription on a tomb at beni hassan, dating from the reign of osortasen the first, who lived three thousand years before christ, represents theban glassblowers at work. i told enrico of this one day when we were on our way to a glass-factory. "that's nothing," said enrico; "it was the glassblowers of venice who taught them how," and not a ghost of a smile came across his fine, burnt-umber face. there is a story by pliny about certain phenician mariners landing on the shores of a small river in palestine and making a fire to cook their food, and afterward discovering that the soda and sand under their pots had fused into glass. no one now seriously considers that the first discovery of glass, and for all i know enrico may be right in his flat statement that the first glass was made at venice, "for venice always was." the art of glassmaking surely goes back to the morning of the world. the glassblower is a classic, like the sower who goes forth to sow, the potter at his wheel, and the grinding of grain with mortar and pestle. thus, too, the art of the mosaicist--who places bright bits of stone and glass in certain positions so as to form a picture--goes back to the dawn. the exquisite work in mosaic at pompeii is the first thing that impresses the visitor to that silent city. much of the work there was done long before the christian era, and must have then been practised many centuries to bring it to such perfection. young tiziano from cadore did not like the mere following of a set pattern--he introduced variations of his own, and got his nose tweaked for trying to improve on a good thing. altogether he seemed to have had a hard time of it there at messer zuccato's mosaic-shop. the painter's art, then as now, preceded the art of the mosaicist, for the picture or design to be made in mosaic is first carefully drawn on paper, and then colored, and the worker in mosaic is supposed simply to follow copy. when you visit the glass-factories of venice today, you see the painted picture tacked up on the wall before the workmen, who with deft fingers stick the bits of glass into their beds of putty. this scheme of painting a pattern is in order that cheap help can be employed; when it began we do not know, but we do know there was a time when the great artist in mosaic had his design in his head, and materialized it by rightly placing the bits of glass with his own hands, experimenting, selecting and rejecting until the thing was right. but this was before the time of titian, for when titian came down to venice there were painters employed in the shop of sebastian zuccato who made the designs for the dunderheads to follow. that is not just the word the painters used to designate the boys and women who placed the bits of glass in position, but it meant the same thing. the painters thought themselves great folks, and used to make the others wait on them and run errands, serving them as "fags." but the vecellio boy did not worship at the shrine of the painters who made the designs. he said he could make as good pictures himself, and still continued to make changes in the designs when he thought they should be made; and once in a dispute between the boy and the maker of a design, the master took sides with the boy. this inflated the lad with his own importance so, that shortly after he applied for the position of the quarrelsome designer. the fine audacity of the youngster so pleased the master that he allowed him to try his hand with the painters a few hours each day. he was getting no wages anyway, only his board, and the kind of board did not cost much, so it did not make much difference. in venice at that time there were two painters by the name of bellini--gentile and giovanni, sons of the painter jacob bellini, who had brought his boys up in the way they should go. gian, as the venetians called the younger brother, was the more noted of the two. occasionally he made designs for the mosaicists, and this sometimes brought him to the shop where young titian worked. the boy got on speaking terms with the great painter, and ran errands back and forth from his studio. when twelve years of age we find him duly installed as a helper at gian bellini's studio, with an easel and box of paints all his own. * * * * * the brightest scholar in the studio of gian bellini was a young man by the name of giorgio, but they called him giorgione, which being interpreted means george the great. he was about the age of titian, and the two became firm friends. giorgione was nearly twenty when we first hear of him. he was a handsome fellow--tall, slender, with an olive complexion and dreamy brown eyes. there was a becoming flavor of melancholy in his manner, and more than one gracious dame sought to lure him back to earth, away from his sadness, out of the dream-world in which he lived. giorgione was a musician and a poet. he sang his own pieces, playing the accompaniment on a harp. vasari says he sang his songs, playing his own accompaniment on a flute, but i think this is a mistake. into all his work giorgione infused his own soul--and do you know what the power to do that is? it is genius. to be able to make a statue is little, but to breathe into its nostrils the breath of life--ah! that is something else! the last elusive, undefinable stroke of the brush, that something uniting the spirit of the beholder with the spirit of the artist, so that you feel as he felt when he wrought--that is art. burne-jones is the avatar of giorgione. he subdues you into silence, and you wait, expecting that one of his tall, soulful dream-women will speak, if you are but worthy--holding your soul in tune. giorgione never wrought so well as burne-jones, because he lived in a different age--all art is an evolution. painting is a form of expression, just as language is a form of expression. every man who writes english is debtor to shakespeare. every man who paints and expresses something of that which his soul feels is debtor to giorgione and botticelli. but to judge of the greatness of an artist--mind this--you must compare him with his contemporaries, not with those who were before or those who came after. the old masters are valuable, not necessarily for beauty, but because they reveal the evolution of art. between burne-jones and giorgione came botticelli. now, botticelli builded on giorgione, while burne-jones builded on botticelli. aubrey beardsley, dead at the age at which keats died, builded on both, but he perverted their art and put a leer where burne-jones placed faith and abiding trust. aubrey beardsley got the cue for his hothouse art from one figure in botticelli's "spring," i need not state which figure: a glance at the picture and you behold sulphur fumes about the face of one of the women. did aubrey beardsley infuse his own spirit into his work? yes, i think he did. mrs. jameson says, "there are no successful imitations of giorgione, neither can there be, for the spirit of the man is in every face he drew, and the people who try to draw like him always leave that out." there are various pictures in the louvre, the national gallery, and the pinacothek at munich, signed with giorgione's name, but mrs. jameson declares they are not his, "because they do not speak to your soul with that mild, beseeching look of pity," possibly we should make allowance for mrs. jameson's warm praise--other women talked like that when giorgione was alive. giorgione was one of those bright luminaries that dart across our plane of vision and then go out quickly in hopeless night, leaving only the memory of a blinding light. he died at thirty-three, which disraeli declares is the age at which the world's saviors have usually died--and he names the redeemer first in a list of twenty who passed out at the age of three-and-thirty. disraeli does not say that all those in his list were saviors, for the second name he records is that of alexander the great, the list ending with shelley. giorgione died of a broken heart. the girl he loved eloped with his friend, morta del feltri, to whom he had proudly introduced her a short time before. it is an old story--it has been played again and again to its da rimini finish. the friend introduces the friend, and the lauded virtues of this friend inflames imagination, until love strikes a spark; then soon instead of three we find one--one groping blindly, alone, dazed, stunned, bereft. the handsome giorgione pined away, refusing to be comforted. and soon his proud, melancholy soul took its flight from an environment with which he was ever at war, and from a world which he never loved. and titian was sent for to complete the pictures which he had begun. surely, disembodied spirits have no control over mortals, or the soul of giorgione would have come back and smitten the hand of titian with palsy. for a full year before he died giorgione had not spoken to titian, although he had seen him daily. giorgione had surpassed all artists in venice. he had a careless, easy, limpid style. but there was decision and surety in his swinging lines, and best of all, a depth of tenderness and pity in his faces that gave to the whole a rich, full and melting harmony. giorgione's head touched heaven, and his feet were not always on earth. titian's feet were always on earth, and his head sometimes touched heaven. titian was healthy and in love with this old, happy, cruel, sensuous world. he was willing to take his chances anywhere. he had no quarrel with his environment, for did he not stay here a hundred years (lacking half a year), and then die through accident? of course he liked it. one woman, for him, could make a paradise in which a thousand nightingales sang. and if one particular woman liked some one else better, he just consoled himself with the thought that "there is just as good fish," etc. i will not quote walt whitman and say his feet were tenoned and mortised in granite, but they were well planted on the soil--and sometimes mired in clay. titian admired giorgione; he admired him so much that he painted exactly like him--or as nearly as he could. titian was a good-looking young man, but he was not handsome like giorgione. yet titian did his best; he patronized giorgione's tailor, imitated his dreamy, far-away look, used a brush with his left hand, and painted with his thumb. his coloring was the same, and when he got a commission to fresco the ceiling of a church he did it as nearly like giorgione frescoes as he could. this kind of thing is not necessarily servile imitation--it is only admiration tipped to t' other side. it is found everywhere in aspiring youth and in every budding artist. as in the animal kingdom, genius has its prototype. in the national gallery at london you will see in the turner room a "claude lorraine" and a "turner" hung side by side, as provided for in turner's will. you would swear, were the pictures not labeled, that one hand did them both. when thirty, turner admired claude to a slavish degree; but we know there came a time when he bravely set sail on a chartless sea, and left the great claude lorraine far astern. titian loved giorgione so well that he even imitated his faults. at first this high compliment was pleasing to giorgione; then he became indifferent, and finally disgusted. the very sight of titian gave him a pain. he avoided his society. he ceased to speak to him when they met, and forbade his friends to mention the name "titian" in his presence. it was about this time that giorgione's ladylove won fame by discarding him in that foolish, fishwife fashion. he called his attendants and instructed them thus: "do not allow that painter from cadore--never mind his name--to attend my funeral--you understand?" then he turned his face to the wall and died. in his studio were various pictures partly completed, for it seems to have been his habit to get rest by turning from one piece of work to another. his executors looked at these unfinished canvases in despair. there was only one man in all venice who could complete them, and that was titian. titian was sent for. he came, completed the pictures, signed them with the dead man's name, and gave them to the world. "and," says the veracious vasari, "they were done just as well, if not better than giorgione himself could have done them, had he been alive!" it was absurd of giorgione to die of a broken heart and let titian come in, making free with everything in his studio, and complete his work. it was very absurd. time is the great avenger--let us wait. morta del feltri, the perfidious friend, grew tired of his mistress: their love was so warm it shortly burned itself to ashes--ashes of roses. morta deserted the girl, fled from venice, joined the army, and a javelin plunged through his liver at the battle of zara ended his career. the unhappy young woman, twice a widow, fought off hungry wolves by finding work in a glass-factory, making mosaics at fourteen cents a day. when she was seventy, titian, aged seventy-five, painted her picture as a beggar-woman. * * * * * the quality of sentiment that clings about the life of giorgione seems to forbid a cool, critical view of his work. byron indited a fine poem to him; and poetic criticism seems for him the proper kind. the glamour of sentiment conceals the real man from our sight. and anyway, it is hardly good manners to approach a saint closely and examine his halo to see whether it be genuine or not. halos are much more beautiful when seen through the soft, mellow light of distance. giorgione's work was mostly in fresco, so but little of it has survived. but of his canvases several surely have that tender, beseeching touch of spirit which stamps the work as great art. whether mrs. jameson is right in her assumption that all canvases bearing giorgione's name are spurious which lack that look of pity, is a question. i think that mrs. jameson is more kind than critical, although my hope is that renan is correct in his gratuitous statement, "at the last great day men will be judged by women, and the almighty will merely vise the verdict." if this be true, all who, like giorgione, have died for the love of woman will come off lightly. but the fact is, no man is great all the time. genius is an exceptional mood even in a genius, and happy is the genius who, like tennyson, builds a high wall about his house, so he is seen but seldom, and destroys most of his commonplace work. ruskin has printed more rubbish than literature--ten times over. i have his complete works, and am sorry to say that, instead of confining myself to "sesame and lilies," i have foolishly read all the dreary stuff, including statistics, letters to hobbs and nobbs, with hot arguments as to who fished the murex up, and long, scathing tirades against the old legal shark who did him out of a hundred pounds. surely, to be swindled by a lawyer is not so unusual a thing that it is worth recording! but ruskin wrote about it, had it put in print, read the proof, and printed the stuff, so no one, no matter how charitably disposed, can arise and zealously declare that this only is genuine, and that spurious. it's all genuine--rubbish, bosh and all. titian painted some dreary, commonplace pictures, and he also painted others that must ever be reckoned as among the examples of sublime art that have made the world stronger in its day and generation and proud of what has been. titian was essentially a pagan. when he painted christian subjects he introduced a goodly flavor of the old greek love of life. indeed, there is a strong doubt whether the real essence of christianity was ever known at venice, except in rare individual cases. it was the spirit of the sea-kings, and not the gentle, loving christ, that inspired her artists and men of learning. the sensuous glamour of the orient steeped the walls of san marco in their rainbow tints, and gave that careless, happy habit to all the venetian folk. in titian's time, as today, gay gallants knelt in the churches, and dark, dreamy eyes peeked out from behind mantillas, and the fan spoke a language which all lovers knew. outside was the strong smell of the sea, and never could a sash be flung open to the azure but there would come floating in on the breeze the gentle tinkle of a guitar. but titian, too, as well as giorgione, infused into his work at times the very breath of life. at the belle d' arte at venice is that grand picture, "the assumption," which for more than two hundred years was in the church of santa maria de' frari. when napoleon appointed a commission to select the paintings in venice that were considered best worth preserving and protecting, and take them to the belle d' arte, this picture was included in the list. it was then removed from its place, where it had so long hung, above the grave of the man who executed it. i have several large photographs of this picture, showing different portions of it. one of these pictures reveals simply the form of the virgin. she rises from the earth, caught up in the clouds, the drapery streaming in soft folds, and on the upturned face is a look of love and tenderness and trust, combined with womanly strength, that hushes us into tears. surely there is an upward law of gravitation as well as a gravitation that pulls things down. titian has shown us this. and as he drew over and over again in his pictures the forms and faces of the men and women he knew, so i imagine that this woman was a woman he knew and loved. she is not a far-off, tenuous creature, born of dreams: she is a woman who has lived, suffered, felt, mayhap erred, and now turns to a power, not herself, eternal in the heavens. into this picture the artist infused his own exalted spirit, for the mood we behold manifest in others is usually but the reflection of our own spirit. in some far-off eon, ere this earth-journey began, some woman looked at me that way once, just as titian has this woman look, with the same melting eyes and half-parted lips, and it made an impression on my soul that subsequent incarnations have not effaced. i bought the photograph in venice, at ongania's, and paid three dollars for it. then i framed it in simple, unplaned, unstained cedar, and it hangs over my desk now as i write. when i am tired and things go wrong, and the round blocks all seem to be getting into the square holes, and remembrances of the lawyer who cheated me out of a hundred pounds come stealing like a blight over my spirit, i look up at the face of this woman who is not only angelic but human. i behold the steady upward flight and the tender look of pity, and my soul reaches out, grasping the hem of the garment of her who we are told was the mother of god, and with her i leave the old sordid earth far beneath and go on, and on, and up, and up, and up, until my soaring spirit mingles and communes with the great infinite. anthony van dyck his pieces so with live objects strive, that both or pictures seem, or both alive. nature herself, amaz'd, does doubting stand, which is her own and which the painter's hand, and does attempt the like with less success, when her own work in twins she would express. his all-resembling pencil did outpass the magic imagery of looking-glass. nor was his life less perfect than his art. nor was his hand less erring than his heart. there was no false or fading color there, the figures sweet and well-proportioned were. --_cowley's "elegy on sir anthony van dyck"_ [illustration: anthony van dyck] the most common name in holland is van dyck. its simple inference is that the man lives on the dyke, or near it. in the good old days when villagers never wandered far from home, the appellation was sufficient, and even now, at this late day, it is not especially inconsistent. in holland you are quite safe in addressing any man you meet as van dyck. the ancient brotherhood of saint luke, of antwerp, was always an exclusive affair, but during the years between fifteen hundred ninety-seven and sixteen hundred twenty-three there were twenty-seven artists by the name of van dyck upon its membership register. out of these two dozen and three names, but one interests us. anthony van dyck was the son of a rich merchant. he was born in the year fifteen hundred ninety-nine--just twenty-two years after the birth of rubens. before anthony was ten years old the name and fame of rubens illumined all antwerp, and made it a place of pilgrimage for the faithful lovers of art of northern europe. the success of rubens fired the ambition of young van dyck. his parents fostered his desires, and after he had served an apprenticeship with the artist van balen, a place was secured for him in the rubens studio. for a full year the ambitious rubens took small notice of the van dyck lad, and possibly would not have selected him then as a favorite pupil but for an accident. rubens reduced his work to a system. while in his studio he was the incarnation of fire and energy. but at four o'clock each day he dismissed his pupils, locked the doors, and mounting his horse, rode off into the country, five miles and back. one afternoon, when the master had gone for his usual ride, several of the pupils returned to the studio, wishing to examine a certain picture, and by hook or by crook gained admittance. on an easel was a partly finished canvas, the paint fresh from the hands of the master. the boys examined the work and then began to scuffle--boys of sixteen or seventeen always scuffle when left to themselves. they scuffled so successfully that the easel was upset, and young van dyck fell backwards upon the wet canvas, so that the design was transferred to his trousers. the picture was ruined. the young men looked upon their work aghast. it meant disgrace for them all. in despair van dyck righted the easel, seized a brush, and began to replace the picture ere it could fade from his memory. his partners in crime looked on with special personal interest and encouraged him with words of lavish praise. he worked to within ten minutes of the time the master was due; and then all made their escape by the window through which they had entered. the next day, when the class assembled, the pupils were ordered to stand up in line. then they were catechized individually as to who had replaced the master's picture with one of his own. all pleaded ignorance until the master reached the blond-haired van dyck. the boy made a clean breast of it all, save that he refused to reveal the names of his accomplices. "then you painted the picture alone?" "yes," came the firm answer that betokened the offender was resolved on standing the consequences. the master relieved the strained tension by a laugh, and declared that he had only discovered the work was not his own by perceiving that it was a little better than he could do. accidents are not always unlucky--this advanced young van dyck at once to the place of first assistant to peter paul rubens. * * * * * commissions were pouring in on rubens. with him the tide was at flood. he had been down to paris and had returned in high spirits with orders to complete that extensive set of pictures for marie de medici; he also had commissions from various churches; and would-be sitters for portraits waited in his parlors, quarreling about which should have first place. van dyck, his trusted first lieutenant, lived in his house. the younger man had all the dash, energy and ambition of the older one. he caught the spirit of the master, and so great was his skill that he painted in a way that thoroughly deceived the patrons; they could not tell whether rubens or van dyck had done the work. this was very pleasing to rubens. but when van dyck began sending out pictures on his own account, properly signed, and people said they were equal to those of rubens, if not better, rubens shrugged his shoulders. there was as little jealousy in the composition of peter paul rubens as in any artistic man we can name; but to declare that he was incapable of jealousy, as a few of his o'er-zealous defenders did, is to apply the whitewash. the artistic temperament is essentially feminine, and jealousy is one of its inherent attributes. of course there are all degrees of jealousy, but the woman who can sit serenely by and behold her charms ignored for those of another, by one who yesterday sat at her feet making ballad to her eyebrow and sighing like a furnace, does not exist on the planet called earth. the artist, in any line, craves praise, and demands applause as his lawful right; and the pupil who in excellence approaches him, pays him a compliment that warms the cockles of his heart. but let a pupil once equal him and the pupil's name is anathema. i can not conceive of any man born of woman who would not detest another man who looked like him, acted like him, and did difficult things just as well. such a one robs us of our personality, and personality is all there is of us. the germ of jealousy in rubens' nature had never been developed. he dallied with no "culture-beds," and the thought that any one could ever really equal him had never entered his mind. his conscious sense of power kept his head high above the miasma of fear. but now a contract for certain portraits that were to come from the rubens studio had been drawn up by the jesuit brothers, and in the contract was inserted a clause to the effect that van dyck should work on each one of the pictures. "pray you," said rubens, "to which van dyck do you refer? there are many of the name in antwerp." the jealousy germ had begun to develop. and about this time van dyck was busying himself as understudy, by making love to rubens' wife. rubens was a score of years older than his pupil, and isabella was somewhere between the two--say ten years older than van dyck, but that is nothing! these first fierce flames that burn in the heart of youth are very apt to be for some fair dame much older than himself. no psychologist has ever yet just fathomed the problem, and i am sure it is too deep for me--i give it up. and yet the fact remains, for how about doctor samuel johnson--and did not our own robert louis fall desperately in love with a woman sixteen years his senior? aye, and married her, too, first asking her husband's consent, and furtherance also being supplied by the ex-husband giving the bride away at the altar. at least, we have been told so. were this sketch a catalog, a dozen notable instances could be given in which very young men have been struck hard by women old enough to have nursed them as babes. van dyck loved isabella rubens ardently. he grew restless, feverish, lost appetite and sighed at her with lack-luster eye across the dinner-table. rubens knew of it all, and smiled a grim, sickly smile. "i, too, love every woman who sits to me for a portrait. he'll get over it," said the master. "it all began when i allowed him to paint her picture." busy men of forty, with ambitions, are not troubled by anthony hope's interrogation. they glibly answer, "no, no, love is not all--it's only a small part of life--simply incidental!" but van dyck continued to sigh, and all of his spare time was taken up in painting pictures of the matronly isabella. he managed to work even in spite of loss of appetite; and sitters sometimes called at the studio and asked for "master van dyck," whereas before there was only one master in the whole domain. rubens grew aweary. he was too generous to think of crushing van dyck, and too wise to attempt it. to cast him out and recognize him openly as a rival would be to acknowledge his power. a man with less sense would have kicked the lovesick swain into the street. rubens was a true diplomat. he decided to get rid of van dyck and do it in a way that would cause no scandal, and at the same time be for the good of the young man. he took van dyck into his private office and counseled with him calmly, explaining to him how hopeless must be his love for isabella. he further succeeded in convincing the youth that a few years in italy would add the capsheaf to his talent. without italy he could not hope to win all; with italy all doors would open at his touch. then he led him to his stable and presented him with his best saddle-horse, and urged immediate departure for a wider field and pastures new. a few days later the handsome van dyck--with a goodly purse of gold, passports complete, and saddlebags well filled with various letters of introduction to rubens' italian friends--followed by a cart filled with his belongings, started gaily away, bound for the land where art had its birth. "with italy--with italy i can win all!" he kept repeating to himself as he turned his horse's head to the south. * * * * * the first day's ride took the artistic traveler to the little village of saventhem, five miles from brussels. here he turned aside long enough to say good-by to a fair young lady, anna van ophem by name, whom he had met a few months before at antwerp. he rode across the broad pasture, entered the long lane lined with poplars, and followed on to the spacious old stone mansion in the grove of trees. anna herself saw him coming and came out to meet him. they had not been so very well acquainted, but the warmth of a greeting all depends upon where it takes place. it was lonely for the beautiful girl there in the country: she welcomed the handsome young painter-man as though he were a long-lost brother, and proudly introduced him to her parents. instead of a mere call he was urged to put up his horse and remain overnight; and a servant was sent out to find the man who drove the cart with the painter's belongings, and make him comfortable. the painter decided that he would remain overnight and make an early start on the morrow. and it was so agreed. there was music in the evening, and pleasant converse until a late hour, for the guest must sit up and see the moon rise across the meadow--it would make such a charming subject for a picture! so they sat up to see the moon rise across the meadow. at breakfast the next morning there was a little banter on the subject of painting. could not the distinguished painter remain over one day and give his hosts a taste of his quality? "i surely will if the fair anna will sit for her portrait!" he courteously replied. the fair anna consented. the servant who drove the cart had gotten on good terms with the servants of the household, and was being initiated into the mysteries of making dutch cheese. meanwhile the master had improvised a studio and was painting the portrait of the charming anna. after working two whole days he destroyed the canvas because the picture was not keyed right, and started afresh. the picture was fairish good, but his desire now was to paint the beautiful anna as the madonna. van dyck's affections having been ruthlessly uprooted but a few days before, the tendrils very naturally clung to the first object that presented itself--and this of course was the intelligent and patient sitter, aged nineteen last june. if rubens could not paint the picture of a lady without falling in love with her, what should be expected of his best pupil, van dyck? pygmalion loved into life the cold marble which his hand had shaped, and thus did van dyck love his pictures into being. all portrait-painters are sociable--they have to be in order to get acquainted with the subject. the best portrait-painter in america talks like a windmill as he works, and tries a whole set round of little jokes, and dry asides and trite aphorisms on the sitter, meanwhile cautiously noting the effect. for of course so long as a sitter is coldly self-conscious, and fully mindful that he is "being took," his countenance is as stiff, awkward, and constrained as that of a farmer at a dinner-party. hence the task devolves upon the portrait-artist to bring out, by the magic of his presence, the nature of the subject. "in order to paint a truly correct likeness, you must know your sitter thoroughly," said van dyck. the gracious rubens prided himself on his ability in this line. he would often spend half an hour busily mending a brush or mixing paints, talking the while, but only waiting for the icy mood of the sitter to thaw. then he would arrange the raiment of his patron, sometimes redress the hair, especially of his lady patrons, and once we know he kissed the cheek of the duchess of mantua, "so as to dispel her distant look." i know a portrait-artist in albany who is said to occasionally salute his lady customers by the same token, and if they protest he simply explains to them that it was all in the interest of art--in other words, artifice for art's sake. after three days at the charming old country-seat at saventhem, van dyck called his servant and told him to take the shoes off of the saddle-horse, and turn it and the cart-horse loose in the pasture. he had decided to remain and paint a picture for the village church. and it was so done. the pictures that van dyck then painted are there now in the same old ivy-grown, moss-covered church at saventhem. the next time you are in brussels it will pay you to walk out and see them. one of the pictures is called "saint martin dividing his cloak with two beggars." the saint is modestly represented by van dyck himself, seated astride the beautiful horse that rubens gave him. the other picture is "the holy family," in which the fair anna posed for the virgin, and her parents and kinsmen are grouped around her as the magi and attendants. both pictures reveal the true van dyck touch, and are highly prized by the people of the village and the good priests of the church. each night a priest carries in a cot and sleeps in the chancel to see that these priceless works of art are protected from harm. when you go there to see them, give the cowled attendant a franc and he will unfold the tale, not just as i have written it, but substantially. he will tell you that van dyck stopped here on his way to italy and painted these pictures as a pious offering to god, and what boots it after all! more than once have the village peasants collected, armed with scythes, hoes and pitchforks, to protect these sacred pictures from vandalism on the part of lustful collectors or marauding bands of soldiers. in eighteen hundred fourteen, a detachment of french soldiers killed a dozen of the villagers, and a priest fell fighting for these treasures on the sacred threshold, stabbed to his death. then the vandals tramped over the dead bodies, entered the church, and cut from its frame van dyck's "holy family" and carried the picture off to paris. but after napoleon had gotten his waterloo (only an hour's horseback ride from saventhem), the picture was restored to the villagers on order of the convention. rubens waited expectantly, thinking to have news from his brilliant pupil in italy. he waited a month. two months passed, and still no word. after three months a citizen reported that the day before he had seen van dyck, aided by a young woman, putting up a picture in the village church at saventhem. rubens saddled his horse and rode down there. he found van dyck and his lady-love sitting hand in hand on a mossy bank, in a leafy grove, listening to the song of a titmouse. rubens did not chide the young man; he merely took him one side and told him that he had stayed long enough, and "beyond the alps lies italy." he also suggested that anthony van dyck could not afford to follow the example of his illustrious roman namesake who went down into egypt and found things there so softly luxurious that he forgot home, friends, country--all! to remain at saventhem would be death to his art--he must have before him the example of the masters. van dyck said he would think about it; and rubens took a look at his old saddle-horse rolling in the pasture or wading knee-deep in clover, and rode back home. in a few days he sent chevalier nanni down to the country-seat at saventhem, to tell van dyck that he was on his way to italy and that van dyck had better accompany him. van dyck concluded to go. he made tearful promises to his beautiful anna that he would return for her in a year. and so the servant, who had become an expert in the making of dutch cheese, caught the horses out of the pasture, and having rebroken them, the cavalcade started southward in good sooth. * * * * * it was four years before van dyck returned. he visited milan, florence, verona, mantua, venice and rome, and made himself familiar with the works of the masters. everywhere he was showered with attention, and the fact that he was the friend and protege of rubens won him admittance into the palaces of the nobles. the four years in italy widened his outlook and transformed him from a merely handsome youth into a man of dignity and poise. great was his relief when he returned to antwerp to hear that the pretty anna van ophem of saventhem had been married three years before to a worthy wine merchant of brussels, and was now the proud mother of two handsome boys. great was the welcome that van dyck received at antwerp; and in it all the gracious rubens joined. but there was one face the returned traveler missed: isabella had died the year before. the mere fact that a man has been away for several years studying his profession gives him a decided prestige when he returns. van dyck, fresh from italy, exuberant with life and energy, became at once the vogue. he opened a studio, following the same lines that rubens had, and several churches gave him orders for extensive altarpieces. antwerp prided herself on being an artistic center. buyers from england now and then appeared, and several of rubens' pictures had been taken to london to decorate the houses and halls of royalty. portrait-painting is the first form of art that appeals to a rude and uncultivated people. to reproduce the image of a living man in stone, or to show a likeness of his face in paint, is calculated to give a thrill even to a savage. there is something mysterious in the art, and the desire to catch the shadow ere the substance fades is strong in the human heart. one reason that sacred art was so well encouraged in the middle ages was because the faces portrayed were reproductions of living men and women. this lent an intense personal interest in the work, and insured its fostering care. callous indeed was the noble who would not pay good coin to have himself shown as saint paul, or his enemy as judas. in fact, "judas receiving the thirty pieces of silver" was a very common subject, and the "judas" shown was usually some politician who had given offense. in sixteen hundred twenty-eight, england had not yet developed an art-school of her own. all her art was an importation, for although some fine pictures had been produced in england, they were all the work of foreigners--men who had been brought over from the continent. henry the eighth had offered raphael a princely sum if he would come to london and work for a single year. raphael, however, could not be spared from italy to do work for "the barbarians," and so he sent his pupil, luca penni. bluff old hans holbein also abode in england and drew a goodly pension from the state. during the reign of mary and her spanish husband, philip, several pictures by titian arrived in london, via madrid. then, too, there were various copies of pictures by paul veronese, murillo and velasquez that long passed for original, because the copyist had faithfully placed the great artist's trademark in the proper place. queen elizabeth held averages good by encouraging neither art nor matrimony--whereas her father had set her the example of being a liberal patron of both. if elizabeth never discovered shakespeare, how could she be expected to know raphael? about sixteen hundred twenty, the year the "mayflower" sailed, paul vensomer, cornelis jannsen and daniel mytens went over to england from the netherlands and quickly made fortunes by painting portraits for the nobility. this was the first of that peculiar rage for having a hall filled with ancestors. the artists just named painted pictures of people long gone hence, simply from verbal descriptions, and warranted the likeness to give satisfaction. oh, the dutch are a thrifty folk! james the first had no special eye for beauty--no more than elizabeth had--but a few of his nobles were intent on providing posterity with handsome ancestors, and so the portrait-painter flourished. an important move in the cause of literature was made by king james when he placed sir walter raleigh in the tower; for raleigh's best contributions to letters were made during those thirteen years when he was alone, with the world locked out. and when his mind began to lose its flash, the king wisely put a quietus on all danger of an impaired output by cutting off the author's head. still, there was no general public interest in art until the generous charles appeared upon the scene. charles was an elegant scholar and prided himself on being able to turn a sonnet or paint a picture; and the only reason, he explained, why he did not devote all his time to literature and art was because the state must be preserved. he could hire men to paint, but where could one be found who could govern? charles had purchased several of rubens' pieces, and these had attracted much attention in london. receptions were given where crowds surged and clamored and fought, just to get a look at the marvelous painting of the wonderful fleming. such gorgeous skill in color had never before been seen in england. charles knighted rubens and did his best to make him a permanent attache of his court; but rubens had too many interests of a financial and political nature at home to allow himself to be drawn away from his beloved antwerp. but now he had a rival--the only real rival he had ever known. van dyck was making head. the rival was younger, handsomer, and had such a blandishing tongue and silken manner that the crowd began to call his name and declare he was greater than cæsar. yet rubens showed not a sign of displeasure on his fine face--he bowed and smiled and agreed with the garrulous critics when they smote the table and declared that all of van dyck's madonnas really winked. he bided his time. and it soon came, for the agent of lord arundel, that great mæcenas of the polite arts, came over to flanders to secure treasures, and of course called on rubens. and rubens talked only of van dyck--the marvelous van dyck. the agent secured several copies of van dyck's work, and went back to england, telling of all that rubens had told him, with a little additional coloring washed in by his own warm imagination. to discover a genius is next to being one yourself. lord arundel felt that all he had heard of van dyck must be true, and when he went to the king and told him of the prodigy he had found, the king's zeal was warm as that of the agent, for does not the "messianic instinct" always live? this man must be secured at any cost. they had failed to secure rubens, but the younger man had no family ties, no special property interests, neither was he pledged to his home government as was rubens. straightway the king of england dispatched a messenger urging anthony van dyck to come over to england. the promised rewards and honors were too great for the proud and ambitious painter to refuse. he started for england. * * * * * in stature van dyck was short, but of a very compact build. he carried the crown of his head high, his chin in, and his chest out. his name is another added to that list of big-little men who had personality plus, and whose presence filled a room. cæsar, napoleon, lord macaulay, aaron burr and that other little man with whom burr's name is inseparably linked, belong to the same type. these little men with such dynamic force that they can do the thinking for a race are those who have swerved the old world out of her ruts--whether for good or ill is not the question here. when you find one of these big-little men, if he does not stalk through society a conquering don juan it is because we still live in an age of miracles. women fed on van dyck's smile, and pined when he did not deign to notice them. he was royal in all his tastes--his manner was regal, and so proud was his step that when he passed forbidden lines, sentinels and servants saluted and made way, never daring to ask him for card, passport or countersign. he gloried in his power and worked it to its farthest limit. unlike rembrandt, he never painted beggars; nor did he ever stoop as titian did when he pictured his old mother as a peasant woman at market, in that gem of the belle d' arte at venice; nor did he ever reveal on his canvas wrinkled, weather-worn old sailors, as did velasquez. he pictured only royalty, and managed, in all his portraits, to put a look of leisure and culture and quiet good-breeding into the face, whether it was in the original or not. in fact, he fused into every picture that he painted a goodly modicum of his own spirit. you can always tell a van dyck portrait; there is in the face a self-sufficiency, a something that speaks of "divine right"--not of arrogance, for arrogance and assumption reveal a truth which man is trying to hide, and that is that his position is a new acquirement. van dyck's people are all to the manner born. he was thirty-three years old when he arrived in england. king charles furnished the painter a house at blackfriars, fronting the thames, to insure a good light, and gave him a summer residence in kent. all his expenses were paid by the state, and as his tastes were regal the demands on the public exchequer were not small. his title was, "principal painter in ordinary to the king and queen of england." van dyck had worked so long with rubens that he knew how to use 'prentice talent. he studied by a system and turned off a prodigious number of canvases. the expert can at once tell a picture painted by van dyck during his career in england: it lacks the care and finish that was shown in his earlier years. yet there is a subtle sweep and strength in it all that reveals the personality of the artist. twenty-two pictures he painted of king charles that we can trace. these were usually sent away as presents. and it is believed that in the seven years van dyck lived in england he painted nearly one thousand portraits. the courtly manner and chivalrous refinement of the fleming made him a prime favorite of charles. he was even more kingly than the king. in less than three months after he arrived in england charles publicly knighted him, and placed about his neck a chain of gold to which was attached a locket, set with diamonds, containing a picture of the king. a record of van dyck's affairs of the heart would fill a book. his old habit of falling in love with every lady patron grew upon him. his reputation went abroad, and his custom of thawing the social ice by talking soft nonsense to the lady on the sitter's throne, while it repelled some allured others. at last charles grew nettled and said that to paint lady digby as "the virgin" might be all right, and even to turn around and picture her as "susanna at the bath" was not necessarily out of place, but to show margaret lemon, anne carlisle and catherine wotton as "the three graces" was surely bad taste. and furthermore, when these same women were shown as "psyche," "diana" and the "madonna"--just as it happened--it was really too much! in fact, the painter must get married; and the king and queen selected for him a wife in the person of a scottish beauty, maria ruthven. had this proposition come a few years before, the proud painter would have flouted it. but things were changed. twinges of gout and sharp touches of sciatica backed up the king's argument that to reform were the part of wisdom. van dyck's manly shape was tending to embonpoint: he had evolved a double chin, the hair on his head was rather seldom, and he could no longer run upstairs three steps at a time. yes, he would get married, live the life of a staid, respectable citizen, and paint only religious subjects. society was nothing to him--he would give it up entirely. and so sir anthony van dyck was married to maria ruthven, at saint paul's cathedral, and the king gave the bride away, ceremonially and in fact. sir anthony's gout grew worse, and after some months the rheumatism took an inflammatory turn. other complications entered, which we would now call bright's disease--that peculiar complaint of which poor men stand in little danger. the king offered the royal physician a bonus of five hundred pounds if he would cure van dyck: but if he had threatened to kill the doctor if the patient died, just as did the greek friends of byron, when the poet was ill at rome, it would have made no difference. a year after his marriage, and on the day that maria ruthven gave birth to a child, anthony van dyck died, aged forty years. rubens had died but a few months before. the fair scottish wife did not care to retain her illustrious name at the expense of loneliness, and so shortly married again. whom she married matters little, since it would require a search-warrant to unearth even the man's name, so dead is he. but inasmuch as the brilliant helena fourment, second wife of rubens, whose picture was so often painted by her artist-husband, married again, why shouldn't madame van dyck follow the example? it is barely possible that charles lamb was right when he declared that no woman married to a genius ever believed her husband to be one. we know that the wife of edmund spenser became the faerie queene of another soon after his demise, and whenever spenser was praised in her presence she put on a look that plainly said, "i could a tale unfold." my own opinion is that a genius makes a very bad husband. and further, i have no faith in that specious plea, "a woman who marries a second time confers upon her first husband the highest compliment, for her action implies that she was so happy in her first love that she is more than willing to try it again." i think the reverse is more apt to be the truth, and that the woman who has been sorely disappointed in her first marriage is anxious to try the great experiment over again, in order if possible to secure that bliss which every daughter of eve feels is her rightful due. maria ruthven lived to rear a goodly brood of children, and samuel pepys records that she used to send a sort o' creepy feeling down the backs of callers by innocently introducing her children thus: "this is my eldest daughter, whose father was sir anthony van dyck, of whom you have doubtless heard; and these others are my children by my present husband, sergeant nobody." van dyck's remains are buried in saint paul's cathedral. a very fine monument, near the grave of turner, marks the spot; but his best monument is in the examples of his work that are to be found in every great art-gallery of the world. fortuny i think i knew fortuny as well as any one did. he was surcharged with energy, animation and good-cheer; and the sunshine he worked into every canvas he attempted, was only a reflection of the sparkling, gem-like radiance of his own nature. he absorbed from earth, air, sky, the waters and men, and transmuted all dross into gold. to him all things were good. --_letter from regnault_ [illustration: fortuny] now, once upon a day there was a swart, stubby boy by the name of mariano fortuny. he was ten years old, going on 'leven, and lived with his grandfather away up and up four flights of rickety stairs in an old house at the village of reus, in spain. mariano's father had died some years before--died mysteriously in a drunken fight at a fair, where he ran a punch and judy show. some said the devil had come and carried him off, just as he nightly did mr. punch. frowsy, little, shock-headed mariano didn't feel so awfully bad when his father died, because his father used to make him turn the hand-organ all day, and half the night, and take up the collections; and the fond parent used to cuff him when there were less than ten coppers in the tambourine. they traveled around from place to place, with a big yellow dog and a little blue wagon that contained the show. they hitched their wagon to a dog. at night they would sleep in some shed back of a tavern, or under a table at a market, and mariano would pillow his head on the yellow dog and curl up in a ball trying to keep warm. when the father died, a tall man, who carried a sword and wore spurs, and had two rows of brass buttons down the front of his coat, took the dog and the wagon and the punch and judy show and sold 'em all--so as to get money to pay the funeral expenses of the dead man. the tall man with the sword might have sold little mariano, too, or thrown him in with the lot for good measure, but nobody seemed to want the boy--they all had more boys than they really needed already. a fat market-woman gave the lad a cake, and another one gave him two oranges, and still another market-woman, fatter than the rest, blew her nose violently on her check apron and said it was too bad a boy like that didn't have a mother. mariano never had a mother--at least none that he knew of, and it really seemed as if it didn't make much difference, but now he began to cry, and, since the fat woman had suggested it, really wished he had a mother, after all. there was an old priest standing by in the group. mariano had not noticed him. but when the priest said, "but god is both our father and our mother, so no harm can come to us!" mariano looked up in his face and felt better. the priest's name was father gonzales; mariano knew, because this is what the market-woman called him. the fat market-woman talked with the priest, and the priest talked with the man with the dangling sword, and then father gonzales took the boy by the hand and led him away, and mariano trotted along by his side, quite content, save for a stifled wish that the big yellow dog might go too. and it is a gross error to suppose that a yellow dog is necessarily nothing but a canine whose capillary covering is highly charged with ocherish pigment. where they were going made no difference. "god is our father and our mother"--father gonzales said so--and, faith! he ought to know. and by and by they came to the tall old tenement-house, and climbed up the stairs to where mariano's old "grandfather" lived. perhaps he wasn't mariano's sure-enough grandfather, but he was just as good as if he had been. * * * * * but now it was an awfully long time ago since little mariano and father gonzales had first climbed the stairs to where grandfather fortuny lived. the old grandfather and mariano worked very hard, but they were quite content and happy. they had enough to eat, and each had a straw bed and warm blankets to cover him at night, and when the weather was very cold they made a fire of charcoal in a brazier and sat before it with spread-out hands, very thankful that god had given them such a good home and so many comforts. the grandfather made images out of white plaster, flowers sometimes, and curious emblems that people bought for votive offerings. little mariano's share in the work was to color the figures with blue and red paint, and give a lifelike tint to the fruit and bouquets that the grandfather cast from the white plaster. father gonzales was their best customer, and used often to come up and watch mariano paint an image of the virgin, just as he ordered it. mariano was very proud to receive father gonzales' approval; and when the image was complete he would sometimes get a copper extra for delivering the work to some stricken person that the priest wished especially to remember. for one of father gonzales' peculiarities was that although he bought lots of things he always gave them away. mariano used often to carry letters and packages for father gonzales. one day the good priest came up the stairs quite out of breath. he carried a letter in his hand. "here, mariano, my boy, you can run, while my poor old legs are full of rheumatism. here, take this letter down to the diligence office and tell them to send it tonight, sure. it is for the bishop at barcelona and it must be in his hands before tomorrow. run now, for the last post closes very soon." mariano took the letter, dived hatless out of the door and, sitting on the first stair, shot to the bottom like the slide to doom. grandfather fortuny and the gentle old priest leaned out over the stone window-sill and laughed to see the boy scurry down the street. then the priest went his way. grandfather fortuny waited, looking out of the window, for the boy to come back. the boy did not come. he waited. lights began to flicker in the windows across the way. a big red star came up in the west. the wind blew fresh and cool. the old man shut down the sash, and looked at the untasted supper of brown bread and goat's milk and fresh fruit. he took his hat from the peg and his cane from the corner and hobbled down the stairs. he went to the diligence office. no one there remembered seeing the boy--how can busy officials be expected to remember everything? grandfather fortuny made his way to the house of father gonzales. the priest had been called away to attend a man sick unto death--he would not be back for an hour. the old man waited--waited one hour--two. father gonzales came, and listened calmly to the troubled tale of the old man. then together they made their way over to the tall tenement and up the creaky stairway. there was the flicker of a candle to be seen under the door. they entered, and there at the table sat mariano munching silently on his midnight supper. "where have you been?" was the surprised question of both old men, speaking as one person. "me? i've been to barcelona to give the letter to the bishop--the last diligence had gone," said the boy with his mouth full of bread. "to barcelona--ten miles, and back?" "me? yes." "did you walk?" "no, i ran." father gonzales looked at grandfather fortuny, and grandfather fortuny looked at father gonzales; then they both burst out laughing. mariano placed an extra plate on the table, and the three drew up chairs. * * * * * business was looking up with grandfather fortuny and mariano. all the images they made were quickly taken. people said they liked the way the cheeks and noses of the apostles were colored; and when father gonzales brought in a sailor who had been shipwrecked, and the sailorman left ten pesetas for a plaster-of-paris ship to be placed as a votive offering in the chapel of saint dominic, their cup was full. mariano made the ship himself, and painted it, adding the yellow pennant of spain to the mainmast. this piece of work caused a quarrel between grandfather fortuny and father gonzales. the priest declared that a boy like that shouldn't waste his youth in the shabby, tumble-down village of reus--he should go to barcelona and receive instruction in art. the grandfather cried and protested that the boy was all he had to love in the wide world; he himself was growing feeble, and without the lad's help at the business nothing could be done--starvation would be the end. besides, it would take much money to send mariano to the academy--it would take all their savings, and more! do not inflate the child with foolish notions of making a fortune and winning fame! the world is cruel, men are unkind, and the strife of trying to win leads only to disappointment and vain regret at the last. did not the artist salvio commit suicide? mariano had now a trade--who in reus could make an image of the virgin and color it in green, red and yellow so it would sell on sight for two pesetas? father gonzales smiled and said something about images at two pesetas each as compared with the work of murillo and velasquez. he laughed at the old man's fears of starvation, and defied him to name a single case where any one had ever starved. and as for expenses, why, he had thought it all out: he would pay mariano's expenses himself! "should we two old men, about ready to die, stand in the way of the success of that boy?" exclaimed the priest. "why, he will be an artist yet, do you hear?--an artist!" they compromised on the grammar-school, with three lessons a week by a drawing-master. grandfather fortuny did not starve. mariano was a regular steam-engine for work. he made more images evenings, and better ones, than they had ever made before during the day. finally father gonzales' wishes prevailed and mariano was sent to the academy at barcelona. out of his own scanty income the old priest set aside a sum equal to eight dollars a month for mariano; and when the grandfather's sight grew too feeble for him to work at his trade he moved over to the rectory. for a year, father gonzales sent the eight dollars on the first of each month. and then there came to him a brusk notification from claudio lorenzale, the director of the academy, to the effect that certain sums had been provided by the city of barcelona to pay the expenses of four of the most worthy pupils at the academy, and mariano fortuny had been voted as one who should receive the benefit of the endowment. father gonzales read the notice to grandfather fortuny, and then they sent out for a fowl, and a bottle and a loaf of bread two feet long; and together the two old men made merry. the grandfather had now fully come to the belief that the lad would some day be a great artist. we do not know much concerning the details of mariano's life at barcelona, save from scraps of information he now and then gave out to his friends regnault and lorenzo valles, and which they in turn have given to us. yet we know he won the love of his teachers, and that federico madrazo picked out his work and especially recommended it. madrazo, i believe, is living now--at least he was a few years ago. he was born and bred an artist. his father, joseph, had been a pupil under david, and was an artist of more than national renown. he served the court at madrid in various diplomatic relations, and won wealth and a noble name. federico madrazo used to spend a portion of his time at the academy of barcelona as instructor and adviser to the director. i do not know his official position, if he had one, but i know he afterward became the director of the museum of art at madrid. madrazo had two sons, who are now celebrated in the art world. one of them, raimonde madrazo, is well known in paris, and, in eighteen hundred ninety-three, had several pictures on exhibition at the chicago exposition; while another son, rivera, is a noted sculptor and a painter of no small repute. and so it was that mariano fortuny at barcelona attracted the attention of federico madrazo, the artist patrician. i can not find that mariano's work at this time had any very special merit. it merely showed the patient, painstaking, conscientious workman. but the bright, strong, eager young man was the sort that every teacher must love. he knew what he was at school for, and did his best. madrazo said, "he's a manly fellow, and if he does not succeed he is now doing more--he deserves success." so mariano fortuny and the great madrazo, pupil and teacher, became firm friends. and we know that, in eighteen hundred fifty-seven, mariano was voted the "prize of rome." each year this prize was awarded to the scholar who on vote of the teachers and scholars was deemed most deserving. it meant two years of study at rome with five hundred dollars a year for expenses. and the only obligation was that the pupil should each year send home two paintings: one an original and the other a copy of some old masterpiece. the sum of two hundred fifty dollars was advanced to mariano at once. he straightway sent one-half of the amount down to his grandfather, with particulars of the good news. "what did i tell you?" said the grandfather. "it was i who first taught him to use a brush. i used to caution him about running his reds into his greens, and told him to do as i said and he would be a great artist yet." father gonzales and grandfather fortuny went out and bought two fowls, three bottles, and a loaf of bread a yard long. mariano made all preparations to start for rome. but the night before the journey was to begin, conscription officers came to his lodging and told him to consider himself under arrest--he must serve the state as a soldier. it seems that the laws of spain are such that any citizen can be called on to carry arms at any moment; and there are officials who do little but lie in wait for those who can pay, but have no time to fight. these officials are more intent on bleeding their countrymen than the enemy. mariano applied to his friend madrazo for advice as to what to do, and madrazo simply cut the gordian knot by paying out of his own purse three hundred dollars to secure the release of the young artist. and so mariano started gaily away, carrying with him the heart's love of two old men, and the admiring affection of a whole school. the grandfather died three months afterward--went babbling down into the valley, making prophecies to the last to the effect that mariano fortuny would yet win deathless fame. and father gonzales lived to see these prophecies fulfilled. * * * * * then, at twenty-two, fortuny was ordered by the city of barcelona to accompany general prim on his algerian expedition, it was a milepost on his highway of success. nominally he was secretary to the general. who it was secured his appointment he never knew; but we have reason to suppose it was federico madrazo. fortuny's two years in rome had just expired; his barcelona friends knew that the time had been well spent, and the opportunities improved, and a further transplantation they believed would result in an increased blossoming. "enter into life! enter into life!" was the call of a prophet long ago. in barbaric africa, fortuny entered into life with the same fine, free, eager, receptive spirit that he had elsewhere shown. general prim, soldier and scholar, saw that his secretary was capable of doing something more than keeping accounts, and so a substitute was hired and fortuny was sent here and there as messenger, but in reality, so that he could see as many sides of old moorish life as possible. staid old general prim loved the young man just as madrazo had. fortuny was not much of a soldier, for war did not interest him, save from its picturesque side. "war is transient, but beauty is eternal," he once said. even the fact that the spanish army was now on the soil of her ancient enemy, the moor, did not stir his patriotism. he sketched with feverish industry, fearing the war would end too soon, and he would have to go back with empty sketchbooks. the long stretches of white sands, the glaring sunshine, the paradox of riotous riches and ragged poverty, the veiled women, blinking camels, long rifles with butts inlaid with silver, swords whose hilts are set with precious stones, gray arab horses with tails sweeping the ground, and everywhere the flutter of rags--these things bore in on his artist-nature and filled his heart. he hastily painted in a few of his sketches and sent them as presents to his friends in barcelona. the very haste of the work, the meager outline and simple colors--glaring whites and limpid blues, with here and there a dash of red to indicate a scarf or sash--astonished his old teachers. here were pictures painted in an hour that outmatched any of the carefully worked out, methodical attempts of the academy! it was all life, life, life--palpitating life. the sketches were shown, the men in power interviewed, and the city of barcelona ordered fortuny to paint one large picture to be eventually placed in the parliament house to commemorate the victory of general prim. as an earnest of good faith a remittance of five hundred dollars accompanied the order. the war was short. at the battle of wad ras the enemy was routed after a pitched fight where marked dash and spirit were shown on both sides. and so this was to be the scene of fortuny's great painting. hundreds of sketches were made, including portraits of general prim and various officers. fortuny set about the work as a duty to his patrons who had so generously paved the way for all the good fortune that was his. the painting was to be a world-beater; and fortuny, young, strong, ambitious--knowing no such word as fail--went at the task. fortuny had associated with many artists at rome and he had heard of that wonderful performance of horace vernet's, the "taking of the smalah of abd-el-kader." this picture of vernet's, up to that time, was the largest picture ever held in a single frame. it is seventy-one feet long and sixteen feet high. to describe that picture of vernet's with its thousand figures, charging cavalry, flashing sabers, dust-clouds, fleeing cattle, stampeding buffalos, riderless horses, overturned tents, and fear-stricken, beautiful women would require a book. in passing, it is well to say that this picture of vernet's is the parent of all the panorama pictures that have added to the ready cash of certain enterprising citizens of chicago, and that vernet is the father of the modern "military school." if you have seen vernet's painting you can never forget it, and if there were nothing else to see at versailles but this one picture you would be repaid, and amply repaid, for going out from paris to view it. before beginning his great canvas fortuny was advised to go to versailles and see the vernet masterpiece. he went and spent three days studying it in detail. he turned away discouraged. to know too much of what other men have said is death to a writer; for an artist to be too familiar with the best in art is to have inspiration ooze out at every pore. fortuny took a week to think it over. he was not discouraged--not he--but he decided to postpone work on the masterpiece and busy himself for a while with simpler themes. he remained at paris and made his thumb-nail sketches: a moor in spotless white robe with red cap, leaning against a wall; a camel-driver at rest; a solitary horseman with long spear, a trellis with climbing vines, and a veiled beauty looking out from behind, etc. and in all these pictures is dazzling sunshine and living life. the joy of them, the ease, the grace, the beauty, are matchless. goupil and company, the art-dealers, contracted to take all the work he could turn out. and fortuny did not make the mistake of doing too much. he possessed the artistic conscience, and nothing left his studio that did not satisfy his heart and head. trips had been taken to florence, venice and the beloved morocco, and the poise and grace and limpid beauty of fortuny's pictures seemed to increase. three years had passed, and now came a letter from the authorities at barcelona asking for their great battle picture, and a remittance was sent "to meet expenses." fortuny promised, and made an effort at the work. another year went by and another letter of importunity came. barcelona did not comprehend how her gifted son was now being counted among the very ablest artists in paris--that world center of art. artists should struggle for recognition, be rebuffed, live on a crust in dingy garrets, cultivate a gaunt and haggard look, and wear suits shiny at the elbows! how could the old professors down at barcelona understand that this mere youth was pressed with commissions from rich americans, and in receipt of a princely income? fortuny returned all the money that barcelona had sent him, regarding it all as a mere loan, and promised to complete the battle picture whenever he could bring his mind to bear upon it so that the work would satisfy himself. the next year he visited spain and was received at madrid and barcelona as a prince. decorations and ceremonials greeted him at madrid; and at barcelona there were arches of triumph built over the streets, and a hundred students drew his carriage from the steamboat-landing up to the old academy where he used to draw angles and curves from a copy all day long. and it was not so many moons after this little visit to barcelona that wedding-bells were sent a-swing, and mariano fortuny was married to cecilia, daughter of federico madrazo. their honeymoon of a year was spent at the alhambra palace amid the scenes made famous by our own washington irving. and it was from granada that he sent a picture to america to be sold for the benefit of the sufferers in the chicago fire. but there were no idle days. the artist worked with diligence, dipping deep into the old moorish life, and catching the queer angles of old ruins and more queer humanity upon his palette. his noble wife proved his mate in very deed, and much of his best work is traceable to her loving criticism and inspiration. paris, granada and rome were their home, each in turn. the prices fortuny realized were even greater than meissonier commanded. some of his best pieces are owned in america, through the efforts of w. h. stewart of philadelphia. at the a. t. stewart sale, in new york, the "fortunys" brought higher prices than anything else in the collection, save, i believe, the " " of meissonier. in fact, there are more "fortunys" owned in new york than there are in either barcelona or madrid. indeed, there is a marked similarity between the style of fortuny and that of meissonier. when some busybody informed meissonier that fortuny was imitating him, meissonier replied, "to have such a genius as mariano fortuny imitate me would be the greatest happiness of my whole career." fortuny's life is mirrored in his name: his whole career was one triumphant march to fortune, fame, love and honor. he avoided society, as he was jealous of the fleeting hours, and his close friends were few; but those who knew him loved him to a point just this side of idolatry. fortuny died at rome on november twenty-second, eighteen hundred seventy-two, of brain rupture--an instant and painless death. in his short life of thirty-six years he accomplished remarkable results, but all this splendid work he regarded as merely in the line of preparation for a greater work yet to come. for some weeks before he died he had been troubled with a slight fever, contracted, he thought, from painting in a damp church; but the day of his death he took up his brush again and, as he worked, gaily talked with his wife of their plans for the future. it is very pleasant to recall, however, that before death claimed him, fortuny had completed the great picture of "the battle of wad ras." the canvas is now hanging on the wall of the parliament house at barcelona, and the picture is justly the pride of the city that showed itself such a wise and loving mother to the motherless boy, mariano fortuny. * * * * * italy and spain are sisters, and not merely first cousins, as mr. whistler once remarked. their history to a great degree is contemporaneous. they have seen dynasties arise, grow old, and die; and schools of art, once the pride of the people, sink into blank forgetfulness: for schools, like dynasties and men, live their day and go tottering to their rest. italy, as the elder sister, has set the fashion for the younger. the manners, habits and customs of the people have been the same. to a great extent all art is controlled by fad and fashion; and all the fashions in the polite arts easily drifted from italy into spain. the works of titian carried to madrid produced a swarm of imitators, some of whom, like velasquez, zurbaran, ribera and murillo, having spun their cocoons, passed through the chrysalis stage, developed wings, and soared to high heaven. but the generations of imitators who followed these have usually done little better than gape. and although spain has been a kind mother to art for four hundred years, yet the modern school of spanish art shows no "apostolic succession" from the past. it is a thing separate and alone: gorgeous, dazzling, strong, and rarely beautiful. totally unlike the art of the old masters, it takes its scenes from nature and actual living life--depending not on myth, legend or fable. it discards pure imagination, and by holding a mirror up to nature has done the world the untold blessing of introducing it to itself. the average man sees things in the mass, and therefore sees nothing; everything, to his vision, is run together in hopeless jumble: all is discord, confusion--inextricable confusion worse confounded. but the artist who is also a scientist (whether he knows it or not) discovers that in the seeming confusion, order, method and law yet reign supreme. and to prove his point he lifts from the tangle of things one simple, single scene and shows this, and this alone, in all its full and rounded completeness--beautiful as a snow-crystal on the slide of a microscope. all art consists in this: to show the harmony of a part. and having seen the harmony of a part we pass on to a point where we can guess the harmony of the whole. whether you be painter, sculptor, musician or writer, all your endeavors are toward lifting from the mass of things a scene, a form, a harmony, a truth, and, relieving it from all that distracts, catch it in immortal amber. the writer merely unearths truth: truth has always existed: he lifts it out of the mass, and holding it up where others can see it, the discerning cry, "yes, yes--we recognize it!" the musician takes the sound he needs from the winds blowing through the forest branches, constructs a harp strung with apollo's golden hair, and behold, we have a symphony! the wrongs of a race in bondage never touched the hearts of men until a woman lifted out a single, solitary black man and showed us the stripes upon the quivering back of uncle tom. one human being nailed to a cross reveals the concentrated woes of earth; and as we gaze upon the picture, into our hard hearts there comes creeping a desire to lessen the sorrows of the world by an increased love; and a gentleness and sympathy are ours such as we have never before known. fortuny is king of the modern school of spanish painters. his genius made an epoch, and worked a revolution in the art of his country--and, some have said, in the art of the time. as a nation it may be that spain is crumbling into dust, but her rotting ruins will yet fertilize many a bank of violets. certain it is that no modern art surpasses the art of spain; and for once italy must go to spain for her pattern. ary scheffer the artistic tastes of the princess, the lofty range of her understanding, her liberality, and the sterling benevolence of her mind all combined to engender a coldness and lack of sympathy between herself and the persons composing the court. in the heart of the princess dwelt a deep religious faith, such as becomes a noble, womanly heart. nevertheless, her ardent mind sought to penetrate every mystery, so she was often accused of being a doubter--when the reverse was really true. --_ary scheffer to his brother arnola_ [illustration: ary scheffer] the artistic evolution of ary scheffer was brought about mainly through the influence of three women. in the love of these women he was bathed, nourished and refreshed; their approbation gave direction to his efforts; for them he lived and worked; while a fourth woman, by her inability to comprehend the necessities of such a genius, clipped his wings, so that he fell to earth and his feet mired in the clay. the first factor in the evolution of scheffer, in point of both time and importance, was his mother. she was the flint upon which he tried his steel: his teacher, adviser, critic, friend. she was a singularly strong and capable woman, seemingly slight and fragile, but with a deal of whipcord, sinewy strength in both her physical and mental fiber. no one can study the lives of eminent artists without being impressed with the fact that the artist is essentially the child of his mother. the sympathy demanded to hold a clear, mental conception--the imagination that sees the whole, even when the first straight line is made--is the gift of mother to son. she gives him of her spirit, and he is heir to her love of color, her desire for harmony and her hunger for sympathy. these, plus his masculine strength, may allow him to accomplish that which was to her only a dream. if a mother is satisfied with her surroundings, happy in her environment, and therefore without "a noble discontent," her children will probably be quite willing to have a good time on the "unearned increment" that is their material portion. her virtue and passive excellence die with her, and she leaves a brood of mediocrities. were this miraculous scheme of adjustment lacking in the eternal plan, wealth, achievement and talent could be passed along in a direct line and the good things of earth be corraled by a single family. but nature knows no law of entail; she does, however, have her law of compensation, and this is the law which holds in order the balance of things. if a man accumulates a vast fortune, he probably also breeds spendthrifts who speedily distribute his riches; if he has great talent, the talent dies with him, for he only inspires those who are not of his blood; and if a woman is deprived of the environment for which her soul yearns, quite often her children adjust the average by working out an answer to her prayer. when twenty-eight years of age we find madame scheffer a widow, with three sons: by name, ariel, henri and arnold. madame scheffer had a little money--not much, but enough to afford her a small, living income. she might have married again, or she could have kept her little "dot" intact and added interest to principal by going and living with kinsmen who were quite willing to care for her and adopt her children. but no; she decided to leave the sleepy little dutch village where they lived in holland, and go down to paris. and so she thrust her frail bark boldly out upon the tide, hoping and expecting that somewhere and sometime the friendly islands would be reached. she would spend her last sou in educating her boys, and she knew, she said, that when that was gone, god would give them the power and inclination to care for her and provide for themselves. in short, she tumbled her whole basket of bread upon the waters, fully confident that it would come back buttered. her object in moving to paris was that her boys could acquire french, the language of learning, and also that they might be taught art. and so they moved to the great, strange world of paris--paris the gay, paris the magnificent, paris that laughs and leers and sees men and women go down to death, and still laughs on. they lived, away up and up in a tenement-house, in two little rooms. there was no servant, and the boys took hold cheerfully to do the housekeeping, for the mother wasn't so very strong. the first thing was to acquire the french language, and if you live in paris the task is easy. you just have to--that's all. madame scheffer was an artist of some little local repute in the village where they had lived, and she taught her boys the rudiments of drawing. ariel was always called ary. when he grew to manhood he adopted this pet name his mother had playfully given him. he used to call her "little mother." shortly after reaching paris, ary was placed in the studio of m. guerin. arnold showed a liking for the oriental languages, and was therefore allowed to follow the bent of his mind. henry waxed fat on the crumbs of learning that ary brought home. and so they lived and worked and studied; very happy, with only now and then twinges of fear for the future, for it would look a little black at times, do all they could to laugh away the clouds. it was a little democracy of four, with high hopes and lofty ideals. mutual tasks and mutual hardships bound them together in a love that was as strong as it was tender and sweet. two years of paris life had gone by, and the little fund that had not been augmented by a single franc in way of income had dwindled sadly. in six months it was gone. they were penniless. the mother sold her wedding-ring and the brooch her husband had given her before they were married. then the furniture went to the pawnbroker's, piece by piece. one day ary came bounding up the stairs, three steps at a time. he burst into the room and tossed into his mother's lap fifty francs. when he got his breath he explained that he had sold his first picture. ary, the elder boy, was eighteen; henri, the younger, was thirteen. "it was just like a play, you see," said ary scheffer, long years afterward. "when things get desperate enough they have to mend--they must. the pictures i painted were pretty bad, but i really believe they were equal to many that commanded large prices, and i succeeded in bringing a few buyers around to my views. genius may starve in a garret, if alone; but the genius that would let its best friends starve, too, being too modest to press its claims, is a little lacking somewhere." young scheffer worked away at any subject he thought would sell. he painted just as his teacher, guerin, told him, and guerin painted just like his idol, david, or as nearly as he could. art had gotten into a fixed groove; laws had been laid down as to what was classic and what not. conservatism was at the helm. art, literature, philosophy, science, even religion, have their periods of infancy, youth, manhood and decay. and there comes a time to every school, and every sect, when it ceases to progress. when it says, "there now, this is perfection, and he who seeks to improve on it is anathema," it is dead, and should be buried. but schools and sects and creeds die hard. creeds never can be changed: they simply become obsolete and are forgotten; they turn to dust and are blown away on the free winds of heaven. the art of the great david had passed into the hands of imitators. it had become a thing of metes and bounds and measurements and geometric theorems. its colors were made by mixing this with that according to certain fixed formulas. about this time a young playwright by the name of victor hugo was making much din, and the classics as a consequence were making mighty dole and endeavoring to hiss him down. the censor had forbidden a certain drama of hugo's to be played until it had been cut and trimmed and filed and polished, and made just like all other plays. victor hugo was the acknowledged leader of the spirit of protest; in lyric music rossini led; and delacroix raised the standard of revolt in painting. with this new school, which called itself "romanticism," madame scheffer and her sons sincerely sympathized. the term "romanticism" of itself means little, or nothing, or everything, but the thing itself is the eternal plea for the right of the individual--a cry for the privilege to live your own life and express the truth as you feel it, all in your own way. it is a revolution that has come a thousand times, and must and will come again and again. when custom gets greater than man it must be broken. the ankylosis of artistic smugness is no new thing. in heart and taste and ambition ary and the little mother were one. madame scheffer rejoiced in the revolt she saw in the air against the old and outgrown. she was a republican in all her opinions and ideals; and these feelings she shared with her boys. they discussed politics and art and religion over the teacups; and this brave and gentle woman kept intellectual pace with her sons, who in merry frolic often carried her about in their arms. only yesterday, it seemed to her, she had carried them, and felt upon her face the soft caress of baby hands. and now one of these sons stood a foot higher than she. ary scheffer was tall, slender, with a thoughtful, handsome face. the habit of close study, and the early realization of responsibilities had hastened his maturity. necessity had sharpened his business sense and given a practical side to his nature, so he deferred enough to the old world to secure from it the living that is every man's due. his pictures sold--sold for all they were worth. the prices were not large, but there was enough money so that the gaunt wolf that once scratched and sniffed at the door was no longer to be seen nor heard. they had all they needed. the little mother was the banker, and we may safely guess that nothing was wasted. pupils now came to ary scheffer--dull fellows from the schools, who wished to be coached. sitters in search of good portraits, cheap for cash, occasionally climbed the stairway. the little mother dusted about and fixed up the studio so as to make it look prosperous. one fine lady came in a carriage to sit for her portrait. she gave her wraps into the keeping of the little mother at the door, with an admonitory, "take care of these, mind you, or i'll report you to your master." the little mother bowed low and promised. that night when she told at the supper-table how the fine lady had mistaken her for a servant, henri said, "well, just charge the fine lady fifty francs extra in the bill for that." but ary would not consent to let the blunder go so cheaply. when the fine lady came for her next sitting, the little mother was called and advised with at length as to pose and color-scheme. neither was the advising sham, for ary deferred to his mother's judgment in many ways, and no important step was taken without her approval. they were more like lovers than mother and son. his treatment of her was more than affectionate--it was courteous and deferential, after the manner of men who had ancestors who were knights of the olden time. the desire to sit on a divan and be waited upon is the distinguishing feature of the heartless mistress of fortune. like the jeweled necklace and bands of gold at wrist and waist, which symbol a time when slavery was rife and these gauds had a practical meaning, so does the woman who in bringing men to her feet by beck and nod tell of animality too coarse for speech. but the woman with the great, tender and loving heart gives her all and asks no idolatrous homage. her delight is in serving, and willingly and more than willingly, for without thought she breaks the vase of precious ointment and wipes the feet of the beloved with the hairs of her head. madame scheffer sought in all ways to serve her sons, and so we find there was always a gentle rivalry between ary and his mother as to who could love most. she kept his studio in order, cleaned his brushes and prepared the canvas. in the middle of the forenoon she would enter his workroom with tea and toast or other little delicacies that he liked, and putting the tray down, would kiss the forehead of the busy worker and gently tiptoe out. when the day's work was done she intelligently criticized and encouraged; and often she would copy the picture herself and show how it could be changed for the better here or there. and all this fine, frank, loving companionship so filled ary's heart that he put far behind him all thought of a love for another with its closer tie. he lived and worked for the little mother. they were very happy, for they were succeeding. they had met the great, cruel world, the world of paris that romps and dances and laughs, and sees struggling and sad-eyed women and men go down to their death, and still laughs on; they had met the world in fair fight and they had won. the little mother had given all for ary; on his genius and ability she had staked her fortune and her life. and now, although he was not twenty-one, she saw all that she had given in perfect faith, coming back with interest ten times compounded. the art world of paris had both recognized and acknowledged the genius of her boy--with that she was content. * * * * * in the year eighteen hundred eighteen, we find general lafayette writing to lady morgan in reference to a proposed visit to the chateau de la grange. he says: "i do not think you will find it dull here. among others of our household is a talented young painter by the name of scheffer." later, lady morgan writes to friends in england from la grange, "ary scheffer, a talented artist, is a member of our company here at the chateau. he is quite young, but is already a person of note. he is making a portrait of the general, and giving lessons to the young ladies in drawing, and i, too, am availing myself of his tutorship." through his strong republican tendencies scheffer had very naturally drifted into the company of those who knew lafayette. the artist knew the history of the great man and was familiar with his american career. scheffer was interested in america, for the radicals with whom he associated were well aware that there might come a time when they would have to seek hastily some hospitable clime where to think was not a crime. and indeed, it is but natural that those with a penchant for heresy should locate a friendly shore, just as professional criminals study the extradition laws. lafayette, franklin and washington had long been to scheffer a trinity of familiar names, and when an opportunity came to be introduced to the great franco-american patriot he gladly took advantage of it. lafayette was sixty-one; scheffer was twenty-three, but there at once sprang up a warm friendship between them. not long after their first meeting scheffer was invited to come to la grange and make it his home as long as he cared to. the little mother urged the acceptance of such an invitation. to associate for a time with the aristocratic world would give the young man an insight into society and broaden his horizon. in the family of lafayette, scheffer mingled on an equality with the guests. his conversation was earnest, serious and elevated; and his manner so gracious and courtly that he won the respect of all he met. lady morgan intimates that his simplicity of manner tempted the young ladies who were members of his class in drawing to cut various innocent capers in his presence, and indulge in sly jokes which never would have been perpetrated had the tutor been more of a man of the world. it has happened more than once that men of the highest spirituality have had small respect for religion, as it is popularly manifested. the machinery of religion and religion itself are things that are often widely separated; and ary scheffer was too high-minded and noble to worship the letter and relinquish the spirit that maketh alive. he was of that type that often goes through the world scourged by a yearning for peace, and like the dove sent out from the ark finding no place to rest. all about he beheld greed, selfishness, hypocrisy and pretense. he longed for simplicity and absolute honesty, and was met by craft and diplomacy. he asked for religion, and was given a creed. and so into the hearts of such as he there comes creeping a spirit of revolt. instead of accepting this topsy-turvy old world and making the best of it, their eyes are fixed upon an ideal that heaven alone can realize. the home of lafayette was the rendezvous of the discontented. art, literature, politics and religion were all represented in the parlors of la grange. where franklin had discoursed poor richard philosophy, there now gathered each sunday night a company in which "the greatest of the americans" would have delighted. for this company, no question was too sacred for frank and free discussion. it was at the home of lafayette that scheffer met augustin thierry, and between these two there grew a friendship that only death was to divide. but there was one other person scheffer met at la grange who was to exercise a profound influence on his life: this was the duchess of orleans. the quiet manliness of the young artist impressed the future queen of france, and he was invited to neuilly to copy certain portraits. in the year eighteen hundred twenty-six, we find scheffer regularly established in the household of the duke and duchess of orleans, with commissions to paint portraits of all the members of the family, and incidentally to give lessons in drawing and mathematics to the princess marie. the princess had been a sore trial to her parents, in that she had failed to fit into the conventional ways of polite society. once she had shocked all neuilly by donning man's attire and riding horseback astride. a worthy priest who had been her tutor had found her tongue too sharp for his comfort, and had resigned his post in dismay. the princess argued religion with the bishop and discussed politics with visitors in such a radical way that her father often turned pale. for the diversions of society she had a profound contempt that did not fail to manifest itself in sharp sallies against the smug hypocrisy of the times. she had read widely, knew history, was familiar with the poets, and had dived into the classics to a degree equaled by few women in france. so keen was her wit that, when pompous dignitaries dined at neuilly, her father and mother perspired freely, not knowing what was coming next. in her character were traits that surely did not belie her louis quatorze ancestry. and yet this father and mother had a certain secret pride in the accomplishments of their daughter. parents always do. her independence sort of kept them vibrating between ecstasies of joy and chills of fear. the princess was plain in feature but finely formed, and had attracted the favorable attention of various worthy young men, but no man had ever dared to make love to her except by post or proxy. several lovers had pressed their claims, making appeal through her father; but the duke of orleans, strong as he was, never had cared to intimate to his daughter a suggestion as to whom she should wed. love to her was a high and holy sacrament, and a marriage of convenience or diplomacy was to the mind of the princess immoral and abhorrent. the father knew her views and respected them. but happiness is not a matter of intellect. and in spite of her brilliant, daring mind the princess of orleans was fretting her soul out against the bars of environment: she lacked employment; she longed to do, to act, to be. she had ambitions in the line of art, and believed she had talent that was worth cultivating. and so it was that ary scheffer, the acknowledged man of talent, was invited to neuilly. he came. he was twenty-nine years of age; the princess was twenty-five. the ennui of unused powers and corroding heart-hunger had made the princess old before her time. scheffer's fight with adversity had long before robbed him of his youth. these two eyed each other curiously. the gentle, mild-voiced artist knew his place and did not presume on terms of equality with the princess who traced a direct pedigree to louis the great. he thought to wait and allow her gradually to show her quality. she tried her caustic wit upon him, and he looked at her out of mild blue eyes and made no reply. he had no intention of competing with her on her own preserve; and he had a pride in his profession that equaled her pride of birth. he looked at her--just looked at her in silence. and this spoilt child, before whom all others quailed, turned scarlet, stammered and made apology. in good sooth, she had played tierce and thrust with every man she had met, and had come off without a scar; but here was a man of pride and poise, and yet far beneath her in a social way, and he had rebuked her haughty spirit by a simple look. a london lawyer has recently put in a defense for wife-beating, on the grounds that there are women who should be chastised for their own good. i do not go quite this far, but from the time scheffer rebuked the princess of orleans by refusing to reply to her saucy tongue there was a perfect understanding between them. the young woman listened respectfully if he spoke, and when he painted followed his work with eager eyes. at last she had met one who was not intent on truckling for place and pelf. his ideals were as high and excellent as her own--his mind more sincere. life was more to him than to her, because he was working his energies up into art, and she was only allowing her powers to rust. she followed him dumbly, devotedly. he wished to treat her as an honored pupil and with the deference that was her due, but she insisted that they should study and work as equals. instead of giving the young woman lessons to learn, they studied together. her task as pupil was to read to him two hours daily as he worked, and things she did not fully understand he explained. the princess made small progress as a painter, probably because her teacher was so much beyond her that she was discouraged at thought of equaling him; and feeling that in so many other ways they were equals, she lost heart in trying to follow him in this. at length, weary of attempts at indifferent drawing, the princess begged her tutor to suggest some occupation for her where they could start afresh and work out problems together. scheffer suggested modeling in clay, and the subject was taken up with avidity. the princess developed a regular passion for the work, and group after group was done. among other figures she attempted was an equestrian statue of joan of arc. this work was cast in bronze and now occupies an honored place at versailles. so thoroughly did the young woman enter into the spirit of sculpture that she soon surpassed scheffer in this particular line; but to him she gave all credit. her success was a delight to her parents, who saw with relief that the carping spirit of cynicism was gone from her mind, and instead had come a kindly graciousness that won all hearts. in the ability to think and act with independence there was something decidedly masculine in the spirit of the princess marie; and, as i have shown, scheffer possessed a sympathy and gentleness that was essentially feminine (which is quite a different thing from being effeminate). these two souls complemented each other, and their thoughts being fixed on similar ideals, how can we wonder that a very firm affection blossomed into being? but the secret of their love has never been written, and base would be the pen that would attempt to picture it in detail. take off thy shoes, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. the duke and duchess admired scheffer, but never quite forgot that he was in their employ, and all their attempts to treat him as an equal revealed the effort. it was as though they had said: "you are lowly bred, and work with your hands, and receive a weekly wage, but these things are nothing to us. we will not think less of you, for see, do we not invite you to our board?" the aristocracy of birth is very seldom willing to acknowledge the aristocracy of brain. and the man of brains, if lowly born, has a mild indifference, at least, for all the gilt and gaud of royalty. the prince of wales does not recognize the nobility of israel zangwill; and israel zangwill asks in bored indifference, "who--who is this man you call h. r. h.?" but love is greater than man-made titles, and when was there ever a difference in station able to separate hearts that throbbed only for each other? possibly even the stern old duke might have relented and given his blessing were it not that events of mighty importance came seething across the face of france, and duties to his country outweighed the duties to his daughter. on the thirtieth day of july, eighteen hundred thirty, ary scheffer was at the house of his mother in paris. a hurried knock came at the door, and ary answered it in person. there on the threshold stood m. thiers. "oh, scheffer! it is you, how fortunate! you are a member of the household of orleans, and i have a most important message for the duke. you must go with me and deliver it to him." "i see," said scheffer; "the convention has named the duke as king of france, and we are to notify him." "exactly so," said thiers. horses were at the door: they mounted and rode away. the streets were barricaded, so carriages were out of the question, but scheffer and thiers leaped the barricades, and after several minor mishaps found themselves safely out of paris. the call was not entirely unexpected on the part of the duke. scheffer addressed him as "le roi," and this told all. the duke hesitated, but finally decided to accept the mission, fraught with such mighty import. he started in disguise for paris that night on foot. at the back entrance of the palais royal stood ary scheffer, and saw louis philippe mingle with the crowd, unrecognized--then pass into the palace--this palace that was his birthplace. the next day louis appeared with lafayette on a balcony of the hotel de ville, and these two embraced each other in sight of the multitude. it is not for me to write a history of those troublous times, but suffice it to say that the "citizen king" ruled france probably as well as any other man could have done. his task was a most difficult one, for he had to be both king and citizen--to please royalist and populist alike. this sudden turn of the political kaleidoscope was a pivotal point in the life of ary scheffer. so long as the duke of orleans was a simple country gentleman, scheffer was the intimate friend of the family, but how could the king of france admit into his family circle a mere low-born painter? certainly not they who are descended from kings! orders were issued by the government to scheffer to paint certain pictures, and vouchers reached him from official sources, but he was made to understand that friendship with the household of a king was not for him. possibly he had been too much mixed up with the people in a political way! the favor of the populace is a thing monarchs jealously note, as mariners on a lee shore watch the wind. the father of louis philippe was descended from a brother of louis the great, while on his mother's side he was a direct descendant of the great monarch and madame de montespan. such an inbred claim to royalty was something of which to boast, but at the same time louis philippe was painfully sensitive as to the blot on the 'scutcheon. the princess marie knew the slender tenure by which her father held his place, and although her heart was wrung by the separation from her lover, she was loyal to duty as she saw it, and made no sign that might embarrass the citizen king. arnold and henri scheffer were each married, and working out careers. ary and his mother lived together, loving and devoted. and into the keeping of this mother had come a grandchild--a beautiful girl-baby. they called her name cornelie. about the mother of cornelie the grandmother was not curious. it was enough to know that the child was the child of her son, and upon the babe she lavished all the loving tenderness of her great, welling, mother heart. she had no words but those of gentleness and love for the son that had brought this charge to her. and did she guess that this child would be the sustaining prop for her son when she, herself, was gone? all this time the poor princess marie was practically a prisoner in the great palace, wearing out her heart, a slave to what she considered duty. she grew ill, and all efforts of her physicians to arouse her from her melancholy were in vain. her death was a severe shock to poor scheffer. for some months friends feared for his sanity, for he would only busy his brush with scenes from faust, or religious subjects that bordered on morbidity. again and again he painted "marguerite in prison," "marguerite waiting," "marguerite in paradise" and "mignon." into all of his work he infused that depth of tenderness which has given the critics their cue for accusing him of "sentimentality gone mad." and in fact no one can look upon any of the works of scheffer, done after eighteen hundred thirty, without being profoundly impressed with the brooding sadness that covers all as with a garment. from the time he met the princess of orleans there came a decided evolution in his art; but it was not until she had passed away that one could pick out an unsigned canvas and say positively, "this is scheffer's!" in all his work you see that look of soul, and in his best you behold a use of the blue background that rivals the blue of heaven. no other painter that i can recall has gotten such effects from colors so simple. but scheffer's life was not all sadness. for even when the little mother had passed away, ary scheffer wrote calmly to his friend august thierry: "i yet have my daughter cornelie, and were it not for her i fear my work would be a thing of the past; but with her i still feel that god exists. my life is filled with love and light." * * * * * it was a curious circumstance that ary scheffer, who conducted the citizen king to paris, was to lead him away. scheffer was a captain in the national guard, and when the stormy times of eighteen hundred forty-eight came, he put away his brushes, locked his studio, and joined his regiment. louis philippe had begun as a "citizen"--one of the people--and following the usual course had developed into a monarch with a monarch's indifference to the good of the individual. the people clamored for a republic, and agitation soon developed into revolution. on the morning of the twenty-fourth of february, eighteen hundred forty-eight, scheffer met the son of lafayette, who was also an officer in the national guard. "how curious," said lafayette, "that we should be protecting a king for whom we have so little respect!" "still, we will do our duty," answered scheffer. they made their way to the tuileries, and posted themselves on the terrace beneath the windows of the king's private apartments. as they sat on the steps in the wan light of breaking day. scheffer heard some one softly calling his name. he listened and the call was repeated. "who wants me?" answered scheffer. "'tis i, the queen!" came the answer. scheffer looked up and at the lattice of the window saw the white face of the woman he had known so well and intimately for a full score of years. the terror of the occasion did away with all courtly etiquette. "who is with you?" asked the queen. "only lafayette," was the answer. "come in at once, both of you. the king has abdicated and you must conduct us to a place of safety." scheffer and his companion ran up the steps, the queen unbolted the door with her own hands, and they entered. inside the hallway they found louis philippe dressed as for a journey, with no sign of kingly trappings. with them were their sons and several grandchildren. they filed out of the palace, through the garden, and into the place de la concorde--that spot of ghastly memories. the king looked about nervously. some of the mob recognized him. scheffer concluded that a bold way was the best, and stepping ahead of louis philippe, called in a voice of authority, "make way--make way for the king!" the crowd parted dumb with incredulity at the strange sight. by the fountain in the square stood a public carriage, and into this shabby vehicle of the night the royal passengers were packed. dumas, who had followed the procession, mounted the box. scheffer gave a quick whispered order to the driver, closed the door with a slam, lifted his hat, and the vehicle rumbled away towards the quai. when scheffer got back to the tuileries the mob had broken in the iron gates at the front of the gardens, and was surging through the palace in wild disorder. scheffer hastened home to tell cornelie the news of the night. * * * * * when the little mother died, a daughter of henri scheffer came to join the household of ary scheffer. the name of this niece was also cornelie. the fact of there being two young women in the house by one name has led to confusion among the biographers. and thus it happens that at least four encyclopedias record that ernest renan married the daughter of ary scheffer. renan married the niece, and the fact that they named their first child ary helped, possibly, to confirm the error of the biographers. scheffer's life was devoted to providing for and educating these young women. he himself gave them lessons in the languages, in music, painting and sculpture. the daughter was a handsome girl; and in point of intellect kept her artist-father very busy to keep one lesson in advance. together they painted and modeled in clay, and the happiness that came to scheffer as he saw her powers unfold was the sweetest experience he had ever known. the coldness between himself and the king had increased. but louis philippe did not forget him, for commissions came, one after another, for work to cover the walls of the palace at versailles. with the queen his relations were friendly--even intimate. several times she came to his house. her interest in cornelie was tender and strong, and when scheffer painted a "mignon" and took cornelie for a model, the queen insisted on having the picture and paying her own price--a figure quite beyond what the artist asked. this picture, which represents so vividly the profound pathos and depth of soul which ary scheffer could put upon a canvas, can now be seen in the louvre. but the best collection of scheffer's portraits and historical pictures is at versailles. in the gentle companionship of his beloved daughter, scheffer found the meed of joy that was his due. with her he lived over the days that had gone forever, and those other days that might have been. and when the inevitable came and this daughter loved a worthy and suitable young man, scheffer bowed his head, and fighting hard to keep back the tears gave the pair his blessing. the marriage of doctor marjolin and cornelie scheffer was a happy mating; and both honored the gifted father and ministered to him in every kindly way. but so susceptible was scheffer's nature that when his daughter had given her whole heart to another, the fine edge of his art was dulled and blunted. he painted through habit, and the work had merit, but only at rare intervals was there in it that undefinable something which all can recognize, but none analyze, that stamps the product as great art. * * * * * when, in the year eighteen hundred fifty, scheffer married, it was the death of his art. the artist does business on a very small margin of inspiration. do you understand me? the man of genius is not a genius all the time. usually he is only a very ordinary individual. there may be days or weeks that are fallow, and sometimes even years that are years of famine. he can not conquer the mood of depression that is holding him to earth. but some day the clouds suddenly clear away, the sun bursts out, and the soul of the man is alive with divine fervor. sublime thoughts crowd upon him, great waves of emotion sweep over his soul, and as webster said of his hayne speech, "the air was full of reasons, and all i had to do was to reach up and seize them." all great music and all deathless poems are written in a fever of ecstasy; all paintings that move men to tears are painted in tears. but it is easy to break in upon the sublime mood and drag the genius back to earth. certain country cousins who occasionally visited the family of ralph waldo emerson cut all mental work off short; the philosopher laid down his pen when the cousins came a-cousining and literally took to the woods. an uncongenial caller would instantly unhorse carlyle, and tennyson had a hatred of all lion-hunters--not merely because they were lion-hunters, but because they broke in upon his paradise and snapped the thread of inspiration. mrs. grote tells us that scheffer's wife was intelligent and devoted--in fact, she was too devoted. she would bring her sewing and watch the artist at his work. if the great man grew oblivious of her presence she gently chided him for it; she was jealous of his brothers, jealous of his daughter, even jealous of his art. she insisted not only that he should love her, but demanded that he should love nothing else. and yet all the time she was putting forth violent efforts to make him happy. as a result she put him in a mood where he loved nothing and nobody. she clipped his wings, and instead of a soaring genius we find a whimsical, commonplace man with occupation gone. wives demand the society of their husbands as their lawful right, and i suppose it is expecting too much to suppose that any woman, short of a saint, could fit into the bachelor ways of a dreamer of dreams, aged fifty-five. before he met the widow of general beaudrand, scheffer was happy, with a sweet, sad happiness in the memories of the love of his youth--the love that was lost, and being lost still lived and filled his heart. but the society of the widow was agreeable, her conversation vivacious. he decided that this being so it might be better still to have her by him all the time. and this was what the lady desired, for it was she who did the courting. oliver wendell holmes once said, "because i like an occasional pinch of salt is no reason why you should immerse me in brine," but ary scheffer, the mild, gentle and guileless, did not reason quite so far. the vivacious sophie took him captive, and he was shorn of his strength. and no doubt the ex-widow was as much disappointed as he; there really was no good reason why he should not paint better than ever, when here he wouldn't work at all! lawks-a-daisy! his spirit beat itself out against the bars, health declined, and although he occasionally made groggy efforts to shake himself back into form, his heart was not in his work. seven years went dragging by, and one morning there came word from london that the duchess of orleans, the mother of the beloved marie, was dying. scheffer was ill, but he braced himself for the effort, and hastily started away alone, leaving a note for cornelie. he arrived in england in time to attend the funeral of his lifelong friend, and then he himself was seized with a deadly illness. his daughter was sent for, and when she came the sick man's longing desire was to get back to france. if he was to die, he wanted to die at home. "to die at home at last," is the prayer of every wanderer. ary scheffer's prayer was answered. he expired in the arms of his beloved daughter on june fifteenth, eighteen hundred fifty-eight, aged sixty-three years. francois millet when i meet a laborer on the edge of a field, i stop and look at the man: born amid the grain where he will be reaped, and turning up with his plow the ground of his tomb, mixing his burning sweat with the icy rain of autumn. the furrow he has just turned is a monument that will outlive him. i have seen the pyramids of egypt, and the forgotten furrows of our heather: both alike bear witness to the work of man and the shortness of his days. --_chateaubriand_ [illustration: francois millet] jean francois millet is to art what wagner is to music, or what whitman is to poetry. these men, one a frenchman, another a german, the third an american, taught the same gospel at the same time, using different languages, and each quite unaware of the existence of the others. they were all revolutionaries; and success came so tardily to them that flattery did not taint their native genius. "great men never come singly," says emerson. richard wagner was born in the year eighteen hundred thirteen, millet in eighteen hundred fourteen, and whitman in eighteen hundred nineteen. "tannhauser" was first produced in eighteen hundred forty-five; the "sower" was exhibited in eighteen hundred fifty; and in eighteen hundred fifty-five "leaves of grass" appeared. the reception accorded to each masterpiece was about the same; and all would have fallen flat had it not been for the gibes and jeers and laughter which the work called forth. wagner was arrested for being an alleged rioter; whitman was ejected from his clerkship and his book looked after by the attorney-general of massachusetts; millet was hooted by his fellow-students and dubbed the wild-man-of-the-woods. in a letter to pelloquet, millet says, "the creations that i depict must have the air of being native to their situation, so that no one looking on them shall imagine they are anything else than what they are." in his first preface to "leaves of grass," whitman writes: "the art of arts, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. * * * to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movement of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph of art." wagner wrote in an essay on art: "the greek, proceeding from the bosom of nature, attained to art when he had made himself independent of the immediate influences of nature. "we, violently debarred from nature, and proceeding from the dull ground of a heaven-rid and juristic civilization, first reach art when we completely turn our backs on such a civilization, and once more cast ourselves, with conscious bent, into the arms of nature." men high in power, deceived by the "lack of form," the innocent naivete as of childhood, the simple homeliness of expression, the absence of effort, declared again and again that millet's work was not art, nor wagner's "recurring theme" true music, nor whitman's rhymeless lines poetry. the critics refused to recognize that which was not labored: where no violence of direction was shown they saw no art. to follow close to nature is to be considered rude by some--it indicates a lack of "culture." millet, wagner and whitman lived in the open air; with towns and cities they had small sympathy; they felt themselves no better and no wiser than common folks; they associated with working men and toiling women; they had no definite ideas as to who were "bad" and who "good." they are frank, primitive, simple. they are masculine--and in their actions you never get a trace of coyness, hesitancy, affectation or trifling coquetry. they have nothing to conceal: they look at you out of frank, open eyes. they know the pains of earth too well to dance nimbly through life and laugh the hours away. they are sober, serious, earnest, but not grim. their faces are bronzed by sun and wind; their hands are not concealed by gloves; their shirts are open to the breast, as though they wanted room to breathe deeply and full; the boots they wear are coarse and thick-soled, as if the wearer had come from afar and yet had many long miles to go. but the two things that impress you most are: they are in no haste; and they are unafraid. all can approach such men as these. possibly the smug and self-satisfied do not care to; but men in distress--those who are worn, or old, or misunderstood--children, outcasts, those far from home and who long to get back, silently slip weak hands in theirs and ask, "may we go your way?" can you read "captain, my captain," or listen to the "pilgrims' chorus," or look upon "the man with the hoe" without tears? and so we will continue our little journey. * * * * * charles warren stoddard relates that in one of the far-off islands of the south sea, he found savages so untouched by civilization that they did not know enough to tell a lie. it was somewhat such a savage as this with whom we have to deal. he was nineteen years old, six feet high, weighed one hundred sixty pounds, and as he had never shaved, had a downy beard all over his face. his great shock of brown hair tumbled to his shoulders. his face was bronzed, his hands big and bony, and his dark gray eyes looked out of their calm depths straight into yours--eyes that did not blink, eyes of love and patience, eyes like the eyes of an animal that does not know enough to fear. he was the son of a peasant, and the descendant of a long line of peasants, who lived on the coast of normandy--plain, toiling peasants whose lives were deeply rooted into the rocky soil that gave them scanty sustenance. if they ever journeyed it was as sailors--going out with the tide--and if they did not come back it was only because those who go down to the sea in ships sometimes never do. and now this first-born of the peasant flock was going to leave his native village of gruchy. he was clad in a new suit of clothes, spun, woven, cut and sewed by the hands of his grandmother. he was going away, and his belongings were all packed in a sailor's canvas bag; but he was not going to sea. great had been the preparations for this journey. the family was very poor: the father a day-laborer and farmer; the mother worked in the fields, and as the children grew up they too worked in the fields; and after a high tide the whole family hurried to the seashore to gather up the "varech," and carry it home for fertilizer, so that the rocky hillside might next summer laugh a harvest. and while the father and the mother toiled in the fields, or gathered the varech, or fished for shrimps, the old grandmother looked after the children at home. the grandmother in such homes is the real mother of the flock: the mother who bore the children has no time to manifest mother-love; it is the grandmother who nurses the stone-bruises, picks out the slivers, kisses away the sorrows, gladdens young hearts by her simple stories, and rocks in her strong, old arms the babe, as she croons and quavers a song of love and duty. and so the old grandmother had seen "her baby" grow to a man, and with her own hands she had made his clothes, and all the savings of her years had been sewed into a belt and given to the boy. and now he was going away. he was going away--going because she and she alone had urged it. she had argued and pleaded, and when she won the village priest over to her side, and father lebrisseau in his turn had won several influential men--why, it must be! the boy could draw: he could draw so well that he some day would be a great artist--langlois, the drawing-master at cherbourg, ten miles away, said so. what if they were only poor peasants and there never had been a painter in the family! there would be now. so the priest had contributed from his own purse; and the councilmen of cherbourg had promised to help; and the grandmother had some silver of her own. jean francois millet was going to paris to study to be an artist. tears rained down the wrinkled, leathery cheeks of the old grandmother; the mother stood by dazed and dumb, nursing a six-months-old babe; children of various ages hung to the skirts of mother and grandmother, tearful and mystified; the father leaned on the gate, smoking a pipe, displaying a stolidity he did not feel. the diligence swung around the corner and came rattling down the single, stony, narrow street of the little village. the driver hardly deigned to stop for such common folks as these; but the grandmother waved her apron, and then, as if jealous of a service some one else might render, she seized one end of the canvas bag and helped the brown young man pass it up to the top of the diligence. jean francois climbed up after, carrying a little prayer-book that had been thrust into his hands--a final parting gift of the grandmother. the driver cracked his whip and away they went. as the diligence passed the rectory, father lebrisseau came out and held up a crucifix; the young man took off his cap and bowed his head. the group of watchers moved out into the roadway. they strained their eyes in the direction of the receding vehicle. * * * * * after a three days' ride, jean francois was in paris. the early winter night was settling down, and the air was full of fog and sleet. the young man was sore from the long jolting. his bones ached, and the damp and cold had hunted out every part of his sturdy frame. the crowds that surged through the street hurrying for home and fireside after the day's work were impatient. "don't block the way, johnny crapaud!" called a girl with a shawl over her head; and with the combined shove and push of those behind, the sabot-shod young man was shouldered into the street. there he stood dazed and bereft, with the sailor's bag on his back. "where do you wish to go?" asked a gendarme, not unkindly. "back to gruchy," came the answer. and the young man went into the diligence office and asked when the next stage started. it did not go until the following morning. he would have to stay somewhere all night. the policeman outside the door directed him to a modest tavern. next morning things looked a little better. the sun had come out and the air was crisp. the crowds in the street did not look quite so cold and mean. after hunger had been satisfied, "johnny crapaud" concluded to stay long enough to catch a glimpse of the louvre, that marvel of marvels! the louvre had been glowingly described to him by his old drawing-master at cherbourg. visions of the louvre had been in his mind for weeks and months, and now his hopes were soon to be realized. in an hour perhaps he would stand and look upon a canvas painted by rubens, the immortal rubens! his enthusiasm grew warm. the girl who had served him with coffee stood near and was looking at him with a sort of silent admiration, such as she might bestow upon a curious animal. he looked up; their eyes met. "is it true--is it true that there are pictures by rubens in the louvre?" asked the young man. the oddity of the question from such a being and the queer normandy accent amused the girl, and she burst out laughing. she did not answer the question, but going over to a man seated at another table whispered to him. then they both looked at the queer youth and laughed. the young countryman did not know what they were laughing at--probably they did not, either--but he flushed scarlet, and soon made his way out into the street, his luggage on his back. he wanted to go to the louvre, but dare not ask the way--he did not care to be laughed at. and so he wandered forth. the shops were very marvelous, and now and again he lingered long before some window where colored prints and paintings were displayed. he wondered if the places were artists' studios; and at one place as he looked at a series of sketches the thought came to him that he himself could do better. this gave him courage, and stepping inside the door he set down his bag and told the astonished shopkeeper that the pictures in the window were very bad--he could paint better ones--would the proprietor not hire him to paint pictures? he would work cheap, and labor faithfully. he was hastily hustled out into the street--to harbor lunatics was dangerous. so he trudged on--looking for the louvre. night came and the search was without reward. seeing a sign of "apartments for single gentlemen," he applied and was shown a modest room that seemed within his means. the landlady was very kind; in fact, she knew people at gruchy and had often been to cherbourg--her uncle lived there. jean francois felt relieved to find that even in busy, bustling, frivolous paris there were friendly people; and when the kind lady suggested that pickpockets in the streets were numerous, and that he had better give his money over to her for safekeeping, he handed out his store of three hundred francs without question. he never saw his money again. the next day he still sought the louvre--not caring to reveal his ignorance by asking the way. it was several days before fate led him along the seine and he found himself on the pont neuf. the palace stretching out before him had a familiar look. he stopped and stared. there were the palaces where history had been made. he knew the tuileries and he knew the louvre--he had seen pictures of both. he walked out across the place de la concorde, and seeing others enter, made his way through the gates of the sacred precinct. he was in the palace of the louvre; he had found the way, unaided and alone. his deep religious nature was moved, and taking off his cap he crossed himself in a silent prayer of gratitude. what his sensations were he partially pictured to his friend sensier thirty years after: "it seemed as though i had at last attained, achieved. my feelings were too great for words, and i closed my eyes, lest i be dazzled by the sight and then dare not open them lest i should find it all a dream. and if i ever reach paradise i know my joy will be no greater than it was that first morning when i realized that i stood within the louvre palace." for a week millet visited the louvre every day. when the doors were unlocked each morning he was waiting on the steps; and he did not leave in the afternoon until the attendant warned him it was time to go. he lingered long before the "raffaellos" and stood in the "rubens gallery" dumb with wonder and admiration. there were various people copying pictures here and there. he watched them furtively, and after seeing one young man working at an easel in a certain place for a week, he approached and talked with him. jean francois told his history and the young man listened patiently. he advised that it would be foolish to go back to gruchy at once. the youth should go to some master and show what he could do--remain and study for a little while at least; in fact, he himself would take him to delaroche. things looked brighter; and arrangements were made to meet on the morrow and go interview the master. delaroche was found and proved kindly. he examined the two sketches that jean francois submitted, asked a few questions, and graciously led the new applicant into the atelier, where a score of young men were sketching, and set him to work. the letter written by jean to the good old grandmother that night hinted at great plans for the future, and told of love, and of hope that was dauntless. * * * * * twelve years were spent by jean francois in paris--years of biting poverty and grim endurance: the sport and prey of fate: the butt and byword of the fashionable, artistic world. jean francois did not belong in paris: how can robins build nests in omnibuses? he was at war with his environment; and the stern puritan bias of his nature refused to conform to the free and easy ways of the gay metropolis. he sighed for a sight of the sea, and longed for the fields and homely companionship that normandy held in store. so we find him renouncing paris life and going back to his own. the grandmother greeted him as one who had won, but his father and mother, and he, himself, called it failure. he started to work in the fields and fell fainting to the earth. "he has been starved," said the village doctor. but when hunger had been appeased and strength came back, ambition, too, returned. he would be an artist yet. a commission for a group of family portraits came from a rich family at cherbourg. gladly he hastened thence to do the work. while in cherbourg he found lodgings in the household of a widow who had a daughter. the widow courted the fine young painter-man--courted him for the daughter. the daughter married him. a strong, simple man, unversed in the sophistry of society, loves the first woman he meets, provided, of course, she shows toward him a bit of soft, feminine sympathy. this accounts for the ease with which very young men so often fall in love with middle-aged women. the woman does the courting; the man idealizes, and endows the woman with all the virtues his imagination can conjure forth. love is a matter of propinquity. the wife of jean francois was neutral salts. she desired, no doubt, to do what was right and best, but she had no insight into her husband's needs, and was incapable of guessing his latent genius. as for the new wife's mother and kinsmen, they regarded jean francois as simply lazy, and thought to crowd him into useful industry. he could paint houses or wagons, and, then, didn't the shipyard folks employ painters? well, i guess so. jean francois still dreamed of art. he longed to express himself--to picture on canvas the emotions that surged through his soul. disillusionment had come, and he now saw that his wife was his mate only because the church and state said so. but his sense of duty was firm, and the thought of leaving her behind never came to him. the portraits were painted--the money in his pocket; and to escape the importunities and jeers of his wife's relatives he decided to try paris once more. the wife was willing. paris was the gateway to pleasure and ambition. but the gaiety of paris was not for her. on a scanty allowance of bread one can not be so very gay--and often there was no fuel. jean francois copied pictures in the louvre and hawked them among the dealers, selling for anything that was offered. delaroche sent for him. "why do you no longer come to my atelier?" said the master. "i have no money to pay tuition," was the answer. "never mind; i'll be honored to have you work here." so jean francois worked with the students of delaroche; and a few respected his work and tried to help market his wares. but connoisseurs shook their heads, and dealers smiled at "the eccentricities of genius," and bought only conventional copies of masterpieces or studies of the nude. meantime the way did not open, and paris was far from being the place the wife supposed. she would have gone back to cherbourg, but there was no money to send her, and pride prevented her from writing the truth to her friends at home. she prayed for death, and death came. the students at delaroche's contributed to meet the expenses of her funeral. jean francois still struggled on. delaroche and others declared his work was great, but how could they make people buy it? a time of peculiar pinching hardship came, and jean francois again bade paris adieu and made his way back to gruchy. there he could work in the fields, gather varech on the seashore, and possibly paint portraits now and then--just for amusement. and thus he would live out the measure of his days. the visit of jean francois to his boyhood's home proved a repetition of the first. another woman married him. catherine lemaire was not a brilliant woman, but she had a profound belief in her husband's genius. possibly she did not understand him when he talked his best, but she made a brave show of listening, and did not cross him with any little whimsical philosophies of her own. she was sturdy and strong of heart; privation was nothing to her; she could endure all that jean francois could, and count it a joy to be with him. she was the consoler, not he; and when the mocking indifference of the world passed the work of jean francois by, she said, "who cares, so long as we know 't is good?" and measured the stocking on her nose and made merry music with the flying needles. soon the truth forced itself on jean francois and catherine that no man is thought much of by his kinsmen and boyhood acquaintances. no one at gruchy believed in the genius of jean francois--no one but the old grandmother, who daily hobbled to mass and prayed the blessed virgin not to forget her boy. jean francois and his wife studied the matter out and talked it over at length, and they decided that to stay in gruchy would be to forfeit all hope of winning fame and fortune. gruchy held nothing for them; possibly paris did. and anyway, to go down in a struggle for better things was not so ignominious an end as to allow one's powers to rust out, held back only through fear of failure. they started for paris. yes, paris remembered jean francois. how could paris forget him--he was so preposterous and his work so impossible! it was still a struggle for bread. marriages and births have a fixed relation to the price of corn, the sociologists say. perhaps they are right; but not in this case. the babies came along with the years, and all brought love with them. the devotion of jean francois to his wife and children had a deep, sober, religious quality, such as we associate with abraham and jacob and the other patriarchs of old. the heart of millet was often wrung by the thought of the privation and hardships his wife and children had to undergo. he blamed himself for their lack of creature comforts, and the salt tears rained down his beard when he had to go home and report that he had tramped the streets all day with a picture under his arm, looking for a buyer, but no buyer could be found. but all this time the old grandmother up in normandy waited and watched for news from her boy. now and again during the years she saw his name mentioned in connection with the salon; and once she heard a medal had been granted him, and at another time an "honorable mention." her heart throbbed in pride and she wrote congratulations, and thanked the good god for answering her prayers. little did she know of the times when bread was cut in tiny bits and parceled out to each hungry mouth, or the days when there was no fuel and the children kept to their beds to prevent freezing. but the few friends of jean francois who had forced the "honorable mention" and secured the medal, now got something more tangible; they induced the government director of fine arts to order from jean francois millet a picture for which the artist was to receive two thousand francs; two hundred francs were paid on account and the balance was to be paid on delivery of the picture. jean francois hurried home with the order in his trembling fingers. catherine read the order with misty eyes. she was not unduly elated--she knew that success must come some time. and husband and wife then and there decided that when the eighteen hundred francs were paid over to them they would move out of paris. they would make a home in the country. people do without things in the country, but they do not starve. you can raise vegetables, and even though the garden be small and the folks poor, god is good and the sunshine and showers come and things grow. and for fuel one can gather fagots if they are near a wood. they would go to barbizon--barbizon, that tiny village on the edge of the forest of fontainebleau. several artists who had been there in the summer sketching had told them of it. the city was gradually smothering jean francois. he prayed for a sight of the great open stretches of pasture, and green woods and winding river. and now it was all so near. he set to work feverishly to paint the great picture that was to bring deliverance. at last the picture was done and sent to the director's. days of anxious waiting followed. the picture was accepted and paid for. jean francois and catherine cried and laughed for joy, as they tumbled their belongings into bags and bundles. the grocer who had trusted them took some of their furniture for pay, and a baker and a shoemaker compromised by accepting a picture apiece. they were going to barbizon--going to the country--going to freedom! and so the father and the mother and the queer-looking, yellow children were perched on the top of the diligence with their bundles, bound for barbizon. they looked into each other's faces and their joy was too great for speech. * * * * * living at the village of barbizon, or near it, were theodore rousseau, hughes martin, louis leroy and clerge. these men were artists, and their peasant neighbors recognized them as separate and apart from themselves. they were summer boarders. but millet was a peasant in thought and feeling and sympathy, and mingled with the people on an absolute equality. he was peasant--and more than peasant; for the majesty of the woods, the broken rocks, the sublime stretches of meadow-lands with their sights, odors and colors intoxicated him with their beauty. he felt as if he had never before looked upon god's beautiful world. and yet paris was only a day's journey away! there he could find a market for his work. to be near a great city is a satisfaction to every intellectual worker, but, if he is wise, his visits to the city are far apart. all he needs is the thought that he can go if he chooses. millet was thirty-four years of age when he reached barbizon. there he was to remain for the remaining twenty-seven years of his life--to live in the one house--years of toil, and not lacking in poverty, pain and anxiety, but years of freedom, for he worked as he wished and called no man master. it is quite the custom to paint the life of millet at barbizon as one of misery and black unrest; but those who do this are the people who read pain into his pictures: they do not comprehend the simplicity and sublimity and quiet joy that were possible in this man's nature, and in the nature of the people he pictured. from the time he reached barbizon there came into his work a largeness, a majesty and an elevation that is unique in the history of art. millet's heart went out to humanity--the humanity that springs from the soil, lives out its day, and returns to earth. his pictures form an epic of country life, as he tells of its pains, its anxieties, its privations--yes, of its peace and abiding faith, and the joy and health and strength that comes to those who live near to nature's heart. walt whitman catalogues the workers and toilers, and lists their occupations in pages that will live; millet shows us wood-gatherers, charcoal-burners, shepherds, gleaners, washerwomen, diggers, quarrymen, road laborers, men at the plow, and women at the loom. then he shows the noon-hour, the moments of devotion, the joys of motherhood, the silent pride of the father, the love of brother and sister and of husband and wife. and again in the dusk of a winter night we see black-lined against the sky the bent figure of an old woman, bearing her burden of fagots; and again we are shown the plain, homely interior of a cottage where the family watches by the bedside of a dying child. and always the picture is not quite complete--the faces are never distinct--no expression of feature is there, but the soul worked up into the canvas conveys its silent message to all those who have eyes to see and hearts to feel. only a love and sympathy as wide as the world could have produced the "gleaners," the "sower" and the "angelus." millet was what he was on account of what he had endured. all art is at last autobiography. the laborer's cottage that he took at barbizon had but three small, low rooms. these served as studio, kitchen and bedchamber. when the family had increased to eleven, other rooms were added, and the studio was transferred to the barn, there at the end of the garden. millet had two occupations, and two recreations, he once said. in the mornings he worked in his garden, digging, sowing, planting, reaping. in the afternoons he painted--painted until the sun got too low to afford the necessary light; then he went for his daily solitary walk through the woods and fields, coming back at dark. after supper he helped his wife with the housework, put the children to bed, and then sat and read until the clock struck midnight. this was his simple life. very slowly, recognition came that way. theodore rousseau, himself a great artist, and a man too great for jealousy, spread his fame, and the faithful sensier in paris lost no opportunity to aid his friend by the use of a commercial shrewdness in which millet was woefully lacking. then came corot, daubigny, diaz and others of giant stature, to barbizon, and when they went back to paris they told of millet and his work. and then we find meissonier, the proud, knocking at the gate of le grand rustique. it is pleasant to recall that americans were among the first to recognize the value of millet's art. his "sower" is the chief gem of the vanderbilt collection; and the "angelus" has been thought much more of in france since america so unreservedly set her seal upon it. millet died in eighteen hundred seventy-five. it was only during the last ten years of his life that he felt financially free, and even then he was far from passing rich. after his death his fame increased, and pictures he had sold for twenty dollars, soon changed hands for as many hundred. englishmen say that america grew millet-mad, and it may be true that our admiration tipped a bit to t' other side; yet the fabulous prices were not always paid by americans--the rich men of earth vied with each other for the possession of a "millet." the "gleaners" was bought by the french government for three hundred thousand francs, and is now in the louvre "in perpetuity." this sum paid for this one picture represents a larger amount of money than passed through the hands of millet during his entire life; and yet it is not one-half what another "millet" brought. the "angelus" was sold for the sum of eight hundred thousand francs--a larger amount than was ever before paid for a single canvas. it is idle to say that no picture is worth such a sum. anything is worth what some one else will pay for it. the number of "millets," it may be explained, is limited, and with men in america who have incomes of ten million dollars or more a year, no sane man dare prophesy what price the "sower" may yet command. millet himself, were he here, would be aghast at the prices paid for his work, and he would turn, too, with disfavor from the lavish adulation bestowed upon his name. this homely, simple artist was a profound thinker; a sympathetic dreamer; a noble-hearted, generous man; so truthful and lovable that his virtues have been counted a weakness; and so they are--for the planet earth. joshua reynolds to make it people's interest to advance you, by showing that their business will be better done by you than by any other person, is the only solid foundation of success; the rest is accident. --_reynolds to his nephew_ [illustration: joshua reynolds] on the curious little river plym, five miles from plymouth, is the hamlet of plympton. it is getting on towards two hundred years since joshua reynolds was born there. the place has not changed so very much with the centuries: there still stand the quaint stone houses, built on arches over the sidewalk, and there, too, is the old norman church with its high mullioned windows. chester shows the best example of that very early architecture, and plympton is chester done in pigmy. the birthplace of reynolds is one of these houses in the "row"; a greengrocer now has the lower floor of the house for his shop, while his numerous family live upstairs. the reverend samuel reynolds also had a numerous family--there being eleven children--so the present occupation is a realistic restoration of a previous condition. the grocer has a leaning toward art, for his walls are well papered with chromos and posters; and as he sold a cabbage to a good housewife he nipped off a leaf for a pen of rabbits that stood in the doorway, and talked to me glibly of reynolds and gainsborough. the grocer considers gainsborough the greater artist, and surely his fame is wide, like unto the hat--hated by theater-goers--that his name has rendered deathless, and which certain unkind ones declare has given him immortality. joshua was the seventh child in the brood of five boys and six girls. the fond parents set him apart for the church, and to that end he was placed in the plympton grammar-school, and made to "do" fifty lines of ovid a day. the old belief that to translate latin with facility was the true test of genius has fallen somewhat into desuetude, yet there are a few who still hold to the idea that to reason, imagine and invent are not the tests of a man's powers; he must conjugate, decline and derive. but grant allen, possessor of three college degrees, avers that a man may not even be able to read and write, and yet have a very firm mental grasp on the eternal verities. anyway, joshua reynolds did not like latin. he hated the set task of fifty lines, and hated the system that imposed a fine of twenty lines for a failure to fulfil the first. the fines piled up until young joshua, aged twelve, goin' on thirteen, went into such hopeless bankruptcy that he could not pay tuppence on the pound. we have a sheet of this latin done at that time, in a cramped, schoolboy hand, starting very bold and plain, and running off into a tired blot and scrawl. on the bottom of the page is a picture, and under this is a line written by the father: "this is drawn by joshua in school out of pure idleness." the reverend samuel had no idea that his own name would live in history simply because he was the father of this idle boy. still, the clergyman showed that he was a man of good sense, for he acceded to the lad's request to let the latin slide. this conclusion no doubt was the easier arrived at after the master of the school had explained that the proper education of such a youth was quite hopeless. all the reynolds children drew pictures and most of them drew better than joshua. but joshua did not get along well at school, and so he felt the necessity of doing something. it is a great blessing to be born into a family where strict economy of time and money is necessary. the idea that nothing shall be wasted, and that each child must carve out for himself a career, is a thrice-blessed heritage. rich parents are an awful handicap to youth, and few indeed there be who have the strength to stand prosperity; especially is this true when prosperity is not achieved, but thrust upon them. joshua got hold of a copy of richardson's "theory of painting," and found therein that the author prophesied the rise of a great school of english painters. joshua thought about it, talked with his brothers and sisters about it, and surprised his mother by asking her if she knew that there was soon to be a distinct school of british art. about this time there came to the village a strolling artist by the name of warmell. this man opened up a studio on the porch of the tavern and offered to make your picture while you wait. he did a thriving business in silhouettes, and patrons who were in a hurry could have their profiles cut out of black paper with shears and pasted on a white background in a jiffy--price, sixpence. joshua struck up quite a friendship with this man and was taught all the tricks of the trade--even to the warning that in drawing the portrait of a homely man it is not good policy to make a really homely picture. the best-paying pewholder in the reverend samuel reynolds' church was a mr. craunch, whose picture had been made by the joint efforts of the strolling artist warmell and young reynolds. 't was a very beautiful picture, although it is not on record that mr. craunch was a handsome man. warmell refused to take pay for craunch's picture, claiming that he felt it was pay enough to have the honor of such a great man sitting to him. this remark proved to craunch that warmell was a discerning person and they were very soon on intimate terms of friendship. mr. craunch gave mr. warmell orders to paint pictures of the craunch family. one day warmell called the great man's attention to the fact that young reynolds, his volunteer assistant, had ambitions in an art way that could not be gratified unless some great and good man stepped in and played the part of a mæcenas. in fact, joshua wanted to go to london and study with hudson, the son-in-law and pupil of richardson, the eminent author who wrote the "theory of painting." warmell felt sure that after a few months, with his help, young reynolds could get the technique and the color-scheme, and a' that, and the firm of warmell and reynolds could open a studio in plymouth or portsmouth and secure many good orders. craunch listened with patience and advised with the boy's parents. the next week he took the lad up to london and entered him as a pupil with the great hudson, who could not paint much of a picture himself, but for a consideration was willing to show others how. rumor has it that warmell got a certain sum in english gold for all pupils he sent to hudson's studio, but i take no stock in such insinuations. warmell here disappears from mortal view, like one of those stage trapdoor vanishings of mephisto--only mephisto usually comes back, but warmell never did. reynolds was very happy at hudson's studio. he was only seventeen years old when he arrived there, fresh from the country. london was a marvel of delight to joshua; the shops, theaters, galleries and exhibitions were a never-ending source of joy. he worked with diligence, and probably got more for his money than any one of hudson's fifty pupils. hudson was well-to-do, dignified and kind. his place was full of casts and classic fragments, and when he had set his pupils to copying these he considered his day's work done. joshua wrote glowing letters home, telling of all he did. "while i am at work i am the happiest creature alive," he said. hudson set joshua to copying guercino's works, and kept the lad at it so steadily that he was really never able to draw from nature correctly thereafter. after a year, craunch came up from the country to see how his ward was getting along. joshua showed him the lions of the city; and painted his picture, making so fine a portrait that when mr. craunch got back home he threw away the one made by warmell. once at an exhibition joshua met alexander pope, whom he had seen several times at hudson's studio. pope remembered him and shook hands. joshua was so inflated by the honor that he hastened home to write a letter to his mother and tell her all about it. according to the terms of agreement with hudson, joshua was bound to stay four years; but now two years had passed, and one fine day in sudden wrath hudson told him to pack up his kit and go. the trouble was that joshua could paint better than hudson--every pupil in the school knew it. when the scholars wanted advice they went to reynolds, and some of them, being sons of rich men, paid reynolds for helping them. then reynolds had painted a few portraits on his own account and had kept the money, as he had a perfect right to do. hudson said he hadn't, for he was bound as an apprentice to him. "but only during working-hours," replied young reynolds. we can hardly blame hudson for sending him away--no master wants a pupil around who sees all over, above and beyond him, and who can do better work than he. it's confusing, and tends to rob the master of the deification that is his due. reynolds had remained long enough--it was time for him to go. he went back to devonshire, and craunch, the biggest man in plympton, took him over to lord edgecumbe, the biggest man in plymouth. craunch carried along the portrait of himself that joshua had made, and asked milord if he didn't want one just like it. edgecumbe said he surely did, and asked joshua if he painted the picture all alone by himself. joshua smiled. lord edgecumbe had a beautiful house, and to have a good picture of himself, and a few choice old ancestors on the walls, he thought would be very fine. joshua took up his abode in the edgecumbe mansion, the better to do his work. he was a handsome youth, nearly twenty years old, with bright, beaming eyes, a slight but compact form, and brown curls that came to his shoulders. his london life had given him a confidence in himself, and in his manner there was a grace and poise flavored with a becoming diffidence. a man who can do things well should assume a modesty, even if he has it not. if you can write well, do not talk--leave that to the man who can do nothing else. if you can paint, let your work speak for you. joshua reynolds was young, but he was an artist in diplomacy. his talent, his modesty, his youth, his beauty, won the hearts of the entire edgecumbe household. he painted portraits of all the family; and of course all the visitors were called upon to admire, not only the pictures, but the painter as well. a studio was opened in one of lord edgecumbe's buildings at plymouth, and he painted portraits of all the great folks thereabout. on christmas-day, seventeen hundred forty-six, the reverend samuel reynolds died, but before his death he fully realized that one of his children was well on the way to fame and fortune. the care of the broken family now devolved on joshua, but his income was several times as much as his father had ever earned, and his responsibilities were carried lightly. while at the house of lord edgecumbe, reynolds had met young commodore keppel. in seventeen hundred forty-nine, keppel was placed in command of the mediterranean fleet, with orders to clear the seas of the barbary pirates. keppel invited reynolds to join him on board the "centurion" as his guest. gladly he accepted, and they sailed away for the orient with a cabin stocked with good things, and enough brushes, paints, canvases and easels to last several painters a lifetime. * * * * * it was three years before reynolds came back to plymouth. he had visited lisbon, cadiz, gibraltar, port mahon and minorca. at the two last-named places there were british garrisons, and reynolds set to work making portraits of the officers. for this he was so well paid that he decided to visit italy instead of voyaging farther with his friend keppel. he then journeyed on to naples, rome, venice, pisa and florence, stopping in each city for several months, immersing himself in the art atmosphere of the place. returning to rome, he remained there two years, studying and copying the works of raphael, angelo, titian and other masters. occasionally, he sold his copies of masterpieces, and by practising strict economy managed to live in a fair degree of comfort. rome is the hottest place in summer and the coldest in winter of which i know. the average italian house has a damp and chill in winter which clutches the tourist and makes him long for home and native land. imagine a new england farmhouse in march with only a small dish-pan of coals to warm it, and you have rome in winter. rome, with its fever in summer and rheumatism and pneumonia in winter, has sent many an artist to limbus. joshua reynolds escaped the damp of the vatican with nothing worse than a deafness that caused him to carry an ear-trumpet for the rest of his life. but now he was back at plymouth. lord edgcumbe looked over the work he had brought and called into the ear-trumpet that a man who could paint like that was a fool to remain in a country town: he should go to london and vanquish all such alleged artists as hudson. keppel had gotten back to england, and he and edgcumbe had arranged that reynolds should pitch his tent in the heart of artistic london. so a handsome suite of apartments was secured in saint martin's lane. the first work undertaken seems to have been that full-length portrait of commodore keppel. the picture shows the commodore standing on a rocky shore, issuing orders to unseen hosts. there is an energy, dash and heroism pictured in the work that at once caught the eye of the public. "have you seen keppel's portrait?" asked edgcumbe of every one he met. invitations were sent out to call at joshua reynold's studio and see "keppel." there were a good many pictures displayed there, but "keppel" was placed in a small room, set apart, rightly focused, properly draped, and lighted only by candles, that stood in silver candle-sticks, and which were solemnly snuffed by a detailed marine, six foot three, in a red coat, with a formidable hanger at his side. only a few persons were admitted at a time and on entering the room all you saw was the valiant form of the doughty commodore, the sea-mist in his face and the wild winds blowing his locks. the big marine on guard in the shadow added the last realistic touch, and the gentlemen visitors removed their hats and the ladies talked in whispers--they all expected keppel to speak, and they wished to hear what he would say. it is a great thing to paint a beautiful picture, but 't is a more difficult feat to hypnotize the public into accepting the fact. the live keppel was pointed out on the street as the man who had had his picture taken. now, people do not have portraits painted simply because they want portraits painted: they want these portraits shown and admired. to have reynolds paint your portrait might prove a repetition of the keppel--who knows! sitters came and a secretary in livery took their names and made appointments, as is done today in the office of a prosperous dentist. joshua reynolds was young and strong, and he worked while it was called the day. he worked from sunrise until sunset. that first year in london he produced one hundred twenty portraits, besides painting various other pictures. this he could not have done without the assistance of a most loyal helper. this helper was giuseppe marchi. there are a half-dozen biographies of reynolds, and from boswell, walpole and burney, gossips-in-ordinary, we have vivid glimpses into his life and habits. then we have his own journal, and hundreds of letters; but nowhere do we get a frank statement of the assistance rendered him by giuseppe marchi. when reynolds was in rome, aged twenty-one, he fell in with a tatterdemalion, who proffered his service as guide. rome is full of such specimens, and the type is one that has not changed in five hundred years. reynolds tossed the lad a copper, and the ragged one showed his fine white teeth in a gladsome grin and proffered information. he clung to the visitor all that afternoon, and the next morning when reynolds started out with his sketching-outfit, the youngster was sitting on his doorstep. so they fared forth, giuseppe carrying the kit. reynolds knew but little italian--the boy taught him more. the boy knew every corner of rome, and was deep in the history of the eternal city--all he knew was rome. joshua taught the youngster to sketch, and after the first few days there in rome. joshua rigged giuseppe up an easel, and where went joshua there also went giuseppe. joshua got a bit ashamed of his partner's attire and bought him better raiment. when reynolds left rome on his homeward march, there, too, tagged the faithful giuseppe. after several months they reached lyons, and joshua counted his money. there was only enough to pay his fare by the diligence to paris, with a few francs over for food. he told giuseppe that he could not take him farther, and emptying his pockets of all his coppers, and giving him his best silk handkerchief and a sketching-outfit, they cried down each other's backs, kissed each other on both cheeks in the italian fashion, and parted. it took eight days to reach paris by the diligence, and joshua only got through by stopping one day and bartering a picture for sundry loaves of necessary bread. but he had friends in paris, influential friends. and when he reached the home of these influential friends, there on the curbstone sat giuseppe, awaiting his coming, with the silk handkerchief knotted loosely about his neck! giuseppe had thrown away the painting-kit and walked the three hundred miles in eight days, begging or stealing by the way the food he needed. when joshua reynolds opened his studio in saint martin's lane, his faithful helper was giuseppe marchi. giuseppe painted just as joshua did, and just as well. when sitters came, giuseppe was only a valet: he cleaned the brushes, polished the knives, ran for water and hovered near to do his master's bidding. he was the only person allowed in the model-room, and all the time he was there his keen eyes made a correct and proper estimate of the sitter. listening to no conversation, seeing nothing, he yet heard everything and nothing escaped his glance. when the sitting, which occupied an hour, was over, giuseppe took the picture into another room, and filled in the background and drapery just as he knew it should be. "marchi does not sign and date the portraits, but he does all the rest," said garrick. and "little burney," treading on thinner ice, once remarked, "if sir joshua ever embraces a fair sitter and imprints upon her forehead a chaste kiss, i am sure that giuseppe marchi will never tell." it is too late to accuse sir joshua reynolds of ingratitude towards giuseppe; he was grateful, and once referred to marchi as "an angel sent from god to help me do my work." but he paid marchi valet's wages and treated him like a servant. possibly this was the part of expedience, for had marchi ever gotten it into his head that he could paint as well as sir joshua he would have been worthless as a helper. for forty years they were never separated. cotton disposes of giuseppe marchi by saying, "he was a clever colorist, but incapable of doing independent work." cotton might, however, have told the whole simple truth, and that was that marchi was hands, feet, eyes and ears for his master--certain it is that without his help sir joshua could never have attained the fame and fortune he did. * * * * * in selecting his time for a career, joshua reynolds showed good judgment. he went into public favor on a high tide. england was prosperous, and there was in the air a taste for the polite arts. literature was becoming a fad. within a short time there had appeared gray's "elegy," smollett's "peregrine pickle," fielding's "amelia" and richardson's "clarissa harlowe." here was menu to fit most palates, and the bill-of-fare was duly discussed in all social gatherings of the upper circles. the afflicted ones fed on gray; the repentant quoted richardson; while smollett and fielding were read aloud in parlor gatherings where fair ladies threatened to leave the room--but didn't. out at strawberry hill, his country home, horace walpole was running that little printing-shop, making books that are now priceless, and writing long, gossipy letters that body forth the spirit of the time, its form and pressure. the dilettante society, composed of young noblemen devoted to high art and good-fellowship, was discussing a scheme for a national academy. garrick was at the height of his fame; hogarth was doing for art what smollett did for literature; while two young irishmen, burke and goldsmith, were getting ready to make english letters illustrious; hudson was painting portraits with a stencil; gainsborough was immortalizing a hat; doctor johnson was waiting in the entry of lord chesterfield's mansion with the prospectus of a dictionary; and pretty kitty fisher had kicked the hat off the head of the prince of wales on a wager. and so into this atmosphere of seething life came joshua reynolds, the handsome, gracious, silent, diplomatic reynolds. fresh from italy and the far-off islands of the southern seas where ulysses sailed, he came--his name and fame heralded as the raphael of england. to have your portrait painted by reynolds was considered a proper "entree" into the "bon ton." to attempt to give the names of royalty who sat to him would be to present a transcript of burke's peerage. unlike van dyck, at whose shrine reynolds worshiped, reynolds was coldly diplomatic in his relations with his sitters. he talked but little, because he could not hear, and to hold an ear-trumpet and paint with both hands is rather difficult. on the moment when the sitting was over, the patron was bowed out. the good ladies who lay in wait with love's lariat never found an opportunity to make the throw. reynolds' specialty was women and children. no man has ever pictured them better, and with him all women were kind. not only were they good, but good-looking; and when arms lacked contour, or busts departed from the ideal, kitty fisher or nelly o'brien came at the call of marchi and lent their charms to complete the canvas. reynolds gradually raised his prices until he received fifteen guineas for a head, one hundred for a half-length, and one hundred and fifty for a full-length. and so rapidly did he work that often a picture was completed in four hours. usually, success is a zigzag journey, but it was not so with reynolds. from seventeen hundred fifty-seven to seventeen hundred eighty-eight, his income was never less than thirty thousand dollars a year, and his popularity knew no eclipse. about the time the american stamp act was being pushed through parliament, reynolds' studio was the neutral stamping-ground for both parties. copley, the boston artist, gave reynolds a bias in favor of truth; and when townshend, the man who introduced the stamp act in parliament, sat to sir joshua, the artist and sitter forgot their business and wrangled over politics. soon afterward sir joshua made a bet with townshend, a thousand pounds against five, that george washington would never enter reynolds' studio. this was in response to the boast that washington would soon be brought to england a captive, and townshend would conduct him to reynolds to have his picture taken. the bet made a sensation and reynolds offered to repeat it to all comers; and a score or more of sincere men paid over five pounds into the hands of sir joshua, and took his note for one thousand pounds, payable when washington landed in england a prisoner. old ursa major had small patience with reynolds' political prophecies; he called america a land of pirates and half-breed cutthroats, and would have bet sir joshua to a standstill--only he had conscientious scruples about betting, and besides, hadn't any money. goldsmith and burke, of course, sided with reynolds in his american sympathies, and garrick referred to them as "my friends, the three irish gentlemen." a frequent visitor at the studio at this time was angelica kauffman, who deserves a volume instead of a mere mention. she came up from switzerland, unknown, and made her way to the highest artistic circles in london. she had wit and beauty, and painted so well that reynolds admitted she taught him a few tricks in the use of color. she produced several portraits of reynolds, and reynolds painted several of her; and the daughter of thackeray wrote a novel which turns on the assumption that they were lovers. there certainly was a fine comradeship existing between them; but whether reynolds was ever capable of an all-absorbing passion there is much doubt. he was married to his work. reynolds had many intimate friends among women: peg woffington, mrs. clive, mrs. thrale, hannah more, fanny burney and others. with them all there went the same high, chivalrous and generous disinterestedness. he was a friend to each in very fact. when the royal academy was formed in seventeen hundred sixty-eight, reynolds was made its president, and this office he held until the close of his life. he was not one of the chief promoters of the academy at the beginning, and the presidency was half forced upon him. he might have declined the honor then had the king not made him a knight, and showed that it was his wish that reynolds should accept. sir joshua, however, had more ballast in his character than any other painter of his time, and it was plain that without his name at the head the academy would be a thing for smiles and quiet jokes. the thirty-four charter members included the names of two americans, copley and west, and of one woman, angelica kauffman. and it is here worthy of note that although the methodist church still refuses to allow women to sit as delegates in its general conference, yet, in seventeen hundred sixty-eight, no dissent was made when joshua reynolds suggested the name of a woman as a member of the royal academy. sir joshua did not forget his friends at the time honors were given out, for he secured the king's permission to add several honorary members to the academy--men who couldn't paint, but who still expressed themselves well in other ways. doctor johnson was made professor of ancient literature; oliver goldsmith, professor of ancient history; and richard dalton, librarian. in this case the office did not seek the man: the man was duly measured, and the office manufactured to fit him. when sir joshua died, in february, seventeen hundred ninety-two, it was the close of a success so uninterrupted that it seems unequaled in the history of art. he left a fortune equal to considerably more than half a million dollars; he had contributed valuable matter to the cause of literature; he had been the earnest friend of all workers in the cause of letters, music and art; and had also been the intimate adviser and confidant of royalty. he was generous and affectionate, wise and sincere; a cheerful and tireless worker--one in whom the elements were so well mixed that all the world might say, this was a man! landseer the man behind his work was seen through it--sensitive, variously gifted, manly, genial, tender-hearted, simple and unaffected; a lover of animals, children and humanity; and if any one wishes to see at a glance nearly all we have written, let him look at landseer's portrait, painted by himself, with a canine connoisseur on either side. --_monkhouse_ [illustration: landseer] happy lives make dull biographies. young women with ambitions should be very cautious lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world. "miss pott--the beautiful miss pott," they called her. the biographers didn't take time to give her first name, nor recount her pedigree, so rapt were they with her personality. they only say, "she was tall, willowy and lissome; and sir joshua reynolds painted her picture as a peasant beauty, bearing on her well-poised head a sheaf of corn." it was at the house of macklin, the rich publisher, that john landseer, the engraver, met miss pott. she was artistic in all her instincts; and as she knew the work of the brilliant engraver and named his best pieces without hesitation he grew interested. men grow interested when you know and appreciate their work; sometimes they grow more interested, at which time they are also interesting. and so it came about that they were married, the beautiful miss pott and john landseer, and it can also be truthfully added that they were happy ever afterward. but that was the last of miss pott. her husband was so strong, so self-centered, so capable, that he protected her from every fierce wind, and gratified her every wish. she believed in him thoroughly and conformed her life to his. her personality was lost in him. the biographer scarcely refers to her, save when he is obliged to, indirectly, to record that she became the mother of three fine girls, and the same number of boys, equally fine, by name, thomas, charles and edwin. thomas and charles grew to be strong, learned and useful men, so accomplished in literature and art that their names would shine bright on history's page, were they not thrown into the shadow by the youngest brother. before edwin landseer was twenty years of age he was known throughout the united kingdom as "landseer." john landseer was known as "the father of landseer," and the others were "the brothers of landseer." and when once in piccadilly, the beautiful miss pott (that was) was pointed out as "the mother of landseer," the words warmed the heart of the good woman like wine. to be the wife of a great man, and the mother of a greater was career enough--she was very happy. queen anne street, near cavendish square, is a shabby district, with long lines of plain brick houses built for revenue only. but queen anne street is immortal to all lovers of art because it was the home of turner; and within its dark, dull and narrow confines were painted the most dazzlingly beautiful canvases that the world has ever seen. and yet again the street has another claim on our grateful remembrance, for at number eighty-three was born, on march seventh, eighteen hundred two, edwin landseer. the father of landseer was an enthusiastic lover of art. he had sprung from a long line of artistic workers in precious metals; and to use a pencil with skill he regarded as the chief end of man. long before his children knew their letters, they were taught to make pictures. indeed, all children can make pictures before they can write. for a play-spell, each day john landseer and his boys tramped across hampstead heath to where there were donkeys, sheep, goats and cows grazing; then all four would sit down on the grass before some chosen subject and sketch the patient model. edwin landseer's first loving recollections of his father went back to these little excursions across the heath. and for each boy to take back to his mother and sisters a picture of something they had seen was a great joy. "well, boys, what shall we draw today?" the father would ask at breakfast-time. and then they would all vote on it, and arguments in favor of goat or donkey were eloquently and skilfully set forth. i said that a very young child could draw pictures: standing by my chair as i write this line is a chubby little girl, just four years old, in a check dress, with two funny little braids down her back. she is begging me for this pencil that she may "make a pussy-cat for mamma to put in a frame." what boots it that the little girl's "pussy-cat" has five or six legs and three tails--these are all inferior details. the evolution of the individual mirrors the evolution of the race, and long before races began to write or reason they made pictures. art education had better begin young, for then it is a sort of play; and good artistic work, robert louis stevenson once said, is only useful play. probably edwin landseer's education began a hundred years before he was born; but his technical instruction in art began when he was three years old, when his father would take him out on the heath and placing him on the grass, put pencil and paper in his hand and let him make a picture of a goat nibbling the grass. then the boy noted for himself that a goat had a short tail, a cow a switch-tail, and horses had no horns, and that a ram's horns were unlike those of a goat. he had begun to differentiate and compare--and not yet four years old! when five years of age he could sketch a sleeping dog as it lay on the floor better than could thomas, his brother, who was seven years older. we know the deep personal interest that john landseer felt in the boy, for he preserved his work, and today in the south kensington museum we can see a series of sketches made by edwin landseer, running from his fifth year to manhood. thus do we trace the unfolding of his genius. that young landseer's drawing was a sort of play there is no doubt. people who set very young children at tasks of grubbing out cold facts from books come plainly within the province of the society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and should be looked after, but to do things with one's hands for fun is only a giving direction to the natural energies. before edwin landseer was eight years of age his father had taught him the process of etching, and we see that even then the lad had a vivid insight into the character of animals. he drew pictures of pointers, mastiffs, spaniels and bulldogs, and gave to each the right expression. the landseers owned several dogs, and what they did not own they borrowed; and once we know that charles and thomas "borrowed" a mastiff without the owner's consent. all children go through the scissors age, when they cut out of magazines, newspapers or books all the pictures they can find, so as to add to the "collection." often these youthful collectors have specialties: one will collect pictures of animals, another of machinery, and still another of houses. but usually it is animals that attract. scissors were forbidden in the landseer household, and if the boys wanted pictures they had to make them. and they made them. they drew horses, sheep, donkeys, cattle, dogs; and when their father took them to the zoological garden it was only that they might bring back trophies in the way of lions and tigers. then we find that there was once a curiosity exhibited in fleet street in the way of a lion-cub that had been caught in africa and mothered by a newfoundland dog. the old mother-dog thought just as much of the orphan that was placed among her brood as of her sure-enough children. the owner had never allowed the two animals to be separated, and when the lion had grown to be twice the size of his foster-mother there still existed between the two a fine affection. the stepmother exercised a stepmother's rights, and occasionally chastised, for his own good, her overgrown charge, and the big brute would whimper and whine like a lubberly boy. this curious pair of animals made a great impression on the landseers. the father and three boys sketched them in various attitudes, and engravings of edwin's sketch are still to be had. and so wherever in london animals were to be found, there, too, were the landseers with pencils and brushes, and pads and palettes. in the back yard of the house where the landseers lived were sundry pens of pet rabbits; in the attic were pigeons, and dogs of various breeds lay on the doorstep sleeping in the sun, or barked at you out of the windows. it is reported that john landseer once contemplated a change of residence; he selected the house he wanted, bargained with the landlord, agreed as to terms and handed out his card preparatory to signing a lease. the real-estate agent looked at the name, stuttered, stammered, and finally said: "you must excuse me, sir, but they say as how you are a dealer in dogs, and your boys are dog-catchers! you'll excuse me--but--i just now 'appened to think the 'ouse is already took!" * * * * * the landseers moved from queen anne street to foley street, near burlington house. this was a neighborhood of artists, and for neighbors they had west, mulready, northcote, constable, flaxman and our own picturesque allston, of cambridge, massachusetts. the elgin marbles were then kept at burlington house, and these were a great source of inspiration to the landseer boys. it gave them a true taste of the grecian, and knowing a little about greece, they wanted to know more. greece became the theme--they talked it at breakfast, dinner and supper. the father and mother told them all they knew, and guessed at a few things more, and to keep at least one lesson ahead of the children the parents "crammed for examination." edwin sketched that world-famous horse's head from the parthenon, and the figures of horses and animals in bas-relief that formed the frieze; and the boys figured out in their minds why horses and men were all the same height. gradually it dawned upon the father and the brothers that edwin was their master so far as drawing was concerned. they could sketch a newfoundland dog that would pass for anybody's newfoundland, but edwin's was a certain identical dog, and none other. edwin landseer really discovered the dog. he discovered that dogs of one breed may be very different in temper and disposition; and going further he found that dogs have character and personality. he struck an untouched lode and worked it out to his own delight and the delight of great numbers of others. his pictures were not mystical, profound or problematic--simply dogs, but dogs with feelings, affections, jealousies, prejudices. in short, he showed that dogs, after all, are very much like folks; and from this, people with a turn for psychology reasoned that the source of life in the dog was the same as the source of life in man. plain people who owned a dog beloved by the whole household, as household dogs always are, became interested in landseer's dogs. they could not buy a painting by landseer, but they could spare a few shillings for an engraving. and so john landseer began to reproduce the pictures of edwin's dogs. the demand grew, and thomas now ceased to sketch and devoted all his time to etching and engraving his brother's work. every one knew of landseer, even people who cared nothing for art: they wanted a picture of one of his dogs to hang over the chimney, because the dog looked like one they used to own. then rich people came and wanted edwin to paint a portrait of their dog, and a studio was opened where the principal sitters were dogs. from a position where close economy must be practised, the landseers found themselves with more money than they knew what to do with. edwin was barely twenty, but had exhibited at several royal academy exhibitions and his name was on every tongue. he gave no attention to marketing his wares--his father and brothers did all that--he simply sketched and had a good time. he was healthy, strong, active, and could walk thirty miles a day; but now that riches had come that way he bought a horse and rode. then other horses were presented to him, and he began to picture horses, too. that he knew horses and loved them is evidenced in many a picture. in every village or crossroads town of america can be found copies of his "shoeing," where stands the sleek bay mare, the sober, serious donkey, and the big dog. no painter who ever lived is so universally known as landseer, and this is because his father and brothers made it their life-business to reproduce his work by engraving. occasionally, rich ladies would want their own portraits painted with a favorite dog at their feet, or men wanted themselves portrayed on horseback, and so landseer found himself with more orders than he could well care for. people put their names, or the name of their dog, on his waiting-list, and some of the dogs died of old age before the name was reached. "i hear," said a lady to sydney smith at a dinner party--"i hear you are to have your portrait painted by landseer." "is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" answered the wit. the story went the rounds, and mulready once congratulated the clergyman on the repartee. "i never made the reply," said sydney smith; "but i wish i had." sydney smith was once visiting the landseer studio, and his eye chanced to light on the picture of a very peculiar-looking dog. "yes, it's a queer picture of a queer dog. the drawing is bad enough, and never pleased me!" and landseer picked up the picture and gave it a toss out of the window. "you may have it if you care to go get it," he carelessly remarked to the visitor. smith made haste to run downstairs and out of the house to secure his prize. he found it lodged in the branches of a tree. in telling the tale years afterward, smith remarked that, whereas many men had climbed trees to evade dogs, yet he alone of all men had once climbed a tree to secure one. sir walter scott saw landseer's picture of "the cat's paw," and was so charmed with it that he hunted out the young artist, and soon after invited him to abbotsford. leslie, the american artist, was at that time at scott's home painting the novelist's portrait. this portrait, by the way, became the property of the ticknor family of boston, and was exhibited a few years ago at the boston museum of fine arts. landseer, leslie and scott made a choice trio of congenial spirits. they were all "outdoor men," strong, sturdy, good-natured, and fond of boyish romp and frolic. many were the long tramps they took across mountain, heath and heather. they visited the highland district together, fished in loch lomond, paddled the entire length of loch katrine, and hunted deer on the preserve of lord gwydr. on one hunting excursion, landseer was stationed on a runway, gun in hand, with a gillie in attendance. the dogs started a fine buck, which ran close to them, but instead of leveling his gun, landseer shoved the weapon into the hands of the astonished gillie with the hurried whispered request, "here, you, hold this for me!" and seizing his pencil, made a hasty sketch of the gallant buck ere the vision could fade from memory. in fact, both landseer and leslie proved poor sportsmen--they had no heart for killing things. a beautiful live deer was a deal more pleasing to landseer than a dead one; and he might truthfully have expressed the thought of his mind by saying, "a bird in the bush is worth two on a woman's bonnet." and indeed he did anticipate thoreau by saying, "to shoot a bird is to lose it." the idea of following deer with dogs and guns, simply for the sport of killing them, was repugnant to the soul of this sensitive, tender-hearted man. in the faces of his deer he put a look of mingled grandeur and pain--a half-pathos, as if foreshadowing their fate. in picturing the dogs and donkeys, he was full of jest and merriment; but the kings of moor and forest called forth deeper and sadder sentiments. that wild animals instinctively flee in frenzied alarm at man's approach is comment enough on our treatment of them. the deer, so gentle and so graceful, so innocent and so beautiful, are never followed by man except as a destroyer; and the idea of looking down a rifle-barrel into the wide-open, soulful eyes of a deer made landseer sick at heart. * * * * * to landseer must be given the honor of first opening a friendly communication between the present royal family and the artistic and literary world. wild-eyed poets and rusty-looking, impecunious painters were firmly warned away from balmoral. the thought that all poets and painters were anarchistic and dangerous--certainly disagreeable--was firmly fixed in the heart of the young queen and her attendants. the barrier had first been raised to landseer. he was requested to visit the palace and paint a picture of one of the queen's deerhounds. it was found that the man was not hirsute, untamed or eccentric. he was a gentleman in manner and education--quite self-contained and manly. he was introduced to the queen; they shook hands and talked about dogs and horses and things, just like old acquaintances. they loved the same things, and so were friends at once. it was not long before landseer's near neighbors at saint john's wood were stricken speechless at the spectacle of queen victoria on horseback waiting at the door of landseer's house, while the artist ran in to change his coat. when he came out he mounted one of the groom's horses for a gallop across the park with the queen of england, on whose possessions the sun never sets. these rides with royalty were, however, largely a matter of professional study; for he not only painted a picture of the queen on horseback, but of albert as well. and at windsor there can now be seen many pictures of dogs and horses painted by landseer, with nobility incidentally introduced, or vice versa, if you prefer. it was in eighteen hundred thirty-five that landseer began to paint the pets of the royal family, and the friendly intimacy then begun continued up to the time of his death in eighteen hundred seventy-three. in the national academy are sixty-seven canvases by landseer; and for the queen, personally, he completed over one hundred pictures, for which he received a sum equal to a quarter of a million dollars. landseer's career was one of continuous prosperity. in his life there was neither tragedy nor disappointment. his horses and dogs filled his bachelor heart, and when tray, blanche and sweetheart bayed and barked him a welcome to that home in saint john's wood where he lived for just fifty years, he was supremely content. his fortune of three hundred thousand pounds was distributed at his death, as he requested, among various servants, friends and needy kinsmen. landseer had no enemies, and no detractors worth mentioning. that his great popularity was owing to his deference to the spirit of the age goes without saying. he never affronted popular prejudices, and was ever alert to reflect the taste of his patrons. the influence of passing events was strong upon him: the subtlety of turner, the spiritual vision of fra angelico, the sublime quality of soul (that scorned present reward and dedicated its work to time) of michelangelo were all far from him. that he at times attempted to be humorous by dressing dogs in coats and trousers with pipe in mouth is to be regretted. a dog so clothed is not funny--the artist is. the point has also been made that in landseer's work there was no progression--no evolution. his pictures of mountain scenery done in scotland before he was thirty mark high tide. to him never again came the same sweep of joyous spirit or surge of feeling. bank-accounts, safety and satisfaction are not the things that stir the emotions and sound the soul-depths. landseer never knew the blessing of a noble discontent. but he contributed to the quiet joy of a million homes; and it is not for us to say, "it is beautiful; but is it art?" neither need we ask whether the name of landseer will endure with those of raphael and leonardo. edwin landseer did a great work, and the world is better for his having lived; for his message was one of gentleness, kindness and beauty. gustave dore lacroix told dore one day, early in his life in paris, that he should illustrate a new edition of his works in four volumes, and he sent them to him. in a week lacroix said to dore, who had called, "well, have you begun to read my story?" "oh! i mastered that in no time; the blocks are all ready"; and while lacroix looked on stupefied, the boy dived into his pockets and piled many of them on the table, saying, "the others are in a basket at the door; there are three hundred in all!" --_blanche roosevelt_ [illustration: gustave dore] it was at the cafe de l'horloge in paris. mr. whistler sat leaning on his cane, looking off into space, dreamily and wearily. he roused enough to answer the question: "dore--gustave dore--an artist? why, the name sounds familiar! oh, yes, an illustrator. ah, now i understand; but there is a difference between an artist and an illustrator, you know, my boy. dore--yes, i knew him--he had bats in his belfry!" and mr. whistler dismissed the subject by calling for a match, and then smoked his cigarette in grim silence, blowing the smoke through his nose. not liking a man, it is easy to shelve him with a joke, or to waive his work with a shrug and toss of the head, but not always will the ghost down at our bidding. in the realm of art nothing is more strange than this: genius does not recognize genius. still, the word is much abused, and the man who is a genius to some is never so to others. in defining a genius it is easiest to work by the rule of elimination and show what he is not. for instance, neither reynolds, landseer nor meissonier was a genius. these men were strong, sane, well poised--filled with energy and life. they were receptive and quick to grasp a suggestion or hint that could be turned to their advantage--to further the immediate plans they had in hand. they had ambition and the ability to concentrate on a thing and do it. just what they focused their attention upon was largely a matter of accident. they had in them the capacity for success--they could have succeeded at anything they undertook, and they were too sensible to undertake a thing at which they could not succeed. they always saw light through at the other end. "i have success tied to the leg of my easel by a blue ribbon," said meissonier. they succeeded by mathematical calculation, and the fame, name and gold they won was through a conscious laying hold upon the laws that bring these things to pass. they chose to paint pictures, and the entire energy of their natures was concentrated upon this one thing. practising the art, day after day, month after month, year after year, they acquired a wonderful facility. they knew the history of art--its failures, pitfalls and successes. they knew the human heart--they knew what the people wanted and what they didn't. they set themselves to supply a demand. and all this keenness, combined with good taste and tireless energy, would have brought a like success in any one of a dozen different professions. and these are the men who give plausibility to that stern half-truth: a man can succeed in anything he undertakes--it is all a matter of will. but you can not count gustave dore in any such category. he stands alone: he had no predecessors, and he left no successors. we say that the artist has his prototype; but every rule has its exception--even this one. gustave dore drew pictures because he could do nothing else. he never had a lesson in his life, never drew from a model, could not sketch from nature; accepted no one's advice; never retouched or considered his work after it was done; never cudgeled his brains for a subject; could read a book by turning the leaves; grasped all knowledge; knew all languages; found an immediate market for his wares and often earned a thousand dollars before breakfast; lived fifty years and produced over one hundred thousand sketches--an average of six a day; made two million dollars by the labor of his own hands; was knighted, flattered, proclaimed, adored, lauded, scorned, scoffed, hooted, maligned, and died broken-hearted. surely you can not dispose of a man like this with a "bon mot"! comets may be good or ill, but wise men nevertheless make note of them, and the fact that they once flashed their blinding light upon us must live in the history of things that were. * * * * * an alsatian by birth, and a parisian by environment, dore is spoken of as of the french school, but if ever an artist belonged to no "school" it was gustave dore. his early years were spent in strassburg, within the shadow of the cathedral. his father was a civil engineer--methodical, calculating, prosperous. the lad was the second of three sons: strong, bright, intelligent boys. in his travels up and down the rhine the father often took little gustave with him, and the lad came to know each wild crag, and crowning fortress, and bend in the river where strong men with spears and bows and arrows used to lie in wait. in imagination gustave repeopled the ruins and filled the weird forests with curious, haunting shapes. the rhine reeks with history that merges off into misty song and fable; and this folklore of the storied river filled the day-dreams and night-dreams of this curious boy. but all children have a vivid imagination, and the chief problem of modern education is how to conserve and direct it. as yet no scheme or plan or method has been devised that shows results, and the men of imagination seem to be those who have succeeded in spite of school. in gustave dore we have the curious spectacle of nature keeping bright and fresh in the man all those strange conceptions of the child, and multiplying them by a man's strength. the wild imaginings of gustave only served his father and mother with food for laughter; and his erratic absurdities in making pictures supplied the neighbors' fun. but actions that are funny in a child become disturbing in a man; he's cute when little, but "sassy" when older. gustave, however, did not put away childish things. when he had reached the age of indiscretion--was fourteen, and had a frog in his throat, and was conscious of being barefoot--he still imagined things and made pictures of them. his father was distressed, and sought by bribes to get him to quit scrawling with pencil and turn his attention to logarithms and other useful things; but with only partial success. when fifteen he accompanied his father and older brother to paris, where the older boy was to be installed in the ecole polytechnique. it was the hope of the father that, once in paris, gustave would consent to remain with his brother, and thus, by a change of base, a reform in his tastes would come about and he would leave the rhine with its foolish old-woman tales and cease the detestable habit of picturing them. it was the first time gustave had ever been to paris--the first time he had ever visited a large city. he was fascinated, captivated, enthralled. paris was fairyland and paradise. he announced to his father and brother that he would not return to alsace, neither would he go to the polytechnique. they told him he must do either one or the other; and as the father was going back home in two days, gustave could have just forty-eight hours in which to decide his destiny. passing by the office of the "journal pour rire," the father and son gaping in all the windows like true rustics, they saw announced an illustrated edition of "the labors of hercules." some of the illustrations were shown in the window with the hope of tempting possible buyers. gustave looked upon these illustrations with critical eye, and his face flushed scarlet--but he said nothing. he knew the book; aye, every tale in it, with all its possible variations, had long been to him a bit of true history. to him hercules lived yesterday, and, confusing hearsay with memory, he was almost ready to swear that he was present and used a shovel when the strong man cleaned the augean stables. the next morning, when his father and brother were ready to go to visit the polytechnique, gustave pleaded illness and was allowed to lie abed. but no sooner was he alone than he seized pencil and paper and began to make pictures illustrating "the labors of hercules." in two hours he had half a dozen pictures done, and fearing the return of his father he hurried with his pictures to monsieur philipon, director of the "journal pour rire." he shouldered past the attendants, pushed his way into the office of the great man, and spreading his pictures out on the desk cried, "look here, sir! that is the way 'the labors of hercules' should be illustrated!" it was the action of one absorbed and lost in an idea. had he taken thought he would have hesitated, been abashed, self-conscious--and probably been repulsed by the flunkies--before seeing monsieur philipon. it was all the sublime effrontery and conceit--or naturalness, if you please--of a country bumpkin who did not know his place. philipon glanced at the pictures and then looked at the boy. then he looked at the pictures. he called to another man in an adjoining room and they both looked at the pictures. then they consulted in an undertone. it was suggested that the boy draw another illustration right there and then. they wished to make sure that he himself did the work, and they wanted to see how long it took. gustave sat down and drew another picture. philipon refused to let the lad leave the office, and dispatched a messenger for his father. when the father arrived, a contract was drawn up and signed, whereby it was provided that the "infant" should remain with philipon for three years, on a yearly salary of five thousand francs, with the proviso that the lad should attend the school, lycee charlemagne, for four hours every day. thus, while yet a child, without discipline or the friendly instruction that wisdom might have lent, he was launched on the tossing tide of commercial life. his "hercules" was immediately published and made a most decided hit--a palpable hit. paris wanted more, and philipon wished to supply the demand. the new artist's pictures in the "journal pour rire" boomed the circulation, and more illustrations were in demand. philipon suggested that the four hours a day at school was unnecessary--gustave knew more already than the teachers. gustave agreed with him, and his pay was doubled. more work rushed in, and gustave illustrated serial after serial with ease and surety, giving to every picture a wildness and weirdness and awful comicality. the work was unlike anything ever before seen in paris: every one was saying, "what next!" and to add to the interest, philipon, from time to time, wrote articles for various publications concerning "the child illustrator" and "the artistic prodigy of the 'journal pour rire.'" with such an entree into life, how was it possible that he should ever become a master? his advantages were his disadvantages, and all his faults sprang naturally as a result of his marvelous genius. he was the victim of facility. everything in this world happens because something else has happened before. had the thing that happened first been different, the thing that followed would not be what it is. had gustave dore entered the art world of paris in the conventional way, the master might have toned down his exuberance, taught him reserve, and gradually led him along until his tastes were formed and character developed. and then, when he had found his gait and come to know his strength, the name of paul gustave dore might have stood out alone as a bright star in the firmament--the one truly great modern. or, on the other hand, would the ossified discipline and set rules of a school have shamed him into smirking mediocrity and reduced his native genius to neutral salts? who will be presumptuous enough to say what would have occurred had not this happened and that first taken place? * * * * * before gustave dore had been in paris a year his father died. shortly after, the strassburg home was broken up, and madame dore followed her son to paris. gustave's tireless pencil was bringing him a better income than his father had ever made; and the mother and three sons lived in comfort. the mother admonished gustave to apply himself to pure art, and not be influenced by philipon and the others who were making fortunes by his genius. and this advice he intended to follow--not yet, but very soon. there were "rabelais" and balzac's "contes drolatiques" to illustrate. these done, he would then enter the atelier of one of the masters and take his time in doing the highest work. but before the books were done, others came, with retainers in advance. then a larger work was begun, to illustrate the crimean war, in five hundred battle-scenes. and so he worked--worked like a steam-engine--worked without ceasing. he illustrated shakespeare's "tempest" as only dore could; then came coleridge, moore, hood, milton, dante, hugo, gautier, and great plans were being laid to illustrate the bible. the years were slipping past. his brothers had found snug places in the army, and he and his mother lived together in affluence. between them there was an affection that was very loverlike. they were comrades in everything--all his hopes, plans and ambitions were rehearsed to her. the love that he might have bestowed on a wife was reserved for his mother, and, fortunately, she had a mind strong enough to comprehend him. in the corner of the large, sunny apartment that was set apart for his mother's room, he partitioned off a little room for himself, where he slept on an iron cot. he wished to be near her, so that each night he could tell her of what he had done during the day, and each morning rehearse his plans for the coming hours. by telling her, things shaped themselves, and as he described the pictures he would draw, others came to him. the confessional seems a crying need of every human heart--we wish to tell some one. and without this confessional, where one soul can outpour to another that fully sympathizes and understands, marriage is a hollow, whited mockery, full of dead men's bones. there is a desire of the heart that makes us long to impart our joy to another. corot once caught the sunset on his canvas as the great orb sank, a golden ball, behind the hills of barbizon. he wished to show the picture to some one--to tell some one, and looking around saw only a cottage on the edge of the wood a quarter of a mile away, and thither he ran, crying to the astonished farmer, "i've got it! i've got it!" when dore did a particularly good piece of work, in the first intoxication of joy he would run home, kiss his mother on both cheeks, and picking her up in his strong arms run with her about the rooms. at other times he would play leap-frog over the chairs, vault over the piano, and jump across the table. and this wild joy that comes after work well done he knew for many years. in the evening, after a particularly good day, he would play the violin and sing entire scenes from some opera, his mother turning the leaves. as to his skill as a musician, is this testimonial on the back of a fine photograph i once had the pleasure of handling: "as a souvenir of tender friendship, presented to gustave dore, who joins with his genius as a painter the talents of a distinguished violinist and charming tenor.--g. rossini." the illustrations for dante's "inferno" were done in dore's twenty-second year, and for this work he was decorated with the cross of the legion of honor. he never did better work, and at this time his hand and brain seemed at their best. every great writer and every great artist makes vigorous use of his childhood impressions. childhood does not know it is storing up for the days to come, but its memories sink deep into the soul, and when called upon to express, the man reaches out and prints from the plates that are bitten deep; and these are the pictures of his early youth--or else they tell of a time when he loved a woman. the first named are the more reliable, for sex and love have been made forbidden subjects, until self-consciousness, affectation and untruth creep easily into their accounting. all literature and all art are secondary sex manifestations, just as surely as the song of birds or the color and perfume of flowers are sex qualities. and so it happens that all art and all literature is a confession; and it occurs, too, that childhood does not stand out sharp and clear on memory's chart until it is past and adolescence lies between. then maturity gives back to the man the childhood that is gone forever. many of the world's best specimens of literature are built on the impressions of childhood. shakespeare, victor hugo, and i'll name you another--james whitcomb riley--have written immortal books with the autobiography of childhood for both warp and woof. gustave dore's best work is a reproduction of his childhood's thoughts, feelings and experiences--all well colored with the stuff that dreams are made of. the background of every good dore picture is a deep wood or mountain-pass or dark ravine. the wild, romantic passes of the vosges, and the sullen crags, topped with dark mazes of wilderness, were ever in his mind, just as he saw them yesterday when he clutched his father's hand and held his breath to hear the singing of the wood-nymphs 'mong the branches. his tracery of bark and branch, and drooping bough held down with weight of dew, are startlingly true. the great roots of giant trees, denuded by storm and flood, lie exposed to view; and deep vistas are given of shadowy glade and swift-running mountain torrent. all is somber, terrible, and tells of forces that tossed these mountain-tops like bowls, and of a power immense, immeasurable, incomprehensible, eternal in the heavens. dore's first exhibition in the salon was made when he was eighteen, and a few years later, when he was presented with the cross of the legion of honor, the decoration made his work exempt from jury examination. and so every year he sent some large painting to the salon. his work was the wonder of paris, and on every hand his illustrations were in demand, but his canvases were too large in size and too terrible in subject to fit private residences. patrons were cautious. to own a "dore" was proof of a high appreciation of art, or else a lack of it--buyers did not know which. they were afraid of being laughed at. his competitors began to hoot and jeer. not being able to make pictures that would compete with his, they wrote him down in the magazines. his name became a jest. various of his illustrations for the bible were enlarged into immense canvases, some of which were twenty feet long and twelve feet high. all who looked upon these pictures were amazed by the fecundity in invention and the skill shown in drawing; but the most telling criticism against them was their defect in coloring. dore could draw, but could not color, and the report was abroad that he was color-blind. the only buyers for his pictures came from england and america. paris loved art for art's sake, and the bible was not popular enough to make its illustration worth while. "what is this book you are working on?" asked a caller. it was different in london, where spurgeon preached every sunday to three thousand people. the "dores" taken to london attracted much attention--"mostly from the size of the canvases," parisians said. but the particular subject was the real attraction. instead of reading their daily "chapter," hard-working, tired people went to see a dore bible picture where it was exposed in some vacant storeroom and tuppence entrance-fee charged. it occurred to certain capitalists that if people would go to see one dore, why would not a dore gallery pay? a company was formed, agents were sent to paris and negotiations begun. finally, on payment of three hundred thousand dollars, forty large canvases were secured, with a promise of more to come. dore took the money, and, the agents being gone, ran home to tell his mother. she was at dinner with a little company of invited guests. gustave vaulted over the piano, played leap-frog among the chairs, and turning a handspring across the table, incidentally sent his heels into a thousand-dollar chandelier that came toppling down, smashing every dish upon the table, and frightening the guests into hysterics. "it's nothing," said madame dore; "it's nothing--gustave has merely done a good day's work!" the "dore gallery" in london proved a great success. spurgeon advised his flock to see it, that they might the better comprehend bible history; the reverend doctor parker spoke of the painter as "one inspired by god"; sunday-schools made excursions thither; men in hobnailed shoes knelt before the pictures, believing they were in the presence of a vision. and all these things were duly advertised, just as we have been told of the old soldier who visited the gettysburg cyclorama at chicago and looking upon the picture, he suddenly cried to his companion, "down, bill, down! by t' lord, there's a feller sightin' his gun on us!" barnum offered the owners twice what they paid for the "dore gallery," with intent to move the pictures to america, but they were too wise to accept. twenty-eight of the canvases were eventually sold, however, for a sum greater than was paid for the lot, yet enough remained to make a most representative display; and no american in london misses seeing the dore gallery, any more than we omit madame tussaud's wax-works. in eighteen hundred seventy-three, dore visited england and was welcomed as a conquering hero. the prince of wales and the nobility generally paid him every honor. he was presented to the queen, and victoria thanked him for the great work he had done, and asked him to inscribe for her a copy of the "dore bible." more than this, the queen directed that several dore pictures be purchased and placed in windsor castle. of course, all paris knew of dore's success in england. paris laughed. "what did i tell you?" said berand. and paris reasoned that what england and america gushed over must necessarily be very bad. the directors of the salon made excuses for not hanging his pictures. dore had become rich, but his own paris--the paris that had been a foster-mother to him--refused to accredit him the honor which he felt was his due. in eighteen hundred seventy-eight, smarting under the continued gibes and geers of artistic france, he modeled a statue which he entitled "glory." it represents a woman holding fast in affectionate embrace a beautiful youth, whose name we are informed is genius. the woman has in one hand a laurel-wreath; hidden in the leaves of this wreath is a dagger with which she is about to deal the victim a fatal blow. dore grew dispirited, and in vain did his mother and near friends seek to rally him out of the despondency that was settling down upon him. they said, "you are only a little over forty, and many a good man has never been recognized at all until after that--see millet!" but he shook his head. when his mother died, in eighteen hundred eighty-one, it seemed to snap his last earthly tie. of course he exaggerated the indifference there was towards him; he had many friends who loved him as a man and respected him as an artist. but after the death of his mother he had nothing to live for, and thinking thus, he soon followed her. he died in eighteen hundred eighty-three, aged fifty years. * * * * * so here endeth "little journeys to the homes of eminent painters," being volume four of the series, as written by elbert hubbard: edited and arranged by fred bann; borders and initials by roycroft artists, and produced by the roycrofters, at their shops, which are in east aurora, erie county, new york, mcmxxii [transcriber's note: inconsistencies in the original (e.g., arnola/arnold; edgcumbe/edgecumbe; geers/jeers) have been retained in this etext.] [frontispiece: red riding hood from the picture by g. f. watts, in the birmingham art gallery page ] the book of art for young people by agnes ethel conway and sir martin conway with sixteen full-page illustrations in colour a. & c. black, ltd. , & soho square, london, w. first published september as "the children's book of art" reprinted in , , and made in great britain. printed by r. & r. clark, limited, edinburgh. to my little friends agnes and rosanne note my thanks are due and are cordially rendered to the earl of yarborough, sir frederick cook, and the authorities of trinity college, cambridge, for permission to reproduce their pictures; to lady alfred douglas and mr. henry newbolt for leave to quote from their poems; to mr. everard green, somerset herald, for all that is new in the interpretation of the wilton diptych; to miss k. k. radford for the translation in chapter viii., and to all the friends who have helped me with criticism and suggestions. a. e. c. contents chap. page i introductory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii the thirteenth century in europe . . . . iii richard ii. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv the van eycks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v the renaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi raphael . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii the renaissance in venice . . . . . . . . viii the renaissance in the north . . . . . . ix rembrandt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x peter de hoogh and cuyp . . . . . . . . . xi van dyck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xii velasquez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii reynolds and the eighteenth century . . . xiv turner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv the nineteenth century . . . . . . . . . index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . list of illustrations in the colours of the original paintings red ridinghood . . . . . . . . . . _g. f. watts_ _frontispiece_ richard ii. before the virgin page and child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the three maries . . . . . . . . . _h. van eyck_ . . . . . st. jerome in his study . . . . . _antonello da messina_ the nativity . . . . . . . . . . . _sandro botticelli_ . . the knight's dream . . . . . . . . _raphael_ . . . . . . . the golden age . . . . . . . . . . _giorgione_ . . . . . . st. george destroying the dragon . _tintoret_ . . . . . . edward, prince of wales, afterwards edward vi. . . . . _holbein_ . . . . . . . a man in armour . . . . . . . . . _rembrandt_ . . . . . . an interior . . . . . . . . . . . _p. de hoogh_ . . . . . landscape with cattle . . . . . . _cuyp_ . . . . . . . . william ii. of orange . . . . . . _van dyck_ . . . . . . don balthazar carlos . . . . . . . _velasquez_ . . . . . . the duke of gloucester . . . . . . _sir j. reynolds_ . . . the fighting temeraire . . . . . . _turner_ . . . . . . . the children's book of art chapter i introductory almost the pleasantest thing in the world is to be told a splendid story by a really nice person. there is not the least occasion for the story to be true; indeed i think the untrue stories are the best--those in which we meet delightful beasts and things that talk twenty times better than most human beings ever do, and where extraordinary events happen in the kind of places that are not at all like our world of every day. it is so fine to be taken into a country where it is always summer, and the birds are always singing and the flowers always blowing, and where people get what they want by just wishing for it, and are not told that this or that isn't good for them, and that they'll know better than to want it when they're grown up, and all that kind of thing which is so annoying and so often happening in this obstinate criss-cross world, where the days come and go in such an ordinary fashion. but if i might choose the person to tell me the kind of story i like to listen to, and hear told to me over and over again, it would be some one who could draw pictures for me while talking--pictures like those of tenniel in _alice in wonderland_ and _through the looking-glass_. how much better we know alice herself and the white knight and the mad hatter and all the rest of them from the pictures than even from the story itself. but my story-teller should not only draw the pictures while he talked, but he should paint them too. i want to see the sky blue and the grass green, and i want red cloaks and blue bonnets and pink cheeks and all the bright colours, and some gold and silver too, and not merely black and white--though black and white drawings would be better than nothing, so long as they showed me what the people and beasts and dragons and things were like. i could put up with even rather bad drawings if only they were vivid. don't you know how good a bad drawing sometimes seems? i have a friend who can make the loveliest folks and the funniest beasts and the quaintest houses and trees, and he really can't draw a bit; and the curious thing is, that if he could draw better i should not like his folks and beasts half as much as i do the lop-sided, crook-legged, crazy-looking people he produces. and then he has such quaint things to tell about them, and while he talks he seems to make them live, so that i can hardly believe they are not real people for all their unlikeness to any one you ever saw. now, the old pictures you see in the picture galleries are just like that, only the people that painted them didn't invent the stories but merely illustrated stories which, at the time those painters lived, every one knew. some of the stories were true and some were just a kind of fairy tale, and it didn't matter to the painters, and it doesn't matter to us, which was true and which wasn't. the only thing that matters is whether the story is a good one and whether the picture is a nice one. there is a delightful old picture painted on a wall away off at assisi, in italy, which shows st. francis preaching to a lot of birds, and the birds are all listening to him and looking pleased--the way birds do look pleased when they find a good fat worm or fresh crumbs. now, st. francis was a real man and such a dear person too, but i don't suppose half the stories told about him were really true, yet we can pretend they were and that's just what the painter helps us to do. don't you know all the games that begin with 'let's pretend'?--well, that's art. art is pretending, or most of it is. pictures take us into a world of make-believe, a world of imagination, where everything is or should be in the right place and in the right light and of the right colour, where all the people are nicely dressed to match one another, and are not standing in one another's way, and not interrupting one another or forgetting to help play the game. that's the difference between pictures and photographs. a photograph is almost always wrong somewhere. something is out of place, or something is there which ought to be away, or the light is wrong; or, if it's coloured, the colours are just not in keeping with one another. if it's a landscape the trees are where we don't want them; they hide what we want to see, or they don't hide the very thing we want hidden. then the clouds are in the wrong place, and a wind ruffles the water just where we want to see something reflected. that's the way things actually happen in the real world. but in the world of 'let's pretend,' in the world of art, they don't happen so. there everything happens right, and everybody does, not so much what they should (that might sometimes be dull), but exactly what we want them to do--which is so very much better. that is the world of your art and my art. unfortunately all the pictures in the galleries weren't painted just for you and me; but you'll find, if you look for them, plenty that were, and the rest don't matter. those were painted, no doubt, for some one else. but if you could find the some one else for whom they were painted, the some one else whose world of 'let's pretend' was just these pictures that don't belong to your world, and if they could tell you about their world of 'let's pretend,' ten to one you'd find it just as good a world as your own, and you'd soon learn to 'pretend' that way too. well, the purpose of this book is to take you into a number of worlds of 'let's pretend,' most of which i daresay will be new to you, and perhaps you will find some of them quite delightful places. i'm sure you can't help liking st. jerome's cell when you come to it. it's not a bit like any room we can find anywhere in the world to-day, but wouldn't it be joyful if we could? what a good time we could have there with the tame lion (not a bit like any lion in the zoo, but none the worse for that) and the jolly bird, and all st. jerome's little things. i should like to climb on to his platform and sit in his chair and turn over his books, though i don't believe they'd be interesting to read, but they'd certainly be pretty to look at. if you and i were there, though, we should soon be out away behind, looking round the corner, and finding all sorts of odd places that unfortunately can't all get into the picture, only we know they're there, down yonder corridor, and from what the painter shows us we can invent the rest for ourselves. one of the troubles of a painter is that he can't paint every detail of things as they are in nature. a primrose, when you first see it, is just a little yellow spot. when you hold it in your hand you find it made up of petals round a tiny centre with little things in it. if you take a magnifying glass you can see all its details multiplied. if you put a tiny bit of it under a microscope, ten thousand more little details come out, and so it might go on as long as you went on magnifying. now a picture can't be like that. it just has to show you the general look of things as you see them from an ordinary distance. but there comes in another kind of trouble. how do you see things? we don't all see the same things in the same way. your mother's face looks very different to you from its look to a mere person passing in the street. your own room has a totally different aspect to you from what it bears to a casual visitor. the things you specially love have a way of standing out and seeming prominent to you, but not, of course, to any one else. then there are other differences in the look of the same things to different people which you have perhaps noticed. some people are more sensitive to colours than others. some are much more sensitive to brightness and shadow. some will notice one kind of object in a view, or some detail in a face far more emphatically than others. girls are quicker to take note of the colour of eyes, hair, skin, clothes, and so forth than boys. a woman who merely sees another woman for a moment will be able to describe her and her dress far more accurately than a man. a man will be noticing other things. his picture, if he painted one, would make those other things prominent. so it is with everything that we see. none of us sees more than certain features in what the eye rests upon, and if we are artists it is only those features that we should paint. we can't possibly paint every detail of everything that comes into the picture. we must make a choice, and of course we choose the features and details that please us best. now, the purpose of painting anything at all is to paint the beauty of the thing. if you see something that strikes you as ugly, you don't instinctively want to paint it; but when you see an effect of beauty, you feel that it would be very nice indeed to have a picture showing that beauty. so a picture is not really the representation of a thing, but the representation of the beauty of the thing. some people can see beauty almost everywhere; they are conscious of beauty all day long. they want to surround themselves with beauty, to make all their acts beautiful, to shed beauty all about them. those are the really artistic souls. the gift of such perfect instinct for beauty comes by nature to a few. it can be cultivated by almost all. that cultivation of all sorts of beauty in life is what many people call civilization--the real art of living. to see beauty everywhere in nature is not so very difficult. it is all about us where the work of uncivilized man has not come in to destroy it. artists are people who by nature and by education have acquired the power to see beauty in what they look at, and then to set it down on paper or canvas, or in some other material, so that other people can see it too. it seems strange that at one time the beauty of natural landscape was hardly perceived by any one at all. people lived in the beautiful country and scarcely knew that it was beautiful. then came the time when the beauty of landscape began to be felt by the nicest people. they began to put it into their poetry, and to talk and write about it, and to display it in landscape pictures. it was through poems and pictures, which they read and saw, that the general run of folks first learned to look for beauty in nature. i have no doubt that turner's wonderful sunsets made plenty of people look at sunsets and rejoice in the intricacy and splendour of their glory for the first time in their lives. well, what turner and other painters of his generation did for landscape, had had to be done for men and women in earlier days by earlier generations of artists. the greeks were the first, in their sculpture, to show the wonderful beauty of the human form; till their day people had not recognised what to us now seems obvious. no doubt they had thought one person pretty and another handsome, but they had not known that the human figure was essentially a glorious thing till the greek sculptors showed them. another thing painters have taught the world is the beauty of atmosphere. formerly no one seems to have noticed how atmosphere affects every object that is seen through it. the painters had to show us that it is so. after we had seen the effect of atmosphere in pictures we began to be able to see for ourselves in nature, and thus a whole group of new pleasures in views of nature was opened up to us. away back in the middle ages, six hundred and more years ago, folks had far less educated eyes than we possess to-day. they looked at nature more simply than we do and saw less in it. so they were satisfied with pictures that omitted a great many features we cannot do without. but painting does not only concern itself with representing the world we actually see and the people that our eyes actually behold. it concerns itself quite as much with the world of fancy, of make-believe. indeed, most painters when they look at an actual scene let their fancy play about it, so that presently what they see and what they fancy get mixed up together, and their pictures are a mixture of fancy and of fact, and no one can tell where the one ends and the other begins. the fancies of people are very different at different times, and you can't understand the pictures of old days unless you can share the fancies of the old painters. to do that you must know something about the way they lived and the things they believed, and what they hoped for and what they were afraid of. here, for instance, is a very funny fact solemnly recorded in an old account book. a certain count of savoy owned the beautiful castle of chillon, which you have perhaps seen, on the shores of the lake of geneva. but he could not be happy, because he and the people about him thought that in a hole in the rock under one of the cellars a basilisk lived--a very terrible dragon--and they all went in fear of it. so the count paid a brave mason a large sum of money (and the payment is solemnly set down in his account book) to break a way into this hole and turn the basilisk out; and i have no doubt that he and his people were greatly pleased when the hole was made and no basilisk was found. folks who believed in dragons as sincerely as that, must have gone in terror in many places where we should go with no particular emotion. a picture of a dragon to them would mean much more than it would to us. so if we are really to understand old pictures, we must begin by understanding the fancies of the artists who painted them, and of the people they were painted for. you see how much study that means for any one who wants to understand all the art of all the world. we shall not pretend to lead you on any such great quest as that, but ask you to look at just a few old pictures that have been found charming by a great many people of several generations, and to try and see whether they do not charm you as well. you must never, of course, pretend to like what you don't like--that is too silly. we can't all like the same things. still there are certain pictures that most nice people like. a few of these we have selected to be reproduced in this book for you to look at. and to help you realize who painted them and the kind of people they were painted for, my daughter has written the chapters that follow. i hope you will find them entertaining, and still more that you will like the pictures, and so learn to enjoy the many others that have come down to us from the past, and are among the world's most precious possessions to-day. chapter ii the thirteenth century in europe before we give our whole attention to the first picture, of which the original was painted in england in , let us imagine ourselves in the year making a rapid tour through the chief countries of europe to see for ourselves how the people lived. the first thing that will strike us on our journey is the contrast between the grandeur of the churches and public buildings and the insignificance of most of the houses. some of the finest churches in england, built in the style of architecture called 'norman,' one or more of which you may have seen, date before the year , as for example, durham cathedral, and the naves of norwich, ely, and peterborough cathedrals. the great churches abroad were also beautiful and more elaborately decorated, in the north with sculpture and painting, in the south with marble and mosaic. the towns competed one with another in erecting them finer and larger, and in decorating them as magnificently as they could. this was done because the church was a place which the people used for many other purposes besides sunday services. in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the parish church, on week-days as well as on sundays, was a very useful and agreeable place to most of the parishioners. the 'holy' days, or saints' days, 'holidays' indeed, were times of rejoicing and festivity, and the church processions and services were pleasant events in the lives of many who had few entertainments, and who for the most part could neither read nor write. printing was not yet invented, at least not in europe, and as every book had to be written out by hand, copies of books were rare and only owned by the few who could read them, so that stories were mostly handed down by word of mouth, the same being told by mother to child for many generations. the favourites were stories of the saints and martyrs of the catholic church, for of course we are speaking now of times long before the reformation. the old testament stories and all the stories of the life of christ and his apostles were well known too, and just as we never tire of reading our favourite books over and over again, our forefathers of wanted to see on the walls of their churches representations of the stories which they could not read. their daily thoughts were more occupied with the infant christ, the saints, and the angels, than ours generally are. they thought of themselves as under the protection of some saint, who would plead with god the father for them if they asked him, for god himself seemed too high or remote to be appealed to always directly. he was approached with awe; the saints, the virgin, and the infant christ, with love. we must realise this difference before we can well understand a picture painted in the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries, nor can we look at one without feeling that the artist and the people for whom he painted, so loved the holy personages. they thought about them always, not only at stated times and on sundays, and never tired of looking at pictures of them and their doings. it is sometimes said that only catholics can understand medieval art, because they feel towards the saints as the old painters did. but it is possible for any one to realize how in those far-off days the people felt, and it is this that we must try to do. the religious fervour of the middle ages was not a sign of great virtue among all the people. some were far more cruel, savage, and unrestrained than we are to-day. very wicked men even became powerful dignitaries in the church. but it was the church that fostered the impulses of pity and charity in a fierce age, and some of the saints of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such as st. francis of assisi and st. catharine of siena, are still held to be among the most beautiful characters the world has ever known. the churches of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in florence were lined with marble, and a great picture frequently stood above the altar. it is difficult to realize to-day that the processes which we call oil and water-colour painting were not then invented, and that no shops existed to sell canvases and paints ready for use. the artist painted upon a wooden panel, which he had himself to make, plane flat, and cut to the size he needed. in order to get a surface upon which he could paint, he covered the panel with a thin coating of plaster which it was difficult to lay on absolutely flat. upon the plaster he drew the outline of the figures he was going to paint, and filled in the background with a thin layer of gold leaf, such as is to-day used for gilding frames. after the background had been put in, it was impossible to correct the outline of the figures, and the labour of preparing the wooden panel and of laying the gold was so great that an artist would naturally not make risky attempts towards something new, lest he should spoil his work. in the jerusalem chamber of westminster abbey there is a thirteenth-century altar-piece of this kind, and you can see the strips of vellum that were used to cover the joins of the different pieces of wood forming the panel, beneath the layer of plaster, which has now to a great extent peeled off. the people liked to see their old testament stories and the stories from the life of christ painted over and over again. they had become fond of the versions of the tales which they had known and seen painted when they were young, and did not wish them changed, so that the range of subjects was not large. the same were repeated, and because of the painter's fear of making mistakes it was natural that the same figures should be repeated too. thus, whatever the subject pictured, a tradition was formed in each locality for the grouping and general arrangement of the figures, and the most authoritative tradition for such typical groupings was preserved in constantinople or byzantium, from which city the 'byzantine' school of painting takes its name. before , byzantium had been a centre of residence and the civilizing influence of trade for eighteen centuries. it had been the capital of the roman empire, and less civilized peoples from the north had never conquered the town, destroying the greek and roman traditions, as happened elsewhere in europe. you have read how the romans had to withdraw their armies from england to defend rome against the attacks of the goths from the north, and then how britain was settled by angles, saxons, jutes, and danes, who destroyed most of the roman civilization. a similar though much less complete destruction took place in italy a little later, when goths and lombards, who were remotely akin to the angles and saxons, overwhelmed roman culture. but next to constantinople, rome had the best continuous tradition of art, for the fine monuments of the great imperial days still existed in the city. in byzantium the original greek population struggled on, and continued to paint, and make mosaics, and erect fine buildings, till the turks conquered them in . the byzantines were wealthy and made exquisite objects in gold, precious stones, and ivory. while they were painting better than any other people in europe, they too reproduced the same subjects and the same figures over and over again, only the figures were more graceful than those of the local italian, english, and french artists, who in varying degrees at different times tried to paint like the byzantine or greek artists, but without quite the same success. so long as there was no need for an artist to paint anything but the old well-established subjects, and so long as people desired them to be painted in the old conventional manner, there was little reason why any painter should try to be original and paint what was not wanted. but in the thirteenth century a great change took place. let us here refresh our memories of what we may have read of that delightful saint, francis of assisi. he was born in , the son of a well-to-do nobleman, in the little town of assisi in umbria, and as a lad became inflamed with the ideal of the religious life. but instead of entering one of the existing monastic orders, where he would have been protected, he gave away every possession he had in the world and adopted 'poverty' as his watchword. clad in an old brown habit, he walked from place to place preaching charity, obedience, and renunciation of all worldly goods. he lived on what was given to him to eat from day to day; he nursed the lepers and the sick. ever described as a most lovable person, he won by his preaching the hearts of people of all classes, from the king of france to the humblest peasant. he wrote beautiful hymns in praise of the sun, the moon, and the stars, and had a great love for every living thing. the birds were said to have flocked around him because they loved him, and we read that he talked to them and called them his 'little sisters.' an old writer tells this story in good faith: when st. francis spake words to them, the birds began all of them to open their beaks and spread their wings and reverently bend their heads down to the ground, and by their acts and by their songs did show that the holy father gave them joy exceeding great. wherever he preached he made converts who 'married holy poverty,' as st. francis expressed it, gave up everything they had, and lived his preaching and roaming life. st. francis himself had no idea of forming a monastic order. he wished to live a holy life in the world and show others how to do the same, and for years he and his companions worked among the poor, earning their daily bread when they could, and when they could not, begging for it. gradually, however, ambition stirred in the hearts of some of the followers of francis, and against the will of their leader they made themselves into the order of franciscan friars, collected gifts of money, and began to build churches and monastic buildings. at first the buildings were said to belong to the pope, who allowed the franciscans to use them, since they might not own property; but after the death of st. francis, the order built churches throughout the length and breadth of italy, not of marble and mosaic but of brick, since brick was cheaper; but the brick walls were plastered, and upon the wet plaster there were painted scenes from the life of st. francis, side by side with the old christian and saintly legends. this sudden demand for painted churches with paintings of new subjects, stirred the painters of the day to alter their old style. when an artist was asked to paint a large picture of st. francis preaching to the birds, he had to look at real birds and he had to study a real man in the attitude of preaching. there was no scene that had ever been painted from the life of christ or of any saint in which a man preached to a bird, so that the artist was driven to paint from nature instead of copying former pictures. let us now read what a painter who lived in the sixteenth century, vasari by name, wrote about the rise of painting in his native city. some learned people nowadays say that vasari was wrong in many of the stories he told, but after all he lived much nearer than we do to the times he wrote about, and it is safer to believe what he tells us than what modern students surmise, except when they are able to cite other old authorities to which vasari did not have access. the endless flood of misfortunes which overwhelmed unhappy italy not only ruined everything worthy of the name of a building, but completely extinguished the race of artists, a far more serious matter. then, as it pleased god, there was born in the year , in the city of florence, giovanni, surnamed cimabue, to shed the first light on the art of painting. instead of paying attention to his lessons, cimabue spent the whole day drawing men, horses, houses, and various other fancies on his books and odd sheets, like one who felt himself compelled to do so by nature. fortune proved favourable to his natural inclination, for some greek artists were summoned to florence by the government of the city for no other purpose than the revival of painting in their midst, since the art was not so much debased as altogether lost. in this way cimabue made a beginning in the art which attracted him, for he often played the truant and spent the whole day in watching the masters work. thus it came about that his father and the artists considered him so fitted to be a painter that if he devoted himself to the profession he might look for honourable success in it, and to his great satisfaction his father procured him employment with the painters. thus by dint of continual practice and with the assistance of his natural talent he far surpassed the manner of his teachers. for they had never cared to make any progress and had executed their works, not in the good manner of ancient greece, but in the rude modern style of that time. cimabue drew from nature to the best of his powers, although it was a novelty to do so in those days, and he made the draperies, garments, and other things somewhat more life-like, natural, and soft than the greeks had done, who had taught one another a rough, awkward, and commonplace style for a great number of years, not by means of study but as a matter of custom, without ever dreaming of improving their designs by beauty of colouring or by any invention of worth. if you were to see a picture by cimabue (there is one in the national gallery which resembles his work so closely that it is sometimes said to be his), you would think less highly than vasari of the life-like quality of his art, though there is something dignified and stately in the picture of the virgin and child with angels that he painted for the church of st. francis at assisi. another story is told by vasari of a picture by cimabue, which tradition asserts to be the great madonna, still in the church of santa maria novella at florence. cimabue painted a picture of our lady for the church of santa maria novella. the figure was of a larger size than any which had been executed up to that time, and the people of that day who had never seen anything better, considered the work so marvellous that they carried it to the church from cimabue's house in a stately procession with great rejoicing and blowing of trumpets, while cimabue himself was highly rewarded and honoured. it is reported, and some records of the old painters relate, that while cimabue was painting this picture in some gardens near the gate of s. piero, the old king charles of anjou passed through florence. among the many entertainments prepared for him by the men of the city, they brought him to see the picture of cimabue. as it had not then been seen by any one, all the men and women of florence flocked thither in a crowd with the greatest rejoicings, so that those who lived in the neighbourhood called the place the 'joyful suburb' because of the rejoicing there. this name it ever afterwards retained, being in the course of time enclosed within the walls of the city. for this story we may thank vasari, because it helps us to realize the love the people of florence felt for the pictures in their churches, and the reverence in which they held an artist who could paint a more beautiful picture of the virgin and child than any they had seen before. it is difficult to think of the population of a town to-day walking in procession to honour the painter of a fine picture; but a picture of the madonna was a very precious thing indeed to a florentine of the thirteenth century, and we may try to imagine ourselves walking joyfully in that florentine procession so as the better to understand florentine art. i have repeated this legend about cimabue, because he was the master of giotto, who is called the father of modern painting. the story is that cimabue one day came upon the boy giotto, who was a shepherd, and found him drawing a sheep with a pointed piece of stone upon a smooth surface of rock. he was so much struck with the drawing that he took the boy home and taught him, and soon he in his turn far surpassed his master. in order to appreciate giotto we need to go to assisi, florence, or padua, for in each place he has painted a series of wall-paintings. in the great double church of assisi, built by the franciscans over the grave of st. francis within a few years of his death, giotto has illustrated the whole story of his life. an isolated reproduction of one scene would give you no idea of their power. in many respects he was an innovator, and by the end of his life had broken away completely from the byzantine school of painting. he composed each one of the scenes from the life of st. francis in an original and dramatic manner, and so vividly that a person unacquainted with the story would know what was going on. standing in the nave of the upper church, you are able to contrast these speaking scenes of the lives of people upon earth, with the faded glories of great-winged angels and noble madonnas with greek faces, that were painted in the byzantine style when the church was at its newest, before giotto was born. these look down upon us still from the east end of the church. giotto died in , and for the next fifty years painters in italy did little but imitate him. scenes from the life of st. francis and incidents from the legends of other saints remained in vogue, but they were not treated in original fashion by succeeding artists. the new men only tried to paint as giotto might have painted, and so far from surpassing him, he was never even equalled by his followers. we need not burden our memories with the names of these 'giottesque' artists; and now, after this glimpse of an almost vanished world, we will turn our attention to england and to the first picture of our choice. chapter iii richard ii. our first picture is a portrait of richard ii. on his coronation day in the year , when he was ten years old. it is the earliest one selected, and the eyes of those who see it for the first time will surely look surprised. the jewel-like effect of the sapphire-winged angels and coral-robed richard against the golden background is not at all what we are accustomed to see. nowadays it may take some time and a little patience before we can cast ourselves back to the year and look at the picture with the eyes of the person who painted it. let us begin with a search for his purpose and meaning at least. the picture is a diptych--that is to say, it is a painting done upon two wings or shutters hinged, so as to allow of their being closed together. you have no doubt been wondering why i called it a portrait, for the picture is far from being what to-day would commonly be described as such. richard himself is not even the most conspicuous figure; and he is kneeling and praying to the virgin. what should we think if any living sovereign, ordering a state portrait, had himself portrayed surrounded on one side by his predecessors on the throne, and on the other side by the virgin and child and angels? but, in the fourteenth century, it was nothing strange that the virgin and child, the angels, john the baptist, edward the confessor, edmund the martyr, and richard ii. should be thus depicted. when we have realized that it was usual for a royal patron to command and an artist to paint such an assemblage of personages, as though all of them were then living and in one another's presence, we have learnt something significant and impressive about a way of thinking in the middle ages. richard ii. thought of himself as the successor of a long line of kings, appointed by the divine power to rule a small portion of the divine territories, so what more natural than that he, as the newly reigning sovereign, should have his portrait painted, surrounded by his holiest predecessors upon the throne, and in the act of dedicating his kingdom to the virgin mary? in an account given of his coronation we read that, after the ceremony in westminster abbey, richard went to the shrine of our lady at pewe, near by, where he made a special offering to our lady of eleven angels, each wearing the king's badge, one for each of the eleven years of his young life. what form this offering of angels took, we know not; they may have been little wooden figures, or coins with an angel stamped upon them; but it is reasonable to connect the offering with this very picture of our lady and the angels. the king's special badges were the white hart and the collar of broom-pods which you see embroidered all over his magnificent red robe. the white hart is pinned in the form of a jewel beneath his collar, and each of the eleven angels bears the badge upon her shoulder and the collar of broom-pods round her neck. one of the king's angels gives the royal standard of england with the cross of st. george on it to the infant christ in token of richard's dedication of his kingdom to the virgin and child. edward iii. died at midsummer and richard succeeded him in his eleventh year, having been born on january , . it is necessary to note the exact day of the year when these events took place, for it can have importance in determining the saint whom a personage chiefly honoured as patron and protector. in this instance st. john the baptist, whose feast occurs on june , near to the day of richard's accession, obviously stands as patron saint of the young king. next to him is king edward the confessor, the founder of westminster abbey, who was canonized for his sanctity and who points to richard ii. as his spiritual successor upon the throne. in medieval art the saints are distinguished by their emblems, which often have an association with the grim way in which they met their death, or with some other prominent feature in their legend. here edward holds up a ring, whereof a pretty story is told. edward once took it off his finger to give it to a beggar, because he had no money with him. but the beggar was no other than john the evangelist in disguise, and two years later he sent the ring back to the king with the message that in six months edward would be in the joy of heaven with him. william caxton, the first english printer, relates in his life of king edward that when he heard the message he was full of joy and let fall tears from his eyes, giving praise and thanksgiving to almighty god. [illustration: richard ii. before the virgin and child from a picture by an unknown artist in the wilton house collection] st. edmund, who stands next to edward the confessor, is the other saintly king of england; after whom the town of bury st. edmunds takes its name. he was shot to death with arrows by the danes because he would not give up christianity. if i could show you several suitably chosen pictures at once, you would recognize in the arrangement of the three kings here (two standing, one kneeling before the virgin and child) a plain resemblance to the typical treatment of a well-known subject--the adoration of the magi. you remember how when the three wise men of the east--always thought of in the middle ages as kings--had followed the star which led them to the manger where christ was born, they brought him gold and frankincense and myrrh as offerings. this beautiful story was a favourite one in the middle ages, often represented in sculpture and painting. one king always kneels before the virgin and child, presenting his gift, whilst the other two stand behind with theirs in their hands. the standing kings and the kneeling richard in our picture, are grouped in just the same relation to the divine infant as the three magi. the imitation of the type is clear. there was a special reason for this, in that the birthday of richard fell upon january , the feast of the epiphany, when the wise men did homage to the babe. the picture, by reminding us of the three wise men, commemorated the birthday of the king as well as his coronation, the two chief dates of his life. you have some idea now of the train of thought which this fourteenth-century painter endeavoured to express in his picture commemorative of the coronation of a king. a medieval coronation was a very solemn ceremony indeed, and the picture had to be a serious expression of the great traditions of the throne of england, suggested by the figures of st. edward and st. edmund, and of hope for future good to the realm, to ensue from the blessings of the virgin and child upon the young king. religious feeling is dominant in this picture, and if from it you could turn to others of like date, you would find the same to be true. the meaning was the main thing thought of. when giotto painted his scenes from the life of st. francis, his first aim was that the stories should be well told and easily grasped by all who looked at them. their beauty was of less importance. this difference between the aim of art in the middle ages and in our own day is fundamental. if you begin by picking to pieces the pictures of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries because the drawing is bad, the colouring crude, and the grouping unnatural, you might as well never look at them at all. putting faults and old fashions aside to think of the meaning of the picture, we shall often be rewarded by finding a soul within, and the work may affect us powerfully, notwithstanding its simple forms and few strong colours. nevertheless, after the painter had planned his picture so as to convey its message and meaning, he did try to make it beautiful to look upon, and he often succeeded. in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was beauty of outline and a pleasant patching together of bright colours for which the painters strove, both in pictures and in manuscripts. if you think of this picture for a moment as a coloured pattern, you will see how pretty it is. the blue wings against the gold background make a hedge for the angel faces and look extremely well. if the figure of richard ii. seems flat, if you feel as though he were cut out of cardboard and had no thickness, then turn your mind to consider only the outline of the figure. it is very graceful. artists in the thirteenth century sometimes made their figures over-long if they thought that a sweep of graceful line would look well in a certain position in their picture; the drapery was bent into impossible curves if so they fell into a pretty pattern. in the fourteenth century, beauty of outlines still prevailed, even when they contained plain masses of brilliant colour so pure and gem-like that the pictures almost came to look like stained-glass windows. in fact probably the constant sight of stained-glass windows in the churches greatly influenced the painters' way of work. the contrast of divers colours placed next one another was more startling than we find in later painting, whilst an effort was made to finish every detail as though it were to be looked at through a magnifying glass. in this picture which we are now learning how to see, the virgin was to be shown standing in a meadow of flowers. a modern artist knows how to paint the general effect of many flowers growing out of grass, but the medieval painter had not the skill to do that. he had not learnt to look at the effect of a mass of flowers as a whole, nor could he have rendered such an effect with the colours and processes he possessed. he knew what one flower looked like, and thought that many must be a continued repetition of one. but it was impossible to paint a great number of flowers close together, each finished in detail, so he chose instead to paint a few as completely as he could, and leave the rest to the imagination of the spectator. that was his way of making a selection from nature; thus he hoped to suggest the idea of a flowery meadow, since he could not hope to render the look of it. likewise, all the details of the dresses are minutely painted. the robes of richard and of edmund the martyr are beautiful examples of the careful and painstaking work characteristic of the middle ages. no medieval painter spared himself trouble. although he had not mastered the art of drawing the figure, he had learnt how to paint jewellery and stuffs beautifully, and delighted in doing it. the drawing of the figures you can see to be imperfect, yet nothing could be sweeter in feeling than the bevy of girl angels with roses in their hair surrounding the virgin. most of them are not unlike english girls of the present day, and the critics who say that this picture must have been painted by a frenchman may be asked where he is likely to have found these english models for his angels. possibly the face of richard himself may have been painted from life, for the features correspond closely enough with the large full-face portrait of him in westminster abbey, and with the sculptured figure upon his tomb. he certainly does not look like a child of ten, for his state robes and crown give him a grown-up appearance. but if you regard the face carefully you can see that it is still that of a child. the gold background in the original shines out brilliantly, for after the gold was laid on, it was polished with an agate, which gives it a burnished effect, and then the little patterns were carefully punched so as not to pierce the gold and thereby expose the white ground beneath. there is a jewel-like quality in the colour such as you can see in manuscripts of the time, and it is possible that the painter may have learned his art as an illuminator of manuscripts. artists in those days seldom confined themselves to one kind of work. we do not know this man's name, and are not even certain whether he was french or english. before, as in the time of richard, painting had been mainly a decorative art, and the object of making pictures was to adorn the pages of a book, or the walls and vaults of a building. the most vital artistic energies of western europe in the thirteenth century had gone into the building of the great cathedrals and abbeys, which are to-day the glory of that period. most medieval paintings that still exist in england are decorative wall-paintings of this kind, and only traces of a few remain. in many country places you can see poor and faded vestiges of painting which adorned church walls in the thirteenth century, and occasionally you may come upon a bit by some chance better preserved. these old wall-paintings were done upon the dry plaster. the discovery, or rather the revival, of 'fresco' painting (that is, of painting done upon the wet surface of freshly plastered walls, a more durable process) was made in italy and did not penetrate to england. richard ii. was not the only art-loving king of his time. you have read of john, king of france, who was taken prisoner at the battle of poitiers by the black prince, father of richard. during his captivity he lived in considerable state in london at the savoy palace, which occupied the site of the present savoy hotel in the strand; he brought his own painter from france with him, who painted his portrait which still exists in paris. this king john was the father of four remarkable sons, charles v., king of france, with whom edward iii. and the black prince fought the latter part of the hundred years' war; philip the bold, duke of burgundy; john, duke of berry; and louis, duke of anjou. in this list, all are names of remarkable men and great art-patrons, about whom you may some day read interesting things. numerous lovely objects still in existence were made for them, and would not have been made at all if they had not been the men they were. it was only just becoming possible in the fourteenth century for a prince to be an art-patron. that required money, and hitherto even princes had rarely been rich. the increasing wealth of england, france, and flanders at this time was based upon the wool industry and the manufacture and commerce to which it gave rise. the lord chancellor in the house of lords to this day sits on a woolsack, which is a reminder of the time when the woolsacks of england were the chief source of the wealth of english traders. after the black death, an awful plague that swept through europe in , a large part of the land of england was given up to sheep grazing, because the population had diminished, and it took fewer people to look after sheep than it did to till the soil. although this had been an evil in the beginning, it became afterwards a benefit, for english wool was sold at an excellent price to the merchants of flanders, who worked it up into cloth, and in their turn sold that all over europe with big profits. the larger merchants who regulated the wool traffic were prosperous, and so too the landowners and princes whose property thus increased in value. the four sons of king john became very wealthy men. philip the bold, duke of burgundy, by marrying the heiress of the count of flanders acquired the flemish territory and the wealth obtained from the wool trade and manufacture there. berry and anjou were great provinces in france yielding a large revenue to their two dukes. each of these princes employed several artists to illuminate books for him in the most splendid way; they built magnificent chateaux, and had tapestries and paintings made to decorate their walls. they employed many sculptors and goldsmiths, and all gave each other as presents works of art executed by their favourite artists. in the british museum there is a splendid gold and enamel cup that john, duke of berry, caused to be made for his brother king charles v.; to see it would give you a good idea of the costliness and elaboration of the finest work of that day. the courts of these four brothers were centres of artistic production in all kinds--sculpture, metal-work, tapestries, illuminated manuscripts and pictures, and there was a strong spirit of rivalry among the artists to see who could make the loveliest things, and among the patrons as to which could secure the best artists in his service. these four princes gave an important impulse to the production of beautiful things in france, burgundy, and flanders, but it is needless to burden you with the artists' names. in the fourteenth century an artist was a workman who existed to do well the work that was desired of him. he was not an independent man with ideas of his own, who attempted to make a living by painting what he thought beautiful, without reference to the ideas of a buyer. of course, if people prefer and buy good things when they see them, good things will be likely to be made, but if those with money to spend have no taste and buy bad things or order ugly things to be made, then the men who had it in them to be great artists may die unnoticed, because the beautiful things they could have made are not called for. to-day many people spend something upon art and a few spend a great deal. let us hope we may not see too much of the money spent in creating a demand for what is bad rather than for what is beautiful. it was not unusual in the fourteenth century for a man to be at one and the same time painter, illuminator, sculptor, metal-worker, and designer of any object that might be called for. one of these many gifted men, andre beauneveu of valenciennes, a good sculptor and a painter of some exquisite miniatures, is sometimes supposed to have been the painter of our picture of richard ii. in the absence of any signature or any definite record it is impossible to say who painted it, but it is unnecessary to assume that it must have been painted by a french artist, since we know that at the end of the fourteenth century there were very good painters in england. it was by no means an exception not to sign a picture in those days, for the artists had not begun to think of themselves as individuals entitled to public fame. hand-workers of the fourteenth century mostly belonged to a corporation or guild composed of all the other workers at the same trade in the same town, and to this rule artists were no exception. each man received a recognized price for his work, and the officers of the guild saw to it that he obtained that price and that he worked with good and durable materials. there were certain advantages in this, but it involved some loss of freedom in the artist, since all had to conform to the rules of the guild. the system was characteristic of the middle ages, and arose from the fact that in those troublous times every isolated person needed protection and was content to merge his individuality in some society in order to obtain it. the guilds made for peace and diminished competition, so that a guildsman may have been less tempted to hurry over or scamp his task. the result was much honest, careful work such as you see in the original of this picture. we are told by those who know best that there has never been a time when the actual workmanship of the general run of craftsmen was better than in the middle ages. this picture of richard ii. has not faded or cracked or fallen off the panel, and it seems as though we may hope it never will, for it was well made and, what is even more important, it seems always to have been well cared for. if only the nice things that are produced were all well cared for, how many more of them there would be in the world! chapter iv the van eycks before passing to hubert van eyck, the painter of the original of our next picture, please compare carefully the picture of richard ii. and this of the three maries, looking first at one and then at the other. the subject of the visit of the maries to the sepulchre is, of course, well known to you, but let us read the beautiful passage from st. matthew telling of it, that we may see how faithfully in every detail it was followed by hubert van eyck. in the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came mary magdalene, and the other mary, to see the sepulchre. and, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. his countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. surely this would be thought a beautiful picture had it been painted at any time, but when you compare it with the richard ii. diptych does it not seem to you as though a long era divided the two? yet one was painted less than fifty years after the other. it is the attitude of mind of the painter that makes the difference. in the diptych, although the portrait of richard himself was a likeness, the setting was imaginary and symbolic. the artist wished to tell in his picture how all the kings who succeed one another upon the throne of england alike depend upon the protection of heaven, and how richard in his turn acknowledged that dependence, and pledged his loyalty to the blessed virgin and her holy child. that picture was intended to take the mind of the spectator away from the everyday world and suggest grave thought, and such was likewise in the main the purpose of all paintings in the middle ages. but we are now leaving the middle ages behind and approaching a new world nearer to our own. hubert van eyck, in attempting to depict the event at the sepulchre as it might actually have occurred outside the walls of the city of jerusalem, was doing something quite novel in his day. his picture might almost be called a bible illustration. it is at least painted in the same practical spirit as that of a man painting an illustration for any other book. it is not a picture meant to help one to pray, or meditate. it does not express any religious idea. it was intended to be the veracious representation of an actual event, shown as, and when, and how it happened, true to the facts so far as hubert knew them. [illustration: the three maries from the picture by hubert van eyck, in sir frederick cook's collection, richmond] he has dressed the maries in robes with wrought borders of hebrew characters, imitated from embroidered stuffs, such as at that time were imported into europe from the east. the dresses are not accurate copies of eastern dresses; hubert would scarcely have known what those were like, but was doing his best to paint costumes that should look oriental. mary magdalen wears a turban, and the keeper on the right has a strange peaked cap with hebrew letters on it. hebrew scholars have done their best to read the inscriptions on these clothes, but we must infer that hubert only copied the letters without knowing what they meant, since it has not been possible to make any sense of them. in the foreground are masses of flowers most carefully painted, and so accurately drawn that botanists have been able to identify them all; several do not grow in the north of europe. the town at the back is something like jerusalem as it looked in hubert van eyck's own day. a few of the buildings can be identified still, and a general view of jerusalem taken in , sixty years after the death of hubert, bears some resemblance to the town in this picture. the city is painted in miniature, much as it would look if you saw it from near at hand. every tower, house, and window is there. you can even count the battlements. the great building with the dome in the middle of the picture, is the mosque of omar, which occupies the supposed site of solomon's temple. some people have thought that perhaps hubert van eyck, and his brother john, actually went to the east. many men made pilgrimages in those days, and almost every year parties of christian pilgrims went to jerusalem. it was a rough and even a dangerous journey, but not at all impossible for a patient traveller. dr. hulin, who has made wonderful discoveries about the early flemish painters, found a mention, in an old sixteenth-century list, of a 'portrait of a moorish king or prince' by van eyck, painted in or perhaps . if he painted a portrait of an oriental prince, he may have visited one oriental country at least, or at any rate the south of spain. probably enough during that journey he made studies of the cypress, stone-pine, date-palm, olive, orange, and palmetto, which occur in his pictures. they grow in the south of spain and other mediterranean regions, but not in the cold north where hubert spent most of his days. it is difficult at first to realize what an innovation it was for hubert van eyck to paint such a landscape. in the richard ii. diptych there is just a suggestion of brown earth for the saints to stand upon, but the rest of the background is of gold, as was the common practice at the time. the great innovator, giotto, in some of his pictures had attempted to paint landscape backgrounds. in his fresco of st. francis preaching to the birds there is a tree for them to perch on, but it seems more like a garden vegetable than a tree. even his buildings look as though they might fall together any moment like a pack of cards. hubert not only gives landscape a larger place than it ever had in any great picture before, but he paints it with such skill and apparent confidence that we should never dream he was doing it almost for the first time. st. matthew says: 'as it began to _dawn_ towards the first day of the week, came mary magdalene, and the other mary, to see the sepulchre.' even in this point hubert wished to be accurate. the rising sun is hidden behind the rocks on the left side of the picture, for it was not until years later that any painter ventured to paint the sun in the heavens. but the rays from the hidden orb strike the castles on the hills with shafts of light. the town remains in shadow, while the sky is lit up with floods of glory. an effect such as this must have been very carefully studied from nature. hubert was evidently one who looked at the world with observant eyes and found it beautiful. when he had flowers to paint, he painted the whole plant accurately, not the blossoms individually, like the painter of richard ii. he liked fine stuffs, embroideries, jewels, and glittering armour. he was no visionary trying to free himself from the earth and live in contemplation of the angels and saints in paradise, like so many of the thirteenth and fourteenth century artists. in this new delightful interest in the world as it is, he reflected the tendency of his day. the fifty years that had elapsed between the painting of richard ii.'s portrait and the work of the van eycks, had seen a great development of trade and industry in flanders. hubert was born, perhaps about , at maas eyck, from which he takes his name. maas eyck was a little town on the banks of the river maas, near the frontier of the present holland and belgium. he may have spent most of his life in ghent, the town officials of which city paid him a visit in to see his work, and gave six groats to his apprentices in memory of their visit. where he learnt his art, where he worked before he came to ghent, we do not know for certain, but there is reason to think that he was employed for a while in holland by the count. john, his brother, concerning whom more facts have been gathered, is said to have been twenty years younger than hubert. he was a painter too, and worked in the employ of philip the good, duke of burgundy and count of flanders, the grandson of philip the bold, who was one of those four sons of king john of france mentioned in our last chapter. philip the good continued the traditions of his family and was in his time a great art-patron. his grandfather had fostered an important school of sculpture in flanders and burgundy, which culminated in the superb statues still existing at dijon. like his brother the duke of berry, he had given work to a number of miniature painters. the count of holland also employed some wonderful miniature painters to beautify a manuscript for him. this manuscript and one made for the duke of berry were among the finest ever painted so far as the pictures in them are concerned. the count of holland's book used to be in the library at turin, where it was burnt a few years ago, so we can see it no more. but the fortunate ones who did see it thought that the pictures in it were actually painted by the van eycks when they were young. the duke of berry's finest book is at chantilly and is well known. both this and the turin book contained the loveliest early landscapes, a little earlier in date than this landscape in the 'three maries' picture. so you see why it is said that the illuminators first invented beautiful landscape painting, and that landscapes were painted in books before they were painted as pictures to hang on walls. the practical spirit in which hubert van eyck worked exactly matched the sensible, matter-of-fact flemish character. the flemings, even in pictures of the madonna, wanted the virgin to wear a gown made of the richest stuff that could be woven, truthfully painted, with jewels of the finest flemish workmanship, and they liked to see a landscape behind her studied from their own native surroundings. no man could try to paint things as they looked, in the way hubert did, without making great progress in drawing. if you compare the drawing of the angel appearing to the maries with any of the angels wearing the badge of richard ii., you will see how much more life-like is the angel of hubert. the painter of richard ii. was not happy with his figures unless they were standing up or kneeling in profile, but hubert van eyck can draw them with tolerable success lying down, or sitting huddled. he can also combine a group in a natural manner. the absence of formal arrangement in the picture of the maries is quite new in medieval art. the painter of richard ii. had known very little about perspective. the science of drawing things as they look from one point of view has no doubt been taught to all of you. you know certain rules about vanishing points and can apply them in your drawing. but you would have found it very hard to invent perspective without being taught. i can remember drawing a matchbox by the light of nature, and very queer it contrived to become. medieval artists were in exactly that same case. the artists of the ancient world had discovered some of the laws of perspective, but the secret was lost, and artists in the middle ages had to discover them all over again. hubert van eyck made a great stride toward the attainment of this knowledge. when you look at the picture the perspective does not strike you as glaringly wrong, though there was still much that remained to be discovered by later men, as we shall see in our next chapter. the brothers van eyck were, first and foremost, good workmen. few other painters in the whole of the world's history have aimed at anything like the same finish of detail. in the original of this picture the oriental pot which the green mary holds in her hand is a perfect marvel of workmanship. there is no detail so small but that when you look into it you discover some fresh wonder. a story is told of how hubert van eyck painted a picture upon which he had lavished his usual painstaking care. but when he put it in the sun to dry, the panel cracked down the middle. after this disappointment hubert went to work and invented a new substance with which colours are made liquid, a 'medium' as it is called, which when mixed with colour dried hard and quickly. it was possible to paint with the new medium in finer detail than before, and the flemish artists universally adopted it. while very little was remembered about the facts of hubert van eyck's life, his name was always associated with the discovery of a new method of painting, and on that account held in great honour. the 'three maries' is in many respects the most attractive of the pictures ascribed to hubert, but his most famous work was a larger picture, or assemblage of pictures framed together, the 'adoration of the lamb,' in st. bavon's church at ghent. it is an altar-piece--a painting set up over an altar in a church or chapel to aid the devotions of those worshipping there. many of the panels of the ghent altar-piece are now in the museums of berlin and brussels. they belonged to the wings or shutters which were made to close over the central parts, and which used also to be painted outside and inside with devotional or related subjects. the four great central panels on which these shutters used to close are still at ghent. the subject of the 'adoration of the lamb' was taken from revelations, where before the lamb has opened the seals of the book, st. john says: and every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard i saying, blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the lamb for ever and ever. hubert has figured this verse by assembling, as in one time and place, representatives of christendom. they who worship are the prophets, apostles, popes, martyrs, and virgins. on each side of the central panel the just judges, the soldiers of christ, the hermits, and the pilgrims, advance to join the throng around the lamb. most beautiful of all is the crowd of virgin martyrs bearing palms, moving over the green grass carpeted with flowers, to adore the lamb of god, the redeemer of the world. above, god the father, the virgin mother, and st. john the baptist, with crowns of wonderful workmanship, are throned amid choirs of singing and playing angels on either hand. the picture does not illustrate the description of the adoration of the lamb in the fifth chapter of revelations so faithfully as the picture of the 'three maries' illustrated st. matthew. the lamb has not seven horns and seven eyes, and the four beasts and twenty-four elders are not falling down before it and adoring. the lamb is an ordinary sheep, and the picture is a symbolic expression of the catholic faith, founded upon a biblical text, but not what could be described as 'a bible illustration.' people in the middle ages liked to embody their faith in a visible form, and we are told that theologians frequently drew up schemes of doctrine which painters did their best to translate into pictures, and sculptors into sculpture. such works of art were for instruction rather than beauty, though some also served well the purpose of decoration. josse vyt, who ordered the picture, and whose portrait, with that of his wife, is painted on the shutters, no doubt explained exactly what he wanted, and hubert sought to please him.[ ] but although the design of the central panel was old-fashioned and symbolic, hubert was able to do what he liked with the landscape, and with the individual figures. they are real men and women with varieties of expression such as had not been painted before, and the landscape is even more beautiful than the one at the back of the 'three maries.' snow mountains rise in the distance, and beautiful cypresses and palms of all kinds clothe the green slopes behind the lamb. there are flowers in the grass and jewels for pebbles in the brook. behind, you can see the cathedrals of utrecht and cologne, st. john's of maestricht, and more churches and houses besides, and the walls of a town, and wide stretches of green country. [footnote : there are reasons for thinking that the picture may have been ordered by some prince who died before it was finished, and that vyt only acquired it later, in time to have his own and his wife's portraits added on the shutters.] hubert van eyck died in , and the picture was finished by his younger brother john, of whose life, though more is known than of hubert's, we need not here repeat details. many of his pictures still exist, and the most delightful of them for us are his portraits. he was not the first man to paint good portraits, but few artists have ever painted better likenesses. it seems evident that the people in his pictures are 'as like as they can stare,' with no wrinkle or scratch left out. portraits in earlier days than these were seldom painted for their own sake alone. a pious man who wanted to present an altar-piece or a stained-glass window to a church would modestly have his own image introduced in a corner. by degrees such portraits grew in size and scale, and the neighbouring saints diminished, till at last the saints were left out and the portrait stood alone. then it came about that such a picture was hung in its owner's house rather than in a church. one of the best portraits john van eyck ever painted is at bruges--the likeness of his wife. the panel was discovered about fifty years ago in the market-place of bruges, where an old woman was using the back of it to skin eels on; but so soundly had the picture been painted that even this ill-usage did not ruin it. the lady was a very plain flemish woman with no beauty of feature or expression, but john has revealed her character so vividly that to look at her likeness is to know her. it is indeed a long leap from the richard ii. of fifty years before, with its representation of the outline of a youth, to this ample realization of a mature woman's character. john lived till , and had some pupils and many imitators. one of these, roger van der weyden by name, spread his influence far and wide throughout the whole of the netherlands, france, and germany. how important this influence was in the history of art we shall see later. many of the imitators of john learnt his accuracy and thoroughness of workmanship, but none of them attained his deep insight into character. during the next fifty years many and beautiful were the pictures produced throughout flanders. all of them have a jewel-like brilliance of colour, approaching in brightness the hues of the richard ii. diptych. the landscape backgrounds are charming miniatures of towns by the side of rivers with spanning bridges. the painting of textures is exquisite. but the flemish face, placid, plump, and fair-haired, prevails throughout. in the pictures of paradise, where the saints and angels play with the infant christ, we still feel chained to the earth, because the figures and faces are the unidealized images of those one might have met in the streets of bruges and ghent. this is not a criticism on the artists. the merit of their work is unchallenged; and how could they paint physical beauty by them scarce ever seen? yet when all has been said in praise of the flemish school, the brothers van eyck, the founders of it, remain its greatest representatives, and their work is still regarded with that high and almost universal veneration which is the tribute of the greatest achievement. chapter v the renaissance who is this old gentleman in our next picture reading so quietly and steadily? does he not look absorbed in his book? certainly the peacock, the bird, and the cat do not worry him or each other, and there is still another animal in the distance--a lion! can you see him? he is walking down the cloister pavement on the right, with his foot lifted as though it were hurt. the story is that this particular lion limped into the monastery in which this old man lived, and while all the other monks fled in terror, this monk saw that the lion's fore-paw was hurt. he raised it up, found what was the matter, and pulled out the thorn; and ever afterwards the lion lived peacefully in the monastery with him. now, whenever you see a lion in a picture with an old monk, him you will know to be st. jerome. he was a learned christian father who lived some fifteen hundred years ago, yet his works are still read, spoken, and heard every day throughout the world. he it was who made the standard latin version of the scriptures. the services in roman catholic churches in all countries are held in latin to this day, and st. jerome's translation of the bible, called the vulgate, is the version still in use. here you see st. jerome depicted sitting in his own study, reading to prepare himself for his great undertaking; and what a study it is! you must go to the national gallery to enjoy all the details, for the original painting is only inches high by inches broad, and the books and writing materials are so tiny that some are inevitably lost in this beautiful photograph. the study is really a part of a monastery assigned to st. jerome himself, his books, manuscripts, and other such possessions. he has a pot of flowers and a dwarf tree, and a towel to dry his hands on, and a beautiful chair at his desk. he has taken off his dusty shoes and left them at the foot of the steps. the painter of this picture, must have had in his mind a very happy idea of st. jerome. others have sometimes painted him as they thought he looked when living in a horrible desert, as he did for four years. but at the time this picture was painted, about the year , st. jerome in his study was a more usual subject for painters than st. jerome in the desert. one reason of this was that in italy, in the latter half of the fifteenth century, st. jerome was considered the patron saint of scholars, and for the first time since the fall of the roman empire, scholars were perhaps the most influential people of the day. [illustration: st. jerome in his study from the picture by antonello da messina, in the national gallery, london] of course you all know something about the remarkable revival of learning in the fifteenth century, which started in italy, spread northward, and reached england in the reign of henry viii. before the fifteenth century, italians seem to have been indifferent to the monuments around them of ancient civilization. suddenly they were fired with a passion for antiquity. they learnt greek and began to take a keen interest in the doings of the greeks and romans, who in many ways had lived a life so far superior to their own. artists studied the old statues, which taught them the beauty of the human figure. the reacquired wisdom of the ancients by degrees broke down the medieval barriers. there was born a spirit of enterprise into the world of thought as well as into the world of fact, which revolutionized life and art. the period which witnessed this great mental change is well known as the renaissance or 'rebirth.' when you first looked at this picture you must have thought it very different from the two earlier ones. such a subject could only have been painted thus in an age when men admired the scholar's life. though the figure is called that of st. jerome, there is really nothing typically saintly about him; he is only serious. the subjects chosen by painters of the renaissance were no longer almost solely religious, but began to be selected from the world of everyday life; even when the subject was taken from christian legend, it was now generally treated as an event happening in the actual world of the painter's own day. the manner in which this picture is painted is still more suggestive of change than the subject itself. our artist knew a great deal about the new science of perspective, for instance. one might almost think that, pleased with his new knowledge, he had multiplied the number of objects on the shelves so as to show how well he could foreshorten them. medieval painters had not troubled about perspective, and were more concerned, as we have seen, to make a pretty pattern of shapes and colours for their pictures. the van eycks, as we noted, only acquired the beginnings of an understanding of it, and were very proud of their new knowledge. it was in italy that all the rules were at last brought to light. the renaissance period in italy may be considered as lasting from to . the pioneer artists who mastered perspective and worked at the human figure till they could draw it correctly in any attitude, lived in the first seventy-five years of the fifteenth century. they were the breakers of stone and hewers of wood who prepared the way for the greater artists of the end of the century, but in the process of learning, many of them painted very lovely things. the painter of our picture lived within those seventy-five years. he was, probably, a certain antonello of messina--that same town in sicily recently wrecked by earthquakes. of his life little is known. he seems to have worked chiefly in venice where there was a fine school of painting during the renaissance period; his senior giovanni bellini, one of the early great painters of venice, some of whose pictures are in the national gallery, taught him much. it is also said that antonello went to the netherlands and there learnt the method of laying paint on panel invented by the van eycks. modern students say he did not, but that he picked up his way of painting in italy. certainly he and other venetians and italians about this time improved their technical methods as the van eycks had done, and this picture is an early example of that more brilliant fashion of painting. there is here a flemish love of detail. the italian painters had been more accustomed to painting upon walls than the flemings, for the latter had soon discovered that a damp northern climate was not favourable to the preservation of wall-paintings. fresco does not admit of much detail, as each day's work has to be finished in the day, before the plaster dries. thus, a long tradition of fresco painting had accustomed the italian painters to a broad method of treatment, which they maintained to a certain extent even in their panel pictures. but in our st. jerome we see a wealth of detail unsurpassed even by john van eyck. one needs a magnifying-glass to see everything there is to be seen in the landscape through the window on the left. besides the city with its towers and walls and the mountains behind, there is a river in the foreground where two little people are sitting in a boat. observe every tiny stone in the pavement, and every open page of the books on the shelves. here, too, is breadth in the handling. hold the book far away from you, so that the detail of the picture vanishes and only the broad masses of the composition stand out. you still have what is essential. the picture is one in which italian feeling and sentiment blend with flemish technique and love of little things. there has always been something of a mystery about the picture, and you must not be surprised some day if you hear it asserted that antonello did not paint it at all. such changes in the attributions of unsigned paintings are not uncommon. one of the greatest pioneer artists of the fifteenth century was andrea mantegna of padua in the north of italy. more than any other painter of his day, he devoted himself to the study of ancient sculpture, even to the extent of sometimes painting in monochrome to imitate the actual marble. paintings by him, which look like sculptured reliefs, are in the national gallery; and at hampton court is a series of cartoons representing the triumph of julius caesar, in which the conception and the handling are throughout inspired by old roman bas-reliefs. in other pictures of his, the figures look as though cast of bronze, for he was likewise influenced by the sculptors of his own day, particularly by the florentine donatello, one of the geniuses of the early renaissance. mantegna's studies of form in sculpture made him an excellent draughtsman. strangely enough, it was this very severe artist who was, perhaps, the first to depict the charm of babyhood. often he draws his babes wrapped in swaddling clothes, with their little fingers in their mouths, or else in the act of crying, with their eyes screwed up tight, and their mouths wide open. such a combination of hard sculpturesque modelling with extreme tenderness of feeling has a charm of its own. we have now just one more picture of a sacred subject to look at, one of the last that still retains much of the old beautiful religious spirit of the middle ages. the painter of it, sandro botticelli, a florentine, in whom were blended the piety of the middle ages and the intellectual life of the renaissance, was a very interesting man, whose like we shall not find among the painters of his own or later days. he was born in , in florence, the city in italy most alive to the new ideas and the new learning. its governing family, the medici, of whom you have doubtless read, surrounded themselves with a brilliant society of accomplished men, and adorned their palaces with the finest works of art that could be produced in their time. the best artists from the surrounding country were attracted to florence in the hope of working for the family, who were ever ready to employ a man of artistic gifts. in such an atmosphere an original and alert person like botticelli could not fail to keep step with the foremost of his day. his fertile fancy was charmed by the revived stories of greek mythology, and for a time he gave himself up to the painting of pagan subjects such as the birth of venus from the sea, and the lovely allegory of spring with venus, cupid, and the three graces. he was one of the early artists to break through the old wall of religious convention, painting frankly mythological subjects, and he did them in an exquisite manner all his own. the true spirit of beauty dwelt within him, and all that he painted and designed was graceful in form and beautiful in colour. if, for instance, you look closely into the designs of the necks of dresses in his pictures, you will find them delightful to copy and far superior to the ordinary designs for such things made to-day. in his love of beauty and his keen appreciation of the new possibilities of painting he was a true child of the renaissance, though he had not the joyous nature so characteristic of the time. moreover, as i have said, he retained the old sweet religious spirit, and clothed it with new forms of beauty in his sacred paintings. there is something pathetic about many of these--the virgin, while she nurses the infant christ, seems to foresee all the sorrow in store for her, and but little of the joy. the girl angels who nestle around her in so many of his pictures, have faces of exquisite beauty, but in most of them, notwithstanding the fact that they are evidently painted from florentine girls of the time, botticelli has infused his own personal note of sadness. at the end of the fifteenth century, when botticelli was beginning to grow old, great events took place in florence. despite the revival of learning, we are told by historians that the church was becoming corrupt and the people more pleasure-loving and less interested in the religious life. then it was that savonarola, a friar in one of the convents of florence, all on fire with enthusiasm for purity and goodness, began to awaken the hearts of the people with his burning eloquence, and his denunciations of their worldliness and the deadness of the church. he prophesied a great outpouring of the wrath of god, and in particular that the church would be purified and renewed after a quick and terrible punishment. the passion, the conviction, the eloquence of savonarola for a time carried the people of florence away, and botticelli with them, so that he became one of the 'mourners' as the preacher's followers were called. at this time many persons burnt in great 'bonfires of vanities' all the pretty trinkets that they possessed. but when the prophecies did not literally come true, and the people began to be weary of savonarola's vehemence, we read that a reaction set in, which afforded a chance for his enemies within the church, whom he had lashed with his tongue from the pulpit of the cathedral. they contrived to have him tried for heresy and burnt in the market-place of florence, in the midst of the people who so shortly before had hung on every word that fell from his lips. this tragedy entirely overwhelmed botticelli, who thenceforward almost abandoned painting, and gave up his last years to the practices of the religious life. it was at this time, says mr. horne, and under the influence of these emotions, in the year , when he was sixty years of age, that he painted the picture here reproduced, as an illustration to the prophecies of savonarola, and a tribute to his memory. savonarola had been wont to use the descriptions, in the book of revelations, of the woes that were to fall upon the earth before the building of the new jerusalem, to illustrate his prophecy of the scourge that was to come upon italy, before the church became purified from the wickedness of the times. at the top of the picture is written in greek: i, sandro, painted this picture at the end of the year , during the troubles of italy, in the half year after the first year of the loosing of the devil for - / years, in accordance with the fulfilment of the th chapter of the revelations of st. john. then shall the devil be chained, according to the th chapter, and we shall see him trodden down as in the picture. the devil which was loosed for three and a half years stood for the stage of wickedness through which botticelli believed that florence was passing in . in the bottom corners of the picture you can see minute little devils running away discomfited; otherwise all is pure joy and peace, symbolic of the gladness to come upon italy when the church had been purified: when life is difficult, i dream of how the angels dance in heaven. of how the angels dance and sing in gardens of eternal spring, because their sins have been forgiven.... and never more for them shall be the terrors of mortality. when life is difficult, i dream of how the angels dance in heaven....[ ] [footnote : by lady alfred douglas.] that is what botticelli dreamed. he saw the beautiful angels in green, white, and red dancing with joy, because of the birth of their saviour, and into their hands he put scrolls, upon which were written:--'glory to god in the highest.' the rest of the verse, 'peace and goodwill towards men' is on the scrolls of the shepherds, brought by the angel to behold the babe lying in the manger. the three men, embraced with such eagerness and joy by the three angels in the foreground, are savonarola and his two chief companions, burnt with him, who, after their long suffering upon earth, have found reward and happiness in heaven. [illustration: the nativity from the picture by sandro botticelli, in the national gallery, london] such is the meaning of this beautiful little picture, as spiritual in idea as any of the paintings of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. but while the earlier painters had striven with inadequate powers to express the religious feeling that was in them, botticelli's skill matched his thought. his drawing of the angels in their greek dresses is very lovely, and one scarce knows in any picture a group surpassing that of the three little ones upon the roof of the manger, nor will you soon see a lovelier virgin's face than hers. botticelli had great power of showing the expression in a face, and the movement in a figure. here the movements may seem overstrained, a fault which grew upon him in his old age; the angel, with the two shepherds on the right, has come skimming over the ground and points emphatically at the babe, and the angel in front embraces savonarola with vehemence. the artists of the early renaissance had learnt with so much trouble to draw figures in motion that their pleasure in their newly acquired skill sometimes made them err by exaggeration as their predecessors by stiffness. the way in which botticelli treated this subject of the nativity of christ, is, as you see, very different from the way in which hubert van eyck painted the three maries at the sepulchre. we saw how the latter pictured the event as actually taking place outside jerusalem. to botticelli the nativity of christ was emblematic of a new and happier life for people in florence, with the church regenerated and purified, as christ would have wished it to be. to him the nativity was a symbol of purity, so he painted the picture as a commentary on the event, not as an illustration of the biblical text. the angels rejoice in heaven as the shepherds upon earth, the devils flee away discomfited, and savonarola and his companions obtain peace after the tribulations of life. such was the message of botticelli in the picture here reproduced. chapter vi raphael the original of our next picture is very small, only seven inches square, yet i hope it will instantly appeal to you. the name of the artist, raphael, is perhaps the most familiar of all the names of the old masters, mainly, it may be, because he was the painter of the sistine madonna, the best known and best loved of madonnas. when raphael drew and painted this picture of the 'knight's dream,' about the year , he was himself like a young knight, at the outset of his short and brilliant career. as a boy he was handsome, gifted, charming. his nature is said to have been as lovely as his gifts were great, and he passed his short life in a triumphant progress from city to city and court to court, always working hard and always painting so beautifully that he won the admiration of artists, princes, and popes. his father, giovanni santi, was a painter living in the town of urbino, in central italy, but raphael when quite young went to perugia to study with the painter perugino, a native of that town. perugia stands upon a high hill, like the hill in the background of the picture of the 'knight's dream,' only higher, for from it you can overlook the wide umbrian plain as far as assisi--the home of st. francis--which lies on the slope of the next mountain. that beautiful umbrian landscape, in which all the towns look like castles perched upon the top of steep hills, with wide undulating ground between, occurs frequently in the pictures of perugino, and often in those of his pupil raphael. if you have once seen the view from perugia for yourself, you will realize how strongly it took hold of the imagination of the young painter. raphael had a most impressionable mind. it was part of his genius that, from every painter with whom he came in contact he imbibed the best, almost without knowing it. the artists of his day, michelangelo, leonardo da vinci, and the other great men, were each severally employed in working out once and for all some particular problem in connection with their art. michelangelo, a giant in intellect, painter, sculptor, architect, and poet, studied the human body as it had not been studied since the days of ancient greece. his sculptured figures on the tombs of the medici in florence rank second only to those of the greatest greek sculptors, and his ceiling in the sistine chapel is composed of a series of masterpieces of figure-painting. he devoted himself largely in his sculpture and his painting to the representation of the naked human body, and made it futile in his successors to plead ignorance as an excuse for bad drawing. as a colourist he was not pre-eminent, and his few panel pictures are for the most part unfinished. leonardo da vinci, the older contemporary of raphael, first in florence and afterwards in the north of italy, left a colossal reputation and but few pictures, for in his search after perfection he became dissatisfied with what he had done and is said to have destroyed one masterpiece after another. for him the great interest in the aspect of man and woman was not so much the form of the body as the expression of the face. what was fantastic and weird fascinated him. at windsor are designs he made for the construction of an imaginary beast with gigantic claws. he once owned a lizard, and made wings for it with quicksilver inside them, so that they quivered when the lizard crawled. he put a dragon's mask over its head, and the result was ghastly. the tale gives us a side light on this extraordinary personage. when you are led to read more about him you will feel the fascination of his strong, yet perplexing personality. the faces in his pictures are wonderful faces, with a fugitive mocking smile and a seeming burden of strange thought. by mastery of the most subtle gradations of light, his heads have an appearance of solidity new in painting, till raphael and some of his contemporaries learnt the secret from leonardo. heretofore, italian painters had been contented to bathe their pictures in a flood of diffused light, but he experimented also with effects of strong light and shade on the face. his landscape backgrounds are an almost unearthly cold grey, and include the strangest forms of rock and mountain. his investigations into several of the scientific problems connected with art led to results which affected in an important degree the work of many later artists. if raphael had less originality than michelangelo or leonardo, if leonardo was the first artist to obtain complete mastery over the expression of the face and michelangelo over the drawing of the figure, raphael was able to profit at once by whatever they accomplished. yet never was he a mere imitator, for all that he absorbed became tinged with a magical charm in his fertile brain, a charm so personal that his work can hardly be mistaken for that of any other artist. our picture of a 'knight's dream' was probably painted while raphael was under the influence of a master named timoteo viti, whose works you are not likely to know, or much care about when you see them. it was just after he had painted it that he came into perugino's hands. although the 'knight's dream' is so small, and raphael was but a boy when he painted it, the picture has the true romantic air, characteristic of the joyful years of the early renaissance. he does not seem to have felt the conflict between the old religious ideal and the new pursuit of worldly beauty as botticelli felt it. yet he chose the competition of these two ideals as the subject of this picture. the knight, clothed in bright armour and gay raiment, bearing no relation at all to the clothes worn in , rests upon his shield beneath the slight shade of a very slender tree. in his dream there appear to him two figures, both of whom claim his knightly allegiance for life: one, a young and lovely girl in a bright coloured dress with flowers in her hair, tempts him to embrace a life of mirth, of jest and youthful jollity, quips and cranks and wanton wiles, nods and becks and wreathed smiles. the other resembles the same poet's pensive nun, devout and pure, sober, steadfast, and demure. she holds sword and book, symbols of stern action and wise accomplishment. which the knight will choose we are not told, perhaps because raphael himself never had to make the choice. he was too gifted and too fond of work to be tempted from it by anything whatever. always joyous and always successful, he was able to paint any subject, sacred, profane, ancient, or modern, so long as it was a happy one. he was too busy and too gay to feel pain and sorrow, as botticelli felt them, and to paint sad subjects. to him the visible world was good and beautiful, and the invisible world lovely and happy likewise. his madonnas are placid or smiling mothers. the fat and darling babies they hold are indeed divine but not awesome. yet the extraordinary sweetness of expression, nobility of form, and beauty of colouring in the madonnas make you almost hold your breath when you look at them. in the 'knight's dream' there is a simple beauty in the pose and grouping of the figures. you can hardly fancy three figures better arranged for the purpose of the subject. there is something inevitable about them, which is the highest praise due to a mastery of design in the art of composition. raphael's surpassing gift was in fitting beautiful figures into any given space, so that it seems as though the space had been made to fit the figures, instead of the figures to fit the space. you could never put his round madonnas into a square frame. the figures would look as wrong as in a round frame they look right. if you were to cut off a bit of the foreground in any of his pictures and add the extra piece to the sky, you would make the whole look wrong, whereas perhaps you might add on a piece of sky to hubert van eyck's 'three maries' without spoiling the effect. [illustration: the knight's dream from the picture by raphael, in the national gallery, london] the colouring of the picture, too, is jewel-like and lovely, but the uncoloured drawing is itself full of charm. the grace of line, which was to distinguish all the works of his mature years, is already manifest in this effort of his boyhood. it seems to foretell the sweep of the virgin's drapery in the sistine madonna, and the delightful maze of curves flowing together and away again and returning upon themselves which outline the face, the arms, hands, and draperies of st. catherine in the national gallery. you will find it well worth a little trouble to look long and closely at one of raphael's well-known madonnas till you clearly see how the composition of all the parts of it is formed by the play of long and graceful curves. you can see from the drawing of the 'knight's dream,' which is hung quite near the painting in the national gallery, how carefully raphael thought out the detail of the picture before he began to paint. he seems even to have been afraid that he might not be able to draw it again so perfectly; therefore he placed the drawing over the panel and pricked it through. the marks of the pin are quite clear, and it brings one nearer this great artist to follow closely the process of his work. it makes the young boy genius of almost seem akin to the struggling boy and girl artists of the present time. from perugia raphael went to florence, where he painted a number of his most beautiful madonnas. then, in , he was called to rome by pope julius ii. to decorate some rooms in the vatican palace. the renaissance popes were possessed of so great wealth, and spent it to such purpose, that its spending influenced the art of their age. many of the rooms in the vatican had been decorated by botticelli and other good artists of the previous half-century, but already the new pope considered their work out of date and ordered it to be replaced by michelangelo and raphael. for nine years raphael worked at the decoration of the palace, always being pressed, hurried, and even worried by two successive popes who employed him. the wall spaces which he had to fill were often awkwardly broken up with windows and doors, but he easily overcame whatever difficulties were encountered. to succeed apparently without struggle was a peculiar gift granted to raphael above any other artist of his day. the frescoes painted by him in the vatican illustrated subjects from greek philosophy and medieval church history, as well as from the old and new testament. as an illustrator of sacred writ he never attempted that verisimilitude in eastern surroundings to which hubert van eyck leaned, neither was he satisfied with the dress of his own day in which other painters were wont to clothe their sacred characters. the historical sense, which has driven some modern artists to much antiquarian research to discover exactly what peter and paul must have worn, did not exist before the nineteenth century. raphael felt, nevertheless, that the clothes of the renaissance were hardly suitable for noah and abraham, so he invented a costume of his own, founded upon roman dress, but different from oriental or contemporary clothes. the scripture illustrations of raphael most familiar to you may probably be his cartoon designs for tapestry in the south kensington museum, which were bought by charles i. in these you can see what is meant about the clothes, but you will not be surprised at them, because the same have been adopted by the majority of bible illustrators ever since the days of raphael. his pictures became so popular that it was thought whatever he did must be right. the dress was a mere detail in his work, but it was easy to copy and has been copied persistently from that day to this. it is curious to think that the long white robes, which christ wears in the illustrations of our present-day sunday school books and other religious publications, are all due to imitation of raphael's designs. the first room he finished for julius ii. was so rich in effect and beautiful in colour that the pope could scarcely wait for more rooms as fine. raphael had to call in a large number of assistants to enable him to cover the walls fast enough to please the pope, and the quality of the work began to deteriorate. the uneven merit of his frescoes foretold the consequence of overwork despite his matchless facility and power. but in his panel pictures, when he was not hurried, his work continued to improve until he reached his crowning achievement in the sistine madonna painted three years before his death. raphael was thirty-seven when he died in , and very far from coming to the end of his powers of learning. each picture that he painted revealed to him new difficulties to conquer, and new experiments to try, in his art. we seem compelled to think that had he lived and laboured for another score of years, the history of painting in italy might have been different. in rome and florence no successor attempted to improve upon his work. his pupils and assistants were more numerous than those of any other painter, but when they had obtained some of his facility of drawing and painting they were contented. none of them had raphael's genius, yet all wished to paint like him; so that for the following fifty years rome and florence and southern italy were flooded with inferior raphaelesque paintings, which tended to become more slip-shod in execution as time went on, and more devoid of any personal note. it was just as though his imitators had learnt to write beautifully and then had had little to say. leonardo da vinci died a few months before raphael. several of his pupils were artists of ability, and lived to carry on his traditions of painting in the north of italy. leonardo himself had been so erratic, produced so little, and so few of his pictures survive, that many know him best in his pupils' work, or through copies and engravings of his great 'last supper'--a picture that became an almost total wreck upon the walls of the refectory in milan, for which it was painted. his influence upon his contemporaries at milan was very great, so that during some years hardly a picture was painted there which did not show a likeness to the work of leonardo. he had created a type of female beauty all his own. the face will impress itself upon your memory the first time you see it, whether in a picture by leonardo or in one by a pupil. you can see it in the national gallery in the great 'madonna of the rocks,' and in the magnificent drawing at burlington house. it is not a very beautiful face, but it haunts the memory, and the milanese artists of leonardo's day never threw off their recollection of it. with far less power than leonardo, one of his imitators, bernardino luini, painted pictures of such charm and simplicity that almost everyone finds them delightful. if you could see his picture of the angels bearing st. catherine, robed in red, through the air to her last resting-place upon the hill, you would feel the beauty and peace of his gentle nature revealed in his art. but the spell of leonardo vanished with the death of those who had known him in life. the last of his pupils died in , and with him the leonardo school of painting came to an end. there is one more painter belonging to the full renaissance too famous to remain entirely unmentioned. this is correggio, a painter affected also by the pictures of raphael and leonardo, but individual in his vision and his work. he passed his life in parma, in the north of italy, inheriting a north italian tradition, and hearing only echoes of the world beyond. his canvases are thronged with fair shapes, pretty women and dancing children, ethereally soft and lovely. but it is in his native town that the angels soar aloft with the virgin in the dome of the cathedral, and the children frolic on the walls of the convent. these are his masterpieces you would like best. in the impetus given to painting in italy by the renaissance was drawing to an end. the great central epoch may be said to have terminated in tuscany a few years after the deaths of leonardo and raphael in . but we have said nothing yet of venice, where, in , artists whose visions and whose record of them were to be as wonderful as those of botticelli and raphael, were as yet sleeping in their cradles. chapter vii the renaissance in venice a visit to venice is one of the joys which perhaps few of us have yet experienced. but whether we have been there or not, we all know that the very sound of her name is enchanting for those who are fresh from her magic--her sunrises and sunsets unmatched for colour, and her streets for silence. the venetians were a proud and successful people, wealthier by virtue of their great sea-trade than the citizens of florence or of any other town in italy; their foremost men lived in great high-roomed palaces, richly furnished, and decorated with pictures of a sumptuous pageantry. but the venetians were not merely a luxurious people. the poetry of the lagoons, and the glory of the sunset skies, imparted to their lives the wealth of a rare romance. even in venice to-day, now that the steamers have spoilt the peace of the canals and the old orange-winged sailing-boats no longer crowd against the quays, the dreamy atmosphere of the city retains its spell. few artists ever felt and expressed this atmosphere better than giorgione, the painter of the first of our venetian pictures. he was one of the great artists of the renaissance who died young, ten years before raphael, but their greatness is scarcely comparable. like raphael, giorgione was precocious, but unlike him he painted in a style of his own that from the very beginning owed little to any one else. he saw beauty in his own way, and was not impelled to see it differently by coming into contact with other artists, however great. unlike raphael, he was not a great master of the art of composition. in the little picture before us the grouping of the figures is not what may be called inevitable, like that in the 'knight's dream.' it seems as though one day when giorgione was musing on the beauties of the world, and the blemishes of life, even life in venice, he thought of some far-off time beyond the dawn of history when all men lived in peace. the ancient greeks called this perfect time the 'golden age' of the world. in many ways their idea of it tallies with the description of the garden of eden, and they were always contrasting with it the 'iron age' in which they thought they lived, as the hebrews contrasted the life of adam and eve in the garden with their own. as the fancy flashed across giorgione's mind, perchance he saw some just king of whom his subjects felt no fear seated upon a throne like this. a dreamy youth plays soft music to him, and another hands him flowers and fruit. books lie strewn upon the steps, and a child stands in a reverent attitude before him. wild and domestic animals live together in harmony; the ground is carpeted with flowers; all is peaceful. such a subject suited the temperament of giorgione, and he painted it in the romantic mood in which it was conceived. nothing could be further from everyday life than this little scene. it has the unlaboured look that suits such an improvised subject. of course no one knows for certain that this is a picture of the golden age, and you may make up any story you like about it for yourselves. that is one of the charms of the picture. it has been said that the throned one is celebrating his birthday, and that his little heir is reciting him a birthday ode accompanied by music. you may believe this if you like, but how do you then account for the leopard and the peacock living in such harmony together? [illustration: "the golden age" from the picture by giorgione, in the national gallery, london] giorgione painted a few sacred pictures and many mythological scenes, besides several very beautiful portraits of dreamy-looking poets and noblemen. but even when he illustrated some well-known tale, he did not care to seize upon the dramatic moment that gives the crisis of the story, as giotto would have done, and as the painter of our next picture does. violent action did not attract him. whatever the subject, if it were possible to group the figures together at a moment when they were beautifully doing nothing, he did so. but he liked still more to paint ideal scenes from his own fancy, where young people sit in easy attitudes upon the grass, conversing for an instant in the intervals of the music they make upon pipes and guitar. he was the first artist, so far as i know, to paint these half real, half imaginary scenes, of which our picture may be one. in all of them landscape bears an important part, and in some the background has become the picture and completely subordinated the figures. in this little 'golden age' the landscape is quiet in tone, tinged with melancholy, romantic, to suit the mood of the figures. its colouring, though rich, is subdued, more like the tints of autumn than the fresh hues of spring. the venetians excelled in their treatment of colour. they lived in an uncommon world of it. giorgione saw his picture in his mind's eye as a blaze of rich colour; he did not see the figures sharply outlined against a remote background, as are the three in raphael's 'knight's dream.' that does not mean that raphael, like the artist of the richard ii. diptych, failed to make his figures look solid, but that he saw beauty most in the outlines of the body and the curves of the drapery, irrespective of colour, whereas to giorgione's eye outline was nothing without colour and light and shade. the body of the king upon the throne in our picture is massed against the background, but there is no definite outline to divide it from the tree behind. in this respect giorgione was curiously modern for his date, as we shall see in pictures of a still later time. giorgione was only thirty-three years old when he died of the plague in , the same year as botticelli. his master, giovanni bellini, who was born in , outlived him by six years, and the great titian, his fellow-pupil in the studio of bellini, lived another half-century or more. titian in many ways summed up all that was greatest in venetian art. his pictures have less romance than those of giorgione, except during the short space of time when he painted under the spell of his brother artist. it is extremely difficult to distinguish then between titian's early and giorgione's late work. titian perhaps had the greater intellect. giorgione's pictures vary according to his mood, while titian's express a less changeable personality. in spite of his youth, giorgione made a profound impression upon all the artists of his time. they did not copy his designs, but the beauty of his pictures made them look at the world with his romantic eyes and paint in his dreamy mood. it was almost as though giorgione had absorbed the romance of venice into his pictures, so that for a time no venetian painter could express venetian romance except in giorgione's way. but in , eight years after giorgione's death, another great innovating master was born at venice, tintoret by name, who in his turn opened new visions of the world to the artists of his day. while painting in the rest of italy was becoming mannered and sentimental, lacking in power and originality, tintoret in venice was creating masterpieces with a very fury of invention and a corresponding swiftness of hand. he was his own chief teacher. outside his studio he wrote upon a sign to inform or attract pupils--'the design of michelangelo and the colouring of titian.' profound study of the works of these two masters is manifest in his own. like michelangelo he worked passionately rather than with the sober competence of titian. his thronging visions, his multitudinous and often vast canvases are a surpassing record. prolonged study of the human form had given to him, as to michelangelo, a wonderful power of drawing groups of figures. his mere output was marvellous, and much of it on a grandiose scale. he covered hundreds of square feet of ceilings and walls in venice with paintings of subjects that had been painted hundreds of times before; but each as he treated it was a new thing. centuries of tradition governed the arrangement of such subjects as the crucifixion and the last judgment, so that even the free painters of the renaissance had deviated but little from it. in tintoret the freedom of the renaissance reached its height. for him tradition had no fetters. when he painted a picture of paradise for the doge's palace it measured by feet, and contained literally hundreds of figures. his imagination was so prolific that he seems never to have repeated a figure. new forms, new postures, new groupings flowed from his brush in exhaustless multitude. it is necessary to go to venice to see tintoret's most famous works, still remaining upon the walls of the churches and buildings for which they were painted, or in which they have been brought together. but the national gallery is fortunate in possessing one relatively small canvas of his which shows some of his finest qualities. the subject of st. george slaying the dragon was not a new one. it had been painted by raphael and by several of the earlier venetian painters, but tintoret's treatment of it was all his own. in the earlier pictures, the princess, for whose sake st. george fights the dragon, was a little figure in the background fleeing in terror. st. george occupied the chief place, as he does upon the back of our gold sovereigns, where the princess has been left out altogether. tintoret makes her flee, but she is running towards the spectator, and so, in her flight, stands out the most conspicuous figure. one of the victims that the dragon has slain lies behind her. in the distance st. george fights with all his might against the powers of evil, whilst 'the splendour of god' blazes in the sky. there is a vividness and power about the picture that proclaims the hand of tintoret. in contrast to giorgione he liked to paint figures in motion, yet he was as typical an outcome of venetian romance as the earlier painter. nothing could be more like a fairy-tale than this picture. it was no listless dreamer that painted it, but one with a gorgeous imagination and yet a full knowledge of the world, enabling him to give substance to his visions. tintoret's stormy landscapes are as beautiful in their way as giorgione's dreamy ones, and each carries out the mood of the rest of the picture. this one is full of power, mystery, and romance. tintoret had modelled his colouring upon titian and was by nature a great colourist, but too often he used bad materials that have turned black with the lapse of years. in this picture you see his colour as it was meant to be, rich, and boldly harmonious. the vivid red and blue of the princess's clothes are a daring combination with the brilliant green of the landscape, but tintoret knew what he was doing, and the result is superb. with his death in the best of venetian painting came to an end. [illustration: st. george destroying the dragon from the picture by tintoretto, in the national gallery, london] there were as many excellent painters in the fairy city as there had been in florence; contemporaries of giovanni bellini (who, in his early years, worked in close companionship with mantegna, his brother-in-law), as well as contemporaries of titian and tintoret. the painter veronese, for instance, died a few years before tintoret. for pomp and pageantry his great canvases are eminent. standing in some room of the doge's palace, decorated entirely by his hand, we are carried back to the time when venice was queen of the seas, unrivalled for magnificence and wealth. he was the master of ceremonies, before whom other painters of pomps and vanities pale. gorgeous colouring is what all these venetian painters had in common. we see it in the early days when venetian art was struggling into existence. in her art, as in her skies and waters, we are overwhelmed by a vision of colour unsurpassed. we have now touched on a few prominent points in the history of painting in italy from its early rise in florence with giotto; through its period of widespread excellence in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, when raphael, giorgione, michelangelo, and leonardo were all painting masterpieces in florence, venice, rome, and milan at the same moment; to its final blaze of sunset grandeur in venice. it is time to return to the north of europe. in the next chapter we will try to gain a few glimpses of the progress of painting in germany, holland, flanders, and our own country. chapter viii the renaissance in the north the renaissance involved a change of outlook towards the whole world which could not long remain confined to italy. there were then, as now, roads over the passes of the alps by which merchants and scholars were continually travelling from italy through germany and flanders to england, communicating to the northern countries whatever changes of thought stirred in the south. in germany, as in italy, men speedily awoke to the new life, but the awakening took a different form. we find a different quality in the art of the north. italian spontaneity and child-like joy is absent; so, too, the sense of physical beauty, universal in italy. you remember how the successors of the van eycks in flanders painted excellent portraits and small carefully studied pictures of scriptural events in wonderful detail. they were a strictly practical people whose painting of stuffs, furs, jewellery, and architecture was marvellously minute and veracious. but they were not a handsome race, and their models for saints and virgins seem to have been the people that came handiest and by no means the best looking. thus the figures in their pictures lack personal charm, though the painting is usually full of vigour, truth, and skill. when flemings began to make tours in italy and saw the pictures of raphael, in whom grace was native, they fell in love with his work and returned to flanders to try and paint as he did. but to them grace was not god-given, and in their attempt to achieve it, their pictures became sentimental and postured, and the naive simplicity and everyday truth, so attractive in the works of the earlier school, perished. the influence of the van eycks had not been confined to flanders. artists in germany had been profoundly affected. they learnt the new technique of painting from the pupils of the van eycks in the fifteenth century. like them, too, they discarded gold backgrounds and tried to paint men and women as they really looked, instead of in the old conventional fashion of the middle ages. schools of painting grew up in several of the more important german towns, till towards the end of the fifteenth century two german artists were born, albert durer at nuremberg in , and hans holbein the younger at augsburg in , who deserve to rank with the greatest painters of the time in any country. durer is commonly regarded as the most typically german of artists, though his father was hungarian, and as a matter of fact he stands very much alone. his pictures and engravings are 'long, long thoughts.' every inch of the surface is weighted with meaning. his cast of mind, indeed, was more that of a philosopher than that of an artist. in a drawing which durer made of himself in the looking-glass at the age of thirteen, we see a thoughtful little face gazing out upon the world with questioning eyes. already the delicacy of the lines is striking, and the hair so beautifully finished that we can anticipate the later artist whose pictures are remarkable for so surprising a wealth of detail. the characteristics of the flemish school, carefulness of workmanship and indifference to the physical beauty of the model, to which the italians were so sensitive, continued in his work. for thoroughness his portraits can be compared with those of john van eyck. in the national gallery his father lives again for us in a picture of wonderful power and insight. durer was akin to leonardo in the desire for more and yet more knowledge. like him he wrote treatises on fortifications, human proportions, geometry, and perspective, and filled his sketchbooks with studies of plants, animals, and natural scenery. his eager mind employed itself with the whys and wherefores of things, not satisfied with the simple pleasure that sight bestows. in his engravings, even more than in his pictures, we ponder the hidden meanings; we are not content to look and rejoice in beauty, though there is much to charm the eye. his problems were the problems of life as well as the problems of art. the other great artist of germany, hans holbein the younger, was the son of hans holbein the elder, a much esteemed painter in augsburg. this town was on the principal trade route between northern italy and the north sea, so that venetians and milanese were constantly passing through and bringing to it much wealth and news of the luxury of their own southern life. as a result the citizens of augsburg dressed more expensively and decorated their houses more lavishly than did the citizens of any other town in germany. after a boyhood and youth spent at augsburg, holbein removed to basle. he was a designer of wood-engravings and goldsmiths work and of architectural decoration, besides being a painter. in those days of change in south germany, artists had to be willing to turn their hands to any kind of work they could get to do. north of the alps, where the reformation was upsetting old habits, an artist's life was far from being easy. reformers made bonfires of sacred pictures and sculptured wooden altar-pieces. indeed the reformation was a cruel blow to artists, for it took away church patronage and made them dependent for employment upon merchants and princes. except at courts or in great mercantile towns they fared extremely ill. altar-pieces were rarely wanted, and there were no more legends of saints to be painted upon the walls of churches. the demand for portraiture, on the other hand, was increasing, whilst the growth of printing created a new field for design in the preparation of woodcuts for the illustration of books. thus it came to pass that the printer froben, at basle, was one of the young holbein's chief patrons. we find him designing a wonderful series of illustrations of _the dance of death_, as well as drawing another set to illustrate _the praise of folly_, written by erasmus, who was then living in basle and frequenting the house of froben. erasmus was a typical scholar of the sixteenth century, belonging rather to civilized society as a whole than to any one country. he moved about europe from one centre of learning to another, alike at home in educated circles in england, flanders, and germany. he had lived for some time in england and knew that there were men there with wealth who would employ a good painter to paint their portraits if they could find one. erasmus himself sat to holbein, and sent the finished portrait as a present to his friend sir thomas more, lord chancellor of england. in england, owing to the effects of the wars of the roses, good painters no longer existed. a century of neglect had destroyed english painting. henry viii., therefore, had to look to foreign lands for his court painter, and where was he to come from? france was the nearest country, but the french king was in the same predicament as henry. he obtained his painters from italy, and at one time secured the services of leonardo da vinci; but italy was a long way off and it would suit henry better to get a painter from flanders or germany if it were possible. so erasmus advised holbein to go to england, and gave him a letter to sir thomas more. on this first visit in , he painted the portraits of more and his whole family, and of many other distinguished men; but it was not till his second visit in that he became henry viii.'s court painter. in this capacity he had to decorate the walls of the king's palaces, design the pageantry of the royal processions, and paint the portraits of the king's family. although holbein could do and did do anything that was demanded of him, what he liked best was to paint portraits. romantic subjects such as the fight of st. george and the dragon, or an idyll of the golden age, little suited the artistic leanings of a german. to a german or a fleming the world of facts meant more than the world of imagination; the painting of men and women as they looked in everyday life was more congenial to them than the painting of saints and imaginary princesses. but how unimportant seems all talk of contrasting imagination and reality when we see them fused together in this charming portrait of edward, the child prince of wales. it belongs to the end of the year , when he was just fifteen months old, and the imagination of holbein equipped him with the orb of sovereignty in the guise of a baby's rattle. it is in the coupling of distant kingship and present babyhood that the painter works his magic and reveals his charm. [illustration: edward, prince of wales, afterwards edward vi. from the picture by holbein, in the collection of the earl of yarborough, london] if you recall for a moment what you know of henry viii., his masterful pride, his magnificence, his determination to do and have exactly what he wanted, you will understand that his demands upon his court painter for a portrait of his only son and heir must have been high. no one could say enough about this wonderful child to please henry, for all that was said in praise of him redounded to the glory of his father. the following is a translation of the latin poem beneath the picture: child, of thy father's virtues be thou heir, since none on earth with him may well compare; hardly to him might heaven yield a son by whom his father's fame should be out-done. so, if thou equal such a mighty sire, no higher can the hopes of man aspire; if thou surpass him, thou shalt honoured be o'er all that ruled before, or shall rule after thee.[ ] [footnote : translated by miss k. k. radford.] in justice be it said that the little edward vi. was of an extraordinary precocity. when he was eight years old he wrote to archbishop cranmer in latin. when he was nine he knew four books of cato by heart as well as much of the bible. to show you the way in which royal infants were treated in those days,--we read that at the time this picture was painted, the little prince had a household of his own, consisting of a lady-mistress, a nurse, rockers for his cradle, a chamberlain, vice-chamberlain, steward, comptroller, almoner, and dean. it is hard to believe that the child is only fifteen months old, so erect is the attitude, so intelligent the face. the clothes are sumptuous. a piece of stuff similar in material and design to the sleeve exists to-day in a museum in brussels. in the best sense holbein was the most italian of the germans. for in him, as in the gifted italian, grace was innate. he may have paid a brief visit to italy, but he never lived there for any length of time, nor did he try to paint like an italian as some northern artists unhappily tried to do. the german merits, solidity, boldness, detailed finish, and grasp of character, he possessed in a high degree, but he combined with them a beauty of line, delicacy of modelling, and richness of colour almost southern. his pictures appeal more to the eye and less to the mind than do those of durer. where durer sought to instruct, holbein was content to please. but like a german he spared no pains. he painted the stuff and the necklace, the globe and the feather, with the finish of an artist who was before all things a good workman. observe how delicately the chubby little fingers are drawn. holbein's detailed treatment of the accessories of a portrait is only less than the care expended in depicting the face. he studied faces, and his portraits, one may almost say, are at once images of and commentaries on the people they depict. thus his gallery of pictures of henry and his contemporaries show us at once the reflexion of them as in a mirror, and the vision of them as beheld by a singularly discerning and experienced eye that not only saw but comprehended. this is the more remarkable because holbein was not always able to paint and finish his portraits in the presence of the living model, as painters insist on doing nowadays. his sitters were generally busy men who granted him but one sitting, so that his method was to make a drawing of the head in red chalk and to write upon the margin notes of anything he particularly wanted to remember. afterwards he painted the head from the drawing, but had the actual clothes and jewels sent him to work from. in the royal collection at windsor there are a number of these portrait drawings of great interest to us, since many of the portraits painted from them have been lost. as a record of remarkable people of that day they are invaluable, for in a few powerful strokes holbein could set down the likeness of any face. but when he came to paint the portrait he was not satisfied with a mere likeness. he painted too 'his habit as he lived.' erasmus is shown reading in his study, the merchant in his office surrounded by the tokens of his business, and henry viii. standing firmly with his legs wide apart as if bestriding a hemisphere. but i think that you will like this fine portrait of the infant prince best of all, and that is why i have chosen it in preference to a likeness of any of the statesmen, scholars, queens, and courtiers who played a great part in their world, but are not half so charming to look upon as little prince edward. chapter ix rembrandt after the death of holbein, artists in the north of europe passed through troublous times till the end of the sixteenth century. france and the netherlands were devastated by wars. you may remember that the netherlands had belonged in the fifteenth century to the dukes of burgundy? through the marriage of the only daughter of the last duke, these territories passed into the possession of the king of spain, who remained a catholic, whilst the northern portion of the netherlands became sturdily protestant. their struggle, under the leadership of william the silent, against the yoke of spain, is one of the stirring pages of history. by the beginning of the seventeenth century, seven of the northern states of the netherlands, of which holland was the chief, had emerged as practically independent. the southern portion of the netherlands, including the old province of flanders, remained catholic and was governed by a spanish prince who held his court at brussels. when peace came at last, there was a remarkable outburst of painting in each of the two countries. rubens was the master painter in flanders. of him and of his pupil van dyck we shall hear more in the next chapter. in holland there was a yet more wide-spread activity. indomitable perseverance had been needed for so small a country to throw off the rule of a great power like spain. the long struggle seems to have called into being a kindred spirit manifesting itself in every branch of the national life. dutch merchants, dutch fishermen, and dutch colonizers made themselves felt as a force throughout the world. the spirit by which dutchmen achieved political success was pre-eminent in the qualities which brought them to the front rank in art. there were literally hundreds of painters in holland, few of them bad. that does not mean that all dutchmen had the magical power of vision belonging to the greatest artists, the power that transforms the objects of daily view into things of rare beauty, or the imagination of a tintoret that creates and depicts scenes undreamt of before by man. many painted the things around them as they looked to a commonplace mind, with no glamour and no transforming touch. when we see their pictures, our eyes are not opened to new effects. we continue to see and to feel as we did before, but we admire the honest work, the pleasant colour, and the efficiency of the painters. in default of raphaels, giorgiones, and titians, we should be pleased to hang upon our walls works such as those. but towering above the other artists of holland, great and small, was one dutchman, rembrandt, who holds his own with the greatest of the world. he was born in , the son of a miller at leyden, who gave him the best teaching there to be had. soon he became a good painter of likenesses, and orders for portraits began to stream in upon him from the citizens of his native town. these he executed well, but his heart was not wrapped up in the portrayal of character as john van eyck's had been. neither was it in the drawing of delicate and beautiful lines that he wished to excel, as did holbein and raphael. he was the dramatist of painting, a man who would rather paint some one person ten times over in the character of somebody else, high priest, king, warrior, or buffoon, than once thoroughly in his own. but when people ordered portraits of themselves they wanted good likenesses, and rembrandt was happy to supply them. at first it was only when he was working at home to please himself that he indulged his picturesque gift. he painted his father, his mother, and himself over and over again, but in each picture he tried some experiment with expression, or a new pose, or a strange effect of lighting, transforming the general aspect of the original. his own face did as well as any other to experiment with; none could be offended with the result, and it was always to be had without paying a model's price for the sitting. thus all through his life, from twenty-two to sixty-three, we can follow the growth of his art with the transformation of his body, in the long series of pictures of his single self. more than any artist that had gone before him, rembrandt was fascinated by the problem of light. the brightest patch of white on a canvas will look black if you hold it up against the sky. how, then, can the fire of sunshine be depicted at all? experience shows that it can only be suggested by contrast with shadows almost black. but absolutely black shadows would not be beautiful. fancy a picture in which the shadows were as black as well-polished boots! rembrandt had to find out how to make his dark shadows rich, and how to make a picture, in which shadow predominated, a beautiful thing in itself, a thing that would decorate a wall as well as depict the chosen subject. that was no easy problem, and he had to solve it for himself. it was his life's work. he applied his new idea in the painting of portraits and in subject pictures, chiefly illustrative of dramatic incidents in bible history, for the same quality in him that made him love the flare of light, made him also love the dramatic in life. rembrandt's mother was a protestant, who brought up her son with a thorough knowledge of the scripture stories, and it was the bible that remained to the end of his life one of the few books he had in his house. the dramatic situations that he loved were there in plenty. over and over again he painted the nativity of christ. sometimes the baby is in a tiny dutch cradle with its face just peeping out, and the shepherds adoring it by candle-light. often he painted scenes from the old testament; such as isaac blessing esau and jacob, who are shown as two little dutch children. simeon receiving the infant christ in the temple is a favourite subject, because of the varied effects that could be produced by the gloom of the church and the light on the figure of the high priest. these, and many other beautiful pictures, were studies painted for the increase of the artist's own knowledge, not orders from citizens of leyden, or of amsterdam, to which capital he moved in . at the same time he was coming more and more into demand as a portrait-painter. these were days in which he made money fast, and spent it faster. he had a craving to surround himself with beautiful works of art and beautiful objects of all kinds that should take him away from the dunes and canals into a world of romance within his own house. he disliked the stiff dutch clothes and the great starched white ruffs worn by the women of the day. he had to paint them in his portraits; but when he painted his beautiful wife, saskia, she is decked in embroideries and soft shimmering stuffs. wonderful clasps and brooches fasten her clothes. her hair is dressed with gold chains, and great strings of pearls hang from her neck and arms. rembrandt makes the light sparkle on the diamonds and glimmer on the pearls. sometimes he adorns her with flowers and paints her as flora. again, she is fastening a jewel in her hair, and rembrandt himself stands by with a rope of pearls for her to don. all these jewels and rich materials belonged to him. he also bought antique marbles, pictures by giorgione and titian, engravings by durer, and four volumes of raphael's drawings, besides many other beautiful works of art. these were splendid years, years in which he was valued by his contemporaries for the work he did for them, and years in which every picture he painted for himself gave him fresh experience. a picture of the anatomy class of a famous physician had been among the first with which rembrandt made a great public success. every face in it--and there were eight living faces--was a masterpiece of portraiture, and all were fitly grouped and united in the rapt attention with which they followed the demonstration of their teacher. in he received an order to paint a large picture of one of the companies of the city guard of amsterdam. according to the custom of the day, each person portrayed in the picture contributed his equal share towards the cost of the whole, and in return expected his place in it to be as conspicuous as that of anybody else. such groups were common in holland in the seventeenth century. the towns were proud of their newly won liberties, and the town dignitaries liked to see themselves painted in a group to perpetuate remembrance of their tenure of office. but rembrandt knew that it was inartistic to give each and every person in a large group an equal or nearly equal prominence, although such was the custom to which even franz hals' brush had yielded full compliance. for his magnificent picture of the city guard, rembrandt chose the moment when the drums had just been sounded as an order for the men to form into line behind their chief officers' march-forth. they are coming out from a dark building into the full sunshine of the street. all in a bustle, some look at their fire-arms, some lift their lances, and some cock their guns. the sunshine falls full upon the captain and the lieutenant beside him, but the background is so dark that several of the seventeen figures are almost lost to view. a few of the heads are turned in such a way that only half the face is seen, and no doubt as likenesses some of them were deficient. rembrandt was not thinking of the seventeen men individually. he conceived the picture as a whole, with its strong light and shade, the picturesque crossing lines of the lances, and the natural array of the figures. by wiseacres, the picture was said to represent a scene at night, lit by torch-light, and was actually called the 'night watch,' though the shadow of the captain's hand is of the size of the hand itself, and not greater, being cast by the sun. later generations have valued it as one of the unsurpassed pictures in the world; but it is said that contemporary dutch feeling waxed high against rembrandt for having dealt in this supremely artistic manner with an order for seventeen portraits, and that he suffered severely in consequence. certainly he had fewer orders. the prosperous class abandoned him. his pictures remained unsold, and his revenue dwindled. rembrandt was thirty-six years of age and at the very height of his powers, at the time of the failure of this his greatest picture. his mature style of painting continued to displease his contemporaries, who preferred the work of less innovating artists who painted good likenesses smoothly. every year his treatment became rougher and bolder. he transformed portraits of stolid dutch burgomasters into pictures of fantastic beauty; but the likeness suffered, and the burgomasters were dissatisfied. their conservative taste preferred the smooth surface and minute treatment of detail which had been traditional in the low countries since the days of the van eycks. year after year more of their patronage was transferred to other painters, who pandered to their preferences and had less of the genius that forced rembrandt to work out his own ideal, whether it brought him prosperity or ruin. these painters flourished, while rembrandt sank into ever greater disrepute. it is certain, too, that he had been almost childishly reckless in expenditure on artistic and beautiful things which were unnecessary to his art and beyond his means, although those for a while had been abundant. at the time of the failure of the 'night watch,' his wife saskia died, leaving him their little son, titus, a beautiful child. through ever-darkening days, for the next fifteen years, he continued to paint with increasing power. it is to this later period that our picture of the 'man in armour' belongs. [illustration: a man in armour from the picture by rembrandt, in the corporation art gallery, glasgow] the picture is not a portrait, but rather a study of light upon armour. no man came to rembrandt and asked to be painted like that; but rembrandt saw in his mind's eye a great effect--a fine knightly face beneath a shadowing helmet and set off against a sombre background. a picture such as this is a work of the imagination in the same sense as the 'saint george and the dragon' of tintoret. it was an effect that only rembrandt could see, painted as only he could paint it. the strongest light falls upon the breastplate, the next strongest upon the helmet, and the ear-ring is there to catch another gleam. when you look at the picture closely, you can see that the lights are laid on (we might almost say 'buttered on') with thick white paint. more than once rembrandt painted armour for the sake of the effects of light. in one of the portraits of himself he wears a helmet, and he painted his brother similarly adorned. a picture of a person wearing the same armour as in the glasgow picture is in st. petersburg, but the figure is turned in a slightly different direction and reflects the light differently. it is called 'pallas athene,' and was no doubt painted at the same time as ours; but the person, whether named pallas athene or knight, was but a peg upon which to hang the armour for the sake of the light shining on it. rembrandt was a typical dutch worker all his life. besides the great number of pictures that have come down to us, we have about three thousand of his drawings, and his etchings are very numerous and fine. i wonder if you know how prints are made? there are, broadly speaking, two different processes. you can take a block of wood and cut away the substance around the lines of the design. then when you cover with ink the raised surface of wood that is left and press the paper upon it, the design prints off in black where the ink is but the paper remains white where the hollows are. this is the method called wood-cutting, which is still in use for book illustrations. in the other process, the design is ploughed into a metal plate, the lines being made deep enough to hold ink, and varying in width according to the strength desired in the print. you then fill the grooves with ink, wiping the flat surface clean, so that when the paper is pressed against the plate and into the furrows, the lines print black, out of the furrows, and the rest remains white. there are several ways of making these furrows in a metal plate, but the chief are two. the first is to plough into the metal with a sharp steel instrument called a burin. the second is to bite them out with an acid. this is the process of etching with which rembrandt did his matchless work. he varnished a copper plate with black varnish. with a needle he scratched upon it his design, which looked light where the needle had revealed the copper. then the whole plate was put into a bath of acid, which ate away the metal, and so bit into the lines, but had no effect upon the varnish. when he wanted the lines to be blacker in certain places, he had to varnish the whole rest of the plate again, and put it back into the bath of acid. the lines that had been subjected to the second biting were deeper than those that had been bitten only once. the number of plates etched by rembrandt was great, at least two hundred; some say four hundred. their subjects are very various--momentary impressions of picturesque figures, scriptural scenes, portraits, groups of common people, landscapes, and whatever happened to engage the artist's fancy, for an etching can be very quickly done, and is well suited to record a fleeting impression. thousands of the prints still exist, and even some of the original plates in a very worn-down condition. in spite of the quantity and quality of rembrandt's work, he was unable to recover his prosperity. he had moved into a fine house when he married saskia, and was never able to pay off the debts contracted at that time. things went from bad to worse, until at last, in , when rembrandt was fifty, he was declared bankrupt, and everything he possessed in the world was sold. we have an inventory of the gorgeous pictures, the armour, the sculptures, and the jewels and dresses that had belonged to saskia. his son titus retained a little of his mother's money, and set up as an art dealer in order to help his father. it is a truly dreary scene, yet rembrandt still continued to paint, because painting was to him the very breath of life. he painted titus over and over again looking like a young prince. in these later years the portraits of himself increase in number, as if because of the lack of other models. when we see him old, haggard, and poor in his worn brown painting-clothes, it hardly seems possible that he can be the same rembrandt as the gay, frolicking man in a plumed hat, holding out the pearls for saskia. in his old age he received one more large order from a group of six drapers of amsterdam for their portraits. it has been said that the lesson of the miscalled 'night watch' had been branded into his soul by misfortune. what is certain is that, while in this picture he purposely returned to the triumphs of portraiture of his youth, he did not give up the artistic ideals of his middle life. he gave his sitters an equal importance in position and lighting, and at the same time painted a picture artistically satisfying. not one of the six men could have had any fault to find with the way in which he was portrayed. each looks equally prominent in vivid life. yet they are not a row of six individual men, but an organic group held together you hardly know how. at last you realize that all but one are looking at you. _you_ are the unifying centre that brings the whole picture together, the bond without which, metaphorically speaking, it would fall to pieces. this picture of six men in plain black clothes and black hats, sitting around a table, is by some considered the culmination of rembrandt's art. it shows that, in spite of misfortune and failure, his ardour for new artistic achievement remained with him to the end. in rembrandt seems to have paid a brief and unnoticed visit to england. if charles ii. had heard of him and made him his court painter, we might have had an unrivalled series of portraits of court beauties by his hand instead of by that of sir peter lely. as it was, a hasty sketch of old st. paul's cathedral, four years before it was burnt down, is the sole trace left of his visit. the story of his old age is dreary. even titus died a few months before his father, leaving him alone in the world. in the autumn of he himself passed away, leaving behind him his painting-clothes, his paint-brushes, and nothing else, save a name destined to an immortality which his contemporaries little foresaw. all else had gone: his wife, his child, his treasures, and his early vogue among the dutchmen of his time. the last picture of all was a portrait of himself, in the same attitude as his first, but disillusioned and tragic, with furrowed lines and white hair. no one cared whether he died or not, and it is recorded that after his death pictures by him could be bought for sixpence. thus ended the life of one of the world's supremely great painters. chapter x peter de hoogh and cuyp let us now turn from the splendid gloom of rembrandt's 'knight in armour,' to delight in this beautiful little interior of a dutch house by peter de hoogh. still you see the prepossession for light, but for more tempered rays and softer shadows. the sunshine is diffused by the yellow curtains throughout the room. the old lady need not fear its revelations, to be sure, for it is holland--she knows that the whole house has been duly scrubbed with soap and water. dust and dirt are banished. it is a cloudless day and dry under foot, otherwise the little boy would have worn clogs over his shoes, and you might see them outside. mud on the polished stones of the passage would have ruffled the housewife's calm. as it is, we can see she has had no worries this morning. she has donned her fresh red dress and clean white apron, and will soon be seated to prepare the vegetables and fruit that are being brought her. perhaps they are a present from the old lady in the house over the way, who from her front door watches the child delivering the gift. [illustration: an interior from the picture by pieter de hoogh, in the wallace collection, london] it is a domestic scene that you might witness in any of the old towns of holland to this day. the insides and outsides of the houses are still scrubbed with soap and water; rows of clogs stand outside the front doors on muddy days; the women wear the same bright coloured gowns fully gathered round the waist, with the cleanest of white aprons; their faces are placid and unruffled as they pursue the even tenour of their way. this atmosphere of dutch life, peaceful, home-loving, and competent, is rendered by peter de hoogh in most of his pictures. it is not the atmosphere of rembrandt's art, yet he never could have painted thus except for rembrandt. the same love of sunlight and shadows prevailed with peter de hoogh, and it was no less the aim of his art to attain mastery over the painting of light, but light diffused and reflected. he loved to show the sunlight shining through some coloured substance, such as this yellow curtain, which scatters its brightness and lets it fall more evenly throughout the room. he never painted such extreme contrasts as make manifest rembrandt's power. rembrandt's light had been so vivid that it seemed to overwhelm colours in a dazzling brilliancy. peter de hoogh's lights are just strong enough to reveal the colours in a milder illumination. in our picture the sunshine diffused by the yellow curtains mingles with the red of the woman's dress and creates a rich orange. little does she know how well her dress looks. but it was only after incessant study of the way in which rembrandt had mastered the whole range from light to dark, that peter de hoogh became able to paint as he did within his narrower scale, abridged at both extremes. begin with the room, then the passage, then the farther hall, then the highway open to the unseen sky above, then the house-front beyond it, and the hall beyond the lady in the neighbouring doorway; there are at least four distinct distances in this picture each differently lighted, and the several effects worked out with scrupulous painstaking fidelity. it is worth your while, with your own eyes rather than with many words of mine, to search out on the original all these beautifully varied gradations. in many of his pictures one part is lighted from the sunlit street, and another from a closed court. sometimes his figures stand in an open courtyard, whilst behind is a paved passage leading into the house. all his subjects are of the domestic dutch life of the seventeenth century, but the arrangement in rooms, passages, courtyards, and enclosed gardens admitted of much variation. we never feel that the range of subjects is limited, for the light transforms each into a scene of that poetic beauty which it was peter de hoogh's great gift to discern, enjoy, and record. the painting is delicate and finished, meant to be seen from near at hand. it is always the room that interests him, as much as the people in it. the painting of the window with its little coats of arms, transparent yet diffusing the light, is exquisitely done. a chair with the cushion upon it, just like that, occurs again and again in his pictures, the cushion being used as a welcome bit of colour in the scheme. most of all, the floors, whether paved with stone as in this picture, or with brick as in the courtyards, are painted with the delightful precise care that the van eycks gave to their accessories. in peter de hoogh's vision of the world there is the same appreciation of the objects of daily use as was displayed by the fifteenth-century flemish painters whenever their sacred subjects gave them opportunity. in the seventeenth century it was more congenial to the flemish and dutch temperament to paint their own country, and domestic scenes from their own lives, than pictures of devotion. other artists besides peter de hoogh painted people in their own houses. in the pictures of terborch ladies in satin dresses play the spinet and the guitar. jan steen depicted peasants revelling on their holidays or in taverns. peter de hoogh was the painter of middle-class life, and discovered in its circumstances, likewise, abounding romance. the dutchman of the seventeenth century loved his house and his garden, and every inch of the country in which he lived, rescued as it had been from invasions by armies and the sea. many painters never left holland, and found beauty enough there to fill well-spent lives in painting its flatness beneath over-arching clear or clouded skies. although the earlier flemings had had a great love of landscape, they had not conceived it as a subject suitable for a whole picture, but only for a background. in the sixteenth century the figures gradually get smaller and less important, and towards the end of the century disappear. as the song says, 'a very different thing by far' is painting a landscape background and painting a whole landscape picture. before the end of the century rubens painted some wonderful landscapes, and he was soon followed by a great number of very fine landscape painters in holland. cuyp was one of many. in a dutch landscape we cannot expect the rich colouring of italy. the colouring of holland is low toned, and tender gradations lead away to the low and level horizon. the canals are sluggish and grey, and the clouds often heavy and dark. we saw how the brilliant skies and pearly buildings of venice made venetian painters the gayest colourists of the world. so the dutch painters took their sober scale of landscape colouring as it was dictated to them by the infinitely varied yet sombre loveliness of their own land. in the great flat expanses of field, intersected by canals and dotted with windmills, the red brick roof of a water-mill may look 'loud,' like an aggressive hat. but the shadows cast by the clouds change every moment, and in flat country where there is less to arrest the eye the changes of tone are more marked. in an etching, rembrandt could leave a piece of white paper for the spot of highest sunlight, and carry out all the gradations of tone in black and white, until he reached the spot of darkest shadow. a painted landscape he indicated in the same way by varying shades of dull brown. in all of them you seem to feel the interposition of the air between you and the distant horizon at which you are looking. what else is there? at each point in the picture the air modifies the distinctness with which you can see the objects. this consciousness of air in a picture of low horizon is a very difficult thing to describe and explain. we know when it is there and when it is not. it has to be seen, to be enjoyed, and recorded. holbein painted edward vi. standing, so to speak, in a vacuum. every line of his face is sharply defined. in real life air softens all lines, so that even the edge of a nose in profile is not actually seen as a sharp outline. the figures in richard ii.'s picture stand in the most exhausted vacuum, but hubert van eyck had already begun to render the vision or illusion of air in his 'three maries.' in this respect he had learnt more than the early painters of the italian renaissance; but raphael and the venetians, especially giorgione and titian, sometimes bathed their figures in a luminous golden atmosphere with the sun shining through it. the dutch painters carried this still further, particularly in their pictures of interiors and landscapes. it is the atmosphere in the rooms that makes peter de hoogh's portrayal of interiors so wonderful. in our little picture the light coming through the window makes the air almost golden. when this painting of air and tone is set forth by the exquisite colour of peter de hoogh, you see this kind of dutch achievement at its best. cuyp's love of sunshine is rare among dutch landscape painters. he suffuses his skies with a golden haze that bathes his kin and kine alike in evening light. in our picture you can feel the great height of the sky and the depth of the air between the foreground and the horizon. the rendering of space is excellent. but cuyp has not been content with the features of his native holland. he has put an imaginary mountain in the distance and a great hill in the foreground. it is certainly not a view that cuyp ever saw in holland with his own eyes. he thought that the mountain's upright lines were good to break the flatness; and the finished composition, if beautiful, is its own excuse for being. [illustration: landscape with cattle from the picture by cuyp, in the dulwich gallery] rembrandt is an exception to all rules, but most of the dutch painters did not allow themselves these excursions within their studios to foreign scenes. they faithfully depicted their own flat country as they saw it, and added neither hills nor mountains. but they varied the lighting to express their own moods. ruysdael's sombre tone befits the man who struggled with poverty all his life, and died in a hospital penniless. cuyp is always sunny. in his pictures, cattle browse at their ease, and shepherds lounge contented on the grass. he was a painter of portraits and of figure subjects as well as of landscapes, and his little groups of men and cattle are always beautifully drawn. ruysdael, hobbema, and many others were landscape painters only, and some had their figures put in by other artists. often they did without them, but in the landscapes of cuyp, cows generally occupy the prominent position. the black and white cow in our picture is a fine creature, and nothing could be more harmonious in colour than the brown cow and the brown jacket of the herdsman. there were some painters in holland in the seventeenth century who made animals their chief study. theretofore it had been rare to introduce them into pictures, except as symbols, like the lion of st. jerome, or where the story implied them; or in allegorical pictures, such as the 'golden age.' but at this later time animals had their share in the increased interest that was taken in the things of daily life, and they were painted for their handsome sakes, as landseer painted them in england fifty years ago. thus the seventeenth century in holland shows an enlargement in the scope of subjects for painting. devotional pictures were becoming rare, but illustrations, sacred and secular, portraits, groups, interiors, and landscapes, were produced in great numbers. dutch painters outnumbered those of flanders, but among the latter were at least two of the highest eminence, rubens and van dyck, and to these we will next direct our attention. chapter xi van dyck the great painter rubens lived at antwerp, a town about as near to amsterdam as dover is to london. yet despite the proximity of flanders and holland, their religion, politics, social life, and art were very different in the seventeenth century, as we have already seen. rubens was a painter of the prosperous and ruling classes. he was employed by his own sovereign, by the king of spain, by marie de medicis, queen of france, and by charles i. of england. his remarkable social and intellectual gifts caused him to be employed also as an ambassador, and he was sent on a diplomatic errand to spain; but even then his leisure hours were occupied in copying the fine titians in the king's palace. one day he was noticed by a spanish noble, who said to him, 'does my lord occupy his spare time in painting?' 'no,' said rubens; 'the painter sometimes amuses himself with diplomacy.' in his life as in his art he was exuberant. an absurd anecdote of the time is good enough to show that. some people, who went to visit him in his studio at antwerp, wrote afterwards that they found him hard at work at a picture, whilst at the same time he was dictating a letter, and some one else was reading aloud a latin work. when the visitors arrived he answered all their questions without leaving off any of those three occupations! we must not all hope to match rubens. rubens's great ceremonial paintings, containing numerous figures and commemorating historical scenes in honour of his royal patrons, were executed by his own hands, or by the hands he taught and guided, with great skill and speed. he painted also beautiful portraits of his wife and family, and pictures of his own medieval castle, which he restored and inhabited during the last years of his life, with views of the country stretching out in all directions. he liked a comfortable life and comfortable-looking people. he painted his own wives as often as rembrandt painted saskia; both were plump enough to make our memories recur with pleasure to the slenderer figures preferred by botticelli and the painters of his school. to accomplish the great mass of historic, symbolic, and ceremonial painting that still crowds the walls of the galleries of europe, rubens needed many assistants and pupils, but only one of them, van dyck, rose to the highest rank as a painter. he was a fleming by birth, and worked in the studio at antwerp for several years as an assistant of rubens; then he went to italy to learn from the great pictures of the italian renaissance, as so many northern artists wished to do. it has been said that the works of titian influenced his youthful mind the most. van dyck spent three years in genoa, where he was employed by those foremost in its life to paint their portraits. many of these superb canvases have been dispersed to enrich the galleries of both hemispheres, public and private; but the proud, handsome semblances of some of his sitters, dressed in rich velvet, pearls, and lace, look down upon us still from the bare walls of their once magnificent palaces, with that 'grand air' for which the eye and the brush of van dyck have long remained unrivalled. when he returned to flanders from italy, he had attained a style of painting entirely his own and very different from that of his great master, rubens. the william ii of orange picture is an excellent example of van dyck's work. the child is a prince: we know it as plainly as if van dyck had spoken the word before unveiling his canvas. his erect attitude, his dignified bearing, his perfect self-possession and ease, show that he has been trained in a high school of manners. but there is also something in the delicate oval of the face, the well-cut nose and mouth, and the graceful growth of the hair, that speak of refined breeding. distinction is the key-note of the picture. [illustration: william ii. of orange from the picture by van dyck, in the hermitage gallery, leningrad] this little prince had in his veins the blood of william the silent, and became the father of our william iii. poor human nature is too easily envious, and some deny the reality, in fact, of the distinction, the grace, of van dyck's portrayed men and women. nevertheless, van dyck's vision, guiding his brush, was as rare an endowment as envy is a common one, and has higher authority to show us what to look for, to see, and to enjoy. van dyck was the first painter who taught people how they ought to look, to befit an admirer's view of their aristocratic rank. his portraits thus express the social position of the sitter as well as the individual character. although this has been an aim of portrait-painters in modern times, when they have been painting people of rank, it was less usual in the seventeenth century. there was hardly scope enough in antwerp for two great painters such as rubens and van dyck, so in van dyck left flanders and settled permanently in england, as court painter to charles i. all his life charles had been an enthusiastic collector of works of art. born with a fine natural taste, he had improved it by study, until rubens could say of him: 'the prince of wales is the best amateur of painting of all the princes in the world. he has demanded my portrait with such insistence that he has overcome my modesty, although it does not seem to me fitting to send it to a prince of his importance.' two of our pictures, the richard ii. diptych and the edward vi. of holbein, were in his collection, besides many we have mentioned, such as holbein's 'erasmus,' raphael's cartoons, and mantegna's 'triumph of caesar.' before charles came to the throne he had gone to spain to woo the daughter of philip iii. the magnificent titians in the palace at madrid extorted such admiration from the prince that philip felt it incumbent upon him as a host and a spaniard to offer some of them to charles. charles sent his own painter to copy the rest. he kept agents all over europe to buy for him, and spent thousands of pounds in salaries and presents to the artists at his court. as in the time of henry viii., there were still no first-rate english painters. james i. had employed a fleming, and an inferior dutchman, whom charles retained in his service for a time. then he experimented with a second-rate italian artist, who painted some ceilings which still exist at hampton court. rubens was too much in demand at other courts for charles to have his exclusive service, but the courtly van dyck was a painter after his own heart. for the first time he had found an artist who satisfied his taste, and van dyck a court in which he could paint distinction to his heart's content. charles would have squandered money on him if he had then had it to squander. as it was, he paid him far less than he had paid his inferior predecessors, but van dyck continued to paint for him to the end, and by heaven's mercy died himself before the crash came, which overthrew charles and scattered his collection. between the years and , van dyck painted a great number of portraits of the king. it is from these that we obtain our vivid idea of the first charles's gentleness and refinement. he has a sad look, as though the world were too much for him and he had fallen upon evil days. we can see him year by year looking sadder, but van dyck makes the sadness only emphasize the distinction. queen henrietta maria was painted even more often than the king. she is always dressed in some bright shimmering satin; sometimes in yellow, like the sleeve of william ii.'s dress, sometimes in the purest white. she looks very lovely in the pictures, but lovelier still are the groups of her children. even james ii. was once a bewitching little creature in frocks with a skull-cap on his head. his sister mary, aged six, in a lace dress, with her hands folded in front of her, looks very good and grown-up. when she became older, though not even then really grown-up, she married the william of orange of our picture. he came from holland and stayed at the english court, as a boy of twelve, and it was then that van dyck painted this portrait of him. later on, when they were married, van dyck painted them together, but william was older and looked a little less beautiful, and mary had lost the charm of her babyhood. with all her royal dignity and solemnity, she is a perfect child in these pictures. refined people, loving art, have grown so fond of the van dyck children, that often when they wish their own to look particularly bewitching at some festivity, they dress them in the costumes of the little mary and elizabeth stuart, and revive the skull-caps and the lace dresses for a fresh enjoyment. van dyck's patrons in england, other than the king, were mostly noblemen and courtiers. they lived in the great houses, which had been built in many parts of the country during the reigns of elizabeth and her successors. the rooms were spacious, with high walls that could well hold the large canvases of van dyck. sometimes a special gallery was built to contain the family portraits, and van dyck received a commission to paint them all. often, several copies of the same picture were ordered at one time to be sent as presents to friends and relations. usually the artist painted but one himself; the rest were copies by his assistants. van dyck's portraits were designed to suit great houses. in a small room, which a portrait by holbein would have decorated nobly, a canvas by van dyck would have been overpowering. in spite of the fact that the expressions on the faces are often intimate and appealing, domesticity is not the mark of his art. in van dyck's picture of our 'heir of fame,' the white linen, the yellow satin, and the armour please us as befitting the lovely face. there is a glimmer of light on the armour, but you see how different is van dyck's treatment of it from rembrandt's. van dyck painted it as an article of dress in due subordination to the face, not as an opportunity for reflecting light and becoming the most important thing in the picture. we have seen how rembrandt, peter de hoogh, cuyp, rubens, and van dyck were all contemporaries, born within an area of ground smaller far than england. yet the range of their subjects was widely different, and each painter gave his individuality full play. the desires of the public were not stereotyped and fixed, as they had been when all alike wanted their religious aspirations expressed in art. the patrons of that epoch had various likings, as we have to-day, and the painter developed along the lines most congenial to himself. unless he could make people like what he enjoyed painting, he could not make a living. if they had no eyes to learn to see, he might remain unappreciated, like rembrandt, until long after his death. yet van dyck's portraits were popular. people could scarcely help enjoying an art that showed them off to such advantage. having found a style that suited him, he adhered to it consistently, thenceforward making but few experiments. this little picture before us is an admirable example of the gentle poetic grace and refinement always recalled to the memory by the name of van dyck. so long as men prize the aspect of distinction, which he was the first northern painter to express in paint, van dyck's reputation will endure. chapter xii velasquez during the years in which van dyck was painting his beautiful portraits of the royal family of england, another painter, velasquez, was immortalizing another royal family in the far-away country of spain. cut off by the great mountains of the pyrenees from the rest of europe, spain did not rank among the foremost powers until after the discovery of america had brought wealth to her from the gold mines of mexico and peru. in the sixteenth century the king of spain's dominions, actual or virtual, covered a great part of western europe, excepting england and france. germany, spain, italy, and the netherlands, owned the sovereignty of the holy roman emperor, charles v. his son was philip ii. of spain, the husband of our queen mary of england, and his great-grandson was king philip iv., the patron of velasquez, as charles i. was of van dyck. it is the little son of philip iv., don balthazar carlos, whose portrait is before us--as manly and sturdy looking a little fellow as ever bestrode a pony. he was but six years old when velasquez painted the picture here reproduced. certainly he was not fettered and cramped and prevented from taking exercise like his little sisters. the princesses of spain were dressed in wide skirts, spread out over hoops and hiding their feet, from the time they could walk. the tops of the dresses were as stiff as corselets, and one wonders how the little girls were able to move at all. as they grew older the hoops became wider and wider, until in one picture of a grown-up princess, the skirts are broader than the whole height of her body. stringent court etiquette forbade a princess to let her feet be seen, but so odd may such conventions be, that it was nevertheless thought correct for the queen to ride on horseback astride. it is from the canvases of velasquez that we know the spanish royal family and the aspect of the court of philip iv. as though we had lived there ourselves. the painter was born in the south of spain in the same year as van dyck, and seven years earlier than rembrandt. to paint the portrait of his sovereign was the ambition of the young artist. when his years were but twenty-four the opportunity arrived, and philip was so pleased with the picture that he took the young man into his household, and said that no one else should ever be allowed to paint his portrait. velasquez welcomed with gratified joy the prospect of that life-long proximity, although neither his earnings nor his station at all matched the service he rendered to his sovereign. as the years went on he was paid a little better, but his days and hours were more and more taken up with duties at court, and his salary was always in arrears. he could not even reserve his own private time for his art, but as he waxed higher in the estimation of the king, the supervision of court ceremonies, entrusted to him as an honour, deprived him of leisure, and at last brought his life prematurely to a close. from the time when velasquez entered the service of the king, he painted exclusively for the court. we have eight portraits by him of philip iv., and five of the little don carlos, besides many others of the queens and princesses. we can follow the growth of his art in the portraits of philip iv., as we can follow that of rembrandt in portraits of himself. but while rembrandt might make of the same person, himself, or another model, a dozen different people, so that it mattered little who the model was, velasquez was concerned with a different problem. in the seventeenth century almost any good painter could draw his models correctly, but velasquez reproduced the living aspect of a man as no one else had done. we have already spoken of the feeling of atmosphere that cuyp and peter de hoogh were able to bring into their pictures. velasquez, knowing little or nothing of the contemporary dutchmen, worked at the same art problems all his life, and at last mastered the atmosphere problem completely, whether it was the air of a closed room in the dark palace of philip, or the air of the open country, as in our picture. in this there is no bright light except upon the face of the little prince. it is dark and gloomy weather, but if on such a day you were to see the canvas in the open air it would almost seem part of the country itself, as velasquez's picture of a room seems part of the gallery in which it hangs. it was only by degrees that he attained this quality in his work. he had had the ordinary teaching of a painter in spain, but the level of art there at the time was not so high as in holland or italy. like rembrandt he was to a great extent his own master. in his early years he painted pictures of middle-class life, in which each figure is truthfully depicted, as were the early heads in rembrandt's 'anatomy.' like rembrandt in his youth, he looked at each head separately and painted it as faithfully as he could. the higher art of composing into the unity of a group all its parts, and keeping their perfections within such limits as best co-operate in the transcendent perfection of the whole--this was the labour and the crown of both their lives. velasquez's best and greatest groups are such a realized vision of life that they have remained the despair of artists to this day. velasquez came to court in the year in which charles i., as prince of wales, went to madrid to woo the sister of philip iv. he painted her portrait twice, and made an unfinished sketch of charles, which has unfortunately been lost. five years afterwards rubens was a visitor at the spanish court on a diplomatic errand. the painters took a fancy to one another, and corresponded for the remainder of their lives. they must have talked long about their art, and the elder painter, rubens, is thought to have promoted in velasquez a desire to see the great treasures of italy. at all events we find that in the next year he has obtained permission and money from philip to undertake the journey, which kept him away from spain for two years. there is an amusing page, in doggerel verse, which i remember to have read some years ago. i trust the translator will pardon the liberty i am taking in quoting it. it reports a perhaps imaginary conversation between velasquez and an italian painter in rome. 'the master' in this rhyme is velasquez. the master stiffly bowed his figure tall and said, 'for raphael, to speak the truth, --i always was plain-spoken from my youth,-- i cannot say i like his works at all.' 'well,' said the other, 'if you can run down so great a man, i really cannot see what you can find to like in italy; to him we all agree to give the crown.' velasquez answered thus: 'i saw in venice the true test of the good and beautiful; first, in my judgment, ever stands that school, and titian first of all italian men is.' velasquez in rome was already a ripening artist, whose vision of the world was quite uncoloured and unshaped by the medieval tradition. raphael's pictures with their superhumanly lovely saints, their unworldly feeling, and their supernaturally clear light, doubtless imparted pleasure, but not a sympathetic inspiration. tintoret's immense creative power and the colours of titian's painting which inspired tintoret's ambition, as we remember--these were the effective influences velasquez experienced in italy. his purchases and his own later canvases afford that inference. on his return from italy he painted a ceremonial picture as wall decoration for one of the palaces of philip, and in it we can trace the influence of the great ceremonial paintings of the venetians. the picture commemorates the surrender of breda in north brabant, when the famous general spinola received its keys for philip iv. it is far more than a series of separate figures. two armies, officers and men, are grouped in one transaction, in one near and far landscape. it is a picture in which the foreground and the distances, with the lances of the soldiers and the smoke of battle, are as indispensable to the whole as are the central figures of the dutchman in front handing the city keys to the courtly spanish general. don balthazar carlos was born while velasquez was in italy. on his return he painted his first portrait of him at the age of two. the little prince is dressed in a richly-brocaded frock with a sash tied round his shoulder. his hair has only just begun to grow, but he has the same look of determination upon his face that we see four years later in the equestrian portrait. a dwarf about his own height stands a step lower than he does, so as again to give him prominence. another picture of don balthazar a little older is in the wallace collection in london. velasquez's power with his brush lay in depicting vividly a scene that he saw; thus in portraiture he was at his best. he knew how to pose his figures to perfection, so as to make the expression of their character a true pictorial subject. in our picture it is on high ground that the hoofs of the pony of don balthazar carlos tread. so to raise the little prince above the eye of the spectator was a good stroke, suggesting an importance in the gallant young rider. the boy's erect figure, too, firmly holding his baton as a king might hold a sceptre, and the well-stirruped foot, are all perfect posing. velasquez does not give him distinction in the manner of van dyck, by delicate drawing and gentle grace, but in a sturdier fashion, with speed and pose and a fluttering sash in the wind. all the portraits of this lad are full of charm. he was heir to the throne, but died in boyhood. [illustration: don balthazar carlos from the picture by velasquez, in the prado museum, madrid] velasquez paid another visit to italy, twenty years after his first, for the purpose of buying more pictures to adorn philip's palaces. again we find him in venice, where he bought two tintorets and a veronese, and again he made a long stay in rome, this time to paint the portrait of the pope. when he returned to spain in he had still nine years of work before him. there were portraits of philip's new queen to be painted--a young girl in a most uncomfortable dress--and portraits of her child, the infanta marguerita. bewitching are the pictures of this little princess at the ages of three, of four, and of seven, with her fair hair tied in a bow at the side of her head, and voluminous skirts of pink and silver. but sweetest of all is the picture called 'the maids of honour' ('les meninas'), in which the princess, aged about six, is being posed for her portrait. she is petulant and tired, and two of her handmaidens are cajoling her to stand still. her two dwarfs and a big dog have been brought to amuse her, and the king and queen, reflected in a mirror at the end of the room, stand watching the scene. velasquez himself, with his easel and brushes, is at the side, painting. the picture perpetuates for centuries a moment of palace life. in that transitory instant, velasquez took his vivid impression of the scene, and has translated his impression into paint. everything is simple and natural as can be. the ordinary light of day falls upon the princess, but does not penetrate to the ceiling of the lofty room, which is still in shadow. all seem to have come together haphazard without being fitted into the canvas. there is little detail, and the whole effect seems produced by the simplest means; yet in reality the skill involved is so great that artists to-day spend weeks copying the picture, in the endeavour to learn something of the secret of velasquez. the best judges are among those who rank him highest, so that he is called pre-eminently 'the painter's painter.' it is impossible for any one but a painter to understand how he used paint. from near at hand it looks a smudge, but at the proper distance every stroke takes its right place. such freedom was the result of years of careful painting of detail, and is not to be attained by any royal road. velasquez seldom seems to have made preliminary drawings, but of that we cannot be sure. certainly he had learned to conceive his vision as a whole, and we may fancy at least that he drew it so upon the canvas--altering the lines as he went--working at all the parts of the picture at once, keeping the due relation of part to part; not as if he finished one bit at a time, or thought of one part of a figure as distinct from the rest. to have drawn separate studies for legs and arms would have been foreign to his method of working. the pictures painted in this his latest style are few, for the court duties heaped upon him left too little time. maria theresa, the sister of don balthazar carlos, was engaged to be married to louis xiv., king of france. the marriage took place on the border of france and spain, and velasquez was in charge of all the ceremonies. the princess travelled with a cavalcade eighteen miles long, and we can imagine what work all the arrangements involved. the marriage over, the ever loyal velasquez returned to madrid, but he returned only to die. chapter xiii reynolds and the eighteenth century hitherto we have travelled far and wide in our search for typical examples of the beautiful in painting. we went from flanders to italy, from italy to germany, back to holland, and thence to spain. it is true that we began in england with our first picture, and that we have returned twice, once with holbein, and again with van dyck, both foreign born and trained artists. we will finish with examples of truly native english art. in the eighteenth century england for the first time gained a foremost place in painting, though the people of the day scarcely realized that it was so. even the poet gray, writing in , could say: why this nation has made no advance hitherto in painting and sculpture, it is hard to say.... you are generous enough to wish, and sanguine enough to foresee, that art shall one day flourish in england. i, too, much wish, but can hardly extend my hopes so far. yet in reynolds was forty years of age and gainsborough but four years younger. hogarth was even sixty-six, and at work upon his last plate. although, hitherto, the best painting in england had been done by foreign artists such as holbein and van dyck, yet there had always been englishmen of praiseworthy talent who had painted pleasing portraits. hogarth carried this native tradition to a high point of excellence. he painted plain, good-natured-looking people in an unaffected and straightforward way. but he was a humourist in paint, and as great a student of human nature as he was of art. his insight into character and his great skill with the brush, combined with his sensitiveness to fun, make him in certain respects a unique painter. in the national gallery there is a picture of the heads of his six servants in a double row. they might all be characters from dickens, so vividly and sympathetically humorous is each. in his engravings hogarth satirised the lives of all classes of the society of his day. when we look at them we live again in eighteenth-century london, and walk in streets known to fame though now destroyed, thronged with men and women, true to life. as an artist, hogarth occupies a position between the seventeenth-century dutch painters of low life and the english painters that succeeded him, who expressed the ideals of a refined society. his portraits have something of the strength of rembrandt's. his street and tavern scenes rival jan steen's; but behind the mere representation of brutality, vice, crime, and misery we perceive not merely a skilled craftsman but a moral being, whom contact with misery deeply stirs and the sight of wickedness moves to indignation. after a succession of distinguished painters were born in england. many of them first saw the light in obscure villages in the depths of the country. reynolds came from devonshire, gainsborough from suffolk, romney from the lake country. the eighteenth century was a time when politicians and men of letters had the habit of gathering in the coffee-houses of london--forerunners of the clubs of to-day. conversation was valued as one of life's best enjoyments, and the varied society of actors, authors, and politicians, in which it flourished best, could only be obtained in the town. to the most distinguished circle of that kind in london, our painter reynolds belonged. in the eighteenth century, society had also begun to divide its time in modern fashion between town and country. many of the large country houses of to-day, and nearly all the landscape-gardened parks, belong to that date. nevertheless it was a time of great artificiality of life. the ladies had no short country skirts, and none of the freedom to which we are accustomed. in london they wore long powdered curls and rouged, and in the country too they did not escape from the artificiality of fashion. indeed, their great desire seems to have been to get away from everything natural and spontaneous. the artificial poetry of that time deals with the patch-boxes and powder-puffs of the fashionable dames of the town, and with nymphs and dresden china shepherdesses in the country. even on reynolds' canvases the desire to improve upon nature is apparent. in his young days he painted the local personages of devonshire. then he made a journey abroad and spent three years in rome and venice. on his return he settled in london, and the most distinguished men and women of the day and their children sat to him. it seems that he would have liked his lords and ladies to look as heroic or sublime as the heroes or gods of michelangelo. instead of painting them in the surroundings that belonged to them, as holbein or velasquez would have done, he dressed his ladies in what he called white 'drapery,' a voluminous material, neither silk, satin, woollen, nor cotton, and painted them sailing through the woods. the ladies themselves liked to look like nymphs, characterless and pretty, so the fashion of painting portraits in this way became common. the pictures are pleasing to look at, although so artificial, and after all it was only full-length portraits of ladies that reynolds treated in this way. they were a small part of his whole output. but he and velasquez worked in a totally different spirit. velasquez made the subject before him, however unpromising, striking because of its truth. reynolds liked to change it on occasion into something quite different, for the sake of making a picture pretty. nevertheless, his strength lay in straightforward portraiture, and in the rendering of character. his portraits of men, unlike those of women, are dignified, simple, and restrained. his art was one long development till blindness prevented him from working. every year he attained more freedom and naturalness in his pose and developed more power in his use of colour. [illustration: the duke of gloucester from the picture by sir joshua reynolds, in trinity college, cambridge] many would say that his loveliest achievements were portraits of children, yet he did not attain the same freedom in his child poses till late in life. you have all seen photographs, at any rate, of the 'age of innocence' and the 'heads of angels,' but this little picture of the duke of gloucester, nephew of george iii., will not be so familiar. i wonder whether it reminds you of anything you know? it reminds me of van dyck. the little duke stands with an air of importance upon the hillside, which is raised above the eye of the spectator as velasquez raised the ground beneath the pony of don balthazar carlos. there is no mistake about the child being a simple english boy, with a nice chubby face and ordinary straight fair hair. but he is a prince and knows it. for the sake of having his picture painted, he poses with an air of conscious dignity beyond his years. he sweeps his cloak around him like any grown-up cavalier, and holds out a plumed hat and walking stick in a lordly fashion. the child is consciously acting the part of a grown-up person, which only emphasizes his childhood. but the air of refinement and distinction in the picture comes straight from van dyck. as you look at the portraits of the duke of gloucester and william ii. of orange side by side, it may puzzle you to say which is the more attractive. van dyck has painted the clothes in more detail. a century later reynolds has learnt to paint with dash, though not with the mastery of velasquez. the effect of the cloak of the little duke, its shimmering shades of mauve and pink, is inimitable. it tones beautifully with the background, varying from dull green to brightest yellow. the background happens to be sky, but it might as well have been a curtain, as long as its bit of colour so set off the clothes of the little duke. when reynolds painted children he delighted in making them act parts. even in the 'age of innocence' the little girl is looking how very very innocent. he painted one picture of a small boy, master crewe, dressed to look like henry viii. in the style of holbein. with broad shoulders and a rich dress, he stands on his sturdy legs quite the figure of henry. but the face is one beam of boyish laughter, and on the top of the little replica of the body of the corpulent monarch the effect of the childish face is most entertaining. when reynolds puts away his ideas of the grand style of michelangelo to paint pictures such as these, he is entirely delightful. he sometimes painted holy families and classical subjects, but the more the spirit of medieval sacred art has sunk into us, the less can we admire modern versions of the old subjects. the sacred paintings of the middle ages owe some of their charm to the fact that they do not make upon us the impression of life. in reynolds' holy families, the mother and child are painted with all the skill of a modern artist and look as human as his portraits of the duchess of devonshire and her baby. it is no longer possible to think of them as anything but portraits of the models whom reynolds employed for his picture. another method that modern artists have sometimes adopted in painting sacred subjects, is to imitate the faulty drawing and incomplete representation of life which are present in the art of the old masters. but this conscious imitation of bygone ignorance beguiles no one who has once felt the charm of the painters before raphael. reynolds' great contemporary, gainsborough, has been called 'a child of nature.' he would have liked to live in the country always and paint landscapes. he did paint many of his native suffolk, but in his day landscapes were unsaleable, so he was driven to the town and to portrait painting to make a living. less than reynolds a painter of character, gainsborough reproduced the superficial expression of his sitters. but he had so natural an eye for grace and beauty, that his portraits always please. he did not attempt reynolds' wide range of subjects or the same difficulties of pose. of reynolds he said: 'how various he is,' but his admiration did not make him stray from his natural path to attempt the variety of another. reynolds, equally admiring, said of him: 'i cannot make out how he produces his effects.' perhaps gainsborough did not know either. he does seem to paint by instinct, and successive pictures became more pleasing. buoyant in his life as in his art, his last words were: 'we are all going to heaven, and van dyck is of the company.' another great contemporary painter was romney, whose portraits of ladies are delightful. figured as nymphs too, they are so buoyant with bright expressions and wayward locks, that one wishes he had depicted in their faces a soul. all over england and scotland portrait painters flourished at this time. there were so many english artists that in the royal academy was founded, with sir joshua reynolds as its first president. it was to the students of the royal academy that he delivered his discourses upon art, setting forth the principles which he judged to be sound. he was an indefatigably hard worker until within two years of his death in . all classes of men esteemed and regretted him, clouded though his intercourse with them had been by the deafness from which he suffered during the greater part of his life. goldsmith, the author of the _vicar of wakefield_, wrote this character 'epitaph' for him: here reynolds is laid, and to tell you my mind, he has not left a wiser or better behind. his pencil was striking, resistless and grand; his manners were gentle, complying and bland; still born to improve us in every part, his pencil our faces, his manners our heart. to coxcombs averse, yet most civilly steering when they judged without skill, he was still hard of hearing. when they talked of their raphaels, correggios and stuff, he shifted his trumpet and only took snuff. by flattery unspoiled ... the end is missing, for while goldsmith was versifying so feelingly about his friend, death overtook the writer, eighteen years before the subject of the epitaph. chapter xiv turner i wonder which of you, if seeing this picture for the first time, will realize that you are looking at the old familiar thames? it would seem rather to be some place unknown except in dreams, some phantasy of the human spirit that we ourselves could never hope to see. and yet, in fact, this is what turner actually did see one evening as he was sailing down the thames to greenwich with a party of friends. suddenly there loomed up before his eyes the great hull of the _temeraire_, famous in the fight against the fleet of napoleon at trafalgar, and so full of memories of glorious battle, that it was always spoken of by sailors as the _fighting temeraire_. at last, its work over as a battleship, or even as a training-ship for cadets, dragged by a doughty little steam-tug, it was headed for its last resting-place in the thames, to be broken up for old timber. as the _temeraire_ hove in sight through the mist, a fellow-painter said to turner: 'ah, what a subject for a picture!' and so indeed it proved. the veteran ship, for turner, had a pathos like the passing of a veteran warrior to his grave. [illustration: the fighting temeraire from the picture by turner, in the national gallery, london] turner loved the sea, and was very sensitive to its associations with the toils and triumphs of mankind. born beside the thames, he grew up among boats and fraternized with sailors all his life. it was impossible for him to be the beholder of such a scene as the _temeraire's_ approach to her last moorings, save as a poet-painter; and stirred to the putting forth of all his powers, this _fighting temeraire_ is his surpassing poem. it was in , while reynolds was at the height of his fame, that turner saw the light, born of obscure parents in an obscure house, but with a gift of vision that compelled him to the palette and the pencil his whole life long. yet, when he was apprenticed to an architect to learn architectural drawing, he had to be dismissed after two periods of probation because of his absolute inability to learn the theory of perspective or even the elements of geometry. but the time was not far off when he was to become in his turn professor of perspective at the royal academy. the popular distaste, or unborn taste, for landscape, which had prevented gainsborough from following his natural bent, was changing at last. the end of the eighteenth century saw the beginning of a return to nature in art as well as in poetry. some artists in the eastern counties, older than turner, were already spending their lives in the not too lucrative painting of landscape. these men took for their masters the seventeenth-century painters of holland. old crome, so called to distinguish him from his son, founded his art upon that of hobbema, and came so close to him in his early years that it is difficult to distinguish their pictures. in the works of this 'norwich school' the wide horizons of the dutch artists often occur. but there is a brighter colour, a fresher green, recalling england rather than holland. turner never felt the influence of the dutch painters so strongly as these artists did. like gainsborough, and many another artist before him and since, turner was to be dominated by the necessity of making a living. at the end of the century a demand arose for 'topographical collections,' of views of places, selected and arranged according to their neighbourhood. these were not necessarily fine works of art, but they were required to be faithful records of places. topographical paintings, drawings, and prints took the place now filled by the photograph and the postcard. turner found employment enough making water-colour sketches to be engraved for such topographical publications. but sketches that might be mere hack-work became under his fingers magically lovely. we may follow him to many a corner of england, wales, and scotland, sketching architecture, mountain, moor, mists, and lakes. his earliest sketches are rather stiff and precise. but he developed with rapidity, and soon painted them in tones of blue and grey, so soft that the stars and the horizons merge into one lovely indefiniteness. not till much later is there a touch of brighter colour in them such as fires the 'temeraire,' but in all there is the same spirit of poetry. turner longed to be a poet, although he could hardly write a correct sentence even in prose. but he was a poet in his outlook upon life; he seldom painted a scene exactly as he saw it, but transfused it by an imaginative touch into what on rare occasions, with perfect conjuncture of mist and weather, it might possibly become. he gave extra height to church spires, or made precipices steeper than they were, thus to render the impression of the place more explicit than by strict copying of the facts. yet he could be minutely accurate in his rendering of all effects of sky, cloud, and atmosphere when he chose. other landscape painters have generally succeeded best with some particular aspect of nature, and have confined themselves to that. cuyp excelled in painting the golden haze of sunshine, and constable in effects of storm and rain. but turner attempted all. sunset, sunrise, moonlight, morning, sea, storm, sunshine: the whole pageantry of the sky. he never made a repetition of the golden hazes of cuyp, who in his particular field stands alone; but it was a small field compared with that of turner, who held the mirror up to nature in her every mood. later in life, turner travelled in france, germany, and italy. in venice his eyes were gladdened by the gorgeous colours above her lagoons. henceforth he makes his pictures blaze with hues scarcely dared by painter before. but so great was his previous mastery of the paler shades, that a few touches of brilliant colour could set his whole canvas aflame. even in the 'temeraire,' the sunset occupies less than half the picture. the cold colours of night have already fallen on the ship, and there remains but a touch of red from the smoke of the tug. as venice enriched his vision of colour, rome stimulated him to paint new subjects suggested by ancient history and mythology. he knew little of roman history or classical literature, yet enough to kindle his imagination; witness his 'rise and fall of the carthaginian empire' in the national gallery. in these the figures are of no importance. the pictures still are landscapes, but freed from the necessity of being like any particular place. in work such as this, turner had but one predecessor, the french claude lorraine. while the dutchmen of the seventeenth century were painting their own country beautifully, claude was living in rome, creating imaginary landscapes. he called his pictures by the names of scriptural incidents, and placed figures in the foreground as small and unessential as those of turner. these classical landscapes, with their palaces and great flights of steps leading down to some river's edge, and the sea in the distance covered with boats carrying fantastic sails, never for a moment make the impression of reality. but they are beautiful compositions, designed to please the eye and stimulate the fancy, and are even attractive by virtue of their novel aloofness from the actual world. turner set himself to rival claude in his ideal landscapes, founded upon the stories of the ancient world. in his picture of 'dido building carthage,' he painted imaginary palaces, rivers, and stately ships, in the same cool colouring as claude, and bequeathed his picture to the national gallery, on condition that it should hang for ever between two pictures by claude to challenge their superiority. opinions are divided as to the rank of turner's 'carthage,' so when you go to the national gallery, you must look at them both and prepare to form a preference. turner was incited to this rivalry with claude by the popularity that painter enjoyed among english collectors of the day, who were less eager to buy turner's great oil-paintings than those of his predecessor. incidentally this rivalry was the origin of the great series of etchings executed by or for him, known as _the book of studies (liber studiorum)_. this book was suggested by claude's _libri di verita_, six volumes of his own drawings (of pictures he himself had painted and sold) made in order to identify his own, and detect spurious, productions. but turner's book was designed to show his power in the whole range of landscape art. the drawings were carefully finished productions, work by which he was willing to be judged, and many of them he etched with his own hands. his favourite haunts, the abbeys of scotland and yorkshire, the harbours of kent, the mountains of switzerland, the lochs of scotland, and the river wye, he chose as illustrating his best power over architecture, sea, mountain, and river. he repeated several of the same subjects later in oils, such as the pearly hazy 'norham castle' in the tate gallery. turner painted still another kind of imaginary landscape, not in rivalry with any one, but to please himself. of course you all know the story of ulysses and the one-eyed giant, polyphemus, in the _odyssey_ of homer? turner chose for his picture the moment when ulysses has escaped from the clutches of polyphemus, and sailing away in his boat, taunts the giant, who stands by the water's edge, cursing ulysses and bemoaning the loss of his sight. turner has used this mythical scene as an opportunity for creating stupendous rocks never seen by a pair of mortal eyes, and a galley worthy of heroes or gods. the picture is the purest phantasy, even more like a fairy-tale than the story it illustrates. he has made the whole scene burn in the red light of a flaming sunrise, redder by far than the sunset of the old 'temeraire.' the story is told of a gentleman who, looking at a picture of turner's, said to him, 'i never saw a sunset like that.' 'no, but don't you wish you could?' replied turner. that is what we feel about the sunrise in the picture of ulysses and polyphemus. next to it in the national gallery hangs another picture called 'rain, steam, and speed'--the great western railway. from the realm of the mythical, this takes us back to the class of scenes of which the 'fighting temeraire' is one, actually beheld by turner, but magically transfigured by his brush. a train is coming towards us over a bridge, prosaic subject enough, especially in , when railways were supposed to be ruining the aspect of the country and were hated by beauty-loving people. but turner saw romance in the swift passage of a train, and painted a picture in which smoke and rain, cloud and sunset, river and bridge, boats and trees, are all fused in a mist, pearly and golden as well as smutty and grey. when you look at it, you must stand away and look long, till gradually the vision of turner shapes itself before your eyes and the scene as he beheld it lives again for you. we saw how venice opened his eyes to flaming colour. in his pictures of venice, her magic beauty is revealed by a delicate sympathy, that re-creates the fairy city in her day of glory. never tired of painting her in all her aspects, at morning, at even, in pomp, and at peace, a sight of his pictures is still the best substitute for a visit to the city itself. other artists have interpreted scenery beautifully, and a few have painted ideal landscapes, but who besides turner has ever united such diversities of power? he continued to paint water-colour sketches to the end of his life, for these were appreciated by a public that did not understand, and neglected to buy, his oil-paintings. he sketched throughout france and switzerland for various publications as he had sketched in england. time has not damaged these drawings, as it has the pictures in oil, for to the end of his life turner sometimes used bad materials. even the sky of the 'fighting temeraire' has faded considerably since it was painted, and others of his oil-pictures are mere shadows of their former selves. it is pathetic to look upon the wreck of work not a century old and to wonder how much of it will be preserved for future generations. turner himself deemed the 'temeraire' one of his best pictures, and from the beginning intended to bequeath it to the national gallery, refusing to sell it for any price whatever. there's a far bell ringing, at the setting of the sun, and a phantom voice is singing of the great days done. there's a far bell ringing, and a phantom voice is singing of renown for ever clinging to the great days done. now the sunset breezes shiver, _temeraire! temeraire!_ and she's fading down the river, _temeraire! temeraire!_ now the sunset breezes shiver, and she's fading down the river, but in england's song for ever she's the '_fighting temeraire_.'[ ] [footnote : _the fighting temeraire_. henry newbolt.] chapter xv the nineteenth century since we began our voyagings together among the visionary worlds of the great painters, five hundred and thirty years ago, at the accession of king richard ii., we have journeyed far and wide, trudging from the rock where cimabue found the boy giotto drawing his sheep's likeness. the battleship of turner has now brought us to the mid-nineteenth century, a time within the memories of living men, and still our journey is not ended. hitherto we have been guided in our general preference for certain artists and certain pictures by the concurring opinion of the best judges of many successive generations. but while we are looking at modern paintings, we cannot say, as some one did, that in our opinion, 'which is the correct one,' such and such a picture is worthy to rank with titian. the taste of one age is not the taste of another. who can surely pronounce the consensus of opinion to-day? who can guess if it will concur with that of future decades--of future centuries? we can but hope that learning to see and enjoy the recognized masterpieces of the past will teach us what to like best among the masterpieces of the present. a great love of the old masters inspired the work of a group of young artists, who, about the year , banded themselves together into a society which they called the pre-raphaelite brotherhood. the title indicates their aim, which was to draw the inspiration of their art from the fifteenth-century painters of italy. the sweetness of feeling in a picture such as botticelli's 'nativity,' the delicacy of workmanship and beautiful painting of detail in antonello's 'st. jerome' and other pictures of that date, had an irresistible fascination for them. they fancied and felt that these artists had attained to the highest of which art was capable, so that the best could only again be produced by a faithful study of their methods. the aims of the brotherhood were not imitation of the artists but of the methods of the past. they held that every painted object, and every painted figure should be as true as it could be made to the object as it actually existed, rather than to the effect produced upon the eye, seeing it in conjunction with other objects. these men heralded a widespread medieval revival, but all the study in the world could not make them paint like born artists of the fifteenth century. yet there are those who think that much of the spirit of beauty, which had dwelt in the soul of botticelli and his contemporaries, was born again in rossetti and burne-jones. their feeling for beauty of form and purity of colour, and their aloofness from the modern world, impart to their work an atmosphere that may remind us of the fifteenth century, though the fifteenth century could never have produced it. rossetti and burne-jones, indeed, never formally joined the brotherhood, though they were influenced by its ideals and pursued the same strict fidelity to nature in all the accessories of a picture. millais and holman hunt, original members of the brotherhood, painted men and women of the mid-victorian epoch with every detail of their peaked bonnets and plaid shawls, and were comparatively indifferent to beauty of form and face. but rossetti and burne-jones created a type of ideal beauty which they employed on their canvases with persistent repetition. burne-jones founded his type upon the angels of botticelli, and his drapery is like that of the ring of dancers in the sky in our picture of the 'nativity.' you are probably familiar with some of his pictures and perhaps have felt the spell of his pure gem-like colouring and pale, haunting faces. it was the people of their minds' eye who sat beside their easels. rossetti lived and worked in the romantic mood of a giorgione, but instead of expressing the atmosphere of his fairy city of venice, he created one as far as possible removed from his own mid-victorian surroundings. his imaginary world was peopled by women with pale faces and luxuriant auburn hair, pondering upon the mysteries of the universe. like rossetti's 'blessed damozel,' they look out from the gold bar of heaven with eyes from which the wonder is not yet gone. one of the best pre-raphaelite landscapes is the 'strayed sheep' of holman hunt. the sheep are wandering over a grass hillside of the vividest green, shot with spring flowers, and every sheep is painted with the detail of the central sheep in hubert van eyck's 'adoration of the lamb.' the colouring is almost as bright and jewel-like as that of the fifteenth-century painters, for one of the theories of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood was that grass should be painted as green as the single blade--not the colour of the whole field seen immersed in light and atmosphere, which can make green grass seem gray or even blue. in brett's 'val d'aosta,' another pre-raphaelite landscape, we look from a hill upon a great expanse of valley with mountains rising behind. every field of corn and every grassy meadow is outlined as clearly as it would be upon a map. every stick can be counted in the fences between the fields and every tree in the hedge-rows. when we look at the picture we involuntarily wander over the face of the country. there is no taking in the view at a glance; we must walk through every field and along every path. after seeing these pre-raphaelite landscapes, let us imagine ourselves straightway turning to one of the numerous scenes by whistler of the thames at twilight, with its glimmering lights and ghostly shapes of bridges and hulks of steamers. nothing is outlined, nothing is clearly defined, but the mystery of london's river is caught and pictured for ever. let us look, too, at his 'valparaiso,' bathed in a brilliant south american sunshine, where all is pearly and radiant with southern light. even here the impression is not given by the power of the sun revealing every detail. there are few touches, but like velasquez, he has made every touch tell. as the pre-raphaelite brotherhood kindled their inspiration by the vision of the fifteenth-century painters of italy, so whistler and many other modern artists have turned to velasquez for guidance. till the last half of the last century his name had been almost forgotten outside spain. now, among the modern 'impressionists' so-called, he is perhaps more studied than any other painter. when we were looking at the pictures of this great man, we saw how he and rembrandt were among the earliest to learn the value of subordinating detail in the parts to the better general effect of the whole, so as to present no more than the eye could grasp in a comprehensive glance. every tree and stick in brett's 'val d'aosta' is truthfully painted, but the picture as a whole does not give the spectator the impression of truth, for the simple reason that the eye can never see at once what brett has tried to make it see. all the wonderfully veracious detail in the work of the pre-raphaelite does not give the impression of life. men like holman hunt, on the one hand, and on the other hand whistler, living and working at the same time, exhibiting their works in the same galleries, differ even more in their ideals than velasquez differed from the fifteenth-century painters of italy. facts such as these make the study of modern art difficult. before the nineteenth century, pictures of the same date in the same country were painted in approximately the same style. but during the last fifty years many styles have reigned together. at one and the same time painters have been inspired by the greek and roman sculptors, by botticelli, mantegna, titian, tintoret, velasquez, rembrandt, reynolds, and turner, and the work of each is, notwithstanding, unmistakably nineteenth century, and could never have been produced at any other date. every artist finds a problem of his own to solve, and attacks it in his own way. when whistler painted a portrait he endeavoured to express character in the general aspect of the figure, rather than in the face. the picture of his mother is a wonderful expression of the sweetness and peace of old age, given by the severe lines of her black dress and the simplicity and nobility of her pose. the great painter watts, who by the face chiefly sought to express the man, never painted a full-length figure portrait. his long life, covering nearly the whole of the century, enabled him to portray many of the foremost men of the age--statesmen, poets, musicians, and men of letters. in his portrait gallery their fine spirits still meet one another face to face. but his portraits, in and through likenesses of the men, are made to express the essence of that particular art of which the man was a spokesman. in his portrait of tennyson, the bard with his laurel wreath is less tennyson the man, if one may say so, than tennyson the poet. the picture might be called 'poetry,' as that of joachim could be called 'music,' for the violinist with his dreamy beautiful face, playing his heart out, looks the soul of music's self. watts was never a pre-raphaelite, clothing anew his dreams of medieval beauty; nor a seeker after the glories of greece and rome, like leighton and alma tadema; nor a student of the instant's impression, like whistler. to penetrate beneath the seen to the unseen was the aim of his art. he wrestled to express thoughts in paint that seem inexpressible. when we go to the tate gallery in london, to the room filled with most precious works of watts, we feel almost overawed by the loftiness of his ideas, though they may seem to strain the last resources of the painter's art. one of them is a picture of 'chaos' before the creation of the world. half-formed men and women struggle from the earth to force themselves into life, as the half-wrought statues of michelangelo from the marble that confines them. near by is a picture of the 'all-pervading,' the spirit of good that penetrates the world, symbolized as a woman gazing long into a globe held upon her knee. opposite is the 'dweller in the innermost,' with deep, unsearchable eyes. these are pictures that constrain thought rather than charm the eye. when the thought is less obscure, it is better suited to pictorial utterance, and watts sometimes painted pictures as simple as these are difficult. there is nothing obscure in our frontispiece picture of 'red ridinghood.' it sets before us a child's version and vision of a child's fable that is imperishable, and as such makes an immediate appeal to the eye. she is not acting a part or posing as a princess, but is simply a cowering little girl, frightened at the wolf and eager to protect her basket. in her freshness and simplicity, a cottage maiden with anxious blue eyes, most innocent and childish of children, she need not shun proximity to richard ii., edward vi., william of orange, don balthazar carlos, and the duke of gloucester. and thus we conclude our procession of royal children with a child of the people. beginning with richard ii., a portrait of a king rather than a child, we end with a picture in which childhood merely, without the gift of distinction or the glamour of royalty, suffices to charm a great painter's eye and inspire his thought. with the sweetness and grace of modern childhood filling our eyes, may we not well close this children's book? index 'adoration of the lamb,' - adoration of the magi, treatment of, 'age of innocence,' _alice in wonderland_, 'all-pervading,' the, animals, painting of, antonello of messina, - art, definition of, atmosphere, treatment of by dutch school, , by holbein, by velasquez, beauneveu, andre, of valenciennes, bellini, giovanni, , black death, influence of, botticelli, - , influence of, on burne-jones, brett's 'val d'aosta,' _et seq._ burne-jones, _et seq._ byzantium, influence of, turkish conquest of, 'chaos,' charles i. employs rubens, employs van dyck, painted by velasquez, charles ii., charles v., king of france, charles v., emperor, chillon, castle of, churches, medieval grandeur of, cimabue, vasari's account of, picture in national gallery, picture in santa maria novella, training of giotto, civilization, definition of, claude lorraine, - constable, correggio, crome, old, cuyp, - , 'dido building carthage,' don balthazar carlos, _et seq._, _et seq._ douglas, lady alfred, dragons, fear of, duke of gloucester, - durer, - compared with holbein, dutch expansion in the seventeenth century, 'dweller in the innermost,' edward the confessor, story of, edward prince of wales, - eighteenth century, artificiality of, erasmus, - portrait of, etching, process of, fighting _temeraire_, _et seq._ francis of assisi, life of, , franciscans, foundation of the order of, 'fresco' painting, gainsborough, _et seq._ garden of eden, giorgione, - , giotto, , , , 'golden age,' - , goldsmith, greeks, influence of, , henrietta maria, henry viii., _et seq._ employs holbein, portrait of, hobbema, , hogarth, _et seq._ holbein, - , , 'erasmus' in collection of charles i., holman hunt, , horne, herbert p., hubert van eyck, _et seq._, hulin, dr., il penseroso, impressionism, beginning of, infanta marguerita, _et seq._ james ii., jerusalem chamber, view of, taken in , joachim, portrait of, john, duke of berry, , , john, king of france, john van eyck, compared with durer, josse vyt, julius ii., pope, 'knight's dream,' , - l'allegro, landscape painting, beginning of, lely, sir peter, leonardo da vinci, - , - , compared with durer, 'les meninas,' liber studiorum, louis, duke of anjou, luini, bernardino, - 'madonna of the rocks,' 'man in armour,' - mantegna, , , 'triumphs of caesar,' maria theresa, marie de medicis, mary stuart, - medieval detail, coronation, solemnity of, guilds, michelangelo, influence on reynolds, , influence on tintoret, millais, milton, more, sir thomas, , mosque of omar, newbolt, henry, 'night watch,' rembrandt's, - 'norham castle,' 'norwich school,' 'pallas athene,' perspective, absence of, hubert's improvement in, mastery of, in renaissance, perugino, peter de hoogh, - philip iv., , philip the bold, , philip the good, photographs and pictures, the difference between them, portraiture, in the fifteenth century, growth of, pre-raphaelite brotherhood, _et seq._ 'rain, steam, and speed,' raphael, - , cartoons, in collection of charles i., comparison with giorgione, , influence on velasquez, 'red ridinghood,' reformation, effect of on art, rembrandt, - , 'anatomy,' , compared with peter de hoogh, compared with van dyck, compared with velasquez, landscapes of, syndics, revelations, , revival of learning, reynolds, - richard ii., portrait of, _et seq._ diptych, , , , diptych in collection of charles i., roger van der weyden, rome, influence on turner, rossetti, _et seq._ royal academy, rubens, , - friendship with velasquez, on charles i., ruysdael, santi, giovanni, st. catherine, raphael's, burial of, st. catherine of siena, st. edmund, st. francis of assisi, , preaching to the birds, , , st. george slaying the dragon, - st. jerome's cell, , - lion of, st. matthew, saskia, , _et seq._ savonarola, - sistine madonna, spain, greatness of, in sixteenth century, stained-glass windows, influence of in the fourteenth century, steen, jan, , 'strayed sheep,' 'surrender of breda,' tenniel, tennyson, portrait of, terborch, 'three maries,' - compared with botticelli's 'nativity,' compared with raphael's 'knight's dream,' treatment of atmosphere in, timoteo viti, tintoret, - influence on velasquez, titian, , , , turner, - sunsets of, 'ulysses deriding polyphemus,' umbrian landscape, beauty of, 'valparaiso,' van dyck, - compared with reynolds, _et seq._ comparison with velasquez, van eyck's influence in germany, vasari, , velasquez, - compared with reynolds, influence of, venice, influence on turner, , influence of on venetian artists, _et seq._ veronese, watts, - whistler, _et seq._, william the silent, , william ii. of orange, - william iii., wood-cutting, process of, wool industry, importance of, the end _printed in great britain_ by r & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. _uniform with this volume_ _each_ s. _net_ aesop's fables andersen's fairy tales arabian nights bunyan's pilgrim's progress grimm's fairy tales swiss family robinson tales from "the earthly paradise" john halifax, gentleman count of monte cristo uncle tom's cabin book of celtic stories book of edinburgh mr. midshipman easy book of london book of the railway _each_ s. _net_ tales of english castles and manors tales of the covenanters scott's tales of a grandfather (abridged) the book of scotland the book of stars with commodore anson a. & c. black, ltd., , , & soho square, london, w. _new york_ the macmillan company _melbourne_ the oxford university press _cape town_ the oxford university press _toronto_ the macmillan company of canada _bombay calcutta madras_ macmillan and company, ltd. how to enjoy pictures by j. littlejohns, r.i., r.b.a., r.c.a., r.b.c., r.w.a. with full-page illustrations in colour, one in black and white, and constructional drawings in the text. _small crown to._ /- net (_by post, / _) mr. littlejohns explains very simply and pleasantly a method of approach to pictures intended for those who have no knowledge of them and no trained sensibility.[ ] the book deals simply and briefly with many of the considerations involved in composing a picture, and gives an analysis, illustrated by diagrams, of nine well-known masterpieces. the author does his work very well, and no one who reads carefully what he says and carries out his instructions can fail to find added interest if not also keener enjoyment in the contemplation of pictures.[ ] mr. littlejohns writes, not only with the artist's intuition, but with the clearness and simplicity derived from his experiences as a teacher of children.[ ] the colour reproductions are excellent and could not be bought separately for the price of the whole book.[ ] [footnote : _the times literary supplement_.] [footnote : _scottish educational journal_.] [footnote : _the church times_.] [footnote : _monthly notes of the national society of art masters_.] black's dictionary of pictures a guide to the best work of the best painters edited by randall davies _demy vo._ / net (_by post, /-_) this book contains descriptive accounts, with full and accurate particulars, of nearly of the most important pictures in public galleries in this country and on the continent. they have been selected out of the immense number of exhibited works as being those which, in view of the opinions of the best critics, or in some cases by popular suffrage, are such as practically everybody who cares about pictures ought, or would like, to know something about. a. & c. black, ltd., , and soho square, london, w. reproductions of great masters facsimile reproductions in colour of the originals large mounted prints, series - . average size of printed surface, - / x - / ins. each /- net, mounted; in black frame, unglazed, but with picture varnished, price / net each; in narrow antique gold frame, price /- net each; or in ducat gold frame, price /- net each. . the age of innocence _reynolds_ . william ii., prince of orange-nassau _van dyck_ . lady hamilton as a bacchante _romney_ . the laughing cavalier _franz hals_ . study of grief _greuze_ . portrait of mrs. siddons _gainsborough_ . nelly o'brien _reynolds_ . portrait of the doge leonardo loredano _bellini_ . portrait of an old lady _rembrandt_ . the virgin and child _botticelli_ . the hay wain _constable_ . madame le brun and her daughter _le brun_ . the broken pitcher _greuze_ . the parson's daughter _romney_ . the milkmaid _greuze_ . portrait of miss bowles _reynolds_ . la gioconda _leonardo da vinci_ . ulysses deriding polyphemus _turner_ . chapeau de paille _rubens_ . portrait of mrs. siddons _sir t. lawrence_ . head of a girl _greuze_ . the san sisto madonna _raphael_ . the dead bird _greuze_ . princess margarita marla _velasquez_ . the tribute money _titian_ . sir walter scott _raeburn_ . robert burns _nasmyth_ . the swing _fragonard_ . inside of a stable _george morland_ . head of a girl _rembrandt_ . embarking for cythera _watteau_ . anne of cleves _holbein_ . the avenue, middleharnis, holland _hobbema_ . interior of a dutch house _peter de hoogh_ . charles i. _van dyck_ . st. john the baptist _leonardo da vinci_ . a young man _raphael_ . a party in a park _watteau_ . his majesty king george v. _h. de t. glazebrook_ . the surrender of breda _velasquez_ . prince balthasar carlos _velasquez_ . the maids of honour _velasquez_ . the tapestry weavers _velasquez_ . the topers _velasquez_ . the immaculate conception _murillo_ . the blue boy _gainsborough_ _a complete list of the large and small series will be sent post free on application to the publishers._ elementary water-colour painting by j. hullah brown second edition, containing an outline drawing and six full-page illustrations in colour, including guides for gradations of colour, colour washes, mixing of colour, etc. _demy vo._ price / net _quarter canvas_ press opinions "an attractive and well-illustrated little book, which will help to initiate members of sketching classes into methods of getting effects."--_times educational supplement_. "an accurate little brochure ... well illustrated in colour, and containing sound instructions as to the mixing and putting on of water-colours. it would really be of service to anyone _not too youthful_ who was out of the way of obtaining personal instruction in the matter."--_the educational times_. a. & c. black, ltd., , and soho square, london, w. [illustration: portrait of a slav prince . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] rembrandt by mortimer menpes with an essay on the life and work of rembrandt by c. lewis hind london adam and charles black preface although i am familiar with rembrandt's work, through photographs and black and white reproductions, i invariably experience a shock from the colour standpoint whenever i come in touch with one of his pictures. i was especially struck with that masterpiece of his at the hermitage, called the _slav prince_, which, by the way, i am convinced is a portrait of himself; any one who has had the idea suggested cannot doubt it for a moment; it is rembrandt's own face without question. the reproductions i have seen of this picture, and, in fact, of all rembrandt's works, are so poor and so unsatisfactory that i was determined, after my visit to st. petersburg, to devise a means by which facsimile reproductions in colour of rembrandt's pictures could be set before the public. the black and white reproductions and the photographs i put on one side at once, because of the impossibility of suggesting colour thereby. rembrandt has been reproduced in photograph and photogravure, and by every mechanical process imaginable, but all such reproductions are not only disappointing, but wrong. the light and shade have never been given their true value, and as for colour, it has scarcely been attempted. after many years of careful thought and consideration as to the best, or the only possible, manner of giving to those who love the master a work which should really be a genuine reproduction of his pictures, i have adapted and developed the modern process of colour printing, so as to bring it into sympathy with the subject. for the first time these masterpieces, with all the rich, deep colouring, can be in the possession of every one--in the possession of the connoisseur, who knows and loves the originals but can scarcely ever see them, and in that of the novice, who hardly knows the emotions familiar to those who have made a study of the great masters, but is desirous of learning. at the hermitage in st. petersburg i was specially privileged--i was allowed to study these priceless works with the glass off and in moments of bright sunlight--to see those sweeps of rich colour, so full, so clear, so transparent, and broken in places, allowing the undertones to show through. i myself have made copies of a hundred rembrandts in order to understand more completely his method of work. and in copying these pictures certain qualities have been revealed to me which no one could possibly have learnt except by this means. rembrandt worked more or less in two stages: first, by a carefully-painted monochrome, handled in such a way as to give texture as well as drawing, and in which the masses of light and shade are defined in a masterly manner; second, by putting on the rich, golden colour--mostly in the form of glazes, but with a full brush. this method of handling glazes over monochrome has given a gem-like quality to rembrandt's work, so much so that you might cut out any square inch from any portion of his pictures and wear it as a jewel. and in all his paintings there is the same decorative quality that i have before alluded to: any picture by rembrandt arrests you as a decorative patch--the grouping and design, and, above all, the balance of light and shade, are perfect. mortimer menpes. _july ._ contents chapter i the recoverers of rembrandt chapter ii the appeal of the paintings chapter iii the appeal of the etchings chapter iv epochs in rembrandt's life chapter v the great triumvirate list of illustrations . portrait of a slav prince _frontispiece_ . portrait of a woman of eighty-three . a rabbi seated, a stick in his hands and a high feather in his cap . the holy family with the angels . portrait of a savant . an old man with a long white beard, seated, wearing a wide cap, his hands folded . rembrandt leaning on a stone sill . reconciliation between david and absalom . an old woman in an arm chair, with a black head-cloth . minerva . titus in a red cap and a gold chain . portrait of an old lady, full face, her hands folded . portrait of an old lady in a velvet hood, her hands folded . flora with a flower-trimmed crook . the descent from the cross . a young woman in a red chair holding a pink in her right hand _the illustrations in this volume have been engraved and printed at the menpes press._ rembrandt chapter i the recoverers of rembrandt imagine a man, a citizen of london, healthy, middle-aged, successful in business, whose interest in golf is as keen, according to his lights and limitations, as the absorption of rembrandt in art. suppose this citizen, having one day a loose half-hour of time to fill in the neighbourhood of south kensington, remembers the articles he has skimmed in the papers about the constantine ionides bequest: suppose he strolls into the museum and asks his way of a patient policeman to the ionides collection. suppose he stands before the revolving frame of rembrandt etchings, idly pushing from right to left the varied creations of the master, would he be charmed? would his imagination be stirred? perhaps so: perhaps not. perhaps, being a man of importance in the city, knowing the markets, his eye-brows would unconsciously elevate themselves, and his lips shape into the position that produces the polite movement of astonishment, if some one whispered in his ear--"at the holford sale the _hundred guilder print_ fetched £ , and _ephraim bonus with the black ring_, £ ; and m. edmund de rothschild paid £ for a first state of the _dr. a. tholinx_." those figures might stimulate his curiosity, but being, as i have said, a golfer, his interest in rembrandt would certainly receive a quick impulse when he observed in the revolving frame the etching no. , - / inches wide, - / inches high, called _the sport of kolef or golf_. [illustration: portrait of a woman of eighty-three . national gallery, london.] is it fantastical to assume that his interest in rembrandt dated from that little golf etching? great events ofttimes spring from small causes. we will follow the rembrandtish adventures of this citizen of london, and golfer. suppose that on his homeward way from the museum he stopped at a book shop and bought m. auguste bréal's small, accomplished book on rembrandt. having read it, and being a man of leisure, means, and grip, he naturally invested one guinea in the monumental tome of m. Émile michel, member of the institute of france--that mine of learning about rembrandt in which all modern writers on the master delve. astonishment would be his companion while reading its packed pages, also while turning the leaves of _l'oeuvre de rembrandt_, décrit et commenté, par m. charles blanc, de l'academie française. this sumptuous folio he picked up second hand and conveyed home in a cab, because it was too heavy to carry. now he is fairly started on his journey through the rembrandt country, and as he pursues his way, what is the emotion that dominates him? amazement, i think. let me illustrate the extent and character of his amazement by describing a little incident that happened to him during a day's golfing at a seaside course on the following saturday. the approach to the sixteenth green is undeniably sporting. across the course hangs the shoulder of a hill, and from the fastnesses of the hill a brook gushes down to the sea through the boulders that bestrew its banks. obliged to wait until the preceding couple had holed out, our citizen and golfer amused himself by upturning one of the great lichen-stained boulders. he gazed into the dank pit thus disclosed to his eyes, and half drew back dismayed at the extraordinary activity of insect life that was revealed. it was so sudden, so unexpected. beneath that grey and solemn boulder that time and man accepted as a freehold tenant of the world, that our citizen had seen and passed a hundred times, a population of experts were working, their deeds unseen by the wayfarer. now what is the meaning of this little story? how did the discovery of that horde of capable experts strike the imagination of our golfer? the boulder was rembrandt. the busy insects were the learned and patient students working quietly on his behalf--his discoverers and recoverers. he had passed that boulder a hundred times, his eyes had rested cursorily upon it as often as the name of rembrandt in book or newspaper had met his indifferent gaze. now he had raised the boulder, as he had lifted the rembrandt curtain, and lo! behind the curtain, as beneath the boulder, he had discovered life miraculously active. reverence for the students of art, for the specialists, for the scientific historians, was born within him as he pursued his studies in rembrandt lore. also he was conscious of sorrow, anger, and pride: sorrow for the artist of genius who goes down to his grave neglected, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung: anger at the stupidity and blindness of his contemporaries: pride at the unselfish industry and ceaseless activity of the men who, born years after, raise the master to his throne. [illustration: a rabbi seated, a stick in his hands and a high feather in his cap . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] in the year an old dutchman called rembrandt dies in obscurity in amsterdam. so unmemorable was the death deemed that no contemporary document makes mention of it. the passing of rembrandt was simply noted, baldly and briefly, in the death-register of the wester kerk: "tuesday, october , ; rembrandt van ryn, painter on the roozegraft, opposite the doolhof. leaves two children." yet once, while he was alive, before he painted _the night watch_, he had been the most famous painter in holland. later, oblivion encompassed the old lion, and little he cared so long as he could work at his art. forty years after his death, gerard de lairesse, a popular painter, now forgotten, wrote of rembrandt--"in his efforts to attain a yellow manner, rembrandt merely achieved an effect of rottenness.... the vulgar and prosaic aspects of a subject were the only ones he was capable of noting." poor gerard de lairesse! to-day not a turn or a twist of his life, not a facet of his temperament, not an individual of his family, friends, or acquaintances, not the slightest scrap of paper bearing the mark of his hand, but has been peered into, scrutinised, tracked to its source, and written about voluminously. the bibliography of rembrandt would fill a library. several lengthy and learned catalogues of his works have been published in volumes so large that a child could not lift one of them. his pictures, his multitudinous drawings, his etchings, their authenticity, their history, their dates, the identification of his models, have been the subjects of innumerable books and essays. why, it would have taken our golfer three months just to read what has been written about one of rembrandt's pictures--that known as _the night watch_. he might have begun with bredius and meyer of holland, and m. durand-greville of france, and would then have been only at the beginning of his task. people make the long journey to st. petersburg for the sake of the pictures by rembrandt that the hermitage contains. he is hailed to-day as the greatest etcher the world has ever known, and there are some who place him at the head of that noble triumvirate who stand on the summit of the painters' parnassus, velasquez, titian, and rembrandt. having browsed and battened on rembrandt, and noted the countless cosmopolitan workers that for fifty years have been excavating the country marked on the art map rembrandt, you can perhaps understand why our golfer likened the work of his commentators to the incessant activity that his upturning of that grey, lichen-covered boulder revealed. [illustration: the holy family with the angels . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] but had our golfer, brimming with the modern passion for efficiency, learned foreign tongues, and browsed in the musty archives, he would have discovered that there was much to unlearn. the early scribes piled fancy upon invention, believing or pretending that rembrandt was a miser, a profligate, a spendthrift, and so on. "houbraken's facts," we read, "are interwoven with a mass of those suspicious anecdotes which adorn the plain tale of so many artistic biographies. campo-weyermann, dargenville, descamps, and others added further embellishments, boldly piling fable upon fable for the amusement of their readers, till legend gradually ousted truth." all this and much more he would have had to unlearn, discovering in the end the simple truth that rembrandt lived for his art; that he loved and was kind to his wife and to the servant girl who, when saskia died, filled her place; that he was neither saint nor sinner; that he was extravagant because beautiful things cost money; that being an artist he did not manage his affairs with the wisdom of a man of the world; that he was hot-headed, and played a hot-headed man's part in the family quarrels; and that he was plucky and improvident, and probably untidy to the end, and that he did his best work when the buffets of fate were heaviest. the new era in rembrandt literature began with kolloff's _rembrandt's leben und werke_, published in . this contribution to truth was followed by the works of messrs. bürger and vosmaer, by the lucubrations of other meritorious bookworms, by the studies of messrs. bode and bredius, and finally by m. Émile michel's life, which is the definitive and standard work on rembrandt. our golfer, whose french is a little rusty, was delighted to find when he gave the order for this book that it had been translated into english under the editorship of mr. frederick wedmore. it was in the third edition. he learned much from m. Émile michel--among other things the herculean labour that is necessary if one desires to write a standard and definitive book on a subject. not only did m. michel visit and revisit all the galleries where rembrandt's pictures are displayed in russia, france, england, sweden, denmark, and north germany, but he lived for several years with rembrandt, surrounded by reproductions of his pictures, drawings, and etchings, and by documents bearing on their history, his mind all the while intently fixed on the facts of rembrandt's life and the achievements of his genius. gradually the procession of dates and facts took on a new significance; the heterogeneous threads of information wove themselves into the fabric of a life. m. michel is the recoverer-in-chief of all that truly happened during the sixty-three years that rembrandt passed upon this earth. every dead painter, poet, or writer of genius, has had his recoverer. a searchlight has flashed upon all that charles lamb said, did, or wrote. every forerunner who inspired keats, from the day when he took the _faerie queene_ like a fever, and went through it "as a young horse through a spring meadow, romping," has been considered and analysed. you could bury keats and lamb in the tomes that have been written about them. with the books of his commentators you could raise a mighty monument of paper and bindings to rembrandt. all this is very right and most worthy of regard. we do not sing "for they are jolly good fellows" in their honour, but we offer them our profound respect and gratitude. and our golfer, in his amateurish way, belongs to the tribe. he has approached rembrandt through books. his temperament enjoyed exploring the library hive marked rembrandt. now he feels that he must study the works of the master, and while he is cogitating whether he shall first examine the pictures at st. petersburg, or the in the louvre, or the at cassel, or the at berlin, or the at dresden, or the in the national gallery, or the etchings and drawings in the print room of the british museum, or the frame of etchings at south kensington, so accessible, i drop him. yes: drop him in favour of another who did not care two pins about the history or the politics of art, or the rights or wrongs of rembrandt's life, but went straight to his pictures and etchings, wondered at them, and was filled with an incommunicable joy. chapter ii the appeal of the paintings suppose our citizen and golfer, deliberately dropped in the preceding chapter, had a child, a son, who by a freak of heredity was brooding and imaginative, fond, in a childish way, of pictures and books, but quite indifferent to scientific criticism and the methods of the analytic men. during his school holidays his mother would take him to the pantomime, and to the national gallery. dazed, he would scan the walls of pictures, wondering why so many of them dealt with scriptural subjects, and why some were so coloured, and others so dim. [illustration: portrait of a savant . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] but after the third or fourth visit this child began to recognise favourites among the pictures, and being somewhat melancholy and mystical by nature, liking trees, beechwood glades, cathedral aisles, and the end of day, he would drag upon his mother's arm when they passed two pictures hanging together in the dutch room. one was called _the woman taken in adultery_, the other, _the adoration of the shepherds_. these pictures by rembrandt attracted him: they were so different from anything else in the gallery. he did not trouble to understand their meaning; he did not dwell upon the beauty of the still figure of christ, or note that the illumination in _the adoration of the shepherds_ proceeded from the supernatural light that shines from the infant jesus. what captivated him was the vastness contained in these small pictures, and the eerie way in which the light was separated from the dark. he had never seen anything like it before, but these pictures made him long to be grown up and able to seek such sights. he could see the lurking shadows alone in his bed at night, and held his breath when he thought of the great darkness that stretched out to the frames of the pictures. he wondered if temples were really as mysterious and dim as the great building that loomed above the small dazzling figure of the kneeling penitent and that horrid man who, his mother told him, was one of her accusers. when she came into his bedroom to see that he was safely tucked up for the night, this child asked his mother why rembrandt's pictures were so different from the pictures of other painters. she explained that rembrandt was a great master of _chiaroscuro_, making a valiant attempt to pronounce the uncomfortable word. "what does that mean?" asked the little boy. "it--er--means--one moment, dear; i think i hear your father calling." she ran downstairs and consulted the dictionary. "a _chiaroscurist_," she told her little boy when she returned to the bedroom, "is a painter who cares for and studies light and shade rather than colour. now go to sleep. you're too young to bother about such things." this child's mother was an ardent ruskinian. observing that her husband, the citizen and golfer, was asleep in his chair when she returned from her son's bedroom, she stepped into the library, picked _modern painters_ from the shelf, and read the following passages, gravely shaking her head occasionally as she read. "... rembrandt always chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the most illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. in order to obtain this, in most cases, not very important truth, he sacrifices the light and colour of five-sixths of his picture; and the expression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of shape or tint. but he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent skill and subtlety. "... his love of darkness led also to a loss of the spiritual element, and was itself the reflection of a sombre mind.... "... i cannot feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness and the dulness of his light. glorious or inglorious, the speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. it is the aim of the best painters to paint the noblest things they can see by sunlight. it was the aim of rembrandt to paint the foulest things he could see--by rushlight...." had ruskin, one wonders, ever seen _the syndics_ at amsterdam, or the _portrait of his mother_, and the _singing boy_ at vienna, or _the old woman_ at st. petersburg, or the _christ at emmaus_ at the louvre, or any of the etchings? the time came when the child was allowed to visit the national gallery unattended; but although he never lost his affectionate awe for the two dim interiors, he did not really begin to appreciate rembrandt until he had reached manhood. rembrandt is too learned in the pathos of life, too deeply versed in realities, to win the suffrages of youth. but he was attracted by another portrait in the national gallery--that called _a jewish rabbi_. this was the first likeness he had seen of a rabbi, a personality dimly familiar to him through the lessons in church and his school scripture class. remembering what his mother had told him about _chiaroscuro_, he noted how the golden-brown light is centred upon the lower part of the face; how the forehead is in shadow, and how stealthily the black hat and coat creep out from the dark background. he had never seen, and never could have imagined, such a sad face. this rabbi seemed to be crouching into the picture as he dimly understood that jews in all ages, except those who owned diamond mines in south africa, had cringed under the hand of their oppressors. he wondered how rembrandt knew what a rabbi was like. his father might have told him that rembrandt's pencil and brush were never idle, that he was for ever making pictures of himself, of his father, of his mother, of his wife, of his children and relations, of every interesting type that came within the ken of his piercing eyes; that one day, when he was prowling about the jews' quarter at amsterdam, he saw an old, tired, wistful hebrew sitting in the door of his shop, engaged him in conversation, persuaded him to sit for his portrait, and lo! the nameless amsterdam jew became immortal. [illustration: an old man with a long white beard, seated, wearing a wide cap, his hands folded . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] his father might also have told him (perhaps he did) that the artist, wherever he goes, sometimes hardly aware of his preoccupation, is always selecting subjects to paint, and brooding over the method of treatment; that one day rembrandt noted with amusement a man in the street shaking his fist at the skull-capped head of an older man bobbing angrily from a window. rembrandt chuckled, remembered the incident, painted it, and called it, for a picture must have a title, _samson threatening his father-in-law_; that one day rembrandt saw a fair-haired, chubby boy learning his lessons at his mother's knee. the composition appealed to his artist eye, he painted it, and the result is that beautiful and touching picture in the hermitage gallery at st. petersburg called _hannah teaching samuel his lessons_. to a child, the portrait of a painter by himself has a human interest apart altogether from its claim to be a work of art. rembrandt's portrait of himself at the national gallery, painted when he was thirty-two, is not one of his remarkable achievements. it is a little timid in the handling, but that it is an excellent likeness none can doubt. this bold-eyed, quietly observant, jolly-looking man was not quite the presentment of rembrandt that the child had imagined; but rembrandt at this period was something of a sumptuous dandy, proud of his brave looks and his fur-trimmed mantle. life was his province. no subject was vulgar to him so long as it presented problems of light and construction and drawing. rembrandt, like montaigne, was never didactic. he looked at life through his eyes and through his imagination, and related his adventures. one day it was a flayed ox hanging outside a butcher's shop, which he saw through his eyes; another day it was christ healing the sick, which he saw through his imagination. you can imagine the healthy, full-blooded rembrandt of this portrait painting the _carcase of a bullock_ at the louvre, or that prank called _the rape of ganymede_, or that delightful, laughing picture of his wife sitting upon his knee at dresden, which ruskin disliked. the other portrait of rembrandt by himself at the national gallery shows that he was not a vain man, and that he was just as honest with himself as with his other sitters. it was painted when he was old and ailing and time-marked, five years before his death. his hands are clasped, and he seems to be saying--"look at me! that is what i am like now, an old, much bothered man, bankrupt, without a home, but happy enough so long as i have some sort of a roof above me under which i can paint. i am he of whom it was said that he was famous when he was beardless. observe me now! what care i so that i can still see the world and the men and women about me--'when i want rest for my mind, it is not honours i crave, but liberty.'" [illustration: rembrandt leaning on a stone sill . national gallery, london.] twenty-eight seemed a great age to the child; but he thought it wonderful that the portrait of an _old lady_ at the national gallery should have been painted when rembrandt was but twenty-eight. she was too strong and determined for his liking, and he wondered why some of rembrandt's pictures, like _the woman taken in adultery_, should be so mysterious and poetical, and others like this old lady so lifelike and straightforward. he was too young to understand that the composition of the fortuitous concourse of atoms called rembrandt, included not only the power that velasquez possessed in so supreme a degree of painting just what his eyes saw, exemplified by this portrait of _an old lady_, aged , and by the portrait of _elizabeth bas_ at amsterdam, but that it also included the great gift of creative imagination, exemplified by the _christ at emmaus_, and _the good samaritan_ of the louvre, and in a way by the _portrait of a slav prince_ at the hermitage, where a man in the alembic of rembrandt's imagination has become a type. also in _the reconciliation of david and absalom_ at the hermitage, where behind the sham trappings of the figures shine the eternal motives of reconciliation and forgiveness. when the child was much older he saw the _christ at emmaus_, and _the good samaritan_ in the little room at the louvre, hanging side by side, and he never forget the hour that he spent with them. he had seen, year by year, many of the world's pictures; but at the sight of these two works, his childish predilection for rembrandt became a deep-rooted reverence and admiration, which was never to pass from him. here was rembrandt the seer, the man who had suffered. saskia was dead, his popularity gone; but the effect of these things was but to fill his heart with a world sympathy, with pity for all who sorrow. again and again he treated the _christ at emmaus_, _the good samaritan_, and _the prodigal son_ themes. "some strange presentment of his own fate," says m. michel, "seems to have haunted the artist, making him keenly susceptible to the story of _the good samaritan_. he too was destined to be stripped and wounded by life's wayside, while many passed him by unheeding." the _christ at emmaus_ is a small picture, and small the figures appear in that vast, dimly lighted chamber where the three are seated at table. the spiritual significance of christ is suggested by most simple means. light, and intensity of emotion, are the only aids. rembrandt disdains all other effects. intense feeling pervades the picture, even in the bare feet of christ, even in the astonished hand of the disciple resting upon the chair; even in the back of the other disciple who gazes, with clasped hands, transfixed with amazement and love at the face of his master, who has just broken bread and thus revealed himself. [illustration: reconciliation between david and absalom . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] of all rembrandt's pictures, this was the one that made the profoundest impression upon the child when he had become a man. other works, such as _the shipbuilder and his wife_ at buckingham palace, _the syndics of the drapers_ at amsterdam, that ripe expression of rembrandt's ripest powers, convinced him of the master's genius. he was deeply impressed by the range of portraits and subject-pictures at the hermitage gallery, many of which, by the art of mr. mortimer menpes, have been brought to the fireside of the untravelled; but the _christ at emmaus_ revealed to him the heart of rembrandt, and showed him, once and for all, to what heights a painter may attain when intense feeling is allied with superb craftsmanship. he found this intensity of emotion again in the _portrait of his mother_ at vienna. the light falls upon her battered, wrinkled face, the lips are parted as in extreme age, the hands, so magnificently painted, are folded upon her stick. when we look at rembrandt's portrait of _an old woman_ at the hermitage gallery, with that touch of red so artfully and fittingly peeping out from between the folds of her white scarf, we feel that he can say nothing more about old age, sad, quiescent, but not unhappy; when we look at the portrait of _an old lady_ in the national gallery (no. ) we feel that he can tell us no more about old age that still retains something that is petty and eager; but in the portrait of his mother at vienna, rembrandt, soaring, gives us quite another view of old age. it is the ancient face of a mother painted by a son who loved her, who had studied that face a thousand times, every line, and light, and aspect of the features, and who stated all his love and knowledge upon a canvas. rembrandt was always inspired when he painted his own family. there is a quality about his portraits of father, mother, saskia, titus, and hendrickje, yes! and of himself, that speaks to us as if we were intimates. it is a personal appeal. we find it in every presentment that rembrandt gives us of another figure which constantly inspired his brush--the figure of christ. in _the woman taken in adultery_, it is his figure that is articulate: it is the figure of christ in the emmaus picture that amazes: it is the figure of christ that haunts us in a dozen of the etchings. slowly the child, now become a man, began, as he thought, to understand rembrandt. why did _the singing boy_ at vienna, apart from the quality of the painting, and the joy depicted on that young smiling face, make a personal appeal to him? because he is rembrandt's son, titus; or if titus was not actually the model, the features and the smile of titus hovered between the father and the canvas. [illustration: an old woman in an arm chair, with a black head-cloth . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] he found an authentic portrait of titus in the wallace collection, painted in , the year after rembrandt had become bankrupt. it is one of the most charming portraits the master ever produced, a picture that even the most casual frequenter of galleries must pause before and love. a red cap crowns his curly hair, which falls to his shoulders. the face has a sweet expression; but the observant can detect traces of ill-health upon it. titus died before his father. father, mother, saskia, hendrickje, titus, had all gone when the old man passed to his rest. on the opposite wall at the wallace collection is _the parable of the unmerciful servant_, a fine example of rembrandt the _chiaroscurist_, straightforward, but touched with that mystery so rare in painting, but which, under certain conditions, was as natural to rembrandt as drawing. it is not always present in his work. none can say that there is any mystery about the sober portrait pictures called _the wife of jan pellicorne with her daughter_, and _burgomaster jan pellicorne with his son_, in the wallace collection. a scriptural subject was needed to inspire rembrandt's brush with the sense of mystery. it was the mystery of two pictures at the national gallery that first drew the child to rembrandt: it was the etchings that gave him a deeper insight into rembrandt's sense of mystery, and made of him a willing gamaliel at the master's feet. chapter iii the appeal of the etchings the citizen and golfer, whose commerce with rembrandt was narrated in the first chapter, approached the master through the writings of his recoverers, certain art historians and scholars, who frequent libraries, search archives, and peruse documents; men to whom a picture is a scientific document rather than an emotional or intellectual experience. he was well content to end his commerce with rembrandt there. history interested him: to art he was apathetic. his son, as was indicated in the second chapter, was indifferent to art history, and he would not have walked across the road to read an unedited document; but i see him tramping ten miles to seek a picture that promised to stir his emotions and stimulate his imagination. rembrandt, the maker of pictures, had become a vivid personality, a master whom he reverenced; but rembrandt the etcher was unknown to him. there are authorities who assert that in etching rembrandt's art found its amplest and most exquisite expression. none will deny that his is the greatest name in etching. if all rembrandt's pictures were destroyed, if every record of them by photograph or copy was blotted out, the etchings alone would form so ample a testimony to his genius that the name of rembrandt would still remain among the foremost artists of the world. rembrandt enjoyed a period of popularity with his pictures, followed by years of decline and neglect, when lesser and more accommodating men ousted him from popular favour. but from first to last the products of his needle were appreciated by his contemporaries, even if he himself did not set great store by them. he began to etch early in life: he ceased only when his eyesight failed. he found in etching a congenial and natural means of self-expression. his artistic fecundity threw them off in regal profusion. the mood seized him: he would take a prepared plate, and sometimes, having swiftly spent his emotion, he did not trouble to do more than indicate the secondary incidents in a composition. often he gave them away to friends and fellow-artists, or tossed them, when they had answered their purpose in his art life, so continuously experimental, into one of the sixty portfolios of leather recorded in the inventory of his property. the history of _christ healing the sick_, known as _the hundred guilder print_, now the most prized of all the etchings, shows that he did not attach much value, either artistic or monetary, to this plate. he did not even receive a hundred guilders (under £ ) for it, but gave the etching to his friend jan zoomer in exchange for _the pest_, by m. anthony. at the holford sale, as has already been noted, £ was given for the _hundred guilder print_. it is supposed that only two of the etchings were made expressly for publication--the _descent from the cross_, and the _ecce homo_; but rembrandt may have benefited from the sale of them through the partnership that was formed in between his son titus and hendrickje stoffels. [illustration: minerva . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] in the eighteenth century certain connoisseurs had already made collections of his etchings. catalogues began to be published, and in adam bartsch, keeper of the prints in the library at vienna, issued the well-known catalogue that bears his name in two octavo volumes. since bartsch's monumental work many students of the etchings have striven to sift the authentic from the false. needless to say, they disagree. here are the figures:-- bartsch authentic etchings. wilson " " claussin " " blanc " " middleton-wake " " de seidlitz " " legros - " " m. de seidlitz's list of was arrived at through consultation with several authorities, and that number is now accepted as approximately correct. our enthusiast knew nothing of the work of the labourers in rembrandt's etching vineyard. he was quite ignorant of the expert contributions of sir francis haden, p.g. hamerton, and mr. frederick wedmore, although his father, had he been a communicative man, could have discoursed learnedly on their efforts. fate so willed it that he came to rembrandt's etchings by chance, and, being sensitively alive to beauty and idealism, they merged into his life, and became as it were a personal possession. on a certain day, in the window of one of those delightful london shops where first editions, prints, pieces of pottery, and odds and ends tempting to the virtuoso, are exposed for sale, he saw a small opulent picture by monticelli. entering to inquire the price, he discovered, as he had feared, that it was far beyond his bank balance. at the invitation of the proprietor, who seemed delighted that his goods should be admired, he stayed to "look round." strewn upon a rosewood, inlaid table were a hundred and more etchings. many were quite small, heads of men and women minutely and beautifully wrought; others, larger in size, were biblical subjects; some were weird and fantastical; one, for example, showed a foreshortened figure lying before an erection, upon which a skinny bird stood with outstretched wings, flanked by ugly angel boys blowing trumpets. [illustration: titus in a red cap and a gold chain . the wallace collection, london.] "the best are sold," said the gentle proprietor. the enthusiast was about to ask the name of the artist, when he suddenly caught sight of the _christ at emmaus_. his blood stirred in him. that little shop became an altar of art, and he an initiate. it was not the same version as the louvre picture, but only one mind--the mind of rembrandt, only one heart--the heart of rembrandt, could have so felt and stated the pathos and emotion of that scene. controlling his excitement, he turned over the prints and paused, startled, before _abraham's sacrifice_. what was it that moved him? he could hardly say. but he was moved to an extraordinary degree by that angel standing, with outstretched wings, by abraham's side, hiding the kneeling boy's eyes with his hand, staying the knife at the supreme moment. he turned the prints, and paused again before _the prodigal son_. some might call the face of the kneeling prodigal hideous, might assert that the landscape was slight and unfinished, that the figure in the doorway was too sketchy. not so our enthusiast. this was the prodigal son, and as for the bending, forgiving father, all that he could imagine of forgiveness and pity was there realised in a few scratches of the needle. he turned the prints and withdrew _tobit blind_. in every line of this figure of the wandering old man, tapping his stick upon the pavement, feeling his way by the wall, was blindness, actual blindness--all the misery and loneliness and indignity of it. "are these for sale?" he asked the smiling proprietor, without the slightest hope that he could afford one. "oh yes! _tobit blind_ you can have for two shillings and sixpence. _abraham's sacrifice_, _christ at emmaus_, and _the prodigal son_ are four shillings each." the enthusiast could not conceal his astonishment. "i thought rembrandt's etchings cost hundreds of pounds," he said. "they do, but these are merely reproductions. only a millionaire could hope to possess a complete collection of first states. these are the reproductions that were issued with m. blanc's catalogue. he made them from the best proofs in his own collections, and from the public museums. you should compare them with the originals. the difference will astonish you. it's candle-light to sunlight, satinette to the finest silk." "but where can i see the originals? i don't know any millionaires." "nothing easier! go to the print room of the british museum or to the ionides collection." a day or two later the enthusiast, carrying under his arm the roll of four rembrandt's etchings that he had purchased for fourteen shillings and sixpence, ascended the stairs of the british museum, and timidly opened the door marked, "print room. students only." his reception agreeably surprised him. he, an obscure person, was treated as if he were a m. michel. an obliging boy requested him to hang his hat and coat upon a peg, and to sign his name in a book. an obliging youth waved him to a noble desk running at a right angle to a noble window, and begged him to indicate his needs upon a slip of paper. he inscribed the printed form with the words--"rembrandt's etchings and drawings." the obliging youth scanned the document and said--"which do you wish to see? there are many portfolios. i can bring you one at a time." "do so, if you please," said the enthusiast. "i should like to examine them all, even if it takes a week." the obliging youth inclined his head and departed. there is a delightful air of leisure and learning about the print room, and an entire absence of hustle. two students besides himself were the only other members of the public, one studying holbein, the other blake. [illustration: portrait of an old lady, full face, her hands folded . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] the first portfolio that was brought to him contained the _christ healing the sick_, known as _the hundred guilder print_, in several states. it was the first large etching by rembrandt that he had seen, and he gazed with astonishment, admiration, and awe at the almost miraculous characterisation of the figures, at the depth and richness of the blacks, and the nobility of the conception. he passed from that to _the three crosses_, and was even more moved by the dramatic intensity and realism of those burdened crosses against the profound gloom, and the dim, poignantly realised figures in the foreground. he saw the _christ before pilate_ and _the death of the virgin_, lingering before them, studying every detail, realising to the full, through these splendid impressions, the height and significance of rembrandt's genius. he compared the four prints he had purchased with their originals, and understood why collectors were eager to pay enormous prices for fine states, probably printed by the master himself. as soon as he had finished one portfolio, the watchful attendant carried it away, and substituted another. it was so easy, so restful, and so invigorating to study a master under these conditions, that he wondered the public did not flock to the print room as to a first night at a popular theatre. on another day he studied the drawings and landscape etchings--that dark, spacious design called _the three trees_, and a perfect little drawing of _joseph consoling the prisoners_. the large plates inspired him with reverence and profound admiration for rembrandt's genius as an etcher, but it was the smaller etchings that won his love and held it. he promised himself, when he came into certain family monies of which there was some prospect, that instead of buying an automobile, he would make himself the proud owner of _the three trees_, _the prodigal son_, _abraham's sacrifice_, and _tobit blind_--perhaps one, perhaps two, perhaps three, perhaps all four. chapter iv epochs in rembrandt's life suppose the admiration of our enthusiast for rembrandt had been noted in the select suburb where he lived: suppose his mother was one of those estimable ladies who hold monthly dorcas meetings in their drawing-rooms: suppose that while the ladies were working at useful garments for the poor, she persuaded her son to discourse on rembrandt: suppose, because the petition came from his mother that he, very much against his will, consented. it was not an easy task, as he took little or no interest in the life of rembrandt; his interests were entirely with the æsthetic appeal of his work. what, he asked himself, can one say about the life of a man when that life was wholly one with his art--mingling with it, ministering to it at every point. a boy, the fifth child of a miller living at leyden, is born into the world, takes to art as a duck to water, becomes one of the greatest painters of the world, dies in obscurity, is forgotten, and long after his death is placed among his peers. what is there to say about such a life? he made the attempt. [illustration: portrait of an old lady in a velvet hood, her hands folded . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] at the age of fourteen rembrandt entered at leyden university, but showed little inclination for books. he preferred lucas van leyden to virgil, and his parents, accepting the situation, allowed him to study painting under swanenburch, and later in the studio of lastman at amsterdam. after a few months with lastman he returned to leyden, "to practise painting alone and in his own way." so much for his schooling. at the age of twenty-one he produced a picture called _st. paul in prison_, and gerard dou became his pupil. in he left leyden and settled in amsterdam. in he married saskia van uylenborch, who bore him three children, and titus was the youngest. some years later he had two daughters by his servant, hendrickje stoffels. perhaps he married her. she was a kind, good soul, faithful and loyal to her master. his friends do not seem to have disapproved of this irregular union, but the consistory of her church summoned hendrickje before them and forbade her to communicate. at the age of fifty rembrandt was declared bankrupt. from that date until his death troubles encompassed him; but he was happy so long as he could paint undisturbed. his son titus died when he was sixty-two, and the following year rembrandt died, and was buried at a cost of thirteen florins. our enthusiast did not find it easy to manipulate these facts, and he elected to slur over the hendrickje episode; but he was able to interest the ladies of the dorcas meeting by showing them some of rembrandt's pictures. he collected a series of photographs of the portraits and paintings, including his favourite pictures, such as _the jewish rabbi_ in the national gallery, _titus_ and _the parable of the unmerciful servant_ in the wallace collection, _rembrandt's mother_ and _the singing boy_ at vienna; and he invested sixpence in a little manual recently published, called _the masterpieces of rembrandt_, containing sixty excellent reproductions of his portraits and pictures. he also displayed photographs of the remarkable series in the hermitage gallery at st. petersburg: _the descent from the cross_, with the brilliant light focussed on the body and winding sheet, and fading away into the darkness of the background; that radiant portrait of saskia painted just before her marriage to rembrandt, known as _flora with a flower-trimmed crook_, standing at the opening of a grotto, with a wreath of flowers upon her head, and the light falling upon her face and gay attire; _the holy family_, the father working at his daily task in the background, and the virgin, who has laid down her book, drawing aside the curtain from the cot to gaze upon the child. he explained that rembrandt, in placing this scene in a humble dutch cottage, knew that he could express the biblical story better that way than if he had painted an imaginary scene after the manner of the italians. "this great dutch master" (he quoted from mr. colvin) "succeeded in making as wonderful pictures out of spiritual abjectness and physical gloom as the italians out of spiritual exaltation and shadowless day." [illustration: flora with a flower-trimmed crook . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] at this point of his discourse he began to feel more confidence, and he proceeded to focus his remarks upon four periods in rembrandt's life--epochs that lend themselves to separate treatment, each epoch marked by the production of a masterpiece, and one remarkable portrait that has a particular and pathetic interest. those four pictures are _the anatomy lesson_, painted in , when he was twenty-six; the _sortie of a company of amsterdam musketeers_, known as _the night watch_, painted in , when he was thirty-six; _the syndics of the cloth hall_, painted in , when he was fifty-six; and his own portrait, painted in , two years before his death. "his _anatomy lesson_," says m. michel, "was the glorification of science itself; in his _sortie of a company of amsterdam musketeers_ he embodied that civic heroism which had lately compassed dutch independence; and in a group of five cloth merchants seated round a table, discussing the affairs of their guild, he summed up, as it were, in a few immortal types, the noble sincerity of dutch portraiture." _the anatomy lesson_ was the picture that gave rembrandt his opportunity, and proclaimed his preeminence among the painters in amsterdam. it was the custom in those days for corporations, civic bodies, and associations of various kinds, to commemorate their period of office by commissioning portrait groups which should hand down their worthy faces to posterity. the desire of the less prominent members of the associations thus painted was that each head should be a likeness, plainly recognisable,--that one burgher should not be treated with more importance than another. this desire for present and posthumous commemoration extended to medical circles. portraits and portrait groups of famous physicians and surgeons were painted and hung in the theatres where they lectured or operated. dr. tulp, an eminent surgeon of the day, commissioned rembrandt to represent him performing an operation, proposing to present the picture to the surgeons' guild in memory of his professorship. the grave, realistic picture called _the anatomy lesson_, now hanging at the hague museum, was the result. the corpse lies upon the dissecting table; before it stands dr. tulp, wearing a broad-brimmed hat; around him are grouped seven elderly students. some are absorbed by the operation, others gaze thoughtfully at the professor, or at the spectator. dr. tulp indicates with his forceps one of the tendons of the subject's left arm, and appears to be addressing the students, or practitioners, for these seven bearded men have long passed the age of studentship. this picture made rembrandt's reputation. he was but twenty-six; the world seemed to be at his feet; in the two following years he painted forty portraits. it was not easy for our enthusiast to explain to the ladies of the dorcas meeting that the dissection of a body was a suitable subject for the brush of a painter. the dutchmen of rembrandt's day were not so squeamish as we have become since. they had a passion for the literal painting of literal things, and this picture was destined not for a tate gallery, but for the wall of an operating theatre. dr. tulp desired a picture of himself performing an operation, and rembrandt gave it to him, painted in a way that pleased his contemporaries, and that has astonished the world ever since. ten years later rembrandt painted another doelen or regent picture which, under the erroneous title of _the night watch_, is to-day the chief attraction of the ryks museum at amsterdam. this time it was not a group of surgeons, but a company of amsterdam musketeers marching out under the leadership of their captain, frans banning cocq. in all these civic or military regent pictures, each member subscribed a sum towards the artist's fee, and consequently each individual wished to have his money's worth in the shape of an accurate presentation of his face and form. it is an old quarrel between artist and public. mr. abbey had to face it in his coronation picture; mr. bacon had to face it in his _return of the c.i.v.'s_; perhaps the only folk who solved the problem were the complaisant gentlemen who designed panoramas of cricket matches in the last century, where each member of the company blandly faces the spectator. much water had flowed under burgomaster six's bridge since rembrandt painted _the anatomy lesson_. then he was the obedient student. now he was an acknowledged master. he painted _the sortie of the company of frans banning cocq_ as an artist who was profoundly interested in problems of light and shade, with strong views as to the composition of a picture, not as a methodical and mediocre painter desirous of carrying out the commission in a way to please his patrons. they wanted a presentment of the face and figure of each member of the company who had subscribed a hundred florins. rembrandt gave them a work of art. no doubt the captain and his lieutenant were well enough pleased, for they stride forth in the forefront of the picture, but the rank and file were bitterly hostile. from the painting of _the night watch_ his popularity began to wane. the history of this picture, after it had been hung in the doelen or assembly hall belonging to captain cocq's company, was as troublous as the later life of rembrandt. years afterwards when, blackened with smoke and ill-usage, it was removed from the doelen to the hotel de ville, the authorities, finding that it was too large for the space it was destined to occupy, deliberately cut a piece away from each side. this is proved by a copy of the picture made by lundens before the mutilation, now in the national gallery. when m. hopman undertook the restoration of _the night watch_ he discovered, when he had removed the surface of dirt, that the sortie is taking place by daylight, and that the work contained something that rembrandt evidently intended should represent a ray of sunlight. but the popular name of the picture is still _the night watch_. the ladies of the dorcas society expressed in eyes and gestures their disapproval of the amsterdam vandals who mutilated _the night watch_. one of them remarked: "it happened a long time ago. so gross a barbarity could not be perpetrated now." twenty years later, at the age of fifty-six, rembrandt, having known what it was to be homeless and penniless, painted his masterpiece, _the syndics of the cloth hall_, merely five figures grouped round a table, with a servant, uncovered, in attendance. it is an extraordinarily real picture, the final statement of rembrandt's knowledge of painting, combined with that rare power of seeing things just as they are--the hundred subtleties that the untrained eye never sees, as well as the accents that all see. it is the perfect painter's vision--a scene grasped as a whole, character searched out but not insistent, the most delicate suggestion of equally diffused light knitting the figures together. he made no attempt to be picturesque as in _the night watch_; he was content just to paint five men dressed in black, with flat white collars and broad-brimmed hats, and a servant. with these simple materials rembrandt produced the picture that the world has agreed to regard as his masterpiece. contemporary criticism says nothing about it. the place of honour at the ryks museum at amsterdam is given to _the night watch_, but it is _the syndics of the cloth hall_--a simple presentation of five grave men seated at a table--that we remember with wonder and admiration. our enthusiast, having dwelt upon these three masterpieces, marking epochs in rembrandt's life, referred again to the magnificent array of portraits scattered in such regal profusion through the thirty years that passed between the painting of _the anatomy lesson_ and _the syndics_. then noticing, while enlarging upon the etchings, that his mother was casting anxious glances at the clock, he hurriedly referred to the last portrait that rembrandt painted of himself, two years before his death. he could not describe this portrait, which is in a private collection in berlin, as he had never seen it, so he quoted m. michel's description: "this extraordinary work, perhaps the last rembrandt painted, is modelled with prodigious vigour and freedom. with superb audacity, the master shows us once more the familiar features, on which age and sorrow have worked their will. they are distorted, disfigured, almost unrecognisable. but the free spirit is still unbroken. the eyes that meet ours are still keen and piercing; they have even the old twinkle of good-humoured irony, and the toothless mouth relaxes in frank laughter. what was the secret of this gaiety? in spite of his poverty, he had still a corner in which to paint. beside him stand an easel and an antique bust, perhaps a relic of his former wealth. he holds his maul-stick in his hand, and pauses for a moment in his work. he is happy because he can give himself up to his art." [illustration: the descent from the cross . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] it was the last of half a hundred portraits of himself, painted and etched without vanity; painted because a man's self is such an accommodating model, always ready and willing; painted because rembrandt loved to experiment with himself before a mirror, grimacing, angry, stern, "as an officer," "with a casque," "with a gorget," or, as we see him in the national gallery, on one wall with the bloom of youth and health upon his face, on the other, dulled, stained, and marked by the finger of time. this we can say: that he was always true to himself. chapter v the great triumvirate it is generally acknowledged that the greatest masters of painting that the world has known are titian, velasquez, and rembrandt, and to each of the triumvirate we apply the word genius. among the many definitions of that abused word is one which states that genius consists not in seeing more than other people, but in seeing differently. we acknowledge genius in a painter when, over and above masterly technical power, he presents to us a view of life or of nature which we may never have seen, but which we are convinced is the vision of deeper eyes than our own, and is true. the seer has seen it, and it is only because of the dimness or narrowness or worldliness of our outlook that we do not perceive it also. a great painter writes us a letter, tells us of the things he has seen or heard or felt, gives us news of the world wherein he lives. he expresses his personality to us, and personality in art is a thing incalculable. corot's _arcadia_ landscape delights us because it is the distilled essence of the vision, heart, and character of the personality called corot. personality may be expressed by a rembrandt, abundantly. it may also be expressed by a velasquez, negatively. we must be vigilant, in judging a painter, to distinguish between his own personality and the personality of those who interpret him to us. the more we give of ourselves to a painter or an author, the greater is the return of his appeal and interest. cleave the wood of your brain and you find him brimming with communications, raise the stone of your imagination and he is revealed. a certain critic, who had devoted his life to the study of reynolds, while lecturing upon the achievement of that master, threw upon the screen a certain large subject-picture, not one of reynold's happiest efforts, but a laboured and unattractive design which, we know, gave reynolds an infinity of trouble. so scientific, so interesting was this critic's analysis of the picture, so absorbing the attributes he read into it, that many of his audience were persuaded that they were looking upon a reynolds masterpiece, whereas they were but hypnotised by the subtleties of the critic's mind working upon reynolds. conversely the criticism of some writers tends towards depreciation because of their predilection for objective as opposed to subjective criticism. the late p.g. hamerton, writing upon rembrandt, says, "the chiaroscuro of rembrandt is often false and inconsistent, and in fact he relied largely on public ignorance. but though arbitrary, it is always conducive to his purpose." "conducive to his purpose!" there is much virtue in those four words. rembrandt probably knew as well as anybody that his lighting of a picture was not a facsimile of the lighting of nature, or rather not the chiaroscuro as seen by the average eye; but he had an aim, a vision before him, and he did not hesitate to interpret that vision in his own way. who dares to say that rembrandt was disloyal to nature? our concern is not what we should have done, but what rembrandt did, seeing with his own eyes. and the questions we should ask ourselves are:--is the interpretation of the world as seen through his eyes beautiful, suggestive, profound, and stimulating? does the statement of his personality in paint add to our knowledge, educate our æsthetic perceptions, and extend our horizon by showing us things that our imperfect vision does not see except through him? [illustration: a young woman in a red chair holding a pink in her right hand . the hermitage, st. petersburg.] comparisons are not only odious, but foolish. no sensible critic attempts a comparison between titian, velasquez, and rembrandt. he accepts them as they are, and is grateful. but even the most obscure of mortals may have his preferences, and a curious chapter in the lives of individuals who have concerned themselves with painting would be the bewildering way in which the pendulum of their appreciation and admiration has swung backwards and forwards from titian to velasquez, from velasquez to rembrandt, and sometimes back to titian. it is often a question of mood. there are moods when the regal abundance, the consummate craftsmanship of titian, the glow and splendour of his canvases, the range of them from _the man with the glove_ in the louvre to the _bacchus and ariadne_, force us to place him on the summit of parnassus. we are dazzled by this prince of painters, dominating venice at the height of her prosperity, inspired by her, having around him, day by day, the glorious pictures that the genius of venice had produced. we follow his triumphant career, see him courted and fêted, recognise his detachment from the sorrow and suffering of the unfortunate and unclassed, and amid the splendour of his career note his avidity for the loaves and fishes of the world. unlike rembrandt, fortune favoured titian to the end. his career was a triumphal progress. we stand in that small room at the prado museum at madrid and gaze upon his canvases, sumptuous and opulent, diffusing colour like a sunset, indifferent to their story or meaning, happy and content with the flaming feast outspread for our enjoyment. we stand before his _entombment_ at the louvre, dumb before its superlative painting, with hardly a thought for the tragedy that it represents. titian accepts the literary motive, and the artist in him straight forgets it. we walk from _the entombment_ to the little chamber where rembrandt's _christ at emmaus_ hangs, and the heart of rembrandt is beating there. to titian the glory of the world, to rembrandt all that man has felt and suffered, parting and sorrow, and the awakening of joy. we do not compare the one painter with the other; we say: "this is titian, that is rembrandt; each gives us his emotion." foolish indeed it seems in the face of these two pictures, and a thousand others, to say that art should be this or that,--that a picture should or should not have a literary or a philosophical motive. painters give us themselves. we amuse ourselves by placing them in schools, by analysing their achievement, by scientific explanations of what they did just by instinct, as lambs gambol--and behind all stands the sphinx called personality. there are moods when the appeal of velasquez is irresistible. grave and reticent, a craftsman miraculously equipped, detached, but not with the jovian detachment of titian, this spanish gentleman stalks silently across the art stage. hundreds of drawings of rembrandt's exhibit evidence of the infinite extent of his experiments after perfection. the drawings of velasquez can be counted on the fingers of one hand. he drew in paint upon the canvas. from his portraits and pictures we gather not the faintest idea of what he felt, what he thought, what he believed. one thing we know absolutely--that he saw as keenly and as searchingly as any painter who has ever lived. what he saw before him he could paint, and in the doing of it he was unrivalled. his hand followed and obeyed his eye. when the object was not before him, he falls short of his superlative standard. the figures of philip iv., of olivares, and of prince baltazar carlos in the three great equestrian portraits are as finely drawn as man could make them. velasquez saw them; he did not see the prancing horses which they ride, consequently our eyes dropping from the consummate figures are disappointed at the conventional attitudes of the steeds. velasquez, like titian, moved from success to success; both were friends of kings, both basked in royal favour, neither had the disadvantage, or perhaps the great advantage, like rembrandt, of the education of adversity. velasquez made two journeys into italy; he knew what men had accomplished in painting, and if he was not largely influenced by titian and tintoretto, their work showed him what man had done, what man could do, and indicated to him his own dormant powers. rembrandt was sufficient unto himself. there are moods when one is sure that he stands at the head of the painting hierarchy. in spite of his greatness, we feel that he is very near to our comprehension. what a picture of the old painter towards the end of his life that saying of baldinucci presents. we are told that near the close of his career, absorbed in his art, indifferent to the world, "when he was painting at his easel he had come to wipe his brushes on the hinder portions of his dress." rembrandt looms out like some amorphous boulder, stationary, lichen-stained, gathering time unto itself. he travelled so little that it can be said he was untravelled. the works of other painters affected him not at all. we are without proof that he was even interested in the work of his contemporaries or predecessors. life was his passion. one model was as good as another. he looked at life, and life fired his imaginations. he painted himself fifty times; he painted his friends, his relations, and the people he met while prowling about the streets. his pencil was never idle. imagination, which confuses the judgment of so many, aided him, for his imagination was not nourished by vanity, or the desire to produce an effect, but flowed from the greatness of his brooding heart. he stood alone during his life, an absorbed man, uninfluenced by any school; he stands alone to-day. the world about him, and his thoughts and reflections, were his only influences. he read few books, and the chief among them was the bible. mr. berenson has written an exhaustive and learned work on lorenzo lotto, analysing his pictures year by year, and exhuming the various painters who influenced lotto at the different periods of his life. mr. berenson's book extends to nearly three hundred pages. the influences of the painting fraternity upon rembrandt would not provide material for the first paragraph of the first page of such a book. his fame is assured. he is one of the great triumvirate. "he was greater, perhaps," says mr. clausen, "than any other painter in human feeling and sympathy, in dramatic sense and invention; and his imagination seemed inexhaustible." the ryks museum at amsterdam may be said to have been designed as a shrine for his _night watch_. near by it hangs _the syndics of the cloth company_, excelled, in this particular class of work, by no picture in the world; but it is by the portraits and the etchings that the sweep, profundity, and versatility of rembrandt's genius is exemplified. truly his imagination was inexhaustible. it is an education to stand before his portraits in the national gallery. observe the _old lady_, aged , the massive painting of her face, and the outline of her figure set so firmly against the background. here is realism, frank and straightforward, almost defiant in its strength. turn to the portrait of _a jewish rabbi_. here is idealism. you peer and peer, and from the brown background emerges a brown garment, relieved by the black cap, and the black cloak that falls over his left shoulder. luminous black and luminous brown! brown is the side of the face in shadow, brown is the brow in shadow. all is tributary to the glory of the golden brown on the lighted portion of the face. the portrait composes into a perfect whole. the dim blacks and browns lead up to the golden brown illuminating the old weary head, that wonderful golden brown--the secret of rembrandt. this old jew lives through the magic art of rembrandt. he crouches in the frame, wistful and waiting, the eternal type, eternally dreaming the jews' dream that is still a dream. the end _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. whistler as i knew him by mortimer menpes square imperial vo ( × - / inches), bound in cloth, with top edge gilt, containing full-page facsimile reproductions in colour and tint of whistler's oil-colours, water-colours, pastels, and etchings. (the edition de luxe contains an original whistler etching never before published.) ordinary edition, s. net. edition de luxe (limited to copies), guineas net * * * * * some press opinions haldane macfall in =the academy=.--"no one who loves the art of whistler should be without this handsome book; it contains works of art of exquisite beauty; it contains a delightful picture of the outward whistler that the man himself wished to be mistaken for the real thing--half butterfly, half wasp, wholly laughing enigma." =the observer=.--"a singularly illuminating and intimate monograph." =the week's survey=.--"mr. menpes gives us an extraordinarily vivid account of the technical methods which whistler employed. this in itself must make his book a text-book for all time." =the magazine of art=.--"it is all wonderfully true to life, obviously sincere and convincing, and vastly entertaining." =the bystander=.--"one of the most delightful biographical sketches which has appeared for a long time." =to-day=.--"a deeply interesting and an extremely entertaining volume." =the daily news=.--"a quite miraculous study that, like shallow, ought to provide the world with laughter for the wearing out of six fashions. and after that the pictures will still remain a permanent joy." a.m.b. in =the king=.--"by far the most valuable and interesting book on whistler which has been written, or, indeed, is ever likely to be written." =t.p.'s weekly=.--"an honest and clear study of the great artist." a.c.r.c. in =the outlook=.--"it bears the impress of actuality, and is probably the truest chain of living pictures of whistler's personality that any 'follower' could have made." =dundee advertiser=.--"told in a most fascinating manner." =the world=.--"an extremely interesting and valuable historical document." =truth=.--"at once a superb and an amazing book--superb in the number and excellence of its reproductions of whistler's work, amazing in its characteristic anecdotes of the master." =the connoisseur=.--"the illustrations form an invaluable record of whistler's art, and they in themselves make mr. menpes's book a desirable possession." =the studio=.--"full of deeply interesting data respecting whistler's methods, of real revelation of his remarkable personality, and of pathetic instances of the devotion of his followers." =the globe=.--"eminently amusing and very instructive to boot." =aberdeen free press=.--"as literature it is vastly entertaining; as art it is an extraordinarily brilliant and abundant collection representative of the work of a remarkable man, in himself a 'school.'" * * * * * the non-illustrated edition whistler as i knew him by mortimer menpes square demy vo bound in cloth price / net * * * * * published by adam and charles black · soho square · london · w. by the same author each with full-page illustrations in colour price s. net * * * * * venice =publishers' note=.--this book treats of venice not only at one time of the day, but at all times. there is venice at night; venice in sunshine; venice in grey; it is a colour record of venice, full of actuality. there are all sides of venice--old doorways; the riva; the rialto; st. mark's before and after the fall of the campanile; the doge's palace; the salute at dawn and the salute at sunset; market places; fishing villages, with their vividly-coloured fishing boats--rich orange sails splashed with yellows and vermilions; the piazza; churches; and the islands of the lagoon. * * * * * the durbar =morning post.=--"this splendid book will be accepted by all as the best realisation of an epoch-making ceremony that we are ever likely to get." =the academy.=--"unquestionably the best pictorial representation of the durbar which has appeared." =the globe.=--"likely to be the most brilliant and lasting record of the historical occasion." * * * * * world's children =the times.=--"of the cleverness, both of the pictures and letter-press, there can be no doubt. miss menpes's short papers on the children of different lands are full of insight, human and fresh experience; and mr. menpes's pictures ... are above all remarkable for their extraordinary variety of treatment, both in colour scheme and in the pose and surroundings of the subject." * * * * * world pictures =the scotsman.=--"mr. menpes has been a wanderer over the face of the earth armed with brush and pencil, and he has brought back with him portfolios filled with samples of the colour and sunshine, and of the life and form, quaint or beautiful, of the most famous countries of the east and of the west, and his charming book is a kind of album into which he has gathered the cream of an artist's memories and impressions of the many countries he has visited and sketched in." * * * * * japan =the times.=--"mr. menpes's pictures are here given in most perfect facsimile, and they form altogether a series of colour impressions of japan which may fairly be called unrivalled. even without the narrative they would show that mr. menpes is an enthusiast for japan, her art and her people; and very few european artists have succeeded in giving such complete expression to an admiration in which all share." * * * * * war impressions =daily telegraph.=--"one hardly knows which to admire the more--the skill of the artist or the skill with which his studies have been reproduced, for the colours of the originals are shown with marvellous fidelity, and the delicate art of the impressionist loses nothing in the process. the book, therefore, is a double triumph, and will therefore be prized by collectors." * * * * * brittany =publishers' note.=--mr. menpes is perhaps exceptionally capable of producing a true and vivid description of brittany. he has lived and painted there for many years. every aspect of the country has been faithfully depicted by him; every mood of breton life, every trait of character. whether it is a pig-market that is portrayed, or a dignified breton surrounded by his household gods of oak and blue china in the atmosphere of his own home--whether it is a fleet of fishing boats hung with cobalt-blue nets, or group of mediæval houses in some ancient town--each and every picture bears the impress of actuality. * * * * * published by a. & c. black · soho square · london · w. and obtainable from all booksellers at home or abroad [illustration] don't open your door ...unless... you know who rang the bell protection that pays an =ackerman door interviewer= (peephole) you look through a mirror and you see your caller =but he cannot see you!= for installation call: wa. - - a.m. or - p.m. authorized agent walter deutschman west th street, new york , n.y. retail price =$ . = plus $ . for installation installation takes minutes through any door, steel, wood, etc. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) transcriber's note: letters enclosed in a square bracket with tilde denote that there is an overscore or tilde above the letter; for example Ñ is denoted by [~n]. [c] denotes a reversed c. the great masters in painting and sculpture edited by g. c. williamson luca signorelli * * * * * the great masters in painting and sculpture. _the following volumes have been issued_ bernardino luini. by george c. williamson, litt.d., editor of the series. velasquez. by r. a. m. stevenson. andrea del sarto. by h. guinness. luca signorelli. by maud cruttwell. _december_ . raphael. by h. strachey. _january_ . _in preparation._ carlo crivelli. by g. m'neil rushforth, m.a., lecturer in classics, oriel college, oxford. correggio. by selwyn brinton, m.a., author of "the renaissance in italian art." fra angelico. by langton douglas, m.a. the brothers bellini. by s. arthur strong, m.a., librarian to the house of lords. michael angelo. by charles holroyd, keeper of the national gallery of british art. turner. by charles francis bell, m.a., deputy keeper of the ashmolean museum. perugino. by g. c. williamson, litt.d., editor of the series. memlinc. by w. h. james weale, late keeper of the national art library. murillo. by manuel b. cossio, litt.d., ph. d., director of the musee pedagogique, madrid. rembrandt. by malcolm bell. _others to follow._ london: george bell & sons * * * * * [illustration: _portrait of an unknown man_] luca signorelli by maud cruttwell [illustration] london george bell & sons "pianga cortona omai, vestasi oscura, che estinti son del signorello i lumi; et, tu, pittura, fa de gli occhi fuimi, che resti senza lui debile e scura." _epitaph composed at the time of his death_ "il cortonese luca d'ingegno e spirito pellegrino." rime di giovanni santi prefatory notice. the references to vasari, and crowe and cavalcaselle, are invariably to the latest editions, both in italian: "opere di giorgio vasari" (firenze, g. c. sansoni, ); "cavalcaselle e crowe" (le monnier, ). the author desires to express her gratitude to mr bernhard berensen, author of "lorenzo lotto," etc., for much help in her work. florence, _october_ . contents page list of illustrations ix bibliography xiii genealogical tree xv chapter i. his life ii. development and characteristics of his genius iii. earliest works iv. middle period v. orvieto vi. later paintings vii. last works viii. drawings ix. pupils and general influence chronological table catalogue of works index list of illustrations page portrait of a man _gallery, berlin_ _frontispiece_ portrait of signorelli _museo del duomo, orvieto_ the deposition _cathedral, cortona_ the flagellation _brera gallery, milan_ apostles _santa casa, loreto_ the incredulity of s. thomas _santa casa, loreto_ the conversion of saul _santa casa, loreto_ madonna and saints _cathedral, perugia_ the circumcision _national gallery, london_ pan _gallery, berlin_ madonna _uffizi, florence_ madonna and saints _pitti, florence_ holy family _rospigliosi gallery, rome_ holy family _uffizi, florence_ the annunciation _cathedral, volterra_ the annunciation _uffizi, florence_ the crucifixion _santo spirito, urbino_ miracle of s. benedict _monte oliveto_ miracle of s. benedict _monte oliveto_ saints _gallery, berlin_ holy family _gallery, berlin_ the crucifixion _municipio, borgo san sepolero_ portraits of signorelli and fra angelico _cathedral, orvieto_ patriarchs _cathedral, orvieto_ the preaching and fall of antichrist _cathedral, orvieto_ the crowning of the elect _cathedral, orvieto_ subjects from dante _cathedral, orvieto_ heaven _cathedral, orvieto_ hell _cathedral, orvieto_ the damnation _cathedral, orvieto_ the resurrection _cathedral, orvieto_ signs of destruction _cathedral, orvieto_ madonna and saints _brera, milan_ dead christ upheld by angels _s. niccolò, cortona_ the adoration of the magi _jarvis collection, new haven, u.s.a._ madonna and saints _mancini collection, città di castello_ the deposition _santa croce, umbertide_ madonna, saints, and prophets _gallery, arezzo_ study of nude figure _louvre, paris_ magdalen at the foot of the cross _academy, florence_ tiberius gracchus _gallery, buda-pesth_ erratum page line , _for_ "pius ii." _read_ "sixtus iv." the frontispiece and the illustrations facing pp. , , and ( ) are from photographs by hanfstaengl (munich), those facing pp. (no. ) and by anderson (rome), that facing page by a. braun & co. (dornach and paris), those facing pp. and from private photographs, and the remainder by alinari (florence). bibliography. luca signorelli. vasari, con annotazione di gaetano milanesi. (firenze, g. c. sansoni, .) vol. iii. luca signorelli und die italienische renaissance. robert vischer. (leipzig, .) luca signorelli. cavalcaselle e crowe. (le monnier, .) vol. viii. Über leben, wirken und werke der maler andrea mantegna und luca signorelli. g. f. waagen. (historisches taschenbuch von raumer.) luca signorelli. manni. (racolta milanese di vari opuscoli, .) vol. i. storia del duomo di orvieto. padre della valle, . il duomo di orvieto. ludovico luzi, . memorie ecclesiastiche e civili di cittÀ di castello. muzi, . istruzione storico. giacomo mancini, . notizie ... sopra luca signorelli. girolamo mancini, . guida dei monumenti ... nella provincia dell'umbria, guardabassi. . family tree of the signorelli family. ventura di signorelli. | luca. | egidio = a sister of lazzaro dei taldi | (great-grandfather of giorgio | vasari, the biographer). +---------------------------+ | | ventura. luca = galizia carnesecca. | | | +----------------+---+-------------+----------+---------+ | | | | | | | polidoro antonio pier tommaso gabriella = felicia = | (painter and = . nannina = margherita mariotto luca della | builder). di paolo di vagnozzi. del mazza. bioscia. | di forzore. | | | . mattea di | bernardina. | domenico di | | | simone. | +-------------+ | +-+-----------+ | | | | | lucrezia francesco rosata = giulio. filiziano. = domenico (painter). mariotto di gilio = felice di felice (banker.) carrari. passerini. luca signorelli chapter i his life (born : died ) it is a curious fact that, considering the number of documents which exist relating to signorelli, and the paintings time has spared, so little should be known beyond the merest outline of his life. the very dates of his birth and death are indirectly acquired; the documents leave his youth and early manhood an absolute blank, and there are only two of his numerous works which can with certainty be placed before his thirty-third year.[ ] we are, therefore, forced to fall back upon traditionary record, and by the aid of his biographer vasari, and the evidence of youthful studies which his paintings contain, to patch together a probable account of his life, up to the time when the documents begin. on vasari, in this case, we can depend with a certain amount of confidence, since signorelli was his kinsman, and they had been in such personal communication as was possible between an old man and a child. from vasari, then, we learn that luca was born in cortona, of egidio signorelli, and a sister of lazzaro dè taldi.[ ] this lazzaro, great grandfather of the biographer, deserves special mention, since it was through his means, and under his guardianship, that luca was placed as a child to study painting with pier dei franceschi, at arezzo.[ ] vasari tells us that lazzaro was "a famous painter of his time, not only in his own country, but throughout tuscany, with a style of painting hardly to be distinguished from that of his great friend, pietro della francesca."[ ] this, however, is an assertion that has never been supported, and was probably based on the author's pride in his own family, for in the cortona tax-receipts for the year , he is described merely as a harness-maker (_sellajo di cavalli_.)[ ] there is, besides, no record of him among the painters of arezzo, and no fragment remains of the many works enumerated by his great-grandson. but it is of little consequence whether he was a painter of pictures or a decorator of saddles; what is to our purpose is the fact, that by his means luca was placed under the tutelage of the painter most capable of developing the noblest qualities of his genius. luca was born about , as we gather from vasari, and if is the correct date of his uncle lazzaro's death, his apprenticeship to pier dei franceschi must have begun before his eleventh year. it is probable that, with his fellow-pupil melozzo da forlì, his senior by three years, signorelli assisted the master with the frescoes in s. francesco, although there is no trace of any work that might be from his hand. vasari tells us that as a youth he laboured "to imitate the style of his master," with such success, that (as he remarked of lazzaro) "their work was hardly to be distinguished apart."[ ] the nearest approach to the style of piero that remains to us is "the flagellation," of the brera, milan, which, however, already shows signs of a more deeply impressed technical influence, but it was probably under piero's training that signorelli developed his broad methods of work, and the grand manner which makes his painting so impressive. the later influence visible in the above-mentioned "flagellation," as throughout all his work, is that of antonio pollaiuolo. to him and to donatello are due the most important features in his artistic development, and in technique he follows much more readily than the umbrian, the florentine methods, with which his painting has nearly everything in common. of the influence of donatello it may justly be said that every painter and sculptor of the fifteenth century submitted to it, but few were so completely touched by his spirit as signorelli. not only, as we shall see later, did he transfer attitudes and features from donatello's statues into his earlier paintings, but he caught, and even exaggerated, the confident and somewhat arrogant spirit of his work, and exploited it with the same uncompromising realism. the influence of antonio pollaiuolo was still more important, and is so evident in the whole mass of his painting, that with no other warrant we may feel certain that he spent a considerable time either as pupil or assistant to the florentine master. the passion of pollaiuolo was to discover the science of movement in the human frame. "he understood the nude in a more modern way than the masters before him," says vasari, "and he removed the skin from many corpses to see the anatomy beneath."[ ] he was, in fact, the great anatomical student among the quattrocento artists; and, having the same tastes, it was natural that to his workshop signorelli should turn, in order to satisfy his own craving for knowledge of the structure of bones and muscles. the internal evidence of his paintings warrants this supposition, but there is no record of any residence in florence, beyond the announcement of vasari, that he went there after his visit to siena, not at all as a student, but as a fully-fledged painter, making gifts of his pictures to his friend and patron, lorenzo dei medici. his work, however, proves so incontestably the training of pollaiuolo, and shows so close an acquaintance with florentine works of art, that we may safely presume the greater part of his youth, after leaving the studio of pier dei franceschi, to have been passed in florence as pupil or assistant of antonio. it is a wide leap from these days of study to the beginning of his citizen's life in cortona, when, a man of thirty-eight, he first settled down as a burgher discharging important duties there, but it would be idle to attempt to fill the gap, and only one document exists to help in any way to bridge it over. this is a commission from the commune of città di castello, dated ,[ ] requiring signorelli to paint, over some older frescoes in their tower, a large "madonna and saints," but, unfortunately the work itself no longer exists, for what time and neglect had spared, the earthquake of completely destroyed. we may presume that before he painted the important frescoes for the church of the holy house at loreto, since in that year he was first appointed to the municipal offices in cortona, which necessitated an almost constant residence there for the next three years, as the documents of election show.[ ] these numerous papers (for the most part discovered through the efforts of signor girolamo mancini, and published in his "notizie"), are preserved in the archives of cortona, and form the chief evidence of the painter's whereabouts up to the end of his long life. they record, first, his appointment in the autumn of to the council of xviii., and to the conservatori degli ordinamente,[ ] in the following spring to the priori, and in the summer to the general council, and they continue with few interruptions up to the very day of his death. they decide for us the social status he enjoyed, for both priori and councillors were chosen from the richest and most influential families, although not necessarily noble.[ ] his official life began in a time of tumult and bloodshed. it was the year after the failure of the pazzi conspiracy, and all around cortona were pitched the camps of the rival troops of sixtus iv. and the excommunicated florentines. cortona itself, as a frontier town of the medici, was in the very centre of the fray; and besides these more important quarrels, there were the incessant internal bickerings between the nobles and the populace, which at that time divided every italian city against itself. altogether, the position of magistrate in such a town, at such a time, could have been no sinecure, and it is difficult to understand how the hard-working painter could have found time or inclination to accept the citizen's duties, which were so weighty an occupation in themselves. much time has been spent in the vain search for documents relating to signorelli's supposed visit, in , to rome, where, it is said, he was summoned to paint, with perugino, pintorricchio, botticelli, and cosimo rosselli, the walls of the sistine chapel. later criticism has perhaps accounted for the absence of such a record. of the two frescoes there, formerly attributed to him, it is now no longer doubted that one--"the journey of moses and zipporah"--is by pintorricchio, and the opinion is gradually gaining ground that the other--"the death of moses"--although much nearer to signorelli's style, is not sufficiently so as to permit us to accept it as his work.[ ] the notices of the next few years contain little of interest beyond the facts, that in signorelli painted the altar-piece in the perugia cathedral, the first dated picture remaining, and that in he received the much-coveted honour of citizenship from città di castello, for the "great ability" with which he painted a standard for the brotherhood of the blessed virgin,[ ] a work which no longer exists. soon after follows a document dated , which bears witness that luca had been invited by the authorities of santa maria dei fiori in florence to assist in judging the models and designs for the projected façade of that church.[ ] this is important as a proof of the high esteem in which he was held in florence, implying also that he must have understood something of architecture. he declined the invitation, perhaps for the same reason for which he had excused himself the month before from serving as priore in his native town, "being absent at a distance of over forty miles,"[ ] probably at volterra. he painted there in this year three pictures, all of which are still in the city; the "annunciation" and the "madonna and saints," dated , and the fresco of "s. jerome" on the walls of the municipio. the next notice of importance is of the year , when he received the commission from the monks of s. benedict to fresco the walls of their cloister at monte oliveto.[ ] here he painted eight episodes from the life of the patron saint, leaving the rest of the work to be completed by sodoma. notwithstanding this task he found time, for four months of this very year, to serve among the priori in cortona, and accepted, besides, a fresh appointment as one of the revisori degli argenti. in the following year he was in siena, where he painted the altar-piece for the bicchi family, the wings of which are now in berlin. [illustration: [_museo del duomo, orvieto_ portrait of signorelli] we have now reached the most important time in signorelli's life, the year in which he received the commission for the decoration of the cappella nuova in the cathedral of orvieto. fifty years before, the roof had been begun by fra angelico, and ever since he went away, leaving it unfinished, the authorities had been undecided to whom to give the important work. benozzo gozzoli had begged for it; perugino, it is said, had refused it; and now, in , perhaps influenced to the choice by the success of the monte oliveto frescoes, they entrusted the work to signorelli. wishing first, however, to test his powers, they limited the commission to the completion of the vaulting, and it was not till the following year that they handed over to him the rest of the chapel, to be painted with the story of the last judgment. with this dramatic subject, and in these great spaces of the walls he had for the first time a free field for the wide sweep of his brush, and the force of his vivid imagination. the conceptions of dante inspired, but did not trammel him, and he had sufficient strength to make the great drama his own, and to compel it to serve his ends in the display of the human frame in its most vigorous aspects. the portrait he has painted of himself in the first of the frescoes, as well as that in the opera del duomo, show us a man in the very prime of life, full of energy and determination. four years at least, signorelli laboured at these frescoes, although not consecutively, as we shall presently see. he had with him as assistant his son polidoro,[ ] and perhaps girolamo genga, and other pupils. he was apparently on friendly terms with the authorities, of one of whom, the treasurer niccolò francesco, he painted a portrait, side by side with his own above mentioned. it is on a brick or tile, on the back of which is a flattering inscription, evidently composed by niccolò himself, in which he speaks of signorelli as "worthy of comparison with apelles."[ ] yet, notwithstanding this friendship with the treasurer, he could not get the money due to him, and it required the intervention of no less a person than guidobaldo of urbino, in , to obtain it for him. a letter from the prince is preserved in the orvieto archives,[ ] in which he writes: "loving maestro luca di cortona as i do, in no common measure, for his ability and rare talents, i can refuse him no possible favour in all that he may require of me," and goes on to beg the authorities for their love to him, to pay their debt to the painter, "which assuredly will be to me the greatest favour." [illustration: [_cathedral, cortona_ the deposition] even in fulfilling so arduous an undertaking as these great frescoes luca did not abandon his magistrate's work in his own city, and during the time, was serving both on the general council and as one of the priori. in , moreover, he found time to paint for his cathedral at cortona the beautiful "deposition," in which is a repetition of the pietà of the capella nuova. the realism and pathos of this dead christ are so convincing as to have given rise to the legend that it was painted from the body of his son, who died, or was killed, in this year. vasari thus relates the incident: luca had a son, "beautiful in face and person, whom he loved most dearly," killed in cortona, whereupon, "overwhelmed with grief as he was, he had the body stripped, and with the greatest fortitude of soul, without tears or lamentation, he made a drawing of it, in order to have always before his eyes ... what nature had given him, and cruel fate had snatched away."[ ] this son, antonio, probably a painter also, must have been a man of mature years at the time of his death, for he was already married to a second wife. the story has taken hold of the fancy of signorelli's biographers, in the dearth of personal matter, and is the best known incident in his life, but it is more than probable that antonio was carried off by the plague which, following close on the heels of the war of , attacked cortona, in which case it becomes a mere legend. we learn from a document, dated june rd, that the painter's house was not spared, for he excused himself from serving as priore in that month, because the _peste bubbonica_ had broken out in his family. four years later, polidoro, his eldest son, and his assistant at orvieto, died also. this happened while signorelli was on a visit to siena, for it was there he bought the mourning cloth. the object of this visit was to design one of the subjects for the famous pavement of the cathedral, but whether he ever did it we do not know; certainly it was never executed in marble. in the next year we have the usual records of official appointments, and as a proof of his artistic activity, the two pictures still remaining in the little town of arcevia, dated and , one of them, the splendid _ancona_, being among his finest works. now a man of nearly seventy, signorelli's energies seemed to grow greater with increasing age, for in we find him, besides being elected to his usual offices, deputed as ambassador to florence, to demand there permission to reform the offices and ordinances of cortona, and in the same year he was at rome, together with perugino, pintorricchio, and sodoma, working at the decoration of the vatican chambers, already begun by pier dei franceschi. giambattista caporali gives a glimpse into their social life in rome, telling of a supper given in their honour by bramante[ ]--bramante, to whose introduction to the pope of the young raffaelle it is due that none of their work, with the exception of perugino's ceiling, remains to us. how much signorelli painted we do not know. vasari says, "he had successfully completed one wall,"[ ] but so enchanted was julius ii. with the facile and modern style of raffaelle, that after he had finished the "stanza della segnatura," he forced him to destroy the paintings of the older masters and delivered the entire work to him and his assistants: a caprice which points a very significant turn in the history of painting--the triumph of the late renaissance over the giants of the past. signorelli seemed destined to find nothing but disappointment in rome. five years later, an old man of seventy-two, he again went there, this time on the accession of giovanni dei medici, in , to the papal chair. knowing the luxurious nature of the new pope, and remembering the intense passion of his father lorenzo for art and letters, to rome flocked poets and painters, sculptors and architects, from every part of italy, in the hope of work or of reward, and among them came signorelli, with reasonable expectation of employment, and notice from the son of his old patron and friend.[ ] like his predecessor, however, leo x. preferred the more modern school of raffaelle and his pupils, and luca had to return disappointed to cortona. in connection with the visit exists a curious document, which has smirched too long the honour of the painter. it is the famous letter of michelangelo, preserved among the buonarotti archives, in which he makes a complaint to the capitano of cortona, that signorelli, sick with the ingratitude of the medici "for the love of whom he would have had his head cut off," had borrowed of him eighty _juli_ with which to return to cortona; that on application for the money, luca declared it to have been already repaid, so that now he--michelangelo--sees no other way of obtaining his own but by application to the capitano for justice.[ ] this is the gist of the letter; we have to use our own knowledge of the character of the two men to decipher the mystery, since no other document confirms or denies the accusation. the reasonable explanation seems to be that some delay, probably on the road, in the transmission of the money, irritated the notoriously impatient temper of michelangelo. signorelli's character, from all we know of it, seems to have been most upright and generous. "such was the goodness of his nature, that he never lent himself to things that were not just and righteous," says vasari,[ ] and that he should have been guilty of so petty a crime towards a friend, is not for a moment to be believed. moreover, his will, re-made in the following year, proves him to have been in prosperous circumstances, while the fact that he continued to hold his appointments, and to receive fresh and even more honourable ones, testifies to the respect in which he was held by his fellow-citizens. in pleasant contrast with michelangelo's accusation are the glimpses we have of his stately old age, through vasari. "and at last," he writes, "having completed works for nearly all the princes of italy, and being now old, he returned to cortona, where, in his last years, he worked more for pleasure than any other reason, as one who, accustomed to labour, knew not how to be idle."[ ] of these later paintings the "deposition" of umbertide proves that the old man of seventy-five had lost little of his power. it is one of his most beautiful and tender renderings of a scene he has so often painted. the "madonna," now in the arezzo gallery, painted three years later ( ), shows, perhaps, a slight falling off in technical power, while retaining to the full his characteristic grandeur of conception. it was this picture which, vasari tells us, was borne on the shoulders of the brothers, for whose order it was painted, from cortona to arezzo, and luca, old as he was, insisted on accompanying them, partly to place it in position, as was customary, and partly to revisit his friends and relations. the biographer gives a characteristic incident in connection with this visit, told so charmingly, that i can do no better than transcribe it:-- "and he, being lodged in the house of the vasari, where i was a little child of eight years, i remember how that good old man, who was always gracious and courteous, having learnt from the master who first taught me my letters, that i cared for nothing else at school but drawing pictures; i remember, i say, he turned to antonio, my father, and said to him: 'antonio, since giorgio takes after his family, let him by all means be taught how to draw, because, even if he cares for literature, to know how to draw cannot but be a source of honour and enjoyment, if not of utility, to him, as to every honourable man.' then he turned to me, who stood up straight before him, and said, 'learn, little kinsman.'" and vasari adds, how, hearing that he suffered much from bleeding at the nose, which sometimes left him half dead, signorelli hung a jasper charm about his neck, "with infinite tenderness. which memory of luca," he concludes, "will remain eternally fixed in my soul."[ ]--one of those delightful human touches of which the writings of vasari are so full. this visit to arezzo took place only four years before his death. he must have died in , at the age of eighty-two, but there is no special record of the event, the date being gathered only from a document, which tells of the election on the th of december of another inspector of santa margherita, to fill the place of the dead painter.[ ] on the th of october of the same year, he had made his last will, leaving, with many minor bequests, the bulk of his property to his son, pier tommaso, and his grandson, giulio, and expressing his desire to be buried in the tomb of his family in the church of s. francesco.[ ] in his first edition, vasari tells us that, after his death, his memory was honoured by many epitaphs, among which he quotes the following:-- "pianga cortona omai, vestasi oscura, che estinti son' del signorello i lumi; et tu, pittura, fa de gli occhi fiumi, chè resti senza lui debili e scura."[ ] apparently signorelli retained his health and energy up to the end of his long life, for only the year before his death he had accepted fresh appointments in cortona, and, in addition to his old offices, was filling those of priore of the fraternity of s. mark, sindaco del capitans, and several others, religious and secular. he was, moreover, still actively painting, and in the very year of his death he completed the altar-piece for the church at foiano, a work as noble and majestic in conception as it is vigorous in execution, besides accepting a commission from the priori to paint them an altar-piece for the chapel of their palace. i can do no better than conclude this scanty history with the character of the man, as it is told us by vasari: "luca was a person of excellent habits, sincere and affectionate with his friends, sweet and agreeable in his converse with everyone, specially courteous to those who had need of his help, and kindly in his instructions to his pupils. he lived most splendidly, and delighted in dressing well. for the which good qualities he was always, in his own country and elsewhere, held in the highest veneration."[ ] footnotes: [ ] the "madonna" (no. ), and "the flagellation" (no. ), brera, milan. [ ] it was the fame of lazzaro's son giorgio as an imitator of antique vases that won for the family the name vasari. [ ] vasari, ii. . [ ] vasari, ii. . [ ] vasari, ii. . editor's notes. [ ] vasari, iii. and . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] muzi, "memorie," p. ; and giacomo mancini, "istruzioni," ii. and . [ ] for the dates of these various appointments, see the chronological table, p. . [ ] i have thought it best only to translate those titles which have a corresponding meaning in our own country. [ ] vischer, p. . [ ] it is with the utmost diffidence i venture to hold a different opinion from a critic of such weight as morelli (see "italian painters," i. ), but a careful comparison has forced me to subscribe to the later judgments. crowe & cavalcaselle (see cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. ) and vischer (signorelli, p. ) have both maintained that a great part of the execution reveals the hand of bartolommeo della gatta. one of the latest critics, mr b. berensen, presumes that the whole fresco is by him. i know too little of this painter's style to be able to form an opinion, feeling certain only that it is not by signorelli. [ ] see chronological table, p. . [ ] arch. dell opera del duomo di firenze. deliberazioni dall'anno all'anno . a carte . the document merely mentions his name among those who were unable to attend. [ ] see chronological table, p. . [ ] see "guida all'arcicenobio di monte oliveto" (siena, ), p. . [ ] proved by a document in the orvieto archives, containing a list of materials handed over by the treasurer of the works to polidoro. see vischer, p. . [ ] now in the opera del duomo, orvieto. the portrait of signorelli in the frontispiece is the half of this painting. [ ] the letter is transcribed in vischer, p. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] in the reprint of cesariano's "comments on vitruvius," by g. b. caporali. (perugia, ). the passage is quoted in vermiglioli's "memorie di pintorricchio" ( ), pp. and . [ ] vasari, iv. . [ ] the biographers of signorelli, following the lead of vasari, have dwelt much on his friendship with contemporary princes--the baglioni, vitelli, etc.; till we have grown to think of him rather as a silk-clad courtier than a hard-working burgher and painter. it may well be that, like leonardo, he combined work with luxury, but the evidence is of too slight a nature to allow us to consider that side of his life, if it really existed. of his friendship with lorenzo dei medici, however, there is more proof, since he painted for him, and was evidently influenced by his classic tastes, as several of his pictures show. [ ] the letter is transcribed in vischer, p. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] mancini, "notizie," . [ ] arch. gen. di contratti di firenze. rogiti di ser baldelli. filza dal al . [ ] "let cortona weep henceforth, and clothe herself in black, for the light of signorello is extinguished; and thou, painting, make rivers of thine eyes for without him thou remainest weak and obscure." [ ] vasari, iii. . chapter ii development and characteristics of his genius the foregoing chapter contains only a bare record of certain facts in the life of luca signorelli. fortunately time has spared many of his paintings, and in the study of these we get a fuller insight into his nature and his aims. a man's work is, after all, the most satisfactory and reliable document for those who take the pains to decipher it--the autobiography which every man of genius bequeaths to posterity. we have seen how by good fortune he was placed as a child to study painting under pier dei franceschi, who was of all men most able to bring out in his pupils the finer instincts and nobler qualities of their genius. by his guidance and example, no doubt, signorelli cultivated his natural breadth of conception and of treatment, which give grandeur and impressive solemnity to all his works, besides acquiring the technical excellences of good drawing, solid modelling, and the broad massing of the shadows, which are so characteristic of piero's own painting. the spirit of master and pupil was fundamentally alike, the chief points of dissimilarity in their work arising from minor divergences of temperament. both were men of robust mind, with a message of resolute purpose to deliver. both chose to express themselves through the medium of the human form in its most vigorous aspects, and were, therefore, pre-occupied with mastering its structure. but while piero, with a serene nature, chose to represent unemotional figures like the sculptures of the ancient egyptians, the restless and impetuous spirit of signorelli preferred scenes of violent action, and energetic movement. it was, perhaps, the entire affinity of their temperament, as well as his passion for anatomical study, which led him to choose his second master in a man whose taste for realism, and interest in the action of muscle and movement of limb was as keen as his own. on antonio pollaiuolo, even more than on pier dei franceschi, had fallen the mantle of paolo uccello's investigating spirit. as the latter gave all his attention to applying the laws of perspective to landscape and figures, so the efforts of pollaiuolo were concentrated on giving freedom to the limbs. great anatomist though he was, piero was not so ardent a lover of the nude for its own sake as the florentine, and the problems of movement have little interest for him, whereas in the most characteristic work of pollaiuolo it is evident that the scenes are chosen to display the muscles in tense prominence, and the limbs in violent action or unusual posture.[ ] with precisely the same interests in the human structure and its movements, it is no wonder that signorelli caught so much of his style and mannerisms. the influence of antonio pollaiuolo was stronger than any other in the development of his actual work, and is visible in all his paintings up to the last in greater or less degree, but only less important is that of donatello, to whom antonio himself owed so much. forty years before the birth of signorelli, donatello had been able to carve the human form with absolute perfection of anatomy, and not only that, but to endow it with freedom of limb and overflowing life. it is easy to suppose the impression his statues must have made on the youth, whose spirit was so much akin to his own in exuberant energy, and who had the same uncompromising love of realism. the two artists had much in common in their confident self-reliance, and almost arrogant buoyancy of nature, which was the true renaissance expression, and the outward sign of its immense strength. signorelli caught and revived the very essence of donatello's spirit--the love of bodily life in its most hopeful and vigorous manifestations. it is significant that the swaggering posture which became such a special feature of his painting, should have originated with donatello. donatello was, before all things, a realist, and it was probably the habitual attitude of the cavalry soldier of the day, accustomed to straddle over the broad back of his war-horse, but there is little doubt that it was adopted by signorelli from the "s. george" of or san michele, and perhaps half-unconsciously signified to him--what that statue so well embodies--the confident spirit of youth and strength. in his portrait of pippo spana, now in s. apollonia, florence, andrea di castagno also imitated and emphasised it, as also did botticelli in his carved background of the "calumny," and perugino in many of his paintings. but botticelli's painted statue and perugino's "s. michael" and "warriors" of the cambio seem to spread their legs because they are too puny to bear the weight of the body in any other manner, while with signorelli, the attitude became the keynote of his resolute indomitable nature, and so much a part of his work, that one is apt to forget it did not originate with him. although the character and aims of the two men are so entirely different, yet to perugino, signorelli owed much in his methods of producing the feeling of free space, and the life and movement of the atmosphere. perugino's greatest gift to art was this power of rendering the magic of the sun-warmed air and the sense of illimitable distance. he gave to his landscapes space and depth, the gentle stir of wind, and the golden shimmer of sunshine. signorelli also learnt this power of presenting the life of hill and tree and sky, and some of his effects of distance have the space and grandeur almost of nature herself. he also, like perugino, could detach his figures from the background, and send the line of hills receding back to the horizon. signorelli owes to him, besides, certain superficial characteristics, such as the fluttering scarfs and ribbon-like draperies, and the upturned face with ecstatic eyes which belongs to the umbrian painter as much as the drooping head belongs to botticelli. from these four great artists signorelli learnt what each had best to give, and assimilated and made it his own, with unerring instinct for its virtue in aiding his own specific qualities. not that he was in any sense an eclectic, but he had the unconscious tendency of the healthy soul to seize upon the food that best ministers to its nourishment. thus the fine genius and inspiration of pier dei franceschi and the grace of perugino saved him from becoming too rigorously realistic under the influence of the scientific florentines, donatello and pollaiuolo, working upon his own uncompromising nature. the most important writers on signorelli--crowe and cavalcaselle,[ ] rumohr,[ ] and, above all, vischer,[ ] mention several other masters, who, they claim, exercised an influence upon his work, and it is obvious that to the sienese school generally he was indebted for many decorative methods, particularly in the use of gold and gilded gesso. there are also in some of his paintings reminiscences of verrocchio and fiorenzo di lorenzo; but an impression of sufficient depth to be considered, must touch the spirit, and here there appears to me to be little besides superficial resemblances. it must be remembered, moreover, in the case of verrocchio, how much he himself owed to donatello, while with respect to the asserted influence of pintorricchio, it is more probable that what likeness there is in their style should testify to the impression of the stronger upon the weaker nature. with andrea di castagno his work, both in outward form and in spirit, has something in common; and no doubt signorelli was impressed by paintings which themselves show so much the influence of donatello. as we have seen, luca's chief interest, like that of pollaiuolo, lay in the effort to render movement of limb with facility, and therefore his attention was concentrated on the muscles and their action. we do not know how long he studied anatomy from the dead and living model in the florentine workshop, nor have we any example of his gradual development, for when he first appears before us in his earliest remaining work, "the flagellation," of the brera, he is already the master who has conquered all the difficulties of muscular movement, and surpassed even antonio pollaiuolo in freedom of gesture and correct anatomy. it is not till later, however, that the most important advance he made on previous painting first begins to show itself--the power, namely, of rendering combined action, of working the limbs of a crowd into a single movement. this is signorelli's special achievement, on the merits of which he takes rank with the most important masters of the quattrocento as a pioneer and teacher. great as was pollaiuolo's command over gesture and action, it was limited to the combination of two figures only,[ ] while with signorelli the action of the single figure is held subordinate to that of the multitude. he gives the stately march of an army, as in the umbertide predella and the monte oliveto fresco; the writhings of innumerable figures, like heaps of coiled serpents, as in the "damnation" of orvieto; the rush of a violent mob stirred by a common impulse, as in the florence and cortona "betrayals." this command over united movement was new in painting, though, like all other difficulties, it had been already mastered by donatello, as we see in his romping children of the prato pulpit, and the florence cantoria, to name only two examples. botticelli, who, with so different a nature, had yet, in common with the robust signorelli, this passion for swift movement, achieved later, it is true, almost as great triumphs[ ]; but to luca belongs the merit of having endowed painting with the same freedom of combined movement which donatello had given to sculpture. unlike botticelli, he is consistently a lover of energy all through his life, and as the source of energy, of strength, and vigorous health. his grand conception of the body is one of the chief characteristics of his work. strong and stately, it is a fit receptacle for the spirit of resolution and self-confidence with which he animates it. his virgins are like goddesses, and seem to typify for him the strength of womanhood. nowhere do we see nobler beauty than in his angels and archangels. in these "divine birds"[ ] he seems to have recognised the ideal of all he strove for, and their wings are symbols to him of swift movement and superhuman strength. it was always strength that attracted him, and strength conscious of its own force, finding its expression in exuberant animation. thus he loves to paint the swaggering soldiers, whose attitudes express their audacious self-reliance. he gives the luxuriant life of nature as no one else gave it, and his trees and plants are as robust and unyielding as his firmly-planted figures. his angels' wings are not merely decorative, but have real power of muscle under the plumes to lift the body and bear it aloft without fatigue. he was a lover of beauty, but it was not for beauty he strove, or we should not so often find bits of realistic ugliness to risk the harmony of his noblest paintings. grace and charm seemed to come to him unsought, as natural adjuncts of a vigorous and healthy nature; but his deliberate choice of types of face and form, were those which, by their strength, promised satisfaction to his love of energetic action. from the first this tendency is noticeable, for example, in the above-mentioned "flagellation," and the loreto "conversion of saul," and goes on increasing until it reaches a climax in the frescoes of orvieto. once one has grasped the main motive of signorelli's work, his preoccupation with movement, and consequently with the muscles, his frequent defects and inequalities in other respects become, as faults of inattention, less incomprehensible. for example, his values of distance are often faulty, and give the unpleasant sensation that one figure is standing on the top of another,[ ] a defect of carelessness, for no one is a better master of aerial perspective when he chooses. again, his hands and feet are often incorrectly drawn and badly modelled, but it is only when they are not essential to the action; for although the drawing of hands and feet is always perhaps his weakest point, yet even in his early painting of the "flagellation" he has already mastered some of their greatest difficulties of foreshortening. the recognition of the intention in a man's work enables one to dispense with much adverse criticism in detail. it would be wearisome to reiterate the faults of drawing in each picture when we come to deal with them separately, and it is better to recognise in the outset that, in pursuit of a certain definite end, signorelli is careless of what seems to him unessential at the moment. thus in dealing with him as a colourist[ ] we have to bear in mind that it was by line and modelling chiefly that his effects of movement were obtained. to be over-critical of the shortcomings of his colour, therefore, would be as foolish as to miss the charm of bonifazio's splendid harmonies in abuse of some defect of drawing. sometimes, in fact, signorelli gains his end by the very crudeness and heaviness for which he is generally condemned, the sharp contrasts giving a rugged strength to his painting, and the copper colour of the flesh adding robustness to the figures. it would, however, be most unjust to speak as if his colour were always, or even usually, crude and harsh. on the contrary, in landscape it is invariably beautiful; and he uses certain golden and moss-greens in foliage and grass, and a limpid greenish-blue in water, which are most harmonious. sometimes it is gorgeous, and in nearly all his early paintings there is a beauty of red and soft green, and a warmth of golden glow of great depth and tenderness. he had, perhaps, a tendency to the use of too heavy colour, especially in the flesh; and he himself seems aware of it, for, in middle life, for a brief time, he changed his tone to an almost silvery lightness, with very pale flesh-tints, as in the uffizi "holy family," no. , and again, after working at orvieto, in the "dead christ supported by angels," of s. niccolò, cortona, whose general colour is almost like honey; but he relapses always into his characteristic dark tones, especially in the works of his old age, which are for the most part heavy and rather harsh, with flesh-tints of the reddish-brown of terra-cotta. it is, as i have said, by form rather than colour that signorelli obtains his best effects. he is a superb linealist, as the often-quoted "flagellation" shows, and one is inclined to wish he had oftener used outline, as here, in the manner of pier dei franceschi. his line is firm and clear, simple and structural, of unerring sweep and accuracy, as we see in his numerous _predella_ paintings; but even more remarkable is the wonderful plastic quality of his modelling. by this he makes us realise better than any one before him the tenseness of sinew, the resistance of hard muscle, and the supple elasticity of flesh, giving a solidity and weight to his forms that make them impressive as grand sculptures. as an illustrator signorelli is most unequal; brilliant and dramatic when the subject appealed to his taste, as in the orvieto frescoes, often weak, as in his treatment of sacred themes. he was essentially a religious painter, but in the widest meaning of the word, and he does not seem to have felt the dignity and significance of many of the scenes in the life of christ. when he has to paint him bound to the pillar or nailed to the cross, submissive to scourging and insult, his interest seems to wander from what should be the central figure, and fixes itself on some two or three of the minor actors, to whom he gives the importance he should have concentrated on the christ. the painter _con amore_ of arrogant strength, he seems to have little in common with meekness and humility that bows the head to scourging and martyrdom. thus in nearly all his "crucifixions" the central figure is ignoble in type and expression, and in the "flagellations" of the brera and of morra, is entirely without dignity, even ignominious. this is curious when we consider that even more than of arrogant strength signorelli was the painter of stately and noble beauty. again it seems as if he cared only to represent figures of powerful maturity, for there is a complete lack of sympathy in his painting of children. with one or two exceptions, his child christs are half-animal little beings, more like tiny satyrs than human children, although not without a certain pathos in their very ugliness. in a picture of as great beauty and tender feeling as the "holy family," of the rospigliosi collection, for example, the child is more animal than human. unlike donatello, who delights in childhood, and sees in it the bubbling source of future strength, signorelli gives his babies the overweighted, unelastic sadness of old age. in composing his holy families, therefore, his attention is centred on the virgin, the strong woman he loved to paint, but the child he seems to feel as an accessory to be executed because the church has ordered it, and so he puts it in without thought of all it meant and typified. but although he sometimes falls short as an interpreter of the church's intention, the impressive grandeur of his work is in itself intensely religious, and he makes us feel most solemnly the dignity of nature, and especially of the human form. once he was stirred into something of the pagan spirit, probably under the influence of the court of lorenzo, and he touched the real note of pantheism in the "pan," of the berlin gallery, and the noble figures in the background of the uffizi and munich "madonnas." in these the spiritual mood dominates and is sustained throughout, and there is no sign of the scientific absorption which sometimes in his treatment of the nude makes us too aware of the student and the realist. one is at times conscious that, painting straight from the life, signorelli's interest lay chiefly in a faithful reproduction of the body before him. his dead christs for example, were obviously copied exactly as the corpses lay or hung in his studio. the s. onofrio of the perugia altar-piece, stood just so, a half-starved street-beggar, with baggy skin over rheumatic joints. the angel in the same picture, chosen perhaps for its grace of face, must be reproduced exactly as the child sat, with weak legs and ungainly body. each figure is a truthful study from life, and it was that which interested the painter, and not that he was representing saints and angels whose noble beauty was supposed to elevate the mind to a state of worship. yet with all his realistic treatment, he was intensely alive to the graces of decoration, both in general lines and in detail. in the frescoes of loreto, and more particularly of orvieto, the mere scheme of decoration is superb, and adds beauty and distinction to every subtle line of the architecture. he pays attention, also, to the minor details of decorative effect, and takes pains with the ornaments and embroideries; while his use of gold, and embossing with gesso, add much to the æsthetic charm of his work, and proves that he could, when necessary, subordinate his love of realism to his sense of beauty. before summing up the chief qualities of signorelli's work, i must not omit one characteristic which points to the strength of his personality--the way he repeats his own types (and not types only, but precisely the same forms) time after time, and often after the lapse of many years. the child christs he paints over and over again, the same figure, sometimes exactly in the same attitude, as in the "madonnas," of the florence academy and of the brera. the seated burly bishop of the loreto vaulting (one of his earliest works) occurs again in the volterra "madonna," and again (painted many years later) in the "madonna," of the florence academy. line for line he reproduces the figure of echo, out of the early "pan," into the fresco of "the crowning of the elect," at orvieto. in one or two cases he boldly repeats the same figure in the same picture, feature for feature, as in the virgin and s. john of the rospigliosi "holy family," limb for limb as in the flying soldiers of the loreto "conversion of saul." he was also most faithful to his own type of limb or feature, especially those in which morelli has taught us always to look for similarity. the fleshy ear, with its slightly pointed top, is nearly invariable, as also is the broad hand with its little outlined nails and thick wrists. in glancing rapidly over the whole of signorelli's work, consistency to an absorbing interest is the note struck again and again. he has set himself from the first a task--the mastery of the human structure and its movements; and with the resolution and perseverance of a strong nature, he never swerves from his purpose. this is the conscious aim and intention of the artist. what he was able to give to the world, of nobility and dignity--a wider and healthier conception of nature and her power and beauty--was the message of his genius, of which he was himself unconscious, but which spoke all the more forcibly for the learning acquired by hard application and earnest effort. in a detailed study of his painting, it may be that the student of anatomy and the realist often assert themselves, but as grand figure after grand figure has passed before the mind, the general impression is solemn and ennobling. "to no other contemporary painter," says morelli, "was it given to endow the human frame with the like degree of passion, vehemence and strength."[ ] to this we may add that no other painter has ever conceived humanity with the same stately grandeur and in the same broad spirit. the confident strength of youth, the stern austerity of middle life, the resolute solemnity of old age--these are his themes. signorelli is, before all, the painter of the dignity of human life. footnotes: [ ] it is sufficient to cite the double picture of "hercules," of the uffizi, the "s. sebastian," of the national gallery, and the engraving called "the battle of the nudes." [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. , etc. [ ] ital. forsch. ii. . [ ] vischer, , etc. vischer considers the likeness to fiorenzo due to their mutual relation to verrocchio. [ ] even the splendid decorative engraving called "the battle of the nudes," is only a series of duels. a comparison of these figures with the two nude executioners in the brera "flagellation" will justify the assertion of signorelli's superiority as a master of anatomy and movement. [ ] specially in "the death of virginia," of the morelli collection, bergamo, and the sketched figures in the repainted "adoration of the magi," lately exposed in the uffizi. [ ] "purgatorio," ii. . [ ] for example, in the "madonna," of the mancini collection, and "the crowning of the elect," at orvieto. [ ] signorelli's pictures, when not frescoed, are invariably painted with oil. [ ] "italian painters," i. . chapter iii earliest works one of the most remarkable things in the history of signorelli's work, considering what a number of his paintings remain, is that only two of them can be placed with any degree of certainty as having been executed before his fortieth year. these two are the "madonna" (no. ), and "the flagellation" (no. ), in the brera gallery, milan. this last, however--"the flagellation"--indicates in what manner much of his earlier time had been employed, for although betraying in parts a certain youthful immaturity, yet the skilful drawing and thorough comprehension of anatomy shown in the nudes, especially in the backs of the two executioners, reveals already the practised hand of a master of his craft. [illustration: [_brera, milan_ the flagellation] the best studies of the nude remaining to us by earlier painters, are the figures in "the death of adam," by pier dei franceschi, in his frescoes at arezzo, the "hercules overcoming antæus," and "the battle of the nudes," by antonio pollaiuolo, in the uffizi gallery. it is sufficient to compare with these the freer rendering of gesture, and the greater accuracy of the anatomy in signorelli's executioners, to see what an advance he had already made upon any previous painting. (i limit, of course, this assertion to painting only, for in sculpture donatello had years before given free gesture and perfect anatomy to his statues.) it would be impossible to overrate the excellence and beauty of drawing in the splendid swing of the bodies, the flexibility of the limbs, the sinewy elasticity of the leg muscles, and above all, the subtle suggestion of muscular movement under the loose skin of the backs. there is here, even more than in his later painting, an appreciation of the relative values of the muscles, and a consequent breadth of modelling, which he lost somewhat, by over-accentuation, in his subsequent treatment of the nude. the inequalities of the picture betray wherein lay the painter's chief interest, for to this skilful mastery of the difficulties of anatomy are opposed the rather childish conception of the pilate and the stiff action of all the clothed figures. his apprenticeship to pier dei franceschi is here sufficiently proved, not so much by any likeness of colour or of composition to "the flagellations," of that master, in urbino and borgo san sepolero, as in the firm, clear outlining of the nude figures, their solid modelling, and in the broad massing of the shadows. even more apparent is the influence of antonio pollaiuolo, in the great realism with which the subject is treated, and in such superficial resemblances as the type of head of the executioner who binds the hands of christ, and the characteristic striped loin-cloths. the christ is one of signorelli's most ignoble presentations of the saviour, and yet it seems as though he had tried to give graces which should harmonise with a certain conception of the character--the hair, for example, is the beautiful rippling hair of a woman, the bent head and downcast eyes represent the gentleness of resignation, and the attitude of the legs is intended to be graceful. but the effort to curb his own natural instinct for pride and strength makes him strike a false note, and his attempt to give the beauty of meekness has resulted only in producing a mask of hypocritical inertia. the picture was painted for the church of santa maria del mercato in fabriano, and this, as well as the fact of its being precisely the same size, and with the same curved top, seems to argue that it formed originally one picture with the madonna, no. of the same gallery, whose _provenance_ is also from that church. here the virgin sits,[ ] clad in a gold garment and blue green-lined mantle, with the child on her knee, and floating round her dark-green cherubs' heads. she is the powerful type of woman, from which in his virgins signorelli never departed, but in this case with a rather cow-like expression, which gave place later to a tender or noble dignity. the face of the child has lost its original character through repainting, but the cherubs' heads surrounding the throne, have the overweighted, half-animal expression of which i have already spoken as characteristic of his children. next in order, as far as can be judged by the internal evidence of the painting, come the frescoes in the sacristy of the church of the santa casa at loreto. they were finished some time before , and bear very marked traces of florentine impressions. of these vasari writes: "in santa maria di loreto, he painted in the sacristy in fresco, the four evangelists, the four doctors, and other saints, which are very beautiful; and for this work he was liberally rewarded by pope sixtus."[ ] this is a mistake, for the patron of the church was cardinal girolamo basso della rovere, and the presence of his coat-of-arms in the centre of the cupola is evidence that the work was executed at his expense. in each of the eight compartments of this roof is painted a standing angel, playing or tuning musical instruments--most graceful and beautiful figures. below are seated the four evangelists and four fathers of the church, against a gold background, who seem, in their impressive grandeur to be prototypes of the prophets and sybils of michelangelo's sistine frescoes. i do not agree with vischer in seeing the hand of bartolommeo della gatta in the angels. they show much of the influence of pollaiuolo, and seem to me to be signorelli's unassisted work. the face and gesture of one of them especially--the angel in the flowered robe playing a lute--is almost a duplicate of the child on the _gradino_ of the throne in the perugia altar-piece. the bishop in the compartment next this angel is repeated in the volterra "madonna and saints," and in that of the florence academy. [illustration: [_santa casa, loreto_ apostles] in the divisions of the walls under the roof are painted the twelve apostles, grand and stately figures, standing two in each compartment, divided by imitation pilasters, and forming a magnificent frieze round the walls. the draperies are exceedingly broadly painted and this breadth of treatment and the boldness of the design gives importance to the figures. there being seven compartments to be filled, in two of them signorelli has introduced the figure of christ, treated this time with dignity, perhaps because here he is represented as the master, and not the "man of sorrows." in one he reproves s. peter (?), who turns away with conscience-stricken humility very nobly rendered; in the other he shows the marks of the passion to the incredulous thomas. these two are perhaps the finest of the series, and are, besides, dramatic in gesture and expression. the composition of the last is, with evident intention, borrowed from verrocchio's group on the walls of or san michele, florence, but the likeness ends with the general lines of composition. vischer makes a strong point of this, as a proof of verrocchio's influence on signorelli,[ ] but to me it seems that feeling, types of face, and especially the broad and simple treatment of the draperies are entirely different. [illustration: [_santa casa, loreto_ the incredulity of s. thomas] the most important of these frescoes, however, as best illustrating signorelli's own peculiar tendencies, is "the conversion of saul," in the compartment over the door. he has realised the scene with emotion, and rendered it with a most convincing dramatic power, giving the suddenness of the fall of the principal figure, and the excitement and panic-stricken terror of the soldiers, with wonderful truth and animation. it is interesting to note the almost exact repetition of the same figure in the two soldiers who hurry away to the left, but it is not at all mechanical, and in no way detracts from the excellence of the composition. very pollaiuolesque is the figure with raised shield in the foreground to the right, and one feels the influence of perugino in the spacious empty distance of the background, from which the figures are so well detached. [illustration: [_santa casa, loreto_ the conversion of saul] as decoration these frescoes are exceedingly fine, the grand row of figures, besides the stately strength of each separate group, being most impressive in general effect. they have been much damaged. for many years used as a sacristy, the greasy smoke of the incense had so blackened the walls that the frescoes were nearly invisible. the skilful cleaning of signor guiseppe missaghi, at the instigation of signor cavalcaselle, has restored to them much of their original beauty, although the colour still remains somewhat obscured. on the roof of the nave, in the church itself, are painted a series of frescoes in _grisaille_, twenty-six prophets and fathers of the church, somewhat over life size, seated one in each medallion. they are solemn and impressive figures like those in the sacristy, and painted on the same broad lines, and remind one strongly of the two medallions, also in _grisaille_, in the "madonna," of the uffizi corridor. all of them have severely suffered from repainting. "the adoration of the magi," formerly in the campana gallery, rome, now no. of the louvre, seems to have been painted in . crowe and cavalcaselle[ ] rightly consider its execution to be the work of assistants, by reason of the rawness of colour and general coarseness of the painting; yet in composition, and in many of the figures, there is so much of the master's impressive dignity, that i feel compelled to regard the drawing, in parts at least, as his own. the stately madonna, and the noble figure of the king on her right, whose draperies have the same sweeping breadth as those in the national gallery, "circumcision," as well as the solid, well-seated figures of the mounted attendants, seem to be signorelli's own composing. the child is also characteristic, and resembles that in the _tondo_ of the pitti gallery. the badly-drawn horses, again, seem his, for it will be noticed all through his work that he has never cared to thoroughly master their form, and paints them always with curious mannerisms of too closely-placed nostrils, and human eyebrows, which show how little attention he had given to their anatomy. the first dated picture remaining is the altar-piece of the perugia cathedral, painted in , of which vasari writes: "also in perugia he painted many works; and among others in the cathedral, for messer jacopo vannucci of cortona, bishop of the city, a picture in which is our lady, sant onofrio, sant ercolano, s. john baptist, s. stephen,[ ] and an angel, most beautiful, who tunes a lute."[ ] the inscription with the date (given in the catalogue) are unfortunately hidden by the frame. this is one of signorelli's finest altar-pieces, the colour being especially rich and harmonious, and it shows, even more than the loreto frescoes, the strength of florentine influences. for example, very close to pollaiuolo is the figure of the angel tuning the lute, with its striped scarf, and so also is the powerful head of s. ercolano. the s. stephen is almost a reproduction of the bust of s. lorenzo by donatello in the sacristy of the church of that saint in florence, the aged s. onofrio again recalls his wooden statue of s. jerome in faenza, and finally the motive of the cut flowers in glasses is borrowed from the triptych of hugo van der goes in the gallery of santa maria nuova, florence. the ornamental accessories are singularly fine and careful in finish, and it would seem as though signorelli had been inspired in this, not only by the great tryptych, but also by the followers of the paduan squarcione. in the last chapter i have pointed out the extreme realism with which the figures are treated, but this does not spoil the impressive grandeur of the painting, gained by the broad style and the stately simplicity of the composition. the virgin sits firmly, with the mantle resting in heavy folds across her knees; the s. stephen is overflowing with the vigorous life of youth; the splendidly-draped bishop is a powerful and majestic figure; and there is real tenderness and grace in the face of the angel, notwithstanding the want of symmetry in the body and legs. the painting has suffered from restoration, but on the whole is fairly well preserved, and may be seen to advantage in the quiet of this well-lighted winter-chapel. [illustration: [_cathedral, perugia_ madonna and saints] crowe and cavalcaselle place "the circumcision," of the national gallery, formerly in volterra, as about the same date as the foregoing;[ ] vischer, presuming that it was painted at the same time with the dated pictures of still remaining in volterra, groups it with them; but the similarity of colour and treatment lead me to accept the former theory. the distance from cortona to volterra is not very great, and the fact that he was painting there in does not preclude the possibility of his having painted there six or seven years before, even if it was executed on the spot, which was not by any means always the case. at all events the picture has much in common with the perugia altar-piece, both in warmth of colour, simplicity of composition and splendid breadth of execution. the painting of this "circumcision" is bold and resolute, the draperies sweep in broad folds round the figures. the attitude of the standing woman to the right is grand, and the earnest concentration of the faces on the ceremony, and the absence of any connecting link between them and us, give dramatic reality to the scene. vasari writes of it: "at volterra he painted in fresco"--(a mistake--it is his usual oil medium)--"in the church of s. francesco, above the altar of the brotherhood, the circumcision of our lord, which is considered marvellously beautiful; although the child, having suffered from the damp, was repainted by sodoma much less beautiful than it was before."[ ] this unfortunate repainting, which has also evidently included part of the virgin's face, was more probably due to the monks' dislike of signorelli's type of child than to any damage by weather, for it would be strange that a picture, otherwise so well preserved, should be injured by damp nowhere but in the part most protected by reason of its central position. to support this theory, under the painting by sodoma may be clearly seen (in the painting--not in the photograph) the original legs of the child of signorelli, in a totally different position, showing that sodoma had made no attempt to keep to the drawing. the monks, no doubt, preferred the more commonplace infant of sodoma, but we, while acknowledging that the children of signorelli are far from what they should be, may regret the loss, as did vasari, who adds this comment: "it would be better to retain the work of excellent men, even though half spoiled, than to have it repainted by one who knows less." [illustration: [_national gallery, london_ the circumcision] a very important group of paintings apparently of about this date, bear the impress of the classic tastes of the court of lorenzo dei medici, for whom they seem to have been painted. it comprises the great picture of "pan," in the berlin gallery, the "madonna," of the uffizi corridor, and the munich _tondo_. i have been tempted to give them a much earlier place, in the gap before the perugia altar-piece, because they show so much of the idealism and idyllic spirit, which seem properly to belong to youth, but a careful comparison of them with that picture and the loreto frescoes, reveals a greater maturity of technique which makes so early a placing not very probable. in all these three paintings there is an appreciation of beauty for its own sake, and a true touch of the pantheistic spirit, combined with a melancholy grandeur, which is most impressive. the finest of the three, the great canvas of "pan," now in the berlin gallery, is the picture of which vasari wrote: "he painted for lorenzo dei medici, on canvas, some nude gods, which were much praised ... and presented to the said lorenzo."[ ] sometimes called the "school of pan," it is more poetically described in the german catalogue "pan, as god of natural life, and master of music, with his attendants." it is full of poetry, and of idyllic charm with all its stately solemnity. the sad beauty of the god as he listens to the music of the pipes, the golden sunlight on the moss-green grass, the quiet peace of the scene, have an entrancing effect, and we are transported in spirit to the same "melodious plot of beechen green and shadows numberless" where pan holds his court. [illustration: [_gallery, berlin_ pan] the bronze-coloured body of the god is magnificently modelled, with a solidity unequalled even in the orvieto frescoes. the style of pollaiuolo is noticeable, in the attitude of the youth lying at his feet, particularly in the treatment of the legs. the figure of echo is repeated later in "the crowning of the elect," in orvieto, though there it has lost much of the idyllic charm of this wood-nymph. the grouping of the figures is perhaps less happy than usual, but this time the bad values of distance are no doubt due to the rough treatment the painting has undergone. it has indeed had an eventful history. about thirty years ago it was found by the late signor tricca, a noted restorer of pictures, in the attics of the palazzo corsi, florence. he hesitated at first to recognise it certainly as the work of signorelli, for all the figures were covered from head to foot with draperies of obviously eighteenth-century painting. on trial, however, he found that these were easily removed, and as the nude figures were revealed, he at once identified it as the picture of the nude gods, mentioned by vasari. it seems that it had passed into the possession of the rinuccini family as part of the dowry of one of the medici, and on the marriage of one of the ladies of the rinuccini with a marchese corsi again formed part of the bride's portion. soon after its discovery and restoration the marchese corsi died, and his brother cardinal corsi inherited the property. objecting to the picture on account of the nude figures, he desired signor tricca to sell it, and it was then bought by mr h. j. ross, who offered it to the english national gallery. on the refusal of the authorities to purchase it, it was acquired in by dr bode for the berlin gallery, of which it is one of the greatest treasures.[ ] it has naturally suffered much from the process of cleaning away the later draperies, and much of the under-painting is exposed, but enough remains of its original beauty to rank it as the best of signorelli's easel pictures. undoubtedly of the same date is the "madonna," no. of the uffizi gallery. this picture was, also, according to vasari, painted as a present for lorenzo dei medici, and was for many years in the villa of duke cosimo at castello. it has the same idyllic beauty in the background as the "pan," and is painted in the same half-pagan spirit. the virgin, it is true, sits awkwardly, and with a rather ungainly gesture of hands and arms, there are faults of drawing in the feet, and the child is ugly and insignificant. but these are faults easy to overlook in considering the grandeur of the landscape, the beauty of the colour, and, above all, the magnificent modelling of the nude figures in the background. the virgin gains in importance by the nobility of these athletes behind her, but it is clear that signorelli's interest lay less in the melancholy mother and child, than in these superb titans, in whom he seems to have personified the forces of nature. how great was the influence of this picture upon michelangelo we need only take a few steps into the tribuna to see, in his _tondo_ of the holy family, no. . the painting is set in a kind of frame in _grisaille_, surmounted by a head of s. john the baptist, and two seated prophets in medallions. [illustration: [_uffizi, florence_ madonna] somewhat inferior in execution, but painted in exactly the same spirit, is the "madonna," of the munich gallery, formerly in the palazzo ginori, florence.[ ] here, as in the last, the virgin sits, filling the foreground space, a stately figure, with fingers pressed together, as if in prayer to the child at her feet. the background is a classic landscape, through which runs a stream of the beautiful limpid green with which signorelli always paints water, and by its side sits another of the noble nude figures, untying his sandal. it may be intended for s. john the baptist, as the critics say, but i do not think that either here or in the uffizi painting, signorelli had any intention of adhering to traditional illustration. it seems rather as though the pictures were symbolic--expressive of some comparison in his mind between christianity, as he perhaps conceived it for the moment, melancholy and dejected, and the greek pantheism, vigorous and strong, and radiant with the joy of life. another picture belonging to this beautiful group is the "portrait of a man," in the berlin gallery, formerly in the torrigiani collection, florence. in the days before it was photographed it was considered to be a portrait of signorelli himself, and, as it represents a man with grey hair, was naturally reckoned among his later works; but comparison with the two portraits at orvieto show that there is no real resemblance of feature, while the technique and spirit of the painting claim a place for it among this early series. here again occur the classic figures, but this time with less of the idyllic feeling. on one side are hurrying apollo and daphne(?), on the other, one athlete has overthrown another, and stands menacingly over his prey, who tries with ineffectual gestures to beat him off--a very pollaiuolesque scene of violence. the colouring, with its clear reds of the _biretta_ and the robe, is very successful. with this powerful portrait closes this beautiful and interesting group of paintings, the _provenance_ of all four of which, it will be observed, is from florence. the two _tondos_, of the pitti and corsini galleries, florence, must have been painted at a date not far distant from those, for they have much in common in certain forms, and particularly in the rich and glowing scheme of colour. the "holy family," of the pitti gallery, has been restored, and suffers much from thick varnish and repainting, but nothing has spoilt the harmony of the colours, nor the tender beauty of the virgin, whose features and expression are a repetition of those of echo in the "pan." the saint, who writes at the dictation of the child, is painted with earnestness, and the whole scene is treated with the utmost religious feeling. the "madonna and saints," of the corsini gallery, has the same warm glow of colour, and was probably painted about the same time. the virgin sits with the child on her left knee, clad in a red robe, round the neck of which little loves are embroidered in gold. over it she wears a dark-green mantle shot with gold--a form of decoration very usual with signorelli, especially about this time. she has the beautiful, pale, honey-coloured hair which occurs so often in his works, almost the same colour which was characteristic of palma's venetian ladies later. to the left kneels s. jerome, gazing up at her, and on the right is s. bernard holding a pen and book. the painting is in a good state of preservation. [illustration: [_pitti, florence_ madonna and saints] the rather insignificant type of head of s. joseph occurs again in another "holy family," which belongs approximately to the same period,--that of the rospigliosi gallery in rome. as far as beauty and tender grace go, this is the most successful of all his madonnas. the daring repetition of the same features with darker colouring in the s. john behind her, i have already drawn attention to. the draperies are painted with great freedom, and a fine sweep of broad fold. they are shot, as in the corsini _tondo_, with gold in the high lights. insignificant as is the child in all these holy families, there is at the same time something pathetic and winning in the earnest, careworn little face. [illustration: [_rospigliosi gallery, rome_ holy family] very different is the type signorelli has adopted for the christ in the uffizi "holy family," no. , which must be placed somewhere about this time, or a very little later. here he is represented with a certain nobility of feature and gesture, although self-conscious and unchildlike. the greek profile of the virgin is almost identical with that of the above-mentioned rospigliosi picture, while the powerful head of s. joseph carries us back to the figures in the "circumcision." the virgin sits uneasily, ill-balanced, and with badly-modelled feet, but the beauty of the face makes amends for these defects. it is a picture full of noble qualities, both of feeling and technique, and it has besides a special importance by reason of the difference of colour, so much less heavy than usual. the flesh tints are very pale, and the shadows a silvery grey, and the whole tone is much lighter than in any of the preceding pictures. the composition is specially fine, the attention being concentrated without effort on the central figure of the child, to which the other two serve as a kind of frame. [illustration: [uffizi, florence holy family] i cannot leave this series of early works, which includes so many _tondos_, without drawing attention to the excellence of signorelli's composition in this difficult form. the figures fill the space naturally and without any artificial bending of the heads to fit the shape; there is a sense of space, and ease of grouping, and the large sweeping lines of the draperies follow most harmoniously the curves of the panel. with the exception of the perugia altar-piece, none of the above-mentioned paintings are dated. inferentially we arrive at the time when the loreto frescoes were completed, but there is little to help in grouping the rest beyond the internal evidence they afford. i have endeavoured to place them in the order they seem most naturally to take, with reference to colour, form, and the early influences to be observed in them, but the arrangement must necessarily be somewhat arbitrary. fortunately this difficulty grows less and less in dealing with the later works, and the most important of them are generally dated. footnotes: [ ] i shall, as far as space permits, describe those pictures of which illustrations cannot be inserted. where the illustration is given, it becomes unnecessary. [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] vischer, p. . [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. . note . [ ] i have thought it best only to translate those names that are familiar to us in english. [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] i am indebted for the above facts to mr h. j. ross of poggio gherardo, florence, the original purchaser of the picture. [ ] the photograph gives so little idea of the beauty of the original that i have not reproduced it. chapter iv middle period we have now arrived at the paintings belonging to the year , part of which signorelli spent in volterra, three works still remaining in that city to testify to the visit--"the annunciation," of the cathedral; the "madonna and saints," now in the gallery, both dated; and a much-injured fresco in _grisaille_, representing s. jerome, on the walls of the same building--the palazzo communale. the "madonna enthroned with saints" was painted for the altar of maffei chapel in san francesco, and was unfortunately removed not many years ago to the gallery of the palazzo communale, suffering the greatest damage in the transit. two large cracks run through the figures of the child and the seated father; large pieces of the paint have dropped away, and in the repainting the child has lost all characteristics of signorelli's work. in the less ruined parts, however, enough remains to testify to the original excellence of the painting, which is finely composed, and broadly and vigorously treated, especially in the draperies. the virgin sits enthroned between four saints, with a very peruginesque angel on either side, and seated below, at the foot of her throne, are two fathers of the church, in one of whom we have repeated the burly bishop with wide-spread knees and fine sweeping drapery of the loreto cupola, and which occurs later in the florence academy altar-piece. the influence of pollaiuolo can be observed in the sculptures on the _gradino_ of the throne, little nude figures in violent action. in better preservation is the "annunciation," in the cathedral, signed, and with the same date as the foregoing. the architecture, with its excellent perspective, again reminds us that signorelli was the pupil of pier dei franceschi, the painter of the wonderful _loggia_ in the "annunciation," of perugia. the virgin is painted with great feeling, and in the solemn beauty of the archangel we get the first of those splendid creatures whose sublimity signorelli felt in the same spirit as dante, who bent his knees and folded his hands at the sight of the "_uccel divino_," "_trattando l'aere con l'eterne penne_."[ ] [illustration: [_cathedral, volterra_ the annunciation] the resemblance is so great between this painting and the "annunciation," of the uffizi _predella_ (no. ) that we are justified in placing the latter somewhere about the same date. as is so often the case in _predella_ pictures, especially with signorelli's, the spontaneity and freedom of execution, and even of conception, is much greater here than in the more carefully thought-out and finished works. small as this panel is, the rush of the great archangel, the solemn beauty of the landscape, and the splendid attitudes of the young courtiers in the last division, make it one of the master's most important and characteristic paintings. the colour in the first panel of the "annunciation" is especially beautiful, and there is a noble simplicity in the composition, as well as a breadth and certainty of touch that give the picture great grandeur. the _predella_ is divided by painted pilasters into three parts. in the first the archangel hastens through a rocky pass to announce the message, to which the virgin bows with awed acceptance of its solemn meaning. in the second, the shepherds kneel to offer homage to the new-born child, who lies at the virgin's feet, while the third represents the visit of the magi. the same freedom of brushwork characterises another "annunciation," of probably the same time, and treated in much the same manner, although less stately than that of the uffizi. this is one part of a _predella_ formerly belonging to the mancini collection of città di castello.[ ] the archangel, with great wings half folded, and blown drapery, is just alighting at the feet of the virgin, who has dropped her book, and drawn back with startled gesture at the impetuous rush of the messenger. connected with these by the same qualities of breadth of treatment, and almost modern impressionism in the conception of the scene, are two compartments of a _predella_, belonging to mr benson in london, representing "the dispute by the way," and "the supper at emmaus." in the former especially, the dramatic realism with which the apostles are depicted, as they argue with animated gestures, is extraordinarily vivid. yet another _predella_ picture--"the feast in the house of simon," now in the dublin gallery--belongs approximately to this period. it is a most beautiful representation of the scene, and is treated somewhat in the gay manner of bonifazio or paolo veronese. at a long table, crowded with guests, christ sits, with his mother on his right hand, the master of the feast being conspicuous in the middle. over christ's head, the magdalen, a charming and graceful figure, pours the ointment, and on the left of the table judas, with expressive gesture, calls attention to the waste. notwithstanding the small size of the panel, and the number of the figures, the effect is exceedingly spacious and free. it is a well-composed scene, full of animation, and broad in treatment, and is fortunately in a good state of preservation. the altar-pieces to which all this series of _predelle_ belong are unknown. we will now consider the fine standard, painted in for the church of santo spirito in urbino.[ ] on one side was represented the "crucifixion," and on the other "the descent of the holy ghost at pentecost," but the canvases have now been divided. in the former, at the foot of the cross is grouped the first of those characteristic scenes of the fainting virgin which was, probably from its dramatic element, so favourite a subject with signorelli. sincerely and naturally felt, it in no way trenches on the melodramatic, as one or two of the later groups tend to do, and the solitary figure of christ, raised high above the sorrowing women, is for once, among his crucifixions, of dignity and real pathos. the solemnity of the mood given, is enhanced by the fine idea of the soldier on the left, who, impressively standing out against the sky, shades his eyes, with bewildered gesture, as though blinded by a sudden comprehension of the sacrifice. the grief of the women who tend the unconscious virgin, is sympathetically realised, and without exaggeration of outward sorrow. the composition is specially beautiful, the sides are well-balanced, while the two mounted soldiers on either side (notwithstanding their characteristically badly-drawn horses) give the scene a ceremonious stateliness, which is very impressive. [illustration: [_uffizi, florence_ the annunciation] in the "pentecost" we have another most masterly bit of perspective and fine spacious effect. at the end of a long room, between two rows of the apostles, is seated the virgin. above is god the father, attended by two angels, and below, the tongues of flame, the gift of the hovering dove, have alighted on the heads of all the company. apart from the sense of space and the well-composed grouping, the technical execution does not appear so satisfactory as in the "crucifixion," but this may be accounted for by the fact that the painting has suffered more from restoration. very closely allied to this standard in composition is the fine "s. sebastian" of città di castello, painted in for the church of s. domenico, now in the gallery, which, in spite of its bad condition is a picture of great importance and beauty. the least satisfactory part is the saint himself, who stands bound high up upon the tree, his sentimental face with upturned eyes and open mouth recalling the s. john of several of the crucifixions. above him leans god the father, and below five soldiers string their bows or shoot, with superb gestures. three of them are in the tight-fitting clothes in which signorelli loved to display the fine proportions and splendidly-developed muscles of his figures, and the other two are draped only with the pollaiuolesque striped loin-cloth. in the middle distance, burgesses and sad-faced women look on at the martyrdom, and in the background a distant street, filled with soldiers, leads steeply up to a ruined classic building, not unlike the colosseum. the great damage which the picture has suffered makes it difficult on a superficial view to give it the place it really deserves among the master's works. the colouring is somewhat crude, especially the flesh-tints, which are red and heavy, but it must nevertheless be ranked high on account of the composition, and the fine drawing and modelling of the foreground figures. [illustration: [_santo spirito, urbino_ the crucifixion] to the following year, , belong the series of eight frescoes painted by signorelli in the cloister of the benedictine monastery of monte oliveto. vasari writes: "at chiusuri, near siena, the principal habitation of the monks of monte oliveto, he painted on one side of the cloister eleven scenes of the life and work of s. benedict."[ ] vasari has mistaken the number of the paintings, for there were never more than nine, even supposing the last, of which only a slight fragment remains, to have been by him. to me it seems doubtful, but the fragments are in so ruined a state, the fresco having been almost entirely cut away in the enlarging of the doorway, that certainty one way or the other is hardly possible. the remaining eight are for the most part in a deplorable condition, both from the damage of time and neglect, and also from repainting, the lower part of the foreground in all of them being completely lost, and smeared over with a surface of thick green. the paintings are very unequal, some being comparatively poor, while the two last are exceedingly fine. the story begins in the middle of the saint's life. the first scene shows "how god punished florenzo," a wicked rival abbot, who had tried to poison s. benedict, and to lead his monks astray. in the background four grotesque devils are tearing down the walls of his convent, with extraordinary energy of action, and three others bear away the soul of the monk, whose body may be seen crushed beneath the ruins. in the foreground the saint listens to the tale, told by a kneeling brother. the scene is conceived in a spirit somewhat trivial for signorelli, and has but little of his usual stately strength. the composition is too much crowded on one side, and, as far as can be judged from the state of the fresco, the draperies of the monks are mechanically treated. the parts most worthy of praise seem to be the vivacity of the devils, and the effect of spacious distance, but it is in so damaged a condition that it would be unfair to be over-critical. the next is in an even worse condition. it illustrates "how s. benedict converted the inhabitants of monte cassino," to whom, supported by two monks, he preaches in the foreground. in the middle distance others pull down from its pillar the statue of apollo, worshipped by these people. this is a very much finer painting. the composition is again overcrowded on one side, but there is much noble dignity in the figures of the three monks, and the beautiful architecture and perspective of the temple, are admirable. the foreground has been entirely destroyed, the draperies are nearly effaced, and a little town in the background is so smeared over with green paint, that the effects of distance are lost. no. iii. is in better condition, though very much injured in the foreground. it shows "how s. benedict exorcised the devil upon the stone," who guarded the place where the statue of apollo was buried, which brought a curse on the convent. in the background is seen the disinterment of the statue, and to the right, the vengeance of the devil, who sets fire to their building. flames burst through the windows, and the monks hasten with excited gestures to quench them. these remind one in their _naiveté_ of carpaccio's scurrying friars, in s. giorgio degli schiavone, venice. there are some very fine bits in this fresco; the attitude of the monk to the left who is heaving up the stone is exceedingly good and true to nature, and the landscape is spacious and distant. no. iv. shows "how s. benedict resuscitated the monk upon whom the wall fell," the scene of the death taking place in the background, the devil having precipitated him from the scaffolding on which he was at work. in the middle distance three brothers bear the dead body, and in the foreground the saint stands and raises him again to life. this fresco is very fine both in general composition and detail. the little scene of the death is full of action and animation, the group of monks who bear the corpse is dignified, and very noble is the kneeling figure of the resuscitated friar. the paintings get gradually better, as though signorelli had warmed to his task. the next is very charming and one of the most successful in composition. it illustrates "how s. benedict reveals to two monks where and when they had eaten out of the convent." the two disobedient brothers sit in the foreground of a long room (of most excellent perspective), and are served with meats and drinks. at the end of the room, at the open doorway stands the graceful figure of a youth. the section of the wall is given, showing in the distance the penitent brothers on their knees before the saint, who has reproved their disobedience. there is something almost german in the domestic simplicity with which signorelli has conceived the scene. the woman who waits on the right is peruginesque in type and attitude, although with the robust physique that belongs to signorelli. the fresco is much repainted especially in the roof. [illustration: [_monti oliveto, maggiore_ miracle of s. benedict] the next shows "how s. benedict reproves the brother of the monk valerian for his violated fast," and reveals to him that it was the devil who had tempted him in the disguise of a traveller, the different scenes, as usual, going on in the background. in front the youth kneels before the monks, and to the right the devil, his horns showing through his cap, tempts him. in the distance they can be seen feasting under a rock. the fresco is much injured and repainted, but the figure of the devil with the bundle over his shoulder is very fine and well drawn. the two last of the series are the best. signorelli has in them given the rein to his love of martial scenes, and painted them with great animation and verve. in no. vii. we have the scene "how s. benedict discovers the deceit of totila," and unmasks the shield-bearer, who, disguised as the king of the goths, comes to prove the knowledge of the saint. in the background, a plain covered with camps and soldiers, totila sends forth his servant, and in the foreground the saint, surrounded by four monks, proclaims to him his identity. statesmen, arrogant pages, and warriors, stand behind the exposed shield-bearer. it is interesting to observe how signorelli's attention has wandered from the empty faces and mechanically executed draperies of the monks, and concentrated itself on this group. the figures, in their tight clothes, are superbly posed and modelled, especially the three who stand next to the shield-bearer. the last of the frescoes is almost as fine a study of magnificent attitude. it shows "how s. benedict recognises and welcomes totila," the real king of the goths, who kneels before him, surrounded by his army on horse and foot. in the background, troops are marching with great animation, (one of those fine effects of combined movement so characteristic of the master). some of the foreground figures are again splendidly drawn and modelled, and the mounted soldiers sit their horses exceedingly well. [illustration: [_monte oliveto, maggiore_ the miracle of s. benedict] in these two last paintings we get a hint of the great work that was to come three years later--at orvieto. signorelli has put forth all his strength in these groups of swaggering youths in every posture of conscious power and pride, and never perhaps been more successful in individual figures. some of the faces in the last fresco appear to be portraits, and if it be true, as vasari says, that he painted the vitelli and baglioni, it is here probably that we should find them rather than among the audience of antichrist. in running the eye down the whole series of frescoes, the scheme of colour, as far as can be judged in their present condition, does not strike one as pleasant. crude blues, emerald greens, brownish purples, heavy earthen browns--these are the predominating tints. the flesh tones are uniformly red and heavy. neither is the decorative effect of the compositions specially good, as at loreto, and more particularly at orvieto. perhaps even, on a superficial view, the space-filling by sodoma is happier, and has a more imposing effect. it is chiefly in detail that the great qualities of signorelli show themselves. the rest of the walls of the large cloister are painted with twenty-seven subjects by sodoma, showing the youth and hermit-life of the saint, and continuing, after the series by signorelli, with his miracles and his old age. although the subjects chosen by luca illustrate the later years, yet they were painted first, and it is probable that the place of each scene was arranged before any of the work was entered upon. the year following the execution of these frescoes signorelli was in siena, painting the two wings for the altar-piece of the bicchi family, formerly in the church of s. agostino, now in the berlin gallery, no. . a ms. of the abbate galgano bicchi, which gives the date, speaks of it as an _ancona_, the centre of which was a statue of s. christopher by jacopo della quercia, and with a _predella_, which the abbate minutely describes.[ ] nothing now remains of the altar-piece but these two beautiful wings, one of which contains figures of the magdalen, santa chiara, and s. jerome, the other, of s. augustine, s. antonio and s. catherine of siena. vasari writes of it: "at siena he painted in sant'agostino, a picture for the chapel of s. cristofano, in which are some saints surrounding a s. christopher in relief."[ ] both panels are of very rich and harmonious colour, especially the one containing the noble figure of the magdalen, in her green robe shot with gold and deep red mantle, and her ropes of honey-coloured hair. [illustration: [_gallery, berlin_ saints] perhaps about the same date, perhaps somewhat earlier, we may place the fine _tondo_ (no. b) hanging in the same gallery, formerly in the patrizi collection, rome. i have not given it its usual name of a "visitation," because that scene, conventionally treated, took place before the birth of the children who here play so important a part. signorelli has, according to his habit, conceived the subject without any reference to traditional custom. i have already spoken of the ease with which he composes in the _tondo_ form, and this is perhaps the best example of his skill. the natural grouping of the figures, the sweeping curves of the draperies, which, especially that of s. joseph accentuated with gold, carry out the lines of the circle, give a sense of rest and harmony to the eye. the scene is treated with a simplicity and noble dignity which deserve special praise. it is in some ways the most sympathetic of all his holy families, and he seems to have felt the charm of every-day simple life, and for once has given the christ the life and beauty of childhood. the tender foreboding sadness in the face of the virgin, the reverential sympathy of the aged elizabeth, and the kindly care with which the powerful zacharias holds the child, are touches full of poetry. morelli places this _tondo_ as a late work,[ ] but the soft and harmonious colour, as well as the poetic feeling, seem to belong to this period, before the painting of the orvieto frescoes, if not even earlier. [illustration: [_gallery, berlin_ holy family (called visitation)] lastly, in this group must be placed the standard of borgo san sepolcro, painted for the confraternity s. antonio abbate, now in the municipio. it is interesting to note, as its position in the gallery allows us to do, how completely signorelli has now detached himself from the influence of his first master--outwardly at least. no greater contrast could well be, than the unrestful dramatic realism of the "crucifixion" on this standard, and the inspired serenity of the "resurrection" of pier dei franceschi close by; than the coarsely-conceived figure of the crucified christ, with its heavy features and uncouth limbs, and the spiritual beauty of the risen saviour. this "crucifixion" is the least successful of all signorelli's renderings of this subject (with the exception, perhaps, of the morra fresco), both from its technical defects of extreme hardness and heavy colour, as well as from the lack of any real feeling in the painter for his subject. the unfortunate introduction of the patron saint, posing as joseph of arimathoea, disturbs the harmony of the mood, while his exaggerated gesture contrasts disagreeably with the apathetic coldness of the other figures, over-dramatic as their action is. the christ is treated deliberately as a study of muscle, and is among the most ignominious of his types, and the fantastic landscape, with its shadowy rocks and solid clouds, is badly composed and without existence. although there is no trace of the influence of piero remaining, yet there is much of antonio pollaiuolo, especially in the muscular figure and bent legs of the christ. [illustration: [_municipio, borgo san sepolcro_ the crucifixion] the two large saints on the reverse of the standard are, on the other hand, imposing and noble figures, splendidly painted in signorelli's grandest and most sweeping manner. s. antonio, in the black habit of the order for which the banner was executed, stands reading in a book, and by his side is s. eligio, the smith-saint, in red mantle and dark-green robe, holding in one hand the farrier's tool, and in the other the cut-off horse's hoof of the legend. below kneel small figures of four brothers of the confraternity. we have now come to the end of the series of works, executed, as nearly as can be judged, between and , and with the latter date have arrived at the time of the painting of the orvieto frescoes, which were to be the crowning point in the life's work of the master. footnotes: [ ] "purg." ii. and . [ ] when last heard of by the author it was for sale in england. [ ] the contract, dated june , is transcribed in pungileoni's "elogio stor. di giov. santi.," p. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] the ms. is in the possession of conte scipione bicchi-borghese, siena. [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] "die galerie zu berlin," p. . chapter v orvieto there seems to be a moment in the life of every great man in which he touches the height of his possibilities, and reaches the limits of his powers of expression. to signorelli it came late, at an age when most men begin to feel at least their physical powers on the wane. the two last frescoes of the monte oliveto series indicate that an immense force lay in reserve, waiting an opportunity for some wider and freer field of action, than had hitherto presented itself. that opportunity now came, when, at the age of fifty-nine, he was called upon to undertake the vast work of these orvieto frescoes. with the exception of the sistine chapel, no such task has been achieved at so sustained a pitch of imaginative power and technical excellence. whether the subject stirred his dramatic spirit, or whether the great spaces to be filled gave an expanded sense of liberty to his genius, or whether his powers, intellectual and physical, really were at the zenith of their strength; whatever was the cause, he succeeded in executing a work which ranks among the greatest monuments of the renaissance, perhaps should even rank as the very greatest. morelli writes: "these masterpieces appear to me unequalled in the art of the fifteenth century; for to no other contemporary painter was it given to endow the human frame with a like degree of passion, vehemence, and strength."[ ] and beside the dignity with which he has in these frescoes elevated the body to an almost superhuman grandeur, his conception of supernatural things is proportionately solemn and impressive. it is impossible to look at the scenes without emotion, and the mood evoked is due in a great measure to the earnest conviction with which they are conceived. signorelli, always a religious painter, in the wider meaning of the word, seems here to assume an almost prophetic attitude of warning, embodied, one might almost think, in the portrait of himself, stern and menacing, standing sentinel-like over the work. vasari thus speaks of the frescoes: "in the principal church of orvieto--that of the madonna--he completed with his own hand the chapel which had been begun there by fra giovane da fiesole; in which he painted all the history of the end of the world, with strange fantastic invention: angels, demons, ruins, earthquakes, fires, miracles of antichrist, and many other of the like things; besides which, nudes, foreshortened figures, and many beautiful designs; having pictured to himself the terror which will be in that latest tremendous day. by means of this he roused the spirit of all those who came after him in such a way that since, they have found the difficulty of that manner easy. wherefore it does not surprise me that the works of luca should have always been most highly praised by michelagnolo, nor that certain things of his divine judgement which he painted in the chapel were in part courteously taken from the invention of luca; as are the angels, demons, the heavenly orders, and other things in which michelagnolo imitated the style of luca, as everyone may see. luca portrayed in the above-mentioned work himself and many of his friends; niccolò, paulo and vitellozzo vitelli; giovan, paulo and orazio baglioni, and others whose names are unknown."[ ] [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ portraits of signorelli and fra angelico (detail from antichrist)] fifty-two years before, in , fra angelico had spent three months and a half in this cathedral of orvieto, painting the spandrels in the roof of the cappella nuova, as it was then called.[ ] he had time to complete only two frescoes, being either recalled to rome by nicholas v., or to the convent of s. domenico, near fiesole (of which, in , he was made prior). these two works are among the best and strongest of his paintings. in the principal space, that over the altar, he painted christ in glory, surrounded by a _mandorla_, with angels on either side; and in the spandrel on the right, a group of sixteen prophets, seated pyramidally against a blaze of gold background. it is probable that he had thought out the general scheme of the frescoes, and that signorelli only carried out his intention in working the paintings into one great whole--christ in heaven, surrounded by angels, apostles, martyrs, virgins, patriarchs and fathers of the church, witnessing from on high the execution of divine justice below. however that may be, it is certain that signorelli, in his painting of the roof, kept most scrupulously to the older master's arrangement, and in one of the spandrels actually seems to have worked over his design. after the withdrawal of fra angelico, the chapel remained untouched for more than fifty years. in his pupil, benozzo gozzoli, who had probably been his assistant in the painting, demanded permission to continue the work; but the authorities were not content to grant it, and it was only in , after some futile negotiations with perugino, who appears to have refused the commission, that they finally resolved to place the decoration in the hands of signorelli. perhaps decided to this step by the success of the monte oliveto frescoes, they were yet so cautious and so determined to have only the very best work in their chapel, that at first they only entrusted to him the painting of the vaulting, already begun. they were wise to be careful in their choice, for they were probably conscious of the extreme beauty of their cathedral, and, in particular, of the exquisite architecture of this chapel. orvieto cathedral is one of the finest and most impressive of the italian churches, and from its foundation in , the authorities had been notoriously lavish in their expenditure for its building, and fastidious in their choice of architects, sculptors, and painters.[ ] from the point of view merely of decoration, they could have given the work to no better artist than signorelli, and the first impression, on passing into the chapel from the austere and spacious nave, is of the harmonious plan, both of colour and design, with which the original beauty of the architecture has been enhanced, and its graceful characteristics accentuated. the roof is of very perfect shape, and the spaces well adapted for painting. it is divided in the middle by an arch, thus having two complete vaultings, each with four spandrels. the walls are high and spacious, also divided in two parts, in each of which, on either side, is a large fresco. signorelli has separated the lower part of the wall by a painted frieze of delicate gold and ivory, and in the lower half executed a series of portraits, each surrounded by medallions in _grisaille_, containing small subject-pictures, the rest of the space being filled with an intricate pattern of grotesques. the south wall, in which are three small windows, has been unfortunately disfigured by a _baroque_ seventeenth-century altar, whose projections hide a part of the frescoes. opposite is the entrance, a magnificently-proportioned portal, with a rounded arch, most delicately decorated in colour. every inch of the walls is covered, and for the most part by the work of signorelli himself, the above-mentioned grotesques, the merely ornamental painting, and a few of the medallions alone being by his assistants. in describing the frescoes i intend to begin with those of the vaulting, and then to work gradually round the walls from the left of the entrance, where the first of the series of larger paintings begins with "the preaching and fall of antichrist." in the spandrel opposite the christ of fra angelico, signorelli has painted eight angels holding the symbols of the passion, while two others, not unlike the great archangels of the "resurrection," blow trumpets to announce the impending judgment. left of the altar, opposite fra angelico's "prophets," and arranged in exactly the same pyramidal form, is a magnificent group, representing the "apostles," the virgin being seated on the lowest tier with s. peter and s. paul. very noble, impressive figures, powerfully and solidly painted, with broadly-draped, heavy-folded robes, they sit like rocks upon clouds as solid as hills. these, with the two frescoes of fra angelico, complete the paintings of the first vaulting. those on the other side of the arch are executed entirely by signorelli, and, with the exception of one, from his own designs. this one is the weakest of his roof-paintings in execution, and the composition and actual drawing of the central figures, are the work of fra angelico. it represents the "choir of martyrs," a group of seven figures. in the centre are seated three deacons in full canonicals, with bishops on either side, and below two saints in plain robes. these last have all signorelli's characteristics of drawing, and sit with wide-spread knees and broadly-painted draperies, a striking contrast to the weak attitudes and niggling robes of the central group. signorelli has indeed hardly altered the childish chubby features of the deacon in the middle, nor the benevolent vacuity of the two bishops, so different to his own austere types. opposite to this, over the portal, is a group of eight "virgins," broadly and vigorously treated, in signorelli's boldest manner. to the right is another of the pyramidal groups, fifteen "doctors of the church," some of whom are represented disputing and discussing points of theology. the last of the roof-paintings is a powerful group of "patriarchs," ranking, with that of the "apostles," among the most impressive of the frescoes. here appear many of his well-known types of face; the melancholy features of pan are repeated in the turbaned youth in the top row, intended perhaps to be solomon; the christ of the uffizi "holy family" is in the second tier to the left; the powerful zacharias from the berlin _tondo_ in the lowest. luzi, in his minute description of the paintings,[ ] has bestowed names on all these figures, without much advantage, since they are for the most part doubtful. few of them bear symbols, but the different groups are sufficiently described in large letters, by the painters themselves--gloriosvs apostolorvm choir--martirvm candidatvs exercitvs--etc. etc. the figures, with the exception of those by fra angelico, and the design for the "martyrs," are entirely the work of signorelli himself. the decorations between the spaces seem to be in part by the assistant of fra angelico--perhaps benozzo gozzoli. in the first border heads are painted, in lozenges, at regular intervals, a few of which are in the older master's style, while many show the manner of signorelli. the rounded projecting rib is painted with foliage of cypress-green, with here and there rich red and golden flowers gleaming out, and on either side a border of conventionalised water-lilies. it is difficult to say which of the masters designed this exceedingly beautiful decoration, but it is most effective, and well-calculated to accentuate the life of the fine curves in the vaulting. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ patriarchs] these groups of signorelli's are noble and impressive paintings, in technique strong and vigorous. the draperies are treated with simplicity and breadth of fold, and the gold background gives richness and beauty to the colour. no wonder that the authorities, jealous though they were at the beauty of their chapel, should have hesitated no longer to hand over the great spaces of the walls to the brush of the painter who had so well executed their first commission. in the april of the following year, , the new task was given. the payment for the roof was to have been ducats; for the walls they offered . besides this, the painter was to be furnished with ultramarine, a certain quantity of food and wine, and a free lodging, with two beds, as the lengthy documents of commission minutely tell.[ ] the paintings begin with "the preaching and fall of antichrist." here the foreground is filled with groups of the followers of the false prophet, who, with the features of christ, stands on a little raised dais, listening with an evil expression, as the devil behind him, unseen by the crowd, whispers into his ear what he shall say. before the dais are scattered gold vessels, bars and coins, with which he tempts the audience. farther back to the right, different groups represent the false teaching and miracles of antichrist, and in the background is his temple, with armed men going in and out of its open portico. the left of the frescoes is devoted to the fall of the false prophet, and the destruction of his followers. above we see him precipitated head-downwards from heaven by an angel surrounded by fiery rays, which strike death to the army beneath. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ the preaching and fall of antichrist] in sombre black, and standing outside the scene, signorelli has painted the portrait of himself, with fingers interlaced and firmly-planted feet, and behind, the milder, but still gloomy figure of fra angelico. there is something sinister in the saturnine melancholy on the faces of the crowd, unrelieved by any lightness, and culminating in the evil expression of antichrist himself. the peace of the gold-flecked landscape only accentuates the horror of the scene of the downfall in the background. the picture is a fit prologue to the terrible judgment to come. in composition the fresco is very fine, the values of distance are well kept, and the meaning of the scene is obvious and significant, and dramatically rendered. the foreground group is very strongly painted, natural in attitude and gesture, and the figure of a man in striped hose is magnificently modelled. i do not care to touch on so hypothetical a thing as the supposed portraiture in this group, but it is interesting to note, in the old man right of antichrist, the features familiar to us in the drawings of leonardo, possibly painted from a study of the same model. behind is a profile head, obviously intended for dante. the terrible force of the angel, with its hawk-like swoop, the unresisting heavy fall of the body through the air, are rendered with extraordinary power. the foreshortening is admirable, and so is the fine perspective of the beautiful architecture of the temple. the figures of the soldiers on the steps recall perugino in the manner of treatment--dark against light, and well detached from the background. the capitals of the pillars, the buttons on the clothes, and the rays of the angel are embossed with gilded gesso, as also are the distant hills. this form of ornamentation, so much used by signorelli in these frescoes, adds greatly to their decorative beauty. under this painting is a square-shaped portrait, half cut away by a recess, in which stands a modern altar. it is supposed by luzi to represent homer, and is the first of a series which run all round the walls, much repainted, but all of them the work of the master himself. they are surrounded by four medallions, painted in _grisaille_, also for the most part by signorelli, but in this case only two, and a fragment of the third, remain, the enlarging of the recess having almost entirely cut that and the fourth away. in the top medallion are five nude figures, a powerful female and four males, all wildly hastening as if from some impending destruction. in that on the left a man stands on a dais, surrounded by soldiers who hold a prisoner bound before him. in the lower fragment, only one figure remains. these all represent, according to luzi, scenes from homer. the groups are well composed and full of vigorous energy, the nudes are splendidly modelled in broad, bold strokes, so sharply drawn on the wet plaster that the outlines are deeply incised. where, as here, these _grisaille_ pictures are the work of signorelli himself, they are worthy of more attention than is usually given to them, being as fine as any of his best work. to realise fully their vigour and excellence, one need only compare these powerful nudes with those painted in the pilasters close by, the work of assistants. the medallions in every case are surrounded by a broadly painted coloured pattern of grotesques, also by assistants, but probably to a large extent designed by signorelli, for they are extremely characteristic of his preoccupation with the human form and with movement. arabesques have but little attraction for him, and it will be noticed that in all his ornamental work where it is possible, he paints figures. these decorations are almost entirely composed of fantastic creatures, fauns, tiny satyrs, horses, birds, etc., who blending their shapes and borrowing each other's limbs, frisk all over the walls, and by their gambols and contortions form a pattern of curves and lines, which is a maze of animated life, retaining at the same time the broad and harmonious effect of an arabesque. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ the crowning of the elect] the next large painting represents "the crowning of the elect." a crowd of men and women, many draped round the loins, some quite naked, gaze upwards ecstatically, or kneel reverently to receive the gold crowns which angels are placing on their heads. above, seated on clouds, are nine other angels, draped in many-folded robes, who play musical instruments. to the right two figures (in one of whom the echo of the "pan" is repeated) seem to walk out of the scene, thus connecting this fresco with the next, in which the elect and crowned souls prepare to ascend to heaven. the background is entirely of gold, thickly studded with bosses of gilded gesso. the figures are finely modelled and posed. the flesh-painting, as in all the frescoes, is perhaps somewhat heavy in colour, but the whole effect is rich and harmonious. the chief defects in the work are the overcrowding of the composition, and the bad values of distance, caused in a great measure by the gold background. signorelli's treatment is too realistic, his figures are too solid and too true to life, to bear the decorative background so suitable to the flat, half-symbolic painting of the sienese school. they need space and air behind them, and lacking that, one feels a disagreeable sensation of oppression and overcrowding. keeping the eye upon the ground, which is treated naturally, this feeling goes; the long shadows distinctly marked, send the figures to their different planes, and the confused composition becomes clear. underneath are the usual decorations, two square portraits surrounded each by four medallions. we do not need the help of luzi to recognise dante in the first, injured though it is, and much repainted, especially about the mouth, which gives the face a somewhat grotesque expression. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ subjects from dante] the _grisaille_ paintings represent stories from the "purgatorio," but although fine in design, are not executed by signorelli himself. they have none of the breadth and grandeur of the first series, and the effect is meagre and niggling, equal importance being given to the rocks and to the figures. the other portrait is probably intended for virgil, who, with upturned face and melodramatic expression, seems to seek for inspiration. this expression is exaggerated, but the painting is vigorous and strong. around, the medallions again represent subjects from the "purgatorio," and are apparently by the same hand as the last, with the exception of the lower one, which seems to have some of signorelli's own work in the nude figures. the south wall is pierced by three lancet windows, the central one over the altar, dividing the two principal frescoes of "heaven" and "hell." the former is, as i have said, a continuation of the last scene, and represents angels preceding the elect souls, and showing them the way to heaven. in the sky, heavily embossed with gold like the last, float angels with musical instruments, one of whom, with face downward, blowing a pipe, is not so successfully foreshortened as is usual with signorelli. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ heaven] in the thickness of the small window which cuts into this fresco, are painted two coloured medallions, one of an angel vanquishing a devil, the other of s. michael, with the balances, weighing souls--both by the master himself. below are two series of small pictures in _grisaille_, with scenes from the "purgatorio." the lowest is unfortunately hidden by the altar. all of them are by signorelli himself, exceedingly good, and worthy of careful study, one being especially beautiful--the top picture of the first series, in which dante and virgil stand before the angel, with the gold-plumed eagle in the foreground--a most nobly conceived illustration to the ninth canto of the "purgatorio." [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ hell] on the opposite side of the altar is the judgment of minos, and the driving of the lost souls to hell under the superintendence of the two archangels, who stand in the sky with drawn swords, sorrowfully watching the fulfilment of divine justice. signorelli here has followed very closely the text of the "inferno." in the foreground "minos standeth horribly and gnasheth," condemning the miserable souls before him each to his different circle, his tail wound twice about his middle. farther back, the pistoiese, vanno fucci, with blasphemous gesture, yells out his challenge to god; charon plies his boat; and in the background despairing souls follow a mocking demon who runs before them with a banner. the two medallions on the sides of the window contain, one the archangel gabriel with the lily of the annunciation, the other a very beautiful group of raphael and tobias, both by signorelli himself. below, the decorations correspond to those on the opposite side, the _grisaille_ pictures, representing, according to luzi, scenes from the "metamorphoses" of ovid, all, with the exception, perhaps, of the medallion just below the window, being also the work of the master, and very powerfully painted. leaving the window wall, we now come to the finest of all the frescoes, the magnificent scene of the "damnation." so vivid is the realisation, so life-like the movements and gestures, that the writhing mass appears really alive, and one can almost hear the horrible clamour of the devils, and the despairing yells of the victims. the general effect is of one simultaneous convulsed movement, one seething turmoil. in detail, the horror is most dramatically rendered. the malignancy of the devils, their brutal fury as they claw their prey, tear at their throats, and wrench back their heads; the utter horror and anguish of the victims, the confusion, the uproar, are given with a convincing realistic force, which makes the scene ghastly and terrible. in most representations of hell, and especially of devils, human imagination fails in conveying any sense of real horror, even the earnest dürer and botticelli treating them with a grotesqueness which shows how far they were from any conviction of their reality. signorelli is the only painter of the renaissance i can recall who has succeeded in giving a savage sternness, a formidable brutishness to his fiends, which is very far from grotesque, but is really appalling. these ferocious creatures are of all colours, slate-blue, crude purple, heavy green, livid mauve--sometimes of all these poisonous-looking colours fading one into the other. strong and malevolent, they triumph in their work of torture, with a gloomy malignancy very different from the trifling malice of the fiends he painted at monte oliveto. above stand the three archangels, in armour, with half-drawn swords, menacing those who try to fly upward instead of toward the flames of hell. two, in their hurry to escape chastisement, let fall their prey; another, with great bat-wings which cut the air like scythes, swoops down again into the chaos below. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ the damnation] i suppose a mass of convulsed limbs has never been rendered in so masterly a manner. the effect is so natural that one is inclined to forget the difficulties signorelli has so superbly overcome. but if one considers in detail the different attitudes, the violent action of the arms and legs, the contorted positions of the bodies--every muscle either on the stretch or relaxed into a flaccid limpness,--the foreshortened limbs twisted into every kind of unnatural posture, and the complicated interweaving of the whole, one realises that it is indeed his masterpiece, not only for the mood of terror and awe it induces by its imaginative power, but for its marvellous rendering of tumultuous movement, and the ease with which enormous technical difficulties have been surmounted. the portraits below are, according to luzi, of ovid and horace, the four medallions round the former seeming, in their energy and furious life, to carry out the tumult of the great fresco above. they represent scenes from "the metamorphoses," and deal chiefly with hades and the infernal deities. above stand four female figures with fluttering draperies, among whom we can distinguish diana with the bow, and pallas with the lance and shield. below, pluto stands in a chariot drawn by dragons. this painting is very much injured, as is much of this lower part of the wall, especially the grotesques. on the right pluto bears away persephone in his arms in a chariot drawn by two fantastic horses, which an attendant urges furiously forward with a caduceus. on the left ceres, with wildly-floating hair, leaps into a tearing chariot drawn by two winged serpents, which cupid goads onward with a flaming torch. these are all by signorelli himself, and, for the rendering of violent movement, worthy of their position under the great painting. round the other portrait are subjects also connected with the infernal regions. over it, Æneas stands before the cumoean sybil, a very injured painting. below, orpheus in hades plays before pluto and persephone to win back eurydice, who lies bound before them. on the right hercules rescues theseus from hades, and slays cerberus, and on the left, eurydice, following orpheus, looks back, and is re-seized by the demons. these are all exceedingly good and dramatic paintings, and are by signorelli himself. the next large space, after the fresco of "the damnation," is filled with "the resurrection." above, the two mighty archangels sound their trumpets, and the dead wake, and break through the crust of the grey earth below. they stand about embracing each other, or helping each other to rise, or gazing with rapture up at the archangels, who, with fluttering draperies and ribbons, and great spread wings of purple and peacock-green, stand, surrounded by little shadowy cherubs, in the gold-embossed sky. most of the figures are of signorelli's usual powerful build, one, however, is an emaciated youth with little on his bones but skin, many are skeletons. to these last he has given a pathetic look of ecstasy, which is wonderfully expressive, considering it is obtained only by means of eyeless sockets and grinning jaw-bones. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ the resurrection] the fresco has suffered much, particularly from the painting, in later times, of draperies round the loins, some of which have been worn or rubbed half off. almost in the centre is a large stain, outlining the shape of a window, which signorelli caused to be filled up, and which can still be seen on the outside of the cathedral. the damp, oozing through the new plaster round the framework, partly destroyed the painting, but the centre is remarkably well preserved. it is interesting to note in studying this fresco, that, student of anatomy though he was, the skeleton seems to have had little attraction for signorelli. the placing of the bones is, of course, correct, but the delicacy of their curves, their relative proportions and thicknesses, their beauty of detail, are not given at all. for example, in the skeleton in the foreground, the pelvis has scarcely the shape, and none of the variety of line, of the bone itself, but is merely a coarsely-drawn girdle. compared to the extreme delicacy with which he models flesh, and his minute appreciation of every gradation of curve in the muscles, this carelessness in the treatment of the skeleton is noteworthy. under this, the last of the larger frescoes, is a recess, in which was formerly the sarcophagus containing the bones of pietro parens, the patron saint of orvieto. in this recess, under the brackets on which the sarcophagus stood, signorelli has painted one of his most beautiful "pietàs." unfortunately, half hidden by a marble group, sculptured in by ippolito scalza, it is difficult to see, and impossible to photograph, and is therefore not so well known and appreciated as it deserves to be. the christ is an exact repetition of the figure in the "deposition," of the cortona cathedral, and was probably painted about the same time-- . the position only is reversed. the other two figures are also repeated from that altar-piece, with only very slight variations. behind is painted the tomb, on which is a relief in _grisaille_ of four naked figures bearing the dead body of the saviour. this formed the lower part of the now removed sarcophagus, the three stone supports of which still project from the wall. on the right of the "pietà," is painted the martyr pietro parens himself. the saint gazes down with tender reverence at the scene at his feet, standing in fur-trimmed robes and cap, one hand on his breast, the other holding the palm of martyrdom. over his head is the hammer, the instrument of his death. the face is of extreme beauty, with gentle expression, the robes are finely draped, the attitude most natural, and the whole figure is one of the noblest and most sympathetic of all signorelli's works, and deserves to be better known. on the other side, and also as supporter of the "pietà," stands faustinus, another patron saint of the city, also a very beautiful figure, with features which recall the type generally used by signorelli for s. john. at his feet lies the millstone with which he was drowned. on either side, in the thickness of the wall, is a medallion in _grisaille_, containing the scenes of their deaths, very powerfully painted. this recess occupies more than one half of the space below "the resurrection," allowing room for only one portrait and two medallions. the former luzi has decided to be lucan, and represents a beautiful youth, with a mass of loose curling hair crowned with oak-leaves and acorns. the scenes of the medallions are supposed to be from "the phaisalia." in that above three nude men fight with fists, one binds his prostrate foe, and another bears off a slain body. in that on the right four men fight with clubs and swords. all are powerful figures, painted by signorelli in his most characteristic manner. below the portrait of the poet is an inscription of , honouring the memory of signorelli, and of ippolito scalza, the sculptor of the marble "pietà." the frescoes round the beautifully-proportioned entrance portal, being on an inside wall, are in a state of better preservation than the rest, and the colours brighter. they represent "the signs of the destruction of the world." for imaginative power they can be compared only with the woodcuts of albrecht dürer's "apocalypse." to our right on entering, the "rain of fire" shoots in heavy lines from the hands and bodies of demons with outspread wings. the distraction of the people on whom it falls is well rendered. in the foreground armed men on horse and foot seek wildly to escape the shafts, which have already precipitated some to the ground. in the middle distance the flames pursue a flying mob of terrified women clutching their infants, and men trying to protect them; while in the foreground old men, youths, and children, are struck down in heaps, stopping their ears, and gazing up in panic at the unearthly apparition. on the opposite side the sun and moon are eclipsed, and a dark rain of blood falls from the gloomy sky. an earthquake has shaken the city, and its buildings totter and fall in fragments on the people. in the foreground is a group, perhaps intended for the prophets of the destruction, who gaze up, less terrified, but with fear and solemn awe. [illustration: [_cathedral, orvieto_ signs of destruction] next to "the damnation," these are perhaps the finest of the series, and show most imagination and dramatic feeling. the foreshortening of some of the figures is admirable, the composition in the restricted space is good, and there is superb drawing and modelling in the foreground figure among the prophets in the last fresco. in the centre, over the arch, signorelli has painted a group of winged children, who hold a tablet by a bunch of ribbons, in one of whom are repeated the features of the christ-child of the uffizi "holy family." in the space under "the rain of fire" has been painted a portrait, but not a fragment of the face remains, an obelisk-shaped monument having in later times been placed against the wall, completely destroying it. cavalcaselle, for what reason is not clear to me, supposes that it represented niccolò franceschi, the treasurer of the works. on the opposite side of the doorway is a coloured medallion, representing a man with a turban, who, leaning his back over the frame as though it were a window, seems to be gazing up at the painting above. this, cavalcaselle suggests, is a portrait of the painter himself; luzi, however, considers it to be empedocles. over it in the decorations are two small tablets bearing the master's initials, l. and s. we began by considering the general impression of the frescoes upon the mind, their great imaginative qualities, and the solemn mood they induce. we will conclude by summing up the technical excellences, which distinguish them from all his previous work by extra power and ability. the beauty of the compositions, the filling of the spaces and the effectiveness of the scheme of decoration are as much above the work of three years before--the mount oliveto series--as is the freedom and dramatic power with which the scenes are rendered. what chiefly strikes one is the homogeneousness of the whole design, each part of the work keeping its due place in the great scheme. we are never unconscious, even while carried away by the emotions of each separate scene, of the solemn presence of the judges above, who preside over the final justice. considered as subject-pictures, the intense dramatic feeling makes them extremely powerful in their different effects, so that it is impossible to look at them unmoved. finally, the facility and freedom with which his anatomical knowledge has allowed signorelli to render all the possibilities of movement and gesture, is as much in advance of his age, as is his modern and natural visualisation, and the impressionistic breadth of his brushwork. in that respect, indeed, it is impossible to go farther. later painters have erred as much in exaggerating violent action and over-developing muscles, as the earlier master fell short in dry and laborious stiffness. signorelli, while retaining the earnest sincerity and thoughtfulness of the earlier workers, has been able at the same time to render with modern facility every movement of the human frame, and the result is an achievement which no later skill has surpassed, which is perhaps the last word in the treatment of the nude in action. before closing these remarks, i must not omit to record the gratitude due to the two german painters, bothe and pfannenschmidt of würtemburg, who, in , at their own cost, cleaned and carefully restored the frescoes, a work done on the whole with great discretion. two other paintings of the master, now in the opera del duomo, are so closely connected with the chapel, that the description would be incomplete without mention of them here--the altar-piece of the magdalen, and the portraits of himself and the treasurer of the cathedral, niccolò franceschi. the former, painted originally for the cathedral, is a life-sized, very broadly painted figure, somewhat coarse in execution, but exceedingly powerful. she wears a gorgeous gold garment, elaborately embroidered, and over it a brownish-red mantle lined with green. there is a stately dignity in the picture itself which the photograph unfortunately does not reproduce. it is dated , and on the old frame is the following inscription: ceccarellevs . de . apvidvtis--et . rvfinvs . antonii . -- conservat . pa . pacis . conservatrici . ex . se . consvlto . m.d.iiii. the double portrait, painted in ,[ ] is a work of the greatest importance, both by reason of the interest attached to the portraiture, and also that it remains to us absolutely untouched, every stroke being in the original state as the master left it. the heads are full of character and life, powerfully and rapidly painted in black and red, on a brick or tile, thickly overlaid with gesso. the brush-strokes are bold and firm, and the outline slightly incised in the plaster. under each head signorelli has painted the names lvca and nicolavs, and on the back is a most interesting inscription, apparently painted by himself, although the words are most probably the composition of the treasurer. the following is a translation: "luca signorelli, an italian by race, citizen of cortona, renowned for his skill as a painter, comparable to apelles for attainment, has, under the rule and in the pay of niccolò franceschi, of the same race, but a citizen of orvieto, treasurer of the vestry of its cathedral, painted with clear meaning this chapel, dedicated to the virgin, with figures of the last judgment; and, eager for immortal fame, on the back of this inscription, has painted the effigy of both, life-like, and with wonderful art. in the reign of pope alexander vi. and of the emperor maximilian iv. in the year of grace m.ccccc. in the third kalends of january." footnotes: [ ] "italian painters," i. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] it was not till the seventeenth century that the chapel was dedicated to the madonna di san brizio, on account of a byzantine miraculous picture of the virgin, still on the altar. [ ] for an account of the cathedral, see the padre della valle's "storia del duomo di orvieto." [ ] "il duomo di orvieto." ludovico luzi. firenze. le monnier, . [ ] preserved among the archives of the cathedral. transcribed by vischer, p. , etc. [ ] the head of luca is reproduced, divided from the other, as the frontispiece. chapter vi later paintings we have seen that during the four years and a half in which signorelli was engaged on the great work of the orvieto frescoes, he yet spent some part of the time in his native city, and there, in , he painted the signed and dated "deposition" with its _predelle_ for the church of santa margherita, now removed to the cathedral. vasari thus speaks of it: "in santa margherita of cortona, his native town, belonging to the frati del zoccolo, he painted a dead christ; one of his most excellent works."[ ] this dead christ is the figure which by its realism and pathos gave rise to the legend, already quoted,[ ] that it was painted from the body of his own son. it is an exact counterpart of the "pietà" in the orvieto frescoes, except that it is here reversed. it is a work of great beauty and feeling, painted with sincere emotion, and has none of the academic dryness with which he treated the same subject in borgo san sepolcro. the fine grouping, the restraint with which the sorrow is rendered, the real pathos of the scene, give the picture dignity and solemnity, and the glow of colour, obtained by the lavish use of gold in the embroideries, add to its richness and decorative beauty. the virgin is nearly the same figure as in the orvieto fresco, and in feature recalls the san sepolcro "crucifixion," and the magdalen is almost identical with the altar-piece of the opera del duomo, just considered, although here painted with more refinement and grace. in the background is one of those vivid scenes of crowded movement, which occur so often at this period of the master's development--a group of excited soldiers pressing round the cross, with fluttering pennons and prancing steeds. the _predella_ hung just below, contains four subjects--"christ in gethsemane," "the last supper," "the betrayal," and "the flagellation." unfortunately, both pictures are so badly lighted that it is almost impossible except on a very bright day to appreciate the colour. the scenes in this _predella_ are nearly the same as in that of the florence academy, which hangs as part of the altar-piece, no. , although it does not seem really to have belonged to it. the two _predelle_ must certainly have been painted within a very short time of one another. in both the composition of "the last supper" is precisely the same, as well as "the flagellation." in the "betrayal" there is the same violent crowd with spears and pennons, surging round the christ. in the florence picture, however, there are only three divisions, "the betrayal" and "the way to calvary" forming the background to "the agony in the garden," where christ kneels before a little brook, with the apostles sleeping in rows behind him. the broad impressionistic manner in which they are painted is the same; and, coarse as is the brushwork, dark and heavy as is the colour, especially in the flesh tints, they are yet exceedingly fine examples of signorelli's bold style and quick resolute workmanship, and well illustrate his power of rendering violent combined movement, in the crowds which throng round the betrayed christ, and march tumultuously on the way to calvary. the "madonna and saints" above this last _predella_ (no. ) although according to signor milanesi, not its altar-piece,[ ] must certainly have been painted somewhere about the same time, for the broad style, tending rather to coarseness, of the work of this period is very noticeable. it was executed for the church of santa trinità in cortona, and milanesi suggests that it might be the altar-piece ordered in by the authorities of that church,[ ] but the description given by the document of commission is very different, and the picture itself seems to bear evidence of an earlier date. like so many of the works in this gallery, the painting has been so thickly daubed over by modern restorers, that it is next to impossible to form a just idea of the original colour; in its present state it is disagreeably crude and heavy, and in any case the overcrowding of the composition would prevent its being considered a successful example of the master's work, although it has his usual stately dignity and impressive qualities in the individual figures. the virgin sits with the child on her knee, clad in red robes, over which is a garment, now smeared over with black paint, but which formerly was covered with gold embroideries. over her head is a trinity, in a _mandorla_ surrounded by cherubs. on the left stands the archangel michael, in roman armour, holding the balances, in which are little nude figures representing the souls of the dead; on the right stands gabriel with the lily and scroll containing the message of the annunciation. below, seated at the foot of the throne, are saint augustine and saint anastasio, the latter the same burly bishop with wide-spread knees of the loreto cupola, and the volterra altar-piece. these two saints are fine, stately figures, painted with broad sweeping lines. the green robe of s. anastasio was originally covered with a gorgeous pattern, probably of yellow or gold, but this has been effaced by the thick smear of repaint. the gentle humility in the face of the virgin recalls the "madonna," of the brera gallery, milan (no. _bis_) with which the picture has, besides, much in common, the child, as well as the hands of the virgin, being exactly the same, although in a reversed position. we shall not probably be far wrong in placing the florence altar-piece about the same time as this "madonna," of the brera, which is dated , and was painted for the church of s. francesco in arcevia (a town famous for its possession of one of signorelli's most important works, which we shall presently consider). very much repainted, the madonna still retains great charm and beauty, but the composition is geometrical, and the figures of the saints uninteresting and empty. in these, especially the standing figure on the left, i feel the hand of an assistant. with all signorelli's mannerisms, it lacks his resolute touch and powerful presentation. it is probable that the great inequalities in many of his paintings, especially at this later time, are due to his leaving much of the execution to assistants. whatever faults are in the work of the master himself, he is never, up to the last, guilty of any feebleness or insipidity, such, for instance, as in the painting of this unsolid figure. [illustration: [_brera, milan_ madonna and saints] i have been led from one picture to another by reason of similarities of form, and have omitted to speak of a beautiful and important painting, evidently executed soon after the orvieto frescoes, with which it has much in common. this is the altar-piece in the church of s. niccolò, cortona, on one side of which is a "madonna and saints," on the other a "dead christ upheld by angels." it is as far as i know, original in idea--this dead christ supported by the archangel, while others show the symbols of the passion to the group of kneeling saints. the four angels are very noble figures, and resemble those of the "hell" and "resurrection," of orvieto. the "s. jerome" is sincerely painted, and without any of the senile sentimentality with which signorelli occasionally represents this saint. the one false note in the work is the stunted figure of the dead christ, which seems all the more insignificant by contrast with the grand archangel who supports it. this poetic figure with its great wings and its tender beauty is perhaps the greatest of all the master's renderings of the "divine birds." the colour scheme is much lighter than usual, the flesh-tints being especially fair, and the painting is another instance of those seeming efforts to adopt a less heavy palette, to which i have drawn attention in speaking of the uffizi _tondo_. [illustration: [_s. niccolò, cortona_ dead christ upheld by angels] vischer considers the "madonna and saints" on the reverse of the panel to have been painted at a different date.[ ] it is an exceedingly fine picture, with all the great qualities of majestic beauty. the virgin sits enthroned between ss. peter and paul, robed in red, and wearing a blue mantle lined with green. the child, half lying on her knee, has his hand raised in act to bless. it is well modelled, and of a more pleasing type than usual. in was painted another very important work--the altar-piece in the church of s. medardo in arcevia, a splendid _ancona_, still in its original gothic frame. the virgin is of the same tender type as in the brera and florence academy pictures, but with an added stateliness and gravity. in the centre panel she sits enthroned, with the child on her knee, clad in an embroidered robe, on the breast of which are two naked cherubs. on the left stand s. medardo and s. sebastian, on the right s. andrew and s. rock, each figure separated, as in the old polyptychs, by the pilasters of the frame. above is god the father, with two saints on either side, left s. paul and s. john the baptist, right s. peter and s. james of camerino. each of the side pilasters of the frame is divided into seven small spaces, each containing the half figure of a saint, the work of assistants. the effect of the whole painting is of great splendour, the colours are of glowing depth, and the richness enhanced by the low relief in gilded gesso of some of the brocades. but with all its state and dignity, perhaps the most important part of the altar-piece is the _predella_ with its five beautiful pictures, flanked on either side by the arms of arcevia. as colour these are remarkably fine and are treated with more care and less rapidity than signorelli usually gave to _predella_ work, while retaining the same breadth and freedom of general effect. "the annunciation," with its beautiful perspective, is one of his best compositions of this subject, in which he is always so successful. "the nativity" recalls that of the uffizi _predella_; "the adoration of the magi" is a fine rendering of the scene, but the two last are the most interesting as well as being the best in workmanship. in "the flight into egypt" the painter has evidently been influenced by the engravings of albrecht dürer, and has painted the little fortified town of the background very much in his manner. "the murder of the innocents" contains two figures in splendid action, the executioners, one with his dagger raised in act to strike, the other holding the child up by the leg--both magnificent studies of the nude, and worthy of the painter of the orvieto frescoes. [illustration: [_in possession of mr jarvis, new haven, u.s.a._ the adoration of the magi] very inferior is the altar-piece of "the baptism," in the same church of s. medardo. the existence of the contract of commission, dated june , ,[ ] shows that signorelli bound himself to paint the figures of christ, of the baptist, and of god the father, with his own hand, leaving the rest of the work to his best pupils. these figures are, however, so different from any of the master's own work, that it is difficult to believe that they are entirely by him. the picture had evidently to be finished in great haste, since the receipt for payment in luca's hand is dated the th of the same month of june, thus leaving only nineteen days between commission and completion, a very short time for so large a work. the baptist stands in a rich red mantle pouring the water on the head of the herculean christ, who wears the pollaiuolesque striped loin-cloth. the coarseness and exaggeration of the muscular development have not the characteristics of signorelli's own errors in over-realism, but bear the same relation to his style that the work of bandinelli bears to that of michelangelo. above is a feeble figure of god the father, and in the middle distance a man pulls off his shirt, reminding one, both in form and treatment, of the figures in pier dei franceschi's "baptism," of the national gallery. another sits by the river putting on a sandal, not unlike, although very inferior to, the athlete of the munich _tondo_. the composition is grand, and in the importance given by it to the two principal figures we certainly see the work of signorelli. the picture is an example of one of those mysterious conflicts of documentary and internal evidence, which the study of art occasionally furnishes. it still remains in its beautiful original frame, in the gables of which is painted an "annunciation," and below, on each side, three half figures of saints by some assistant, who was not even a pupil of signorelli, but obviously a follower of niccolò da foligno. the _predella_ contains five scenes. "the birth of the baptist," "the preaching in the desert," "the denouncing of herod and herodias" (a _tondo_), "the feast of herod," and--rather out of its due course, since the head is offered in the charger in the fourth scene--"the decapitation in prison." there is a very beautiful fragment of an unknown _predella_ in the possession of mr jarvis of new haven, u.s.a., which belongs approximately to this period. it has all the impressive dignity and breadth of treatment of signorelli's best work. the subject is conceived with special feeling for its stateliness, joseph standing by the side of the virgin to receive the gifts, as a chamberlain might stand beside the throne, while the earnest reverence of the kneeling king, who has cast his crown at the feet of the child, is most nobly rendered. the gold in the brocaded robes is here slightly in relief. the face of the kneeling king recalls that of the aged apostle in "the institution of the eucharist," cortona, a painting dated ; a beautiful picture, executed for the high altar of the gesù, but which has now been removed to the cathedral. like the other works in this choir it is very badly lighted, and the photograph is also indistinct. vasari writes of it: "in the compagnia del gesù, in the same city (cortona), he painted three pictures, of which the one over the high altar is marvellous, where christ communicates the apostles, and judas puts the wafer in his satchel."[ ] at the end of a shallow hall, in the usual good perspective, his head accentuated against the sky, as in leonardo's "last supper," christ stands, and puts the sacred wafer in the mouth of a kneeling apostle. in the foreground judas, with a crafty look, opens his satchel. the composition is exceedingly fine, the twelve apostles making a stately frame for the central figure of christ. the attitudes and gestures are natural and dramatic, and the faces have individual character. the two other pictures of which vasari speaks as having also been painted for the gesù, now the baptistery, are--"the nativity" (a coarse and badly-painted school picture, having affinities with that of the national gallery, london, no. ), and a "madonna and saints," which still remains in the baptistery. here the virgin sits, with a bishop on either side, and two monks below. dry and precise in composition, like that of the brera, and apparently painted with the assistance of pupils, the madonna herself is still very characteristic of the master, and not unlike those of the brera and the florence academy. the picture is in an exceedingly ruined state, and the gabled top in which is painted god the father, though not without merit, does not belong to the original painting, but is of a later date. lastly, we may place in this group, the broadly-painted _predella_, which hangs now, badly lighted, in the sacristy of the arezzo cathedral. it is unknown to what altar-piece it belonged, and the pictures are now divided and separately framed. the first represents "the birth of the virgin," the second "the presentation," and the last "the marriage." "the presentation" is the finest in composition and general effect, and contains very stately figures of joachim and anna, with splendidly draped robes, and behind them a fine austere landscape. all three pictures are broadly painted and swept in in the usual impressionistic manner. footnotes: [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] see p. . [ ] vasari, iii. . commentario. [ ] see chronological table, p. . [ ] vischer, p. . [ ] for these notices see anselmi's monograph, "a proposito della classificazione dei monumenti nazionali nella provincia d'ancona." (foligno, ), p. . also quoted by cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. p. . [ ] vasari, iii, . chapter vii last works we have now considered in detail most of the important works of signorelli's early manhood and maturity, and up to his seventy-fourth year have found him, both in conception and execution, still maintaining a high standard of excellence, and at an age when the life's work is supposed to be over showing but little sign of failing powers. on the contrary, he seems to have gained ground in certain things most characteristic of his technical ability--in a rugged strength of modelling, in facility of drawing and freedom of brushwork, and particularly in that mastery of united movement, which it seemed his special desire to attain. even in this last group of paintings which we have now to consider the mind works as powerfully, and the subjects are conceived with the same impressive grandeur, as before, and only in one or two instances can it be noticed that the hand does not always respond so readily to the purpose. in the "madonna and saints," of the mancini collection, città di castello, a slight technical falling off is apparent, although it is possible that this may be due to the assistance of pupils. its history would seem, however, to point to its being the unaided work of signorelli; but, as we have already seen, documentary evidence is by no means infallible. in the archives of montone, a little town near umbertide, a deed, dated september , , was discovered, which speaks of an altar-piece presented by the master as a free gift to a certain french physician, luigi de rutanis, in gratitude "for services rendered, and for those which he hoped to receive in future."[ ] [illustration: [_mancini coll., città di castello_ madonna and saints] the virgin stands heavily on the heads of cherubs, with s. sebastian on one side, and santa cristina, with a terribly realistic millstone hung round her neck, on the other. two angels hold the crown over her head, and below stand s. jerome and s. nicholas of bari, both intently reading. the background stretches away into a charming distant landscape, in which is a lake, not unlike trasimeno, and sloping hills, on which scenes of pastoral life are taking place. this landscape, taken by itself, is the best part of the painting; of the rest, the composition is too mechanically precise, the values of distance are bad, the figures being all on the same plane, and even the landscape does not keep its proper place in the picture. this last fault may, however, be due to repainting, which is so thick that it is useless to speak of the present colour. the altar-piece was discovered by signor giacomo mancini in a cellar in montone, almost destroyed by damp and neglect, and since its restoration it is perhaps hardly fair to discuss more than the general lines; yet these, in the awkwardness of arrangement, and the comparative triviality of the figures, both in attitude and gesture, betray a weakness we have not hitherto met with. another picture of the same date-- --is "the madonna and saints," in the church of san domenico, cortona, also in very bad condition. the restoration of the seventeenth century added a piece of canvas all round, in order to enlarge it. it was painted for serninio, bishop of cortona, whose portrait is to be seen in the corner, full of expression and exceedingly well modelled. the virgin, in red robe and green mantle, sits with her feet resting on the heads of cherubs, with an angel on either side, and below s. peter martyr, and s. domenico. it is an important work, and among the most successful of the later paintings, and it is curious that it should not have been photographed by either of the larger firms. the next year, , signorelli painted "the deposition," of umbertide, in which he shows all the technical power of his maturity--(or was it, perhaps, that he left less of the execution to assistants?). it was executed for the little dark church of santa croce, in this village, till recently called la fratta, and still stands over the high altar--not, however, in its original frame, which was removed in the seventeenth century. it seems that there was a lunette over the top, containing a pietà.[ ] terribly defaced by bad restoration, and the cracking of the later paint, it is still a very beautiful work, and its _predella_ has all the qualities of boldness and freedom characteristic of the master's best times. some of the figures are perhaps too obviously life-studies, especially the mary, standing in the foreground left, which he evidently painted straight from some _contadina_, whose stolid features he reproduced without reference to the subject. the body of the christ is successful, and has all the weight and helpless inertia of a corpse; the composition is admirable, and there is sincerity of emotion in the painting of much of the scene. it is, however, in the three pictures of the _predella_ that we shall find most proof of the vigour of mind and hand. it is interesting to compare signorelli's treatment of the same subject with that of pier dei franceschi in arezzo, at the painting of which he probably assisted, more than forty years before--"the march of constantine," "the discovery of the cross," and "the entry of heraclius into jerusalem." the first of the three is the best, both for the special quality of animated movement, and for the excellence of its composition and its effect of spacious movement. how much larger a tiny panel like this appears than some of the crowded altar-pieces of his later years! dashed in with a few broad touches, as a modern impressionist might paint, the scene of the camp is most natural, with its groups of soldiers and marching troops with raised lances and fluttering pennons. [illustration: [_santa croce, umbertide_ the deposition] in the second, three scenes are run into one, without much reference to any sequence of the story. on the right the queen of sheba kneels before the bridge which she has recognised as the sacred wood; on the left the empress helena finds the three crosses; and in the centre takes place the testing of the true one in the resuscitation of the dead youth. in the third--"the entry of heraclius into jerusalem"--we have again a splendid effect of a moving body of men. the emperor has descended from his horse, which is led behind him, and barefooted, in his shirt, he carries the cross within the gates. the next dated work--"the madonna and saints," of the arezzo gallery, was painted three years after this, in . "he executed," says vasari, "in his old age, a picture for the compagnia of s. girolamo, part of which was paid for by messer niccolò gamurrini, doctor of law, master of the rolls, whom he portrayed from life in that picture, on his knees before the madonna, to whom he is presented by a s. nicholas, also in the said picture; there are besides, s. donato and s. stephen, and below a nude s. jerome, and a david who sings on a psaltery; there are also two prophets, who appear, by the scrolls in their hands, to be discussing the conception."[ ] [illustration: [_gallery, arezzo_ madonna, saints, and prophets] the commission was given to luca by the compagnia of s. girolamo, on september , , and the price was to be one hundred broad gold florins, to be shared by messer gamurrini and the confraternity. in this picture it is in the intention rather than the execution that we shall find the vigour and strength which ended only with the painter's life. much still remains grand and impressive, but though it shows considerable power, the actual work is not so good. the colour is exceedingly dark, and full of harsh contrasts; the composition is overcrowded, as in many of his later paintings; and the figure of david, although nobly conceived, is awkward and ill-balanced. on the other hand, the virgin is as powerfully executed as ever, and so is the earnest, white-haired prophet at her feet. it seems to me that the master has given his own features in this upturned face, with its firmly-cut lips and square jaw, certainly much more real a person than the apathetic kneeling donor. after its removal from its original place over the altar of the confraternity, the picture was for several years in santa croce, and, after the suppression of that convent in , removed to santo spirito, and from thence to the gallery. very close to it in style, and probably painted at no distant date, is the _predella_ owned by mr ludwig mond. it has three stories--i. ahasuerus and esther, ii. and iii. (with no legendary connection of which i am aware) scenes in the life of s. augustine. the first is the finest. ahasuerus, surrounded by his councillors, bends forward, and touches with his sceptre the head of the kneeling esther. his figure is very like that of the david in the foregoing picture. on the right is a fine back view of one of the characteristic swaggering soldiers in tight striped clothes. the treatment is broad, but the drawing in parts is somewhat careless. in the other two scenes, the composition is jerky and insignificant, but the individual figures are characteristic, especially the nude _écorché_-like old saint. they represent visions which appear in the air to s. augustine, who sits below under a _loggia_. again, very close to the arezzo altar-piece is "the conception of the virgin," painted for the church of the gesù, cortona, now in the cathedral. the virgin stands, on the usual cherub heads, in red and blue robes, while god the father bends over her, and two angels scatter flowers through the air. below are six prophets, among them david, with his psaltery, and solomon, in crown and royal robe. under the virgin, apparently supporting the cherubs, is the tree of life, with two very fine nude figures of adam and eve receiving the fruit from the serpent. it is the lower part only we have to consider, the whole of the upper painting, with the weak, badly-draped virgin and the theatrical angels being certainly the work of assistants, as also, it seems to me, is the drapery of the half-kneeling prophet to the right. the david is exactly the same figure as in the arezzo altar-piece, to which, besides, there is a great resemblance in all the faces, and in the hard coarse manner in which the draperies are treated. the picture, however, lacks the rugged strength which makes the arezzo picture, with all its shortcomings, so impressive, and only in the nude figures is the old power unimpaired. these, however, are very good, the adam especially being as fine a study of the human form as any of the earlier work. at morra, a little village not far from città di castello, in the church of san crescenziano, are two very important frescoes, a "crucifixion" and a "flagellation," evidently very late work of the master. in the latter the composition is very little altered from the early picture of the brera. christ is in the centre, bound to the pillar, and on the right stands the roman soldier. the executioner near him is almost a repetition of the magnificent drawing in the louvre (see reproduction), except that the legs are wide apart. all signorelli's energies have again gone into the figures of the executioners, but, fine as they are, they are not treated with the same breadth as in the earlier picture, albeit the painting is free almost to roughness. the background, instead of the carved wall, now opens out of the court into a spacious landscape. in the "crucifixion," the group at the foot of the cross is arranged much like those of the san sepolcro, urbino, and cortona pictures, but it is half lost in the confusion of a crowd of mounted soldiers. the impressive silence and solemnity of these earlier "pietàs" is changed here to a scene of noisy turmoil, and the painter's interest is obviously centred on the movement of this hustling crowd. the horses are badly drawn and ill-balanced, as in the louvre "adoration," and the magdalen is very coarsely painted. the animation and action are well rendered, but something of the grandeur of his earlier work is sacrificed. this grandeur was, however, fully regained in the last work of the master, painted in , the very year of his death--"the coronation of the virgin," in the collegiata of foiano, a small town near sinalunga. the virgin, in red robes and greenish-blue mantle, with fair hair, kneels before christ, who places the crown on her head. on either side two angels play musical instruments, and on the right and left stand s. joseph and the archangel michael. in the foreground kneels s. martin, to whom the altar-piece was dedicated, in a magnificent gold cope, having on his left s. jerome with a grey loin-cloth. farther back are three monks, and behind s. martin stands the magdalen, while on the other side an old saint introduces the donor, angelo massarelli. the general tone of colour is not nearly so heavy as in the arezzo painting, the reds are of a pale rose-colour, and only the flesh-tints of s. jerome are very dark. this figure and the s. martin are nobly and powerfully conceived. the donor recalls the portrait of the gamurrini of arezzo. the painting does not seem to be the unassisted work of signorelli, the s. michael being too insignificant a figure, and the magdalen too weakly executed to be by his own hand. the _predella_ bears evidence that he had an assistant, for, of the four stories of s. martin, which they illustrate, only two are by the master. these two are very fine and bold, in composition and brushwork. in the first the saint, clad in armour, is seated on the characteristic white horse, with a man-at-arms behind him, and divides his cloak with the nude beggar. the background is a broadly-painted landscape. the other represents the saint kneeling before a bishop and two acolytes, clothed in a green tabard, a romantic and beautiful figure. the two remaining divisions are larger in size, and obviously the work of assistants, one illustrating s. martin exorcising a mad bull, the other his funeral and the miraculous healing of the sick by the dead body. it is satisfactory to have to conclude the list of works with one so strong, and which combines so many of the qualities which we have learnt to look for in signorelli's painting. rugged energy, dignity, decorative grace, and even romantic beauty are all to be found in this altar-piece, which is a fit ending to the life's work of the master.[ ] footnotes: [ ] transcribed in vischer, p. . [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. . [ ] vasari, iii. . [ ] these detailed studies do not include all the works of signorelli, but a complete list of all that are known to the author is to be found in the catalogue at the end. chapter viii drawings the study of signorelli's drawings is unsatisfactory, both by reason of their scarcity, and the enormous difference of merit, even among those few which can be considered as genuine. morelli writes: "his drawings are found in all the most important collections of europe,"[ ] but he mentions only thirteen, and although many certainly in all the galleries bear his name, and the impress of his influence, later study appears to accept only six as by his own hand; and of these six two are so much inferior to the rest that i cannot bring myself to feel any degree of certainty as to their genuineness. this difficulty of acceptance arises from a comparison with the very high standard of excellence in the two magnificent studies of the nude in the louvre collection, which correspond, in breadth of feeling, in grandeur of pose, and in boldness and accuracy of touch, to his best brushwork. no. , formerly in the baldinucci collection, represents two nude male figures of superb proportions, one standing with his hands on his hips, the other, in the characteristic attitude with wide-spread, firmly-planted feet, having his hand on the shoulder of the first. it is in black chalk, dashed in swiftly, with bold sweeping strokes, apparently direct from the life. it is one of the finest studies of the nude in existence, both for the splendid anatomy of the figures and the freedom and energy of touch. no. , also from the baldinucci collection, which is here reproduced, is hardly inferior to it in the same qualities of boldness and freedom. it seems to be the study from which signorelli painted the executioner in _grisaille_ near the "pietà," in orvieto, and later the scourging figure of the morra "flagellation," although in both there are slight differences of position. the action is exceedingly fine, the poise of the figure on the well-drawn feet being especially good, while all the force of the strong body is thrown into the arms stretched high up over the head. in dresden is a sheet of studies, which, while less fine than these two, are yet very characteristic, and undoubtedly genuine. they are also in black chalk, but very much rubbed, and consequently rather indistinct they represent four nude figures in different postures, which morelli considers to be studies for part of the orvieto frescoes, although i have failed to discover there anything which corresponds to them. [illustration: [_louvre, paris_ study of nude figure] in the uffizi gallery, florence, is another black chalk study of two men being chained by devils, which, again, seems as though it must have been intended for some of the figures in the "damnation," but which i cannot find there. this drawing is also very characteristic, and although falling far below the merit of the louvre studies, has all signorelli's qualities of dramatic energy and strength of touch. the heavy, coarse study for a "death of lucretia," also in the uffizi, i find extremely hard, in comparison with any of the foregoing, to accept as an undoubted work of the master, although i am not prepared to absolutely deny it. there is a want of proportion in the figures, and an indecision in the strokes, hard to reconcile with all we know of his work. in the collection at windsor is another chalk drawing--"hercules overcoming antæus"--of little merit either of anatomy or of technique, but which may possibly be from his hand. there is something of the influence of antonio pollaiuolo visible in this treatment of his favourite subject, and it is just conceivable that it may be an early study by signorelli done in his workshop. the list of all the drawings which are attributed to him in different collections would take too long for the slight purpose it would serve; but for the benefit of those who desire to compare for themselves those which morelli and vischer decide to be genuine, i have added a list of their attributions, transcribed without addition or correction. drawings mentioned by morelli dresden (_gallery_).--study of four nude figures. florence (_uffizi_).--case . [no. .] london (_brit. mus._).--three drawings, in vol. . paris (_louvre_).--[nos. , , , , , , .] windsor (_library_).--a drawing, attributed to masaccio. besides these, a design for marcantonio's engraving of "mars, venus, and cupid" (bartsch, ), attributed to mantegna. drawings from vischer's list of signorelli's works berlin (_gallery_).--man's head with cap (exposed in frame). chatsworth.--four saints (waagen's attribution). dresden (_gallery_) case i. .--head of a woman. (exposed in room ii.).--battlefield (?) [this so-called battlefield is the study of four nudes, mentioned among the genuine drawings.--_author's note._] florence (_uffizi_).--figure of youth. two damned bound by devils. nude figure bearing corpse. madonna and child (doubtful). death of lucretia (?). bacchanal. paris (_louvre_) .--four nude figures; black chalk. . two saints; coloured chalk. . a saint; coloured chalk. . nude figure scourging; black chalk. . a saint; black chalk. . two nude figures. . pietà. . nude figure bearing corpse; water-colour (more finished repetition of the uffizi study). siena (_collection of mr c. fairfax murray_).--seated saints (study for _grisaille_ prophets in the nave of the church of loreto). windsor (_collection of h.m. the queen_).--devil seizing man; black chalk (study for orvieto frescoes). male figure in three positions; indian ink (attributed to raffael). [illustration: [_academy, florence_ magdalen at the foot of the cross] footnotes: [ ] "italian painters," i. . chapter ix pupils and general influence it would not be possible, in the space at my disposal, to go with any thoroughness into the work of signorelli's imitators, even of those who fell directly under his influence. the painters who stand foremost among them, don bartolommeo della gatta and girolamo genga, are both too important to be dealt with in a short notice, while it would be a thankless as well as an arduous task, to try to distinguish the different painters of what is generically classed as school-work, being, as it nearly always is, without either individuality or merit. i shall do little more, therefore, than make a brief mention of the names and principal works of the known imitators, and try instead to indicate the influence of signorelli's style upon painting in general. morelli says much of his "uncompromising guidance," and of the "degeneration" of those who fell under his "crushing influence."[ ] something of the sort has been said of michelangelo, and might be said of every strong man whose personality is powerful enough to stamp its mark on his contemporaries, but since no one who is content to be merely a copyist could produce valuable work, the world has probably lost little by the submission. it is, however, true that, as the powerful muscles of michelangelo's statues become meaningless lumps in the works of bandinelli and vasari, so the mannerisms of signorelli, which were the outward sign of his strong and energetic temperament, lost all significance, and were merely coarse exaggerations in the work of his imitators. the swaggering attitude, the freedom of gesture, and the dramatic expression, shorn of the strength and earnest emotion from which they sprang, became disagreeably incongruous in the pictures of the feeble painters who imitated them. but one, at least, of signorelli's disciples was neither slavish nor feeble. bartolommeo della gatta, otherwise piero di antonio dei, the most important of those who came under his influence, was a painter of great charm and ability. if it be true, as a recent criticism has pronounced, that the beautiful "madonna," of the christ church collection, oxford, there attributed to pier dei franceschi, is from his brush,[ ] we have to deal with a man who started work under the same ennobling influence as signorelli himself. be that as it may, and as future research will decide, the fresco of "the death of moses," in the sistine chapel, which later study has presumed to be almost entirely his work, proves him to be a painter of great beauty and importance. signor gaetano milanesi has thrown doubt upon his existence as a painter of anything except miniatures,[ ] but the happy discovery of a document, referring to his altar-piece of "s. francis receiving the stigmata," in the church of that saint in castiglione fiorentino, has placed the fact beyond dispute.[ ] the student who desires to know more of this painter is referred to the last italian edition of cavalcaselle e crowe, vol. viii., and to the "life" by vasari, whose reliability in this case the researches of the critics so well confirm. born probably in , he was already a man of mature age when signorelli himself was a child, but his simple, pliable nature fitted him to be a follower rather than a leader, and we find him now influenced by pier dei franceschi, now by signorelli, and again later by fiorenzo di lorenzo. if it be true that the really splendid painting of the sistine chapel is due to him entirely, it is, of course, his masterpiece, and reaches, indeed, a level not very inferior to that of signorelli himself. his most important undisputed works are the above-mentioned painting in the church of s. francesco, castiglione fiorentino, the altar-piece in the collegiata of the same town, a s. rock in the gallery, and a fresco of s. jerome, in the bishop's palace, arezzo, etc. another imitator of importance, girolamo genga, impressionable as his nature was, yet has much individual excellence to distinguish him from the rest of signorelli's assistants. born at urbino in , he was placed, at the age of fifteen, in the studio of signorelli, with whom, according to vasari, he remained for twenty years, becoming "one of the best pupils that he had."[ ] after assisting the master in the painting of the cappella nuova, orvieto, genga (always according to the same authority) placed himself to study perspective with perugino, at the time that raffaelle was also under the influence of that painter. this, as well as the fact that he was a native of urbino, and had probably also felt the impression of timoteo viti, would account for the enormous influence raffaelle's painting had upon his later work. he seems to have had an extraordinary facility for changing his style; for, while under the influence of signorelli, as in the petrucci palace frescoes (nos. and in the gallery of siena), his work bears so much resemblance to that of the master, that so observant a critic as morelli declared the composition of both to be most certainly by luca himself.[ ] genga seems to have caught, not the superficial forms only, but also the spirit of signorelli in these frescoes, for in one--"the flight of Æneas from troy"--there is an exaggeration of the characteristic energy and movement, which, almost hysterical though it be, is yet successful and full of real life; while in the swaggering strength of the nude figures in "the rescue of prisoners" there is something of luca's own dignity and impressiveness. in his later work, although he never departs from certain likenesses to his first master, yet he gives himself up to the influence of raffaelle unreservedly, as may be best seen in the cesena altar-piece, now in the brera, milan. morelli writes of him: "this eclectic painter, who, though working in a baroque style, is not without talent, is confounded with the most diverse masters, both in drawings and paintings";[ ] and the fact that besides the above-mentioned variations of style, his work is also pardonably attributed to girolamo del pacchia[ ] and to sodoma,[ ] fully justifies the epithet and the assertion. of the other and less important followers, tommaso bernabei, called papacello, seems to have been first assistant of giulio romano, and then of giambattista caporali, with whom he is said to have painted the frescoes in the villa passerini, near cortona. his first original work is of the year --a "conception of the virgin," in the church of santa maria del calcinaio, near cortona, in which the manner of signorelli is very apparent. in the same church are two other paintings by him, dated , an "adoration of the magi," and an "annunciation," which are sufficient to indicate the small amount of artistic ability of the painter. the date of his birth is unknown; he died in .[ ] we have, besides, four members of signorelli's own family. first, his son polidoro, whom we know to have been his assistant at orvieto; for, in a document of , he is mentioned as having received certain payments there for salary, as well as for materials for the work.[ ] his manner of painting is unknown to us, so that it is impossible to distinguish his share in the frescoes. two other sons, antonio and pier tommaso, were, it seems, also assistants of their father, the former being the painter of a dated altar-piece in the church of santa maria del calcinaio, near cortona.[ ] lastly, his nephew francesco, the most important of the assistants bearing his own name, from whose hand there are several paintings very close to the master in style. to him, at least, are attributed the standard of "the baptism," in the gallery of città di castello, and a _tondo_ of a "madonna and saints," in the palazzo pubblico, cortona. there is one signed altar-piece by him, "the conception of the virgin," in the choir of s. francesco, gubbio. turpino zaccagna is another pupil, of whom manni writes that he was a noble youth of cortona, who took to painting, and imitated signorelli's style.[ ] of his work remains an altar-piece in the church of s. agata di cantalena, near cortona, signed and dated . with him the list of known pupils closes. but more really important than either of these minor scholars is the unknown imitator who painted the beautiful "magdalen," of the florence academy. executed on linen, and evidently intended for a church standard, this is the most successful of all the works in signorelli's manner, which yet cannot be accepted as genuine. the design of the principal figures in the foreground and middle distance i believe to be by signorelli himself, and the intensity of emotion in the magdalen, who has cast herself at the foot of the cross, and the impressive grandeur of the three figures to the right, have lost none of the original spirit of the master. the colour is entirely different, and would alone preclude the acceptance of the painting as signorelli's work, but, moreover, the general effect has so little of his sweeping breadth, and the details of the shadowy landscape are so poorly composed, that it is probable even the whole of the drawing is not by him. [illustration: [_gallery, buda-pesth_ tiberius gracchus] an interesting picture in the gallery of buda-pesth, there attributed to luca himself, connects the charming and mysterious "griselda" series (nos. , , and ), of the national gallery,[ ] with some follower of signorelli, for it is sufficient to glance at the background of this "tiberius gracchus" to be convinced that its painter is the same unknown master. in the "griselda" pictures there is more evidence than here of the influence of pintorricchio, to whom they are, not unnaturally, attributed; while in the "tiberius," in the drapery of the figure, and the type of the children who support the tablet, especially, there is much of the real spirit of signorelli, as well as a good deal of his breadth and solidity of drawing. the painter must, for the present, remain as an unknown umbrian, almost equally influenced by pintorricchio and luca, and with peculiar qualities of simple grace and romance, which give his work an extremely individual character. very different is the imitation of signorelli's mannerisms in such works as "the nativity," of the national gallery, "the madonna and saints," of the gallery of città di castello, and "the abbondanza," of the uffizi. in these the imitation is mechanical, and without any comprehension of the master's spirit. it would be useless to mention more of the school-work, in which superficial excellences and defects are copied with equal zeal. on the other hand, the spiritual qualities which these mechanical imitators missed, were felt intensely by men who never adopted his mannerisms, and it is in the work of these that the real effect of signorelli's influence is to be found. the frescoes of orvieto never became, like masaccio's in the carmine, a school to which the younger painters thronged, purposely to learn the methods of the master, but their impressive grandeur and solemnity, and the breadth of brushwork and solid modelling by which these qualities were in a great measure obtained, worked, nevertheless, a very important change in the art of the time, and a wave of strong fresh blood was sent through its veins. without them, perhaps, we should never have had the same appeal to the imagination and the nobler instincts in the sistine paintings, although there is not in the whole of the work one single mannerism from signorelli's style.[ ] but what is called the "terribilità" of the older master was entirely free from the sombre melancholy which strikes so gloomy a note in the work of michelangelo. signorelli's greatest gift to us is his conception of humanity, not only of its robust strength, but of its mental vigour. his figures are solemn, but it is a solemnity untainted with sadness, conscious only of the dignity of the human race, its significance and responsibilities. by his power over his materials, won by hard study, he added much to art, and presented things, not as conventional symbols, but as they are actually reflected on the eye. his people stand on solid ground by the help of firm muscle, substantial realities that we feel could be touched and walked round. his atmosphere gives the sense of real space and air. his trees seem to have roots, and their branches to be full of sap. by this truth and power of presenting things as they are he was able to endow his paintings with his own conception of nature, grander and wider than our own, and to make us see mankind with his eyes, built on broader, stronger lines. nothing trivial or insignificant enters into his perception of life. he takes his place with mantegna, with dürer, and with cossa, the austere painters, who felt the dignity of life to lie in rugged strength, iron resolution, and unflinching self-reliance. footnotes: [ ] "italian painters," i. . [ ] an attribution of mr b. berensen. [ ] see "commentary on the life of bart. della gatta." vasari, iii. . [ ] cavalcaselle e crowe. transcript of the document, viii. . [ ] vasari, vi. . [ ] "italian painters," i. . [ ] "italian painters," ii. . [ ] madonna. siena gallery, no. . [ ] portrait of man. pitti gallery, florence, no. . [ ] see cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. . [ ] vischer, . [ ] vischer, . [ ] inserted at the end of vischer's "signorelli," . [ ] unfortunately recently hung so high that any just appreciation of their great merit and beauty is impossible. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle maintain that raffaelle also studied carefully the works of signorelli. see cavalcaselle e crowe, viii. , and i. , etc. etc. chronological table of the life and works of luca signorelli [the following table is compiled from that of cavalcaselle e crowe. (le monnier, ) as being more complete than that in milanesi's vasari, and more condensed than that of vischer. dates, however, which are not supported by documentary evidence have been omitted.] (_circa_). luca was born of egidio, son of luca, son of ventura signorelli. . (november) completed the fresco in the tower of the commune, città di castello, with the virgin enthroned between ss. jerome and paul, first spoiled by exposure, and completely destroyed by the earthquake of . . (sep. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii., cortona. . (nov. ) elected to the conservatori degli ordinamente del comune. . elected to the priori for the months of march and april. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . painted the altar-piece in the cathedral of perugia. . is sent to gubbio, to negotiate with francesco di giorgio, sienese architect, for a design for the church of calcinaio, near cortona. . (jan. ) undertook the painting of a chapel in sant' agata, spoleto; a work which, it seems, was never executed. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . elected to the priori for the months of january and february. . (july ) for the great ability with which he painted the banner of the blessed virgin, is made citizen of città di castello, as was his great desire. . reseated in the chief magistracy of cortona for the months of september and october. . elected to the consiglio generale. . (dec. ) elected to the priori for the months of january and february. . (dec. ) his son antonio announces to the priori that luca cannot serve, being absent from the city at a distance of over forty miles. . (jan. ) is among those invited to judge the designs and models presented for the competition for the façade of santa maria del fiore, florence. did not assist. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . painted the altar-piece of the "annunciation," in the cathedral, volterra. . painted the altar-piece of san francesco, volterra. . painted the altar-piece of the "adoration of the magi," for the church of sant'agostino, città di castello. . elected to the consiglio generale. . (sept. ) sold for gold florins to domenico di tommaso della barba of cortona, some acres of ground situated in the territory of montalla, called la mucchia, and the via di montalla, and others in the territory of orsaia, called the bocca del prato and the via da loghino. . commission for the banner for the church of santo spirito, urbino. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. . painted the altar-piece of the "nativity," for the church of san francesco, città di castello. . elected to the priori for the months of may and june. . (march ) elected one of the revisori degli argenti. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. . painted in the cloister of monte oliveto, near chiusuri, "stories in the life of s. benedict." . painted the altar-piece for the chapel of the bicchi family in s. agostino, siena. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (april ) commission for the frescoes in the roof of the cappella nuova, in the cathedral, orvieto. . (april ) commission for the painting of the walls in the above-mentioned chapel. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (may ) becomes surety to a citizen who undertakes the office of priore of the commune. . certain payments are made to polidoro, son of maestro luca, for colours and plaster, the removing of the scaffolding of the chapel, and for a part of his salary. . (june ) sold to ventura, his brother, the half of a house, which belonged to him, together with the said ventura, situated in cortona, in the quarter of san marco, bounded by the hospital of san niccolò, by pietro, surnamed scrolla, by jacopo di francesco, and by the via del comune. . painted the "deposition," for the church of santa margherita, cortona, now in the cathedral. . payment made to maestro luca signorelli for the painting of the cappella nuova, orvieto. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (june ) elected to the priori for the months of july and august, but cannot serve because his family is attacked by the plague. . (july ) presents to paolo di forzore and to his daughter francesca two acres of ground at rio di loreto, belonging to him as heir of his son antonio, who had received it as the dowry of his first wife nannina, daughter of paolo. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. being absent, his name was removed from the list. . (feb. ) elected to the council of xviii. . elected to the priori for the months of may and june. . painted the altar-piece of s. mary magdalen for the cathedral of orvieto. . (dec. ) payment for the paintings of the cappella nuova. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (sept. ) is surety for one of the priori. . is in siena, and receives the commission for the cartoon of the "judgment of solomon," for the marble pavement of the cathedral. . (oct. ) is surety for one of the priori. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . elected to the priori for the months of july and august. . (dec. ) elected to the council of the casa di misericordia. . painted the altar-piece in the church of s. medardo, arcevia. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . elected to the priori for the months of july and august. . (july ) is sent on an embassy to florence to demand permission to reform the offices and ordinances of the commune. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . is in rome, painting for julius ii., together with perugino, pintorricchio, and sodoma. . (feb. ) elected one of the inspectors of santa margherita. . (march ) becomes surety for a priest. . (march ) binds himself to paint, for gold florins, a picture for the high altar of the convent church of santuccie, cortona. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . elected to the priori for the months of january and february. . (aug. ) appointed one of the inspectors of relics of the cathedral. . payment for the cappella nuova, orvieto. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. . painted "the institution of the eucharist," in the cathedral, cortona. . (sept. ) is sent as ambassador to florence, together with messer silvio passerini, messer gilio and jacopo vagnucci, to congratulate the medici on their return to florence. departed sept. and returned oct. . . is in rome, and appears to have borrowed money from michelangelo. . (july ) elected to the riformatori e imborsatori degli uffici. . (aug. ) elected to the sindaco del capitano. . (march ) makes a will, annulling the donation made to his daughter gabriella, to his son-in-law mariotto passerini, and to his grandaughter bernardina, and pronouncing as his sole heir his son pier tommaso, and his grandson giulio, son of the above. . (feb. ) elected to the conservatori degli ordinamente. . painted the "madonna," now in the mancini collection, città di castello. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (sept. ) is commissioned by the priori of cortona to paint, for gold florins, the arms of silvio passerini, chancellor of leo x., on the walls of the atrium of the palazzo pubblico. - . painted the "deposition," in the church at la fratta (now umbertide). . (feb. ) elected to the collegi. . (feb. ) luca, from the rostrum, speaks publicly in the council on a matter in deliberation. . (may ) elected to the consiglio generale; but is absent. . elected to the priori for the months of november and december. . (feb. ) among the stimatori del danno. . (april ) among the inspectors of the property of santa margherita. . (july ) is elected as ambassador to rome to present to cardinal passerini a gift from the commune. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio generale. . (nov. ) is excused from the above-mentioned embassy to rome. . elected to the collegi. . painted the altar-piece for the confraternity of san girolamo of arezzo. . (feb. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . elected to the priori for the months of may and june. . (june ) gave the design of a wooden candelabra with copper sconces for the altar of the great hall of council, cortona. . (aug. ) elected to the consiglio dei xviii. . (april ) elected prior of the confraternity of sant' antonio. . (april ) commissioned to paint a picture for the hospital of the misericordia, cortona. . (may ) the priori writes to cardinal passerini, legate to perugia, that he should not send maestro pietro perugino or other painters to whom luca may have spoken, to value the picture painted by luca in the church of santa maria del piève. . (july ) commission for the picture for the convent of s. trinità in cortona. . (aug. ) elected to take part in the commission to examine the new bridge over the chiana. . (sept. ) elected to the pacieri. . (feb. ) elected to the collegi. . (april ) prior of the confraternity of san marco. . (aug. ) elected one of the conservatori degli ordinamente del comune, and the provveditori de' luoghi pii. . elected to the priori for the months of january and february. . painted the altar-piece of the collegiata, foiano. . (feb. ) elected to the sindaci del capitano. . (april ) elected one of the inspectors of the chapel of santa margherita. . (june ) received payment for the picture of foiano. . (june ) the priori commission him to paint, for the chapel of the great hall of the palazzo pubblico, a picture with "christ disputing in the temple," for the price of gold florins. . (july ) elected one of the riformatori degli uffici. . (oct. ) his last will. desires to be buried in the church of s. francesco, in the tomb of his family. . (oct. ) adds a codicil to his will with a few alterations of bequests. . died between the last days of november and the st december. the th december another citizen is nominated to the inspectorship of the chapel of santa margherita, as substitute for maestro luca, being dead. catalogue of the works of luca signorelli arranged according to the galleries in which they are contained. catalogue of works. british isles. dublin, gallery. feast in the house of simon.[ ] _this must be the panel mentioned by cavalcaselle as in the possession of capt. stirling, glentyan, scotland (?)._ liverpool, royal institution. madonna. oil. ft. in. × ft. in. [no. .] london, national gallery. the circumcision. oil. ft. in. × ft. in. [no. .] _originally in the church of s. francesco, volterra. later in the duke of hamilton's collection, near glasgow. purchased in ._ inscribed: lvcas cortonensis pinxit. london, mr benson's collection. madonna. two parts of predella: . dispute on the way to emmaus. . christ at emmaus. london, lord crawford's collection. two parts of predella: . meeting of joachim and anna. . birth of the virgin. london, mr ludwig mond's collection. predella: . ahasuerus and esther. and . scenes in the life of s. augustine. london, mr muir mackenzie's collection. madonna. tondo. on sale in london. annunciation. part of predella formerly in the mancini collection, città di castello. for sale since . richmond, collection of sir francis cook. two fragments of a baptism. profile portrait of man. scotland (collection of sir john stirling maxwell, pollock house). pietÀ. france. paris, louvre. part of predella. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. _from the collection of louis xviii._ adoration of the magi. oil. ft. in. × ft. in. drawing only. _from the collection of napoleon iii._ seven half-figures in various costumes (?). . fragment. _bought from campana collection, rome, by napoleon iii._ germany. altenburg, saxony, museum. nine fragments of polyptych. oil. _from the collection of the late herr von lindenau._ four small panels with a saint in each, and five parts of a predella: . christ on the mount of olives. . flagellation. . crucifixion. . deposition. . resurrection. berlin, gallery. two wings of altar-piece. . oil. ft. in. × ft. ½ in. [no. .] _painted for the church of s. agostino, siena, which was burnt down in . bought from the solly collection._ pan as god of natural life and master of music. oil on canvas. ft. in. × ft. ½ in. [no. a.] _probably painted for lorenzo dei medici. discovered in in the palazzo corsi, florence. bought by the berlin gallery ._ inscribed: lvca cortonen. holy family. oil. in. × in. tondo. [no. b.] _from the patrizi collection, rome. bought ._ inscribed: lvchas signorellvs de cortona. portrait of man. oil. ft. in. × ft. _from the torrigiani collection, florence._ meiningen, ducal palace. part of predella. munich, gallery. madonna and child. oil. tondo. _from the palazzo ginori, florence._ italy. arcevia, s. medardo (between fabriano and sinigalia). polyptych. madonna and saints. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. in the original gothic frame. inscribed: lvcas signorellvs pingebat. m.d.vii. predella: . the annunciation. . the nativity. . the adoration of the magi. . the flight into egypt. . the murder of the innocents. arcevia, s. medardo, cappella del sacramento. baptism. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. in the original gothic frame. partly by assistants. predella: . the birth of the baptist. . the preaching in the desert. . the denouncing of herod and herodias. . the feast of herod. . the decapitation in prison. arezzo, gallery. madonna, saints, and prophets. . oil. ft. ½ in. × ft. in. [no. .] _painted for the campagnia of san girolamo. for many years in s. croce; on the suppression of that convent in removed to s. spirito; from thence to the gallery._ arezzo, duomo, sacristy. three parts of predella. oil. . birth of the virgin. . presentation. . marriage of the virgin. bergamo, morelli collection. s. rock. oil. [no. .] madonna. oil. [no. .] s. sebastian. [no. .] borgo san sepolcro, municipio. church standard. oil on canvas. ft. in. × ft. in. on one side a crucifixion; on the other, ss. antonio and eligio. _from the confraternity of s. antonio abbate._ castiglione fiorentino collegiata, cappella del sacramento. deposition. fresco. ft. in. × ft. in. cittÀ di castello, gallery. martyrdom of s. sebastian. . oil, ft. in. × ft. ½ in. [no. .] _from the church of s. domenico._ cittÀ di castello, palazzo mancini. madonna and saints. . oil. _painted for the church of s. francesco in montone, near umbertide. discovered in a cellar in montone._ inscribed: egregivm qvod cernis opvs magister aloysius ex gallia, et tomasina ejvs vxor ex devotione svis svmptibvs poni cvravervnt. lvca signorello de cortona pictore insigni formas indvcente. anno d. mdxv. cortona, duomo. deposition. . oil. ft. in. × ft in. _from the church of santa margherita._ inscribed (under frame): lvcas aegidi signorelli. cortonensis. mdii. predella to the above: . christ in gethsemane. . the last supper. . the betrayal. . the flagellation. the institution of the eucharist. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. _from the high altar of the gesù._ inscribed: lvcas signorellivs corthoniensis pingebat. mdxii. conception of the virgin. oil. the upper part the work of assistants. cortona, s. domenico ( rd altar, r.). madonna and saints. . oil. _painted for the bishop of cortona._ inscribed: io serninivs e[~p]s cortone[~n]s iconam et ornatum p. p. facieri a.d. ci[c]i[c]xv. haeredes vero d. astrvbalis ejvs ex f[~v]e ab nepotis p. s. instavran. cvravervnt. a.d. ci[c]. i[c]. cxix. cortona, gesu. madonna and saints. cortona, s. niccolo. dead christ upheld by angels. oil. ft. ½ in. × ft. ½ in. on the reverse-- madonna enthroned between ss. peter and paul. cortona, s. niccolo (on the wall, l. of entrance). madonna and saints. fresco. ft. in. × ft. in. _discovered in by don agramante lorini._ florence, academy. crucifixion. oil, on canvas. [no. .] (part of the design only.) madonna and saints. oil. [no. .] _from the church of s. trinità, cortona._ predella. [no. .] . the last supper. . christ in gethsemane. . the flagellation. florence, corsini gallery. madonna and saints. tondo. florence, pitti. holy family. oil. ft. in. × ft in. tondo. [no. .] florence, uffizi. madonna and child ( st corridor). [no. .] _probably painted for lorenzo dei medici. later in the villa of duke cosimo at castello. removed to the gallery ._ holy family. tondo. [no. .] _originally in the "audienza dei capitani," later in the "stanza del provveditore."_ predella. [no. .] . the annunciation. . the nativity. . the adoration of the magi. _from the church of santa lucia, montepulciano._ foiano (near sinalunga), collegiata. coronation of the virgin. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. predella. (two scenes only by signorelli.) loreto, church of the santa casa. frescoes. probably finished before . (left sacristy) "della cura." (in the cupola) angels, evangelists, and fathers of the church. (walls) apostles, incredulity of s. thomas. (over door) conversion of saul. (nave) medallions in _grisaille_ of prophets and fathers of the church. milan, brera. madonna and saints. . oil. ft. in. × ft. ½ in. [no. bis.] _from the church of s. francesco, arcevia. first brought to the gallery . in removed to the church at figino, near milan. replaced in the gallery ._ inscribed: lvcas signorelli p. cortona (on the back of the throne), iacobi simonis philippinis aere deo et divÆ mariae dicatvm fr: bernardino vignato gvardiano procvrante. mdviii. the flagellation. [no. .] { probably one panel { originally. madonna and child. [no. .] { ft. ½ in. × ft. _from the church of santa maria del mercato, fabriano._ "the flagellation" inscribed: opvs lvce cortonensis. monte oliveto (near asciano), cloisters. frescoes. . eight scenes from the life of s. benedict. morra (near città di castello), s. crescenziano. crucifixion. fresco. flagellation. fresco. orvieto, cathedral, chapel of the madonna di s. brizio, formerly cappella nuova. frescoes. - . (six compartments in vaulting): . apostles; . signs of the passion; . martyrs (design of fra angelico); . virgins; . patriarchs; . fathers of the church. (four large frescoes): . antichrist; . crowning of the elect; . damnation; . resurrection. (window wall): r. hell; l. heaven. (round the portal): signs of destruction. (lower walls): pietà; portraits of poets; medallions in _grisaille_. orvieto, opera del duomo. s. maria maddalena. . oil. ft. in. × ft. in. _originally painted for the cathedral._ inscribed on the upper part of the frame: ceccarellevs. de. apvidvtis--et rvfinvs antonii.-- on the lower: conservat. pa. pacis. conservatrici. ex. se consvlto. m.d.iiii. portraits of signorelli and niccolÒ franceschi. [no. .] tempera on brick. ft. × ft. ½ in. inscribed on the draperies: lvca and nicolavs. on the back, probably by signorelli at the request of niccolò franceschi, the treasurer of the works: lvcas signorellvs. natione ytalys. patria corton[~e]sis. arte pictvre eximivs. merito apelli conpar[~a]dvs. svb regimine et stipendio nicolai fr[~a]ch. eivsd[~e] nationis patrie vrbevetane. camerarii fabrice. hvivs basylice sacell[~v] hoc virgini dicat[~v] ivdicii finalis ordine figvrad[~v] pspicve pinsit cvpidvsq [~i]mortalitatis vtrivsq effigi[~e] atfrgo litterar[~v] har[~v] natvraliter mira eff[~i]sit arte. alexandro . viº . pon . max . sedente . et maximiano. iiii . inperiante a[~n]o salvtis mºcccccº. te[~r]io kalendas janvarias. perugia, duomo, winter chapel. madonna and saints. . oil. ft. in. × ft. ½ in. inscribed (hidden by the frame): jacobvs vannvtivs nobilis cortonensis olim episcopvs pervsinvs hoc deo max. et divo honophrio sacellvm dedicavit: cvi in archiepiscopvm nicaenvm assvmpto nepos dionisivs svccessit, et qvanta vides impensa ornavit aeqva pietas. m. cccc. lxxxiv. rome, rospigliosi collection. holy family. oil. ft. in. × ft. [sala ii., no. .] umbertide, santa croce. deposition. oil. ft. in. × ft. in. predella: . march of constantine. . discovery of the cross. . entry of heraclius into jerusalem. urbino, santa spirito. church standard. (now divided.) oil on canvas. ft. × ft. (on one side, crucifixion; on the other, descent of the holy ghost at pentecost.) volterra, duomo, sacristy. annunciation. . oil. inscribed: lvcas cortonen pinxit mxdi. a later inscription records its restoration in . volterra, municipio. madonna and saints. . oil. _from the church of s. francesco._ inscribed: maria. vergini. petrvs. belladomna. hvjvs. religionis professor pos. lvcas cortone[~n] pinxit. m cccc lxxxxi. volterra (first landing of stairs), municipio. s. girolamo. fresco. united states of america. new haven. collection of mr jarvis. part of predella. adoration of the magi. oil. footnotes: [ ] the paintings, except when otherwise indicated, are on wood. index _adoration of the magi, the_ (louvre), ; (arcevia), ; (new haven), _agony in the garden, the_, _ahasuerus and esther_, _annunciation, the_ (volterra), , , ; (uffizi), ; (formerly mancini collection), ; (arcevia), , arcevia, altar-piece at, , _baptism, the_ (arcevia), berensen, b., , bernabei, tommaso, _betrayal, the_ (florence), , ; (cortona), , bicchi family, altar-piece for, , _birth of the baptist, the_ (arcevia), _birth of the virgin, the_ (arezzo), bode, dr, botticelli, ; his "calumny," ; passion for swift movement, bramante, caporali, giambattista, castagno, andrea di, ; influence of on signorelli, _christ in gethsemane_, _circumcision, the_, , , città di castello, frescoes at, , , ; citizenship of presented to signorelli, _conception of the virgin, the_, _conversion of saul, the_, , , _coronation of the virgin, the_, cortona, signorelli born at, ; municipal appointments at, , , , ; the "deposition" in the cathedral of, , crowe and cavalcaselle, , , , , , , _crowning of the elect, the_, , , , _crucifixion, the_ (urbino), ; (borgo san sepolcro), , ; (morra), , _damnation, the_, , , dante, portraits of, by signorelli, at orvieto, , ; scenes from the divina commedia, , _dead christ supported by angels_, , _death of lucretia_, study for a, _death of moses, the_, , _decapitation in prison, the_, _denouncing of herod and herodias_, _deposition, the_ (cortona), , ; (umbertide), , , _descent of the holy ghost, the_, , _discovery of the cross, the_, _dispute by the way, the_, donatello, his influence on signorelli, , ; mastery of combined movement, _entry of heraclius into jerusalem, the_, _feast of herod, the_, _feast in the house of simon, the_, _flagellation, the_ (brera), , , , , , , , ; (cortona), ; (florence), ; (morra), , _flight into egypt, the_, foiano, altar-piece at, , foligno, niccolò da, forlì, melozzo da, fra angelico, frescoes at orvieto, , , , franceschi, pier dei, signorelli the pupil of, , , , , ; and signorelli compared, , ; his "death of adam," ; his "resurrection," ; his "baptism," francesco, niccolò, portrait of, by signorelli, , , gatta, bartolommeo della, , ; an imitator of signorelli, , , genga, girolamo, ; an imitator of signorelli, , gozzoli, benozzo, , , guidobaldo, of urbino, _hercules overcoming antæus_ (chalk drawing), _holy family_ (rospigliosi collection), , , ; (pitti), , ; (uffizi), , homer, scenes from, at orvieto, _institution of the eucharist, the_, _journey of moses and zipporah, the_, fresco by pintorricchio, _last judgment, the_, , , _last supper, the_ (cortona), ; (florence), lazzaro de' taldi, signorelli's uncle, lorenzo, fiorenzo di, reminiscences of, in signorelli's work, loreto, frescoes at, , , , lucan, scenes from, at orvieto, , luzi, ludovico, "il duomo di orvieto," , , , , , _madonna and saints_ (brera), , , , ; (volterra), , , , ; (arezzo), ; (uffizi), , , , ; (munich), , , ; (florence academy), , , ; (corsini gallery), ; (città di castello), , ; (s. niccolò, cortona), , ; (s. domenico, cortona), _magdalen, the_, altar-piece (orvieto), , mancini, giacomo, , mancini, girolamo, _march of constantine, the_, _marriage of the virgin, the_, medici, giovanni dei (pope leo x.), medici, lorenzo dei, ; friendship with signorelli, , , michelangelo, story of his dealings with signorelli, milanesi, signor, , missaghi, guiseppe, monte oliveto, frescoes in the benedictine cloister at, , , , morelli, on the frescoes in the sistine chapel, ; on signorelli, , , ; on his drawing, , ; on his influence, ; on girolamo genga, _murder of the innocents, the_, _nativity, the_ (arcevia), ; (cortona), nude, early treatment of the, orvieto, frescoes in the cathedral of, , , , , , _et seq._ ovid, scenes from, at orvieto, _pan_, , , parens, pietro, , perugia, altar-piece in the cathedral of, , , perugino, , , , , ; his influence on signorelli, , , _pietà_ (orvieto), pintorricchio, , ; frescoes in the sistine chapel by, ; asserted influence of, on signorelli, pollaiuolo, antonio, his influence on signorelli, , , , , , , , , , ; his "s. sebastian," ; his "battle of the nudes," , , ; "hercules," , _portrait of a man_ (berlin), _preaching and fall of antichrist, the_, _preaching in the desert, the_, _presentation, the_, quercia, jacopo della, raffaelle, , , _rain of fire, the_, _resurrection, the_, rome, frescoes in the sistine chapel, ; decoration of the vatican chambers, rosselli, cosimo, rumohr, on signorelli, _s. augustine, scenes from the life of_, _s. benedict, scenes from the life of_, _s. jerome_, , _s. martin, scenes from the life of_, _s. sebastian, the martyrdom of_, scalza, ippolito, , signorelli, antonio, , signorelli, francesco, signorelli, luca, little known of his life, ; vasari on, ; birth, ; studied painting under pier dei franceschi, ; influence of antonio pollaiuolo and donatello, , ; gap in his biography, ; early frescoes, ; municipal appointments at cortona, , , , , ; his social status, ; supposed visit to rome, ; frescoes in the sistine chapel ascribed to, ; painted the altar-piece in perugia cathedral, ; received the honour of citizenship from città di castello, ; pictures at volterra, ; frescoes in the cloister at monte oliveto, ; altar-piece at siena, ; frescoes in the cathedral of orvieto, , ; portraits of himself, , , , ; the "deposition" at cortona, ; death of his son antonio, ; and of polidoro, ; pictures at arcevia, ; decoration of the vatican chambers, ; disappointments at rome, ; alleged transaction with michelangelo, ; visit to arezzo, , ; death, ; vasari's character of, ; artists who influenced, , ; origin of the swaggering posture so characteristic of his paintings, , ; use of gold and gesso, , ; his great achievement, the rendering of combined action, ; his defects, , ; his colour, ; his line and modelling, ; an unequal illustrator, , ; his painting of children, ; realism, ; repetitions, ; chief qualities of his work, ; earliest works, ; frescoes at loreto, ; altar-piece at perugia, ; qualities of his _tondos_, ; works at volterra, ; frescoes at monte oliveto, ; the orvieto frescoes, , ; later works, ; altar-piece at arcevia, ; last works, , ; drawings, , ; his imitators and influence, , signorelli, pier tommaso, , signorelli, polidoro, , ; his death, _signs of the destruction of the world_, sodoma, , , , standards painted by signorelli, , , _supper at emmaus, the_, uccello, paolo, van der goes, hugo, vasari, on signorelli, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , verrocchio, reminiscences of, in signorelli's work, , vischer, on the frescoes in the sistine chapel, ; on signorelli, , , , , ; list of signorelli's drawings, _visitation, the_, _way to calvary, the_, zaccagna, turpino, w. h. white and co. ltd., riverside press, edinburgh notice photographs of most of the works mentioned in this volume are to be obtained in various sizes from w. a. mansell & co. art photograph publishers and dealers, , oxford street, london, w. , pall mall east, s.w. * * * * * permanent carbon points, permanent prints, photogravures, from most of the pictures in the galleries at london. national gallery. dulwich gallery. tate gallery. edinburgh. glasgow. brussels. milan. venice. munich. berlin. dresden. vienna. liechtenstein. belvedere. czernin. amsterdam. hague, haarlem. cassel. etc., etc. royal collections at buckingham palace. windsor castle. private collections of the duke of devonshire. the earl spencer. the earl of northbrook. _art books--art albums--artistic framing._ * * * * * franz hanfstÆngl , pall mall east, s.w. lists and prospectuses free. catalogues, one shilling. fine art engravers and printers. * * * * * the swan electric engraving company, , charing cross road, london, w.c. * * * * * engravers and printers of photogravure plates. of "swantype" blocks. of fine line-work. * * * * * the leading firm in great britain for all high-class reproduction work, including the orthochromatic photography of pictures and works of art. * * * * * transcriber's note: general: corrections to punctuation have not been individually noted. page xii: erratum applied to text. page xiii: guidÀ corrected to guida. rella corrected to nella. page : "by the which he roused" amended to "by means of this he roused". page : duplicate a removed from "in that on the left a a man". page : ninteen corrected to nineteen. page : campagnia standardised to compagnia. page : pietá corrected to pietà. page : pspicve without tilde as in original, probably intended as an abbreviation for perspicue. figvrad[~v] as in original, perhaps a misspelling of figurandum. atfrgo as in original perhaps intended a tergo. cvpidvsq (cupidusque?) and vtrivsq (utriusque?) as in original without overlining. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) transcriber's note: bracketted lower case letters refer to notes at the end of the text{a} at the end of this text i have provided some links to internet sites which have more information about some of the artists, some of which may have color images similar to the ones presented in this book. great pictures as seen and described by famous writers edited and translated by esther singleton author of "turrets, towers, and temples" and translator of "the music dramas of richard wagner" with numerous illustrations [illustration: fisherman presenting the ring to the doge gradenigo. _bordone._] new york dodd, mead and company copyright, by dodd, mead and company preface the cordial reception of "turrets, towers, and temples" has encouraged me to hope that a welcome may be given to a book treating the masterpieces of painting in a similar manner. great writers and literary tourists have occasionally been inspired to record the impressions of their saunterings among galleries and museums. the most interesting of these, not necessarily professional, i have tried to bring together in the following pages. my object has been not to make a selection of the greatest pictures in the world, although many that have that reputation will be found here, but rather to bring together those that have produced a powerful impression on great minds. consequently, when the reader is disturbed at the omission of some world-famous painting, i beg him to remember my plan and blame the great writers instead of me for neglecting his favourite. my task has not been a light one. a few words of rapturous admiration are constantly to be met with in the pages of art-lovers, but a sympathetic study of a single work is rarely found. general comment of a given artist's work is also plentiful, while discriminating praise of individual canvases is scanty. the literary selection has, therefore, involved a great deal of research. from time to time the relative popularity of painters shifts strangely, but no matter what inconstant fashion may dictate, or what may be the cult of the hour, certain paintings never lose their prestige, but annually attract as many pilgrims as lourdes or fusi-san. of modern painters i have only included turner and rossetti. it is interesting to compare the example i have chosen from rossetti with leonardo's "monna lisa." pater has admirably brought out, without dwelling too much upon it, the charm that is eternal in her face as well as the fantastic imagination of the great artist who created her for all time. he says: "the fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one.... certainly lady lisa might stand as the embodiment of the _old_ fancy, the symbol of the _modern_ idea." in a similar sense lilith the siren, the lorelei, the eternal enchantress, in her modern robe, is the embodiment of a _new_ fancy, the symbol of the _ancient_ idea; and just here across four centuries the thoughts of two great artists meet. the types of beauty and women in this book offer no little suggestion to the fancy. from botticelli's "la bella simonetta," and raphael's "la fornarina," through all the periods of painting the model has been a great influence upon the painter's work, and upon this point nearly every essayist and critic represented in these pages dwells. in many of the essays, such as pater's on botticelli, and swinburne's on andrea del sarto, the author strays away from the painting to talk of the painter, but in doing this he gives us so thoroughly the spirit of that painter that a fuller light is thrown upon the picture before us. i have included a few criticisms by modern french critics, mm. valabrègue, lafond, giron, guiffrey, and reymond, recognized authorities upon the artists whose works they describe; and i have selected fromentin's valuable essay on "the night watch," feeling sure that this thoughtful criticism would interest even the enthusiastic admirers of this enigmatical work. i have been careful to take no unnecessary liberties with the text. in the translations from gruyer, goethe, fromentin, and others, which were unfortunately too long to be included entire, i have not allowed myself to condense, but only to cut. this is true, also, of the english extracts. e.s. new york, _september_, . contents the fisherman presenting the ring to the doge gradenigo _bordone_ thÉophile gautier. the birth of venus _botticelli_ walter pater. the queen of sheba _veronese_ john ruskin. the last judgment _michael angelo_ alexandre dumas. magdalen in the desert _correggio_ aimÉ giron. banquet of the arquebusiers _van der helst_ william makepeace thackeray. l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythÈre _watteau_ edmond and jules de goncourt. the sistine madonna _raphael_ f.a. gruyer. the dream of st. ursula _carpaccio_ john ruskin. the descent from the cross _rubens_ eugÈne fromentin. bacchus and ariadne _titian_ i. charles lamb. ii. edward t. cook. the coronation of the virgin _fra angelico_ thÉophile gautier. judith _botticelli_ maurice hewlett. the avenue of middelharnais _hobbema_ paul lafond. the dance of the daughter of herodias _andrea del sarto_ algernon charles swinburne. adoration of the magi _fabriano_ f.a. gruyer. portrait of georg gisze _holbein_ antony valabrÈgue. paradise _tintoret_ john ruskin. aurora _guido reni_ i. charlotte a. eaton. ii. john constable. the assumption of the virgin _titian_ thÉophile gautier. the night watch _rembrandt_ eugÈne fromentin. the rape of helen _gozzoli_ cosmo monkhouse monna lisa _leonardo da vinci_ walter pater. the adoration of the lamb _van eyck_ kugler. the death of procris _piero di cosimo_ i. edward t. cook. ii. john addington symonds. the marriage in cana _tintoret_ john ruskin. madame de pompadour _de la tour_ charles-augustin sainte-beuve. the hay wain _constable_ c.l. burns. the surrender of breda _velasquez_ thÉophile gautier. the immaculate conception _murillo_ aimÉ giron. st. francis before the soldan _giotto_ john ruskin. lilith _rossetti_ algernon charles swinburne. adoration of the magi _dürer_ moriz thausing. marriage a-la-mode _hogarth_ austin dobson. the madonna of the rocks _leonardo da vinci_ thÉophile gautier beatrice cenci _guido reni_ percy bysshe shelley the transfiguration _raphael_ mrs. jameson the bull _paul potter_ eugÈne fromentin corÉsus and callirhoÉ _fragonard_ edmond and jules de goncourt the market-cart _gainsborough_ richard and samuel redgrave bacchus and ariadne _tintoret_ hippolyte adolphe taine bacchus and ariadne anonymous la cruche cassÉe _greuze_ thÉophile gautier portrait of lady cockburn and her children _reynolds_ frederic g. stephens st. cecilia _raphael_ percy bysshe shelley the last supper _leonardo da vinci_ johann wolfgang von goethe the children of charles i. _van dyck_ jules guiffrey the fighting tÉmÉraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, _turner_ john ruskin spring _botticelli_ marcel reymond illustrations bordone fisherman presenting the ring to the doge gradenigo _venice_ frontispiece facing page botticelli the birth of venus _florence_ veronese the queen of sheba _turin_ michael angelo the last judgment _rome_ correggio magdalen _dresden_ van der helst the banquet of the arquebusiers _amsterdam_ watteau l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythère _paris_ raphael the sistine madonna _dresden_ carpaccio the dream of st. ursula _venice_ rubens the descent from the cross _antwerp_ titian bacchus and ariadne _london_ fra angelico the coronation of the virgin _paris_ botticelli judith _florence_ hobbema the avenue of middelharnais _london_ andrea del sarto the dance of the daughter of herodias _florence_ fabriano the adoration of the magi _florence_ holbein portrait of georg gisze _berlin_ tintoret paradise _venice_ guido reni aurora _rome_ titian the assumption of the virgin _venice_ rembrandt the night watch _amsterdam_ gozzoli the rape of helen _london_ l. da vinci monna lisa _paris_ van eyck the adoration of the lamb _ghent_ piero di cosimo the death of procris _london_ tintoret the marriage in cana _venice_ de la tour portrait of madame de pompadour _paris_ constable the hay wain _london_ velasquez the surrender of breda _madrid_ murillo the immaculate conception _paris_ giotto st. frances before the soldan _florence_ rossetti lilith _rockford, del._ dÜrer the adoration of the magi _florence_ hogarth the marriage a-la-mode _london_ l. da vinci the madonna of the rocks _paris_ guido reni portrait of beatrice cenci _rome_ raphael the transfiguration _rome_ paul potter the bull _the hague_ fragonard corésus and callirhoé _paris_ gainsborough the market-cart _london_ tintoret bacchus and ariadne _venice_ greuze la cruche cassée _paris_ reynolds portrait of lady cockburn and her children _london_ raphael st. cecilia _naples_ l. da vinci the last supper _milan_ van dyck portrait of the children of charles i. _turin_ turner the fighting téméraire _london_ botticelli spring _florence_ great pictures described by great writers the fisherman presenting the ring to the doge gradenigo (_bordone_) thÉophile gautier this picture, which represents a gondolier returning the ring of saint mark to the doge, treats of a legend, an episode of which giorgione, as we shall see in the next hall, has also painted in a somewhat singular manner. here is the story in a few words: one night while the gondolier was sleeping in his gondola, waiting for custom along the canal of s. giorgio maggiore, three mysterious individuals jumped into his boat and bade him take them to the lido; one of the three persons, as well as he could be distinguished in the darkness, appeared to have the beard of an apostle and the figure of a high dignitary of the church; the two others, by a certain sound as of armour rubbing beneath their mantles, revealed themselves as men-at-arms. the gondolier turned his prow towards the lido and began to row; but the lagoon, so tranquil at their departure, began to chop and swell strangely: the waves gleamed with sinster{a} lights; monstrous apparitions were outlined menacingly around the barque to the great terror of the gondolier; and hideous spirits of evil and devils half man half fish seemed to be swimming from the lido towards venice, making the waves emit thousands of sparks and exciting the tempest with whistling and fiendish laughter in the storm; but the appearance of the shining swords of the two knights and the extended hand of the saintly personage made them recoil and vanish in sulphurous explosions. the battle lasted for a long time; new demons constantly succeeded the others; however, the victory remained with the personages in the boat, who had themselves taken back to the landing of the piazzetta. the gondolier scarcely knew what to think of their strange conduct; until, as they were about to separate, the oldest of the group, suddenly causing his nimbus to shine out again, said to the gondolier: "i am saint mark, the patron of venice. i learned to-night that the devils assembled in convention at the lido in the cemetery of the jews, had formed the resolution of exciting a frightful tempest and overthrowing my beloved city, under the pretext that many excesses are committed there which give the evil spirits power over her inhabitants; but as venice is a good catholic and will confess her sins in the beautiful cathedral which she has raised to me, i resolved to defend her from this peril of which she was ignorant, by the aid of these two brave companions, saint george and saint theodore, and i have borrowed thy boat; now, as all trouble merits reward, and as thou hast passed a boisterous night, here is my ring; carry it to the doge and tell him what thou hast seen. he will fill thy cap with golden sequins." so saying, the saint resumed his position on the top of the porch of saint mark's, saint theodore climbed to the top of his column, where his crocodile was grumbling with ill-humour, and saint george went to squat in the depths of his columned niche in the great window of the ducal palace. the gondolier, rather astonished, and he had reason enough, would have believed that he had been dreaming after drinking during that evening several glasses too many of the wine of samos, if the large and heavy golden ring studded with precious stones which he held in his hand had not prevented his doubting the reality of the events of the night. therefore, he went to find the doge, who was presiding over the senate in his cap of office, and, respectfully kneeling before him, he related the story of the battle between the devils and the patron saints of venice. at first this story seemed incredible; but the return of the ring, which was in very sooth that of saint mark, and the absence of which from the church treasury was established, proved the gondolier's veracity. this ring, locked up under triple keys in a carefully-guarded treasury, the bolts of which showed no trace of disturbance, could only have been removed by supernatural means. they filled the gondolier's cap with gold and celebrated a mass of thanksgiving for the peril they had escaped. this did not prevent the venetians from continuing their dissolute course of life, from spending their nights in the haunts of play, at gay suppers, and in love-making; in masking for intrigues, and in prolonging the long orgy of their carnival for six months in the year. the venetians counted upon the protection of saint mark to go to paradise and they took no other care of their salvation. that was saint mark's affair; they had built him a fine church for that, and the saint was still under obligations to them. the moment selected by paris bordone is that when the gondolier falls on his knees before the doge. the composition of the scene is very picturesque; you see in perspective a long row of the brown or grey heads of senators of the most magisterial character. curious spectators are on the steps, forming happily-contrasted groups: the beautiful venetian costume is displayed here in all its splendour. here, as in all the canvases of this school, an important place is given to architecture. the background is occupied by fine porticos in the style of palladio, animated with people coming and going. this picture possesses the merit, sufficiently rare in the italian school, which is almost exclusively occupied with the reproduction of religious or mythological subjects, of representing a popular legend, a scene of manners, in a word, a romantic subject such as delacroix or louis boulanger might have chosen and treated according to his own special talent; and this gives it a character of its own and an individual charm. _voyage en italie_ (paris, new ed., ). the birth of venus (_botticelli_) walter pater in leonardo's treatise on painting only one contemporary is mentioned by name--sandro botticelli. this pre-eminence may be due to chance only, but to some will rather appear a result of deliberate judgment; for people have begun to find out the charm of botticelli's work, and his name, little known in the last century, is quietly becoming important. in the middle of the fifteenth century he had already anticipated much of that meditative subtlety which is sometimes supposed peculiar to the great imaginative workmen of its close. leaving the simple religion which had occupied the followers of giotto for a century, and the simple naturalism which had grown out of it, a thing of birds and flowers only, he sought inspiration in what to him were works of the modern world, the writings of dante and boccaccio, and in new readings of his own of classical stories; or if he painted religious subjects, painted them with an undercurrent of original sentiment which touches you as the real matter of the picture through the veil of its ostensible subject. what is the peculiar sensation, what is the peculiar quality of pleasure which his work has the property of exciting in us, and which we cannot get elsewhere? for this, especially when he has to speak of a comparatively unknown artist, is always the chief question which a critic has to answer. in an age when the lives of artists were full of adventure, his life is almost colourless. criticism indeed has cleared away much of the gossip which vasari accumulated, has touched the legend of lippo and lucrezia, and rehabilitated the character of andrea del castagno; but in botticelli's case there is no legend to dissipate. he did not even go by his true name: sandro is a nickname, and his true name is filipepi, botticelli being only the name of the goldsmith who first taught him art. only two things happened to him, two things which he shared with other artists--he was invited to rome to paint in the sistine chapel, and he fell in later life under the influence of savonarola, passing apparently almost out of men's sight in a sort of religious melancholy which lasted till his death in , according to the received date. vasari says that he plunged into the study of dante, and even wrote a comment on the _divine comedy_. but it seems strange that he should have lived on inactive so long; and one almost wishes that some document might come to light which, fixing the date of his death earlier, might relieve one, in thinking of him, of his dejected old age. [illustration: the birth of venus. _botticelli._] he is before all things a poetical painter, blending the charm of story and sentiment, the medium of the art of poetry, with the charm of line and colour, the medium of abstract painting. so he becomes the illustrator of dante. in a few rare examples of the edition of , the blank spaces left at the beginning of every canto for the hand of the illuminator have been filled as far as the nineteenth canto of the _inferno_, with impressions of engraved plates, seemingly by way of experiment, for in the copy in the bodleian library, one of the three impressions it contains has been printed upside down and much awry in the midst of the luxurious printed page. giotto, and the followers of giotto, with their almost childish religious aim, had not learned to put that weight of meaning into outward things, light, colour, every-day gesture, which the poetry of the _divine comedy_ involves, and before the fifteenth century dante could hardly have found an illustrator. botticelli's illustrations are crowded with incident, blending with a naïve carelessness of pictorial propriety three phases of the same scene into one plate. the grotesques, so often a stumbling-block to painters who forget that the words of a poet, which only feebly present an image to the mind, must be lowered in key when translated into form, make one regret that he has not rather chosen for illustration the more subdued imagery of the _purgatorio_. yet in the scene of those who go down quick into hell there is an invention about the fire taking hold on the up-turned soles of the feet, which proves that the design is no mere translation of dante's words, but a true painter's vision; while the scene of the centaurs wins one at once, for, forgetful of the actual circumstances of their appearance, botticelli has gone off with delight on the thought of the centaurs themselves, bright small creatures of the woodland, with arch baby faces and mignon forms, drawing tiny bows. botticelli lived in a generation of naturalists, and he might have been a mere naturalist among them. there are traces enough in his work of that alert sense of outward things which, in the pictures of that period, fills the lawns with delicate living creatures, and the hill-sides with pools of water, and the pools of water with flowering reeds. but this was not enough for him; he is a visionary painter, and in his visionariness he resembles dante. giotto, the tried companion of dante, masaccio, ghirlandaio even, do but transcribe with more or less refining the outward image; they are dramatic, not visionary painters; they are almost impassive spectators of the action before them. but the genius of which botticelli is the type usurps the data before it as the exponents of ideas, moods, visions of its own; with this interest it plays fast and loose with those data, rejecting some and isolating others, and always combining them anew. to him, as to dante, the scene, the colour, the outward image or gesture, comes with all its incisive and importunate reality; but awakes in him, moreover, by some subtle structure of his own, a mood which it awakes in no one else, of which it is the double or repetition, and which it clothes, that all may share it, with sensuous circumstances. but he is far enough from accepting the conventional orthodoxy of dante which, referring all human action to the easy formula of purgatory, heaven, and hell, leaves an insoluble element of prose in the depths of dante's poetry. one picture of his, with the portrait of the donor, matteo palmieri, below, had the credit or discredit of attracting some shadow of ecclesiastical censure. this matteo palmieri--two dim figures move under that name in contemporary history--was the reputed author of a poem, still unedited, _la città divina_, which represented the human race as an incarnation of those angels who, in the revolt of lucifer, were neither for god nor for his enemies, a fantasy of that earlier alexandrian philosophy, about which the florentine intellect in that century was so curious. botticelli's picture may have been only one of those familiar compositions in which religious reverie has recorded its impressions of the various forms of beatified existence--_glorias_, as they were called, like that in which giotto painted the portrait of dante; but somehow it was suspected of embodying in a picture the wayward dream of palmieri, and the chapel where it hung was closed. artists so entire as botticelli are usually careless about philosophical theories, even when the philosopher is a florentine of the fifteenth century, and his work a poem in _terza rima_. but botticelli, who wrote a commentary on dante and became the disciple of savonarola, may well have let such theories come and go across him. true or false, the story interprets much of the peculiar sentiment with which he infuses his profane and sacred persons, comely, and in a certain sense like angels, but with a sense of displacement or loss about them--the wistfulness of exiles conscious of a passion and energy greater than any known issue of them explains, which runs through all his varied work with a sentiment of ineffable melancholy. so just what dante scorns as unworthy alike of heaven and hell, botticelli accepts, that middle world in which men take no side in great conflicts, and decide no great causes, and make great refusals. he thus sets for himself the limits within which art, undisturbed by any moral ambition, does its most sincere and surest work. his interest is neither in the untempered goodness of angelico's saints, nor the untempered evil of orcagna's _inferno_; but with men and women in their mixed and uncertain condition, always attractive, clothed sometimes by passion with a character of loveliness and energy, but saddened perpetually by the shadow upon them of the great things from which they shrink. his morality is all sympathy; and it is this sympathy, conveying into his work somewhat more than is usual of the true complexion of humanity, which makes him, visionary as he is, so forcible a realist. it is this which gives to his madonnas their unique expression and charm. he has worked out in them a distinct and peculiar type, definite enough in his own mind, for he has painted it over and over again, sometimes one might think almost mechanically, as a pastime during that dark period when his thoughts were so heavy upon him. hardly any collection of note is without one of these circular pictures, into which the attendant angels depress their heads so naïvely. perhaps you have sometimes wondered why those peevish-looking madonnas, conformed to no acknowledged or obvious type of beauty, attract you more and more, and often come back to you when the sistine madonna and the virgins of fra angelico are forgotten. at first, contrasting them with those, you may have thought that there was even something in them mean or abject, for the abstract lines of the face have little nobleness and the colour is wan. for with botticelli she too, though she holds in her hands the "desire of all nations," is one of those who are neither for god nor for his enemies; and her choice is on her face. the white light on it is cast up hard and cheerless from below, as when snow lies upon the ground, and the children look up with surprise at the strange whiteness of the ceiling. her trouble is in the very caress of the mysterious child, whose gaze is always far from her, and who has already that sweet look of devotion which men have never been able altogether to love, and which still makes the born saint an object almost of suspicion to his earthly brethren. once, indeed, he guides her hand to transcribe in a book the words of her exaltation, the _ave_ and the _magnificat_, and the _gaude maria_, and the young angels, glad to rouse her for a moment from her dejection, are eager to hold the inkhorn and support the book; but the pen almost drops from her hand, and the high cold words have no meaning for her, and her true children are those others, in the midst of whom, in her rude home, the intolerable honour came to her, with that look of wistful inquiry on their irregular faces which you see in startled animals--gipsy children, such as those who, in apennine villages, still hold out their long brown arms to beg of you, but on sundays become _enfants du choeur_ with their thick black hair nicely combed and fair white linen on their sunburnt throats. what is strangest is that he carries this sentiment into classical subjects, its most complete expression being a picture in the uffizi, of venus rising from the sea, in which the grotesque emblems of the middle age, and a landscape full of its peculiar feeling, and even its strange draperies powdered all over in the gothic manner with a quaint conceit of daisies, frame a figure that reminds you of the faultless nude studies of ingres. at first, perhaps, you are attracted only by a quaintness of design, which seems to recall all at once whatever you have read of florence in the fifteenth century; afterwards you may think that this quaintness must be incongruous with the subject, and that the colour is cadaverous, or at least cold. and yet the more you come to understand what imaginative colouring really is, that all colour is no mere delightful quality of natural things, but a spirit upon them by which they become expressive to the spirit, the better you will like this peculiar quality of colour; and you will find that quaint design of botticelli's a more direct inlet into the greek temper than the works of the greeks themselves even of the finest period. of the greeks as they really were, of their difference from ourselves, of the aspects of their outward life, we know far more than botticelli, or his most learned contemporaries; but for us, long familiarity has taken off the edge of the lesson, and we are hardly conscious of what we owe to the hellenic spirit. but in pictures like this of botticelli's you have a record of the first impression made by it on minds turned back towards it in almost painful aspiration from a world in which it had been ignored so long; and in the passion, the energy, the industry of realization, with which botticelli carries out his intention, is the exact measure of the legitimate influence over the human mind of the imaginative system of which this is the central myth. the light is, indeed, cold--mere sunless dawn; but a later painter would have cloyed you with sunshine; and you can see the better for that quietness in the morning air each long promontory as it slopes down to the water's edge. men go forth to their labours until the evening; but she is awake before them, and you might think that the sorrow in her face was at the thought of the whole long day of love yet to come. an emblematical figure of the wind blows hard across the grey water, moving forward the dainty-lipped shell on which she sails, the sea "showing his teeth" as it moves in thin lines of foam, and sucking in one by one the falling roses, each severe in outline, plucked off short at the stalk, but embrowned a little, as botticelli's flowers always are. botticelli meant all that imagery to be altogether pleasurable; and it was partly an incompleteness of resources, inseparable from the art of that time, that subdued and chilled it; but his predilection for minor tones counts also; and what is unmistakable is the sadness with which he has conceived the goddess of pleasure as the depository of a great power over the lives of men. i have said that the peculiar character of botticelli is the result of a blending in him of a sympathy for humanity in its uncertain condition, its attractiveness, its investiture at rarer moments in a character of loveliness and energy, with his consciousness of the shadow upon it of the great things from which it shrinks, and that this conveys into his work somewhat more than painting usually attains of the true complexion of humanity. he paints the story of the goddess of pleasure in other episodes besides that of her birth from the sea, but never without some shadow of death in the grey flesh and wan flowers. he paints madonnas, but they shrink from the pressure of the divine child, and plead in unmistakable undertones for a warmer, lower humanity. the same figure--tradition connects it with simonetta, the mistress of giuliano de' medici--appears again as judith returning home across the hill country when the great deed is over, and the moment of revulsion come, and the olive branch in her hand is becoming a burthen; as justice, sitting on a throne, but with a fixed look of self-hatred which makes the sword in her hand seem that of a suicide; and again as veritas in the allegorical picture of calumnia, where one may note in passing the suggestiveness of an accident which identifies the image of truth with the person of venus. we might trace the same sentiment through his engravings; but his share in them is doubtful, and the object of this fragment has been attained if i have defined aright the temper in which he worked. but, after all, it may be asked, is a painter like botticelli, a second-rate painter, a proper subject for general criticism? there are a few great painters, like michael angelo or leonardo, whose work has become a force in general culture, partly for this very reason that they have absorbed into themselves all such workmen as sandro botticelli; and, over and above mere technical or antiquarian criticism, general criticism may be very well employed in that sort of interpretation which adjusts the position of these men to general culture, whereas smaller men can be the proper subjects only of technical or antiquarian treatment. but, besides those great men, there is a certain number of artists who have a distinct faculty of their own by which they convey to us a peculiar quality of pleasure which we cannot get elsewhere, and these, too, have their place in general culture, and have to be interpreted to it by those who have felt their charm strongly, and are often the objects of a special diligence and a consideration wholly affectionate, just because there is not about them the stress of a great name and authority. of this select number botticelli is one; he has the freshness, the uncertain and diffident promise which belongs to the earlier renaissance itself, and makes it perhaps the most interesting period in the history of the mind; in studying his work one begins to understand to how great a place in human culture the art of italy had been called. _studies in the history of the renaissance_ (london, ). the queen of sheba (_veronese_) john ruskin this picture is at turin, and is of quite inestimable value. it is hung high; and the really principal figure--the solomon, being in the shade, can hardly be seen, but is painted with veronese's utmost tenderness, in the bloom of perfect youth, his hair golden, short, crisply curled. he is seated high on his lion throne; two elders on each side beneath him, the whole group forming a tower of solemn shade. i have alluded, elsewhere, to the principle on which all the best composers act, of supporting these lofty groups by some vigorous mass of foundation. this column of noble shade is curiously sustained. a falconer leans forward from the left-hand side, bearing on his wrist a snow-white falcon, its wings spread, and brilliantly relieved against the purple robe of one of the elders. it touches with its wings one of the golden lions of the throne, on which the light also flashes strongly; thus forming, together with it, the lion and eagle symbol, which is the type of christ, throughout mediæval work. in order to show the meaning of this symbol, and that solomon is typically invested with the christian royalty, one of the elders by a bold anachronism, holds a jewel in his hand in the shape of a cross, with which he (by accident of gesture) points to solomon; his other hand is laid on an open book. [illustration: the queen of sheba. _veronese._] the group opposite, of which the queen forms the centre, is also painted with veronese's highest skill; but contains no point of interest bearing on our present subject, except its connection by a chain of descending emotion. the queen is wholly oppressed and subdued; kneeling, and nearly fainting, she looks up to solomon with tears in her eyes; he, startled by fear for her, stoops forward from the throne, opening his right hand, as if to support her, so as almost to drop the sceptre. at her side her first maid of honour is kneeling also, but does not care about solomon; and is gathering up her dress that it may not be crushed; and looking back to encourage a negro girl, who, carrying two toy-birds, made of enamel and jewels, for presentation to the king, is frightened at seeing her queen fainting, and does not know what she ought to do; while lastly, the queen's dog, another of the little fringy paws, is wholly unabashed by solomon's presence, or anybody else's; and stands with his forelegs well apart, right in front of his mistress, thinking everybody has lost their wits; and barking violently at one of the attendants, who has set down a golden vase disrespectfully near him. _modern painters_ (london, ). the last judgement (_michael angelo_) alexandre dumas while michael angelo worked upon his _moses_, clement vii., following the example of julius ii., would not leave him alone for a moment. it was a trick of all these popes to exact from the poor artist something different to what he was doing at the time. to obtain some respite, he was forced to promise the pope that he would occupy himself at the same time with the cartoon of _the last judgment_. but clement vii. was not a man to be put off with words; he supervised the work in person, and buonarroti was obliged to pass continually from the chisel to the pencil and from the pen to the mallet. _the last judgment!_ _moses!_ these are two works of little importance and easy to do off-hand! and yet he had to. his holiness would not listen to reason. one day it was announced to michael angelo that he would not receive his accustomed visit: clement vii. was dead. the artist breathed freely just during the conclave. the new pope, paul iii., had nothing more pressing to do than to present himself in buonarroti's studio, followed pompously by ten cardinals. the newly-elected pope was easily recognized there! [illustration: the last judgment. _michael angelo_.] "ah!" said the holy father, in a tone of firm decision, "i hope that henceforth the whole of your time will belong to me, maestro buonarroti." "may your holiness deign to excuse me," replied michael angelo, "but i have just signed an engagement with the duke of urbino, which forces me to finish the tomb of pope julius." "what!" exclaimed paul iii.: "for thirty years i have had a certain wish and now that i am pope i cannot realize it!" "but the contract, holy father, the contract!" "where is this contract? i will tear it up." "ah!" exclaimed in his turn the cardinal of mantua, who was one of the suite, "your holiness should see the _moses_ which maestro michael angelo has just finished: that statue alone would more than suffice to honour the memory of julius." "cursed flatterer!" muttered michael angelo in a low voice. "come, come, i will take charge of this matter myself," said the pope. "you shall only make three statues with your own hand: the rest shall be given to other sculptors, and i will answer for the duke of urbino's consent. and now, maestro, to the sistine chapel. a great empty wall is waiting for you there." what could michael angelo reply to such an emphatic wish expressed so distinctly? he finished in his best style his two statues of _active life_ and _contemplative life_--dante's symbolical rachel and leah--and not wishing to profit by this new arrangement to which he was forced to submit, he added fifteen hundred and twenty-four ducats to the four thousand he had received, to pay with his own gains for the works confided to the other artists. having thus terminated this unfortunate affair, which had caused him so much worry and fatigue, michael angelo was at last enabled to occupy himself exclusively with the execution of his _last judgment_, to which he devoted no less than eight to nine years. this immense and unique picture, in which the human figure is represented in all possible attitudes, where every sentiment, every passion, every reflection of thought, and every aspiration of the soul are rendered with inimitable perfection, has never been equalled and never will be equalled in the domain of art. this time the genius of michael angelo simply attacked the infinite. the subject of this vast composition, the manner in which it is conceived and executed, the admirable variety and the learned disposition of the groups, the inconceivable boldness and firmness of the outlines, the contrast of light and shade, the difficulties, i might almost say the impossibilities vanquished, as if it were all mere play, and with a happiness that savours of prodigy, the unity of the whole and the perfection of the details, make _the last judgment_ the most complete and the greatest picture in existence. it is broad and magnificent in effect, and yet each part of this prodigious painting gains infinitely when seen and studied quite near; and we do not know of any easel-picture worked upon with such patience and finished with such devotion. the painter could only choose one scene, several isolated groups, in this appalling drama which will be enacted on the last day in the valley of jehoshaphat, where all the generations of man shall be gathered together. and yet, admire the omnipotence of genius! with nothing but a single episode in a restricted space, and solely by the expression of the human body, the artist has succeeded in striking you with astonishment and terror, and in making you really a spectator of the supreme catastrophe. at the base of the picture, very nearly in the centre, you perceive the boat of the _inferno_, a fantastic reminiscence borrowed from pagan tradition, in accordance with which first the poet and then the painter were pleased to clothe an accursed being with the form and occupation of charon. "charon with the eyes of burning embers gathering together with a gesture all these souls, and striking with his oar those who hesitate."[ ] it is impossible to form an idea of the incredible science displayed by michael angelo in the varied contortions of the damned, heaped one upon the other in the fatal bark. all the violent contractions, all the visible tortures, all the frightful shrinkings that suffering, despair, and rage can produce upon human muscles are rendered in this group with a realism that would make the most callous shudder. to the left of this bark you see the gaping mouth of a cavern; this is the entrance to purgatory, where several demons are in despair because they have no more souls to torment. this first group, which very naturally attracts the spectator's attention, is that of the dead whom the piercing sound of the eternal trumpet has awakened in their tombs. some of them shake off their shrouds, others with great difficulty open their eyelids made heavy by their long sleep. towards the angle of the picture there is a monk who is pointing out the divine judge with his left hand; this monk is the portrait of michael angelo. the second group is formed of the resuscitated ones who ascend of themselves to the judgment. these figures, many of which are sublime in expression, rise more or less lightly into space, according to the burden of their sins, of which they must render account. the third group, also ascending to the right of christ, is that of the blessed. among all these saints, some of whom show the instrument of their execution, others the marks of their martyrdom, there is one head especially remarkable for beauty and tenderness: it is that of a mother who is protecting her daughter, turning her eyes, filled with faith and hope, towards the christ. above the host of saints, you see a fourth group of angelic spirits, some bearing the cross, others the crown of thorns,--instruments and emblems of the saviour's passion. the fifth group, parallel to the fourth which we have just pointed out, is composed of angels; such, at least, they seem to be by the splendour of their youth and the aërial lightness of their movements; and these also bear, as if in triumph, other emblems of the divine expiation--the column, the ladder, and the sponge. above these angels, on the same plane as the saints and to the left of christ, is the choir of the just; the patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, and the holy personages form this sixth group. the seventh is the most horrible of all and the one in which the art of michael angelo has displayed itself in all its terrific grandeur: it is composed of the rejected ones, overwhelmed by the decree and led away to punishment by the rebel angels. the very coldest spectator could not remain unmoved by this spectacle. you believe yourself in hell; you hear the cries of anguish and the gnashing of the teeth of the wretched, who, according to the terrible dantesque expression, vainly desire a second death. the eighth, ninth, and tenth groups, occupying the base of the composition, are composed, as we have already said, of the bark of charon, the grotto of purgatory, and the angels of judgment, eight in number, blowing their brazen trumpets with all their might to convoke the dead from the four quarters of the earth. finally, in the eleventh group, in the centre, very near the upper part of the picture, between the two companies of the blessed, and seated upon the clouds, the sovereign judge with a terrible action hurls his malediction upon the condemned: _"ite maledicti in ignem aeternum."_ the virgin turns away her head and trembles. on christ's right is adam, and on his left, st. peter. they have exactly the same positions assigned to them by dante in his _paradiso_. this immense work was exhibited to the public on christmas day, . it had cost eight years of work. michael angelo was then sixty-seven years old. several anecdotes relating to this great picture have come down to us. it is related that the pope, scandalized at the nudity of certain figures, a nudity which daniele da volterra was afterwards charged to clothe, sent word to michael angelo that he must cover them. michael angelo replied with his usual brusqueness: "tell the pope that he must employ himself a little less in correcting my pictures, which is very easy, and employ himself a little more in reforming men, which is very difficult." it is said that maestro biaggio, master of ceremonies to paul iii., having accompanied the pope on a visit that his holiness made to see michael angelo's fresco when it was about half finished, allowed himself to express his own opinion upon _the last judgment_. "holy father," said the good messer biaggio, "if i dare pronounce my judgment, this picture seems more appropriate to figure in a tavern than in the chapel of a pope." unfortunately for the master of ceremonies, michael angelo was behind him and did not lose a word of messer biaggio's compliment. the pope had scarcely gone before the irritated artist, wishing to make an example as a warning for all future critics, placed this messer biaggio in his hell, well and duly, under the scarcely flattering guise of minos. that was always dante's way when he wanted to avenge himself upon an enemy. i leave you to imagine the lamentations and complaints of the poor master of ceremonies when he saw himself damned in this manner. he threw himself at the pope's feet, declaring that he would never arise unless his holiness would have him taken out of hell: that was the most important thing. as for the punishment, that the painter deserved for this dreadful sacrilege, messer biaggio would leave that entirely to the high impartiality of the holy father. "messer biaggio," replied paul iii. with as much seriousness as he could maintain, "you know that i have received from god an absolute power in heaven and upon the earth, but i can do nothing in hell; therefore you must remain there." while michael angelo was working at his picture of _the last judgment_, he fell from the scaffold and seriously injured his leg. soured by pain and seized with an attack of misanthropy, the painter shut himself up in his house and would not see any one. but he reckoned without his physician; and the physician this time was as stubborn as the invalid. this excellent disciple of Æsculapius was named baccio rontini. having learned by chance of the accident that had befallen the great artist, he presented himself before his house and knocked in vain at the door. no response. he shouted, he flew into a passion, and he called the neighbours and the servants in a loud voice. complete silence. he goes to find a ladder, places it against the front of the house, and tries to enter by the casements. the windows are hermetically sealed and the shutters are fast. what is to be done? any one else in the physician's place would have given up; but rontini was not the man to be discouraged for so little. with much difficulty he enters the cellar and with no less trouble he goes up into buonarroti's room, and, partly by acquiescence and partly by force, he triumphantly tends his friend's leg. it was quite time: exasperated by his sufferings, the artist had resolved to let himself die. _trois maîtres_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] dante, _inferno_ iii. magdalen in the desert (_correggio_) aimÉ giron correggio was a painter and a poet at the same time, interpreting nature, flattering her, idealizing her, and realizing her creations in their double æsthetic expression, with undulating outlines and tender tones. his drawing was modelled and supple, with a certain vigour of line and a certain solidity of relief. he had a charming imagination of conception and a voluptuous grace in its accomplishment, which are requisites in the painting of women and children. he therefore excelled in rendering _bambini_. with a note-book in his hand, he studied them everywhere. this explains why his loves and his cherubs have such rare truth of mien, of flesh, and of life. his knowledge of anatomy is great and he foreshortens on canvas and ceiling astonishingly before the advent of michael angelo. his enchanting colouring, impasted like that of giorgione, vivid as that of titian, ran through the most delicate gradations and melted into the most elusive harmonies. beneath his facile brush, soft and thick, the transparencies of the skin and the morbidezza of the flesh become ideal. he was the first to apply himself to the choice of fabrics, and one of the first in italy to attend to the scientific distribution of light. but, in the famous _chiaroscuro_ he does not get his effects by contrasts, but by analogies, superimposing shadow upon shadow and light upon light, both being disposed in large masses and graduated in progression. this process occurs at its fullest in the _christmas night_, where the moon shines, and the child glows with radiance, in a kind of symbolic struggle between the natural light of this world and the supernatural light of the other. the effect is such that the spectator is forced instinctively to blink his eyes, as does the shepherdess herself entering the stable. "when correggio excels he is a painter worthy of athens," wrote diderot, whose art criticism had in it more of sentiment than knowledge. "with correggio everything is large and graceful," said louis carrache, who gave correggio a large place in his eclecticism. but after studying and weighing everything, from his somewhat excessive qualities it follows that correggio was more of an idealist than a mystic and obeyed art more than faith, with a leaning towards the apotheosis of form. he painted _io and jupiter_ for frederick gonzaga of mantua. this picture having passed to the son of the regent, the two passionate heads so strongly troubled his prudery that he cut them out and burned them. coypel then begged the prince to spare the rest and to give it to him. he obtained it on condition that "he would make good use of it," and on the death of coypel, m. pasquier, _député du commerce de rouen_, paid , _livres_ for the mutilated remains, as i find in a very old account. [illustration: magdalen. _correggio_] all the great museums of the world possess correggios, and i will only mention the exquisite _saint catherine_ and the resplendent _antiope_ of the louvre; the _danaë_ of the borghese gallery, a _chef-d'oeuvre_ of grace and delicacy; and, finally, in the dresden gallery, our _magdalen in the desert_, that jewel so well-known and so often reproduced. this magdalen as a matter of fact holds the first place among the small correggios. there are two kinds of magdalens in art: i. the repentant, emaciated, growing ugly, disfigured by tears and penitence at the end of her life, with a skull in her hand or before her eyes, not having had even--like the one sculptured in the cathedral of rouen--"for three times ten winters any other vesture than her long hair," according to petrarch's verse; ii. the sinner, always young, always beautiful, always seductive, who has not lost any of her charms nor even of her coquetry, and with whom the book of life takes the place of the death's head. our magdalen belongs to the latter class. in a solitary spot, but attractive with its verdure and rocks, on a grassy knoll the saint is stretched out at full length, with her shoulder, her bosom, her arms, and her feet adorably bare. a blue fabric drapes the rest of her body and forms a coquettish hood for her head and neck. her flesh has a robust elegance of line. leaning on her right elbow, her hand, half hidden in her hair, supports a charming and meditative head, while her other arm is slipped under an open manuscript. her hair, long and blonde, according to legend--which she loves and still cares for because it once wiped the feet of her saviour--falls in thick curls, or strays at will with a premeditated abandon. on the ground, to her right, stands the vase of perfumes of her first adoration; to the left are the stones of her supreme expiation. what grace in her attitude! what beauty of form! she is thrown in with a rare happiness and painted with an exquisite delicacy of touch and tint. the blue drapery upon the green landscape defines her sufficiently without making her stand out too much, leaving the figure and the landscape to mingle without disturbing each other in skilful harmony. all of this is in most finished execution, a little elaborate, perhaps, and the expression of the face reflects the sweet, sad memory of the beloved, whose gospels she is reading, just as one reads again tender letters of the past. this work was executed for the dukes of este, who kept it in a silver frame studded with precious stones and used it as an ornament for their bedrooms, and when they travelled, they took it with them in a casket. when the king of poland became its possessor, he gave it a second boxing of glass with lock and key. in , this masterpiece having been stolen, , ducats were promised for its discovery, and, in consideration of that sum, the thief denounced himself. cristofano allori, the greatest florentine painter of the decadence, made a superb copy for the offices, i believe. this magdalen of correggio's, "the least converted of sinners and the most adorable of penitents," is she really, historically and liturgically the magdalen of the house of bethany, of the grotto de la sainte-baume in provence? no. she recalls rather "_cette dame de marque_" who was evoked in the seventeenth century by the carmelite father pierre de saint-louis in his sublime poem of accomplished burlesque; and does not the following verse hum in your ear: _"lèvres dont l'incarnat faisant voir à la fois un rosier sans épine, un chapelet sans croix,"_ while the sinner _" ... s'occupe à punir le forfait de son temps prétérit qui ne fut qu'imparfait"?_ this evidently is not at all the art of the middle ages, nor its saints, whose vestment was sackcloth and whose body was a mere lay figure for a soul devoted entirely to purity, to simplicity, to mysticism, and to the other world. in the sixteenth century, however, people took the sackcloth from the saints and dressed them in flesh. then was produced a kind of revival of paganism, of naturalism, of life; and religious art, in its flesh and colouring, no longer created anything but an olympus of beautiful maidens, or, at least, noble goddesses. correggio's magdalen belongs to this artistic cycle and the painter executed it in the noonday splendour of those qualities, the dawn of which glows in parma at st. paul's. correggio is not a mystic, he is a voluptuous naturalist, and from him to the realist caravaggio, "the grinder of flesh," and the exuberant rubens, who gave much study to correggio, the distance is not very great and the decline is fatal. but, in the meantime, where shall we find more grace, or seductiveness--under this conversion complicated with memories--than in correggio's magdalen? in hagiographal literature we find a work of similar tone and charm: _marie madeleine_, by p. lacordaire, an exquisite little book written with tenderness and piety, which deliciously calls up before us the magdalen of repentance and love, "the loving woman accustomed to the delights of contemplation and needing only to see in her heart him whom in other days she saw under the transparent veil of mortal flesh." it must be confessed that correggio was constantly preoccupied with _charm_ and with that skilful coquetry that sports with every grace. this is a subtlety of purely personal qualities; but let others beware of a systematic affectation! in this way correggio did not found a school, but he had imitators, among whom was parmigiano, who by dint of study and in search for grace--the most natural thing in the world--most often fell into affected and conventional ways. jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre: peinture, sculpture, architecture_ (paris, - ). banquet of the arquebusiers _(van der helst)_ william makepeace thackeray the _night-watch_ at amsterdam is magnificent in parts, but on the side to the spectator's right, smoky and dim. the _five masters of the drapers_ is wonderful for depth, strength, brightness, massive power. what words are these to express a picture! to describe a description! i once saw a moon riding in the sky serenely, attended by her sparkling maids of honour, and a little lady said, with an air of great satisfaction, "_i must sketch it_." ah, my dear lady, if with an h.b., a bristol board, and a bit of india-rubber, you can sketch the firmament on high, and the moon in her glory, i make you my compliment! i can't sketch _the five drapers_ with any ink or pen at present at command--but can look with all my eyes, and be thankful to have seen such a masterpiece. they say he was a moody, ill-conditioned man, the old tenant of the mill. what does he think of the "van der helst" which hangs opposite his _night-watch_, and which is one of the great pictures of the world? it is not painted by so great a man as rembrandt; but there it is--to see it is an event of your life. having beheld it you have lived in the year , and celebrated the treaty of münster. you have shaken the hands of the dutch guardsmen, eaten from their platters, drunk their rhenish, heard their jokes, as they wagged their jolly beards. the amsterdam catalogue discourses thus about it:--a model catalogue: it gives you the prices paid, the signatures of the painters, a succinct description of the work. "this masterpiece represents a banquet of the civic guard, which took place on the th of june, , in the great hall of the st. joris doele, on the singel at amsterdam, to celebrate the conclusion of the peace at münster. the thirty-five figures composing the picture are all portraits. "'the captain witse' is placed at the head of the table, and attracts our attention first. he is dressed in black velvet, his breast covered with a cuirass, on his head a broad-brimmed black hat with white plumes. he is comfortably seated on a chair of black oak, with a velvet cushion, and holds in his left hand, supported on his knee, a magnificent drinking-horn, surrounded by a st. george destroying the dragon, and ornamented with olive-leaves. the captain's features express cordiality and good-humour; he is grasping the hand of 'lieutenant van wavern' seated near him in a habit of dark grey, with lace and buttons of gold, lace-collar and wrist-bands, his feet crossed, with boots of yellow leather, with large tops, and gold spurs, on his head a black hat and dark-brown plumes. behind him, at the centre of the picture, is the standard-bearer, 'jacob banning,' in an easy martial attitude, hat in hand, his right hand on his chair, his right leg on his left knee. he holds the flag of blue silk, in which the virgin is embroidered" (such a silk! such a flag! such a piece of painting!), "emblematic of the town of amsterdam. the banner covers his shoulder, and he looks towards the spectator frankly and complacently. [illustration: the banquet of the arquebusiers. _van der helst._] "the man behind him is probably one of the sergeants. his head is bare. he wears a cuirass, and yellow gloves, grey stockings, and boots with large tops, and knee-caps of cloth. he has a napkin on his knees, and in his hand a piece of ham, a slice of bread and a knife. the old man behind is probably 'william the drummer.' he has his hat in his right hand, and in his left a gold-footed wineglass, filled with white wine. he wears a red scarf, and a black satin doublet, with little slashes of yellow silk. behind the drummer, two matchlock-men are seated at the end of the table. one in a large black habit, a napkin on his knee, a _hausse-col_ of iron, and a linen scarf and collar. he is eating with his knife. the other holds a long glass of white wine. four musketeers, with different shaped hats, are behind these, one holding a glass, the three others with their guns on their shoulders. other guests are placed between the personage who is giving the toast and the standard-bearer. one with his hat off, and his hand uplifted, is talking to another. the second is carving a fowl. a third holds a silver plate; and another, in the background, a silver flagon, from which he fills a cup. the corner behind the captain is filled by two seated personages, one of whom is peeling an orange. two others are standing, armed with halberts, of whom one holds a plumed hat. behind him are other three individuals, one of them holding a pewter pot on which the name 'poock,' the landlord of the 'hotel doele,' is engraved. at the back, a maid-servant is coming in with a pasty, crowned with a turkey. most of the guests are listening to the captain. from an open window in the distance, the façades of two houses are seen, surmounted by stone figures of sheep." there, now you know all about it: now you can go home and paint just such another. if you do, do pray remember to paint the hands of the figures as they are here depicted; they are as wonderful portraits as the faces. none of your slim van dyck elegancies, which have done duty at the cuffs of so many doublets; but each man with a hand for himself, as with a face for himself. i blushed for the coarseness of one of the chiefs in this great company, that fellow behind "william the drummer," splendidly attired, sitting full in the face of the public; and holding a pork-bone in his hand. suppose the _saturday review_ critic were to come suddenly on this picture? ah! what a shock it would give that noble nature! why is that knuckle of pork not painted out? at any rate, why is not a little fringe of lace painted round it? or a cut pink paper? or couldn't a smelling-bottle be painted in instead, with a crest and a gold top, or a cambric pocket-handkerchief in lieu of the horrid pig, with a pink coronet in the corner? or suppose you covered the man's hand (which is very coarse and strong), and gave him the decency of a kid glove? but a piece of pork in a naked hand? o nerves and eau de cologne, hide it, hide it! in spite of this lamentable coarseness, my noble sergeant, give me thy hand as nature made it! a great, and famous, and noble handiwork i have seen here. not the greatest picture in the world--not a work of the highest genius--but a performance so great, various, and admirable, so shrewd of humour, so wise of observation, so honest and complete of expression, that to have seen it has been a delight, and to remember it will be a pleasure for days to come. well done, bartholomeus van der helst! brave, meritorious, victorious, happy bartholomew, to whom it has been given to produce a masterpiece! ... was it a dream? it seems like one. have we been to holland? have we heard the chimes at midnight at antwerp? were we really away for a week, or have i been sitting up in the room dozing, before this stale old desk? here's the desk; yes. but if it has been a dream, how could i have learned to hum that tune out of _dinorah?_ ah, is it that tune, or myself that i am humming? if it was a dream how comes this yellow notice des tableaux du musÉe d'amsterdam avec fascimile des monogrammes before me, and this signature of the gallant bartholomeus van der helst fecit a; . yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday; it lasted a whole week. _roundabout papers_ (london, ). l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythÈre (_watteau_) edmond and jules de goncourt watteau is the great poet of the eighteenth century. a creation, a whole creation of poetry and dreams, emanated from his brain and filled his work with the elegance of a supernatural life. from the fantasies of his brain, from the caprice of his art, from his perfectly original genius, not one but a thousand fairies took their flight. from the enchanted visions of his imagination, the painter has drawn an ideal world, and, superior to his own time, he has created one of those shakespearian realms, one of those countries of love and light, one of those paradises of gallantry that polyphile built upon the cloud of dreams for the delicate joy of poetic mortals. watteau revived grace. grace with watteau is not the antique grace--a rigid and solid charm, the perfection of the marble of a galatea, the entirely plastic and the material glory of a venus. grace with watteau is grace. it is that nothing that invests a woman with an attraction, a coquetry, a more than physical beauty. it is that subtile quality which seems the smile of a line, the soul of form, the spiritual physiognomy of matter. [illustration: l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythÈre. _watteau._] all the fascinations of a woman in repose: languor, idleness, abandon, leaning back, reclining at full length, nonchalance, the cadences of pose, the pretty air of profiles bending over the scales of love (_gammes d'amour_), the receding curves of the bosom, the serpentine lines and undulations, the suppleness of the female body, the play of slender fingers on the handle of a fan and the indiscretions of high heels beyond the skirts, and the happy fortune of deportment, and the coquetry of actions, and the management of the shoulders, and all that knowledge that was taught to women by the mirrors of the last century,--the mimicry of grace!--lives in watteau with its blossom and its accent, immortal and fixed in a more vital proof than the bosom of the wife of diomedes moulded by the ashes of pompeii. and if this grace is animated by watteau, if he looses it from repose and immobility, if he renders it active and moving, it seems that it works with a rhythm and that its measured pace is a dance led by some harmony. how decorative is the form of woman, and her grace! o nature, wherein the painter's poetic fancies wander! o landscape! o stage fit for a desirable life! a helpful land, gallant woods, meadows full of music, groves propitious to the sports of echo! cradling trees hung with baskets of flowers! desert places far from the jealous world, touched by the magic brush of a servandoni, refreshed with fountains, peopled with marbles and statues, and naiads, that spot the trembling shadow of the leaves! jets of water suddenly springing up in the midst of farm-yards! an amiable and radiant countryside! suns of apotheosis, beautiful lights sleeping on the lawns, penetrating and translucent verdure without one shadow where the palette of veronese, the riot of purple, and of blonde tresses may find sleep. rural delights! murmurous and gorgeous decorations! gardens thick with brier and rose! french landscapes planted with italian pines! villages gay with weddings and carriages, ceremonies, toilettes, and fêtes stunned with the noise of violins and flutes leading the bridal of nature and the opera to a jesuit fane! rustic scene on the green curtain, on the flowery slope up which the _comédie française_ climbs and the _comédie italienne_ gambols. quick! to array the spring in ball costume, watteau's heavens and earth, quick. _gelosi!_ a bergomask laugh shall be the laughter, animation, and action, and movement of the piece. look where folly, capped and belled, runs and wakes gaiety, zephyrs, and noise! ruffs and caps, belts and daggers, little vests and short mantles, go and come. the band of buffoons comes running, bringing beneath the shady boughs the carnival of human passions and its rainbow-hued garb. variegated family, clothed with sunlight and brilliant silk! that masks with the night! that patches and paints with the moon! harlequin, as graceful as a product of the pencil of parmesan! pierrot, with his arms at his side, as straight as an i, and the tartaglias, and the scapins, and the cassandras, and the doctors, and the favourite mezzetin "the big brown man with the laughing face" always in the foreground with his cap on the back of his head--striped all over like a zebra, proud as a god, and drunk as a silenus! it is the _comédie italienne_ that plays the guitar in all these landscapes.... here is the new olympus and the new mythology; the olympus of all the demi-gods forgotten by antiquity. here is the deification of the ideas of the eighteenth century, the soul of watteau's world and time led to the pantheon of human passions and fashions. these are the new humours of aging humanity--languor, gallantry, and reverie, which watteau incarnates as clothed allegories, and which he rests upon the _pulvinar_ of a divine nature; these are the moral muses of our age out of which he has created the women, or, we might say, the goddesses of these divine pictures. love is the light of this world, it penetrates and fills it. it is the youth and serenity of it; and amidst rivers and mountains, promenades and gardens, lakes and fountains, the paradise of watteau unfolds; it is cythera. under a sky painted with the colours of summer, the galley of cleopatra swings at the bank. the waves are stilled. the woods are hushed. from the grass to the firmament, beating the motionless air with their butterfly wings, a host of cupids fly, fly, play and dance, here tying careless couples with roses, and tying above a circlet of kisses that has risen from earth to the sky. here is the temple, here is the end of this world: the painter's _l'amour paisible_, love disarmed, seated in the shadows, which the poet of theos wished to engrave upon a sweet cup of spring; a smiling arcadia; a decameron of sentiment; a tender meditation; attentions with vague glances; words that lull the soul; a platonic gallantry, a leisure occupied by the heart, an idleness of youthful company; a court of amorous thoughts; the emotional and playful courtesy of the young newly married leaning upon the offered arm; eyes without fever, desire without appetite, voluptuousness without desire, audacious gestures regulated like the ballet for a spectacle, and tranquil defences disdainful of haste through their security; the romance of the body and the mind, soothed, pacified, resuscitated, happy; an idleness of passion at which the stone satyrs lurking in the green _coulisses_ laugh with their goat-laughter. adieu to the bacchanales led by gillot, that last pagan of the renaissance, born of the libations of the pleiad to the rustic gods of arcueil! adieu to the olympus of the _io pæan_, the hoarse pipe and the goat-footed gods, the laughter of the _cyclops_ of euripides and the _evohe_ of ronsard, the licentious triumphs, the ivy-crowned joys; "_et la libre cadence de leur danse._" these gods have gone, and rubens, who lives again in that palette of light and rosy flesh, wanders bewildered in these _fêtes_, where the riot of the senses is stilled,--animated caprices which seem to await the crack of a whip to dissolve and disappear in the realm of fancy like a mid-summer night's dream! it is cythera; but it is watteau's. it is love, but it is a poetic love, a love that dreams and thinks; modern love, with its aspirations and its crown of melancholy. yes, at the heart of this work of watteau's, i do not know what slow and vague harmony murmurs behind those laughing words; i do not know what musical and sweetly contagious sorrow is diffused throughout these gallant _fêtes_. like the fascination of venice, i do not know what veiled and sighing poetry in low tones holds here the charmed spirit. the man has passed across his work; and this work you come to regard as the play and distraction of a suffering thought, like the playthings of a sick child who is now dead.... but let us speak of that masterpiece of french masterpieces, that canvas which has held a distinguished place on one of the walls of the _salon carré_ for fifty years, _l'embarquement de cythère_. observe all that ground lightly coated with a transparent and golden varnish, all that ground covered with rapid strokes of the brush lightly laid on with a delicate touch. notice that green of the trees shot through with red tones, penetrated with quivering air, and the vaporous light of autumn. notice the delicate water-colour effect of thick oil, the general smoothness of the canvas, the relief of this pouch or hood; notice the full modelling of the little faces with their glances in the confused outlines of the eye and their smiles in the suggested outlines of the mouth. the beautiful and flowing sweep of the brush over those _décolletages_, the bare flesh glowing with voluptuous rose among the shadows of the wood! the pretty crossings of the brush to round a neck! the beautiful undulating folds with soft breaks like those which the modeller makes in the clay! and the spirit and the gallantry of touch of watteau's brush in the feminine trifles and headdresses and finger-tips,--and everything it approaches! and the harmony of those sunlit distances, those mountains of rosy snow, those waters of verdurous reflections; and again those rays of sunlight falling upon robes of rose and yellow, mauve petticoats, blue mantles, shot-coloured vests, and little white dogs with fiery spots. for no painter has equalled watteau in rendering beautifully coloured objects transfigured by a ray of sunlight, their soft fading and that kind of diffused blossoming of their brilliancy under the full light. let your eyes rest for a moment on that band of pilgrims of both sexes hurrying, beneath the setting sun, towards the galley of love that is about to set sail: there is the joyousness of the most adorable colours in the world surprised in a ray of the sun, and all that haze and tender silk in the radiant shower involuntarily remind you of those brilliant insects that we find dead, but with still living colours, in the golden glow of a piece of amber. this picture, the _embarquement de cythère_, is the wonder of wonders of this master. _l'art du dix-huitième siècle_ ( d ed., paris, ). the sistine madonna (_raphael_) f.a. gruyer raphael seemed to have attained perfection in the _virgin with the fish_; however, four or five years later, he was to rise infinitely higher and display something superior to art and inaccessible to science. it was in that the benedictines of the monastery of st. sixtus ordered this picture. they had required that the virgin and the infant jesus should be in the company of st. sixtus and st. barbara. this is how raphael entered into their views. deep shadows were veiling from us the majesty of the skies. suddenly light succeeds the obscurity, and the infant jesus and mary appear surrounded by a brightness so intense that the eyes can scarcely bear it. between two green curtains drawn to either side of the picture, amid an aureole of innumerable cherubin, the virgin is seen standing upon the clouds, with her son in her arms, showing him to the world as its redeemer and sovereign judge. lower down, st. sixtus and st. barbara are kneeling on the clouds on either side. nothing is visible of the earth, but it is divined by the gestures and glances of the two saints, who are pointing to the multitude for whom they are imploring the divine mercy. two angels are leaning on a kind of balustrade whose horizontal line forms a solid plane at the base of the composition. nothing could be more elementary than the idea of such a picture; the ancient symmetry and the most rigid parallelism are scrupulously observed. raphael becomes almost archaic, and, while returning to the simplicity of primitive traditions, by the force of genius he confounds the scientific exaggeration that is already so close to decadence. doubtless he had raised his eyes high every time he had taken antiquity as a model, but he raised them much higher still by becoming exclusively christian again, and by comprehending that the humblest way is not only the surest, but also the most sublime. why is such simple means so highly successful in exalting our feelings? why is it, when looking at this picture, we have moments of divine oblivion in which we fancy ourselves in heaven? that is what we must try to penetrate and comprehend. [illustration: the sistine madonna. _raphael_.] the principal figure of the picture is the infant jesus. he is no longer the graceful _bambino_ that we have so often seen in the arms of raphael's madonnas, gentle and encouraging to the eyes of mankind, or again he who, erewhile, in the _virgin with the fish_, leaned towards the young tobit; it is the god himself, it is the god of justice and of the last day. in the most humble state of our flesh, beneath the veil of infancy, we see the terrifying splendour of infinite majesty in this picture. the divine infant leaves between himself and us a place for fear, and in his presence we experience something of the fear of god that adam felt and that he transmitted to his race. for attaining such heights of impression the means employed by raphael are of an incomprehensible simplicity. the infant jesus nestles familiarly in his mother's arms. sitting on a fold of the white veil that the virgin supports with her left hand, he leans against the madonna's right arm; his legs are crossed one above the other; the whole of the left arm follows the bend of the body and the left hand rests upon the right leg; at the same time, the right shoulder being raised by mary's hand, the right arm is bent at the elbow and the hand grasps the virgin's veil. this attitude, so natural, so true, so unstudied, expresses grandeur and sovereignty. nothing can be more elementary nor more powerful. the light rests calmly upon every part of this beautiful body and all its members in such fine repose. humanity was never seen under such radiance. the son of god, in transporting to heaven the terrestrial form of his infancy, has made it divine for all eternity. raphael doubtless owed to antiquity something of the power that enabled him spontaneously to create such a masterpiece; but in this case he has far surpassed his models, and we should search vainly in antique art for a more ideal and grand figure than that of this marvellous infant. however, hitherto we have only examined the body, what shall we say about the head to give a true idea of it? in fact, that is perhaps the most extraordinary and most indescribable part of the whole picture. the infant jesus seems to recoil from the spectacle of human shame; he lovingly presses against the virgin's breast, softly rests his forehead against his mother's cheek, and darts towards the world one of those flaming and terrible glances at which, it is said, everything in heaven, on earth, and in hell trembles. his disordered hair stands upright and quivers as in the breath of the tempest, and sombre clouds pass across the widely modelled forehead; the brows are frowning, the pupils dilate and the flame is ready to dart forth; the eyes, profound and terrible, are preparing to flash with lightning; they still withhold it, but we feel that it may break forth, and we tremble. this glance is truly splendid; it fascinates you, attracts you, and, at the same time, fills you with terror. the lips are quivering, and, from the point of view of line, that is the great mystery, i think; the upper lip, visibly lifted on the left side, assumes a strange accent of anger and indignation. this deviation of a single feature is materially a small matter, and yet it suffices to stamp the whole countenance with irresistible action. the infant jesus assumes a formidable aspect; we recognize in him the sovereign judge; his power is infinite and one act of his will be sufficient to condemn or absolve. the _virgin of the chair_ had given us a presentiment of this image in ; the _virgin of st. sixtus_ shows it to us in , in its eternal grandeur and sublime reality. but the word of god would scarcely leave room for anything but fear, if the virgin did not immediately come to shed hope in the soul terrified at the idea of justice. in fact, the virgin remains calm and serene beside her enraged son, and reassures our heart also with her confidence. if she presents the son of god to the world under a terrifying aspect, at the same time she presses him so tenderly against her breast, and her features, under the splendour of the divine radiance, shine with such purity that we feel the flame that purifies all passing within ourselves. the virgin appears here like the dawning light. she advances from right to left, beautiful as the skies, light as the cloud that bears her. her gait, or rather her flight through the air, is stamped with royal nobleness and dignity. her right hand, raised as high as the shoulder, holds the body of jesus under his right arm, and the saviour lies back against his mother's right arm, while mary's left arm is placed under the infant's body to support and carry him. the virgin of st. sixtus, like every madonna, wears a red robe and a white mantle; and art has never done greater things with drapery with such simple elements. the mantle falls with a beautiful movement over the lower part of the body and floats in wide folds, which, while sharply defining the form and movement of the lower limbs, reveals the bare feet which are of admirable form and colour. the robe, ornamented only with a little gold embroidery on the sleeve, is of a purple tint in the shadows and becomes rose in the light; it is girdled below the breast like the antique statues, and reveals the neck as well as the top of the shoulders, which are surrounded by a veil of white gauze. a long scarf of the same colour as the veil but tinted with bistre, is placed on the crown of the head, and, distending like a sail above the left shoulder, returns to the left hand to serve as a support for the infant, and runs along the body of jesus, who grasps it with his right hand. the virgin's head appears in full illumination without any artifice, and glows solely with its own beauty. it is three quarters left, indeed almost full face, in a similar position but in opposition to the saviour's head, which, as we have seen, is three quarters right and almost full face also. the hair, a light chestnut, is arranged simply in smooth and flat bands lightly waved above the brow, leaving the ears, cheeks, and temples completely uncovered, and not interfering in any way with the outlines of the face. the forehead, of a medium height, presents a widely developed surface, in the centre of which glows a light that is continued down the bridge of the nose. the eyes, of irreproachable shape, are full of brilliance, and their gaze sheds over all it illumines an infinite softness mingled with an indefinable exaltation. the mouth trembles with divine emotion and seems to quiver with celestial bliss. another remarkable thing in this supreme manifestation of genius is that in the virgin and the infant, of such different, we might almost say such opposite expressions, the same features are noticeably repeated. raphael has been faithful to the last to the system he adopted in almost his earliest pictures, and to make this intentional resemblance more noticeable here he has placed the two heads close together, and shown them almost full face, so that there shall be no distracting element; and has opposed them to each other by turning them in different ways so that they may complement each other and be reflected in one another as in a mirror. therefore, as the same glory surrounds both mother and son at the same time, so the same character of beauty is found faithfully reproduced in each. the skulls of both have the same general conformation, the same intelligence shines upon the two brows, although the saviour's is dark and menacing whilst the virgin's remains radiant and clear; the eyes have also the same shape and are full of the same fire, though the glance of the one is terrible and of the other, reassuring; the mouth has the same lines, the same nobility, and the same quiver that has the power of alternately inspiring terror and tranquillity; and the cleft in the chin is identical. the colour also helps to make an almost perfect unity of these two figures--we have the same white and solid flesh tints, strong and delicate; the same warm and always luminous shadows. indeed, jesus is confounded with mary, so to speak, so that the two forms together make one and the same body, and, moreover, the saviour at need may get rid of his majestic nakedness beneath the veil and in the mantle of mary. this virgin, in which raphael has surpassed himself, was painted in a moment of veritable exaltation of genius. it was not laboriously conceived; it was born of itself, spontaneously complete, like the antique minerva, with its perfect form and beauty, and it was the recompense for an entire life consecrated without intermission to the search after nature and truth, to the study of the masters and all the traditions, to the cult of the ideal and especially of the virgin. after having produced so many rare masterpieces, his love and faith were carried to such a pitch of power and enthusiasm that he seemed to be borne up by them, and, suddenly penetrating into a sphere superior to all he had hitherto visited, he painted a virgin incomparably more beautiful than all the admirable virgins he had painted before. not a single design, nor preparatory study, puts us on the trace of any bringing forth of any of the parts of this picture. however, if the image of this virgin was traced on the canvas by a hand suddenly inspired, i think that at the same time raphael confronted his inspiration with nature, and that, whilst resolutely springing towards the infinite, he yet set himself face to face with reality. perhaps, strictly, he would have had no need of that; he had amassed so much, his memory placed such numerous, varied, and exact documents at the service of his will, that he had only to remember in order almost immediately to produce an accomplished whole. moreover, he had the model he wanted, possessing without dominating it; and without losing sight of his ideal, it was to this model that he applied himself for the embodiment of his idea. thus, in the virgin of st. sixtus, we recognize, not the image of la fornarina, but the transfiguration of her image. none of her features are left and yet it is she, but so purified that no trouble nor shadow comes to dim the radiant and virginal brightness of the picture. in every human creature there is a divine germ that cannot flourish on earth and whose blossoming is only in the skies; this is the flowering, the splendour of which is shown in the virgin of st. sixtus. we care very little about raphael's private life; we only affirm in the presence of his work that as a painter he did not love for this life only, and that from the beginning to the end of his career he had the respect and the taste for eternal love. since the day when the virgin appeared transfigured to the seer of the apocalypse, she had never revealed herself in such effulgence. before this picture, we lose every memory of earth and see nothing but the queen of heaven and of the angels, the creature elect and blessed above all creatures. in thus painting the virgin, raphael has almost reached the confines of divinity. but everything in this picture is food for admiration, even the atmosphere that envelops it and those innumerable and endless legions of cherubin that gravitate around the virgin and the word of god. the aureole that encircles the divine group shows nothing at first but dazzling and golden light; then, as it recedes from the centre, this light gradually pales and insensibly merges from the most intense gold into the purest blue, and is filled with those heads, chaste, innocent, and fervent, that spring beneath the brush of raphael like the flowers at the breath of spring. these aërial creatures throng to contemplate the virgin, and their forms recall those radiances in the shape of crowns that fill the dantesque paradise, making the name of mary resound with their praises. our eyes and mind lose themselves in the immense multitude of these happy spirits. "number if you can the sands of the sea or the stars in the sky, those that are visible and invisible, and still believe that you have not attained the number of the angels. it costs god nothing to multiply the most excellent things, and it is the most beautiful of which he is most prodigal." we cannot keep our eyes away from that sky; we gaze at it and love to dazzle and weary our eyes with it. on either side of the virgin, kneel st. sixtus and st. barbara. placed also amid the clouds, but below the madonna, they are near the sovereign mediatrix, as mediators also between the world and the sovereign judge. st. sixtus is seen on the right in profile, his head is raised towards the infant jesus, his left hand is placed devoutly on his breast while his right is foreshortened and points towards the spectator. he wears a white rochet tied by a girdle with golden tassels, a white amice around his neck, a magnificent pallium woven with gold falling to his feet, and a long chasuble embroidered with gold and lined with red enveloping his shoulders and arms, the wide folds of which are lost amid the clouds. his head is bare, and his white tiara, adorned with the triple crown, is placed on the balustrade that runs horizontally across the base of the picture. it is impossible to find a representation of pontifical sovereignty of greater fervour, grandeur, and truth. his cranium is bald and has only a crown of grey hair remaining. his emaciated face is full of ardour and power: his eyes penetrate straight into the splendour of god; and his mouth, although partially hidden by the grey beard that covers the lower part of his face, is praying with extraordinary fervour. his gesture, so resolute and respectful, is in itself an act of love and charity, and his very hands, so true in drawing and so bold in action, have their special eloquence. it seems impossible that the divine justice will not allow itself to be swayed by such intercession. st. barbara is opposite st. sixtus. her body is in left profile, towards the virgin, while her head, turned over her left shoulder towards the spectator, appears almost in full face. only her left arm and hand are visible, pressed against her breast. her left knee, directly resting upon the cloud, sustains the weight of her body; her right leg, which is raised, only touches the clouds with the foot. her head is as beautiful, youthful, and fresh as the action of her whole figure is easy, elegant, and noble. then where did raphael find this serenity if not in himself? the saint, gently bending towards the earth, seems to want to receive our hopes and vows to bear them to heaven. she is one of those virgins who are created in the image of the virgin par excellence. nevertheless, here she affects certain worldly appearances which, beside the severe simplicity of the mother of the word, establish a hierarchy between the two figures and a sort of line of demarcation that cannot be crossed. the higher we soar the more is grandeur simplified in everything. st. barbara's hair is arranged with a certain elegance; it is very abundant, of an ash blonde, and forms thick waving bands that are gathered off the temples and are crossed by two white fillets, one of which crosses the top of the forehead like a diadem. her eyes, lowered towards the earth, are perfectly beautiful; her mouth is calm and sweet; and purity shines in all her features. her shoulders are bare, only covered with a veil of white gauze which falls down her back, passes under her arm and returns to her breast where her left hand holds it. her robe of violet shading into a neutral tint, is only visible where it covers her leg; for a green mantle, thrown over it, envelops the body, only revealing the arm, the sleeve of which is blue on the upper arm, yellow, and slightly puffed at the shoulder, and yellow also on the forearm. all this is of a grand air and in exquisite taste. thus draped, the figure has a charming effect which, without detracting from the religious idea, leaves room also for a more human sentiment. raphael, doubtless, had thought that the figures of the virgin, the infant jesus, st. sixtus, and st. barbara would alone be sufficient for his picture; but the empty space remaining beneath the feet of the madonna was too considerable to be filled up simply by clouds: and therefore he added that rigid and horizontal supporting bar on which two angels lean upon their elbows, contemplating the glory of the virgin with such rapture. in fact, these angels seem to be painted as an afterthought, for, laid in with a light brush, they scarcely cover the clouds, but allow the underlying pigment to show through. little wings of vivid tint complete these aërial creatures, always living around raphael and always ready to come from his brush. although held to nature by the most intimate ties, although perhaps too familiar in attitude and manner, they are yet supernatural by the clearness of their intelligence and by the power of their admiration. we are enchanted with their candour and beauty. they are full of zeal and enthusiasm; they possess the grace of the pagan loves merged into christian innocence and chastity. their faith is as beautiful as the sky, and in loving them it is almost for god himself that we feel the love. such are the various parts of this work; their union forms the most sublime harmony, and each in particular brings a divine note to this celestial concert. by what process was this picture produced? we can scarcely say, so greatly does the inspiration predominate over the technique. raphael aimed at the sublime; and the rest was given to him as increase. the colour is just what it should be in such a subject; whilst keeping to a sweet, calm, and peaceful scale, it is resplendent with light, and we ask ourselves whether it is not the hand of an angel rather than that of a man that has been able to realize such a marvel. the _virgin of st. sixtus_ is the most beautiful picture in the world. to copy this virgin is to attempt the impossible. study it a hundred times and a hundred times it will reveal itself under a new aspect. it was before this picture, it is said, that correggio cried: "and i also, i am a painter." the _virgin of st. sixtus_ was immediately placed where it was meant to be; it was present in triumph every day for two hundred and thirty-six years at the divine sacrament; and never was a human work so worthy of that signal honour. in the degenerate monks of st. sixtus preferred a little gold to their inestimable masterpiece, and for a miserable sum of a hundred and some thousands of francs ( , to , ), they sold their virgin to augustus iii., elector of saxony and king of poland. that day the barbarians were not those the italians think.... at dresden, the madonna was received with great pomp. augustus iii. had it brought in haste into the reception hall of his palace; as the place of honour was occupied by the throne, he, himself, seized the royal chair, and relegating it to a less conspicuous station, he cried: "room for the great raphael." if this is historic, it does honour to the prince; if legendary, it is to the glory of the people whose sentiment it translates. _les vierges de raphaël_ (paris, ). the dream of st. ursula (_carpaccio_) john ruskin in the year , just before leaving venice i had been carefully looking at a picture by victor carpaccio, representing the dream of a young princess. carpaccio has taken much pains to explain to us, as far as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting her little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything in it. it is lighted by two doubly-arched windows, the arches being painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that bear them, gilded. they are filled at the top with small round panes of glass; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low lattice across them; and in the one at the back of the room are set two beautiful white greek vases with a plant in each; one having rich dark and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of any species known to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of heath. [illustration: the dream of st. ursula. _carpaccio._] these flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room, and beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to put things on anywhere: beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are covered with green cloth; but above are bare and white. the second window is nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the princess's reading-table, some two feet and a half square, covered by a red cloth with a white border and dainty fringe; and beside it her seat, not at all like a reading chair in oxford, but a very small three-legged stool like a music stool, covered with crimson cloth. on the table are a book, set up at a slope fittest for reading, and an hour-glass. under the shelf near the table so as to be easily reached by the outstretched arm, is a press full of books. the door of this has been left open, and the books, i am grieved to say, are rather in disorder, having been pulled about before the princess went to bed, and one left standing on its side. opposite this window, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture (i can't see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective), with a lamp before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like one for holding incense. the bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a canopy of warm red. the princess's shield is at the head of it, and the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais which projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the child has laid her crown. her little blue slippers lie at the side of the bed,--her white dog beside them, the coverlid is scarlet, the white sheet folded half way back over it; the young girl lies straight, bending neither at waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over her in a narrow unbroken wave, like the shape of the coverlid of the last sleep, when the turf scarcely rises. she is some seventeen or eighteen years old, her head is turned towards us on the pillow, the cheek resting on her hand, as if she were thinking, yet utterly calm in sleep, and almost colourless. her hair is tied with a narrow riband, and divided into two wreaths, which encircle her head like a double crown. the white nightgown hides the arm raised on the pillow, down to the wrist. at the door of the room an angel enters; (the little dog, though lying awake, vigilant, takes no notice.) he is a very small angel, his head just rises a little above the shelf round the room, and would only reach as high as the princess's chin, if she were standing up. he has soft grey wings, lustreless; and his dress, of subdued blue, has violet sleeves, open above the elbow, and showing white sleeves below. he comes in without haste, his body, like a mortal one, casting shadow from the light through the door behind, his face perfectly quiet; a palm-branch in his right hand--a scroll in his left. so dreams the princess, with blessed eyes, that need no earthly dawn. it is very pretty of carpaccio to make her dream out the angel's dress so particularly, and notice the slashed sleeves; and to dream so little an angel--very nearly a doll angel,--bringing her the branch of palm, and message. but the lovely characteristic of all is the evident delight of her continual life. royal power over herself, and happiness in her flowers, her books, her sleeping and waking, her prayers, her dreams, her earth, her heaven.... "how do i know the princess is industrious?" partly by the trim state of her room,--by the hour-glass on the table,--by the evident use of all the books she has, (well bound, every one of them, in stoutest leather or velvet, and with no dog's-ears,) but more distinctly from another picture of her, not asleep. in that one a prince of england has sent to ask her in marriage: and her father, little liking to part with her, sends for her to his room to ask her what she would do. he sits, moody and sorrowful; she, standing before him in a plain house-wifely dress, talks quietly, going on with her needlework all the time. a work-woman, friends, she, no less than a princess; and princess most in being so. in like manner, is a picture by a florentine, whose mind i would fain have you know somewhat, as well as carpaccio's--sandro botticelli--the girl who is to be the wife of moses, when he first sees her at the desert well, has fruit in her left hand, but a distaff in her right.[ ] "to do good work, whether you live or die," it is the entrance to all princedoms; and if not done, the day will come, and that infallibly, when you must labour for evil instead of good. _fors clavigera_ (sunnyside, orpington, kent, ). footnotes: [ ] more accurately a rod cloven into three at the top, and so holding the wool. the fruit is a bunch of apples; she has golden sandals, and a wreath of myrtle round her hair. the descent from the cross (_rubens_) eugÈne fromentin many people say _antwerp_; but many also say _the country of rubens_, and this mode of speech more exactly expresses all the things that constitute the magic of the place: a great city, a great personal destiny, a famous school, and ultra-celebrated pictures. all this is imposing, and our imagination becomes excited rather more than usual when, in the centre of the _place vert_, we see the statue of rubens and, farther on, the old basilica where are preserved the triptychs which, humanly speaking, have consecrated it. the statue is not a masterpiece; but it is he, in his own home. under the form of a man, who was nothing but a painter, with the sole attributes of a painter, in perfect truth it personifies the sole flemish sovereignty which has neither been contested nor menaced, and which certainly never will be. [illustration: the descent from the cross. _rubens._] at the end of the square is seen notre dame; it presents itself in profile, being outlined by one of its lateral faces, the darkest one, on account of the rains beating on that side. it is made to look blacker and bigger by being surrounded with light and low buildings. with its carved stonework, its rusty tone, its blue and lustrous roof, its colossal tower where the golden disk and the golden needles of its dial glitter in the stone discoloured by the vapours from the scheldt and by the winters, it assumes monstrous proportions. when the sky is troubled, as it is to-day, it adds all its own strange caprices to the grandeur of the lines. imagine then the invention of a gothic piranesi, exaggerated by the fancy of the north, wildly illuminated by a stormy day, and standing out in irregular blotches against the scenic background of a sky entirely black or entirely white, and full of tempest. a more original or more striking preliminary stage-setting could not be contrived. thus it is vain for you to have come from mechlin or brussels, to have seen the _magi_ and the _calvary_, to have formed an exact and measured idea of rubens, or even to have taken familiarities in examining him that have set you at your ease with him, for you cannot enter notre dame as you enter a museum. it is three o'clock; the clock high up has just struck. scarcely even a sacristan makes a sound in the tranquil, clean and clear naves, as pieter neefs has represented them, with an inimitable feeling for their solitude and grandeur. it is raining and the light is fading. shadows and gleams succeed each other upon the two triptychs in their thin framing of brown wood fastened without any pomp to the cold and smooth walls of the transepts, and this proud painting only stands out the more amid the violent lights and obscurities contending around it. german copyists have placed their easels before the _descent from the cross_; there is nobody before the _elevation to the cross_. this simple fact expresses the world's opinion as to these two works. they are greatly admired, almost unreservedly so, and the fact is rare in the case of rubens, but the admiration is divided. the chief renown has fallen upon the _descent from the cross_. the _elevation to the cross_ has the gift of touching still more the impassioned, or more deeply convinced, friends of rubens. no two works, in fact, could resemble each other less than these that were conceived at an interval of two years, that were inspired by the same effort of mind, and that, nevertheless, so plainly bear the marks of two separate tendencies. the date of the _descent from the cross_ is ; that of the _elevation to the cross_ is . i insist upon the date, for it is important. rubens was returning to antwerp, and it was on his disembarkation, so to speak, that he painted them. his education was finished. at that moment he had even an excess of studies that were somewhat heavy for him and of which he was going to make free use once for all and then get rid of almost immediately. of all the italian masters he had consulted, each one, be it understood, gave him advice of a sufficiently exclusive nature. the hot-headed masters authorized him to dare greatly; the severe masters recommended him to keep himself under strong restraint. his nature, character, and native faculties all tended to a division. the task itself exacted that he should make two parts of his beautiful gifts. he felt the expediency of this, took advantage of it, treated of the subjects in accordance with their spirit, and gave two contrary and two just ideas of himself: on the one hand the most magnificent example we possess of his wisdom, and on the other one of the most astonishing visions of his fire and ardour. to the personal inspiration of the painter add a very marked italian influence and you will still better be able to explain to yourself the extraordinary value that posterity attaches to pages which may be regarded as his diploma works and which were the first public acts of his life as the head of a school. i will tell you how this influence manifests itself and by what characteristics it may be recognized. but first it is enough for me to remark that it exists, in order that the physiognomy of the talent of rubens may not lose any of its features at the moment when we examine it. this is not that he should be positively cramped in canonical formulæ in which others would find themselves imprisoned. on the other hand, with what ease he moves among these formulæ, with what freedom he makes use of them, with what tact he disguises or confesses them, according as he takes pleasure in revealing the well-informed man or the novice. however, whatever he may do, we feel the _romanist_ who has just spent some years on classic ground, who has just arrived and has not yet changed his atmosphere. there is some unknown quality remaining with him that reveals travel, such as a foreign odour about his clothes. it is certainly to this fine italian scent that the _descent from the cross_ owes the extreme favour that it enjoys. for those indeed who would like rubens to be somewhat as he is, but very much also as they imagine him, there is here a seriousness in youth, a frank and studious flower of maturity which is about to disappear and which is unique. i need not describe the composition. you could not mention a more popular composition as a work of art or as an example of religious style. there is nobody who has not in his mind the ordering and the effect of the picture, its great central light cast against a dark background, its grandiose masses, its distinct and massive divisions. we know that rubens got the first idea of it from italy, and that he made no attempt to conceal the loan. the scene is powerful and grave. it acts on one from afar, it stands out strikingly upon a wall: it is serious and enforces seriousness. when we remember the carnage with which the work of rubens is crimsoned, the massacres, the executioners torturing, martyring, and making their victims howl, we recognize that here we have a noble _execution_. everything in it is restrained, concise, and laconic, as in a page of holy writ. there are neither gesticulations, cries, horrors, nor too many tears. the virgin hardly breaks into a single sob, and the intense suffering of the drama is expressed by scarce a gesture of inconsolable motherhood, a tearful face, or red eyes. the christ is one of the most elegant figures that rubens ever imagined for the painting of a god. it possesses some peculiar extended, pliant, and almost tapering grace, that gives it every natural delicacy and all the distinction of a beautiful academic study. it is subtly proportioned and in perfect taste: the drawing does not fall far short of the sentiment. you have not forgotten the effect of that large and slightly hip-shot body, with its small, thin, and fine head slightly fallen to one side, so livid and so perfectly limpid in its pallor, neither shrivelled nor drawn, and from which all suffering has disappeared, as it descends with so much beatitude to rest for a moment among the strange beauties of the death of the just! recollect how heavily it hangs and how precious it is to support, in what a lifeless attitude it glides along the sudarium, with what agonized affection it is received by the outstretched hands and arms of the women. is there anything more touching? one of his feet, livid and pierced, encounters at the foot of the cross the bare shoulder of magdalen. it does not rest upon it, but grazes it. the contact is scarcely noticeable, we divine it rather than see it. it would have been profane to insist upon it, it would have been cruel not to have made us believe in it. all rubens's furtive sensitiveness is in this imperceptible contact that says so many things, respects them all, and makes them affecting. the sinner is admirable. she is incontestably the best piece of work in the picture, the most delicate, the most personal, one of the best figures of women, moreover, that rubens ever executed in his career that was so fertile in feminine creations. this delicious figure has its legend; how should it not have, its very perfection having become legendary! it is probable that this beautiful maiden with the black eyes, with the firm glance, with the clear-cut profile, is a portrait, and the portrait is that of isabella brandt, whom he had married two years before, and who had also sat for him for the virgin in the wing of the _visitation_. however, while observing her ample figure, powdered hair, and plump proportions, we reflect what must some day be the splendid and individual charms of that beautiful helen fourment whom he is to marry twenty years later. from his earliest to his latest years, one tenacious type seems to have taken up its abode in rubens's heart; one fixed idea haunted his amorous and constant imagination. he delights in it, he completes it, he achieves it; to some extent he pursues it in his two marriages, just as he never ceases to repeat it throughout his works. there is always something both of isabella and of helen in the women whom rubens painted from either one of them. in the first he puts a sort of preconceived trait of the second; into the second glides a kind of ineffaceable memory of the first. at the date of which we treat, he possesses the first and is inspired by her; the other is not yet born, and still he divines her. the future already mingles with the present; the real with the ideal. as soon as the image appears it has this double form. not only is it exquisite, but not a feature is wanting. does it not seem as if in thus fixing it from the first day, rubens intended that neither he nor anyone else should forget it? as for the rest, this is the sole mundane grace with which he has embellished this austere picture, slightly monkish, and absolutely evangelical in character, if by that is meant the gravity of sentiment and style, and if we remember the rigours that such a spirit must impose upon itself. in that case, you will understand, a great part of his reserve is as much the result of his italian education as of the attention he gave to his subject. the canvas is sombre, notwithstanding its high lights and the extraordinary whiteness of the winding-sheet. in spite of its reliefs, the painting is _flat_. it is a picture of blackish grounds on which are disposed broad strong lights of no gradations. the colouring is not very rich: it is full, well-sustained, and clearly calculated to be effective from a distance. it makes the picture, frames it, expresses its weakness and its strength, and makes no attempt to beautify it. it is composed of an almost black green, an absolute black, a rather heavy red, and a white. these four tones are placed side by side as frankly as is possible with four notes of such violence. the contact is brusque and yet they do not suffer. in the great white, the corpse of christ is drawn with a delicate and supple line and modelled by its own reliefs without any effort of _nuances_, thanks to deviations of imperceptible values. no shining, no single division in the lights, and scarcely a detail in the dark parts. all that is of a singular breadth and rigidity. the outlines are narrow, the half-tints limited except in the christ, where the under layer of ultramarine has worn through and to-day forms blemishes. the pigment is smooth, compact, flowing easily and thoughtfully. at the distance from which we examine it, the work of the hand disappears, but it is easy to guess that it is excellent and directed with full confidence by a mind broken into good habits, that conforms to them, applies itself, and wishes to do well. rubens remembers, observes, restrains himself, possesses all his forces, subordinates them, and only half makes use of them. in spite of these drawbacks, this is a singularly original, attractive, and strong work. van dyck will derive his best religious inspirations from it. philippe de champagne will not imitate it, i am afraid, except in its weak points, and from it will compose his french style. otto van veen should certainly applaud it. what should van oort think of it? as for jordaens, he is waiting for his fellow student to become more distinctly and expressly rubens before following him in these new ways. _les maîtres d' autrefois_ (paris, ). bacchus and ariadne (_titian_) charles lamb hogarth excepted, can we produce any one painter within the last fifty years, or since the humour of exhibiting began, that has treated a story _imaginatively_? by this we mean, upon whom has subject so acted that it has seemed to direct _him_--not to be arranged by him? any upon whom its leading or collateral points have impressed themselves so tyrannically, that he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a revelation? any that has imparted to his compositions, not merely so much truth as is enough to convey a story with clearness, but that individualizing property, which should keep the subject so treated distinct in feature from every other subject, however similar, and to common apprehensions almost identical; so as that we might say this and this part could have found an appropriate place in no other picture in the world but this? is there anything in modern art--we will not demand that it should be equal--but in any way analogous to what titian has effected, in that wonderful bringing together of two times in the _ariadne_, in the national gallery? precipitous, with his reeling satyr rout about him, repeopling and re-illuming suddenly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond the grape, bacchus, born in fire, fire-like flings himself at the cretan. this is the time present. with this telling of the story an artist, and no ordinary one, might remain richly proud. guido in his harmonious version of it, saw no farther. but from the depths of the imaginative spirit titian has recalled past time, and laid it contributory with the present to one simultaneous effect. with the desert all ringing with the mad symbols of his followers, made lucid with the presence and new offers of a god,--as if unconscious of bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some unconcerning pageant--her soul undistracted from theseus--ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore, in as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the athenian. here are two points miraculously co-uniting; fierce society, with the feeling of solitude still absolute; noon-day revelations, with the accidents of the dull grey dawn unquenched and lingering; the _present_ bacchus with the _past_ ariadne; two stories, with double time; separate, and harmonizing. had the artist made the woman one shade less indifferent to the god; still more, had she expressed a rapture at his advent, where would have been the story of the mighty desolation of the heart previous? merged in the insipid accident of a flattering offer met with a welcome acceptance. the broken heart for theseus was not lightly to be pieced up by a god. _lamb's complete works_, edited by r.h. shepherd (london, ). [illustration: bacchus and ariadne. _titian_.] bacchus and ariadne (_titian_) edward t. cook but though as yet half unconscious, ariadne is already under her fated star: for above is the constellation of ariadne's crown--the crown with which bacchus presented his bride. and observe in connection with the astronomical side of the allegory the figure in bacchus's train with the serpent round him: this is the serpent-bearer (milton's "ophiuchus huge") translated to the skies with bacchus and ariadne. notice too another piece of poetry: the marriage of bacchus and ariadne took place in the spring, ariadne herself being the personification of its return, and bacchus of its gladness; hence the flowers in the foreground which deck his path. the picture is as full of the painter's art as of the poet's. note first the exquisite painting of the vine leaves, and of these flowers in the foreground, as an instance of the "constant habit of the great masters to render every detail of their foreground with the most laborious botanical fidelity." "the foreground is occupied with the common blue iris, the _aquilegia_, and the wild rose (more correctly the _capparis spinosa_); _every stamen_ of which latter is given, while the blossoms and leaves of the columbine (a difficult flower to draw) have been studied with the most exquisite accuracy." but this detail is sought not for its own sake, but only so far as is necessary to mark the typical qualities of beauty in the object. thus "while every stamen of the rose is given because this was necessary to mark the flower, and while the curves and large characters of the leaves are rendered with exquisite fidelity, there is no vestige of particular texture, of moss, bloom, moisture, or any other accident, no dewdrops, nor flies, nor trickeries of any kind: nothing beyond the simple forms and hues of the flowers, even those hues themselves being simplified and broadly rendered. the varieties of _aquilegia_ have in reality a greyish and uncertain tone of colour, and never attain the purity of blue with which titian has gifted his flower. but the master does not aim at the particular colour of individual blossoms; he seizes the type of all, and gives it with the utmost purity and simplicity of which colour is capable." a second point to be noticed is the way in which one kind of truth has often to be sacrificed in order to gain another. thus here titian sacrifices truth of aërial effect to richness of tone--tone in the sense, that is, of that quality of colour which makes us feel that the whole picture is in one climate, under one kind of light, and in one kind of atmosphere. "it is difficult to imagine anything more magnificently impossible than the blue of the distant landscape; impossible, not from its vividness, but because it is not faint and aërial enough to account for its purity of colour; it is too dark and blue at the same time; and there is indeed so total a want of atmosphere in it, that, but for the difference of form, it would be impossible to tell the mountains intended to be ten miles off, from the robe of ariadne close to the spectator. yet make this blue faint, aërial, and distant; make it in the slightest degree to resemble the tint of nature's colour; and all the tone of the picture, all the intensity and splendour will vanish on the instant."[ ] we may notice lastly what sir joshua reynolds points out (discourse viii.), that the harmony of the picture--that wonderful bringing together of two times of which lamb speaks above, is assisted by the distribution of colours. "to ariadne is given (say the critics) a red scarf to relieve the figure from the sea, which is behind her. it is not for that reason alone, but for another of much greater consequence; for the sake of the general harmony and effect of the picture. the figure of ariadne is separated from the great group, and is dressed in blue, which, added to the colour of the sea, makes that quantity of cold colour which titian thought necessary for the support and brilliancy of the great group; which group is composed, with very little exception, entirely of mellow colours. but as the picture in this case would be divided into two distinct parts, one half cold, and the other warm; it was necessary to carry some of the mellow colours of the great group into the cold part of the picture, and a part of the cold into the great group; accordingly, titian gave ariadne a red scarf, and to one of the bacchante a little blue drapery." it is interesting to know that this great picture took titian three years, off and on, to finish. it was a commission from the duke of ferrara, who supplied canvas and frame for it, and repeatedly wrote to press for its delivery; it reached him in . _a popular handbook to the national gallery_ (london and new york, ). footnotes: [ ] _modern painters_, vols. i., xxvii., xxx. (preface to second edition), pt. i. sec. ii. ch. § , pt. ii. sec. ii. ch. . § ; vol. iii. pt. iv. ch. ix. § ; vol. v. pt. ix. ch. iii. § ; _arrows of the chace_, i. . the coronation of the virgin (_fra angelico_) thÉophile gautier _the coronation of the virgin_, by fra beato angelico, seems to have been painted by an angel rather than by a mortal. time has not tarnished the ideal freshness of this painting, delicate as a miniature in a missal, and whose tints are borrowed from the whiteness of the lily, the rose of the dawn, the blue of the sky, and the gold of the stars. no muddy tones of earth dull these seraphic beings composed of luminous vapours. upon a throne with marble steps, the varied colours of which are symbolic, christ is seated, holding a crown of rich workmanship which he is about to place upon the head of his divine mother, kneeling before him, with her head modestly inclined and her hands crossed upon her breast. around the throne, throng a choir of angel-musicians, playing the trumpet, the theorbo, the _angelot_, and the _viola d' amore_. a light flame flutters about their heads and their great wings palpitate with joy at this glorious coronation which will transform the humble handmaid of the lord into the lady of paradise. to the left, an angel kneels in prayer. in the lower part of the painting with faces uplifted to the sky the hosts of the blessed, distributed in two groups, adore and contemplate. on one side, are moses, saint john the baptist, the apostles, the bishops, and the founders of orders, distinguished by some emblem, and for greater certainty bearing their names inscribed around their nimbus, or upon the embroideries of their vestments. saint dominick holds a branch of lilies and a book. a sun forms the agrafe of saint thomas aquinas's mantle; charlemagne, "_l'empereur à la barbe fleurie_," is recognizable by his crown of _fleur-de-lis_. saint nicholas, bishop of myra, has by his side the three balls of gold, symbolic of the three purses which he gave to a poor gentleman to dower his three daughters whose beauty exposed them to dangers. on the other side, throng king david, apostles, martyrs, saint peter the dominican with his wounded head, saint laurence holding his gridiron, saint stephen with a palm in his hand, and saint george armed from head to foot; then, in the foreground of the picture, is the charming group of saints of perfectly celestial grace: the kneeling magdalen offers her vase of perfumes; saint cæcilia advances, crowned with roses; saint clara gleams through her veil, constellated with crosses and golden stars; saint catherine of alexandria leans upon the wheel, the instrument of her execution, as calmly and peacefully as if it were a spinning-wheel; and saint agnes holds in her arms a little white lamb, the symbol of innocent purity. [illustration: the coronation of the virgin. _fra angelico._] fra beato angelico has given to these youthful saints a celestial and ideal beauty, whose type exists not upon this earth: they are visible souls, rather than bodies, they are thoughts of human form enveloped in these chaste draperies of white, rose, and blue, sown with stars and embroidered, clothed as might be the happy spirits who rejoice in the eternal light of paradise. if there be paintings in heaven, surely they must resemble those of fra angelico. _guide de l'amateur au musée du louvre_ (paris, ). judith (_sandro botticelli_) maurice hewlett in the days when it was verging on a question whether a man could be at the same time a good christian and an artist the chosen subjects of painting were significant of the approaching crisis--those glaring moral contrasts in history which, for want of a happier term, we call dramatic. why this was so, whether art took a hint from politics, or had withdrawn her more intimate manifestations to await likelier times, is a question it were long to answer. the subjects, at any rate, were such as the greeks, with their surer instincts and saving grace of sanity in matters of this kind, either forbore to meddle with or treated as decoratively as they treated acanthus-wreaths. to-day we call them "effective" subjects; we find they produce shocks and tremors; we think it braces us to shudder, and we think that art is a kind of emotional pill; we measure it quantitatively, and say that we "know what we like." and doubtless there is something piquant in the quivering produced, for example, by the sight of white innocence fluttering helpless in a grey shadow of lust. so long as the bible remained a god that piquancy was found in a _massacre of the innocents_; in our own time we find it in a _faust and gretchen_, in the doré gallery, or in the royal academy. it was a like appreciation of the certain effect of vivid contrasts as powerful didactic agents (coupled with, or drowning, a something purer and more devout) which had inspired those most beautiful and distinctive of all the symbols of catholicism, the _adoration of the kings_, the christ-child cycle, and which raised the holy child and maid-mother to their place above the mystic tapers and the cross. naturally the old testament, that garner of grim tales, proved a sick wine: _david and golias_, _susanna and the elders_, the _sacrifice of isaac_, _jethro's daughter_. but the story of judith did not come to be painted in tuscan sanctuaries until donatello of florence had first cast her in bronze at the prayer of cosimo _pater patriæ_. her entry was dramatic enough at least: dame fortune may well have sniggered as she spun round the city on her ball. cosimo the patriot and his splendid grandson were no sooner dead and their brood sent flying, than donatello's _judith_ was set up in the piazza as a fit emblem of rescue from tyranny, with the vigorous motto, to make assurance double, "exemplvm salvtis pvblicae cives posvere." savonarola, who knew his bible, saw here a keener application of judith's pious sin. a few years later that same _judith_ saw him burn. thus, as an incarnate cynicism, she will pass; as a work of art she is admittedly one of her great creator's failures. her neighbour _perseus_ of the loggia makes this only too plain! for cellini has seized the right moment in a deed of horror, and donatello, with all his downrightness and grip of the fact, has hit upon the wrong. it is fatal to freeze a moment of time into an eternity of writing. his _judith_ will never strike: her arm is palsied where it swings. the damoclean sword is a fine incident for poetry; but holofernes was no damocles, and if he had been, it were intolerable to cast his experience in bronze. donatello has essayed that thing impossible for sculpture, to arrest a moment instead of denote a permanent attribute. art is adjectival, is it not, o donatello? her business is to qualify facts, to say what things are, not to state them, to affirm that they are. a sculptured _judith_ was done not long afterwards, carved, as we shall see, with a burin on a plate; and the man who so carved her was a painter. [illustration: judith. _botticelli._] meantime, _pari passu_, almost, a painter who was a poet was trying his hand; a man who knew his bible and his mythology and was equally at home with either. perhaps it is not extravagant to say that you cannot be an artist unless you are at home with mythology, unless mythology is the swiftest and most direct expression of your being, so that you can be measured by it as a man is known by his books, or a woman by her clothes, her way of bowing, her amusements, or her charities. for mythopoeia is just this, the incarnating the spirit of natural fact; and the generic name of that power is art. a kind of creation, a clothing of essence in matter, an hypostatizing (if you will have it) of an object of intuition within the folds of an object of sense. lessing did not dig so deep as his greek voltaire (whose "dazzling antithesis," after all, touches the root of the matter), for he did not see that rhythmic extension in time or space, as the case may be, with all that that implies--colour, value, proportion, all the convincing incidents of form--is simply the mode of all arts, the thing with which art's substance must be interpenetrated, until the two form a whole, lovely, golden, irresistible, and inevitable as nature's pieces are. this substance, as i have said, is the spirit of natural fact. and so mythology is art at its simplest and barest (where the bodily medium is neither word, nor texture of stone, nor dye), the parent art from which all the others were, so to speak, begotten by man's need. this much of explanation, i am sorry to say, is necessary, before we turn to our mytho-poet of florence, to see what he made out of the story of judith. first of all, though, what has the story of judith to do with mythology? it is a legend, one of the finest of semitic legends; and between legend and myth there is as great a gulf as between jew and greek. i believe there are no myths proper to israel--i do not see how such magnificent egoists could contract to the necessary state of awe--and i do not know that there are any legends proper to greece which are divorced from real myths. for where a myth is the incarnation of the spirit of natural fact, a legend is the embellishment of an historical event: a very different thing. a natural fact is permanent and elemental, an historical event is transient and superficial. take one instance out of a score. the rainbow links heaven and earth. iris, then, to the myth-making greek, was jove's messenger, intermediary between god and man. that is to incarnate a constant, natural fact. plato afterwards, making her a daughter of thaumas, incarnated a fact, psychological, but none the less constant, none the less natural. but, to say, as the legend-loving jew said, that noah floated his ark over a drowning world and secured for his posterity a standing covenant with god, who then and once for all set his bow in the heavens; that is to indicate, somewhere, in the dim backward and abysm of time, an historical event. the rainbow is suffered as the skirt of the robe of noah, who was an ancestor of israel. so the judith poem may be a decorated event, or it may be the barest history in a splendid epical setting: the point to remember is that it cannot be, as legend, a subject for creative art. the artist, in the language of neo-platonism, is a demiurge; he only of men can convert dead things into life. and now we will go into the uffizi. mr. ruskin, in his petulant-playful way, has touched upon the feeling of amaze most people have who look for the first time at botticelli's _judith_ tripping smoothly and lightly over the hill-country, her steadfast maid dogging with intent patient eyes every step she takes. you say it is flippant, affected, pedantic. for answer, i refer you to the sage himself, who, from his point of view--that painting may fairly deal with a chapter of history--is perfectly right. the prevailing strain of the story is the strength of weakness--_ex dulci fortitudo_, to invert the old enigma. "o god, o my god, hear me also, a widow. break down their stateliness by the hand of a woman!" it is the refrain that runs through the whole history of israel, that reasonable complacency of a little people in their god-fraught destiny. and, withal, a streak of savage spite: that the audacious oppressor shall be done scornfully to death. there is the motive of jael and sisera too. so "she smote twice upon his neck with all her might, and she took away his head from him, and tumbled his body down from the bed." ho! what a fate for the emissary of the great king. wherefore, once more, the jubilant paradox, "the lord hath smitten him by the hand of a woman!" that is it: the amazing, thrilling antithesis insisted on over and over again by the old hebrew bard. "her sandals ravished his eyes, her beauty took his mind prisoner, and the fauchion passed through his neck." that is the _leit-motif_: sandro the poet knew it perfectly well and taught it to the no small comfort of mr. ruskin and his men. giuditta, dainty, blue-eyed, a girl still and three years a widow, flits homeward through a spring landscape of grey and green and the smile of a milky sky, being herself the dominant of the chord, with her bough of slipt olive and her jagged scimitar, with her pretty blue fal-lals smocked and puffed, and her yellow curls floating over her shoulders. on her slim feet are the sandals that ravished his eyes; all her maiden bravery is dancing and fluttering like harebells in the wind. behind her plods the slave girl folded in an orange scarf, bearing that shapeless, nameless burden of hers, the head of the grim lord holofernes. oh, for that, it is the legend itself! for look at the girl's eyes. what does their dreamy solemnity mean if not, "the lord hath smitten him by the hand of a woman"? one other delicate bit of symbolizing he has allowed himself, which i may not omit. you are to see by whom this deed was done: by a woman who has unsexed herself. judith is absorbed in her awful service; her robe trails on the ground and clings about her knees; she is unconscious of the hindrance. the gates of bethulia are in sight; the chaldean horsemen are abroad, but she has no anxiety to escape. she is swift because her life just now courses swiftly; but there is no haste. the maid, you shall mark, picks up her skirts with careful hand, and steps out the more lustily for it. so far botticelli the poet, and so far also mr. ruskin, reader of pictures. what says botticelli the painter? had he no instincts to tell him that his art could have little to say to a legend? or that a legend might be the subject of an epic (here, indeed, was an epic ready made), might, under conditions, be the subject of a drama; but could not, under any conditions, be alone the subject of a picture? i don't for a moment suggest that he had, or that any artist ever goes to work in this double-entry, methodical way, but are we entitled to say that he was not influenced by his predilections, his determinations as a draughtsman, when he squared himself to illustrate the bible? we say that the subject of a picture is the spirit of natural fact. if botticelli was a painter, _that_ is what he must have looked for, and must have found, in every picture he painted. where, then, was he to get his natural facts in the story of judith? what is, in that story, the natural, essential (as opposed to the historical, fleeting) fact? it is murder. judith's deed was what the old scots law incisively calls _slauchter_. it may be glossed over as assassination or even execution--in fact, in florence, where giuliano was soon to be taken off, it did not fail to be so called: it remains, however, just murder. botticelli, not shirking the position at all, judged murder to be a natural fact, and its spirit or essence swiftness and stealth. chaucer, let us note, had been of the same mind: "the smyler with the knyf under his cloke," and so on, in lines not be matched for hasty and dreadful suggestion. swiftness and stealth, the ambush, the averted face and the sudden stab, are the standing elements of murder: pare off all the rest, you come down to that. your staring looks, your blood, your "chirking," are accidentals. they may be there (for each of us carries a carcase), but the horror of sudden death is above them: a man may strangle with his thoughts cleaner than with his pair of hands. and as "matter" is but the stuff wherewith nature works, and she is only insulted, not defied, when we flout or mangle it, so it is against the high dignity of art to insist upon the carrion she must use. she will press, here the terror, there the radiance, of essential fact; she will leave to us, seeing it in her face, to add mentally the poor stage properties we have grown to trust. no blood, if you please. therefore, in botticelli's _judith_, nothing but the essentials are insisted on; the rest we instantly imagine, but it is not there to be sensed. the panel is in a tremor. so swift and secret is judith, so furtive the maid, we need no hurrying horsemen to remind us of her oath,--"hear me, and i will do a thing which shall go throughout all generations to the children of our nation." sudden death in the air; nature has been outraged. but there is no drop of blood--the thin scarlet line along the sword-edge is a symbol if you will--the pale head in the cloth is a mere "thing:" yet we all know what has been done. _earthwork out of tuscany_ (london, ). the avenue of middelharnais (_hobbema_) paul lafond some small and slender trees, branchless almost to their tops, border the two sides of a road, which occupies the centre of the picture, and extend all the way to a village which closes the horizon with several masts and hulls of ships in profile against a sky where the sun is veiled; to the right, a nursery-garden of shrubs and rose-trees separated from the road by a wide ditch full of water; then, in the middle distance, the buildings of a farm; to the left, a clump of trees and another ditch, and further back the spire of a church; a huntsman, with a gun on his shoulder and preceded by his dog, is walking on the road, and two peasants--a man and a woman--have stopped to chat on the path that leads across to the farm; a horticulturist is grafting the shrubs in the nursery-garden; and this corner of a landscape has sufficed for hobbema to produce a masterpiece which the national gallery of london is justly proud to possess. this youngest of the great european museums is not the poorest and owns very considerable works of every school. [illustration: the avenue of middelharnais. _hobbema._] what is most admired in this picture of the dutch master? the firmness of touch, the brilliancy of the key, the ease and breadth of execution without the slightest sign of hesitation or alteration, or the extraordinary perfection with which the perspective is rendered? we do not know. despite the complexity of the subject, the one defect of which may be a slight lack of unity in the composition, the general effect of the picture is simple and powerful, and the gradation of colour harmonious and correct. it would be impossible to go any farther than this artist has done in the interpretation of this tranquil dutch landscape. the deep values of the trees, the yellowish greys of the road, and the sluggish water of the ditches, together with the blue sky flecked with little grey and white clouds produce an ensemble of absolute calm. the little figures which give life to this canvas are so fine and delicate in execution that they leave nothing to be desired. here, as very rarely happens, the multiplication of details does not spoil the effect of the whole. this is a picture absolutely without a peer, and a page by itself in hobbema's work. this is true in every sense, even in the choice of subject; for most frequently the painter borrows the motives for his pictures from a different phase of nature. ordinarily he interprets forest-clearings; the skirts of a wood with poor huts hidden by great trees; calm and fresh pools; and streams feeding humble mills. witness the one in the louvre for which he showed so great a predilection and which he reproduced under so many varied aspects. but whatever may be the subject he treats, he always remains the happy interpreter of the calm scenery of his own country of low and drowned horizons; the painter attracted by the light which with him envelops everything it approaches--trees, cottages, ground, waters, and distances bathed in delicious depths. nature, gentle and friendly to man, which he saw with a simplicity and a clearness approached by no other painter, attracted and charmed him above all else, in contrast to his contemporary and friend, j. ruysdael, who, led away by heart-breaking melancholy, would never see any side of her but the energetic and lugubrious, the sad and troubled. in his forests, on the banks of his ponds and rivers, in the neighbourhood of his huts and mills, hobbema wants to have company; so he has sown his landscapes with figures, and they are constantly animated with people and animals. are these figures always his own? it would be imprudent to affirm this, although they harmonize in most cases so marvellously with the rest of the picture, and it would therefore seem difficult for them to be by another hand. however, if we must defer to his historian, von wurzbach, they are very frequently the work of nicholaas berghem, adriaen van de velde, lingelbach, philip wouwerman, isack van ostade, pijnacker, etc., which would prove, at least, that he knew how to select his collaborators. the painter of the _avenue of middelharnais_ in the national gallery, of the _mill_ in our louvre, and of many other masterpieces was yet unknown, or rather despised, not very long ago, and it is quite recently that his name has emerged from the unjust neglect in which it was buried. this great name of hobbema had fallen into such discredit that when one of his pictures fell by chance into the hands of an amateur or merchant the signature would be effaced as quickly as possible and replaced by that of j. ruysdael, the sole painter worthy of entering into competition with him. who then is this meindert hobbema? where was he born? where did he live? what was his life? alas, we know very little concerning this impeccable master, one of the greatest glories of dutch painting. the principal historians of the netherland school are ignorant of him or pass him by in silence. houbraken, descamps, and d'argenville are dumb regarding him. those who, by chance, treat of him, commit so many errors that it is best to take no account of their words. three cities, amsterdam, koeverden, and a village, middelharnais, in the province of guelder, which he has made famous by the marvellous picture, the subject of our notice, dispute the honour of being his birthplace. but, it seems, although nothing can be affirmed with certainty, that he first saw the light in amsterdam in . he was the son of a sergeant in the netherland army and spent his early life in koeverden, where he was baptized and where his father was in garrison. at a later period he established himself in amsterdam, where he became the pupil and soon the comrade and friend of j. ruysdael, who served as witness to his marriage with eeltie vinck, celebrated in this same city, oct. , . from that time he scarcely ever left amsterdam, where he died, dec. , , five years after his wife, in the sad roosegraft, which had seen rembrandt expire thirty years before. he was sixty-seven years of age. have we any need to add that, like rembrandt, the painter of painters, he died poor? that is all we know of meindert hobbema. it is little enough, but quite sufficient. have we not the man complete in his work? what more could we wish? jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre: peinture, sculpture, architecture_ (paris, - ). the dance of the daughter of herodias (_andrea del sarto_) algernon charles swinburne with the majestic and tragic things of art we began, at the landmarks set by leonardo and michael angelo; and are come now, not quite at random, to the lyric and elegiac loveliness of andrea del sarto. to praise him would need sweeter and purer speech than this of ours. his art is to me as the tuscan april in its temperate days, fresh and tender and clear, but lulled and kindled by such air and light as fills the life of the growing year with fire. at florence only can one trace and tell how great a painter and how various he was. there only, but surely there, can the influence and pressure of the things of time on his immortal spirit be understood; how much of him was killed or changed, how much of him could not be. there are the first-fruits of his flowering manhood, when the bright and buoyant genius in him had free play and large delight in its handiwork; when the fresh interest of invention was still his, and the dramatic sense, the pleasure in the play of life, the power of motion and variety; before the old strength of sight and of flight had passed from weary wing and clouding eye, the old pride and energy of enjoyment had gone out of hand and heart. how the change fell upon him, and how it wrought, any one may see who compares his later with his earlier works, with the series, for instance, of outlines representing the story of st. john baptist in the desolate little cloister of lo scalzo. in these mural designs there is such exultation and exuberance of young power, of fresh passion and imagination, that only by the innate grace can one recognize the hand of the master whom hitherto we know by the works of his after life, when the gift of grace had survived the gift of invention. this and all other gifts it did survive; all pleasure of life and power of mind, all the conscience of the man, his will, his character, his troubles, his triumphs, his sin and honour, heart-break and shame. all these his charm of touch, his sweetness of execution, his "elysian beauty, melancholy grace," outlived, and blossomed in their dust. turn from that cloistral series to those later pictures, painted when he was "faultless" and nothing more; and seeing all the growth and all the gain, all the change and all the loss, one to whom the second was unknown would feel and foreknow his story and his sorrow. in the cloister, what life and fullness of growing and strengthening genius, what joyous sense of its growth and the fair field before it, what dramatic delight in character and action! where st. john preaches in the wilderness and the few first listeners are gathered together at his feet, old people and poor, soul-stricken, silent--women with worn still faces, and a spirit in their tired aged eyes that feeds heartily and hungrily on his words--all the haggard funereal group filled from the fountain of his faith with gradual fire and white-heat of soul; or where salome dances before herod, an incarnate figure of music, grave and graceful, light and glad, the song of a bird made flesh, with perfect poise of her sweet slight body from the maiden face to the melodious feet; no tyrannous or treacherous goddess of deadly beauty, but a simple virgin, with the cold charm of girlhood and the mobile charm of childhood; as indifferent and innocent when she stands before herodias and when she receives the severed head of john with her slender and steady hands; a pure bright animal, knowing nothing of man, and of life nothing but instinct and motion. in her mother's mature and conscious beauty there is visible the voluptuous will of a harlot and a queen; but, for herself, she has neither malice nor pity; her beauty is a maiden force of nature, capable of bloodshed without bloodguiltiness; the king hangs upon the music of her movement, the rhythm of leaping life in her fair fleet limbs, as one who listens to a tune, subdued by the rapture of sound, absorbed in purity of passion. i know not where the subject has been touched with such fine and keen imagination as here. the time came when another than salome was to dance before the eyes of the painter; and she required of him the head of no man, but his own soul; and he paid the forfeit into her hands. with the coming of that time upon him came the change upon his heart and hand; "the work of an imperious whorish woman." those words, set by the prophet as a brand upon the fallen forehead of the chosen bride, come back to mind as one studies in her husband's pictures the full calm lineaments, the large and serene beauty of lucrezia del fede; a predominant and placid beauty, placid and implacable, not to be pleaded with or fought against. voluptuous always and slothful, subtle at times no doubt and sweet beyond measure, full of heavy beauty and warm, slow grace, her features bear no sign of possible love or conscience. seen side by side with his clear sad face, hers tells more of the story than any written record, even though two poets of our age have taken it up. in the feverish and feeble melodrama of alfred de musset there is no touch of tragedy, hardly a shadow of passionate and piteous truth; in mr. browning's noblest poem--his noblest it seems to me--the whole tragedy is distilled into the right words, the whole man raised up and reclothed with flesh. one point only is but lightly touched upon--missed it could not be by an eye so sharp and skilful--the effect upon his art of the poisonous solvent of love. how his life was corroded by it and his soul burnt into dead ashes, we are shown in full; but we are not shown in full what as a painter he was before, what as a painter he might have been without it. this is what i think the works of his youth and age, seen near together as at florence, make manifest to any loving and studious eye. in those later works, the inevitable and fatal figure of the woman recurs with little diversity or change. she has grown into his art, and made it even as herself; rich, monotonous in beauty, calm, complete, without heart or spirit. but his has not been always "the low-pulsed forthright craftsman's hand" it was then. he had started on his way towards another goal than that. nothing now is left him to live for but his faultless hand and her faultless face--still and full, suggestive of no change in the steady deep-lidded eyes and heavy lovely lips without love or pudency or pity. here among his sketches we find it again and ever the same, crowned and clothed only with the glory and the joy and the majesty of the flesh. when the luxurious and subtle sense which serves the woman for a soul looks forth and speaks plainest from those eyes and lips, she is sovereign and stately still; there is in her beauty nothing common or unclean. we cannot but see her for what she is; but her majestic face makes no appeal for homage or forgiveness. _essays and studies_ (london, ). [illustration: the dance of the daughter of herodias. _andrea del sarto._] adoration of the magi (_gentile da fabriano_) f.a. gruyer at the beginning of the fifteenth century, gentile da fabriano[ ] painted an _adoration of the magi_,[ ] in which the faithful representation of contemporary scenes is again found. the virgin, completely enveloped in a large blue cloak, is seated in front of the stable, with her head piously inclined towards her son whom she is regarding with tender gaze. st. joseph is at her side and behind her are two young women who are holding and admiring the gifts offered to the saviour. the infant jesus has laid his hand on the head of the oldest of the magi, who, prostrated, kisses his feet with devotion. the two other kings are much younger than the first one. they are presenting their offerings to the son of god, and are about to lay their crowns before him. then follows the retinue of these magi; and in this throng, where may be counted at least seventy figures on foot and on horseback, of all ranks, of all ages, and of all sizes, it is easy to recognize a trace of those popular festivals instituted in the preceding century. despite some slight oriental disguises, one may easily recognize the bearing, the general features, and the costumes of the italy of the first years of the fifteenth century. gentile was also pleased to add to the "superb chargers" mentioned by lattuda, all kinds of animals, especially the apes that the milanese loved to include in their pompous processions. finally, in the background of this picture he has painted the embattled walls of a guelph city with two massive gates; the one through which the magi have entered, the other through which they will take their departure. is there anything here, either in the foreground or the background that suggests jerusalem? do you not notice rather a resemblance to the fortifications of milan, with the porta romana and the porta san-lorenzo? [illustration: adoration of the magi. _fabriano_.] after having painted the frescoes of the cathedral of orvieto, gentile lived for a long time in the north of italy, particularly in venice. it is very likely that while there, closer to the orient and more especially nearer to milan, he painted his _adoration of the magi_. we may then certainly consider this as a faithful portrayal of one of those public ceremonials, which without doubt he had witnessed, and in which he had most likely participated. only, ignoring the passions and violence of the period, he left everywhere in this painting the imprint of his own gentle and tender nature. we know that michael angelo remarked of gentile that his name was in perfect harmony with the tone of his works. none of them can more thoroughly convince us of the justice of this observation than this picture. from the virgin herself to the most humble of the servants of the magi, and indeed even to the animals, that beautiful soul which had for its servant a talent replete with delicacy and suavity may be traced.[ ] _les vierges de raphaël_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] one of the founders of the roman school. [ ] this painting is in the gallery of the accademia delle belle arti, florence. at its base on one side one may read: opvs: gentilis, de: fabriano; and on the other side: mcccc.x.x.iii: mensis: maii. [ ] in a predella below this picture may be seen _the adoration of the shepherds_ and _the flight into egypt_. gentile da fabriano also painted an _adoration of the magi_ at san-domenico, perugia. this second picture is of less value than the one at the accademia delle belle arti in florence. portrait of georg gisze (_holbein_) antony valabrÈgue when holbein returned to london towards the end of , leaving basle, where he had worked for nearly three years, he found himself immediately occupied with several portraits of the merchants of the hanseatic league. during his first sojourn in england, he had painted the chancellor, sir thomas more, his protector and friend, and he had traced the features of several members of the aristocracy. on his return, circumstances for his gaining access to the court were less favourable. henry viii. was obeying his own good pleasure and satisfying all his caprices, and the chancellor was holding aloof, and could not exert his influence. holbein did not now possess the title of painter to the king, consequently he had to consider himself happy in obtaining the favour of his compatriots. the german merchants had formed themselves into a powerful association; they found themselves united in a kind of city, which went by the name of stahlhof. there they had their guildhall, their bourse, the place where their affairs were managed and which contained their stores of merchandise, and their counting-houses. it was a separate quarter, where each one could also have his own dwelling. the company was opulent; the industry of the members of the hanseatic league was chiefly in iron and the precious metals; among them were armourers, watch-makers, and goldsmiths. in the stahlhof, called in english the steelyard, and which the founders themselves had designated the palace of steel, was to be noted a certain opulence and pursuit of comfort which is to be found in all ages. after having finished their business, the merchants formed a social circle of their own. they had a festival-hall of their own, and they could walk about in spacious gardens which extended along the banks of the thames. among these representatives of high finance a painter might find a choice _clientèle_ that would never care about the price of an order. we know that holbein painted the portraits of many of these rich merchants, for to-day we find these canvases, whose authenticity has been established, in museums and important collections. we may therefore suppose that the german merchants appreciated holbein at his true value; doubtless they disputed the honour of having their features reproduced by a master of such remarkable talent. the portrait of georg gisze, which is before our readers, is certainly the finest work of this series. when we saw this masterly work in the museum of berlin, to which it belongs, it left an indelible impression upon us which we still feel at this distance. it is incontestably a masterpiece from every point of view; in the gallery there is but one other picture of the same kind which may be compared to it, a painting which suggests a parallel in a single detail,--_the man with the pinks_, by van eyck. [illustration: portrait of georg gisze. _holbein._] holbein has represented georg gisze in his mercantile office, at a table, holding a letter which he is about to open, and surrounded by small objects, articles for which he has use in his business and in his every-day life. this man appears before us in a marvellous pose, among these material surroundings and in this professional scene. observe his calm attitude and his almost placid physiognomy: we notice, however, the firm and decided air of a wealthy and elegant merchant. and, at the same time, we are sure that the type represented here is not of sudden growth: everything about him reveals intelligence. georg gisze is young; the painter has told us his name and his age in an inscription on the wall: he is thirty-four. we do not lack information about him. we like him under that air of youthful seriousness; we see upon his face that dawning gravity in which the blossom of feeling already exists, but its plenitude and maturity are still to come. and in attentively examining our personage we are struck with his reflective and searching glance. we seem to have a glimpse in him of an undefined melancholy. this expression surprises us in this man, who ought to be happy at living and who lacks no pleasures that fortune can procure. this is a state of mind which is indicated to us, moreover, by a motto traced above his name on one of the walls of his office: _nulla sine mærore voluptas_. why this thought? is it purely emblematic, or does it contain an allusion to some private matter? we are led to believe that it is intended as a complementary explanation, that it was placed upon the picture because it was in sympathy with a train of ideas special to the model. perhaps it recalls some domestic sorrow, the lively grief left by an absent one, or by some eternal separation. a moral mystery, which seems to us very attractive, hovers around georg gisze. he has long fair hair confined beneath a black cap; his smooth-shaven face is rather thin. he wears a rich costume, a pourpoint of cerise silk with puffed sleeves, and, over this pourpoint, a cloak of black wool lined with fur. the table on which he is leaning is covered with a persian rug, and, beside the various objects scattered upon it, you notice a bunch of carnations in an artistically wrought venetian glass. these carnations, like the motto, awake in us an image, a poetical reminiscence. sentiment, germanic in its essence, mingled with dreams and vague ideals, is introduced into this merchant's office. the master has fully displayed with supreme power, and with all the resources of his art, the colours of the costume, the paleness of the face, and the freshness of the flesh standing out from the background of green panels. he has played with all the various tones of the accessories, book and registers, inkstand, watch, and scales for weighing the gold. every detail, with no link missing, contributes to form the perfect harmony of the whole. we cannot too greatly admire the singular clearness and extraordinary precision with which the artist has placed in relief every detail that can make a figure live and render a work essentially eloquent.[ ] people have tried to make out that georg gisze was a merchant of basle. he would then have been of the race connected most closely with the master's life. this opinion has been discussed by woltmann, holbein's historian. the superscriptions on the sufficiently numerous letters, which are reproduced in this painting, must be especially noticed; they are written in an ancient dialect which seems rather to be that of central germany.[ ] jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre: peinture, sculpture, architecture_ (paris, - ). footnotes: [ ] in one corner of the picture is found this inscription with its latin distich: imaginem georgii gysenii ista refert vultus, quâ cernis imago georgi sic oculos vivos, sic habet ille genas. anno ætatis suæ xxxiii. anno dom. . [ ] we read on one of these letters: _dem erszamen jergen gisze to lunden in engelant, mynem broder to handen._ paradise (_tintoret_) john ruskin the chief reason why we all know the _last judgment_ of michael angelo, and not the _paradise_ of tintoret, is the same love of sensation which makes us read the _inferno_ of dante, and not his _paradise_; and the choice, believe me, is our fault, not his; some farther evil influence is due to the fact that michael angelo had invested all his figures with picturesque and palpable elements of effect, while tintoret has only made them lovely in themselves and has been content that they should deserve, not demand, your attention. you are accustomed to think the figures of michael angelo sublime--because they are dark, and colossal, and involved, and mysterious--because, in a word, they look sometimes like shadows, and sometimes like mountains, and sometimes like spectres, but never like human beings. believe me, yet once more, in what i told you long since--man can invent nothing nobler than humanity. he cannot raise his form into anything better than god made it, by giving it either the flight of birds or strength of beasts, by enveloping it in mist, or heaping it into multitude. your pilgrim must look like a pilgrim in a straw hat, or you will not make him into one with cockle and nimbus; an angel must look like an angel on the ground, as well as in the air; and the much-denounced pre-raphaelite faith that a saint cannot look saintly unless he has thin legs, is not more absurd than michael angelo's, that a sibyl cannot look sibylline unless she has thick ones. [illustration: paradise. _tintoret._] all that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, when you look into it, is mere stage decoration, and that of a vulgar kind. light is, in reality, more awful than darkness--modesty more majestic than strength; and there is truer sublimity in the sweet joy of a child, or the sweet virtue of a maiden, than in the strength of antæus, or thunder-clouds of Ætna. now, though in nearly all his greater pictures, tintoret is entirely carried away by his sympathy with michael angelo, and conquers him in his own field;--outflies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him in fancy, and outflames him in rage,--he can be just as gentle as he is strong: and that _paradise_, though it is the largest picture in the world, without any question, is also the thoughtfullest, and most precious. the thoughtfullest!--it would be saying but little, as far as michael angelo is concerned. for consider it of yourselves. you have heard, from your youth up (and all educated persons have heard for three centuries), of this _last judgment_ of his, as the most sublime picture in existence. the subject of it is one which should certainly be interesting to you in one of two ways. if you never expect to be judged for any of your own doings, and the tradition of the coming of christ is to you as an idle tale--still, think what a wonderful tale it would be, were it well told. you are at liberty, disbelieving it, to range the fields--elysian and tartarean, of all imagination. you may play with it, since it is false; and what a play would it not be, well written? do you think the tragedy, or the miracle play, or the infinitely divina commedia of the judgment of the astonished living who were dead;--the undeceiving of the sight of every human soul, understanding in an instant all the shallow and depth of past life and future,--face to face with both,--and with god:--this apocalypse to all intellect, and completion to all passion, this minute and individual drama of the perfected history of separate spirits, and of their finally accomplished affections!--think you, i say, all this was well told by mere heaps of dark bodies curled and convulsed in space, and fall as of a crowd from a scaffolding, in writhed concretions of muscular pain? but take it the other way. suppose you believe, be it never so dimly or feebly, in some kind of judgment that is to be;--that you admit even the faint contingency of retribution, and can imagine, with vivacity enough to fear, that in this life, at all events, if not in another--there may be for you a visitation of god, and a questioning--what hast thou done? the picture, if it is a good one, should have a deeper interest, surely on _this_ postulate? thrilling enough, as a mere imagination of what is never to be--now, as a conjecture of what _is_ to be, held the best that in eighteen centuries of christianity has for men's eyes been made;--think of it so! and then, tell me, whether you yourselves, or any one you have known, did ever at any time receive from this picture any, the smallest vital thought, warning, quickening, or help? it may have appalled, or impressed you for a time, as a thunder-cloud might: but has it ever taught you anything--chastised in you anything--confirmed a purpose--fortified a resistance--purified a passion? i know that for you, it has done none of these things; and i know also that, for others, it has done very different things. in every vain and proud designer who has since lived, that dark carnality of michael angelo's has fostered insolent science, and fleshly imagination. daubers and blockheads think themselves painters, and are received by the public as such, if they know how to foreshorten bones and decipher entrails; and men with capacity of art either shrink away (the best of them always do) into petty felicities and innocencies of genre painting--landscapes, cattle, family breakfasts, village schoolings, and the like; or else, if they have the full sensuous art-faculty that would have made true painters of them, being taught from their youth up, to look for and learn the body instead of the spirit, have learned it and taught it to such purpose, that at this hour, when i speak to you, the rooms of the royal academy of england, receiving also what of best can be sent there by the masters of france, contain _not one_ picture honourable to the arts of their age; and contain many which are shameful in their record of its manners. of that, hereafter. i will close to-day by giving you some brief account of the scheme of tintoret's _paradise_, in justification that it is the thoughtfullest as well as mightiest picture in the world. in the highest centre is christ, leaning on the globe of the earth, which is of dark crystal. christ is crowned with a glory as of the sun, and all the picture is lighted by that glory, descending through circle beneath circle of cloud, and of flying or throned spirits. the madonna, beneath christ, and at some interval from him, kneels to him. she is crowned with the seven stars, and kneels on a cloud of angels, whose wings change into ruby fire where they are near her. the three great archangels, meeting from three sides, fly towards christ. michael delivers up his scales and sword. he is followed by the thrones and principalities of the earth; so inscribed--throni--principatus. the spirits of the thrones bear scales in their hands; and of the princedoms, shining globes: beneath the wings of the last of these are the four great teachers and lawgivers, st. ambrose, st. jerome, st. gregory, st. augustine, and behind st. augustine stands his mother, watching him, her chief joy in paradise. under the thrones are set the apostles, st. paul separated a little from the rest, and put lowest, yet principal; under st. paul, is st. christopher, bearing a massive globe, with a cross upon it: but to mark him as the christ-bearer, since here in paradise he cannot have the child on his shoulders, tintoret has thrown on the globe a flashing stellar reflection of the sun round the head of christ. all this side of the picture is kept in glowing colour--the four doctors of the church have golden mitres and mantles; except the cardinal, st. jerome, who is in burning scarlet, his naked breast glowing, warm with noble life,--the darker red of his robe relieved against a white glory. opposite to michael, gabriel flies towards the madonna, having in his hand the annunciation lily, large and triple-blossomed. above him, and above michael equally, extends a cloud of white angels, inscribed "serafini;" but the group following gabriel, and corresponding to the throni following michael, is inscribed "cherubini." under these are the great prophets, and singers, and foretellers of the happiness or of the sorrow of time. david, and solomon, and isaiah, and amos of the herdsmen. david has a colossal golden psaltery laid horizontally across his knees;--two angels behind him dictate to him as he sings, looking up towards christ; but one strong angel sweeps down to solomon from among the cherubs, and opens a book, resting it on the head of solomon, who looks down earnestly, unconscious of it;--to the left of david, separate from the group of prophets, as paul from the apostles, is moses, dark-robed;--in the full light, withdrawn far behind him, abraham, embracing isaac with his left arm, and near him, pale st. agnes. in front, nearer, dark and colossal, stands the glorious figure of santa giustina of padua; then a little subordinate to her, st. catharine, and, far on the left, and high, saint barbara leaning on her tower. in front, nearer, flies raphael; and under him is the four-square group of the evangelists. beneath them, on the left, noah; on the right, adam and eve, both floating unsupported by cloud or angel; noah buoyed by the ark, which he holds above him, and it is _this_ into which solomon gazes down, so earnestly. eve's face is, perhaps, the most beautiful ever painted by tintoret--full in light, but dark-eyed. adam floats beside her, his figure fading into a winged gloom, edged in the outline of fig-leaves. far down, under these, central in the lowest part of the picture, rises the angel of the sea, praying for venice; for tintoret conceives his paradise as existing now, not as in the future. i at first mistook this soft angel of the sea for magdalene, for he is sustained by other three angels on either side, as the magdalen is, in designs of earlier time, because of the verse, "there is joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner that repenteth." but the magdalen is on the right, behind st. monica; and on the same side, but lowest of all, rachel, among the angels of her children gathered now again to her for ever. i have no hesitation in asserting this picture to be by far the most precious work of art of any kind whatsoever, now existing in the world; and it is, i believe, on the eve of final destruction; for it is said that the angle of the great council-chamber is soon to be rebuilt; and that process will involve the destruction of the picture by removal, and, far more, by repainting. i had thought of making some effort to save it by an appeal in london to persons generally interested in the arts; but the recent desolation of paris has familiarized us with destruction, and i have no doubt the answer to me would be, that venice must take care of her own. but remember, at least, that i have borne witness to you to-day of the treasures that we forget, while we amuse ourselves with the poor toys, and the petty, or vile, arts, of our own time. the years of that time have perhaps come, when we are to be taught to look no more to the dreams of painters, either for knowledge of judgment, or of paradise. the anger of heaven will not longer, i think, be mocked for our amusement; and perhaps its love may not always be despised by our pride. believe me, all the arts, and all the treasures of men, are fulfilled and preserved to them only, so far as they have chosen first, with their hearts, not the curse of god, but his blessing. our earth is now encumbered with ruin, our heaven is clouded by death. may we not wisely judge ourselves in some things now, instead of amusing ourselves with the painting of judgments to come? _the relation between michael angelo and tintoret_ (london, ). aurora (_guido reni_) charlotte a. eaton on the roof of the summer-house of the palazzo rospigliosi, is painted the celebrated fresco of guido's _aurora_. its colouring is clear, harmonious, airy, brilliant--unfaded by time; and the enthusiastic admirer of guido's genius may be permitted to hope that this, his noblest work, will be immortal as his fame. [illustration: aurora. _guido reni_.] morghen's fine engraving may give you some idea of the design and composition of this beautiful painting; but it cannot convey the soft harmony of the tints, the living touches, the brilliant forms, the realized dream of the imagination, that bursts, with all its magic, upon your enraptured sight in the matchless original. it is embodied poetry. the hours, that hand-in-hand encircle the car of phoebus, advance with rapid pace. the paler, milder forms of those gentler sisters who rule over declining day, and the glowing glance of those who bask in the meridian blaze, resplendent in the hues of heaven,--are of no mortal grace and beauty; but they are eclipsed by aurora herself, who sails on the golden clouds before them, shedding "showers of shadowing roses" on the rejoicing earth; her celestial presence diffusing gladness, and light, and beauty around. above the heads of the heavenly coursers, hovers the morning star, in the form of a youthful cherub, bearing his flaming torch. nothing is more admirable in this beautiful composition, than the motion given to the whole. the smooth and rapid step of the circling hours as they tread on the fleecy clouds; the fiery steeds; the whirling wheels of the car; the torch of lucifer, blown back by the velocity of his advance; and the form of aurora, borne through the ambient air, till you almost fear she should float from your sight; all realize the illusion. you seem admitted into the world of fancy, and revel in its brightest creations. in the midst of such youth and loveliness, the dusky figure of phoebus appears to great disadvantage. it is not happily conceived. yet his air is noble and godlike, and his free commanding action, and conscious ease, as he carelessly guides, with one hand, the fiery steeds that are harnessed to his flaming car, may, perhaps, compensate in some degree for his want of beauty; for he certainly is not handsome; and i looked in vain for the youthful majesty of the god of day, and thought on apollo belvedere. had guido thought of it too, he never could have made this head, which is, i think, the great and only defect of this exquisite painting; and what makes it of more importance, is, that apollo, not aurora, is the principal figure--the first that catches the eye, and which, in spite of our dissatisfaction, we are to the last obliged to contemplate. the defects of his apollo are a new proof of what i have very frequently observed, that guido succeeded far better in feminine than in masculine beauty. his female forms, in their loveliness, their delicacy, their grace and sweetness are faultless; and the beauty and innocence of his infants have seldom been equalled; but he rarely gave to manly beauty and vigour a character that was noble. from the _aurora_ of guido, we must turn to the rival _aurora_ of guercino, in the villa ludovisi. in spite of guido's bad head of apollo, and in spite of guercino's magic chiaroscuro, i confess myself disposed to give the preference to guido. in the first place, there is not the same unity of composition in guercino's. it is very fine in all its parts; but still it _is_ in parts. it is not so fine a _whole_, nor is it so perfect a composition, nor has it the same charm as guido's. neither is there the same ideal beauty in the aurora. guercino's is a mortal--guido's a truly ethereal being. guercino's aurora is in her car, drawn by two heavenly steeds, and the shades of night seem to dissipate at her approach. old tithonus, whom she has left behind her seems half awake; and the morning star, under the figure of a winged genius bearing his kindled torch, follows her course. in a separate compartment, night, in the form of a woman, is sitting musing, or slumbering, over a book. she has much of the character of a sibyl. her dark cave is broken open, and the blue sky and the coming light break beautifully in upon her and her companions, the sullen owl and flapping bat, which shrink from its unwelcome ray. the hours are represented under the figure of children, fluttering about before the goddess, and extinguishing the stars of night--a beautiful idea; but one, perhaps, better adapted to poetry than painting. the hours of guercino are, however, infinitely less poetic and less beautiful than the bright female forms which encircle the car of day in guido's _aurora_. yet it is a masterpiece of painting; and but for the _aurora_ of guido, we could have conceived nothing beyond the _aurora_ of guercino. _rome in the nineteenth century_ ( th edition, london, ). aurora (_guido reni_) john constable although no distinct landscape is known by the hand of guido, yet in a history of this particular branch it may not be improper to notice its immense importance as an accessory in his picture of _aurora_. it is the finest instance i know of the beauty of natural landscape brought to aid a mythological story, and to be sensible of its value we have only to imagine a plain background in its stead. but though guido has placed us in the heavens, we are looking towards the earth, where seas and mountain-tops are receiving the first beams of the morning sun. the chariot of apollo is borne on the clouds, attended by the hours and preceded by aurora, who scatters flowers, and the landscape, instead of diminishing the illusion, is the chief means of producing it, and is indeed most essential to the story. leslie, _life and letters of john constable, r.a._ (london, new ed., ). the assumption of the virgin (_titian_) thÉophile gautier the pearl of the museum at madrid is a raphael; that of venice is a titian, a marvellous canvas, forgotten and afterwards recovered, which has its legend also. for many long years venice possessed this masterpiece without knowing it. relegated to an old and seldom frequented church it had disappeared under a slow coating of dust and behind a network of spider-webs. the subject could scarcely be made out. one day, count cicognora, a great connoisseur, noticing that these rusty figures had a certain air, and scenting the master under this livery of neglect and misery, wetted his finger and rubbed the canvas, an action which is not one of exquisite propriety, but which an expert on pictures cannot help doing when he is face to face with a dirty canvas, be he twenty times a count and a thousand times a dandy. the noble picture, preserved intact under this layer of dust, like pompeii under its mantle of ashes, appeared so young and fresh that the count never doubted but that he had discovered the canvas of a great master, an unknown _chef-d'oeuvre_. he had the strength of mind to control his excitement, and proposed to the _curé_ to exchange this great dilapidated painting for a beautiful picture, quite new, perfectly clean, very brilliant, and well framed, which would do honour to the church and give pleasure to the faithful. the _curé_ joyfully accepted it, smiling to himself at the eccentricity of the count, who gave new for old and demanded nothing in return. when relieved of its dirt and stains, titian's _assunta_ appeared radiant as the sun when it bursts through the clouds. parisian readers may form an idea of the importance of this discovery by going to see the beautiful copy, recently made by serrur and placed in the beaux arts. the _assunta_ is one of titian's greatest works, the one in which he attains his highest flight: the composition is balanced and distributed with infinite art. the upper portion, which is arched, represents paradise, glory, as the spanish say in their ascetic language: garlands of angels floating and submerged in a wave of light of uncalculable depth, stars scintillating in the flame, and brighter glints of the everlasting light form the aureole of the father, who arrives from the depths of the infinite with the action of a hovering eagle, accompanied by an archangel and a seraph whose hands support the crown and the nimbus. this jehovah, like a divine bird appearing head-foremost and with body horizontally foreshortened beneath a wave of drapery flying open like wings, astonishes us by its sublime boldness; if it is possible for the brush of a human being to give a countenance to divinity, certainly titian has succeeded. unlimited power and imperishable youth radiate from that white-bearded face that need only nod for the snows of eternity to fall: not since the olympian jove of phidias has the lord of heaven and earth been represented more worthily. [illustration: the assumption of the virgin. _titian._] the centre of the picture is occupied by the virgin mary, who is lifted up, or rather who is surrounded by a wreath of angels and souls of the blessed: for she has no need of any aid to mount to heaven; she rises by the springing upward of her robust faith, by the purity of her soul, which is lighter than the most luminous ether. truly there is in this figure an unheard-of force of ascension, and in order to obtain this effect titian has not had recourse to slender forms, diaphanous draperies, and transparent colours. his madonna is a very true, very living, and very real woman, with a beauty as solid as that of the venus de milo, or the sleeping woman in the tribune of florence. large, full drapery flows about her in numerous folds; her flanks are wide enough to have contained a god, and, if she was not on a cloud, the marquis du guast might have put his hand on her beautiful bosom, as in the picture in our museum. yet nothing is of more celestial beauty than this great and strong figure in its rose-coloured tunic and azure mantle; notwithstanding the powerful voluptuousness of the body, the radiant glance is of the purest virginity. at the base of the picture, the apostles are grouped in happily-contrasted attitudes of rapture and surprise. two or three little angels, who link them to the intermediary zone of the composition, seem to be explaining to them the miracle that is taking place. the heads of the apostles, who are of various ages and characters, are painted with a surprising force of vitality and reality. the draperies are of that fullness and abundant flow that characterize titian as the richest and at the same time the simplest of all painters. in studying this virgin and mentally comparing her with other virgins of different masters, we reflected what a marvellous and ever new thing is art. what catholic painting has embroidered with variations upon this theme of the madonna, without ever exhausting it, astonishes and confuses the imagination; but, in reflecting, we comprehend that under the conventional type each painter conveyed secretly, at the same time, his dream of love and the personification of his talent. the madonna of albrecht dürer in her sad and somewhat constrained gracefulness, with her tired features, interesting rather than beautiful, her air of a matron rather than a virgin, her german and _bourgeoise_ frankness, her tight garments and her symmetrically broken folds, almost always accompanied by a rabbit, an owl, or an ape, through some vague memory of germanic pantheism, may she not be the woman whom he would have loved and preferred to all others, and does she not also exceedingly well represent the very genius of the artist? as she is his madonna, she might easily be his muse. the same resemblance exists in raphael. the type of his madonna, in whom, mingled with old memories, the features of the fornarina are always found, sometimes suggested, sometimes copied, most frequently idealized, is she not the most perfect symbol of his talent,--elegant, graceful, and penetrated throughout with a chaste voluptuousness? the christian nourished on plato and greek art, the friend of leo x., the dilettante pope, the artist who died of love while painting the _transfiguration_, did he not live entirely in these modest venuses holding on their knees a child who is love? if we wished to symbolize the genius of every painter in an allegorical picture, would it be any other than the angel of urbino? the virgin of the _assunta_, big, strong, highly-coloured, with her robust and beautiful grace, her fine bearing, and her simple and natural beauty,--is she not titian's painting with all its qualities? we might carry our researches still further; but we have said enough as a suggestion. thanks to the dusty shroud which covered it for so long, the _assunta_ glows with a quite youthful brilliancy; the centuries have not elapsed for it, and we enjoy the supreme pleasure of seeing a picture of titian's just it came fresh from the palette. _voyage en italie_ (new ed., paris, ). the night watch (_rembrandt_) eugÈne fromentin we know how the _night watch_ is hung. it faces the _banquet of arquebusiers_ by van der helst, and, no matter what has been said, the two pictures do not hurt each other. they oppose each other like day and night, like the transfiguration of things and their literal imitation, slightly vulgar and clever. admit that they are as perfect as they are celebrated and you will have before your eyes a unique antithesis, what la bruyère calls "opposition truths that illuminate one another." i shall not astonish anyone in saying that the _night watch_ possesses no charm, and the fact is without example among the fine works of pictorial art. it is amazing, it is disconcerting, it is imposing, but it absolutely lacks that insinuating quality that convinces us, and it almost always fails to please us at first. in the first place, it shocks our logical sense and that habitual visual rectitude that loves clear forms, lucid ideas, and clearly formulated boldness; something warns us that our imagination as well as our reason will be only half satisfied and that even the mind that is most easily won over will not submit till the last and will not surrender without dispute. this is due to various causes that do not all arise from the picture,--the light is detestable; the frame of dark wood in which the painting is drowned spoils its middle values, and its bronze scale of colour, and its force, and makes it look much more smoked than it is; and, lastly and above all, the exigencies of the place prevent the picture from being hung at the proper height, and, against all the laws of the most elementary perspective, oblige you to look at it from the same level. [illustration: the night watch. _rembrandt._] you are aware that the _night watch_, rightly or wrongly, passes for an almost incomprehensible work, and that constitutes its chief prestige. perhaps it would have made far less noise in the world, if for two centuries people had not kept up the habit of trying to find out its meaning instead of examining its merits, and persisted in the mania of regarding it as a picture enigmatical above all. taking it literally, what we know of the subject seems to me sufficient. in the first place, we know the names and quality of the personages, thanks to the care with which the painter has inscribed them on a plate at the bottom of the picture; which proves that if the painter's fancy has transfigured many things, the chief idea at least deals with the customs of local life. it is true that we cannot tell for what purpose these men are going out armed, whether they are going to practise shooting, or on parade, or what; but, as there is no matter here for the deeper mysteries, i am persuaded that if rembrandt has failed to be more explicit it is because either he did not wish or he did not know how to be, and there is a whole series of hypotheses that might be very simply explained by some such matter as inability or intentional reticence. as for the time of day (the most vexed question of all and the only one, moreover, that could have been settled when first it arose), for fixing that we have no need to discover that the captain's outstretched arm casts a shadow upon the skirt of his coat. it suffices to remember that rembrandt never treated light otherwise; that nocturnal obscurity is his habit; that shadow is the ordinary form of his poetic feeling and his usual means of dramatic expression; and that in his portraits, in his interiors, in his legends, in his anecdotes, in his landscapes, and in his etchings, as in his paintings, it is generally with night that he makes day. it is agreed that the composition does not constitute the principal merit of the picture. the subject had not been selected by the painter, and the manner in which he intended to treat it did not allow of its first sketch being very spontaneous, nor very lucid. therefore the scene is indecisive, the action almost null, and, consequently, the interest is greatly divided. from the very beginning is betrayed an inherent vice in the first idea, and a kind of irresolution in the manner of conceiving, distributing, and placing it. some men marching, others standing still, one priming his musket, another loading his, another firing, a drummer who poses for the head while beating his instrument, a somewhat theatrical standard-bearer, and, finally, a crowd of figures fixed in the requisite immobility of portraits,--so far as action is concerned, these, if i am not mistaken, are the sole picturesque features of the painting. is this indeed sufficient to give it the facial, anecdotal, and local feeling that we expect from rembrandt when he paints the places, things, and men of his time? if van der helst instead of seating his arquebusiers had made them move in any manner whatever, do not doubt that he would have given us the truest if not the finest indications of their ways. and as for frans hals, you may imagine with what clearness and order, and how naturally he would have disposed the scene; how piquant, lively, ingenious, abundant, and magnificent he would have been. the idea conceived by rembrandt then is one of the most ordinary, and i would venture to say that the majority of his contemporaries considered it poor in resources; some because its abstract line is uncertain, scanty, symmetrical, meagre, and singularly incoherent; others, the colourists, because this composition, so full of gaps and ill-occupied spaces, did not lend itself to that broad and generous employment of colours which is usual with able palettes.... thus there is no truth and very little pictorial invention in the general disposition. is there more in the individual figures? what immediately strikes us is that they are unreasonably disproportioned and that many of them have shortcomings and so to speak an embarrassment of characterization that nothing can justify. the captain is too big and the lieutenant too small, not only by the side of captain kock, whose stature crushes him, but also beside accessory figures whose height or breadth gives this somewhat plain young man the air of a youth who has grown a moustache too soon. regarding the two as portraits, they are scarcely successful ones of doubtful likeness and thankless physiognomy, which is surprising in a portrait-painter who had made his mark in , and which affords some excuse for captain kock's having a little later applied to the infallible van der helst. is the guard loading his musket rendered any better? moreover, what do you think of his right-hand neighbour, and of the drummer? one might say that all these portraits lack hands, so vaguely are they sketched and so insignificant is their action. it follows that what they hold is also ill rendered: muskets, halberds, drum-sticks, canes, lances, and flag-pole; and that the gesture of an arm is impotent when the hand that ought to act does not do so clearly, quickly, or with energy, precision, or intelligence. i will not speak of the feet, which, in most cases, are lost in shadow. such in reality are the necessities of the system of envelopment adopted by rembrandt, and such is the imperious foregone conclusion of his method, that one general dark cloud invades the base of the picture and that the forms float in it to the great detriment of their points of support. must we add that the clothes are very similar to the likenesses, sometimes uncouth and unnatural, sometimes rigid and rebellious to the lines of the body? one would say that they are not worn properly. the helmets are stupidly put on, the hats are outlandish and ungracefully worn. the scarfs are in their place and yet they are awkwardly tied. here is none of that unique ease of carriage, that natural elegance, that _négligé_ dress, caught and rendered to the life in which frans hals knows how to attire every age, every stature, every stage of corpulence, and, certainly also, every rank. we are not reassured on this point more than on many others. we ask ourselves whether there is not here a laborious fantasy, like an attempt to be strange, which is not at all pleasing or striking. some of the heads are very handsome, i have mentioned those that are not. the best, the only ones in which the hand of the master and the feeling of a master are to be recognized, are those which, from the depths of the canvas, shoot their vague eyes and the fine spark of their mobile glances at you; do not severely examine their construction, nor their plan, nor their bony structure; accustom yourself to the greyish pallor of their complexion, question them from afar as they also look at you from a distance, and if you want to know how they live, look at them as rembrandt wants us to look at his human effigies, attentively and long, at their lips and eyes. there remains an episodical figure which has hitherto baffled all conjectures, because it seems by its traits, its carriage, its odd splendour, and its inappropriateness, to personify the magic, the romantic feeling, or, if you prefer, the misrepresentation of the picture; i mean that little witch-like personage, child-like and crone-like at the same time, with her hair streaming and adorned with pearls, gliding among the guards for no apparent reason, and who, a not less inexplicable detail, has a white cock, that at need might be taken for a purse, hanging from her girdle. whatever right she has to join the troop, this little figure seems to have nothing human about her. she is colourless and almost shapeless. her figure is that of a doll and her gait is automatic. she has the air of a beggar, something like diamonds covers her whole body, and an accoutrement resembling rays. you would say that she came from some jewry, or old clothes market, or bohemia, and that, awaking from a dream, she had attired herself in the most singular of all worlds. she has the light, the uncertainty, and the wavering of a pale fire. the more we examine her, the less we can grasp the subtle lineaments that serve as envelope for her uncorporeal existence. we end by seeing in her nothing but a kind of extraordinarily strange phosphorescence which is not the ordinary light of things, nor yet the ordinary brilliance of a well-regulated palette, and this adds more sorcery to the peculiarities of her countenance. notice that in the place she occupies, one of the dark corners of the canvas, rather low in the middle distance, between a man in deep red and the captain dressed in black, this eccentric light has much greater force than the most sudden contrast with a neighbouring tint, and without extreme care this explosion of accidental light would have sufficed to disorganize the whole picture. what is the meaning of this little imaginary or real being, who, however, is only a supernumerary while yet holding, so to speak, the chief rôle? i shall not attempt to tell you. abler people than i have allowed themselves to inquire what it was and what it was doing there, without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. but if to all these somewhat vain questions rembrandt replied: "this child is a caprice no less strange than and quite as plausible as many others in my engraving or painting. i have placed it as a narrow ray amid great masses of shadow because its exiguity rendered it more vibrating and it suited me to awaken with a ray one of the dark corners of my picture. it also wears the usual costume of my female figures, great or small, young or old, and in it you will find the type frequently occurring in my works. i love what glitters, and that is why i have clothed her in brilliant materials. as for those phosphorescent gleams that astonish you here, whilst elsewhere they pass unnoticed, it is only the light in its colourless splendour and supernatural quality that i habitually give to my figures when i illuminate them at all strongly."--do you not think that such a reply ought to satisfy the most difficult, and that finally, the rights of the stage-setter being reserved, he need only render account of one point: the manner in which he has treated the picture? we know what to think of the effect produced by the _night watch_ when it appeared in . this memorable attempt was neither understood nor relished. it added noise to rembrandt's glory, increased it in the eyes of his faithful admirers, and compromised it in the eyes of those who had only followed him with some effort and attended him to this decisive point. it made him a painter more peculiar and a master less sure. it heated and divided men of taste according to the heat of their blood, or the stiffness of their reason. in short, it was regarded as an absolutely new but dangerous adventure which brought him applause and some blame, and which at heart did not convince anybody. if you know the judgment expressed on this subject by rembrandt's contemporaries, his friends and his pupils, you know that opinion has not sensibly varied for two centuries, and that we repeat almost the same thing that this great daring man might have heard during his lifetime.... save one or two frank colours, two reds and a deep violet, except one or two flashes of blue, you cannot perceive anything in this colourless and violent canvas to recall the palette and ordinary method of any of the known colourists. the heads have the appearance rather than the colouring proper to life. they are red, purple, or pale, without for all that having the true paleness velasquez gives to his faces, or those sanguine, yellowish, greyish, or purplish shades that frans hals renders with such skill when he desires to specify the temperaments of his personages. in the clothes and hair and various parts of the accoutrements, the colour is no more exact nor expressive than is, as i have said, the form itself. when a red appears, it is not of a delicate nature and it indistinctly expresses silk, cloth, or satin. the guard loading his musket is clothed in red from head to foot, from his hat to his boots. do you perceive that rembrandt has occupied himself for a moment with the varied physiognomy of this red, its nature or substance, as a true colourist would not have failed to do?... i defy any one to tell me how the lieutenant is dressed and in what colour. is it white tinged with yellow? is it yellow faded to white? the truth is that this personage having to express the central light of the picture, rembrandt has clothed him with light, very ably with regard to brilliance and very negligently with regard to colour. now, and it is here that rembrandt begins to show himself, for a colourist there is no light in the abstract. light of itself is nothing: it is the result of colours diversely illumined and diversely radiating in accordance with the nature of the ray that they transmit or absorb. one very deep tint may be extraordinarily luminous; another very light one on the contrary may not be at all luminous. there is not a student in the schools who does not know that. with the colourists, then, the light depends exclusively upon the choice of the colours employed to render it and is so intimately connected with the tone that we may truthfully say that with them light and colour are one. in the _night watch_ there is nothing of the kind. tone disappears in light as it does in shade. the shade is blackish, the light whitish. everything is brilliant or dull, radiant or obscure, by an alternative effacement of the colouring principle. here we have different values rather than contrasted tones. and this is so true that a fine engraving, a good drawing, a mouilleron lithograph, or a photograph will give an exact idea of the picture in its important effects, and a copy simply in gradations from light to dark would destroy none of its arabesque. what is his execution in the picture before us? does he treat a stuff well? no. does he express it ingeniously, or with liveliness, with its seams, folds, breaks, and tissue. assuredly not. when he places a feather at the brim of a hat, does he give it the lightness and floating grace that we see in van dyck, or hals, or velasquez? does he indicate by a little gloss on a dead ground, in their form, or feeling of the body, the human physiognomy of a well adjusted coat, rubbed by a movement or worn with use? can he, with a few masterly touches and taking no more trouble than things are worth, indicate lace-work, or suggest jewellery, or rich embroidery? in the _night watch_ we have swords, muskets, partisans, polished casques, damascened cuirasses, high boots, tied shoes, a halberd with its fluttering blue silk, a drum, and lances. imagine with what ease, with what carelessness, and with what a nimble way of making us believe in things without insisting upon them, rubens, veronese, van dyck, titian himself, and lastly frans hals, that matchless workman, would have summarily indicated and superbly carried off all these accessories. do you maintain in good faith that rembrandt in the _night watch_ excels in treating them thus? i pray you, look at the halberd that the little lieutenant ruijtenberg holds at the end of his stiff arm; look at the foreshortened steel, look especially at the floating silk, and tell me if an artist of that value has ever allowed himself more pitifully to express an object that ought to spring forth beneath his brush without his being aware of it. look at the slashed sleeves that have been so highly praised, the ruffles, the gloves; examine the hands! consider well how in their affected or unaffected negligence their form is accentuated and their foreshortening is expressed. the touch is thick, embarrassed, awkward, and blundering. we might truly say that it goes astray, and that applied crosswise when it should be applied lengthwise, made flat when any other than he would have rounded it, it confuses instead of determining the form.... at length i come to the incontestable interest of the picture, to rembrandt's great effort in a new field: i am going to speak of the application on a large scale of that way of looking at things which is proper to him and which is called chiaroscuro. no mistake is possible here. what people attribute to rembrandt is really his. without any doubt chiaroscuro is the native and necessary form of his impressions and ideas. others have made use of it; but nobody has employed it so constantly and ingeniously as he. it is the supremely mysterious form, the most enveloped, the most elliptic, and the richest in hidden meanings and surprises that exists in the pictorial language of the painter. in this sense it is more than any other the form of intimate feelings or ideas. it is light, vaporous, veiled, discreet; it lends its charm to hidden things, invites curiosity, adds an attraction to moral beauties, and gives a grace to the speculations of conscience. in short, it partakes of sentiment, emotion, uncertainty, indefiniteness, and infinity; of dreams and of the ideal. and this is why it is, as it ought to be, the poetic and natural atmosphere in which rembrandt's genius never ceased to dwell. in very ordinary language and in its action common to all schools, chiaroscuro is the art of rendering the atmosphere visible, and painting an object enveloped with air. its aim is to render all the picturesque accidents of shadow, of half-tints, of light, of relief, and of distance; and to give in consequence more variety, more unity of effect, more caprice and more relative truth either to forms or to colours. the contrary is a more ingenuous and more abstract acceptation, by virtue of which objects are shown as they are, viewed close at hand, the atmosphere being suppressed, and consequently without any other than linear perspective, which results from the diminishing of objects and from their relation to the horizon. when we speak of aërial perspective, we already presuppose a little chiaroscuro. any other than rembrandt, in the dutch school, might sometimes make us forget that he was obeying the fixed laws of chiaroscuro; with him this forgetfulness is impossible: he has so to speak framed, co-ordinated and promulgated its code, and if we might believe him a _doctrinaire_ at this moment of his career, when instinct swayed him much more than reflection, the _night watch_ would have a redoubled interest, for it would assume the character and the authority of a manifesto. to envelop and immerse everything in a bath of shadow; to plunge light itself into it only to withdraw it afterwards to make it appear more distant and radiant; to make dark waves revolve around illuminated centres, grading them, sounding them, thickening them; to make the obscurity nevertheless transparent, the half gloom easy to pierce, and finally to give a kind of permeability to the strongest colours that prevents their becoming blackness,--this is the prime condition, and these also are the difficulties of this very special art. it goes without saying, that if anyone ever excelled in this, it was rembrandt. he did not invent, he perfected everything; and the method that he used oftener and better than anyone else bears his name. when explained according to this tendency of the painter to express a subject only by the brilliance and obscurity of objects, the _night watch_ has, so to speak, no more secrets for us. everything that might have made us hesitate is made clear. its qualities have their _raison d'être_; and we even come to comprehend its errors. the embarrassment of the practitioner as he executes, of the designer as he constructs, of the painter as he colours, of the costumer as he attires, the inconsistency of the tone, the amphibology of the effect, the uncertainty of the time of day, the strangeness of the figures, their flashing apparition in deep shadow,--all this results here by chance from an effect conceived contrary to probability, and pursued in spite of all logic, not at all necessary, and with the following purpose: to illuminate a real scene with unreal light, that is to say, to clothe a fact with the ideal character of a vision. do not seek for anything beyond this audacious project that mocked the painter's aims, clashed with received ideas, set up a system in opposition to customs, and boldness of spirit in opposition to manual dexterity; and the temerity of which certainly did not cease to spur him on until the day when i believe insurmountable difficulties revealed themselves, for, if rembrandt resolved some of them, there are many that he could not resolve. _maîtres d'autrefois_ (paris, ). the rape of helen (_benozzo gozzoli_) cosmo monkhouse though the patronage of art had shifted partly from the church to the great magnates, especially the great commercial princes like the medici at florence, her influence was still paramount, and though secular subjects were not uncommon, the vast majority of paintings executed for patrons, whether clerical or lay, were still religious in subject. it is not therefore, surprising that among the artists of the fifteenth century, many of whom were monks and all church painters, we find a distinct cleavage dividing artists whose aim was to break away from all traditions--realists--classicists--in a word, reformers, from artists who clung tenaciously to the old ideals, and whose main aim was still the perfection of devotional expression. [illustration: the rape of helen. _gozzoli_.] it was to the former class that benozzo gozzoli belonged, pupil though he was of fra angelico. although his special quality may be partly discerned in the altar-piece that hangs above his master's _predella_, in the strongly marked character of the saints, and perhaps more in the carefully studied goldfinches, there was little scope in such a subject for the exercise of his imagination or the display of his individuality. it is different with the little panel opposite, _the rape of helen_ (no. ), in which he has depicted with great liveliness and gusto a scene from a classical legend. possibly, to fra angelico, who regarded painting only as a means of edification, its employment on such a subject may have seemed little less than sacrilege, not unlike the use of a chancel for the stabling of horses. such views can scarcely be said to be extinct now, and this is the more remarkable as no one has the same feeling with regard to the other arts, such as sculpture or poetry. to a young man like benozzo, and many others of his day, not monks, nor specially devout in disposition, it must, nevertheless, have been a change which was welcome. to paint the _virgin enthroned with saints_ over and over again, must have been a little wearisome to men conscious of a fancy to which they could give no scope except by putting s. jerome's hat in a new place, or introducing a couple of goldfinches. one likes to think of the pleasure with which gozzoli received his commission one morning, perhaps from cosimo de' medici himself, for whom his master was adorning a cell in the convent of san marco, recently rebuilt at the great man's expense. did he know the legend of helen of troy, or had he to seek the advice of some scholar like nicolli or poggio for the right tradition? he seems, indeed, to have been rather mixed in his ideas on the subject. did he consult brunellesco in the construction of his greek temple, or donatello or ghiberti for the statue inside? whence came that wonderful landscape with its mountains and cypress trees and strange-shaped ships? from his imagination, or from some old missal or choir-book illumination? at all events, pleasure evidently went to the making of it, for his fancy had full scope. his costumes he adopted frankly from those of his day, adding some features in the way of strange headgear, much like those in fra angelico's _adoration_ (in which he possibly had a hand), to give an eastern colour to the group of boyish heroes on the left; not knowing or considering that the robes in which he was accustomed to drape his angels were much nearer to, were indeed derived from, the costume of the greeks. for his ideal of female beauty he seems to have been satisfied with his own taste. one can scarcely imagine a face or figure much less classical than that of the blonde with the _retroussé_ nose (presumably helen herself), who is riding so complacently on the neck of the long-legged italian in the centre. the figures in the temple are of a finer type, and the lady in the sweeping robe, with the long sleeves, who turns her back to us, has a simple dignity which reminds one less of gozzoli's master than of lippo lippi or masaccio, whose frescoes in the carmine he, in common with all other artists, had doubtless studied. there is nothing so classical or so natural in the picture as the beautiful little bare-legged boy that is running away in the foreground. this little bright panel--so gay, so naïve, so ignorant, and withal so charming--is of importance in the history of art as illustrated in the national gallery. it is the first in which the artist has given full play to his imagination, and entered the romantic world of classic legend, and, with one exception, the first which is purely secular in subject, and was designed for a "secular" purpose. it probably once formed part of a marriage-chest. the important share which the landscape has in the composition, and its serious attempt at perspective, are also worthy of note. as an example of the master himself, of the painter of the great panoramic procession of the notables of his day, which under the title of the _adoration of the kings_, covers the walls of the chapel in the medici palace at florence, of the designs of the history of s. agostino at san gemignano, and of the frescoes in campo santo at pisa, it is of course extremely inadequate, but it suffices to indicate many paths which the young artist was to strike out from the old track which sufficed for his saint-like master. _in the national gallery_ (london, ). monna lisa[ ] _(leonardo da vinci)_ walter pater in vasari's life of leonardo da vinci as we now read it there are some variations from the first edition. there, the painter who has fixed the outward type of christ for succeeding centuries was a bold speculator, holding lightly by other men's beliefs, setting philosophy above christianity. words of his, trenchant enough to justify this impression, are not recorded, and would have been out of keeping with a genius of which one characteristic is the tendency to lose itself in a refined and graceful mystery. the suspicion was but the time-honoured form in which the world stamps its appreciation of one who has thoughts for himself alone, his high indifferentism, his intolerance of the common forms of things; and in the second edition the image was changed into something fainter and more conventional. but it is still by a certain mystery in his work, and something enigmatical beyond the usual measure of great men, that he fascinates, or perhaps half repels. his life is one of sudden revolts, with intervals in which he works not at all, or apart from the main scope of his work. by a strange fortune the works on which his more popular fame rested disappeared early from the world, as the _battle of the standard_; or are mixed obscurely with the work of meaner hands, as the _last supper_. his type of beauty is so exotic that it fascinates a larger number than it delights, and seems more than that of any other artist to reflect ideas and views and some scheme of the world within; so that he seemed to his contemporaries to be the possessor of some unsanctified and secret wisdom; as to michelet and others to have anticipated modern ideas. he trifles with his genius, and crowds all his chief work into a few tormented years of later life; yet he is so possessed by his genius that he passes unmoved through the most tragic events, overwhelming his country and friends, like one who comes across them by chance on some secret errand.... [illustration: monna lisa. _l. da vinci_.] his art, if it was to be something in the world, must be weighted with more of the meaning of nature and purpose of humanity. nature was "the true mistress of higher intelligences." so he plunged into the study of nature. and in doing this he followed the manner of the older students; he brooded over the hidden virtues of plants and crystals, the lines traced by stars as they moved in the sky, over the correspondences which exist between the different orders of living things, through which, to eyes opened, they interpret each other; and for years he seemed to those about him as one listening to a voice silent for other men. he learned here the art of going deep, of tracking the sources of expression to their subtlest retreats, the power of an intimate presence in the things he handled. he did not at once or entirely desert his art; only he was no longer the cheerful objective painter, through whose soul, as through clear glass, the bright figures of florentine life, only made a little mellower and more pensive by the transit, passed on to the white wall. he wasted many days in curious tricks of design, seeming to lose himself in the spinning of intricate devices of lines and colours. he was smitten with a love of the impossible--the perforation of mountains, changing the course of rivers, raising great buildings, such as the church of san giovanni, in the air; all those feats for the performance of which natural magic professes to have the key. later writers, indeed, see in these efforts an anticipation of modern mechanics; in him they were rather dreams, thrown off by the over-wrought and labouring brain. two ideas were especially fixed in him, as reflexes of things that had touched his brain in childhood beyond the measure of other impressions--the smiling of women and the motion of great waters.... the science of that age was all divination, clairvoyance, unsubjected to our exact modern formulas, seeking in an instant of vision to concentrate a thousand experiences. later writers, thinking only of the well-ordered treatise on painting which a frenchman, raffaelle du fresne, a hundred years afterwards, compiled from leonardo's bewildered manuscripts, written strangely as his manner was, from right to left, have imagined a rigid order in his inquiries. but this rigid order was little in accordance with the restlessness of his character; and if we think of him as the mere reasoner who subjects design to anatomy, and composition to mathematical rules, we shall hardly have of him that impression which those about him received from him. poring over his crucibles, making experiments with colour, trying by a strange variation of the alchemist's dream to discover the secret, not of an elixir to make man's natural life immortal, but rather giving immortality to the subtlest and most delicate effects of painting, he seemed to them rather the sorcerer or the magician, possessed of curious secrets and a hidden knowledge, living in a world of which he alone possessed the key. what his philosophy seems to have been most like is that of paracelsus or cardan; and much of the spirit of the older alchemy still hangs about it, with its confidence in short cuts and odd byways to knowledge. to him philosophy was to be something giving strange swiftness and double sight, divining the sources of springs beneath the earth or of expression beneath the human countenance, clairvoyant of occult gifts in common or uncommon things, in the reed at the brook-side or the star which draws near to us but once in a century. how in this way the clear purpose was overclouded, the fine chaser's head perplexed, we but dimly see; the mystery which at no point quite lifts from leonardo's life is deepest here. but it is certain that at one period of his life he had almost ceased to be an artist. the year --the year of the birth of raffaelle and the thirty-first of leonardo's life--is fixed as the date of his visit to milan by the letter in which he recommends himself to ludovico sforza, and offers to tell him for a price strange secrets in the art of war. it was that sforza who murdered his young nephew by slow poison, yet was so susceptible to religious impressions that he turned his worst passions into a kind of religious cultus, and who took for his device the mulberry tree--symbol, in its long delay and sudden yielding of flowers and fruit together, of a wisdom which economizes all forces for an opportunity of sudden and sure effect. the fame of leonardo had gone before him, and he was to model a colossal statue of francesco, the first duke. as for leonardo himself he came not as an artist at all, or careful of the fame of one; but as a player on the harp, a strange harp of silver of his own construction, shaped in some curious likeness to a horse's skull. the capricious spirit of ludovico was susceptible to the charm of music, and leonardo's nature had a kind of spell in it. fascination is always the word descriptive of him. no portrait of his youth remains; but all tends to make us believe that up to this time some charm of voice and aspect, strong enough to balance the disadvantage of his birth, had played about him. his physical strength was great; it was said that he could bend a horseshoe like a coil of lead. the duomo, the work of artists from beyond the alps, so fantastic to a florentine used to the mellow unbroken surfaces of giotto and arnolfo, was then in all its freshness; and below, in the streets of milan, moved a people as fantastic, changeful, and dreamlike. to leonardo least of all men could there be anything poisonous in the exotic flowers of sentiment which grew there. it was a life of exquisite amusements, (leonardo became a celebrated designer of pageants,) and brilliant sins; and it suited the quality of his genius, composed in almost equal parts of curiosity and the desire of beauty, to take things as they came. curiosity and the desire of beauty--these are the two elementary forces in leonardo's genius; curiosity often in conflict with the desire of beauty, but generating, in union with it, a type of subtle and curious grace. the movement of the fifteenth century was two-fold: partly the renaissance, partly also the coming of what is called the "modern spirit," with its realism, its appeal to experience; it comprehended a return to antiquity, and a return to nature. raffaelle represents the return to antiquity, and leonardo the return to nature. in this return to nature he was seeking to satisfy a boundless curiosity by her perpetual surprises, a microscopic sense of finish by her finesse, or delicacy of operation, that _subtilitas naturæ_ which bacon notices. so we find him often in intimate relations with men of science, with fra luca paccioli the mathematician, and the anatomist marc antonio della torre. his observations and experiments fill thirteen volumes of manuscript; and those who can judge describe him as anticipating long before, by rapid intuition, the later ideas of science. he explained the obscure light of the unilluminated part of the moon, knew that the sea had once covered the mountains which contain shells, and the gatherings of the equatorial waters above the polar. he who thus penetrated into the most secret parts of nature preferred always the more to the less remote, what, seeming exceptional, was an instance of law more refined, the construction about things of a peculiar atmosphere and mixed lights. he paints flowers with such curious fidelity that different writers have attributed to him a fondness for particular flowers, as clement the cyclamen, and rio the jasmine; while at venice there is a stray leaf from his portfolio dotted all over with studies of violets and the wild rose. in him first, appears the taste for what is _bizarre_ or _recherché_ in landscape: hollow places full of the green shadow of bituminous rocks, ridged reefs of trap-rock which cut the water into quaint sheets of light--their exact antitype is in our own western seas; all solemn effects of moving water; you may follow it springing from its distant source among the rocks on the heath of the _madonna of the balances_, passing as a little fall into the treacherous calm of the _madonna of the lake_, next, as a goodly river below the cliffs of the _madonna of the rocks_, washing the white walls of its distant villages, stealing out in a network of divided streams in _la gioconda_, to the sea-shore of the _saint anne_--that delicate place, where the wind passes like the hand of some fine etcher over the surface, and the untorn shells lie thick upon the sand, and the tops of the rocks, to which the waves never rise, are green with grass grown fine as hair. it is the landscape, not of dreams or fancy, but of places far withdrawn, and hours selected from a thousand with a miracle of finesse. through his strange veil of sight things reach him so; in no ordinary night or day, but as in faint light of eclipse, or in some brief interval of falling rain at daybreak, or through deep water. and not into nature only; but he plunged also into human personality, and became above all a painter of portraits; faces of a modelling more skilful than has been seen before or since, embodied with a reality which almost amounts to illusion on dark air. to take a character as it was, and delicately sound its stops, suited one so curious in observation, curious in invention. so he painted the portraits of ludovico's mistresses, lucretia crivelli and cecilia galerani the poetess, of ludovico himself, and the duchess beatrice. the portrait of cecilia galerani is lost, but that of lucretia crivelli has been identified with _la belle ferronnière_ of the louvre, and ludovico's pale, anxious face still remains in the ambrosian. opposite is the portrait of beatrice d'este, in whom leonardo seems to have caught some presentiment of early death, painting her precise and grave, full of the refinement of the dead, in sad earth-coloured raiment, set with pale stones.... the _last supper_ was finished in ; in the french entered milan, and whether or not the gascon bowmen used it as a mark for their arrows, the model of francesco sforza certainly did not survive. ludovico became a prisoner, and the remaining years of leonardo's life are more or less years of wandering. from his brilliant life at court he had saved nothing, and he returned to florence a poor man. perhaps necessity kept his spirit excited: the next four years are one prolonged rapture or ecstasy of invention. he painted the pictures of the louvre, his most authentic works, which came there straight from the cabinet of francis the first, at fontainebleau. one picture of his, the _saint anne_--not the _saint anne_ of the louvre, but a mere cartoon now in london--revived for a moment a sort of appreciation more common in an earlier time, when good pictures had still seemed miraculous; and for two days a crowd of people of all qualities passed in naïve excitement through the chamber where it hung, and gave leonardo a taste of cimabue's triumph. but his work was less with the saints than with the living women of florence; for he lived still in the polished society that he loved, and in the houses of florence, left perhaps a little subject to light thoughts by the death of savonarola (the latest gossip is of an undraped monna lisa, found in some out-of-the-way corner of the late orleans collection), he saw ginevra di benci, and lisa, the young third wife of francesco del giocondo. as we have seen him using incidents of the sacred legend, not for their own sake, or as mere subjects for pictorial realisation, but as a symbolical language for fancies all his own, so now he found a vent for his thoughts in taking one of those languid women, and raising her, as leda or pomona, modesty or vanity, to the seventh heaven of symbolical expression. _la gioconda_ is, in the truest sense, leonardo's masterpiece, the revealing instance of his mode of thought and work. in suggestiveness, only the _melancholia_ of dürer is comparable to it; and no crude symbolism disturbs the effect of its subdued and graceful mystery. we all know the face and hands of the figure, set in the marble chair, in that cirque of fantastic rocks, as in some faint light under sea. perhaps of all ancient pictures time has chilled it least.[ ] as often happens with works in which invention seems to reach its limit, there is an element in it given to, not invented by, the master. in that inestimable folio of drawings, once in the possession of vasari, were certain designs by verrocchio, faces of such impressive beauty that leonardo in his boyhood copied them many times. it is hard not to connect with these designs of the elder by-past master, as with its germinal principle, the unfathomable smile, always with a touch of something sinister in it, which plays over all leonardo's work. besides, the picture is a portrait. from childhood we see this image defining itself on the fabric of his dreams; and but for express historical testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, embodied and beheld at last. what was the relationship of a living florentine to this creature of his thought? by what strange affinities had she and the dream grown thus apart, yet so closely together? present from the first, incorporeal in leonardo's thought, dimly traced in the designs of verrocchio, she is found present at last in il giocondo's house. that there is much of mere portraiture in the picture is attested by the legend that by artificial means, the presence of mimes and flute players, that subtle expression was protracted on the face. again, was it in four years and by renewed labour never really completed, or in four months and as by stroke of magic, that the image was projected? the presence that thus so strangely rose beside the waters is expressive of what in the ways of a thousand years man had come to desire. hers is the head upon which all "the ends of the world are come," and the eyelids are a little weary. it is a beauty wrought out from within upon the flesh, the deposit, little cell by cell, of strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions. set it for a moment beside one of those white greek goddesses or beautiful women of antiquity, and how would they be troubled by this beauty into which the soul with all its maladies has passed? all the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there in that which they have of power to refine and make expressive the outward form, the animalism of greece, the lust of rome, the reverie of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the pagan world, the sins of the borgias. she is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with eastern merchants; and, as leda, was mother of helen of troy, and as saint anne, the mother of mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments and tinged the eyelids and the hands. the fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. certainly lady lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea. during these years at florence leonardo's history is the history of his art; he himself is lost in the bright cloud of it. the outward history begins again in , with a wild journey through central italy, which he makes as the chief engineer of cæsar borgia. the biographer, putting together the stray jottings of his manuscripts, may follow him through every day of it, up the strange tower of sienna, which looks towards rome, elastic like a bent bow, down to the sea-shore at piombino, each place appearing as fitfully as in a fevered dream.... we catch a glimpse of him again at rome in , surrounded by his mirrors and vials and furnaces, making strange toys that seemed alive of wax and quicksilver. the hesitation which had haunted him all through life, and made like one under a spell, was upon him now with double force. no one had ever carried political indifferentism farther; it had always been his philosophy to "fly before the storm;" he is for the sforzas or against them, as the tide of their fortune turns. yet now he was suspected by the anti-gallian society at rome of french tendencies. it paralyzed him to find himself among enemies; and he turned wholly to france, which had long courted him. france was about to become an italy more italian than italy itself. francis the first, like lewis the twelfth before him, was attracted by the finesse of leonardo's work; _la gioconda_ was already in his cabinet, and he offered leonardo the little château de clou, with its vineyards and meadows, in the soft valley of the masse, and not too far from the great outer sea. m. arsène houssaye has succeeded in giving a pensive local colour to this part of his subject, with which, as a frenchman, he could best deal. "a monsieur lyonard, peinteur du roy pour amboyse,"--so the letter of francis the first is headed. it opens a prospect, one of the most attractive in the history of art, where, under a strange mixture of lights, italian art dies away as a french exotic. _studies in the history of the renaissance_ (london, ). footnotes: [ ] the spelling commonly used is "mona lisa." the editor has thought best, however, to keep the form of spelling used by walter pater. [ ] yet for vasari there was some further magic of crimson in the lips and cheeks, lost for us. the adoration of the lamb (_van eyck_) kugler hubert van eyck was born, according to the common acceptation, in . john van eyck was his junior by some unknown number of years. chroniclers of the sixteenth century vaguely suggest that the two brothers settled at ghent in . there is every reason to believe that all these dates are incorrect; that hubert was born after , and that the date of his migration to ghent must be placed later in the century. it is credible that both the brothers were court painters to philip of charolois, heir apparent to the throne of burgundy, who lived with his wife michelle de france at ghent between and . in the service of the prince, painters were free from the constraint of their guild, but on the withdrawal of the court the privilege would cease; and this explains how the names of the van eycks were not recorded in the register of the corporation of st. luke till , when, on the death of the countess michelle, and as a tribute to her memory, they were registered as masters without a fee. john van eyck soon found employment in the court atmosphere, which seemed congenial to him, whilst hubert remained at ghent, received commissions from the municipality ( ), and became acquainted with jodocus vydts, for whom he composed the vast altar-piece known as the _adoration of the lamb_. it was not fated that he should finish the great work which he was then induced to begin. he probably sketched the subjects that were to adorn the panels, and completed some of the more important of them. at his death in he was buried in the chapel, the decoration of which had been the last occupation of his life. we may sum up the qualities which distinguished him, and the services which he rendered to the art of his country, in the following sentences:-- [illustration: the adoration of the lamb. _van eyck_.] he carried the realistic tendency, already existing in the flemish masters, to an extraordinary pitch of excellence, whilst in many essential respects he adhered to the more ideal feeling of the previous period, imparting to this, by the means of his far richer powers of representation, greater distinctness, truth of nature, and variety of expression. throughout his works he displayed an elevated and highly energetic conception of the stern import of his labours in the service of the church. the prevailing arrangement of his subject is symmetrical, holding fast the early architectonic rules which had hitherto presided over ecclesiastic art. the later mode of arrangement, in which a freer and more dramatic and picturesque feeling was introduced, is only seen in hubert van eyck's works in subjection to these rules. thus his heads exhibit the aim at beauty and dignity belonging to the earlier period, only combined with more truth of nature. his draperies unite its pure taste and softness of folds with greater breadth; the realistic principle being apparent in that greater attention to detail which a delicate indication of the material necessitates. nude figures are studied from nature with the utmost fidelity; undraped portions are also given with much truth, especially the hands; only the feet remain feeble. that, however, which is almost the principal quality of his art, is the hitherto unprecedented power, depth, transparency, and harmony of his _colouring_. to attain this he availed himself of a mode of painting in oil which he and his brother had perfected. oil painting, it is true, had long been in use, but only in a very undeveloped form, and for inferior purposes. according to the most recent and thorough investigations, the improvement introduced by the van eycks, and which they doubtless only very gradually worked out, were the following. first, they removed the chief impediment which had hitherto obstructed the application of oil-paint to pictures properly so called. for, in order to accelerate the slow drying of the oil colours, it had been necessary to add a varnish to them, which consisted of oil boiled with a resin. owing to the dark colour of this varnish, in which amber, or more frequently sandarac, was used, this plan, from its darkening effect on most colours, had hitherto proved unsuccessful. the van eycks, however, succeeded in preparing so colourless a varnish that they could apply it without disadvantage, to all colours. in painting a picture they proceeded on the following system. the outline was drawn on a _gesso_ ground, so strongly sized that no oil could penetrate the surface. the under painting was then executed in a generally warm brownish glazing colour, and so thinly that the light ground was clearly seen through it. they then laid on the local colours, thinner in the lights, and, from the quantity of vehicle used, more thickly in the shadows; in the latter availing themselves often of the under painting as a foil. in all other parts they so nicely preserved the balance between the solid and the glazing colours as to attain that union of body and transparency which is their great excellence. finally, in the use of the brush they obtained that perfect freedom which the new vehicle permitted; either leaving the touch of the brush distinct, or fusing the touches tenderly together, as the object before them required. of all the works which are now attributed to hubert, but one is genuine and historically authenticated. this noble work is certified by an inscription. it is a large altar picture, consisting of two rows of separate panels, once in the cathedral of st. bavon at ghent. it was painted, as before remarked, for jodocus vydts, seigneur of pamele, and burgomaster of ghent, and his wife elizabeth, of the then distinguished family of burlunt, for their mortuary chapel in that cathedral.[ ] when the wings were opened, which occurred only on festivals, the subject of the upper centre picture was seen, consisting of three panels, on which were the triune god--the king of heaven and earth--and at his side the holy virgin and the baptist; on the inside of the wings were angels, who with songs and sacred music celebrate the praises of the most high: at the two extremities, each inside the half-shutters which covered the figure of god the father, were adam and eve, the representatives of fallen man. the lower central picture shows the lamb of the revelation, whose blood flows into a cup; over it is the dove of the holy spirit; angels, who hold the instruments of the passion, worship the lamb, and four groups, each consisting of many persons, advance from the sides: they comprise the holy martyrs, male and female, with priests and lay-men; in the foreground is the fountain of life; in the distance the towers of the heavenly jerusalem. on the wing pictures, other groups are coming up to adore the lamb; on the left, those who have laboured for the kingdom of the lord by worldly deeds--the soldiers of christ, and the righteous judges; on the right, those who, through self-denial and renunciation of earthly good, have served him in the spirit--holy hermits and pilgrims; a picture underneath, which represented hell, finished the whole. this work is now dispersed: the centre pictures and the panels of adam and eve only being in ghent.[ ] the lower picture of hell was early injured and lost, and the others form some of the greatest ornaments of the gallery of the berlin museum.[ ] the three figures of the upper centre picture are designed with all the dignity of statue-like repose belonging to the early style; they are painted, too, on a ground of gold and tapestry, as was constantly the practice in earlier times: but united with the traditional type we already find a successful representation of life and nature in all their truth. they stand on the frontier of two different styles, and, from the excellence of both, form a wonderful and most impressive whole. in all the solemnity of antique dignity the heavenly father sits directly fronting the spectator--his right hand raised to give the benediction to the lamb, and to all the figures below; in his left is a crystal sceptre; on his head the triple crown, the emblem of the trinity. the features are such as are ascribed to christ by the traditions of the church, but noble and well-proportioned; the expression is forcible, though passionless. the tunic of this figure, ungirt, is of a deep red, as well as the mantle, which last is fastened over the breast by a rich clasp, and, falling down equally from both shoulders, is thrown in beautiful folds over the feet. behind the figure, and as high as the head, is a hanging of green tapestry adorned with a golden pelican (a well-known symbol of the redeemer); behind the head the ground is gold, and on it, in a semicircle, are three inscriptions, which again describe the trinity, as all-mighty, all-good, and all-bountiful. the two other figures of this picture display equal majesty; both are reading holy books and are turned towards the centre figure. the countenance of john expresses ascetic seriousness, but in the virgin's we find a serene grace, and a purity of form, which approach very nearly to the happier efforts of italian art. on the wing next to the virgin stand eight angels singing before a music-desk. they are represented as choristers in splendid vestments and crowns. the brilliancy of the stuffs and precious stones is given with the hand of a master, the music-desk is richly ornamented with gothic carved work and figures, and the countenances are full of expression and life; but in the effort to imitate nature with the utmost truth, so as even to enable us to distinguish with certainty the different voices of the double quartet, the spirit of a holier influence has already passed away. on the opposite wing, st. cecilia sits at an organ, the keys of which she touches with an expression of deep meditation: other angels stand behind the organ with different stringed instruments. the expression of these heads shows far more feeling, and is more gentle; the execution of the stuffs and accessories is equally masterly. the two extreme wings of the upper series, the subjects of which are adam and eve, are now in the museum at brussels. the attempt to paint the nude figure of the size of life, with the most careful attention to minute detail, is eminently successful, with the exception of a certain degree of hardness in the drawing. eve holds in her right hand the forbidden fruit. in the filling up, which the shape of the altar-piece made necessary over these panels, there are small subjects in chiaroscuro: over adam, the sacrifice of cain and abel; over eve, the death of abel--death, therefore, as the immediate consequence of original sin. the arrangement of the lower middle picture, the worship of the lamb, is strictly symmetrical, as the mystic nature of the allegorical subject demanded, but there is such beauty in the landscape, in the pure atmosphere, in the bright green of the grass, in the masses of trees and flowers, even in the single figures which stand out from the four great groups, that we no longer perceive either hardness or severity in this symmetry. the wing picture on the right, representing the holy pilgrims, is, in the figures, less striking than the others. here st. christopher, who wandered through the world seeking the most mighty lord, strides before all, a giant in stature, whilst a host of smaller pilgrims, of various ages, follow him. a fruitful valley, with many details, showing a surprising observation of nature, is seen through the slender trees. the cast of the folds in the ample red drapery of st. christopher, as in the upper picture, reminds us still of the earlier style. the whimsical and singular expression in the countenances of the pilgrims is also very remarkable. the picture next to the last described is more pleasing; it represents the troop of holy anchorites passing out of a rocky defile. in front are st. paul the hermit and st. anthony, the two who set the first example of retirement from the world; and the procession closes with the two holy women who also passed the greater part of their lives in the wilderness, mary magdalen and st. mary of egypt. the heads are full of character, with great variety of expression: on every countenance may be traced the history of its life. grave old men stand before us, each one differing from the other; one is firm and strong, another more feeble; one cheerful and single-minded, another less open. some inspired fanatics wildly raise their heads, whilst others with a simple and almost humorous expression walk by their side, and others again are still struggling with their earthly nature. it is a remarkable picture, and leads us deep into the secrets of the human heart--a picture which in all times must be ranked amongst the master-works of art, and which to be intelligible needs no previous inquiry into the relative period and circumstances of the artists who created it. the landscape background, the rocky defile, the wooded declivity, and the trees laden with fruit, are all eminently beautiful. the eye would almost lose itself in this rich sense of still life if it were not constantly led back to the interest of the foreground. the opposite wing pictures differ essentially in conception from those just described. their subject did not in itself admit such varied interest, and it is rather the common expression of a tranquil harmony of mind, and of the consciousness of a resolute will, which attracts the spectator, combined at the same time with a skilful representation of earthly splendour and magnificence. inside the wing to the right we see the soldiers of the lord on fine chargers, simple and noble figures in bright armour, with surcoats of varied form and colour. the three foremost with the waving banners appear to be st. sebastian, st. george, and st. michael, the patron saints of the old flemish guilds, which accompanied their earls to the crusades. in the head of st. george, the painter has strikingly succeeded in rendering the spirit of the chivalry of the middle ages--that true heroic feeling and sense of power which humbles itself before the higher sense of the divinity. emperors and kings follow after him. the landscape is extremely beautiful and highly finished, with rich and finely-formed mountain ridges, and the fleecy clouds of spring floating lightly across. the second picture (the last to the left) represents the righteous judges; they also are on horseback, and are fine and dignified figures. in front, on a splendidly caparisoned grey horse, rides a mild benevolent old man, in blue velvet trimmed with fur. this is the likeness of hubert, to whom his brother has thus dedicated a beautiful memorial. rather deeper in the group is john himself, clothed in black, with his shrewd, sharp countenance turned to the spectator. we are indebted to tradition for the knowledge of these portraits. both these wing pictures have the special interest of showing us, by means of armour, rich costumes, and caparisons, a true and particular representation of the court of burgundy in the time of philip the good--when it was confessedly the most superb court in europe. the upper wings, when closed, represented the annunciation, and this was so arranged that on the outer and wider ones (the backs of the two pictures of angels singing and playing) were the figures of the virgin and the angel gabriel,--on the inner narrower ones (that is, on the back of the adam and eve), a continuation of the virgin's chamber. here, as was often the case in the outside pictures of large altar-pieces, the colouring was kept down to a more uniform tone, in order that the full splendour might be reserved to adorn with greater effect the principal subject within. the angel and the holy virgin are clothed in flowing white drapery, but the wings of the angel glitter with a play of soft and brilliant colour, imitating those of the green parrot. the heads are noble and well painted; the furniture of the room is executed with great truth, as well as the view through the arcade which forms the background of the virgin's chamber, into the streets of a town, one of which we recognize as a street in ghent. in the semicircles which close these panels above, on the right and left, are the prophets micah and zechariah, whose heads have great dignity, but are somewhat stiff and unsatisfactory in their attitudes. in the centre (corresponding with the figures in chiaroscuro over adam and eve) are two kneeling female figures represented as sibyls. the exterior portion of the lower wings contains the statues of the two st. johns. these display a heavy style of drapery, and there is something peculiarly angular in the breaks of the folds, imitated perhaps from the sculpture of the day, which had also already abandoned the older northern mould. this peculiarity by degrees impressed itself more and more on the style of painting of the fifteenth century, and the drapery of the figures in the annunciation already betrays a tendency towards it. the heads exhibit a feeling for beauty of form which is rare in this school. john the baptist, who is pointing with his right hand to the lamb on his left, is appropriately represented, as the last of the prophets, as a man of earnest mien and dignified features, with much hair and beard. john the evangelist, on the other hand, appears as a tender youth with delicate features, looking very composedly at the monster with four snakes which, at his benediction, rises from the chalice in his hand. the likenesses of the donors are given with inimitable life and fidelity. they show the careful hand of jan van eyck, but already approach that limit within which the imitation of the accidental and insignificant in the human countenance should be confined. the whole, however, is in admirable keeping, and the care of the artist can hardly be considered too anxiously minute, since feeling and character are as fully expressed as the mere bodily form. the aged jodocus vydts, to whose liberality posterity is indebted for this great work of art, is dressed in a simple red garment trimmed with fur; he kneels with his hands folded, and his eyes directed upwards. his countenance, however, is not attractive; the forehead is low and narrow, and the eye without power. the mouth alone shows a certain benevolence, and the whole expression of the features denotes a character capable of managing worldly affairs. the idea of originating so great a work as this picture is to be found in the noble, intellectual, and expressive features of his wife, who kneels opposite to him in the same attitude, and in still plainer attire. at hubert van eyck's death, on the th of september, , jodocus vydts engaged jan van eyck, the younger brother and scholar of hubert, to finish the picture in the incomplete parts.[ ] a close comparison of all the panels of this altar-piece with the authentic works of jan van eyck shows that the following portions differ in drawing, colouring, cast of drapery, and treatment, from his style, and may therefore with certainty be attributed to the hand of hubert:--of the inner side of the upper series, the almighty, the virgin, st. john the baptist, st. cecilia with the angels playing on musical instruments, and adam and eve; of the inner side of the lower series, the side of the centre picture with the apostles and saints, and the wings with the hermits and pilgrims, though with the exception of the landscapes. on the other hand, of the inner side of the upper series, the wing picture with the singing angels is by jan van eyck; of the inner side of the lower series, the side of the centre picture of the adoration of the lamb, containing the patriarchs and prophets, etc., and the entire landscape; the wing with the soldiers of christ and the righteous judges, and the landscapes to the wing with the hermits and pilgrims; finally, the entire outer sides of the wings, comprising the portraits of the founders, and the annunciation. the prophet zechariah and the two sibyls alone show a feebler hand.[ ] about one hundred years after the completion of this altar-piece an excellent copy of it was made by michael coxis for philip ii. of spain. the panels of this work, like those of the original, are dispersed; some are in the berlin museum, some in the possession of the king of bavaria, and others in the remains of the king of holland's collection at the hague. a second copy, which comprises the inside pictures of this great work, from the chapel of the town-house at ghent, is in the antwerp museum. _handbook of painting: the german, flemish, and dutch schools_, based on the handbook of kugler remodelled by dr. waagen and revised by j.a. crowe (london, ). footnotes: [ ] carton, _les trois frères van eyck_, p. . [ ] marc van vaernewijck in a ms. of - , describing the ghent troubles, states that on the th of august, two days before the iconoclasts plundered st. bavon, the picture of the mystic lamb was removed from the vijdts chapel and concealed in one of the towers. see the ms., _van die beroerlicke tijden in die nederlanden_{b}, recently printed at ghent ( ), p. . on the same page in which vaernewijck relates this story he says that he refers his readers, for the lives of the van eycks to his book, _mijn leecken philosophie int xx^e bouck_. this book, which probably still exists on the shelves of some library, has not as yet been discovered. [ ] "the pictures here exhibited as the works of hemmelinck, messis, lucas of holland, a. dürer, and even holbein, are inferior to those ascribed to eyck in colour, execution, and taste. the draperies of the three on a gold ground, especially that of the middle figure, could not be improved in simplicity, or elegance, by the taste of raphael himself. the three heads of god the father, the virgin, and st. john the baptist, are not inferior in roundness, force, or sweetness to the heads of l. da vinci, and possess a more positive principle of colour."--_life of fuseli_, i. p. . this is a very remarkable opinion for the period when it was written. [ ] this appears from the following inscription of the time, on the frame of the outer wing:-- "pictor hubertus ab eyck, major quo nemo repertus incepit; pondusque johannes arte secundus frater perfecit, judoci vyd prece fretus [versv sexta mai vos collocat acta tveri]." [the last verse gives the date of may , .] the discovery of this inscription, under a coating of green paint, was made in berlin in , when the first word and a half of the third line, which were missing, were [imperfectly] supplied [with "frater perfectus"] by an old copy of this inscription, found by m. de bast, the belgian connoisseur. [ ] [dr. waagen did not always hold decided opinions as to what portions of the altar-piece of ghent are by hubert and john van eyck, respectively. there is no doubt that some of "the sublime earnestness" which schlegel notes in the eternal, the virgin, and john the baptist, and much of the stern realism which characterizes those figures, is to be found in the patriarchs and prophets, and in the hermits and pilgrims, and in the adam and eve; but it is too much to say that these wing pictures can "with certainty be assigned to hubert," and it is not to be forgotten that john van eyck worked in this picture on the lines laid down by his elder brother, and must have caught some of the spirit of his great master.] the death of procris (_piero di cosimo_) edward t. cook a very characteristic work by piero, called di cosimo, after his godfather and master, cosimo rosselli. piero's peculiarities are well known to all readers of george eliot's _romola_, where everything told us about him by vasari is carefully worked up. the first impression left by this picture--its quaintness--is precisely typical of the man. he shut himself off from the world, and stopped his ears; lived in the untidiest of rooms, and would not have his garden tended, "preferring to see all things wild and savage about him." he took his meals at times and in ways that no other man did, and romola used to coax him with sweets and hard-boiled eggs. his fondness for quaint landscape ("he would sometimes stand beside a wall," says vasari, "and image forth the most extraordinary landscapes that ever were") may be seen in this picture: so also may his love of animals, in which, says vasari, he took "indescribable pleasure." [illustration: the death of procris. _piero di cosimo._] the subjects of his pictures were generally allegorical. in _romola_ he paints tito and romola as bacchus and ariadne; here he shows the death of procris, the story in which the ancients embodied the folly of jealousy. for procris being told that cephalus was unfaithful, straight-way believed the report and secretly followed him to the woods, for he was a great hunter. and cephalus called upon "aura," the latin for breeze, for cephalus was hot after the chase: "sweet air, o come," and echo answered, "come, sweet air." but procris, thinking that he was calling after his mistress, turned to see, and as she moved she made a rustling in the leaves, which cephalus mistook for the motion of some beast of the forest, and let fly his unerring dart, which procris once had given him. but procris lay among the white wind-flowers, shot in the throat. from out the little wound the slow blood drained, as drops in autumn showers drip from the leaves upon the sodden ground. none saw her die but lelaps, the swift hound, that watched her dumbly with a wistful fear, till at the dawn, the hornèd wood-men found and bore her gently on a sylvan bier, to lie beside the sea,--with many an uncouth tear. austin dobson: _old world lyrics_. _a popular handbook to the national gallery_ (london and new york, ). the death of procris (_piero di cosimo_) john addington symonds the point that connects him with botticelli is the romantic treatment of his classical mythology, best exemplified in his pictures of the tale of perseus and andromeda.[ ] piero was by nature and employment a decorative painter; the construction of cars for pageants, and the adornment of dwelling rooms and marriage chests, affected his whole style, rendering it less independent and more quaint than that of botticelli. landscape occupies the main part of his compositions, made up by a strange amalgam of the most eccentric details--rocks toppling over blue bays, sea-caverns and fantastic mountain ranges. groups of little figures upon these spaces tell the story, and the best invention of the artist is lavished on the form of monstrous creatures like the dragon slain by perseus. there is no attempt to treat the classic subject in a classic spirit: to do that and to fail in doing it, remained for cellini....[ ] the same criticism applies to piero's picture of the murdered procris watched by a satyr of the woodland.[ ] in creating his satyr the painter has not had recourse to any antique bas-relief, but has imagined for himself a being half human, half bestial, and yet wholly real; nor has he portrayed in procris a nymph of greek form, but a girl of florence. the strange animals and gaudy flowers introduced into the landscape background further remove the subject from the sphere of classic treatment. florentine realism and quaint fancy being thus curiously blended, the artistic result may be profitably studied for the light it throws upon the so-called paganism of the earlier renaissance. fancy at that moment was more free than when superior knowledge of antiquity had created a demand for reproductive art, and when the painters thought less of the meaning of the fable for themselves than of its capability of being used as a machine for the display of erudition. _the renaissance in italy_ (london, ). footnotes: [ ] uffizi gallery. [ ] see the bas-relief upon the pedestal of his 'perseus' in the loggia de' lanzi. [ ] in the national gallery. the marriage in cana (_tintoret_) john ruskin the church of the salute is farther assisted by the beautiful flight of steps in front of it down to the canal; and its façade is rich and beautiful of its kind, and was chosen by turner for the principal object in his well known view of the grand canal. the principal faults of the building are the meagre windows in the sides of the cupola, and the ridiculous disguise of the buttresses under the form of colossal scrolls; the buttresses themselves being originally a hypocrisy, for the cupola is stated by lazari to be of timber, and therefore needs none. the sacristy contains several precious pictures: the three on its roof by titian, much vaunted, are indeed as feeble as they are monstrous; but the small titian, _st. mark with sts. cosmo and damian_, was, when i first saw it, to my judgment, by far the first work of titian's in venice. it has since been restored by the academy, and it seemed to me entirely destroyed, but i had not time to examine it carefully. [illustration: the marriage in cana. _tintoret_] at the end of the larger sacristy is the lunette which once decorated the tomb of the doge francesco dandolo, and, at the side of it, one of the most highly finished tintoret's in venice, namely: _the marriage in cana_. an immense picture, some twenty-five feet long by fifteen high, and said by lazari to be one of the few which tintoret signed with his name. i am not surprised at his having done so in this case. evidently the work has been a favourite with him, and he has taken as much pains as it was ever necessary for his colossal strength to take with anything. the subject is not one which admits of much singularity or energy in composition. it was always a favourite one with veronese, because it gave dramatic interest to figures in gay costumes and of cheerful countenances; but one is surprised to find tintoret, whose tone of mind was always grave, and who did not like to make a picture out of brocades and diadems, throwing his whole strength into the conception of a marriage feast; but so it is, and there are assuredly no female heads in any of his pictures in venice elaborated so far as those which here form the central light. neither is it often that the works of this mighty master conform themselves to any of the rules acted upon by ordinary painters; but in this instance the popular laws have been observed, and an academy student would be delighted to see with what severity the principal light is arranged in a central mass, which is divided and made more brilliant by a vigorous piece of shadow thrust into the midst of it, and which dies away in lesser fragments and sparkling towards the extremities of the picture. this mass of light is as interesting by its composition as by its intensity. the cicerone who escorts the stranger round the sacristy in the course of five minutes and allows him some forty seconds for the contemplation of a picture which the study of six months would not entirely fathom, directs his attention very carefully to the "bell' effetto di prospettivo," the whole merit of the picture being, in the eyes of the intelligent public, that there is a long table in it, one end of which looks further off than the other; but there is more in the "bell' effetto di prospettivo" than the observance of the common law of optics. the table is set in a spacious chamber, of which the windows at the end let in the light from the horizon, and those in the side wall the intense blue of an eastern sky. the spectator looks all along the table, at the farther end of which are seated christ and the madonna, the marriage guests on each side of it,--on one side men, on the other women; the men are set with their backs to the light, which passing over their heads and glancing slightly on the table-cloth, falls in full length along the line of young venetian women, who thus fill the whole centre of the picture with one broad sunbeam, made up of fair faces and golden hair. close to the spectator a woman has risen in amazement, and stretches across the table to show the wine in her cup to those opposite; her dark red dress intercepts and enhances the mass of gathered light. it is rather curious, considering the subject of the picture, that one cannot distinguish either the bride or the bride-groom; but the fourth figure from the madonna in the line of women, who wears a white head-dress of lace and rich chains of pearls in her hair, may well be accepted for the former, and i think that between her and the woman on the madonna's left hand the unity of the line of women is intercepted by a male figure: be this as it may, this fourth female face is the most beautiful, as far as i recollect, that occurs in the works of the painter, with the exception only of the madonna in the _flight into egypt_. it is an ideal which occurs indeed elsewhere in many of his works, a face at once dark and delicate, the italian cast of feature moulded with the softness and childishness of english beauty some half a century ago; but i have never seen the ideal so completely worked out by the master. the face may best be described as one of the purest and softest of stothard's conceptions, executed with all the strength of tintoret. the other women are all made inferior to this one, but there are beautiful profiles and bendings of breasts and necks along the whole line. the men are all subordinate, though there are interesting portraits among them; perhaps the only fault of the picture being that the faces are a little too conspicuous, seen like balls of light among the crowd of minor figures which fill the background of the picture. the tone of the whole is sober and majestic in the highest degree; the dresses are all broad masses of colour, and the only parts of the picture which lay claim to the expression of wealth or splendour are the head-dresses of the women. in this respect the conception of the scene differs widely from that of veronese, and approaches more nearly to the probable truth. still the marriage is not an important one; an immense crowd, filling the background, forming superbly rich mosaic of colour against the distant sky. taken as a whole the picture is perhaps the most perfect example which human art has produced of the utmost possible force and sharpness of shadow united with richness of local colour. in all the other works of tintoret, and much more of other colourists, either the light and shade or the local colour is predominant; in the one case the picture has a tendency to look as if painted by candle-light, in the other it becomes daringly conventional, and approaches the conditions of glass-painting. this picture unites colour as rich as titian's with light and shade as forcible as rembrandt's, and far more decisive. there are one or two other interesting pictures of the early venetian school in this sacristy, and several important tombs in the adjoining cloister; among which that of francesco dandolo, transported here from the church of the frari, deserves especial attention. _stones of venice_ (london, ). madame de pompadour (_de la tour_) charles-augustin sainte-beuve madame de pompadour was not exactly a _grisette_, as her enemies affected to say and as voltaire has said in a malicious moment: she was a _bourgeoise_, a blossom of finance, the most lovely woman in paris, witty, elegant, adorned with a thousand gifts and a thousand talents, but with a way of feeling that did not have the grandeur and coldness of an aristocratic ambition. she loved the king for his own sake, as the handsomest man in his realm, as the one who had seemed the most amiable to her; she loved him sincerely, sentimentally, if not with a profound passion. on her arrival at court, her ideal would have been to amuse him with a thousand entertainments borrowed from the arts, or even from matters of the intellect, to make him happy and constant in a circle of varied enchantments and pleasures. a watteau landscape, sports, comedies, pastorals in the shade, a continual embarkation for cythera, that would have been the round she would have preferred. but once transported into the slippery enclosure of the court, she could realize her ideal very imperfectly. kind and obliging by nature, she had to take up arms to defend herself against enmity and perfidy and to take the offensive to avoid being overthrown; necessity led her into politics and induced her to make herself minister of state. she loved the arts and intellectual things far above the comprehension of any of the ladies of quality. on her arrival at her eminent and dishonourable post--much more dishonourable than she thought--she at first only thought of herself as destined to aid, to call to her side, and to encourage struggling merit and men of talent of all kinds. this is her sole glory, her best title, and her best excuse. she did her best to advance voltaire and to make him agreeable to louis xv., whom the petulant poet so strongly repelled by the vivacity and even the familiarity of his praises. she thought she had found a genius in crébillon and honoured him accordingly. she showed favour to gresset; she protected marmontel; she welcomed duclos; she admired montesquieu and plainly showed it. she would have liked to serve jean-jacques rousseau. when the king of prussia ostentatiously gave d'alembert a modest pension and louis xv. was scoffing in her presence at the amount ( livres), in comparison with the term _sublime genius_, for which it was given, she advised him to forbid the philosopher to accept it and to double it himself; which louis xv. did not dare to do; his religious principles would not permit it on account of the _encyclopédie_. it was not her fault that we cannot say _the century of louis xv._, as we say _the century of louis xiv_. [illustration: portrait of madame de pompadour. _de la tour._] there are then in the career and power of madame de pompadour two distinct periods: the first, the most brilliant and most greatly favoured, was that following the peace of aix-la-chapelle ( ): in this, she completely played her rôle of a youthful favourite, fond of peace, the arts, the pleasures of the mind, and advising and protecting all things happily. there was a second period, greatly checkered, but more frequently disastrous and fatal; this was the whole period of the seven years' war, the attempted assassination by damiens, the defeat of rosbach, and the insults of the victorious frederick. these were harsh years which prematurely aged this weak and graceful woman, who was drawn into a struggle beyond her strength.... however, my impression is that things might have been worse, and that, with the aid of m. de choiseul, by means of the family compact she again covered her own mistakes and the humiliation of the french monarchy with a certain amount of prestige. it seems that the nation itself felt this and felt more especially that after this brilliant favourite there would be a greater fall; for when she died at versailles, april , , the regret of the parisian populace, which some years before would have stoned her, was universal.... the one who seemed to regret her the least was louis xv.; it is related that seeing from a window the hearse on its way from versailles to paris, the weather being dreadful, he only said: "the marquise will not have very fine weather for her journey." all the masters of the french school of her time painted a portrait of madame de pompadour: we have one by boucher, and another by drouais which grimm preferred to all others; but the most admirable of all is certainly la tour's pastel owned by the louvre. to this we go in order to see _la marquise_ before we allow ourselves to judge of her, or to form the least idea of her personality. she is represented as seated in an arm-chair, holding in one hand a book of music, and with her left arm resting on a marble table on which are placed a globe and several volumes. the largest one of these books, which is next to the globe, is volume iv. of the _encyclopédie_; next to it in a row are the volumes of _l'esprit des lois_, _la henriade_, and _pastor fido_, indicative of the tastes at once serious and sentimental of the queen of this spot. upon the table also and at the base of the globe is seen a blue book upside down, its cover is inscribed: _pierres gravées_; this is her work. underneath it and hanging down over the table is a print representing an engraver of precious stones at work with these words: _pompadour sculpsit_. on the floor, by the foot of the table, is a portfolio marked with her arms and containing engravings and drawings; we have here a complete trophy. in the background, between the feet of the consol-table, is seen a vase of japanese porcelain: why not of sèvres? behind her arm-chair and on the side of the room opposite the table is another arm-chair, or an ottoman, on which lies a guitar. but it is the person herself who is in every respect marvellous in her extreme delicacy, gracious dignity, and exquisite beauty. holding her music-book in her hand lightly and carelessly, her attention is suddenly called away from it; she seems to have heard a noise and turns her head. is it indeed the king who has arrived and is about to enter? she seems to be expecting him with certainty and to be listening with a smile. her head, thus turned aside, reveals the outline of the neck in all its grace, and her very short but deliciously-waved hair is arranged in rows of little curls, the blonde tint of which may be divined beneath the slight covering of powder. the head stands out against a light-blue background, which in general dominates the whole picture. everything satisfies and delights the eye; it is a melody, perhaps, rather than a harmony. a bluish light, sifting downwards, falls across every object. there is nothing in this enchanted boudoir which does not seem to pay court to the goddess,--nothing, not even _l'esprit des lois_ and _l'encyclopédie_. the flowered satin robe makes way along the undulations of the breast for several rows of those bows, which were called, i believe, _parfaits contentements_, and which are of a very pale lilac. her own flesh-tints and complexion are of a white lilac, delicately azured. that breast, those ribbons, and that robe--all blend together harmoniously, or rather lovingly. beauty shines in all its brilliance and in full bloom. the face is still young; the temples have preserved their youth and freshness; the lips are also still fresh and have not yet withered as they are said to have become from having been too frequently puckered or bitten in repressing anger and insults. everything in the countenance and in the attitude expresses grace, supreme taste, and affability and amenity rather than sweetness, a queenly air which she had to assume but which sits naturally upon her and is sustained without too much effort. i might continue and describe many lovely details, but i prefer to stop and send the curious to the model itself: there they will find a thousand things that i scarcely dare to touch upon. such in her best days was this ravishing, ambitious, frail, but sincere woman, who in her elevation remained good, faithful (i love to believe) in her sin, obliging, so far as she could be, but vindictive when driven to it; who was quite one of her own sex after all, and, finally, whose intimate life her lady-in-waiting has been able to show us without being too heavy or crushing a witness against her. in spite of everything, she was exactly the mistress to suit this reign, the only one who could have succeeded in turning it to account in the sense of opinion, the only one who could lessen the crying discord between the least literary of kings and the most literary of epochs. if the abbé galiani, in a curious page, loudly preferring the age of louis xv. to that of louis xiv., has been able to say of this age of the human mind so fertile in results: "such another reign will not be met with anywhere for a long time," mme. de pompadour certainly contributed to this to some extent. this graceful woman rejuvenated the court by bringing into it the vivacity of her thoroughly french tastes, tastes that were parisian. as mistress and friend of the prince, as protectress of the arts, her mind found itself entirely on a level with her rôle and her rank: as a politician, she bent, she did ill, but perhaps not worse than any other favourite in her place would have done at that period when a real statesman was wanting among us. when she found herself dying after a reign of nineteen years; when at the age of forty-two years she had to leave these palaces, these riches, these marvels of art she had amassed, this power so envied and disputed, but which she kept entirely in her own hands to her last day, she did not say with a sigh, like mazarin, "so i must leave all this!" she faced death with a firm glance, and as the _curé_ of the madeleine, who had come to visit her at versailles, was about to depart, she said: "wait a moment, _monsieur le curé_, we will go together." madame de pompadour may be considered the last in date of the kings' mistresses who were worthy of the name: after her it would be impossible to descend and enter with any decency into the history of the du barry. the kings and emperors who have succeeded in france, from that day to this, have been either too virtuous, or too despotic, or too gouty, or too repentant, or too much the paterfamilias, to allow themselves such useless luxuries: at the utmost, only a few vestiges have been observable. the race of kings' mistresses, therefore, may be said to be greatly interrupted, even if not ended, and mme. de pompadour stands before our eyes in history as the last as well as the most brilliant of all.[ ] _causeries de lundi_ (paris, - ), vol. ii. footnotes: [ ] here is an exact statement of the civil register of the state relating to mme. de pompadour: jeanne-antoinette poisson, marquise de pompadour, born in paris, dec. , (saint-eustache);--married march , , to charles-guillaume lenormant, seigneur d'Étioles (saint-eustache); died april , ; interred on the th at the capucines de la place vendôme. her parish in paris was la madeleine; her hôtel, in the faubourg saint-honoré, now l'Élysée. m. le roi, librarian of versailles, has published, after an authentic manuscript the _relevé des dépenses de mme. de pompadour depuis la première année de sa faveur jusqu'à sa mort_. this statement, which mentions the sums and their uses, presents a complete picture of the marquise's varied tastes, and does not try too much to dishonour her memory. the hay wain (_constable_) c.l. burns a little strip of country on the borders of essex and suffolk, not ten miles in length, and but two or three in breadth, presenting to the casual observer few features more striking than are to be seen in many other parts of england, but hailed with delight by painters for its simple charm, has exercised a wider influence upon modern landscape painting than all the noble scenery of switzerland or the glories of italy; for here was nurtured that last and greatest master of that school of english landscape painting, which made the eastern counties famous in the annals of art. he was so essentially english, it might be said local, in his feeling, that he never left his country, and produced his greatest works within the narrow limits of his native valley; in whom love of locality was indeed the very basis of his art. [illustration: the hay wain.] constable, for it was he, like rembrandt, was the son of a miller, and was born at a time when the winds and flowing waters were powers in the land, bearing a golden harvest on their health-giving and invisible currents, turning sails upon countless hill-tops, and wheels in every river--before the supplanter, steam, was even dreamed of. his earliest recollections were mingled with the busy clatter of wheels, and the whirr of sails, as they sped round before the wind, was the music of his boyhood. his father, good man of the world as he was, holding a high opinion of the solid comforts gained by following his own profitable calling, placed his son, at the age of seventeen, in charge of a windmill, hoping thereby to curb his rising enthusiasm for the more glorious but less substantial pursuit of art. alas! how little can we predict the effect of our actions. this one, framed to divert his purpose in life, was the very means of leading him to study more closely the ever-varying beauties of the sky, with its matchless combinations of form and colour, and all the subtle differences of atmosphere, which in after-life formed a distinctive feature in his work; and, for a landscape-painter, perhaps no early training could have been better. his daily occupation by bringing him continually face to face with nature, and necessitating a constant observance of all her changing phenomena, trained his heart and eye to discover her secrets, hidden from the careless, but revealed to all true lovers of her wisdom. the effect upon a temperament so artistic as constable's was as permanent as it was quickly apparent. in less than a year we find his father reluctantly converted to his son's views in the choice of a career, and consenting to his sojourn in london, to learn the principles and technicalities of his profession, which he soon strove to forget and subsequently set at defiance. two years of studio work was sufficient to convince him that his school was the open air; and in his own country, amid the scenes of his boyhood, he could shake off the chains of fashion, which bound the landscape-painter of that day, and go straight to nature for his inspiration. concerning this he writes: "for the last two years i have been running after pictures, and seeing truth at second-hand. i have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which i set out, but have rather tried to make my performances look like the work of other men; i shall return to bergholt, where i shall get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes which may employ me--there is room for a _natural_ painter;" a prediction which was hardly fulfilled in his lifetime, for, with the majority of even intelligent lovers of art, his works were rarely understood and never popular, though the appreciative sympathy of an enlightened few kept him from despair. but, appreciated or not, he had found his life's work, and henceforth his mission was to depict the scenes around his old home, and to express the love he felt so keenly for "every stile and stump, and every lane in dear bergholt." "painting," he writes, "is with me but another word for feeling, and i associate my careless boyhood with all that lies on the banks of the stour--those scenes made me a painter, and i am grateful." how lovingly he repaid this debt of gratitude to his native valley will be seen by the tender care he bestowed in depicting its beauties; indeed, the strongest impression produced after visiting constable's country and again turning to a study of his works, is the marvellous sense of locality he has embodied in them. you seem to breathe the very air of suffolk and hear again the "sound of water escaping from mill-dams," and see once more "the willows, the old rotten planks, the slimy posts, and brickwork," he delighted in. in spite of the fifty years which have elapsed since he laid aside his brush for ever, with all the accidents of time and season, the subjects he painted are still to be easily found, and clearly distinguished by anyone at all acquainted with his works. the only exception is in the original of the famous _cornfield_, now in the national gallery. here the enemy has been busy, and by the aid of his children growth and decay, has succeeded in transforming the subject out of all recognition, tearing down the trees on the left, enlarging the group on the right, shutting out the view of stratford church, and choking up the brook from which the boy is drinking. nor has time been idle with this same boy, who six years ago, was carried to his last resting-place in bergholt churchyard, aged sixty-five.... it is not, however, in bergholt village that we must seek for the scenes which made constable a painter, but down in the quiet hollow a mile and a half to the eastward on the banks of his much-loved stour, and around the paternal mill of flatford, not improved as is the one at dedham into hideousness, but remaining much as it was in the artist's day. both mills were the property of golding constable, witnessed thereto in the latter, the initials g.c., carved in irregular characters deep in the huge mill scales, still legible beneath the dust of a century, as enduring almost as the memory of his gifted son. a low uneven structure is flatford mill, with many gables and queer outbuildings; standing on an island, the millhouse backing the main stream and facing a pool formed by the mill-tail, which, flowing through the mill, rejoins the main stream a hundred yards below. to this spot came constable many a hundred times, we may be sure, fishing in the stream, or sketching with his close ally, john dunthorne, the village plumber, and a lover of nature; their performances with the brush doubtless puzzling old willy lott--whose farmhouse occupies the opposite side of the pool; but though his judgment might not have been so technically sound upon art matters as upon the merits of those hornless suffolk cattle, said to have been unconsciously introduced by constable into pictures painted in far distant countries, yet his criticisms would have been worth hearing by virtue of their originality. willy cared but little for the outer world and its mode of thinking, any curiosity he may have ever had concerning it being amply satisfied by the experiences of four nights, separated by long intervals, spent away from his ancestral roof in four-score years. that this house of his possessed a peculiar fascination for constable is evident from its forming an important feature in two of his best known works, the _hay wain_ and the _valley farm_, besides appearing in numerous sketches. every foot of ground round the old mill seems to have imparted a yearning in him to paint it. the lock in the main stream, with its tide of life passing through, busier then than in these days of railways; the bridge above, with the picturesque cottages still standing, all were lingered over, studied, and painted with an affection inspired by the recollection of those golden hours of his boyhood. here, doubtless, was the scene of those stolen interviews with his future wife, following the ecclesiastical ban placed on his suit by the lady's grandfather, dr. rhudde, the rector, whose belief in the preordination of marriage was tempered in this case by a wise discretion on the subject of settlements. to the young painter's inability to satisfy this scruple may be attributed the doctor's discouragement of any practical application of the theory. the marriage duly took place despite the old gentleman, who, although not apparently reconciled during the remainder of his life, pleasantly surprised the young couple by leaving his granddaughter four thousand pounds when he died. the mill-tail is used as a thoroughfare, up which the hay is carted, from the meadows on the opposite bank of the river, a shallow and stony bedded back-water meeting it at its junction with the main stream. down this back-water in july the heavy cart-horses drag the sweet-scented haywains knee deep and axle deep in water, leaving feathery wisps of hay hanging from the willows, and clinging to the tall rushes upon either hand, the waggoner bravely astride the leader, while haymakers and children are seated on top of the load, not a little nervous in mid-stream, and clinging tightly when the horses are struggling up the deep ascent into the stack-yard. a contrast, indeed, is the bustle of the hay-making with the splash of the teams and the merry voices of the children to the solitude which reigns supreme in this silent, currentless backwater during the rest of the year. winding between the long flat meadows away from the traffic of the river it becomes in early summer a veritable museum of aquatic plants: lilies choke its passage, and the ancient gates, giving access to the adjoining fields, lie lost in creamy meadow-sweet, their sodden and decaying posts wreathed in sweet forget-me-nots, while sword-like rushes rear their points till they part the grey-green willow leaves above. the silence would become oppressive were it not for an indistinct murmur from the working world, which forms a fitful background to the prevailing stillness; the distant roar of a train as it rushes on its journey to the palpitating heart of london, the faint sound of a mowing machine in the meadows, or the crack of a whip up the tow-path as a barge moves up to the primitive lock, add a touch of human interest without disturbing the sense of restfulness from the eager hurry of nineteenth century existence.... constable's country may be said to extend along the stour valley, anywhere within walking distance of his home, neyland, stoke, langham, stratford, and in the opposite direction, harwich, all having furnished material for his fruitful pencil. but, despite much admirable work done in each of these places, it was to the few acres of river and meadow round the old mill at flatford that he owed his first awakening to the wonders of nature around him. to these, his first and truest masters, his memory was ever turning for inspiration; and during the life-long battle he waged with all that was untrue, he was certain of finding there encouragement to victory and solace in disappointment. _magazine of art_ ( ). the surrender of breda (_velasquez_) thÉophile gautier _the surrender of breda_, better known under the name of _las lanzas_, mingles in the most exact proportion realism and grandeur. truth pushed to the point of portraiture does not diminish in the slightest degree the dignity of the historical style. a vast and spacious sky full of light and vapour, richly laid in with pure ultramarine, mingles its azure with the blue distances of an immense landscape where sheets of water gleam with silver. here and there incendiary smoke ascends from the ground in fantastic wreaths and joins the clouds of the sky. in the foreground on each side, a numerous group is massed: here the flemish troops, there the spanish troops, leaving for the interview between the vanquished and victorious generals an open space which velasquez has made a luminous opening with a glimpse of the distance where the glitter of the regiments and standards is indicated by a few masterly touches. the marquis of spinola, bareheaded with hat and staff of command in hand, in his black armour damascened with gold, welcomes with a chivalrous courtesy that is affable and almost affectionate, as is customary between enemies who are generous and worthy of mutual esteem, the governor of breda, who is bowing and offering him the keys of the city in an attitude of noble humiliation. flags quartered with white and blue, their folds agitated by the wind, break in the happiest manner the straight lines of the lances held upright by the spaniards. the horse of the marquis, represented almost foreshortened from the rear and with its head turned, is a skilful invention to tone down military symmetry, so unfavourable to painting. it would not be easy to convey in words the chivalric pride and the spanish grandeur which distinguish the heads of the officers forming the general's staff. they express the calm joy of triumph, tranquil pride of race, and familiarity with great events. these personages would have no need to bring proofs for their admittance into the orders of santiago and calatrava. their bearing would admit them, so unmistakably are they hidalgos. their long hair, their turned-up moustaches, their pointed beards, their steel gorgets, their corselets or their buff doublets render them in advance ancestral portraits to hang up, with their arms blazoned on the corner of the canvas, in the galleries of old castles. no one has known so well as velasquez how to paint the gentleman with such superb familiarity, and, so to speak, as equal to equal. he is by no means a poor, embarrassed artist who only sees his models while they are posing and has never lived with them. he follows them in the privacy of the royal apartments, on great hunting-parties, and in ceremonies of pomp. he knows their bearing, their gestures, their attitudes, and their physiognomy; he himself is one of the king's favourites (_privados del rey_). like themselves, and even more than they, he has _les grandes et les petites entrées_.[ ] the nobility of spain having velasquez for a portrait-painter could not say, like the lion of the fable: "ah! if the lions only knew how to paint." [illustration: the surrender of breda. _velasquez_.] velasquez takes his place naturally between titian and van dyck as a painter of portraits. his colour is solidly and profoundly harmonious, without any false luxury and with no need of glitter. his magnificence is that of ancient hereditary fortunes. it has tranquillity, equality, and intimacy. we find no violent reds, greens, nor blues, no upstart glitter, no brilliant gew-gaws. all is restrained and subdued, but with a warm tone like that of old gold, or with a grey tone like the dead sheen of family silver. gaudy and loud things will do for upstarts, but don diego velasquez de silva is too true a gentleman to make himself an object of remark in that manner, and, let us say, too good a painter also. although a realist, he brings to his art a lofty grandeur, a disdain of useless detail, and an intentional sacrifice that plainly reveal the sovereign master. these sacrifices were not always those that another painter would have made. velasquez chose to put in evidence what, it sometimes seems, should have been left in shadow. he extinguishes and he illuminates with apparent caprice, but the effect always justifies him. the correctness of his eye was such that while he only pretended to be copying, he brought the soul to the surface and painted the inner and the outer man at the same time. his portraits relate the secret _mémoires_ of the spanish court better than all the chroniclers. let him represent them in gala dress, riding their genets, in hunting-costume, an arquebuse in their hand, a greyhound at their feet, and we recognize in these wan figures of kings, queens, and infantas, with pale faces, red lips, and massive chins the degeneracy of charles v. and the falling away of exhausted dynasties. although a court-painter, he has not flattered his royal models. however, despite the brainlessness of the type, the quality of these high personages would never be doubted. it is not that he did not know how to paint genius; the portrait of the count-duke of olivares, so noble, so imperious, and so full of authority, unanswerably proves that, unable to lend any fire to these sad lords, he gives them a cold majesty, a wearied dignity, a gesture and pose of etiquette, and then envelops all with his magnificent colour; that was full payment for the protection of his crowned friend. m. paul de saint-victor has somewhere called victor hugo "the spanish grandee of poetry;" may we not be permitted to call velasquez "the spanish grandee of painting"? no qualification would suit him better. as we have said, velasquez was court chamberlain, and it was he who was charged with the preparation of the lodgings of the king in the trip that philip iv. made to irun to deliver the infanta doña maria-teresa to the king of france. it was he who had decorated and ornamented the pavilion where the interview of the two kings took place in the Île des faisans. velasquez was distinguished among the crowd of courtiers by his personal dignity, the elegance, the richness, and the good taste of his costumes on which he arranged with art the diamonds and jewels,--gifts of the sovereigns; but on his return to madrid, he fell ill with fatigue and died on the th of august, . his widow, doña juana pacheco, only survived him seven days and was interred near him in the parish of san juan. the funeral of velasquez was splendid; great personages, knights of the military orders, the king's household, and the artists were present sad and pensive, as if they felt that with velasquez they were interring spanish art. _guide de l'amateur au musée du louvre_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] private audiences of the king. the immaculate conception (_murillo_) aimÉ giron after her , battles with the moors and the conquest of granada, spain had a splendid outburst of literary and artistic glory. in painting, the four schools of valencia, toledo, madrid, and seville suddenly shone forth with that conception of the real and that care for sharp relief which they owed to the brilliancy of their sunshine, while amid the fogs of the north the outline is more wavering and the vision less clear. under the influence of this original realism, their works instinctively reproduced that two-fold character which the land of spain, smiling in her valleys and savage in her mountains, shows in sharp contrast. but the spaniards are, in truth, much more realistic in their execution than in their inspiration. the school of seville, founded by luis de vargas, counted among its illustrious masters the greatest painter of that sunlit and passionate andalusia, murillo (bartolomé-estéban), - , spain's most popular painter, "the painter of the conceptions," as she called him. [illustration: the immaculate conception. _murillo_.] his uncle, juan del castillo, a mediocre artist but a good teacher, initiated him into his dry, stiff, and hard manner,--that of the old florentine school. in his studio young estéban murillo had young pedro de moya as a fellow-student. one day the former took a fancy to go to cadiz, where, miserable enough, he painted on pieces of serge some madonnas for traffic in the west indies, while the latter went to london to work in van dyck's studio. on his return pedro de moya brought several studies of the flemish master, and murillo, suddenly revolutionized and suddenly illuminated, no longer dreamed of anything but of going to flanders or italy, passing--happily--through madrid. in madrid, the velasquez of the court of charles ii. stopped him on the way, gave him admission to the royal collections, where he copied titian, veronese, and rubens, and then opened his purse to him, and, lastly, revealed the secrets of his mighty art. thus taught and thus inspired, murillo returned to seville, where he settled once for all, immuring himself in his studio, where--modest, timid, and gentle--he lived with that single love for his art which soon enriched him, two years later adding to it the adoration of his wife, a noble lady of pilas. it was from this studio that almost all of his laborious, numerous, and superb works issued, sometimes scarcely signed. from the very beginning, murillo possessed all the qualities of a great master, and henceforth we have only to separate his own personality and originality. murillo had three periods, as he also had three styles according to the nature of the subjects he had to treat: the first period, under the influence of the florentine formulas of juan del castillo, was somewhat that of happy and masterly imitations; the second, under the memories of van dyck, brought back by pedro de moya and of the copies painted at madrid, belongs to the flemish school. but, at thirty-five, in full possession of his genius, he reveals _himself_, with his superb colouring, his consummate ease, his great science, his rich and inexhaustible imagination, his exquisite and tender sentiment, and his harmony, often produced with feminine delicacy and childish grace, with his vigour, his trivialities, and his mysticism. the genius of murillo, in fact, obeyed a double current, which carried him forward, on the one hand towards the sky, and on the other towards the earth, towards the catholic ideal or towards vulgar realities, gentle madonnas alternately with knavish beggars. very sincerely and observantly religious, with the contemplative soul of the land of great men and great mysteries, saint john of the cross and saint theresa, this chaste artist, who never painted a nude woman, has the exalted sentiment of faith of the spanish artists, a sentiment which is somewhat ennobled by their realism of nature. "why don't you finish that christ?" asked one of his friends. "i am waiting until he comes to speak to me," replied murillo. with these works he enriched the chapter-house of the seville cathedral, the hospital de la caridad, that of the hospital de los venerables, the convents of the capuchins, the augustines, etc. i have said that murillo had three styles, almost three pencils, not like the pencils of gold, of silver, and of iron that the venetians attributed to the unequal genius of tintoret, but in sympathy with the subjects he had to treat. the spaniards have distinguished and qualified these styles as follows: _frio, calido y vaporoso_, cold, warm, and vaporous. in the cold style he painted broadly, boldly, and frankly his beggars and his _muchachos_, so true to life and in strong relief, with a certain brutality almost approaching triviality. a very well-known work of this kind is the _pouilleux_ in the museum of the louvre, and a masterpiece in the pinacothek of munich, the grandmother and infant. he sought these types in some old moorish dwelling, on the deck of a ship from tunis or tripoli anchored in a spanish harbour, or in among a band of wandering _gitanos_ on the banks of the guadalquivir. in the vaporous manner, which he used in rendering the ecstasies of the saints, he painted (under indescribable transparencies of light and atmospheric shade which is really only extinguished light), _saint francis in ecstasy_, _the angel kitchen_ (miracle of san diego) running through several scales of tones in a marvellous chord and softening all the outlines "dulcemente perdidos," as céan bermudez says. in his warm style, come his _annunciations_, _conceptions_, and all those gentle and graceful madonnas, sweet and poetic young mothers rather than divine virgins "whom jews might kiss and infidels adore," as pope says, and which remind us of correggio's effeminacy, unknown to murillo, and in which he plays with ease with harmonies, contrasts, and reflections of colour. _the immaculate conception_, in the national museum of the louvre, is of this style. certainly it is not more beautiful than the _conception_ in madrid, of such extraordinary brilliance, and of such a virginal expression of innocence, piety, and melancholy; and above all not more beautiful than that of seville--_the great conception_, or the _pearl of conceptions_, making the virgin mother's face into a beautiful and intense face of an archangel. that had its day of resounding triumph. every one knows that marshal soult accepted this work in spain for the pardon of two monks condemned to be hanged as spies. on the th of may, , this canvas was sold at auction. around it the greatest nations were represented with their rival gold, and loud applause accompanied each royal bid. when, for the sum of , francs, it was knocked down--"to france, gentlemen!" cried the count de nieuwerkerke--then broke forth the delirium of a battle won. in a diaphanous atmosphere gilded with an invisible clearness as of paradise, the winged heads and bodies of little angels are moving: the former gracefully grouped, the latter boldly and skilfully disposed. the celestial infants have followed all the way to the earth the rays of celestial light in its elusive gradations of colour under its imperceptible glazing. in the centre, in the act of ascent, the virgin rises in ecstasy. one corner of a cloud, the crescent moon, and a masterly group of little angels, naked and enraptured, bear the immaculate aloft. gracefully and statuesquely posed, and broadly draped in a white robe with sober folds enriched by an ample scarf of light blue, she modestly hides her feet under the drapery and chastely crosses her hands over the breast in which she feels the conception of the son of god operating. her head under its dishevelled waves of black hair, a little turned back and bending slightly to one side, is raised to heaven with uplifted eyes and open mouth, as if to receive in every sense the flow of the spirit. the face, in the exquisite sweetness of a surrender to piety, reflects the bliss of faith, of mystical voluptuousness, and divine ecstasy. the expression is religious, but the virgin is human, and full of life in the firmness of her lines and the warmth of her flesh-tints. beneath the suppleness of the drawing and the soft touches we recognize in mary the immaculate, the woman and even the andalusian. the whole work is a most harmonious and well-balanced composition, of the greatest opulence of colour, solidly laid in, and here and there lightly glazed over in the venetian manner; a superb work this, in which murillo has found the right point where his idealism and his materialism meet and mingle. if i remember rightly, we know one hundred and thirty canvases of murillo, to any one of which our admiration hesitates to award the pre-eminence,--and if the crown of laurels which a pope laid upon the funeral couch of raphael is the consecration of the sovereignty of the painter of urbino for history, the universally popular name of murillo has also sanctified the incontestable genius of the painter of seville. jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre: peinture, sculpture architecture_ (paris, - ). st. francis before the soldan (_giotto_) john ruskin it is a characteristic--(as far as i know, quite a universal one)--of the great masters, that they never expect you to look at them;--seem always rather surprised if you want to; and not overpleased. tell them you are going to hang their picture at the upper end of the table at the next great city dinner, and that mr. so-and-so will make a speech about it;--you produce no impression upon them whatever, or an unfavourable one. the chances are ten to one they send you the most rubbishy thing they can find in their lumber-room. but send for one of them in a hurry, and tell him the rats have gnawed a nasty hole behind the parlour door, and you want it plastered and painted over;--and he does you a masterpiece which the world will peep behind your door to look at for ever. i have no time to tell you why this is so; nor do i know why, altogether, but so it is. giotto, then, is sent for, to paint this high chapel: i am not sure if he chose his own subjects from the life of st. francis: i think so,--but of course can't reason on the guess securely. at all events, he would have much of his own way in the matter. [illustration: st. francis before the soldan. _giotto._] now you must observe that painting a gothic chapel rightly is just the same thing as painting a greek vase rightly. the chapel is merely the vase turned upside-down, and outside-in. the principles of decoration are exactly the same. your decoration is to be proportioned to the size of your vase; to be together delightful when you look at the cup, or chapel, as a whole; to be various and entertaining when you turn the cup round; (you turn _yourself_ round in the chapel;) and to bend its heads and necks of figures about, as best it can, over the hollows, and ins and outs, so that anyhow, whether too long or too short--possible or impossible--they may be living, and full of grace. you will also please take it on my word to-day--in another morning walk you shall have proof of it--that giotto was a pure etruscan-greek of the thirteenth century: converted indeed to worship st. francis instead of heracles; but as far as vase-painting goes, precisely the etruscan he was before. this is nothing else than a large, beautiful, coloured etruscan vase you have got, inverted over your heads like a diving-bell. the roof has the symbols of the three virtues of labour--poverty, chastity, obedience. a. highest on the left side, looking to the window. the life of st. francis begins in his renunciation of the world. b. highest on the right side. his new life is approved and ordained by the authority of the church. c. central on the left side. he preaches to his own disciples. d. central on the right side. he preaches to the heathen. e. lowest on the left side. his burial. f. lowest on the right side. his power after death. besides these six subjects, there are, on the sides of the window, the four great franciscan saints, st. louis of france, st. louis of toulouse, st. clare, and st. elizabeth of hungary. the soldan, with an ordinary opera-glass, you may see clearly enough; and i think it will be first well to notice some technical points in it. if the little virgin on the stairs of the temple reminded you of one composition of titian's, this soldan should, i think, remind you of all that is greatest in titian; so forcibly, indeed, that for my own part, if i had been told that a careful early fresco by titian had been recovered in santa croce, i could have believed both report and my own eyes, more quickly than i have been able to admit that this is indeed by giotto. it is so great that--had its principles been understood--there was in reality nothing more to be taught of art in italy; nothing to be invented afterwards except dutch effects of light. that there is "no effect of light" here arrived at, i beg you at once to observe as a most important lesson. the subject is st. francis challenging the soldan's magi,--fire-worshippers--to pass with him through the fire, which is blazing red at his feet. it is so hot that the two magi on the other side of the throne shield their faces. but it is represented simply as a red mass of writhing forms of flame; and casts no firelight whatever. there is no ruling colour on anybody's nose; there are no black shadows under anybody's chin; there are no rembrandtesque gradations of gloom, or glitterings of sword-hilt and armour. is this ignorance, think you, in giotto, and pure artlessness? he was now a man in middle life, having passed all his days in painting, and professedly, and almost contentiously, painting things as he saw them. do you suppose he never saw fire cast firelight?--and he the friend of dante! who of all poets is the most subtle in his sense of every kind of effect of light--though he has been thought by the public to know that of fire only. again and again, his ghosts wonder that there is no shadow cast by dante's body; and is the poet's friend _because_ a painter, likely, therefore, not to have known that mortal substance casts shadow, and terrestrial flame, light? nay, the passage in the _purgatorio_ where the shadows from the morning sunshine make the flames redder, reaches the accuracy of newtonian science, and does giotto, think you, all the while, see nothing of the sort? the fact was, he saw light so intensely that he never for an instant thought of painting it. he knew that to paint the sun was as impossible as to stop it; and he was no trickster, trying to find out ways of seeming to do what he did not. i can paint a rose,--yes; and i will. i can't paint a red-hot coal; and i won't try to, nor seem to. this was just as natural and certain a process of thinking with _him_, as the honesty of it, and true science, were impossible to the false painters of the sixteenth century. nevertheless, what his art can honestly do to make you feel as much as he wants you to feel, about this fire, he will do; and that studiously. that the fire be _luminous_ or not, is no matter just now. but that the fire is _hot_, he would have you to know. now, will you notice what colours he has used in the whole picture. first, the blue background, necessary to unite it with the other three subjects, is reduced to the smallest possible space. st. francis must be in grey, for that is his dress; also the attendant of one of the magi is in grey; but so warm, that, if you saw it by itself, you would call it brown. the shadow behind the throne, which giotto knows he _can_ paint, and therefore does, is grey also. the rest of the picture[ ] in at least six-sevenths of its area--is either crimson, gold, orange, purple, or white, all as warm as giotto could paint them; and set off by minute spaces only of intense black,--the soldan's fillet at the shoulders, his eyes, beard, and the points necessary in the golden pattern behind. and the whole picture is one glow. a single glance round at the other subjects will convince you of the special character in this; but you will recognize also that the four upper subjects in which st. francis's life and zeal are shown, are all in comparatively warm colours, while the two lower ones--of the death, and the visions after it--have been kept as definitely sad and cold. necessarily, you might think, being full of monks' dresses. not so. was there any need for giotto to have put the priest at the foot of the dead body, with the black banner stooped over it in the shape of a grave? might he not, had he chosen, in either fresco, have made the celestial visions brighter? might not st. francis have appeared in the centre of a celestial glory to the dreaming pope, or his soul been seen of the poor monk, rising through more radiant clouds? look, however, how radiant, in the small space allowed out of the blue, they are in reality. you cannot anywhere see a lovelier piece of giottesque colour, though here you have to mourn over the smallness of the piece, and its isolation. for the face of st. francis himself is repainted, and all the blue sky; but the clouds and four sustaining angels are hardly retouched at all, and their iridescent and exquisitely graceful wings are left with really very tender and delicate care by the restorer of the sky. and no one but giotto or turner could have painted them. for in all his use of opalescent and warm colour, giotto is exactly like turner, as, in his swift expressional power, he is like gainsborough. all the other italian religious painters work out their expression with toil; he only can give it with a touch. all the other great italian colourists see only the beauty of colour, but giotto also its brightness. and none of the others, except tintoret, understood to the full its symbolic power; but with those--giotto and tintoret--there is always, not only a colour harmony, but a colour secret. it is not merely to make the picture glow, but to remind you that st. francis preaches to a fire-worshipping king, that giotto covers the wall with purple and scarlet;--and above, in the dispute at assisi, the angry father is dressed in red, varying like passion; and the robe with which his protector embraces st. francis, blue, symbolizing the peace of heaven. of course certain conventional colours were traditionally employed by all painters; but only giotto and tintoret invent a symbolism of their own for every picture. thus in tintoret's picture of the fall of the manna, the figure of god the father is entirely robed in white, contrary to all received custom; in that of moses striking the rock, it is surrounded by a rainbow. of giotto's symbolism in colour at assisi i have given account elsewhere.[ ] you are not to think, therefore, the difference between the colour of the upper and lower frescos unintentional. the life of st. francis was always full of joy and triumph. his death, in great suffering, weariness, and extreme humility. the tradition of him reverses that of elijah: living, he is seen in the chariot of fire; dying, he submits to more than the common sorrow of death. there is, however, much more than a difference in colour between the upper and lower frescos. there is a difference in manner which i cannot account for; and above all, a very singular difference in skill,--indicating, it seems to me, that the two lower were done long before the others, and afterwards united and harmonized with them. it is of no interest to the general reader to pursue this question; but one point he can notice quickly, that the lower frescos depend much on a mere black or brown outline of the features, while the faces above are evenly and completely painted in the most accomplished venetian manner:--and another, respecting the management of the draperies, contains much interest for us. giotto never succeeded, to the very end of his days, in representing a figure lying down, and at ease. it is one of the most curious points in all his character. just the thing which he could study from nature without the smallest hindrance, is the thing he never can paint; while subtleties of form and gesture, which depend absolutely on their momentariness, and actions in which no model can stay for an instant he seizes with infallible accuracy. not only has the sleeping pope, in the right hand lower fresco, his head laid uncomfortably on his pillow, but all the clothes on him are in awkward angles, even giotto's instinct for lines of drapery failing him altogether when he has to lay it on a reposing figure. but look at the folds of the soldan's robe over his knees. none could be more beautiful or right; and it is to me wholly inconceivable that the two paintings should be within even twenty years of each other in date--the skill in the upper one is so supremely greater. we shall find, however, more than mere truth in its casts of drapery, if we examine them. they are so simply right, in the figure of the soldan, that we do not think of them;--we see him only, not his dress. but we see dress first, in the figures of the discomfited magi. very fully draped personages these, indeed,--with trains, it appears four yards long, and bearers of them. the one nearest the soldan has done his devoir as bravely as he could; would fain go up to the fire, but cannot; is forced to shield his face, though he has not turned back. giotto gives him full sweeping breadth of fold; what dignity he can;--a man faithful to his profession, at all events. the next one has no such courage. collapsed altogether, he has nothing more to say for himself or his creed. giotto hangs the cloak upon him in ghirlandajo's fashion, as from a peg, but with ludicrous narrowness of fold. literally, he is a "shut-up" magus--closed like a fan. he turns his head away, hopelessly. and the last magus shows nothing but his back, disappearing through the door. opposed to them, in a modern work, you would have had a st. francis standing as high as he could in his sandals, contemptuous, denunciatory; magnificently showing the magi the door. no such thing, says giotto. a somewhat mean man; disappointing even in presence--even in feature; i do not understand his gesture, pointing to his forehead--perhaps meaning, "my life, or my head, upon the truth of this." the attendant monk behind him is terror-struck; but will follow his master. the dark moorish servants of the magi show no emotion--will arrange their masters' trains as usual, and decorously sustain their retreat. lastly, for the soldan himself. in a modern work, you would assuredly have had him staring at st. francis with his eyebrows up, or frowning thunderously at the magi, with them bent as far down as they would go. neither of these aspects does he bear according to giotto. a perfect gentleman and king, he looks on his magi with quiet eyes of decision; he is much the noblest person in the room--though an infidel, the true hero of the scene, far more so than st. francis. it is evidently the soldan whom giotto wants you to think of mainly, in this picture of christian missionary work. he does not altogether take the view of the heathen which you would get in an exeter hall meeting. does not expatiate on their ignorance, their blackness, or their nakedness. does not at all think of the florentine islington and pentonville, as inhabited by persons in every respect superior to the kings of the east; nor does he imagine every other religion but his own to be log-worship. probably the people who really worship logs--whether in persia or pentonville--will be left to worship logs to their hearts' content, thinks giotto. but to those who worship _god_, and who have obeyed the laws of heaven written in their hearts, and numbered the stars of it visible to them,--to these, a nearer star may rise; and a higher god be revealed. you are to note, therefore, that giotto's soldan is the type of all noblest religion and law, in countries where the name of christ has not been preached. there was no doubt what king or people should be chosen: the country of the three magi had already been indicated by the miracle of bethlehem; and the religion and morality of zoroaster were the purest, and in spirit the oldest, in the heathen world. therefore, when dante in the nineteenth and twentieth books of the paradise, gives his final interpretation of the law of human and divine justice in relation to the gospel of christ--the lower and enslaved body of the heathen being represented by st. philip's convert ("christians like these the ethiop shall condemn")--the noblest state of heathenism is at once chosen, as by giotto: "what may the _persians_ say unto _your_ kings?" compare also milton,-- "at the soldan's chair, defied the best of paynim chivalry." _mornings in florence_ (sunnyside, orpington, kent, ). footnotes: [ ] the floor has been repainted; but though its grey is now heavy and cold, it cannot kill the splendour of the rest. [ ] _fors clavigera_ for september, . lilith (_rossetti_) algernon charles swinburne "of adam's first wife, lilith, it is told (the witch he loved before the gift of eve), that, ere the snake's her sweet tongue could deceive, and her enchanted hair was the first gold. and still she sits, young while the earth is old, and, subtly by herself contemplative, draws men to watch the bright net she can weave, till heart and body and life are in its hold. "the rose and poppy are her flowers; for where is he not found, o lilith, whom shed scent and soft-shed kisses and soft-shed sleep shall snare? lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent and round his heart one strangling golden hair." _dante gabriel rossetti._ it is well-known that the painter of whom i now propose to speak has never suffered exclusion or acceptance at the hand of any academy. to such acceptance or such rejection all other men of any note have been and may be liable. it is not less well known that his work must always hold its place as second in significance and value to no work done by any painter of his time. among the many great works of mr. d.g. rossetti, i know of none greater than his two latest. these are types of sensual beauty and spiritual, the siren and the sibyl. the one is a woman of the type of adam's first wife; she is a living lilith with ample splendour of redundant hair; "she excels all women in the magic of her locks; and when she winds them round a young man's neck she will not ever set him free again." [illustration: lilith. _rossetti_.] clothed in soft white garments, she draws out through a comb the heavy mass of hair like thick spun gold to fullest length; her head leans back half sleepily, superb and satiate with its own beauty; the eyes are languid, without love in them or hate; the sweet luxurious mouth has the patience of pleasure fulfilled and complete, the warm repose of passion sure of its delight. outside, as seen in the glimmering mirror, there is full summer; the deep and glowing leaves have drunk in the whole strength of the sun. the sleepy splendour of the picture is a fit raiment for the idea incarnate of faultless fleshly beauty and peril of pleasure unavoidable. for this serene and sublime sorceress there is no life but of the body; with spirit (if spirit there be) she can dispense. were it worth her while for any word to divide those terrible tender lips, she too might say with the hero of the most perfect and exquisite book of modern times--_mademoiselle de maupin--"je trouve la terre aussi belle que le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est la vertu."_ of evil desire or evil impulse she has nothing; and nothing of good. she is indifferent, equable, magnetic; she charms and draws down the souls of men by pure force of absorption, in no wise wilful or malignant; outside herself she cannot live, she cannot even see: and because of this she attracts and subdues all men at once in body and in spirit. beyond the mirror she cares not to look, and could not. _"ma mia suora rahel mai non si smaga, dal suo miraglio, e siede tutto 'l giorno."_ so, rapt in no spiritual contemplation, she will sit to all time, passive and perfect: the outer light of a sweet spring day flooding and filling the massive gold of her hair. by the reflection in a deep mirror of fervent foliage from without, the chief chord of stronger colour is touched in this picture; next in brilliance and force of relief is the heap of curling and tumbling hair on which the sunshine strikes; the face and head of the siren are withdrawn from the full stroke of the light. _essays and studies_ (london, ). adoration of the magi (_dÜrer_) moriz thausing italy, that beautiful enchantress, whose irresistible charms have caused many of germany's greatest men to forget their native land, and array themselves beneath her colours, did not fail to exercise over dürer, in the course of the year and more that he spent beyond the alps, that subtle influence which elevates the understanding and expands the mind. he thought, as did goethe after him, with a sort of shudder, of his return to cloudy skies, and of the less easy nature of the life which awaited him at home. but, though he enjoyed himself very much at venice, and gave in willingly in many external things to the prevailing taste there, the essential nature of his art remained untouched by foreign influences, and he returned to nuremberg unitalianized, and true to his original principles. the fame which his works enjoyed in italy only encouraged him to continue in the path he had already chosen. perhaps the exuberance of life displayed in venetian painting inspired him, even under the altered circumstances of his home life, with the determination to devote all his energies to large easel pictures. to the _adoration of the magi_ in , and the _feast of the rosary_ in , succeeded the _adam and eve_ in , the _martyrdom of the ten thousand saints_ in , the _assumption of the virgin_ in , and the all saints picture or _adoration of the trinity_ of . dürer was at the height of his power when he created these masterpieces, small, indeed, in number, but remarkable for their conception, composition, and entire execution by his own hand. to complete a large picture to his satisfaction, dürer required the same time as schiller did for a tragedy, viz., a whole year.... it was in the year that dürer finished the first great picture, which, from its excellent state of preservation, must have been entirely executed with the greatest care by his own hand, even to the most minute detail. this picture is the _adoration of the magi_, now in the tribune of the uffizi at florence. mary sits on the left, looking like the happiest of german mothers, with the enchantingly naïve infant on her knees; the three wise men from the east, in magnificent dresses glittering with gold, approach, deeply moved, and with various emotions depicted on their countenances, while the whole creation around seems to share their joyous greeting, even to the flowers and herbs, and to the great stag-beetle and two white butterflies, which are introduced after the manner of wolgemut. the sunny green on copse and mountain throws up the group better than the conventional nimbus could have done. the fair-haired virgin, draped entirely in blue with a white veil, recalls vividly the same figure in the paumgärtner altarpiece. aërial and linear perspective are still imperfect, but the technical treatment of the figures is as finished as in dürer's best pictures of the later period. the outlines are sharp, the colours very liquid, laid on without doubt in tempera, and covered with oil glazes; the whole tone exceedingly fresh, clear, and brilliant. if it was barbari's fine work which incited dürer to this delicate and careful method of execution, he has certainly far surpassed the venetian, not only in form and ideas, but also in the solidity of his technique. this technique is undoubtedly of northern origin, as is also the harmony of colour, which dürer here realizes, and does not soon again abandon. it must not be forgotten, however, that the difference between this technique and that practised by giovanni bellini is one of degree and not of principle; judging at least by the unfinished painting of giovanni's in the uffizi, in which the design is sketched either with the pencil or brush, and the colours then laid on in tempera, and afterwards repeatedly covered with oil glazes. dürer appears to have owed the opportunity of producing this his first masterpiece in painting to a commission from the elector frederick of saxony. christian ii. presented it to the emperor rudolph ii. in , and in the last century it was sent from the imperial gallery, in exchange for the _presentation in the temple_, by fra bartolomeo, to florence, where it now shines as a gem of german art amongst the renowned pictures in the tribune of the uffizi. [illustration: adoration of the magi. _dürer._] _the life and works of albert dürer_, translated from the german and edited by fred. a. eaton (london, ). marriage a-la-mode (_hogarth_) austin dobson nevertheless, if the main circumstances of the painter's career should still remain unaltered, there must always be a side of his work which will continue to need interpretation. in addition to painting the faults and follies of his time, he was pre-eminently the pictorial chronicler of its fashions and its furniture. the follies endure; but the fashions pass away. in our day--a day which has witnessed the demolition of northumberland house, the disappearance of temple bar, and the removal of we know not what other time-honoured and venerated landmarks--much in hogarth's plates must seem as obscure as the cartouches on cleopatra's needle. much more is speedily becoming so; and without some guidance the student will scarcely venture into that dark and doubtful rookery of tortuous streets and unnumbered houses--the london of the eighteenth century. [illustration: marriage a-la-mode. _hogarth._] were it not beyond the reasonable compass of a methodical memoir, it would be a pleasant task to loiter for a while in that vanished london of hogarth, of fielding, of garrick;--that london of rocque's famous map of , when "cits" had their country-boxes and "gazebos" at islington and hackney, and fine gentlemen their villas at _marybone_ and _chelsey_; when duels were fought in the "fields" behind the british museum, and there was a windmill at the bottom of rathbone place. we should find the thames swarming with noisy watermen, and the streets with thick-calved irish chairmen; we should see the old dusky oil-lamps lighted feebly with the oil that dribbled on the rake when he went to court; and the great creaking sign-boards that obscured the sky, and occasionally toppled on the heads of his majesty's lieges beneath. we should note the sluggish kennels and the ill-paved streets; and rejoice in the additional facilities afforded for foot-passengers at the "new buildings near _hanover_ square." we might watch king george ii. yawning in his chapel royal of st. james's, or follow queen caroline of anspach in her walk on constitution hill. or we might turn into the mall, which is filled on summer evenings with a _beau-monde_ of cinnamon-coloured coats and pink _négligés_. but the tour of covent garden (with its column and dial in the centre) would take at least a chapter, and the pilgrimage of leicester fields another. we should certainly assist at the lord mayor's show; and we might, like better folks before us, be hopelessly engulfed in that westward-faring crowd, which, after due warning from the belfry of st. sepulchre's, swept down the old tyburn road on "execution day" to see the last of laurence shirley, earl ferrers, or the highwayman james m'lean. it is well, perhaps, that our limits are definitely restricted. moreover, much that we could do imperfectly with the pen, hogarth has done imperishably with the graver. essentially metropolitan in his tastes, there is little notable in the london of his day of which he has not left us some pictorial idea. he has painted the green park, the mall, and rosamond's pond. he has shown us covent garden and st. james's street; cheapside and charing cross; tottenham-court road and hog-lane, st. giles. he has shown us bridewell, bedlam, and the fleet prison. through a window in one print we see the houses on old london bridge; in another it is temple bar, surmounted by the blackened and ghastly relics of jacobite traitors. he takes us to a cock-fight in bird cage walk, to a dissection in surgeons' hall. he gives us reception-rooms in arlington street, counting-houses in st. mary axe, sky-parlours in porridge island, and night-cellars in blood-bowl alley. he reproduces the decorations of the rose tavern or of the turk's head bagnio as scrupulously as the monsters at dr. misaubin's museum in st. martin's lane, or the cobweb over the poor-box in mary-le-bone old church. the pictures on the walls, the chinese nondescripts on the shelves, the tables and chairs, the pipes and punch-bowls, nay, the very tobacco and snuff, have all their distinctive physiognomy and prototypes. he gives us, unromanced and unidealized, "the form and pressure," the absolute details and accessories, the actual _mise-en-scène_, of the time in which he lived.[ ] but he has done much more than this. he has peopled his canvas with its _dramatis personæ_,--with vivid portraits of the more strongly-marked actors in that cynical and sensual, brave and boastful, corrupt and patriotic age. not, be it understood, with its wolfes and johnsons,--he was a humourist and a satirist, and goodness was no game for his pencil,--rather with its lovats and chartres, its sarah malcolms and its shebbeares. he was a moralist after the manner of eighteenth-century morality, not savage like swift, not ironical like fielding, not tender-hearted at times like johnson and goldsmith; but unrelenting, uncompromising, uncompassionate. he drew vice and its consequences in a thoroughly literal and business-like way, neither sparing nor extenuating its details, wholly insensible to its seductions, incapable of flattering it even for a moment, preoccupied simply with catching its precise contortion of pleasure or of pain. in all his delineations, as in that famous design of prud'hon's, we see justice and vengeance following hard upon the criminal.... a hint of the new series had already been given in the _battle of the pictures_, where the second scene, still inoffensively reposing upon the easel, is wantonly assaulted by a copy of the _aldobrandini marriage_. in april following the set of engravings was issued, the subscription ticket being the etching of heads known as _characters and caricaturas_. plates i. and vi. were engraved by scotin, plates ii. and iii. by baron, and plates iv. and v. by ravenet. exactly two years earlier, hogarth had heralded them by the following notification in the _london daily post, and general advertiser_ of april nd, : "mr. hogarth intends to publish by subscription, six prints from copper-plates, engrav'd by the best masters in paris, after his own paintings; representing a variety of _modern occurrences in high-life_, and called marriage a-la-mode. particular care will be taken, that there may not be the least objection to the decency or elegancy of the whole work, and that none of the characters represented shall be personal." then follow the terms of subscription. the last quoted lines are probably a bark at some forgotten detraction, and if not actually ironical, doubtless about as sincere as fielding's promise, in the prologue to his first comedy, not to offend the ladies. those who had found inelegancy and indecency in the previous productions of the painter, would still discover the same defects in the masterpiece he now submitted to the public. and although it may be said that the "characters" represented are not "personal" in a satirical sense, his precautions, as he himself tells us, "did not prevent a likeness being found for each head, for a general character will always bear some resemblance to a particular one." but what, no doubt, interested his critical contemporaries even more than these preliminary protestations, was the painter's promise to represent, in his new work, "a variety of modern occurrences in high-life." here, it may be admitted, was a proposition which certainly savoured of temerity. what could one whose pencil had scarcely travelled beyond the limits of st. giles's, know of the inner secrets of st. james's? a hervey or a beauclerk, or even a fielding, might have sufficed; but a hogarth of leicester fields, whose only pretence to distinction (as high life conceives it) was that he had run away with thornhill's handsome daughter,--what special title had he to depict that charmed region of cards and folly, ringed with its long-resounding knockers, and flambeau-carrying footmen! this was, however, to reckon without genius, which over-leaps loftier barriers than these. it is true that the english novel of manners, which has since stimulated so many artists, had only just made its appearance; and _pamela_ and _joseph andrews_ but falteringly foreshadowed _clarissa_ and _tom jones_. yet there is nothing in the story of _marriage a-la-mode_ which was beyond the powers of a _spectator ab extra_, always provided he were fairly acquainted with the modelys and wildairs of the stage, and the satires of johnson and pope. the plot, like that of all masterpieces, is extremely simple. an impoverished nobleman who marries his son to a rich citizen's daughter; a husband who, pursuing his own equivocal pleasures, resigns his wife to the temptations of opportunity; a foregone sequel and a tragic issue:--this material is of the oldest, and could make but slender claim to originality. submitted to colman or garrick as the _scenario_ of a play for yates and mrs. woffington, it would probably have been rejected as pitifully threadbare. yet combined and developed under the brush of hogarth, set in an atmosphere that makes it as vivid as nature itself, decorated with surprising fidelity, and enlivened by all the resources of the keenest humour, it passes out of the line of mere transcripts of life, and, retaining the merits of the specific and particular, becomes a representative and typical work, as articulate to-day, as direct and unhesitating in its teaching, as it was when it was first offered to the world. how well-preserved, even now, these wonderful pictures are! it would almost seem as if time, unreasoning in his anger, had determined to ignore in every way the audacious artist who treated him with such persistent indignity. look at them in the national gallery. look, too, at the cracks and fissures in the wilkies, the soiled rainbows of turner,--the bituminous riding-habit of lady douro in sir edwin's _story of waterloo_. but these paintings of william hogarth are well-nigh as fresh to-day as when, new from the easel, they found their fortunate purchaser in mr. lane of hillingdon. they are not worked like a denner, it is true, and the artist is often less solicitous about his method than about the result of it; yet they are soundly, straight-forwardly, and skilfully executed. lady bingley's red hair, carestini's nostril, are shown in the simplest and directest manner. everywhere the desired effect is exactly produced, and without effort. take, as an illustration, the inkstand in the first scene, with its bell and sand-caster. in these days it would be a patient _trompe-l'oeil_, probably better done than the figures using it. here it is merely indicated, not elaborated; it holds its exact place as a piece of furniture, and nothing more. and at this point it may be observed that if in the ensuing descriptions we should speak of colour, the reader will remember we are describing, not the performances of messrs. ravenet and the rest, but hogarth's original pictures at trafalgar square. it is the more necessary to bear this in mind, because, besides being reversed, the paintings frequently differ in detail from the engravings. the first of the series represents the signing of the marriage contract. the scene, as the artist is careful to signify by the ostentatious coronets on the furniture and accessories (they are to be discerned even on the crutches), is laid in the house of an earl, who, with his gouty foot swathed in flannels, seems with a superb--if somewhat stiff-jointed--dignity to be addressing certain pompous observations respecting himself and his pedigree (dating from william the conqueror) to a sober-looking personage opposite, who, horn-spectacles on nose, is peering at the endorsement of the "marriage settlem^t of the r^t hon^ble. lord vincent [squanderfield]."[ ] this second figure, which is that of a london merchant, with its turned-in toes, the point of the sword-sheath between the legs, and the awkward constraint of its attitude, forms an admirable contrast to the other. a massive gold chain denotes the wearer to be an alderman. between the two is a third person, perhaps the merchant's confidential clerk or cashier, who holds out a "mortgage" to the earl. gold and notes lie upon the table, where are also an inkstand, sealing-wax, and a lighted candle in which a "thief" is conspicuous. at the back of this trio is the betrothed couple--the earl's son and the alderman's daughter. it is, in fact, an alliance of _sacs et parchemins_, in which the young people are involved rather than interested. the lady, who looks young and pretty in her bridal-dress, wears a mingled expression of _mauvaise honte_ and distaste for her position, and trifles with the ring, which she has strung upon her handkerchief, while a brisk and well-built young lawyer, who trims a pen, bends towards her with a whispered compliment. meantime the viscount--a frail, effeminate-looking figure, holding an open snuff-box, from which he affectedly lifts a pinch--turns from his _fiancée_ with a smirk of complacent foppery towards a pier-glass at his side. his wide-cuffed coat is light blue, his vest is loaded with embroidery. he wears an enormous _solitaire_, and has high red heels to his shoes. before him, in happy parody of the ill-matched pair, are two dogs in coupling-links:--the bitch sits up, alert and curious, her companion is lying down. the only other figure is that of an old lawyer, who, with a plan in his hand, and a gesture of contempt or wonder, looks through an open window at an ill-designed and partly-erected building, in front of which several idle servants are lounging or sitting. like pope's "visto," the earl has "a taste," and his taste, interrupted for the moment by lack of funds, is the ruinous one of bricks and mortar. the pictures on the wall exemplify and satirize the fashion of the time. the largest is a portrait in the french style of one of the earl's ancestors, who traverses the canvas triumphantly. a cannon explodes below him, a comet is seen above; and in his right hand, notwithstanding his cuirass and voluminous queen-anne peruke, he brandishes the thunderbolt of jupiter. _judith and holofernes_, _st. sebastian_, _the murder of abel_, _david and goliath_, _the martyrdom of st. laurence_, are some of the rest, all of which, it is perhaps needless to note, belong to those "dismal dark subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental," against which we have already heard the painter inveigh. upon the ceiling, with a nice sense of decorative fitness, is _pharaoh in the red sea_. from a sconce at the side, a gorgon surveys the proceedings with astonishment. hogarth has used a similar idea in the _strolling actresses_, where the same mask seems horrified at the airy freedom of the lightly-clad lady who there enacts the part of diana. in the picture of the _contract_, the young people and "counsellor silvertongue," as he has been christened by the artist, are placed in close proximity. these are the real actors in the drama. building _immemor sepulcri_, the old earl had but few years to live. henceforth he is seen no more; and the alderman reappears only at the end of the story.... we have only dealt briefly with these concluding pictures, the decorations and accessories of which are to the full as minute and effective as those of the one that precede them. the furniture of the bagnio, with its portrait of moll flanders humorously continued by the sturdy legs of a jewish soldier in the tapestry _judgment of solomon_ behind, the half-burned candle flaring in the draught of the open door and window, the reflection of the lantern on the ceiling and the shadow of the tongs on the floor, the horror-stricken look on the mask of the lady and the satanic grin on that of her paramour, all deserve notice. so do the gross dutch pictures in the alderman's house, the sordid pewter plates and the sumptuous silver goblet, the stained table-cloth, the egg in rice, and the pig's head which the half-starved and ravenous dog is stealing. there is no defect of invention, no superfluity of detail, no purposeless stroke in this "owre true tale." from first to last it progresses steadily to its catastrophe by a forward march of skilfully linked and fully developed incidents. it is like a novel of fielding on canvas; and it seems inconceivable that, with this magnificent work _en évidence_, the critics of that age should have been contented to re-echo the opinion of walpole that "as a painter hogarth had but slender merit," and to cackle the foot-rule criticisms of the rev. william gilpin as to his ignorance of composition. but so it was. not until that exhibition of his works at the british institution in , was it thoroughly understood how excellent and individual both as a designer and a colourist was this native artist, whom "picture-dealers, picture-cleaners, picture-frame-makers, and other connoisseurs"--to use his own graphically ironical words--had been allowed to rank below the third-rate copyists of third-rate foreigners. beyond the remark that the "jaded morning countenance" of the viscount in scene ii. "lectures on the vanity of pleasure as audibly as anything in ecclesiastics," lamb's incomparable essay in _the reflector_ makes no material reference to _marriage a-la-mode_. his comments, besides, are confined to the engravings. but hazlitt, who saw the pictures in the above-mentioned exhibition in , devotes much of his criticism to the tragedy of the squanderfields, chiefly, it would seem, because lamb had left the subject untouched. hazlitt's own studies as an artist, his keen insight and his quick enthusiasm, made him a memorable critic of hogarth, whose general characteristics he defines with admirable exactitude. much quotation has made his description of the young lord and counsellor silvertongue sufficiently familiar. but he is equally good in his vignette of the younger woman in the episode at the quack doctor's, a creation which he rightly regards as one of hogarth's most successful efforts. "nothing," he says, "can be more striking than the contrast between the extreme softness of her person and the hardened indifference of her character. the vacant stillness, the docility to vice, the premature suppression of youthful sensibility, the doll-like mechanism of the whole figure, which seems to have no other feeling but a sickly sense of pain--show the deepest insight into human nature, and into the effects of those refinements in depravity, by which it has been good-naturedly asserted that 'vice loses half its evil in losing all its grossness.'" in the death of the countess, again, he speaks thus of two of the subordinate characters:--"we would particularly refer to the captious, petulant self-sufficiency of the apothecary, whose face and figure are constructed on exact physiognomical principles, and to the fine example of passive obedience, and non-resistance in the servant, whom he is taking to task, and whose coat of green and yellow livery is as long and melancholy as his face. the disconsolate look, the haggard eyes, the open mouth, the comb sticking in the hair, the broken gapped teeth, which, as it were, hitch in an answer--everything about him denotes the utmost perplexity and dismay." some other of hazlitt's comments are more fanciful, as, for example, when he compares lady squanderfield's curl papers (in the "toilet scene") to a "wreath of half-blown flowers," and those of the macaroni-amateur to "a _chevaux-de-frise_ of horns, which adorn and fortify the lack-lustre expression and mild resignation of the face beneath." with his condemnation of the attitude of the husband, in the scene at the "turk's head bagnio," as "one in which it would be impossible for him to stand, or even fall," it is difficult to coincide; and it is an illustration of the contradictions of criticism that this very figure should have been selected for especial praise, with particular reference to the charges made against the painter of defective drawing, by another critic who was not only as keenly sympathetic as hazlitt, but was probably a better anatomist--the author of _rab and his friends_. to hazlitt's general estimate of hogarth we shall not now refer. but his comparison of hogarth and wilkie may fairly be summarized in this place, because it contains so much excellent discrimination of the former. wilkie, hazlitt contends, is a simple realist; hogarth is a comic painter. while one is a "serious, prosaic, literal narrator of facts," the other is a moral satirist, "exposing vice and folly in their most ludicrous points of view, and, with a profound insight into the weak sides of character and manners in all their tendencies, combinations, and contrasts.... he is carried away by a passion for the _ridiculous_. his object is not so much 'to hold the mirror up to nature' as 'to show vice her own feature, scorn her own image.' he is so far from contenting himself with still-life that he is always on the verge of caricature, though without ever falling into it. he does not represent folly or vice in its incipient, or dormant, or _grub_ state; but full-grown, with wings, pampered into all sorts of affectation, airy, ostentatious, and extravagant.... there is a perpetual collision of eccentricities--a tilt and tournament of absurdities; the prejudices and caprices of mankind are let loose, and set together by the ears, as in a bear-garden. hogarth paints nothing but comedy or tragi-comedy. wilkie paints neither one nor the other. hogarth never looks at any object but to find out a moral or a ludicrous effect. wilkie never looks at any object but to see that it is there.... in looking at hogarth, you are ready to burst your sides with laughing at the unaccountable jumble of odd things which are brought together; you look at wilkie's pictures with a mingled feeling of curiosity and admiration at the accuracy of the representation." the distinction thus drawn is, in the main, a just one. yet, at certain points, wilkie comes nearer to hogarth than any other english artist; and that elegant amateur, sir george howland beaumont, reasoned rightly when he judged the painter of _the village politicians_ to be, in his day, the only fit recipient of hogarth's mahl-stick. to return to _marriage a-la-mode_. notwithstanding that the pictures were, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, announced for sale in , it was five years before they actually found a purchaser, although, in the interval, they seem to have been freely exhibited both at the "golden head" and at cock's auction rooms. in , however, they were at last disposed of by another of those unfortunate schemes devised by hogarth for disposing of his works. the bidding, said the announcement in the _daily advertiser_, was to be by written notes; no dealers in pictures were to be admitted as bidders; and the highest bidder at noon on the th june was to be the purchaser. whether this mode of sale, coupled with the characteristic manner of its notification, "disobliged the town" or not, it is impossible to say; but it is certain that when mr. lane, "of hillingdon, near uxbridge," who was to become the lucky proprietor of the pictures, arrived on the date appointed at the "golden head," he found he was the only bidder who had put in an appearance.[ ] in fact, there was no one in the room but the painter himself and his friend dr. parsons, secretary to the royal society. the highest written offer having been declared to be £ , mr. lane, shortly before twelve, said he would "make the pounds guineas," but subsequently much to his credit, offered the artist a delay of some hours to find a better purchaser. an hour passed, and as, up to that time, no one had appeared, hogarth, much mortified, surrendered the pictures to mr. lane, who thus became the owner of the artist's best work, and the finest pictorial satire of the century, for the modest sum of £ , which included carlo marratti frames that had cost hogarth four guineas a-piece. mr. lane, who readily promised not to sell or clean the pictures without the knowledge of the painter, left them at his death to his nephew, colonel j.f. cawthorne, by whom they were put up to auction in march, , but were bought in again for guineas. in they were sold at christie's for £ , to mr. john julius angerstein, with the rest of whose collection they were acquired in for the national gallery. _william hogarth_ (new york and london, ). footnotes: [ ] "it was reserved to hogarth to write a scene of furniture. the rake's levee-room, the nobleman's dining-room, the apartments of the husband and wife in _marriage a-la-mode_, the alderman's parlour, the poet's bed-chamber, and many others, are the history of the manners of the age." so says horace walpole (_anecdotes_, etc., , p. ), and in this, at least, he was an unimpeachable authority. [ ] the name is added in the print. [ ] not the "sole bidder," as allan cunningham and others have inferred. if this were so, in "making the pounds guineas," mr. lane would be bidding against himself, a thing which occasionally occurs at auctions, but is not recommended. we have failed to find any other account of this transaction than that supplied to nichols for his second edition of , pp. - , by mr. lane himself, which is summarized above. cunningham seems to have derived his information from the same source; but he strangely transforms it. we can but surmise that he followed ireland's transcript, in which the highest bid is given as £ , instead of £ --a rather unfortunate mistake, for it appears to have misled a good many people. the madonna of the rocks (_leonardo da vinci_) thÉophile gautier the engraving has popularized the _vierge aux rochers_,[ ] that composition that exhales the strange and mysterious grace of the master. in a strange spot, a kind of grotto bristling with stalactites and sharply pointed rocks, the holy virgin presents the little saint john to the infant jesus, who blesses him with uplifted finger. an angel with a proud and charming face,--a celestial hermaphrodite having something of the young maiden and the youth but superior to either in his ideal beauty,--accompanies and supports the little jesus like a page of the great household who watches over the child of the king with mingled respect and protection. hair of a thousand crisp curls frames that face so aristocratic and distinguished. certainly this angel occupies a very high rank in the hierarchy of the sky; he should, at least, possess a throne, a dominion, or a principality. the infant jesus draws himself up in a pose that shows great knowledge of foreshortening, and is a marvel of roundness and fine modelling. the virgin is of that charming lombard type in which under chaste innocence appears that malicious playfulness which da vinci excels in rendering. the colour of this majestic picture has blackened, particularly in the shadows, but it has lost nothing of its harmony, and perhaps it is more ideally poetic than if it had kept its original freshness and the natural tones of life. doubts have been raised regarding this picture. some critics have wished to see here merely a composition by leonardo executed by a strange hand, or even simply the copy of another canvas painted for the chapel of the conception of the church of the franciscans in milan. but none other than leonardo could have drawn such firm and pure contours or carried this model through those learned grades that give to the body the roundness of sculpture with all the softness of skin, or rendered his favourite types so superbly and delicately.... [illustration: the madonna of the rocks. _l. da vinci._] _the madonna of the rocks_, the engraving of which is so well known, belongs to and may be considered the type of leonardo's second manner. the modelling is pursued with a care not found in those painters who are not familiar with the engraving chisel. the roundness of the bodies obtained by gradation of tints, the exactness of the shadows and the parsimonious reserve in the light in this unparalleled picture betray the habits of a sculptor. we know that leonardo was one, and he often said: "it is only in modelling that the painter can find the science of shadow." for a long time earthen figures which he made use of in his work were preserved. the appearance of the _madonna of the rocks_ is singular, mysterious, and charming. a kind of basaltic grotto shelters the divine group placed on the bank of a spring which shows the stones of its bed through its limpid waters. through the arched grotto we see a rocky landscape dotted with slender trees and traversed by a stream, on the banks of which is a village; the colour of all this is as indefinable as those chimerical countries that we pass through in dreams and is marvellously appropriate to set off the figures. what an adorable type is the madonna! it is quite peculiar to leonardo, and does not in the least recall the virgins of perugino nor those of raphael: the upper part of the head is spherical, the forehead well developed; the oval of the cheeks sweeps down to a delicately curved chin; the eyes with lowered lids are circled with shadow; the nose, although fine, is not in a straight line with the forehead, like those of the greek statues; the nostrils seem to quiver as if palpitating with respiration. the mouth, rather large, has that vague, enigmatical and delicious smile which da vinci gives to all the faces of his women; faint malice mingles there with the expression of purity and kindness. the hair, long, fine, and silky, falls in waving locks upon cheeks bathed in shadows and half-tints, framing them with incomparable grace. it is lombard beauty idealized with an admirable execution whose only fault is perhaps too absolute a perfection. and what hands! especially the one stretched out with the fingers foreshortened. m. ingres alone has succeeded in repeating this _tour de force_ in his figure of _la musique couronnant cherubini_. the arrangement of the draperies is of that exquisite and precious taste that characterizes da vinci. an agrafe in the form of a medallion fastens on the breast the ends of a mantle lifted up by the arms which thus produce folds full of nobility and elegance. the angel who is pointing out the infant jesus to the little saint john has the sweetest, the finest, and the proudest head that brush ever fixed upon canvas. he belongs, if we may so express it, to the highest celestial aristocracy. one might say he was a page of high birth accustomed to place his foot on the steps of a throne. hair in waves and ringlets abounds upon his head, so pure and delicate in design that it surpasses feminine beauty and gives the idea of a type superior to all that man can dream of; his eyes are not turned towards the group that he is pointing at, for he has no need to look in order to see, and even if he did not have wings on his shoulders, we should not be deceived regarding his nature. a divine indifference is depicted upon his charming face, and almost a smile lurks in the corners of his lips. he accomplishes the commission given him by the eternal with an impassible serenity. assuredly no virgin, no woman, ever had a more beautiful face; but the most manly spirit and the most dominating intelligence shine in those dark eyes, fixed vaguely upon the spectator who seeks to penetrate their mystery. we know how difficult it is to paint children. the scarcely settled forms of the earliest age lend themselves awkwardly to art expression. in the little saint john of the _madonna of the rocks_, leonardo da vinci has solved this problem with his accustomed superiority. the drawn-up position of the child, who presents several portions of his body foreshortened, is full of grace, a grace sought-for and rare, like everything else that the sublime artist ever did, but natural, nevertheless. it is impossible to find anything more finely modelled than this head with its chubby dimpled cheeks, than those plump little round arms, than the body crossed with rolls of fat, and those legs half folded in the sod. the shadow advances towards the light by gradations of infinite delicacy and gives an extraordinary relief to the figure. half enveloped in transparent gauze, the divine _bambino_ kneels, joining his hands as if he were already conscious of his mission and understood the gesture which the little saint john repeats after the angel. with regard to the colour, if in becoming smoked it has lost its proper value, it has retained a harmony preferred by delicate minds for the freshness and brilliancy of its shadows. the tones have deadened in such perfect sympathy that the result is a kind of neutral, abstract, ideal, and mysterious tint which clothes the forms like a celestial veil and sets them apart from terrestrial realities. _guide de l'amateur au musée du louvre_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] the national gallery and the louvre each claims that it possesses the original of this celebrated picture and that its rival is a replica. the former was purchased in milan, in by gavin hamilton, who sold it to lord suffolk, in whose collection at charlton park it was long an ornament. it was purchased from him in for £ , . the louvre picture is first mentioned as belonging to francis i. designs for it are in turin and windsor, and in these the outstretched hand of the angel appears. this does not occur in the london _madonna of the rocks_, which differs in several details; for example, there are halos above the heads of the figures and john the baptist carries a cross.--e.s. beatrice cenci (_guido reni_) percy bysshe shelley on my arrival at rome i found that the story of the cenci was a subject not to be mentioned in italian society without awakening a deep and breathless interest: and that the feelings of the company never failed to incline to a romantic pity for the wrongs, and a passionate exculpation of the horrible deed to which they urged her who has been mingled two centuries with the common dust. all ranks of people knew the outlines of this history, and participated in the overwhelming interest which it seems to have the magic of exciting in the human heart. i had a copy of guido's picture of beatrice, which is preserved in the colonna palace, and my servant instantly recognized it as the portrait of _la cenci_.... the portrait of beatrice at the colonna palace is most admirable as a work of art: it was taken by guido during her confinement in prison. but it is most interesting as a just representation of one of the loveliest specimens of the workmanship of nature. there is a fixed and pale composure upon the features; she seems sad and stricken-down in spirit, yet the despair thus expressed is lightened by the patience of gentleness. her head is bound with folds of white drapery, from which the yellow strings of her golden hair escape, and fall about her neck. the moulding of her face is exquisitely delicate; the eyebrows are distinct and arched; the lips have that permanent meaning of imagination and sensibility which suffering has not repressed, and which it seems as if death scarcely could extinguish. her forehead is large and clear; her eyes, which we are told were remarkable for their vivacity, are swollen with weeping, and lustreless, but beautifully tender and serene. in the whole mien there is a simplicity and dignity which, united with her exquisite loveliness and deep sorrow, are inexpressibly pathetic. beatrice cenci appears to have been one of those rare persons in whom energy and gentleness dwell together without destroying one another: her nature was simple and profound. the crimes and miseries in which she was an actor and a sufferer are as the mask and mantle in which circumstances clothed her for her impersonation on the scene of the world. the cenci palace is of great extent; and, though in part modernized, there yet remains a vast and gloomy pile of feudal architecture in the same state as during the dreadful scenes which are the subject of this tragedy. the palace is situated in an obscure corner of rome, near the quarter of the jews; and from the upper windows you see the immense ruins of mount palatine, half hidden under their profuse overgrowth of trees. there is a court in one part of the palace (perhaps that in which cenci built the chapel to st. thomas) supported by granite columns, and adorned with antique friezes of fine workmanship, and built up, according to the ancient italian fashion, with balcony over balcony of open work. one of the gateways of the palace, formed of immense stones, and leading through a passage dark and lofty, and opening into gloomy subterranean chambers, struck me particularly.... [illustration: portrait of beatrice cenci. _guido reni._] the most wicked life which the roman nobleman, francesco cenci, led in this world not only occasioned his own ruin and death, but also that of many others and brought down the destruction of his house. concerning his religion, it is sufficient to state that he never frequented any church; and, although he caused a small chapel, dedicated to the apostle st. thomas, to be built in the court of his palace, his intention in so doing was to bury there all his children, whom he cruelly hated. he cursed [his sons] and often also struck and ill-treated his daughters. the eldest of these, being unable any longer to support the cruelty of her father, exposed her miserable condition to the pope and supplicated him either to marry her according to his choice, or shut her up in a monastery, that by any means she might be liberated from the cruel oppression of her parent. her prayer was heard, and the pope, in pity to her unhappiness, bestowed her in marriage to signore carlo gabrielli, one of the first gentlemen of the city of gubbio, and obliged francesco to give her a fitting dowry of some thousand crowns. francesco, fearing that his youngest daughter would, when she grew up, follow the example of her sister, bethought himself how to hinder this design, and for that purpose shut her up alone in an apartment of the palace, where he himself brought her food, so that no one might approach her; and imprisoned her in this manner for several months, often inflicting on her blows with a stick. in the meantime ensued the death of his two sons, rocco and cristoforo--one being assassinated by a surgeon, and the other by paolo corso, while he was attending mass. the inhuman father showed every sign of joy on hearing this news; saying that nothing would exceed his pleasure if all his children died, and that, when the grave should receive the last, he would, as a demonstration of joy, make a bonfire of all that he possessed. and on the present occasion, as a further sign of his hatred, he refused to pay the slightest sum towards the funeral expenses of his murdered sons.... beatrice, finding it impossible to continue to live in so miserable a manner, followed the example of her sister; she sent a well-written supplication to the pope, imploring him to exercise his authority in withdrawing her from the violence and cruelty of her father. but this petition, which might, if listened to, have saved the unfortunate girl from an early death, produced not the least effect. francesco, having discovered this attempt on the part of his daughter, became more enraged, and redoubled his tyranny; confining with vigour not only beatrice, but also his wife. at length, these unhappy women, finding themselves without hope of relief, driven to desperation, resolved to plan his death.... beatrice communicated the design to her eldest brother, giacomo, without whose concurrence it was impossible that they should succeed. this latter was easily drawn into consent, since he was utterly disgusted with his father, who ill-treated him, and refused to allow him a sufficient support for his wife and children.... giacomo, with the understanding of his sister and mother-in-law, held various consultations and finally resolved to commit the murder of francesco to two of his vassals, who had become his inveterate enemies; one called marzio, and the other olimpio: the latter, by means of francesco, had been deprived of his post as castellan of the rock of petrella.... he [francesco] received an honourable burial; and his family returned to rome to enjoy the fruits of their crime. they passed some time there in tranquillity. but divine justice, which would not allow so atrocious a wickedness to remain hid and unpunished, so ordered it that the court of naples, to which the account of the death of cenci was forwarded, began to entertain doubts concerning the mode by which he came by it, and sent a commissary to examine the body and to take informations.... the pope, after having seen all the examinations and the entire confessions, ordered that the delinquents should be drawn through the streets at the tails of horses and afterward decapitated. many cardinals and priests interested themselves, and entreated that at least they might be allowed to draw up their defence. the pope at first refused to comply, replying with severity, and asking these intercessors what defence had been allowed to francesco when he had been so barbarously murdered in his sleep.... the sentence was executed the morning of saturday the th of may. the messengers charged with the communication of the sentence, and the brothers of the consorteria, were sent to the several prisons at five the preceding night; and at six the sentence of death was communicated to the unhappy brothers while they were placidly sleeping. beatrice, on hearing it broke into a piercing lamentation, and into passionate gesture, exclaiming, "how is it possible, o my god, that i must so suddenly die?" lucretia, as prepared and already resigned to her fate, listened without terror to the reading of this terrible sentence, and with gentle exhortations induced her daughter-in-law to enter the chapel with her; and the latter, whatever excess she might have indulged in on the first intimation of a speedy death, so much the more now courageously supported herself, and gave every one certain proofs of a humble resignation. having requested that a notary might be allowed to come to her, and her request being granted, she made her will, in which she left , crowns to the fraternity of the sacre stimmate, and willed that all her dowry should be employed in portioning for marriage fifty maidens; and lucretia, imitating the example of her daughter-in-law, ordered that she should be buried in the church of s. gregorio at monte celio, with , crowns for charitable uses, and made other legacies; after which they passed some time in the consorteria, reciting psalms and litanies and other prayers with so much fervour that it well appeared that they were assisted by the peculiar grace of god. at eight o'clock they confessed, heard mass, and received the holy communion. beatrice, considering that it was not decorous to appear before the judges and on the scaffold with their splendid dresses, ordered two dresses, one for herself and the other for her mother-in-law, made in the manner of the nuns--gathered up, and with long sleeves of black cotton for lucretia, and of common silk for herself, with a large cord girdle. when these dresses came, beatrice rose, and, turning to lucretia--"mother," said she, "the hour of our departure is drawing near; let us dress therefore in these clothes, and let us mutually aid one another in this last office." lucretia readily complied with this invitation, and they dressed, each helping the other, showing the same indifference and pleasure as if they were dressing for a feast.... the funereal procession passed through the via dell' orso, by the apollinara, thence through the piazza navona; from the church of s. pantalio to the piazza pollarolla, through the campo di fiori, s. carlo a catinari, to the arco de' conti cenci; proceeding, it stopped under the palace cenci, and then finally rested at the corte savilla, to take the two ladies. when these arrived, lucretia remained last, dressed in black, as has been described, with a veil of the same colour, which covered her as far as her girdle. beatrice was beside her, also covered with a veil. they wore velvet slippers, with silk roses and gold fastenings; and, instead of manacles, their wrists were bound by a silk cord, which was fastened to their girdles in such a manner as to give them almost the free use of their hands. each had in her left hand the holy sign of benediction, and in the right hand a handkerchief, with which lucretia wiped her tears, and beatrice the perspiration from her forehead. being arrived at the place of punishment, bernardo was left on the scaffold, and the others were conducted to the chapel. during this dreadful separation, this unfortunate youth, reflecting that he was soon going to behold the decapitation of his nearest relatives, fell down in a dreadful swoon, from which, however, he was at last recovered, and seated opposite the block.... while the scaffold was being arranged for beatrice, and whilst the brotherhood returned to the chapel for her, the balcony of a shop filled with spectators fell, and five of those underneath were wounded, so that two died a few days after. beatrice, hearing the noise, asked the executioner if her mother had died well, and, being replied that she had, she knelt before the crucifix, and spoke thus: "be thou everlastingly thanked, o my most gracious saviour, since, by the good death of my mother, thou hast given me assurance of thy mercy towards me." then, rising, she courageously and devoutly walked towards the scaffold, repeating by the way several prayers with so much fervour of spirit that all who heard her shed tears of compassion. ascending the scaffold, while she arranged herself, she also turned her eyes to heaven, and thus prayed: "most beloved jesus, who, relinquishing thy divinity, becamest a man, and didst through love purge my sinful soul also of its original sin with thy precious blood; deign, i beseech thee, to accept that which i am about to shed, at thy most merciful tribunal, as a penalty which may cancel my many crimes, and spare me a part of that punishment justly due to me." then she placed her head under the axe, which, at one blow, was divided from her body as she was repeating the second verse of the psalm _de profundis_, at the words _fiant aures tuæ_. the blow gave a violent motion to her body, and discomposed her dress. the executioner raised the head to the view of the people; and in placing it in the coffin placed underneath, the cord by which it was suspended slipped from its hold, and the head fell to the ground, shedding a great deal of blood, which was wiped up with water and sponges.... the bodies of lucretia and beatrice were left at the end of the bridge until the evening, illuminated by two torches, and surrounded by so great a concourse of people that it was impossible to cross the bridge. an hour after dark, the body of beatrice was placed in a coffin, covered by a black velvet pall richly adorned with gold: garlands of flowers were placed, one at her head, and another at her feet; and the body was strewed with flowers. it was accompanied to the church of s. peter in montorio by the brotherhood of the order of mercy, and followed by many franciscan monks, with great pomp and innumerable torches. she was there buried before the high altar, after the customary ceremony had been performed. by reason of the distance of the church from the bridge, it was four hours after dark before the ceremony was finished. afterwards, the body of lucretia, accompanied in the same manner, was carried to the church of s. gregorio upon the celian hill; where, after the ceremony, it was honourably buried. beatrice was rather tall, of a fair complexion, and she had a dimple on each cheek, which, especially when she smiled, added a grace to her lovely countenance that transported every one who beheld her. her hair appeared like threads of gold; and, because they were extremely long, she used to tie it up, and when afterwards she loosened it, the splendid ringlets dazzled the eyes of the spectator. her eyes were of a deep blue, pleasing, and full of fire. to all these beauties she added, both in words and action, a spirit and a majestic vivacity that captivated every one. she was twenty years of age when she died. _the cenci: poetical works of percy bysshe shelley_, edited by william m. rossetti (london ). the transfiguration (_raphael_) mrs. jameson the transfiguration is an early subject in christian art, and has gone through different phases. it is given in the mosaics of s. apollinare in classe, at ravenna (sixth century), in that reticence of form and emblematical character significant of classic art. by the uninitiated the subject would not be readily deciphered. in the centre of the domed apse is a large jewelled cross, in the middle of which is the head of christ. this represents the lord. on each side are bust-lengths of moses and elijah, while below are three sheep, emblems of the three disciples. another form is seen in early miniatures--for instance, in a magnificent evangelium preserved in the cathedral at aix-la-chapelle. here christ is seen with three rays above him; at his side are the full-length figures of moses and elijah; below are the three disciples--two crouching low in terror, while peter raises himself, saying "lord, it is good for us to be here," etc. the next form is that given by early byzantine artists, of a very formal and conventional character. christ is in the mandorla, from which five rays of glory proceed. these five rays touch the prophets at his side, and the disciples, all three crouching low at his feet. we see giotto scarcely emerging from this convention in his series in the accademia. fra angelico has a more fanciful representation. the christ has his arms extended, as a type of the death he was to suffer on the cross. the disciples retain the traditional byzantine positions. at the sides are the mere heads of the prophets, while the painter's adoration of the virgin, and his homage toward st. domenic, the founder of his order, are shown by their attendant figures. it must be allowed that there could be no more daring or more difficult undertaking in art than to represent by any human medium this transcendent manifestation of the superhuman character of the redeemer. it has been attempted but seldom, and of course, however reverent and poetical the spirit in which the attempt has been made, it has proved, in regard to the height of the theme, only a miserable failure. i should observe, however, that the early artists hardly seem to have aimed at anything beyond a mere _indication_ of an incident too important to be wholly omitted. in all these examples the representation of a visible fact has been predominant, the aim in the mind of the artist being to comply with some established conventional or theological rule. only in one instance has the vision of heavenly beatitude been used to convey the sublimest lesson to humanity, and thus the inevitable failure has been redeemed nobly, or, we might rather say, converted into a glorious success. when raphael, in the last year of his life, was commissioned by the cardinal de' medici to paint an altar-piece for the cathedral of narbonne, he selected for his subject the transfiguration of our lord. [illustration: the transfiguration. _raphael._] every one knows that this picture has a world-wide fame; it has, indeed, been styled the "greatest picture in the world;" it has also been criticised as if raphael, the greatest artist who ever lived, had been here unmindful of the rules of art. but it is clear that of those who have enthusiastically praised or daringly censured, few have interpreted its real significance. some have erred in ignorantly applying the rules of art where they were in no respect applicable. others, not claiming to know anything, or care anything about rules of art, insisting on their right to judge what is or is not intelligible to _them_, have given what i must needs call very absurd opinions about what they do not understand. it has been objected by one set of critics that there is a want of unity, that the picture is divided in two, and that these two parts not only do not harmonize, but "mutually hurt each other." others say that the spiritual beatitude above, and the contortions of the afflicted boy below, present a shocking contrast. others sneer at the little hillock or platform which they suppose is to stand for mount tabor, think the group above profane, and the group below horrible. such as these, with a courage quite superior to all artistic criticism, and undazzled by the accumulated fame of five centuries, venture on a fiat which reminds one of nothing so much as voltaire's ridicule of hamlet, and his denunciation of that _barbare_, that _imbécile de shakespeare_, who would not write so as to be appreciated by a french critic. now, in looking at the transfiguration (and i hope the reader, if the original be far off, will at least have a good print before him while going over these following remarks), we must bear in mind that it is not an historical but a devotional picture--that the intention of the painter was not to represent a scene, but to excite religious feelings by expressing, so far as painting might do it, a very sublime idea, which it belongs to us to interpret. i can best accomplish this, perhaps, by putting down naturally my own impressions, when i last had the opportunity of studying this divine picture. if we remove to a certain distance from it, so that the forms shall become vague, indistinct, and only the masses of colour and the light and shade perfectly distinguishable, we shall see that the picture is indeed divided as if horizontally, the upper half being all light, and the lower half comparatively all dark. as we approach nearer, step by step, we behold above, the radiant figure of the saviour floating in mid air, with arms outspread, garments of transparent light, glorified visage upturned as in rapture, and the hair uplifted and scattered as i have seen it in persons under the influence of electricity. on the right, moses; on the left, elijah; representing, respectively, the old law and the old prophecies, which both testified of him. the three disciples lie on the ground, terror-struck, dazzled. there is a sort of eminence or platform, but no perspective, no attempt at real locality, for the scene is revealed as in a vision, and the same soft transparent light envelops the whole. this is the spiritual life, raised far above the earth, but not yet in heaven. below is seen the earthly life, poor humanity struggling helplessly with pain, infirmity, and death. the father brings his son, the possessed, or, as we should now say, the epileptic boy, who ofttimes falls into the water or into the fire, or lies grovelling on the earth, foaming and gnashing his teeth; the boy struggles in his arms--the rolling eyes, the distorted features, the spasmodic limbs are at once terrible and pitiful to look on. such is the profound, the heart-moving significance of this wonderful picture. it is, in truth, a fearful approximation of the most opposite things; the mournful helplessness, suffering, and degradation of human nature, the unavailing pity, are placed in immediate contrast with spiritual light, life, hope--nay, the very fruition of heavenly rapture. it has been asked, who are the two figures, the two saintly deacons, who stand on each side of the upper group, and what have they to do with the mystery above, or the sorrow below? their presence shows that the whole was conceived as a vision, or a poem. the two saints are st. lawrence and st. julian, placed there at the request of the cardinal de' medici, for whom the picture was painted, to be offered by him as an act of devotion as well as munificence to his new bishopric; and these two figures commemorate in a poetical way, not unusual at the time, his father, lorenzo, and his uncle, giuliano de' medici. they would be better away; but raphael, in consenting to the wish of his patron that they should be introduced, left no doubt of the significance of the whole composition--that it is placed before worshippers as a revelation of the double life of earthly suffering and spiritual faith, as an excitement to religious contemplation and religious hope. in the gospel, the transfiguration of our lord is first described, then the gathering of the people and the appeal of the father in behalf of his afflicted son. they appear to have been simultaneous; but painting only could have placed them before our eyes, at the same moment, in all their suggestive contrast. it will be said that in the brief record of the evangelist, this contrast is nowhere indicated, but the painter found it there and was right to use it--just the same as if a man should choose a text from which to preach a sermon, and, in doing so, should evolve from the inspired words many teachings, many deep reasonings, besides the one most obvious and apparent. but, after we have prepared ourselves to understand and to take into our heads all that this wonderful picture can suggest, considered as an emanation of the mind, we find that it has other interests for us, considered merely as a work of art. it was the last picture which came from raphael's hand; he was painting on it when seized with his last illness. he had completed all the upper part of the composition, all the ethereal vision, but the lower part of it was still unfinished, and in this state the picture was hung over his bier, when, after his death, he was laid out in his painting-room, and all his pupils and his friends, and the people of rome, came to look upon him for the last time; and when those who stood round raised their eyes to the _transfiguration_, and then bent them on the lifeless form extended beneath it, "every heart was like to burst with grief" (_faceva scoppiare l' anima di dolore a ognuno che quivi guardava_), as, indeed, well it might. two-thirds of the price of the picture, _duccati di camera_, had already been paid by the cardinal de' medici; and, in the following year, that part of the picture which raphael had left unfinished was completed by his pupil giulio romano, a powerful and gifted but not a refined or elevated genius. he supplied what was wanting in the colour and chiaroscuro according to raphael's design, but not certainly as raphael would himself have done it. the sum which giulio received he bestowed as a dowry on his sister, when he gave her in marriage to lorenzetto the sculptor, who had also been a pupil and friend of raphael. the cardinal did not send the picture to narbonne, but, unwilling to deprive rome of such a masterpiece, he presented it to the church of san pietro in montorio, and sent in its stead the _raising of lazarus_, by sebastian del piombo, now in our national gallery. the french carried off the _transfiguration_ to paris in , and, when restored, it was placed in the vatican, where it now is. the _communion of st. jerome_, by domenichino, is opposite to it, and it is a sort of fashion to compare them, and with some to give the preference to the admirable picture by domenichino; but the two are so different in aim and conception, the merits of each are so different in kind, that i do not see how any comparison can exist between them. _the history of our lord, as exemplified in works of art_, continued and completed by lady eastlake ( nd ed., london, ). the bull (_paul potter_) eugÈne fromentin _the lesson in anatomy, the night watch_, and paul potter's _bull_ are the most celebrated things in holland. to the latter the museum at the hague owes a great part of the interest it inspires. it is not the largest of paul potter's canvases; but it is, at least, the only one of his great pictures that merits serious attention. _the bear hunt_ in the museum of amsterdam (supposing it to be authentic), even by ridding it of the retouches which disfigure it, has never been anything else save the extravagance of a young man, the greatest mistake he committed. _the bull_ is not priced. estimating it according to the present value of paul potter's other works, nobody doubts that in a european auction it would fetch a fabulous sum. then is it a beautiful picture? by no means. does it deserve the importance attached to it? incontestably. then is paul potter a very great painter? very great. does it follow that he really does paint as well as is commonly supposed? not exactly. that is a misapprehension that it will be well to dissipate. [illustration: the bull. _paul potter._] on the day when this suppositious auction of which i speak opened, and consequently when every one had the right freely to discuss the merits of this famous work, if anyone dared to let the truth be heard, he would speak very nearly as follows: "the reputation of the picture is very much exaggerated and at the same time very legitimate; it is contradictory. it is considered as an incomparable specimen of painting, and that is a mistake. people think it is an example to be followed, a model to be copied, one in which ignorant generations may learn the technical secrets of their art. in that again they deceive themselves entirely. the work is ugly and very ill-conceived, and the painting is monotonous, thick, heavy, dull, and dry. the arrangement is of the poorest. unity is lacking in this picture, which begins one knows not where, does not end anywhere, receives light without being illuminated, and distributes it at random, escapes on every side and runs out of the frame, so exactly like flowered linen prints does it seem to be painted. the space is too crowded without being occupied. neither the lines, nor the colour, nor the distribution of the effects, give it even those first conditions of existence which are essential to any fairly well-ordered work. the animals are ridiculous in their size. the painting of the fawn cow with the white head is very hard. the ewe and the ram are modelled in plaster. as for the shepherd, no one would think of defending him. only two portions of this picture seem to be intended for our notice, the great sky and the enormous bull. the cloud is well in place: it is lighted up where it should be, and it is also properly tinted according to the demands of the principal object, its purpose being to accompany or serve as a relief to the latter. with a wise understanding of the law of contrasts, the painter has beautifully graded the strong tints and the dark shading of the animal. the darkest part is opposed to the light portion of the sky, and the most energetic and ingrained characteristic of the bull is opposite to all that is most limpid in the atmosphere. but this is hardly a merit, considering the simplicity of the problem. the rest is simply a surplus that we might cut away without regret, to the great advantage of the picture." that would be a brutal criticism, but an exact one. and yet public opinion, less punctilious or more clear-sighted, would say that the signature was well worth the price. public opinion never goes entirely astray. by uncertain roads, often by those not most happily chosen, it arrives definitely at the expression of a true sentiment. the motives that lead it to acclaim any one are not always of the best, but there are always other good reasons that justify this expression. it is deceived regarding titles, sometimes it mistakes faults for excellencies, it estimates a man for his manner, and that is the least of all his merits; it believes that a painter paints well when he paints badly and because he paints minutely. what is astonishing in paul potter is the imitation of objects carried to the point of eccentricity. people do not know, or do not notice, that in such a case the soul of the painter is of more worth than the work, and that his manner of feeling is of infinitely greater importance than the result. when he painted _the bull_ in , paul potter was not twenty-three years of age. he was a very young man; and according to the usual run of young men of twenty-three years, he was a child. to what school did he belong? to none. had he any masters? we do not know of any other teachers than his father pieter simonsz potter, an obscure painter, and jacob de wet (of haarlem), who had no force to influence a pupil either for good or evil. paul potter then found around his cradle and afterwards in the studio of his second master nothing but simple advice and no doctrines; very strange to say, the pupil did not need anything more. until paul potter divided his time between amsterdam and haarlem, that is to say, between frans hals and rembrandt in the focus of the most active, the most inspiring and the richest art of celebrated masters that the world had ever known except during the preceding century in italy. professors were not lacking, the choice was only too embarrassing. wynants was forty-six; cuyp, forty-two; terburg, thirty-nine; ostade, thirty-seven; metzu, thirty-two; wouwerman, twenty-seven; and berghem, about his own age, was twenty-three years of age. many of the youngest even were members of the guild of st. luke. finally, the greatest of all, the most illustrious, rembrandt, had already produced the _night watch_, and he was a master to tempt one. what became of paul potter? how did he isolate himself in the heart of this rich and swarming school, where practical ability was extreme, talent universal, style somewhat similar, and, nevertheless--a beautiful thing at that happy time--the methods of feeling were very individual? had he any fellow-pupils? we do not see them. his friends are unknown. he was born,--it is the utmost we can do to be sure of the exact year. he reveals himself early, signing a charming etching at fourteen; at twenty-two he is ignorant on many points, but on others his maturity is unexampled. he laboured and produced work upon work; doing some things admirably. he accumulated them in a few years in haste and abundance, as if death were at his heels, and yet with an appreciation and a patience which render this prodigious labour miraculous. he married, young, for any one else but very late for him, for it was on july , ; and on august , , four years afterwards, death seized him in the height of his glory, but before he had learned his whole ground. what could be simpler, shorter, and more fully accomplished? genius and no lessons, ardent study, an ingenuous and able product, attentive observation and reflection; add to this great natural charm, the gentleness of a meditative mind, the appreciation of a conscience filled with scruples, the sadness inseparable from solitary labour, and, perhaps, the natural melancholy belonging to sickly beings, and you very nearly have all paul potter. to this extent, if we except its charm, _the bull_ at the hague represents him wonderfully well. it is a great _study_, too great from the common-sense point of view, not too great for the research of which it was the object, nor for the instruction that the painter drew from it. reflect that paul potter, compared with his brilliant contemporaries, was ignorant of all the skill of the handicraft: i do not speak of the tricks of which his frankness can never be suspected. he especially studied forms and aspects in their absolute simplicity. the least artifice was an embarrassment which would have spoiled him, because it would have altered his clear view of things. a great bull in a vast plain, an immense sky, and no horizon, so to speak,--what better opportunity is there for a student to learn once for all a host of very difficult things, and to know them, as they say, by rule and compass. the action is very simple; he did not fail with it; the movement is true, and the head admirably full of life. the beast has his age, his type, his character, his disposition, his length, his height, his joints, his bones, his muscles, his hair rough or smooth, in flocks or curls, his hide loose or stretched,--all is perfection. the head, the eye, the neck and shoulders, the chest, from the point of view of a naïve and powerful observation, form a very rare specimen, perhaps, really without an equal. i do not say that the pigment is beautiful, nor that the colour is well chosen; pigment and colour are here subordinated too visibly to preoccupations of form for us to exact much on that head, when the designer has given all, or nearly all, under another. moreover, the work in that field accomplished with such force results in rendering nature exactly as she is, in her reliefs, her nuances, and her power, and almost in her mysteries. it is not possible to aim at a more circumscribed but more formal result and attain it with more success. people say _paul potter's bull_, and that is not enough, i assure you: they might say _the bull_, and, in my opinion, that would be the greatest eulogy that could be bestowed upon this work, so mediocre in its weak parts and yet so decisive. _les maîtres d'autrefois_ (paris, ) corÉsus and callirhoÉ (_fragonard_) edmond and jules de goncourt poets were lacking in the last century. i do not say rhymers, versifiers and mechanical arrangers of words; i say poets. poetry, taking the expression in the truth and height of its meaning; poetry, which is an elevation or an enchantment of the imagination, the contribution of an ideal of reverie or gaiety to human thought; poetry, which carries away and suspends above the world the soul of a period and the spirit of a people, was unknown to the france of the eighteenth century, and her two only poets were two painters: watteau and fragonard. watteau, the man of the north, the child of flanders, the great poet of love! the master of sweet serenity and tender paradises, whose work may be likened to the elysian field of passion! watteau, the melancholy enchanter who has made nature sigh so heavily in his autumn woods, full of regret around dreamful pleasure! watteau, the pensieroso of the regency; fragonard, the little poet of the _art of love_ of the time. have you noticed in _l'embarquement de cythère_ all those naked little forms of saucy and knavish loves half lost in the heights of the sky? where are they going? they are going to play at fragonard's and to put on his palette the hues of their butterfly wings. [illustration: corÉsus and callirhoÉ. _fragonard_.] fragonard is the bold narrator, the gallant _amoroso_, the rogue with gallic malice, nearly italian in genius but french in spirit; the man of foreshortened mythology and roguish undress, of skies made rosy by the flesh of goddesses and alcoves lighted with female nudity. upon a table beside a bunch of roses let us allow the leaves of his work to be ruffled by the wind of a lovely day: from landscapes where robes of satin are escaping in coquettish flight, our glance skips to meadows guarded by annettes of fifteen years, to granges where the somersaults of love upset the painter's easel, to pastures where the milk-maid of the milk-jug reveals her bare legs and weeps like a nymph over her broken urn, for her sheep, her flocks, and her vanished dream. upon another page a maiden in love is writing a beloved name on the bark of a tree on a lovely summer evening. the breeze is always turning them over: now a shepherd and shepherdess are embracing before a sun-dial which little cupids make into a pleasure-dial. it keeps on turning them; and now we have the beautiful dream of a pilgrim sleeping with his staff and gourd beside him, and to whom appears a host of young fays skimming a huge pot. does it not seem that your eye is upon a vision of a fête by boucher, shown by his pupil in tasso's garden? adorable magic lantern! where clorinde follows fiammette, where the gleams of an epic poem mingle with the smiles of the _novellieri_! tales of the fay urgèle, little comic jests, rays of gayety and sunshine which one might say were thrown upon the cloth upon which béroalde de verville made his cherry-gatherer walk. tasso, cervantes, boccaccio, ariosto (ariosto as he has drawn him, inspired by love and folly), it recalls all his genii of happiness. it laughs with the liberties of la fontaine. it goes from properce to grécourt, from longus to favart, from gentil-bernard to andré chénier. it has, so to speak, the heart of a lover and the hand of a charming rascal. in it the breath of a sigh passes into a kiss and it is young with immortal youth: it is the poem of desire, a divine poem! it is enough to have written it like fragonard for him to remain what he will always be: the cherubino of erotic painting.... he leaped into success and fame at one bound, with his picture of _callirhoé_, that painting of universal approbation, which caused him to be received into the _académie_ by acclamation; that painting which aroused public enthusiasm at the salon in the month of august, and which had the honour of a royal command for its reproduction upon gobelin tapestry. imagine a large picture nine feet high by twelve feet long, where the human figures are of natural size, the architecture in its proper proportion and the crowd and sky have their own space. between two columns of a shining marble with its iris-coloured reflections, above the heavy purple of a tapestry with golden fringe spread out and broken by the ridge of two steps, opens the scene of an antique drama which seems to be under the curtain of a theatre. on this tapestry, on this pagan altar-cloth, stands a copper crater near an urn of black marble half veiled with white linen. a column cuts in half a large candelabra smoking with incense and ornamented with goats' heads, a superb bronze which must have been taken from the lava of herculaneum. a young priest has thrown himself on his knees against this candelabra and embraces its pedestal; in terror he has allowed his censer to fall to the earth. standing by his side is corésus, the high priest, crowned with ivy, enveloped in draperies, and seemingly floating in the sacerdotal whiteness of his vestments; a beardless priest, of doubtful sex, of androgynous grace, an enervated adonis, the shadow of a man. with a backward turn of one hand he plunges the knife in his breast; with the other he has the appearance of casting his life into the heavens, whilst across his effeminate face pass the weakness of the agony and grief of violent death. opposite the dying high-priest is the living though fainting victim, nearly dead at the belief that she is about to die. with her head resting on her shoulder, she has glided before the smoking altar. her body has lost all rigidity on her bending legs, her arms hang down at her side; her glance is distracted; she has lost all volition in the use of her limbs; and she is there, sinking motionless, her throat scarcely distending with a breath, turning white under her crown of roses, which the painter's brush has made to pale in sympathy. between her body and the altar a young priest is leaning in horrified curiosity. another, upon one knee, perfectly terrified, with fixed gaze and parted lips, holds before the young girl the basin used to receive the blood of the victims. in the background are visible figures of old grey-bearded priests, aghast at the horrible spectacle. above them the smoke of the temple, the flames, the perfumes, and the incense of the altar mingle with the cloudy sky, a sky of a night of miracles and hell, wild and rolling, a sky of fiery and sombre whirlwind, in which a genie brandishing a torch and dagger bears love away in sombre flight enveloped in a black mantle. from that shadow, let us go to the shadow at the base of the picture: two women, writhing with fear, shrink back veiling their faces; a little boy clings about their knees and holds fast to them, and a ray of sunlight, falling across the arm of one of the women, illumines the hair and the little rosy hands of the child. such is fragonard's great composition, that striking unexpected production, for which he must have taken the idea, and, perhaps, even the effect from one of the revivals of _callirhoé_ by the poet roy;[ ] a painting of the opera, and demanding from the opera its soul and its light. but what a magnificent illusion this picture presents! it must be seen in the louvre so that the eyes may feast upon the clear and warm splendour of the canvas, the milky radiance of all those white priestly robes, the virginal light inundating the centre of the scene, palpitating and dying away on _callirhoé_, enveloping her fainting body like the fading of day, and caressing that failing throat. the rays of light and the smoke all melt into one another; the temple smokes and the mists of incense ascend everywhere. night is rolling above the day. the sun falls into the gloom and casts a reflected glare. the gleams of sulphur flames illuminate the faces and the throng. fragonard lavishly threw the lights of fairyland upon his masterpiece: it is rembrandt combined with ruggieri. and what movement, what action are in this agitated and convulsive painting! the clouds and the garments whirl, the gestures are rapid, the attitudes are despairing, horror shudders in every pose and on every lip, and a great mute cry seems to rise throughout this entire temple and throughout this entire lyrical composition. this cry of a picture, so new for the eighteenth century, is passion. fragonard introduces it into his time in this picture so full of tragic tenderness where we might fancy the entombment of iphigenia. the phantasmagoria raises his art to the level of the emotion of the _alceste_ of euripides; it reveals a future for french painting: pathos. _l'art du dix-huitième siècle_ ( d ed., paris, ). footnotes: [ ] _callirhoé_ by pierre-charles roy, was written in .--e.s. the market-cart (_gainsborough_) richard and samuel redgrave it is said that sir joshua at an academy dinner gave "the health of mr. gainsborough, the greatest landscape painter of the day," to which wilson, in his blunt, grumbling way, retorted, "ay, and the greatest portrait painter, too." in gainsborough's own time, the world of art patrons seem to have employed his talents as a portrait painter, but to have disregarded his landscape art. beechey said that "in gainsborough's house in pall mall the landscapes stood ranged in long lines from his hall to his painting-room, and that those who came to sit to him for his portraits, on which he was chiefly occupied, rarely deigned to honour them with a look as they passed them." after his death, however, and the eulogium reynolds had pronounced on his landscapes and rustic children, these came to be considered his finest works, and it is usual now to speak of him as a landscape rather than as a portrait painter. but it is more than doubtful whether wilson did not judge more truly of his talent than sir joshua; and without wishing to place him above reynolds in that painter's peculiar branch, it is certain that gainsborough, in his finest portraits, formed a style equally original, and produced works that are every way worthy to take rank with those of the great president. they contrast with the latter in being more silvery and pure, and in the absence of that impasto and richness in which reynolds indulged, but his figures are surrounded by air and light, and his portraits generally are easy and graceful without affectation.... [illustration: the market-cart. _gainsborough_] reynolds says: "it is difficult to determine whether gainsborough's portraits were most admirable for exact truth of resemblance, or his landscapes for a portrait-like representation of nature,"--a strange judgment, written more with a view to a well-rounded period than to any true criticism on his rival's landscape art. it is certainly true that gainsborough put aside altogether the early foundation of dutch landscape on which he had begun to build, and took an entirely original view of nature, both as to treatment and handling. yet in the sense in which the artists of our day paint "portrait-like representations of nature," gainsborough's art was anything but portrait-like. it has been objected to the great italian landscape painters that they did not discriminate between one tree and another, but indulged in a "painter's tree." there is far more variety in those of our native artist, yet it would puzzle a critic to say what his trees really are, and to point out in his landscapes the distinctive differences between oak and beech, and elm. the weeds, too, in his foregrounds, have neither form nor species. on the margins of his brooks or pools a few sword-shaped dashes tell of reeds and rushes; on the banks of his road-side some broad-leaved forms catch the straggling sun-ray, but he cared little to go into botanical minutiæ, or to enable us to tell their kind. his rocks are certainly not truly stratified or geologically correct--how should they be?--he studied them, perhaps, in his painting-room from broken stones and bits of coal. the truth is, however, that he gave us more of nature than any merely imitative rendering could do. as the great portrait painter looks beyond the features of his sitter to give the mind and character of the man, often thereby laying himself open to complaint as to his mere _likeness_ painting; so the great landscape painter will at all times sink individual imitation in seeking to fill us with the greater truths of his art. it may be the golden sunset or the breezy noon, the solemn breadth of twilight, or the silvery freshness of morn--the something of colour, of form, of light and shade, floating rapidly away, that makes the meanest and most commonplace view at times startle us with wonder at its beauty, when treated by the true artist. and did he study such merely from broken stones and pieces of coal, from twigs and weeds in his painting-room? vain idea! these were but the _memoria technica_, that served to call up in his mind the thoughts he had fed on in many a lonely walk and leisure moment, when they of common clay plodded on and saw nothing--brooded on with a nature tuned to the harmonies of colour and of form, organized in a high degree to receive and retain impressions of beauty; and gifted with the power to place vividly before us by his art objects which had so delighted and pleased himself. does any one think otherwise--let him try what can be got out of stones and coals; let him try how his memory will aid him, with such feeble helps as broken twigs and dry mosses, and then he may be able to appreciate, in a degree, how this man had won the mastery of paint and canvas and turned their dross into the fine gold of true art. but in the history of british art, the great merit of gainsborough is, to have broken us entirely loose from old conventions. wilson had turned aside from dutch art to ennoble landscape by selecting from the higher qualities of italian art; but gainsborough early discarded all he had learned from the bygone schools, and gave himself up wholly to nature; he was capable of delicate handling and minute execution, but he resolutely cast them aside lest any idol should interfere between him and his new religion. there may be traced a lingering likeness in his landscapes to those of rubens; but this arose more from his generalization of details, his sinking the parts in the whole, than to any imitation of the great fleming. it is like the recollection of some sweet melody which the musician weaves into his theme, all unconscious that it is a memory and not a child of his own creation. the pictures of gainsborough, on the whole, stand better far than those by reynolds. "landscape with cattle," a picture belonging to the marquis of lansdowne, is lovely for colour and freshness; it has been lined and repaired, but evidently had parted widely in the lights. could any closeness of individual imitation give the truth, beauty of colour, and luminous sunlight of this picture? it somewhat reminds one of zuccarelli, but how completely has gainsborough sucked the honey and left the comb of the master! viewed near, this picture is somewhat loose in texture, and hesitating in execution; the colour obtained by semi-transparents, as yellow-ochre, terra-verte, and ultramarine; while viewed at a proper distance, it is in perfect harmony. in examining the landscapes of this painter, much must, however, be allowed for the present state of some of his works. many are covered with a dark-brown varnish, obscuring the silvery freshness of their first state. this has cracked up in the darks and quite changed them. the _market-cart_ and the _watering-place_, as well as others in the national collection, are in a very different condition to that in which they left the easel. the world, however, has become so conservative, and has such belief in the picture-vamper's "golden tones," that so they must remain. it would be most impolitic to touch them until they have become too dark to be seen at all. _a century of painters of the english school_ (london, ). bacchus and ariadne (_tintoret_) hippolyte adolphe taine it is more difficult for me to speak to you of the venetian painters than of any others. before their pictures one has no desire to analyze or reason; if one does this, it is by compulsion. the eyes enjoy, and that is all: they enjoy as the venetians enjoyed in the sixteenth century; for venice was not at all a literary or critical city like florence; there painting was nothing more than the complement of the environing pleasure, the decoration of a banqueting-hall or of an architectural alcove. in order to understand this you must place yourself at a distance, shut your eyes and wait until your sensations are dulled; then your mind performs its work.... there are certain families of plants, the species of which are so closely allied that they resemble more than they differ from each other: such are the venetian painters, not only the four celebrities, giorgione, titian, tintoret, and veronese, but others less illustrious, palma "il vecchio," bonifazio, paris bordone, pordenone, and that host enumerated by ridolfi in his _lives_, contemporaries, relatives, and successors of the great men, andrea vicentino, palma "il giovine," zelotti, bazzaco, padovinano, bassano, schiavone, moretto, and many others. what first appeals to the eye is the general and common type; the individual and personal traits remain for a time in shadow. they have worked together and by turns in the ducal palace, but by the involuntary concord of their talents their pictures make an harmonious whole. at first our eyes are astonished; with the exception of three or four halls, the apartments are low and small. the hall of council of the ten and those surrounding it[ ] are gilded habitations, insufficient for the figures that dwell therein; but after a moment one forgets the habitation and sees only the figures. power and voluptuousness blaze there, unbridled and superb. in the angles nude men, painted caryatides, jut out in such high relief that at the first glance one takes them for statues; a colossal breath swells their chests; their thighs and their shoulders writhe. on the ceiling a mercury, entirely nude, is almost a figure by rubens, but of a more gross sensuality. a gigantic neptune urges before him his sea-horses which plash through the waves; his foot presses the edge of his chariot; his enormous and ruddy body is turned backwards; he raises his conch with the joy of a bestial god; the salt wind blows through his scarf, his hair, and his beard; one could never imagine, without seeing it, such a furious _élan_, such an overflowing of animal spirit, such a joy of pagan flesh, such a triumph of free and shameless life in the open air and broad sunlight. what an injustice to limit the venetians to the painting of merely happy scenes and to the art of simply pleasing the eye! they have also painted grandeur and heroism; the mere energetic and active body has attracted them; like the flemings, they have their colossi also. their drawing, even without colour, is capable by itself of expressing all the solidity and all the vitality of the human structure. look in this same hall at the four _grisailles_ by veronese--five or six women veiled or half-nude, all so strong and of such a frame that their thighs and arms would stifle a warrior in their embrace, and, nevertheless, their physiognomy is so simple or so proud that, despite their smile, they are virgins like raphael's venuses and psyches. [illustration: bacchus and ariadne. _tintoret._] the more we consider the ideal figures of venetian art, the more we feel the breath of an heroic age behind us. those great draped old men with the bald foreheads are the patrician kings of the archipelago, barbaresque sultans who, trailing their silken simars, receive tribute and order executions. the superb women in sweeping robes, bedizened and creased, are empress-daughters of the republic, like that catherina cornaro from whom venice received cyprus. there are the muscles of fighters in the bronzed breasts of the sailors and captains; their bodies, reddened by the sun and wind, have dashed against the athletic bodies of janizaries; their turbans, their pelisses, their furs, their sword-hilts constellated with precious stones,--all the magnificence of asia is mingled on their bodies with the floating draperies of antiquity and with the nudities of pagan tradition. their straight gaze is still tranquil and savage, and the pride and the tragic grandeur of their expression announce the presence of a life in which man was concentrated in a few simple passions, having no other thought than that of being master so that he should not be a slave, and to kill so that he should not be killed. such is the spirit of a picture by veronese which, in the hall of the council of the ten, represents an old warrior and a young woman; it is an allegory, but we do not trouble ourselves about the subject. the man is seated and leans forward, his chin upon his hand, with a savage air; his colossal shoulders, his arm, and his bare leg encircled with a cnemis of lions' heads protrudes from his ample drapery; with his turban, his white beard, his thoughtful brow, and his traits of a wearied lion, he has the appearance of a pacha who is tired of everything. she, with downcast eyes, places her hands upon her soft breast; her magnificent hair is caught up with pearls; she seems a captive awaiting the will of her master, and her neck and bowed face are strongly empurpled in the shadow that encircles them. nearly all the other halls are empty; the paintings have been taken into an interior room. we go to find the curator of the museum; we tell him in bad italian that we have no letters of introduction, nor titles, nor any rights whatsoever to be admitted to see them. thereupon he has the kindness to conduct us into the reserved hall, to lift up the canvases, one after the other, and to lose two hours in showing them to us. i have never had greater pleasure in italy; these canvases are now standing before our eyes; we can look at them as near as we please, at our ease, and we are alone. there are some browned giants by tintoret, with their skin wrinkled by the play of the muscles, saint andrew and saint mark, real colossi like those of rubens. there is a saint christopher by titian, a kind of bronzed and bowed atlas with his four limbs straining to bear the weight of a world, and on his neck by an extraordinary contrast, the tiny, soft, and laughing _bambino_, whose infantine flesh has the delicacy and grace of a flower. above all, there are a dozen mythological and allegorical paintings by tintoret and veronese, of such brilliancy and such intoxicating fascination that a veil seems to fall from our eyes and we discover an unknown world, a paradise of delights situated beyond all imagination and all dreams. when the old man of the mountain transported into his harem his sleeping youths to render them capable of extreme devotion, doubtless it was such a spectacle that he furnished. upon the coast at the margin of the infinite sea, serious ariadne receives the ring of bacchus, and venus, with a crown of gold, has come through the air to celebrate their marriage. here is the sublime beauty of bare flesh, such as it appears coming out of the water, vivified by the sun and touched with shadows. the goddess is floating in liquid light and her twisted back, her flanks and her curves are palpitating, half enveloped in a white, diaphanous veil. with what words can we paint the beauty of an attitude, a tone, or an outline? who will describe the healthy and roseate flesh under the amber transparency of gauze? how shall we represent the soft plenitude of a living form and the curves of limbs which flow into the leaning body? truly she is swimming in the light like a fish in its lake, and the air, filled with vague reflections, embraces and caresses her. _voyage en italie_ (paris, ). footnotes: [ ] painted by veronese and by zelotti and bazzaco under his direction. bacchus and ariadne anonymous titian's magnificent pictures in the ducal palace were, all but one, destroyed by fire the year after his death; but his impetuous rival, tintoretto, is abundantly represented there. with regard to _him_, as usual, our admiration for frequent manifestations of extraordinary power is but too commonly checked and chilled by coarse, heavy painting, and the unexpressive wholly uninteresting character of many of his allegorical or celestial groups, which seem introduced merely as exercises or exhibitions of technical skill, rather than as appeals to our imagination or finer feelings.... on the whole you are again tempted to be somewhat out of conceit with tintoretto, till you pause in the ante collegio, or guard-room, before a picture of his so poetically conceived and admirably wrought, indeed so pleasing in all respects, that you wonder still more at the dull, uninteresting character of so many of the others. yes, here _il furioso_ tintoretto, leaving ostentatious, barren displays of technical power, has once again had the gentleness and patience to make himself thoroughly agreeable. ariadne, a beautiful and noble figure, is seated undraped on a rock, and bacchus, profusely crowned with ivy, advances from the sea, and offers her the nuptial ring; whilst above, venus, her back towards you, lying horizontally in the pale blue air, as if the blue air were her natural couch, spreads or rather kindles, a chaplet or circlet of stars round ariadne's head. here, those who luxuriate in what is typical, may tell us, and probably not without truth, that tintoretto wished to convey a graceful hint of venice crowned by beauty and blessed with joy and abundance. bacchus arising from the sea well signifies these latter gifts, and the watery path by which they come to her; and the lonely island nymph to whom he presents the wedding-ring, may be intended to refer to the situation and original forlornness of venice herself, when she sat in solitude amidst the sandy isles of the lagune, aloof from her parental shores, ravaged by the hun or the lombard. the pale yellow sunshine on these nude figures and their light transparent shadows, and the mild temperate blue of the calm sea and air, almost completing the most simple arrangement of the colouring of the picture, are still beautiful, and no doubt were far more so before its lamentable fading, occasioned, it seems, by too much exposure to light; you feel quite out of doors, all on the airy cliffs, as you look on it, and almost taste the very freshness of the sea-breeze. _the art journal_ (london, ). la cruche cassÉe (_greuze_) thÉophile gautier one might say of greuze, as of hogarth, that the moral scenes which he represents appear to have been posed for and acted by excellent actors rather than copied directly from nature. this is the truth, but seen, however, through an interpretation and under a travesty of rusticity. all is reasoned out, full of purpose, and leading to an end. there is in every stroke what the _littérateurs_ call ideas when they talk about painting. thus diderot has celebrated greuze in the most lyric strain. greuze, however, is not a mediocre artist: he invented a _genre_ unknown before his time, and he possesses veritable qualities of a painter. he has colour, he has touch, and his heads, modelled by square plans and, so to speak, by facets, have relief and life. his draperies, or rather his rumpled linen, torn and treated grossly in a systematic fashion to give full value to the delicacy of the flesh, reveal in their very negligence an easy brush. _la malédiction paternelle_ and _le fils maudit_ are homilies that are well painted and of a practical moral, but we prefer _l'accordée du village_, on account of the adorable head of the _fiancée_; it is impossible to find anything younger, fresher, more innocent and more coquettishly virginal, if these two words may be connected. greuze, and this is the cause of the renown which he enjoys now after the eclipse of his glory caused by the intervention of david and his school, has a very individual talent for painting woman in her first bloom, when the bud is about to burst into the rose and the child is about to become a maiden. as in the eighteenth century all the world was somewhat libertine, even the moralists, greuze, when he painted an innocence, always took pains to open the gauze and give a glimpse of the curve of the swelling bosom; he puts into the eyes a fiery lustre and upon the lips a dewy smile that suggests the idea that innocence might very easily become voluptuousness. [illustration: la cruche cassÉe. _greuze._] _la cruche cassée_ is the model of this _genre_. the head has still the innocence of childhood, but the fichu is disarranged, the rose at the corsage is dropping its leaves, the flowers are only half held in the fold of the gown and the jug allows the water to escape through its fissure. _guide de l'amateur au musée du louvre_ (paris, ). portrait of lady cockburn and her children (_reynolds_) frederic g. stephens the number of reynolds's portraits of ladies has never been given, probably it cannot be ascertained with precision; it is beyond all question marvellous, but not less so is the variety of the attitudes in which he placed the sitters, that of the ideas he expressed, and of the accessories with which they are surrounded; to this end, and to show how successfully he fitted things together, background and figure, compare the portrait of _elizabeth hamilton, countess of derby_ splendidly engraved by w. dickinson, with that of lady betty delmé. it is the same everywhere. we believe that reynolds, of that english school of portrait-painters of which he was the founder, was the happiest in introducing backgrounds to his works; to him we are for the most part indebted for that aptitude of one to the other which has so great an effect in putting the eye and mind of the observer into harmonious relationship with what may be called the _motive_ of the portrait, which, indeed, elevates a mere likeness to the character of a picture, and affords a charming field for the display of art in pathos, which is too often neglected, if not utterly ignored, by reynolds's successors. we think he exhibited more of this valuable characteristic than any other contemporary artist. lawrence aimed at it, but with effect only commensurate to his success in painting. of old, as before the seventeenth century in germany and italy, the art of landscape-painting _per se_ was inefficiently cultivated, at least expressed with irregularity, although occasionally with force enough to show that the pathos as well as the beauty of nature were by no means unappreciated or neglected to anything like the extent which has been commonly represented by writers on art. reynolds probably took the hint, as he did many others of the kind, from vandyck, and gave apt backgrounds to his figures: between these painters no one did much, or even well in the pathetic part of the achievement. since reynolds, none have approached him in success. it will be understood that the object of these remarks is not to suggest for the reader's consideration who painted the best landscape backgrounds as landscapes, but who most happily adapted them to his more important themes. we believe reynolds did so, and will conclude our remarks by another example. the landscape in the distance of _the age of innocence_ is as thoroughly in keeping with the subject as it can be: thus here are fields easy to traverse, a few village elms, and just seen above their tops the summits of habitations,--the hint is thus given that the child, all innocent as she is, has not gone far from home, or out of sight of the household to which she belongs.... [illustration: portrait of lady cockburn and her children. _reynolds._] it has been alleged that reynolds never, or rarely painted the landscape backgrounds to his pictures, and that they were the work of peter toms, r.a., one of his ablest assistants, or of others who were more potent with that branch of art than the president himself.... it is hard to deny to the mind which conceived the ruling idea of such pictures that honour which is assuredly due to some one, and to whom more probably than to the painter of the faces and designer of the attitudes, which are in such perfect harmony with the subordinate elements about them as to be completed only when the alliance is made. without this alliance, this harmony of parts, half the significance of many of reynolds's pictures is obscured. when we have noted this the result is at least instructive, if not convincing, that one mind designed, if one hand did not invariably execute, the whole of any important portrait by our subject. our own belief is, that whenever the landscapes or other accessories of his productions are essential to the idea expressed by the work as a whole, then undoubtedly reynolds wrought these minor parts almost wholly, if not entirely, with his own brushes. few, if any, of reynolds's family groups equals in beauty, variety, and spirit, the famous _cornelia and her children_, or rather _lady cockburn and her three infants_,--a work so charming, that we can well conceive the feelings of the royal academicians of , that long-past time, when it was brought to be hung in the exhibition, and received with clapping of hands, as men applaud a successful musical performance, or the fine reading of a poem. every royal academician then present--the scene must have been a very curious one--stepped forward, and in this manner saluted the work of the president; they did so, not because it was his, but on account of its charming qualities. conceive the painters, each in his swallow-tailed coat, his ruffles and broad cuffs, his knee-breeches, buckles, long waistcoat, and the rest of his garments of those days, thus uniting in one acclaim. the reader may judge whether or not such applause was deserved by the picture, which tells its own story. the parrot in the background was occasionally used by reynolds; see the portrait of elizabeth, countess of derby, and the engraving from it by w. dickinson.[ ] it has been said that the only example of reynolds's practice in signing pictures on the border of the robes of his sitters appears in _mrs. siddons as the tragic muse_; nevertheless, this picture of _cornelia_ shows at least one exception to that asserted rule. the border of lady cockburn's dress in the original is inscribed in a similar manner thus:--" , reynolds _pinxit_." the picture was begun in , and is now in the possession of sir james hamilton, of portman square, who married the daughter of general sir james cockburn, one of the boys in the picture. it is noteworthy that all these children successively inherited the baronetcy; one of them--the boy who looks over his mother's shoulder--was admiral sir george cockburn, bart., on board whose ship, the _northumberland_, napoleon was conveyed to st. helena. sir james, the eldest brother, was afterwards seventh baronet; sir william, the third brother, was eighth baronet of the name, was dean of york, and married a daughter of sir r. peel. the lady was augusta anne, daughter of the rev. frances ascough, d.d., dean of bristol, married in , the second wife of sir james cockburn, sixth baronet of langton, in the county of berwick, m.p. she was niece of lord lyttleton. for this picture in march, , reynolds received £ s. this was probably the whole price, and for a work of no great size, but wealthy in matter, the amount was small indeed. it includes four portraits. after comparison of the facts that the engravings, by c.w. wilkin, in stipple, and by s.w. reynolds, mezzotint, are dated, on the robe as aforesaid, " ," and its exhibition in , the year in which it was paid for, we may guess that the signature and date were added by the painter after exhibiting it, and probably while he worked on it, with the advantage of having compared the painting with others in the royal academy. the landscape recalls that glimpse of halcyon country of which we caught sight in _the infant academy_--its trees, its glowing sky, are equally adaptable to both subjects. the picture was exhibited at the british institution in , and was then the property of sir james cockburn, bart., whose portrait it contains. _english children as painted by sir joshua reynolds_ (london, ). footnotes: [ ] rather we should say, see the engraving only. the picture is one of the very few prime works by reynolds which has disappeared without records of its loss. st. cecilia (_raphael_) percy bysshe shelley i have seen a quantity of things here--churches, palaces, statues, fountains, and pictures; and my brain is at this moment like a portfolio of an architect, or a print-shop, or a common-place book. i will try to recollect something of what i have seen; for indeed it requires, if it will obey, an act of volition. first, we went to the cathedral, which contains nothing remarkable, except a kind of shrine, or rather a marble canopy, loaded with sculptures, and supported on four marble columns. we went then to a palace--i am sure i forget the name of it--where we saw a large gallery of pictures. of course, in a picture gallery you see three hundred pictures you forget, for one you remember. i remember, however, an interesting picture by guido, of the rape of proserpine, in which proserpine casts back her languid and half-unwilling eyes, as it were, to the flowers she had left ungathered in the fields of enna. we saw besides one picture of raphael--st. cecilia; this is in another and higher style; you forget that it is a picture as you look at it; and yet it is most unlike any of those things which we call reality. it is of the inspired and ideal kind, and seems to have been conceived and executed in a similar state of feeling to that which produced among the ancients those perfect specimens of poetry and sculpture which are the baffling models of succeeding generations. there is a unity and a perfection in it of an incommunicable kind. the central figure, st. cecilia, seems rapt in such inspiration as produced her image in the painter's mind; her deep, dark, eloquent eyes lifted up; her chestnut hair flung back from her forehead--she holds an organ in her hands--her countenance, as it were, calmed by the depth of its passion and rapture, and penetrated throughout with the warm and radiant light of life. she is listening to the music of heaven, and, as i imagine, has just ceased to sing, for the four figures that surround her evidently point, by their attitudes, towards her; particularly st. john, who, with a tender yet impassioned gesture, bends his countenance towards her, languid with the depth of his emotion. at her feet lie various instruments of music, broken and unstrung. of the colouring i do not speak; it eclipses nature, yet has all her truth and softness. _letters from italy. the prose works of percy bysshe shelley_, edited by harry buxton forman (london, ). [illustration: st. cecilia. _raphael._] the last supper (_leonardo da vinci_) johann wolfgang von goethe we will now turn to _the last supper_, which was painted on the wall of the refectory of st. maria delle gratie in milan. the place where this picture is painted must first be considered: for here the knowledge of this artist is focussed. could anything more appropriate, or noble, be devised for a refectory than a parting meal which the whole world will reverence for ever? several years ago when travelling we beheld this dining-room still undestroyed. opposite the entrance on the narrow end on the floor of the hall stands the prior's table with a table for the monks on either side, all three raised a step above the ground, and now when the visitor turns around he sees painted on the wall, above the not very high doors, a fourth table, at which are seated christ and his disciples, as if they also belonged to this company. it must have been an impressive sight at meal times when the tables of christ and the prior looked upon each other like two pictures, and the monks found themselves enclosed between them. and, for this very reason, the artist's judgment selected the tables of the monks for a model. also the table-cloth, with its creased folds, embroidered stripes, and tied corners, was taken from the linen-room of the monastery, while the dishes, plates, drinking-vessels, and other utensils are similarly copied from those used by the monks. here, also, no attempt was made to depict an uncertain and antiquated custom. it would have been extremely unsuitable in this place to permit the holy company to recline upon cushions. no! it should be made contemporary. christ should take his last supper with the dominicans in milan. in many other respects also the picture must have produced a great effect. about ten feet above the floor the thirteen figures, each one half larger than life-size, occupy a space twenty-eight parisian feet long. only two of these can be seen at full length at the opposite ends of the table, the others are half-figures, and here, too, the artist found great advantage in the conditions. every moral expression belongs solely to the upper part of the body, and the feet, in such cases, are always in the way; the artist has created here eleven half-figures, whose laps and knees are hidden by the table and table-cloth under which the feet in the deep shadow are scarcely visible. now, let us transport ourselves to this place and room, imagine the extreme moral repose which reigns in such a monastic dining-hall, and marvel at the strong emotion and impassioned action that the painter has put into his picture whilst he has kept his work of art close to nature, bringing it immediately in contrast with the neighbouring actual scene. the exciting means which the artist employed to agitate the tranquil and holy supper-table are the master's words: "there is one amongst you that betrays me." the words are spoken, and the entire company falls into consternation; but he inclines his head with downcast looks; the whole attitude, the motion of the arms, the hands, and everything repeat with heavenly resignation which the silence itself confirms, "verily, verily, there is one amongst you that betrays me." [illustration: the last supper. _l. da vinci._] before going any farther we must point out a great expedient, by means of which leonardo principally animated this picture: it is the motion of the hands; only an italian would have discovered this. with his nation the whole body is expressive, all the limbs take part in describing an emotion, not only passion but also thought. by various gestures he can express: "what do i care?"--"come here!"--"this is a rascal, beware of him!" "he shall not live long!" "this is a main point. take heed of this, my hearers!" to such a national trait, leonardo, who observed every characteristic with the greatest attention, must have turned his searching eye; in this the present picture is unique and one cannot observe it too much. the expression of every face and every gesture is in perfect harmony, and yet a single glance can take in the unity and the contrast of the limbs rendered so admirably. the figures on both sides of our lord may be considered in groups of three, and each group may be regarded as a unit, placed in relation and still held in connection with its neighbours. on christ's immediate right are john, judas, and peter. peter, the farthest, on hearing the words of our lord, rises suddenly, in conformity with his vehement character, behind judas, who, looking up with terrified countenance, leans over the table, tightly clutching the purse with his right hand, whilst with the left he makes an involuntary nervous motion as if to say: "what may this mean? what is to happen?" peter, meanwhile, with his left hand has seized the right shoulder of john, who is bending towards him, and points to christ, at the same time urging the beloved disciple to ask: "who is the traitor?" he accidentally touches judas's side with the handle of a knife held in his right hand, which occasions the terrified forward movement upsetting the salt-cellar, so happily brought out. this group may be considered as the one first thought of by the artist; it is the most perfect. while now on the right hand of the lord a certain degree of emotion seems to threaten immediate revenge, on the left, the liveliest horror and detestation of the treachery manifest themselves. james the elder starts back in terror, and with outspread arms gazes transfixed with bowed head, like one who imagines that he already beholds with his eyes what his ears have heard. thomas appears behind his shoulder, and approaching the saviour raises the forefinger of his right hand to his forehead. philip, the third of this group, rounds it off in the most pleasing manner; he has risen, he bends forward towards the master, lays his hands upon his breast, and says with the greatest clearness: "it is not i, lord, thou knowest it! thou knowest my pure heart, it is not i." and now the three last figures on this side give us new material for reflection. they are discussing the terrible news. matthew turns his face eagerly to his two companions on the left, hastily stretching out his hands towards the master, and thus, by an admirable contrivance of the artist, he is made to connect his own group with the preceding one. thaddæus shows the utmost surprise, doubt, and suspicion; his left hand rests upon the table, while he has raised the right as if he intended to strike his left hand with the back of his right, a very common action with simple people when some unexpected occurrence leads them to say: "did i not tell you so? did i not always suspect it?"--simon sits at the end of the table with great dignity, and we see his whole figure; he is the oldest of all and wears a garment with rich folds, his face and gesture show that he is troubled and thoughtful but not excited, indeed, scarcely moved. if we now turn our eyes to the opposite end of the table, we see bartholomew, who rests on his right foot with the left crossed over it, supporting his inclined body by firmly resting his hands upon the table. he is probably trying to hear what john will ask of the lord: this whole side appears to be inciting the favourite disciple. james the younger, standing near and behind bartholomew, lays his left hand on peter's shoulder, just as peter lays his on john's shoulder, but james mildly requests the explanation whilst peter already threatens vengeance. and as peter behind judas, so james the younger stretches out his hand behind andrew, who, as one of the most prominent figures expresses, with his half-raised arms and his hands stretched out directly in front, the fixed horror that has seized him, an attitude occurring but once in this picture, while in other works of less genius and less reflection, it is too often repeated.... it is sad to reflect that unfortunately even when the picture was painted, its ruin might have been predicted from the character and situation of the building. duke louis, out of malice or caprice, compelled the monks to renovate their decaying monastery in this unfavourable location, wherefore it was ill-built and as if by forced feudal labour. in the old galleries we see miserable meanly-wrought columns, great arches with small ill-assorted bricks, the materials from old pulled-down buildings. if then what is visible on the exterior is so bad, it is also to be feared that the inner walls, which were plastered over, were constructed still worse. this is saying nothing of weather-beaten bricks and other minerals saturated with hurtful salts which absorbed the dampness of the locality and destructively exhaled it again. farther away stood the unfortunate walls to which such a great treasure was entrusted, towards the north, and, moreover in the vicinity of the kitchen, the pantry, and the scullery; and how sad, that so careful an artist, who could not select and refine his colours and clear his glaze and varnish too carefully, was compelled by the circumstances, or rather by the place and situation in which the picture had to stand, to overlook the chief point upon which everything depended, or not to take it sufficiently to heart! however, despite all this, if the monastery had stood upon high ground, the evil would not have been so great. it lies so low, and the refectory lower than the rest of the building, that in the year , during a long rain, the water stood to a depth of three palms, which leads us also to believe that the frightful floods of also extended to this place. it is to be remembered that the monks did their best to dry out this room, but unfortunately there remained enough humidity to penetrate it through and through; and they were even sensible of this in leonardo's time. about ten years after the completion of the picture, a terrible plague overran the good city, and how could we expect that the afflicted monks, forsaken by all the world and in fear of death, should think of the picture in their dining-room? war and numerous other misfortunes which overtook lombardy in the first half of the sixteenth century were the cause of the complete neglect of such works as the one we are speaking of; the white-washed wall being especially unfavourable: perhaps, indeed, the very style of painting lent itself to speedy destruction. in the second half of the sixteenth century a traveller says that the picture is half spoiled; another sees in it only a tarnished blot; people complain that the picture is already lost, assuredly it can scarcely be seen; another calls it perfectly useless, and so speak all the later authors of this period. but the picture was still there, even if it was the shadow of its former self. now, however, from time to time fear arises lest it be lost entirely; the cracks are increasing and run into one another, and the great and precious surface is splitting into numberless small flakes and threatening to fall piece by piece. touched by this state of affairs, cardinal frederick borromeo had a copy of it made in , and we are grateful for his forethought. not only did it suffer by the lapse of time, in connection with the above-mentioned circumstances, but the owners, themselves, who should have kept and preserved it, wrought its greatest ruin and therefore have covered their memory with eternal shame. it seemed to them necessary to have doors that they might pass in and out of the refectory; so these were cut symmetrically through the wall upon which the picture stood. they desired an impressive entrance into the room which was so precious to them. a door much larger than was necessary was broken through the middle, and, without any feeling of reverence either for the painter or the holy company, they ruined the feet of several apostles, indeed, even of christ. and from this, the ruin of the picture really dates. now, in order to build an arch, a much larger opening had to be made in the wall than even for the door; and not only was a large portion of the picture lost, but the blows of hammers shook the picture in its own field, and in many places the crust was loosened and some pieces were fastened on again with nails. at a later period, by a new form of bad taste, the picture was obscured, inasmuch as a national escutcheon was fastened under the ceiling, almost touching the forehead of christ; thus by the door from below, so now from above also, the lord's presence was cramped and degraded. from this time forward the restoration was again spoken of which was undertaken at a later period. but what real artist would care to undertake such a responsibility? unfortunately, in the year , bellotti presented himself, poor in art, but at the same time, as is usual, with an abundant supply of presumption. he, like a charlatan, boasted of a secret process with which he could restore the picture to its original state. by means of a small sample of his work he deluded the ignorant monks who yielded to his discretion this treasure, which he immediately surrounded with scaffolding, and, hidden behind it, he painted over the entire picture with a hand shaming to art. the little monks wondered at the secret, which he communicated in a common varnish to delude them, and gave them to understand that with this they would be able to save it from spoiling for ever. whether, on the clouding of the picture after a short time, the monks made use of this costly remedy or not, is unknown, but it certainly was freshened up several times, and indeed with water-colours in certain parts. meanwhile the picture had become constantly more decayed, and again the question arose how far it could still be preserved, but not without much contention among artists and directors. de giorgi, a modest man of moderate talent, but intelligent and zealous and with a knowledge of true art, steadfastly refused to set his hand forward where leonardo had withheld his own. at last, in , on a well-meaning order but one void of discretion, through the indulgence of a courtly prior, the work was transferred to a certain mazza, who botched it in a masterly manner. the few old original spots remaining, although twice muddied by a foreign hand, were an impediment to his free brush; so he scraped them with iron and prepared bare places for the free play of his own impudent daubing, indeed, several heads were handled in this way. friends of art were now aroused against that in milan, and patrons and clients were openly blamed. enthusiasm fed the fire and the fermentation became general. mazza, who had begun to paint on the right of the saviour, had by this arrived at the left, and only the heads of matthew, thaddæus, and simon remained untouched. he thought to cover bellotti's work and to vie with him in the name of a hero. but fate willed otherwise, for the pliant prior having been transferred, his successor, a friend of art, did not delay to dismiss mazza forthwith; through which step three heads were so far saved that we can accordingly judge of bellotti. and, indeed, this circumstance probably gave rise to the saying: "there are still three heads of the genuine original remaining." in , the french host crossed the alps triumphantly, led by general bonaparte. young, crowned with fame and seeking fame, he was drawn by the name of leonardo to the place that has now held us so long. he immediately gave orders that no encampment should be made here lest other damage should happen, and signed the order on his knee before he mounted his horse. shortly afterwards another general disregarded these orders, had the doors broken in, and turned the hall into a stable. mazza's coating had already lost some of its freshness and the horse steam which was worse than the steam from viands on monkish sideboards lastingly impregnated the walls, and added new mould to the picture; indeed, dampness collected so heavily that it ran down leaving white streaks. later, this room was used for storing hay, and sometimes for other purposes connected with the military, by whom it was abused. finally the administration succeeded in closing the place, and even walling it in, so that for a long time those who wished to see _the last supper_ were obliged to climb a ladder leading to the pulpit from which the reader discoursed at meal times. in the year , a great flood produced still more dampness. in , on the recommendation of vossi, who took it upon himself to assume the secretaryship of the academy, a door was built and the board of governors promised more care in the future. finally, in , the viceroy of italy gave orders that the place should be renovated and duly honoured. windows were put in and scaffolding was erected in some parts to examine if there was anything more that could be done. the door was transferred to the side, and since then no considerable changes have been noticed, although to the minute observer its dullness varies according to the state of the atmosphere. although the work itself is as good as lost, may it yet leave some slight trace to the sad but pious memory of future generations! _werke_ (stuttgart and tübingen, ), vol. xxxix. the children of charles i. (_van dyck_) jules guiffrey upon his arrival [in england] anthonius was temporarily lodged at the house of edward norgate, a _protégé_ of the earl of arundel, charged by the king to provide for all the needs of his guest. another such installation could not be repeated. the sovereign himself took pains to find a suitable establishment for his painter. mr. carpenter cites a very curious note on this subject. charles i. wrote with his own hand,--"to speak with inigo jones concerning a house for vandike." this house demanded the combination of certain conditions very difficult to meet with. it was necessary that the artist should be comfortably established; and, on the other hand, the king wished him not to be too far from the palace. the architect was able to satisfy all these requirements. a winter residence was found for van dyck in blackfriars on the right bank of the thames. from his palace in whitehall, charles i., crossing the river in his barge, could conveniently reach the studio of his favourite painter. he took great pleasure in watching him at work and loved to forget himself during the long hours charmed by the wit and innate distinction of his entertainer. during the summer season, van dyck lived at eltham in the county of kent. he probably occupied an apartment or some dependency of one of the palaces of the crown. an annual pension of two hundred pounds sterling was assigned to him, first of all to enable him to support a household worthy of the title bestowed upon him,--"principal painter in ordinary." the portraits commanded by the king were paid for independently. the remuneration for his works finally provided the artist with that brilliant and gorgeous life which had been his ambition for so long and which an assiduous industry had not been able to procure for him in flanders. he had no less than six servants and several horses; at all periods, as we know, he always bestowed much care and refinement upon his toilet. frequenting an elegant and frivolous court could not but develop this natural disposition for all the quests of luxury. [illustration: portrait of the children of charles i. _van dyck._] three months after his arrival, van dyck was included in a creation of knights made on july , . charles i. added still more to this favour by the gift of a chain of gold bearing a miniature of himself enriched with diamonds. in many of his portraits the artist is represented with this mark of royal munificence. it now devolved upon him to justify the high position to which he found himself so rapidly elevated. an act of the privy seal pointed out by mr. carpenter shows us that van dyck lost no time in satisfying the impatience of his royal protector. on august , , the sum of £ was allowed him from the royal treasury for various works of painting. the enumeration of these pictures furnishes precious details for the price of the artist's works. it seems that from the very beginning, a kind of tariff was adopted with common accord, according to the size of each portrait. the price of a whole length portrait was £ ; other canvases only fetched £ ; that refers probably to personages at half length. finally, a large family picture, representing the king, the queen, and their two children attained the sum of £ . at a later period, these figures were increased and the price of a full length portrait was raised to £ . but how many of these works, in which, however, very great qualities shine, pale before a canvas of the master preserved in the museum of turin! we mean the picture in which the three young children of charles i. are grouped--the prince of wales, the princess henrietta maria who became the duchess of orleans, and the duke of york. all three are still in long dresses, therefore the eldest was about five or six years old at most; all three are standing up, and for that reason we cannot give the youngest less than eighteen months or two years. this circumstance dates the picture--it was painted in . we know the various portraits of the children of charles i. disseminated in the museums and palaces of europe; we have seen and admired the picture in dresden, those at windsor, the sketch in the louvre, and the canvas in berlin, a copy of the great composition which belongs to the queen of england. very well! there is not the slightest hesitation possible--not one of these pictures is comparable to that in turin. nowhere does there exist a work of van dyck's so delicate, so well preserved, and so perfect in all its points. with what care and worship this picture is surrounded no one can imagine. the most watchful precautions and the most respectful regard are at its service. we have been told that the directors of the museum constantly refuse to move it for the convenience of photographers. a little detail hardly worth mentioning, one would say! we do not think so. we consider that the authorities of the museum are right a thousand times, when they possess such a _chef-d'oeuvre_, not to neglect any precaution, however insignificant it may appear, to assure it a longer duration. a fine engraving of this incomparable jewel gives a very exact idea of the arrangement and dominating qualities of the picture; but how can we translate in black and white the shimmering of material, the delicacy of tone, the colouring of those robes, rose, blue, and white, of exquisite harmony and incomparable finesse. what shall we say of the physiognomy, of the grace, and also the penetrating charm of those three child figures? such a work would alone suffice for the glory of a museum, above all when it has kept its freshness like the flowering of genius. every moment of the painter was consecrated to the various members of the royal family. that was natural enough. charles i. never desisted from watching his clever _protégé_ at work, and spending his leisure in his studio,--the habitual _rendez-vous_ of the young gentlemen and the beauties of fashion. the establishment of the artist permitted him to receive such guests becomingly. hired musicians were instructed to divert his aristocratic models during the hours of work. thus he was enabled to attract and hold at his home the very best society in london. every day at his table sat numerous guests chosen from the _élite_ of the artists and _littérateurs_ mingled with the greatest personages. carried into the whirlwind of this light world so full of entertainment, van dyck hastened to enjoy all the pleasures and exhaust all the delights, without considering his strength, or hoarding his health.... the king would never let him stop painting the pictures of his children. on his side, van dyck brought to this task all his art, we might say all his heart. doubtless, he derived from rubens and also from van balen that very lively intelligence for the graces of childhood. also, when he occupied himself in rendering those delicious faces of rosy and chubby babies, in the midst of glimmering stuffs, he found colours of incomparable freshness.... every artist of high degree carries within himself the ideal type whose expression he pursues without pause. this search imprints upon each of his works the characteristic mark of genius: originality. thus we recognize at the first glance the giants that sprang from the brain of michael angelo, the enigmatical sirens of da vinci, and those superhuman figures with which raphael has peopled his immortal compositions. titian lived in a world of kings and magnificent princes. correggio's individuality is grace of form and charm of colour; his portion is not to be scorned. the exuberant nature of rubens betrays itself in his least important canvases. the personages of his innumerable pictures share in common the affinities of race and family which make them recognizable everywhere. anthonius van dyck obeys, likewise, the common law. each of his works is marked by that sign of originality, which in him consists of the incessant pursuit of elegance and distinction. distinction,--that is the gift _par excellence_, the dominating quality of this artist, that which constitutes his individuality, that which marks with an indelible imprint all his glorious works, from the first gropings of the pupil of rubens to those immortal images of charles i., his family, and his court. whether he belongs to the highest spheres of society or whether he comes from the simple _bourgeoisie_ of antwerp, the model receives from van dyck's brush the most aristocratic mien. one would insist that the painter spent his life only in a world of gentlemen and patricians. never does he surprise even the men that he knows the best, his most intimate friends, in the familiar carelessness of their daily occupations. rarely, very rarely, does it come into his mind to group them in some intimate interior scene. everybody is made to pose before posterity; each sitter has the smile to give his or her descendants the most exalted idea of his or her station and manners. not one is vulgar, not one dares to show himself in his ordinary work, or in the careless good nature of daily life. nothing alters their immutable serenity; nothing troubles the unalterable placidity of their physiognomy. let others paint the people of taverns, the world of _kermesses_ and peasants! van dyck wished to be and to live for ever the painter of aristocracy. _antoine van dyck--sa vie et sonnoeuvre._ (paris, ). the fighting tÉmÉraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, (_turner_) john ruskin "the flag which braved the battle and the breeze no longer owns her." exhibited at the academy in , with the above lines cited in the catalogue. of all turner's pictures in the national gallery this is perhaps the most notable. for, _first_ it is the last picture he ever painted with _perfect_ power--the last in which his execution is as firm and faultless as in middle life; the last in which lines requiring exquisite precision, such as those of the masts and yards of shipping, are drawn rightly at once. when he painted the _téméraire_ turner could, if he liked, have painted the _shipwreck_ or the _ulysses_ over again; but when he painted the _sun of venice_, though he was able to do different, and in some sort more beautiful things, he could not have done _those_ again. his period of central power thus begins with the _ulysses_ and closes with the _téméraire_. the one picture, it will be observed, is of sunrise, the other of sunset. the one of a ship entering on its voyage, and the other of a ship closing its course for ever. the one, in all the circumstance of the subject, unconsciously illustrative of his own life in its triumph, the other, in all the circumstances of its subject, unconsciously illustrative of his own life in its decline. accurately as the first sets forth his escape to the wild brightness of nature, to reign amidst all her happy spirits, so does the last set forth his returning to die by the shore of the thames. and besides having been painted in turner's full power, the _téméraire_ is of all his large pictures the best preserved. _secondly_, the subject of the picture is, both particularly and generally, the noblest that in an english national gallery could be. the _téméraire_ was the second ship in nelson's line at the battle of trafalgar; and this picture is the last of the group which turner painted to illustrate that central struggle in our national history. the part played by the _téméraire_ in the battle will be found detailed below. and, generally, she is a type of one of england's chief glories. it will be always said of us, with unabated reverence, "they built ships of the line." take it all in all, a ship of the line is the most honourable thing that man as a gregarious animal, has ever produced. by himself, unhelped, he can do better things than ships of the line; he can make poems and pictures, and other such concentrations of what is best in him. but as a being living in flocks, and hammering out, with alternate strokes and mutual agreement, what is necessary for him in those flocks, to get or produce, the ship of the line is his first work. and as the subject was the noblest turner could have chosen so also was his treatment of it. of all pictures of subjects not visibly involving human pain, this is, i believe, the most pathetic that was ever painted. the utmost pensiveness which can ordinarily be given to a landscape depends on adjuncts of ruin; but no ruin was ever so affecting as this gliding of the vessel to her grave. a ruin cannot be so, for whatever memories may be connected with it, and whatever witness it may have borne to the courage and glory of men, it never seems to have offered itself to their danger, and associated itself with their acts, as a ship of battle can. the mere facts of motion, and obedience to human guidance, double the interest of the vessel: nor less her organized perfectness, giving her the look, and partly the character of a living creature, that may indeed be maimed in limb or decrepit in frame, but must either live or die, and cannot be added to nor diminished from--heaped up and dragged down--as a building can. and this particular ship, crowned in the trafalgar hour of trial with chief victory--prevailing over the fatal vessel that had given nelson death--surely, if ever anything without a soul deserved honour or affection, we owed them here. those sails that strained so full bent into the battle--that broad bow that struck the surf aside, enlarging silently in steadfast haste full front to the shot--resistless and without reply--those triple ports whose choirs of flame rang forth in their courses, into the fierce revenging monotone, which, when it died away, left no answering voice to rise any more upon the sea against the strength of england--those sides that were wet with the long runlets of english life-blood, like press planks at vintage, gleaming goodly crimson down to the cast and clash of the washing foam--those pale masts that stayed themselves up against the war-ruin, shaking out their ensigns through the thunder, till sail and ensign drooped--steeped in the death-stilled pause of andalusian air, burning with its witness-clouds of human souls at rest,--surely, for these some sacred care might have been left in our thoughts, some quiet space amidst the lapse of english waters? nay, not so. we have stern keepers to trust her glory to--the fire and the worm. never more shall sunset lay golden robe on her, nor starlight tremble on the waves that part at her gliding. perhaps, where the low gate opens to some cottage-garden, the tired traveller may ask, idly, why the moss grows so green on its rugged wood; and even the sailor's child may not answer, nor know, that the night-dew lies deep in the war-rents of the wood of the old _téméraire_. and, _lastly_, the pathos of the picture--the contrast of the old ship's past glory with her present end; and the spectacle of the "old order" of the ship of the line whose flag had braved the battle and the breeze, yielding place to the new, in the little steam-tug--these pathetic contrasts are repeated and enforced by a technical _tour de force_ in the treatment of the colours which is without a parallel in art. and the picture itself thus combines the evidences of turner's supremacy alike in imagination and in skill. the old masters, content with one simple tone, sacrificed to its unity all the exquisite gradations and varied touches of relief and change by which nature unites her hours with each other. they gave the warmth of the sinking sun, overwhelming all things in its gold, but they did not give those gray passages about the horizon, where, seen through its dying light, the cool and the gloom of night gather themselves for their victory.... but in this picture, under the blazing veil of vaulted fire, which lights the vessel on her last path, there is a blue, deep, desolate hollow of darkness out of which you can hear the voice of the night wind, and the dull boom of the disturbed sea; the cold deadly shadows of the twilight are gathering through every sunbeam, and moment by moment, as you look, you will fancy some new film and faintness of the night has risen over the vastness of the departing form. (compiled from _modern painters_, vol. i. pt. ii. sec. i. ch. vii. § _n._, sec. ii. ch i. § ; _harbours of england_, p. ; and _notes on the turner gallery_, pp. - .) [illustration: the fighting tÉmÉraire. _turner._] finally a few words about the history of the picture itself may be interesting. the subject of it was suggested to turner by clarkson stanfield (who himself, it will be remembered, had painted a _battle of trafalgar_). they were going down the river by boat, to dine, perhaps, at greenwich, when the old ship, being tugged to her last berth at deptford, came in sight. "there's a fine subject, turner," said stanfield. this was in . next year the picture was exhibited at the academy, but no price was put upon it. a would-be purchaser offered turner guineas for it. he replied that it was his " guinea size" only, and offered to take a commission at that price for any subject of the same size, but with the _téméraire_ itself he would not part. another offer was subsequently made from america, which again turner declined. he had already mentally included the picture, it would seem, amongst those to be bequeathed to the nation; and in one of the codicils to his will, in which he left each of his executors a picture to be chosen by them in turn, the _téméraire_ was specially excepted from the pictures they might choose.[ ] edward t. cook, _a popular handbook to the national gallery_. footnotes: [ ] mr. w. hale white recently drew up for mr. ruskin, from official records, the following history of the _téméraire_. to him and to mr. ruskin i am indebted for permission to insert the history here. it will be seen that turner was right in calling his picture the _fighting téméraire_ and the critic who induced him to change the title in the engraving to the _old téméraire_ wrong:-- "the _téméraire_, second-rate, ninety-eight guns, was begun at chatham, july, , and launched on the th september, . she was named after an older _téméraire_ taken by admiral boscawen from the french in , and sold in june, . the chatham _téméraire_ was fitted at plymouth for a prison ship in , and in she became a receiving ship and was sent to sheerness. she was sold on the th august, , to mr. j. beatson for £ , . the _téméraire_ was at the battle of trafalgar on the st october, . she was next to the _victory_, and followed nelson into action; commanded by captain elias harvey, with thomas kennedy as first lieutenant. her maintopmast, the head of her mizzenmast, her foreyard, her starboard, cathead and bumpkin, and her fore and main topsail yards were shot away; her fore and main masts so wounded as to render them unfit to carry sail, and her bowsprit shot through in several places. her rigging of every sort was cut to pieces; the head of her rudder was taken off by the fire of the _redoutable_; eight feet of the starboard side of the lower deck abreast of the mainmast were stove in, and the whole of her quarter-galleries on both sides carried away. forty-six men on board of her were killed, and seventy-six wounded.... the _téméraire_ was built with a beakhead, or, in other words, her upper works were cut off across the catheads; a peculiarity which can be observed in turner's picture. it was found by experience in the early part of the french war that this mode of construction exposed the men working the guns to the enemy's fire, and it was afterwards abandoned. it has been objected," adds mr. white, "that the masts and yards in the picture are too light for a ninety-eight gun ship; but the truth is that when the vessel was sold she was juryrigged as a receiving ship, and turner, therefore, was strictly accurate. he might have seemed more accurate by putting heavier masts and yards in her; but he painted her as he saw her. this is very important, as it gets rid of the difficulty which i myself have felt and expressed, that it was very improbable that she was sold all standing in sea-going trim, as i imagined turner intended us to believe she was sold, and answers also the criticism just mentioned as to the disproportion between the weight of the masts and yards and the size of the hull." part of the _téméraire_, mr. white tells me, is still in existence. messrs. castle, the shipbuilders of millbank, have the two figures of atlas which supported the sterngallery. spring (_botticelli_) marcel reymond of all the ancient italian painters, botticelli has, for several years, been the master most in fashion. why? the first reason should be sought in that reaction against the pseudo-classic style of the renaissance which has seemed to be the dominant tendency of art in the nineteenth century. but this explanation does not suffice to tell us for what reasons the favour of the public has specially fallen upon botticelli. why select botticelli rather than any other artist of the fourteenth or fifteenth century? why botticelli and not giotto, or fra angelico, or, to cite none but his contemporaries, why not signorelli, or ghirlandajo? it is because fra angelico's art is too religious for our century and giotto's art too philosophical, or, at least, it is because our century no longer thinks of demanding from its artists, as in the time of giotto and fra angelico, the expression of the moral questions with which it is occupied. and if we seem to-day somewhat indifferent to the art of ghirlandajo, or signorelli, it is because their thought is too grave and because we desire before all else that art shall bring smiles into our laborious life; we demand that it shall give repose to our tired brains by charming us with the vision of all terrestrial beauties, without exacting any labour or any effort from our minds. in this quest of beauty, our curious minds, which know so many things and which have been able to compare the works of the most diverse civilizations, are perpetually seeking novelty, eager for rare forms, and inimical to everything banal and to everything that ordinary life brings before our eyes. and in our _fin de siècle_ we have been so much the more prone to subtle pursuits because for some time our french art has seemed to take delight in the forms of a gross realism. this refinement of art, this intimate analysis of form and thought, this love of sensual beauty, had appeared at the court of the medici by the same causes that prompt us to seek them; they are the fruit of a society that has attained the highest degree of well-being, wealth and knowledge. this kind of art lasted only for a moment in florence. it is correct to say that florentine art did not seem destined to speak the charms of feminine beauty. from its beginning, this school had been stamped by giotto with the philosophic impress, and for two centuries its artists had been before everything else, thinkers, occupied more with moral ideas than with the beauty of form. the first in florence to be enthralled by the charm of beautiful eyes was the poor filippo lippi. it was he who created that new form of art which was to continue with botticelli, his pupil, and which attained its perfection under the hands of leonardo. if, to the lucrezia buti of filippo lippi, we join botticelli's simonetta and leonardo's monna lisa, we should have the poem of love sung by florentine genius under its most exquisite form. [illustration: spring. _botticelli._] what botticelli was, _spring_ will tell us; and this work is so significant, its essence expresses the thought of the master so clearly that it has preserved all its charm for us, although its particular meaning is not known to us. we call it _spring_, but if one of the figures in the picture really represents spring, it is only an accessory figure; and, moreover, this name given to the picture is entirety modern. vasari says that it represents _venus surrounded by the graces_, but if we find the three graces in the picture, it is not likely that the principal figure represents venus. in my opinion, it is that principal figure that is the key to the picture; it is for this figure that everything has been done, and this it is, above all, that we must interrogate if we wish to know botticelli's meaning. evidently it is neither venus, nor spring; and the precision of the features, and the fidelity of the smallest details of the costume make us believe that we are in the presence of a veritable portrait.... around her, nature adorns herself with flowers; spring and the graces surround her like a train of fays. here is one of the familiar poetical forms of the fifteenth century; and, doubtless, by attentively reading the florentine poets, we should discover the meaning of all the allegorical figures that botticelli has united in his work and which we do not understand.[ ] but whatever may be the particular meaning of each of these figures, it is certain that here we have to do with love and beauty, and that perhaps in no other work may we find the charm of woman described in more passionate accents. in this world of feminine fascination botticelli loved everything. he knows the attraction of the toilet and of jewels, but he knows above all that no gem and no invention of man can rival the beauty of the female form. he was the first to understand the exquisite charm of silhouettes, the first to linger in expressing the joining of the arm and body, the flexibility of the hips, the roundness of the shoulders, the elegance of the leg, the little shadow that marks the springing of the neck, and, above all, the exquisite carving of the hand. but, even more, he understood "_le prestige insolent des grands yeux_,"--large eyes, full, restless, and sad, because they are filled with love. look at these young maidens of botticelli's. what a heavenly vision! did alfred de musset know these veiled forms that seem to float over the meadow and did he think of them in the sleeplessness of his nights of may? did he think of that young girl whose arm rises supple as the stem of a flower, of that young grace so charming in the frame of her fair hair confined by strings of pearls, or, indeed, of that _primavera_, who advances so imperiously beautiful, in her long robe of brocade, scattering handfuls of flowers that she makes blossom, or of that young mother more charming still in her modest grace, with her beautiful eyes full of infinite tenderness. and around this scene, what a beautiful frame of verdure and flowers! nature has donned her richest festal robes; the inanimate things, like the human beings, all speak of love and happiness, and tell us that the master of this world is that little child with bandaged eyes, who amuses himself by shooting his arrows of fire. to say a word about the technique of this work, we should remark that botticelli always painted in fresco or distemper, and that he did not seek the supple modelling that painting in oil affords; and, on the other hand, he submitted profoundly to the influence of pollaiolo; he observed nature with the eyes of a goldsmith; and he painted his works as if, working a niello or enamel, he had to set each figure in gold-wire. finally, is it necessary to speak of the date of the _primavera_? this would occasion a long discussion if the space were accorded me. let it suffice to say that the biography written by vasari merits no credence, that it has been unfortunately accepted by the majority of historians, and that we have not yet a good chronology of botticelli's works, nor even a simple catalogue. as for the chronology, most historians, relying upon vasari, place nearly all of botticelli's works before his trip to rome in . i think, on the contrary, and i will prove it elsewhere, that the great productive period of botticelli belongs to the ten last years of the century and that the _primavera_ should be classed in this period. the _primavera_ represents, with _the birth of venus_ and _the adoration of the magi_, the culminating point of botticelli's art. jouin, _chefs-d'oeuvre; peinture, sculpture, architecture_ (paris, - ). footnotes: [ ] see notably the _stanze_ of politian, where one will find nearly all the details of botticelli's picture; the shady grove, the flowery meadow, even the attitudes and the garments of the personages. is it not a figure of botticelli's which is thus described: "she is white and white is her robe, all painted with flowers, roses, and blades of grass." transcriber's notes: {a} possible typo for sinister? {b} van die beroerlicke tijden in die nederlanden. tijden appears in text as tij den. other sources give tyden as another spelling. most of the illustrations in this book have links to colored images on other sites on the internet. if the links don't work, try the "web gallery of art" at http://www.wga.hu/ then search for the artist or painting of interest. since this is not an html file, you may wish to copy to link you are interested in, into your browser, where you can view the related image. botticelli the birth of venus _florence_ http://www.wga.hu/art/b/botticel/ allegor/ birth.jpg veronese the queen of sheba _turin_ michael angelo the last judgment _rome_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/m/michelan/ sistina/lastjudg/ lastjud.jpg correggio magdalen _dresden_ van der helst the banquet of the arquebusiers _amsterdam_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/h/helst/celebrat.jpg watteau l'embarquement pour l'Île de cythère _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/w/watteau/antoine/ / cythe .jpg raphael the sistine madonna _dresden_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/raphael/ roma/ / sisti.jpg carpaccio the dream of st. ursula _venice_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/c/carpacci/ ursula/ / dream.jpg rubens the descent from the cross _antwerp_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/rubens/ religi/ desce .jpg titian bacchus and ariadne _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/t/tiziano/mytholo /bacchus.jpg fra angelico the coronation of the virgin _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/a/angelico/altar/angelic .jpg botticelli judith _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/b/botticel/painting/judith.jpg hobbema the avenue of middelharnais _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/h/hobbema/alley.jpg andrea del sarto the dance of the daughter of herodias _florence_ fabriano the adoration of the magi _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/g/gentile/adormag.jpg holbein portrait of georg gisze _berlin_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/h/holbein/hans_y/ / gisze.jpg tintoret paradise _venice_ guido reni aurora _rome_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/reni/ /aurora.jpg titian the assumption of the virgin _venice_ rembrandt the night watch _amsterdam_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/rembran/painting/group/night_wa.jpg gozzoli the rape of helen _london_ l. da vinci monna lisa _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/l/leonardo/ / monali.jpg van eyck the adoration of the lamb _ghent_ http://www.wga.hu/art/e/eyck_van/jan/ ghent/ open /l adora.jpg piero di cosimo the death of procris _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/p/piero/cosimo/allegory/procris.jpg tintoret the marriage in cana _venice_ http://www.wga.hu/art/t/tintoret/ religio/marriage.jpg de la tour portrait of madame de pompadour _paris_ constable the hay wain _london_ http://www.wga.hu/art/c/constabl/haywain.jpg velasquez the surrender of breda _madrid_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/v/velazque/ - / breda.jpg murillo the immaculate conception _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/m/murillo/ -/immacula.jpg giotto st. frances before the soldan _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/g/giotto/s_croce/ bardi/scenes_ /franci .jpg rossetti lilith _rockford, del._ http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/dgr/paintings/ .jpg dÜrer the adoration of the magi _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/d/durer/ / / adorat.jpg hogarth the marriage a-la-mode _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/h/hogarth/marriag .jpg l. da vinci the madonna of the rocks _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/l/leonardo/ / virg_p.jpg guido reni portrait of beatrice cenci _rome_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/s/sirani/b_cenci.jpg raphael the transfiguration _rome_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/raphael/ roma/ / trans.jpg paul potter the bull _the hague_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/p/potter/y_bull.jpg fragonard corésus and callirhoé _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/f/fragonar/ / coresu.jpg gainsborough the market-cart _london_ tintoret bacchus and ariadne _venice_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/t/tintoret/ mytholo/ariadne.jpg greuze la cruche cassée _paris_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/g/greuze/broken_j.jpg reynolds portrait of lady cockburn and her children _london_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/r/reynolds/cockburn.jpg raphael st. cecilia _naples_ http://www.abcgallery.com/r/raphael/raphael .jpg l. da vinci the last supper _milan_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/l/leonardo/ / lastsu .jpg van dyck portrait of the children of charles i. _turin_ http://www.abcgallery.com/v/vandyck/vandyck .jpg turner the fighting téméraire _london_ http://www.j-m-w-turner.co.uk/artist/gifetc/tameria.jpg botticelli spring _florence_ http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/b/botticel/allegory/primaver.jpg fragments. § . but this form is much modified by the special direction of the descending force as it escapes from confinement. for a stream coming down a ravine is kept by the steep sides of its channel in concentrated force: but it no sooner reaches the bottom, and escapes from its ravine, than it spreads in all directions, or at least tries to choose a new channel at every flood. let _a b c_, fig. , be three ridges of mountain. the two torrents coming down the ravine between them meet, at _d_ and _e_, with the heaps of ground formerly thrown down by their own agency. these heaps being more or less in the form of cones, the torrent has a tendency to divide upon their apex, like water poured on the top of a sugar-loaf, and branch into the radiating channels _e x_, _e y_, &c. the stronger it is, the more it is disposed to rush straightforward, or with little curvature, as in the line _e x_, with the impetus it has received in coming down the ravine; the weaker it is, the more readily it will lean to one side or the other, and fall away in the lines of escape, _e y_, or _e h_; but of course at times of highest flood it fills all its possible channels, and invents a few new ones, of which afterwards the straightest will be kept by the main stream, and the lateral curves occupied by smaller branches; the whole system corresponding precisely to the action of the ribs of the young leaf, as shown in plate + + of vol. iii., especially in fig. ,--the main torrent, like the main rib, making the largest fortune, i. e. raising the highest heap of gravel and dust. [illustration: fig. .] § . it may easily be imagined that when the operation takes place on a large scale, the mass of earth thus deposited in a gentle slope at the mountain's foot becomes available for agricultural purposes, and that then it is of the greatest importance to prevent the stream from branching into various channels at its will, and pouring fresh sand over the cultivated fields. accordingly, at the mouth of every large ravine in the alps, where the peasants know how to live and how to work, the stream is artificially embanked, and compelled as far as possible to follow the central line down the cone. hence, when the traveller passes along any great valley,--as that of the rhone or arve,--into which minor torrents are poured by lateral ravines, he will find himself every now and then ascending a hill of moderate slope, at the _top_ of which he will cross a torrent, or its bed, and descend by another gradual slope to the usual level of the valley. in every such case, his road has ascended a tongue of débris, and has crossed the embanked torrent carried by force along its centre. under such circumstances, the entire tongue or heap of land ceases of course to increase, until the bed of the confined torrent is partially choked by its perpetual deposit. then in some day of violent rain the waves burst their fetters, branch at their own will, cover the fields of some unfortunate farmer with stones and slime, according to the torrent's own idea of the new form which it has become time to give to the great tongue of land, carry away the road and the bridge together, and arrange everything to their own liking. but the road is again painfully traced among the newly fallen débris; the embankment and bridge again built for the stream, now satisfied with its outbreak; and the tongue of land submitted to new processes of cultivation for a certain series of years. when, however, the torrent is exceedingly savage, and generally of a republican temper, the outbreaks are too frequent and too violent to admit of any cultivation of the tongue of land. a few straggling alder or thorn bushes, their roots buried in shingle, and their lower branches fouled with slime, alone relieve with ragged spots of green the broad waste of stones and dust. the utmost that can be done is to keep the furious stream from choosing a new channel in every one of its fits of passion, and remaining in it afterwards, thus extending its devastation in entirely unforeseen directions. the land which it has brought down must be left a perpetual sacrifice to its rage; but in the moment of its lassitude it is brought back to its central course, and compelled to forego for a few weeks or months the luxury of deviation. § . on the other hand, when, owing to the nature of the valley above, the stream is gentle, and the sediment which it brings down small in quantity, it may be retained for long years in its constant path, while the sides of the bank of earth it has borne down are clothed with pasture and forest, seen in the distance of the great valley as a promontory of sweet verdure, along which the central stream passes with an influence of blessing, submitting itself to the will of the husbandman for irrigation, and of the mechanist for toil; now nourishing the pasture, and now grinding the corn, of the land which it has first formed, and now waters. § . i have etched above, plate + +, a portion of the flank of the valley of chamouni, which presents nearly every class of line under discussion, and will enable the reader to understand their relations at once. it represents, as was before stated, the crests of the montagnes de la côte and taconay, shown from base to summit, with the glacier des bossons and its moraine. the reference figure given at p. will enable the reader to distinguish its several orders of curves, as follows: _h r_. aqueous curves of fall, at the base of the tapia; very characteristic. similar curves are seen in multitude on the two crests beyond as _b c_, _c_ b. _d e_. first lines of projection. the débris falling from the glacier and the heights above. _k_, _l_, _n_.three lines of escape. a considerable torrent (one of whose falls is the well-known cascade des pélerins[ ]) descends from behind the promontory _h_: its natural or proper course would be to dash straight forward down the line _f g_, and part of it does so; but erratic branches of it slide away round the promontory, in the lines of escape, _k_, _l_, &c. each row of trees marks, therefore, an old torrent bed, for the torrent always throws heaps of stones up along its banks, on which the pines, growing higher than on the neighboring ground, indicate its course by their supremacy. when the escaped stream is feeble, it steals quietly away down the steepest part of the slope; that is to say, close under the promontory, at _i_. if it is stronger, the impetus from the hill above shoots it farther out, in the line _k_; if stronger still, at _l_; in each case it curves gradually round as it loses its onward force, and falls more and more languidly to leeward, down the slope of the débris. _r s_. a line which, perhaps, would be more properly termed of limitation than of escape, being that of the base or termination of the heap of torrent débris, which in shape corresponds exactly to the curved lip of a wave, after it has broken, as it slowly stops upon a shallow shore. within this line the ground is entirely composed of heaps of stones, cemented by granite dust and cushioned with moss, while outside of it, all is smooth pasture. the pines enjoy the stony ground particularly, and hold large meetings upon it, but the alders are shy of it; and, when it has come to an end, form a triumphal procession all round its edge, following the concave line. the correspondent curves above are caused by similar lines in which the débris has formerly stopped. [illustration: . débris curvature.] § . i found it a matter of the greatest difficulty to investigate the picturesque characters of these lines of projection and escape, because, as presented to the eye, they are always modified by perspective; and it is almost a physical impossibility to get a true profile of any of the slopes, they round and melt so constantly into one another. many of them, roughly measured, are nearly circular in tendency;[ ] but i believe they are all portions of infinite curves either modified by the concealment or destruction of the lower lips of débris, or by their junction with straight lines of slope above, throwing the longest limb of the curve upwards. fig. , in plate + + opposite, is a simple but complete example from chamouni; the various overlapping and concave lines at the bottom being the limits of the mass at various periods, more or less broken afterwards by the peasants, either by removing stones for building, or throwing them back at the edges here and there, out of the way of the plough; but even with all these breaks, their natural unity is so sweet and perfect, that, if the reader will turn the plate upside down, he will see i have no difficulty (merely adding a quill or two) in turning them into a bird's wing (fig. ), a little ruffled indeed, but still graceful, and not of such a form as one would have supposed likely to be designed and drawn, as indeed it was, by the rage of a torrent. but we saw in chap. vii. § that this very rage was, in fact, a beneficent power,--creative, not destructive; and as all its apparent cruelty is overruled by the law of love, so all its apparent disorder is overruled by the law of loveliness: the hand of god, leading the wrath of the torrent to minister to the life of mankind, guides also its grim surges by the laws of their delight; and bridles the bounding rocks, and appeases the flying foam, till they lie down in the same lines that lead forth the fibres of the down on a cygnet's breast. § . the straight slopes with which these curves unite themselves below, in plate + + (_f g_ in reference figure), are those spoken of in the outset as lines of rest. but i defer to the next chapter the examination of these, which are a separate family of lines (not curves at all), in order to reassemble the conclusions we have now obtained respecting _curvature_ in mountains, and apply them to questions of art. and, first, it is of course not to be supposed that these symmetrical laws are so manifest in their operation as to force themselves on the observance of men in general. they are interrupted, necessarily, by every fantastic accident in the original conformation of the hills, which, according to the hardness of their rocks, more or less accept or refuse the authority of general law. still, the farther we extend our observance of hills, the more we shall be struck by the continual roundness and softness which it seems the object of nature to give to every form; so that, when crags look sharp and distorted, it is not so much that they are unrounded, as that the various curves are more subtly accommodated to the angles, and that, instead of being worn into one sweeping and smooth descent, like the surface of a knoll or down, the rock is wrought into innumerable minor undulations, its own fine anatomy showing through all. [illustration: j. ruskin. j. h. le keux. . the buttresses of an alp.] § . perhaps the mountain which i have drawn on the opposite page (plate + +[ ]) is, in its original sternness of mass, and in the complexity of lines into which it has been chiselled, as characteristic an instance as could be given by way of general type. it is one of no name or popular interest, but of singular importance in the geography of switzerland, being the angle buttress of the great northern chain of the alps (the chain of the jungfrau and gemmi), and forming the promontory round which the rhone turns to the north-west, at martigny. it is composed of an intensely hard gneiss (slaty crystalline), in which the plates of mica are set for the most part against the angle, running nearly north and south, as in fig. , and giving the point, therefore, the utmost possible strength, which, however, cannot prevent it from being rent gradually by enormous curved fissures, and separated into huge vertical flakes and chasms, just at the lower promontory, as seen in plate + +, and (in plan) in fig. . the whole of the upper surface of the promontory is wrought by the old glaciers into furrows and striæ more notable than any i ever saw in the alps. § . now observe, we have here a piece of nature's work which she has assuredly been long in executing, and which is in peculiarly firm and stable material. it is in her best rock (slaty crystalline), at a point important for all her geographical purposes, and at the degree of mountain elevation especially adapted to the observation of mankind. we shall therefore probably ascertain as much of nature's mind about these things in this piece of work as she usually allows us to see all at once. [illustration: fig. .] § . if the reader will take a pencil, and, laying tracing paper over the plate, follow a few of its lines, he will (unless before accustomed to accurate mountain-drawing) be soon amazed by the complexity, endlessness, and harmony of the curvatures. he will find that there is not one line in all that rock which is not an infinite curve, and united in some intricate way with others, and suggesting others unseen; and if it were the reality, instead of my drawing, which he had to deal with, he would find the infinity, in a little while, altogether overwhelm him. but even in this imperfect sketch, as he traces the multitudinous involution of flowing line, passing from swift to slight curvature, or slight to swift, at every instant, he will, i think, find enough to convince him of the truth of what has been advanced respecting the natural appointment of curvature as the first element of all loveliness in form. § . "nay, but there are hard and straight lines mingled with those curves continually." true, as we have said so often, just as shade is mixed with light. angles and undulations may rise and flow continually, one through or over the other; but the opposition is in quantity nearly always the same, if the mass is to be pleasant to the eye. in the example previously given (plate + +), the limestone bank above villeneuve, it is managed in a different way, but is equal in degree; the lower portion of the hill is of soft rock in thin laminæ; the upper mass is a solid and firm bed, yet not so hard as to stand all weathers. the lower portion, therefore, is rounded into almost unbroken softness of bank; the upper surmounts it as a rugged wall, and the opposition of the curve and angle is just as complete as in the first example, in which one was continually mingled with the other. § . next, note the _quantity_ in these hills. it is an element on which i shall have to insist more in speaking of vegetation; but i must not pass it by, here, since, in fact, it constitutes one of the essential differences between hills of first-rate magnificence, and inferior ones. not that there is want of quantity even in the lower ranges, but it is a quantity of inferior things, and therefore more easily represented or suggested. on a highland hill side are multitudinous clusters of fern and heather; on an alpine one, multitudinous groves of chestnut and pine. the number of the things may be the same, but the sense of infinity is in the latter case far greater, because the number is of nobler things. indeed, so far as mere magnitude of space occupied on the field of the horizon is the measure of objects, a bank of earth ten feet high may, if we stoop to the foot of it, be made to occupy just as much of the sky as that bank of mountain at villeneuve; nay, in many respects its little ravines and escarpments, watched with some help of imagination, may become very sufficiently representative to us of those of the great mountain; and in classing all water-worn mountain-ground under the general and humble term of banks, i mean to imply this relationship of structure between the smallest eminences and the highest. but in this matter of superimposed _quantity_ the distinctions of rank are at once fixed. the heap of earth bears its few tufts of moss or knots of grass; the highland or cumberland mountain its honeyed heathers or scented ferns; but the mass of the bank at martigny or villeneuve has a vineyard in every cranny of its rocks, and a chestnut grove on every crest of them. § . this is no poetical exaggeration. look close into that plate (+ +). every little circular stroke in it among the rocks means, not a clump of copse nor wreath of fern, but a walnut tree, or a spanish chestnut, fifty or sixty feet high. nor are the little curves, thus significative of trees, laid on at random. they are not indeed counted, tree by tree, but they are most carefully distributed in the true proportion and quantity; or if i have erred at all, it was, from mere fatigue, on the side of sparingness. the minute mounds and furrows scattered up the side of that great promontory, when they are actually approached, after three or four hours' climbing, turn into independent hills with true _parks_ of lovely pasture land enclosed among them, and avenue after avenue of chestnuts, walnuts, and pines bending round their bases; while in the deeper dingles, unseen in the drawing, nestle populous villages, literally bound down to the rock by enormous trunks of vine, which, first trained lightly over the loose stone roofs, have in process of years cast their fruitful net over the whole village, and fastened it to the ground under their purple weight and wayward coils, as securely as ever human heart was fastened to earth by the net of the flatterer. § . and it is this very richness of incident and detail which renders switzerland so little attractive in its subjects to the ordinary artist. observe, this study of mine in plate + + does not profess to be a _picture_ at all. it is a mere sketch or catalogue of all that there is on the mountain side, faithfully written out, but no more than should be put down by any conscientious painter for mere guidance, before he begins his work, properly so called; and in finishing such a subject no trickery nor shorthand is of any avail whatsoever; there are a certain number of trees to be drawn; and drawn they must be, or the place will not bear its proper character. they are not misty wreaths of soft wood suggestible by a sweep or two of the brush; but arranged and lovely clusters of trees, clear in the mountain sunlight, each specially grouped and as little admitting any carelessness of treatment, though five miles distant, as if they were within a few yards of us; the whole meaning and power of the scene being involved in that one fact of quantity. it is not large merely by multitudes of tons of rock,--the number of tons is not measurable; it is not large by elevation of angle on the horizon,--a house-roof near us rises higher; it is not large by faintness of aerial perspective,--in a clear day it often looks as if we could touch the summit with the hand. but it is large by this one unescapable fact that, from the summit to the base of it, there are of timber trees so many countable thousands. the scene differs from subjects not swiss by including hundreds of other scenes within itself, and is mighty, not by scale, but by aggregation. § . and this is more especially and humiliatingly true of pine forest. nearly all other kinds of wood may be reduced, over large spaces, to undetailed masses; but there is nothing but patience for pines; and this has been one of the principal reasons why artists call switzerland "unpicturesque." there may perhaps be, in the space of a swiss valley which comes into a picture, from five to ten millions of well grown pines.[ ] every one of these pines must be drawn before the scene can be. and a pine cannot be represented by a round stroke, nor by an upright one, nor even by an angular one; no conventionalism will express a pine; it must be legitimately drawn, with a light side and a dark side, and a soft gradation from the top downwards, or it does not look like a pine at all. most artists think it not desirable to choose a subject which involves the drawing of ten millions of trees; because, supposing they could even do four or five in a minute, and worked for ten hours a day, their picture would still take them ten years before they had finished its pine forests. for this, and other similar reasons, it is declared usually that switzerland is ugly and unpicturesque; but that is not so; it is only that _we_ cannot paint it. if we could, it would be as interesting on the canvas as it is in reality; and a painter of fruit and flowers might just as well call a human figure unpicturesque, because it was to him unmanageable, as the ordinary landscape-effect painter speak in depreciation of the alps. § . it is not probable that any subjects such as we have just been describing, involving a necessity of ten years' labor, will be executed by the modern landscape school,--at least, until its pre-raphaelitic tendencies become much more developed than they are yet; nor was it desirable that they should have been by turner, whose fruitful invention would have been unwisely arrested for a length of time on any single subject, however beautiful. but with his usual certainty of perception, he fastened at once on this character of "quantity," as the thing to be expressed, in one way or another, in all grand mountain-drawing; and the subjects of his on which i have chiefly dwelt in the first volume (chapter on the inferior mountains, § , &c.) are distinguished from the work of other painters in nothing so much as in this redundance. beautiful as they are in color, graceful in fancy, powerful in execution,--in none of these things do they stand so much alone as in plain, calculable quantity; he having always on the average twenty trees or rocks where other people have only one, and winning his victories not more by skill of generalship than by overwhelming numerical superiority. § . i say his works are distinguished in this more than in anything else, not because this is their highest quality, but because it is peculiar to them. invention, color, grace of arrangement, we may find in tintoret and veronese in various manifestation; but the expression of the infinite redundance of natural landscape had never been attempted until turner's time; and the treatment of the masses of mountain in the daphne and leucippus, golden bough, and modern italy, is wholly without precursorship in art. nor, observe, do i insist upon this quantity _merely_ as arithmetical, or as if it were producible by repetition of similar things. it would be easy to be redundant, if multiplication of the same idea constituted fulness; and since turner first introduced these types of landscape, myriads of vulgar imitations of them have been produced, whose perpetrators have supposed themselves disciples or rivals of turner, in covering their hills with white dots for forest, and their foregrounds with yellow sparklings for herbage. but the turnerian redundance is never monotonous. of the thousands of groups of touches which, with him, are necessary to constitute a single bank of hill, not one but has some special character, and is as much a separate invention as the whole plan of the picture. perhaps this may be sufficiently understood by an attentive examination of the detail introduced by him in his st. gothard subject, as shown in plate + +. § . i do not, indeed, know if the examples i have given from natural scenes, though they are as characteristic as i could well choose, are enough to accustom the reader to the character of true mountain lines, and to enable him to recognize such lines in other instances; but if not, at all events they may serve to elucidate the main points, and guide to more complete examination of the subject, if it interests him, among the hills themselves. and if, after he has pursued the inquiry long enough to feel the certitude of the laws which i have been endeavoring to illustrate, he turns back again to art, i am well assured it will be with a strange recognition of unconceived excellence, and a newly quickened pleasure in the unforeseen fidelity, that he will trace the pencilling of turner upon his hill drawings. i do not choose to spend, in this work, the labor and time which would be necessary to analyze, as i have done the drawing of the st. gothard, any other of turner's important mountain designs; for the reader must feel the disadvantage they are under in being either reduced in scale, or divided into fragments: and therefore these chapters are always to be considered merely as memoranda for reference before the pictures which the reader may have it in his power to examine. but this one drawing of the st. gothard, as it has already elucidated for us turner's knowledge of crest structure, will be found no less wonderful in the fulness with which it illustrates his perception of the lower aqueous and other curvatures. if the reader will look back to the etching of the entire subject, plate + +, he will now discern, i believe, without the necessity of my lettering them for him, the lines of fall, rounded down from the crests until they plunge into the overhanging precipices; the lines of projection, where the fallen stones extend the long concave sweep from the couloir, pushing the torrent against the bank on the other side; in the opening of the ravine he will perceive the oblique and parallel inclination of its sides, following the cleavage of the beds in the diagonal line a b of the reference figure; and, finally, in the great slope and precipice on the right of it, he will recognize one of the grandest types of the peculiar mountain mass which turner always chose by preference to illustrate, the "slope above wall" of _d_ in fig. , p. ; compare also the last chapter, §§ , . it will be seen, by reference to my sketch of the spot, plate + +, that this conformation does actually exist there with great definiteness: turner has only enlarged and thrown it into more numerous alternations of light and shade. as these could not be shown in the etching, i have given, in the frontispiece, this passage nearly of its real size: the exquisite greys and blues by which turner has rounded and thrown it back are necessarily lost in the plate; but the grandeur of his simple cliff and soft curves of sloping bank above is in some degree rendered. we must yet dwell for a moment on the detail of the rocks on the left in plate + +, as they approach nearer the eye, turning at the same time from the light. it cost me trouble to etch this passage, and yet half its refinements are still missed; for turner has put his whole strength into it, and wrought out the curving of the gneiss beds with a subtlety which could not be at all approached in the time i had to spare for this plate. enough, however, is expressed to illustrate the points in question. § . we have first, observe, a rounded bank, broken, at its edges, into cleavages by inclined beds. i thought it would be well, lest the reader should think i dwelt too much on this particular scene, to give an instance of similar structure from another spot; and therefore i daguerreotyped the cleavages of a slope of gneiss just above the cascade des pélerins, chamouni, corresponding in position to this bank of turner's. plate + + (facing p. ), copied by mr. armytage from the daguerreotype, represents, necessarily in a quite unprejudiced and impartial way, the structure at present in question; and the reader may form a sufficient idea, from this plate, of the complexity of descending curve and foliated rent, in even a small piece of mountain foreground,[ ] where the gneiss beds are tolerably continuous. but turner had to add to such general complexity the expression of a more than ordinary undulation in the beds of the st. gothard gneiss. § . if the reader will look back to chapter ii. § , he will find it stated that this scene is approached out of the defile of dazio grande, of which the impression was still strong on turner's mind, and where only he could see, close at hand, the nature of the rocks in a good section. it most luckily happens that de saussure was interested by the rocks at the same spot, and has given the following account of them, voyages, §§ , :-- "À une lieue de faïdo, l'on passe le tésin pour le repasser bientôt après [see the old bridge in turner's view, carried away in mine], et l'on trouve sur sa rive droite des couches d'une roche feuilletée, qui montent du côté du nord. "on voit clairement que depuis que les granits veinés ont été remplacés par des pierres moins solides, tantôt les rochers se sont éboulés et ont été recouverts par la terre végétale, tantôt leur situation primitive a subi des changements irréguliers. "§ . mais bientôt après, _on monte par un chemin en corniche au dessus du tésin, qui se précipite entre des rochers avec la plus grande violence_. ces rochers sont là si serrés, qu'il n'y a de place que pour la rivière et pour le chemin, et même en quelques endroits, celui-ci est entièrement pris sur le roc. je fis à pied cette montée, pour examiner avec soin ces beaux rochers, _dignes de toute l'attention d'un amateur_. "les veinés de ce granit forment en plusieurs endroits des _zigzags redoublés_, précisément comme ces anciennes tapisseries, connues sous le nom de points d'hongrie; et là, on ne peut pas prononcer, si les veinés de la pierre, sont ou ne sont pas parallèles à ses couches. cependant ces veinés reprennent aussi dans quelques places, une direction constante, et cette direction est bien la même que celle des couches. il paroît même qu'en divers endroits, où ces veinés ont la forme d'un _sigma_ ou d'une m couchée m, ce sont les grandes jambes du _sigma_, qui ont la direction des couches. enfin, j'observai plusieurs couches, qui dans le milieu de leur épaisseur paroissoient remplies de ces veinés en zigzag, tandis qu'auprès de leurs bords, on les voyoit toutes en lignes droites." § . if the reader will now examine turner's work at the point _x_ in the reference figure, and again on the stones in the foreground, comparing it finally with the fragment of the rocks which happened fortunately to come into my foreground in plate + +, rising towards the left, and of which i have etched the structure with some care, though at the time i had quite forgotten saussure's notice of the peculiar m-shaped zigzags of the gneiss at the spot, i believe he will have enough evidence before him, taken all in all, to convince him of turner's inevitable perception, and of the entire supremacy of his mountain drawing over all that had previously existed. and if he is able to refer, even to the engravings (though i desire always that what i state should be _tested_ by the drawings only) of any others of his elaborate hill-subjects, and will examine their details with careful reference to the laws explained in this chapter, he will find that the turnerian promontories and banks are always simply _right_, and that in all respects; that their gradated curvatures, and nodding cliffs, and redundant sequence of folded glen and feathery glade, are, in all their seemingly fanciful beauty, literally the most downright plain speaking that has as yet been uttered about hills; and differ from all antecedent work, not in being ideal, but in being, so to speak, pictorial _casts_ of the ground. such a drawing as that of the yorkshire richmond, looking down the river, in the england series, is even better than a model of the ground, because it gives the aerial perspective, and is better than a photograph of the ground, because it exaggerates no shadows, while it unites the veracities both of model and photograph. § . nor let it be thought that it was an easy or creditable thing to treat mountain ground with this faithfulness in the days when turner executed those drawings. in the encyclopædia britannica (edinburgh, ), under article "drawing," the following are the directions given for the production of a landscape:-- "if he is to draw a landscape from nature, let him take his station on a rising ground, where he will have a large horizon, and mark his tablet into three divisions, downwards from top to the bottom; and divide in his own mind the landscape he is to take into three divisions also. then let him turn his face directly opposite to the midst of the horizon, keeping his body fixed, and draw what is directly before his eyes upon the middle division of the tablet: then _turn his head, but not his body_,[ ] to the left hand and delineate what he views there, joining it properly to what he had done before; and, lastly, do the same by what is to be seen upon his right hand, laying down everything exactly, both with respect to distance and proportion. one example is given in plate clxviii. "the best artists of late, in drawing their landscapes, make them shoot away, one part lower than another. those who make their landscapes mount up higher and higher, as if they stood at the bottom of a hill to take the prospect, commit a great error; the best way is to get upon a rising ground, make the nearest objects in the piece the highest, and those that are farther off to shoot away lower and lower till they come almost level with the line of the horizon, lessening everything proportionably to its distance, and observing also to make the objects fainter and less distinct the farther they are removed from the eye. he must make all his lights and shades fall one way, and let every thing have its proper motion: as trees shaken by the wind, the small boughs bending more and the large ones less; water agitated by the wind, and dashing against ships or boats, or falling from a precipice upon rocks and stones, and spirting up again into the air, and sprinkling all about; clouds also in the air now gathered with the winds; now violently condensed into hail, rain, and the like,--always remembering, that whatever motions are caused by the wind must be made all to move the same way, because the wind can blow but one way at once." such was the state of the public mind, and of public instruction, at the time when claude, poussin, and salvator were in the zenith of their reputation; such were the precepts which, even to the close of the century, it was necessary for a young painter to comply with during the best part of the years he gave to study. take up one of turner's views of our yorkshire dells, seen from about a hawk's height of pause above the sweep of its river, and with it in your hand, side by side with the old encyclopædia paragraph, consider what must have been the man's strength, who, on a sudden, passed from such precept to such practice. § . on a sudden it was; for, even yet a youth, and retaining profound respect for all older artist's ways of _work_, he followed his own will fearlessly in choice of _scene_; and already in the earliest of his coast drawings there are as daring and strange decisions touching the site of the spectator as in his latest works; lookings down and up into coves and clouds, as defiant of all former theories touching possible perspective, or graceful componence of subject, as, a few years later, his system of color was of the theory of the brown tree. nor was the step remarkable merely for its magnitude,--for the amount of progress made in a few years. it was much more notable by its direction. the discovery of the true structure of hill banks had to be made by turner, not merely in _advance_ of the men of his day, but in _contradiction_ to them. examine the works of contemporary and preceding landscapists, and it will be found that the universal practice is to make the tops of all cliffs broken and rugged, their bases smooth and soft, or concealed with wood. no one had ever observed the contrary structure, the bank rounded at the top, and broken on the flank. and yet all the hills of any importance which are met with throughout lowland europe are, properly speaking, high banks, for the most part following the courses of rivers, and forming a step from the high ground, of which the country generally consists, to the river level. thus almost the whole of france, though, on the face of it, flat, is raised from to feet above the level of the sea, and is traversed by valleys either formed by, or directing, the course of its great rivers. in these valleys lie all its principal towns, surrounded, almost without exception, by ranges of hills covered with wood or vineyard. ascending these hills, we find ourselves at once in an elevated plain, covered with corn and lines of apple trees, extending to the next river side, where we come to the brow of another hill, and descend to the city and valley beneath it. our own valleys in northumberland, yorkshire, derbyshire, and devonshire, are cut in the same manner through vast extents of elevated land; the scenery which interests the traveller chiefly, as he passes through even the most broken parts of those counties, being simply that of the high _banks_ which rise from the shores of the dart or the derwent, the wharfe or the tees. in all cases, when these banks are surmounted, the sensation is one of disappointment, as the adventurer finds himself, the moment he has left the edge of the ravine, in a waste of softly undulating moor or arable land, hardly deserving the title of hill country. as we advance into the upper districts the fact remains still the same, although the banks to be climbed are higher, the ravines grander, and the intermediate land more broken. the majesty of an isolated peak is still comparatively rare, and nearly all the most interesting pieces of scenery are glens or passes, which, if seen from a height great enough to command them in all their relations, would be found in reality little more than trenches excavated through broad masses of elevated land, and expanding at intervals into the wide basins which are occupied by the glittering lake or smiling plain. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: j. ruskin. j. h. le keux. . the quarries of carrara.] § . all these facts had been entirely ignored by artists; nay, almost by geologists, before turner's time. he saw them at once; fathomed them to the uttermost, and, partly owing to early association, partly, perhaps, to the natural pleasure of working a new mine discovered by himself, devoted his best powers to their illustration, passing by with somewhat less attention the conditions of broken-summited rock, which had previously been the only ones known. and if we now look back to his treatment of the crest of mont pilate, in the figure given at the close of the last chapter, we shall understand better the nature and strength of the instinct which compelled him to sacrifice the peaked summit, and to bring the whole mountain within a lower enclosing line. in that figure, however, the dotted peak interferes with the perception of the form finally determined upon, which therefore i repeat here (fig. ), as turner gave it in color. the eye may not at first detect the law of ascent in the peaks, but if the height of any one of them were altered, the general form would instantly be perceived to be less agreeable. fig. shows that they are disposed within an infinite curve, a _c_, from which the last crag falls a little to conceal the law, while the terminal line at the other extremity, a _b_, is a minor echo of the whole contour. [illustration: fig. .] § . i must pause to make one exception to my general statement that this structure had been entirely ignored. the reader was, perhaps, surprised by the importance i attached to the fragment of mountain background by masaccio, given in plate + + of the third volume. if he looks back to it now, his surprise will be less. it was a complete recognition of the laws of the lines of aqueous sculpture, asserted as turner's was, in the boldest opposition to the principles of rock drawing of the time. it presents even smoother and broader masses than any which i have shown as types of hill form; but it must be remembered that masaccio had seen only the softer contours of the apennine limestone. i have no memorandum by me of the hill lines near florence; but plate + + shows the development of limestone structure, at a spot which has, i think, the best right to be given as an example of the italian hills, the head of the valley of carrara. the white scar on the hill side is the principal quarry; and the peaks above deserve observation, not so much for anything in their forms, as for the singular barrenness which was noted in the fifteenth chapter of the last volume (§ ) as too often occurring in the apennines. compare this plate with the previous one. the peak drawn in plate + + rises at least feet above the sea,--yet is wooded to its top; this carrara crag not above ,[ ]--yet it is wholly barren. § . masaccio, however, as we saw, was taken away by death before he could give any one of his thoughts complete expression. turner was spared to do _his_ work, in this respect at least, completely. it might be thought that, having had such adverse influence to struggle with, he would prevail against it but in part; and, though showing the way to much that was new, retain of necessity some old prejudices, and leave his successors to pursue in purer liberty, and with happier power, the path he had pointed out. but it was not so: he did the work so completely on the ground which he chose to illustrate, that nothing is left for future artists to accomplish in that kind. some classes of scenery, as often pointed out in the preceding pages, he was unfamiliar with, or held in little affection, and out of that scenery, untouched by him, new motives may be obtained; but of such landscape as his favorite yorkshire wolds, and banks of rhenish and french hill, and rocky mountains of switzerland, like the st. gothard, already so long dwelt upon, he has expressed the power in what i believe to be for ever a central and unmatchable way. i do not say this with positiveness, because it is not demonstrable. turner may be beaten on his own ground--so may tintoret, so may shakespeare, dante, or homer: but my _belief_ is that all these first-rate men are lonely men; that the particular work they did was by them done for ever in the best way; and that this work done by turner among the hills, joining the most intense appreciation of all tenderness with delight in all magnitude, and memory for all detail, is never to be rivalled, or looked upon in similitude again. footnotes [ ] _quantity_ of curvature is as measurable as quantity of anything else; only observe that it depends on the nature of the line, not on its magnitude; thus, in simple circular curvature, _a b_, fig. , being the fourth of a large circle, and _b c_ the half of a smaller one, the quantity of the element of circular curvature in the entire line _a c_ is three fourths of that in _any_ circle,--the the same as the quantity in the line _e f_. [illustration: fig .] [ ] the catenary is not properly a curve capable of infinity, if its direction does not alter with its length; but it is capable of infinity, implying such alteration by the infinite removal of the points of suspension. it entirely corresponds in its effect on the eye and mind to the infinite curves. i do not know the exact nature of the apparent curves of suspension formed by a high and weighty waterfall; they are dependent on the gain in rapidity of descent by the central current, where its greater body is less arrested by the air; and i apprehend, are catenary in character, though not in cause. [ ] i am afraid of becoming tiresome by going too far into the intricacies of this most difficult subject; but i say "_towards_ the bottom of the hill," because, when a certain degree of verticality is reached, a counter protective influence begins to establish itself, the stones and waterfalls bounding away from the brow of the precipice into the air, and wearing it at the top only. also it is evident that when the curvature falls into a vertical cliff, as often happens, the maximum of curvature must be somewhere _above_ the brow of the cliff, as in the cliff itself it has again died into a straight line. [ ] the following extract from my private diary, giving an account of the destruction of the beauty of this waterfall in the year , which i happened to witness, may be interesting to those travellers who remember it before that period. the house spoken of as "joseph's," is that of the guide joseph coutet, in a village about a mile below the cascade, between it and the arve: that noticed as of the "old avalanche" is a hollow in the forest, cleft by a great avalanche which fell from the aiguille du midi in the spring of . it struck down about a thousand full-grown pines, and left an open track in the midst of the wood, from the cascade nearly down to the village. "evening, thursday, june th. i set out for the cascade des pélerins as usual; when we reached joseph's house, we heard a sound from the torrent like low thunder, or like that of a more distant and heavier fall. a peasant said something to joseph, who stopped to listen, then nodded, and said to me, 'la cascade vient de se déborder.' thinking there would be time enough afterwards to ask for explanations, i pushed up the hill almost without asking a question. when we reached the place of the old avalanche, joseph called to me to stop and see the torrent increase. there was at this time a dark cloud on the aiguille du midi, down to its base; the upper part of the torrent was brown, the lower white, not larger than usual. the brown part came down, i thought, with exceeding slowness, reaching the cascade gradually; as it did so, the fall rose to about once and a half its usual height, and in the five minutes' time that i paused (it could not be more) turned to the color of slate. i then pushed on as hard as i could. when i reached the last ascent i was obliged to stop for breath, but got up before the fall could sensibly have diminished in body of water. it was then nearly twice as far cast out from the rock as last night, and the water nearly black in color; and it had the appearance, as it broke and separated at the outer part of the fall, of a shower of fragments of flat slate. the reason of this appearance i could not comprehend, unless the water was so mixed with mud that it drew out flat and unctuously when it broke; but so it was: instead of spray it looked like a shower of dirty flat bits of slate--only with a lustre, as if they had been wet first. this, however, was the least of it, for the torrent carried with it nearly as much weight of stone as water; the stones varying in size, the average being, i suppose, about that of a hen's egg; but i do not suppose that at any instant the arch of water was without four or five as large as a man's fist, and often came larger ones,--all vomited forth with the explosive power of a small volcano, and falling in a continual shower as thick, constant, and, had it not been mixed with the crash of the fall, as loud as a heavy fire of infantry; they bounded and leaped in the basin of the fall like hailstones in a thunder-shower. as we watched the fall it seemed convulsively to diminish, and suddenly showed, as it shortened, the rock underneath it, which i could hardly see yesterday: as i cried out to joseph it rose again, higher than ever, and continued to rise, till it all but reached the snow on the rock opposite. it then became very fantastic and variable, increasing and diminishing in the space of two or three seconds, and partially changing its direction. after watching it for half an hour or so, i determined to try and make some memoranda. coutet brought me up a jug of water: i stooped to dip my brush, when coutet caught my arm, saying, 'tenez;' at the same instant i heard a blow, like the going off of a heavy gun, two or three miles away; i looked up, and as i did, the cascade sank before my eyes, and fell back to the rock. neither of us spoke for an instant or two; then coutet said, 'c'est une pierre, qui est logée dans le creux,' or words to that effect: in fact, he had seen the stone come down as he called to me. i thought also that nothing more had happened, and watched the destroyed fall only with interest, until, as suddenly as it had fallen, it rose again, though not to its former height; and coutet, stooping down, exclaimed, 'ce n'est pas ça, le roc est percé;' in effect, a hole was now distinctly visible in the cup which turned the stream, through which the water whizzed as from a burst pipe. the cascade, however, continued to increase, until this new channel was concealed, and i was maintaining to coutet that he must have been mistaken (and that the water only _struck_ on the outer rock, having changed its mode of fall above), when again it fell; and the two girls, who had come up from the châlet, expressed their opinion at once, that the 'cascade est finie.' this time all was plain; the water gushed in a violent jet d'eau through the new aperture, hardly any of it escaping above. it rose again gradually, as the hole was choked with stones, and again fell; but presently sprang out almost to its first elevation (the water being by this time in much less body), and retained very nearly the form it had yesterday, until i got tired of looking at it, and went down to the little châlet, and sat down before its door. i had not been there five minutes before the cascade fell, and rose no more." [ ] it might be thought at first that the line to which such curves would approximate would be the cycloid, as the line of quickest descent. but in reality the contour is modified by perpetual sliding of the débris under the influence of rain; and by the bounding of detached fragments with continually increased momentum. i was quite unable to get at anything like the expression of a constant law among the examples i studied in the alps, except only the great laws of delicacy and changefulness in all curves whatsoever. [ ] i owe mr. le keux sincere thanks, and not a little admiration, for the care and skill with which he has followed, on a much reduced scale, the detail of this drawing. [ ] allow ten feet square for average space to each pine; suppose the valley seen only for five miles of its length, and the pine district two miles broad on each side--a low estimate of breadth also: this would give five millions. [ ] the white spots on the brow of the little cliff are lichens, only four or five inches broad. [ ] what a _comfortable_, as well as intelligent, operation, sketching from nature must have been in those days! [ ] it is not one of the highest points of the carrara chain. the chief summits are much more jagged, and very noble. see chap. xx. § . chapter xviii. resulting forms:--fifthly, stones. § . it is somewhat singular that the indistinctness of treatment which has been so often noticed as characteristic of our present art shows itself always most when there is least apparent reason for it. modern artists, having some true sympathy with what is vague in nature, draw all that is uncertain and evasive without evasion, and render faithfully whatever can be discerned in faithless mist or mocking vapors; but having no sympathy with what is solid and serene, they seem to become uncertain themselves in proportion to the certainty of what they see; and while they render flakes of far-away cloud, or fringes of inextricable forest, with something like patience and fidelity, give nothing but the hastiest indication of the ground they can tread upon or touch. it is only in modern art that we find any complete representation of clouds, and only in ancient art that, generally speaking, we find any careful realization of stones. § . this is all the more strange, because, as we saw some time back, the _ruggedness_ of the stone is more pleasing to the modern than the mediæval, and he rarely completes any picture satisfactorily to himself unless large spaces of it are filled with irregular masonry, rocky banks, or shingly shores: whereas the mediæval could conceive no desirableness in the loose and unhewn masses; associated them generally in his mind with wicked men, and the martyrdom of st. stephen; and always threw them out of his road, or garden, to the best of his power. yet with all this difference in predilection, such was the honesty of the mediæval, and so firm his acknowledgment of the necessity to paint completely whatever was to be painted at all, that there is hardly a strip of earth under the feet of a saint, in any finished work of the early painters, but more, and better painted, stones are to be found upon it than in an entire exhibition full of modern mountain scenery. § . not better painted in every respect. in those interesting and popular treatises on the art of drawing, which tell the public that their colors should neither be too warm nor too cold, and that their touches should always be characteristic of the object they are intended to represent, the directions given for the manufacture of stones usually enforce "crispness of outline" and "roughness of texture." and, accordingly, in certain expressions of frangibility, irregular accumulation, and easy resting of one block upon another, together with some conditions of lichenous or mossy texture, modern stone-painting is far beyond the ancient; for these are just the characters which first strike the eye, and enable the foreground to maintain its picturesque influence, without inviting careful examination. the mediæval painter, on the other hand, not caring for this picturesque general effect, nor being in anywise familiar with mountain scenery, perceived in stones, when he was forced to paint them, eminently the characters which they had in common with figures; that is to say, their curved outlines, rounded surfaces, and varieties of delicate color, and, accordingly, was somewhat too apt to lose their angular and fragmentary character in a series of muscular lines resembling those of an anatomical preparation; for, although in large rocks the cleavable or frangible nature was the thing that necessarily struck him most, the pebbles under his feet were apt to be oval or rounded in the localities of almost all the important schools of italy. in lombardy, the mass of the ground is composed of nothing but alpine gravel, consisting of rolled oval pebbles, on the average about six inches long by four wide--awkward building materials, yet used in ingenious alternation with the bricks in all the lowland italian fortresses. besides this universal rotundity, the qualities of stones which rendered them valuable to the lapidary were forced on the painter's attention by the familiar arts of inlaying and mosaic. hence, in looking at a pebble, his mind was divided between its roundness and its veins; and leonardo covers the shelves of rock under the feet of st. anne with variegated agates; while mantegna often strews the small stones about his mountain caves in a polished profusion, as if some repentant martyr princess had been just scattering her caskets of pearls into the dust. § . some years ago, as i was talking of the curvilinear forms in a piece of rock to one of our academicians, he said to me, in a somewhat despondent accent, "if you look for curves, you will see curves; if you look for angles, you will see angles." the saying appeared to me an infinitely sad one. it was the utterance of an experienced man; and in many ways true, for one of the most singular gifts, or, if abused, most singular weaknesses, of the human mind is its power of persuading itself to see whatever it chooses;--a great gift, if directed to the discernment of the things needful and pertinent to its own work and being; a great weakness, if directed to the discovery of things profitless or discouraging. in all things throughout the world, the men who look for the crooked will see the crooked, and the men who look for the straight will see the straight. but yet the saying was a notably sad one; for it came of the conviction in the speaker's mind that there was in reality _no_ crooked and _no_ straight; that all so called discernment was fancy, and that men might, with equal rectitude of judgment, and good-deserving of their fellow-men, perceive and paint whatever was convenient to them. § . whereas things may always be seen truly by candid people, though never _completely_. no human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; but we may see more and more of it the longer we look. every individual temper will see something different in it: but supposing the tempers honest, all the differences are there. every advance in our acuteness of perception will show us something new; but the old and first discerned thing will still be there, not falsified, only modified and enriched by the new perceptions, becoming continually more beautiful in its harmony with them and more approved as a part of the infinite truth. § . there are no natural objects out of which more can be thus learned than out of stones. they seem to have been created especially to reward a patient observer. nearly all other objects in nature can be seen, to some extent, without patience, and are pleasant even in being half seen. trees, clouds, and rivers are enjoyable even by the careless; but the stone under his foot has for carelessness nothing in it but stumbling; no pleasure is languidly to be had out of it, nor food, nor good of any kind; nothing but symbolism of the hard heart and the unfatherly gift. and yet, do but give it some reverence and watchfulness, and there is bread of thought in it, more than in any other lowly feature of all the landscape. § . for a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. the fineness of nature's work is so great, that, into a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and, taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone, in by far the plurality of instances, is more interesting than the surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form and incomparably richer in color,--the last quality being, in fact, so noble in most stones of good birth (that is to say, fallen from the crystalline mountain-ranges), that i shall be less able to illustrate this part of my subject satisfactorily by means of engraving than perhaps any other, except the color of skies. i say, _shall_ be less able, because the beauty of stone surface is in so great a degree dependent on the mosses and lichens which root themselves upon it, that i must place my richest examples in the section on vegetation. for instance, in the plate opposite, though the mass of rock is large and somewhat distant, the effect of it is as much owing to the white spots of silvery lichen in the centre and left, and to the flowing lines in which the darker mosses, growing in the cranny, have arranged themselves beyond, as to the character of the rock itself; nor could the beauty of the whole mass be explained, if we were to approach the least nearer, without more detailed drawing of this vegetation. for the present i shall only give a few examples of the drawing of stones roughly broken, or worn so as not to be materially affected by vegetation. [illustration: . bank of slaty crystallines.] § . we have already seen an example of titian's treatment of mountain crests as compared with turner's; here is a parallel instance, from titian, of stones in the bed of a torrent (fig. ), in many ways good and right, and expressing in its writhed and variously broken lines far more of real stone structure than the common water-color dash of the moderns. observe, especially, how titian has understood that the fracture of the stone more or less depends on the undulating grain of its crystalline structure, following the cavity of the largest stone in the middle of the figure, with concentric lines; and compare in plate + + the top of turner's largest stones on the left. [illustration: fig. .] § . if the reader sees nothing in this drawing (fig. ) that he can like,--although, indeed, i would have him prefer the work of turner,--let him be assured that he does not yet understand on what titian's reputation is founded. no painter's name is oftener in the mouth of the ordinary connoisseur, and no painter was ever less understood. his power of color is indeed perfect, but so is bonifazio's. titian's _supremacy_ above all the other venetians, except tintoret and veronese, consists in the firm truth of his portraiture, and more or less masterly understanding of the nature of stones, trees, men, or whatever else he took in hand to paint; so that, without some correlative understanding in the spectator, titian's work, in its highest qualities, must be utterly dead and unappealing to him. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . i give one more example from the lower part of the same print (fig. ), in which a stone, with an eddy round it, is nearly as well drawn as it can be in the simple method of the early wood-engraving. perhaps the reader will feel its truth better by contrast with a fragment or two of modern idealism. here, for instance (fig. ), is a group of stones, highly entertaining in their variety of form, out of the subject of "christian vanquishing apollyon," in the outlines to the pilgrim's progress, published by the art-union, the idealism being here wrought to a pitch of extraordinary brilliancy by the exciting nature of the subject. next (fig. ) is another poetical conception, one of flaxman's, representing the eddies and stones of the pool of envy (flaxman's dante), which may be conveniently compared with the titianesque stones and streams. and, finally, fig. represents, also on flaxman's authority, those stones of an "alpine" character, of which dante says that he "climbed with heart of proof the adverse steep." it seems at first curious that every one of the forms that flaxman has chanced upon should be an impossible one--a form which a stone never could assume: but this is the nemesis of false idealism, and the inevitable one. § . the chief incapacity in the modern work is not, however, so much in its outline, though that is wrong enough, as in the total absence of any effort to mark the surface roundings. it is not the _outline_ of a stone, however true, that will make it solid or heavy; it is the interior markings, and thoroughly understood perspectives of its sides. in the opposite plate the upper two subjects are by turner, foregrounds out of the liber studiorum (source of arveron, and ben arthur); the lower by claude, liber veritatis, no. . i think the reader cannot but feel that the blocks in the upper two subjects are massy and ponderous; in the lower, wholly without weight. if he examine their several treatment, he will find that turner has perfect imaginative conception of every recess and projection over the whole surface, and _feels_ the stone as he works over it; every touch, moreover, being full of tender gradation. but claude, as he is obliged to hold to his outline in hills, so also clings to it in the stones,--cannot round them in the least, leaves their light surfaces wholly blank, and puts a few patches of dark here and there about their edges, as chance will have it. [illustration: . truth and untruth of stones.] § . turner's way of wedging the stones of the glacier moraine together in strength of disorder, in the upper subject, and his indication of the springing of the wild stems and leafage out of the rents in the boulders of the lower one, will hardly be appreciated unless the reader is _fondly_ acquainted with the kind of scenery in question; and i cannot calculate on this being often the case, for few persons ever look at any near detail closely, and perhaps least of all at the heaps of débris which so often seem to encumber and disfigure mountain ground. but for the various reasons just stated (§ ), turner found more material for his power, and more excitement to his invention, among the fallen stones than in the highest summits of mountains; and his early designs, among their thousand excellences and singularities, as opposed to all that had preceded them, count for not one of the least the elaborate care given to the drawing of torrent beds, shaly slopes, and other conditions of stony ground which all canons of art at the period pronounced inconsistent with dignity of composition; a convenient principle, since, of all foregrounds, one of loose stones is beyond comparison the most difficult to draw with any approach to realization. the turnerian subjects, "junction of the greta and tees" (yorkshire series, and illustrations to scott); "wycliffe, near rokeby" (yorkshire); "hardraw fall" (yorkshire); "ben arthur" (liber studiorum); "ulleswater" and the magnificent drawing of the "upper fall of the tees" (england series), are sufficiently illustrative of what i mean. § . it is not, however, only, in their separate condition, as materials of foreground, that we have to examine the effect of stones; they form a curiously important element of distant landscape in their aggregation on a large scale. it will be remembered that in the course of the last chapter we wholly left out of our account of mountain lines that group which was called "lines of rest." one reason for doing so was that, as these lines are produced by débris in a state of temporary repose, their beauty, or deformity, or whatever character they may possess, is properly to be considered as belonging to stones rather than to rocks. § . whenever heaps of loose stones or sand are increased by the continual fall of fresh fragments from above, or diminished by their removal from below, yet not in such mass or with such momentum as entirely to disturb those already accumulated, the materials on the surface arrange themselves in an equable slope, producing a straight line of profile in the bank or cone. the heap formed by the sand falling in an hour-glass presents, in its straight sides, the simplest result of such a condition; and any heap of sand thrown up by the spade will show the slopes here and there, interrupted only by knotty portions, held together by moisture, or agglutinated by pressure,--interruptions which cannot occur to the same extent on a large scale, unless the soil is really hardened nearly to the nature of rock. as long as it remains incoherent, every removal of substance at the bottom of the heap, or addition of it at the top, occasions a sliding disturbance of the whole slope, which smooths it into rectitude of line; and there is hardly any great mountain mass among the alps which does not show towards its foundation perfectly regular descents of this nature, often two or three miles long without a break. several of considerable extent are seen on the left of plate + +. § . i call these lines of rest, because, though the bulk of the mass may be continually increasing or diminishing, the line of the profile does not change, being fixed at a certain angle by the nature of the earth. it is usually stated carelessly as an angle of about degrees, but it never really reaches such a slope. i measured carefully the angles of a very large number of slopes of mountain in various parts of the mont blanc district. the few examples given in the note below are enough to exhibit the general fact that loose débris lies at various angles up to about ° or °; débris protected by grass or pines may reach °, and rocky slopes ° or °, but in continuous lines of rest i never found a steeper angle.[ ] § . i speak of some rocky slopes as lines of rest, because, whenever a mountain side is composed of soft stone which splits and decomposes fast, it has a tendency to choke itself up with the ruins, and gradually to get abraded or ground down towards the débris slope; so that vast masses of the sides of alpine valleys are formed by ascents of nearly uniform inclination, partly loose, partly of jagged rocks, which break, but do not materially alter the general line of ground. in such cases the fragments usually have accumulated without disturbance at the foot of the slope, and the pine forests fasten the soil and prevent it from being carried down in large masses. but numerous instances occur in which the mountain is consumed away gradually by its own torrents, not having strength enough to form clefts or precipices, but falling on each side of the ravines into even banks, which slide down from above as they are wasted below. § . by all these various expedients, nature secures, in the midst of her mountain curvatures, vast series of perfectly straight lines opposing and relieving them; lines, however, which artists have almost universally agreed to alter or ignore, partly disliking them intrinsically, on account of their formality, and partly because the mind instantly associates them with the idea of mountain decay. turner, however, saw that this very decay having its use and nobleness, the contours which were significative of it ought no more to be omitted than, in the portrait of an aged man, the furrows on his hand or brow; besides, he liked the lines themselves, for their contrast with the mountain wildness, just as he liked the straightness of sunbeams penetrating the soft waywardness of clouds. he introduced them constantly into his noblest compositions; but in order to the full understanding of their employment in the instance i am about to give, one or two more points yet need to be noticed. § . generally speaking, the curved lines of convex, _fall_ belong to mountains of hard rock, over whose surfaces the fragments _bound_ to the valley, and which are worn by wrath of avalanches and wildness of torrents, like that of the cascade des pélerins, described in the note above. generally speaking, the straight lines of _rest_ belong to softer mountains, or softer surfaces and places of mountains, which, exposed to no violent wearing from external force, nevertheless keep slipping and mouldering down spontaneously or receiving gradual accession of material from incoherent masses above them. § . it follows, rather, that where the gigantic wearing forces are in operation, the stones or fragments of rock brought down by the torrents and avalanches are likely, however hard, to be rounded on all their edges; but where the straight shaly slopes are found, the stones which glide or totter down their surfaces frequently retain all their angles, and form jagged and flaky heaps at the bottom. and farther, it is to be supposed that the rocks which are habitually subjected to these colossal forces of destruction are in their own mass firm and secure, otherwise they would long ago have given way; but that where the gliding and crumbling surfaces are found without much external violence, it is very possible that the whole framework of the mountain may be full of flaws; and a danger exist of vast portions of its mass giving way, or slipping down in heaps, as the sand suddenly yields in an hour-glass after some moments of accumulation. § . hence, generally, in the mind of any one familiar with mountains, the conditions will be associated, on the one hand, of the curved, convex, and overhanging bank or cliff, the roaring torrent, and the rounded boulder of massive stone; and, on the other, of the straight and even slope of bank, the comparatively quiet and peaceful lapse of streams, and the sharp-edged and unworn look of the fallen stones, together with a sense of danger greater, though more occult, than in the wilder scenery. [illustration: j. m. w. turner j. cousen. . goldau.] the drawing of the st. gothard, which we have so laboriously analyzed, was designed, as before mentioned, from a sketch taken in the year . but with it was made another drawing. turner brought home in that year a series of sketches taken in the neighborhood of the pass; among others, one of the valley of goldau, covered as it is by the ruins of the rossberg. knowing his fondness for fallen stones, i chose this goldau subject as a companion to the st. gothard. the plate opposite will give some idea of the resultant drawing. § . _some_ idea only. it is a subject which, like the st. gothard, is far too full of detail to admit of reduction; and i hope, therefore, soon to engrave it properly of its real size. it is, besides, more than usually difficult to translate this drawing into black and white, because much of the light on the clouds is distinguished merely by orange or purple color from the green greys, which, though not darker than the warm hues, have the effect of shade from their coldness, but cannot be marked as shade in the engraving without too great increase of depth. enough, however, has been done to give some idea of the elements of turner's design. § . detailed accounts of the rossberg fall may be found in any ordinary swiss guide; the only points we have to notice respecting it are, that the mountain was composed of an indurated gravel, disposed in oblique beds sloping _towards_ the valley. a portion of one of these beds gave way, and half filled the valley beneath, burying five villages, together with the principal one of goldau, and partially choking up a little lake, the streamlets which supplied it now forming irregular pools among the fallen fragments. i call the rock, and accurately, indurated gravel; but the induration is so complete that the mass breaks _through_ the rolled pebbles chiefly composing it, and may be considered as a true rock, only always in its blocks rugged and formless when compared with the crystalline formations. turner has chosen his position on some of the higher heaps of ruin, looking down towards the lake of zug, which is seen under the sunset, the spire of the tower of aart on its shore just relieved against the light of the waves. the rossberg itself, never steep, and still more reduced in terror by the fall of a portion of it, was not available to him as a form _explanatory_ of the catastrophe; and even the slopes of the righi on the left are not, in reality, as uninterrupted in their slope as he has drawn them; but he felt the connection of this structure with the ruin amidst which he stood, and brought the long lines of danger clear against the sunset, and as straight as its own retiring rays. § . if the reader will now glance back to the st. gothard subject, as illustrated in the two plates + + and + +, and compare it with this of goldau, keeping in mind the general conclusions about the two great classes of mountain scenery which i have just stated, he will, i hope, at last cease to charge me with enthusiasm in anything that i have said of turner's imagination, as always instinctively possessive of those truths which lie deepest, and are most essentially linked together, in the expression of a scene. i have only taken two drawings (though these of his best period) for the illustration of all the structures of the alps which, in the course of half a volume, it has been possible for me to explain; and all my half-volume is abstracted in these two drawings, and that in the most consistent and complete way, as if they had been made on purpose to contain a perfect summary of alpine truth. § . there are one or two points connected with them of yet more touching interest. they are the last drawings which turner ever made with unabated power. the one of the st. gothard, speaking with strict accuracy, is _the_ last drawing; for that of goldau, though majestic to the utmost in conception, is less carefully finished, and shows, in the execution of parts of the sky, signs of impatience, caused by the first feeling of decline of strength. therefore i called the st. gothard (vol. iii. ch. xv. § ) the last mountain drawing he ever executed with perfect power. but the goldau is still a noble companion to it--more solemn in thought, more sublime in color, and, in certain points of poetical treatment, especially characteristic of the master's mind in earlier days. he was very definitely in the habit of indicating the association of any subject with circumstances of death, especially the death of multitudes, by placing it under one of his most deeply _crimsoned_ sunset skies. the color of blood is this plainly taken for the leading tone in the storm-clouds above the "slave-ship." it occurs with similar distinctness in the much earlier picture of ulysses and polypheme, in that of napoleon at st. helena, and, subdued by softer hues, in the old témeraire. the sky of this goldau is, in its scarlet and crimson, the deepest in tone of all that i know in turner's drawings. another feeling traceable in several of its former works, is an acute sense of the contrast between the careless interests and idle pleasures of daily life, and the state of those whose time for labor, or knowledge, or delight is passed for ever. there is evidence of this feeling in the introduction of the boys at play in the churchyard of kirkby lonsdale, and the boy climbing for his kite among the thickets above the little mountain churchyard of brignal-banks; it is in the same tone of thought that he has placed here the two figures fishing, leaning against these shattered flanks of rock,--the sepulchral stones of the great mountain field of death. § . another character of these two drawings, which gives them especial interest as connected with our inquiries into mediæval landscape, is, that they are precisely and accurately illustrative of the two principal ideas of dante about the alps. i have already explained the rise of the first drawing out of turner's early study of the "male bolge" of the splugen and st. gothard. the goldau, on the other hand, might have been drawn in purposeful illustration of the lines before referred to (vol. iii. ch. xv. § ) as descriptive of a "loco _alpestro_." i give now dante's own words: "qual' è quella ruina, che nel fianco di quà da trento l'adice percosse, o per tremuoto, o per sostegni manco, che da cima del monte, onde si mosse, al piano è sì la roccia discoscesa che alcuna via darebbe a chi su fosse; cotal di quel burrato era la scesa." "as is that landslip, ere you come to trent, that smote the flank of adige, through some stay sinking beneath it, or by earthquake rent; for from the summit, where of old it lay, plainwards the broken rock unto the feet of one above it might afford some way; such path adown this precipice we meet." cayley. § . finally, there are two lessons to be gathered from the opposite conditions of mountain decay, represented in these designs, of perhaps a wider range of meaning than any which were suggested even by the states of mountain strength. in the first, we find the unyielding rock, undergoing no sudden danger, and capable of no total fall, yet, in its hardness of heart, worn away by perpetual trampling of torrent waves, and stress of wandering storm. its fragments, fruitless and restless, are tossed into ever-changing heaps: no labor of man can subdue them to his service, nor can his utmost patience secure any dwelling-place among them. in this they are the type of all that humanity which, suffering under no sudden punishment or sorrow, remains "stony ground," afflicted, indeed, continually by minor and vexing cares, but only broken by them into fruitless ruin of fatigued life. of this ground not "corn-giving,"--this "rough valley, neither eared nor sown,"[ ] of the common world, it is said, to those who have set up their idols in the wreck of it-- "among the smooth stones of the stream is thy portion. they, they are thy lot."[ ] but, as we pass beneath the hills which have been shaken by earthquake and torn by convulsion, we find that periods of perfect repose succeeded those of destruction. the pools of calm water lie clear beneath their fallen rocks, the water-lilies gleam, and the reeds whisper among their shadows; the village rises again over the forgotten graves, and its church-tower, white through the storm-twilight, proclaims a renewed appeal to his protection in whose hand "are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills is his also." there is no loveliness of alpine valley that does not teach the same lesson. it is just where "the mountain falling cometh to naught, and the rock is removed out of his place," that, in process of years, the fairest meadows bloom between the fragments, the clearest rivulets murmur from their crevices among the flowers, and the clustered cottages, each sheltered beneath some strength of mossy stone, now to be removed no more, and with their pastured flocks around them, safe from the eagle's stoop and the wolf's ravin, have written upon their fronts, in simple words, the mountaineer's faith in the ancient promise-- "neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it cometh; "for thou shalt be in league with the stones of the field; and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with thee." footnotes [ ] small fragments of limestone, five or six inches across, and flattish, sharp, angular on edges, and quite loose; slope ° near fountain of maglans ½ somewhat larger stones, nearer maglans; quite loose ¾ similar débris, slightly touched with vegetation débris on southern side of maglans ½ slope of montagne de la côte, at the bottom, as seen from the village of chamouni ¾ average slope of montagne de taconay, seen from chamouni maximum slope of side of breven slope of débris from ravine of breven down to the village of chamouni slopes of débris set with pines under aiguille verte, seen from argentière general slope of tapia, from argentière slopes of la côte and taconay, from argentière ¾ profile of breven, from near the chapeau (a point commanding the valley of chamouni in its truest longitude) ½ average slope of montanvert, from same point ½ slope of la côte, same point ½ eastern slope of pain de sucre, seen from vevay western " " " ½ slope of foot of dent de morcles, seen from vevay ½ " " midi, " " [ ] deut. xxi. . so amos, vi. : "shall horses run upon the rock; will one plow here with oxen?" [ ] is. lvii. , . chapter xix. the mountain gloom. § . we have now cursorily glanced over those conditions of mountain structure which appear constant in duration, and universal in extent; and we have found them, invariably, calculated for the delight, the advantage, or the teaching of men; prepared, it seems, so as to contain, alike in fortitude or feebleness, in timeliness or in terror, some beneficence of gift, or profoundness of counsel. we have found that where at first all seemed disturbed and accidental, the most tender laws were appointed to produce forms of perpetual beauty; and that where to the careless or cold observer it seemed severe or purposeless, the well-being of man has been chiefly consulted, and his rightly directed powers, and sincerely awakened intelligence, may find wealth in every falling rock, and wisdom in every talking wave. it remains for us to consider what actual effect upon the human race has been produced by the generosity, or the instruction of the hills; how far, in past ages, they have been thanked, or listened to; how far, in coming ages, it may be well for us to accept them for tutors, or acknowledge them for friends. § . what they have already taught us may, one would think, be best discerned in the midst of them,--in some place where they have had their own way with the human soul; where no veil has been drawn between it and them, no contradicting voice has confused their ministries of sound, or broken their pathos of silence: where war has never streaked their streams with bloody foam, nor ambition sought for other throne than their cloud-courtiered pinnacles, nor avarice for other treasure than, year by year, is given to their unlaborious rocks, in budded jewels, and mossy gold. § . i do not know any district possessing more pure or uninterrupted fulness of mountain character (and that of the highest order), or which appears to have been less disturbed by foreign agencies, than that which borders the course of the trient between valorsine and martigny. the paths which lead to it out of the valley of the rhone, rising at first in steep circles among the walnut trees, like winding stairs among the pillars of a gothic tower, retire over the shoulders of the hills into a valley almost unknown, but thickly inhabited by an industrious and patient population. along the ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old glaciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant watches the slow coloring of the tufts of moss and roots of herb which, little by little, gather a feeble soil over the iron substance; then, supporting the narrow strip of clinging ground with a few stones, he subdues it to the spade; and in a year or two a little crest of corn is seen waving upon the rocky casque. the irregular meadows run in and out like inlets of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet with perpetual streamlets, that seem always to have chosen the steepest places to come down, for the sake of the leaps, scattering their handfuls of crystal this way and that, as the wind takes them, with all the grace, but with none of the formalism, of fountains; dividing into fanciful change of dash and spring, yet with the seal of their granite channels upon them, as the lightest play of human speech may bear the seal of past toil, and closing back out of their spray to lave the rigid angles, and brighten with silver fringes and glassy films each lower and lower step of sable stone; until at last, gathered altogether again,--except, perhaps, some chance drops caught on the apple-blossom, where it has budded a little nearer the cascade than it did last spring,--they find their way down to the turf, and lose themselves in that silently; with quiet depth of clear water furrowing among the grass blades, and looking only like their shadow, but presently emerging again in little startled gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered suddenly that the day was too short for them to get down the hill. green field, and glowing rock, and glancing streamlet, all slope together in the sunshine towards the brows of the ravines, where the pines take up their own dominion of saddened shade; and with everlasting roar in the twilight, the stronger torrents thunder down pale from the glaciers, filling all their chasms with enchanted cold, beating themselves to pieces against the great rocks that they have themselves cast down, and forcing fierce way beneath their ghastly poise. the mountain paths stoop to these glens in forky zigzags, leading to some grey and narrow arch, all fringed under its shuddering curve with the ferns that fear the light; a cross of rough-hewn pine, iron-bound to its parapet, standing dark against the lurid fury of the foam. far up the glen, as we pause beside the cross, the sky is seen through the openings in the pines, thin with excess of light; and, in its clear, consuming flame of white space, the summits of the rocky mountains are gathered into solemn crowns and circlets, all flushed in that strange, faint silence of possession by the sunshine which has in it so deep a melancholy; full of power, yet as frail as shadows; lifeless, like the walls of a sepulchre, yet beautiful in tender fall of crimson folds, like the veil of some sea spirit, that lives and dies as the foam flashes; fixed on a perpetual throne, stern against all strength, lifted above all sorrow, and yet effaced and melted utterly into the air by that last sunbeam that has crossed to them from between the two golden clouds. § . high above all sorrow: yes; but not unwitnessing to it. the traveller on his happy journey, as his foot springs from the deep turf and strikes the pebbles gayly over the edge of the mountain road, sees with a glance of delight the clusters of nut-brown cottages that nestle among those sloping orchards, and glow beneath the boughs of the pines. here, it may well seem to him, if there be sometimes hardship, there must be at least innocence and peace, and fellowship of the human soul with nature. it is not so. the wild goats that leap along those rocks have as much passion of joy in all that fair work of god as the men that toil among them. perhaps more. enter the street of one of those villages, and you will find it foul with that gloomy foulness that is suffered only by torpor, or by anguish of soul. here, it is torpor--not absolute suffering,--not starvation or disease, but darkness of calm enduring; the spring known only as the time of the scythe, and the autumn as the time of the sickle, and the sun only as a warmth, the wind as a chill, and the mountains as a danger. they do not understand so much as the name of beauty, or of knowledge. they understand dimly that of virtue. love, patience, hospitality, faith,--these things they know. to glean their meadows side by side, so happier; to bear the burden up the breathless mountain flank, unmurmuringly; to bid the stranger drink from their vessel of milk; to see at the foot of their low deathbeds a pale figure upon a cross, dying also, patiently;--in this they are different from the cattle and from the stones, but in all this unrewarded as far as concerns the present life. for them, there is neither hope nor passion of spirit; for them neither advance nor exultation. black bread, rude roof, dark night, laborious day, weary arm at sunset; and life ebbs away. no books, no thoughts, no attainments, no rest; except only sometimes a little sitting in the sun under the church wall, as the bell tolls thin and far in the mountain air; a pattering of a few prayers, not understood, by the altar rails of the dimly gilded chapel, and so back to the sombre home, with the cloud upon them still unbroken--that cloud of rocky gloom, born out of the wild torrents and ruinous stones, and unlightened, even in their religion, except by the vague promise of some better thing unknown, mingled with threatening, and obscured by an unspeakable horror,--a smoke, as it were, of martyrdom, coiling up with the incense, and, amidst the images of tortured bodies and lamenting spirits in hurtling flames, the very cross, for them, dashed more deeply than for others, with gouts of blood. § . do not let this be thought a darkened picture of the life of these mountaineers. it is literal fact. no contrast can be more painful than that between the dwelling of any well-conducted english cottager, and that of the equally honest savoyard. the one, set in the midst of its dull flat fields and uninteresting hedgerows, shows in itself the love of brightness and beauty; its daisy-studded garden beds, its smoothly swept brick path to the threshold, its freshly sanded floor and orderly shelves of household furniture, all testify to energy of heart, and happiness in the simple course and simple possessions of daily life. the other cottage, in the midst of an inconceivable, inexpressible beauty, set on some sloping bank of golden sward, with clear fountains flowing beside it, and wild flowers, and noble trees, and goodly rocks gathered round into a perfection as of paradise, is itself a dark and plague-like stain in the midst of the gentle landscape. within a certain distance of its threshold the ground is foul and cattle-trampled; its timbers are black with smoke, its garden choked with weeds and nameless refuse, its chambers empty and joyless, the light and wind gleaming and filtering through the crannies of their stones. all testifies that to its inhabitant the world is labor and vanity; that for him neither flowers bloom, nor birds sing, nor fountains glisten; and that his soul hardly differs from the grey cloud that coils and dies upon his hills; except in having no fold of it touched by the sunbeams. § . is it not strange to reflect, that hardly an evening passes in london or paris but one of those cottages is painted for the better amusement of the fair and idle, and shaded with pasteboard pines by the scene-shifter; and that good and kind people,--poetically minded,--delight themselves in imagining the happy life led by peasants who dwell by alpine fountains, and kneel to crosses upon peaks of rock? that nightly we lay down our gold to fashion forth simulacra of peasants, in gay ribands and white bodices, singing sweet songs, and bowing gracefully to the picturesque crosses; and all the while the veritable peasants are kneeling, songlessly, to veritable crosses, in another temper than the kind and fair audiences dream of, and assuredly with another kind of answer than is got out of the opera catastrophe; an answer having reference, it may be, in dim futurity, to those very audiences themselves? if all the gold that has gone to paint the simulacra of the cottages, and to put new songs in the mouths of the simulacra of the peasants, had gone to brighten the existent cottages, and to put new songs into the mouths of the existent peasants, it might in the end, perhaps, have turned out better so, not only for the peasants, but for even the audience. for that form of the false ideal has also its correspondent true ideal,--consisting not in the naked beauty of statues, nor in the gauze flowers and crackling tinsel of theatres, but in the clothed and fed beauty of living men, and in the lights and laughs of happy homes. night after night, the desire of such an ideal springs up in every idle human heart; and night after night, as far as idleness can, we work out this desire in costly lies. we paint the faded actress, build the lath landscape, feed our benevolence with fallacies of felicity, and satisfy our righteousness with poetry of justice. the time will come when, as the heavy-folded curtain falls upon our own stage of life, we shall begin to comprehend that the justice we loved was intended to have been done in fact, and not in poetry, and the felicity we sympathized in, to have been bestowed and not feigned. we talk much of money's worth, yet perhaps may one day be surprised to find that what the wise and charitable european public gave to one night's rehearsal of hypocrisy,--to one hour's pleasant warbling of linda or lucia,--would have filled a whole alpine valley with happiness, and poured the waves of harvest over the famine of many a lammermoor.[ ] § . "nay," perhaps the reader answers, "it is vain to hope that this could ever be. the perfect beauty of the ideal must always be fictitious. it is rational to amuse ourselves with the fair imagination; but it would be madness to endeavor to put it into practice, in the face of the ordinances of nature. real shepherdesses must always be rude, and real peasants miserable; suffer us to turn away our gentle eyes from their coarseness and their pain, and to seek comfort in cultivated voices and purchased smiles. we cannot hew down the rocks, nor turn the sands of the torrent into gold." § . this is no answer. be assured of the great truth--that what is impossible in reality is ridiculous in fancy. if it is not in the nature of things that peasants should be gentle and happy, then the imagination of such peasantry is ridiculous, and to delight in such imagination wrong; as delight in any kind of falsehood is always. but if in the nature of things it be possible that among the wildness of hills the human heart should be refined, and if the comfort of dress, and the gentleness of language, and the joy of progress in knowledge, and of variety in thought, are possible to the mountaineer in his true existence, let us strive to write this true poetry upon the rocks before we indulge it in our visions, and try whether, among all the fine arts, one of the finest be not that of painting cheeks with health rather than rouge. § . "but is such refinement possible? do not the conditions of the mountain peasant's life, in the plurality of instances, necessarily forbid it?" as bearing sternly on this question, it is necessary to examine one peculiarity of feeling which manifests itself among the european nations, so far as i have noticed, irregularly,--appearing sometimes to be the characteristic of a particular time, sometimes of a particular race, sometimes of a particular locality, and to involve at once much that is to be blamed and much that is praiseworthy. i mean the capability of enduring, or even delighting in, the contemplation of objects of terror--a sentiment which especially influences the temper of some groups of mountaineers, and of which it is necessary to examine the causes, before we can form any conjecture whatever as to the real effect of mountains on human character. § . for instance, the unhappy alterations which have lately taken place in the town of lucerne have still spared two of its ancient bridges; both of which, being long covered walks, appear, in past times, to have been to the population of the town what the mall was to london, or the gardens of the tuileries are to paris. for the continual contemplation of those who sauntered from pier to pier, pictures were painted on the woodwork of the roof. these pictures, in the one bridge, represent all the important swiss battles and victories; in the other they are the well-known series of which longfellow has made so beautiful a use in the golden legend, the _dance of death_. imagine the countenances with which a committee, appointed for the establishment of a new "promenade" in some flourishing modern town, would receive a proposal to adorn such promenade with pictures of the dance of death. § . now just so far as the old bridge at lucerne, with the pure, deep, and blue water of the reuss eddying down between its piers, and with the sweet darkness of green hills, and far-away gleaming of lake and alps alternating upon the eye on either side; and the gloomy lesson frowning in the shadow, as if the deep tone of a passing-bell, overhead, were mingling for ever with the plashing of the river as it glides by beneath; just so far, i say, as this differs from the straight and smooth strip of level dust, between two rows of round-topped acacia trees, wherein the inhabitants of an english watering-place or french fortified town take their delight,--so far i believe the life of the old lucernois, with all its happy waves of light, and mountain strength of will, and solemn expectation of eternity, to have differed from the generality of the lives of those who saunter for their habitual hour up and down the modern promenade. but the gloom is not always of this noble kind. as we penetrate farther among the hills we shall find it becoming very painful. we are walking, perhaps, in a summer afternoon, up the valley of zermatt (a german valley), the sun shining brightly on grassy knolls and through fringes of pines, the goats leaping happily, and the cattle bells ringing sweetly, and the snowy mountains shining like heavenly castles far above. we see, a little way off, a small white chapel, sheltered behind one of the flowery hillocks of mountain turf; and we approach its little window, thinking to look through it into some quiet home of prayer; but the window is grated with iron, and open to the winds, and when we look through it, behold--a heap of white human bones mouldering into whiter dust! so also in that same sweet valley, of which i have just been speaking, between chamouni and the valais, at every turn of the pleasant pathway, where the scent of the thyme lies richest upon its rocks, we shall see a little cross and shrine set under one of them; and go up to it, hoping to receive some happy thought of the redeemer, by whom all these lovely things were made, and still consist. but when we come near--behold, beneath the cross, a rude picture of souls tormented in red tongues of hell fire, and pierced by demons. § . as we pass towards italy the appearance of this gloom deepens; and when we descend the southern slope of the alps we shall find this bringing forward of the image of death associated with an endurance of the most painful aspects of disease, so that conditions of human suffering, which in any other country would be confined in hospitals, are permitted to be openly exhibited by the wayside; and with this exposure of the degraded human form is farther connected an insensibility to ugliness and imperfection in other things; so that the ruined wall, neglected garden, and uncleansed chamber, seem to unite in expressing a gloom of spirit possessing the inhabitants of the whole land. it does not appear to arise from poverty, nor careless contentment with little: there is here nothing of irish recklessness or humor; but there seems a settled obscurity in the soul,--a chill and plague, as if risen out of a sepulchre, which partly deadens, partly darkens, the eyes and hearts of men, and breathes a leprosy of decay through every breeze and every stone. "instead of well-set hair, baldness, and burning instead of beauty." nor are definite proofs wanting that the feeling is independent of mere poverty or indolence. in the most gorgeous and costly palace garden the statues will be found green with moss, the terraces defaced or broken; the palace itself partly coated with marble, is left in other places rough with cementless and jagged brick, its iron balconies bent and rusted, its pavements overgrown with grass. the more energetic the effort has been to recover from this state, and to shake off all appearance of poverty, the more assuredly the curse seems to fasten on the scene, and the unslaked mortar, and unfinished wall, and ghastly desolation of incompleteness entangled in decay, strike a deeper despondency into the beholder. § . the feeling would be also more easily accounted for if it appeared consistent in its regardlessness of beauty,--if what was _done_ were altogether as inefficient as what was deserted. but the balcony, though rusty and broken, is delicate in design, and supported on a nobly carved slab of marble; the window, though a mere black rent in ragged plaster, is encircled by a garland of vine and fronted by a thicket of the sharp leaves and aurora-colored flowers of the oleander; the courtyard, overgrown by mournful grass, is terminated by a bright fresco of gardens and fountains; the corpse, borne with the bare face to heaven, is strewn with flowers; beauty is continually mingled with the shadow of death. § . so also is a kind of merriment,--not true cheerfulness, neither careless nor idle jesting, but a determined effort at gaiety, a resolute laughter, mixed with much satire, grossness, and practical buffoonery, and, it always seemed to me, void of all comfort or hope,--with this eminent character in it also, that it is capable of touching with its bitterness even the most fearful subjects, so that as the love of beauty retains its tenderness in the presence of death, this love of jest also retains its boldness, and the skeleton becomes one of the standard masques of the italian comedy. when i was in venice, in , the most popular piece of the _comic_ opera was "death and the cobbler," in which the point of the plot was the success of a village cobbler as a physician, in consequence of the appearance of death to him beside the bed of every patient who was not to recover; and the most applauded scene in it was one in which the physician, insolent in success, and swollen with luxury, was himself taken down into the abode of death, and thrown into an agony of terror by being shown lives of men, under the form of wasting lamps, and his own ready to expire. § . i have also not the smallest doubt that this endurance or affronting of fearful images is partly associated with indecency, partly with general fatuity and weakness of mind. the men who applauded loudest when the actress put on, in an instant, her mask representing a skull, and when her sharp and clear "sono la morte" rang through the theatre, were just those whose disgusting habits rendered it impossible for women to pass through some of the principal streets in venice,--just those who formed the gaping audience, when a mountebank offered a new quack medicine on the riva dei schiavoni. and, as fearful imagery is associated with the weakness of fever, so it seems to me that imbecility and love of terror are connected by a mysterious link throughout the whole life of man. there is a most touching instance of this in the last days of sir walter scott, the publication of whose latter works, deeply to be regretted on many accounts, was yet, perhaps, on the whole, right, as affording a means of studying the conditions of the decay of overwrought human intellect in one of the most noble of minds. among the many signs of this decay at its uttermost, in castle dangerous, not one of the least notable was the introduction of the knight who bears on his black armor the likeness of a skeleton. § . the love of horror which is in this manner connected with feebleness of intellect, is not, however, to be confounded with that shown by the vulgar in general. the feeling which is calculated upon in the preparation of pieces full of terror and crime, at our lower theatres, and which is fed with greater art and elegance in the darker scenery of the popular french novelists, however morally unhealthy, is not _unnatural_; it is not the result of an apathy to such horror, but of a strong desire for excitement in minds coarse and dull, but not necessarily feeble. the scene of the murder of the jeweller in the "count of monte cristo," or those with the squelette in the "mystères de paris," appeal to instincts which are as common to all mankind as those of thirst and hunger, and which are only debasing in the exaggerated condition consequent upon the dulness of other instincts higher than they. and the persons who, at one period of their life, might take chief pleasure in such narrations, at another may be brought into a temper of high tone and acute sensibility. but the love of horror respecting which we are now inquiring appears to be an unnatural and feeble feeling; it is not that the person needs excitement, or has any such strong perceptions as would cause excitement, but he is dead to the horror, and a strange evil influence guides his feebleness of mind rather to fearful images than to beautiful ones,--as our disturbed dreams are sometimes filled with ghastliness which seem not to arise out of any conceivable association of our waking ideas, but to be a vapor out of the very chambers of the tomb, to which the mind, in its palsy, has approached. § . but even this imbecile revelling in terror is more comprehensible, more apparently natural, than the instinct which is found frequently connected with it, of absolute joy in _ugliness_. in some conditions of old german art we find the most singular insisting upon what is in all respects ugly and abortive, or frightful; not with any sense of sublimity in it, neither in mere foolishness, but with a resolute choice, such as i can completely account for on no acknowledged principle of human nature. for in the worst conditions of sensuality there is yet some perception of the beautiful, so that men utterly depraved in principle and habits of thought will yet admire beautiful things and fair faces. but in the temper of which i am now speaking there is no preference even of the lower forms of loveliness; no effort at painting fair limbs or passionate faces, no evidence of any human or natural sensation,--a mere feeding on decay and rolling in slime, not apparently or conceivably with any pleasure in it, but under some fearful possession of an evil spirit. § . the most wonderful instance of this feeling at its uttermost which i remember, is the missal in the british museum, harl. mss. . the drawings of the principal subjects in it appear to have been made first in black, by martin schöngauer (at all events by some copyist of his designs), and then another workman has been employed to paint these drawings over. no words can describe the intensity of the "plague of the heart" in this man; the reader should examine the manuscript carefully if he desires to see how low human nature can sink. i had written a description of one or two of the drawings in order to give some conception of them to persons not able to refer to the book; but the mere description so saddened and polluted my pages that i could not retain it. i will only, therefore, name the principal characteristics which belong to the workman's mind. § . first, perpetual tampering with death, whether there be occasion to allude to it or not,--especially insisting upon its associations with corruption. i do not pain the reader by dwelling on the details illustrative of this feeling. secondly, delight in dismemberment, dislocation, and distortion of attitude. distortion, to some extent, is a universal characteristic of the german fifteenth and sixteenth century art; that is to say, there is a general aptitude for painting legs across, or feet twisted round, or bodies awkwardly bent, rather than anything in a natural position; and martin schöngauer himself exhibits this defect in no small degree. but here the finishing workman has dislocated nearly every joint which he has exposed, besides knitting and twisting the muscles into mere knots of cordage. [illustration: fig. .] what, however, only amounts to dislocation in the limbs of the human figures, becomes actual dismemberment in the animals. fig. is a faithful copy of a tree with two _birds_, one on its bough, and one above it, seen in the background, behind a soldier's mace, in the drawing of the betrayal. in the engraving of this subject, by schöngauer himself, the mace does not occur; it has been put in by the finishing workman, in order to give greater expression of savageness to the boughs of the tree, which, joined with the spikes of the mace, form one mass of disorganized angles and thorns, while the birds look partly as if being torn to pieces, and partly like black spiders. in the painting itself the sky also is covered with little detached and bent white strokes, by way of clouds, and the hair of the figures torn into ragged locks, like wood rent by a cannon shot. [illustration: fig. .] this tendency to dismember and separate everything is one of the eminent conditions of a mind leaning to vice and ugliness; just as to connect and harmonize everything is that of a mind leaning to virtue and beauty. it is shown down to the smallest details; as, for instance, in the spotted backgrounds, which, instead of being chequered with connected patterns, as in the noble manuscripts (see vol. iii. plate ), are covered with disorderly dashes and circles executed with a blunt pen or brush, fig. . and one of the borders is composed of various detached heads cut off at the neck or shoulders without the slightest endeavor to conceal or decorate the truncation. all this, of course, is associated with choice of the most abominable features in the countenance. § . thirdly, pure ignorance. necessarily such a mind as this must be incapable of perceiving the truth of any form; and therefore together with the distortion of all studied form is associated the utter negation or imperfection of that which is less studied. fourthly, delight in blood. i cannot use the words which would be necessary to describe the second[ ] painting of the scourging, in this missal. but i may generally notice that the degree in which the peculiar feeling we are endeavoring to analyze is present in any district of roman catholic countries, may be almost accurately measured by the quantity of blood represented on the crucifixes. the person employed to repaint, in the campo santo of pisa, the portion of orcagna's pictures representing the inferno, has furnished a very notable example of the same feeling; and it must be familiar to all travellers in countries thoroughly subjected to _modern_ romanism, a thing as different from thirteenth-century romanism as a prison from a prince's chamber. lastly, utter absence of inventive power. the only ghastliness which this workman is capable of is that of distortion. in ghastly _combination_ he is impotent; he cannot even understand it or copy it when set before him, continually destroying any that exists in the drawing of schöngauer. § . such appear to be the principal component elements in the mind of the painter of this missal, and it possesses these in complete abstraction from nearly all others, showing, in deadly purity, the nature of the venom which in ordinary cases is tempered by counteracting elements. there are even certain feelings, evil enough themselves, but more _natural_ than these, of which the slightest mingling would here be a sort of redemption. vanity, for instance, would lead to a more finished execution, and more careful copying from nature, and of course subdue the ugliness by fidelity; love of pleasure would introduce occasionally a graceful or sensual form; malice would give some point and meaning to the bordering grotesques, nay, even insanity might have given them some inventive horror. but the pure mortiferousness of this mind, capable neither of patience, fidelity, grace, or wit, in any place, or from any motive,--this horrible apathy of brain, which cannot ascend so high as insanity, but is capable only of putrefaction, save us the task of all analysis, and leave us only that of examining how this black aqua tophana mingles with other conditions of mind. § . for i have led the reader over this dark ground, because it was essential to our determination of the influence of mountains that we should get what data we could as to the extent in other districts, and derivation from other causes, of the horror which at first we might have been led to connect too arbitrarily with hill scenery. and i wish that my knowledge permitted me to trace it over wider ground, for the observations hitherto stated leave the question still one of great difficulty. it might appear to a traveller crossing and recrossing the alps between switzerland and italy, that the main strength of the evil lay on the south of the chain, and was attributable to the peculiar circumstances and character of the italian nation at this period. but as he examined the matter farther he would note that in the districts of italy generally supposed to be _healthy_, the evidence of it was less, and that it seemed to gain ground in places exposed to malaria, centralizing itself in the val d'aosta. he would then, perhaps, think it inconsistent with justice to lay the blame on the mountains, and transfer his accusation to the marshes, yet would be compelled to admit that the evil manifested itself most where these marshes were surrounded by hills. he would next, probably, suppose it produced by the united effect of hardships, solitude, and unhealthy air; and be disposed to find fault with the mountains, at least so far as they required painful climbing and laborious agriculture;--but would again be thrown into doubt by remembering that one main branch of the feeling,--the love of ugliness, seemed to belong in a peculiar manner to northern germany. if at all familiar with the art of the north and south, he would perceive that the _endurance_ of ugliness, which in italy resulted from languor or depression (while the mind yet retained some apprehension of the difference between fairness and deformity, as above noted in § ), was not to be confounded with that absence of perception of the beautiful, which introduced a general hard-featuredness of figure into all german and flemish early art, even when germany and flanders were in their brightest national health and power. and as he followed out in detail the comparison of all the purest ideals north and south of the alps, and perceived the perpetual contrast existing between the angular and bony sanctities of the one latitude, and the drooping graces and pensive pieties of the other, he would no longer attribute to the ruggedness, or miasma, of the mountains the origin of a feeling which showed itself so strongly in the comfortable streets of antwerp and nuremberg, and in the unweakened and active intellects of van eyck and albert durer. conditions which produce the mountain gloom. § . as i think over these various difficulties, the following conclusions seem to me deducible from the data i at present possess. i am in no wise confident of their accuracy, but they may assist the reader in pursuing the inquiry farther. general power of intellect. i. it seems to me, first, that a fair degree of intellect and imagination is necessary before this kind of disease is possible. it does not seize on merely stupid peasantries, but on those which belong to intellectual races, and in whom the faculties of imagination and the sensibilities of heart were originally strong and tender. in flat land, with fresh air, the peasantry may be almost mindless, but not infected with this gloom. romanism. ii. in the second place, i think it is closely connected with the romanist religion, and that for several causes. a. the habitual use of bad art (ill-made dolls and bad pictures), in the services of religion, naturally blunts the delicacy of the senses, by requiring reverence to be paid to ugliness, and familiarizing the eye to it in moments of strong and pure feeling; i do not think we can overrate the probable evil results of this enforced discordance between the sight and imagination. b. the habitually dwelling on the penances, tortures, and martyrdoms of the saints, as subjects of admiration and sympathy, together with much meditation on purgatorial suffering; rendered almost impossible to protestants by the greater fearfulness of such reflections, when the punishment is supposed eternal. c. idleness, and neglect of the proper duties of daily life, during the large number of holidays in the year, together with want of proper cleanliness, induced by the idea that comfort and happy purity are less pleasing to god than discomfort and self-degradation. this insolence induces much despondency, a larger measure of real misery than is necessary under the given circumstances of life, and many forms of crime and disease besides. d. superstitious indignation. i do not know if it is as a result of the combination of these several causes, or if under a separate head, that i should class a certain strange awe which seems to attach itself to romanism like its shadow, differing from the coarser gloom which we have been examining, in that it can attach itself to minds of the highest purity and keenness, and, indeed, does so to these more than to inferior ones. it is an undefinable pensiveness, leading to great severity of precept, mercilessness in punishment, and dark or discouraging thoughts of god and man.[ ] it is connected partly with a greater belief in the daily presence and power of evil spirits than is common in protestants (except the more enthusiastic, and _also gloomy_, sects of puritans), connected also with a sternness of belief in the condemnatory power and duty of the church, leading to persecution, and to less tempered indignation at oppositions of opinion than characterizes the protestant mind ordinarily, which, though waspish and bitter enough, is not liable to the peculiar heart-burning caused in a papist by any insult to his church, or by the aspect of what he believes to be heresy. § . for all these reasons, i think romanism is very definitely connected with the gloom we are examining, so as without fail to produce some measure of it in all persons who sincerely hold that faith; and if such effect is ever not to be traced, it is because the romanism is checked by infidelity. the atheism or dissipation of a large portion of the population in crowded capitals prevents this gloom from being felt in full force; but it resumes its power, in mountain solitudes, over the minds of the comparatively ignorant and more suffering peasantry; so that it is not an evil inherent in the hills themselves, but one result of the continuance in them of that old religious voice of warning, which, encouraging sacred feeling in general, encourages also whatever evil may essentially belong to the form of doctrine preached among them. [illustration: fig. .] disease of body. § . iii. it is assuredly connected also with a diseased state of health. cheerfulness is just as natural to the heart of a man in strong health as color to his cheek; and wherever there is habitual gloom, there must be either bad air, unwholesome food, improperly severe labor, or erring habits of life. among mountains, all these various causes are frequently found in combination. the air is either too bleak, or it is impure; generally the peasants are exposed to alternations of both. great hardship is sustained in various ways, severe labor undergone during summer, and a sedentary and confined life led during winter. where the gloom exists in less elevated districts, as in germany, i do not doubt, though i have not historical knowledge enough to prove this, that it is partly connected with habits of sedentary life, protracted study, and general derangement of the bodily system in consequence; when it exists in the gross form exhibited in the manuscript above examined, i have no doubt it has been fostered by habits of general vice, cruelty, and dissipation. [illustration: fig. .] rudeness of life. § . iv. considered as a natural insensibility to beauty, it is, i imagine, indicative of a certain want of cultivation in the race among whom it is found, perhaps without corporal or mental weakness, but produced by rudeness of life, absence of examples of beautiful art, defects in the mould of the national features, and such other adversities, generally belonging to northern nations as opposed to southern. here, however, again my historical knowledge is at fault, and i must leave the reader to follow out the question for himself, if it interests him. a single example maybe useful to those who have not time for investigation, in order to show the kind of difference i mean. fig. is a st. peter, from a german fifteenth-century ms., of good average execution; and fig. a madonna, either of the best english, or second-rate french, work, from a service-book executed in . the reader will, i doubt not, perceive at once the general grace and tenderness of sentiment in the lines of the drapery of the last, and the comparatively delicate type of features. the hardnesses of line, gesture, and feature in the german example, though two centuries at least later, are, i think, equally notable. they are accompanied in the rest of the ms. by an excessive coarseness in choice of ornamental subject: beneath a female figure typical of the church, for instance, there is painted a carcass, just butchered, and hung up with skewers through the legs. § . v. in many high mountain districts, not only are the inhabitants likely to be hurt by hardship of life, and retarded by roughness of manners, but their eyes are familiarized with certain conditions of ugliness and disorder, produced by the violence of the elements around them. once accustomed to look upon these conditions as inevitable in nature, they may easily transfer the idea of inevitableness and fitness to the same appearances in their own houses. i said that mountains seem to have been created to show us the perfection of beauty; but we saw in the tenth chapter that they also show sometimes the extreme of ugliness: and to the inhabitants of districts of this kind it is almost necessary to their daily comfort that they should view without dislike aspects of desolation which would to others be frightful. and can we blame them, if, when the rivers are continually loading their fields with heaps of black slime, and rolling, in time of flood, over the thickets on their islets, leaving, when the flood is past, every leaf and bough dim with granite-dust,--never more to be green through all the parching of summer; when the landslip leaves a ghastly scar among the grassy mounds of the hill side;--the rocks above are torn by their glaciers into rifts and wounds that are never healed; and the ice itself blackened league after league with loose ruin cast upon it as if out of some long and foul excavation;--can we blame, i say, the peasant, if, beholding these things daily as necessary appointments in the strong nature around him, he is careless that the same disorders should appear in his household or his farm; nor feels discomforted, though his walls should be full of fissures like the rocks, his furniture covered with dust like the trees, and his garden like the glacier in unsightliness of trench and desolation of mound? § . under these five heads are embraced, as far as i am able to trace them, the causes of the temper which we are examining; and it will be seen that only the last is quite peculiar to mountain and marsh districts, although there is a somewhat greater probability that the others also may be developed among hills more than in plains. when, by untoward accident, all are associated, and the conditions described under the fifth head are very distinct, the result is even sublime in its painfulness. of places subjected to such evil influence, none are quite so characteristic as the town of sion in the valais. in the first place (see § ), the material on which it works is good; the race of peasantry being there both handsome and intelligent, as far as they escape the adverse influences around them; so that on a fête-day or a sunday, when the families come down from the hill châlets, where the air is healthier, many very pretty faces may be seen among the younger women, set off by somewhat more pains in adjustment of the singular valaisan costume than is now usual in other cantons of switzerland. § . secondly, it is a bishopric, and quite the centre of romanism in switzerland, all the most definite romanist doctrines being evidently believed sincerely, and by a majority of the population; protestantism having no hold upon them at all; and republican infidelity, though active in the councils of the commune, having as yet, so far as i could see, little influence in the hearts of households. the prominence of the valais among roman catholic states has always been considerable. the cardinal of sion was, of old, one of the personages most troublesome to the venetian ambassadors at the english court.[ ] § . thirdly, it is in the midst of a marshy valley, pregnant with various disease; the water either stagnant, or disgorged in wild torrents charged with earth; the air, in the morning, stagnant also, hot, close, and infected; in the afternoon, rushing up from the outlet at martigny in fitful and fierce whirlwind; one side of the valley in almost continual shade, the other (it running east and west) scorched by the southern sun, and sending streams of heat into the air all night long from its torrid limestones; while less traceable plagues than any of these bring on the inhabitants, at a certain time of life, violent affections of goître, and often, in infancy, cretinism. agriculture is attended with the greatest difficulties and despondencies; the land which the labor of a life has just rendered fruitful is often buried in an hour; and the carriage of materials, as well as the traversing of land on the steep hill sides, attended with extraordinary fatigue. § . owing to these various influences, sion, the capital of the district, presents one of the most remarkable scenes for the study of the particular condition of human feeling at present under consideration that i know among mountains. it consists of little more than one main street, winding round the roots of two ridges of crag, and branching, on the sides towards the rocks, into a few narrow lanes, on the other, into spaces of waste ground, of which part serve for military exercises, part are enclosed in an uncertain and vague way; a ditch half-filled up, or wall half-broken down, seeming to indicate their belonging, or having been intended to belong, to some of the unfinished houses which are springing up amidst their weeds. but it is difficult to say, in any part of the town, what is garden-ground or what is waste; still more, what is new building and what old. the houses have been for the most part built roughly of the coarse limestone of the neighboring hills, then coated with plaster, and painted, in imitation of palladian palaces, with grey architraves and pilasters, having draperies from capital to capital. with this false decoration is curiously contrasted a great deal of graceful, honest, and original ironwork, in bulging balconies, and floreted gratings of huge windows, and branching sprays, for any and every purpose of support or guard. the plaster, with its fresco, has in most instances dropped away, leaving the houses peeled and scarred; daubed into uncertain restoration with new mortar, and in the best cases thus left; but commonly fallen also, more or less, into ruin, and either roofed over at the first story when the second has fallen, or hopelessly abandoned;--not pulled down, but left in white and ghastly shells to crumble into heaps of limestone and dust, a pauper or two still inhabiting where inhabitation is possible. the lanes wind among these ruins; the blue sky and mountain grass are seen through the windows of their rooms and over their partitions, on which old gaudy papers flaunt in rags: the weeds gather, and the dogs scratch about their foundations; yet there are no luxuriant weeds, for their ragged leaves are blanched with lime, crushed under perpetually falling fragments, and worn away by listless standing of idle feet. there is always mason's work doing, always some fresh patching and whitening; a dull smell of mortar, mixed with that of stale foulness of every kind, rises with the dust, and defiles every current of air; the corners are filled with accumulations of stones, partly broken, with crusts of cement sticking to them, and blotches of nitre oozing out of their pores. the lichenous rocks and sunburnt slopes of grass stretch themselves hither and thither among the wreck, curiously traversed by stairs and walls and half-cut paths, that disappear below starkly black arches, and cannot be followed, or rise in windings round the angles, and in unfenced slopes along the fronts, of the two masses of rock which bear, one the dark castle, the other the old church and convent of sion; beneath, in a rudely inclosed square at the outskirts of the town, a still more ancient lombardic church raises its grey tower, a kind of esplanade extending between it and the episcopal palace, and laid out as a plot of grass, intersected by gravel walks; but the grass, in strange sympathy with the inhabitants, will not grow _as_ grass, but chokes itself with a network of grey weeds, quite wonderful in its various expression of thorny discontent and savageness; the blue flower of the borage, which mingles with it in quantities, hardly interrupting its character, for the violent black spots in the centre of its blue takes away the tenderness of the flower, and it seems to have grown there in some supernatural mockery of its old renown of being good against melancholy. the rest of the herbage is chiefly composed of the dwarf mallow, the wild succory, the wall-rocket, goose-foot, and milfoil;[ ] plants, nearly all of them, jagged in the leaf, broken and dimly clustered in flower, haunters of waste ground and places of outcast refuse. beyond this plot of ground the episcopal palace, a half-deserted, barrack-like building, overlooks a _neglected vineyard_, of which the clusters, black on the under side, snow-white on the other with lime-dust, gather around them a melancholy hum of flies. through the arches of its trelliswork the avenue of the great valley is seen in descending distance, enlarged with line beyond line of tufted foliage, languid and rich, degenerating at last into leagues of grey maremma, wild with the thorn and the willow; on each side of it, sustaining themselves in mighty slopes and unbroken reaches of colossal promontory, the great mountains secede into supremacy through rosy depths of burning air, and the crescents of snow gleam over their dim summits as--if there could be mourning, as once there was war, in heaven--a line of waning moons might be set for lamps along the sides of some sepulchral chamber in the infinite. § . i know not how far this universal grasp of the sorrowful spirit might be relaxed if sincere energy were directed to amend the ways of life of the valaisan. but it has always appeared to me that there was, even in more healthy mountain districts, a certain degree of inevitable melancholy; nor could i ever escape from the feeling that here, where chiefly the beauty of god's working was manifested to men, warning was also given, and that to the full, of the enduring of his indignation against sin. it seems one of the most cunning and frequent of self-deceptions to turn the heart away from this warning and refuse to acknowledge anything in the fair scenes of the natural creation but beneficence. men in general lean towards the light, so far as they contemplate such things at all, most of them passing "by on the other side," either in mere plodding pursuit of their own work, irrespective of what good or evil is around them, or else in selfish gloom, or selfish delight, resulting from their own circumstances at the moment. of those who give themselves to any true contemplation, the plurality, being humble, gentle, and kindly hearted, look only in nature for what is lovely and kind; partly, also, god gives the disposition to every healthy human mind in some degree to pass over or even harden itself against evil things, else the suffering would be too great to be borne; and humble people, with a quiet trust that everything is for the best, do not fairly represent the facts to themselves, thinking them none of their business. so, what between hard-hearted people, thoughtless people, busy people, humble people, and cheerfully minded people,--giddiness of youth, and preoccupations of age,--philosophies of faith, and cruelties of folly,--priest and levite, masquer and merchantman, all agreeing to keep their own side of the way,--the evil that god sends to warn us gets to be forgotten, and the evil that he sends to be mended by us gets left unmended. and then, because people shut their eyes to the dark indisputableness of the facts in front of them, their faith, such as it is, is shaken or uprooted by every darkness in what is revealed to them. in the present day it is not easy to find a well-meaning man among our more earnest thinkers, who will not take upon himself to dispute the whole system of redemption, because he cannot unravel the mystery of the punishment of sin. but can he unravel the mystery of the punishment of no sin? can he entirely account for all that happens to a cab-horse? has he ever looked fairly at the fate of one of those beasts as it is dying,--measured the work it has done, and the reward it has got,--put his hand upon the bloody wounds through which its bones are piercing, and so looked up to heaven with an entire understanding of heaven's ways about the horse? yet the horse is a fact--no dream--no revelation among the myrtle trees by night; and the dust it dies upon, and the dogs that eat it, are facts;--and yonder happy person, whose the horse was till its knees were broken over the hurdles, who had an immortal soul to begin with, and wealth and peace to help forward his immortality; who has also devoted the powers of his soul, and body, and wealth, and peace, to the spoiling of houses, the corruption of the innocent, and the oppression of the poor; and has, at this actual moment of his prosperous life, as many curses waiting round about him in calm shadow, with their death's eyes fixed upon him, biding their time, as ever the poor cab-horse had launched at him in meaningless blasphemies, when his failing feet stumbled at the stones,--this happy person shall have no stripes,--shall have only the horse's fate of annihilation; or, if other things are indeed reserved for him, heaven's kindness or omnipotence is to be doubted therefore. § . we cannot reason of these things. but this i know--and this may by all men be known--that no good or lovely thing exists in this world without its correspondent darkness; and that the universe presents itself continually to mankind under the stern aspect of warning, or of choice, the good and the evil set on the right hand and the left. and in this mountain gloom, which weighs so strongly upon the human heart that in all time hitherto, as we have seen, the hill defiles have been either avoided in terror or inhabited in penance, there is but the fulfilment of the universal law, that where the beauty and wisdom of the divine working are most manifested, there also are manifested most clearly the terror of god's wrath, and inevitableness of his power. nor is this gloom less wonderful so far as it bears witness to the error of human choice, even when the nature of good and evil is most definitely set before it. the trees of paradise were fair; but our first parents hid themselves from god "in medio ligni paradisi," in the midst of the trees of the garden. the hills were ordained for the help of man; but, instead of raising his eyes to the hills, from whence cometh his help, he does his idol sacrifice "upon every high hill and under every green tree." the mountain of the lord's house is established above the hills; but nadab and abihu shall see under his feet the body of heaven in his clearness, yet go down to kindle the censer against their own souls. and so to the end of time it will be; to the end, that cry will still be heard along the alpine winds, "hear, oh ye mountains, the lord's controversy!" still, their gulfs of thawless ice, and unretarded roar of tormented waves, and deathful falls of fruitless waste, and unredeemed decay, must be the image of the souls of those who have chosen the darkness, and whose cry shall be to the mountains to fall on them, and to the hills to cover them; and still, to the end of time, the clear waters of the unfailing springs, and the white pasture-lilies in their clothed multitude, and the abiding of the burning peaks in their nearness to the opened heaven, shall be the types, and the blessings, of those who have chosen light, and of whom it is written, "the mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, righteousness." footnotes [ ] as i was correcting this sheet for press, the morning paper containing the account of the burning of covent garden theatre furnished the following financial statements, bearing somewhat on the matter in hand; namely, £ that the interior fittings of the theatre, in , cost , that it was opened on the th of april, ; and } that in the loss upon it was } , in " " , ------ , ------ £ and that in one year the vocal department cost , the ballet " " , the orchestra " " , ------ , ------ mr. albano afterwards corrected this statement, substituting , for , : and perhaps the other sums may also have been exaggerated, but i leave the reader to consider what an annual expenditure of from , _l._ to , _l._ might effect in practical idealism in general, whether in swiss valleys or elsewhere. i am not one of those who regard all theatrical entertainment as wrong or harmful. i only regret to see our theatres so conducted as to involve an expense which is worse than useless, in leading our audiences to look for mere stage effect, instead of good acting, good singing, or good sense. if we really loved music, or the drama, we should be content to hear well-managed voices, and see finished acting, without paying five or six thousand pounds to dress the songsters or decorate the stage. simple but well-chosen dresses, and quiet landscape exquisitely painted, would have far more effect on the feelings of any sensible audience than the tinsel and extravagance of our common scenery; and our actors and actresses must have little respect for their own powers, if they think that dignity of gesture is dependent on the flash of jewellery, or the pathos of accents connected with the costliness of silk. perfect execution of music by a limited orchestra is far more delightful, and far less fatiguing, than the irregular roar and hum of multitudinous mediocrity; and finished instrumentation by an adequate number of performers, exquisite acting, and sweetest singing, might be secured for the public at a fourth part of the cost now spent on operatic absurdities. there is no occasion whatever for decoration of the house: it is, on the contrary, the extreme of vulgarity. no person of good taste ever goes to a theatre to look at the fronts of the boxes. comfortable and roomy seats, perfect cleanliness, decent and fitting curtains and other furniture, of good stuff, but neither costly nor tawdry, and convenient, but not dazzling, light, are the proper requirements in the furnishing of an opera-house. as for the persons who go there to look at each other--to show their dresses--to yawn away waste hours--to obtain a maximum of momentary excitement--or to say they were there, at next day's three-o'clock breakfast (and it is only for such persons that glare, cost, and noise are necessary), i commend to their consideration, or at least to such consideration as is possible to their capacities, the suggestions in the text. but to the true lovers of the drama i would submit, as another subject of inquiry, whether they ought not to separate themselves from the mob, and provide, for their own modest, quiet, and guiltless entertainment, the truth of heartfelt impersonation, and the melody of the unforced and delicate voice, without extravagance of adjunct, unhealthy lateness of hours, or appeal to degraded passions. such entertainment might be obtained at infinitely smaller cost, and yet at a price which would secure honorable and permanent remuneration to every performer; and i am mistaken in my notion of the best actors, if they would not rather play at a house where people went to hear and to feel, than weary themselves, even for four times the pay, before an audience insulting in its listlessness and ignorant in its applause. [ ] there are, unusually, two paintings of this subject, the first representing the preparations for the scourging, the second its close. [ ] this character has, i think, been traced in the various writings of mrs. sherwood better than in any others; she has a peculiar art of making it felt and of striking the deep tone of it as from a passing-bell, contrasting it with the most cheerful, lovely, and sincere conditions of protestantism. [ ] see "four years at the court of henry viii." (dispatches of the venetian ambassador giustinian, translated by mr. rawdon brown,) . [ ] malva rotundifolia, cichorium intybus, sisymbrium tenuifolium, chenopodium urbicum, achillea millefolium. chapter xx. the mountain glory. § . i have dwelt, in the foregoing chapter, on the sadness of the hills with the greater insistance that i feared my own excessive love for them might lead me into too favorable interpretation of their influences over the human heart; or, at least, that the reader might accuse me of fond prejudice, in the conclusions to which, finally, i desire to lead him concerning them. for, to myself, mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery; in them, and in the forms of inferior landscape that lead to them, my affections are wholly bound up; and though i can look with happy admiration at the lowland flowers, and woods, and open skies, the happiness is tranquil and cold, like that of examining detached flowers in a conservatory, or reading a pleasant book; and if the scenery be resolutely level, insisting upon the declaration of its own flatness in all the detail of it, as in holland, or lincolnshire, or central lombardy, it appears to me like a prison, and i cannot long endure it. but the slightest rise and fall in the road,--a mossy bank at the side of a crag of chalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging it,--a ripple over three or four stones in the stream by the bridge,--above all, a wild bit of ferny ground under a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might see a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will instantly give me intense delight, because the shadow, or the hope, of the hills is in them. § . and thus, although there are few districts of northern europe, however apparently dull or tame, in which i cannot find pleasure, though the whole of northern france (except champagne), dull as it seems to most travellers, is to me a perpetual paradise; and, putting lincolnshire, leicestershire, and one or two such other perfectly flat districts aside, there is not an english county which i should not find entertainment in exploring the cross-roads of, foot by foot; yet all my best enjoyment would be owing to the imagination of the hills, coloring, with their far-away memories, every lowland stone and herb. the pleasant french coteau, green in the sunshine, delights me, either by what real mountain character it has in itself (for in extent and succession of promontory the flanks of the french valleys have quite the sublimity of true mountain distances), or by its broken ground and rugged steps among the vines, and rise of the leafage above, against the blue sky, as it might rise at vevay or como. there is not a wave of the seine but is associated in my mind with the first rise of the sandstones and forest pines of fontainebleau; and with the hope of the alps, as one leaves paris with the horses' heads to the south-west, the morning sun, flashing on the bright waves at charenton. if there be _no_ hope or association of this kind, and if i cannot deceive myself into fancying that perhaps at the next rise of the road there may be seen the film of a blue hill in the gleam of sky at the horizon, the landscape, however beautiful, produces in me even a kind of sickness and pain; and the whole view from richmond hill or windsor terrace,--nay, the gardens of alcinous, with their perpetual summer,--or of the hesperides (if they were flat, and not close to atlas), golden apples and all--i would give away in an instant, for one mossy granite stone a foot broad, and two leaves of lady-fern.[ ] § . i know that this is in great part idiosyncrasy; and that i must not trust to my own feelings, in this respect, as representative of the modern landscape instinct; yet i know it is not idiosyncrasy, in so far as there may be proved to be indeed an increase of the absolute beauty of all scenery in exact proportion to its mountainous character, providing that character be _healthily_ mountainous. i do not mean to take the col de bon homme as representative of hills, any more than i would take romney marsh as representative of plains; but putting leicestershire or staffordshire fairly beside westmoreland, and lombardy or champagne fairly beside the pays de vaud or the canton berne, i find the increase in the calculable sum of elements of beauty to be steadily in proportion to the increase of mountainous character; and that the best image which the world can give of paradise is in the slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the sides of a great alp, with its purple rocks and eternal snows above; this excellence not being in any wise a matter referable to feeling, or individual preferences, but demonstrable by calm enumeration of the number of lovely colors on the rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, and quantity of noble incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye at any given moment. § . for consider, first, the difference produced in the whole tone of landscape color by the introductions of purple, violet, and deep ultramarine blue, which we owe to mountains. in an ordinary lowland landscape we have the blue of the sky; the green of grass, which i will suppose (and this is an unnecessary concession to the lowlands) entirely fresh and bright; the green of trees; and certain elements of purple, far more rich and beautiful than we generally should think, in their bark and shadows (bare hedges and thickets, or tops of trees, in subdued afternoon sunshine, are nearly perfect purple, and of an exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed fields, and dark ground in general. but among mountains, in _addition_ to all this, large unbroken spaces of pure violet and purple are introduced in their distances; and even near, by films of cloud passing over the darkness of ravines or forests, blues are produced of the most subtle tenderness; these azures and purples[ ] passing into rose-color of otherwise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, the blue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper than in the plains. nay, in some sense, a person who has never seen the rose-color of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what _tenderness_ in color means at all; _bright_ tenderness he may, indeed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the far-away hill-purples he cannot conceive. § . together with this great source of preeminence in _mass_ of color, we have to estimate the influence of the finished inlaying and enamel-work of the color-jewellery on every stone; and that of the continual variety in species of flower; most of the mountain flowers being, besides, separately lovelier than the lowland ones. the wood hyacinth and wild rose are, indeed, the only _supreme_ flowers that the lowlands can generally show; and the wild rose is also a mountaineer, and more fragrant in the hills, while the wood hyacinth, or grape hyacinth, at its best cannot match even the dark bell-gentian, leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontested queenliness, and the alpine rose and highland heather wholly without similitude. the violet, lily of the valley, crocus, and wood anemone are, i suppose, claimable partly by the plains as well as the hills; but the large orange lily and narcissus i have never seen but on hill pastures, and the exquisite oxalis is preeminently a mountaineer.[ ] § . to this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next to add an inestimable gain in the continual presence and power of water. neither in its clearness, its color, its fantasy of motion, its calmness of space, depth, and reflection, or its wrath, can water be conceived by a lowlander, out of sight of sea. a sea wave is far grander than any torrent--but of the sea and its influences we are not now speaking; and the sea itself, though it _can_ be clear, is never calm, among our shores, in the sense that a mountain lake can be calm. the sea seems only to pause; the mountain lake to sleep, and to dream. out of sight of the ocean, a lowlander cannot be considered ever to have seen water at all. the mantling of the pools in the rock shadows, with the golden flakes of light sinking down through them like falling leaves, the ringing of the thin currents among the shallows, the flash and the cloud of the cascade, the earthquake and foam-fire of the cataract, the long lines of alternate mirror and mist that lull the imagery of the hills reversed in the blue of morning,--all these things belong to those hills as their undivided inheritance. § . to this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no less manifest preeminence in the character of trees. it is possible among plains, in the species of trees which properly belong to them, the poplars of amiens, for instance, to obtain a serene simplicity of grace, which, as i said, is a better help to the study of gracefulness, as such, than any of the wilder groupings of the hills; so also, there are certain conditions of symmetrical luxuriance developed in the park and avenue, rarely rivalled in their way among mountains; and yet the mountain superiority in foliage is, on the whole, nearly as complete as it is in water; for exactly as there are some expressions in the broad reaches of a navigable lowland river, such as the loire or thames, not, in their way, to be matched among the rock rivers, and yet for all that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen the element of water at all; so even in his richest parks and avenues he cannot be said to have truly seen trees. for the resources of trees are not developed until they have difficulty to contend with; neither their tenderness of brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced to choose their ways of various life where there is contracted room for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches. the various action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable rocks, stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search of glacier winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine, crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams, climbing hand in hand among the difficult slopes, opening in sudden dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into companies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in grave procession over the heavenward ridges,--nothing of this can be conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities of the lowland forest: while to all these direct sources of greater beauty are added, first the power of redundance,--the mere quantity of foliage visible in the folds and on the promontories of a single alp being greater than that of an entire lowland landscape (unless a view from some cathedral tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer _visibility_,--tree after tree being constantly shown in successive height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and flanks of masses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes of them continually defined against the clear sky, near and above, or against white clouds entangled among their branches, instead of being confused in dimness of distance. § . finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the still less questionable supremacy in clouds. there is no effect of sky possible in the lowlands which may not in equal perfection be seen among the hills; but there are effects by tens of thousands, for ever invisible and inconceivable to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among the hills in the course of one day. the mere power of familiarity with the clouds, of walking with them and above them, alters and renders clear our whole conception of the baseless architecture of the sky; and for the beauty of it, there is more in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the points of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill the arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. and of the nobler cloud manifestations,--the breaking of their troublous seas against the crags, their black spray sparkling with lightning; or the going forth of the morning along their pavements of moving marble, level-laid between dome and dome of snow;--of these things there can be as little imagination or understanding in an inhabitant of the plains as of the scenery of another planet than his own. § . and, observe, all these superiorities are matters plainly measurable and calculable, not in any wise to be referred to estimate of _sensation_. of the grandeur or expression of the hills i have not spoken; how far they are great, or strong, or terrible, i do not for the moment consider, because vastness, and strength, and terror, are not to all minds subjects of desired contemplation. it may make no difference to some men whether a natural object be large or small, whether it be strong or feeble. but loveliness of color, perfectness of form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure, are precious to all undiseased human minds; and the superiority of the mountains in all these things to the lowland is, i repeat, as measurable as the richness of a painted window matched with a white one, or the wealth of a museum compared with that of a simply furnished chamber. they seem to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper. and of these great cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple traversed by the continual stars,--of these, as we have seen, it was written, nor long ago, by one of the best of the poor human race for whom they were built, wondering in himself for whom their creator _could_ have made them, and thinking to have entirely discerned the divine intent in them--"they are inhabited by the beasts." § . was it then indeed thus with us, and so lately? had mankind offered no worship in their mountain churches? was all that granite sculpture and floral painting done by the angels in vain? not so. it will need no prolonged thought to convince us that in the hills the purposes of their maker have indeed been accomplished in such measure as, through the sin or folly of men, he ever permits them to be accomplished. it may not seem, from the general language held concerning them, or from any directly traceable results, that mountains have had serious influence on human intellect; but it will not, i think, be difficult to show that their occult influence has been both constant and essential to the progress of the race. § . consider, first, whether we can justly refuse to attribute to their mountain scenery some share in giving the greeks and italians their intellectual lead among the nations of europe. there is not a single spot of land in either of these countries from which mountains are not discernible; almost always they form the principal feature of the scenery. the mountain outlines seen from sparta, corinth, athens, rome, florence, pisa, verona, are of consummate beauty; and whatever dislike or contempt may be traceable in the mind of the greeks for mountain ruggedness, their placing the shrine of apollo under the cliffs of delphi, and his throne upon parnassus, was a testimony to all succeeding time that they themselves attributed the best part of their intellectual inspiration to the power of the hills. nor would it be difficult to show that every great writer of either of those nations, however little definite regard he might manifest for the landscape of his country, had been mentally formed and disciplined by it, so that even such enjoyment as homer's of the ploughed ground and poplar groves owes its intensity and delicacy to the excitement of the imagination produced, without his own consciousness, by other and grander features of the scenery to which he had been accustomed from a child; and differs in every respect from the tranquil, vegetative, and prosaic affection with which the same ploughed land and poplars would be regarded by a native of the netherlands. the vague expression which i have just used--"intellectual lead," may be expanded into four great heads; lead in religion, art and literature, war, and social economy. § . it will be right to examine our subject eventually under these four heads; but i shall limit myself, for the present, to some consideration of the first two, for a reason presently to be stated. st. influence of mountains on religious temperament. i. we have before had occasion to note the peculiar awe with which mountains were regarded in the middle ages, as bearing continual witness against the frivolity or luxury of the world. though the sense of this influence of theirs is perhaps more clearly expressed by the mediæval christians than by any other sect of religionists, the influence itself has been constant in all time. mountains have always possessed the power, first, of exciting religious enthusiasm; secondly, of purifying religious faith. these two operations are partly contrary to one another: for the faith of enthusiasm is apt to be _im_pure, and the mountains, by exciting morbid conditions of the imagination, have caused in great part the legendary and romantic forms of belief; on the other hand, by fostering simplicity of life and dignity of morals, they have purified by action what they falsified by imagination. but, even in their first and most dangerous influence, it is not the mountains that are to blame, but the human heart. while we mourn over the fictitious shape given to the religious visions of the anchorite, we may envy the sincerity and the depth of the emotion from which they spring: in the deep feeling, we have to acknowledge the solemn influences of the hills; but for the erring modes or forms of thought, it is human wilfulness, sin, and false teaching, that are answerable. we are not to deny the nobleness of the imagination because its direction is illegitimate, nor the pathos of the legend because its circumstances are groundless; the ardor and abstraction of the spiritual life are to be honored in themselves, though the one may be misguided and the other deceived; and the deserts of osma, assisi, and monte viso are still to be thanked for the zeal they gave, or guarded, whether we find it in st. francis and st. dominic, or in those whom god's hand hid from them in the clefts of the rocks. § . and, in fact, much of the apparently harmful influence of hills on the religion of the world is nothing else than their general gift of exciting the poetical and inventive faculties, in peculiarly solemn tones of mind. their terror leads into devotional casts of thought; their beauty and wildness prompt the invention at the same time; and where the mind is not gifted with stern reasoning powers, or protected by purity of teaching, it is sure to mingle the invention with its creed, and the vision with its prayer. strictly speaking, we ought to consider the superstitions of the hills, universally, as a form of poetry; regretting only that men have not yet learned how to distinguish poetry from well-founded faith. and if we do this, and enable ourselves thus to review, without carping or sneering, the shapes of solemn imagination which have arisen among the inhabitants of europe, we shall find, on the one hand, the mountains of greece and italy forming all the loveliest dreams, first of the pagan, then of the christian mythology; on the other, those of scandinavia to be the first sources of whatever mental (as well as military) power was brought by the normans into southern europe. normandy itself is to all intents and purposes a hill country; composed, over large extents, of granite and basalt, often rugged and covered with heather on the summits, and traversed by beautiful and singular dells, at once soft and secluded, fruitful and wild. we have thus one branch of the northern religious imagination rising among the scandinavian fiords, tempered in france by various encounters with elements of arabian, italian, provençal, or other southern poetry, and then reacting upon southern england; while other forms of the same rude religious imagination, resting like clouds upon the mountains of scotland and wales, met and mingled with the norman christianity, retaining even to the latest times some dark color of superstition, but giving all its poetical and military pathos to scottish poetry, and a peculiar sternness and wildness of tone to the reformed faith, in its manifestations among the scottish hills. § . it is on less disputable ground that i may claim the reader's gratitude to the mountains, as having been the centres not only of imaginative energy, but of purity both in doctrine and practice. the enthusiasm of the persecuted covenanter, and his variously modified claims to miraculous protection or prophetic inspiration, hold exactly the same relation to the smooth proprieties of lowland protestantism, that the demon-combats, fastings, visions, and miracles of the mountain monk or anchorite hold to the wealth and worldliness of the vatican. it might indeed happen, whether at canterbury, rheims, or rome, that a good bishop should occasionally grasp the crozier; and a vast amount of prudent, educated, and admirable piety is to be found among the ranks of the lowland clergy. but still the large aspect of the matter is always, among protestants, that formalism, respectability, orthodoxy, caution, and propriety, live by the slow stream that encircles the lowland abbey or cathedral; and that enthusiasm, poverty, vital faith, and audacity of conduct, characterize the pastor dwelling by the torrent side. in like manner, taking the large aspects of romanism, we see that its worst corruptions, its cunning, its worldliness, and its permission of crime, are traceable for the most part to lowland prelacy; but its self-denials, its obediences, humilities, sincere claims to miraculous power, and faithful discharges of pastoral duty, are traceable chiefly to its anchorites and mountain clergy. § . it is true that the "lady poverty" of st. francis may share the influence of the hills in the formation of character; and that, since the clergy who have little interest at court or conclave are those who in general will be driven to undertake the hill services, we must often attribute to enforced simplicity of life, or natural bitterness of feeling, some of the tones of thought which we might otherwise have ascribed to the influence of mountain scenery. such causes, however, affect the lowland as much as the highland religious character in all districts far from cities; but they do not produce the same effects. the curate or hermit of the field and fen, however simple his life, or painful his lodging, does not often attain the spirit of the hill pastor or recluse: we may find in him a decent virtue or a contented ignorance, rarely the prophetic vision or the martyr's passion. among the fair arable lands of england and belgium extends an orthodox protestantism or catholicism; prosperous, creditable, and drowsy; but it is among the purple moors of the highland border, the ravines of mont genèvre, and the crags of the tyrol, that we shall find the simplest evangelical faith, and the purest romanist practice. § . of course the inquiry into this branch of the hill influence is partly complicated with that into its operation on domestic habits and personal character, of which hereafter: but there is one curious witness borne to the general truth of the foregone conclusions, by an apparently slight, yet very significant circumstance in art. we have seen, in the preceding volume, how difficult it was sometimes to distinguish between honest painters, who truly chose to paint sacred subjects because they loved them, and the affected painters, who took sacred subjects for their own pride's sake, or for merely artistical delight. amongst other means of arriving at a conclusion in this matter, there is one helpful test which may be applied to their various works, almost as easily and certainly as a foot-rule could be used to measure their size; and which remains an available test down to the date of the rise of the claudesque landscape schools. nearly all the genuine religious painters use _steep mountain distances_. all the merely artistical ones, or those of intermediate temper, in proportion as they lose the religious element, use flat or simply architectural distances. of course the law is liable to many exceptions, chiefly dependent on the place of birth and early associations of painters; but its force is, i think, strongly shown in this;--that, though the flemish painters never showed any disposition to paint, _for its own sake_, other scenery than of their own land (compare vol. iii. chap. xiii. § ), the sincerely religious ones continually used alpine distances, bright with snow. in like manner giotto, perugino, angelico, the young raphael, and john bellini, always, if, with any fitness to their subject, they can introduce them, use craggy or blue mountain distances, and this with definite expression of love towards them; leonardo, conventionally, as feeling they were necessary for his sacred subjects, while yet his science and idealism had destroyed his mountain sincerity; michael angelo, wholly an artist, and raphael in later years, show no love of mountains whatever, while the relative depths of feeling in tintoret, titian, and veronese, are precisely measurable by their affection to mountains. tintoret, though born in venice, yet, because capable of the greatest reaches of feeling, is the first of the old painters who ever drew mountain detail rightly:[ ] titian, though born in cadore, and recurring to it constantly, yet being more worldly-minded, uses his hills somewhat more conventionally, though, still in his most deeply felt pictures, such as the st. jerome, in the brera, giving to the rocks and forests a consummate nobleness; and veronese, in his gay grasp of the outside aspects of the world, contentedly includes his philosophy within porticos and pillars, or at the best overshadows it with a few sprays of laurel. § . the test fails, however, utterly, when applied to the later or transitional landscape schools, mountains being there introduced in mere wanton savageness by salvator, or vague conventionalism by claude, berghem, and hundreds more. this need not, however, in the least invalidate our general conclusions: we surely know already that it is possible to misuse the best gifts, and pervert the purest feelings; nor need we doubt the real purpose, or, on honest hearts, the real effect, of mountains, because various institutions have been founded among them by the banditti of calabria, as well as by st. bruno. § . i cannot leave this part of my subject without recording a slight incident which happened to myself, singularly illustrative of the religious character of the alpine peasant when under favorable circumstances of teaching. i was coming down one evening from the rochers de naye, above montreux, having been at work among the limestone rocks, where i could get no water, and both weary and thirsty. coming to a spring at a turn of the path, conducted, as usual, by the herdsmen into a hollowed pine-trunk i stooped to it and drank deeply: as i raised my head, drawing breath heavily, some one behind me said, "celui qui boira de cette eau-ci, aura encore soif." i turned, not understanding for the moment what was meant; and saw one of the hill-peasants, probably returning to his châlet from the market-place at vevay or villeneuve. as i looked at him with an uncomprehending expression, he went on with the verse:--"mais celui qui boira de l'eau que je lui donnerai, n'aura jamais soif." i doubt if this would have been thought of, or said, by even the most intelligent lowland peasant. the thought might have occurred to him, but the frankness of address, and expectation of being at once understood without a word of preparative explanation, as if the language of the bible were familiar to all men, mark, i think, the mountaineer. nd. influence of mountain on artistical power. § . we were next to examine the influence of hills on the artistical power of the human race. which power, so far as it depends on the imagination, must evidently be fostered by the same influences which give vitality to religious vision. but, so far as artistical productiveness and skill are concerned, it is evident that the mountaineer is at a radical and insurmountable disadvantage. the strength of his character depends upon the absence of luxury; but it is eminently by luxury that art is supported. we are not, therefore, to deny the mountain influence, because we do not find finished frescoes on the timbers of châlets or delicate bas-reliefs on the bastion which protects the mountain church from the avalanche; but to consider how far the tone of mind shown by the artists laboring in the lowland is dependent for its intensity on the distant influences of the hills, whether during the childhood of those born among them, or under the casual contemplation of men advanced in life. § . glancing broadly over the strength of the mediæval--that is to say, of the peculiar and energetic--art of europe, so as to discern, through the clear flowing of its waves over france, italy, and england, the places in the pool where the fountain-heads are, and where the sand dances, i should first point to normandy and tuscany. from the cathedral of pisa, and the sculpture of the pisans, the course is straight to giotto, angelico, and raphael,--to orcagna and michael angelo;--the venetian school, in many respects mightier, being, nevertheless, subsequent and derivative. from the cathedrals of caen and coutances the course is straight to the gothic of chartres and notre dame of paris, and thence forward to all french and english noble art, whether ecclesiastical or domestic. now the mountain scenery about pisa is precisely the most beautiful that surrounds any great italian city, owing to the wonderful outlines of the peaks of carrara. milan and verona have indeed fine ranges in sight, but rising farther in the distance, and therefore not so directly affecting the popular mind. the norman imagination, as already noticed, is scandinavian in origin, and fostered by the lovely granite scenery of normandy itself. but there is, nevertheless, this great difference between french art and italian, that the french paused strangely at a certain point, as the norman hills are truncated at the summits, while the italian rose steadily to a vertex, as the carrara hills to their crests. let us observe this a little more in detail. § . the sculpture of the pisans was taken up and carried into various perfection by the lucchese, pistojans, sienese, and florentines. all these are inhabitants of truly mountain cities, florence being as completely among the hills as inspruck is, only the hills have softer outlines. those around pistoja and lucca are in a high degree majestic. giotto was born and bred among these hills. angelico lived upon their slope. the mountain towns of perugia and urbino furnish the only important branches of correlative art; for leonardo, however individually great, originated no new school; he only carried the _executive_ delicacy of landscape detail so far beyond other painters as to necessitate my naming the fifteenth-century manner of landscape after him, though he did not invent it; and although the school of milan is distinguished by several peculiarities, and definitely enough separable from the other schools of italy, all its peculiarities are mannerisms, not inventions. correggio, indeed, created a new school, though he himself is almost its only master. i have given in the preceding volume the mountain outline seen from parma. but the only entirely great group of painters after the tuscans are the venetians, and they are headed by titian and tintoret, on whom we have noticed the influence of hills already; and although we cannot trace it in paul veronese, i will not quit the mountain claim upon him; for i believe all that gay and gladdening strength of his was fed by the breezes of the hills of garda, and brightened by the swift glancing of the waves of the adige.[ ] § . observe, however, before going farther, of all the painters we have named, the one who obtains most executive perfection is leonardo, who on the whole lived at the greatest distance from the hills. the two who have most feeling are giotto and angelico, both hill-bred. and generally, i believe, we shall find that the hill country gives its inventive depths of feeling to art, as in the work of orcagna, perugino, and angelico, and the plain country executive neatness. the executive precision is joined with feeling in leonardo, who saw the alps in the distance; it is totally unaccompanied by feeling in the pure dutch schools, or schools of the dead flats. § . i do not know if any writer on art, or on the development of national mind, has given his attention to what seems to me one of the most singular phenomena in the history of europe,--the pause of the english and french in pictorial art after the fourteenth century. from the days of henry iii. to those of elizabeth, and of louis ix. to those of louis xiv., the general intellect of the two nations was steadily on the increase. but their art intellect was as steadily retrograde. the only art work that france and england have done nobly is that which is centralized by the cathedral of lincoln, and the sainte chapelle. we had at that time (_we_--french and english--but the french first) the incontestable lead among european nations; no thirteenth-century work in italy is comparable for majesty of conception, or wealth of imaginative detail, to the cathedrals of chartres, rheims, rouen, amiens, lincoln, peterborough, wells, or lichfield. but every hour of the fourteenth century saw french and english art in precipitate decline, italian in steady ascent; and by the time that painting and sculpture had developed themselves in an approximated perfection, in the work of ghirlandajo and mino of fésole, we had in france and england no workman, in any art, deserving a workman's name; nothing but skilful masons, with more or less love of the picturesque, and redundance of undisciplined imagination, flaming itself away in wild and rich traceries, and crowded bosses of grotesque figure sculpture, and expiring at last in barbarous imitation of the perfected skill and erring choice of renaissance italy. painting could not decline, for it had not reached any eminence; the exquisite arts of illumination and glass design had led to no effective results in other materials; they themselves, incapable of any higher perfection than they had reached in the thirteenth century, perished in the vain endeavor to emulate pictorial excellence, bad _drawing_ being substituted, in books, for lovely _writing_, and opaque precision, in glass, for transparent power; nor in any single department of exertion did artists arise of such calibre or class as any of the great italians; and yet all the while, in literature, _we_ were gradually and steadily advancing in power up to the time of shakespere; the italians, on the contrary, not advancing after the time of dante. § . of course i have no space here to pursue a question such as this; but i may state my belief that _one_ of the conditions involved in it was the mountain influence of italian scenery, inducing a disposition to such indolent or enthusiastic reverie, as could only express itself in the visions of art; while the comparatively flat scenery and severer climate of england and france, fostering less enthusiasm, and urging to more exertion, brought about a practical and rational temperament, progressive in policy, science, and literature, but wholly retrograde in art; that is to say (for great art may be properly so defined), in the art of _dreaming_. rd. influence of mountains on literary power. § . iii. in admitting this, we seem to involve the supposition that mountain influence is either unfavorable or inessential to literary power; but for this also the mountain influence is still necessary, only in a subordinate degree. it is true, indeed, that the avon is no mountain torrent, and that the hills round the vale of stratford are not sublime; true, moreover, that the cantons berne or uri have never yet, so far as i know, produced a great poet; but neither, on the other hand, has antwerp or amsterdam. and, i believe, the natural scenery which will be found, on the whole, productive of most literary intellect is that mingled of hill and plain, as all available light is of flame and darkness; the flame being the active element, and the darkness the tempering one. § . in noting such evidence as bears upon this subject, the reader must always remember that the mountains are at an unfair disadvantage, in being much _out of the way_ of the masses of men employed in intellectual pursuits. the position of a city is dictated by military necessity or commercial convenience; it rises, flourishes, and absorbs into its activity whatever leading intellect is in the surrounding population. the persons who are able and desirous to give their children education naturally resort to it; the best schools, the best society, and the strongest motives assist and excite those born within its walls; and youth after youth rises to distinction out of its streets, while among the blue mountains, twenty miles away, the goatherds live and die in unregarded lowliness. and yet this is no proof that the mountains have little effect upon the mind, or that the streets have a helpful one. the men who are formed by the schools, and polished by the society of the capital, may yet in many ways have their powers shortened by the absence of natural scenery; and the mountaineer, neglected, ignorant, and unambitious, may have been taught things by the clouds and streams which he could not have learned in a college, or a coterie. § . and in reasoning about the effect of mountains we are therefore under a difficulty like that which would occur to us if we had to determine the good or bad effect of light on the human constitution, in some place where all corporal exercise was necessarily in partial darkness, and only idle people lived in the light. the exercise might give an advantage to the occupants of the gloom, but we should neither be justified in therefore denying the preciousness of light in general, nor the necessity to the workers of the few rays they possessed; and thus i suppose the hills around stratford, and such glimpses as shakespere had of sandstone and pines in warwickshire, or of chalk cliffs in kent, to have been essential to the development of his genius. this supposition can only be proved false by the rising of a shakespere at rotterdam or bergen-op-zoom, which i think not probable; whereas, on the other hand, it is confirmed by myriads of collateral evidences. the matter could only be _tested_ by placing for half a century the british universities at keswick, and beddgelert, and making grenoble the capital of france; but if, throughout the history of britain and france, we contrast the general invention and pathetic power, in ballads or legends, of the inhabitants of the scottish border with those manifested in suffolk or essex; and similarly the inventive power of normandy, provence, and the bearnois with that of champagne or picardy, we shall obtain some convincing evidence respecting the operation of hills on the masses of mankind, and be disposed to admit, with less hesitation, that the apparent inconsistencies in the effect of scenery on greater minds proceed in each case from specialities of education, accident, and original temper, which it would be impossible to follow out in detail. sometimes only, when the original resemblance in character of intellect is very marked in two individuals, and they are submitted to definitely contrary circumstances of education, an approximation to evidence may be obtained. thus bacon and pascal appear to be men naturally very similar in their temper and powers of mind. one, born in york house, strand, of courtly parents, educated in court atmosphere, and replying, almost as soon as he could speak, to the queen asking how old he was--"two years younger than your majesty's happy reign!"--has the world's meanness and cunning engrafted into his intellect, and remains smooth, serene, unenthusiastic, and in some degree base, even with all his sincere devotion and universal wisdom; bearing, to the end of life, the likeness of a marble palace in the street of a great city, fairly furnished within, and bright in wall and battlement, yet noisome in places about the foundations. the other, born at clermont, in auvergne, under the shadow of the puy de dôme, though taken to paris at eight years old, retains for ever the impress of his birthplace; pursuing natural philosophy with the same zeal as bacon, he returns to his own mountains to put himself under their tutelage, and by their help first discovers the great relations of the earth and the air: struck at last with mortal disease; gloomy, enthusiastic, and superstitious, with a conscience burning like lava, and inflexible like iron, the clouds gather about the majesty of him, fold after fold; and, with his spirit buried in ashes, and rent by earthquake, yet fruitful of true thought and faithful affection, he stands like that mound of desolate scoria that crowns the hill ranges of his native land, with its sable summit far in heaven, and its foundations green with the ordered garden and the trellised vine. § . when, however, our inquiry thus branches into the successive analysis of individual characters, it is time for us to leave it; noting only one or two points respecting shakespere, whom, i doubt not, the reader was surprised to find left out of all our comparisons in the preceding volume. he seems to have been sent essentially to take universal and equal grasp of the _human_ nature; and to have been removed, therefore, from all influences which could in the least warp or bias his thoughts. it was necessary that he should lean _no_ way; that he should contemplate, with absolute equality of judgment, the life of the court, cloister, and tavern, and be able to sympathize so completely with all creatures as to deprive himself, together with his personal identity, even of his conscience, as he casts himself into their hearts. he must be able to enter into the soul of falstaff or shylock with no more sense of contempt or horror than falstaff or shylock themselves feel for or in themselves; otherwise his own conscience and indignation would make him unjust to them; he would turn aside from something, miss some good, or overlook some essential palliation. he must be utterly without anger, utterly without purpose; for if a man has any serious purpose in life, that which runs counter to it, or is foreign to it, will be looked at frowningly or carelessly by him. shakespere was forbidden of heaven to have any _plans_. to _do_ any good or _get_ any good, in the common sense of good, was not to be within his permitted range of work. not, for him, the founding of institutions, the preaching of doctrines, or the repression of abuses. neither he, nor the sun, did on any morning that they rose together, receive charge from their maker concerning such things. they were both of them to shine on the evil and good; both to behold unoffendedly all that was upon the earth, to burn unappalled upon the spears of kings, and undisdaining, upon the reeds of the river. § . therefore, so far as nature had influence over the early training of this man, it was essential to his perfectness that the nature should be quiet. no mountain passions were to be allowed in him. inflict upon him but one pang of the monastic conscience; cast upon him but one cloud of the mountain gloom; and his serenity had been gone for ever--his equity--his infinity. you would have made another dante of him; and all that he would have ever uttered about poor, soiled, and frail humanity would have been the quarrel between sinon and adam of brescia,--speedily retired from, as not worthy a man's hearing, nay, not to be heard without heavy fault. all your falstaffs, slenders, quicklys, sir tobys, lances, touchstones, and quinces would have been lost in that. shakespere could be allowed no mountains; nay, not even any supreme natural beauty. he had to be left with his kingcups and clover;--pansies--the passing clouds--the avon's flow--and the undulating hills and woods of warwick; nay, he was not to love even these in any exceeding measure, lest it might make him in the least overrate their power upon the strong, full-fledged minds of men. he makes the quarrelling fairies concerned about them; poor lost ophelia find some comfort in them; fearful, fair, wise-hearted perdita trust the speaking of her good will and good hostess-ship to them; and one of the brothers of imogen confide his sorrow to them,--rebuked instantly by his brother for "wench-like words;[ ]" but any thought of them in his mighty men i do not find: it is not usually in the nature of such men; and if he had loved the flowers the _least_ better himself, he would assuredly have been offended at this, and given a botanical turn of mind to cæsar, or othello. § . and it is even among the most curious proofs of the necessity to all high imagination that it should paint straight from the life, that he has _not_ given such a turn of mind to some of his great men;--henry the fifth, for instance. doubtless some of my readers, having been accustomed to hear it repeated thoughtlessly from mouth to mouth that shakespere conceived the spirit of all ages, were as much offended as surprised at my saying that he only painted human nature as he saw it in his own time. they will find, if they look into his work closely, as much antiquarianism as they do geography, and no more. the commonly received notions about the things that had been, shakespere took as he found them, animating them with pure human nature, of any time and all time; but inquiries into the minor detail of temporary feeling, he despised as utterly as he did maps; and wheresoever the temporary feeling was in anywise contrary to that of his own day, he errs frankly, and paints from his own time. for instance in this matter of love of flowers; we have traced already, far enough for our general purposes, the mediæval interest in them, whether to be enjoyed in the fields, or to be used for types of ornamentation in dress. if shakespere had cared to enter into the spirit even of the early fifteenth century, he would assuredly have marked this affection in some of his knights, and indicated, even then, in heroic tempers, the peculiar respect for loveliness of _dress_ which we find constantly in dante. but he could not do this; he had not seen it in real life. in his time dress had become an affectation and absurdity. only fools, or wise men in their weak moments, showed much concern about it; and the facts of human nature which appeared to him general in the matter were the soldier's disdain, and the coxcomb's care of it. hence shakespere's good soldier is almost always in plain or battered armor; even the speech of vernon in henry the fourth, which, as far as i remember, is the only one that bears fully upon the beauty of armor, leans more upon the spirit and hearts of men--"bated, like eagles having lately bathed;" and has an under-current of slight contempt running through the following line, "glittering in golden coats, _like images_;" while the beauty of the young harry is essentially the beauty of fiery and perfect youth, answering as much to the greek, or roman, or elizabethan knight as to the mediæval one; whereas the definite interest in armor and dress is opposed by shakespere in the french (meaning to depreciate them), to the english rude soldierliness: "_con._ tut, i have the best armor in the world. would it were day! _orl._ you have an excellent armor, but let my horse have his due." and again: "my lord constable, the armor that i saw in your tent to-night, are those stars, or suns, upon it?" while henry, half proud of his poorness of array, speaks of armorial splendor scornfully; the main idea being still of its being a gilded show and vanity-- "our gayness and our _gilt_ are all besmirched." this is essentially elizabethan. the quarterings on a knight's shield, or the inlaying of his armor, would never have been thought of by him as mere "gayness or gilt" in earlier days.[ ] in like manner, throughout every scale of rank or feeling, from that of the french knights down to falstaff's "i looked he should have sent me two-and-twenty yards of satin, as i am true knight, and he sends me security!" care for dress is always considered by shakespere as contemptible; and mrs. quickly distinguishes herself from a true fairy by her solicitude to scour the _chairs of order_--and "each fair instalment, coat, and several crest;" and the association in her mind of the flowers in the fairy rings with the "sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery, buckled below fair knighthood's bending knee;" while the true fairies, in field simplicity, are only anxious to "sweep the dust behind the door;" and "with this field dew consecrate, every several chamber bless through this palace with sweet peace." note the expression "field dew consecrate." shakespere loved courts and camps; but he felt that sacredness and peace were in the dew of the fields only. § . there is another respect in which he was wholly incapable of entering into the spirit of the middle ages. he had no great art of any kind around him in his own country, and was, consequently, just as powerless to conceive the general influence of former art, as a man of the most inferior calibre. therefore it was, that i did not care to quote his authority respecting the power of imitation, in the second chapter of the preceding volume. if it had been needful to add his testimony to that of dante (given in § ), i might have quoted multitudes of passages wholly concurring with that, of which the "fair portia's counterfeit," with the following lines, and the implied ideal of sculpture in the winter's tale, are wholly unanswerable instances. but shakespere's evidence in matters of art is as narrow as the range of elizabethan art in england, and resolves itself wholly into admiration of two things,--mockery of life (as in this instance of hermione as a statue), or absolute splendor, as in the close of romeo and juliet, where the notion of _gold_ as the chief source of dignity of aspect, coming down to shakespere from the times of the field of the cloth of gold, and, as i said before, strictly elizabethan, would interfere seriously with the pathos of the whole passage, but for the sense of sacrifice implied in it: "as _rich_ shall romeo by his lady lie poor sacrifices of our enmity." § . and observe, i am not giving these examples as proof of any smallness in shakespere, but of his greatness; that is to say, of his contentment, like every other great man who ever breathed, to paint nothing but _what he saw_; and therefore giving perpetual evidence that his sight was of the sixteenth, and not of the thirteenth century, beneath all the broad and eternal humanity of his imagination. how far in these modern days, emptied of splendor, it may be necessary for great men having certain sympathies for those earlier ages, to act in this differently from all their predecessors; and how far they may succeed in the resuscitation of the past by habitually dwelling in all their thoughts among vanished generations, are questions, of all practical and present ones concerning art, the most difficult to decide; for already in poetry several of our truest men have set themselves to this task, and have indeed put more vitality into the shadows of the dead than most others can give the presences of the living. thus longfellow, in the golden legend, has entered more closely into the temper of the monk, for good and for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian, though they may have given their life's labor to the analysis: and, again, robert browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the middle ages; always vital, right, and profound; so that in the matter of art, with which we have been specially concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the mediæval temper, that he has not struck upon in those seemingly careless and too rugged rhymes of his. there is a curious instance, by the way, in a short poem referring to this very subject of tomb and image sculpture; and illustrating just one of those phases of local human character which, though belonging to shakespere's own age, he never noticed, because it was specially italian and un-english; connected also closely with the influence of mountains on the heart, and therefore with our immediate inquiries. i mean the kind of admiration with which a southern artist regarded the _stone_ he worked in; and the pride which populace or priest took in the possession of precious mountain substance, worked into the pavements of their cathedrals, and the shafts of their tombs. § . observe, shakespere, in the midst of architecture and tombs of wood, or freestone, or brass, naturally thinks of _gold_ as the best enriching and ennobling substance for them;--in the midst also of the fever of the renaissance he writes, as every one else did, in praise of precisely the most vicious master of that school--giulio romano; but the modern poet, living much in italy, and quit of the renaissance influence, is able fully to enter into the italian feeling, and to see the evil of the renaissance tendency, not because he is greater than shakespere, but because he is in another element, and has _seen_ other things. i miss fragments here and there not needed for my purpose in the passage quoted, without putting asterisks, for i weaken the poem enough by the omissions, without spoiling it also by breaks. "_the bishop orders his tomb in st. praxed's church._ "as here i lie in this state chamber, dying by degrees, hours, and long hours, in the dead night, i ask, do i live--am i dead? peace, peace, seems all; st. praxed's ever was the church for peace. and so, about this tomb of mine. i fought with tooth and nail to save my niche, ye know; old gandolf[ ] cozened me, despite my care. shrewd was that snatch from out the corner south he graced his carrion with. yet still my niche is not so cramped but thence one sees the pulpit o' the epistle side, and somewhat of the choir, those silent seats; and up into the aery dome where live the angels, and a sunbeam's sure to lurk. and i shall fill my slab of basalt there, and 'neath my tabernacle take my rest, with those nine columns round me, two and two, the odd one at my feet, where anselm[ ] stands; peach-blossom marble all. swift as a weaver's shuttle fleet our years: man goeth to the grave, and where is he? did i say basalt for my slab, sons? black-- 'twas ever antique-black[ ] i meant! how else shall ye contrast my frieze to come beneath? the bas-relief in bronze ye promised me, those pans and nymphs ye wot of, and perchance some tripod, thyrsus, with a vase or so, the saviour at his sermon on the mount, st. praxed in a glory, and one pan, and moses with the tables ... but i know ye mark me not! what do they whisper thee, child of my bowels, anselm? ah, ye hope to revel down my villas while i gasp, bricked o'er with beggar's mouldy travertine, which gandolf from his tomb-top chuckles at! nay, boys, ye love me--all of jasper, then! there's plenty jasper somewhere in the world-- and have i not st. praxed's ear to pray horses for ye, and brown greek manuscripts. that's if ye carve my epitaph aright, choice latin, picked phrase, tully's every word, no gaudy ware like gandolf's second line-- tully, my masters? ulpian serves _his_ need." § . i know no other piece of modern english, prose or poetry, in which there is so much told, as in these lines, of the renaissance spirit,--its worldliness, inconsistency, pride, hypocrisy, ignorance of itself, love of art, of luxury, and of good latin. it is nearly all that i said of the central renaissance in thirty pages of the "stones of venice" put into as many lines, browning's being also the antecedent work. the worst of it is that this kind of concentrated writing needs so much _solution_ before the reader can fairly get the good of it, that people's patience fails them, and they give the thing up as insoluble; though, truly, it ought to be to the current of common thought like saladin's talisman, dipped in clear water, not soluble altogether, but making the element medicinal. § . it is interesting, by the way, with respect to this love of stones in the italian mind, to consider the difference necessitated in the english temper merely by the general domestic use of wood instead of marble. in that old shakesperian england, men must have rendered a grateful homage to their oak forests, in the sense of all that they owed to their goodly timbers in the wainscot and furniture of the rooms they loved best, when the blue of the frosty midnight was contrasted, in the dark diamonds of the lattice, with the glowing brown of the warm, fire-lighted, crimson-tapestried walls. not less would an italian look with a grateful regard on the hill summits, to which he owed, in the scorching of his summer noonday, escape into the marble corridor or crypt palpitating only with cold and smooth variegation of the unfevered mountain veins. in some sort, as, both in our stubbornness and our comfort, we not unfitly describe ourselves typically as hearts of oak, the italians might in their strange and variegated mingling of passion, like purple color, with a cruel sternness, like white rock, truly describe themselves as hearts of stone. § . into this feeling about marble in domestic use, shakespere, having seen it even in northern luxury, could partly enter, and marks it in several passages of his italian plays. but if the reader still doubts his limitation to his own experience in all subjects of imagination, let him consider how the removal from mountain influence in his youth, so necessary for the perfection of his lower human sympathy, prevented him from ever rendering with any force the feelings of the mountain anchorite, or indicating in any of his monks the deep spirit of monasticism. worldly cardinals or nuncios he can fathom to the uttermost; but where, in all his thoughts, do we find st. francis, or abbot samson? the "friar" of shakespere's plays is almost the only stage conventionalism which he admitted; generally nothing more than a weak old man who lives in a cell, and has a rope about his waist. § . while, finally, in such slight allusions as he makes to mountain scenery itself, it is very curious to observe the accurate limitation of his sympathies to such things as he had known in his youth; and his entire preference of human interest, and of courtly and kingly dignities to the nobleness of the hills. this is most marked in cymbeline, where the term "mountaineer" is, as with dante, always one of reproach; and the noble birth of arviragus and guiderius is shown by their holding their mountain cave as "a cell of ignorance; travelling abed. a prison for a debtor;" and themselves, educated among hills, as in all things contemptible: "we are beastly; subtle as the fox, for prey; like warlike as the wolf, for what we eat: our valor is to chase what flies; our cage we make our choir, as doth the prisoned bird." a few phrases occur here and there which might justify the supposition that he had seen high mountains, but never implying awe or admiration. thus demetrius: "these things seem _small_ and _indistinguishable_, _like far-off mountains, turned into clouds_." "taurus snow," and the "frosty caucasus," are used merely as types of purity or cold; and though the avalanche is once spoken of as an image of power, it is with instantly following depreciation: "rush on his host, as doth the melted snow upon the valleys, whose low vassal seat the alps doth spit and void his rheum upon." § . there was only one thing belonging to hills that shakespere seemed to feel as noble--the pine tree, and that was because he had seen it in warwickshire, clumps of pine occasionally rising on little sandstone mounds, as at the place of execution of piers gaveston, above the lowland woods. he touches on this tree fondly again and again. "as rough, their royal blood enchafed, as the rud'st wind, that by his top doth take the mountain pine, and make him stoop to the vale." "the strong-based promontory have i made shake, and by the spurs plucked up the pine and cedar." where note his observance of the peculiar horizontal roots of the pine, spurred as it is by them like the claw of a bird, and partly propped, as the aiguilles by those rock promontories at their bases which i have always called their spurs, this observance of the pine's strength and animal-like grasp being the chief reason for his choosing it, above all other trees, for ariel's prison. again: "you may as well forbid the mountain pines to wag their high tops, and to make no noise when they are fretted with the gusts of heaven." and yet again: "but when, from under this terrestrial ball, he fires the proud tops of the eastern pines." we may judge, by the impression which this single feature of hill scenery seems to have made on shakespere's mind, because he had seen it in his youth, how his whole temper would have been changed if he had lived in a more sublime country, and how essential it was to his power of contemplation of mankind that he should be removed from the sterner influences of nature. for the rest, so far as shakespere's work has imperfections of any kind,--the trivialness of many of his adopted plots, for instance, and the comparative rarity with which he admits the ideal of an enthusiastic virtue arising out of principle; virtue being with him for the most part founded simply on the affections joined with inherent purity in his women or on mere manly pride and honor in his men;[ ]--in a word, whatever difference, involving inferiority, there exists between him and dante, in his conceptions of the relation between this world and the next, we may partly trace as we did the difference between bacon and pascal, to the less noble character of the scenes around him in his youth; and admit that, though it was necessary for his special work that he should be put, as it were, on a level with his race, on those plains of stratford, we should see in this a proof, instead of a negation, of the mountain power over human intellect. for breadth and perfectness of condescending sight, the shakesperian mind stands alone; but in _ascending_ sight it is limited. the breadth of grasp is innate; the stoop and slightness of it was given by the circumstances of scene; and the difference between those careless masques of heathen gods, or unbelieved though mightily conceived visions of fairy, witch, or risen spirit, and the earnest faith of dante's vision of paradise, is the true measure of the difference in influence between the willowy banks of avon, and the purple hills of arno. § . our third inquiry, into the influence of mountains on domestic and military character, was, we said, to be deferred; for this reason, that it is too much involved with the consideration of the influence of simple rural life in unmountainous districts, to be entered upon with advantage until we have examined the general beauty of vegetation, whether lowland or mountainous. i hope to pursue this inquiry, therefore, at the close of the next volume; only desiring, in the meantime, to bring one or two points connected with it under the consideration of our english travellers. § . for, it will be remembered, we first entered on this subject in order to obtain some data as to the possibility of a practical ideal in swiss life, correspondent, in some measure, to the poetical ideal of the same, which so largely entertains the european public. of which possibility, i do not think, after what we have even already seen of the true effect of mountains on the human mind, there is any reason to doubt, even if that ideal had not been presented to us already in some measure, in the older life of the swiss republics. but of its possibility, _under present circumstances_, there is, i grieve to say, the deepest reason to doubt; and that the more, because the question is not whether the mountaineer can be raised into a happier life by the help of the active nations of the plains; but whether he can yet be protected from the infection of the folly and vanity of those nations. i urged, in the preceding chapter, some consideration of what might be accomplished, if we chose to devote to the help what we now devote to the mockery of the swiss. but i would that the enlightened population of paris and london were content with doing nothing;--that they were satisfied with expenditure upon their idle pleasures, in their idle way; and would leave the swiss to their own mountain gloom of unadvancing independence. i believe that every franc now spent by travellers among the alps tends more or less to the undermining of whatever special greatness there is in the swiss character; and the persons i met in switzerland, whose position and modes of life rendered them best able to give me true information respecting the present state of their country, among many causes of national deterioration, spoke with chief fear of the influx of english wealth, gradually connecting all industry with the wants and ways of strangers, and inviting all idleness to depend upon their casual help; thus gradually resolving the ancient consistency and pastoral simplicity of the mountain life into the two irregular trades of innkeeper[ ] and mendicant. § . i could say much on this subject if i had any hope of doing good by saying anything. but i have none. the influx of foreigners into switzerland must necessarily be greater every year, and the greater it is, the larger, in the crowd, will be the majority of persons whose objects in travelling will be, first, to get as fast as possible from place to place, and, secondly, at every place where they arrive, to obtain the kind of accommodation and amusement to which they are accustomed in paris, london, brighton, or baden. railroads are already projected round the head of the lake of geneva, and through the town of fribourg; the head of the lake of geneva being precisely and accurately the one spot of europe whose character, and influence on human mind, are special; and unreplaceable if destroyed, no other spot resembling, or being in any wise comparable to it, in its peculiar way: while the town of fribourg is in like manner the only mediæval mountain town of importance left to us; inspruck and such others being wholly modern, while fribourg yet retains much of the aspect it had in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. the valley of chamouni, another spot also unique in its way, is rapidly being turned into a kind of cremorne gardens; and i can see, within the perspective of but few years, the town of lucerne consisting of a row of symmetrical hotels round the foot of the lake, its old bridges destroyed, an iron one built over the reuss, and an acacia promenade carried along the lake-shore, with a german band playing under a chinese temple at the end of it, and the enlightened travellers, representatives of european civilization, performing before the alps, in each afternoon summer sunlight, in their modern manner, the dance of death. § . all this is inevitable; and it has its good as well as its evil side. i can imagine the zealous modernist replying to me that when all this is happily accomplished, my melancholy peasants of the valley of trient will be turned into thriving shopkeepers, the desolate streets of sion into glittering thoroughfares, and the marshes of the valais into prosperous market-gardens. i hope so; and indeed am striving every day to conceive more accurately, and regulate all my efforts by the expectation of, the state of society, not now, i suppose, much more than twenty years in advance of us, when europe, having satisfactorily effaced all memorials of the past, and reduced itself to the likeness of america, or of any other new country (only with less room for exertion), shall begin to consider what is next to be done, and to what newness of arts and interests may best be devoted the wealth of its marts, and the strength of its multitudes. which anticipations and estimates, however, i have never been able, as yet, to carry out with any clearness, being always arrested by the confused notion of a necessity for solitude, disdain of buying and selling, and other elements of that old mediæval and mountain gloom, as in some way connected with the efforts of nearly all men who have either seen far into the destiny, or been much helpful to the souls, of their race. and the grounds of this feeling, whether right or wrong, i hope to analyze more fully in the next volume; only noting, finally, in this, one or two points for the consideration of those among us with whom it may sometimes become a question, whether they will help forward, or not, the turning of a sweet mountain valley into an abyss of factory-stench and toil, or the carrying of a line of traffic through some green place of shepherd solitude. § . for, if there be any truth in the impression which i have always felt, and just now endeavored to enforce, that the mountains of the earth are its natural cathedrals, or natural altars, overlaid with gold, and bright with broidered work of flowers, and with their clouds resting on them as the smoke of a continual sacrifice, it may surely be a question with some of us, whether the tables of the moneychanger, however fit and commendable they may be as furniture in other places, are precisely the thing which it is the whole duty of man to get well set up in the mountain temple. § . and perhaps it may help to the better determination of this question, if we endeavor, for a few patient moments, to bear with that weakness of our forefathers in feeling an awe for the hills; and, divesting ourselves, as far as may be, of our modern experimental or exploring activity, and habit of regarding mountains chiefly as places for gymnastic exercise, try to understand the temper, not indeed altogether exemplary, but yet having certain truths and dignities in it, to which we owe the founding of the benedictine and carthusian cloisters in the thin alpine air. and this monkish temper we may, i suppose, best understand by considering the aspect under which mountains are represented in the monk's book. i found that in my late lectures, at edinburgh, i gave great offence by supposing, or implying, that scriptural expressions could have any force as bearing upon modern practical questions; so that i do not now, nor shall i any more, allude to such expressions as in any wise necessarily bearing on the worldly business of the practical protestant, but only as necessary to be glanced at in order to understand the temper of those old monks, who had the awkward habit of understanding the bible literally; and to get any little good which momentary sympathy with the hearts of a large and earnest class of men may surely bring to us. § . the monkish view of mountains, then, already alluded to,[ ] was derived wholly from that latin vulgate of theirs; and, speaking as a monk, it may perhaps be permitted me to mark the significance of the earliest mention of mountains in the mosaic books; at least, of those in which some divine appointment or command is stated respecting them. they are first brought before us as refuges for god's people from the two judgments of water and fire. the ark _rests_ upon the "mountains of ararat;" and man, having passed through that great baptism unto death, kneels upon the earth first where it is nearest heaven, and mingles with the mountain clouds the smoke of his sacrifice of thanksgiving. again: from the midst of the first judgment by fire, the command of the deity to his servant is, "escape to the mountain;" and the morbid fear of the hills, which fills any human mind after long stay in places of luxury and sin, is strangely marked in lot's complaining reply: "i cannot escape to the mountain, lest some evil take me." the third mention, in way of ordinance, is a far more solemn one: "abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off." "the place," the mountain of myrrh, or of bitterness, chosen to fulfil to all the seed of abraham, far off and near, the inner meaning of promise regarded in that vow: "i will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh mine help." and the fourth is the delivery of the law on sinai. § . it seemed, then, to the monks, that the mountains were appointed by their maker to be to man, refuges from judgment, signs of redemption, and altars of sanctification and obedience; and they saw them afterwards connected, in the manner the most touching and gracious, with the death, after his task had been accomplished, of the first anointed priest; the death, in like manner, of the first inspired lawgiver; and, lastly, with the assumption of his office by the eternal priest, lawgiver, and saviour. observe the connection of these three events. although the _time_ of the deaths of aaron and moses was hastened by god's displeasure, we have not, it seems to me, the slightest warrant for concluding that the _manner_ of their deaths was intended to be grievous or dishonorable to them. far from this: it cannot, i think, be doubted that in the denial of the permission to enter the promised land, the whole punishment of their sin was included; and that as far as regarded the manner of their deaths, it must have been appointed for them by their master in all tenderness and love; and with full purpose of ennobling the close of their service upon the earth. it might have seemed to us more honorable that both should have been permitted to die beneath the shadow of the tabernacle, the congregation of israel watching by their side; and all whom they loved gathered together to receive the last message from the lips of the meek lawgiver, and the last blessing from the prayer of the anointed priest. but it was not thus they were permitted to die. try to realize that going forth of aaron from the midst of the congregation. he who had so often done sacrifice for their sin, going forth now to offer up his own spirit. he who had stood, among them, between the dead and the living, and had seen the eyes of all that great multitude turned to him, that by his intercession their breath might yet be drawn a moment more, going forth now to meet the angel of death face to face, and deliver himself into his hand. try if you cannot walk, in thought, with those two brothers, and the son, as they passed the outmost tents of israel, and turned, while yet the dew lay round about the camp, towards the slopes of mount hor; talking together for the last time, as step by step, they felt the steeper rising of the rocks, and hour after hour, beneath the ascending sun, the horizon grew broader as they climbed, and all the folded hills of idumea, one by one subdued, showed amidst their hollows in the haze of noon, the windings of that long desert journey, now at last to close. but who shall enter into the thoughts of the high priest, as his eye followed those paths of ancient pilgrimage; and, through the silence of the arid and endless hills, stretching even to the dim peak of sinai, the whole history of those forty years was unfolded before him, and the mystery of his own ministries revealed to him; and that other holy of holies, of which the mountain peaks were the altars, and the mountain clouds the veil, the firmament of his father's dwelling, opened to him still more brightly and infinitely as he drew nearer his death; until at last, on the shadeless summit,--from him on whom sin was to be laid no more--from him, on whose heart the names of sinful nations were to press their graven fire no longer,--the brother and the son took breastplate and ephod, and left him to his rest. § . there is indeed a secretness in this calm faith and deep restraint of sorrow, into which it is difficult for us to enter; but the death of moses himself is more easily to be conceived, and had in it circumstances still more touching, as far as regards the influence of the external scene. for forty years moses had not been alone. the care and burden of all the people, the weight of their woe, and guilt, and death, had been upon him continually. the multitude had been laid upon him as if he had conceived them; their tears had been his meat, night and day, until he had felt as if god had withdrawn his favor from him, and he had prayed that he might be slain, and not see his wretchedness.[ ] and now, at last, the command came, "get thee up into this mountain." the weary hands that had been so long stayed up against the enemies of israel, might lean again upon the shepherd's staff, and fold themselves for the shepherd's prayer--for the shepherd's slumber. not strange to his feet, though forty years unknown, the roughness of the bare mountain-path, as he climbed from ledge to ledge of abarim; not strange to his aged eyes the scattered clusters of the mountain herbage, and the broken shadows of the cliffs, indented far across the silence of uninhabited ravines; scenes such as those among which, with none, as now, beside him but god, he had led his flocks so often; and which he had left, how painfully! taking upon him the appointed power, to make of the fenced city a wilderness, and to fill the desert with songs of deliverance. it was not to embitter the last hours of his life that god restored to him, for a day, the beloved solitudes he had lost; and breathed the peace of the perpetual hills around him, and cast the world in which he had labored and sinned far beneath his feet, in that mist of dying blue;--all sin, all wandering, soon to be forgotten for ever; the dead sea--a type of god's anger understood by him, of all men, most clearly, who had seen the earth open her mouth, and the sea his depth, to overwhelm the companies of those who contended with his master--laid waveless beneath him; and beyond it, the fair hills of judah, and the soft plains and banks of jordan, purple in the evening light as with the blood of redemption, and fading in their distant fulness into mysteries of promise and of love. there, with his unabated strength, his undimmed glance, lying down upon the utmost rocks, with angels waiting near to contend for the spoils of his spirit, he put off his earthly armor. we do deep reverence to his companion prophet, for whom the chariot of fire came down from heaven; but was his death less noble, whom his lord himself buried in the vales of moab, keeping, in the secrets of the eternal counsels, the knowledge of a sepulchre, from which he was to be called, in the fulness of time, to talk with that lord, upon hermon, of the death that he should accomplish at jerusalem? and lastly, let us turn our thoughts for a few moments to the cause of the resurrection of these two prophets. we are all of us too much in the habit of passing it by, as a thing mystical and inconceivable, taking place in the life of christ for some purpose not by us to be understood, or, at the best, merely as a manifestation of his divinity by brightness of heavenly light, and the ministering of the spirits of the dead, intended to strengthen the faith of his three chosen apostles. and in this, as in many other events recorded by the evangelists, we lose half the meaning and evade the practical power upon ourselves, by never accepting in its fulness the idea that our lord was "perfect man," "tempted in all things like as we are." our preachers are continually trying, in all manner of subtle ways, to explain the union of the divinity with the manhood, an explanation which certainly involves first their being able to describe the nature of deity itself, or, in plain words, to comprehend god. they never can explain, in any one particular, the union of the natures; they only succeed in weakening the faith of their hearers as to the entireness of either. the thing they have to do is precisely the contrary of this--to insist upon the _entireness_ of both. we never think of christ enough as god, never enough as man; the instinctive habit of our minds being always to miss of the divinity, and the reasoning and enforced habit to miss of the humanity. we are afraid to harbor in our own hearts, or to utter in the hearing of others, any thought of our lord, as hungering, tired, sorrowful, having a human soul, a human will, and affected by events of human life as a finite creature is; and yet one half of the efficiency of his atonement, and the whole of the efficiency of his example, depend on his having been this to the full. § . consider, therefore, the transfiguration as it relates to the human feelings of our lord. it was the first definite preparation for his death. he had foretold it to his disciples six days before; then takes with him the three chosen ones into "an high mountain apart." from an exceeding high mountain, at the first taking on him the ministry of life, he had beheld, and rejected the kingdoms of the earth, and their glory: now, on a high mountain, he takes upon him the ministry of death. peter and they that were with him, as in gethsemane, were heavy with sleep. christ's work had to be done alone. the tradition is, that the mount of transfiguration was the summit of tabor; but tabor is neither a high mountain, nor was it in any sense a mountain "_apart_;" being in those years both inhabited and fortified. all the immediately preceding ministries of christ had been at cesarea philippi. there is no mention of travel southward in the six days that intervened between the warning given to his disciples, and the going up into the hill. what other hill could it be than the southward slope of that goodly mountain, hermon, which is indeed the centre of all the promised land, from the entering in of hamath unto the river of egypt; the mount of fruitfulness, from which the springs of jordan descended to the valleys of israel. along its mighty forest avenues, until the grass grew fair with the mountain lilies, his feet dashed in the dew of hermon, he must have gone to pray his first recorded prayer about death; and from the steep of it, before he knelt, could see to the south all the dwelling-place of the people that had sat in darkness, and seen the great light, the land of zabulon and of naphtali, galilee of the nations;--could see, even with his human sight, the gleam of that lake by capernaum and chorazin, and many a place loved by him, and vainly ministered to, whose house was now left unto them desolate; and, chief of all, far in the utmost blue, the hills above nazareth, sloping down to his old home: hills on which yet the stones lay loose, that had been taken up to cast at him, when he left them for ever. § . "and as he prayed, two men stood by him." among the many ways in which we miss the help and hold of scripture, none is more subtle than our habit of supposing that, even as man, christ was free from the fear of death. how could he then have been tempted as we are? since among all the trials of the earth, none spring from the dust more terrible than that fear. it had to be borne by him, indeed, in a unity, which we can never comprehend, with the foreknowledge of victory,--as his sorrow for lazarus, with the consciousness of the power to restore him; but it _had_ to be borne, and that in its full earthly terror; and the presence of it is surely marked for us enough by the rising of those two at his side. when, in the desert, he was girding himself for the work of life, angels of life came and ministered unto him; now, in the fair world, when he is girding himself for the work of death, the ministrants come to him from the grave. but from the grave conquered. one, from that tomb under abarim, which his own hand had sealed so long ago; the other from the rest into which he had entered, without seeing corruption. there stood by him moses and elias, and spake of his decease. then, when the prayer is ended, the task accepted, first, since the star paused over him at bethlehem, the full glory falls upon him from heaven, and the testimony is borne to his everlasting sonship and power. "hear ye him." if, in their remembrance of these things, and in their endeavor to follow in the footsteps of their master, religious men of by-gone days, closing themselves in the hill solitudes, forgot sometimes, and sometimes feared, the duties they owed to the active world, we may perhaps pardon them more easily than we ought to pardon ourselves, if we neither seek any influence for good nor submit to it unsought, in scenes to which thus all the men whose writings we receive as inspired, together with their lord, retired whenever they had any task or trial laid upon them needing more than their usual strength of spirit. nor, perhaps, should we have unprofitably entered into the mind of the earlier ages, if among our other thoughts, as we watch the chains of the snowy mountains rise on the horizon, we should sometimes admit the memory of the hour in which their creator, among their solitudes, entered on his travail for the salvation of our race; and indulge the dream, that as the flaming and trembling mountains of the earth seem to be the monuments of the manifesting of his terror on sinai,--these pure and white hills, near to the heaven, and sources of all good to the earth, are the appointed memorials of that light of his mercy, that fell, snow-like, on the mount of transfiguration. footnotes [ ] in tracing the _whole_ of the deep enjoyment to mountain association, i of course except whatever feelings are connected with the observance of rural life, or with that of architecture. none of these feelings arise out of the landscape, properly so-called: the pleasure with which we see a peasant's garden fairly kept, or a ploughman doing his work well, or a group of children playing at a cottage door, being wholly separate from that which we find in the fields or commons around them; and the beauty of architecture, or the associations connected with it, in like manner often ennobling the most tame scenery;--yet not so but that we may always distinguish between the abstract character of the unassisted landscape, and the charm which it derives from the architecture. much of the majesty of french landscape consists in its grand and grey village churches and turreted farmhouses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and beautifully placed cities. [ ] one of the principal reasons for the false supposition that switzerland is not picturesque, is the error of most sketchers and painters in representing pine forest in middle distance as dark _green_, or grey green, whereas its true color is always purple, at distances of even two or three miles. let any traveller coming down the montanvert look for an aperture, three or four inches wide, between the near pine branches, through which, standing eight or ten feet from it, he can see the opposite forests on the breven or flegère. those forests are not above two or two and a half miles from him; but he will find the aperture is filled by a tint of nearly pure azure or purple, not by green. [ ] the savoyard's name for its flower, "pain du bon dieu," is very beautiful; from, i believe, the supposed resemblance of its white and scattered blossom to the fallen manna. [ ] see reference to his painting of stones in the last note to § of the chapter on imagination penetrative, vol. ii. [ ] in saying this i do not, of course, forget the influence of the sea on the pisans and venetians; but that is a separate subject, and must be examined in the next volume. [ ] "with fairest flowers while summer lasts, and i live here, fidele, i'll sweeten thy sad grave. thou shalt not lack the flower that's like thy face--pale primrose, nor the azured harebell--like thy veins; no, nor the leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, outsweetened not thy breath. the ruddock would with charitable bill bring thee all this; yea, and furred moss besides, when flowers are none, to winter-ground thy corse. _gui._ prithee, have done, and do not play in wench-like words with that which is so serious." imogen herself, afterwards in deeper passion, will give weeds--not flowers--and something more: "and when with wildwood leaves, and weeds, i have strewed his grave, and on it said a century of prayers, such as i can, twice o'er, i'll weep, and sigh, and, leaving so his service, follow you." [ ] if the reader thinks that in henry the fifth's time the elizabethan temper might already have been manifesting itself, let him compare the english herald's speech, act , scene , of king john; and by way of specimen of shakespere's historical care, or regard of mediæval character, the large use of _artillery_ in the previous scene. [ ] the last bishop. [ ] his favorite son; nominally his nephew. [ ] "nero antico" is more familiar to our ears; but browning does right in translating it; as afterwards "cipollino" into "onion-stone." our stupid habit of using foreign words without translation is continually losing us half the force of the foreign language. how many travellers hearing the term "cipollino" recognize the intended sense of a stone splitting into concentric coats, like an onion? [ ] i mean that shakespere almost always implies a total difference in _nature_ between one human being and another; one being from the birth, pure and affectionate, another base and cruel; and he displays each, in its sphere, as having the nature of dove, wolf, or lion, never much implying the government or change of nature by any external principle. there can be no question that in the main he is right in this view of human nature; still, the other form of virtue does exist occasionally, and was never, as far as i recollect, taken much note of by him. and with this stern view of humanity, shakespere joined a sorrowful view of fate, closely resembling that of the ancients. he is distinguished from dante eminently by his always dwelling on last causes instead of first causes. dante invariably points to the moment of the soul's choice which fixed its fate, to the instant of the day when it read no farther, or determined to give bad advice about penestrino. but shakespere always leans on the force of fate, as it urges the final evil; and dwells with infinite bitterness on the power of the wicked, and the infinitude of result dependent seemingly on little things. a fool brings the last piece of news from verona, and the dearest lives of its noble houses are lost; they might have been saved if the sacristan had not stumbled as he walked. othello mislays his handkerchief, and there remains nothing for him but death. hamlet gets hold of the wrong foil, and the rest is silence. edmund's runner is a moment too late at the prison, and the feather will not move at cordelia's lips. salisbury a moment too late at the tower, and arthur lies on the stones dead. goneril and iago have on the whole, in this world, shakespere sees, much of their own way, though they come to a bad end. it is a pin that death pierces the king's fortress wall with; and carelessness and folly sit sceptred and dreadful, side by side with the pin-armed skeleton. [ ] not the old hospitable innkeeper, who honored his guests and was honored by them, than whom i do not know a more useful or worthy character; but the modern innkeeper, proprietor of a building in the shape of a factory, making up three hundred beds; who necessarily regards his guests in the light of numbers , , - , and is too often felt or apprehended by them only as a presiding influence of extortion. [ ] vol iii. chap. xiv. § . [ ] numbers, xi. , . appendix. i. modern grotesque. the reader may perhaps be somewhat confused by the different tone with which, in various passages of these volumes, i have spoken of the dignity of expression. he must remember that there are three distinct schools of expression, and that it is impossible, on every occasion when the term is used, to repeat the definition of the three, and distinguish the school spoken of. there is, first, the great expressional school, consisting of the sincerely thoughtful and affectionate painters of early times, masters of their art, as far as it was known in their days. orcagna, john bellini, perugino, and angelico, are its leading masters. all the men who compose it are, without exception, _colorists_. the modern pre-raphaelites belong to it. secondly, the pseudo-expressional school, wholly of modern development, consisting of men who have never mastered their art, and are probably incapable of mastering it, but who hope to substitute sentiment for good painting. it is eminently characterized by its contempt of color, and may be most definitely distinguished as the school of clay. thirdly, the grotesque expressional school, consisting of men who, having peculiar powers of observation for the stronger signs of character in anything, and sincerely delighting in them, lose sight of the associated refinements or beauties. this school is apt, more or less, to catch at faults or strangenesses; and, associating its powers of observation with wit or malice, produces the wild, gay, or satirical grotesque in early sculpture, and in modern times, our rich and various popular caricature. i took no note of this branch of art in the chapter on the grotesque ideal; partly because i did not wish to disturb the reader's mind in our examination of the great imaginative grotesque, and also because i did not feel able to give a distinct account of this branch, having never thoroughly considered the powers of eye and hand involved in its finer examples. but assuredly men of strong intellect and fine sense are found among the caricaturists, and it is to them that i allude in saying that the most subtle expression is often attained by "slight studies;" while it is of the pseudo-expressionalist, or "high art" school that i am speaking, when i say that expression may "sometimes be elaborated by the toil of the dull;" in neither case meaning to depreciate the work, wholly different in every way, of the great expressional schools. i regret that i have not been able, as yet, to examine with care the powers of mind involved in modern caricature. they are, however, always partial and imperfect; for the very habit of looking for the leading lines by the smallest possible number of which the expression may be attained, warps the power of _general_ attention, and blunts the perception of the delicacies of the entire form and color. not that caricature, or exaggeration of points of character, may not be occasionally indulged in by the greatest men--as constantly by leonardo; but then it will be found that the caricature consists, not in imperfect or violent _drawing_, but in delicate and perfect drawing of strange and exaggerated forms quaintly combined: and even thus, i believe, the habit of looking for such conditions will be found injurious; i strongly suspect its operation on leonardo to have been the increase of his non-natural tendencies in his higher works. a certain acknowledgment of the ludicrous element is admitted in corners of the pictures of veronese--in dwarfs or monkeys; but it is _never_ caricatured or exaggerated. tintoret and titian hardly admit the element at all. they admit the noble grotesque to the full, in all its quaintness, brilliancy, and awe; but never any form of it depending on exaggeration, partiality, or fallacy.[ ] i believe, therefore, whatever wit, delicate appreciation of ordinary character, or other intellectual power may belong to the modern masters of caricature, their method of study for ever incapacitates them from passing beyond a certain point, and either reaching any of the perfect forms of art themselves, or understanding them in others. generally speaking, their power is limited to the use of the pen or pencil--they cannot touch color without discomfiture; and even those whose work is of higher aim, and wrought habitually in color, are prevented by their pursuit of _piquant_ expression from understanding noble expression. leslie furnishes several curious examples of this defect of perception in his late work on art;--talking, for instance, of the "insipid faces of francia." on the other hand, all the real masters of caricature deserve honor in this respect, that their gift is peculiarly their own--innate and incommunicable. no teaching, no hard study, will ever enable other people to equal, in their several ways, the works of leech or cruikshank; whereas, the power of pure drawing is communicable, within certain limits, to every one who has good sight and industry. i do not, indeed, know how far, by devoting the attention to points of character, caricaturist skill may be laboriously attained; but certainly the power is, in the masters of the school, innate from their childhood. farther. it is evident that many subjects of thought may be dealt with by this kind of art which are inapproachable by any other, and that its influence over the popular mind must always be great; hence it may often happen that men of strong purpose may rather express themselves in this way (and continue to make such expression a matter of earnest study), than turn to any less influential, though more dignified, or even more intrinsically meritorious, branch of art. and when the powers of quaint fancy are associated (as is frequently the case) with stern understanding of the nature of evil, and tender human sympathy, there results a bitter, or pathetic spirit of grotesque, to which mankind at the present day owe more thorough moral teaching than to any branch of art whatsoever. in poetry, the temper is seen, in perfect manifestation, in the works of thomas hood; in art, it is found both in various works of the germans,--their finest, and their least thought of; and more or less in the works of george cruikshank,[ ] and in many of the illustrations of our popular journals. on the whole, the most impressive examples of it, in poetry and in art, which i remember, are the song of the shirt, and the woodcuts of alfred rethel, before spoken of. a correspondent, though coarser work appeared some little time back in punch, namely, the "general février turned traitor." the reception of the woodcut last named was in several respects a curious test of modern feeling. for the sake of the general reader, it may be well to state the occasion and character of it. it will be remembered by all that early in the winter of - , so fatal by its inclemency, and by our own improvidence, to our army in the crimea, the late emperor of russia said, or was reported to have said, that "his best commanders, general january and general february, were not yet come." the word, if ever spoken, was at once base, cruel, and blasphemous; base, in precisely reversing the temper of all true soldiers, so nobly instanced by the son of saladin, when he sent, at the very instant of the discomfiture of his own army, two horses to coeur de lion, whose horse had been killed under him in the mêlée; cruel, inasmuch as he ought not to have exulted in the thought of the death, by slow suffering, of brave men; blasphemous, inasmuch as it contained an appeal to heaven of which he knew the hypocrisy. he himself died in february; and the woodcut of which i speak represented a skeleton in soldier's armor, entering his chamber, the driven sleet white on its cloak and crest; laying its hand on his heart as he lay dead. there were some points to be regretted in the execution of the design, but the thought was a grand one; the memory of the word spoken, and of its answer, could hardly in any more impressive way have been recorded for the people; and i believe that to all persons accustomed to the earnest forms of art, it contained a profound and touching lesson. the notable thing was, however, that it offended all persons _not_ in earnest, and was loudly cried out against by the polite formalism of society. this fate is, i believe, the almost inevitable one of thoroughly genuine work, in these days, whether poetry or painting; but what added to the singularity in this ease was that _coarse_ heartlessness was even more offended than polite heartlessness. thus, blackwood's magazine,--which from the time that, with grace, judgment, and tenderness peculiarly its own, it bid the dying keats "back to his gallipots,"[ ] to that in which it partly arrested the last efforts, and shortened the life of turner, had with an infallible instinct for the wrong, given what pain it could, and withered what strength it could, in every great mind that was in anywise within its reach; and had made itself, to the utmost of its power, frost and disease of the heart to the most noble spirits of england,--took upon itself to be generously offended at this triumphing over the death of england's enemy, because, "by proving that he is obliged to undergo the common lot of all, his brotherhood is at once reasserted."[ ] he was not, then, a brother while he was alive? or is our brother's blood in general not to be acknowledged by us till it rushes up against us from the ground? i know that this is a common creed, whether a peculiarly wise or christian one may be doubted. it may not, indeed, be well to triumph over the dead, but perhaps it is less well that the world so often tries to triumph over the living. and as for exultation over a fallen foe (though there was _none_ in the mind of the man who drew that monarch dead), it may be remembered that there have been worthy persons, before now, guilty of this great wickedness,--nay, who have even fitted the words of their exultation to timbrels, and gone forth to sing them in dances. there have even been those--women, too,--who could make a mock at the agony of a mother weeping over her lost son, when that son had been the enemy of their country; and their mock has been preserved, as worthy to be read by human eyes. "the mother of sisera looked out at a window. 'hath he not sped?'" i do not say this was right, still less that it was wrong; but only that it would be well for us if we could quit our habit of thinking that what we say of the dead is of more weight than what we say of the living. the dead either know nothing, or know enough to despise both us and our insults, or adulation. "well, but," it is answered, "there will always be this weakness in our human nature; we shall for ever, in spite of reason, take pleasure in doing funereal honor to the corpse, and writing sacredness to memory upon marble." then, if you are to do this,--if you are to put off your kindness until death,--why not, in god's name, put off also your enmity? and if you choose to write your lingering affections upon stones, wreak also your delayed anger upon clay. this would be just, and, in the last case, little as you think it, generous. the true baseness is in the bitter reverse--the strange iniquity of our folly. is a man to be praised, honored, pleaded for? it might do harm to praise or plead for him while he lived. wait till he is dead. is he to be maligned, dishonored, and discomforted? see that you do it while he is alive. it would be too ungenerous to slander him when he could feel malice no more; too contemptible to try to hurt him when he was past anguish. make yourselves busy, ye unjust, ye lying, ye hungry for pain! death is near. this is your hour, and the power of darkness. wait, ye just, ye merciful, ye faithful in love! wait but for a little while, for this is not your rest. "well, but," it is still answered, "is it not, indeed, ungenerous to speak ill of the dead, since they cannot defend themselves?" why should they? if you speak ill of them falsely, it concerns you, not them. those lies of thine will "hurt a man as thou art," assuredly they will hurt thyself; but that clay, or the delivered soul of it, in no wise. ajacean shield, seven-folded, never stayed lance-thrust as that turf will, with daisies pied. what you say of those quiet ones is wholly and utterly the world's affair and yours. the lie will, indeed, cost its proper price and work its appointed work; you may ruin living myriads by it,--you may stop the progress of centuries by it,--you may have to pay your own soul for it,--but as for ruffling one corner of the folded shroud by it, think it not. the dead have none to defend them! nay, they have two defenders, strong enough for the need--god, and the worm. ii. rock cleavage. i am well aware how insufficient, and, in some measure, how disputable, the account given in the preceding chapters of the cleavages of the slaty crystallines must appear to geologists. but i had several reasons, good or bad as they may be, for treating the subject in such a manner. the first was, that considering the science of the artist as eminently the science of _aspects_ (see vol. iii. chap. xvii. § ), i kept myself in all my investigations of natural objects as much as possible in the state of an uninformed spectator of the outside of things, receiving simply what impressions the external phenomena first induce. for the natural tendency of accurate science is to make the possessor of it look for, and eminently see, the things connected with his special pieces of knowledge; and as all accurate science must be sternly limited, his sight of nature gets limited accordingly. i observed that all our young figure-painters were rendered, to all intents and purposes, _blind_ by their knowledge of anatomy. they saw only certain muscles and bones, of which they had learned the positions by rote, but could not, on account of the very prominence in their minds of these bits of fragmentary knowledge, see the real movement, color, rounding, or any other subtle quality of the human form. and i was quite sure that if i examined the mountain anatomy scientifically, i should go wrong, in like manner, touching the external aspects. therefore in beginning the inquiries of which the results are given in the preceding pages, i closed all geological books, and set myself, as far as i could, to see the alps in a simple, thoughtless, and untheorizing manner; but to _see_ them, if it might be, thoroughly. if i am wrong in any of the statements made after this kind of examination, the very fact of this error is an interesting one, as showing the kind of deception which the external aspects of hills are calculated to induce in an unprejudiced observer; but, whether wrong or right, i believe the results i have given are those which naturally would strike an artist, and _ought_ to strike him, just as the apparently domical form of the sky, and radiation of the sun's light, ought to be marked by him as pictorial phenomena, though the sky is not domical, and though the radiation of sunbeams is a perspective deception. there are, however, one or two points on which my opinions might seem more adverse to the usual positions of geologists than they really are, owing to my having left out many _qualifying_ statements for fear of confusing the reader. these i must here briefly touch upon. and, first, i know that i shall be questioned for not having sufficiently dwelt upon slaty cleavages running transversely across series of beds, and for generally speaking as if the slaty crystalline rocks were merely dried beds of micaceous sand, in which the flakes of mica naturally lay parallel with the beds, or only at such an angle to them as is constantly assumed by particles of drift. now the reason of this is simply that my own mountain experience has led me _always_ among rocks which induced such an impression; that, in general, artists seeking for the noblest hill scenery, will also get among such rocks, and that therefore i judged it best to explain their structure completely, merely alluding (in chap. x. § ) to the curious results of cross cleavage among the softer slates, and leaving the reader to pursue the inquiry, if he cared to do so; although, in reality, it matters very little to the artist whether the slaty cleavage be across the beds or not, for to him the cleavage itself is always the important matter, and the stratification, if contrary to it, is usually so obscure as to be naturally, and therefore properly, lost sight of. and touching the disputed question whether the micaceous arrangements of metamorphic rocks are the results of subsequent crystallization, or of aqueous deposition, i had no special call to speak: the whole subject appeared to me only more mysterious the more i examined it; but my own impressions were always strongly for the aqueous deposition; nor in such cases as that of the beds of the matterhorn (drawn in plate + +), respecting which, somewhat exceptionally, i have allowed myself to theorize a little, does the matter appear to me disputable. and i was confirmed in this feeling by de saussure; the only writer whose help i did not refuse in the course of these inquiries. _his_ i received for this reason,--all other geological writers whose works i had examined were engaged in the maintenance of some theory or other, and always gathering materials to support it. but i found saussure had gone to the alps as i desired to go myself, only to _look_ at them, and describe them as they were, loving them heartily--loving them, the positive alps, more than himself, or than science, or than any theories of science; and i found his descriptions, therefore, clear, and trustworthy; and that when i had not visited any place myself, saussure's report upon it might always be received without question. not but that saussure himself has a pet theory, like other human beings; only it is quite subordinate to his love of the alps: he is a steady advocate of the aqueous crystallization of rocks, and never loses a fair opportunity of a blow at the huttonians; but his opportunities are always _fair_, his description of what he sees is wholly impartial; it is only when he gets home and arranges his papers that he puts in the little aqueously inclined paragraphs, and never a paragraph without just cause. he may, perhaps, overlook the evidence on the opposite side; but in the alps the igneous alteration of the rocks, and the modes of their upheaval, seem to me subjects of intense difficulty and mystery, and as such saussure always treats them; the evidence for the original _deposition_ by water of the slaty crystallines appears to him, as it does to me, often perfectly distinct. now, saussure's universal principle was exactly the one on which i have founded my account of the slaty crystallines:--"fidèle à mon principle, de ne regarder comme des couches, dans les montagnes schisteuses, que les divisions parallèles aux feuillets des schistes dont elles sont composées."--_voyages_, § . i know that this is an arbitrary, and in some cases an assuredly false, principle; but the assumption of it by de saussure proves all that i want to prove,--namely, that the beds of the slaty crystallines are in the alps in so large a plurality of instances correspondent in direction to their folia, as to induce even a cautious reasoner to assume such correspondence to be universal. the next point, however, on which i shall be opposed, is one on which i speak with far less confidence, for in this saussure himself is against me,--namely, the parallelism of the beds sloping under the mont blanc. saussure states twice, §§ , , that they are arranged in the form of a fan. i can only repeat that every measurement and every drawing i made in chamouni led me to the conclusions stated in the text, and so i leave the subject to better investigators; this one fact being indisputable, and the only one on which for my purpose it is necessary to insist, that, whether in chamouni the beds be radiant or not, to an artist's eye they are usually parallel; and throughout the alps no phenomenon is more constant than the rounding of surfaces across the extremities of beds sloping outwards, as seen in my plates + +, + +, and + +, and this especially in the most majestic mountain masses. compare de saussure of the grimsel, § : "toujours il est bien remarquable que ces feuillets, verticaux au sommet, s'inclinent ensuite, comme à chamouni, contre le dehors de la montagne:" and again of the granite at guttannen, § : "ces couches ne sont pas tout-a-fait verticales; elles s'appuyent un peu contre le nord-est, ou, comme à chamouni, contre le dehors de la montagne." again, of the "quartz micacé" of zumloch, § : "ces rochers sont en couches à peu près verticales, dont les plans courent du nord-est au sud-ouest, en s'appuyant, _suivant l'usage_, contre l'extérieur de la montagne, ou contre la vallée." again, on the pass of the griés, § : "le rocher présente des couches d'un schiste micacé rayé comme une étoffe; comme de l'autre côté ils surplombent vers le dehors de la montagne." without referring to other passages i think saussure's simple words, "suivant l'usage," are enough to justify my statement in chap. xiv. § ; only the reader must of course always remember that every conceivable position of beds takes place in the alps, and all i mean to assert generally is, that where the masses are most enormous and impressive, and formed of slaty crystalline rocks, there the run of the beds up, as it were, from within the mountain to its surface, will, in all probability, become a notable feature in the scene as regarded by an artist. one somewhat unusual form assumed by horizontal beds of slaty crystallines, or of granite, is described by saussure with unusual admiration; and the passage is worth extracting, as bearing on the terraced ideal of rocks in the middle ages. the scene is in the val formazza. "indépendamment de l'intérêt que ces couches présentent au géologiste sous un nombre de rapports qu'il seroit trop long et peut-être inutile de détailler, elles présentent même pour le peintre, un superbe tableau. je n'ai jamais vu de plus beaux rochers et distribués en plus grandes masses; ici, blancs; là, noircis par les lichens; là, peints de ces belles couleurs variées, que nous admirions au grimsel, et entremêlés d'arbres, dont les uns couronnent le faîte de la montagne, et d'autres sont inégalement jetés sur les corniches qui en séparent les couches. vers le bas de la montagne l'oeil se repose sur de beaux vergers, dans des prairies dont le terrein est inégal et varié, et sur de magnifiques chàtaigniers, dont les branches étendues ombragent les rochers contre lesquels ils croissent. en général, ces granits en couches horizontals redent ce pays charmant; car, quoiqu'il y ait, comme je l'ai dit, des couches qui forment des saillies, cependant elles sont pour l'ordinaire arrangées en gradins, ou en grandes assises posées en reculement les unes derrière les autres, et les bords de ces gradins sont couverts de la plus belle verdure, et d'arbres distribués de la manière la plus pittoresque. on voit è mme des montagnes très-élevées, qui out la forme de pain de sucre, et qui sont entourées et couronnées jusqu'à leur sommet, de guirlandes d'arbres assis sur les intervalles des couches, et qui forment l'effet du monde le plus singulier."-_voyages_, § . another statement, which i made generally, referring, for those qualifications which it is so difficult to give without confusing the reader, to this appendix, was that of the usually greater hardness of the tops of mountains as compared with their flanks. my own experience among the alps has furnished me with few exceptions to this law; but there is a very interesting one, according to saussure, in the range of the furca del bosco. (voyages, § .) lastly, at page of this volume, i have alluded to the various cleavages of the aiguilles, out of which one only has been explained and illustrated. i had not intended to treat the subject so partially; and had actually prepared a long chapter, explaining the relations of five different and important systems of cleavage in the chamouni aiguilles. when it was written, however, i found it looked so repulsive to readers in general, and proved so little that was of interest even to readers in particular, that i cancelled it, leaving only the account of what i might, perhaps, not unjustifiably (from the first representation of it in the liber studiorum) call turner's cleavage. the following passage, which was the introduction to the chapter, may serve to show that i have not ignored the others, though i found, after long examination, that turner's was the principal one:-- "one of the principal distinctions between these crystalline masses and stratified rocks, with respect to their outwardly apparent structure, is the subtle complexity and number of _ranks_ in their crystalline cleavages. the stratified masses have always a simple intelligible organization; their beds lie in one direction, and certain fissures and fractures of those beds lie in other clearly ascertainable directions; seldom more than two or three _distinct_ directions of these fractures being admitted. but if the traveller will set himself deliberately to watch the shadows on the aiguilles of chamouni as the sun moves round them, he will find that nearly every quarter of an hour a new _set_ of cleavages becomes visible, not confused and orderless, but a series of lines inclining in some one definite direction, and that so positively, that if he had only seen the aiguille at that moment, he would assuredly have supposed its internal structure to be altogether regulated by the lines of bed or cleavage then in sight. let him, however, wait for another quarter of an hour, and he will see those lines fade entirely away as the sun rounds them; and another set, perhaps quite adverse to them and assuredly lying in another direction, will as gradually become visible, to die away in their turn, and be succeeded by a third scheme of structure. "these 'dissolving views' of the geology of the aiguilles have often thrown me into despair of ever being able to give any account of their formation; but just in proportion as i became aware of the infinite complexity of their framework, the one great fact rose into more prominent and wonderful relief,--that through this inextricable complexity there was always manifested _some_ authoritative principle. it mattered not at what hour of the day the aiguilles were examined, at that hour they had a system of structure belonging to the moment. no confusion nor anarchy ever appeared amidst their strength, but an ineffable order, only the more perfect because incomprehensible. they differed from lower mountains, not merely in being more compact, but in being more disciplined. "for, observe, the lines which cause these far-away effects of shadow, are not, as often in less noble rocks, caused by real cracks through the body of the mountain; for, were this so, it would follow, from what has just been stated, that these aiguilles were cracked through and through in every direction, and therefore actually weaker, instead of stronger, than other rocks. but the appearance of fracture is entirely external, and the sympathy or parallelism of the lines indicates, not an actual splitting through the rock, but a mere disposition in the rock to split harmoniously when it is compelled to do so. thus, in the shell-like fractures on the flank of the aiguille blaitière, the rock is not actually divided, as it appears to be, into successive hollow plates. go up close to the inner angle between one bed of rock and the next, and the whole mass will be found as firmly united as a piece of glass. there is absolutely no crack between the beds,--no, not so much as would allow the blade of a penknife to enter for a quarter of an inch;[ ] but such a subtle disposition to symmetry of fracture in the heart of the solid rock, that the next thunderbolt which strikes on that edge of it will rend away a shell-shaped fragment or series of fragments; and will either break it so as to continue the line of one of the existing sides, or in some other line parallel to that. and yet this resolvedness to break into shell-shaped fragments running north and south is only characteristic of the rock at this spot, and at certain other spots where similar circumstances have brought out this peculiar humor. forty yards farther on it will be equally determined to break in another direction, and nothing will persuade it to the contrary. forty yards farther it will change its mind again, and face its beds round to another quarter of the compass; and yet all these alternating caprices are each parts of one mighty continuous caprice, which is only masked for a time, as threads of one color are in a patterned stuff by threads of another; and thus from a distance, precisely the same cleavage is seen repeated again and again in different places, forming a systematic structure; while other groups of cleavages will become visible in their turn, either as we change our place of observation, or as the sunlight changes the direction of its fall." one part of these rocks, i think, no geologist interested in this subject should pass without examination; viz., the little spur of blaitière drawn in plate + +, fig. . it is seen, as there shown, from the moraine of the charmoz glacier, its summit bearing s. ° w.; and its cleavage bed leaning to the left or s.e., against the aiguille blaitière. if, however, we go down to the extremity of the rocks themselves, on the right, we shall find that all those thick beams of rock are actually _sawn into vertical timbers_ by other cleavage, sometimes so fine as to look almost slaty, directed straight s.e., against the aiguille, as if, continued, it would saw it through and through; finally, cross the spur and go down to the glacier below, between it and the aiguille du plan, and the bottom of the spur will be found presenting the most splendid mossy surfaces, through which the true gneissitic cleavage is faintly traceable, dipping _at right angles_ to the beds in fig. , or under the aiguille blaitière, thus concurring with the beds of la côte. i forgot to note that the view of this aiguille blaitière, given in plate + +, was taken from the station marked _q_ in the reference figure, p. ; and the sketch of the aiguille du plan at p. , from the station marked _r_ in the same figure, a highly interesting point of observation in many respects; while the course of transition from the protogine into gneiss presents more remarkable phenomena on the descents from that point _r_ to the tapia, t, than at any other easily accessible spot. various interesting descriptions of granite cleavage will be found in de saussure, chiefly in his accounts of the grimsel and st. gothard. the following summary of his observations on their positions of beds ( ), may serve to show the reader how long i should have detained him if i had endeavored to give a description of all the attendant phenomena:-- "il est aussi bien curieux de voir ces gneiss, et ces granits veinés, en couches verticales à guttannen; mélangées d'horizontals et de verticales au lauteraar; toutes verticales au grimsel et au griés; toutes horizontales dans le val formazza, et enfin pour la troisième fois verticales à la sortie des alpes à l'entrée du lac majeur." iii. logical education. in the preface to the third volume i alluded to the conviction, daily gaining ground upon me, of the need of a more accurately logical education of our youth. truly among the most pitiable and practically hurtful weaknesses of the modern english mind, its usual inability to grasp the connection between any two ideas which have elements of opposition in them, as well as of connection, is perhaps the chief. it is shown with singular fatality in the vague efforts made by our divines to meet the objections raised by free-thinkers, bearing on the nature and origin of evil; but there is hardly a sentence written on any matter requiring careful analysis, by writers who have not yet begun to perceive the influence of their own vanity (and there are too many such among divines), which will not involve some half-lamentable, half-ludicrous, logical flaw,--such flaws being the invariable consequence of a man's straining to say anything in a learned instead of an intelligible manner. take a sentence, for example, from j. a. james's "anxious inquirer:"--"it is a great principle that _subjective religion_, _or in other words_, religion _in us_, is produced and sustained by fixing the mind on _objective religion_, _or_ the facts and doctrines of the word of god." cut entirely out the words i have put in italics, and the sentence has a meaning (though not by any means an important one). but by its verbosities it is extended into pure nonsense; for "facts" are neither "objective" nor "subjective"[ ] religion; they are not religion at all. the belief of them, attended with certain feelings, is religion; and it must always be religion "in us," for in whom else should it be (unless in angels; which would not make it less "subjective"). it is just as rational to call doctrines "objective religion," as to call entreaties "objective compassion;" and the only real fact of any notability deducible from the sentence is, that the writer desired earnestly to say something profound, and had nothing profound to say. to this same defect of intellect must, in charity, be attributed many of the wretched cases of special pleading which we continually hear from the pulpit. in the year , i heard, in edinburgh, a sermon from a leading and excellent presbyterian clergyman, on a subject generally grateful to protestant audiences, namely the impropriety and wickedness of fasting. the preacher entirely denied that there was any authority for fasting in the new testament; declared that there were many feasts appointed, but no fasts; insisted with great energy on the words "forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats," &c., as descriptive of romanism, and _never once_, throughout a long sermon, ventured so much as a single syllable that might recall to his audience's recollection the existence of such texts as matthew iv. and vi. , or mark ix. . i have heard many sermons from roman catholic priests, but i never yet heard, in the strongest holds of romanism, any so monstrous an instance of special pleading; in fact, it never could have occurred in a sermon by any respectable roman catholic divine; for the romanists are trained to argument from their youth, and are always to some extent plausible. it is of course impossible to determine, in such cases, how far the preacher, having conscientiously made up his mind on the subject by foregoing thought, and honestly desiring to impress his conclusion on his congregation, may think his object will be best, and even justifiably attained, by insisting on all that is in favor of his position, and trusting to the weak heads of his hearers not to find out the arguments for the contrary; fearing that if he stated, in any proportionate measure, the considerations on the other side, he might not be able, in the time allotted to him, to bring out his conclusion fairly. this, though i hold it an entirely false view, is nevertheless a comprehensible and pardonable one, especially in a man familiar with the reasoning capacities of the public; though those capacities themselves owe half their shortcomings to being so unworthily treated. but, on the whole, and looking broadly at the way the speakers and teachers of the nation set about their business, there is an almost fathomless failure in the results, owing to the general admission of special pleading as an _art to be taught_ to youth. the main thing which we ought to teach our youth is to _see_ something,--all that the eyes which god has given them are capable of seeing. the sum of what we _do_ teach them is to _say_ something. as far as i have experience of instruction, no man ever dreams of teaching a boy to get to the root of a matter; to think it out; to get quit of passion and desire in the process of thinking; or to fear no face of man in plainly asserting the ascertained result. but to _say_ anything in a glib and graceful manner,--to give an epigrammatic turn to nothing,--to quench the dim perceptions of a feeble adversary, and parry cunningly the home thrusts of a strong one,--to invent blanknesses in speech for breathing time, and slipperinesses in speech for hiding time,--to polish malice to the deadliest edge, shape profession to the seemliest shadow, and mask self-interest under the fairest pretext,--all these skills we teach definitely, as the main arts of business and life. there is a strange significance in the admission of aristotle's rhetoric at our universities as a class-book. cheating at cards is a base profession enough, but truly it would be wiser to print a code of gambler's legerdemain, and give _that_ for a class-book, than to make the legerdemain of human speech, and the clever shuffling of the black spots in the human heart, the first study of our politic youth. again, the ethics of aristotle, though containing some shrewd talk, interesting for an _old_ reader, are yet so absurdly illogical and sophistical, that if a young man has once read them with any faith, it must take years before he recovers from the induced confusions of thought and false habits of argument. if there were the slightest dexterity or ingenuity in maintaining the false theory, there might be some excuse for retaining the ethics as a school-book, provided only the tutor were careful to point out, on first opening it, that the christian virtues,--namely, to love with all the heart, soul, and strength; to fight, not as one that beateth the air; and to do with _might_ whatsoever the hand findeth to do,--could not in anywise be defined as "habits of choice in moderation." but the aristotelian quibbles are so shallow, that i look upon the retention of the book as a confession by our universities that they consider practice in shallow quibbling one of the essential disciplines of youth. take, for instance, the distinction made between "envy" and "rejoicing at evil" ([greek: phthonos] and [greek: epichairekakia]), in the second book of the ethics, viz., that envy is grieved when any one meets with good-fortune; but "the rejoicer at evil so far misses of grieving, as even to rejoice" (the distinction between the _good_ and _evil_, as subjects of the emotion, being thus omitted, and merely the verbal opposition of grief and joy caught at); and conceive the result, in the minds of most youths, of being forced to take tricks of words such as this (and there are too many of them in even the best greek writers) for subjects of daily study and admiration; the theory of the ethics being, besides, so hopelessly untenable, that even quibbling will not always face it out,--nay, will not help it in exactly the first and most important example of virtue which aristotle has to give, and the very one which we might have thought his theory would have fitted most neatly; for defining "temperance" as a mean, and intemperance as one relative extreme, not being able to find an opposite extreme, he escapes with the apology that the kind of person who sins in the other extreme "has no precise name; because, on the whole, he does not exist!" i know well the common censure by which objections to such futilities of so-called education are met, by the men who have been ruined by them,--the common plea that anything does to "exercise the mind upon." it is an utterly false one. the human soul, in youth, is _not_ a machine of which you can polish the cogs with any kelp or brickdust near at hand; and, having got it into working order, and good, empty, and oiled serviceableness, start your immortal locomotive at twenty-five years old or thirty, express from the strait gate, on the narrow road. the whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction, i use the words with their weight in them; intaking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes and faiths. there is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies,--not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron. take your vase of venice glass out of the furnace, and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover _that_ to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from god's presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him--at least in this world. footnotes [ ] compare stones of venice, vol. iii. chap. iii. § . [ ] taken all in all, the works of cruikshank have the most sterling value of any belonging to this class, produced in england. [ ] "the notice in blackwood is still more scurrilous; the circumstance of keats having been brought up a surgeon is the staple of the jokes of the piece. he is told 'it is a better and wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet.'"--_milnes' life of keats_, vol. i. p. , and compare pp. , . it may perhaps be said that i attach too much importance to the evil of base criticism; but those who think so have never rightly understood its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of johnson's (idler, no. , april , ): "little does he (who assumes the character of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not understand." and truly, not in this kind only, but in all things whatsoever, there is not, to my mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought than the power of a fool. in the world's affairs there is no design so great or good but it will take twenty wise men to help it forward a few inches, and a single fool can stop it; there is no evil so great or so terrible but that, after a multitude of counsellors have taken means to avert it, a single fool will bring it down. pestilence, famine, and the sword, are given into the fool's hand as the arrows into the hand of the giant: and if he were fairly set forth in the right motley, the web of it should be sackcloth and sable; the bells on his cap, passing balls; his badge, a bear robbed of her whelps; and his bauble, a sexton's spade. [ ] by the way, this doubt of the possibility of an emperor's death till he _proves_ it, is a curious fact in the history of scottish metaphysics in the nineteenth century. [ ] the following extract from my diary refers to the only instance in which i remember any appearance of a spring, or welling of water through inner fissures, in the aiguilles. " th august. ascended the moraine till i reached the base of blaitière; the upper part of the moraine excessively loose and edgy; covered with fresh snow: the rocks were wreathed in mist, and a light sleet, composed of small grains of kneaded snow, kept beating in my face; it was bitter cold too, though the thermometer was at °, but the wind was like that of an english december thaw. i got to the base of the aiguille, however, one of the most grand and sweeping bits of granite i have ever seen; a small gurgling streamlet, escaping from a fissure not wide enough to let in my hand, made a strange hollow ringing in the compact rock, and came welling out over its ledges with the sound, and successive wave, of water out of a narrow-necked bottle, covering the rock with ice (which must have been frozen there last night) two inches thick. i levelled the breven top, and found it a little beneath me; the charmoz glacier on the left, sank from the moraine in broken fragments of nevè, and swept back under the dark walls of the charmoz, lost in cloud." [ ] if these two unlucky words get much more hold in the language, we shall soon have our philosophers refusing to call their dinner "dinner," but speaking of it always as their "objective appetite." end of the fourth volume. * * * * * corrections made to the original text. page : 'his insistence upon this' corrected from 'insistance.' page : 'for in utter darkness the distinction is not visible' changed from 'darknes.' page : 'sharks, slugs, bones, fungi, frogs' originally 'fogs.' page : 'sitting about three yards from a bookcase' changed from 'yard.' page : 'we imagine the deity in like manner' originally 'maner.' page : 'whatever their material may be,--tilted slightly up' changed from 'tited.' page : 'action actually taking place' corrected from 'palce.' page : 'which in its beautifully curved outline)' extra ')' removed. page : 'it seems partly to rebuke, and partly to guard'corrected from 'and party.' page : 'partly of their own own gravity' removed duplicate 'own.' page : (footnote [ ]) 'ce n'est pas c'a' changed to 'ce n'est pas ça.' page : 'are distinguished from the work of other painters' from 'distingushd.' page : 'shakespere' changed to 'shakespeare.' page : chapter xix start added ' ' after the §. page : 'its direction is illegitimate' from 'illegitmate.' page : 'celui qui boira' corrected from 'doira.' page : 'all its peculiarities are mannerisms' changed from 'peculiarites.' masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare pietro perugino ( - ) [illustration: plate i.--virgin and child with adoring angels (in the national gallery, london) this is the centre panel from the great altar-piece commissioned by duke lodovico of milan, from perugino, for the certosa of pavia, and completed in . the three lower panels are replaced in the church by copies, the originals having been purchased from the certosa by the melzi family in , and sold by duke melzi to the national gallery in . a masterpiece of pietro's religious art, painted in his best method and best period.] perugino by selwyn brinton, m.a. illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. * * * * * list of illustrations plate i. virgin and child with adoring angels frontispiece in the national gallery, london page ii. st. sebastian in the musée du louvre, paris iii. the deposition from the cross in the pitti palace, florence iv. st. mary magdalen in the pitti palace, florence v. virgin with little st. john adoring the infant christ in the pitti palace, florence vi. francesco delle opere in the uffizi gallery, florence vii. the dead christ in the academy of fine arts, florence viii. virgin and child with two male saints in the national gallery, london * * * * * i [illustration] in considering the work of one of the greatest of the masters of the renaissance, we have to go further back than the disputed question as to who was the first teacher of pietro di cristofano vannucci--surnamed by his contemporaries "_il perugino_," the perugian--and to inquire into the more interesting story of his predecessors in that wonderful school of umbria, on which his art puts, in a certain sense, the seal and completion. in an earlier work on this subject i traced this school, in its first definite inception, to that grand old religious painter niccolo da foligno, whose art may be studied within his native city of foligno--in his great altar-piece of the church of s. niccolo--in perugia, paris, london, and his fine paintings in the vatican gallery at rome; and in all these works i traced in niccolo a great master, "archaic but strong in drawing and full of character, possessing just the qualities of the founder of a great school." but upon that school many influences were to stream in, and to affect its progress. the earlier art of siena, the city of mary virgin, intensely emotional and religious in its character, the dignity of duccio and the lorenzetti, the grace and delicate beauty of simone memmi were among these. close to niccolo himself, in the hill-town of montefalco, the florentine, benozzo gozzoli, pupil of fra angelico, had been busied on picture stories from st. francis' legend, which seem to find their continuation in the perugian miracle pictures of fiorenzo di lorenzo; and yet nearer to florence, in the umbrian borderland, that "king of painting," piero della francesca, was to combine the umbrian emotion with florentine intellectualism. these are the influences which were to stream upon the young pietro as an eager and industrious student--some among them of course indirectly, but others no doubt very directly and immediately. vasari's account, which is still of first value save where it is opposed by stronger evidence, is that he was sent as a poor boy to grind colours and run errands in the "bottega" of some perugian painter. the impression which is here given of his extreme poverty is probably exaggerated. the vannucci family had enjoyed the citizenship of perugia since , nor was it in perugia but in their native township of castel (later città) della pieve that his son pietro was born to cristofano vannucci. but we may take it that he left the paternal roof while yet a child (he was probably not more than nine years old), and was apprenticed, as above stated, in perugia--though to what artist vasari does not tell us. here, therefore, conjecture is rife, and buonfigli,--that delightful decorator of the perugian palazzo pubblico,--fiorenzo di lorenzo, and even niccolo da foligno himself have been assigned by various critics as his teacher. personally, i incline to fiorenzo di lorenzo, whose easel paintings in the gallery of perugia seem to foreshadow the typical perugino background; but it is yet more probable that either as a master or (as suggested by crowe and cavalcaselle) as a journeyman associate he may have come under the influence of piero della francesca, and gained from him that intimate knowledge of perspective which appears in all his later works. in any case this unknown master--if we are to believe vasari--was an inspiring influence; for not only "did he never cease to set before pietro the great advantages and honours that were to be obtained from painting ... but when the boy was wont to frequently inquire of him in what city the best artists were formed ... he constantly received the same reply, namely, that florence was the place above all others wherein men attain to perfection in all the arts, but more especially in painting." i spare to my reader the long harangue which vasari here puts into the mouth of young pietro's unknown teacher, and which the critic pretty certainly evolved out of his own inner consciousness; and come to his conclusion, which is, that our pietro, with every goodwill to improve himself, came to florence, and entered the famous bottega of andrea del verrocchio. nor do i see any sufficient ground to reject this statement, though morelli in his "italian painters" (vol. i. p. ) emphasises very properly the importance of his earlier training, "in all probability at perugia, under fiorenzo di lorenzo, and then at arezzo under piero della francesca," and will not have him described "as unconditionally the pupil of verrocchio." the point to notice here is that pietro must have been a fairly advanced artist when he went, obviously to "finish" himself, to florence, and that in his earlier work it is not so much the direct influence of verrocchio which counts as that of his countrymen, the umbrians. [illustration: plate ii.--st. sebastian (in the musée du louvre, paris) perugino painted this saint many times, there being more than six different renderings still existing. the picture reproduced here is one of the best, both in the modelling of the nude and the sentiment of the figure and the lovely umbrian landscape. it came (in ) from the sciarra colonna gallery. underneath the figure will be seen the words, _sagitte tue infixe sunt michi_.] but at florence he must certainly have been in these years, going there (as the author i have just quoted suggests) "soon after ," probably, for a time at least, within verrocchio's workshop, and drinking in all the glorious message of florentine art in the company of the younger generation of her craftsmen, among whom giovanni santi, in his rhyming chronicle of art, mentions directly another pupil of verrocchio, the young leonardo da vinci, as his friend and associate: "_due giovin par d'etate e par d'amori leonardo da vinci e'l perusino pier della pieve_...." that he must have been already advanced in his art in those days is borne out by the fact that only ten years later ( ) he was summoned by pope sixtus to rome, to decorate, in the company of the great florentine masters--ghirlandajo, cosimo rosselli, and botticelli--the walls of the "sistine" chapel in fresco. prior to this great commission, milanesi notes ( ) frescoes painted by him in the great hall of the perugian palazzo pubblico, which have entirely disappeared, and others ( ) in a chapel at cerqueto, of which only a "st. sebastian," very umbrian in character, now survives. "whence it came about," says vasari, "that the fame of pietro was so spread abroad within italy and without that, to his great glory, he was brought by pope sixtus to work at rome in his chapel, in company with other excellent craftsmen: in the which place he made the story of christ where he gives to st. peter the keys, and likewise the 'nativity' and 'baptism of christ' and the 'finding of moses' ... and on the side where is the altar the mural painting of the 'assumption of madonna,' wherein he drew pope sixtus on his knees. but these last-mentioned works were destroyed to make room for the 'last judgment' of the divine michelangelo, in the time of pope paul iii." vasari here refers to the wall paintings in fresco of the "nativity," "finding of moses," and "assumption." all these have disappeared without a trace. there remain the magnificent "delivery of the keys" and the frescoes of the "journey of moses" and the "baptism of christ." i made a careful study of these last two frescoes at rome ten years ago, when writing the life of pinturicchio, and that study led me to the conclusion that here we have pinturicchio working under perugino himself. "the moses, for instance," i wrote of the "journey of moses in egypt," "who appears here is thoroughly peruginesque (he is to be compared with the christ and the baptist in the fresco opposite), but is painted probably by pinturicchio under perugino's instructions. the zipporah, too, when she is seen advancing, or again where the child in her lap undergoes the rite of circumcision, and the female attendant in white in the corner of the fresco are creations of vannucci's very type and mould. the beautiful landscape, however, with its palm-trees and overhanging rocks, is thoroughly in pinturicchio's manner, and the fresco is full of grouped portraits--a florentine trait.... now, if we turn about, we can examine the fresco opposite (right wall next the altar) of the 'baptism of christ': here again i find the two umbrians to have been working in collaboration. in support of this attribution it is interesting to compare the 'baptism' here with the undoubted 'baptism' by perugino at foligno. i have seen both the foligno painting and that of the sistina this month, and have photographs of each before me as i correct these notes; and i find the two groups absolutely identical save for the slight variations in type and drapery of the st. john, caused, as i think, by his having been painted by pinturicchio, but under the elder master's guidance." i have here quoted from my notes, written within the sistine chapel itself, at some length, because they lead me to some extent to differ from the conclusions of senator morelli, who, insisting on the poetry of pinturicchio's landscapes, is disposed to give both these frescoes to that great master. pinturicchio was undoubtedly working in rome as perugino's assistant during this pontificate of pope sixtus. crowe and cavalcaselle say of this artist: "he was a perugian by birth and education, had followed with moderate talent the lessons of buonfigli and fiorenzo di lorenzo, and afterwards joined the atelier of perugino. he had all the qualities that should be sought in a subordinate, and might have become indispensable to one who undertook large commissions and required an orderly superintendent for his apprentices. it was natural that perugino should take him into partnership and give him a third of his profits. nor do the sixtine frescoes discountenance the belief that the two men stood in this relation to each other in ." when perugino left rome for florence in , pinturicchio remained there, obtained commissions from the great families of the della rovere and cibo, and from the borgia pope alexander vi., for whom he decorated the famous "appartamento borgia" within the vatican. he thus began to assume the position of an independent master; but if we trace his hand (especially in the children and landscape backgrounds) in the two sistine wall paintings which i have just mentioned--though working still under the elder master's supervision and assistance--it is perugino alone who comes before us, in his full strength, in the "delivery to st. peter of the keys." the subject, it has been well said, was a simple incident, but demanded "from the deep meaning attached to it as related to the history of the roman church a certain grandeur and solemnity of treatment"; and here at once we see the full influence upon pietro of his florentine training, combined, in a very interesting way, with those earlier umbrian elements which still remained with him as the strongest impulse, and which he had learnt from his earlier perugian master, or later, not improbably, from the great piero della francesca. no writer upon umbrian art can afford to neglect its wonderful landscape backgrounds, often poetic and fantastic, as in the art of pinturicchio, but always with this sense of roominess, of vastness, and spaciousness, which mr. berenson has very happily defined by the phrase of "space-composition"; and, writing of this very fresco in an earlier work, i compared within the sistina the crowded frescoes and stir of movement of botticelli or cosimo rosselli with those wide spaces of perugino's "granting of the keys," where our eyes are carried onwards from the central group far away to the distant temple with its roomy porticoes. but if the background with its bramantesque temple and the middle distance is still purely umbrian, and seems to foreshadow the "sposalizio" at caen, or at the brera, in those noble figures grouped upon the front plane of the composition--many of them obviously contemporary portraits (one of them in a skullcap being suggested as the master himself)--we may trace the dominant influence of the great florentines, of masaccio within the brancacci chapel of the carmine, and of the noble fresco art of domenico ghirlandajo. and thus pietro perugino combines within himself already the two most important currents of the art of the italian renaissance--that art of florence, with its intellectualism, its masterly drawing, its sense of form, and that lovely devotional spirit of umbrian art, developed and inherited from the earlier sienese. he is at least for us here the precursor--the "forerunner"; and what his divinely gifted pupil, the young raphael of urbino, was to complete he already foreshadows. another point which has not been brought out very fully by our master's critics is the predominance of fresco painting in his earlier work. the value of fresco painting to these italian masters as a training for eye and hand cannot be too much insisted upon. it needed both a sure eye and a quick hand, for the painting had to be done at once when the plaster was ready to receive it; and there can be no doubt that pietro's absolute mastery, at this period, of this difficult art had prepared him for the wonderful series of altar-pieces in the tempera and oil mediums which we are now about to study. [illustration: plate iii.--the deposition from the cross (in the pitti palace, florence) this is the famous painting of the dead christ for the nuns of s. chiara, of which vasari speaks with such enthusiasm, and tells us the nuns were offered (and refused) three times the contract price for the picture. it certainly is a masterpiece of italian devotional art. it is fully signed and dated--_petrus perusinus pinxit a. d. mcccclxxxxv._--and there are studies for it in the uffizi collection of drawings and at christ church, oxford.] perugino, as we have noticed, had returned to florence in the autumn of , when the frescoes of the sistine chapel were no doubt completed, and soon after this ( ) received an invitation to visit orvieto--his altar-piece for s. domenico at fiesole having been completed in the year previous. the frescoes in the capella di s. brizio within orvieto cathedral had been left unfinished through the death of fra angelico, and our perugino, as a master "whose fame had been spread throughout italy," was now requested to examine the chapel and tender for the completion of its decoration. he did so, but his price was a high one-- ducats and all materials to be found him--and we shall trace later how the negotiations, protracted for several years, came eventually to nothing. for the moment florence attracted him, for here, in january of , under the presidency of lorenzo de' medici, called the magnificent, the foremost artists of the day were gathered to consider the decoration of the façade of the florentine duomo; and here perugino was present, beside such masters as domenico ghirlandajo, cosimo rosselli, andrea della robbia, botticelli, baldovinetti, pollajuolo--a long list of names now world-famed in the story of art. from florence, in march of this same year, our master made his way to perugia, where he drew the balance of his pay for the sistine frescoes; and then, prudently avoiding orvieto, went on south to rome, where we have seen that pinturicchio had now established himself, together with the florentine filippino lippi, and had found many commissions. but perugino soon found a patron in the cardinal giuliano della rovere, later to become famous in history as pope julius ii.; and this powerful prelate protected our artist from the importunities of the orvietans, who were pressing him to fulfil his contract, and threatening, if he delayed longer, to appoint another artist in his place. cardinal giuliano, the imperious patron later of michelangelo, took the matter with a characteristically high hand. "we laboured under the impression"--thus he writes to the council of orvieto--"that you were to be compliant, as best suits the love we have ever borne to your community. and so we now again exhort and pray that you do reserve the place which is his due to maestro pietro, and refrain from molesting him...." the fact was that the great prelate wanted pietro for a time for himself, and to this time ( ) belongs the lovely altar-piece, formerly in the cardinal's palace, and now in the villa albani at rome. all our master's devotional feeling, his refinement and beauty of type, his wealth of golden colour, is found already in this wonderful altar-piece, which is divided into six compartments, the central panel being occupied by the "nativity," with above the "crucifixion" and "annunciation," and at the sides the figures of four adoring saints. the landscape background is here of extraordinary beauty, reflecting the quiet serenity of the kneeling figures, and on the pillars of the colonnade behind the "nativity" the master has signed his work-- petrus de perusia pinxit . the albani altar-piece had always ranked as one of perugino's loveliest and most typical creations, worthy to stand beside the beautiful altar-piece of the certosa of pavia, of which england is now the fortunate possessor in her national gallery; but to this busy and fertile period in the master's career belong a number of attractive and interesting works, which we must now endeavour in some measure to classify and analyse. i have already alluded to the altar-piece of s. domenico at fiesole; but pietro painted another altar-piece for the same church in , which is now in the uffizi gallery, a "virgin enthroned," between saints sebastian and john baptist, dated and signed, as usual, "petrus perusinus." the "crucifixion" of la calza (florence), showing very markedly the influence of luca signorelli, may have probably preceded this; but to the same year of belongs the beautiful "pietà" (dead christ) of the florence accademia, and the wonderful and most impressive "crucifixion" of s. maria maddalena de' pazzi (florence) was commissioned by pietro pucci in , though it was not completed till april of . unsurpassed here is the master in the solemnity, the sense of aloofness from earthly things, which he conveys to us in these six figures--the crucified, with as spectators his mother, the beloved disciple, and kneeling saints, seen against the wide stretch of such an umbrian background as we may see from perugia or cortona or assisi; and next in importance to this masterpiece of religious art is the famous "pietà" of s. chiara, of which vasari speaks with such enthusiasm. "he worked out for the ladies of santa chiara a painting of the dead christ, with colouring so lovely and so fresh that by good craftsmen it was held a thing marvellous and excellent. in this work certain very lovely heads of old men are to be seen, and likewise certain maries who, with weeping faces, regard the dead man with reverence and wondrous love; and moreover he made a landscape which was then highly esteemed. it is said that francesco del pugliese would fain have given to the aforesaid nuns three times as much money as they had paid to pietro, and in addition offered to give them a similar painting made by the artist's own hand; and they would not agree, because pietro said that he could never equal that original." this noble creation of religious art is now in the pitti palace at florence, and fully bears out vasari's appreciative criticism: in composition, in beauty of type in the mourning women and men, in the lax body of the dead saviour, in the exquisite landscape with its trees defined against the far sky, our master touches here a very high level in religious art. as usual with works of this importance he fully signed it, on the rock on which the christ is laid-- petrus perusinus pinxit a.d. mcccclxxxxv; and the very careful studies which he made for the groups in this picture may be seen among the drawings of the uffizi collection. when we consider that the magnificently virile portrait of francesco delle opere ( ), now in the tribuna of the uffizi, belongs to this same period, as well as the lovely "madonna with saints" of s. agostino at cremona ( , signed and dated), the "ascension of christ," painted for s. pietro at perugia ( , now at lyons hôtel de ville), and the grand altar-piece of the vatican ( ), which i shall describe more fully later, we shall agree with the critics (crowe and cavalcaselle), who describe the year as "remarkable in the career of vannucci. it was that in which an umbrian ... successfully applied the laws of composition and added a calm tenderness to the gravity of the florentine school; and through his influence on fra bartolommeo and raphael replaced, as far as it was possible, the pious mysticism that had perished with angelico." the master's influence on fra bartolommeo may be clearly traced in the "pietà" of s. chiara, the forerunner of the frate's own noble work; and it was not far from this very time ( ) that the young rafaelle sanzio must have entered his perugian workshop. ii we have now traced the art of pietro vannucci from its first beginnings in the workshop of some unknown teacher at perugia to the time when he was one of the accepted masters of italian art, as much at home in florence--that glowing centre of artistic impulse and creation--as in his own perugia, or in the rome of the renaissance popes. here, then, before we proceed further with the story of his art, which is practically the story of his busy life, there are some points on which we shall not waste time in lingering. we saw how perugino, like giotto himself and almost every great master of italian painting, had perfected his knowledge and trained his eye and hand in the practice of fresco-painting; and we have next to notice that he obtained fame among his contemporaries, as well as patronage, from his knowledge and use of the new oil medium. vasari on this point is most explicit: "certainly colouring was a matter which pietro thoroughly understood, and this both in fresco as well as in oil ..." and again he mentions certain pictures specially as being painted in oil. of course one cannot set up even such direct evidence from vasari as conclusive, for we know there are many slips in his invaluable chronicle; and this very point of the master's medium for his panel pictures has been questioned by modern critics. dr. g. c. williamson in his excellent monograph on perugino refers to mr. herbert horne--a critic whose opinion on italian art carries great weight--as saying that "all perugino's pictures were painted in tempera on a gesso background," and suggests at least that an entirely different technique can be traced in the albani altar-piece and that of the certosa. crowe and cavalcaselle, in their notice of perugino, have analysed very carefully his technique, and shown how his flesh tints were worked up from a warm brown undertone, through a succession of glazes, each lighter in colour and fuller in body than the last, "receiving light from without and transparency from within," till the highest light was reached. [illustration: plate iv.--st. mary magdalen (in the pitti palace, florence) a very lovely figure idealised in type, and recalling, though younger, the virgin of the great crucifixion in s. maria maddalena dei pazzi at florence. across the bosom, embroidered, runs the legend "s. maria maddalena."] in this analysis the authors have obviously and entirely the oil medium in view; but there is another view which, as it seems to me, may throw light upon the question. experiments have, as i understand, been made in late years in germany to combine the use of tempera with that of oil-painting--the object being to combine the brilliancy and richness of oil with the lasting colour of tempera, in which yolk of egg was used with the pure colours--and i believe that certain results have been attained. now this was just the position of painting in perugino's day, when upon the old tempera panels of the giottesques and their successors the oil technique of the van eycks was asserting its advantages; and i would suggest that our master in this period of transition used both mediums, and perhaps sometimes in the same picture may have passed from one to the other. here, too, his connection with the gesuati may have aided him materially, for vasari tells us expressly how these friars, for whom he worked very frequently, were practised in the art of colours as well as enamel and glass-painting, and it was perhaps from them that he had learned the secret which makes his altar-pieces still so transparent and so pure in colour. another point which we cannot fail to notice at this period of pietro's life is his immense activity, his careful business relations in contracts for his work, and his continual industry. he is so constantly on the move that we begin to wonder how he found time for his paintings: he is so continually productive that we wonder no less that he found it possible to travel. his wanderings might be normal in these days of pullman-cars and express trains, but in an age when any journey was a matter of difficulty and often personal danger they seem almost phenomenal. from orvieto ( ) he goes to florence, from florence to perugia, and thence to rome; in he is married at fiesole to chiara fancelli; in he is at venice, and probably at cremona, painting there his altar-piece at s. agostino; then back again to florence, at perugia in march of , making his contract for the famous vatican madonna, and at pavia in october of the same year, working at his no less famous altar-piece of the certosa. in all these visits he was either arranging for fresh work or leaving some lovely altar-piece as a memorial of his presence; and next we shall notice that the two real points of attraction in all this busy life are perugia, his native city, if not actually his birthplace, and florence. rome, though he spent some time there, and completed much important work, never, i think, had the same hold upon him; but between florence and perugia he often seems to hesitate. and this is really important, because the two tendencies, the umbrian and the florentine, are always present in his art. he had completed, as we saw, his training in the city of arno, had married later ( ) a beautiful florentine girl, the daughter of luca fancelli, who brought with her a dowry of golden florins, and on his return from perugia in had invested part of the money he had received for his altar-piece of the magistrates' chapel in land at florence. in fact, during the whole of these years, after his return from rome at the time of alexander borgia's accession ( ) to nearly , i take our master's real centre of activity as being florence; there he had his workshop, painted panels for distant customers, undertook frescoes for the florentine convents, and returned after his business visits to other parts of italy. the year marks a change in all this, for this was the year in which the master definitely threw over the offer of the orvietans to decorate their capella di s. brizio in orvieto duomo, and accepted his great commission from the perugian guild of bankers to adorn with fresco paintings their audience-hall--the sala del cambio. this great commission necessitated a long stay at perugia, and therefore the master broke up his florentine workshop, or "bottega." but florence had evidently a very deep hold on his affections, for we find that in he gave up his perugian establishment for the purpose of returning to florence, and on arriving there took a lodging in the pinti suburb. at florence perugino was justly esteemed as one of the great master-craftsmen of the city, and as such was invariably consulted--as in the great meeting held (january of ) to consider the new façade of s. maria del fiore; or again when (in january of ) he was invited with benozzo gozzoli, cosimo rosselli, and filippino lippi to value the frescoes of alessio baldovinetti in s. trinità of florence; or yet again when (june of ), after the destruction of the lantern of s. maria del fiore by lightning, he tendered his advice along with filippino and lorenzo di credi. [illustration: plate v.--virgin with little st. john adoring the infant christ (in the pitti palace, florence) the centre of the painting is filled by the figure of the virgin, who, on her knees with hands clasped, adores the little jesus, seen seated upon a sack, supported by an angel. he is balanced on the other side by the kneeling baby st. john. the umbrian landscape is of great beauty.] but while pietro had been busied at perugia, in those years of absence ( - ) a new spirit, of dæmonic power, had come to fascinate the florentines, and give them a new conception of the art of the human form; and, in fact, hardly had our master reached florence and secured his lodging than he was invited to give his verdict as to the best site for michelangelo's gigantic marble "david." feeling ran high in the city both as to the site and the work itself. as to the former, the loggia de' signori was suggested, but michelangelo himself preferred the left-hand side of the doorway of the palazzo vecchio, and his wish was respected. yet the feeling against this figure among some of the citizens was such that, when it was exposed, it became a mark for missiles, and the watchmen set to guard it were assaulted. we may imagine that there were frequent gatherings and many heated discussions among the artistic confraternity, who were wont to meet in the shop of baccio d'agnolo; and it may have been in one of these discussions that "michelangelo declared to perugino that his art was absurd and antiquated." "_goffo nell' arte_"--a bungler in his art--that is the precise phrase quoted by vasari, and which so rankled in the breast of the elder man that, "pietro being unable to support such an insult, they both carried their plaint before the magistracy of the eight; in the which affair pietro remained with but little credit." it would have been better, we feel, and more dignified, to have passed over the slighting word with the contempt which it deserved. the master of the sistine fresco which we have described, of the albani altar-piece and its younger sister of the certosa, of the altar-piece of the magistrates' chapel at perugia, and the superb frescoes of the cambio, stood far above such criticism in his own or any later age; and this appreciation of the perugian's work in art does not imply any depreciation of buonarroti's genius, of which, in its own sublime and individual path, the present writer is an enthusiastic admirer. but pietro was a strong-tempered and revengeful man, as is shown by the earlier records of florentine justice, when he had appeared (in july of ) before the eight--the "_otto di custodia_"--for having, with a notorious ruffian, one aulista di angelo of perugia, waylaid a private enemy more than once with the intention of beating him--"_pluries et pluries nocturno tempore accesserunt armati quibusdam bastonibus._" on that occasion he had escaped with a fine of ten florins of gold; and this later appearance does not seem, in its issue, to have been to the master's credit. there was, besides this, much of truth in buonarroti's criticism--a truth which added to the sting--that by this time pietro's art had already begun to show old motives carelessly repeated. "pietro," says our vasari, "had worked so much, and had always such abundance of work in hand, that he often put the same things into his works; and had so reduced his art to a system that he gave to all his figures the same appearance." if this tendency appears even in his work before , it becomes much more apparent later on; but to dwell on this point here would carry me too far, and for the present we are concerned with the master in his full strength at the date just mentioned. for the year dates the completion of the cambio frescoes, and may be taken roughly as the great central date in pietro's art. before describing in detail those frescoes, let us consider what other commissions had preceded that of the perugian bankers. foremost among these must come the great altar-piece of the certosa of pavia, to which i have frequently alluded. it had been commissioned by duke lodovico sforza of milan soon after the artist left venice--the great certosa monastery being always under the personal patronage of the dukes of milan. pietro seems to have been working at it already in , and it was completed, on the duke's pressing instance, by the end of . it has only remained partially in its original place--in the second chapel on the left of the great carthusian church. the upper central painting--that of the eternal father--is still by perugino, the three lower panels are copies from the originals, now in the national gallery of london, and the panels at the side are by borgognone. nothing that the master of perugia has left us exceeds in tranquil beauty these central panels of the london national gallery. orsini tells us that from the certosa painting with its six panels had passed into the possession of the ducal family of melzi at milan; but this is not quite correct, for we have seen that the panel of the eternal father is still in place. in duke melzi parted with his three panels to the london gallery. in the centre panel the sweet, pensive virgin is adoring the child jesus, who is watched over by an angel, as in leonardo's famous "madonna of the rocks," while three angels make music in the sky above; on the right of this is the archangel raphael with the young tobias; on the left the lovely figure of the archangel michael, fully armed, with legs apart set firmly on the ground, and left hand resting on his shield--a figure which the master repeated more than once, notably in the great assumption of the virgin in the florence academy. perugino was married at this time to the beautiful chiara fancelli, and there is little doubt that she appears in more than one of his pictures; in particular, she is said to have posed for the archangel raphael of this certosa altar-piece. next to the beauty of type in this and other figures, we have to notice the pure rich colouring and the extraordinary beauty, in the central panel, of the landscape background. all the umbrian sense of space is there, in this valley with its winding stream and blue distances, while in the middle distance the delicately drawn trees are mirrored against the clear sky. it is a picture one would love to live with, and, without possessing the rapt devotion, the deep inner spirit, which pervades the paintings of angelico, its atmosphere is calm, restful, and in that sense prayerful. a whole group of other paintings, attractive and interesting, though of lesser interest, belongs to this splendidly fertile period of pietro's genius. the fano altar-piece--a virgin and child with saints--dates from a visit in , and an annunciation followed in the next year, while at sinigaglia and cantiano there are very similar works. both the fano pictures, which i have not seen, have been carefully described by dr. williamson in his monograph on this artist. the madonna crowned, with the child on her knee and a group of kneeling penitents behind, now in the perugian gallery, was painted for the confraternity of san pietro martire in ; and there is in the same gallery a somewhat similar work, painted for another confraternity, with two saints (one of whom is st. bernardino) kneeling in the foreground, and in the distance perugia, with the yet untouched towers of the baglioni. to the same period have been attributed the family of st. anne, at marseilles, and the virgin in glory, of the bologna gallery, with its armed st. michael and its lovely female figure of st. apollonia; and now we come to a creation which, in its fine drawing and composition and its atmosphere of tranquil beauty, takes a place beside the certosa altar-piece or that of the perugian magistrates' chapel. i refer to the virgin appearing to st. bernard, now in the munich gallery. the theme was a favourite one at this period of italian art, for it has been treated with great beauty by filippino lippi in his painting in the badia at florence. the munich picture was destined by our master for s. spirito at florence, and was acquired (in ) by king ludwig of bavaria from the capponi family, who held the rights over the chapel where it hung. as in filippino's rendering, the monastic saint is seated in study or adoration, and looks up, with a startled gesture, to see the virgin enter with a train of lovely angels; but what filippino fails to equal--even with his delicious angels, who might be taken from florentine urchins--is the sense of tranquil beauty which comes to us in these figures of the perugian master, and is continued in that wonderful sweep of distant landscape seen through the open colonnade. a study for this fine painting is among the drawings in the uffizi gallery. [illustration: plate vi.--francesco delle opere (in the uffizi gallery, florence) an interesting portrait, once thought a self-portrait of the master, but now considered to be of francesco delle opere. a powerful face, small dark eyes, a well-cut nose, and thick bull-neck. we see that perugino was a fine portraitist of men, both in this and his genuine self-portrait (in the sala del cambio) and the two vallombrosan monks in the florence academy. on the back of this picture is inscribed: d'luglio pietro perugino pinse franco del ope (i.e. delle opere).] i have already had occasion to mention the great crucifixion of s. maria maddalena de' pazzi (completed ), and a very similar treatment of this subject appears in a later crucifixion painted for the convent of s. jerome in florence, and now in the accademia of that city. here, in the three figures introduced, the christ and the virgin mother are almost reproduced from those in the larger fresco of s. maria maddalena, but are coarser and more careless in the painting. the city here in the distance has been traced to be florence, and the date suggested is about . closer yet to this central date of the perugian master's work is the great vallombrosa "assumption" (dated ); but this very probably succeeded immediately in order of time to the sala del cambio frescoes, and therefore i leave it for the moment to speak of the earlier, but most important, commission of the altar-piece of the magistrates' chapel at perugia. a painting to decorate this chapel, and which was to include the portraits of the priori, the governing body then in office, had been commissioned from pietro as early as , and the contract actually signed; but the master had more important work on hand--notably his frescoes for the chapel of pope sixtus--and it was not till twelve years later, in , that, being again in perugia and at the summit of his fame, he was successfully captured by the magistrates of that city, and signed a fresh contract on far higher terms (one hundred golden ducats, but with a time limit of six months for the work) to paint the altar-piece of their chapel. the result was the masterpiece which now hangs in the vatican gallery, and shows us the virgin enthroned with the child standing upright on her knee, beneath such an open portico as appears in the "vision of st. bernard," and with beside her four grave attendant saints, as robed and mitred bishops. here the master varies a little his frequent signature--for _petrus de chastro plebis pinxit_ gives as his birthplace the little umbrian city of città della pieve. the great altar-piece, which possesses all the devotional beauty and repose of his best period, was this time completed within the time agreed, and took its honoured place within the magistrates' chapel at perugia, whence it was torn away by the invading french in , and found its way back, not to perugia, but to the vatican collection at rome. perugia, especially in the person of her greatest master, pietro vannucci, suffered terribly at the hands of napoleon; and here i must express my appreciation of the able description given by my friend dr. g. c. williamson of what he very aptly calls "the story of the pillage." perugia in was very rich in the works of her master, pietro perugino. "almost every church possessed pictures by the master. the altar-piece painted in for the magistrates' chapel was still _in situ_, and public buildings were full of rich decoration." but napoleon, a man whose life was steeped in battle and human bloodshed, seems by a strange contrast to have had a particular fancy for the quiet devotional art of the umbrian master. his commissioner, one tinet by name, had orders to ransack perugia, and six cartloads of her treasured paintings, drawn by oxen, left the city for paris. one altar-piece, that of the magistrates' chapel, was nearly forgotten, but remembered at the last moment, and included. but even so, the terrible conqueror who held italy beneath his feet was not contented, and a fresh decree, of , ordered more pictures to be sent for his paris collection. a certain tofanelli was now the agent for further spoliation, and by diligent search forty-eight more pictures were squeezed out of unlucky perugia, and in november of forwarded, viâ rome, to paris. napoleon had now more works of perugino than he could find place for in his gallery of the louvre, and gave many of them away to the provincial museums of france; and thus it happens that the works of our master are distributed, in fragmentary condition in panels from his famous altar-pieces, among the french provincial cities--such towns as bordeaux, marseilles, lyons, grenoble, nantes, rouen, and caen, where they are practically inaccessible to the average student--while only a small portion of the once rich collection of his works remains within the perugian pinacoteca. but fortunately his masterpiece in fresco painting within the sala del cambio could not be so easily torn from the walls. i have already alluded to the acceptance by the master in of this commission, for which he had refused the decoration of orvieto duomo. the actual space offered him to decorate by the perugian bankers in their sala del cambio was not very great, but the result was a thing of perfect beauty--"a little gem" (i called it in my notes written at perugia, and published some years ago) "of decorative renaissance art. it is a small room, panelled with the loveliest tarsia work (this too from vannucci's design), and above these panels the master's frescoes. the 'nativity' and 'transfiguration' at the end of the room are among his finest, ripest works, and on each side are the prophets and sibyls, or heroes, kings, and sages of antiquity--leonidas the spartan, trajan the wise roman emperor, fabius 'cunctator,' socrates, horatius, who kept the bridge, and the roman camillus." it is most probable that the whole scheme of decoration, and of these classic sages and heroes in particular, with their guiding virtues above, was supplied to the artist by the humanist maturanzio, secretary to the "priori" of perugia, and acting under their orders; while maturanzio himself may have drawn his inspiration from a ms. cicero in the perugian library, in whose miniatures the four cardinal virtues appear beside the heroes who displayed them in their lives. such a dictation was quite in the traditions of the best italian art. i have shown in an earlier work--"the renaissance in italian art"--how this was probably the case in the famous frescoes of the spanish chapel at florence, where ruskin had pictured the artist himself as giving his message of religious dogmatic teaching to the world; and later we shall see how the marchioness of mantua, isabella d'este, ties down our pietro most mercilessly in the allegorical painting which she commissions. but here, in the rendering at least, perugino is entirely himself, and all these figures, whether heroes of heathendom or sages or prophets--isaiah, moses, david, and daniel--or virtues or lovely sibyls, are painted in one key of tranquil, devotional beauty. "obliged," says addington symonds, "to treat in the sala del cambio the representative heroes of greek and roman story, he adopted the manner of his religious paintings. leonidas, the lion-hearted spartan, and cato, the austere roman, bend their mild heads like flowers in perugino's frescoes, and gather up their drapery in studied folds with celestial delicacy." in the ceiling, which, if not painted by himself, is undoubtedly from his design, he had perhaps a freer hand in the arrangement, and has created a very lovely piece of decoration. here the deities of the old heathen world appear as imaged in that delicious sentiment of the earlier renaissance. venus is wafted through the sky, drawn by two doves; luna, nude to the waist, sits in a chariot with her nymphs in harness; mercury holds his _caduceus_, the serpent wand; apollo drives his four-horsed chariot; and--loveliest group of all--jupiter receives the cup of nectar from young ganymede, "such a cup-bearer" (i wrote in my perugian notes) "as the tyrants of the visconti or the baglioni may have had--a slim young page with long floating curls, his limbs clad in tight red hose, and long ribbons twining around him, as on bent knee he offers the cup to his master." his fellow-citizens wished the master to include his own portrait in the frescoes of their cambio, and here it is, for us, a square, solid-looking face of middle life, whose hair escapes from the tight red cap--a face not perhaps attractive, but of intellectuality and power, and with great determination in the lines of mouth and chin. the latin lines of compliment beneath are probably due to the scholarly pen of maturanzio, and on the other side the words _anno salut. md_ give the date of the work's completion--the central date, as we may fairly take it, of perugino's genius, and his life-work in art. it is the moment when he climbs the hill-top--this fateful year that divides the century--and stands upon the highest ground; henceforth for him too, as for his country, the slow years mark the footsteps of decline. iii rafaelle sanzio of urbino had lost his mother, magia ciarla, in , and his father, giovanni santi, three years later. it was not long after this that he was placed by his relatives for instruction in perugino's famous workshop at perugia, and we may safely assume that he was there during part of the master's richly creative period which we have just traversed, and that his hand was busied, along with those of other pupils, in the paintings of the frescoes of the sala del cambio. [illustration: plate vii.--the dead christ (in the academy of fine arts, florence) vasari mentions at some length pietro's work for the convent of the gesuati, and in doing so describes this picture: "a pietà--that is to say, christ in the lap of our lady with four figures around--as good as any painted in his manner." the convent seems to have suffered much from its position without the porta a pinti in the siege of florence, and both this painting and the "christ in the garden" eventually found their way to the academy. pietro was a good friend of the gesuati monks, and was a good deal at one time at the convent. date of this work, about .] among these pupils vasari mentions, beside rafaelle, the florentines--rocco zoppo, baccio, and francesco ubertino (the latter best known by his surname of bacchiacca), giovanni di pietro (called lo spagna), andrea di luigi (called l'ingegno), eusebio di san giorgio, benedetto caporali, and others. we have already noted bernardino di betto, called pinturicchio, as his assistant, and later as a sort of partner and superintendent of these young apprentices; and there seems little doubt that, after the completion of the cambio frescoes and perugino's subsequent return to florence, pinturicchio took young rafaelle with him to siena, as an assistant in his great commission there ( ) to decorate the library of cardinal piccolomini. in perugino the brilliant but most assimilative young student found just the master he needed. he would have been crushed under the masterful force, the relentless nudities, of such a master as luca signorelli, whereas in pietro's devotional art, with its accurate training in drawing, colour, and perspective, his sunny nature found room to expand, and his first visit to florence ( ) proved as inspiring to him as it had been to his master. meanwhile that busy master, his decorative commission of the sala del cambio completed, had gone back at once to purely religious art in a great painting for the high altar at vallombrosa, which is now in the florence accademia. the subject is the assumption of mary virgin, who appears in a mandorla surrounded by angels, while god the father bends to bless from heaven, and four saints on earth beneath await in adoration. this was probably painted at the monastery, for vasari says distinctly, "at vallombrosa he painted a picture for the high altar"; and this is quite likely, as well as that his two grand profile portraits of the abbot baldasarre and of don biagio milanesi date from the same visit. we have already noticed his finely virile portrait of francesco delle opere in the uffizi collection, and this, combined with the two monastic portraits just mentioned, now in the florentine accademia, proves that, if our master had devoted himself to portrait work, he might have been one of the greatest portraitists of all time. in the two last portraits the technique is of extreme simplicity. it is simply the bare shaven head, seen in profile against a brown background. but the drawing is faultless, the man himself is there, and there is not a touch more than is needed to reveal the bones of the skull beneath an upper surface covering of flesh and skin. the vallombrosan altar-piece dates from , and in perugino was one of the priors (priori), and, being obliged to reside in the communal palace and give the most of his time to magisterial and civic duties, he probably had little time left for painting. but he took occasion to contract for future work ( )--for saints and angels to be painted around a fine crucifix in wood for the convent of s. francesco al monte, which is now in the perugian gallery; for designs for the intarsia work of s. agostino, and a double altar-piece for the same church, as well as a sposalizio (marriage of mary) for the duomo. in we have seen that pietro had returned to florence, and taken lodgings in the pinti quarter. there followed the quarrel with michelangelo which i have mentioned, and very shortly after this he left florence again for perugia. while here, he received a letter from the priors of his birthplace, città della pieve, inviting him to paint a fresco there. this was on february , , and, after some correspondence as to terms, in march following the contract was concluded, and the fresco painted in the same year. the subject of this fine fresco is the adoration of the magi. hidden away in its little township, it is not easily accessible to visitors, and escaped the plunder of the french. i have not yet been able to visit it, but my friend dr. g. c. williamson, who drove to città across the mountains from perugia, was deeply impressed by the painting and the place, and writes, "the town is strangely beautiful--like a petrified city, left high and dry by the moving waters of civilisation, untouched and unspoiled." at panicale, another township near there, is a st. sebastian by our master, signed and dated . these were works which he probably painted rapidly and for a comparatively low price--the pieve adoration having been reduced to seventy-five florins--and crowe and cavalcaselle trace the hand of his assistant, lo spagna, in the panicale st. sebastian and an assumption in that city. but perugino had by no means abandoned florence as yet, for we find him writing from there in june of to the marchioness of mantua to acknowledge the receipt of eighty ducats for his tempera painting of the "combat of love and chastity." isabella d'este da gonzaga, marchioness of mantua, an enthusiastic collector and art patron, and one of the most cultivated women of her time, was at that moment forming within her palace at mantua the famous studio della grotta, which she adorned with paintings by mantegna, costa, and perugino. these paintings, which i have described in my own work on mantua, and elsewhere, were still in the grotta in , but after the terrible sack of mantua in they were sold to cardinal richelieu, and are now in the musée du louvre. they were all of allegorical subjects, dictated by the marchesa herself, and the "parnassus" of her court painter, andrea mantegna, is a masterpiece. but that of the perugian master is far less satisfactory, and was indeed found so by that very keen critic, the marchesa isabella herself. she wrote to him on june of the year : "the picture has reached me safely, and, as it is well drawn and coloured, pleases me; but if it had been more carefully finished, it would have been more to your honour and our satisfaction." she here goes straight to the point in noting--as we shall do later--that the master was becoming careless and hasty in his execution. on the other hand, it is fair to remember that the subject was not probably congenial, that he was tied hand and foot in his treatment by the learned lady's written instructions (on hearing that he had represented venus as nude, she declared that if one single figure were altered the whole fable would be ruined), and it is only in the wide sweep of clear sky and hills and river that the artist really finds himself again. another commission of this time in florence was to complete the descent from the cross begun in by filippino lippi, and left unfinished at his death in . this picture, which was destined for the ss. annunziata at florence, was completed by perugino, and is now in the accademia. the lower portion is here by our master, and, considering the initial difficulty of working upon another man's conception, the result is to be praised. crowe, indeed, calls the virgin fainting in the arms of the three maries one of the noblest conceptions of his brush. but the same cannot be said of his joint commission of the assumption, painted also for the ss. annunziata in this summer of . dr. williamson, whose monograph i have already mentioned, and who went to the pains of visiting all these works of perugino scattered by napoleon through the small provincial museums of france, noted that the resemblance between the assumption and the ascension of lyons, which had been painted in for s. pietro at perugia, is so close as to show the artist had hardly troubled to make any change. not only this, but the coronation of the virgin, of the perugian gallery, shows groups identical with both the above paintings, and this assumption, for which, as crowe says, "he fell back on the model of the lyons ascension," is painted in a slovenly and careless manner. when we remember what florence was in this early sixteenth century--a city keenly intellectual, alive to art as perhaps no city, save athens, has ever been before or since, and highly critical and censorious--we need not be surprised that the master, thus openly convicted of plagiarism from his earlier works and of careless technique, was censured by his friends and attacked by his enemies. vasari tells us that "when the aforesaid work" (the assumption) "was uncovered, it was freely blamed by all the younger craftsmen, and, in particular, because pietro had made use of those figures which had already appeared in his other works; and his friends replied that it was not that his powers had failed, but that he had acted so either from greed of money or from haste. to whom pietro answered: 'i have put into this work the figures praised before by you, and with which you were infinitely pleased. if now they displease you and are not praised, what can i do to help it?' but these men continued to assail him with sonnets and public insults. whence he, already old, left florence, and returned to perugia." there is something pathetic in the old man's reply, and it must have cost him a heart-pang to thus turn his back on florence. he had loved the city, had gained there his first inspiration in art, his first successes, had wedded there, bought a house and property, and purchased in this noble church of the ss. annunziata a burial-place for himself and his descendants. but he never returned. his name disappears from the rolls of the painters' guild in florence, and in appears in that of perugia. umbria welcomed back her great master with reverent appreciation. that divided impulse of his life was ended, and from henceforth he was all her own. [illustration: plate viii.--virgin and child with two male saints (in the national gallery, london) this fine painting, very individual in treatment, was painted by pietro in for the executors of giovanni schiavone, a master-carpenter of perugia. in baron delle penna, by whose family it had been inherited, removed the painting to his palace at perugia, and thence it passed to the london gallery in .] always a good man of business, perugino's first step on reaching perugia was to collect the debts still due to him. from the authorities of città della pieve he demanded the balance (march of ) of florins, which was liquidated by the conveyance of a house, from panicale florins, and for his work in the cambio he drew ducats. then the commissions began to come in again, and an altar-piece of this very time ( ), representing madonna between ss. jerome and francis, has recently come to the london national gallery from the palazzo penna at perugia, and is a work of charm and great merit. it had been ordered in by the executors of giovanni schiavone, a master-carpenter of perugia, to be set over the altar of a chapel in s. maria de' servi in that city. this work completed, he left for foligno, where i found still in place his fresco of the baptism of christ in the church of la nunziatella, and from foligno ( - ) he was summoned by pope julius to rome to decorate the ceilings of his vatican palace. bazzi (sodoma) and peruzzi were already being employed on the same work, and at rome perugino met his old friends and rivals in art--signorelli, bramantino, and others--and introduced to them his own pupil caporali. when rafaelle was accepted by julius ii. as his final and only master in the vatican, and bidden by the impetuous pontiff to destroy all work of other artists, he spared--with that _gentilezza_ which was in his character--the ceiling paintings of his old master perugino, which yet remain to us in the camera dell' incendio. but, eclipsed by his brilliant young pupil, there was clearly no room for old pietro at rome, and he journeyed northward with signorelli, breaking his journey to paint a crucifixion for s. maria degli angeli at assisi, and another painting at siena of the same subject for the church of s. agostino. a fragment which is in the collection of miss hertz at rome may belong to another picture due to this siena visit; and later we find him painting at bettona, and ( - ) in his own birthplace of città della pieve. vasari has a gossiping story that pietro, "who trusted no one, and, in going and returning from castello della pieve, carried all the money he had about him always on his person," was robbed on the way, and lost his money and nearly his life. and he adds next: "pietro was a person of very little religion, and could never be made to believe in the immortality of the soul; nay, with words adapted to his evil mind, he did most obstinately refuse every good path. he placed all his hopes in the goods of fortune, and for money would have made every bad contract." there were two reasons why vasari should have been unfair to perugino--one, that he was an umbrian, even though long resident in florence, the other, that he had come, as we have seen, into collision with his admired michelangelo. even so, vasari is much too good a judge to depreciate his art, but he attacks the perugian master personally, and his remarks about religion do not count for much. vasari lived in an age--that of the counter-reformation--which combined in italy the lowest level of morals with apparent orthodoxy, and, under the shadow of the inquisition, religion became a good stone to throw at your enemy. but we cannot say there is nothing behind his charge, because, with regret, we have seen within these pages this master of the tender virgins and calm saints of god as being vindictive (that affair before the eight with aulista di angelo comes to our thought), disloyal, and shifty in his business dealings (here the orvietans and their chapel of s. brizio are an instance), and always consistently keen on getting the best side of a bargain. it does come as something of a shock--at any rate to me--to turn from this serenely devotional art to this record of the man's personality, and we feel inclined to echo the words of symonds, who asks, "how could such a man have endured to pass a long life in the fabrication of devotional pictures?" the answer perhaps lies in the fact that pietro did not create this lovely art of devotion, of which he was such a supreme interpreter. he found it all around him, in the aspirations of thousands of prayerful souls, even in the very soil of this land of his, where the etruscans had once quarried the tombs of their dead, and as an art motive it absorbed his whole feeling. when, later in life, material success came to invade his nature, its influence as a corrosive at once appears in his art creation. the touch of ideal beauty leaves his figures; drawing, colour, composition become mere hasty repetition of his earlier efforts. and yet we cannot but think of the old master with pleasure, even in these later years, as filling these little hill-towns of umbria, bettona, assisi, montefalco, spello, trevi, most of all his own birthplace, castello della pieve, with frescoes which are at least lovely shadows of his greatest works. at bettona he had painted a st. anthony, and again in the church of s. peter at città della pieve, and here, too, in the church of s. maria de' servi is the fragment--but a beautiful fragment--of a ruined crucifixion. the frescoes of s. maria maggiore at spello (signed and dated ), and the adoration of the magi in the church of s. maria delle lagrime at trevi, are important in this late period of his art, as well as perhaps a nativity in the church of s. francesco at montefalco, which is filled with work of his pupils. but a work of special interest is his completion of the frescoes of his greatest pupil, rafaelle of urbino, in the church of s. severo at perugia. sixteen years had elapsed since rafaelle in had, as a youth of brilliant promise, painted the upper fresco, anticipating therein the composition of his great disputa del sacramento within the vatican. since then he had gone on from strength to strength, and now, in his declining years, his old master was called on to complete his pupil's work. the six saints whom he painted there, beneath rafaelle's fresco, grouped on either side of terra-cotta figures of the virgin and child--ss. jerome, john, gregory, and boniface, with ss. scolastica and martha--possess, as far as can be now judged, both dignity and beauty. the fresco is signed by him, and dated with the year of , little more than a year before his death. for to the last the old man was busy, and after a long life of industry died almost with the brush within his hand. this very year of he was at trevi as well as spello. in he painted the "transfiguration" for s. maria nuova at perugia, and his frescoes for the convent of s. agnese at perugia, which are still in place--both the "transfiguration" and its three predella panels being now in the perugian gallery. his last work ( ), the fresco of the adoration of the shepherds (a fresco now transferred to canvas), is now in the london national gallery, where is also his charming virgin with the little jesus and st. john, a signed work from the late mr. beckford's collection. the child jesus stands, naked and upright, upon a stone balustrade, and plays with a lock of his mother's hair, who is herself of the pure virginal type imaged by rafaelle in his earlier creations, notably the famous "madonna del granduca"; while the "adoration," the master's last work, was removed from the church of fontignano in . the landscape in both these works--in the beckford virgin blue hills and outlined trees, in the fontignano fresco wide-sweeping uplands--is of great attraction. "as the aged artist," says crowe, "laboured at fontignano, industrious to the close, a plague broke out in the perugia district and ravaged the country. a disgraceful panic over-spread the land. it was decreed that the ceremonies of religion should be omitted in all cases where death ensued from the contagion. perugino died and was buried in a field at fontignano ... and no one knows where lie the bones of pietro perugino." later documentary evidence, which is quoted by the above authors, and at greater length by milanesi in his edition of "vasari's lives," has here overthrown the statement by vasari that "pietro, having come to the age of seventy-two years, ended the course of his life in castello della pieve, where he was honourably buried in the year ." we know now that his sons ( ) endeavoured to have their father's body brought from his hasty burial-place to be interred in s. agostino at perugia; but, in the disturbed state of central italy during this epoch of foreign invasion, the pious wish was never fulfilled. when we think with what care and expense pietro had once prepared his last resting-place in s. maria de' servi at florence, this tragedy of his unknown and hurried burial seems the more sad. he survives in his art; and that is a complete vindication, an undying memorial. in these pages we have traced his progress from his first great commission of the sistine chapel, with its dignified grouping and sense of air and space, through the tender beauty of his altar-pieces, the simplicity and breadth of his fresco work--the nativity of the villa albani, the crucifixion of s. maria maddalena de' pazzi, the pietà of the nuns of s. chiara, the altar-piece of the certosa of pavia--till, in his great decorative commission at perugia of the sala del cambio, in the year , he seemed to reach the summit of his creative power, and climb down from thence, though by no means immediately or conclusively, to these faded and yet exquisite frescoes, with which, in his own fading years, he wreathed the little hill-cities of his native umbria. and we noted him as a complete master of his art, even though he might willingly abide within a certain religious convention; we saw that the master of the delivery of the keys within the sistine, the great portrait artist, whose hand has left us those forceful heads of francesco delle opere, of the abbot baldasarre, and don biagio, the painter of the albani and certosa altar-pieces, the decorator of the cambio, had nothing to fear in his powers of art creation from the very greatest of his time. but after we have said all this, we must own that his special place within that galaxy of genius of the greatest italian art is best described by a writer to whose appreciative criticism i have always given my sincere admiration; for pietro's task it was "to create for the soul amid the pomps and passions of this world a resting-place of contemplation, tenanted by saintly and seraphic beings. no pain comes near the folk of his celestial city; no longing poisons their repose; they are not weary, and the wicked trouble them no more. their cheerfulness is no less perfect than their serenity; like the shades of hellas, they have drunk lethæan waters from the river of content, and all remembrance of things sad or harsh has vanished from their minds.... in the best work of perugino, the renaissance set the seal of absolute perfection upon pietistic art." * * * * * "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. bellini. george hay. botticelli. henry b. binns. boucher. c. haldane macfall. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. chardin. paul g. konody. constable. c. lewis hind. corot. sidney allnutt. da vinci. m. w. brockwell. delacroix. paul g. konody. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. fra angelico. james mason. fra filippo lippi. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. gainsborough. max rothschild. greuze. alys eyre macklin. hogarth. c. lewis hind. holbein. s. l. bensusan. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. ingres. a. j. finberg. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. le brun, vigÉe. c. haldane macfall. leighton. a. lys baldry. luini. james mason. mantegna. mrs. arthur bell. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. millais. a. lys baldry. millet. percy m. turner. murillo. s. l. bensusan. perugino. selwyn brinton. raeburn. james l. caw. raphael. paul g. konody. rembrandt. josef israels. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. romney. c. lewis hind. rossetti. lucien pissarro. rubens. s. l. bensusan. sargent. t. martin wood. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. titian. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. van dyck. percy m. turner. van eyck. j. cyril m. weale. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. watteau. c. lewis hind. watts. w. loftus hare. whistler. t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ * * * * * note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) transcriber's note: ) variations in the spelling of names and recording of some questionable dates have been left as printed in the original text. ) chapter ix--sala del gran consiio possibly should be sala del gran consiglio. ) likely corrections are noted in brackets within the text in the format [tn: . . .]. the venetian school of painting [illustration: _giorgione._ madonna with s. liberale and s. francis. _castelfranco._ (_photo, anderson._)] the venetian school of painting by evelyn march phillipps with illustrations books for libraries press freeport, new york first published reprinted international standard book number: - - - library of congress catalog card number: - printed in the united states of america by new world book manufacturing co., inc. hallandale, florida preface many visits to venice have brought home the fact that there exists, in english at least, no work which deals as a whole with the venetian school and its masters. biographical catalogues there are in plenty, but these, though useful for reference, say little to readers who are not already acquainted with the painters whose career and works are briefly recorded. "lives" of individual masters abound, but however excellent and essential these may be to an advanced study of the school, the volumes containing them make too large a library to be easily carried about, and a great deal of reading and assimilation is required to set each painter in his place in the long story. crowe and cavalcaselle's _history of painting in north italy_ still remains our sheet anchor; but it is lengthy, over full of detail of minor painters, and lacks the interesting criticism which of late years has collected round each master. there seems room for a portable volume, making an attempt to consider the venetian painters, in relation to one another, and to help the visitor not only to trace the evolution of the school from its dawn, through its full splendour and to its declining rays, but to realise what the venetian school was, and what was the philosophy of life which it represented. such a book does not pretend to vie with, much less to supersede, the masterly treatises on the subject which have from time to time appeared, or to take the place of exhaustive histories, such as that of professor leonello venturi on the italian primitives. it should but serve to pave the way to deeper and more detailed reading. it does not aspire to give a complete and comprehensive list of the painters; some of the minor ones may not even be mentioned. the mere inclusion of names, dates, and facts would add unduly to the size of the book, and, when without real bearing on the course of venetian art, would have little significance. what the book does aim at is to enable those who care for art, but may not have mastered its history, to rear a framework on which to found their own observations and appreciations; to supply that coherent knowledge which is beneficial even to a passing acquaintance with beautiful things, and to place the unscientific observer in a position to take greater advantage of opportunities, and to achieve a wide and interesting outlook on that cycle of artistic apprehension which the venetian school comprises, and which marks it as the outcome and the symbol of a great historic age. the works cited have been principally those with which the ordinary traveller is likely to come into contact in the chief european galleries, and, above all, in venice itself. the lists do not propose to be exhaustive, but merely indicate the principal works of the artists. those in private galleries, unless easy of access or of first-rate importance, are usually eliminated. it has not been thought necessary to use profuse illustrations, as the book is intended primarily for use when visiting the original works. contents part i chapter i page venice and her art chapter ii primitive art in venice chapter iii influences of umbria and verona chapter iv the school of murano chapter v the paduan influence chapter vi jacopo bellini chapter vii carlo crivelli chapter viii gentile bellini and antonello da messina chapter ix alvise vivarini chapter x carpaccio chapter xi giovanni bellini chapter xii giovanni bellini (_continued_) chapter xiii cima da conegliano and other followers of bellini part ii chapter xiv giorgione chapter xv giorgione (_continued_) chapter xvi the giorgionesque chapter xvii titian chapter xviii titian (_continued_) chapter xix titian (_continued_) chapter xx palma vecchio and lorenzo lotto chapter xxi sebastian del piombo chapter xxii bonifazio and paris bordone chapter xxiii painters of the venetian provinces chapter xxiv paolo veronese chapter xxv tintoretto chapter xxvi tintoretto (_continued_) chapter xxvii bassano part iii chapter xxviii the interim chapter xxix tiepolo chapter xxx pietro longhi chapter xxxi canale chapter xxxii francesco guardi bibliography index illustrations by at . madonna with s. liberale giorgione castelfranco and s. francis _frontispiece_ . adoration of the antonio da murano berlin magi . agony in garden jacopo bellini british museum . procession of the gentile bellini venice holy cross . altarpiece of alvise vivarini venice . arrival of the carpaccio venice ambassadors . pietà giovanni bellini brera . an allegory giovanni bellini uffizi . fête champêtre giorgione louvre . portrait of ariosto titian national gallery . diana and actaeon titian earl brownlow . holy family palma vecchio colonna gallery, rome . portrait of laura di lorenzo lotto brera pola . marriage in cana paolo veronese louvre . s. mary of egypt tintoretto scuola di san rocco . bacchus and ariadne tintoretto ducal palace . baptism of s. lucilla jacopo da ponte bassano . antony and cleopatra tiepolo palazzo labia, venice . visit to the pietro longhi national gallery fortune-teller . s. maria della salute francesco guardi national gallery list of painters paolo da venezia, _fl._ - . niccolo di pietro, _fl._ - . niccolo semitocolo, _fl._ . stefano di venezia, _fl._ . lorenzo veneziano, _fl._ - . chatarinus, _fl._ . jacobello del fiore, _fl._ - . gentile da fabriano, - . vittore pisano (pisanello), _circa_ - . michele giambono, _fl._ . giovanni alemanus, _fl._ - . antonio da murano, _circa_ - . bartolommeo vivarini, _fl._ - . alvise vivarini, _fl._ - . antonello da messina, _circa_ - . jacopo bellini, _fl._ - . jacopo dei barbari, _circa_ - . andrea mantegna, - . carlo crivelli, - . bartolommeo montagna, - . francesco buonsignori, - . gentile bellini, _circa_ - . giovanni bellini, - . lazzaro bastiani, _fl._ - . vittore carpaccio, _fl._ - . girolamo da santa croce. mansueti, _fl._ - . giovanni battista da conegliano (cima), - . vincenzo catena, _fl._ - . bissolo, - . marco basaiti, _circa_ - . andrea previtali, _fl._ - . bartolommeo veneto, _fl._ - . n. rondinelli, _fl._ - . girolamo savoldo, - . giorgio barbarelli (giorgione), - . giovanni busi (cariani), _circa_ - . tiziano vecellio (titian), - . palma vecchio, - . lorenzo lotto, - . martino da udine (pellegrino di san daniele). morto da feltre, _circa_ - . romanino, - . sebastian luciani (del piombo), - . giovanni antonino licinio (pordenone), - . bernardino licinio, _fl._ - . alessandro bonvicino (moretto), _circa_ - . bonifazio de pitatis (veronese), _fl._ - . paris bordone, - . jacopo da ponte (bassano), - . jacopo robusti (tintoretto), - . paolo caliari (veronese), - . domenico robusti, - . palma giovine, - . alessandro varotari (il padovanino), - . gianbattista fumiani, - . sebastiano ricci, - . gregorio lazzarini, - . rosalba carriera, - . g. b. piazetta, - . gianbattista tiepolo, - . antonio canale (canaletto), - . belotto, - . francesco guardi, - . part i chapter i venice and her art venetian painting in its prime differs altogether in character from that of every other part of italy. the venetian is the most marked and recognisable of all the schools; its singularity is such that a novice in art can easily, in a miscellaneous collection, sort out the works belonging to it, and added to this unique character is the position it occupies in the domain of art. venice alone of italian states can boast an epoch of art comparable in originality and splendour to that of her great florentine rival; an epoch which is to be classed among the great art manifestations of the world, which has exerted, and continues to exert, incalculable power over painting, and which is the inspiration as well as the despair of those who try to master its secret. the other schools of italy, with all their superficial varieties of treatment and feeling, depended for their very life upon the extent to which they were able to imbibe the florentine influence. siena rejected that strength and perished; venice bided her time and suddenly struck out on independent lines, achieving a magnificent victory. art in florence made a strictly logical progress. as civilisation awoke in the old latin race, it went back in every domain of learning to the rich subsoil which still underlay the ruin and the alien structures left by the long barbaric dominion, for the italian in his darkest hour had never been a barbarian; and as the mind was once more roused to conscious life, florence entered readily upon that great intellectual movement which she was destined to lead. her cast of thought was, from the first, realistic and scientific. its whole endeavour was to know the truth, to weigh evidences, to elaborate experiments, to see things as they really were; and when she reached the point at which art was ready to speak, we find that the governing motive of her language was this same predilection for reality, and it was with this meaning that her typical artists found a voice. no artist ever sought for truth, both physical and spiritual, more resolutely than giotto, and none ever spoke more distinctly the mind of his age and country; and as one generation follows another, art in tuscany becomes more and more closely allied to the intellectual movement. the scientific predilection for _form_, for the representation of things as they really are, characterises not florentine painting alone, but the whole of florentine art. it is an art of contributions and discoveries, marked, it is needless to say, at every step by dominating personalities, positively as well as relatively great, but with each member consciously absorbed in "going one better" than his predecessors, in solving problems and in mastering methods. florentine art is the outcome of florentine life and thought. it is part of the definite clear-cut view of thought and reason, of that exactitude of apprehension towards which the whole florentine mind was bent, and the lesser tributaries, as they flowed towards her, formed themselves on her pattern and worked upon the same lines, so that they have a certain general resemblance, and their excellence is in proportion to the thoroughness with which they have learned their lesson. the difference which separates venetian from the rest of italian painting is a fundamental one. venice attains to an equally distinguished place, but the way in which she does it and the character of her contribution are both so absolutely distinct that her art seems to be the outcome of another race, with alien temperament and standards. venice had, indeed, a history and a life of her own. her entire isolation, from her foundation, gave her an independent government and customs peculiar to herself, but at the same time her people, even in their earliest and most precarious struggles, were no barbarians who had slowly to acquire the arts of civilised life. among the refugees were persons of high birth and great traditions, and they brought with them to the first crazy settlement on the lagoons some political training and some idea of how to reconstruct their shattered social fabric. the venetian republic rose rapidly to a position of influence in europe. small and circumscribed as its area was, every feature and sentiment was concentrated and intensified. but one element above all permeates it and sets it apart from other european states. the oriental element in venice must never be lost sight of if we wish to understand her philosophy of art. there are some grounds, seriously accepted by the most recent historians, for believing that the first venetian colonists were the descendants of emigrants who in prehistoric times had established themselves in asia and who had returned from thence to northern italy. "these colonists," says hazlitt, "were called tyrrhenians, and from their settlements round the mouth of the po the venetian stock was ultimately derived." if the tradition has any truth, we think with a deeper interest of that instinct for commerce which seems to have been in the very blood of the early venetians. did it, indeed, come down to them from the merchants of tyre and carthage? from that wonderful trading race which stretched out its arms all over europe and penetrated even to our own island? from the first, venice cut herself adrift, as far as possible, from western ties, but she turned to eastern people and to intercourse with the east with a natural affinity which savours of racial instinct. all her greatness was derived from her asiatic trade, and her bazaars, heaped with eastern riches, must have assumed a deeply oriental aspect. her customs long retained many details peculiar to the east. the people observed a custom for choosing and dowering brides, which was of asia. the national treatment of women was akin to that of an oriental state; venetian women lived in a retirement which recalled the life of the harem, only appearing on great occasions to display their brocades and jewels. girls were closely veiled when they passed through the streets. the attachment of men to women had no intellectual bias, scarcely any sentiment, but "went straight to the mark: the enjoyment of physical beauty." the position of women in venice was a great contrast to that attained by the florentine lady of the renaissance, who was highly educated, deeply versed in men and in affairs, the fine flower of culture, and the queen of a brilliant society. the love for colour and gorgeous pageantry was of semitic intensity and seemed insatiable, and the gratification of the senses was a deliberate state policy. but passionate as was the spirit of patriotism, enthusiastic the love and loyalty of the people, the civic spirit was absent. the masses were contented to live under a despotic rule and to be little despots in their own houses. in the twelfth century the people saw power pass into the hands of the aristocracy, and as long as the despotism was a benevolent one, the event aroused no opposition. like orientals, the venetians had wild outbursts, and like them they quieted down and nothing came of them. as mr. hazlitt remarks, "their occasional resistance to tyranny, though marked by deeds of horrid and dark cruelty, left no deep or enduring traces behind it. it established no principle. it taught no lesson." venice was a republic only in name. the whole aspect of her government is eastern. its system of espionage, its secret tribunals, its swift and silent blows,--these are all oriental traits, and the east entering into her whole life from without found a natural home awaiting it. we should be mistaken, however, in thinking that the venetians in their great days were enervated and lapped in the sensuality which we are apt to associate with eastern ideals. sensuality did in the end drain the life out of her. "it is the disease which attacks sensuousness, but it is not the same thing." the venetians were by nature men with a deep capacity for feeling, and it is this deep feeling which has so large a share in venetian art. the painters of venice were of the people and had no wide intellectual outlook at its most splendid moment, such as was possessed by those men who in florence were drawn into the company of the medici and their court of scholars, and who all their lives were in the midst of a society of large aims and a free public spirit, in which men took their share of the responsibilities and honours of a citizen's life. the merchant-patrons of venice are quite uninterested in the solving of problems. they pay a price, and they want a good show of colour and gilding for their money. presently they buy from outside, and a half-hearted imitation of foreigners is the best ambition of venetian artists. art, it has been said, does not declare itself with true spontaneity till it feels behind it the weight and unanimity of the whole body of the people. that true outburst was long in coming, but its seeds were fructifying deep in a congenial soil. they were fostered by the warmth and colour of oriental intercourse, and at last the racial instinct speaks with no uncertain accent in the great domain of art, and speaks in a new and unexpected way; as splendid as, yet utterly unlike, the grand intellectual declaration of florence. let us bear in mind, then, that venice in all her history, in all her character, is eastern rather than western. hers is the kingdom of feeling rather than that of thought, of emotion as opposed to intellect. her whole story tells of a profoundly emotional and sensuous apprehension of the nature of things; and till the time comes when her artists are inspired to express that, their creations may be interesting enough, but they fail to reveal the true workings of her mind. when they do, they find a new medium and use it in a new way. venetian colour, when it comes into its kingdom, speaks for a whole people, sensuous and of deep feeling, able for the first time to utter itself in art. we have to divide the history of the venetian school into three parts. the first extends from the primitives to the end of giovanni bellini's life. he forms a link between the first and second periods. the second begins with giorgione and ends with tintoretto and bassano, and is the venetian school proper. thirdly, we have the eighteenth-century revival, in which tiepolo is the most conspicuous figure, and which is in an equal degree the expression of the life of its time. chapter ii primitive art in venice the school of byzantium, so widespread in its influence, was particularly strong in venice, where mosaics adorned the cathedral of torcello from the ninth century and st. mark's became a splendid storehouse of byzantine art. the earliest mosaic on the façade of st. mark's was executed about the year , those in the baptistery date during the reign of andrea dandolo, who was doge from to . yet though the life of giotto lies between these two dates, and his frescoes at padua were within a few hours' journey, there is no sign that the great revolution in painting, which was making itself felt in every principal centre of italy, had touched the richest and most peaceful of all her states. yet local art in venice was no outcome of byzantinism. it rose as that of the mosaicists fell, but its rise differs from that of florence and siena in being for long almost imperceptible. artists were looked upon merely as artisans in all the cities of italy, but in venice before any other city they had been placed among the craftsmen. the statute of the guild of siena was not formulated till ; that of venice is the earliest of which we have any record, and bears the date of . there is scarcely a word to indicate that pictures in the modern sense of the term existed. painters were employed on the adornment of arms and of household furniture. leather helmets and shields were painted, and such banners as we see in paolo uccello's battlepieces. painted chests and _cassoni_ were already in demand, dishes and plates for the table and the surface of the table itself were treated in a similar way. special regulations dealt with all these, and it is only at the end of the list that anconæ are mentioned. the ancona was a gilded framework, having a compartment containing a picture of the madonna and child, and others with single figures of the saints, and these were the only pictures proper produced at this date. the demand for anconæ was, however, large, and they were very early placed, not only in the churches, but in the houses of patricians and burghers. constant disputes arose between the painters and the gilders. pictures were habitually painted upon a gold ground, but the painters were forbidden to gild the backgrounds themselves. "gilding is the business of the gilder, painting that of the painter," says a contemporary record. "now the gilder contends that if a frame has to be gilt and then touched with colour, he is entitled to perform both operations, but the painter disputes this right, and maintains that the gilder should return it to him when the addition of painting is desired." it was, however, finally decided by law that each should exercise both professions, when one or the other played a subordinate part in the finished work. though the art of mosaic was falling into decay as painting began to emerge, yet the commercial manufactory of byzantine madonnas, which had been established as early as , went on, on the rialto, without any variation of the traditional forms. florence very early discarded the temptation to cling to material splendour, but as we pass into the hall of the primitives in the venetian academy, we see at once that venetian art, in its earlier stages, has more to do with the gilder than the painter. the holy personages are merely accessories to the gorgeous framework, the embossed ornaments, the real jewels, which were in favour with the rich and magnificent patrons. there is no sign of any feeling for painting as painting, no craving after the study of form as the outcome of intellectual activity, no zest of discovery, such as made the painter's life in florence an excitement in which the public shared. what little venice imbibes of these things is from outside influence, after due lapse of time. a prosperous, luxurious city of merchants and statesmen, she was too much bound up in the transactions and sensations of actual life to develop any abstract and thoughtful ideals. perhaps the first painting we can discover which shows any sign of independent effort is the series which paolo da venezia painted on the back of the pala d' oro, over the high altar of st. mark, when it was restored in the fourteenth century. this reveals an artist with some pictorial aptitude and one alive to the subjects that surround him. it tells the story of st. mark's corpse transported to venice. the first panel contains a group of cardinals of varying types and expressions; in another the disciple listening to st. mark's teaching, and crouching with his elbows on his knees, has a true, natural touch. the dramatic feeling here and there is considerable. the scene of the guards watching the imprisoned saint through the window and seeing the shadow of two heads, as the saviour visits him, imparts a distinct emotion; and there is force as well as feeling for decorative composition in the panel in which the saint's body lies at the feet of the sailors, while his vision appears shining upon the sails. except for the exaggerated insistence on the gilded elaborations of the early ancona, there is not much to differentiate the early art of venice from that of other centres; but we notice that it persevered longer in the material and mechanical art of the craftsman. tuscan taste made little impression, and many years elapsed before work akin to that of giotto attracted attention and was admired and imitated. a man like antonio veneziano met with the fate of the innovator in venice. he had too much of the simplicity of the tuscan and was compelled to carry his work to pisa, where his naïf and humorous narratives still delight us in the campo santo. it was in that he was employed to finish the frescoes of the life of s. ranieri, which had been left uncompleted at andrea da firenze's death, and the fondness for architecture and surroundings in the florentine taste, which secured him a welcome, may, as vasari says, be derived from agnolo gaddi, who had already visited padua and venice. in the last years of the fourteenth century tributary streams begin to feed the feeble main current. in guariento, a paduan, was employed by the state to paint a huge fresco of paradise in the hall of the gran consiglio of the ducal palace. this, which lay hid for centuries under the painting by tintoretto, was uncovered in and found to be in fairly good preservation. it can now be seen in a side room. it tells us that guariento had to some extent been influenced by giotto. the thrones have long gothic pendatives, the faces have more the giottesque than the byzantine cast and show that the old traditions were crumbling. when painting in venice first begins to live a life of its own, jacobello del fiore stands out as the most conspicuous of the indigenous venetians. his father had been president of the painters' guild. jacopo himself was president from to . he was a rich and popular member of the state and a man of high character. his works, to judge by the specimens left, hardly attained the dignity of art, though in the banner of "justice," in the academy, the space is filled in a monumental fashion and the figure of st. gabriel with the lily has something grand and graceful. we trace the same treatment of flying banners and draperies and rippling hair in the fantastic but picturesque s. grisogono in the left transept of san trovaso. jacobello's will, executed in in favour of his wife lucia and his son, ercole, with provision for a possible posthumous son, shows him to have been a man of considerable possessions. he owned a slave and had other servants, a house, money, and books. among his fellow-workers who are represented in venice are niccolo semitocolo, niccolo di pietro, and lorenzo veneziano. the important altarpiece by the last, in the academy, has evidently been reconstructed; two eternal fathers hover over the annunciation, and the saints have been restored to the framework in such wise that the backs of many of them are turned on the momentous central event. in the "marriage of st. catherine," in the same gallery, lorenzo gets more natural. the child, in a light green dress with gold buttons, has a lively expression, and looks round at his mother as if playing a game. the chapel of san tarasio in san zaccaria contains an ancona of which the central panel was only inserted in , and is identical with lorenzo's other work. one of the finest and most elaborate of all the anconæ is in san giovanni in bragora, and is also the work of lorenzo. in this, as well as in that of san tarasio, the mother offers the child the apple, signifying the fruit of the tree of jesse and symbolical of the incarnation. this incident, which is found thus early in art, was evidently felt to raise the group of the mother and child from a representation of a merely earthly relationship to a spiritual scene of the deepest meaning and the highest dignity. niccolo di pietro has several early works of the last decade of the fourteenth century, from which we gather that he began as a byzantine, but that he imitated guariento and was tentatively drawn to the giottesque movement, but not, we may remember, before giotto had been dead for some sixty years. niccolo di pietro has been confounded with niccolo semitocolo, but it is now realised that they were two distinct masters. the most important work of michele giambono which has come down to us is the signed ancona with five saints, now in the venetian academy. it is unusual to find a saint in the central panel instead of the madonna. the saint is on a larger scale than his companions, and has hitherto passed as the redeemer, but professor venturi has identified him as st. james the great. he has the gold scallop-shell and pilgrim's staff. it is clear from his size and position that the ancona has been painted for an altar specially dedicated to this apostle. the saints on the right are s. michael and s. louis of toulouse. between s. john the evangelist and s. james is a monastic figure which has evidently changed places with s. john at some moment of restoration. if the two figures are transposed, their attitudes become intelligible. s. john is inculcating a message inscribed in his open book, while the monk is displaying his humble answer on his own page. the use in it of the term _servus_ suggests that he is a servite, though the want of the nimbus precludes the idea that he is one of the founders. it is probable that he is s. filipo benizzi, who, though considered as a saint from the time of his death, was not canonised for several centuries. the mond collection includes a glowing picture by giambono; a seated figure clad in rich vestments and holding an orb, probably representing a "throne," one of the angelic orders of the celestial hierarchy.[ ] [ ] these interesting particulars are given by mr. g. m'n. rushforth in the _burlington magazine_ for october . works are still in existence which may be ascribed to one or other of these masters, or of which no attribution can be made, but we know nothing positive of any other artists of the time which preceded the influence of gentile da fabriano. nothing leads us to suppose that the venetian school in its origin had any pretension to be a school of colour, or that it could claim anything like real excellence at a time when the republic first became alive to the movement which was going on in other parts of italy, and decided to call in foreign talent. principal works _paolo da venezia._ venice. st. mark's: the pala d' oro. vicenza. death of the virgin. _lorenzo da venezia._ venice. academy: altarpiece. correr museum: saviour giving keys to st. peter. s. giovanni in bragora: ancona. berlin. two saints. _nicoletto semitocolo._ venice. academy: altarpiece. padua. biblioteca archivescovo: altarpiece. _stefano da venezia._ venice. academy: coronation of virgin, with false signature of semitocolo. _jacobello del fiore._ venice. academy: justice. s. trovaso: s. grisogono. _niccolo di pietro._ venice. s. maria dei miracoli: altarpiece. _michele giambono._ venice. academy: st. james the great and other saints. london. mond collection: a "throne." chapter iii influences of umbria and verona gentile da fabriano, the umbrian master, when he reached venice in the early years of the fifteenth century, was already a man of note. he had received his art education in florence, and he brought with him fresh and delicate devices for the enrichment of painting with gold, which, derived as it was from the sienese assimilation of byzantine methods, was very superior in fancy and refinement to anything that venice had to show. he was a man of a gentle, mystic temperament, but he was accustomed to courts, and a finished master whose technique and artistic value was far beyond anything that the local painters were capable of. he spent some years in venice, adorning the great hall with episodes from the legend of barbarossa; one of these, which is specially cited, was of the battle between the emperor and the venetians. gentile was working till about , and the walls, finished by pisanello, were covered by . after this gentile remained some time in bergamo and brescia, and settled in florence about . the year after reaching florence, he painted the famous "adoration of the magi," now in the florentine academy. even after leaving venice his fame survived; pictures went from his workshop in the popolo s. trinità, and he sent back two portraits after he had returned to his native fabriano. we have no positive record of gentile and vittore pisano, commonly called pisanello, having met in venice, but there is every evidence in their work that they did so, and that one overlapped the other in the paintings for the ducal palace. the school of verona already had an honourable record, and its guild dates from . the following are its rules, the document of which is still preserved, while that of venice has been lost: rules of the veronese guild (_abridged_) . no one to become a member who had not practised art for twelve years. . twelve artists to be elected members. . the reception of a new member depends on his being a senior. . the members are obliged in the winter season to take upon themselves the instruction of all the pupils in turn. . a member is liable to be expelled for theft. . each member is bound to extend to another fraternal assistance in necessity. . to maintain general agreement in any controversies. . to extend hospitality to strange artists. . to offer to one another reciprocal comfort. . to follow the funerals of members with torches. . the president is to exercise reference authority. . the member who has the longest membership to be president. there were also by-laws, which provided that no master should accept a pupil for less than three years, and this acceptance had to be definitely registered by the public notary, a son, brother, grandson, or nephew being the only exceptions. no master might receive an apprentice who should have left another master before his time was out, unless with that master's free consent. there were penalties for enticing away a pupil, and others to be enforced against pupils who broke the agreement. severe restrictions existed with regard to the sale of pictures, no one but a member of the guild being allowed to sell them. no one might bring a work from any foreign place for purposes of sale. it might not even be brought to the town without the special permission of the _gastaldiones_, or trustees of the guild, and those trustees were permitted to search for and destroy forged pictures. every painter, therefore, had to subordinate his interests and inclinations to the local school. it helps us to understand why the individual character of the different masters is so perceptible, and one of the primary causes of this must have been the careful training of the pupils in the master's workshop. the fresco left by altichiero, pisanello's first master, in the church of s. anastasia in verona, shows how worthily a veronese painter was at this early time following in the footsteps of giotto. three knights of the cavalli family are presented by their patron saints to the madonna. the composition has a large simplicity, a breadth of feeling which is carried into each gesture. the knights with their raised helmets, in the pattern of horses' heads, are full of reality, the madonna is sweet and dignified, and the saints are grand and stately. the picture has a delightful suavity and ease, and the colouring has evidently been lovely. the setting is in good proportion and more satisfactory than that of the giottesques. from the series of frescoes in s. antonio, verona, we gather that while venice was still limited to stiff anconæ, the veronese masters were managing crowds of figures and rendering distances successfully. altichiero puts in homely touches from everyday life with a freedom which shows he has not yet mastered the principles of selection or the dignified fitness which guided the great masters; as, for instance, in the case of the old woman, among the spectators of the crucifixion, who shows her grief by blowing her nose. he lets himself be drawn off by all manner of trivial detail and of gay costume; but again in such frescoes as s. lucia, or the "beheading of st. george," in the paduan chapel of the santo, he proves how well he understands the force of solid, simply-draped figures, direct in gesture and expression, while the decorative use he makes of lances against the background was long afterwards perhaps imitated, but hardly surpassed, by tintoretto. pisanello, who followed quickly upon altichiero and his assistant, avanzi, exhibits the same chivalresque and courtly inclinations which commended gentile da fabriano to the splendour-loving venetians. verona, under the peaceful but gallant government of the scaligeri, had long been the home of all knightly lore, and the artists had been employed to decorate chapels for the families of the great nobles. among these, pisanello had attained a high place. though very few of his paintings remain, they all show these influences, and his subtly modelled medals establish him as a master of the most finished type. a much destroyed fresco in s. anastasia, verona, portrays the history of st. george and the dragon. in the st. george we probably see the portrait of the great personage in whose honour the fresco was painted. he is mounting his horse, which, seen from behind, reminds us of the fore-shortened chargers of paolo uccello. the rescued princess, also a portrait, wears a magnificent dress and an elaborate headgear in the fashion of the day. other horses, fiery and spirited, are grouped around, and in the band of cavaliers, beyond st. george, every head is individualised; one is beautiful, another brutal, and so on through the seven. a greyhound and spaniel in the foreground are superbly painted, the background is excellent, and a realistic touch is given by the corpses which dangle unheeded from the trees outside the castle-gate. a ruined, but fortunately not restored, "annunciation" in s. fermo, has a simple, slender figure of the virgin sitting by her white bed, and the angel, with great sweeping, rushing wings and bowed, child-like head with fair hair, is a most sweet and keen figure, thrilling and convincing, in contrast to all the dead, over-worked frescoes round the church. all these paintings are too small to be the least effective at the height at which they are placed, and can only be seen with a good glass. pisanello's art is not well adapted to wide, frescoed walls, and he seems to have enjoyed painting miniature panels, such as the two we possess. in these he is full of originality, and shows his love for the knightly life, the life of courts, in the armed _cap-à-pied_ figure of st. george, whose point-device armour is crowned by a wide tuscan hat and feather. the artist's knowledge and love of animals and wild nature comes out in them, and his interest in beauty and chivalry as opposed to the outworn conventionalities of ecclesiastic demands. we shall be able to trace the influence of both the umbrian and the veronese painter on men like antonio di murano and jacopo bellini, and it is important to note the likeness of the two to one another. in gentile's "adoration" we have on the one hand the holy family and the gay pageant of the kings, of which we could find the prototype in many an umbrian panel. on the other we see those contrasting elements which were struggling in pisanello; the delight in flowers and animals, in gaily apparelled figures, in dogs and horses. the two have no lasting effect, but though they created no actual school, they gave a stimulus to venetian art, and started it on a new tack, enabling it to open its channels to fresh ideas. during the time they were in venice, jacobello del fiore shows some signs of adapting the new fashion to his early style, and the horse of s. grisogono is very like that of gentile in the "adoration," or like pisano's horses. michele giambono is actually found in collaboration, in the chapel of the madonna da mascoli in st. mark's, with such a virile painter as the florentine, andrea del castagno, who is evidently responsible for god the father and two of the apostles; but castagno must have been thoroughly antipathetic to the venetians, and though he may have taught them the way to draw, he has not left any traces of a following. facio, writing in , speaks of gentile's work in the ducal palace as already decaying, while pisanello's was painted out by alvise vivarini and bellini. principal works _gentile da fabriano._ florence. academy: adoration of the magi. milan. brera: altarpiece. _altichiero._ padua. capella s. felice, s. antonio: frescoes. capella s. giorgio, s. anastasia: the cavalli family. _pisanello._ padua. s. anastasia: st. george and the dragon. verona. s. fermo: annunciation. london. s. george and s. jerome; s. eustace and the stag. chapter iv the school of murano the important little town of murano, a satellite of venice, lies upon an island, some ten minutes' row from the mother state, distinct from which it preserved separate interests and regulations. its glass manufacture was safeguarded by the most stringent decrees, which forbade members of the guild to leave the islet under pain of death. its mosaics, stone work, and architecture speak of an early artistic existence, and we recognise the justice of the claim of muranese painters to be the first to strike out into a more emancipated type than that of the primitives. the painter giovanni of murano, called giovanni alemanus or d' alemagna, names between which venetian jealousy for a time drew an imaginary distinction, had certainly received his early education in germany, and betrays it by his heavier ornamentation and more gothic style; but he was a fellow-worker with antonio of murano, the founder of the great vivarini family, and the academy contains several large altarpieces in which they collaborated. "christ and the virgin in glory" was painted for a church in venice in , and has an inscription with both names on a banderol across the foreground. the eternal father, with his hands on the shoulders of the mother and son, makes a group of which we find the origin in gentile da fabriano's altarpiece in the brera, and it is probable that one if not both masters had been studying with the umbrian and absorbing the principles he had brought to venice. it is easy to trace the influence of giovanni d' alemagna, though not always easy to pick out which part of a picture belongs to him and which to antonio working under his influence. in s. pantaleone is a "coronation of the virgin," with gothic ornaments such as are not found in purely italian art at this period, but the example in which both masters can be most closely followed is the great picture in the academy, the "madonna enthroned," where she sits under a baldaquin surrounded by saints. here the gothic surroundings become very florid, and have a gingerbread-cake effect, which italian taste would hardly have tolerated. many features are characteristic of the german; the huge crown worn by the mother, the floriated ornament of the quadrangle, the almost baroque appearance of the throne. through it all, heavily repainted as it is, shines the dawn of the tender expression which came into venetian art with gentile. [illustration: _antonio da murano._ adoration of the magi. _berlin._ (_photo, hanfstängl._)] giovanni d' alemagna and antonio da murano were no doubt widely employed, and when the former died antonio founded and carried on a real school in venice. in he was living in the parish of s. maria formosa with his wife, who was the daughter of a fruit merchant, and the wills of both are still preserved in the parish archives. gentile da fabriano had set the example for gorgeous processions with gay dresses and strange animals; winding paths in the background and foreshortened limbs prove that attention had been drawn to paolo uccello's studies in perspective, while many figures and horses recall pisanello. a striking proof of the sojourn of gentile and pisanello in venice is found in an "adoration of magi," now ascribed to antonio da murano, in which the central group, the oldest king kissing the child's foot, is very like that in gentile's "adoration," but the foreshortened horses and the attendants argue the painter's knowledge of pisanello's work. a comparison of the architecture in the background with that in the "st. george" in s. anastasia shows the same derivation, and the dainty cavalier, who holds a flag and is in attendance on the youngest king, is reminiscent of st. george and st. eustace in pisanello's paintings in the national gallery, so that in this one picture the influences of the two artists are combined. antonio took his younger brother, bartolommeo, into partnership, and the title of da murano was presently dropped for the more modern designation of vivarini. both brothers are fine and delicate in work, but from the outset of their collaboration the younger man is more advanced and more full of the spirit of the innovator. in his altarpiece in the first hall of the academy the nativity has already a new realism; joseph leans his head upon his hand, crushing up his cheek. the saints are particularly vivid in expression, especially the old hermit holding the bell, whose face is brimming with ardent feeling. principal works _giovanni d' alemanus and antonio da murano._ venice. christ and the virgin in glory; virgin enthroned, with saints. _antonio da murano._ berlin. adoration of magi. chapter v the paduan influence and now into this dawning school, employed chiefly in the service of the church, with its tentative and languid essays to understand florentine composition, resulting in what is scarcely more than a mindless imitation, and with its rather more intelligent perception of the humanist qualities of pisanello's work, there enters a new factor; or rather a new agency makes a slightly more successful attempt than gentile and castagno had done to help the venetians to realise the supreme importance of the human figure, its power in relation to other objects to determine space, its modelling and the significance of its attitude in conveying movement. giotto had been able to present all these qualities in the human form, but he had done so by the light of genius, and had never formulated any sufficient rules for his followers' guidance. in ghiberti's school, at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the fascination of the antique in art was making itself felt, but donatello had escaped from the artificial trammels it threatened to exercise, and had carried the florentine school with him in his profound researches into the human form itself. donatello had been working in padua for ten years before pisanello's death, and in an indirect way the venetians were experiencing some after-results of the systematising and formulating of the new pictorial elements. though the intellectual life had met with little encouragement among the positive, practical inhabitants of venice, in padua, which had been subject to her since , speculative thought and ideal studies were in full swing. there was no re-birth in venice, whose tradition was unbroken and where "men were too genuinely pagan to care about the echo of a paganism in the remote past." st. mark was the deity of venice, and "the other twelve apostles" were only obscurely connected with her religious life, which was strong and orthodox, but untroubled by metaphysical enthusiasms and inconvenient heresies. padua, on the other hand, was absorbed in questions of learning and religion. a university had been established here for two centuries. the abstract study of the antique was carried on with fervour, and the memory of livy threw a lustre over the city which had never quite died out. it seemed perfectly right and respectable to the venetians that the _savants_, lying safely removed from the busy stream of commercial life, should cultivate inquiries into theology and the classics, which would only have been a hindrance to their own practical business; but such, as it was well known, were of absorbing interest in the circles which gathered round the medici in florence. the school of art, which was now arising in padua, was fed from such sources as these. the love of the antique was becoming a fashion and a guiding principle, and influenced the art of painting more formally than it could succeed in doing among the independent and original florentines. francesco squarcione, though, as vasari says, he may not have been the best of painters, has left work (now at berlin) which is accepted as genuine and which shows that he was more than the mere organiser he is sometimes called. he had travelled in greece, and was apparently a dealer, supplying the demand for classic fragments, which was becoming widespread. when he founded his school in padua he evidently was its leading spirit and a powerful artistic influence. his pupils, even the greatest, were long in breaking away from his convention, and few of them threw it off entirely, even in after life. that convention was carried with undeviating thoroughness into every detail. draperies are arranged in statuesque folds, designed to display every turn of the form beneath; the figures are moulded with all the precision and limitations of statuary. the very landscape becomes sculpturesque, and rocks of a volcanic character are constructed with the regularity of masonry. the colour and technique are equally uncompromising, and the surface becomes a beautiful enamel, unyielding, definite in its lines, lacquer-like in its firmness of finish, while the gothic forms, which had hitherto been so prevalent, were replaced by more or less pedantic adaptations from roman bas-reliefs. this system of design was practised most determinedly in padua itself, but it soon spread to venice. squarcione himself was employed there after , and though antonio da murano clung to the old archaic style he saw the paduan manner invading his kingdom, and his own brother became strongly squarcionesque. the two brothers of murano come most closely together in an altarpiece in the gallery of bologna, where the framework is more simple than alemanus's german taste would have permitted, and the madonna and child have some natural ease, and the delicacy of feeling of primitive art. bartolommeo, when he breaks away and sets out to paint by himself, is crude and strong, but full of vital force. in his altarpiece of , in the academy, he gives his saints reality by taking them off their pedestals and making them stand upon the ground, and though they are still isolated from one another in the partitions of an ancona, their sparkling eyes, individual features, and curly beards give them a look of life. the draperies, thin and clinging, with little rucked folds, which display the forms, and the drawing of the bony structure, exaggerated in the arms and legs, are squarcionesque. the rocks and stones, too, show the paduan convention. in several of his other altarpieces, bartolommeo introduces rich ornaments and swags of fruit, such as donatello had first brought to padua, or which paduan artists delighted to copy from classic columns. antonio's manner to the end is the local venetian manner, infused as it was with the soft and charming influence of gentile da fabriano and pisanello, but bartolommeo adopts the new and more ambitious style. though not a very good painter, and inclined to be puffy and shapeless in his flesh forms, he was the head of a crowd of artists, and works of his school, signed _opus factum_, went all over italy, and are found as far south as bari. works of his pupils are numerous; the "st. mark enthroned" in the frari is as good if not better than the master's own work, and the triptych in the correr museum is a free imitation. round this early school gathered such painters as antonio da negroponte and quirizio da murano, who were both working in . negroponte has left an enthroned madonna in s. francesco della vigna, which is one of the most beautiful examples of colour and of the fanciful charm of the renaissance that the early art of venice has to show. the mother and child are placed in a marble shrine, adorned with antique reliefs, rich wreaths of fruit swag above her head, a little gothic loggia is full of flowers and fruit, and birds are perched on cornucopias. on either side, four badly drawn little angels, with ugly faces and awkwardly foreshortened forms, foreshadow the beautiful, music-making angels which became such a feature of north italian art. the divine mother, adoring the child lying across her knees, has an exquisite, pensive face, conceived with all the delicacy and simplicity of early art. it seems quite possible, as professor leonello venturi suggests, that we have here the early master of crivelli, in whom we find the love of fruit garlands, of chains of beads and rich brocades carried to its farthest limits, who takes keen pleasure in introducing the ugly but lively little angels, and who gives the same pensive and almost mincing expression to his madonnas. principal works _antonio da murano and bartolommeo vivarini._ bologna. altarpiece. _bartolommeo vivarini._ venice. academy: altarpiece, ; two saints. frari: madonna and four saints. s. giovanni in bragora: madonna and two saints. s. maria formosa: triptych. london. madonna and saints. vienna. s. ambrose and saints. _antonio da negroponte._ venice. s. francesco della vigna: altarpiece. chapter vi jacopo bellini while venice was assimilating the spirit of the school of squarcione, which in the next few years was to be rendered famous by mantegna, another influence was asserting itself, which was sufficient to counteract the hard formalism of paduan methods. when gentile da fabriano left venice, he carried with him, and presently established with him in florence, a young man, jacopo bellini, who had already been working with him and pisanello, and who was an ardent disciple of the new naturalistic and humanist movement. both gentile and his apprentice were subjected to annoyance from the time they arrived in florence, where the strict regulations which governed the guilds made it very difficult for any newcomer to practise his art. the records of a police case report that on the th of june some young men, among them, one, bernabo di san silvestri, the son of a notary, were observed throwing stones into the painter's room. his assistant, jacopo bellini, came out and drove the assailants away with blows, but bernabo, accusing jacopo of assault, the latter was committed to prison in default of payment. after six months' imprisonment, a compromise of the fine and a penitential declaration set him at liberty. the accounts declare that gentile took no steps to be of service to his follower; but jacopo soon after married a girl from pesaro, and his first son was christened after his old master, which does not look as though they were on unfriendly terms. jacopo travelled in the romagna, and was much esteemed by the estes of ferrara, but he was back in venice in . he has left us only three signed works, and one or two more have lately been attributed to him, but they give very little idea of what an important master he was. [illustration: _jacopo bellini._ agony in garden--drawing. _british museum._ (_photo, anderson._)] his madonna in the academy has a round, simple type of face, and in the louvre madonna, which is attributed but not signed, it is easy to recognise the same arched eyebrows and half-shut, curved eyelids. in this picture, where the madonna blesses the kneeling leonello d' este, we see how pisanello acted on jacopo and, through him, on venetian art. the connection between the two masters has been established in a very interesting way by professor antonio venturi's discovery of a sonnet, written in , which recounts how they painted rival portraits of leonello, and how bellini made so lively a likeness that he was adjudged the first place. the landscape in the louvre picture is advanced in treatment, and with its gilded mountain-tops, its stag and its town upon the hill-side, is full of reminiscences of pisanello, especially of the "st. george" in s. anastasia. we come upon such traces, too, in jacopo's drawings, and it is by his two sketch-books that we can best judge of his greatness. one of these is in the british museum; the other, in the louvre, was discovered not many years ago in the granary of a castle in guyenne. these drawings reveal jacopo as one of the greatest masters of his day. he is larger, simpler, and more natural than pisanello, and he apparently cares less for the human figure than for elaborate backgrounds and surroundings. many of his designs we shall refer to again when we come to speak of his two sons. his "supper of herod" reminds us of masolino's fresco at castiglione d' olona. he sketches designs for numbers of religious scenes, treated in an original and interesting manner. a "crucifixion" has bands of soldiers ranged on either side, an "adoration of the magi" has a string of camels coming down the hill, the executioners in a "scourging" wear eastern head-dresses. in a sketch for a "baptism of christ" tall angels hold the garments in the early traditional way; on one side two play the lute and the violin, while the two on the other side have a trumpet and an organ. he has sketches for the ascension, resurrection, circumcision, and entombment, repeated over and over again with variations, and one of s. bernardino preaching in venice (where he was in ). jacopo delights even more in fanciful and mythological than in sacred subjects. a tournament with spectators, a faun riding a lion, a "triumph of bacchus" with panthers, are among such essays. the fauns pipe, the wine-god bears a vase of fruit. his love of animals is equal to that of pisanello, and s. hubert and the stag with the crucifix between its horns is directly reminiscent of the veronese. his horses, of which there are immense numbers, sometimes look as if copied from ancient bas-reliefs. his treatment of single nude figures is often poor and weak enough, and his rocks have the flat-topped, geological formation of the paduan school, but no one who so drank in every description of lively scene about him could have been in any danger of becoming a mere archeological type, and it was from this pitfall that he rescued mantegna. to judge by his drawings, jacopo did not overlook any source of art open to him; he delights in the rich research of the paduans as much as in the varieties of wild nature and all the incidents of contemporary life first annexed by pisanello. he is often very like gentile da fabriano, he makes raids into uccello's domains of perspective, he is frankly mundane and draws a revel of satyrs and centaurs with a real interpretation of the lyrical and pagan spirit of the greeks, and he has an idealism of the soul, which found its full expression in his son, giovanni. we cannot call jacopo bellini the founder of the venetian school, for its makings existed already, but it was his influence on his sons which, above all, was accountable for the development of early excellence. his long, flowing lines have a sweep and a fanciful grace which form an absolute antidote to the definite, geometrical paduan convention. in jacopo we see the thorough assimilation of those foreign elements which were in sympathy with the venetian atmosphere, and while up to now venice had only imbibed influences, she was soon to create for herself an artistic _milieu_ and to become the leader of the movement of painting in the north of italy. principal works _jacopo bellini._ brescia. annunciation and predelle. verona. christ on cross. venice. academy: madonna. museo correr: crucifixion. london. british museum: sketch-book. paris. madonna and leonello d' este: sketch-book. chapter vii carlo crivelli we must turn aside from the main stream when we come to speak of carlo crivelli, who, important master as he was, occupies a place by himself. a pupil of the vivarini and perhaps, as we have noted, of antonio negroponte, crivelli was profoundly influenced by the paduans, from whom he learned that metallic, finished quality of paint which he carried to perfection. crivelli shows intellect, individuality, even genius, in the way in which he grapples with his medium and produces his own reading, and the circumstances of his life were such as to throw him in upon himself and to preserve his originality. his little early "madonna and child" at verona is linked with that of negroponte by the elaborate festoons, strings of beads, and large-patterned brocades used in the surroundings, and has those ugly, foreshortened little _putti_, holding the instruments of the passion, of the type elaborated by squarcione and marco zoppo, and which, in their improved state, we are accustomed to think of as mantegnesque. when crivelli was thirty-eight years old, he was condemned to six months' imprisonment and to a fine of two hundred lire for an outrage on a neighbour's wife. perhaps it was to escape from an unenviable reputation that he left venice soon after and set up painting in the marches, where he lived from to . he then went on to camerino in umbria, where his great triptych, now in the brera, was painted, and a few years later he was in ascoli, with a commission for an annunciation in the cathedral. this is the picture now in the national gallery, in which the bishop holds a model of the duomo. after he worked in little towns in the marches, and is not mentioned after . he does not seem ever to have come back to venice. shut up in the marches, where there was little strong local talent, and where he could not keep up with the progress that was taking place in venice, he was obliged himself to supply the artistic movement. he kept the squarcionesque traditions to the end, but moulded them by his own love of rich and exuberant decoration. moreover, he was of a very intense religious bias, and this finds a deeply touching and mystical expression, more especially in his pietàs. the love of gilded patterns and fanciful detail was deep-seated in all the umbrian country. his altarpieces were intended as sumptuous additions to rich churches, and were consequently arranged, with many divisions, in the old muranese manner. his great ancona, in the national gallery, is a marvel of elaborate ornament and enamel-like painting. the madonna is delicate, almost affected in her refinement. her long fingers hold the child's garment with the extreme of dainty precision, the croziers and rings of the saints and bishops are embossed with gold and real jewels. the flowers in the panel of "the immaculate conception," which hangs beside it, are twisted into heads of mythological beasts and grotesques or cherubs; but crivelli has plenty of strength, and his male saints have vigorous, bony limbs and fierce fanatical eyes. it is, however, in his colour that he charms us most, and though he does not touch the real fount, he is of all the earlier school the most remarkable for subtle tender tones and lovely harmonies of olive-greens and faded rose and cream embossed with gold. crivelli continued executing one great ancona after another, limiting his progress to perfecting his technique, and his influence was most deeply felt by such umbrian painters as lorenzo di san severino and niccola alunno. the honours paid him testify to the reputation he acquired. he was created a knight and presented with a golden laurel wreath. but though he never, that we can hear of, revisited his native state, he always adds _venetus_ to the signature on his paintings, a fact which tells us that far from venice and in provincial districts, her prestige was felt and gave his work an enhanced commercial value. he had no after-influence upon the venetian school, and in this respect is interesting as an example of the tenacity exercised by the squarcionesque methods, when, unchecked by any counter-attraction, they came to act upon a very different temperament; for in his love of grace and beauty and of rich effects, and especially in his intensity of mystic feeling, crivelli is a true venetian and has no natural affinity with the classic spirit of the paduans. principal works venice. ss. jerome and augustine. ascoli. duomo: altarpiece and pietà. berlin. madonna and six saints. london. pietà; the blessed ferretti; madonna and saints; annunciation; ancona in thirteen compartments; the immaculate conception. mr. benson: madonna. sir francis cook: madonna enthroned. mond collection: ss. peter and paul. lord northbrook: madonna; resurrection; saints; crucifixion; madonna; madonna and saints. milan. brera: ss. james, bernardino, and pellegrino; ss. anthony abbot, jerome, and andrew. poldi-pezzoli: s. francis in adoration. rome. vatican: pietà. chapter viii gentile bellini and antonello da messina what, then, is the position which art has achieved in venice a decade after the middle of the fourteenth century, and how does she compare with the florentine school? the florentines, fra angelico, andrea del castagno, and pesellino were lately dead. antonio pollaiuolo was in his prime, fra lippo was fifty-four, paolo uccello was sixty-three. but though the progress in the north had been slower, art both in padua and venice was now in vigorous progress. bartolommeo vivarini was still painting and gathering round him a numerous band of followers; mantegna was thirty, had just completed the frescoes in the eremitani chapel and the famous altarpiece in s. zeno; and gentile and giovanni bellini were two and four years his seniors. francesco negro, writing in the early years of the sixteenth century, speaks of gentile as the elder son of jacopo bellini. giovanni is thought to have been an illegitimate son, as jacopo's widow only mentions gentile and another son, niccolo, in her will. there is every reason to believe that, as was natural, the two brothers were the pupils and assistants of their father. a "madonna" in the mond collection, the earliest known of gentile's works, shows him imitating his father's style; but when his sister, niccolosia, married mantegna in , it is not surprising to find him following mantegna's methods for a time, and a fresco of st. mark in the scuola di san marco, an important commission which he received in , is taken direct from mantegna's fresco at padua. as the bellini matured, they abandoned the squarcionesque tradition and evolved a style of their own; gentile as much as his even more famous brother. gentile is the first chronicler of the men and manners of his time. in he settled in venice, and was appointed to paint the organ doors in st. mark's. these large saints, especially the st. mark, still recall the paduan period. they have festoons of grapes and apples hung from the architectural ornaments, and the cast of drapery, showing the form beneath, reminds us of mantegna's figures. but gentile soon becomes an illustrator and portrait painter. much of his work was done in the scuola of st. mark, where his father had painted, and this was destroyed by fire in . early, too, is the fine austere portrait of lorenzo giustiniani, in the academy. in an emissary from the sultan mehemet arrived in venice and requested the signoria to recommend a good painter and a man clever at portraits. gentile was chosen, and departed in september for constantinople. he painted many subjects for the private apartments of the sultan, as well as the famous portrait now in the possession of lady layard. it would be difficult for a historic portrait to show more insight into character. the face is cold, weary, and sensual, with all the over-refined look of an old race and a long civilisation, and has a melancholy note in its distant and satiated gaze. the sultan showed gentile every mark of favour, loaded him with presents, and bestowed on him the title of bey. he returned home in , bringing with him many sketches of eastern personages and the picture, now in the louvre, representing the reception of a venetian embassy by the grand vizier. some five years before gentile's commission to constantinople antonello da messina had arrived in venice, and the spread and popularisation of oil-painting had hastened the casting off of outworn ecclesiastical methods and brought the painters nearer to the truth of life. antonello did not actually introduce oils to the notice of venetian painters, for bartolommeo vivarini was already using them in , but he was well known by reputation before he arrived, and having probably come into contact with flemish painters in naples, he had had better opportunities of seizing upon the new technique, and was able to establish it both in milan and in venice. a large number of venetians were at this time resident in messina: the families of lombardo, gradenigo, contarini, bembo, morosini, and foscarini were among those who had members settled there. many of these were patrons of art, and probably paved the way to antonello's reception in venice. at first all the traits of antonello's early work are flemish: the full mantles, white linen caps and tuckers, the straight sharp folds and long wings of the angels have much of van eyck, but when he gets to venice in , its colour and life fascinate him, and a great change comes over his work. his portraits show that he grasped a new intensity of life, and let us into the character of the men he saw around him. his "condottiere," in the louvre, declares the artist's recognition of that truculent and formidable being, full of aristocratic disdain, the product of a daring, unscrupulous life. the "portrait of a humanist," in the castello in milan, is classic in its deepest sense; and in the trivulzio college at milan an older man looks at us out of sly, expressive eyes, with characteristic eyebrows and kindly, half-cynical mouth. it was not wonderful that these portraits, combined with the new medium, worked upon gentile's imagination and determined his bent. the first examples of great canvases, illustrating and celebrating their own pageants, must have mightily pleased the venetians. scenes in the style of the reception of the venetian ambassadors were called for on all hands, and when the excellence of gentile's portraits was recognised, he became the model for all venice. when his own and his father's and brother's paintings perished by fire in , he offered to replace them "quicker than was humanly possible" and at a very low price. giovanni, who had been engaged on the external decorations, was ill at the time, but the signoria was so pleased with the offer that it was decided to let no one touch the work till the two brothers were able to finish it. gentile still painted religious altarpieces with the virgin and child enthroned with saints, but most of his time was devoted to the production of his great canvases. some of these have disappeared, but the "procession" and "miracle of the cross," commissioned by the school of s. giovanni evangelista, are now in the academy, and the third canvas, executed for the same school, "st. mark preaching at alexandria," which was unfinished at the time of his death, and was completed by his brother, is in the brera. [illustration: _gentile bellini._ procession of the holy cross. _venice._ (_photo, anderson._)] these great compositions of crowds bring back for us the venice of gentile's day as no verbal description can do. there is no especial richness of colour; the light is that of broad day in the piazza and among the luminous waterways of the city. we can see the scene any day now in the wide square, making allowance for the difference of costume. the groups are set about in the ample space, with the wonderful cathedral as a background. st. mark's has been painted hundreds of times, but no one has ever given such a good idea of it as gentile--of its stateliness and beauty, of its wealth of detail; and he does so without detracting from the general effect, for st. mark's, though the keynote of the whole composition, is kept subservient, and is part of the stage on which the scene is enacted. the procession passes along, carrying the relics, attended by the waxlights and the banners. behind the reliquary kneels the merchant, jacopo salò, petitioning for the recovery of his wounded son. then come the musicians; the spectators crowd round, they strain forward to see the chief part of the cortège, as a crowd naturally does. some watch with reverence, others smile or have a negligent air. the faces of the candle-bearers are very like those we may see to-day in a great church procession: some absorbed in their task, or uplifted by inner thoughts; others looking curiously and sceptically at the crowd. gentile tries in his crowds to bring together all the types of life in venice, all the officials and the ecclesiastical world, the young and old. with a few strokes he creates the individual and also the type;--the careless rover; the responsible magistrate; the shrewd, practical man of business; the young men, full of their own plans, but pausing to look on at one of the great religious sights of their city. in the "finding of the cross" he produces the effect of the whole city _en fête_. it was a sight which often met his eyes. the doge made no fewer than thirty-six processions annually to various churches of the city, and on fourteen of these occasions he was accompanied by the whole of the nobles dressed in their state robes. every event of importance was seized on by the venetian ladies as an opportunity for arraying themselves in the richest attire, cloth of gold and velvet, plumes and jewels. gentile has massed the ladies of queen catherine cornaro's court around their queen upon the left side of the canal. the light from above streams upon the keeper of the school, who holds the sacred relic on high. all round are the old, irregular venetian houses, and in the crowd he paints the variety of men he saw around him every day in venice. yet even in this animated scene he retains his old quattrocento calm. the groups are decorously assisting: only here and there he is drawn off to some small detail of reality, such as an oarsman dexterously turning his boat, or the maid letting the negro servant pass out to take a header into the canal. the spectators look on coolly at one more of the oft-seen, miraculous events. the committee, kneeling at the side, is a row of unforgettable portraits, grave, benign, sour, and austere, with bald head or flowing hair. in this composition he triumphs over all difficulties of perspective; our eye follows the canals, and the boats pass away under the bridge in atmospheric light. all the joy of venice is in that play of light on broad brick surfaces, light which is cast up from the water and dances and shimmers on the marble façades. gentile made his will in , as well as others in and . he left word that he was to be buried in ss. giovanni e paolo, and begged his brother giovanni to finish the work in the scuola, in return for which he is to receive their father's sketch-book. the unfinished piece is the "st. mark preaching at alexandria," and it shows gentile still developing his capacity as a painter. it is pale in colour but brilliant in sunlight. the mass of white given by the head-dresses of the turkish women is cleverly subdued so as not to detract from the effect of the sunlight. the thronged effect of the great square is studied with more than his usual care, and the faces have all the old individuality. the foremost figures in the crowd have a colour and richness which we may attribute to giovanni's hand. gentile was always fully employed, and the detailed paintings of functions became very popular; but he was a far less modern painter than his brother, and, in fact, they represent two distinct artistic generations, though gentile's work was so much the most elaborate and, as the quattrocento would have thought, the most ambitious. gentile is essentially the historic painter, yet his is a grave, sincere art, and he has an unerring instinct for the right incidents to include. he cuts out all unseemly trivialities, his actors are stern, powerful men, the treatment is historic and contemporary, but not gossipy. we realise the look of the venice of his day, in all its tide of human nature, but we also feel that he never forgot that he was chronicling the doings of a city of strong men, and that he must paint them, even in their hours of relaxation and emotion, so as to convey the real dignity and power which underlay all the events of the republic. we gather from his will and that of his wife that they had no children, which perhaps makes the more natural the affectionate terms upon which he remained all through his life with his brother. their artistic sympathies must have differed widely. gentile's love for historical research, for costume and for pageants, found no echo in the deeper idealism of giovanni--indeed, his offer of the famous sketch-book, as an inducement to the latter to finish his last great work, seems to hint that it was an exercise out of his brother's line; but he knew that giovanni was a great painter, and did not trust it, as we might have expected, to his assistants, giovanni mansueti and girolamo da santacroce. principal works _gentile bellini._ london. s. peter martyr; portrait. milan. brera: preaching of st. mark. venice. doge lorenzo giustiniani; miracle of true cross; procession of true cross; healing by true cross. lady layard. portrait of sultan. _antonello da messina._ antwerp. crucifixion, . berlin. three portraits. london. the saviour, ; portrait; crucifixion, . messina. madonna and saints, . paris. condottiere. milan. portrait of a humanist. venice. academy: ecce homo. vicenza. christ at the column. chapter ix alvise vivarini contemporary with giovanni bellini were artists still firmly attached to the past, who were far from suspecting that he was to outstrip them. one of antonio de murano's sons, luigi or alvise vivarini, grew up to follow his father's profession, and was enrolled in the school of his uncle, bartolommeo. the latter being an enthusiastic follower of squarcione, alvise was at first trained in paduan principles. jacopo bellini's efforts had done something to counteract the hard, statuesque paduan manner, and had rendered mantegna's art more human and less stony, but jacopo could not prevent squarcionesque painters from importing into venice the style which he disliked so much. bartolommeo threw in his lot with the paduans, and his school, especially when reinforced by alvise, maintained its reputation as long as it only had to compete with local talent. the vivarinis had now been firmly established in venice for two generations, and were the best-known and most popular of her painters. albert dürer, on his first visit, admired them more than the bellini. when, however, gentile and his brother set up in venice, a hot rivalry arose between them and the old muranese school. the bellini had come with their father from padua, with all its new and scientific fashions. they had all the prestige of relationship with mantegna, and they shared the patronage of his powerful employers. the striking historical compositions of gentile were at once in demand by the great confraternities. bartolommeo had never been very successful in his dealing with oil-painting, though he had dabbled in it for some years before antonello da messina came his way, but the perception with which the bellini at once grasped the new technique gave them the victory. we have only to compare the formless contours of much of bartolommeo vivarini's work, the bladder-like flesh-painting of the holy child, with the clear luminous colour and firm delicate touch of gentile, to see that the one man is leagues ahead of the other. alvise vivarini had more natural affinity with his father than with his uncle. he never becomes so exaggerated in his forms as bartolommeo. the expression of his faces is much deeper and more inward, and he has something of the devotional sweetness of early art. his first known work is an ancona of at montefiorentino, in a lonely franciscan monastery on the spurs of the apennines. in the centre of the five panels the madonna sits with her hands pressed palm to palm, in adoration of the child asleep across her knees. the painter here follows the tradition of his father and uncle, especially in the bologna altarpiece, in which they collaborated in . four saints stand on either side, framed in gothic panels; it is all in the old way, and it is only by degrees that we see there is more sweetness in the expression, better modelling in the figures, and a slenderer, more graceful outline than the earlier anconæ can show. only five years after this ancona at montefiorentino, with its stiff rows of isolated saints, we have the altarpiece in the academy "of ," which was painted for a church in treviso, and here a great change is immediately apparent. the antiquated division into panels has disappeared, nothing is left of the artificial, squarcionesque decorations, the attitudes are simple, and the scene is a united one. the madonna's outstretched hand, the suggestion of "ecce agnus dei," makes an appeal which draws the attention of all the saints to one point, and it is made plain that the one idea pervades the entire assembly. the curtain, which symbolises the sanctuary, still hangs behind the throne, but the gold background is abandoned. alvise has not indeed, as yet, imagined any landscape or constructed an interior, but he lightens the effect by two arched windows which let in the sky. the forms are characteristic of his idea of drawing the human figure; they have the long thighs with the knees low down, which we are accustomed to find, and he constructs a very fine and sharply contrasted scheme of light and shade. there is no trace of the statuesque paduan draperies. the virgin's brocaded mantle is simply draped, and the robes of the saints hang in long straight folds. no doubt alvise, though nominally the rival of the bellini, has more affinity with them, particularly with giovanni, than with the paduan artists, and as time goes on it is evident that he paints with many glances at what they were doing. in the altarpiece in berlin he constructs an elaborate cupola above the virgin, such as bellini was already using. his saints are full of movement. in the end he begins to attitudinise and to display those artificial graces which were presently accentuated by lotto. [illustration: _alvise vivarini._ altarpiece of . _venice._ (_photo, anderson._)] in the two bellini had for some time been employed in the sala del gran consiglio by the council of ten. alvise, with his busy school, had hoped, but hitherto in vain, to be invited to enter into competition with them. at length he wrote the following letter:-- to the most serene the prince and the most excellent signoria--i am alvise of murano, a faithful servant of your serenity and of this most illustrious state. i have long been anxious to exercise my skill before your sublimity and prove that continued study and labour on my part have not been useless. therefore offer, as a humble subject, in honour and praise of that celebrated city, to devote myself, without return of payment or reward, to the duty of producing a canvas in the sala del gran consiio, according to the method at present in use by the two brothers bellinii, and i ask no more for the said canvas than that i should be allowed the expenses of the cloth and colours as well as the wages of the journeymen, in the manner that has been granted to the said bellinii. when i have done i shall leave to your serenity of his goodness to give me in his wisdom the price which shall be adjudged to be just, honest, and appropriate, in return for the labour, which i shall be enabled, i trust, to continue to the universal satisfaction of your serenity and of all the excellent government, to the grace of which i most heartily commend myself. the "method at present in use" was presumably the oil-painting established by antonello, which was now being made use of to replace the decorations in fresco and tempera which guariento, pisanello, and gentile da fabriano had executed, and which were constantly decaying and suffering from the sea air and the dampness of the climate. the council accepted alvise's offer with little delay, and he was told to paint a picture for a space hitherto occupied by one of pisanello's, and was given a salary of sixty ducats a year, something less than that drawn by giovanni bellini. unfortunately his work, scenes from the history of barbarossa, perished in the great fire of . venice is rich in works which show us what sort of painter was at the head of the muranese school at the time when it rivalled that of the bellini. alvise has two reading saints on either side of the altarpiece of , and of these the baptist is one of his best figures, "admirably expressive of tension and of brooding thought." it is large and free in stroke, and particularly advanced in the treatment of the foliage. close by hangs a character-study of st. clare; type of a strenuous, fanatical old woman, one which belongs not only to the period, but will be recognised by every student of human nature. formidable and even cruel is her unflinching gaze; she is such a figure as might have stood for scott's prioress, and looks as little likely to show mercy to an erring member of her order. in contrast, there is the exquisite little "madonna and child" with the two baby angels, still shown as a bellini in the sacristy of the church of the redentore. it is the most absolutely simple and direct picture of the kind painted in venice. the baby life is more perfect than anything that gian. bellini produced, and if much less intellectual than his madonnas, there is all the tender charm of the primitives, combined with a freedom of drapery and a softness of form which could not be surpassed. the two little angels are more mundane in spirit than those of the school of bellini; they have nothing of the mystical quality, though we are reminded of bellini, and the painting is an exercise in his manner. in the sacristy of san giobbe is an early annunciation, which is now definitely assigned to alvise. it has the old tender sentiment, and the carnations of its draperies are of a lovely tint. the priests of s. giovanni in bragora were great patrons of the school of the vivarini, for here, besides several works by bartolommeo and his assistants, is a little madonna in a side chapel, which may be compared with the redentore picture. the mother sits inside a room, with the child lying across her knees in the same pose. the two arched openings in the background of the altarpiece have become windows, through which we look out on a charming landscape of lake and mountain. in the same church a "resurrection" is not to be overlooked. it was executed in , and some of the grace and beauty of the sixteenth century has crept into it. against the pink flush of dawn stands the swaying figure of the risen christ, and below appear the heads of the two guards, looking up, surprised and joyful. it is perhaps the very earliest example of that soft and sensuous feeling, that rhapsody of sensation which was presently to sweep like a flood over the art of venice. "what a time must the dawn of the sixteenth century have been when a man of seventy, and not the most vigorous and advanced of his age, had the freshness and youthful courage to greet it; nay, actually to depict its magic and glamour as alvise does in the 'resurrection'! giorgione is here anticipated in the roundness and softness of the figures, and in the effect of light. titian's assunta is foreshadowed in the fervour of the guards' expressions." alvise, if he never thoroughly mastered the structure of the nude, and if his forms keep throughout some touch of the archaic, some awkwardness in the thickness of the figures, with their round heads, long thighs, and uncertain proportions, is yet extraordinarily refined and tender in sentiment, his line has a natural flow and beauty, and the heads of his madonnas and saints cannot be surpassed in loveliness. his death came when the noble altarpiece to st. ambrogio in the frari was still unfinished, and it was completed by his assistant, marco basaiti. the execution is heavy and probably of basaiti, but the venerable doctor is a grand figure, and the two young soldier saints on his right and left hand are striking examples of the beauty we claim for him. the architectural plan is very elaborate, but altogether successful. the group is set beneath an arched vault supported by columns and cornices. overhead, behind a balustrade, is placed a coronation of the virgin. the many figures are grouped so as not to interfere with each other, and the sword of st. george, the crozier of st. gregory, and the crook of st. ambrose break up the composition and give length and line. the faces of the saints are extremely beautiful, and the two angels making music below compare well with those of the bellinesque school. the portraits alvise has left add to his reputation, and remind us of those of antonello da messina, particularly in the vital expression of the eyes, though they are without antonello's intense force. the "bernardo di salla" and the "man feeding a hawk," though some critics still ascribe them to savoldo, have features which make their attribution to alvise almost certainly correct. indeed, the resemblance of bernardo to the madonna in the altarpiece cannot escape the most unscientific observer. there is the same inflated nostril, the peculiarly curved mouth, and vivacious eyes. among the followers of alvise, marco basaiti, bartolommeo montagna, and lorenzo lotto are the most distinguished. others less direct are giovanni buonconsiglio and francesco bonsignori, while cima da conegliano was for a short time his greatest pupil. we shall return to these later. principal works berlin. madonna enthroned, with six saints. london. portrait of youth. milan. bonomi-cereda collection: portrait of a man. naples. madonna with ss. francis and bernardino. paris. portrait of bernardo di salla. venice. academy: seven panels of single saints; madonna and six saints, . frari: s. ambrose enthroned. s. giovanni in bragora: madonna adoring child; resurrection and predelle. redentore: sacristy: madonna and child, with angels. vienna. madonna. windsor. man feeding a hawk. chapter x carpaccio vittore carpaccio was gentile bellini's most faithful pupil. he and his master stand apart in having, before the arrival of the venetian school proper, captured an aspect and a charm inspired by the natural beauty of the city of the sea. gentile, as we have seen, paints her historic appearance, and carpaccio gives us something of the delight we feel to-day in her translucent waters and her ample, sea-washed spaces flooded with limpid light. while others were absorbed in assimilating extraneous influences, he goes on his own way, painting, indeed, the scenes that were asked for, but painting them in his own manner and with his own enjoyment. pageant-pictures had been the demand of the venetian state from very early days. the first use of painting had been that made by the church to glorify religion, and very soon the state had followed, using it to enhance the love which venetians bore to their city, and to bring home to them the consciousness of its greatness and glory. pageants and processions were an integral part of venetian life. the people looked on at them, often as they occurred, with more pride and sense of proprietorship than a londoner does at a coronation procession or at the king going in state to open parliament. the venetian loved splendour and beauty and the story of the city's great achievements, and nothing provided so welcome a subject for the decoration of the great public halls as portrayals of the events which had made venice famous. artists had been employed to produce these as early as the end of the fourteenth century, and those of the bellini and alvise vivarini (which perished in the great fire) were a rendering on modern lines of the same subjects, satisfying the more advanced feeling for truth and beauty. besides the church and the public government, we have already seen the "schools," as they were called, becoming important employers. these schools were the great organised confraternities in the cause of charity and mutual help, which sprang up in venice in the fifteenth century. that of st. mark was naturally the foremost, but others were banded each under their patron saint. each attracted numbers of rich patrons, for it was the fashion to belong to the confraternities. riches and endowments rolled in, and halls for meeting and for transacting business were built, and were adorned with pictures setting forth the legends of their patron saints. we have already seen gentile bellini employed in the schools of san marco and san giovanni, and now the schools of st. ursula and st. george gave commissions to carpaccio, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that gentile, having become pre-eminent in this art, provided employment for his pupil and assistant, and that by degrees carpaccio became a _maestro_ on his own account. a host of second-rate painters were plying side by side, disciples first of one master, then drawn off to become followers of a second; assimilating the influence first of one workshop and then of another. carpaccio has been lately identified as a pupil of lazzaro bastiani, who had a school in venice, and the recent attribution to this painter of the "doge before the madonna," in the national gallery, gives some countenance to the contention that he was held to be of great excellence in his time. though some historians advance the suggestion that carpaccio was a native of capo d'istria, there is little proof that he was not, like his father pietro, born a venetian. he seems to have worked in venice all his life, his first work being dated and his last . in his wife, laura, declared herself a widow. the narrative art needed by the confraternities was supplied in perfection by carpaccio, and one of his earliest independent commissions was the important one of decorating the school of st. ursula. devotion to st. ursula was a monopoly of the school. no one else had a right to collect offerings in her name or to put up an image to her. the legend afforded an opportunity for painting varied and dramatic scenes, of which carpaccio takes full advantage, and the cycle is one of the freshest and most characteristic things that has come down to us from the quattrocento. problems are not conspicuous. the mediocre masters who have educated the painter have made little impression on him. he is entirely occupied in delight in his subject and in telling his story. the story of st. ursula, told briefly, is that she was the daughter of the king of brittany. the king of england sends his ambassadors to beg her hand for his son, hereo. ursula discusses the proposal with her father, and makes the conditions that hereo, who is a heathen, shall be baptized, and that the betrothed couple must before marriage visit the pope and the sacred shrines. after taking leave of their parents, the prince and princess depart on their expedition, but ursula has had a vision in her sleep in which an angel has announced her martyrdom. she is accompanied on her journey by , virgins, and they are received by pope cyriacus in rome. the pope then makes the return journey with them as far as cologne, where, however, they are assaulted and massacred by the huns, after which ursula is accorded a splendid funeral, and is canonised. the thirteen scenes in which the story is told are arranged on nine canvases, and the painter has not executed them in the chronological order, some of the latest events being the least complete in artistic skill. professor leonello venturi assigns the following dates to the list: . the ambassadors of the king of england meet those of the king of brittany to ask for the hand of ursula. probably painted from - . . (on same canvas) ursula discusses the proposal with her father. - . . the king of brittany dismisses the ambassadors. - . . the ambassadors return to the king of england. - . . an angel appears to ursula in her sleep. . , , . the betrothed couple take leave of their respective parents, and the prince meets ursula. . . the betrothed couple and the , virgins meet the pope. . . they arrive at cologne. . , . the massacre by the huns. the funeral. . . the saint appears in glory, with the palm of martyrdom, venerated by the , virgins and received in heaven by the eternal father. . no. is a small canvas, such as might naturally have been chosen for a first experiment. the heads are large with coarse features, and the proportions of the figures are poor. the face of the saint in glory (no. ), plump and without much expression, is of the type of bastiani's saints. it may be assumed that such a great scheme of decoration would not have been entrusted to any one who was not already well known as an independent master, but perhaps carpaccio, who would have been about thirty when the work was begun, was still principally engrossed with the conventional, ecclesiastical subject. the heads of the virgins pressing round the saint appear to be portraits, and were very possibly those of the wives and daughters of members of the confraternity. the improvement that takes place is so rapid that we can guess how congenial the painter found the task and how quickly he adapted his already trained talent. in no. he takes delight in the opportunity for painting a little domestic scene,--the bedroom of a young venetian girl, perhaps a sister of his own. the comfortable bed, the dainty furniture, are carefully drawn. the clear morning light streams into the room. the saint lies peacefully asleep, her hand under her head, her long eyelashes resting upon her cheek: the whole is an idyll, full of insight into girlish life. the tiny slippers made, no doubt, one of the details that caught his eye. the crown lying on the ledge of the bed is an arbitrary introduction, as naïf as the angel. in the funeral scene the luminous light is diffused over all, the young saint lies upon her bier and is followed by priest and deacon, the crowd is composed with truth to nature, the draperies and garments are brought into harmony with the sky and background, and in all those that follow we find this quality of light. the landscape behind the massacre has gained in natural character, the city is at some distance, houses and churches are half buried in woods; the setting is much more natural than are the quaint and elegant pages who occupy it, and who are drawing their crossbows and attacking the martyrs with leisurely nonchalance. the panel in which the betrothed couple meet shows a great advance, and this and the succeeding ones of the ambassadors, which were painted between and , must have crowned carpaccio's reputation. he paints venice in its most fascinating aspect; the enamelled beauty of its marbles, its sky and sea, its palaces and ships, the rich and picturesque dresses men wore in the streets, the barge glowing with rich velvets. he evinces a fairy-tale spirit which we may compare with the work of pintoricchio. his prince, kneeling in a white and gold dress, with long fair curls, is a real fairy prince; ursula, in her red dress and puffed sleeves, her rippling, flaxen hair and strings of pearls, is a princess of story. carpaccio's art is simple and garrulous in feeling, his conception is as unpassionate as the fancies of a child, but he has a true love for these gay crowds; venice going upon her gallant way--her solid, worthy citizens, men of substance, shrewd and valuable, taking their pleasure seriously with a sense of responsibility. they throng the streets and cross over the bridges, every figure is full of freedom and vitality. the arrival and dismissal of the ambassadors are the best of all the scenes. in the middle of the great stage king maurus of brittany sits upon a venetian terrace. in the colonnade to the left is gathered a group of venetian personages, members of the loredano family, which was a special patron of st. ursula's guild, and gave this panel. the types are all vividly realised and differentiated: the courtier looking critically at the arrivals; the frankly curious bourgeoisie; the man of fashion passing with his nose in the air, disdaining to stare too closely; the fop with his dogs and their dwarf keeper. far beyond stretch the lagoons; the sea and air of venice clear and fresh. what is noticeable even now in an italian crowd, the absence of women, was then most true to life, for except on special occasions they were not seen in the streets, but were kept in almost oriental seclusion. the dismissal of the ambassadors affords the opportunity for drawing an interior with the street visible through a doorway. a group at the side, of a man dictating a letter and the scribe taking down his words, writing laboriously, with his shoulders hunched and his head on one side, is excellent in its quiet reality. the same life-like vivacity is displayed in ursula's consultation with her father. the old nurse crouched upon the steps is introduced to break the line and to throw back the main group. carpaccio has already used such a figure in the funeral scene, and titian himself adopts his suggestion. [illustration: _carpaccio._ arrival of the ambassadors. _venice._ (_photo, anderson._)] carpaccio is not a very great painter, but a charming one. his treatment of light and water, of distant hills and trees, shows a sense of peace and poetry, and though he is influenced by gentile's splendid realistic heads, the type which appeals to him is gentler and more idealised. his fancy is caught by oriental details, to which gentile would naturally have directed his attention, and of which there was no lack in venice at this time. all his episodes are very clearly illustrated, and his popular brush was kept busily employed. he took a share with other assistants in the series which gentile was painting in s. giovanni evangelista. in the dalmatians inhabiting venice resolved to decorate their school, which had been founded fifty years earlier, for the relief of destitute dalmatian seamen in venice. the subjects were to be selected from the lives of the saviour and the patron saints of dalmatia and albania, st. jerome, st. george of the sclavonians, and st. tryphonius. the nine panels and an altarpiece which carpaccio delivered between and still adorn the small but dignified hall of the school. his "jerome in his study" has nothing ascetic, but shows a prosperous venetian ecclesiastic seated in his well-furnished library among his books and writings. he is less successful in his scenes from the life of christ; the gethsemane is an obvious imitation of mantegna; but when he leaves his own style he is weak and poor, and imaginary scenes are quite beyond him. in the death and interment of st. jerome he gives a delightful impression of the peace of the old convent garden, and in the scene where the lion introduced by the saint scatters the terrified monks he lets a sense of humour have free play. the monks in their long garments, escaping in all directions, are really comical, and in conjunction with the ingratiating smile of the lion, the scene passes into the region of broad farce. we divine the same sense of the comic in the scene in st. ursula's history, where the , virgins are hurrying in single file along a winding road which disappears out of the picture. in the principal scene in the life of st. george, carpaccio again achieves a masterpiece. the force and vivacity of the saint in armour charging the dragon, lingers long in the memory. the long, decorative lines of lance and war-horse and dragon throw back the whole landscape. the details show an almost childish delight in the realisation of ghoulish horrors. he rather injures his "triumph of st. george" by his anxiety to bring in the temple of solomon at jerusalem; the flying flags distract the eye, and the whole scene is one of confusion, broken up into different parts, while the dragon is reduced to very unterrifying insignificance. his series for the school of the albanians dealt with the life of the virgin, who was their special patron. its remains are at bergamo, milan, and in the academy. the single figures in the "presentation," the priest and maiden, are excellent. a child at the side of the steps, leading a unicorn, emblem of chastity, shows once more what a hold this use of a figure had taken of him. in the "visitation" the figures are too much scattered, and the fantastic buildings attract more attention than the women. he still produced altarpieces, and the presentation of the infant christ in the temple, which he was called upon to paint for san giobbe, where one of bellini's most famous altarpieces stood, challenged him to put forth all his strength. he never produced anything more simple and noble or more worthy of the cinque-cento than this altarpiece (now in the academy). it surpasses bellini's arrangement in the way in which the personages are raised upon a step, while the dome overhead and the angel musicians below give them height and dignity. the contrast between the infant and the youthful woman and the old men is purposely marked. such a contrast between youth and age is a very favourite one. bellini, in the same church, draws it between ss. sebastian and job, and alvise vivarini, in his last painting, balances a very youthful sebastian with st. jerome. this is the most grandiose, the least of a _genre_ picture of all carpaccio's creations, although he does make simeon into a pontiff with attendant cardinals bearing his train. one of his last works is the s. vitale over the high altar of the church of that name, where we forgive the wooden appearance of the horse which the saint rides for the sake of the simple dignity of the rider and the airy effect given by the balcony overhead. nor must we forget that study of the "two courtesans" in the museo civico, full of the sarcasm of a deep realism. it conveys to us the matter-of-fact monotony of the long, hot days, and the women and the animals with which they are beguiling their idle hours are painted with the greatest intelligence. it carries us back to another phase of life in carpaccio's venice, seen through his observant, humorous eyes, and if there is nothing in his colour distinctive of the impending venetian richness, it is still arresting in its brilliant limpidity; it seems drawn straight from the transparent canals and radiant lagoons. we apprehend the difference at once in bastiani and in mansueti, who essay the same sort of compositions. they studied grouping carefully, and it must have seemed easy enough to paint their careful architecture and to place citizens in costume with appropriate action in a "miracle of the cross," or the "preaching of st. mark"; but these pictures are dry and crowded, they give no illusion of truth, there is none of the careless realism of carpaccio's crowds,--of incidents taking place which are not essential to the story, and, as in life, are only half seen, but which have their share in producing a full and varied illusion. the scenes want the air and depth in which carpaccio's pictures are enveloped. we are not stimulated and charmed, taken into the outer air and refreshed by these heavy personages, standing in rows, painted in hot, dry colour, and carrying no conviction in their glance and action. principal works berlin. madonna and saints; consecration of stephen. ferrara. death of virgin. milan. presentation of virgin; marriage of virgin; st. stephen disputing. paris. st. stephen preaching. stuttgart. martyrdom of st. stephen. venice. academy: the history of st. ursula and the , virgins; presentation in the temple. museo correr: visitation; two courtesans. s. giorgio degli schiavone: history of ss. george and tryphonius; agony in the garden; christ in the house of the pharisee; history of st. jerome. s. vitale: altarpiece to s. vitale. lady layard. death of the virgin; st. ursula taking leave of her father. vienna. christ adored by angels. chapter xi giovanni bellini the difference between gian. bellini and his accomplished brother, that which makes us so conscious that the first was the greater of the two and which sets him in a later artistic generation than gentile, is a difference of mind. such pageant-pictures as we hear that giovanni was engaged upon have all been destroyed. we may suspect that their composition was not particularly congenial to him, and that the strictly religious pictures and the small allegorical studies, by which we must judge him, were more after his heart. it is his poetic and ideal feeling which adds so strongly to his claim to be a great artist; it was this which drew all men to him and enabled him so powerfully to influence the art of his day in venice. jacopo's wife, anna, in a will of , leaves everything to her two sons, gentile and niccolo. giovanni was evidently not her son, but vasari speaks of him as the elder of the two, so that it is very possible that he was an illegitimate child, brought up, after the fashion that so often obtained, in the full privileges of his father's house. documents show that jacopo bellini was living in venice in , first near the piazza, and afterwards in the parish of san lio. he was a member of s. giovanni evangelista, and probably one of the leading artists of the city. his two sons helped him in his great decorative works, and also went with him to padua, where he painted the gattamalata chapel. their relative position is suggested by a document of , which records that the father received twenty-one ducats for "three figures, done on cloth, put in the great hall of the patriarch," only two of which were to go to the son. in gian. bellini's signature first appears on a document, and at about this time we may suppose that he and his brother began to execute small commissions on their own account. on these visits to padua the intimacy must have sprung up, which led to mantegna's marriage in with jacopo's daughter. at padua, too, bellini, in company with mantegna, drank in the inspiration left there by donatello, the greatest master that either of them encountered. it was the humanistic and naturalistic side of donatello which touched giovanni bellini, more than all his classic lore. it chimed in, too, with his father's graceful and fanciful quality, and there is no doubt that the venetian painters soon exercised a marked influence on mantegna. they "fought for him with squarcione," and even in the eremitani frescoes he begins to lose his purely statuesque type and to become frankly renaissance. in the later scenes of the series a pergola with grapes, a venetian campanile and doorway replace his classic towers and arches of triumph. in the "martyrdom of st. james" the couple walking by and paying no attention whatever to the tragic event, are very like the people whom gentile introduces in his backgrounds. there are few documents more interesting in the history of art than the two pictures of the "agony in the garden," executed by the brothers-in-law, about , from a design by jacopo in the british museum sketch-book. jacopo draws the mound-like hill, christ kneeling before the vision of the chalice, the figures wrapt in slumber, and the distant town. in few pictures up to this time is the landscape conceived in such sympathy with the figures. as we look at this sketch and examine the two finished compositions, which it is so fortunate to find in juxtaposition in the national gallery, we surmise that the two artists agreed to carry out the same idea and each to give his version of jacopo's suggestion, and very curious it is to see the rendering each has produced. mantegna has made use of the most formal and squarcionesque contours in his surroundings. the rocks are of an unnatural, geological structure. the towers of jerusalem are defined in elaborate perspective, and a band of classic figures fills the middle distance. the sleeping forms of the disciples are laid about like so many draped statues taken from their pedestals. the choir of child angels is solid and leaves nothing to the imagination, and if it were not for the beautifully conceived christ, the whole composition would leave us quite unmoved. on the other hand, we can never look at bellini's version without a fresh thrill. he, like mantegna, has followed jacopo's scheme of winding roads and the city "set on a hill," and has drawn the advancing band of soldiers; but, independent of all details, he gives us the vision of a poet. the still dawn is breaking over the broadly painted landscape, the rosy shafts of light are colouring the sky and casting their magic over every common object, and, lonely and absorbed, the sacred figure kneels, wrapt into the heavenly vision, which is hardly more definite than a stronger beam of light upon the radiance. one of the disciples, at least, is a successful and natural study of a tired-out man, whose head has fallen back and whose every limb has relaxed in sleep. bellini is less assured, less accomplished than mantegna, but he is able to touch us with the pathos of both natural and spiritual feeling. even earlier than this picture, critics place the "crucifixion" and "transfiguration" of the museo correr and our own "salvator mundi." in , when giovanni was a young man of four or five and twenty, san bernardino had held a great revival at padua, and the whole of venice had thronged to hear him. it is very possible, as mr. roger fry suggests in his _life of bellini_, that giovanni's emotional temperament had been worked upon by the preacher's eloquence, and the very poignant feelings of love and pity which his early art expresses were the deliberate consequence of his sympathy with the deep religious mysteries expounded. in the two pictures in the correr, bellini is still going with the paduan current. in both we have the winding roads so characteristic of his father, but the rocks in the "transfiguration" have the jointed, arbitrary character of mantegna's and the draperies are plastered to the forms beneath; yet the figures here have a beauty and a dignity which no reproduction seems able to convey. the feeling is already more imposing than the execution. christ and the two prophets tower up against the belt of clouds, the central figure conveying a sense of pathetic isolation; while below, st. john's attitude betrays a state of tension, the feet being drawn up and contorted. this picture prepares us for the overwhelming emotion we find in the "redeemer" and the group of pietàs. the treatment of the christ was a development of the early _motif_ of angels flying forward on either side of the cross, but here the sacred blood pouring into the chalice is also sacramental and connected with the intensified religious fervour which had led to the foundation of the franciscan and dominican orders, illustrations of which are met with in the miniatures and wood-engravings of fifteenth-century books of devotion. the accessories, the antique reliefs, the low wall, the distant buildings, have an allegorical meaning underlying each one, and common to trecento and, in a less degree, to quattrocento art. paradise regained is signified by the paved court with the open door, in contradistinction to the hortus clausus, or enclosed court; the type of the old covenant. in one of the bas-reliefs mucius scaevola thrusts his hand into the fire, the ancient type of heroic readiness to suffer. the other represents a pagan sacrifice, foreshadowing the sacrifice upon the cross. figures in the background are leaving a ruined temple and making their way towards the new christian city, fortified and crowned with a church tower, and in the midst of all this symbolism, christ and the attendant angel are placed, vibrating with nervous feeling. during the next few years, bellini devoted himself to two subjects of the highest devotional order. these are the madonna and child, the great exercise in every age for painters, and the pietà, which he has made peculiarly his own. [illustration: _giovanni bellini._ pietÀ. _brera, milan._ (_photo, brogi._)] close by, at padua, giotto had left a rendering of the last subject, so full of passionate sorrow that it is hardly possible that it should not, if only half consciously, have stimulated the artistic sensibilities of the most sensitive of painters; but bellini's pathos shrinks from all exaggeration. he conceives grief with the tenderest insight. his interest in the subject was so intense that he never left the execution to others, and though not a single one bears his signature, yet each is entirely by his own hand. besides the pietà at milan, which is perhaps the best known, there is one in the correr museum, another in the doge's palace, and yet others at rimini and at berlin. the version he adopts, which places the body of christ within the sarcophagus, was a favourite in north italy. donatello uses it in a bas-relief (now in the victoria and albert museum), but whether he brought or found the suggestion in padua nothing exists to show. jacopo has left sketches in which the whole group is within the tomb, and this rendering is followed by carpaccio, crivelli, marco zoppo, and others. it is never found in trecento art, and is probably traceable to the paduan impulse to make use of classic remains. giovanni bellini's pietàs fall into two groups. in one, the christ is placed between the virgin and st. john, who are embodiments of the agony of bereavement. in the other, the dead redeemer is supported by angels, who express the amazement and grief of immortal beings who see their lord suffering an indignity from which they are immune. mary and st. john _inside_ the sarcophagus shows that they are conceived mystically; mary as the church, and st. john as the personification of christian philosophy--a significance frequently attached to these figures. such a picture was designed to hang over the altar, at which the mystical sacrifice of the mass was perpetually offered. in his treatment of the brera example bellini has shaken off the paduan tradition, and is forming his own style and giving free play to his own feeling. the winding roads and evening sky, barred with clouds, are the accessories he used in the "agony in the garden," but the figures are treated much more boldly; the drapery falls in broad masses, and scarcely a trace is left of sculpturesque treatment. careful as is the study of the nude, everything is subordinated to the emotion expressed by the three figures: the helpless, indifferent calm of the dead, the tender solicitude of the mother, the wandering, dazed look of the despairing friend. here there is nothing of beautiful or pathetic symbol; the group is intense with the common sorrow of all the world. mary presses the corpse to her as if to impart her own life, and gazes with anguished yearning on the beloved face. bellini seems to have passed to a more complex age in his analysis of suffering, yet here is none of the extravagance which the primitive masters share with the caracci: his restraint is as admirable as his intensity. in the rimini version the tender concern and questioning surprise of the attendant angels contrast with the inert weight of the beautiful dead body they support. their childish limbs and butterfly wings make a sinuous pattern against the lacquered black of the ground-work, and mr. roger fry makes the interesting suggestion that the effect, reminiscent of greek vase-painting, and the likeness of the head of christ to an old bronze, may, in a composition painted for sigismondo malatesta, be no mere accident, but a concession to the patron's enthusiasm for classic art. in bellini received his first commission in the scuola di san marco. gentile had been employed there since on the history of the israelites in the desert. bellini agreed to paint "the deluge and the ark of noah" with all its attendant circumstances, but of these, except from vasari's descriptions, we can form no idea. these great pageant-pictures had become identified with the bellini and their following, while the production of altarpieces was peculiarly the province of the vivarini. here bellini effected a change, for sacred subjects best suited the restrained and simple perfection of his style, and afforded the most sympathetic opening for his idealistic spirit. for the next twenty years or more, however, he was unavoidably absorbed in public work, for we hear of his being given the direction of that which gentile left unfinished in the ducal palace when he went to the east in . in , giovanni being ill, gentile superintended the work for him, and in that year he was appointed to paint in the hall of the grand council, at an annual salary of sixty ducats. other commissions were turned out of the _bottega_ he had set up with his brother in , and between that year and he went to pesaro to paint the important altarpiece that still holds its place there. it is in some ways the greatest and most powerful thing that bellini ever accomplished. the central figures and the attendant saints have a large gravity and carefully studied individuality. st. jerome, absorbed in his theological books, an ascetic recluse, is admirably contrasted with the sympathetic, cultured st. paul. the landscape, set in a marble frame, is a gem of beauty, and proves what an appeal nature was making to the painter. the predella, illustrating the principal scenes in the lives of the saints around the altar, is full of oriental costumes. the horses are small eastern horses, very unlike the ponderous italian war-horse, and the whole is evidently inspired by the sketches which gentile brought back on his return from constantinople in . looking from one to another of the cycle of madonna pictures which bellini produced, and of which so many hang side by side in the academy, we are able to note how his conception varied. in one of the earliest the child lies across its mother's knee, in the attitude borrowed from his father and the vivarini, from whom, too, he takes the uplifted hands, placed palm to palm. the earlier pictures are of the gentle and adoring type, but his later madonnas are stately venetian ladies. he gives us a queenly woman, with full throat and stately poise, in the madonna degli alberi, in which the two little trees are symbols of the old and new testament; or, again, he paints a lovely intellectual face with chiselled and refined features, and sad dark eyes, and contrasts it dramatically with the bluff st. george in armour; and there is another madonna between st. francis and st. catherine, a picture which has a curious effect of artificial light. chapter xii giovanni bellini (_continued_) in the maggior consiglio of the venetian republic appointed bellini superintendent of the great hall, and conferred on him the honourable title of state painter. in this capacity he was the overseer of all public works of painting, and was expected to devote a part of his time to the decoration of the hall. sansovino enumerates nine of his historical paintings, which had been painted before the state appointment, all having reference to the visit of pope alexander; but though he must have been much engrossed, he seems to have suspended the work from time to time, for between and he painted the large altarpiece in the frari, that at san pietro in murano, and the one in the academy, which was painted for san giobbe. of these three, the last shows the greatest advance and is fullest of experiment. the madonna is a grand ecclesiastical figure. it has been said with truth that it is a picture which must have afforded great support and dignity to the church. the infant has an expression of omniscience, and the mother gazes out of the picture, extending invitation and encouragement to the advancing worshippers. the religious feeling is less profound; the artist has been more absorbed in the contrast between the beautiful, youthful body of st. sebastian and that of st. giobbe, older but not emaciated, and with the exquisite surface that his now complete mastery of oil-painting enabled him to produce. this technique has evidently been a great delight, and is here carried to perfection; the skin of st. sebastian gleams with a gloss like the coat of a horse in high condition. everything that architecture, sculpture, and rich material can supply is borrowed to enhance the grandeur of the group; but the line of sight is still close to the bottom of the picture, and if it were not for the exquisite grace with which the angels are placed, the madonna would have a broad, clumsy effect. the madonna of the frari is the most splendid in colour of all his works. as he paints the rich light of a golden interior and the fused and splendid colours, he seems to pass out of his own time and gives a foretaste of the glory that is to follow. the murano altarpiece is quite a different conception; instead of the seclusion of the sanctuary, it is a smiling, _plein air_ scene: the mother benign, the child soft and playful, the old doge barbarigo and the patron saints kneeling among bright birds, and a garden and mediæval townlet filling up the background, for which, by the way, he uses the same sketch as in the pesaro picture. it says much for his versatility that he could within a short time produce three such different versions. among bellini's most fascinating achievements in the last years of the fifteenth century are his allegorical paintings, known to us by the "pélerinage de l'Âme" in the uffizi and the little series in the academy. the meaning of the first has been unravelled by dr. ludwig from a mediæval poem by guillaume de guilleville, a cistercian monk who wrote about , and it is interesting to see the hold it has taken on bellini's mystic spirit. the paved space, set within the marble rail, signifies, as in the "salvator mundi," the paradise where souls await the resurrection. the new-born souls cluster round the tree of life and shake its boughs. the poem says: there is no pilgrim who is not sometimes sad who has not those who wound his heart, and to whom it is not often necessary to play and be solaced and be soothed like a child with something comforting. know that those playing there in order to allay their sorrow have found beneath that tree an apple that great comfort gives to those that play with it.[ ] [ ] this translation is by miss cameron taylor. [illustration: _giovanni bellini._ an allegory. _florence._ (_photo, anderson._)] this may be an allusion to sacramental comfort. st. peter and st. paul guard the door, beside which the madonna and a saint sit in holy conversation. a very beautiful figure on the left, wrapped in a black shawl, requires explanation, and it has been suggested that it is the donor, a woman who may have lost husband and children, and who, still in life, is introduced, watching the happiness of the souls in paradise. ss. giobbe and sebastian, who might have stepped out of the san giobbe altarpiece, are obviously the patron saints of the family, and st. catherine, at the virgin's side, may be the donor's own saint. this picture, with its delicious landscape bathed in atmospheric light, is a forerunner of those giorgionesque compositions of "pure and unquestioning delight in the sensuous charm of rare and beautiful things" in which the artistic nature is even more engrossed than with the intellectual conception, and within its small space bellini seems to have enshrined all his artistic creed. the allegories in the academy are also full of meaning. they are decorative works, and were probably painted for some small cabinet. they seem too small for a cassone. they are ruined by over-painting, but still full of grace and fancy. the figure in the classic chariot, bearing fruit, in the encounter between luxury and industry, is drawn from jacopo's triumphant bacchus. fortune floats in her barque, holding the globe, and the souls who gather round her are some full of triumphant success, others clinging to her for comfort, while several are sinking, overwhelmed in the dark waters. "prudence," the only example of a female nude in bellini's works, holds a looking-glass. hypocrisy or calumny is torn writhing from his refuge. the summa virtus is an ugly representation of all the virtues; a waddling deformity with eyes bound holds the scales of justice; the pitcher in its hand means prudence, and the gold upon its feet symbolises charity. the landscape, both of this and of the "fortune," resembles that which he was painting in his larger works at the end of the century. soon after bellini entered into relations with isabela d'este, marchioness of gonzaga. that distinguished collector and connoisseur writes through her agent to get the promise of a picture, "a story or fable of antiquity," to be placed in position with the allegories which mantegna had contributed to her "paradiso." bellini agreed to supply this, and received twenty-five ducats on account. he seems, however, to have felt that he would be at a disadvantage in competing with mantegna on his own ground, and asks to be allowed to choose his subject. isabela was unwillingly obliged to content herself with a sacred picture, and a "nativity" was selected. she is at once full of suggestions, desiring to add a st. john baptist, whom bellini demurs at introducing except as a child, but in april the commission is still unaccomplished, and isabela angrily demands the return of her money. this brings a letter of humble apology from bellini, and presently the picture is forwarded. lorenzo of pavia writes that it is quite beautiful, and that "though giovanni has behaved as badly as possible, yet the bad must be taken with the good." the joy of its acquisition appeased isabela, who at once began to lay plans to get a further work out of bellini, and in bembo wrote to her that he would take a fresh commission always providing he might fix the subject. from the catalogue of her mantovan pictures we gather that the picture "sul asse" (on panel) represented the "b.v., il putto, s. giovanni battista, s. giovanni evangelista, s. girolamo, and santa caterina." the great altarpieces which remain strike us less by their research, their preoccupation with new problems of paint or grouping, than by their intense delight in beauty. bellini was now nearly eighty years old, and in the young giorgione had proclaimed a revolution in art with his castelfranco madonna. in composition and detail the madonna of san zaccaria is in some degree a protest against the arcadian, innovating fashion of approaching a religious scene, of which the church had long since decided on the treatment, yet bellini cannot escape the indirect suggestion of the new manner. the same leaven was at work in him which was transforming the men of a younger generation. in this altarpiece, in the baptism at vicenza, in others, perhaps, which have perished, and above all in the hermit saint in s. giovanni crisostomo he is linked in feeling and in treatment with the later venetian school. the new device, which he adopts quite naturally, of raising the line of sight, sets the figures in increased depth. for the first time he gives height and majesty to the young mother by carrying the draperies down over the steps. he realises to the full the contrast between the young, fragile heads of his girl-saints and the dark, venerable countenances of the old men. the head of s. lucy, detaching itself like a flower upon its stem, reminds us of the type which we saw in his watcher in the sacred allegory of the uffizi. the arched, dome-like niche opens on a distance bathed in golden light. bellini keeps the traditions of the old hieratic art, but he has grasped a new perfection of feeling and atmosphere. who the saints are matters little; it is the collective enjoyment of a company of congenial people that pleases us so much. the "baptism" in s. corona, at vicenza, painted sixteen years later than cima's in s. giovanni in bragora, is in frank imitation of the younger man. christ and the baptist, traditional figures, are drawn without much zest, in a weak, conventional way, but the artist's true interest comes out in the beauty of face and gesture of the group of women holding the garments, and above all in the sombre gloom of the distance, which replaces cima's charming landscape, and which keys the whole picture to the significance of a portent. in the enthronement of the old hermit, s. chrysostom himself, painted in , bellini keeps his love for the golden dome, but he lets us look through its arch, at rolling mountain solitudes, with mists rising between their folds. the geranium robe of the saint, an exquisite, vivid bit of colouring, is caught by the golden sunset rays, the fine ascetic head stands out against the evening sky, and in the faces of the two saints who stand on either side of the aged visionary bellini has gone back to all his old intensity of religious feeling, a feeling which he seemed for a time to have exchanged for a more pagan tone. in , at gentile's death, giovanni undertook, at his brother's dying request, to finish the "preaching of st. mark," receiving as a recompense that coveted sketch-book of his father's, from which he had adopted so many suggestions, and which, though he was the eldest, had been inherited by the legitimate son. in the preceding year albert dürer had visited venice for the second time, and bellini had received him with great cordiality. dürer writes, "bellini is very old, but is still the best painter in venice"; and adds, "the things i admired on my last visit, i now do not value at all." implying that he was able now to see how superior bellini was to the hitherto more highly esteemed vivarini. at the very end of bellini's life, in , the duke of ferrara paid him eighty-five ducats for a painting of "bacchanals," now at alnwick castle; which may be looked upon as an open confession by one who had always considered himself as a painter of distinctively religious works, that such a gay scene of feasting afforded opportunities which he could not resist, for beauty of attitude and colour; but the gods, sitting at their banquet in a sunny glade, are almost fully draped, and there is little of the _abandon_ which was affected by later painters. the picture was left unfinished, and was later given to titian to complete. in his capacity as state painter to the republic, it was bellini's duty to execute the official portraits of the doges. during his long life he saw eleven reigns, and during four he held the state appointment. besides the official, he painted private portraits of the doges, and that of doge loredano, in the national gallery, is one of the most perfect presentments of the quattrocento. this portrait, painted by one old man of another, shows no weakening in touch or characterisation. it is as brilliant and vigorous as it is direct and simple. the face is quiet and unexaggerated; there is no unnatural fire and feeling, but an air of accustomed dignity and thought, while the technique has all the perfection of the painter's prime. in giovanni was buried in the church of ss. giovanni and paolo, by the side of his brother gentile. to the last he was popular and famous, overwhelmed with attentions from the most distinguished personages of the city. though he had begun life when art showed such a different aspect, he was by nature so imbued with that temperament, which at the time of his death was beginning to assert itself in the younger school, that he was able to assimilate a really astonishing share of the new manner. he is guided by feeling more than by intellect. all the time he is working out problems, he is dominated by the emotion of his subject, but his emotion, his pathos, are invariably tempered and restrained by the calm moderation of the quattrocento. the golden mean still has command of bellini, and never allows his feelings, however poignant, to degenerate into sentimentality or violence. principal works bergamo. lochis: madonna (e.). morelli: two madonnas. berlin. pietà (l.); dead christ. florence. uffizi: allegory; the souls in paradise (l.). london. portrait of doge (l.); madonna (l.); agony in garden (e.); salvator mundi (e.). milan. brera: pietà (e.); madonna; madonna, . mond collection. dead christ; madonna (e.). murano. s. pietro: madonna with saints and doge barbarigo, . naples. sala grande: transfiguration. pesaro. s. francesco: altarpiece. rimini. dead christ (e.). venice. academy: three madonnas; five small allegorical paintings (l.); madonna with ss. catherine and magdalene; madonna with ss. paul and george; madonna with five saints. museo correr: crucifixion (e.); transfiguration (e.); dead christ; dead christ with angels. palazzo ducale, sala di tre: pietà (e.). frari: triptych; madonna and saints, . s. giovanni crisostomo: s. chrysostom with ss. jerome and augustine, . s. maria dell' orto: madonna (e.). s. zaccaria: madonna and saints, . vicenza. s. corona: baptism, . chapter xiii cima da conegliano and other followers of bellini the rising tide of feeling, the growing sense of the joy of life and the apprehension of pure beauty, which was strengthening in the people and leading up to the great period of venetian art, flooded round bellini and recognised its expression in him. he was more popular and had a larger following among the artists of his day than either gentile or carpaccio with their frankly mundane talent. whatever giovanni's state works may have been, his religious paintings are the ones which are copied and adapted and studied by the younger band of artists, and this because of their beauty and notwithstanding their conventional subjects. gentile's pageant-pictures have still something cold and colourless, with a touch of the archaic, while giovanni's religious altarpieces evince a new freedom of handling, a modern conception of beautiful women, a use of that colour which was soon to reign triumphant. as far as it went indeed, its triumph was already assured; as giovanni advanced towards old age, it was no longer of any use for the young masters of the day to paint in any way save the one he had made popular, and one artist after another who had begun in the school of alvise vivarini ended as the disciple of giovanni bellini. it was the habit of bellini to trust much to his assistants, and as everything that went out of his workshop was signed by his name, even if it only represented the use of one of his designs, or a few words of advice, and was "passed" by the master, it is no wonder that european collections were flooded with works, among which only lately the names of catena, previtali, pennacchi, marco belli, bissolo, basaiti, rondinelli, and others begin to be disentangled. only one of his followers stands out as a strong and original master, not quite of the first class, but developing his own individuality while he draws in much of what both alvise and bellini had to give. cima da conegliano, whose real name was giovanni battista, always signs himself _coneglianensis_: the title of cima, "the rock," by which he is now so widely known, having first been mentioned in the seventeenth century by boschini, and perhaps given him by that writer himself. he was a son of the mountains, who, though he came early to venice, and lived there most of his life, never loses something of their wild freshness, and to the end delights in bringing them into his backgrounds. he lived with his mother at conegliano, the beautiful town of the trevisan marches, until , when he was twenty-five, and then came down to vicenza, where he fell under the tuition of bartolommeo montagna, a vicentine painter, who had been studying both with alvise and bellini. cima's "madonna with saints," painted for the church of st. bartolommeo, vicenza, in , shows him still using the old method of tempera, in a careful, cold, painstaking style, yet already showing his own taste. the composition has something of alvise, yet that something has been learned through the agency of montagna, for the figures have the latter's severity and austere character and the colour is clearer and more crude than alvise's. it is no light resemblance, and he must have been long with montagna. in the type of the christ in montagna's pietà at monte berico, in the fondness for airy porticoes, in the architecture and main features of his "madonna enthroned" in the museo civico at vicenza, we see characteristics which cima followed, though he interpreted them in his own way. he turns the heavy arches and domes that alvise loved, into airy pergolas, decked with vines. he gives increasing importance to high skies and to atmospheric distances. when he got to venice in , he began to paint in oils, and undertook the panel of s. john baptist with attendant saints, still in the church of s. madonna dell' orto. the work of this is rather angular and tentative, but true and fresh, and he comes to his best soon after, in the "baptism" in s. giovanni in bragora, which bellini, sixteen years later, paid him the compliment of copying. it was quite unusual to choose such a subject for the high altar, and could only be justified by devotion to the baptist, who was cima's own name-saint as well as that of the church. cima is here at his very highest; the composition is not derived from any one else, but is all the conception of an ingenuous soul, full of intuition and insight. the christ is particularly fine and simple, unexaggerated in pose and type; the arm of the baptist is too long, but the very fault serves to give him a refined, tentative look, which makes a sympathetic appeal. the attendant angels look on with an air of sweet interest. the distant mountains, the undulating country, the little town of conegliano, identified by the castle on its great rock, or _cima_, are arcadian in their sunny beauty. the clouds, as a critic has pointed out, are full of sun, not of rain. the landscape has not the sombre mystery of titian's, but is bright with the joyous delight of a lover of outdoor life. as cima masters the new medium he becomes larger and simpler, and his forms lose much of their early angularity. a confraternity of his native town ordered the grand altarpiece which is still in the cathedral there, and in this he shows his connection with venice; the architecture is partly taken from st. mark's, the lovely madonna head recalls bellini, and a group of bellinesque angels play instruments at the foot of the throne. cima is, however, never merged in bellini. he keeps his own clearly defined, angular type; his peculiar, twisted curls are not the curls of bellini's saints, his treatment of surface is refined, enamel-like, perfectly finished, but it has nothing of the rich, broken treatment which bellini's natural feeling for colour was beginning to dictate. cima's pale golden figures have an almost metallic sharpness and precision, and though they are full of charm and refinement, they may be thought lacking in spontaneity and passion. to belongs the "incredulity of st. thomas," now in the academy, but painted for the guild of masons. it is a picture full of expression and dignity, broad in treatment if a little cold in its self-restraint. cima seems to have not quite enough intellect, and not quite enough strong feeling. however, the little altarpiece of the nativity, in the church of the carmine in venice, has a richer, fuller touch, and this foreshadows the work he did when he went to parma, where his transparent shadows grow broader and stronger, and his figures gain in ease and freedom. he never loses the delicate radiance of his lights, and his types and his architecture alike convey something of a peculiarly refined, brilliant elegance. like all these men of great energy and prolific genius, cima produced an astonishing number of panels and altarpieces, and no doubt had pupils on his own account, for a goodly list could be made of pictures in his style, but not by his own hand, which have been carried by collectors into widely-scattered places. his exquisite surface and finish and his marked originality make him a difficult master to imitate with any success. his latest work is dated , but ridolfi says he lived till , and it seems probable that he returned to his beloved conegliano and there passed his last years. if cima possessed originality, vincenzo of treviso, called catena, gained an immense reputation by his industry and his power of imitating and adopting the manner of bellini's school. in those days men did not trouble themselves much as to whether they were original or not. they worked away on traditional compositions, frankly introducing figures from their master's cartoons, modifying a type here, making some little experiment or arrangement there, and, as a french critic puts it, leaving their own personality to "hatch out" in due time, if it existed, and when it was sufficiently ripened by real mastery of their art. it is here that catena fails; beginning as a journeyman in the sala del gran consiglio, at a salary of three ducats a month, he for long failed to acquire the absolute mastery of drawing which was possessed by the better disciples of the schools. but he is painstaking, determined to get on, and eager to satisfy the continually increasing demand for work. his draperies are confused and unmeaning, his faces round, with small features, inexpressive button mouths, and weak chins, and his flesh tints have little of the glow which is later the prerogative of every second-rate painter. yet catena succeeds, like many another careful mediocre man, in securing patronage, and as the sixteenth century opened he gained the distinction from doge loredano of a commission to paint the altarpiece for the pregadi chapel of the sala di tre, in the ducal palace. he adapts his group from that of bellini in the cathedral of murano, bringing in a profile portrait of the kneeling doge, of which he afterwards made numerous copies, one of which was for long assigned to gentile and one to giovanni bellini. that catena is not without charm, we discern in such a composition as his "martyrdom of st. cristina," in s. maria mater domini, in which the saint, a solid, bellinesque figure, kneels upon the water, in which she met her death, and is surrounded by little angels, holding up the millstone tied round her neck, and laden with other instruments of her martyrdom. catena borrows right and left, and tries to follow every new indication of contemporary taste. for instance, he remarks the growing admiration for colour, and hopes by painting gay, flat tints, in bright contrast, to produce the desired effect. it is evident that he made many friends among the rich connoisseurs of the time, and that his importance was out of proportion to his real merit. marcantonio michele, writing an account of raphael's last days to a friend in venice, and touching on michelangelo's illness, begs him to see that catena takes care of himself, "as the times are unfavourable to great painters." catena had acquired and inherited considerable wealth; he came of a family of merchants, and resided in his own house in san bartolommeo del rialto. he lived in unmarried relations with dona maria fustana, the daughter of a furrier, to whom he bequeaths in his will ducats and all his personal effects. as a careful portrait-painter, with a talent for catching a likeness, he was in constant demand, and in some of his heads--that of a canon dressed in blue and red, at vienna, and especially in one of a member of the fugger family, now at dresden--he attains real distinction. and in his last phase he does at length prove the power that lies behind long industry and perseverance. suddenly the giorgionesque influence strikes him, and turning to imbibe this new element, he produces that masterpiece which throws a glamour over all his mediocre performances; his "warrior adoring the infant christ," in the national gallery, is a picture full of charm, rich and romantic in tone and spirit. the virgin and the child upon her knee are of his dull round-eyed type, the form and colours of her draperies are still unsatisfactory, but the knight in armour with his eastern turban, the romantic young page, holding his horse, are pure giorgionesque figures. beautiful in themselves, set in a beautiful landscape glowing with light and air, the whole picture exemplifies what surprising excellence could be suddenly attained by even very inferior artists, who were constantly associating with greater men, at a moment when the whole air was, as it were, vibrating with genius. catena was very much addicted to making his will, and at least five testaments or codicils exist, one of them devising a sum of money for the benefit of the school of painters in venice, and another leaving to his executor, prior ignatius, the picture of a "st. jerome in his cell," which may be the one in our national collection, which remained in venice till . it is painted in his gay tones, imitating basaiti and lotto, and brings in the partridge of which he made a sort of sign manual. cardinal bembo writes in to pietro lippomano, to announce that, at his request, he is continuing his patronage of catena: though i had done all that lay in my power for vincenzo catena before i received your lordship's warm recommendation in his favour, i did not hesitate, on receipt of your letter, to add something to the first piece i had from him, and i did so because of my love and reverence for you, and i trust that he will return appropriate thanks to you for having remembered that you could command me. marco basaiti was alternately a journeyman in different workshops and a master on his own account. for long the assistant and follower of alvise vivarini, we may judge that he was also his most trusted confidant, for to him was left the task of completing the splendid altarpiece to s. ambrogio, in the frari. his heavy hand is apparent in the execution, and the two saints, sebastian and jerome, in the foreground, have probably been added by him, for they have the air of interlopers, and do not come up to the rest of the company in form and conception. the sebastian, with his hands behind his back and his loin cloth smartly tied, is quite sufficiently reminiscent of bellini's figure of to make us believe that basaiti was at once transferring his allegiance to that reigning master. in his earlier phase he has the round heads and the dry precise manner of the muranese. in his large picture in the academy, the "calling of the sons of zebedee," he produces a large, important set piece, cold and lifeless, without one figure which arrests us, or lingers in the memory. "the christ on the mount" is more interesting as having been painted for san giobbe, where bellini's great altarpiece was already hanging, and coming into competition with bellini's early rendering of the same scene. painted some thirty years later, it is interesting to see what it has gained in "modernness." the landscape and trees are well drawn and in good colour, and the saints, standing on either side of a high portico, have dignity. in the "dead christ," in the academy, he is following bellini very closely in the flesh-tints and the _putti_. the _putti_, looking thoughtfully at the dead, is a _motif_ beloved of bellini, but basaiti cannot give them bellini's pathos and significance; they are merely childish and seem to be amused. in basaiti has entered upon a new phase. he has felt giorgione's influence, and is beginning to try what he can do, while still keeping close to bellini, to develop a fuller touch, more animated figures, and a brilliant effect of landscape. he runs a film of vaporous colour over his hard outlines and makes his figures bright and misty, and though underneath they are still empty and monotonous, it is not surprising that many of his works for a time passed as those of bellini. though he is a clever imitator, "his figures are designed with less mastery, his drawing is a little less correct, his drapery less adapted to the under form. light and shade are not so cleverly balanced, colours have the brightness, but not the true contrast required. in landscape he proceeds from a bleak aridity to extreme gaiety; he does not dwell on detail, but his masses have neither the sober tint nor the mysterious richness conspicuous in his teacher ... he is a clever instrument." both previtali and rondinelli were workers with basaiti in bellini's studio. previtali occasionally signed himself andrea cordeliaghi or cordella, and has left many unsigned pictures. he copies catena and lotto, palma and montagna; but for a time his work went forth from bellini's workshop signed with bellini's name. in , in a great altarpiece in san spirito at bergamo, he first takes the title of previtali, compiling it in the cartello with the monogram already used as cordeliaghi. there are traces of many other minor artists at this period, all essaying the same manner, copying one or other of the masters, taking hints from each other. the venetian love of splendour was turning to the collection of works of art, and the work of second-class artists was evidently much in demand and obtained its meed of admiration. bissolo was a fellow-labourer with catena in the hall of the ducal palace in ; he is soft and nerveless, but he copies bellini, and has imbibed something of his tenderness of spirit. it will be seen from this list how difficult it is to unravel the tale of the false bellinis. the master's own works speak for themselves with no uncertain voice, but away from these it is very difficult to pronounce as to whether he had given a design, or a few touches, or advice, and still more difficult to decide whether these were bestowed on basaiti in his later manner, or on previtali or bissolo, or if the teaching was handed on by them in a still more diluted form to the lesser men who clustered round, much of whose work has survived and has been masquerading for centuries under more distinguished names. it is sometimes affirmed that the loss of originality in the endeavour to paint like greater men has been a symptom of decay in every school in the past. it is interesting to notice, therefore, that in every great age of painting there has always been an undercurrent of imitation, which has helped to form a stream of tradition, and which, as far as we can see, has done no harm to the stronger spirits of the time. principal works _cima._ berlin. madonna with four saints; two madonnas. conegliano. duomo: madonna and saints, . dresden. the saviour; presentation of virgin. london. two madonnas; incredulity of s. thomas; s. jerome. milan. brera: six pictures of saints; madonna. parma. madonna with saints; another; endymion; apollo and marsyas. paris. madonna with saints. venice. academy: madonna with ss. john and paul; pietà; madonna with six saints; incredulity of s. thomas; tobias and the angel. carmine: adoration of the shepherds. s. giovanni in bragora: baptism, ; ss. helen and constantine; three predelle; finding of true cross. ss. giovanni and paolo: coronation of the virgin. s. maria dell' orto: s. john baptist and ss. paul, jerome, mark, and peter. lady layard. madonna with ss. francis and paul; madonna with ss. nicholas of bari and john baptist. vicenza. madonna with ss. jerome and john, . _vincenzo catena._ bergamo. carrara: christ at emmaus. berlin. portrait of fugger; madonna, saints, and donor (e.). dresden. holy family (l.). london. warrior adoring infant christ (l.); s. jerome in his study (l.); adoration of magi (l.). mr. benson: holy family. lord brownlow: nativity. mond collection: madonna, saints, and donors (e.). paris. venetian ambassadors at cairo. venice. ducal palace: madonna, saints, and doge loredan (e.). giovanelli palace: madonna and saints. s. maria mater domini: s. cristina. s. trovaso: madonna. vienna. portrait of a canon. _marco basaiti._ bergamo. the saviour, ; two portraits. berlin. pietà; altarpiece; s. sebastian; madonna (e.). london. s. jerome; madonna. milan. ambrosiana: risen christ. munich. madonna, saints, and donor (e.). murano. s. pietro: assumption. padua. portrait, ; madonna with ss. liberale and peter. venice. academy: saints; dead christ; christ in the garden, ; calling of children of zebedee, . museo correr: madonna and donor; christ and angels. salute: s. sebastian. vienna. calling of children of zebedee, . _andrea previtali._ bergamo. carrara: pentecost; marriage of s. catherine; altarpiece; madonna, ; madonna with saints and donors. lochis: madonna and saint. count moroni: madonna and saints; family group. s. alessandro in croce: crucifixion, . s. spirito: s. john baptist and saints, ; madonna and four female saints, . berlin. madonna and saints; marriage of s. catherine. dresden. madonna and saints. london. madonna and donor (e.). milan. brera: christ in garden, . oxford. christchurch library: madonna. venice. ducal palace: christ in limbo; crossing of the red sea. redentore: nativity; crucifixion. verona. stoning of stephen; immaculate conception. _n. rondinelli._ berlin. madonna. florence. uffizi: madonna and saints. milan. brera: madonna with four saints and three angels. paris. madonna and saints. ravenna. two madonnas with saints. s. domenico: organ shutters; madonna and saints. venice. museo correr: madonna; madonna with saints and donors. giovanelli palace: two madonnas. _bissolo._ london. mr. benson: madonna and saints. mond collection: madonna and saints. venice. academy: dead christ; madonna and saints; presentation in temple. s. giovanni in bragora: triptych. redentore: madonna and saints. s. maria mater domini: transfiguration. lady layard: madonna and saints. part ii chapter xiv giorgione when we enter a gallery of florentine paintings, we find our admiration and criticism expressing themselves naturally in certain terms; we are struck by grace of line, by strenuous study of form, by the evidence of knowledge, by the display of thought and intellectual feeling. the florentine gestures and attitudes are expressive, nervous, fervent, or, as in michelangelo and signorelli, alive with superhuman energy. but when looking at pictures of the venetian school we unconsciously use quite another sort of language; epithets like "dark" and "rich" come most freely to our lips; a golden glow, a slumberous velvety depth, seem to engulf and absorb all details. we are carried into the land of romance, and are fascinated and soothed, rather than stimulated and aroused. so it is with portraits; before the "mona lisa" our intelligence is all awake, but the men and women of venetian canvases have a grave, indolent serenity, which accords well with the slumber of thought. up to the beginning of the sixteenth century the painters of venice had not differed very materially from those of other schools; they had gradually worked out or learned the technicalities of drawing, perspective and anatomy. they had been painting in oils for twenty-five years, and they betrayed a greater fondness for pageant-pictures than was felt in other states of italy. florence appoints michelangelo and leonardo to decorate her public palace, but no great store is set by their splendid achievements; their work is not even completed. the students fall upon the cartoons, which are allowed to perish, instead of being treasured by the nation. gentile bellini and carpaccio and the band of state painters are appreciated and well rewarded. these men have reproduced something of the lucent transparency, the natural colour of venice, but it is as if unconsciously; they are not fully aiming at any special effect. year after year the venetian masters assimilate more or less languidly the influences which reach them from the mainland. they welcome guariento and gentile da fabriano, they set themselves to learn from veronese or florentine, the paduans contribute their chiselled drawing, their learned perspective, their archeological curiosity. yet even early in the day the venetians escape from that hard and learned art which is so alien to their easy, voluptuous temperament. jacopo bellini cannot conform to it, and his greatest son is ready to follow feeling and emotion, and in his old age is quick to discover the first flavour of the new wine. if venetian art had gone on upon the lines we have been tracing up to now, there would have been nothing very distinctive about it, for, however interesting and charming alvise and carpaccio, cima and the bellini may be, it is not of them we think when we speak of the venetian school and when we rank it beside that of florence, while giovanni bellini alone, in his later works, is not strong enough to bear the burden. the change which now comes over painting is not so much a technical one as a change of temper, a new tendency in human thought, and we link it with giorgione because he was the channel through which the deep impulse first burst into the light. we have tried to trace the growth of the early venetian school, but it does not develop logically like that of florence; it is not the result of long endeavour, adding one acquisition and discovery to another. venetian art was peculiarly the outcome of personalities, and it did not know its own mind till the sixteenth century. then, like a hidden spring, it bubbles irresistibly to the surface, and the spot where it does so is called by the name of a man. there are beings in most great creative epochs who, with peculiar facility, seem to embody the purpose of their age and to yield themselves as ready instruments to its design. when time is ripe they appear, and are able, with perfect ease, to carry out and give voice to the desires and tendencies which have been straining for expression. these desires may owe their origin to national life and temperament; it may have taken generations to bring them to fruition, but they become audible through the agency of an individual genius. a genius is inevitably moulded by his age. rome, in the seventeenth century, drew to her in bernini a man who could with real power illustrate her determination to be grandiose and ostentatious, and, at the height of the renaissance, venice draws into her service a man whose sensuous feeling was instilled, accentuated, and welcomed by every element around him. more conclusively than ever, at this time, venice, the world's great sea-power, was in her full glory as the centre of the world's commerce and its art and culture. vasco da gama had discovered the sea route to india in , but the stupendous effect which this was to exert on the whole current of power did not become apparent all at once. venice was still the great emporium of the east, linked to it by a thousand ties, oriental in her love of eastern richness. it would be exaggerating to say that the venetians of the sixteenth century could not draw. as there were tuscans who understood beautiful harmonies of colour, so there were venetians who knew a good deal about form; but the other italians looked upon colour as a charming adjunct, almost, one might say, as an amiable weakness: they never would have allowed that it might legitimately become the end and aim in painting, and in the same way form, though respected and considered, was never the principal object of the venetians. up to this time venice had fed her emotional instincts by pageants and gold and velvets and brocades, but with giorgione she discovered that there was a deeper emotional vehicle than these superficial glories,--glowing depths of colour enveloped in the mysterious richness of chiaroscuro which obliterated form, and hid and suggested more than it revealed. giorgione no longer described "in drawing's learned tongue"; he carried all before him by giving his direct impression in colour. he conceives in colour. the florentines cared little if their finely drawn draperies were blue or red, but giorgione images purple clouds, their dark velvet glowing towards a rose and orange horizon. he hardly knows what attitudes his characters take, but their chestnut hair, their deep-hued draperies, their amber flesh, make a moving harmony in which the importance of exact modelling is lost sight of. his scenes are not composed methodically and according to the old rules, but are the direct impress of the painter's joy in life. it was a new and audacious style in painting, and its keynote, and absolutely inevitable consequence, was to substitute for form and for gay, simple tints laid upon it, the quality of chiaroscuro. we all know how the shades of evening are able to transform the most commonplace scene; the dull road becomes a mysterious avenue, the colourless foliage develops luscious depths, the drab and arid plain glows with mellow light, purple shadows clothe and soften every harsh and ugly object, all detail dies, and our apprehension of it dies also. our mood changes; instead of observing and criticising, we become soothed, contemplative, dreamy. it is the carrying of this profound feeling into a colour-scheme by means of chiaroscuro, so that it is no longer learned and explanatory, but deeply sensuous and emotional, that is the gift to art which found full voice with giorgione, and which in one moment was recognised and welcomed to the exclusion of the older manner, because it touched the chord which vibrated through the whole venetian temperament. and the immediate result was the picture of _no subject_. giorgione creates for us idle figures with radiant flesh, or robed in rich costumes, surrounded by lovely country, and we do not ask or care why they are gathered together. we have all had dreams of elysian fields, "where falls not any rain, nor ever wind blows loudly," where all is rest and freedom, where music blends with the plash of fountains, and fruits ripen, and lovers dream away the days, and no one asks what went before or what follows after. the golden age, the haunt of fauns and nymphs: there never has been such a day, or such a land: it is a mood, a vision: it has danced before the eyes of poets, from david to keats and tennyson: it has rocked the tired hearts of men in all ages: the vision of a resting-place which makes no demands and where the dwellers are exempt from the cares and weakness of mortality. needless to say, it is an ideal born of the east; it is the eastern dream of paradise, and it speaks to that strain in the temperament which recognises that life cannot be all thought, but also needs feeling and emotion. and for the first time in all the world the painter of castelfranco sets that vague dream before men's eyes. the world, with its wistful yearnings and questionings, such as leonardo or botticelli embodied, said little to his audience. here was their natural atmosphere, though they had never known it before. these deep, solemn tones, these fused and golden lights are what giorgione grasps from the material world, and as he steeps his senses in them the subject counts but little in the deep enjoyment they communicate. we, who have seen his manner repeated and developed through thousands of pictures, find it difficult to realise that there had been nothing like it before, that it was a unique departure, that when bellini and titian looked at his first creations they must have experienced a shock of revelation. the old definite style must have seemed suddenly hard and meagre, and every time they looked on the glorious world, the deep glow of sunset, the mysterious shades of falling night, they must have felt they were endowed with a sense to which they had hitherto been strangers, but which, it was at once apparent, was their true heritage. they had found themselves, and in them venice found her real expression, and with giorgione and those who felt his impetus began the true venetian school, set apart from all other forms of art by its way of using and diffusing and intensifying colour. when giorgione, the son of a member of the house of barbarelli and a peasant girl of vedelago, came down to venice, we gather that he had nothing of the provincial. vasari, who must often have heard of him from titian, describes him as handsome, engaging, of distinguished appearance, beloved by his friends, a favourite with women, fond of dress and amusement, an admirable musician, and a welcome guest in the houses of the great. he was evidently no peasant-bred lad, but probably, though there is no record of the fact, was brought up, like many illegitimate children, in the paternal mansion. his home was not far from the lagoons, in one of the most beautiful places it is possible to imagine, on a lovely and fertile plain running up to the asolean hills and with the julian alps lying behind. we guess that he received his education in the school of bellini, for when that master sold his allegory of the "souls in paradise" to one of the medici, to adorn the summer villa of poggio imperiale, there went with it the two small canvases now in the uffizi, the "ordeal of moses" and the "judgment of solomon," delightful little paintings in giorgione's rich and distinctive style, but less accomplished than bellini's picture, and with imperfections in the drawing of drapery and figures which suggest that they are the work of a very young man. the love of the venetians for decorating the exterior of their palaces with fresco led to giorgione being largely employed on work which was unhappily a grievous waste of time and talent, as far as posterity is concerned. we have a record of façades covered with spirited compositions and heraldic devices, of friezes with bacchus and mars, venus and mercury. zanetti, in his seventeenth-century prints, has preserved a noble figure of "fortitude" grasping an axe, but beyond a few fragments nothing has survived. before he was thirty giorgione was entrusted with the important commission of decorating the fondaco dei tedeschi. this building, which we hear of so often in connection with the artists of venice, was the trading-house for german, hungarian, and polish merchants. the venetian government surrounded these merchants with the most jealous restrictions. every assistant and servant connected with them was by law a venetian, and, in fact, a spy of the republic. all transactions of buying and selling were carried out by venetian brokers, of whom some thirty were appointed. as time went on, some of these brokerships must have resolved themselves into sinecure offices, for we find bellini holding one, and certainly without discharging any of the original duties, and they seem to have become some sort of state retainerships. in the old fondaco had been burnt to the ground, and the present building was rising when giorgione and titian were boys. a decree went forth that no marble, carving, or gilding were to be used, so that painting the outside was the only alternative. the roof was on in , and from that date giorgione, titian, and morto da feltre were employed in the adornment of the façade. vasari is very much exercised over giorgione's share in these decorations. "one does not find one subject carefully arranged," he complains, "or which follows correctly the history or actions of ancients or moderns. as for me, i have never been able to understand the meaning of these compositions, or have met any one able to explain them to me. here one sees a man with a lion's head, beside a woman. close by one comes upon an angel or a love: it is all an inexplicable medley." yet he is delighted with the brilliancy of the colour and the splendid execution, and adds, "colour gives more pleasure in venice than anywhere else." among other early work was the little "adoration of the magi," in the national gallery, and the so-called "philosophers" at vienna. according to the latest reading, this last illustrates virgil's legend that when the trojan Æneas arrived in italy, evander pointed out the future site of rome to the ancient seer and his son. giorgione, in painting the scene, is absorbed in the beauty of nature. it is his first great landscape, and all accessories have been sacrificed to intensity of effect. he revels in the glory of the setting sun, the broad tranquil masses of foliage, the long evening shadows, and the effect of dark forms silhouetted against the radiant light. chapter xv giorgione (_continued_) when giorgione was twenty-six he went back to castelfranco, and painted an altarpiece for the church of san liberale. in the sixteenth century tuzio costanza, a well-known captain of free companions, who had made his fortune in the wars, where he had been attached to catherine cornaro, followed the dethroned queen from cyprus, and when she retired to asolo, settled near her at castelfranco. his son, matteo, entered the service of the venetian republic, and became a leader of fifty lances; but matteo was killed at the battle of ravenna in , and costanza had his son's body embalmed and buried in the family chapel. nothing is known of the details of this commission, but we are not straining the bounds of probability by assuming that in a little town like castelfranco, hardly more than a village, the two youths must have been well known to each other, and that this acquaintance and the familiarity of the one with the appearance of the other may have been the determining cause which led the bereaved father to give the commission to the young painter, while the tragic circumstances were such as would appeal to an ardent, enthusiastic nature. a treasure of our national gallery is a study made by giorgione for the figure of san liberale, who is represented as a young man with bare head and crisp, golden locks, dressed in silver armour, copied from the suit in which matteo costanza is dressed in the stone effigy which is still preserved in the cemetery at castelfranco. at the side of the stone figure lies a helmet, resembling that on the head of the saint in the altarpiece. in giorgione's group the mother and child are enthroned on high, with st. francis and st. liberale on either hand. the child's glance is turned upon the soldier-saint, a gallant figure with his lance at rest, his dagger on his hip, his gloves in his hand, young, high-bred, with features of almost feminine beauty. the picture is conceived in a new spirit of simplicity of design, and shows a new feeling for restraint in matters of detail. it is the work of a man who has observed that early morning, like late evening, has a marvellous power of eliminating all unessential accessories and of enveloping every object in a delicious scheme of light. repainted, cleaned, restored as the canvas is, it is still full of an atmosphere of calm serenity. it is not the ecstatic, devotional reverie of perugino's saints. the painter of castelfranco has not steeped his whole soul in religious imagination, like the painter of umbria; he is an exemplar of the lyric feeling; his work is a poem in praise of youth and beauty, and dreams in air and sunshine. he uses atmosphere to enhance the mood, but giorgione carries his unison of landscape with human feeling much further than perugino; he observes the delicate effects of light, and limpid air circulates in his distance. the sun rising over the sea throws a glamour and purity of early morning over a scene meant to glorify the memory of a young life. the painter shows his connection with his master by using the figure of the st. francis in bellini's san giobbe altarpiece. what bellini owed to giorgione is still a matter for speculation. the san zaccaria altarpiece was, as we have seen, painted in the year following that of castelfranco. something has incited the old painter to fresh efforts; out of his own evolution, or stimulated by his pupil's splendid experiments, he is drawn into the golden atmosphere of the venetian cinque-cento. the venetian painters were distinguished by their love for the kindred art of music. giorgione himself was an admirable musician, and linked with all that is akin to music in his work, is his love for painting groups of people knit together by this bond. he uses it as a pastime to bring them into company, and the rich chords of colour seem permeated with the chords of sound. not always, however, does he need even this excuse; his "conversation-pieces" are often merely composed of persons placed with indescribable grace in exquisite surroundings, governed by a mood which communicates itself to the beholder. with the florentines, the cartoon was carefully drawn upon the wall and flat tints were superimposed. they knew beforehand what the effect was to be; but the venetians from this time gradually worked up the picture, imbedding tints, intensifying effects, one touch suggesting another, till the whole rich harmony was gradually evoked. with the florentines, too, the figures supply the main interest; the background is an arbitrary addition, placed behind them at the painter's leisure, but giorgione's and titian's _fêtes champêtres_ and concerts could not _be_ at all in any other environment. the amber flesh-tints and the glowing garments are so blended with the deep tones of the landscape, that one would not instil the mood the artist desires without the other. piero di cosimo and pintoricchio can place delightful nymphs and fairy princesses in idyllic scenes, and they stir no emotion in us beyond an observant pleasure, a detached amusement; but giorgione's gloomy blues, his figures shining through the warm dusk of a summer evening, waken we hardly know what of vague yearning and brooding memory. in the "fête champêtre" of the louvre he acquires a frankly sensuous charm. he becomes riper, richer in feeling, and displays great exuberance of style. the woman filling her pitcher at the fountain is exquisite in line and curve and amber colour. she seems to listen lazily to the liquid fall of the water mingling with the half-heard music of the pipes. the beautiful idyll in the giovanelli palace is full of art of composition. it is built up with uprights; pillars are formed by the groups of trees and figures, cut boldly across by the horizontal line of the bridge, but the figures themselves are put in without any attention to subject, though an unconscious humorist has discovered in them the domestic circle of the painter. the man in venetian dress is there to assist the left-hand columnar group, placed at the edge of the picture after the manner of leonardo. the woman and child lighten the mass of foliage on the right and make a beautiful pattern. the white town of castelfranco sings against the threatening sky, the winds bluster through the space, the trees shiver with the coming storm. here and there leafy boughs are struck in with a slight, crisp touch, in which we can follow readily the painter's quick impression. the "knight of malta" is a grand magisterial figure, majestic, yet full of ardent warmth lying behind the grave, indifferent nobility. the face is bisected with shadow, in the way which michelangelo and andrea del sarto affected, and the cone-shaped head with parted hair is of the type which seems particularly to have pleased the painter. to giorgione, too, belongs the honour of having created a venus as pure as the aphrodite of cnidos and as beautiful as a courtesan of titian. [illustration: _giorgione._ fÊte champÊtre. _louvre._ (_photo, alinari._)] the death of giorgione from plague in is registered by all the oldest authorities. his body was conveyed to castelfranco by members of the barbarelli family and buried in the church of san liberale. in an epitaph was placed over his tomb by matteo and ercole barbarelli. allowing that he was hardly more than twenty when his new manner began to gain a following, he had only some twelve years in which to establish his deep and lasting influence. we divine that he was a man of strong personality, such a one as warms and stimulates his companions. even his nickname tells us something,--great george, the chief, the george of georges,--it seems to express him as a leader. and we have no lack of proof that he was admired and looked up to. his style became the only one that found favour in venice, and the painters of the day did their best to conform to it. few authentic examples are left from his own hand, but out of his conscious and devoted and more or less successful imitators, there grew up a school, "out of all those fascinating works, rightly or wrongly attributed to him; out of many copies from, or variations on him, by unknown or uncertain workmen, whose drawings and designs were, for various reasons, prized as his; out of the immediate impression he made upon his contemporaries and with which he continued in men's minds; out of many traditions of subject and treatment which really descend from him to our own time, and by retracing which we fill out the original image." summing up all these influences, he has left us the giorgionesque; the art of choosing a moment in which the subject and the elements of colour and design are so perfectly fused and blended that we have no need to ask for any more articulate story; a moment into which all the significance, the fulness of existence has condensed itself, so that we are conscious of the very essence of life. those idylls of beings wrapped into an ideal dreamland by music and the sound of water and the beauty of wood and mountain and velvet sward, need all our conscious apprehension of life if we are to drink in their full fascination. the dream of the lotos-eaters can only come with force to those who can contrast it adequately with the experience, the complication, and the thousand distractions of an over-civilised world. rest and relaxation, the power of the deeply tinted eventide, or of the fresh morning light, and the calm that drinks in the sensations they are able to afford, are among the precious things of life. the instinct upon which giorgione's work rests is the satisfying of the feeling as well as the thinking faculty, the life of the heart, as compared to the life of the intellect, the solution of life's problems by love instead of by thought. it was the eastern ideal, and its positive expression is conveyed by means of colour, deep, restful, satisfying, fused and controlled by chiaroscuro rather than by form. principal works berlin. portrait of a man. buda-pesth. portrait of a man. castelfranco. duomo: madonna with ss. francis and liberale. dresden. sleeping venus. florence. uffizi: trial of moses (e.); judgment of solomon (e.); knight of malta. hampton court. a shepherd. madrid. madonna with ss. roch and anthony of padua. paris. fête champêtre. rome. villa borghese: portrait of a lady. venice. seminario: apollo and daphne. palazzo giovanelli: gipsy and soldier. san rocco: christ bearing cross. boston. mrs. gardner: christ bearing cross. london. sketch of a knight; adoration of shepherds. viscount allendale: adoration of shepherds. vienna. evander showing Æneas the future site of rome. chapter xvi the giorgionesque giorgione had given the impulse, and all the painters round him felt his power. the venetian painters that is, for it is remarkable, at a time when the men of one city observed and studied and took hints from those of every other, how faint are the signs that this particular manner attracted any great attention in other art centres. leonardo da vinci was a master of chiaroscuro, but he used it only to express his forms, and never sacrifices to it the delicacy and fineness of his design. it is the one quality raphael never assimilates, except for a brief instant at the period when sebastian del piombo had arrived in rome from venice. it takes hold most strongly upon andrea del sarto, who seems, significantly enough, to have had no very pronounced intellectual capacity, but in venice itself it now became the only way. the old bellini finds in it his last and fullest ideal; catena, basaiti, cariani do their best to acquire it, and so successfully was it acquired, so congenial was it to venetian art, that even second- and third-rate venetian painters have usually something attractive which triumphs over superficial and doubtful drawing and grouping. it is easy to see how much to their taste was this fused and golden manner, this disregard of defined form, and this new play of chiaroscuro. the venetian room in the national gallery is full of such examples: the nymphs and _amoretti_ of no. , charming figures against melting vines and olives; "venus and adonis," in which a bewitching cupid chases a butterfly; lovers in a landscape, roaming in the summer twilight; scenes in which neither person nor scenery is a pretext for the other, but each has its full share in arousing the desired emotion. such pictures are ascribed to, or taken from giorgione by succeeding critics, but have all laid hold of his charm, and have some share in his inspiration. one of the ablest of his followers, a man whose work is still confounded with the master's, is cariani, the bergamasque, who at different times in his life also successfully imitated palma and lotto. in his giorgionesque manner cariani often creates charming figures and strong portraits, though he pushes his colour to a coarse, excessive tone. his family group in the roncalli collection at bergamo is very close to giorgione. seven persons, three women and four men, are grouped together upon a terrace, and behind them stretches a calm landscape, half concealed by a brocaded hanging. the effect of the whole is restful, though it lacks giorgione's concentration of sensation. then, again, cariani flies off to the gayer, more animated style of lotto. later on, when he tries to reproduce giorgione's pastoral reveries, his shepherds and nymphs become mere peasants, herdsmen, and country wenches, who have nothing of the idyllic distinction which giorgione never failed to infuse. "the adulteress before christ" at glasgow still bears the greater name, but its short, vulgar figures and faulty composition disclaim his authorship, while cariani is fully capable of such failings, and the exaggerated, red-brown tone is quite characteristic of him. these painters are more than merely imitative; they are also typical. giorgione's new manner had appealed to some quality inherent and hereditary in their nature, and the essential traits they single out and dwell upon are the traits which appeal equally to the instincts of both. it is this which makes their efforts more sympathetic than those of other second-rate painters. colour, or rather the peculiar way in which giorgione used colour, made a natural appeal to them, and it is a medium which does make an immediate appeal and covers a multitude of shortcomings. but giorgione was not to leave his message to the mercy of mere disciples and imitators, however apt. growing up around him were men to whom that message was an inspiration and a trumpet-call, men who were to develop and deepen it, endowing it with their own strength, recognising that the way which the young pioneer of castelfranco had pointed out was the one into which they could unhesitatingly pour their whole inclination. the instinct for colour was in their very blood. they turned to it with the heart-whole delight with which a bird seeks the air or a fish the water, and foremost among them, to create and to consolidate, was the mighty titian. principal works _cariani._ bergamo. carrara: madonna and saints. lochis: woman and shepherd; portraits; saints. morelli: madonna (l.). roncalli collection: family group. hampton court. adoration of shepherds (l.); venus (l.). london. death of s. peter martyr (l.); madonna and saints (l.). milan. brera: madonna and saints (l.); madonna (l.). ambrosiana: way to golgotha. paris. madonna, saints, and donor (e.); holy family and saints. rome. villa borghese: sleeping venus; madonna and s. peter. venice. holy family; portraits. vienna. christ bearing cross; the "bravo." _school of giorgione._ london. unknown subject; adoration of shepherds; venus and adonis; landscape, with nymphs and cupids; the garden of love. mr. benson. lovers and pilgrim. chapter xvii titian the mountains of cadore are not always visible from venice, but there they lie, behind the mists, and in the clear shining after rain, in the golden eventide of autumn, and on steel-cold winter days they stand out, lapis-lazuli blue or deep purple, or, like shelley's enchanted peaks, in sharp-cut, beautiful shapes rising above billowy slopes. cadore is a land of rich chestnut woods, of leaping streams, of gleams and glooms, sudden storms and bursts of sunshine. it is an order of scenery which enters deep into the affections of its sons, and we can form some idea of the hold its mingling of wild poetry and sensuous softness obtained over the mind of titian from the fact that in after years, while he never exerts himself to paint the city in which he lived and in which all his greatest triumphs were gained, he is uniformly constant to his mountain home, enters into its spirit and interprets its charm with warm and penetrating insight. the district formed part of the dependencies of the great republic, and relied upon venice for its safety, its distinction, and in great measure for its employment. the small craftsmen and artists from all the country round looked forward to going down to seek their fortune at her hands. they tacked the name of their native town to their own name, and were drawn into the magnificent life of the city of the sea, and came back from time to time with stories of her art, her power, and beauty. the vecelli had for generations held honourable posts in cadore. the father and grandfather of the young tiziano were influential men, and with his brother and sisters he must have been brought up in comfort. there are even traditions of noble birth, and it is evident that titian was always a gentleman, though this did not prevent his being educated as a craftsman, and when he was only ten years old he was sent down to venice to be apprenticed to a mosaicist. it was a changing venice to which titian came as a boy; changing in its life, its social and political conditions, and its art was faithfully registering its aspirations and tastes. more than at any previous time, it was calculated to impress a youth to whom it had been held up as the embodiment of splendid sovereignty, and the difference between the little hill-town set in the midst of its wild solitudes and the brilliant city of the sea must have been dazzling and bewildering. a new sense of intellectual luxury had awakened in the great commercial centre. the venetian love of splendour was displaying itself by the encouragement and collection of objects of art, and both ancient and modern works were in increasing request. on gentile bellini's and carpaccio's canvases we see the sort of people the venetians were, shrewd, quiet, splendour-loving, but business-like, the young men fashionably dressed, fastidious connoisseurs, splendid patrons of art and of religion. buyers were beginning to find out what a delightful decoration the small picture made, and that it was as much in place in their own halls as over the altar of a chapel. the portrait, too, was gaining in importance, and the idea of making it a pleasure-giving picture, even more than a faithful transcript, was gathering ground. the "procession of the relic" was still in gentile's studio, but the frari "madonna and child" was just installed in its place. carpaccio was beginning his long series of st. ursula, and the bellini and vivarini were in keen rivalship. titian is said to have passed from the _bottega_ of gentile to that of giovanni bellini, but nothing in his style reminds us of the former, and even his early work has very little that is really bellinesque, whereas from the very first he reflects the new spirit which emanated from giorgione. titian was a year the elder, and we can divine the sympathy that arose between the two when they came together in bellini's school. as soon as their apprenticeship was at an end they became partners. fond of pleasure and gaiety, loving splendour, dress, and amusement, they were naturally congenial companions, and were drawn yet more closely together by their love for their art and by the aptitude with which titian grasped giorgione's principles. and if we ask ourselves why we take for granted that of two young men so closely allied in age and circumstance we accept giorgione as the leader and the creator of the new style, we may answer that titian was a more complex character. he was intellectual, and carried his intellect into his art, but this was no new feature. the intellect had had and was having a large share in art. but in that part which was new, and which was launching art upon an untried course, giorgione is more intense, more one-idea'd than titian. what he does he does with a fervour and a spontaneity that marks him as one who pours out the language of the heart. the partnership between the two was probably arranged a few years before the end of the century, for we have seen that young painters usually started on their own account at about nineteen or twenty. for some years titian, like giorgione, was engrossed by the decorations of the fondaco dei tedeschi. the groups of figures described by zanetti in show us that while giorgione made some attempt at following classic figures, titian broke entirely with greek art and only thought of picturesque nature and contemporary costume. vasari complains that he never knew what titian's "judith" was meant to represent, "unless it was germania," but zanetti, who had the benefit of sebastiano ricci's taste, declares that from what he saw, both giorgione and titian gave proofs of remarkable skill. "while giorgione showed a fervid and original spirit and opened up a new path, over which he shed a light that was to guide posterity, titian was of a grander and more equable genius, leaning at first, indeed, upon giorgione's example, but expanding with such force and rapidity as to place him in advance of his companion, on an eminence to which no later craftsman was able to climb.... he moderated the fire of giorgione, whose strength lay in fanciful movement and a mysterious artifice in disposing shadows, contrasted darkly with warm lights, blended, strengthened, blurred, so as to produce the semblance of exuberant life." certain works remain to link the two painters; even now critics are divided as to which of the two to attribute the "concert" in the pitti. the figures are giorgionesque, but the technique establishes it as an early titian, and it is doubtful whether giorgione would be capable of the intellectual effort which produced the dreamy, passionate expression of the young monk, borne far out of himself by his own melody, and half recalled to life by the touch on his shoulder. titian, like giorgione, was a musician, and the fascination of music is felt by many masters of the italian schools. in one picture the player feels vaguely after the melody, in another we are asked to anticipate the song that is just about to begin, or the last chords of that just finished vibrate upon the ear, but nowhere else in all art has any one so seized the melody of an instant and kept its fulness and its passion sounding in our ears as this musician does. though we cannot say that titian was the pupil of any one master, the fifteen years, more or less, that he spent with giorgione left an indelible impression upon him. we have only to look at such a picture as the "madonna and child with ss. john baptist and antony abate," in the uffizi, an early work, to recollect that in giorgione at castelfranco had taken the madonna from her niche in the sanctuary and had enthroned her on high in a bright and sunny landscape with s. liberale standing sentinel at her feet, like a knight guarding his liege lady. titian in this early group casts every convention aside; a beautiful woman and lovely children are placed in surroundings whose charm is devoid of hieratic and religious significance. the same easy unfettered treatment appears in the "madonna with the cherries" at vienna, and the "madonna with st. bridget and s. ulfus" at madrid, and while it has been surmised that the example of the precise albert dürer, who paid his first visit to venice in , was not without its effect in preserving titian from falling into laxity of treatment and in inciting him to fine finish, it is interesting to find that titian was, in fact, discarding the use of the carefully traced and transferred cartoon, and was sketching his design freely on panel or canvas with a brush dipped in brown pigment, and altering and modifying it as he went on. the last years of titian's first period in venice must have been anxious ones. the emperor maximilian was attacking the venetian possessions on the mainland, in anger at a refusal to grant his troops a free passage on their way to uphold german supremacy in central italy. cadore was the first point of his invasion, and from titian's uncle and great-uncle were in the councils of the state, his father held an important command, and his brother francesco, who had already made some progress as an artist, threw down his brush and became a soldier. titian was not one of those who took up arms, but his thoughts must have been full of the attack and defence in his mountain fastnesses, and he must have anxiously awaited news of his father's troops and of the squadrons of maso of ferrara, under whose colours francesco was riding. francesco made a reputation as a distinguished soldier, and was severely wounded, and when peace was made, titian, "who loved him tenderly," persuaded him to return to the pursuit of art. the ratification of the league of cambray, in which julius ii., maximilian, and ferdinand of naples combined against the power of venice, was disastrous for a time to the city and to the artists who depended upon her prosperity. craftsmen of all kinds first fled to her for shelter, then, as profits and orders fell off, they left to look elsewhere for commissions. an outbreak of plague, in which giorgione perished, went further to make venice an undesirable home, and at this time sebastian del piombo left for rome, lotto for the romagna, and titian for padua. we may believe that titian never felt perfectly satisfied with fresco-painting as a craft, for when he was given a commission to fresco the halls of the santo, the confraternity of st. anthony, patron-saint of padua, he threw off beautifully composed and spirited drawings, but he left the execution of them chiefly to assistants, among whom the feeble domenico campagnola, a painter whom he probably picked up at padua, is conspicuous. even where the landscape is best, as in "s. anthony restoring a youth," the drawing and composition only make us feel how enchanting the scene would have been in oils on one of titian's melting canvases. in those frescoes which he executed himself while his interest was still fresh, the "miracle which grants speech to an infant" is the most giorgionesque. up to this time he had preserved the straight-cut corsage and the actual dress of his contemporaries, after the practice of giorgione; he keeps, too, to his companion's plan of design, placing the most important figures upon one plane, close to the frame and behind a low wall or ledge which forms a sort of inner frame and with a distant horizon. in the paduan frescoes he makes use of this plan, and the straight clouds, the spindly trees, and the youths in gay doublets are all reminiscent of his early comrade, but the group of women to the left in the "miracle of the child" shows that titian is beginning more decidedly to enunciate his own type. the introduction of portraits proves that he was tending to rely largely upon nature, in contradistinction to giorgione's lyrically improvised figures. he fuses the influence of giorgione and the influence of antonello da messina and the bellini in a deeper knowledge of life and nature, and he is passing beyond giorgione in grasp and completeness. when he was able to return to venice, which he did in , a temporary peace having been concluded with maximilian, he abandoned the uncongenial medium of fresco for good, and devoted himself to that which admitted of the afterthoughts, the enrichments, the gradual attainment of an exquisite surface, and at this time his works are remarkable for their brilliant gloss and finish. during the next twelve years we may group a number of paintings which, taken in conjunction with those of giorgione, show the true venetian school at its most intense, idyllic moment. they are the works of a man in the pride of youth and strength, sane and healthy, an example of the confident, sanguine, joyous temper of his age, capable of embodying its dominant tendencies, of expressing its enjoyment of life, its worldly-mindedness, its love of pleasure, as well as its noble feeling and its grave and magnificent purpose. for absolute delight in colour let us turn to a picture like the "noli me tangere" of the national gallery. the golden light, the blues and olives of the landscape, the crimson of the magdalen's raiment, combine in a feast of emotional beauty, emphasising the feeling of the woman, whose soul is breathed out in the word "master." the colour unites with the light and shadow, is embedded in it; and we can see titian's delight in the ductile medium which had such power to give material sensation. in these liquid crimsons, these deep greens and shoaling blues, the velvety fulness and plenitudes of the brush become visible; we can look into their depths and see something quite unlike the smooth, opaque washes of the florentines. in such a masterpiece as "sacred and profane love," painted during these years for the borghese, there are summed up all those artistic aims towards which the venetian painters had been tending. the picture is still giorgionesque in mood. it may represent, as dr. wickhoff suggests, venus exhorting medea to listen to the love-suit of jason; but the subject is not forced upon us, and we are more occupied with the contrast between the two beautiful personalities, so harmoniously related to each other, yet so opposed in type. the gracious, self-absorbed lady, with her softly dressed hair, her loose glove, her silvery satin dress, is a contrast in look and spirit to the goddess whose free, simple attitude and outward gaze embody the nobler ideal. the sinuous and enchanting line of venus's figure against the crimson cloak has, i think, been the outcome of admiration for giorgione's "sleeping venus," and has the same soft, unhurried curves. titian's two figures are perfectly spaced in a setting which breathes the very aroma of the early renaissance. a bas-relief on the marble fountain represents nymphs whipping a sleeping love to life, while a cupid teases the chaste unicorn. a delicious baby love splashes in the water, fallen rose-leaves strew the mellow marble rim, around and away stretches a sunny country scene, in which people are placidly pursuing a life of ease and pleasure. what a revelation to venice these pictures were which began with giorgione's conversaziones! how little occupied the women are with the story. venus does not argue, or check off reasons on her fingers, like s. ursula. medea is listening to her own thoughts, but the whole scene is bathed in the suggestion of the joy and happiness of love. the little censer burning away in the blue and breathless air might be a philtre diffusing sensuous dreams, and when the rays of the evening sun strike the picture, where it now hangs, and bring out each touch of its glowing radiance, it seems to palpitate with the joy of life and to thrill with the magic of summer in the days when the world was young. with the influence still lingering of giorgione's "knight of malta," titian produced some of his finest portraits in the decade that led to the middle of his life. the "dr. parma" at vienna, the noble "man in black" and "man with a glove" of the louvre, the "young englishman" of the pitti, with his keen blue eyes, the portrait at temple newsam, which, with some critics, still passes as a giorgione, are all examples in which he keeps the half-length, invented by bellini and followed by giorgione. after the visit to padua he shows less preference for costume, and his women are generally clothed in a loose white chemise, rather than the square-cut bodice. we do not wonder that all the leading personages of italy wished to be painted by titian. his are the portraits of a man of intellect. they show the subject at his best; grave, cultivated, stately, as he appeared and wished to appear; not taken off his guard in any way. what can be more sympathetic as a personality than the ariosto of the national gallery? we can enter into his mind and make a friend of him, and yet all the time he has himself in hand; he allows us to divine as much as he chooses, and draws a thin veil over all that he does not intend us to discover. the painter himself is impersonal and not over-sensitive; he does not paint in his own fancies about his sitter--probably he had none; he saw what he was meant to see. there was what mr. berenson calls "a certain happy insensibility" about him, which prevented him from taking fantastic flights, or from looking too deep below the surface. [illustration: _titian._ ariosto. _london._ (_photo, mansell and co._)] chapter xviii titian (_continued_) with the "assumption," finished in for the church of the frari, titian rose to the very highest among renaissance painters. the "glorious s. mary" was his theme, and he concentrated all his efforts on the realisation of that one idea. the central figure is, as it were, a collective rather than an individual type. well proportioned and elastic as it is, it has the abundance of motherhood. harmonious and serene, it combines dramatic force and profound feeling. exultant humanity, in its hour of triumph, rises with her, borne up lightly by that throbbing company of child angels and followed by full recognition and awestruck satisfaction in the adoring gaze of the throng below, yet titian has contrived to keep some touch of the loving woman hurrying to meet her son. the flood of colour, the golden vault above, the garment of glowing blues and crimsons, have a more than common share in that spirit of confident joy and poured-out life which envelops the whole canvas. in the worthy representation of a great event, the visible assumption of humanity to the throne of god, titian puts forth all his powers and steeps us in that temper of sanguine emotion, of belief in life and confidence in the capacity of man, which was so characteristic of the ripe renaissance. in looking at this splendid canvas, we must call to mind the position for which titian painted it. hung in the dusky recesses of the apse, it was tempered by and merged in its stately surroundings. the band of apostles almost formed a part of the whispering crowd below, and the glorious mother was beheld soaring upwards to the golden light and the mysterious vistas of the vaulted arches above. the patronage of courts had by this time altered the tenor of titian's life. in duke alfonso d'este had invited him to ferrara, where he had finished bellini's "bacchanals." it bears the marks of titian's hand, and he has introduced a well-known point of view at cadore into the background. in alfonso writes to propose another painting, and titian's acceptance is contained in a very courtier-like letter, in which we divine a touch of irony. "the more i thought of it," he ends, "the more i became convinced that the greatness of art among the ancients was due to the assistance they received from great princes, who were content to leave to the painter the credit and renown derived from their own ingenuity in bespeaking pictures." alfonso's requirements for his new castle were frankly pagan. mythological scenes were already popular. mantegna had adorned isabela d'este's "paradiso" with revels of the gods, botticelli had given his conception of classic myth in the medici villa, already bellini had essayed a bacchanal, and titian was to make designs for similar scenes to complete the decorations of the halls of este. the same exuberant feeling he shows in the "assumption" finds utterance in the "garden of loves" and the "bacchanals," both painted for alfonso of ferrara. the children in the former may be compared with the angels in the "assumption." their blue wings match the heavenly blue sky, and they are painted with the most delicate finish. we can imagine the beauty of the great hall at ferrara when hung with this brilliant series, which was completed in by the "bacchus and ariadne" of the national gallery. the whole company of bacchanals is given up to wanton merrymaking. above them broods the deep blue sky and great white clouds of a summer day. the deep greens of the foliage throw the creamy-white and burning colour of the draperies and the fair forms of the nymphs into glowing relief, while by a convention the satyrs are of a deep, tawny complexion. on a roll of music is stamped the rollicking device, "_chi boit et ne reboit, ne sçeais que boir soit_." the purple fruit hangs ripened from the vines, its crimson juice shines like a jewel in crystal goblets and drips in streams over rosy limbs. the influence of such pictures as these was absorbed by rubens, but though they hardly surpass him in colour, they are more idyllic and less coarse. the perfect taste of the renaissance is never shown more victoriously than here, where indulgence ceases to be repulsive, and the actors are real flesh and blood, yet more arcadian than revolting. in the "bacchus and ariadne," titian gives triumphant expression to a mood of wild rejoicing, so gay, so good-tempered, so simple, that we must smile in sympathy. the conqueror flinging himself from his golden chariot drawn by panthers, his deep red mantle fluttering on high, is so full of reckless life that our spirit bounds with him. his rioting band, marching with song and laughter, seems to people that golden country-side with fit inhabitants. the careless satyrs and little merry, goat-legged fauns shock us no more than a herd of forest ponies, tossing their manes and dashing along for love of life and movement.[ ] yet almost before this series was put in place titian was showing the diversity of his genius by the "deposition," now in the louvre, which was painted at the instance of the gonzaga, marquis of mantua and nephew of alfonso d'este. here he makes a great step in the use of chiaroscuro. while it is satisfying in balance and sweeping rhythm, and by the way in which every line follows and intensifies the helpless, slackened lines of the dead body, it escapes raphael's academic treatment of the same subject. its splendid colours are not noisy; they merge into a scene of solemn pathos and tragedy. the scene has a simplicity and unity in its passion, and what above all gives it its intense power is the way in which the flaming hues are absorbed into the twilight shadows. the dark heads stand out against the dying sunset, the pallor of the dead is half veiled by the falling night. it is a picture which has the emotional beauty of a scene in nature, and makes a profound impression by its depth and mystery. this same solemnity and gravity temper the brilliant colouring of the great altarpiece painted for the pesaro family in the frari. columns rise like great tree-trunks, light and air play through the clouds seen between them. the grouping is a new experiment, but the way in which the mother and child, though placed quite at one side of the picture, are focussed as the centre of interest, by the converging lines, diagonal on the one hand and straight on the other, crowns it with success. the scheme of colour brings the two figures into high relief, while st. francis and the family of the donor are subordinated to rich, deep tints. titian has abandoned, more completely than ever before, any attempt to invest the child with supernatural majesty. he is a delightful, spoiled baby, fully aware of his sovereignty over his mother, pretending to take no notice of the kneeling suppliants, but occupying himself in making a tent over his head out of her veil. the "madonna in glory with six saints" of the vatican is another example of the rich and "smouldering" colour in which titian was now creating his great altarpieces, kneading his pigments into a quality, a solidity, which gives reality without heaviness, and finishing with that fine-grained texture which makes his flesh look like marble endowed with life. [ ] it is this quality of unarrested movement, so conspicuous above all in the figure of bacchus, which attracts us irresistibly in the huntress, in lord brownlow's "diana and actaeon." the construction of the form of the goddess in this beautiful but little-known picture is admirable. worn as the colour is, appearing almost as a monochrome, the landscape is full of atmospheric suggestion. it is in titian's latest manner, and its ample lines and free unimpeded motion can be due to no inferior brush. [illustration: _titian._ diana and actaeon. _earl brownlow._ (_the medici society, ltd._)] venuses, altarpieces, and portraits all tell us how boldly his own style was established. his sacred persons are not different from his pagans and goddesses. yet though he has gone far, he still reminds us of giorgione. he has been constant to the earliest influences which surrounded him, and to that temperament which made him accept those influences so instantaneously--and this constancy and unity give him the untroubled ascendancy over art which is such a feature of his position. with leonardo and with titian, painters had sprung to a recognised status in the great world of the renaissance. they were no longer the patronised craftsmen. they had become the courted guests, the social equals. titian, passing from the courts of ferrara to those of mantua and urbino, attended by a band of assistants, was a magnificent personage, whose presence was looked upon as a favour, and who undertook a commission as one who conferred a coveted boon. among those who clustered closest round the popular favourite, no one did more to enhance his position than aretino, the brilliant unscrupulous debauchee, wit, bully, blackmailer, but a man who, with all his faults, had evidently his own power of fascination, and, the friend of princes, must have been himself the prince of good company. aretino, as far as he could be said to be attached to any one, was consistent in his attachment to titian from the time they first met at the court of the gonzaga. he played the part of a chorus, calling attention to the great painter's merits, jogging the memory of his employers as to payments, and never ceasing to flatter, amuse, and please him. titian, for his part, shows himself equally devoted to aretino's interests, and has left various characteristic portraits of him, handsome and showy in his prime, sensual and depraved as age overtook him. in the spring of the confraternity of st. peter martyr invited artists to send in sketches for an altarpiece to their patron-saint, in ss. giovanni and paolo, to replace an old one by jacobello del fiore. palma vecchio and pordenone also competed, but titian carried off the prize. the picture was delivered in , and during the autumn of sebastian del piombo had returned to venice from rome, and michelangelo had sought refuge there from florence and had stayed for some months. a quarrel with the monks over the price had delayed the picture, so that it may quite probably have only been begun after intercourse with the roman visitors had given a fresh turn to titian's ideas; for though he never ceases to be himself, it certainly seems as if the genius of michelangelo had had some effect. from what we know of the altarpiece, which perished by fire in , but of which a good copy by cigoli remains, titian embarked suddenly upon forms of herculean strength in violent action, but there his likeness to the florentine ended; the figures were, indeed, drawn with a deep, though not altogether successful, attention to anatomy and foreshortening, but the picture obtained its effect and derived its impressiveness from the setting in which the figures were placed--the great trees, bending and straining, the hurrying clouds, as if nature were in portentous harmony with the sinister deed, and overhead the enchanting gleam of light which shot downward and irradiated the face of the martyr and the two lovely winged boys, bathed in a flood of blue æther, who held aloft the palm of victory. many copies of it remain, and we only regret that one which rubens executed is not preserved among them. when we look at the delicious "madonna del coniglio" in the louvre and our own "marriage of s. catherine," the first of which certainly, and the second probably, was painted about this time, we cannot doubt that the charm of the idea of motherhood had particularly arrested the painter. about his first son, pomponio, was born, and was followed by another son and a daughter. in the s. catherine he paints that passion of mother-love with an intensity and reality that can only be drawn from life, and on the wheel at her feet he has inscribed his name, ticianus, f. his feeling for landscape is increasing, and the landscape in these pictures equals the figures in importance and has engrossed the painter quite as much. every year titian paid a visit to cadore, and in the rich woodlands, the distant villages, the great white villa on the hill-side, and, above all, in the far-off blue mountains and the glooms and gleams of storm and sunshine, the sudden dart of rays through the summer clouds, which he has painted here, we see how constant was his study of his native country, and how profoundly he felt its poetry and its charm. he had married cecilia, the daughter of a barber belonging to perarolo, a little town near cadore. in she died, and he mourned her deeply. he went on working and planning for his children's future, and his sister came from cadore to take charge of the motherless household; but his friends' letters speak of his being ill from melancholy, and he could not go on living in the old house at san samuele, which had been his home for sixteen years. he took a new house on the north side of the city, in the parish of san canciano. the casa grande, as it was called, was a building of importance, which the painter first hired and finally bought, letting off such apartments as he did not need. the first floor had a terrace, and was entered by a flight of steps from the garden, which overlooked the lagoons, and had a view of the cadore mountains. it has been swept away by the building of the fondamenta nuove, but the documents of the leases are preserved, and the exact site is well established. here his children grew up, and he worked for them unceasingly. pomponio, his eldest son, was idle and extravagant, a constant source of trouble, and aretino writes him reproachful letters, which he treats with much impertinence. orazio took to his father's profession, and was his constant companion, and often drew his cartoons; and his beautiful daughter, lavinia, was his greatest joy and pride. in this house titian showed constant hospitality, and there are records of the princely fashion in which he entertained his friends and distinguished foreign visitors. priscianese, a well-known humanist and _savant_ of the day, describes a bacchanalian feast on the st of august, in a pleasant garden belonging to messer tiziano vecellio. aretino, sansovino, and jacopo nardi were present. till the sun set they stayed indoors, admiring the artist's pictures. "as soon as it went down, the tables were spread, looking on the lagoons, which soon swarmed with gondolas full of beautiful women, and resounded with music of voices and instruments, which till midnight, accompanied our delightful supper. titian gave the most delicate viands and precious wines, and the supper ended gaily." in the year titian for the first time sought other than italian patronage. charles v., who was then at the height of his power, with all italy at his feet, passed through mantua, and among all the treasures that he saw was most struck by titian's portrait of federigo gonzaga. after much writing to and fro, it was arranged that titian should meet the emperor at bologna, where he had just been crowned. he made his first sketch of him, from which he afterwards produced a finished full length. it was the first of many portraits, and vasari declares that from that time forth charles would never sit to any other master. he received a knighthood, and many commissions from members of the emperor's court. it was for one of his nobles, da valos, marquis of vasto, that he painted the allegorical piece in the louvre, in which mary of arragon, the lovely wife of da valos, is parting with her husband, who is bound on one of the desperate expeditions against the terrible turks. da valos is dressed in armour, and the couple are encircled by hymen, victory, and the god of love. the composition was repeated more than once, but never with quite the same success. we again suspect the influence of michelangelo in the altarpiece painted before titian next left venice, of st. john the almsgiver, for the church of that name, of which the doge was patron. the figures are life-size, the types stern and rugged, daringly foreshortened, and the colours, though gorgeous, are softened and broken by broad effects of light and shade. it is painted in a solemn mood, a contrast to that in which about this time he produced a series of beautiful female portraits, nude or semi-nude, chiefly, it would appear, at the instance of the duke of urbino. the duke at this time was the general-in-chief of the venetian forces, a position which took him often to venice, and titian's relations with him lasted till the painter's death. at least twenty-five of his works must have adorned the castles of urbino and pesaro. among these were the venus of the uffizi, "la bella di tiziano," in her gorgeous scheme of blue and amethyst, the "girl in a fur cloak," besides portraits of the duke and duchess. it would be impossible to enumerate here the numbers of portraits which titian was now supplying. the reputation he had acquired, not only in italy, but in spain, france, and germany, was greater than had ever been attained by any painter, while his social position was established among the highest in every court. "he had rivals in venice," says vasari, "but none that he did not crush by his excellence and knowledge of the world in converse with gentlemen." there is not a writer of the day who does not acclaim his genius. titian was undoubtedly very fond of money, and had amassed a good fortune. he was constantly asking for favours, and had pensions and allowances from royal patrons. lavinia, when she married, brought her husband a dowry of ducats. he had painted the portraits of the doges with tolerable regularity, but all through his life complaints were heard of his neglect of the work of the hall of grand council. occupied as he was with the work of his foreign patrons, he had systematically neglected the conditions enjoined by his possession of a broker's patent, and the signoria suddenly called on him to refund the salary amounting to over ducats a year, for the twenty years during which he had drawn it without performing his promise, while they prepared to instal pordenone, who had lately appeared as his bitter rival, in his stead. though titian must have been making large sums of money at this time, his expenses were heavy, and he could not calmly face the obligation to repay such a sum as ducats at the same time that he lost the annual salary, nor was it pleasant to be ousted by a second-rate rival. his easy remedy was, however, in his own hands; he set to work and soon completed a great canvas of the "battle of cadore," which, though it is only known to us from a contemporary print and a drawing by rubens, evidently deserved vasari's verdict of being the finest battlepiece ever placed in the hall. the movement and stir he contrives to give with a small number of figures is astonishing. the fortress burns upon the hill-side, a regiment advancing with lances and pennons produces the illusion that it is the vanguard of a great army, the desperate conflict by the narrow bridge realises all the terrors of war. it was an atonement for his long period of neglect, but it was not till [tn: pordenone died in ] that, pordenone having suddenly died, the signoria relented and reinstated titian in his broker's patent. one of his later paintings for the state still keeps its place, "the triumph of faith," in which doge grimani, a splendid, steel-clad form with flowing mantle, kneels before the angelic apparition of faith, who holds a cross, which angels and cherubs help her to support. beneath the clouds are seen the venetian fleet, the ducal palace, and the campanile. it is an allegory of grimani's life; his defeat and captivity are symbolised by the cross and chalice, and the magnificent figure of st. mark with the lion is introduced to show that the doge believes himself to owe his freedom to the saint's intercession. the prophet and standard-bearer at the sides were added by marco vecellio. though the battlepiece perished in the fire of , another masterpiece of this time marks a climax in titian's brilliantly coloured and highly finished style. the "presentation of the virgin" was painted for the refectory of the confraternity of the carità, which was housed in the building now used as the academy, so that the picture remains in the place for which it was executed. it is one of the most vivid and life-like of all his works. the composition is the traditional one; the fifteen steps of the "gospel of mary," the high priest of the old dispensation welcoming the childish representative of the new. below is a great crowd, but it is this little figure which first attracts the eye. the contrast between the mass of architecture and the free and glowing country beyond is not without meaning, and a broken roman torso, lying neglected on the ground, symbolises the downfall of the pagan empire. the flight of steps, with the figure sitting below them, is an idea borrowed from carpaccio, and perhaps taken by him from the sketch-book of jacopo bellini. the men on the left are portraits of members and patrons of the confraternity. most titianesque are the beautiful women in rich dresses at the foot of the steps. in this stately composition we see what is often noticeable in titian's scenes; he brings in the bystanders after the manner of a greek chorus. they all, with one accord, express the same sentiment. there is a certain acceptation of the obvious in titian, a vein of simplicity flows through his nature. he has not the sensitive and subtle search after the motives of humanity which we find in tintoretto or lotto. he has great intellectual power, but not great imagination. it is a temper which helps to keep the unity, the monumental quality of his scenes undisturbed and adds to their effect. in the "ecce homo" christ is shown to the populace by pilate, who with dubious compliment is a portrait of aretino, and the contrast of the lonely, broken-down man with the crowd which, with all its lower instincts let loose, thunders back the cry of "crucify him," is the more dramatic because of the unanimous spirit which possesses the raging multitude. other artists would have given more incidental byplay, and drawn off our attention from the main issue. chapter xix titian (_continued_) while titian was executing portraits of the doges, of aretino and of isabella of portugal, and of himself and his daughter lavinia, he was also striking out a new line in the ceiling pictures for the church of san spirito, which have since been transferred to the salute. though painted before his journey to rome, it may be suspected that he had michelangelo's work in the sixtine chapel in mind, and that he was setting himself the task of bold foreshortening and technical problems. the daring of the conception is great, yet we feel sure that this is not titian's element; his figures in violent movement give a vivid idea of strength and muscular force, but fail both in grace and drawing, and though the colour and light and shade distract our attention from defects of form, he does not possess that mastery over the flowing silhouette which tintoretto attained. it was in that his relations with the farnese, whose young cardinal he had been painting, drew him at last to rome. leo x. had tried to attract him there without success, but now at sixty-eight he found himself as far on the road as urbino. his son orazio was with him, and duke guidobaldo was himself his escort, and sent him on with a band of men-at-arms from pesaro. he was received in rome by cardinal bembo; paul iii. gave him a cordial welcome and vasari was appointed his cicerone. it is interesting to inquire what impression rome, with its treasures of antique statuary and contemporary painting, made upon titian. "he is filled with wonder and glad that he came," writes bembo. in a letter to aretino he regrets that he had not come before. he stayed eight months in rome, and was made a roman citizen. he visits the stanze of raphael in company with sebastian del piombo, and michelangelo comes to see him at his lodgings, and he receives a long letter from aretino advising him to compare michelangelo with raphael, and sansovino and bramante with the sculptors and architects of antiquity. titian was well established in his own style, and was received as the creator of acknowledged masterpieces, and he never painted a more magnificent portrait-piece than that of paul iii., the peevish old pope, ailing and humorous, suspicious of the two nephews who are painted with him, and who he guessed to be conspiring against him. the characteristic attitude of the old man of eighty, bent down in his chair, his quick, irritable glance, the steady, determined gaze of the cardinal, the obsequious attitude and weak, wily face of ottavio farnese are all immortalised in a broader, more careless technique than titian has hitherto used. though he does not seem to have been directly influenced by all he saw in rome, we undoubtedly find a change coming over his work between and , which may be in part ascribed to a widening of his artistic horizon and a consciousness of what others were doing, both around him and abroad. in its whole handling and character his late is different from his early manner. it begins at this time to take on a blurred, soft, impressionist character. his delight in rich colouring seems to wane, and he aims at intensifying the power of light. he reaches that point in the venetian school of painting which we may regard as its climax, when there is little strong local colour, but the canvas seems illumined from within. there are no clear-cut lines, but the shapes are suggested by sombre enveloping shades in which the radiant brightness is embedded. his landscapes alter too; they are no longer blue and smiling, filled with loving detail, but grander, more mysterious. in the "st. jerome" in paris the old saint kneels in wild and lonely surroundings, and the moon, slowly rising behind the dark trees, sends a sharp, silver ray across the crucifix. the "supper at emmaus" has the grandiose effect that is given by avoidance of detail and simplification of method. titian painted several portraits of himself, and we know what sort of stately figure was presented by the old man of seventy who, at christmas in , set forth to ride across the alps in the depths of winter to obey charles v.'s call to augsburg. the excitement of the public was great at his departure, and aretino describes how his house was besieged for the sketches and designs he left behind him. for nearly forty years titian was employed by the house of hapsburg. he had been working for charles since , and when the emperor abdicated, his employment by philip ii. lasted till his death. the palace inventory of contained seventy-six titians, and though probably not all were genuine, yet an immense number were really by him, and the gallery, even now, is richer in his works than any other. the great hall of the pardo must have been a wonderful sight, with titian's finest portrait of himself in the midst, and the magnificent portraits and sacred and allegorical pieces which he continued from this time forward to contribute to it. in this year, which was the last before charles's abdication, and during this visit to south germany, he painted the great equestrian portrait of the emperor on the field of mühlberg, and two years later came the first of his many portraits of philip ii. the face, in the first sketch, is laid in with a sort of fury of impressionism, and in the parade portrait the sitter is realised as a man of great distinction. ugly and sensual as he is, we never tire of looking at titian's conception--a full length of distinguished mien rendered attractive by magnificent colour. everything in it lives, and the slender, aristocratic hands are, as morelli says, a whole biography in themselves. the splendid series of allegorical subjects which titian contributed to the pardo, while he was still supplying sacred pictures and altarpieces to venice and the neighbouring mainland, are among his most mature and important works. never has his gamut of tones been fuller and stronger than in the "jupiter and antiope," or the "venus of the pardo" as it is sometimes called. the venus herself has the attitude of giorgione's dreaming goddess, with her arm flung up above her head. it is, perhaps, the only time that titian succeeds in giving anything ideal to one of his venuses. the famous nudes of the uffizi and the louvre are splendid courtesans, far removed from giorgione's idyllic vision; but antiope, slumbering on her couch of skins, and her woodland lover, gazing with adoring eyes on her beautiful face, have a whole world of sweet and joyful fancy. the whole scene is full of a _joie de vivre_, which carries us back to the bacchanals painted so many years before, and in these titian gives king philip his most perfect work, every touch of which is his own. this picture, now in the louvre, was given to charles i. by the king of spain, and bought for cardinal mazarin in . "danaë," "venus and adonis," "europa and the bull," and a "last supper" followed in quick succession, but titian was now employing many assistants, and great parts of the canvases issuing from his workshop show weak, imitative hands, while replicas were made of other works. his later feeling for the religious in art is expressed in the now bedimmed paintings in san salvatore in venice. vasari describes these in . painted when titian was nearly ninety years old, the "transfiguration" is remarkable for forcible, majestic movement, while in the "annunciation" he invents quite a new treatment. mary turns round and raises her veil, while she grasps the book as if she depended on it for stay and support. the four angels are full of life and gaiety, and the whole has much grace and colour, though it is dashed in, in the painter's later style, in broad and sweeping planes without patience of detail. the old man has signed it "titianus, fecit, fecit," a contemptuous reply to some critics who complained of its want of finish. he knew well what it was in composition and execution, and that all that he had ever known or done lay within the careless strength of his last manner. a letter written to the king of spain's secretary in gives a list "in part" of fourteen pictures sent to madrid during the last twenty-five years, "with many others which i do not remember." on every hand we hear of lost pictures from the master's brush, and the number produced even during the last ten years of his life must have been enormous, for till the end he was full of great undertakings and achievements. very late in life he painted a "shepherd and nymph" (vienna), which in its idyllic feeling, its slumberous delight, its mingling of clothed and nude figures, recalls the early days with giorgione, yet the blurred and smouldering richness, the absolute negation of all sharp lines and lights is in his very latest style, and he has gone past giorgione on his own ground. then in strange contrast is the "christ crowned with thorns," at vienna, a tragic figure stupefied with suffering. his last great work was the "pietà" in the academy, which, though unfinished, is nobly designed and very impressive. he places the virgin supporting the body in a great dome-shaped niche, which gives elevation. it is flanked by two calm, antique, stone figures, whose impassive air contrasts with the wild pain and grief below. the magdalen steps out towards the spectator with the wailing cry of a greek tragedy. it perhaps hardly moves us like the concentrated feeling of bellini's madonna, or the hurried, trembling grief of tintoretto's magdalen, but it is monumental in the sweeping grace of its line, and full of nobility of feeling. it is sadly rubbed and darkened and has lost much of titian's colour, but is still beautiful in its deep greys mingled with a sombre golden glow, as of half-extinguished fires. these late paintings are of the true impressionist order; looked at closely they present a mass of scumbled touches, of incoherent dashes, but if we step farther away, to the right focus, light and dark arrange themselves, order shines through the whole, and we see what the great master meant us to see. "titian's later creations," says vasari, "are struck off rapidly, so that when close you cannot see them, but afar they look perfect, and this is the style which so many tried to imitate, to show that they were practised hands, but only produced absurdities." titian was preparing the picture for the frari, in payment for the grant of a tomb for himself, when in august the plague broke out in venice, and on the th the great painter died of it in his own house. the stringent regulations concerning infection were relaxed to do honour to one of the greatest sons of venice, and he was laid to rest in the frari, borne there in solemn procession, through a city stricken by terror and panic, and buried in the chapel of the crucified saviour, for which his last work was ordered. the "assumption" of his prime looked down upon him, and close at hand was the "madonna of casa pesaro." his son orazio caught the plague and died immediately after, and the painter's house was sacked by thieves and many precious things stolen. the great personality of titian stands out as that which of all others established and consolidated the school of venice. he is its central figure. the century of life, of which eighty years were passed in ceaseless industry of production, left its deep impression on the art of every civilised country of europe. every great man of the day who was a lover of art and culture fell under titian's spell. his influence on his contemporaries was enormous, and he had everything: genius, industry, personal distinction, character, social charm. he is, perhaps, of too intellectual a cast of mind to be quite typical of the venetian spirit, in the way that tintoretto is; it is conceivable that in another environment titian might have developed on rather different lines, but this temper gave him greater domination. he was free from the eccentricities which beset genius. he possessed the saving salt of practical common sense, so that the golden mean of sanity and healthful joy in his works commended them to all men, and they are not difficult to understand. yet while all can see the beauty of his poetic instinct for colour, his interesting and original technique, his grasp and scope, his mastery and certainty have gained for him the title of "the painter's painter." there is no one from whom men feel that they can so safely learn so much, and the grand breadth and power of elimination of his later years is justified by the way in which in his earlier work he has carried exquisite finish and rich impasto to perfection. principal works ancona. crucifixion (l.). s. domenico: madonna with saints and donor, . antwerp. pope alexander vi. presenting jacopo pesaro. berlin. infant daughter of strozzi, ; portrait of himself (l.); lavinia bearing charges. brescia. ss. nazaro e celso: altarpiece, . dresden. madonna with saints (e.); tribute money (e.); lavinia as bride, ; lavinia as matron (l.); portrait, ; lady with vase (l.); lady in red dress. florence. pitti: la bella; aretino, ; magdalen; the young englishman; the concert (e.); philip ii.; ippolito de medici, ; tomaso mosti. uffizi: eleanora gonzaga, duchess of urbino, ; francesco della rovere, duke of urbino, ; flora; venus, the head a portrait of lavinia; venus, the head a portrait of eleanora gonzaga; madonna with s. anthony abbot. london. holy family and shepherd; bacchus and ariadne (e.); noli me tangere (e.); madonna with ss. john and catherine. bridgewater house: holy family (e.); venus of the shell; three ages of man; diana and actaeon, ; callisto, . earl brownlow: diana and actaeon (l.). sir f. cook: portrait of laura de dianti. madrid. madonna with ss. ulfus and bridget (e.); bacchanal; the garden of loves; danaë, ; venus and youth playing organ (l.); salome (portrait of lavinia); trinity, ; entombment, ; prometheus; religion succoured by spain (l.); sisyphus (l.); alfonso of ferrara; charles v. at the battle of mühlberg, ; charles v. and his dog, ; philip ii., ; philip ii.; the infant; don fernando and victory; portrait; portrait of himself; duke of alva; venus and adonis; fall of man; empress isabella. medole (near brescia). christ appearing to his mother. munich. vanitas; portrait of charles v., ; madonna and saints; man with baton. naples. paul iii. and cardinals, ; danaë. padua. scuola del santo: frescoes; s. anthony granting speech to an infant; the youth who cut off his leg; the jealous husband, . paris. madonna with saints (e.); la vierge au lapin; madonna with s. agnes; christ at emmaus (l.); crowning with thorns (l.); entombment; s. jerome (l.); jupiter and antiope (l.); francis i.; allegory; marquis da valos and mary of arragon; alfonso of ferrara and laura dianti; l'homme au gant (e.); portraits. rome. villa borghese: sacred and profane love (e.); st. dominio (l.); education of cupid (l.). capitol: baptism (e.). doria: daughter of herodias. vatican: madonna in glory and six saints, . treviso. duomo: annunciation. urbino. resurrection (l.); last supper (l.). venice. academy: presentation of virgin, ; s. john in the desert; assumption, ; pietà, . palazzo ducale staircase: s. christopher, . sala di quattro porte: doge giovanni before faith, . frari: pesaro madonna, . s. giovanni elemosinario: s. john the almsgiver, . scuola di san rocco: annunciation (e.). salute sacristy: descent of the holy spirit; st. mark enthroned with saints; david and goliath; sacrifice of isaac; cain and abel. s. salvatore: annunciation (l.); transfiguration (l.). verona. duomo: assumption. vienna. gipsy madonna (e.); madonna of the cherries (e.); ecce homo, ; isabela d'este, ; the tambourine player; girl in fur cloak; dr. parma (e.); shepherd and nymph (l.); portraits; doge andrea gritti; jacopo strada; diana and callisto; madonna and saints. wallace collection. perseus and andromeda. (in collaboration with his nephew, francesco vecellio.) louvre. madonna and saints. (the same by francesco alone.) glasgow. madonna and saints. chapter xx palma vecchio and lorenzo lotto among the many who clustered round titian's long career, palma attained to a place beside him and giorgione which his talent, which was not of the highest order, scarcely warranted. but he was classed with the greatest, and influenced contemporary art because his work chimed in so well with the venetian spirit. a bergamasque by birth, he came of venetian parentage, and learnt the first elements of his art in venice. he never really mastered the inner niceties of anatomy in its finest sense, and the broad generalisation of his forms may be meant to conceal uncertain drawing, but his large-bosomed, matronly women and plump children, his round, soft contours, his clean brilliancy, and the clear golden polish in which his pictures are steeped, made a great appeal to the public. his invention is the large santa conversazione, as compared with those in half-length of the earlier masters. the virgin and saints and kneeling or bending donors are placed under the spreading trees of a rich and picturesque landscape. it is palma's version of the giorgionesque ideal, which he had his share in establishing and developing. the heavy tree-trunk and dark foliage, silhouetted almost black against the background, are characteristic of his compositions. as his life goes on, though he still clings to his full, ripe figures and to the same smooth fleshiness in his women, the features become delicate and chiselled, and the more refined type and subtler feeling of his middle stage may be due to his companionship with lotto, with whom he was in bergamo when they were both about twenty-five. he touches his highest, and at the same time keeps very near giorgione, in the splendid st. barbara, painted for the company of the _bombadieri_ or artillerists. their cannon guard the pedestal on which she stands; it was at her altar that they came to commend themselves on going forth to war, and where they knelt to offer thanksgiving for a safe return; and she is a truly noble figure, regal in conception and fine and firm in execution, attired in sumptuous robes of golden brown and green, with splendid saints on either hand. palma was often approached by his patrons who wanted mythological scenes, gods, and goddesses; but though he produced a venus, a handsome, full-blown model, he never excels in the nude, and his tendency is to seize upon the homely. his scenes have a domestic, familiar flavour. with all his golden and ivory beauty he lacks fire, and his personages have a sluggish, plethoric note. in his latest stage he hides all sharpness in a sort of scumble or haze. it would, however, be unfair to say he is not fine, and his portraits especially come very near the best. vienna is rich in examples in half-lengths of one beautiful woman after another robed in the ample and gorgeous garments in which he is always interested. among them is his handsome daughter, violante, with a violet in her bosom, and wearing the large sleeves he admires. the "tasso" of the national gallery has been taken from him and given first to giorgione and then to titian, but there now seems some inclination to return it to its first author. it has a more dreamy, intellectual countenance than we are accustomed to associate with palma; but he uses elsewhere the decorative background of olive branches, and the waxen complexion, tawny colouring, and the pronounced golden haze are palmesque in the highest degree. the colouring is in strong contrast to the pale ivory glow of the ariosto of titian, which hangs near it. [illustration: _palma vecchio._ holy family. _colonna gallery, rome._ (_photo, anderson._)] no one could be more unlike palma than his contemporary, lorenzo lotto, who has for long been classed with the bergamasques, but who is proved by recently discovered documents to have been born in venice. it was for long an accepted fact that lotto was a pupil of bellini, and his earliest altarpiece, to s. cristina at treviso, bears traces of bellini's manner. a pietà above has child angels examining the wounds with the grief and concern which bellini made so peculiarly his own, and the st. jerome and the branch of fig-leaves silhouetted against the light remind us of the altarpiece in s. crisostomo. lotto seems to have clung to quattrocento fashions. the ancona had long been rejected by most of his contemporaries, but he painted one of the last for a church in recanati, in carved and gilt compartments, and he painted predellas long after they had become generally obsolete. we ask ourselves how it was that lotto, who had so susceptible and easily swayed a nature, escaped the influence of giorgione, the most powerful of any in the venice of his youth--an influence which acted on bellini in his old age, which titian practically never shook off, and which dominated palma to the exclusion of any earlier master. it would take too long to survey the train of argument by which mr. berenson has established alvise vivarini as the master of lotto. notwithstanding that bellini's great superiority was becoming clear to the more cultured venetians, alvise, when lotto was a youth, was still the painter _par excellence_ for the mass of the public. in the s. cristina altarpiece the child standing on its mother's knee is in the same attitude as the child in alvise's altarpiece of , and the mother's hand holds it in the same way. other details which supply internal evidence are the shape of hands and feet, the round heads and the way the child is often represented lying across the mother's knees. lotto carries into old age the use of fruit and flowers and beads as decoration, a squarcionesque feature beloved of the vivarini, but which was never adopted by bellini. about lotto comes into contact with palma, and for a short time the two were in close touch. a "santa conversazione," of which a good copy exists in villa borghese, rome, and one at dresden, with the holy family grouped under spreading trees, is saturated with palma's spirit, but it soon passes away, and except for an occasional touch, disappears entirely from lotto's work. lotto may have had relations in bergamo, for when in a competition between artists was set on foot by alessandro martino, a descendant of general colleone, for an altarpiece for s. stefano, he competed and carried off the prize. this was the first of the series of the great works for bergamo, which enrich the little city, where at this period he can best be studied. the great altarpiece (now removed to san bartolommeo) is a most interesting human document, a revelation of the painter's personality. he does not break away from hieratic conventions, like the rival school; his madonna is still placed in the apse of the church with saints grouped round her, a form from which the vivarini never departed, but the whole is full of intense movement, of a lyric grace and ecstasy, a desire to express fervent and rapturous devotion. the architectural background is not in happy proportion in relation to the figures, but the effect of vista and space is more remarkable than in any north italian master. the vivid treatment of light and shade, and the gaiety and delicacy of the flying angels, who hold the canopy, and of the putti, who spread the carpet below, the shapes of throne and canopy and the decorations have led to the idea that lotto drew his inspiration from correggio, whom he certainly resembles in some ways; but at this time correggio was only twenty, and had not given any examples of the style we are accustomed to call correggiesque. we must look back to a common origin for those decorative details, which are so conspicuous in crivelli and bartolommeo vivarini, which came to lotto through the vivarini and to correggio through ferrarese painters, and of which the fountain-head for both was the school of squarcione. for the much more striking resemblances of composition and spirit, the explanation seems to be that lotto on one side of his nature was akin to correggio; he had the same lyrical feeling, the same inclination to exuberance and buoyancy. to both, painting was a vehicle for the expression of feeling, but lotto had also common sense and a goodly share of that humour that is allied to pathos. till the year lotto was much in bergamo, where the first altarpiece gained him orders for others. the reputation of a member of the school of venice was a sure passport to employment. we trace alvise's tradition very plainly in the altarpiece in san bernardino, where the gesture of the madonna's hand as she expounds to the listening saints recalls alvise's of . the little gathered roses, which lotto makes use of to the end of his life, lie scattered on the step; angels, daringly foreshortened, sweep aside the curtain of the sanctuary. the colour is in lotto's scarlet, light blues, and violet. he soon shows himself fond of genre incidents, and in "christ taking leave of his mother" gives a view into a bedroom and a cat running across the floor. the donor kneels with her hair fashionably dressed and wearing a pearl necklace. in the "marriage of s. catherine" at bergamo the saint is evidently a portrait, with hair pearl-wreathed. she kneels very simply and naturally before the child, and the exquisitely lovely and elaborately gowned young woman who represents the madonna, looks out towards the spectator with a mundane and curiously modern air. it was probably the recognition of lotto's success with portraits that led to their being so often introduced into his sacred pieces. in the one we have just noticed, the donor, niccolas bonghi, is brought in, and is on rather a larger scale than the rest, but lotto has evidently not found him interesting. the portraits of the brothers della torre, and that of the prothonotary giuliano in the national gallery, inaugurate that wonderful series of characterisations which are his greatest distinction. a series of frescoes in village churches round bergamo must also be noticed. they are remarkable for spontaneous and original decoration, and may compare with the ceremonial groups of gentile bellini and carpaccio. lotto's personages, as they chatter in the market-places, are full of natural animation and gaiety, and we realise what a step had been made in the painting of actual life. owing to the unsettled state of the rest of italy, the years from to , which lotto spent in venice, found that city the gathering-ground of many of the most distinguished scholars and deepest thinkers of the day. men of all shades of religious thought were engaged in learned discussion, and lotto's ardent and inquiring temperament must have been stimulated by such an environment. during these years, too, he became intimate with titian, and experimented in titian's style, with the result that his painting gets thicker and richer, more fused and solid, and his figures are better put together. he imitates titian's colour, too, but it makes him paint in deeper, fiercer tints, and he soon finds it does not suit him, and returns to his own scheme. his colour is still rather too dazzling, but the distances are translucent and atmospheric. he continues to introduce portraits. in his altarpiece in ss. giovanni and paolo the deacons giving alms and receiving petitions curiously resemble in type and expression the ecclesiastics we see to-day. lotto was now an accepted member of titian's set, and aretino, in a letter dated , writes that titian values his taste and judgment as that of no other; but aretino, with his usual mixture of connoisseurship and clever spite, goes on to insinuate accidentally, as it were, what he himself knew perfectly well, that lotto was not considered on a par with the masters of the first rank. "envy is not in your breast," he says, "rather do you delight to see in other artists certain qualities which you do not find in your own brush, ... holding the second place in the art of painting is nothing compared to holding the first place in the duties of religion." an interesting codex or commentary tells us that lotto never received high prices for his work, and we hear of him hawking pictures about in artistic circles, putting them up in raffles, and leaving a number with jacopo sansovino in the hope that he might hear of buyers. his work ended as it had begun, in the marches. he undertook commissions at recanati, ancona, and loreto, and in september he concluded a contract with the holy house at loreto, by which, in return for rooms and food, he made over himself and all his belongings to the care of the fraternity, "being tired of wandering, and wishing to end his days in that holy place." he spent the last four years of his life at loreto as a votary of the virgin, painting a series of pictures which are distinguished by the same sort of apparent looseness and carelessness which we noticed in titian's late style; a technique which, as in titian's case, conceals a profound knowledge of plastic modelling. though lotto executed an immense number of important and very beautiful sacred works, his portraits stand apart, and are so interesting to the modern mind that one is tempted to linger over them. other painters give us finer pictures; in none do we feel so anxious to know who the sitters were and what was their story. lotto has nothing of the pagan quality which marks giorgione and titian; he is a born psychologist, and as such he witnesses to an attitude of mind in the italy of his day which is of peculiar interest to our own. lotto's bystanders, even in his sacred scenes, have nothing in common with titian's "chorus"; they have the characterisation of distinct individuals, and when he is concerned with actual portraits he is intensely receptive and sensitive to the spirit of his sitters. he may be said to "give them away," and to take an almost unfair advantage of his perception. the sick man in the doria gallery looks like one stricken with a death sentence. he knows at least that it is touch and go, and the painter has symbolised the situation in the little winged genius balancing himself in a pair of scales. in the borghese gallery is the portrait of a young, magnificently dressed man, with a countenance marked by mental agitation, who presses one hand to his heart, while the other rests on a pile of rose-petals in which a tiny skull is half-hidden. the "old man" in the brera has the hard, narrow, but intensely sad face of one whose natural disposition has been embittered by the circumstances of his life, just as that of our prothonotary speaks of a large and gentle nature, mellowed by natural affections and happy pursuits. we smile, as lotto does, with kindly mischief at "marsilio and his bride;" the broad, placid countenance of the man is so significantly contrasted with the clever mouth and eyes of the bride that it does not need the malicious glance of the cupid, who is fitting on the yoke, to "dot the i's and cross the t's" of their future. again, the portrait of laura di pola, in the brera, introduces us to one of those women who are charming in every age, not actually beautiful, but harmonious, thoughtful, perfectly dressed, sensible, and self-possessed, and the "family group" in our own gallery holds a history of a couple of antagonistic temperaments united by life in common and the clasping hands of children. lotto does not keep the personal expression out of even such a canvas as his "triumph of chastity" in the rospigliosi gallery. his delightful venus, one of the loveliest nudes in painting, flies from the attacking termagant, whose virtue is proclaimed by the ermine on her breast, and sweeps her little cupid with her with a well-bred, surprised air, suggestive of the manners of mundane society. [illustration: _lorenzo lotto._ portrait of laura di pola. _brera._ (_photo, anderson._)] the painter who was thus able to unveil personality had evidently a mind that was aware of itself, that looked forward to a wider civilisation and a more earnest and intimate religion. his life seems to have been one of some sadness, and crowned with only moderate success. he speaks of himself as "advanced in years, without loving care of any kind, and of a troubled mind." his will shows that his worldly possessions were few and poor, and that he had no heir closer than a nephew; but he leaves some of his cartoons as a dowry to "two girls of quiet nature, healthy in mind and body, and likely to make thrifty housekeepers," on their marriage to "two well-recommended young men," about to become painters. his sensitive and introspective temperament led him to prefer the retirement and the quiet beauty of loreto to the brilliant society of which he was made free in venice. "his spirit," says mr. berenson, "is more like our own than is perhaps that of any other italian painter, and it has all the appeal and fascination of a kindred soul in another age." principal works _palma vecchio._ bergamo. lochis: madonna and saints (l.). cambridge. fitzwilliam museum: venus (l.). dresden. madonna; ss. john, catherine; three sisters; holy family; meeting of jacob and rachel (l.). london. hampton court: santa conversazione; portrait of a poet. milan. brera: ss. helen, constantine, roch, and sebastian; adoration of magi (l.), finished by cariani. naples. santa conversazione with donors. paris. adoration of shepherds. rome. villa borghese: lucrece (l.); madonna with saints and donor. capitol: christ and woman taken in adultery. palazzo colonna: madonna, s. peter, and donor. venice. academy: st. peter enthroned and six saints; assumption. giovanelli: sposalizio (l.). s. maria formosa: altarpiece. vienna. santa conversazione; violante (l.); five portraits of women. _lorenzo lotto._ ancona. assumption, ; madonna with saints (l.). asolo. madonna in glory, . bergamo. carrara: marriage of s. catherine; predelle. lochis: holy family and s. catherine; predelle; portrait. s. bartolommeo: altarpiece, . s. alessandro in colonna: pietà. s. bernardino: altarpiece. s. spirito: altarpiece. berlin. christ taking leave of his mother; portraits. brescia. nativity. cingoli. s. domenico: madonna and saints and fifteen small scenes. florence. uffizi: holy family. london. hampton court: portrait of andrea odoni, ; portrait (e.); portraits of agostino and niccolo della torre, ; family group; portrait of prothonotary giuliano. bridgewater house: madonna and saints (e.). loreto. palazzo apostolico: saints; nativity; s. michael and lucifer (l.); presentation (l.); baptism (l.); adoration of magi (l.). recanati. municipio: altarpiece, ; transfiguration (e.). s. maria sopra mercanti: annunciation. rome. villa borghese: madonna with s. onofrio and a bishop, . rospigliosi: love and chastity. venice. carmine: s. nicholas in glory, . s. giacomo dall' orio: madonna with saints, . ss. giovanni e paolo: s. antonino bestowing alms, . vienna. santa conversazione, etc. chapter xxi sebastian del piombo it was very natural that rome should wish for works of the masters of the new venetian school, but the first-rate men were fully employed at home. all the efforts made to secure titian failed till nearly the end of his career. on the other hand, venice was full of less famous masters following in giorgione's steps. when sebastian luciani was a young man, giorgione was paramount there, and no one could have foretold that his life would be of such short duration. it was to be expected, therefore, that a painter who consulted his own interests should leave the city where he was overshadowed by a great genius and go farther afield. the influence of the guilds was withdrawn in the sixteenth century, so that it was a simpler matter for painters to transfer their talents, and painting was beginning to appeal strongly to the _dilettanti_, who rivalled one another in their offers. only one work of sebastian's is known belonging to this earlier time in venice. it is the "s. chrysostom enthroned," in s. giovanni crisostomo, and its majesty and rich colouring, and more especially the splendid group of women on the left, so proud and soft in their venetian beauty, make us wonder if sebastian might not have risen to greater heights if he had remained in his natural environment. he responded to the call to rome of agostino chigi, the great painter, [tn: chigi was a banker] art collector, and patron, the friend of leo x. chigi had just completed the farnesina villa, and sebastian was employed till on its decoration, and at once came under the influence of michelangelo. the "pietà" at viterbo shows that influence very strongly; in fact, vasari says that michelangelo himself drew the cartoon for the figure of christ, which would account for its extraordinary beauty. sebastian embarked on a close intimacy with the florentine painter, and, according to vasari, the great canvas of the "raising of lazarus," in the national gallery, was executed under the orders and in part from the designs of michelangelo. this colossal work was looked on as one of the most important creations of the sixteenth century, but there is little to make us wish to change it for the altarpiece of s. crisostomo. the desire for scientific drawing and the search after composition have produced a laboured effect; the female figures are cast in a masculine mould, and it lacks both the severe beauty of the tuscan school and the emotional charm of sebastian's native style. we cannot, however, avoid conjecturing if in the figure of lazarus himself we have not a conception of the great florentine. it is so easy in pose, so splendid in its, perhaps excessive, length of limb, that our thoughts turn involuntarily to the _ignudi_ in the sixtine chapel. the picture has been dulled and injured by repainting, but the distance still has the sombre depth of the venetians. all through sebastian's career he seeks for form and composition, but, great painter as he undoubtedly is, he is great because he possesses that inborn feeling for harmony of colour. this is what we value in him, and he excels in so far as he follows his venetian instincts. the death of raphael improved sebastian's position in rome, and though leo x. never liked or employed him, he did not lack commissions. the "fornarina" in the uffizi, with the laurel-wreathed head and leopard-skin mantle, still reveals him as the venetian, and it is curious that any critic should ever have assigned its rich, voluptuous tone and its coarse type to raphael. sebastian obtained commissions for decorating s. maria del popolo in oils and s. pietro in montorio in fresco, but in the latter medium, though he is ambitious of acquiring the force of michelangelo, he lacks the tuscan ease of hand. colour, for which he possessed so true an aptitude, the deep, fused colour of giorgione, is set aside by him; his tints become strong and crude, his surfaces grow hard and polished, and he thinks, above all, of bold action, of drawing and modelling. the venetian genius for portraiture remains, and he has left such fine examples as the "andrea doria" of the vatican, or the "portrait of a man in the pitti," a masterly picture both in drawing and execution, with grand draperies, a fur pelisse, and damask doublet with crimson sleeves. in the national gallery we possess his own portrait by himself, in company with cardinal de medici. the faces are well contrasted, and we judge from sebastian's that his biographer describes him justly, as fat, indolent, and given to self-indulgence, but genial and fond of good company. after an absence of twenty years he returned to venice. there he came in contact with titian and pordenone, and struck up a friendship with aretino, who became his great ally and admirer. the sack of rome had driven him forth, but in , when the city was beginning partially to recover from that time of horror, he returned, and was cordially welcomed by clement vii., and admitted into the innermost ecclesiastical circles. the piombo, a well-paid, sinecure office of the papal court, was bestowed on him, and his remaining years were spent in rome. he was very anxious to collaborate with michelangelo, and the great painter seems to have been quite inclined to the arrangement. the "last judgment," in the sixtine chapel, was suggested, and sebastian had the melancholy task of taking down perugino's masterpieces; but he wished to reset the walls for oils, and michelangelo stipulated for fresco, saying that oils were only fit for women, so that no agreement was arrived at. sebastian's mode of work was slow, and he employed no assistants. he seems to have been inordinately lazy, fond of leisure and good living, and his character shows in his work, which, with a few exceptions, has something heavy and common about it, a want of keenness and fire, an absence of refinement and selection. principal works florence. uffizi: fornarina, ; death of adonis. pitti: martyrdom of s. agatha, ; portrait (l.). london. resurrection of lazarus, ; portraits. naples. holy family; portraits. paris. visitation, . rome. portrait of andrea doria (l.). farnesina: frescoes, . s. pietro in montorio. frescoes. treviso. s. niccolo: incredulity of s. thomas (e.). venice. academy: visitation (e.). s. giovanni chrisostomo: s. chrysostom enthroned (e.). viterbo. pietà (l.). chapter xxii bonifazio and paris bordone some uncertainty has existed as to the identity of the different members of the family of bonifazio. all the early historians agree in giving the name to one master only. boschini, however, in discovered the register of the death of a second, and a third bearing the name was working twenty years later. upon this dr. morelli came to the conclusion that we must recognise three, if not four, masters bearing the name of bonifazio, but documents recently discovered by professor ludwig have in great measure destroyed morelli's conjectures. there may have been obscure painters bearing the name, but they were mere imitators, and it is doubtful if any were related to the family of de pitatis. bonifazio veronese is really the only one who counts. as ridolfi says, he was born in verona in the most beautiful moment of painting. he came to venice at the age of eighteen, and became a pupil of palma vecchio, with whom his work has sometimes been confused. after palma's death bonifazio continued in friendly relations with his old master's family, and his niece married palma's nephew. bonifazio himself married the daughter of a basket-maker, and appears to have had no children, for he and his wife by their wills bestowed their whole fortune on their nephews. antonio palma, who married bonifazio's niece, was a painter whose pictures have sometimes been attributed to the legendary third bonifazio. bonifazio's life was passed peacefully in venice. he received many important commissions from the republic, and decorated the palace of the treasurers. his character and standing were high, and he was appointed, in company with titian and lotto, to administer a legacy which vincenzo catena had left to provide a yearly dower for five maidens. after a long life spent in steady work, bonifazio withdrew to a little farm amidst orchards--fifteen acres of land in all--at san zenone, near asolo; but he still kept his house in san marcuola, where he died. he was buried in s. alvise in venice. a son of the plains and of venetian stock, his work is always graceful and attractive, though inclined to be hot in colour. it has a very pronounced aristocratic character, and bears no trace of the rough, provincial strain of such men as cariani or pordenone. it is very fine and glowing in colour, but lacks vigour and energy in design. nowhere do we get more worldly magnificence or such frank worship of wealth as on bonifazio's joyous canvases. he represents christian saints and eastern kings alike, as gentlemen of princely rank. there is a note of purely secular art about his adorations and holy families. in the "adoration of the magi," in the academy, the madonna is a handsome, prosperous lady of bonifazio's acquaintance. the child, so far from raising his hand in benediction, holds it out for the proffered cup. he does not, as usual, distinguish the eldest king, but singles out the cup held by the second, who, in a puffed velvet dress, is an evident portrait, probably that of the donor of the picture, who is in this way paid a courtier-like compliment. the third king is such a moor as bonifazio must often have seen embarking from his eastern galley on the riva dei schiavoni. a servant in a peaked hood peers round the column to catch sight of what is going on. the groups of animals in the background are well rendered. in the "rich man's feast," where lazarus lies upon the step, we have another scene of wealthy and sumptuous venetian society, an orgy of colour. and, again, in the "finding of moses" (brera) he paints nobles playing the lute, making love and feasting, and lovely fair-haired women listening complacently. we are reminded of the way in which they lived: their one preoccupation the toilet, the delight of appearing in public in the latest and most magnificent fashions. and in these paintings bonifazio depicts the elaborate striped and brocaded gowns in which the beautiful venetians arrayed themselves, made in the very fashions of the year, and their thick, fair hair is twisted and coiled in the precise mode of the moment. the deep-red velvet he introduces into nearly all his pictures is of a hue peculiar to himself. as catena often brings in a little white lap-dog, so bonifazio constantly has as an accessory a liver-and-white spaniel. vasari speaks of paris bordone as the artist who most successfully imitated titian. he was the son of well-to-do tradespeople in treviso, and received a good education in music and letters, before being sent off to venice and placed in titian's studio. bordone does not seem to have been on very friendly terms with titian. he was dissatisfied with his teaching, and titian played him an ill turn in wresting from him a commission to paint an altarpiece which had been entrusted to him when he was only eighteen. he was, above all, in love with the manner of the dead giorgione, and it was upon this master that he aspired to form his style. his masterpiece, in the academy, was painted for the confraternity of st. mark, and made his reputation. the legend it represents may be given in a few words: in the days of doge gradenigo, one february, there arose a fearful storm in venice. during the height of the tempest, three men accosted a poor old fisherman, who was lying in his decayed old boat by the piazza, and begged that he would row them to s. niccolo del lido, where they had urgent business. after some demur they persuaded him to take the oars, and in spite of the hurricane, the voyage was accomplished. on reaching the shore they pointed out to him a great ship, the crew of which he perceived to consist of a band of demons, who were stirring up the waves and making a great hubbub. the three passengers laid their commands on them to desist, when immediately they sailed away and there was a calm. the passengers then made the oarsman row them, one to s. niccolo, one to s. giorgio, and the third was rowed back to the piazza. the fisherman timidly asked for his fare, and the third passenger desired him to go to the doge and ask for payment, telling him that by that night's work a great disaster had been averted from the city. the fisherman replied that he should not be believed, but would be imprisoned as a liar. then the passenger drew a ring from his finger. "show him this for a sign," he said, "and know that one of those you have this night rowed is s. niccolas, the other is s. george, and i am s. mark the evangelist, protector of the venetian republic." he then disappeared. the next day the fisherman presented the ring, and was assigned a provision for life from the senate. there has, perhaps, never been a richer and more beautiful subject-picture painted than this glowing canvas, or one which brings more vividly before us the magnificence of the pageants which made such a part of venetian life in the golden age of painting. it is all strength and splendour, and escapes the hectic colour and weaker type which appear in bordone's "last supper" and some of his other works. in he went to france and entered the service of francis ii., painting for him many portraits of ladies, besides works for the cardinals of guise and of lorraine. the king of poland sent to him for a "jupiter and antiope." at augsburg he was paid crowns for work done for the great fugger family. no one gives us so closely as bordone the type of woman who at this time was most admired in venice. the venetian ideal was golden haired, with full lips, fair, rosy cheeks, large limbed and ample, with "abundant flanks and snow-white breast." a type glowing with health and instinct with life, but, to say the truth, rather dull, without deep passions, and with no look that reveals profound emotions or the struggle of a soul. from what we see of bordone's female portraits and from some of the mythological compositions he has left, he might have been among the most sensually minded of men. his beautiful courtesan, in the national gallery, is an almost over-realistic presentment of a woman who has just parted from her lover. his women, with their carnation cheeks and expressionless faces, are like beautiful animals; but, as a matter of fact, their painter was sober and temperate in his life, very industrious, and devoted to his widowed mother. about he married the daughter of a venetian citizen, and had a son, who became one of the many insignificant painters of the end of the sixteenth century. most of his days were divided between his little villa of lovadina in the district of belluno, and his modest home in the corte dell' cavallo near the misericordia. "he lives comfortably in his quiet house," writes vasari, who certainly knew bordone in venice, "working only at the request of princes, or his friends, avoiding all rivalry and those vain ambitions which do but disturb the repose of man, and seeking to avert any ruffling of the serene tranquillity of his life, which he is accustomed to preserve simple and upright." many of his pictures show an intense love of country solitudes. his poetic backgrounds, lonely mountains, leafy woods, and sparkling water are in curious contrast to the sumptuous groups in the foreground. his "three heads," in the brera, is a superb piece of painting and an interesting characterisation. the woman is ripe, sensual, and calculating, feeling with her fingers for the gold chain, a mere golden-fleshed, rose-flushed hireling, solid and prosaic. the go-between is dimly seen in the background, but the face of the suitor is a strange, ironic study: past youth, worn, joyless, and bitter, taking his pleasure mechanically and with cynical detachment. the "storm calmed by s. mark" (academy) was, in mr. berenson's opinion, begun by giorgione. rich, brilliant, and essentially venetian as is the work of these two painters, it does not reach the highest level. it falls short of grandeur, and has that worldly tone that borders on vulgarity. as we study it we feel that it marks the point to which venetian art might have attained, the flood-mark it might have touched, if it had lacked the advent of the three or four great spirits, who, appearing about the same time, bore it up to sublimer heights and developed a more distinguished range of qualities. bonifazio and bordone lack the grandeur and sweetness of titian, the brilliant touch and imaginative genius of tintoretto, the matchless feeling for colour, design, and decoration of veronese, but they continue venetian painting on logical lines, and they form a superb foundation for the highest. principal works _bonifazio veronese._ dresden. finding of moses. florence. pitti: madonna; s. elizabeth and donor (e.); rest in flight into egypt; finding of moses. hampton court. santa conversazione. london. santa conversazione (e.). milan. brera: finding of moses. paris. santa conversazione. rome. villa borghese: mother of zebedee's children; return of the prodigal son. colonna: holy family with saints. venice. academy: rich man's feast; massacre of innocents; judgment of solomon, ; adoration of kings. giovanelli: santa conversazione. vienna. santa conversazione; triumph of love; triumph of chastity; salome. _paris bordone._ bergamo. lochis: vintage scenes. berlin. portrait of man in black; chess players; madonna and four saints. dresden. apollo and marsyas; diana; holy family. florence. pitti: portrait of woman. genoa. brignole sale: portraits of men; santa conversazione. hampton court. madonna and donors. london. daphnis and chloe; portrait of lady. bridgewater house: holy family. milan. brera: descent of holy spirit; baptism; s. dominio presented to the saviour by virgin; madonna and saints; venal love. s. maria pr. celso: madonna and s. jerome. munich. portrait; man counting jewels. paris. portraits. rome. colonna: holy family and saints. treviso. madonna and saints. duomo: adoration of shepherds; madonna and saints. venice. academy: fisherman and doge; paradise; storm calmed by s. mark. palazzo ducale chapel: dead christ. giovanelli: madonna and saints. s. giovanni in bragora; last supper. vienna. allegorical pictures; lady at toilet; young woman. chapter xxiii painters of the venetian provinces it has become usual to include in the venetian school those artists from the subject provinces on the mainland, who came down to try their luck at the fountain-head and to receive its hallmark on their talent. the friulan cities, udine, serravalle, and small neighbouring towns, had their own primitive schools and their scores of humble craftsmen. their art wavered for some time in its expression between the german taste, which came so close to their gates, and the italian, which was more truly their element. up to friuli was invaded seven times in thirty years by the turks. they poured in large numbers over the bosnian borders, crossed the isonzo and the tagliamenta, and massacred and carried off the inhabitants. these terrible periods are marked by the cessation of work in the provinces, but hope always revived again. the break caused by such a visitation can be distinctly traced in the church of s. antonino, at the little town of san daniele. martino da udine obtained the epithet of pellegrino da san daniele in when he returned from an early visit to venice, where he had been apprenticed to cima. he was appointed to decorate s. antonino. his early work there is hard and coarse, ill-drawn, the figures unwieldy and shapeless, and the colour dusky and uniform; but owing to the turkish raid, he had to take flight, and it was many a year before the monks gained sufficient courage and saved enough money to continue the embellishment of their church. in the meantime, pellegrino's years had been spent partly in venice and partly, perhaps, in ferrara, for the reason raphael gave for refusing to paint a "bacchus" for the duke, was that the subject had already been painted by pellegrino da san daniele. when pellegrino resumed his work, it demonstrated that he had studied the modern venetians and had come under a finer, deeper influence. a st. george in armour suggests giorgione's s. liberale at castelfranco; he specially shows an affinity with pordenone, who was his pupil and who was to become a better painter than his old master. as pellegrino goes on he improves consistently, and adopts the method, so peculiarly venetian, of sacrificing form to a scheme of chiaroscuro. he even, to some extent, succeeds in his difficult task of applying to wall painting the system which the venetians used almost exclusively for easel pictures. he was an ambitious, daring painter, and some of his church standards were for long attributed to giorgione. the church of san antonino remains his chief monument; but for all his travels pellegrino remains provincial in type, is unlucky in his selection, cares little for precision of form, and trusts to colour for effect. the same transition in art was taking place in other provinces. morto da feltre, pennacchi, and girolamo da treviso have all left work of a giorgionesque type, and some painters who went far onward, began their career under such minor masters. giovanni antonio licinio, who takes his name from his native town of pordenone, in friuli, was one of these. all the early part of his life was spent in painting frescoes in the small towns of the friulan provinces. at first they bear signs of the tuition of pellegrino, but it soon becomes evident that pordenone has learned to imitate giorgione and palma. quite early, however, one of his chief failings appears, and one which is all his own, the disparity in size between his various figures. the secondary personages, the magi in a nativity, the saints standing round an altar, are larger and more athletic in build and often more animated in action than the principal actors in the scene. what pleased pordenone's contemporaries was his daring perspective and his instinctive feeling for movement. he carried out great schemes in the hill-towns, till at length his reputation, which had long been ripe in his native province, reached venice. in he was invited to treviso to fresco the façade of a house for one of the raviguino family. the painter, as payment, asked fifty scudi, and titian was called in to adjudicate, but he admired the work so much that he hinted to raviguino that he would be wise not to press him for a valuation. as a direct consequence of this piece of business, pordenone was employed on the chapel at treviso, in conjunction with titian. at this time the assumption and the madonna of casa pesaro were just finished, and it is probable that pordenone paid his first visit to venice, hard by, and saw his great contemporary's work. with his characteristic distaste for fresco, titian undertook the altarpiece and painted the beautiful annunciation which still holds its place, and pordenone covered the dome with a foreshortened figure of the eternal father, surrounded by angels. among the remaining frescoes in the chapel, an adoration of the magi and a s. liberale are from his brush. fired by his success at treviso, pordenone offered his services to mantua and cremona, but the mantovans, accustomed to the stately and restrained grace of mantegna, would have nothing to say to what crowe and cavalcaselle call his "large and colossal fable-painting." he pursued his way to cremona, and that he studied mantegna as he passed through mantua is evident from the first figures he painted in the cathedral. in cremona every one admired him, and all the artists set to work to imitate his energetic foreshortening, vehement movement and huge proportions. pordenone, with his love for fresco, was all his life an itinerant painter. in he was back at udine and wandered from place to place, painting a vast distemper for the organ doors at s. maria at spilimbergo, the façade of the church of valeriano, an imposing series at travesio, and in , the "story of the true cross" at casara. at the last place he threw aside much of his exaggeration, and, ruined and restored as the frescoes are, they remain among his most dignified achievements. he may be studied best of all at piacenza, in the church of the madonna di campagna, where he divides his subjects between sacred and pagan, so that we turn from a "flight into egypt" or a "marriage of s. catherine," to the "rape of europa" or "venus and adonis." at piacenza he shows himself the great painter he undoubtedly is, having achieved some mastery over form, while his colour has the true venetian quality and almost equals oils in its luscious tones and vivid hues, which he lowers and enriches by such enveloping shadows as only one whose spirit was in touch with the art of giorgione would have understood how to use. very complete records remain of pordenone's life, full details of a quarrel with his brother over property left by his father in , and accounts of the painter's negotiations to obtain a knighthood, which he fancied would place him more on a par with titian when he went to live in venice. the coveted honour was secured, but from this time he seems to have been very jealous of titian and to have aimed continually at rivalling him. pordenone was a punctual and rapid decorator, and on being given the ceiling of the sala di san finio to decorate in the summer of , he finished the whole by march . we have seen how titian annoyed the signoria by his delays, how anxious they were to transfer his commission to pordenone, and what a narrow escape the venetian had of losing his broker's patent. pordenone was engaged by the nuns of murano to paint an annunciation, after they had rejected one by titian on account of its price, and though it seems hardly possible that any one could have compared the two men, yet no doubt the pleasure of getting an altarpiece quickly and punctually and for a moderate sum, often outweighed the honour of the possible painting by the great titian. no one has left so few easel-paintings as pordenone; fresco was so much better suited to his particular style. the canvas of the "madonna of mercy" in the venice academy, was painted about for a member of the house of ottobono, and introduces seven members of the family. it is very free from his colossal, exaggerated manner; the attendant saints are studied from nature, and in his journals the painter mentions that the st. roch is a portrait of himself. the "s. lorenzo enthroned," in the same gallery, shows both his virtues and failings. the saints have his enormous proportions. the baptist is twisting round, to display the foreshortening which pordenone particularly affects. the gestures are empty and inexpressive, but the colour is broad and fluid; there is a large sense of decoration in the composition, and something simple and austere about the figure of s. lorenzo. as is so often the case with pordenone, the principal actor of the scene is smaller and more sincerely imagined than the attendant personages, who are crowded into the foreground, where they are used to display the master's skill. pordenone died suddenly at ferrara, where he had been summoned by its duke to undertake one of his great schemes of decoration. he was said to have been poisoned, but though he had jealous rivals there seems no proof of the truth of the assertion, which was one very commonly made in those days. he is interesting as being the only distinguished member of the venetian school whose frescoes have come down to us in any number, and as being the only one of the later masters with whom it was the chosen medium. his kinsman, bernardino licinio, is represented in the national gallery by a half-length of a young man in black, and at hampton court by a large family group and by another of three persons gathered round a spinet. his masterpiece is a madonna and saints in the frari, which shows the influence of palma. his flesh tints, striving to be rich, have a hot, red look, but his works have been constantly confounded with those of giorgione and paris bordone. a long list might be given of minor artists who were industriously turning out work on similar lines to one or other of these masters: calderari, who imitates paris bordone as well as pordenone; pomponio amalteo, pordenone's son-in-law, a spirited painter in fresco; florigerio, who practised at udine and padua, and of whom an altarpiece remains in the academy; giovanni battista grassi, who helped vasari to compile his notices of friulan art, and many others only known by name. at the close of the fifteenth century the revulsion against paduan art extended as far as brescia, and girolamo romanino was one of the first to acquire the trick of venetian painting. he probably studied for a time under friulan painters. pellegrino is thought to have been at brescia or bergamo during the friulan disturbances of - , and about romanino emerges, a skilled artist in pellegrino's palmesque manner. his works at this time are dark and glowing, full of warm light and deep shadow; the scene is often laid under arches, after the manner of the vivarini and cima; a gorgeous scheme of accessory is framed in noble architecture. brescia was an opulent city, second only to milan among the towns of northern italy, and romanino obtained plenty of patronage; but in the city fell a prey to the horrors of war, was taken and lost by venice, and in was sacked by the french. romanino fled to padua, where he found a home among the benedictines of s. giustina. here he was soon well employed on an altarpiece with life-size figures for the high altar, and a "last supper" for the refectory. it is also surmised that he helped in the series for the scuola del santo, for several of which titian in had signed a receipt, and the "death of st. anthony" is pointed out as showing the brescian characteristics of fine colour, but poor drawing. romanino returned to brescia when the venetians recovered it in , but before doing so he went to cremona and painted four subjects, which are among his most effective, in the choir of the duomo. he is not so daring a painter as pordenone, from whom he sometimes borrows ideas, but he is quite a convert to the modern style of the day, setting his groups in large spaces and using the slashed doublets, the long hose, and plumed headgear which giorgione had found so picturesque. romanino is often very poor and empty, and fails most in selection and expression at the moments when he most needs to be great, but he is successful in the golden style he adopted after his closer contact with the venetians, and his draperies and flesh tints are extremely brilliant. he is, indeed, inclined to be gaudy and careless in execution, and even the fine "nativity" in the national gallery gives the impression that size is more regarded than thought and feeling. moretto is perhaps the only painter from the mainland who, coming within the charmed circle of venetian art and betraying the study of palma and titian and the influence of pordenone, still keeps his own gamut of colour, and as he goes on, gets consistently cooler and more silvery in his tones. he can only be fully studied in brescia itself, where literally dozens of altarpieces and wall-paintings show him in every phase. his first connection was probably with romanino, but he reminds us at one time of titian by his serious realism, and finished, careful painting, at another of raphael, by the grace and sentiment of his heads, and as time goes on he foreshadows the style of veronese. in the "feast in the house of simon" in the organ-loft of the church of the pietà in venice, the very name prepares us for the airy, colonnaded building, with vistas of blue sky and landscape, and the costly raiment and plenishing which might have been seen at any venetian or brescian banquet. in his portraits moretto sometimes rivals lotto. his personages are always dignified and expressive, with pale, high-bred faces, and exceedingly picturesque in dress and general arrangement. he loved to paint a great gentleman, like the sciarra martinengo in the national gallery, and to endow him with an air of romantic interest. one of those who entered so closely into the spirit of the venetian school that he may almost be included within it, is savoldo. his pictures are rare, and no gallery can show more than one or two examples. the louvre has a portrait by him of gaston de foix, long thought to be by giorgione. his native town can only show one altarpiece, an "adoration of shepherds," low in tone but intense in dusky shadow with fringes of light. he is grey and slaty in his shadows, and often rough and startling in effect, but at his best he produces very beautiful, rich, evening harmonies; and a letter from aretino bears witness to the estimation in which he was held. it is not easy to say if brescia or vicenza has most claim to bartolommeo montagna, the early master of cima. born of brescian parents, he settled early in vicenza, and he is by far the most distinguished of those vicentine painters who drank at the venetian fount. he must have gone early to venice and worked with the vivarini, for in his altarpiece in the brera he has the vaulted porticoes in which bartolommeo and alvise vivarini delighted. his "madonna enthroned" in the gallery at vicenza has many points of contact with that of alvise at berlin. among these are the four saints, the cupola, and the raised throne, and he is specially attracted by the groups of music-making angels; but montagna has more moral greatness than alvise, and his lines are stronger and more sinewy. he keeps faithful to the alvisian feeling for calm and sweetness, but his personages have greater weight and gravity. he essays, too, a "pietà" with saints, at monte berico, and shows both pathos and vehemence. he has evidently seen bellini's rendering, and attempts, if only with partial success, to contrast in the same way the indifference of death with the contemplation and anguish of the bereaved. hard and angular as montagna's saints often are, they show power and austerity. his colour is brilliant and enamel-like; he does not arrive at the venetian depth, yet his altarpieces are very grand, and once more we are struck by the greatness of even the secondary painters who drew their inspiration from padua and venice. among the other vicentines, giovanni speranza and giovanni buonconsiglio were imbued with characteristics of mantegna. speranza, in one of his few remaining works, almost reproduces the beautiful "assumption" by pizzolo, mantegna's young fellow-student, in the chapel of the eremitani. he employs buonconsiglio as an assistant, and they imitate montagna to such an extent that it is difficult to distinguish between their works. buonconsiglio's "pietà" in the vicenza gallery, is reminiscent of montagna's at monte berico. the types are lean and bony, the features are almost as rugged as dürer's, the flesh earthy and greenish. about buonconsiglio was studying oils with antonello da messina; he begins to reside in venice, and a change comes over his manner. his colours show a brilliancy and depth acquired by studying titian; and then, again, his bright tints remind us of lotto. his name was on the register of the venetian guild as late as . after pisanello's achievement and his marked effect on early venetian art, veronese painting fell for a time to a very low ebb; but mantegna's influence was strongly felt here, and art revived in liberale da verona, falconetto, casoto, the morone and girolamo dai libri, painters delightful in themselves, but having little connection with the school of venice. francesco bonsignori, however, shook himself free from the narrow circle of veronese art, where he had for a time followed liberale, and grows more like the vicentines, montagna and buonconsiglio. he is careful about his drawing, but his figures, like those of many of these provincial painters, are short, bony and vulgar, very unlike the slender, distinguished type of the great paduan. under the name of francesco da verona, bonsignori works in the new palace of the gonzagas, and several pictures painted for mantua are now scattered in different collections. at verona he has left four fine altarpieces. he went early to venice, where he became the pupil of the vivarini. his faces grow soft and oval, and the very careful outlines suggest the influence of bellini. girolamo mocetto was journeyman to giovanni bellini; in fact, vasari says that a "dead christ" in s. francesco della vigna, signed with bellini's name, is from mocetto's hand. his short, broad figures have something of bartolommeo vivarini's character. francesco torbido went to venice to study with giorgione, and we can trace his master's manner of turning half tones into deep shades; but he does not really understand the giorgionesque treatment, in which shade was always rich and deep, but never dark, dirty and impenetrable, nor in the lights can he produce the clear glow of giorgione. another veronese, cavazzola, has left a masterpiece upon which any painter might be happy to rest his reputation; the "gattemalata with an esquire" in the uffizi, a picture noble in feeling and in execution, and one which owes a great deal to venetian portrait-painters. principal works _pordenone._ casara. old church: frescoes, . colatto. s. salvatore: frescoes (e.). cremona. duomo: frescoes; christ before pilate; way to golgotha; nailing to cross; crucifixion, ; madonna enthroned with saints and donor, . murano. s. maria d. angeli: annunciation (l.). piacenza. madonna in campagna: frescoes and altarpiece, - . pordenone. duomo: madonna of mercy, ; s. mark enthroned with saints, . municipio: ss. gothard, roch, and sebastian, . spilimbergo. duomo: assumption; conversion of s. paul. sensigana. madonna and saints. torre. madonna and saints. treviso. duomo: adoration of magi; frescoes, . venice. academy: portraits; madonna, saints, and the ottobono family; saints. s. giovanni elemosinario: saints. s. rocco: saints, . _pellegrino._ san daniele. frescoes in s. antonio. cividale. s. maria: madonna with six saints. venice. academy: annunciation. _romanino._ bergamo. s. alessandro in colonna: assumption. berlin. madonna and saints; pietà. brescia. galleria martinengo: portrait; christ bearing cross; nativity; coronation. duomo: sacristy: birth of virgin; visitation. s. francesco: madonna and saints; sposalizio. cremona. duomo: frescoes. london. polyptych; portrait. padua. last supper; madonna and saints. sato, lago di garda. duomo: saints and donor. trent. castello: frescoes. verona. st. jerome. s. giorgio in braida: organ shutters. _moretto._ bergamo. lochis: holy family; christ bearing cross; donor. brescia. galleria martinengo: nativity and saints; madonna appearing to s. francis; saints; madonna in glory with saints; christ at emmaus; annunciation. s. clemente: high altar and four other altarpieces. s. francesco: altarpiece. s. giovanni evangelista: high altar; third altar. s. maria in calchera: dead christ and saints; magdalen washing feet of christ. s. maria delle grazie: high altar. ss. nazaro and celso: two altarpieces; sacristy: nativity. seminario di s. angelo: high altar. london. portrait of count sciarra martinengo; portrait; madonna and saints; two angels. milan. brera: madonna and saints; assumption. castello: triptych; saints. rome. vatican: madonna enthroned with saints. venice. s. maria della pietà: christ in the house of levi. verona. s. giorgio in braida: madonna and saints. _bartolommeo montagna._ bergamo. lochis: madonna and saint, . berlin. madonna, saints, and donors, . milan. brera: madonna, saints, and angels. padua. scuola del santo: fresco; opening of s. antony's tomb. pavia. certosa: madonna, saints, and angels. venice. academy: madonna and saints; christ with saints. verona. ss. nazaro e celso: saints; pietà; frescoes, - . vicenza. holy family; madonna enthroned; two madonnas with saints; three madonnas. duomo: altarpiece; frescoes. s. corona: madonna and saints. monte berico: pietà, ; fresco. chapter xxiv paolo veronese paolo veronese, though perhaps he is not to be placed on the very highest pinnacle of the venetian school, must be classed among those few great painters who rose far above the level of most of his contemporaries and who brought in a special note and flavour of his own. his art is an independent art, and he borrows little from predecessors or contemporaries. his free and joyous temperament gave relief at a moment when the venetian scheme of colour threatened to become too sombre, and when sebastian del piombo, pordenone, titian himself, and above all tintoretto, were pushing chiaroscuro to extremes. veronese discards the deepest bronzes and mulberries and crimsons and oranges, and finds his range among cream and rose and grey-greens. titian concentrated his colours and intensified his lights, tintoretto sacrifices colour to vivid play of light and dark, but veronese avoids the dark; the generous light plays all through his scenes. he has no wish to secure strong effects but delights in soft, faded tints; old rose and _turquoise morte_. in his colour and his subjects he is a personification of the robust, proud, joy-loving republic, in which, as m. yriarte says, a man produced his works as a tree produces its fruit. we get very near him in those vast palaces and churches and villas, where his heroic figures expand in the azure air, against the white clouds, and yet he is one of the artists of the renaissance about whom we know least. here and there, in contemporary biography, we come across a mention of him and learn that he was sociable and lively, quick at taking offence, fond of his family and anxious to do his best by them. he was, too, very generous with his work--a great contrast in this respect to titian--and contracts with convents and confraternities show that he often only stipulated for payment for bare time. yet he was fond of personal luxury, loved rich stuffs, horses and hounds, and, says ridolfi, "always wore velvet breeches." his first masters, according to mr. berenson, were badile and brusasorci, masters of verona, but before he was twenty, he was away working on his own account. his first patron was cardinal gonzaga, who brought several painters from verona to mantua; but mantua was no longer what it had been in the days of isabela d'este, and paolo caliari soon returned to his own town. before he was twenty-three he had decorated villa porti, near vicenza, in collaboration with zelotti, a veronese, portraying feasting gods and goddesses, framed in light architectural designs in monochrome. the two painters went on to other villas, mixing mortal and mythical figures in a happy, light-hearted medley. zelotti having received a commission at vicenza, paolo decided to seek his fortune in venice. the prior of the convent of san sebastiano, on the zattere, was a veronese, and caliari wrote to him before arriving in venice in . thanks to the good prior, who played a considerable part in his destiny, he obtained a commission for a "coronation of the virgin and four other saints." he first painted the sacristy, but his success was instantaneous, and many orders followed. the ceiling of the church was devoted to the history of esther. the whole of these paintings are marvellously well preserved, and, inset in the carved and gilt framework, make a _coup d'oeil_ of surprising beauty. they had an immense effect. every one was able to appreciate these joyous pictures of venice, the loveliness of her skies, the pomp of her ceremonies, the rich eastern stuffs and the glorious architecture of her palaces. it was an auspicious moment for a painter of veronese's temper; the so-called republic, now, more than ever, an oligarchy, was at the height of its fortunes, redecorating was going forward everywhere, the merchant-nobility was rich and spending magnificently, the eastern trade was flourishing, venice was in all her glory. the patrons caliari came to work for, preferred the ceremonial to the imaginative treatment of sacred themes, and he does not choose the tragedies of the bible for illustration. he paints the history of esther, with its royal audiences, banquets, and marriage-feasts. his christs and maries and martyrs are composed, courtly personages, who maintain a dignified calm under misfortune, and have very little violent feeling to show. at the time of his arrival in venice, palma vecchio was just dead, tintoretto was absorbed by the scuola di san rocco, paris bordone was with francis i. as rivals, caliari had salviati, bonifazio, schiavone, and zelotti, all rendering homage to titian who was eighty years old, but still in full vigour. titian's opinions in matters of art were dictates, his judgment was a law. he immediately recognised veronese's genius, which was of a kind to appeal to him, and together with sansovino, who at this time was director of buildings to the signoria, he received the young painter with an approval which ensured him a good start. five years after veronese's arrival he was retained to decorate the villa barbaro at maser, which is a type of those patrician country-houses to which the venetians were becoming more attached every year. daniele barbaro, patriarch of aquileia, whose magnificent portrait by veronese is in the pitti, was himself an artist and designed the ceiling of the hall of the council of ten. palladio, alessandro vittoria, and veronese were associated to build him a dwelling worthy of a prince of the church. in style the villa is a total contrast to the gorgeous venetian palaces; it is sober and simple, and well adapted to leisure and retirement. its white stucco walls and decorations are devoid of gilding and colour, and the rooms adorned by veronese's brush show him in quite a new light. his visit to rome did not take place till four years later, but he has been influenced here by the feeling for the antique, and he thinks much of line and style. he leaves on one side the gorgeous brocades and gleaming satins, in which he usually delights, and his nymphs are only clothed in their own beauty. and here veronese shows his admirable taste and discretion; his patrons, the barbaro family, are his friends, men and women of the world, who put no restraint on his fancy, and are not prone to censure, and veronese, with the bridle on his neck, so to speak, uses his opportunities fully, yet never exceeds the limits of good taste. he is not gross and sensual like rubens, but proud, grave and sweet, seductive, but never suggestive or vulgar. after having placed single figures wherever he can find a nook, he assembles all the gods of olympia at a supper in the cupola. immortality is a beautiful young woman seated on a cloud. mercury gazes at her, caduceus in hand; diana caresses her great hound; saturn, an old man, rests his head on his hand; mars, apollo, venus, and a little cupid are scattered in the empyrean, and jupiter presides over the party. below, a balcony rail runs round the cupola, and looking over it, an old lady, dressed in the latest fashion, points out the company to a beautiful young one and to a young man in a doublet who holds a hound in a leash. they are evidently family portraits, taken from those who looked on at the artist, and on the other side he has introduced members of his own family who were helping him. these decorations have a gaiety, an absence of pedantry, a sound and sane sympathy with the spirit of the renaissance which tell of a happy moment when art was at its height and in touch with its environment. from about we may begin to date his great supper pictures. the marriage of cana (louvre), one of his most famous works, was painted for the refectory in sammichele, the old part of s. giorgio maggiore. the treaty for it is still in existence, dated june . the artist asks for a year; the prior is to furnish canvas and colours, the painter's board, and a cask of wine. the further payment of ducats illustrates the prices received by the greatest artists at the height of the renaissance: £ for work which occupied quite eight months. veronese must have delighted in painting this work. needless to say, it is not in the least religious. he has united in it all the most varied personages who struck his imagination. so we see a spanish grandee, francis i., suleiman the sultan, charles v., vittoria colonna, and eleanor of austria. in the foreground, grouped round a table, are veronese himself, playing the viol, tintoretto accompanying him, jacopo da ponte seated by them, and paolo's brother, the architect, with his hand on his hip, tossing off a full glass; and in the governor of the feast, opulent and gorgeously attired, we recognise aretino. under the marble columns of a grimani or a pesaro, he brings in all the illustrious actors of his own time and leaves us an odd and informing document. we can but accept the scene and admire the originality of its design and the freedom of its execution, its boldness and fancy, the way in which the varied incidents are brought into harmony, and the grace of the colonnade, peopled with spectators, standing out against the depth of distant sky. the celebrated suppers, of which this is the first example, are dispersed in different galleries and some have disappeared, but from this time veronese loved to paint these great displays, repeating some of them, but always introducing variety. [illustration: _paolo veronese._ marriage in cana. _louvre._ (_photo, mansell and co._)] in he accompanied girolamo grimani, procurator of st. mark's, who was appointed ambassador to the holy see, and for the first time saw the works of raphael and michelangelo and the treasures of antiquity. for a time, the sight of the antique had some effect upon his work; in his famous ceiling in the louvre, "jupiter destroying the vices," the influence of michelangelo is apparent and its large gestures are inspired by sculpture. ridolfi says that veronese brought home casts from rome, and statues of amazons and the laocoon seem to have inspired the jupiter. he did not go on long in this path; he does not really care for the nude--it is too simple for him. he prefers that his saints and divinities should appear in the gorgeous costumes of the day, and that his venus and diana and the nymphs should trail in rich brocades. but few documents are left concerning his work for the ducal palace up to ; much of it was destroyed in the great fire, but the signoria then gave him a number of fresh commissions. the most important was the immense oval of the "triumph of venice," or, as it is sometimes called, the "thanksgiving for lepanto"; the republic crowned by victory and surrounded by allegorical figures, glory, peace, happiness, ceres, juno and the rest. the composition shows the utmost freedom: the fair queen leans back, surrounded by laughing patricians, who look up from their balconies, as if they were attending a regatta on the grand canal. the horses of the free companions, the soldiers who go afar to carry out the will of the republic, prance in a crowd of personages, each of whom represents a town or colony of her domain. like all veronese's creations, this will always be pre-eminently a picture of the sixteenth century, dated by a thousand details of costume, architecture, and armour. venice, the venice of lepanto and the venier, of titian, aretino, and veronese himself, makes a deep impression upon us, and the artist reflects his age with sympathetic spontaneity. hardly a hall of the ducal palace but can show a canvas of veronese or the assistants by whom he was now surrounded. from time to time he resumed the decorations of s. sebastiano, and his incessant production betrays no trace of fatigue or languor. the martyrdom of the saint is a triumph of the beauty of the silhouette against a radiant sky. he goes back to verona and paints the "martyrdom of st. george." he pours light into it. the saints open a shining path, down which a flower-crowned love flutters with the diadem and palm of victory. the whole air and expression of st. george is full of strength and that look of goodness and serenity which is the painter's nearest approach to religious feeling. veronese was created a chevalier of st. mark; every one was asking for his services, but he was a stay-at-home by nature and fond of living with his family. philip ii. longed to get him to cover his great walls in the escurial, but he very civilly declined all his invitations and sent federigo zucchero in his stead. it was on account of the "feast in the house of levi" that in he was hauled before the tribunal of the inquisition, and the document concerning this was only discovered a few years ago. the signoria had never allowed any tribunal to chastise works of literature; on the contrary, venice, though comparatively poor herself in geniuses of the mind, was the refuge of freedom of thought, and, in fact, had made a sort of compact with niccolas v., which allowed her to set aside or suspend the decisions of the holy office, from which she could not quite emancipate herself. veronese, however, was denounced by some "aggrieved person," to whom his way of treating sacred subjects seemed an outrage on religion. the members of the tribunal demanded "who the boy was with the bleeding nose?" and "why were halberdiers admitted?" veronese replied that they were the sort of servants a rich and magnificent host would have about him. he was then asked why he had introduced the buffoon with a parrot on his hand. he replied that he really thought only christ and his apostles were present, but that when he had a little space over, he adorned it with imaginary figures. this defence of the vast and crowded canvas did not commend itself, and he was asked if he really thought that at the last supper of our saviour it was fitting to bring in dwarfs, buffoons, drunken germans, and other absurdities. did he not know that in germany and other places infested with heresy, they were in the habit of turning the things of holy church into ridicule, with intent to teach false doctrine to the ignorant? paolo for his defence cited the last judgment, where michelangelo had painted every figure in the nude, but the inquisitor replied crushingly, that these were disembodied spirits, who could not be expected to wear clothing. could veronese uphold his picture as decent? the painter was probably not very much alarmed. he was a person of great importance in venice, and the proceedings of the inquisition were always jealously watched by members of the senate, who would not have permitted any unfair interference with the liberties of those under the protection of the state. the real offence was the introduction of the german soldiers, who were peculiarly obnoxious to the venetians; but veronese did not care what the subject was as long as it gave him an excuse for a great _spectacle_. brought to bay, he gave the true answer: "my lords, i have not considered all this. i was far from wishing to picture anything disorderly. i painted the picture as it seemed best to me and as my intellect could conceive of it." it meant that veronese painted in the way that he considered most artistic, without even remembering questions of religion, and in this he summed up his whole æsthetic creed. he was set at liberty on condition that he took out one or two of the most offending figures. the "feast in the house of levi" (as he named it after the trial) is the finest of all his great scenic effects. the air circulates freely through the white architecture, we breathe more deeply as we look out into the wide blue sky, and such is the sensation of expansion, that it is hardly possible to believe we are gazing at a flat wall. titian's backgrounds are a blue horizon, a burning twilight. veronese builds marble palaces, with rosy shadows, or columns blanched in the liquid light. his personages show little violent action. he places them in noble poses in which they can best show off their magnificent clothes, and he endows his patricians, his goddesses, his sacred persons, with a uniform air of majestic indolence. after his "trial," veronese proceeded more triumphantly than ever. every prince wished to have something from his brush; the emperor rudolph, at prague, showed with pride the canvases taken later by gustavus adolphus. the duke of modena, carrying on the traditions of ferrara, added veronese's works to the treasures of the house of este. the last ten years of his life were given up to visiting churches on the mainland and on the little islands round venice, all covetous to possess something by the brilliant veronese, whose name was in every mouth. torcello, murano, treviso, castelfranco, every convent and monastery loaded him with commissions, and it is significant of the spirit of the time, that in spite of the disapproval of the holy see, his most ardent patrons, those who delighted most in his robust, uncompromising worldliness, were to be found in the religious houses. then, when he went to rest in the summer heats in some villa on the brenta, he left delightful souvenirs here and there. it was on such an occasion, for the pisani, that he painted the "family of darius," which was sold to england by a member of the house in . the royal captives, who are throwing themselves at the feet of the conqueror, are, with paolo's usual frank naïveté and disregard of anachronisms, dressed in full venetian costume--all the chief personages are portraits of the pisani family. the freedom and rapidity of execution, the completeness and finish, the charm of colour, the beauty of the figures (especially the princely ones of alexander and hephaestion), and its extraordinary energy, make this one of the finest of all his works. the critic, charles blanc, says of it, "it is absurd and dazzling." in the "rape of europa," he recurred again to one of those legends of fabled beings who have outlasted dynasties and are still fresh and living. veronese was surrounded by men like aretino and bembo, well versed in mythology, and with his usual zest he makes the tale an excuse for painting lovely, blooming women, rich toilets, and a delightful landscape. the wild flowers spring, and the little loves fly to and fro against a cloud-flecked sky of the wonderful veronese turquoise. it is the work of a man who is a true poet of colour and for whom colour represents all the emotions of joy and pleasure. veronese died comparatively young, of chill and fever, and all his family survived him. he lies buried in san sebastiano. from contemporary memoirs we know that he lived and dressed splendidly. he kept immense stores of gorgeous stuffs to paint from in his studio, and drew everything from life,--the negroes covered with jewels, the bright-eyed pages, the models who, robed in velvets, brocades and satins, became queens or courtesans or saints. the pearls which bedecked them were from his own caskets. though we know little of his private life, his work is so alive that he seems personified in it. he is saved from what might have been a prosaic or a sordid style by the delicious, ever-changing colour in which he revels; his silks and satins are less modelled by shadows than tinted by broken reflections, his embroidered and striped and arabesqued tissues are so harmoniously combined that the eye rests, wherever it falls, on something exquisite and subtle in tint. this is where his genius lies, "the decoration does not add to the interest of the drama; it replaces it"; in short, it _is_ the drama itself, for his types show little selection, and his ideal of female beauty is not a very sympathetic one. his personages are cold and devoid of expression, their gestures are rather meaningless, but by means of light and air and exquisite colour he gives the poetical touch which all great art demands. on account of their size few examples of veronese's work are to be found in private collections, but the galleries of the different european capitals are rich in them. numbers of paintings, too, which are by his assistants are dignified by his name, and directly after his death spurious works were freely manufactured and sold as genuine. principal works dresden. madonna with cuccina family; adoration of magi; marriage of cana. florence. pitti: portrait of daniele barbaro. uffizi: martyrdom of s. giustina; holy family (e.). london. consecration of s. niccolas; the family of darius before alexander; adoration of the magi. maser. villa barbaro: frescoes. padua. s. giustina: martyrdom of s. giustina. paris. christ at emmaus; marriage of cana. venice. academy: battle of lepanto; feast in the house of levi; madonna with saints. ducal palace: triumph of venice; rape of europa; venice enthroned. s. barnabà: holy family. s. francesco della vigna: holy family. s. sebastiano: madonna and saints; crucifixion; madonna in glory with s. sebastian and other saints; others in part; frescoes; saints and figure of faith; sibyls. verona. portrait of pasio guadienti, . s. giorgio: martyrdom of s. george. vicenza. monte berico: feast of st. gregory, . vienna. christ at the house of jairus. chapter xxv tintoretto it does not seem likely that many new discoveries will be made about tintoretto's life. it was an open and above-board one, and there is practically no time during its span that we are not able to account for, and to say where he was living and how he was occupied. the son of a dyer, a member of one of the powerful guilds of venice, the "little dyer," _il tentoretto_, appears as an enthusiastic boy, keen to learn his chosen art. he was apprenticed to titian and, immediately after, summarily ejected from that master's workshop, on account, it seems probable, of the independence and innovation of his style, which was of the very kind most likely to shock and puzzle titian's courtly, settled genius. after this he painted when and where he could, pursuing his artistic studies with the headlong ardour which through life characterised his attitude towards art. mr. berenson thinks he may have worked in bonifazio's studio. he formed a close friendship with andrea schiavone,[ ] he imported casts of michelangelo's statues, he studied the works of titian and palma. over his door was written "the colour of titian and the form of michelangelo." all his energies were for long devoted to the effort to master that form. colour came to him naturally, but good drawing meant more to him than it had ever done to any venetian. long afterwards, to repeated inquiries as to how excellence could be best ensured, he would give no other advice than the reiterated, "study drawing." he practised till the human form in every attitude held no difficulties for him. he suspended little models by strings, and drew every limb and torso he could get hold of over and over again. he was found in every place where painting was wanted, getting the builders to let him experiment upon the house-fronts. to master light and shade he constructed little cardboard houses, in which, by means of sliding shutters, lamplight and skylight effects could be arranged. it is particularly interesting to hear of this part of his education, as in the end the love of shine and shadow was the most victorious of all his inspirations. [ ] andrea meldola, the sclavonian, a native of dalmatia, landing in venice, had a great struggle for existence. he drew from parmegianino, and studied giorgione and titian. he was probably an assistant of titian, and helped him, as in the "venus and adonis" of the national gallery, which owes much to his hand. he fails conspicuously in form, his shadows are black, and his figures often vulgar, but he has a fine sense of colour, and a free, crisp touch. he was one of the young masters who flooded venice with light, sketchy wares. the chief events in tintoretto's life are art-events. for some years he frescoed the outside of houses at a nominal price, or merely for his expenses. he decorated household furniture and everything he could lay hands on. then came a few small commissions, an altarpiece here, organ-doors there, for unimportant churches. no one in venice talked of any one save palma, bonifazio, and, above all, titian, and it was difficult enough for an outsider, who was not one of their clique, to get employment. but by the time tintoretto was twenty-six his talent was becoming recognised; he had painted the two altarpieces for ss. ermagora and fortunato, and the offer he made to decorate the vast church of his parish brought him conspicuously into notice. in the first ardour of youth he completed the "last judgment" for the choir. from time to time, during fourteen years, he redeemed his early promises and executed the "golden calf" and the "presentation of the virgin." within two years of his offer to the prior, came his first great opportunity of achieving distinction. this was a commission from the confraternity of st. mark, and with the "miracle of the slave" he sprang at once to the highest place. the picture was universally admired, and was followed by three more dealing with the patron saint. at forty he married happily a beautiful young girl, faustina dei vescovi, or episcopi, as it is indifferently given, the daughter of a noble family of the mainland. tradition has always pointed to the girl in blue in the "golden calf" as her portrait, while it is easy to recognise tintoretto himself in the black-bearded giant, who helps to carry the idol. his house at this time was somewhere in the parrocchia dell' orto, and there, during the next fourteen years, eight children were born, of whom the two eldest, domenico and marietta, attained distinction in their father's profession. another great event, which profoundly influenced his life, was the beginning of his connection in with the scuola di san rocco, the great confraternity which was devoted to combating the ravages of the plague and to succouring the families of its victims. his work for this lasted to the end of his life and is his most distinguished memorial. the palace to which the robusti family moved in , and which was inhabited by his descendants so late as , can still be identified in the calle della sensa. it is broken up into two parts, but it is evident that it was a dwelling of some importance, a good specimen of venetian gothic. it still bears marks of considerable decoration; the walls are sheathed in marble plaques, and the first floor has rows of gothic windows in delicately carved frames and little balconies of fretted marble. zanetti, in , gives an etching of a magnificent bronze frieze cast from the master's design, which ran round the grand sala. the family must have occupied the _piano nobile_ and let off the floors they did not require. descriptions of the life led by the painter and his family are given by vasari, who knew him personally, and by ridolfi, whose book was published in , and who must have known his children, several of whom were still alive and proud of their father's fame. we hear of pleasant evenings spent in the little palace, of the enthusiastic love of music, tintoretto himself and his daughter being highly gifted. among the _habitués_ were zarlino, for twenty-five years chapel-master of st. mark's, one of the fathers of modern music; bassano; and veronese, who, in spite of his love for magnificent entertainments, was often to be found in tintoretto's pleasant home. poor andrea schiavone was always welcome, and as time went on the house became the haunt of all the cultured gentlemen and _litterati_ of venice. it is not difficult from the materials available to form a sufficiently lively idea of this venetian citizen of the sixteenth century, as father and husband, host and painter. ridolfi has collected a number of anecdotes, which space forbids me to use, but which are all very characteristic. we gather that he was a man of strong character, generous, sincere and simple, decided in his ways, caring little for the great world, but open-handed and hospitable under his own roof, observant of men and manners, and sometimes rather brusque in dealing with bores and offensive persons. full of dry quiet humour and of good-natured banter of his wife's little weaknesses. a man, too, of upright conduct and free, as far as it can be ascertained, from any of those laxities and infidelities, so freely quoted of celebrated men and so easily condoned by his age. art was tintoretto's main preoccupation; but he seems to have been a man of strong religious bias, making a close study of the bible, and turning naturally in his last days to those truths with which his art had made him familiar, truths which he had represented with that touch of mystic feeling which was the deepest part of his nature. his relations with the state commenced in , when his offer to present a superb painting of the victory of lepanto was made to and accepted by the council of ten. tintoretto was rewarded by a broker's patent, and between this and the "paradiso," the work of his old age, he executed a number of pictures for the signoria. the only record of any travels are confined to two journeys paid to mantua, where he went in the 'sixties and again in to see to the hanging of paintings done for the gonzaga, and of which the documents have been kept, though the pictures have vanished. tintoretto's last years were saddened by the death of his beloved daughter, who had always been his constant companion. he died in after a fortnight's illness and left a will, which, together with that of his son, throws a good deal of light upon the family history. it is not easy to select from the vast quantity of work left by tintoretto. he is one of those painters whose whole life was passed in his native city and who can only be adequately studied in that city. perhaps the first place in which to seek him, is the great church which was the monument of his early prime. the "last judgment" was probably inspired by that of michelangelo, of which descriptions and sketches must have reached the younger master, over whom the florentine had exercised so strong a fascination. tintoretto's version impresses one as that of a mind boiling with thoughts and visions which he pours out upon the huge space. it depicts a terrible catastrophe, a scene of rushing destruction, of forms swept into oblivion, of others struggling to the light, of many beautiful figures and of a flood of air and light behind the rushing water,--water which makes us almost giddy as we watch it. the "golden calf" is a maturer production and includes some of the loveliest women tintoretto ever painted. we see too plainly the planning, the device of concentrating interest on the idol by turning figures and pointing fingers, but nothing can be imagined more supple and queenly than the woman in blue, and the way the light falls on her head and perfectly foreshortened arm shows to what excellence tintoretto had attained. the "presentation" is a riper work. the drawing of the flight of steps and of the groups upon them could not be bettered. the little figure of the virgin, prototype of the new dispensation, as she advances to meet the representative of the old, thrills with mystic feeling, yet the painter has contrived to retain the sturdy simplicity of a child. the "st. agnes," with its contrast of light and shade, of strength made perfect in weakness, is of later date and was the commission of cardinal contarini. it is interesting to realise how tintoretto, especially in the "presentation," has contrived, while using the traditional episodes, to infuse so strong an imaginative sense. the contrast of age and youth, the joy of the gentiles, the starlike figure of the child surrounded by shadows, convey an emotional feeling, in harmony with the nature of the scene. next let us group together the miracles in the history of st. mark. one of the qualities which strikes us most in the "miracle of the slave" is its strong local colour. it tells of titian and bonifazio and is unlike tintoretto's later style. the colours are glowing and gem-like; carnations, orange-yellows, deep scarlet, and turquoise-blue. the crimson velvet of the judge's dress is finely relieved against a blue-green sky, and tintoretto has kept that instinctive fire and dash which culminates at once and without effort in perfect action, "as a bird flies, or a horse gallops." it startled the quiet members of the guild, and at the first moment they hesitated to accept it. the "rescue of the saracen" and the "transportation of the body" are more in the golden-brown manner to which he was moving, but it is in the "finding of the body" (brera) that he rises to the highest emotional pitch. the colossal form of the saint, expanding with life and power as he towers in the spirit above his own lifeless clay, draws all eyes to him and seems to fill the barrel-roofed hall with ease and energy. every part of the vault is flooded by his life-giving energy, and here tintoretto deals with light and shade with full mastery. as we follow tintoretto's career, it is borne in upon us how little positive colour it takes to make a great colourist. the whole venetian school, indeed, does not deal with what we understand as bright colour. vivid tints are much more characteristic of the flemish and the florentine, or, let us say, of the painters of to-day. strong, crude colours are to be seen on all sides in the salon or the royal academy, but they are absent from the scheme of sombre splendour which has given the venetians their title to fame. this is especially true of tintoretto, and it becomes more so as he advances. his gamut becomes more golden-brown and mellow; the greys and browns and ivories combine in a lustrous symphony more impressive than gay tints, flooded with enveloping shadow and illumined by flashes of iridescent light. another noticeable feature is the way in which he puts on his oil-colour, so that it bears the direct impression of the painter's hand. the florentines had used flat tints, opaque and with every brush-mark smoothed away; but as the later venetians covered large spaces with oil-colour, they no longer sought to dissimulate the traces of the brush, and light, distance, movement, were all conveyed by the turns and twists and swirls with which the thin oil-colour was laid on. look at the power of touch in such a picture as the "death of abel"; we see this spontaneity of execution actually forming part of the emotion with which the picture is charged. the concentrated hate of the one figure, the desperate appeal of the other, the lurid note of the landscape, gain their emotion as much from the impetuous brush-work as from the more studied design. we come closest to the painter's mind in the scuola di san rocco. he had already been employed in the church, and there remains, darkened and ruined by damp, the series illustrative of the career of s. roch, patron saint of sufferers from the plague. when the great halls of assembly were to be decorated in , the confraternity asked a conclave of painters, among whom were veronese and andrea schiavone, to prepare sketches for competition. when they assembled to display their designs, tintoretto swept aside a cartoon from the ceiling of the refectory and discovered a finished picture, the "s. roch in glory," which still holds its place there. neither the other artists nor the brethren seem to have approved of this unconventional proceeding, but he "hoped they would not be offended; it was the only way he knew." partly from the displeased withdrawal of some of the rest, but partly also from the excellence of the work, the commission fell to tintoretto, and after two years' work he was received into the order, and was assigned an annual provision of ducats (£ ) a year for life, being bound every year to furnish three pictures. chapter xxvi tintoretto (_continued_) the first portion of the vast building that was finished was the refectory, but in examining the scheme, it is perhaps more convenient to leave it to its proper place, which is the climax. before beginning, tintoretto must have had the whole thing planned, and we cannot doubt that he was influenced by the sixtine chapel and recalled its plan and significance; the old dispensation typifying the new, the old testament history vivified by the acts of christ. the main feature of the harmony which it is only reasonable to suppose governs the whole building, is its dedication to s. roch, the special patron of mercy. the principal paintings of the upper hall are therefore concerned with acts of divine mercy and deliverance, and even the monochromes bear upon the central idea. on the roof are the three most important miracles of mercy performed on behalf of the chosen people. the paintings on roof and walls are linked together. the "fall of man" at one end of the hall, the disobedient eating, corresponds with the obedient eating of the passover at the other, and is interdependent with the manna in the wilderness, the last supper, and the miracle of the loaves. the miracles of satisfied thirst are represented by "moses striking the rock," samson drinking from the jawbone and the waters of meribah. the baptism and other signs of the advent of christ and the divine preparation, balance events in the early life of moses. in the refectory which opens from the great hall, we come to the "crucifixion," the crowning act of mercy, surrounded by the events which immediately succeeded it, and typified immediately above in the central hall, by the lifting up of the brazen serpent. the miracles include six of refreshment and succour, two of miraculous restoration to health, and two of deliverance from danger. the whole scheme has been worked out in detail in my book on "tintoretto." in the working out of his great scheme, tintoretto is impatient of hackneyed and traditional forms; he must have a reading of his own, and one which appeals to his imagination. we see that passion for movement which distinguishes his early work. "moses striking the rock" is a figure instinct with purpose and energy. the water bounds forth, living, life-giving, the people strain wildly to reach it. his figures are sometimes found fault with, as extravagant in gesture, but the attitudes were intended to be seen and to arrest attention from far below, and we must not forget that the painter's models were drawn from a southern race, to whom emphasis of action is natural. tintoretto, it may be conceded, is on certain occasions, generally when dealing with accessory figures, inclined to excess of gesture; it is the defect of his temperament, but when he has a subject that carries him away he is sincere and never violent in spirit. titian is cold compared to him; his colour, however effective, is calculated, whereas tintoretto's seems to permeate every object and to soak the whole composition. to quote a recent critic: "he chose to begin, if possible, with a subject charged with emotion. he then proceeded to treat it according to its nature, that is to say, he toned down and obscured the outlines of form and mapped out the subject instead in pale or sombre masses of light and shade. under the control of this powerful scheme of chiaroscuro, the colouring of the composition was placed, but its own character, its degree of richness and sobriety, was determined by the kind of emotion belonging to the subject. to use colour in this way, not only with emotional force, but with emotional truth, is to use it to perform one of the greatest functions of art."[ ] [ ] "venice and the renaissance," _edinburgh review_, . so in the crucifixion it is not so much the aspect of the groups, the pathos of the faces or gestures, that tells, but it is the mystery and gloom in which the whole scene is muffled, the atmosphere into which we are absorbed, the sense of livid terror conveyed by the brooding light and shadow, that makes us feel how different the rendering is from any other. in the "christ before pilate" the head and figure of christ are not particularly impressive in themselves, but the brilliant light falling on the white robes and coursing down the steps supplies dignity and poetry; the slender white figure stands out like a shaft of light against the lurid and troubled background. again, in the "way to golgotha" the falling evening gleam, the wild sky, the deep shadow of the ravine, throw into relief the quiet form, detached in look and feeling, as of one upborne by the spirit far above the brutal throng. nowhere does that spiritual emotion find deeper expression than in the "visitation." the passion of thanksgiving, the poignancy of mother-love, throb through the two women, who have been travelling towards one another, with a great secret between them, and who at length reach the haven of each other's love and knowledge. here, too, the dying light, the waving tree, the obliteration of form, and the feeling of mystery make a deep appeal to the sensuous apprehension. we find it again and again; the great trees sway and whisper in the gathering darkness as the virgin rides through the falling evening shadows, clasping her babe, and in that most moving of all tintoretto's creations, the "s. mary of egypt," the emotional mood of nature's self is brought home to us. the trees that dominate the landscape are painted with a few "strokes like sabre cuts"; the landscape, given with apparent carelessness, yet conveying an indescribable sense of space and solemnity, unfolds itself under the dying day; and in solitary meditation, thrilling with ecstasy, sits that little figure, whose heart has travelled far away to commune with the spirit, "whose dwelling is the light of setting suns." it is not possible in a short space to touch, even in passing, on all the many scenes in these halls: the "annunciation," with its marvellous flight of cherubs, reminding us of the flight of pigeons in the piazza, and how often the old painter must have watched them; the "temptation," contrasting the throbbing evil, the flesh that _must_ be fed, with the calm of absolute purity; the "massacre of the innocents," for which the horrors of sacked towns could have supplied many a parallel,--we have not time to dwell on these, but we may notice how the artist has overcome the difficulty of seeing clearly in the dark halls, by choosing strong and varied effects of light for the most shadowed spaces, and we can picture what the halls must have been like when they first glowed from his hand, adorned with gilded fretwork and moulding, and hung with opulent draperies, with the rose-red and purple of bishops' and cardinals' robes reflected in the gleaming pavement. [illustration: _tintoretto._ _scuola di san rocco._ s. mary of egypt. (_photo, anderson._)] leonardo, by one supreme example, tintoretto, by many renderings, have made the "last supper" peculiarly their own in the domain of art. it shows how strongly the mystic strain entered into the man's character, that often as tintoretto treated the subject, it never lost its interest for him, and he never failed to find a fresh point of view. in that in s. polo, christ offers the sacred food with a gesture of vehement generosity. placed as the picture is, to appeal to all comers to the mass, to afford them a welcome as they pass to the high altar, it tells of the bread of life given to all mankind. tintoretto himself, painted in the character of s. paul, stands at one side, absorbed in meditation. we need not insist again on the emotional value of the deep colours, the rich creams and crimsons and the chiaroscuro. in his latest rendering, in s. giorgio maggiore, he touches his highest point in symbolical treatment. some people are only able to see a theatrical, artificial spirit in this picture, but at least, when we consider what deep meditation tintoretto had bestowed on his subjects, we may believe that he himself was sincere and that he let himself go over what commended itself as an entirely new rendering. "the light shined in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." the supernatural is entering on every side, but the feast goes on; the serving men and maids busy themselves with the dishes; the disciples are inquiring, but not agitated; none see that throng of heavenly visitants, pouring in through the blue moonlight, called to their master's side by the supreme significance of his words. the painter has taken full advantage of the opportunity of combining the light of the cresset lamp, pouring out smoky clouds, with the struggling moonlight and the unearthly radiance, in divers, yet mingling streams which fight against the surrounding gloom. in the scene in the scuola di s. rocco the betrayal is the dominating incident, and in san stefano all is peace, and the saviour is alone with the faithful disciples. [illustration: _tintoretto._ bacchus and ariadne. _ducal palace, venice._ (_photo, anderson._)] though several of the large compositions ascribed to tintoretto in the ducal palace are only partly by him, or entirely by followers and imitators, its halls are still a storehouse of his genius. there is much that is fine about the great state pieces. in the "marriage of st. catherine," the saint, in silken gown and long transparent veil, is an exquisite figure. tintoretto bathes all his pageantry in golden light and air, and yet we feel that these huge official subjects, with the prosaic old doges introduced in incongruous company, neither stimulated his imagination nor satisfied his taste. it is on the smaller canvases that he finds inspiration. he never painted anything more lovely, more perfect in design, or more gay and tender in idea, than the cycle in the ante-collegio. the glowing light and exquisitely graded shadows upon ivory limbs have a sensuous perfection and a refined, unselfconscious joy such as is felt in hardly any other work, except the painter's own "milky way" in the national gallery. in all these four pictures the feeling for design, a branch of art in which tintoretto was past master, is fully displayed. in the bacchus and ariadne all the principal lines, the eyes and gestures, converge upon the tiny ring which is the symbol of union between the goddess and her lover, between the queenly city and the adriatic sea. or take "pallas driving away mars": see how the mass into which the figures are gathered on the left adds strength to the thrust of the goddess's arm, and what steadiness is given by that short straight lance of hers, coming in among all the yielding curves. the whole four are linked together in meaning: the call to venice to reign over the seas, her triumphant peace, with wisdom guiding her council, and her warriors forging arms in case of need. in conjunction with these pictures are two small ones in the chapel, hardly less beautiful--st. george with st. margaret, and ss. andrew and jerome. it is difficult to say whether the exultant st. george, the dignified young bishop, or the two older saints are the more sympathetic creations, or the more admirable, both in drawing and colour. the sense of space in both settings is an added charm, and every scrap of detail, the leafy boughs, the cross and crozier, is important to the composition. there are many other striking examples, ranging all through tintoretto's life, of his untiring imagination. in the salute is that "marriage of cana," in which all the actors seem to swim in golden light. the sharp silhouettes bring out an effect of radiant sunshine with which the hall is flooded, and all the architectural lines lead our eyes towards the central figure, placed at a distance. on that long canvas in the academy, kneel the three treasurers, pouring out their gold and bending in homage before the madonna and child, who sit enthroned upon a broad piazza, through the marble pillars of which a blue and distant landscape shines. grave senators in mulberry velvet and ermine kneel before the child, or hold counsel on paduan affairs under the patronage of s. giustina. the "crucifixion" (in s. cassiano) is another triumph of the painter's imaginative conception. the bold lines of the crosses, the ladder, and the figures detach against a glorious sky, and the presence of the moving, murmuring throng, of which, by the placing of the line of sight, the spectator is made to form a part, is conveyed by the swaying and crossing of the lances borne by the armed men who keep the ground. there is a series, too, which deals with the magdalen. she mourns her dead in that solemn, restrained "entombment," where the enfolding shadows frame the cross against the sad dawn, which adorns the mortuary chapel of s. giorgio maggiore; and the pietà in the brera, the long lines of which add to the impression of tender repose, has its peace broken by the passionate cry of the woman who loved much. tintoretto's ideas are exhaustless; he can paint the same scene in a dozen different ways, and, in fact, the book of sketches lately acquired by the british museum shows as many as thirty trials dashed off for one subject, and after all he uses one composed for something quite different. it is this habit of throwing off red-hot essays, fresh from his brain, that has led to the common but superficial judgment that tintoretto was merely a great improvisatore, whose successes came more or less by good luck. he could, indeed, paint pictures at a pace at which many great masters could only sketch, but he had already designed and considered and rejected, doing with oil, ink, and paper what many of his contemporaries did mentally. such achievements as the ante-collegio cycle, the "house of martha and mary," the "marriage of cana," the "temptation of s. anthony," to name only a few, show a finish and perfection and a balance of design which preclude the idea of their being lightly painted pictures. when he was actually engaged, tintoretto let himself go with impetuous ardour, but we may feel assured he left nothing to chance, though he had his own way of making sure of the result. it is strange to hear people, as one does now and then, talking of the "paradiso" as "a splendid failure." it may be granted that the subject is an impossible one for human art to realise, yet when all allowance has been made for a lamentable amount of drying and blackening, it is difficult to agree that ruskin was all wrong in his admiration of that thronging multitude, ordered and disciplined by the tides of light and shadow, which roll in and out of the masses, resolving them into groups and single figures of almost matchless beauty and melting away into a sea of radiant æther, which tells us of the boundless space which surrounds the serried ranks of the blessed. tintoretto was seventy-eight when it was allotted to him, and it was the last great effort of his mind and hand. studies for it are preserved both at the louvre and at madrid, and it is evident that the painter has framed it upon the thought of dante's mystic rose. the circles and many of the figures can be traced in the poem, and the idea of the eternal light streaming through the leaves of the rose dominates the composition. it is appropriate that it should have been his last great work, as it was also the greatest attempt at composition ever made by a master of the venetian school. there is no room here to study tintoretto as a painter of battlepieces, though from the time he painted the "battle of lepanto," for the council of ten, he often returned to such subjects. his two series for the gonzaga included several, and the ducal palace still possesses examples. the impetuosity of his style stood him in good stead, and he never fails to bring in graceful and striking figures. his portraits are hardly equal to titian's intellectual grasp or fine-grained colour, but they are extraordinarily characteristic. he prefers to paint men rather than women, and he painted hundreds--all the great persons of his time who lived in and visited venice. the venetian portrait by this time was expected to be more than a likeness and more than a problem. it was to please the taste as a picture, to interest and to satisfy criticism. tintoretto, like lotto, gets behind the scenes, and we see some mood, some aspect of the sitter that he hardly expected to show. his penetration is not equal to lotto's, but he deals with his sitters with an observation which pierces below the surface. in criticising tintoretto, men seem often unable to discriminate between the turgid and melodramatic, and the spontaneous and temperamental. the first all must abhor, but the last is sincere and deserves to be respected. it is by his best that we must judge a man, and taking his best and undoubtedly authentic work, no one has left a larger amount which will stand the test of criticism. as an exponent of lofty and elevated central ideas, which unify all parts of his composition, tintoretto stands with the greatest imaginative minds. the intellectual side of life was exemplified in florentine art, but the renaissance would have been a one-sided development if there had not arisen a body of men to whom emotion and the gift of sensuous apprehension seemed of supreme value, and at the very last there arose with him one who, to their philosophy of feeling and the mastery of their chosen medium, added the crowning glory of the imaginative idea. principal works augsburg. christ in the house of martha and mary. berlin. portraits; madonna and saints; luna and the hours; procurator before s. mark. dresden. lady in black; the rescue; portraits. florence. pitti: portraits of men; luigi cornaro; vincenzo zeno. uffizi: portrait of himself; admiral venier; portrait of old man; jacopo sansovino; portrait. hampton court. esther before ahasuerus; nine muses; portrait of dominican; knight of malta. london. s. george and the dragon; christ washing feet of disciples; origin of milky way. bridgewater house: entombment; portrait. madrid. battle on land and sea; solomon and the queen of sheba; susanna and the elders; finding of moses; esther before ahasuerus; judith and holofernes. milan. brera: s. helena, saints and donors; finding of the body of s. mark (e.). paris. susanna and the elders; sketch for paradise; portrait of himself. rome. capitol: baptism; ecce homo; the flagellation. colonna: adoration of the holy spirit; old man playing spinet; portraits. turin. the trinity. venice. academy: s. giustina and three senators; madonna with saints and treasurers, ; portraits of senators; deposition; jacopo soranzo, (still attributed to titian); andrea capello (e.); death of abel; miracle of s. mark, ; adam and eve; resurrected christ blessing three senators; madonna and portraits; crucifixion; resurrection; presentation in temple. palazzo ducale: doge mocenigo commended to christ by s. mark; doge da ponte before the virgin; marriage of s. catherine; doge gritti before the virgin. ante-collegio: mercury and three graces; vulcan's forge; bacchus and ariadne; pallas resisting mars, abt. . ante-room of chapel: ss. george, margaret, and louis; ss. andrew and jerome. senato: s. mark presenting doge loredano to the virgin. sala quattro porte: ceiling. ante-room: portraits; ceiling, doge priuli with justice. passage to council of ten: portraits; nobles illumined by holy spirit. sala del gran consiglio: paradise, . sala dello scrutino: battle of zara. palazzo reale: transportation of body of s. mark; s. mark rescues a shipwrecked saracen; philosophers. giovanelli palace: battlepiece; portraits. s. cassiano: crucifixion; christ in limbo; resurrection. s. giorgio maggiore: last supper; gathering of manna; entombment (in mortuary chapel). s. maria mater domini: finding of true cross. s. maria dell' orto: last judgment (e.); golden calf (e.); presentation of virgin (e.); martyrdom of s. agnes. s. polo: last supper; assumption of virgin. s. rocco: annunciation; pool of bethesda; s. roch and the beasts; s. roch healing the sick; s. roch in campo d' armata; s. roch consoled by an angel. scuola di s. rocco: lower hall, all the paintings on wall. staircase: visitation. upper hall: all the paintings on walls and ceiling. refectory: crucifixion, ; christ before pilate; ecce homo; way to golgotha; ceiling, . salute: marriage of cana, ; martyrdom of s. stephen. s. silvestro: baptism. s. stefano: last supper; washing of feet; agony in garden. s. trovaso: temptation of s. anthony. vienna. susanna and the elders; sebastian venier; portraits of procurators, senators, and men (fifteen in all); old man and boy; portrait of lady. chapter xxvii bassano we wonder how many of those sightseers who pass through the ante-collegio in the ducal palace, and stare for a few moments at tintoretto's famous quartet and at veronese's "rape of europa," turn to give even such fleeting attention to the long, dark canvas which hangs beside them, "jacob's journey into canaan," by jacopo da ponte, called bassano. yet from the position in which it is placed the visitor might guess that it is considered to be a gem, and it gains something in interest when we learn from zanetti that it was ordered by jacopo contarini at the same time as the "rape of europa," as if the great connoisseur enjoyed contrasting veronese's light, gay style with the vigorous brush of da ponte. if attention is arrested by the beauty of the painting, and the visitor should be inspired to seek the painter in his native city, he will be well repaid. bassano once held an important position on the main road between italy and germany, but since the railroad was made across the brenner pass, few people ever see the little town which lies cradled on the spurs of the italian alps, where the gorge of valsugana opens. it is surrounded by chestnut woods, which sweep up to the blue mountains, the wide brenta flows through the town, and the houses cluster high on either side, and have gardens and balconies overhanging the water. the façades of many of the houses are covered with fading frescoes, relics of da ponte's school of fresco-painters, which, though they are fast perishing, still give a wonderful effect of warmth and colour. jacopo da ponte was the son and pupil of his father, francesco, who in his day had been a pupil of the vicentine, bartolommeo montagna. francesco da ponte's best work is to be found at bassano, in the cathedral and the church of san giovanni, and has many of the characteristics, such as the raised pedestal and vaulted cupola, which we have noticed that montagna owed to the vivarini. francesco's son went when very young to venice, and was there thrown at once among the artists of the lagoons, and attached himself in particular to bonifazio. in jacopo's earliest work, now in the museum at bassano, a "flight into egypt," bonifazio's tuition is markedly discernible in the build of the figures and, above all, in the form of the heads. a comparison of the very peculiarly shaped head of the virgin in this picture with that of the venetian lady in bonifazio's "rich man's feast," in the venetian academy, leaves us in no doubt on this score. jacopo's "adulteress before christ" and the "three in the fiery furnace" have bonifazio's manner in the architecture and the staging of the figures. only five examples are known of this early work of da ponte, and it is all in bonifazio's lighter style, not unlike his "holy family" in the national gallery. the house in which the painter lived when he returned to his native town, still stands in the little piazza monte vecchio, and its whole façade retains the frescoes, mouldy and decaying, with which he decorated it. the design is in four horizontal bands. first comes a frieze of children in every attitude of fun and frolic. then follows a long range of animals--horses, oxen, and deer. musical instruments and flowers make a border, with allegorical representations of the arts and crafts filling the spaces between the windows. the principal band is decorated with scriptural subjects, most of which are now hardly discernible, but which represent "samson slaying the philistines," "the drunkenness of noah," "cain and abel," "lot and his daughters," and "judith with the head of holofernes." between the two last there formerly appeared a drawing of a dead child, with the motto, "mors omnia aequat," which was removed to the museum in , in comparatively good preservation. jacopo da ponte lived a busy life at bassano, where, with the help of his four sons, who were all painters, he poured out an inexhaustible stream of works, which, it is said, were put up to auction at the neighbouring fairs, if no other market was forthcoming. from time to time he and his sons went down to venice, and with the help of the eldest, francesco, bassano (as he is generally known) painted the "siege of padua" and five other works in the ducal palace. his mature style was founded mainly upon that of titian, and it is to this second manner that he owes his fame. he makes use of fewer colours, and enhances his lights by deepening and consolidating his shadows, so that they come into strong contrast, and his technique gains a richer impasto. he has a marvellous faculty for keeping his colour pure, and his greens shine like a beetle's wing. a nature-lover in the highest degree, his painting of animals and plants evinces a mind which is steeped in the magic of outdoor life. a subject of which he was particularly fond, and which he seems to have undertaken for half the collectors of europe, was the "four seasons." here was found united everything that bassano most loved to paint: beasts of the farmyard and countryside, agriculturists with their implements, scenes of harvest-time and vintage, rough peasants leading the plough, cutting the grass, harvesting the grain, young girls making hay, driving home the cattle, taking dinner to the reapers. when he was obliged to paint for churches he chose such subjects as the adoration of the shepherds, the sacrifice of noah, the expulsion from the temple, into which he could introduce animals, painting them with such vigour and such forcible colour that titian himself is said to have had a copy hanging in his studio. he loved to paint his daughters engaged in household tasks, and perhaps placed his figures with rather too obvious a reference to light and shade, and to the sun striking full on sunburnt cheeks and buxom shoulders. a friend, not a rival, of veronese and tintoretto, gianbattista volpado, records that when he was one day discussing contemporary painters with the latter, tintoretto exclaimed, "ah, jacopo, if you had my drawing and i had your colour i would defy the devil himself to enable titian, raphael, and the rest to make any show beside us." bassano was invited to take up his residence at the court of the emperor rudolph, but he refused to leave his mountain city, where he died in . his funeral was attended by a crowd of the poorest inhabitants, for whom his charity had been boundless. the "journey of jacob," to which we have already alluded, is among his most beautiful works. the brilliant array of figures is subordinated to the charm of the landscape. the evening dusk draws all objects into its embrace. the long, low, deep-blue distance stands out against a gleam of sunset sky. the tree-trunks and light play of leafy branches, which break up the composition, are from da ponte's own country round bassano. the pony upon which the boy scrambles, the cows, the dog among the quiet sheep, are given with all the loving truth of the born animal-painter. it is no wonder that teniers borrowed ideas from him, and has more than once imitated his whole design. the "baptism of st. lucilla" (in the museum at bassano) is one of his most titianesque creations. the personages in it are grouped upon a flight of steps, in front of a long renaissance palace with cypresses against a sky of evening-red barred with purple clouds. the drawing and modelling of the figures are almost faultless, and the colour is dazzling. the bending figure of s. lucilla, with the light falling on her silvery satin dress, as she kneels before the young bishop, st. valentine, is one of the most graceful things in art, and titian himself need not have disowned the little angels, bearing palm branches and frolicking in the stream of radiance overhead. bassano has a "concert," which is interesting as a family piece. it was painted in the year in which his son leandro's marriage took place, and is probably a bridal painting to celebrate the event. the "magistrates in adoration" (vicenza) again gives a brilliant effect of light, and its stately ceremonial is founded on tintoretto's numerous pictures of kneeling doges and procurators in fur-trimmed velvet robes. [illustration: _jacopo da ponte._ baptism of s. lucilla. _bassano._ (_photo, alinari._)] madonnas and saints are usually built into close-packed pyramids, but in the "repose in egypt," now in the ambrosiana, milan, his arrangement comes very close to palma and lotto. the beautiful mother and child, the attendants, above all the st. joseph, resting, head on hand, at the virgin's feet and gazing in rapt adoration on the child, are examples of the true venetian manner, while the exquisite landscape behind them, and the vigorously drawn tree under which they recline, show bassano true to his passion for nature. hampton court is rich in his pictures. "the adoration of the shepherds," in which the pillars rise behind the sacred group, is an exercise in the manner of titian's frari altarpiece. his portraits are fine and sympathetic, but hardly any of them are signed or can be dated. his own is in the uffizi, and there is a splendid "old man" at buda-pesth. ariosto and tasso, sebastian venier, and many other distinguished men were among his sitters; most of them are in half-length with three-quarter heads. the national gallery possesses a singularly attractive one of a young man with a sensitive, acute countenance, robed in dignified, picturesque black, relieved by an embroidered linen collar. he stands by the sort of square window, opening on a distant landscape, of which tintoretto and lotto so often made use, in front of which a golden vase, holding a branch of olive, catches the rays of light. bassano has no great power of design, and his knowledge of the nude seems to have been small, but his brushwork is facile, and his colour leaps out with a vivid beauty which obliterates other shortcomings. principal works augsburg. madonna and saints. bassano. susanna and elders (e.); christ and adulteress (e.); the three holy children (e.); madonna, saints, and donor (e.); flight into egypt (e.); paradise; baptism of s. lucilla; adoration of shepherds; st. martin and the beggar; st. roch recommending donor to virgin; st. john the evangelist adored by a warrior; descent of holy spirit; madonna in glory, with saints (l.). duomo: s. lucia in glory; martyrdom of s. stephen (l.); nativity. s. giovanni: madonna and saints. bergamo. carrara: portrait. lochis: portraits. cittadella. duomo: christ at emmaus. dresden. israelites in desert; moses striking rock; conversion of s. paul. hampton court. portraits; jacob's journey; boaz and ruth; shepherds (e.); christ in house of pharisee; assumption of virgin; men fighting bears; tribute money. london. portrait of man; christ and the money-changers; good samaritan. milan. ambrosiana: adoration of shepherds (e.); annunciation to shepherds (l.). munich. portraits; s. jerome; deposition. padua. s. maria in vanzo: entombment. paris. christ bearing cross; vintage (l.). rome. villa borghese: last supper; the trinity. venice. academy: christ in garden; a venetian noble; s. elenterino blessing the faithful. ducal palace, ante-collegio: jacob's journey. s. giacomo dell' orio: madonna and saints. vicenza. madonna and saints; madonna; st. mark and senators. vienna. the good samaritan; thomas led to the stake; adoration of magi; rich man and lazarus; the lord shows abraham the promised land; the sower; a hunt; way to golgotha; noah entering the ark; christ and the money-changers; after the flood; saints; adoration of magi; portraits; christ bearing cross. academy: deposition; portrait. part iii chapter xxviii the interim many of the churches and palaces of venice and the adjoining mainland, and almost every public and private gallery throughout europe, contain pictures purporting to be painted by titian, tintoretto, veronese, and others of that famous company. hardly a great english house but boasts of a round dozen at least of such specimens, acquired in the days when rich englishmen made the "grand tour" and substantiated a reputation for taste and culture by collecting works of art. these pictures resemble the genuine article in a specious yet half-hearted way. their owners themselves are not very tenacious as to their authenticity, and the visit of an expert, or the ordeal of a public exhibition tears their pretensions to tatters. in the academia itself the bonifazio and tintoretto rooms are crowded with imitations. the ducal palace has ceilings and panels on which are reproduced the kind of compositions initiated by the great artists, which make an effort to capture their gamut of colour and to master their scheme of chiaroscuro, copying them, in short, in everything except in their inimitable touch and fire and spirit. it would have been impossible for any men, however industrious and prolific, to have carried out all the work which passes under their names, to say nothing of that which has perished; but our surprise and curiosity diminish when we come to inquire systematically into the methods of that host of copyists which, even before the masters' death, had begun to ply its lucrative trade. we must bear in mind that every great man was surrounded by busy and attentive satellites, helping him to finish and, indeed, often painting a large part of important commissions, witnesses of the high prices received, and alive to all the gossip as to the relative popularity of the painters and the requests and orders which reached them from all quarters. the painters' own sons were in many instances those who first traded upon their fathers' fame. from ridolfi, zanetti, or boschini we learn of the many paintings executed by carlotto caliari and the vast numbers painted by domenico robusti in the style of their respective fathers. domenico seems to have particularly affected the subject of "st. george and the dragon," and the picture at dresden, which passes under tintoretto's name, is perhaps by his hand. of bassano's four sons, francesco "imitated his father perfectly," conserving his warmth of tint, his relief and breadth. zanetti enumerates a surprising number of francesco's works, seven of them being painted for the ducal palace. leandro followed more particularly his father's first manner, was a good portrait-painter, and possessed lightness and fancy. girolamo copied and recopied the old bassano till he even deceived connoisseurs, "how much more," says zanetti, writing in , "those of the present day, who behold them harmonised and accredited by time." no school in venice was so beloved, or lent itself so well to the efforts of the imitators, as that of paolo veronese. even at an early date it was impossible not to confound the master with the disciples; the weaker of the originals were held to be of imitators, the best imitations were assigned to the master himself. "oh how easy it is," exclaims zanetti again, "to make mistakes about veronese's pictures, but i can point out sundry infallible characteristics to those who wish for light upon this doubtful path; the fineness and lightness of the brushwork, the sublime intelligence and grace, shown particularly in the form of the heads, which is never found in any of his imitators." few venetians, however, followed the style of only one man; the output was probably determined and varied by the demand. too many attractive manners existed to dazzle them, and when once they began to imitate, they were tempted on all hands. it must also be remembered that every master left behind him stacks of cartoons, sketches and suggestions, and half-finished pictures, which were eagerly seized upon, bought or stolen, and utilised to produce masterpieces masquerading under his name. as the seventeenth century advanced the character of art and manners underwent a change. men sought the beautiful in the novel and bizarre, and the complex was preferred to the simple. venetian art, in all its branches, had passed from the stately and restrained to the pompous and artificial. yet the barocco style was used by venice in a way of its own; whimsical, contorted, and overloaded with ornament as it is, it yet compels admiration by its vigorous life and movement. the art of the sei-cento in venice was extravagant, but it was alive. it escaped the most deadly of all faults, a cold and academic mannerism--and this at a time when the rest of italy was given over to the inflated followers of michelangelo and the calculated elaborations of the eclectics. many of the things we most love in venice, such as the salute, the clock-tower, the dogana, the bridge of sighs, the rezzonico and pesaro palaces, are additions of the seventeenth century. the barocco intemperance in sculpture was carried on by disciples of bernini; and as the immediate influence of the great masters declined, painting acquired the same sort of character. the carelessness and rapidity of tintoretto, which, in his case, proceeded from the lightning speed of his imagination and the unerring sureness of his brush, became a mechanical trick in the hands of superficial students. true art had migrated elsewhere--to the homes of velasquez, rubens, and rembrandt. as art grew more pompous it became less emotional. painters like palma giovine spoilt their ready, lively fancy by the vice of hurry. the nickname of "fa presto" was deserved by others besides luca giordano, and venice was overrun by a swarm of painters whose prime standard of excellence was the ability to make haste. grandeur of conception was forgotten; a grave, ample manner was no longer understood; superficial sentiment and bombastic size carried the day. yet a few painters, though their forms had become redundant and exaggerated, retained something of what had been the venetian glory--the deep and moist colour of old. it still glowed with traces of its old lustre on the canvases of giovanni contarini, or tiberio tinelli, or pietro liberi; and though there was a perfect fury of production, without order and without law, there can still be perceived the survival of that sense of the decorative which kept the thread of art. we discover it in the ceiling of the church of san pantaleone, where gianbattista fumiani paints the glorification of the martyred patron, and which, fantastic and extravagant as it is, with its stupendous, architectural setting, and its acutely, almost absurdly foreshortened throng, is not without a certain grandiose geniality, ample and picturesque, like the buildings of that date. in alessandro varotari (il padovanino), whose "nozze di cana" in the academia is a finely spaced scene, in which a charming use is made of cypresses, we seem to recognise the last ray of the titianesque. the painting of the seventeenth century passed on towards the eighteenth, and, from ceilings and panels, rosy nymphs and venuses smile at us, attitudinising and contorted upon their cloudy backgrounds. lackadaisical magdalens drop sentimental tears, and the angel of the annunciation capers above the head of an affected virgin, while violent colours, intensified chiaroscuro, and black greasy impasto betray the neighbourhood of the _tenebrosi_. when, towards the end of the seventeenth century, gregorio lazzarini set himself to shake off these influences, he went to the opposite extreme. although a beautiful designer, he becomes cold and flat in colour, with a coldness and insipidity, indeed, that take us by surprise, appearing in a country where the taste for luminous and brilliant tints was so strongly rooted. the student of venetian painting, who wishes to fill up the hiatus which lies between the golden age and the revival of the eighteenth century, cannot do better than compare fumiani's vault in san pantaleone with lazzarini's sober and earnest fresco, "the charity of san lorenzo giustiniani," in san pietro in castello, and with pietro liberi's "battle of the dardanelles" in the ducal palace. in all three we have examples of the varied and accomplished yet soulless art of this period. not many of the scenes painted for the palaces of patricians in the seventeenth century have survived. they are to be found here and there by the curious who wander into old churches and palaces with a second-hand copy of boschini in their hands; but in the reaction from the florid which took place in the empire period, many of them gave place to whitewash and stucco. in the ducal palace, side by side with the masterpieces of the renaissance, are to be found the overcrowded canvases of vicentino, giovanni contarini, pietro liberi, celesti, and others like them. some of the poor and meretricious mosaics in st. mark's are from designs by palma giovine and fumiani. carlo ridolfi, who was a painter himself, as well as the painter's chronicler, has an "adoration of the magi" in s. giovanni elemosinario, poor enough in invention and execution. two pictures by obscure artists disfigure a corner of the scuola di san rocco. the museo civico has a large canvas by vicentino, a "coronation of a dogaressa," which once adorned palazzo grimani. we hear of a school opened by antonio balestra, who was the master of rosalba carriera and pietro longhi, and the names of others have come down to us in numbers too numerous to be quoted. towards the end of the seventeenth century more light and novelty sparkles in the painting of the bellunese, battista ricci, and assures us that he was no mere copyist; and, as the eighteenth century opens, we become aware of the strong and daring brush of gianbattista piazetta. piazetta studied the works of the carracci for some time in bologna, and especially those of guercino, whose style, with its bold contrasts of light and shade, has served above all as his model. he paints very darkly, and his figures often blend with and disappear into the profound tones of his backgrounds. charles blanc calls him "a venetian caravaggio"; and he has something of the strength and even the brutality of the bolognese. a fine decorative and imaginative example of his work is the "madonna appearing to s. philip neri" in the church of s. fava. the erect form of the madonna is relieved in striking chiaroscuro against the mantle, upheld by _putti_. radiant clouds light up the background and illumine the form of the old saint, a refined and spirited figure, gazing at the vision in an ecstasy of devotion. piazetta is a bold realist, and many of his small pictures are strong and forcible. sebastiano ricci, battista's son, is described as "a fine intelligence," and attracts our notice as having forged special links with england. hampton court possesses a long array of his paintings. in the chapel of chelsea hospital the plaster semi-dome is painted by him, in oils, with very good effect. he is said to have worked in thornhill's studio, and his influence may be suspected in the blenheim frescoes, and even in touches in hogarth's work. by the eighteenth century venice had parted with her old nobility of soul, and enjoyment had become the only aim of life. yet venice, among the states of italy, alone retained her freedom. the doge reigned supreme as in the past. beneath the ceiling of veronese the dreaded three still sat in secret council. venice was still the city of subtle poisons and dangerous mysteries, but the days were gone when she had held the balance in european affairs, and she had become, in a superlative degree, the city of pleasure. nowhere was life more varied and entertaining, more full of grace and enchantment. a long period of peace had rocked the venetian people into calm security. there was, indeed, a little spasmodic fighting in corfù, dalmatia, and algiers, but no real share was retained in the struggles of europe. the whole policy of the city's life was one of self-indulgence. holiday-makers filled her streets; the whole population lived "in piazza," laughing, gossiping, seeing and being seen. the very churches had become a rendezvous for fashionable intrigues; the convents boasted their _salons_, where nuns in low dresses, with pearls in their hair, received the advances of nobles and gallant abbés. people came to venice to waste time; trivialities, the last scandal, sensational stories, were the only subjects worth discussing. in an age of parodies and practical jokes, the more absurd any one could be, the more silly or witty stories he could tell, the more assured was his success in the joyous, frivolous circle, full of fun and laughter. the carnival lasted for six months of the year, and was the occasion for masques and licence of every description. in the hot weather, the gay descendants of the contarini, the loredan, the pisani, and other grand old houses, migrated to villas along the brenta, where by day and night the same reckless, irresponsible life went gaily on. the power of such courtesans as titian and paris bordone had painted was waning. their place was adequately supplied by the easy dames of society, no longer secluded, proud and tranquil, but "stirred by the wild blood of youth and stooping to the frolic." "they are but faces and smiles, teasing and trumpery," says one of their critics, yet they are declared to be wideawake, natural and charming, making the most of their smattering of letters. love was the great game; every woman had lovers, every married woman openly flaunted her _cicisbeo_ or _cavaliere servente_. the older portion of the middle class was still moderate and temperate, contented to live in the old fashion, eschewing all interest in politics, with which it was dangerous for the ordinary individual to meddle; but the new leaven was creeping through every level of society. the sons and daughters of the _bourgeoisie_ tried to rise in the social scale by aping the pleasant vices of the aristocracy. they deserted the shop and the counting-house to play cards and strut upon the piazza. they mimicked the fine gentleman and the gentildonna, and made fashionable love and carried on intrigues. the spirit of the whole people had lost its elevation; there were no more proud patricians, full of noble ambitions and devoted zeal of public service; it was hardly possible to get a sufficient number of persons to carry on public business. it is a contemptible indictment enough; yet among all this degenerate life, we come upon something more real as we turn to the artists. they were very much alive. in music, in literature, and in painting, new and graceful forms of art were emerging. painting was not the grand art of other days; it might be small and trivial, but there grew up a real little renaissance of the eighteenth century, full of originality and fire, and showing a reaction from the pompous and banale style of the imitators. the influence of the "lady" was becoming increasingly felt by society. confidential little boudoirs, small and cosy apartments were the mode, and needed decorating as well as vast salas. the dainty luxury of gilt furniture, designed by andrea brustolon and upholstered in delicate silks, was matched by small, attractive works of art. venice had lost her eastern trade, and as the east faded out of her scheme of life, the west, to which she now turned, was bringing her a different form of art. the great reception rooms were still suited by the grandiose compositions of ricci, piazetta, and pittoni, but another genre of charming creations smiled from the brocaded alcoves and more intimate suites of rooms. it is impossible to name more than a fraction of these artists of the eighteenth century. there is amigoni, admirable as a portrait-painter; pittoni, one of the ablest figure-painters of the day; luca carlevaris, the forerunner of canale; pellegrini, whose decorations in this country are mentioned by horace walpole and of which the most important are preserved in the cupola and spandrils of the grand hall at castle howard. their work is still to be found in many a venetian church or north italian gallery. some of it is almost fine, though too often vitiated by the affected, exaggerated spirit of their day. when originality asserts itself more decidedly, rosalba carriera stands out as an artist who acquired great popularity. in , when she was a young woman of twenty-four, she was already a great favourite with the public. she began life as a lace-maker, but when trade was bad, jean stève, a frenchman, taught her to paint miniatures. she imparted a wonderfully delicate feeling to her art, and, passing on to pastel, she brought to this branch of portraiture a brilliancy and freshness which it had not known before. rosalba has perhaps preserved for us better than any one else, those women of venice who floated so lightly on the dancing waves of that sparkling stream. there they are: la cornaro; la maria labia, who was surrounded by french lovers, "very courteous and very beautiful"; la zenobio and la pisani; la foscari, with her black plumes; la mocenigo, "the lady with the pearls." she has pinned them all to the canvas; lovely, frail, light-hearted butterflies, with velvet neck-ribbons round their snowy throats and coquettish patches on their delicate skin and bouquets of flowers in their high-dressed hair and sheeny bodices. they look at us with arch eyes and smile with melting mouths, more frivolous than depraved; sweet, ephemeral, irresponsible in every relation of life. older men and women there are, too, when those artificial years have produced a succession of rather dull, sodden personages, kindly, inoffensive, but stupid, and still trifling heavily with the world. of rosalba we have another picture to compare with those of her sitters. she and the other artists of her circle lived the merry, busy life of the worker, and found in their art the antidote to the evil living and the dissipation of the gay world which provided sitters and patrons. rosalba's _milieu_ is a type of others of its class. she lives with her mother and sisters, an honest, cheerful, industrious existence. they are fond of old friends and old books, and indulge in music and simple pleasures. her sisters help rosalba by preparing the groundwork of her paintings. she pays visits, and writes rhymes, and plays on the harpsichord. she receives great men without much ceremony, and the elector palatine, the duke of mecklenburg, frederick, king of norway, and maximilian, king of bavaria, come to her to order miniatures of their reigning beauties. then she goes off to paris where she has plenty of commissions, and the frequently occurring names of english patrons in her fragmentary diaries, tell how much her work was admired by english travellers. she did more than anybody else to promote the fashion for pastels, and her delightful art may be seen at its best in the pastel room of the dresden gallery. henrietta, countess of pomfret, has left us a charming description of a party of english travellers, which included horace walpole, arriving in venice in , strolling about in mask and _bauta_, and visiting the famous pastellist in her studio. it is in such guise that rosalba has painted walpole, and has left one of the most interesting examples of her art. some examples _francesco da ponte._ venice. ducal palace: sala del maggior consiglio. four pictures on ceiling (second from the four corners of the sala). on left as you face the paradiso: . pope alexander iii. giving the stocco, or sword, to the doge as he enters a galley to command the army against ferrara; . victory against the milanese; . victory against imperial troops at cadore; . victory under carmagnola, over visconti. these four are all very rich in colour. chiesetta: circumcision; way to calvary. sala dell' scrutino: padua taken by night from the carraresi. _leandro da ponte._ venice. sala del maggior consiglio: the patriarch giving a blessed candle to the doge. sala of council of ten: meeting of alexander iii. and doge ziani. a fine decorative picture, running the whole of one side of the sala. sala of archeological museum: virgin in glory, with the avogadori family. _palma giovine._ dresden. presentation of the virgin. florence. uffizi: s. margaret. munich. deposition; nativity; ecce homo; flagellation. venice. academy: scenes from the apocalypse; s. francis. ducal palace: the last judgment. vienna. cain and abel; daughter of herodias; pietà; immaculate conception. _il padovanino._ florence. uffizi: lucretia. london. cornelia and her children. paris. venus and cupid. rome. villa borghese: toilet of minerva. venice. academy: the marriage of cana; madonna in glory; vanity, orpheus, and eurydice; rape of proserpine; virgin in glory. verona. man and woman playing chess; triumph of bacchus. vienna. woman taken in adultery; holy family. _pietro liberi._ venice. ducal palace: battle of the dardanelles. _andrea vicentino._ venice. museo civico: the marriage of a dogaressa. _g. a. fumiani._ venice. san pantaleone: ceiling. church of the carità: christ disputing with the doctors. _a. balestra._ verona. s. tomaso: annunciation. _g. lazzarini._ venice. s. pietro in castello. the charity of s. lorenzo giustiniani. _sebastiano ricci._ venice. s. rocco: the glorification of the cross. gesuati: pope pius v. and saints. london. royal hospital, chelsea: half-dome. _g. b. pittoni._ vicenza. the bath of diana. _g. b. piazetta._ venice. chiesa della fava: madonna and s. philip neri. academy: crucifixion; the fortune-teller. _rosalba carriera._ venice. academy: pastels. dresden. pastels. chapter xxix tiepolo we have already noted that to establish the significance of any period in art, it is necessary that the tendencies should unite and combine in some culminating spirits who rise triumphant over their contemporaries and soar above the age in which they live. such a genius stands out above the eighteenth century crowd, and is not only of his century, but of every time. for two hundred years tiepolo has been stigmatised as extravagant, mannered, as just equal to painting cupids, nymphs, and parroquets. in the last century he experienced the effect of the profound discredit into which the whole of eighteenth-century art had fallen. in france, david had obliterated watteau; and the reputation of pompeo battoni, a sort of italian david, effaced tiepolo and his contemporaries. when the delegates of the french republic inspected italian churches and palaces, and decided what works of art should be sent to the louvre, they singled out the bolognese, the guercinos and guidos, the carracci, even pompeo battoni and other such forgotten masters, a gatti, a nevelone, a badalocchio; but to the lasting regret of their descendants, they disdained to annex a single one of the great paintings of the venetian, gianbattista tiepolo. eastlake only vouchsafes him one line as "an artist of fantastic imagination." most of the nineteenth-century critics do not even mention him. burckhardt dismisses him with a grudging line of praise, blanc is equally disparaging, and for taine he is a mere mannerist, yet his influence has been felt far beyond his lifetime; only now is he coming into his own, and it is recognised that the _plein-air_ artist, the luminarist, the impressionist, owe no small share of their knowledge to his inspiration. the name of tiepolo brings before us a whole string of illustrious personages--doges and senators, magnificent procurators and great captains--but we have nothing to prove that the artist belonged to a decayed branch of the famous patrician house. born in castello, the people's quarter of venice, he studied in early youth with that good draughtsman, lazzarini. at twenty-three he married the sister of francesco guardi; guardi, who comes between longhi and canale and who is a better painter than either. tiepolo appeared at a fortunate moment. the demand for a facile, joyous genius was at its height. the life of the aristocracy on the lagoons was every year growing more gay, more abandoned to capricious inclination, to light loves and absurd amusements. and the art which reflected this life was called upon to give gaiety rather than thought, costume rather than character. yet if the venetian art had lost all connection with the grave magnificence of the past, it had kept aloof from the academic coldness which was in fashion beyond the lagoons, so that though theatrical, it was with a certain natural absurdity. the age had become romantic; the arcadian convention was in full force, nature herself was pressed into the service of idle, sentimental men and women. the country was pictured as a place of delight, where the sun always shone and the peasants passed their time singing madrigals and indulging in rural pleasures. the public, however, had begun to look for beauty; the traditions which had formed round the decorative schools were giving way to the appreciation of original work. tiepolo, sincere and spontaneous even when he is sacrificing truth to caprice, struck the taste of the venetians, and without emancipating himself from the tendencies of the time, contrives to introduce a fresh accent. all round him was a weak and self-indulgent world, but within himself he possessed a fund of buoyant and inexhaustible energy. he evokes a throng of personages on the ceilings of the churches and palaces confided to his fancy. his creations range from mythology to religion, from the sublime to the grotesque. all olympia appears upon his ample and luminous spaces. it is not to the cold, austere lazzarini, or to the clashing chiaroscuro of piazetta, or the imaginative spirit of battista ricci, though he was touched by each of them, that we must turn for tiepolo's derivation. long before his time, the kind of decoration of ceilings which we are apt to call tiepolesque; the foreshortened architecture, the columns and cornices, the figures peopling the edifices, or reclining upon clouds, had been used by an increasing throng of painters. the style arose, indeed, in the quattrocento; mantegna, the umbrians, and even michelangelo had used it, though in a far more sober way than later generations. correggio and the venetians had perfected the idea, which the artists of the seventeenth century seized upon and carried to the most intemperate excess. but tiepolo rose above them all; he abandoned the heavy, exaggerated, contorted designs, which by this time defied all laws of equilibrium, and we must go back further than his immediate predecessors for his origins. his claim to stand with tintoretto or veronese may be contested, but he is nearest to these, and no doubt veronese is the artist he studied with the greatest fervour. without copying, he seems to have a natural affinity of spirit with veronese and assimilates the ample arrangement of his groups, the grace of his architecture, and his decorative feeling for colour. zanetti, who was one of tiepolo's dearest friends, writes: "no painter of our time could so well recall the bright and happy creations of veronese." the difference between them is more one of period than of temperament. paolo veronese represented the opulence of a rich, strong society, full of noble life, while tiepolo's lot was cast among effeminate men and frivolous women, and full of the modern spirit himself, he adapts his genius to his time and devotes himself to satisfy the theatrical, sentimental vein of the venice of the decadence. full of enthusiasm for his work, he was ready to respond to any call. he went to and fro between venice and the villas along the mainland and to the neighbouring towns. then coveting wider fields, he travelled to milan and genoa, where his frescoes still gleam in the palaces of the dugnani, the archinto, and the clerici. at würzburg in bavaria he achieved a magnificent series of decorations for the palace of the prince-archbishop. then coming back to italy, he painted altarpieces, portraits, pictures for his friends, and a fresh multitude of allegorical and mythological frescoes in palaces and villas. his charming villa at zianigo is frescoed from top to bottom by himself and his sons, and has amusing examples of contemporary dress and manners. when the academy was instituted in , tiepolo was appointed its first director, but the sort of employment it provided was not suited to his impetuous spirit, and in he threw up the post and went off to spain with his two sons. there he received a splendid welcome and was loaded with commissions, the only dissentient voice being that of raphael mengs, who, obsessed by the taste for the classic and the antique, was fiercely opposed to the venetian's art. tiepolo died suddenly in madrid in , pencil in hand. though he was past seventy, the frescoes he has left there show that his hand was as firm and his eye as sure as ever. his frescoes have, as we have said, that frankly theatrical flavour which corresponds exactly to the taste of the time. such works as the "transportation of the holy house of loretto" in the church of the scalzi in venice, or the "triumph of faith" in that of the pietà, the "triumph of hercules" in palazzo canossa in verona, or the decorations in the magnificent villa of the pisani at strà, are extravagant and fantastic, yet have the impressive quality of genius. these last, which have for subject the glorification of the pisani, are full of portraits. the patrician sons and daughters appear, surrounded by abundance, war, and wisdom. a woman holding a sceptre symbolises europe. all round are grouped flags and dragons, "nations grappling in the airy blue," bands of red indians in their war-paint and happy couples making love. the idea of the history, the wealth, the supreme dignity of the house is paramount, and over all appears fame, bearing the noble name into immortality. in palazzo clerici at milan a rich and prodigal committee gave the painter a free hand, and on the ceiling of a vast hall the sun in a chariot, with four horses harnessed abreast, rises to the meridian, flooding the world with light. venus and saturn attend him, and his advent is heralded by mercury. a symbolical figure of the earth joys at his coming, and a concourse of naiads, nymphs, and dolphins wait upon his footsteps. in the school of the carmine in venice tiepolo has left one of his grandest displays. the haughty queen of heaven, who is his ideal of the virgin, bears the child lightly on her arm, and, standing enthroned upon the rolling clouds, hardly deigns to acknowledge the homage of the prostrate saint, on whom an attendant angel is bestowing her scapulary. the most charming _amoretti_ are disporting in all directions, flinging themselves from on high in delicious _abandon_, alternating with lovely groups of the cardinal virtues. at villa valmarana near vicenza, after revelling among the gods, he comes to earth and delights in painting lovely ladies with almond eyes and carnation cheeks, attended by their cavaliers, seated in balconies, looking on at a play, or dancing minuets, and carnival scenes with masques and dominoes and _fêtes champêtres_, which give us a picture of the fashions and manners of the day. he brings in groups of chinese in oriental dress, and then he condescends to paint country girls and their rustic swains, in the style of phyllis and corydon. sometimes he becomes graver and more solid. he abandons the airy fancies scattered in cloud-land. the story of esther in palazzo dugnano affords an opportunity for introducing magnificent architecture, warriors in armour, and stately dames in satin and brocades. he touches his highest in the decorations of palazzo labia, where antony and cleopatra, seated at their banquet, surrounded by pomp and revelry, regard one another silently, with looks of sombre passion. four exquisite panels have lately been acquired by the brera gallery, representing the loves of rinaldo and armida, and are a feast of gay, delicate colour, with fascinating backgrounds of italian gardens. the throne-room of the palace at madrid has the same order of compositions--Æneas conducted by venus from time to immortality, and other deifications of spanish royalty. [illustration: _tiepolo._ antony and cleopatra. _palazzo labia, venice._] now and then tiepolo is possessed by a tragic mood. in the church of san alvise he has left a "way to calvary," a "flagellation," and a "crowning of thorns," which are intensely dramatic, and which show strong feeling. particularly striking is the contrast between the refined and sensitive type of his christ and the realistic and even brutal study of the two despairing malefactors--one a common ruffian, the other an aged offender of a higher class. his altarpiece at este, representing s. tecla staying the plague, is painted with a real insight into disaster and agony, and s. tecla is a pathetic and beautiful figure. sometimes in his easel-pictures he paints a head of christ, a s. anthony, or a crucifixion, but he always returns before long to the ample spaces and fantastic subjects which his soul loved. tiepolo is a singular contradiction. his art suggests a strong being, held captive by butterflies. sometimes he is joyous and limpid, sometimes turbulent and strong, but he has always sincerity, force, and life. a great space serves to exhilarate him, and he asks nothing better than to cover it with angels and goddesses, white limbs among the clouds, sea-horses ridden by tritons, patrician warriors in roman armour, balustrades and columns and _amoretti_. he does not even need to pounce his design, but puts in all sorts of improvised modifications with a sure hand. the vastness of his frescoes, the daring poses of his countless figures, and the freedom of his line speak eloquently of the mastery to which his hand had attained. he revels, above all, in effects of light--"all the light of the sky, and all the light of the sea; all the light of venice ... in which he swims as in a bath. he paints not ideas, scarcely even forms, but light. his ceilings are radiant, like the sky of birds; his poems seem to be written in the clouds. light is fairer than all things, and tiepolo knows all the tricks and triumphs of light."[ ] [ ] philippe monnier, _venice in the eighteenth century_. nearly all his compositions have a serene and limpid horizon, with the figures approaching it painted in clear, silvery hues, airy and diaphanous, while the forms below are more muscular, the flesh tints are deeper, and the whole of the foreground is often enveloped in shadow. veronese had lit up the shadows, which, under his contemporaries, were growing gloomy. tiepolo carries his art further on the same lines. he makes his figures more graceful, his draperies more vaporous, and illumines his clouds with radiance. his faded blue and rose, his golden-greys, and pearly whites and pastel tints are not so much solid colours as caprices of light. we have remarked already that with veronese the accessories of gleaming satins and rich brocades serve to obscure the persons. in many of tiepolo's scenes the figures are lost in a flutter of drapery, subject and action melt away, and we are only conscious of soft harmonies of delicious colour, as ethereal as the hues of spring flowers in woodland ways and joyous meadows. with these delicious, audacious fancies, put on with a nervous hand, we forget the age of profound and ardent passion, we escape from that of pompous solemnity and studied grace, and we breathe an atmosphere of irresponsible and capricious pleasure. in this last word of her great masters venice keeps what her temperament loved--sensuous colour and emotional chiaroscuro, used to accentuate an art adapted to a city of pleasure. the excellence of the old masters' drawings is a perpetual revelation. even second-class men are almost invariably fine draughtsmen, proving that drawing was looked upon as something over which it was necessary for even the meanest to have entire mastery. tiepolo's drawings, preserved in venice and in various museums, are as beautiful as can be wished; perfect in execution and vivid in feeling. in venice are twenty or thirty sheets in red carbon, of flights of angels, and of draperies studied in every variety of fold. poor work of his school is often ascribed to his sons, but the superb "stations of the cross," in the frari, which were etched by domenico, and published as his own in his lifetime, are almost equal to the father's work. tiepolo had many immediate followers and imitators. the colossal roof-painting of fabio canal in the church of ss. apostoli, venice, may be pointed out as an example of one of these. but he is full of the tendencies of modern art. mr. berenson, writing of him, says he sometimes seems more the first than the last of a line, and notices how he influenced many french artists of recent times, though none seem quite to have caught the secret of his light intensity and his exquisite caprice. principal works aranjuez. royal palace: frescoes; altarpiece. orangery: frescoes. bergamo. cappella colleoni: scenes from the life of the baptist. berlin. martyrdom of s. agatha; s. dominia and the rosary. london. sketches; deposition. madrid. escurial; ceilings. milan. palazzi clerici, archinto, and dugnano: frescoes. brera: loves of rinaldo and armida. paris. christ at emmaus. strà. villa pisani: ceiling. venice. academy: s. joseph, the child, and saints; s. helena finding the cross. palazzo ducale: sala di quattro porte: neptune and venice. palazzo labia: frescoes; antony and cleopatra. palazzo rezzonico: two ceilings. s. alvise: flagellation; way to golgotha. ss. apostoli: communion of s. lucy. s. fava: the virgin and her parents. gesuati: ceiling; altarpiece. s. maria della pietà: triumph of faith. s. paolo: stations of the cross. scalzi: transportation of the holy house of loretto. scuola del carmine: ceiling. verona. palazzo canossa: triumph of hercules. vicenza. museo entrance hall: immaculate conception. villa valmarana: frescoes; subjects from homer, virgil, ariosto, and tasso; masks and oriental scenes. würzburg. palace of the archbishop: ceilings; fêtes galantes; assumption; fall of rebel angels. chapter xxx pietro longhi we have here a master who is peculiarly the venetian of the eighteenth century, a genre-painter whose charm it is not easy to surpass, yet one who did not at the outset find his true vocation. longhi's first undertakings, specimens of which exist in certain palaces in venice, were elaborate frescoes, showing the baneful influence of the bolognese school, in which he studied for a time under giuseppe crispi. he attempts to place the deities of olympus on his ceilings in emulation of tiepolo, but his juno is heavy and common, and the titans at her feet appear as a swarm of sprawling, ill-drawn nudities. he shows no faculty for this kind of work, but he was thirty-two before he began to paint those small easel-pictures which in his own dainty style illustrate the "vanity fair" of his period, and in which the eighteenth century lives for us again. his earliest training was in the goldsmith's art, and he has left many drawings of plate, exquisite in their sense of graceful curve and their unerring precision of line. it was a moment when such things acquired a flawless purity of outline, and longhi recognised their beauty with all the sensitive perception of the artist and the practised workman. his studies of draperies, gestures, and hands are also extraordinarily careful, and he seems besides to have an intimate acquaintance with all the elegant dissipation and languid excesses of a dying order. we feel that he has himself been at home in the masquerade, has accompanied the lady to the fortune-teller, and, leaning over her graceful shoulder, has listened to the soothsayer's murmurs. he has attended balls and routs, danced minuets, and gossiped over tiny cups of china tea. he is the last chronicler of the venetian feasts, and with him ends that long series that began with giorgione's concert and which developed and passed through suppers at cana and banquets at the houses of levi and the pharisee. we are no longer confronted with the sumptuosity of bonifazio and veronese; the immense tables covered with gold and silver plate, the long lines of guests robed in splendid brocades, the stream of servants bearing huge salvers, or the bands of musicians, nor are there any more alfresco concerts, with nymphs and bacchantes. instead there are masques, the life of the ridotto or gaming-house, routs and intrigues in dainty boudoirs, and surreptitious love-making in that city of eternal carnival where the _bauta_ was almost a national costume. longhi holds that post which in french art is filled by watteau, fragonard, and lancret, the painters of _fêtes galantes_, and though he cannot be placed on an equal footing with those masters, he is representative and significant enough. on his canvases are preserved for us the mysteries of the toilet, over which ladies and young men of fashion dawdled through the morning, the drinking of chocolate in _négligé_, the momentous instants spent in choosing headgear and fixing patches, the towers of hair built by the modish coiffeur--children trooping in, in hoops and uniforms, to kiss their mother's hand, the fine gentleman choosing a waistcoat and ogling the pretty embroideress, the pert young maidservant slipping a billet-doux into a beauty's hand under her husband's nose, the old beau toying with a fan, or the discreet abbé taking snuff over the morning gazette. the grand ladies of longhi's day pay visits in hoop and farthingale, the beaux make "a leg," and the lacqueys hand chocolate. the beautiful venetians and their gallants swim through the gavotte or gamble in the ridotto, or they hasten to assignations, disguised in wide _bauti_ and carrying preposterous muffs. the correr museum contains a number of his paintings and also his book of original sketches. one of the most entertaining of his canvases represents a visit of patricians to a nuns' parlour. the nuns and their pupils lend an attentive ear to the whispers of the world. their dresses are trimmed with _point de venise_, and a little theatre is visible in the background. this and the "sala del ridotto" which hangs near, are marked by a free, bold handling, a richness of colouring, and more animation than is usual in his genre-pictures. he has not preserved the lovely, indeterminate colour or the impressionist touch which was the natural inheritance of watteau or tiepolo. his backgrounds are dark and heavy, and he makes too free a use of body colour; but his attitude is one of close observation--he enjoys depicting the life around him, and we suspect that he sees in it the most perfect form of social intercourse imaginable. longhi is sometimes called the goldoni of painting, and he certainly more nearly resembles the genial, humorous playwright than he does hogarth, to whom he has also been compared. yet his execution and technique are a little like hogarth's, and it is possible that he was influenced by the elder and stronger master, who entered on his triumphant career as a satirical painter of society about . this was just the time when longhi abandoned his unlucky decorative style, and it is quite possible that he may have met with engravings of the "marriage à la mode," and was stimulated by them to the study of eighteenth-century manners, though his own temperament is far removed from hogarth's moral force and grim satire. his serene, painstaking observation is never distracted by grossness and violence. the venetians of his day may have been--undoubtedly were--effeminate, licentious, and decadent, but they were kind and gracious, of refined manners, well-bred, genial and intelligent, and so longhi has transcribed them. in the time which followed, ceilings were covered by boucher, pastels by latour were in demand, the scholars of david painted classical scenes, and pietro longhi was forgotten. antonio francesco correr bought five hundred of his drawings from his son, alessandro, but his works were ignored and dispersed. the classic and romantic fashions passed, but it was only in that the brothers de goncourt, writing on art, revived consideration for the painter of a bygone generation. many of his works are in private collections, especially in england, but few are in public galleries. the national gallery is fortunate in possessing several excellent examples. [illustration: _pietro longhi._ visit to the fortune-teller. _london._ (_photo, hanfstängl._)] principal works bergamo. lochis: at the gaming table; taking coffee. baglioni: the festival of the padrona. dresden. portrait of a lady. hampton court. three genre-pictures. london. visit to a circus; visit to a fortune-teller; portrait. mond collection: card party; portrait. venice. academy: six genre-paintings. correr museum: eleven paintings of venetian life; portrait of goldoni. palazzo grassi: frescoes; scenes of fashionable life. quirini-stampalia: eight paintings; portraits. chapter xxxi canale while piazetta and tiepolo were proving themselves the inheritors of the great school of decorators, venice herself was finding her chroniclers, and a school of landscape arose, of which canale was the foremost member. giovanni antonio canale was born in venice in , the same year as tiepolo. his father earned his living at the profession, lucrative enough just then, of scene-painting, and antonio learned to handle his brush, working at his side. in he went off to seek his fortune in rome, and though he was obliged to help out his resources by his early trade, he was most concerned in the study of architecture, ancient and modern. rome spoke to him through the eye, by the picturesque masses of stonework, the warm harmonious tones of classic remains and the effects of light upon them. he painted almost entirely out-of-doors, and has left many examples drawn from the ruins. his success in rome was not remarkable, and he was still a very young man when he retraced his steps. on regaining his native town, he realised for the first time the beauty of its canals and palaces, and he never again wavered in his allegiance. two rivals were already in the field, luca carlevaris, whose works were freely bought by the rich venetians, and marco ricci, the figures in whose views of venice were often touched in by his uncle, sebastiano; but canale's growing fame soon dethroned them, "i cacciati del nido," as he said, using dante's expression. in a generation full of caprice, delighting in sensational developments, canale was methodical to a fault, and worked steadily, calmly producing every detail of venetian landscape with untiring application and almost monotonous tranquillity. he lived in the midst of a band of painters who adored travel. sebastiano ricci was always on the move; tiepolo spent much of his time in other cities and countries, and passed the last years of his life in spain; pietro rotari was attached to the court of st. petersburg; belotto, canale's nephew, settled in bohemia; but canale remained at home, and, except for two short visits paid to england, contented himself with trips to padua and verona. early in life canale entered into relations with joseph smith, the british consul in venice, a connoisseur who had not only formed a fine collection of pictures, but had a gallery from which he was very ready to sell to travellers. he bought of the young venetian at a very low price, and contrived, unfairly enough, to acquire the right to all his work for a certain period of time, with the object of sending it, at a good profit, to london. for a time canale's luminous views were bought by the english under these auspices, but the artist, presently discovering that he was making a bad bargain, came over to england, where he met with an encouraging reception, especially at windsor castle and from the duke of richmond. canale spent two years in england and painted on the thames and at cambridge, but he could not stand the english climate and fled from the damp and fogs to his own lagoons. to describe his paintings is to describe venice at every hour of the day and night--venice with its long array of noble palaces, with its grand canal and its narrow, picturesque waterways. he reproduces the venice we know, and we see how little it has changed. the gondolas cluster round the landing-stages of the piazzetta, the crowds hurry in and out of the arcades of the ducal palace, or he paints the festivals that still retained their splendour: the great bucentaur leaving the riva dei schiavoni on the feast of the ascension, or san geremia and the entrance to the cannaregio decked in flags for a feast-day. from one end to another of the grand canal, that "most beautiful street in the world," as des commines called it in , we can trace every aspect of canale's time, when the city had as yet lost nothing of its splendour or its animation. at the entrance stands s. maria della salute, that sanctuary dear to venetian hearts, built as a votive offering after the visitation of the plague in . its flamboyant dome, with its volutes, its population of stone saints, its green bronze door catching the light, pleased canale, as it pleased sargent in our own day, and he painted it over and over again. the annual fête of the confraternity of the carità takes place at the scuola di san rocco, and canale paints the old renaissance building which shelters so much of tintoretto's finest work, decorated with ropes of greenery and gay with flags,[ ] while tiepolo has put in the red-robed, periwigged councillors and the gazing populace. near it in the national gallery hangs a "regatta" with its array of boats, its shouting gondoliers, and its shadows lying across the range of palaces, and telling the exact hour of the day that it was sketched in; or, again, the painter has taken peculiar pleasure in expressing quiet days, with calm green waters and wide empty piazzas, divided by sun and shadow, with a few citizens plodding about their business in the hot midday, or a quiet little abbé crossing the piazza on his way to mass. canale has made a special study of the light on wall and façade, and of the transparent waters of the canals and the azure skies in which float great snowy fleeces. [ ] it is thought that it may have been painted from his studio. his second visit to england was paid in . he was received with open arms by the great world, and invited to the houses of the nobility in town and country. the english were delighted with his taste and with the mastery with which he painted architectural scenes, and in spite of advancing years he produced a number of compositions, which commanded high prices. the garden of vauxhall, the rotunda at ranelagh, whitehall, northumberland house, eton college, were some of the subjects which attracted him, and the treatment of which was signalised by his calm and perfect balance. he made use of the camera ottica, which is in principal identical with the camera oscura. lanzi says he amended its defects and taught its proper use, but it must be confessed that in the careful perspective of some of his scenes, its traces seem to haunt us and to convey a certain cold regularity. canale was a marvellous engraver. mantegna, bellini, and titian had placed engraving on a very high level in the venetian school, and though at a later date it became too elaborate, tiepolo and his son brought it back to simplicity. canale aided them, and his _eaux-fortes_, of which he has left about thirty, are filled with light and breadth of treatment, and he is particularly happy in his brilliant, transparent water. the high prices canale obtained for his pictures in his lifetime led to the usual imitations. he was surrounded by painters whose whole ambition was limited to copying him. among these were marieschi, visentini, colombini, besides others now forgotten. more than fifty of his finest works were bought by smith for george iii. and fill a room at windsor. he was made a member of the academy at dresden, and bruhl, the prime minister of the elector, obtained from him twenty-one works which now adorn the gallery there. canale died in venice, where he had lived nearly all his life, and where his gondola-studio was a familiar object in the piazzetta, at the lido, or anchored in the long canals. his nephew, bernardo belotto, is often also called canaletto, and it seems that both uncle and nephew were equally known by the diminutive. belotto, too, went to rome early in his career, where he attached himself to panini, a painter of classic ruins, peopled with warriors and shepherds. he was, by all accounts, full of vanity and self-importance, and on a visit to germany managed to acquire the title of count, which he adhered to with great complacency. he travelled all over italy looking for patronage, and was very eager to find the road to success and fortune. about the same time as his uncle, he paid a visit to london and was patronised by horace walpole, but in the full tide of success he was summoned to dresden, where the elector, disappointed at not having secured the services of the uncle, was fain to console himself with those of the nephew. the extravagant and profligate augustus ii., whose one idea was to extract money by every possible means from his subjects, in order to adorn his palaces, was consistently devoted to belotto, who was in his element as a court painter. he paints all his uncle's subjects, and it is not always easy to distinguish between the two; but his paintings are dull and stiff as compared with those of canale, though he is sometimes fine in colour, and many of his views are admirably drawn. some works of canale it is impossible to draw up any exhaustive list, so many being in private collections. dresden. the grand canal; campo s. giacomo; piazza s. marco; church and piazza of ss. giovanni and paolo. florence. the piazzetta. hampton court. the colosseum. london. scuola di san rocco; interior of the rotunda at ranelagh; s. pietro in castello, venice. paris. louvre: church of s. maria della salute. venice. heading; courtyard of a palace. vienna. liechtenstein gallery: church and piazza of s. mark, venice; canal of the giudecca, venice; view on grand canal; the piazzetta. windsor. about fifty paintings. wallace collection. the giudecca; piazza san marco; church of san simione; s. maria della salute; a fête on the grand canal; ducal palace; dogana from the molo; palazzo corner; a water-fête; the rialto; s. maria della salute; a canal in venice. chapter xxxii francesco guardi an entry in gradenigo's diary of , preserved in the museo correr, speaks of "francesco guardi, painter of the quarter of ss. apostoli, along the fondamenta nuove, a good pupil of the famous canaletto, having by the aid of the camera ottica, most successfully painted two canvases (not small) by the order of a stranger (an englishman), with views of the piazza san marco, towards the church and the clock tower, and of the bridge of the rialto and buildings towards the cannaregio, and have to-day examined them under the colonnades of the procurazie and met with universal applause." francesco guardi was a son of the austrian tyrol, and his mountain ancestry may account, as in the case of titian, for the freshness and vigour of his art. both his father, who settled in venice, and his brother were painters. his son became one in due time, and the profession being followed by four members of the family accounts for the indifferent works often attributed to guardi. his indebtedness to canale is universally acknowledged, and perhaps it is true that he never attains to the monumental quality, the traditional dignity which marks canale out as a great master, but he differs from canale in temperament, style, and technique. canale is a much more exact and serious student of architectural detail; guardi, with greater visible vigour, obliterates detail, and has no hesitation in drawing in buildings which do not really appear. in his oval painting of the ducal palace (wallace collection) he makes it much loftier and more spacious than it really is. in his "piazzetta" he puts in a corner of the loggia where it would not actually be seen. in the "fair in piazza s. marco" the arch from under which the fair appears is gigantic, and he foreshortens the wing of the royal palace. he curtails the length of the columns in the piazza and so avoids monotony of effect, and he often alters the height of the campaniles he uses, making them tall and slender or short and broad, as his picture requires. at one time he produced some colossal pictures, in several of which mr. simonson, who has written an admirable life of the painter, believes that the hand of canale is perceptible in collaboration; but it was not his natural element, and he often became heavy in colour and handling. in he undertook a commission from pietro edwards, who was a noted connoisseur and inspector of state pictures, and had been appointed superintendent in of an official studio for the restoration of old masters. edwards had important dealings with guardi, who was directed to paint four leading incidents in the rejoicings in honour of the visit of pius iv. to venice. the venetians themselves had become indifferent patrons of art, but venice attracted great numbers of foreign visitors, and before the second half of the eighteenth century the export of old masters had already become an established trade. there is no sign, however, that joseph smith, who retained his consulship till , extended any patronage to guardi, though he enriched george iii.'s collection with works of the chief contemporary artists of venice. it is probable that guardi had been warned against him by canale and profited by the latter's experience. we can divide his work into three categories. . views of venice. . public ceremonies. . landscapes. gradenigo mentions casually that he used the camera ottica, but though we may consider it probable, we cannot trace the use of it in his works. he is not only a painter of architecture, but pays great attention to light and atmosphere, and aims at subtle effects; a transparent haze floats over the lagoons, or the sun pierces though the morning mists. his four large pendants in the wallace collection show his happiest efforts; light glances off the water and is reflected on the shadowed walls. his views round the salute bring vividly before us those delicious morning hours in venice when the green tide has just raced up the grand canal, when a fresh wind is lifting and curling all the loose sails and fluttering pennons, and when the gondoliers are straining at the oars, as their light craft is caught and blown from side to side upon the rippling water. the sky occupies much of his space, he makes searching studies of it, and his favourite effect is a flash of light shooting across a piled-up mass of clouds. the line of the horizon is low, and he exhibits great mastery in painting the wide lagoons, but he also paints rough seas, and is one of the few masters of his day--perhaps the only one--who succeeds in representing a storm at sea. often as he paints the same subjects he never becomes mechanical or photographic. we may sometimes tire of the monotony of canale's unerring perspective and accurate buildings, but guardi always finds some new rendering, some fresh point of interest. sometimes he gives us a summer day, when venice stands out in light, her white palaces reflected in the sun-illumined water; sometimes he is arrested by old churches bathed in shadow and fusing into the rich, dark tones of twilight. his boats and figures are introduced with great spirit and _brio_, and are alive with that handling which a french critic has described as his _griffe endiablée_. [illustration: _francesco guardi._ s. maria della salute. _london._ (_photo, mansell and co._)] his masterly and spirited painting of crowds enables him to reproduce for us all those public ceremonies which venice retained as long as the republic lasted: yearly pilgrimages of the doge to venetian churches, to the salute to commemorate the cessation of the plague, to san zaccaria on easter day, the solemn procession on corpus christi day, receptions of ambassadors, and, most gorgeous of all, the feast of the wedding of the adriatic. he has faithfully preserved the ancient ceremonial which accompanied state festivities. in the "fête du jeudi gras" (louvre) he illustrates the acrobatic feats which were performed before doge mocenigo. a huge temple of victory is erected on the piazzetta, and gondoliers are seen climbing on each other's shoulders and dancing upon ropes. his motley crowds show that the whole population, patricians as well as people, took part in the feasts. he has also left many striking interiors: among others, that of the sala del gran consiglio, where sometimes as many as a thousand persons were assembled, the "reception of the doge and senate by pius iv." (which formed one of the series ordered by pietro edwards), or the fine "interior of a theatre," exhibited at the burlington fine arts in , belonging to a series of which another is at munich. in his landscapes guardi does not pay very faithful attention to nature. the landscape painters of the eighteenth century, as mr. simonson points out, were not animated by any very genuine impulse to study nature minutely. it was the picturesque element which appealed to them, and they were chiefly concerned to reproduce romantic features, grouped according to fancy. guardi composes half fantastic scenes, introducing classic remains, triumphal arches, airy palladian monuments. his _capricci_ include compositions in which roman ruins, overgrown with foliage, occupy the foreground of a painting of venetian palaces, but in which the combination is carried out with so much sparkle and nervous life and such charm of style, that it is attractive and piquant rather than grotesque. england is richest in guardis, of any country, but france in one respect is better off, in possessing no less than eleven fine paintings of public ceremonials. guardi may be considered the originator of small sketches, and perhaps the precursor of those glib little views which are handed about the piazza at the present day. his drawings are fairly numerous, and are remarkably delicate and incisive in touch. a large collection which he left to his son is now in the museo correr. in his later years he was reduced to poverty and used to exhibit sketches in the piazza, parting with them for a few ducats, and in this way flooding venice with small landscapes. the exact spot occupied by his _bottega_ is said to be at the corner of the palazzo reale, opposite the clock tower. the house in which he died still exists in the campiello della madonna, no. , parrocchia s. canziano, and has a shrine dedicated to the madonna attached to it. when quite an old man, guardi paid a visit to the home of his ancestors, at mastellano in the austrian tyrol, and made a drawing of castello corvello on the route. to this day his name is remembered with pride in his tyrolean valley. some works of guardi bergamo. lochis: landscapes. berlin. grand canal; lagoon; cemetery island. london. views in venice. milan. museo civico: landscapes. poldi-pezzoli: piazzetta; dogana; landscapes. oxford. taylorian museum: views in venice. padua. views in venice. paris. procession of the doge to s. zaccaria; embarkment in bucentaur; festival at salute; "jeudi gras" in venice; corpus christi; sala di collegio; coronation of doge. turin. cottage; staircase; bridge over canal. venice. museo correr: the ridotto; parlour of convent. verona. landscapes. wallace collection. the rialto; san giorgio maggiore (two); s. maria della salute; archway in venice; vaulted arcades; the dogana. bibliography it is an advantage to the student of italian art to be able to read french, german, and italian, for though translations appear of the most important works, there are many interesting articles and monographs of minor artists which are otherwise inaccessible. vasari, not always trustworthy, either in dates, facts, or opinions, yet delightfully human in his histories, is indispensable, and new editions and translations are constantly issued. sansoni's edition (florence), with milanesi's notes, is the most authoritative; and for translations, those of mrs. foster (messrs. blashfield and hopkins), and a new edition in the temple classics (dent, vols., s. each vol.). ridolfi, the principal contemporary authority on venetian artists, who published his _maraviglie dell' arte_ nine years after domenico tintoretto's death, is only to be read in italian, though the anecdotes with which his work abounds are made use of by every writer. crowe and cavalcaselle's _painting in north italy_ (murray) is a storehouse of painstaking, minute, and, on the whole, marvellously correct information and sound opinion. it supplies a foundation, fills gaps, and supplements individual biographies as no other book does. for the early painters, down to the time of the bellini, _i origini dei pittori veneziani_, by professor leonello venturi, venice, , is a large book, written with mastery and insight, and well illustrated; _la storia della pittura veneziana_ is another careful work, which deals very minutely with the early school of mosaics. in studying the bellini, the late mr. s. a. strong has _the brothers bellini_ (bell's great masters), and the reader should not fail to read mr. roger fry's _bellini_ (artist's library), a scholarly monograph, short but reliable, and full of suggestion and appreciation, though written in a cool, critical spirit. dr. hills has dealt ably with _pisanello_ (duckworth). molmenti and ludwig in their monumental work _vittore carpaccio_, translated by mr. r. h. cust (murray, ), and paul kristeller in the equally important _mantegna_, translated by mr. s. a. strong (longmans, ), seem to have exhausted all that there is to be said for the moment concerning these two painters. it is almost superfluous to mention mr. berenson's two well-known volumes, _the venetian painters of the renaissance_, and the _north italian painters of the renaissance_ (putnam). they are brilliant essays which supplement every other work, overflowing with suggestive and critical matter, supplying original thoughts, and summing up in a few pregnant words the main features and the tendencies of the succeeding stages. in studying giorgione, we cannot dispense with pater's essay, included in _the renaissance_. the author is not always well informed as to facts--he wrote in the early days of criticism--but he is rich in idea and feeling. mr. herbert cook's _life of giorgione_ (bell's great masters) is full and interesting. some authorities question his attributions as being too numerous, but whether we regard them as authentic works of the master or as belonging to his school, the illustrations he gives add materially to our knowledge of the giorgionesque. when we come to titian we are well off. crowe and cavalcaselle's _life of titian_ (murray, out of print), in two large volumes, is well written and full of good material, from which subsequent writers have borrowed. an excellent life, full of penetrating criticism, by mr. c. ricketts, was lately brought out by methuen (classics of art), complete with illustrations, and including a minute analysis of titian's technique. sir claude phillips's monograph on titian will appeal to every thoughtful lover of the painter's genius, and dr. gronau has written a good and scholarly life (duckworth). mr. berenson's _lorenzo lotto_ must be read for its interest and learning, given with all the author's charm and lucidity. it includes an essay on alvise vivarini. my own _tintoretto_ (methuen, classics of art) gives a full account of the man and his work, and especially deals exhaustively with the scheme and details of the scuola di san rocco. professor thode has written a detailed and profusely illustrated life of tintoretto in the knackfuss series, and the paradiso has been treated at length and illustrated in great detail in a very scholarly _édition de luxe_ by mr. f. o. osmaston. it is the fashion to discard ruskin, but though we may allow that his judgments are exaggerated, that he reads more into a picture than the artist intended, and that he is too fond of preaching sermons, there are few critics who have so many ideas to give us, or who are so informed with a deep love of art, and both _modern painters_ and the _stones of venice_ should be read. m. charles yriarte has written a life of paolo veronese, which is full of charm and knowledge. it is interesting to take a copy of boschini's _della pittura veneziana_, , when visiting the galleries, the palaces, and the churches of venice. his lists of the pictures, as they were known in his day, often open our eyes to doubtful attributions. second-hand copies of boschini are not difficult to pick up. when the later-century artists are reached, a good sketch of the venice of their period is supplied by philippe monnier's delightful _venice in the eighteenth century_ (chatto and windus), which also has a good chapter on the lesser venetian masters. the best life of tiepolo is in italian, by professor pompeo molmenti. the smaller masters have to be hunted for in many scattered essays; a knowledge of goldoni adds point to longhi's pictures. canaletto and his nephew, belotto, have been treated by m. uzanne, _les deux canaletto_; and mr. simonson has written an important and charming volume on francesco guardi (methuen, ), with beautiful reproductions of his works. among other books which give special information are morelli's two volumes, _italian painters in borghese and doria pamphili_, and _in dresden and munich galleries_, translated by miss jocelyn ffoulkes (murray); and dr. j. p. richter's magnificent catalogue of the mond collection--which, though published at fifteen guineas, can be seen in the great art libraries--has some valuable chapters on the venetian masters. index academy, florence, venice, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , adoration of magi, , , , , , , adoration of shepherds, , , , , agnolo gaddi, alemagna, giovanni, - , , , altichiero, , alvise vivarini, - , , , , , , , , , , , amalteo, pomponio, amigoni, anconæ, , , , , , , , , angelico, fra, annunciation, , , , , , , antonello da messina, , , , , antonio da murano, , , , , , antonio negroponte, , antonio veneziano, aretino, , , , - , , , , , , ascension, augsburg, , , badile, balestra, baptism of christ, , , bartolommeo vivarini, , , , , , , , , , , basaiti, marco, , - bassano, , , - , bastiani, lazzaro, , , battoni, pompeo, , bellini, gentile, - , , , , , , , , , , bellini, giovanni, , , , , , , , , , , , - , , , - , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , bellini, jacopo, , , - , , - , belotto, , - bembo, cardinal, , , , benson, mr., , , , , berenson, mr., , , , , , , , , bergamo, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , berlin, , , , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , bissolo, , , , blanc, m. charles, , , bologna, , , , , , bonifazio, - , , , , , , , bonsignori, , bordone, paris, , , - , , , borghese, villa, , , , , boschini, , , , boston, botticelli, , brera, , , , , , , , , , , , brescia, , , , , , , bridgewater house, , british museum, , broker's patent, , , brusasorci, buonconsiglio, , burckhardt, _burlington magazine_, byzantine art, , , calderari, carlevaris, luca, , caliari, carlotto, caliari, paolo. _see_ veronese campagnola, domenico, canal, fabio, canale, gian antonio, , , - , , canaletto. _see_ canale caravaggio, cariani, - , carpaccio, , , , , , , , , , , , , carracci, , , carriera. _see_ rosalba carriera castagno, andrea del, , castello, milan, catena, vincenzo, , - , , , cathedrals, ascoli, bassano, , conegliano, cremona, , , murano, spilimbergo, treviso, , , , verona, , celesti, chelsea hospital, churches-- bergamo. s. alessandro, , s. bartolommeo, s. bernardino, s. spirito, , , brescia. s. clemente, ss. nazaro e celso, castelfranco. s. liberale, s. daniele. s. antonino, , , padua. eremitani, , , il santo, , s. giustina, , s. maria in vanzo, s. zeno, pesaro. s. francesco, piacenza. madonna di campagna, ravenna. s. domenico, rome. s. maria del popolo, s. pietro in montorio, , venice. s. alvise, ss. apostoli, , s. barnabà, carmine, , , s. cassiano, ss. ermagora and fortunato, s. fava, , s. francesco della vigna, , , gesuati, s. giacomo dell' orio, , s. giobbe, , , , , s. giorgio maggiore, , , s. giovanni in bragora, , , , , , , , s. giovanni crisostomo, , s. giovanni elemosinario, , ss. giovanni and paolo, , , s. maria formosa, , , s. maria dei frari, , , , , , , , , , , , , , s. maria mater domini, , , s. maria dei miracoli, s. maria dell' orto, , , , , s. maria della salute, , , , , , s. mark's, , , , , , , s. pantaleone, , , pietà, , , s. pietro in castello, , s. pietro in murano, , s. polo, , redentore, , , , s. rocco, , s. salvatore, , scalzi, s. sebastiano, , , , s. spirito, s. stefano, , s. trovaso, , , s. vitale, , s. zaccaria, , , , , verona. s. anastasia, , , , , s. antonio, , s. fermo, , s. tomaso, vicenza. s. corona, , , monte berico, , , , , cima da conegliano, , , , - , , colombini, confraternity, carità, s. mark, , , contarini, giovanni, cook, sir f., cook, mr. herbert, correggio, , correr museum (museo civico), , , , , , , , , , crivelli, carlo, , - , crowe and cavalcaselle, , , crucifixion, , , , , , dante, david, , doges-- barbarigo, dandolo, giustiniani, gradenigo, grimani, loredano, , mocenigo, donatello, , , doria gallery, , dresden, , , , , , , , , , , dürer, albert, , , edwards, pietro, , este, este, isabela d', , , , fabriano, gentile da, , , , , , , , , , , florence, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , florentine, , , , , , , , , , , , florigerio, fondaco dei tedeschi, , , fragonard, fry, mr. roger, , , fumiani, gianbattista, , gaston de foix, giambono, michele, , , giordano, luca, giorgione, , , , , , - , , - , - , - , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , giotto, , , , , , goldoni, carlo, , goncourt, de, guardi, francesco, , - , , , guariento, , , , guercino, guido, guilds, , , , , , , , , guillaume de guilleville, hampton court, , , , , , , hazlitt, , hogarth, , jacobello del fiore, , , , jacopo bellini. _see_ bellini kristeller, m. paul, lancret, last judgment, last supper, , , layard, lady, , , , lazzarini, gregorio, , , , leonardo, , , , , , liberi, pietro, , , licinio, bernardino, licinio, g. a. _see_ pordenone lippo, fra, london (national gallery), , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , longhi, pietro, , , - lorenzo di san severino, lorenzo veneziano, , , loreto, , lotto, lorenzo, , , - , , , , , louvre, , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , luciani. _see_ sebastian del piombo ludwig, professor, , , madrid, , , , , , , mansueti, giovanni, , mantegna, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , marieschi, martino da udine. _see_ pellegrino maser, villa, , masolino, mengs, raphael, michelangelo, , , , , , , , - , , , milan, ambrosiana, , , , brera. _see_ brera mocetto, girolamo, molmenti, professor, , mond collection, , , , , monnier, philippe, , montagna, bartolommeo, , , - , morelli, , , moretto, , morto da feltre, , munich, , murano, , , , , museo civico. _see_ correr naples, , , , , national gallery. _see_ london niccolo di pietro, , , niccolo semitocolo, , , osmaston, mr. f. o., padovanino, il, , padua, , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , palaces-- milan. archinto, , clerici, dugnani, , rome. colonna, strà. pisani, venice. ducal, , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , giovanelli, labia, , rezzonico, verona. canossa, würzburg, , palma giovine, , , palma vecchio, , - , , , , , , , paolo da venezia, paris. _see_ louvre parma, pellegrino, , , , pennacchi, , perugino, , , pesaro, , , pesellino, piacenza, , piero di cosimo, pietà, , , , , , pintoricchio, , pisanello (pisano), , , - , , , , , - , , , pordenone, , , , , - , previtali, , , quirizio da murano, raphael, , , , , , , ravenna, , rembrandt, ricci, battista, , ricci, marco, ricci, sebastiano, , , , , richter, dr. j. p., ricketts, mr. c., ridolfi, , , , , , , rimini, , , robusti, domenico, , robusti, jacopo. _see_ tintoretto robusti, marietta, romanino, - rome, , , , , , , , , , , , rondinelli, , , rosalba carriera, , - , rubens, , , , ruskin, , sansovino, , , , santa croce, girolamo da, sarto, andrea del, , savoldo, , sebastian del piombo, , , - , siena, , , signorelli, simonson, mr., , , smith, joseph, , speranza, spilimbergo, , strong, mr. s. a., , taylor, miss cameron, tiepolo, domenico, tiepolo, g. b., , - , , , , , , , tintoretto, , , , , , , , , , , - , - , - , , , , , , , , , , titian, , , , , , , - , - , , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , - , , , , - , , , , , torbido, francesco, treviso, , , , , , , , uccello, paolo, , , urbino, , , uzanne, m. o., valmarana, villa, varotari. _see_ padovanino vasari, , , , , , , , , , , , , , vecellio. _see_ titian vecellio, marco, vecellio, orazio, , vecellio, pomponio, velasquez, venice. _see_ academy venturi, professor antonio, venturi, professor leonello, vi, , verona, , , , , , , , , , , veronese, paolo, , , - , , , , , , , vicentino, vicenza, , , , , - , , , vienna, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , visentini, viterbo, vivarini. _see_ alvise vivarini. _see_ bartolommeo wallace collection, , , walpole, horace, , , watteau, , , wickhoff, dr., windsor, , yriarte, m. charles, , zanetti, , , , , , , zelotti, zoppo, marco, zucchero, federigo, note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) frederic lord leighton late president of the royal academy of arts an illustrated record of his life and work by ernest rhys [illustration: _winding the skein._ _by permission of the fine art society._ _f. leighton. pinxt._ _swan electric engraving co. sc._] george bell & sons london: george bell & sons first published, super-royal, to, . second edition, revised, colombier vo, . third edition, revised, crown vo, . publishers' note to third edition the reception given to previous editions of this work encourages the publishers to hope that a re-issue in a smaller form may be appreciated. the present volume is reprinted with a few alterations and corrections from the second edition published in . a chapter on "lord leighton's house in ," by mr. s. pepys cockerell, has been added. the publishers take the opportunity to repeat their acknowledgments of assistance most kindly given by numerous owners and admirers of the artist's work. by the gracious consent of h.m. the queen, the _cimabue_ in the buckingham palace collection, is here reproduced. especial thanks are also due to lord davey, lord hillingdon, lord rosebery, mrs. dyson-perrins, the late mr. alfred morrison, sir bernhard samuelson, lady hallé, mr. alex. henderson, mr. francis reckitts, the late sir henry tate, the birmingham and manchester corporations, and the president and council of the royal academy, who have kindly permitted the reproduction of pictures in their possession. to the late lord leighton himself the author and publishers have to acknowledge their indebtedness for a large number of studies and sketches, hitherto unpublished, as well as for his kind co-operation in the preparation of the volume. the author wishes also to record his thanks to mr. m. h. spielmann for permission to use his admirable account of the president's method of painting. by arrangement with the holders of several important copyrights, including messrs. thos. agnew and sons, p. and d. colnaghi and co., h. graves and co., arthur tooth and sons, the society for promoting christian knowledge, the proprietors of the art journal, the berlin photographic company, and the fine art society (whose courtesies in the matter are duly credited in the list of illustrations), the publishers have been enabled to represent many of the most popular paintings by the artist, and a selection of his famous designs for dalziel's bible gallery. contents page chapter i. his early years ii. year by year-- to iii. year by year-- to iv. year by year-- to v. year by year-- to vi. his method of painting vii. mural decoration, sculpture, and illustration viii. discourses on art ix. lord leighton's home x. lord leighton's house in . by s. pepys cockerell xi. the artist and his critics xii. conclusion appendix i. chronological list of works ii. list of landscapes and studies sold at christie's (july, ) index list of illustrations i. figure subjects. page winding the skein _frontispiece_ _by permission of the fine art society._ (_photogravure plate._) cimabue's madonna _by the gracious permission of her majesty the queen._ golden hours _by the kind permission of lord davey._ helen of troy _by permission of messrs. h. graves and co._ orpheus and eurydice _by the kind permission of francis reckitts, esq._ venus disrobing for the bath _by the kind permission of alexander henderson, esq._ electra at the tomb of agamemnon dÆdalus and icarus _by the kind permission of alexander henderson, esq._ st. jerome _by the kind permission of the president and council of the royal academy of arts._ hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis _by the kind permission of sir bernhard samuelson._ summer moon _by the kind permission of the late alfred morrison, esq., from the photogravure published by messrs. p. and d. colnaghi and co._ the juggling girl _by the kind permission of lord hillingdon._ a condottiere _by permission of the corporation of birmingham._ the daphnephoria _by permission of the fine art society._ nausicaa sister's kiss _by permission of the fine art society._ phryne at eleusis _by permission of the late lord leighton._ day dreams _by permission of the fine art society._ cymon and iphigenia _by permission of the fine art society._ (_photogravure plate._) the last watch of hero _by permission of the corporation of manchester._ greek girls playing at ball _by permission of the berlin photographic company._ the bath of psyche _by permission of the berlin photographic company._ farewell _by permission of messrs. a. tooth and sons._ "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it" _by the kind permission of sir henry tate._ the frigidarium _by permission of messrs. h. graves and co._ rizpah _by permission of messrs. cassell and co._ the bracelet _by permission of messrs. t. agnew and sons._ fatidica _by permission of messrs. t. agnew and sons._ a bacchante _by permission of messrs. h. graves and co._ hit _by permission of the proprietors of the "art journal."_ egyptian slinger _by the kind permission of lord davey._ elisha and the shunamite's son _by the kind permission of mrs. dyson-perrins._ "... serenely wandering in a trance of sober thought" ii. landscapes, etc. garden at generalife, granada mimbar of the great mosque at damascus fountain in court at damascus the island of Ægina, pnyx in the foreground ruined mosque, broussa city of tombs, assiout, egypt athens, with the genoese tower, pnyx in foreground coast of asia minor seen from rhodes red mountains desert, cairo iii. portraits. portrait of the artist. (in the uffizi gallery, florence) portrait of the hon. mabel mills _by the kind permission of lady hillingdon._ portrait of captain (sir) richard burton portrait of signor costa portrait of the lady sybil primrose _by the kind permission of lord rosebery._ iv. studies and sketches. two early pencil studies scheme for a picture, "the plague in florence" study for a head--"the dead romeo" a pencil study a lemon tree. (a pencil study) byzantine well-head. (a pencil study) study for "the daphnephoria" study for "elijah in the wilderness" study for "captive andromache" (nude) study for a figure in "captive andromache" study for "andromache" study for "perseus and andromeda" study for a figure in "the bath of psyche" study for "solitude" study for a figure in "the return of persephone" study for "persephone" studies for the decoration of the ceiling of a music room cain and abel { } moses views the promised land { from dalziel's } samson and the lion { "bible gallery" } samson carrying off the gates { } _by permission of messrs. j. s. virtue and co. and the society for promoting christian knowledge._ "a contrast" a study in oils. (head of a girl, back view) head of a young girl. (a study in oils) _by the kind permission of lady hallé._ study of a head study of a head a study in oils. (head of a girl) v. frescoes, wall paintings, etc. two friezes--music, the dance decoration for the ceiling of a music room the industrial arts of war. (from the fresco at south kensington museum) the industrial arts of peace. (from the fresco at south kensington museum) cupid. (from a fresco) phoenicians bartering with britons. (panel in the royal exchange) vi. sculpture. an athlete struggling with a python. (bronze statue, from two points of view) study in clay for "cymon" study in clay for "the sluggard" study in clay for "perseus" study in clay for "andromeda" design for reverse of the jubilee medallion ( ) vii. lord leighton's house. in the inner hall. (from a photograph taken specially by mr. james hyatt) in the arab hall. (from a photograph by messrs. bedford, lemere, and co.) bookplate of lord leighton. (designed by r. anning bell) _with four exceptions all the reproductions are by the swan electric engraving company._ frederic lord leighton, p.r.a. list of dignities and honours conferred on frederic leighton. knighted, ; created a baronet, ; created baron leighton of stretton, ; elected associate of the royal academy, ; royal academician, ; president of the royal academy, ; hon. mem. royal scottish academy, and royal hibernian academy, associate of the institute of france, president of the international jury of painting, paris exhibition, ; hon. member, berlin academy, ; also member of the royal academy of vienna, , belgium, , of the academy of st. luke, rome, and the academies of florence ( ), turin, genoa, perugia, and antwerp ( ); hon. d.c.l., oxford, ; hon. ll.d., cambridge, ; hon. ll.d., edinburgh, ; hon. d.lit., dublin, ; hon. d.c.l., durham, ; hon. fellow of trinity college, london, ; lieut.-colonel of the th middlesex (artists') rifle volunteers, to (resigned); then hon. colonel and holder of the volunteer decoration; commander of the legion of honour, ; commander of the order of leopold; knight of the prussian order "pour le mérite," and of the coburg order dem verdienste. [illustration: portrait of the artist ( ) _painted for the uffizi gallery_] frederic lord leighton, p.r.a. an illustrated chronicle chapter i his early years to italy, at whose liberal well-head english art has so often renewed itself, we turn naturally for an opening to this chronicle of a great english artist's career. frederic leighton was the painter of our time who strove hardest to keep alive an italian ideal of beauty in london; therefore it is in italy, the italy of raphael and angelo and his favourite giotteschi, that we must seek the true beginnings of his art. london made its first acquaintance with him and his painting in , when the picture, _cimabue's madonna carried in procession through the streets of florence_, startled the royal academy, and proved that a 'prentice work could be in its way something of a masterpiece. this picture, the work of an unknown young artist of twenty-five, painted chiefly in rome, showed at once a new force and a new quality, and in its singular feeling for certain of the archaic italian schools, showed, too, where for the moment the sympathies of the painter really lay. how far the potentiality disclosed in it was developed during the forty years following, how far the ideals in art, which it seemed to declare, were pursued or departed from, the royal academy year by year is witness. here, before we turn to consider the history of those later years, we shall find it interesting to use this first picture as an index to that period of probation, which is so often the most interesting part of an artist's history. in accounting for it, and finding out the determining experiences of the artist's pupilage, we shall account, also, for much that came after. although frankfort and paris play their part, the formative influences of that early period, we shall find, carry us chiefly, and again and again, into italy. frederic leighton was born on the rd of december, , at scarborough, the son of a medical practitioner. his father, dr. frederic leighton, was also the son of a physician who was knighted for eminence in his profession. thus we have two generations of medicine and culture in the family; but there is no sign of art, or love for art, before the third. this generation produced three children, all devoted to the graphic arts and to music, of whom the boy, frederic was the eldest. a word or two more must be given to his forbears, on grounds of character and heredity, before we pass. sir james leighton, the grandfather, was physician to the court at st. petersburg, where he served in succession alexander the first, and nicholas, with whom he was on terms of considerable intimacy. his son, dr. frederic leighton, who promised to be a still more brilliant practioner, was educated at stonyhurst, but after taking his m.d. degree at edinburgh, just as he was rapidly acquiring the highest professional reputation, contracted a cold that led to a partial deafness. this made it impossible for him to go on practising with safety, and retiring to his study he turned from physical to metaphysical pursuits. in spite of his deafness, as severe an embargo on social reputation as can well be laid, dr. leighton is said to have been equally noted among his friends for his keen intellectual quality and his urbanity. to be the son of his father, then, counted for something in our hero's career. even in art, which dr. leighton did not care for particularly, the boy had very great opportunities. before he was ten years old, he went abroad with his mother, who was in ill health; and already he had shown such decided signs of the _furor pingendi_ during a chance visit to mr. lance's studio in paris, that it is without surprise that we hear of him in as taking drawing lessons from signor f. meli, at rome. during these early travels the boy's sketch books were full (we are told) of precociously clever things. the climacteric moment came early in his career. at florence, in , when he was fourteen, he delivered himself of a sort of boyish ultimatum to his father, who, after taking counsel of hiram powers, the american sculptor, wisely gave the boy his wish, and decided to let him be an artist. powers when asked, "shall i make him an artist?" exclaimed in no uncertain terms, "sir, you have no choice in the matter, he is one already;" and on further question, the father being anxious about the boy's possibilities, said, "he may become as eminent as he pleases." few art students of our time appear to have encountered more fortunate conditions, on the whole, than did frederic leighton in the years immediately following. the florentine school of fifty years ago, however, was not the best for a beginner. it was full of mannerisms, which a boy of that age was sure to pick up, and exaggerate on his own account. at that time bezzuoli and servolini were the great lights and directors of the academy of the fine arts, and they delighted, naturally, in so able and so apt a pupil; that he found it hard to shake off their teaching becomes evident later. those who had the good fortune at any time to have heard lord leighton describe his early wanderings in europe, must have been struck by the warmth of his tribute to johann eduard steinle, the frankfort master, who did more than any other to correct his style, and to decide the whole future bent of his art. steinle, whose name is barely known to us in england, was one of that remarkable school of painters, called familiarly "the nazarenes," because of their religious range of subjects, who were inspired originally by overbeck and pfühler. leighton in recent years described him as "an intensely fervent catholic;" a man of most striking personality, and of most courtly manners, whose influence upon younger men was fairly magnetic. in the case of this particular pupil, certainly, his intervention was of most powerful effect. religious in his methods, as well as in his sentiment of art, the florid insincerities and mannerisms of the florentine academy, as they were still to be seen in the young leighton's work, found in him an admirable chastener, but it took many years of painfully hard work, lasting until , to undo the evil wrought by decadent florence. prior to this fortunate intercourse with steinle, the student had an old acquaintance with frankfort, which, like florence, seemed destined to play a great part in his history. before going to florence, and deciding on his artistic career, in , he had been sent to school in frankfort. he returned there from florence to resume his general education, and on leaving at seventeen, went for a year to the städtelsches institut. [illustration: two early pencil studies] in he went to brussels, and worked there for a time without any master, painting the first picture that deserves to be remembered. characteristically enough, this depicted _cimabue finding giotto in the fields of florence_. the shepherd boy is engaged in drawing the figure of a lamb upon a smooth rock, using a piece of coal for pencil; an admirable and precocious piece of work. at the time it was first shown it was considered especially good in its harmonious and original colouring, nor did a sight of it in at the winter exhibition of the royal academy contradict the generous verdict of contemporary critics. at brussels he painted a portrait of himself, a notable thing of its kind, wherein we see a slight, dark youth, with a face of much charm and distinction, whose features one easily sees to be like those of later portraits. then, immediately before the return to frankfort, and the studying there, under steinle, leighton spent some months in paris, working in an atelier in the rue richer. the conditions of this most informal of life-schools were such as henri murger, who was alive and writing at the time, might have approved, but were hardly to be called educative in any higher sense. the only master that these bohemians could boast was a very invertebrate old artist, who seems to have been the soul of politeness and irresponsibility, and who accompanied every weak criticism with the deprecatory conclusion, "voilà mon opinion!" "m. voilà mon opinion!" is a type not unknown otherwhere than in that paris atelier. a fine alterative the student must have found the severe and stringent tonics that steinle prescribed immediately afterwards in frankfort. in the admirable monograph on "sir frederic leighton" by mrs. andrew lang, from which we have drawn on occasion in these pages, an interesting account is given of an exploit at darmstadt, in which the young artist took a chief part. an artists' festival was to be held there, and sir frederic and one of his fellow-students, signor gamba, took it into their heads to paint a picture for the occasion on the walls of an old ruined castle near the town. the design was speedily sketched after the most approved mediæval fashion, and no time was lost in executing the work. "the subject was a knight standing on the threshold of the castle, welcoming the guests, while in the centre of the picture was spring, receiving the representatives of the three arts, all of them caricatures of well-known figures. in one corner were the two young artists themselves, surveying the pageant. the schloss where this piece was painted is still in existence, and the grand duke has lately erected a wooden roof over the painting, to preserve it from destruction." before leaving frankfort, leighton had already interested steinle in his projected picture of _cimabue's madonna_, and the design for it was made under steinle's direction. under his direct influence, too, and inspired by boccaccio, another florentine picture--a cartoon of its great plague--was painted. in speaking of the dramatic treatment of its subject, mrs. lang describes "the contrast between the merry revellers on one side of the picture and the death-cart and its pile of corpses on the other, while in the centre is the link between the two--a terror-stricken woman attempting to escape with her baby from the pestilence-stricken city. we shall look in vain among the president's later works for any picture with a similar _motif_. in general he shared plato's opinion--that violent passions are unsuitable subjects for art; not so much because the sight of them is degrading, as because what is at once hideous and transitory in its nature should not be perpetuated." [illustration: scheme for a picture: the plague in florence] we have seen how the spirit and sentiment of italy continually remained by the artist in his german studio, and how in frankfort his artistic imagination returned again and again to florence, and to the early florentines of his particular adoration--cimabue and giotto. the recall to italy came inevitably, as steinle's teaching at last had fully worked its purpose. steinle himself counselled the move, and gave his favourite pupil an introduction to cornelius in rome. it was to rome, therefore, and not to florence, that the young artist went--to rome where sooner or later the steps of all men who work for art or for religion tend, and where so few stay. this was in , the year which was represented in the commemorative exhibition at burlington house by _a persian pedlar_, a small full-length figure of a man in oriental costume, seated cross-legged on a divan, with a long pipe in his hand. to belongs a _portrait of miss laing_ (lady nias), which was shown again at the same time. the rome of the mid-century was rome at its best, with much artistic stimulus of the present, as well as of the past. the english colony was particularly strong. thackeray was there, moving about after his wont in the studios and salons; the brownings were there, and in their prime. the young painter and his work, including the _cimabue's madonna_ in its earlier stages, made a great impression on thackeray, who turned prophet for once on the strength of it. on returning to london and meeting millais, he prophesied gaily to that ardent pre-raphaelite, then marching on from success to success: "millais! my boy, i have met in rome a versatile young dog called leighton, who will one of these days run you hard for the presidentship!" this was early days for such a rumour to reach the academy, who knew an older school, represented by landseer and eastlake, and a younger school, represented by millais and rossetti, but as yet knew not leighton. among the leading artists in rome at this time, beside cornelius, were the two french painters, bouguereau and gerome. to these, especially to bouguereau, who was a great believer in "scientific composition," leighton was, on his own testimony, largely indebted for his fine sense of form. yet another famous frenchman, robert fleury, whom he afterwards met in paris, may be mentioned here, since from him he learnt much in the way of colouring, and the technique of his art. turning from the painters to the poets, it was at rome that robert browning, who was at this time writing his "men and women," formed close acquaintance with the young artist. something of the atmosphere which permeates such poems as "bishop blougram's apology," "andrea del sarto," and others of the same series, seems to linger yet in the record of those early meetings of poets and painters, with all their associations: "the vatican, greek busts, venetian paintings, roman walls, and english books." one easily supposes browning speaking through his bishop blougram, as, it is said, he was heard to speak in those days in praise of correggio, to whose qualities, ruskin tells us, sir frederic leighton curiously approximates: "'twere pleasant could correggio's fleeting glow hang full in face of one where'er one roams, since he more than the others brings with him italy's self--the marvellous modenese!" italy's self, in truth, frederic leighton, like browning in poetry, did not fail to bring with him, and revived for us for many years, by his art and southern glow of colour, in the gray heart of london. [illustration: cimabue's madonna carried in procession through the streets of florence ( )] among other people whom leighton met in rome were george sand, mrs. kemble, george mason the painter, of _harvest moon_ fame, gibson the sculptor, and lord lyons. like robert browning, let us add, he was readily responsive to the quickening of his contemporaries, and vigorously studied the present in order that he might the better paint the past, and put live souls into the archaic raiment of cimabue and old florence. he was working hard all this while, with a devotion and concentration that impressed other friends beside thackeray, upon his picture of _cimabue's madonna_, which was exhibited in the academy of , and as the work of an unknown hand made a distinct sensation. it was discussed, angrily by some, delightedly by others. the criticism which rossetti, mr. ruskin, and other critics bestowed upon it in the press or in private correspondence[ ] will come more fitly into our later pages, when we turn to deal with contemporary opinions upon leighton's work. enough to say here that it won fame for the artist at a stroke. the queen bought it for £ , having bespoken it, i believe, before it left his studio, and hung it eventually in buckingham palace. with this encouraging first great success, the probationary stage of our artist's history may be said to close. chapter ii year by year-- to the academy of forty years ago was very different from that we know to-day. it was held in the left wing of the national gallery, and had not nearly so much space at its disposal as it has in its present quarters at burlington house. the exhibition of contained few pictures, compared with the multitudinous items of the present shows. generally speaking, the exhibition was of a heavier, more georgian aspect, in spite of certain pre-raphaelite experiments and other signs of the coming of a younger generation. sir charles eastlake was president. professor hart was delivering lectures to its students, full of academic, respectable intelligence, if little more; lectures which those who are curious may find reported in full in the "athenæum" of that time. more interesting was the appearance of mr. ruskin as commentator on the pictures of the academy in this year, the first in which he issued his characteristic "academy notes." his long, and, all things considered, remarkably appreciative criticism of the _cimabue's madonna_ we discuss elsewhere (p. ). of another picture of italy by a very different painter, which was considered a masterpiece by some critics, we find him speaking in terms of monition: "is it altogether too late to warn him that he is fast becoming nothing more than an academician?" the one picture of the year, according to mr. ruskin, was the _rescue_, by millais. "it is the only great picture exhibited this year," he writes, "but this is very great." for the rest, _a scene from as you like it_, by maclise; another shakespearean subject, the inevitable _lear and cordelia_, by herbert; and a _beatrice_ by the then president, and we have recalled everything that served to give the academy of that year its distinction in the eyes of contemporary critics. sir edwin landseer, who to the outer world was the one great fact in the art of the time, does not appear to have exhibited in . looking back now to that date, what one discerns chiefly is the emergence of the pre-raphaelites from the more conventional multitude that were taking up the artistic traditions of the first half of the century. millais, rossetti, holman hunt, and their associates, count to us, to-day, as the representatives of an earlier generation; in they still stood for all that was daring, unprecedented, and adventurous in their art. this newcomer, with his _cimabue's madonna_ in a new style, puzzled the critics considerably. they did not know quite how to allot him in their casual division of contemporary schools. "landseer and maclise we know; and millais and holman hunt; but who is leighton?" was the tenor of their commentary. meanwhile an event of great significance to english art in this year was happening--an exhibition of english pictures in paris, the first of its kind. this beginning of such international exchanges was important; it has led up to many striking modifications of both english and french schools since that date. it is curious that it should coincide with the awakening to certain other foreign influences: that of the early italian school upon the pre-raphaelites, and that of the later italian, popularly known as "the classic school," upon leighton and mr. g. f. watts. of this exhibition of english pictures, which was held in the avenue montaigne, m. ernest chesneau, a critic very sympathetic to english art, tells us, in his admirable book on the "english school of painting," that "for the french it was a revelation of a style and a school of the very existence of which they had hitherto had no idea; and whether owing to its novelty, or the surprise it occasioned, or, indeed, to its real merit, whatever may have been the true cause, most certain it is that the english, until then little thought of and almost unknown abroad, obtained in france a great success." m. chesneau, in going on to account further for the great impression made by the english painters in paris, attributes it largely to the _singularity_ which, for foreign eyes, marks their work. it is curious, indeed, that french critics, and m. chesneau among them, really admire this singularity, which they count distinctively british. they look for it in our pictures, and if they do not find it--as in the work of leighton--they feel aggrieved. british eccentricity, whether thinking its way with the aid of genius into "pre-raphaelitism," or now again, with the aid of extreme cleverness and talent, into certain cruder forms of "impressionism," is sure of its effect. but an art like leighton's, whose aim is beauty and not eccentricity, is apt to be slighted by both french and english critics, with some notable exceptions. not all its grace, its classic quality, its beauty of line and distinction of treatment, avail it, when it comes into conflict with doctrinaire theories on the one hand, and a love for mere sensationalism on the other. [illustration: the dead romeo a pencil study] the success of his picture at the academy, and the incidental lionizing of a season, did not tempt the artist to stay long in london, and he went to paris, where he settled himself in a studio and proceeded to complete his _triumph of music_, and other pictures begun in rome. by this time the painter's method might seem assured, but paris was still able to add something to his style, with the aid of such masters as fleury. english critics, who expected _the triumph of music_ to sustain the reputation won by _cimabue's madonna_, were disappointed--partly because orpheus was represented as playing a violin, in place of the traditional lyre. to those who will examine and compare them more carefully, there is no such discrepancy. _the triumph of music: orpheus by the power of his art redeems his wife from hades_, which is every whit as distinctive a performance as the _cimabue's madonna_ (as indeed it was conceived and painted largely under the same conditions), was nevertheless not a popular success. certainly, it marks, as clearly as anything can, the sense of colour, the sense of form, the draughtsmanship, the immensely cultured eye and hand, first discovered to the english critics by its predecessor. it was sold after the painter's death. of certain other works painted in , , and , some of which never found their way to the academy, little need be said. to this period belong two pictures painted in paris, the one, _pan_ under a fig-tree, with a quotation from keats's "endymion": "o thou, to whom broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom their ripened heritage," and the other, a pendant to it, _a nymph and cupid_. _salome, the daughter of herodias_, painted in , but apparently not exhibited at the academy, represents a small full-length figure in white drapery, with her arms above her head, which is crowned with flowers; behind her stands a female musician. another, shown in at the royal academy, and again in the retrospective exhibition, was first entitled _the fisherman and syren_, and afterwards _the mermaid_; it is a composition of two small full-length figures, a mermaid clasping a fisherman round the neck. the subject is taken from a ballad by goethe: "half drew she him, half sunk he in, and never more was seen." in the same year was a painting inspired by "romeo and juliet," entitled _count paris, accompanied by friar laurence, comes to the house of the capulets to claim his bride; he finds juliet stretched, apparently lifeless, on the bed_. the picture shows, in addition to the figures named in its former title, the father and mother of juliet bending over their daughter's body, and through an opening beyond numerous figures at the foot of the staircase. the latter year marked the painter's return to london, where he entered more actively into its artistic life than he had done hitherto, and made closer acquaintance with the pre-raphaelites, who were already entering upon their second and maturer stage. to take rossetti: it was in that he made those five notable designs to illustrate "poems by alfred tennyson," which moxon and co. published in the following year; an event that, for the first time, really introduced him to the public at large. to , again, belongs rossetti's _blue closet_ and _damsel of the sangrael_, both painted for mr. w. morris. and in and , the famous and hapless distemper pictures on the walls of the union debating society's room at oxford, were engaging rossetti and his associates, including burne-jones, william morris, mr. val. prinsep, mr. arthur hughes, and mr. spencer stanhope. [illustration: a pencil study] it was in the summer of , mr. f. g. stephens tells us, that the original hogarth club was founded, of which the two rossettis were prominent instigators,--one of the most notable of the many protestant societies that have sprung up at different times from a slightly anti-academic bias. it is interesting to find that leighton's famous _lemon tree_ drawing in silverpoint was exhibited here. the hogarth club held its meetings at , piccadilly, in the first instance; removed afterwards to , waterloo place, pall mall, and finally dissolved, in , after existing for four seasons. to speak of other painters more or less associated with rossetti and his school, mr. holman hunt, whose _light of the world_ had greatly struck paris in , exhibited his _scapegoat_ at the academy of , a picture which called from mr. ruskin immense praise, and a characteristic protest: "i pray him to paint a few pictures with less feeling in them, and more handling." of millais we have already spoken. in he exhibited _the child of the regiment_, _peace concluded_, and _autumn leaves_. in leighton showed three pictures at the academy. one, _a roman lady_ (then called _la nanna_), a half-length black-haired figure, facing the spectator, in italian costume; another, now called _nanna_, then entitled _pavonia_, a half-length figure of a girl in italian costume, with peacock's feathers in the background; and _sunny hours_, which seems to have escaped record so far. the same year saw another of his pictures, _samson and delilah_, exhibited at suffolk street. we must not pass by the famous _study of a lemon tree_ (now at oxford), mentioned above, without quoting the praise by mr. ruskin, which made it famous. mr. ruskin couples it with another drawing, both of which we have been fortunately able to reproduce in our pages. these "two perfect early drawings," he writes, "are of _a lemon tree_, and another of the same date, of _a byzantine well_, which determine for you without appeal, the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. of all our present masters sir frederic leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of correggio than any seen since correggio's time. but you see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained, and exalted, his gift of beautiful _vaghezza_." the _lemon tree_ study, let us add, was drawn at capri in the spring of . here, and elsewhere in the south of europe, whither the artist returned, escaping from london at every opportunity, many other notable studies and drawings were made during this period. some of these were employed long since for the backgrounds of pictures familiar to us all. others, faithful studies of nature, small oil and water-colour drawings, chiefly landscape, were scarce known to the general public during the painter's life, but were eagerly competed for at the sale of his pictures in july, . the little picture of _capri at sunrise_ was hung in the academy of , the painter's only contribution of that year. in the year following, we find another small picture of capri, together with five others, some of which played their part in winning for the artist his wider recognition. [illustration: a lemon tree a pencil study] [illustration: byzantine well head a pencil study] meanwhile, the artist was drawing his london ties closer. in he took up his abode at , orme square, where he continued to reside until he built his famous house in holland park road, some years later. his art did not for this reason become more like london, or more infected with that british singularity which some critics would seem to demand. on the contrary, italy and the south, the glow of colour, the perfection of form, the plastic exquisiteness, which mark for us his mature performances, and which follow after classic ideals, were more and more clearly to be discerned in the remarkable cycle of pictures associated with this part of his career. in he painted portraits of his sister, _mrs. sutherland orr_, and of _mr. john hanson walker_, the former shown at the academy, where also hung _paolo e francesca_, _a dream_, _lieder ohne worte_, _j. a.--a study_, and _capri--paganos_. rossetti, writing of this exhibition, says: "leighton might, as you say, have made a burst had not his pictures been ill-placed mostly--indeed, one of them (the only very good one, _lieder ohne worte_) is the only instance of very striking unfairness in the place."[ ] in there were no fewer than six of the artist's pictures at the may exhibition of the academy: the _odalisque_, a very popular work, shows a draped female figure, in a very leightonesque pose, with her arm above her head, leaning against a wall by the water. she holds a peacock's feather screen in her left hand, while a swan in the water at her feet cranes its head upwards towards her; _michael angelo nursing his dying servant_, a group of two three-quarter length figures; the servant reclining in an armchair with his head resting against the shoulder of michael angelo--a fairly powerful but somewhat academic version of the incident--which looks at first glance like the work of a not very important "old master;" _the star of bethlehem_, showing one of the magi on the terrace of his house looking at the strange star in the east, while below are indications of a revel he has just left. _duett_, _sisters_, _sea echoes_, and _rustic music_, also belong to this year. in he showed _eucharis_, a half-length figure of a white-robed girl, with a basket of fruit on her head; _jezebel and ahab_; _a cross-bow man_; and _a girl feeding peacocks_; with these we complete the list of his work as an outsider. [illustration: golden hours ( )] chapter iii year by year-- to in leighton was made an associate of the royal academy. to its summer exhibition he contributed three pictures, showing great and various power in their composition. _dante at verona_, _orpheus and eurydice_, and _golden hours_. the first of these, one of the most remarkable pictures of our modern english school, in which "dante" appears, is a large work, with figures something less than life-size. it illustrates the verses in the "paradiso": "thou shalt prove how salt the savour is of others' bread; how hard the passage, to descend and climb by others' stairs. but that shall gall thee most will be the worthless and vile company with whom thou must be thrown into the straits, for all ungrateful, impious all and mad shall turn against thee." "dante, in fulfilment of this prophecy, is seen descending the palace stairs of the can grande, at verona, during his exile. he is dressed in sober grey and drab clothes, and contrasts strongly in his ascetic and suffering aspect with the gay revellers about him. the people are preparing for a festival, and splendidly and fantastically robed, some bringing wreaths of flowers. bowing with mock reverence, a jester gibes at dante. an indolent sentinel is seated at the porch, and looks on unconcernedly, his spear lying across his breast. a young man, probably acquainted with the writing of dante, sympathises with him. in the centre and just before the feet of dante, is a beautiful child, brilliantly dressed and crowned with flowers, and dragging along the floor a garland of bay leaves and flowers, while looking earnestly and innocently in the poet's face. next come a pair of lovers, the lady looking at dante with attention, the man heedless. the last wears a vest embroidered with eyes like those in a peacock's tail. a priest and a noble descend the stairs behind, jeering at dante."[ ] it was the _golden hours_ which, though perhaps less memorable and imaginative than the others, won the greatest popular success of the three, a success beyond anything that the artist had so far painted. as this picture is here reproduced, description is needless, except so far as regards the colour of the background, which is literally golden. the dress of the lady who leans upon the spinet is white, embroidered with flowers. the _orpheus and eurydice_ showed that the old friendship, formed originally in rome, between the painter and robert browning, was maintained. some of the poet's lines served as a text for the picture; and as they are little known we repeat them here: "but give them me--the mouth, the eyes, the brow-- let them once more absorb me! one look now will lap me round for ever, not to pass out of its light, though darkness lie beyond. hold me but safe again within the bond of one immortal look! all woe that was, forgotten, and all terror that may be, defied,--no past is mine, no future! look at me!" [illustration: helen of troy ( ) _by permission of messrs. henry graves and co._] [illustration: orpheus and eurydice ( )] to this year, also, belongs a portrait of _the late miss lavinia i'anson_, a circular panel showing the sky for background. this was exhibited again in the winter academy of . in the artist showed once again his eclectic sympathies, by the variety of the subject-pictures that he sent to the academy, ranging from _david_ to _helen of troy_. in his tenderly conceived _david_, the psalmist is seen gazing at two doves in the sky above; he, sunk in a profound reverie, is seated upon a house-top overlooking some neighbouring hills. the whole is large in its handling and treatment, and in the simplicity of its drapery recalls several of the famous illustrations the artist contributed to dalziel's bible gallery. it was exhibited with the quotation, "oh, that i had wings like a dove! for then would i fly away and be at rest." with the delightful _helen of troy_ we are recalled to the third book of the iliad, when iris bids helen go and see the general truce made pending the duel between paris and menelaus, of which she is to be the prize. so helen, having summoned her maids and "shadowed her graces with white veils," rose and passed along the ramparts of troy. in the picture the light falls on her shoulders and her hair, while her face and the whole of the front of her form are shadowed over, with somewhat mystical effect. to the same year belongs _in st. mark's_, a picture of a lady with a child in her arms leaving the church, a lovely and finished study of colour; _the widow's prayer_; and _mother and child_, a graceful reminder of a gentler world than helen's. in the critics had at last a work which seemed to them to follow the lines of the _cimabue's madonna_. this was the radiant and lovely picture of the _syracusan bride leading wild beasts in procession to the temple of diana_. the composition of this remarkable painting deserves to be closely studied, for it is very characteristic of sir frederic leighton's theories of art, and his conviction of the necessarily decorative effect of such works. a terrace of white marble, whose line is reflected and repeated by the line of white clouds in the sky painting above, affords the figures of the procession a delightful setting. the syracusan bride leads a lioness, and these are followed by a train of maidens and wild beasts, the last reduced to a pictorial seemliness and decorative calm, very fortunate under the circumstances. the procession is seen approaching the door of the temple, and a statue of diana serves as a last note in the ideal harmonies of form and colour to which the whole is attuned. as compared with the _cimabue's madonna_, it is a more finished piece of work, and the handling throughout is more assured. it was as much an advance, technically, upon that, as the _daphnephoria_, which crowned the artist's third decade, was upon this. according to popular report, it was this picture of the _syracusan bride_ which decided his future election as a full member of the academy; but as a matter of fact, it was in that this election took place. the picture, let us add, was suggested to the painter by a passage in the second idyll of theocritus: "and for her then many other wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a lioness." _the painter's honeymoon_ and a _portrait of mrs. james guthrie_ were also exhibited this year; and the wall-painting of _the wise and foolish virgins_, at lyndhurst, in the new forest, was executed during the summer. [illustration: venus disrobing for the bath ( )] [illustration: electra at the tomb of agamemnon ( )] in its next exhibition, that of , the academy held five pictures by the artist, including the delightful _pastoral_, two small full-length figures standing in a landscape of a shepherd and a girl--whom he is teaching to play the pipes. this again might be considered a painter's translation from theocritus, and the _venus disrobing for the bath_, one of the most debated of all the artist's paintings of the nude. the paleness of the flesh-tint of this venus aroused a criticism which has often been urged against his pictures--that such a hue was not in nature. in imparting an ideal effect to an ideal subject, leighton always, however, followed his own conviction--that art has a law of its own, and a harmony of colour and form, derived and selected no doubt from natural loveliness, but not to be referred too closely to the natural, or to the average, in these things. to the academy leighton contributed another biblical theme, _jonathan's token to david_. with this were four others, as widely varying in subject and conception as need be desired. one was a very charming portrait of a very pretty woman, _mrs. frederick p. cockerell_. then follow three more in that cycle of classic subjects, of which the painter never tired. the full title of the first runs, _ariadne abandoned by theseus: ariadne watches for his return: artemis releases her by death_. in it the figure of ariadne, clothed in white drapery, is seen lying on a rocky promontory overlooking the sea. _acme and septimius_ is a circular picture, with two small full-length figures reclining on a marble bench. this extract from sir theodore martin's translation of catullus was appended to its title in the catalogue: "then bending gently back her head, with that sweet mouth so rosy red, upon his eyes she dropped a kiss, intoxicating him with bliss." a love song on canvas, a pictorial transcript from catullus, it was perhaps the most popular picture of the year. the last of the three was _actæa, the nymph of the shore_. it represents a small full-length nude figure lying on white drapery by the sea-shore. actæa is a lovely figure, full of that grace which leighton so well knew how to impart to his idealized figures. after this year, at any rate, there could be no longer any doubt but that the artist's power really lay in the creation of ideal forms; whether presented in monomime or combined in poetic and decorative groups, called up from the wonderful limbo of classic myth and history. with came _electra at the tomb of agamemnon_, a memorable picture, full of characteristic effects of colour and composition, and a notable exercise in the grand style. this work, considered from any side, must be seen to be the outcome of a unique faculty, so unprecedented in english art as to run every risk of misconception that native predilections could impose upon those who stopped to criticise it. the figure of electra clad in black drapery offered a problem of peculiar difficulty. another painting shown this year was _dædalus and icarus_, a strikingly conceived picture. the two figures are singularly noble conceptions of the idealized nude; the drapery at the back of icarus is typical of the painter in every fold, while the landscape seen far below the stone platform on which the figures stand, shows a bay of the blue Ægean sea in full sidelight, with a lovely glimpse of the white walls of a distant town. the same exhibition of saw, also, the vigorously painted diploma picture, _st. jerome_, which marked his election as r.a. in it the saint, nude to the waist, kneels with uplifted arms at the foot of a crucifix, his lion seen in the background. _helios and rhodos_, another painting exhibited at the same time, shows helios descending from his chariot, which is in a cloud above, to embrace the nymph rhodos, who has risen from the sea. [illustration: dÆdalus and icarus ( )] [illustration: st. jerome ( )] chapter iv year by year-- to sundry journeys into the east during this period of leighton's career, gave him new subject-matter, new tints to his palette, and added something of an oriental fantasy to the classic sentiment of his art. the sketches of damascus and other time-honoured eastern cities, mosques, gardens, and courtyards, which figured largely among sir frederic's studies, were made for the most part in the autumn of . previously, as early as , the east had cast its spell upon him. in , he went into egypt, and made a voyage up the nile with m. de lesseps, then at the flood of good-fortune. the khedive himself provided the steamer for this adventure. "it was during this voyage," we are told, "that sir frederic came across a small child with the strangest and most limited idea of full dress that probably ever occurred to mortal--a tiny coin strung on to one of her strong coarse hairs." of the studies made during the journey, one is a woman's head, draped so as to have a singularly archaic and sphinx-like effect. another is the fine profile of a young peasant; and yet another, the head of an old man, simple-minded and philosophical. [illustration: garden at generalife, granada] [illustration: mimbar of the great mosque at damascus (since destroyed by fire)] in the _helios and rhodos_, already mentioned, served as the first sign to the public of the new r.a.'s interest in things oriental. to the exhibition, his only contribution was the picture, _a nile woman_, which is now owned by the princess of wales. it is a small full-length figure of a girl, balancing an empty pitcher upon her head, at the time of moonrise. anticipating the eastern subjects which future years produced, we may note a picture of _old damascus_, showing the jews' quarter in that fabled city, in all its motley picturesqueness, and the delightful _moorish garden,--a dream of granada_, which were exhibited in . a powerful picture, shown in , of the _egyptian slinger_,[ ] is illustrated later in this volume, but no reproduction can quite suggest the striking colouring of the original, and the masterly treatment of its light and shade, in the presentment of this lonely figure posed high on its platform against the clear evening sky. the delightful _little fatima_, and the _grand mosque, damascus_, enlarged from the sketch previously alluded to, were also exhibited in . but perhaps the most picturesque memorial of the east due to the artist's wanderings of these years, is an architectural, and not a pictorial one. the fame of the arab hall in lord leighton's house has reached even further than that of _little fatima_, or his painting of the _grand mosque at damascus_. built originally to provide a setting for some exquisite blue tiles, brought by the owner from damascus itself, it remains the most perfect representation of an oriental interior to be found in london; but this again belongs to a later period, and we must return to the date whence this chronicle was interrupted. before doing so, however, it may be noted that in began the famous winter exhibitions of old masters and deceased british artists, of which leighton was one of the most active supporters. in the may exhibition of the royal academy, , was hung a notable canvas, _greek girls picking up pebbles by the sea_, described at the time as "a delightful composition, comprising figures of almost exhaustless grace, and wealth of beauty in design and colour." another painting, also shown there, _cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline_, is a charming example of its kind. the philosopher, with a scroll on his lap, sits on a cushioned bench with his young daughter by his side, his earnest action in delightful contrast with her girlish grace. but his great work in was _hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis_. the scene of this profound tragedy is on the sea-shore, where the body of alcestis, robed in white, lies under the branches of trees in the centre of the picture. on the left is a group of mourners, a seated girl and a woman prostrate in grief. on the right are the two struggling figures; hercules' superb form and tossing lion-skin contrasting finely, both in action and colouring, with the tall and coldly grey-robed spectre of death, who presses forward to the bed where alcestis lies, whence he is thrust back by the mighty hercules. the exquisite figure of alcestis with her statuesquely draped robes and their pure and delicate colouring, forms a wonderful contrast to the two strenuous figures on the right, while the figures of the mourners on the left are delightfully posed and full of grace. in july of this year, it is interesting to remember, appeared browning's "balaustion's adventure," which contained the following tribute to the above picture and its painter: "i know, too, a great kaunian painter, strong as herakles, though rosy with a robe of grace that softens down the sinewy strength: and he has made a picture of it all. there lies alkestis dead, beneath the sun, she longed to look her last upon, beside the sea, which somehow tempts the life in us to come trip over its white waste of waves, and try escape from earth, and fleet as free. behind the body i suppose there bends old pheres in his hoary impotence; and women-wailers, in a corner crouch --four, beautiful as you four,--yes, indeed! close, each to other, agonizing all, as fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy, to two contending opposite. there strains the might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match, --death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like the envenomed substance that exudes some dew, whereby the merely honest flesh and blood will fester up and run to ruin straight, ere they can close with, clasp and overcome, the poisonous impalpability that simulates a form beneath the flow of those grey garments; i pronounce that piece worthy to set up in our poikilé!" [illustration: hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis ( )] [illustration: summer moon ( ) _by permission of messrs. p. and d. colnaghi and co._] to belongs the _summer moon_, one of the loveliest things ever shown at the academy, a picture full of that rarer feeling for light and colour, which the artist achieved again and again in his treatment of sunset, twilight, and night effects. _after vespers_, exhibited the same year, is a three-quarter length figure of a girl in a green robe standing in front of a bench, holding in her right hand a string of beads. this year's academy held also _a condottiere_, the noble figure of a man in armour, now in the birmingham municipal gallery, and a portrait of the _right hon. edward ryan_. hardly less memorable was _moretta_, exhibited in the academy of , in the words of a critic of the day, "one of the most subtle and fortunate productions of the painter." _moretta_ is robed in green, with masses of loosely arranged hair, and a tender and delicate face. _weaving the wreath_, shown the same year (and again in the guildhall, ), is a very charming figure of quite a young girl seated on a carpet upon a raised step at the foot of a building. behind her is a bas-relief, against which her head, crowned by a chaplet of flowers, tells out with sculpturesque effect; the sharp, vertical line of thread strained between her hands, and thence in diagonal line to the ball at her feet, is curiously rigid, and by contrast makes the draperies across which it is silhouetted appear still more mobile. we are passing over, deliberately, the artist's decorative masterpieces of this period,--the south kensington frescoes to wit; of which the _arts of war_ belongs to the year , and its companion, _arts of peace_, to . these works will be found treated at length in a later chapter on the artist's decorative work (pp. , ). in the academy of appeared four pictures, the most important being the heroic painting,--_clytemnestra from the battlements of argos watches for the beacon-fires which are to announce the return of agamemnon_. in this picture, the figure of clytemnestra is seen standing erect, with hands folded, supporting the drapery that clothes a majestic form. for further description, we may be content to quote that given at the time in the appreciative art columns of the "athenæum:" "there is the grandeur of greek tragedy in mr. leighton's _clytemnestra_ watching for the signal of her husband's return from troy. the time is deep in the fateful night, while the city sleeps; moonlight floods the walls, the roofs, the gates, and the towers with a ghastly glare, which seems presageful, and casts shadows as dark as they are mysterious and terrible. the dense blue of the sky is dim, sad, and ominous. but the most ominous and impressive element of the picture is a grim figure, the tall woman on the palace roof before us, who looks titanic in her stateliness, and huge beyond humanity in the voluminous white drapery that wraps her limbs and bosom. her hands are clenched and her arms thrust down straight and rigidly, each finger locked as in a struggle to strangle its fellow; the muscles swell on the bulky limbs. drawn erect and with set features, which are so pale that the moonlight could not make them paler, the queen stares fixedly and yet eagerly into the distance, as if she had the will to look over the very edge of the world for the light to come." [illustration: the juggling girl ( )] [illustration: a condottiere ( ) _by permission of the corporation of birmingham_] another picture this year was the _moorish garden--a dream of granada_, a delightful little canvas, almost square. in the foreground is a young girl carrying copper vessels, and followed by two peacocks; the background is obviously taken from the study of a garden at generalife (reproduced at p. ); the _antique juggling girl_ and _old damascus: the jews' quarter_, were also in the academy of . to belongs the _egyptian slinger_, a picture which, as we shall see later, provoked severe censure from mr. ruskin. as exhibited it differed much from its present state. not only was the sky of deeper violet, but almost in silhouette against the moon, on another raised platform, stood a draped female figure, afterwards painted out entirely. other works shown this year were _little fatima_, a small half-length figure of a little girl in eastern costume, seen against a dark background; and a _portion of the interior of the grand mosque at damascus_ (reproduced at p. ). as the building it depicts has since been burnt down, the fine transcript has an added interest. we are come now to a year which, even beyond other years of activity, displayed the artist's characteristic energy: . in the academy of that year, with the _daphnephoria_, leighton once more chose a great classic theme, for a painting which, by its composition, reminded the critics and lovers of art of the artist's early triumph with the _cimabue's madonna_, and of his other great processional picture, the _syracusan bride_. of all his works in this class, there is no doubt that the _daphnephoria_ is the most technically complete. the procession is seen defiling along a terrace backed by trees through which the clear southern sky gleams. a youth carrying the symbolic olive bough, called the kopo, adorned with its curious emblems, leads the procession. he is clad in purple robes and crowned with leaves. the youthful priest, known as the daphnephoros (the laurel-bearer) follows, clothed in white raiment. he is similarly crowned, and carries a slim laurel stem. then come three boys, in scanty red and green draperies, which serve only to emphasize the beauty of their almost naked forms, the middle and tallest one bearing aloft a draped trophy of golden armour. these are seen to be pausing while the leader of the chorus, a tall, finely modelled man, whose back is turned, is giving directions to the chorus with uplifted right hand; in his left hand is a lyre, and the left arm from the elbow is characteristically draped. the first row of the chorus is composed of five children, clothed in purple, crowned with flowers; two rows of maidens, in blue and white, come next; and these in turn are succeeded by some boys with cymbals. the interest of the passing procession is very much enhanced by the effect produced on two lovely bystanders,--a girl and child in blue, beautifully designed, who are drawing water in the left foreground. in the valley below is seen the town of thebes. [illustration: the daphnephoria ( ) _by permission of the fine art society._] [illustration: study for "the daphnephoria"] with the painter's reading of the _daphnephoria_ it may be interesting to compare another account of this splendid religious function. at this festival in honour of apollo, celebrated every ninth year by the boeotians, it was usual, says pleasant lempriere, "to adorn an olive bough with garlands of laurel and other flowers, and place on the top a brazen globe, from which were suspended smaller ones. in the middle was placed a number of crowns, and a globe of inferior size, and the bottom was adorned with a saffron-coloured garment. the globe on the top represented the sun, or apollo; that in the middle was an emblem of the moon, and the others of the stars. the crowns, which were in number, represented the sun's annual revolution. this bough was carried in solemn procession by a beautiful youth of an illustrious family, whose parents were both living. he was dressed in rich garments which reached to the ground, his hair hung loose and dishevelled, his head was covered with a golden crown, and he wore on his feet shoes called _iphricatidæ_, from iphricates, an athenian who first invented them. he was called daphnêphoros, 'laurel-bearer,' and at that time he executed the office of priest of apollo. he was preceded by one of his nearest relations, bearing a rod adorned with garlands, and behind him followed a train of virgins with branches in their hands. in this order the procession advanced as far as the temple of apollo, surnamed ismenius, where supplicatory hymns were sung to the god."[ ] in the academy hung also the striking portrait, _captain richard burton, h.m.'s consul at trieste_; and two very characteristic single figures, _teresina_ and _paolo_. the portrait of captain burton has been fairly described as masterly. "there is no attempt," said one critic, "at posing or picturesqueness in the portrait. it is the head of a man who is lean and rugged and brown, but the face is full of character, and every line tells. it is painted in the same strong and bold, and yet careful, way that distinguishes the head of signor costa, painted three years later." the next year saw leighton's first appearance as a sculptor. it was at the academy of that he exhibited the well-known, vigorously designed and wrought _athlete struggling with a python_.[ ] this adventure of the r.a. into a new field proved so successful, that the _athlete_ took rank as the most striking piece of sculpture of that year. "in this work," said a friendly critic, "mr. leighton has attempted to succeed in a truly antique way. we are bound to admit that he has done wisely, bravely, and successfully." the statue was bought, we may add, for £ , , as the first purchase made by the trustees of the chantrey fund, and is now in the tate gallery at millbank. it was afterwards repeated in marble, by the artist's own hand, for the danish museum at copenhagen. still more popular was his _music lesson_, another work in the same exhibition. to realize the full charm of this picture, one must see the original; for much depends upon the beauty of its colouring. imagine a classical marble hall, marble floor, marble walls, in black and white, and red--deep red--marble pillars; and sitting there, sumptuously attired, but bare-footed, two fair-haired girls, who serve for pupil and music-mistress. the elder is showing the younger how to finger a lyre, of exquisite design and finish; and the expression on their faces is charmingly true, while the colours that they contribute to the composition,--the pale blue of the child's dress, the pale flesh tints, the pale yellow hair, and the white and gold of the elder girl's loose robe, and the rich auburn of her hair,--are most harmonious. a bit of scarlet pomegranate blossom, lying on the marble ground, gives the last high note of colour to the picture. two other pictures of must not be omitted. _study_ shows us a little girl (the present lady orkney), in eastern garb, diligently reading a sheet of music which lies before her on a little desk. there is great charm in the simple grace of the picture and in the softly brilliant colouring of the child's costume. very delightful, too, is the portrait of _miss mabel mills_ (now the hon. mrs. grenfell), habited in black velvet, and a large dark hat with coloured feathers, set against a grey background, a picture here reproduced. _a study_, _an italian girl_, and a _portrait of h. e. gordon_, were all three shown at the grosvenor gallery the same year. [illustration: portrait of the hon. mabel mills ( )] [illustration: portrait of captain richard burton ( )] another picture, in which a simple theme is treated in a classic fashion--not dissimilar to that employed for the _music lesson_--is _winding the skein_, a lovely painting exhibited at the academy in . in this we see two greek maidens as naturally employed as we often see english girls in other surroundings. this idealization of a familiar occupation--so that it is lifted out of a local and casual sphere, into the permanent sphere of classic art, is characteristic of the whole of leighton's work. he, like sir l. alma-tadema and albert moore, contrived also to preserve a certain modern contemporary feeling in the classic presentment of his themes. he was never archaic; so that the classic scenarium of his subjects, in his hands, appears as little antiquarian as a mediæval environment, shall we say, in the hands of browning. _nausicaa_, a full-length girlish figure, in green and white draperies, standing in a doorway, and _serafina_, another single figure, and _a study_, were also shown the same year. at the grosvenor gallery were a _portrait of miss ruth stewart hodgson_, a demure little damsel in outdoor attire, and a _study of a girl's head_, full face. [illustration: nausicaa ( )] [illustration: study for "elijah and the angel"] chapter v year by year-- to on november th, , frederic leighton was elected president of the royal academy, in succession to sir francis grant, and immediately received the honour of knighthood. in leighton sent eight contributions to the academy, not one of which, with the possible exception of the _elijah_, perhaps, has been counted among his masterpieces. four of them belong to that group of ideal figure paintings which almost constitute a _genre_ in themselves: _biondina_, _catarina_, _amarilla_, and _neruccia_, a girl with a red flower in her hair, in white dress, against a dark background. the finely austere _elijah in the wilderness_ was an addition to the notable group of scriptural paintings. in this picture the nude figure of the prophet is seen reclining on a rock, with head and arms thrown back, while beside him stands an angel holding bread and water. the striking and powerful _portrait of professor costa_, the _portrait of the countess brownlow_, and a portrait study, completed the list of the year's contributions, the largest number ever sent in by leighton, before his election or afterward. this year ten of his landscape-studies in oil were exhibited at the grosvenor gallery. it may be thought by the outsider that the coveted office of the president of the royal academy of arts is, in a way, an ornamental one,--some such golden sinecure as that of the old high chamberlains. nothing could be more mistaken. "not everybody," wrote the late mr. underhill, who for some time, as private secretary to sir frederic leighton, had special opportunities of knowing, "is aware of the tax upon a man's time and energy that is involved in the acceptance of the office in question. the post is a peculiar one, and requires a combination of talents not frequently to be found, inasmuch as it demands an established standing as a painter, together with great urbanity and considerable social position. the inroads which the occupancy of the office makes upon an artist's time are very considerable. there is, on the average, at least one council meeting for every three weeks throughout the whole of the year. there are from time to time general assemblies for the election of new members and for other purposes, over which the president is bound, of course, to preside. for ten days or a fortnight in every april he has to be in attendance with the council daily at burlington house, for the purpose of selecting the pictures which are to be hung in the spring exhibition. he has to preside over the banquet which yearly precedes the opening of the academy, and he has to act as host at the annual conversazione. finally, it is his duty every other year to deliver a long, elaborate, and carefully prepared 'discourse' upon matters connected with art, to the students who are for that purpose assembled. it is a post of much honour and small profit." [illustration: sister's kiss ( ) _by permission of the fine art society_] [illustration: portrait of signor costa ( )] in filling this post, and neglecting no one of its smallest offices and endless small courtesies, an artist had needs be without the characteristic artist's defects of hesitation and delay; and in fact, lord leighton mastered, as much as any statesman of our time, the indispensable secret of despatch. we quote from mr. underhill again: "to administer the affairs of the academy, to fulfil a round of social semi-public and public engagements, and to paint pictures which invariably reach a high level of excellence, would of course be impossible--even to sir frederic leighton--were it not for the fact that he makes the very most of the time at his disposal. 'that's the secret,' remarked a distinguished member of the academy to the present writer some little time before the president's death; 'sir frederic knows exactly how long it will take to do a certain thing, and he apportions his time accordingly.' this being the case, no one will be surprised to learn that he attached the greatest importance to punctuality. he himself never failed to keep an appointment at the exact moment fixed upon, and he expected, of course, similar punctuality on the part of others. the stroke of eight from the academy clock was the signal for sir frederic to enter the council room at burlington house, and to open the deliberations of the body over which he presided. 'they will never again get a man to devote so much time and energy to the business of the academy,' said sir frederic leighton's most distinguished colleague shortly before his death; 'never again.'" and since that time the same tribute has been paid ungrudgingly in public and private often enough. in , we are tempted by five canvases; of which the _sister's kiss_ and _psamathe_, are perhaps the most important. the former turns a garden wall to delightful account, in its picture of a child, who is seated upon it, and of her charmingly drawn elder sister, who gives the kiss. the composition of this picture may be seen in our reproduction, but the colour of the bronze green robe--of singular beauty--is of course not even suggested. more classic, perhaps, and not less picturesque, is the greek maiden, psamathe, who was, if we remember aright, one of the nereides. the artist has painted her sitting by the seashore, gazing over the Ægean, with her back turned to the spectator. filmy garments, which have slipped from her shoulders on to the sand; arms folded about her knees; every detail of the picture carries out the effect of dreamy loveliness that pervades psamathe and her surroundings. _iostephane_ is a three-quarter length figure, less than life size, of a girl in light yellow drapery, with violets in her fair hair, who stands facing the spectator and arranging her draperies over her right arm; there are marble columns and a fountain in the background. _the light of the harem_ is a version of one of the groups in the fresco of _the industrial arts of peace_ at south kensington. the picture now known as the _nymph of the dargle_ was also exhibited this year under the title of _crenaia_. it represents a small full-length figure facing the spectator; the river dargle flows through powerscourt, and forms the waterfall here represented in the background, hence its name. _rubinella_, a girl with red gold hair was shown at the summer exhibition and a large number of sketches and studies at the winter exhibition of the grosvenor gallery this year. in , the portrait of the painter, painted by invitation in for the collection of autograph portraits of artists in the uffizi gallery, florence, deserves particular mention. not even mr. watts' best portrait of leighton is quite so like as this, which shows the striking head of the artist to great effect, assisted by the decorative president's robe and insignia. the _idyll_, shown the same year, has been compared by some critics with the _cymon and iphigenia_, the scene and circumstance of both being to a certain degree similar, while there are similar effects in both of colour and of composition. in the _idyll_, we have a lovely female figure, lying at full length, attended by a second nymph, and by a piping man, all grouped beneath an arm of a beech tree, that extends overhead and shadows the upland ridge on which they have come to rest, while they gaze on a river winding among sunlit meads. the water reflects the blue and white of sky and clouds; the land is dashed by shadows. the nymphs' robes are red, blue, and pale yellow. [illustration: phryne at eleusis ( )] [illustration: day dreams ( ) _by permission of the fine art society_] we ought not to overlook another idyllic picture in the same exhibition, _whispers_, an illustration of horace's well-known line, "lenesque sub noctem susurri." in this charming work, amid masses of crimson flowers and green leaves, two lovers are seen seated upon a marble bench, while he whispers tenderly in her ear, and she listens with dreamy eyes and maidenly mien. the noble picture of _elisha and the shunamite's son_ (reproduced at p. ) was also shown this year, as well as _bianca_, a fair-haired girl in a white dress, standing with folded arms, _viola_, and two portraits, _mrs. augustus ralli_, exhibited at the royal academy, and _mrs. algernon sartoris_, at the grosvenor gallery. in the academy appeared two of the most popular of sir frederic's pictures, _wedded_ and _day dreams_. in the latter, a fair sybarite is pressing her cheek against her hands, as she stands near a tapestry, with eyes gazing far away, the images of love-dreams in them; her purple mantle, embroidered with silver, produces a charming effect of colour. still more famous is _wedded_,--"one of the happiest of sir frederic's designs," said a critic at the time, "and as a composition of lines, difficult, subtle, and original, may be called one of the most remarkable productions of this decade." other pictures shown this year were _antigone_ and the much-debated _phryne at eleusis_--a notable study of the famous hetaira, who is seen standing, and holding out with one hand the mass of her deep auburn hair. her skin is of a ruddy golden hue, as if seen under a glow of sunlight. red tissue, which falls from her shoulders and extended arms, and an olive-coloured mantle that has fallen at the foot of the marble columns behind her, backed by a sky, very characteristic of the painter, in which snowlike masses of cloud float in a southern azure, produce a total effect of a certain super-womanly order of beauty. a _design for a portion of a proposed decoration in st. paul's_, a picture entitled _melittion_, and a _portrait of mrs. mocatta_, were also hung at the academy in ; _zeyra_, a little eastern child in plum coloured headdress, a rich bit of colour elaborately painted, was shown at the grosvenor gallery. in , _memories_, though not one of the most typical of leighton's pictures, decidedly pleased the general public. it shows the half-length figure of a blonde, in a black and gold dress. more interesting artistically was a decorative frieze, _the dance_, for a drawing-room, the design for which we reproduce, and which may, in so far, answer for itself. other pictures of are _kittens_, a full-length figure of a fair-haired child in purple and embroidered drapery, seated on a bench covered with a leopard skin, holding a rose in hand and looking down at a kitten sitting beside her; and the _vestal_, a bust of a girl with her head and shoulders swathed with white gold-embroidered draperies. to this year also belongs a _portrait of miss nina joachim_, a child in a blue frock with crimson sash. [illustration: _cymon and iphigenia._ _by permission of the fine art society._ _f. leighton. pinxt._ _swan electric engraving co. sc._] [illustration: studies for two friezes "music" and "the dance"] the next year, , brought _letty_, that most delightful of english maidens, _a nap_, _sun gleams_, and the imaginative and admirably romantic _cymon and iphigenia_. _letty_ was one of leighton's pictures which particularly excited mr. ruskin's admiration. it shows a simply pretty child, with soft brown hair under a black hat, a saffron kerchief about her neck. the _letty_ and the _cymon and iphigenia_, with a few other notable pictures, did much to leave a pleasant recollection of the exceptional academy of . "a more original effect of light and colour, used in the broad, true, and ideal treatment of lovely forms," said a french critic, "we do not remember to have seen at the academy, than that produced by the _cymon and iphigenia_." engravings and other reproductions of the picture have made its design, at any rate, almost as familiar now as boccaccio's tale itself. there are some divergences, however, in the two versions. boccaccio's tale is a tale of spring; sir frederic, the better to carry out his conception of the drowsy desuetude of sleep, and of that sense of pleasant but absolute weariness which one associates with the season of hot days and short nights, has changed the spring into that riper summer-time which is on the verge of autumn; and that hour of late sunset which is on the verge of night. under its rich glow lies the sleeping iphigenia, draped in folds upon folds of white, and her attendants; while cymon, who is as unlike the boor of tradition as spenser's colin clout is unlike an ordinary cumbrian herdsman, stands hard-by, wondering, pensively wrapt in so exquisite a vision. altogether, a great presentment of an immortal idyll; so treated, indeed, that it becomes much more than a mere reading of boccaccio, and gives an ideal picture of sleep itself,--that sleep which so many artists and poets have tried at one time or another to render. in , among the five contributions of the president to the academy, appeared the vivacious portrait of lord rosebery's little daughter, _the lady sybil primrose_, who appears in white with a blue sash, carrying a doll. _a portrait of mrs. a. hichens_ and _phoebe_ were the only other pictures this year. a frieze, _music_, was shown, and at the grosvenor gallery _a study_ of a fair-haired girl, in green velvet dress. was chiefly notable for the statue in bronze of _the sluggard_, in which leighton again furnished us with a plastic characterization of sleep, which he designed by way of contrast to his statue of the struggling athlete. it was suggested, mr. spielmann says, by accidental circumstances. the model who had been sitting to him fell a-yawning in his interval of rest, and charmed the artist, not only with his exceptional beauty of line and play of muscle, but also with the artistic contrast of energy and languor. but that he might not lay himself open to the charge that the work was a glorification of indolence, the sculptor made concession to what after all was an artistic suggestion, and placed under the yawner's foot "the glorious wreath of laurel leaves heel trodden and despised." the graceful statuette of a little girl who is alarmed by a toad on the edge of a pool or stream of water, called _needless alarms_, appeared at the same time; and was so much admired by the president's colleague, sir john everett millais, that he wished to purchase it, whereupon sir frederic presented it to him, and received, in return, the charming picture of _shelling peas_, which sir john painted specially for this pleasant exchange. in also appeared the _decoration in painting for a music room_, destined for new york, which is illustrated[ ] by the completed work, and its preliminary studies from life for it. _gulnihal_, a single figure, is the only other painting exhibited at the academy in this year. [illustration: the last watch of hero ( ) _by permission of the manchester corporation_] [illustration: portrait of the lady sybil primrose ( )] in appeared a picture which seems scarcely to have received its due appreciation, _the jealousy of simætha the sorceress_. this is a seated figure in yellow and white drapery, with a purple mantle wrapped around her shoulders; a well-wrought, finely-rendered work. _the last watch of hero_, also first seen this year, is now in the manchester corporation gallery. it is in two compartments; in the upper, and larger, hero, clad in pink drapery, is seen drawing aside a curtain and gazing out over the sea. below, in the smaller panel, is the body of the dead leander, on a rock washed by the waves. a quotation from sir edwin arnold's translation of musæus was appended to its title: "with aching heart she scanned the sea-face dim. * * * * * lo! at the turret's foot his body lay, rolled on the stones and washed with breaking spray." a picture of a little girl with yellow hair and pale blue eyes, entitled with a verse by robert browning: "yellow and pale as ripened corn which autumn's kiss frees,--grain from sheath,-- such was her hair, while her eyes beneath showed spring's faint violets freshly born," was in the same exhibition, and also a design for the reverse of the jubilee medallion, executed for her majesty's government. in appeared another large work, which, although not absolutely a procession, has much in common with the _cimabue_, the _syracusan bride_, and _the daphnephoria_. it was entitled _captive andromache_, and accompanied by a fragment of the "iliad," translated by e. b. browning: ... "some standing by marking thy tears fall, shall say, 'this is she, the wife of that same hector that fought best of all the trojans when all fought for troy.'" this, and a _portrait of amy, lady coleridge_, were the artist's only contributions to the royal academy of . the _portraits of the misses stewart hodgson_ is also of this year, which saw four landscape studies exhibited at the royal society of painters in water colours, and five at the royal society of british artists, suffolk street. the _sibyl_, exhibited in , is a full-length figure swathed in lilac drapery, seated with her legs crossed, on a chair, her chin supported by her left hand, and gazing out of the picture. beside her are scrolls, and a sombre sky is behind the figure. _invocation_, a girl in white robes with arms raised above her head, and a _portrait of mrs. f. lucas_, were also shown; but _greek girls playing at ball_ is not only the most important, but is also a picture that shows the mannerism of lord leighton's treatment of drapery at its finest. elsewhere the undulating snaky coils may be somewhat distressing, here they float in the air and help the suggestion of movement. the landscape at the back is also both typical and beautiful. an _elegy_ was the fifth of the artist's contributions to the academy of . in _the bath of psyche_ appeared at the academy. this at once established its position as a popular favourite, and has probably been more widely reproduced than any other. it was purchased under the terms of the chantrey bequest, and is now in the tate gallery. it was suggested, so mr. m. h. spielmann tells us, by the "paper-knife" picture, as lord leighton called it, which he had painted for sir l. alma-tadema's wall screen. _solitude_ was also shown this year, and the _tragic poetess_, a full-length figure, clad in blue and purple drapery, on a terrace, with the sea beyond. the fourth picture at the academy was a very faithfully painted transcript of _the arab hall_, at no. , holland park road. [illustration: greek girls playing at ball ( ) _by permission of the berlin photographic co._] [illustration: the bath of psyche ( ) _by permission of the berlin photographic co._] in appeared _perseus and andromeda_, a very original version of a theme which it seems the destiny of every painter and sculptor of classical subjects to attempt at some time. in this andromeda is bound to a rock, the monster stands over her with outstretched wings, while from the clouds above, perseus, on his winged steed, is discharging arrows. the clay models for perseus are reproduced elsewhere (at p. ). the _return of persephone_ was another important work shown this year. it represents persephone, supported by hermes, being brought back to the upper world, where she is awaited with outstretched arms by demeter. a _portrait of a. b. mitford, esq._, and a marble version of the _athlete struggling with a python_, were also shown in the same exhibition. in a version of a panel of the proposed decoration for the dome of st. paul's appeared with the title, _and the sea gave up the dead which were in it_; this, purchased by mr. henry tate, is now among the pictures he gave to the gallery at millbank. the most important of leighton's later works, _the garden of the hesperides_, in many respects the most sumptuous piece of decoration he ever achieved, was shown this year. it is a large circular picture, the centre occupied by a tree bearing golden apples; under its branches recline the three hesperides, caressing the dragon who assists them to guard the treasure. a superbly brilliant sea is in the distance. the charm of this picture is mainly in its colour, but as an example of elaborately artificial composition it is hardly less noteworthy. unfortunately, despite every effort of lord leighton, most kindly exerted on behalf of the editor of this volume, the owners of the copyright refused under any condition to allow it to be illustrated herein. _a bacchante_, and _at the fountain_, a girl in fawn-coloured and violet draperies, with a bunch of lemons overhanging the marble wall behind her, were shown this year; and also a _clytie_, which must not be confused with another known by the same title, the last picture on which the artist was at work before his death. the version, shown in the retrospective exhibition, is thus described in its catalogue: "a small figure of clytie is seen on the right, kneeling on a stone building with arms outstretched towards the sun, which is setting behind a range of moorland hills." in _hit_, _the frigidarium_, _farewell_, _corinna of tanagra_, and _rizpah_ were exhibited at the academy. of these the most important is the last named. it illustrates the story of the two sons of rizpah, by saul, armoni and mephibosheth, who were slain by the gideonites. rizpah, robed in dark blue, is seen in the act of fetching away their bodies, which are shrouded by dull lilac and blue draperies. vultures circle above, and two leopards approach stealthily. _farewell_ is a single figure in olive green and plum-coloured peplis under a portico above the sea, where she pauses to take a last look at an outward-bound ship. _atalanta_ depicts the bust only of a dark-haired girl in purple and white drapery, with a snake-like ornament twisted round her arm, which is bare to the shoulder. _corinna of tanagra_ is a half-length figure crowned with leaves, in coloured drapery, resting her clasped hands upon her lyre. _the frigidarium_ is an upright figure in semi-transparent red drapery, which with the background of gold is reflected in the water beneath her feet. [illustration: farewell ( ) _by permission of messrs. arthur tooth and sons_] [illustration: "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it."--rev. xx. ( )] [illustration: the frigidarium ( ) _by permission of messrs. h. graves and co._] in were shown _the spirit of the summit_, a white-robed figure with upturned face, sitting on a snowy peak, with starlit sky beyond; _the bracelet_; _fatidica_, a figure in green-white robes; _at the window_, a dark-haired boy in blue, looking over the ledge of a window; and _summer slumber_. this last is a somewhat elaborate composition; a girl in salmon colour draperies is lying asleep on the broad rim of a marble fountain, masses of flowers are in the mid distance, and a vista of sunny landscape through the open window beyond. in , the last year of the artist's working life, he sent six pictures to the academy, and completed the wall decoration at the royal exchange (here illustrated), _phoenicians bartering with britons_. the paintings were entitled, _flaming june_ (a picture reproduced in colours for a christmas number of the "graphic"), in which the "broad" painting of the sea beyond was a notable exception to the artist's usual handling; _lachrymæ_, a standing figure in robes of black and blue green, resting her arm upon a doric column; _'twixt hope and fear_, a seated figure of a black-haired greek girl, robed in white and olive, with a sheep-skin thrown around her; _the maid with her yellow hair_, a girlish figure in lemon-coloured drapery, reading from a red-backed book; _listener_, a child seated with crossed legs on a fur rug; and a _study of a girl's head_, with auburn, wavy hair. in the academy _clytie_ was the only picture. in lord leighton's studio in various stages of completion were a _bacchante_, a half-length figure of a fair-haired girl crowned with leaves, and a leopard skin over her shoulder; _the fair persian_, a bust of a girl with flowing dark hair, crowned by a jewelled circlet; and _the vestal_, a half-length figure of a girl in white drapery, these were all exhibited at the winter exhibition of . to _clytie_, his last picture, a small monograph has been devoted by the fine art society. in this we read: "'thank goodness my ailment has not interfered with my capacity for work, for i have never had a better appetite for it, nor i believe done better. i was idle for five months in the summer, but since my return i have been working hard and have produced the pictures you see.' thus he spoke to the present writer [of the monograph in question] as he led the way across his studio.... turning to the _clytie_ he continued: 'this i have been at work upon all the morning. orchardson has been so good as to say i have never done anything finer than the sky. you know the story. i have shown the goddess in adoration before the setting sun, whose last rays are permeating her whole being. with upraised arms she is entreating her beloved one not to forsake her. a flood of golden light saturates the scene, and to carry out my intention, i have changed my model's hair from black to auburn. to the right is a small altar, upon which is an offering of fruit, and upon a pillar beyond i shall show the feet of a statue of apollo.' "but a few days after this occurrence the dead president lay in semi-state in his coffin, before the picture. a drawing in the 'graphic' (january th, ) shows the interior of the studio, with the figure of clytie, in her attitude of despair, stretching her arms above the body of her creator." here the record, year by year, is closed. a few pictures seem to have escaped the honours of exhibition. one,[ ] _a noble lady of venice_, in possession of lord armstrong, does not appear to have been exhibited. it is probably the picture which was sold at christie's in for guineas. a _lady with pomegranates_, which sold for guineas at the sale of baron grant's pictures in , does not appear in our list of exhibited works; nor, it may be, are all the early pictures included therein. but the official catalogues of the royal academy may exhibitions, and of the special winter exhibition devoted to the artist's works, have been freely drawn upon for description, and to the list of his life's work, as it appeared in the first edition of this work, many additions have been made. [illustration: rizpah ( )] [illustration: the bracelet ( ) _by permission of messrs. t. agnew and sons_] [illustration: fatidica ( ) _by permission of messrs. t agnew and sons_] chapter vi his method of painting for particulars of the wonderfully thorough "method," which leighton used in preparing his pictures, we cannot do better than quote the following admirable account by mr. m. h. spielmann (published during the painter's life), which he has allowed us to reprint here.[ ] "i have said that the sense of line in composition, in figure and drapery, is one of the chief qualities of the artist; and the conviction that the method in which he places them upon canvas with such unerring success--for it may be said that the president rarely, if ever, produces an ugly form in a picture--would be both interesting and instructive, prompted me to learn in what manner his effects are produced. this i have done, having special regard to one of his academy pictures, _the sibyl_, which, being a single figure, simplifies greatly the explanation of the mode of procedure. this explanation holds good in every case, be the composition great or small, elaborate or simple; the _modus operandi_ is always the same. [illustration: a bacchante ( ) _by permission of messrs. henry graves and co._] [illustration: "hit" ( ) _by permission of "the art journal"_] "having by good fortune observed in a model an extraordinarily fine and 'michelangelesque' formation of the hand and wrist--an articulation as rare to find as it is anatomically beautiful and desirable--he bethought him of a subject that would enable him to introduce his _trouvaille_. as but one attitude could display the special formation to advantage, the idea of a sibyl, sitting brooding beside her oracular tripod, was soon evolved, but not so soon was its form determined and fixed. like mr. watts, sir frederic leighton thinks out the whole picture before he puts brush to canvas, or chalk to paper; but, unlike mr. watts, once he is decided upon his scheme of colour, the arrangement of line, the disposition of the folds, down to the minutest details, he seldom, if ever, alters a single line. and the reason is evident. in sir frederic's pictures--which are, above all, decorations in the real sense of the word--the design is a pattern in which every line has its place and its proper relation to other lines, so that the disturbing of one of them, outside of certain limits, would throw the whole out of gear. having thus determined his picture in his mind's eye, he in the majority of cases makes a sketch in black and white chalk upon brown paper to fix it. in the first sketch, the care with which the folds have been broadly arranged will be evident, and, if it be compared with the finished picture, the very slight degree in which the general scheme has been departed from will convince the reader of the almost scientific precision of the artist's line of action. but there is a good reason for this determining of the draperies before the model is called in; and it is this. the nude model, no matter how practised he or she may be, never moves or stands or sits, in these degenerate days, with exactly the same freedom as when draped; action or pose is always different--not so much from a sense of mental constraint as from the unusual liberty experienced by the limbs, to which the muscular action invariably responds when the body is released from the discipline and confinement of clothing. "the picture having been thus determined, the model is called in, and is posed as nearly as possible in the attitude desired. as nearly as possible i say, for, as no two faces are exactly alike, no two models ever entirely resemble one another in body or muscular action, and cannot, therefore, pose in such a manner as exactly to correspond with either another model or another figure--no matter how correctly the latter may be drawn. from the model the artist makes the careful outline, in brown paper, a true transcript from life, which may entail some slight corrections of the original design in the direction of modifying the attitude and general appearance of the figure. this would be rendered necessary, probably by the bulk and material of the drapery. so far, of course, the artist's attention is engaged exclusively by 'form,' 'colour' being always treated more or less ideally. the figure is now placed in its surroundings, and established in exact relation to the canvas. the result is the first true sketch of the entire design, figure and background, and is built up of the two previous ones. it must be absolutely accurate in the distribution of spaces, for it has subsequently to be 'squared off' on to the canvas, which is ordered to the exact scale of the sketch. at this moment, the design being finally determined, the sketch in oil colours is made. it has been deferred till now, because the placing of the colours is, of course, of as much importance as the harmony. this done, the canvas is for the first time produced, and thereon is enlarged the design, the painter re-drawing the outline--never departing a hair's breadth from the outlines and forms already obtained--and then highly finishing the whole figure in warm monochrome from the life. every muscle, every joint, every crease is there, although all this careful painting is shortly to be hidden with the draperies; such, however, is the only method of insuring absolute correctness of drawing. the fourth stage completed, the artist returns once more to his brown paper, re-copies the outline accurately from the picture, on a larger scale than before, and resumes his studies of draperies in greater detail and with still greater precision, dealing with them in sections, as parts of a homogeneous whole. the draperies are now laid with infinite care on to the living model, and are made to approximate as closely as possible to the arrangement given in the first sketch, which, as it was not haphazard, but most carefully worked out, must of necessity be adhered to. they have often to be drawn piecemeal, as a model cannot by any means always retain the attitude sufficiently long for the design to be wholly carried out at one cast. this arrangement is effected with special reference to painting--that is to say, giving not only form and light and shade, but also the relation and 'values' of tones. the draperies are drawn over, and are made to conform exactly to the forms copied from the nudes of the underpainted picture. this is a cardinal point, because in carrying out the picture the folds are found fitting mathematically on to the nude, or nudes, first established on the canvas. the next step then is to transfer these draperies to the canvas on which the design has been squared off, and this is done with flowing colour in the same monochrome as before over the nudes, to which they are intelligently applied, and which nudes must never--mentally at least--be lost sight of. the canvas has been prepared with a grey tone, lighter or darker, according to the subject in hand, and the effect to be produced. the background and accessories being now added, the whole picture presents a more or less completed aspect--resembling that, say, of a print of any warm tone. in the case of draperies of very vigorous tone, a rich flat local colour is probably rubbed over them, the modelling underneath being, though thin, so sharp and definite as to assert itself through this wash. certain portions of the picture might probably be prepared with a wash or flat tinting of a colour the _opposite_ of that which it is eventually to receive. a blue sky, for instance, would possibly have a soft, ruddy tone spread over the canvas--the sky, which is a very definite and important part of the president's compositions, being as completely drawn in monochrome as any other portion of the design; or for rich blue mountains a strong orange wash or tint might be used as a bed. the structure of the picture being thus absolutely complete, and the effect distinctly determined by a sketch which it is the painter's aim to equal in the big work, he has nothing to think of but colour, and with that he now proceeds deliberately, but rapidly. [illustration: nude study for "captive andromache"] [illustration: study for a figure in "captive andromache"] [illustration: study for "andromache"] "such is the method by which sir frederic leighton finds it convenient to build up his pictures. the labour entailed by such a system as this is, of course, enormous, more especially when the composition to be worked out is of so complex a character as the _captive andromache_ of last year, every figure and group of which were treated with the same completeness and detail as we have seen to attend the production of so simple a picture as _the sibyl_. deliberateness of workmanship and calculation of effect, into which inspiration of the moment is never allowed to enter, are the chief characteristics of the painter's craftsmanship. the inspiration stage was practically passed when he took the crayon in his hand; and to this circumstance probably is to be assigned the absence of realism which arrests the attention of the beholder." mr. spielmann has instanced, in the above account, the tragic and lovely _captive andromache_, exhibited in ; and we may further add that exquisite painting of _greek girls playing at ball_, of ; or the still more exquisite _bath of psyche_, of the year following. all three are full of technical delicacy and finesse. for other qualities take that radiantly pictured myth, the _perseus and andromeda_, or the _return of persephone_ (both of ); or the lovely _clytie_ of , whose sunset background was painted at malinmore, on the west coast of donegal; or the _atalanta_ or the _rizpah_ of . [illustration: study for "perseus and andromeda"] [illustration: study for "the bath of psyche"] [illustration: study for "solitude"] the memorable picture, first named of these, which shows andromache at the well, is in particular a most characteristic example of the artist's larger style. in it, true to his classic predilections, he gives a new setting to the touching old story of andromache's captivity. following up the earlier scene in the "iliad," where andromache begs her husband hector not to sally forth to battle, but to stay and defend the city, and where, finding her prayers in vain, and weeping, she bids hector farewell, the picture shows the fulfilment of andromache's fears and the dire prophecy which hector had recalled to his wife. by way of contrast to this sombre canvas, take the glowing and brilliant colours of the _perseus and andromeda_, one of the three pictures shown at the academy in . the painting of the surroundings of andromeda, the deep blue water in the sea lagoon beneath, and these radiant elemental people of air and light, provides such a glow of colour, as haunts the eye for long after one has gazed one's fill upon it. something of the same feeling for the spirit that is in the forces of the earth, lurks behind many of leighton's representments of the classic myths. it is certainly to be found, with a difference, in the _return of persephone_, exhibited with the _perseus_, which becomes in the artist's hands a profound allegory of the return of spring, with all kind of symbolical meanings in the three figures of proserpine, ceres, and hermes, that are seen meeting before the mouth of hades. _the spirit of the summit_, one of the latest of these embodiments of the relation of man to nature, may be read to mean man's finer spirit of aspiration, and the mountainous imagination of art itself. it is characteristic of the artist that, in the later years of his career, at a time when most artists and men are apt to give up something of their earlier pursuit of ideals, he retained undiminished a feeling for the unaccomplished heights of the imagination. _the spirit of the summit_ may serve, then, as the symbol, not so much of things attained, and art victorious, as of things that are always to be attained, and of art striving and undeterred. in this way it may serve, too, as in some sort the emblem of leighton's own ideals, and of his whole career. his artistic temper was throughout, one of endless energy, endless determination; with a dash of that finer dissatisfaction which is always seeking out new embodiments, under all difficulties, of man's pursuit, in a difficult, and often an unbeautiful world, of truth and beauty. above all, he was a consummate draughtsman, and as francisco pacheco, the father-in-law of velasquez, wrote in his "arte de la pintura" ( ): "drawing is the life and soul of painting; drawing, especially outline, is the hardest; nay, the art has, strictly speaking, no other difficulty. without drawing painting is nothing but a vulgar craft; those who neglect it are bastards of the art, mere daubers and blotchers." [illustration: study for "the return of persephone"] [illustration: study for "persephone"] chapter vii mural decoration, sculpture, and illustration the drawings of lord leighton deserve special consideration. the famous _lemon tree_ was made at capri in the spring of ; it is work that no pre-raphaelite could have finished more minutely, yet it has nothing "niggling" in its treatment. in a conversation[ ] lord leighton is said to have referred to the many days spent upon the production of this study--dwelling specially on the difficulty he experienced in finding again and again each separate leaf in the perspective of the confused branches, as morning after morning he returned at sunrise to continue the work. the drawing of each leaf reveals the close observation which ultimately recorded its particular individuality. you feel that as a shepherd knows his sheep to call each by its name, so the artist must have become familiar with every separate leaf and twig before he had completed his task. the whole is broad and simple, and scarcely suggests the enormous patience which must have been needed to carry out the self-imposed toil. nothing is shirked, nothing is scamped; from the stem to the outermost leaf, every part in succession reveals equal interest, and yet the whole is not without that larger quality which brings it together in a harmonious whole, so that it is as much the study of a tree as the study of each separate item that composes it. the _byzantine well-head_ is another notable instance of similar labour devoted to an architectural subject; this was evidently a favourite with its author; for during his life it hung close by his bed in the simple chamber of his otherwise sumptuous home, a room devoid of luxury and almost ascetic in its appointments.[ ] the great mass of studies, on brown paper chiefly, which he had carefully preserved, were purchased by the fine art society, and some two hundred and fifty were exhibited at their gallery in december, , and a selection in facsimile has been published in sumptuous form. in a prefatory note to the catalogue of these studies mr. s. pepys cockerell says: "it is seldom that we are privileged to watch at ease the workings of another's mind, but these drawings, the intimate record of a long life-time, offer an unusually good opportunity. one might call them the confessions of an artist; and anyone who wants to know what leighton was really like, has only to use his eyes. one thing, at any rate, no one can fail to see, viz., that he had the qualities which result in industry. whatever success he achieved was only gained after desperate labour. it is curious that while he had the reputation for working with ease, he considered himself to have no facility for anything, whether for art, for writing, or for speaking. i recollect his once saying: 'thank heaven, i was never clever at anything,' for he believed with sir joshua, that everything is granted to well-deserved labour." the landscape studies in oil (of which a list almost complete will be found in appendix ii.), show equal observation and sympathetic perception of the beauty of colour, as well as of the beauty of form. the truth of these carefully recorded impressions of scenery was no less patent than the masterly "selection" which had set itself to depict all that seemed of value, and escaped at once the photographic imitation of one school, and the evasion of detail of another. they all preserve a certain classic repose, without violence to topographical accuracy, or painter-like intention. [illustration: study for the ceiling of a music-room] [illustration: study for the ceiling of a music-room] [illustration] [illustrations: decoration for the ceiling of a music-room] we have had occasion to refer frequently, in passing, to leighton's decorative works, but we have purposely deferred any description of them, preferring to treat them separately. to know how present was his feeling for decorative effect at all times, it is sufficient to glance never so casually at his own house, about which we hope presently to say something,--genuine expression as it is of his art. now we wish rather to touch on his more public performances. of these, the famous frescoes which fill large lunettes in the central court at south kensington, _the industrial arts of war_ and _the industrial arts of peace_, are the best known, as they are among the most characteristic of all the artist's productions. the fresco of _the arts of war_ is a very complex piece of work. it is crowded with figures, full of that orderly disorder which one must expect to find, on the hurried morning of a day of battle, in these delightfully decorative warriors. "in the centre"--we quote here mrs. lang's description--"is a white marble staircase, leading from the quadrangle to an archway, beyond which is another courtyard. seen through the archway, knights are riding by.... the busy scene in the courtyard suggests an immediate departure to the seat of war. in the corner to the right crossbows are being chosen and tested; a man is kneeling by a pile of swords, and descanting on their various merits to an undecided customer, while those weapons that he has already disposed of are having their blades tried and felt. a little way off, to the left of the archway, some men-at-arms are trying on the armour of a youth who has still to win his spurs.... the whole is distinguished by the extreme naturalness and simplicity of all the actions, and by soft, glowing colours, chiefly dark olive green and splendid saffrons." in _the arts of peace_, its companion, the central portion of the fresco is devised as the interior of a greek house, where within a semicircular alcove we see a number of greek maidens and older women, delightfully grouped, mainly occupied in the art of personal adornment. before this house is the waterside, with a very decorative boat, confined by a gracefully-looped chain, whose curve, as it hangs, is very subtly designed to complete the salient lines of the whole composition. on either side of this interior we have groups of men, more vigorously treated,--drawing water, bearing burdens, pushing a boat from land. the total effect of these finely posed contrasted groups, of the admirably architectured walls, piers, and pavements, and of the striking background, as of another hill-crowned athens, is most complete and satisfying. the colouring throughout, diversified with extreme art as it is, is full of that southern radiance, and clear, sunlit glamour, so often found in the artist's pictures. to realize this fully, south kensington must be visited, for word-painting at its best but poorly reproduces the art that it doubtfully imitates. [illustration: fresco: the industrial arts of war ( )] [illustration: fresco: the industrial arts of peace ( )] but these were by no means the first attempts of the artist to acclimatize the noblest form of mural decoration, which cannot even at this date be regarded as fully naturalized amongst us. in he commenced work on a fresco of _the wise and foolish virgins_, which forms the altarpiece of the beautiful modern church at lyndhurst, erected on the site of the older building commemorated in charles kingsley's ballad. this painting still remains a lasting attraction to visitors in the new forest village. in the centre, the bridegroom, clad in white, bearing lilies in his left hand, extends his right to the foremost of the five wise virgins. angels at each side of the central figure welcome the one group, and repel the other. on the extreme right is a kneeling figure, "ora;" on the left, "vigila," a figure trimming a lamp. the scale of the figures is over life-size, and the unfortunate position of the work, immediately under a large east window, so that the figures appear standing on the altar, has provoked adverse criticism; but the painting itself, as a triumphant accomplishment of a peculiarly difficult undertaking, and a superb scheme of line and colour, has won favourable comments at all times. it was painted in the medium, a mixture of copal, wax, resin, and oil, previously employed with success by mr. gambier parry in his decorations for ely cathedral. it is interesting to read the account of the execution of this work, which is said to have been carried out chiefly on saturday afternoons, the artist catching a mid-day train from town, and working on it from the moment of his arrival until dusk. experience of the london and south western railway company thirty years ago makes one doubt whether leaving town at mid-day should not be taken as arriving at lyndhurst road at that time, for otherwise it would have been a miracle to accomplish the task by daylight. it is, however, exhilarating to find that the sustained enthusiasm of the young artist was equal to the effort involved in mastering so many obstacles; for the result, despite the increased attention given to decoration in these later years, may even now be considered, so far as modern ecclesiastical painting is concerned, to be without a rival in england. the beautiful _cupid with doves_, is also said to be from a fresco; whether a genuine painting on the wall itself (after the true fresco manner) or not, it has the larger qualities peculiar to the method which distinguishes several other works that were certainly not executed in this medium,--the latest of leighton's mural decorations, for example, a painting of _phoenicians bartering with britons_, which the president of the royal academy in presented as the first of a series of panels in the royal exchange. although, as this was painted on canvas, it cannot be ranked as a legitimate successor in the direct line of the lyndhurst and south kensington frescoes, it is marked by many of the architectural qualities which distinguish a painting designed to be in true relation to the planes of its surroundings, and employs a convention which makes it appear an integral part of the wall surface, not a mere panel accidentally placed within a frame supplied by the features of the building itself. the south kensington frescoes, as we have before stated, were painted in - . some ten years later sir frederic collaborated with sir edward (then mr.) poynter in the decoration of the dome of st. paul's. his share was to have filled eight _medallions_, so called, in the compartments into which his colleague divided the dome. the design for one of these, _the sea gave up the dead which were in it_, was exhibited at the academy of , and is now among the works presented by mr. tate to the national gallery of british art. this is another treatment of a great subject, in which the problem of reconciling the dramatic with the decorative has been seriously attempted. the dome of st. paul's, had it been completed according to this scheme, might have been a worthy if a somewhat academic presentation of the tremendous visions of the apocalypse. [illustration: cupid: from a fresco] [illustration: phoenicians bartering with britons panel in the royal exchange ( )] certain others of leighton's decorative works we have already mentioned, such as the design for a ceiling, now in new york. not so well known is his frieze delineating a dance, for an english drawing-room; or the small frieze with a design of dolphins, also in england. a scheme in water-colours for a mural decoration, entitled _the departure for the war_, was never carried out; the sketch for it was sold with the remaining works at christie's, july, . the single figures in mosaic of _cimabue_ and _pisano_, at the south kensington museum, must not be forgotten. to the public--or at least that portion which limits its art to the exhibitions of the royal academy--leighton, as we have seen, made his _début_ as a sculptor with the group, _an athlete struggling with a python_ (known also as _an athlete strangling a python_), which in the bronze version is now among works purchased under the terms of the chantrey bequest in the tate gallery. but long before that date he had successfully essayed plastic art; his first effort being for the medallion of a monument to mrs. browning in the protestant cemetery at florence. two other monuments, to the memory of major sutherland orr (his sister's husband), and lady charlotte greville, must also be mentioned. we have already spoken of _the athlete_, _the sluggard_, and _needless alarms_. but it would be unfair to omit mention of many small works--small, that is to say, in scale, for they are distinguished by great breadth of handling--which were prepared as auxiliary studies for his paintings. visitors to the studio in holland park road, were always impressed by several of these models, which stood on a large chest in the bay of a great studio window. especially noteworthy was a group of three singing maidens, who figure in _the daphnephoria_, and another of the "choragus" for the same picture; for later works, the mounted perseus, and andromeda with the monster, both designed for the picture of that legend. others belonging to a slightly earlier period included--the sleeping iphigenia, a crouching figure of her attendant, and a nude figure of cymon, all, of course, for _cymon and iphigenia_. these models were made to be clad in wet drapery of exquisitely fine texture, and were prepared only for ten minutes' drawing of the first idea of the figures; all serious study being made from the draped model, or the lay figure. such help as they have rendered must all be referred to the period before the finished cartoon was ready to be traced on the canvas. since lord leighton's decease most of these have been successfully cast in bronze, and are the property of the royal academy. in the studio were also the first sketches in clay for _the sluggard_, and also for _the athlete_, which was not originally intended to be carried further. indeed, several people mistook it for a genuine antique, and admired it accordingly; dalou, the great french sculptor, was especially so struck by it, that he advised its author to work out the idea in full size. the three years' labour devoted to the task, the failures by the way, and its ultimate triumphant success, both here and in paris, are too well known to need recapitulation. a replica was commissioned for the copenhagen gallery, and probably no work of its accomplished author did more to win him the appreciation of french and german artists. [illustration: bronze statue: an athlete struggling with a python ( )] [illustration: bronze statue: an athlete struggling with a python ( )] [illustration: study in clay for "cymon"] [illustration: study in clay for "the sluggard"] [illustration: study in clay for "perseus"] [illustration: study in clay for "andromeda"] in this brief mention of lord leighton's achievements in sculpture, the medal commemorating the jubilee of queen victoria, a study for which is reproduced at p. , must not be overlooked. although to those who have not followed closely the splendid period of english illustration which may be said to have reached its zenith at the time when dalziel's "bible gallery" was published, it may be a surprise to find "frederic leighton" figuring as an illustrator, yet the nine compositions in that book are by no means his sole contribution to the art of black and white. for each instalment of "romola," as it ran through the pages of the "cornhill magazine," the artist contributed a full page drawing, and an initial letter. the twenty-four full pages were afterwards reprinted in "the cornhill gallery" (smith and elder, ). these are most notable works, even when measured by the standard of their contemporaries. the same magazine contains two other works from his pen, one illustrating a poem, "the great god pan," by mrs. browning, and another illustrating a story by mrs. sartoris, entitled "a week in a french country house." these, and the nine compositions in the "bible gallery" (the pictures from which have lately been re-issued in a popular form by the society for promoting christian knowledge) exhaust the list of those which can be traced. as four of the magnificent designs are reproduced here, it would be superfluous to describe them; the titles of the five others are: _abram and the angel_, _eliezer and rebekah_, _death of the first born_, _the spies' escape_, and _samson at the mill_. one of the original drawings on wood is now on view at the south kensington museum, and, by comparison with impressions from the engraved blocks, we see how small has been the loss in translation, so admirably has the artist mastered the limitation of the technique that was to represent his work in another medium. the reproductions here given are considerably reduced, and necessarily lose something, but they retain enough to prove that had the artist cared to rest his reputation upon such works, he might have done so with a light heart, for whenever the golden period of english illustration is recalled, these comparatively few drawings will inevitably be recalled with it. a photographic silver-print from a drawing which forms the frontispiece to a little book of fairy tales is of hardly sufficient importance--charming though its original must have been--to be included among the book illustrations. the drawing, _a contrast_, reproduced at p. , is undated; the idea it is intended to suggest, a model who once stood for some youthful god, revisiting the adolescent portrait of himself when old age has him gripped fast with rheumatism and failing vigour. to-day, when one has heard sculptors claim that lord leighton's finest work was in their own craft, one has also heard many illustrators not merely extol these drawings--notably the bible subjects--as his masterpieces, but jealously refuse to consider him entitled to serious regard as an artist in any other medium. this attitude, so curiously unlike the usual welcome from experts which awaits an artist who ventures into fresh mediums for expressing himself, should be put on record as a unique tribute; the more worthy of attention, because in each instance it was advanced not wholly as praise, but to some extent as a reproach on leighton's painting. no intended compliment could carry more genuine appreciation than this warm approval from fellow experts in the special subjects of which they are masters. [illustration: cain and abel] [illustration: moses views the promised land] [illustration: samson and the lion] [illustration: samson carrying the gates] chapter viii discourses on art we must next speak of the late president's addresses and discourses on art, and of that other art of oratory, which, we shall find, as he conceived it, had something of the same monumental quality he imparted to his painting. his presidential speeches at the annual banquet of the academy would alone be sufficient to show this; but it is of course to his addresses and discourses that we must turn if we would understand his feeling for the two unallied arts. his success in the one is to be explained, we shall find, in very much the same way as his success in the other. like most speakers of any distinction, lord leighton left nothing to chance. in his speeches and discourses, as in his pictures, the most careful and exact preparation was made for every effect, however apparently casual it may have seemed. his discourses were obviously based upon classic models; for their full periods, sonorously and deliberately arranged, have a rhythm that attends to the whole period, and not merely, as is often the way with english speakers, to each sentence in turn. in quoting from these discourses, we do so, however, with an eye to his own proper art as a painter, and to his whole theory and sentiment of that art and its functions, and its allied plastic arts, even more than to his art as a speaker. indeed, the discourses form a unique contribution to the art criticism of our time; they cover the most interesting and various periods in the history of the art of europe; and although the cycle he had mapped out was interrupted before he had completed it--first by illness which postponed the biennial discourse, and then by death--the portions already delivered touch incidentally on the theory and philosophy of all art in a highly suggestive and eloquent way. in his first discourse, delivered to the academy students on the th of december, , the new president took occasion to estimate the modern predicament and general position of art, as a prelude to the consideration of its special developments, in later discourses. "i wish in so doing," he said, "to seek the solution of certain perplexities and doubts which will often, in these days of restless self-questioning in which we live, arise in the minds and weigh on the hearts of students who think as well as work." in answering the question of questions in art for us to-day--that is, what are its chances in the present, compared with the glory and splendour of its achievement in the past?--leighton provides us with some memorable passages in his first discourse. speaking of the "evolution of painting in italy," he turned it to notable account in his argument, as in this reference to the florentine school: "it is, perhaps," he said, "in tuscany, and notably in florence, that we see the national temperament most clearly declared in its art, as indeed in all its intellectual productions; here we see that strange mixture of attic subtlety and exquisiteness of taste, with a sombre fervour and a rude pelasgic strength which marks the tuscans, sending forth a dante, a brunelleschi, and a michael angelo,--a fiesole, a boccaccio, and a botticelli, and we find that eagerness in the pursuit of the knowledge of men and things, which was so characteristic of them, summed up in a macchiavelli and a lionardi da vinci." [illustration: a contrast] how different the conditions when we turn to consider english art, as it stands to-day: "the whole current of human life setting resolutely in a direction opposed to artistic production; no love of beauty, no sense of the outward dignity and comeliness of things, calling on the part of the public for expression at the artist's hands; and, as a corollary, no dignity, no comeliness for the most part, in their outward aspect; everywhere a narrow utilitarianism which does not include the gratification of the artistic sense amongst things useful; the works of artists sought for indeed, but too often as a profitable merchandise, or a vehicle of speculation, too often on grounds wholly foreign to their intrinsic worth as productions of a distinctive form of human genius, with laws and conditions of its own." the modern student may well question, whether the great artists of the past, if they lived now under our different conditions, would achieve all that they did then. for further bewilderment, the differences to be seen in the past itself, between school and school, and one age and another, may lead him to doubt "whether art be not indeed an ephemeral thing, a mere efflorescence of the human intelligence, an isolated development, incapable of organic growth." to such doubts, comes the reassuring answer: "that art is fed by forces that lie in the depth of our nature, and which are as old as man himself; of which therefore we need not doubt the durability; and to the question whether art with all its blossoms has but one root, the answer we shall see to be: assuredly it has; for its outward modes of expression are many and various, but its underlying vital motives are the same." the new president concluded his first discourse with an eloquent plea for sincerity in art: "without sincerity of emotion no gift, however facile and specious, will avail you to win the lasting sympathies of men"--a truth which perhaps needs more repeating to-day than ever it did! in the second discourse (december th, ), we are called upon to consider that other question which has so often perplexed the artist, especially the english artist, in whom the moral sentiment is apt to take a threatening form on occasion: "what is the relation in which art stands to morals and to religion?" for his reply, leighton took in turn the two contentions: one, that the first duty of all artistic productions is the inculcation of a moral lesson, if not indeed of a christian truth; the other, that art is altogether independent of ethics. his conclusion is the only sagacious and sane one: that whilst art in itself is indeed independent of ethics, yet is there no error so deadly as to deny that "the moral complexion, the ethos, of the artist does in truth tinge every work of his hand, and fashion, in silence, but with the certainty of fate, the course and current of his whole career." the steps that lead irresistibly to this conclusion, are very clearly indicated in the course of this discourse; and the more convincingly, because the speaker is himself so sympathetic to the religious inspiration of italian art, on the one hand, and to its merely natural æsthetic growth on the other. [illustration: a study in oils] "the language of art," he said then, "is not the appointed vehicle of ethic truths;... on the other hand, there is a field in which she has no rival. we have within us the faculty for a range of emotion, of exquisite subtlety and of irresistible force, to which art, and art alone amongst human forms of expression, has a key; these then, and no others, are the chords which it is her appointed duty to strike; and form, colour, and the contrasts of light and shade are the agents through which it is given to her to set them in motion. her duty is, therefore, to awaken those sensations directly emotional and indirectly intellectual, which can be communicated only through the sense of sight, to the delight of which she has primarily to minister. and the dignity of these sensations lies in this, that they are inseparably connected by association of ideas with a range of perception and feelings of infinite variety and scope. they come fraught with dim complex memories of all the evershifting spectacle of inanimate creation and of the more deeply stirring phenomena of life; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the outer world; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the changeful and the transitory lives of men." in his third discourse, which was delivered on the th december, , the president entered on his exhaustive discussion, continued in many subsequent discourses, of "the relation of artistic production to the conditions of time and place under which it is evolved, and to the characteristics of the races to which it is due." in this discourse he briefly and suggestively reviews the art of egypt, assyria, and greece, endeavouring to account for the main characteristics of each. in egypt he shows how a nation securely established in a peace and pre-eminence lasting for ages, blessed beyond measure in a fertile and prospering climate, a nation beyond all things pious and occupied in reverential care of the dead, should give birth to an art serene, magnificent, and vast. "those whose fortune it has been," he eloquently said, "to stand by the base of the great pyramid of khoofoo, and look up at its far summit flaming in the violet sky, or to gaze on the wreck of that solemn watcher of the rising sun, the giant sphinx of gizeh, erect, still, after sixty centuries in the desert's slowly rising tide; or who have rested in the shade of the huge shafts which tell of the pomp and splendour of hundred-gated thebes; must, i think, have received impressions of majesty and of enduring strength which will not fade within their memory." after old egypt, and the account of chaldæan and assyrian art, with its warlike expression, we are led on in turn to the consideration of greek art, and the causes of its development. "nothing that i am aware of in the history of the human intelligence," he said, "is for a moment comparable to the dazzling swiftness of the ripening of greek art in the fifth century before christ." after speaking of the fortunate balance and interaction of races which resulted in the greek art of that era, he goes on to speak of the exceptionally favouring circumstances of the people: "here are no vast alluvial plains, such as those along which, in the east, whole empires surged to and fro in battle; no mighty flood of rivers, no towering mountain walls: instead, a tract of moderate size; a fretted promontory thrust out into the sea--far out, and flinging across the blue a multitude of purple isles and islets towards the ionian, kindred, shores." such a fortunate environment, joined to the extraordinarily high ideal formed by the greeks of citizenship, had much to do with the fostering of greek art, in all "its nobility and its serenity, its exquisite balance, its searching after truth, and its thirst for the ideal." [illustration: head of a young girl a study in oils] in his fourth discourse lord leighton carried on his inquiry upon the origins and conditions of art into the difficult region of the etruscans; whose plastic work, like their speech, he considers, was at best an uncouth, vigorous imitation, or re-shaping, of greek models. as examples of etruscan art, we are referred to "the two lovely bronze mirrors, preserved at perugia and berlin, representing,--one, helen between castor and pollux,--the other, bacchus, semele, and apollo.... in either case, the design is distinctly greek; nevertheless a certain ruggedness of form and handling is felt in both, betraying a temper less subtle than the hellenic; and we read without surprise on the one 'pultuke,' and 'phluphluus' on the other." lest it should be thought that something less than justice is done to etruscan art, take this fine description of the tomb of volumnus violens: "the recumbent effigy of the volumnian is, indeed, rude and of little merit; rude also in execution is the monument on which it rests, but in conception and design of a dignity almost dantesque. facing the visitor, as he enters the sepulchral chamber, this small sarcophagus--small in dimensions, but in impressiveness how great!--rivets him at once under the taper's fitful light. raised on a rude basement, the body of the monument figures the entrance to a vault; in the centre, painted in colours that have nearly faded, appears a doorway, within the threshold of which four female figures gaze wistfully upon the outer world; on either side two winged genii, their brows girt with the never-failing etruscan serpents, but wholly free from the quaintness of early etruscan treatment, sit cross-legged, watching, torch in hand, the gate from which no living man returns. roughly as they are hewn, it would be difficult to surpass the stateliness of their aspect or the art with which they are designed; roman gravity, but quickened with etruscan fire, invests them: ... and our thoughts are irresistibly carried forward to the supreme sculptor whom the tuscan land was one day to bear." from etruria, we pass naturally on to rome; for, as we are significantly reminded, "the romans lay, until the tide of greek art broke on them after the fall of syracuse, wholly under the influence of the etruscans.... etruria gave them kings, augurs, doctors, mimes, musicians, boxers, runners; the royal purple, the royal sceptre, the fasces, the curule chair, the lydian flute, the straight trumpet, and the curved trumpet. the education of a roman youth received its finishing touches in etruria: tuscan engineers had girt rome with walls; tuscan engineers had built the great conduit through which the swamp, which was one day to be the forum, was drained into the tiber. what wonder, then, that in architecture, also in painting, in sculpture, in jewellery, and in all the things of taste, etruscans gave the law to the ruder and less cultured race?" this influence lasted, until the counter-current of greece found an inlet to roman life, filtering "through campania into rome from the opposite end of the peninsula." and then, from the fall of syracuse, and the bringing of its spoils to rome, we find a perfect craze for grecian marbles, bronzes, pictures, gems, inflaming the magnates, nobles, and _nouveaux riches_ of rome. how fortunate that influence was in another field, that of literature, we know. in plastic art, by reason of the essentially inartistic spirit of the roman race, the result was practically small; save indeed in one department, that of portraiture, to which the essential impulse was, as leighton very suggestively shows, "ethic, not æsthetic." even in roman architecture, our critic finds little to weaken his view of the roman æsthetic inefficiency. "it was not," he said, "the spontaneous utterance of an æsthetic instinct, but the outcome of material needs and of patriotic pride," and hence only an incomplete expression of roman civilization. "to them, in brief, art was not vernacular: their purest taste, their brightest gifts of mind, found no utterance in it." [illustration: study of a head] "we have seen art," he concluded, "such art as it was given to rome to achieve--rise and fall with the virtues of the roman people. from the lips of the most seeing of its sons we know the solvent in which those virtues perished: that solvent was the greed, the insatiate greed, of gold--'auri sacra fames'--the rot of luxury. 'more deadly than arms,' juvenal magnificently exclaims, 'luxury has swept down upon us, and avenges the conquered world.' ...... 'sævior armis luxuria incubuit, victumque ulciscitur orbem.'" from rome we are taken, in the fifth discourse, delivered on the th december, , to the making and the racial re-shaping of italy, that began with the fifth century. all through these discourses the speaker laid great stress upon the ethnological history of the european races, as he turned to one after another, and essayed to trace their artistic idiosyncracy and their artistic evolution. italy is, to the ethnologist as well as to the art student, one of the most interesting countries in europe. rome almost alone, among the italian provinces, retained her racial and æsthetic peculiarities, unaffected to the end of the chapter; and even when she wielded "the sceptre of the christian world," still she produced no one flower of native genius, we are reminded, unless giulio romano, that "brawny and prolific plagiarist of raphael," as leighton well stigmatizes him, be thought a genius; which criticism forbid! it was different with tuscany, where the introduction of new racial elements had a distinct effect. this "new amalgam" produced in the field of art, we are told, an infinitely nobler and more exquisite result than had grown out of the old conditions. still, however, the old etruscan allied grace and harsh strength lingered on in the art of christian etruria. "of the subtle graces which breathe in that art, from giotto to lionardo, it is needless to speak; and surely in the rugged angularities of a verocchio, a signorelli, or a donatello, and in the shadow of sadness which broods over so much of the finest florentine work, the more sombre phase of the etruscan temper still lives on." in the end, if we try to account for the artistic power and mastery of one people in italy, and the lack of that power in another, we are driven to the conclusion that the source of the artistic gift is hidden and obscure. one may cite the opposite examples of venice and of genoa,--the one so masterfully artistic; the other so impotent. and yet the same favouring conditions, _à priori_, might have seemed to exist for both. with the intermingling of the peoples, and the rejuvenescence of the physical life, came the spiritual outburst of christianity. and the influence, again, of christianity upon italian art was immense. in place of joy in the ideals of bodily perfection, "loathing of the body and its beauty, as of the vehicle of all temptation, a yearning for a life in which the flesh should be shaken off, a spirit of awe, of pity, and of love, became the moving forces that shaped its creations." after great religious periods, we often find that great scientific periods follow. the ethical impulse that religion gives, is converted into other forms of energy, by reason of man's awakened consciousness of the meaning of things, physical and material as well as spiritual. [illustration: study of a head] in italy a reaction against the christian doctrine of the degradation of the flesh led to a new recognition of the beauty of man and of his physical environment. anatomy and perspective were studied, accordingly, with a new sense of their significance in art. the spirit of science led to "such amazing studies of leaf and flower as lionardo loved to draw. thus to tuscan artists the new movement brought the love of nature, and the light of science." we come upon dante and petrarch in this discourse, in tracing the history of italian art during the centuries of transition: "with dante we reach the threshold of the renaissance. he stands on the verge of the middle ages; in him the old order ends. with petrarch the new order begins." it is not so much as a poet, however, that petrarch counts in this process from one period to another; but rather as an intellectual pioneer, leading the way into the great pagan world. petrarch "was the first humanist," in short. we cannot stay to dwell upon the effect of the humanists and all they stood for, good and evil, in italian art and letters. we pass on, now, from petrarch and the influence the movement had on italian literature, to its effect on italian art. the renaissance did not affect art in the same way, as botticelli may serve to show. "but perhaps," said the lecturer, "the various operations in the province of art of the two main motive forces of the renaissance--the impulse towards the scientific study of nature, and the impulse to reinstate the classic spirit--may be best illustrated by reference to lionardo da vinci, raphael, and michael angelo." the passages in which leighton characterised these three masters are among the most striking of all those uttered by him within the walls of the academy. lionardo's scientific "avidity of research," raphael's "classic serenity," and angelo's "mediæval ardour," are turned to admirable effect in the pages of this discourse; and the tribute paid to them on the part of an english painter who has zealously sought to live and work in the light of their great examples, has indeed an interest that is personal, in a sense, as well as general and critical. take this concluding sentence upon raphael: "whatever was best in the classic spirit was absorbed and eagerly assimilated by him, and imparted to the work of his best day that rhythm, that gentle gravity, and that noble plenitude of form, which are its stamp, and proclaim him the brother of mozart and of sophocles." or this, again, on michael angelo, as distinguishing him from raphael: "the type of human form which he lifted to the fullest expressional force is the last development of a purely indigenous conception of human beauty, whereas the type which we know as raphaelesque is a classic ideal warmed with christian feeling. sublimely alone as buonarotti's genius stands, towering and unapproached, ... it does but mark the highest summit reached in the magnificent continuity of its evolution, by the purely native genius of tuscan art." having arrived at tuscan art, and at michael angelo, in whom it reaches its consummate development, we leave italy, and turn now to the description of art in spain, given by lord leighton in his discourse of december, . and first we have some account of the extraordinarily various racial strains which were contributed to form the significant figure of the fifteenth-century spaniard. on the ancient iberian stock was grafted celtic, greek, phoenician, and carthaginian blood; and to these infusions succeeded the great invasion of the visigoths of the fifth century. [illustration: study of a head] "the art of spain," he said, "was, at the outset, wholly borrowed, and from various sources; we shall see heterogeneous, imported elements, assimilated sometimes in a greater or less degree, frequently flung together in illogical confusion, seldom, if ever, fused into a new, harmonious whole by that inner welding fire which is genius; and we shall see in the sixteenth century a foreign influence received and borne as a yoke"--(that of the italian renaissance) "because no living generative force was there to throw it off--with results too often dreary beyond measure; and, finally, we shall meet this strange freak of nature, a soil without artistic initiative bringing forth the greatest initiator--observe, i do not say the greatest artist--the greatest initiator perhaps since lionardo in modern art--except it be his contemporary rembrandt--diego velasquez." in his discourse of december, , we have, rapidly sketched, the evolution of art in france. touching again on the question of race, the lecturer adduced the great race of gauls, submitting first to roman, and afterwards to frankish, or teutonic, domination and admixture. the main characteristics of the gaulish people he judges to be, "a love of fighting and a magnificent bravery, great impatience of control, a passion for new things, a swift, brilliant, logical intelligence, a gay and mocking spirit--for 'to laugh,' says rabelais, 'is the proper mark of man,'--an inextinguishable self-confidence." with the reign of charlemagne began the development of the architecture of france, but not until the tenth and eleventh centuries did the "movement reach its full force; and its development was due mainly to the great monastic community, which, founded by st. benedict early in the sixth century, had poured from the heights of monte cassino its beneficent influence over western europe." here we have it explained how the principle of gothic architecture, "the substitution of a balance of active forces for the principle of inert resistance," was gradually evolved. this principle once found, gothic architecture reached its most splendid period in a wonderfully short space of time; cathedrals and churches were built everywhere, and before the end of the thirteenth century, the most splendid gothic buildings were begun or completed. with the end of the thirteenth century gothic architecture began to decline, lured by the "fascination of the statical _tour de force_, the craving to bring down to an irreducible minimum the amount of material that would suffice to the stability of a building extravagantly lofty." many more extracts we would gladly make, whether from the account of the french sculpture of this period, marked as it was by "sincerity and freshness, often by great beauty and stateliness;" or from the criticism of such artists as jean cousin, who painted windows which were "limpid with hues of amethyst, sapphire, and topaz, and fair as a may morning;" or again, of watteau, of whom we are told that "in the vivacity and grace of his drawing, in the fascination of his harmonies, rich and suave at once, in the fidelity with which he reflected his times without hinting at their coarseness, this wizard of the brush remains one of the most interesting, as he is one of the most fascinating, masters of his country's art." in the discourse of the history of gothic architecture was pursued, from its native france to its adopted home in germany. at the end of last century goethe declared that not only was the gothic style native to germany, but no other nation had a peculiar style of its own; "for," he said, "the italians have none, and still less the frenchmen"! according to leighton, "the germans, as a race, were, speaking broadly, never at one in spirit with ogival architecture. the result was such as you would expect; in the use of a form of architecture which was not of spontaneous growth in their midst, and unrestrained, moreover, as they were, by a sound innate instinct of special fitness, german builders were often led into solecisms, incongruities, and excesses, from which in the practice of their native style they have been largely free." of this style, which may be called the german-romanesque, the best examples are to be found among the churches of the rhineland. in the thirteenth century this style, admirably as it expressed the genius of the teuton, succumbed to invading french influence. "i have often wondered," he continued, "at the strange contrast between the reticent and grave sobriety of the architecture of germany before the fall of the hohenstaufens, and its erratic self-indulgence in the gothic period." there is much, however, to be said in praise of the gothic churches of germany, their fine colouring, suggestiveness, and variety. take the description of the church of st. lorenz in nuremberg. "nothing could well be more delightful than the impression which you receive on entering it; the beauty of the dark brown stone, the rich hues of the stained glass, the right relation of tone value, to use a painter's term, between the structure and the lights--the sombre blazoned shields which cluster along the walls, the succession on pier beyond pier of pictures powerful in colour and enhanced by the gleaming gold of fantastic carven frames, above all the succession of picturesque objects in mid-air above you, a large chandelier, a stately rood-cross, and to crown all, veit stoss's masterpiece, the annunciation, rich with gold and colour; all these things conspire to produce a whole, delightful and poetic, in spite of much that invites criticism in the architectural forms themselves." still more interesting is the word-picture of the great cathedral of cologne, "a monument of indomitable will, of science, and of stylistic orthodoxy ... its beautiful rhythm, its noble consistency and unity, its soaring height, rivet the beholder's gaze"; and yet, the building, in spite of all, does not entirely convince: "the kindling touch of genius" seems to be wanting. take, finally, this description of albert dürer: "he was a man of a strong and upright nature, bent on pure and high ideals, a man ever seeking, if i may use his own characteristic expression, to make known through his work the mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart; he was a thinker, a theorist, and as you know, a writer; like many of the great artists of the renaissance, he was steeped also in the love of science.... superbly inexhaustible as a designer, as a draughtsman he was powerful, thorough, and minute to a marvel, but never without a certain almost caligraphic mannerism of hand, wanting in spontaneous simplicity--never broadly serene. in his colour he was rich and vivid, not always unerring in his harmonies, not alluring in his execution--withal a giant." with this tribute to a great predecessor we must leave these discourses, which need, to be properly appreciated, to be studied as a whole; as indeed they form leighton's deliberate exposition of his whole principles of aesthetics. in working this out, discourse by discourse, he was not content to rely upon convenient literary sources, or previously acquired knowledge of his subject; but undertook special journeys, and spent long periods, abroad, to procure his own evidence at first hand. this gives his discourses all the value of original research, based on new materials, to add to their purely critical value. had they been completed, they would have formed an invaluable contribution to the history and the philosophy of art. chapter ix lord leighton's home if we seek for practical expression of leighton's sympathy for decorative art, we may find it most satisfactorily in his own home as it appeared during his life. mr. george aitchison, r.a., designed the whole house;--even the arab hall being largely built from drawings made specially by him in moorish spain. although the exterior of no. , holland park road has individuality, rather than distinction, it was within that its special charms were found. one of the first things seen on entering was a striking bronze statue, "icarus," by mr. alfred gilbert; a typical instance of leighton's generous recognition of artistic contemporaries. in earlier pages we spoke of the arab hall and its oriental enchantment. no attempt to paint the effects of such an interior in words can call it up half as clearly as the slightest actual drawing. there is a dim dome above, and a fountain falling into a great black marble basin below; there are eight little arched windows of stained glass in the dome; and there are white marble columns, whose bases are green, whose capitals are carved with rare and curious birds, supporting the arches of the alcoves. the cairo lattice-work in the lower arched recesses lets in only so much of the hot light of midsummer (for it is in summer that one should see it to appreciate its last charm), as consists with the coolness, and the quiet, and the perfect oriental repose, which give the chamber its spell. [illustration: the house: the inner hall] more in what we may call the highway of the house, from entrance hall to studios, is the large hall, out of which the arab hall leads, and from which the dark oak staircase ascends with walls tiled in blue and white. here, on every side, one saw all manner of lovely paintings and exquisite _bric-à-brac_: a drawing of _the fontana della tartarughe in rome_ by leighton's old mentor, steinle; other bronzes and paintings, and in full view a huge stuffed peacock, which seemed to have shed some of its brilliant hues upon its surroundings. in the drawing-room hung many corots and constables, with a superb daubigny, and a most tempting example of george mason,--a picture of a girl driving calves on a windy hill, amid a perfect embarrassment of such artistic riches. the famous corots, a sequence of panels, representing _morning_, _noon_, _evening_, and _night_, which cost lord leighton less than , francs each, were sold for , guineas for the four, at christie's, in july, . still another small corot, a picture of a boat afloat on a still lake, was also in this room. one of the constables that hung there is literally historic--for it is the sketch for that famous _hay wain_ which, exhibited in paris, at once upset the classical tradition, and gave impetus to the whole modern school of french landscape. near it was one of constable's many pictures of hampstead heath,--simply a bit of dark heath against a sympathetic sky; but so painted as to be a masterpiece of its kind. these pictures were but a few of the many artfully disposed things of beauty, born in older italy, or newer france, or in our new-old london. upon the staircase there were pictures at every turn to make one pause, step by step, on the way. sir joshua reynolds was represented by an unfinished canvas of lord rockingham, in which the great burke, in his minor function of secretary, also figures. then came g. f. watts's earlier portrait of leighton himself; and here a genuine tintoretto. there was the p.r.a.'s famous _portrait of captain burton_; and over a doorway his early painting of _the plague at florence_, with another early work, _romeo and juliet_, one of his very few shakespearean pictures. from the landing whence most of these things were visible, you entered at once the great studio. round the upper wall ran a cast of the parthenon frieze, and beneath this the wall on one side was riddled and windowed, as it were, with innumerable framed pictures, small studies of foreign scenes; so that one looked out in turn upon italy and the south, egypt and the east, or upon an irish sunset, or a scottish mountain-side. opposite these, below the great window, were many of the artist's miniature wax models and studies. else, the ordinary not unpicturesque lumber of an artist's studio was conspicuously absent. the secret of leighton's despatch and careful ordering of his days, was to be read, indeed, in every detail of his work-a-day surroundings. even in a dim antechamber, with a trellised niche most mysteriously overlooking the arab hall, at one end of the studio, in which the curious visitor might have expected to find dusty studies, discarded canvases, and other such æsthetic remnants,--even that was found to contain not lumber, but a sebastian del piombo, a sketch of sappho by delacroix, a landscape by costa, a madonna and child of sano di pietro del piombo. at the extreme other end of the main studio was the working studio of glass, built to combat the fogs by procuring whatever vestige of light kensington may accord in its most november moods. the last addition to the building, not long before lord leighton's death, was a gallery, known as "the music room," expressly designed to receive his pictures--mostly gifts from contemporary artists; or, to speak more accurately, works that had been exchanged for others in a wholly non-commercial spirit. these included, _shelling peas_, by sir j. e. millais, _the corner of the studio_, by sir l. alma-tadema, _the haystacks_, and _venus_, by g. f. watts, and _chaucer's dream of good women_, by sir e. burne-jones. such was the daily environment of that hard, unceasing, indefatigable labour which, natural faculty taken for granted, is always the secret of an artist's extraordinary production. and it was an environment, as one felt on leaving it for the gray london without, that well accorded with the radiant painted procession of the figures, classic and other, that file through lord leighton's pictures. chapter x lord leighton's house in in the preceding chapter a picture is drawn of the "house beautiful," as it was in lord leighton's lifetime. it was then full to overflowing with all manner of treasures; but now all that were removable have been dispersed. only the shell, the house itself, remains. yet denuded as it is, that is still well worth looking at. the architectural features to which mr. rhys, dazzled by other things, hardly did justice, are now all the more apparent. one of the rarest of all accomplishments, at any rate in england, is a cultivated taste in architecture; but it so happened that amongst his many acquirements lord leighton possessed it in a remarkable degree. in fact he received, although a painter by profession, the gold medal of the royal institute of british architects in virtue of the intimate knowledge of architecture he had displayed in some of his backgrounds--for instance, those of the frescoes at south kensington. it is a great honour, and one by no means lightly bestowed. at any rate, when there was a question of building himself a house, though he might not have been able to build it himself, he was thoroughly qualified to choose an architect. his choice fell upon professor aitchison, now r.a., and he probably hit upon the only man of his generation able to put his feeling into bricks and mortar, viz., the feeling for a beauty sedate, delicate, and dignified. we must remember the condition of things architectural in the sixties to do justice to the independence of employer and architect. it was a time when the albert memorial was possible, and when men tried to guide their steps by the light of "the seven lamps of architecture." a sentimental fancy for gothic based on irrational grounds was all but universal, and it needed courage to avow a preference for the classical. the compromise in favour of quaintness and capricious prettiness which began under the name of the "queen anne style," and has contributed so many picturesque and pleasing buildings to our modern london, had not yet budded. nor would it ever at any time of his life have thoroughly responded to leighton's taste. so long as he could detect a defect he was dissatisfied, and extreme nicety is not what the dutch style pretends to. it depends upon a picturesque combination of forms of no great refinement in themselves, but which give a varied skyline and a pretty play of light and shade. it amuses at the first glance, and as it rarely demands a second, it is well suited to turbid atmospheres, which blur outlines, and a chilly climate in which people cannot loiter out of doors. moreover, the old-world memories it evokes, although in a minor degree than was the case with the gothic, contribute to its facile popularity. but the classical taste is a love for form and delicate beauty of line _as such_, quite irrespective of any associations which may accompany them, or lamps, be they seven or seventy times seven. and to build his house in this style was the natural thing for a sculptor and fastidious seeker after the ideal in form. he found the man he wanted in professor aitchison. we must go over the outside and inside of the house, but rapidly; for to do more than just indicate the points worth attention would be waste of effort. to convey an idea of the feelings produced by architecture is perhaps possible, but it is perfectly vain to hope to picture it or reproduce in words the actual beauties of proportion or of colour. those who wish to verify them must see for themselves and examine the building carefully. the aspect of the house as seen from the street is, it must be admitted, hardly symmetrical; but it is evident also that the first design has been much altered and added to. at one end the arab hall, with its dome and "bearded" battlements, is an obvious afterthought, in great contrast with the serious simplicity of the rest. and at the other end the glass studio, which was added later still, is also clearly an excrescence. the centre part was the original house, and the studio was the chief feature of it, and very much as it is now. it is, of course, on the north side, and the street, the south side, is occupied by small rooms which, with their repeated small openings, offer no great scope for designing. still, the whole has that look of dignity which always accompanies high finish; and the entrance, far from being commonplace, because it has nothing quaint or surprising about it, has a certain ample serenity which it is rare to find. the mouldings of stonework and woodwork, few and simple as they are, are not taken out of a pattern-book, as is usually the case, but are specially designed each for its own position. all the refinement of a building consists in its mouldings, and no one has designed mouldings better than professor aitchison. a vast improvement has been made in this respect in the last twenty years or so, and it is largely due to his influence. at any rate he was one of the first and he remains the best of modern designers of mouldings. there are some fine examples of his work in the house. on the north the house looks into a fair-sized garden, skilfully planted, so that it looks much larger than it is. in the mind of the writer this aspect is intimately bound up with the recollection of delightful sunday mornings in summer, when he sat chatting on random subjects with the president, who, in slippers, a so-called "land and water hat," and a smock frock, leant back in a garden-chair and talked as no one else could. the quiet, the sun overhead, the grass under our feet, the green trees around us, and the house visible between them, form an ineffaceable picture of æsthetic contentment it is a delight to recall. it recurred every sunday whenever the weather was fine and warm. then it was that there was leisure to appreciate the admirable symmetry of the architecture; for in england it is so rare to sit out of doors where one may look at architecture that even if architects were to design exteriors with all the subtlety of a brunelleschi or a bramante, they would seldom get anyone to notice their work. the studio occupies the whole of the upper story, and the architect had a good opportunity, as there was no need to cut it up as is the case when several rooms have to be provided for, by numerous uniform lights. here, in the centre, is one great light between wide spaces of wall judiciously divided by string courses, and in the upper part on either side of the great window is a row of three small windows. at the east end is a small door leading into a pretty little venetian balcony with stone parapet. the whole makes a very beautiful building, and the details and proportions are all worth examining. this central part was what one saw through the trees as one sat in the garden. less visible were the glass studio on its iron columns, an excellent piece of work, considering its few possibilities, and the arab hall at the other end. of course the latter looks a little incongruous. it is a professed reproduction of arab architecture, but carried out, like the rest of the house, with unstinted expense, care, and finish. we will now go inside by the front door. the cornice of the ceiling of the vestibule first entered is singularly fine. like every other good artist professor aitchison improved as he went on, and this is one of his latest designs in mouldings. when the entrance was altered some years before the president's death, an opportunity occurred for putting in a new ceiling. passing on into the hall one comes upon a very picturesque arrangement of staircase. it is lit from above by a broad skylight. the stairs begin to rise against the wall of the dining-room which is recessed; while on the first floor the wall of the studio is projected and carried on columns, beyond which the stairs rise. so that figures coming through the hall in the light, begin mounting the stairs in the shadow, and re-emerge into the light, as the stairs turn, with a very varied and striking effect. by the first short flight of steps, and between the two columns, is a seat made of a persian chest or cassone, beautiful and unusual in shape, and richly inlaid. lord leighton bought it in rhodes or lindos, and was very proud of it. it could not be removed and sold with the rest of the treasures at christie's as it was a "fixture." the floor of the hall is of marble mosaic, mostly black and white. only one small piece by the dining-room door, a very agreeable design, is in pinkish marbles. [illustration: the house: the arab hall] on the left, down a short passage, is the arab hall. it is so unlike anything else in europe that its reputation has withdrawn all attention from the rest of the house. it certainly is a most sumptuous piece of work. elsewhere leighton satisfied his love of chastened form; in this room and its approach he gave full scope to his delight in rich colours. the general scheme is a peacock blue, known technically as egyptian green, and gold, with plentiful black and white. here and there tiny spots of red occur, but they are rare. the harmony begins in the staircase hall. the walls, except in the recessed part, where there are genuine oriental tiles, are lined to the level of the first floor with tiles of a fine blue, from the kilns of mr. de morgan, and the soffitt of the stairs is coloured buff, with gold spots. in the passage the tone increases in richness. the ceiling is silver and the cornice gold, while the walls, except for a fine panel of oriental tiles over the drawing-room door, are lined with the same tiles as the staircase. then between two grand columns of red caserta marble, with gilt capitals modelled by randolph caldecott, we pass into the arab hall itself, and we come upon the full magnificence of the effect. it is made up of polished marbles of many colours, gilt and sculptured capitals, alabaster, shining tiles, glistening mosaic of gold and colours, brass and copper in the hanging corona, and coloured glass in the little pierced windows, in fact, of every form of enrichment yet devised by eastern or western art. from the floor, which is black and white, the tone rises through blue to lose itself in the gloom of a golden dome, sparsely lit by jewel-like coloured lights. in the centre a jet of water springs up, to fall back into a basin of black marble. the form of the basin which deepens towards the centre in successive steps, is an adaptation of the pattern of a well-known oriental fountain. all is equally black in this pool, and the border unfortunately is barely distinguishable from the water. after a dinner party at which sir e. burne-jones, mr. whistler, mr. albert moore, and many others were present, i recollect how, when we were smoking and drinking coffee in this hall, somebody, excitedly discoursing, stepped unaware right into the fountain. two large japanese gold tench, whose somnolent existence was now for the first time made interesting, dashed about looking for an exit, and there was a general noise of splashing and laughter. the dark, apparently fathomless pool was rather a mistake. mishaps like that just mentioned occurred, i believe, more than once. there had been at first a white marble basin, but it did not give satisfaction, because, being in several pieces, it leaked, whereas the black one is all cut out of one block, at great expense, of course. but the white had the advantage of lightness where light is none too plentiful. in our winter, when days are dark and cold, black pools, with marble columns and floors, tiled walls, and dim domes about them do not fall in with english notions of cosy woollen comfort. the season to do justice to this hall is when summer comes round. when the sun breaks through the lattice work of the musharabiyehs, and the light is thrown up on the storied tiles, and up the polished columns to the glinting mosaic, to die away in the golden cupola, the effect is indeed superb, and to sit on the divan, by the splash of the fountain, and look from the glories within to the green trees without, is to live not in london but in the veritable arabian nights. the hall is square. on one side is the entrance. in the centre of each of the other sides is a lofty arched recess. those to the north and south are windows, shuttered with genuine musharabiyehs bought in cairo and having deep cushioned divans. the recess to the west has only a small pierced window high up. it has a raised step, and in it used to stand certain bronze reproductions from pompeii, with pots, vases, etc., now gone. some of the tiles were bought in damascus in . the price paid was £ for the complete tile surface of one room. what would they be worth now? others, particularly the great inscription spoken of below, were bought later in cairo, and the rest at odd times. here and there are single tiles, but most of them are in sets forming fine panels. an interesting one, in the south-east corner, represents hawks clutching their prey, cheetahs and deer, a hunter, etc., and another has herons, fish, tortoises, deer, etc. set into the woodwork in the western recess are four tiles with female figures. these are either persian or come from the neighbourhood of persia, for the anatolian or egyptian mahommedan tolerated no representations of life. the rest repeat in pleasing variety the usual motives of oriental design, viz., vines, cypresses, pinks and vases, doorways (? the entrances of mosques), with hanging lamps, and conventional floral designs. above the entrance runs the chief treasure, the grand series of tiles bearing the great inscription. it is about sixteen feet long. according to mr. harding smith it may be translated thus: "in the name of the merciful and long-suffering god. the merciful hath taught the koran. he hath created man and taught him speech. he hath set the sun and moon in a certain course. both the trees and the grass are in subjection to him." it cannot be said that there is anything very new in that. there rarely is in such inscriptions. there are three others, but so far as they have been deciphered they appear to be incomplete, and in two cases, at any rate, to much the same effect as the big one. just pious reminders. the real interest of them lies in the decorative effect of the imposing procession of letters across the wall, and the splendour of their colours. for beauty and condition this great inscription is said to be without a rival in any collection in europe. let into the woodwork panelling in the west bay there are two small lustred persian tiles of the thirteenth century. they have been mutilated as to the faces of the figures by true believers. the rest belong to the sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries, a time when artistic production was stimulated by the commercial wealth brought by the trade of venice and genoa with the east through anatolia, damascus and cairo. round three sides above the tiles runs a decorative mosaic frieze, by walter crane, of an arabesque design on a gold ground. it is a beautiful and fanciful piece of work in itself, and it serves moreover to blend the prevailing colour of the tiles with the gilding of the upper regions. but it does not continue round the fourth side, because over the entrance, above the great inscription, an oriel window of musharabiyeh work looks down into the hall from the first floor of the house. the pierced windows, or at least eight of them, were brought from cairo, and when bought had the original glass in them; but in the east the glass is stuck in with white of egg, and as they were, as usual, ill-packed, the glass all came out and was ground to fragments in the jolting of the journey. only enough could be saved to fill the window in the upper part of the west recess opposite the entrance. the remainder had to be filled with english imitations. returning now to the staircase, we find it ends on the first floor in a landing leading to the great studio. on the left it is open to the little studio; so-called because, having a skylight, lord leighton used it for painting out-of-door effects until he had the glass studio built. adjoining it, or forming an extension of it, is another room, built only a year or two before the late owner's death. after the addition of the glass studio the two were only used as an antechamber, and were hung with the pictures presented by brother artists, and with a few old masters. the mouldings round the skylights are very pretty. the latticed window before mentioned looks down from the little studio into the arab hall. the great studio is a large room about sixty feet by twenty-five and about seventeen in height. in the centre of the north side is the lofty window forming a bay and extending into a skylight in the top. high up on either side of it are the three small openings mentioned when speaking of the exterior. a curtain hangs in front of them, and in point of fact they were never used. in the west wall is an apse with a gilt semi-dome, which appears in some of lord leighton's pictures. across the east end runs a gallery at about eight feet from the floor with bookshelves under it on either side, and in the middle a broad passage leads into the glass studio, and still outside this is a wide balcony looking into the garden. casts of a portion of the panathenaic frieze of the parthenon run along the upper part of the wall of the great studio, fit emblem of the lifelong devotion of the president to classic art. such then is the workshop. even now, comparatively bare as it is at the present moment of writing, this is one of the most picturesque suites of rooms in existence; but to see it on one of the grand occasions of leighton's musical receptions was a very different sight and one not easily to be forgotten. then when walls and easels were covered with pictures, when rare carpets hung from the gallery, flowers and palms filled the bay window, beautiful women and men of every form of distinction crowded the floor to listen to joachim and piatti, nothing was wanting which could give beauty or interest to the spectacle. it will be seen that the house is still rich in artistic beauty and still has objects of value. but the most precious of its contents are after all its associations. its floors have been trodden by all that was most notable in the society of its owner's day, people whose names alone would be an epitome of our times. it was also the workshop of a great artist. but, above all, it was the centre of a great influence which profoundly modified english art. whatever judgment the future may pass upon his own productions, the fact must never be lost sight of that even without them leighton was a great man. intellectually, spiritually, and socially he was the most brilliant leader and stimulator of artists we have ever seen in england. his earnest example and lifelong persistence fanned the flame of enthusiasm among all branches of art workers. he taught englishmen to study form, and it was under his encouragement that sculpture, which was fallen so low, has now risen into so good a place. finally he did more than anyone else has done to raise the status of the artist in society. the house which he built himself was his hobby, and in the refinement and catholicity of taste it shows, there is so just a reflex of his characteristics that an account of it is indispensable to any book which claims to describe the man. s. pepys cockerell. chapter xi the artist and his critics before closing our record it will be well to quote, as we promised earlier, some of the contemporary criticism that sir frederic's work has encountered from time to time; and especially the criticism of his earlier performances, while he was still in the years of his pre-academic probation. as a provocation to criticism, most interesting of all is his picture, the _cimabue's madonna carried in procession through the streets of florence_, upon which we have already commented. as we may here remind our readers, it was painted at rome chiefly, in - , and was exhibited at the academy of . in that year, as good fortune would have it, mr. ruskin issued for the first time, "notes on some of the principal pictures exhibited in the rooms of the royal academy." some pages of this famous pronouncement are devoted to this very picture, and we cannot do better than quote freely from a criticism so remarkable. "this is a very important and very beautiful picture," says mr. ruskin. "it has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of venetian art--that is to say, on the calm acceptance of the whole of nature, small and great, as, in its place, deserving of faithful rendering. the great secret of the venetians was their simplicity. they were great colourists, not because they had peculiar secrets about oil and colour, but because when they saw a thing red, they painted it red; and ... when they saw it distinctly, they painted it distinctly. in all paul veronese's pictures, the lace borders of the table cloths or fringes of the dresses are painted with just as much care as the faces of the principal figures; and the reader may rest assured that in all great art it is so. everything in it is done as well as it _can_ be done. thus in the picture before us, in the background is the church of san miniato, strictly accurate in every detail; on the top of the wall are oleanders and pinks, as carefully painted as the church; the architecture of the shrine on the wall is well studied from thirteenth-century gothic, and painted with as much care as the pinks; the dresses of the figures, very beautifully designed, are painted with as much care as the faces: that is to say, all things throughout with as much care as the painter could bestow. it necessarily follows that what is most difficult (_i.e._ the faces) should be comparatively the worst done. but if they are done as well as the painter could do them, it is all we have to ask; and modern artists are under a wonderful mistake in thinking that when they have painted faces ill, they make their pictures more valuable by painting the dresses worse. "the painting before us has been objected to because it seems broken up in bits. precisely the same objection would hold, and in very nearly the same degree, against the best works of the venetians. all faithful colourists' work, in figure-painting, has a look of sharp separation between part and part.... although, however, in common with all other works of its class, it is marked by these sharp divisions, there is no confusion in its arrangement. the principal figure is nobly principal, not by extraordinary light, but by its own pure whiteness; and both the master and the young giotto attract full regard by distinction of form and face. the features of the boy are carefully studied, and are indeed what, from the existing portraits of him, we know those of giotto must have been in his youth. the head of the young girl who wears the garland of blue flowers is also very sweetly conceived. "such are the chief merits of the picture. its defect is that the equal care given to the whole of it is not yet _care enough_. i am aware of no instance of a young painter, who was to be really great, who did not in his youth paint with intense effort and delicacy of finish. the handling here is much too broad; and the faces are, in many instances, out of drawing, and very opaque and feeble in colour. nor have they in general the dignity of the countenance of the thirteenth century. the dante especially is ill-conceived--far too haughty, and in no wise noble or thoughtful. it seems to me probable that mr. leighton has greatness in him, but there is no absolute proof of it in this picture; and if he does not, in succeeding years, paint far better, he will soon lose the power of painting so well." to mr. ruskin's account, which is sufficient to enable one to realize the picture in some detail, we may add further the criticism of the "athenæum" of may th, , which is interesting as showing how the work affected a contemporary critic of another order. it speaks of mr. leighton as "a young artist who, we believe, has studied in italy," and goes on to say: "there can be no question that the picture is one of great power, although the composition is quaint even to sectarianism; and though the touch, in parts broad and masterly, is in the lesser parts of the roughest character." the last clause of the sentence bears out, it may be perceived, a significant indictment in mr. ruskin's deliverance, which lays stress on a defect that the artist, in his maturer brush-work, does not show. rossetti, writing to his friend william allingham, may th, , says: "there is a big picture of _cimabue_, one of his works in procession, by a new man, living abroad, named leighton--a huge thing, which the queen has bought, which everyone talks of. the r.a.'s have been gasping for years for someone to back against hunt and millais, and here they have him, a fact that makes some people do the picture injustice in return. it was _very_ uninteresting to me at first sight; but on looking more at it, i think there is great richness of arrangement, a quality which, when _really_ existing, as it does in the best old masters, and perhaps hitherto in no living man--at any rate english--ranks among the great qualities. "but i am not quite sure yet either of this or of the faculty for colour, which i suspect exists very strongly, but is certainly at present under a thick veil of paint, owing, i fancy, to too much continental study. one undoubted excellence it has--facility, without much neatness or ultra-cleverness in the execution, which is greatly like that of paul veronese; and the colour may mature in future works to the same resemblance, i fancy. there is much feeling for beauty, too, in the women. as for purely intellectual qualities, expression, intention, etc., there is little as yet of them; but i think that in art richness of arrangement is so nearly allied to these, that where it exists (in an earnest man) they will probably supervene. however, the choice of subject, though interesting in a certain way, leaves one quite in the dark as to what faculty the man may have for representing incident or passionate emotion. but i believe, as far as this showing goes, that he possesses qualities which the mass of our artists aim at chiefly, and only seem to possess. whether he have those of which neither they nor he give sign, i cannot tell; but he is said to be only twenty-four years old. there is something very french in his work, at present, which is the most disagreeable thing about it; but this i dare say would leave him if he came to england."[ ] in the year following leighton's academical _début_, he exhibited a picture entitled _the triumph of music_, which the "athenæum," hereafter so sympathetic towards his work, described as "anything but a triumph of art." partly, perhaps, because of the general tone of discouragement in all the criticisms of this year, the artist did not send in anything to the academy of . in his two pictures--_the fisherman and the syren_, and _count paris_, although admirably conceived, and extremely interesting to us now, received no word of friendly criticism that is worth recording. at the academy of were exhibited two pictures by him, which served to reassure at last those critics who had been shaking their heads over his supposed inability to follow up his first success. we turn to the "athenæum" again, to study its gradual conversion from an attitude of critical distrust to one of critical sympathy: "mr. leighton," says the "athenæum," "after a temporary eclipse, struggles again to light. his heads of italian women this year are worthy of a young old master: anything more feeling, commanding, or coldly beautiful, we have not seen for many a day.... this is real painting, and we cannot but think that a painter who can paint so powerfully will soon be able to surpass that processional picture of his,..." _i.e._, the _cimabue_. in , the artist, who then entered upon his thirtieth year, exhibited a small picture, _capri, sunrise_, which won great praise for its successful treatment of italian landscape under the scirocco, whose sulphurous light is cast with evil suggestion upon the white houses and green vegetation. in paying his tribute to the quality of the picture, the critic of the "athenæum" cannot resist, however, the old cry of great expectations. for the effect of the _cimabue's madonna_ had aroused critics to regard the painter as one who would continue the legend of the great historical schools, and carry on the traditions of the so-called grand style. but the critic proposes, the creator disposes: the artist went his own way, following still his own ideals. in , some rather warm discussion raged over two of the artist's contributions to the royal academy, which appeared in its catalogue as nos. and , and which, it was said, had been deliberately slighted by the hanging committee. in later years, leighton must sometimes have smiled when he heard (as from his position he must needs have,) the annual plaint of the "skied." it is to the "art journal," whose criticisms, when they had to do with the new and rising schools, used to be always entertaining, if often provoking, in those days, that we turn for a contemporary account of these things, rather than to any other source. the critic having premised, with a delightful and convincing air of "i told you so!" that his first effort (the inevitable _cimabue's madonna_) having exhausted the poor artist, "he has been coming down the ladder of fame ever since," continues in characteristic tones: "instead of being hung too high, the _dream_, had it been properly hung, would have been displayed upon the ceiling." the picture, according to this authority, consisted only of a questionable combination of the "lower forms of mere decorative ornamentation," and was in fact, "not so much a picture as a very clever treatment for the centre of a ceiling." so much for what was really the first clear sign of the artist's delightful decorative faculty. it is clear from various evidences of the feeling of the critics about leighton at this time, that they had begun to look upon him as one whose ideals were frivolous, and not seriously minded, or weighted with the true british substantiality of the old academy tradition. in the very next year, the artist, by the chances of his own temperamental many-sided delight in life and art, did something to reassure his admonitors once more. no. at the royal academy of was his picture, _the star of bethlehem_, which, with some natural and not unfair deductions, won considerable praise from the critic last quoted. in this painting, which shows curiously the mingled academic and natural quality of the artist, the critic found profound incompatibilities of conception and technique; and next year, the same critic was stirred to exclaim,--"the pictures which of all others give most trouble and anxiety to the critic are perhaps those of mr. millais and mr. leighton,"--a very suggestive conjunction of names, let us add. it was probably the same critic, who speaking of the _dante at verona_, in , said gravely, "the promise given by the _cimabue_ here reaches fruition." writing in , mr. w. m. rossetti, a critic whom it is interesting to be able to cite, said of two of the artist's pictures of that year, the _girl feeding peacocks_ and the _girl with a basket of fruit_, they belong "to that class of art in which mr. leighton shines--the art of luxurious exquisiteness; beauty, for beauty's sake; colour, light, form, choice details, for their own sake, or for beauty's." in the same year, mr. rossetti spoke of the young artist as the one "british painter of special faculty who has come forward with the most decided novelty of aim"--since, that is, the new development of art under the little band of pre-raphaelites,--with which mr. w. m. rossetti was himself so closely associated. by way of contrast, we may cite the "art journal" of , which provides a most extraordinary criticism of _david_, of that year. "we would venture to ask," says this ingenious critic, "why the divine psalmist has so small a brain? within this skull there is not compass for the poet's thoughts to range. we state as a physiological fact, that a head so small, with a brow so receding, could not have belonged to any man who has made himself conspicuous in the world's history. again, descending to mere matter of costume, there cannot be a doubt that the purple mantle flung on the psalmist's shoulders is wholly wanting in study of detail, and constitutes a blot on the landscape. barring these oversights, the picture possesses merits." at this period we hear the first critical murmurs against the artist's very deliberately chosen method of flesh-painting. in , speaking of the _venus disrobing_, the "art journal" critic says: "according to the manner, not to say the mannerism, of the artist, it has a pale silvery hue, not as white as marble, not so life-glowing as flesh." with this we may compare, for the comparison is instructive, the "athenæum," whose notice is more sympathetic. the figure of the goddess it describes as "all rosy white, ... admirably drawn, and modelled with extreme care." again, in , the "art journal" says of sir frederic's _actæa_: "the artist has made some attempt to paint flesh in its freshness and transparency, and indeed the more he renounces the opacity of the german school, and the more he can realize the brilliance of the old venetian painters, the better." in , the "athenæum" praised the _sister's kiss_, as "a lovely group," but complained that the execution was a "little too smooth,"--a complaint not infrequently echoed from time to time by the artist's critics. some years later we find mr. w. m. rossetti making the same complaint in criticising _winding the skein_. in the picture, _portions of the interior of the grand mosque at damascus_, won great praise, as "a remarkably delicate piece of work, in which the beautiful colouring of the tiled walls and mosaic pavement are skilfully rendered." in , the quondam hostile "art journal" is completely converted by the _daphnephoria_: "to project such a scene upon canvas presupposes a man of high poetic imagination, and when it is accompanied by such delicacy and yet such precision of drawing and such sincerity of modelling, the poet is merged in the painter and we speak of such a one as a master. there is, indeed, nothing more consolatory to those who take an interest in british art than the knowledge that we have among us a man of such pure devotion and lofty aim." it was in , that mr. ruskin, resuming his _rôle_ of an academy critic, claimed leighton as "a kindred goth," and confessed, "i determined on writing this number of 'academy notes,' simply because i was so much delighted with mr. leslie's _school_, mr. leighton's _little fatima_, mr. hook's _hearts of oak_, and mr. couldery's _kittens_." in his lectures on the art of england, the same critic, speaking of leighton's children, says: "it is with extreme gratitude, and unqualified admiration, that i find sir frederic condescending from the majesties of olympus to the worship of those unappalling powers, which, heaven be thanked, are as brightly anglo-saxon as hellenic; and painting for us, with a soft charm peculiarly his own, the witchcraft and the wonderfulness of childhood." upon the _egyptian slinger_ of the same year, which mr. ruskin terms the "study of man in his oriental function of scarecrow (symmetrically antithetic to his british one of game preserver)," his criticism is interesting, but adverse. the critic who elsewhere acknowledged fully the artist's acutely observant and enthusiastic study of the organism of the human body, confesses himself unable to recognize his skill, or to feel sympathy with the subjects that admit of its display. it is, he goes on to say further of the _slinger_, "it is, i do not doubt, anatomically correct, and with the addition of the corn, the poppies, and the moon, becomes semi-artistic; so that i feel much compunction in depressing it into the natural history class; and the more, because it partly forfeits its claim even to such position, by obscuring in twilight and disturbing our minds, in the process of scientific investigation, by sensational effects of afterglow and lunar effulgence, which are disadvantageous, not to the scientific observer only, but to less learned spectators; for when simple persons like myself, greatly susceptible to the influence of the stage lamps and pink side-lights, first catch sight of this striding figure from the other side of the room, and take it, perhaps, for the angel with his right foot on the sea and the left on the earth, swearing there shall be time no longer; or for achilles alighting from one of his lance-cast-long leaps on the shore of scamander, and find on near approach that all this grand straddling and turning down of the gas mean practically only a lad shying stones at sparrows, we are only too likely to pass it petulantly without taking note of what is really interesting in this eastern custom and skill." [illustration: egyptian slinger ( )] the most recent criticism of importance on the art of leighton is contained in an admirable volume by m. de la sizeranne.[ ] we take this opportunity of quoting a few sentences from an appreciation which opens with the significant remark that sir frederic leighton is officially the representative of english painting on the continent, and, in reality, the representative of continental painting in england, and concludes by tracing the definitely english ideal that underlies the artist's work. elsewhere the critic says, "ce qui est britannique en m. leighton, quoique bien voilé par son éclectisme, transparaîtra encore." apart from leighton's distinctively native predilection for certain subjects, m. de la sizeranne finds him very english in his treatment of draperies, for instance, a treatment which he traces ingeniously to the much study given to the greek drapery of the elgin marbles by the english school, since the days of the pre-raphaelites. elsewhere, taking as his text the picture _the spirit of the summit_, he says: "des sujets qui élèvent la pensée vers les sommets de la vie ou de l'histoire, de sorte qu'on ne puisse se rappeler un nez ou une jambe sans se souvenir de quelque haute leçon évangélique, ou de moins de quelque grande nécessité sociale, voilà ce que m. leighton a traité. et un style beaucoup plus sobre que celui d'overbeck, beaucoup plus viril que celui de m. bouguereau, voilà comment il les a traités." again: "la grandeur de la communion humaine, la noblesse de la paix, tel est le thème qui a le plus souvent et le mieux inspiré m. leighton. et cela il ne l'a pas trouvé en france, ni ailleurs. c'est bien une idée anglaise." no better summing up of the chronicle of the life work of the artist could well be found. but we have pursued far enough this study of an artist's progress through the thorny, devious ways of art criticism. we have reached the point, in fact, where the comparative uncertainties of an artist's career make way for the certainties. with one quotation more, in which we have a tribute from another critic, mr. comyns carr, we may fitly close: "no painter of our time," said mr. carr, "maintains a firmer or more constant adherence to those severe principles of design which have received the sanction of great example in the past. sir frederic leighton has never lowered the standard of his work in deference to any popular demand, and for this persistent devotion to his own highest ideals he deserves well of all who share his faith in the power of beauty." [illustration: elisha and the shunamite's son ( )] chapter xii conclusion in now bringing this record to a close, we will of set purpose remain true to the chronicler's function, pure and simple; attempting no profounder or more critical summing up of our subject, than consists with the plain record of a remarkable career. after a year of indifferent health, during part of which time he was ordered abroad for rest and change, being thus unable to preside at the annual banquet in may, leighton returned to england apparently convalescent. although unable to deliver the biennial presidential address, which fell due in december, , he met the students on that occasion, and apologized for not delivering the discourse which was due, in these words: "the cloud which has hung over me hangs over me still."[ ] early in a peerage was bestowed upon him, and all the world applauded the honour conferred on art in his name. on january th, , the news of his death came as a terrible surprise. the new peer, baron leighton of stretton, was buried with much state at st. paul's cathedral, before men in general had wholly recognized that lord leighton was the popular "sir frederic," the president of the royal academy, and one of the most familiar figures at any important function--at court or elsewhere. except perhaps in the case of politicians, who live in some degree by the public recognition of their personal qualities, it is difficult to render tribute gracefully and well to a contemporary. but we cannot close these pages, now, without pausing to recall how fortunate it has been that english art, for seventeen years, had as its titular head an artist whose affluent artistic faculty was but the open sign of a crowded life, loyal throughout to the great causes, high ideals, and, let us add, the early friendships, chosen long ago in the mid century. we are now at that century's end,--an end not without its reproach, as expressed by a decadence more self-conscious than dignified, more critical than creative; but in lord leighton's art there was little diminution in his active energy, and of that finer health and spirit of life, which is behind all beauty! like his distinguished friend and colleague, mr. g. f. watts (whose tribute to him as a man and as an artist has been expressed again and again in eloquent terms), leighton remained, in his later period as in his youth, generously alive to all the things that count, devoted still to the art, the current life, and the great national traditions, of his own country. from another famous colleague, sir e. j. poynter, p.r.a., one may fitly add here the following further sentences of contemporary tribute, which were written by way of dedication to his "ten lectures on art," published some years ago:--"i came to-day from the 'varnishing day' at the royal academy exhibition with a pleasant conviction that there is on all sides a more decided tendency towards a higher standard in art, both as regards treatment of subject and execution, than i have before noticed; and i have no hesitation in attributing this sudden improvement in the main to the stimulus given to us all by the election of our new president, and to the influence of the energy, thoroughness and nobility of aim which he displays in everything he undertakes. i was probably the first, when we were both young and in rome together, to whom he had the opportunity of showing the disinterested kindness which he has invariably extended to beginners, and to him, as the friend and master who first directed my ambition, and whose precepts i never fail to recall when at work (as many another will recall them), i venture to dedicate this book with affection and respect." "as we are, so our work is!" said leighton in one of the most memorable of his discourses; "and the moral effect of what we are will control the artist's work from the first touch of the brush or chisel to the last." "believe me," he concludes, in a striking passage that may very fitly serve us, too, with a conclusion to these passages, "believe me, whatever of dignity, whatever of strength we have within us, will dignify and will make strong the labours of our hands; whatever littleness degrades our spirit will lessen them and drag them down. whatever noble fire is in our hearts will burn also in our work, whatever purity is ours will also chasten and exalt it; for as we are, so our work is, and what we sow in our lives, that, beyond a doubt, we shall reap for good or for ill in the strengthening or defacing of whatever gifts have fallen to our lot." it would be superfluous to quote from the elegiac tributes which appeared in the public press after lord leighton's death, and invidious to repeat certain unkind and unjust strictures which marred the otherwise unanimous note of appreciation. it is obvious that an artist with so strongly marked a personality must needs have been fettered by the very limits he himself had set. at one time, when a painter of eminence openly expressed his preference for lord leighton's unfinished work, and begged him to keep a certain picture as "a beautiful sketch," he replied: "no, i shall finish it, and probably, as you suggest, spoil it. to complete satisfactorily is what we painters live for. i am not a great painter, but i am always striving to finish my work up to my first conception." there are many mansions in the city of art, and if the one of lord leighton's building was not to the taste of all his contemporaries, the edifice can be left to await the final test of years. fashions in taste change rapidly, and much of his finish that finds disfavour to-day may in time charm once again. a career overburdened by official honour was destined to provoke a certain amount of envious protest; but as a man, no voice has urged a word against his ideally perfect performance, not merely of his official duties, but of others which indeed were laid upon him by his position. these he obeyed without ostentation--almost without men's knowledge. his kindly help, by commendation or by commission given to young artists; his broad and tolerant view of work conceived in direct opposition to all he valued himself, was not hidden from his friends. "it is with a sense of amazement," a critic writes in a private letter, "that one afternoon after a protest that nothing he said was to be published, i heard him discuss the prospects and the works of our ultra-modern painters. even in fields beyond his sympathy he picked out the chaff from the wheat, and was judicially accurate in his verdicts of the difference between 'tweedle-dum' and 'tweedle-dee,' both one would have said, entirely unknown to him." in lord leighton british artists lost a truer friend than many of them suspected, one who wielded his power justly to all, and was more often on the side of progress than not, a power for reform that can never be estimated at its actual value, working within a highly conservative body, full of vested interests and prejudice--as is the habit of academies of art and literature abroad no less than at home. that leighton, who controlled its destinies so long, was loyal to its true interests, and never forgot the institution with which he was associated so many years is evident from his last words: "give my love to all at the academy." [illustration: bookplate of lord leighton. designed by r. anning bell.] appendix i list of principal works _with date and place of exhibition_ (_circa_). *cimabue finding giotto in the fields of florence.[ ] ( - / × in.) steinle institute (frankfort). . the duel between romeo and tybalt. ( × in.) (_circa_). the death of brunelleschi. steinle institute. . [early portrait of leighton by himself.] . *a persian pedlar. " [buffalmacco, the painter. a humorous subject, taken from vasari, was undertaken about this date.] . portrait of miss laing (lady nias). . *cimabue's celebrated madonna is carried in procession through the streets of florence. in front of the madonna, and crowned with laurels, walks cimabue himself, with his pupil giotto; behind it, arnolfo di lapo, gaddo gaddi, andrea tafi, nicola pisano, buffalmacco and simone memmi; in the corner, dante. ( - / × in.) r.a.[ ] " the reconciliation of the montagues and capulets over the dead bodies of romeo and juliet. paris international exhibition.[ ] . the triumph of music. ( × in.) r.a. "orpheus, by the power of his art, redeems his wife from hades." . *salome, the daughter of herodias. ( - / × in.) . *the mermaid (the fisherman and the syren). (from a ballad by goethe.) ( - / × - / in.) r.a. "half drew she him, half sunk he in, and never more was seen." " "count paris, accompanied by friar lawrence and a band of musicians, comes to the house of the capulets, to claim his bride: he finds juliet stretched apparently lifeless on her bed."--_romeo and juliet_, act iv., sc. . ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " reminiscence of algiers. s.s. _these were_, [a subject from keats's hymn to pan,] _in the first book of "endymion," a figure of pan under a fig-tree, with the inscription_, "_o thou, to whom broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom their ripen'd fruitage;_" _and the other_, [a pendant to the "pan,"] _the figure of a nude nymph about to bathe, with a little cupid loosening her sandal._ . sunny hours. r.a. " *roman lady (la nanna). r.a. " *nanna (pavonia). r.a. " samson and delilah. s.s. . capri--sunrise. r.a. . *portrait of mrs. sutherland orr. [mrs. s. o., a portrait.] ( × in.) r.a. " *portrait of john hanson walker, esq. ( × in.) " paolo e francesca. r.a. "ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse quando legemmo il disiato riso esser baciato da cotanto amante, questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, la bocca mi baciò tutto tremante: galeotto fu'l libro e chi lo scrisse: quel giorno più non vi legemmo avante." " a dream. r.a. ... "not yet--not yet-- still there is trial for thee, still the lot to bear (the father wills it) strife and care; with this sweet consciousness in balance set against the world, to soothe thy suffering there thy lord rejects thee not. such tender words awoke me hopeful, shriven to life on earth again from dream of heaven." " lieder ohne worte. r.a. " j. a. a study. r.a. " capri--paganos. r.a. . odalisque. r.a. " *the star of bethlehem. ( × - / in.) r.a. one of the magi, from the terrace of his house, stands looking at the star in the east; the lower part of the picture indicates a road, which he may be supposed just to have left. " sisters. r.a. " *michael angelo nursing his dying servant. ( × in.) r.a. " duett. r.a. " sea echoes. r.a. " rustic music. . jezebel and ahab, having caused naboth to be put to death, go down to take possession of his vineyard; they are met at the entrance by elijah the tishbite: r.a. "hast thou killed, and also taken possession?" " *eucharis. (a girl with a basket of fruit.) ( - / × in.) r.a. " a girl feeding peacocks. r.a. " an italian crossbow-man. ( × - / in.) r.a. . dante at verona. r.a. " *orpheus and eurydice. ( × in.) r.a. "but give them me--the mouth, the eyes,--the brow-- let them once more absorb me! one look now will lap me round for ever, not to pass out of its light, though darkness lie beyond! hold me but safe again within the bond of one immortal look! all woe that was, forgotten, and all terror that may be, defied--no past is mine, no future! look at me!" robert browning: _a fragment_. " *golden hours. ( × in.) r.a. " *portrait of the late miss lavinia i'anson. (circular, - / in.) . *david. ( × in.) r.a. "oh that i had wings like a dove! for then would i fly away and be at rest." _psalm_ lv. " mother and child. r.a. " widow's prayer. r.a. " helen of troy. r.a. "thus as she spoke, in helen's breast arose fond recollections of her former lord, her home, and parents; o'er her head she threw a snowy veil; and shedding tender tears she issued forth not unaccompanied; for with her went fair Æthra, pittheus' child. and stag-eyed clymene, her maidens twain. they quickly at the scæan gate arrived." " in st. mark's. r.a. . painter's honeymoon. r.a. " portrait of mrs. james guthrie. r.a. " syracusan bride leading wild beasts in procession to the temple of diana. r.a. (suggested by a passage in the second idyll of theocritus.) "and for her, then, many other wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a lioness." " the wise and foolish virgins. (fresco in lyndhurst church.) . *pastoral. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *greek girl dancing. (spanish dancing girl: cadiz in the old times.) ( × in.) r.a. " knuckle-bone player. r.a. " *roman mother. ( × in.) r.a. " *venus disrobing for the bath. ( × - / in.) r.a. " *portrait of mrs. john hanson walker. ( × in.) . jonathan's token to david. r.a. "and it came to pass in the morning, that jonathan went out into the field at the time appointed by david, and a little lad with him." " *portrait of mrs. frederick p. cockerell. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *portrait of john martineau, esq. ( - / × - / in.) " *ariadne abandoned by theseus; ariadne watches for his return; artemis releases her by death. ( × in.) r.a. " *acme and septimius. (circular, - / in.) r.a. "then bending gently back her head with that sweet mouth, so rosy red, upon his eyes she dropped a kiss, intoxicating him with bliss." catullus (theodore martin's translation). " *actÆa, the nymph of the shore. ( × in.) r.a. . *st. jerome. (diploma work, deposited in the academy on his election as an academician.) ( × in.) r.a. " *dÆdalus and icarus. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *electra at the tomb of agamemnon. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *helios and rhodos. ( - / × in.) r.a. . a nile woman. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " study. s.s. . *hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis. ( × - / in.) r.a. " greek girls picking up pebbles by the shore of the sea. r.a. " *cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline. ( × - / in.) r.a. " view of assiout(?) (_a sketch._) s.s. " sunrise at longsor. (_a sketch._) s.s. " view of the red mountains near cairo. (_a sketch._) s.s. . *after vespers. ( × - / in.) r.a. " *summer moon. (guildhall, .) ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " portrait of the right hon. edward ryan, secretary of the dilettanti society, for which the picture was painted. (s.p.p., .) r.a. " a condottiere. r.a. " *the industrial arts of war at the international exhibition at south kensington. (monochrome, × in.) " the captive. s.s. " an arab cafÉ, algiers. s.s. . *weaving the wreath. (guildhall, .) r.a. " moretta. (guildhall, .) ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *the industrial arts of peace. (monochrome, × in.) r.a. " a roman. s.s. " vittoria. s.s. . *moorish garden: a dream of granada. ( × in.) (guildhall, .) r.a. " old damascus: jews' quarter. r.a. " *antique juggling girl. (guildhall, .) ( - / × in.) r.a. " clytemnestra from the battlements of argos watches for the beacon fires which are to announce the return of agamemnon. r.a. " annarella, ana capri. d.g. " rubinella, capri. d.g. " lemon tree, capri. d.g. " west court of palazzo, venice. d.g. . *portion of the interior of the grand mosque of damascus. ( × in.) r.a. " *portrait of mrs. h. e. gordon ( - / × in.) r.a. " *little fatima. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " venetian girl. r.a. " *egyptian slinger. (eastern slinger scaring birds in harvest-time: moonrise.) (guildhall, .) r.a. " florentine youth. s.s. " ruined mosque in damascus. s.s. . *portrait of sir richard francis burton, k.c.m.g. (portrait of capt. richard burton, h.m. consul at trieste). ( - / × - / in.) (paris, ; melbourne, ; s.p.p., .) r.a. " *the daphnephoria. ( × in.) r.a. a triumphal procession held every ninth year at thebes, in honour of apollo and to commemorate a victory of the thebans over the Æolians of arne. (see proclus, "chrestomath," p. .) " teresina. r.a. " paolo. r.a. . *music lesson. ( - / × - / in.) (paris, .) r.a. " *portrait of miss mabel mills (the hon. mrs. grenfell). ( × in.) r.a. " *an athlete strangling a python.[ ] bronze. (paris, .) r.a. " *portrait of h. e. gordon. ( - / × in.) g.g. " an italian girl. g.g. " *study. (a little girl with fair hair, in a pink robe.) ( × in.) r.a. " a study. g.g. . *nausicaa. ( - / × - / in.) (guildhall, .) r.a. " serafina. r.a. " *winding the skein. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " a study. r.a. " *portrait of miss ruth stewart hodgson. ( - / × - / in.) g.g. " study of a girl's head. g.g. " sierra: elviza in the distance, granada. s.s. " the sierra alhama, granada. s.s. . biondina. r.a. " catarina. r.a. " *elijah in the wilderness. ( × - / in.) (paris, .) r.a. " portrait of signor g. costa. r.a. " amarilla. r.a. " a study. r.a. " portrait of the countess brownlow. r.a. " *neruccia. ( × in.) r.a. " a study. s.s. " the carraca hills. s.s. " a street in lerici. s.s. " via bianca, capri. g.g. " archway in algiers. g.g. " ruins of a mosque, damascus. g.g. " study of a donkey. g.g. " on the terrace, capri. g.g. " sketch near damascus. g.g. " view in granada. g.g. " study of a donkey, egypt. g.g. " study of a head. g.g. " nicandra. g.g. . *sister's kiss. ( × - / in.) r.a. " *iostephane. ( × in.) r.a. " the light of the harem. ( × in.) r.a. " psamathe. ( × in.) r.a. " *the nymph of the dargle (crenaia). ( - / × in.) r.a. " rubinella. g.g. " the pozzo corner, venice. winter exhibition. g.g. " jack and his cider can. " " g.g. " the painter's honeymoon. " " g.g. " winding of the skein (with sketch). " " g.g. " head of urbino. " " g.g. " steps of the bargello, florence. " " g.g. " a contrast. " " g.g. " garden at capri. " " g.g. " twenty-nine studies of heads, flowers, and draperies. " " g.g. . elisha raising the son of the shunamite. ( x in.) (guildhall, .) r.a. " portrait of the painter.[ ] r.a. " *idyll. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *portrait of mrs. stephen ralli. ( × in.) r.a. " *whispers. ( × in.) r.a. " viola. r.a. " *bianca. ( × - / in.) r.a. " portrait of mrs. algernon sartoris. g.g. . *day-dreams. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " wedded. r.a. " phryne at eleusis. ( × in.) (melbourne, .) r.a. " antigone. r.a. " "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it." _rev._ xx. . (design for a portion of a decoration in st. paul's.) r.a. " melittion. r.a. " *portrait of mrs. mocatta. ( - / × - / in.) " zeyra. g.g. . the dance: decorative frieze for a drawing-room in a private house. r.a. " *vestal. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *kittens. ( × - / in.) r.a. " memories. r.a. " *portrait of miss nina joachim. ( × in.) . *letty. ( × - / in.) r.a. " *cymon and iphigenia. ( × in.) r.a. " a nap. r.a. " sun gleams. r.a. . "... serenely wandering in a trance of sober thought." ( × in.) r.a. " portrait of the lady sybil primrose. r.a. " *portrait of mrs. a. hichens. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " music: a frieze. r.a. " phoebe. (manchester, .) r.a. " a study. g.g. " tombs of muslim saints. s.s. " mountains near ronda puerta de los vientos. s.s. . painted decoration for the ceiling of a music-room.[ ] ( ft. × ft.) r.a. " gulnihal. r.a. " *the sluggard. statue, bronze. r.a. " *needless alarms. statuette. r.a. . *the jealousy of simÆtha, the sorceress. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *the last watch of hero. ( - / × - / in., with predella - / × - / in.) r.a. "with aching heart she scanned the sea-face dim. . . . . . . . . . . lo! at the turret's foot his body lay, rolled on the stones, and washed with breaking spray." _hero and leander: musæus_ (translated by edwin arnold). " [picture of a little girl with golden hair and pale blue eyes.] "yellow and pale as ripened corn which autumn's kiss frees--grain from sheath-- such was her hair, while her eyes beneath, showed spring's faint violets freshly born." robert browning. " *design for the reverse of the jubilee medallion. (_executed for her majesty's government._) r.a. _empire, enthroned in the centre, rests her right hand on the sword of justice, and holds in her left the symbol of victorious rule. at her feet, on one side, commerce proffers wealth, on the other a winged figure holds emblems of electricity and steam-power. flanking the throne to the right of the spectator are agriculture and industry--on the opposite side, science, literature, and the arts. above, interlocking wreaths, held by winged genii representing respectively the years and , inclose the initials,_ v.r.i. . *captive andromache. ( × in.) r.a. ".... some standing by, marking thy tears fall, shall say, 'this is she, the wife of that same hector that fought best of all the trojans, when all fought for troy.'" _iliad_, vi. (e. b. browning's translation.) " *portrait of amy, lady coleridge. ( × - / in.) (s.p.p., .) r.a. " *portraits of the misses stewart hodgson. ( × - / in.) " four studies. r.w.s. " five studies. s.s. . *sibyl. ( × in.) r.a. " *invocation. ( × - / in.) r.a. " elegy. r.a. " greek girls playing at ball. ( × in.) r.a. " *portrait of mrs. francis a. lucas. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. . solitude. r.a. " *the bath of psyche.[ ] ( × - / in.) r.a. " *tragic poetess. ( × in.) r.a. " *the arab hall. ( × in.) (guildhall, .) r.a. . *perseus and andromeda. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *portrait of a. b. freeman-mitford, esq., c.b. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *return of persephone. ( × - / in.) r.a. " athlete struggling with a python--group, marble. r.a. . *"and the sea gave up the dead which were in it." (circular, in.) r.a. " at the fountain. ( × in.) r.a. " *the garden of the hesperides. (circular, in.) (chicago, ; guildhall, .) r.a. " bacchante. r.a. " *clytie. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " phryne at the bath. ( × in.) s.s. " malin head, donegal. s.s. " st. mark's, venice. s.s. " interior of st. mark's, venice. s.s. " the doorway, north aisle, venice. s.s. " rizpah (the small study in oils). ( × in.) s.s. . *farewell! ( × - / in.) r.a. " *hit! ( × in.) r.a. " *atalanta. ( - / × in.) r.a. " rizpah. ( × in.) r.a. " *corinna of tanagra. ( - / × in.) r.a. " the frigidarium. r.a. . *the spirit of the summit. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *the bracelet. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *fatidica. ( - / × in.) r.a. " *summer slumber. ( - / × in.) r.a. " at the window. r.a. " wide wondering eyes. ( × - / in.) manchester. " the roman campagna, monte soracte in the distance. s.s. " the acropolis of lindos. s.s. " fiume morto, gombo, pisa. s.s. " gibraltar from san rocque. s.s. . lachrymÆ. ( × in.) r.a. " the maid with the yellow hair. r.a. " *"'twixt hope and fear." ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " *flaming june. ( × in.) r.a. " listener. r.a. " a study. r.a. " phoenicians bartering with britons. royal exchange. " boy with pomegranate. grafton gallery. " miss dene. " aqua certosa, rome. s.s. " chain of hills seen from ronda. s.s. " rocks, malin head, donegal. s.s. " tlemÇen, algeria. s.s. . *clytie. ( - / × - / in.) r.a. " candida. ( × - / in.) antwerp, . " *the vestal. ( × - / in.) unfinished. " *a bacchante. ( - / × in.) " *the fair persian. ( - / × - / in.) unfinished. [illustration: "... serenely wandering in a trance of sober thought" ( )] [illustration: design for the reverse of the jubilee medallion ( )] appendix ii the studies in oil, chiefly landscape, of quite small size, few of which had been exhibited, were sold, with the remaining works of the artist, by messrs. christie, manson and woods on july th, th, and th, , when the prices realized, from to guineas each for the best, were in excess of those the most sympathetic admirer of lord leighton's singular power as a landscape-painter had dared to expect. for convenience of future reference, the list of these as they appear in the sale catalogue may be worth the space it occupies; the numbers denote the "lot." . {head of a girl. {head of a boy. . a study of houses, venice. . the coast of asia minor, from rhodes. . a street scene. . houses at capri. . the coast of asia minor, from rhodes. . a garden scene. . a fortress, egypt. . tombs of muslim saints at assouan, first cataract. r.s.b.a., . . a bay, asia minor, from rhodes. . the bay of lindos. . in the campagna, italy. . a town, capri. . mountains near ronda puerta de los vientos. r.s.b.a., . . a view in the campagna. . a covered street in algiers. . a doorway, algiers. . head of a girl. . head of a man. . head of a girl. . head of a girl. . street in algiers. . st. mark's, venice. r.s.b.a., . . interior of st. mark's, venice. r.s.b.a., . . the doorway, north aisle, st. mark's, venice. r.s.b.a., . . a bay scene, isle of rhodes. . a view on the coast, lindos. . denderah. . the roman campagna, monte soracte in the distance. r.s.b.a., . . a study in the campagna. . aqua certosa, rome. . a view of the town of lindos. . the acropolis of lindos, where stood the temple of athena pallas. r.s.b.a., . . a study in the campagna, with monte soracte. . study of a man's head. . an arab's head. . a sheik. . an arab. . head of an old lady. . a turkish boatman. . fiume morto, gombo, pisa. r.s.b.a., . . the citadel, cairo. . a view in damascus. . a view in capri. . bocca d'arno. . the city of tombs, assiout, egypt. r.s.b.a. [ ?]. . buildings, siout, egypt. . a mountainous landscape, spain. . a street scene, capri. . a coast scene, isle of wight. . barren land. . a town in spain. . bosco sacro, campagna. . villa malta, rome. . the rocks of the sirens, capri. . a view in spain. . a valley, spain. . on the coast, isle of wight. . garden at generalife, granada. . the baths at caracalla. . a house, capri. . in st. mark's, venice. . the staircase of a house, capri. . the garden of a house, capri. . study of a male figure carrying a pitcher. . head of a girl. . the coast of asia minor, from rhodes. . chain of hills seen from ronda. r.s.b.a., . . the coast of asia minor. (study for the background of _perseus_.) . a pool, findhorn river, n.b. (study for the background of _solitude_.) . a lane. (study of rocks for _solitude_.) . a woman seated, in a landscape. (study for _simætha the sorceress_.) . taormina, sicily. (sketch for background of _wedded_.) . a pool on the findhorn river, forres, n.b. (study for the background of _solitude_.) . taormina, sicily. (study for the background of _wedded_.) . interior of a house at lindos. (study for the picture of _cleoboulos_.) . study of a woman's head. capri, moonlight. (study for the effect in _clytemnestra_.) . buildings, capri, moonlight. (a study for the same.) . an allegorical design for a mural decoration. . head of a lady and gentleman of the fifteenth century. ( × - / in.) (painted in .) . head of a lady. white on brown ground. . a study from velasquez. [ to _were larger works, mainly studies for completed pictures or the pictures themselves_.] {a landscape. . {study of sky at malinmore. {study. . a rocky coast, malinmore, donegal. . a mountainous landscape. . a view in scotland. . a landscape, italy. . fishing boats on the coast, capri. . a village on a hill, capri. . a scene in the desert. . the coast of greece. . head of a man. . a scotch lake. . near kynance cove. . carrara mountains. . a view in algiers. . tlemÇen, algeria. r.s.b.a., . . the damascus gate, jerusalem. . the erictheum (_sic_). . a street in lerici, near where shelley was drowned. . {study of trees. {a landscape. . {head of a gondolier. {irish peasant girl. . head of an italian peasant. . {a common. {landscape, with cottages. . a rocky coast, kynance. . granite boulders, forres, n.b. . a sunny cornfield. . a courtyard, tangiers. . a courtyard, tangiers. . a sketch of albano. . a coast scene, ireland. . a scotch scene. . a study of rocks. . the steeple rock, kynance cove. . a sandy bay, ireland. . kynance cove. . holy island. bamborough in the distance. . a coast scene, ischia. . glen columbkill, ireland. . a moorish archway, tangiers. . perugia. . a rocky coast, malinmore. . malin head, donegal. r.s.b.a., . . gibraltar, from san rocque. r.s.b.a., . . a bay scene, spain. . a sketch in bedfordshire. . a landscape, ronda. . a spanish town. . the baths of caracalla. . the street of the knights, rhodes. . the coast of asia minor, seen from rhodes. . longsor. . a mountain scene, with temple and figure, egypt. . a study on the coast of ireland. . a river scene, scotland. . mickleour, scotland. . a sea piece. . the coast of asia minor. . {on the nile. {a view in spain. . {a temple on the nile. {spanish view. . malinmore, donegal. . the bay of cadiz, moonlight, and palazzo rezzonico. . a view of athens. . {scotch mountains: sunset. {a coast scene, rhodes. . vittoria. r.s.b.a., . . {a classical head. (monochrome.) {head of a man. . a study of pine trees. . a village on a hill. . a ruined mosque at broussa. . a woody bank. . ruins of a moorish arch, spain. . a view in italy, with a cornfield. . (this number is omitted in the sale catalogue.) . mimbar of the great mosque at damascus. . {rocks, capri. {a fortress, spain. . {landscape, scotland. {landscape, scotland. . the red mountains, desert, egypt. . sketch near cairo. . a fountain in the court-yard of a jew's house, spain. . a house in tangiers. mansion house, . . a street scene, cairo. . a moorish street. . a study of rocks, scotland. . the garden of the house of the man who built the alhambra. . a spanish donkey. . a donkey and arab driver. . mena donkey. . a study of hills. . the temple of phylÆ. . damascus: night. . a mountainous landscape, with a cavern. . a wood scene. . head of an italian girl. . the dungeons of a castle. . a castle keep. . entrance to a house, capri. . a coast scene, ireland: storm effort (_sic_). . longsor. . the nile at thebes. . a view on the campagna. . a mountainous landscape, scotland. . capri by night. . a fortress on the campagna. . a landscape, with sand hills. . a wood scene. . near denderah. . a landscape. . athens, with the genoese tower, pnyx in the foreground. . a landscape, cairo. . on the nile. . pasture, egypt. . red mountains desert, egypt. . an egyptian village. . the island of Ægina. . thebes. . the coast of Ægina, pnyx in the foreground. . buildings on the coast, island of rhodes. . assouan, egypt. . a vineyard, capri. . the temple of phylÆ, looking up the nile. . the nile at esueh. . the cathedral, capri. . a square in cadiz. . on the nile. . in the nile valley. . a view across the nile. . a woody hill side. . rocks of the sirens capri. . a farm. there were also copies made by leighton himself of _peace and war_ after rubens, the _massacre of the innocents_, after bonifazio, _a martyrdom_, and the _last supper_, after veronese. the huge collection of studies, mainly in chalk upon brown paper, made by lord leighton, were nearly all preserved; two hundred and forty of these were exhibited by the fine art society, who bought the whole collection, and afterwards published a volume containing forty reproduced in facsimile. [illustration: fountain in court at damascus] [illustration: the island of Ægina: pnyx in foreground] [illustration: red mountains desert, cairo] [illustration: ruined mosque, broussa] [illustration: city of tombs, assiout, egypt] [illustration: athens with the genoese tower: pnyx in foreground] [illustration: coast of asia minor seen from rhodes] index. _titles of pictures are printed in italics._ _abram and the angel_, . _acme and septimius_, . _actæa_, , . _Ægina, the island of_, illus., . _after vespers_, . aitchison, george, r.a., . allingham, william, . alma-tadema, sir l., , , . _amarilla_, . _and the sea gave up its dead_, , ; illus., . _andromeda_ (study in clay), ; illus., . _antigone_, . _antique juggling girl_, ; illus., . arab hall, the, , , , , - ; illus., . _ariadne abandoned by theseus_, . arnold, sir edwin, translation of musæus, . art and morals, leighton on, . "art journal," criticisms of the, , _et seq._ artistic production in relation to time and place, leighton on, . _arts of peace, the_, , , , ; illus., . _arts of war, the_, , ; illus., . _asia minor, the coast of_, illus., . assyria, the art of, leighton on, . _at the fountain_, . _at the window_, . _atalanta_, , . "athenæum," criticisms of the, , , _et seq._ _athens, with the genoese tower_, illus., . _athlete struggling with a python_, , , , ; illus., , ; (marble version), . _bacchante_ ( ), , ( ) ; illus., . _bath of psyche, the_, , , ; illus., . bezzuoli, . _bianca_, . "bible gallery," dalziel's, , , . _biondina_, . black and white, leighton's work in, , . boccaccio, leighton inspired by, , . book illustration, , . bookplate, leighton's, illus., . bouguereau, leighton and, . _bracelet, the_, ; illus., . bronzes, , , , . _broussa, ruined mosque at_, illus., . _brownlow, countess of_, . browning, e. b., ; medallion of a monument to, ; illustration by leighton to her "great god pan," . browning, robert, ; subjects from, , ; on _hercules wrestling with death_, . brussels, leighton at, , . burne-jones, sir e., , . _burton, capt. richard_, , ; illus., . _byzantine well-head, a_, , ; illus., . _cain and abel_, illus., . _cairo, red mountains desert_, illus., . _capri--paganos_, . _capri at sunrise_, , . capri, leighton at, , . _captive andromache_, , ; _studies_ for, illus., . carr, mr. comyns, on leighton, . _catarina_, . ceiling, design for a, , , ; illus., . chesneau, ernest, on english art, . cimabue, influence of, . _cimabue_ (mosaic figure), . _cimabue finding giotto_, . _cimabue's madonna_, , , , , , , ; criticisms of, - , ; illus., . _city of tombs, assiout_, illus., . _cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline_, . _clytemnestra_, . _clytie_ ( ), , . _clytie_ (his last picture), , . cockerell, s. pepys, on leighton's drawings, . _cockerell, mrs. frederick p._, . _coleridge, lady_, . cologne cathedral, leighton on, . colour: leighton's mode of procedure, - . _condottiere, a_, ; illus., . _contrast, a_, ; illus., . _corinna of tanagra_, . cornelius, , . "cornhill gallery, the," . correggio, leighton and, , . _costa, signor_, ; illus., . _count paris_, , , . cousin, jean, . _crenaia_, . _cross-bow man, a_, . _cupid with doves_, ; illus., . _cymon_ (clay model), ; illus., . _cymon and iphigenia_, , , , ; photogravure, . _dædalus and icarus_, ; illus., . dalou and _the athlete_, . dalziel's "bible gallery," , , ; illus., . _damascus, grand mosque at_, , , ; illus., . damascus, sketches of, , , , ; illus., , . _dance, the_, , ; illus., . dante, leighton on, . _dante at verona_, , . _daphnephoria_, , , , , ; clay models for, ; illus., ; _study for_ (illus.), . darmstadt, leighton at, . _david_, , ; illus., . _day dreams_, ; illus., . _death of the first born_, . decorative work, leighton's, - . _departure for the war, the_, . discourses on art, leighton's, - . drapery, leighton's treatment of, , - . _dream, a_, , . _duett_, . dürer, albert, leighton on, . eastlake, sir charles, - . egypt, leighton's visit to, ; on the art of, . _egyptian slinger_, , , ; illus., . _electra at the tomb of agamemnon_, ; illus., . _elegy_, . _eliezer and rebekah_, . _elijah in the wilderness_, ; _study for_, illus., . _elisha and the shunamite's son_, illus., . english art, leighton on, . etruscan art, leighton on, , . _eucharis_, . _fair persian, the_, . _farewell_, ; illus., . _fatidica_, ; illus., . _fisherman and syren, the_, , . _flaming june_, . fleury, robert, , . _florence, the plague at_, , ; illus., . florence, leighton at, , . _fountain, at the_, . _fountain in court at damascus_, illus., . france, evolution of art in, leighton on, . frankfort, leighton at, - . frescoes, , - ; illus., - . friezes, , , ; illus., . _frigidarium, the_, ; illus., . gamba, signor, . _garden of the hesperides, the_, . generalife, study of a garden at, ; illus., . german architecture, leighton on, - . gerome, . gibson, the sculptor, . gilbert, alfred, . giotto, . girl, a little ( ), . ---- in eastern garb ( ), . _girl feeding peacocks, a_, , . _girl with a basket of fruit_, . _girls' heads, studies of_, , ; illus., , , , . goethe: subject from, ; on gothic architecture, . _golden hours_, , ; illus., . _gordon, h. e._, . gothic architecture, leighton on, . greek art, leighton on, . _greek girls picking up pebbles by the sea_, . _greek girls playing at ball_, , ; illus., . grenfell, the hon. mrs. (_miss mabel mills_), . greville, lady charlotte, monument to, . _gulnihal_, . _guthrie, portrait of mrs. james_, . hart, professor, . _helen of troy_, ; illus., . _helios and rhodos_, , . _hercules wrestling with death_, ; illus., . _hesperides, garden of the_, . _hichens, mrs. a._, . _hit_, ; illus., . _hodgson, miss ruth_, . _hodgson, misses stewart_, . hogarth club, the, . hunt, holman, , . _i'anson, the late mrs. lavinia_, . _idyll_, . _in st. mark's_, . _invocation_, . _iostephane_, . _italian girl, an_, . italy, evolution of painting in, leighton on the, . _j. a.--a study_, . _jezebel and ahab_, , . _joachim, miss nina_, . _jonathan's token to david_, , . jubilee medal, , , ; illus., . _juggling girl_, ; illus., . keats's "endymion," subject from, , . kemble, mrs., . _kittens_, . _lachrymæ_, . _lady with pomegranates, a_, . _laing, miss, portrait of_, . landscape studies, leighton's, , , , , , , ; illus., , , , . landseer, sir edwin, , . lang's, mrs. andrew, monograph on leighton, , , . _last watch of hero_, ; illus., . leighton, frederic, lord; list of dignities and titles, ; ancestors and birth, ; first picture, ; portrait ( ), ; first picture for the academy, ; a.r.a., ; r.a., ; first appearance as a sculptor, ; p.r.a., ; _portrait_, by himself, ; illus., ; portraits by watts, , ; his method of painting, - ; drawings, , ; decorative works, - ; sculpture, , ; book illustration, , ; discourses on art, - ; house, - ; criticisms on his work, , ; death, . _lemon tree, study of a_, , , ; illus., . lesseps, f. de, . _letty_, , . _lieder ohne worte_, . _light of the harem, the_, . lionardo da vinci, leighton on, , , . _listener_, . _little fatima_, , , . _lucas, mrs. f._, . lyndhurst, altarpiece at, , , . lyons, lord, . _maid with her yellow hair, the_, . martin's, sir theodore, "catullus," . mason, george, , . meli, signor f., . _melittion_, . _memories_, . _mermaid, the_, . michael angelo, leighton on, . _michael angelo nursing his dying servant_, . millais, sir j. e., , , , , . _mills, miss mabel_, ; illus., . _mitford, a. b._, . _mocatta, mrs._, . modelling and models (clay), , . _moorish garden_, , . morals, art and, leighton on, . _moretta_, . morris, william, and rossetti, . mosaics, . _moses views the promised land_, illus., . _mosque, ruined, at broussa_, illus., . _mother and child_, . murger, henri, . _music_ (a frieze), ; illus., . _music, the triumph of_, , . _music lesson_, , . _music room, decoration for a_, , , ; illus., . _nanna_, . _nap, a_, . nature in leighton's compositions, . _nausicaa_, ; illus., . _needless alarms_, , . _neruccia_, . nias, lady (_miss laing_), . nile, voyage up the, . _nile woman, a_, . _noble lady of venice, a_, . _nymph and cupid, a_, , . nymph of the dargle, the, . _odalisque_, . _old damascus_ (the jews' quarter), , . orchardson, mr., on _clytie_, . orkney, lady, . _orpheus and eurydice_, , ; illus., . orr, major sutherland, monument to, . _orr, mrs. sutherland_, . pacheco, francisco, on drawing, . _painter's honeymoon, the_, . _pan_, , . _paolo_, . _paolo e francesca_, , . _paris, count_, , , . paris, leighton at, , ; exhibition at, . parry, gambier, and ely cathedral, . _pastoral_, . _pavonia_, . _pencil drawings, two early_, illus., . _pencil study, a_, illus., . _persephone, return of_, , ; _studies for_, illus., . _perseus_ (clay model), ; illus., . _perseus and andromeda_, , , ; _study for_, illus., . _persian pedlar_, a, . petrarch, leighton on, . _phoebe_, . _phoenicians bartering with britons_, , ; illus., . _phryne at eleusis_, ; illus., . _pisano, niccolò_ (mosaic), . _plague at florence, the_, , ; illus., . powers, hiram, . poynter, sir e. j., and leighton, , . pre-raphaelites, the, , . _primrose, the lady sybil_, ; illus., . _psamathe_, . _ralli, mrs. augustus_, . raphael, leighton on, . _red mountains desert, cairo_, illus., . _return of persephone, the_, , ; _studies for_, illus., . _rizpah_, , ; illus., . roman art, leighton on, . _roman lady, a_, . romano giulio, leighton on, . rome, leighton at, , - . _romeo, the dead_, illus., . _romeo and juliet_, . "romola" illustrations, . rossetti, d. g., , ; works by, , ; on leighton, , , . rossetti, w. m., on leighton, , , . royal exchange, decoration at, , ; illus., . _rubinella_, . ruskin on leighton, , , , , , , . _rustic music_, . _ryan, edward_, . _st. jerome_, ; illus., . _st. marks, in_, . st. paul's, design for proposed decoration of, , , . _salome_, . _samson and delilah_, . _samson and the lion_, illus., . _samson at the mill_, . _samson carrying the gates_, illus., . sand, george, . sartoris, mrs. algernon, _portrait of_, ; illustration by leighton to her "week in a french country house," . sculpture, , , , ; illus., , . _sea echoes_, . _sea gave up the dead, and the_, , ; illus., . _serafina_, . "_serenely wandering_," illus., . servolini, . _sibyl_, , , . _simætha the sorceress_, . _sisters_, . _sister's kiss_, , ; illus., . sizeranne, m. de la, on leighton, . _sluggard, the_, , , ; _study for_, illus., . _solitude_, ; _study for_, illus., . south kensington, drawings on wood at, ; frescoes, , - ; mosaic, . spain, leighton on the art of, , . spielmann, mr. m. h., on leighton, , , - . _spies' escape, the_, . _spirit of the summit, the_, , , . _star of bethlehem, the_, , , . steinle, johann eduard, , , . stephens, f. g., on the hogarth club, . studies, collection of leighton's, . studies in oil, list of, - . _studies of heads_, , ; illus., , , , , , . _study_ (little girl in eastern garb), . _study a_ (grosvenor gallery, ), ; (academy, ), ; (grosvenor gallery, ), . _summer moon_, ; illus., . _summer slumber_, . _sun gleams_, . _sunny hours_, . _syracusan bride_, , , , . tate gallery, the, , , . _teresina_, . thackeray on leighton, . _tragic poetess_, . _triumph of music, the_, , . _'twixt hope and fear_, . velasquez, diego, leighton on, . _venus disrobing_, , ; illus., . _vestal_, , . _viola_, . volumnus violens, tomb of, leighton on, . _walker, john hanson_, . watteau, leighton on, . watts, g. f., ; pictures by, ; portraits of leighton, , ; method compared with leighton's, ; on leighton, . _weaving the wreath_, . _wedded_, . _whispers_, . _widow's prayer, the_, . _winding the skein_, , ; photogravure, _front_. _wise and foolish virgins, the_, , . _zeyra_, . chiswick press: printed by charles whittingham and co. tooks court, chancery lane, london. footnotes: [ ] see pages - . [ ] letter to william allingham, may th, . [ ] "athenæum," april, . [ ] the original title of this picture was _eastern slinger scaring birds in harvest-time: moonrise_. see illustration at p. . [ ] this picture was re-sold at christie's in for , guineas. [ ] sometimes entitled _an athlete strangling a python_. [ ] at page . [ ] engraved in the "magazine of art," march, . [ ] "current art" ("magazine of art," may, ). [ ] "the studio," vol. iii. [ ] reproductions of both of these drawings are given at p. . [ ] "letters of dante gabriel rossetti to william allingham," by george birkbeck hill, d.c.l., ll.d. london, t. fisher unwin, . [ ] "la peinture anglaise contemporaine" (paris, hachette, ). [ ] "magazine of art," march, , p. . [ ] the asterisk denotes works exhibited at the winter exhibition of the royal academy of arts, . [ ] r.a., royal academy; g.g., grosvenor gallery; r.w.s., royal society of painters in water-colours; s.s., royal society of british artists, suffolk street; d.g., dudley gallery; s.p.p., society of portrait painters. [ ] exhibited in the roman section, by some blunder of the committee; the picture having been painted in rome. [ ] purchased for £ , by the president and council of the royal academy, under the terms of the chantrey bequest. [ ] painted by invitation for the collection of portraits of artists painted by themselves in the uffizi gallery, florence. [ ] painted for the house of mr. murquand, new york. [ ] purchased for , guineas by the president and council of the royal academy, under the terms of the chantrey bequest. * * * * * transcriber's note: passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break or to the end of a long quote. the following misprints have been corrected: "dyson-perrin" corrected to "dyson-perrins" (page v) "frederic" corrected to "frederick" (page and index) missing word added on page (assumed "the"). additional spacing after some of the quotes is intentional to indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new paragraph as presented in the original text. the original text includes greek characters. for this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations. [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by -- t. leman hare vigÉe le brun - ===================================================================== plate i.--marie antoinette. frontispiece (at versailles) the first portrait that vigée le brun painted, in her twenty-fourth year ( ) of marie antoinette. here is no hint of the tragedy that was to overwhelm the handsome young daughter of austria; all was as yet but gaiety and roses and sunshine and pleasant airs, and the glamour that hovers about a throne. but there are signs of the imperious temper of her house, combined with the levity and frivolity of manners which were so early to make her unpopular. [illustration: plate i.] ===================================================================== vigée le brun by haldane macfall illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents i. the beginnings ii. the wonderful child iii. marriage and motherhood iv. marie antoinette v. sweet exile vi. the end list of illustrations plate i. marie antoinette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece at versailles ii. madame vigée le brun and child in the louvre iii. madame vigée le brun and child in the louvre iv. portrait of madame vigée le brun in the national gallery, london v. the two elder children of marie antoinette at versailles vi. portrait of madame molé-raymond in the louvre vii. marie antoinette and her children at versailles viii. peace bringing back plenty in the louvre [illustration: vigée le brun] i the beginnings in paris, in the rue coquillière, louis the fifteenth being king of france--or rather the pompadour holding sway thereover--there lived a witty, amiable fellow who plied the art of painting portraits in oils and pastels after the mediocre fashion that is called "pleasing." this louis vigée and his wife, jeanne maissin, moved in the genial enthusiastic circle of the lesser artists, passing through their sober day without undue excitement; for fame and wealth and the prizes of life were not for them. boucher was lord of art; and la tour and greuze and chardin were at the height of their genius; but honest louis vigée could but plod on at his pleasing portraits, and sigh that the gods had not borne to him the immortal flame. yet he was to come near to the glory of it--nearer than he thought. 'twas a pity that he was robbed of the splendour of basking in the reflected radiance, and by a fish's bone. it was to have its beginning in that year after the indolent but obstinate king, having fallen foul of his parliaments in his game of facing-both-ways in the bitter strife 'twixt church and people, patched up a peace with the parliament men. ===================================================================== plate ii.--madame vigÉe le brun and child (in the louvre) in vigée le brun's portrait of herself and her child we see in full career the greek ideals that were come upon france--a france weary of light trifling with life, and of mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower. [illustration: plate ii.] ===================================================================== our worthy mediocre vigée could remember the banished parliament re-entering paris in triumph on that fourth day of september in amidst the exultant shouts of the people; the clergy looking on with a scowl the while. on that same day was born to the dauphin a son--the little fellow called the duke de berry--whom we shall soon see ascending the throne as the ill-starred louis the sixteenth, for the dauphin was to be taken before the old king died. honest waggish vigée, painting industriously at his pleasing portraits, would recall it well; since, early in the following year, there was that to happen under his own modest roof which was to bring fame to his name, though he should not live to bask in its full glow. on the th of april there was born to him a little girl-child, whom they christened elizabeth louise vigée, or as she herself wrote it across the title-page of her _souvenirs_, louise elizabeth vigée. into her little fingers destiny set the skill that had been denied to her father; the flame was given to her. and by the whimsy of things, there was also born in far-away vienna, in this same year of , in the palace of the emperors of austria, a little princess whom they christened marie antoinette; who was to marry the little seven-month old princeling that lay sucking his thumb in the royal palace near by, and thereby to become future queen of france. like françois boucher, the great painter to the king, elizabeth vigée came to the pretty business with the advantage of being an artist's child; like him, she received her first lessons at an early age from her father; and, like him, she moved from earliest childhood in an atmosphere of art and artists. from her father she inherited a talent and taste for art, an amiable temper, a gift of wit; from her mother, a very handsome woman, she was dowered with a beauty for which she was as remarkable, and to which her many portraits of herself bear abundant witness. from very childhood she began to display the proofs of her inheritance--that happy disposition and that charm of manner that were to make her one of the most winsome personalities of her time. at the convent to which her parents sent her in her tenth year she fell to drawing on the margins of her books, filling them with little portrait-heads--an incessant habit that set her teachers grumbling at her lack of respect towards grammar and history. but to her delighted father the grumbles were matter for laughter; in him she found an ally who was hugely proud to discover in his girl an inheritor of his gifts. it is told of the fond father that the girl having taken to him one day a drawing, vigée cried out exultantly: "you will be a painter, my girl, or there never was one!" brought up, as the child was, in the world of artists, with the aims and ambitions and enthusiasms of artists for her very breath, she could not fail to find in such a world, besides the encouragement which was prodigally bestowed upon so young and promising a talent, the teaching needful to develop her powers. amongst the artists who were on friendly terms with the girl's father, and of whom doyen was the most intimate, was davesne, a member and deputy professor of the academy of st. luke--he who afterwards claimed to have taught the little elizabeth the elements of painting. davesne's lessons were at best but few, and seem to have been limited to showing the eager child how to set a palette. the girl was in fact picking up the crumbs that fell from many tables; at any rate she showed astoundingly precocious industry and gifts, and was soon making quite a stir amongst the painter-folk, and becoming a source of pride to her father. vigée, however, was only destined to guide and encourage the child towards the path; he died on the th of may from swallowing a fish bone. little elizabeth was but thirteen years old when this first great grief fell upon her. that was a strange world in which the child stood bewildered at the baffling cruelty of human destiny--this eighteenth-century france. the pompadour had died in the child's ninth year; her dogged and persistent enemy, the dauphin, the year after her; the neglected queen now followed the pompadour to the grave in the june of this same year that left little elizabeth fatherless. under the scandals of the court, and the tyranny and corruption of the nobility and clergy, the french people were no longer concealing their distress under courtly phrases, nor groaning in secret. the ideas of the new philosophers were penetrating and colouring public opinion. they were beginning to talk of the great antique days of greece, of heroes, and of virtue, and of living and dying like romans. fickle fashion was turning her back upon the art of old boucher, and upon dresden shepherds and shepherdesses and pleasant landscapes and bosky groves, and was taking up her abode with heroes and amongst picturesque ruins. the parliament men were demanding rights, were indeed going to prison and into banishment for those rights; nay, was not choiseul the great minister of france; and choiseul's power was deep planted in the rights of the people and founded on parliaments. all france was watching for the dawn of liberty. ii the wonderful child the thirteen-year-old child suffered a grief so poignant at the loss of her father, to whom she had been passionately attached, that it threatened to have the gravest consequences on her future; had it not been for her father's old friend doyen, who, transferring to the girl the deep affection he had had for the dead man, urged the child to take up her brushes again--for she was already painting from nature. it was now that she entered the studio of gabriel briard, an historical painter and member of the royal academy; a mediocre artist (though superior to davesne, who claimed to have been her teacher), but he was a fine draughtsman. to briard's studio she went with a little friend, a year older than herself, mademoiselle bocquet, who was to become like herself a member of the academy of saint luke; a girl of a certain talent who, however, abandoned painting on her early marriage. the two girls tripped it to briard's studio like a couple of school-children, demurely escorted by a servant, who carried their dinner in a basket; and, as they went to their daily task, be sure the quick intelligent girl heard more than a little scandal of the court--indeed all paris more than whispered of it--scandal big with meaning for france, and for little elizabeth not least of all. the tears of the king's grief over the dead body of his queen were scarce dried when louis the fifteenth still further degraded the dignity of the throne of france--still more dangerously brought royalty into contempt by publicly acknowledging as his new mistress a young woman from the gutters, the beautiful, laughing, reckless spendthrift du barry, to whom one of the king's first gifts was louveciennes, where elizabeth was afterwards to meet her. before the year was out choiseul fell; and for the remaining four years that were left to the king france was governed by the milliner du barry and her precious trio, d'aiguillon, terray, and maupeou; and rushed towards the abyss. however, these things troubled our precocious elizabeth but little as yet. the girl grew rapidly in craftsmanship and in personal beauty. indeed, she developed towards womanhood as early and as swiftly as in skill of artistry, being remarkable for her prettiness, her freshness and delicacy of colouring, and her elegance of figure--early displaying the airy wit that, with these abundant gifts of her fairy godmother, were so valuable an aid to the reputation which she was achieving by her artistry at a time when most children are in the schoolroom. her advance was so astounding that every one was talking about the girl; and the moment soon arrived when her master saw the pupil passing him in skill of hand and reputation as a painter; gazing dumbfounded at the stream of the greatest celebrities and personages of the day flocking to the studio of a girl of but fifteen years of age. how strange a thing the weaving of the web of destiny! in this very same year there came out of austria a fifteen-year-old princess of its royal house, leaving the home of her forefathers in tears, and amidst the tears of a people that had grown to love the winsome child; for, marie antoinette was setting forth on her life's adventure as future queen of france, a tragic wayfaring for a butterfly! elizabeth vigée's extraordinary rise into notice brought her the friendship and counsel of joseph vernet, who gave her most precious advice which was a beacon to her career all her years: "my child," said he, "do not follow any system of schools. consult only the works of the great italian and flemish masters. but, above all things, make as many studies as you can from nature. nature is the supreme master. if you study nature with care it will prevent you from picking up any mannerisms." ===================================================================== plate iii.--madame vigÉe le brun and child (in the louvre) vigée le brun painted another portrait of herself and her little girl-child; and she painted both, fortunately for her fame, when her skill was at its increase. they stand out, with all their limitations, pure and exquisite as the madonna and child of italy's finest achievement; for they were painted by a woman of genius with the passionate love of a child that is the wondrous heritage of woman--none the less religious in that it apes no show of religion. [illustration: plate iii.] ===================================================================== doyen and greuze also helped her with suggestions; but she was from the beginning her own teacher. davesne and briard only flattered themselves by claiming her tutoring. the girl showed in no way any slightest sign of their influence. ardent and enthusiastic in her pursuit of art, she haunted the galleries and private collections, but above all she went to nature. naturalness is by consequence a marked attribute of one who painted in this artificial age--in portraiture she largely escaped the conventional style, both its limitations and, be it also confessed, something of that great beauty of style and that superb decorative splendour that mark the handsome achievement of nattier and drouais and their fellows. nor must it be forgotten that the realism claimed by the later years, and the naturalism claimed for this girl's art, were already to be seen in full career in the master-work of la tour in portraiture, and in the still-life of chardin. this girl's genius never reached to the force of la tour, nor the superb handling or colour-sense or vigour of chardin, but she painted with rare skill the eminent women of her day and, with near as remarkable a skill, more than one man; her loss would have left a serious gap in the statement of the french genius of the end of the seventeen hundreds. it has been a custom too long indulged in by literary critics to praise her at the expense of boucher's "conventionality"; but she never painted a portrait that surpassed the wallace "pompadour" or the "infant orleans," to say nothing of other rare portraits from boucher's easel. to set her up in rivalry against one of the greatest decorative artists of the years is but to give her an ugly fall. the astounding part is not that she painted better than she did, but that she achieved what she did. but free from convention? no. she was a woman, and a painter of women--a painter of women from the woman's point of view that desires the world only to think of woman in her pose as woman, reticent, careful to screen the impulsive, most of all the vexatious, the violent, and the irregular moods of femininity's temperament from the eyes of the passer-by; always eager to show woman dressed for the part, and well dressed. she was incapable of stating the deeps of character; and had she had the power, she would have looked upon it as something of an indecency--or worse, an indelicacy. she would, in fact, have preferred to deny the deeps. she sets her sitter ever in the drawing-room of fashion, draws a heavy curtain with a rattle between the drawing-room and the inner boudoir (the "sulking room"), slams the door on the bedroom, or any hint that there is a bedroom, before she cries "come in," to admit us to her studio; she prefers to show the woman in her properties as the creature of fashion, not in the intimacy of her inner living and full significance. this is as much and as absolutely convention as any tricking out of ladies as dresden shepherdesses, and the more subtle in that it is the less obvious; as much convention as any painting of large eyes or rose-bud mouths. it is as misleading as convention. but it is the basis of a woman's life; and, in that, it is true. boucher has been blamed for being conventional; is often sneered at as the arch-make-believe. but when he painted women he painted them as men really see them with their masks off, and with all their allure of femininity. this sneer of convention is a two-edged sword. in the year that they found boucher dead, seated at his easel before an unfinished canvas of venus, this girl of fifteen discovered herself celebrated; saw her studio invaded by the flower of the world of fashion; the women of the nobility at the french court visiting her; the exclusive doors of the faubourg st. germain thrown open to her; princesses, duchesses, countesses, celebrities of the day and strangers of distinction her friends. she was in close touch with the leading artists of her day--le moyne, blunt quentin de la tour, and the rest. the girl, in spite of her astounding industry, was soon wholly unable to carry out the orders for portraits which rained in upon her; her charm of manner and her increasing beauty added to the pressure of the siege of her admirers. a little while before her fifteenth birthday her mother married again a young jeweller, of the name of le sèvre, a miserly fellow, who, under the pretext of taking them into the country, hired a little house at chaillot, where they went with the girl for their sundays; the thrifty stepfather planting its garden with the gay blossoms of the useful haricot-bean and the nasturtium. he had a frugal mind. the petty tyrannies of the thrifty jeweller, his mean outlook on life, and his sordid aims, made of the habits and atmosphere of his class an even more uncongenial world for this brilliant girl to live in. happily the pursuit of her art, and the friendship of that circle into which that art and her gifts and charming personality raised her, mitigated the tyranny of this sordid relationship. and, to add to her relief, madame suzanne, wife of the sculptor, and a friend of her mother, would carry off the girl with her into the country; and it was during one of their walks at marly that she met for the first time marie antoinette. on the th of may , a month before elizabeth vigée's nineteenth birthday, king louis the fifteenth died of the small-pox--died without a friend, for he had dismissed the du barry in tears a short while before. his body was hastily thrust into a coffin, and hurried at the trot through the darkness to st. denis, for fear of attack from the sullen crowds that gathered to do it dishonour; so was he huddled away amongst the bones of the ancient kings of his race, unattended by the court, and amidst the curses of his people. louis the sixteenth, son of louis fifteenth's only son, the dead dauphin, ascended the throne of france in his twentieth year, a pure-minded, honourable young fellow, full of good intentions, and sincerely anxious for the well-being of his people; but of a diffident temper, timid, hesitating, and uncertain in decision, and under the influence of his young consort, the beautiful queen marie antoinette, who had the imperious temper of her house, wedded to light and frivolous manners; she brought to her counsels a deplorable lack of judgment and a steadfast incompetence in knowledge of men. the good qualities of this young pair had been very well in private life; but france needed greater abilities for her guidance than the simple virtues. it was a hideous part of the destiny of this young couple that they came to rule over a france that was passionately angered at the misdeeds of a king and his privileged class of nobles and clergy who had gone before them--of a class that had come unscathed through that reign, and were grown incapable of realising that they could not come unscathed through another. the du barry flown, and her precious trio of ministers with her, louis recalled the crafty old schemer maurepas to power from the banishment into which the pompadour had sent him; but he otherwise began well by making turgot his minister of finance. on the th of october in this that saw louis quinze and marie antoinette come to the throne of france, elizabeth vigée was elected to the academy of st. luke at nineteen years of age. she brought to her early successes a charming modesty and an utter absence of conceit or of pose that added greatly to her reputation, and paved the way to further honours. iii marriage and motherhood but early success was not to be without black care stepping into the triumphal car in her procession towards an early and wide fame of this charming and accomplished young woman of twenty. honours were easy. but the devil was in the machinery. her family had lived in the rue de cléry, opposite the hotel lubert; thence they had drifted to the rue st. honoré hard by the palais royal; they now returned to the rue de cléry to the hotel lubert itself. here it chanced that le brun, the expert, carried on a lucrative traffic in pictures. his gallery attracted the pretty artist, who could study there at leisure the works of the great masters that passed through. the two families soon became intimate. le brun carefully weighing the great advantages that such a union could bring to him, but entangled by his engagement to marry the daughter of a dutch dealer in pictures who lived opposite to him, and with whom he had considerable business in works of art, beat about as to how he could marry elizabeth vigée. the girl was living in the splendour of a circle to which her family could not hope to aspire; the picture-dealer belonged to the middle-class in which her own family moved. any day she might marry out of that middle-class world into the world of fashion. he saw that the girl moved in, and was happiest in, a great world to which he had not the key. he had the ambition to belong to that world, though his common-sense might have told him that he never could do more than hang about its outer courts. he was a calculating blackguard, a man of loose life, and a vulgar fellow with vulgar ambitions. he saw astutely enough that this girl was well on the high-road to considerable fortune. the dutch girl opposite necessitated wary walking. he played the romantic lover, and before six months were run out he was pressing his suit, asking elizabeth vigée to marry him secretly. ===================================================================== plate iv.--portrait of madame vigÉe le brun (in the national gallery, london) she saw at anvers the famous "chapeau de paille" by rubens. this canvas by rubens clearly inspired her to the painting of the portrait of herself in a straw hat, where she stands bathed in the sunlight, her palette in her hand. the painting of the flesh of the pretty face is exquisite, and in spite of intense finish is broadly conceived and rich and glowing in colour. the clumsy drawing of the hand that holds the palette is the only defect in this, one of her masterpieces. the picture has the added interest of revealing to us how vigée le brun set her palette. the thing is thrilling with life; and the little feminine conceit of wearing her black wrap is quaintly delightful. [illustration: plate iv.] ===================================================================== the girl seems to have had a presentiment of the misery that such a marriage would mean for her. after long and serious hesitation she gave her consent. it was perhaps due to a sense of being between the devil and the deep sea, for her sordid and miserly stepfather the jeweller must have been a sorry table-companion of her home life. if she suspected the picture-dealer to be a rogue, she thought, likely enough, that the more genial rogue would be a pleasanter fellow to live with than the other. she married him secretly on the th of january , on the edge of her twenty-first year. it was not a wholly promising beginning, this that gave her the name that she was to immortalise--vigée le brun. it was a sorry match. it began in secrecy; she was to discover that it was founded on a treachery. when the marriage was discovered it was too late to dissuade the girl from it; she had to listen to some plain home-truths as a dutchman saw them, and to grim prophecies of the evil that would come of the business. but he might have spared his breath. she was to have her ugly awakening. she early discovered that le brun was a gambler, a rake, and a thoroughly dissolute and unscrupulous rogue. it was not long before he had not only squandered his own fortune, but was playing ducks and drakes with every penny that she gained by her art and her untiring industry. she was soon to become a mother; the love that she had sedately allowed to go out to her disreputable and pretentious husband, and which she had early withdrawn in tatters, she now lavished upon this, her girl-child. meanwhile, her reputation increased by leaps and bounds. her studio was simply besieged by "the quality." the duchess of orleans had to wait her turn a whole year before she could be painted. vigée le brun's praise was in every mouth. she was sung in prose and verse; the poetasters ran to much doggerel of handsome intent, as was the fashion of the day. marquises and the rest of the scribbling folk tripped over halting feet to sing her charms and immortalise her art. "l'orgueil de france" rhymed it to "la double puissance;" and "immortal crayon" to "admiration." they spilled the rosy inks. le brun, not the picture-dealing husband, but the poetical fellow who modestly nicknamed himself the pindar of his age, plucked at the lyre with both hands in her honour. nay, have we not the written record that laharpe, uttering his rhymed discourse on the genius of women to a great gathering of the bloods and wits at the academy, and bursting into violent poesies in announcing that elizabeth, "the modern rosalba, but more brilliant than she, weds the voice of favart with the smiles of a venus"--every one rose to their feet, "not omitting the duchess of chartres and the king of sweden," and turning to the blushing elizabeth, applauded her "with transports"! so much for france within the walls of the royal academy. but france without! the great minister, turgot, baffled by the selfishness of the privileged classes, fell. but louis called to power near as good a man, worthy banker neckar. in an unfortunate hour for the royal house, and against the will of the king, be it credited, and to the bewilderment of neckar, the nation having gone mad with enthusiasm over the prospect of an alliance with britain's revolted american colonies, war was declared against england, france undertaking not to conclude peace until the colonies were free. the success of the revolted colonies made the revolution in france a certainty. the fall of neckar and the setting up of the reckless and incompetent calonne over the destinies of france brought the shout of the democracy to the gardens of the king. vigée le brun's picture of the dandified man certainly does not show him a leader of great enterprises. his reckless extravagance satisfied the nobles; it brought bankruptcy stalking to the doors of the king's palace. the distress and sufferings of the people became unbearable. the miserable scandal of the diamond necklace added to the discredit of the queen. the royal family and the court sank further in the people's respect. as for vigée le brun, she was come into her kingdom. and it is during those twenty years, from shortly after her marriage until she was forty, that her best and most brilliant portraiture belongs, before the hardness and dryness of her later style showed signs of the decay of her powers. ===================================================================== plate v.--the two elder children of marie antoinette--the first dauphin (born , died ) and the madame royale (at versailles) the little dauphin of four years, and his seven-year-old sister, the madame royale, seated on a bank, the boy's hat thrown at his feet upon the flower-strewn ground--a work in which vigée le brun's colour-sense, her fine arrangement, and her feeling for style reach to their highest flight. the handsome boy was mercifully taken at the dawn of the revolution; the girl was to know all its terrors. [illustration: plate v.] ===================================================================== to its earliest, freshest years belongs the first portrait that vigée le brun painted, in her twenty-fourth year ( ) of marie antoinette, in which the young queen is seen with a large basket, and dressed in a satin gown, holding a rose in her hand--painted the year after the birth of her eldest child, the madame royale. here is no hint of the tragedy that was to overwhelm the handsome young daughter of austria; all was as yet but gaiety and roses and sunshine and pleasant airs and the glamour that hovers about a throne. but there are signs of the imperious temper of her house, combined with the levity and frivolity of manners, which were so early to make her unpopular. vigée le brun was to paint her royal mistress close on thirty times during the next ten years, until the prison doors shut upon the royal house of france; and there grew up between the two women a subtle and charming friendship that was to make the talented woman a dogged and convinced royalist to her dying day--indeed, the temperament of women needs small incense towards the worshipping of idols. vigée le brun was rarely more happy in her art than in several of the many portraits she painted of herself about this time--more particularly the two famous pictures of herself with her little daughter. "the marie antoinette with the rose" is redolent still of the eighteenth-century france--the siècle louis quinze. in vigée le brun's portrait of herself and her child we see in full career the greek ideals that were come upon france--a france weary of light trifling with life, and of mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower; here is that crying back to the antique spirit that was leavening the middle-class of france which was about to claim dominion over the land and to step to the foot of the throne and usurp the sceptre and diadem of her ancient line of kings as the third estate; and to come to power with violent upheaval, wading to the throne through blood and terror. here we see vigée le brun, royalist, glorifying motherhood, her arms and shoulders bare in chaste nudity, her body scantily attired in the simple purity of greek robes, her child in her embrace. vigée le brun painted another portrait of herself and her little girl-child; and she painted both, fortunately for her fame, when her skill was at its increase. they stand out, with all their limitations, pure and exquisite as the madonna and child of italy's finest achievement; for they were painted by a woman of genius with the passionate love of a child that is the wondrous heritage of woman; none the less religious in that it apes no show of religion. we see the age of free thought stating the innate religion of free thought; as renaissance italy painted paganism in religious disguise with the innate irreligion of its day. in all her portraiture one is struck by the fact that vigée le brun took much pains to arrange the draperies in what she considered picturesque fashion rather than that she painted the ordinary gowns of her day as her sitters wore them on entering her studio. and we have her own word for it in her _souvenirs_ (wherein the careful record of each picture that she painted may be found) that the dress of most women of the time seemed ugly to her--as it does to so many artists, generally not the best, in all times--indeed, she used every ounce of tact that she possessed in order to "arrange" the draperies. she sternly set her face against the use of powder and paint that the fashion of her century put upon complexions even of the most delicate beauties; and she always, when she could, arranged the hair of the women sitters. she tells, not without pride, how, having persuaded the beautiful duchess of grammont-caderousse to put off paint and powder, and to allow her to arrange her jet-black hair, drawing it down over the forehead and separating it over the brow and arranging it in irregular little curls, the duchess went to the theatre as she was, and created the fashion thereby, in spite of the fact that vigée le brun could never persuade the queen to give in to her, marie antoinette replying to all her beguilings: "i shall be the last to follow the fashion; i do not wish them to say that i am trying to hide my huge forehead." marie antoinette was beginning to realise that all france did not fawn upon her with the courtier's bended shoulder or pretty speech. iv marie antoinette in her twenty-seventh year ( ) vigée le brun made a journey into flanders with her husband, who had gone thither picture-dealing. the works of the flemish masters that she there saw had a marked effect upon the increase of her art. she saw at anvers the famous "chapeau de paille" by rubens; and had revealed to her the beauties of a sun-flooded figure, with the face painted in the golden glow of reflected lights under the shadow flung down over it by a large hat. this canvas by rubens clearly inspired her to the painting of the portrait of herself in a straw hat, where she stands bathed in the sunlight, her palette in her hand. the painting of the flesh of the pretty face is exquisite, and in spite of intense finish is broadly conceived and rich and glowing in colour. the clumsy drawing of the hand that holds the palette is the only defect in this, one of her masterpieces. the picture has the added interest of revealing to us how vigée le brun set her palette. the thing is thrilling with life; and the little feminine conceit of wearing her black wrap is quaintly delightful. thenceforth her art has an added sense of style, a fuller statement of atmosphere; in her handling of paint and employment of colour she was soon to reach the very height of her achievement. it was shortly after her return from this journey into flanders that joseph vernet decided to put down her name for election to the royal academy. her portrait of herself created such a sensation that her election became assured. she had to paint the usual formal _tableau de reception_, and chose allegory, painting her "la paix ramenant l'abondance," which, though a somewhat stilted affair such as academies demand, is full of charm--and is still to be seen at the louvre. she was received into the academy on the last day of may in in her twenty-eighth year, and thenceforward had the valuable privilege of the right to show at the salon. vigée le brun had not reached to such rapid and wide success, in spite of all her charm and youth and the defence that chivalry should grant to her sex, without setting jealous tongues wagging. the "peace bringing back abundance" happened to be hung under a canvas by ménageot, "the birth of the dauphin"; and comparisons between the two pictures were aimed at creating a slander which there were only too many ready to believe; for it was supported by certain facts which fell into place, and took on a suspicious air when pointed to as supporting evidence. this ménageot, who afterwards became director of the academy at rome, lived in the same house as vigée le brun; and rumour soon got agog to the effect that he was in the habit of painting, or at any rate putting the finishing touches to, her work, pierre, at this time first painter to the king, had employed this slander in order to oppose her election to the academy; he was the leading spirit of a cabal against her, as soon became known; for he was the victim soon afterwards of a satirical jingle that went the round of the studios. she was harassed also by the petty spites of enemies who did not hesitate to try and have her studio seized under the charge that she was painting without legal title since she had never been apprenticed to a painter. and malignant tongues whispered it abroad that she never would have been elected to the academy had it not been done at the command of the court. they made her very friendship with the queen a whip with which to lash at her. she was now painting many portraits of the queen. vigée le brun spent her entire day at her easel, from the time she arose in the morning, and she rose early, until the daylight went. she gave up dining in the town, in order not to be drawn away from her work; and the temptation must have been strong for a young and charming woman so greatly in request. but at nightfall she went out to social functions, and herself received the most brilliant and distinguished members of society and art and letters at her own house, giving concerts where grétry, whose portrait she painted, and other celebrated musicians played portions of their operas before they were seen or heard upon the stage; whilst the grandees of the old noblesse and the famous wits frequented her house. again, the report of her receptions got noised abroad; and envious tongues were soon exaggerating the extravagance and luxury in which she lived, descending to such childish tittle-tattle as that she lit her fires with bank-notes, that the number of her guests was so great and so distinguished that, for lack of seats, the marshals of france had to sit upon the floor; gossip and babble that were to cost her dearer than she thought, though she laughed it all away with a shrug of her pretty shoulders at the time. it was concerning one of her six-o'clock suppers that a slander was started which was to be a serious menace to her in after years. ===================================================================== plate vi.--portrait of madame molÉ-raymond (in the louvre) this famous painting of madame molé-raymond, the pretty actress of the comédie française, is one of vigée le brun's masterpieces. her brush is now at its most dexterous use; the laughing pretty woman is caught like a live thing and fixed upon the canvas as at a stroke as she trips across the vision, with muff upraised, smiling out upon us as she passes. vigée le brun never stated character with more consummate skill than here; never set down action with more vivid brush, catching movement flying. [illustration: plate vi.] ===================================================================== it was an age of small oratory. every man who could string a neat sentence together, scribbled or harangued. it was boorish and an unfashionable thing not to be an author, a poetaster, a little orator, a critic, a dabbler in the arts. at coffee-houses or clubs, wheresoever men foregathered, some fellow would mount a table and harangue his friends. the bloods caught the vogue, little foreseeing that it made a hotbed for the airing of discontents, and for the parading of ideals which alone could blot out those discontents. all took to it like ducks to the village pond. there was much quackery; some honest noise. now it so chanced that at vigée le brun's there was a gathering at which le brun--"pindar" le brun the poet--spouting a discourse, described a greek supper. the idea at once sprang up that they should have one straightway; they got up the cook and started to set the thing going, the poet guiding the making of the sauces. amidst the general merriment vigée le brun suggested that they should dress for the fantastic affair in greek costume, and arrange the tables and seats after the antique fashion. so the jocular business went apace. it was a merry party of athenians that sat down to the feast--"pindar" le brun wearing laurels in his ridiculous hair, and a purple mantle round about him; the marquis de cubières tricked out with a guitar as a golden lyre; vigée le brun being chief costumier to the frolic, draping chaudet the sculptor and others in as near greek fashion as could be. vigée le brun, herself in white robes and tunic, and garlanded with flowers and veiled, seems to have presided over a rollicking gathering. the noise of the jollification got abroad. the banquet cost the frugal vigée le brun some fifteen francs in all; but in the mouths of the spiteful the tale of its extravagance quickly grew. a few days afterwards there was talk of it at court; and the king was solemnly assured by "one who knew," that it had cost , francs. this unfortunate greek supper dogged her steps in the wanderings over the face of europe that were to be her long exile. at rome she was to discover that it had cost her , francs; at vienna it was to rise to , ; and when she reached st. petersburg she was to find that, gathering volume on the long journey, it had increased to , francs, when she scotched the lie and killed it; but not before it had served her a very ugly turn. the truth was that she was being made to share the unpopularity that had fallen upon the queen. she was painting, and was on friendly terms with, not only the royal family, but with the unpopular ministers and servants of the crown, and with the noblesse, who in league with the queen were chiefly concerned in keeping the king from popular measures. she painted, according to the authorities, in , in her thirtieth year, the portrait of calonne though a parchment in the engraving from it bears the date . the portrait of the minister set slander going against the artist, as regards the vast sum paid for it. the portrait of the seated minister ends below the knees; and it was of this picture of the weak calonne, who clung so limpet-like to office, that sophie arnould, seeing it at the salon, made the neat remark: "it is because he sticks to office that madame le brun has cut off his legs." but whether she received much or little mattered not much to vigée le brun; her husband seized and squandered all she earned. as a matter of fact, she received francs for the portrait from calonne, sent in a handsome box worth francs--a couple of hundred pounds at the outside. it was a small price compared to the sums she was now receiving for portraits; beaujou, the financier, paid francs (say guineas); prince lubomirski , francs (£ )--not that the poor maker of these works gained thereby, for her precious picture-dealer husband had it according to his habit, and she had difficulty and a scene even to get two louis from the price when she asked the rogue for it. however, her reputation ever increased. she showed at this same salon of , in her thirtieth year, the portrait of the little dauphin of four years and his seven-year-old sister, the madame royale, seated on a bank, the boy's hat thrown at his feet upon the flower-strewn ground--a work in which her colour-sense, her fine arrangement, and her feeling for style reach to their highest flight. it is perhaps the most wholly successful and most complete and masterly canvas of her long career. it hangs in versailles, a pathetic comment, this happy moment in the children's life, when the days looked rosy and all the world was a beautiful garden. at the salon of , in her thirty-second year, is record of a picture of "marie antoinette and her children"; and of herself with her girl; and, amongst others, those of mademoiselle dugazon and of madame molé-raymond. this famous painting of madame molé-raymond, the pretty actress of the comédie française, is one of vigée le brun's masterpieces. her brush is now at its most dexterous use; the laughing pretty woman is caught like a live thing and fixed upon the canvas as at a stroke as she trips across the vision, with muff upraised, smiling out upon us as she passes. vigée le brun never stated character with more consummate skill than here; never set down action with more vivid brush, catching movement flying; she never stated life more truly nor with more exquisite tact than in this bright vision of a dainty woman of the theatre. affairs in france were now in such a huddle that the state could not pay interest on the public loans. calonne could no longer disguise the serious business from himself or the king. there was nothing for it but to call the assembly of notables. they met at versailles on the nd of february . calonne fell, to give place to his enemy the turbulent and stupid cardinal de brienne. the court was completely foul of the people when de brienne threw up office in the midst of riots in paris and throughout the country, and, in panic, fled to italy, leaving the government in dire confusion and distress. the king took a wise course; he recalled neckar. the convoking of the states-general now became a certainty. paris rang with the hoarse cry for the third estate. the wrangle as to the constitution of the states-general became every day more dangerous. the last portrait that vigée le brun painted of the doomed queen was the canvas that hangs at versailles known as "marie antoinette and her children," in which the queen is seen seated beside a cradle with the baby duke of normandy on her knee, the little madame royale at her side, and the small dauphin pointing into the cradle. when the doors of the salon of were thrown open the painting was not quite finished; and for some days the frame reserved for it remained empty. it was on the eve of what was to become the revolution, and the country was speaking now in no hushed whispers of the public deficit in the nation's treasury, and gazing bewildered at the bankruptcy that threatened the land. the empty frame drew forth the bitter jest: "voilà le déficit!" the little dauphin's pointing at the cradle was not to be without its significance--for the little fellow was to die at the outbreak of the revolution and his place was to be taken by the babe on his mother's knee--the small duke of normandy was to become dauphin in his place, and, in some few years, with his little sister, was to be made a close prisoner in the temple. the king and the queen, separated from their children and each other, were to go out to the guillotine; the girl was to live through the seething hell of the terror as by a miracle, and thereafter unhappily enough as the duchess of angoulême; but the fair boy, heir to one of the noblest heritages in all this vast world, torn from marie antoinette whilst the queen still lived, a prisoner, was to be handed to the tender mercies of the infamous simon, jailor at the temple, who was to train the frightened child to drink and swear and sing with piping treble the _camagnole_, until, hidden away in a tower of the prison, he was to die like a frightened hunted thing, his shirt not changed for months--die in darkness and squalor and in a filthy state. the guillotine did no mightier act of simple godlike vengeance than the day it sheared the skull from the foul neck of cordwainer simon. marie antoinette, in this the thirtieth portrait that vigée le brun painted of her, is no longer the mere careless, gorgeous butterfly of some ten years ago when the little more than girl-artist first limned her features in the "marie antoinette with a rose." the ten years that have passed are ending in solemn seriousness for the thirty-third birthday of the french queen. the future is a threat. the people are demanding rule by parliament--are singing for it--writing broadsheets claiming it. it was about this time of stress and strain and anxiety at court that, in , berger engraved so superbly one of vigée le brun's greatest portraits, the consummately painted character-study, and exquisitely dainty colour-harmony of the marchioness de sabran. the elections to the states-general took place amidst indescribable excitement throughout all france. the winter which went before the meeting of the states-general was terribly severe; it came on top of a bad harvest; the price of bread rose to famine pitch. neckar generously sacrificed a vast part of his private fortune to buy food for the hunger-stricken poor of paris. it was in national gloom that the states-general met at versailles on the th of may in . that day sounded the knell of the monarchy. ===================================================================== plate vii.-marie antoinette and her children (at versailles) the last portrait that vigée le brun painted of the doomed queen was the canvas that hangs at versailles known as "marie antoinette and her children," in which the queen is seen seated beside a cradle with the baby duke of normandy on her knee, the little madame royale at her side, and the small dauphin pointing into the cradle. when the doors of the salon of were thrown open the painting was not quite finished; and for some days the frame reserved for it remained empty. it was on the eve of what was to become the revolution, and the country was speaking now in no hushed whispers of the public deficit in the nation's treasury, and gazing bewildered at the bankruptcy that threatened the land. the empty frame drew forth the bitter jest: "voilà, le déficit!" [illustration: plate vii.] ===================================================================== in little over a month the states-general was become the self-constituted national assembly; a few days later, on the th of june, the deputies took the solemn oath in the tennis-court--the _jeu de paume_. at the queen's foolish urging the king fell back on force; filled paris with troops under de broglie; dismissed neckar. the people at once took to arms. the th of july saw the fall of the hated bastille. on the nd the people hanged foulon to the street-lamp at the corner of the place de grève--and thenceforth the terrible shout _à la lanterne!_ became the cry of fashion. such was the dawn of the revolution in the streets of paris, upon which vigée le brun's eyes gazed down terrified in her thirty-fourth year. quickly followed the rumblings of the dark thunder-clouds that came up in threatening blackness behind the dawn--and which were about to burst with a roar upon reckless paris. the king showed astounding courage and considerable capacity during these awful days; but his work was constantly thwarted and ruined by the court party and the queen. on the rd of october the officers of the regiment of flanders were foolishly entertained at versailles, and the whole court being present, the white cockade of the bourbons was distributed amidst rapturous approval, and the national tricolour trodden under foot. the starving rabble of paris knew it, by the next day; and headed by a band of frantic women, set out for versailles on the morning of the th of october, under the leadership of the ruffian maillard who had distinguished himself at the capture of the bastille. they overran the palace. the king again showed superb nerve; and the mob, abashed and admiring, calling "long live the king!" withdrew to the courtyards. the unfortunate brawl in the courtyard followed; and the mishap of the night. the next day the royal family had to make their humiliating journey with the rabble to paris. small hope for vigée le brun, unless she stole out of france, and at once. she stood, indeed, in perilous plight. her relations with the court, and with the nobility, made every hour that she stayed in paris a greater danger to her life. it was dangerous to go into the streets--dangerous to leave paris--but for vigée le brun more dangerous to stay. she was a marked woman. there was for her one sole way from death, and it was flight. by delaying she risked also the life of her child. her friends begged her to be gone. she took the girl; searched hurriedly for all the money she could lay hands on--her husband had taken all but eighty francs (some three guineas)--and, leaving her canvases where they stood unfinished, she passed out of the studio that had been all the world to her; the place where she had spent the happiest hours of her life. a few days before, she had had to refuse to begin a portrait of the future duchess de noailles--to save her own head, not to paint those of others, was now become her single aim. on the th of october of this year of , that fearsome day that saw the rabble marching to versailles, vigée le brun took her seat in a diligence with her little girl, seated between a thief and a jacobin; the diligence rattled along the cobbles of her beloved city, and out of the gates--in such fashion vigée le brun left paris and took the road for italy. v sweet exile as she rattled out of paris between her grim companions, vigée le brun little thought that her exile would last a dozen years; but everywhere she went she was destined to be welcomed with honour; and wheresoever she roamed--and she ranged across the face of the land wellnigh from end to end of it--she was to receive the same ovations, meet with the same success, be rewarded with the highest honours. she went amongst strangers with but eighty francs in her purse out of all the fortune she had made by her dogged industry; she was to find in exile, not only a gracious home, but at last an immunity from the shameless squandering of her earnings by the disreputable thief whom she had married. at turin, her first halting-place, she tarried but a short while. she found that her name and fame had gone before her. at bologna no french citizen was allowed to stay for more than twenty-four hours; but for vigée le brun permission was brought without her asking for it. she spent three days gazing at the masterpieces of the bologna school; and was made a member of its academy. at florence she was asked to paint her portrait for the celebrated collection of portraits of famous artists by their own hand at the uffizi gallery. at rome the same impressive welcome awaited her. here she was soon at work again, with palette and brushes, upon the portrait of herself, which she had promised to the gallery at florence, where it now hangs--one of the most exquisite heads she ever painted, sunny, smiling, happy, with youth come back to it. after eight months in rome she moved on to naples. here it was that she painted the portrait of lady hamilton, nelson's emma, reclining by the sea, holding a cup in her hand as a bacchante. vigée le brun also painted her as a sibyl--that picture which she took with her wherever she went, from town to town, and which always drew a crowd to her studio; whilst, grimly enough, nelson's emma rose to be one of the famed lovers of romance, to sink into want, and so to death in loneliness and misery at calais. it was at naples, too, that vigée le brun painted that portrait of paisiello which she sent to paris to the salon, where it was hung as pendant to a portrait by david, and led to his high tribute to her genius, when, after gazing upon it for a long while, he said to his pupils: "they will think that my canvas was painted by a woman, and the portrait of paisiello by a man." vigée le brun was now painting without cease. the queen of naples, her two elder daughters, and the prince royal, all sat to her. during the first year of her exile the news from france had not been greatly alarming, and danger seemed to have been lulled. but at naples she was to hear tidings that caused her bitter grief. first neckar, finding himself out of touch with the king and the people and the parliament, retired to switzerland. then, unfortunately for the king, mirabeau died in the april of . the king thenceforth resolved on escape. the royal family made their ill-starred flight to varennes; to be brought back to paris as prisoners. the constitutional party in the legislative assembly, at first dominant, soon became subordinate to the more violent girondists, with their extreme wing of _jacobins_ under robespierre and of _cordeliers_ under danton, marat, camille desmoulins, and fabre d'eglantine. the proscription of all emigrants quickly followed--and the name of vigée le brun was written upon the lists. the queen's enmity to lafayette baulked, and completed the ruin of, the royalist hopes. he retired into exile, and sadly left the royal cause to its fate. on the th of april france entered upon her supreme struggle with europe by declaring war. on the night of the th of august the dread tocsin sounded the note of doom to the royal cause--herald to the bloodshed of the th of august. three days afterwards the king and the royal family were prisoners in the temple. there followed the terrible september massacres. the national convention met for the first time on the st of september ; decreed the first year of the republic; abolished royalty and titles of courtesy; decreed _citoyen_ and _citoyenne_ in their place, and _tu_ and _toi_ for _vous_. it also proved the enmity of the two wings of the now all-powerful girondist party--the girondists proper as against the _jacobins_ or _montagnards_. the conflict began with the fierce quarrel as to whether the king could be tried. it was with sorrow at her heart that the exiled artist left italy and journeyed into austria. having spent three years in italy, roaming from town to town, and being received with honour wherever she went, she turned her footsteps to vienna, where she remained from to , her thirty-seventh to her fortieth years, again to be idolised, and painting hard the while. "to paint and to live are the same word to me," she was wont to say. ===================================================================== plate viii.--peace bringing back plenty (in the louvre) it was shortly after her return from this journey into flanders that joseph vernet decided to put down her name for election to the royal academy. her portrait of herself created such a sensation that her election became assured. she had to paint the usual formal _tableau de reception_, and chose allegory, painting her "la paix ramenant l'abondance," which, though a somewhat stilted affair such as academies demand, is full of charm--and is still to be seen at the louvre. [illustration: plate viii.] ===================================================================== but these years in vienna must have gnawed at vigée le brun's heart like a fearful disease. in her france her much-loved marie antoinette was going through terrible days. the king was being tried for his life, and "louis capet" knew that he was a condemned man before he faced his accusers with the rare dignity and courage that keep his memory green. he was condemned to death,--orleans, "philip egalité," voting with the majority amidst a murmur of universal horror even amongst the men who condemned the king. louis' head fell to the guillotine on the th of january . war with europe followed; and the deadly struggle between the girondists and jacobins for supreme power. the th of may saw the appointment of the terrible secret committee of public safety. by june the girondists had fallen. charlotte corday's stabbing marat in his bath left the way clear to robespierre's ambition. the jacobins in power, the year of the reign of terror set in--from july to july , with robespierre as lord of the hellish turmoil. the famous "loi des suspects" soon filled the prisons with some two hundred thousand miserable prisoners. the scaffold reeked with blood. during the year of the terror the guillotine sheared the heads from fourteen hundred victims. the unfortunate queen, marie antoinette, whose hair had gone white in a night, was tried as "the widow capet," going to the guillotine with majestic serenity on the th of october . the girondist deputies followed; also the despicable egalité orleans, who went to his doom as the dandy he was, blotting out his many sins in a final dignity. amongst the many batches came the miserable du barry, shrieking with terror, to her awful death, which she had brought upon herself by foolishly advertising a reward for a robbery from her house of louveciennes. then came strife amongst the jacobins themselves. danton and robespierre fought the bloodthirsty villain hébert for life, and overthrew him; the hébertists went to the guillotine like the curs they were. danton, with his appeals for cessation of the terror, alone now stood between robespierre and supreme power; danton, camille desmoulins, d'eglantine, and their fellows went to the guillotine. but other as able and resolute men had determined that robespierre and his terror must end; robespierre went to the guillotine. the revolution of the ninth thermidor put an end to the terror in july . it was whilst at vienna, in her thirty-ninth year, on the rd of june , during the terror, that vigée le brun took out her act of divorce. and it was in this year that "citizen le brun" published in paris his _précis historique de la vie de la citoyenne le brun, peintre_! in her fortieth year vigée le brun went from vienna to prague; and, getting roaming again, passed through dresden to berlin and on to st. petersburg, where she arrived in the july of this same year of . her welcome in st. petersburg must have been very sweet to the wandering exile. on the morrow of her arrival the empress catherine had her presented. she found at st. petersburg many of her old friends, fled from the revolution. to her all europe became a second country; but st. petersburg her second home. here, in fact, were larger numbers of those that had meant paris to her than she could now have found in paris itself. she was besides a spoiled child of the court. her life at st. petersburg was a very busy one. she settled down at once to the industrious practice of that art that was breath and life and holiday to her--working from morning until nightfall, and happy in it all. she painted something like forty-eight portraits in st. petersburg. the empress catherine, now an old woman, was to have sat to her, and had appointed the day and hour, but her "to-day at eight" was not to be; apoplexy struck down her good-will; she was found dead in her room. the six years in st. petersburg were amongst the happiest years of the artist's life, and the richest for her fortunes. her reception into the academy of st. petersburg was almost a state triumph. meanwhile, the armies of france were winning the respect of the world by their gallantry and skill in war. the rd of september saw france ruled by the directory. the th of october, the "day of the sections," led to napoleon bonaparte's employment as second in command of the army--the young general was soon commander-in-chief. and france thenceforth advanced, with all the genius of her race to that splendid and astounding recovery of her fortunes and to that greatness which became the wonder of the world. the revolution of the th and th of brumaire ( th and th november ) ended the directory and set the people's idol, napoleon bonaparte, at the helm of her mighty state as first consul. there was now little need--indeed there had not been for some time any need--for vigée le brun to remain an exile; but, as a matter of fact, exile she had found to be so sweet a thing, so magnificent and perpetual a triumph, so delightful an existence, that paris had early ceased to call her. her experience with her rascally husband scarcely beckoned her back to her old home; she was now sole mistress of her considerable earnings. besides, the paris of her delight had been the paris of marie antoinette--aristocratic paris. where was that paris to be found? the personages and the atmosphere and the palaces and homes of all that paris meant to her were gone into thin air--a sad memory. during her exile her mother had died; her last link with paris died with her. she probably rarely gave the city of her youth's delight a thought, and likely enough never would have given it another serious one, had not destiny now struck her a blow which she bitterly resented; but which she should have foreseen to be as inevitable as death. her daughter betrothed herself to, and married, a russian, m. nigris, secretary to the count czernicheff. vigée le brun had been sorely tempted to oppose the match, for she foresaw that the girl would find no happiness in the union. she had poured out upon her child all the passionate love that had been so miserably thwarted in her own marriage. it had been more than bitterness to her to note that whilst her love for her girl increased, the girl's love for her seemed to dwindle. it was the bitterest blow that vigée le brun had ever known; and she had been struck more than once. it turned the wanderer's eyes homewards to her wrecked paris. russia was no longer a delight to her. she became restless. the wander-fever came upon her; she got roaming; she went to moscow for five or six months; but she could not settle--she decided to leave russia. the people amongst whom she had lived so long showed their affection, and personally appealed to her to make her home amongst them. the grandees went to her and told her of the sorrow that the news of her going had brought to them. the emperor alexander the first, himself, begged her not to leave them. she fenced all their kindnesses by promising to return soon. but during the forty years that remained to her she never set foot again in her "second home." in her forty-sixth year vigée le brun left russia, and turned her face towards paris; she crossed the border into germany and halted a short while in berlin to paint a few portraits, and in order to go to potsdam to paint the queen of prussia. on leaving berlin she narrowly escaped losing her diamonds and gold, a servant of the inn making an attempt to force open the baggage that contained them. from berlin she roamed to dresden, where she seems to have hesitated, reluctant to bend her steps towards paris, yet torn with desire to go. as she came nearer to france her desire to return conflicted with her horror at the memories which the tragedy and wreckage of the terror raised like ghouls in her imagination--every well-loved spot would now bear witness to her of the ghastly crimes that had swept away her old friends, their once masters and mistresses. vi the end at last, the year after napoleon, with great pomp, took up his official residence as first consul at the palace of the tuileries, vigée le brun set foot on french soil after twelve years splendid exile, carrying with her a considerable fortune. the egregious le brun seems to have been reconciled, for he took a leading part in her reception. as she stepped out of the carriage she found herself in the arms of her brother and his wife, amidst tears of joy--with le brun in attendance. in her home, which was gay with flowers, everything else was exactly as she had left it, except that above her bed was a crown of golden stars set there by "citizen le brun." the long-suffering vigée le brun was deeply touched; but could not forget that the unconscious wag had made her pay dearly for the golden stars. concerts and ovations greeted the returned exile; but it was all a strange world. a few old friends--and the rest, kindly strangers. she grew restless, and in six months was setting out for london. here she found herself amongst hosts of old friends; and the doors of the great, as everywhere, thrown open to her. she painted george the fourth and byron amongst many others. the rage for portraits by her kept her in england for three years; and it was her fiftieth year ( ) before she returned by way of holland and belgium into france. but in the midst of the great sea of adventure that swept france along under napoleon she seems never to have got her bearings. she roamed to switzerland twice, and painted some two hundred pastel landscapes of its scenery. it was during her first visit thereto that she met and painted madame de staël as "corinne." the years were increasing, the fever for travel cooled, and vigée le brun, buying a house at louveciennes, thenceforth passed her days between her country-house and town-mansion. death began to make gaps amongst such old friendships as the guillotine had spared to her. le brun died in ; her daughter in ; her brother the following year. her art began to fail her. but her closing years were illumined by the affection and care of her two nieces, madame de rivière and madame trippier le franc. at five of the morning of the th of march in , she died in her apartment at no. rue st. lazare, in her eighty-seventh year; and was buried according to her wish at louveciennes, where, in the church, still hangs the picture of "ste. genevieve" painted by her. even her poor dead body could not sleep where she had willed; she was destined to gentle exile even after death. her remains were moved to the new cemetery, and the simple tomb was again set up over them, whereon one may see a palette and brushes chiselled at its summit, and the grim words: "here, at last, i rest." printed in great britain. in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. carlo dolci. george hay. luini. james mason. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. _others in preparation._ [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by -- t. leman hare raeburn - ===================================================================== plate i.--lord newton (frontispiece). (national gallery of scotland.) this chef-d'oeuvre, which dates from about , represents one of the most celebrated characters who ever sat upon the bench of the court of session. famous in his day for "law, paunch, whist, claret, and worth," the exploits of charles hay, "the mighty," as he was called, have become traditions of the parliament house. (see p. .) [illustration: plate i.] ===================================================================== raeburn by james l. caw illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents introduction chapter i. " ii. " iii. " iv. " v. " vi. list of illustrations plate i. lord newton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece (national gallery of scotland) ii. children of mr and the hon. mrs paterson of castle huntly (in the possession of chas. j. g. paterson, esq.) iii. mrs lauzun (national gallery, london) iv. mrs campbell of balliemore (national gallery of scotland) v. professor robison (university of edinburgh) vi. john tait of harvieston and his grandson (in the possession of mrs pitman) vii. miss de vismes (in the possession of the earl of mansfield) viii. mrs scott moncrieff (national gallery of scotland) [illustration: raeburn] when in , henry raeburn, then at the height of his powers, proposed to settle in london, lawrence dissuaded him. it is unnecessary, as it would be unjust, to insinuate that the future president of the royal academy had ulterior and personal motives in urging him to rest content with his supremacy in the north. raeburn was fifty-five at the time, and, after his undisputed reign at home, even his generous nature might have taken ill with the competition inseparable from such a venture. lawrence's advice was wise in many ways, and raeburn, secure in the admiration and constant patronage of his countrymen, lived his life to the end unvexed by the petty jealousy of inferior rivals. nor was recognition confined to scotland. ultimately he was elected a member of the royal academy, an honour all the more valued because unsolicited. yet, had the courtly lawrence but known, acceptance of his advice kept a greater than himself from london, and, it may be, prevented the perpetuation and further development of that tradition of noble portraiture of which raeburn, with personal modifications, was such a master. for long also it confined the scottish painter's reputation to his own country. forty years after his death, his art was so little known in england that the redgraves, in their admirable history of english painting, relegated him to a chapter headed "the contemporaries of lawrence." time brings its revenges, however, and of late years raeburn has taken a place in the very front rank of british painters. and, if this recognition has been given tardily by english critics, the reason is to be found in want of acquaintance with his work. he had lived and painted solely in scotland, and scottish art, like foreign art, so long as it remains at home, has little interest for london, which, sure of its attractive power, sits arrogantly still till art is brought to it. but raeburn's work possesses that inherent power, which, seen by comprehending eyes, compels admiration. the raeburn exhibition held in edinburgh in was quite local in its influence, but from time to time since then, at "the old masters" and elsewhere, admirable examples have been shown in london; and recent loan collections in glasgow and edinburgh, wherein his achievement was very fully illustrated, were seen by large and cosmopolitan audiences. and the better his work has become known, the more has it been appreciated. collectors and galleries at home and abroad are now anxious to secure examples; dealers are as alert to buy as they are keen to sell; prices have risen steadily from the very modest sums of twenty years ago until fine pictures by him fetch as much as representative specimens of reynolds and gainsborough. fashion has had much to do with this greatly enhanced reputation, but another, and more commendable cause of the appreciation, not of the commercial value but of the artistic merit of his work, lies in the fact that the qualities which dominate it are those now held in highest esteem by artists and lovers of art. isolated though he was, raeburn expressed himself in a manner and achieved pictorial results which make his achievement somewhat similar in kind to that of velasquez and hals. ===================================================================== plate ii.--children of mr and the hon. mrs paterson of castle huntly. (charles j. g. paterson, esq.) painted within a year or two of raeburn's return from italy, some critics have seen, or thought they saw, in this picture the influence of michael angelo. be this as it may, the handling, lighting, and tone and disposition of the colour are eminently characteristic of much of the work done by raeburn about . [illustration: plate ii.] ===================================================================== i if, during the last century, scotland has shown exceptional activity in the arts, especially in painting, and has produced a succession of artists whose work is marked by able craftsmanship and emotional and subjective qualities, which give it a distinctive place in modern painting, the more than two hundred years which lay between the reformation and the advent of raeburn seemed to hold little promise of artistic development. during the middle ages and the renaissance the internal condition of the country was too unsettled and its resources were too meagre to make art widely possible. strong castles and beautiful churches were built here and there, but intermittent war on the borders and fear of invasion kept even the more settled central districts in a state of unrest. moreover, the fierce barons were at constant feud amongst themselves, and not infrequently the more powerful amongst them were banded against the king. of the first five jameses only the last died, and that miserably, in his bed. the innate taste of the stewarts, no doubt, created an atmosphere of culture in the court, and this tendency was further strengthened by commercial relations with the low countries and political associations with france. poetry and scholarship were encouraged, if poorly rewarded--one remembers dunbar's unavailing poetical pleas for a benefice--and relics and old records show that even in those stirring times life was not without its refinements and tasteful accessories. yet only in the church or for her service was there the quietude necessary for art work of the higher kinds. then came the reformation (during which much fine ecclesiastical furniture and decoration perished) severing the connection of art with religion and sowing distrust of art in any form. had the union of the crowns not taken place in , it is possible that the art of painting might have developed much earlier than it did. no doubt that event brought healing to the long open sore caused and inflamed by kingly ambitions and national animosities, but it removed the court to london, and with that some of the greatest nobles, while the change in the religion of the ruling house from presbyterianism to episcopacy, which followed, led to the covenants and the religious persecution, and drove the iron of ascetism into the souls of those classes from whom artists mostly spring. yet the logical rigidity of the calvinistic spirit, while taking much of the joy out of life and opposing its manifestation in art, had certain compensating advantages. disciplining the mind, quickening the reasoning powers, and cultivating that grasp of essentials which makes for success in almost any pursuit, and not least in art, it helped very largely to make the scot what he is. during the peaceful years which immediately followed the union, there was considerable activity in the building of country residences. now that the country was more settled these were less castles than mansions, and the larger and better lighted apartments possible led to a good deal of elaborate decoration. of this pinkie house ( ) with its painted gallery is perhaps the most celebrated example. it is difficult, however, to determine how much of this kind of work was done by foreign, how much by native craftsmen, and as it seems to have exerted little influence upon the one or two picture-painters who emerged during the seventeenth century, one need not discuss the probabilities. so far as has been discovered, the only link between this phase of art and the other consists of the fact that george jamesone ( ?- ), the first clearly recognisable scottish artist, was apprenticed in to one john andersone "paynter" in edinburgh, whose decoration in gordon castle is mentioned by an old chronicler. as might be expected in the circumstances the "scottish van dyck," as he is fondly called, was a portrait-painter. he was followed by a few others, such as the scougall family, aikman marshall, wait, and the two alexanders, who, although neither so accomplished nor so much appreciated as their precursor, form a never quite broken succession of portraitists between him and allan ramsay ( - ) in whose work art in scotland took a great step forward.[ ] a few of ramsay's predecessors had succeeded in supplementing the meagre instruction--if any thing that existed could be dignified by that name--to be obtained in scotland by a visit to the low countries or italy, but ramsay was the first to obtain a sound technical training. the author of "the gentle shepherd," to whom edinburgh was indebted for its first circulating library and its first play-house, encouraged his son's bent for art, and after some preliminary study in london, allan _fils_ was sent to "the seat of the beast" beyond the alps, where he became a pupil of solimena and imperiale and of the french academy. formed under these influences, his style possesses no clearly marked national trait, except it be the feeling for character which informs his finer work and makes it, in a way, a link between that of jamesone and that of raeburn. to this he added a delicate sense of tone and a tenderness of colour and lighting, a gracefulness of drawing and a refined accomplishment which were new in scottish painting. his turn for charm of pose and grace of motive was pronounced, and his portraitures mirror very happily the mannered yet elegant social airs of the mid-eighteenth century. more than that of any english painter of his day, his art possesses "french elegance." ===================================================================== plate iii.--mrs lauzun. (national gallery.) only one of the three raeburns in the national gallery is an adequate example. this is the picture reproduced. it was painted in , and, while very typical technically, possesses greater charm than most of the portraits of women executed by him at that comparatively early date. [illustration: plate iii.] ===================================================================== ramsay's activity as a painter coincided with a remarkable intellectual movement which, making itself felt in history, philosophy, science, and political economy, raised scotland within a few years to a conspicuous intellectual place in europe. a product of the reaction which followed the narrow and intense theological ideals which had dominated scotland, it was closely associated with the reign of the moderates, who, with their breadth of view, tolerance, and intellectual gifts had become the most influential party in the national church. offering an outlet for the human instincts and secular activities, it possessed special attraction for independent minds and induced boldness of speculation and original investigation of the phenomena of history and society. intimate with the leaders in this movement, ramsay, before he left edinburgh for london, was active in the formation ( ) of the "select society," which in addition to its main object--the improvement of its members in reasoning and eloquence--sought to encourage the arts and sciences and to improve the material and social condition of the people. it was in this more genial atmosphere that henry raeburn was reared. born in , raeburn was not too late to paint many of the most gifted of the older generation. david hume, who sat to ramsay more than once, was dead before the new light rose above the horizon, and the appearance of adam smith does not seem to be recorded except in a tassie medallion; but black, the father of modern chemistry, and hutton, the originator of modern geology, were amongst his early sitters; and fine works in a more mature manner have principal robertson, james watt, the engineer, adam ferguson, the historian, dugald stewart, the philosopher, and others scarcely less interesting for subject. and of his own immediate contemporaries--the cycle of walter scott--he has left an almost complete gallery. nor were his sitters less fortunate. if they brought fine heads to be painted, he painted them with wonderful insight grasp of character, and great pictorial power. [ ] j. michael wright ( ?- ?), at his best probably the finest native painter of the seventeenth century, went to england. ii. descended from a race of "bonnet-lairds," who took their name from a hill farm in the border district, robert raeburn, the artist's father, seems to have come to edinburgh as a young man in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. at that time the city had expanded but little beyond the limits marked by the flodden wall. the high grey lands along the windy ridge between the castle and holyrood were still tenanted by the upper classes, and such extension as had been was towards the meadows. the new town had not been projected even, and on the slopes, now occupied by its spacious streets and squares, copse-woods and grass and heather grew. in the hollow at the foot of these green braes, and by the side of the water of leith, a chain of little hamlets--dean, stockbridge, and canon-mills--nestled, and in the mid-most of these robert raeburn established himself as a yarn-boiler. although in the country, his home was less than a mile from st giles's kirk. his business appears to have prospered, and during the early forties he married miss ann elder. there was a difference of twelve years in the ages of their two sons, william and henry, and the younger was no more than six when both father and mother died. left to the care of his brother, who carried on the business, henry raeburn was nominated for maintenance and education at heriot's hospital by mrs sarah sandilands or durham in , and remained seven years in the school, which owed its origin to the bequest of george heriot, jeweller to james vi. and i. in edinburgh and later in london. many boys had been educated on "jingling geordie's" foundation, but raeburn was to be its most distinguished product. he does not seem to have distinguished himself specially as a scholar, however, the two prizes awarded to him having been for writing, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen he was apprenticed to a jeweller and goldsmith in parliament close. this choice of a calling was probably suggested by the lad's own inclinations, but it was a stroke of good fortune that gave him james gilliland as a master. no craft then practised in the scottish capital was so likely to have been congenial to him. in the eighteenth century a silversmith made as well as sold plate and ornaments, and in his master's shop raeburn must have learned to use his hands and may have acquired some idea of design. in addition gilliland seems to have been a man of some taste--one of his most intimate friends, david deuchar, the seal-engraver, devoted his leisure to etching, and executed many plates after holbein and the dutch masters. it was to the latter that raeburn owed his first lessons in art. surprising his friend's apprentice at work on a drawing of himself, deuchar, struck by the talent displayed, inquired if he had had any instruction. no, he had not, wished he had, but could not afford it, the youth replied; and deuchat's offer to give him a lesson once or twice a week was accepted eagerly. the story is pleasant and circumstantial enough to be credible; and the existence of an early raeburn miniature of deuchar is evidence of the existence of friendship between the two. but, as a free drawing-school had been founded in by the honourable the board of manufactures for the precise object of encouraging and improving design for manufactures, the impossibility of raeburn receiving instructions of some kind was less than seems to be implied. it is true, of course, that the teaching then given was exceedingly elementary, and that it was not until after the appointment in of john graham[ ] ( - ) as preceptor that the trustees' academy was developed and began to exercise a definite and indeed a profound influence on scottish painting. from , the year in which raeburn left heriot's, until his death, alexander runciman ( - ), the "sir brimstone" of a convivial club of the day and an artist of great ambition and some gifts, if little real accomplishment, in history painting, was master, however, and tradition has it that raeburn took the tone of his colour from that painter's work. but no record exists of raeburn having been a pupil of the school, and he does not appear to have received any more training than was involved in the relationships with his master and his master's friend which have been described. even subsequent introduction to david martin ( - ), who settled in edinburgh in , when raeburn was nineteen, meant little more. by that time, or little later, he had almost certainly come to an arrangement under which his master cancelled his indenture, and received as compensation a share in the prices received for the miniatures to which raeburn now chiefly devoted himself, and for which gilliland probably helped to secure commissions. these miniatures, of which few have survived, recognisable as his work at least, possess no very marked artistic qualities. drawn with care and not without considerable sense of construction, they are tenderly modelled but not stippled, and the colour is cool and rather negative in character. the frank way in which the sitters are regarded, and the lighting and placing of the heads are almost the only elements which hint their authorship. they are simple and straight-forward likenesses rather than works of art and bear no obvious relationship to the elegant bibelots or deeply-searched portraits in little of the contemporary english school of miniaturists. but obviously they were some preparation for the development which followed, when, soon afterwards and almost at once, he passed from water-colour miniature to life-size portraiture in oil paint. ===================================================================== plate iv.--mrs campbell of balliemore. (national gallery of scotland.) this is one of the finest of the many fine portraits by raeburn in the edinburgh gallery. its place in the artist's work is discussed on page . [illustration: plate iv.] ===================================================================== the rapid expansion of edinburgh provided new opportunities and helped to raeburn's early success. when he was eight years old the building of the north bridge, which was to connect the old city with the projected new town on the other side of the valley, was begun, and by the time he attained his majority many of the well-to-do had migrated. the new district meant bigger houses and larger rooms, and, with the increase in wealth which followed the commercial and agricultural development of the country of which the city was the capital, led to alterations in the habits and expansion of the ideals of its inhabitants. it was probably the opening for an artist offered by these altered circumstances which had brought martin to edinburgh, and certainly raeburn was fortunate in that his emergence coincided with them. an attractive and clever lad devoting himself to art in a community increasing in wealth and expanding in ideas, and with a sympathetic master coming in contact with the upper classes, raeburn could not fail to make acquaintances able and willing to help him. amongst these was john clerk, younger of eldin, later a famous advocate, through whom the young artist got into touch with the penicuik family which for several generations had been notable for its interest in the arts. and this would lead to other introductions. [ ] sir david wilkie, sir william allan, and others were pupils of graham. iii. the influences which affected raeburn and the models upon which he formed either his style or his method are difficult to trace. allan ramsay, having painted many portraits in edinburgh before he went to london in the same year as raeburn was born, would be, one would think, the most likely source of inspiration. except runciman, who occasionally varied historical subjects by portraits painted in a broad but somewhat empty manner, and seaton, an artist of whom little is known but whose rare and seldom seen portraits possess a breadth of handling and a simplicity of design which give the best of them a certain distinction--can they have been an influence with raeburn?--the scottish portrait-painters of the eighteenth century were much influenced by ramsay, and martin had been his favourite pupil. raeburn's connection with the latter was very slight, however. beyond giving the youth the entreé to his studio and lending him a few pictures to copy, martin does not seem to have been of much direct assistance, and even these little courtesies come to an end when the painter to the prince of wales for scotland unjustly accused the jeweller's apprentice of having sold one of the copies he had been allowed to make. rumour, often astray but now and then hitting the mark, said that the real reason was jealousy of the younger man's growing powers. raeburn's debt to ramsay and martin was therefore inconsiderable and indirect. it is not traceable in the technique or arrangement of his earliest known pictures, such as the full-length "george chalmers" in dunfermline town hall, which was painted in , when the artist was twenty. probably sight of martin's pictures in progress was an incentive to work rather than a formative influence on his development as a painter. he had, says allan cunningham, writing within a few years of raeburn's death, "to make experiments, and drudge to acquire what belongs to the mechanical labour, and not to the genius of his art. his first difficulty was the preparation of his colours; putting them on the palette, and applying them according to the rules of art taught in the academies. all this he had to seek out for himself." and, if probably exaggerated, the statement gives some idea of the difficulties with which he had to contend. there were at that time no exhibitions and no public collections of pictures where a youth of genuine instinct could have gleaned hints as to technical procedure, but there were at least portraits in a number of houses in the city and district, and from these and from prints after the masters, of which deuchar, an etcher himself, evidently possessed examples, raeburn no doubt derived much instruction as to design, the use of chiaroscuro and the like. it has also been suggested with considerable likelihood that mezzotints after portraits by sir joshua reynolds had a considerable effect upon him. ===================================================================== plate v.--professor robison. (university of edinburgh.) painted about , "professor robison" is one of the most notable portraits painted by raeburn before . it represents the culmination of his _premier coup_ manner. (see pp. and .) [illustration: plate v.] ===================================================================== passing from supposition, which, however interesting and plausible, throws no very definite light upon the formation of raeburn's style, to his early work itself, one finds it chiefly remarkable for frank rendering of character. obviously he believed in his own eyes, and sought simple and direct ways for the expression of his vision. certain of what he saw, and desiring to set it down as he saw it, lack of training in the traditional methods of painting by process probably led him to attempt direct realisation in paint. here is at once the simplest and the most reasonable explanation of how he became an exponent of direct painting, of how, isolated though it was, his art came to be perhaps the most emphatic statement of this particular method of handling between velasquez and hals and comparatively recent times. of course at this early stage his technical accomplishment was not at all equal to his frankness of vision. his drawing, although expressing character, was uncertain and not fully constructive; his sense of design was rather stiff and occasionally somewhat archaic in character; his handling and modelling, if broad and courageous, were insufficiently supported by knowledge; his colour was apt to be dull and monotonous, or, when breaking from that, patchy and crude in its more definite notes which do not fuse sufficiently with their surroundings. gradually these deficiencies were mastered, but in some degree they persist in most of the comparatively few portraits which can be said with certainty to have been painted before he went to italy. he had been in no hurry to go. ever since marriage with one of his sitters in , when he was only twenty-two, his future had been secure. the lady, _neé_ ann edgar of bridgelands, peebleshire, brought him a considerable fortune. the widow of james leslie--who traced his descent to sir george leslie, first baron of balquhain ( ), and who, after his purchase of deanhaugh in ,[ ] was spoken of as "count of deanhaugh"--she was twelve years the artist's senior, and had three children; but the marriage turned out most happily for all concerned. raeburn went to live at his wife's property, which lay not far from his brother's house and factory at stockbridge, and, although sitters increased with his growing reputation until he is said to have been quite independent of his wife's income, he does not appear to have had a separate studio. probably his edinburgh clients went to deanhaugh, and at times he seems to have painted portraits at the country houses of the gentry. but in desire to see and learn more than was possible at home took him to italy. while in london he made the acquaintance of reynolds, in whose studio he may have worked for a few weeks, and sir joshua's advice confirming his original intention, raeburn and his wife went to rome, where they resided about two years. when parting reynolds took him aside and whispered: "young man, i know nothing about your circumstances. young painters are seldom rich; but if money be necessary for your studies abroad, say so, and you shall not want it." money was not needed, but letters of introduction were accepted gladly; and "ever afterwards raeburn mentioned the name of sir joshua with much respect." [ ] if, as stated by cumberland hill in his _history of stockbridge_, leslie bought deanhaugh in , and if, as stated by cunningham and others, raeburn married in , the lady can have been a widow for only a few months. iv. in these days of rapid travel, the transition from north to south is exceedingly striking. leaving london one speeds past the pleasant surrey fields and lanes and woodlands, and through the soft rolling green downs, and in the afternoon and evening sees the less familiar but not strange wide planes and poplar-fringed rivers of northern france, to open one's eyes next morning upon the brown sun-baked lands, with their strange southern growths, which lie behind marseilles; and all day as the train thunders along the riviera, through olive gardens and vineyards, one has glimpses of strangely picturesque white-walled and many-coloured shuttered towns fringing the broad bays or clustering on the rocks above little harbours, and drinks a strange enchantment from great vistas of lovely coast washed by blue waters and gladdened by radiant sunshine. and on the second morning, issuing into the great square before the station, you have your first sight of rome. ===================================================================== plate vi.--john tait of harvieston and his grandson. (mrs pitman.) one of the artist's most virile and trenchant performances, it was painted in - . the child was introduced after the grandfather's death. (see p. .) [illustration: plate vi.] ===================================================================== yet impressive as these transitions are, they are nothing to the contrast which rome presented to the stranger from the north in the eighteenth century when, after slow and long and weary travelling, he reached his goal. then rome was still a town of the renaissance imposed upon a city of the ancients; and under the aegis of the papacy preserved aspects of life and character which differed little from those of three or four centuries earlier. after the grey metropolis of the north, with its softly luminous or cloudy skies, its sombreness of aspect, its calvinistic religious atmosphere, its interest in science and philosophy, and its want of interest in the arts, the clear sunshiny air of the eternal city, its picturesque and crowded life, its gorgeous ecclesiastical ceremonies and processions, its monuments of art and architecture, and its cosmopolitan coteries of eager dilettanti discussing the latest archaeological discoveries, and of artists studying the achievements of the past, must have formed an extraordinary contrast, yet raeburn, much as these novel and stirring surroundings would strike him, remained true to his own impressions of reality and was unaffected in his artistic ideals. almost alone of the foreign artists then resident in rome, he was unaffected by the pseudo-classicism which prevailed. in part a product of emasculated academic tradition, and in part the result of philosophical speculations, upon which the discoveries at pompeii and the excavations then taking place in rome had had a strong influence, it was an attitude which founded itself upon the past and opposed the direct study of nature. gavin hamilton ( - ) and jacob more ( ?- ) two of its most conspicuous pictorial exponents were scots by birth, but they had lived so long abroad that scotland had become to them little more than a memory. the work of the former was in many ways an embodiment of the current dilettante conception of art, and kindred in kind, though earlier in date, to that of jacques louis david ( - ) under whose sway, towards the close of the century, classic ideals came to dominate the art of europe outside these isles. his usefulness to raeburn was chiefly that of a cicerone. there was little of an archaeological kind with which he was unacquainted, and he was so famous a discoverer of antiquities that the superstitious romans thought that he was in league with the devil. the landscapes of more, though highly praised by goethe, would appeal to raeburn little more than did the "sublime" historical designs of hamilton. they were but dilutions, frequently flavoured with melodramatic sentiment, of the noble convention formulated by claude and the poussins. raeburn, on the other hand, had looked at man and nature inquiringly, and had evolved a manner of expressing the results of his observation for himself. moreover he was past the easily impressionable age, and turned his opportunities to direct and practical uses. he used to declare that the advice of james byres ( - ?) of tonley, who, in raeburn's own words, was "a man of great general information, a profound antiquary, and one of the best judges perhaps of everything connected with art in great britain," was the most valuable lesson he received while abroad. "never paint anything except you have it before you" was what his friend urged, and, while raeburn, to judge from his early portraits, did not stand greatly in need of the injunction, it probably strengthened him in his own beliefs. be that as it may he seems to have used his stay in italy principally to widen his technical experience, and his work after his return was richer and fuller than what he had done previously. no record of any special study he may have undertaken or of the pictures he particularly admired exists. even gossip is silent as regards his preferences, except in so far as it is said that while in rome he came near to preferring sculpture to painting. v. arrived back in edinburgh in , raeburn took a studio in the new town, and, with his enhanced powers and the added prestige due to his sojourn abroad, soon occupied a commanding place. few agreed with martin that "the lad in george street painted better before he went to italy," for if the majority were unaware of his high artistic gifts, none could be unconscious of the vital and convincing quality of his portraitures. his earlier sitters included some of the most distinguished people in scotland. lord president dundas must have been amongst the very first for he died before the end of the year. ere long his position was unassailable, and during the five-and-thirty years that followed he painted practically everybody who was anybody. burns is probably the only great scotsman of that epoch who was not immortalised by his brush, for the missing likeness, which has been discovered so often, was not painted from life but from nasmyth's portrait. from the time he returned home until , when he purchased the adjoining property off st bernard's, raeburn lived at deanhaugh.[ ] the junction of these small estates enabled him to feu the outlying parts on plans prepared by himself, architecture being one of his hobbies, and his family's connection with them is still marked by such names as raeburn place, ann street (after his wife), leslie place, st bernard's crescent, and deanhaugh street. some years earlier continuous increase in the number of his clients had rendered a change of studio desirable, and in he moved from george street to (now ) york place where he had built a specially designed and spacious studio, with a suite of rooms for the display of recently completed work or of portraits he had painted for himself. at a later date, when exhibitions were inaugurated in edinburgh (first series - ), he lent the show-rooms to the society of artists which organised them. this action was typical of raeburn's cordial relations with his fellow-artists, most of whom were poor and socially unimportant; and only a year before his death he championed the professional artists when, partly in opposition to the royal institution, they proposed to form an academy. incidentally also, the letter written on that occasion, which i have transcribed in full in _scottish painting; past and present_, gives an indication of the extent of his practice, of how fully he was engaged. until raeburn's career had been one unbroken success, but in that year, following upon the failure of his son, financial disaster overtook him. the firm of "henry raeburn and company, merchants, shore, leith," consisted of henry raeburn, junior, and james philip inglis, who had married anne leslie, the artist's step-daughter, but neither the _edinburgh gazette_ nor the local directory states the nature of their business. in the proceedings in connection with raeburn's own bankruptcy, however, he is described as "portrait-painter and underwriter." what underwriter exactly means is uncertain, but it may be that the son was a marine-insurance broker, that raeburn himself took marine-insurance risks. in any case his ruin seemed complete. not only did he lose all his savings but he had even to sell the york place studio, of which he was afterwards only tenant. he failed, paid a composition, and, two years later, proposed settling in london. by those of his biographers who have noticed it at all, this failure and the contemplated removal south have been very closely associated. but a more careful examination of the whole circumstances makes such an assumption rather doubtful. alexander cunningham, in a letter written on th february , tells a correspondent--"i had a walk of three hours on sunday with my worthy friend, raeburn. he had realised nearly £ , , which is all gone. he has offered a small composition, which he is in hopes will be accepted. he quits this to try his fate in london, which i trust in god will be successful. while i write this i feel the tear start." so far the connection is evident enough. but although the artist received his discharge in june of the same year,[ ] it was not until two years later that he took active steps towards carrying out his idea.[ ] the time was highly propitious. hoppner had just died ( rd january ), and wilkie records in his journal (march nd) that he had heard that that artist's house was to be taken for raeburn. lawrence was now without a rival in the metropolis, and raeburn's talent was of a kind which would soon have commanded attention there. the opening was obvious, but raeburn's reception by the gentlemen of the royal academy, when he visited london in may, was not very cordial, and fortunately for scotland, if not for himself, he was persuaded to remain in edinburgh. from then onward the fates were kind. to quote his own words, written in , "my business, though it may fall off, cannot admit of enlargement." wider recognition also came to him. he had exhibited at the royal academy as early as , but it was before he became a regular contributor, and in he was elected an associate, full membership following three years later. just prior to his advancement to academician rank, he wrote one of the few letters by him that have been preserved:--"i observe what you say respecting the election of an r.a.; but what am i to do here? they know that i am on their list; if they choose to elect me without solicitation, it will be the more honourable to me, and i will think the more of it; but if it can only be obtained by means of solicitation and canvassing, i must give up all hopes of it, for i would think it unfair to employ those means." no doubt election was particularly gratifying to raeburn. isolated as he was in edinburgh, where an academy did not come into existence until some years after his death, it must have been stimulating to receive such tangible assurance of that appreciation of one's fellow-workers which is the most grateful form of admiration to the artist. he reciprocated by offering as his diploma work the impressive portrait of himself, which is now one of the treasures of the national gallery of scotland. the rules of the academy, however, forbade the acceptance of a self-portrait, and in he gave the "boy with rabbit"--a portrait of his step-grandson, but one of his most genre-like pieces. other academic diplomas received later were those of the academies of florence, new york, and south carolina. a year before he died these artistic laurels were supplemented by royal favour. on the occasion of that never-to-be-forgotten event--to those who took part in it--the first visit of a king to scotland since the union of parliaments, raeburn was presented to george iv. and knighted. his fellow artists marked their appreciation of this fresh distinction by entertaining him to a public dinner, at which the chairman, alexander nasmyth, the doyen of the local painters, declared that "they loved him as a man not less than they admired him as an artist." and in the following may, the king appointed him his "limner and painter in scotland, with all fees, profits, salaries, rights, privileges, and advantages thereto belonging." raeburn did not long enjoy these new honours. in july, a day or two after returning from an archaeological excursion in fifeshire with, amongst others, sir walter scott and miss edgeworth, he became suddenly ill, took to bed, and in less than a week was dead. [ ] all raeburn's biographers follow cunningham in stating that raeburn succeeded to st bernard's on the death of his brother in or . it was not so, however. the intimation in the _edinburgh evening courant_, of th december , reads, "died on the th december mr william raeburn, manufacturer, stockbridge"; and the title deeds of st bernard's show that the artist purchased it from the trustees of the late mrs margaret ross in october . [ ] henry raeburn & co.'s affairs were not settled until march . [ ] that his own affairs were not only settled but were again highly prosperous before this is apparent from his having purchased st bernard's in . vi. while raeburn's attitude to reality was determined and his style was formed to a great extent before he went abroad, his ideas of pictorial effect were broadened and his technical resources enriched by his sojourn in italy. some of the work executed immediately after his return, such as the portraits of lord president dundas, neil gow, the famous fiddler, and the earlier of two portraits of his friend john clerk of eldin, shows, with much unity, a greater care and precision in the handling of detail, a more searched kind of modelling and a fuller sense of tone, and thicker impasto and fuller colour than that done previously. moreover the design of the first-named picture is reminiscent in certain ways of velasquez's "pope innocent x.," which he may have seen and studied in the doria palace in rome, though too much stress need not be laid on the resemblance. about this time also, he painted a few pictures in which difficult problems of lighting are subtly and skilfully solved. in things like the charming bust "william ferguson of kilrie" (before ) and the group of sir john and lady clerk of penicuik ( ) the faces are in luminous shadow, touched by soft reflected light to give expression and animation. but for obvious reasons such effects are not favoured by the clients of portrait-painters, and that raeburn should have adopted them at all is evidence of the widening of the artistic horizon induced by his stay abroad. ===================================================================== plate vii.--miss emily de vismes--lady murray. (earl of mansfield.) an admirable example of the artist's mature style, and one of his most charming portraits of women. (see p. .) [illustration: plate vii.] ===================================================================== in pictures painted but little later than these, one finds a marked tendency to revert to the more abbreviated modelling and broader execution which have been noted as characteristic of his pre-roman style. the execution, however, is now much more confident and masterly, the draughtsmanship better, the design, while exceedingly simple, less stiff and more closely knit. using pigment of very fluid consistency and never loading the lights, though following the traditional method of thick in the lights and thin in the shadows, his handling is exceedingly direct and spontaneous, his touch fearless and broad yet thoroughly under control, his drawing summary yet selective and so expressive that, even in faces where the lighting is so broad that there is little shadow to mark the features and little modelling to explain the planes, the large structure of the head and the essentials of likeness are rendered in a very satisfying and convincing way. his colour, however, if losing the inclination to the rather dull grey-greenness which had prevailed before , remained somewhat cold and wanting in quality, and the more forcible tints introduced in the draperies were frequently lacking in modulation and were not quite in harmony with the prevailing tone. something of this deficiency in fusion is also noticeable in his flesh tints, the carnations of the complexions being somewhat detached owing to defective gradation where the pinks join the whites. as experience came, raeburn advanced from the somewhat starved quality of pigment, which in his earlier pictures was accentuated by his broad manner of handling, until in many of the pictures painted during the later nineties he attained extraordinary { } power of expression by vigorous and incisive use of square brush-work and full yet fluid and unloaded impasto. this method with its sharply struck touches and simplified planes reaches its climax perhaps in the striking portrait ( circa) of professor robison in white night-cap and red-striped dressing-gown, though the more fused manner of "mrs campbell of balliemore" ( ) and the extraordinary trenchant handling of the "john tait of harvieston and his grandson" ( - ) show modifications which are as fine and perhaps less mannered. even earlier he sometimes attained a solidity and forcefulness of effect, a fullness of colour, and a resonance of tone which gave foretaste of the accomplishment of his full maturity. curiously this is most marked in two or three full-lengths. the earliest of these was the famous "dr nathaniel spens" in the possession of the royal company of archers, by which body it was commissioned in . in it close realisation of detail and restraint in handling are very happily harmonised with breadth of ensemble and effectiveness of design. some five years later this fine achievement was followed by the even more striking, if rather less dignified, "sir john sinclair," a splendid piece of virtuosity, which unites brilliant colour and admirable tone to great dash and bravura of brush-work. during this period, and indeed throughout his career, raeburn usually placed his sitters in a strong direct light, which, being thrown upon the head and upper part of the figure (from a high side-light) illumined the face broadly, and, while emphasising the features with definite though narrow shadows, made it dominate the ensemble. very often this concentration of effect was associated with a forced and arbitrary use of chiaroscuro. in many of his pictures one finds the lower portion of the figure, including the hands, low in tone through the artist having arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow over the parts he wished subordinated. this device appears in full-lengths as well as in busts and threequarter-lengths, and while, no doubt, helping to the desired end, is now and then a disturbing influence from the fact that it is difficult to account for the result from purely normal causes. with rembrandt, the greatest master of concentrated pictorial effect, the transitions from the fully illumined passages to the surrounding transparent darks are so gradual and so subtle that one scarcely notices that the effect has been arranged--the concentration is an integral part of the imaginative apprehension of the subject. it is otherwise with raeburn, in his earlier work at least. later he attained much the same results by less arbitrary and apparent means, by swathing the hands and arms--the high tone of which he evidently found disconcerting and conflicting with the heads--in drapery, by placing them where they tell as little as possible, and by modifications in handling. his management of accessories was also determined by desire for concentration. although, as is obvious from his increasing use of it, preferring a simple background from which the figure has atmospheric detachment, he frequently used the scenic setting which reynolds and gainsborough had made the vogue. his idea, however, was that a landscape background should be exceedingly unassertive--"nothing more than the shadow of a landscape; effect is all that is wanted"--and, always executing them himself, his are invariably subordinate to the figure. but the essential quality of his vision went best with plain backgrounds. that he did not wholly abandon the decorative convention which he heired, and often employed to excellent purpose, was due in large measure to caution. "he came," says w. e. henley, "at the break between new and old--when the old was not yet discredited, and the new was still inoffensive; and with that exquisite good sense which marks the artist, he identified himself with that which was known, and not with that which, though big with many kinds of possibilities, was as yet in perfect touch with nothing actively alive." yet, had he had the full courage of his convictions, his work would have been an even more outstanding landmark in the history of painting than it is. still to ask from raeburn what one does not get from velasquez, many of whose portraits have a conventional setting, is to be more exacting than critical, and, as has been indicated, simplicity of design and aerial relief became increasingly evident in raeburn's work, and that in spite of the protests of some of his admirers. while raeburn had been working towards a fuller and more subtle statement of likeness, modelling, and arrangement, it is possible that removal to his new studio accelerated development in that direction. the painting-room had been designed by himself for his own special purposes, and no doubt suggested new possibilities. in any case, the portraits painted after reveal a definite increase in the qualities mentioned. but before considering the characteristics of his later style, it might be well to tell what is known of his habits of work and technical procedure. cunningham's summary of these applies partly to the george street and partly to the york place period, but for practical purposes they may be regarded as one, for, while raeburn's art may be divided into periods, each was but a stage in a gradual and consistent evolution. "the motions of the artist were as regular as those of a clock. he rose at seven during summer, took breakfast about eight with his wife and children, walked into george street, and was ready for a sitter by nine; and of sitters he generally had, for many years, not fewer than three or four a day. to these he gave an hour and a half each. he seldom kept a sitter more than two hours, unless the person happened--and that was often the case--to be gifted with more than common talents. he then felt himself happy, and never failed to detain the party till the arrival of a new sitter intimated that he must be gone. for a head size he generally required four or five sittings: and he preferred painting the head and hands to any other part of the body; assigning as a reason that they required less consideration. a fold of drapery, or the natural ease which the casting of a mantle over the shoulder demanded, occasioned him more perplexing study than a head full of thought and imagination. such was the intuition with which he penetrated at once to the mind, that the first sitting rarely came to a close without his having seized strongly on the character and disposition of the individual. he never drew in his heads, or indeed any part of the body, with chalk--a system pursued successfully by lawrence--but began with the brush at once. the forehead, chin, nose, and mouth, were his first touches. he always painted standing, and never used a stick for resting his hand on; for such was his accuracy of eye, and steadiness of nerve, that he could introduce the most delicate touches, or the almost mechanical regularity of line, without aid, or other contrivance than fair off-hand dexterity. he remained in his painting-room till a little after five o'clock, when he walked home, and dined at six.... from one who knew him in his youthful days, and sat to him when he rose in fame, i have this description of his way of going to work. "he spoke a few words to me in his usual brief and kindly way--evidently to put me into an agreeable mood; and then having placed me in a chair on a platform at the end of his painting-room, in the posture required, set up his easel beside me with the canvas ready to receive the colour. when he saw all was right, he took his palette and his brush, retreated back step by step, with his face towards me, till he was nigh the other end of the room; he stood and studied for a minute more, then came up to the canvas, and, without looking at me, wrought upon it with colour for some time. having done this, he retreated in the same manner, studied my looks at that distance for about another minute, then came hastily up to the canvas and painted for a few minutes more." these details may be supplemented by the list of colours used by him, which alexander fraser, r.s.a., gave in _the portfolio_. "his palette was a simple one; his colours were vermilion, raw sienna (but sometimes yellow ochre instead), prussian blue, burnt sienna, ivory black, crimson lake, white, of course, and the medium he used was 'gumption,' a composition of sugar of lead, mastic varnish, and linseed oil. the colours were ground by a servant in his own house and put into small pots ready for use." when one adds that his studio had a very high side-light, and that he painted on half-primed canvas with a definitely marked twill, all that is known of his practice has been noted. ===================================================================== plate viii.--mrs scott moncrieff. (national gallery of scotland.) none of raeburn's portraits of ladies is quite so famous as this. although in indifferent condition owing to bitumen having been used, it is singularly charming in colour, design, and sentiment, and is one of the chief treasures of the gallery, in which it has hung since , when mr r. scott moncrieff, welwood of pitliver, bequeathed it to the royal scottish academy. (see page .) [illustration: plate viii.] ===================================================================== as already suggested, raeburn's style was tending towards greater completeness of expression and more naturalness of arrangement before he removed to york place in , but, while his normal advance was in that direction, it was so gradual that it is only by looking at a number of pictures painted, say, five or ten years later, and comparing them with their { } predecessors that one notices that the advance was definite and not casual. occasionally, as in the "professor robison," there is a very emphatic restatement of a somewhat earlier method; but, as the "lord braxfield" of about is a premonition of a much later manner, this exceptional treatment seems to have been inspired by the character of the sitter having suggested its special suitability. but comparing the splendid group, "reginald macdonald of clanranald and his two younger brothers" (about ), or the "mrs cruikshank of langley park" (about ), with typical examples painted between and , one finds the later pictures marked not only by increased power of drawing and more masterly brush-work but by a finer rendering of form, by greater roundness of modelling, and by a more expressive use of colour and chiaroscuro. considerable ingenuity has been expended in trying to prove that raeburn's subsequent development was due in some way or other to the influence of hoppner and lawrence. consideration of his situation and of his work itself, however, scarcely bears this out. his ignorance of what was being done by london artists, and of how his own pictures compared with theirs, is very clearly evident from the following letter written to wilkie:-- edinburgh, _th september_ . mr dear sir,--i let you to wit that i am still here, and long much to hear from you, both as to how you are and what you are doing. i would not wish to impose any hardship upon you, but it would give me great pleasure if you would take the trouble to write me at least once a year, if not oftener, and give me a little information of what is going on among the artists, for i do assure you i have as little communication with any of them, and know almost as little about them, as if i were living at the cape of good hope. i send up generally a picture or two to the exhibition, which serve merely as an advertisement that i am still in the land of the living, but in other respects it does me no good, for i get no notice from any one, nor have i the least conception how they look beside others. i know not in what london papers any critiques of that kind are made, and our edinburgh ones (at least those that i see) take no notice of these matters. at any rate i would prefer a candid observation or two from an artist like you, conveying not only your own opinion but perhaps that of others, before any of them. are the portrait-painters as well employed as ever? sir thomas lawrence, they tell me, has refused to commence any more pictures till he gets done with those that are on hand, and that he has raised his prices to some enormous sum. is that true, and will you do me the favour to tell me what his prices really are, and what sir w. beechy, mr philips, and mr owen have for their pictures? it will be a particular favour if you will take the trouble to ascertain these for me precisely, for i am raising my prices too, and it would be a guide to me--not that i intend to raise mine so high as your famous london artists. moreover he is said to have visited london only three times: in , when he spent several weeks while on his way to italy; in , when he contemplated settling there; and in , after he was elected an academician. it is of course only with the later visits that we have to do in this connection. by that time hoppner was dead, and lawrence's claim to be painter par excellence to the fashionable world was undisputed. no doubt the scottish painter would be attracted by the technical accomplishment of lawrence's work; but he was between fifty and sixty years of age and little likely to be influenced by an art, which, for all its brilliance, was meretricious in many respects. yet it is possible that the adulation lavished by society upon his contemporary's style may have induced him to consider if something of the elegance for which it was esteemed so highly could not be added with advantage to his own. on the other hand, scottish society was gradually undergoing evolution, and, while a greater infusion of fashion amongst its members would in itself tend to stimulate the favourite painter of the day in the same direction, increase in wealth would bring a greater number of younger sitters to his studio. probably a combination of these represents the influences which affected raeburn. in any case, his later portraits, especially of women, possess qualities of charm and beauty which, while never merely pretty or meretricious, connect them in some measure with the more modish and less sincere and virile work of lawrence. but otherwise--and, unlike his southern contemporaries, he never sacrificed character to elegance or subordinated individuality to type--the evolution of his style continued on purely personal lines. the pictures painted between and his death, while still at the height of his powers, are essentially one with those of the preceding decade. there is in them a more delicate sense of beauty than before, and his portraits of ladies are marked by a quickened perception of feminine grace and charm; but these are results of the natural development of his nature and of his personal powers of expression rather than of any radical alteration in his standpoint. as regards the work of the last fifteen years and more, it is less increased grasp of character, for that had always been a leading trait, than growth in the expressive power and completeness of his technique that is the dominating factor. and here the prevailing qualities are but the issue of previous experience. his modelling ceases to be marked by the rough-hewn and over simplified planes which had distinguished his incisive square-touch at its strongest and becomes fused and suave. as sir walter armstrong put it, "he began with the facets and ended with the completest modelling ever reached by any english painter." now his colour not only loses the inclination to slatiness and monotony, which were evident before , and sometimes even later, but, the half-tones being more delicately graded, the transitions, though still lacking the subtleties of the real colourist, are blended and the general tone enriched and harmonised. and his use of chiaroscuro becomes infinitely more delicate both in its play upon the face and in the broad disposition, which now attains finer and more convincing concentration in virtue of more skillful subordination through handling, as well as through more pictorial management of his old arrangement of lighting. moreover the scenic setting, if retained in many full-lengths, is to a great extent abandoned for a simple background lighted from the same source as the sitter, and against which face and figure come in truer atmospheric envelope and relief. with these alterations, which were not perhaps invariably all gain, his later work now and then lacking the delightfully clear and incisive brushing of the preceding period, were also associated a fuller and fatter body of paint which, while never loaded, gives richness of effect, and a sonorousness of tone which his earlier pictures rarely possess. a sympathetic and human perception of character was the basis of his relationship to his sitters, each of whom is individualised in a rarely convincing way, and to me at least the { } view of life expressed in his later pictures seems more genial and comprehending than that which dominates his earlier work. comparatively this is perhaps especially evident in his rendering of pretty women. "mrs scott moncrieff," "miss de vismes," "miss janet suttie," and "mrs irvine boswell," to name no more, are all beauties; but each differs from the others, and is marked by personal traits to an extent unusual in his earlier practice. still his grasp of character is more obviously seen in his portraitures of older women and of men, and his masterpieces are to be found amongst his pictures of this kind rather than amongst his "beauty" pieces, seductive though the best of these are. when one thinks of his finest and most personal achievements, one recalls such things as "lord newton," "sir william forbes," and "james wardrop of torbanehill," or "mrs cruikshank," and "mrs james campbell." born a painter of character, raeburn was at his best where character, intellect, and shrewdness were most marked. yet axiomatic though it may sound, this implies great gifts. to seize the obvious points of likeness, and make a portrait more living than life itself is comparatively easy; but to grasp the essential elements of likeness and character, and, while vitalising these pictorially and decoratively, to preserve the normal tone of life is difficult indeed. of this, the highest triumph of the portrait-painter's art as such, raeburn was a master. printed in great britain at the press of the publishers. in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. carlo dolci. george hay. luini. james mason. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. _others in preparation._ [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by -- t. leman hare velazquez ===================================================================== plate i.--the infante don fernando of austria (frontispiece) this picture was painted for the torre de la parada, and shows king philip's younger brother in hunting costume. velazquez seems to have repainted a part of the canvas which is to be seen in the prado, madrid. [illustration: plate i.] ===================================================================== velazquez by s. l. bensusan illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents introduction i. the method and influence of velazquez ii. the painter's early days iii. velazquez in madrid iv. a retrospect list of illustrations plate i. the infante don fernando of austria . . . . . . . frontispiece in the prado, madrid ii. las meniñas in the prado, madrid iii. the infante philip prosper in the imperial gallery, vienna iv. the infante don balthasar carlos in the prado, madrid v. antonio the englishman in the prado, madrid vi. admiral adriano pulido pareja in the national gallery, london vii. donna mariana of austria in the prado, madrid viii. the princess maria theresa of austria in the prado, madrid introduction [illustration: velazquez] it is a curious truth that spain in these days of her decline exercises almost as much control over the mind of the world as she exercised over its territories in the days of her great empire. cervantes in literature and velazquez in art seem destined to secure for their country a measure of immortality that throws into the background the memory of such people as carlos quinto, philip ii., and those other lesser lights who made the name of spain respected or detested throughout europe and south america. if science and art are destined, as some altruists hope, to unite the world in a bond that defies the arbitrary boundaries made by rulers, then the name of diego de silva velazquez will stand high in the list of those whom the world delights to honour, for people who are opposed diametrically on all questions of politics and faith find ground upon which they may meet in security and amity when they stand before the pictures of the great spanish master. and cervantes, who used words instead of colours to express the life he saw around him, would redeem spain from insignificance if she had never owned a colony, and had never sought to step beyond her own borders to develop the arts of peace or follow the paths of war. perhaps it would be hard to find more diverse opinions than those that are heard in the studio. artists see life through the medium of many temperaments, they are notoriously intemperate in their enthusiasms. there are schools of painting to suit every conviction, and the work that one man would give his all to possess would not find hanging space upon the wall controlled by another. but before velazquez even artists forget their controversies; he stands, like bach and beethoven in the world of music, respected even by those who do not understand. no controversy rages round him; he has marched unchallenged to the highest place in men's regard. ===================================================================== plate ii.--las meniÑas this picture was painted about the year , and, now in the prado, is considered one of the greatest works of the master. it presents the infanta margarita attended by her maids of honour, while velazquez himself is shown painting the portraits of philip iv. and his second wife mariana of austria, who are seen reflected in the mirror. [illustration: plate ii.] ===================================================================== it is interesting to note that a reputation unrivalled in the world of pictures is founded upon a comparatively small number of works. one of his latest critics reduces the pictures of velazquez now in existence to eighty-nine, while acknowledging that some have disappeared from the royal palaces of spain and cannot be traced. this critic, señor don aureliano de beruete--a connoisseur, a collector, and a worker in the best interests of art--is perhaps a little too severe. he will not admit to his catalogue a portrait like that of admiral adriano pulido pareja, which, despite some inferior workmanship, can show considerable claims to be regarded as genuine; but even if all the disputed ones were admitted, and such a list as the late r. a. m. stevenson published were accepted without that far-seeing critic's own reserve, we should not have as many pictures to represent the forty years of the artist's life as sir joshua reynolds was known to paint in a single year. velazquez has left very few drawings, and these are of small importance; there are but two acknowledged engravings; and to limit still further our sources of knowledge, the artist's correspondence seems to have been lost; while the memoirs which velazquez was said to have drawn up when philip iv. sent the pictures to the escorial are now admitted by the best authorities to be the work of another man. i the method and influence of velazquez in dealing with the life and work of the spanish master, even in the modest fashion of this little monograph, one must bear in mind the fact that velazquez, in the eyes of his contemporaries, was not only an artist--he was a court painter; and pictures other than portraits were of comparatively little importance to philip iv. and his circle. art borrowed most of her importance in sixteenth and seventeenth century spain from the fact that she was the handmaid of holy mother church. velazquez was a court official who chanced to be a clever portrait-painter, and his promotion tended ever to take him further away from his art. with the increase of state duties the claims upon his time grew more and more difficult to meet, and, when he rose in the closing years of his life to be grand marshal of the palace, entrusted with the ordering of state functions and missions to distinguished foreigners, his art became entirely a secondary consideration. the studio was no more than a place of refuge for the artist in the hours when he might forget that he was an official. if velazquez had not been compelled to sacrifice the best part of forty years' activity to the ridiculous formalities of court life, the world might have been richer to-day by scores of pictures worthy to rank by the side of "las meniñas" and the portrait of pope innocent x. the painter might have found outside court circles far more inspiring sitters than those whom he was compelled to paint, for it takes all that even a velazquez can give to a portrait to make a philip iv., a mariana of austria, or even an isabella of bourbon, reveal their dominant characteristics without caricature; indeed one feels that the interest belongs to the picture and not to the sitter. the success is one of tone, of harmony and of line, of sure handling directed by an inward vision. because of gifts lying beyond praise, the painter has preserved seventeenth-century spain for us as far as court circles represent it; but among the many charges laid to the account of philip iv. must be added that of limiting the range and crippling the capacity of an artist who cannot be placed second to any man. when we come to analyse his work we find that its qualities are not of a sensational kind. velazquez makes no appeal through the medium of brilliant pigment; his great contemporary rubens used colour in far more striking fashion. velazquez loved grey and silvery tints, and in the years of his maturity understood relative values perfectly. he knew, too, exactly how far he could go, and never made experiments in search of qualities that were not his. although he had a certain quality of delicate imagination, he was a realist, and could not paint without a model; he never acquired a mannerism, or applied to one sitter the treatment that some artists seem to keep for types. every figure he set upon canvas has its own individuality, and, while velazquez, like other artists, had manners and methods that belong to fixed periods of his life, it is not easy to set down in cold print an analysis of the causes that make up his effects. he had no tricks; everything that he did was clear, simple, and withal inimitable. hundreds of men have copied his pictures; none has been able to copy his method. with his death his influence upon art ceased. his genius lay buried in the grave with him, and did not suffer complete resurrection until the nineteenth century was turning towards its successor, though raphael mengs had done all he could to make his merits known a hundred years before. even to-day, we may be said to be in the first stage of our enjoyment of the master's work. there are at least fifty good books upon the subject of velazquez' life and art, written in three or four languages, and all published in the last half century; there must be many more to come, for every generation sees genius in the light of its own time. so much for literature. in art the painter has influenced very many moderns. manet, courbet, corot, millet, whistler, are among the men whose work shines in the light of the prado, and the list might be prolonged indefinitely, for all earnest art workers go to velazquez, confident that whatever their aims and ideals, he will confirm and strengthen what is best in them. they know, too, that they may return again and again, and that the rich stores of guidance and encouragement in the pursuit of ideals are as inexhaustible as the barrel of meal that did not waste, and the cruse of oil that did not fail, in the house of the widow of zarephath. ii the painter's early days in the years when velazquez first saw the light, the power of spain, despite the shock it had received from british seamen, was the dominating factor in european politics. philip ii. had come to the end of a reign of more than forty years; philip iii. had just reached the throne. the painter was not born in the atmosphere of court life, but in the very catholic city of seville, then as now a fatal place for those who cannot withstand the manifold temptations to lead a lazy life. happily for the boy his parents had not inherited the seville traditions; his father came from oporto, which, being a seaport town, has no lack of mental and physical activity. the spirit of painting settled at a very early age upon young diego de silva velazquez--the second name by which he is universally known belonged to his mother's family--almost before he was in his teens he was working in the studio of francisco de herrera, architect and painter. the temperaments of master and pupil could not fuse; there was sufficient trouble to lead don juan rodriguez to transfer his son's services to francesco pacheco, painter, poet, professor, and withal a man of action and experience. he knew much about contemporary art, encouraged a hopeful outlook upon life, and enjoyed the respect of all men. moreover his studio was the meeting-place for many of the distinguished folk of the city. in the very early years of their association pacheco understood that his young pupil was not like other lads, that he possessed an individuality that could not be repressed or directed into the usual channels, and instead of resenting this new element, he sought to direct it wisely and kindly, thereby laying velazquez under a debt of gratitude that the painter never repudiated. indeed there were stronger ties in the making, for in the spring of , when the young artist was on the threshold of his wonderful career, pacheco gave him his daughter juana for wife, "encouraged," he says, "by his virtues, his fine qualities, and the hopes which his happy nature and great talent raised in me." the kind old painter is not remembered to-day by his pictures, or even by his "book of portraits of illustrious personages," and other quaintly titled works from his pen. he lives because he helped to make velazquez a great painter, and recorded his impression of his son-in-law's earliest works, the various "bodegones," of which several may be seen in london to-day. others are in berlin and st. petersburg. from these pictures of the secular life velazquez passed to religious subjects--"christ in the house of martha" (national gallery) and the "adoration of the magi" (prado) belong to these early years. ===================================================================== plate iii.--the infante philip prosper this picture hangs in the imperial gallery of vienna. it is the work of the painter's last period, and shows us the little son of philip iv. by his second wife. the lad died some two years after the picture was painted; it has been restored, not too cleverly. [illustration: plate iii.] ===================================================================== in , velazquez, already the father of two children, made his first journey to madrid, and was allowed to visit the royal palaces. he did not stay long in castile, and his return to the capital was brought about by the divinity that shapes men's ends. philip iii. was dead; his son philip iv. had selected as friend and adviser the count olivarez, son of the governor of the alcazar in seville. olivarez had many friends in the city that wears the "modo" for its badge, in recognition of unswerving loyalty to alfonso the learned. doubtless he had heard about the work of the young painter and had seen some examples of it, and he wished to strengthen himself in the capital by bringing accomplished men from his own city to official posts in madrid. so he sent for velazquez, who journeyed a second time to the north, now in the company of pacheco, and on arrival there painted a lost portrait of a gentleman usher, fonseca by name. this picture did for velazquez what the portrait of admiral keppel did for reynolds, and before the excitement died away, the young king philip iv. had deigned to promise a sitting to the clever sevillian. the success of the first picture of philip iv. (apparently the early one now in the prado) was so complete that the king ordered all existing portraits of himself to be removed from the palace, and gave the painter an order of admission to his service with a salary of about two pounds five shillings a month! under the skilled hands of the artist we are permitted to see the tall, gloomy lad grow up a dull, reserved man, and we read in his face a part at least of the causes of spain's ultimate downfall. iii velazquez in madrid of the painter's work at court in those early days we hear a little from pacheco, but the story of the times is more or less obscure. a clever portrait-painter was not a very interesting person in the eyes of a spanish grandee. he was classed with the court buffoons and dwarfs who existed merely to amuse. indeed, portraiture was not above suspicion in the eyes of some fanatics, who held that art existed to serve the church, and should not seek secular employment. there are documents extant showing that velazquez received eight pounds for three portraits, of which one is lost and the other two (philip and the count of olivarez) are in spain. in the painter received a present of three hundred ducats, which was followed by a pension of the same value and a gift of free lodging, and, in , by the appointment to the post of gentleman usher. there is no doubt but that the king was attached to his young court painter in a certain undemonstrative fashion. pacheco tells us that philip used to visit the artist's studio constantly, reaching it by way of the secret passages of which the palace was full. the year marks an event of the first importance in the life of velazquez, for peter paul rubens came on a diplomatic mission to madrid, charged by his government to pave the way to the conclusion of peace between england and spain. rubens was then about fifty years old. he stayed nine months in the spanish capital, and, despite his diplomatic duties and the gout, found time to paint an extraordinary number of pictures, including five of philip. he also copied the king's titians. velazquez was entrusted by philip with the work of entertaining rubens, and showing him the art treasures of spain, and the friendship that grew up rapidly between the two artists was creditable to both, because rubens, then at the zenith of his fame, recognised the amazing gifts of the young spaniard, and velazquez never allowed the brilliancy of the ambassador-artist to tempt him from the paths that he had chosen to follow. there are some who think that rubens exerted a great influence upon his young friend's art, but we cannot pretend to trace it. rubens may have widened his mind; he could not influence his hand or eye. shortly after rubens left madrid, velazquez completed his picture "los borrachos," now in the prado, and one of the acknowledged masterpieces of his first style, though the tone is dark, and some of the figures do not blend with their surroundings. in the late summer of the same year velazquez left spain for italy, in the company of don ambrosio spinola, who was going to take command of the spanish forces. soldier and artist parted at milan, and the latter went to venice, where he stayed with the spanish ambassador and copied some of tintoretto's pictures. thence he went by way of ferrara to rome, the honoured guest of a relation of the count of olivarez, and he busied himself copying old pictures and painting new ones. like many of the artists who go for the first time to italy, he was influenced in some degree by guido, who was then living. he painted his own portrait, which is to be seen in the capitoline museum, and went from rome to naples, returning to madrid in the early part of . ===================================================================== plate iv.--the infante don balthasar carlos this is one of the prado pictures of king philip's eldest son by his first wife, the unfortunate little prince who died while he was yet a boy. when this picture was painted don balthasar carlos was six years old. [illustration: plate iv.] ===================================================================== it might be mentioned in this place that the painter's eldest daughter was growing up, and that he married her three years later to one of his pupils, the artist j. b. del mazo. this clever artist, who was treated by his master velazquez as velazquez had been treated by his master pacheco, is held by critics to be responsible for many pictures generally ascribed to his father-in-law. there is a picture in the wallace collection known as the "lady with the fan," which is thought by no less a critic than señor beruete to represent the young francesca velazquez, who became the señora del mazo when she was only fifteen years old. shortly after his return to madrid, velazquez came under the influence of el greco, who had died in , and left some wonderful pictures that may be seen to-day in toledo. this fact is important, not that the influence resulted in imitation, but because it was distinctly inspiring, and greco is a painter who is coming slowly before the public. it cannot be doubted that his influence on artists through velazquez has been very deep and abiding, particularly in portraiture. in the years following the return from italy, velazquez painted some of the pictures of the little prince don balthasar carlos, the king's son, who was born in , and died in , the year of his betrothal to mariana of austria. there are many pictures of this interesting lad who, had he lived, might have done so much to save his country. the earliest was painted as soon as velazquez returned from italy, and is at present in boston. the next in date would seem to be the one in the wallace collection, and following this comes the well-known picture of don balthasar in hunting dress, now in the prado, the one with the small greyhound seen on the right, just coming into the canvas. then we have the famous picture of the young prince on his spirited andalusian pony, which is perhaps the most popular of all; and succeeding that in the order of the painting comes the portrait that, in the writer's opinion, is the best of the series. it hangs in the imperial museum in vienna, and was painted when the prince was about eleven years old. doubtless there are other portraits of the ill-fated boy, whose features seem to suggest that he had inherited from his mother some of the qualities that his father lacked, and that had he been spared to succeed his father in , he would have handled affairs with vigour and intelligence. in philip's daughter maria teresa was born, and the history of the artist's life in madrid becomes uneventful or lost. probably on account of the increasing unrest abroad and the decline of the spanish fortunes, velazquez' earliest patron, the count of olivarez, was disgraced in , the year in which condé helped to break the power of spain at rocroi. although the condition of the spanish empire was very unfavourable, and philip iv. must have known long hours of anxiety and unrest, there is no reason to believe that he withdrew his company or his favour from the best beloved of his court painters. spinola had taken breda from justin of nassau, and the surrender was promptly immortalised by velazquez in the picture "las lanzas," which draws so many pilgrims to madrid to-day. it was painted for the palace of buen retiro, and curiously enough--since it records one of the few successes of spain in the low countries--the subject passed out of men's memory, and for many years nobody knew why the artist had painted it, or what it was all about. some time between the painting of this picture and the fall of olivarez, murillo came to madrid and became a pupil of velazquez, who had just received a grant of five hundred ducats to be paid annually by order of the king. in velazquez accompanied philip on a journey through aragon, and two or three years later he was appointed inspector of buildings, a post involving much tedious work, and helping to keep the painter from his studio. he seems to have bestowed a certain amount of labour on portraits painted by other men, in order to bring them into harmony with the collection that philip was making. it is difficult to deal with this matter within limited space because the details are distinctly controversial, but it is as well to remember that some of the portraits attributed to velazquez in the prado gallery are of people who were dead before velazquez was painting, so they could not have sat for him; and in the days of philip iv. it was considered no disgrace for a man to repaint another artist's canvases. moreover, a painter to the court of spain was not supposed to carry an uneasy conscience about with him. it was his duty to obey orders and to accept from his superiors as much guidance and direction as they were gracious enough to give him. in the king granted velazquez permission to return to italy in order to find pictures for a royal academy of fine art to be established in madrid. by this time philip was a widower, though he was on the point of marrying his niece, mariana of austria. she had been affianced to the infante don balthasar carlos, but he had been dead for three years, and the spanish throne was without an heir. velazquez visited genoa, venice, milan, and padua, and brought back pictures by veronese and tintoretto. rome and naples were revisited, and the famous portrait of pope innocent x., of which one copy is in st. petersburg, and the other in the doria palace in rome, was painted. the former is a bust and a study; the latter is a three-quarter length, and is painted with a wonderful blend of red and white. it was copied by sir joshua reynolds, who declared that it was the finest work he had seen in rome. what would he have thought of the later masterpieces by the same hand? the portrait was copied by other men too, and there is no doubt that the copies were in some cases sold for originals. by the time velazquez returned to madrid in , at the urgent request of his royal master, the court of spain was _en fête_. philip's wife, to whom he had been married two years, was only seventeen, and required amusement. functions of every sort, excursions, entertainments on a most sumptuous scale, were the order of the day, and because velazquez was now at the summit of his achievement, because he could paint pictures that will endure as long as men care for art, it is difficult indeed to forgive philip iv. for making him marshal of the palace. to be sure the post was well paid, the salary being about £ a year with lodging in the treasure house, but the duties were endless. the king's action was on a par with the custom that prevails in our own foreign office, of sending a man who understands china thoroughly to serve the country in peru, and one who has mastered russian politics to portugal. ===================================================================== plate v.--antonio the englishman this was one of the dwarfs in the service of the king. his is one of the last portraits painted by velazquez. the figure is life size, and hangs in the prado at madrid. [illustration: plate v.] ===================================================================== happily velazquez, for all that he was regarded in madrid as a rather lazy man, found time when he was marshal of the palace to paint the best of all his portraits. he was honoured by queen mariana of austria, the king's second wife, who sat for him on several occasions, and the results may be seen in paris, vienna, new york, and madrid. some of the portraits, painted without a suspicion of flattery, show the absurd head-dress, the false hair, and the extraordinary crinoline that were worn at the time, in all their ugliness, and force us to see how great was the distance lying between the royal house and any sense of beauty. velazquez was not perhaps very happy with this work, because nature had endowed philip's wife with a face that was almost as dull and unresponsive to emotion as that of her lord and master; but after a time children were born, and the court painter had a more sympathetic task. he has left portraits that are quite charming of the infanta margarita and the infante philip prosper; he painted both of the children while they were very young. in point of fact, neither lived to grow up; doubtless they would have been uninteresting enough if they had been spared. the infanta margarita is to be seen in vienna, in paris, and in madrid, and she of course is the centre of the famous picture, "las meniñas." prince prosper was painted by velazquez, when no more than two years old. there were two other children, prince ferdinand and prince carlos ii., but the former was no more than a year old when velazquez died, and carlos was unborn. of the four children born to philip iv. by his second wife, three died young. in the last years of his life, when the pressure of court duties and the ill-will of highly placed fools must have been hard to bear, velazquez found time to paint some of his greatest masterpieces. "the maids of honour" ("las meniñas"), "the spinners" ("las hilanderas"), "Æsop," "menippus," "the coronation of the virgin," and the "venus with the mirror," are all the ripe fruit of the painter's last decade. his art had matured; adversity had thrown him back upon his work; it was the solace of the hours that were not claimed by absurd official duties. who shall say that the scant consideration he received from parasites and courtiers was an unmixed evil? the men who despised the painter because philip favoured him may have helped to mould his character, may have enabled him to detach himself completely from his own official character when he could lay aside the garb of office and turn to his beloved canvases once again. the portraits of philip in his last years, those of his second wife and her children, those of the dwarfs too, belong to the years between and . it was a custom of the unhealthy and depressing spanish court in which the queen lived in an armour of corsets and crinoline, and might not be touched by any of her faithful subjects upon pain of death--the court in which the king was compelled to preside at the _autos da fé_--to keep dwarfs as playthings. perhaps because they were ugly and deformed they came quite naturally into the court environment. the earliest portrait of don balthasar carlos shows him in company with a dwarf, and there were about the court many other unfortunate creatures whom velazquez painted between and . there is more than a suspicion in the minds of many of his biographers that the half-concealed contempt with which velazquez was regarded in court circles left him small choice of company; that he was rated with dwarfs and outcasts because he worked with his hands; and of course no hidalgo, who was a perfect master of the art of time-wasting, could take seriously any low-blooded creature who earned his right to live by working. if velazquez had been on the same footing as rubens--had he enjoyed the same position that goya, with no greater official appointment, was to hold a little more than a century after his death--we may presume that the dwarfs would not have been painted, and that velazquez' art would have been given to the service of the blue-blooded gentlemen who were making as big a muddle of spanish interests as their country's worst enemies could desire. one hesitates to say that they would have been less interesting sitters, because we know that nobody, however dull and stupid in appearance, could fail to become interesting at the hands of the painter. it is fair to remember, too, in defence of the spanish attitude, that the years were given not to the arts of peace but to those of war; that leisure was scanty, intrigue unceasing, and the austerity of life was made greater by the strong and merciless grip of the church. formality and superstition marched hand in hand in a court whose ruler, if we may judge by his portraits, had forgotten how to smile. then again, the atmosphere of the madrid court, for all its dulness and secrecy and unhealthy ways, was not as it became under charles iii., when godoy played the part of count olivarez, and the countess benavente, the duchess of alba, and other women as frail as they were beautiful, did not hesitate to indulge in open intrigue with the king's painter. turn to the canvases of velazquez and you will not find a woman who was fascinating enough to have been worth the trouble and danger of an intrigue. the wives of philip iv. could not but have been virtuous, and would have had but small sympathy with pretty women. to be sure philip iv. had many mistresses, but he did not ask his court painter to record their beauty. before velazquez returned to madrid from his second visit to italy, he seems to have painted the portrait of the dwarf known as "el primo," now in the prado. this man, known in private life as don louis de hacedo, accompanied philip on a tour, and he seems to have been a studious person, because the artist has depicted him with book, pen, and paper, and given him a refined expression. the others have little to redeem their ugliness and deformity. the child of vallecas seems to be the dwarf who figures with don balthasar carlos in the first picture that velazquez painted of the unfortunate young prince, the one that is now in america. he has grown a little older and a little more ugly in the canvas that is devoted entirely to his portrait; he does not wear good clothes, but a coarse green coat with stockings to match. the idiot of coria is also dressed in green, though his garments are a little richer, but don antonio seems to have been a person of some importance. he is pictured in the prado standing beside a beautiful mastiff almost as big as himself, and he wears a ruddy brown dress worked with gold. he carries a large plumed hat in his hand. sebastian de morra, who sits facing the audience, has one of the most wonderful heads ever set on canvas by the artist. this dwarf too is dressed in the green costume that would seem to have been worn by the dwarfs attached to the court of spain. in addition to the little company of dwarfs there were buffoons at the court, and of these velazquez painted pablillos, who is known as "the comedian," and don juan of austria, whose portrait is a triumph of harmony in colour, the pink of mantle and stockings contrasting admirably with black doublet and cape. ===================================================================== plate vi.--admiral adriano pulido pareja this picture may be seen in the national gallery. it is signed and dated , and was purchased from the longford castle collection in . señor beruete holds a strong opinion that it was not painted by velazquez. [illustration: plate vi.] ===================================================================== in the last years the painter seems to have gone a little further down in the social scale in search of his sitters, for the "Æsop" is a beggar, and "menippus" is no better. to all these sufferers and outcasts velazquez responded with a sympathy that is not less clearly revealed than the technique that gives so much enduring delight to artists the world over. in the final decade of the painter's life philip seems to have given him no more than two sittings. perhaps the artist's "mars" and his "venus with the mirror" gave offence in madrid, where the nude was only accepted if it was painted by some artist who had won his fame outside the iberian peninsula. the whole trend of life in the court of mariana of austria was opposed to the presentation of the nude in art. the two late pictures of philip, of which the one is in the prado and the second in our national gallery, are quite the most finished of all his studies of his royal master. the face, free from even a suggestion of human interest or enthusiasm, has no emotion whatsoever save disillusionment and sadness. the spectator gets a suggestion that life has resolved itself into a long series of formal duties and formal enjoyments, and that neither suffices to make it worth living. duty to the world at large and to the vast empire slipping from his grasp seems to be all that holds philip; and when we consider that he had lost his first wife and her promising son, and of his children by his second wife one or two were dead already; that dissipation and anxiety had sapped his energies, and superstition had crabbed his intelligence; it is not strange that the face should be as it is. in philip conferred upon velazquez the knighthood of santiago, and money was deposited on his behalf by a friend who understood the painter's financial straits to pay for the inquiries relating to his genealogy. in spite of the king's wishes, the council appointed to inquire into the antecedents of the painter refused to admit him, though velazquez supplied many proofs that his blood was pure and his origin honourable. at last, philip applied to the pope alexander vii. for a dispensation in the artist's favour, realising that the vatican was a court whose jurisdiction was unlimited in its scope. the pope was complaisant: he could hardly be otherwise to philip iv.; he sent a brief that enabled velazquez, after long delays, to obtain the much coveted order. the story that philip bestowed it upon velazquez as a reward for the picture "las meniñas" is one of the pretty fables that must be disregarded, and it seems likely that philip only exerted himself on his painter's behalf because he wished him to superintend the arrangements for the festivities that were to celebrate the marriage of the infanta maria teresa with louis xiv. if we may read character in physiognomy, there is little risk that philip would have behaved generously without cause. velazquez left madrid for irun, on the franco-spanish frontier, in april . the work was harassing; he was not a _persona grata_ with his colleagues, and none sought to lighten his burdens. he returned to the capital at the end of june, when madrid is not fit to live in, and was taken ill a month later. hard and unremitting labour, the folly and bitter opposition of men who were not worthy to clean his palette, the inconveniences and delays of travel in spain, and the tender mercies of several spanish doctors of repute, seem to have combined, with a bad attack of fever, to bring a troubled life to its closing scene. the end came on the th of august , when, to quote señor beruete, "he delivered up his soul to god, who had created him to be the admiration of the world." the body was decorated with the ornaments of the knights of santiago and buried in the parish church of st. john the baptist. within a week his devoted wife, juana de pacheco velazquez, followed him to a rest that no ceremonial of the spanish court could disturb. strange as it may seem to those who know nothing of spain, the petty worries and vexations to which velazquez had been subjected did not cease with his death. it was decided by the authorities that the thousand ducats paid to the dead painter for superintending the works of the alcazar must be returned, and in order that the claim might be met, the contents of the artist's studio and some of his furniture would seem to have been seized. king philip recorded his gracious distress at this decision, but did nothing to overrule it. litigation followed, and after some years the claim to the thousand ducats was withdrawn by the authorities, the affairs of the master were wound up for all time, and the stigma of debt was removed from the memory of a man who never received a tithe of his deserts. philip iv. took juan del mazo, the painter's son-in-law, to be court painter in velazquez' place, and the appointment is worth noting, because it is to this worthy man's wonderful facility for echoing his father-in-law's style that we owe the presence of so many imitations in the world's public galleries and private collections. some of these clever copies of lost pictures have remained unchallenged until recent years, and whether this be a tribute to the capacity of del mazo or a reflection upon the capacity of critics, is a question lying beyond the scope of this little book. but it is not difficult to understand that the renown of velazquez was on the increase for a few years after his death, and that mazo, who was clever and poorly paid, and had a sincere respect for his father-in-law, should have remembered that there is no greater flattery than imitation. iv a retrospect it is in no spirit of extravagance that one ventures to say that the life of velazquez was a long and tragic struggle against surroundings detrimental to the full and natural expression of his genius, nor is it surprising that the people who had followed his career with indifference saw very little matter for comment when he died. there were a few useless and pompous ceremonies associated with his obsequies, and spain went on with the daily task, the common round, unconscious of her loss. so many material possessions were passing from hands too weak to hold or to administer them that the death of an artist could not be noticed. ===================================================================== plate vii.--donna mariana of austria this picture was brought from the escorial to the prado in . the lady was the second wife of philip iv., and would have been the wife of don balthasar carlos had he lived. [illustration: plate vii.] ===================================================================== fair-minded critics may hesitate to say with spain's enemies that civilisation ends with the pyrenees, but it is certain that the spanish attitude towards life has differed from that of other countries to an extent that has left indelible impressions upon art and literature. velazquez carried a little of the andalusian sun to castile, but the heavy cloud that settled upon the spanish court speedily obscured it. life for the painter was an affair of constant struggle against financial and social difficulties, of endless work for unresponsive masters; and the labour was not lightened by any of the associations that helped the great masters of the italian school who had some share of light and honour. the funereal pomp of the spanish court; the strange climatic conditions of madrid, where you may pass in a moment from a blaze of sun that scorches to a blast of icy wind that strikes a fatal blow at the lungs; the hard and unattractive landscape; the proud, cruel, and impassive people who cannot even feign an interest in such affairs as art or letters, all served to leave their impression upon the painter's work. we cannot imagine that any artist who worked in madrid in the seventeenth century could become a colourist after the manner of the venetians; he would not see the colour unless he went to catalonia or andalusia and entered into their stirring national life. then again spain was influenced by the moors, and eastern art is more concerned with harmony than colouring, more concerned to blend neutral tints than present rich tones. the writer has seen many pictures in the studios of modern madrid that are inspired directly by the italians, for nowadays spanish artists flock to italy, where they learn to imitate the venetian colour schemes, and to become third-rate echoes of old masters. there are a few men who paint interesting pictures in spain to-day--pradilla and carbonero are among the best; but spain does not hold a great artist. the last of all died in exile in bordeaux in the early days of the last century, and left his gifts to the french school of manet. velazquez could never have become a flamboyant colourist. a few of the pictures in the prado have some reds and pinks; for example, "las hilanderas," in which there is a red curtain, and the picture of philip on horseback, in which the king wears a pink scarf. there are high colours in "the coronation of the virgin" and a few others, but as a rule velazquez wrought with a subdued palette, and sought to weave harmonies in grey and silver. bright colours are an expression of the joy of life, and this was unknown to the spaniards of castile. murillo has colour, but then he was always an andalusian. just as velazquez borrowed very little from his sitters and gave a great deal, so he claimed next to nothing from the primary colours, and he gave a colour sense that is indescribably beautiful to silver and grey. this was his deliberate choice and judgment, but it is impossible to forget that surroundings and associations must have had a great deal to do with it. men who live lives that are complete in the fullest sense of the term have a natural craving for glowing hues, and may find velazquez dull if they come to the prado from the academy of venice; but unless their tastes have become wholly vitiated, unless their eyes are suffering from a surfeit of light, they will soon learn to find that their best beloved masters would not bear transplanting. they belong to the soil of the country they worked in, while velazquez, like rembrandt, can travel to any climate, and shine with unclouded glory in any atmosphere. it is impossible to imagine that rubens could have painted with the palette that served velazquez, but the greater of the two men has given the world an invaluable lesson in appreciation, and because nature is full of exquisite colour harmonies that are quite subdued in tone it is well that we should have been taught to appreciate them. velazquez himself declared that raphael did not please him, but titian did; he found in him the greatest of all the venetians. and yet it is hard to say that he took anything from the admired master, because with velazquez admiration and imitation are things apart. he did not even imitate el greco, the painter whose influence upon the world of art is not yet fully acknowledged or understood, and he did not copy rubens, whose splendours would have dazzled a weaker man. velazquez merely saw certain truths in greco's handling of portraiture, and accepted them. throughout his life he made a steady improvement in the quality of the work done, but the changes came through introspection rather than from any outside influence. his pictures are divided by many critics into three styles, which may be divided roughly by his visits to italy. in the early days the paint on his canvas was very thick, the shadows were heavy, the composition was not always conclusive or well devised. the one quality was that irreproachable throughout all the years was the drawing, which was always masterly. from the days of the early "bodegones" down to the "meniñas" nobody could find a picture in which his drawing is obviously at fault; although in speaking of velazquez it is of course difficult to separate drawing from painting. as he grew up the sense of composition and colour harmony became stronger and stronger, and the faults passed. at the same time, velazquez was a severe critic of his own work, and a careful examination shows that even those pictures to which no suspicion can attach were retouched and corrected in the making. in this country one secures little more than a glimpse of the master's work. the national gallery has nearly a dozen pictures, but there are certain questions about the authenticity of some of them, and the philip in the dulwich gallery is rather more than doubtful. the wallace collection has a few beautiful examples of velazquez, and after that there are about fifty private owners of pictures that cannot be readily seen. perhaps a considerable proportion of these works would, if subjected to very careful scrutiny, reveal themselves as copies by mazo or others. in france there are half-a-dozen fine pictures in the louvre. germany can show some in berlin, dresden, and munich; holland has one or two. there are less than a dozen in all italy. the hermitage gallery in st. petersburg has five or six, and vienna about twice as many; but to see velazquez one must go to madrid. the museo del prado has over sixty of the artist's pictures, and though a small proportion of these have scarcely a touch of the master's hand, all his greatest work has found a resting-place here. las lanzas, las hilanderas, las meniñas, philip iv. on horseback, don balthasar carlos on his pony, the crucifixion, the coronation of the virgin, the dwarfs, Æsop, menippus--all these are to be seen in the prado; the greater number being in the salon of isabella, an octagonal room in which one may spend long hours. the writer, on the occasion of his last visit to madrid, made a note of the number of visitors to the famous octagonal room during the four mornings he spent there. in the course of some twelve hours the room was visited by some twelve people! it is only fair to say that it was not in the tourist season; the month was june, and nobody stayed in madrid from choice. ===================================================================== plate viii.--the princess maria theresa of austria this daughter of philip iv. became queen of france. the picture was painted when she was about ten years of age, and consequently belongs to the last period of velazquez' work. it was hung in the alcazar until some time in the eighteenth century, when it was transferred to the prado. [illustration: plate viii.] ===================================================================== there are pictures by velazquez to be seen in madrid outside the prado, but for the most part they are in private houses, and are not accessible to everybody. seville boasts half-a-dozen canvases by her greatest painter, and there are a few elsewhere in spain; but it may be said that those who know the salon of isabella have seen velazquez at his best, and that those who have seen his other pictures and have not visited the prado, do not know velazquez at all. perhaps there are pleasant surprises yet in store for the art world, for many pictures are still untraced. doubtless some have been destroyed by fire and others are in half-forgotten lumber rooms of palaces and galleries from which they will be gathered in due course. velazquez owes a large part of his popularity in spain to-day to the measure of appreciation he has secured beyond the borders. every second-hand dealer in madrid or seville has a "genuine murillo" to offer the stranger. it is worth a thousand pounds; but as the dealer is an honest man, he will sell it first for two hundred, then for one, and finally for fifteen or even ten. but no second-hand dealer shows a "genuine velazquez." he knows that at best it could only appeal to artists, and he knows them for strange folk endowed with much enthusiasm, little money, and an embarrassing measure of knowledge of the methods by which genuine old masters are created to supply a long-felt want. the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. carlo dolci. george hay. luini. james mason. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. _others in preparation._ [illustration: =november beechwood.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] the painter in oil a complete treatise on the principles and technique necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors by daniel burleigh parkhurst pupil of william sartain, of bouguereau and tony-fleury, and of aimÉe morot; member of the new york water color club; formerly lecturer on art in dickinson college; author of "sketching from nature," etc. "_la peinture à l'huile est bien difficile; mais beaucoup plus beau que la peinture à l'eau._" boston: lothrop, lee & shepard co. copyright, , by lee and shepard _all rights reserved_ the painter in oil typography by c. j. peters & son presswork by berwick & smith, norwood press norwood mass. to a. m. p. this book is affectionately inscribed. _september th, ._ preface books of instruction in the practice of painting have rarely been successful. chiefly because they have been too narrow in their point of view, and have dealt more with recipes than with principles. it is not possible to give any one manner of painting that shall be right for all men and all subjects. to say "do thus and so" will not teach any one to paint. but there are certain principles which underlie all painting, and all schools of painting; and to state clearly the most important of these will surely be helpful, and may accomplish something. it is the purpose of this book to deal practically with the problems which are the study of the painter, and to make clear, as far as may be, the principles which are involved in them. i believe that this is the only way in which written instruction on painting can be of any use. it is impossible to understand principles without some statement of theory; and a book in order to be practical must therefore be to some extent theoretical. i have been as concise and brief in the theoretical parts as clearness would permit of, and i trust they are not out of proportion to the practical parts. either to paint well, or to judge well of a painting, requires an understanding of the same things: namely, the theoretical standpoint of the painter; the technical problems of color, composition, etc.; and the practical means, processes, and materials through which and with which these are worked out. it is obvious that one cannot become a good painter without the ability to know what is good painting, and to prefer it to bad painting. therefore, i have taken space to cover, in some sort, the whole ground, as the best way to help the student towards becoming a good painter. if, also, the student of pictures should find in this book what will help him to appreciate more truly and more critically, i shall be gratified. d. b. p. _december , _ contents part i.--materials chapter page i. observations ii. canvases and panels iii. easels iv. brushes v. paints vi. vehicles and varnishes vii. palettes viii. other tools ix. studios part ii.--general principles x. mental attitude xi. tradition and individuality xii. originality xiii. the artist and the student xiv. how to study part iii.--technical principles xv. technical preliminaries xvi. drawing xvii. values xviii. perspective xix. light and shade xx. composition xxi. color part iv.--practical application xxii. representation xxiii. manipulation xxiv. copying xxv. kinds of painting xxvi. the sketch xxvii. the study xxviii. still life xxix. flowers xxx. portraits xxxi. landscape xxxii. marines xxxiii. figures xxxiv. procedure in a picture xxxv. difficulties of beginners list of illustrations page november beechwood _parkhurst_ _frontispiece_ stretchers canvas pliers double-pointed tack easel easel sketching easel sketching easel brushes.--red sable, round red sable red sable, flat round bristle flat bristle flat pointed fan brush cleaner oil colors oval palette arm palette the color box palette knife the scraper the oil-cup mahl-sticks three-legged stool sketching chair sketching umbrella drawing of hands _dürer_ eggs. white against white the canal _parkhurst_ bohemian woman _franz hals_ sewing by lamplight _millet_ descent from the cross the golden stairs the sower _millet_ return to the farm _millet_ the fisher boy _franz hals_ boar-hunt _snyders_ good bock _manet_ sketch of a hillside the river bank _parkhurst_ study of a blooming-mill _parkhurst_ still life, no. still life, no. still life, no. still life, no. still life, no. still life, no. sweet peas dÜrer _by himself_ portrait of his mother _whistler_ portrait of himself _valasquez_ portrait _parkhurst_ haystacks in sunshine _monet_ on the race track _degas_ willow road _parkhurst_ entrance to zuyder zee _clarkson stanfield_ girl spinning _millet_ sketch of a flute player _parkhurst_ milton dictating "paradise lost" _munkacsy_ buckwheat harvest _millet_ study of fortune _angelo_ Ébouch of portrait _th. robinson_ landscape photo. no. landscape photo. no. part i materials the painter in oil chapter i general observations there is a false implication in the saying that "a poor workman blames his tools." it is not true that a good workman can do good work with bad tools. on the contrary, the good workman sees to it that he has good tools, and makes it a part of his good workmanship that they are in good condition. in painting there is nothing that will cause you more trouble than bad materials. you can get along with few materials, but you cannot get along with bad ones. that is not the place to economize. to do good work is difficult at best. economize where it will not be a hindrance to you. your tools can make your work harder or easier according to your selection of them. the relative cost of good and bad materials is of slight importance compared with the relative effect on your work. the way to economize is not to get anything which you do not need. save on the non-essentials, and get as good a quality as you can of the essentials. save on the number of things you get, not on the quantity you use. you must feel free in your use of material. there is nothing which hampers you more than parsimony in the use of things needful to your painting. if it is worth your while to paint at all, it is worth your while to be generous enough with yourself to insure ordinary freedom of use of material. the essentials of painting are few, but these cannot be dispensed with. put it out of your mind that any one of these five things can be got along without:-- you must have something to paint _on_, canvas or panel. have plenty of these. you must have something to set this canvas on--something to hold it up and in position. your knees won't do, and you can't hold it in one hand. the lack of a practical easel will cost you far more in trouble and discouragement than the saving will make up for. you must have something to paint with. the brushes are most important; in kind, variety, and number. you cannot economize safely here. you must have paints. and you must have good ones. the best are none too good. get the best. pay a good price for them, use them freely, but don't waste them. and you must have something to hold them, and to mix them on; but here the quality and kind has less effect on your work than any other of your tools. but as the cost of the best of palettes is slight, you may as well get a good one. now, if you will be economical, the way to do it is to take proper care of your tools _after you have got them_. form the habit of using good tools as they should be used, and that will save you a great deal of money. chapter ii canvases and panels you should have plenty of canvas on hand, and it would be well if you had it all stretched ready for use. many a good day's work is lost because of the time wasted in getting a canvas ready. it is not necessary to have many kinds or sizes. it is better in fact to settle on one kind of surface which suits you, and to have a few practical sizes of stretchers which will pack together well, and work always on these. you will find that by getting accustomed to these sizes you work more freely on them. you can pack them better, and you can frame them more conveniently, because one frame will always do for many pictures. perhaps there is no one piece of advice which i can give you which will be of more practical use outside of the principles of painting, than this of keeping to a few well-chosen sizes of canvas, and the keeping of a number of each always on hand. it is all well enough to talk about not showing one's work too soon. but we all do, and always will like to see our work under as favorable conditions as possible. and a good frame is one of the favorable conditions. but good frames are expensive, and it is a great advantage to be able to have a frame always at hand which you can see your work in from time to time; and if you only work on four sizes of canvas, say, then four frames, one for each size, will suit all your pictures and sketches. use the same sizes for all kinds of work too, and the freedom will come, as i say, in the working on those sizes. don't have odd sizes about. you can just as well as not use the regular sizes and proportions which colormen keep in stock, and there is an advantage in being able to get a canvas at short notice, and it will be one of your own sizes, and will fit your frame. all artists have gone through the experience of eliminating odd sizes from their stock, and it is one of the practical things that we all have to come down to sooner or later, and the sooner the better,--to have the sizes which we find we like best, not too many, and stick to them. i would have you take advantage of this, and decide early in your work, and so get rid of one source of bother. =rough and smooth.=--the best canvas is of linen. cotton is used for sketching canvas. but you would do well always to use good grounds to work on. you can never tell beforehand how your work will turn out; and if you should want to keep your work, or find it worth while to go on with it, you would be glad that you had begun it on a good linen canvas. the linen is stronger and firmer, and when it has a "grain," the grain is better. =grain.=--the question of grain is not easy to speak about without the canvas, yet it is often a matter of importance. there are many kinds of surface, from the most smooth to the most rugged. some grain it is well the canvas should have; too great smoothness will tend to make the painting "slick," which is not a pleasant quality. a grain gives the canvas a "tooth," and takes the paint better. just what grain is best depends on the work. if you are going to have very fine detail in the picture use a smoothish canvas; but whenever you are going to paint heavily, roughly, or loosely, the rough canvas takes the paint better. the grain of the canvas takes up the paint, helps to hold it, and to disguise, in a way, the body of it. for large pictures, too, the canvas must necessarily be strong, and the mere weight of the fabric will give it a rough surface. =knots.=--for ordinary work do not be afraid of a canvas which has some irregularities and knots on it. if they are not too marked they will not be unpleasantly noticeable in the picture, and may even give a relief to too great evenness. =twilled canvas.=--the diagonal twill which some canvases have has always been a favorite surface with painters, particularly the portrait painters. this grain is a sympathetic one to work on, takes paint well, and is not in any way objectionable in the finished picture. =the best.=--the best way is to try several kinds, and when you find one which has a sympathetic working quality, and which has a good effect in the finished picture, note the quality and use it. you will find such a canvas among both the rough and smooth kinds, and so you can use either, as the character of your work suggests. it is well to have both rough and smooth ready at hand. =absorbent.=--some canvases are primed so as to absorb the oil during the process of painting. they are very useful for some kinds of work, and many painters choose them; but unless you have some experience with the working of them, they are apt to add another source of perplexity to the difficulties of painting, so you had better not experiment with them, but use the regular non-absorbent kinds. =old and new.=--the canvas you work on should not be too freshly primed. the painting is likely to crack if the priming is not well dried. you cannot always be sure that the canvas you get at stores is old, so you have an additional reason for getting a good stock and keeping it on hand. then, if you have had it in your own possession a long while, you know it is not fresh. canvas is all the better if it is a year old. =grounds.=--the color of the grounds should be of interest to you. canvases are prepared for the market usually in three colors,--a sort of cool gray, a warm light ochrish yellow, and a cool pinkish gray. which is best is a matter of personal liking. it would be well to consider what the effect of the ground will be on the future condition of the picture when the colors begin to effect each other, as they inevitably will sooner or later. vibert in his "_la science de la peinture_" advocates a white ground. he says that as the color will be sure to darken somewhat with time, it is well that the ground should have as little to do with it as possible. if the ground is white there is so much the less dark pigment to influence your painting. he is right in this; but white is a most unsympathetic color to work over, and if you do not want to lay in your work with _frottées_, a tint is pleasanter. for most work the light ochrish ground will be found best; but you may be helped in deciding by the general tone of your picture. if the picture is to be bright and lively, use a light canvas, and if it is to be sombre, use a dark one. remember, too, that the color of your ground will influence the appearance of every touch of paint you put on it by contrast, until the priming is covered and out of sight. =stretchers.=--the keyed stretcher, with wedges to force the corners open and so tighten the canvas when necessary, is the only proper one to use. for convenience of use many kinds have been invented, but you will find the one here illustrated the best for general purposes. the sides may be used for ends, and _vice versa_. if you arrange your sizes well, you will have the sides of one size the right length for the ends of another. then you need fewer sizes, and they are surer to pack evenly. [illustration: =stretchers.=] =stretching.=--you will often have to stretch your own canvases, so you should know how to do it. there is only one way to make the canvas lay smoothly without wrinkles: cut the canvas about two inches longer and wider than the stretcher, so that it will easily turn down over the edges. begin by putting in _one tack_ to hold the _middle_ of one end. then turn the whole thing round, and stretch tightly lengthwise, and put a tack to hold it into the _middle_ of the other end. do the same way with the two sides. only four tacks so far, which have stretched the canvas in the middle two ways. as you do this, you must see that the canvas is on square. don't drive the tacks all the way in at first till you know that this is so. then give each another blow, so that the head binds the canvas more than the body of the tack does; for the pull of the canvas against the side of the tack will tear, while the head will hold more strands. this first two ways stretching must be as tight as any after stretching will be or you will have wrinkles in the middle, while the purpose is to pull out the wrinkles towards the corners. now go back to the ends: stretch, and place one tack each side of the first one. in a large canvas you may put two each side, but not more, and you must be sure that the strain is even on both sides. don't pull too much; for next you must do the same with the other end which should bear _half_ of the whole stretch. do just the same now with the two sides. now continue stretching and tacking,--each side of the middle tacks on each end, then on each side, then to the ends again, and so gradually working towards the corners, when as you put in the last tacks the wrinkles will disappear, if you have done your work well. don't hurry and try to drive too many tacks into a side at a time, for to have to do it all over again would take more time than to have worked slowly and done it properly. you may of course stretch a small canvas with your hands, but it will make your fingers sore, and you cannot get large canvases tight without help. you will do well to have a pair of "canvas pliers" which are specially shaped to pull the canvas and hold it strongly without tearing it, as other pliers are sure to do. [illustration: =canvas pliers.=] when you take canvases out-doors to work, you will find it useful to strap two together, face inwards, with a double-pointed tack like this in each corner to keep them apart. you will not have any trouble with the fresh paint, as each canvas will then protect the other. you can pack freshly painted canvases for shipping in the same way. [illustration: =double-pointed tack.=] =panels.=--for small pictures panels are very useful, and when great detail is desirable, and fine, smooth work would make an accidental tear impossible to mend well, they are most valuable. they are made of mahogany and oak generally. panels are useful, too, for sketching, as you can easily pack them. they are light, and the sun does not shine through the backs. you can get them for about the same cost as canvas for small sizes, which are what you would be likely to use, and they are often more convenient, particularly for use in the sketch-box. chapter iii easels the important thing in an easel is that it should be steady and firm; that it should hold the canvas without trembling, and so that it will not fall as you paint out towards the edges. you often paint with a heavy hand, and you must not have to hold on to your picture with one hand and paint with the other. nothing is more annoying than a poor easel, and nothing will give you more solid satisfaction, than the result of a little generosity in paying for a good one. the ideal thing for the studio is, of course, the great "screw easel," which is heavy, safe, convenient, and expensive. we would like to have one, but we can't afford it, so we won't speak of it. the next best thing is an ordinary easel which doesn't cost a great deal, but which is firm and solid and practical. don't get one of the various three-legged folding easels which cost about seventy-five cents or a dollar. they tumble down too often and too easily. the wear and tear on the temper they cause is more than they are worth. it is true that they fold up out of the way. but they fold up when you don't expect them to; and you ought to be able to afford room enough for an easel anyway, if you paint at all. [illustration] the illustration shows one of the firmest of the inexpensive easels, and one which will fold up into as small a compass as any practical easel will. it will hold perfectly well a good-sized canvas, even with its frame, and will not tumble over on slight provocation. another good easel is shown on p. . it is more lightly made, not so well braced, but is more convenient for raising and lowering the picture, as the catch allows the whole thing to be raised and lowered at once. if you are to save money on your easel, don't save on the construction and strength of it, but on the finish. let the polish and varnish go, but get a well-made easel with solid wood. the heavier it is, the less easily it packs away, to be sure, but the more steadily it will hold your picture. [illustration] =sketching easels.=--the same things are of importance in an easel for out-of-door work that are needed in a studio easel, except that it must also be portable. so if you must have a folding easel, get a _good_ sketching easel; or if you can't have one for in-doors and one for out-doors, then pay a good price for a sketching easel, and use it in doors and out also. there are two things which are absolutely essential in a sketching easel. it _must_ have legs which may be made longer and shorter, and it _must hold_ the canvas firmly. it is not enough to lean the canvas on it. the wind blows it over just when you are putting on an interesting touch, or the touch itself upsets it, either of which is most aggravating, and does not tend to satisfactory work. you must not be obliged to sit down to work just where you don't want to, a little this side or a little that side of the chosen spot, because the ground isn't even there and the easel will not stand straight. you must be able to make a leg longer or shorter as the unevenness of the ground necessitates. it is impossible to work among rocks or on hillsides if you cannot make your easel stand as you want it. these things are not to be got round. you might as well not work as to sketch with a poor sketching easel. and you must pay a good price for it. the sketching easel that is good for anything has never been made to sell for a dollar and a half. pay three or four dollars for it, at any rate, and use it the rest of your life. i use an easel every day that i have worked on every summer for twelve years. most artists are doing much the same. the easel is not expensive _per year_ at that rate! it is such an easel as that shown on the opposite page, and is satisfactory for all sorts of work. [illustration] if you are working in a strong wind, or if you have a large canvas, such an easel as this illustration shows is the best and safest yet invented, and it is as good for other work, and particularly when you want to stand up. and either of these easels will be perfectly satisfactory to use in the house. [illustration] chapter iv brushes an old brush that has been properly cared for is generally better than a new one. it seems to have accommodated itself to your way of painting, and falls in with your peculiarities. it is astonishing how attached you get to your favorite brushes, and how loath you are to finally give them up. what if you have no others to take their places? don't look upon your brushes as something to get as few of as possible, and which you would not get at all if you could help it. there is nothing which comes nearer to yourself than the brush which carries out your idea in paint. you should be always on the lookout for a good brush; and whenever you run across one, buy it, no matter how many you have already. don't look twice at a bad brush, and don't begrudge an extra ten cents in the buying of a good one. if you are sorry to have to pay so much for your brushes, then take the more care of them. use them well and they will last a long while; then don't always use the same handful. break in new ones now and again. keep a dozen or two in use, and lay some aside before they are worn out, and use newer ones. so when at last you cannot use one any more, you have others of the same kind which will fill its place. have all kinds and sizes of brushes. have a couple of dozen in use, and a couple of dozen which you are not using, and a couple of dozen more that have never been used. what! six dozen? well, why not? every time you paint you look over your brushes and pick out those which look friendly to what you are going to do. you want all sorts of brushes. you can't paint all sorts of pictures with the same kind of brush. your brush represents your hand. you must give every kind of touch with it. you want to change sometimes, and you want a clean brush from time to time. you don't want to feel that you are limited; that whether you want to or not these four brushes you must use because they are all you have! you can't paint that way. that six dozen you will not buy all at once. when you get your first outfit, get at least a dozen brushes. as you look over the stock and pick out two or three of this kind, and two or three of that, you will be astonished to see how many you have--yet you don't know which to discard. don't discard any. buy them all. then, if you don't paint, it will not be the fault of your brushes. and from time to time get a half a dozen which have just struck you as especially good ones, and quite unconsciously you acquire your six dozen--and even more, i hope! =bristle and sable.=--the brushes suitable for oil painting are of two kinds,--bristle and sable hair. of the latter, _red_ sable are the only ones you should get. they are expensive, but they have a spring and firmness that the black sable does not have. camel's hair is out of the question. don't get any, if you can only have camel's hair. it is soft and flabby when used in oil and you can't work well with such brushes. the same is true of the black sable. but though the red sables are expensive, you do not need many of them, nor large ones, so the cost of those you will need is slight. [illustration] the only sables which are in any degree indispensable to you are the smaller sizes of _riggers_. these are thin, long brushes which are useful for outlining, and all sorts of fine, sharp touches. you use them to go over a drawing with paint in laying in a picture, and for branches, twigs, etc. as their name implies, you must have them for the rigging of vessels in marine painting also. the three sizes shown in the cut on the opposite page are those you should have, and if you get two of each, you will find them useful in all sorts of places. when you buy them, see that they are elastic and firm, that they come naturally and easily to a good point, without any scraggy hairs. test them by moistening them, and then pressing the point on the thumb-nail. they should bend evenly through the whole length of the hair. reject any which seem "weak in the back." if it lays flat toward the point and bends all in one place near the ferrule, it is a poor brush. [illustration] these three larger and thicker sizes come in very useful often and it would be well if you were to have these too. sometimes a thick, long sable brush will serve better than another for heavy lines, etc. all these brushes are round. one largish flat sable like this it would be well to have; but these are all the sables necessary. [illustration] =bristle brushes.=--the sable brush or pencil is often necessary; but oil painting is practically always done with the bristle, or "hog hair," brush. these are the ones which will make up the variety of kinds in your six dozen. a good bristle brush is not to be bought merely by taking the first which comes to hand. good brushes have very definite qualities, and you should have no trouble in picking them out. nevertheless, you will take the trouble to select them, if you care to have any satisfaction in using them. =the bristle.=--you want your brush to be made of the hair just as it grew on the hog. all hair, in its natural state, has what is called the "flag." that is the fine, smooth taper towards the natural end of it, and generally the division into two parts. this gives the bristle, no matter how thick it may be, a silky fineness towards the end; and when this part only of the bristle is used in the brush, you will have all the firmness and elasticity of the bristle, and also a delicacy and smoothness and softness quite equal to a sable. but this, in the short hair of an artist's brush, wastes all the rest of the length of the hair; for it is only by cutting off the "flag," and using that, which is only an inch or so long, that you can make the brush. yet the bristle may be several inches long, and all this is sacrificed for that little inch of "flag." naturally the "flag" is expensive, and naturally also the manufacturer uses the rest of the hair for inferior brushes. these latter you should avoid. these inferior brushes are made from the part of the bristle remaining, by sandpapering, or otherwise making the ends fine again after they are cut off. but it is impossible to make a brush which has the right quality in this way. =selection.=--never buy a brush without testing its evenness, as has been advised in the care of sables. feel carefully the end of the bristles also, and see that the "flag" is there. all brushes are kept together for packing by paste in the bristles. see that this is soaked off before you test your brush. =round or flat.=--it will make little difference whether you use round or flat brushes. the flat brush is most commonly preferred now, and most brushes are made that way. so you had better get that kind, unless you have some special reason for preferring the round ones. =handles.=--whether the handles are nicely polished, also, is of no importance. what you are to look to is the quality of the bristles and of the making; the best brushes are likely to be nicely finished all over. but if you do find a really good brush which is cheaper because of the plain handle, and you wish to save money, do it by buying the plain-handled one. =sizes and shapes.=--you will need some quite large brushes and some smaller ones, some square ones and some pointed. [illustration] here are three round brushes which, for all sorts of painting, will be of very general utility. for most of your brushes select the long and thin, rather than the short and thick ones. the stubby brush is a useless sort of thing for most work. there are men who use them and like them, but most painters prefer the more flexible and springy brush, if it is not weak. so, too, the brush should not be too thick. a thick brush takes up too much paint into itself, and does not change its tint so readily. for rubbing over large surfaces where a good deal of the same color is thickly spread on the canvas, the thick, strong brush is a very proper tool. but where there is to be any delicacy of tone, it is too clumsy; you want a more delicate instrument. the same proportions hold with large and small brushes, so these remarks apply to all. =flat brushes.=--this is particularly applicable to the flat brushes, and the more that most of your brushes will be flat. you should have both broad-ended and pointed brushes among your flat ones. for broad surfaces, such as backgrounds and skies, the broad ends come in well; and for the small ones there are many square touches where they are useful. the most practical sizes are those shown on page . but you will often need much larger brushes than the largest of these. for the smaller brushes you will have to be very careful in your selections. for only the silkiest of bristle will do good work in a very small brush, and then the temptation is to use a sable, which should be resisted. why you should avoid using the sable as a rule is that it will make the painting too "slick" and edgy. there is a looseness that is a quality to prize. all the hardness, flatness, and rigidity that are desirable you can get with the bristle brush. when you work too much with sables, the overworking brings a waxy and woodeny surface, which is against all the qualities of atmosphere and luminosity, and of freshness and freedom of touch. [illustration] some of the most useful sizes of the more pointed brushes are shown on opposite page. there are, of course, sizes between these, and many larger; but these are what you will find the best. it would be better to have more of each size than to have more sizes. you should try to work with fewer rather than more sizes, and, as a rule, work more with the larger than with the smaller brush, even for fine work. you will work with more force and tend less to pettiness, if you learn to put in small touches with the largest brush that will do it. breadth is not painting with a large brush; but the man who works always with a small brush instinctively looks for the things a small brush is adapted to, and will unconsciously drift into a little way of working. [illustration] the fan brush, such as here illustrated, is a useful brush, not to paint with, but to flick or drag across an outline or other part of a painting when it is getting too hard and liney. you may not want it once a month, but it is very useful when you do want it. [illustration] =care of brushes.=--the best of economy in brushes lies in your care of them. you should never let the paint dry on them nor go too long without careful washing. it is not necessary to wash them every day with soap and water, but they would be the better for such treatment. quite often, once a week, say, you should wash your brushes carefully with soap and water. you may use warm water, but don't have it hot, as that may melt the glue which holds the bristles together in the ferrule. use strong soap with plenty of lye in it--common bar soap, or better, the old-fashioned soft soap. hold several brushes together in one hand so that the tips are all of a length, dip them together into or rub them onto the soap, and then rub them briskly in the palm of the other hand. when the paint is well worked into the lather, do the same with the other brushes, letting the first ones soak in the soap, but not in the water. then rinse them, and carefully work them clean one by one, with the fingers. when you lay them aside to dry, see that the bristles are all straight and smooth, and they will be in perfect condition for next painting. [illustration] =cleaning.=--but from day to day you need not take quite so much trouble as this. true, the brushes will keep in better condition if washed in soap and water every day, but it is not always convenient to do this. you may then use the brush-cleaner. this is a tin box with a false bottom of perforated tin or of wire netting about half-way down, which allows the liquid to stand a half-inch or so above it; so that when you put your brush in and rub it around, the paint is rinsed from it, and settles through the perforations to the bottom, leaving the liquid clear again above it. if you use this carefully, cleaning one brush at a time, not rubbing it too hard, and pulling the hairs straight by wiping them on a clean rag, you may keep your brushes in good condition quite easily. but they will need a careful soap-and-water washing every little while, besides. the liquid best for use in this cleaner is the common kerosene or coal oil. never use turpentine to rinse your brushes. it will make them brittle and harsh; but the kerosene will remove all the paint, and will not affect the brush. chapter v paints of all your materials, it is on your paints that quality has the most vital effect. with bad paint your work is hopeless. you may get an effect that looks all right, but how long will it stand, and how much better may it not have been if your colors had been good? you can tell nothing about it. you may have luck, and your work hold; or you may not have luck, and in a month your picture is ruined. don't trust to luck. keep that element out as much as you can, always. but in the matter of paints, if you count on luck at all, remember that the chances are altogether against you. don't let yourself be persuaded to indulge in experiments with colors which you have reason to think are of doubtful quality. keep on the safe side, and use colors you are sure of, even if they do cost a little more--at first; for they are cheaper in the long-run. and even in the time of using of one tube, generally the good paint does enough more work to cover the difference of cost. =bad paints.=--suspect colors which are too cheap. good work is expensive. ability and skill and experience count in making artists' colors, and must be paid for. if you would get around the cost of first-class material you must mix it with inferior material. the first effect you will notice in using poor colors is a certain hindrance to your facility, due to the fact that the color is weak--does not have the snap and strength in it that you expect. the paint has not a full color quality, but mixes dead and flat. this you will find particularly in the finer and lighter yellows. you need not fear much adulteration in those paints which are naturally cheap, of course. it is in those higher-priced colors, on which you must largely depend for the more sparkling qualities, that you will have most trouble. unevenness of working, and lack of covering or mixing power, you will find in poor paints also. they have no strength, and you must keep adding them more and more to other colors to get them to do their work. all these things are bothersome. they make you give more attention to the pigments while working than you ought to, and when all is done, your picture is weak and negative in color. another effect to be feared from bad colors is that your work will not stand; the colors fade or change, and the paint cracks. the former effect is from bad material, or bad combinations of them in the working, and the latter mainly from bad vehicles used in grinding them. i have seen pictures go to pieces within a month of their painting--bad paint and bad combinations. of course you can use good colors so that the picture will not stand. but that will be your own fault, and it is no excuse for the use of colors which you can by no possibility do good work with. =good paints.=--the three things on which the quality of good paint depends are good pigment, good vehicles, and good preparation. the pigments used are of mineral, chemical, and vegetable origin. the term _pigment_ technically means the powdered substance which, when mixed with a vehicle, as oil, becomes _paint_. the most important pigments now used are artificial products, chiefly chemical compounds, including chemical preparations of natural mineral earths. as a rule, the colors made from earths may be classed as all permanent; those from chemicals, permanent or not, as the case may be; and those of vegetable origin fugitive, with few exceptions. some colors are good when used as water colors, and bad when used in oil. further on i will speak of the fugitiveness and permanency of colors in detail. i wish here to emphasize the fact that the origin of the material of which the pigment is made has much to do with the sort of work that that pigment will do, and with the permanency of the effect which is produced; and therefore that while a paint may look like another, its working or its lasting qualities may be quite different. =the vehicles.=--the vehicles by which the pigment is made fluent and plastic are quite as important in their effects. they not only have to do with the business of drying, owing to the substances used as dryers, but they may have to do with the chemical action of one pigment on another. =the preparation.=--finally, the preparation of the pigment demands the utmost skill and knowledge, if the colors are to be good. the paints used by the old masters were few and simple, and the fact that they prepared them themselves had much to do with the manner in which they kept their color. the paints used now are less simple. we do not prepare and grind them ourselves, and we could hardly do so if we wished to, so we are the more dependent on the integrity of the colorman who does it for us. the preparation of the paint begins with the chemical or physical preparation of each pigment, and then comes the mixing of several to produce any particular color; and finally the mechanical process of grinding with the proper vehicle to bring it to the proper fineness and smoothness. =grinding.=--the color which the artist uses must be most evenly and perfectly ground. the grinding which will do for ordinary house paints will not do for the artist's colors. neither will the chemical processes suitable for the one serve for the other. not only must the machinery, but the experience, skill and care, be much greater for artist's colors. therefore it is that the specialization of color-making is most important to good colors for the use of the artist. =reliable makers.=--if you would work to the best advantage as far as your colors are concerned, both as to getting the best effects which pure pigments skilfully and honestly prepared will give you, and as to the permanency of those effects when you have gotten them, see to it that you get paint made by a thoroughly reliable colorman. it is not my province to say whose colors you should use; doubtless there are many colormen who make artists' materials honestly and well. nevertheless, i may mention that there are no colors which have been more thoroughly tested, both by the length of time they have been in the possession of painters, and by the number of painters who have used them, than those of winsor and newton of london. no colors have been so generally sold and for so long a time, particularly in this country, as these, and none are so well known for their evenness and excellence of quality. i do not say that these manufacturers do not make any colors which should not go on the palette of the cautious artist--i believe that they do not make that claim themselves; but such colors as they do assert to be good, pure, and permanent, you may feel perfectly safe in using, and be sure that they are as well made as colors can be. this is as much as can be said of any paints, and more than can be said of most. i have used these colors for many years, and my own experience is that they have always been all that a painter need ask. the fact that winsor and newton's colors can be found in any town where colors can be had at all, makes me the more free to recommend them, as you can always command them. this fact also speaks for the general approval of them. inasmuch as certain colors are not claimed to be permanent and others are, it is for you to compose your palette of those which will combine safely. this you can do with a little care. some colors are permanent by themselves or with some colors, but not in combination with certain others. you should then take the trouble to consider these chemical relationships. it is not necessary for you to study the chemistry of paints, but you may read what has been ascertained as to the effects of combinations, and act accordingly. there are practically duplications of color-quality in pigments which are bad, and in pigments which are good; so that you can use the good color instead of the bad one to do the same work. the good color will cost more, but there is no way of making the bad color good, so you must pay the difference due to the cost of the better material, or put up with the result of using bad colors. =chemical changes.=--the causes of change of color in pigments are of four kinds, all of them chemical effects. , the action of light; , the action of the atmosphere; , the action of the medium; and , the action of the pigments themselves on each other. the action of light is to bring about or to assist in the decomposition of the pigment. it is less marked in oil than in water color, because the oil forms a sort of sheath for the color particles. the manner in which light does its deteriorating work is somewhat similar to that of heat. the action of light is very slow, but it seems to do the same thing in a long time that heat would do in a short time. some colors are unaffected or little affected by light, and of course you will use them in preference to all others. the atmosphere affects the paint because of certain chemical elements contained in it, which tend to cause new combinations with the materials which are already in combination in the pigment. the action of the oxygen in the air is the chief agent in affecting the pigment, and it is here particularly that light, and especially sunlight, assists in decomposition. the air of towns and cities generally contains sulphuric and sulphurous acids and sulphuretted hydrogen. this latter gas is most effective in changing oil paintings, because of its action in turning white lead dark; and as white lead is the basis of many qualities in painting, this gas may have a very general action. moisture in the atmosphere is also a cause of change, but there is little to be dreaded from this, as the oil protects the colors. oil absorbs oxygen in drying, and so is apt to have an effect on colors liable to change from that element, and many vehicles contain materials to hasten the drying which further aid in the deterioration of the pigment. bad oil will tend to crack the picture also. the greatest care should be used in this direction, as the most permanent colors may be ruined by bad vehicles. pigments will not have a deteriorating effect on each other as long as they are solid. but if one of them is soluble in the medium, then chemical action commences; but as most pigments are somewhat soluble, there is always some danger in mixing them. the best we can do is, as i said before, to try to have on the palette, as far as possible, only colors which are friendly to each other. as a student you should not be much occupied, however, with all this. you must expect that all color will change somewhat. but you need not use those which change immediately or markedly, and you may use them in a way which will tend to make them change as little as may be. colors have stood for years, and what is practical permanence, not perfect permanence, is all you need look for. if you think too much of the permanence of your colors, it will interfere with the directness of your study. therefore, decide on a palette which is as complete and safe as you can make it, excluding the notably bad pigments, and think no more about it. when you need to add a new color to your palette, choose it with reference to those already on it, and go ahead. this is what the whole subject resolves itself to, practically, for you as a student. =opaque and transparent colors.=--some colors, like the madders, have a jelly-like consistency when mixed with oil, others, the earths among them, are dense and opaque. we speak of them respectively as "transparent" and "solid" colors. these qualities, which divide the paints into two classes, have no relation to their permanency. as far as that is concerned you use them in the same way, as some transparent colors are safe and some fugitive; and the same with the opaque colors. the only difference is in the fact that, as a rule, the solid colors are better dryers. but you will notice that while you may mix these colors together as though this difference between them did not exist, in certain processes you use them differently. so you will see, farther on, that for a "glaze" you can use only the transparent or semi-opaque colors, for a scumble you naturally use the solid ones. you should know, however, for the sake of clearness, just what is meant when "solid" or "body" or "opaque" color is spoken of, and what is meant by "transparent" color. =safe and unsafe colors.=--beyond what has been said of the causes of change in colors it is not necessary that you should know the chemical constituents of them. if you want to look into the matter further there are books, such as "field's chromatography," which treat fully of the subject, and which you may study. but practically you should know which colors are to be depended on and which not. let us consider the principal colors in detail then, merely as to their actual stability. i will speak of them in connection with the plates of colors at the end of this book. i would like you to compare what is said of each color with the corresponding color in the plates. those colors in the plates which are not spoken of here, you may consider as useful in showing you the character of different colors which are made, but which may or may not be used, according as you may need them. i shall not attempt to mention all the pigments that are in the market. you need never use more than fifteen or twenty all told. many painters use more, it is true; but if you know how to make the best use of that number, you may safely wait till you "grow to them" before you bother with more. and i shall speak only of those which you will find essential or most generally useful, and those which should be particularly avoided. =permanency.=--it should be stated what is meant by a permanent color. there is no color which is not to be influenced in some way. the most sound of pigments will change if the conditions favor the change. when we speak of a permanent color, we mean only one which under the usual conditions will stand for an indefinite time. by which is meant ordinary diffused daylight, not direct sunlight, and the ordinary air under normal conditions. if there be direct sunlight, you may expect your picture to change sooner or later. but one does not hang his pictures where the sun's rays will fall on them. if there is any exceptional condition of moisture in the air, the picture may suffer. or if from any cause unusual gases are in the atmosphere, or if the picture be too long in a dark, close place, the picture may smother for lack of fresh air, just as any other thing, plant or animal, which depends on normal conditions of atmosphere would do. let us say, then, that what we mean by a permanent color is one which will stand unchanged for an indefinite length of time in a room which is of the usual condition of temperature and freedom from moisture, and where the light is diffused, and such that the direct rays of the sun are not on the picture often, or to any great extent. cold will not hurt a picture if the canvas is not disturbed in that condition, but to bend or roll it while it is very cold will of course crack it, and sudden and extreme changes of temperature may have the same effect. in other words, some care must be used with all pictures as a matter of course. color list =whites.=--_zinc white_ is the only permanent white, but it lacks body and is little used. the lead whites, _flake_, _silver_, _cremnitz_, will darken in time, and will turn yellow with oil, and may change with or affect change in other pigments. the zinc white is liable to crack. we have no perfect white, so practically you may consider the lead whites as permanent enough, as other painters do. =yellows.=--_cadmium_ is permanent in all three of its forms. it is a color the permanence of which is of great importance; for its brilliancy is quite essential to modern painting, and if it were not permanent, the picture would soon lose the very quality for which the color was used. _the chromes_, which are of similar color-quality, are less permanent, and are almost sure to turn to a horny sort of yellow; and a green, which by their use was bright and sparkling, will, in a few months, lose its freshness--this cadmium will not do. cadmium is also to be preferred to chrome, because it is of a much finer tonality. greens and yellows made by the admixture of chrome are apt to be crude as compared with those in which cadmium was used. _strontian yellow_ is a permanent and most useful light yellow, much to be preferred to all other citron yellows except the pale cadmium, and can be used in place of that if necessary. they are both expensive colors of about the same cost. _naples yellow_ was a very prominent pigment with the older painters. it is still very much used, but in the simplification of your palette you may as well leave it out, as you can get the same qualities with cadmium and white. it is durable and safe, but adds another tube to your palette which you can well dispense with. _the ochres_ are among the oldest and safest of pigments. you can use them with any colors which are themselves permanent. there are several of them,--_yellow ochre_, _roman ochre_, _transparent gold ochre_, and others. they are all native earths, and though they contain iron, they are sufficiently inert to be thoroughly sound colors. _the siennas_, burnt and raw, are like the ochres, native earths, very old and permanent colors, and may be used anywhere. _the umbers_ are in the same class with the siennas and ochres. they should all rank among the yellows. the browns of umber and sienna will make greens with blues. _indian yellow and yellow lake_ should both be avoided as fugitive. _aureolin_ is a rich, warm golden yellow of the greatest permanence, and should be used when indian yellow and yellow lake would be used if they were permanent. =reds.=--the _vermilions_ are permanent when well made. they are of great body and power, as well as delicacy. they are of two kinds,--_chinese_, which is bluish in tone, and _scarlet_ and _orange vermilion_, which have the yellow quality. both kinds are useful to the palette because of the practical necessities of mixing. _light red_ is a deep, warm red earth, made by calcining ochre, and has the same permanence as the other ochres. it is a fine color, of especial value in painting flesh, and mixes with everything safely. _the madders_--_rose_, _pink_, _purple_, and _madder carmine_--are the only transparent reds which are permanent. whatever the name given them, they should not be confounded with the _lakes_, which are absolutely untrustworthy. by reference to the plates you will see that the madders are practically the same as the lakes in color when first used. but the lakes fade and the madders do not. the madders cost about twice as much as the lakes; but you must pay the difference, for the lakes cannot be made to stand, and you must have the color. there is nothing for it but to pay twice as much and buy the madders. _the lakes_--_scarlet_, _geranium_, _crimson_, and _purple_--are all bad. the madders and lakes are all slow dryers; but unless carelessly used with other colors which are not yet dry they need not have a bad effect on the picture from cracking. distinguish the so-called _madder lakes_ and the _lakes_; and between _carmine_, which is a lake, and _madder carmine_, which is a madder. =blues.=--the _ultramarine_ of the old masters is practically unused to-day because of its cost. but the artificial ultramarines, while not quite of the same purity of color, are equally permanent, and are in every respect worthy to be used. of these the _brilliant ultramarine_ is the nearest in color to the real lapis lazuli. the _french ultramarine_ is less clear and vivid, but is a splendid deep blue, and most useful. the so-called _permanent blue_ is not quite so permanent as its name implies, but permanent enough for practical purposes. _cobalt blue_ and _cerulean blue_ are two pigments, one very light and clear, the other darker, which are made of the oxide of the metal cobalt. in oil they are permanent, and do not change when mixed with other colors. for delicate tints, when the tones are to be subtly gray yet full of the primary colors, the cobalts are indispensable. you should always have them on hand, and generally on your palette. cerulean blue is of less importance than the other, but in very clear, delicate blue skies it is often the only color which will get the effect. _prussian blue_ possesses a depth and power and a quality of color which make it unique. the greenish tone gives it great value in certain combinations _as far as its tinting effect is concerned_. but it is not reliable as a pigment. it changes under various conditions, and fades with the light. it is not to be depended upon. _antwerp blue_, a weaker kind of prussian blue, is even more fugitive. it is a pity that these colors will not stand, but as they will not, we must get along without them. _indigo_ has a certain grayish quality which is useful sometimes, but it cannot be placed among the even moderately permanent colors. _the blacks_ may be classed as blues, because they will make green if mixed with yellow. considered as blues, they are, of course, dense and negative, and should not be too freely used. but they are all permanent. the only ones we need speak of are _ivory black_, which has a reddish cast, and _blue black_, which is weaker, but lacks the purplish note, which is often an advantage. =greens.=--we need mention only a few greens. there are numerous greens, of various degrees of permanence, but it is not necessary to speak of all the colors on the market. you could not use them all if you had them, and we may as well confine ourselves to those we really need. _veridian_, or _emeraude green_, is the deepest and coldest of our greens, and is permanent. it is too cold, and looks even more so at night. in use it needs the addition of some yellow which holds its own at night, such as yellow ochre, or the painting will be impossible in gaslight, and even worse under electric light. _emerald green_ is the same as the french _veronese_ green, and is generally permanent. it is said to turn dark, and does lose some of its brilliancy with time and the effect of impure air. but there are places where one needs it, especially in sketching, and it is well to use it sometimes. but bear in mind that it is not absolutely permanent, and as the quality that it gives, brilliant light green, is the very one it will lose should it change, don't expect too much of it. _terre verte_ is a very weak color. but it is most tender in its quality, and is permanent to all intents and purposes. it may get slightly darker in time, but will not lose the qualities for which it will be used. it is very useful to use with ivory black or elsewhere, to slightly modify a reddish tendency, and is a fine glazing color. _the chrome greens_, by whatever name, brunswick green, or the better-known cinnabar or zinnober greens, are all bad. they are useful colors as color, but they will not stand, and you will even get better color by mixing certain yellows and blues than these will give you, so you had better lay them aside, tempting as they are. =other colors.=--you will notice that i have said nothing about the various browns and olives and purples. it is simply because it is better for you to make all these colors than to get them in the tubes. the earths and the browns of madder are all good, and the mixing of madders and good blues will make all the shades of violet and purple you can possibly want in their purity. =palettes.=--we have, then, a number of pigments which are solid and safe, of each of the primary colors, and of such variety of qualities that the whole range of possible color is practicable with them in combination. to recapitulate, let us make a list of them. the permanent colors. zinc white. (lead white enough so.) cadmium yellow. cadmium orange. cadmium yellow, pale. strontian yellow. yellow ochre. roman ochre. transparent gold ochre. raw sienna. burnt sienna. raw umber. aureolin. chinese vermilion. scarlet vermilion. orange vermilion. light red. rose madder. pink madder. purple madder. madder carmine. rubens madder. ultramarine blue brilliant. ultramarine blue french. permanent blue. cobalt. cerulean blue. ivory black. blue black. veridian. emerald green. terre verte. here is a list of colors which will work well together, and with which you can do as much as is possible with colors as far as our present materials go. most of these colors, i am aware, are among the more expensive ones. this i am sorry for, but cannot help. the good colors are at times the expensive ones, but as there are no cheaper ones which are permanent to take their places, it would be the falsest of economy to use others. =palette principles.=--in making up your palette, you must so arrange it that you can get pure color when you want it. there is never any trouble to get the color negative; to get richness and balance is another matter. if you will refer to the color plates, you will see that in each of the three primary colors there are pigments which lean towards one or the other of the other two. the scarlet red is a yellow red. the chinese vermilion and the rose madder are blue reds. the same holds with yellows and blues, as orange cadmium is a red yellow, and strontian yellow is a greenish yellow. this is, in practice, of the utmost importance in the absence of the ideal color, for when we deal with the practical side of pigment, we deal with very imperfect materials which will not follow in the lines of the scientific theory of color. if we would have the purest and richest secondary color, we must take two primaries, each of which partakes of the quality of the other. to make a pure orange, for instance, we must use a yellow red and a red yellow. if we used a bluish red and a bluish (greenish) yellow, the blue in both would give us a sort of tertiary in the form of a negative secondary instead of the pure rich orange we wanted. this latter fact is quite as useful in keeping colors gray without too much mixing when we want them so, but nevertheless we must know how to get pure color also. these characteristics have a bearing on the setting of our palette, for we must have at least two of each of the three primary colors--red, yellow, and blue--and white. there may be as many more as you want, but there must be at least that number. but the character of the work you are doing will also have an influence on the colors you use. you may not need the same palette for one sort of picture that is essential to another. you can have a palette which will do all sorts of work, but a change in the combinations may often be called for in accordance with the different color characteristics of your picture. i will suggest several palettes of different combinations which will give you an idea of how you may compose a palette to suit an occasion. i do not say that you should confine yourself to any or all of these palettes, nor that they are the best possible. but they are safe and practical, and you may use them until you can find or compose one better suited to your purposes. they will all be made up from the colors we have in our list, and will all have the arrangement i called your attention to as to the use of two of each primary. it would be well if you were to compare each of the colors with the corresponding one in the plates at the end of the book, and get acquainted with its characteristic look. [illustration: =no. .= =no. .= =no. .=] =expense.=--i have several times referred to the relative expense of colors, and stated that when the good color was of greater cost than others, there was nothing for it but to get the best. i cannot modify that statement, but it is well to say that as a rule the expensive colors are not those that you use the most of, although some are used constantly. vermilion is so strong a color that the cost hardly matters. of the deep blues the same is true. but the light yellows, and the madders and cobalt, will often make you groan at the rapidity of their disappearance. but you can get more tubes of them, and their work remains, while were you to use the cheaper paints, the flight of the color from the canvas would make you groan more, and that disappearance could never be made good except by doing the work all over. =sizes.=--the cheapest colors come in the largest tubes. in the illustration, no. represents the full size of the ordinary tube of the average cost. some of the most commonly used colors come in larger tubes at corresponding price. only professionals get these large sizes except in the case of white. you use so much of this color that it hardly pays to bother at all with the ordinary tube of it. get the quadruple tube, which is nominally four times as large, but contains nearly five times as much. no. represents the actual size of the second size of tubes in which a few regular-priced colors come; while the smallest tube is the size of no. . in this sized tube all the high-priced colors are put up; the cadmiums, the madders, vermilions, and ultramarines and cobalts. the cheap colors are the ordinary earths, such as the ochres, umbers, siennas, the blacks and whites, and all sorts of greens and blues and lakes, which you had better have nothing to do with. =arrangement.=--in the following palettes i shall give the names of the colors, as you would look down upon them on your palette. the arrangement is that of a good many painters, and is a convenient one. it is as well to arrange them with white at the right, then the yellows, then the reds, the browns, blues, blacks, and greens. but i have found this as i give it, to be the best for use, simply because it keeps the proper colors together, and the white, which you use most, where it is most easily got at, and i think you will find it a good arrangement. =a cheap palette.=--this palette i give so that you may see the range possible with absolutely sound colors which are all of the least price. you can get no high key with it. all the colors are low in tone. you could not paint the bright pitch of landscape with it, yet it is practically what they tried to paint landscape with a hundred years ago, and it accounts largely for the lack of bright greens in the landscapes of that date. but for all sorts of indoor work and for portraits you will find it possible to get most beautiful results. you will notice there is no bright yellow. that is because cadmium is expensive and chrome is not permanent. vermilion is left out for the same reason. add orange vermilion and cadmium yellow and orange cadmium, and you have a powerful palette of great range and absolute permanency. white. naples yellow. venetian red. yellow ochre. light red. roman ochre. indian red. transparent gold ochre. burnt sienna. raw umber. permanent blue. ivory black. terre verte. =an all-round palette=:-- white. strontian yellow. orange vermilion. cadmium yellow. rose madder. orange cadmium. burnt sienna. yellow ochre. raw umber. cobalt. ultramarine. ivory black. terre verte. this palette is a pretty large one, and you can do almost anything with it. but for many things it is better to have more of certain kinds of colors and less of others. this is a good palette for all sorts of in-the-house work, and if you call it a still-life palette, it will name it very well. for a student it will do anything he is apt to be capable of for a good while. =a rich low-keyed portrait and figure palette=:-- white. cadmium. chinese vermilion. orange cadmium. light red. yellow ochre. rose madder. transparent gold ochre. raw umber. cobalt. blue black. terre verte. =a landscape palette.=--landscape calls for pitch and vibration. you must have pure color and great luminosity, yet a range of color which will permit of all sorts of effects. the following will serve for everything out-of-doors, and i have seen it with practically no change in the hands of very powerful and exquisite painters. there are no browns and blacks in it because the colors which they would give are to be made by mixing the purer pigments, so as to give more life and vibration to the color. the blackest note may be gotten with ultramarine and rose madder with a little veridian if too purple; the result will be blacker than black, and have daylight in it. the ochre is needed more particularly to warm the veridian. white. strontian yellow. orange vermilion. cadmium yellow. pink madder. orange cadmium. rose madder. yellow ochre. cobalt. ultramarine. veridian. emerald green. if you paint figures out-of-doors you will need this same palette. madder carmine or purple madder, and cerulean blue may also usefully added to this list. =a flower palette.=--for painting flowers the colors should be capable of the most exquisite and delicate of tints. there should be no color on the palette which cannot be used in any part of the picture. the range need not be so great in some respects as in others, but the richness should be unlimited. in the matter of greens, it is true though hard to convince the amateur of, that if there were no green tube in your box, and you mixed all your greens from the yellows and blues, the picture would be the better. as to the browns, they will put your whole picture out of key. in this palette i am sure you will find every color which is needed. there are few greens, but those given can be used to gray a petal as well as to paint a leaf; therefore there is no likelihood of your using a color in a leaf which is not in tone with the flower. i am calculating on your using all your ability in studying the influence of color on color, and in mixing pure colors to make gray. here as elsewhere in these palettes i have in mind their use according to the principles of color and light and effect as laid down in the other parts of the book, which deal specially with those principles. if you do not understand just why i arrange these palettes as i do, turn to the chapters on color, and on the different kinds of painting, and i think you will see what i mean, and understand better what i say, about these combinations. of course you do not need all of these colors on your palette at the same time. some are necessary to certain flowers whose richness and depth you could hardly get without them. the colors you should have as a rule on your palette are these:-- white. strontian yellow. orange vermilion. cadmium yellow. pink madder. yellow ochre. rose madder. cobalt. ultramarine. veridian. emerald green. to add to these when needed, you should have in your box, pale and deep cadmium, chinese vermilion, madder carmine, and purple madder. chapter vi vehicles and varnishes a vehicle is any liquid which is mixed with the color to make it fluent. the vehicle may be ground with the pigment or mixed with it on the palette, or both. oil colors are of course ground in oil as a vehicle; but it is often necessary or convenient to add to them, in working, such a vehicle as will thin them, or make them dry better. those which thin or render more fluent the paint are oils and spirits; those which make them dry more quickly are "dryers" or "siccatives." all vehicles must of necessity have an effect on the permanency of the pigments. bad vehicles tend to deteriorate them; good ones preserve them. =oils.=--the most commonly used oils are linseed and poppy oil. they are neither of them quick dryers, and are usually mixed with sugar of lead, manganese, etc., to hasten the drying. these have a tendency to affect the colors; but if one will have recourse to none but the pure oils, he must be patient with the drying of his picture. for this reason it would be well to use vehicles with the colors on the palette as little as possible--and that is against thin and smooth painting. oil has the tendency to turn dark with time, thus turning the color dark also. the only way to reduce this tendency is to clarify the oil by long exposure to the sunlight. the early german painters used oil so clarified, and their pictures are the best preserved as to color of any that we have. but the drying is even slower with purified oil than with the ordinary oil. it would be best, then, to use oil as little as may be in painting, and if you need a dryer, use it only as you actually need it in bad drying colors, and then very little of it. the essences of turpentine and of petroleum may be used to thin the paint, and are preferable to oil, because they have less darkening tendency. they do not, however, bind the color so well, and the paint should not be put on too thinly with them. usually there is enough oil ground with the pigment as it comes in the tubes to overcome any probability of the paint scaling or rubbing when thinned with turpentine, but in the slow-drying, transparent colors there will be a liability to crack. moderation in the use of any and all vehicles is the best means of avoiding difficulty. use vehicles only when you need them, not habitually, and then only as much as there is real need of. if you use oil, use the lighter oils, and expect some darkening in time. prefer turpentine to oil, and expect your color to dry rather "dead," or without gloss, by its use. if you intend to varnish, this is all right. if you do not intend to varnish the picture, keep the color as near the pure tones as you can. the grayer the color, the more the "dead" or "flat" drying will make it look colorless. =varnishes.=--when the picture is done, after it is dry, varnishes are used to bring out the freshness of color, and to preserve the surface from outside influences of all sorts. a picture must be well dried before it is varnished, or it is likely to crack; six months is not too long to be safe. if you are in a hurry to varnish, use a temporary or retouching varnish. the best varnish is necessary for use on pictures. never use any except a varnish especially made for the purpose by a reliable colorman. those made by winsor and newton may all be depended upon. pay a good price for it, and don't use too much. mastic varnish is that which is most favorably known. be sure you get a good and pure quality. varnishes are made from various gums or resins dissolved in a solvent such as alcohol, turpentine, or oil, as the case may be. the lighter gums are the best for pictures, because they do not affect the color of the picture. much care should be used in putting on the varnish--that it is even and as thinly distributed as will serve the purpose. it should not be flowed on, but carefully worked out with a clean brush, and then kept from dirt and dust until dry. the finer varnishes in oil or turpentine are best for ordinary use. those in alcohol do not hold their freshness so well. varnishes are sometimes used as siccatives, and to mix with colors which are liable to affect other colors, or to lack consistency. usually, however, they are not needed. chapter vii palettes the most important qualities in a palette are that it should be large enough, and that it should balance well on the thumb. whether it is round or square is a slight matter. the oval palette is usually best for the studio because the corners are seldom of use, and add weight. but for sketching, the square palette fits the box best. [illustration: =oval palette.=] get a palette much larger than you think you want. when you get it on your thumb the mixing-surface is much less than there seemed to be before it was set, for all the actual surface is between the row of colors and the thumb. if the palette is polished it is not essentially better; it is easier to keep clean, as far as looks go, but of no greater real service. if the choice is between a larger unpolished and a smaller polished one, the price being the consideration, get the larger one. get a light wood in preference to a dark wood for a choice of color, but not if there is better grain or lighter weight in the darker palette. it is an assistance in painting not to have to compare the tint you are mixing with too dark a surface, for the color looks lighter than it is; so the light wood will help you to judge justly of the color while the palette is new. when it has been worked on a while it will come to have a sympathetic color anyway. this bears on the cleanliness of your palette. it is a mistake to consider that cleanliness demands that the palette should be cleaned to the wood and polished after every painting. on the contrary, if a little of the paint is rubbed out over the palette every time it is cleaned, after a few weeks there will come a fine smooth polish of paint, which will have a delicate light gray color, which is a most friendly mixing surface. =adapting.=--when you get a new palette, before you use it take a little trouble to carve out the thumb-hole to fit your thumb. make it large enough to go over the ball of the thumb, and set easily on the top of the hand. when the hole is too small the thumb gets numb after working a little while, which this will obviate. =cleanliness.=--the cleanliness of a palette consists in its being always in such a condition that you can handle it without getting dirty; that the mixing-surface will not foul the freshly mixed paint; and that the paint around the edge is always so that you can pick up a fresh, clean brushful. if you try to clean off all your color every day and polish your palette nicely, you will not only take up more time with your palette than you do with your painting, but the fact that some left-over paint may be wasted will make you a little stingy in putting on fresh paint, which is one of the worst habits a beginner can fall into. you cannot paint well unless you have paint enough on your palette to use freely when you need it. it is all well enough to put on more, but nothing is more vexing than to have to squeeze out new paint at almost every brushful. you must have paint enough when you begin, to work with, or you waste too much time with these details. [illustration: =arm palette.=] if you are painting every day, leave the good paint where it is at the end of your work, and scrape off all the muddy or half-used piles, and clean carefully all the palette except those places where the paint is still fresh and pure. then, when you have to add more to that, clean that place with the palette-knife before squeezing out the new color. in this way the palette will not look like a centre-table, but it will be practically clean, have a good clear mixing-surface, and you will neither waste paint nor be stingy with it. =the arm palette.=--for painting large canvases, where the largest-sized brushes are used and paint must be mixed in greater quantities, the arm palette is a most convenient thing if it is well balanced. it is in the way rather than otherwise for small pictures, and is useful only as it is particularly called for. chapter viii other tools it remains to speak of those tools which are not essentials, but conveniences, to painting. even as conveniences, however, they are of importance enough to have an influence on your work. you can paint without them, but you will work more easily for the having of them; and something of the sort, although not necessarily of the same kind, you must have. you may improvise something, in other words, to take the place of these, but you would be wiser to get those which are made for the purpose. =the box.=--first, the box. you must keep your things together somehow, and it would be as well that you keep them in a box which is portable and suited to the purpose. when you sketch you must have a proper box, and why not have one which is equally serviceable in the house? those most commonly sold to amateurs are of tin, and they are various in size and construction, and not too expensive. the only thing against them is the difficulty of adapting them to service different from that they were designed for; that is, if you want to put in a different sort of panel, or if you want to fix it in the cover for convenience, or anything like that, you cannot readily do it, because you cannot use tacks in them. this counts for more than would seem on a sketching trip. but the tin box is light, and is not easily broken, and while it is in shape is practical. [illustration: =the color box.=] the box to be most recommended is the wooden one. it costs more than the tin one,--about twice as much; but you can always arrange it for an emergency very readily, and if it gets broken you can fix it yourself, or get any carpenter to do it for you, while you may be a good many miles from a tinner, who would be necessary to mend your tin box. you had better not get too large a box. get one long enough for the brushes; but if you are going to use it out-of-doors much, get a narrow one with a folding palette, so as to save weight. in this way you will get a larger palette than you could get in a smaller and wider box, which is an important consideration. [illustration: =palette knife.=] =the palette-knife.=--of more immediate necessity to your painting is the palette-knife. you cannot keep the palette clean without it. now and again you may want to mix colors, or even paint with it. but you constantly get rid of the too much mixed color on your palette with it, and this is essential to good painting. take some care to select a good knife; have the blade long enough to be springy and flexible, but not too long. about five inches from the wood of the handle to the end of the blade is a good length. and see that it bends in a true curve from one end to the other, and is not stiff at the end and weak in the middle. it should have the same even elasticity that a brush should have. for painting you need a "trowel palette-knife," which has a bent shank, making the blade and the handle on different levels, so that as you press the blade to the canvas, the fingers are kept away from the painted surface. the shank should be round, and the blade very fine and flexible. the knife should balance nicely in the hand, and turn freely in the fingers, so that you can paint with either face of the blade with equal balance. it takes some care to pick out a good trowel-knife, as a poor one is worse than none. =the scraper.=--you frequently need to scrape rough paint from a canvas or a picture, and you need to scrape strongly to get a dirty palette clean. you can use an old razor for the first purpose, or a piece of broken glass, if you use it carefully, and any old knife can be used to clean your palette. but a regular tool is better than either. the scraper here shown is the best. [illustration: =the scraper.=] =the oil-cup.=--do not use oils and vehicles very much. but when you need them you must have something to keep them in, convenient to the brush when working. it should have a spring to hold it on to the palette, and of such form that the contents are not easily spilled by the movement of the hand or the body when painting. the form here illustrated is the best that has been brought out so far. [illustration: =the oil-cup.=] =the mahl-stick.=--sometimes you want to rest the hand when painting, for steadiness. the "mahl-" or rest-stick has a ball on the end, which one usually covers with a wad of rag, so that it can be placed against the canvas without injury, and the hand rested on it. it is so light that it can be held with the brushes in the palette hand, and stiff enough to support the brush-hand. [illustration: =mahl-sticks.=] =sketching adjuncts.=--out-of-doors you must have a seat, and you should have an umbrella. the best seat for a man, because it can be folded into so small a space, is the three-legged stool. this is not usually satisfactory for a woman, whose skirts tip it over. the better seat for her is shown below. the back is not very firm, but it does give support, and the whole is light and strong. [illustration] [illustration] the umbrella should be large and light, and one such as the illustration, with a valve in the top to let the wind and hot air through, will be found cooler and less easily blown over. you should have some strong rings sewed on to it, so that you can fasten it from four sides by strings, to keep it steady if the wind blows hard. the umbrella should be of light-colored material, preferably white; but if it is lined with black, the shade will be better, and give no false glow to the color. [illustration] chapter ix studios a painting-room is always a matter of serious consideration, and to the beginner one of difficulty. the arrangement of light is not easy, and a special window is almost always out of the question; yet in some way the light must be so managed that the canvas is not covered with reflected lights which prevent one from seeing what the paint is really like. =the north light.=--the first thing to be looked for is a steady light which will be always about the same, and not be sunny part of the time and in the shade the rest. a window looking to the north for this reason is generally selected. the sun does not come into it, and the light is diffused and regular. the effect of the light in the studio is cool, but colors are justly seen in it, and the light that falls on any object or model in it will be always the same. if there is to be a skylight, this should be arranged in the same way. the sash must not be flat, but must be nearly enough to the vertical to prevent the sun's direct rays from entering, and it must for that purpose face to the north. this makes the skylight practically a high north light in the roof or ceiling, and that is what it should be. whether the sash is above the ceiling or just below it, in the roof or in the wall, is of no particular importance. the thing to be seen to is that it is high enough for the light to enter above the head of the painter, and that it be so directed that only north light can come in. the size of the window is also to be carefully considered. it should not be too large. too much light will be sure to interfere with the proper control of light and shade on your model, and too little will make your painting too dark. the position of the window with reference to the shape of the room has to do with this. the most probable form of a room is long and narrow. for painting it is better that the window be in the middle of the end wall, high up, rather than in the middle of the side wall. you will find that you can more easily get distance from your model, and at the same time get the light both on him and on your canvas. but a painting-room should not be too narrow. about one-third longer than it is wide, with the window in one end, will give you a good light, and the further end of the room will not be too dark, as it would be apt to be if the room were longer. preferably, too, the window should be to the left of the centre of the wall rather than to the right, as you face it; so that when you are as near the side wall as you can get, with the light over your left shoulder (as it should be), the light will strike on the canvas well, and not too directly on the front of the model. it will give you a better lateral position to the window, in other words. if you have to accept a window in a side wall, this is even more to be looked for. if the window is to the right of the centre, you will have a strong side-light on your model; but you will either have no light on your canvas, or you will have to turn so that the light falls on your canvas from the right, which is awkward, as the paint is in the shadow of the hand and brush which puts it on. the height of the lower part of the window should be at least six feet from the floor, and for ordinary purposes the proportion of window space to floor space should be about one-tenth. it is impossible to give a rule; but if the floor is about twelve feet by sixteen, say, a window about five feet by four will be enough, or six and a half by three if it is placed horizontally. if you want intense light with strong contrast of light and shade on your model, have the window smaller and squarer, and place your easel just under it, where the light is good. the rest of the room will be dark. better have the window large enough, and have it so curtained that you can cut off as much light as you need to. all this is if you are going to make yourself a window; in which case you will think well before you commit yourself. more probably you will have to get along as best you can with the ordinary room and the ordinary window. in which case get a high room with the window running up as close to the ceiling as possible, and facing north, then you can curtain it so as to control the light. =arrangement of ordinary windows.=--for a good working light you should have only one window in your room; for the light coming in from two openings will make a crossing of rays which will not only interfere with the simplicity of the effect of light and shade on your model, but will make a glare on your canvas. you can either close the light out of the right-hand window, or, better, arrange a curtain so the light from one window will not fall on the same place as that from the other. when you are working from still life or from a model this is often an advantage, for you can have a strong side-light on the model, and a second light on the canvas. to arrange this, have a sort of crane made of iron, shaped like a carpenter's square, which will swing at right angles with the wall, the arm reaching, say, six feet into the room. swing this by means of staples well up to the ceiling, so that the light cannot get over it, and near to the right-hand window. from this arm you can hang a thick, dark curtain, which will cover and shut out the light from the right-hand window when swung back over it. if you want to pose your model in the light of that window, while you paint in that of the other, swing the curtain out into the room at right angles to the wall, and it will prevent a cross light from the two windows; so that when the model is posed back of the curtain the light from that window will not fall on the canvas, nor the light from the other fall on the model. the light will be best on your picture coming from well above you as you work. there will then be no reflections on the paint. you may find it necessary to cover entirely the lower half of the window which gives your painting-light. you will find it useful to have a shade of good solid holland, arranged with the roller at the bottom, and a string running up through a pulley at the top; so that you may pull the shade _up_ from the bottom instead of _down_ from the top, and so cut off as much of the lower part of the window as is necessary. if you need the light from the lower part of the window, you may make a thin curtain of muslin to cover the lower sash, which will let the light through, but diffuse the rays and prevent reflection. =the size of the studio.=--of course a large studio is a good thing, but it is not always at one's command. but you should try to have the room large enough to let you work freely, and have distance enough from the model. the size that i have mentioned, twelve feet by sixteen, is as small as one should have, and one that you can almost always get. if the room is smaller than that, you cannot do much in it, and fifteen by twenty will give ample space. part ii general principles chapter x mental attitude there is a theoretical and a practical side to art. the business of the student is with the practical. theories are not a part of his work. before any theoretical work is done there is the bald work of learning to see facts justly, in their proper degree of relative importance; and how to convey these facts visibly, so that they shall be recognizable to another person. the ideals of art are for the artist; not for the student. the student's ideal should be only to see quickly and justly, and to render directly and frankly. technique is a word which includes all the material and educational resources of representation. the beginner need bother himself little with what is good and what is bad technique. let him study facts and their representation only. choice of means and materials implies a knowledge by which he can choose. the beginner can have no such knowledge. choice, then, is not for him; but to work quite simply with whatever comes to hand, intent only on training the eye to see, the brain to judge, and the hand to execute. later, with the gaining of experience and of knowledge, for both will surely come, the determination of what is best suited for the individual temperament or purpose will work itself out naturally. the student should not allow the theoretical basis of art to interfere with the directness of his study of the material and the actual. nevertheless, he should know the fact that there is something back of the material and the actual, as well as in a general way what that something is. because the student's business is with the practical is no reason why he should remain ignorant of everything else. it is important that he should think as a painter as well as work as a painter. if he has no thought of what all this practical is for, he will get a false idea of his craft. he will see, and think of, and believe in, nothing but the craftsmanship: that which every good workman respects as good and necessary, but which the wise workman knows is but the perfect means for the expression of thought. some consideration, then, of the theoretical side of art is necessary in a book of this kind. a number of considerations arise at the outset, about which you must make up your mind:-- is judgment of a picture based on individual liking? can you hope to paint well by following your own liking only? is it worth your while to try to do good work? can you hope to do good work at all? you must decide these questions for yourself, but you must remember that it depends upon how you decide them whether your work will be good or bad. to take the last consideration first, you may be sure that it is worth while to try to do good work, and mainly because you may hope to do as good work as you want to do. that is, precisely as good work as you are willing to take the trouble to learn to do. talent is only another name for love of a thing. if you love a thing enough to try to find out what is good, to train your judgment; and to train your abilities up to what that judgment tells you is good, the good work is only a matter of time. you will notice that you must train your judgment as well as your ability; not all at once, of course. but how can you hope to do good work if you do not know what good work is when you see it? if you have no point of view, how can you tell what you are working for, what you are aiming at? and if you do not know what you are aiming at, are you likely to hit anything? =train your judgment.=--let us say, then, that you must train your critical judgment. how are you to set about it? in the first place, don't set up your own liking as a criterion. make up your mind that when it comes to a choice between your personal taste and that of some one who may be supposed to know, between what you think and what has been consented to by all the men who have ever had an opinion worthy of respect, you may rest assured that you are wrong. and when you have made up your mind to that, when you have reached that mental attitude, you have taken a long step towards training your judgment; for you have admitted a standard outside of mere opinion. another attitude that you should place your mind in is one of catholicity--one of openness to the possibility of there being many ways of being right. don't allow yourself to take it for granted that any one school or way of painting or looking at things is the only right one, and that all the other ways are wrong. that point of view may do for a man who has studied and thought, and finally arrived at that conclusion which suits his mind and his nature,--but it will not do for a student. such an attitude is a sure bar to progress. it results in narrowness of idea, narrowness of perception, and narrowness of appreciation. you should try all things, and hold fast to that which is good. and having found what is good, and even while holding fast to it, you should remember that what is good and true for you is not necessarily the only good and true for some one else. you must not only hold to your own liberty of choice, but recognize the same right for others. if this is not recognized, what room has originality to work in? the range of subject, of style, and of technical methods among acknowledged masters, should alone be proof of the fact that there is no one way which is the only good way; and if you would know how to judge and like a good picture, the study of really great pictures, without regard to school, is the way to learn. =how to look at pictures.=--the study of pictures means something more than merely looking at them and counting the figures in them. it implies the study of the treatment of the subject in every way. the management of light and shade; the color; the composition and drawing; and finally those technical processes of brush-work by means of which the canvas gets covered, and the idea of the artist becomes visible. all these things are important in some degree; they all go to the making of the complete work of art: and you do not understand the picture, you do not really and fully judge it, unless you know how to appreciate the bearing on the result, of all the means which were used to bring it about. all this adds to your own technical knowledge as well as to your critical judgment, both of which ends are important to your becoming a good painter. =why paint well.=--you see i am assuming that you wish to be a good painter. there is no reason why you should be a bad painter because you are not a professional one. the better you paint the better your appreciation will be of all good work, the keener your appreciation of what is beautiful in nature, and the greater your satisfaction and pleasure in your own work. there are better reasons for painting than the desire to "make a picture." painting implies making a picture, it is true; but it means also seeing and representing charming things, and working out problems of beauty in the expression of color and form: and this is something more than what is commonly meant by a picture. the picture comes, and is the result; but the making of it carries with it a pleasure and joy which are in exact proportion to the power of appreciation, perception, and expression of the painter. this is the real reason for painting, and it makes the desire and the attempt to paint well a matter of course. =craftsmanship.=--the mechanical side of painting naturally is an important part of your problem. you cannot be too catholic in your opinion with regard to it. it is vital that you be not narrowed by any prejudices as to the surface effect of paint. whether the canvas be smooth or rough, the paint thick or thin, the details few or many,--the goodness or badness of the picture does not depend on any of these. they are or should be the result, the natural outcome because the natural means of expression, of the manner in which the picture is conceived. one picture may demand one way of painting and another demand a quite different way; and each way be the best possible for the thing expressed. it all depends on the man; the make-up of his mind; the way he sees things; the results he aims to attain,--all of them controlled more or less by temperament and idiosyncrasy. what would produce a perfect work for one man would not do at all for another. the works of the great masters offer the most marked contrasts of ideal and of treatment, and painters have varied greatly in their manner of some painting at different periods of their lives. rembrandt, for instance, painted very thinly in his early years, with transparent shadows and carefully modelled, solidly loaded lights. later in life he painted most roughly; and "the syndics" was so heavily and roughly loaded that even now, after two hundred years, the paint stands out in lumps--and this is one of his masterpieces. so again, if you will compare the manipulation in the work of raphael with that of tintoretto, that of rubens with that of velasquez, or most markedly, the work of frans hals with that of gerard dou, you will see that the greatest extremes of handling are consistent with equal greatness of result. =finish.=--from this you may conclude that what is generally understood by the word "finish" is not necessarily a thing to be sought for. the tendency of great painters is rather away from excessive smoothness and detail than towards it. while a picture may be a good one and be very minute and smooth, it by no means follows that a picture is bad because it is rough. the truth is that the test of a picture does not lie in the character of the pigment surface _in itself_ at all, nor in whether it be full of detail or the reverse, but in the conception and in the harmonious relation of the technique to the manner in which the whole is conceived. the true "finish" is whatever surface the picture happens to have when the idea which is the purpose of the picture is fully expressed, with nothing lacking to make that expression more complete, nor with anything present which is not needed to that completeness. this too is the truth about "breadth," that much misunderstood word. breadth is not merely breadth of brush stroke. it is breadth of idea, breadth of perception; the power of conceiving the picture as a whole, and the power of not putting in any details which will interfere with the unity of effect. =intent.=--in this connection it would be well to bear in mind the purpose of the work on which the painter may be engaged. a man would, and should, work very differently on canvases intended for a study, a sketch, and a picture. the study would contain many things which the other two would not need. it is the work in which and by which the painter informs himself. it is his way of acquiring facts, or of assuring himself of what he wants and how he wants it. and he may put into it all sorts of things for their value as facts which he may never care to use, but which he wishes to have at command in case he should want them. the sketch, on the other hand, is a note of an effect merely, or of a general idea, and calls for only those qualities which most successfully show the central idea, which might sometime become a picture, or which suggests a scheme. a carefully worked-up sketch is a contradiction in terms, just as a careless study would be. a picture might have more or less of the character of either of these two types, and yet belong to neither. it might have the sketch as its motive, and would use as much or as little of the material of the study as should be needed to make the result express exactly the idea the painter wished to impart, and no more and no less. all these things should be borne in mind, as you study the characteristics of paintings to learn what they can mean to you beyond the surface which is obvious to any one; or as you work on your own canvas to attain such power or proficiency, such cleverness or facility, as you may conclude it is worth your while to try for. chapter xi tradition and individuality a picture is made up of many elements. certain of them are essentially abstract. they must be thought out by a sort of _mental vision without words_. this is the most subtle and intimate part of the picture. these are the means by which the ideal is brought into the picture. =line, mass, and color.=--such are the qualities of _line_, dissociated from representation; of _mass_, not as representing external forms; and _color_, considered as a _quality_, not as yet expressed visibly in pigment, nor representing the color of any _thing_. when these elements are combined they may make up such conceptions as proportion, rhythm, repetition, and balance, with all the modifications that may come from still further combination. it is because these elements are qualities in themselves beautiful that actual objects not beautiful may be made so in a painting, by being treated as _color_ or _line_ or _mass_, and so given place on the canvas, rather than as being of themselves interesting. a face, for instance, may be ugly as a _face_, yet be beautiful as color or light and shade in the picture. these qualities, i say, do not represent--they do not necessarily even exist, except in the mind to which they are the terms of its thought. nevertheless, they are the soul of the picture. for whatever the subject, or the objects chosen for representation, it is by working out combinations of these elements, through and by means of those objects, that the picture really is made. the picture, _as a work of art_, is not the representation of objects making up a subject, but a fabric woven of color, line, and mass; of form, proportion, balance, rhythm, and movement, expressed through those actual objects in the picture which give it visible form. i do not purpose to go deeply into these matters here. elsewhere, as they bear practically on the subject in hand, as in the chapters on "composition" and on "color," i shall speak of them more fully. but i wish here to call attention to this abstract side of painting in order to show the relation between the two classes of things, the one abstract and the other concrete, which together are needed to make up a picture. the concrete, or material, part of a picture includes all those things which you can look at or feel on the canvas; and by seeing which you can also see the abstract qualities, which do not _visibly_ exist until made visible through the disposition of these tangible things, on the canvas. beyond this is included all the technical qualities of expression; form, as _drawing_; all representations of objects; the pigment by means of which color is seen; and all those technical processes which produce the various kinds of surface in the putting on of paint, and bring about the different effects of light and shade and color, form or accent. in learning to paint, it is with these concrete things that you should concern yourself mainly. the science of painting consists in the knowledge of how to be the master of all the practical means of the craft. for it is with these that you must work, with these you must express yourself. these are the tools of your trade. they are the words of your art language--the language itself being the abstract elements--and the thoughts, the combinations which you may conceive in your brain by means of these abstract elements. you must have absolute command of these _materials_ of painting. no matter how ideal your thought may be, no matter how fine your feeling for line and color and composition, if you do not know how to handle the gross material which is the only medium by which this can all be made visible and recognizable to another person, you will fail of either expressing yourself, or of representing anything else. now you will see what i have been driving at all this time; why i have been talking in terms which may well be called not practical. i want to fix your attention on the fact that there are two qualities in a picture: that one will be always within you, mainly, and will control the character of your picture, because it will be the expression of your mental self; and the other the practical part, which any one may, and all painters must learn, because it is the only means of getting the first into existence. the one, the abstract part, no one can tell you how to cultivate nor how to use. if i tried to do so, it would be my idea and not yours which would result. i can only tell you that it is the _thought of art_, and you must think your own thoughts. but the other, the material, the concrete, the practical, it is the purpose of this whole book to help you to understand and to acquire the mastery of, so far as may be done by words. teaching by words is difficult, and never completely satisfactory. but much may be done. if you will use your own brains, so that what does not seem clear at first may come to have a meaning because of your thinking about it, we may accomplish a great deal. i cannot make you paint. i cannot make you understand. i can give you the principles, but you must apply them and think them out. everything i say must be in a measure general; for the needs of every one are individual, and the requirement of each technical problem is individual. i must speak for all, and not to any one. yet i shall state principles which can always be made to apply to each single need, and i will try to show how the application may be made. =technique.=--the science of painting consists of a variety of processes by means of which a canvas is covered with pigment, and various objects are represented thereon. the whole body of method and means is called technique; the several parts of technique are called by names of their own. that part which applies to the putting on of the paint may be generally called _handling_, although the word _painting_ is sometimes restricted to this sense, and _brush-work_ is often used for the same thing. the other technical means will be spoken of in their proper place. let me say now a few words as to _handling_ in general. where did all this technique come from? from experiment. ever since art began, men have been searching for means of fixing ideas upon surfaces. but it is only within the last four hundred years that the processes of oil painting have been in existence--simply because they are peculiar to the use of pigments ground in oil as a vehicle, and the oil medium was not invented until the middle of the fifteenth century. with the invention of this medium new possibilities came into the world, and a continual succession of painters have been inventing ways of putting on paint, the result being the stock of methods and processes of handling which are the groundwork of the art of painting to-day. from time to time there have been groups of artists who have used common methods, and who have developed expression through those methods which became characteristic of their epoch; and because the resulting pictures were of a high degree of perfection, their methods of handling acquired an authority which had a very determining effect on different periods of painting. in this way have come those ideas as to what kind of painting or what ways of putting paint on canvas should be accepted as "legitimate." and the methods accepted as legitimate or condemned as illegitimate have been varied from time to time--those condemned by one period being advocated by another; and the processes themselves have been almost as varied as the periods or groups of men using them. in the long run, methods and processes have received such authoritative sanction from having been each and all used by undoubted masters, that they have become the traditional property of all art, which any one is free to use as he finds need of them. they have become the stock in trade of the craft. the artist may use them as he will, provided only he will take the trouble to understand them. he must understand them, because the manipulations which make up these different processes accomplish different effects and different qualities; and as the painter aims at results, if he does not understand the result of a process when he uses it, he will get a different one from that which he intended. the painter should not be hampered by process; he should not be controlled in the expression of himself by tradition. he should feel free to use any or all means to bring about the result he aims at, and he should allow no tradition or point of view to prevent him from selecting whichever means will most surely or satisfactorily bring about his true purpose. of course there are many ways of using paint which are unsafe. some pigments are unsafe to use because they either do not hold their own color, or tend to destroy the color of others. you should always bear this in mind; and if you care for the permanence of your work, you should not use such materials or such processes as work against it. but beyond this, the whole range of the experience and experiment of the workers who have gone before you are at your command, to help you to express yourself most perfectly or completely; to represent whatever of visible beauty you may conceive or perceive. and this is the whole aim of the painter; to stand for this is the whole purpose of the picture. chapter xii originality originality is not a thing to strive for. if it comes, it is not through striving. the search for originality seldom results in anything worth having. it is a quality inherent in the man; and the best way of being original in your work is to be natural. perhaps the most useful advice which you could receive is that you be always natural. never be artificial nor insincere; never copy another person's subject, manner, or method, with the intention of doing as he does. the most original things are often the most simple, because they have come naturally from a sincere desire to express what has been seen or felt, in the most direct way. if every one were content to be himself, there would be no dearth of originality. no two people are alike, neither are any two painters alike; they could not be. they do not look alike, nor see alike, nor feel alike, nor think alike. how, then, should they paint alike? the attempt to do a thing because another has made a success of that sort of thing is the most fruitful source of the commonplace in painting. paint that which appeals to you most fully. don't try to paint what appeals to some one else. if you like it, then do it; and do it in the most direct way you can find; only do it so as to fully and completely convey just what it is that _you_ like, unaffected by anything else. and because you have seen or felt for yourself in your own way, and expressed that; and because you are not another, nor like any other that ever was, what you have done will not be like anything else that ever was--and that is originality. but never imitate yourself, either. be open. be ready to receive impressions and emotions. and if you have done one thing well, accept that in itself as a reason for not doing it again. there are always plenty of things--ideas, impressions, conceptions, appreciations--waiting to be painted; and if you try to paint one twice, you fail once of freshness, and lose a chance of doing a new thing. that is what a painter is for, not to cover a canvas with paint, hang it on a wall, and call it by a name. the painter is the eye of the people. he sees things which they have no time to look for, or looking, have not learned to see. the painter serves his purpose best when he recognizes the beautiful where it was not perceived before, and so sets it forth that it is recognized to be beautiful through his having seen it. there is the difference between the artist and the photograph, which sees only facts as facts; which while often distorting them does so mindlessly, and at best, when accurate, gives the bad with the good in unconscious impartiality. but back of the painter's eye which sees and distinguishes is the painter's brain which selects and arranges, using facts as material for the expression of beauties more important than the facts. but what is a picture? i have met some strange though positive notions as to what is and what is not a picture. some persons think that a certain (or uncertain) proportion of definite forms and objects are necessary to make canvas a picture; that it must contain some definite and tangible facts of the more obvious kind. i remember one man who asserted that a canvas in an exhibition was not a picture, but only a sketch, because it had nothing in it but an expanse of sea and sky. to make a picture of it there was needed at least a moon, and some birds, or better, a ship and some reflections. all this sort of thing is idle. a picture is not a picture because it has more of this or less of that; it is a picture because it is complete in the expression of the idea which is the cause of its existence. and that idea may be tangible or not. it may include many details or none. it is an idea which is best or only expressed by being made visible, and which is worthy of being expressed because of its beauty; and when that idea is wholly and fully visible on canvas or other surface, that surface is a picture. what the contents of a picture shall be is a matter personal to the painter of it. the manner in which it is conceived and produced is determined by his temperament and idiosyncrasy. a picture is a visible idea expressed in terms of color, form, and line. it is the product of perception plus feeling, plus intent, plus knowledge, plus temperament, plus pigment. and as all these are differently proportioned in all persons, it is only a matter of being natural on the part of the painter that his picture should be original. chapter xiii the artist and the student it is a mistake to make pictures too soon. the nearest a student is likely to get to a picture is a careful study, and he will be as successful with this, if he makes it for the study of it, as if he made it for the sake of making a picture--better probably. the making of a picture for the picture's sake is dangerous to the student. his is less likely to be sincere. he is apt to "idealize," to make up something according to some notion of how a picture should be, rather than from knowledge of how nature is. real pictures grow from study of nature. they are the outcome of maturity, not of the student stage. this implies something deeper than superficial facts, and a power of selection,--of choice and of purpose which must rest on a very broad and deep knowledge. the artist is always a student, of course; but he is not a student only. he is a student who knows what and why he wants to study; not one who is in process of finding out these things. =aims.=--it should be noted that the aim of the student and the aim of the artist are essentially different. the student's first aim is to learn to see and represent nature's facts; to distinguish justly between relations. it is the training of the eye and the judgment. imitation is not the highest art; but the highest art requires the ability to imitate as a mere power of representation. the mind must not be hampered in its expression by lack of knowledge and control of materials, and the painter who is constantly occupied with the problems he should have worked out in his student days, is just so far from being a master. he must have all his means perfectly at his command before he can freely express himself. the acquirement of this mastery of means is the student's business. everything he does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to being a painter. but he must remember that he is still a student, and as he hopes to be a painter, must have patience with himself; must not hurry himself, must work as a student for the ends of a student. all the facts of nature art uses. but she uses them as she needs them, simplifying, emphasizing, suppressing, combining as will best meet the necessities of the case in hand. all this requires the utmost knowledge, for it must be done in accordance not only with laws of art, but with the laws of nature. there are changes which can be made, and be right--made as nature might make them. other changes which would be false to nature's ways, and so false to art also. for art works through nature always, and in accordance with her. this is the aim of the painter, to express ideas through nature, not to express notions about nature. the facts of nature are the material of art; the words of the language in which the ideas of art are to be conveyed. but there are truths more important than these facts. the underlying sentiment of which they are the external manifestation, and which is the vivifying spirit of them. this is the true fact of the picture. it is more important to give the sentiment of the thing than to give the fact of it; not merely because it is more truly represented so, but because the beauty is shown in showing the character. for the character of the fact is the beauty of the fact. to bring out the beauty which may lie in the fact is the aim of the artist; to acquire the ability to do this is the aim of the student. chapter xiv how to study there is a right and a wrong way to study, and it all centres around the fact that what you aim to learn is perception and expression. what you are to express you do not learn; you grow to that. but you must learn how to use all possible means; all the facts of visible nature, and all the characteristics of pigments. all qualities, color and form and texture, are but the means of your expression, and you must know how they may be used. your perception and appreciation must be trained, and your mind stored with facts and relativities. then you are ready to recognize and to convey the true inwardness you find in conditions commonplace to others. you are to see where others see not; for it is marvellous how little the average eye sees of the really interesting things, how little of the visual facts, and how rarely it sees the picture before it is painted. all is material to the painter. it is not that "everything that is, is beautiful," but that everything that is has qualities and possibilities of beauty; and these, when expressed, make the picture, in spite of the superficial or obvious ugliness. in one sense nothing is commonplace, for everything exists visibly by means of light and color, and light and color are of the fundamental beauties. so arrange or look upon the commonplace that light and color are the most obvious qualities, and the commonplace sinks into the background--is lost. there is nothing like painting to make life fascinating; for there is nothing which brings so many charming combinations into your perception, as the habit of looking to find the possibilities of beauty in everything that comes within your view. you must form the habit of looking always from the painter's point of view. the painter deals primarily with pigment, and what can be represented with pigment; chiefly color and light in the broadest sense, including form and composition, as things which give bodily presence and action to the possibilities of pigment. shade, or shadow, of course, is an actuality in painting, because it is the foil of light and color, and furnishes the element of relation. =methods.=--two general methods are at the command of the student from the first,--to study at once from nature, or to copy. i think i may safely claim to speak for the great body of teachers who are also professional artists, in saying that copying is a means of study rather for the advanced student than for the beginner. you cannot begin too soon to study nature with your own eyes, and to accumulate your own facts and observations and deductions. the use of copying is not to find out how to paint, but to see how many ways there are of painting. the great end of all study in painting is to train the eyes to see relations, to see them in nature. it is not to see that there are relations, but to see where they are; to recognize and to measure and to judge them. painting is the art of perception before everything, and when you copy you only see, accept, what some one else has already perceived. copying does not help you to _perceive_, it can only help to show you how something can be _expressed after_ it has been perceived, and that is not the vital thing in the study of painting. handling, composition, management of color, technique of the brush generally, may be studied by copying. these only--and for these things it is useful and wise. but the beginner is not ready for these, for they are not the alphabet, but the grammar of painting. =danger.=--the danger of too early copying is that the student learns to set too much value on surface qualities rather than those to which the surface is merely incidental. with this is the danger (a serious one, and one hard to overcome the results of) that the student becomes clever as a producer of pictures before he has trained his power to see. he becomes a student of pictures rather than a student of nature, and when in doubt will go to art rather than to nature for help and suggestion. could anything be more fatal? consider the things that student will have to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms of nature--the only healthy, the only prolific way of thinking. he sees always through other people's eyes, and thinks with other people's brains, and feels other people's emotions; that is not creation; that is the attitude for the spectator, not for the painter. these things are all useful and good, but not for the beginner. later, when you have found out something for yourself, when you have ground of your own to stand on, then you may not only without danger, but with benefit, go to the work of other men to see the range of possible point of view and expression, to see the scope of technical material and individual adaptation; and so broaden your own mental view and sympathy, possibly reform or educate your taste, and perhaps get some hints which will help you in the solving of some future problem. but rather than the undue sophistication which can result from unwise copying,--the over-knowledge of process and surface, and under-knowledge of nature,--is to be preferred a frank crudeness of work which is the result of an honest going to nature for study. you should not expect a perfect eye for color and form too soon. better a healthily youthful crudity of perception based on nature, and standing for what you have yourself studied and worked out, which represents your own attainment, than a greater show of knowledge which is insincere and superficial because it represents a mere acceptance of the facts set down by others; and not only that, but even with it an acceptance also of the actual terms used by those others. often copying is the most convenient way in which you can get help. there is really much to be learned from it, and you can make a picture serve as a criticism on your own work. particularly in the matter of color or tone, as something to recognize the achievement of for its own sake. if you can recognize good color as such, aside from what it represents, if you can appreciate tone in a picture which is the work of some one else, you are so much the more likely to notice the lack of those qualities in your own work. so, too, there are qualities of brush-work which are always good, and some which are always bad. you can study the former positively, and the latter negatively, in studying and copying other pictures. i have mentioned the training of your critical judgment as a necessity in your education. you can do it slowly in learning to paint, but you can facilitate that training by copying and studying really good pictures, if you do it in the right way. =the right way.=--so if you do copy, do it in the right way, so as to get all the real help out of it, and not so as to have to unlearn the greater part of it. don't copy "to get a picture." don't make a copy which at a distance has a resemblance to the original, but which on a more careful study shows none of the qualities which make the original what it is. not only see to it that the same subtleties of perception and representation are preserved in your copy, but that they are attained in the same way. use the same brush-work or other execution. use the same pigments in the same places, with the same vehicles; study the original with your brain as well as with your eyes and hands; try to see not only how the painter did a certain thing but why. so that as you work, you follow him in the working out of his problem, and make it your problem also. in this way you will get some real good from his picture, and not a mere canvas which has been of no use to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one else who knows a good picture (copy or original) when he sees it. =why copy.=--there are only two good reasons for making a copy,--to study the original as a problem, and to have something to serve as an example of the master on a work which you like. and in either case such a sincere manner of copying as i urge is the only possible way to get what you want. to "get a picture," regardless of whether it really does justice to the original, is the wrong way, and this leads always through bad copying to bad painting, and you are fortunate if you escape an entire perversion of your point of view. you may be able to make some money now and again by doing this sort of thing, but you will never learn anything from it. on the contrary, it is the surest way you could find of closing your eyes to all that is worth seeing. =get to nature.=--if you would really learn to paint, to see for yourself, to represent what you see in your own way, you cannot get to nature too soon. don't bother about what the thing is, so long as it is nature herself. by nature i mean anything, absolutely anything which exists of itself, not painted. whether it be the living figure, or a cast, or a bit of landscape, or a room interior--all things which actually exist must show themselves by the facts of light falling upon them: the relation of color, and the contrasts of light and dark. whatever you see is useful to you in this way, for these bring about all the qualities and conditions which you most need to study. but models are not always at command, interiors do not easily stay a long time at your disposal, and bits of landscape which interest you are not always easy to get at; for a student is apt to be either far advanced or unusually ardent who will find interest in the first combination which falls under his eye. therefore the most practically useful material for study, which is always "nature," is what we call "still life,"--_"morte" nature_, dead nature is the better or more descriptive name the french give to it. by this is meant any and all combinations of objects and backgrounds grouped arbitrarily for representation. bottles and jugs and fruits, books and bric-a-brac; all sorts of things lend themselves readily and interestingly to this use. the great value of still life for the student lies in the variety of combinations of color and form, of light and shade and texture, that he can always command. there is practically no problem possible to in-the-house light which may not be worked out by means of still life. the training in perception and representation, in composition and arrangement, and in technique, which it will give you is invaluable; and most important of all, while you can always make such arrangements as will interest you, because you need place only such things or colors as you like, you are really studying nature herself, you are looking at the things themselves, and the result you get is the product of your own eyes and brain. the problem is entirely your own, both in the stating and the solving, and what you learn is well learned, and represents a definite progress along the right line. you have worked for the sake of the working, and there is nothing which you have got from it that may not be applicable to any future work you may do, that does not directly lead to the great object you have in view,--to learn how to paint well. =be sincere.=--but, above all, be sincere with yourself; don't do anything to be clever, nor because it pleases some one else. painting is difficult enough at best. you need all the interest and fascination that the most charming thing can have for you to help you to do it so that it is worth the trouble. don't take away the whole life of it by insincerity. a very thoughtful painter said to me once that he believed that all really good pictures could be shown to be good by the sole criterion of conviction. can you think of any painting being good without it? can you think of any amount of cleverness and ability making a picture good without that. and it is quite as important in study as elsewhere. never do anything except seriously; take yourself and your work seriously; only by serious work can serious results come. =joy in your work.=--do it because you like to. but like good work and hate bad work; and, above all, hate half-way work. understand yourself: what you want to do and why you want to do it, and then be honest enough with yourself to work till you have honestly done what you wanted to do, and as you wanted to do it. part iii technical principles chapter xv technical preliminaries =reasons.=--painting is something more than laying on paint. it implies a certain amount of knowledge of necessary preliminaries--technical matters which are not strictly painting, but without which good painting is impossible. it is all well enough to put paint on canvas, but there must be a knowledge on which to base the where and the why of laying it on, as well as the knowledge of how to lay it on. if anything, the where and why are more important than the how. there are almost infinite methods and processes of getting the paint onto the surface. every painter may select or invent his own way, and provided it accomplishes the main purpose--the bringing about of combinations of form, relative color and pitch, the expression of an idea--it is all right. but there are laws which govern the positions of the different spots of paint, and the reasons for placing them in certain relations. these laws are back of personal idiosyncrasy. they are a part of the laws which control all material things. the painter may no more go contrary to them in painting than he may go contrary to physical laws in any of the practical matters of life. if pigments are not used in accordance with the laws governing their chemical composition, they will not stand. if the laws of proportion are not observed in composition, the picture will not balance. the laws of color harmony are as mathematically fixed as the law of gravity. so, too, the relations of size, which give the impression of nearness or distance to objects, rest on the laws of optics. you have infinite scope for individual expression inside of those laws, but you cannot go outside of them. =scientific knowledge not necessary.=--it is not necessary that you should have any special knowledge of all these laws nor even of the application of them; but you must recognize their existence, and have some practical notions about them and their effect on your work. you can of course carry the study as far as you are interested to go. the farther the better. the more you study them the more you will find them interesting, and the easier will it be for you to work freely within their limitations. but this is not the place for special study. there are books which treat particularly of these things, and you must go to them. but a superficial consideration of these subjects cannot be left out of any book which would be really helpful to the student of painting. i can go into the theory of things only so far as to give you that amount of practical knowledge which is absolutely necessary to you as a painter. what i shall give is given only because it cannot be wisely left out, and the form of it as well as the substance and quantity are determined by the same reason. as you hope to become a painter, then, do not neglect to study and think of this part of the book, not merely as a preliminary to the process of painting, but as containing matter which is continually essential to it--which is part and parcel of it. another reason for the careful reading of these chapters is that any discussion of the art of painting necessarily demands the use of words or phrases which must be understood. to speak of technical things presupposes the use of technical phrases, and without a knowledge of the words there can be no comprehension of the thought. chapter xvi drawing drawing is basic to painting. good painting cannot exist without it. i do not mean that there must be always the outline felt or seen, but that the understanding of relative position, size, and form must be felt; and that is drawing. drawing is not merely form, but implies these other things, and painting is not legible without them. they go to the completeness of expression. movement, and action, as well as composition and all that it implies or includes, depend upon drawing, and they are vital to a painting. =importance of drawing.=--much has been said and written of drawing as being the most important thing in a picture; so much so, as to excuse all sorts of shortcomings in other directions. this is a mistake. drawing is essential because you cannot lay on color to express anything without the colors taking shape, and this is drawing. but still the color itself, and other characteristics which are not strictly a part of drawing, are quite as important to painting, simply because the thing without them could not be a painting at all: it would be a drawing. all painters fall into two classes,--those who are most sensitive to the refinements of form, and those most sensitive to refinements of color and tone. but the great colorists, the painters _par excellence_, the workers in pigment before everything else, those who find their sentiment mainly there, these are the men who have made painting what it is, and who have brought out its possibilities. and looking at painting from their point of view, drawing cannot be more important than other qualities. =neglect of drawing.=--great artists have sometimes not been perfect draughtsmen. they have been careless of exactness of form. but they have always been strong in the great essentials of drawing, and they have made up for such deficiencies as they showed, by their greatness in other directions. delacroix, for instance, sometimes let his temperament run him into carelessness of form in his hurry to express his temperamental richness of color. these things are superficial to the greater ends he had in view, but we have to distinctly forgive it in accepting the picture. and a great colorist may be so forgiven; he makes up for his fault by other things. but there is no forgiveness for the student or the painter who is simply a poor draughtsman. the effect of neglect of drawing is to make a weak picture. a painter, who was also an exceptionally fine draughtsman, once spoke of work weak in drawing as resembling "boned turkey." lack of firmness, indecision, characterize the painter who cannot draw. those firm, simple, but effective touches which are evident somewhere in the work of all good painters, are impossible without draughtsmanship. they mean precision. precision means position. position means drawing. =proportions.=--all good work is from the general to the particular, from the mass to the detail. keep that in mind as a fundamental principle in good work, whatever the kind. you should never place a detail till you have placed your larger masses. the relative importance of things depends on the consideration of those most important first. let this be your first rule in drawing. proportions next. largest proportions, then exactness of relative proportions. study first in masses. see nothing at first but the large planes. as hunt said, "hang the nose on to the head, not the head on to the nose." in getting proportions of the great masses, let no small variations of line or form break into your study of the whole. therefore, see outlines first in straight lines and angles. if you cannot see them at first, study to find them; look at the long lines of movement; mass several curves into one line representing the general direction of them. train yourself to look at things in this way. there is nothing which will not fall into position so. this will not be easy at first. the training of a quick perception of these things is a part of your training in drawing--the first essential. it is not that the straight lines are to be sought for themselves, but that they simplify the first breaking up of the whole into its parts, and so makes more easy the study of proportion. the accuracy of the general masses makes possible a greater accuracy of the lesser proportions which come within them. you see form more truly also, when the perception of it is founded on a mass or a line indicating the larger character of it. it saves time for you, too. you do not have to rub out so much. the great lines and planes once established, everything else falls naturally into place. spend much time over this part of a drawing. cut the time you give to a drawing into parts, and let the part given to the laying in of larger proportions be from a third to a half of the whole time, and study and correct these until they are right. once these are right a very slight accent tells for twice what it would otherwise, and so you need much less detail to give the effect. =modelling.=--in the same way that you have laid out the proportions in mass, lay out your proportions of light and shade. model your drawing by avoiding the small until the large variations of shade are in place. avoid seeing curves in relief as you have avoided curves of outline. try to analyze the modelling into flat planes, each one large enough to give a definite mass of relief. don't be afraid of an edge in doing this. let your flat tone come frankly up to the next tone and stop. this again is not for any effect in itself, but only for facility and exactness. later you can loose it as much as you see fit in breaking up the drawing into the more delicate planes, and these again into the most subtle. study first the outline and then the planes. constantly compare them as to relation; you will find it suggestive. remember that your aim is to produce a whole, not a lot of parts, and although a whole includes the parts, the parts are incidental. =measurements.=--you will always have to use measurements for the sake of accuracy. probably you will never be able to dispense with them. the best way would be to take them as a matter of course, and get so that you make them almost mechanically, without thinking of it. you will save yourself an immense deal of time and trouble by accepting this at once; for accuracy is impossible without measurements, and the habit of accuracy is the greatest time-saver. hold your charcoal in your hand freely, so that your thumb can slip along it and mark off parts of the object when you sight at them across the coal. measure horizontal and vertical proportions into themselves and into each other. height and breadth are checks to each other. if the height is a certain proportion of the breadth, then the smaller proportions of height must have equivalent proportions to each other _as well as to breadth_. measure these and you are sure of being right. =steps.=--divide your drawing into steps or stages of work. you will find it a helpful thing in studying. you will do it quite naturally later. do it deliberately at first, as a matter of training. _first step._--measure the extreme height and breadth of the whole group or object of your drawing, with accuracy, and mark each extreme. _second step._--outline the great mass of it with the simplest lines possible. give the general shape of the whole. this blocks it in. _third step._--measure each of the objects in the group, or the parts most prominent, if it be a single object. measure its height and breadth, both in its own proportion and in proportion to the dimensions of the other parts and of the whole. enclose it in straight lines as you did with the whole mass. _fourth step._--find the more important of the lesser proportions in each object, and block them out also. this should map out your drawing exactly and with some completeness. _fifth step._--lay in simple flat tones to fill in these outlines, and keep the relations of light and dark very carefully as you do so. _sixth step._--this should leave your paper with a few large masses of dark and light, which can now be cut into again with the next smaller masses, giving more refinement to the whole. this also should so break up the edges as to get rid of any feeling of squareness or edginess. _seventh step._--put in such accents of dark, or take out such of light, as will give necessary character and force to the drawing. i do not say that this method produces the most finished drawing; but it is a most excellent way to study drawing, and, more or less modified, is practically the basis of all methods. in practised hands it allows of any amount of exactness or freedom of execution. i have seen most beautiful work done in this way. =home study.=--it is not necessary to have a teacher in order to draw well; but it is necessary to find out what are the essentials of good drawing, and to work definitely and acquire them. good drawing is a combination of exactness and freedom; and the exactness must come first. the structure of the thing must be shown without unnecessary detail. you should always look at any really good drawing you can come at, and try to see what there may be in it of helpful suggestion to you. [illustration: =drawing of hands.= _dürer._] =study the masters.=--get photographs of drawings by the masters of drawing, and study them. see how they searched their model for form and character. do not make so much of the actual stroke as the manner in which it is made to express and lend itself to the meaning. in this drawing by albrecht dürer you have a splendid example of exactness and feeling for character. you could have no better type of what to look for and how to express it. although it is not important that you should lay on the lines of shading just as this is done, it is important to notice how naturally they follow, and conform to, the character of the surface--which is one of the ways in which the point helps to search out the modelling. this drawing is made with a black and a white chalk on a gray ground; a very good way to study. a good hint is also offered in this drawing, of the modesty of the old masters, in subject. a hand or part of any object is enough to study from. there is no need to always demand a picture in everything you do. =materials.=--for all purposes which come in the range of the painter you should use charcoal. for purposes of study it is the most satisfactory of materials; it is sensitive, easily controlled, and easily corrected. for sketching or preliminary drawing on the canvas it is equally good. you should have also a plumb-line with which to test vertical positions of parts in relation to each other, and this, with the pencil held horizontally for other relative positions, gives you all you need in that direction. in drawing on the canvas it is not often necessary to do more than place the various objects and draw their outlines carefully and accurately. sometimes, however, as in faces, or in pictures which include important figures, you will need a shaded drawing, and this can be done perfectly with charcoal, and fixed with fixative afterwards. =imitation.=--perfect drawing, in the sense of exact drawing, is not the most important thing. a drawing may be exact, and yet not be the truer for it. it may be inexact, and yet be true to the greater character. so, too, the drawing may have to change an accidental fact which is not worth the trouble of expression or which will injure the whole. there is something more important than detail, and the essential characteristics can be expressed sometimes only by a drawing which is deliberately false in certain things in order to be the more true to the larger fact. then, too, there is an individuality which the artist has to express through his representation of the external; and he is justified in altering or slighting facts in order to bring about that more important self-expression. of course the self must be worth expressing. there is no excuse for mere falsification nor for mere inability. but a good workman will not be guilty of that, and the complete picture in its unity will be his justification for whatever means he has taken. =feeling.=--drawing must be a matter of feeling. a perception of essential truth of a thing, as much as of trained observation of the facts. the good draughtsman becomes so by training his observation of facts first, always searching for those most important, and emphasizing those; and with the power which will come in time to his eye and hand easily and quickly to grasp and express facts, will come also the power of mind to grasp the essential characteristics. and the trained hand and eye will permit the most perfect freedom of expression. this is the desideratum of the student; this is the end to be aimed at,--the perfect union of the trained eye and hand to see and do, and the trained mind to feel and select, and the freedom of expression which comes of that perfect union. chapter xvii values =the term.=--the word "values" is seldom understood by the average individual, yet it should not be difficult to take in. it means simply the relation between degrees of strength of light and dark, and of color considered as light and dark. translate the word into "importance," and think what it means. the relative importance, strength, force, power, value, of a touch of color to make itself felt in the whole--that is its value. a weak value is a note which does not make itself felt; a strong value is one which does. a false value is a touch of color which has not its proper relation to the other spots or masses of color in the picture, _considered_ as _light and dark_--_not as color per se_. =importance.=--as soon as you grasp this idea you see at once how important values must be to the whole picture. it is not possible to do any good work, either in black and white or color, without it. in one sense it is incidental to drawing. when you consider drawing as the expression of modelling, the relative roundness of parts, and of relief, as well as outline, values come into play to give the relations of planes of light and dark in black and white. in this it becomes part of drawing. =values and color.=--as soon, however, as color becomes a part of the picture, values become the basis of modern painting as distinguished from the painting of previous centuries. values, of course, always existed wherever good painting existed, because you cannot paint without recognizing the relations, the relative pitch and relative strength of tones. but the word is never heard in relation to old masters. it is apparently of quite modern coinage and use, and it probably was coined because of a new and greater importance of the fact which it represents. the older painters in painting a picture kept parts of a whole object--a head or a figure, say--in relation to itself; and that was values--but restricted values. the whole picture was arranged on the basis of arbitrary lighting, which entered into the scheme of composition of that picture. this is not values, but what is generally understood by the older writers when they speak of "chiaroscuro." the modern painter deals little with chiaroscuro. it is almost obsolete as a technical word. arbitrary arrangement of light and shade in a picture is not usual nowadays, and consequently the word which expressed it has dropped somewhat into disuse. =basis of modern painting.=--instead of the old composition in arbitrary light and shade, the modern painter accepts the actual arrangement of light as the basis of his picture, and spreads the values over the whole canvas. in this way the quality of "value" becomes the very foundation of the modern picture. for you cannot accept the ordinary or actual condition of light, as governing the light and shade of your picture, without extending the same scheme of relations over the whole canvas. every most insignificant spot of light and shade and color, as well as the most significant, must keep its place, must hold its true relation to every other spot and to all the rest. each value must keep its place according to the laws of fact, or it is out of touch with the whole. the whole picture must be either on a scheme of general fact, or a scheme of general arbitrary arrangement. any one piece of arbitrary arrangement in this connection must be backed up by other pieces of arbitrary arrangement, or else there must be no arbitrary arrangement at all. the modern painter accepts the former; and the importance of "values" is the result. =absolute and relative values.=--we may speak of values as absolute or relative. this relates to the key or pitch of a painting. it is the contribution to the art of painting which was made by the french painter, manet. you may paint a picture in the same pitch as nature, or you may transpose it to a higher or a lower pitch. the relations of the different values of the picture will hold the same relation to each other as the values of nature do to each other. but the actual pitch of each, the relation of each to an absolute light or an absolute dark, will be higher or lower than in nature. this would be relative values. or the pitch, relation to absolute light and dark, of each value may be the same, value for value, as in nature. this would be absolute values. the attempt at absolute values was not made at all before manet's time. a landscape was frankly painted down, or darker, from the pitch of nature, and an interior as frankly painted up, or lighter. in both cases the values had to be condensed,--telescoped, so to speak,--because pigment would not express the highest light nor the lowest dark in nature; and to have the same number of gradations between the highest and lowest notes in the picture, the amount of difference between each value had to be diminished--but _relatively_ they were the same. the degree of variation from the actual was the same all through. with absolute values the painter aims at giving the _just note_,--the exact equivalent in value that he finds in nature. he tries to paint up to out-door light or paint down to in-door light. =close values.=--this naturally calls for a fine distinction of tones--the utmost subtlety of perception of values. to paint a picture in which the highest light may not be white nor the lowest dark black, and yet give a great range and variety to the values all through the picture, the values must be _close_; must be studied so closely as to take cognizance of the slightest possible distinction, and to justly express it. this sort of thing was not thought of by the older painters. it is the distinguishing characteristic of modern painting. it is a substitution of the study of _relation_ for the study of _contrast_. =study of values.=--you see at once how important, how vital, the study of values is to painting. even if you paint with arbitrary lighting, as is still done by many painters, especially in portraits, you have to consider and study them as they apply to _parts_ of your picture. you will find no good painter of old time who did not study relations. if you look at a velasquez, you will find that he knew values, even though he did not use the word. but if you are in touch with your century, if you would paint to express the suggestion you receive from the nature you study, or if you would convey the idea of truth to the world around you, as that world exists, frankly accepting the conditions of it, you will have to make the study of values fundamental to your work. ="the fourth dimension."=--you study values with your eyes only, but you cannot _measure_ values. length, breadth, and thickness you can measure; but values constitute what might be called a "_fourth dimension_," and you must measure it by your eye, and without any mechanical aid. your eye must be trained to distinguish and judge differences of value. =helps.=--there are, however, several things which you can use to help you in training your eye to distinguish values. when you look for values you do not wish to see details nor things, you wish to see only masses and relations. you must _unfocus_ your eye. the focussed eye sees the fact, and not the relation. anything which will help you to see outlines and details less distinctly will help you to see the values more distinctly. =half-closed eyes.=--the most common way is to half close the eyes, which shuts out details, but permits you to see the values. some painters think this falsifies pitch, and prefer to keep the eyes wide open, but to focus them on some point _beyond_ the values they are studying. this is not so easy to do as to half close the eyes, but becomes less difficult with practice. =the blur glass.=--an ordinary magnifying-glass of about -inch focus, which you can get at an optician's for fifteen or twenty cents, will blur the details, and help you to see the values, because it makes everything vague except the masses. you can frame it for use by putting it between two pieces of cardboard with a hole in them, or you can do the same with two pieces of leather sewed around the edge. of course the glass itself is all you need, but it will be easily broken if unprotected. do not try to look _through_ the glass at your subject, but _at_ the glass and the image on it. =the claude loraine mirror.=--this is a curved mirror with a black reflecting surface. the object is reflected on it, _reduced_ both in size and pitch. it concentrates the masses and the color, and so helps to distinguish the relative values. you can make a mirror of this sort for yourself by painting the back of a piece of plate glass black. the real claude loraine mirror is expensive. =the common mirror= is also very helpful in distinguishing values. it reduces the size of things, and reverses the drawing so that you see your subject under different conditions, and a fresh eye is the result. place the group and your painting side by side, if you are painting still life, and look at both at the same time in the mirror. do the same with a portrait and the sitter. =diminishing glass.=--much the same effect can be had by using a double concave lens. the picture is not reversed, but it is reduced, and the details eliminated. in using any of these means you must remember that it is always the relations and not the things you are studying; and the most useful of these aids is the blur glass, because you cannot possibly see anything in it but the values and color masses, everything else being blurred. chapter xviii perspective there are two kinds of perspective, linear and aërial. the former has to do with the manner in which horizontal lines appear to converge as they recede from the foreground, and so produce the effect of distance. the latter has to do with the effect of distance, which is due to the successive gradations of gray in color noticeable in objects farther and farther away from the observer. =aërial perspective.=--to the student, aërial is _color_ perspective, because of the modifications which colors undergo when removed to a distance. modifications of tone are largely due to varying distance, and so aërial perspective is largely a matter of _values_. that they are due to the greater or less thickness of the atmosphere is only a matter of interest, not of importance, to the artist; the important thing to him is that the careful study of values is necessary to relief, perspective, and particularly, atmosphere and envelopment in a picture. to the student, aërial perspective should be only a matter of observation and of the study of relations of color and value. there are no rules. the effect depends on greater or less density of atmosphere. near objects are seen through a thin stratum of air, and farther objects through a thicker one. all you have to do to express it is to recognize the relative tones of color. paint the colors as they are, as you see them in nature, and you need have no trouble with aërial perspective. but though i say "this is all you have to do," don't imagine that i mean that it is always easy, or that it can be done without thought and study. you will have to use all your powers of perception if you wish to do good work in this direction. especially on clear days, or in those climates where the air is so rare that objects at great distances seem near, you will find that atmospheric perspective is simply another name for close values. and close values, you remember, are the most subtle of relations of light and shade and color. the only rule for aërial perspective is to use your eyes, and do nothing without a previous careful study of nature. =linear perspective.=--for most kinds of painting, a technical knowledge of linear perspective is not necessary, although every painter should understand the general principles of it. in most cases all the exactness needed can be obtained by comparing all lines carefully with the pencil or brush handle held horizontally or vertically, and studying the angle any line makes with it. apply to all objects in perspective the same observation that you do in any other kind of drawing, and you will have little trouble, as long as you are drawing from an object before you. but if you go into perspective at all, go into it thoroughly. a little perspective is a dangerous thing, and more likely to mix you up by suggesting all sorts of half-understood things than to be of any real help. there are some kinds of subjects, however, which require a complete knowledge of all the rules and processes of perspective. whenever you have to construct a picture from details stated but not seen; when you have a complicated architectural interior or exterior; when figures are to be placed at certain distances or in definite positions, and they are too numerous or the conditions are otherwise such that you cannot pose your models for this purpose; then you may have to make most elaborate perspective plans, and lay out your picture with great exactness, or the drawing which is fundamental to such a picture will not be true. such men as gérôme and alma-tadema plan their pictures most carefully, and so did paul veronese, and it requires a thorough and practical knowledge of perspective. but this is not the place to teach you perspective. it is a subject which requires special study, and whole volumes are given to the elucidation of it. in a work of this kind anything more than a mention of the bearings of perspective on painting would be out of place. if you do not care to take up seriously the study of perspective, avoid attempting to paint any subjects which call for it; or, if you do care to study it, get a special work on that subject, give plenty of time to it, and study it thoroughly. =foreshortening.=--in this connection i may speak of something which is akin to perspective, yet the very reverse of it. as its name implies, foreshortening means the way in which anything seems shortened or in modified drawing as it projects towards you; while perspective is the manner in which lines appear as they recede from you. like aërial perspective, the best way to study foreshortening is to study nature, not rules. perspective can be worked out by rule, foreshortening cannot. pose your model, or if it be a branch of a tree, or anything of that sort, place yourself in the proper position with reference to it, and then study the drawing _as it appears_, thinking nothing of _how it is_; make your measurements, and place your lines as if there were no problem of foreshortening at all, but study the relations of lines, of size, and of values, and the foreshortening will take care of itself. after all, foreshortening is only good drawing, and a good draughtsman will foreshorten well, while a bad draughtsman will not. therefore, learn to draw, and don't worry about the foreshortening. chapter xix light and shade =chiaroscuro.=--a few words about chiaroscuro will be useful. this is a term of great importance and frequent use with artists and writers up to within the last thirty or forty years. it has of late become almost unused. the reason for this was explained in the chapter on "values." nevertheless, it is well that the student should know what the word meant, and still means. although he may hear and use it less frequently than if he had lived earlier in the century, the pictures, certain qualities of which no other word expresses, still exist, and are probably as immortal as anything in this world can be. he should know what those qualities are, and he should understand their relation to the work of to-day. chiaroscuro is described by an old writer as suggesting "a theme which is the most interesting, perhaps, in the whole range of the art of painting. of vast importance, great extent, and extreme intricacy. chiaroscuro is an italian compound word whose two parts, _chiar_ and _oscuro_, signify simply _bright_ and _obscure_, or _light_ and _dark_. hence the art or branch of art that bears the name regards all the relations of light and shade, and this independently of coloring, notwithstanding that in painting, coloring and the clair-obscure are of their very nature inseparable. the art of clair-obscure, therefore, teaches the painter the disposition and arrangement in general of his lights and darks, with all their degrees, extreme and intermediate, of tint and shade, both in single objects, as the parts of a picture, and in combination as one whole, so as to produce the best representation possible in the best manner possible; that is, _so as to produce the most desirable effect upon the senses and spirit of the observers_. in a word, its end and aim are fidelity and beauty of imitation; its means, every effect of light; chromatic harmonies and contrasts; chromatic values, reflections; the degradations of atmospheric perspective, etc." the italics are mine. you see at once that this covers a pretty wide field. but it is to be again noted that the use of chiaroscuro by the old painters meant not only the expression of the light and shade of nature, but the so arranging of the objects and the way that the light was permitted to fall on them, that certain parts of the picture became shadow, while the light was concentrated in some other part or parts. in this way the arrangement of the light and shade of a picture became a distinct element of composition, and a very important one. the _quality_ of "light" was something to be emphasized by contrast. it is stated (whether truly or not) that the proportion of light to dark was according to a definite rule or principle with certain painters, some permitting more, and some less, space of canvas to be proportioned to light and to dark. the gradations of light and dark were studied of course; but the quantity of light spread over the canvas was calculated upon, so that the less space of light and the greater the space of dark, the more brilliant would be the main spot of light in the picture. they wrought with the _quality of light and shade_ as an _element_, just as they would with the quality of line or of color, considered apart from objects or facts they might represent. =arbitrary lighting.=--this is the arbitrary light and shade spoken of in the chapter on "values"; and although the older painters included what we now call values in their word chiaroscuro, it is this fact of arbitrary lighting as opposed to accepting the light as it does fall, or selecting those places or times where it does naturally fall as we would like it to, that makes the difference between modern painting generally and the older method, and has made chiaroscuro as a word and as a quality of painting so much a thing of the past. =light and shade.=--but we may use the old word with a more restricted meaning. if we use it to mean literally light and shade, the way light falls on objects and the relief due to the light side and the shadow side of them, we get a use which implies a very important and practical matter for present study. [illustration: =eggs. white against white.=] =objects visible by light and shadow.=--if you will put a white egg on a piece of white paper, with another white paper back of it, you will see that it is only because the egg obstructs the light, the side of it towards the light preventing the light rays from touching the other side, and so casting a shadow on itself and on the paper, that the egg is visible. you will also see, if you manipulate the egg, that according as the light is concentrated or diffused, or according to the sharpness of the shadow and light, is the egg more or less distinct. =contrast.=--apply these facts to other objects, and you will see how important the principle of contrast is to the representation of nature. not only contrast of light and shade, but contrast of color. and you should make a study, both by setting up groups of objects in different lights, and by studying effects of lights wherever you are, of the possibilities and combinations of light and shadow. =constant observation.=--the painter is constantly studying with his eyes. it is not necessary always to have the brush in your hand in order to be always studying. keep your brain active in making observations and considering the relations in nature around you. the amount of material you can store up in this way is immense, to say nothing of the training it gives you in the use of your eyes, and in the practice of selection of motives for work. schemes of color or composition are not usually deliberately invented within the painter's brain. they are in most cases the result of some suggestion from a chance effect noticed and remembered or jotted down, and afterwards worked out. nature is the great suggester. it is the artist's business to catch the suggestion and make it his own. for nature seldom works out her own suggestions. the effect as nature gives it is either not complete, or is so evanescent as to be uncopyable. but the habit of constant receptivity on the part of the artist makes nature an infinite mine of possibilities to him. [illustration: =the canal.= _burleigh parkhurst._ effect of diffused out-door light to be compared with effect of studio light in "bohemian woman," and artificial light in "woman sewing by lamplight."] =perception.=--only by continually observing and judging of contrasts and relations can the eye be trained to perceive subtle distinctions; yet it must be so trained, for all good work is dependent on these distinctions. =effects of light.=--it is important to study the different qualities of light. take, for instance, the difference of character on a sunny day and on a gray day. on the former, fine distinctions of color are less pronounced; they are lost in the contrasts of sunlight and shadow. on a gray day the light is diffused; contrast is less, but the finer distinctions are more marked. for the study of the subtleties of color choose a gray day. so, too, is the difference marked between the general light of out-doors and the more concentrated light of the house. the pitch is different. outside, even in a dark day, the general character of light is clearer, more full, than in-doors. there is nothing possible under the open sky like the strong contrasts you get from a single window in an otherwise unlighted room. compare, for instance, the character of the light and shade as shown in the illustrations on pages and . the one is the diffused, out-of-door light, the other that from a studio window. the character of the subject has nothing to do with this quality. the head would have less of sharpness and contrast in the open air, and more reflected light. other differences to be studied as to quality of the light in the manner of its contrast, and also for its color quality, are to be seen in moonlight or nightlight as compared with daylight. artificial light, such as lamp- and candle-light, gives marked effects also, which may be compared with daylight both as it is out-of-doors and in its more concentrated effects in the studio. compare the picture of the "woman sewing by lamplight," by millet, with the "canal" and the "bohemian woman" given above. the effects of gas and electric light also should be studied. their characteristics both of contrast and, particularly, of color are worth your attention as a student, inasmuch as the essence of some pictures lies in these qualities. another matter of great importance to the student, and one which the same three illustrations just referred to may serve to show, is the effect on objects of the position of the point of entrance of the light with reference to them and to the observer. the simplest light is the side-light from a single window. this gives broad, sharp masses of light and shade, and makes the study of drawing and painting more simple. with the observer in the same relative position to the subject, as the light swings round towards a point back of him the contrasts become less, the relations more subtle and difficult of recognition, and naturally the study of them more difficult. in this position of light the values become "close." to make the object seen at all, it is necessary that the finest distinctions shall be observed. [illustration: =bohemian woman.= _frans hals._ effect of contrast of light and shade in studio to be compared with diffused light of open air in the "canal," and artificial light in "woman sewing by lamplight."] [illustration: =sewing by lamplight.= _millet._ effect of artificial light contrast to be compared with natural light in illustrations of "canal" and "bohemian woman."] [illustration: =descent from the cross.=] portrait painters have always been fond of a top light, which gives a direct concentrated light descending on the sitter, very similar in character to the side-light, but more favorable to the expression and drawing of the face. =cross lights.=--the most confusing and difficult of study and representation are the "_cross lights_." if there are several windows or other points for the admission of light, and the sitter or object painted is between them, the light comes from all sides, so that the rays cross each other and there is no single scheme of light and shade. the rays from one side modify the shadows cast from the other side, and a perplexing and involved arrangement of values is the result. this is a favorite technical problem with painters, and its solution is splendid training; but the student who can successfully solve it is not far from the end of his "student days." chapter xx composition =importance.=--composition is of the utmost importance. it is impossible that a picture should be good without it. you may define it as that study by means of which the balance of the picture comes about. but you must understand the word balance in its broadest sense. there is nothing in the planning of the picture which has not to be considered in making the picture balance. the arrangement of the lines, of the forms, of the masses, and of the colors must all be right if the composition be right. composition is the planning of the picture; and it is more or less complicated, more or less to be carefully studied beforehand in exact accordance with the simplicity or complication of the scheme of the picture. you may not need more than the consideration of a few main facts. it may almost be done by a few moments' deliberation in some simple studies or even pictures. but even then there is possible the most subtle discrimination of selection, and a perfect gem of composition may be found in the arrangement of a picture having the simplest and fewest elements. the more complicated the materials which are to be worked into a picture, the more careful must be the previous planning; but, for all that, the genius will find scope for his utmost powers in a simple figure, just because the fewer the means, the more each single thing can interfere with the balance of the whole, and the more a fine choice will tell. =the Æsthetic.=--i have already mentioned briefly the æsthetic elements of a picture. i have called to your attention that back of the obvious facts of a subject and the objects in the picture, and the theme which the painter makes his picture represent; back of the technical processes and management of concrete material which make painting possible, is the æsthetic purpose of the work of art; without this it could not be a work of art at all: it would be merely a more or less exact representation of something, a mere prosaic description, the interest in which would lie wholly in the _fact_, and would perish whenever interest in the fact should cease. it is not the _fact_, nor even the able expression of the fact, which makes a work of art a thing of interest and delight centuries after the bearing of the fact has been forgotten. the perennial interest of a work of art lies in the way in which the artist has used his ostensible theme, and all the facts and objects appertaining to it, as a part of the material with which he expresses those ideas which are purely æsthetic; which do not rest on material things. these have to do with material things only by rendering them beautiful, giving to them an interest which they themselves could not otherwise have. =theory.=--does this sound unpractical? well, it is unpractical. does it seem mere theory? it is theory. i want to impress it on you that it is theory. for it is the theory which underlies art, and if you do not understand it, you only understand art from the outside. consciously or unconsciously every artist works to express these purely æsthetic qualities, and to a greater or less extent he expresses himself through them. =art for art's sake.=--this is the real meaning of the much-debated phrase, "art for art's sake." the mistake which leads to the misconception and most of the discussion about it, is in confounding "art for art's sake" with "technique for technique's sake," which is a very different thing. certainly every painter will work to attain the most perfect technique he is capable of. but not for the sake of the technique, but for what it will do. the better the technique the better the control of all the means to expression. if you take technique to mean only the understanding and knowledge of all the manipulations of art, technique is only a means, and it is so that i mean it to be understood here. if you broaden its meaning to include all the _mental_ conceptions and means, that is another thing, and one likely to lead to confusion of idea. so i use the word technique in its strictest sense. =the Æsthetic elements.=--what, then, are these æsthetic qualities i have spoken of? will you consider the quality of "line"? not _a_ line, but line as an element, excluding all the possible things which may be done with lines in different relations to themselves and to other elements. now will you consider also the other elements, "mass" and "color"? do you see that here are three terms which suggest possibilities of combination of infinite scope? and they are purely intellectual. what may be done with them may be done, primarily, without taking into consideration the representation of any material fact whatsoever. take as the type, conventional ornament. you can make the most exquisite combinations, in which the only interest and charm lies in the fact of those combinations in line and mass and color. take architecture. quite aside from the use of the building is the æsthetic resultant from combinations of line and mass and color. and so in the picture the question of _art_, the question of æsthetic entity, lies in the intellectual qualities of combinations of line and mass and color which permeate through and through the technical and material structure that you call the picture, and give it whatever universal and permanent value it has, and which make it immortal, if immortal it ever can be. =composition.=--the bearing of all this on composition should be obvious, for composition is the technique of combination. in the composition of a picture all the elements come into play. it is in composition that the management of the abstract results in the concrete. let us look at it from a more practical side. frankly, there are qualities, which you always look for in a picture,--good drawing, of course, and good color. but there are such things as these: harmony, balance, rhythm, grace, impressiveness, force, dignity. where do they come from? must not every good picture have them, or some of them, to some extent? how are you going to get them? if you have fifteen or twenty square feet or square yards of surface, you will not get them onto it by unaided inspiration. inspiration is, like any other intellectual quality, quite logical, only it acts more quickly and takes longer steps between conclusions perhaps. you will get these qualities onto your canvas only by so arranging all the objects which make up the body of your picture that these qualities shall be the result. it is arrangement then. =arrangement.=--but arrangement of what? how? the objects. but on some principle back of them. consider another set of qualities: proportion, i.e., relative size; arrangement, relative position; contrast; accent,--these are what you manipulate your objects with, and your objects themselves are only line and mass and color in the concrete. objects, figures, bric-a-brac, draperies, houses and trees, skies and mountains, and every and any other natural fact, you may consider as so many bits of form and color with which you may work out a scheme on canvas; and how you do it is to consider them as pawns in your game of æsthetics. with these as materials, what you really do is to combine mass and line and color by means of proportion, arrangement, contrast, and accent, that a beautiful entity of harmony, balance, rhythm, grace, dignity, and force may result. and this is composition. =no rules.=--naturally in dealing with a thing like this, which is the very essence of art, rules are of very little use. ability in composition may be acquired when it is not natural, but it calls for a continuous training of the sense of proportion and arrangement, just as the development of any other ability calls for training. the best thing that you can do is to study good examples and try to appreciate, not only their beauty, but how and why they are beautiful. cultivate your taste in that direction; and with the taste to like good and dislike bad composition will come the feeling which tells you when it is good and when it is bad, and this feeling you can apply to your own work, and by experiment you will gain knowledge and skill. rules are not possible simply because they are limitations, and the true composer will always overstep a limitation of that kind, and with a successful result. principles of composition, too, must be variously adapted, according to the kind of picture you have in hand. the principles are the same, of course; but as the materials differ in a figure painting and a landscape, for instance, you must apply them to meet that difference. =suggestions.=--the first suggestion that might be made as a help to the study of composition is to consider your picture as a whole always. no matter how many figures, no matter how many groups, they must all be considered as parts of a _whole_, which must have no effect of being too much broken up. if the figures are scattered, they must be scattered in such a way that they suggest a logical connection between them as individuals in each group, and groups in a whole. there should usually be a main mass, and the others subsidiary masses. there should be a centre of interest of some sort, whether it be a color, a mass, or a thing; and this centre should be the point to which all the other parts balance. =simplicity= is a good word to have in mind. however complicated the composition may seem superficially, you may treat it simply. you will control it by not considering any part as of any importance in itself, but only as it helps the whole; and you may strengthen or weaken that part as you need to. don't cut the thing up too much. let a half a dozen objects count as one in the whole. mass things, simplify the masses, and make the elements of the masses hold as only parts of those masses. =study placing= of things in different sizes relative to the size of the canvas. make sketches which take no note of anything but the largest masses or the most important lines, and change them about till they seem right; then break them up in the same way into their details. apply the _steps_ suggested for drawing to the study of composition, searching for balance chiefly, or for some other quality which is proper to composition. =line.=--each of the main elements of composition can be used as a problem of arrangement. you can study _composition_ in line, in mass, or in color. "the golden stairs," by burne-jones, is almost purely an arrangement in _line_, and beautifully illustrates the use of this element as the main æsthetic motive in a picture. [illustration] compare this composition in line with the "descent from the cross," in which the _line_ is equally marked, but more complicated, and used in connection with _mass_ to a much greater extent, and involved with interrelations of chiaroscuro and color. consider the effect which each picture derives as a whole from this management of these elements. the one emphasizing that of line, with the resultant of rhythm and grace; the other balancing the elements, and so gaining power and impressiveness. [illustration: =the sower.= _millet._ to show arrangement in mass and line, in which the mass gives weight and dignity without weakening the emphasis of rhythm in the line.] often the whole composition should be a balancing of the elements, as in this case. but the emphasizing of one element will always emphasize the characteristics to which those elements tend as the main characteristic of the picture. grace, rhythm, movement, come most naturally from arrangement chiefly in _line_. if _mass_ comes into the picture, the masses may be arranged to help the _line_, or to modify it. in "the sower" the management of mass is such as to give great dignity, and almost solemnity, to the picture, yet not to take away from the rhythmic swing and action of the figure which comes from line, but even to emphasize it. compare this in these respects with the lighter grace of "the golden stairs" and the less unified movement, but greater activity, of the "descent from the cross." of course masses will come into the picture; but either the masses themselves can be arranged into line, or there can be emphasis given to lines which break up or modify the masses, so that the character of the picture is governed by them. =mass.=--in the arrangement of mass, light and shade and color are effective. smaller groups may be made into a larger one, and individual objects also brought together, by grouping them in light or in shade, or by giving them a common color. [illustration: =return to the farm.= _millet._ to show the effect of mass in giving qualities of "scale" and "the statuesque."] weight, dignity, the statuesque, scale, are characteristics of _mass_. line in this connection only takes from the brusqueness that mass alone would have, or helps to break up any tendency to monotony. the "return to the farm," by millet, shows this combination, the reverse of "the sower." in this, the _line_ is used to enrich the repose and weight, the statuesque of the _mass_. in the other, the _mass_ gives dignity and impressiveness to the grace and rhythm of the _line_. the color scheme of course will have an equal effect in the emphasizing or modifying of the motive of line or mass. color will not only have an effect on it, but must be in sympathy with it, or the balance will be lost. =color.=--this is mainly where composition in color will come in. light and shade or chiaroscuro, as i explained in the last chapter, are necessarily intimately connected with composition here. and you never work in color or mass without working in light and shade also. of color itself i shall speak in the next chapter. it is only necessary to point out the fact of connection here. of course in painting, all the elements are most closely related. although it is necessary to speak of them separately in the actual working out, you keep them all in mind together, and so make them continually help and modify each other. =a principle.=--there is a well-established principle in architecture, that you must never try to emphasize two proportions in one structure. a hall may be long and narrow, but not both long and wide; in which case the proportions would neutralize each other--you would have a simple square, characterless. you may emphasize height or breadth--not both, or you get the same negative character. so you may apply this principle more or less exactly to the composition of a picture. don't try to express too many things in one picture, or if you do, let some one be the main thing, and all the rest be subordinate to it. there is perhaps no law more rigid than the one which denies success to any attempt to scatter force, effect, and purpose. one main idea in each picture, and everything subordinated to lend itself to the strengthening of that. to a certain extent this will apply to line and mass, though not absolutely. as a rule, line or mass, one or the other, must be the main element. =leverage.=--i have often thought that much insight into the principles of balance of masses, and of mass and line, could be gained by thinking of it analogously to equilibrium in leverage. a small mass, or a simple line or accent, may be made to balance a very much greater mass. the greater part of a canvas may be one mass, and be balanced by quite a small spot. but leverage must come in to help. somewhere in the picture will be the point of support, the fulcrum. and the large mass and the small one will have an obvious relation with reference to that point. or the element of apparent density will come in. the large mass will be the least dense, the small one the most dense, and the equilibrium is established. for composition is but the equilibrium of the picture, and equilibrium the picture must have. there are many rules as to placing of mass and arrangement of line, but they are all more or less arbitrary and limiting in influence. individuality must and will ignore such rules, just because composition deals chiefly with the abstract qualities rules will not help. a fine feeling or perception of what is right is the only law, and the trained eye is the only measure. as in values, so in composition you must study relations in nature, and results in the work of the masters, to train your eye to see; and you must sketch and block in all sorts of combinations with your own hand, to give you practical experience. =scale.=--one point of great importance should be noticed. that is the effect on the observer of the size of any main mass or object with reference to the size of the canvas. this is analogous to what is called _scale_ in architecture. if the mass or object is justly proportioned to the whole surface of the canvas, and is treated in accordance with it, it will impose its own scale on all other objects. you can make a figure impress the observer as being life size, although it may really be only a few inches long. a house or castle coming into the picture may be made to give its scale to the surroundings, and make them seem small instead of itself seeming merely an object in a picture. this will be due to the _placing_ of it on the canvas, largely, and more in this than in anything else. the manner of painting will also lend importantly to it; for an object to appear big must not be drawn nor painted in a little manner. the placing of objects of a known size near, to give scale, is a useless expedient in such a case. at times it may be successful, often of use; but if the scale of the main object is false, the other object of known size, instead of giving size to the main one, as it is intended to do, will be itself dwarfed by it. =placing.=--this matter of placing is one which you should constantly practise. make it a regular study when you are sketching from nature. try to concentrate in your sketches so as to help your study of composition. in making a sketch, look for one main effect, and often have that effect the importance of some object, studying to give it _scale_ by the placing and the treatment of it, and its relation to the things surrounding it in nature and on the canvas. in this way you will be studying composition in a most practical way. =still life.=--for practical study of composition, the most useful materials you can have are to be found in still life. nowhere can you have so great freedom of arrangement in the concrete. you can take as many actual objects as you please, and place them in all sorts of relations to each other, studying their effect as to grouping; and so study most tangibly the principles as well as the practice of bringing together line and mass and color as elements, through the means of actual objects. this you should constantly do, till composition is no more an abstract thing, but a practical study in which you may work out freely and visibly intellectual æsthetic ideas almost unconsciously, and train your eye to see instinctively the possibilities of all sorts of compositions, and to correct the falsities of accidental combinations. =don't attempt too much.=--don't be too ambitious. begin with simple arrangements, and add to them, studying the structure of each new combination and grouping. when you are going to paint, remember that too much of an undertaking will not give you any more beauty in the picture, and may lead to discouragement. in the chapter on "still life" i will explain more practically the means you may take, and how you may take them, to the end of making composition a practical study to you. chapter xxi color the subject of color naturally divides, for the painter, into two branches,--color as a _quality_, and color as _material_. considered in the former class, it divides into an abstract a theoretical and a scientific subject; considered in the latter, it is a material and technical one. the material and technical side has been treated of in the chapter on "pigments." in this chapter we will have to do with color considered as an æsthetic element. =the abstract.=--the quality of _color_ is the third of the great elements or qualities, through the management of which the painter works æsthetically. just as he uses all the material elements of his picture as the means of making concrete and visible those combinations of line and mass which go to the making of the æsthetic structure, so he uses these in the expression of the ideal in combinations of color. in this relation nothing stands to him for what it is, but for what it may be made to do for the color-scheme of his picture. if he wants a certain red in a certain place, he wants it because it is red, and it makes little difference to him, _thinking in color_, whether that red note is actually made by a file of red-coated soldiers, by a scarlet ribbon, or by a lobster. the scarlet spot is what he is thinking of, and what object most naturally and rightly gives it to him is a matter to be decided by the demands of the subject of the picture; and its fitness as to that is the only thing which has any influence beyond the main fact that red color is needed at that point. if he were a designer of conventional ornament, the color problem would be the same. at that point a spot of red would be needed, and a spot of paint would do it. the painter thinks in color the same way, but he expresses himself in different materials. =the ideal.=--this is the reason that a still-life painting is as interesting to a painter as a subject which to another finds its great interest in the telling of a story. to the painter the story, or the objects which tell it, are of minor importance. that the picture is beautiful in color is what moves him. as composition and color the thing is an admirable piece of æsthetic thinking and æsthetic expression, and so gives him a purely æsthetic delight; and the technical process is secondary with him, interesting only because he is a technician. the representation of the objects incidental to the subject is as incidental to his interest, as it is to the picture considered as an æsthetic thought. this is what the layman finds it so impossible to take into his mental consciousness. and it is probable that many painters do not so distinguish their artistic point of view from their human point of view. but consciously or unconsciously the painter does think in these terms of color, line, and mass when he is working out his picture; and whether he admits it to himself or not, these characteristics are the great influencing facts in his judgment of pictures, as well as in the growth and permanency of his own fame. that is why a great popular reputation dies so rapidly in many instances. the æsthetic qualities of the man's work are the only ones which can insure a permanent reputation for that work; for the art of painting is fundamentally æsthetic, and nothing external to that can give it an artistic value. without that its popularity and fame are only matters of accidental coincidence with popular taste. if a painter is really great in the power of conception and of expression of any of the great æsthetic elements, his work will be permanently great. it will be acknowledged to be so by the consensus of the world's opinion in the long run; nothing else can make it so, and nothing but obliteration can prevent it. i am explicit in stating these ideas, not because i expect that you will learn from this book to be a great master of the æsthetic, but because i am assured that you can never be a painter unless you understand a painter's true problems. you must be able to know a good picture in order to make a good picture, and however little you try for, your work will be the better for having a painter's way of looking at a painter's work. the technical problems are the control of the materials of expression. the painter must have that control. the student's business is to attain that control, and then he has the means to convey his ideas. but those ideas, if he be a true painter, are not ideas of history or of fiction, but ideas of line and mass and color, and of their combinations. =the color sense.=--therefore color is a thing to be striven for for its own sake. good color is a value in itself. you may not have the genius to be a good colorist, but you need not be a bad one; for the color sense can be definitely acquired. i will not say that color initiative can always be acquired; but the power to perceive and to judge good color can be, and it will go far towards the making of a good painter, even of a great one. i knew one painter who came near to greatness, and near to greatness as a colorist, who in twelve years trained his eye and feeling from a very inferior perception of color to the power which, as i say, came near to greatness. he was an able painter and a well-trained one before that; but in this direction he was deficient, and he deliberately set about it to educate that side of himself, with the result i have stated. how did he do it? simply by recognizing where he needed training, and working constantly from nature to perceive fine distinctions of tone; and by careful and severe self-criticism. summer after summer he went out-doors and worked with colors and canvas to study out certain problems. every year he set himself mainly one problem to solve. this year it might be luminosity; next it might be the domination of a certain color; another year the just discrimination of tones--and he became a most exquisite colorist. so, as i knew his work before and after this self-training, and as i know personally of the means he took to attain his purpose, i think i can speak positively of the fact that such development of the color sense is possible. =taste.=--it is well to remember that taste in color is not dependent on personal judgment alone; that what is good and what is bad in color does not rest on mere opinion. that a good colorist's idea of color does not agree with your own is not a matter of mere whim or liking, in which you have quite as good a right to your opinion as he has to his. the colorist, it is true, does not produce or judge of color by rule. he works from his feeling of what is right. but there is a law back of his taste and feeling. the laws of color harmony are definite, and have been definitely studied and definitely calculated. color depends for its existence on waves of vibration of rays of light, just as sound is dependent on sound waves. =color waves.=--these waves of light give sensations of color which vary with the rapidity or length of the wave, and certain combinations of wave lengths will be harmonious (beautiful), and others will not be. this is a matter of scientific fact; it is not a notion. the mathematical relations of color waves have been calculated as accurately as the relations of sound waves have been. it is possible to make combinations of mathematical figures which shall represent a series of harmonious color waves. and it is possible to measure the waves radiated from a piece of bad coloring and prove them, _mathematically_, to be bad color. it is a satisfaction to the artist to know that this is so; because although he will never compose color-schemes by the aid of mathematics, it gives him solid ground to stand on, and it diminishes the assurance of the man who claims the right to assert his opinion on color because "one man's taste is as good as another's." it is also encouraging to the student to know it, because he then knows that there is a definite knowledge, and not a personal idiosyncrasy, on which he can found his attempts to cultivate this side of his artistic life. =color composition.=--the artist's problem in color composition is analogous to that of line and mass, but is of course governed by conditions peculiar to it. the qualities which derive from line and mass are emphasized or modified by the management of color in relation to them. the painter in this direction uses the three elements together. contrast and accent are attributes of color. dignity and weight, as well as certain emotional qualities, such as vivacity and sombreness, may give the key to the picture in accordance with the arrangement of its color-scheme. the mass may be simplified and strengthened, or broken up and lightened, by the color of the forms in it. by massing groups of objects in the same color, or by introducing different colors in the different forms in the same group, the mass is emphasized or weakened. so in line, the same color in repetition will carry the line through a series of otherwise isolated forms, and effect the emphasis of line. masses can be strung into line, like beads, on a thread of color. in the great compositions of the old venetian painters this marshalling of color groups constituted a principal element. the decorative unity of these great canvases could have been possible in no other way. as i have said, the key of the color-scheme has a direct emotional effect, so adding to the power and dignity or the grace and lightsomeness of the composition. the analogy between color and imagination is marked. certain temperaments instinctively express their ideals through color. to the painter color may be an all-influencing power; it is the glory of painting. drawing appeals to the intellect, but color speaks directly to the emotions, and conveys at a glance the idea which is re-enforced through the slower intellectual perception of the meaning of forms. in some unexplained way it expresses to the observer the temperamental mood; the joyousness, the severity or agitation which was the cause of its conception. in this strange but direct manner the color note aids the expression by line and mass of the æsthetic emotion which is the meaning of the painter's thought. =key.=--the key, then, is an important part of the picture. the very terms _warm_ and _cold_ applied to colors suggest what may be done by color arrangement. the _pitch_ of the picture places it, in the emotional scale. =tone.=--tone is harmony; the perfect balance of color in all parts of the picture. fine color always means the presence, in all the color of the picture, of all the three primaries in greater or less proportion. leave one color out in some proportion, and you have just so much less of a balance. i do not mean that some touch may not be pure color. on the contrary, the whole picture may be built up of touches of pure color. but the balance of color must be made then by touches of the different colors balancing each other, not only all over the picture, but in each part of it, to avoid crudity or over-proportion of any color. generally the color scheme is dominated by some one color: which means that every touch of color on the canvas is modified to some extent by the presence of that color, keeping the whole in key. each color retains its personal quality, but the quality of the dominant color is felt in it. =false tone.=--this is not to be attained by painting the picture regardless of color relations, and then glazing or scumbling some color all over the whole. this is the false tone of some of the older historical painters, particularly of the english school of the earlier part of this century. they "painted" the picture, and then just before exhibiting it "toned" it by glazing it all over with a large brush and some transparent pigment, generally bitumen. this did, in fact, bring the picture in tone after a fashion. but it is not a colorist's method. it is the rule of thumb method of a false technique and a vicious color sense. true tone is not something put onto the picture after it is painted. it is an inherent part of its color conception, and is worked into it while the picture is being painted, and grows to perfection with the growth of the picture. it is of the very essence of the picture. it is the dominant balance of color qualities; the result of a perfect appreciation of the value of every color spot which goes to the expression of the artist's thought. in one sense it is the same as _atmosphere_ in that the tonality of the picture is the atmosphere which pervades it. it may perhaps be best described by saying that it is that combination of color which gives to the picture the effect of every object and part in it having been seen under the same conditions of atmosphere; having been seen at the same time, with the same modification, and with the same degree and quality of light vibration. tone is _color value_ as distinguished from value as degree of power as light and shade; and in this is the perfection of subtlety of color feeling. =tone painters and colorists.=--some painters have been called "tone painters," while others have been called "colorists;" not that tone painters are not colorists, but that there is a difference. it is a difference of aim, a difference of desire. those painters who are usually called colorists, like titian and rubens, are in love with the richness and power of the color gamut. they are full of the splendor of color. they paint in full key, however balanced the canvas. each note of color tells for its full power. their stop is the open diapason, and their harmony is the harmony of large intervals and full chords. the tone painter deals with close intervals. he is in love with subtle harmonies. what he loves is the essence of the color quality, and not its splendor. with the closest range he can give all possible half-tones and shades and modulations of color, yet never exceed the gray note perhaps; never once go to the full extent of his palette-power. the utmost delicacy of perception and feeling, and the most perfect command of materials and of values, are necessary to such a painter. above all, is he the "painter's painter," for the infinite subtlety and the exquisiteness of power are his. and yet this is the thing least appreciated by the lay mind, the most difficult to encompass, and requiring the most knowledge to appreciate. =scientific color.=--to the scientist color is simply the irritation of the nerves of the retina of the eye by the waves of light. different wave lengths give different color sensations. it is the generally accepted theory now that there are three primary sensations; that is, that the eye is sensitive to three kinds of color, and that all other shades and varieties of color are the results of mingling or overlapping of the waves which produce those three colors, and irritating more or less the nerves sensitive to each color simultaneously. these three primary colors are now stated to be red, blue, and _green_. the older idea was that they were red, blue, and _yellow_; and was based on experiments with pigments. pigments do give these results; for a mixture of blue and yellow _pigment_ will give green, and a mixture of red and green _pigment_ will not give yellow, while the reverse is the fact with _light_. white light is composed of all the colors. and the white light may be broken up (separated by refraction or the turning aside of light rays from their true course) into the colors of the rainbow, which is itself only this same decomposition of light by atmospheric refraction. black is the absence of light, and consequently of color. this is not the case with pigment, for pure pigment has never been produced. the pigment simply reflects light rays which fall on it; that is, pigments have the power of absorbing, and so rendering invisible, certain of the rays which, combined, make up the white light which illumines them; and of transmitting others to the eye by reflection. we see, that is, our nerves of sight are irritated by, those rays which are not absorbed, but which are reflected. all pigment is more or less absorbent of color rays, and more or less reflective of them; certain color rays being absorbed by a pigment, and certain other rays being reflected by it. the pigment is named according to those rays which it reflects. as a color-producing substance, then, the pigment is practically a mirror reflecting color rays. but a true mirror would reflect all rays unmodified. if we could paint with mirrors, each of which would reflect its own color _unsullied_, we could do what the scientist does with light; but the painter deals with an imperfect mirror which gives no color rays back unsullied by rays of another class, and so our results cannot be the same as the scientist's. so that just in accordance with the degree of purity of transmitting power of a pigment will be the purity of the color which we get by its use. but absolute purity of pigment we cannot get, so we cannot deal with it as we do with light, and we deal with a practical fact rather than a scientific fact, as painters. =primaries and secondaries.=--as all the other shades of color are produced by the combinations (over-lappings) of the waves or vibrations in the light rays from the primary colors, we have a series of colors called secondaries, because they are made up of the rays of any two of the three primaries: as purple, which is a combination of blue and red. when dealing with _light_ the secondaries are: shades of violet and purple from red and blue; shades of orange red, orange, orange yellow, yellow, and yellowish green from red and green; and bluish green and greenish blue from blue and green--the character of the color being decided by the proportions of the primaries in the mixture. these conclusions have been reached mainly through experiments in white light. the primaries so obtained do not hold good with pigment, as i have stated, but the principles do. it will avoid confusion if i speak hereafter of the combinations as they occur with pigment, it being borne in mind that it is a practical fact that we are dealing with rather than a scientific one. in dealing with _pigment_ the primaries are red, blue, and _yellow_, not _green_. of course the secondaries are also changed; and we have purple and violet shades from red and blue, orange from red and _yellow_, and green from blue and yellow--all of which vary in shade with the proportion of the mixture of the primaries, as is the case with light. =tertiaries.=--another class of shades or colors is called _tertiary_, or third; for they are mixtures of all the three primaries, or of a primary with a secondary which does not result from mixture with that primary. tertiaries are all _grays_, and grays are practically always tertiaries. if you keep this in mind as a technical fact, it will help you in management of color. grays are, to the painter, always combinations of color which include the three primaries. the usual idea is that gray is more or less of a negation of color. this is not so. gray is the balancing of all color, so that any true harmony of color, however rich it may be, is always quiet in effect as a whole; that is, grayish--good color is never garish. it is very important that the painter should understand this characteristic of color. you cannot be too familiar with the management of grays. if you try to make your grays with negative colors, you will not produce harmonious color, but negative color, and negative color is only a shirking of the true problem. grays made of mixtures of pure colors, balancings of primaries and secondaries, that is, modifications of the tertiaries, are quite as quiet in effect and quite as beautiful as any, but they are also more luminous; they are _live_ color instead of _dead_ color. grays made by mixing black with everything are the reverse, and should not be used except when you use black as a color (which it is in _pigment_), giving a certain color quality to the gray that results from it. =complementary colors.=--two colors are said to be complementary to each other when they together contain the three primaries in equal strength. green, for instance, is the complementary of red, for it contains yellow and blue; orange (yellow and red) is complementary to blue; and purple (red and blue) is complementary to yellow. the knowledge of complements of colors is very important to the painter, for all the effects of color contrast and color harmony are due to this. complementary colors, in mass, side by side, contrast. the greatest possible contrast is that of the complementaries. complementary colors mixed, or so placed that small portions of them are side by side, as in hatching or stippling, give the tertiaries or grays by the mixing of the rays. =the law of color contrast.=--"when two dissimilar colors are placed in contiguity, they are always modified in such a manner as to increase their dissimilarity." =warm and cold colors.=--red and yellow are called warm colors, and blue is called a cold color. this is not that the color is really cold or warm, of course, but that they convey the impression of warmth and coldness. it is mainly due to association probably, for those things which are warm contain a large proportion of yellow or red, and those which are cold contain more blue. there is a predominance of cold color in winter and of the warm colors in summer. from the primaries various degrees of warmth and coldness characterize the secondaries and tertiaries, as they contain more or less proportionately of the warm or cold primaries. in contrasting colors these qualities have great effect. =color juxtaposition.=--in studying the facts of color contrast and color juxtaposition you will find that two pigments, if mixed in the ordinary way, will have one effect; and the same pigments in the same proportions, mixed not by stirring them into one mass, but by laying separate spots or lines of the pigment side by side, produce quite another. the gain in brilliancy by the latter mode of mixing is great, because you have mixed the _color rays_, which are really light rays, instead of mixing the _pigment_ as in the usual way. you have really mixed the color by mixing _light_ as far as it is possible to do it with pigment. you have taken advantage of all the light reflecting power of the pigment on which the color effect depends. each pigment, being nearly pure, reflects the rays of color peculiar to it, unaffected by the neutralizing effect of another color mixed with it; while the neutralizing power of the other color being side by side with it, the waves or vibrations of the color rays blend by overlapping as they come side by side to the eye; and so the color, made up of the two waves as they blend, is so much more vibrant and full of life. ="yellow and purple."=--it is this principle which is the cause of the peculiarity in the technique of certain "impressionist" painters. the "yellow lights and purple shadows" is only placing by the side of a color that color which will be most effective in forcing its note. brilliancy is what these men are after, and they get it by the study of the law of color contrast and color juxtaposition. the effect of complementaries in color contrast is what you must study for this, for the theory of it. for the practice of it, study carefully and faithfully the actual colors in nature, and try to see what are the real notes, what the really component colors, of any color contrast or light contrast which you see. purple shadows and yellow light re-enforcing each other you will find to exist constantly in nature. refine your color perception, and you will be able to get the result without the obviousness of the means which has brought down the condemnation on it. closer study of the relations is the way to find the art of concealing art. but yellow and purple are not the only complementaries. all through the range of color, the secondaries and tertiaries as well as the primaries, this principle of complement plays a part. there is no color effect you can use in painting which does not have to do, more or less, with the placing of the complementary color in mass, to emphasize; or mixed through to neutralize, the force of it. train your eyes to see what the color is which makes the effect. analyze it, see the parts in the thing, so that you may get the thing in the same way, if you would get it of the same force as in nature. =practical color.=--all these theoretical ideas as to color have their relation to the actual handling of pigment, which is the craft of the painter. the facts of contrasting and harmonizing color relation have a practical bearing on the painter's work, both in what he is to express and how he is to do it; as to his conception of a picture and his representation of facts. in his conception he must deal with the possibilities of effect of color on color. the power of one color to strengthen the personal hue of another, or its power to modify that hue, is a fact bearing on whether the color in the picture is the true image of the color he has seen in his mind. in the same degree must this possibility affect his representation of actual objects. the greatest possibilities of luminosity in sunlight or atmospheric effects come from the power to produce vibration by cool contrasted with warm color. you will find that a red is not so rich in any position as when you place its complementary near it. at times you will find it impossible to get the snap and sparkle to a scarlet--cannot make it carry, cannot make it felt in your picture as you want it without placing a touch of purple, perhaps, just beside it; to place near by a darker note will not have the same effect. it is the contrast of color vibration, not the contrast of light and shade, which gives the life. and at the same time that you enhance the brilliancy of the several notes of color in the picture, you harmonize the whole. for the mosaic of color spots all over the canvas brings about the balance of color in the composition, and harmony is the result. =study relations.=--you must constantly study the actual relations of color in nature. you will find, if you look for it, that always, just where in art you would need a touch of the complementary for strength or for harmony, nature has put it there. she does it so subtly that only a close observer would suspect it. but the thing is there, and it is your business to be the close observer who sees it, both for your training as a colorist, and your use as an interpreter of nature's beauties. it is your business to see subtly, for nature uses colors subtly. the note sparkles in nature, but you do not notice the complementary color near it. can you not also place the complementary color so that it is not seen, but its influence on the important color is felt? it is by searching out these _finesses_ of nature that you train your eye. you must actually see these colors. at first you may only know that they must be there because the effect is there. but your eye is capable of actually recognizing them themselves, and you are no painter till it can. the theoretical knowledge is and should be a help to you, but the actual power of sight is most important. a painter may use theoretical knowledge to help his self-training, but power of eye he must have as the result of that training. the instantaneous recognition of facts and relations, the immediate and perfect union of eye and thought, are what make that intuitive perception which is the true feeling of the artist. work this out with eye and palette. study the color and its relation in nature, and study its analogy in the pigment touches on the canvas. =the palette.=--you try to attain nature's effects of light with pigment. pigment is less pure than light. you cannot have the same scale, the same range, but you must do the best you can, and the arrangement of your palette will help you. as you have not a perfect blue, a perfect red, and a perfect yellow, you must have two colors for one. your paints will always be more or less impurely primary. no one red will make a pure purple with blue, and an equally pure orange with yellow. yet pure purple and pure orange you must be able to make. have, then, both a yellowish or orange red and a bluish or purplish red on your palette. do the same with blue and yellow. in this way you can not only get approximately pure secondaries when you need them, but the primaries themselves lean somewhat towards the secondaries, so that you can make very delicate combinations with pure colors. a bluish yellow and a yellowish blue, for instance, will make a rather positive green. by using a reddish yellow and a bluish or purplish red, you practically bring in the red note, and make a grayer green while still using only two pigments. so, too, you get similar control of effects by the use of opaque or transparent pigments, the transparent ones tending to richness, the opaque to dulness of color. various processes in the manner of laying on paint bring about these different qualities, and will be spoken of in the chapter on "processes." classify your pigments in your mind in accordance with these characteristics. think of the ochres, for instance, as mainly opaque, and as yellows tending to the reddish. with any blue they make gray greens because of the latter quality, and they make gray oranges with red because of the dulness of their opacity and body. for richer greens think of the lighter chromes and cadmium yellows or citrons; and for the richer oranges, the deeper cadmiums and chromes. with reds, work the same way, scarlet or orange vermilions for one side of the scale, and the chinese or bluish vermilion on the other side. the deeper and heavier reds fall in line the same way. indian red is bluish, light red and venetian red are yellowish. part iv practical application chapter xxii representation although much has been said about the theoretical and abstract side of painting, and the importance of the æsthetic elements in art have been insisted upon, it is not to be supposed for a moment that painting does not deal with actual things. all painting which is not purely conventional must deal with and represent nature and natural facts. these are the body of the picture; the æsthetic elements are the heart of it. i believe that it is important that you should know that there is that side to painting, and should have some insight into it; that you should see that there is something else to think of than the imitation of natural objects. i would have you think more nobly of painting than to believe that "the greatest imitation is the greatest art." beneath the imitation of the obvious facts of nature are the deeper facts and truths, and in and through these may you express those qualities of intellectual creation by means of which only, painting is not a craft, but an art. but for all that, painting does, and always must, deal with those obvious facts; and however much you may give your mind to the problems of composition and color, you must base it on a foundation of ability to represent what you see. represent well the external objects, and you are in a position to interpret the spirit of them. for as nature only manifests her inner spirit through her outward forms and facts, you must be able to paint these well before you can do anything else. the intellectual action which perceives and constructs is the art, the skill which represents and reproduces is the science, of painting. painting is the art of expression in color. the fact of color rather than form is the fundamental characteristic of it. the use of pigment rather than other materials is implied in its name. therefore the science of painting deals with the materials with which to produce on canvas all manner of visible color combinations; and those processes of manipulation which make possible the representation of all the facts of color and light, of substance and texture, through which nature manifests herself. it is not enough to have the pigment, nor even that it should get itself onto the canvas. different characteristics call for different management of paint. luminosity of light and sombreness of shadow will not be expressed by the same color, put on in the same way. different forms and surfaces and objects demand different treatment. the science of painting must deal with all these. it has been said that there are as many ways of painting as there are painters. certainly there are as many ways as there are men of any originality. for however a painter has been trained, whatever the methods which he has been taught to use, he will always change them, more or less, in adapting them to his own purposes. and as the main intent of the art of an epoch or period differs from that of a previous one, so the manner of laying on paint will change to meet the needs of that difference. the manner of painting to-day is very different from that of other times. some of the old processes are looked upon by the modern man as quite beneath his recognition. yet these same methods are necessary to certain qualities, and if the modern man does not use or approve of those methods, it is because he is not especially interested in the qualities which they are necessary to. there is probably no one statement which all fair-minded painters will more willingly acquiesce in, than one which affirms that the method by which the result is attained is unimportant, provided that the result _is_ attained, and that it is one worth attaining. every man will, whether it is right or not, use those methods which most surely and completely bring about the expression of the thing he wishes to express. in the face of this fact, and of the many acknowledged masterpieces, every one of which was painted in defiance of some rule some time or other alleged to be the only right one, it is not possible to prescribe or proscribe anything in the direction of the manipulation of colors. the result _must_ be right, and if it is, it justifies the means. if it be not right, the thing is worthless, no matter how perfectly according to rule the process may be. as hunt said, "what do i care about the grammar if you've got something to say?" the important thing is to say something, and if you do really say something, and do really completely and precisely express it, as far as a painter is concerned it will be grammatical. if not to-day, the grammar will come round to it to-morrow. henry ward beecher is reported to have answered to a criticism on grammatical slips in the heat of eloquence, "young man, if the english language gets in the way of the expression of my thought, so much the worse for the english language!" in painting, at any rate, the _complete_ expression of thought _is_ grammatical, and if not, so much the worse for the grammarians. =try everything.=--know, then, all you can about all the ways of manipulating paint that have ever been used. use any or all of those ways as you find them needful or helpful. there is none which has not the authority of a master behind it, and though another master may decry it, it is because, being a master, he claims the very right he denies to you. experiment with all; but never use any method for the sake of the method, but only for what it is capable of doing for you in helping expression. =safety.=--the only real rule as to what to use and what not, applies to the effect on the permanence of your canvas. never use pigments which will fade; nor in such a way that they will cause others to fade. avoid all such using of materials as you know will make your picture crack, or in any other way bring about its deterioration. =good painting.=--but for all i have just said, there is an acknowledged basis of what is good painting. if any man or school lays on paint in a frank, direct way, getting the effect by sheer force of putting on the right color in just the right place, with no tricks nor affectations, that is good painting; and the more simple, direct, and frank the manner of handling, the better the painting. let us understand what direct painting is first, and then consider varieties of handling. for whatever may be the subsequent manipulations, the picture is generally "laid in" with the most direct possible manner of laying on paint, and the other processes are mainly to modify or to further and strengthen the effect suggested in the first painting. and generally, also, in all sketches and studies which are preliminary preparations for the picture, the most direct painting is used, and the various processes are reserved for working out more subtle effects on the final canvas. =old dutch painting.=--probably there are no better examples of frank painting than the works of the old dutchmen. you should study them whenever you have a chance. waiving all discussion as to the æsthetic qualities of their work,--as _painters_, as masters of the craft of laying on paint, they are unexcelled. and in most cases, too, they possessed the art of concealing their art. you will have to use the closest observation to discover the exact means they used to get the subtle tones and atmospheric effects. the only obvious quality is the perfect understanding and skill of their brush-work. in the smoothest as well as in the roughest of their work, you can note how perfectly the brush searches the modelling, and with the most exquisite expressiveness and perfect frankness, follows the structural lines. no doubt there were often paintings, glazings, and scumblings; but they always furthered the meaning of the first painting, and never in the least interfered with or obscured the effect of _naïveté_, of candor of workmanship. it is, however, this simple and sincere brush-work that you should strive to attain as the basis of your painting. learn to express drawing with your brush, and to place at once and without indecision or timidity the exact tone and value of the color you see in nature at that point. until you are enough of a master of your brush to get an effect in this way, do not meddle with the more complex methods of after-painting. you will never do good work by subsequent manipulation, if you have a groundwork of feebleness and indecision. direct painting is the fundamental process of all good painting. let me take the type of old dutch painting to represent to you this quality of direct painting. first of all notice a basis of perfect drawing,--a knowledge, exactness, and precision which admits of no fumbling, no vagueness, but only of a concise and direct recognition of structure. note that this drawing is as characteristic of the brush-work as of the drawing which is under it. observe that the handling of the whole school, from the least to the greatest, is founded on a similar and perfect craftsmanship,--the same use of materials; the same deliberateness; the same simple yet ample palette; the same use of solid color candidly expressing the planes of modelling, freely following the lines of structure; the absence of affectation or invention of individual means. whatever the individuality of the artist, it rests on something else than difference of technique. from the freest and most direct of painters, frans hals, to the most smooth and detailed, gerard dou, the directness and ingenuousness of means to ends is the same, and founded on the same technical basis of color manipulation. the one is more eager, terse, the other more deliberate and complete; but both use the same pigments, both use the same solid color, are simple, lucid, both occupied solely with the thing to be expressed, and the least degree in the world with the manner of it. that manner comes from the same previous technical training which each uses in the most matter-of-course way, with only such change from the type, as his temperament unconsciously imposes on him. there is nothing like it elsewhere. study it; notice the unaffectedness of brush-stroke in rembrandt. see how it is the same as hals, but less perfunctory. see how the brush piles up paint again and again along the same ridge of flesh, taking no notice of its revelation of the insistence of attempt at the right value, nor of its roughness of surface. to get that drawing and that color in the freest, frankest, most direct way: that is the aim. the absolute conviction of it: that is the essence of this technique of the old dutch masters. and whatever else it may have or may not have, you will find in it all that you can find anywhere of suggestion of direct and frank and sincere painting, and nothing i can say will give you any such clear idea of what you should strive for as the basis of all the different sorts of brush-work necessary or useful in the production of an oil painting. [illustration: =the fisher boy.= _frans hals._ to show the directness and sureness of brush-stroke, and candor and simplicity of means, always present in dutch work, though never so free as with hals.] =detail.=--the question of detail may well come in here. how far are you to carry detail in your painting? the dutch painters went to both extremes. gerard dou worked two weeks on a broom-handle, and hoped to finish it in a few days more. frans hals would paint a head in an hour. the french painter meissonier paints the high light on every button of a trooper's coat, and de neuville barely paints the button at all. what way are you to turn? which are you to choose? we have a great deal said nowadays against detail in painting. much is said of breadth and broad painting. which is right? =true breadth.=--the answer lies in the central idea of the picture. there are times when detail may be very minute, and times when the greatest freedom is essential. true breadth is compatible with much even minute detail in the same canvas. for breadth does not mean merely a large brush. it never means slap-dash. it is the just conception of the amount of detail necessary (and the amount necessary to be left out) in order that the idea of the picture may be best expressed. detail is out of place in a large canvas always, and in proportion to its size it is allowable. a decorative canvas, a picture which is to be seen from a distance, or is to fill a wall space, wants effect, much justness of composition and color. largeness of conception and execution, and only so much detail as shall be necessary to the best expression compatible with that largeness. on the other hand, a "cabinet picture," a small panel, will admit of microscopic detail if it be not so painted that the detail is all you can see. and just here is the heart of the whole matter. whether you use much or little detail, it is not for the sake of the detail, not for any interest which lies in the detail itself, but for what power of expression may lie in it. if the picture, large or small, be largely conceived, and its main idea as to subject and those qualities of æsthetic meaning i have spoken of are always kept in view, and never allowed to lose themselves in the search for minuteness, then any amount of detail will take its place in true relation to the whole picture. if it does not do this it is bad. the relations of parts to the whole are the key to the situation always. nothing is right which interferes with the true relations in the picture. this is where the working for detail is most likely to lead you astray. it takes great ability and power to keep detail where it belongs. detail is always the search for small things, and they are almost sure to obtrude themselves to the neglecting of the more important things. details which do not stay in their places had better be left out of the picture. there is such a thing as _values_ in _facts_ as well as other parts of your work. and this applies to breadth as well as to detail. [illustration: =boar-hunt.= _snyders._ to show relation of detail to the whole picture. the detail is carried far, yet does not interfere with emphasis of action and life. the picture is broad in spirit and effect if detailed in execution.] gerard dou remains a great painter, and even a broad painter, strange as it may sound, in spite of his microscopic work. but only because of his breadth of eye. the detail is not the most important thing with him. it is in the picture, and you can see it when you look for it. but as you look at the picture it is not peppered all over with pin-points of detail, until the picture itself cannot be seen. every detail stays back as it would in nature; loses itself in the part to which it belongs; modestly waits to be sought out; is not seen until it is looked for. this is broad painting, because the main things are emphasized; and if the details are painted they are seen in their true relations, and the power of the whole is not sacrificed to them. with much or little detail, this is what is to be aimed at. whether with big brushes or little ones, the expression of the main idea, of the important, the vital things,--this is broad painting, and this only. chapter xxiii manipulation =premier coup.=--something similar to what i have spoken of as "direct painting" has long been a much-advocated manner of painting in france, under the name of _premier coup_; which means, translated literally, "first stroke." it is taught that the painter should use no after or overworkings at all; but that he should carefully and deliberately select the color for his brush-stroke, and then lay it on the canvas at one stroke, each after-stroke being laid beside some previous one, until the canvas has been covered by a mosaic of color each shade representing a single "first-stroke," with no after-stroke laid over it to modify its effect. such a process tends to great deliberation of work and exactness of study. probably no better thing was ever devised for the training of the eye and hand. but it has its limits, and is not often rigidly adhered to in the painting of pictures; although the fresh, direct effect of this sort of work is preserved as far as possible in much modern french work, and that quality is held in great esteem. this manner of painting is especially useful in the making of sketches and studies, and leads to a strong control of the brush and the resources of the palette. in all painting of this character the color should have body. transparent color should not be used alone, but only to modify the tint of the more solid pigments; for the transparent colors used indiscriminately are apt to crack, which characteristic is avoided when the heavier color forms the body of the paint. =solid painting.=--in most cases solid painting is the safest,--the least likely to crack, and the most safely cleaned from varnish and dirt without injury to the paint itself. it is firmer in character too, and gives more solidity of effect to the picture. =mixing.=--in mixing colors you should be careful not to over mix. don't stir your paint. too much mixing takes the life out of the color. particles of the pure color not too much broken up by mixing are valuable to your work, giving vibration and brilliancy to it. the reverse is muddiness, which is sure to come from too much fussing and overworking of wet paint. don't use more than three pigments in one tint if you can help it, and mix them loosely. if you must use more colors, mix still more loosely. put all the colors together, one beside the other, drag them together with the brush, scoop them up loosely on the end of it, and lay the tint on freely and frankly. never muddle the color on the canvas. don't put one color over another more than you can help; you will only get a thick mass of paint of one kind mixing with a mass of another, and the result will be dirty color, which of all things in painting is most useless. keep the color clean and fresh, and have your brush-strokes firm and free. never tap, tap, tap, your paint; make up your mind what the color is, and mix it as you want it. decide just where the touch is to go, and lay it on frankly and fairly, and leave it. if it isn't right, daubing into it or pat-patting it won't help it. either leave it, or mix a new color, and lay it on after having scraped this one off. don't try to economize on your mixing. a color mixed for one place will never do for another, so don't try to paint another place with it. have the patience to proceed slowly, and mix the color specially for each brush-stroke. on the other hand, don't be niggardly with your paint. don't use less paint than you need. mix an ample brushful and put it on; then mix another, and use judgment as to how much you should use each time. the variety of tone and value which comes of mixing new color for every touch of the brush is in itself a charm in a painting, aside from the greater truth you are likely to get by it. [illustration: =good bock.= _manet._ to illustrate direct and solid painting.] =corrections.=--as far as you can, make corrections by over-painting when the paint is dry, or nearly so. when i say don't work into wet color to correct, i do not mean that you are never to do so, but that to do it too much is likely to get your work muddy and pasty. of course it is almost impossible to avoid doing so sometimes, but when you do, do it with deliberation. don't lose your head and pile wet paint on wet paint in the vain hope of getting the color by force of piling it on. you will only get it worse and worse. get it as nearly right as you can. if it is hopeless, scrape it off clean, and mix a fresh tint. if it is as near right as you can see to mix it now, go ahead; and put a better color on that place to-morrow when it is dry, if you can. =keep at it.=--but above all don't be permanently satisfied with the almost. don't be afraid to put paint over dry paint till it is right. work at it day after day. let the paint get thick if it will, if only you get the thing right. the secret of getting it right is to keep at it, and be satisfied with nothing less than the best you can do. when you can see nothing wrong you can do no better. but as long as your eye will recognize a difference between what is on the canvas and what ought to be there, you have not done your best, and you are shirking if you stop. never call a thing done as long as you can see something wrong about it. no matter what any one else says, your work must come up _at least_ to the standard of what you yourself can see. =loose painting.=--sometimes it is necessary to lay on paint very loosely in order to get vibration of warm and cool color or of pure pigment in the same brush-stroke, or to let the under paint show somewhat through the loose texture of the paint over it. too much of this sort of thing is not to be desired, but its effect in the right place is not to be obtained in any other way. the paint may be dragged over the canvas with a long brush charged with color more or less thoroughly mixed, as seems most effectual, or it may be flipped into its place, or it may be hatched on with parallel strokes. all these ways will be spoken of as they suggest themselves in other chapters. solid color, generally, is used in this manner, and the effect of body is rather strengthened by it than the reverse. =scumbling.=--another means of modifying the color and effect of a painting has perhaps always been more or less commonly in use. this is called _scumbling_, and may be considered under the head of solid painting, as it is always done with body, and never with transparent, color. the process consists of rubbing a mixture of body color, without thinning, over a surface previously painted and dried. generally this _scumble_ is of a lighter color than the under-painting, and is rubbed on with a stubby brush slightly charged with the paint. as much surface as is desired may be covered in this way, and the result is to give a hazy effect to that part, and to reduce any sharpness of color or of drawing. often the effect is very successfully obtained. distant effects may be painted solidly and rather frankly, and then brought into a general indefiniteness by scumbling. too much scumbling will make a picture vague and soft, and after a scumble it is best to paint into it with firm color to avoid this. the scumble may be used with the richer and darker colors, too, to modify towards richness the tone of parts of the picture, or to darken the value. most often, however, its value lies in its use to bring harsher and sharper parts together, and to give the hazy effect when it is needed. scumbling will not have a good effect when it is not intended to varnish the picture afterwards; for the oil in the paint is absorbed immediately, and the rubbing of color gives a dead look to the canvas which is very unpleasant, and decidedly the reverse of artistic. =glazing.=--a very valuable process, the reverse of scumbling, is glazing. it has always been in use since the invention of the oil medium. all the italian painters used it; it is an essential part of their system of coloring. the rich, deep color of titian, the warm flesh of raphael, and the jewel-like quality of the early german painters are impossible without some form of glaze. the germans perhaps made glazes with white of egg before oil was used as a vehicle. but to glaze is the only way to get the fullest effect of the quality characteristic of the transparent paints. a glaze is a thin wash of transparent color flowed over an under-painting to modify its tone or to add to its effect. it is not always transparent color, but usually it is. sometimes opaque or semi-opaque color may be used, and it is a glaze by virtue of the fact that it is thinned with a vehicle either oil or varnish, and _flowed_ on. a scumble is _rubbed_ on, and is never pure transparent color. =advantages of glazing.=--the advantages are the gain in harmony, in force, in brilliancy; you may correct a color when it is wrong, or perfect it when it is not possible to get the force or richness required without it. these are the qualities which have made it used by all schools more or less. =disadvantages.=--there are, however, quite as evident and marked disadvantages. the free use of oil as a thinning vehicle, although it makes possible a greater degree of richness of color, is very likely to turn the picture brown in time. oil will always eventually have a browning effect on all paints, even when mixed with them as little as is absolutely necessary. if you make a tinted varnish of oil (which is practically what a glaze is), you add so much, to the surely darkening action of the oil on the picture. if, again, you depend upon a glaze for the richness of color for your picture, and you use a color which is not permanent, your glaze fades, and your color is not there. a glaze is particularly liable to be injured by the cleaner if it ever gets into his hands. he works down to fresh color, and what with the browning of the glaze and the fact that the cleaner is more anxious that the picture should be cleaned than that its color should be fine, he will, in nine cases out of ten, _clean_ off the glaze which may be the final and most expensive color the painter has put on it. glazing is little used nowadays, compared with what it once was. but there are times when you cannot get what you want in any other way, and when you are sure that glazing is the only thing which will give you your result, the only law for the painter comes in,--get your result. =precautions.=--if you do glaze, however, there is a right and a wrong way. you should not use a glaze as a last resort. it is better to calculate on it beforehand; for you always glaze with a darker tint upon a lighter one, so that if you have not allowed for this, you will get your picture too low in tone before you know it. if you want to make your picture, or a part of it, brighter and lighter, bring it up in pitch with body color first, with solid painting, and then glaze it. do not glaze on color which is not well dried. the drying of the under color and the drying of the glaze are apt to be different in point of time, and the picture will crack. if the vehicle is the same as was used in the under-painting, and the drying qualities of both paintings are the same, there is no danger. but when color dries, it shrinks and flattens, and two kinds of colors shrinking differently are sure to pull apart, and that causes cracking. if the under-painting is well dry, but not hard and glossy on the surface, and is capable of still absorbing enough of the new color's vehicle to bind the coats together, your glaze will stand. but rather than have it too soft, have the under-painting too hard, and then before you glaze go over it with a little thin, quick-drying varnish, and glaze into that. the varnish will hold the two coats of paint together. glazing, as well as scumbling, implies the obligation to varnish your picture. whenever you use oil freely you will have to varnish your picture to keep it bright and fresh in color. it would be wise never to use a glaze as a final process. glaze to get the tone or to modify it, but paint into the glaze with body color, and you keep the advantage of the glaze without many of the disadvantages of it, and the picture has a more solid effect of painting. =frottée.=--closely akin to the glaze in manner, but very different in use, is the _frottée_, or "rubbing." this is generally used on the fresh surface of the canvas, to "rub in" the light and shade or the first coloring of the picture after the drawing is done. it is one of the safest and wisest ways of beginning your picture. you can either rub in the picture with a _frottée_ of one color, as sienna or umber, or you can use all the colors in their proper places, only using very little vehicle, and making something very thin in tint, somewhat between a glaze and a scumble. you can make a complete drawing in monochrome in this way, or you can lay in all the ground colors of the picture till it has much the effect of a complete painting. then, as you paint and carry the picture forward, every color you put on will be surrounded with approximately the true relations, instead of being contrasted by a glare of white canvas. a _frottée_ is a most sympathetic ground to paint over. chapter xxiv copying copying may well be spoken of here, as it is in a sense a kind of manipulation. it is a means of study to the student, and a useful, sometimes necessary process to the painter. in the transferring of the results of his sketches and studies to the final canvas, the painter must be able to copy, and to know all the conveniences of it. before the painting begins on a picture, the main figures in it must be placed and drawn on the canvas with reference to the plan of it, and their relation to that plan. this calls for some method of exact reproduction of the facts stored in the artist's studies for that purpose. the process of copying is that method. from the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical means of understanding the intent and the expression of the painter whose work he wishes to know. there is no way of understanding the why and the how of technical expression so sure and complete as to study with the brush and paint, following the same method and processes as the master you copy, and trying to comprehend the meaning and the expression at the same time. this is not the best means of study for a beginner, as i have said before. it trains the understanding of processes rather than the eye; and the training of the power of perception rather than the understanding of methods is what the young student needs. the processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature are secondary matters to him. let him really see the thing and find his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is still the best thing for him. he may take such help as he can find, as he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can give to him, when he cannot see his own way. but the searching of nature should come first. the _seeing_ of what is must precede the _stating_ of it. but when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to be tried for than an approximation of the right colors in the right places. certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for something more than a recognizable picture. when a serious student makes a copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and drawing, but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities of technique, and whatever there may be that goes to make up the "manner" of the original. this is not only for the sake of the copy, for the sake of really having a picture which is more than superficially like the original; but in this way can be gained much real knowledge of technique which cannot be gotten so easily otherwise. study your original carefully before and while working on your own canvas. see how it was done if you can (and you can), and do it in the same way, touch for touch, stroke for stroke, color for color. use a large brush when he used a large brush; if the original was done with a palette-knife, use yours; and particularly never use a smaller brush than the painter used on the picture you are copying. the same thing holds as to processes. if your original was painted solidly, with full body of color, do so on your copy. never glaze nor scumble because _you_ can't get the colors without. your business is to try to get the same qualities _in the same way_. and any other manipulation is not only getting a different thing, but shirking the problem. because, if you can't get the effect in the way he did, you certainly won't get the _same one_ any other way. you are not originating, you are not painting a picture, you are copying another man's work; and common honesty to him, as well as what you are trying to learn, demands that you shall not belie him by stating on your canvas implicitly, that he did the thing one way, when as a matter of fact his canvas shows that he did it another way. this may seem commonplace, because one would think that as a matter of course any one would naturally make a copy this way. but this is precisely what the average person does not do when copying, and i have found it constantly necessary to insist upon these very points even to advanced students. so in the pigments, the vehicles, the tools, and even the canvas if you can, as well as in the handling of the paint and the processes used, follow absolutely and humbly, but intelligently, the workmanship of the picture you copy, if it is worth your while to do it at all. in making copies it is not usual to make the preliminary drawing freehand. it takes time that may better be given to something else, and often it is not exact enough. when a painter has made careful studies which he wishes to transfer to his canvas, they may have qualities of line or movement, or of emphasis or character which the model may not have had. these studies, probably, are much smaller than they will be in the picture. the same things may be true of the characteristics of the sketches. these are problems which have been worked out, and to copy them freehand makes the work to be done over again on a larger scale on the canvas of the picture. this would not only take too much time, but the same result might not follow. for this purpose a more mechanical process is commonly made use of, which combines the qualities of exactness with a certain freedom of hand, without which the work would be too rigid and hard. ="squaring up."=--this process is called "squaring-up," and consists of making a network of squares which cut up the study, and map out its lines and proportions, and make it possible to be sure that any part of the original will come in the same relative place in the copy no matter what the size may be, and at the same time leaves the actual laying out of the thing to freehand drawing. the process is a very simple one. you mark off a number of points horizontally and vertically on the study. make as many as you think best--if there are too few, you will have too much of the study in one part; if too many, it makes you more trouble. it is not necessary that there be as many points one way as the other; make the number to suit the lines of the study. draw straight lines across the study from each of the points, keeping them carefully parallel, and seeing to it that the horizontal lines cross the vertical ones exactly at right angles. these lines cut the study into right-angled parallelograms, which may be squares or not according as the vertical lines are the same distance from each other that the horizontal ones are, or not. number the spaces between the lines at the top, , , , etc., and at one side the same. now if you square off a part of your canvas with the same number of spaces at the top and the same number at the side as you have done with the study, and keep the relation of the spaces the same, you can make it as large or as small as you please, and you can draw the outlines within those squares as they fall in the study, and they will be the same in proportion without your having the trouble of working to scale. the squares furnish the scale for you, and the proportion is not of the study to the picture, but as the vertical spaces are to the horizontal, in both the study and the picture. by numbering the squares on the canvas to correspond with those on the study, and noticing in which square, and in what part of it, any line or part of a line comes, you can, by drawing that line in the same part of the corresponding square on the canvas, repeat the line in the same relation and with exactness, while still leaving the hand free to modify it, or correct it. in this way the simplest or the most complex, the largest or the smallest study sketch or drawing may be accurately transferred to any surface you please. chapter xxv kinds of painting why not recognize that conviction, intense personal attraction to a certain sort of thing is the life of all art. how else can life get into art than through the love of what you paint? a man may understand what he does not love, but he will never infuse with life that which he does not love. understand it he should, if he would express it; but love it he must, if he would have others love it. you see it is not the thing, but the manner; not the fact, but what you can find in it; not the object, but what you can express by it. "_un chef d'oeuvre vaut un chef d'oeuvre_" because perfect delight in loveliness found in a small thing is as perfect as perfect delight in loveliness found in a great thing. and still life uninteresting as a fact, may be fascinating if "seen through the medium of a temperament." don't let the idea get into your head that one thing is easier to do than another thing. perhaps it is, but it is a bad mental attitude to think so. and even then, you may find that when you have worked out all that its easiness shows you, some one with better knowledge or insight may come along and point out undreamed-of beauties and subtleties. and are they easy? to see and express the possibilities in easy things is the hardest of all. =classification.=--divide paintings into two classes,--those representing objects seen out-of-doors, and those representing objects in-doors. this is the most fundamental of all classifications, and it is one which belongs practically to this century. before this century it was hardly thought of to distinguish out-door light from in-door light. some of the dutchmen did it. but it is only in this century that the principle has made itself felt. it is this which makes the difference of pitch or key so marked between the modern and the ancient pictures. it has changed the whole color-scheme. an out-door picture may be still painted in the studio, but it must be painted from studies made out-doors. it is no longer possible to pose a model in a studio-light and paint her so into a landscape. it was right to do it when it was done frankly, when the world had not waked up to the fact that things look different in diffused and in concentrated lights. it is not right now. you cannot go back of your century. to be born too late is more fatal than to be born too soon. whatever kind of picture you take in hand, remember that what distinguishes the treatment of it from that of other pictures depends on the inherent character of it. that the difficulties as well as the facilities in the working of it are due to the fact that it demands a different application of the universal principles. don't think that landscape drawing is easier than that of the figure because smudges of green and blue and brown can be accepted as a landscape, while a smudge of pink will not do duty for the nude figure. it is only that the drawing of the figure is more obvious, and variations from the more obvious right are more easily seen. you must study the necessities, the demands of treatment of the different sorts of subjects--see what is peculiar to each, and what common to all. you must find to what æsthetic qualities each most readily lends itself, what are the subtleties to be sought for, and what are the problems they offer. chapter xxvi the sketch the sketch is the germ of the picture. it contains the idea which may later become the finished work. in your sketches you gather effects and suggestions of possibilities, of all kinds. you do not work long over a sketch, nor do you work perfunctorily. you do not make it because you ought to, but because you see something in nature which charms you; or because you have found an idea you wish to make a note of. understand thoroughly the use and meaning of sketches, and you will get more good from the making of them. for your sketching is an important matter to your painting. you do not learn how to paint by sketching; but you can learn a great many things, and some of them you can learn no other way. a sketch is not a picture; neither is it a study. each of these things has its special purpose and function, and its proper character. a sketch is always a note of an idea--an idea seen or conceived. everything is sacrificed in the sketch to the noting of that idea. one idea only, in one sketch; more ideas, more sketches. there are two kinds of sketches: those made from nature to seize an effect of some sort; and those made to work out or express tersely some composition or scheme of color which you have in your mind. both are of great use to the student as well as essential to the work of the artist. [illustration: =sketch of a hillside blocked in from nature, first suggestion of composition, etc.=] the first conception of a picture is always embodied in the form of a sketch, and the artist will make as many sketches as he thinks of changes in his original idea. it is in this form that he works out his picture problem. he is troubled here by nothing but the one thing he has in mind at this time. it may be an arrangement of line or of mass. he changes and rearranges it as he pleases, not troubling himself in the least with exactness of drawing, of modelling, of color, nor of anything but that one of composition. it may be a scheme of color, and here again the spots of pigment only vaguely resemble the things they will later represent; now they are only composition of color to the painter, and everything bends to that. when this has been decided on, has been successfully worked out, then it is time enough to think of other things. and think of other things he does, before he makes his picture; but not in this sketch; in another sketch or other sketches, each with its own problem, or in studies which will furnish more material to be used later; or in the picture itself, where the problem is the unity of the various ideas within the great whole in the completed painting. it is the sketch on which the picture rests for its singleness of purpose. no picture but begins in this way, whether it is afterwards built up on the same canvas or not. the sketch points the way. but all the preliminary sketches of a painting are not problems of composition or color; are not conceptions of the brain. there are suggestions received from nature which the painter perceives rather than conceives. possibilities show themselves in these, but it is in the sketch that they first become tangible and stable. this is the sketch from nature, always the record of an impression, the note of an idea hinted by one fact or condition seen more sharply or clearly than any or all of the thousands which surrounded it at the moment. the painter must always sketch from nature. only by so doing can he be constantly in touch with her, and receive her suggestions unaffected by multitudinous facts. the sketch preserves for him the evanescent effects of nature, which the study would not so entirely, because not so simply, grasp. the sudden storm approaches; the fleeting cloud shadow; or the last gleam of afterglow; these, as well as the more permanent, but equally charming effects of mass against mass of wood and sky, or of meadow and hill, he can only store up for future use or reference in his sketches. =main idea only.=--in the making of the sketch, then, no problem should come in but that of the expression of the main idea,--no problem of drawing or of manipulation of color. to get the idea expressed in the most direct and immediate and convenient way, anything will do to sketch on or with; that which presents the least difficulty is the best. the matter of temperament, of course, comes in largely, and technical facility. that which you can use most freely, use in your sketching, and keep for other occasions the new means or medium. use freely, if you can, black and white for whatever black and white will express, and pigment for all color effects. oil for greatest certainty and facility of correction. =quick work.=--make your sketch at one sitting, or you will have something which is not a sketch. work long enough, and it may be a study; but more than one sitting makes it neither one thing nor the other. to say nothing of the fact that the conditions are unlikely to be exactly the same again, you are almost sure on the second working to have lost the first impression,--the freshness and directness of purpose which the first impress gives; and this is the very heart of a sketch. you must never lose sight of what was the original purpose of it; never forget what it was which first made you want to paint it. no matter what else you get or do not get, if you lose this you lose all that can give it life or reality. the very fact that you have limited yourself to one working makes you concentrate on that which first caught your attention, and that is what you want to seize. overworkings and after-paintings will only interfere with the directness and force with which this is expressed. remember that nature is never at rest. you must catch her on the wing, and the more quickly you do it the more vivid will be the effect. [illustration: =the river bank.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._ half-hour sunset sketch.] "nature is economical. she puts her lights and darks only where she needs them." do the same, and use no more effort than will suffice to express that which is most important. the rest will come another time. try to keep things simple. keep the impression of unity; have the sketch one thing only. express things as they look. as they look to _you_ and at _this time_. how they seem to some one else, or seemed at some other time, is not to the point. what you know they are or may be will not help you, but only hinder you in a sketch. the more facts the worse, in sketching. remember always what a sketch is for. don't be beguiled into trying to make a picture of it, nor a study of it. above all, don't try to make a clever thing of it. make something sincere and purposeful of it, and have it as concise, as terse, as direct, and as expressive of one thing as you can. =keep looking.=--always keep your eyes open and your mind receptive; do not be always looking for reasons. accept the charm as it presents itself; note it, if you have anything handy to express it with; if not, study it, and get something into your mind and memory from it. the simplest way of expressing it, and the simplest elements which cause it, you can study without the materials to preserve it, and you so keep your receptivity and quicken your power of observation. your sketch will be more quickly done, directly and more forcefully, if you map out the thing rather deliberately first with a few very exact lines and masses in some way: then you have a free mind to concentrate on the effect. a few values and masses well placed are the things you most want; you can almost always spare time to ensure their exactness by a few measurements and two or three rubs of color first. of course if the sketch is of a passing gleam you can do nothing but get a few smudges of color. but get them true in value and in color relation; get the glow of it, or you will get nothing. =canvases of a size.=--in sketching from nature, have the habit of using always the same sized canvases or panels. they pack better, and you learn to know your spaces, and so you do quicker and better work. make them big enough to do free work on, yet small enough to cover easily, so that you lose no time in mere covering of surface. ten inches by fourteen is plenty small enough, and fifteen by twenty large enough, for most persons. suit yourself as to the size, but settle on a size, and stick to it. nothing is more awkward and inconvenient than to have stacks of canvases of all sizes and shapes. always have plenty of sketching materials on hand. you will lose many a good effect which will pass while you are getting your kit ready. in sketching, avoid details. when you want them, make a study of them. in a sketch they only interfere with frankness of expression. one or two details for the sake of accent only, may be admitted. make a frame with your hand, or, better, cut a square hole in a card, and look through it. decide what is the essence of it, what is vital to the effect, and do that; concentrate on that. put in what you need for the conveying of that, and leave out everything else. =work solidly.=--work in body color, and lay on your paint fully and freely. in getting an effect of light, don't be afraid of contrast either of value or of color. paint loosely; get the vibration which results from half-mixed color. don't flatten out the tone. load the color if you want to. in twenty years you will wonder to see how smooth it has become. freedom and breadth give life to a sketch. don't work close to your work. don't bend over it. use plenty of color, large brushes, and strike from the shoulder. chapter xxvii the study the qualities which make a good study are the reverse of those which make a good sketch. in the sketch all is sacrificed to the effect, or to the one thing which is its purpose. the study is what its name implies, and its purpose is not one thing, but many. in a study you put in everything which may be valuable. you store it with facts. you leave out nothing which you wish to put in. it is all material. you can take and leave in using it afterwards, as you could from nature. of course every study has some main intention, but you must take the trouble to give everything that goes to the making of that. a study is less of a picture than a sketch is. for unity of effect is vital to both a sketch and a picture. but this quality is of no essential value in a study--unless it be a study of unity. for you can make a _study_ of anything, from a foreground weed to a detailed interior, from a bit of pebble to a cavalry charge. but in a study of one thing you concentrate on that thing, you deliberately and carefully study everything in it, while in a sketch you work only for general effect. the study is the storehouse of facts to the painter. by it he assures himself of the literal truths he needs, collecting them as material in color or black and white, and as mental material by his mental understanding of them, only to be gained in this way. in making a study you may work as long as you please, timing yourself by the difficulty and size of the thing you are studying. a study of an interior or a landscape may occupy a week or two; one of a simple object for some detail in a picture may be a matter of only a few hours. but in any work of this kind you should be deliberate, and remember that what you are doing is neither a sketch nor a picture, but the gathering of material which is to be useful, but which can be useful only so far as it is accurate. in making studies, don't try for surface finish; get the facts, and leave all other qualities for the picture. don't glaze and scumble, but work as directly as you can. study the structure and texture of whatever you are doing. understand it thoroughly as you go on, and search out whatever is not clear to you. this is no place for effects; nor for slighting or shirking. if you do not do work of this kind thoroughly, you might as well not do it at all--better; for you are at least not training yourself to be careless. there are places where you may be careless, but the making of a study is not that place. take plenty of trouble with preliminaries. get all your foundation work true. have a good drawing, get the groundwork well laid in, and then build your superstructure of careful study. don't be afraid of over-exactness, nor of hardness and edginess here. all that is only an excess of precision, and it is just as well to have it. you can leave it out if you want to in your picture, but a groundwork of exactness is not to be despised. be exact also with your values. if your study is not sure of its values, it will weaken the results you should get from it later. make your studies in the same light as that which the picture will represent. you can paint a picture under any light you please if your studies give you the facts as to light and shade that the truth to nature requires; but studies made in one light for a picture representing another are useless to that picture. no good painting was ever made without preliminary studies. when you are to make a picture, therefore, take plenty of time to prepare yourself with all the material in the form of facts that you may require. don't trust to building up a picture from a sketch or two and your "general knowledge." that sort of thing is something which a painter of experience may do after storing his mind for years with all sorts of knowledge; but it will not do for most people--least of all for a student. and it is a dangerous way for any one to work. even the experienced painter is apt to do the worse work for it, and if he does so constantly, his reputation may suffer for it. take time to be right. [illustration: =study of a blooming-mill.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] don't be afraid of taking measurements. every one who did anything worth looking at took measurements. leonardo laid down a complete system of proportions. you can't get your proportions right without measurements, and if your proportions are not right, nothing will be right. use a plumb-line: use it frequently, and measure horizontals and verticals. if you are in doubt about anything, stop a minute and measure. it takes less time than correcting. whatever you do, get the character first, then the details. character is not a conglomeration of details. the detail is the incident of character. see what the vital things are first, then search farther. use your intelligence as well as your eye and hand. think as you work. don't for a moment let your hand get ahead of your brain. don't work absent-mindedly, nor without purpose. if your mind is tired, if your eye won't see, stop and rest a while. tired work runs your picture down hill. chapter xxviii still life the name of still life is used in english for all sorts of pictures which represent groupings of inanimate objects except flowers. the french word for it is better than ours. they call it "_nature morte_" or dead nature. there is no kind of painting which is more universally useful--to the student as well as to the painter. it furnishes the means for constant, regular, and convenient study and practice. you need never lack for something interesting to paint, nor for a model who will sit quietly and steadily without pay, if you have some pieces of drapery, and a few articles, of whatever shape or form, which you can group in a convenient light. you can make the group as simple or as difficult as you wish, and make it include any phase of study. the advantage of its possible variety, scope, and particularly, its convenience and cheapness and manageableness, make it the fundamental work for the beginner. =materials.=--practically anything and everything is available for still life. you should be constantly on the lookout for interesting objects of all kinds. try to get a collection which has as much variety in form, size, and surface as you can. old things are generally good, but it is a mistake to suppose old and broken things the best. an object is not intrinsically better because of its being more or less damaged, although it sometimes has interesting qualities, as of color or history, because of its age. what you should avoid is bad proportion, line, and color in the things you get. the cost is not of any importance at all. you can pick up things for a few cents which will be most useful. have all sorts of things, tall slim vases, and short fat jugs. have metals and glass, and books and plaques. they all come in, and they add to the variety and interest of your compositions. =draperies.=--the study of drapery particularly is facilitated by still-life study. you can arrange your draperies so that they are an essential part of your study, and will stay as long as you care to paint from them, and need not be moved at all. this fact of "staying power" in still life is one of importance in its use, as it reduces to the minimum the movement and change which add to the difficulties in any other kinds of work. the value of the antique in drawing lies in its unvarying sameness of qualities from day to day. in still life you have the same, with color added. you can give all your attention and time unhurriedly, with the assurance that you can work day after day if you want to, and find it just the same to-morrow morning as you left it to-day. this as it applies to drapery is only the more useful. you can hardly have a lay figure of full size, because of its cost. to study drapery on a model carefully and long, is out of the question, because it is disarranged every time the model moves, and cannot be gotten into exactly the same lines again. still life steps in and gives you the power to make the drapery into any form of study, and to have it by itself or as a part of a picture. in draperies you should try to have a considerable variety just as you have of the more massive objects,--variety of surface, of color, and of texture. do not have all velvet and silk. these are very useful and beautiful, but you will not always paint a model in velvet and silk. satins and laces are also worn by women, and cloth of all kinds by men, and so you should study them. sometimes you want the drapery as a background, to give color or line; and yet to have also marked surface qualities (texture), would take from the effect of those qualities in the other objects of the group. as to color, in the same way you should have all sorts of colors; but see to it that the colors are good,--in themselves "good color," not harsh nor crude. it does you no good as a student to learn how to express bad color. neither is it good training for you, in studying how to represent what you see, to have to change bad color in your group into good color in your picture. good useful drapery does not mean either large pieces, or pieces with much variety of color in one piece; on the contrary, you should avoid spotty or prominent design in it. still, the more kinds you have, the more you can vary your work. if your drapery is a little strong in color, you can always make it more quiet by washing or fading it to any extent. there is very little material which is absolutely fast color. but when it is so, and the color is too strong, don't use it. don't scorn old and faded cloth, especially silk and velvet, or plush. the fact that it would look out of place on furniture or as a dress does not imply that it may not be beautiful as a background or as a foreground color. these old and faded materials furnish some of the most useful things you can have; a fact the reverse of what is true in general of other still-life things. =the use of still life.=--there is no way in which you can better study the principles of composition than by the use of still life. the fact that you can bring together a large number of objects of any color and form, and can arrange and rearrange them, study the effect and result before painting, and be working with actual objects and not by merely drawing them, gives a positiveness and actuality to composition that is of the greatest service to you. you can use (and should at times) the whole side or corner of a room, and so practise composition on the large scale, or you can make a small group on a table. that you are using furniture and drapery or vases, flowers, and books, instead of men and women, does not affect the seriousness and usefulness of the problem; for the principles of composition and color do not have to do with the materials which you use to bring about the effect, but the effect itself. it is practically impossible for the student and the amateur to make very advanced study of composition in line and mass with more than one or two living models; but with still life he may and should get all the practical knowledge possible. =practical composition.=--suppose you were going to work with still life, how would you begin? in the first place, get a good composition. never work from a bad one. you must learn composition some time, so you might as well study it every time you have occasion to start a still-life study. take any number of things and put them on a table, get a simple background to group them against. consider your things, and eliminate those which are not necessary, or will not tell in the composition. it is a law that whatever does not help your picture (or composition) tells against it; so get rid of anything which will not help the composition. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] for instance, here are a lot of things indiscriminately grouped on a table. you might paint them, but they are not arranged. there is no composition. they would lack one commanding characteristic of a good picture if you were to paint them so. what do they lack as they are? they have no logical connection with each other, either in arrangement or in the placing, to begin with. they do not help each other either in line or mass. they are crowded, huddled together. you could do with less of them; or, if you want them all, you can place them better. but suppose we take some of them away for simplicity, and rearrange the rest. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] here are some of the things, with others taken away. the combination is simpler, but still it is not satisfactory. there is some logical connection among the objects, but none in the grouping. they are still huddled; there is no line; it is too square; no attempt at balance; they are simply things. if you change them about a little, having regard to size, proportion, balance, and line, you can get something better out of these same objects. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] here the coffee-pot is moved toward the centre, to give height and mass, and to break up the round of the plaque; the handle turned around to give more looseness and freedom; the pitcher is placed where it will break the line of the plaque, yet not too obviously or awkwardly; the handle is placed at a good angle with that of the coffee-pot, and the relation of distance with the coffee-pot in balancing the whole is considered. the drapery is spread out so as to have some probability. it does not help much in line, but it does in mass and in color (in the original). it could be bettered, but it will do for the present. the cup also has a reasonable position, and helps to balance and to give weight to the main mass, which is the coffee-pot. there is not much light and shade in this composition, nor much distinction. but it does balance, and would make a good study, and is a very respectable piece of composition,--simple, modest, and dignified. now if you wanted to add some of those things which were eliminated, and make a more complicated composition, you would look for the same things in it when completed. we have simply the same group, with the bottle and glass added. the stout jug in the first group is left out because it is not needed, and it will not mass with the rest easily. the tall glass vase is left out because it is too transparent to count either as line, mass, or color, and does not in any way help, and therefore counts against, because it does not count for, our composition. the things we have here are enough, but they are not right as they are now. they injure rather than help the last arrangement. the bottle and glass are in the composition, but not of it; a composition must be _one thing_, no matter how many objects go to the making of it. this is two things. draw a line down between the bottle and glass and the other things, and you get two compositions, both good, instead of one, which we must have for good arrangement. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] let's change them again. this is worse, if anything. we have now got two groups and a thing. the coffee-pot and cup and saucer alone, the bottle and glass alone, and the pitcher; the drapery tries to pull them together, but can't. the plaque has no connection with anything. they are all pulled apart. in the last group at least there was some chief mass, the first complete composition. now every one is for himself; three up and down lines and a circle--that's about what it amounts to. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] let's group them,--push them together. place the bottle near the coffee-pot. because they are about the same height, one cannot dominate the other in height; then make them pull together as a mass. [illustration: =still life, no. .=] place the cup about as before, and the mass pretty well towards the centre of the plaque. put the pitcher where it will balance, and the glass where it will count unobtrusively, and help break the line of the bottoms of the objects. the drapery now helps in line also, and gives more unity, as well as mass and weight and color, to the whole. this group is about as well placed as these objects will come. there is balance, mass, proportion, dignity, unity. of course you may make a paintable and interesting composition with only two things. but you must give them some relation both as to fact and as to position. the same elements of unity and balance and line come in, no matter how many or how few are the objects which enter as elements in your group. in this way study composition with still life. move things about and see how they look; use your eye and judgment. get to see things together, and apply the principles spoken of in the chapter on "composition" to all sorts of things in nature. =scope of study.=--drawing is always drawing, whatever the objects to which it is applied, and you can study all the problems of drawing and values with still life. the drawing is not so severe as that of the antique, nor so difficult as study from the life, but you can learn to draw and then apply it to other things, and advance as far as you please; and as i said at first, you need never lack an amiable model. all sorts of effects of lighting you can study easily with still life; and of color and texture also. the study of surface and texture is most important to you. if you were to undertake to paint a sheep or a cow the first time; if you were to paint without previous experience a background which contained metal and glass, or a model with a velvet or satin dress, you would not succeed. these all involve problems of skill and facility of representation. when you paint a portrait or figure picture, or a landscape with animals, you should not have to deal with, as new, problems of this sort. you should have arrived at some understanding of this sort of thing in studies which are not complicated by other problems of greater difficulty. this is where still life comes in again to make the study of painting easier. =interest.=--but the use of this sort of painting is not only its practical _use_. you need not feel that it is all drudgery--which is something that most students do not love! you may make pictures with a much clearer conscience along this line; for the better the picture, and the more interesting and charming it is, the more successful is your work as study. you can be as interested in the beauty and the picture of it as you please, and it will only make you work the better. to see the picture in a group of bottles and books is to be the more able to see the picture in a tree and sky. an artist's eye is sensitive to beauty of color and line and form wherever he sees it. the student's should be also. no artist but has found delight in painting still life. no student should think it beneath his serious study. =procedure.=--study painting first in still-life compositions. when you set up your canvas first, and set your palette, let it be in front of a few simple objects grouped interestingly; or, better, set up a single jar or a book, with a simply arranged background for color contrast. all the problems of manipulation are there for you to study. no processes of handling, no manner of color effect, which you cannot use in this study. learn here what you will need in other lines of work. =beginning.=--the best way to make a study from still life is to begin with a careful charcoal drawing on the canvas. you may shade it more or less as you please, but be most careful about proportions and forms. the shading means the modelling and the values in black and white; and you can do this either in charcoal as you draw, or it can be put in with monochrome when you begin with paint. but you must have the drawing sure and true first; for drawing is position, locality. you must know _where_ a value is to go before you can justly place it. the value is the _how much_. you must have the _where_ before the _how much_ can mean anything in drawing. it would be well to lay in some of the planes of light and shade, because you feel proportion more naturally and truly so than with mere outline. the outline encloses the form, but with nothing but outline you are less apt to feel the reality of the form. the planes of values fill in the outline and give substance to it. they map it out so that it takes thickness and proportion; it is more real. and any fault of outline is more quickly seen, because you cannot get your masses of shade of the right form and proportion if the outline enclosing them is not right. =the frottée.=--make, then, a careful light-and-shade drawing with charcoal directly on the canvas, working in the background where it tells against the group, but without carrying it out to the edges of the canvas. be accurate with your modelling and values, and keep the planes simple and well defined. draw all characteristic details, but only the most important, nearly as if it were not to be painted, but were to remain a drawing. fix this drawing with fixative and an atomizer. in beginning with paint go over the drawing with a thin _frottée_ which shall re-enforce the drawing with color. you may do this with one color, making a monochrome painting very thin, leaving the canvas bare for the lights. many of the best painters lay in all pictures this way. what color is to be used is a matter for consideration. it should be one so sympathetic to the coloring of the whole picture that if it is left without any other paint over it in places it will still look all right. raw umber is a good color, or raw umber modified with burnt sienna and black. you can make a mixture that seems right. this establishes your larger values, and gives you something better than a bare canvas, and something with which you can have a more just idea of the effect of each touch of color you put on. if there is much variety of color in the various objects of your composition, it is better to make your _frottée_ suggest the different colors. instead of making a monochrome _frottée_, rub in each object with a thin mixture, approximating the color and value, but not solid, nor as strong as it will become when painted, of course. nevertheless, you can get in this first rubbing in, a strong effect, which at a distance has a very solid look, though the relations are not so carefully studied. when you come to put on solid color with this sort of an under-painting, it is easy to judge pretty closely of color as well as light-and-shade relations, and you can work more frankly into it. into this painting, when it is dry, you may begin to paint with body color, beginning with the true color and value of the lights, and working down through the half darks into the darks. paint the background pretty carefully as to color and value, but loosely as to handling. paint slowly, deliberately, and thoughtfully. there is no need to pile up masses of wrong color. you should try to be sure of the color before you lay it on. study the color in the group, mix on the palette, and compare them. think at least two minutes for every one minute of actually laying on paint. you save time in the end by being deliberate and by working thoughtfully. put on color firmly and with a full brush, but there is no need to load color for the sake of the body of it. =loaded lights.=--it was a principle with the older painters to paint the shadows thinly and with transparent color, and to load the lights. it gave a richness to the shadows and a solidity to the lights which was much valued. but don't think about this; don't let it influence the frankness of your painting. the theory is in itself largely obsolete now, and in fact has been disregarded by almost every able painter who ever lived, in practice, no matter what he said about it. i only speak of it because almost all books on painting have laid it down as a rule, and you had better know its true relation to painting. like all other traditional methods of painting it has been used by the greatest of painters, and has also been disregarded by the greatest of painters; and as far as you are concerned, you may use it or not as suits your purpose. the main thing is to get the right color and value in the right place, in the most direct and natural, in the least affected, manner possible. you may work into your _frottée_, then, more or less solidly as you feel will give you the best representation of the color you see. =solid painting.=--don't paint always in the same way. it is a mistake to get too accustomed to one manner of procedure. different things require different handling. let the thing suggest how you shall paint it. if you want to paint directly, paint solidly from first to last instead of rubbing in thinly first. but always have an accurate drawing underneath. in working solidly without previous laying in, begin where each brush-stroke will have the greatest effect toward establishing the appearance of reality. if the canvas is light, begin by putting in the main darks, and if the canvas is dark, do the reverse. you get the most immediate effect of reality by the _relief_; the relief you get most directly by putting in first those values which contrast with what is already there. establish your most telling values first, then work from them towards less immediately effective things. =color and values.=--study the color at the same time you do the value. put on no touch of paint as a value or a color alone. if you do, you will have to paint that spot twice,--once for the value, and again for the color. you might as well paint for the two qualities in one stroke. it takes more thought, but it gives you more command of your work. it doesn't load your canvas with useless paint, and it saves time in the long run. =relations and directness.=--study to give the true relations of things. try to get the just color quality. give it at once. don't get it half way and trust to luck and a subsequent painting to correct it. you will never learn to paint that way. paint intensely while you paint. use all the energy you have. paint with your whole strength for a half or a whole hour, and then rest. you will accomplish more so than by painting all day in a languid, half-hearted way. =directness.=--directness comes from making up your mind just what tint of color and value is needed, and just where it is to go, first, then putting it there with no coaxing. get the right color on your brush and plenty of it; then put the brush deliberately and firmly down in the right place, and take it directly away, and look at the result without touching it again till you have made up your mind that it needs something else, and what it is that it needs. then do that and stop. directness and justness of relation are the most important things in painting. they tell for most, result in most, both to the picture and to the student. whatever you do, work for that. try to have no vagueness in your mind as to what you will do or why you do it, and the effect of it will show on your canvas. chapter xxix flowers flower painting is the refinement of still life. you have the same control of combination, but you have not the same control of time. flowers will change, and change more rapidly than any other models you can have; and at the same time they are so subtle that the most exquisite truth and justness are necessary to paint them well. people seem to think that any one can paint flowers. on the contrary, almost no one can paint them well. there are not a dozen painters in the world who can really paint flowers as they ought to be painted. why? because while they are so exquisite in drawing and color, and so infinitely delicate in value, they are also even more infinitely subtle in substance and sentiment. when you have got the drawing and the color and the value, you have not got the _quality_. what is the petal of a flower? it is not paper, and it is not wax, neither is it flesh and blood, of the most exquisite kind. all these are gross as substance compared to the tender firmness of the flower petal; and the whole bunch of flowers is made up of petals. yet you cannot paint the _petals_ either, else you lose the _flower_. you must paint the _quality_ of the petal, and the _character_ of the flower. all these things make the mere perception of facts most difficult, and it must be done with full knowledge that in an hour it will be something else, and you can never get it back to its original form again. yet you cannot paint a bunch of flowers in an hour. what will you do? =mass and value.=--there is something besides the flower and the petal; there is the _mass_. the mass is _one thing_, and it is surrounded with air, and air goes through the interstices of it. you must make this visible. the difference in value in flowers is something "infinitely little," as a great flower painter said to me once. yet the difference is there. the bunch has its nearer and its farther sides, and the way the light falls on it is the most obvious expression of it. when you begin a group of flowers, get the _whole_ first. make up your mind that you cannot complete your work from the flower you have in front of you, and that you must constantly change your models. do not paint the little things, the personal things first then. paint what is common to all the flowers in the group first. paint the mass and the rotundity of it, and express most vaguely the _forms_ of the accents, and of the darks which fall between the flowers, but get their values. for you will have to change these, and you should have nothing there which will influence you to shirk. in this way only can you get the larger things without hampering your future work by what may be wrong. [illustration: =sweet peas.=] get the large values, and as little as possible of the expression of the individual flowers; then as the flowers fade and change, substitute one or two fresh ones at a time, in this or that part of the partially wilted group, using the same kind of flower as that which was in that place before; then work more closely from these new flowers, letting the whole bunch preserve for you the mass and general relation. as you work, the bunch will be gradually changing and constantly renewed from part to part, and you can work slowly from general to particular. finally, from new flowers, put in those more individual touches which give the personal flowers. this is the only way you can work a long time, and it is not easy. but it should not discourage you. nothing takes the place of the flower picture, and the only way to learn to paint flowers is to paint flowers. =general principles hold always.=--still, the principles of all painting hold here as elsewhere, and what is said of painting in general will have its application to flowers. paint flowers because you love them; and if you love them, love them enough to study patiently to express the qualities most worth painting, even if there be difficulties. =details again.=--don't make too much of unimportant things. the whole is more than the part; the flower than the petal. of course you can't paint a flower without painting the petals, but you need not paint the petals so that you can't see anything else. if the character of the flower as a whole is to be seen at a glance without the emphasis of any special petal, suggest the petals only. if the petal is important to the expression of character, then paint it; and if you do, paint it well. use your judgment; make the less expressive of the greater, or do not paint it at all. =colors.=--colors and tints in flowers are always more rather than less subtle than you think them. if you have a doubt, make it more delicate--give delicacy the benefit of the doubt. still, flowers are never weak in color. subtle as they are, it is the very subtlety of strength. black will be the most useless color of your palette. make your grays by mixing your richer colors. a gray in a flower is shadow on rich color, and it must not be painted by negation of color, but by refinement of color. =sketches.=--make sketches of flowers constantly. try to carry the painting of a single flower or of a group as far as you can in an hour. practise getting as much of the effect of detail as possible with as little actual painting of it, and then apply this to your picture. get to know your work in studies and sketches, and you will work better in more difficult combinations. when you have, as you generally will have, still-life accessories to your flowers, rub in quickly the color and values of the vase or what not first, but leave the painting of it till the flowers are done. it will be a more patient sitter than they. apply the ways of painting spoken of with reference to still life to the sketching of flowers. either rub in quickly a _frottée_ and then paint solidly into that, or work frankly and solidly but deliberately to render the characteristic qualities. when you sketch flowers don't take too many at a time; calculate to work not more than an hour and a half or two hours, and have no more flowers in your sketch than you can complete in that time. when you sketch, quite as much as when you work at more ambitious canvases, get the mass first, especially if the group is large. then put in the accents which do most to give the character or type of the flower. make studies of single flowers and sketches of groups. in the study search detail and modelling; in the sketch search relations and relief, effect and large accent. chapter xxx portraits don't look upon portraits as something any one can do. a portrait is more than a likeness, and the painting of it gives scope for all of the great qualities possible in art. only a great painter can paint a great portrait. some great painters rest their fame on work in this field, and others have added by this to the fame derived from other kinds of work. you must not think it easy to paint a portrait, or rest satisfied with having got a likeness. likeness is a very commonplace thing, which almost any one can get. if there were no other qualities to be tried for, it would hardly be worth while to paint a portrait. back of the likeness, which a few superficial lines may give, is the character, which needs not only skill and power to express but great perception to see, and judgment to make use of to the best advantage. =character.=--the first requisite in a good portrait is character,--more than likeness, more than color or grace, before everything else, it needs this; nothing can take the place of it and make a portrait in any real sense of the word. everything else may be added to this, and the picture be only so much the greater; but this is the fundamental beauty of the portrait. some of the greatest painters made pictures which were very beautiful, yet the greatest beauty lay in the perception and expression of character. holbein's wonderful work is the apotheosis of the direct, simple, sincere expression of character in the most frank and unaffected rectitude of drawing. there are masterpieces of albrecht dürer which rest on the same qualities, as you can see in the portrait of himself by dürer. likeness is incidental to character; get that, and the likeness will be there in spite of you. hubert herkomer said once that he did not try for likeness; if only he got the right values in the right places, the likeness had to be there. the same can hardly be said of character, for this depends on the selection from the phases of expression which are constantly passing on the face, those which speak most of the personality of the man; and the emphasis of these to the sacrifice of others. the painting of character is interpretation of individuality through the painting of the features, and, like all interpretation, depends more on insight and selection than on representation. try for this always. search for it in the manner, in the pose and occupation, of your sitter. get likeness if you will, of course; but remember that there is a petty likeness, which may be accident or not, which you can always get by a little care in drawing; and that there is a larger character which includes this, and does not depend on exaggeration of feature or emphasis of accidental lines, but on the large expressiveness of the individual. you may find it elsewhere than in the face. the character affects the whole movement of the man. the set of the head and the great lines of the face, the head and shoulders alone would give it to you even if the features were left out. study to see this, and to express it first, and then put in as much detail as you see fit, only taking care never to lose the main thing in getting those details. =qualities.=--there are other great qualities also which you can get in a portrait. all the qualities of color and tone, of course. but the simplicity of a single figure does not preclude the qualities of line and mass. the great things to be done with composition may as well be done in portrait as elsewhere. if you would see what may be done with a single figure, study the portrait of his mother, by whistler. you could not have a better example. it is one of the greatest portraits of the world. notice the character which is shown in every line and plane in the figure. the very pose speaks of the individuality. notice the grace and repose of line, and the relations of mass to mass and space--the proportion. see how quiet it is and simple, yet how just and true. of the color you cannot judge in a black and white, but you can see the relations of tones, the values and the drawing. it is these things which make a picture; not only a portrait, but a great work of art as well. [illustration: =dürer=, _by himself_. to be studied as an example of directness and naïveté of painting.] [illustration: =portrait of his mother.= _whistler._] =drawing.=--good work in portraiture depends on good drawing, just as other work does. don't think that because it is only a head you can make it more easily than anything else. as in other kinds of work, the drawing you should try for is the drawing of the proportions and characteristic lines. get the masses and the more important planes, and don't try for details. you can get these afterwards, or leave them out altogether, and they will not be missed if your work has been well done. don't undertake too much in your work. make up your mind how much you can do well, and don't be too ambitious; the best painters who ever lived have been content to work on a head and shoulders, and have made masterpieces of such paintings. you may be content also. see how little velasquez could make a picture of! and notice also the placing of the head, and the simplicity of mass, and of light and shade. =painting.=--of course you can help your color with glazing and scumbling, but work for simplicity first. it is not necessary to use all sorts of processes; you can get fine results and admirable training from portrait studies, and the more directly you do it, the better the training will be. study the portrait of himself, by albrecht dürer. you will find no affectation here; the most simple and direct brush-work only. you will not be able to do this sort of thing, but that is no reason why you should not try for it. it will depend on the brush-stroke. it implies a precision of eye as well as of hand. it means drawing quite as much as painting,--drawing in the painting. you will not get this great precision; nevertheless, try for it, and get as near it as you can. don't try for too much cleverness; be content with good sincere study, and the most direct expression of planes that you can give. [illustration: =portrait of himself.= _velasquez._] let your brush follow lines of structure. don't lay on paint across a cheek, for instance. notice the direction of the muscle fibre. it is the line of contraction of the muscle which gives the anatomical structure to a face. if your brush follows those, you will find that it takes the most natural course of direction. do the same with the planes of the body and of the clothing. note the lines of action, and the brush-stroke will naturally follow them. see that the whole form, and particularly the head, "constructs." the head is round, more or less; it is not flat. the planes of it cross the plane of the canvas, recede from it, cross behind, and return. this in all directions. you must make your painting express this. it is not enough that there be features, the features must be part of a whole which is surrounded, behind as well as in front, by the atmosphere. the hair is not just hair, it is the outer covering of the skull, and of necessity follows the curves of the skull; and there is a back part to the skull which you cannot see, but which you can feel--can know the presence of, because of the way it is connected with the front part by the sides. all this you must make evident in your painting, as well as the facts which are on the side of the skull turned toward you. how make it evident? by values and directness of brush-stroke. =background.=--never treat the background as something different from the head. the whole thing must go together. the slightest change in the background is equivalent to that much change of the head itself. for the change means necessarily a different contrast, either of color or light and shade, and it will have its effect on the color or relief of the head. paint the two together, then. make the head and all that goes with it or around it as equally parts of the picture, which all tend to affect each other. your background is not something which can be laid in after the head is finished. true you can paint the background immediately around the head first, and then, after painting the head, extend the background to the edge of the canvas; but the color, tone, and character of the background must be decided upon at the time the head is painted, and carried on in the same feeling. it is never good work to paint the head and then paint a background behind it. particularly is this true when there are windows or any objects whatever in the background. it is most important that the whole thing shall be seen in the same kind of light, and in the same relation of light. this is hardly to be done when the head is one painting and the background another. [illustration: =portrait.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] this is not rigidly true, however, in cases when the whole thing is planned beforehand, and studies made for each part, as in elaborate portraits and compositions which include several figures or special surroundings. but the principle holds good here also. the relation must be kept of the head to the surroundings, and the effect of the one upon the other always kept in mind. =complex portraits.=--it is often possible to pose your model so as to bring out some characteristic occupation. this is often done in portraits of distinguished men. such a treatment gives opportunity for composition both of the figure and of the various objects which may make up the background. in such pictures you should study arrangement of line and mass, to make the thing æsthetically interesting as well as interesting as a portrait. composition in mass,--the consideration of the head and shoulders in relation to the space of the canvas,--is necessary in the simplest head; but as soon as the canvas takes in a representation of action on the part of the figure, line and movement must be considered, as was done so beautifully in whistler's portrait. in this the study of composition is your problem. you may study it all the time and in every picture you do, but it should be worked out before you begin to paint. plan your canvas carefully always. know just where everything is coming. when you leave things to chance, you are pretty sure to have trouble later. =portraits good training.=--i would not have you undertake to paint a portrait rashly. you should know what you are to expect. if you are not pretty sure of your drawing, and of the first principles of seeing color in nature, and of representing it on canvas, you are likely to get discouraged. particularly if a friend poses for you, you may expect disappointment on both sides. drawing a head from the life is a very different thing from drawing an inanimate object which will stay in one position as long as you can pay the rent. so in the painting of it, too, the color itself is alive. flesh is something very elusive to see the color of. and when you find that just as you begin to get things well under way, or are in a particularly tight place, just at that moment your model must rest, you must stop while the position is changed and gotten back to again; then you will begin to realize that "_la nature ne s'arrête pas_." i would have you know all this, i say, before you begin on your first portrait; but, nevertheless, if you can get a start at it you will find it extremely good practice. the very difficulties bring more definitely to you the real problems of painting. the fact that it is really the representation of something which has life has an interest quite of its own. the constant change of position on the part of the model will make you more observant, and less regardful of details; or if you do regard the details, and forget the other things, it will show you how inadequate those details are to real expression, unless there is something larger to place them on. don't undertake the painting of a head without considering well that you are likely to have trouble, and that the trouble you will have is most likely to be of a kind that you don't expect. but, having begun, keep your head and your grit, and do the best you can. remember that you learn by mistakes, and failures are a part of every man's work, and of every painter's experience, and not only of your own. you will save your self-esteem from considerable bruising if you make it a point never to let your sitter see your work till you are pretty well over the worst of it. the knowledge that it is to be seen will make you work less unconsciously, and you will find yourself trying for likeness, and all that sort of thing, when that is not what you should be thinking about; and if, after all, the thing is a failure, it is a great consolation to know that no one but yourself has seen it! =beginning a portrait.=--the ways of beginning portraits are innumerable. there is no one right way. some are right for one painter or subject, and some for others; but there are some methods which are more advisable for the beginner. you can begin and carry through your painting entirely with body color, or you can begin it with _frottées_, and paint solidly into that. take these two methods as types, and work in one or the other, according to what are the special qualities you want your work to have. if you have never painted a head, and have some knowledge of the use of paint and of drawing, i would suggest that you make a few studies of the head and shoulders, life size, in solid color, and on a not too large canvas, say sixteen by twenty inches. this will leave you no extra space, and you can devote your whole attention to the study of the head, with only a few inches of background around it. you will probably make the head too large. a head looks larger than it really is, especially when you are putting it on canvas. if you measure them you will find that few heads will be longer than nine inches from the top of the hair to the bottom of the chin. take this as the regular size in drawing it on your canvas, and make the other proportions according to that. make a drawing of the outlines in straight lines, which shall give only the main proportions of the head, neck, and shoulders. within this, block out the features largely. don't draw the eyes, but only the shape of the orbit; nor the nostril, but only the mass of light and shade of the nose. =construction.=--in these studies avoid trying to get anything more than what will be suggested by this simple drawing. use body color. don't think of anything but what you have to represent. never mind how the paint goes on, nor what colors you use, except that it is right in value, and as near the color as you can get. put it on with the full brush, and try to get first the large masses and planes. get it light where it is light, and dark where it is dark, and have contrast enough to give some relief. don't try for any problems. set your model in a simple, strong light and go ahead. no details, no eyes, only the great structural masses. try to feel the skull under these planes of light and dark. have the edges of them pronounced and firm. do a lot of these studies; learn structure first. you will never be able to put an eye in its place in the orbit till you can make the plane of dark which expresses the bony structure of the orbit. you will feel the edge of the brow, of the cheekbone, and where the light falls on the temple and on the side of the nose. inside of this is the dark of the cavity, broken for your purpose only by the light on the upper lid. lay these in. do the same with the other planes, and put your brush down firmly where you want the color, with no consideration but the simplest and most direct expression of value and color. now, when you can lay in a head in this way, so that you can express the likeness with nothing but these dozen or so of simple planes, you have got some idea of what are the main things which give character to a head. you will begin to understand how it should "construct." into this you can put all the detail you want, and if the detail is in value with this beginning it will keep its proper relation to the whole. always when painting a head solidly, work this way. get the action and character of the head as a whole. block in the planes of the face and the features; and then go ahead to give the details which express the lesser characteristics. but always get the character, even the first look of resemblance, with this blocking in. details and features will not give you the likeness, to say nothing of the character, if you have not gotten the character first by the representation of those proportions which mean the structure which underlies all the accidental positions of the detail of feature. =the frottée.=--if you want to be more exact with your drawing before you begin to paint, lay in your canvas with a light-and-shade drawing in charcoal. then make a _frottée_ in one color, and paint into and over that, as was described in the chapter on "still life." by careful and studious use of these two methods of work you can learn the main principles of painting portraits, and modify the handling as you have need; for all the various methods of manipulation are modifications of one or the other, or combinations of both of these fundamentally different ways of working. if you paint more than one sitting, get as good a drawing as you can the first day. put in your _frottée_ the next, or make your blocking in; then after that do your painting into the _frottée_, or the working out of such details as you decide to put in. titian painted solidly, probably with no details; then worked these in and glazed, then touched rich colors into the glaze. but you had better not bother with all these ways of painting. when you can work well in the simplest way, you will find yourself making all sorts of experiments without any suggestions from me. work first for facts of utmost importance, and technical methods are not such facts. perception and representation by any most convenient means are the first things to be thought of, and nothing else is of importance until a certain amount of advance is made along this line. learn to see and paint the wholeness of the thing at once, not the details, but the _fact_ of it. try to lay in things so that you have a solid ground to work onto and into later. look for the vital things. don't try for "finish." finish is not worked for nor painted into a picture; finish _occurs_ when you have represented all you have to express. when you have got character and values and true representation of color, you will find that the "finish" is there without your having bothered about it. the masses you are to look for and emphasize are the great spaces where the light strikes and the shadows fall. close your eyes. the lines disappear. you only see large planes of values; express these at once and simply. don't be afraid of rudeness, either of handling or of color, at first. don't try for finesse. all these delicacies will come later. but you must get the important things first. learn to be strong _first_, or you never will be. delicacy comes after strength, not before. so, too, freedom comes after knowledge--is the result of knowledge. so paint to learn. if it is rigid at first and hard, never mind. get the understanding and the representation as well as you can, and try for other things later. [illustration: =haystacks in sunshine.= _monet._ to show certain characteristics of handling in "impressionist" work.] chapter xxxi landscape from the usual rating of figures as the most important branch of painting, it would be natural to speak of that kind of work first. but work from the head must come before you attempt the figure, and there are a good many things that you can learn from landscape which will help you in figure-work. the manner of painting figures has been much modified, too, of late years, owing to certain qualities and points of view which are due to the study of landscape and the important position that it has come to occupy. in the old days landscape was only a secondary thing, not only as a branch of art in itself, but particularly as it was used by figure painters. in this century it has so broadened in its scope that it is now recognized to be as important a field of work as any. but further than this, it has become the most influential study in the whole range of painting. from the development of the study of outdoor nature, and particularly outdoor light, it has come about that certain facts of nature have been recognized which were before neglected, ignored, or unsuspected, and these facts bear quite as much on the painting of the figure as on the painting of landscape. so that it is no more possible to paint the figure, in some respects, as it was painted as a matter of course a hundred years ago, while other ways of painting the figure, which were undreamed of at that time, are the matters of course now. the whole problem of light has taken a new phase, and the treatment of color in that relation is modified in the painting of figures as well as in the other branches of work. =pitch.=--in no direction is this more marked than in the matter of _pitch_, or _key_. with the study of landscape, the range of gradation from light to dark has broadened. a picture may now be painted in a "high key;" the picture may be, from the highest to the lowest note in it, far lighter than would have been thought possible even thirty years ago. this question of "bright pictures" is one which demands consideration. one has only to go into any exhibition of pictures to-day to be struck with the fact that the key of almost every picture in it, of whatever kind, has changed from what it would have been in the last generation. this is not merely the result of the spread of the "impressionist" idea. that influence has only been strongly felt in this country within the last ten years. it is not that which i am speaking of now. i mean the fact that even the grayer pictures--those which do not in any ordinary sense of the word belong to impressionist work--are light in color, where they would once have been dark, or at least darker. the impressionists have had a definite influence, it is true; but the work of the earlier "_plein air_" men--the men who posed their models out-of-doors as a matter of principle, who studied landscape out-of-doors--was the first and most powerful influence, and that of the impressionists, coming along after it, has simply emphasized and carried it farther. =bright pictures.=--whatever may be thought of the work of those painters who are called "impressionists," it must be recognized that they have taught us how some things may be possible. and the present quality of brightness will necessarily be to a certain extent a permanent one in art. for like it or not as we may, it is true--true to a certain great, fundamental characteristic of nature. for outdoor light _is bright_, even on a gray day. the luminosity of color is too great to be represented with dark paint or lifeless color. and once this fact is recognized, it is a fact which will inevitably influence all kinds of work. what is possible and right at a certain stage of knowledge or recognition may be impossible when other points of view have once been accepted. we see only what we look for, and we look for only what we expect to see or are interested to see. you cannot go out-of-doors now and paint as you would have painted a hundred years ago. then you would have painted what you saw then; but you would not have seen nor looked for things which you cannot help seeing now. for our eyes have been opened to new qualities and new facts, and once the eyes have been opened to them they can never be closed to them again. =average observation.=--i say we see only what we look for, what we expect to find; anything out of the ordinary is hard to believe at first. in looking at nature the average observer does not even see the obvious. certain general facts he accepts in the general, but as a rule there is no real recognition of what is there; no perception of the relations of things; no analysis; no real _seeing_, only a conventional acceptance of a thing as a _thing_. men look at nature with one idea, and at a picture of nature with an entirely different idea. nature in the picture is to most people just what they have been accustomed to see in other pictures. they get their idea of how nature looks from those pictures, and if you show them a picture differently conceived they have difficulty in taking it in. for this reason the "bright picture" does not "look right." i remember being asked by a man in a modern exhibition what i thought of "these bright pictures." when i asked which pictures he had reference to, i found that he meant the work of a man whose whole aim in painting landscape was, as he once said to me, to get "the just note" in color and value. one would think that the fact that the whole force of an extremely able and sincere mind was directed to that purpose, would produce a picture with at least truth of observation. yet this was not what my passing acquaintance wanted to see. the picture he liked, which "had some nature in it," as he pointed out to me, was an extremely commonplace landscape with a black tree against a garish sky, reflected in a pool of water. the "bright picture" seemed to me exquisitely gray and quiet, though high in key, and the one with "nature in it," harsh and crude, but conventional; and that was just the point. the average observer wants to see, and does see, in nature what he is accustomed to accept in a picture as nature. but a painter cannot go on such a basis. he may paint a dark picture, but he must find a subject which is dark to do so. he may not paint daylight with false pitch and false relations, and say he sees it so. with every liberty for personal seeing, there are still certain facts so established and obvious that personality must take them and deal with them, must use them and not ignore them, in its self-expression. [illustration: =on the race track.= _degas._ to show relations of pitch and contrast out-doors.] the pitch of daylight is one of these facts. light and luminosity may not be qualities which appeal to your temperament. you may therefore not make them the main theme of your painting of landscape; but you cannot paint a daylight picture without in some way making it obvious that luminosity is a fundamental characteristic of day light. there is no other quality so universally present and pervasive. in sunlight it is the most vital quality. you might as well paint water without recognizing the fact that water is wet, as to paint daylight without recognizing the fact that diffused sunlight is brilliant. =a help.=--you will find it very useful as a help in seeing pitch as well as color to have a card with a square hole cut in it to look through at your landscape. have one side covered with black velvet and the other left white. compare darks with the black, and the lights with the white, and make the picture compose in the opening as in a frame. =key and harmony.=--but you should remember that the high key for out-of-door work does not mean crude nor unsympathetic color, neither does it mean that there is nothing but sunshine and shadow. your picture may be as high as you please in pitch, and yet be harmonious and pleasing. i have seen impressionist pictures of most pronounced type hung in the same room with old pictures and in perfect harmony with them. it means that good color is always good color, and will always be harmonious with other good color, whatever the pitch of either. one picture is simply a different note from the other, that is all. the color in nature is not crude in not being dark. the relations of spots of color are just; you have only to be as just in observing them, and your picture will be harmonious. make your notes just _all over_ your canvas. have some of them just and the rest false, and of course it will be wrong. or if you try to make crudity take the place of brilliancy, you will not get harmony. the harmony which comes from the presence in just relation of all the colors is none the less beautiful because more alive. you need not try for the most contrasting and most sparkling qualities of out-of-door color, but you should feel for the out-of-doorness of it. the space, the breadth, lack of confines, the largeness and movement, vibration and life,--these are the things which the modern painter has discovered in landscape and has emphasized; and this is what has made modern landscape a vital force in modern art. whatever you do or do not see, feel, and express in your painting, these you must see, feel, and express; for once these qualities are recognized and accepted they are as universal as the law of gravity, and can be as little ignored. =landscape drawing.=--landscape is more difficult to draw than is generally thought; not only is the character affected by the _scale_ of the main masses, but there is great probability of overdrawing. the curves that mark the modelling of the ground are very difficult to give justly. the altitude and slope of mountains are almost invariably exaggerated. the twists and windings of roadways and fences are seldom carefully drawn; yet the most exquisite movement of line is to be gained by just representation of them. to give the character of a tree, too, without making out too much of the detail of it, needs more precise observation than it generally gets. [illustration: =willow road.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] get the character; get the sentiment of it. search for the important things here first, and be more particular about the placing of each line than about the number of lines. don't draw too many lines in a landscape; don't draw too many objects. carefully study the scene before you till you have decided what parts are most essential in giving the character that you want to express, and then draw most carefully those parts. see which are the _most expressive lines_ in it. get the swing and movement of those lines in the large; then study the more subtle movement of them. get these things on the canvas first, and put everything else in as subsidiary to them. have all this well placed before you begin to paint, and allow for little things being painted on to this. don't get too many things into one landscape. the spirit of the time and place is what will make the beauty of it, not the details nor the mere facts. this spirit you will find in a few things, not in many. having found which lines and forms, which masses and relations of color and value, express this, the more carefully you avoid putting in other things the more entirely you emphasize the quality which is the real reason of existence of your picture. in studying landscape, work for one thing at a time. what has been said of sketching and studies applies here. landscape is the most bewildering of subjects in its multiplicity of facts and objects and colors and contrasts. if you cannot find a way to simplify it you will neither know where to begin nor where to leave off. i cannot tell you just what to do or not to do, because no two landscapes are alike. recipes will do nothing in helping you to paint. but there is the general principle which you may follow, and i try to keep it before you even at the risk of over-repetition. in no kind of picture can you drag in unimportant things simply because they exist in nature. in landscape more than elsewhere, because you cannot arrange it, but must select in the actual presence of everything, you must learn to concentrate on the things which mean most, and to refuse to recognize those which will not lend themselves to the central idea. =selection.=--when you select your subject, or "_motif_," as the french call it, select it for something definite. there is always something which makes you think this particular view will make a good picture. state to yourself what it is that you see in it, not in detail, but in the general. is it the general color effect of the whole, or a contrast? is it a sense of largeness and space, or a beautiful combination of line in the track of a road, or row of trees, or a river? perhaps it is the mass and majesty of a mountain or a group of trees. something definite or definable catches you--else you had better not do it at all; and what that something is you must know quite precisely, or you will not have a well-understood picture. when you have distinctly in your mind what you want to paint it for, then see that the composition is so placed on your canvas that that characteristic is the main thing in evidence. with this done it is a very easy thing to concentrate on that characteristic, and to leave out whatever tends to break it up or distract from it. this is the only way you can simplify your subject. first by a distinct conception of _what_ you paint it for, then by so much analysis of the whole field of vision as will show you what does and what does not help in the expression of it. =detail.=--much detail in landscape is never good painting. whether big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more important than detail. give detail when it is needed to express character or to avoid slovenliness. give as much detail _where the emphasis lies_ as will insure the completeness of representation--not a touch more. =structure.=--have your foreground details well understood in drawing and value. this does not require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it does require _structure_. everything requires structure. _structure is fundamental to character._ if you will not take the trouble to study the character of any least thing you put in, don't put it in at all. nothing is important enough to put in, if it is not important enough to have its character and its purpose in the picture understood. i spoke of structure in speaking of the head. if i said nothing but "structure, structure, structure" to the end of the section, you would get the impression of what is the most important thing in drawing. if you will look for and find the line and proportion expressing the anatomy which makes the thing fulfil its particular function in the world, you will understand its character, and that is what is important, everywhere. =work in season.=--make your picture in the season which it represents. i don't say that a good summer picture may not be made in winter; but i do say that you are more likely to express the summer quality while the summer is around you. there is too much half painting of pictures, and then leaving them to be "finished up" afterwards. of course you can make all your studies and sketches, and then begin and finish the picture from them. if you are careful to have plenty of material, to accumulate all your facts with the intention of working from those facts, all right; but it would be better if you were to work your picture in the season of it, as long as you are a student at least. for until you have had a great deal of experience, you will find when you come to paint your picture that some very much needed material you have neglected to collect, and you cannot safely supply it from memory. if this occurs in the time of year represented in the picture, you can just go out and study it. =out-of-door landscapes.=--the most important movement in modern art, the most important in its effects on all kinds of work, is what i have mentioned as the _plein air_ movement. it was thought by some clear-headed men that the best way to paint an out-door picture was to take their canvases out-of-doors to paint it. instead of working from a few color sketches and many pencil studies, they painted the whole picture from first to last in the open air. working in this way, certain qualities got into the pictures unavoidably. necessarily the color was fresher and truer. necessarily there was more breadth and frankness, and less conventionality and mere picture-making. the spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and the whole type of picture was changed. for the first time out-of-door values were studied as things in themselves interesting and important. the result on landscape pictures was that pictures painted in the studio seemed unreal and insincere, and that men looked and studied less for the making of pictures, and more for what nature had to reveal. it would be a good thing for you as a student if you would do as these men did whenever you want to do any work at landscape, whether for itself, or for background. if you wish to pose any kind of figure with landscape background, pose and paint your figure out-of-doors. make sketches as much as you please, make studies as much as you please; but make them for the suggestions and knowledge they will give you, and not for material to be used in painting a picture at home. for your picture, start, and go on with, and finish it out-doors; you will get a feeling of freshness and truth in your work which you cannot get any other way. you will also acquire a power of concentration and of selection and rejection in the presence of nature which is of the utmost importance to you. =impressionism.=--it is not possible to speak of landscape and _plein air_ without mention of the "impressionists." you should understand what "impressionism" really is, and what it is not, and what the impressionist stands for. whether we like it or not, this work is not to be ignored. it has tried for certain things, and has shown that they can be much more justly represented than had before been believed to be possible, and fad or no fad, that result stands. in the first place, impressionism does not mean "purple and yellow." any one who says "purple and yellow" and throws the whole thing aside, is a very superficial critic. the purple and yellow are incidental to the impressionist, not essential. it is only one of the ways of handling color by means of which it was found possible to express certain qualities of light. before everything else the real impressionist stands for the representation of the personal conception and method as against the traditional. he believes that if a man has anything of his own to say, he must say it in his own way; and that if he cannot find that nature has anything to say to him personally, if nature cannot give him a personal message, if he can only paint by giving another man's ideas and another man's method, then he had better not paint at all; so that whatever he may see to paint, and however he finds a way to express it, the value of it and the truth of it lie in the fact that it is _his_, his way of seeing, and his way of expressing,--that it is "personal." =luminosity.=--the impressionist is imbued with the fact that all the light by means of which things are at all visible is luminous--that it vibrates. he does not think that living light can be represented by dead color. he strives to make his color live also. this is the secret of the purple and yellow. by the contrast of these two colors, by the combination and contrast and juxtaposition of the complementary colors and the use of pure pigments, he can make his colors more vibrant, and so give more of the pitch of real sunlight. he actually applies on his canvas the laws which are known to hold with light and color scientifically. he applies practically in his work those laws which the scientist furnishes him with theoretically. the result in some hands is garish, crude. but the best men have shown that it is possible to use the means so as make a subtle harmony and a luminous brilliancy that have never before been attained. the crudity is the result of the man, not of the method. =the application.=--the application of all this to your own work is that when you want pitch and sunlight you can get it through the observance of the laws of color contrast, and such a laying on of pigment as will bring this about. try to study the actual contrasts of color, not as they seem, but as they are in nature. study the facts which have been observed as to colors in their effects on each other, and then try to see these in nature and to paint the results. =the luminists.=--this is the principle of all "loose painting" carried out scientifically. it is the cause of the peculiar technique of those impressionists who paint in streaks and spots of pigment. the manner of putting on paint does interfere with the continuity of outline in the drawing necessarily, but there is a marked gain in the quality of light; and as these men are "luminists," and light is what they want primarily, the sacrifice is justifiable, or at any rate explicable. now if you understand the scientific principle, and the practical application and its result on canvas, you have in your hands one of the main instrumentalities in the rendering of one great quality of out-of-doors. how far you adopt it is a matter for you to decide for yourself. if the complete adoption of it implies too much of a sacrifice of other things of equal or greater value to you, then modify it, or take advantage of it as much as will give you the balance of qualities you most want. there is one way to get light and brilliancy and life into your color: adapt it to your purpose if you need it. this is the application of color juxtaposition to mixing. the placing of complementaries so as to increase contrast is another way of adding to the brilliancy of light. you will find this most useful when you want to give the greatest possible emphasis to the effect of sunlight and shadow. if you keep your shadows cool, your lights will be the richer and more sparkling because of that contrast. if you want more strength in a note of color, get its complement as near it as you can. look for their iridescence of edges of shadow, and of the contours of objects. you will get greater relief of light and shade by contrast of warm and cool than contrast of light and dark. do not misunderstand me. i am not advising you to be an impressionist. i wish only that you shall see what there is in this way of looking at nature and of representation of certain effects of nature, which will be of use to you in the painting of landscape. i would have you know what means are at your command, what is possible to accomplish in certain directions, and how it is possible to accomplish it; then i would have you make use of whatever will most directly and completely serve your purpose. do not use any color or colors, any method or point of view, because of any advocacy whatsoever. know first what you want to paint and why. let nature speak to you. go out and look at landscape. study and observe; see the effect which makes you want to paint it, and then use the means and method which seem most entirely adapted to it. don't ask yourself, nor let any one else ask you, is this so-and-so's method? or, does this belong to this or that school? don't bother about schools or methods at all. look frankly to see, accept frankly, and then work to render and convey as frankly as you have seen. be sincere--sincere with yourself and with your painting: then you will surely work at whatever you do from conviction, and not from fad; and whether it makes you paint as an impressionist or not is a very minor matter, because sincerity of purpose is the most important thing in painting, and method of representation one of the least. =atmosphere.=--a universal characteristic of nature will be a fundamental one in landscape. a landscape which you cannot breathe in is not a perfect one. we live and breathe in atmosphere, and the expression of atmosphere will go far to make your landscape true. but atmosphere is not haziness. neither is it vagueness nor negativeness of color. truth of color-quality, and justness of relation will do most in getting it. you had better not try for atmosphere as a thing, but as a result. anything so universal and so indefinite can be expressed by no one thing. if you try to get it by any one means you will miss it. study, then, the subtlety of color relation and justness of value. try to be sensitive to the slightest variety of tone, and be satisfied with no least falsity of rendering, and you will find that your picture will not lack atmosphere. =color of contour.=--an important thing for you to look for and to study is the color of contours. you will not find it easy; not easy even to know what it is that you are looking for. but consider it as a combination of contiguous values and color vibrations, and things will reveal themselves to you. no form is composed of unvarying color. no combination of color surrounding it lacks variety. all along the edge of forms and objects, of whatever kind, the value and color relation constantly change. the outline is not constant. here and there it becomes lost from identity of value and color with what surrounds it, and again defines itself. the edge is not sharp. the color rays vibrate across each other. the inevitable variety of tint and value, of definiteness and vagueness, gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blendings. these are qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. this constant variety of contrasting edges is the constant movement and play of the visual rays, and the study of it gives life and vibration to the picture, and all the objects represented in it. outdoors, particularly when the play of diffused light and the movement of all the objects is continually felt, either through their own elasticity or because of the heat and light waves, this study is most necessary, if you would get the feeling of freedom, space, and air. =skies.=--in the painting of the sky there are several points to be kept in mind. the sky, even on the quietest day, is full of movement. cloud masses change continually. if there are no clouds there is constant vibration in the blue; constant variety in the plane of color,--a throb of color sensation which is not to be expressed by a dead, flat tint. paint the sky loosely. lay on the color as you will, with a broad, flat brush, or with a loose, smudgy handling; put it on with horizontal strokes, or with criss-cross touches, but never make it a lifeless tone. have variety in it; keep a pulsation between the warm and cool color. you can work in the separate touches of half-mixed color, warm and cool, all through the sky, so that the whole tone will be flat and even, but not dense and dead. so far as the sky is concerned, the atmosphere is essential, and is to be represented not by dense color, but by free, loose, vibrating color. =clouds.=--if you have clouds to paint, do not draw them rigidly. get the effect of the mass and movement, and the lightness of them. as they constantly change in form, any one form they may assume cannot be characteristic. the type form is what you must get, and the suggestion of the motion and lightness. you can suggest, too, the direction of the wind by the way they mass and sway and flow. the direction of the sun's rays, too, counts in the color of them. the outline of a cloud mass is never hard, never rigid. the pitch and luminosity and subtlety are what give you most of the effect of it. study the type of cloud, of course. it is a _cumulus_, _cirrus_, _stratus_, or what not. this character is important; but the character lies in the whole body of the cloud form, not in the accidental outlines or the special position of it for the moment. =sky composition.=--the massing of cloud forms is a very useful factor in the composition of the landscape. the cloud bank or cloud line is capable of giving accent or balance to the picture. as it is not constant in position any more than in form, you can place it with truth to nature pretty nearly always where it will do the most good as an element in the composition. make use of them, then, and study the forms and the possible phases of them so as to make the best use of them. =diffused light.=--much of the characteristic quality of out-door light is the result of the diffusion of light due to both the refraction and the reflection of the sky. the light which bathes the landscape comes in all directions from the sky. necessarily, then, the sky will be in most cases far higher in value than anything under it. even the blue of the sky, which looks darker than some bit of light in the landscape, you will find, if you can manage to get them to tell against each other, will be the more luminous of the two, and will look lighter. there are times when the sun glares on a white building or a piece of white sand, when the white tells light against the blue. but these are exceptions, and if we could get a blue paint which would give the intensity of color, and also the brilliancy of the light, even these cases would be most truly represented with the sky as the higher value. it is a case of whether to sacrifice value to color, or the reverse, as we cannot have both. sometimes, however, in a storm, the dense dark of the storm sky is really lower in value than some white object against it, especially if there be a bit of sun breaking through on it. but in general, nevertheless, you should consider the sky as always lighter and more luminous than anything under it. =three planes.=--it will help you in understanding the way the light falls on landscape to consider everything as in one of three planes, and these planes taking greater or less proportions of light according to the position of the sun with reference to them. the position of the sun changes from a point immediately over, to a point practically at right angles to all objects in nature. everything that can exist under the sun will come in one of these planes, and at some time in the day in each. the vertical, the horizontal, or some sort of an oblique between these two. if the sun is overhead exactly, the flat ground, the tops of trees and houses, will get the full amount of sunlight. the vertical planes, sides of houses, depths of foliage, etc., will get the least, some of them being lighted only by diffused and reflected light. the planes lying between these two extremes will get more or less, according as they are more or less at right angles to the direct rays of the sun. and as the sun declines from the zenith, the vertical planes get more and more and the horizontal planes less and less of the light, till in the late afternoon the banks of trees and sides of buildings and cloud-masses are gilded with light, and the broad horizontal plains of land and water are in shadow. however obscured the sun may be, this principle holds more or less; and it makes clear and helps you to observe and notice many facts in landscape light and shade which it is necessary to know. millet said that all the beauty of color and value, and the whole art of painting, rested on the comprehension and observance of these facts. he said that as the planes of any form turned towards or away from the light and so got more or less of it, and as one form stood more or less far back of another and the atmosphere came between, the color and value changed; and in the observance of this, and its representation as applied to any and every object or group of objects, lay the whole of painting. all the possible beauties of the art rested on it. he showed a painting of a single pear in which these things were most subtly observed, and said that that painting was as complete and perfect as any painting he could do simply because in the observance of these relations was implied the observance of everything which was vital to painting. =short sittings.=--this characteristic, and the steady change of position of the sun and its effects on all the objects which are directly lighted by it, make it necessary, whenever you are painting from nature out-of-doors, that you should not paint at one thing very long at a time. the light changes pretty rapidly; at high noon it only takes a few moments to exactly reverse the light. it is seldom that you can do any just study for more than an hour or an hour and a half at a sitting. some men do work two or three hours, but they are not studying justly all that time; for that which was light is dark three hours later, and any true study of value and color is impossible under these conditions. of course on gray days this is less marked, but you must suit your sittings to the time and facts. it would be better if you had more canvases, and worked a short time on each, and many days on all. you would have the truest work. monet works never more than a half-hour on one canvas; but when he starts out he takes a half-dozen or more different canvases, and paints on each till the light has changed. theodore robinson seldom worked more than three-quarters of an hour, or at most an hour, on one canvas; but, he worked for twenty or thirty days on each canvas, and sometimes had a single canvas under way for successive seasons. any man who would truly study for the just value and note of color must work more or less in this way when he works out-of-doors. chapter xxxii marines all that has been said on landscape painting applies to marines. you have the same open-air feeling and vibration of light and color. there is no need to say the same things over again. it is only necessary to take all these things for granted, and emphasize certain other things which are peculiar to the sea. =sea and sky.=--to begin with, the relation of the sky to what is under it is markedly different in color from any other relations in painting. the sea is always more or less of a perfect reflecting surface, and always strongly influenced in color, value, and key by the reflections of the sky on its surface. the sky color is always modifying the water--when and how depends on the condition of the weather, and the degree of quiet or movement of the water. sometimes the water is a perfect mirror; sometimes the mirror quality is almost lost, but the influence is there. this relation is the most important thing, because the sea and the sky is always the main part of your picture; and no matter what else is there, or how well painted it may be, if these things are not recognized, if they are not justly observed, your picture is bad. i cannot tell you all about these things. the variety of effects and relations is infinite. you must study them, paint them in the presence of nature, and use your eyes; only remember the general principles of air and atmosphere and light and color that i have spoken of elsewhere--all have most vital importance on marine painting. you must study these, and think of them, and in the presence of sea or sky observe their bearings, and apply them as well as you can. =movement.=--if "_la nature ne s'arrête pas_" ordinarily, the fact is even more marked in marines; for the water is the very type of ceaseless motion. somehow, you must not only study in spite of the continual motion, but you must manage to make that motion itself felt. this you will find is in the larger modelling of the whole surface--the "heave" of it as distinguished from the waves themselves. the waves are a part of that motion of course; but give the wave-drawing only, without their relation to the great swing of the whole body of water, and you get rigidity rather than movement. the wave movement is in and because of this larger motion. see that first, and make it most evident, then let the waves themselves cut it up and help to express it. [illustration: =entrance to zuyder zee.= _clarkson stanfield._] =wave drawing.=--how shall you "draw" so changeable a thing as a wave? every wave has a type of form, has a characteristic movement and shape; and as it changes it comes into a new position and shape in logical and practically identical sequence of movement. you can only study this by constant watching. you look at the wave, and then turn your eyes away to fix it on your canvas; as you look back, the wave is not there. well, you can only not try to make a portrait of each wave; it isn't possible. don't expect to. study the movement and type forms; think of it; fix it in your mind; decide on the mass and suggestive relation of it to other masses, and put that down. there is never a recurrence of the same thing either in exact form or color, but fix your eyes on one place, and over and over again you will see a succession of waves of similar kind. or look at a wave and follow it as it drives on; changes come and go, but the wave form in the main keeps itself for some time. look over a large field of the water without too sharply focussing the eyes, you will see the great lines and planes of modelled surface over and over again taking the same or similar shapes, positions, and relations. and as you look your eye will follow the movement in spite of yourself. your gaze will gradually come nearer and nearer; but meanwhile, in following the wave, it will have felt that the wave was the same in shape, but only varied in position. in this way you will come to know the wave forms. jot them down, either in color or with charcoal; but do not look for outline too much. try to study the forms and relations, mainly by the broad touch, with a characteristic direction and movement. no amount of explanation will tell you anything. you must sit and look, think, analyze, and suggest, then generalize as well as you can. =open sea and coast.=--the open sea is all movement. even a ship, the most rigid thing on it, moves with it. but you do not have to study these things from the standpoint of invariable movement. you can start from a stable base. study coast things first. you have then the relation of the movement of the water to the rock or land, and you can simplify the thing somewhat. what has been said of motion holds good still; but you can get something definite in a rock mass, and study the changes near it, and then extend your study as you feel strong enough. the study of coast scenery is quite as full of changing beauty as the open sea, and it has certain types that belong to it alone. breakers and surf, and the contrast of land and sea colors and forms, give great variety of subject and problem. in the drawing of rocks the study of character is quite as important, but not so evasive, as the study of wave forms. you must try to give the feeling of weight to them. the mass and immovability add to the charm and character of the water about them. =subject.=--don't undertake too much expanse on one canvas. of course there are times when expanse is itself the main theme; but aside from that, too much expanse will make too little of other things which you should study. whether your canvas be big or little, to get expanse everything in the way of detail and form must be relatively small, otherwise there is no room on the canvas for the expanse. so if you would paint some surf, or a rock and breakers, or a ship, place the main thing in proper proportion to the canvas, and let the expanse take care of itself, making the main thing large enough to study it adequately. if it is too small on the canvas, you cannot do this. =ships.=--the painting of the sea necessarily involves more or less the painting of vessels of different kinds. you may put the ship in so insignificant a relation to the picture that a very vague representation of it will do, but you must have a thorough knowledge of all the details of structure and type if you give any prominence to the ship in your picture. =detail.=--you do not need to put in every rope in a vessel. you do not need to follow out every line in the standing rigging even, in order to paint a ship properly. to do this would miss the spirit of it, and make the thing rigid and lifeless. but ignorance will not take the place of pedantry for all that. every kind of vessel has its own peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar arrangement of spar and rigging. whether you are complete or not in the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent the true character of the craft you are painting. you must take the trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what are the kinds, number, and proportion of them, and their arrangement on any kind of vessel or boat you may paint. there is again only one way to know this. if you are not especially a painter of marines, you may find that the study of some particular vessel in its present condition and relation to surrounding things will serve your turn; but if you go in for the painting of marine pictures generally, you can only get to know vessels by being on and about them at all seasons and places. your regular marine painter fills dozens and hundreds of sketch-books with pencilled notes of details and positions and accidents and incidents of all sorts and conditions of ships. ships under full sail and under reefed canvas; ships in a squall and ships in dead calm--he can never have too many of these facts to refer to. the true marine painter is nine parts a sailor. if he does not take, or has not taken a voyage at sea, at least has passed and does pass a large part of his time among vessels and sailors. he knows them both; his details are facts that he understands. and what he puts in or leaves out of a painting is done with the full knowledge of its relative importance to his picture and to the significance of the ship. all this sounds like a good deal to undertake; but to the man who loves the water and what sails upon it, it is only following his liking, and any one who does not love all this should content himself with only the most incidental sea painting; for sea pictures are not to be painted from recipes any more than any other thing, and ships particularly cannot be represented without an understanding of them. and after all, you do not have to do all this study at once. if you will only study well each thing that you do, and never paint one vessel or boat without understanding that one; if you will study the one you are doing now, and will do the same every time,--eventually you will have piled up a vast deal of knowledge without having realized how much you were doing. =color of water.=--you must study the color of water in the large when you paint it. remember that its color depends on other things than what it is itself. the character of the bottom, whether it be rocky or sandy, and the depth of the water, will affect its color; and to one accustomed to see these things, the picture betrays its truth or falsity at a glance, especially as the character of the wave and the great movement of the whole surface are influenced by the same things. [illustration: =girl spinning.= _millet._ example of "_contre jour_" and out-of-door contrast of light and shade.] chapter xxxiii figures the broadest classification of figure pictures is to consider them as of two kinds,--those painted in an out-door or diffused light, and those painted in an in-door or concentrated light. the painting of figures out-of-doors you will find more difficult if you have had no experience in painting them in the studio. the problems of light and shade and color are more complex in the diffused light, and the knowledge of structure and modelling, as well as of special values gained by studio study, will be most helpful to you when you paint out-of-doors. i should say, then, don't attempt any serious painting of the human figure in the open air till you have had some experience with its special problems in the house. =the nude.=--no good figure-work has ever been done which was not founded on a knowledge of the nude. whether the figure is draped or not, the nude is the basis of form. the best painters have always made their studies of pose and action in the nude, and then drawn the draperies over that. this insures the truth of action and structure, which is almost sure to be lost when the drawing of the form is made through drapery or clothing. the underlying structure is as essential here as in portrait. it is the more imperative that the body be felt within the clothes from the fact that it cannot be seen. there must be no ambiguity; no doubt as to the anatomy underneath; for without this there can be no sense of actuality. i do not say paint the nude. on the contrary, if you want to go so far as that in the study of the figure, you must not attempt to do it with the aid of a book. go to a good life class. but i wish to emphasize the principle that when you undertake to paint anything involving the figure, you must know something of the structure of what is more or less hidden, and must make allowance for the disguising of form which the draping of it will inevitably cause. and when you draw your figure, you should lay in your main lines, at any rate, from the nude figure if you can. if you cannot command a professional model for this purpose, you can only be more careful about your study of the underlying lines and forms as they are suggested by the saliencies of the draperies. if this is the case, be most accurate in those measurements which place the proportions of the parts which show through the covering, and try to trace out by the modelling where the lines would run. by mapping out these proportions, and drawing the lines over the drapery masses wherever you can make them out, you can judge to a certain extent of the truth of action in your drawing. the use of a lay figure will help you somewhat if you can get one which is true in proportion. it will not help you much in the finer modelling, but it will at least insure your structural lines being in the right place, and that is as much as you can hope for without the special study of the nude. a lay figure is expensive, costing about three hundred dollars in this country. you will hardly be apt to aspire to a full-sized one, as only professional painters can afford to pay so much for accessories. but small wooden ones are within the means of most people, and will be found useful for the purpose i have mentioned, and one should be obtained. when you have assured yourself, as far as you can by its use with and without special draperies, of the right action of your drawing, you must do your painting from the draped model. =the model.=--never paint without nature before you. if you paint the figure, never paint without the model. for the sake of the study of it, it goes without saying that you can learn to paint the figure only by studying from the figure. but beyond that, for the sake of your picture, you can have no hope of doing good work without working from the actual object represented. the greatest masters have never done pictures "out of their heads." the compositions and æsthetic qualities came from their heads it is true, but they never worked these things out on canvas without the aid of nature. and the greater the master, the more humble was he in his dependence on nature for the truth of his facts. much more, then, the student needs to keep himself rigidly to the guidance of nature; and this he can only do by the constant use of the model. =one figure or many.=--whether you have one or more figures, the problem may be kept the same. the canvas must balance in mass and line and in color. when you decide to make a picture with several figures, study the composition first as if they were not _figures_, but groups of masses and line. get the whole to balance and compose, then decide your color composition. simplify rather than make complex. the more you have of number, the more you should consider them as parts of a whole. keep the idea of grouping; combine the figures, rather than divide them. have every figure in some logical relation to its group, and then the group in relation to the other parts. don't string them out or spot them about. study the spaces between as well as the spaces they occupy. and don't fill up these spaces with background objects. that will not bind the group together, but will separate it. fill the spaces with air and with values--even more important! all this arranged, paint each group and each figure as if it were one thing instead of many. as you treat the head, the body, the dress, and the chair as all parts of a whole in a single sitting figure, so treat the various heads, bodies, dresses, etc., in a group as parts of a whole, by studying always the relations of each to each. and then study to keep the different groups as parts of whole canvas in the same way. =simplicity of subject.=--but do not be too ambitious in your attempts. keep your subjects simple. don't be in a hurry to paint many figures. paint one figure well before you try several. you will find plenty of scope for your knowledge and skill in single figures. practise with sketches and compositions, if you will, in grouping several figures, and try to manage them so that the whole shall be simple in mass and effect; but do not attempt, as a student, without experience and skill in the painting of one figure, to paint pictures containing several. by the time you can really paint a single figure well, you can dispense with a manual of painting, and branch out as ambitiously as you please. in the meantime, everything that you have knowledge enough to express well, you can express with the single figure. with the model, the background, the pose and occupation, the clothing and draperies, and whatever accessories may be natural to the thing as elements, it is possible to work out all the problems of line and mass and color. if a really fine thing cannot be made with one figure, more figures will only make it worse. look again at whistler's portrait of his mother. consider it now, not as a portrait, but as a single figure. what are the qualities of it which would be helped if there were more in it? the very simplicity of it makes the handling of it more masterly. look also at the one simple figure of millet's "sower;" all the great qualities of painting that are likely to get themselves onto one canvas you will find in this. see what movement and dignity there are in it. how statuesque it is! it is monumental. it has scale; it imposes its own standard of measurement. there are air and envelopment and light and breadth. are these not qualities enough for one canvas? =nature the suggester.=--take your suggestions, your ideas, for pictures from nature. keep your eyes open. observe all poses which may hint of possible schemes of light and shade, of composition, or of color. it is marvellous how constantly groupings and poses and effects of all kinds occur in every-day life. humanity is kaleidoscopic in its succession of changes; one after another giving a phase new and different, but equally suggestive of a picture if you will take the hint. the picture which originates in a natural occurrence is always true if it is sincerely and frankly painted. truth is more various than fiction. it is easier to see than to invent. and in the arrangement of the material which nature freely and constantly furnishes to him there is scope for all the invention of man. =action and character.=--the picture comes from the action--resides in it. the action comes from the act, and is natural to it, expressive of it. any gesture or position which is the natural and unaffected result of an essential action will be true and vital, suggestive of nature, and beautiful because it will inevitably have character--be characteristic. the beauty of the picture is not something external to the costumes, occupations, and life which surround you, but is to be found, contained in it, and brought out, manifested, made visible, by the mere logical working out of the need, the custom, or the occasion. emphasis is only the salience of the most natural movement. daily life swarms with pictures. you do not need to go to other places and other times for subjects. if you are awake to what is going on around you, if you see the essential line of the occupation, or the mass and color which is incidental to every least activity, you will have more suggested to you than you have time to do justice to. and it is your business to see the beautiful in the commonplace. everything is commonplace till you see the charm in it. the artistic possibility does not lie in the unusual in any subject, but in the fact that the thing cannot get done without action and grouping and color and contrast; and these are the artist's opportunities. keep your eyes open for them; learn to recognize them when you see them; look for these rather than for the details of the accidental fact which brings them out. see the movement of it, and the relation of it to what surrounds it, and you will hardly avoid seeing the picture in it. here is a composition which is an almost literal rendering of the movement and light and shade effect of a position quite accidentally seen. the whole effect of lighting and of line, the grouping and the pose, resulted purely from the musician's desire to get a good light on his music. there was no need to add to it. it was simply necessary to recognize the charm of it, and to represent that charm through it as frankly as it could be done. [illustration: =sketch of a flute player.= _d. burleigh parkhurst._] =posing the model.=--let the character of the model suggest the pose. if you have a scheme for a picture, choose a model whose personality will lend itself naturally to the occupation or action natural to that scheme. then follow the suggestion which you find in the model. some rearrangement will always be necessary if you do not use as a model the same person who originally gave you the idea for the picture. every human being has a different manner. you cannot hope for exactly the same expression in one person that you found in another. but put the model as nearly as you can in the same situation and pose, and then when the model eases from the unnatural muscular balance into the one natural to him, you will find the idea taken from your first observation translated into the characteristics of your present model. never try to place a model in a pose which he can only hold by an unnatural strain. you will not get a satisfactory result from it. study your model; see what poses he most naturally falls into, and then take advantage of one of these, and arrange your picture with reference to it. never attempt to represent a character in your picture by using a model of a different class or type from it; you will not be successful either in painting a lady from a model who is a peasant, nor in painting a peasant from a model who is a lady. the life and occupation and thought common to your model will get into your painting of her; and if that is not in accordance to the idea in the picture, your picture will be false. the dress, no less than the pose and occupation, must be such as is natural to your model. the accessories of your picture must befit the character you wish to paint; otherwise your model becomes no more than a lay figure. take note of the characteristics which are peculiar to your model, and use them; do not change them nor idealize them. rather paint them as they are, and make them a vital part of your study of the subject. this is the best you can do with these characteristics. they may be the most expressive thing in your picture. if they are of such a nature that you cannot use them in this way, then do not use this model at all; you cannot get rid of these things. in trying to obscure or idealize them, you only lose character, or paint a character into your model which is unnatural to him; the result will not be satisfactory. =quiet sitters.=--an inexperienced painter should not use a model with too much vivacity of body or of expression. the quiet, reposeful, thoughtful model, who will change little in position or manner, will simplify the problem. a model too wide awake or too sleepy will either of them give you trouble. avoid very young children as models, and particularly babies. they are never quiet, and the problems you will have even with the best of models will be made enormously more difficult by their restlessness. for your first work choose models with well-marked faces, and pose them in a direct light which will give you the simplest and strongest effect of light and shade. see that your sitter is in as comfortable a position as you can get him into, so that the pose can be held easily. don't attempt difficult and unusual attitudes. such things require much skill and knowledge to take advantage of, and to use successfully. make your effect more in the study of composition and color than in fanciful poses. later, when you have gained experience, you may do this sort of thing. if you are painting a face, see that the eyes are in at a restful angle with the head, and that they are not facing a too strong light, nor are obliged to look at a blank space. give them room to have a restful focus, and perhaps something pleasant or interesting to look at. =length of pose.=--no sitter can hold a pose in perfect motionlessness. do not expect it. you must learn to make allowance for certain slight changes which are always occurring. you must give your model plenty of rest, too, especially if he be not a professional model. a half-hour pose to ten minutes' rest is as much as a regular model expects to do as a rule. if you have a friend posing for you, particularly if it be a woman, twenty minutes' pose and ten minutes' rest, for a couple of hours, is all you should expect; and if the pose is a standing one, this will probably be more than she can hold--make the rests longer. an inexperienced model--and sometimes even a trained one--is likely to faint while posing, particularly if the room be close. look out for this; watch your sitter, and see that she is not looking tired. the minute that you see the least sign of fatigue, if she shows pallor--rest. do not get so absorbed in your canvas that you do not notice your model's condition. if you are observing and studying your model as closely as you should, you can hardly fail to notice any change that may occur, and you should at once give her relief. =distance.=--don't work too near your model, nor too near your canvas. as regards the first, be far enough away to see the whole of the figure you are painting, or of that part which you are doing, entirely at one focus of the eye, and yet near enough to see the detail clearly. if you are too near, you see parts at a time, and do not see it as a whole. if you are too far, you see too generally for good study. you might make it a rule to be away from your subject a distance of about three or four times the extreme measurement of it. if it is a full length, say fifteen to twenty feet, if you can get so large a room. if it is a head and shoulders, about six or eight feet. never get closer than six feet. as to your canvas, work at arm's length. don't bend over--again you see parts, and you must treat your canvas as a whole. never rest your hand or arm on the canvas. train your arm to be steady. sit up straight, hold your brush well out at the end of the handle, and your arm extended; now and then, if you need closer work, lean forward, and if necessary use a rest-stick; but as a rule your work will be stronger and hang together better if you work as i have suggested. of course you will often get up, and walk away from your work. set your easel alongside the model, and go away to a distance, and compare them. too intense application to the canvas forgets that relations, effect, and wholeness of impression are of the greatest importance, and are only to be judged of when seen at some distance. =background.=--under the general title of background you may place everything which will come in as accessory to the figure, and against or alongside of which it stands. the picture must "hang together"; must have envelopment; must be a whole, not an aggregation of parts. everything that goes to the making up of this whole must have a natural and logical connection with it. from the first conception of the picture you must consider the background as an essential part of it, and as something which will have a vital effect upon the figure. the color of the background must be thought of as a part of, because affecting, the figure itself. the simplicity or variety in the background, the number of objects in it, must be considered as to the effect on the figure also. you cannot make the background a patchwork of objects and colors without interfering with the effect of the main thing in the picture. if your figure is simple and quiet, keep the background the same. make it a principle to treat the background simply always. if the character of the case demands some detail, and a variety of objects, then treat them so that their effect is as simple as possible; and the figure must be made stronger, in order that the variety in the background shall not overpower it. control it by the way the light or the color masses, or simplify the painting of them. keep the background in value as regards prominence and relief of objects as well as in the matter of color. =composition of backgrounds.=--you can make the background help the figure, not merely by the painting of objects which help to explain,--that is of course,--but in the placing and arranging of them you may emphasize the composition. whether the background be a curtain with its folds, or an interior with its furniture, you can and must make every object, every fold of the drapery, every mass of wall or object, distinctly help out in the composition as line and mass. your composition must balance; the line and movement of the figure must have its true relation. the way you use whatever goes into the picture, the objects which make up the background, the way they group, and the spaces between them, must have a helpful reference to that movement, and to the balance of the whole. =simplicity.=--lean always towards simplicity in composition as against complexity. in backgrounds particularly, avoid detail and over-variety. don't have the whole surface of the canvas spotted with _things_. if it is necessary, put it in; if it is not necessary, leave it out; and if there is the slightest doubt which it is, leave it out. the most common and the most fatal mistake is to make the picture too "interesting." the interest in a picture does not lie in the quantity of things expressed, but in the character of them, and in the quality of their representation. if you cannot treat a simple composition well, if you cannot make a picture balance well, and make it interesting with a quiet background, be sure a multitude of objects will not help it. the more you put into it the worse it will be. learn to be master of the less before you try to be master of the more. [illustration: =milton dictating "paradise lost."= _munkacsy._ to show use of background. notice also the composition.] =lighting.=--i have spoken of lighting in general in other chapters. you must apply the principles to your use of figures. study the different effects which you can get on the model by the different ways of placing in reference to the window. whatever lighting will be difficult in one kind of painting will be no less so in another. avoid cross-lights, and do not be ambitious to try unusual and exceptional effects. if one should occur to you as charming, of course do it, if it is not too difficult, but don't go around hunting for the strange and weird. there is beauty enough for all occasions in such effects as are constantly coming under your observation. what was said about simplicity of subject will apply here as well, for the light and color effect is naturally a part of the subject. the most practical lights are those which fall from one side, so as to give simple masses of light and dark; they should come from above the level of the head, so as to throw the shadow somewhat downwards. ="contre jour."=--one kind of posing with reference to lighting, gives very beautiful effect, but calls for close study of values, and is very difficult. it is called in french, _contre jour_; that is, literally, "against the day," or, against the light. it is a placing of the model so that the light comes from behind, and the figure is dark against the light. from its difficulty it should not be taken as a study by a beginner, for modelling and color are difficult enough at best. when they are to be gotten in the low key that the light behind necessitates, and with the close values which this implies, the difficulty is enormously increased. but before you attempt the human figure in the open air, you will find it very good study to work in the house _contre jour_. the effect of a figure out-doors has many of the qualities of _contre jour_. the diffusion of light and the many reflections make the problem more complex; but the contrast, the close values, and the subtle modelling which you must study in _contre jour_ will be good previous training before going out-doors with a model. look at millet's "shepherdess spinning," at the head of this chapter, as an example of _contre jour_. =figures out-of-doors.=--in painting, an object is always a part of its environment. so a figure must partake of the characteristics of its surroundings. out-of-doors it is part of the landscape, characterized by the qualities which are peculiar to landscape. the diffusion of light, the vibration and the movement of it, the brilliancy and pitch, the cross-reflections and the envelopment,--all these give to the figure a quality quite different from that which it has in the house. there is no such definiteness either of drawing, or of light and shade, or of color. the problem is a different one. you must treat your figure no more as something which you can control the effect of, but as something which, place it in what position, in what surroundings, you will, it will still be affected by conditions over which you have no control. textures and surface qualities, local or personal colors, lose their significance to the figure out-of-doors. they become lost in other things. the pose, the action, the mass, the note of color or value,--these are what are of importance. the more you search for the qualities which would be a matter of course in the house, the more you will lose the essential quality,--the quality of the fact of out-doors. when in the house, you can have things as definite as you wish; out-doors you will find a continual play of varying color and light. the shadows do not fall where you expect them to. the values are less marked. the stillness of the pose is interfered with by the constant movement of nature. the color is influenced by the diffused color of the atmosphere and the reflected color of the grass, the trees, and the sky. the light does not fall _on_ the face so much as it falls _around_ it. the modelling is less, the planes are not precise. the expression is as much due to the influence of what is around it as to the face itself. all this means that you must study and paint the figure from a new point of view. you do not make so much of what the model is as how the model looks in these surroundings. you must not look for so much decision, and you must study values closely. look more for the modelling of the mass than for the modelling of surface. look more for the vibration of light and air on the flesh and drapery colors than for these colors in themselves. look for color of contours in the model. study the subtleties of values of contours, and make your figure relieve by the contrast of value in mass rather than by the modelling within the outline. see how the figure "tells" as a whole against what is behind it first, and keep all within that first relation. [illustration: =buckwheat harvest.= _millet._] it is possible to look for and to find many of the qualities which distinguish the figure in the studio light; sometimes you may want to do so. the telling of a story, the literary side of the picture, if you want that side, sometimes needs help that way. but in this you lose larger characteristics, and the picture as a whole will not have the spirit of open air in it. what has been said of the painting of landscape applies to the painting of figures in landscapes. pose your figure out-of-doors if you would represent it out-of-doors. then paint it as if it were any other out-door object. if the figure is more important to the composition than anything else in the landscape, as it often will be, then study that mainly, and treat the rest as background, but as background which has an influence which must be constantly recognized. never finish a figure begun out-doors by painting afterwards from a model posed in the house. leave the figure as you bring it in. if it is not finished, at least it will be in keeping with itself; and this will surely be lost if you try to work it from a model in different conditions. =animals.=--animals should be considered as "figures out-of-doors." there is no essential difference in the handling one sort of a figure or another. the anatomy is different, and the light falls on different textures, but the principle is not changed. you must consider them as forms influenced by diffused light and diffused color, and paint them so. you will find that often, especially in full sunlight, the color peculiar to the thing itself is not to be seen at all. the character of the light which falls on it gives the note, and controls. in the shade the effect is less marked, but the constant flicker makes the same sort of variation, though not to the same extent. there is no secret of painting animals either in the house or out-of-doors which is not the same as the secret of painting the human figure. if you would paint an animal, get one for a model and study it. work in some sort of a house-light first, in a barn or shed, or, if it be a small animal, in your studio. study as you would any other thing, from a chair to a man. the principles of drawing do not change with the character of anatomy. the animal may be less amiable a poser, but you must make allowance for that. when you have got a knowledge of the form, and the character of color and surface, take the animal out-doors, get some one to help hold him, and apply the same principles that would govern your study of a rock or a tree in the open air. as for fur, and all that sort of thing, treat it as you would any other texture-problem in still life. chapter xxxiv procedure in a picture some pictures, particularly those begun and finished in the open air, may be frankly commenced immediately on the canvas from nature as she is before the painter, and without any special processes or methods of procedure carried on to completion. but many pictures are of a sort which renders this manner of work unwise or impossible. there may be too many figures involved. the composition, the drawing, or other arrangement may be too complicated for it, and then the painter has to have some methodical and systematic way of bringing his picture into existence. he must take preliminary measures to ensure his work coming out as he intends, and must proceed in an orderly and regular manner in accordance with the planning of the work. it is in this sort of thing that he finds sketches and studies essential to the painting of the picture as distinguished from their more common use as training for him, or accumulation of general facts. =preliminaries.=--there must be made numbers of sketches, first of the slightest and merely suggestive, and then of a more complete, kind, to develop the general idea of composition from the first and perhaps crude conception of the picture. all the great painters have left examples of work in these various stages. it is a part of the training of every student in art schools to make these composition sketches, and to develop them more or less fully in larger work. in the french schools there are monthly _concours_, when men compete for prizes with work, and their success is influenced by a previous _concour_ of these composition sketches. this preliminary sketch in its completed stage gives the number and position and movement of the figures and accessories, with the arrangement of light and shade and color. there is no attempt to give anything more than the most general kind of drawing, such details as the features, fingers, etc., being neglected. the light and shade on the single figures also is not expressed, but the light and shade effect of the whole picture is carefully shown, and the same with the color-scheme. it is this first sketch that establishes the character of the future picture in everything but the details. sometimes this work is done on a quite large canvas, but usually is not more than a foot or two long, and of corresponding width. =studies.=--after this there must be studies made for the drawing of the single figures, and for more exactness of line and action in the bringing of all together into the whole. this work is usually done in charcoal, from the life, and sometimes on a piece of drawing-paper stretched over the same canvas that the picture will be painted on, or otherwise arranged, but of the same size. often, however, this work, too, is done on a smaller scale than that of the picture, especially when the picture is to be very large. this is based on the preliminary sketch as composition, and is intended to carry that idea out more in full, and perfect the drawing of the different figures, and to harmonize the composition. the composition and relation of figures both as to size and position on the final canvas depend on this study. [illustration: =study of fortune.= _michael angelo._] =corrections.=--in making these studies and in transferring them to the canvas, corrections are of course often necessary. the correction may or may not be satisfactory. to avoid too great confusion from the number of corrections in the same place, they are not made always directly on the study or canvas, but on a curtain of tissue paper dropped over it. the figure may be completely drawn, and is to be modified in whole or in part. the tissue paper receives the new drawing, and the old drawing shows through it, and the effect of the correction can be compared with that of the first idea. the study itself need not then be changed until the alteration which is satisfactory is found, as the process may be repeated as many times as necessary on the tissue paper, and the alterations finally embodied in the completed study. =figure studies.=--the studies for the various single figures are now made in the nude from the model, generally a quarter or half life size--a careful, accurate light and shade drawing of every figure in the picture, the model being posed in the position determined on in the study just spoken of. sometimes further single studies are made with the same models draped, and generally special studies of drapery are made as well; these studies are afterwards used to place the figures in position on the canvas before the painting begins. =transferring.=--the composition study must now be transferred to the canvas, to give the general arrangement and relative position, size, and action of the figures, etc. if the drawing is the same size as the canvas it is done by tracing, if not, then it is "squared up." in this stage of the process mechanical exactness of proportion is the thing required, as well as the saving of time; all things having been planned beforehand, and freedom of execution coming in later. this establishes the proportions, the sizes, and positions of the several figures on the final canvas. the drawing is not at this stage complete. the more general relations only are the purpose of this. onto this preparation the studies drawn from the nude model are "squared up," and the drawing corrected again from the nude model. this drawing is now covered with its drapery, which is drawn from the life in charcoal, or a _frottée_ of some sort. at this stage the canvas should represent, in monochrome, very justly, what the finished picture will be in composition, drawing, and light and shade. if the _frottée_ of various colors (as suggested in the chapter on "still life") has been used, the general color scheme will show also. this completes the preliminary process of the picture, and when the painting is begun with a _frottée_, this stage includes also the _first painting_. ="the Ébouch."=--an _ébouch_ is a painting which, mainly with body color, blocks in broadly and simply the main masses of a composition. sometimes an _ébouch_ is used as one of the preliminary color studies for a picture, especially if there is some problem of drapery massing to be determined, or other motive purely of color and mass. or if there is some piece of landscape detail such as a building or what not to come in, _ébouches_ for it will be made to be used in completing the picture. but more commonly the _ébouch_ is the first blocking-in painting of the picture, by means of which the greater masses of color and value are laid onto the canvas, somewhat rudely, but strongly, so as to give a strong, firm impression of the picture, and a solid under-painting on which future work may be done. whether this _ébouch_ is rough or smooth, just how much of it will be body or solid color and how much transparent, just what degree of finish this painting will have,--these depend on the man who does it. no two men work precisely the same way. some men make what is practically a large and very complete sketch. some paint quite smoothly or frankly, with more or less of an effect of being finished as they go, working from one side of the picture gradually across the whole canvas. others work a bit here and a bit there, and fill in between as they feel inclined. another way is to patch in little spots of rather pure color, so that the _ébouch_ looks like a sort of mosaic of paint. in the matter of color, too, there is great difference of method. some men lay in the picture with stronger color than they intend the finished picture to have, and gray it and bring it together with after-painting. others go to the other extreme, and paint grayer and lighter, depending on glazings and full touches of color later on to richen and deepen the color. all the way between these two are modifications of method. the main difference between these extremes is that when stronger color is used in the first painting, the process is to paint with solid color all through; while if glazings are to be much used, the _ébouch_ must be lighter and quieter in color, to allow for the results of after-painting. for you cannot glaze _up_. you always glaze _down_. the glaze being a transparent color, used without white, will naturally make the color under it more brilliant in color, but darker in value, just as it would if you laid a piece of colored glass over it. and this result must be calculated on beforehand. [illustration: =Ébouch of portrait.= _th. robinson._ one sitting of one hour and a half.] which of all these methods is best to use depends altogether on which best suits the man and his purpose in the picture or his temperament. a rough _ébouch_ will not make a smooth picture. a mosaic gives a pure, clear basis of color to gray down and work over, and may be scraped for a good surface. it is a deliberate method, and will be successful only with a thoughtful, deliberate painter. if a man is a timid colorist, a strong, even crude, under-painting will help to strengthen his color. a good colorist will get color any way. for a student, the more directly he puts down what he sees, the less he calculates on the effect of future after-painting, the better. but whichever way a man works as to these various beginnings, the chief thing is, that he understand beforehand what are the peculiar advantages and qualities of each, and that he consider before he begins what he expects to do, and how he purposes to do it. =further painting.=--the first painting may be put in from nature with the help of the several models in succession. more probably it will be put in from the color sketch which furnishes the general scheme, and from a number of studies and _ébouches_ which will give the principal material for each part of the canvas. with the next painting comes the more exact study from models and accessories themselves. the under-painting is in, the color relations and the contrasts of masses, but all is more or less crude and undeveloped. every one thing in the picture must be gradually brought to a further stage of completion. the background is not as yet to be carried farther as a whole. if the canvas is all covered, so that the background effect is there, it is all that is needed as yet. the most important figures are to be painted, beginning with the heads and hands, and at the same time painting the parts next to them, the background and drapery close around them, so that the immediate values shall all be true as far as it has gone. no small details are painted yet. the whole canvas is carried forward by painting all over it, no one thing being entirely finished; for the same degree of progress should be kept up for the whole picture. to finish any one part long before the rest is done, would be to run the risk of over-painting that part. after the heads and other flesh parts, the draperies should be brought up, and the background and all objects in it painted, to bring the whole picture to the same degree of completion. this finishes the second painting. it is all done from nature direct, and is painted solidly as a rule. even if the first painting has been a _frottée_ this one will have been solidly painted into that _frottée_, although the transparent rubbing may have been left showing, whenever it was true in effect; most probably in the shadows and broader dark masses of the backgrounds. in this second painting no glazings or scumblings come in. the canvas is brought forward as far as possible with direct frank brush-work with body color before these other processes can be used. glazes and such manipulations require a solid under-painting, and a comparative completion of the picture for safe work. these processes are for the modifying of color mainly; you do not draw nor represent the more important and fundamental facts of the picture with them. all these things are painted first, in the most frank and direct way, and then you can do anything you want to on a sure basis of well-understood representation. there will be structure underneath your future processes. =the third painting.=--the third painting simply goes over the picture in the same manner as the second, but marking out more carefully the important details and enforcing the accuracy of features, or strengthening the accents of dark and bringing up those of the lights. the procedure will, of course, be different, according as the picture was begun with an _ébouch_ of body color or a _frottée_ of transparent color. the third painting will, in either case, carry the picture as a whole further toward being finished. =rough and smooth.=--if body color has been used pretty freely in the two first paintings, the surface of paint will be pretty rough in places by the time it is ready for the third painting. whether that roughness is a thing to be got rid of or not is something for the painter to decide for himself. among the greatest of painters there have always been men who painted smoothly and men who painted roughly. i have considered elsewhere the subject of detail, but the question of detail bears on that of the roughness of the painting; for minute detail is not possible with much roughness of surface; the fineness of the stroke which secures the detail is lost in the corrugations of the heavier brush-strokes. the effect of color, and especially luminosity, has much to do with the way the paint is put on also, and all these things are to be considered. as a rule, it might be well to look upon either extreme as something not of importance in itself. the mere quality of smoothness on the canvas is of no consequence or value, any more than the mere quality of roughness is. if these things are necessary to or consequent upon the getting of certain other qualities which are justly to be considered worth striving for, then these qualities will be seen on the canvas, and will be all right. the painter will do well to look on them as something incidental merely to the picture. if he will simply work quite frankly, intent on the expression of what is true and vital to his picture, the question of the surface quality of his canvas will not bother him beyond the effect that it has upon his attaining of that expression. =scraping.=--the second painting will be well dry before the third begins, especially if the paint be more rough and uneven than is for any reason desirable. almost every painter scrapes his pictures more or less. there is pretty sure to be some part of it in which there is roughness just where he doesn't want it. for the third painting, that is to say, after the main things in the picture are practically entirely finished, there remains to be done the strengthening and richening and modifying of the colors, values, and accents, and the bringing of the whole picture together by a general overworking. before this begins, the picture may need scraping more or less all over. if it does need it, you may use a regular tool made for that purpose; or the blade of a razor may be used, it being held firmly in such a position that there is no danger of its cutting the canvas. it is not necessary to scrape the paint smooth, but only to take off such projections and unevenness of paint as would interfere with the proper over-painting. the third painting represents any and all processes that may be used to complete the picture. there is no rule as to the number of processes or "paintings." you may have a dozen paintings if you want them, and after the first two they are all modifications and subdivisions of the third painting; for they all add to furthering the completion of the picture. they are all done more or less from nature, as the second painting was. there should be very little done to any picture without constant reference to nature. if you glaze your picture, glaze one part at a time. don't "tone" it with a general wash of some color. that is not the way pictures are "brought into tone," nor is that the purpose of the glaze. the glaze, like any other application of paint, is put on just where it is needed to modify the color of that place where the color goes. the use of a scumble is the same; and both the glaze and the scumble will be painted into and over with solid color, and that again modified as much as is called for. the thing which is to be carefully avoided is not the use of any special process, but the ceasing from the use of some process or other before the thing is as it should be,--don't stop before the picture represents the best, the completest expression of the idea of the picture. this completeness of expression may even go to the elimination of what is ordinarily looked upon as "finish." finish is not surface, but expression; and completeness of expression may demand roughness and avoidance of detail and surface at one time quite as positively as it demands more detail and consequent smoothness at another. and this final completeness comes from the last paintings which i group together as the "third." scumble and glaze and paint into them, and glaze and scumble again. use any process which will help your picture to have those qualities which are always essential to any picture being a good one. the qualities of line and mass, composition that is, you get from the first, or you never can get it at all. those qualities of character, and truth of representation, and exactness of meaning, you get in the first paintings, together with the more general qualities of color and tone. emphasis and force of accent, such detail as you want, and the final and more delicate perceptions of color and tone, you get in the third or last painting, which may be divided into several paintings. =between paintings.=--when a painting is dry and you begin to work on it again, you will probably find parts of its surface covered with a kind of bluish haze, which quite changes its color or obscures the work altogether. it is "dried in." in drying, some of the oil of the last painting is absorbed by what is beneath it, and the dead haze is the result. you cannot paint on it without in some way bringing it back to its original color. you cannot varnish it out at this stage, for this will not have a good effect on your picture. ="oiling out."=--you can oil it all over, and then rub all the oil off that you can. this will bring it out. but the oil will tend to darken the picture; too much oil should be avoided. turpentine with a little oil in it will bring it out also, but it will not stay out so long, but perhaps long enough for you to work on it. if you put a little siccative de harlem in it, or use any picture varnish thinned with turpentine, it will serve well enough. there is a retouching varnish, _vernis à retoucher_, which is made for this purpose, and is perfectly safe and good. the picture must be well dried before it is finally varnished. chapter xxxv difficulties of beginners all painters have difficulty with their pictures, but the trouble with the beginner is that he has not experience enough to know how to meet it. the solving of all difficulties is a matter of application of fundamental principles to them; but it is necessary to know these principles, and to have applied them to simple problems, before one can know how to apply them to less simple ones. i have tried to deal fully with these principles rather than to tell how to do any one thing, and to point out the application whenever it could be done. there are, however, some things that almost always bother the beginner, and it may be helpful to speak of them particularly. =selection of subject.=--one of the chief objections to copying as a method of beginning study is that while it teaches a good deal about surface-work, it gives no practical training just when it is most needed. the student who has only copied has no idea how to look for a composition, how to place it on his canvas, or how to translate into line and color the actual forms which he sees in nature. these things are all done for him in the picture he is copying, yet these are the very first things he should have practised in. the making of a picture begins before the drawing and painting begins. you see something out-doors, or you see a group of people or a single person in an interesting position. it is one thing to see it; how are you practically to grasp it so as to get it on canvas? that is quite a different thing. how much shall you take in? how much leave out? what proportion of the canvas shall the main object or figure take up? all these are questions which need some experience to answer. in dealing with figures experience comes somewhat naturally, because you will of course not undertake more than a head and shoulders, with a plain background, for your first work. the selecting of subject in this is chiefly the choice of lighting and position of head, which have been spoken of elsewhere; and the placing of them on the canvas should be reduced to the making of the head as large as it will come conveniently. the old rule was that the point of the nose should be about the middle of the canvas, and in most cases on the ordinary canvas this brings the head in the right place. as you paint more you will put in more and more of the figure, and so progress comes very naturally. but in landscape you are more than likely to be almost helpless at first. there is so much all around you, and so little saliency, that it is hard to say where to begin and where to leave off. practice in still life will help you somewhat, but still things in nature are seldom arranged with that centralization which makes a subject easy to see. even the simplicity which is sometimes obvious is, when you come to paint it, only the more difficult to handle because of its simplicity. the simplicity which you should look for to make your selection of a subject easy is not the lack of something to draw, but the definiteness of some marked object or effect. what is good as a "view" is apt to be the reverse of suitable for a picture. you want something tangible, and you do not want too much or too little of it. a long line of hill with a broad field beneath it, for instance, is simple enough, but what is there for you to take hold of? in an ordinary light it is only a few broad planes of value and color without an accent object to emphasize or centre on. it can be painted, of course, and can be made a beautiful picture, but it is a subject for a master, not for a student. but suppose there were a tree or a group of trees in the field; suppose a mass of cloud obscured the sky, and a ray of sunlight fell on and around the tree through a rift in the clouds. or suppose the opposite of this. suppose all was in broad light, and the tree was strongly lighted on one side, on the other shadowed, and that it threw a mass of shadow below and to one side of it. immediately there is something which you can take hold of and make your picture around. the field and hill alone will make a study of distance and middle distance and foreground, but it would not make an effective sketch. the two effects i have supposed give the possibility for a sketch at once, and what suggests a sketch suggests a picture. this central object or effect which i have supposed also clears up the matter of the placing of your subject on the canvas. with merely the hill and plain you might cut it off anywhere, a mile or two one side or the other would make little or no difference to your picture. but the tree and the effect of light decide the thing for you. the tree and the lighting are the central idea of the picture. very well, then, make them large enough on your canvas to be of that importance. then what is around them is only so much more as the canvas will hold, and you will place the tree where, having the proper proportionate size, it will also "compose well" and make the canvas balance, being neither in the middle exactly nor too much to one side. here are two photographs taken in the same field and of the same view, with the camera pointed in the same direction in both. one shows the lack of saliency, although the tree is there. in the other the camera was simply carried forward a hundred yards or so, until the tree became large enough to be of importance in the composition. the placing is simply a better position with reference to the tree in this case. =centralize.=--now, as you go about looking for things to sketch, look always for some central object or effect. if you find that what seems very beautiful will not give you anything definite and graspable,--some contrast of form, or light and shade, or color,--don't attempt it. the thing is beautiful, and has doubtless a picture in it, but not for you. you are learning how to look for and to find a subject, and you must begin with what is readily sketched, without too much subtlety either of form or color or value. =placing.=--having found your subject with something definite in it, you must place it on your canvas so that it "tells." it will not do to put it in haphazard, letting any part of it come anywhere as it happens. you will not be satisfied with the effect of this. the object of a picture is to make visible something which you wish to call attention to; to show something that seems to you worth looking at. then you must arrange it so that that particular something is sure to be seen whether anything else is seen or not. this is the first thing to be thought of in placing your subject. _where_ is it to come on the canvas? how much room is it to take up? if it is too large, there is not enough surrounding it to make an interesting whole. if it is to be emphasized, it must have something to be emphasized with reference to. on the other hand, if it is too small, its very size makes it insignificant. [illustration: =landscape photo. no. .=] if it is a landscape, decide first the proportions of land and sky,--where your horizon line will come. then, having drawn that line, make three or four lines which will give the mass of the main effect or object--a barn, a tree, a slope of hill, or whatever it be, get merely its simplest suggestion of outline. these two things will show you, on considering their relation to each other and to the rest of the canvas, about what its emphasis will be. if it isn't right, rub it out and do it again, a little larger or smaller, a little more to one side or the other, higher or lower, as you find needed. when you have done this to your satisfaction, you have done the first important thing. [illustration: =landscape photo. no. .=] =still life, etc.=--if your subject be still life, flowers, or an animal or other figure, go about it in the same way. look at it well. try to get an idea of its general shape, and block that out with a few lines. you will almost always find a horizontal line which by cutting across the mass will help you to decide where the mass will best come. first, the mass must be about the right size, and then it must balance well on the canvas. any of the things suggested as helping about drawing and values will of course help you here. the reducing-glass will help you to get the size and position of things. the card with a square hole in it will do the same. even a sort of little frame made with the fingers and thumbs of your two hands will cut off the surrounding objects, and help you see your group as a whole with other things out of the way. =walk about.=--a change of position of a very few feet sometimes makes a great difference in the looks of a subject. the first view of it is not always the best. walk around a little; look at it from one point and from another. take your time. better begin a little later than stop because you don't like it and feel discouraged. time taken to consider well beforehand is never lost. "well begun is half done." =relief.=--in beginning a thing you want to have the first few minutes' work to do the most possible towards giving you something to judge by. you want from the very first to get something recognizable. then every subsequent touch, having reference to that, will be so much the more sure and effective. look, then, first for what will count most. =what to look for.=--whether you lay your work out first with black-and-white or with paint, look to see where the greatest contrast is. where is there a strong light against dark and a strong dark against light? not the little accents, but that which marks the contact of two great planes. find this first, and represent it as soon as you have got the main values, in this way the whole thing will tell as an actuality. it will not yet carry much expression, but it will look like a _fact_, and it will have established certain relations from which you can work forward. =colors.=--it ought to go without saying that the colors as they come from the tube are not right for any color you see in nature however you think they look. but beginners are very apt to think that if they cannot get the color they want, they can get it in another kind of tube. this is a mistake. the tubes of color that are actually necessary for almost every possible tint or combination in nature are very few. but they must be used to advantage. now and then one finds his palette lacking, and must add to it; but after one has experimented a while he settles down to some eight or ten colors which will do almost everything, and two or three more that will do what remains. when you work out-of-doors you may find that more variety will help you and gain time for you; that several blues and some secondaries it is well to have in tubes besides the regular outfit. still even then, when you have got beyond the first frantic gropings, you will be surprised to see yourself constantly using certain colors and neglecting others. these others, then, you do not need, and you may leave them out of your box. =too many tubes.=--if you have too many colors, they are a trouble rather than a help to you. you must carry them all in your mind, and you do not so soon get to thinking of the color in nature and taking up the paint from different parts of your palette instinctively--which means that you are gaining command of it. never put a new color on your palette unless you feel the actual need of it, or have a special reason for it. better get well acquainted with the regular colors you have, and have only as many as you can handle well. =mixing.=--use some system in mixing your paint. have your palette set the same way always, so that your brush can find the color without having to hunt for it. have a reasonable way too of taking up your color before you mix it. don't always begin with the same one. is the tint light or dark? strong or delicate? what is the prevailing color in it? let these things affect the sequence of bringing the colors together for mixing. let these things have to do also with the proportionate quantity of each. suppose you have a heavy dark green to mix, what will you take first? make a dash at the white, put it in the middle of the palette, and then tone it down to the green? how much paint would you have to take before you got your color? yet i've seen this very thing done, and others equally senseless. what is the green? dark. bluish or warm? will reddish or yellowish blue do it best? how much space do you want that brushful to cover? take enough blue, add to it a yellow of the sort that will make approximately the color. don't stir them up; drag one into the other a little--very little. the color is crude? another color or two will bring it into tone. don't mix it much. don't smear it all over your palette. make a smallish dab of it, keeping it well piled up. if you get any one color too great in quantity, then you will have to take more of the others again to keep it in balance. be careful to take as nearly the right proportions of each at the first picking up, so as to mix but few times; for every time you add and mix you flatten out the tone more, and lose its vibration and life. now, if the color is too dark, what will you lighten it with? white? wait a minute. think. will white take away the richness of it? white always grays and flattens the color. don't put it into a warm, rich color unless it belongs there. then only as much as is needed. treat all your tints this way. is it a high value on a forehead in full light? white first, then a little modifying color, yellow first, then red; perhaps no red: the kind of yellow may do it. when you have a rich color to mix, get it as strong as you can first. then gray it as much as you need to, never the reverse. but when you want a delicate color, make it delicate first, and then strengthen it cautiously. these seem but common-sense. hardly necessary to take the trouble to write it down? but common-sense is not always attributed to artists, and the beginner does not seem able always to apply his common-sense to his painting at first. to say it to him opens his eyes. best be on the safe side. =crude color.=--the beginner is sure to get crude color, either from lack of perception of color qualities, or inability to mix the tints he knows he wants. in the latter case crude color either comes from too few colors in the mixture, or from inharmonious colors brought together, which is only another form of the same, for an added complementary would make it right. for instance, prussian blue and chrome yellow mixed will make a powerful green which you could hardly put anywhere--a strong, crude green. well, what is the complementary? red? and what does a complementary do to a color? neutralizes, grays. then add a very little red, enough to gray the green, not enough to kill its quality. or if you don't want the color that makes, take a little reddish yellow, ochre say, and possibly a little reddish blue, new blue or ultramarine; add these, and see how it grays it and still keeps the same kind of green. this is the principle in extreme. still, the best way would be not to try to make a green of prussian blue and chrome yellow. it is better to know the qualities of each tube color on your palette. know which two colors mix to make a crude color, and which will be gray, more or less, without a third. =muddy color.=--dirty or muddy color comes from lack of this last. you do not know how your colors are going to affect each other. you mix, and the color looks right on the palette, but on the canvas it is not right. you mix again and put it on the canvas; it mixes with the first tint and you get--mud. why? both wrong. scrape the whole thing off. with a clean spot of canvas mix a fresh color. put it on frankly and freshly and let it alone--don't dabble it. the chances are it will be at least fresh, clean color. over-mixing makes color muddy sometimes, especially when more than three colors are used. when you don't get the right tint with three colors, the chances are that you have got the wrong three. if that is not so, and you must add a fourth, do so with some thoughtfulness, or you will have to mix the tint again. =dirty brushes and palette.=--using dirty brushes causes muddy color. don't be too economical about the number of brushes you use. keep a good big rag at your hand, and wipe the paint out of your brush often. if the color is getting muddy, clean your palette and take a clean brush. your palette is sure to get covered with paint of all colors when you have painted a little while. you can't mix colors with any degree of certainty if the palette is smeared with all sorts of tints. use your palette-knife--that's what it's for. scrape the palette clean every once in a while as it gets crowded. wipe it off. take some fresh brushes. then, if your color is dirty, it is your fault, not the fault of your tools. =out-door and in-door colors.=--there is one source of discouragement and difficulty that every one has to contend against; that is, the difference in the apparent key of paint when, having been put on out-of-doors, it is seen in the house. out-of-doors the color looked bright and light, and when you get it in-doors it looks dark and gray, and perhaps muddy and dead. this is something you must expect, and must learn how to control. as everything that the out-door light falls upon looks the brighter for it, so will your paint look brighter than it really is because of the brilliancy of the light which you see it in. you must learn to make allowance for that. you must learn by experience how much the color will go down when you take it into the house. of course an umbrella is a most useful and necessary thing in working out-of-doors, and if it is lined with black so much the better for you; for there is sure to be a good deal of light coming through the cloth, and while it shades your canvas, it does to some extent give a false glow to your canvas, which a black lining counterbalances. mere experience will give you that knowledge more or less; but there are ways in which you can help yourself. when you first begin to work out-doors try to find a good solid shade in which to place your easel, and then try to paint up to the full key, even at the risk of a little crudeness of color. use colors that seem rather pure than otherwise. you may be sure that the color will "come down" a little anyhow, so keep the pitch well up. then, if the shade has been pretty even, and your canvas has had a fair light, you will get a fairly good color-key. =predetermined pitch.=--another way is to determine the pitch of the painting in some way before you take the canvas out-of-doors. there are various ways of doing this. the most practical is, perhaps, to know the relative value, in the house and out-doors, of the priming of your canvas. have a definite knowledge of how near to the highest light you will want that priming is. then, when you put on the light paint, if you keep it light with reference to the known pitch of the priming, you will keep the whole painting light. =discouragement.=--we all get discouraged sometimes, but it is something to know that the case is not hopeless because we are. that what we are trying to do does not get done easily is no reason that it may not get done eventually. often the discouragement is not even a sign that what we are doing is not going well. the discouragement may be one way that fatigue shows itself, and we may feel discouraged after a particularly successful day's work--in consequence of it very probably. make it a rule not to judge of a day's work at the end of that day. wait till next morning, when fresh and rested, and you will have a much more just notion of what you have done. when you begin to get blue about your work is the time to stop and rest. if the blues are the result of tire, working longer will only make your picture worse. a tired brain and eye never improved a piece of painting. and in the same spirit rest often while you are painting. if your model rests, it is as well that you rest also. turn away from your work, and when you get to work again you will look at it with a fresh eye. =change your work often.=--too continued and concentrated work on the same picture also will lead to discouragement. change your work, keep several things going at the same time, and when you are tired of one you may work with fresh perceptions and interest on another. stop often to walk away from your work. lay down your palette and brushes, and put the canvas at the other end of the room. straighten your back and look at the picture at a distance. you get an impression of the thing as a whole. what you have been doing will be judged of less by itself and more in relation to the rest of the picture, and so more justly. when things are going wrong, stop work for the day. take a rest. then, before you begin again on it to-morrow, take plenty of time to look the picture over--consider it, compare it with nature, and make up your mind just what it lacks, just what it needs, just what you will do first to make it as it should be. it is marvellous how it drives off the blues to know just what you are going to do next. transcriber's notes . passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_. . passages in bold are indicated by =bold=. . illustration captions are indicated by =caption=. . images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest paragraph break. . the word d'oeuvre uses an oe ligature in the original on page . . in the list of illustrations, page number for "descent from cross" is corrected to (original text is ). . the following misprints have been corrected: "heavvier" corrected to "heavier" (page ) "interor" corrected to "interior" (page ) "arrangemen" corrected to "arrangement" (page ) "analagous" corrected to "analogous" (page ) "freeest" corrected to "freest" (page ) "näiveté" corrected to "naïveté" (page ) . other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. fra angelico by j. b. supino translated by leader scott. florence alinari brothers, publishers. . all rights reserved printed by barbéra--alfani and venturi, proprietors florence. * * * * * [illustration: the annunciation. (convent of san marco, florence)] index. beato angelico--proem page i.--fra angelico at cortona and perugia ( - ) ii.--fra angelico at fiesole ( - ) iii.--fra angelico at florence ( - ) san marco in the gallery of ancient and modern art iv.--fra angelico at rome and orvieto ( - ) index to the illustrations [illustration] [illustration: angels of the "last judgement."] tradition shows us fra giovanni angelico absorbed in his work, and either caressing with his brush one of those graceful angelic figures which have made him immortal, or reverently outlining the sweet image of the virgin before which he himself would kneel in adoration. legend pictures him devoutly prostrate in prayer before commencing work, that his soul might be purified, and fitted to understand and render the divine subject; and again in oration after leaving his easel, to thank heaven for having given him power to make his holy visions visible to other eyes. but has tradition any foundation in fact? why not? through his numberless works we may easily divine the soul of the artist, and can well understand, how the calm and serene atmosphere of the monastic cell, the church perfumed with incense, and the cloister vibrating with psalms, would develop the mystic sentiment in such a mind. and can we disregard tradition in face of such humility of life, such beauty of work, exquisite refinement of feeling, and sweetness of expression! among all the masters who have attempted to imbue the human form with the divine spirit, he is perhaps the only one who succeeded in producing pure celestial figures, and this with such marvellous simplicity of line, that they have become the glory of his art. whether it be the virgin enthroned amidst groups of cherubim sounding heavenly trumpets, or christ blessing the just and driving away sinners; whether the martyrs supporting their torments with superhuman resignation, the apostles preaching the gospel, or angels free in the air and chanting celestial glories; the same spirit is in them all--at once intense, devout, and utterly pure, in which the fervent believer and the true artist are inseparably blended. the reason is, that fra giovanni put into his work the flame of an overpowering passion; under his touch features were beautified, and figures animated with a new mystic grace. he threw himself entirely into his art which thus became the spontaneous expression of his soul. "it was the custom of fra giovanni," says vasari, "to abstain from retouching or improving any painting once finished. he altered nothing, but left all as it was done the first time, believing, as he said, that such was the will of god. it is also affirmed that he would never take his pencil in hand until he had first offered a prayer. he is said never to have painted a crucifix without tears streaming from his eyes, and in the countenances and attitudes of his figures it is easy to perceive proof of his sincerity, his goodness, and the depth of his devotion to the religion of christ."[ ] how this devout mind, full of the figurative sacred writings then current, must have overflowed with visions, ecstasies and miracles! and what tremors of awe must he have felt, in putting these visions into colour! his madonnas, their features suffused with candour and humility, bend with maternal grace hitherto unwitnessed, in loving contemplation of the son, or--mothers in glory--they bow to receive the homage of the redeemer. his saints ecstatically gaze at luminous celestial apparitions; his golden winged angels dance lightly beneath the throne of their lord or sound merrily the most various instruments, singing: _laudate dominum..., laudate eum in sono tubæ, laudate eum in psalterio et cithara, laudate eum in timpano et choro..._; or else with their fair curly heads downcast they reverently worship the divine majesty. what a feast of light and colour is in these panels, gleaming with azure and gold like a hymn to religion and faith! "we know from him how the pious imagination of the men of his time pictured the kingdom of heaven, with the angels, saints, and blessed ones, and on this account alone his pictures would have been of extraordinary importance in the history of religion. not to love fra angelico would mean to lack the true sentiment of ancient art, for though we recognize the pious _naïveté_ of the monk, there is in the heavenly beauty of his figures, and the joy of youthful faith which animates the artist, a charm unequalled in the whole history of art!"[ ] whether fra angelico ever actually had a master, it is impossible to ascertain. there are critics who affirm that if anyone initiated him in art, imbuing him with his own sentiment and style, it might have been the camaldolese monk lorenzo monaco; but cavalcaselle justly observes that between angelico and lorenzo monaco there only exists that affinity which in coetaneous artists results from community of thought, social conditions, and religious sentiments. two monks like the camaldolese and the dominican might well show the same ideas, without implying a relation of master and scholar between them.[ ] both critics and historians, however, agree in the assertion that he began his career in art by illuminating codices and choral books. baldinucci and rosini judge that his master in painting was the florentine gherardo starnina, whom lanzi designates as "a painter of life-like style." but padre marchese refuting this opinion observes that "not to mention vasari's silence on the matter, the fact is very doubtful, because gherardo passed many years in spain, and returning to his native land died in , when little guido of mugello[ ] was only years old, an age which scarcely admits of the first steps in art."[ ] but the date of starnina's death is now corrected and proved to have been in , so, taking into account the character of our artist's works, nothing need now be opposed to the theory that fra giovanni may have profited by the teaching of that master, while living in florence after his return from spain; besides it is not proved whether that journey to spain was ever really taken. historians, it is true, tell us that starnina, being obliged to leave florence after the ciompi riots ( ), took refuge in spain, where he lived several years; but it is certain that in his name was inscribed in the guild of florentine painters.[ ] vasari does not doubt that fra angelico, like other artists from masaccio onwards, acquired his skill by studying the frescoes of the brancacci chapel;[ ] but besides the fact that the style of those pictures is diametrically opposed to fra angelico's, the latter could not possibly have been in masaccio's school, for as he was born in , he was fifteen years older than masaccio and already a proved master, when the carmine frescoes were being painted. fra angelico's style is so individual and characteristic, that it might rather be considered as springing from his own disposition, developed under the influence of his time. studying the works left in florence by his great predecessors, leading a retired life, and purifying every idea, every inspiration in the fire of religion, angelico was enabled, by meditation, to perfect the models of the best artists of the "trecento", among whom we should opine that the influence of orcagna in his frescoes in the strozzi chapel of s. m. novella, was greater even than that of giotto. indeed it is evident that what orcagna began, is carried to the highest development in fra angelico, who combined softness and refinement with severity of form, grace of expression with nobility of attitude. the figure of the virgin in the fresco of the judgment in the strozzi chapel, so grand and majestic in its simplicity, is again recognisable in the panels of fra angelico, imitated with his own especial character and spiritual feeling, full of grace and humility, the soft lines breathing beauty and lightness. the saints who appear to be actually in celestial repose, have also inspired fra giovanni; the same gentle and contemplative expression which irradiates the features of the elect is again visible in our painter's figures. in the colouring of both, vivacity is combined with softness, and vigour of chiaro-scuro goes together with transparency of tint. nevertheless it is true that in certain respects, fra angelico might be said to belong to the same school as masolino. they are, however, at the antipodes from each other in sentiment and artistic interpretation, for while the saintly giovanni endeavoured to idealize the human figure and render it divine, masolino, like most of his contemporaries, followed a style distinctly realistic; yet it may be proved that in technique, both followed the same rules, and worked on similar principles. in fact the similitude between the two painters noticeable in their composition, softness of outline, lightness of figures, and clear harmonious colouring, tends to confirm the great artistic affinity which we have indicated. both of them used rosy tints in the flesh, with greenish and yellowish shadows, both recall the older artists of the "trecento" in the perspective, which is often incorrect, and out of proportion. but how far superior is fra angelico when the work of both in its full aspect is compared! fra angelico has, it is true, conventional forms, and there is a certain sameness in his heads with their large oval countenances; the small eyes, outlined round the upper arch of the eyebrow, and with a black spot for pupils, sometimes lack expression, or have a too monotonous one, and the iris is often lost in the white of the cornea; his mouths are always drawn small with a thickening of the lips in the centre, and the corners strongly accentuated; the colour of his faces is either too pink or too yellow; the folds of the robes (often independent of the figure, especially in the lower part) fall straight, and in the representations of the seated virgin expand on the ground, as if to form the foot of a chalice. but in his frescoes these faults of conventional manner almost entirely disappear, giving place to freer drawing, more life-like expression, and a character of greater power. we will not repeat with vasari that fra giovanni perfected his art from the frescoes of the brancacci chapel; but we do not doubt that he too felt the beneficent influx of the new style, of which masaccio was the greatest champion, and that he followed it, leaving behind, up to a certain point, the primitive giottesque forms. there is in his art, the great mediæval ideal rejuvenated and reinvigorated by the spirit of newer times. being in the beginning of his career, as is generally believed, only an illuminator, he continued, with subtle delicacy and accurate, almost timid design, to illuminate in larger proportions on his panels, those figures which are often only parts of a decorative whole. but in his later works while still preserving the simplicity of handling, and the innate character of his style, he displays a new tendency, and learns to give life to his figures, not only by the expression of purity and sweet ecstasy, but in finer particularization of form and action which he reproduces in more material style. his clear diaphanous transparency of colouring is not used from lack of technical ability, but to approach more nearly to his ideal of celestial and divine visions, and succeed in a species of pictorial religious symbolism. in the midst of his calm and serene compositions fra angelico has figures in which a healthy realism is strongly accentuated; figures drawn with decision, strong chiaro-scuro and robust colouring, which show that he did not deliberately disdain the progress made in art by his contemporaries. indeed we should err in believing that fra angelico was unwilling to recognize the artistic developments going on around him, and the new tendencies followed by his eminent neighbours ghiberti, brunelleschi and donatello. it was not so; but he only profited by the movement as far as he deemed possible without losing his own sentiment and character; thus giving a rare example of self-knowledge. perhaps he divined that if he had followed the new current too closely, it would have carried him farther than he wished to go; that the new manner would have removed him for ever from his ideal; in a word, that too intense study of the real, would have diminished or entirely impeded fantasy and feeling. he instinctively saw these perils, and therefore kept himself constant to his old style, and while perfecting himself in it, he still remained what he always had been, and what he felt he should be. though constrained to repeat to excess the usual subjects, too traditionally drawn, "he often," as burckhardt writes, "understood how to avoid in the features of his saintly personages that aspect of abstract impersonality, which had hitherto marked them, and to animate them with delicate and individual life. he succeeded in giving a new character to the time-honoured types used in preceding artistic representations. to prove this it is sufficient to cite the st. john baptist--one of fra angelico's finest creations." he modifies the traditional type of christ according to his own faith and feeling. deriving it from giotto, with improvements gathered from orcagna, he excels both masters, impressing on it a divine character, and giving to the face of the man god a sweet gentleness which is truly sublime. these qualities reach the highest grade in the "coronation of the virgin" at the convent of san marco, and in the picture at pisa[ ] where the saviour is represented standing upright, in the act of blessing with his right hand, while in the uplifted left he holds a golden cup. he is represented full face, in all his majesty, his features of an exquisite sweetness and nobility,--a grand figure, which has all the seduction of a vision, such as our dominican alone could conceive and design. as he could, in a manner no one had ever done before, give to the figure of the living christ the expression of infinite goodness, ready for sacrifice; so in his crucifixions, instead of following the example of his contemporaries, who depicted christ already dead, with marks of sorrow on his features, and contorted by the spasm of a violent death; he represented him living, calm and serene, conscious of the sacrifice he completed, and full of joy in dying for man's salvation. the type of the virgin, too, though its characteristic construction of features, and short and receding chin, are derived from the sienese masters, especially from lorenzetti, in fra angelico responds to an artistic idealization chosen by him as approaching more the divinity of her person. the flowing robes of the virgin show her long and refined hands, but beneath that mantle he draws no feminine figure nor can one even guess at it. all the power of the artist is concentrated in her face umile in tanta gloria, (humble in such great glory) on which the artist has impressed such candour, and so lively an expression of ineffable grace, that one is involuntarily moved to devotion. the divine child with its golden curls, full and sunny face, wide open and sparkling eyes, is in the pictures at cortona and perugia depicted with rosy fingers in the act of blessing; in the "madonna della stella" he embraces his mother so closely that he almost hides himself in her bosom; in the great azure-surrounded tabernacle of the linen guild, he is smiling; while in the fresco of the corridor at san marco, he has an ingenuous wondering gaze as he holds forth his little hand,--an expression so natural that it shows a happy grafting of ideal representation, on a conscientious and close study of the real. full of character, too, are the heads of his old people, with flowing beards and severe aspect, and those of his saints and martyrs, which were evidently either young novices of the convent, contemporary brethren, or elder companions in the faith, portrayed with sapient and ingenuous realism. but the figures which most brilliantly display his genius, are those diaphanous angels, robed in flowing tunics, resplendent with gold, and of infinite variety. while admiring that multitude of celestial creatures, who praise, sing and dance around the radiant madonnas, how can we doubt that they have visited his cell, and that he has lived with them in a fraternal and sweet familiarity?[ ] even when he has to represent scenes of passion, fra angelico mitigates the violence of action with softness of sentiment, for anger and disdain never entered his soul; and in their place he prefers to reproduce one character alone in all his figures with their gentle expression. it is his own character, with its angelic goodness of heart, which he incarnates in the divine beauty of all these celestial beings. as in name and art, so in real life he was truly "angelic," for he spent his whole time in the service of god, and the good of his neighbour and the world. "and what more can or ought to be desired, than by thus living righteously," says vasari, "to secure the kingdom of heaven, and by labouring virtuously, to obtain everlasting fame in this world? and, of a truth, so extraordinary and sublime a gift as that possessed by fra giovanni, should scarcely be conferred on any but a man of most holy life, since it is certain that all who take upon them to meddle with sacred and ecclesiastical subjects, should be men of holy and spiritual minds.... "fra giovanni was a man of the utmost simplicity of intention, and was most holy in every act of his life.... he disregarded all earthly advantages; and, living in pure holiness, was as much the friend of the poor in life as i believe his soul now is in heaven. he laboured continually at his paintings, but would do nothing that was unconnected with things holy. he might have been rich, but for riches he took no care; on the contrary, he was accustomed to say, that the only true riches was contentment with little. he might have commanded many, but would not do so, declaring that there was less fatigue and less danger of error in obeying others, than in commanding others. it was at his option to hold places of dignity in the brotherhood of his order, and also in the world; but he regarded them not, affirming that he sought no dignity and took no care but that of escaping hell and drawing near to paradise. and, of a truth, what dignity can be compared to that which should be most coveted by all churchmen, nay, by every man living, that, namely, which is found in god alone, and in a life of virtuous labour? "fra giovanni was kindly to all, and moderate in all his habits, living temperately, and holding himself entirely apart from the snares of the world. he used frequently to say, that he who practised the art of painting had need of quiet, and should live without cares or anxious thoughts; adding, that he who would do the work of christ should perpetually remain with christ. he was never seen to display anger among the brethren of his order; a thing which appears to me most extraordinary, nay, almost incredible; if he admonished his friends, it was with gentleness and a quiet smile; and to those who sought his works, he would reply with the utmost cordiality, that they had but to obtain the assent of the prior, when he would assuredly not fail to do what they desired. in fine, this never-sufficiently-to-be-lauded father was most humble, modest, and excellent in all his words and works; in his painting he gave evidence of piety and devotion, as well as of ability, and the saints that he painted have more the air and expression of sanctity than have those of any other master."[ ] fra giovanni angelico, whose worldly name was guido or guidolino (little guy), was born in the year ; his father was named piero (surname not known) of vicchio in the mugello;--that pleasant valley which boasts of having given birth to giotto. vasari asserts that guido's brother benedetto, a miniaturist, was also very clever in a larger style of painting, but the researches of milanesi quite refute this opinion, and show that benedetto did nothing more than copy choral books, and that he continued this kind of work till his death.[ ] "the most ancient chronicles of the convent of st. mark and st. dominic at fiesole," writes milanesi when registering the death of fra benedetto brother of angelico, in the year , "remark simply that he was a very good writer, and that he wrote and annotated the choral books of st. mark and some of those of st. dominic." we have only the evidence in vasari and the "annali del convento di san marco," written after his lives of the painters to prove that he was a miniaturist.[ ] in these annals it is added, with more historical truth, that although angelico "might have conveniently lived in the world, and besides his own possessions might have gained any income he chose, with the art for which he was famous even in his youth, yet, for his own satisfaction and peace, being by nature steady and good, and chiefly also for the salvation of his soul he preferred to take the vows in the order of the preaching monks."[ ] this happened in . on the slopes of the smiling hill of fiesole the foundations of a new convent were being laid by giovanni dominici, the great preacher and reformer, who wished in this new monastery to give a model to all the cloistered orders which at the close of the preceding century had greatly fallen from their ancient observances. st. antonino was among the first to embrace this reform, and after two years guidolino and his brother followed his example, choosing the robes of st. dominic. on being received by the dominicans they were sent to cortona, where st. antonino and others already resided, there being as yet no novitiate at the fiesole convent. in they took the irrevocable vows, but it cannot be ascertained whether they still remained at cortona, or returned at once to their own convent at fiesole. if the latter, the two brothers must have been involved in the vicissitudes of the fiesolan convent, which, refusing to acknowledge pope alexander v. (who was elected by the council of pisa ), entered into a fierce contest with the archbishop of florence. the convent was abandoned by its inmates who fled to foligno to avoid the rule of fra tommaso da fermo, general of the order, who had sworn obedience to the new pope. they were received as guests at foligno by ugolino de' trinci, lord of the city, and federigo frezzi, author of the _quadriregio_. here they passed five years, being treated with great benevolence by their brethren, nor did they leave until driven away by the plague in , when they again took shelter at cortona where they remained till . when guidolino entered the convent and took the name of giovanni, he must have been already expert in art; for the vicissitudes which followed could certainly not have facilitated the study of painting. in fact his works which remain at cortona are in so youthful a style, and bear the imprint of such freshness as to remove all doubt on this generally accepted assertion. while staying at foligno, the fiesolan refugees propagated that severe form of life and strict observance which giovanni dominici had taught in his convent at fiesole, and brother giovanni again began his artistic work, for painting was to him like prayer, i. e. his usual way of raising his mind and heart to god. unfortunately few of these first works have been preserved, but from those few we are assured that he studied in florence, from which school alone he could have appropriated the noble manner impressed on all his works; and that those who perceive an umbrian influence in his art, are very far from the truth. there may be some elements common to both the umbrian art and that of angelico; this, however, does not depend so much on the teaching of the school, as on technical affinity; insomuch as umbrian painting in its lucidity, charm and accuracy of colour, is in some measure derived from the art of illumination, and most probably fra angelico took his style from the same source, as even in his most perfect works, he always preserved a remembrance of it. in fact, his patient diligence and study of detail render his pictures so many miniatures, done in larger proportions; the lucidity of tint, the grace of the ornamental motives, the almost exaggerated minuteness of execution, are decided proofs of the artistic education of fra angelico. it is pleasant to imagine him, during his sojourn at foligno and cortona, making pilgrimages to assisi, to draw inspiration from the works of the great masters in the splendid church of san francesco. there he found his old friends, and might at a glance admire together giotto, simone martini, and lorenzetto. we should say he admired simone and lorenzetto more than giotto, for the grace of their figures, refinement of execution, and greater richness of the accessories, robes and ornamentation, together with the pleasing brilliance of colouring, all approached more nearly to fra giovanni's own artistic sentiment than the style of giotto. and even less than the umbrian painters or miniaturists (if indeed there were any worthy to influence the artistic spirit of our artist) did the landscape of verdant umbria stir his soul, which even the sweet slopes of fiesole could not touch. doubtless from the heights of the convent at cortona, which dominates one of the finest views in italy, the young monk admired the beautiful horizon, and enjoyed the splendour of the verdant plain, and the blue mountains, "enwrapt in mists of purple and gold", as he had often at sunrise and sunset, enjoyed from his fiesole convent the gentle fields and dales "peopled with houses and olives"; but, after all, these beauties of nature so often displayed before him, were dumb to an artist who was wholly absorbed in visions beyond this world. the study of the verdant country never occupied his mind; in his paintings, landscape is either an insignificant accessory, or if it occupies a large space in the picture as in the "deposition from the cross" in the florentine gallery, it shows plainly that it is not the result of special study, of personal impressions, or of love of the place itself. in fact it does not attract or interest the observer at all. nor could this be otherwise; the inner life of the spirit, which he lived so intensely, and so vividly transfused in the figures of his saints, must necessarily have abstracted his mind from his surroundings, to which he therefore gave little attention. in this he was faithful to the giottesque principle of not enriching the background, except by just what was necessary to render the subject intelligible, and this without pretension, or new research. his trees rose straight on their trunks, the leaves and branches spreading in conventional style; his rocks have the usual gradations which we find in the old school; the views of distant cities are absolutely fantastic and infantile creations; only the green plain is often illumined, in an unusual manner, by tiny flowerets of many hues, while mystic roses crown the angels' locks, adorn overflowing baskets, or rise on long stalks at the foot of the virgin's throne in transparent vases. such are the characteristics, the spirit and the sentiment that appear in the works of fra angelico, who might be considered as the last representative of that school of which giotto was master; and at the same time the initiator of "quattrocento" art, whose powerful development irresistibly attracted him. he painted so many pictures for the houses of florentine citizens, that "i was often astonished," writes vasari, "how one man alone could, even in many years, do so much and so well." "and we also," justly observes milanesi, "are not less amazed than vasari, for although many works have been dispersed or are still hidden, yet a great number still remain both in italy and other countries, and, what is more remarkable, the greater part are not mentioned by vasari."[ ] we will follow our artist in his different places of abode, thus establishing the various periods of his life and artistic productions; from the fiesole hills, where the first seedlings of his fantasy were sown, to green umbria, where his early works are, works warm with enthusiasm, faith and youthful candour: from florence, which he enriched with admirable frescoes, and innumerable pictures dazzling with gold and azure, to rome, where he left his grand pictorial legacy in the oratory of pope nicholas v. [illustration: angels of the "last judgement."] i. fra angelico at cortona and perugia. [ - .] [illustration: angel of the annunciation. (pinacoteca, perugia.)] if, after a study of the pictorial works of fra angelico, any one should undertake to make a precise classification of them, he would--although his frescoes are easy enough to classify--find himself confronted by no small difficulty in regard to the panel paintings. so active and original was the artist, and so grand in his simplicity, that he always remained just what he appeared from the beginning,--the painter of ingenuous piety, mystical ecstasy, and intense religious fervour. [illustration: history of st. dominic's life.] no record is extant of his first visit to foligno, but in the church of st. dominic at cortona we may still admire a triptych with the virgin and four saints; an annunciation; and two "predelle"; one of which is said to have belonged to the picture of st. dominic, as the scenes relate to the life of that saint, and the other with some stories of the virgin, to the annunciation mentioned above. [illustration: the resurrection of cardinal de' ceccani's nephew.] to the story of st. dominic (which had already been treated in a masterly manner by fra guglielmo, in the "arca" at bologna, and by traini in his picture at pisa), fra angelico has, in some scenes, given a fuller development, but with less dramatic sentiment; exactly the good and bad points which are more clearly shown in his other works. the "predella", divided into seven parts, represents the birth of saint dominic; the dream of pope honorius iii., to whom the saint appears in act of steadying the falling church; the meeting of the saint with st. francis; the confirmation of his rule by means of the virgin; the visits of st. peter and st. paul; the dispute with heretics; the resurrection of the nephew of cardinal de' ceccani; the supper of the saint and his brethren; and lastly his death. [illustration: death of st. dominic.] the scene of the resurrection of the young napoleon, nephew of cardinal stefano de' ceccani, had been already powerfully depicted by traini; in angelico's hands it comes out restrained and cold, the acts of amazement in the devotees present at the miracle, who raise their hands in astonishment, are too conventional: and it is precisely in the intermingling of these gestures of sorrow for the death, and wonder for the revivication, that the pisan artist has brought out his best effects. as we have before pointed out, the calm spirit of fra angelico avoided realistic representation; his figures always suggest love, faith and resignation, but are never agitated; like the soul of their author, they are incapable of violent action; therefore when these should be drawn, the representation falls below reality. we shall see instances of this in other works of his. [illustration: the annunciation. (church of gesù, cortona.)] one of angelico's most familiar subjects was the annunciation, and the most interesting of the cortona pictures, is that of the angel's visit to mary. its motive is simple and clear, as it was transmitted from early christian art; the general lines are unchanged, but the expression greatly so. fra angelico did not disturb the religious solemnity of the apparition with useless accessories; faithful to his own sentiment, he has clothed mary with humility. she sits beneath the portico, the book neglected on her lap, her hands crossed, and her drooping head inclined towards the heavenly messenger. the golden-winged angel with roseate robe also bends before the virgin, the right hand pointing to her breast and the left to the dove which sheds celestial rays on mary's head. in the background adam and eve are being expelled from the terrestrial paradise, symbol of the ancient christian legend which directly connects the story of original sin with that of the redemption. this mystic subject, which does not lack grace and freshness in the cortona painting, finds its fuller development in san marco at florence. here the madonna is seated on a wooden stool, her head projected forward almost in ecstasy, with hands clasped on her breast, and in similar attitude the angel half kneels before her. the scene takes place before a little grated window in the colonnade of a cloister, utterly bare of ornament, but in this very simplicity lies all the charm and poetry of angelico. before a subject so ideal, so solemn, which reveals in such intensity of faith and feeling how his thought spontaneously turned to the prayer of the salutation which was certainly on the artist's lips as he painted, or was inspired by some sweet annunciation hymn such as this, which probably has been often repeated before this entrancing picture: alzando gli occhi vidi maria bella col libro in mano, e l' angel gli favella. dinnanzi a lei si stava inginocchiato quell' angel gabriel tanto lucente, ed umilmente a lei ebbe parlato: "vergine pura, non temer niente; messaggio son di dio onnipotente, che t' ha eletta e vuolti per sua sposa." e poi le disse: "in cielo è ordinato, che siate madre del figliuol di dio, però che gli angeli il padre han pregato, che con effetto adempia el lor disio; e da parte del sommo e buono dio, questa benedizione a voi s' appella." queste parole fur tanto infiammate e circundate di virtù d' amore, che ben parean da dio fussin mandate, e molto se n' allegra nel suo core: "da poi che piace all' alto dio signore, io son contenta d' essere sua ancella." ella si stava dentro alla sua cella, e grande meraviglia si faceva, però che a nessun uomo ella favella, e molto timorosa rispondeva. l' angelo disse allora: "ave maria, di grazia tu se' piena, o chiara stella." allor discese lo spirito santo, come un razzo di sol l' ha circundata, poi dentro a lei entrò quel frutto santo in quella sacrestia chiusa e serrata; di poi partori inviolata e si rimase vergine e donzella. o veri amanti, venite a costei, quella che di bellezza è madonna: l' aria e la terra si sostien per lei, del ciel regina e del mondo colonna, chi vuol veder la donzella gioconda vada a veder la nunziata bella.[ ] the other predella at cortona represents various episodes in the life of the virgin:--the nativity, marriage, visitation, adoration of the magi, presentation in the temple, death, burial and lastly the apparition of the virgin to the blessed dominican reginald of orleans. padre marchese believes that this last scene did not originally belong to the predella; but the doubt is unfounded, for nothing is more natural than the artist's wish to connect the history of the virgin with his order, of which she is the patroness. [illustration: the marriage of the virgin. (cortona.)] [illustration: the marriage of the virgin. (uffizi gallery.)] cavalcaselle, as well as marchese, affirms that the scene of the marriage of the virgin reproduces that of the picture in the uffizi at florence. this may be, as far as the subject and scene go, but in the disposition of the figures, the development of action, the two works have nothing in common. of course in both there must be the priest who unites the bridal couple, and around them the usual personages in various attitudes of complaisance, surprise, and rejoicing, but the grouping of the figures in the predella at cortona is more naturally conceived. the women on the right appear to come from the house where they had met to assist at the ceremony; the men stand on the left. the background with its portico, and the walls, above which the trees of a garden project, are shown with more truth and solidity. to give wider scope to the scene fra angelico has depicted the marriage in an open space. the picture in the uffizi, on the other hand, is so conventional both in architecture and landscape that it is impossible to establish a comparison between the two. [illustration: the visitation.] the visitation depicts the wife of zacharias meeting the virgin, and lovingly embracing her; a serving maid leaning against the threshold, half hidden by the door, is listening with devotion, while another woman kneels on the ground in the road raising her hands to heaven. in the adoration of the magi we find the usual qualities of composition and feeling. one of the kings has already rendered homage to the redeemer, and is talking to st. joseph, who thanks him with earnest devotion; and while the second falls prone before the divine child, and kisses his feet with profound emotion, the third prepares himself to render the required homage. all around are elegant little figures of pages and servants, in life-like and natural attitudes. [illustration: adoration of the magi.] the last story represents the assumption of the virgin, at which, according to ancient tradition, christ is present and carries in his arms the soul of his mother in the form of a little child. [illustration: adoration of the magi. (uffizi gallery.)] padre marchese wrote that both the adoration and this assumption are in every respect similar, or replicas of those in the uffizi. if anything, the pretty little panels of the uffizi might be replicas of the cortona ones; but in florence the only painting with the scene of the adoration of the magi is that in the predella of the tabernacle of the linen weavers' guild. now, while the adoration in the cortona predella is naturally and simply pourtrayed, that of florence is conventional and stiff, the vacuity of some figures and their actions is very evident--therefore this similitude also reduces itself to mere identity of subject. the assumption of the virgin also offers very notable differences. the predella at cortona is more intense and severe, more simple and hence more grand; while the little panel in the uffizi shows that the effort to embellish the scene has been too much for the artist, and the intensity of sentiment is greatly lessened, being injured by useless accessories. in that of cortona, on the contrary, the figures of the apostles who hold the sheet on which the virgin reposes are full of expression and natural in action, the steep and mountainous background has severe and grand lines, as if to emphasize the sadness of the scene. here the artist felt and created, there he merely repeated himself. [illustration: the death of the virgin. (cortona.)] [illustration: the death of the virgin. (uffizi gallery.)] the triptych, once on the great altar of the church of san domenico, now at a side altar on the right, has the virgin seated in the centre with the holy child upright on her knee, his right hand is raised in act of benediction, and with his left he holds a rose. around the throne are four angels, one of which carries a basket of flowers. in the side panels are st. matthew, st. john baptist, st. john the evangelist and mary magdalene. above in the central compartment of the triptych, is the crucifixion and the two rounds on the sides represent the annunciation. in the chapel of sant' orsola in san domenico at perugia there was formerly a panel picture now divided into many parts and much damaged. this was painted by fra giovanni for the chapel of san niccolò de' guidalotti, and may now be seen in the vannucci gallery at perugia. [illustration: virgin and child with saints. (church of st. domenico, cortona.)] the virgin is enthroned with her son on her knees, his right hand in act of benediction, his left holding a half open pomegranate. at the foot of the throne four angels are standing back, the two first lift up a basket full of white and red roses, the others peep from behind the throne of the virgin who turns lovingly to her little son, who is entirely nude, and as rosy as the angels' flowers, and those in three vases at the foot of the throne. on the right of the virgin are st. john baptist and st. catherine; on the left st. dominic and st. nicholas. on the predella, which is divided into three parts, were once various scenes from the life of st. nicholas of bari, two of these are now to be found in the vatican gallery. in a complex composition, they represent the birth of the saint; his listening to the preaching of a bishop to a congregation of women seated in a flowery field; the saint saving from dishonour the daughters of a poor gentleman; and the miracle of causing a hundred measures of wheat to rain down and relieve the famine in the city of nuri. on the upper portion the saint appears from behind a rock, having been invoked by some devotees to calm a tempest which threatened to wreck their bark. [illustration: madonna and child. (pinacoteca, perugia.)] the portion at perugia represents the miraculous salvation of three innocent youths, sons of roman princes; and the death and funeral of the saint. in the lower part of the picture he is extended on the bier surrounded by monks, women and poor people who weep his loss, while above, his soul is being led to heaven by four angels. the frame of the painting is now divided into twelve fragments, each one containing a small figure of a saint: they are st. romuald, st. gregory, st. laurence, st. bonaventure, st. catherine, st. peter martyr, st. mary magdalene, st. thomas aquinas, st. peter, st. stephen, st. paul and st. john. the last four figures have been mutilated in the lower part, and in these, as well as the others, the colouring is much injured. if it were desired to complete the altar-piece, at present, the gables of the tripartite frame would be missing, but there is no doubt that--as in the cortona picture--the two small rounds in the perugian pinacoteca, representing the angel of the annunciation and the virgin, on gold backgrounds, formed part. padre marchese places this panel among the youthful works of the artist, "because it shows more than his other works the manner and technique of giotto's school." padre timoteo bottonio wrote that it was painted in , but the dominican author adds that this is not likely, as fra giovanni angelico was at that time in florence, where the restoration of san marco was begun, and also the building of the new convent which he adorned with so many marvellous frescoes. [illustration: birth, preaching and miracles of st. nicholas. (vatican, rome.)] [illustration: the death of st. nicholas. (pinacoteca, perugia.)] this would actually signify little. as the picture which is said to have been painted for the church of sant' andrea at brescia was naturally done at fiesole, this one for perugia might well have been executed at florence. but though it recalls the most characteristic works of the artist and, for liveliness of colour and accurate study of form, may be considered one of his most remarkable works, we have no hesitation in ascribing it to his first artistic period. in both these altar-pieces the grouping of the figures is still faithful to giottesque tradition; it was only later, i. e. when fra angelico had felt the artistic influences developing around him, that he placed the figures in one picture on different levels, to make a circle round the mother of christ. the type of the virgin herself in this perugian picture is similar to that of the cortona panel; they both have the eyes wide apart, a short, receding chin, and small mouth; characteristics which are also seen in the angels behind the virgin's throne in the san domenico picture at cortona. from an architectural view the throne has here a much more antique shape than in his later designs, where renaissance forms predominate. as to the picture at perugia it has been so restored and arbitrarily put together after the panel was divided, that it affords no serious proof of authenticity. we must therefore conclude that the perugian one was painted before , for could we possibly admit (as padre bottonio wills it) that it was done in , that is only a year before the celebrated painting for the church of san marco? and seeing that when the dominicans again obtained possession of their own convent and returned to fiesole neither fra angelico nor his brother fra benedetto were among them, we may reasonably suppose that angelico was then at perugia, painting the altar-piece for the guidalotti chapel; and that he only returned to florence when he had finished that work, which we may date later than the panel still to be admired at cortona. these are the only works known to have been painted by him while he and his brethren had left their beloved fiesole hills to seek peace and tranquillity in umbria,--the only records of that period of voluntary exile. [illustration: virgin of the annunciation. (pinacoteca, perugia.)] ii. fra angelico at fiesole. [ - .] [illustration] whilst fra angelico was putting the legends of the virgin and st. dominic into colour in umbria, giovanni dominici together with leonardo dati, master-general of the order, was negotiating with the bishop of fiesole and pope gregory xii. to again obtain possession of the convent founded by dominici. it was only in that the fiesolan bishop acceded to their request, on condition that the dominicans would make him a present of some sacred vestments to the value of a hundred ducats. this sum, writes marchese, was taken from the legacy left to the convent by the father of st. antonino, who died about that time. a rich merchant having died in florence in the same year, leaving the monks of fiesole six thousand florins, it was besides decided to enlarge the building. the legal act of free and absolute concession being signed, the father-general at once sent for four of the monks from cortona, among whom, as we have said, were neither fra angelico nor fra benedetto. this does not imply that all the others who had left in , might not have returned later, and probably fra angelico among them.[ ] it was in this convent from which on the side towards the ridge of the fiesole hill, he looked on the olives spreading their silvery branches against the blue sky, that fra angelico, absorbed in work and prayer, passed the greater part of his life. it is impossible to determine at which of the many works that now adorn the florentine and foreign galleries, he worked during his stay in fiesole, where he remained till ; certainly he painted the panel pictures for his church, the tabernacle of the linen weavers, and frescoes in some parts of the convent. that convent so dear to him must have awakened in his soul many bitter and sweet memories--whether he thought of the days when he and his brother benedetto first took their vows, or of the successive vicissitudes when he and the brethren were forced to abandon it. [illustration: coronation of the virgin. (san marco, florence.)] vasari asserts that "he painted an easter candle in several small scenes, for giovanni masi, a monk of the convent of santa maria novella; and also some reliquaries which on solemn feast days were placed on the altar," and are preserved to this day in the convent of san marco. they represent the "coronation of the virgin," the "madonna della stella" and the "adoration of the magi." the coronation has been too much damaged by useless retouching to be able fully to judge of its merits. it is for this cause perhaps that some people have ventured to doubt its authenticity: "one perceives," writes cartier, "his religious conception, and desire to follow his model, but the whole composition lacks order and space, the figures are heavy, attitudes embarrassed, proportions short, outlines coarse and the whole painting is strained."[ ] [illustration: madonna della stella (of the star). (san marco, florence.)] now this is not absolutely exact. naturally if we compare this little reliquary with the great "coronation" at the louvre, we find the composition more compressed, but it is not confused. true, the types of the virgin and redeemer have not that grand simplicity which with sincere enthusiasm we admire in his later panels of the same subject. but possibly we have here the artist's first conception, an idea which he successively developed and perfected till he reached the highest grade of beauty, first in the picture at the louvre, then in the truly celestial one of the florentine gallery. in the little painting of the madonna della stella (of the star) we have qualities of grace and nobility all fra angelico's own. the six adoring angels on the slope of the frame, and the two seated at the base playing musical instruments, not only fully reveal his ability, but might be classed with those of the linen weaver's tabernacle as among the most beautiful and ethereal he ever painted. the third reliquary which is divided into two parts represents the "adoration of the magi," below, and the "annunciation" above. the virgin has a book on her lap, her arms crossed on the breast, and head extended towards the celestial messenger who kneels before her; but both figures, though showing fra angelico's characteristic sentiment, have exaggerated proportions; the neck is inordinately long, the colouring enamelled, and so brilliant as to give the picture the character of a fine and elegantly illuminated missal. in the "adoration" the virgin displays the same defects of proportion, but among the figures of the three kings and the personages accompanying them, are some of exceptional elegance and exquisite beauty. on the whole the scene may be classed among the finest and most graceful of the works which fra angelico has left to us. [illustration: the annunciation and the adoration of the magi. (san marco, florence.)] there is a kind of reliquary in the vatican gallery, which represents the virgin seated, with the child on her left arm. her raised right hand holds the rose, and at her feet kneel st. dominic and st. catherine. cavalcaselle supposes this to have been the fourth of the reliquaries once in santa maria novella, but it more probably belongs to that small painting reproduced by prof. helbig,[ ] in the _revue de l'art chrétien_, in which angelico has represented the death and assumption of the virgin. the under part of the picture, representing the death of the virgin, recalls, in the general grouping of figures, the same subject now in the uffizi gallery; but in this one, four apostles are depicted in the act of raising the bier, while the others surround the christ, who holds in his arms the soul of his mother in the form of a babe. in the upper part we see the virgin with upraised arms, being received by the saviour who extends his hands as if in welcome. the type of the virgin recalls that of the small panel representing the "adoration" and "annunciation." the christ is, in the foreshortening and character of the face, a repetition of that on the reliquary of the "madonna della stella." the figure of the virgin is incorporeal and insignificant; but the angels who in varied attitudes dance around the throne playing divers instruments, are charming and graceful. in the ancient refectory of the fiesolan convent fra angelico painted a life-size christ crucified, with st. dominic kneeling below clinging passionately to the cross. at the sides stand the virgin and st. john the evangelist; there is also a figure of the saintly founder, but it was either added later, or else has been badly restored and cannot be taken as fra angelico's work. the picture has been removed from the wall, and is now in the museum of the louvre; it is damaged in several parts; the delicacy of colouring is lost, the background spoiled, and only the figures of the saviour, the virgin, and the head of st. john remain in tolerable condition. the other fresco in the old chapter-house (this also has been removed from the wall, and is now in the hermitage at st. petersburg), represents the virgin seated, with the child on her knee, between st. dominic and st. thomas aquinas; all these figures show signs of incompetent restoration, the outlines and drapery having been repainted. less spoiled perhaps by retouching, but yet in a deplorable condition, is the other painting, a crucifixion, still existing in the sacristy of the convent. the redeemer with extended arms, has his head drooping straight on the breast, and the legs are stiffened and curve to the right. a crown of thorns encircles the head, which is surrounded by a great aureole; but the head is small; and the face, with its insignificant features, lacks the intense expression which fra angelico usually succeeds in putting into similar subjects. he also painted the altar-piece for the great altar in san domenico at fiesole, "which," writes vasari, "perhaps because it appeared to be deteriorating, has been retouched and injured by other masters. but the predella and ciborium of the sacrament are better preserved; and you may see infinite little figures which are lovely in their celestial glory, and appear indeed to come from paradise, nor can those who draw near ever look at them sufficiently."[ ] the picture is now removed into the choir. in the centre the virgin with her son, is seated on the throne; six angels stand around her in act of adoration, and two kneel in front with vases in their hands. at the sides st. thomas and st. peter are placed on the left; st. dominic and st. peter martyr on the right. the retouching of which vasari speaks, was done by lorenzo di credi in , when the picture was reduced to its present form. we learn this from a record in the ms. chronicle of the convent of fiesole, which is quoted by padre marchese in his "memorie."[ ] but the panel has suffered other and worse things than this. other figures taken from an older frame have been substituted for those in the pilasters. some coarse copies have been put in the place of the three "stories" of the predella, and the original one was sold, together with the ciborium.[ ] the predella, now in the national gallery of london, is divided into five compartments. in the centre is christ robed in white, his right hand raised in benediction, and a standard held in his left; at the sides are a crowd of angels--some blowing trumpets, others playing instruments, others again in attitudes of profound veneration--all have robes of pure and brilliant hues with azure wings lightly sprinkled with gold. the side scenes have multitudes of saints, either standing or kneeling in adoration: on the left are patriarchs, bishops, monks and martyrs, each with his own emblem; on the right, a crowd of kneeling feminine saints among whom we can recognise st. agnes, st. catherine and st. helen, and behind them a line of male saints, amongst them st. cyprian, st. clement, st. thomas, st. erasmus, and others whose names are written on their mitres. still higher king david, st. john baptist and the prophets jeremiah, zaccariah and habakkuk. the faces are painted with great delicacy and accuracy, and although they show some variety of lineament, the expression is rather mannered. the outlines of the feminine saints are full of grace and those of the other sex do not lack great dignity. although the work is of minor proportion, it shows a noteworthy progress when compared with the conceptions of orcagna. the greater part of the draperies are rendered with most refined colouring, so delicately toned and judiciously contrasted, that no part of the painting appears either crude, or of exaggerated richness; while the gold used in every part of the background contributes to give great harmony to the whole. in the pictures placed at the end of the predella, the dominicans are depicted in their white robes and black mantles. [illustration: predella. (national gallery, london.)] this delightful work, which roused the admiration of vasari, contains not less than figures and may justly be considered as one of the gems of the collection. executed with all the delicacy of an illumination, it sparkles with bright but harmonious colours, while the spirit of devotion which penetrates the whole is entirely characteristic of the painter.[ ] angelico reached greater perfection in the picture of the "annunciation" of which vasari says: "in a chapel of the same church is a picture from the same hand, representing our lady receiving the annunciation from the angel gabriel, with a countenance which is seen in profile, so devout, so delicate, and so perfectly executed, that the beholder can scarcely believe it to be by the hand of man, but would rather suppose it to have been delineated in paradise. in the landscape forming the background are seen adam and eve, whose fall made it needful that the virgin should give birth to the redeemer."[ ] this picture (purchased in by duke mario farnese) is now in the museum at madrid. the virgin is seated on the right under a graceful portico sustained by small columns. her head inclines a little towards the angel, in the same attitude as in the cortona altar-piece and the fresco at san marco. she holds the book on her knees, and crosses her hands on her breast; while the golden winged angel, in its rose coloured robe, with an arm curved in similar attitude of reverence, sheds light around, as in the painting at cortona. high up in the left corner the hand of the eternal father sends down a ray of light, in the midst of which the holy spirit is symbolized. in the background, as in the cortona picture, adam and eve are being expelled from paradise. in the predella are some beautiful "stories" representing the "marriage of the virgin," the "salutation," the "adoration of the magi," the "circumcision of christ" and the "death of the virgin."[ ] "but superior to all the other works of fra giovanni, and one in which he surpassed himself, is a picture in the same church (i. e. san domenico at fiesole), near the door on the left hand of the entrance: in this work, he proves the high quality of his powers as well as the profound intelligence he possessed of the art which he practised. the subject is the coronation of the virgin by jesus christ: the principal figures are surrounded by a choir of angels, among whom are vast numbers of saints and holy personages, male and female. these figures are so numerous, so well executed, in attitudes so varied, and the expressions of the heads so richly diversified, that one feels infinite pleasure and delight in regarding them. nay, one is convinced that those blessed spirits can look no otherwise in heaven itself, or to speak under correction, could not, if they had forms, appear otherwise; for all the saints, male and female, assembled here, have not only life and expression, most delicately and truly rendered, but the colouring also of the whole work would seem to have been given by the hand of a saint, or of an angel like themselves. it is not without sufficient reason therefore, that this excellent ecclesiastic is always called frate giovanni angelico. the stories from the life of our lady and of st. dominic which adorn the predella, moreover, are in the same divine style; and i, for myself, can affirm with truth, that i never see this work but it appears something new, nor can i ever satisfy myself with the sight of it, or have enough of beholding it."[ ] [illustration: museum of the louvre--paris. the coronation of the virgin.] the painting is now in the louvre at paris, having been taken from fiesole during the french invasion of . under a rich canopy with inlaid columns and brocade hangings the redeemer seated on the throne, places the crown on the head of his mother, who kneels before him, with hands crossed on her bosom. around them angels are making the air resound with the voice of song, and the music of many instruments. saints, male and female circle round, some standing, others kneeling, their fixed eyes and ecstatic features denoting their joy in such divine splendour. among the saints are the great personages of the religious orders, together with bishops and emperors. on the right, among the kneeling female saints are seen st. agnes tenderly pressing the lamb to her breast, st. catherine holding her wheel of torture and a palm, st. ursula clasps the arrow which united her in death to her divine spouse, st. cecilia's pretty head is garlanded with flowers, while st. mary magdalene turns her back showing the rich locks of hair flowing over her shoulder as she holds the vase of ointment in her left hand. on the opposite side are st. dominic with the lily and open book, st. augustine, st. benedict, st. anthony and st. francis. on a higher level st. louis, with his crown of _fiordalise_, talks with st. thomas; while st. nicholas supports himself with both hands on his pastoral staff. "it is a clever composition, wonderfully balanced, and the solemnity of style does not at all exclude exuberance of life or infinite variety of ideas. "the bodies are almost diaphanous, the heads ethereal, the atmosphere and light have a touch of the supernatural. up to this point the subject is subdued, but the colours lively and pure--among which blue and carmine predominate--gleam with particular splendour."[ ] the predella contains in some small compositions the chief episodes in the life of st. dominic, excepting the central compartment where christ is drawn, issuing from the sepulchre between the virgin and st. john. the compositions are all executed with that love and delicacy which are the glory of the artist, but even these little stories, like the larger panel, have been more or less injured by repeated restorations. [illustration: uffizi gallery--florence. the coronation of the virgin.] a similar subject now in the uffizi gallery at florence and which fra angelico painted for the church of santa maria novella, is still more aerial and celestial, a perfect masterpiece of sentiment and mystic expression. here also fra angelico clings to that traditional characteristic, peculiarly his own--the art of sacred vision, but with what new life he animates it, and what poetical witchery he throws into this creation of his ascetic fantasy! his predecessors reproduced with slight varieties the model of giotto, and the great florentine painter himself has given us the scene in its most simple reality. high in the central part of giotto's "coronation" christ places the crown on the virgin, who with hands crossed, bows her head to receive the homage of her son. but on her face there is no expression of ecstatic joy, modest, indeed "humble in the midst of glory", she droops her eyes, almost as if she dared not rest them on the saviour. angels and saints, symmetrically disposed at the sides, fill the whole background of the picture, with heads either raised in admiration or bowed in respect, but in attitudes so similar, that they give a sense of monotony. then come the saints, some kneeling at the foot of the throne, and others in the side wings of the triptych, reverently bowing to the mother of god. fra angelico repeats the principal motive, but develops it according to his high ideal, his intense faith, and mystic sentiment. he gives to the virgin an expression of infinite sweetness; to the angels a truly celestial charm, to the saints a serene expression of beatitude, and to the whole scene the azure divine character of a vision of paradise. high in the centre the redeemer extends his right hand to add a brilliant gem to the crown of the virgin, who sits near him, with hands crossed in loving reverence. a luminous golden ray from this group engraved on the panel, forms gleaming and resplendent waves in the background of the picture, from which groups of angels stand out, playing all sorts of music, or dancing with hand clasped in hand. two are prostrated in profound admiration at the base, and shed clouds of incense from their thuribles, while two others draw melody from heavenly harps. in the lower part of the picture are many saints, who by their charmed faces and feeling of ineffable joy, show how delighted they are with the vision and the heavenly music. [illustration: ancient and modern gallery--florence. the last judgement.] "the greatest eloquence," writes marchese, "would fail to express the impression which this painting produces. the heart has a language which does not always speak in words, and we can never contemplate this picture without feeling in love with heaven."[ ] among the works which were undoubtedly done by fra angelico during his stay at fiesole, may be ascribed several different representations of the last judgment. he derived the inspiration of the subject directly from orcagna's fresco in santa maria novella, only fra angelico has created a paradise too exclusively modelled on the monastic life. "his ideal," writes reymond, "is a young neophyte entirely absorbed in prayer--a contemplative being who has renounced earthly life, abdicating his qualities as a man to dream of nothing but the future life. orcagna, on the contrary, dreams of an ideal in which human life triumphs in all its fulness, and one might say that the beings which people his paradise are but glorified bodies."[ ] fra giovanni painted hell and paradise with small figures for the camaldolese monks of santa maria degli angeli. this is the picture now in the ancient and modern gallery at florence, of which vasari writes, "he proved the rectitude of his judgment in this work, having made the countenances of the blessed beautiful and full of a celestial gladness; but the condemned, those destined to the pains of hell, he has depicted in various attitudes of sorrow, and bearing the impress and consciousness of their misdeeds and wretchedness on their faces: the blessed are seen to enter the gate of paradise in triumphal dance, the condemned are dragged away to eternal punishment in hell by the hands of demons."[ ] the representation is faithful to artistic tradition. in the highest part the saviour calls the elect to him with his right hand, while with his left he motions away the reprobate: around him are eight winged cherubim, with whom kneeling angels below join to form a circle. some are adoring or praying, others hold scrolls in their hands. on the right sits the virgin in white robes, with hands crossed on her breast and head gently bent: on the left st. john baptist with hands clasped in prayer. at the sides patriarchs, apostles and prophets, and at the extremities st. dominic and st. francis. an angel holds the cross at the feet of christ, and two others flying, blow their trumpets towards the dead, who rise from the open sepulchres below. in the base at the left, demons drag the damned ones to hell; on the right the elect cast glances of love and faith on the saviour, and in joyous fraternity enjoy the heavenly guerdon. the elysian fields of the blessed are truly celestial, gleaming with gold, irrigated by limpid streams, glorious with beautiful flowerets that bloom amid the verdure, the exuberance of nature harmonizing marvelously with the joy of the elect. and in that midst their sportive pennons waved thousands of angels, in resplendence each distinct and quaint adornment. at their glee and carol smiled the lovely one of heaven that joy was in the eyes of all the blest.[ ] not unworthy of the divine poet is angelico's heavenly composition in which as in the dantesque paradise is shed light intellectual replete with love, love of true happiness, replete with joy, joy, that transcends all sweetness of delight.[ ] together with these verses of dante, fra angelico, while endeavouring to depict the dance of the blessed, may well have called to mind these verses of a sacred laud, which is said to be by iacopone da todi and (whether his or not) describes in popular language the celestial _caròla_[ ] of the saints: una rota si fa in cielo de tutti i santi in quel zardino, là ove sta l'amor divino che s'infiamma de l'amore. in quella rota vano i santi et li angioli tutti quanti; a quello sposo van davanti: tutti danzan per amore. in quella corte è un' alegreza d' un amor dismisuranza: tutti vanno ad una danza per amor del salvatore. son vestiti di vergato, bianco, rosso e frammezzato; le ghirlande in mezo el capo: ben mi pareno amatori. tutti quanti con ghirlandi, paren giovin' de trent' anni: quella corte se rinfranchi, ogni cosa è piena d'amore. le ghirlande son fiorite, più che l'oro son chiarite: ornate son di margarite, divisate di colore, ecc.[ ] above from the heavenly jerusalem stream rays of golden light, and two angels who are passing into the portal, are aerial and luminous, as bright and splendid spirits. [illustration: the dance of the blessed. (details from the last judgment)] less original is the representation of hell, which is copied straight from the fresco in the pisan camposanto. not only the same division of _bolge_ (hell-pits), but even the repetition of motives in the souls that fill them; the only and notable difference is the figure of lucifer which instead of being in the centre occupies the base of the picture. at the summit "eriton cruda, che richiamava l'ombre a' corpi sui," is precisely in the same attitude as in the pisan camposanto, a figure holding a banner coiled around by a serpent, and near it is a simoniac with his entrails torn out, the identical figure from the pisan hell. the back view of the figure which a demon raises to throw into the jaws of a terrible monster is also copied entire from the same fresco. the _bolge_ and the damned souls which occupy them, are, as we have said, repetitions, but with less intelligence and character than the pisan fresco. on the left the slothful and lazy are punished; beneath them in two _bolge_ are the passionate and the gluttonous souls, and below again the luxurious and avaricious ones. the poverty of conception in this "inferno" is not even compensated by the usual good qualities of refinement; one could almost believe that the artist found it so repugnant to his character to depict brutality and infernal tortures, that he hurried over this part to get rid of it the sooner. the representation of the damned is cold, their struggles with the demons, which at pisa and in other places is so full of energy, is given here with exaggerated art and becomes ineffectual; in fact this part of the picture is void of feeling, and confirms our previous remarks on the artistic character of the painter. another "last judgment" is in the corsini gallery at rome;--a triptych, the side panels of which represent the "ascension" and the "descent of the holy ghost." this scene is, however, much more simply designed, but cannot be fairly judged now, on account of the retouching and frequent varnishing which disfigure it. [illustration: the last judgment. (rome, national gallery.)] the saviour seated on the clouds, rests his left hand on a book which he holds upright on his knees, while the right is raised in malediction against the sinners, with an action which recalls the christ in the judgment of the camposanto at pisa. on the sides are groups of angels, apostles and saints; and the elect are on the right, the wicked on the left below them. "in the picture of the corsini gallery," writes venturi, "the representation was cramped by the narrow limits of the central panel of the triptych. it is evidently a reduced form of preceding compositions, for several angels which terminate the picture above, are here seen only from the waist downwards. the figures of the elect, loving, ecstatic and beautiful, clad in flame-coloured robes, with stars and flowers, as in similar compositions by fra angelico, are absolutely sublime, while those of the wicked are almost childish, especially the demons with faces of cats and jackals, with red eyes and mouths, black bodies and clawed feet. how much happier he is in the clear and joyful note of colour in some figures standing before a door on the right! and how much better we recognise his sweet spirit in the features of the blest, with their clear eyes whose pupils are fixed trance-like under lightly drawn eyebrows."[ ] [illustration: the last judgment. (berlin museum.)] another panel with a subject analogous to these is in the berlin museum, and is considered superior to that in the florentine gallery.[ ] although the figure of the saviour may be slightly wanting in character, the celestial phalanx is full of grace, especially the blessed ones who cross a flower-strewn field to be led by angels up to paradise; they hold each others hands, and dance and sing delightfully and with graceful action and attitudes raise their heads to join in the glory of _colui che tutto move e risplende_ nel ciel che più della sua luce prende. [illustration: the virgin of the linen weavers' guild. (uffizi gallery, florence.)] [illustration] another last judgment forms one of the thirty-five small pictures which adorned the doors of the presses for the silver vessels etc., in the chapel of the ss. annunziata. it is generally believed that he painted this during his stay at fiesole; but as we find it dates posterior to this, we shall speak of it later, and must first record that in fra angelico painted an "annunciation" for the church of sant' alessandro at brescia, said to be the one on an altar to the right on entering the church. so greatly is it transformed by restorations, that no one in looking at it now would dream that it was by our artist, if indeed it ever were his work. it would appear that the restorer had used other models in repainting the angel and the virgin.[ ] [illustration] on july th the contract was signed between the consuls of the arte dei linaioli (guild of linen weavers) and our artist, for the tabernacle of which they had asked lorenzo ghiberti to give a design. the contract says: "we engage fra guido, called fra giovanni of the order of st. dominic of fiesole, to paint for the said guild, a tabernacle of our lady; to be painted within and without with colours, gold, azure and silver, all of the very finest that can be found, with all his art and diligence, and for all this and his fatigue and work, he shall receive one hundred and ninety gold florins, or any less sum as shall appear to his conscience, and in consideration of the figures that are in the design." [illustration: st mark. st. john baptist.] this painting is now to be admired in the uffizi gallery where it was placed in ; it is too universally known to need a minute description. the virgin enthroned with the holy child is surrounded by twelve angels, the most lovely, graceful and celestial that fra angelico ever painted. in the interior of the side panels are st. john and st. mark, in the exterior st. peter and st. mark. the latter, as is well known, was the protector of the linen guild: "therefore," says padre marchese, "they wished that whether the tabernacle were open or closed, he should be always in their sight." in this work fra angelico shows that his style was derived from giotto and orcagna, though his figures with their large heads, are treated like miniatures and become insignificant; the result is cold and void, precisely by reason of this over conscientious execution. the face of the virgin lacks expression and sentiment, while the angels depicted on the slope of the frame in act of sounding trumpets, psalters, cymbals etc., have such a sweetness of sentiment that they seem literally rained down from heaven. [illustration] iii. fra angelico at florence. [ - .] [illustration] san marco. [illustration] the church of san giorgio--writes vasari--"had at this time been given to the monks of san domenico da fiesole, but they did not occupy it longer than from about the middle of july to the end of january, because cosimo de' medici and lorenzo his brother had obtained for them, from pope eugenius, the church and convent of san marco, which had previously been occupied by salvestrine monks, to whom san giorgio was given in exchange. moreover, they (cosimo and lorenzo de' medici), being much devoted to religion, and zealous for the divine service and worship, gave orders that the above-named convent of san marco should be entirely rebuilt according to the design and model of michelozzo, commanding that it should be constructed on the most extensive and magnificent scale, with all the conveniences that those monks could possibly desire."[ ] and in the year , the said monks made their entry with pomp and solemn fêtes, in which the three bishops of taranto, treves and parentino, took part, preceded by the mace-bearers of the signoria who were sent to give greater magnificence to the scene. fra cipriano, vicar general of the new congregation of the "osservanza," took possession of the convent in the name of that order.[ ] "the first part completed," continues the aretian biographer, "was that above the old refectory and opposite to the ducal stables, which had formerly been erected by the duke lorenzo de' medici. in this place twenty cells were made, the roof was put on, and the various articles of wood-work brought into the refectory, which was finished as we see it in our day."[ ] "the library was afterwards erected, it was vaulted above and below, and had sixty-four bookcases of cypress wood filled with the most valuable books. the dormitory which was in the form of a square, was next built, and finally the cloister was completed, with all the other truly commodious apartments of that convent, which is believed to be the most perfectly arranged, the most beautiful and most convenient building of its kind that can be found in italy, thanks to the skill and industry of michelozzo, who gave it up to its occupants entirely finished in the year .[ ] cosimo de' medici is said to have expended , ducats on this fabric; it is added that while it was in course of construction, he gave the monks ducats every year for their support."[ ] in , two years after the building was begun, the principal chapel was finished, and the work of restoring and embellishing the church was commenced. this was completed in . while the architect was engaged in restoring the church of san marco, fra giovanni was probably commissioned to paint the altar-piece for the great altar. vasari writes of it: "but exquisite and admirable above all is the picture of the high altar in that church; for besides that the madonna in this painting awakens devotional feeling in all who regard her, by the pure simplicity of her expression; and that the saints surrounding her have a similar character; the predella, in which are stories of the martyrdom of st. cosmo, st. damian, and others, is so perfectly finished, that one cannot imagine it possible for any thing to be executed with greater care, nor can figures more delicate, or more judiciously arranged, be conceived."[ ] unfortunately the picture, now in the academy of the belle arti, is in such bad condition that we are not able to confirm vasari's judgment, for the tints have faded, in some parts leaving the undercolouring exposed, in others it is corroded even down to the white of the plaster ground work. the virgin is enthroned, holding on her lap the child, whose right hand is uplifted to bless, while the left holds a globe. beside the throne are groups of angels, in front on the right st. dominic, st. francis and st. peter martyr; on the left st. laurence, st. paul and st. mark; above them kneel sts. cosmo and damian, protectors of the medici family, placed here in homage to the liberality of the medici towards the order. [illustration: madonna and child with angels and saints. (ancient and modern gallery, florence.)] in the predella, now divided, were represented various stories relative to the lives of sts. cosmo and damian, which may be recognised in two little pictures (nos. - , catalogue of ) at the belle arti, and in those now at the gallery at munich (nos. , , ). in the first of the two at florence, the saints have cut off the leg of a sick man, and placed that of a negro in its stead. in the second is represented their burial together with the brethren. in those at munich the scenes are:--the saints constrained by the judge lisia to sacrifice to idols; the saints thrown into the sea and saved by angels, while the judge is liberated from two demons by their prayers; and lastly their crucifixion, while stones and arrows are aimed against them, but rebound on the executioners.[ ] other similar subjects are represented in six "stories" divided into two panels (no. , catalogue of ) in the belle arti. in the first the saints are seen exercising the healing art without receiving payment; they cure palladia, who in her gratitude prays st. damian in the name of god to accept a gift, her brother being wrathful not knowing the cause. in the second the judge lisia obliges the saints and their three brethren to sacrifice to idols; in the third the angels save them from drowning; in the fourth they are condemned to be burnt alive, and sing psalms in the midst of the flames; in the fifth is the stoning; and lastly the decapitation. these works, however, do not always show equal execution, therefore we might judge that the artist sometimes availed himself of the hand of an assistant. from the records remaining to us, it does not appear that fra giovanni worked at any other pictures for his church, so it is probable he gave all his attention to adorning the convent, which on account of the works he has left there, may fairly be considered one of the finest monuments of italian art. it was not the first time that fra angelico had painted large mural frescoes. as he had already shown at fiesole his mastery in that more minute style, which was to find more complete expression in the roman pictures, so the convent of san marco gave him scope to prove his genius also in this freer branch of art. in the cloisters, the corridors, the cells, and the rooms in which the monks met together, we find specimens of his artistic work, and in these various pictures all his favourite personages reappear one by one in larger proportions, but without losing that original grace and sentiment with which his smaller works are imbued. indeed these show that he had studied from the life with independence and sincerity of purpose, and could render it with greater facility and decision. a very noteworthy change in the character of fra angelico's art may be observed in these mural paintings. he must have perceived, after painting the tabernacle for the linen weavers' guild, that a deeper study of the real was necessary to give life to his figures, especially when these should assume larger proportions. to give intelligent expression even to dreams, visions and ideality of thought, a material and technical part is necessary; the mind may wander free in fantasy, through indefinite space, but it needs a firm hand to render the conception evident; and the clearer the expression is, the greater ability in the creation of his works does it show in the artist. thus fra angelico, placing his figures in ideal surroundings, believed at first that refined thought was sufficient to make a perfect picture, and he illuminated his little figures with superficial delicacy, surrounding them with azure and gold, and so idealized them that they are more like diaphanous apparitions than human beings. [illustration: christ on the cross.] but he soon learned that by merely enlarging these little pictures, he could not succeed in giving them even that individuality to which he was led by natural taste and mode of life. in fact, what a difference lies between the figures of the linen weavers' tabernacle painted in , and those of the picture in the church of san marco done in ! the first: void, weak and without expression; the second: full of life and character; and note that this difference strikes the eye even now, notwithstanding the difficulty of comparison owing to the wretched condition to which the panel at san marco is reduced. in this cloister, therefore, where the pictures assume larger proportions and more importance, and the figures greater character and individuality of form, more solidity of artistic execution,--it is here we perceive that far as he still was from the world and worldly things, yet with earnest study and thought he had not failed to avail himself of the progressive development of art around him to improve his style and give more grandeur to his design. we do not know whether the cause which influenced his mind was, that in coming down to florence from the fiesole cloister he was brought into more immediate contact with other styles of art, and artists who followed a different, even opposite method. the distance of his convent from the city was not, however, so great as to have prevented his visiting the immortal works which enriched florence, or to diminish the relations of friendship or acquaintance which he surely had formed with his greater colleagues. in fact, fra angelico and ghiberti must have already consulted together about the tabernacle of the linen guild; and the works which the pious monk sent from fiesole to the churches and convents of florence could not have been unknown there, any more than the works of the other artists in the city were to him. certain changes independent of external causes sometimes take place naturally, we might say spontaneously, in strong artistic temperaments. fra angelico felt and understood as he continued his work, that something was wanting in him before he could succeed in giving reality to his thoughts and sentiment; he necessarily perfected his studies, and investigated truth more conscientiously--the result was the new style, a natural consequence of artistic individual progress. [illustration: st. peter martyr.] opposite the entrance in the pretty cloister of the florentine convent we may admire the figure of the crucified christ who turns his eyes to st. dominic kneeling below, and embracing the cross with both hands, while raising his head to meet the glance of the saviour. in the five lunettes of the doors in the cloister, fra angelico has represented st. peter martyr, st. dominic, christ issuing from the sepulchre, christ in the dress of a pilgrim, and st. thomas aquinas. the figure of the crucified saviour is nobly beautiful in its simple and intelligent outline, firm design and life-like colouring. that of st. peter martyr is full of character; it is a half figure holding with his left hand the palm of martyrdom and a book which he rests on his side; the first finger of the right hand is placed on his mouth, indicating the silence of the cloister. st. dominic has the book of his rules in one hand and the discipline, or rope for scourging in the other, as though to demonstrate that both moral and material influence should govern a religious community. the "christ of the resurrection" shows his wounds, and st. thomas aquinas holds his book of theology in both hands. [illustration: christ issuing from the sepulchre.] in the arch of the hospice the painter has represented two dominicans welcoming christ, to remind the brethren that to offer hospitality to the poor and the pilgrims, was the same as receiving christ. the redeemer with his hat hanging behind his shoulders leans on his pilgrim's staff; one of the brethren presses his left hand, and taking him by the right arm invites him to rest. the heads of the two devotees are full of character and expression, and on their faces beam the joy and love they feel for their unexpected guest. the second monk who clasps the saviour's arm with both hands as though he can scarcely believe his own eyes, is drawn with such natural feeling that nothing greater can be desired or attained. equally beautiful is the pilgrim christ with his long beard and curls flowing on his shoulders; the whole scene in fact is given with great nobility and exquisite grace. [illustration: christ in pilgrim's dress.] in the chapter-house of the convent fra angelico repeated the scene of the crucifixion. vasari writes of it thus: "fra giovanni was so greatly beloved for his admirable qualities by cosimo de' medici, that the latter had no sooner completed the church and convent of san marco, than he caused the good father to paint the whole story of the crucifixion of jesus christ on one of the walls of the chapter-house. in this work figures of all those saints who have been heads and founders of religious bodies, are mourning and bewailing at the foot of the cross on one side; and on the other, st. mark the evangelist beside the mother of the son of god, who has fainted at sight of the crucified saviour. around the virgin are the maries, who are sorrowing with and supporting her; they are accompanied by the saints cosimo and damian. "beneath this work, in a frieze above the dado the master executed a figure of st. dominic standing at the foot of a tree; on the branches of which are medallions, wherein are all the popes, cardinals, bishops, saints, and masters in theology who had belonged to fra giovanni's order of the preaching friars, down to his own day."[ ] in this masterly work fra angelico pours out with full hands the most vivid and intense feelings of his soul, and if he does not attain to grand dramatic power, he at least succeeds in depicting with rare ingenuity the varied expressions of sorrow, despair, hope and faith which animate each person, and in giving natural and life-like character and attitude to the various heads. the group of the fainting virgin may possibly seem conventional, but what sweet piety is in the feeling of the other figures! st. dominic, devoutly kneeling, inclines his head (cleverly foreshortened and marvellously expressed) and extends his arms to the redeemer; st. zenobi (or st. ambrose the archbishop) standing upright, points with his right to the saviour; st. jerome, in hermit's dress, bends forward and clasps his hands in prayer; st. augustine holds his pen in one hand, his book and pastoral staff in the other; st. francis brings his hand to his brow in an attitude of melancholy indefinable sadness. the saints benedict, bernard and romuald follow, then st. thomas aquinas with a most beautiful head full of life and character (it must certainly be a portrait, so life-like is the expression), next st. peter martyr with his hands on his breast; and lastly in the foreground an unknown monk (padre marchese thinks it is st. john gualbert) who weeps, with his left hand over his eyes.[ ] [illustration: san marco--florence the crucifixion.] on the left of the fresco, near the swooning virgin, stands st. john baptist pointing to the saviour; st. mark kneeling shows his gospel; st. laurence clasps his hands on his breast; and st. cosmo wrings his hands as he contemplates the cross; while st. damian turns, covering his eyes, and weeping the mournful loss of the lord. in the ornamentation of the simulated frame which surrounds the fresco, are hexagonal spaces containing half figures of prophets with labels, containing texts referring to the passion of christ; and below them on the right, the erythrean sibyl. in the lower part of the frieze, are ten rounds, containing portraits of the most illustrious members of the dominican order. in the centre st. dominic, on the left pope innocent v., cardinal ugone, father paulo the florentine, the archbishop st. antonino (this must surely have been added later), the blessed ones giordano of saxony, niccolò, remigius the florentine and buoninsegna the martyr. on the right are the blessed brethren john dominici, peter of the marshes, albertus magnus, st. raymond, chiaro of sesto, st. vincent ferreri and bernard the martyr. retouches and restorations are not wanting in this picture, the drapery has been repainted in several parts and the background has been smudged with that reddish colour, which, in altering the tone of the whole fresco, has injured the limpidity of colour and original refinement of harmony. the chronicles of the convent of san marco record another crucifixion by fra angelico in the refectory of the monks, "probably," writes padre marchese, "a replica of that which he had already painted in the fiesolan convent." this now no longer exists, it appears to have been destroyed to make space for sogliani's great fresco of st. dominic at table with his brethren, when they were supplied with bread by angels. but in the cells and dormitories of the florentine convent fra angelico scattered lovely proofs of his genius and sentiment, pouring out on them with rare talent the most exquisite grace of his brush, and tenderest thoughts of his soul. from the "annunciation" to the various scenes from the life of christ; from the "virgin among the saints," in the corridor, to the decoration of the room which cosimo had built for himself in his favourite convent, all breathe such sweet poesy in the grace and simplicity of the varied scenes, that one cannot look at them unmoved. facing the entrance of the upper corridor of the cloister he painted the angel bringing the glad tidings to the virgin. we have already noted in regard to this subject as created by him at cortona, how the representation finds its greater development here, where the artist succeeds better in rendering the feeling of veneration on the part of the heavenly messenger, and the submissive humility of the virgin. the same subject is repeated in a cell (no. ), but in this design, which breathes the same sentiment of sweetness and piety, st. dominic in reverent attitude is looking on. [illustration: the annunciation.] on the wall at the left of the entrance is a crucifixion, with st. dominic on his knees, embracing the cross, the figures are about half life size, the design similar to that which we have already seen in the cloister, but showing less ability. nor are these the only crucifixions which our artist painted. he has reproduced the subject in several cells, always varying either the attitude of the saviour, or the persons who adore him, but the serene attitude of the son of god is unalterable. without exaggerated contractions or violent action he remains fixed on the cross, his head bowed in mute contemplation of the figures below him. these, on the contrary, are the prey of sorrow and despair, they cover their faces, or weep distractedly at his feet. [illustration: "noli me tangere."] some of these frescoes of the crucifixion with st. dominic kneeling below, may be classed as decidedly by other hands, the execution being weak, the drawing incorrect, and the sentiment inefficiently expressed. these variants are doubtless attributable to the assistants he employed in their execution. in the fresco representing the _noli me tangere_ angelico gives us a work full of freshness and life, idealized in giottesque style. the figure of christ is majestic, as with a sign he withdraws himself from the kneeling magdalene, who supplicatingly extends her arms towards him. [illustration: the transfiguration.] most lovely are the composition and feeling of the figures in the "nativity," where the virgin and st. joseph with joined hands kneel in adoration of the babe stretched on a heap of straw on the ground. a little above, on the right stands st. dominic, and behind the virgin on the left a female saint kneels, her hands clasped in prayer. in the background beneath a humble shed are the bull and the ass, and four adoring angels above. [illustration: the risen christ.] in the "transfiguration on mount tabor" the figure of the ascending christ with outstretched arms and noble features is one of fra angelico's best works, but the attitudes of the apostles are conventional; the kneeling figure on the left with hands upraised to express confusion and surprise at the resurrection, is too mannered, and by its pose and action disturbs the serene harmony of the picture. [illustration: the institution of the holy sacrament.] [illustration: the presentation in the temple.] in the "institution of the holy sacrament," fra angelico, in true giottesque style, represented the apostles at the mystic feast, and christ giving them the consecrated wafer, while he holds the chalice in his left hand. here the figures of the disciples admirably express varied feelings of devotion and joy in receiving the divine food from the hand of the master. but the fresco which surpasses all, in nobility of line and simple grandeur of conception, is the "coronation of the virgin." christ and the virgin are seated in glory above the light clouds, the son places the celestial crown on the head of the mother who humbly bows her whole form towards him, with hands crossed on her bosom. her face is irradiated by an ineffable and heavenly smile, the supreme expression of happiness; the drapery of both is white and delicate, enveloping the limbs with well defined folds. the figures without being ineffectual, indeed they are even forcible, yet appear aerial apparitions, and veritable visions of divinity. six saints in ecstasy assist at the triumph, st. thomas aquinas, st. paul, st. dominic, st. francis, st. peter martyr and st. benedict, three on the right and three on the left, in a semicircular composition, all in attitudes of contemplative ecstasy. [illustration: coronation of the virgin.] [illustration: the prayer in the garden.] the frescoes of the maries at the sepulchre, may also be considered one of our artist's masterpieces. the risen christ emerges to half his figure from the clouds which envelop him, while the holy women contemplate the empty sepulchre, and the angel seated in it points out the miracle which has happened. other scenes worthy of notice are the "presentation in the temple," "christ in hades," and the "buffeting of the saviour," and "the prayer in the garden." [illustration: adoration of the magi.] [illustration: the crucifixion.] in one of the last cells, the "crucifixion" is reproduced in a new manner, which represents christ having ascended the ladder and offering himself to death: his mother faints at his feet in the arms of mary magdalene. marchese asserts that this composition was inspired by a legend of st. mary magdalene in the language of the th century. "and i thought that messer gesù, ascended the cross by a ladder voluntarily, offering his hands and feet. a centurion who was afterwards saved saw the deed, and like a wise man he said within himself, oh, what a marvel is here! that this prophet appears to willingly place himself on the cross, neither murmuring nor resisting! and while he stood admiring, messer gesù had ascended sufficiently high, and turning on the ladder opened his kingly arms, and extended his hands to those who were waiting to nail them."[ ] [illustration: the virgin enthroned amidst saints.] lastly in the room which cosimo de' medici had prepared for his own use in the convent and where he often talked with the prior fra antonino, fra angelico painted an "adoration of the magi." as pope eugene iv. slept in this room when he came to florence in to assist at the consecration of the church, it is probable that this adoration allusive to the epiphany, at which time the consecration took place, was painted at that epoch. the fresco, rich in figures and beauty, is executed with real mastery. the personages of the royal cortège vary in type and character, in expression and sentiment, showing the great pains our artist had taken in the painting of this important work, which now, unhappily restored and injured, only allows us to guess at the wonderful beauty with which it was once filled. we see his own hand more completely in the fresco in the corridor representing the virgin enthroned, with the child seated on her knee and several saints at the sides. on the right are st. paul, st. thomas aquinas, st. laurence, and st. peter martyr; on the left st. mark, st. cosmo and st. damian, and st. dominic, holding an open book where it is written: _caritatem habete; humilitatem servate; paupertatem voluntariam possidete. maledictionem dei et meam imprecor possessiones inducenti in meo ordine_. this painting, one of the most perfect in the convent, is one of angelico's best, and shows what a high degree of ability he had reached. the gentle head of the virgin bends down to look at her son with the golden curls, whose face with sparkling eyes breathes an infantile grace. the execution is accurate, the figures well designed, full of character, nobility and life; the delicacy of tone, just balance of composition and freshness of colouring, are mingled with the most profound sentiment and intimate knowledge of truth. rio thinks this fresco was done while fra angelico was in tuscany after ; his adieu, as it were, to his brethren; a last legacy to that devout household with whom he had shared joys and sorrows, and from which he was about to be separated. there is nothing to refute this; but it appears to us that he who had painted the great crucifixion of the chapter-house might well have done at the same time this fresco. it is a compendium of all his technical qualities and feeling, and demonstrates how little by little he succeeded, while still preserving his own spirit, in reaching the real in art, and giving it life in a manner all his own. but in comparing the pictures of the chapel of pope nicholas v. in rome, with this fresco, we cannot avoid noticing in those a greater freedom of composition and grouping of the figures, a greater majesty of design, a truth and depth of observation, not recognisable in any of his earlier works, nor even in the large crucifixion, which is justly considered one of the pious monk's best works. [illustration] in the gallery of ancient and modern art. [illustration: ancient and modern gallery--florence the descent from the cross.] [illustration] the enthusiasm aroused by fra angelico's pictures, caused a vivid desire amongst the various religious orders of the city, to possess some work of his; dominicans, vallombrosians, chartreuse monks, and the camaldolese of santa maria degli angeli, vied with each other, and all in turn obtained some of his admirable creations. among the panels painted by fra giovanni for the florentine churches and convents, the one which excels all for intensity of sentiment and sincerity of expression is the "deposition from the cross," once in the sacristy of santa trinità, and now in the ancient and modern gallery, a panel "in which," writes vasari, "he put so much care that we may class it among the best things he ever did." the disciples with loving reverence let down from the cross, which occupies the centre of the composition, the body of the saviour. his face, drooping on the left shoulder, breathes a sorrowful calm, and divine serenity which death itself could not destroy. the nude is intelligently rendered, in nobility of form, softness of line, and transparency and morbidity of colouring. on the left stands a group of women; st. mary magdalene kisses the feet of christ; the virgin contemplates him in a trance of sadness; on the right the disciples discuss the melancholy drama among themselves, while below, a kneeling saint holds his right hand to his breast and extends the left in a sorrowful wonder. in the background is a hilly landscape with the holy city on the left, and mount calvary which the artist "with poetic and devout conceit," writes marchese, "has drawn adorned with grass and flowers, as though to denote that at the touch of the feet and precious blood of jesus christ, the bare heights were reclad in rich and verdant beauty. although marred by restoration--for the eye is offended by the inharmonious contrast of tints, the effect of unskilful retouching,--we may consider this painting as one of the most beautiful works which fra angelico has left us. grandeur and simplicity are marvellously blended with freshness of colour, and correctness of design with most intense expression and pure sentiment." the landscape in the background shows the usual defects of perspective, but the mountains shade off delicately against the distant blue of the sky, the plain is illuminated with infinite flowerets, and a rich verdure clothes the summit of the sacred hill. in the pilasters of the frame are small figures of saints, some of the best and finest that fra angelico ever painted, and in the gables above the three arches lorenzo monaco has represented the "noli me tangere," the "resurrection," and the "maries at the sepulchre." here the question naturally arises: why should lorenzo monaco have limited his work solely to the three little scenes in the gables of the frame, while fra angelico has given us the beautiful little figures of the pilasters which show all his peculiar grace and refinement? why did an artist capable of producing those admirable saints, leave to fra lorenzo monaco the office (all the worse if he had been, as some say, his master) of finishing the work with only those three insignificant little scenes? and can we suppose that fra lorenzo monaco, already at the apex of his fame, should accept, and, still more strange, be content with a secondary part in fra giovanni's work? the answer is more simple than it at first appears. there is no doubt that the scenes in the gothic gables are the work of the camaldolese monk, and as we cannot logically infer that they were specially painted by him for fra angelico's picture, we must suppose, and indeed firmly believe them to have been added at a later time. in fact, the form of the foliated gothic decoration lacks character and does not harmonize with the pilasters which clearly show, too, a subsequent adaptation of the frame. the finials of the pilasters do not match the style of the gables, in fact it is clear that the gothic ornamentation, taken from some painting by lorenzo monaco, was at a more recent date adapted to fra angelico's altar-piece. fra giovanni painted a panel picture of the "dead christ" for the "compagnia del tempio" in florence; this is now in the ancient and modern gallery, having been placed there in , after the suppression of that company. [illustration: the dead christ.] rio supposes that the enthusiasm aroused by the great deposition in santa trinità, tempted the company to covet the possession of a similar one.[ ] only two figures, however, are common to the two paintings: one is the st. simeon kneeling in the left corner who, in this second picture, is represented as a younger man than in the first; the other is a figure a little behind him, which is a reproduction of that one in the large deposition with a hood on his head, who is speaking to the disciple below him, as he entrust to him the body of the saviour;--a figure which milanesi believes to be a portrait of the architect michelozzo. if this be indeed fra angelico's friend the florentine architect, we may admit cartier's assertion that this panel is a sequel of the larger descent from the cross, and may have been painted at the same time.[ ] but these are things which we dare not affirm with any certainty, as we entertain doubts regarding the greater or less authenticity of writers on the subject of michelozzo's portrait. besides many figures of saints, the painter has introduced those of st. dominic and the beata villana, because the company of the temple had ancient rights over the relics of this good woman which are preserved in the dominican church of santa maria novella. the other figures, though expressing divers feelings of sorrow and lively sympathy, have nothing in common with the famous deposition either in character or technique and the picture does not reach the usual perfection. even the type of the christ differs remarkably in the two paintings, so much so that no comparison can be instituted, or resemblance found between them; moreover, the panel of the temple company is badly spoilt by restoration, and the colouring is so altered that it is almost black in some parts. "in the chapel of the ss. annunziata at florence which piero di cosimo de' medici caused to be built, fra angelico painted the doors of the presses where the silver plate is kept, with little figures executed with great diligence."[ ] they represent the life and death of christ in small scenes, which are now in the ancient and modern gallery. padre marchese writes: "i believe it was in fiesole that he painted many of those little panels, which may now be seen in the gallery of the florentine academy of design, and perhaps also the doors of the presses for the silver vessels in the chapel of the ss. annunziata at florence. in his first edition vasari had enumerated them among his early works, which may have seemed probable, as fra angelico's first steps in art were in illuminating and painting small stories."[ ] but as it was only in that piero de' medici, to show his devotion to the virgin of the annunciation, obtained from the monks the patronage of that altar with the intention of adorning it with a splendour worthy of the dignity of her to whom it was dedicated,[ ] we cannot suppose that fra angelico painted the door of its treasure presses before that time. rio also dates at the epoch of the monk's sojourn in tuscany towards , the great unfinished painting now in the academy of the belle arti, which has been regarded as one of fra angelico's first works. we know as a fact that in he was prior of the convent at fiesole, and may believe that he stayed some time in tuscany, before returning to rome to finish the chapel of pope nicholas v.[ ] but rio adds that "besides the date of the building of the chapel, the fact that the portrait of michelozzo represents him as older in this work than in the deposition," suggests for this cyclic composition an approximative date, very far from that assigned to it previously.[ ] we must not forget, however, that several doubts arise as to the identity of the person representing michelozzo. vasari recognises him in that old nicodemus with a hood, who lowers the christ from the cross in the deposition, while milanesi, asserting that nicodemus has a saint's aureole not a cowl, holds that the portrait of michelozzo is to be seen in the figure with a black hood who speaks with the disciple beneath him as he gives the body of the lord into his hands. certainly milanesi has good reason to doubt vasari's assertion, as nicodemus has no hood: moreover vasari himself in his second edition of the lives ( ) assigns as the architect's likeness that very figure with a cowl who is speaking to the disciple. therefore we must admit that the aretian historian was mistaken either in his indication of the figure, or in the reproduction of it as a headpiece to his life of michelozzo. in any case, a similar figure to that in the "deposition," and with the same head-gear, again appears a little older in the fresco of the convent of san marco representing the "adoration of the magi"; also in another picture of the "presentation in the temple"; and in the little square with a "flight into egypt", on one of the doors of ss. annunziata. [illustration: flight into egypt.] if michelozzo be really portrayed here, we must conclude that the deposition was painted long before , and the press doors about the same time, or a little later; but the student must take into account the curious fact that in the "deposition" the disciple who talks to the man with a cowl above him, has also a certain resemblance to the supposed michelozzo, and that nicodemus reappears as st. john baptist on the left of the large altar-piece painted for the church of san marco, as well as in the picture of the dead christ, and also as the kneeling king who kisses the feet of the babe in the fresco of the "adoration of the magi." therefore, without giving great importance to the question of the true portrait of michelozzo, we find that these heads, whether of nicodemus or the hooded disciple, are represented in various pictures by our artist, modified by age, so that from them we may establish the succession of the different works, i. e. first the "dead christ" of the company of the temple, next the picture at san marco ( ), then the "deposition," and lastly the fresco in san marco, and the little "annunciation." thus all these works would certainly date during fra angelico's stay in florence. but to return to the doors of the presses in the ss. annunziata, it is true, as rio writes, that instead of being a series of subjects for future frescoes or altar-pieces, the "stories" seem a hasty resumé, often too hasty, of works already painted in the convent of san marco or other places. some of them are noticeable for firmness of design and vigour of colouring, others instead are unworthy of the master and evidently show another hand. [illustration: christ betrayed by judas.] [illustration: the resurrection of lazarus.] to give this great work its due appreciation we must take it as a whole, as the profound genius of fra angelico had conceived it. wishing to give it the unity of a dramatic poem, he placed at the beginning and at the end, like a prologue and an epilogue, two symbolic figures, in the last of which the seven branched candlestick serves as a support to the old and new testaments.[ ] we may enumerate among the best scenes the "flight into egypt," the "slaughter of the innocents," the "betrayal of judas," the "dead christ," and the "resurrection of lazarus," all composed in giottesque style: but, when we think of the progress of fra angelico in art as shown in the frescoes in san marco, and his best panel paintings, we cannot avoid noticing a certain want of vigour in these presses. [illustration: the slaughter of the innocents.] [illustration: entombment of christ.] having become accustomed to the grander methods of fresco painting, in which his talent and ability found greater scope for expression,--even though not attaining to the ease and force of some of his contemporaries and followers,--fra angelico must have now found himself at the disadvantage, natural to one who, after moving free in wider space, is suddenly cramped into narrower confines. this explains why we find in some of these small panels, greater conventionality in the representation of scenes and action, and less ease and correctness of execution. we might add also, that many of them, where these defects are especially evident, may be ascribed to other hands, less clever than his own, those of his assistants who were called in to expedite the work and assist the artist. [illustration: coronation of the virgin.] rio believes that two of angelico's paintings, one of which was once in the dominican monastery of san vincenzo d' annalena, and the other in that of the frati dell'osservanza in mugello, but now both at the belle arti, were executed later than the frescoes in the vatican, to which they offer an extraordinary resemblance, not perceivable in the artist's earlier works.[ ] [illustration: the symbolic wheel.] we cannot, however, accept the assertion of the french critic. these two pictures, though utterly different in character and type, too forcibly recall his previous works. and as according to the same author the altar-piece of the monks [ ] of the mugello resembles the other in colouring, technique, the freer style of drapery, the type of the virgin and character of the figures, we might reasonably conclude that both paintings belong to the period of his residence at fiesole or florence, i. e. previous to his departure for rome in . [illustration: the madonna and child with saints. (annalena convent.)] [illustration: the madonna and child with angels and saints. (from the convent of the osservanza.)] we are even less inclined to endorse the opinion of rio in regard to the date of the painting from the annalena convent. the internal organization of the convent was only regulated by a bull of pope nicholas v. after , so there is probably no connection between the internal establishment of the convent and the commission for the picture. the convent (it is well to remember) was founded in , but the religious intentions of anna elena malatesta met with no slight resistance, and it was not till , that pope calixtus iii. conceded her permission to "build in her house a public oratory in which mass should be celebrated and the divine offices performed." we cannot then admit that the picture was specially painted for the convent named[ ] after that saintly lady. when one reflects that anna elena malatesta, foundress of the monastery, was educated in the house of attilio di vieri de' medici, and was by cosimo pater patriæ married to baldaccio of anghiari, it is not unlikely that the picture had been a commission from cosimo, and that when annalena was left a widow, and took the vows in , it was offered by him to the convent, to which the sad widow had consecrated all her care. it is the more probable, that it was painted for the medici, because the two patron saints of their house are represented in it. ss. cosmo and damian only appear in the pictures painted by fra angelico in florence, probably in recognition of the benefits bestowed by cosimo on the monks of san marco; moreover, we do not think the work could have been done at fiesole after the first visit to rome in , because the figures, weak in chiaroscuro, are still treated as if they were enlarged miniatures, and do not show the character of his later works. on the other hand the picture of the osservanza in mugello displays the whole power of the artist, and may be compared, as rio says, to the panel at san marco both in the character of the figures and the larger style of treatment. vasari cites other works which have unfortunately been dispersed or destroyed, among which were an altar-piece in the certosa at florence, representing the "virgin and child," with some angels below, and at the sides st. laurence, st. zenobi, and st. benedict; the "coronation of the madonna," once in the lunette of the acciajoli chapel: another with the "virgin and two saints," painted "con azzurri oltramarini bellissimi," (with beautiful ultramarine blues): and the pictures in the dividing wall of santa maria novella opposite the choir. the "annunciation," which according to vasari was in the church of san francesco at san miniato, and which milanesi believes to be in the museum of madrid, is instead now in the national gallery at london. it is a diptych, in one panel the archangel gabriel, with golden wings outspread, crossing his hands on his breast bows before the virgin, who in the other panel leans forward to listen to his blessed word. the scene is in a cloister, from the arches of which a field of flowers is seen, and in the distant horizon the outlines of the apennine mountains. a great lily blossoms beside the virgin, the two capitals of the columns of the cloister have the albizzi arms carved on them. "this good father painted so many pictures for the houses of the citizens of florence, that one wonders how one man could so perfectly execute even in many years all that he has done." so writes vasari, and indeed a complete list of his paintings still existing in italy and elsewhere would be too long; those we have illustrated will, however, suffice to give a good idea of his artistic genius, and the sentiment with which this gentle artist could represent the marvellous visions of a soul in love with heaven! [illustration: the last supper.] iv. fra angelico at rome and orvieto. [ - .] [illustration: christ in judgment. (orvieto, cathedral.)] these many and various labours--writes vasari--"having rendered the name of fra giovanni illustrious throughout all italy, he was invited to rome by pope nicholas v., who caused him to adorn the chapel of the palace, where the pontiff is accustomed to hear mass, with a "deposition from the cross," and with certain events from the life of san lorenzo, which are admirable."[ ] but vasari errs in giving to nicholas v. the merit of having called fra angelico to rome; he is also mistaken in affirming that the artist was offered the archbishopric of florence, and on his modest refusal sant' antonino was proposed to the pope: "and because fra giovanni appearing to the pope to be, as he really was, a person of most holy life, gentle and modest, the archbishopric of florence having then become vacant, he judged him worthy of that preferment."[ ] it was instead pope eugene iv., who wishing to embellish the vatican with pictures, invited fra angelico to rome in , having admired his sanctity of life, and talent in art when in florence. that pope died the following year, but in his successor nicholas v., fra angelico found another sincere admirer and friend, and he remained in rome to finish the works he had begun. he painted two chapels in the vatican, the one of the sacrament for eugene iv., the other for pope nicholas v., whose name it still bears. the former was pulled down by pope paul iii. to improve the staircase. "in this work," says vasari, "which was an excellent one, fra giovanni had in his own admirable manner painted stories in fresco from the life of christ, and had introduced many portraits of eminent persons then living. these portraits would most probably have been lost to us, had not paulo jovius caused the following among them to be preserved for his museum: pope nicholas v., the emperor frederick, who had at that time arrived in italy; fra antonino, who afterwards became archbishop of florence; biondo da forlì, and ferdinand of arragon."[ ] it is probable that after having finished the chapel of the sacrament, and before the new commission was given by nicholas v., fra angelico--by means of don francesco di barone of perugia, a benedictine monk and celebrated master of glass painting--entered into negotiation with the operai and consuls of the duomo at orvieto, to paint the chapel of the madonna di san brizio. but before he accepted the commission he gave them to understand that he could only go to orvieto in the months of june, july and august, when he did not wish to remain in rome. "he demanded gold ducats a year, together with all expenses of board and lodging, colours and scaffolding; besides seven ducats a month for his assistant, and two for his boy. the contract was signed on these conditions by messer enrico monaldeschi, the principal citizen--almost the tyrant--of orvieto, who always took a personal part in the most important events of the city. fra angelico took with him benozzo di lese, giovanni di antonio da firenze, and iacomo di poli, with whose assistance he commenced the painting in the large lunettes on june th . pietro di niccola of orvieto was also employed. they painted together for three months and a half, but fra angelico did not return the following year. "as the summer of drew near, the overseers, who were left with only pietro baroni, a proved artist, endeavoured to persuade fra angelico to go back again, and join baroni, saying that if he failed them, they would prefer to postpone the work, as they looked more to the beauty than the expense, as they always had been accustomed to do. when every hope of obtaining fra angelico was lost, they gave benozzo gozzoli a trial to continue fra giovanni's frescoes,"[ ] but the effect was not happy. [illustration: the prophets. (orvieto, cathedral.)] fra angelico painted in the roof of the chapel a "christ in judgment," surrounded by a "glory" of angels. sixteen saints and prophets are seated on clouds with the motto: _prophetarum laudabilis numerus_. the saviour in a circle of light raises his right hand on high, while the left supports a globe on his knees. on both sides are groups of angels in varied attitudes of adoration. the prophets stand out in pyramidal groups on a background of gold, and are either reading or meditating with religious calm. rosini judges the christ to be the work of benozzo gozzoli, because it seems inferior to the prophets, which show a grander treatment and better execution. "i think," he writes, "that the prophets alone belong to fra angelico; the christ in glory, and the remainder to benozzo and the others. i am led to this not only by their different style, but the heads of the prophets, although they are disposed one above the other, as the space demands, show the more dignified style, and perfect execution of the florentine monk. that perfection ought to be seen also in the christ, which seems to me to be a little inferior to them."[ ] but even while admitting that the features of the saviour have in some parts the characteristics of benozzo's style, we must not forget that he derived from his master both his good and bad points, and from the latter especially originated those peculiar defects, which are greatly emphasized in benozzo's works. hence it is natural that something of the scholar's manner should appear in that face, but it is no proof that he has worked at it. on the contrary it is enough to prove the impossibility of ascribing this figure to him, to glance at the head of christ in benozzo's fresco in the church of st. francis at montefalco, representing the meeting of st. francis and st. dominic. high up on the left the saviour raises his right hand and the virgin kneels at his feet. now all the figures are absolutely wanting in dignity and character, especially the downcast head of christ, with its projecting forehead and receding chin, which is absolutely vulgar. here benozzo has not even distantly remembered any of his master's noble representations of the saviour. therefore not only had he no part in that figure at orvieto, but neither could he have done the prophets, for they are far superior to the christ. finally, it is not probable that fra angelico, with the feeling which inspired his work, should entrust to an assistant the execution of such an important figure as the christ. even though the figure of the christ is not to be compared to the finest of the prophets, yet we find in the countenance the same characteristics as the other heads display. true, it looks worse than it really is, for a crack in the roof has damaged the mouth and beard, and the fresco has besides suffered in the restorer's hands. it is a known fact, that a few months after fra angelico left, it was necessary to repair the roof of the chapel in which he had worked, on account of the rain that percolated there, to the great detriment of the paintings. however this may be, it is certain that the heads of the prophets have sweetness of expression and nobility of character, and all the figures are remarkable for their fine form, dignified attitudes, free and simple draperies, combined with bright and vivid colouring. these qualities are not so visible in the compartment of our lord and the adoring angels, which may with more certainty be attributed to benozzo. fra angelico returned to rome on the th of september in that year ( ) and never went back to orvieto, but his reasons for breaking his contract and leaving a work incomplete are not explained. perhaps he perceived the difficulties of the composition and was arrested by the terrifying dread--which his character and feeling would have magnified--of painting a last judgment in such grand proportions. or he may have had an intuition, that his work would never be worthy of that famous building, especially as he was called on to depict the punishments of hell and the various feelings of sorrow, passion and despair in the damned souls, sentiments so foreign to his own nature. or possibly the desire to finish the paintings entrusted to him in rome by the new pontiff nicholas v., induced him to break his contract. in the absence of more precise records it is difficult to establish the truth. certain it is that fra angelico left orvieto for rome and that he painted there a "studio" or chapel for nicholas v., for which the payment is entered in a register dated , but "after this year," writes müntz, "we find no more traces of the illustrious dominican, in the books of the secret treasury."[ ] on january th fra angelico is again at fiesole as prior of his convent, and in the same year the rulers of the commune of prato employed the good offices of archbishop antonino to induce fra angelico to paint the principal chapel of their church; but he refused, and the commission was given to filippo lippi. the fact that the name of the dominican artist has not been found in the registers of the vatican treasury after , need not necessarily be taken as a proof that he was not working in the chapel of nicholas v. at a later date. indeed, as he went no more to orvieto, and would not undertake to paint the choir of the prato cathedral, it seems probable that he should have gone back to rome to finish his work there. the chapel which preserves these precious frescoes by angelico may be considered one of the most famous monuments of italian art. on three of the walls, he has represented in two lines of frescoes the vocation, the apostleship, and the martyrdom of st. stephen and st. laurence. on the first side st. stephen receives the communion from st. peter, and distributes alms to the poor: on the second are his preaching and justification before the high priest: in the third his lapidation. below on the first wall is the consecration of st. laurence, and his almsgiving to the poor and maimed; second, his imprisonment and the conversion of the jailer; and lastly his martyrdom. the design is free and firm, yet keeping true to the character of the artist. the execution is more accurate and equal; although less realistic than that of masaccio, yet he succeeds in giving his figures a greater grace and softer expression, indeed, the sentiment with which he imbues his figures, was never reached by any other artist, and that sentiment is here more admirably expressed than in any other of his works. [illustration: chapel of pope nicholas v. vatican--rome. st. lawrence ordained deacon by pope sixtus ii.] [illustration: the preaching and justification of st. stephen. (vatican, rome.)] whether st. stephen be kneeling in wrapt devotion to take the chalice, or with the love of divine charity giving money to the woman, while the little child gives him its hand; whether touching his thumb he seems to explain some religious question, while some women seated there hang on his words, exchange their impressions, or ecstatically clasp their hands in sign of admiration or faith; whether he speak before the great council, or is conducted at last torture, supporting it with faith and resignation;--his noble figure always inspires a feeling of profound piety, of serene calm and personal devotion. although the representation of buildings is still too fantastic, the perspective is not neglected as in some other works. in the "ordination of st. stephen," the design of the interior of the church is in good architectural style, but the canopy above the altar is so low in proportion to the figure of st. peter, that if he were to rise to his full height he could not stand at the altar; in another the open space in which st. stephen is preaching has a fortress on the right, and a palace of very doubtful character in the background. the details of ornamentation, however, are very carefully designed, the motives of the decoration being refined and elegant. the pilasters with their pretty candelabra and capitals rich with sculpture, combine so harmoniously with the purer architectural forms, as to produce a most pleasing effect and show the result of his studies among the numberless remains of ancient rome. [illustration: chapel of pope nicholas v.--vatican--rome. pope sixtus ii consigns the treasures of the church to st. laurence.] the st. laurence series is not less beautiful. it is marvellous that fra angelico could express motives so analogous to the former set of frescoes without repeating himself. sixtus ii., drawn with the lineaments of nicholas v., consecrates to the diaconal office st. laurence, who reverently kneeling extends both hands to receive the sacramental cup. around them are some fine figures of ecclesiastics, who, robed in magnificent vestments, assist at the ceremony, together with deacons and acolytes, who hold the book and censer. there is, it is true, a great sameness in the heads, which suggests that most of them were studied from the same model. in another fresco, the pope consigns the treasures of the church to the saint, while a monk turns brusquely round at the noise made at the door by two soldiers who come to conduct st. laurence to martyrdom. but where fra angelico has best succeeded in fully rendering his sentiment, is in the painting which represents the distribution of alms. angelico evidently delights in the thought of the inner satisfaction of the saint, and the happiness of the recipients; and the sincere and serene joy transfused in the countenances of the different figures is expressed with unusual ability and extraordinary truth to nature. he has enlivened the severity of the scene by the episode of two children, who are laughingly struggling over a piece of money received. infantile grace and content breathe in their features, though slightly disturbed by the doubt which of them will remain possessor of the precious gift. the two last frescoes are very attractive and equally admirable. one represents the condemnation of st. laurence, the other his martyrdom. the study of classic art is still more manifest in these than in the others, for not only the architecture, but even the niches which contain statues are imitated from the antique. in the "condemnation" the emperor decius wears a cuirass with a toga over it fastened on the right shoulder, as in the ancient imperial busts. his sceptre is terminated by a little idol, and above his throne is the roman eagle with outspread wings, in a garland of bay leaves: in the other fresco the statues appear to be reproductions of ancient roman monuments. but unfortunately this last picture has been so injured and restored that we cannot fully appreciate its value. [illustration: chapel of pope nicholas v.--vatican--rome. st. laurence give the church money to the poor.] [illustration: st. bonaventure.] the execution of these pictures is really remarkable. fra angelico, as we have said, without losing his fundamental qualities, has acquired and here reveals new qualities; the four evangelists among the clouds on a background of blue, dotted with golden stars, are noble and full of character; the figures of the saints on the simulated pilasters, and at the corners of each side of the chapel, might be classed among fra angelico's best. who does not remember above the rest the fine and noble figure of st. bonaventure, with his flowing white beard, thoughtful eyes, and an aspect of goodness and seriousness combined that is quite enchanting? what other figure, however beautiful, can show such just proportions, solid form, and majestic design, such a strong character and expression as this? the saint's thoughtful gaze is turned to the left, his mouth lightly indicating a smile, or rather the sweet expression of innate goodness, the marvellously drawn hands support an open book which rests on his side. here fra angelico reveals his skill in all its fulness; and when we reflect on his advanced age, we can only remain in admiring surprise before the freshness of his creative power, and the force of his execution. we have documental evidence that benozzo gozzoli assisted his master in these frescoes, and doubtless we may attribute to him the fine decorations, where roses bud amidst flowers and foliage of every kind, and garlands are resting on pretty little children's heads, or are festooned on medallions bearing the tiara, and crossed keys of nicholas v.; but we cannot give him the merit of having beautified the scenes of the "preaching of st. stephen," or "st. laurence distributing alms."[ ] [illustration: chapel of pope nicholas v. vatican--rome. st. laurence condemned to martyrdom.] we admit the probability that benozzo may have executed some of the figures, but there is a difference between this and supposing that he had any conspicuous part in the compositions, especially in the st. laurence series, which we cannot believe. if the whole scene were indeed by benozzo, would not the difference of hand between master and scholar be more strikingly evident? and the more so, as the scholar had not yet reached mastery of technique, and his early frescoes show a certain crudeness, want of harmony and incorrectness of design, which far remove them from the proved technical ability of his master. nor can we believe that he timidly followed the lines traced on the walls by fra angelico, for even in that case something peculiar to himself must have been clearly perceptible in them. now this, to speak frankly, is not evident. none of the women assisting at the preaching of st. stephen recall the characteristic type of those which benozzo painted in the frescoes at montefalco. the saint's listeners have regular features, and remind one of the various female figures in the san marco frescoes ("resurrection of christ" and "prayer on the mount of olives"). benozzo's handling is less solid, his outlines are hard and sharp, colouring crude and chiaroscuro weak; in the stories of st. laurence we find instead, and in a very high degree, the solidity and correctness which we have admired in fra angelico's florentine paintings. it suffices to recall the "adoration of the magi," in san marco, one of his last works before leaving for rome, and the beautiful prophets at orvieto; in both these pictures we meet with the same types and figures as in the roman frescoes, especially in those representing "st. peter ordaining st. stephen," "st. laurence distributing alms," and "st. stephen before the high priest." without then following up doubtful suppositions, it does not seem admissible that fra angelico, old as he was, should have ceded to his pupil either the direction, or the greater part of works of such importance, which it was greatly to his interest to finish with the utmost care and perfection. cavalcaselle remarks that the severity of the orvietans who would not let benozzo finish the work which fra angelico had left incomplete, is inexplicable; but we must remember that though benozzo imitated his master's style, the inferiority of his talent was always apparent in the common types, false anatomy, and mistaken proportions of his figures. "he does not equal the master who guided him in his first years, but he follows his style as much as he can, with less talent."[ ] it was not therefore benozzo's work which enlarged the master's style, but in the vatican frescoes the master clearly [ ] shows the effort he has himself made to render the action of his figures more grand, his painting more solid, figures more characteristic and the episodes with which his admirable compositions are enriched more fundamentally truthful. these paintings prove that he had reached his greatest artistic development; although always retaining his innate character he concedes to the new requirements of art as much of his temperament and sentiment, as he can conscientiously yield. thus his works display a continuous improvement, each new stage in the long road of his artistic career, represents a fresh conquest, a new and remarkable progress. his pupils and collaborators limited themselves to aiding him, and rendering his work lighter in parts of secondary importance, but he needed no other help to be, and always remain, worthy of the high company in which he finds himself in the vatican. in the sixtine chapel, near the quiet creations of the artists of the renaissance, the power and awful force of michelangelo stand out; in the "stanze" raphael has left an everlasting wealth of artistic treasures; and in the chapel of nicholas v. fra angelico with ingenuous expression and the purest and most sincere religious feeling, painted his master-piece. but notwithstanding the great difference between the former giants of art, and our saintly artist, he is quite worthy of their glorious company. the sweet gentleness of his character was all that hindered him from a more exact and deep study of reality, but it was precisely by means of this character that he succeeded, as no one else could do, in expressing the elevated ideas of his serene and calm soul, profound inspiration and naïve freshness of faith. in after a life entirely dedicated to art, fra giovanni, at the age of years, died in rome, having well earned the grateful veneration of posterity. the austere virtues of his soul gained him the title of _beato_ (blessed) and for the lovely lines traced by his brush, he was called _angelico_. a marble monument was erected over his tomb in the church of the minerva, with his effigy and the following inscription, said to have been dictated by pope nicholas v. himself: hic jacet ven. pictor fr. jo. de flor. ord. p. m c c c c l v non mihi sit laudi, quod eram velut alter apelles, sed quod lucra tuis omnia, christe, dabam; altera nam terris opera extant, altera coelo; urbs me joannem flos tulit etruriæ. "give me not praise for being almost a second apelles, but because i gave to thy poor, o christ, all my earnings. thus part of my work remains on earth and part in heaven. my home was in that city, which is the flower of etruria." [illustration] [footnotes] [ ] vasari, sansoni's edition, ii, p. . [ ] buckhardt und boue, _cicerone_. [ ] _storia della pittura_, ii, p. . [ ] guido was fra angelico's baptismal name in the world. [ ] marchese, _memorie dei più insigni pittori, scultori e architetti domenicani_, i, p. . bologna, romagnoli . [ ] cavalcaselle, _storia della pittura_, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, _vita di masaccio_, ii, p. . [ ] museo civico. sala , n. . [ ] cartier, _vie de fra angelico_. paris, , p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. , note i. the translations from vasari are from bohn's edition. [ ] ibid., ii, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, vol. ii, p. . [ ] translation: i raise my eyes, sweet mary i behold, with book in hand; an angel form is near. it is the shining angel gabriel who kneels before her in humility, and saith: "fear not, pure virgin, i from heaven a messenger from god omnipotent come down to bring glad tidings unto thee, for he hath chosen thee for his blest spouse." he saith again: "in heaven it is decreed thou shalt be mother of the son of god, therefore the father me, his angel, sends to swift fulfil his sacred will and law. and down from him the highest lord to bring this benediction unto which thou'rt called." the angel's heaven-sent words were so inflamed with sacred love's own virtue did they burn they truly seemed to fall from god above. with holy joy her beating heart was full: "behold," she said, "the handmaid of the lord, be it to me according to his word." but as she sat within her archèd cell she wondered greatly how this thing should be: "for i know not, nor speak with any man," to gabriel she timidly responds. then quoth he: "mary hail! thou favoured art, and full of grace, the lord is with thee now." and then came down the spirit of the lord, a ray of golden light shone round about, it pierced her breast, that fruitful heaven-sent ray, and from her womb, whose virgin purity was still inviolate, was born the christ while she a mother, was pure virgin still. oh! lovers true, come hither unto her: madonna she of grace and beauty fair, the earth and air but live for her sweet sake, the queen of heaven, and pillar of the world: he who would see the lovely damosel one this annunciation he should gaze. from an anonymous "laud" reprinted by galletti, n. cclxviii, p. . [ ] op. cit., i, p. . [ ] _vie de fra angelico_, p. . [ ] year , p. . [ ] vol. ii, p. . [ ] vol. i, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. , note . [ ] _pictures in the national gallery_, with descriptive text written by c. l. eastlake. no. i, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] this valuable painting was ceded by the monks of the "scalzi" to the museum of madrid in at the suggestion of señor don federigo de madrazo.--_catalogue of the museum of prado_, don pedro de madrazo , p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. and . [ ] müntz, _histoire de l'art pendant la renaissance--les primitifs_--p. and . [ ] op. cit., i, p. . [ ] _la sculpture florentine_, alinari, , p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] _par._, canto xxxi (carey's translation). [ ] _par._, canto xxx (carey's translation). [ ] the _caròla_ was a kind of sacred dance, in which the dancers holding hands move in a circle, singing as they go. it was supposed to be the dance of paradise.--(_translator's note_.) [ ] translation: in paradise that garden lies where love divine eternal shines, and holy saints _carolas_ weave, their souls inflamed with sacred love. the saints in that bright joyous ring, with angels fair of all degrees, before the bridegroom graceful move and weave the dance of sacred love. those heavenly courts are full of grace, with love immeasurable filled, all in the dance angelic move inspired by their sweet saviour's love. their robes of linen pure are made, white, roseate, and of mingled hues; fair garlands on their heads they wear, fit crowns to crown them priests of love. no head is there ungarlanded, and youthful beams each joyous face; in that bright court refreshed they move where everything o'erflows with love. the garlands made of blossoms fair, shine brighter than the purest gold, the pearly daisies glisten there emblazoning the heavenly love. [ ] venturi, _le gallerie italiane_. _la galleria nazionale di roma_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] see _gazette de beaux arts_, . w. bode, _la renaissance au musée de berlin_; iv. _les peintres florentins du xvme siècle_, p. . [ ] cavalcaselle, _storia della pittura_, ii, p. , note . venturi thinks that the picture approaches more to the art of gentile da fabriano. see vasari, _gentile da fabriano e pisanello_. firenze, sansoni, , p. x. [ ] vasari, ii, _vita di michelozzo_, p. . [ ] richa, _le chiese fiorentine_, vii, p. . [ ] vol. ii, p. . in october the monks demanded a subsidy to rebuild the dormitory which had been destroyed by fire. gaye, i, p. . [ ] vol. ii, p. . some chroniclers attribute the design of the convent to brunelleschi, and the direction and execution of the work to michelozzi. the building was probably completed in . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vol. ii, p. . [ ] _katalog der gemälde-sammlung der kgl. älteren pinakothek in münchen._ mit einer historischen einleitung von dr. franz von reber. [ ] vol. ii, p. . [ ] see vasari, ii, p. , and marchese, op. cit., i, p. and following. [ ] marchese, _san marco illustrato_, p. . [ ] rio, op. cit., ii. p. . [ ] cartier, _vie de fra angelico_, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] marchese, op. cit., i, p. . [ ] _il santuario della ss. annunziata di firenze_, guida storica illustrativa, compilata da un religioso dei servi di maria. firenze, ricci, , p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. , note . [ ] rio, _de l'art chrétien_, p. . "michelozzo paraît avoir, dans ce tableau, de quarante-cinq à cinquante ans. or, on suppose qu'il était né vers , ce qui placerait l'exécution de ce tableau très-peu de temps avant le départ de l'artiste pour rome, en ," p. , note i. [ ] rio, op. cit., ii, p. et seq. [ ] rio, op. cit, ii, p. . [ ] richa, _le chiese fiorentine_, x, pp. - . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] vasari, ii, p. . [ ] luigi fumi, _il duomo d' orvieto e i suoi restauri_. roma, tipografia cooperativa, p. . [ ] _storia della pittura italiana_, iii, p. . [ ] müntz, _les arts à la cour des papes_. première partie, p. . [ ] pératé, _les papes et les arts_. paris, didot, , p. . müntz, _histoire de l'art pendant la renaissance_, i, p. , and m. faucon, _l'oeuvre de fra angelico à rome in the newspaper l'art_, , xxxv, pp. - and - . [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, _a new history of painting in italy_. london, murray, , ii, p. . index to the illustrations. the annunciation (convent of san marco, florence) frontispiece angels of the "last judgment" page and history of st. dominic's life the resurrection of cardinal de' ceccani's nephew death of st. dominic the annunciation (church of gesù, cortona) the marriage of the virgin (cortona) the marriage of the virgin (uffizi gallery, florence) the visitation adoration of the magi adoration of the magi (uffizi gallery, florence) the death of the virgin (cortona) the death of the virgin (uffizi gallery, florence) virgin and child with saints (church of san domenico, cortona) madonna and child (pinacoteca, perugia) birth, preaching and miracles of st. nicholas (vatican, rome) the death of st. nicholas (pinacoteca, perugia) virgin of the annunciation (pinacoteca, perugia) view of the convent of san domenico near fiesole coronation of the virgin (san marco, florence) madonna della stella (of the star) (san marco, florence) the annunciation and the adoration of the magi (san marco, florence) predella (national gallery, london) the coronation of the virgin (museum of the louvre, paris) to face page the coronation of the virgin (uffizi gallery, florence) to face page the last judgment (ancient and modern gallery, florence) to face page the dance of the blessed (details from the last judgment) to face page the last judgment (rome, national gallery) the last judgment (berlin museum) the virgin of the linen weavers' guild (uffizi gallery, florence) angels with musical instruments from the tabernacle of the linen weavers' guild and st. mark st. john baptist the cloister of san marco madonna and child with angels and saints (ancient and modern gallery, florence) christ on the cross st. peter martyr christ issuing from the sepulchre christ in pilgrim's dress the crucifixion (san marco, florence) to face page the annunciation "noli me tangere" the transfiguration the risen christ the institution of the holy sacrament the presentation in the temple coronation of the virgin the prayer in the garden adoration of the magi the crucifixion the virgin enthroned amidst saints st. dominic, from the fresco of "christ at the pretorium" the descent from the cross (ancient and modern gallery) to face page view of florence the dead christ flight into egypt christ betrayed by judas the resurrection of lazarus the slaughter of the innocents entombment of christ coronation of the virgin the symbolic wheel the madonna and child with saints (annalena convent) the madonna and child with angels and saints (from the convent of the osservanza) the last supper christ in judgment (orvieto, cathedral) the prophets (orvieto, cathedral) the preaching and justification of st. stephen (vatican, rome) st. laurence ordained deacon (vatican, rome) to face page sixtus ii. consigns the church treasures to st. laurence (vatican, rome) to face page the distribution of alms (vatican, rome) to face page st. bonaventure (vatican, rome) judgment of st. laurence (vatican, rome) to face page [illustration] note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustration. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) transcriber's note: text enclosed by equal signs was in bold face in the original (example: =bold=). the venetian painters of the renaissance with an index to their works by bernhard berenson author of "florentine painters of the renaissance," "central italian painters of the renaissance." third edition [illustration: _shepherd with pipe._ _from the painting by giorgione, at hampton court._] g. p. putnam's sons new york and london the knickerbocker press copyright, by g. p. putnam's sons _entered at stationers' hall, london_ by g. p. putnam's sons [illustration] made in the united states of america note to the second edition. the indices of this second edition have been carefully revised, and a considerable number of additions have been made to the lists. the author begs once more to call attention to the fact that, with one or two exceptions, _he has mentioned no pictures that he has not seen_. the lists are the result, not of compilation, but of first-hand acquaintance with the works of art. note to third edition. in this edition changes have been made in the numbering of the venice and vienna galleries, as well as of some minor collections, to correspond to recent rehanging. many other alterations have been required by the breaking up of private collections. in several instances it has been impossible to trace pictures to their new homes, and of such the more important remain under the names of their former owners. to the lists of painters have been added beccaruzzi, caprioli, polidoro lanzani, rocco marconi, andrea schiavone, and girolamo da treviso, artists important enough to be missed, but of merit so unequal that only their more interesting works are here given. but the bulk of new additions, amounting to a third as much again as was comprised in the last edition, is of pictures in the various provincial galleries and private collections of great britain, france, and germany. the author takes great pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness to mr. herbert f. cook for invaluable aid in visiting some of the almost numberless british collections. preface. the following essay owes its origin to the author's belief that venetian painting is the most complete expression in art of the italian renaissance. the renaissance is even more important typically than historically. historically it may be looked upon as an age of glory or of shame according to the different views entertained of european events during the past five centuries. but typically it stands for youth, and youth alone--for intellectual curiosity and energy grasping at the whole of life as material which it hopes to mould to any shape. every generation has an innate sympathy with some epoch of the past wherein it seems to find itself foreshadowed. science has of late revealed and given much, but its revelation and gifts are as nothing to the promise it holds out of constant acquisition and perpetual growth, of everlasting youth. we ourselves, because of our faith in science and the power of work, are instinctively in sympathy with the renaissance. our problems do not seem so easy to solve, our tasks are more difficult because our vision is wider, but the spirit which animates us was anticipated by the spirit of the renaissance, and more than anticipated. that spirit seems like the small rough model after which ours is being fashioned. italian painting interests many of us more than the painting of any other school not because of its essential superiority, but because it expressed the renaissance; and venetian painting is interesting above all because it was at venice alone that this expression attained perfection. elsewhere, particularly in florence, it died away before it found complete utterance. in order to keep the main idea clearly before the mind of the reader, to show him how the renaissance reveals itself in venetian painting, the introduction of anything not strictly relevant to the subject has been avoided. the salient points once perceived and connected with the more important painters, the reader will find no difficulty in seeing the proper place of any given work by a great master, or the relative importance of those second-and third-rate painters of whom no special mention has been made because they are comprised within what has been said about the greater artists. but happily art is too great and too vital a subject to be crowded into any single formula; and a formula that would, without distorting our entire view of italian art in the fifteenth century, do full justice to such a painter as carlo crivelli, does not exist. he takes rank with the most genuine artists of all times and countries, and does not weary even when "great masters" grow tedious. he expresses with the freedom and spirit of japanese design a piety as wild and tender as jacopo da todi's, a sweetness of emotion as sincere and dainty as of a virgin and child carved in ivory by a french craftsman of the fourteenth century. the mystic beauty of simone martini, the agonized compassion of the young bellini, are embodied by crivelli in forms which have the strength of line and the metallic lustre of old satsuma or lacquer, and which are no less tempting to the touch. crivelli must be treated by himself and as the product of stationary, if not reactionary, conditions. having lived most of his life far away from the main currents of culture, in a province where st. bernardino had been spending his last energies in the endeavour to call the world back to the ideals of an infantile civilisation, crivelli does not belong to a movement of constant progress, and therefore is not within the scope of this work. to make the essay useful as a handbook to venetian painting, lists have been appended of the works, in and out of italy, by the principal venetian masters. these lists do not pretend to absolute completeness. only such private collections have been mentioned as are well known and accessible to students, although in the case of very rare painters all of their known works are given, and even such as are of doubtful authenticity are alluded to. the author has seen and carefully considered all the pictures he mentions, except one or two at st. petersburg, which are, however, well known from the photographs of mm. braun & cie. the attributions are based on the results of the most recent research. even such painstaking critics of some years ago as messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle laboured under terrible disadvantages, because most of their work was done at a time when travelling was much slower than it has now become, and when photography was not sufficiently perfected to be of great service. rapid transit and isochromatic photography are beginning to enable the student to make of connoisseurship something like an exact science. to a certain extent, therefore, messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle have been superseded, and to a great degree supplemented by the various writings of morelli, richter, frizzoni, and others. the author takes pleasure in acknowledging his indebtedness to the first systematic writers on italian painting no less than to the perfectors of the new critical method, now adopted by nearly all serious students of italian art. to the founder of the new criticism, the late giovanni morelli, and to his able successor, dr. gustavo frizzoni, the author feels bound to ascribe many of his attributions, although a number are based on independent research, and for these he alone is responsible. special thanks are due to a dear friend, enrico costa, for placing his notes of a recent visit to madrid at the author's disposal. they have been used, with a confidence warranted by signor costa's unrivalled connoisseurship, to supplement the author's own notes, taken some years ago. having noted the dependence of scientific art study upon isochromatic photography, the author is happy to take this opportunity of expressing his gratitude to such able photographers as löwy of vienna, tamme of dresden, marcozzi of milan, alinari bros. of florence, and dominic anderson of rome, all of whom have devoted themselves with special zeal to the paintings of the venetian masters. the author is peculiarly indebted to signor anderson for having materially assisted his studies by photographing many pictures which at present have a scientific rather than a popular interest. the frontispiece is a reproduction of giorgione's "shepherd" at hampton court, a picture which perhaps better than any other expresses the renaissance at the most fascinating point of its course. the author is indebted to mr. sidney colvin for permission to make use of a photograph taken at his order. contents. the venetian painters of the renaissance i. value of venetian art ii. the church and painting iii. the renaissance iv. painting and the renaissance v. pageant pictures vi. painting and the confraternities vii. easel pictures and giorgione viii. the giorgionesque spirit ix. the portrait x. the young titian xi. apparent failure of the renaissance xii. lotto xiii. the late renaissance and titian xiv. humanity and the renaissance xv. sebastiano del piombo xvi. tintoretto xvii. value of minor episodes in art xviii. tintoretto's portraits xix. venetian art and the provinces xx. paul veronese xxi. bassano, genre, and landscape xxii. the venetians and velasquez xxiii. decline of venetian art xxiv. longhi xxv. canaletto and guardi xxvi. tiepolo xxvii. influence of venetian art index to the works of the principal venetian painters index of places the venetian painters of the renaissance =i. value of venetian art.=--among the italian schools of painting the venetian has, for the majority of art-loving people, the strongest and most enduring attraction. in the course of the present brief account of the life of that school we shall perhaps discover some of the causes of our peculiar delight and interest in the venetian painters, as we come to realise what tendencies of the human spirit their art embodied, and of what great consequence their example has been to the whole of european painting for the last three centuries. the venetians as a school were from the first endowed with exquisite tact in their use of colour. seldom cold and rarely too warm, their colouring never seems an afterthought, as in many of the florentine painters, nor is it always suggesting paint, as in some of the veronese masters. when the eye has grown accustomed to make allowance for the darkening caused by time, for the dirt that lies in layers on so many pictures, and for unsuccessful attempts at restoration, the better venetian paintings present such harmony of intention and execution as distinguishes the highest achievements of genuine poets. their mastery over colour is the first thing that attracts most people to the painters of venice. their colouring not only gives direct pleasure to the eye, but acts like music upon the moods, stimulating thought and memory in much the same way as a work by a great composer. =ii. the church and painting.=--the church from the first took account of the influence of colour as well as of music upon the emotions. from the earliest times it employed mosaic and painting to enforce its dogmas and relate its legends, not merely because this was the only means of reaching people who could neither read nor write, but also because it instructed them in a way which, far from leading to critical enquiry, was peculiarly capable of being used as an indirect stimulus to moods of devotion and contrition. next to the finest mosaics of the first centuries, the early works of giovanni bellini, the greatest venetian master of the fifteenth century, best fulfil this religious intention. painting had in his lifetime reached a point where the difficulties of technique no longer stood in the way of the expression of profound emotion. no one can look at bellini's pictures of the dead christ upheld by the virgin or angels without being put into a mood of deep contrition, nor at his earlier madonnas without a thrill of awe and reverence. and giovanni bellini does not stand alone. his contemporaries, gentile bellini, the vivarini, crivelli, and cima da conegliano all began by painting in the same spirit, and produced almost the same effect. the church, however, thus having educated people to understand painting as a language and to look to it for the expression of their sincerest feelings, could not hope to keep it always confined to the channel of religious emotion. people began to feel the need of painting as something that entered into their every-day lives almost as much as we nowadays feel the need of the newspaper; nor was this unnatural, considering that, until the invention of printing, painting was the only way, apart from direct speech, of conveying ideas to the masses. at about the time when bellini and his contemporaries were attaining maturity, the renaissance had ceased to be a movement carried on by scholars and poets alone. it had become sufficiently widespread to seek popular as well as literary utterance, and thus, toward the end of the fifteenth century, it naturally turned to painting, a vehicle of expression which the church, after a thousand years of use, had made familiar and beloved. to understand the renaissance at the time when its spirit began to find complete embodiment in painting, a brief survey of the movement of thought in italy during its earlier period is necessary, because only when that movement had reached a certain point did painting come to be its most natural medium of expression. =iii. the renaissance.=--the thousand years that elapsed between the triumph of christianity and the middle of the fourteenth century have been not inaptly compared to the first fifteen or sixteen years in the life of the individual. whether full of sorrows or joys, of storms or peace, these early years are chiefly characterised by tutelage and unconsciousness of personality. but toward the end of the fourteenth century something happened in europe that happens in the lives of all gifted individuals. there was an awakening to the sense of personality. although it was felt to a greater or less degree everywhere, italy felt the awakening earlier than the rest of europe, and felt it far more strongly. its first manifestation was a boundless and insatiable curiosity, urging people to find out all they could about the world and about man. they turned eagerly to the study of classic literature and ancient monuments, because these gave the key to what seemed an immense store-house of forgotten knowledge; they were in fact led to antiquity by the same impulse which, a little later, brought about the invention of the printing-press and the discovery of america. the first consequence of a return to classical literature was the worship of human greatness. roman literature, which the italians naturally mastered much earlier than greek, dealt chiefly with politics and war, seeming to give an altogether disproportionate place to the individual, because it treated only of such individuals as were concerned in great events. it is but a step from realising the greatness of an event to believing that the persons concerned in it were equally great, and this belief, fostered by the somewhat rhetorical literature of rome, met the new consciousness of personality more than half way, and led to that unlimited admiration for human genius and achievement which was so prominent a feature of the early renaissance. the two tendencies reacted upon each other. roman literature stimulated the admiration for genius, and this admiration in turn reinforced the interest in that period of the world's history when genius was supposed to be the rule rather than the exception; that is to say, it reinforced the interest in antiquity. the spirit of discovery, the never satisfied curiosity of this time, led to the study of ancient art as well as of ancient literature, and the love of antiquity led to the imitation of its buildings and statues as well as of its books and poems. until comparatively recent times scarcely any ancient paintings were found, although buildings and statues were everywhere to be seen, the moment anyone seriously thought of looking at them. the result was that while the architecture and sculpture of the renaissance were directly and strongly influenced by antiquity, painting felt its influence only in so far as the study of antiquity in the other arts had conduced to better draughtsmanship and purer taste. the spirit of discovery could thus show itself only indirectly in painting,--only in so far as it led painters to the gradual perfection of the technical means of their craft. unlimited admiration for genius and wonder that the personalities of antiquity should have survived with their great names in no way diminished, soon had two consequences. one was love of glory, and the other the patronage of those arts which were supposed to hand down a glorious name undiminished to posterity. the glory of old rome had come down through poets and historians, architects and sculptors, and the italians, feeling that the same means might be used to hand down the achievements of their own time to as distant a posterity, made a new religion of glory, with poets and artists for the priests. at first the new priesthood was confined almost entirely to writers, but in little more than a generation architects and sculptors began to have their part. the passion for building is in itself one of the most instinctive, and a man's name and armorial bearings, tastefully but prominently displayed upon a church or palace, were as likely, it was felt, to hand him down to posterity as the praise of poets or historians. it was the passion for glory, in reality, rather than any love of beauty, that gave the first impulse to the patronage of the arts in the renaissance. beauty was the concern of the artists, although no doubt their patrons were well aware that the more impressive a building was, the more beautiful a monument, the more likely was it to be admired, and the more likely were their names to reach posterity. their instincts did not mislead them, for where their real achievements would have tempted only the specialist or antiquarian into a study of their career, the buildings and monuments put up by them--by such princes as sigismondo malatesta, frederick of urbino, or alfonzo of naples,--have made the whole intelligent public believe that they were really as great as they wished posterity to believe them. as painting had done nothing whatever to transmit the glory of the great romans, the earlier generations of the renaissance expected nothing from it, and did not give it that patronage which the church, for its own purposes, continued to hold out to it. the renaissance began to make especial use of painting only when its own spirit had spread very widely, and when the love of knowledge, of power, and of glory had ceased to be the only recognised passions, and when, following the lead of the church, people began to turn to painting for the expression of deep emotion. the new religion, as i have called the love of glory, is in its very essence a thing of this world, founded as it is on human esteem. the boundless curiosity of the renaissance led back inevitably to an interest in life and to an acceptance of things for what they were,--for their intrinsic quality. the moment people stopped looking fixedly toward heaven their eyes fell upon the earth, and they began to see much on its surface that was pleasant. their own faces and figures must have struck them as surprisingly interesting, and, considering how little st. bernard and other mediæval saints and doctors had led them to expect, singularly beautiful. a new feeling arose that mere living was a big part of life, and with it came a new passion, the passion for beauty, for grace, and for comeliness. it has already been suggested that the renaissance was a period in the history of modern europe comparable to youth in the life of the individual. it had all youth's love of finery and of play. the more people were imbued with the new spirit, the more they loved pageants. the pageant was an outlet for many of the dominant passions of the time, for there a man could display all the finery he pleased, satisfy his love of antiquity by masquerading as cæsar or hannibal, his love of knowledge by finding out how the romans dressed and rode in triumph, his love of glory by the display of wealth and skill in the management of the ceremony, and, above all, his love of feeling himself alive. solemn writers have not disdained to describe to the minutest details many of the pageants which they witnessed. we have seen that the earlier elements of the renaissance, the passion for knowledge and glory, were not of the kind to give a new impulse to painting. nor was the passion for antiquity at all so direct an inspiration to that art as it was to architecture and sculpture. the love of glory had, it is true, led such as could not afford to put up monumental buildings, to decorate chapels with frescoes in which their portraits were timidly introduced. but it was only when the renaissance had attained to a full consciousness of its interest in life and enjoyment of the world that it naturally turned, and indeed was forced to turn, to painting; for it is obvious that painting is peculiarly fitted for rendering the appearances of things with a glow of light and richness of colour that correspond to and express warm human emotions. =iv. painting and the renaissance.=--when it once reached the point where its view of the world naturally sought expression in painting, as religious ideas had done before, the renaissance found in venice clearer utterance than elsewhere, and it is perhaps this fact which makes the most abiding interest of venetian painting. it is at this point that we shall take it up. the growing delight in life with the consequent love of health, beauty, and joy were felt more powerfully in venice than anywhere else in italy. the explanation of this may be found in the character of the venetian government which was such that it gave little room for the satisfaction of the passion for personal glory, and kept its citizens so busy in duties of state that they had small leisure for learning. some of the chief passions of the renaissance thus finding no outlet in venice, the other passions insisted all the more on being satisfied. venice, moreover, was the only state in italy which was enjoying, and for many generations had been enjoying, internal peace. this gave the venetians a love of comfort, of ease, and of splendour, a refinement of manner, and humaneness of feeling, which made them the first really modern people in europe. since there was little room for personal glory in venice, the perpetuators of glory, the humanists, found at first scant encouragement there, and the venetians were saved from that absorption in archæology and pure science which overwhelmed florence at an early date. this was not necessarily an advantage in itself, but it happened to suit venice, where the conditions of life had for some time been such as to build up a love of beautiful things. as it was, the feeling for beauty was not hindered in its natural development. archæology would have tried to submit it to the good taste of the past, a proceeding which rarely promotes good taste in the present. too much archæology and too much science might have ended in making venetian art academic, instead of letting it become what it did, the product of a natural ripening of interest in life and love of pleasure. in florence, it is true, painting had developed almost simultaneously with the other arts, and it may be due to this very cause that the florentine painters never quite realised what a different task from the architect's and sculptor's was theirs. at the time, therefore, when the renaissance was beginning to find its best expression in painting, the florentines were already too much attached to classical ideals of form and composition, in other words, too academic, to give embodiment to the throbbing feeling for life and pleasure. thus it came to pass that in the venetian pictures of the end of the fifteenth century we find neither the contrition nor the devotion of those earlier years when the church alone employed painting as the interpreter of emotion, nor the learning which characterised the florentines. the venetian masters of this time, although nominally continuing to paint the madonna and saints, were in reality painting handsome, healthy, sane people like themselves, people who wore their splendid robes with dignity, who found life worth the mere living and sought no metaphysical basis for it. in short, the venetian pictures of the last decade of the century seemed intended not for devotion, as they had been, nor for admiration, as they then were in florence, but for enjoyment. the church itself, as has been said, had educated its children to understand painting as a language. now that the passions men dared to avow were no longer connected with happiness in some future state only, but mainly with life in the present, painting was expected to give voice to these more human aspirations and to desert the outgrown ideals of the church. in florence, the painters seemed unable or unwilling to make their art really popular. nor was it so necessary there, for poliziano, pulci, and lorenzo dei medici supplied the need of self-expression by addressing the florentines in the language which their early enthusiasm for antiquity and their natural gifts had made them understand better than any other--the language of poetry. in venice alone painting remained what it had been all over italy in earlier times, the common tongue of the whole mass of the people. venetian artists thus had the strongest inducements to perfect the processes which painters must employ to make pictures look real to their own generation; and their generation had an altogether firmer hold on reality than any that had been known since the triumph of christianity. here again the comparison of the renaissance to youth must be borne in mind. the grasp that youth has on reality is not to be compared to that brought by age, and we must not expect to find in the renaissance a passion for an acquaintance with things as they are such as we ourselves have; but still its grasp of facts was far firmer than that of the middle ages. painting, in accommodating itself to the new ideas, found that it could not attain to satisfactory representation merely by form and colour, but that it required light and shadow and effects of space. indeed, venial faults of drawing are perhaps the least disturbing, while faults of perspective, of spacing, and of colour completely spoil a picture for people who have an every-day acquaintance with painting such as the venetians had. we find the venetian painters, therefore, more and more intent upon giving the space they paint its real depth, upon giving solid objects the full effect of the round, upon keeping the different parts of a figure within the same plane, and upon compelling things to hold their proper places one behind the other. as early as the beginning of the sixteenth century a few of the greater venetian painters had succeeded in making distant objects less and less distinct, as well as smaller and smaller, and had succeeded also in giving some appearance of reality to the atmosphere. these are a few of the special problems of painting, as distinct from sculpture for instance, and they are problems which, among the italians, only the venetians and the painters closely connected with them solved with any success. =v. pageant pictures.=--the painters of the end of the fifteenth century who met with the greatest success in solving these problems were giovanni and gentile bellini, cima da conegliano, and carpaccio, and we find each of them enjoyable to the degree that he was in touch with the life of his day. i have already spoken of pageants and of how characteristic they were of the renaissance, forming as they did a sort of safety-valve for its chief passions. venice, too, knew the love of glory, and the passion was perhaps only the more intense because it was all dedicated to the state. there was nothing the venetians would not do to add to its greatness, glory, and splendour. it was this which led them to make of the city itself that wondrous monument to the love and awe they felt for their republic, which still rouses more admiration and gives more pleasure than any other one achievement of the art-impulse in man. they were not content to make their city the most beautiful in the world; they performed ceremonies in its honour partaking of all the solemnity of religious rites. processions and pageants by land and by sea, free from that gross element of improvisation which characterised them elsewhere in italy, formed no less a part of the functions of the venetian state than the high mass in the catholic church. such a function, with doge and senators arrayed in gorgeous costumes no less prescribed than the raiments of ecclesiastics, in the midst of the fairy-like architecture of the piazza or canals, was the event most eagerly looked forward to, and the one that gave most satisfaction to the venetian's love of his state, and to his love of splendour, beauty, and gaiety. he would have had them every day if it were possible, and, to make up for their rarity, he loved to have representations of them. so most venetian pictures of the beginning of the sixteenth century tended to take the form of magnificent processions, if they did not actually represent them. they are processions in the piazza, as in gentile bellini's "corpus christi" picture, or on the water, as in carpaccio's picture where st. ursula leaves her home; or they represent what was a gorgeous but common sight in venice, the reception or dismissal of ambassadors, as in several pictures of carpaccio's st. ursula series; or they show simply a collection of splendidly costumed people in the piazza, as in gentile's "preaching of st. mark." not only the pleasure-loving carpaccio, but the austere cima, as he grew older, turned every biblical and saintly legend into an occasion for the picture of a pageant. but there was a further reason for the popularity of such pictures. the decorations which were then being executed by the most reputed masters in the hall of great council in the doge's palace, were, by the nature of the subject, required to represent pageants. the venetian state encouraged painting as did the church, in order to teach its subjects its own glory in a way that they could understand without being led on to critical enquiry. venice was not the only city, it is true, that used painting for political purposes; but the frescoes of lorenzetti at siena were admonitions to govern in accordance with the catechism, while the pictures in the great hall of the doge's palace were of a nature to remind the venetians of their glory and also of their state policy. these mural paintings represented such subjects as the doge bringing about a reconciliation between the pope and the emperor barbarossa, an event which marked the first entry of venice into the field of continental politics, and typified as well its unchanging policy, which was to gain its own ends by keeping a balance of power between the allies of the pope and the allies of his opponents. the first edition, so to speak, of these works had been executed at the end of the fourteenth century and in the beginning of the fifteenth. toward the end of that century it no longer satisfied the new feeling for reality and beauty, and thus had ceased to serve its purpose, which was to glorify the state. the bellini, alvise vivarini, and carpaccio were employed to make a second rendering of the very same subjects, and this gave the venetians ample opportunity for finding out how much they liked pageant pictures. it is curious to note here that at the same time florence also commissioned its greatest painters to execute works for its council hall, but left them practically free to choose their own subjects. michelangelo chose for his theme "the florentines while bathing surprised by the pisans," and leonardo "the battle of the standard." neither of these was intended in the first place to glorify the florentine republic, but rather to give scope to the painter's genius, michelangelo's for the treatment of the nude, leonardo's for movement and animation. each, having given scope to his peculiar talents in his cartoon, had no further interest, and neither of the undertakings was ever completed. nor do we hear that the florentine councillors enjoyed the cartoons, which were instantly snatched up by students who turned the hall containing them into an academy. =vi. painting and the confraternities.=--it does not appear that the hall of great council in venice was turned into a students' academy, and, although the paintings there doubtless gave a decided incentive to artists, their effect upon the public, for whom they were designed, was even greater. the councillors were not allowed to be the only people to enjoy fascinating pictures of gorgeous pageants and ceremonials. the mutual aid societies--the schools, as they were called--were not long in getting the masters who were employed in the doge's palace to execute for their own meeting places pictures equally splendid. the schools of san giorgio, sant' ursula, and santo stefano, employed carpaccio, the schools of san giovanni and san marco, gentile bellini, and other schools employed minor painters. the works carried out for these schools are of peculiar importance, both because they are all that remain to throw light upon the pictures in the doge's palace destroyed in the fire of , and because they form a transition to the art of a later day. just as the state chose subjects that glorified itself and taught its own history and policy, so the schools had pictures painted to glorify their patron saints, and to keep their deeds and example fresh. many of these pictures--most in fact--took the form of pageants; but even in such, intended as they were for almost domestic purposes, the style of high ceremonial was relaxed, and elements taken directly from life were introduced. in his "corpus christi," gentile bellini paints not only the solemn and dazzling procession in the piazza, but the elegant young men who strut about in all their finery, the foreign loungers, and even the unfailing beggar by the portal of st. mark's. in his "miracle of the true cross," he introduces gondoliers, taking care to bring out all the beauty of their lithe, comely figures as they stand to ply the oar, and does not reject even such an episode as a serving-maid standing in a doorway watching a negro who is about to plunge into the canal. he treats this bit of the picture with all the charm and much of that delicate feeling for simple effects of light and colour that we find in such dutch painters as vermeer van delft and peter de hoogh. episodes such as this in the works of the earliest great venetian master must have acted on the public like a spark on tinder. they certainly found a sudden and assured popularity, for they play a more and more important part in the pictures executed for the schools, many of the subjects of which were readily turned into studies of ordinary venetian life. this was particularly true of the works of carpaccio. much as he loved pageants, he loved homelier scenes as well. his "dream of st. ursula" shows us a young girl asleep in a room filled with the quiet morning light. indeed, it may be better described as the picture of a room with the light playing softly upon its walls, upon the flower-pots in the window, and upon the writing-table and the cupboards. a young girl happens to be asleep in the bed, but the picture is far from being a merely economic illustration to this episode in the life of the saint. again, let us take the work in the same series where king maure dismisses the ambassadors. carpaccio has made this a scene of a chancellery in which the most striking features are neither the king nor the ambassadors, but the effect of the light that streams through a side door on the left and a poor clerk labouring at his task. or, again, take st. jerome in his study, in the scuola di san giorgio. he is nothing but a venetian scholar seated in his comfortable, bright library, in the midst of his books, with his little shelf of bric-à-brac running along the wall. there is nothing in his look or surroundings to speak of a life of self-denial or of arduous devotion to the problems of sin and redemption. even the "presentation of the virgin," which offered such a splendid chance for a pageant, carpaccio, in one instance, turned into the picture of a simple girl going to her first communion. in other words, carpaccio's quality is the quality of a painter of _genre_, of which he was the earliest italian master. his _genre_ differs from dutch or french not in kind but in degree. dutch _genre_ is much more democratic, and, as painting, it is of a far finer quality, but it deals with its subject, as carpaccio does, for the sake of its own pictorial capacities and for the sake of the effects of colour and of light and shade. =vii. easel pictures and giorgione.=--at the beginning of the renaissance painting was almost wholly confined to the church. from the church it extended to the council hall, and thence to the schools. there it rapidly developed into an art which had no higher aim than painting the sumptuous life of the aristocracy. when it had reached this point, there was no reason whatever why it should not begin to grace the dwellings of all well-to-do people. in the sixteenth century painting was not looked upon with the estranging reverence paid to it now. it was almost as cheap as printing has become since, and almost as much employed. when the venetians had attained the point of culture where they were able to differentiate their sensations and distinguish pleasure from edification, they found that painting gave them decided pleasure. why should they always have to go to the doge's palace or to some school to enjoy this pleasure? that would have been no less a hardship than for us never to hear music outside of a concert-room. this is no merely rhetorical comparison, for in the life of the venetian of the sixteenth century painting took much the same place that music takes in ours. he no longer expected it to tell him stories or to teach him the catechism. printed books, which were beginning to grow common, amply satisfied both these needs. he had as a rule very little personal religion, and consequently did not care for pictures that moved him to contrition or devotion. he preferred to have some pleasantly coloured thing that would put him into a mood connected with the side of life he most enjoyed--with refined merrymaking, with country parties, or with the sweet dreams of youth. venetian painting alone among italian schools was ready to satisfy such a demand, and it thus became the first genuinely modern art: for the most vital difference that can be indicated between the arts in antiquity and modern times is this--that now the arts tend to address themselves more and more to the actual needs of men, while in olden times they were supposed to serve some more than human purpose. the pictures required for a house were naturally of a different kind from those suited to the council hall or the school, where large paintings, which could be filled with many figures, were in place. for the house smaller pictures were necessary, such as could easily be carried about. the mere dimensions, therefore, excluded pageants, but, in any case, the pageant was too formal a subject to suit all moods--too much like a brass band always playing in the room. the easel picture had to be without too definite a subject, and could no more permit being translated into words than a sonata. some of giovanni bellini's late works are already of this kind. they are full of that subtle, refined poetry which can be expressed in form and colour alone. but they were a little too austere in form, a little too sober in colour, for the gay, care-free youth of the time. carpaccio does not seem to have painted many easel pictures, although his brilliancy, his delightful fancy, his love of colour, and his gaiety of humour would have fitted him admirably for this kind of painting. but giorgione, the follower of both these masters, starting with the qualities of both as his inheritance, combined the refined feeling and poetry of bellini with carpaccio's gaiety and love of beauty and colour. stirred with the enthusiasms of his own generation as people who had lived through other phases of feeling could not be, giorgione painted pictures so perfectly in touch with the ripened spirit of the renaissance that they met with the success which those things only find that at the same moment wake us to the full sense of a need and satisfy it. giorgione's life was short, and very few of his works--not a score in all--have escaped destruction. but these suffice to give us a glimpse into that brief moment when the renaissance found its most genuine expression in painting. its over-boisterous passions had quieted down into a sincere appreciation of beauty and of human relations. it would be really hard to say more about giorgione than this, that his pictures are the perfect reflex of the renaissance at its height. his works, as well as those of his contemporaries and followers, still continue to be appreciated most by people whose attitude of mind and spirit has most in common with the renaissance, or by those who look upon italian art not merely as art, but as the product of this period. for that is its greatest interest. other schools have accomplished much more in mere painting than the italian. a serious student of art will scarcely think of putting many of even the highest achievements of the italians, considered purely as technique, beside the works of the great dutchmen, the great spaniard, or even the masters of to-day. our real interest in italian painting is at bottom an interest in that art which we almost instinctively feel to have been the fittest expression found by a period in the history of modern europe which has much in common with youth. the renaissance has the fascination of those years when we seemed so full of promise both to ourselves and to everybody else. =viii. the giorgionesque spirit.=--giorgione created a demand which other painters were forced to supply at the risk of finding no favour. the older painters accommodated themselves as best they could. one of them indeed, turning toward the new in a way that is full of singular charm, gave his later works all the beauty and softness of the first spring days in italy. upon hearing the title of one of catena's works in the national gallery, "a warrior adoring the infant christ," who could imagine what a treat the picture itself had in store for him? it is a fragrant summer landscape enjoyed by a few quiet people, one of whom, in armour, with the glamour of the orient about him, kneels at the virgin's feet, while a romantic young page holds his horse's bridle. i mention this picture in particular because it is so accessible, and so good an instance of the giorgionesque way of treating a subject; not for the story, nor for the display of skill, nor for the obvious feeling, but for the lovely landscape, for the effects of light and colour, and for the sweetness of human relations. giorgione's altar-piece at castelfranco is treated in precisely the same spirit, but with far more genius. the young painters had no chance at all unless they undertook at once to furnish pictures in giorgione's style. but before we can appreciate all that the younger men were called upon to do, we must turn to the consideration of that most wonderful product of the renaissance and of the painter's craft--the portrait. =ix. the portrait.=--the longing for the perpetuation of one's fame, which has already been mentioned several times as one of the chief passions of the renaissance, brought with it the more universal desire to hand down the memory of one's face and figure. the surest way to accomplish this end seemed to be the one which had proved successful in the case of the great romans, whose effigies were growing more and more familiar as new busts and medals were dug up. the earlier generations of the renaissance relied therefore on the sculptor and the medallist to hand down their features to an interested posterity. these artists were ready for their task. the mere materials gave them solidity, an effect so hard to get in painting. at the same time, nothing was expected from them except that they should mould the material into the desired shape. no setting was required and no colour. their art on this account alone would naturally have been the earliest to reach fruition. but over and above this, sculptors and medallists had the direct inspiration of antique models, and through the study of these they were at an early date brought in contact with the tendencies of the renaissance. the passion then prevailing for pronounced types, and the spirit of analysis this produced, forced them to such patient study of the face as would enable them to give the features that look of belonging to one consistent whole which we call character. thus, at a time when painters had not yet learned to distinguish between one face and another, donatello was carving busts which remain unrivalled as studies of character, and pisanello was casting bronze and silver medals which are among the greatest claims to renown of those whose effigies they bear. donatello's bust of niccolò d'uzzano shows clearly, nevertheless, that the renaissance could not long remain satisfied with the sculptured portrait. it is coloured like nature, and succeeds so well in producing for an instant the effect of actual life as to seem uncanny the next moment. donatello's contemporaries must have had the same impression, for busts of this kind are but few. yet these few prove that the element of colour had to be included before the satisfactory portrait was found: in other words, that painting and not sculpture was to be the portrait-art of the renaissance. the most creative sculptor of the earlier renaissance was not the only artist who felt the need of colour in portraiture. vittore pisano, the greatest medallist of this or any age, felt it quite as keenly, and being a painter as well, he was among the first to turn this art to portraiture. in his day, however, painting was still too undeveloped an art for the portrait not to lose in character what it gained in a more lifelike colouring, and the two of pisanello's portraits which still exist are profiles much inferior to his best medals, seeming indeed to be enlargements of them rather than original studies from life. it was only in the next generation, when the attention of painters themselves was powerfully concentrated upon the reproduction of strongly pronounced types of humanity, that they began to make portraits as full of life and energy as donatello's busts of the previous period. even then, however, the full face was rarely attempted, and it was only in the beginning of the sixteenth century that full-face portraits began to be common. the earliest striking achievement of this sort, mantegna's head of cardinal scarampo (now in berlin), was not the kind to find favour in venice. the full-face likeness of this wolf in sheep's clothing brought out the workings of the self-seeking, cynical spirit within too clearly not to have revolted the venetians, who looked upon all such qualities as impious in the individual because they were the strict monopoly of the state. in the portraits of doges which decorated the frieze of its great council hall, venice wanted the effigies of functionaries entirely devoted to the state, and not of great personalities, and the profile lent itself more readily to the omission of purely individual traits. it is significant that venice was the first state which made a business of preserving the portraits of its chief rulers. those which gentile and giovanni bellini executed for this end must have had no less influence on portraiture than their mural paintings in the same hall had on other branches of the art. but the state was not satisfied with leaving records of its glory in the ducal palace alone. the church and the saints were impressed for the same purpose--happily for us, for while the portraits in the great hall have perished, several altar-pieces still preserve to us the likenesses of some of the doges. early in the sixteenth century, when people began to want pictures in their own homes as well as in their public halls, personal and religious motives combined to dictate the choice of subjects. in the minds of many, painting, although a very familiar art, was too much connected with solemn religious rites and with state ceremonies to be used at once for ends of personal pleasure. so landscape had to slide in under the patronage of st. jerome; while romantic biblical episodes, like the "finding of moses," or the "judgment of solomon," gave an excuse for _genre_, and the portrait crept in half hidden under the mantle of a patron saint. its position once secure, however, the portrait took no time to cast off all tutelage, and to declare itself one of the most attractive subjects possible. over and above the obvious satisfaction afforded by a likeness, the portrait had to give pleasure to the eye, and to produce those agreeable moods which were expected from all other paintings in giorgione's time. portraits like that of scarampo are scarcely less hard to live with than such a person himself must have been. they tyrannize rather than soothe and please. but giorgione and his immediate followers painted men and women whose very look leads one to think of sympathetic friends, people whose features are pleasantly rounded, whose raiment seems soft to touch, whose surroundings call up the memory of sweet landscapes and refreshing breezes. in fact, in these portraits the least apparent object was the likeness, the real purpose being to please the eye and to turn the mind toward pleasant themes. this no doubt helps to account for the great popularity of portraits in venice during the sixteenth century. their number, as we shall see, only grows larger as the century advances. =x. the young titian.=--giorgione's followers had only to exploit the vein their master hit upon to find ample remuneration. each, to be sure, brought a distinct personality into play, but the demand for the giorgionesque article, if i may be allowed the phrase, was too strong to permit of much deviation. it no longer mattered what the picture was to represent or where it was going to be placed; the treatment had to be always bright, romantic, and joyous. many artists still confined themselves to painting ecclesiastical subjects chiefly, but even among these, such painters as lotto and palma, for example, are fully as giorgionesque as titian, bonifazio, or paris bordone. titian, in spite of a sturdier, less refined nature, did nothing for a generation after giorgione's death but work on his lines. a difference in quality between the two masters shows itself from the first, but the spirit that animated each is identical. the pictures titian was painting ten years after his companion's death have not only many of the qualities of giorgione's, but something more, as if done by an older giorgione, with better possession of himself, and with a larger and firmer hold on the world. at the same time, they show no diminution of spontaneous joy in life, and even an increased sense of its value and dignity. what an array of masterpieces might be brought to witness! in the "assumption," for example, the virgin soars heavenward, not helpless in the arms of angels, but borne up by the fulness of life within her, and by the feeling that the universe is naturally her own, and that nothing can check her course. the angels seem to be there only to sing the victory of a human being over his environment. they are embodied joys, acting on our nerves like the rapturous outburst of the orchestra at the end of "parsifal." or look at the "bacchanals" in madrid, or at the "bacchus and ariadne" in the national gallery. how brimful they are of exuberant joy! you see no sign of a struggle of inner and outer conditions, but life so free, so strong, so glowing, that it almost intoxicates. they are truly dionysiac, bacchanalian triumphs--the triumph of life over the ghosts that love the gloom and chill and hate the sun. the portraits titian painted in these years show no less feeling of freedom from sordid cares, and no less mastery over life. think of "the man with the glove" in the louvre, of the "concert," and "young englishman" in florence, and of the pesaro family in their altar-piece in the frari at venice--call up these portraits, and you will see that they are true children of the renaissance whom life has taught no meannesses and no fears. =xi. apparent failure of the renaissance.=--but even while such pictures were being painted, the spirit of the italian renaissance was proving inadequate to life. this was not the fault of the spirit, which was the spirit of youth. but youth cannot last more than a certain length of time. no matter how it is spent, manhood and middle age will come. life began to show a sterner and more sober face than for a brief moment it had seemed to wear. men became conscious that the passions for knowledge, for glory, and for personal advancement were not at the bottom of all the problems that life presented. florence and rome discovered this suddenly, and with a shock. in the presence of michelangelo's sculptures in san lorenzo, or of his "last judgment," we still hear the cry of anguish that went up as the inexorable truth dawned upon them. but venice, although humiliated by the league of cambrai, impoverished by the turk, and by the change in the routes of commerce, was not crushed, as was the rest of italy, under the heels of spanish infantry, nor so drained of resource as not to have some wealth still flowing into her coffers. life grew soberer and sterner, but it was still amply worth the living, although the relish of a little stoicism and of earnest thought no longer seemed out of place. the spirit of the renaissance had found its way to venice slowly; it was even more slow to depart. we therefore find that toward the middle of the sixteenth century, when elsewhere in italy painting was trying to adapt itself to the hypocrisy of a church whose chief reason for surviving as an institution was that it helped spain to subject the world to tyranny, and when portraits were already exhibiting the fascinating youths of an earlier generation turned into obsequious and elegant courtiers,--in venice painting kept true to the ripened and more reflective spirit which succeeded to the most glowing decades of the renaissance. this led men to take themselves more seriously, to act with more consideration of consequences, and to think of life with less hope and exultation. quieter joys were sought, the pleasures of friendship and of the affections. life not having proved the endless holiday it had promised to be, earnest people began to question whether under the gross masque of the official religion there was not something to console them for departed youth and for the failure of hopes. thus religion began to revive in italy, this time not ethnic nor political, but personal,--an answer to the real needs of the human soul. =xii. lotto.=--it is scarcely to be wondered at that the venetian artist in whom we first find the expression of the new feelings, should have been one who by wide travel had been brought in contact with the miseries of italy in a way not possible for those who remained sheltered in venice. lorenzo lotto, when he is most himself, does not paint the triumph of man over his environment, but in his altar-pieces, and even more in his portraits, he shows us people in want of the consolations of religion, of sober thought, of friendship and affection. they look out from his canvases as if begging for sympathy. but real expression for the new order of things was not to be found by one like lotto, sensitive of feeling and born in the heyday of the renaissance, to whom the new must have come as a disappointment. it had to come from one who had not been brought in personal contact with the woes of the rest of italy, from one less conscious of his environment, one like titian who was readier to receive the patronage of the new master than to feel an oppression which did not touch him personally; or it had to come from one like tintoretto, born to the new order of things and not having to outlive a disappointment before adapting himself to it. =xiii. the late renaissance and titian.=--it is as impossible to keep untouched by what happens to your neighbours as to have a bright sky over your own house when it is stormy everywhere else. spain did not directly dominate venice, but the new fashions of life and thought inaugurated by her nearly universal triumph could not be kept out. her victims, among whom the italian scholars must be reckoned, flocked to venice for shelter, persecuted by a rule that cherished the inquisition. now for the first time venetian painters were brought in contact with men of letters. as they were already, fortunately for themselves, too well acquainted with the business of their own art to be taken in tow by learning or even by poetry, the relation of the man of letters to the painter became on the whole a stimulating and at any rate a profitable one, as in the instance of two of the greatest, where it took the form of a partnership for mutual advantage. it is not to our purpose to speak of aretino's gain, but titian would scarcely have acquired such fame in his lifetime if that founder of modern journalism, pietro aretino, had not been at his side, eager to trumpet his praises and to advise him whom to court. the overwhelming triumph of spain entailed still another consequence. it brought home to all italians, even to the venetians, the sense of the individual's helplessness before organized power--a sense which, as we have seen, the early renaissance, with its belief in the omnipotence of the individual, totally lacked. this was not without a decided influence on art. in the last three decades of his long career, titian did not paint man as if he were as free from care and as fitted to his environment as a lark on an april morning. rather did he represent man as acting on his environment and suffering from its reactions. he made the faces and figures show clearly what life had done to them. the great "ecce homo" and the "crowning with thorns" are imbued with this feeling no less than the equestrian portrait of charles the fifth. in the "ecce homo" we see a man with a godlike personality, humbled by the imperial majesty, broken by the imperial power, and utterly unable to hold out against them. in the "crowning with thorns" we have the same godlike being almost brutalised by pain and suffering. in the portrait of the emperor we behold a man whom life has enfeebled, and who has to meet a foe who may crush him. yet titian became neither soured nor a pessimist. many of his late portraits are even more energetic than those of his early maturity. he shows himself a wise man of the world. "do not be a grovelling sycophant," some of them seem to say, "but remember that courtly manners and tempered elegance can do you no harm." titian, then, was ever ready to change with the times, and on the whole the change was toward a firmer grasp of reality, necessitating yet another advance in the painter's mastery of his craft. titian's real greatness consists in the fact that he was as able to produce an effect of greater reality as he was ready to appreciate the need of a firmer hold on life. in painting, as i have said, a greater effect of reality is chiefly a matter of light and shadow, to be obtained only by considering the canvas as an enclosed space, filled with light and air, through which the objects are seen. there is more than one way of getting this effect, but titian attains it by the almost total suppression of outlines, by the harmonising of his colours, and by the largeness and vigour of his brushwork. in fact, the old titian was, in his way of painting, remarkably like some of the best french masters of to-day. this makes him only the more attractive, particularly when with handling of this kind he combined the power of creating forms of beauty such as he has given us in the "wisdom" of the venetian royal palace, or in the "shepherd and nymph" of vienna. the difference between the old titian, author of these works, and the young titian, painter of the "assumption," and of the "bacchus and ariadne," is the difference between the shakspeare of the "midsummer-night's dream" and the shakspeare of the "tempest." titian and shakspeare begin and end so much in the same way by no mere accident. they were both products of the renaissance, they underwent similar changes, and each was the highest and completest expression of his own age. this is not the place to elaborate the comparison, but i have dwelt so long on titian, because, historically considered, he is the only painter who expressed nearly all of the renaissance that could find expression in painting. it is this which makes him even more interesting than tintoretto, an artist who in many ways was deeper, finer, and even more brilliant. =xiv. humanity and the renaissance.=--tintoretto grew to manhood when the fruit of the renaissance was ripe on every bough. the renaissance had resulted in the emancipation of the individual, in making him feel that the universe had no other purpose than his happiness. this brought an entirely new answer to the question, "why should i do this or that?" it used to be, "because self-instituted authority commands you." the answer now was, "because it is good for men." in this lies our greatest debt to the renaissance, that it instituted the welfare of man as the end of all action. the renaissance did not bring this idea to practical issue, but our debt to it is endless on account of the results the idea has produced in our own days. this alone would have made the renaissance a period of peculiar interest, even if it had had no art whatever. but when ideas are fresh and strong, they are almost sure to find artistic embodiment, as indeed this whole epoch found in painting, and this particular period in the works of tintoretto. =xv. sebastiano del piombo.=--the emancipation of the individual had a direct effect on the painter in freeing him from his guild. it now occurred to him that possibly he might become more proficient and have greater success if he deserted the influences he was under by the accident of birth and residence, and placed himself in the school that seemed best adapted to foster his talents. this led to the unfortunate experiment of eclecticism which checked the purely organic development of the separate schools. it brought about their fusion into an art which no longer appealed to the italian people, as did the art which sprang naturally from the soil, but to the small class of _dilettanti_ who considered a knowledge of art as one of the birthrights of their social position. venice, however, suffered little from eclecticism, perhaps because a strong sense of individuality was late in getting there, and by that time the painters were already well enough educated in their craft to know that they had little to learn elsewhere. the one venetian who became an eclectic, remained in spite of it a great painter. sebastiano del piombo fell under the influence of michelangelo, but while this influence was pernicious in most cases, the hand that had learned to paint under bellini, cima, and giorgione, never wholly lost its command of colour and tone. =xvi. tintoretto.=--tintoretto stayed at home, but he felt in his own person a craving for something that titian could not teach him. the venice he was born in was not the venice of titian's early youth, and his own adolescence fell in the period when spain was rapidly making herself mistress of italy. the haunting sense of powers almost irresistible gave a terrible fascination to michelangelo's works, which are swayed by that sense as by a demonic presence. tintoretto felt this fascination because he was in sympathy with the spirit which took form in colossal torsoes and limbs. to him these were not, as they were to michelangelo's enrolled followers, merely new patterns after which to model the nude. but beside this sense of overwhelming power and gigantic force, tintoretto had to an even greater degree the feeling that whatever existed was for mankind and with reference to man. in his youth people were once more turning to religion, and in venice poetry was making its way more than it had previously done, not only because venice had become the refuge of men of letters, but also because of the diffusion of printed books. tintoretto took to the new feeling for religion and poetry as to his birthright. yet whether classic fable or biblical episode were the subject of his art, tintoretto coloured it with his feeling for the human life at the heart of the story. his sense of power did not express itself in colossal nudes so much as in the immense energy, in the glowing health of the figures he painted, and more still in his effects of light, which he rendered as if he had it in his hands to brighten or darken the heavens at will and subdue them to his own moods. he could not have accomplished this, we may be sure, if he had not had even greater skill than titian in the treatment of light and shadow and of atmosphere. it was this which enabled him to give such living versions of biblical stories and saintly legends. for, granting that an effect of reality were attainable in painting without an adequate treatment of light and atmosphere, even then, the reality would look hideous, as it does in many modern painters who attempt to paint people of to-day in their every-day dress and among their usual surroundings. it is not "realism" which makes such pictures hideous, but the want of that toning down which the atmosphere gives to things in life, and of that harmonising to which the light subjects all colours. it was a great mastery of light and shadow which enabled tintoretto to put into his pictures all the poetry there was in his soul without once tempting us to think that he might have found better expression in words. the poetry which quickens most of his works in the scuola di san rocco is almost entirely a matter of light and colour. what is it but the light that changes the solitudes in which the magdalen and st. mary of egypt are sitting, into dreamlands seen by poets in their moments of happiest inspiration? what but light and colour, the gloom and chill of evening, with the white-stoled figure standing resignedly before the judge, that give the "christ before pilate" its sublime magic? what, again, but light, colour, and the star-procession of cherubs that imbue the realism of the "annunciation" with music which thrills us through and through? religion and poetry did not exist for tintoretto because the love and cultivation of the muses was a duty prescribed by the greeks and romans, and because the love of god and the saints was prescribed by the church; but rather, as was the case with the best people of his time, because both poetry and religion were useful to man. they helped him to forget what was mean and sordid in life, they braced him to his task, and consoled him for his disappointments. religion answered to an ever-living need of the human heart. the bible was no longer a mere document wherewith to justify christian dogma. it was rather a series of parables and symbols pointing at all times to the path that led to a finer and nobler life. why then continue to picture christ and the apostles, the patriarchs and prophets, as persons living under roman rule, wearing the roman toga, and walking about in the landscape of a roman bas-relief? christ and the apostles, the patriarchs and prophets, were the embodiment of living principles and of living ideals. tintoretto felt this so vividly that he could not think of them otherwise than as people of his own kind, living under conditions easily intelligible to himself and to his fellow-men. indeed, the more intelligible and the more familiar the look and garb and surroundings of biblical and saintly personages, the more would they drive home the principles and ideas they incarnated. so tintoretto did not hesitate to turn every biblical episode into a picture of what the scene would look like had it taken place under his own eyes, nor to tinge it with his own mood. his conception of the human form was, it is true, colossal, although the slender elegance that was then coming into fashion, as if in protest against physical force and organisation, influenced him considerably in his construction of the female figure; but the effect which he must always have produced upon his contemporaries, and which most of his works still produce, is one of astounding reality as well as of wide sweep and power. thus, in the "discovery of the body of st. mark," in the brera, and in the "storm rising while the corpse is being carried through the streets of alexandria," in the royal palace at venice, the figures, although colossal, are so energetic and so easy in movement, and the effects of perspective and of light and atmosphere are so on a level with the gigantic figures, that the eye at once adapts itself to the scale, and you feel as if you too partook of the strength and health of heroes. =xvii. value of minor episodes in art.=--that feeling for reality which made the great painters look upon a picture as the representation of a cubic content of atmosphere enveloping all the objects depicted, made them also consider the fact that the given quantity of atmosphere is sure to contain other objects than those the artist wants for his purpose. he is free to leave them out, of course, but in so far as he does, so far is he from producing an effect of reality. the eye does not see everything, but all the eye would naturally see along with the principal objects, must be painted, or the picture will not look true to life. this incorporation of small episodes running parallel with the subject rather than forming part of it, is one of the chief characteristics of modern as distinguished from ancient art. it is this which makes the elizabethan drama so different from the greek. it is this again which already separates the works of duccio and giotto from the plastic arts of antiquity. painting lends itself willingly to the consideration of minor episodes, and for that reason is almost as well fitted to be in touch with modern life as the novel itself. such a treatment saves a picture from looking prepared and cold, just as light and atmosphere save it from rigidity and crudeness. no better illustration of this can be found among italian masters than tintoretto's "crucifixion" in the scuola di san rocco. the scene is a vast one, and although christ is on the cross, life does not stop. to most of the people gathered there, what takes place is no more than a common execution. many of them are attending to it as to a tedious duty. others work away at some menial task more or less connected with the crucifixion, as unconcerned as cobblers humming over their last. most of the people in the huge canvas are represented, as no doubt they were in life, without much personal feeling about christ. his own friends are painted with all their grief and despair, but the others are allowed to feel as they please. the painter does not try to give them the proper emotions. if one of the great novelists of to-day, if tolstoi, for instance, were to describe the crucifixion, his account would read as if it were a description of tintoretto's picture. but tintoretto's fairness went even further than letting all the spectators feel as they pleased about what he himself believed to be the greatest event that ever took place. among this multitude he allowed the light of heaven to shine upon the wicked as well as upon the good, and the air to refresh them all equally. in other words, this enormous canvas is a great sea of air and light at the bottom of which the scene takes place. without the atmosphere and the just distribution of light, it would look as lifeless and desolate, in spite of the crowd and animation, as if it were the bottom of a dried up sea. =xviii. tintoretto's portraits.=--while all these advances were being made, the art of portraiture had not stood still. its popularity had only increased as the years went on. titian was too busy with commissions for foreign princes to supply the great demand there was in venice alone. tintoretto painted portraits not only with much of the air of good breeding of titian's likenesses, but with even greater splendour, and with an astonishing rapidity of execution. the venetian portrait, it will be remembered, was expected to be more than a likeness. it was expected to give pleasure to the eye, and to stimulate the emotions. tintoretto was ready to give ample satisfaction to all such expectations. his portraits, although they are not so individualised as lotto's, nor such close studies of character as titian's, always render the man at his best, in glowing health, full of life and determination. they give us the sensuous pleasure we get from jewels, and at the same time they make us look back with amazement to a state where the human plant was in such vigour as to produce old men of the kind represented in most of tintoretto's portraits. with tintoretto ends the universal interest the venetian school arouses; for although painting does not deteriorate in a day any more than it grows to maturity in the same brief moment, the story of the decay has none of the fascination of the growth. but several artists remain to be considered who were not of the venetian school in the strict sense of the term, but who have always been included within it. =xix. venetian art and the provinces.=--the venetian provinces were held together not merely by force of rule. in language and feeling no less than in government, they formed a distinct unit within the italian peninsula. painting being so truly a product of the soil as it was in italy during the renaissance, the art of the provinces could not help holding the same close relation to the art of venice that their language and modes of feeling held. but a difference must be made at once between towns like verona, with a school of at least as long a growth and with as independent an evolution as the school of venice itself, and towns like vicenza and brescia whose chief painters never developed quite independently of venice or verona. what makes romanino and moretto of brescia, or even the powerful montagna of vicenza, except when they are at their very best, so much less enjoyable as a rule than the venetians--that is to say the painters wholly educated in venice,--is something they have in common with the eclectics of a later day. they are ill at ease about their art, which is no longer the utterly unpremeditated outcome of a natural impulse. they saw greater painting than their own in venice and verona, and not unfrequently their own works show an uncouth attempt to adopt that greatness, which comes out in exaggeration of colour even more than of form, and speaks for that want of taste which is the indelible stamp of provincialism. but there were venetian towns without the traditions even of the schools of vicenza and brescia, where, if you wanted to learn painting, you had to apprentice yourself to somebody who had been taught by somebody who had been a pupil of one of giovanni bellini's pupils. this was particularly true of the towns in that long stretch of plain between the julian alps and the sea, known as friuli. friuli produced one painter of remarkable talents and great force, giovanni antonio pordenone, but neither his talents nor his force, nor even later study in venice, could erase from his works that stamp of provincialism which he inherited from his first provincial master. such artists as these, however, never gained great favour in the capital. those whom venice drew to herself when her own strength was waning and when, like rome in her decline, she began to absorb into herself the talent of the provinces, were rather painters such as paolo veronese whose art, although of independent growth, was sufficiently like her own to be readily understood, or painters with an entirely new vein, such as the bassani. =xx. paul veronese.=--paolo was the product of four or five generations of veronese painters, the first two or three of which had spoken the language of the whole mass of the people in a way that few other artists had ever done. consequently, in the early renaissance, there were no painters in the north of italy, and few even in florence, who were not touched by the influence of the veronese. but paolo's own immediate predecessors were no longer able to speak the language of the whole mass of the people. there was one class they left out entirely, the class to whom titian and tintoretto appealed so strongly, the class that ruled, and that thought in the new way. verona, being a dependency of venice, did no ruling, and certainly not at all so much thinking as venice, and life there continued healthful, simple, unconscious, untroubled by the approaching storm in the world's feelings. but although thought and feeling may be slow in invading a town, fashion comes there quickly. spanish fashions in dress, and spanish ceremonial in manners reached verona soon enough, and in paolo caliari we find all these fashions reflected, but health, simplicity, and unconsciousness as well. this combination of seemingly opposite qualities forms his great charm for us to-day, and it must have proved as great an attraction to many of the venetians of his own time, for they were already far enough removed from simplicity to appreciate to the full his singularly happy combination of ceremony and splendour with an almost childlike naturalness of feeling. perhaps among his strongest admirers were the very men who most appreciated titian's distinction and tintoretto's poetry. but it is curious to note that paolo's chief employers were the monasteries. his cheerfulness, and his frank and joyous worldliness, the qualities, in short, which we find in his huge pictures of feasts, seem to have been particularly welcome to those who were expected to make their meat and drink of the very opposite qualities. this is no small comment on the times, and shows how thorough had been the permeation of the spirit of the renaissance when even the religious orders gave up their pretence to asceticism and piety. =xxi. bassano, genre, and landscape.=--venetian painting would not have been the complete expression of the riper renaissance if it had entirely neglected the country. city people have a natural love of the country, but when it was a matter of doubt whether a man would ever return if he ventured out of the town-gates, as was the case in the middle ages, this love had no chance of showing itself. it had to wait until the country itself was safe for wayfarers, a state of things which came about in italy with the gradual submission of the country to the rule of the neighbouring cities and with the general advance of civilisation. during the renaissance the love of the country and its pleasures received an immense impulse from latin authors. what the great romans without exception recommended, an italian was not slow to adopt, particularly when, as in this case, it harmonised with natural inclination and with an already common practice. it was the usual thing with those who could afford to do so to retire to the villa for a large part of the year. classic poets helped such italians to appreciate the simplicity of the country and to feel a little of its beauty. many took such delight in country life that they wished to have reminders of it in town. it may have been in response to some such half formulated wish that palma began to paint his "sante conversazioni,"--groups of saintly personages gathered under pleasant trees in pretty landscapes. his pupil, bonifazio, continued the same line, gradually, however, discarding the traditional group of madonna and saints, and, under such titles as "the rich man's feast" or "the finding of moses," painting all the scenes of fashionable country life, music on the terrace of a villa, hunting parties, and picnics in the forest. bonifazio's pupil, jacopo bassano, no less fond of painting country scenes, did not however confine himself to representing city people in their parks. his pictures were for the inhabitants of the small market-town from which he takes his name, where inside the gates you still see men and women in rustic garb crouching over their many-coloured wares; and where, just outside the walls, you may see all the ordinary occupations connected with farming and grazing. inspired, although unawares, by the new idea of giving perfectly modern versions of biblical stories, bassano introduced into nearly every picture he painted episodes from the life in the streets of bassano, and in the county just outside the gates. even orpheus in his hands becomes a farmer's lad fiddling to the barnyard fowls. bassano's pictures and those of his two sons, who followed him very closely, found great favour in venice and elsewhere, because they were such unconscious renderings of simple country life, a kind of life whose charm seemed greater and greater the more fashionable and ceremonious private life in the city became. but this was far from being their only charm. just as the church had educated people to understand painting as a language, so the love of all the pleasant things that painting suggested led in time to the love of this art as its own end, serving no obvious purpose either of decoration or suggestion, but giving pleasure by the skilful management of light and shadow, and by the intrinsic beauty of the colours. the third quarter of the sixteenth century thus saw the rise of the picture-fancier, and the success of the bassani was so great because they appealed to this class in a special way. in venice there had long been a love of objects for their sensuous beauty. at an early date the venetians had perfected an art in which there is scarcely any intellectual content whatever, and in which colour, jewel-like or opaline, is almost everything. venetian glass was at the same time an outcome of the venetians' love of sensuous beauty and a continual stimulant to it. pope paul ii., for example, who was a venetian, took such a delight in the colour and glow of jewels, that he was always looking at them and always handling them. when painting, accordingly, had reached the point where it was no longer dependent upon the church, nor even expected to be decorative, but when it was used purely for pleasure, the day could not be far distant when people would expect painting to give them the same enjoyment they received from jewels and glass. in bassano's works this taste found full satisfaction. most of his pictures seem at first as dazzling, then as cooling and soothing, as the best kind of stained glass; while the colouring of details, particularly of those under high lights, is jewel-like, as clear and deep and satisfying as rubies and emeralds. it need scarcely be added after all that has been said about light and atmosphere in connection with titian and tintoretto, and their handling of real life, that bassano's treatment of both was even more masterly. if this were not so, neither picture-fanciers of his own time, nor we nowadays, should care for his works as we do. they represent life in far more humble phases than even the pictures of tintoretto, and, without recompensing effects of light and atmosphere, they would not be more enjoyable than the cheap work of the smaller dutch masters. it must be added, too, that without his jewel-like colouring, bassano would often be no more delightful than teniers. another thing bassano could not fail to do, working as he did in the country, and for country people, was to paint landscape. he had to paint the real country, and his skill in the treatment of light and atmosphere was great enough to enable him to do it well. bassano was in fact the first modern landscape painter. titian and tintoretto and giorgione, and even bellini and cima before them, had painted beautiful landscapes, but they were seldom direct studies from nature. they were decorative backgrounds, or fine harmonising accompaniments to the religious or human elements of the picture. they never failed to get grand and effective lines--a setting worthy of the subject. bassano did not need such setting for his country versions of bible stories, and he needed them even less in his studies of rural life. for pictures of this kind the country itself naturally seemed the best background and the best accompaniment possible,--indeed, the only kind desirable. without knowing it, therefore, and without intending it, bassano was the first italian who tried to paint the country as it really is, and not arranged to look like scenery. =xxii. the venetians and velasquez.=--had bassano's qualities, however, been of the kind that appealed only to the collectors of his time, he would scarcely rouse the strong interest we take in him. we care for him chiefly because he has so many of the more essential qualities of great art--truth to life, and spontaneity. he has another interest still, in that he began to beat out the path which ended at last in velasquez. indeed, one of the attractions of the venetian school of painting is that, more than all others, it went to form that great spanish master. he began as a sort of follower of bassano, but his style was not fixed before he had given years of study to veronese, to tintoretto, and to titian. =xxiii. decline of venetian art.=--bassano appealed to collectors by mere accident. he certainly did not work for them. the painters who came after him and after tintoretto no longer worked unconsciously, as veronese did, nor for the whole intelligent class, as titian and tintoretto had done, but for people who prided themselves on their connoisseurship. palma the younger and domenico tintoretto began well enough as natural followers of tintoretto, but before long they became aware of their inferiority to the masters who had preceded them, and, feeling no longer the strength to go beyond them, fell back upon painting variations of those pictures of tintoretto and titian which had proved most popular. so their works recall the great masters, but only to bring out their own weakness. padovanino, liberi, and pietro della vecchia went even lower down and shamelessly manufactured pictures which, in the distant markets for which they were intended, passed for works of titian, veronese, and giorgione. nor are these pictures altogether unenjoyable. there are airs by the great composers we so love that we enjoy them even when woven into the compositions of some third-rate master. =xxiv. longhi.=--but venetian painting was not destined to die unnoticed. in the eighteenth century, before the republic entirely disappeared, venice produced three or four painters who deserve at the least a place with the best painters of that century. the constitution of the venetian state had remained unchanged. magnificent ceremonies still took place, venice was still the most splendid and the most luxurious city in the world. if the splendour and luxury were hollow, they were not more so than elsewhere in europe. the eighteenth century had the strength which comes from great self-confidence and profound satisfaction with one's surroundings. it was so self-satisfied that it could not dream of striving to be much better than it was. everything was just right; there seemed to be no great issues, no problems arising that human intelligence untrammelled by superstition could not instantly solve. everybody was therefore in holiday mood, and the gaiety and frivolity of the century were of almost as much account as its politics and culture. there was no room for great distinctions. hair-dressers and tailors found as much consideration as philosophers and statesmen at a lady's levee. people were delighted with their own occupations, their whole lives; and whatever people delight in, that they will have represented in art. the love for pictures was by no means dead in venice, and longhi painted for the picture-loving venetians their own lives in all their ordinary domestic and fashionable phases. in the hair-dressing scenes we hear the gossip of the periwigged barber; in the dressmaking scenes, the chatter of the maid; in the dancing-school, the pleasant music of the violin. there is no tragic note anywhere. everybody dresses, dances, makes bows, takes coffee, as if there were nothing else in the world that wanted doing. a tone of high courtesy, of great refinement, coupled with an all-pervading cheerfulness, distinguishes longhi's pictures from the works of hogarth, at once so brutal and so full of presage of change. =xxv. canaletto and guardi.=--venice herself had not grown less beautiful in her decline. indeed, the building which occupies the very centre of the picture venice leaves in the mind, the salute, was not built until the seventeenth century. this was the picture that the venetian himself loved to have painted for him, and that the stranger wanted to carry away. canale painted venice with a feeling for space and atmosphere, with a mastery over the delicate effects of mist peculiar to the city, that make his views of the salute, the grand canal, and the piazzetta still seem more like venice than all the pictures of them that have been painted since. later in the century canale was followed by guardi, who executed smaller views with more of an eye for the picturesque, and for what may be called instantaneous effects, thus anticipating both the romantic and the impressionist painters of our own century. =xxvi. tiepolo.=--but delightful as longhi, canale, and guardi are, and imbued as they are with the spirit of their own century, they lack the quality of force, without which there can be no really impressive style. this quality their contemporary tiepolo possessed to the utmost. his energy, his feeling for splendour, his mastery over his craft, place him almost on a level with the great venetians of the sixteenth century, although he never allows one to forget what he owes to them, particularly to veronese. the grand scenes he paints differ from those of his predecessor not so much in mere inferiority of workmanship, as in a lack of that simplicity and candour which never failed paolo, no matter how proud the event he might be portraying. tiepolo's people are haughty, as if they felt that to keep a firm hold on their dignity they could not for a moment relax their faces and figures from a monumental look and bearing. they evidently feel themselves so superior that they are not pleasant to live with, although they carry themselves so well, and are dressed with such splendour, that once in a while it is a great pleasure to look at them. it was tiepolo's vision of the world that was at fault, and his vision of the world was at fault only because the world itself was at fault. paolo saw a world touched only by the fashions of the spanish court, while tiepolo lived among people whose very hearts had been vitiated by its measureless haughtiness. but tiepolo's feeling for strength, for movement, and for colour was great enough to give a new impulse to art. at times he seems not so much the last of the old masters as the first of the new. the works he left in spain do more than a little to explain the revival of painting in that country under goya; and goya, in his turn, had a great influence upon many of the best french artists of our own times. =xxvii. influence of venetian art.=--thus, venetian painting before it wholly died, flickered up again strong enough to light the torch that is burning so steadily now. indeed, not the least attraction of the venetian masters is their note of modernity, by which i mean the feeling they give us that they were on the high road to the art of to-day. we have seen how on two separate occasions venetian painters gave an impulse to spaniards, who in turn have had an extraordinary influence on modern painting. it would be easy, too, although it is not my purpose, to show how much other schools of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as the flemish, led by rubens, and the english led by reynolds, owed to the venetians. my endeavour has been to explain some of the attractions of the school, and particularly to show its close dependence upon the thought and feeling of the renaissance. this is perhaps its greatest interest, for being such a complete expression of the riper spirit of the renaissance, it helps us to a larger understanding of a period which has in itself the fascination of youth, and which is particularly attractive to us, because the spirit that animates us is singularly like the better spirit of that epoch. we, too, are possessed of boundless curiosity. we, too, have an almost intoxicating sense of human capacity. we, too, believe in a great future for humanity, and nothing has yet happened to check our delight in discovery or our faith in life. index to the works of the principal venetian painters. note. public galleries are mentioned first, then private collections, and churches last. the principal public gallery is always understood after the simple mention of a city or town. thus, paris means paris, louvre, london means london, national gallery, etc. an interrogation point after the number or title of a picture indicates that its attribution to the given painter is doubtful. distinctly early or late works are marked e. or l. it need scarcely be said that the attributions here given are not based on official catalogues, and are often at variance with them. antonello da messina. =b.= circa : d. circa . began under unknown flemish painter; influenced by the vivarini and bellini. =antwerp.= . crucifixion, . =bergamo.= lochis, . st. sebastian. =berlin.= . portrait of young man, . a. portrait of young man, . . portrait of young man in red coat. =dresden.= . st. sebastian. =london.= . the saviour, . . portrait of man. . crucifixion, . . st. jerome in his study. =messina.= madonna with ss. gregory and benedict, . =milan.= museo civico, . portrait of man wearing wreath. prince trivulzio, portrait of man, . =naples.= sala grande, . portrait of man. =paris.= . condottiere, . =rome.= villa borghese, . portrait of man. =venice.= academy, . ecce homo. giovanelli, portrait of man. =vicenza.= sala iv, . christ at column. jacopo di barbari. circa- circa. pupil of alvise vivarini; influenced by antonello da messina. =augsburg.= still life piece, . =bergamo.= gallery lochis, , . heads of young men. frizzoni-salis, head of christ. =berlin.= a. madonna and saints. =dresden.= . christ blessing. , . ss. catherine and barbara. . galatea. l. =florence.= pitti, . st. sebastian. =hamburg.= consul weber, . old man and young woman. . =london.= mr. doetsch, portrait of young man. l. =naples.= sala degli olandesi e tedeschi, . bust of a cardinal. =treviso.= s. niccolÒ, frescoes around tomb of onigo. piazza del duomo, frescoes on façade. =venice.= lady layard, a falcon. frari, d chapel l. of choir, decorative frescoes. =vienna.= . portrait of young man. =weimar.= head of christ. bartolommeo veneto. active - . pupil of gentile bellini; influenced by bergamask and milanese painters. =belluno.= . madonna. =bergamo.= carrara, . landscape. e. lochis, . madonna, . =brussels.= m. lÉon somzÉe, bust of a venetian noble. =douai.= . portrait of young man. =dresden.= . salome. =florence.= uffizi, . portrait of a man, . =frankfort.= . portrait of a courtesan. . st. catherine. =genoa.= prince giorgio doria, portrait of a lady. glasgow. . st. catherine crowned. london. . portrait of ludovico martinengo, . mr. benson, madonna and angels. e. dorchester house, portrait of man, . =milan.= ambrosiana, . madonna. portrait of man in black. borromeo, st. catherine. duke melzi, jewess breaking her wedding ring. =nancy.= portrait of young man. =paris.= . portrait of lady. =rome.= corsini, . portrait of young man. doria, . the saviour. =venice.= palazzo ducale, chapel, madonna. =verona.= madonna. e. marco basaiti. circa - . pupil of alvise vivarini; follower of bellini. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, bust of boy. =bergamo.= carrara, . the saviour, . lochis, . portrait of man. morelli, portrait of man, . frizzoni-salis, madonna with ss. monica and francis. =berlin.= . pietà. e. . altar-piece. . st. sebastian. . madonna. e. herr von beckerath, st. jerome. herr kaufmann, st. jerome. =boston, u. s. a.= . entombment. e. =buda-pesth.= . st. catherine reading. st. jerome. =london.= . st. jerome. . madonna. mr. benson, st. jerome beside a pool, . portrait of man. madonna and saints. infant bacchus. mr. c. butler, dead christ. mr. salting, madonna. e. sir michael shaw-stewart, madonna. =meiningen.= ducal palace, st. antony abbot. st. paul. l. =milan.= ambrosiana, . resurrected christ. =munich.= . madonna, saints, and donor. e. =murano.= s. pietro, assumption of virgin. =padua.= sala emo, . portrait of man . madonna with ss. liberale and peter. =paris.= m. martin le roy, st. sebastian. =rome.= doria, . st. sebastian. =strassburg.= st. jerome. =stuttgart.= . madonna. . madonna with female saint. =venice.= academy, . st. james and st. antony abbot. . dead christ. st. george and dragon, . . christ in the garden . . st. jerome. . calling of children of zebedee, . museo corker, sala ix, . madonna and donor. . christ and angels. giovanelli, st. jerome in desert. s. pietro in castello, st. peter enthroned and four other saints. salute, st. sebastian. =vienna.= . calling of children of zebedee, . harrach collection, madonna. jacopo bassano. - . pupil of bonifazio veronese. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, portrait of an admiral. portrait of youth. =augsburg.= . madonna with ss. john and roch. =bassano.= . susanna and elders. e. . christ and adulteress. e. . the three holy children. e. . madonna, ss. lucy and francis, and donor. e. . flight into egypt. e. . st. john the baptist. . paradise. . baptism of st. lucilla. . adoration of shepherds. . st. martin and the beggar. . st. roch recommending donor to virgin. . st. john the evangelist adored by a warrior. . descent of holy spirit. . madonna in glory, ss. lucy and agatha. l. . last supper. duomo, st. lucy in glory, and martyrdom of stephen. l. nativity. s. giovanni, madonna in glory, ss. giustina, barbara, and mark. s. m. delle grazie, crucifixion (fresco). =bergamo.= carrara, . male portrait. lochis, . portrait of lawyer. . portrait of a painter. frizzoni-salis, madonna. portrait of old man. signor baglioni, portrait of old man. casa suardi, st. jerome in desert. =berlin.= herr kaufmann, bust of senator. herr wesendonck, animals going into ark. =biel, n. b.= mrs. hamilton ogilvie, dives and lazarus. nativity. l. =bologna.= corridor iv, two male busts. =brussels.= . old man seated. =buda-pesth.= . head of st. jerome. =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire, portrait of niccolò cappello. =cittadella.= duomo, christ at emaus. e. =dijon.= . agony in garden. . st. sebastian. =dresden.= . israelites in desert. . moses striking rock. . conversion of paul. =edinburgh.= . portrait of man. . adoration of magi. e. =feltre.= vescovado, portrait of old man. =florence.= uffizi, . two hunting dogs. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, bust of old man. senator seated. st. john in landscape. =hampton court.= . head of old man. . male portrait. . jacob's journey. . boaz and ruth. . shepherds' offering. e. . christ in the house of the pharisee. . assumption of virgin. . men fighting bears. . tribute money. =hopetoun house, n. b.= lord hopetoun, portrait of a doge seated. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine, agony in garden. =london.= . portrait of man. . christ and the money changers. . the good samaritan. mr. benson, st. john in the wilderness. christ in house of levi. portrait of woman. mr. g. donaldson, portrait of man aged , . =milan.= ambrosiana, . annunciation to shepherds. l. . adoration of shepherds. e. =modena.= . st. paul and another saint. =montpellier.= . old man in armour. =munich.= . old man, son, and grandson. . st. jerome in desert. . deposition from cross. . madonna enthroned and two saints. lotzbeck collection, . portrait of lady. =padua.= s. maria in vanzo, entombment. =paris.= , vintage. l. . portrait of giovanni da bologna. . portrait of old man. =rome.= villa borghese, . last supper. . the trinity. corsini, . portrait of lady. countess santa fiora, nativity. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird, annunciation. =tours.= . bust of old man. =venice.= academy, . christ in garden. . portrait of a venetian noble. . st. eleuterius blessing the faithful. palazzo ducale, anti-collegio. jacob's journey. palazzo reale, st. jerome, . s. giacomo dall' orio, madonna in glory and two saints. =verona.= . portrait of a senator. =vicenza.= sala v, madonna and saints. e. entrance hall, . madonna, st. mark, and two senators. palazzo loschi, night scene. =vienna.= . the good samaritan. . thamar led to the stake. . adoration of magi. . rich man and lazarus. . the lord shows abraham the promised land. . the sower. . a hunt. . way to golgotha. . noah entering the ark. . christ and the money changers. . after the flood. . ss. sebastian, florian, and roch. . adoration of magi. . portrait of procurator. . portrait of senator. . christ bearing cross. . two men. . portrait of young man. . portrait of young man. academy, . portrait of procurator. =woburn abbey.= . portrait of venetian senator. francesco beccaruzzi. active in the second and third quarter of the xvi century. pupil of pordenone; imitator of all his great venetian contemporaries; finally, imitator of paul veronese. =belluno.= . woman in white dress. =bergamo.= lochis, . portrait of young woman. =berlin.= herr kaufmann, portrait of gentleman. herr wesendonck, . santa conversazione. =boston, u. s. a.= . copy of a (lost) paris bordone: holy family and saints. =buda-pesth.= . bust of woman. . madonna. . young woman seated. =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum, . adoration of shepherds. =conegliano.= duomo, r. wall, three saints. e. s. m. delle grazie, high altar, madonna and saints. s. rocco, organ picture, madonna and saints. l. =dresden.= . calling of matthew. =ferrara.= sala ii. christ and the adulteress. =florence.= uffizi, . portrait of man. =glasgow.= . madonna enthroned with saints and angels. =haigh hall= (near wigan). lord crawford, bust of woman. =hopetoun house, n. b.= lord hopetoun, gentleman with horse and groom. =lille.= . stoning of stephen(?) . legend of moses. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine, bust of man. santa conversazione. =london.= burlington house, diploma gallery, temperance. apsley house, portrait of lady. mr. c. butler, portrait of man. st. george and the dragon. sir william farrer, santa conversazione. dorchester house, portrait of doge andrea gritti. viscount powerscourt, portrait of "politian." lord northbrook, santa conversazione. mr. g. salting, portrait of man. =keir, n. b.= mr. archibald stirling, young woman playing organ. =milan.= museo civico, . portrait of man with spaniel. =narbonne.= . marriage of st. catherine. =oldenburg.= . dead christ. =padua.= . santa conversazione. . bust of monk in white. =parma.= . portrait of man. =rome.= colonna, . a cavalier. doria, . portrait of woman. . man with flower. =serravalle.= s. antonio, baptism. =strassburg.= scene taken from lotto's crucifixion at monte san giusto. =stuttgart.= . bust of man. =toulouse.= holy family and infant john presenting dove. =treviso.= monte di pietÀ, dead christ. prophets. eredi perazzolo, way to golgotha. s. lucia, sacristy, st. lucy. =venice.= academy, . st. francis receiving stigmata. . deposition. correr, portrait of "cesare borgia." manfrin gallery. santa conversazione and donor. quirini-stampalia, . santa conversazione. palazzo reale, madonna and st. catherine. =venice= (_con_.). giovanelli, . st. roch. s. m. dell' orto, ss. lawence, helen, gregory, dominic, and lorenzo giustiniani. =vienna.= . portrait of lady. . a warrior. . the baptist. . thaddeus. academy, . st. lawrence. . nativity. . deposition. . st. paul. gentile bellini. - . pupil of his father, jacopo bellini; influenced by the paduans. =buda-pesth.= . portrait of catherine cornaro. =frankfort a/m.= . bust of st. mark. e. =london.= . st. peter martyr. . portrait of mathematician. . head of a monk. mr. ludwig mond, madonna enthroned. e. =milan.= brera, . preaching of st. mark. l. (finished by giovanni bellini.) =monopoli.= duomo, st. jerome and donor (?). e. =venice.= academy, . beato lorenzo giustiniani, . . miracle of true cross, . . corpus christi procession, . . healing accomplished by fragment of true cross. l. museo correr, portrait of doge giovanni mocenigo. san marco fabbriceria, organ shutters, ss. theodore and mark, ss. jerome and francis. e. lady layard, adoration of magi. portrait of sultan mohamet, . giovanni bellini. (?)- . pupil of his father, jacopo; formed in padua under the influence of donatello. =bergamo.= lochis, . madonna. e. morelli, . madonna. . madonna. =berlin.= . pietà. l. . dead christ. =florence.= uffizi, . allegory of tree of life. l. =london.= . portrait of loredano. l. . madonna. l. . agony in garden. e. . blood of redeemer. e. mr. ludwig mond, dead christ. madonna. =milan.= brera, . pietà. e. . madonna. . madonna, . dr. gust. frizzoni, madonna. e. =murano.= s. pietro, madonna with ss. mark and augustin and doge barbarigo, . =naples.= sala grande, . transfiguration. =newport, u. s. a.= mr. t. h. davis, madonna. e. =pesaro.= . crucifixion (?). e. . god the father. s. francesco, altar-piece in many parts. =rimini.= dead christ. e. =turin.= . madonna. e. =venice.= academy, . madonna. . madonna. . five small allegories. l. . madonna with st. catherine and magdalen. . madonna with ss. paul and george. . madonna. . madonna with six saints. museo correr, sala vii, . transfiguration. e. sala ix, . dead christ. e. . crucifixion. e. . dead christ supported by three angels. e. palazzo ducale, sala di trÈ, pietà. e. frari, triptych, madonna and saints, . s. francesco della vigna, madonna and four saints, . s. giovanni crisostomo, ss. jerome, augustin, and christopher, . s. maria dell' orto, madonna. e. s. zaccaria, madonna and four saints, . =verona.= . madonna. e. =vicenza.= s. corona, baptism, . jacopo bellini. active - . pupil of the umbrian painter, gentile da fabriano, and of the veronese, pisanello. =brescia.= s. alessandro, annunciation, with five predelle. =ferrara.= sig. vendeghini, adoration of magi. =london.= british museum, sketch-book. e. =lovere.= tadini, madonna. =padua.= sala iv, christ in limbo. =paris.= sketch-book. l. =venice.= academy, . madonna. museo correr, sala ix, . crucifixion. s. trovaso, s. giovanni crisogono on horseback. (?) =verona.= . christ on cross. bissolo. - . pupil and assistant of giovanni bellini. =berlin.= . altar-piece. l. =brescia.= tosio, sala xiv, . madonna and saints. e. =chantilly.= madonna. =düsseldorf.= . madonna with infant john and his parents. =genoa.= annunziata, madonna and four saints. =hampton court.= . portrait of man. e. =london.= mr. benson, annunciation. madonna. mr. mond, madonna with ss. paul and catherine. =milan.= brera, . st. stephen. . st. antony of padua. . a bishop. =rome.= villa borghese, . madonna. e. =treviso.= duomo, three saints and donor. s. andrea, madonna and two saints. =venice.= academy, . dead christ. . presentation in the temple. . christ crowning s. catherine. . madonna with ss. james and job. museo correr, sala ix, . madonna with st. peter martyr. s. giovanni in bragora, triptych. s. maria mater domini, transfiguration. redentore, madonna with ss. john and catherine. lady layard, madonna with ss. michael and ursula and donors. =verona.= circumcision. e. =vienna.= . lady at toilet, . . baptism. bonifazio veronese. active circa - . pupil of palma vecchio; influenced by giorgione. =bergamo.= carrara, , . small mythological scenes. frizzoni-salis, parable of sower. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, santa conversazione. e. =campo s. piero.= oratory of s. antonio, preaching of st. antony (in part). =dresden.= . finding of moses. =florence.= pitti, . madonna, st. elizabeth, and donor. e. . rest in flight. . finding of moses. . christ among the doctors (in part). =hague.= . bust of woman. =hampton court.= . santa conversazione. =lille.= . esther before ahasuerus. =london.= . santa conversazione. e. mr. benson, allegories of morning, and of night (in part). mr. butler, santa conversazione. rape of helen. subject from a romance. mr. charles t. d. crews, birth of john. dr. richter, joseph drawn out of the well. head of pompey brought to cæsar. =milan.= brera, . finding of moses. ambrosiana, . holy family with tobias and angel. e. poldi-pezzoli, pinacoteca, . doctor visiting a patient. =paris.= . santa conversazione. =rome.= villa borghese, . mother of zebedee's children. . return of the prodigal son. colonna, . holy family with ss. jerome and lucy. doria, . santa conversazione. prince chigi, finding of moses. =venice.= academy, . rich man's feast. . massacre of innocents. . judgment of solomon, (in part). palazzo reale, madonna with ss. catherine and john the almsgiver, . giovanelli, santa conversazione. lady layard, twelve very small pictures: rustic occupations. =vienna.= . santa conversazione. . triumph of love. . triumph of chastity. . salome. francesco bonsignori. (?)- . pupil of bartolommeo and alvise vivarini; influenced by giovanni bellini, and later by mantegna and his own townsman, liberale of verona. =bergamo.= lochis, . portrait of a gonzaga. morelli, . the widow's son. l. =berlin.= c. st. sebastian. =florence.= bargello, christ bearing cross. l. =fonthill (wilts).= mr. alfred morrison, portrait of man. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, madonna enthroned. =london.= . portrait of man, . =mantua.= accademia virgiliana, way to golgotha. vision of the nun osanna. =milan.= brera, . st. bernardino. . ss. bernardino and louis holding the initials of christ. poldi-pezzoli, head of a female saint. st. bernardino. profile of old man. bust of venetian noble. =paris.= prince sciarra, bust of a gonzaga. =venice.= palazzo ducale, directors' room. madonna. e. s. giovanni e paolo, d altar r. altar-piece in parts. e. =verona.= . madonna, . . madonna enthroned with four saints, . s. bernardino, madonna enthroned with ss. jerome and george, . s. nazzaro e celso, madonna and saints, finished by girolamo dai libri. s. paolo, madonna with st. antony abbot and the magdalen. e. paris bordone. - . pupil and follower of titian; influenced later by michelangelo. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, apollo and the muses. =bergamo.= lochis, , . vintage scenes. =berlin.= . chess players. . madonna and four saints. =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire, family group. =cologne.= a.a. bathsheba. =dresden.= . apollo and marsyas. . diana as huntress. . holy family and st. jerome. =edinburgh.= . lady at her toilet. =florence.= pitti, . portrait of woman. uffizi, . portrait of young man. =genoa.= brignole-sale, sala v. portrait of man. sala viii, santa conversazione. portrait of man. =glasgow.= . holy family. . holy family. e. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, a courtesan. =hampton court.= . madonna with male and female donors. =keir, n. b.= mr. archibald stirling, madonna and infant john. =london.= . daphnis and chloe. . portrait of lady. bridgewater house, holy family. lord brownlow, cavalier in armour. the misses cohen, portrait of a lady seated. mr. g. donaldson, a courtesan. dr. richter, christ among the doctors. lord rosebery, portrait of a lady. =lovere.= tadini, madonna with ss. george and christopher. =milan.= brera, . baptism. . descent of holy spirit. . s. dominic presented to saviour by virgin. . madonna and saints. bis. three heads. st. ambrose presenting a general to virgin. signor crespi, jove and a nymph. s. maria presso celso, madonna and st. jerome. =munich.= . man counting jewels. =new york, u. s. a.= historical society, . rest in flight. =padua.= sala emo, . christ taking leave of his mother. =paris.= . portrait of man. . portrait of man, . =richmond.= sir f. cook, hunting piece. =rome.= villa borghese, . jupiter and antiope. colonna, . holy family with st. jerome. . holy family, ss. sebastian, and jerome. doria, . venus and mars. vatican, ante-chamber of pope's apartments, st. george and the dragon. =siena.= sala ix, . annunciation. . madonna and donor. =strassburg.= madonna and st. jerome. =treviso.= . madonna with ss. jerome and john the baptist. duomo, adoration of shepherds. madonna with ss. sebastian and jerome. gospel scenes (on a small picture). =venice.= academy, . fisherman and doge. e. . paradise. palazzo ducale, chapel, dead christ. giovanelli, madonna and saints. lady layard, christ baptising a youth in prison. s. giovanni in bragora, last supper. s. giobbe, s. andrew and two other saints. =vienna.= . allegory. . allegory. . lady at toilet. . young woman. czernin, venetian adoring cross. antonio canale called canaletto. - . =biel, n. b.= mrs. hamilton ogilvie, view of scalzi. =buda-pesth.= . the pantheon. =dresden.= . the grand canal. . s. giovanni e paolo. . campo s. giacomo di rialto. . piazza di s. marco. =florence.= uffizi, . the piazzetta. =frankfort a/m.= . entrance to grand canal. . venetian palace and bridge. =hampton court.= the colosseum, . =hopetoun house, n. b.= lord hopetoun, venice from lagoon. =london.= . scuola della carità. . scuola di san rocco. the misses cohen, three studies. dorchester house, view of piazzetta from lagoon. hertford house, thirteen views of venice. mr. mond, two views of the piazza. dr. richter, the dogana. duke of westminster, grand canal. =milan.= casa sormani, the bucentaur. reception of an ambassador. =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian, st. paul's from the thames. s. giorgio maggiore. =paris.= . the salute. mme. andrÉ, two views of venice. m. maurice kann, salute. pescheria. =vienna.= lichtenstein, , , , , , , , , , , , , . views of venice. =windsor castle.= series of large views of the piazza. =woburn abbey.= twenty-four views of venice. domenico caprioli. active -circa . influenced by titian, paris bordone, pordenone, bonifazio, savoldo, and moretto. =berlin.= . portrait of man in black. . tennis player and page. l. . st. sebastian. =brighton.= mr. h. willett, madonna of mercy. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton, portrait of domenico grimani. =castle barnard.= bowes museum, . portrait of man, . =dijon.= . assumption. =london.= lord ashburnham, portrait of titian. l. mr. r. benson, madonna in profile (?). e. duke of grafton, portrait of man. . =motta di livenza.= s. m. dei miracoli, adoration of shepherds. =naples.= museo filangieri, . entombment. l. =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian, return of prodigal. =paris.= mme. c. de rosenberg, portrait of doge grimani. =rome.= borghese, , . caricatured heads. colonna, . portrait of sciarra colonna. =treviso.= . nativity. . =vienna.= . young hero. academy, . picnic. . country dance. =windsor.= portrait of domenico grimani. giovanni busi, called cariani. circa - . pupil of giovanni bellini and palma; influenced by giorgione and capaccio. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, bust of bart. colleoni. =basel.= . bust of young man. =bergamo.= carrara, . madonna with ss. helen, constantine, and other saints. l. . portrait of lady. . bust of man. lochis, . portrait of lady. . christ on cross, bust of donor, . . woman playing, and shepherd asleep. . st. antony of padua. e. . portrait of monk. . portrait of man. . christ bearing cross. e. . portrait of bened. caravaggio. . st. stephen. . small st. jerome. . st. catherine. morelli, madonna. l. portrait of man. duomo, back of high altar, madonna. e. baglioni, madonna and donor, . signor frizzoni-salis, madonna and saints. l. piccinelli, flight into egypt. l. roncalli, family group, . count suardi, st. jerome. portrait of senator. =berlin.= . girl in landscape. . portrait of man. =buda-pesth.= . madonna and st. francis. =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire, portrait of young man. =glasgow.= . christ and the adulteress. =hampton court.= . adoration of shepherds. l. venus. l. =london.= . death of st. peter martyr. l. . madonna and saints. l. south kensington, venus and mars (lent). mr. benson, madonna and donors. portrait of man wearing sword. mr. doetsch, nativity, dorchester house, portrait of man. marquis of lansdowne, a concert. mr. salting, portrait of senator. =marseilles.= st. sebastian with st. roch and a female saint. =milan.= brera, . madonna and saints. l. . madonna. l. museo civico, . lot and his daughters. collection dell' acqua, portrait of a lady. ambrosiana, way to golgotha. borromeo, nativity. st. jerome. poldi-pezzoli, . madonna and saints. bonomi-cereda, portrait of man. magdalen. =munich.= . portrait of man. lotzbeck collection, . portrait of man. =new york, u. s. a.= historical society, . portrait of man. =oldenburg.= . holy family and saints. . two women and a man. =paris.= . madonna, saints, and donor. e. . two men. . holy family with ss. sebastian and catherine. m. aynard, portrait of man. =rome.= villa borghese, . sleeping venus. . madonna and st. peter. . woman with three men. corsini. santa conversazione. vatican. bust of doge. =st. petersburg.= . young woman and old man. =strassburg.= . young man playing guitar. portrait of old venetian. =stuttgart.= . portrait of a lady. =venice.= academy, . portrait of man, . . holy family. . portrait of man. . bust of old woman. =vicenza.= sala. ii, . madonna and saints. =vienna.= . st. sebastian. . christ bearing cross. . the "bravo." . st. john evangelist. academy, . madonna with ss. john and catherine. =zogno.= church, adoration of shepherds. vittore carpaccio. active - . pupil and follower of gentile bellini. =berlin.= . madonna with ss. catherine and jerome. e. . consecration of stephen, . =caen.= . santa conversazione (in part). l. =ferrara.= sala viii, . death of the virgin, . =florence.= uffizi, _bis._ fragment, finding of true cross. =frankfort a/m.= . madonna and infant john. =haigh hall= (near wigan). lord crawford, portrait of lady. =london.= . madonna with ss. john and christopher, and doge giovanni mocenigo, . mr. benson, female saint reading. =milan.= brera, . stephen disputing, . . presentation of virgin (in part). l. . marriage of virgin (in part). l. =paris.= . stephen preaching. l. =stuttgart.= . glory of st. thomas, . . martyrdom of stephen, . =venice.= academy, . martyrdom of the , virgins, . . healing of madman in view of rialto, . , , , , ; , ; , , , ; , . story of st. ursula. . meeting of joachim and anna, . . presentation of infant christ, . museo correr, sala ix, . visitation. l. sala x, . two courtesans. palazzo ducale, sala di trÈ, lion of s. marco, . s. giorgio maggiore, sala del conclave, st. george and the dragon, with predelle, . s. giorgio degli schiavoni, ten pictures along walls of oratory on ground floor, and madonna over altar. st. george slaying dragon; st. george bringing dragon captive; st. george baptising the princess and her father, mdv...; story of st. tryphonius; agony in garden; christ in house of pharisee, ; st. jerome bringing his lion to monastery; burial of st. jerome, ; st. jerome in his study. s. vitale, st. vitale between ss. george and valeria, . lady layard, augustus and sibyl. l. death and assumption of virgin. l. st. ursula taking leave of her father. =vienna.= . christ adored by angels, . vincenzo catena. active - . pupil of the bellini; influenced by carpaccio and giorgione. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, nativity. =bergamo.= carrara, ii. christ at emaus. =berlin.= . portrait of fugger. l. . madonna, saints, and donor. e. . pietà. nazional galerie, raczynski collection. . madonna and saints. e. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, christ giving keys to peter. =buda-pesth.= . madonna, saints, and donor. e. . bust of female saint. . holy family and female saint. e. =cologne.= e. madonna. =dresden.= . holy family. l. . madonna and two saints. e. =glasgow.= . madonna with st. catherine and the magdalen. =liverpool.= . madonna with four saints and donor. e. =london.= . warrior adoring infant christ. l. . st. jerome in his study. l. . bust of youth. . adoration of magi. l. . circumcision. lord ashburnham, madonna, two saints, and donor, . mr. benson, holy family. l. mr. beaumont, nativity. (?) mr. c. butler, christ at the well. l. mr. heseltine, madonna. mr. mond, madonna, saints, and donor. e. =modena.= . madonna and two saints. =nîmes.= . head of an apostle. =padua.= sala emo, . circumcision. e. =paris.= . reception of venetian ambassadors at cairo. mme. andrÉ, portrait of woman. m. lÉopold goldschmidt, bust of woman. m. salomon goldschmidt, circumcision. =rome.= doria, . circumcision. =venice.= palazzo ducale, sala di trÈ, madonna, two saints, and doge loredan. e. quirini-stampalia, sala iii, i. judith. l. giovanelli, madonna with john the baptist and female saint. e. s. maria mater domini, st. christina. s. simeon profeta, the trinity. e. s. trovaso, madonna. e. =vienna.= . portrait of a canon. giovanni battista cima. - circa. pupil of alvise vivarini; influenced by giovanni bellini. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, small holy family and saints. =bergamo.= morelli, . madonna. =berlin.= . madonna enthroned with four saints. . madonna and donor. . healing of anianus (in part). . madonna. =bologna.= . madonna. =boston, u. s. a.= mr. quincy shaw, madonna. e. =conegliano.= duomo, madonna and saints, . =dresden.= . the saviour. . presentation of virgin. =düsseldorf.= . madonna. coronation (in part). l. =frankfort a/m.= . madonna. . madonna and two saints. =london.= . madonna. . madonna. . incredulity of thomas, . . st. jerome. . ecce homo. (?) hertford house, st. catherine. mr. ludwig mond, two saints. mr. j. e. taylor, madonna with two saints (lunette). =milan.= brera, . ss. peter martyr, augustin, and nicholas of bari. . ss. jerome, nicholas of tolentino, ursula, and another female saint. . ss. luke, mary, john the baptist, and mark. . madonna. . st. peter between john the baptist and st. paul, . . st. jerome. . st. giustina and two other saints. poldi-pezzoli, head of female saint. =modena.= . pietà. =munich.= . madonna with mary magdalen and st. jerome. e. =olera.= church, polyptych. e. =parma.= . madonna with ss. cosmos and damian. . madonna with ss. michael and augustin. . endymion. . apollo and marsyas. =paris.= . madonna with john and magdalen. =richmond.= sir f. cook, madonna. =venice.= academy, . madonna with ss. john and paul. . pietà. . madonna. . christ, thomas, and magnus. . madonna with six saints. . tobias and angel, ss. james and nicholas. seminario, god, the father (small lunette). carmine, adoration of shepherds. s. giovanni in bragora, baptism, . ss. helen and constantine. three predelle with story of finding of true cross. s. giovanni e paolo, coronation of the virgin. s. maria dell' orto, st. john between ss. paul, jerome, mark, and peter. lady layard, madonna with ss. francis and paul. madonna with ss. nicholas of bari and john the baptist. =vicenza.= sala iv, . madonna with ss. jerome and john, . =vienna.= . madonna with ss. jerome and louis. carlo crivelli. b. - ; d. after . pupil of the first vivarini; influenced by the paduans. =ancona.= . madonna. e. =ascoli.= duomo, altar-piece, with pietà, . =bergamo.= lochis, . madonna. =berlin.= . the magdalen. a. madonna, st. peter and six other saints. =brussels.= . madonna. . st. francis. =buda-pesth.= madonna. =florence.= panciatichi, . pietà, . =frankfort a/m.= , . annunciation. =london.= . pietà. . the blessed ferretti in ecstasy. . madonna with ss. sebastian and jerome. . annunciation, . . altar-piece in thirteen compartments, . . madonna with ss. sebastian and francis, . . madonna in ecstasy, . . ss. catherine and magdalen. lady ashburton, st. dominic. st. george. mr. benson, madonna, . mr. r. crawshay, pietà. hertford house, st. roch. mr. mond, ss. peter and paul. lord northbrook, madonna. e. resurrection. e. ss. bernardino and catherine. mr. stuart m. samuel, st. george and the dragon. south kensington, jones collection, . madonna. =macerata.= . madonna, . =massa fermana.= municipio, altar-piece, . =milan.= brera, . crucifixion. . madonna. l. . madonna and saints, . . ss. james, bernardino, and pellegrino. . ss. antony abbot, jerome, and andrew. galleria oggiono, coronation of virgin, with john, catherine, francis, augustin, and other saints (in great part). above, a pietà, . museo civico, collection dell' acqua, st. john. st. bartholomew. poldi-pezzoli, sala dorata, . st. francis adoring christ. pinacoteca, . st. sebastian. =paris.= . st. bernardino, . =pausula.= s. agostino, madonna. =richmond.= sir f. cook, madonna. e. =rome.= lateran, madonna, . vatican, pietà. =strassburg.= adoration of shepherds. =venice.= academy, . ss. jerome and augustin. ss. peter and paul. =verona.= . madonna. e. giorgione. - . pupil of giovanni bellini; influenced by carpaccio. =berlin.= a. portrait of man. e. =buda-pesth.= . portrait of antonio brocardo. =castelfranco.= duomo, madonna with ss. francis and liberale. e. =dresden.= . sleeping venus. =florence.= uffizi, . trial of moses. e. . knight of malta. . judgment of solomon. e. =hampton court.= . shepherd with pipe. =madrid.= madonna with ss. roch and antony of padua. =paris.= . fête champêtre. =rome.= villa borghese, . portrait of a lady. =venice.= academy, . storm calmed by st. mark. l. finished, in small part, by paris bordone. seminario, apollo and daphne. giovanelli, gipsy and soldier. s. rocco, christ bearing cross. =vicenza.= casa loschi, christ bearing cross. e. =vienna.= . evander showing Æneas the site of rome. guardi. - . pupil of canaletto. =albi.= . view of salute and giudecca. =amiens.= , , . views. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, scuola di san marco. =bassano.= sala del cavallo, . the piazza. =bergamo.= lochis, - , - . landscapes and views. signor baglioni, two venetian views. count moroni, villa by the sea. =berlin.= a. grand canal. b. lagoon. ^{c & d}. cemetery island. =biel, n. b.= mrs. hamilton ogilvie, salute. redentore. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, large view of venice. =brighton.= mr. constantine iondes, piazza in mist. =brussels.= . scene in st. mark's. =buda-pesth.= - . views of venice. =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum, four small views. =edinburgh.= , . landscapes. =glasgow.= , . views of venice. =hamburg.= consul weber, . ruins. . rialto. =london.= , . views in venice. south kensington, jones collection, . view near venice. the misses cohen, three studies. dorchester house, view from piazzetta. sir wm. farrer, view near venice. sir a. wollaston franks, an island. sir julian goldschmid, boat race. hertford house, nine views of venice. lord houghton, view of riva. mr. mond, pius vi holding a reception. dr. richter, cannareggio. mr. salting, the rialto. view near venice. gothic ruins. classic ruins. mrs. anderson weston, grand canal. =milan.= museo civico, , - . landscapes. poldi-pezzoli, . piazetta. . dogana. , . tiny landscapes. signor bertini, view of lagoon. prince trivulzio, two small landscapes. =modena.= . piazzetta. . s. giorgio. =montpellier.= . storm on canal. =naples.= museo filangieri, court of doge's palace. =new york, u. s. a.= metropolitan museum. . salute. . rialte. =oxford.= taylorian museum, , . views in venice. =padua.= , . views in venice. . hunting scene. =paris.= . procession of doge to s. zaccaria. . embarkment in bucentaur. . festival at salute. . "jeudi gras à venise." . corpus christi. . sala di collegio. . coronation of doge. =paris= (_con_.). mme. andrÉ, two views of venice. m. lÉopold goldschmidt, dogana. piazzetta. =richmond.= sir f. cook, the piazza. =rome.= colonna, . venetian church. don marcello massarenti, doge's palace. =rouen.= . a villa. =strassburg.= . the rialto. =toulouse.= . rialto. e. . bucentaur. e. =turin.= _bis._ cottage. . staircase. . bridge over canal. =venice.= museo correr, sala x, . the ridotto. . parlour of convent of s. zaccaria. =verona.= , . landscapes. bernardino licinio. active - . pupil of pordenone; influenced by giorgione, palma, and bonifazio. =alnwick.= duke of northumberland, family group. =balcarres, n. b.= lord crawford, portrait of man. . =bergamo.= lochis, . portrait of a lady. signor piccinelli, madonna and saints. =berlin.= . portrait of young woman. =boston, u. s. a.= mr. quincy shaw, madonna and two saints. =brescia.= martinengo, sala c, . portrait of a young man, . duomo vecchio, christ bearing cross. adoration of shepherds. =brighton.= mr. h. willett, board of a harpsichord. =buda-pesth.= . portrait of lady. herr rath, portrait of lady. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton, portrait of young man. =dresden.= . portrait of a lady, . =florence.= uffizi, . madonna with st. francis. . portrait of man. =genoa.= brignole-sale, sala vii, portrait of francesco philetus. =hampton court.= . lady playing on virginals. . family group, . =london.= portrait of a young man. lady ashburton, young man with his hand on a skull. mr. c. butler, portrait of lady, . mr. doetsch, barbara kressin, . dorchester house, portrait of man. adoration of shepherds. =lucca.= sala i, . santa conversazione. =milan.= museo civico, . portrait of lady. archbishop's palace, holy family. signor crespi, santa conversazione. casa scotti, holy family with two shepherds. madonna, three saints, male and female donors. =modena.= . portrait of a lady. =munich.= . portrait of man, . =münster in w.= . bust of man, . =padua.= sala romanino, . portrait of young man. =rome.= villa borghese, . family group. . santa conversazione. miss hertz, head of ceres. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird, portrait of lady. =rovigo.= . st. margaret between ss. catherine and lucy. . portrait of a scholar. =saletto.= church, st. silvester between s. antony of padua and giustina, . =venice.= . portrait of woman. . group of putti. . portrait of young woman. lady layard, santa conversazione. frari, madonna enthroned with saints. the predella contains five friars. =vienna.= . portrait of ottaviano grimani, . harrach collection, madonna and female donor. pietro longhi. - . follower of the bolognese painter, crespi. =bergamo.= lochis, . gambling scene. . coffee scene. morelli, . portrait of girl. sig. baglioni, country party. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton. portrait of senator. =dresden.= . portrait of lady. =florence.= mr. loeser, milliner scene. =hampton court.= , . genre pictures, . =keir, n. b.= mr. arch. stirling, lady sitting for portrait. =london.= , . genre pictures. . andrea tron. mr. f. cavendish-bentinck, visit to nuns. mr. arthur james, four genre pictures. mr. mond, card party. portrait of a lady. dr. richter, card party. lady at toilet. =milan.= signor crespi, portrait of man. =modena.= . a letter writer. =venice.= academy, - . genre pictures. museo correr, sala x, , , - . scenes of venetian life. . boys on horseback. portrait of goldoni. palazzo grassi, staircase, frescoes: seven scenes of fashionable life. quirini-stampalia, sala x, . portrait of daniele dolfino. sala xiii, - . the seven sacraments. . temptation of st. antony. . gambling scene. . a circus. . monks and canons. . study of geography. , . portraits of ladies. lorenzo lotto. - . pupil of alvise vivarini; influenced by giovanni bellini and giorgione. =alzano maggiore= (near bergamo). duomo, assassination of st. peter martyr. =ancona.= . assumption of virgin, . . madonna with four saints. l. =asolo.= madonna in glory with two saints, . =bergamo.= carrara, three predelle belonging to s. bartolommeo altar-piece. . marriage of s. catherine, with portrait of n. bonghi, . portrait of a lady. lochis, , , . sketches for predelle, containing the story of s. stephen. . holy family and s. catherine, . s. alessandro in colonna, pietà. s. alessandro in croce, trinity. s. bartolommeo, altar-piece, . s. bernardino, altar-piece, . s. maria maggiore, intarsias, - . s. michele, frescoes in chapel l. of choir. s. spirito, altar-piece, . signor piccinelli, madonna with ss. sebastian and roch. =berlin.= . portrait of an architect. , . portraits of young men. . ss. sebastian and christopher, . . christ taking leave of his mother, . =brescia.= tosio, sala xiii, . nativity. =buda-pesth.= angel with globe and sceptre (originally top of s. bartolommeo altar-piece at bergamo). =celana= (near bergamo). church, assumption of virgin, . =cingoli= (province of macerata). s. domenico, madonna with six saints, and fifteen small scenes from the lives of christ and the virgin, . =costa di mezzate= (near bergamo). marriage of st. catherine, . =dresden.= . madonna, . =florence.= uffizi, . holy family with st. jerome, . =hamburg.= consul weber, . st. jerome. =hampton court.= . portrait of young man. e. . portrait of andrea odoni, . =hermannstadt.= st. jerome. =jesi.=[ ] municipio, three predelle containing story of st. lucy. library, pietà, . annunciation. st. lucy before the judge. madonna and saints, francis receiving stigmata (lunette) . visitation, annunciation (lunette) . [note : all the lottos at jesi are presently to be transported to the palazzo della signoria.] =london.= . portraits of agostino and niccolò della torre, . . family group. . portrait of prothonotary giuliano. bridgewater house, madonna and saints. e. dorchester house, portrait of a lady. mrs. martin colnaghi, madonna with ss. jerome and antony of padua, . sir w. m. conway, danaë. e. =loreto.= palazzo apostolico, . ss. christopher, sebastian, and roch. . christ and adulteress. . nativity. , . ss. lucy and thecla. , . two prophets. l. . michael driving lucifer from heaven. l. . presentation in temple. l. . baptism. l. . adoration of magi. l. . sacrifice of melchisedec. l. =madrid.= . bridal couple, . . st. jerome. =milan.= brera, . pietà, . . portrait of lady. . portrait of old man. . portrait of man. all l. gal. oggioni, . assumption of virgin. e. . portrait of man. poldi-pezzoli, pinacoteca, . holy family. museo civico, . portrait of young man. borromeo, christ on cross with symbols of the passion. dr. frizzoni, st. catherine. =monte s. giusto= (near macerata). church, crucifixion, . =munich.= . marriage of st. catherine. e. =nancy.= head of a man. l. =naples.= sala veneta, . madonna with st. peter martyr. e. bust of man in white cap and coat (?). e. =osimo.= municipio, madonna and angels. =paris.= . christ and adulteress. . st. jerome, . . nativity. =ponteranica= (near bergamo). church, altar-piece in six panels. =recanati.= municipio, altar-piece in six parts, . transfiguration. e. s. domenico, fresco: s. vincent in glory. s. maria sopra mercanti, annunciation. =rome.= borghese, . madonna with s. onofrio and a bishop, . . portrait of man. capitol, . portrait of man. doria, . st. jerome. rospigliosi, allegory. prince doria, portrait of man. =sedrina= (near bergamo). church, madonna in glory and four saints, . =st. petersburg.= leuchtenberg collection, st. catherine, . =trescorre.= suardi chapel, frescoes, . =treviso.= sala sernagiotto, . portrait of monk, . s. cristina, altar-piece, dead christ (lunette). e. =venice.= carmine, s. nicholas in glory, . s. giacomo dall' orio, madonna and saints, . s. giovanni e paolo, s. antonino bestowing alms, . =vienna.= . santa conversazione. . portrait of man. . three views of a man. bartolommeo montagna. circa- . pupil of alvise vivarini; influenced by gentile bellini and the paduan sculptor bellano. =belluno.= . madonna. e. =bergamo.= lochis, . madonna with ss. roch and sebastian, . morelli, . st. jerome. frizzoni-salis, madonna. =berlin.= . madonna, saints, and donors, . =bremen.= kunsthalle, . head and hands of madonna from an annunciation. =certosa= (near pavia). madonna, ss. john, onofrio, and three angels. =london.= mr. c. butler, madonna. sir wm. farrer, madonna. e. two cassone tondi. l. mr. ludwig mond, madonna with st. roch. e. sir b. samuelson, madonna adoring child. =milan.= brera, . madonna, four saints, and three angels, . poldi-pezzoli, st. jerome. st. paul. two tondi (on a cassone). dr. gust. frizzoni, st. jerome. =modena.= . madonna, . =padua.= bishop's palace, hall, frieze with busts of paduan bishops. s. maria in vanzo, madonna and four saints. scuola del santo, fresco . opening of st. anthony's tomb. =panshanger.= lord cowper, madonna. =paris.= . ecce homo. . three angels. =praglia= (near padua). refectory, fresco: crucifixion. =strassburg.= . holy family. =venice.= academy, . madonna, ss. sebastian and jerome. . christ between ss. roch and sebastian. lady layard, john the baptist between two other saints. =verona.= . two saints. s. nazzaro e celso, ss. nazzaro and celso. ss. john and benedict. pietà. ss. blaise and giuliana. frescoes: legend of st. blaise. all - . =vicenza.= sala v, . holy family. . madonna enthroned, four saints, three angels. e. . madonna with ss. monica and mary magdalen. . madonna. l. . madonna. l. . presentation in temple. . s. agnes. . madonna with ss. john the baptist and onofrio. . madonna. l. duomo, fresco: nativity. altar-piece, madonna with ss. catherine and margaret. frescoes: ss. margaret and catherine. s. corona, magdalen between four other saints. s. lorenzo, fresco in chapel l. of choir. monte berico, pietà, . fresco: pietà. palma vecchio. circa- . pupil of giovanni bellini; influenced by giorgione. =alnwick.= duke of northumberland, portrait of lady, (landscape by cariani.) =bergamo.= lochis, . madonna and two saints. l. =berlin.= a. head of young woman. e. b. bust of woman. . portrait of man. =brunswick.= adam and eve. e. =buda-pesth.= . madonna with st. francis, (finished by cariani.) =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum, venus. l (in part). =dresden.= . madonna with john the baptist and st. catherine. . three sisters. . venus. . holy family with s. catherine. . meeting of jacob and rachel. l. =florence.= uffizi, . judith. l. =genoa.= brignole-sale, madonna with magdalen and john. l. =glasgow.= . holy family, (finished by cariani.) =hamburg.= consul weber, annunciation. =hampton court.= . santa conversazione. . head of woman. l. =london.= . portrait of man. mr. benson, santa conversazione and donor, (finished by cariani.) mr. wickham flower, santa conversazione, (finished by cariani.) mr. mond, bust of woman. l. =milan.= brera, . ss. helen, constantine, roch, and sebastian. . adoration of magi, l., (finished by cariani.) =modena.= marchese lotario rangoni, madonna and saints. =munich.= . madonna, ss. roch and mary magdalen. =naples.= sala grande, . santa conversazione, with male and female donors. =paris.= . adoration of shepherds and female donor. =peghera.= church, polyptych. =rome.= borghese, . lucrece. l. . madonna, francis, jerome, and donor. capitol, . christ and adulteress. colonna, . madonna, st. peter, and donor. =serina.= church, polyptych. =venice.= academy, . christ and adulteress. . st. peter enthroned and six other saints. . assumption of virgin. l. quirini-stampalia, sala iv, unfinished portrait of young woman. l. sala xvii, portrait of man. giovanelli, sposalizio. l. s. maria formosa, st. barbara, altar-piece. lady layard, knight and lady (a fragment). =vicenza.= s. stefano, madonna and saints. =vienna.= . john the baptist. . the visitation, (finished by cariani.) . santa conversazione. . portrait of lady. l. . violante. l. , , , , busts of women. e. portrait of old man. . lucretia. lichtenstein, santa conversazione. holy family and two female saints. l. sebastiano del piombo. circa- . pupil of giovanni bellini, cima, and giorgione; later, influenced by michelangelo. =alnwick.= duke of northumberland, visitation. =berlin.= . pietà. l. a. portrait of a knight. l. b. "dorothea." =broomhall, n. b.= lord elgin, portrait of roman lady. =buda-pesth.= portrait of raphael. =cracow.= prince czartoryski, portrait of (?) raphael. =florence.= uffizi, . "fornarina," . . death of adonis. pitti, . martyrdom of st. agatha, . . portrait of man. l. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine, portrait of cardinal nincofort. l. =london.= . resurrection of lazarus, . . portrait of lady. l. . holy family and donor. mr. benson, portrait of man. l. duke of grafton, carondelet and his secretaries. mr. ludwig mond, portrait of pietro aretino. =naples.= sala grande, . portrait of ecclesiastic. l. sala veneta, . head of clement vii. l. sala dei correggio, . holy family. l. =paris.= . visitation, . . st. john in desert. m. alphonse de rothschild, violin player. =parma.= . clement vii. and a chamberlain. l. =rome.= prince doria, portrait of andrea doria. l. sig. del nero, portrait of a prelate. farnesina, sala di galatea, frescoes in lunettes, . s. maria del popolo, birth of virgin. l. (in part.) s. pietro in montorio, frescoes first chapel right. =st. petersburg.= portrait of cardinal pole. l. =siena.= palazzo saracini, portrait of man. l. =treviso.= s. niccolÒ, incredulity of thomas. e. =venice.= academy, . visitation. (?) e. lady layard, pietà. e. s. bartolommeo in rialto, ss. bartholomew, louis, sinibald, and sebastian, on separate panels. e. s. giovanni crisostomo, st. john chrysostom enthroned, and other saints. e. =vienna.= . portrait of (?) cardinal giulio di medici. =viterbo.= pietà. l. . polidoro lanziani. (?)-- . imitator of titian; influenced by bonifazio and pordenone; later, by paul veronese. =ashridge.= lord brownlow, christ and the adulteress. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, madonna and kneeling jerome. madonna, st. elizabeth, and children. =bergamo.= morelli, . holy family. =berlin.= - . sporting cupids. . madonna and saints. nazional galerie, raczynski coll., . st. nicholas presenting children to the virgin. l. herr wesendonck, . portrait of young woman. . madonna and saints. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, portrait of isabella d'este. =buda-pesth.= . holy family and st. catherine. . madonna and young bishop. =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum, , . sante conversazioni. =cologne.= k. predelle: nativity, adoration, and circumcision. =dresden.= . madonna, magdalen, and venetian noble. . marriage of st. catherine. . madonna adoring child. . portrait of man. =edinburgh.= . holy family. =florence.= pitti, . holy family with st. catherine and the magdalen. , holy family. . presentation in temple. l. =glasgow.= . holy family with st. dorothy. =hampton court.= . diana and actæon. =langton, n. b.= (near duns). mrs. baillie-hamilton, adoration of magi. =lille.= . st. peter reading. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine, madonna and st. catherine. =london.= lord battersea, madonna and infant john. mr. r. benson, madonna with st. catherine and the archangel michael. lord brownlow, young woman represented as faith. dorchester house, rest in flight. sir william farrer, three ages. holy family and two donors. adoration of shepherds. mr. mond, madonna with st. catherine and holy children. mr. muir mackenzie, madonna. duke of westminster, christ and the adulteress. lord yarborough, santa conversazione. christ at emaus. =modena.= . madonna and infant john. =munich.= . madonna, bishop, and donor. . portrait of man with staff (?). =naples.= scuola veneta, , . allegories (tondi). =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian, madonna with sleeping child. =oxford.= christ church, diana and actæon. =paris.= . head of young woman. . holy family. . holy family and saints. decapitation of baptist. mme. andrÉ, morosini family adoring virgin. l. =richmond.= sir francis cook, madonna and infant john. =rome.= borghese, . judith. . madonna, baptist, and an angel. capitol, . madonna and infant john. doria, . nativity. . madonna with st. catherine and the baptist. rospigliosi, . adoration of shepherds. don marcello massarenti, santa conversazione. =stuttgart.= . madonna with ss. catherine and jerome. =venice.= quirini-stampalia, sala ii, . marriage of st. catherine. salute, sacristy, holy family. madonna. =verona.= . madonna and infant john. =vienna.= . st. roch. . adoration of magi. . holy family. . christ and the magdalen. academy, . finding of moses. harrach collection, . two putti embracing. g. a. pordenone. - . probably pupil of alvise vivarini. developed under the influence of giorgione and titian. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, bust of franciscan cardinal. =casarsa.= old church, frescoes: story of true cross, . =colalto= (near susigana). s. salvatore, frescoes. e. =cremona.= duomo, frescoes: christ before pilate; way to golgotha; nailing to cross; crucifixion. all . altar-piece: madonna enthroned with s. dominic, paul, and donor, . fresco: deposition, . =milan.= dr. g. frizzoni, dead christ supported by two angels. e. =motta di livenza.= s. maria dei miracoli, frescoes: annunciation. =murano.= s. maria degli angeli, annunciation. l. =piacenza.= madonna di campagna, frescoes: birth of virgin; adoration of magi; disputation of st. catherine. altar-piece; marriage of st. catherine. all - . =pordenone.= duomo, madonna covering with mantle six donors, ss. joseph and christopher to r. and l., . fresco: ss. erasmus and roch, . st. mark enthroned, ss. sebastian, jerome, john, and alexander, . municipio, st. gothard between ss. roch and sebastian, . =san daniele= (near udine). duomo, trinity, . =spilimbergo.= duomo, assumption of virgin. conversion of st. paul. simon magus, . =susigana.= church, madonna and four saints. e. =torre= (near pordenone). church, madonna and four saints. =treviso.= duomo, adoration of magi, and other frescoes, . =venice.= academy, . portrait of lady. . head of man praying. . madonna of carmel, saints, and the ottobon family. . st. lorenzo giustiniani and three other saints. s. giovanni elemosinario, ss. roch, sebastian, and catherine. s. rocco, ss. martin and christopher, . s. stefano, ruined frescoes in cloister. andrea previtali. active - . pupil of giovanni bellini; influenced by lotto. =bergamo.= carrara, . pentecost. . marriage of st. catherine. . altar-piece in parts. . madonna, . . madonna, two saints, and portraits of cassoti and his wife. . madonna. lochis, . madonna. e. . madonna with ss. dominic and sebastian, . sig. baglioni, madonna and two saints. count moroni, madonna, saint, and donor. family group. s. alessandro in croce, crucifixion, . s. andrea, entombment. duomo, altar-piece, and three predelle in sacristry, . s. maria maggiore, fresco over s. door. s. spirito, st. john the baptist and four other saints, . madonna between four female saints, . =berlin.= . madonna and four saints. . marriage of st. catherine. =buda-pesth.= . madonna. =ceneda.= s. maria di meschio, annunciation. e. =dresden.= . madonna and saints, . =hamburg.= consul weber, . holy family. =keir, n.b.= mr. arch. stirling, woman playing, and two men. =london.= . madonna and donor. e. . allegorical subject. sir h. howarth, rest in flight. =milan.= brera, . christ in garden, . coronation (lunette). bonomi-cereda, madonna and two saints, . dr. gust. frizzoni, madonna and donor, . =oldenburg.= . baptist in wilderness, . =oxford.= christ church library, madonna. =padua.= gal. cavalli, . madonna and donor, . =venice.= palazzo ducale, chapel, christ in limbo. crossing of red sea. lady layard, head of christ. s. giobbe, marriage of st. catherine. redentore, nativity. crucifixion. =verona.= . stoning of stephen. . immaculate conception. =vienna.= . madonna. e. . portrait of man. rocco marconi. active in the earlier decades of the xvi century. pupil of giovanni bellini and follower of palma. =berlin.= . christ blessing(?). e. . christ and the adulteress. =buda-pesth.= . madonna, saints, and donor. =chantilly.= madonna and saints (ascribed to palma). =dresden.= . madonna and saints. =düsseldorf.= . triptych. e. =leipzig.= . madonna and four saints (?). =london.= . death of peter martyr (?). lord ashburnham, small landscape (?). mr. j. p. carrington, bust of man (?). e. mr. c. butler, christ in landscape blessing. lord northbrook, madonna. e. sir michael shaw-stewart, madonna. =munich.= . st. nicholas of bari, st. andrew, and a bishop. =münster= (in w.). . madonna and saints. =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian, madonna. =padua.= . madonna and saints (?). =richmond.= sir francis cook, madonna. christ and the adulteress. christ at emaus. =rome.= corsini, . christ blessing. =strassburg.= . madonna. e. =stuttgart.= . last supper. l. =tours.= . madonna and saints. =venice.= academy. . deposition. . christ between two saints. . christ and the adulteress. palazzo reale, christ and the adulteress. giovanelli, christ and the adulteress. s. cassiano, the baptist and four saints. s. giovanni e paolo, christ and saints. =vienna.= czernin gallery, . madonna. n. rondinelli. active about - . pupil of giovanni bellini, whose name he often signs; slightly influenced by palmezzano. =berlin.= . madonna. herr wesendonck, . madonna. =fermo.= carmine, madonna and saints. =florence.= uffizi, . portrait of man. . madonna and two saints. =forli.= . madonna. duomo, st. sebastian. sacristy, visitation. =frankfort a/m.= . madonna with st. anne and the baptist. =innsbruck.= . dead christ upheld by two angels. =liverpool.= . portrait of man. =london.= lady ashburton, madonna. dorchester house, bust of boy. sir b. samuelson, madonna with ss. catherine and bartholomew. =milan.= brera, . madonna, four saints, and three angels. . st. john appearing to galla placida. museo civico, . madonna, ss. francis and peter. =oldenburg.= . madonna. =padua.= sala emo, portrait of young man. =paris.= . madonna between ss. peter and sebastian. =ravenna.= . madonna and four saints. madonna between ss. catherine and john. s. domenico, four large pictures, probably organ shutters; madonna, gabriel, st. peter martyr, s. dominic. =rome.= barberini, , . two madonnas. capitol, portrait of man. doria. . madonna. e. . madonna. . madonna. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird. old man and young man. =stuttgart.= . madonna. =venice.= museo correr, sala vii, , madonna. sala ix, . madonna, two saints, and two donors. giovanelli, two madonnas. lady layard, madonna. s. fantino, holy family. girolamo savoldo. circa - . possibly pupil of francesco bonsignori; influenced by bellini, giorgione, palma, and lotto. =berlin.= . mourning over dead christ. a. magdalen. =brescia.= martinengo, sala c, adoration of shepherds. =fermo.= casa bernetti, st. jerome in landscape. e. =florence.= uffizi, . transfiguration. mr. loeser, st. jerome. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, a shepherd. portrait of a man holding a paper with both hands. =hampton court.= . "gaston de foix." . nativity and donors, . =london.= . magdalen. mr. doetsch, bust of man. mr. mond, portrait of man. =milan.= brera, . madonna in glory and four saints. ambrosiana, . transfiguration. signor crespi, bust of an old man. =munich.= lotzbeck collection, . rest in flight. =new york, u. s. a.= metropolitan museum, marquand collection, . portrait of man. =paris.= . "gaston de foix." =rome.= villa borghese, . head of youth. capitol, . portrait of woman seated. =seven oaks.= lord amherst, flute-player. =treviso.= san niccolÒ, altar-piece, . =turin.= . nativity. . adoration of shepherds. =urbino.= casa albani, rest in flight. =venice.= . the hermits antony and paul. s. giobbe, adoration of shepherds. lady layard, st. jerome. =verona.= santa maria in organo, madonna in glory and saints, . =vienna.= . an apostle. . entombment. lichtenstein, . portrait of young warrior. dead christ. andrea meldolla called schiavone. (?)-- . pupil of titian; influenced by parmigianino. =amiens.= . calisto. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, temperance. =berlin.= a. parable of the faithless steward. b. parable of the lord's vineyard. a. mountain landscape. b. forest scene. herr kaufmann, madonna. =buda-pesth.= . head of young woman (?). =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire, preaching of baptist. marriage of cupid and psyche. =dresden.= . pietà. . holy family and infant john. =florence.= pitti, . death of abel. . adam and eve. uffizi, . adoration of shepherds. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, preparation for combat. the defence. shepherd and cattle. infant jupiter and nymphs. =hamburg.= consul weber, . triumph. =hampton court.= . tobias and the angel. . judgment of midas. . christ before pilate. =london.= lord ashburnham, a cassone. mr. r. benson, landscape with ruins. bridgewater house, christ before pilate. last supper. marriage of st. catherine. lord brownlow, st. catherine. mr. c. butler, jason slaying bulls of aetos. sir william farrer, st. jerome. sir h. howarth, dead christ. mr. james knowles, jupiter and nymph. =marseilles.= judith. =milan.= museo civico, - . story of esther. =munich.= . parnassus. =naples.= sala veneziana, . christ before pilate. =paris.= . the baptist. . ecce homo. =parma.= . deucalion and pyrrha. =venice.= academy, . christ before pilate. . circumcision. . . allegories. quirini-stampalia, sala v, . madonna and st. catherine. corridor, fancy portrait of lady. sala xiv, . conversion of st. paul. palazzo reale, three ceiling paintings. two philosophers. s. m. del carmine, parapet of organ loft, six pictures. s. giacomo dell' orio. christ at emaus. =vienna.= . christ before caiphas. . portrait of man. . curius dentatus. . madonna, infant john, and st. catherine. . birth of jupiter. . belshazzar's feast. . jupiter nursed by amalthea. . diana and actæon. . queen of sheba. . david and the ark. . cupid and psyche. . scipio. . allegory of music. . scene from apocalypse. . apollo and daphne. . death of samson. . apollo and cupid. . adoration of shepherds. . mucius scævola. g. b. tiepolo. - . influenced by g. b. piazzetta, formed on paolo veronese. =amiens.= , , , . sketches. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure, small finding of moses. ceilings: bride and groom; allegory. =bergamo.= carrara, , . sketches. lochis, . sketch. signor baglioni, two legendary subjects. signor piccinelli, christ in the garden. legendary subject. duomo, martyrdom of st. john the bishop. colleoni chapel, lunettes: story of the baptist. =berlin.= . after the bath. . reception. a. st. dominic and the rosary. b. martyrdom of st. agatha. =brighton.= mr. constantine ionides, apotheosis of pope. =brussels.= m. lÉon somzÉe, sacrifice of polyxena. =buda-pesth.= . god the father. . warrior saint on horseback. . madonna and saints. =caen.= . sketch for ecce homo. =edinburgh.= . finding of moses. . antony and cleopatra. =frankfort a/m.= . court scene. =hamburg.= consul weber, . christ bearing cross. . crucifixion. =london.= , . sketches. . deposition. lord battersea, sketch of madonna, saints, and angels. the misses cohen, sketch of esther and ahasuerus. mrs. martin colnaghi, assumption. sir w. m. conway, allegory of the over-throw of paganism. dr. richter, two versions of christ and adulteress. two legendary subjects. =mayence.= . an encampment. =milan.= palazzo chierici, chariot of the sun, ceiling fresco. natural history museum, frescoes. poldi-pezzoli, pinacoteca, . a sketch. . madonna and saints. signor crespi, st. anne presenting virgin to god, . =munich.= . adoration of magi. , . historical subjects. =new york, u. s. a.= metropolitan museum, . sacrifice of isaac. . triumph of ferdinand iii. crowning with thorns. =padua.= sala romanino, . st. patrick. santo, martyrdom of st. agatha. =paris.= . christ at emaus. . standard painted on both sides. mme. andrÉ, reception of henry iii (fresco). three ceiling frescoes. m. lÉopold goldschmidt, crucifixion. =parma.= . st. antony abbot. =piove= (near padua). s. niccolò, franciscan saint in ecstacy. =richmond.= sir f. cook. esther and ahasuerus. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird, assumption. =strassburg.= st. roch. =turin.= . st. antony abbot. =udine.= . chapter of maltese order. s. maria della pietÀ, ceiling. =venice.= . s. joseph, the child, and four saints. . finding of true cross. palazzo ducale, sala di quattro porte, neptune and venice. seminario, refectory, christ at emaus. quirini-stampalia, sala x, . portrait of procurator. palazzo labia, frescoes: antony and cleopatra. palazzo rezzonico, two ceilings. s. alvise, christ at column. way to golgotha. s. apostoli, communion of s. lucy. s. fava, the virgin and her parents. frari, stations of the cross. gesuati, ceiling. altar-piece: madonna and three female saints. s. giovanni e paolo, ceiling of r. chapel. s. maria della pietÀ, ceiling. scalzi, ceiling. scuola del carmine, ceiling paintings. =verona.= . four olivetan saints. =vicenza.= entrance hall, i. immaculate conception. villa valmarana, frescoes in villa and casino, subjects from homer, virgil, ariosto, and tasso, also costume pieces, and oriental scenes. =vienna.= academy, . sketch. =würzburg.= archbishop's palace, frescoes: grand staircase, . hall of emperors, . chapel, two altar-pieces. jacopo tintoretto. - . may have been a pupil of bonifazio veronese; influenced by titian, parmigianino, and michelangelo. =augsburg.= . christ in the house of martha. =bergamo.= carrara, . a lady dressed as a queen. =berlin.= . portrait of procurator. . the same. . madonna with ss. mark and luke. . luna, and the hours. . procurator before st. mark. herr kaufmann, bust of old man. =bologna.= . visitation. corridor iv, portrait of man. =boston, u. s. a.= mrs. j. l. gardner, portrait of senator. =brescia.= tosio, sala xiii, . an old man. s. afra, transfiguration. =buda-pesth.= . head of old man. =caen.= . deposition. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton, head of old man. portrait of senator of . l. =carder house= (near glasgow). mr. arch. stirling, portrait of senator. =cologne.= . ovid and corinna. =dresden.= . lady dressed in mourning. . the rescue. . two gentlemen. =escurial.= christ washing the feet of the disciples. =florence.= pitti, , . portraits of men. . portrait of luigi cornaro. . portrait of vincenzo zeno. uffizi, . portrait of himself. . bust of young man. . admiral venier. . portrait of old man. . portrait of jacopo sansovino. . portrait of man. =hamburg.= consul weber, . warrior. =hampton court.= . esther before ahasuerus. . nine muses. . portrait of dominican. . knight of malta. . portrait of a senator. =leipzig.= . resurrection. =lille.= . portrait of a senator. =london.= . st. george and dragon. . christ washing feet of disciples. . origin of the milky way. bridgewater house. portrait of man. lord brownlow, busts of two old men. mr. r. crawshay, adam and eve. mr. butler, moses striking rock. portrait of senator. dorchester house, portrait of man, . portrait of man by window. sir wm. farrer, the resurrection. mr. arthur james, portrait of andrea barbadigo. portrait of man. mr. mond, galleys at sea. portrait of giovanni gritti. lord rosebery, portrait of admiral venier. e. mr. salting, portrait of ottavio di strà, . =lübeck.= . raising of lazarus, . =lucca.= sala i, . portrait of man. =lyons.= . danaë (in part). =madrid.= . battle on land and sea. . joseph and potiphar's wife. . solomon and the queen of sheba. . susanna and the elders. . finding of moses. . esther before ahasuerus. . judith and holofernes =milan.= brera, . pietà. . st. helen, three other saints, and two donors. bis. finding of body of st. mark. e. museo civico, . bust of procurator. =newport, u. s. a.= mr. t. h. davis, bust of man. =panshanger.= lord cowper, portrait of man. =paris.= . susanna and the elders. . paradise. . portrait of old man. =richmond.= sir f. cook, st. john the baptist. portrait of senator. =rome.= capitol, . the baptism. . ecce homo. . the flagellation. colonna, . three women and a man adoring the holy spirit. . old man playing spinnet. , . portraits of men. doria, . portrait of man. e. =turin.= . the trinity. =venice.= academy, . s. giustina and three donors, . . madonna, three saints, and three donors . . portrait of carlo morosini. portrait of a senator. . deposition. . senator in prayer. . portrait of jacopo soranzo, . . andrea capello. e. sala iv, ceiling: prodigal son, four virtues. . death of abel. . two senators. . miracle of st. mark, . . adam and eve. . two senators. . resurrected christ blessing three senators. . madonna, and three portraits. . crucifixion. . resurrection. palazzo ducale, collegio, doge mocenigo recommended to christ by st. mark. figures in _grisaille_ around the clock. doge daponte before the virgin. marriage of st. catherine and doge donà. doge gritti before the virgin. anti-collegio, mercury and three graces. vulcan's forge. bacchus and ariadne. minerva expelling mars: all, . ante-room of chapel, ss. margaret, george, and louis. ss. andrew and jerome. senato, st. mark presenting doge loredan to the virgin in presence of two other saints. sala quattro porte, ceiling (in part). ingresso, lorenzo amelio, . alessandro bono. vincenzo morosini, . nicolo priuli. ceiling. passage to council of ten, andrea delphino, . a. cicogna. federigo contarini, . nobles illumined by the holy spirit. sala del gran consiglio, paradise, . sala dello scrutino, battle of zara. palazzo reale libreria, transportation of body of st. mark. st. mark rescues a shipwrecked saracen. diogenes, archimedes, and two other philosophers on separate canvases: all e. another room, st. roch. prince giovanelli, battle piece. portrait of senator. portrait of general. portrait of warrior. s. cassiano, crucifixion. christ in limbo. resurrection. gesuiti, assumption of virgin. circumcision. s. giorgio maggiore, last supper. gathering of manna. entombment. s. giuseppe di castello, michael overcoming lucifer. s. maria mater domini, finding of true cross. s. maria dell' orto, last judgment. e. martyrdom of paul. the tablets of the law and the golden calf. e. martyrdom of st. agnes. presentation of virgin. e. s. marziale, glory of s. marziale. s. paolo, last supper. assumption of virgin. s. rocco, annunciation. pool of bethesda. st. roch and the beasts of the field. st. roch healing the sick. st. roch in campo d'armata. st. roch consoled by an angel. st. roch before the pope. scuola di s. rocco, ground floor, nearly all the paintings on walls. staircase, visitation. upper floor, hall, all the paintings on walls and ceiling. portrait of himself, . inner room, crucifixion, . christ before pilate. ecce homo. way to golgotha. ceiling, . altogether, sixty-two paintings. salute, marriage of cana, . s. silvestro, baptism. s. stefano. last supper. washing of feet. agony in garden. s. trovaso, temptation of st. anthony. s. zaccaria, birth of virgin. =vicenza.= entrance hall. . st. augustine healing the plague-stricken. =vienna.= . st. jerome. e. . susanna and the elders. e. . sebastian venier. . an officer in armour. . old man and boy. , . portraits of men. . portrait of man, . . portrait of old man. , , . portraits of men. . portrait of lady. academy, . portrait of ales. contarini. . portrait of doge priuli. =woburn abbey.= . portrait of man. l. titian. - . pupil of the bellini; formed by giorgione. =ancona.= . crucifixion. l. s. domenico, madonna with ss. francis, blaise, and donor, . =antwerp.= . alexander vi presenting baffo to st. peter. e. =ascoli.= st. francis receiving the stigmata. l. =berlin.= a. infant daughter of roberto strozzi, . . portrait of himself. l. . his own daughter lavinia. =boston.= mrs. j. l. gardner, rape of europa, . =brescia.= s. nazaro e celso, altar-piece, . =cobham hall.= lord darnley, portrait of ariosto. e. =dresden.= . madonna with four saints. e. . tribute money. e. . lavinia as bride, . . lavinia as matron. l. . portrait of man, . . a lady with a vase. l. . madonna with a family as donors (in part only). l. . lady in red dress. =florence.= pitti, . "la bella," eleanora gonzaga, duchess of urbino. . pietro aretino, . . magdalen. . portrait of young man. . the concert. e. . philip ii. . ippolito de' medici, . . full-length portrait of man. . head of christ. . "tommaso mosti." uffizi, . eleanora gonzaga, duchess of urbino, . . fr. maria della rovere, duke of urbino, . . flora. e. . madonna with st. antony abbot. e. . venus--the head a portrait of lavinia. l. . portrait of beccadelli, . . venus--the head a portrait of eleanora gonzaga. =genoa.= balbi-senarega, madonna with ss. catherine, domenic, and a donor. e. =hampton court.= . portrait of man, . . portrait of man. e. =london.= . holy family and shepherd. . bacchus and ariadne. . . "noli me tangere." e. . madonna with ss. john and catherine, . bridgewater house, holy family. e. "the three ages." e. venus rising from the sea. diana and actæon. . calisto. . mr. mond, madonna. l. =madrid.= . madonna with ss. ulfus and bridget. e. . bacchanal. . venus worship. . alfonso of ferrara, . . charles v and his dog, . . philip ii in armour, . . the forbidden fruit. l. . charles v on horseback, . . danaë, . . venus, and youth playing organ. l. . salome (portrait of lavinia). . trinity, . . knight of malta. l. . entombment, . . sisyphus. l. . prometheus. l. . st. margaret. l. . philip ii offering infant don fernando to victory. l. . allocution of alfonso d'avalos, . . religion succoured by spain. l. . portrait of himself. . portrait of man. . the empress isabel, . =maniago.= casa maniago, portraits of irene and of emilia di spilimbergo. l. =medole= (near brescia). duomo, christ appearing to his mother. l. =milan.= brera, . st. jerome. l. . bis. antonio porcia. =munich.= . "vanitas." e. . portrait of man. e. . portrait of charles v, . . madonna. l. . christ crowned with thorns. l. =naples.= scuola veneta, ii. philip ii. . paul iii, ottaviano, and card. farnese, . =padua.= scuola del santo, frescoes: st. anthony granting speech to an infant. the youth who cut off his own leg. the jealous husband. all, . =paris.= . madonna with ss. stephen, ambrose, and maurice. e. . "la vierge au lapin." . madonna with st. agnes. . christ at emaus. l. . crowning with thorns. l. . entombment. . st. jerome. l. . "venus del prado." l. . portrait of francis i. . allegory. . "alfonso of ferrara and laura dianti." . portrait of man with hand in belt. . "the man with the glove." e. . portrait of man with black beard. =rome.= borghese, . sacred and profane love. e. . st. dominic. l. . education of cupid. l. capitol, . baptism, with zuane ram as donor. e. doria, daughter of herodias. e. vatican, madonna in glory with six saints, . prince chigi, portrait of aretino. =serravalle.= duomo, madonna in glory, with ss. peter and andrew, . =treviso.= duomo, annunciation. =urbino.= . the resurrection. l. . last supper. l. =venice.= academy, . presentation of virgin in temple, . . st. john in the desert. . assunta, . . pietà, begun in , not quite finished at titian's death. palazzo ducale, staircase to doge's private apartments, fresco: st. christopher, . sala di quattro porte, doge grimani before faith, . palazzo reale, on ceiling of ante-room to libreria, wisdom. l. giovanelli, portrait of man. l. frari, pesaro madonna, . gesuiti, martyrdom of st. lawrence. l. s. giovanni elemosinario, st. john the almsgiver, . s. lio, st. james of compostella. l. s. marcuolo, the christ child between ss. catherine and andrew. e. s. marziale, tobias and the angel, . scuola di s. rocco, annunciation. dead christ (?). e. salute, descent of holy spirit. l. ceiling of choir: eight medallions, one a portrait of titian himself, the rest heads of saints. sacristy, st. mark between ss. roch, sebastian, cosmos, and damian. e. ceiling, david and goliath. sacrifice of isaac. cain slaying abel. s. salvatore, annunciation. l. transfiguration, l. s. sebastiano, st. nicholas of bari (in part), . =verona.= . portrait of ferdinand, king of the romans. duomo, assumption of virgin. =vienna.= . "gipsy madonna." e. . "madonna with the cherries." e. . "the large ecce homo," . . "the little tambourine player." e. . isabella d'este, . . "das mädchen im pelz" (eleanora gonzaga). . "benedetto varchi." . "the physician parma." e. . john frederick of saxony, . . jacopo di strada, . . shepherd and nymph. l. czernin, portrait of doge gritti. girolamo da treviso, the younger. - . pupil of his father, p. m. pennachi; influenced by catena, giorgione, and later by dosso dossi and raphael. =bologna.= s. giovanni in monte, st altar r. noli me tangere. e. s. petronio, th chapel r. monochrome frescoes: miracles of st. antony of padua. =dresden.= . adoration of magi. =faenza.= la magione, choir, frescoes: madonna and saints, with sabba castiglione as donor, . =ferrara.= sig. santini, a female saint and five men. =london.= . madonna, saints, and donor. mr. mond, bust of young man. duke of westminster, nativity. st. luke painting the virgin. =milan.= sig. bagati-valsecchi, the forge of vulcan (fresco on chimney-piece). =modena.= s. pietro, holy family with infant john and st. catherine. =münster= (in w.). kunstverein, . the saviour (?). =rome.= colonna, . portrait of man. donna laura minghetti, judgment of paris (?). =trent.= castle, chapel, frescoes. inner room, frieze. nos. and piazza grande, and via del teatro, frescoes on façades. =venice.= salute, sacristy, st. roch between ss. sebastian and jerome. e. =verona.= . annunciation (?). =vienna.= e. . portrait of man. paolo veronese. - . pupil of antonio badile; strongly influenced by dom. brusasorci. =dresden.= . madonna with cuccina family. . adoration of magi. . marriage of cana. . finding of moses (in part only). . portrait of daniel barbaro. =florence.= pitti, . portrait of daniel barbaro. uffizi, . martyrdom of s. giustina. e. . holy family and st. catherine. =hampton court.= madonna and saints (?). =london.= . consecration of st. nicholas. . alexander and the family of darius. dr. richter, holy family. e. =madrid.= . christ and the centurion. . finding of moses (?). =maser.= villa barbaro, frescoes. =milan.= brera, . ss. antony, cornelius, and cyprian, and page. =padua.= s. giustina, martyrdom of st. giustina. =paris.= . christ at emaus. . young mother and child. e. . marriage of cana. =rome.= colonna, . portrait of man in green. villa borghese, . st. antony preaching to the fishes. =venice.= academy, . battle of lepanto. . feast in house of levi, . . madonna with ss. joseph, john, francis, jerome, and giustina. palazzo ducale, collegio, thanksgiving for lepanto. ante-collegio, rape of europa. s. barnabÀ, holy family. s. caterina, marriage of st. catherine. s. francesco della vigna, holy family with ss. catherine and antony abbot. s. sebastiano, madonna and two saints. crucifixion. madonna in glory with st. sebastian and other saints. ss. mark and marcilian led to martyrdom (in part). st. sebastian being bound (?). frescoes: ss. onofrio and paul the hermit. ss. matthew and mark. ss. roch, andrew, peter, and figure of faith. tiburtine and cumæan sibyls. =verona.= . portrait of pasio guadienti, . . deposition (?). s. giorgio, martyrdom of st. george. s. paolo, madonna and saints. e. =vicenza.= sala ii, . madonna. monte berico, feast of st. gregory, . =vienna.= . christ at the house of jairus. alvise vivarini. active - . pupil of his uncle bartolommeo. =berlin.= . madonna enthroned with six saints. . madonna enthroned with four saints. l. =florence.= mr. charles loeser, madonna. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, bust of smooth-faced man. =london.= the misses cohen, bust of a venetian noble. mr. salting, portrait of youth. =milan.= brera, dead christ adored by two angels. e. bonomi-cereda, portrait of man, . signor bagati-valsecchi, s. giustina dei borromei. l. =modena.= . portrait of man (?). =montefiorentino.= polyptych, . =naples.= scuola veneta, i. madonna with ss. francis and bernardino, . =padua.= . portrait of a man. =paris.= . portrait of a man. l. countess de bÉarn, portrait of man. l. =venice.= academy, . st. matthew. . st. john the baptist. . st. sebastian. st. antony abbot. st. john baptist. st. laurence. e. . st. clare. . head of christ. l. . madonna and six saints, . museo correr, sala ix, . st. antony of padua. frari, st. ambrose enthroned and saints. begun in , finished by basaiti. s. giovanni in bragora, madonna: head of christ, : resurrection, : predelle to last. busts of saviour, john, and mark. s. giovanni e paolo, christ bearing cross. redentore, sacristy, madonna. lady layard, portrait of man. seminario, stanza del patriarca, portrait of man. l. =vienna.= . madonna, . academy, st. clare. female saint with monstrance. =windsor castle.= portrait of man with hawk. bartolommeo vivarini. active - . pupil of giovanni and antonio da murano; influenced by paduans. =bergamo.= frizzoni-salis, madonna and two saints. =boston, u. s. a.= mr. quincy shaw, magdalen. =fermo.= count bernetti, ss. francis and james. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys, polyptych. e. =london.= . madonna with ss. paul and jerome. =meiningen.= ducal palace, an apostle. =naples.= sala veneta, . madonna enthroned, . =paris.= . st. john capistrano, . =turin.= . madonna, . =venice.= academy, , . altar-piece in five parts, . . mary magdalen. . st. barbara, . frari, madonna and four saints, . s. giovanni in bragora, madonna between ss. andrew and john, . s. giovanni e paolo, st. augustine, . ss. dominic and lawrence. s. maria formosa, triptych: madonna, birth of virgin, meeting of joachim and anne, . =vienna.= . st. ambrose between ss. peter, louis, paul, and sebastian, . index of places. =albi.= guardi. =alnwick.= duke of northumberland: licinio, palma. s. del piombo. =alzano.= church: lotto. =amiens.= guardi, schiavone, tiepolo. =ancona.= gallery: crivelli, lotto, titian. s. domenico: titian. =antwerp.= gallery: antonello, titian. =ascoli.= duomo: crivelli. gallery: titian. =ashridge.= lord brownlow: bassano, bordone, cariani, polidoro. =asolo.= church: lotto. =augsburg.= gallery: barbari, bassano, tintoretto. =badger hall= (shropshire). mr. f. capel-cure: basaiti, guardi, pordenone, schiavone, tiepolo. =balcarres, n. b.= lord crawford: licinio. =basel.= cariani. =bassano.= gallery: bassano, guardi. duomo, and s. giovanni: jacopo bassano. s. m. delle grazie: j. bassano. =belluno.= bartolommeo veneto, beccaruzzi, montagna. =bergamo.= gallery, carrara collection: bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, bassano, bonifazio, cariani, gatena, lotto, previtali, tintoretto. lochis collection: antonello, barbari, bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, beccaruzzi, giovanni bellini, bonsignori, bordone, cariani, crivelli, guardi, licinio, lotto, montagna, palma vecchio, previtali. morelli collection: basaiti, giovanni bellini, cariani, cima, p. longhi, montagna, polidoro. signor baglioni: bassano, cariani, guardi, longhi, previtali, tiepolo. frizzoni-salis: barbari, basaiti, bassano, bonifazio, montagna, bartolommeo vivarini. conte moroni: guardi, previtali. signor piccinelli: cariani, licinio, lotto, tiepolo. conte roncalli: cariani. conte suardi: cariani, bassano. s. alessandro in colonna: lotto. s. alessandro in croce: lotto. s. andrea: previtali. s. bartolommeo: lotto. s. bernardino: lotto. colleoni chapel: tiepolo. duomo: cariani, previtali, tiepolo. s. maria maggiore: lotto, previtali. s. michele: lotto. s. spirito: lotto, previtali. =berlin.= antonello, barbari, basaiti, giovanni bellini, bissolo, bordone, caprioli, cariani, carpaccio, catena, cima, crivelli, giorgione, guardi, lotto, montagna, palma, sebastiano del piombo, polidoro, previtali, rocco marconi, rondinelli, savoldo, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto, titian, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. nazional galerie, racynski collection: catena, polidoro. herr beckerath: basaiti. herr kaufmann: basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, schiavone, tintoretto. herr wesendonck: bassano, beccaruzzi, polidoro, rondinelli. =biel, n. b.= mrs. hamilton ogilvie: bassano, canale, guardi. =bologna.= gallery: bassano, cima, tintoretto. s. giovanni in monte: girolamo da treviso. s. petronio: girolamo da treviso. =boston, u. s. a.= museum: basaiti, beccaruzzi. mrs. j. l. gardner: bonifazio, catena, guardi, polidoro, tintoretto, titian. mr. j. quincy shaw: cima, licinio, bartolommeo vivarini. =bremen.= kunsthalle: montagna. =brescia.= gallery tosio: bissolo, lotto, tintoretto. s. afra: tintoretto. s. alessandro: jacopo bellini. s. nazaro e celso: titian. =brighton.= mr. constantine ionides: guardi, tiepolo. mr. henry willett: caprioli, licinio. =broomhall, n. b.= lord elgin: s. del piombo =brunswick.= gallery: palma vecchio. =brussels.= bassano, crivelli, guardi. m. lÉon somzÉe: bart. veneto, tiepolo. =buda-pesth.= basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, gentile bellini, cariani, catena, crivelli, giorgione, guardi, licinio, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, previtali, rocco marconi, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto. herr rath: licinio. =caen.= carpaccio, tiepolo, tintoretto. =cambridge.= fitzwilliam museum: beccaruzzi, guardi, palma, polidoro. =cambridge, u. s. a.= prof. c. e. norton: licinio, longhi, tintoretto. =campo s. piero.= oratory of s. antonio: bonifazio (in part). =carder house= (near glasgow). mr. archibald stirling: tintoretto. =casarsa.= parish church: pordenone. =castelfranco.= church: giorgione. =castle barnard.= bowes museum: caprioli. =celana= (near bergamo). lotto. =ceneda.= madonna di meschio: previtali. =certosa= (near pavia). montagna. =chantilly.= duc d' aumale: bissolo, rocco marconi. =chatsworth.= duke of devonshire: bassano, bordone, cariani, schiavone. =cingoli.= s. domenico: lotto. =cittadella.= duomo: bassano. =cobham hall.= lord darnley: titian. =colalto.= s. salvatore: pordenone. =cologne.= gallery: bordone, catena, polidoro, tintoretto. =conegliano.= duomo: beccaruzzi, cima. s. m. delle grazie: beccaruzzi. s. rocco: beccaruzzi. =costa di mezzate= (near gorlago). lotto. =cracow.= prince czartoryski: s. del piombo. =cremona.= duomo: pordenone. =dijon.= bassano, caprioli. =douai.= bartolommeo veneto. =dresden.= antonello, barbari, bartolommeo veneto, bassano, beccaruzzi, bonifazio, bordone, canaletto, catena, cima, giorgione, licinio, longhi, lotto, palma vecchio, polidoro, previtali, rocco marconi, tintoretto, titian, girolamo da treviso, veronese. =düsseldorf.= bissolo, cima, rocco marconi. =edinburgh.= bassano, bordone, guardi, polidoro, tiepolo. =escurial.= tintoretto. =faenza.= la magione: gir. da treviso. =feltre.= seminario: bassano. =fermo.= carmine: rondinelli. casa bernetti: savoldo, b. vivarini. =ferrara.= beccaruzzi, carpaccio. sig. vendeghini: jacopo bellini. sig. santini: girolamo da treviso. =florence.= pitti: barbari, bonifazio, bordone, s. del piombo, polidoro, schiavone, tintoretto, titian, veronese. uffizi: bartolommeo veneto, bassano, beccaruzzi, giovanni bellini, bordone, canaletto, carpaccio, giorgione, licinio, lotto, palma vecchio, s. del piombo, rondinelli, schiavone, tintoretto, titian, veronese. palazzo panciatichi: crivelli. mr. loeser: savoldo, longhi, alvise vivarini. =fonthill= (wilts). mr. alfred morrison, bonsignori. =forli.= gallery: rondinelli. duomo: rondinelli. s. mercuriale, rondinelli. =frankfort (a/m.)= gallery: bartolommeo veneto, gentile bellini, canale, carpaccio, cima, crivelli, tiepolo. =genoa.= brignole-sale: bordone, licinio, palma vecchio. prince giorgio doria: bartolommeo veneto. palazzo balbi-senarega: titian. s. annunziata: bissolo. =glasgow.= bart. veneto, beccaruzzi, bordone, cariani, catena, guardi, palma, polidoro. =gosford house, n. b.= lord wemys: bassano, bonsignori, bordone, savoldo, schiavone, alvise and bart. vivarini. =hague.= gallery: bonifazio. =haigh hall= (near wigan). lord crawford: beccaruzzi, carpaccio. =hamburg.= consul weber: barbari, guardi, lotto, palma, previtali, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto. =hampton court.= bassano, bissolo, bonifazio, bordone, canaletto, cariani, giorgione, licinio, longhi, lotto, palma vecchio, polidoro, savoldo, schiavone, tintoretto, titian. =hermannstadt.= lotto. =hopetoun house, n. b.= lord hopetoun: bassano, beccaruzzi, canale. =innsbruck.= rondinelli. =jesi.= library: lotto. =keir, n. b.= mr. archibald stirling: beccaruzzi, bordone, longhi, previtali. =langton, n. b.= (near duns). mrs. baillie-hamilton: polidoro. =leipzig.= rocco marconi, tintoretto. =lille.= beccaruzzi, bonifazio, polidoro, tintoretto. =linlathen, n. b.= col. erskine: bassano, beccaruzzi, s. del piombo, polidoro. =liverpool.= catena, rondinelli. =london.= national gallery: antonello, bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, bassano, gentile bellini, giovanni bellini, bonifazio, bonsignori, bordone, canaletto, cariani, capaccio, catena, cima, crivelli, guardi, licinio, pietro longhi, lotto, palma vecchio, sebastiano del piombo, previtali, rocco marconi, savoldo, tiepolo, tintoretto, titian, gir. da treviso, veronese, bartolommeo vivarini. burlington house, diploma gallery: beccaruzzi. south kensington museum. jones collection: crivelli. lord ashburnham: caprioli, catena, rocco marconi. lady ashburton: crivelli, licinio, rondinelli. apsley house: beccaruzzi. lord battersea: polidoro, tiepolo. mr. w. b. beaumont: catena (?). mr. r. h. benson: bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, bassano, bissolo, bonifazio, caprioli, cariani, carpaccio, catena, crivelli, s. del piombo, polidoro. mr. f. cavendish-bentinck: longhi. bridgewater house: bordone, lotto, tintoretto, titian. lord brownlow: bordone, polidoro, tintoretto. mr. c. butler: basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, bonifazio, catena, licinio, montagna, rocco marconi, tintoretto, bartolommeo vivarini. mr. j. p. carrington: rocco marconi. the misses cohen: bordone, canale, guardi, tiepolo, alvise vivarini. mr. martin colnaghi: lotto, tiepolo. sir w. m. conway: lotto, tiepolo. mr. r. crawshay: crivelli, tintoretto. mr. t. d. crews: bonifazio. mr. g. donaldson: bassano, bordone. dorchester house: b. veneto, beccaruzzi, canale, cariani, guardi, licinio, lotto, polidoro, rondinelli, tintoretto. sir wm. farrer: beccaruzzi, guardi, montagna, polidoro, tintoretto. mr. wickham flower: palma. sir a. wollaston franks: guardi. sir julian goldschmid: guardi. duke of grafton: caprioli, s. del piombo. hertford house: canale, cima, crivelli, guardi. mr. j. p. heseltine: catena. sir h. howarth: previtali, schiavone. lord houghton: guardi. mr. arthur james: guardi, tintoretto. mr. james knowles: schiavone. marquis of lansdowne: cariani. mr. muir mackenzie: polidoro. mr. ludwig mond: giovanni and gentile bellini, bissolo, canaletto, catena, cima, crivelli, guardi, p. longhi, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, savoldo, tintoretto, titian, girolamo da treviso. lord northbrook: beccaruzzi, crivelli, rocco marconi. dr. j. p. richter: bonifazio, bordone, canale, guardi, tiepolo, veronese. lord rosebery: bordone, tintoretto. mr. george salting: basaiti, cariani, guardi, tintoretto, alvise vivarini. mr. stuart m. samuel: crivelli. sir b. samuelson: montagna, rondinelli. sir michael shaw-stewart: basaiti, rocco marconi. mr. j. e. taylor: cima. duke of westminster: canale, polidoro, girolamo da treviso. mrs. anderson weston: guardi. lord yarborough: polidoro. =loreto.= palazzo apostolico: lotto. =lovere.= gallery tadini: jacopo bellini, bordone. =lübeck.= tintoretto. =lucca.= gallery: tintoretto. =lyons.= tintoretto. =macerata.= gallery: crivelli. =madrid.= giorgione, lotto, s. del piombo, tintoretto, titian, veronese. =maniago.= casa maniago: titian. =mantua.= accademia virgiliana: bonsignori. =marseilles.= cariani, schiavone. =maser.= villa barbaro: veronese. =massa fermana.= municipio: crivelli. =mayence.= tiepolo. =medole= (near brescia). duomo: titian. =meiningen.= ducal palace: basaiti, bart. vivarini. =milan.= brera: gentile bellini, giovanni bellini, bissolo, bonifazio, bonsignori, bordone, cariani, carpaccio, cima, crivelli, lotto, montagna, palma vecchio, previtali, rondinelli, savoldo, tintoretto, titian, veronese, alvise vivarini. poldi-pezzoli: bonifazio, cariani, crivelli, guardi, lotto, montagna, tiepolo. museo civico: antonello, beccaruzzi, cariani, crivelli, guardi, licinio, lotto, rondinelli, schiavone. ambrosiana: bartolommeo veneto, basaiti, bassano, bonifazio, cariani, savoldo. natural history museum: tiepolo. archbishop's palace: licinio. bagati-valsecchi: gir. da treviso, alvise vivarini. borromeo: bartolommeo veneto, lotto. palazzo chierici: tiepolo. sig. bertini: guardi. sig. b. crespi: bordone, licinio, longhi, savoldo, tiepolo. dr. gust. frizzoni: giovanni bellini, cariani, lotto, montagna, pordenone, previtali. duca melzi: bartolommeo veneto. casa sormani: canaletto. prince trivulzio: antonello, guardi. s. maria presso celso: bordone. =modena.= gallery: bassano, catena, cima, licinio, longhi, montagna, polidoro, alvise vivarini. count lotario rangoni: palma. s. pietro: girolamo da treviso. =monopoli.= duomo: gentile bellini. =montefiorentino.= alvise vivarini. =monte san giusto.= s. maria: lotto. =montpellier.= bassano. =motta di livenza.= s. maria dei miracoli: caprioli, pordenone. =munich.= basaiti, bassano, bordone, cariani, cima, licinio, lotto, palma, polidoro, rocco marconi, schiavone, tiepolo, titian. lotzbeck collection: bassano, cariani, savoldo. =münster= (in w.). licinio, gir. da treviso, rocco marconi. =murano.= s. pietro: basaiti, giovanni bellini. s. maria degli angeli: pordenone. =nancy.= bartolommeo veneto, lotto. =naples.= antonello, barbari, giov. bellini, lotto, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, titian, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. museo filangieri: caprioli, guardi. =narbonne.= beccaruzzi. =new battle, n. b.= marquis of lothian: canale, caprioli, polidoro, rocco marconi. =newport, u. s. a.= mr. t. h. davis: giov. bellini, tintoretto. =new york, u. s. a.= metropolitan museum: guardi, tiepolo. marquand col.: savoldo. historical society: bordone, cariani. =nîmes.= catena. =oldenburg.= beccaruzzi, cariani, previtali, rondinelli. =olera.= church: cima. =osimo.= municipio: lotto. =oxford.= taylorian museum: guardi. christ church library: polidoro, previtali. =padua.= gallery: basaiti, beccaruzzi, jacopo bellini, bordone, catena, guardi, licinio, previtali, rocco marconi, rondinelli, tiepolo, alvise vivarini. santo: tiepolo. scuola del santo: montagna, titian. s. giustina: veronese. s. maria in vanzo: bassano, montagna. bishop's palace: montagna. =panshanger.= lord cowper: montagna, tintoretto. =paris.= louvre: antonello, b. veneto, bassano, bonifazio, bordone, canale, cariani, carpaccio, catena, cima, crivelli, giorgione, guardi, lotto, montagna, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, rondinelli, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto, titian, veronese, alvise vivarini, bart. vivarini. mme. andrÉ: canale, catena, guardi, polidoro, tiepolo. countess de bÉarn: alvise vivarini. mr. lÉopold goldschmidt: catena, guardi, tiepolo. m. salomon goldschmidt: catena. m. maurice kann: canale. m. martin le roy: basaiti. m. alphonse de rothschild: s. del piombo. prince sciarra: bonsignori. =parma.= gallery: beccaruzzi, cima, s. del piombo, schiavone, tiepolo. =pausula.= s. agostino: crivelli. =peghera.= church: palma. =pesaro.= gallery: giovanni bellini. s. francesco: giovanni bellini. =piacenza.= s. maria della campagna: pordenone. =piove= (near padua). s. niccolÒ: tiepolo. =ponteranica= (near bergamo). church: lotto. =pordenone.= municipio: pordenone. duomo: pordenone. =praglia= (near padua). refectory: montagna. =ravenna.= gallery: rondinelli. s. domenico: rondinelli. =recanati.= municipio: lotto. s. domenico: lotto. s. maria sopra mercanti: lotto. =richmond.= sir francis cook: bordone, cima, crivelli, guardi, polidoro, rocco marconi, tiepolo, tintoretto. =rimini.= municipio: giovanni bellini. =rome.= villa borghese: antonello, bassano, bissolo, bonifazio, caprioli, cariani, giorgione, licinio, lotto, palma, polidoro, savoldo, titian, veronese. capitol: lotto, palma, polidoro, rondinelli, savoldo, tintoretto, titian. colonna gallery: bonifazio, bordone, guardi, palma, tintoretto, gir. da treviso, veronese. corsini gallery: bart. veneto, bassano, cariani, rocco marconi. doria gallery: bart. veneto, basaiti, beccaruzzi, bonifazio, bordone, catena, lotto, s. del piombo, polidoro, rondinelli, tintoretto, titian. farnesina: s. del piombo. lateran: crivelli. rospigliosi gallery: lotto, polidoro. vatican: cariani, crivelli, titian. ante-chamber to pope's apartments: bordone. prince chigi: bonifazio, titian. countess santa fiora: bassano. miss hertz: licinio. don marcello massarenti: guardi, polidoro. donna laura minghetti: gir. da treviso. sig. del nero: s. del piombo. s. maria del popolo: s. del piombo. s. pietro in montorio: s. del piombo. =rossie priory, n. b.= lord kinnaird: bassano, licinio, tiepolo. =rouen.= gallery: guardi. =saletto.= church: licinio. =san daniele= (near udine). duomo: pordenone. =sedrina.= church: lotto. =serina.= church: palma. =serravalle.= duomo: titian. s. antonio: beccaruzzi. =seven oaks.= lord amherst: savoldo. =siena.= gallery: bordone. palazzo saracini: s. del piombo. =spilimbergo.= duomo: pordenone. =strassburg.= gallery: basaiti, beccaruzzi, bordone, cariani, crivelli, guardi, montagna, rocco marconi, tiepolo. =stuttgart.= gallery: basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, cariani, carpaccio, polidoro, rocco marconi, rondinelli. =st. petersburg.= hermitage: cariani, s. del piombo. =susigana.= parish church: pordenone. =torre= (near pordenone). church: pordenone. =toulouse.= beccaruzzi, guardi. =tours.= bassano, rocco marconi. =trent.= castle, chapel, and inner room; gir. da treviso. - piazza grande, via del teatro: gir. da treviso. =trescorre.= suardi chapel: lotto. =treviso.= gallery: bordone, caprioli, lotto. monte di pietÀ: beccaruzzi. eredi perazzolo: beccaruzzi. s. andrea: bissolo. s. cristina: lotto. duomo: bissolo, bordone, pordenone, titian. s. lucia: beccaruzzi. s. niccolÒ: barbari, s. del piombo, savoldo. piazza del duomo: barbari. =turin.= giovanni bellini, guardi, tiepolo, tintoretto, b. vivarini. =udine.= municipio: tiepolo. s. maria della pietÀ: tiepolo. =urbino.= ducal palace: titian. casa albani: savoldo. =venice.= academy: antonello, basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, gentile bellini, giovanni bellini, jacopo bellini, bissolo, bonifazio, bordone, cariani, carpaccio, catena, cima, crivelli, guardi, licinio, longhi, montagna, palma vecchio, pordenone, rocco marconi, savoldo, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto, titian, veronese, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. museo correr: basaiti, beccaruzzi, gentile bellini, giovanni bellini, jacopo bellini, bissolo, carpaccio, guardi, longhi, rondinelli, alvise vivarini. palazzo ducale: bartolommeo veneto, bassano, giovanni bellini, bonsignori, bordone, carpaccio, catena, previtali, tintoretto, titian, veronese. manfrin gallery: beccaruzzi. quirini-stampalia: beccaruzzi, catena, longhi, palma, polidoro, schiavone, tiepolo. palazzo reale: bassano, bonifazio, schiavone, tintoretto, titian. seminario: cima, giorgione, tiepolo, alvise vivarini. prince giovanelli: antonello, basaiti, bonifazio, bordone, catena, giorgione, palma, rocco marconi, rondinelli, tintoretto, titian. lady layard: barbari, gentile bellini, bissolo, bonifazio, bonsignori, bordone, carpaccio, cima, licinio, montagna, palma, s. del piombo, previtali, rondinelli, savoldo, alvise vivarini. palazzo grassi: longhi. palazzo labia: tiepolo. palazzo rezzonico: tiepolo. s. alvise: tiepolo. santi apostoli: tiepolo. s. bartolommeo in rialto: s. del piombo. s. barnabÀ: veronese. carmine: cima, lotto, schiavone. scuola del carmine: tiepolo. s. cassiano: rocco marconi, tintoretto. s. caterina: veronese. s. fantino: rondinelli. s. fava: tiepolo. s. francesco della vigna: giovanni bellini, veronese. frari: barbari, giovanni bellini, licinio, tiepolo, titian, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. gesuati: tiepolo. gesuiti: tintoretto, titian. s. giacomo dell' orio: bassano, lotto, schiavone. s. giobbe: bordone, previtali, savoldo. s. giorgio maggiore: carpaccio, tintoretto. s. giorgio degli schiavoni: carpaccio. s. giovanni in bragora: bissolo, bordone, cima, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. s. giovanni crisostomo: giovanni bellini, s. del piombo. s. giovanni elemosinario: pordenone, titian. s. giovanni e paolo: bonsignori, cima, lotto, rocco marconi, tiepolo, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. s. guiseppe in castello: tintoretto. s. lio: titian. s. marco: gentile bellini. s. marcuolo: titian. s. maria formosa: palma, bartolommeo vivarini. s. maria mater domini: bissolo, catena, tintoretto. s. maria dell' orto: beccaruzzi, giov. bellini, cima, tintoretto. s. maria della pietÀ: tiepolo. s. marziale: tintoretto, titian. s. paolo: tintoretto. s. pietro di castello: basaiti. redentore: bissolo, previtali, alvise vivarini. s. rocco: giorgione, pordenone, tintoretto. scuola di s. rocco: tintoretto, titian. salute: basaiti, polidoro, tintoretto, titian, girolamo da treviso. s. salvatore: titian. scalzi: tiepolo. s. sebastiano: titian, veronese. s. simeon profeta: catena. s. stefano: pordenone, tintoretto. s. trovaso: jacopo bellini, catena, tintoretto. s. vitale: carpaccio. s. zaccaria: giovanni bellini, tintoretto. =verona.= gallery: bart. veneto, basaiti, bassano, giovanni bellini, jacopo bellini, crivelli, guardi, montagna, polidoro, previtali, tiepolo, titian, gir. da treviso, veronese. duomo: titian. s. giorgio: veronese. s. nazaro e celso: montagna. s. paolo: veronese. =vicenza.= gallery: antonello, bassano, cariani, cima, montagna, tiepolo, tintoretto, veronese. palazzo loschi: bassano, giorgione. villa valmarana: tiepolo. s. corona: giovanni bellini, montagna. duomo: montagna. s. lorenzo: montagna. monte berico: montagna, veronese. s. stefano: palma. =vienna.= imperial museum: barbari, basaiti, bassano, beccaruzzi, bissolo, bonifazio, bordone, caprioli, cariani, carpaccio, catena, cima, giorgione, licinio, lotto, palma, s. del piombo, polidoro, previtali, savoldo, schiavone, tintoretto, titian, gir. da treviso, veronese, alvise vivarini, bartolommeo vivarini. academy: bassano, beccaruzzi, caprioli, cariani, polidoro, schiavone, tiepolo, tintoretto, alvise vivarini. czernin: bordone, rocco marconi, titian. harrach collection: basaiti, licinio, polidoro. lichtenstein: canale, palma vecchio, savoldo. =viterbo.= municipio: s. del piombo. =weimar.= gallery: barbari. =windsor castle.= canale, caprioli, alvise vivarini. =woburn abbey.= bassano, canale, tintoretto. =würzburg.= archbishop's palace: tiepolo. =zogno.= church: cariani. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) rembrandt and his works: comprising a short account of his life; with a critical examination into his principles and practice of design, light, shade, and colour. illustrated by examples from the etchings of rembrandt. by john burnet, f.r.s. author of "practical hints on painting." [illustration: head of rembrandt] london: david bogue, , fleet street. mdcccxlix. to the earl of ellesmere, the enlightened patron of art and literature, this work is most respectfully inscribed, by his obliged, humble servant, john burnet. preface. the high estimation in which i have ever held the works of rembrandt has been greatly increased by my going through this examination of his various excellencies, and such will ever be the case when the emanations of genius are investigated; like the lustre of precious stones, their luminous colour shines from the centre, not from the surface. with such a mine of rich ore as the works of rembrandt contain, it is necessary to apologise for the paucity of examples offered, for in a work of this kind i have been obliged to confine myself to a certain brevity and a limited number of illustrations; still i must do my publisher the justice to say, he has not grudged any expense that would be the means of doing credit to the great artist, the enlightened patron, or my own reputation. another circumstance has been elicited in preparing this work for publication--the great interest that all have shown in this humble attempt to make rembrandt and his works more generally appreciated. his genius and productions seem to be congenial to the english taste. as a colourist he will ultimately lay the foundation of the british school of painting, and prove the justice of du fresnoy's lines-- "he who colours well must colour bright; think not that praise to gain by sickly white." had it been possible, i would have given some examples of his colour as well as of his chiaro-scuro; but i found his great charm consists more in the tone of his colouring than its arrangement. i have mentioned in the body of the work that sir joshua, certainly the greatest master of colour we have yet had in england, frequently speaks ambiguously of many of rembrandt's pictures. i am therefore bound to quote a remark that he makes to his praise. in his memoranda he says--"i considered myself as playing a great game; and instead of beginning to save money, i laid it out faster than i got it, in purchasing the best examples of art that could be procured, for i even borrowed money for this purpose. the possession of pictures by titian, vandyke, rembrandt, &c., i considered as the best kind of wealth." with these remarks i must now launch the result of my labours, having had constantly in mind that feeling which an advocate has in a good cause, not to expect, by all his exertions, to increase the reputation of his client, but an anxiety not to damage it by his weakness. before concluding i must again revert to the interest that all my friends have taken in the success of this publication; and though it may appear invidious to particularise any, i cannot omit mention of that enthusiastic admirer of rembrandt, my young friend mr. e. w. cooke; the messrs. smith, of lisle-street, the connoisseurs and extensive dealers in his etchings; mr. carpenter, the keeper of the prints in the british museum; and, lastly, my young literary friend, mr. peter cunningham, who has, from the beginning, entered heartily into the cause of "rembrandt and his works." brompton, november th, . illustrations. . head of rembrandt _facing title-page._ . interior of the mill of rembrandt's father _page_ . exterior of the same . rembrandt's house at amsterdam . fac-simile of a letter of rembrandt's . christ and his disciples at emmaus . the entombment . the return from jerusalem . the nativity . doctor faustus . burgomaster six . portrait of van tolling . six's bridge . rembrandt's mill . fac-simile of a drawing by rembrandt in british museum . portrait of rembrandt's mother . portraits of rembrandt and his wife . view of amsterdam . cottage with white palings rembrandt. in commencing an account of the life of rembrandt van rhÿn and his works, i feel both a pleasure and a certain degree of confidence, as, from my first using a pencil, his pictures have been my delight and gratification, which have continued to increase through a long life of investigation. though i cannot expect to enhance the high estimation in which rembrandt is held by all persons competent to appreciate his extraordinary powers, nevertheless, the publication of the results of my study may tend to spread a knowledge of his principles and practice, which may be advantageous to similar branches in other schools; for, notwithstanding that his style is in the greatest degree original and peculiar to himself, yet it is founded upon those effects existing in nature which are to be discovered, more or less, in the works of all the great masters of colouring and chiaro-scuro. of his early life little is known; for, unless cradled in the higher circles of society, the early lives of eminent men frequently remain shrouded in obscurity. the development of their genius alone draws attention to their history, which is generally progressive; hence a retrospective view is ambiguous. little is known either of rembrandt's birth or the place of his death; what is known has already been related, from houbraken to bryan, and from bryan to nieuwenhuys, and anecdotes have accumulated, for something new must be said. it is, however, fortunate that in searching into the source from which this extraordinary artist drew his knowledge, we have only to look into the great book of nature, which existed at the time of apelles and raffaelle; and, notwithstanding the diversity of styles adopted by all succeeding painters, beauties and peculiarities are still left sufficient to establish the highest reputation for any one who has the genius to perceive them, and the industry to make them apparent. this was the cause of rembrandt's captivating excellence; neither a combination of coreggio and titian, nor of murillo and velasquez, but as if all the great principles of chiaro-scuro and colour were steeped and harmonized in the softening shades of twilight; and this we perceive in nature, producing the most soothing and bewitching results. these digressions may, however, come more properly into notice when rembrandt's principles of colour come under review. rembrandt van rhÿn, the subject of this memoir, was born in the year , between leydendorp and koukerk, in the neighbourhood of leyden, on the rhÿn, but certainly not in a mill, as there is no habitable dwelling in the one now known as his father's. my excellent young friend, mr. e. w. cooke, whose works breathe the true spirit of the best of the dutch school, in a letter upon this subject, says-- "my dear sir, "i send you another sketch of the mill; the picture, including the doorzigte, or view out of the window, i painted on the spot, and that picture is now in the possession of the king of holland, having taken it back with me to show him. the mill was a magazine for powder during the spanish invasion; it was soon after converted into a corn mill, and was in the possession of hernan geritz van rhÿn when his son rembrandt was born; it is situated at koukerk, on the old rhÿn, near leyden. i hope you will correct the vulgar error that rembrandt was born in a mill. there are often dwelling houses attached to water-mills, such as we have in england; but in holland, not such a structure as a water-mill, with water-power; the water-mills there are only _draining mills_, such as we have in lincolnshire, norfolk, &c. surely the noise and movement of a windmill would ill accord with the confinement of any lady, especially the mother of so glorious a fellow as _rembrandt_. for the honour of such association i hope you will not omit my name in the work, for i painted three pictures of that precious relic. "yours, &c. "e. w. cooke." [illustration: interior of the mill of rembrandt's father] [illustration: exterior of the same] the mill now known as the one possessed by rembrandt's father is built of stone, with an inscription, and "_rembrandt_," in gold letters, over the door. the one etched by his eminent son is a wooden structure, which must have long since fallen into decay. as they are both interesting, from association of ideas, i have given etchings of them. the mother of rembrandt was neeltje willems van zuitbroek, whose portrait he has etched. as he was an only child, his parents were anxious to give him a good education, and therefore sent him to the latin school at leyden, in order to bring him up to the profession of the law; but, like our own inimitable shakspere, he picked up "small latin and less greek." having shown an early inclination for painting, they placed him under the tuition of jacob van zwaanenburg, a painter unmentioned by any biographer; he afterwards entered the studio of peter lastman, and finally received instruction from jacob pinas. the two last had visited rome, but, notwithstanding, could have given little instruction to rembrandt, as their works show no proof of their having studied the italian school to much purpose. after receiving a knowledge of a few rules, such as they could communicate, he returned home, and commenced painting from nature, when he laid the foundation of a style in art unapproached either before his time or since. in he is said, by houbraken, to have visited the hague, when, by the price he received for one of his pictures, he discovered his value as an artist. the neighbourhood of the rhine was now given up for the city of amsterdam, where he set up his easel in the year , under the patronage of the burgomaster six, and other wealthy admirers of the fine arts. rembrandt's first works, like all the early works of eminent artists, were carefully finished; the work that raised him to the greatest notice, in the first instance, is professor tulpius giving an anatomical lecture on a dead body,[ ] and is dated . reynolds, in his tour through flanders, speaking of this picture, says:--"the professor tulpius dissecting a corpse which lies on the table, by rembrandt. to avoid making it an object disagreeable to look at, the figure is just cut at the wrist. there are seven other portraits, coloured like nature itself; fresh, and highly finished. one of the figures behind has a paper in his hand, on which are written the names of the rest. rembrandt has also added his own name, with the date . the dead body is perfectly well drawn, (a little foreshortened,) and seems to have been just washed; nothing can be more truly the colour of dead flesh. the legs and feet, which are nearest the eye, are in shadow; the principal light, which is on the body, is by that means preserved of a compact form; all these figures are dressed in black." he further adds--"above stairs is another rembrandt, of the same kind of subject: professor nieman, standing by a dead body, which is so much foreshortened that the hands and feet almost touch each other; the dead man lies on his back, with his feet towards the spectator. there is something sublime in the character of the head, which reminds one of michael angelo; the whole is finely painted,--the colouring much like titian." simeon in the temple, in the museum of the hague, painted in , is in his first manner; as are the salutation, in the gallery of the marquis of westminster, painted in ; and the woman taken in adultery, in the national gallery, painted in , all on panel, and finished with the care and minuteness of gerhard dow. his most successful career may be taken from to . about the year he married miss saskia van uylenburg, by whom he had an only son, named titus, the inheritor of the little wealth left after his father's embarrassments, but, though bred to the arts, inheriting little of his father's genius. in what part of amsterdam he resided at this time we have no record, nor is the house now shown as rembrandt's, and which was the subject of a mortgage, sufficiently authenticated to prove its identity; he may have lived in it, but it could not at any time have been sufficiently capacious to contain all the effects given in the catalogue extracted from the register by mr. nieuwenhuys. the late sir david wilkie, in a letter to his sister, says:--"at the hague we were delayed with rain, which continued nearly the whole of our way through leyden, haarlem, and amsterdam. wherever we went, our great subject of interest was seeing the native places of the great dutch painters, and the models and materials which they have immortalized. at amsterdam we sallied forth in the evening, in search of the house of rembrandt; it is in what is now the jews' quarter, and is, in short, a jew's old china shop; it is well built, four stories high, but it greatly disappointed me. the shop is high in the ceiling, but all the other rooms are low and little, and, compared with the houses of titian at venice, of claude at rome, and of rubens at antwerp, is quite unworthy the house of the great master of the school of holland. even if stuffed, as it is now, with every description of the pottery of canton, it could not have held even a sixth part of the inventory nieuwenhuys found, as the distrained effects of rembrandt, and the only solution is, that he may have once lived there; but as his will, still extant, is dated in another street, and as several of the pictures he painted could not be contained in the rooms we were in, we must conclude that, like the shell which encloses the caterpillar, it was only a temporary abode for the winged genius to whom art owes so much of its brilliancy." as the place of his residence is veiled in obscurity, so is the place of his demise, which is supposed to have taken place in , as mr. smith, in a note to his life of rembrandt, says--"that no picture is recorded bearing a later date than , and the balance of his property was paid over to his son in ." mr. woodburn, in a catalogue of his drawings, says:--"it is uncertain what became of him after his bankruptcy, or where he died; a search has been made among the burials at amsterdam, until the year , but his name does not occur; probably baldinucci is correct in stating that he died at stockholm, in ;" others have mentioned hull, and some give a credence to his having fled to yarmouth, during his troubles, and mention two pictures, a lawyer and his wife, said to have been painted there; they are whole lengths, and certainly in his later manner, but i could not gather any authentic account to build conjecture upon, as the intercourse between amsterdam and yarmouth has been kept up from olden time, and a dutch fair held every three years on the shore. the ancestors of the family in whose possession they still are, may have visited holland; but, amongst such conflicting opinions, it is useless to attempt elucidation of the truth of this. we may rest certain that his works will be appreciated in proportion as a knowledge of their excellence is extended. [illustration: rembrandt's house at amsterdam] [sidenote: _extract from the book of sureties of real estates remaining at the secretary's office of the city of amsterdam, fol. , &c._] legal receipt and discharge, given by titus van ryn, for the balance of the estate of his father, rembrandt van ryn. good for gls. -- . the . bre--willem muilm. i the undersigned acknowledge to have received of the said commissaries the undermentioned six thousand nine hundred and fifty-two guldens nine stuivers, the th november, . received the contents, titus van ryn. before the undersigned magistrates appeared titus van ryn, the only surviving son of rembrandt van ryn and of saskia van uylenburg (having obtained his veniam ætatis), as principal,--abraham fransz, merchant, living in the angelier straat, and bartholomeus van benningen, woollen-draper, in the liesdel, as guarantees. and jointly, and each of them separately, promised to re-deliver into the hands of the commissaries of the insolvent estates, when called upon, the said six thousand nine hundred fifty-two guldens and nine stuivers, which the said titus van ryn shall receive of and from the before-mentioned commissaries, the money arising from the house and ground in the anthonis bree straat, a.º , which was sold under execution, and from the personal estate of saskia van uylenburg and rembrandt van ryn aforesaid; hereby binding all their goods, moveables, and immoveables, present and future, in order to recover the said sum and costs. therefore the before-mentioned principal promised to indemnify his said sureties under a similar obligation as above written.--actum, the th september, . a. j. j. hinlopen and arnout hooft. h. v. bronchorst. : a : : (stamp) ________ _the following catalogue is extracted from the register lª r. fol. to inclusive, of the inventory of the effects of_ rembrandt van rhyn, _deposited in the office of the administration of insolvent estates at amsterdam, anno ._ pictures, &c. in the entrance hall. a picture, representing the gingerbread baker by _brauwer_. a ditto, the gamblers _ditto_. a ditto, a woman and child _rembrandt_. a ditto, the interior of an artist's painting room _brauwer_. a ditto, the interior of a kitchen _ditto_. a statue of a woman, in plaster. two children, in plaster. a sleeping child, in plaster. a landscape by _rembrandt_. a ditto _ditto_. a woman represented standing _ditto_. a christmas night piece _jean lievensz_. st. jerome _rembrandt_. dead hares, a small picture _ditto_. a small picture of a pig _ditto_. a small landscape _hercules segers_. a landscape _jean lievensz_. a ditto _ditto_. a ditto _rembrandt_. a combat of lions _ditto_. a landscape, by moonlight _jean lievensz_. a head _rembrandt_. a ditto _ditto_. a picture of still life, objects retouched _ditto_. a soldier, clad in armour by _rembrandt_. a skull, and other objects, styled a vanitas, retouched _ditto_. a ditto, ditto, retouched _ditto_. a sea piece _hendrick antonisz_. four spanish chairs, covered with leather. two ditto, ditto in black. a plank of wood. in the front parlour. a small picture of the samaritan, retouched by _rembrandt_. the rich man _palma vecchio_. (the half of this picture belongs to _peter de la tombe_). a view of the back of a house by _rembrandt_. two sporting dogs, done after nature _ditto_. the descent from the cross, a large picture, in a gilt frame _ditto_. the raising of lazarus _ditto_. a courtesan dressing _ditto_. a woody scene _hercules segers_. tobias, &c. _lastman_. the raising of lazarus _jean lievensz_. a landscape, representing a mountainous country _rembrandt_. a small landscape by _govert jansz_. two heads _rembrandt_. a picture, _en grisaille_ _jean lievensz_. a ditto, _ditto_ _parcelles_. a head _rembrandt_. a ditto _brauwer_. a view of the dutch coast _parcelles_. a ditto of the same, smaller _ditto_. a hermit _jean lievensz_. two small heads _lucas van valkenburg_. a camp on fire _the elder rassan_. a quack doctor _after brauwer_. two heads by _jan pinas_. a perspective view _lucas van leyden_. a priest _jean lievensz_. a model _rembrandt_. a flock of sheep _ditto_. a drawing _ditto_. the flagellation of our lord _ditto_. a picture, done _en grisaille_ _parcelles_. a ditto, ditto _simon de vlieger_. a small landscape _rembrandt_. a head of a woman, after nature _ditto_. a head _rafaelle urbino_. a view of buildings, after nature _rembrandt_. a landscape, after nature _ditto_. a view of buildings _hercules segers_. the goddess juno _jacob pinas_. a looking glass, in a black ebony frame. an ebony frame. a wine cooler, in marble. a table of walnut tree, covered with a carpet. seven spanish chairs, with green velvet cushion. back parlour. a picture by _pietro testa_. a woman with a child _rembrandt_. christ on the cross, a model _ditto_. a naked woman _ditto_. a copy, after a picture _annibal caracci_. two half figures _brauwer_. a copy, after a picture _annibal caracci_. a sea view _parcelles_. the head of an old woman _van dyck_. a portrait of a deceased person _abraham vink_. the resurrection _a. van leyden_. a sketch _rembrandt_. two heads, after nature _ditto_. the consecration of solomon's temple, done _en grisaille_ _ditto_. the circumcision, a copy after _ditto_. two small landscapes by _hercules segers_. a gilt frame. a small oak table. four shades for engraving. a clothes press. four old chairs. four green chair cushions. a copper kettle. a portmanteau. the saloon. a woody scene by _an unknown master_. an old man's head _rembrandt_. a large landscape _hercules segers_. a portrait of a woman _rembrandt_. an allegory of the union of the country _ditto_. this is probably the picture now in the collection of samuel rogers, esq. a view in a village by _govert jansz_. a young ox, after nature _rembrandt_. the samaritan woman, a large picture, attributed to _giorgione_, the half of which belongs to _peter de la tombe_. three antique statues. a sketch of the entombment by _rembrandt_. the incredulity of st. peter _aertje van leyden_. the resurrection of our lord _rembrandt_. the virgin mary _rafaelle urbino_. a head of christ _rembrandt_. a winter scene _grimaer_. the crucifixion. probably intended for _novellari_ _lely of novellaene_. a head of christ _rembrandt_. a young bull or ox _lastman_. a vanitas, retouched _rembrandt_. an ecce homo, _en grisaille_ _ditto_. abraham offering up his son _jean lievensz_. a vanitas, retouched _rembrandt_. a landscape, _en grisaille_ _hercules segers_. an evening scene _rembrandt_. a large looking glass. six chairs, with blue cushions. an oak table. a table cloth. a napkin press. a wardrobe, or armoir. a bed and a bolster. two pillows. two coverlids. blue hangings of a bed. a chair. a stove. in the cabinet of arts. a pair of globes. a box, containing minerals. a small architectural column. a tin pot. the figure of an infant. two pieces of indian jadd. a japan or chinese cup. a bust of an empress. an indian powder box. a bust of the emperor augustus. an indian cup. a bust of the emperor tiberius. an indian work-box, for a lady. a bust of caius. a pair of roman leggins. two porcelain figures. a bust of heraclitus. two porcelain figures. a bust of nero. two iron helmets. an indian helmet. an ancient helmet. a bust of a roman emperor. a negro, cast from nature. a bust of socrates. a bust of homer. a ditto of aristotle. an antique head, done in brown. a faustina. a coat of armour, and a helmet. a bust of the emperor galba. a ditto of the emperor otho. a ditto of the emperor vitellius. a ditto of the emperor vespasian. a ditto of the emperor titus vespasian. a ditto of the emperor domitian. a ditto of silius brutus. forty-seven specimens of botany. twenty-three ditto of land and marine animals. a hammock, and two calabashes. eight various objects, in plaster, done from nature. on the last shelf. a quantity of shells, marine plants, and sundry curious objects, in plaster, done from nature. an antique statue of cupid. a small fuzil, and a pistol. a steel shield, richly embossed with figures, by quintin matsys, very curious and rare. an antique powder-horn. a ditto; turkish. a box, containing medals. a shield of curious workmanship. two naked figures. a cast from the face of prince maurice, taken after his death. a lion and a bull, in plaster, after nature. a number of walking sticks. a long bow. books on art. a book, containing sketches by _rembrandt_. a ditto, containing prints engraved in wood by _lucas van leyden_. a ditto ditto, by _wael and others_. a ditto, containing etchings by _baroccio and vanni_. a ditto, containing prints after _rafaelle urbino_. a gilt model of a french bed, by _verhulst_. a book full of engravings, many of which are double impressions, by _lucas van leyden_. a ditto, containing a great number of drawings by the best masters. a ditto, containing a number of fine drawings by _andrea mantegna_. a ditto, containing drawings by various masters, and some prints. a ditto, larger, full of drawings and prints. a ditto, containing a number of miniatures, wood-cuts, and copper-plate prints, of the various costumes of countries. a book, full of prints by _old breughel_. a ditto, containing prints after _rafaelle urbino_. a ditto, containing valuable prints, after the same. a ditto, full of prints by _tempesta_. a ditto, containing wood-cuts and engravings by _lucas cranach_. a ditto, containing prints after the _caracci_ and _guido_, and _spagnoletti_. a ditto, containing engravings and etchings by _tempesta_. a large folio of ditto ditto, by _ditto_. a ditto ditto, various. a book, containing prints by _goltius_ and _müller_. a ditto, containing prints after _rafaelle urbino_, very fine impressions. a book, containing drawings by _brauwer_. a folio, containing a great number of prints after _titian_. a number of curious jars and venetian glasses. an old book, containing a number of sketches by _rembrandt_. a ditto ditto. a large folio of sketches by _rembrandt_. an empty folio. a backgammon board. an antique chair. a book, containing chinese drawings in miniature. a large cluster of white coral. a book full of prints of statues. a ditto full of prints, a complete work by _heemskirk_. a ditto, full of sketches by _rubens_, _van dyck_, and other masters. a ditto, containing the works of _michael angelo buonarotti_. two small baskets. a book, containing prints of free subjects, after _rafaelle_, _roest_, _annibal caracci_, and _giulio romano_. a ditto, full of landscapes by the most distinguished masters. a book, containing views of buildings in turkey, by _melchoir lowick_, _hendrick van helst_, and others; and also the costumes of that country. an indian basket, containing various engravings by _rembrandt_, _hollar_, _cocq_, and others. a book, bound in black leather, containing a selection of etchings by _rembrandt_. a paper box, full of prints by _hupe martin_, _holbein_, _hans broemer_, and _israel mentz_. a book, containing a complete set of etchings by _rembrandt_. a folio, containing academical drawings of men and women, by _rembrandt_. a book, containing drawings of celebrated buildings in rome, and other views, by the best masters. a chinese basket, full of various ornaments. a folio. a ditto. a ditto, containing landscapes after nature by _rembrandt_. a book, containing a selection of proof prints after _rubens_ and _jacques jordaens_. a ditto, full of drawings by _miervelt_, _titian_, and others. a chinese basket. a ditto ditto, containing prints of architectural subjects. a ditto, containing drawings of various animals from nature by _rembrandt_. a ditto, full of prints after _frans floris_, _bruitwael_, _goltius_, and _abraham bloemart_. a quantity of drawings from the antique, by _rembrandt_. five books, in quarto, containing drawings by _rembrandt_. a book full of prints of architectural views. the medea, a tragedy, by _jan six_. a quantity of prints, by _jacques callot_. a book, bound in parchment, containing drawings of landscapes, after nature, by _rembrandt_. a ditto, full of sketches of figures by _rembrandt_. a ditto, various. a small box, with wood divisions. a book, containing views drawn by _rembrandt_. a ditto, containing fine sketches. a ditto, containing statues after nature by _rembrandt_. a ditto, various. a ditto, containing pen sketches by _peter lastman_. a ditto, containing drawings in red chalk by _ditto_. a ditto, containing sketches drawn with the pen by _rembrandt_. a ditto, various. a ditto, ditto. a book, various. a ditto, ditto. a ditto, ditto. a folio of large drawings of views in the tyrol, by _roeland savery_. a ditto, full of drawings by celebrated masters. a book, in quarto, containing sketches by _rembrandt_. a book of wood-cuts of the proportions of the human figure, by _albert durer_. a book, containing engravings by _jean lievensz_ and _ferdinand bol_. several parcels of sketches by _rembrandt_ and others. a quantity of paper, of a large size. a box, containing prints by _van vliet_, after pictures by _rembrandt_. a screen, covered with cloth. a steel gorget. a drawer, containing a bird of paradise, and six forms of divers patterns. a german book, containing prints of warriors. a ditto, with wood-cuts. flavius josephus, in german, illustrated with engravings by _tobias kinderman_. an ancient bible. a marble inkstand. a cast, in plaster, of prince maurice. in an anti-chamber of the room of arts. st. joseph by _aertje van leyden_. three prints, in frames. the salutation. a landscape after nature _rembrandt_. a landscape _hercules segers._ the descent from the cross _rembrandt_. a head after nature. a skull retouched by _rembrandt_. a model, in plaster, of the bath of diana by _adam van vianen_. a model from nature _rembrandt_. a picture of three puppies, after nature _titus van ryn_. a ditto of a book _ditto_. a head of the virgin _ditto_. the flagellation a copy after _rembrandt_. a landscape by moonlight retouched by _ditto_. a naked woman, a model from nature by _ditto_. an unfinished landscape from nature _ditto_. a horse painted from nature by _rembrandt_. a small picture _young hals_. a fish, after nature. a model, in plaster, of a bason, adorned with figures, by _adam van vianen_. an old chest. four chairs, with black leather seats. a table. in the small painting room. thirty-three pieces of armour and musical instruments. sixty pieces of indian armour, and several bows, arrows, and darts. thirteen bamboo pipes, and several flutes. thirteen objects, consisting of bows, arrows, shields, &c. a number of heads and hands, moulded from nature, together with a harp, and a turkish bow. seventeen hands and arms, moulded from nature. some stag horns. five ancient casques. four long bows, and cross bows. nine gourds and bottles. two modelled busts of bartholt been and his wife. a plaster cast from a grecian antique. a bust of the emperor agrippa. a ditto of the emperor aurelius. a head of christ, of the size of life. a head of a satyr. a sibil--antique. the laocoon--ditto. a large marine vegetable. a vitellius. a seneca. three or four antique heads of women. a metal cannon. a quantity of fragments of antique dresses, of divers colours. seven musical stringed instruments. two small pictures by _rembrandt_. [illustration: fac-simile of a letter of rembrandt's] in the large painting room. twenty objects, consisting of halberds and swords of various kinds. dresses of an indian man and woman. five cuirasses. a wooden trumpet. a picture of two negroes by _rembrandt_. a child by _michael angelo buonarotti_. in the shed. the skins of a lion and a lioness, and two birds. a large piece, representing diana. a bittern, done from nature, by _rembrandt_. in a small room. ten paintings, of various sizes, by _rembrandt_. a bed. in the kitchen. a pewter pot. several pots and pans. a small table. a cupboard. several old chairs. two chair cushions. in the passage. nine plates. two earthen dishes. the linen (then at the washer-woman's). three shirts. six pocket handkerchiefs. twelve napkins. three table cloths. some collars and wristbands. the preceding inventory was made on the th and th of july, . * * * * * _free translation of the autograph letter on the opposite page._ sir, it is, your honour, with reluctance, that i am about to trouble you with a letter, and that, because on applying to the receiver utenbogaert, (to whom i have entrusted the management of my money matters,) as to how the treasurer volberger acquits himself of the yearly per cent. interest, the said utenbogaert, on wednesday last, replied,--that volberger has every half year received the interest on this annuity, and has done so up to the present time; so that now, at the annuity office, more than florins being owing, and this being the exact and true statement, i beg of you, my kind-natured sir, that the exact sum of money at my disposal may be at once made clear, in order that i may at last receive the sum of florins, long since due; as i shall always strive to recompense such by reciprocal services, and with lasting friendship; so that with my most cordial greetings, and the prayer that god may long keep you in good health, and grant you bliss hereafter, i remain, your honour's obedient and devoted servant, rembrandt. i am living on the binnen aemstel, at the confectioner's. th oct. van suylyken, esq. counsellor and secretary to his highness in the hague. _per post._ we cannot reflect upon the foregoing catalogue without regretting that rembrandt, in his old age, should have, like our own milton, "fall'n on evil days, on evil days though fall'n and evil tongues." the troubles existing at that time pervaded the whole of europe, and works, both of poetry and painting, produced little emolument to the possessors; consequently the whole of this rich assemblage of works of art, the accumulation of years, fell a sacrifice to the hammer of the auctioneer, producing little more than four thousand nine hundred guilders. by its list, however, we are enabled to refute the assertion of many of his biographers, that he neglected the antique, and the works of the great masters of the italian school, the catalogue including casts from ancient sculpture, and drawings and prints after michael angelo, raffaelle, and titian, which at that time were rare and of great value. we find by a memorandum on the back of one of rembrandt's proofs, on india paper, of his etching of "christ healing the sick," which now goes by the name of "the hundred guilder print," that, "wishing to possess a print of the plague, by mark antonio, after raffaelle, valued by the dealer van zomers at a hundred florins, he gave the proof in exchange;" and further, "that such proofs were never sold, but given as presents to his friends." we may perceive by this the anxiety he had to collect works that were excellent. as we do not discover amongst the various articles enumerated, either palette or brushes, we may infer that on quitting amsterdam he carried off all his working apparatus. with this short notice of his life, and these few remarks, i must now enter into what is more properly the subject of this work, a critical examination into his principles and practice. [footnote : mr. nieuwenhuys, in a note in his life of rembrandt, mentions that the directors of the anatomical theatre resolved to sell this picture by auction, for the purpose of augmenting the funds for supporting the widows of members, and in consequence the sale was announced for monday the th of august, . since the year , until this period, it had always remained in that establishment, as a gift from professor n. tulp, who presented it as a remembrance of himself and colleagues. mr. n. had no sooner heard that the piece in question was to be sold, than he went to amsterdam, with the intention of purchasing it; but, upon arriving, was informed that his majesty, the king of the netherlands, had opposed the sale, and given orders to the minister for the home department to obtain it for the sum of , guldens, and caused it to be placed in the museum at the hague, where it remains. the picture is on canvas: height - / inches, width - / inches.] rembrandt and his works. the early pictures, in all ages, either merely indicate the character of bas-reliefs or single statues,--a cold continuity of outline, and an absence of foreshortening. the first move in advance, and that which constitutes their pictorial character, in contradistinction to sculpture, is an assemblage of figures, repeating the various forms contained in the principal ones, and thus rendering them less harsh by extension and doubling of the various shapes, as we often perceive in a first sketch of a work, where the eye of the spectator chooses, out of the multiplicity of outlines, those forms most agreeable to his taste. the next step to improvement, and giving the work a more natural appearance, is the influence of shadow, so as to make the outlines of the prominent more distinct, and those in the background less harsh and cutting, and consequently more retiring. the application of shadow, however, not only renders works of art more natural, by giving the appearance of advancing and retiring to objects represented upon a flat surface--thus keeping them in their several situations, according to the laws of aërial perspective--but enables the artist to draw attention to the principal points of the story, and likewise to preserve the whole in agreeable form, by losing and pronouncing individual parts. coreggio was the first who carried out this principle to any great extent; but it was reserved for rembrandt, by his boldness and genius, to put a limit to its further application. breadth, the constituent character of this mode of treatment, cannot be extended; indeed, it is said that rembrandt himself extended it too far; for, absorbing seven-eighths in obscurity and softness, though it renders the remaining portion more brilliant, yet costs too much. this principle, however, contains the greatest poetry of the art, in contradistinction to the severe outline and harsh colouring of the great historical style. composition. to arrive at a true knowledge of the inventions and compositions of rembrandt, it is necessary, in the first instance, to examine those of albert durer, the leonardo da vinci of germany. the inventions of this extraordinary man are replete with the finest feelings of art, notwithstanding the gothic dryness and fantastic forms of his figures. the folds of his draperies are more like creased pieces of paper than cloth, and his representation of the naked is either bloated and coarse, or dry and meagre. his backgrounds have all the extravagant characteristics of a german romance, and are totally destitute of aërial perspective; yet, with the exception of the character of the people and scenery of nuremburg, he is not more extravagant in his forms than the founder of the florentine school, and had he been educated in italy, he in all probability would have rivalled raffaelle in the purity of his design. in his journal, which he kept when he travelled into the netherlands, he mentions some prints he sent to rome, in exchange for those he expected in return, and it is mentioned that raffaelle admired his works highly. the multitude of his engravings, both on copper and wood, which were spread over germany, influenced, in a great degree, the style of composition of those artists who came after him, and accordingly we see many points of coincidence in the compositions of rembrandt. a century, however, had opened up a greater insight into the mysteries of painting than either leonardo da vinci or albert durer ever thought of; one alone,--viz. aërial perspective, seems to mark the line between the ancient and modern school; for though durer invented several instruments for perfecting lineal perspective, his works exhibit no attempt at giving the indistinctness of distant objects. to rubens, germany and holland were indebted for this essential part of the art, so necessary to a true representation of nature. this great genius, in his contemplation of the works of titian and others, both at venice and in madrid, soon emancipated the art of his country from the gothic hardness of lucas cranach, van eyck, and albert durer; but notwithstanding his taste and knowledge of what constituted the higher qualities of the italian school, the irregular combinations and multitudinous assemblage of figures found in the early german compositions remained with him to the last. his works are like a melodrama, filled with actors who have no settled action or expression allotted them, while in the works of raffaelle, and other great composers, the persons introduced are limited to the smallest number necessary to explain the story. this condensing of the interest, if i may use the expression, was borrowed originally from the greeks, of whose sculptures the romans availed themselves to a great degree. on the other hand, this looseness of arrangement, and what may be termed ornamental, not only spread through germany, but infected the schools of venice; witness the works of tintoret and paul veronese, in which the expression of the countenance absolutely goes for nothing, and the whole arrangement is drawn out in a picturesque point of view, merely to amuse and gratify the eye of the spectator. now, with all these infectious examples before him, rembrandt has done much to concentrate the action, and reduce the number drawn out on the canvas to the mere personages who figure in the history. witness his "salutation of the virgin," in the marquis of westminster's collection, which is evidently engendered from the idea contained in the design of albert durer. his strict application to nature, while it enabled him to destroy the unmeaning combinations of his predecessors, led him into many errors, by the simple fact of drawing from the people in his presence. but are not others chargeable with some incongruities? are the madonnas of murillo anything but a transcript of the women of andalusia? the women of venice figure in the historical compositions of titian and paul veronese, and the fornarina of raffaelle is present in his most sacred subjects; those, therefore, who accuse rembrandt of vulgarity of form, might with equal justice draw an invidious comparison between classic italian and high dutch. in many of his compositions he has embodied the highest feeling and sentiment, and in his study of natural simplicity approaches raffaelle nearer than any of the flemish or dutch painters. of course, as a colourist and master of light and shade, he is all powerful; but i allude, at present, to the mere conception and embodying of his subjects on this head. fuseli says,--"rembrandt was, in my opinion, a genius of the first class in whatever relates not to form. in spite of the most portentous deformity, and without considering the spell of his _chiaro-scuro_, such were his powers of nature, such the grandeur, pathos, or simplicity of his composition, from the most elevated or extensive arrangement to the meanest and most homely, that the best cultivated eye, the purest sensibility, and the most refined taste, dwell on them equally enthralled. shakspere alone excepted, no one combined with so much transcendent excellence so many, in all other men unpardonable, faults,--and reconciled us to them. he possessed the full empire of light and shade, and of all the tints that float between them; he tinged his pencil with equal success in the cool of dawn, in the noon-day ray, in the livid flash, in evanescent twilight, and rendered darkness visible. though made to bend a steadfast eye on the bolder phenomena of nature, yet he knew how to follow her into her calmest abodes, gave interest to insipidity and baldness, and plucked a flower in every desert. none ever, like rembrandt, knew how to improve an accident into a beauty, or give importance to a trifle. if ever he had a master, he had no followers; holland was not made to comprehend his power." and in another lecture, speaking of the advantage of a low horizon, he says:--"what gives sublimity to rembrandt's ecce homo more than this principle? a composition which, though complete, hides in its grandeur the limits of its scenery. its form is a pyramid, whose top is lost in the sky, as its base in tumultuous murky waves. from the fluctuating crowds who inundate the base of the tribunal, we rise to pilate, surrounded and perplexed by the varied ferocity of the sanguinary synod to whose remorseless gripe he surrenders his wand, and from him we ascend to the sublime resignation of innocence in christ, and, regardless of the roar, securely repose on his countenance. such is the grandeur of a conception, which in its blaze absorbs the abominable detail of materials too vulgar to be mentioned. had the materials been equal to the conception and composition, the ecce homo of rembrandt, even unsupported by the magic of its light and shade, or his spell of colours, would have been an assemblage of superhuman powers." reynolds, in his eighth discourse, speaking of the annoyance the mind feels at the display of too much variety and contrast, proceeds to say:--"to apply these general observations, which belong equally to all arts, to ours in particular. in a composition, where the objects are scattered and divided into many equal parts, the eye is perplexed and fatigued, from not knowing where to find the principal action, or which is the principal figure; for where all are making equal pretensions to notice, all are in equal danger of neglect. the expression which is used very often on these occasions is, the piece wants repose--a word which perfectly expresses a relief of the mind from that state of hurry and anxiety which it suffers when looking at a work of this character. on the other hand, absolute unity, that is, a large work consisting of one group or mass of light only, would be as defective as an heroic poem without episode, or any collateral incidents to recreate the mind with that variety which it requires. an instance occurs to me of two painters (rembrandt and poussin) of characters totally opposite to each other in every respect, but in nothing more than in their mode of composition and management of light and shadow. rembrandt's manner is absolute unity; he often has but one group, and exhibits little more than one spot of light in the midst of a large quantity of shadow: if he has a second mass that second bears no proportion to the principal. poussin, on the contrary, has scarcely any principle mass of light at all, and his figures are often too much dispersed, without sufficient attention to place them in groups. the conduct of these two painters is entirely the reverse of what might be expected from their general style and character, the works of poussin being as much distinguished for simplicity as those of rembrandt for combination. even this conduct of poussin might proceed from too great affection to simplicity of another kind, too great a desire to avoid the ostentation of art with regard to light and shadow, on which rembrandt so much wished to draw the attention; however, each of them ran into contrary extremes, and it is difficult to determine which is the most reprehensible, both being equally distant from the demands of nature and the purposes of art." this unity is observable in the composition of rembrandt; even where a multiplicity of figures are employed, they are so grouped that the masses of light and shade are interrupted as little as possible; and it is only in his earlier works, such as those now in the munich gallery, where this isolated light is carried to extravagance. in many of his later pictures, we have not only subordinate groups, but a repetition of the principal lights; also a greater breadth of half-tint. "composition," says reynolds, "which is the principal part of the invention of a painter, is by far the greatest difficulty he has to encounter. every man that can paint at all, can execute individual parts; but to keep these parts in due subordination as relative to a whole, requires a comprehensive view of the art, that more strongly implies genius than perhaps any other quality whatever." now rembrandt possessed this power in an eminent degree. at the revival of painting in italy, the compositions consisted entirely of subjects taken from sacred writ--subjects that imposed a purity of thought and a primitive simplicity upon the artists; these qualities were, however, in a great measure lost in passing through the venetian and german schools, where either the love for pictorial effect or the introduction of catholic ceremonies took precedence of every other arrangement. the prolific genius of rubens spread this infectious mode of treatment through flanders and holland, till at length, in the hands of the painters of smoking and drinking scenes, historical subjects, even of a sacred character, became quite ridiculous. yet, with all these examples of bad and vulgar taste around him, we find many compositions of rembrandt less degraded by mean representation than many of the best of the works of the venetian and flemish painters. take, for example, his design of christ and his disciples at emmaus, the principal figure in which is certainly more refined than the christ either in the pictures of titian or rubens of the same subject; in fact, the idea of it is taken from the last supper, by raffaelle, (the mark antonio print of which he must have had.) raffaelle is indebted for the figure to leonardo da vinci; and if we were to trace back, i have no doubt we should find that the milanese borrowed it from an earlier master; indeed, we perceive in the progress of painting much of the primitive simplicity and uniformity preserved in the best works of the italian school. it was only when composition passed through the prolific minds of such artists as paul veronese, tintoret, and rubens, that it was made subservient to the bustle, animation, and picturesque effect of their works. when we find, therefore, any remains revived in the pictures of rembrandt, who was surrounded by compositions of a vulgar and low cast, we can only ascribe it to the taste and genius of this great painter. in the design just mentioned, the idea of the disciples, as if struck with astonishment and awe at the bursting forth of the divinity of christ, is admirably conceived. as the heads are taken from the people of his country, they of necessity partake of the character of the people. this cannot be justified, though it is excusable. reynolds, on this head, speaking of the ennobling of the characters in an historical picture, says, "how much the great style exacts from its professors to conceive and represent their subjects in a poetical manner, not confined to mere matter of fact, may be seen in the cartoons of raffaelle. in all the pictures in which the painter has represented the apostles, he has drawn them with great nobleness; he has given them as much dignity as the human figure is capable of receiving. yet we are expressly told in scripture they had no such respectable appearance; and of st. paul in particular we are told by himself that his _bodily_ presence was _mean_. in conformity to custom, i call this part of the art history painting: it ought to be called poetical, as in reality it is." he further adds, "the painter has no other means of giving an idea of the mind but by that external appearance which grandeur of thought does generally, though not always, impress on the countenance, and by that correspondence of figure to sentiment and situation which all men wish, but cannot command." as i cannot defend the mean appearance of the disciples, neither shall i exculpate our great artist from blame in introducing a dog into so grand a subject; we can only excuse him on the plea of following the practice of his predecessors. titian, in his celebrated picture, has not only introduced a dog, but a cat also, which is quarrelling with the former for a bone under the table. to this love for the introduction of animals into their compositions, for the sake of picturesque variety, many of the greatest painters must plead guilty; and though the incongruity has been pointed out over and over again by the writers on art, it is still clung to as means of contrast with the human figure. in one of the sketches by the late sir d. wilkie for his picture of "finding the body of tippoo saib," he had introduced two dogs, and only obliterated them when informed that dogs were considered unclean by the people of the east, and therefore it was an impossibility for them to be in the palace of seringapatam. while i am upon this subject, it may not be amiss to refer to one of the authorities who censures this practice. fresnoy says, in his poem on the "art of painting," "nec quod inane, nihil facit ad rem sive videtur improprium miniméque urgens potiora tenebit ornamenta operis." "nor paint conspicuous on the foremost plain, whate'er is false, impertinent, or vain." mason. [illustration: christ and his disciples at emmaus] on this rule, reynolds remarks--"this precept, so obvious to common sense, appears superfluous till we recollect that some of the greatest painters have been guilty of a breach of it; for--not to mention paul veronese or rubens, whose principles as ornamental painters would allow great latitude in introducing animals, or whatever they might think necessary to contrast or make the composition more picturesque--we can no longer wonder why the poet has thought it worth setting a guard against this impropriety, when we find that such men as raffaelle and the caracci, in their greatest and most serious works, have introduced on the foreground mean and frivolous circumstances. such improprieties, to do justice to the more modern painters, are seldom found in their works. the only excuse that can be made for those great artists, is their living in an age when it was the custom to mix the ludicrous with the serious, and when poetry as well as painting gave in to this fashion." many of the compositions of rembrandt indicate not only a refined taste, but the greatest sensibility and feeling. for example, the small etchings of the "burial of christ," and the "return from jerusalem;" these, from their slightness, may lay me under the same category as the old greek, who, having a house to sell, carried in his pocket one of the bricks as a sample; yet, being his own indications, i have given them. it is worth while to compare the "entombment" with the same subject by raffaelle, in the crozat collection. the whole arrangement is treated in the finest taste of the italian school. the other design has been always a favourite with the admirers of rembrandt. the feeling character of the youthful saviour is admirably portrayed. holding his mother's hand, he is cheering her on her tiring journey, looking in her face with an expression of affection and solace; while she is represented with downcast eyes, fatigued and "pondering in her mind" the import of the words he had addressed to her, "how is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that i must be about my father's business?" and even here we can almost excuse the introduction of the little dog, who, running before the group, is looking back, giving a bark of joy at their having found the object of their solicitude. the background is conceived in the finest spirit of titian. these are the touches of nature that, like the expressions of our own immortal shakspere, however slight, and though dressed in modern garb or familiar language, reach the innermost sensibilities of the human heart. [illustration: the entombment] [illustration: the return from jerusalem] the character and costume of the people, as well as the scenery of those subjects taken from holy writ, have been a matter of investigation both by artists and writers upon art; for although the events related in the new testament are not of so ancient a date as those of the heathen writers, yet the mind seems to require that the style should be neither classic nor too strictly local. hence, though the costume represented in the venetian pictures is no doubt nearer the truth than that made use of by raffaelle and other italians, it fails to carry us back to ancient and primitive simplicity. the early pictures delineating christian subjects are modelled upon greek forms and dresses, and having been made the foundation of those works afterwards produced by the great restorers of painting, have gained a hold upon our ideas, which, if not impossible, is yet difficult to throw off. as the late sir david wilkie travelled into the east with the express purpose of painting the subjects mentioned in scripture in more strict accordance with the people and their habits, it may be of advantage to give the student his opinions. in his journal, he says--"after seeing with great attention the city of jerusalem and the district of syria that extends from jaffa to the river jordan, i am satisfied it still presents a new field for the genius of scripture painting to work upon. it is true the great italian painters have created an art, the highest of its kind, peculiar to the subjects of sacred history; and in some of their examples, whether from facility of inquiry or from imagination, have come very near all the view of syria could supply. the venetians, (perhaps from their intercourse with cyprus and the levant,) titian, paul veronese, and sebastian del piombo, have in their pictures given the nearest appearance to a syrian people. michael angelo, too, from his generalizing style, has brought some of his prophets and sybils to resemble the old jews about the streets of the holy city; but in general, though the aspect of nature will sometimes recall the finest ideas of leonardo da vinci and raffaelle, yet these masters still want much that could be supplied here, and have a great deal of matters quite contrary to what the country could furnish. these contrarieties, indeed, are so great, that in discussions with the learned here, i find a disposition to that kind of change that would soon set aside the whole system of italian and european art; but as these changes go too much upon the supposition that the manners of scripture are precisely represented by the present race in syria, it is too sweeping to be borne out by what we actually know. at the same time, there are so many objects in this country so perfectly described, so incapable of change, and that give such an air of truth to the local allusions of sacred writ, that one can scarcely imagine that these, had they been known to the painters of italy, would not have added to the impressive power of their works. without trying to take from the grand impression produced by the reading of the sacred writings, it may be said that from its nature many things must be confined to narrative, to description, to precept--and these are no doubt so strong as to supply to a pious mind everything that can be desired; but if these are to be represented, as certainly they have been, by those of an art who have not seen syria, it is clear some other country, italy, spain, or flanders, will be drawn upon to supply this, and the reader of scripture and the admirer of art will be alike deluded by the representation of a strange country in the place of that so selected and so identified as the land of promise--so well known and so graphically described from the first to the last of the inspired writers." these remarks are certainly applicable, but only in a degree. what is quoted from reynolds, in a former part, shows that a licence is indispensable; and yet, without destroying the apparent truth of the subject, many things are now established that, without their being facts, have taken such hold of our ideas that they cannot with safety be departed from. i may instance the countenances of our saviour and the virgin, as given by raffaelle and coreggio--we recognise them as if they had been painted from the persons themselves; i may also add the heads of the apostles. with regard to the scenery, many circumstances may certainly be taken advantage of, always guarding against a topographical appearance that, by its locality, may prevent the work leading the spectator back into distant periods of time. before quitting this part of the subject, which refers to rembrandt's powers of composition, i may notice one or two of his designs, which stamp him as a great genius in this department of the art--viz., his "christ healing the sick," "haman and mordecai," the "ecce homo," "christ preaching," and the "death of the virgin." chiaro-scuro. from the position we are now placed in, surrounded by the accumulated talent of many centuries, it is easy to take a retrospective view of the progress of art; and it is only by so doing that we can arrive at a just estimate of the great artists who advanced it beyond the age in which they lived, and this seems mainly to have been achieved by a close observance of nature. as in philosophy the genius of bacon, by investigating the phenomena of visible objects, put to flight and dissipated the learned dogmas of the school of aristotle, so in sculpture the purity and simplicity of the forms of phidias established a line of demarcation between his own works and those of the formal, symmetrical, and dry sculpture of his predecessors. sculpture, till then, lay fettered and bound up in the severity of egyptian hieroglyphics. likewise we perceive the genius of michael angelo and raffaelle setting aside the stiffness and profile character existing in the works of signorelli and masaccio. in venice, titian emancipated the arts from the grasp of giovanni bellini. in germany, rubens must be considered the great translator of art out of a dead language into a living one, to use a metaphor, and into one that, like music, is universal. previous to rembrandt, the pupils of rubens had thrown off every affinity not only to gothic stiffness, but even to that degree of regularity of composition which all classes of historical subjects require. independent of rubens and his pupils, we find rembrandt was aware of the great advances made in natural representations of objects by adrian brauwer, (several of whose works, by the catalogue given of his effects, were in his possession;) therefore, as far as transparency and richness, with a truthfulness of tint, are concerned, brauwer had set an example. but in the works of rembrandt we perceive a peculiarity entirely his own--that of enveloping parts in beautiful obscurity, and the light again emerging from the shadow, like the softness of moonlight partially seen through demi-transparent clouds, and leaving large masses of undefined objects in darkness. this principle he applied to compositions of even a complicated character, and their bustle and noise were swallowed up in the stillness of shadow. if breadth constitutes grandeur, rembrandt's works are exemplifications of mysterious sublimity to the fullest extent. this "darkness visible," as milton expresses it, belongs to the great founder of the school of holland, and to him alone. flinck, dietricy, de guelder, and others his pupils, give no idea of it; their works are warm, but they are without redeeming cool tints; they are yellow without pearly tones; and in place of leading the eye of the spectator into the depths of aërial perspective, the whole work appears on the surface of the panel. there are none of those shadows "hanging in mid air," which constitute so captivating a charm in the great magician of chiaro-scuro; not only are objects of solidity surrounded by softening obscurity, but the contiguous atmosphere gives indications of the influence of the light and shade. to these principles the art is indebted for breadth and fulness of effect, which constitute the distinct characteristics between the early state and its maturity--and to rembrandt we owe the perfection of this fascinating quality. we must, nevertheless, always look back with wonder at what was achieved by coreggio. even when painting flourished under the guidance of leonardo da vinci and giorgione, reynolds, speaking of this quality in contradistinction to that of relief, says, "this favourite quality of giving objects relief, and which de piles and all the critics have considered as a requisite of the greatest importance, was not one of those objects which much engaged the attention of titian. painters of an inferior rank have far exceeded him in producing this effect. this was a great object of attention when art was in its infant state, as it is at present with the vulgar and ignorant, who feel the highest satisfaction in seeing a figure which, as they say, looks as if they could walk round it. but however low i might rate this pleasure of deception, i should not oppose it, did it not oppose itself to a quality of a much higher kind, by counteracting entirely that fulness of manner which is so difficult to express in words, but which is found in perfection in the best works of coreggio, and, we may add, of rembrandt. this effect is produced by melting and losing the shadows in a ground still darker than those shadows; whereas that relief is produced by opposing and separating the ground from the figure, either by light, or shadow, or colour. this conduct of inlaying, as it may be called, figures on their ground, in order to produce relief, was the practice of the old painters, such as andrea mantegna, pietro perugino, and albert durer, and to these we may add the first manner of leonardo da vinci, giorgione, and even coreggio; but these three were among the first who began to correct themselves in dryness of style, by no longer considering relief as a principal object. as those two qualities, relief and fulness of effect, can hardly exist together, it is not very difficult to determine to which we ought to give the preference. an artist is obliged for ever to hold a balance in his hand, by which he must determine the value of different qualities, that when some fault must be committed, he may choose the least. those painters who have best understood the art of producing a good effect have adopted one principle that seems perfectly conformable to reason--that a part may be sacrificed for the good of the whole. thus, whether the masses consist of light or shadow, it is necessary that they should be compact and of a pleasing shape; to this end, some parts may be made darker and some lighter, and reflections stronger than nature would warrant. paul veronese took great liberties of this kind. it is said, that being once asked why certain figures were painted in shade, as no cause was seen in the picture itself, he turned off the inquiry by answering, 'una nuevola che passa,'--a cloud is passing, which has overshadowed them." before entering more minutely into an investigation of the principles of rembrandt with regard to chiaro-scuro, i must again revert to those of coreggio. opie, speaking of the method of this great artist, says, "to describe his practice will be in a great degree to repeat my observations on chiaro-scuro in its enlarged sense. by classing his colours, and judiciously dividing them into few and large masses of bright and obscure, gently rounding off his light, and passing, by almost imperceptible degrees, through pellucid demi-tints and warm reflections into broad, deep, and transparent shade, he artfully connected the finest extremes of light and shadow, harmonized the most intense opposition of colours, and combined the greatest possible effect with the sweetest and softest repose imaginable." further on, he remarks--"the turn of his thoughts, also, in regard to particular subjects, was often in the highest degree poetical and uncommon, of which it will be sufficient to give as an instance his celebrated _notte_, or painting of the 'nativity of christ,' in which his making all the light of the picture emanate from the child, striking upwards on the beautiful face of the mother, and in all directions on the surrounding objects, may challenge comparison with any invention in the whole circle of art, both for the splendour and sweetness of effect, which nothing can exceed, and for its happy appropriation to the person of him who was born to dispel the clouds of ignorance, and diffuse the light of truth over a darkened world!" now, this work rembrandt must have seen, or at least a copy from it, as his treatment of the same subject, in the national gallery, indicates; but the poetry is lost, for it would be impossible to imitate it without a direct plagiarism. it may, however, have given a turn to his thoughts, in representing many of his subjects under the influence of night in place of day, such as his "taking down from the cross," by torch light; his "flight into egypt," with the lantern; the "burial of christ," &c. while other men were painting daylight, he turned the day into night, which is one of the paths that sublimity travels through. the general idea most people have of rembrandt is, that he is one of the dark masters: but his shadows are not black, they are filled with transparency. the backgrounds to his portraits are less dark than many of either titian or tintoret. his landscapes are not black, they are the soft emanations of twilight; and when he leads you through the shadows of night, you see the path, even in the deepest obscurity. as colour forms a constituent part of chiaro-scuro, i must, in this division, confine myself more particularly to black and white, both in giving examples from his etchings, and explaining the various changes he made upon them in order to heighten the effect. the etching i have here given is the "nativity," in the darkest state; in the british museum there are no less than seven varieties, and the first state is the lightest. but in order to render his mode of proceeding more intelligible, i shall explain the progress of his working. his first etchings are often bit in with the aquafortis, when the shadows have but few ways crossed with the etching point: these are often strongly bit in, that, when covered over with finer lines, the first may shine through, and give transparency. in the next process he seems to have taken off the etching ground, and laid over the plate a transparent ground, (that is to say, one not darkened by the smoke of a candle;) upon this he worked up his effect by a multiplicity of fresh lines, often altering his forms, and adding new objects, as the idea seemed to rise in his mind. after which, when the plate was again subjected to the operation of the acid, the etching ground was removed, and the whole worked up with the greatest delicacy and softness by means of the dry needle, to the scratches of which the aquafortis is never applied. this process it is that gives what is termed the _burr_, and renders the etchings of rembrandt different from all others. now this _burr_ is produced, not by the ink going into the lines, but by the printer being obstructed in wiping it off by the raised edge which the dry point has forced up; for when these lines run through deep shadows, we often see that they print white, from the ink being wiped off the top of the ridge. [illustration: the nativity] this is the foundation of what is called mezzotint engraving, which i shall notice in another place. by keeping these remarks in mind, we shall easily perceive how it is that so many variations occur in impressions from his plates, depending entirely on the direction in which the printer wiped off the ink--whether across the ridges, or in the same direction as the lines. varieties have also arisen from these ridges wearing away by the friction of the hand; and as rembrandt's copper plates, judging from those i have examined, were soft, they soon wore down. we also find this dark effect given in many of his varieties by merely leaving the surface partially wiped, and touching out the high lights with his finger, or a piece of leather. these impressions must have been taken by himself, or, at least, under his superintendence. several of his plates are worked on with the graver, such as his "taking down from the cross;" but that evidently is by the hand of an engraver. we see the same in several of the etchings of vandyke, but their value decreases as the finishing extends. while we are upon the subject of his etchings, it will, perhaps, be of use to confine the conduct of his chiaro-scuro to his etchings alone, as his treatment is very different to what he adopted when he had colour to deal with; and in this respect he must have been influenced by the example of rubens and vandyke, proofs of all the engravings after whose pictures we perceive he had in his possession. in order that we may more clearly understand the reason of many of his etchings remaining unfinished in parts, while other portions are worked up with the greatest care, i shall give an extract from the journal of sir joshua reynolds, when in flanders. in describing a picture in the church of the recollets, at antwerp, he says:--"over the altar of the choir is the famous 'crucifixion of christ between two thieves,' by rubens. to give animation to this subject, he has chosen the point of time when an executioner is piercing the side of christ, whilst another, with a bar of iron, is breaking the limbs of one of the malefactors, who, in his convulsive agony, which his body admirably expresses, has torn one of his feet from the tree to which it was nailed. the expression in the action of this figure is wonderful. the attitude of the other is more composed, and he looks at the dying christ with a countenance perfectly expressive of his penitence. this figure is likewise admirable. the virgin, st. john, and mary the wife of cleophas, are standing by, with great expression of grief and resignation; whilst the magdalen, who is at the feet of christ, and may be supposed to have been kissing his feet, looks at the horseman with the spear with a countenance of great horror. as the expression carries with it no grimace or contortion of the features, the beauty is not destroyed. this is by far the most beautiful profile i ever saw of rubens, or, i think, of any other painter. the excellence of its colouring is beyond expression. to say that she may be supposed to have been kissing christ's feet, may be thought too refined a criticism; but rubens certainly intended to convey that idea, as appears by the disposition of her hands, for they are stretched out towards the executioner, and one of them is before and one behind the cross, which gives an idea of their having been round it. and it must be remembered that she is generally represented as kissing the feet of christ: it is her place and employment in those subjects. the good centurion ought not to be forgotten--who is leaning forward, one hand on the other, resting on the mane of his horse, while he looks at christ with great earnestness. the genius of rubens nowhere appears to more advantage than here; it is the most carefully finished picture of all his works. the whole is conducted with the most consummate art. the composition is bold and uncommon, with circumstances which no other painter had ever before thought of--such as the breaking of the limbs, and the expression of the magdalen; to which we may add the disposition of the three crosses, which are placed perspectively, in a very picturesque manner--the nearest bears the thief whose limbs they are breaking; the next the christ, whose figure is straighter than ordinary, as a contrast to the others; and the furthermost the penitent thief. this produces a most interesting effect, but it is what few but such a daring genius as rubens would have attempted. it is here, and in such compositions, that we properly see rubens, and not in little pictures of madonnas and bambinos. it appears that rubens made some changes in this picture after bolswert had engraved it. the horseman who is in the act of piercing the side of christ holds the spear, according to the print, in a very tame manner, with the back of the hand over the spear, grasping it with only three fingers, the forefinger lying straight over the spear; whereas, in the picture, the back of the hand comes _under_ the spear, and he grasps it with his whole force. the other defect, which is remedied in the picture, is the action of the executioner who breaks the legs of the criminal: in the print, both of his hands are over the bar of iron, which makes a false action; in the picture, the whole disposition is altered to the natural manner in which every person holds a weapon which requires both hands--the right is placed over, and the left under it. this print was undoubtedly done under the inspection of rubens himself. it may be worth observing, that the keeping of the masses of light in the print differs much from the picture; this change is not from inattention, but design; a different conduct is required in a composition with colours from what ought to be followed _when it is in black and white only_. we have here the authority of this great master of light and shadow, that a print requires more and larger masses of light than a picture. in this picture, the principal and the strongest light is the body of christ, which is of a remarkably clear and bright colour. this is strongly opposed by the very brown complexion of the thieves, (perhaps the opposition here is too violent,) who make no great effect as to light; the virgin's outer drapery is dark blue, and the inner a dark purple, and st. john is in dark strong red. no part of these two figures is light in the picture but the head and hands of the virgin, but in the print, they make the principal mass of light of the whole composition. the engraver has certainly produced a fine effect, and i suspect it is as certain that if this change had not been made, it would have appeared a black and heavy print. when rubens thought it necessary, in the print, to make a mass of light of the drapery of the virgin and st. john, it was likewise necessary that it should be of a beautiful shape, and be kept compact; it therefore became necessary to darken the whole figure of the magdalen, which in the picture is at least as light as the body of christ; her head, linen, arms, hair, and the feet of christ, make a mass as light as the body of christ. it appears, therefore, that some parts are to be darkened, as well as other parts made lighter. this, consequently, is a science which an engraver ought well to understand before he can presume to venture on any alteration from the picture he means to represent. the same thing may be remarked in many other prints by those engravers who were employed by rubens and vandyke; they always gave more light than they were warranted by the picture--a circumstance which may merit the attention of engravers." as most of these engravings were made from studies in black and white, perhaps reduced from the picture by the engraver, but certainly touched on afterwards by the painters themselves, they form a school for the study of light and shade when deprived of colour. in the etchings of rembrandt, therefore, we ought to bear in mind that splendour of effect was what he aimed at, and the means adopted by rubens and vandyke were carried still further by the fearless master of chiaro-scuro. now that the eye has been accustomed to engravings where the local colour is rendered, when we look over a folio of the works of bolswert, soutman, pontius, and others of the flemish engravers, they appear, notwithstanding their overpowering depth and brilliancy, unfinished, from the lights of the several coloured draperies and the flesh tones being left white. they also occasionally look spotty in effect, from the extreme strength of the shadows and black draperies. in rembrandt's works these defects are avoided, by finishing his darks with the greatest care and softness, while the figures in the light masses are often left in mere outline: the lights are also reduced in size as they enter the shade; while the darks in the light portions of his prints are circumscribed to a mere point, for the purpose of giving a balance and solidity. the shadows of the several objects likewise assume a greater delicacy as they enter into the masses of light. in these respects, the hundred guilder print is a striking example. as we are now considering light and shade when unaccompanied by colour, i may notice that those portions where the dark and light masses come in contact are the places where both the rounding of the objects by making out the forms, and also the patching down the half-tint with visible lines, may be followed out with the greatest success, as it prevents the work being heavy in effect, and also assists the passage of the light into the shadow. the quality of the lights and darks is flatness. the flemish engravers seem to have been very particular in the method of producing their shadow, both with regard to the direction of the lines, and also their repetition; their object seems to have been intenseness of dark with transparency of execution. in a conversation with sir thomas lawrence upon the subject of shadows, his ideas were that they ought to be as still as possible, and that all the little sparkling produced by the crossing of the lines ought to be extinguished, or softened down. in painting, his notions were that they ought to be kept cool. without presuming to differ with so excellent an artist, it is but proper to mention that all the best engravers, from the time of bolswert to our own, are of a contrary opinion; and our best colourists, from coreggio to rembrandt, and from rembrandt to wilkie, were diametrically opposite in their practice. as far as engraving is concerned, it is but fair to notice that lawrence had rembrandt on his side, of whose works he was a great admirer. [illustration: doctor faustus] i may appear to have dwelt too long upon this subject of engraving, but as the etchings of rembrandt form so large a portion of his popularity, we cannot enter too minutely into the various sources of their excellence. i shall now proceed to describe the etching of "doctor faustus," a copy of which i have given. some think that it represents fust, the partner of guttenburg, who, by his publication of bibles in paris, was looked upon by the people as a dealer in the black art. the papers hung up by the side of the window look like the sheets of his letter-press, and the diagram that attracts his attention, and rouses him from his desk, indicates by words and symbols a connexion with holy writ. but the general opinion is, that it is dr. john faustus, a german physician, in his study. this dr. faustus was supposed to have dealings with familiar spirits, one of which has raised this cabalistic vision, that enters the window with overwhelming splendour, like the bursting of a shell, communicating its radiance to the head and breast of the figure, and, descending by his variegated garment, is extended in a spread of light over the whole lower part of the composition. the light of the window being surrounded by a mass of dark, receives intense importance, and is carried as far as the art can go. it is also, i may observe, rendered less harsh and cutting by its shining through the papers at the side, and by the interruption of the rays of the diagram. the light passing behind the figure, and partially thrown upon a skull, gives an awe-striking appearance to the whole; while the flat breadth of light below is left intentionally with the objects in mere outline. this etching seems never to have been touched on from the first impressions to the last--the first state is dark with excess of burr; the last is merely the burr worn off. before quitting this subject, i wish to make a few remarks. it has been said by some of rembrandt's biographers, that he made alterations in his prints for the sake of enhancing their value; but we know by experience that every alteration he made, however it might be for the better, struck off a certain portion of its money value. i believe his desire to better the effect was the only incitement. many were improved by his working upon them after the first proofs, and many were deteriorated in effect; but every additional line at the least struck off a guilder. i have mentioned that in this etching the brilliancy of the light in the window is enhanced by its being surrounded by a mass of dark; but the same advantage would have accrued from its extension by a mass of half light, as it would then have had a greater breadth of soft light. this subject was a great favourite with the late sir david wilkie, and he introduced this window in his picture of "the school;" but this being a light composition, he treated it in the way i have mentioned above. it was a common practice with wilkie to adopt some part of a celebrated work as a point to work from, and carry out his design upon this suggestion. the spectator, by this means, was drawn into a predisposition of its excellence, without knowing whence it had arisen. thus, in his "john knox preaching," there are many points of similarity with the "st. paul preaching," by raffaelle. i may also mention here what we often perceive in the works of rembrandt--in place of having the light hemmed in by a dark boundary, it is spread out into a mass of half-light; and the same treatment is adopted with regard to his extreme darks, they communicate their properties to the surrounding ground. these qualities are the foundation of breadth and softness of effect. these observations may appear iterations of what has been mentioned before--but truths get strengthened by being placed in new positions. in dividing a work of this kind into portions, it is difficult to give a preference to any department, especially with such an artist as rembrandt, who was equally celebrated in all--and i have only given a priority to historical subjects as they hold a higher rank than portraiture. but his portraits are those productions of his pencil which are most peculiar to himself. [illustration: burgomaster six] portrait of the burgomaster six. this is the most finished and perfect of all the etchings of rembrandt; and as it was done expressly for his friend and patron, we can easily imagine that the painter exerted himself to the utmost, so as to render it worthy of the subject. i have been at some trouble to get an account of the family of jan six, but have gleaned little from those books connected with the history of holland. during the war with england, in the reign of charles the second, he was secretary of state to the city of amsterdam, and his family was afterwards connected with some of their most celebrated men. but what has rendered his name more famous than intermarrying with the families of van tromp or de ruyter, is his patronage of rembrandt--in the same way that lord southampton's name is ennobled by his patronage of shakspere. we know he was devoted to literature as well as the fine arts, having left a tragedy on the story of medea, a copy of which is mentioned in the catalogue of rembrandt's effects, and an etching by the artist was prefixed to the work--viz., the "marriage of jason and creusa;" the rare states of this print are before the quotation of the dutch verses underneath--also the statue of juno is without the diadem, which was afterwards added. i have mentioned that this portrait was a private plate; in fact, the copper is still in the possession of the family. in a sale which took place in , for a division of the property among the various branches, fourteen impressions were sold, but brought comparatively small prices, from the number to be contended for. two proofs, however, on india paper are still in the portfolio of his descendants, which in five years will, it is said, be brought to the hammer, as by that time the parties will be of age. these proofs will in all probability realize two hundred guineas each. the ease and natural attitude of the figure in this work are admirable: the intensity of the light, with the delicacy and truth of the reflected lights, are rendered with the strong stamp of genius; the diffusion of the light also, by means of the papers on the chair, and the few sparkling touches in the shadow, completely take this etching out of the catalogue of common portraiture. the only work i can at present think of that can be brought into competition with it, is the full-length portrait of charles the first, by vandyke, in the queen's collection, and which is rendered so familiar by strange's admirable engraving. in entering into an examination of the execution of this print, it is evident the whole effect is produced by means of the dry point, which must have been a work of great labour. the best impressions are on india paper; and i perceive, by referring to gersaint's catalogue, that at the sale of the burgomaster's property, they only brought about eighteen florins. the next portrait amongst his etchings that at all approaches to the burgomaster, is that of "old haring," which has always struck me as one of the foundations for the style of sir joshua reynolds in portraiture. a fine impression of this work, on india paper, is more like sir joshua than many prints after his own pictures; and with all the high veneration i have for reynolds, i cannot omit noticing how very ambiguously he frequently speaks of this great genius. we know his master, hudson, had an excellent collection of rembrandt's works, and therefore he must have been early imbued with their merits and peculiarities. this, however, we shall have a better opportunity of noticing when we come to the treatment of colour. the next etching in excellence i should mention is the "portrait of john lutma, the goldsmith," with the light background; this was afterwards softened down by the introduction of a window. and here i must observe, that though he often had light backgrounds to his prints, yet in his finished pictures they were generally the reverse. the etching of "ephraim bonus, the jewish physician," is also one of his most effective works; the introduction of the balustrade, on which he leans descending the staircase, removes it from the ordinary level of mere portraiture. on the hand that rests upon the balustrade, is a ring, which in the very rare impressions, from its being done with the dry point, prints dark from the burr. these are invaluable, as in that state the whole work has the fulness and richness of a picture. a very large sum was given for the impression of the print in this state--now in the british museum--in fact, one hundred and sixty pounds; though at the verstolke sale, where this print was purchased, the commission given amounted to two hundred and fifty pounds: but when we consider that the collection in the british museum is now the finest in existence, no extra price should be spared to complete the collection, especially as these works are foundations for the sure improvement of the fine arts in the country. the crown jewels are exhibited as a necessary appendage to the rank of the nation--but there the value stops; now the works of art in this country are not only valuable, but intrinsically beneficial. we know that charles the second pawned the crown pearls to the dutch for a few thousands; but our collection of rembrandts would realize in holland at least ten thousand pounds. this, of course, is a digression, and is merely mentioned here to show how absurd the hue and cry is, that the country is wasting money in purchasing a few specimens of fine art. the "portrait of utenbogardus" is also excellent; and i may here notice the large book, which rembrandt was so fond of introducing, as a means of a breadth of light and employment for his portraits. now, to these circumstances we are indebted for some of the finest works of both reynolds and lawrence: amongst many, i might mention the large ledger in lawrence's "portraits of the baring family," and sir joshua's picture of the "dilettante society," and others. no doubt we find these means of making up a picture both in raffaelle and titian; but it is rendered more applicable to our own purposes when it is brought nearer to our own times, especially when translated by so great a genius as rembrandt. the next fine work amongst his etchings is the "portrait of cornelius silvius," the head of which, being delicately finished with the dry needle, is seldom seen very fine. this also has a book, and the hand extended beyond the frame of the oval opening, upon which it casts its shadow. this practice of representing objects nearer the eye than the frame is certainly to be observed in some of the prints after rubens and others, and has descended to several common prints in our own time, but ought not to be adopted, as bordering too much upon that art which may be designated as a sort of _ad captandum vulgus_ display. as we shall speak more particularly of rembrandt's portraits when colour is investigated, these works are merely mentioned as excellent specimens of composition and chiaro-scuro. i must not omit, however, to notice here the great coppenol, the writing-master to the city of amsterdam: he holds a pen and a sheet of paper in his hand, and is looking at the spectator with a look of intelligent observation. the head and figure of this work were perfected, in the first instance, before the background was put in, and in this state is exceedingly rare--the one in the british museum is valued at five hundred guineas, and was left, amongst other rare works in his collection, by the rev. mr. cracherode, to the public. and here we ought to bear in mind, when individuals contribute so largely by their bequests to the country, it is our bounden duty to carry out their views by perfecting the various collections as opportunities offer in the course of time, which to them was impossible. in one of the impressions in the museum, in a finished state, is written, in a large ornamental hand, a commendation by coppenol himself, wherein he says he does so to unite his name with that of the great artist, rembrandt van ryn, as by that means he knows he shall secure immortality to himself. the portrait, however, that is the most powerful, as well as the most rare, is van tolling the advocate. the effect, both from the reflected light on the face, and the fearless masses of burr, is more like a picture than a print, and renders every other etching comparatively tame. from the chemical bottles at the side, and from the character of the gown in which he is dressed, i am of opinion that he was a physician. the excellence of this work, added to its rarity, has at all times produced large prices. there are two states of this print--the first with an irregular beard, the second with the beard cut square, also some additional work on the drapery, &c.; but, what is worthy of remark is, in both states it is exceedingly scarce; in fact, there are but seven impressions known--viz., two in the british museum, one in mr. holford's collection, one in mr. hawkins', in amsterdam one, in paris one, and one in the collection of mr. rudge. i ought here to notice that the van tolling is one of the prints bequeathed to the nation by the rev. mr. cracherode, and that at the sale of the hon. pole carew's prints, in , this valuable etching was purchased for the late baron verstolke, for two hundred and twenty pounds. [illustration: portrait of van tolling] * * * * * i shall now enter upon an investigation of the landscapes of rembrandt, which, equally with his portraits, are quite peculiar to himself, but differing from all others not from any eccentricity of manner, but from their giving the real essence and character of the scene, when denuded of any trifling and extraneous matters. whatever rembrandt touched was impressed with the peculiar characteristics of his genius; hence it is that the smallest stroke in his etchings is pregnant with truth. though painting belongs exclusively to no country, but represents the natural appearance of each, still it is reserved for genius alone to be able to perceive and place on canvas the essence, as it were, or great leading features of the subject. i am now more particularly speaking of landscape scenery. in all countries and climates there are peculiarities of effect, which, however interesting to the traveller, or a source of investigation to the philosopher or man of science, yet are necessarily excluded from the recording pencil of the artist; his appeal is to mankind at large, not to the isolated few who observe but one side of the subject. the true artist looks upon nature as the chameleon, capable of giving out any variety, and yet all equally true; hence it is that the skies, for example, of claude, salvator rosa, and gaspar poussin are universally subordinate to the general effect of the picture. these men, living in italy, were quite aware of the various prismatic effects observable in sunset, but were also convinced of the necessity of making the sky subservient, at least conducive to, the breadth and harmony of the picture. it may be said that titian and tintoret embodied the deep and intense blues of the venetian atmosphere, but we may remark that their skies are always held in check by the deep reds and browns of the draperies of their figures. let us now, however, turn our remarks more immediately to rembrandt, and the scenery and effects observable in holland. any one conversant with the pictures of the dutch school must have observed peculiar features in the skies of backhuysen, cuyp, and rembrandt, arising entirely from the localities of the scenes of their several pictures. my young friend, e. w. cooke, long a resident in holland, and a keen and observing artist, remarked that the skies in the pictures of backhuysen, though dark and inky, were precisely what we see now--the deep zuyder sea swallowing up any refraction of light which would otherwise have illuminated the clouds; while the skies of cuyp, receiving the coruscations arising from the meeting of the two rivers, the meuse and the waal, the scenes of most of his pictures, exhibit that luminous reflection and unsteady appearance peculiar to his works. i mention these matters, not to prove that these great observers of nature followed implicitly what was presented to their observation, but to show that when even copying the peculiar character of natural phenomena, it was done with a strict reference to the harmony of their works, and made subservient to one great broad principle. in a flat country like holland, especially where a low horizontal line is chosen, we perceive a peculiar feature takes precedence of everything else--that is, the quick diminution of those lines which run to the point of sight, whilst the lines running parallel with the base line of the picture retain their length in a greater degree; hence the accumulation of these lines, such as the division of fields, &c., gradually shade down the distant parts of the landscape, while the foreshortened lines assume the appearance of so many spots, or dark touches. in rembrandt we perceive this character faithfully rendered, and also, assisted by his judicious management, the lines, such as the banks of canals or roads, as they reach the foreground, are strongly pronounced, by either bringing them in contact with strong light, or giving them breadth and force by enriching them with broken ground, reeds, or dark herbage. the objects that stand up, such as trees, &c., are enlarged and darkened as they approach the eye; thus not only enabling them to keep their situation, but also to assist the perspective effect in the highest degree. his small landscape etchings illustrate these remarks, and are full of the touches of truth and nature; and where objects are wanting to give variety and interest, he introduces masses of shadow, or dark clumps of trees, leaving other parts in mere outline. the love of his art caused him to be always provided with the materials for drawing and etching, so that we have these transcripts of nature fresh from the fountain head. we know this from an anecdote mentioned by daulby. in describing the etching of "six's bridge," in his catalogue, he says, "this plate was produced by an incident which deserves to be related. rembrandt lived in great intimacy with the burgomaster six, and was frequently at his country seat. one day, when they were there together, the servant came to acquaint them that dinner was ready, but as they were sitting down to table, they perceived that mustard was wanting. the burgomaster immediately ordered his servant to go into the village to buy some. rembrandt, who knew the sluggishness of the dutch servants, and when they answer _austons_ (a-coming) they are half an hour before they appear, offered the burgomaster a wager that he would etch a plate before his man returned with the mustard. six accepted the wager, and rembrandt, who had always plates at hand ready varnished, immediately took one up, and etched upon it the landscape which appeared from the window of the parlour in which they were sitting. the plate was finished before the servant returned, and rembrandt won his wager. the etching is slight, but it is a wonderful performance, considering the circumstance that produced it." it is not wonderful on account of the rapidity with which it was done, but the genius and science that pervade every touch, not only in the general arrangement, but in the judicious management of the smallest darks; they are all in the most effective situations. when the plate was bit in, the name was left out; it was afterwards added with the dry point; also a little shading was given to the hat of one of the figures on the bridge, which in the rare state is white. i may notice here that it was also rembrandt's practice to sketch with the dry point alone, as several of his landscapes show; this has a very rich and full effect. his most finished and striking landscape is perhaps the etching of the "three trees." what i have said respecting his giving force to those parts nearest the eye, may be seen in the strong dark under the platform of the mill--which etching i have given, as it has always been considered the mill in which he was born; but i believe it is merely a mill of a picturesque character, which he consequently etched. in the rare impressions, the sky is much stained on the plate towards the house and mill, and i believe intentionally so, as it enables the subject to melt more softly into the background, by the outline being less harsh; at least, i found in my copy, when the person employed to clean the margin of the plate cleaned the stains in the sky also, that i had to restore them. as it will be necessary to go over the ground again with regard to rembrandt's landscapes, when we enter upon an investigation of his principles of colour, i shall now commence upon that department, fully conscious how high he stands as an artist in that difficult branch of the art, at the same time aware how feeble words must be to express adequately the deep-toned richness of rembrandt's colouring. [illustration: six's bridge] [illustration: rembrandt's mill] colour. perhaps, if we can comprehend a species of coloured chiaro-scuro, or the addition of colour to the broad and soft principles of light and shade, we shall be able to form a clear perception of the effects of rembrandt's colouring. indistinctness of tint, such as colours assume under the influence of twilight, is a strong characteristic of his manner--the shadows never so dark that a black or blue cannot tell firmly in the midst of them; with the total absence of all harshness, from the outlines of objects melting into their adjacent grounds, or assuming an importance after emerging from a mass of indefinite corresponding hues. as he has a mass of shadow with a mass of light, so he has an accumulation of warm colours in opposition to a congregation of cold--every combination introduced conducing to the great principles of breadth. when such is the plan upon which a work is laid down, we can easily perceive how powerfully the smallest touch of positive colour will tell--as in the midst of stillness a pin falling to the ground will be heard. cuyp has this quality in a high degree, only on another scale--a uniformity of unbroken tone, and in masses of half-tint only, like a few sparkles of light touches, dealt out with the most parsimonious pencil, producing a glitter like so many diamonds. this it is that prevents a work from being heavy, for by their fewness they require not the aid of black grounds to give them consequence, and by their being touched upon colours of the same quality, they avoid the appearance of harshness; in fact, the principles of these two great artists were the same; only from the general tone of cuyp's pictures being light, his strong darks tell with great power, and rembrandt's half tints being of a low tone, his high lights become more forcible. i may here mention not only the breadth of rembrandt's shadows, but their peculiar transparency and clearness, loose in the handling, and filled with air and space, whereas his lights are solid and firm--possessing not only the characteristics of nature in distinctiveness, but also in variety; and though we see always, on a general principle, light upon light and dark on a dark ground, yet we perceive inroads made upon each by their several antagonists; hot and cold colours darting into each other's provinces. this practice is also conducive to breadth, for tints of different hues may be interspersed both in the darks and lights, provided they are of equal strength with those adjoining them. we may observe in rembrandt--that those colours introduced into the shadows are more under the influence of indistinctness, while those in the light are brighter; this is quite a deviation from the roman school, where the colours are pronounced so harshly as to set the influence of chiaro-scuro at defiance. barry, in his sixth lecture, speaking of colours, says--"the happy effects of those sure and infallible principles of light and colour which rubens had so successfully disseminated in the netherlands, were soon found in every department of art. landscapes, portraits, drolls, and even the dullest and most uninteresting objects of still life, possess irresistible charms and fascination from the magic of those principles. rembrandt, who, it is said, was never at venice, might, notwithstanding, have seen, without going out of his country, many pictures of the venetian school. besides, he was about thirty years younger than rubens, whose works were a general object of study when rembrandt was forming himself. but, however it be, there is no doubt, for the colouring and chiaro-scuro, rembrandt is one of the most able artists that ever lived. nothing can exceed the beauty, freshness, and vigour of his tints. they have the same truth, high relish, and sapidity as those of titian. indeed, they have the closest resemblance to the hues of titian when he had giorgione most in view. there is identically the same attention to the relievo and force obtained by his strong shadows and low deep tones; and his chiaro-scuro, though sometimes too artificial, is yet often (particularly in contrasted subjects) productive of the most fascinating effects. in the tones of rembrandt, though we recognise the same richness and depth as in giorgione and titian, yet there is a suppleness and lifelike character in his flesh unlike either, both from his manner of handling, and also his hot and cold tints being less blended." the late sir david wilkie, in one of his letters, speaking of the death of sir thomas lawrence, says--"i do not wonder at the impression made among you in rome by the death of sir thomas lawrence; here, it engrossed for a time every other pursuit. one of the last remarks he made to me indicated his extreme admiration of sir joshua reynolds, who, he thought, had, with rembrandt, carried the imitation of nature, in regard to colours, further than any of the old masters." in many of the higher qualities of colour and chiaro-scuro, reynolds comes nearer to rembrandt than any other artist who has succeeded him. reynolds, in his lectures, speaking of gainsborough, observes--"we must not forget, whilst we are on this subject, to make some remarks on his custom of painting by night, which confirms what i have already mentioned--his great affection to his art, since he could not amuse himself in the evening by any other means so agreeable to himself. i am, indeed, much inclined to believe that it is a practice very advantageous and improving to an artist, for by this means he will acquire a new and higher perception of what is great and beautiful in nature. by candlelight, not only objects appear more beautiful, but from their being in a greater breadth of light and shadow, as well as having a greater breadth and uniformity of colour, nature appears in a higher style, and even the flesh seems to take a higher and richer tone of colour. judgment is to direct us in the use to be made of this method of study; but the method itself is, i am very sure, advantageous. i have often imagined that the two great colourists, titian and coreggio, though i do not know that they painted by night, formed their high ideas of colouring from the effects of objects by this artificial light. but i am more assured that whoever attentively studies the first and best manner of guercino will be convinced that he either painted by this light, or formed his manner on this conception." how far coreggio may have formed his principles upon the effects of lamplight it is impossible to decide, seeing that, though his shadows have great breadth, yet his lights have more of a phosphorescent character, tinged, as it were, with the coolness of moonlight; but titian has all the glow of this property, or, as reynolds remarks, "as if he painted with the sun shining into the room." the italian pictures of vandyke have much of this phosphorescent character--whereas many of those he painted in england have more of a daylight appearance. with regard to rembrandt, he seems to have regulated the entire scheme both of his chiaro-scuro and colour, on this foundation: his many paintings, drawings, and etchings of candlelight subjects, show how much his taste led to this class of art; and his daylight pictures, from the warmth of colour and breadth of shadow, proclaim the source from which he derived the cause of their brilliancy and force. from the light being tinged with yellow, the half-tone partakes of the same warmth, which gives a greenish tint even to his grey tones. this conduct conveys an emanation of the principal light passing over the more delicate shadows. in his daylight subjects it is not so; the light being often comparatively cool, is allowed to extend its influence to the secondary lights, and then, as it subsides into the shadow, is led in by the dark being lighted up by touches of red and brown; thus the light touches in the dark are warm, though the high light and secondary are cool. in coreggio we often find the shadows more hot than even in rembrandt, from his principal light and secondary being more cool. rembrandt never allows his lights, even though comparatively cool, to pass into the shadow without a few touches of warm colour; this was the practice of rubens, to enrich, as it were, "the debateable land." when this principle of painting candlelight subjects fell into the hands of his pupils, the harmony and colouring of the whole were lost or changed. for example, hoogstraten, his pupil, instructed schalcken, as did also gerard dow; but the candlelight pieces of schalcken are hot and foxy, without any redeeming grey tones. when he painted by candlelight, he placed his sitter in a dark room, with a light, while he painted in another apartment, having a hole cut through the door to communicate with his sitter; the consequence was, the effect gave exactly what we see in such cases--a red, dull treatment of colour. we know these facts by an anecdote told of william the third. when schalcken was over in england, the king wished to sit to him for his portrait, and hearing of his celebrity in candlelight pieces, wished it painted under that effect. the painter placed a light in his majesty's hand, and retired into the outer room; the candle guttering, kept dropping on the king's hand, but being unwilling to disturb the artist, the king held on, while the painter, intent on his work, proceeded without noticing it. many of our english artists paint by gaslight; but the tones of the flesh are not benefited, gas shedding a white cool light compared with lamplight. the practice of painting by candlelight originated neither with rembrandt nor gainsborough; in fact, we find that all academies, from the time of bacio bandinelli to our own, were always opened at night, both for the purposes of drawing and painting. but these effects generally remain where they originated, and are seldom taken advantage of without the walls, the figure alone being considered, without reference to the background. tintoret was one of the first to apply the principles to his practice. fuseli, speaking of chiaro-scuro, says--"the nocturnal studies of tintoret, from models and artificial groups, have been celebrated; those prepared in wax or clay he arranged, raised, suspended, to produce masses, foreshortening, and effect. it was thence he acquired that decision of chiaro-scuro, unknown to more expanded daylight, by which he divided his bodies, and those wings of obscurity and light by which he separated the groups of his composition; though the mellowness of his eye nearly always instructed him to connect the two extremes by something that partook of both, as the extremes themselves by the reflexes with the background or the scenery. the general rapidity of his process, by which he baffled his competitors, and often overwhelmed himself, did not, indeed, always permit him to attend deliberately to this principle, and often hurried him into an abuse of practice which in the lights turned breadth into mannered or insipid flatness; and in the shadows into a total extinction of parts. of all this he has in the schools of san rollo and marco given the most unquestionable instances--'the resurrection of christ,' and 'the massacre of the innocents,' comprehend every charm by which chiaro-scuro fascinates its votaries. in the vision, dewy dawn melts into deep but pellucid shade, itself sent or reflected by celestial splendour and angelic hues; whilst in the infant massacre of bethlehem, alternate sheets of stormy light and agitated gloom dash horror on the astonished eye." rembrandt, like tintoret, never destroyed the effective character of his chiaro-scuro by the addition of his colour, but made it a main contributor to the general character of the subject; hence that undisturbed and engulphing breadth which pervades his works. fuseli, in the same lecture, defends the venetian school from being considered as the "ornamental school." after selecting several of the pictures of titian, as proofs of his grand and solemn specimens of colour, he thus proceeds--"but perhaps it is not to titian, but to tintoret and paul cagliari, that the debaucheries of colour, and blind submission to fascinating tints, the rage of scattering flowers to no purpose, are ascribed. let us select from tintoret's most extensive work in the scuola of san rocco, the most extensive composition, and his acknowledged masterpiece--'the crucifixion,' and compare its tone with that of rubens and rembrandt of the same subject. what impression feels he who for the first time casts a glance over the immense scenery of that work? a whole whose numberless parts are connected by a lowering, mournful, minacious tone. a general fearful silence hushes all around the central figure of the saviour suspended on the cross, his fainting mother, and a group of male and female mourners at its foot--a group of colours that less imitate than rival nature, and tinged by grief itself; a scale of tones for which even titian offers me no parallel--yet all equally overcast by the lurid tone that stains the whole, and like a meteor hangs in the sickly air. whatever inequality or dereliction of feeling, whatever improprieties of commonplace, of local and antique costume, the master's rapidity admitted to fill his space, and they are great, all vanish in the power which compresses them into a single point, and we do not detect them till we recover from our terror." the picture of rubens which we oppose to tintoret was painted for the church of st. walburgha, at antwerp, after his return from italy, and has been minutely described and as exquisitely criticised by reynolds: "christ," he says, "is nailed to the cross, with a number of figures exerting themselves to raise it. the invention of throwing the cross obliquely from one corner of the picture to the other, is finely conceived, something in the manner of tintoret." so far reynolds. "in tintoret," says fuseli, "it is the cross of one of the criminals they attempt to raise, who casts his eye on christ, already raised. the body of christ is the grandest, in my opinion, that rubens ever painted; it seems to be imitated from the torso of apollonius, and that of the laocoon. how far it be characteristic of christ, or correspondent with the situation, i shall not here inquire; my object is the ruling tone of the whole--and of this the criticism quoted says not a word, though much of local colour, and grey and ochry balance. would so great a master of tone as reynolds have forgot this master-key if he had found it in the picture? the fact is, the picture has no other than the painter's usual tone. rubens came to his work with gay, technic exultation, and by the magic of his pencil changed the horrors of golgotha to an enchanted garden and clusters of flowers. rembrandt, though on a smaller scale of size and composition, concentrated the tremendous moment in one flash of pallid light. it breaks on the body of christ, shivers down his limbs, and vanishes on the armour of a crucifix--the rest is gloom." this is given with all the eloquence fuseli was so well able to utter; but it displays, also, a severe castigation on those who would class tintoret and paul veronese in the catalogue of ornamental painters. the observations which seem to have kindled his wrath are to be found in sir joshua's fourth lecture, in which he says--"tintoret, paul veronese, and others of the venetian school, seem to have painted with no other purpose than to be admired for their skill and experience in the mechanism of painting, and to make a parade of that art which, as i before observed, the higher style requires its followers to conceal." but, to understand the matter, the whole lecture must be read. with regard to the two pictures fuseli brings into comparison with the venetian, both are described in reynolds' tour to flanders and holland. sir joshua certainly criticizes the rubens correctly with regard to colouring; but sentiment it has none. the rembrandt is now in the munich gallery, and though one of his early pictures, it is very grand and striking. of it reynolds remarks--"there are likewise in this room eight rembrandts, the chief merit of which consists in his peculiarity of manner--of admitting but little light, and giving to that little a wonderful brilliancy. the colouring of christ in the elevation of the cross cannot be exceeded--it is exactly the tint of vandyke's 'susanna,' in the other room; but whether the ground of this picture has been repainted, or the white horse, which was certainly intended to make the mass of light broader, has lost its brightness, at present the christ makes a disagreeable mass of light." in bringing the opinions of these two great artists in contact, the truth is elicited, that the tone of colour has much to do in conveying the sentiment and pathos of the picture, and rembrandt possessed this quality in a very high degree. in the infancy of the arts, when practised by rude nations, we find harsh and bright colours predominate in a very strong scale--in fact, the brighter the more effective on the uneducated eye; and it is only when the arts advance towards perfection that a subdued tone of colour is demanded as most compatible with refinement. colour, both as an imitative quality, and also as an adjunct towards assisting the character of his subject, seems always to have been uppermost in rembrandt's mind. his drawing, it is true, is open to censure, but his colour will stand the most searching investigation, and will always appear more transcendent the more it is examined. reynolds, in his journey through holland, mentions a picture by rembrandt, in the collection of the prince of orange--"a study of a susanna, for the picture by rembrandt which is in my possession: it is nearly the same action, except that she is here sitting. this is the third study i have seen for this figure--i have one myself, and the third was in the possession of the late mr. blackwood. in the drawing which he made for this picture, which i have, she is likewise sitting; in the picture, she is on her legs, but leaning forward. it appears extraordinary that rembrandt should have taken so much pains, and have made at last so very ugly and ill-favoured a figure; but his attention was principally directed to the colouring and effect, in which it must be acknowledged he has attained the highest degree of excellence." the small picture in the national gallery is a study of the same figure. colour was the ruling principle with rembrandt, the alpha and omega, in the same way that richard wilson designated the three qualifications for landscape painting, as contained in one--viz., _breadth_. the tones of colour with which rembrandt clothed his subjects are always in the highest degree appropriate and conducive to the sentiment, whether within the "solemn temples," or the personification of some great supernatural event. as most of his historical subjects are from sacred writ, he never loses sight of those qualities which take them out of the page of every-day occurrences. i shall mention two, though one is sufficient for a master-key to them all. in the picture of "the adoration of the magi and kings," in the queen's collection, the solemnity is carried to the utmost extent, like the mysterious leaf of a sybil's book; the only light shed over the scene seems to descend from the lurid rays of the star that stood over the place of the nativity, and guided them to the spot. to acquire the greatest breadth, he has placed the virgin and child in the corner of the picture, and low down at the base, with the same feeling that impelled shakspere, in his constance, to utter, "here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it." the presentation of incense and precious perfumes, of diadems and jewels, by crowned heads and venerable magi, not only removes the attendants to the background, but even joseph is represented as wrapt in thought, and viewing from the shade the solemnity of the scene. the whole colouring of this work is in accordance with this feeling--subdued, except in the smallest portions of each hue, and these shine out like sparkling of jewels in a dark recess. the other work i would particularize is, "the salutation of the virgin," in the collection of the marquis of westminster. this picture, though of small dimensions, yet exemplifies the peculiarity of rembrandt's mode of treatment. being less decided in the chiaro-scuro and tone of colour than the wise men's offering, it is more difficult to describe; this also arises from the exquisite weaving in of the hot and cold colours. having had it under my eye for a couple of months, i can easily recall it on the least effort of the memory; but to bring it before the spectator who has not seen it, and by no other art than the medium of words, is as difficult as it would be to bring an harmonious arrangement of music by a different means--one must be seen and the other heard to render an explanation evident, which even then can only be understood by connoisseurs in painting and music. i must therefore avail myself of technicalities, which may seem out of place, where we are investigating the general hue of the picture. it is divided into hot and cold colours, which are brought in contact in the centre--elizabeth being clothed in red and yellow, the virgin in blue, white, and cool grey. the hot colour is carried across by the red sleeve of elizabeth, and part of her yellow shawl, and descends to the petticoat of a negress who is removing the grey mantle from the virgin, and is further extended by a few warm-coloured stones and touches in the pavement. the cool colour is carried past the warm tone of zacharias and the porch above him by means of a grey green pillar, a peacock, and a few touches of cool colour on a bush at one corner of the warm side of the picture. the general tone of the work is of a low, deep hue, so that even the cool tints are not cold or raw, but a deep-toned brightness pervades the whole. through the dark grey sky, that seems to descend to overshadow the group, a gleam of light darts upon the scene, as a connecting link between heaven and earth, and giving force and truth to the expression of elizabeth, when she pronounces the words, "blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." the light that shoots through the gloom has roused a pea-hen and chicks, who shake off their sleep as if it was the dawn of day. this is a very imperfect description, but will, nevertheless, serve to show the fine feeling and deep intent of the genius of rembrandt. to extend this investigation further would be perhaps superfluous, did we not know that, even in our own time, doubts are entertained of the proper introduction of pictorial arrangements of chiaro-scuro and colour; but the grand style, like all other modes of portraying a work, must be made subservient to affecting the feelings of the spectator. i shall only bring two pictures in contrast to elucidate this principle still further--"the burning of the books at ephesus," by sebastian bourdon; and "the martyrdom of st. lawrence," by titian. as bourdon has been considered the french raffaelle, it is but fair that he should be taken as a follower of that school, devoted to composition and correct drawing, to the absence of all inferior qualities; the consequence is, he has represented the scene in mid-day, where the flames are red without extending their influence to surrounding objects; consequently, they are not luminous, nor conveying the idea of destruction. titian, on the contrary, has chosen the darkness of night to represent the horrors of the martyrdom--the red burning light of the living coal conveys a tenfold force to the torments of the saint, and the very reality of the colour gives a corresponding truth to the scene, which takes it completely out of the regions of apocrypha, and stamps it with the character of holy writ. the descent of the cool light from heaven upon the scorching body of st. lawrence is like a rush of water to counteract his sufferings, and give him a confidence in his future reward, which the spectator fully enters into. these are the triumphs that appropriate chiaro-scuro and colour achieve for their introduction into historical works. that we may more clearly perceive the rank which rembrandt holds as a colourist, i shall endeavour to investigate the peculiar qualities that characterise the several manners of titian, rembrandt, and reynolds--the one living before, the other after our artist, and of course confining the investigation to portraiture alone. i have selected titian in preference to vandyke, not that i consider him, in this branch, superior; on the contrary, i agree with sir joshua, in mentioning vandyke as the greatest portrait painter that ever existed, all things considered--but i wish to confine myself exclusively to colour, and in this branch it is evident that these three great artists are more similar in their works than any other painters; but titian, by the concurrent testimony of his contemporaries and all succeeding judges upon the subject, is the highest authority on the great leading principles of colour. besides, his works are in many instances uninjured by the rough usage of uneducated men. with regard to the works of rembrandt, which are in comparison as of yesterday, many of them remain in the same frames and on the same walls on which they were first hung. the works of reynolds, though of a more recent date, have suffered more, not from the ruthless hand of the picture-cleaner, but from his making use of more perishable materials. still, from the variety of his vehicles, changed from an anxiety to get a nearer approach to the look and appearance of nature, many of his pictures are sufficiently perfect to build an investigation upon. previous to the appearance of giorgione and titian, this branch of the art differed but little from the treatment the several heads received in historical pictures generally; only with this exception, that when introduced as the component parts of a work where a story had to be told, they were imbued with action and expression; but when treated as simple portraiture, the higher qualities were left out, and a quiet map of the face, to use a familiar expression, was all that was desired to be transferred to the canvas. neither did the head receive that superiority over every other subordinate part of the work which science and a long line of celebrated examples seem now so imperatively to demand. in drawing a comparison between the three great portrait painters, it is necessary, in the first instance, to refer to the several characters of their models, or sitters. the nobility of venice were, at the time of titian, men of long descent, dignified, and holding high rank in a city at that time the emporium of the merchandize of the east, and distributors of rich manufactures to the whole of civilized europe; hence that "senatorial dignity" which characterises his works, and the style and richness of costume so necessary to grandeur, and the historical air in his portraits. his sitters also possessed countenance and figure well calculated to engender and support the noblest character of painting. the sitters of reynolds, notwithstanding the pomatumed pyramids of the female hair, or the stiff, formal curls of the male, which set every attempt to beautify the features at defiance, either by extension of the forms or harmonizing the several parts of the countenance, (serious obstacles to pictorial beauty,) were still in possession of that bland and fascinating look which distinguishes people of high breeding. in contrast with these we have to array the models of rembrandt's painting-room--fat burgomasters, florid in complexion and common in feature; jews and attornies; shipbuilders, and hard harsh-featured master mechanics. independent of the models themselves, there is a congenial feeling created in the artist who associates with and has to represent them; we imperceptibly imbibe the manners of those we are in contact with, either advantageously or injuriously. from these few remarks we may perceive that the dignified attitude, the broad general tone of the countenance, though deep, yet rendered bright and luminous by the jetty blackness of the hair and beard, were all conducive to the creation of the style of titian--a style that swallows up the varieties of minute tints in a general breadth. so in reynolds, the absence of everything strong in expression or harsh in colour gave a refinement to the heads of his men, and a beauty to the faces of his females; and to this treatment all his sitters were subjected--so that even those heads, however deficient in the originals, came off his easel ladies and gentlemen. a subdued delicacy of expression and colour removes them from the common look of familiar life. now, on the contrary, the very character and colour of rembrandt's heads are pronounced with the strong stamp of flesh and blood--an exact representation of nature in an unsophisticated state. his handling, his manner of leaving the various tints, and the marking of minute parts, all conspire to give his works that appearance of truth unfettered with the attempt to elevate the general character at the expense of individuality. the peculiarity of titian's portraits, independent of the high character and simple and dignified attitude of the figure, is a careful and distinct modelling of the features, with the half-shadows, though not dark, yet never slurred over--which in other hands would produce heaviness; but titian counteracts this by the intense darkness of his dresses and backgrounds, so that the features, often modelled with the firmness of sculpture, are rendered comparatively gentle by the treatment of the other parts of the picture. the portraits of sir joshua have this peculiarity, that however loaded and enriched in every part of the work, the head is kept smooth, and often thinly painted. the whole-length of "the marquis of granby," and "the portrait of mrs. siddons," two of his finest pictures, are examples of this mode of treating the head. this has given rise to an anecdote, that mrs. siddons, looking at the picture when unfinished, begged sir joshua not to touch the head any more--and having promised her, he refrained, notwithstanding the richness and depth of the fearless glazings would seem to demand a corresponding force in the head. the truth is, that reynolds seems always to have depended upon the small dark shadows to give solidity to his heads, without clogging them with colour or dark half-tints. the importance of thus refining upon the head may be perceived in the portrait of himself, painted _con amore_, and presented to the dilettante society, of which he was a member. the features, and, indeed, the whole head, depend upon the extreme darks; the judicious arrangement of these shadows not only gives a pictorial dignity to the work, from the stamp of science, but also, where the features in nature are either blunt or mean in themselves, draws off the attention of the spectator to higher qualities. shadows are never mean, but are the stamps of truth rendered beautiful by taste and feeling. independent of the advantage of dark touches giving delicacy to the features that produce them, there is a motion and life given by the vivacity and freedom of the handling, which cannot with safety be taken with the features themselves. this quality seems very early to have been sir joshua's greatest anxiety to acquire. in a remark respecting the pictures of a rival, john stephen liotard, whose only merit was a strong likeness, with great neatness of finish, reynolds says--"the high-finished manner of painting would be chosen if it were possible with it to have that spirit and expression which infallibly fly off when the artist labours; but there are transient beauties which last less than a moment, and must be painted in as little time; besides, in poring long the imagination is fatigued, and loses its vigour. you will find nature in the first manner--but it will be nature stupid, and without action. the portraits of holbein are of this high-finished manner; and for colouring and similitude what was ever beyond them? but then you see fixed countenances, and all the features seem to remain immoveable." northcote observes, "of mere likeness in portraiture reynolds thought very little, and used to say that he could instruct any boy that chance might throw in his way to paint a likeness in a portrait in half a year's time; but to give an impressive and a just expression and character to a picture, or paint it like velasquez, was another thing. what we are all," he said, "attempting to do with great labour, he does at once." barry, speaking of reynolds as a portrait painter, mentions the wretched state the art was in before his time, and how elevated it became from the manner sir joshua treated it. in continuation, he says--"in many of titian's portraits the head and hands are mere staring, lightish spots, unconnected with either the drapery or background, which are sometimes too dark, and mere obscure nothings; and in lely, and even in vandyke, we sometimes meet with the other extreme of too little solidity, too much flickering and washiness. sir joshua's object appears to have been to obtain the vigour and solidity of the one, with the bustle and spirit of the other, without the excess of either; and in by far the greatest number of his portraits he has admirably succeeded. his portrait of mrs. siddons is, both for the ideal and the executive, the finest portrait of the kind perhaps in the world; indeed, it is something more than a portrait, and may serve to give an excellent idea of what an enthusiastic mind is apt to conceive of those pictures of confined history for which apelles was so celebrated by the ancient writers. but this picture of 'mrs. siddons, or the tragic muse,' was painted not long since, when much of his attention had been turned to history; and it is highly probable that the picture of lord heathfield, the glorious defender of gibraltar, would have been of equal importance, had it been a whole length; but even as it is--only a bust--there is great animation and spirit, happily adapted to the indications of the tremendous scene around him; and to the admirable circumstance of the key of the fortress, firmly grasped in his hand, than which imagination cannot conceive anything more ingenious and heroically characteristic. it is, perhaps, owing to the academy, and to his situation in it, to the discourses which he biennially made to the pupils upon the great principles of historical art, and the generous ardour of his own mind to realize what he advised, that we are indebted for a few expansive efforts of colouring and chiaro-scuro which would do honour to the first names in the records of art." and speaking of the large historical work he painted for the empress of russia, he adds--"nothing can exceed the brilliancy of light--the force and vigorous effect of his picture of 'the infant hercules strangling the serpent;' it possesses all that we look for and are accustomed to admire in the works of rembrandt, united to beautiful forms and an elevation of mind to which rembrandt had no pretensions. the prophetical agitation of tiresias and juno, enveloped in clouds, hanging over the scene like a black pestilence, can never be too much admired, and are, indeed, truly sublime." after such commendations, and from so high an authority, we might feel a diffidence in bringing forward the great founder of the dutch school in competition with such artists as titian and reynolds, did we not know that the qualities of the chiaro-scuro and colour of reynolds are founded on the deep tones of rembrandt, who, as a colourist, takes his proper place between the two heads of the venetian and english schools. how far rembrandt was indebted for his principles of colour to the works of titian, it is impossible to say; but many of his pictures bear a greater affinity to the last style of this great colourist than to any other painter. we perceive by the catalogue of his effects, that folios containing drawings by titian, also prints after him, were in his possession. the luminous, rich tones of his flesh are more like titian than rubens or vandyke, whose works he must have been familiar with; and while his backgrounds are less black and inky than those in the portraits of titian and tintoret, they are also more broken, both in colour and execution, which prevents heaviness. his handling--which conveys from its dexterity and touch so lifelike an appearance--is not unlike that of frank hals, of whom reynolds speaks so highly:--"in the works of frank hals, the portrait painter may observe the composition of a face, the features well put together, as the painters express it, from whence proceeds that strong, marked character of individual nature, which is so remarkable in his portraits, and is not found in an equal degree in any other painter. if he had joined to this most difficult part of the art a patience in finishing what he so correctly planned, he might justly have claimed the place which vandyke, all things considered, so justly holds, as the first of portrait painters." there is, however, this difference in their works--independent of the flesh of rembrandt's being much richer in tone, it is produced by glazing and fresh touches of transparent colour, whereas the tints of hals seem to have been mixed in the first instance on his palette; hence that undisturbed dexterity of handling which gives so much the appearance of life in his best works. the distinctive characteristics between a portrait painter and a historical painter, is "that the one paints man in general, the other a particular man;" hence, to ennoble the work, it is necessary to make it conform, as much as can be done with safety to the likeness, to the great principles that guide the highest branches of the art--that is, by softening down those features that overstep the boundary of general nature, and assisting those parts that fall short, or are defective. therefore, when lawrence painted mrs. siddons, the duke of wellington, or lord brougham, he chose a front view of the face, that their peculiarities might not be too apparent. now sir joshua carried these generalizing principles to so great an extent at times that his sitters did not recognise the striking likeness that some people look for as paramount to all other considerations, which made his pupil, northcote, remark that there was a class of sitters who would not be content "unless the house-dog barked at it as a sign of recognition." rembrandt, on the contrary, did not generalize enough; therefore, many portraits were left on his hands, as it is said they were left on reynolds's. but see the result, those very pictures from the easel of both painters bring higher prices than the more favoured of their likenesses, from being intrinsically fine works of art. the number of portraits rembrandt painted of himself is a proof of the little encouragement he received in painting the portraits of others. from sir joshua's hand we have but two or three, while from rembrandt's we have nearly fifty. yet, with all the deficiencies in the art of making up a beautiful face, rembrandt frequently produced portraits of great feminine beauty: witness "the lady with the fan," in the collection of the marquis of westminster, and "the lady," in the royal collection. had he got the same models of female beauty that titian and reynolds had, he would, in all probability, have transferred them to the canvas with the same truth and intenseness of feeling that guided his pencil in other matters. rembrandt's style was that which would have suited oliver cromwell, who, when he sat for his portrait, made it a _sine qua non_ that the painter should leave out neither warts nor wrinkles. the same truth and verisimilitude that regulated his forms, guided his eye with respect to colour. in his earlier pictures, such as "the ship builder," in the royal collection, there is a greater degree of hardness and solidity of pigment than in his later works, which possess more the suppleness of flesh. this is also to be observed in the later works of titian, velasquez, and reynolds, and in the later works of our scottish velasquez--raeburn. the portraits of gainsborough possess this in a high degree. what has been said with regard to rembrandt laying on his colours with the palette-knife, is very much exaggerated. many of his heads are as smooth as reynolds's, and finished with great delicacy and precision; in fact, the versatility of his genius, and the wonderful command over his materials, from indefatigable practice, have given both his pictures and prints that character of having been done in the best style suited to accomplish his object. i have mentioned that titian keeps his backgrounds often dark, for the purpose of giving a delicacy to his strong shadows in the face; both vandyke and rembrandt do this by making the colour of the background amalgamate with the colour of the hair, or dark shades of the head. rubens, reynolds, and lawrence often used a red curtain in contact with their flesh, to produce the same result. the luminous character of the head is certainly better preserved by its giving out rays or similarity of tone to the surrounding background. it has been remarked that the luminous and transparent character of the flesh is enhanced, as in several of vandyke's portraits, by bringing it in contact with an earthy, dull tint. vandyke, indeed, when his ground would not permit him, introduced over the shoulders of his females a scarf of this colour. rembrandt often plunges from the dark shadows of his head into his ground, and thus gives both a breadth and unity. this practice, where the shadows of the face are produced by the same colour as the contiguous background, is certainly the foundation of simplicity. i think the money value of rembrandt's portraits may be taken as a criterion of their intrinsic worth as works of art; other masters' decline in producing high prices, rembrandt's increase--witness the portrait sold the other day at the duke of buckingham's, at stowe;--though the half-length of a burgomaster whom few people ever heard of, it realized seven hundred guineas and upwards. no nameless portrait by reynolds, under the same disadvantages, would produce an equivalent sum. sir joshua's portraits are either branches of our aristocracy, or celebrated public characters. as a knowledge of art advances, works fall naturally into their proper stations. when reynolds's sister asked sir joshua the reason that we never see any of the portraits by jervas now, he replied, "because, my dear, they are all up in the garret." yet this man drove his chariot and four, and received the praises of pope in verse. sir godfrey kneller would sometimes receive a sum of money and a couple of portraits by vandyke as payment; but now, a single portrait of the great founder of the dutch school would outweigh in true value a large number of kneller's collected talent: yet rembrandt died insolvent, and sir godfrey accumulated a large fortune. and such will be the fate of those who paint for posterity, "and look beyond the ignorant present." the true statement of this change, which of necessity takes place, is, that the man of genius paints according to the high impulse that has been given him, as paramount to every other consideration; the other panders to the caprice and ignorance of those who employ him. this it was that made reynolds's master, hudson, exclaim, after sir joshua's return from italy, "why, joshua, you don't paint so well as you did before you went abroad!" when men of genius and high talent fall upon favourable times, the result is the reverse, and the fine arts are esteemed, and their professors rewarded according to their excellence. the age in which titian lived was famous for literary men, who had made the republic of venice known and honoured through the whole of italy. the praises of michael angelo bestowed on the works of the great venetian, had adorned the name of titian with a halo of supernatural brightness; so much so, that whilst painting the portrait of the emperor charles the fifth, happening to drop one of his pencils, charles stooped and picked it up, observing, "that a genius like titian deserved to be waited on by emperors." of reynolds we know that all the beauty and talent of the land flocked to his painting-room, conscious of being handed down to posterity with all the advantages that pictorial science could achieve. the grace of coreggio was grafted by this great master on the strong stem of rembrandt's colouring. in opposition to those advantages, we have to remark that the people with whom rembrandt came in contact were not only of an inferior character, when measured by the standard of grace and dignity, but the troubles of the times militated in a high degree against that encouragement so necessary to the perfection of the art. in spite of these inauspicious circumstances, the genius of rembrandt has produced works fraught with the highest principles of colour and pictorial effect, and to his want of encouragement in the department of mere common portraiture, we are indebted for many of the most pictorial and splendid specimens of strong individual character in familiar life. of all the works by rembrandt, perhaps no picture has attracted so much attention and observation as his "night watch," now in the museum of amsterdam. as its dimensions are thirteen feet by fourteen, it secures attention by its size; its effect, also, is striking in a high degree, though reynolds, in his "tour to holland and flanders," says it disappointed him, having heard so much respecting it. he remarks that it had more of the appearance of ferdinand bol, from a prevalence of a yellow, sickly colour. on the other hand, wilkie says, "had it been a subject such as 'the christ before pilate,' which he has etched, it would have been his finest and grandest work." though painted in , it possesses all the force and high principles of colour to be found in his later works. nothing can exceed the firmness and truth of the two figures advancing to the spectator--especially the officer in the light dress--it is modelled with all the force of nature, and the background figures being steeped in the deepest hues of subdued colour, give a strength and richness which nothing can surpass. of course, there is a want of interest in the story, which is merely an assemblage of the militia of amsterdam, on occasion of the expected visit of the prince of orange and the daughter of charles the first, whom he had espoused. the principal pictures by other great masters receive a greater notoriety from the interest of the subject--such as "the transfiguration," by raffaelle; "the peter martyr," by titian; "the miracle of st. mark," by tintoret; "the martyrdom of st. george," by paul veronese; and "the st. jerome," by coreggio. nevertheless, "the night watch," by rembrandt, may safely be classed with the choicest productions of the great painters of italy and venice. when we consider that his pictures extend to upwards of six hundred and fifty, the reader will appreciate the difficulty i have felt in describing the peculiar merit which has so indelibly stamped most of them with the passport to posterity. landscapes. the landscapes by rembrandt, unhappily few in number, possess the strong mark of truth for which his works are so strikingly fascinating. they are chiefly small, the largest not exceeding three feet. one of his best is in the collection of the marquis of lansdowne, representing a mill seen under the influence of an uncertain twilight; the warm light of the western sky sheds its lustre on the sails of the mill, which stands on high ground; but the other portions of the picture are of dark half-tint, except a reflection of the light on the water towards the foreground. it was exhibited in the british gallery, in , and attracted great attention. another picture peculiar to the genius of rembrandt is in the collection of sir richard colt hoare, bart.; it represents a night scene on the skirts of a wood, with a group of figures seated round a fire, the red gleam of which is reflected in a stream that flows along the foreground. a few cattle are partially seen in the obscure portions of the picture, with a peasant passing with a lantern. other smaller works are in the collections of sir robert peel, samuel rogers, esq., sir abraham hume, and the marquis of hertford. his largest picture of this class was formerly in the louvre, and is now in the public gallery at hesse-cassel. in the landscapes of rembrandt we meet with the same breadth, and hues of a deep tone, without being black or heavy; they are also painted with a full pencil, and rich juicy vehicle. rembrandt, like titian, rubens, and others who were historical painters, seizes upon the great characteristics of nature without entering into the painful fidelity of topographical littleness; the same generalizing principles pervade every variety of subject. fuseli, speaking of portrait painting as mere likenesses, adds--"to portrait painting thus circumstanced, we subjoin, as the last branch of uninteresting subjects, that kind of landscape which is entirely occupied with the tame delineation of a given spot--an enumeration of hill and dale, clumps of trees, shrubs, water, meadows, cottages, and houses--what is commonly called views. these, if not assisted by nature, dictated by taste, or chosen for character, may delight the owner of the acres they enclose, the inhabitants of the spot, perhaps the antiquary or the traveller, but to any other eye, they are little more than topography. the landscape of titian, of mola, of salvator, of the poussins, claude, rubens, elsheimer, rembrandt, and wilson, spurns all relation with this kind of map-work. to them nature disclosed her bosom in the varied light of rising, meridian, and setting suns--in twilight, night, and dawn." [illustration: fac-simile of a drawing by rembrandt in british museum] drawings by rembrandt. in looking over the numerous portfolios of drawings in public and private libraries, we are struck with the accumulated mass of mediocre talent. many of them are often well composed, and even well drawn, but they are completely destitute of what constitutes true merit--they possess no distinguishing mark whereby we can discern one master from another; they are struck off with wonderful dexterity, as far as the eye or hand is concerned, but the mind is totally wanting; neither do they possess the peculiar features of natural truth, whose lines are filled with variety, sometimes sharp, sometimes round--in parts faint and delicate, and in other places strong and cutting. on the other hand, when the drawings of great painters are examined, the master mind shines forth in every touch, and we recognise the works of michael angelo, raffaelle, coreggio, and others, at a glance. the drawings of rembrandt possess this quality in a superlative degree, and the slightest indication seems sufficient to mark the character and leading features of the object represented. his drawings are generally in pen outline, with a wash of bistre, or other warm colour; sometimes he makes use of black and red chalk; they are seldom finished with colours, but have often portions rendered lighter and broader by means of a wash of white. from his great practice in using the point in etching, he not only gives the greatest precision and certainty, but his outline assumes the gentlest delicacy or overpowering boldness. everything from his hand seems to possess a largeness of form, and the greatest breadth of light and shade that can be given; this it is that gives them the stamp of truth, so that it is difficult to distinguish between those drawn immediately from nature, and such as are emanations from his imagination. on looking into the catalogue of his effects, we perceive large folios of his drawings, which, though at the sale they produced but small sums, are now marked with their true value. i may notice here a small drawing of "the death of the virgin," that brought, at the sale of the late baron verstolk, one hundred and sixty guineas. one cannot but regret that the excellent collection of the drawings by rembrandt and other masters, selected by the late sir thomas lawrence, with great taste and at large sums, should have been lost to the country, though offered in his will at comparatively a small price. nevertheless, we possess several fine specimens in the british museum print-room. the etchings of rembrandt. no painter has gained so much celebrity by his etchings as rembrandt, both on account of their number and excellence. claude, parmegiano, berghem, paul potter, adrian ostade, and others, have all been dextrous in using the etching point. rembrandt's performances have all the interest and beauty of finished works; his making use of the dry point, which was unknown before his application of it, gives his etchings that richness and softness peculiar to himself, for the process in the hands of others has never since been attended with the same triumphant success. the etchings consist of three hundred and sixty-five plates, accompanied by two hundred and thirty-seven variations. i can only here give their titles and dates: the amateur is referred to the descriptive catalogues of gersaint, daulby, bartsch, claussin, and wilson. the catalogue by the latter gentleman is the one adopted by the british museum; i have, however, numbered them according to the catalogue raisonné of rembrandt's works by smith, who made use of the arrangement of the chevalier claussin. i have also marked those that are of the greatest excellence with a star before the number. [illustration: portrait of rembrandt's mother] [illustration: portraits of rembrandt and his wife] portraits of the artist. . portrait of rembrandt when a young man, having frizzly hair. . portrait of rembrandt with moustaches, and wearing a bonnet put sideways on his head. . portrait of rembrandt, represented with a falcon on his right hand. . portrait of rembrandt, with frizzly hair, and the head uncovered; remarkable for thick lips and a large nose. very rare. . portrait of rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, with frizzled hair, and the head uncovered. . portrait of rembrandt when a young man, wearing a fur cap and a black habit. . portrait of rembrandt when young, seen in a front view, wearing a slouched hat, and a mantle lined with fur. dated . . portrait resembling rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, with moustaches, short curling beard, and frizzled hair. . portrait of rembrandt when young, seen in a three-quarter view, with the head uncovered and the hair frizzled. . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, having an expression of grimace. . portrait of rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, with a flat bonnet on the head. . portrait of rembrandt when young, seen in a three-quarter view, with head uncovered, and the hair frizzled. (oval.) . portrait of rembrandt when young, with the mouth a little open, the head uncovered, and the hair frizzled. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, having a fur cap, and a mantle bordered with fur. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a three-quarter view, with the head uncovered, and the hair frizzled; he has on a mantle buttoned in front. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, wearing a fur cap of a round form, and a mantle. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, having on a bonnet of the usual shape, placed sideways on his head, and a kind of scarf round his neck. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, having on a richly-ornamented cap or turban, and an embroidered robe. he holds a drawn sabre in his hand. dated . . portraits of rembrandt and his wife, on one plate. dated . . portrait of rembrandt. he has on a mezetin cap, decked with a feather, and a rich mantle. dated . * . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a three-quarter view; he has long curling hair and moustaches; a cap of the usual shape covers the head, and a rich mantle the body. the left arm leans on some stone work. dated . * . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a front view, wearing a narrow-brimmed hat, and a plain habit open in front; he is seated at a table, holding a crayon in his hand. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a three-quarter view, with long curling hair; he has on a cap with a small feather in front of it, attached by a ribbon; his mantle is fastened in front by a clasp. dated . (oval) (this is the cut plate of the celebrated sabre print.) . portrait of rembrandt, seen in nearly a front view, having on a fur cap, which covers his forehead to the eyebrows; his curling hair falls on his shoulders, and his robe is bordered with fur. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, with the left side of the face strongly shadowed; his frizzled hair falls on the shoulders, and his habit is a little open in front, and lined with fur. dated . . portrait strongly resembling rembrandt, seen in a front view, having short frizzled hair, and the mouth a little compressed; he has on a cap, and wears a mantle attached by a little ribbon. . portrait of rembrandt, closely resembling no. . the face is seen in a front view, and the body in a three-quarter position; the hair is frizzled, and a toupée is on the left side; the eyes and forehead are in shadow. . portrait of rembrandt, seen in a three-quarter view, with a small beard and mustacheos; a cap of the usual shape covers his frizzled hair, and the dress is composed of a mantle bordered with fur. this is placed by bartsch and gersaint among the fancy portraits. . portrait resembling rembrandt when young, seen in a front view, with round face, large nose, the mouth a little open, short frizzled hair, and a cap on the head; his mantle is attached by four buttons in front. dated . . portrait of rembrandt (styled by some writers, "titus, the son of the artist.") it represents a young man, with ragged frizzled hair falling on the shoulders. he is dressed in a habit with a collar. dated . . portrait of rembrandt, or very like him, when a young man; he has frizzled hair, and wears a fur cap. (octagon.) this is inserted by other writers among the fancy heads. . portrait closely resembling rembrandt, seen in a front view, with a cap on; the attitude is that of a person drawing. engraved very lightly, and almost without shadow, on a narrow plate. . portrait closely resembling rembrandt, seen in a front view, having on a cap of the usual shape, the top of which is cut off by the edge of the plate. dated . these figures are ill formed. subjects from the old testament. . adam and eve in paradise; the latter has the forbidden fruit in her hand, which she has received from the tempter, who is seen in the form of a serpent in a tree, with an apple in his mouth. dated . * . abraham entertaining the three angels at the door of his house. dated . . abraham offering up his son. dated . . abraham sending away hagar and ishmael. dated . . abraham caressing his son isaac. . abraham with his son isaac. the subject represents the moment when the son asks his father, "where is the sacrifice?" dated . . four subjects to illustrate a spanish book. these were originally engraved on one plate, which was afterwards cut into four. they represent as follows:-- jacob's dream on the plain of padan aran. four angels are ascending and descending the ladder. dated . david preparing his sling to attack goliath. dated . the image seen by nebuchadnezzar in his dream. dated . the vision of ezekiel. dated . . joseph relating his dream to his parents, in the presence of his brethren. dated . . jacob lamenting the supposed death of his son joseph. . joseph and potiphar's wife. dated . * . the triumph of mordecai. . david on his knees in prayer. dated . . blind tobit leaning on a staff, followed by his dog. dated . . the angel departing from tobit and his family. dated . new testament subjects. * . the angel appearing to the shepherds, and announcing the birth of the saviour. dated . . the nativity of the saviour. * . the adoration of the shepherds. . the circumcision. dated . . the circumcision, differently composed. . the presentation in the temple. . the presentation in the temple, differently composed. . the presentation in the temple, differing from the preceding. dated . . the flight into egypt. dated . . the flight into egypt, differently composed. no date. . the flight into egypt, differing from the preceding. . the flight into egypt, differing from the preceding. dated . . the flight into egypt, differing from the preceding. . a _reposo_ of the holy family by night. . a _reposo_ of the holy family. dated . . a _reposo_ of the holy family, supposed to be unique. * . the return from jerusalem of the holy family. dated . . the virgin, with the infant jesus in the clouds. dated . . the holy family. . the holy family, differently composed. dated . . jesus amidst the doctors. dated . . jesus disputing with the doctors. dated . . jesus amidst the doctors, differently composed. dated . * . christ preaching to the people. . the tribute money. . christ driving the money changers out of the temple. dated . . christ with the woman of samaria. the third proof is dated . . christ with the woman of samaria, differently composed. dated . * . the resurrection of lazarus; styled the little. dated . . the resurrection of lazarus; styled the great. no date. * . christ healing the sick. this beautiful print is known under the appellation of "the hundred guilder print." no date. * . christ in the garden of olives. dated . the last figure is wanting. . christ before the people. dated . . christ on the cross between the two thieves, styled "the three crosses." dated . * . the _ecce homo_. dated . * . the descent from the cross. dated . . christ on the cross between the two thieves. . christ on the cross. . the descent from the cross. dated . * . the descent from the cross; a night piece. dated . * . the entombment. . the virgin lamenting the death of the saviour. . christ in the tomb. * . christ at the table with the two disciples of emmaus. dated . . christ at the table with the two disciples of emmaus. dated . . christ in the midst of his disciples, and the incredulity of st. thomas. dated . . the good samaritan. dated . . the return of the prodigal son. dated . . the decollation of st. john. dated . . peter and john at the beautiful gate of the temple. dated . . peter and john at the gate of the temple, differently composed. . st. peter on his knees, with a key in either hand. dated . . the martyrdom of st. stephen. dated . . the baptism of the eunuch. dated . * . the death of the virgin. dated . saints. . st. jerome seated at the foot of a tree. dated . . st. jerome at his devotions. dated . . st. jerome at his devotions, with a lion behind him. dated , or . . st. jerome seated, with spectacles on, writing. dated . . st. jerome seated, reading in a large book held with both hands. . st. jerome seated at a table in a room. dated . . st. jerome on his knees, meditating before a skull. . st. francis on his knees at his devotions, with a crucifix and a book before him. dated . historical, allegorical and fancy subjects. . a youth surprised by the apparition of death. dated . . an allegorical subject, allusive to the demolition of a statue offensive to the low countries. dated . . fortune reversed, an allegorical subject, allusive to some hero upon whom fortune has turned her back. dated . * . the marriage of jason and creusa. dated . . the star of the kings, an ancient dutch custom on the feast of the kings. . a lion hunt; several huntsmen on horseback attacking a lion. dated . . a lion hunt, differently composed to the preceding. . a lion hunt, also differing from the above. . a battle. the subject represents a group of horsemen advancing, full speed, with swords, javelins, &c. . three figures in oriental dresses, accompanied by a dog. dated . . the blind bagpiper amusing some cottagers. . the spanish gipsy. . the rat killer. dated . . the rat killer, differently composed. . the goldsmith. . the pancake woman. dated . . the game of kolf. dated . . the jews' synagogue. dated . . the schoolmaster. dated . . the mountebank. dated . . the draughtsman. . a peasant with his wife and child. . a jew wearing a high cap. dated . . the onion woman. dated . . the peasant with his hands behind him. dated . . the card players. dated . . the blind fiddler. dated . . a man on horseback. . the polander, with his hands united. . the polander, with his sword and staff. . the polander, with a cane in his left hand. dated . . an old man, standing with his back to the spectator. . a peasant man and a woman walking together. . a philosopher seated, with a pen in his hand. . a man seated at a table, on which is an open book. . an old man seated, resting his arm on a book. . an old man without a beard. dated . . an old man with a short beard, leaning on a staff. . an old man with a long beard, in the dress of a persian. dated . . the blind jew, standing with his back to the spectator, leaning on a staff. . two figures in venetian dresses. . a doctor feeling the pulse of a patient. . the skater. * . the hog with his legs tied. dated . . a little dog lying asleep. . a shell, known under the appellation of "the damier." dated . beggars. . a beggar seated, with his hands united. . a beggar and his wife. . a beggar standing, resting both hands on a staff. . a beggar standing, holding a stick in his right hand. . a beggar man and a woman, standing in conversation. dated . . a beggar man and a woman by the side of a bank. . a beggar with a stick in his right hand. in the manner of callot. . a beggar in a slashed cloak. dated . . a beggar woman, with a calebash hanging behind her. . a beggar, wearing a fur cap, and resting both hands on a staff. . an old beggar woman asking charity. dated . . lazarus klap, or the dumb beggar. dated . . a beggar with a wooden leg, standing with his hands behind him. . a beggar sitting at the side of a wall. . a beggar sitting on a bank. dated . . a beggar sitting, with his dog by his side. dated . * . three beggars at the door of a house. dated . . a beggar with one hand in the breast of his jacket, in a cold day. dated . . a beggar with his hands behind him. . a beggar with a wooden leg, and a stick in his hand. . a peasant with his hands behind him, and a basket at his feet. . a peasant woman with a bottle attached to her waist. . a beggar. this is merely a sketch. . a beggar man and a woman walking side by side. . a beggar wrapped up in his mantle. . a sick beggar lying on the ground. academical subjects. . the french bed. dated . . the friar among the corn. . the flute player and the shepherdess. dated . . an old man sleeping, and a couple caressing. . a pot-bellied man, with a pack at his back, and a pouch by his side. dated . . a woman crouching under a tree. dated . . a painter drawing after a model. . a naked man, seated. dated . . academical figures of men. . the bathers. dated . . a man sitting naked for a model. dated . . a woman sitting before a dutch stove. . a woman sitting naked on a bank. . a woman at the bath. dated . . a woman sitting naked with her feet in the water. dated . . venus in the bath. she is seated at the foot of a tree, with her feet in the stream. * . a naked woman sitting on a bed, with an arrow in her hand. dated . . antiope, jupiter, and a satyr. dated . . a woman lying asleep on a couch. a satyr in the background. . a negress lying on a couch. dated . landscapes. . a landscape, in which is introduced a cow. . a landscape, distinguished by a large tree growing by the side of a house. . a landscape, with a bridge, styled "six's bridge." dated . . a view of omval, near amsterdam. dated . * . a view of amsterdam. [illustration: view of amsterdam] [illustration: cottage with white palings] . a landscape, with a huntsman on a road, followed by two dogs. * . a landscape, known under the appellation of "the three trees." dated . * . a landscape, distinguished by a man carrying a yoke of pails. . a landscape, with a canal, on the banks of which are two houses embosomed in trees. washed in bistre, or india ink. . a landscape; the scene is remarkable for a coach passing along a road in the centre of the view. . a landscape, with a terrace, and a road over it in the centre. * . a landscape, with a village situate near the high road. dated . . a view of the village of randorp, remarkable for an old tower, of a square form. dated . . a landscape, in the foreground of which may be noticed a man seated, drawing. . a landscape, with a pond, on the bank of which sits a woman with a child in her lap; a shepherd stands behind her. dated . . a view in holland. some cottages among trees are seen in the centre, and a canal flows along the front. . a landscape, representing a woody scene, with a vista on the right. dated . . a landscape, with an old tower rising above the roofs of some houses. * . a landscape distinguished by a road leading to a village, on which is a shepherd with a flock of sheep. dated . . a landscape, with a cottage and barn. dated . . a landscape, with a large tree and a cottage on the left, and divided obliquely by a canal. dated . . a landscape, remarkable for an obelisk standing on the left, and a village stretching along the distance. . a landscape, with three houses on the left, backed by trees, and near these is a woman followed by a dog; on the opposite side is a canal, with a sailing vessel on it. . a landscape, with a cluster of trees at the side of a road; a second road divides the scene in the centre. . a landscape, with a cottage on the left, and in the centre an alley of trees; close to the front is a man with a stick on his shoulder. . a landscape, with a large piece of water. the name and date are inscribed at the foot of the trunk of a tree on the right. dated . . a landscape, with a cottage near the middle, on either side of which is a tree, and in front an enclosure of paling. * . a view, supposed to be that of the house in which the artist was born, and the adjacent windmill. dated . . the gold-weigher's field. the scene is remarkable for a mansion placed near the centre, and a wood stretching along the left of it; on the right is seen the steeple of a church rising above some trees. dated . . a landscape, distinguished by a canal, on which are two swans. dated . * . a landscape, with a canal, and a boat lying alongside the shore. dated . . a landscape, with a canal in front, at which a cow is drinking. . a view of a village, remarkable for an old square tower. dated . . a landscape, with a river on the left, on which is seen the half of a boat. . a landscape, in which may be noticed a little man, and in the distance two windmills and a steeple. . a landscape of an upright form, having a large tree in the middle, and a man and a woman in front. . a landscape, with a farm-house partly concealed by trees, and surrounded by a wood fence. . a landscape, with a river, on which are two sailing boats, and on the left of the print is seen a man seated on a barge, angling. . a landscape, traversed obliquely by a canal, on the bank of which sits a man, angling. . a landscape, distinguished by a low house built on the bank of a canal, and above the roof of which rises the gable of a second house; near these are some trees and a boarded fence. . a landscape, in which may be noticed a house of two stories high, a windmill, and a river with a sailing boat on it. . a landscape, divided by a canal; in the centre rises a large tree, near which is a cottage partly concealed by trees. dated . . a landscape, with a barn filled with hay, adjacent to which is a cottage with a fence in front of it, and a clump of trees. . a landscape, with a canal in front, and a boat on it; the scene is further distinguished by a large cottage, with the upper part of the door open. . a landscape, with a large house on the right, constructed of wood, and having three chimneys; beyond this object are two hovels surrounded by trees, at the foot of which flows a river. . a landscape, on the left of which may be noticed a peasant drawing water from a well, behind which grows a lofty tree. a dray-cart is also introduced. . a landscape. this scene is distinguished by a château with eight pointed towers. this is doubted by m. de claussin. . a landscape, with several trees in the distance, in addition to which may be noticed a large trunk of a tree, and in front of it is a bull attached by a cord. . a village scene. the view represents, on the right, two houses with pointed roofs; above which rises a round tower. . this view exhibits a portion of a village, with six thatched houses, only one of which is shadowed and finished. dated . . a landscape, with a large canal extending throughout the scene, on the banks of which are two men angling. portraits of men. . portrait of a man, seen in nearly a front view, with his left hand resting on a table. dated . . portrait of a young man, seated, with his right hand placed on his thigh, and the left on his breast. dated . . portrait of an old man. he is in the act of raising the right hand to his bonnet. . portrait of an old man, seen in nearly a front view. he appears to be seated, and his attention is directed downwards. . portrait of a man, with long straight hair covered with a cap; a chain is suspended round his neck, to which is attached a cross. dated . . an old man with a long beard, having on a fur cap, and a large mantle, sitting in an arm-chair. . a man with a short beard, represented in a front view, with a fur cap on his head, and dressed in an embroidered mantle. dated . . portrait of jan antonides vander linden. he wears a handsome robe, and is represented in a garden, with a book in his hand. . an old man, with a square-shaped beard, a fur cap on his head, and the right hand placed on his belt. dated . * . portrait of janus silvius. he is represented in nearly a front view, dressed in a robe bordered with fur, a ruff, and a cap, and seated at a table, with one hand placed on the other. dated . . an old man with a long beard, seated at a table, with both hands on a book. . a young man seated at a table, on which are some books. he has on a cap, and wears a robe lined with fur. dated . . portrait of manasseh ben israel. he is distinguished by a pointed beard, and is seen in a front view, having on a broad-brimmed hat, and a large collar. dated . * . portrait of dr. faustus. this person is represented in a profile view, having on a white cap and a robe, standing, with one hand on a table, and the other on his chair. . portrait of renier hanslo. he is seen in a front view, seated at a table, on which is placed a large open book. dated . . portrait of clement de jonge, a print dealer. he is seated in nearly a front view, wearing a slouched hat, a mantle, and a small collar; he wears gloves, and the right hand is placed in front. dated . . portrait of abraham france, an amateur of prints. he is seated in an arm-chair examining a print which he holds in his right hand. * . portrait of the elder haaring. he is represented in a front view, seated, resting both arms on the elbows of his chair, and the fingers of his right appear to hold a pinch of snuff. * . portrait of young haaring, son of the preceding burgomaster. he is seen in a front view, apparently seated, with his right hand resting on the elbow of his chair. dated . * . portrait of young lutma, a celebrated goldsmith. he is seated, holding in his right hand a metal figure. upon a table near him are a silver tazza, and other objects relative to his occupation. dated . . portrait of jean asselyn, surnamed crabatje. he is represented standing in a front view, having on a slouched hat; his body is enveloped in a mantle, and his right hand rests on a table, on which are a palette and several books. * . portrait of ephraim bonus, a jew doctor. he appears to be in the act of descending some stairs, and his right hand is placed on the baluster. his dress consists of a high-crowned hat, and a pendent frill. dated . . portrait of utenbogardus, a dutch minister. he is seen in a front view, seated, holding with his right hand a book, which lies open on a table. (_oval._) dated . * . portrait of jean silvius, a learned man and a minister. this print is enclosed in an oval, around which is written, _spes mea christus_, &c. * . portrait of utenbogaerd, known under the appellation of the "gold weigher." he is seated, holding a pen in his right hand, which rests on a large book lying open on a table. his attention is directed to a youth, to whom he is giving a bag of money. dated . . portrait of coppenol, a celebrated writing master, styled "the little coppenol." he is seated at a table, holding a pen in his right hand, which he rests on some paper, and the left is also placed on the same sheet; a boy stands behind him, with his hat in his hand. * . portrait of coppenol, called "the great," to distinguish it from the preceding. he is also seated near a table, holding with both hands a sheet of paper, and between the fingers of the right is a pen. * . portrait of tolling, a lawyer. he is seen in a front view, seated at a table, on which is a large book, resting both arms on the elbows of his chair, and holding his spectacles in his hand; he has on a slouched hat. * . portrait of the burgomaster, jan six, when twenty-nine years old. he is represented full-length, standing near an open window, engaged in reading a book, which he holds with both hands. this precious work of rembrandt is dated . fancy heads of men. . a head of an asiatic, seen in a front view, having on a calotte. the dress consists of a furred robe, adorned with a gold chain and a medal. signed, rembrandt, venitiis fecit. dated . . a head of a similar person, seen in a profile view, having on a turban, and a robe bordered with fur. signed, rembrandt, venitiis fecit. . a third head, asiatic; he has a large beard, and is seen in a profile view, having on a turban, decked in front with a feather. signed, rembrandt, venitiis fecit, . . the bust of a man, with long hair, and a short frizzled beard, seen in nearly a profile view, having on the usual shaped cap peculiar to the master. . the bust of an old man, with a long beard, seen in nearly a front view. he has on a fur cap, and wears a mantle, attached in front by clasps. . the bust of an old man, with a long beard, and a bald head in front; he is seen in a front view, bending a little forward, in such a manner as to throw a shadow over the face. . an old man, seen in a profile view, having a short beard and a bald head. his dress consists of a robe bordered with fur. dated . . the bust of an old man without a beard, having a bald head, and seen in a profile view. . the bust of an old man, seen in a profile view, with a bald head, inclined a little forward. dated . . a small bust of an old man, with a bald head, which is bent considerably forward; the face is seen in a three-quarter view. . the bust of an old man, with a beard and frizzled hair, seen in a three-quarter view. dated . . the bust of an old man, with a bald head, which inclines forward, and is turned a little to the right; the mouth is considerably open. dated . . a small bust of an aged man without a beard; the face is turned towards the right, and a large fur cap covers the head. . the bust of an elderly man, with a short frizzled beard. he is seen in a three-quarter view, having on a turned-up cap; the mouth is open, and he appears to be calling to some one. . a head very similar to the preceding, but smaller in size, and extremely rare. . a small bust, the head of which partakes of the character of a turkish slave. he has on a large high cap, turned up. the body is slightly sketched out. . a very small bust of a man, similar in character to the preceding; seen in a profile view, having mustacheos. he has on a cap, the upper part of which hangs over, and a frill surrounds the neck. . the bust of a man, seen in a front view, having on a cap in the shape of a calotte, and a mantle bordered with carmine. . the bust of a man, with the head uncovered and seen in a front view; his hair is frizzled, and his mouth a little on one side. . the head of an old man, with a short beard and a bald crown; his neck is enveloped in fur. the shoulders are only slightly indicated. . the bust of a man, represented in a three-quarter view, with the head bending forward. he has on a fur cap, and a robe bordered with fur, which is open in front, and shows a vest under it. dated . . the bust of a man, seen in nearly a profile view, having a pouting mouth, resembling a negro, and a short frizzled beard. he has on a calotte, and a robe bordered with fur, attached in front with a single button. . a bust of an old man, with a grey beard and bald in front, represented in a three-quarter view, with the head inclining. he has on a hairy coat with a collar. dated . . a half-figure of a young man, represented in a profile view, having short frizzled hair. he wears a large cravat enriched with lace, and a coat with large sleeves and girt with a belt. dated -**; the last figure is omitted. . a bust of a man, seen in a three-quarter view, having mustacheos. he has on a large hat with a broad brim, a coat buttoned in front, and a pendent frill. dated . . a bust of an old man with a large beard, seen in nearly a front view, with a fur cap on. . a bust of an old man, with a large square-shaped beard, seen in a three-quarter view. he has a cap of the usual shape, and a robe bordered with fur. dated . . a bust of an old man, with a similar beard to the last. the face is represented in a three-quarter view, having on a large cap, and a robe bordered with fur. . a bust of an old man with a pointed beard, seen in a three-quarter view, with a bald front, and the eyes bent downwards; the body is enveloped in a cloak. . a bust of an old man with a straight beard, seen in a profile view. he has on a small pointed cap. dated . . a philosopher, with a large square-shaped beard, seen in a profile view, having on a large cap decked with fur; an hour-glass and a skull are faintly introduced. engraved on wood. this print is doubted by the chevalier claussins. . an elderly man, represented in a three-quarter view, apparently seated; he has mustacheos, and a tuft of beard, and wears a large high cap, and a robe bordered with white fur. dated . . a small bust of a man, seen in a front view, with the usual shaped cap on his head, and the body enveloped in a mantle. dated . . a bust of a man, seen in a profile view, having on a cap with pendent ear straps; the shoulders are covered with a mantle, relieved by a small frill. . a bust of a man with a bald head, seen in a three-quarter view; the shoulders are covered with a mantle bordered with fur. dated . . a bust of an old man, with a very large square-shaped beard, seen in nearly a front view. the head inclines forward, and the eyes are directed downwards. dated . . a very small head, of a grotesque character, seen in a profile view, having on a fur cap, surrounded by a band. . another small head, having the appearance of being that of a beggar; the mouth is open, as if he were calling to some one; he has on a pointed cap, and a coat attached by a single button. . a bust of a young man, the head only of which is finished. he has on a large slouched hat. . a bust of a young man, with a hat on, of the same form as the preceding. . a bust of a young man, with a cap on, decked with feathers, and represented at a window. m. claussins thinks this to be of a doubtful kind. . a bust of a man, with mustacheos, and frizzled hair, which falls on the right shoulder. . a bust of an old man, with mustacheos, and a tuft of beard, represented in a three-quarter view, having on a high fur cap, and a fur cloak. . a bust of an old man, with a long beard, and a bald head in front, seen in a profile view; a robe, bordered with fur, covers his shoulders. . a bust of a man, with a cap on, decked with feathers. he is seen in a front view, having a beard and mustacheos, and wearing a frill round the neck. . a bust of an old man, with a white beard, having on a turned-up cap, and a mantle bordered with fur. . a man, having the appearance of a negro, represented in nearly a profile view. he has on a turban decked with a feather, and holds a cane in the right hand. portraits of women. * . portrait of a woman, styled, "the great jewish bride." she is seated, resting her right hand on the elbow of her chair, and holding a roll of papers in the left. . a head, similar to that of the preceding print, and supposed by some amateurs to have been a study for it, but m. claussins, in his catalogue, combats that opinion. * . portrait of a woman, styled, "the little jewish bride." her face is seen in a three-quarter view, and she appears to be standing, with her hands crossed on her waist. dated . . an aged woman, seated at a table, with her hands placed one on the other; a black veil covers her head, and a mantle, bordered with fur, envelopes her shoulders. . an aged woman; she appears to be also seated, and is seen in a three-quarter view, with a kind of bonnet on her head, and a veil over it; her dress terminates in a frill. . portrait of a young woman, seen in nearly a profile view, seated near a table, on which is a book; her right hand is concealed by her robe, and the left placed on the book. dated . . an aged woman meditating over a book. she is seated, having her right hand under her robe, and the left on a book lying on a table. a half-figure, looking to the left. . portrait of a woman, seen in a profile view. her hair is tastefully arranged, and decked with pearls; two rows of the same adorn her neck, and the sleeves of her robe are open. dated . . portrait of an elderly woman, seen in a profile view. she is seated, with the left hand placed on her breast, and the right on the elbow of her chair. dated . . a bust portrait of the mother of rembrandt, represented in nearly a front view, with a veil on her head. her left hand is placed on her breast. dated . . an elderly woman sleeping. she appears to have been fatigued with reading, and having removed her spectacles from her eyes, has fallen asleep while resting her head on her hand. . an aged woman, resembling the mother of rembrandt. she is seen in a three-quarter view, with a linen covering over her head, which falls on her shoulders. dated . . a head of an elderly woman, having also the resemblance of rembrandt's mother. she is seen in a front view, with the mouth compressed. she has on a cap of the usual form. dated . . a bust of an elderly woman, having the same character as the preceding. she is seen in a three-quarter view, with a covering on the head, turned up over the right ear, and falling on the left. dated . . a bust of the mother of rembrandt. she is seen in a front view, with the usual kind of cap on the head, and a robe bordered with fur, which is only slightly sketched in. . an old woman in a black veil. this bust represents the face in a three-quarter view; the veil falls on the shoulders, and her robe is turned up with fur. dated . . a young woman, represented in nearly a profile view, with a basket on her right arm, and a pouch suspended to the left. she has on a small flat hat, and a tippet over her shoulders. . a bust of a moorish woman, seen in nearly a profile view, having on her head a scarf turned up in front, decked with a feather, and falling behind her head. . a bust of an aged woman, lightly etched. she is seen in a three-quarter view, with a bonnet on, in the form of a turban, and lappets hanging on either side, and the dress consists of a fur robe. . a bust of a woman, seen in a three-quarter view, with the head enveloped in a kerchief, the ends of which hang on either side. the body is unfinished. . a head of an elderly woman, seen in a three-quarter view, with the eyes bent downwards. . a woman seated, resting her head on her hand, and turning over the leaves of a book with the other. . an elderly woman, seen in nearly a profile view, with spectacles on, and holding with both hands a book, which she appears to be reading. studies of heads and other objects. . a head of rembrandt, together with studies of old men and women, and other objects, on the same plate. . a study of a horse, two heads, a part of a house, and other objects, on the same plate. . rembrandt's wife, and five other heads, on the same plate. dated . . five heads of men on one sheet,[ ] one of which, placed on the right, wears a square cap, and another, seen on the opposite side, has on a fur cap. . three heads of women on one sheet, one of them, occupying the centre and top, is seen in a front view, with one hand raised to her face. . three heads of women on one sheet. this print is distinguished by one of the women resting her head on her hand, asleep. dated . . two women in separate beds; several heads, and studies of an old man and woman, with sticks in their hands; on one sheet. . a head of rembrandt, and other studies, on the same sheet. dated . * . a study of a dog, the head only of which is finished. . a sketch of a tree, and other objects, on the same sheet. . two small figures, one of which, having on a high crowned cap, is seen to the knees; the form of the other is but imperfectly traced, and the other objects are still more indistinct. . three heads of old men on one sheet. they are all seen in a profile view, and placed in the same direction. . a study of a female head, very lightly etched. she has on her head a kind of mob cap, and the body is turned to the right. [footnote : this plate was afterwards cut into five, and the several heads are arranged in their proper order.] * * * * * savill & edwards, printers, , chandos street, covent garden. team books by don c. seitz whistler stories. mo. cloth........_net_ $. leather, _net_ . every-day europe. ill'd.............._net_ . elba and elsewhere. ill'd. post vo. _net_ . surface japan. ill'd. to............_net_ . the buccaneers. verses. ill'd. vo..._net_ . harper & brothers, new york [illustration: james m'neill whistler from a sketch from life by rajon. courtesy of frederick keppel.] whistler stories collected and arranged by don c. seitz author of "writings by and about james abbott mcneill whistler" harper & brothers publishers new york and london mcmxiii printed in the united states of america published october to sheridan ford, discoverer of the art of folly and of many follies of art preface following the example set by homer when he "smote his bloomin' lyre," as cited by mr. kipling, who went "an' took what he'd admire," i have gleaned the vast volume of whistler literature and helped myself in making this compilation. some few of the anecdotes are first-hand. others were garnered by mr. ford in the original version of _the gentle art of making enemies_. the rest have been published many times, perhaps. but it seemed desirable to put the tales together without the distraction of other matter. so here they are. d.c.s. cos cob, conn., _july, _. whistler stories the studios of chelsea are full of whistler anecdotes. one tells of a female model to whom he owed some fifteen shillings for sittings. she was a philistine of the philistines who knew nothing of her patron's fame and was in no way impressed with his work. one day she told another artist that she had been sitting to a little frenchman called whistler, who jumped about his studio and was always complaining that people were swindling him, and that he was making very little money. the artist suggested that if she could get any piece of painting out of whistler's studio he would give her ten pounds for it. although skeptical, the model decided to tell her "little frenchman" of this too generous offer, and selected one of the biggest and finest works in the studio. "what did he say?" asked the artist who had made the offer, when the model appeared in a state of great excitement and looking almost as if she had come second best out of a scrimmage. "he said, 'ten pounds--good heavens!--ten pounds!' and he got so mad--well, that's how i came in here like this." * * * * * mr. w.p. frith, r.a., following the custom of artists, talked to a model one day to keep her expression animated. he asked the girl to whom she had been sitting of late, and received the answer: "mr. whistler." "and did he talk to you?" "yes, sir." "what did he say?" "he asked me who i'd been sitting to, same as you do; and i told him i'd been sitting to mr. cope, sir." "well, what else?" "he asked me who i'd been sitting to before that, and i said mr. horsley." "and what next?" "he asked me who i'd been sitting to before that, and i said i'd been sitting to you, sir." "what did he say then?" "he said, 'what a d----d crew!'" * * * * * whistler once came very near painting a portrait of disraeli. he had the commission; he even went down to the country where disraeli was; but the great man did not manage to get into the mood. whistler departed disappointed, and shortly afterward took place a meeting in whitehall which was the occasion of a well-known story: disraeli put his arm in whistler's for a little way on the street, bringing from the artist the exclamation, "if only my creditors could see!" * * * * * whistler's ideas, the reverse of commercial, not infrequently placed him in want. he pawned his portrait of his mother, by many considered the best of his productions. miss marion peck, a niece of ferdinand peck, united states commissioner to the paris exposition, wanted her portrait done by whistler. she sat for him nineteen times. further, she requested, as the picture was nearing completion, that extra pains be taken with its finishing. also, she inquired if it could, without danger of injury, be shipped. "why?" asked whistler. "because i wish to send it to my home in chicago," explained miss peck. whistler threw down his brush, overturned the easel, and ran around the studio like a madman. "what!" he shrieked. "send a whistler to chicago! allow one of my paintings to enter hog town! never!" miss peck didn't get the painting. * * * * * once he met what seemed to be a crushing retort. he had scornfully called balaam's ass the first great critic, and the inference was plain until a writer in _vanity fair_ called his attention to the fact that the ass was right. whistler acknowledged the point. but the acknowledgment terminates in a way that is delicious. "i fancy you will admit that this is the only ass on record who ever did 'see the angel of the lord,' and that we are past the age of miracles." even in defeat he was triumphant. * * * * * whistler found that mortimer menpes, once his very dear friend, sketched in chelsea. "how dare you sketch in my chelsea?" he indignantly demanded. a vigorous attack on mr. menpes then followed in the press. one of the first articles began in this style, menpes, of course, being an australian: "i can only liken him to his native kangaroo--a robber by birth--born with a pocket!" "he is the claimant of lemon yellow"--a color to which mr. whistler deemed he had the sole right; and when he thought he had pulverized him in the press (it was soon after the parnell commission, when pigott, the informer, had committed suicide in spain), whistler one evening thrust this pleasant note into mr. menpes's letter-box, scrawled on a half-sheet of paper, with the well-known butterfly cipher attached: "you will blow your brains out, of course. pigott has shown you what to do under the circumstances, and you know the way to spain. good-by!" speaking at a meeting held to complete the details of a movement for the erection of a memorial to whistler, lord redesdale gave a remarkable account of the artist's methods of work. "one day when he was to begin a portrait of a lady," said lord redesdale, "the painter took up his position at one end of the room, with his sitter and canvas at the other. for a long time he stood looking at her, holding in his hand a huge brush as a man would use to whitewash a house. suddenly he ran forward and smashed the brush full of color upon the canvas. then he ran back, and forty or fifty times he repeated this. at the end of that time there stood out on the canvas a space which exactly indicated the figure and the expression of his sitter." this portrait was to have belonged to lord redesdale, but through circumstances nothing less than tragic it never came into his possession. there were bailiffs in the house when it was finished. this was no novelty to whistler. he only laughed, and, laughing, made a circuit of his studio with a palette-knife, deliberately destroying all the pictures exposed there. the portrait of the lady was among them. * * * * * moncure d. conway in his autobiography relates this: "at a dinner given to w.j. stillman, at which whistler (a confederate) related with satisfaction his fisticuffs with a yankee on shipboard, william rossetti remarked: 'i must say, whistler, that your conduct was scandalous.' stillman and myself were silent. dante gabriel rossetti promptly wrote: "'there is a young artist called whistler, who in every respect is a bristler; a tube of white lead or a punch on the head come equally handy to whistler.'" on one occasion a woman said to whistler: "i just came up from the country this morning along the thames, and there was an exquisite haze in the atmosphere which reminded me so much of some of your little things. it was really a perfect series of whistlers." "yes, madam," responded whistler, gravely. "nature is creeping up." * * * * * richard a. canfield, who sat for the portrait now called "his reverence," though canfield was something quite unclerical, recites: "after i had my first sitting on new year's day, , i saw whistler every day until the day i sailed for new york, which was on may th. he was not able to work, however, on all those days. in fact, there were days at a time when he could do nothing but lie on a couch and talk, as only whistler could talk, about those things which interested him. it was mostly of art and artists that he conversed, but now and again he would revert to his younger days at home, to the greatness to which the republic had attained, and to his years at west point. "in spite of all that has been said of him, i know that james mcneill whistler was one of the intensest americans who ever lived. he was not what you call an enthusiastic man, but when he reverted to the old days at the military academy his enthusiasm was infectious. i think he was really prouder of the years he spent there--three, i think they were--than any other years of his life. he never tired of telling of the splendid men and soldiers his classmates turned out to be, and he has often said to me that the american army officer trained at west point was the finest specimen of manhood and of honor in the world. "it was in this way that i spent every afternoon with whistler from new year's until may th, the day before i sailed. when he was able to work i would sit as i was told, and then he would paint, sometimes an hour, sometimes three. at other times he would lie on the couch and ask me to sit by and talk to him. on the morning of the day of the last sitting he sent me a note asking me to take luncheon with him, and adding that he felt quite himself and up to plenty of work. "so i went around to his studio, and he painted until well into the late afternoon. when he was done he said that with a touch or two here and there the picture might be considered finished. then he added: "'you are going home to-morrow, to my home as well as yours, and you won't be coming back till the autumn. i've just been thinking that maybe you had better take the picture along with you. his reverence will do very well as he is, and maybe there won't be any work in me when you come back. i believe i would rather like to think of you having this clerical gentleman in your collection, for i have a notion that it's the best work i have done.' "whistler had never talked that way before, and i have since thought that he was thinking that the end was not far away. i told him, more to get the notion, if he had it, out of his mind than anything else, that i would not think of taking the picture, and that if he didn't put on one of those finishing touches until i got back, so much the better, for then i could see him work. that seemed to bring him back to himself, and he said: "'so be it, your reverence. now we'll say _au revoir_ in a couple of mint-juleps.' he sent for the materials, made the cups, and, just as the sun was setting, we drank to each other and the homeland, and i was off to catch a train for liverpool and the steamer. so it was that whistler and his last subject parted." * * * * * a group of american and english artists were discussing the manifold perfections of the late lord leighton, president of the royal academy. "exquisite musician--played the violin like a professional," said one. "one of the best-dressed men in london," said another. "danced divinely," remarked the third. "ever read his essays?" asked a fourth. "in my opinion they're the best of the kind ever written." whistler, who had remained silent, tapped the last speaker on the shoulder. "painted, too, didn't he?" he said. * * * * * a patron of art asked whistler to tell him where a friend lived on a certain street in london, to which the artist replied: "i can't tell you, but i know how you can find it. just you ring up houses until you come across a caretaker who talks in b flat, and there you are." * * * * * a friend of whistler's saw him on the street in london a few years ago talking to a very ragged little newsboy. as he approached to speak to the artist he noticed that the boy was as dirty a specimen of the london "newsy" as he had ever encountered--he seemed smeared all over--literally covered with dirt. whistler had just asked him a question, and the boy answered: "yes, sir; i've been selling papers three years." "how old are you?" inquired whistler. "seven, sir." "oh, you must be more than that." "no, sir, i ain't." then, turning to his friend, who had overheard the conversation, whistler said: "i don't think he could get that dirty in seven years; do you?" * * * * * benrimo, the dramatist, who wrote "the yellow jacket," relates that when he was a young writer, fresh from the breezy atmosphere of san francisco, he visited london. coming out of the burlington gallery one day, he saw a little man mincing toward him, carrying a cane held before him as he walked, whom he recognized as whistler. with western audacity he stopped the pedestrian, introduced himself, and broke into an elaborate outburst of acclamation for the works of the master, who "ate it up," as the saying goes. waving his wand gently toward the famous gallery, whistler queried: "been in there?" "oh, yes." "see anything worth while?" "some splendid things, magnificent examples--" "i'm sorry you ever approved of me," observed the master, majestically, and on he went, leaving benrimo withered under his disdain. * * * * * whistler had a french poodle of which he was extravagantly fond. this poodle was seized with an affection of the throat, and whistler had the audacity to send for the great throat specialist, mackenzie. sir morell, when he saw that he had been called to treat a dog, didn't like it much, it was plain. but he said nothing. he prescribed, pocketed a big fee, and drove away. the next day he sent posthaste for whistler. and whistler, thinking he was summoned on some matter connected with his beloved dog, dropped his work and rushed like the wind to mackenzie's. on his arrival sir morell said, gravely: "how do you do, mr. whistler? i wanted to see you about having my front door painted." * * * * * whistler used to tell this story about dante gabriel rossetti in his later years. the great pre-raphaelite had invited the painter of nocturnes and harmonies to dine with him at his house in chelsea, and when whistler arrived he was shown into a reception-room. seating himself, he was soon disturbed by a noise which appeared to be made by a rat or a mouse in the wainscoting of the room. this surmise was wrong, as he found the noise was in the center of the apartment. stooping, to his amazement he saw rossetti lying at full length under the table. "why, what on earth are you doing there, rossetti?" exclaimed whistler. "don't speak to me! don't speak to me!" cried rossetti. "that fool morris"--meaning the famous william--"has sent to say he can't dine here to-night, and i'm so mad i'm gnawing the leg of the table." * * * * * one of the affectations of whistler was his apparent failure to recognize persons with whom he had been on the most friendly terms. an american artist once met the impressionist in venice, where they spent several months together painting, and he was invited to call on whistler if he should go to paris. the painter remembered the invitation. the door of the paris studio was opened by whistler himself. a cold stare was the only reply to the visitor's effusive greeting. "why, mr. whistler," cried the painter, "you surely haven't forgotten those days in venice when you borrowed my colors and we painted together!" "i never saw you before in all my life," replied whistler, and slammed the door. this habit of forgetting persons, or pretending to do so, for nobody ever knew when the lapses of recognition were due to intention or absent-mindedness, often tempted other artists to play pranks upon him. he was a man who resented a joke at his own expense, except on a few occasions, and this trait was often turned to good account. he was at naples soon after the incident just related had gained wide circulation. a conspiracy was entered into whereby the whistler worshipers there were to be unaware of his presence. he tried to play billiards with a company of young artists. they met his advance with a stony glare. "oh, i say," persisted he, "i think i know something of that game. i'd like to play." a consultation was held, and the artists shook their heads, inquiring of one another, "who is he?" whistler retired crestfallen, and a roar of laughter which rang through the room added to his discomfiture. "oh, well," he said, pulling nervously at his mustache, and his tone was petulant, "i don't care." * * * * * whistler had a great penchant for white hats, kept all those he had ever worn, and had a large collection. the flat-brimmed tall hat was a whim of his late years, imported from france, _via_ the head of william m. chase. * * * * * mr. chase has contributed largely to the budget of whistler anecdotes. one day when the two men were painting together in whistler's studio in london, a wealthy woman visited them with the demand, which she had made many times before, that whistler return to her a picture by himself which he had borrowed several years before to place on exhibition. the suave voice of whistler was heard in argument, and he finally induced his patron to depart without the work of art. when she had gone he returned to his work, muttering something about the absurdity of some persons who believed that because they had paid two hundred pounds for a picture they thought they thereby owned it. "besides," he said, "there is absolutely nothing else in her house to compare with it, and it would be out of place." * * * * * "chase," said whistler one day, "how-is it now in america? do you find there, as you do in london, that in houses filled with beautiful pictures and superb statuary, and other objects of artistic merit, there is invariably some damned little thing on the mantel that gives the whole thing away?" mr. chase replied, sadly: "it is even so, but you must remember, whistler, that there are such things as birthdays. people are not always responsible." * * * * * mr. chase came up for discussion once at a little party, and whistler's sister observed, "mr. chase amuses james, doesn't he, james?" james, tapping his finger-tips together lightly: "not often, not often." * * * * * "i'm going over to london," said he once to chase, "and there i shall have a hansom made. it shall have a white body, yellow wheels, and i'll have it lined with canary-colored satin. i'll petition the city to let me carry one lamp on it, and on the lamp there will be a white plume. i shall then be the only one." he gave mr. chase some pretty hard digs. he said to him one time in the heat of a discussion on some technical point: "chase, i am not arguing with you. i am telling you." * * * * * reproved by mr. chase for antagonizing his friends, whistler retorted: "it is commonplace, not to say vulgar, to quarrel with your enemies. quarrel with your friends! that's the thing to do. now be good!" * * * * * "the good lord made one serious mistake," he rasped to chase, in holland. "what?" "when he made dutchmen." * * * * * when he had finished his portrait of mr. chase he stood off and admired the work. "beautiful! beautiful!" was his comment. chase, who had irked under the queer companionship, retorted, "at least there's nothing mean or modest about you!" "nothing mean and modest," he corrected. "i like that better! nothing mean _and_ modest! what a splendid epitaph that would make for me! stop a moment! i must put that down!" * * * * * during the chase sittings, the creditors were always calling. whistler divined their several missions with much nicety by the tone of the raps on the door. a loud, business-like bang brought, out this comment: "psst! that's one and ten." later came another, not quite so vehement. "two and six," said whistler. "psst!" "what on earth do you mean?" asked chase. "one pound ten shillings; two pounds six shillings! vulgar tradesmen with their bills, colonel. they want payment. oh, well!" a gentle knock soon followed. "dear me," said whistler, "that must be all of twenty! poor fellow! i really must do something for him. so sorry i'm not in." * * * * * riding one day in a hansom with mr. chase, whistler's eye caught the fruit and vegetable display in a greengrocer's shop. making the cabby maneuver the vehicle to various viewpoints, he finally observed: "isn't it beautiful? i believe i'll have that crate of oranges moved over there--against that background of green. yes, that's better!" and he settled back contentedly! a kindly friend told him of a pleasant spot near london for an artistic sojourn. "i'm sure you'll like it," he added, enthusiastically. "my dear fellow," replied whistler, "the very fact that you like it is proof that it's nothing for me." he went, however, and liked the place, but on the way some of his canvases went astray. he made such a fuss that the station-master asked mr. chase who was his companion: "who is that quarrelsome little man? he's really most disagreeable." "whistler, the celebrated artist," mr. chase replied. at that the man approached whistler and respectfully remarked: "i'm very sorry about your canvases. are they valuable?" "not yet!" screeched whistler. "not yet!" "i only know of two painters in the world," said a newly introduced feminine enthusiast to whistler, "yourself and velasquez." "why," answered whistler, in dulcet tones, "why drag in velasquez?" mr. chase once asked him if he really said this seriously. "no, of course not," he replied. "you don't suppose i couple myself with velasquez, do you? i simply wanted to take her down." * * * * * sir john e. millais, walking through the grosvenor gallery with archibald stuart wortley, stopped longer than usual before the shadowy, graceful portrait of a lady, "an arrangement in gray, rose, and silver," and then broke out: "it's damned clever! it's a damned sight too clever!" this was his verdict on whistler's portrait of lady meux. millais contended that whistler "never learned the grammar of his art," that "his drawing is as faulty as it can be," and that "he thought nothing" of depicting "a woman all out of proportion, with impossible legs and arms!" * * * * * in there was a suggestion that whistler's portrait of carlyle should be bought for the national gallery. sir george scharf, then curator of that institution, came to mr. graves's show-rooms in pall mall to take a look at it. when mr. graves produced the painting he observed, icily: "well, and has painting come to this?" "i told mr. graves," said whistler, "that he should have said,' no, it hasn't."' it was nearly twenty years after when glasgow finally bought the masterpiece. indeed, whistler had little market for his works until . he often found, as he said, "a long face and a short account at the bank." complaining to sidney starr one day of the sums earned by a certain eminent "r.a.," while he received little or nothing, starr reminded him that r.a.'s painted to please the public and so reaped their reward. "i don't think they do," demurred whistler; "i think they paint as well as they can." of alma-tadema's work he observed, "my only objection to tadema's pictures is that they are unfinished." starr spoke approvingly of the promising work of some of the younger artists. "they are all tarred with the same brush," said whistler. "they are of the schools!" of one particular rising star whistler remarked: "he's clever, but there's something common in everything he does. so what's the use of it?" starr indicated a distinguishing difference between the work of a certain r.a. and another. "well," he replied, "it's a nasty difference." * * * * * m.h. spielmann, the art-critic, spoke of "ten o'clock " as "smart but misleading." whistler retorted, "if the lecture had not seemed misleading to him, it surely would not have been worth uttering at all!" * * * * * walter sickert, then a pupil of whistler's, praised lord leighton's "harvest moon" in an article on the manchester art treasure exhibition. whistler telegraphed him at hampstead: "the harvest moon rises at hampstead and the cocks of chelsea crow!" * * * * * apropos of his spats with sickert he remarked, "yes, we are always forgiving walter." another pupil, foreseeing the end of whistler as president of the royal society of british artists, resigned some months before the time. "the early rat," said whistler, grimly, "the first to leave the sinking ship." * * * * * in the fine art society's gallery one day he spoke to a knighted r.a. "who was that?" starr asked. "really, now, i forget," was the reply. "but whoever it was it's some one of no importance, you know, no importance whatever." * * * * * at an exhibition of doré's pictures whistler asked an attendant if a certain academician's large religious picture was not on view. "no," said the man; "it's much lower down!" "impossible!" replied whistler, gleefully. sidney starr relates that whistler was asked one year to "hang" the exhibits in the walker art gallery at liverpool. in the center of one wall he placed luke fildes's "doctor," and surrounded it with all the pictures he could find of dying people, convalescents, still-life medicine bottles, and the like. this caused comment. "but," said whistler, "i told them i wished to emphasize that particular school." "and what did you put on the opposite wall?" starr asked. "oh, leighton's--i really forget what it was." "but that is different, you know," said starr. "no," rejoined whistler; "it's really the same thing!" * * * * * having seen a picture of starr's in liverpool, which he amiably, termed "a picture among paint," he observed to him on the occasion of their first meeting: "paint things exactly as they are. i always do. young men think they should paint like this or that painter. be quite simple; no fussy foolishness, you know; and don't try to be what they call 'strong.' when a picture 'smells of paint,'" he said slowly, "it's what they call 'strong.'" * * * * * riding once with starr to dine at the café royal, whistler leaned forward in the hansom and looked at the green park in the dusk, fresh and sweet after the rain; at the long line of light reflected, shimmering, in the wet piccadilly pavement, and said: "starr, i have not dined, as you know, so you need not think i say this in anything but a cold and careful spirit: it is better to live on bread and cheese and paint beautiful things than to live like dives and paint pot-boilers. but a painter really should not have to worry about--'various,' you know. poverty may induce industry, but it does not produce the fine flower of painting. the test is not poverty; it's money. give a painter money and see what he'll do. if he does not paint, his work is well lost to the world. if i had had, say, three thousand pounds a year, what beautiful things i could have done!" * * * * * before the portrait of little miss alexander went to the grosvenor gallery, tom taylor, the art-critic of the _times_, called at the studio to see it. "ah, yes--'um," he remarked, and added that an upright line in the paneling of the wall was wrong and that the picture would be better without it, adding, "of course, it's a matter of taste." to which whistler rejoined: "i thought that perhaps for once you were going to get away without having said anything foolish; but remember, so you may not make the mistake again, it's not a matter of taste at all; it is a matter of knowledge. good-by!" * * * * * to a critic who remarked, "your picture is not up to your mark; it is not good this time," whistler replied: "you shouldn't say it is not good. you should say you do not like it, and then, you know, you're perfectly safe. now come and have something you do like--have some whiskey." * * * * * stopped at an exhibition by an attendant who wished to check his cane, whistler laughed: "oh, no, my little man; i keep this for the critics." his troubles with the royal society of british artists bred a round of biting remarks. when he and his following went out he said, consolingly: "pish! it is very simple. the artists retired. the british remained!" another shot at the same subject: "no longer can it be said that the right man is in the wrong place!" * * * * * when an adverse vote ended his leadership of the royal society, whistler said, philosophically, "now i understand the feelings of all those who, since the world began, have tried to save their fellow-men." * * * * * commenting on b.r. haydon's autobiography, whistler said: "yes; haydon, it seems, went into his studio, locked the door, and before beginning to work prayed god to enable him to paint for the glory of england. then, seizing a large brush full of bitumen, he attacked his huge canvas, and, of course--god fled." * * * * * starr once asked whistler if the southern exposure of the room in which he was working troubled him. "yes, it does," he answered. "but ruskin lives in the north, you know, and a southern exposure troubled him, rather, eh?" * * * * * much that was characteristic of the artist's wit and temper came out during the famous libel suit he brought against ruskin. the most amusing feature of it was the exhibition in court of some of the "nocturnes" and "arrangements" which were the subject of the suit. the jury of respectable citizens, whose knowledge of art was probably limited, was expected to pass judgment on these paintings. whistler's counsel held up one of the pictures. "here, gentlemen," he said, "is one of the works which have been maligned." "pardon me," interposed mr. ruskin's lawyer; "you have that picture upside down." "no such thing!" "oh, but it is so!" continued ruskin's counsel. "i remember it in the grosvenor gallery, where it was hung the other way about." the altercation ended in the correctness of view of ruskin's lawyer being sustained. this error of counsel helped to produce the celebrated farthing verdict. ever after whistler wore the farthing on his watch-chain. * * * * * the suit had its origin in ruskin's comment upon the "nocturne in black and gold," described as "a distant view of cremorne garden, with a falling rocket and other fireworks." the picture is now the property of mrs. samuel untermyer, of new york. on the opening of the grosvenor gallery, in , ruskin wrote in _fors clavigera_: "the ill-educated conceit of the artist nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. i have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to have a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." when whistler was being examined during the trial, sir john holker, the attorney-general, asked, "how long did it take you to knock off that 'nocturne'?" "i beg your pardon?" said the witness. sir john apologized for his flippancy, and whistler replied: "about a day. i may have put a few touches to it the next day." "for two days' labor you ask two hundred guineas?" "no, i ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime!" then the "nocturne in blue and silver," a moonlight view of battersea bridge, was submitted to the jury. baron huddleston, the presiding justice, asked mr. whistler to explain it. "which part of the picture is the bridge?" he queried. "do you say this is a correct representation?" "i did not intend it to be a correct portrait of the bridge." "are the figures on the top intended for people?" "they are just what you like." "is that a barge beneath?" "yes," replied the witness, sarcastically. "i am much encouraged at your perceiving that! my whole scheme was only to bring out a certain harmony of color." "what is that gold-colored mark on the side, like a cascade?" "that is a firework." "do you think now," said the attorney-general, insinuatingly, "you could make me see the beauty of that picture?" "no," said whistler, after closely scrutinizing his questioner's face. "do you know, i fear it would be as hopeless as for the musician to pour his notes into a deaf man's ear." "what is that structure in the middle?" asked the irritated attorney. "is it a telescope or a fire-escape? is it like battersea bridge? what are the figures at the top? if they are horses and carts, how in the name of fortune are they to get off?" * * * * * a friend who was in court when the farthing damages verdict was brought in relates that whistler looked puzzled for a moment; then his face cleared. "that's a verdict for me, is it not?" he asked; and when his counsel said, "yes, nominally," whistler replied, "well, i suppose a verdict is a verdict." then he said, "it's a great triumph; tell everybody it's a great triumph." when the listener dissented, he condensed all his concentrated scorn of philistine view into a sentence: "my dear s., you are just fit to serve on a british jury." * * * * * "whistler _vs._ ruskin" cost the latter so much more than the farthing verdict that his friends sent out a circular soliciting funds in these terms: "whistler _vs._ ruskin. mr. ruskin's costs. "a considerable opinion prevailing that a lifelong, honest endeavor on the part of mr. ruskin to further the cause of art should not be crowned by his being cast in costs to the amount of several hundreds of pounds, the fine art society has agreed to set on foot a subscription to defray his expenses arising out of the late action of whistler _vs._ ruskin. "persons willing to co-operate will oblige by communicating with the society, , new bond street, london." mr. whistler received scant sympathy, the tone of the comment being well noted by this excerpt from the london _standard_ of november th, : "of course, mr. whistler has costs to pay too, and the amount he is to receive from mr. ruskin (one farthing), even if economically expended, will hardly go far to satisfy the claims of his legal advisers. but he has only to paint, or, as we believe he expresses it, 'knock off,' three or four 'symphonies' or 'harmonies'--or perhaps he might try his hand at a set of quadrilles in peacock blue?--and a week's labor will set all square." arthur lumley, a new york illustrator, met whistler once at a costume ball at george h. boughton's house in london. the artist appeared as hamlet, but in anything but a melancholy mood. next morning's papers related that the sheriff had sold the effects in the white house the day of the ball to satisfy the claims of his creditors! * * * * * isaac n. ford, when correspondent of the new york _tribune_ in london, went with frederick macmonnies, the sculptor, to visit whistler, who brought out a number of portraits for show. one was that of a woman, full figure. "what do you think of her?" he asked. the sculptor gave "a side glance and looked down." "since you force me to speak,", he finally blurted out, "i must tell you that one leg is longer than the other." instead of the expected outburst, whistler scrutinized the portrait from several points, and then observed quietly: "you are quite right. i had not observed the fault, and i shall correct it in the morning." "what an eye for a line a sculptor has!" he said to ford later. * * * * * he quarreled regularly with his brother-in-law, sir f. seymour haden, the famous etcher. "a brother-in-law is not a connection calling for sentiment," he once remarked. haden came into a gallery on one occasion and, seeing whistler, who was there in company with justice day, left abruptly. "i see! dropped in for his morning bitters," observed whistler, cheerfully. * * * * * once in conversation whistler said: "yes, i have many friends, and am grateful to them; but those whom i most love are my enemies--not in a biblical sense, oh, no, but because they keep one always busy, always up to the mark, either fighting them or proving them idiots." * * * * * whistler was very particular about the spelling of his rather long and complicated group of names. careless people made the "mc" "mac," and others left the extra "l" off "mcneill." to one of the latter offenders he wrote: "mcneill, by the way, should have two l's.' i use them both, and in the midst of things cannot well do without them!" * * * * * when tom taylor, the critic, died, a friend asked whistler why he looked so glum. "me?" said whistler. "who else has such cause to mourn? tommy's dead. i'm lonesome. they are all dying. i have hardly a warm personal enemy left!" * * * * * while a draughtsman in the coast survey from november, , to february, , he boarded at the northeast corner of e and th streets, washington. he is remembered as being usually late for breakfast and always making sketches on the walls. to the remonstrating landlord he replied: "now, now, never mind! i'll not charge you anything for the decorations." * * * * * among those with whom whistler quarreled most joyously were the two moores, the illustrious george and his less famous brother, augustus. both took sir william eden's side in the celebrated "baronet _vs_. butterfly" case, where whistler was nonsuited in a french court of law. augustus edited a sprightly but none too reputable weekly in london, called the _hawk_, a series of unpalatable references in which so aroused whistler that, meeting moore in the drury lane theater on the first night of "a million of money," he struck the editor across the face with his cane. a scrimmage followed, which contemporary history closed with the artist on the floor. whistler's own account of the unseemly fracas was thuswise: "i started out to cane the fellow with as little emotion as i would prepare to kill a rat. i did cane him to the satisfaction of my many friends and his many enemies, and that was the end of it." moore wrote: "i am sorry, but i have had to slap mr. whistler. my irish blood got the better of me, and before i knew it the shriveled-up little monkey was knocked over and kicking about the floor." whistler vigorously controverted this version as a "barefaced falsehood." he added: "i am sure he never touched me. i don't know why, for he is a much bigger man than i. my idea is that he was thoroughly cowed by the moral force of my attack. i had to turn him round in order to get at him. then i cut him again and again as hard as i could, hissing out 'hawk!' with each stroke. oh, you can take my word for it, everything was done in the cleanest and most correct fashion possible. i always like to do things cleanly." * * * * * the clash with george moore came to a head with the challenge to fight a duel. in his own version of the event given in the london _chronicle_ of march th, , mr. moore laid his troubles to his efforts to aid the artist. learning that sir william eden wished his wife's portrait painted, he "undertook a journey to paris in the depth of winter, had two shocking passages across the channel, and spent twenty-five pounds on mr. whistler's business." it was arranged, he thought, that whistler was to receive one hundred pounds for a "small sketch." when the "sketch" materialized it was "small" indeed. the baronet and mr. moore expected a little more area of canvas. "the picture in question," remarked mr. moore, "is only twelve inches long by six high. the figure of lady eden is represented sitting on a sofa; the face is about half an inch in length, about the size of a sixpence, and the features are barely indicated." but to the duel: in paris, after the controversy arose, mr. moore told an interviewer he did not think the sketch was worth more than one hundred pounds. to this whistler made a furious reply in the _pall mall gazette_, alleging that moore had "acquired a spurious reputation as an art-critic" by praising his pictures. moore's reply in the journal produced this response, sent from the hotel chatham under date of march th, : "mr. whistler begs to acknowledge mr. moore's letter of march . "if, in it, the literary incarnation of the 'eccentric' person, on the curbstone, is supposed to represent mr. moore at the present moment, mr. whistler thinks the likeness exaggerated--as it is absurd to suppose that mr. moore can really imagine that any one admires him in his late role before interviewer, or in that of the expert in the council chamber. "if, however, mr. moore means in his parable to indicate mr. whistler, the latter is willing to accept mr. moore's circuitous and coarse attempt to convey a gross insult--and, upon the whole, will perhaps think the better of him for an intention to make himself at last responsible. "in such case mr. whistler will ask a friend to meet any gentleman mr. moore may appoint to represent him; and, awaiting a reply, has the honor to remain mr. moore's," etc. to which mr. moore replied: "mr. moore begs to acknowledge the receipt of mr. whistler's letter of the th inst. in mr. moore's opinion mr. whistler's conduct grows daily more absurd." "i hoped," explained mr. moore, "that mr. whistler's friends would intervene and persuade him of the strangeness of his action and the interpretation it would receive in england. but four days later i was flattered by the following communication: "paris, _le mars, ._ "monsieur: "a la réception de votre lettre (lettre d'ailleurs rendue publique dans la _pall mall gazette_), m. whistler nous a prié de vous demander soit une rétractation, soit une réparation par les armes. "nous vous prions donc de vouloir bien nous mettre en rapport avec deux de vos amis. francis vielÃ�-griffin, rue de la pompe. octave mirbeau, carrière-sous-passy, seine-et-oise." mr. moore's interlocutor asked him if there was any fear of losing his interesting personality on account of mr. whistler's challenge. to this mr. moore said: "there are three most excellent reasons why i should not fight a duel with mr. whistler, as mr. whistler well knows. first, only under the very gravest circumstances, if under any at all, would an englishman accept a challenge to a duel. the duel has been relegated to the realms of comic opera. as for inviting me to proceed to belgium for the purpose of fighting him, he might as well ask me to strip myself naked and paint my face and stick feathers in my hair--dress myself as a redskin, in fact, and walk down st. james's street flourishing a tomahawk. second, supposing i were a frenchman, mr. whistler is sixty-five years of age, and it is against the custom of dueling for any one to accept a challenge from so old a gentleman. moreover, mr. whistler is, unhappily, very short-sighted, and would be unable to see me at twenty paces. third, the grounds of the quarrel are so infinitely trivial that, were we both frenchmen, it is doubtful if any seconds would take upon themselves the responsibility of an armed encounter. "i have praised mr. whistler's pictures that he painted five-and-twenty years ago as much as it is possible to praise works of art. i hold the same opinions about them still. i only wish mr. whistler would apply himself to his art instead of wasting his time in quarreling with his friends." the outcome of the eden suit kept whistler in ill-humor for a long time, while moore continued to be a special object of aversion. the two avoided each other. but, as some philosopher has said, if you remain long in paris you will meet all your friends and all your enemies. so it fell out that the two foregathered at the same atelier one sunday afternoon. they nearly collided in entering, but moore was the first inside. the hostess heard sounds from the hall something between china-breaking and the stamping of hoofs. she went out, to find james in a mighty rage. "dear me!" said the lady, "what is the matter, dear master?" "whistler won't come in! whistler won't stay under the same roof with that wild irishman!" moore, in the inside, remarked in his sweetly modulated voice: "why drag in whistler?" this play on his best _mot_, "why drag in velasquez?" was too much, and in screaming wrath the painter fled, leaving moore in full possession. * * * * * an american millionaire, to whom wealth had come rather quickly from western mines, called at the paris studio with the idea of capturing something for his gallery. he glanced casually at the paintings on the walls, and then queried: "how much for the lot?" "four millions," said whistler. "what?" "my posthumous prices! good morning!" * * * * * dante gabriel rossetti once showed whistler a sketch and asked his opinion of its merits. "it has good points, rossetti," said whistler. "go ahead with it by all means." later he inquired how it was getting along. "all right," answered rossetti, cheerfully. "i've ordered a stunning frame for it." in due time the canvas appeared at rossetti's house in cheyne walk, beautifully framed. "you've done nothing to it since i saw it, have you?" said whistler. "no-o," replied rossetti, "but i've written a sonnet on the subject, if you'd like to hear it." he recited some lines of peculiar tenderness. "rossetti," said whistler, as the recitation ended, "take out the picture and frame the sonnet." * * * * * the scotch once raised a fund by subscription to buy the portrait of carlyle, at a price of five hundred guineas, fixed by the painter. when the sum was nearly complete, he learned that the subscription paper contained a clause disclaiming any indorsement of his theory of art. he telegraphed to the committee: "the price of 'carlyle' has advanced to one thousand guineas. dinna ye hear the bagpipes?" * * * * * a dilettante collector in london, after much angling, induced whistler to view his variegated collection. as the several objects passed in review they provoked only a sober "h'm, h'm," that might have meant anything or nothing. when there was no more to see, the host paused for an aggregate opinion and got this: "my dear sir, there's really no excuse for it, no excuse for it at all!" to a lady who complained that the frequent sittings commanded for painting her portrait compelled her to sacrifice much personal convenience, whistler replied: "but, my dear lady, that is nothing in comparison with the sacrifice i have to make on your account. just look: since i have been painting your portrait i have not had time to attend to my correspondence." there was a mountain of unopened letters on his desk. * * * * * frederick wedmore, the patient cataloguer of whistler's etchings, once appeared in print as saying that he had "no wish to understand whistler's works." he wrote "understate," but the wretched compositor undid him. whistler's response to the explanation was: "yes, the mistake is indeed inexcusable, since not only i, but even the compositor, might have known that with mr. wedmore and his like it is always a question of understating and never of understanding anything." in his _memories and impressions_ ford madox hueffer relates that madox brown, going to a tea-party at the white house at chelsea, was met in the hall by mrs. whistler, who begged him to go to the poulterer's and purchase a pound of butter. the bread was cut, but there was nothing in the house to put upon it. there was no money in the house, the poulterer had cut off his credit, and mrs. whistler said she dared not send her husband, for he would certainly punch the tradesman's head! "to think of 'arry [meaning harry quilter, the critic, with whom he fiercely quarreled] living in the temple i erected!" he said. "he has no use for it--doesn't know what to do with it. if he had any feeling for the sympathy of things he would come to me and say: 'here's your house, whistler; take it; you know its meaning, i don't. take it and live in it.' but no, he hasn't sense enough to see that. he obstinately stays there in the way, while i am living in this absurd fashion, next door to myself." * * * * * after the "secession" from the royal society, whistler strolled into the gallery one evening with some friends. a group of admirers were gushing before a leighton canvas. "quite exquisite!" "a gem--really a gem!" "yes," said whistler. "like a diamond in the sty." when elected president of the society of british artists, whistler naturally felt exultant. "carr," he said, jokingly, to conryns carr, the dramatist, "you haven't congratulated me yet." "no," was the retort. "i'm waiting till the correspondence begins!" * * * * * the society did not possess a royal charter until mr. whistler became president. with some help from the prince of wales this was procured. when the prince paid his first visit to the gallery, whistler was there to welcome him. "i'm sure," said the prince at the door, "i never heard of this place, mr. whistler, until you brought it to my notice. what is its history?" "it has none, your highness," was the neat rejoinder. "its history dates from to-day!" when whistler left the white house, at chelsea, he put this legend over the door: "'unless the lord build the house, their labor is but vain that build it.' e.w. godwin, p.s.a., built this one." * * * * * justin mccarthy, the journalist and historian of _our own times_, stayed away from the whistler dinner at the criterion because his friend mortimer menpes had been slighted. he met whistler a few evenings later at a dinner to christie murray. as they came together whistler remarked darkly: "you're a bold man and a philanthropist; but remember, _damien died_!" and he had, just before, among the lepers of molokai! rather rough on the claimant of lemon yellow! * * * * * the fine art society once billed whistler for incidentals to one of his exhibitions, and thoughtfully included a pair of stockings worn by an attendant named cox. "i shall pay for nothing of cox's," said the artist, indignantly. "neither his socks, nor his 'ose, nor anything that is his." * * * * * one of his proofs, sold by sotheby's in --that of an early etching--brought a good price, not on its merits, but for this line by the artist, written on the margin: "legs not by me, but a fatuous addition by a general practitioner." the "legs" were by dr. seymour haden, whistler's eminent brother-in-law. * * * * * the eccentric relationship between whistler and that self-destroyed genius, oscar wilde, has been much portrayed. a characteristic meeting was thus described by a correspondent of the london _literary world_: "whistler and wilde were to be the lions at a literary reception. unfortunately, the lions came too early, when the few previous arrivals were altogether too insignificant to be introduced to them. so they had to talk to each other. it was on a very warm sunday afternoon in the season, and whistler, by the by, was wearing a white 'duck' waistcoat and trousers, and a fabulously long frock-coat, made, i think, of black alpaca, and carrying a brass-tipped stick about four feet long in his right hand, and a wonderful new paint-box, of which he was proud, under his left arm. neither of the lions took any notice of what the other said. finally, wilde, who had spent the previous summer in america, began: 'jimmy, this time last year, when i was in new york, all we men were carrying fans. it should be done here.' instead of replying, whistler observed that he had just returned from paris, and that he always came by the dieppe route, because it gave you so much longer for painting sea effects. whether oscar thought he was going to have an opportunity of scoring or what, he was tempted to break through the contempt with which-he had treated whistler's other remarks. 'and how many did you paint in four hours, jimmy?' he asked, with his most magnificent air of patronage. 'i'm not sure,' said the irrepressible jimmy, quite gravely, 'but i think four or five hundred."' * * * * * a london visitor at the lambs club recounted a new version of the notable enmity which followed the friendship that had existed between whistler and wilde. the latter one day asked the artist's opinion upon a poem which he had written, presenting a copy to be read. whistler read it and was handing it back without comment. "well," queried wilde, "do you perceive any worth?" "it's worth its weight in gold," replied whistler. the poem was written on the very thinnest tissue-paper, weighing practically nothing. the coolness between the two men is said to have dated from that moment. * * * * * walking up to du maurier and wilde at the time the former was portraying the postlethwaites in _punch_, whistler asked, whimsically, "i say, which of you invented the other, eh?" * * * * * when oscar wilde was married, this whistler telegram met him at the door of st. james's church, sussex gardens: "fear i may not be able to reach you in time for ceremony--don't wait." * * * * * "heaven!" said oscar once, when the two were together at forbes-robertson's and a pert flash fell from the artist's lips. "i wish i had said that!" "never mind, dear oscar--you will," retorted whistler. * * * * * when lady archibald campbell sat for her portrait lord archibald was quite uncomfortable at the idea, and made certain that it was a condescension, not a commission. the painting was duly completed, received its due of scathing criticism, and became famous. at this the lady, meeting the artist, remarked: "i hear my portrait has been exhibited everywhere and become famous." "sh-sh-sh!" he said. "so it has, my dear lady archibald, but every discretion has been exercised that lord archibald could desire. your name is not mentioned. the portrait is known as 'the yellow buckskin.'" * * * * * carlyle told whistler he liked his portrait because the painter had given him "clean linen." watts had made his collar green in a previous portrait. * * * * * sitting wearied carlyle. one day as he left the studio he met little miss alexander tripping in for her turn, and asked her name. "i am miss alexander," she said, "and i am going to have my portrait painted." "puir lassie, puir lassie," murmured the old philosopher, pityingly. * * * * * whistler's interest was aroused when the cyclopeans were building the savoy hotel. "hurry!" he said. "where are my things? i must catch that now, for it will never again be so beautiful." * * * * * his model once asked him: "where were you born?" "i never was born, my child; i came from on high." the model retorted: "now that shows how easily we deceive ourselves in this world, for i should say you came from below!" * * * * * invited once to dine with some eminences, the dinner-hour found him busy with his brush and engrossed in his subject. a friend who was to accompany him to the feast urged that it was frightfully late. "don't you think you had better stop?" he asked. "stop?" shrieked whistler. "stop when everything is going so beautifully? go and stuff myself with food when i can paint like this? never! never! besides, they won't do anything until i get there. they never do." * * * * * whistler was in a london shop one day when a customer came in who mistook him for a clerk. "i say, this 'at doesn't fit!" "neither does your coat," observed the painter, after eying him critically. * * * * * a young woman student protested under criticism, "mr. whistler, is there any reason why i shouldn't paint things as i see them?" "well, really, there is no statute against it; but the dreadful moment will be when you see things as you painted them!" "britain's realm," by john brett, r.a., now in the national gallery at millbank, made a stir when first exhibited at the academy. it shows the sea. whistler walked into a wave of adulation one day during the exhibition, and, affecting to "knock" with his knuckles, said sardonically: "ha! ha! tin! if you threw a stone on to this it would make a rumbling noise!" * * * * * his early price for the use of one of his lithographs by a magazine was ten guineas. later he charged twenty, either sum being petty enough. to one editor who tendered ten pounds he wrote: "guineas, m. le rédacteur; guineas, not pounds!" * * * * * at a reception one evening in prince's hall he was introduced to henrietta rae, whose painting "psyche before the throne of venus" had made her notable. she had been described to him in advance as rather weighty in figure. "i don't think you're a bit too fat," was his encouraging greeting. * * * * * "why have you withered people and stung them all your life?" asked a lady. "my dear," he said, "i will tell you a secret. early in life i made the discovery that i was charming; and if one is delightful, one has to thrust the world away to keep from being bored to death." * * * * * during the boxer troubles, when pekin was under siege to rescue the legations, he remarked: "dear! dear! i hope they will save the palace. all the englishmen in the world are not worth one blue china vase." one evening at pennell's miss annulet andrews mentioned attending the royal society soirée the evening before. "poor thing!" he said. "poor, misguided child! did you come all the way to london to consort with such--well, what shall we call them? why, there isn't a fellow among them who had his h's five years ago!" * * * * * "you should be grateful to me," said whistler to leyland, after he had painted the peacock room in the latter's house. "i have made you famous. my work will live when you are forgotten. still, perchance in the dim ages to come you may be remembered as the proprietor of the peacock room." * * * * * whistler's butterfly was the moth of the silkworm borrowed from hokusai. otto h. bacher thought the addition of a sting to the signature came from this incident at venice: in he found a scorpion and impaled it on his etching needle. as the little creature writhed and struck, whistler exclaimed: "look at the beggar now! see him strike! isn't he fine? look at him! look at him now! see how hard he hits! that's right--that's the way! hit hard! and do you see the poison that comes out when he strikes? isn't he superb?" * * * * * referring long after to his retirement from west point, where he had been a cadet for three years, the artist explained his fall by saying: "if silicon had been a gas, i should have been a soldier!" * * * * * he was always proud of his west point cadetship. "west point is america," he would say. julian alden weir, son of whistler's instructor at the academy, once dining with him in london, chanced to remark that football had been introduced at the school. "good god!" cried whistler. "a west point cadet to be rolled in the mud by a harvard junior!" * * * * * when a student at the point he had the habit of combing his long hair in class with his fingers, which brought this frequent command from lieutenant caleb huse: "mr. whistler, go to your room and comb your hair!" * * * * * examined on history at west point, he failed to recall the date of the battle of buena vista. "suppose," said the exasperated instructor, "you were to go out to dinner and the company began to talk of the mexican war, and you, a west point man, were asked the date of the battle; what would you do?" "do?" was the reply. "why, i should refuse to associate with people who could talk of such things at dinner!" * * * * * he disliked the work of the riding class at west point, and one day wished to exchange his heavy horse for a lighter animal. the dragoon in charge called out: "oh, don't swap, don't you swap! yours is a war-horse!" "a war-horse!" exclaimed the little cadet. "that settles it. i certainly don't want him!" "yes, you do, sir," insisted the dragoon. "he's a war-horse, i tell you, for he'd rather die than run!" * * * * * "of course you don't know what fear is," observed mortimer menpes. "ah, yes, i do!" whistler answered. "i should hate, for example, to be standing opposite a man who was a better shot than i, far away out in the forest, in the bleak, cold, early morning. fancy me, the master, standing out in the open as a target to be shot at. pshaw! it would be foolish and inartistic. i never mind calling a man out; but i always have the sense to know he is not likely to come." * * * * * mr. howard mansfield relates that while in london in the summer of with mr. whistler, reference was one day made to west point. he broke at once into enthusiastic praise of that institution, declaring that there was no finer institution in the world, and adding that next to it came the naval academy at annapolis. then he went on to say: "what was it which really saved you in your late deplorable war with the politest nation of europe but the bearing of your naval gentlemen? after the affair in that sea--what's its name?--off the island of cuba, when dear old admiral cervera was fished up like a dollop of cotton out of an ink-pot and was received on one of your ships with all the honors due to his rank, the officers all saluting and the crew manning the yards, as it were--only they haven't any yards now--but lined up in quite the proper way--why, it was splendid, just splendid!" * * * * * dining one night at a house where there were a number of his pictures about the room, he could give attention to nothing but his own work. when he left he begged that one painting be sent to his studio to be revarnished. the unsuspecting hostess complied. once delivered, she could not get it back. finally she wrote: "i can live no longer without my beautiful picture, and i am sending to have it taken away." "isn't it appalling?" he cried to menpes. "just think of it! ten years ago this woman bought my picture for a ridiculously small sum, a mere bagatelle, a few pounds; she has had the privilege of living with this masterpiece for ten whole years, and now she has the presumption to ask for it back again. pshaw! the thing's unspeakable!" * * * * * "what a series of accidents!" was his comment on a row of turners at the national gallery. * * * * * on another occasion, when he arrived at his host's house two hours after the time set for dining, he found the meal well under way. "how extraordinary!" he exclaimed to the amazed company. "really, i should think you could have waited a bit. why, you're just like a lot of pigs with your eating!" * * * * * sir john e. millais said to whistler one day: "jimmy, why don't you paint more pictures? put out more canvases!" "i know better," was the shrewd reply. "the fool!" he muttered, as he entered his studio. "he spreads himself on canvas on every possible occasion, and, do you know, he called me jimmy! mind you, i don't know the fellow well at all." * * * * * his "nocturne in blue and gold, valparaiso," was in the hill collection at brighton. whistler made mr. hill a visit which he thus described: "i was shown into the galleries, and, of course, took a chair and sat looking at my beautiful 'nocturne'; then, as there was nothing else to do, i went to sleep." in this state mr. hill found him! this sleeping habit was common with him when the company or the goings-on failed to interest him. on one occasion his sweet snore alarmed his neighbor, who nudged him and whispered: "i say, whistler, you must not sleep here!" "leave me alone!" commanded the artist, crossly. "i've said all i wanted to. i've no interest at all in what you and your friends have to say." * * * * * he once slumbered through a dinner where edwin a. abbey was a fellow-guest. the next morning he blandly asked mr. chase: "what did abbey have to say last night? anything worth while?" when dan smith was at the beginning of his career as an illustrator he was employed by an important lithographing house. one day, while making a large picture of antony and cleopatra in the barge scene, which was to be used by kyrle bellew and mrs. james brown potter as a poster for their joint starring tour, whistler, accompanied by a friend, visited the studio: whistler examined, with evident interest and approval, the canvas upon which the youthful artist was at work, holding his glass to his eyes; then, looking quizzically over it, remarked to his friend, "what a mercantile wretch it is!" * * * * * whistler presented a copy of his edition of _the gentle art of making enemies_ to "theodore watts, the worldling." asked why he started the unlucky school in the latin quarter, he answered: "it was for carmen rossi [long his model], poor little carmen, who is a mere child and has no money, and is saddled with the usual italian burden of a large, disreputable family--banditti brothers, a trifling husband, and all the rest of it." "carmen" was then thirty years old; weight, one hundred and ninety pounds. but she once had been his child-model. * * * * * a scotch student in the class had worked out the face of an old peasant woman illuminated by a candle. "how beautifully you have painted the candle!" whistler commended. "good morning, gentlemen!" * * * * * one day, when the pupils had been sketching from life, he came upon the work of one which, if it contained all of the truth, did not contain all of the beautiful. after gazing at it for some time whistler observed to the student: "ah, well! you can hardly expect me to teach you morals." and he walked away. * * * * * a carelessly kept palette was an abhorrence to the painter. he would inspect those used by his class, and on the discovery of untidiness uttered a reproof like this: "my friends, have you noticed the way in which a musician cares for his violin? how beautiful it is? how well kept? how tenderly handled? your palette is your instrument, its colors the notes, and upon it you play your symphonies!" * * * * * the colloquies with the class were spirited, sarcastic, interesting. here is a characteristic one: _question:_ "do you know what i mean when i say tone, value, light, shade, quality, movement, construction, etc.?" _chorus:_ "oh, yes, mr. whistler!" _mr. whistler:_ "i'm glad, for it's more than i do myself!" * * * * * he objected to smoking in the atelier, partly because it obscured the light and partly because of its obfuscating qualities. in paris a big englishman clouded the class-room with a copious discharge of smoke. "my dear sir," said whistler, gently, "i know you do not smoke to show disrespect for my request that students refrain from smoking on the days i come to them, nor would you desire to infringe upon the rules of the atelier, but--er--it seems to me--er--that when you are painting--er--you might possibly become so absorbed in your work as to--er--let your cigar go out!" visiting earl stetson crawford in his studio at paris, he noted on the wall a photographic copy of the nicholson portrait of himself. "is that the best you have of me?" he asked. "not that it is not very beautiful and artistic and so on--but i say, come now, you don't think it quite does me justice, do you?" * * * * * when the class was formed, so runs the tale, whistler inquired of each pupil with whom he had studied before. "with julian," said one. "couldn't have done better, sir," whistler answered. "with chase," replied another. "couldn't have done better, sir." "with mowbray," answered a third. "couldn't have done better, sir," and so on. he approached a student slightly deaf, who stammered in reply, "i beg pardon?" "couldn't have done better, sir," responded whistler, placidly, passing on to the next. * * * * * "it suffices not, messieurs," he once observed to the class, "that a life spent among pictures makes a painter, else the policeman in the national gallery might assert himself." * * * * * a pupil told him proudly she had studied with bouguereau. "bouguereau! bouguereau! who is bouguereau?" * * * * * one young lady in the class offended him. she received a polite note, signed with a neat butterfly, requesting her not to attend further. "it was worth being expelled to get the note," she said. whistler heard of the comment. "well, they'll all have a note some day," he observed. his retirement soon followed. * * * * * h. villiers barnett, editor of the _continental weekly_, when in the employ of the _magazine of art_ visited the dowdeswell gallery at a press view of the venice pastels. he alone of the critics developed some interest, and soon found himself alone with whistler. "i beg your pardon," said the latter, "but do you represent a religious journal?" "no," barnett replied, jokingly, "mine is an out-and-out sporting paper!" "oh," said whistler, "that accounts for it." "accounts for what?" "well, you see," said whistler, with an exquisite sneer, "i have been watching you gentlemen of the press all morning. you are the only one in the whole lot who seems to find anything here worth looking at, and you have been taking such very serious interest that i was certain you must be representing some church paper." "mr. whistler," retorted barnett, "make your mind easy. there is nothing ecclesiastical about me nor the publication i have the honor to represent; but all the same, for you this is the day of judgment!" "i wish you good morning," rejoined the painter, pertly. * * * * * his "artistic" make-up of flat-brimmed hat, lemon-colored vest, curls, eyeglass, and beribboned cane sometimes upset the cockney crowd. r.a.m. stevenson, cousin of robert louis, was working in his studio one day when the bell rang violently. he ran to the door just in time to rescue the symphony into which whistler had turned himself from a growling mob. "for god's sake, stevenson," said whistler, "save me from these howling brutes!" he went home in a cab with all his trimmings. * * * * * harper pennington has revealed to us the origin of the "standing-room only" joke. it appears that there was hardly ever any furniture in whistler's house. he was peculiarly parsimonious in the matter of chairs. this led to a remark of corny grain's which became famous. "ah, jimmy! glad to see you playing to such a full house!" said dick (corny) grain when shaking hands before a sunday luncheon, while glaring around the studio with his large, protruding eyes, in search of something to sit on. "what do you mean?" asked whistler. "standing-room only," replied the actor. * * * * * henry labouchere, who first met whistler as a boy in washington in the fifties, when he himself was an attaché of the british legation, took the credit for bringing whistler and his wife together. his story was denied by mrs. whistler's relatives, but is interesting enough to be recorded. "i believe," wrote mr. labouchere in _truth_, "i was responsible for his marriage to the widow of mr. godwin, the architect. she was a remarkably pretty woman and very agreeable, and both she and he were thorough bohemians. "i was dining with them and some others one evening at earl's court. they were obviously greatly attracted to each other, and in a vague sort of way they thought of marrying, so i took the matter in hand to bring things to a practical point. "'jimmy,' i said, 'will you marry mrs. godwin?' "'certainly.' "'mrs. godwin,' i said, 'will you marry jimmy?' "'certainly,' she replied. "'when?' i asked. "'oh, some day,' said whistler. "'that won't do,' i said. 'we must have a date.' "so they both agreed that i should choose the day, tell them what church to come to for the ceremony, provide a clergyman, and give the bride away. "i fixed an early date and got them the chaplain of the house of commons to perform the ceremony. it took place a few days later. after the ceremony was over we adjourned to whistler's studio, where he had prepared a banquet. the banquet was on the table, but there were no chairs, so we sat on packing-cases. the happy pair, when i left, had not quite decided whether they would go that evening to paris or remain in the studio. "how unpractical they were was shown when i happened to meet the bride the day before the marriage in the street. "'don't forget to-morrow,' i said. "'no,' she replied; 'i am just going to buy my trousseau.' "'a little late for that, is it not?' i asked. "'no,' she answered, 'for i am only going to buy a tooth-brush and a new sponge, as one ought to have new ones when one marries.' "however, there never was a more successful marriage. they adored each other, and lived most happily together, and when she died he was broken-hearted indeed. he never recovered from the loss." * * * * * when frederick keppel, the american print expert, first called upon the artist at the tite street studio, the famous portrait of sarasate, "black on black," stood at the end of the long corridor that he used to form a vista for proper perspective of his work. laying his hand on keppel's shoulder, he said: "now, isn't it beautiful?" "it certainly is," was the reply. "no," said he; "but isn't it _beautiful_?" "it is indeed," said keppel. this was too mild a form of agreement. whistler raised his voice to a scream: "d---n it, man!" he piped. "isn't it beautiful?" adopting the emphasis and the exclamation, mr. keppel shouted: "d----n it, it is!" this was satisfactory. * * * * * the proof-sheets of _the gentle art_, whistler version, had just arrived as mr. keppel called. "read them aloud," he commanded, "so i can hear how it sounds." mr. keppel started in, but his elocution was not satisfactory. "stop!" whistler cried. "you are murdering it! let me read it to you!" he read about two hours to his own keen delight, but was finally interrupted by a servant announcing, "lady ----." "where is she?" asked the artist. "in her carriage at the door." he went on reading until mr. keppel suggested that he had forgotten the lady. "oh," he said, carelessly, "let her wait! i'm mobbed with these people." after another quarter-hour he condescended to go down and greet her shivering ladyship. * * * * * a little later during this visit a foreign artist called and was pleasantly received. admiring a small painting, the visitor said: "now, that is one of your good ones." "don't look at it, dear boy," replied whistler, airily; "it's not finished." "finished!" said the visitor. "why, it's the most carefully finished picture of yours i've seen." "don't look at it," insisted whistler. "you are doing an injustice to yourself, you are doing an injustice to the picture, and you're doing an injustice to me!" then, theatrically: "stop! i'll finish it now." with that he picked a very small brush, anointed, its delicate point with paint, and touched the picture in one spot with a speck of pigment. "now it's finished!" he exclaimed. "now you may look at it." forgetting his umbrella, the foreign gentleman called at the studio the next day to get it. whistler was out, but the visitor was much moved to find the "finishing touch" had been carefully wiped off! * * * * * mr. keppel's personal relations with whistler ended when, by an idle chance, he sent a copy of _the university of the state of new york bulletin, bibliography, no. i, a guide to the study of james abbott mcneill whistler_, compiled by walter greenwood forsyth and joseph le roy harrison, to joseph pennell, and another to ernest brown, in london. mr. keppel, arriving in london the day of mrs. whistler's funeral, sent a note of condolence, and, receiving a mourning envelope sealed with a black butterfly, opened it expecting a grateful acknowledgment. instead, it was a fierce, rasping denunciation for the distribution of the pamphlet--a mere catalogue so far as it went. "i must not let the occasion of your being in town pass," he wrote, "without acknowledging the gratuitous zeal with which you have done your best to further the circulation of one of the most malignant innuendos, in the way of scurrilous half-assertions, it has been my fate hitherto to meet. mr. brown very properly sent on to me the pamphlet you had promptly posted to him. mr. pennell, also, i find, you had carefully supplied with a copy--and i have no doubt that, with the untiring energy of the 'busy' one, you have smartly placed the pretty work in the hands of many another before this." * * * * * mr. keppel replied in kind, but whistler never wrote him directly again. some business letter of the former requiring a reply, he summoned the house-porter, who wrote under dictation, beginning his crude epistle thus: "sir:--mr. whistler, who is present, orders me to write as follows." roiled by this beyond measure, mr. keppel resorted to verse to relieve his feelings, after which whistler twice sent verbal messages through friends that if he ever saw him again he would kill him! * * * * * john m. cauldwell, the united states commissioner for the department of art at the paris exposition of , sent a circular letter to american artists in the city announcing his arrival and making appointments to discuss the hanging of their work. whistler received one, asking him to call at "precisely four-thirty" on the afternoon of the following thursday. "i congratulate you," he replied. "personally, i never have been able and never shall be able to be anywhere at precisely four-thirty." * * * * * "_parbleu!_ this is a nice get-up to come and see me in, to be sure!" was his greeting to a newspaper writer who called to tap him on art, clad in a brown jacket, blue trousers, and decked with a red necktie. "i must request you to leave this place instantly! these scribblers, rag-smudges, _incroyable_! why, it is perfectly preposterous! did you ever hear such dissonance? his tie is in g major, and i am painting this symphony in e minor. i will have to start it again. take that roaring tie of yours off, you miserable wretch! remove it instantly!" the visitor removed the "roar." "thank goodness!" said whistler. "my sight is perfectly deaf!" "i am so sorry, mr. whistler," apologized the scribe. "whistler, sir? whistler? that's not my name!" he cried, in a highly wrought voice. "i beg your pardon?" "that is not my name. i say, you don't seem to know your own language. w-h is pronounced wh-h-h--wh-h-histler. bah!" * * * * * max beerbohm, the caricaturist, was rather clumsy with the gallic tongue. whistler used to term it "max beerbohm's limburger french." the carefully cultivated and insistently displayed white lock played a part in many amusing incidents. sir coutts lindsay's butler whispered to him excitedly one evening: "there's a gent downstairs says he's come to dinner, wot's forgot his necktie and stuck a feather in his 'air." another evening, at the theater, an usher said obligingly: "beg pardon, sir, but there's a white feather in your hair, just on top." * * * * * raging characteristically once when in paris, he earned this rebuke from degas, the matchless draughtsman: "whistler, you talk as if you were a man without talent." * * * * * some one gave henry irving a whistler etching for a christmas gift. "of course i was delighted," he said, "for i was a great admirer of the artist as well as a personal friend of the man, but when i started to hang the etching i was puzzled. i couldn't for the life of me tell which was the top and which the bottom. finally, after reversing the picture half a dozen times and finding it looked equally well either way up, i decided to try an experiment. "i invited whistler to dine with me and seated him opposite his picture. during dinner he glanced at it from time to time; between the soup and the fish he put up his eyeglass and squinted at it; between the roast and the dessert he got up and walked over to take a closer view of it; finally, by the time we reached the coffee, he had discovered what the trouble was. "'why, henry,' he said, reproachfully, 'you've hung my etching upside down.' "'indeed!' i said. 'well, my friend, it's taken you an hour to discover it!'" "the man in possession" furnishes an amusing incident in the artist's career. when the creditors at last landed a bailiff in the painter's chelsea mansion, he tried to wear his hat in the drawing-room and smoke and spit all over the house. but whistler, in his own airy way, soon settled that. he went out into the hall, and, selecting a stick from his collection of canes, he daintily knocked the man's hat off. the bailiff was so surprised that he forgot to be angry, and in a day or two he had been trained to wait at table. but though he was now in possession and a favored household servant, he could not obtain his money. so he declared that if he was not paid he would have to put bills up outside the house announcing a sale. and sure enough, a few days after great posters were stuck up all over the front of the house announcing so many tables and so many chairs and so much old nankin china for sale on a given day. whistler enjoyed the joke hugely, and hastened to send out invitations to all his friends to a luncheon-party, adding as a postscript: "you will know the house by the bills of sale stuck up outside." and the bailiff proved an admirable butler and the party one of the merriest ever known. as the guests were rising from the table a lady observed to the host: "your servants seem to be extremely attentive, mr. whistler, and anxious to please you." "oh, yes," replied he; "i assure you they wouldn't leave me!" but the bailiff stayed on, and the day of sale approached; so whistler, having been educated at west point, determined to practise strategy. some one had told him that a mixture of snuff and beer had the property of sending people off to sleep. so he bought a big parcel of snuff and put the greater part of it into a gigantic tankard of beer, which he sent out to the bailiff in the garden. it was a very hot summer afternoon, and the man eagerly welcomed his refreshment. whistler was in his studio painting and soon forgot all about him. in the evening he said to his servant, "where's the man?" the servant replied: "i don't know, sir. i suppose he must have gone away." the next morning whistler got up very late and went out into the garden, where he was astonished to see the bailiff sitting in precisely the same position as the day before. the empty tankard was on the table beside him and his pipe had fallen from his hand upon the grass. "hello, my sleeping beauty!" said whistler. "have you been there all night?" but the man made no answer, and all the painter's efforts to rouse him were unavailing. late in the afternoon, however, he awoke in the most natural way in the world, exclaiming that it was dreadfully hot weather and that he must have been asleep over an hour. whistler's strategy had been even more successful than he anticipated; the bailiff had slept through the entire day appointed for the sale of the painter's household effects, and was induced to go away in a very bewildered state of mind and with a small payment on account in his pocket. * * * * * lady de grey went once to the tite street studio for luncheon and chided whistler for his extravagance in having two man servants to wait on the table, when he was always complaining of being hard up. "hush!" whispered whistler. "one of them is the man in possession, and he has consented to act as footman for the day; but he asks me to please settle up as soon as possible, because he too has a man in possession at his own place and wants to get clear of him." * * * * * once at a garden party the rapt hostess rushed up to the artist and exclaimed: "oh, mr. whistler! do help me out! i have just bought a magnificent turner, but lord----says it isn't genuine, merely a clever imitation. now i want you to look at it, and if you say it is genuine, as i know you will, i shall be perfectly satisfied." "my dear lady," replied whistler, "you expect a good deal of me. the distinction between a real turner and an imitation turner is so extremely subtle." * * * * * a flippant reply to the secretary of a london club where whistler's account was past due produced this retort--and the money was paid: "dear mr. whistler:--it is not a nocturne in purple or a symphony in blue and gray we are after, but an arrangement in gold and silver." * * * * * at an exhibition at the academy of fine arts there was a portrait in subdued colors by whistler, "the little lady of soho." before this picture secretary harrison s. morris stood one day. "it is beautiful," he observed, "and it reminds me of a story about whistler--not a very appropriate or poetical one, perhaps. but here it is, anyhow. whistler one summer day took a walk through the downs with three or four young men. they stopped at an ale-house and called for beer. tankards were set before them and they drank. then whistler said to the host: "'my man, would you like to sell a great deal more beer than you do?' "'aye, sir, i would that!' "'then don't sell so much froth!'" * * * * * when a french magazine located his birthplace in baltimore, and the error traveled far, whistler took no pains to correct it. "my dear cousin kate," he said to mrs. livermore, "if any one likes to think i was born in baltimore, why should i deny it? it is of no consequence to me." * * * * * a chance american introduced himself by saying: "you know, mr. whistler, we were born at lowell, and at very much the same time. you are sixty-seven and i am sixty-eight." "very charming," he replied. "and so you are sixty-eight and were born at lowell. most interesting, no doubt, and as you please! but i shall be born when and where i want, and i do not choose to be born in lowell and i refuse to be sixty-seven!" * * * * * "don't be afraid," said whistler to howard paul, who recoiled from the presence of a huge dog because he did not like the look in the animal's eyes. "look at his tail--how it wags. when a dog wags his tail he's in good humor." "that may be," replied paul, "but observe the wild glitter in his eye! i don't know which end to believe." * * * * * comyns carr met a foreign painter who had been known to breakfast with whistler at chelsea and asked him if he had seen him lately. "ah no, not now so much," was the reply. "he ask me a little while ago to breakfast, and i go. my cab-fare two shilling, 'arf crown. i arrive. very nice. goldfish in bowl. very pretty. but breakfast! one egg, one toast, no more! ah, no! my cab-fare back, two shilling, 'arf crown. for me no more!" * * * * * a.g. plowden, the london police magistrate, attended a private view at grosvenor gallery. the first person he met was whistler. he took plowden, very amiably, to his full-length portrait of lady archibald campbell, where, after sufficiently expressing his admiration, plowden asked if there were any other pictures he ought to see. "other pictures!" cried whistler, in a tone of horror. "other pictures! there are no other pictures! you are through!" * * * * * dining at a paris restaurant in his early days, mr. whistler noted the struggle an elderly englishman was having to make himself understood. he politely volunteered to interpret. "sir," said the person addressed, "i assure you, sir, i can give my order without assistance!" "can you indeed?" quoth whistler, airily. "i fancied the contrary just now, when i heard you desire the waiter to bring you a pair of stairs." * * * * * dining, and dining well, at george h. boughton's house in london, whistler was obliged to leave the table and go up-stairs to indite a note. in a few moments a great noise revealed the fact that he had fallen down the flight. "who is your architect?" he asked, when picked up. the host told him norman shaw. "i might have known it," said whistler. "the d----d teetotaler!" * * * * * a young artist had brought whistler to view his maiden effort. the two stood before the canvas for some moments in silence. finally the junior asked, timidly: "don't you think this painting of mine is a--er--a tolerable picture, sir?" whistler's eyes twinkled. "what is your opinion of a tolerable egg?" he asked. * * * * * "irish girls have the most beautiful hands," he once wrote, "with long, slender fingers and delightful articulations. american girls' hands come next; they are a little narrow and thin. the hands of the english girls are red and coarse. the german hand is broad and flat; the spanish hand is full of big veins. i always use irish models for the hands, and i think irish eyes are also the most beautiful." an american artist studying in paris, like many others, was too poor to have a perfect wardrobe. strolling on the boulevard, he heard a call and, turning, saw whistler hastening toward him, waving his long black cane. rather flattered, he said, "so you recognized me from behind, did you, master?" "yes," said whistler, with a wicked laugh; "i spied you through a hole in your coat." * * * * * "do you think genius is hereditary?" asked an admiring lady one day. "i can't tell you, madam," whistler replied. "heaven has granted me no offspring." * * * * * whistler once took horne, his framer, to look at one of his paintings at the exhibition. "well, horne," he asked, "what do you think of it?" "think of it?" he cried, enthusiastically. "why, sir, it's perfect--perfect. mr. ---- has got one just like it." "what!" said the puzzled whistler. "a picture like this?" "oh," said horne, "i wasn't talking about the picture; i was talking about the frame." * * * * * "well, mr. whistler, how are you getting on?" said an undesirable acquaintance in a paris restaurant. "i'm not," said whistler, emptying his glass. "i'm getting off." * * * * * miss pamela smith, a designer in black and white, while a crude draughtsman, had a fine imagination. whistler was asked to look over some of her work. after careful examination he said: "she can't draw." another look and a gruff "she can't paint" followed. a third look and a long thought wound up with, "but she doesn't need to." * * * * * a lady who rejoiced in "temperament" once said gushingly to whistler: "it is wonderful what a difference there is between people." "yes," he replied. "there is a great deal of difference between matches, too, if you will only look closely enough, but they all make about the same blaze." * * * * * a certain gentleman whose portrait whistler had painted failed to appreciate the work, and finally remarked, "after all, mr. whistler, you can't call that a great work of art." "perhaps not," replied the painter, "but then you can't call yourself a great work of nature!" * * * * * the artist and a friend strolled along the thames embankment one wonderfully starry night. whistler was in a discontented mood and found fault with everything. the houses were ugly, the river not what it might have been, the lights hard and glaring. the friend pointed out several things that appealed to him as beautiful, but the master would not give in. "no," he said, "nature is only sometimes beautiful--only sometimes--very, very seldom indeed; and to-night she is, as so often, positively ugly." "but the stars! surely they are fine to-night," urged the other. whistler looked up at the sky. "yes," he drawled, "they're not bad, perhaps, but, my dear fellow, there's too many of them." a sitter asked him how it was possible to paint in the growing dusk, as he often did. the reply was: "as the light fades and the shadows deepen, all the petty and exacting details vanish; everything trivial disappears, and i see things as they are, in great, strong masses; the buttons are lost, but the garment remains; the garment is lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is lost, but the shadow remains; the shadow is lost, but the picture remains. and that, night cannot efface from the painter's imagination." * * * * * sir laurence alma-tadema, of the classic brush, loved yellow, a color which whistler had annexed unto himself. sir laurence in employing the color in his decorations did not consider himself a plagiarist. he had not seen whistler's. this defense led to a war of words. whistler broke out: "sly alma! his romano-dutch st. john's wooden eye has never looked upon them, and the fine jaundice of his flesh is none of the jaundice of my yellows. to-de-ma-boom-de-ay!" * * * * * seated in a stall at the west end theater one evening, he was constantly irritated by his next neighbor--a lady--who not only went out between the acts, but several times while the curtain was up. the space between the run of seats was narrow, and the annoyance as she squeezed past was considerable. "madam," he said at last, "i trust i do not incommode you by keeping my seat!" * * * * * he regarded the united states tariff on art as barbarous. "when are you coming to america?" he was asked. "when the tariff on art is removed." the copley society asked his aid in making up their exhibition in boston. he refused, saying: "god bless me! why should you hold an exhibition of pictures in america? the people do not care for art!" "how do you know? you have not been there for many years." "how do i know? why, haven't you a law to keep out pictures and statues? is it not in black and white that the works of the great masters must not enter america, that they are not wanted? a people that tolerate such a law have no love for art; their protestation is mere pretense." * * * * * asked by a lady if a certain picture in a gallery was not indecent, he replied: "no, madam. but your question is!" mark twain visited the studio and, assuming an air of hopeless stupidity, approached a nearly completed painting and said: "not at all bad, mr. whistler; not at all bad. only here in this corner," he added, reflectively, with a motion as if to rub out a cloud effect, "if i were you i'd do away with that cloud!" "gad, sir!" cried the painter. "do be careful there! don't you see the paint is not yet dry?" "oh, don't mind that," said mark, sweetly. "i am wearing gloves, you see!" they got on after that. * * * * * in paris, whistler and an english painter got into a turbulent talk over velasquez at a studio tea. in the course of the argument whistler praised himself extravagantly. "it's a good thing we can't see ourselves as others see us," sneered the briton. "isn't it, though?" rejoined whistler, gently. "i know in my case i should grow intolerably conceited." * * * * * financial necessities once caused the sale of whistler's choice furnishings. some of the family, returning to the house during his absence, found the floor covered with chalk diagrams, the largest of which was labeled: "this is the dining-table." surrounding it were a number of small squares, each marked: "this is a chair." another square: "this is the sideboard." * * * * * cope whitehouse once described a boat-load of egyptians "floating down the nile with the thermometer one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade, and no shade." "and no thermometer," interjected whistler. * * * * * a lady sitter brought a cat with her and placed it on her knee. the cat was nervous and yowled continuously. "madam," said the vexed artist, "will you have the cat in the foreground or in the back yard?" * * * * * while painting one of his famous nocturnes a critic of considerable pretensions called. "good heavens, whistler!" he cried, "what in the world are you splashing at?" "i am teaching art to posterity," whistler replied, quietly. "oh!" said the critic, visibly relieved. "i was afraid you were painting for the royal academy." "oh, no," answered whistler; "they do not want masterpieces there, but some of their picture-frames are exquisite and really worth bus-fare to look at." * * * * * walking in the champs-elysées in paris one morning, whistler heard one englishman say to another: "see that chap over there?" "what? that chap with the long hair and spindle legs?" "yes, that's the one. that's whistler, the american, who thinks he's the greatest painter on earth." walking up to the pair, whistler held out his hand and said gravely to the last speaker: "sir, i beg your acceptance of these ten centimes. go buy yourself a little hay!" * * * * * sitting for a portrait was an ordeal. many were quite upset after a siege in the studio. one man annoyed the artist by saying at each dismissal: "how-about that ear, mr. whistler? don't forget to finish that." at the last session, all being finished but this ear, whistler said, "well, i think i'm through; now i'll sign it." this he did in a very solemn and important way. "but my ear!" exclaimed the victim. "you're not going to leave it that way?" "oh," said whistler, grimly, "you can put it in after you get home." * * * * * he occasionally contemplated visiting america in his late years, but the dread of the journey was too much for him to overcome. "if i escape the atlantic," he said, "i shall be wrecked by some reporter at the pier." finally, he definitely canceled his last proposed trip, observing airily: "one cannot continuously disappoint a continent." "america," he once said, lightly, "is a country where i never can be a prophet." * * * * * sir rennell rodd recalled that at a breakfast waldo story gave at dieu-donné's in paris there was a great company, including whistler. every one there was by the way of having written a book or painted a picture, or having in some way outraged the philistine, with the exception of one young gentleman whose _raison d'être_ was not so apparent as his high collar and the glory of his attire. he nevertheless intruded boldly into the talk and laid down his opinions very flatly. he even went so far as to combat some dictum of the master's, whereat that gentleman adjusted his glasses and, looking pleasantly at the youth, queried: "and whose son are you?" when dorothy menpes was a babe in the cradle a white feather lay across her infant brow. the sight pleased whistler. "that child is going to develop into something great," he prophesied, "for see, she begins with a feather, just like me." * * * * * in the last two years of his life mr. whistler's disputes grew less frequent and his public flashes were few. the _morning post_ of london, however, provoked an admirable specimen of his best style, which it printed under date of august th, . in its "art and artists" column the paper had made the following statement: "mr. whistler is so young in spirit that his friends must have read with surprise the dutch physician's announcement that the present illness is due to 'advanced age.' in england sixty-seven is not exactly regarded as 'advanced age,' but even for the gay 'butterfly' time does not stand still, and some who are unacquainted with the details of mr. whistler's career, though they know his work well, will be surprised to learn that he was exhibiting at the academy forty-three years ago. his contributions to the exhibition of were 'two etchings from nature,' and at intervals during the following fourteen or fifteen years mr. whistler was represented at the academy by a number of works, both paintings and etchings. in his contributions numbered seven in all, and in four. among his academy pictures of was the famous 'little white girl,' the painting that attracted so much attention at the paris exhibition of . this picture--rejected at the salon of --was inspired, though the fact seems to have been forgotten of late, by the following lines of swinburne: come snow, come wind or thunder high up in air, i watch my face and wonder at my bright hair, etc." under date of august d mr. whistler sent from the hague this brisk reply: i feel it no indiscretion to speak of my "convalescence," since you have given it official existence. may i, therefore, acknowledge the tender little glow of health induced by reading, as i sat here in the morning sun, the flattering attention paid me by your gentleman of the ready wreath and quick biography? i cannot, as i look at my improving self with daily satisfaction, really believe it all--still it has helped to do me good!--and it is with almost sorrow that i must beg you, perhaps, to put back into its pigeonhole for later on this present summary and replace it with something preparatory, which, doubtless, you have also ready. this will give you time, however, for some correction--if really it be worth while--but certainly the "little white girl," which was not rejected at the salon of ' , was, i am forced to say, not "inspired by the following lines of swinburne," for the one simple reason that those lines were only written, in my studio, after the picture was painted. and the writing of them was a rare and graceful tribute from the poet to the painter--a noble recognition of work by the production of a nobler one! again, of the many tales concerning the hanging at the academy of the well-known portrait of the artist's mother, now at the luxembourg, one is true--let us trust your gentleman may have time to find it out--that i may correct it. i surely may always hereafter rely on the _morning post_ to see that no vulgar woking joke reach me? it is my marvelous privilege then to come back, as who should say, while the air is still warm with appreciation, affection, and regret, and to learn in how little i had offended. the continuing to wear my own hair and eyebrows, after distinguished confrères and eminent persons had long ceased their habit, has, i gather, clearly given pain. this, i see, is much remarked on. it is even found inconsiderate and unseemly in me, as hinting at affectation. i might beg you, sir, to find a pretty place for this, that i would make my apology, containing also promise, in years to come, to lose these outer signs of vexing presumption. protesting, with full enjoyment of its unmerited eulogy, against your premature tablet, i ask you again to contradict it, and appeal to your own sense of kind sympathy when i tell you i learn that i have lurking in london still "a friend"--though for the life of me i cannot remember his name. and i have, sir, the honor to be, j. mcneill whistler. the last dispute that found its way to print came through the new york _sun_ and will h. low, to whom mr. whistler sought to convey a piece of his mind _via_ the newspaper channel, under date of may th, , this grew out of a complication in which mr. low became involved with the hanging committee of the society of american artists over the placing in its exhibition of "rosa corder" and two marines by whistler borrowed from charles l. freer, of detroit, on the condition that they be hung "in a good position." the position selected did not suit mr. low, and he withdrew the pictures. mr. whistler sent his remonstrance to the _sun's_ london office, from which it was cabled to new york and published on may th, as follows: "i had waited for mr. low to publish my reply to a letter from himself concerning the withdrawal of my pictures from the society of american artists. "this gentle opinion of my own upon the situation is, i understand, expert. i therefore inclose it to you for publication. i have the honor to be, dear sir, your obedient servant." the remarks to mr. low read: "i have just learned with distress that my canvases have been a trouble and a cause of thought to the gentlemen of the hanging committee! "pray present to them my compliments and my deep regrets. "i fear also that this is not the first time of simple and good-natured intrusion--looking in, as who would say, with beaming fellowship and crass camaraderie upon the highly finished table and well-seated guests--to be kindly and swiftly shuffled into some further respectable place--that all be well and hospitality endure. "promise, then, for me, that i have learned and that 'this shall not occur again.' and, above all, do not allow a matter of colossal importance to ever interfere with the afternoon habit of peace and good will, and the leaf of the mint so pleasantly associated with this society. "i could not be other than much affected by your warm and immediate demonstration, but i should never forgive myself were the consequence of lasting vexation to your distinguished confrères." the end none none note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) the children's book of celebrated pictures by lorinda munson bryant author of "famous pictures of real boys and girls," "famous pictures of real animals," etc. [illustration] published by the century co. new york copyright, , by the century co. to my daughter bertha cookingham bryant list of illustrations figure page . the holy family. pintoricchio. academy, siena . the valley farm. constable. national gallery, london . madonna and st. jerome. correggio. parma gallery, italy . the wood-gatherers. corot. corcoran art gallery, washington, d.c. . the aurora. guido reni. rospigliosi palace, rome . singing boys. franz hals. cassel gallery, germany . st. barbara. palma vecchio. santa maria formosa, venice . charles i and his horse. van dyck. louvre, paris . the gale. homer. worcester art museum, massachusetts . madonna del gran' duca. raphael. pitti palace, florence . joan of arc. bastien-lepage. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . the fates. michael angelo. pitti palace, florence . madonna of the chair. raphael. pitti palace, florence . wolf and fox hunt. rubens. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . the night watch. rembrandt. ryks museum, amsterdam . the assumption. titian. academy, venice . the melon-eaters. murillo. pinakothek, munich . the muses. romano. pitti palace, florence . "come abide with us." fra angelico. san marco, florence . the supper at emmaus. rembrandt. louvre, paris . children of charles i. van dyck. dresden gallery . the buttery. de hooch. ryks museum, amsterdam . coronation of the virgin. botticelli. uffizi palace, florence . the wolf-charmer. la farge. city art museum, st. louis . the old woman cutting her nails. rembrandt. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . the spinner. maes. ryks museum, amsterdam . st. george and the dragon. carpaccio. church of san giorgio degli schiavoni, venice . the grand canal. turner. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . song of the lark. breton. art institute, chicago . the holy night. correggio. dresden gallery . the gleaners. millet. louvre, paris . st. cecilia. raphael. bologna, italy . helena fourment and her son and daughter. rubens. louvre, paris . the harp of the winds. martin. metropolitan museum of art . the tribute money. titian. dresden gallery . the maids of honor. velasquez. madrid gallery, spain . the nymphs. corot. louvre, paris . st. francis preaching to the birds. giotto. upper church, assisi, italy . the governess. chardin. liechtenstein gallery, vienna . the last supper. leonardo da vinci. santa maria delle grazie, milan . sir galahad. watts. eton college, england . the duchess of devonshire and her child. reynolds. royal gallery, windsor . st. agnes and her lamb. andrea del sarto. pisa cathedral, italy . whistler's mother. whistler. luxembourg, paris . st. christopher. titian. doges palace, venice . the blue boy. gainsborough. private gallery, henry huntington, los angeles, california . the sleeping girl. van der meer. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . st. anthony and the christ-child. murillo. museum of seville, spain . king lear. abbey. metropolitan museum of art, new york city . sunset in the woods. inness. corcoran art gallery, washington, d. c. _dear children:_ the stories i am telling about the pictures and their painters in this book are gathered from many countries. some of them belong to very early times when history was told to grown up people by story-tellers at banquets and in the homes, on the street corners and public halls. some of the stories are legends and traditions that grew up with the beginnings of the christian era. all of them are taken from authentic sources and many of them illustrate some natural law. the artists who painted these pictures knew history and the early myths, the fairy-tales, the legends and the traditions, the bible and the apocrypha. we love these pictures because they are beautiful and true, but really to understand them we must know what the artists had in mind when they painted them. if you learn to know these pictures and love them, i will make you another book soon about statues and their stories. with love and best wishes, from your friend, lorinda munson bryant the holy family bernardino pintoricchio ( - ) in looking at pictures of the old masters you will often see one called the "holy family." i want you to know who belonged to the holy family. the grown people are joseph and mary, the father and mother of jesus; they had no last names at that time. the children are jesus and his cousin, john the baptist, six months older than jesus. sometimes the little john's mother, elizabeth, is in the picture and sometimes his father, zacharias, is there also. in this picture painted by pintoricchio, jesus is about four years old and john four and a half. the bible story gives very little about the growing up of these children. of jesus it says, "and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of god was upon him." and of john it says, "and the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and he was in the deserts till the day of showing unto israel." one story from a very old book, "the infancy," tells about jesus playing with the other boys. it says: "and when jesus was seven years of age, he was on a certain day with other boys, his companions about the same age. who when they were at play, made clay into several shapes, namely, asses, oxen, birds, and other figures, each boasting of his work, endeavoring to exceed the rest. "then the lord jesus said to the boys, i will command these figures which i have made to walk. and immediately they moved, and when he commanded them to return they returned. he also made figures of birds and sparrows, which, when he commanded to fly, did fly, and when he commanded to stand still, did stand still; and if he gave them meat and drink, they did eat and drink." [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the holy family. pintoricchio. academy, siena] the valley farm john constable ( - ) an old man, eighty-four years of age, lived in this house on "the valley farm," in england. he was born here and he used to say that he had never been away from this house but four days in all his life. he asked constable to come and paint a picture of his home. and what a beautiful picture it is! the old house, snuggled down so close to the little stream, could paddle its feet--if it had any--in the cool water. and see how tenderly the tall trees keep guard over it. how we wish that we could be there too! if only we could be in the punt--i am sure it is a punt-boat even if one end of it is pointed--and be rowed up and down in the delightful shade. those two in the boat have no doubt been for the cows and are driving them home to be milked. john constable liked to choose his subjects for his pictures from the familiar scenes near his home. he used to say to his friends: "i have always succeeded best with my native scenes. they have always charmed me, and i hope they always will." [illustration: fig. . the valley farm. constable. national gallery, london] the madonna and child with st. jerome antonio allegri da correggio ( ?- ) correggio loved to paint darling babies, lovely angels, beautiful women and splendid men. in this picture of "the madonna and st. jerome," i want you specially to see st. jerome and his lion. st. jerome, a very noted man who lived four centuries after christ, was the first person to translate the new testament into latin. it was called "the vulgate," because of its common use in the latin church. when st. jerome was thirty years old he went away from the city of rome and became a hermit and lived in desert places in the east. one day, so the story goes, as he sat at the gate of the monastery a lion came up limping as though he had been hurt. the other hermits ran away but st. jerome went to meet the lion. the lion lifted up his paw and st. jerome found a thorn in his foot. he took out the thorn and bound up the poor paw, so the lion stayed with st. jerome and kept guard over an ass that brought the wood from the forest. one day when the lion was asleep a caravan of merchants came along and stole the ass. the poor ashamed lion hung his head before the saint, and jerome thought he had killed and eaten the ass. to punish him st. jerome had him do the work of the ass and bring the wood from the forest. one day some time afterward the lion saw the ass coming down the road leading a caravan of camels. the arabs often have an ass lead the camels. the lion knew that it was the stolen ass, so he led the caravan into the convent grounds. the merchant found that he was caught. st. jerome was very glad to find that his lion was honest and true. whenever you see a picture of a saint with a lion you must remember that it is st. jerome, the great latin scholar. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . madonna and st. jerome. correggio. parma gallery, italy] the wood gatherers jean baptiste camille corot ( - ) the picture of "the wood gatherers" is very precious to us. it is the last picture corot signed after he was confined to the bed, a few days before he died. a curious story is told of corot's painting this picture. he had an old study of another artist's of a landscape with st. jerome at prayer: you remember i told you the story of st. jerome and his lion. corot took the study and made a number of sketches of it. somehow his landscape would not fit st. jerome, so he painted a man on horseback and a dog going off into the woods. then in the place of st. jerome praying he put a woman gathering bits of wood and another woman with a bundle of fagots under her arm. now the picture must have another name and he called it "the wood gatherers." when you go to washington, you must not fail to see this picture in the corcoran art gallery. [illustration: fig. . the wood-gatherers. corot. courtesy of the corcoran art gallery, washington, d. c.] aurora guido reni ( - ) hyperion had three wonderful children, apollo, the god of the sun, selene, the goddess of the moon, and aurora, the goddess of the dawn. when aurora appears her sister, selene (the moon), fades and night rolls back like a curtain. now let us look at this masterpiece by guido reni carefully that we may know how wonderful is the coming of day. aurora, in a filmy white robe, is dropping flowers in the path of apollo (the sun) as he drives his dun-colored horses above the sleeping earth. the horæ (the hours), a gliding, dancing group of lovely beings, accompany the brilliant god. each hour is clothed in garments of a special tint of the great light of day, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and violet. the golden-hued apollo sits supreme in his chariot of the sun. the fresco--fresco means painted on fresh plaster--is on the ceiling of the rospigliosi palace, rome. the painting is as brilliant in color to-day as it was when painted three hundred and fifty years ago. aurora, like most of the gods and goddesses, fell in love with a mortal. she asked zeus to make her husband immortal but she forgot to ask that he should never grow old. and, fickle woman that she was! when he became gray and infirm, she deserted him and, to put a stop to his groans, she turned him into a grasshopper. her son, memnon, was made king of the ethiopians, and in the war of troy he was overcome by achilles. when aurora, who was watching him from the sky, saw him fall she sent his brothers, the winds, to take his body to the banks of a river in asia minor. in the evening the mother and the hours and the pleiades came to weep over her dead son. poor aurora! even to-day her tears are seen in the dewdrops on the grass at early dawn. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the aurora. guido reni. rospigliosi palace, rome] the singing boys frans hals ( ?- ) these jolly singers are dutch boys. they are singing on the street or in some back yard just as singers do to-day, though they lived nearly three hundred years ago. hals was such a rapid painter that he could make a picture while you wait. the story is told that one time young van dyck, the flemish painter who painted "baby stuart," went to see hals in amsterdam when hals was an old man. van dyck did not tell the old artist that he was van dyck but simply asked him to paint his portrait, knowing what a rapid painter hals was. in an hour the picture was done. van dyck remarked, as he looked at the portrait: "that seems easy; i believe i could do it." hals thought he would have some fun, so he told the young stranger that he would sit for him just one hour. van dyck set his easel where hals could not see him work and began to paint. at the end of an hour he said: "your picture is finished, sir." hals, ready to laugh at the daub, looked at the portrait and the laugh went out of his face. he then looked at van dyck, and cried out: "you must be either van dyck or a wizard!" you see, hals had heard of van dyck and his rapid work, and knew that only a master painter could make the splendid portrait in an hour. [illustration: permission of franz hanfstaengl, new york city fig. . singing boys. frans hals. cassel gallery, germany] st. barbara jacopo palma il vecchio ( ?- ) st. barbara, born a. d. , was a very beautiful girl. her father, an eastern nobleman, loved her so much and was so afraid something might happen to her that he built a very wonderful tower for her home and shut her up in it. and in that tower she studied the stars. night after night she looked at the heavenly bodies until she knew more about the sun and the moon and the stars than any of the learned men. but as she studied the shining bodies she decided that worshiping idols, made of wood and stone, as her father did, was wrong. finally she learned about the savior, and to show her faith in christianity she had some workmen who were making repairs on her tower put in three windows. when her father came as usual to visit her, he asked in surprise what the three windows were for. she replied: "know, my father, that through three windows doth the soul receive light, the father, the son, and the holy ghost: and the three are one." her father was very angry when he found she had learned about the savior and had become a christian. he condemned her to death and at last took her out on a hill and killed her, but he, too, was struck dead. st. barbara is always represented with a tower that has three windows in it. palma vecchio painted this picture for some venetian soldiers nearly four hundred years ago. when the germans bombarded venice ( ) the venetians took the picture from the church to a place of safety. scarcely a week had passed before a bomb broke through the roof of the church tearing everything before it at the exact spot where the picture had hung. but "st. barbara," one of the great pictures of the world, was safe. [illustration: fig. . st. barbara. palma vecchio. santa maria formosa, venice] charles i and his horse sir anthony van dyck ( - ) the horse in this picture of charles i is probably the one rubens gave to van dyck. it is said that rubens gave it as a present after van dyck had painted a portrait of helena fourment, the master's second wife, and presented it to him. van dyck was twenty-two years younger than rubens. you will remember that he was the master painter's favorite pupil. having rubens as a teacher did not make the pupil a great painter. van dyck was never more than a prince; just an heir to the throne. rubens was a king and sat on the throne. the story is told that once rubens was away from his private studio when the students bribed the servant to open the door for them. they stole into the master's studio to see "the descent from the cross," which he was then painting. by some mishap the culprits rubbed against the wet paint and spoiled that part of the picture. of course they were terrified at the damage done. they finally decided that van dyck was the one to repair the spot. the work was so well done that they hoped rubens would not see the repairs. but the first thing that caught the eye of the master was that particular spot. he at once sent for the students and asked who had worked on his picture. van dyck stepped out from the others and frankly confessed that he was the culprit. rubens was so pleased with his frankness and also at the skill of the work that he forgave them all. king charles i invited van dyck to come to england, and then he knighted him and gave him a pension for life. the hundreds of pictures of the royal family and court people of england left by van dyck show us how rapidly he could paint, for the artist died when he was only forty-two years old. [illustration: fig. . charles i and his horse. van dyck. louvre, paris] the gale winslow homer ( - ) winslow homer lived in maine, where he heard the roar of mighty waters beating the rocks all day and all night. some days the ocean grew so angry because the winds whirled its waters about in such a cruel manner that it would fling itself upon the sands and rocks as though to tear everything to pieces. the waves would raise up like furious horses champing their bits and foaming at the mouth. somehow these angry waves could never go beyond a certain point, and the mother carrying her baby along the coast knows just the point at which the waves must stop. let us clap our hands and shout with joy that old ocean cannot hurt that mother and her baby. fill your lungs full of that glorious breeze whipping their hair and clothes. open your eyes wide like the baby and let the salt air polish them until they sparkle like diamonds as the baby's do. winslow homer loved old ocean, and so do we! let us love his pictures of old ocean for he has taught us that that mighty power is under a greater power. [illustration: fig. . the gale. homer. courtesy of worcester art museum, massachusetts] madonna del gran' duca raphael sanzio ( - ) i want you to learn everything you can about raphael. he was so kind and gentle and beautiful that everybody loved him. people said that when he walked on the streets of rome scores of young men went with him until one would think him a prince. the pope gave him a large order to decorate the vatican, the pope's home. every artist was willing to help him because he was always ready to do anything he could to help his brother artists. raphael only lived to be thirty-seven. when he died all italy mourned his death, and his funeral was one of the largest of any artist of his time. when raphael was only twenty-one he painted the "madonna del gran' duca." he had gone to florence for the first time. we do not know where the picture was for a hundred years after it was painted; then the painter carlo dolci owned it. again another hundred years went by, and we find it in possession of a poor widow. she sold it to a picture-dealer for about twenty dollars. it then went into the hands of the grand duke of tuscany, ferdinand iii, for the big sum of eight hundred dollars. no amount of money could buy the picture to-day. ferdinand loved the picture so much that he always took it with him on all his travels and the grand duchess, his wife, felt that her baby boys were purer if she had the picture near her. it got its name "madonna of the grand duke" from the title of the family. [illustration: fig. . madonna del gran duca. raphael. pitti palace, florence] joan of arc jules bastien-lepage ( - ) no young girl in history has had such a wonderful story as joan of arc. she began to hear voices and see visions when she was a little child. she was born in the tiny village of domremy, france. just like the other little peasant girls around her she helped her mother about the house and at the spinning. also she went into the fields with her brothers. one day when she was in the garden the archangel st. michael came to her in a glory of light. he said she was a good little girl and that she must go to church and that some day she was to do a great act; she was to crown the dauphin as king of france at rheims. joan was afraid and cried at what the angel told her, but st. michael said, "god will help you." these messages kept coming to her until, when she was sixteen, the voices insisted, "you must help the king, and save france." france was in a terrible state at this time, . the english held most of france. the french king, charles vi, became insane and died. the son, dauphin charles, was weak and lazy and discouraged; he had no money, no army, no energy, and like most cowards, ran from his duty and wasted his time in wickedness. joan was still urged by voices to save france. at last a peasant uncle went with her to a man in power to ask for troops. the man was angry, and said sharply: "the girl is crazy! box her ears and take her back to her father." but joan did not give up. she insisted that some one must take her to dauphin charles, that god willed it. she said: "i will go if i have to wear my legs down to my knees." she went, and she saved france by crowning the dauphin as charles vii at rheims. but the french and the english people condemned joan of arc as a witch and burned her at the stake. too late they cried: "we are lost! we have burned a saint!" [illustration: fig. . joan of arc. bastien-lepage. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the fates michael angelo buonarroti ( - ) when a new baby comes to a home, legend says, three beautiful young girls come to take care of the baby all through its life, but no one ever sees these young girls. each one has a strange work to do. one, called clotho, carries a spindle on which is wound flax. the second, named lachesis, twists a thread from the spindle, called the thread of life. and atropos, the third, has a pair of shears ready to cut the thread of life. a funny story is told about michael angelo when he designed this picture of "the fates." an old woman annoyed the artist very much by coming every day to see him. she insisted that he should appoint her son a special place in the fighting line in the seige of florence ( ). michael angelo took revenge on the old woman by using her as a model for all of the women in his "fates." and that is why michael angelo's fates are old women instead of young girls, as legend says they are. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the fates. michael angelo. pitti palace, florence] the madonna of the chair raphael sanzio ( - ) we like to believe that raphael, in one of his daily walks in the country, really did see this mother and her two little boys sitting in a doorway. of course he must paint them, and having no paper with him he rolled up a barrel and made a sketch on the head of it. the story says that this barrel was once a part of a great oak-tree that stood by the hut of an old man, a hermit up in the mountains. and the mother of the two boys, when a little girl, used to go to see the old man. he loved these two--the little girl and the big oak-tree--and called them his daughters. he used to say that some day they would both be famous. that was more than four hundred years ago, and to-day this picture of "the madonna of the chair" is one of the most famous madonna pictures. it is found in almost every home in america and is a treasure that belongs to all of us though it hangs in a gallery at florence, italy. we know, too, that raphael did not let any of his helpers work on "the madonna of the chair"--in italian, "madonna della sedia." he painted every brush stroke himself, which makes it still more dear to us. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . madonna of the chair. raphael. pitti palace, florence] the wolf and fox hunt peter paul rubens ( - ) the stables of peter paul rubens were known the country over. no prince in the land had more magnificent horses, and no cavalier could ride with more grace and ease than rubens. when van dyck, the artist who painted "baby stuart," was ready to leave the studio of rubens to travel in italy, the master gave him a beautiful horse from his own stables. van dyck probably used this horse as a model in his picture of "charles i and his horse." now look at rubens on the splendid dappled white horse in "the fox and wolf hunt." his first wife, isabel brant, is on his right hand. she carries her falcon balanced on her wrist, his wings spread out in excitement. we feel that rubens and his horse together are directing every movement in the hunt. that horse has all the alertness of the trained dogs and is just as eager in overcoming brute force as men are. in fact we are so fascinated with his beauty and intelligence that the cruel sport is almost forgotten in our interest in him and his master. rubens painted a number of hunting scenes, and always he manages the hunt with the skill of a master. the confusion of the rough-and-tumble fight between the wild beasts and the horses, dogs, and men in rubens' pictures seems to untangle itself under his glorious color and skilful arrangement. this is a picture you must see. when you go to new york city never fail to visit the metropolitan museum of art. [illustration: fig. . wolf and fox hunt. rubens. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the night watch rembrandt van rijn ( ?- ) one time, more than two hundred and fifty years ago, two little children living in amsterdam were playing at the edge of the city just at evening. soon they overheard some spanish soldiers near-by talking together. they began to understand that the men were making some kind of plans and, listening very sharply, they found that the spaniards intended to attack the city of amsterdam that night. the spaniards were fighting the netherlands at that time. you can imagine how frightened the children were. they knew that they must tell some one about it at once. very quietly they crept away from where the men were, then ran for their lives to the town hall. the civic guard were having a banquet there. rembrandt has painted the scene just as the little girl, in the center of the group, has finished her story. the men are making ready to meet the attack. some have on their armor, some are polishing their guns, some have their drums, and all are full of excitement. when the painting was to be put in the new ryks museum, in amsterdam, it was found that the wall was too narrow for the picture. what do you think the authorities did? the stupid men cut a piece off from each side of the picture to fit it in its new place. was ever anything so silly? even those pieces cut off would bring more money to-day than the museum itself cost. the men who had money at the time rembrandt painted the picture were angry because the artist would not make portraits as they wanted them. they ignored rembrandt, and he became very poor and died unknown. to-day those rich men are forgotten and rembrandt is known the world over. [illustration: fig. . the night watch. rembrandt. ryks museum, amsterdam] the assumption titian, or tiziano vecelli ( - ) titian lived to be ninety-nine-years old and still painted pictures. he was working on a painting when an awful plague broke out in venice, and he took it and died. titian painted such wonderful pictures that kings came to see them and rich noblemen paid big sums of money to own them. sometimes king charles v would ride with titian and would have his courtiers pay tribute to titian and wait on him. this made those haughty men very jealous and very angry, but charles v would say, "i have many nobles, but i have only one titian." titian's picture of the "virgin going to heaven" the whole world calls one of the greatest pictures ever painted. some day i hope you will go to venice, that queen city of the sea, and fasten your gondola at the museum door while you go in to see this picture. you will be so dazzled with its bright color that you will hardly see the little cherubs circling around the blessed mother. but i want you to look at them; they are darlings: then look at the men all reaching up and the father in the sky looking down. the story of the picture is about mary, the mother of jesus, going to heaven. [illustration: fig. . the assumption. titian. academy, venice] the melon eaters bartolome esteban murillo ( - ) when the spanish artist murillo was a young painter he was very poor and hardly knew where to get enough to eat. he would go to the market-place and set up his easel and rapidly paint the scenes around him. the people who came to the market to buy and sell saw these pictures and bought them for a mere pittance. often beggar boys, who were everywhere in the market snatching fruits and other eatables from the stalls, would pose for him as they hid in some corner to eat their stolen dainties. these beggar-boy pictures that murillo sold for a song to keep his soul and body together began to attract attention until finally they were looked upon as the greatest pictures murillo ever painted. people outside of spain, murillo's native country, bought them until to-day scarcely a beggar-boy picture of his is found in spain. this picture of "the melon eaters" is known far and wide as a great masterpiece, and yet the boys were little rag-a-muffins, the pests of the market people. murillo knew the joys and sorrows of those boys because he too at that time was very poor and hungry and no one was giving him a helping hand. do you suppose that when he was famous as a painter he ever saw those boys? i think so, for he was greatly beloved by his townspeople of seville. they probably came to his studio many times. murillo painted many religious pictures for the churches of seville. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the melon eaters. murillo. pinakothek, munich] the muses giulio romano ( - ) i am sure you have heard of the muses. romano, a pupil of raphael's, has left us this beautiful picture of them dancing with apollo, their cousin. the muses were the daughters of zeus (jove or jupiter), and memory. these lovely girls also come to every home to help care for the new baby. the greek names of the muses are rather hard to pronounce, but you will want to call them by name. then, too, each girl's name in greek letters is just below where she dances. now begin at the left of the circle. the first one, calliope, stands for narrative poetry; no. , clio, is history; no. , erato, is love-poetry; no. , melpomene, is tragedy; no. , terpsichore, is dance and song. now comes apollo with his quiver full of arrows. he is the god of the hunt and twin brother to diana, the goddess of hunt; also he is god of music and poetry. no. is polyhymnia, muse of hymn-music; no. , euterpe, is song poetry; no. , thalia, is comedy, and no. , urania, muse of astronomy. athene gave the muses the winged horse, pegasus. but alack and alas! one of the poets became very poor and sold pegasus to a farmer. he was fastened to the plow, but he could not plow through the hard earth. his spirit was broken and his body was weak. the angry farmer tried to make him work, but how could he when he had no courage? but just then a beautiful youth came and asked the farmer to let him try the horse. of course the man was glad to have any one help get the plowing done. the young man petted the horse and slyly unfastened the harness as he patted him. he mounted upon his back and pegasus rose in the air, and away they both went, pegasus and mercury. the farmer looked on with amazement. how could a good-for-nothing horse that could not plow do such a wonderful thing as fly? [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the muses. romano. pitti palace, florence] "come, abide with us" fra giovanni angelico ( - ) nearly two thousand years ago two men were walking together along a dusty road in palestine. they talked earnestly as they walked along of a great event that had happened. a man called jesus, the christ, had been crucified and buried, but after three days he was not found in the tomb. as the men talked, a traveler joined them and asked: "what is it ye talk about and are sad?" and the men asked if he were a stranger in jerusalem and did not know the things that had come to pass. the stranger said, "what things?" then the men told him of jesus of nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before god and all the people. and they said that they had all hoped he was the mighty one who was to save the world but that he had been killed. then the stranger, who was jesus himself, but the men did not know him, began to tell them the story of all things about himself. still they did not know him, and as they came to the village of emmaus and the stranger made as though he would have gone further, the men said, "come, abide with us." this picture, showing the men inviting the stranger, was painted by fra angelico for the dominican monastery in florence, italy. you will find it over the entrance of san marco, where it welcomes every stranger who comes. fra angelico was so kind and gentle and helpful that his companions called him "angel brother"; in italian, "fra angelico." [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . "come, abide with us." fra angelico. san marco, florence] the supper at emmaus rembrandt van rijn ( ?- ) rembrandt has taken the story of the two men and the stranger on their way to emmaus after they have gone into the house. you see the disciples still did not know that the stranger was jesus, the christ. but when he sat at meat with them, he took bread and blessed it and brake and gave to them. then they knew that it was the savior who was talking with them and sitting at the table with them. rembrandt shows the wondering men as they begin to recognize who their guest is, and he makes us feel the warmth and gladness that fill their hearts when they know that it is the risen lord. the boy, too, lingers at the savior's side as though to hear the meaning of the scene. but as they look, jesus disappears out of their sight. when he is gone they say to each other: "did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?" rembrandt painted this picture after many sorrows had come to him. his beloved saskia, the mother of the "golden lad," titus, was dead; friends had deserted him and his patrons were gone. but the love of people still filled the heart of the great painter. [illustration: fig. . the supper at emmaus. rembrandt. louvre, paris] three children of charles i of england sir anthony van dyck ( - ) the little boy standing between his brother and sister in this picture is baby stuart, the same child that is in the picture of "baby stuart" that you know so well. when baby stuart grew up he was crowned james ii, king of england ( ). his brother was charles ii, king of england, and his sister was the mother of william iii, king of england. james ii, baby stuart, had a daughter, mary, who became mary, queen of england. when these cousins, william and mary, grew up they were married and crowned king and queen of england in . a funny story is told of the crowning ceremony. william was very short and mary was quite tall. it would not do to have mary taller than her husband, so a stool was brought for william to stand on. now they are the same height as they are crowned king william iii and queen mary ii of england. when william and mary ruled england the country was happy and prosperous because love reigned in the royal household. i have seen the stool that william stood on when he was crowned william iii of england. it is in westminster abbey, london. that is another interesting bit of historic setting that you will see when you go to visit england. sir anthony van dyck, the flemish artist, painted many pictures of the royal families of england, especially the family of charles i. he put little dogs into his pictures so often that the people began to call these little fellows "king charles spaniels." to-day, two hundred years after, they are still called king charles spaniels. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . children of charles i. van dyck. dresden gallery] the buttery pieter de hooch ( ?- ) pieter de hooch is a dutch artist you are going to love. usually you can tell his pictures by the checked or plaid floors. the floors in the homes in holland are mostly made of squares of black and white marble. did you ever see a cuter little girl than this one in the picture? she has come for her pitcher of milk. her mother went to the "buttery" for it: a buttery is a place for keeping casks and barrels and bottles. we can see one end of the cask or barrel under the window in the buttery. now look into the next room and see the chair on a little platform. that platform is quite common in the dutch home and is probably the place where mother or grandmother sits to read or sew by the window. what a beautiful day it must be out of doors to make the rooms so cheerful and bright! hooch loved the sunshine and used it to brighten every home he painted. the sunshine on the checked floors makes his pictures sing with joy and happiness. we can find very little about the life of the "dutch little masters," yet the pictures they have left us are among our greatest treasures: just little home scenes that you and i know about. it is said that de hooch often put in his people after he had finished painting his picture. in one picture he has added a girl near a fireplace to make the picture more balanced. we know that she was added after the picture was made, for we can see the plaid floor through her dress where the paint was too thin to cover the original floor. such little things tell us something of the method of work of the dutch painters. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the buttery. de hooch. ryks museum, amsterdam] the coronation of the virgin sandro botticelli ( - ) the children who are holding the book and ink-bottle in this picture, "the coronation of the virgin," lived four hundred years ago. their names are giovanni and giulio de' medici. botticelli, the artist, knew them well for he was born and brought up in florence and used to spend a great deal of time at the medici palace. the boys were cousins. giulio, the younger, was left an orphan when a wee child and his uncle, lorenzo the magnificent, adopted him and had him brought up with his own son giovanni. the boys were nearly the same age and grew up to be great and good men. both of them were popes of rome. the older boy, giovanni, was pope leo x and giulio pope clement vii. now look at the picture again. the madonna is reading to her little son, jesus, "the magnificat," that beautiful song from luke, chap. i, v. - , sung so often in our churches. let us repeat the song together: my soul doth magnify the lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in god my savior. for he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth, all generations shall call me blessed. for he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. and his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation he hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. he hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. he hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. he hath holpen his servant israel, in remembrance of his mercy; as he spake to our fathers, to abraham, and to his seed for ever. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . coronation of the virgin. botticelli. uffizi palace. florence] the wolf charmer john la farge ( - ) you see these wolves were once the old women gossips of the town, the story says; and when these women were unkind in what they said about people the fates--i have told you another story about the fates--the fates to punish them turned them into wolves. the wolf charmer, who really is the old gypsy who killed the black cat of the village witch, goes out into the night. the owl calls the wolves to attack the gypsy. but the gypsy knew the old women before they were turned into wolves so he calls them by name: "kate, anne, and bee!" and soon they follow him down the narrow path between the rocks and listen to his music on the bagpipes. "a funny story!" you say. you know there are people who have a strange power over wild animals. john la farge said about this picture, "i made it to be one of a series of some hundred subjects, more or less fantastic and imaginary." he never finished the pictures nor carried out his plan of making these books for children. i am giving you "the wolf charmer" because he painted the picture for you. mr. la farge named this picture as the one he liked best of his paintings. [illustration: courtesy of john la farge fig. . the wolf charmer. la farge. courtesy of the city art museum, st. louis] the old woman cutting her nails rembrandt van rijn ( ?- ) no artist in all history had a sadder life than rembrandt. it was sad because the people of amsterdam were stupid and too blind to know that a great man was living among them. rembrandt could paint wonderful portraits, and the rich people wanted their portraits painted. at first all went well. the rich flocked to his studio and rembrandt made marvelous likenesses. then the guilds of the great commercial houses wanted pictures for their halls. they came to rembrandt for these pictures, but thinking that their money had bought the great artist body and soul, they began to tell him how he should make the pictures that each one might have equal prominence in it. naturally rembrandt would not be bought off with money. his art was bigger than gold. the picture that was really the turning point in his life was "the night watch." i wish you would look at the picture again. you see the men away back in the picture were jealous that they were not put in the front row. all they cared for was to have a fine portrait of themselves and rembrandt was only interested in making a great picture. rembrandt went on painting but no one bought his pictures. many sorrows came to him. it was when the world had forsaken him that he painted "the old woman cutting her nails." now you can understand why rembrandt could paint an old woman with human sympathy. we could love that old woman because the unkindness of the world made her more tender and true to suffering humanity. she is the old grandmother we would go to if we were in trouble. [illustration: fig. . the old woman cutting her nails. rembrandt. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the spinner nicolaes maes ( - ) this old woman is spinning flax. have you ever seen a flax wheel? when you go to holland try to visit dordrecht, and if possible, go into a real dutch home. there you may see some one, the grandmother maybe, spinning flax; then you will know that this picture is an actual scene. nicolaes maes, who painted the picture, was born in dordrecht or dort. this city is said to be the oldest city in the netherlands; it was founded in the tenth century. an old woman spinning was a familiar scene to maes. now look at this spinner closely. she will not mind, for she is too intent on picking up a thread, possibly a broken or a knotted one. maes saw a picture in the old woman's dull red dress and bright red sleeves. he liked the brown wheel and the yellow floor and the beautiful bit of blue cloth thrown over the wheel-base. then he saw how beautifully the white kerchief and apron and wall caught the light. he saw the helpfulness of the rugged old hand, worn and scarred as it was, yet patient and firm in repairing a mistake. maes's "the spinner" and rembrandt's "the old woman cutting her nails" make the tasks of every-day life very human. we in america owe much to these old dutch women and to the artists who have made them live for us. this picture of "the spinner" is only sixteen and one fourth inches high and thirteen inches wide, yet that old woman at her spinning-wheel is as much a real person in the room where she hangs on the wall as she was when maes painted her, nearly three hundred years ago. i want you to love these little dutch pictures; they are so honest and true and tell us about real people and real things, and they make us feel that beauty is everywhere. now look at your grandmother as she mends your stockings and see how beautiful she is with the light on her dear old face and hair. [illustration: fig. . the spinner. maes. ryks museum, amsterdam] st. george and the dragon vittore carfaccio ( ?- ) st. george, a noble youth of cappadocia, was one of the oldest and most noted of the saints. the story always told of him is his killing the dragon. once upon a time st. george was going through palestine on horseback when he came to the city of beirut. there he found a beautiful young girl in royal dress weeping outside the walls of the city. when he asked her why she was crying, she told him that a terrible dragon lived in the marshes near the city. and to keep him from destroying every one in the city, each day two young girls must be fed to him. these young girls were chosen by lot, and this day she, cleodolinda, the king's daughter, must be eaten by the dragon. st. george told her not to be afraid for he would destroy the dragon. but she cried: "o noble youth, tarry not here, lest thou perish with me! but fly, i beseech thee!" st. george answered: "god forbid that i should fly! i will lift my hand against the loathly thing, and will deliver thee through the power of jesus christ!" then st. george, rushed at the dragon and thrust his spear into his mouth and conquered him. he then took the young girl's mantle and bound the beast, and she led him into the city to her father. that day twenty thousand people of the city were baptized. as time went on the name of st. george became very great. from the time that richard i--the lion-hearted--placed his army under the protection of st. george the saint became the patron saint of england. in the order of the garter, the highest order of knighthood in great britain, was founded and on its emblem is a picture of st. george and the dragon. carpaccio, a venetian artist, painted this picture of "st. george and the dragon." he painted many other stories of saints. [illustration: fig. . st. george and the dragon. carpaccio. church of san giorgio degli schiavoni, venice] the grand canal, venice joseph mallard william turner ( - ) venice is a very curious city. it is really built on stilts on top of the water. its streets are canals. instead of having street-cars and horses and taxicabs everybody goes in long boats called gondolas. the main street in the city is the grand canal, and in this canal come all sorts of people with all sorts of water-crafts. the children play in the side streets just as you do except that they swim in the water instead of running on the ground. even the babies are in the water fastened to the door-steps by a rope around their little bodies. how they do coo and gurgle as they paddle their little hands and feet like young frogs! turner shows in this picture the grand canal filled with ships from other countries with gaily colored flags fluttering in the breeze. do you see the tower at the left in the picture? that is the campanile, the bell-tower. this wonderful tower fell down flat in . i talked with a man who has a store just opposite the tower, a few weeks after it fell. he said to me: "i thought it would fall on my store and destroy everything. it began to tip; then all at once it fell flat just where it stood." the venetians soon built it up again. when napoleon, the great french emperor, took venice, he rode up the inclined plane of this tower on his horse and stood on the very top overlooking the sea. [illustration: fig. . the grand canal. turner. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the song of the lark jules adolphe breton ( - ) up with me! up with me into the clouds! for thy song, lark, is strong; up with me, up with me into the clouds! singing, singing, with clouds and sky above thee ringing, lift me, guide me till i find that spot which seems so to thy mind! wordsworth can you not almost hear this girl singing? the sun is just coming up. the lark is rising in the sky, singing! the girl has come out to work in the fields; a peasant girl. barefooted, barehanded, she stands straight like a soldier of work with her head lifted to drink in the morning air as she sings. one morning early i was driving through the country roads in the south of england when larks began to rise from the fields where the workmen were, just like this lark from the french field, and how they did sing! i stopped and listened, watching them go up higher and higher, their song growing fainter and fainter, and then they disappeared. where did they go? let us ask this french peasant girl. do you think that she can tell us? if she cannot, who can? [illustration: fig. . song of the lark. breton. courtesy of the art institute, chicago] the holy night antonio allegra da correggio ( ?- ) it is a wonderful story, the story of the holy night. the mother and father had traveled a long way; and when they came to bethlehem every place was taken so they found a bed in a cave. in the night a baby boy came to the mother, and she "wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in an inn. and there was in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. and, lo, the angel of the lord came upon them, and the glory of the lord shone around about them; and they were sore afraid. "and the angel said unto them, fear not; for behold, i bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. for unto you is born this day in the city of david, a savior, which is christ, the lord. and this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising god, saying, glory to god in the highest, and on earth peace, good will unto men. "and it came to pass as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, let us go even to bethlehem and see this thing which has come to pass, which the lord has made known to us. and they came with great haste, and found mary and joseph; and the babe lying in a manger. at first a bright cloud overshadowed the cave but on a sudden the cloud became a great light in the cave, so that their eyes could not bear it. but the light gradually decreased until the infant appeared, and sucked the breast of his mother, mary." the picture shows us the shepherds in the cave worshiping the young child, jesus, the christ. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the holy night. correggio. dresden gallery] the gleaners jean franÇois millet ( - ) millet was a french peasant boy--very poor. he says his grandmother would come into his room early in the morning and call: "awake, my little françois; if you only knew how long a time the birds have been singing the glory of the good god!" he would insist when he was helping in the fields that there was beautiful color over the plowed ground, and when the other fellows laughed at him, he would say: "wait, some day i will paint a picture and show you the color." after he was an artist he was going by a field one day when a peasant cutting grain called to him: "i would like to see you take a sickle." "i'll take your sickle," millet answered quickly, "and reap faster than you and all your family." of course the man laughed, for how could an artist cut grain. he soon stopped laughing, for millet cut much faster and farther than he could. millet would often go into the forest just back of his house to rest after painting all day. then he would say: "i do not know what those beggars of trees say to each other, but they say something which we do not understand, because we do not understand their language." millet's work is often called "the poems of the earth." once when i was in barbizon i found the gate open into millet's door-yard. of course i walked in, but the owner insisted that i walk out again. i shall never forget the peep i had of the little garden and the doorway and the long rambling house. that millet lived there with his large family and there painted the pictures we love makes the place a joy to us. [illustration: fig. . the gleaners. millet. louvre, paris] st. cecilia raphael sanzio ( - ) did you know that st. cecilia invented the organ, that wonderful musical instrument in our churches? cecilia was born in rome sixteen hundred years ago. she was a beautiful young girl who loved music and composed many hymns. the organ she dedicated to god's service. when cecilia was married, her husband, a rich nobleman, was converted and baptized. he knelt by the side of cecilia, and an angel crowned them with crowns made from roses which bloomed in paradise. the first thing valerian asked was that his brother, who was a heathen, might be converted too. they sent for the brother, and when he came and found the room filled with the sweet fragrance of roses, though it was not the rose season, then he too became a christian. the people of rome were very unkind to cecilia and valerian and his brother because they preached the story of jesus, the christ. at last they killed them. st. cecilia is the guardian saint of music and is always shown in art with the organ, as you see in this picture by raphael. the man standing at the left of the picture with his hand up to his face is st. paul. this is the most famous picture of st. paul. raphael shows the group listening to the heavenly choir while the earthly instruments of music have fallen at cecilia's feet broken and out of tune. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . st. cecilia. raphael. bologna, italy] helena fourment rubens and her son and daughter peter paul rubens ( - ) this picture of "helena fourment rubens and her son and daughter" was really painted to honor the boy. it has always been the custom in europe to pay special attention to the boys in the home and keep the girls very much in the background. it is very easy to see how pert the little albert rubens is, and how subdued and meek is his sister. the boy has the "lord of creation" air that would not be good for him in america. we love the picture, for rubens, the father, shows us plainly the old idea that the boy rules the home. naturally the father would know the traits of his own children but not always would he allow us to know them too. rubens was so wonderful as an artist, as a man to settle quarrels, and as a beautiful gentleman that all europe did him honor. he was sent to see the ruling powers in england, in spain, in italy, and in france. each ruler entertained him as a royal guest, and rubens painted masterpieces for each in return. his paintings were the wonder of the age. it is said that his fellow-artists looked with jealous eyes at his flesh tints, and that all painters since have been in despair trying to equal him. he left hundreds of pictures and hundreds of sketches. the sketches alone are bringing many hundreds of times their weight in gold. [illustration: fig. . helena fourment and her son and daughter. rubens. louvre, paris] the harp of the winds homer martin ( - ) about a dozen years ago europe began to wonder if america had any art worth considering. she invited us to send samples of our paintings that her critics might judge of our work. among the pictures selected was homer martin's "the harp of the winds." at once europe saw that an american artist had painted a masterpiece. this scene is on the river seine, a short distance from paris. was anything ever more simple? slender willow-trees almost leafless, bare rocks with a few scrubby bushes, a tiny village sheltered in a curve of the river--what is there to suggest a picture? and yet something grips us. we seem to be at the beginnings of creation. nature is confiding in us. we are hearing the winds play on the harp to the listening river. see how lovingly the water mirrors those harp strings all sparkly with gold and green! i wonder if these willows make a harp or a lyre with their tall stalks reaching to the sky? do you remember how, when mercury found a tortoise, he took the shell and made holes on both sides and strung nine strings across it--one for each muse--and gave it to apollo? i think this harp of the winds has nine strings in memory of mercury's lyre. [illustration: fig. . the harp of the winds. martin. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] the tribute money titian, or tiziano vecelli ( - ) every child must know "the tribute money," painted by titian, for no artist understood the scene better than he did. remember that the bad men in palestine were determined to find something that jesus, the christ, had done against the roman government so they could trap him. at last they sent one in authority to question him. but jesus said, "bring me a penny, that i may see it." and they brought him a penny. and jesus said, "whose is this image and superscription?" and the man was forced to say, "cæsar's." then jesus made that famous reply that people use so often to-day: "render to cæsar the things that are cæsar's, and to god the things that are god's." titian shows the moment when the tax-gatherer must say that the penny belonged to cæsar, the roman emperor. it had cæsar's portrait on it and cæsar's demands written on it. look carefully at the two faces and the two hands, and tell me what you think of the two men as titian shows them to us. [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . the tribute money. titian. dresden gallery] the maids of honor diego rodriguez de silva y velasquez ( - ) if it had not been for velasquez we should know very little about the little princes and princesses of spain in the time of philip iv, about the middle of the sixteenth century. he made many portraits of these children, especially of the little princess margarita. one day when velasquez was painting a portrait of philip iv, the king's little daughter margarita came into the room attended by her maids of honor and a splendid dog. the king was so delighted with the little group that he told velasquez to make a picture of them just as they stood there before him. now look at the picture and you will see in the looking-glass at the back of the room the reflection of the king and the queen. at the easel stands velasquez, the artist, with his palette and brushes. the wee fair-haired princess is the center of the group. the strange-looking little women, her maids of honor, are dwarfs. and see what a magnificent fellow the dog is, lying so contentedly on the floor right in front of us. when the picture was finished, and the people went to see it, many of them asked, "where is the picture?" the little margarita and her maids are so alive and those people standing around seem so real that no one thought they could be painted on canvas. velasquez made such wonderfully real likenesses that some one told this story of one: one day the king came to velasquez's studio and seeing, as he supposed, one of his admirals whom he had sent to take a command a few days before, he spoke angrily: "what! still here? did i not command you to depart? why have you not obeyed?" of course the admiral did not answer, and then the king found that he had been angry at a portrait. [illustration: fig. . the maids of honor. velasquez. madrid gallery, spain] the nymphs jean baptiste camille corot ( - ) everybody loved père corot--papa corot, as he was called. his happy manner and lovely smile won for him the name of the "happy one." i want you to know what papa corot says, in a letter to a friend, about himself and his painting. he writes: "look you, it is charming, the day of a landscapist. he gets up at three in the morning, before sunrise, goes and sits under a tree, and watches and waits. not much can be seen at first. nature is behind a veil. everything smells sweet. "ping! a ray of yellow light shoots up. the veil is torn, and meadow and valley and hill are peeping through the rent. "bing, bing! the sun's first ray--another ray--and the flowers awake and drink a drop of quivering dew. the leaves feel cold and move to and fro. under the leaves unseen birds are singing softly. the flowers are saying their morning prayers. "bam! the sun has risen. bam! a peasant crosses the field with a cart and oxen. ding! ding! says the bell of the ram that leads the flock of sheep. "bam! bam! all bursts--all glitters--all is full of light, blond and caressing as yet. the flowers raise their heads. it is adorable. i paint! i paint! "boom! boom! boom! the sun aflame burns the earth. everything becomes heavy. let us go home. we see too much now. let us go home." you see now why corot could paint such a lovely picture as "the nymphs." he saw these gauzy creatures in the early morning light and painted them before the sun scattered them to the four winds. [illustration: fig. . the nymphs. corot. louvre, paris] st. francis preaching to the birds giotto di bondone ( ?- ) one time more than six hundred years ago st. francis preached the dearest sermon to "my sisters the birds" that you ever heard. he said to them as they lifted their little heads to listen to his words: "ye are beholden unto god your creator, and always and in every place it is your duty to praise him! ye are bounden to him for the element of the air which he has deputed to you forever-more. you sow not, neither do you reap. god feeds you and gives you the streams and fountains for your thirst. he gives you the mountains and the valleys for your refuge, tall trees wherein to make your nests, and inasmuch as you neither spin nor reap god clothes you and your children, hence ye should love your creator greatly, and therefore beware, my sisters, of the sins of ingratitude, and ever strive to praise god." st. francis then made the sign of the cross and sent the birds north, south, east, and west to carry the story of the cross to all mankind. when giotto, who painted this picture of "st. francis preaching to the birds," was a little boy, he took care of his father's sheep in the fields. one day a noted painter, cimabue, found giotto drawing a sheep on a flat rock with colored stones. the picture of the sheep was so lifelike that the great man asked the boy, giotto, to go with him and become an artist. he went, and one day years afterward the pope sent to giotto for a sample of his work. giotto sent him a big round o. it pleased the pope to find a man so original, and he gave giotto many orders for pictures. to-day the saying is "round as giotto's o." [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . st. francis preaching to the birds. giotto. upper church, assisi, italy] the governess jean baptiste simeon chardin ( - ) when chardin began to paint pictures he went into the french homes and painted pictures of brass pots and kettles, of fruits and vegetables. then he took common scenes of life and gave us a number of pictures showing just what was going on in the homes and back yards. the french people were not used to having an artist see beauty in the every-day things they were doing; artists had been painting the rich for the rich. everybody began to love the pictures chardin painted. this is a very simple story in "the governess." the child--is it a boy or a girl?--is now ready to go to school. he--i believe he is a boy--is hearing some advice, and i do not think he is pleased, for he has a little frown on his face. his dress is peculiar. the french children two hundred years ago did not dress as you do to-day. he is the same kind of a child that you are, i am sure, and you and he would soon be great friends. chardin's color was so wonderful that one of his artist friends cried out: "o chardin! it is not white, red, or black that you grind to powder on your palette; it is the air and the light that you take on the point of your brush and fix on canvas." chardin's pictures are as beautiful and bright to-day as they were when he painted them. [illustration: fig. . the governess. chardin. liechtenstein gallery, vienna] the last supper leonardo da vinci ( - ) i want you to know the disciples of jesus just as leonardo da vinci painted them four hundred years ago. leonardo spent months among the men of milan, italy, looking into their faces and talking with them. when he began to paint "the last supper" he had gathered men together so like these twelve disciples that we feel we can know them as jesus knew them. for three years those men of old walked with jesus and talked with him as they went up and down palestine; and at last, on that wonderful night, they met with him in the upper chamber to eat with him the last supper. those disciples did not know that it was the last meal they would eat with jesus before he was hung on the cross. we shall begin in the center of the table and name the disciples as leonardo has them in the picture. first is the savior. at his left is james with his arms spread out in distress; back of him is thomas with his finger uplifted; then philip rising with his hand on his heart; next matthew, his arms pointing to the savior while he turns toward the two near the end; next to him is thaddeus; and then simon. on the other side of jesus sits john, the beloved disciple. his hands are folded and his eyes are cast down. next to john is judas, the betrayer; he holds the bag clutched in his right hand and near him is the overturned salt cellar. leaning back of judas is peter with one hand on john's shoulder; next to peter is andrew; then james, the less, laying one hand on peter's arm. at the end of the table is bartholomew, who has risen resting his hands on the table. these men are all asking, "is it i?" for jesus had said, "he it is to whom i give a sop." [illustration: fig. . the last supper. leonardo da vinci. santa maria delle grazie, milan] sir galahad george frederick watts ( - ) of all the stories of king arthur and his knights of the round table none is so strange as that of sir galahad. its beginning is in the upper chamber at the last supper with jesus and his disciples. legend says that the cup used by our savior at the last supper was the holy grail. joseph of arimathea, who bought the cup from pontius pilate, used it to catch the blood that flowed from the pierced side of our lord. the cup, or holy grail, was kept in the convent of the holy grail by the descendants of joseph of arimathea. the cup had marvelous powers in the hands of a perfect knight. centuries passed and no perfect knight came to claim the holy grail. then king arthur founded the knights of the round table. one seat at the round table was always vacant waiting for the sinless youth. many tried to sit in the "seat perilous," as it was called, but the seat let each one down to disappear forever. at last an old man--joseph of arimathea himself--brought a boy and seated him in the vacant chair. the knights were frightened but the boy sat unharmed and above the seat appeared the words: this is the seat of galahad king arthur knighted him and sent him forth to find the holy grail. years went by and awful trials and temptations came to sir galahad. he did not yield to the bad things that came, but kept looking for the holy grail. at last he held the cross before his face to keep off his tormentors when before his eyes he saw the cup, and the power of the holy grail came to him. this picture of sir galahad in eton college, england, hangs in the chapel opposite the entrance door where each boy passes in on his way to morning and evening prayers. [illustration: fig. . sir galahad. watts. eton college, england] the duchess of devonshire and her child sir joshua reynolds ( - ) sir joshua reynolds ought to be called "the painter of little girls." no artist ever painted a larger number of little girls. and no artist ever knew better than he how to get the confidence of children, boys or girls. one time a little boy in london was to carry a flag in a procession. what do you think he did? he went to sir joshua reynolds, the artist whom no one dared to interrupt, and asked him if he would paint a flag for him. this pleased the great man. when the boy proudly displayed his flag, every one asked: "where did you get such a wonderful flag?" you can guess how proud the boy was to say, "sir joshua reynolds painted it for me!" this picture of "the duchess of devonshire and her child" is one of the greatest pictures sir joshua ever painted. the original painting is now in the magnificent country seat of the duke of devonshire at chatsworth, england. sir joshua had a way of making his pictures sparkle and glisten that was unknown to other artists. one of our own artists, gilbert stuart, when in london, was copying a very valuable portrait by sir joshua. he thought he saw one of the eyes move. he was horrified to find that it really was moving down on the cheek. he grabbed the picture and ran into a cold room and then worked the eye back in place. the secret was out! sir joshua reynolds had used wax to make his pictures glitter and, alas, the glitter would not last. [illustration: fig. . the duchess of devonshire and her child. reynolds. royal gallery, windsor] st. agnes and her lamb andrea del sarto ( - ) one of the most beautiful pictures of "st. agnes and her lamb" was painted by andrea del sarto,--"andrea the faultless," as he was called. it is in the cathedral at pisa. st. agnes was a roman girl who lived three hundred years after the birth of jesus. her father and mother were heathens, but their little daughter became a christian when a mere child. she did not tell her parents that she loved jesus, but when she refused to worship idols they knew that she had become a disciple of the master christ. this made them so angry that they handed her over to the roman rulers to be punished. these wicked men tried in every way to persuade agnes to bow down to their gods made of wood and stone. when she would not bow down to them they tried to force her to worship the idols. they gave her over to the soldiers and ordered them to take her clothes away, but immediately her hair grew and covered her, and angels came and gave her a shining white garment. she even refused to marry the son of the roman magistrate. the son thought that he could compel her to consent to the marriage after she was persecuted, but he was struck blind when he tried to see her. when st. agnes saw what great sorrow came to the home of the young nobleman because he was blind, she prayed for him and his eyesight came again. his father was so thankful that he pleaded for her life, but the people said, "she is a sorceress: she must die." then they tried to burn her, but the flames burned her tormentors and did her no harm. at last she was killed with a sword. she is always represented with a lamb. michael angelo wrote to raphael about andrea del sarto: "there is a little fellow in florence who, if he were employed as you are upon great works, would make it hot for you." [illustration: courtesy of pratt institute fig. . st. agnes and her lamb. andrea del sarto. pisa cathedral, italy] whistler's mother james abbott mcneill whistler ( - ) the story about whistler and his mother is rather a sad one. he went to europe when he was a young painter and told his mother as he started that he would come home to her when he had made a success. but he never made a success in money. he painted this picture of his mother and for twenty years tried to sell it. he offered it to his own country--the united states--for five hundred dollars. we were so stupid that we did not know that the picture was a masterpiece and that no amount of money could buy it later on. but the people of paris began to feel that whistler, the american artist, was a great master, and the city bought the picture, "whistler's mother." of course we can never own the picture now, although it is an american mother, unless the french people should give it to us. but we do not deserve it, do we? after a number of years whistler's mother went to europe to make a home for her wonderful son. she died in chelsea, and to-day the mother and son are side by side in the little churchyard of chiswick, near london. [illustration: fig. . whistler's mother. whistler. luxembourg, paris] st. christopher titian, or tiziano vecelli ( - ) christopher, or offero, was born in palestine in the third century. he was a giant in size but ignorant and poor. he felt that he could not work for any one who was afraid of any one else. he wandered over the country and at last he came to a powerful king and offered to work for him. the king thought it very fine to have a giant for a servant. one day offero stood by the king's side while a minstrel sang a song about satan. every time the name of satan was spoken the king crossed himself. offero was puzzled, for he never had heard of satan, nor of jesus. when he found that the king was afraid of satan, offero went to find the man the king was afraid of. offero found satan and became his servant. but as they went through the land offero saw that satan always went away around the little shrines. offero asked satan why he did that. satan said he did not like to come near the cross where was the crucified one. then offero knew that he was afraid of jesus. he went out to find jesus. at last an old hermit told offero to go to a river where people were often drowned and to carry every one across on his back, and that maybe he would find jesus. offero built himself a hut and spent years carrying people over the stream and no one was drowned. one stormy night offero thought he heard a child's voice calling him. he went out two or three times. at last the child appeared and asked offero to carry him over. offero started. the storm grew worse and the water rose high and the child grew very, very heavy. when offero set the child down, he said, "i feel as though i had carried the whole world!" the child answered: "offero, you have carried the maker of the world. i am jesus, whom you have sought. you shall be called christ-offero--the christ-bearer--from now on." [illustration: fig. . st. christopher. titian. doges' palace, venice] the blue boy thomas gainsborough ( - ) gainsborough began to draw and paint when he was a child. he often entertained his companions by drawing pictures for them while they read the lessons to him. one morning thomas got up with the sun and went out into the garden to sketch. there was in the garden a wonderful pear-tree full of ripe pears, and the pears had been disappearing very mysteriously. while thomas was making his drawings he saw a man's face appear suddenly above the stone wall. he quickly made a sketch of the face, and frightened the man before he could get away with the fruit. at the breakfast-table the young artist told his father what he had done and showed him the sketch. his father knew the man and sent for him. when the man was accused of stealing the pears he denied it, but when he was shown the picture thomas had made of him he confessed that he had taken the pears. artists, like all of us, want to lay down rules for every one to follow who is doing their same kind of work. sir joshua reynolds said, "the masses of light in a picture ought to be always of a warm, mellow colour--yellow, red, or yellowish white; and the blue, the grey, or green colours should be kept almost entirely out of the masses." gainsborough did not agree with him. to show sir joshua that he was wrong gainsborough painted pictures in blue and green. the famous "blue boy" alone proved that he was right. the boy has on a blue satin suit and he stands out-of-doors in green grass with green foliage and blue sky around him. when sir joshua saw gainsborough's blue-green pictures he said frankly, "i cannot think how he produces his effects." these two men were never good friends yet when gainsborough was near death sir joshua reynolds came to his bedside, and when gainsborough died reynolds was one of the pall-bearers. [illustration: fig. . the blue boy. gainsborough. private gallery, henry huntington, los angeles, california] the sleeping girl jan van der meer of delft ( - ) i want you to know and love the dutch pictures. the painters were called "little masters," simply because they painted small pictures for the homes. for the homes! the dutch wanted pictures to hang on their walls; pictures they could live with. now what do you think of the "sleeping girl"? do you know i could live with that picture and feel that i always had something to make me happy? it is so homy. see how comfortable the girl is! of course a good healthy girl has no business to be sleeping in the daytime, but we can forgive her now that van der meer has caught her asleep and let us see her. then look at that wonderful rug! was ever anything so soft and velvety? if we knew about rugs we might tell its name and maybe its age. van der meer had a way of catching people without their knowing it. he seems to have cut a piece out of the wall where he peeped in and painted what he saw. we are glad the girl left the door open into another room so that we can see the table and pictures and part of the window-frame. i think these things are reflected in a looking-glass. van der meer painted only about forty pictures, and eight of those are in the united states. they are among our greatest art treasures. [illustration: fig. . the sleeping girl. van der meer. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] st. antony and the christ-child bartholome esteban murillo ( - ) many very curious legends are told of st. antony of padua, who died in . he was a close friend of st. francis (see "st. francis and his birds," page ). one story says that one time he was preaching about the savior when the child jesus came and sat on his open bible. it is this story that murillo painted his picture to illustrate. again and again murillo has shown us st. antony with the christ-child, but never more beautifully than here. this is one of murillo's greatest religious pictures. another story is told of st. antony. one day he was preaching the funeral sermon of a rich young man when he exclaimed: "his heart is buried in his treasure-chest; go seek it there and you will find it." sure enough when the friends of the rich young man opened the treasure-chest there was the heart, and no heart was found in the young man's dead body. [illustration: fig. . st. anthony and the christ-child. murillo. museum of seville, spain.] king lear edwin austin abbey ( - ) the story of "king lear" is one of the most pitiful of shakespeare's play. it is about the thanklessness of children to a father. old _king lear_ had three daughters--_goneril_, _regan_, and _cordelia_. he loved these daughters dearly and he believed that they loved him. as he grew old in life he thought he would divide his kingdom and property among them equally; then there would be no trouble about his wealth after he was dead. of course he expected to make his home with them in turn as long as he lived. naturally he went to _goneril_, the eldest daughter, first. very soon he found that he was not wanted. she had the money--her father's money--but why should she be troubled with her old father? he then went to _regan_, his second child, but she too refused to make a home for him. the third daughter, _cordelia_, loved her father dearly and wanted him to live with her that she might care for him in his old age. by a strange mishap the old father thought that _cordelia_, his beloved child, was false to him. he wandered off on the heath in a fearful storm and at last found shelter in a hut where he thinks even his faithful dogs are against him. he cries out pitifully: the little dogs and all, tray, blanche and sweetheart, see they bark at me. abbey has painted the scene when the old king is leaving heart-broken, for he thinks _cordelia_, the child he loves best, is deserting him. _cordelia_, knowing how false her sisters are, is saying: i know you what you are; and, like a sister, am most loath to call your faults as they are named. love well our father. abbey's story of "the holy grail" in the boston library is one of america's great series of paintings for wall decoration. [illustration: fig. . king lear. abbey. courtesy of the metropolitan museum of art, new york city.] sunset in the woods george inness ( - ) whenever you can, i want you to find out what the painter says about his own pictures. we feel very glad that george inness told us about "sunset in the woods." he said in : "the material for my picture was taken from a sketch made near hastings, on the hudson, new york, twenty years ago. this picture was commenced seven years ago, but until last winter i had not obtained any idea equal to the impression received on the spot. the idea is to express an effect of light in the woods at sunset." what a wonderful glow he has on those trees beyond the big rock away back in the picture. and see the light on the trunk of the big tree near us. i believe the light is gradually disappearing as we look. somehow we feel the birds are twittering as they go to bed and the flowers are nodding their heads, they are so sleepy. soon it will be dark and the owl will screech and the night insects will buzz. come, we must go home or we cannot see our way! [illustration: fig. . sunset in the woods. inness. courtesy of the corcoran art gallery, washington, d. c.] index abbey, edwin austin, , angelico, fra giovanni, , angelo, michael, , , arthur, king, , bastien-lepage, jules, , botticelli, sandro, , breton, jules adolphe, , cæsar (tiberius), carpaccio, vittore, , chardin, jean baptiste simeon, , charles i, , , charles ii, , charles v, charles vi, vii, corot, jean baptiste camille, , , , correggio, antonio, , , , constable, john, , disciples, the, , dolci, carlo, farge, john la, , ferdinand iii, fourment, helena, , gainsborough, thomas, , galahad, sir, , giotto di bondone, , gods and goddesses, apollo, , , , , aurora, , atropos, (a fate), , calliope, (a muse), , clio (a muse), , clothes, (a fate), , diana, erato (a muse), , euterpe, (a muse), , fates, the, , , horæ, , hyperion, , lachesis (a fate), , melpomene (a muse), , memnon, memory, mercury, , muses, the, , , pegasus, polyhymnia (a muse), , selene, thalia (a muse), , urania (a muse), , zeus, , hals, frans, , homer, winslow, , hooch, pieter de, , inness, george, , james ii, jesus, , , , , , , , , , , , , joan of arc, , joseph of arimathea, lear, king, , maes, nicolaes, , magnificent, the, martin, homer, , medici, giovanni de' (pope leo x), medici, giulio de (pope clement vii), medici, lorenzo de', millet, jean françois, , murillo, bartolome esteban, , , , napoleon, offero, , philip iv, pintoricchio, bernardino, , raphael sanzio, , , , , , , rembrandt, van rijn. , , , , , , reni, guido, , reynolds, sir joshua, , , romano, giulio, , rubens, peter paul, , , , , stuart, gilbert, sarto, andrea del, saints, agnes, , anthony, , barbara, , cecilia, , christopher, , elizabeth, francis, , , george, , jerome, , , john the baptist, joseph, , mary, (madonna, virgin), , , , , , , michael, paul, , titian vecelli, , , , , , turner, joseph mallard william, , van der meer, jan, , van dyck, anthony, , , , , , vecchio, palma, il jacopo, , velasquez, diego rodriguez de silva y, , venice, , vinci, leonardo da, , watts, george frederick, , whistler, james abbott mcneill, , william iii, wordsworth, zacharias, note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/ / / / / / -h.zip) watts ( - ) by w. loftus hare illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: plate i.--death crowning innocence (frontispiece) a little child lying in the lap of the winged figure of death. death, ever to watts a silent angel of pity, "takes charge of innocence, placing it beyond the reach of evil." it was first exhibited at the winter exhibition of the new gallery, , and was given to the nation in . it is now at the tate gallery.] masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s.l. bensusan. reynolds. s.l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s.l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s.l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m.w. brockwell. rubens. s.l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s.l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w.h.j. & j.c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s.l. bensusan. dÜrer. h.e.a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s.l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a.j. finberg. others in preparation. the publishers have to acknowledge the permission of mrs. watts to reproduce the series of paintings here included. [illustration: in sempiternum.] list of illustrations plate i. death crowning innocence frontispiece at the tate gallery ii. the minotaur at the tate gallery iii. hope at the tate gallery iv. thomas carlyle at the south kensington museum v. love and life at the tate gallery vi. love triumphant at the tate gallery vii. the good samaritan at the manchester art gallery viii. prayer at the manchester art gallery [illustration] i a biographical outline in july of the eighty-seven mortal years of george frederick watts came to an end. he had outlived all the contemporaries and acquaintances of his youth; few, even among the now living, knew him in his middle age; while to those of the present generation, who knew little of the man though much of his work, he appeared as members of the ionides family, thus inaugurating the series of private and public portraits for which he became so famous. the watts of our day, however, the teacher first and the painter afterwards, had not yet come on the scene. his first aspiration towards monumental painting began in the year , when in a competition for the decoration of the houses of parliament he gained a prize of £ for his cartoon of "caractacus led captive through the streets of rome." at this time, when history was claiming pictorial art as her servant and expositor, young watts carried off the prize against the whole of his competitors. this company included the well-known historical painter haydon, who, from a sense of the impossibility of battling against his financial difficulties, and from the neglect, real or fancied, of the leading politicians, destroyed himself by his own hand. the £ took the successful competitor to italy, where for four years he remained as a guest of lord holland. glimpses of the italy he gazed upon and loved are preserved for us in a landscape of the hillside town of fiesole with blue sky and clouds, another of a castellated villa and mountains near florence, and a third of the "carrara mountains near pisa"; while of his portraiture of that day, "lady holland" and "lady dorothy nevill" are relics of the italian visit. [illustration: plate ii.--the minotaur in this terrible figure, half man, half bull, gazing over the sea from the battlement of a hill tower, we see the artist's representation of the greed and lust associated with modern civilisations. the picture was exhibited at the winter exhibition of the new gallery, , and formed part of the watts gift in . it hangs in the watts room at the tate gallery.] italy, and particularly florence, was perpetual fascination and inspiration to watts. there he imbibed the influences of orcagna and titian--influences, indeed, which were clearly represented in the next monumental painting which he attempted. it came about that lord holland persuaded his guest to enter a fresh competition for the decoration of the parliament houses, and watts carried off the prize with his "alfred inciting the saxons to resist the landing of the danes." the colour and movement of the great italian masters, conspicuously absent from the "caractacus" cartoon, were to be seen in this new effort, where, as has been said, the english king stands like a raphaelesque archangel in the midst of the design. in watts had attained, one might almost say, the position of official historical painter to the state, a post coveted by the unfortunate haydon; and he received a commission to paint a fresco of "st. george overcomes the dragon," which was not completed till . in this year he contributed as an appendix to the diary of haydon--in itself an exciting document, showing how wretched the life of an official painter then might be--a note telling of the state of historical and monumental painting in the 'forties, and of his own attitude towards it; a few of his own words, written before the days of the "poster," may be usefully quoted here: on the public employment of artists patriots and statesmen alike forget that the time will come when the want of great art in england will produce a gap sadly defacing the beauty of the whole national structure.... working, for example, as an historian to record england's battles, haydon would, no doubt, have produced a series of mighty and instructive pictures.... why should not the government of a mighty country undertake the decoration of all the public buildings, such as town halls, national schools, and even railway stations.... ... or considering the walls as slates whereon the school-boy writes his figures, the great productions of other times might be reproduced, if but to be rubbed out when fine originals could be procured; for the expense would very little exceed that of whitewashing.... if, for example, on some convenient wall the whole line of british sovereigns were painted--were monumental effigies well and correctly drawn, with date, length of reign, remarkable events written underneath, these worthy objects would be attained--intellectual exercise, decoration of space, and instruction to the public. the year was a critical time for watts; his first allegorical picture, "time and oblivion," was painted, and, in the year following, "life's illusions" appeared on the walls of the famous academy which contained the first works of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood. watts was not of the party, though he might have been had he desired; he preferred independence. watts' personal life was at this time pervaded by the influence of lord and lady holland, who, having returned from florence to london, had him as a constant visitor to holland house. in he went to live at the dower house, an old building in the fields of kensington. there, as a guest of the prinsep family, he set up as a portrait painter. his host and family connections were some of the first to sit for him; and he soon gained fame in this class of work. there was a temporary interruption in , when a journey to the east, in company with sir charles newton, for the purpose of opening the buried temple of mausolus at halicarnassus, gave watts further insight into the old greek world; and, one cannot but think, stimulated his efforts, later so successful, in depicting for us so many incidents in classical lore. we have, in a view of a mountainous coast called "asia minor," and another, "the isle of cos," two charming pictorial records of this important expedition. the next six years of the artist's life were spent as a portrait painter; not, indeed, if one may say so, as a professional who would paint any one's portrait, but as a friend, who loved to devote himself to his friends. in pursuance of his principles touching monumental work, watts engaged himself over a period of five years on the greatest and the last of his civic paintings--namely, the "justice; a hemicycle of lawgivers," to which i shall later refer. watts was a man who seems to have enjoyed in a singular degree the great privilege of friendship, which while it has its side of attachment, has also its side of detachment. even in his youthful days he never "settled down," but was a visitor and guest rather than an attached scholar and student at the schools and studies. it is told of him that when just about to leave florence, after a short visit, he casually presented a letter of introduction to lord holland, which immediately led to a four years' stay there, and this friendship lasted for many years after the ambassador's return to england. other groups of friends, represented by the ionides, the prinseps, the seniors, and the russell barringtons, seemed to have possessed him as their special treasure, in whose friendship he passed a great part of his life. two great men, the titular chiefs of poetry and painting, were much impressed by him, and drew from him great admiration--tennyson and leighton; from the latter he learned much; in the sphere of music, of which watts was passionately fond, there stands out joachim the violinist. watts used to recall, as the happiest time in his life, his youthful days as a choral singer; and he always regretted that he had not become a musician. besides being fond of singing he declared that he constantly heard (or felt) mystic music--symphonies, songs, and chorales. only once did he receive a _vision_ of a picture--idea, composition and colours--that was "time, death, and judgment." music, after all, is nearer to the soul of the intuitive man than any of the arts, and watts felt this deeply. he also had considerable dramatic talent. in some friends found for watts a bride in the person of miss ellen terry. the painter and the youthful actress were married in kensington in february of that year, and watts took over little holland house. the marriage, however, was irksome, both to the middle-aged painter and the vivacious child of sixteen, whose words, taken from her autobiography, are the best comment we possess on this incident: "many inaccurate stories have been told of my brief married life, and i have never contradicted them--they were so manifestly absurd. those who can imagine the surroundings into which i, a raw girl, undeveloped in all except my training as an actress, was thrown, can imagine the situation.... i wondered at the new life and worshipped it because of its beauty. when it suddenly came to an end i was thunderstruck; and refused at first to consent to the separation which was arranged for me in much the same way as my marriage had been.... there were no vulgar accusations on either side, and the words i read in the deed of separation, 'incompatibility of temper,' more than covered the ground. truer still would have been 'incompatibility of _occupation_,' and the interference of well-meaning friends. "'the marriage was not a happy one,' they will probably say after my death, and i forestall them by saying that it was in many ways very happy indeed. what bitterness there was effaced itself in a very remarkable way." (_the story of my life_, .) in , at the age of fifty, without his application or knowledge, watts was made an associate, and in the following year a full member, of the royal academy. younger men had preceded him in this honour, but doubtless watts' modesty and independence secured for him a certain amount of official neglect. the old studio in melbury road, kensington, was pulled down in , and a new house was built suited to the painter who had chosen for himself a hermit life. the house was built in such a way as would avoid the possibility of entertaining guests, and was entirely dedicated to work. watts continued his series of official portraits, and many of the most beautiful mythical paintings followed this change. five years later, watts was found at freshwater in the isle of wight, and in he secured what he had so long needed, the sympathetic help and co-operation in his personal and artistic aims, in mr. and mrs. russell barrington, his neighbours. in watts decided, in conformity with his views on patriotic art, to give his pictures to the nation, and there followed shortly after, in and , exhibitions of his works in whitechapel and the grosvenor gallery. a leaflet entitled "what should a picture say?" issued with the approval of watts, in connection with the whitechapel exhibition, has a characteristic answer to the question put to him. "roughly speaking, a picture must be regarded in the same light as written words. it must speak to the beholder and tell him something.... if a picture is a representation only, then regard it from that point of view only. if it treats of a historical event, consider whether it fairly tells its tale. then there is another class of picture, that whose purpose is to convey suggestion and idea. you are not to look at that picture as an actual representation of facts, for it comes under the same category of dream visions, aspirations, and we have nothing very distinct except the sentiment. if the painting is bad--the writing, the language of art, it is a pity. the picture is then not so good as it should be, but the thought is there, and the thought is what the artist wanted to express, and it is or should be impressed on the spectator." in his pictures were exhibited in new york, where they created a great sensation; but incidents connected with the exhibition, and criticisms upon it, caused the artist much nervous distress. [illustration: plate iii.--hope (at the tate gallery) at the first glance it is rather strange that such a picture should bear such a title, but the imagery is perfectly true. the heavens are illuminated by a solitary star, and hope bends her ear to catch the music from the last remaining string of her almost shattered lyre. the picture was painted in and given to the nation in . a very fine duplicate is in the possession of mrs. rushton.] it was a peculiar difficulty of his nature which led him to insist, on the occasions of the london and provincial exhibitions of his pictures, that the borrowers were to make all arrangements with his frame-maker, that he should not be called upon to act in any way, and that no personal reference should be introduced. watts always considered himself a private person; he disliked public functions and fled from them if there were any attempt to draw attention to him. his habits of work were consistent with these unusual traits. at sunrise he was at his easel. during the hot months of summer he was hard at work in his london studio, leaving for the country only for a few weeks during foggy weather. at the age of sixty-nine watts married miss mary fraser-tytler, with whom he journeyed to egypt, painting there a study of the "sphinx," one of the cleverest of his landscapes. three years after his return, he settled at limnerslease, compton, in surrey, where he took great interest in the attempt to revive industrial art among the rural population. twice, in and , the artist refused, for private reasons, the baronetcy that other artists had accepted. he lived henceforth and died the untitled patriot and artist, george frederick watts. ii the man and the messenger having given in the preceding pages the briefest possible outline of the life of watts as a man amongst men, we are now able to come to closer quarters. he was essentially a messenger--a teacher, delivering to the world, in such a manner that his genius and temperament made possible, ideas which had found their place in his mind. he would have been the first to admit that without these ideas he would be less than nothing. if it were possible to bring together all the external acts of the painter's life, his journeyings to and fro, his making and his losing friends, we should have insufficient data to enable us to understand watts' message; his great ambitions, his constant failures, his intimate experiences, his reflections and determinations--known to none but himself--surely these, the internal life of watts, are the real sources of his message? true, he was in the midst of the nineteenth century, breathing its atmosphere, familiar with the ideals of its great men, doubting, questioning, and hoping with the rest. to him, as to many a contemporary stoic, the world was in a certain sense an alien ground, and mortal life was to be stoically endured and made the best of. it is impossible to believe, however, that this inspiring and prophetic painter reproduced and handed on merely that which his time and society gave him. his day and his associates truly gave him much; the past and his heredity made their contributions; but we must believe that the purest gold was fired in the crucible of his inner experience, his joys and his sufferings. in him was accomplished that great discovery which the philosophers have called pessimism; he not only saw in other men (as depicted in his memorable canvas of ), but he experienced in himself the transitory life's illusions. to watts, the serious man of fifty years, love and death, faith and hope, aspiration, suffering, and remorse, were not, as to the eighteenth-century rhymester, merely greek ladies draped in flowing raiment; to him they were realities, intensely focussed in himself. watts was giving of himself, of his knowledge and observation of what love is and does, and how death appears so variously; and who but a man who knew the melancholy of despair could paint that picture "hope"? immediately after the central crisis of his personal life appeared the canvas entitled "fata morgana," illustrative of a knight in vain pursuit of a phantom maiden; and before long there was from his brush the pictured story of a lost love, "orpheus and eurydice," one of the saddest of all myths, but, one feels, no old myth to him. by a more careful analysis of the artist's work we hope to learn the teaching watts set himself to give, and to ascertain the means that he adopted; but one point needs to be made clear at this stage, namely, that although watts was a great teacher, yet he was not a revolutionary. the ideals he held up were not new or strange, but old, well-tried, one might almost say conventional. they represent the ideals which, in the friction and turmoil of ages, have emerged as definite, clear, final. they are not disputed or dubious notions, but accepted truisms forgotten and neglected, waiting for the day when men shall live by them. furthermore, watts was not in any sense a mystic--neither personally or as an artist. "the dweller in the innermost" is not the transcendental self known to a few rare souls, but is merely conscience, known to all. the biblical paintings have no secret meaning assigned to them. the inhabitants of eden, the hero of the deluge, the hebrew patriarchs, samson and satan--all these are the familiar figures of the evangelical's bible. "eve repentant" is the woman eve, the mother of the race; "jacob and esau" are the brothers come to reconciliation; "jonah" is the prophet denouncing the nineveh of his day and the babylon of this. the teaching--and there is teaching in every one of them--is plain and ethical. so also, with the greek myths; they teach plainly--they hold no esoteric interpretations. watts is no neo-platonist weaving mystical doctrines from the ancient hero tales; he is rather a stoic, a moralist, a teacher of earthly things. but we must be careful to guard against the impression of watts as a lofty philosopher consciously issuing proclamations by means of his art. really he was not aware of being a philosopher at all; he was simply an artist, an exquisitely delicate and sensitive medium, who, when once before his canvas, suddenly filled with his idea, was compelled to say his word. if there be any synthesis about his finished work--and no one can deny this--it was not because watts gave days and nights and years to "thinking things out." his paintings are, as he used to call them, "anthems," brought forth by the intuitive man, the musician. this was the fundamental watts. whatever unity there be, is due rather to unity of inspiration than to strength or definiteness of character and accomplishment, and this was sometimes referred to by watts as a golden thread passing through his life--a thread of good intention--which he felt would guide him through the labyrinth of distractions, mistakes, irritations, ill health, and failures. one of the striking incidents in the life of watts was his offer to decorate euston railway station with frescoes entitled "the progress of cosmos." "chaos" we have in the tate gallery, full of suggestiveness and interest. we see a deep blue sky above the distant mountains, gloriously calm and everlasting; in the middle distance to the left is a nebulous haze of light, while in the foreground the rocks are bursting open and the flames rush through. figures of men, possessed by the energy and agony of creation, are seen wrestling with the elements of fire and earth. one of these figures, having done his work, floats away from the glow of the fire across the transparent water, while others of his creative family have quite passed the struggling stage of movement and are reclining permanent and gigantic to the right of the picture. the same idea is repeated in the chain of draped women who are emerging from the watery deep; at first they are swept along in isolation, then they fly in closer company, next they dance and finally walk in orderly procession. but chaos, for all this, is a unity; of all material forms it is the most ancient form; cosmos however is the long-drawn tale beginning with the day when "the spirit of god brooded on the face of the waters." cosmos might have been watts' synthetic pictorial philosophy; herbert spencer with his pen, and he with his brush, as it were, should labour side by side. but this was not to be; the directors of the north-western railway declined the artist's generous offer, and he had to get his "cosmos" painted by degrees. on the whole, perhaps, we should be thankful that the railway company liberated watts from this self-imposed task. we remember that dante in his exile set out to write "il convivio," a banquet of so many courses that one might tremble at the prospect of sitting down to it; the four treatises we have are interesting, though dry as dust; but if dante had finished his banquet, he might never have had time for his "divine comedy"; so perhaps, after all, we shall be well content to be without watts' "cosmos," remembering what we have gained thereby. besides, the continuous and spontaneous self-revelation of an artist or a poet is sometimes truer than a rigid predetermined plan. [illustration: plate iv.--thomas carlyle (at the south kensington museum) this canvas was painted in , and is the earlier of the two portraits of the famous historian painted by watts. it formed part of the foster bequest. it is interesting to compare this with the painting in the national portrait gallery.] a few words from the pen of the artist, appearing by way of preface to a book, "a plain handicraft," may here be quoted to indicate the strong views watts took on the "condition-of-england question." his interest in art was not centred in painting, or sculpture, or himself, or his fellow artists. he believed in the sacred mission of art as applied to profane things. we see how closely he adheres to the point of view made so famous by ruskin. both watts and ruskin, one feels, belong rather to the days of pericles, when everything was best in the state because the citizens gave themselves up to it and to each other. writing of the necessity and utility of reviving plain handicrafts among the mass of the people, the painter of "mammon" says: "... when the object is to vitalise and develop faculties--the especial inheritance of the human race, but strangely dormant in our time among the largest section of the community--the claim becomes one that cannot be ignored. looking at the subject from a point of view commanding a wide horizon, it seems to be nothing less than a social demand, rising into a religious duty, to make every endeavour in the direction of supplying all possible compensating consolation for the routine of daily work, become so mechanical and dreary. when home is without charm, and country without attaching bonds, the existence of a nation is rudely shaken; dull discontent leading to sullen discontent, may readily become active animosity. there will not be men interested in the maintenance of law and order, who feel that law and order bring them no perceptible formal advantage. in the race for wealth, it has been forgotten that wealth alone can offer neither dignity nor permanent safety; no dignity, if the man of the population is degraded by dull toil and disgraceful competition; no safety, if large numbers drag on a discontented existence, while the more active and intelligent leave our shores. "whether or not our material wealth is to be increased or diminished, it is certain that a more general well-being and contentment must be striven for. a happy nation will be a wealthy nation, wealthy in the best sense, in the assurance that its children can be depended upon in case of need, wealth above the fortune of war, and safety above the reach of fortune. the rush of interest in the direction of what are understood as worldly advantages, has trampled out the sense of pleasure in the beautiful, and the need of its presence as an element essential to the satisfaction of daily life, which must have been unconsciously felt in ages less absorbed in acquiring wealth for itself alone. in olden times our art congresses would have been as needless as congresses to impress on the general mind the advantages of money-making would be in these." (_plain handicraft_, .) in g.f. watts, however, we have an instance of a man who, although he sees and is attracted by abstract principles of ethics, does not perceive the manner of their final application; he is not really scientific. it might be thought that the painter of "greed and toil," "the sempstress," "mammon," "the dweller of the innermost," and "love triumphant," would be able to indicate, in that sphere of social activity called "practical politics," how these principles could find their expression and realisation. it is interesting, however, to know, and to have it authoritatively from his own pen, that watts at least could not discern either the time or the application of these ethical principles to the affairs of the great world; for in there appeared from his hand a quasi-philosophical defence of the south african war, entitled "our race as pioneers." he said: "inevitable social and political measures claim obedience, which may be at variance with the spiritual and ethical conscience; but there comes in the question of necessity, apparent laws that contest with pure right and wrong; ... and as we must live, nothing remains but commerce; and commerce cannot be carried on without competition, and pushing the limits of our interests. the result of competition can only be conflict--war, unless some other outlet can be found. commerce will not supply this; its very activity, which is its health and life, will produce the ambition, envy, and jarring interests that will be fatal to peace.... the principle, _movement_, must have its outlet, its safety valve. this has always been war.... the goddess trade, the modern pandora, has in her box all the evils that afflict mankind.... how can commerce, as understood by the principles of trade, abolish war?" "the simple principles of right and wrong are easily defined," and perhaps easily painted; "but the complexity of human affairs and legitimate interests, conducing to the activity demanded by the great law, _movement_, makes some elasticity necessary, even where there is the most honest desire to be just." thus, from his own words, we see how the painter transcends the politician; he is a stimulator, he gives hints, not instructions; he is commanding, imperative, but he does not show how, nor stay to devise ways and means. he even perceives, as he thinks, that though the commands of his pictures, "faith," "conscience," and "love triumphant," be given, yet they cannot be obeyed fully because of "evolution" and "destiny," or as he calls it "movement." to his intimate friends watts, who was so introspective, often complained of "the duality of my nature." in the midst of affairs, financial or worldly, on questions of criticism, personal conduct and the like, the great artist was variable and uncertain. though humble and self-deprecatory to an extreme degree, he made mistakes from which he could escape only with great difficulty; and he suffered much from depression and melancholy. this man, however, never appears in the pictures; when once in his studio, alone facing his canvas, watts is final, absolute, an undisturbed and undistracted unity, conscious of that overwhelming "rightness" known to a hebrew prophet. whatever time or death may have in store for him or any man, there riding swiftly above them is judgment the absolute one; whatever theories may be spun from the perplexed mind of the magazine writer about expansion and necessity, there sits the terrible "mammon" pilloried for all time. indeed, he said his pictures were "for all time"; they were from the mind and hand of the seer, who, rising from his personality, transcended it; and as the personality of dual nature gradually fades away into the forgotten past, the messenger emerges ever more and more clearly, leaving his graphic testimonies spread out upon a hundred canvases. it might be said as a final estimate that the value and sincerity of watts' work becomes intensified a hundred-fold when we remember that its grandeur and dignity, its unity and its calm, was the work of a man who seldom, if ever, attained internal peace. like some who speak wiser than they know, so watts gave himself as an instrument to inspirations of which he was not able, through adverse circumstances, to make full use. thus was the man divided from the messenger. [illustration: plate v.--love and life (at the tate gallery) love, strong in his immortal youth, leads life, a slight female figure, along the steep uphill path; with his broad wings he shelters her, that the winds of heaven may not visit her too roughly. violets spring where love has trod, and as they ascend to the mountain top the air becomes more and more golden. the implication is that, without the aid of divine love, fragile human life could not have power to ascend the steep path upward. first exhibited at the grosvenor gallery in . companion picture to "love and death," and "love triumphant."] iii a review of watts' work failing the "progress of the cosmos," we have from the mind and brush of watts a great number of paintings, which may be grouped according to their character. such divisions must not be regarded as rigid or official, for often enough a picture may belong to several groups at the same time. for the purpose of our survey, however, we divide them as follows: . monumental or historical paintings and frescoes. . humanitarian or social paintings. . portraits, private and public. . biblical paintings. . mythical paintings. . "pessimistic" paintings. . the great realities. . the love series. . the death series. . landscapes. . unclassified paintings. . paintings of warriors. "caractacus" was the first of the monumental paintings; by them watts appears as a citizen and a patriot, whose insular enthusiasm extends backward to the time when the british chief caractacus fought and was subdued by the romans. he enters also into the spirit of the resistance offered to the danes by king alfred. george and the dragon are included by him in the historical though mythical events of our race. undoubtedly the most remarkable of watts' monumental paintings is the fresco entitled "justice; a hemicycle of lawgivers," painted for the benchers' hall in lincoln's inn. it is x feet. here watts, taking the conventional and theoretical attitude, identifies law-making with justice, and in his fresco we see thirty-three figures, representing moses, zoroaster, pythagoras, confucius, lycurgus and his fellow-greeks, numa pompilius and other romans. here figures also justinian, the maker of the great code; mahomet, king alfred, and even attila the hun. the painting represents the close of this phase of watts' work; he received a gift of £ and a gold cup in memory of its achievement. in england, at least, no one has ever attempted or accomplished anything in fresco of so great dimensions. watts' monumental genius drove him to sculpture on the grand scale also. "hugh lupus" for the duke of westminster, and "physical energy," upon which he laboured at intervals during twenty-five years of his life, are his great triumphs in this direction. it is not the first time that an artist deficient in health and strength has made physical energy into a demigod. men often, perhaps always, idealise what they have not. it was the wish of the sculptor to place a cast of "physical energy" on the grave of cecil rhodes on the matoppo hills in south africa, indicating how watts found it possible (by idealising what he wished to idealise), to include within the scope and patronage of his art, the activities, aims, and interests of modern colonial enterprise. _humanitarian paintings_.--the earliest of these, "the wounded heron," asks our pity for the injured bird, and forbids us to join in the enthusiasm of the huntsman who hurries for his suffering prize. the same thought is expressed in the beautiful "shuddering angel," who is covering his face with his hands at the sight of the mangled plumage scattered on the altar of fashion. in the large canvases, "a patient life of unrequited toil," and "midday rest," we have paintings of horses, both of them designed to teach us consideration for the "friend of man." "the sempstress" sings us tom hood's "song of the shirt." "the good samaritan" (see plate vii.) properly belongs to this series. it was presented by the artist to the citizens of manchester, as an expression of his admiration of thomas wright, the prison philanthropist, whose work was at that time ( ) creating a sensation in the north of england. if we compare this painting with other biblical subjects executed at a later date, we see how much watts' work has gained since then. the almost smooth texture and the dark shadows of the manchester picture have given way to ruggedness and transparency. still, "the good samaritan" is simple and excellent in purpose and composition. a little known painting entitled "cruel vengeance," seems to be a forecast of "mammon"; a creature with human form and vulture's head presses under his hand a figure like the maiden whose head rests on mammon's knee. in "greed and labour" the seer's eye pierces through the relations between the worker and his master; labour is a fine strong figure loaded with the implements of his toil, with no feeling of subjection in his manly face; on the other hand, the miser creeping behind him, clutching the money bags, represents that greed who, as mammon, is seen sitting on his throne of death. "mammon" is, however, the greatest of the three, containing in itself the ideas and forms of the other two. it is a terrible picture of the god to whom many bow the knee--"dedicated to his worshippers." his leaden face shows a consciousness of power, but not happiness arising from power; his dull eyes see nothing, though his mind's eye sees one thing clearly--the money bags on his lap. the two frail creatures of youth and maiden, "types of humanity" as watts said, are crushed by his heavy limbs, while behind a fire burns continuously, perhaps also within his massive breast. _portraits_.--in portraiture, as in other forms of art, watts had distinct and peculiar views. he gradually came to the opinion, which he adopted as his first rule in portraiture, that it was his duty, not merely to copy the external features of the sitter, but to give what might be called an intellectual copy. he declared it to be possible and necessary for the sitter and painter to attain a unity of feeling and a sympathy, by which he (the painter) was inspired. watts' earlier portraits, while being far from characterless, are not instances of the application of this principle. there is in them a slight tendency to eighteenth-century ideal portraiture, which so often took the sitter (and the observer too) back to times and attitudes, backgrounds and thunderstorms, that never were and never will be. watts, however, was slightly influenced by the pre-raphaelite school. he might, had he wished, have been their portrait painter--and indeed, the picture of the comely mrs. hughes, a kind, motherly creature, with a background of distant fields, minutely painted, is quite on the lines of pre-raphaelite realism. [illustration: plate vi.--love triumphant (at the tate gallery) time and death having travelled together through the ages, have run their course and are at length overthrown. love alone arises on immortal wings, triumphantly, with outspread arms to the eternal skies. given to the nation in .] somewhat of the same character is the portrait of mrs. nassau senior, who, with one knee on a sofa, is shown tending flowers, her rippling golden hair falling over her shoulders. a full-length portrait of miss mary kirkpatrick brunton, dated , also belongs to the old style. watts had a passion for human loveliness, and in his day some of the great beauties sat to him. the "jersey lily" (mrs. langtry) with her simple headdress and downcast eye, appeared at the academy of . "miss rachel gurney" is a wonderful portrait of a flaming soul imprisoned in a graceful form and graceless dress. miss gurney is shown standing, turning slightly to the right with the head again turned over the right shoulder, while the whole effect of energy seems to be concentrated in the flashing eyes. watts was able to interpret equally well personalities of a very different character, and perhaps the canvas representing miss edith villiers is one of the most successful of his spiritual portraits. miss dorothy dene, whose complexion watts was one of the first to transfer to canvas, miss mary anderson, and miss dorothy maccallum, were all triumphantly depicted. he will be known, however, as the citizen portrait-painter of the nineteenth century, who preserved for us not merely the form, but the spirit of some of the greatest men of his day. lord tennyson sat three times. in the poet was shown in the prime of life, his hair and beard ruffled, his look determined. in we had another canvas--"the moonlight portrait"; the face is that of merlin, meditative, thoughtful. as you look at it the features stand out with great clearness, the distance of the laurels behind his head can be estimated almost precisely, while seen through them is the gleam of the moon upon the distant water. the portrait, in scholastic robes, with grizzled beard, and hair diminished, is tennyson the mystic, and reminds us of his "ancient sage"-- "... for more than once when i sat all alone, revolving in myself the word that is the symbol of myself, the mortal limit of the self was loosed and passed into the nameless, as a cloud melts into heaven." the portrait of john l. motley, the american minister to england in , and author of "the rise of the dutch republic," is one of the most successful paintings of handsome men; watts here depicts perfectly the "spiritual body" of strength, purity, and appeal; the eyes are deepest blue, and the hair the richest brown. in this case the artist has, as he was so prone, fallen into symbolism even in portraiture, for we can trace in the background a faint picture of an old-time fighting ship. another classic portrait, so different to that by whistler, is of thomas carlyle. the sage of chelsea sits ruffled and untidy, with his hands resting on the head of a stick, and his features full of power. he seems protesting against the few hours' idleness, and anxious to get back to the strenuous life. the sitter was good enough to say that the portrait was of "a mad labourer"--not an unfair criticism of a very good portrait. _the biblical paintings_ are, as before said, in partial fulfilment of the frustrated scheme of "cosmos." "eve repentant," in an attitude so typical of grief, is perhaps the most beautiful; it is one of a trilogy, the others being "she shall be called woman," and "eve tempted." it is singular that in these three canvases the painter avoids the attempt to draw the face of the mother of the race. in the first the face is upturned, covered in shadow; in the second it is hid from view by the leaves of the forbidden tree, while in the third eve turns her back and hides her weeping face with her arms. this habit of watts to obscure the face is observed in "the shuddering angel," judgment in "time, death, and judgment," in "love and death," "sic transit," "great possessions," and some others. often indeed a picture speaks as much of what is not seen as of what is seen. incidents from the gospels are represented by "the prodigal," where the outcast is seen crouching on the ground, his face fixed on vacuity, almost in the act of coming to himself. "for he had great possessions," is, however, the greatest and simplest of all. there the young man who went away sorrowful with bowed head, scarcely knowing what he has lost, is used by watts as one of his most powerful criticisms of modern life. although the incident is a definite isolated one, yet the costume, figure, chain of office, and jewelled fingers, clutching and releasing, are of no time or land in particular. it is not a little remarkable that watts, who had breathed so deeply the air of italy, and had almost lived in company of titian and raphael, should never have attempted the figure of christ or his apostles. this was, however, not without reason. his pictures were not only "for all time," but apart from time altogether. his only specific reference to christianity is his beautiful canvas, "the spirit of christianity," in which he rebuked the churches for their dissensions. a parental figure floats upon a cloud while four children nestle at her feet. the earth below is shrouded in darkness and gloom, despite the steeple tower raising its head above a distant village. the rebuke was immediately stimulated by the refusal of a certain church to employ watts when the officials found he was not of their faith. in this picture watts approached nearest to the italian madonnas both in form and colour. _the mythical paintings_ are, in the main, earlier than the biblical series, but even here the same note of teaching is struck, and our human sympathies are drawn out towards the figure depicted. in one, "echo" comes to find her lover transformed into a flower; in another, "psyche," through disobedience, has lost her love. she gazes regretfully at a feather fallen from cupid's wing; it is a pink feather, such as might be taken from the plumage of the little lord of love who vainly opposes death in his approach to the beloved one. in "psyche," watts has made the pale body expressive of abject loss; there is no physical effort, except in the well-expanded feet, and no other thought but lost love. the legend of "diana and endymion" was painted three times--"good, better, best." a shepherd loved the moon, who in his sleep descends from heaven to embrace him. the canvas of must be regarded as the final success--the sleeping figure is more asleep, his vision more dreamlike and diaphanous. "orpheus and eurydice" (painted three times) is perhaps the greatest of his classical pictures. it is one of the few compositions that were considered by its author as "finished." here again the lover through disobedience loses his love; the falling figure of eurydice is one of the most beautiful and realistic of all the series of watts' nudes, and the agony of loss, the energy of struggle, are magnificently drawn in the figure of orpheus. looking at the canvas, one recalls the lines of the old platonic poet-philosopher boëthius: "at length the shadowy king, his sorrows pitying, 'he hath prevailed!' cried; 'we give him back his bride! to him she shall belong, as guerdon of his song. one sole condition yet upon the boon is set; let him not turn his eyes to view his hard-won prize, till they securely pass the gates of hell.' alas! what law can lovers move? a higher law is love! for orpheus--woe is me!-- on his eurydice-- day's threshold all but won-- looked, lost, and was undone!" in "the minotaur," that terrible creature, half man, half bull, crushing with his hideous claw the body of a bird, stands ever waiting to consume by his cruel lust the convoy of beauteous forms coming unseen and unwilling over the sea to him. it is an old myth, but watts intended it for a modern message. the picture was painted by him in the heat of indignation in three hours. a small but very important group of paintings, which i call "the pessimistic series," begins with "life's illusions," painted in . "it is," says watts, "an allegorical design typifying the march of human life." fair visions of beauty, the abstract embodiments of divers forms of hope and ambition, hover high in the air above the gulf which stands as the goal of all men's lives. at their feet lie the shattered symbols of human greatness and power, and upon the narrow space of earth that overhangs the deep abyss are figured the brighter forms of illusions that endure through every changing fashion of the world. a knight in armour pricks on his horse in quick pursuit of the rainbow-tinted bubble of glory; on his right are two lovers; on his left an aged student still pores over his work by the last rays of the dying sun; while in the shadow of the group may be seen the form of a little child chasing a butterfly. this picture has the merit, along with "fata morgana," of combining the teaching element with one of the finest representations of woman's form that came from watts' brush. he was one of those who vigorously defended the painting of the nude. these are some of his words: "one of the great missions of art--the greatest indeed--is to serve the same grand and noble end as poetry by holding in check that natural and ever-increasing tendency to hypocrisy which is consequent upon and constantly nurtured by civilisation. my aim is now, and will be to the end, not so much to paint pictures which are delightful to the eye, but pictures which will go to the intelligence and the imagination, and kindle there what is good and noble, and which will appeal to the heart. and in doing this i am forced to paint the nude." "fata morgana" is a picture of fortune or opportunity pursued and lost by an ardent horseman. it was painted twice, first in the italian style, and again in what must be called watts' own style--much the finer effort. this picture shows us what, in the artist's view, man in this mortal life desires, pursues, and mostly loses. fortune has a lock of hair on her forehead by which alone she may be captured, and as she glides mockingly along, she leads her pursuers across rock, stream, dale, desert, and meadow typical of life. the pursuit of the elusive is a favourite theme with watts, and is set forth by the picture "mischief." here a fine young man is battling for his liberty against an airy spirit representing folly or mischief. humanity bends his neck beneath the enchanter's yoke--a wreath of flowers thrown round his neck--and is led an unwilling captive; as he follows the roses turn to briars about his muscular limbs, and at every step the tangle becomes denser, while one by one the arrows drop from his hand. the thought of "life's illusions" and "fata morgana" is again set forth in "sic transit gloria mundi," where we see the body of a king whose crown, and all that represents to him the glory of the world, is left at death. it is not, however, in watts' conception essential glory that passes away, but the _glory of the world_. upon the dark curtain that hangs behind the shrouded figure are words that represent his final wisdom, "what i spent, i had; what i saved, i lost; what i gave, i have." [illustration: plate vii.--the good samaritan (at the manchester art gallery) this is an early picture, painted in the year and presented to the city of manchester by the artist in honour of the prison philanthropist, a native of that city.] these i call "pessimistic paintings," because they represent the true discovery ever waiting to be made by man, that the sum total of all that can be gained in man's external life--wealth, fame, strength, and power--that these inevitably pass from him. to know this, to see it clearly, to accept it, is the happiness of the pessimist, who thenceforward fixes his hope and bends his energies to the realisation of other and higher goods. in this he becomes an optimist, for this is the pursuit, as watts never ceases to teach, in which man can and does attain his goal. thus our prophet-painter, having seen and known and felt all this, having tested it in the personal and intimate life, brings to a triumphant close his great series, where positive rather than negative teaching is given. _the great realities_.--we have seen in "chaos" primordial matter; we have now from watts' brush the origin of things on the metaphysical side. in "the all-pervading," there sits the spirit of the universe, holding in her lap the globe of the systems, the representation of the last conclusions of philosophy. this mysterious picture is very low in tone, conforming to watts' rule to make the colouring suit the subject. here there is nothing hard or defined; the spirit of the universe is merely suggested or hinted at, his great wings enclose all. the elliptical form of this composition is seen again in "death crowning innocence" and "the dweller in the innermost," and the same expressive indefiniteness and lowness of the colour tones. in the latter effort we have the figure of conscience, winged, dumb-faced and pensive, seated within a glow of light. on her forehead is the shining star, and in her lap the arrows which pierce through all disguises, and a trumpet that proclaims peace to the world. here, therefore, is the greatest reality from the psychological side. we have also cosmical paintings representing "evolution," "progress," the "slumber of the ages," and "destiny," all of them asking and answering; not indeed finally and dogmatically, but as watts desired that his pictures should do, stimulating in the observer both the asking and the answering faculty. in "faith" we have a companion to "hope." wearied and saddened by persecutions, she washes her blood-stained feet in a running stream, and recognising the influence of love in all the beauty of nature, she feels that the sword is not the best argument, and takes it off. the colouring of this picture is rich and forcible, the maroon robe of the figure being one of watts' favourite attempts. a satisfying picture of a little child emerging from the latest wave on the shore of humanity's ocean, asks the question, _whence and whither_. i reserve for "hope" the final word (see plate iii.). if, as i said, the optimism which is spiritual and ideal springs from the pessimism which is material and actual, so too does hope grow from the bosom of despair. this the picture shows. crouching on the sphere of the world sits the blindfold figure of a woman, bending her ear to catch the music of one only string preserved on her lyre. when everything has failed, there is hope; and hope looks, in watts' teaching, for that which cannot fail, but which is ever triumphant, namely, love. _the love series_.--according to watts, love steers the boat of humanity, who is seen in one of his canvases tossed about and almost shipwrecked. love does not do this easily, but he does it. love, as a winged youth, also guides life, a fragile maiden, up the rocky steep--life, that would else fail and fall. violets spring where love has trod, and as they ascend to the mountain top the air becomes more golden. this picture, "love and life" (see plate v.) was painted four times. "love and death," painted three times, represents the irresistible figure of death tenderly, yet firmly, entering a door where we know lies the beloved one. this is an eternal theme, suggested, i believe, by a temporal incident--the death of a young member of the prinsep family. love vainly pushes back the imperious figure; the protecting flowers are trodden down and the dove mourns; and with it all we feel that though love fears death, yet death respects love. just as "love and death" are companion pictures and tell complementary truths, so "time, death, and judgment" is related to "love triumphant" (see plate vi.). in the one we see time, represented by a mighty youth half clad in a red cloak, striding along with great vigour. his companion, whom he holds by the hand, is death, the sad mother with weary, downcast eye and outspread lap ready to receive her load; but with neither of them is the final word, for judgment, poised in the clouds, wields his fiery sword of eternal law and holds the balance before his hidden face. in "love triumphant" love takes the place of, and transcends judgment. time and death having travelled together through the ages, are in the end overthrown, and love alone rises on immortal wings. thus the stoical painter reaches his greatest height--tells his best truth. _the death series_.--as may be expected, death has no terrors for the fundamental watts. never once does death look with hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, or grasp with bony fingers at the living. in "death crowning innocence," as a mother she puts her halo on the infant innocence, whom she claims. death holds a court to which all must go--priest, soldier, king, cripple, beautiful woman, and young child. the lion must die, the civilisation be overthrown, wealth, fame, and pride must be let go--so watts shows in his "court of death"; all come to the end of the book marked _finis_. death is calm and majestic, with angel wings, and overhead are the figures of silence and mystery, guarding, but partially revealing what is beyond the veil--sunrise and the star of hope; while even in the lap of death nestles a new-born babe--the soul passing into new realms through the gates of death. again, death is _the messenger_ who comes, not to terrify, but as an ambassador to call the soul away from this alien land, quietly touching the waiting soul with the finger-tips. in the beautiful "paolo and francesca" the lovers are seen as dante told of them; wafted along by the infernal wind; of them he spoke: "... bard! willingly i would address these two together coming, which seem so light before the wind." francesca's reply to dante is of love and death: "love, that in gentle heart is quickly learnt, entangled him by that fair form...; love, that denial takes from none beloved, caught me with pleasing him so passing well, that as thou seest, he yet deserts me not. love brought us to one death." watts has admirably caught the sweetness and sorrow of this situation in his beautiful picture, which, again, is one of the very few he considered finally "finished." it is almost a monochrome of blues and greys. in "time and oblivion," one of the earliest of the symbolical paintings, time is again the stalwart man of imperishable youth, while oblivion, another form of death, spreads her mantle of darkness over all, claiming all. _landscapes_.--although watts will ever be remembered for his allegorical, biblical, and portrait painting, yet he was by no means deficient in landscape art. indeed, he carried into that branch of work his peculiar personality. not only do his landscapes depict beautiful scenery in a fitting manner, joining atmosphere, sunshine, and colour, but they convey in an extraordinary degree the mood of nature and of man. "the sphinx by night" has an air of mystery about it that immediately impresses the spectator, and tells him something that cannot be communicated by words. the italian and the asiatic canvases by watts, "florence," "fiesole," "correna," "cos," and "asia minor," all induce the feeling of repose and happiness, and the message that nature sends to her devotees comes sweetly and calmly in "the rainbow," where we look over an extensive valley from high ground, while heavy clouds and the rainbow adorn the upper air. in "the cumulus" we "see skyward great cloud masses rolling, silently swelling and mixing." they recall perhaps the memories of the child, to whom the mountains of the air are a perpetual wonder. when in savoy in , watts painted the alps, again with a cloudy sky and a rocky foreground. in this the quietude of the scene penetrates the beholder. english landscape, to which all true hearts return, was successfully depicted, both in form and spirit, by watts' "landscape with hayricks" (like the brighton downs), a quiet view from the summit of a hillside, on which are seen some hayricks. but perhaps the highest of them all is that very peaceful idyll named "all the air a solemn stillness holds." it was a view from the garden of little holland house. the time is sunset; a man and two horses are wending their way home. there are farm buildings on the left, and a thick wood in the background. in this one we feel how thoroughly watts uses all forms as expressions of his invisible moods. in purely imaginative landscape, however, watts struck his highest note. his "deluge" canvases are wonderful attempts; in "the dove that returned in the evening," the bird is the only creature seen flying across the dreary waste of waters, placid but for three long low waves. on the horizon the artist has dimly suggested the ark of noah. "mount ararat" is especially worthy of mention among the landscapes. [illustration: plate viii.--prayer (at the manchester art gallery) this is one of the most simple and beautiful of watts' early works. the young woman is kneeling at the table, book in hand, her mind absorbed in thoughts of reverence. painted in .] before watts entered upon his series of great imaginative paintings he had used realism for didactic purposes. in those days his work was less rugged than in later times, and had a delicateness and refinement which is seen to perfection in some of his earlier portraits. a few of these efforts may be mentioned. "study" is the bust of a girl, with long red hair, looking upwards; it represents a beautiful combination of spirituality and human affection. "the rain it raineth every day" is a picture of ennui and utter weariness, beautifully and sympathetically expressed. the colouring is very brave. in "prayer" (see plate viii.) the simplicity of the treatment may lead any one to pass it by as something slight and conventional, but it is perhaps one of the greatest of this type where simplicity and spirituality are combined. in "choosing" watts approached very near to the summit of simplicity and charm. a golden-haired girl is choosing a camellia blossom; but where all are so beautiful it is difficult for her to decide. great interest in this picture lies in the fact that it was painted in , and was drawn from watts' young bride miss ellen terry. one is almost tempted to find in this picture the germ of allegory which grew to such heights in the artist's later efforts. _the warrior series_.--watts, like ruskin and many other of the nineteenth-century philosophic artists, idealised warfare. his warriors are not clad in khaki; they do not crouch behind muddy earthworks. they are of the days before the shrapnel shell and maxim gun; they wear bright steel armour, wield the sword and lance, and by preference they ride on horseback. indeed, they are of no time or country, unless of the house of arthur and the land of camelot. we are thus able to understand the characteristic of watts' warrior pictures. the first is "caractacus," the british chief; though no christian, he is the earliest of watts' heroes. the second is the beautiful "sir galahad," whose strength was as the strength of ten, because his heart was pure. we see a knight standing bare-headed at the side of his white horse, gazing with rapt eyes on the vision of the holy grail, which in the gloom and solitude of the forest has suddenly dawned on his sight. the features of young arthur prinsep, with his bushy hair, who later became a general in the british army, can be detected in this wonderful and simple picture. its composition is like a stained-glass window. it is of all watts' perhaps the nearest to mysticism, and at the same time it is an appeal to the young to be like sir galahad. the original is in eton college chapel. in followed "the eve of peace," in which we see a warrior of middle age, much like watts himself at that time, who has lost the passion for warfare, sheathing his sword, glad to have it all over. the peacock feather that is strewn on the floor of "the court of death," and lies by the bier in "sic transit," is fastened to the warrior's casque. "aspiration," also taken from young prinsep ( ), is a picture of a young man in the dawn of life's battle, who, wishing to be a standard-bearer, looks out across the plain. he sees into the great possibilities of human life, and the ardent spirit of life is sobered by the burden of responsibilities. "watchman, what of the night?" is another wonderful composition, representing a figure with long hair, clad in armour, looking out into the darkness of the night, with his hand grasping the hilt of the sword. the colour, low in tone, and the whole composition, indicate doubt and yet faith. ellen terry was the model for this painting. "the condottiere" represents the fighting spirit of the middle ages. this soldier is, like the others, clad in armour, and is not likely to have a vision of the holy grail. his features represent the determination and vigour which were required of him in those ferocious days. "the red cross knight accompanying una" is a charming picture, representing an incident in spenser's "faëry queen," but the palm must be given to "the happy warrior," who is depicted at the moment of death, his head falling back, and his helmet unloosed, catching a glimpse of some angelic face, who speaks to him in terms of comfort and of peace. this picture, of all the others, shows how watts has insisted on carrying to the very highest point of idealism the terrible activities of warfare: "this, the happy warrior, this is he, that every man in arms should wish to be." he sent a copy, the original of which is in the munich gallery, to lord dufferin, whose son was killed in the south african war, and he declares that many bereaved mothers have thanked him for the inspiration and comfort it has brought to them. watts' pictures are widely distributed; a roomful may be seen at the tate gallery, millbank, s.w. nearly all the portraits of public men are at the national portrait gallery, trafalgar square, london. there is a portrait of thomas carlyle in the south kensington museum, three or four pictures at the manchester corporation gallery, and one at the leicester art gallery. there are also several of watts' best pictures in a gallery attached to his country house at compton in surrey; while his fresco "justice" can be seen at the benchers' hall, lincoln's inn. watts was conscious of the benefit he had received from the great men who had preceded him, and in his best moments so essentially humble, that in his last will and testament, and the letters of gift, he rises to the great height of artistic patriotism which always appeared to him in the light of a supreme duty. the former document has the following phrases: "i bequeath all my studies and works to any provincial gallery or galleries in great britain or ireland, which my executors shall in their discretion select, and to be distributed between such galleries." this will is dated november , , and relates to such works as had not already been disposed of. his great gift to the nation was made in , accompanied by a characteristic letter in which he says: "you can have the pictures any time after next sunday. i have never regarded them as mine, but never expected they would be placed anywhere until after my death, and only see now my presumption and their defects and shrink from the consequences of my temerity! i should certainly like to have them placed together, but of course can make no conditions. one or two are away, and i am a little uncertain about the sending of some others; if you could spare a moment i should like to consult you." a few weeks later, following a letter from the keeper of the national gallery, he writes as follows: "i beg to thank you and through you the trustees and director of the national gallery for the flattering intention of placing the tablet you speak of, but while returning grateful thanks for the intention of doing me this honour i should like it to be felt that i have in no way desired anything but the recognition that my object in work, and the offering of it, has only been the hope of spending my time and exercising my experience in a worthy manner, leaving to time further judgment. most certainly i desire that my pictures should be seen to advantage, and have a good effect as an encouragement to artists of stronger fibre and greater vitality, to pursue if only occasionally a similar direction and object." at the end of a long life by no means devoid of mistakes and disappointments, it would seem as though watts attained to his desires. the man has passed away, while the witness of his aspirations remains. none this ebook was produced by charles aldarondo and the distributed proofreaders team. the notebooks of leonardo da vinci volume translated by jean paul richter preface. a singular fatality has ruled the destiny of nearly all the most famous of leonardo da vinci's works. two of the three most important were never completed, obstacles having arisen during his life-time, which obliged him to leave them unfinished; namely the sforza monument and the wall-painting of the battle of anghiari, while the third--the picture of the last supper at milan--has suffered irremediable injury from decay and the repeated restorations to which it was recklessly subjected during the xviith and xviiith centuries. nevertheless, no other picture of the renaissance has become so wellknown and popular through copies of every description. vasari says, and rightly, in his life of leonardo, "that he laboured much more by his word than in fact or by deed", and the biographer evidently had in his mind the numerous works in manuscript which have been preserved to this day. to us, now, it seems almost inexplicable that these valuable and interesting original texts should have remained so long unpublished, and indeed forgotten. it is certain that during the xvith and xviith centuries their exceptional value was highly appreciated. this is proved not merely by the prices which they commanded, but also by the exceptional interest which has been attached to the change of ownership of merely a few pages of manuscript. that, notwithstanding this eagerness to possess the manuscripts, their contents remained a mystery, can only be accounted for by the many and great difficulties attending the task of deciphering them. the handwriting is so peculiar that it requires considerable practice to read even a few detached phrases, much more to solve with any certainty the numerous difficulties of alternative readings, and to master the sense as a connected whole. vasari observes with reference to leonardos writing: "he wrote backwards, in rude characters, and with the left hand, so that any one who is not practised in reading them, cannot understand them". the aid of a mirror in reading reversed handwriting appears to me available only for a first experimental reading. speaking from my own experience, the persistent use of it is too fatiguing and inconvenient to be practically advisable, considering the enormous mass of manuscripts to be deciphered. and as, after all, leonardo's handwriting runs backwards just as all oriental character runs backwards--that is to say from right to left--the difficulty of reading direct from the writing is not insuperable. this obvious peculiarity in the writing is not, however, by any means the only obstacle in the way of mastering the text. leonardo made use of an orthography peculiar to himself; he had a fashion of amalgamating several short words into one long one, or, again, he would quite arbitrarily divide a long word into two separate halves; added to this there is no punctuation whatever to regulate the division and construction of the sentences, nor are there any accents--and the reader may imagine that such difficulties were almost sufficient to make the task seem a desperate one to a beginner. it is therefore not surprising that the good intentions of some of leonardo s most reverent admirers should have failed. leonardos literary labours in various departments both of art and of science were those essentially of an enquirer, hence the analytical method is that which he employs in arguing out his investigations and dissertations. the vast structure of his scientific theories is consequently built up of numerous separate researches, and it is much to be lamented that he should never have collated and arranged them. his love for detailed research--as it seems to me--was the reason that in almost all the manuscripts, the different paragraphs appear to us to be in utter confusion; on one and the same page, observations on the most dissimilar subjects follow each other without any connection. a page, for instance, will begin with some principles of astronomy, or the motion of the earth; then come the laws of sound, and finally some precepts as to colour. another page will begin with his investigations on the structure of the intestines, and end with philosophical remarks as to the relations of poetry to painting; and so forth. leonardo himself lamented this confusion, and for that reason i do not think that the publication of the texts in the order in which they occur in the originals would at all fulfil his intentions. no reader could find his way through such a labyrinth; leonardo himself could not have done it. added to this, more than half of the five thousand manuscript pages which now remain to us, are written on loose leaves, and at present arranged in a manner which has no justification beyond the fancy of the collector who first brought them together to make volumes of more or less extent. nay, even in the volumes, the pages of which were numbered by leonardo himself, their order, so far as the connection of the texts was concerned, was obviously a matter of indifference to him. the only point he seems to have kept in view, when first writing down his notes, was that each observation should be complete to the end on the page on which it was begun. the exceptions to this rule are extremely few, and it is certainly noteworthy that we find in such cases, in bound volumes with his numbered pages, the written observations: "turn over", "this is the continuation of the previous page", and the like. is not this sufficient to prove that it was only in quite exceptional cases that the writer intended the consecutive pages to remain connected, when he should, at last, carry out the often planned arrangement of his writings? what this final arrangement was to be, leonardo has in most cases indicated with considerable completeness. in other cases this authoritative clue is wanting, but the difficulties arising from this are not insuperable; for, as the subject of the separate paragraphs is always distinct and well defined in itself, it is quite possible to construct a well-planned whole, out of the scattered materials of his scientific system, and i may venture to state that i have devoted especial care and thought to the due execution of this responsible task. the beginning of leonardo's literary labours dates from about his thirty-seventh year, and he seems to have carried them on without any serious interruption till his death. thus the manuscripts that remain represent a period of about thirty years. within this space of time his handwriting altered so little that it is impossible to judge from it of the date of any particular text. the exact dates, indeed, can only be assigned to certain note-books in which the year is incidentally indicated, and in which the order of the leaves has not been altered since leonardo used them. the assistance these afford for a chronological arrangement of the manuscripts is generally self evident. by this clue i have assigned to the original manuscripts now scattered through england, italy and france, the order of their production, as in many matters of detail it is highly important to be able to verify the time and place at which certain observations were made and registered. for this purpose the bibliography of the manuscripts given at the end of vol. ii, may be regarded as an index, not far short of complete, of all leonardo s literary works now extant. the consecutive numbers (from to ) at the head of each passage in this work, indicate their logical sequence with reference to the subjects; while the letters and figures to the left of each paragraph refer to the original manuscript and number of the page, on which that particular passage is to be found. thus the reader, by referring to the list of manuscripts at the beginning of volume i, and to the bibliography at the end of volume ii, can, in every instance, easily ascertain, not merely the period to which the passage belongs, but also exactly where it stood in the original document. thus, too, by following the sequence of the numbers in the bibliographical index, the reader may reconstruct the original order of the manuscripts and recompose the various texts to be found on the original sheets--so much of it, that is to say, as by its subject-matter came within the scope of this work. it may, however, be here observed that leonardo s manuscripts contain, besides the passages here printed, a great number of notes and dissertations on mechanics, physics, and some other subjects, many of which could only be satisfactorily dealt with by specialists. i have given as complete a review of these writings as seemed necessary in the bibliographical notes. in , raphael trichet dufresne, of paris, published a selection from leonardo's writings on painting, and this treatise became so popular that it has since been reprinted about two-and-twenty times, and in six different languages. but none of these editions were derived from the original texts, which were supposed to have been lost, but from early copies, in which leonardo's text had been more or less mutilated, and which were all fragmentary. the oldest and on the whole the best copy of leonardo's essays and precepts on painting is in the vatican library; this has been twice printed, first by manzi, in , and secondly by ludwig, in . still, this ancient copy, and the published editions of it, contain much for which it would be rash to hold leonardo responsible, and some portions--such as the very important rules for the proportions of the human figure--are wholly wanting; on the other hand they contain passages which, if they are genuine, cannot now be verified from any original manuscript extant. these copies, at any rate neither give us the original order of the texts, as written by leonardo, nor do they afford any substitute, by connecting them on a rational scheme; indeed, in their chaotic confusion they are anything rather than satisfactory reading. the fault, no doubt, rests with the compiler of the vatican copy, which would seem to be the source whence all the published and extensively known texts were derived; for, instead of arranging the passages himself, he was satisfied with recording a suggestion for a final arrangement of them into eight distinct parts, without attempting to carry out his scheme. under the mistaken idea that this plan of distribution might be that, not of the compiler, but of leonardo himself, the various editors, down to the present day, have very injudiciously continued to adopt this order--or rather disorder. i, like other enquirers, had given up the original manuscript of the trattato della pittura for lost, till, in the beginning of , i was enabled, by the liberality of lord ashburnham, to inspect his manuscripts, and was so happy as to discover among them the original text of the best-known portion of the trattato in his magnificent library at ashburnham place. though this discovery was of a fragment only--but a considerable fragment--inciting me to further search, it gave the key to the mystery which had so long enveloped the first origin of all the known copies of the trattato. the extensive researches i was subsequently enabled to prosecute, and the results of which are combined in this work, were only rendered possible by the unrestricted permission granted me to investigate all the manuscripts by leonardo dispersed throughout europe, and to reproduce the highly important original sketches they contain, by the process of "photogravure". her majesty the queen graciously accorded me special permission to copy for publication the manuscripts at the royal library at windsor. the commission centrale administrative de l'institut de france, paris, gave me, in the most liberal manner, in answer to an application from sir frederic leighton, p. r. a., corresponding member of the institut, free permission to work for several months in their private collection at deciphering the manuscripts preserved there. the same favour which lord ashburnham had already granted me was extended to me by the earl of leicester, the marchese trivulsi, and the curators of the ambrosian library at milan, by the conte manzoni at rome and by other private owners of manuscripts of leonardo's; as also by the directors of the louvre at paris; the accademia at venice; the uffizi at florence; the royal library at turin; and the british museum, and the south kensington museum. i am also greatly indebted to the librarians of these various collections for much assistance in my labours; and more particularly to monsieur louis lalanne, of the institut de france, the abbate ceriani, of the ambrosian library, mr. maude thompson, keeper of manuscripts at the british museum, mr. holmes, the queens librarian at windsor, the revd vere bayne, librarian of christ church college at oxford, and the revd a. napier, librarian to the earl of leicester at holkham hall. in correcting the italian text for the press, i have had the advantage of valuable advice from the commendatore giov. morelli, senatore del regno, and from signor gustavo frizzoni, of milan. the translation, under many difficulties, of the italian text into english, is mainly due to mrs. r. c. bell; while the rendering of several of the most puzzling and important passages, particularly in the second half of vol. i, i owe to the indefatigable interest taken in this work by mr. e. j. poynter r. a. finally i must express my thanks to mr. alfred marks, of long ditton, who has most kindly assisted me throughout in the revision of the proof sheets. the notes and dissertations on the texts on architecture in vol. ii i owe to my friend baron henri de geymuller, of paris. i may further mention with regard to the illustrations, that the negatives for the production of the "photo-gravures" by monsieur dujardin of paris were all taken direct from the originals. it is scarcely necessary to add that most of the drawings here reproduced in facsimile have never been published before. as i am now, on the termination of a work of several years' duration, in a position to review the general tenour of leonardos writings, i may perhaps be permitted to add a word as to my own estimate of the value of their contents. i have already shown that it is due to nothing but a fortuitous succession of unfortunate circumstances, that we should not, long since, have known leonardo, not merely as a painter, but as an author, a philosopher, and a naturalist. there can be no doubt that in more than one department his principles and discoveries were infinitely more in accord with the teachings of modern science, than with the views of his contemporaries. for this reason his extraordinary gifts and merits are far more likely to be appreciated in our own time than they could have been during the preceding centuries. he has been unjustly accused of having squandered his powers, by beginning a variety of studies and then, having hardly begun, throwing them aside. the truth is that the labours of three centuries have hardly sufficed for the elucidation of some of the problems which occupied his mighty mind. alexander von humboldt has borne witness that "he was the first to start on the road towards the point where all the impressions of our senses converge in the idea of the unity of nature" nay, yet more may be said. the very words which are inscribed on the monument of alexander von humboldt himself, at berlin, are perhaps the most appropriate in which we can sum up our estimate of leonardo's genius: "majestati naturae par ingenium." london, april . f. p. r. contents of volume i. prolegomena and general introduction to the book on painting clavis sigillorum and index of manuscripts.--the author's intention to publish his mss. ( ).--the preparation of the mss. for publication ( ).--admonition to readers ( ).--the disorder in the mss. ( ).--suggestions for the arrangement of mss. treating of particular subjects ( -- ).--general introductions to the book on painting ( -- ).--the plan of the book on painting ( -- ).--the use of the book on painting ( ).--necessity of theoretical knowledge ( , ).--the function of the eye ( -- ).--variability of the eye ( ).--focus of sight ( ).--differences of perception by one eye and by both eyes ( -- ).--the comparative size of the image depends on the amount of light ( -- ). ii. linear perspective general remarks on perspective ( -- ).--the elements of perspective:--of the point ( -- ).--of the line ( -- ).--the nature of the outline ( ).--definition of perspective ( ).--the perception of the object depends on the direction of the eye ( ).--experimental proof of the existence of the pyramid of sight ( -- ).--the relations of the distance point to the vanishing point ( -- ).--how to measure the pyramid of vision ( ).--the production of the pyramid of vision ( -- ).--proof by experiment ( -- ).--general conclusions ( ).--that the contrary is impossible ( ).--a parallel case ( ).--the function of the eye, as explained by the camera obscura ( -- ).--the practice of perspective ( -- ).--refraction of the rays falling upon the eye ( -- ).--the inversion of the images ( ).--the intersection of the rays ( -- ).--demonstration of perspective by means of a vertical glass plane ( -- .)--the angle of sight varies with the distance ( -- ).--opposite pyramids in juxtaposition ( ).--on simple and complex perspective ( ).--the proper distance of objects from the eye ( -- ).--the relative size of objects with regard to their distance from the eye ( -- ).--the apparent size of objects denned by calculation ( -- ).--on natural perspective ( -- ). iii. six books on light and shade general introduction.--prolegomena ( ).--scheme of the books on light and shade ( ).--different principles and plans of treatment ( -- ).--different sorts of light ( -- ).--definition of the nature of shadows ( -- ).--of the various kinds of shadows ( -- ).--of the various kinds of light ( -- ).--general remarks ( -- ).--first book on light and shade.--on the nature of light ( -- ).--the difference between light and lustre ( -- ).--the relations of luminous to illuminated bodies ( ). --experiments on the relation of light and shadow within a room ( -- ).--light and shadow with regard to the position of the eye ( -- ).--the law of the incidence of light ( -- ).--second book on light and shade.--gradations of strength in the shadows ( -- ).--on the intensity of shadows as dependent on the distance from the light ( -- ).--on the proportion of light and shadow ( -- ).--third book on light and shade.--definition of derived shadow ( -- ).--different sorts of derived shadows ( -- ).--on the relation of derived and primary shadow ( -- ).--on the shape of derived shadows ( -- ).--on the relative intensity of derived shadows ( -- ).--shadow as produced by two lights of different size ( -- ).--the effect of light at different distances ( ).--further complications in the derived shadows ( -- ).--fourth book on light and shade.--on the shape of cast shadows ( -- ).--on the outlines of cast shadows ( -- ).--on the relative size of cast shadows ( . ).--effects on cast shadows by the tone of the back ground ( ).--a disputed proposition ( ).--on the relative depth of cast shadows ( -- ).--fifth book on light and shade.--principles of reflection ( . ).--on reverberation ( ).--reflection on water ( . ).--experiments with the mirror ( -- ).--appendix:--on shadows in movement ( -- ).--sixth book on light and shade.--the effect of rays passing through holes ( . ).--on gradation of shadows ( . ).--on relative proportion of light and shadows ( -- ). iv. perspective of disappearance definition ( . ).--an illustration by experiment ( ).--a guiding rule ( ).---an experiment ( ).--on indistinctness at short distances ( -- ).--on indistinctness at great distances ( -- ).--the importance of light and shade in the prospettiva de' perdimenti ( -- ).--the effect of light or dark backgrounds on the apparent size of objects ( -- ).--propositions on prospettiva de' perdimenti from ms. c. ( -- ). v. theory of colours the reciprocal effects of colours on objects placed opposite each other ( -- ).--combination of different colours in cast shadows ( ).--the effect of colours in the camera obscura ( . ).--on the colours of derived shadows ( . ).--on the nature of colours ( . ).--on gradations in the depth of colours ( . ).--on the reflection of colours ( -- ).--on the use of dark and light colours in painting ( -- ).--on the colours of the rainbow ( -- ). vi. perspective of colour and aerial perspective general rules ( -- ).--an exceptional case ( ).--an experiment ( ).--the practice of the prospettiva de' colori ( ).--the rules of aerial perspective ( -- ).--on the relative density of the atmosphere ( -- ).--on the colour of the atmosphere ( -- ). vii. on the proportions and on the movements of the human figure preliminary observations ( . ).--proportions of the head and face ( -- ).--proportions of the head seen in front ( -- ).--proportions of the foot ( -- ).--relative proportions of the hand and foot ( ).--relative proportions of the foot and of the face ( -- ).--proportions of the leg ( -- ).--on the central point of the whole body ( ).--the relative proportions of the torso and of the whole figure ( ).--the relative proportions of the head and of the torso ( ).--the relative proportions of the torso and of the leg ( . ).--the relative proportions of the torso and of the foot ( ).--the proportions of the whole figure ( -- ).--the torso from the front and back ( ).--vitruvius' scheme of proportions ( ).--the arm and head ( ).--proportions of the arm ( -- ).--the movement of the arm ( -- ).--the movement of the torso ( -- ).--the proportions vary at different ages ( -- ).--the movement of the human figure ( -- ).--of walking up and down ( -- ).--on the human body in action ( -- ).--on hair falling down in curls ( ).--on draperies ( -- ). viii. botany for painters, and elements of landscape painting classification of trees ( ).--the relative thickness of the branches to the trunk ( -- ).--the law of proportion in the growth of the branches ( -- ).--the direction of growth ( -- ).--the forms of trees ( -- ).--the insertion of the leaves ( -- ).--light on branches and leaves ( -- ).--the proportions of light and shade in a leaf ( -- ).--of the transparency of leaves ( -- ).--the gradations of shade and colour in leaves ( -- ).--a classification of trees according to their colours ( ).--the proportions of light and shade in trees ( -- ).--the distribution of light and shade with reference to the position of the spectator ( -- ).--the effects of morning light ( -- ).--the effects of midday light ( ).--the appearance of trees in the distance ( -- ).--the cast shadow of trees ( . ).--light and shade on groups of trees ( -- ).--on the treatment of light for landscapes ( -- ).--on the treatment of light for views of towns ( -- ).--the effect of wind on trees ( -- ).--light and shade on clouds ( -- ).--on images reflected in water ( ).--of rainbows and rain ( . ).--of flower seeds ( ). ix. the practice of painting i. moral precepts for the student of painting.--how to ascertain the dispositions for an artistic career ( ).--the course of instruction for an artist ( -- ).--the study of the antique ( . ).--the necessity of anatomical knowledge ( . ).--how to acquire practice ( ).--industry and thoroughness the first conditions ( -- .)--the artist's private life and choice of company ( . ).--the distribution of time for studying ( -- ).--on the productive power of minor artists ( -- ).--a caution against one-sided study ( ).--how to acquire universality ( -- ).--useful games and exercises ( . ).--ii. the artist's studio.--instruments and helps for the application of perspective.--on judging of a picture.--on the size of the studio ( ).--on the construction of windows ( -- ).--on the best light for painting ( -- ).--on various helps in preparing a picture ( -- ).--on the management of works ( . ).--on the limitations of painting ( -- ).--on the choice of a position ( . ).--the apparent size of figures in a picture ( . ).--the right position of the artist, when painting and of the spectator ( -- ).--iii. the practical methods of light and shade and aerial perspective.--gradations of light and shade ( ).--on the choice of light for a picture ( -- ).--the distribution of light and shade ( -- ).--the juxtaposition of light and shade ( . ).--on the lighting of the background ( -- ).--on the lighting of white objects ( ).--the methods of aerial perspective ( -- ).--iv. of portrait and figure painting.--of sketching figures and portraits ( . ).--the position of the head ( ).--of the light on the face ( -- ).--general suggestions for historical pictures ( -- ).--how to represent the differences of age and sex ( . ).--of representing the emotions ( ).--of representing imaginary animals ( ).--the selection of forms ( -- ).--how to pose figures ( ).--of appropriate gestures ( -- ).--v. suggestions for compositions.--of painting battle-pieces ( -- ).--of depicting night-scenes ( ).--of depicting a tempest ( . ).--of representing the deluge ( -- ).--of depicting natural phenomena ( . ).--vi. the artist's materials.--of chalk and paper ( -- ).--on the preparation and use of colours ( -- ).--of preparing the panel ( ).--the preparation of oils ( -- ).--on varnishes ( -- ).--on chemical _materials ( -- ).--vii. philosophy and history of the art of painting.--the relation of art and nature ( . ).--painting is superior to poetry ( . ).--painting is superior to sculpture ( . ).--aphorisms ( -- ).--on the history of painting ( . ).--the painter's scope ( ). x. studies and sketches for pictures and decorations on pictures of the madonna ( ).--bernardo di bandino's portrait ( ).--notes on the last supper ( -- ).--on the battle of anghiari ( ).--allegorical representations referring to the duke of milan ( -- ).--allegorical representations ( -- ).--arrangement of a picture ( ).--list of drawings ( ).--mottoes and emblems ( -- ). the author's intention to publish his mss. . how by a certain machine many may stay some time under water. and how and wherefore i do not describe my method of remaining under water and how long i can remain without eating. and i do not publish nor divulge these, by reason of the evil nature of men, who would use them for assassinations at the bottom of the sea by destroying ships, and sinking them, together with the men in them. nevertheless i will impart others, which are not dangerous because the mouth of the tube through which you breathe is above the water, supported on air sacks or cork. [footnote: the leaf on which this passage is written, is headed with the words _casi_ , and most of these cases begin with the word '_come_', like the two here given, which are the th and th. . _sughero_. in the codex antlanticus a; a there is a sketch, drawn with the pen, representing a man with a tube in his mouth, and at the farther end of the tube a disk. by the tube the word '_channa_' is written, and by the disk the word '_sughero_'.] the preparation of the mss. for publication. . when you put together the science of the motions of water, remember to include under each proposition its application and use, in order that this science may not be useless.-- [footnote: a comparatively small portion of leonardo's notes on water-power was published at bologna in , under the title: "_del moto e misura dell'acqua, di l. da vinci_".] admonition to readers. . let no man who is not a mathematician read the elements of my work. the disorder in the mss. . begun at florence, in the house of piero di braccio martelli, on the nd day of march . and this is to be a collection without order, taken from many papers which i have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place, according to the subjects of which they may treat. but i believe that before i am at the end of this [task] i shall have to repeat the same things several times; for which, o reader! do not blame me, for the subjects are many and memory cannot retain them [all] and say: 'i will not write this because i wrote it before.' and if i wished to avoid falling into this fault, it would be necessary in every case when i wanted to copy [a passage] that, not to repeat myself, i should read over all that had gone before; and all the more since the intervals are long between one time of writing and the next. [footnote: . in the history of florence in the early part of the xvith century _piero di braccio martelli_ is frequently mentioned as _commissario della signoria_. he was famous for his learning and at his death left four books on mathematics ready for the press; comp. litta, _famiglie celebri italiane_, _famiglia martelli di firenze_.--in the official catalogue of mss. in the brit. mus., new series vol. i., where this passage is printed, _barto_ has been wrongly given for braccio. . _addi di marzo _. the christian era was computed in florence at that time from the incarnation (lady day, march th). hence this should be by our reckoning. . _racolto tratto di molte carte le quali io ho qui copiate_. we must suppose that leonardo means that he has copied out his own mss. and not those of others. the first thirteen leaves of the ms. in the brit. mus. are a fair copy of some notes on physics.] suggestions for the arrangement of mss treating of particular subjects.( - ). . of digging a canal. put this in the book of useful inventions and in proving them bring forward the propositions already proved. and this is the proper order; since if you wished to show the usefulness of any plan you would be obliged again to devise new machines to prove its utility and thus would confuse the order of the forty books and also the order of the diagrams; that is to say you would have to mix up practice with theory, which would produce a confused and incoherent work. . i am not to blame for putting forward, in the course of my work on science, any general rule derived from a previous conclusion. . the book of the science of mechanics must precede the book of useful inventions.--have your books on anatomy bound! [footnote: . the numerous notes on anatomy written on loose leaves and now in the royal collection at windsor can best be classified in four books, corresponding to the different character and size of the paper. when leonardo speaks of '_li tua libri di notomia_', he probably means the mss. which still exist; if this hypothesis is correct the present condition of these leaves might seem to prove that he only carried out his purpose with one of the books on anatomy. a borrowed book on anatomy is mentioned in f.o.] . the order of your book must proceed on this plan: first simple beams, then (those) supported from below, then suspended in part, then wholly [suspended]. then beams as supporting other weights [footnote: . leonardo's notes on mechanics are extraordinarily numerous; but, for the reasons assigned in my introduction, they have not been included in the present work.]. general introductions to the book on painting ( - ). . introduction. seeing that i can find no subject specially useful or pleasing--since the men who have come before me have taken for their own every useful or necessary theme--i must do like one who, being poor, comes last to the fair, and can find no other way of providing himself than by taking all the things already seen by other buyers, and not taken but refused by reason of their lesser value. i, then, will load my humble pack with this despised and rejected merchandise, the refuse of so many buyers; and will go about to distribute it, not indeed in great cities, but in the poorer towns, taking such a price as the wares i offer may be worth. [footnote: it need hardly be pointed out that there is in this 'proemio' a covert irony. in the second and third prefaces, leonardo characterises his rivals and opponents more closely. his protest is directed against neo-latinism as professed by most of the humanists of his time; its futility is now no longer questioned.] . introduction. i know that many will call this useless work [footnote: . questa essere opera inutile. by opera we must here understand libro di pittura and particularly the treatise on perspective.]; and they will be those of whom demetrius [footnote: . demetrio. "with regard to the passage attributed to demetrius", dr. h. mÃ�ller strÃ�bing writes, "i know not what to make of it. it is certainly not demetrius phalereus that is meant and it can hardly be demetrius poliorcetes. who then can it be--for the name is a very common one? it may be a clerical error for demades and the maxim is quite in the spirit of his writings i have not however been able to find any corresponding passage either in the 'fragments' (c. muller, _orat. att._, ii. ) nor in the supplements collected by dietz (_rhein. mus._, vol. , p. )." the same passage occurs as a simple memorandum in the ms. tr. , apparently as a note for this '_proemio_' thus affording some data as to the time where these introductions were written.] declared that he took no more account of the wind that came out their mouth in words, than of that they expelled from their lower parts: men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and the only true riches of the mind. for so much more worthy as the soul is than the body, so much more noble are the possessions of the soul than those of the body. and often, when i see one of these men take this work in his hand, i wonder that he does not put it to his nose, like a monkey, or ask me if it is something good to eat. [footnote: in the original, the proemio dì prospettiva cioè dell'uffitio dell'occhio (see no. ) stands between this and the preceding one, no. .] introduction. i am fully concious that, not being a literary man, certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me; alleging that i am not a man of letters. foolish folks! do they not know that i might retort as marius did to the roman patricians [footnote : _come mario disse ai patriti romani_. "i am unable to find the words here attributed by leonardo to marius, either in plutarch's life of marius or in the apophthegmata (_moralia_, p. ). nor do they occur in the writings of valerius maximus (who frequently mentions marius) nor in velleius paterculus (ii, to ), dio cassius, aulus gellius, or macrobius. professor e. mendelson of dorpat, the editor of herodian, assures me that no such passage is the found in that author" (communication from dr. muller strubing). leonardo evidently meant to allude to some well known incident in roman history and the mention of marius is the result probably of some confusion. we may perhaps read, for marius, menenius agrippa, though in that case it is true we must alter patriti to plebei. the change is a serious one. but it would render the passage perfectly clear.] by saying: that they, who deck themselves out in the labours of others will not allow me my own. they will say that i, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which i desire to treat of [footnote : _le mie cose .... che d'altra parola_. this can hardly be reconciled with mons. ravaisson's estimate of l. da vinci's learning. "_leonard de vinci etait un admirateur et un disciple des anciens, aussi bien dans l'art que dans la science et il tenait a passer pour tel meme aux yeux de la posterite._" _gaz. des beaux arts. oct. .]; but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words [footnote : see footnote ]; and [experience] has been the mistress of those who wrote well. and so, as mistress, i will cite her in all cases. . though i may not, like them, be able to quote other authors, i shall rely on that which is much greater and more worthy:--on experience, the mistress of their masters. they go about puffed up and pompous, dressed and decorated with [the fruits], not of their own labours, but of those of others. and they will not allow me my own. they will scorn me as an inventor; but how much more might they--who are not inventors but vaunters and declaimers of the works of others--be blamed. introduction. and those men who are inventors and interpreters between nature and man, as compared with boasters and declaimers of the works of others, must be regarded and not otherwise esteemed than as the object in front of a mirror, when compared with its image seen in the mirror. for the first is something in itself, and the other nothingness.--folks little indebted to nature, since it is only by chance that they wear the human form and without it i might class them with the herds of beasts. . many will think they may reasonably blame me by alleging that my proofs are opposed to the authority of certain men held in the highest reverence by their inexperienced judgments; not considering that my works are the issue of pure and simple experience, who is the one true mistress. these rules are sufficient to enable you to know the true from the false--and this aids men to look only for things that are possible and with due moderation--and not to wrap yourself in ignorance, a thing which can have no good result, so that in despair you would give yourself up to melancholy. . among all the studies of natural causes and reasons light chiefly delights the beholder; and among the great features of mathematics the certainty of its demonstrations is what preeminently (tends to) elevate the mind of the investigator. perspective, therefore, must be preferred to all the discourses and systems of human learning. in this branch [of science] the beam of light is explained on those methods of demonstration which form the glory not so much of mathematics as of physics and are graced with the flowers of both [footnote: . such of leonardo's notes on optics or on perspective as bear exclusively on mathematics or physics could not be included in the arrangement of the _libro di pittura_ which is here presented to the reader. they are however but few.]. but its axioms being laid down at great length, i shall abridge them to a conclusive brevity, arranging them on the method both of their natural order and of mathematical demonstration; sometimes by deduction of the effects from the causes, and sometimes arguing the causes from the effects; adding also to my own conclusions some which, though not included in them, may nevertheless be inferred from them. thus, if the lord--who is the light of all things--vouchsafe to enlighten me, i will treat of light; wherefore i will divide the present work into parts [footnote: . in the middle ages--for instance, by roger bacon, by vitellone, with whose works leonardo was certainly familiar, and by all the writers of the renaissance perspective and optics were not regarded as distinct sciences. perspective, indeed, is in its widest application the science of seeing. although to leonardo the two sciences were clearly separate, it is not so as to their names; thus we find axioms in optics under the heading perspective. according to this arrangement of the materials for the theoretical portion of the _libro di pittura_ propositions in perspective and in optics stand side by side or occur alternately. although this particular chapter deals only with optics, it is not improbable that the words _partirò la presente opera in parti_ may refer to the same division into three sections which is spoken of in chapters to .]. the plan of the book on painting ( -- ). . on the three branches of perspective. there are three branches of perspective; the first deals with the reasons of the (apparent) diminution of objects as they recede from the eye, and is known as diminishing perspective.--the second contains the way in which colours vary as they recede from the eye. the third and last is concerned with the explanation of how the objects [in a picture] ought to be less finished in proportion as they are remote (and the names are as follows): linear perspective. the perspective of colour. the perspective of disappearance. [footnote: . from the character of the handwriting i infer that this passage was written before the year .]. . on painting and perspective. the divisions of perspective are , as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances. [footnote: the division is here the same as in the previous chapter no. , and this is worthy of note when we connect it with the fact that a space of about years must have intervened between the writing of the two passages.] . the discourse on painting. perspective, as bearing on drawing, is divided into three principal sections; of which the first treats of the diminution in the size of bodies at different distances. the second part is that which treats of the diminution in colour in these objects. the third [deals with] the diminished distinctness of the forms and outlines displayed by the objects at various distances. . on the sections of [the book on] painting. the first thing in painting is that the objects it represents should appear in relief, and that the grounds surrounding them at different distances shall appear within the vertical plane of the foreground of the picture by means of the branches of perspective, which are: the diminution in the distinctness of the forms of the objects, the diminution in their magnitude; and the diminution in their colour. and of these classes of perspective the first results from [the structure of] the eye, while the other two are caused by the atmosphere which intervenes between the eye and the objects seen by it. the second essential in painting is appropriate action and a due variety in the figures, so that the men may not all look like brothers, &c. [footnote: this and the two foregoing chapters must have been written in to . they undoubtedly indicate the scheme which leonardo wished to carry out in arranging his researches on perspective as applied to painting. this is important because it is an evidence against the supposition of h. ludwig and others, that leonardo had collected his principles of perspective in one book so early as before ; a book which, according to the hypothesis, must have been lost at a very early period, or destroyed possibly, by the french (!) in (see h. ludwig. l. da vinci: _das buch van der malerei_. vienna iii, and ).] the use of the book on painting. . these rules are of use only in correcting the figures; since every man makes some mistakes in his first compositions and he who knows them not, cannot amend them. but you, knowing your errors, will correct your works and where you find mistakes amend them, and remember never to fall into them again. but if you try to apply these rules in composition you will never make an end, and will produce confusion in your works. these rules will enable you to have a free and sound judgment; since good judgment is born of clear understanding, and a clear understanding comes of reasons derived from sound rules, and sound rules are the issue of sound experience--the common mother of all the sciences and arts. hence, bearing in mind the precepts of my rules, you will be able, merely by your amended judgment, to criticise and recognise every thing that is out of proportion in a work, whether in the perspective or in the figures or any thing else. necessity of theoretical knowledge ( . ). . of the mistakes made by those who practise without knowledge. those who are in love with practice without knowledge are like the sailor who gets into a ship without rudder or compass and who never can be certain whether he is going. practice must always be founded on sound theory, and to this perspective is the guide and the gateway; and without this nothing can be done well in the matter of drawing. . the painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence. the function of the eye ( - ). . introduction to perspective:--that is of the function of the eye. behold here o reader! a thing concerning which we cannot trust our forefathers, the ancients, who tried to define what the soul and life are--which are beyond proof, whereas those things, which can at any time be clearly known and proved by experience, remained for many ages unknown or falsely understood. the eye, whose function we so certainly know by experience, has, down to my own time, been defined by an infinite number of authors as one thing; but i find, by experience, that it is quite another. [footnote : compare the note to no. .] [footnote: in section we already find it indicated that the study of perspective and of optics is to be based on that of the functions of the eye. leonardo also refers to the science of the eye, in his astronomical researches, for instance in ms. f b '_ordine del provare la terra essere una stella: imprima difinisce l'occhio'_, &c. compare also ms. e b and f b. the principles of astronomical perspective.] . here [in the eye] forms, here colours, here the character of every part of the universe are concentrated to a point; and that point is so marvellous a thing ... oh! marvellous, o stupendous necessity--by thy laws thou dost compel every effect to be the direct result of its cause, by the shortest path. these [indeed] are miracles;... in so small a space it can be reproduced and rearranged in its whole expanse. describe in your anatomy what proportion there is between the diameters of all the images in the eye and the distance from them of the crystalline lens. . of the attributes of the eye, all concerned in painting. painting is concerned with all the attributes of sight; which are:--darkness, light, solidity and colour, form and position, distance and propinquity, motion and rest. this little work of mine will be a tissue [of the studies] of these attributes, reminding the painter of the rules and methods by which he should use his art to imitate all the works of nature which adorn the world. . on painting. variability of the eye. st. the pupil of the eye contracts, in proportion to the increase of light which is reflected in it. nd. the pupil of the eye expands in proportion to the diminution in the day light, or any other light, that is reflected in it. rd. [footnote: . the subject of this third proposition we find fully discussed in ms. g. a.]. the eye perceives and recognises the objects of its vision with greater intensity in proportion as the pupil is more widely dilated; and this can be proved by the case of nocturnal animals, such as cats, and certain birds--as the owl and others--in which the pupil varies in a high degree from large to small, &c., when in the dark or in the light. th. the eye [out of doors] in an illuminated atmosphere sees darkness behind the windows of houses which [nevertheless] are light. th. all colours when placed in the shade appear of an equal degree of darkness, among themselves. th. but all colours when placed in a full light, never vary from their true and essential hue. . of the eye. focus of sight. if the eye is required to look at an object placed too near to it, it cannot judge of it well--as happens to a man who tries to see the tip of his nose. hence, as a general rule, nature teaches us that an object can never be seen perfectly unless the space between it and the eye is equal, at least, to the length of the face. differences of perception by one eye and by both eyes ( - ). . of the eye. when both eyes direct the pyramid of sight to an object, that object becomes clearly seen and comprehended by the eyes. . objects seen by one and the same eye appear sometimes large, and sometimes small. . the motion of a spectator who sees an object at rest often makes it seem as though the object at rest had acquired the motion of the moving body, while the moving person appears to be at rest. on painting. objects in relief, when seen from a short distance with one eye, look like a perfect picture. if you look with the eye _a_, _b_ at the spot _c_, this point _c_ will appear to be at _d_, _f_, and if you look at it with the eye _g_, _h_ will appear to be at _m_. a picture can never contain in itself both aspects. . let the object in relief _t_ be seen by both eyes; if you will look at the object with the right eye _m_, keeping the left eye _n_ shut, the object will appear, or fill up the space, at _a_; and if you shut the right eye and open the left, the object (will occupy the) space _b_; and if you open both eyes, the object will no longer appear at _a_ or _b_, but at _e_, _r_, _f_. why will not a picture seen by both eyes produce the effect of relief, as [real] relief does when seen by both eyes; and why should a picture seen with one eye give the same effect of relief as real relief would under the same conditions of light and shade? [footnote: in the sketch, _m_ is the left eye and _n_ the right, while the text reverses this lettering. we must therefore suppose that the face in which the eyes _m_ and _n_ are placed is opposite to the spectator.] . the comparative size of the image depends on the amount of light ( - ). the eye will hold and retain in itself the image of a luminous body better than that of a shaded object. the reason is that the eye is in itself perfectly dark and since two things that are alike cannot be distinguished, therefore the night, and other dark objects cannot be seen or recognised by the eye. light is totally contrary and gives more distinctness, and counteracts and differs from the usual darkness of the eye, hence it leaves the impression of its image. . every object we see will appear larger at midnight than at midday, and larger in the morning than at midday. this happens because the pupil of the eye is much smaller at midday than at any other time. . the pupil which is largest will see objects the largest. this is evident when we look at luminous bodies, and particularly at those in the sky. when the eye comes out of darkness and suddenly looks up at these bodies, they at first appear larger and then diminish; and if you were to look at those bodies through a small opening, you would see them smaller still, because a smaller part of the pupil would exercise its function. [footnote: . _buso_ in the lomb. dialect is the same as _buco_.] . when the eye, coming out of darkness suddenly sees a luminous body, it will appear much larger at first sight than after long looking at it. the illuminated object will look larger and more brilliant, when seen with two eyes than with only one. a luminous object will appear smaller in size, when the eye sees it through a smaller opening. a luminous body of an oval form will appear rounder in proportion as it is farther from the eye. . why when the eye has just seen the light, does the half light look dark to it, and in the same way if it turns from the darkness the half light look very bright? . on painting. if the eye, when [out of doors] in the luminous atmosphere, sees a place in shadow, this will look very much darker than it really is. this happens only because the eye when out in the air contracts the pupil in proportion as the atmosphere reflected in it is more luminous. and the more the pupil contracts, the less luminous do the objects appear that it sees. but as soon as the eye enters into a shady place the darkness of the shadow suddenly seems to diminish. this occurs because the greater the darkness into which the pupil goes the more its size increases, and this increase makes the darkness seem less. [footnote : _la luce entrerà_. _luce_ occurs here in the sense of pupil of the eye as in no : c. a. b; a; i-- ; and in many other places.] . on perspective. the eye which turns from a white object in the light of the sun and goes into a less fully lighted place will see everything as dark. and this happens either because the pupils of the eyes which have rested on this brilliantly lighted white object have contracted so much that, given at first a certain extent of surface, they will have lost more than / of their size; and, lacking in size, they are also deficient in [seeing] power. though you might say to me: a little bird (then) coming down would see comparatively little, and from the smallness of his pupils the white might seem black! to this i should reply that here we must have regard to the proportion of the mass of that portion of the brain which is given up to the sense of sight and to nothing else. or--to return--this pupil in man dilates and contracts according to the brightness or darkness of (surrounding) objects; and since it takes some time to dilate and contract, it cannot see immediately on going out of the light and into the shade, nor, in the same way, out of the shade into the light, and this very thing has already deceived me in painting an eye, and from that i learnt it. . experiment [showing] the dilatation and contraction of the pupil, from the motion of the sun and other luminaries. in proportion as the sky is darker the stars appear of larger size, and if you were to light up the medium these stars would look smaller; and this difference arises solely from the pupil which dilates and contracts with the amount of light in the medium which is interposed between the eye and the luminous body. let the experiment be made, by placing a candle above your head at the same time that you look at a star; then gradually lower the candle till it is on a level with the ray that comes from the star to the eye, and then you will see the star diminish so much that you will almost lose sight of it. [footnote: no reference is made in the text to the letters on the accompanying diagram.] . the pupil of the eye, in the open air, changes in size with every degree of motion from the sun; and at every degree of its changes one and the same object seen by it will appear of a different size; although most frequently the relative scale of surrounding objects does not allow us to detect these variations in any single object we may look at. . the eye--which sees all objects reversed--retains the images for some time. this conclusion is proved by the results; because, the eye having gazed at light retains some impression of it. after looking (at it) there remain in the eye images of intense brightness, that make any less brilliant spot seem dark until the eye has lost the last trace of the impression of the stronger light. _ii. linear perspective. we see clearly from the concluding sentence of section , where the author directly addresses the painter, that he must certainly have intended to include the elements of mathematics in his book on the art of painting. they are therefore here placed at the beginning. in section the theory of the "pyramid of sight" is distinctly and expressly put forward as the fundamental principle of linear perspective, and sections to treat of it fully. this theory of sight can scarcely be traced to any author of antiquity. such passages as occur in euclid for instance, may, it is true, have proved suggestive to the painters of the renaissance, but it would be rash to say any thing decisive on this point. leon battista alberti treats of the "pyramid of sight" at some length in his first book of painting; but his explanation differs widely from leonardo's in the details. leonardo, like alberti, may have borrowed the broad lines of his theory from some views commonly accepted among painters at the time; but he certainly worked out its application in a perfectly original manner. the axioms as to the perception of the pyramid of rays are followed by explanations of its origin, and proofs of its universal application ( -- ). the author recurs to the subject with endless variations; it is evidently of fundamental importance in his artistic theory and practice. it is unnecessary to discuss how far this theory has any scientific value at the present day; so much as this, at any rate, seems certain: that from the artist's point of view it may still claim to be of immense practical utility. according to leonardo, on one hand, the laws of perspective are an inalienable condition of the existence of objects in space; on the other hand, by a natural law, the eye, whatever it sees and wherever it turns, is subjected to the perception of the pyramid of rays in the form of a minute target. thus it sees objects in perspective independently of the will of the spectator, since the eye receives the images by means of the pyramid of rays "just as a magnet attracts iron". in connection with this we have the function of the eye explained by the camera obscura, and this is all the more interesting and important because no writer previous to leonardo had treated of this subject_ ( -- ). _subsequent passages, of no less special interest, betray his knowledge of refraction and of the inversion of the image in the camera and in the eye_ ( -- ). _from the principle of the transmission of the image to the eye and to the camera obscura he deduces the means of producing an artificial construction of the pyramid of rays or--which is the same thing--of the image. the fundamental axioms as to the angle of sight and the vanishing point are thus presented in a manner which is as complete as it is simple and intelligible_ ( -- ). _leonardo distinguishes between simple and complex perspective_ ( , ). _the last sections treat of the apparent size of objects at various distances and of the way to estimate it_ ( -- ). general remarks on perspective ( - ). . on painting. perspective is the best guide to the art of painting. [footnote: . compare , .] . the art of perspective is of such a nature as to make what is flat appear in relief and what is in relief flat. the elements of perspective--of the point ( - ). . all the problems of perspective are made clear by the five terms of mathematicians, which are:--the point, the line, the angle, the superficies and the solid. the point is unique of its kind. and the point has neither height, breadth, length, nor depth, whence it is to be regarded as indivisible and as having no dimensions in space. the line is of three kinds, straight, curved and sinuous and it has neither breadth, height, nor depth. hence it is indivisible, excepting in its length, and its ends are two points. the angle is the junction of two lines in a point. . a point is not part of a line. . of the natural point. the smallest natural point is larger than all mathematical points, and this is proved because the natural point has continuity, and any thing that is continuous is infinitely divisible; but the mathematical point is indivisible because it has no size. [footnote: this definition was inserted by leonardo on a ms. copy on parchment of the well-known _"trattato d'architettura civile e militare"_ &c. by francesco di giorgio; opposite a passage where the author says: _'in prima he da sapere che punto è quella parie della quale he nulla--linia he luncheza senza àpieza; &c.] . , the superficies is a limitation of the body. , and the limitation of a body is no part of that body. , and the limitation of one body is that which begins another. , that which is not part of any body is nothing. nothing is that which fills no space. if one single point placed in a circle may be the starting point of an infinite number of lines, and the termination of an infinite number of lines, there must be an infinite number of points separable from this point, and these when reunited become one again; whence it follows that the part may be equal to the whole. . the point, being indivisible, occupies no space. that which occupies no space is nothing. the limiting surface of one thing is the beginning of another. . that which is no part of any body is called nothing. . that which has no limitations, has no form. the limitations of two conterminous bodies are interchangeably the surface of each. all the surfaces of a body are not parts of that body. of the line ( - ). . definition of the nature of the line. the line has in itself neither matter nor substance and may rather be called an imaginary idea than a real object; and this being its nature it occupies no space. therefore an infinite number of lines may be conceived of as intersecting each other at a point, which has no dimensions and is only of the thickness (if thickness it may be called) of one single line. how we may conclude that a superficies terminates in a point? an angular surface is reduced to a point where it terminates in an angle. or, if the sides of that angle are produced in a straight line, then--beyond that angle--another surface is generated, smaller, or equal to, or larger than the first. . of drawing outline. consider with the greatest care the form of the outlines of every object, and the character of their undulations. and these undulations must be separately studied, as to whether the curves are composed of arched convexities or angular concavities. . the nature of the outline. the boundaries of bodies are the least of all things. the proposition is proved to be true, because the boundary of a thing is a surface, which is not part of the body contained within that surface; nor is it part of the air surrounding that body, but is the medium interposted between the air and the body, as is proved in its place. but the lateral boundaries of these bodies is the line forming the boundary of the surface, which line is of invisible thickness. wherefore o painter! do not surround your bodies with lines, and above all when representing objects smaller than nature; for not only will their external outlines become indistinct, but their parts will be invisible from distance. . definition of perspective. [drawing is based upon perspective, which is nothing else than a thorough knowledge of the function of the eye. and this function simply consists in receiving in a pyramid the forms and colours of all the objects placed before it. i say in a pyramid, because there is no object so small that it will not be larger than the spot where these pyramids are received into the eye. therefore, if you extend the lines from the edges of each body as they converge you will bring them to a single point, and necessarily the said lines must form a pyramid.] [perspective is nothing more than a rational demonstration applied to the consideration of how objects in front of the eye transmit their image to it, by means of a pyramid of lines. the _pyramid_ is the name i apply to the lines which, starting from the surface and edges of each object, converge from a distance and meet in a single point.] [perspective is a rational demonstration, by which we may practically and clearly understand how objects transmit their own image, by lines forming a pyramid (centred) in the eye.] perspective is a rational demonstration by which experience confirms that every object sends its image to the eye by a pyramid of lines; and bodies of equal size will result in a pyramid of larger or smaller size, according to the difference in their distance, one from the other. by a pyramid of lines i mean those which start from the surface and edges of bodies, and, converging from a distance meet in a single point. a point is said to be that which [having no dimensions] cannot be divided, and this point placed in the eye receives all the points of the cone. [footnote: . - . compare with this the proem. no. . the paragraphs placed in brackets: lines - , - , and -- , are evidently mere sketches and, as such, were cancelled by the writer; but they serve as a commentary on the final paragraph, lines - .] . in what way the eye sees objects placed in front of it. the perception of the object depends on the direction of the eye. supposing that the ball figured above is the ball of the eye and let the small portion of the ball which is cut off by the line _s t_ be the pupil and all the objects mirrored on the centre of the face of the eye, by means of the pupil, pass on at once and enter the pupil, passing through the crystalline humour, which does not interfere in the pupil with the things seen by means of the light. and the pupil having received the objects, by means of the light, immediately refers them and transmits them to the intellect by the line _a b_. and you must know that the pupil transmits nothing perfectly to the intellect or common sense excepting when the objects presented to it by means of light, reach it by the line _a b;_ as, for instance, by the line _b c_. for although the lines _m n_ and _f g_ may be seen by the pupil they are not perfectly taken in, because they do not coincide with the line _a b_. and the proof is this: if the eye, shown above, wants to count the letters placed in front, the eye will be obliged to turn from letter to letter, because it cannot discern them unless they lie in the line _a b;_ as, for instance, in the line _a c_. all visible objects reach the eye by the lines of a pyramid, and the point of the pyramid is the apex and centre of it, in the centre of the pupil, as figured above. [footnote: . in this problem the eye is conceived of as fixed and immovable; this is plain from line .] experimental proof of the existence of the pyramid of sight ( - ). . perspective is a rational demonstration, confirmed by experience, that all objects transmit their image to the eye by a pyramid of lines. by a pyramid of lines i understand those lines which start from the edges of the surface of bodies, and converging from a distance, meet in a single point; and this point, in the present instance, i will show to be situated in the eye which is the universal judge of all objects. by a point i mean that which cannot be divided into parts; therefore this point, which is situated in the eye, being indivisible, no body is seen by the eye, that is not larger than this point. this being the case it is inevitable that the lines which come from the object to the point must form a pyramid. and if any man seeks to prove that the sense of sight does not reside in this point, but rather in the black spot which is visible in the middle of the pupil, i might reply to him that a small object could never diminish at any distance, as it might be a grain of millet or of oats or of some similar thing, and that object, if it were larger than the said [black] spot would never be seen as a whole; as may be seen in the diagram below. let _a_. be the seat of sight, _b e_ the lines which reach the eye. let _e d_ be the grains of millet within these lines. you plainly see that these will never diminish by distance, and that the body _m n_ could not be entirely covered by it. therefore you must confess that the eye contains within itself one single indivisible point _a_, to which all the points converge of the pyramid of lines starting from an object, as is shown below. let _a_. _b_. be the eye; in the centre of it is the point above mentioned. if the line _e f_ is to enter as an image into so small an opening in the eye, you must confess that the smaller object cannot enter into what is smaller than itself unless it is diminished, and by diminishing it must take the form of a pyramid. . perspective. perspective comes in where judgment fails [as to the distance] in objects which diminish. the eye can never be a true judge for determining with exactitude how near one object is to another which is equal to it [in size], if the top of that other is on the level of the eye which sees them on that side, excepting by means of the vertical plane which is the standard and guide of perspective. let _n_ be the eye, _e f_ the vertical plane above mentioned. let _a b c d_ be the three divisions, one below the other; if the lines _a n_ and _c n_ are of a given length and the eye _n_ is in the centre, then _a b_ will look as large as _b c. c d_ is lower and farther off from _n_, therefore it will look smaller. and the same effect will appear in the three divisions of a face when the eye of the painter who is drawing it is on a level with the eye of the person he is painting. . to prove how objects reach the eye. if you look at the sun or some other luminous body and then shut your eyes you will see it again inside your eye for a long time. this is evidence that images enter into the eye. the relations of the distance points to the vanishing point ( - ). . elements of perspective. all objects transmit their image to the eye in pyramids, and the nearer to the eye these pyramids are intersected the smaller will the image appear of the objects which cause them. therefore, you may intersect the pyramid with a vertical plane [footnote : _pariete_. compare the definitions in , - , - . these lines refer exclusively to the third diagram. for the better understanding of this it should be observed that _c s_ must be regarded as representing the section or profile of a square plane, placed horizontally (comp. lines , , ) for which the word _pianura_ is subsequently employed ( , ). lines - contain certain preliminary observations to guide the reader in understanding the diagram; the last three seem to have been added as a supplement. leonardo's mistake in writing _t denota_ (line ) for _f denota_ has been rectified.] which reaches the base of the pyramid as is shown in the plane _a n_. the eye _f_ and the eye _t_ are one and the same thing; but the eye _f_ marks the distance, that is to say how far you are standing from the object; and the eye _t_ shows you the direction of it; that is whether you are opposite, or on one side, or at an angle to the object you are looking at. and remember that the eye _f_ and the eye _t_ must always be kept on the same level. for example if you raise or lower the eye from the distance point _f_ you must do the same with the direction point _t_. and if the point _f_ shows how far the eye is distant from the square plane but does not show on which side it is placed--and, if in the same way, the point _t_ show _s_ the direction and not the distance, in order to ascertain both you must use both points and they will be one and the same thing. if the eye _f_ could see a perfect square of which all the sides were equal to the distance between _s_ and _c_, and if at the nearest end of the side towards the eye a pole were placed, or some other straight object, set up by a perpendicular line as shown at _r s_--then, i say, that if you were to look at the side of the square that is nearest to you it will appear at the bottom of the vertical plane _r s_, and then look at the farther side and it would appear to you at the height of the point _n_ on the vertical plane. thus, by this example, you can understand that if the eye is above a number of objects all placed on the same level, one beyond another, the more remote they are the higher they will seem, up to the level of the eye, but no higher; because objects placed upon the level on which your feet stand, so long as it is flat--even if it be extended into infinity--would never be seen above the eye; since the eye has in itself the point towards which all the cones tend and converge which convey the images of the objects to the eye. and this point always coincides with the point of diminution which is the extreme of all we can see. and from the base line of the first pyramid as far as the diminishing point [footnote: the two diagrams above the chapter are explained by the first five lines. they have, however, more letters than are referred to in the text, a circumstance we frequently find occasion to remark.] . there are only bases without pyramids which constantly diminish up to this point. and from the first base where the vertical plane is placed towards the point in the eye there will be only pyramids without bases; as shown in the example given above. now, let _a b_ be the said vertical plane and _r_ the point of the pyramid terminating in the eye, and _n_ the point of diminution which is always in a straight line opposite the eye and always moves as the eye moves--just as when a rod is moved its shadow moves, and moves with it, precisely as the shadow moves with a body. and each point is the apex of a pyramid, all having a common base with the intervening vertical plane. but although their bases are equal their angles are not equal, because the diminishing point is the termination of a smaller angle than that of the eye. if you ask me: "by what practical experience can you show me these points?" i reply--so far as concerns the diminishing point which moves with you --when you walk by a ploughed field look at the straight furrows which come down with their ends to the path where you are walking, and you will see that each pair of furrows will look as though they tried to get nearer and meet at the [farther] end. [footnote: for the easier understanding of the diagram and of its connection with the preceding i may here remark that the square plane shown above in profile by the line _c s_ is here indicated by _e d o p_. according to lines , _a b_ must be imagined as a plane of glass placed perpendicularly at _o p_.] . how to measure the pyramid of vision. as regards the point in the eye; it is made more intelligible by this: if you look into the eye of another person you will see your own image. now imagine lines starting from your ears and going to the ears of that image which you see in the other man's eye; you will understand that these lines converge in such a way that they would meet in a point a little way beyond your own image mirrored in the eye. and if you want to measure the diminution of the pyramid in the air which occupies the space between the object seen and the eye, you must do it according to the diagram figured below. let _m n_ be a tower, and _e f_ a, rod, which you must move backwards and forwards till its ends correspond with those of the tower [footnote : _i sua stremi .. della storre_ (its ends ... of the tower) this is the case at _e f_.]; then bring it nearer to the eye, at _c d_ and you will see that the image of the tower seems smaller, as at _r o_. then [again] bring it closer to the eye and you will see the rod project far beyond the image of the tower from _a_ to _b_ and from _t_ to _b_, and so you will discern that, a little farther within, the lines must converge in a point. the production of pyramid of vision ( - ). . perspective. the instant the atmosphere is illuminated it will be filled with an infinite number of images which are produced by the various bodies and colours assembled in it. and the eye is the target, a loadstone, of these images. . the whole surface of opaque bodies displays its whole image in all the illuminated atmosphere which surrounds them on all sides. . that the atmosphere attracts to itself, like a loadstone, all the images of the objects that exist in it, and not their forms merely but their nature may be clearly seen by the sun, which is a hot and luminous body. all the atmosphere, which is the all-pervading matter, absorbs light and heat, and reflects in itself the image of the source of that heat and splendour and, in each minutest portion, does the same. the northpole does the same as the loadstone shows; and the moon and the other planets, without suffering any diminution, do the same. among terrestrial things musk does the same and other perfumes. . all bodies together, and each by itself, give off to the surrounding air an infinite number of images which are all-pervading and each complete, each conveying the nature, colour and form of the body which produces it. it can clearly be shown that all bodies are, by their images, all-pervading in the surrounding atmosphere, and each complete in itself as to substance form and colour; this is seen by the images of the various bodies which are reproduced in one single perforation through which they transmit the objects by lines which intersect and cause reversed pyramids, from the objects, so that they are upside down on the dark plane where they are first reflected. the reason of this is-- [footnote: the diagram intended to illustrate the statement (pl. ii no. i) occurs in the original between lines and . the three circles must be understood to represent three luminous bodies which transmit their images through perforations in a wall into a dark chamber, according to a law which is more fully explained in ? . so far as concerns the present passage the diagram is only intended to explain that the images of the three bodies may be made to coalesce at any given spot. in the circles are written, giallo--yellow, biàcho--white, rosso--red. the text breaks off at line . the paragraph no. follows here in the original ms.] . every point is the termination of an infinite number of lines, which diverge to form a base, and immediately, from the base the same lines converge to a pyramid [imaging] both the colour and form. no sooner is a form created or compounded than suddenly infinite lines and angles are produced from it; and these lines, distributing themselves and intersecting each other in the air, give rise to an infinite number of angles opposite to each other. given a base, each opposite angle, will form a triangle having a form and proportion equal to the larger angle; and if the base goes twice into each of the lines of the pyramid the smaller triangle will do the same. . every body in light and shade fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself; and these, by infinite pyramids diffused in the air, represent this body throughout space and on every side. each pyramid that is composed of a long assemblage of rays includes within itself an infinite number of pyramids and each has the same power as all, and all as each. a circle of equidistant pyramids of vision will give to their object angles of equal size; and an eye at each point will see the object of the same size. the body of the atmosphere is full of infinite pyramids composed of radiating straight lines, which are produced from the surface of the bodies in light and shade, existing in the air; and the farther they are from the object which produces them the more acute they become and although in their distribution they intersect and cross they never mingle together, but pass through all the surrounding air, independently converging, spreading, and diffused. and they are all of equal power [and value]; all equal to each, and each equal to all. by these the images of objects are transmitted through all space and in every direction, and each pyramid, in itself, includes, in each minutest part, the whole form of the body causing it. . the body of the atmosphere is full of infinite radiating pyramids produced by the objects existing in it. these intersect and cross each other with independent convergence without interfering with each other and pass through all the surrounding atmosphere; and are of equal force and value--all being equal to each, each to all. and by means of these, images of the body are transmitted everywhere and on all sides, and each receives in itself every minutest portion of the object that produces it. proof by experiment ( - ). . perspective. the air is filled with endless images of the objects distributed in it; and all are represented in all, and all in one, and all in each, whence it happens that if two mirrors are placed in such a manner as to face each other exactly, the first will be reflected in the second and the second in the first. the first being reflected in the second takes to it the image of itself with all the images represented in it, among which is the image of the second mirror, and so, image within image, they go on to infinity in such a manner as that each mirror has within it a mirror, each smaller than the last and one inside the other. thus, by this example, it is clearly proved that every object sends its image to every spot whence the object itself can be seen; and the converse: that the same object may receive in itself all the images of the objects that are in front of it. hence the eye transmits through the atmosphere its own image to all the objects that are in front of it and receives them into itself, that is to say on its surface, whence they are taken in by the common sense, which considers them and if they are pleasing commits them to the memory. whence i am of opinion: that the invisible images in the eyes are produced towards the object, as the image of the object to the eye. that the images of the objects must be disseminated through the air. an instance may be seen in several mirrors placed in a circle, which will reflect each other endlessly. when one has reached the other it is returned to the object that produced it, and thence--being diminished--it is returned again to the object and then comes back once more, and this happens endlessly. if you put a light between two flat mirrors with a distance of braccio between them you will see in each of them an infinite number of lights, one smaller than another, to the last. if at night you put a light between the walls of a room, all the parts of that wall will be tinted with the image of that light. and they will receive the light and the light will fall on them, mutually, that is to say, when there is no obstacle to interrupt the transmission of the images. this same example is seen in a greater degree in the distribution of the solar rays which all together, and each by itself, convey to the object the image of the body which causes it. that each body by itself alone fills with its images the atmosphere around it, and that the same air is able, at the same time, to receive the images of the endless other objects which are in it, this is clearly proved by these examples. and every object is everywhere visible in the whole of the atmosphere, and the whole in every smallest part of it; and all the objects in the whole, and all in each smallest part; each in all and all in every part. . the images of objects are all diffused through the atmosphere which receives them; and all on every side in it. to prove this, let _a c e_ be objects of which the images are admitted to a dark chamber by the small holes _n p_ and thrown upon the plane _f i_ opposite to these holes. as many images will be produced in the chamber on the plane as the number of the said holes. . general conclusions. all objects project their whole image and likeness, diffused and mingled in the whole of the atmosphere, opposite to themselves. the image of every point of the bodily surface, exists in every part of the atmosphere. all the images of the objects are in every part of the atmosphere. the whole, and each part of the image of the atmosphere is [reflected] in each point of the surface of the bodies presented to it. therefore both the part and the whole of the images of the objects exist, both in the whole and in the parts of the surface of these visible bodies. whence we may evidently say that the image of each object exists, as a whole and in every part, in each part and in the whole interchangeably in every existing body. as is seen in two mirrors placed opposite to each other. . that the contrary is impossible. it is impossible that the eye should project from itself, by visual rays, the visual virtue, since, as soon as it opens, that front portion [of the eye] which would give rise to this emanation would have to go forth to the object and this it could not do without time. and this being so, it could not travel so high as the sun in a month's time when the eye wanted to see it. and if it could reach the sun it would necessarily follow that it should perpetually remain in a continuous line from the eye to the sun and should always diverge in such a way as to form between the sun and the eye the base and the apex of a pyramid. this being the case, if the eye consisted of a million worlds, it would not prevent its being consumed in the projection of its virtue; and if this virtue would have to travel through the air as perfumes do, the winds would bent it and carry it into another place. but we do [in fact] see the mass of the sun with the same rapidity as [an object] at the distance of a braccio, and the power of sight is not disturbed by the blowing of the winds nor by any other accident. [footnote: the view here refuted by leonardo was maintained among others by bramantino, leonardo's milanese contemporary. lomazzo writes as follows in his trattato dell' arte della pittura &c. (milano . libr. v cp. xxi): sovviemmi di aver già letto in certi scritti alcune cose di bramantino milanese, celebratissimo pittore, attenente alla prospettiva, le quali ho voluto riferire, e quasi intessere in questo luogo, affinchè sappiamo qual fosse l'opinione di cosi chiaro e famoso pittore intorno alla prospettiva . . scrive bramantino che la prospettiva è una cosa che contrafà il naturale, e che ciò si fa in tre modi circa il primo modo che si fa con ragione, per essere la cosa in poche parole conclusa da bramantino in maniera che giudico non potersi dir meglio, contenendovi si tutta parte del principio al fine, io riferirò per appunto le proprie parole sue (cp. xxii, prima prospettiva di bramantino). la prima prospettiva fa le cose di punto, e l'altra non mai, e la terza più appresso. adunque la prima si dimanda prospettiva, cioè ragione, la quale fa l'effetto dell' occhio, facendo crescere e calare secondo gli effetti degli occhi. questo crescere e calare non procede della cosa propria, che in se per esser lontana, ovvero vicina, per quello effetto non può crescere e sminuire, ma procede dagli effetti degli occhi, i quali sono piccioli, e perciò volendo vedere tanto gran cosa_, bisogna che mandino fuora la virtù visiva, _la quale si dilata in tanta larghezza, che piglia tutto quello che vuoi vedere, ed_ arrivando a quella cosa la vede dove è: _e da lei agli occhi per quello circuito fino all' occhio, e tutto quello termine è pieno di quella cosa_. it is worthy of note that leonardo had made his memorandum refuting this view, at milan in ] . a parallel case. just as a stone flung into the water becomes the centre and cause of many circles, and as sound diffuses itself in circles in the air: so any object, placed in the luminous atmosphere, diffuses itself in circles, and fills the surrounding air with infinite images of itself. and is repeated, the whole every-where, and the whole in every smallest part. this can be proved by experiment, since if you shut a window that faces west and make a hole [footnote: . here the text breaks off.] . . [footnote: compare libri, _histoire des sciences mathématiques en italie_. tome iii, p. .] the function of the eye as explained by the camera obscura ( . ). . if the object in front of the eye sends its image to the eye, the eye, on the other hand, sends its image to the object, and no portion whatever of the object is lost in the images it throws off, for any reason either in the eye or the object. therefore we may rather believe it to be the nature and potency of our luminous atmosphere which absorbs the images of the objects existing in it, than the nature of the objects, to send their images through the air. if the object opposite to the eye were to send its image to the eye, the eye would have to do the same to the object, whence it might seem that these images were an emanation. but, if so, it would be necessary [to admit] that every object became rapidly smaller; because each object appears by its images in the surrounding atmosphere. that is: the whole object in the whole atmosphere, and in each part; and all the objects in the whole atmosphere and all of them in each part; speaking of that atmosphere which is able to contain in itself the straight and radiating lines of the images projected by the objects. from this it seems necessary to admit that it is in the nature of the atmosphere, which subsists between the objects, and which attracts the images of things to itself like a loadstone, being placed between them. prove how all objects, placed in one position, are all everywhere and all in each part. i say that if the front of a building--or any open piazza or field--which is illuminated by the sun has a dwelling opposite to it, and if, in the front which does not face the sun, you make a small round hole, all the illuminated objects will project their images through that hole and be visible inside the dwelling on the opposite wall which may be made white; and there, in fact, they will be upside down, and if you make similar openings in several places in the same wall you will have the same result from each. hence the images of the illuminated objects are all everywhere on this wall and all in each minutest part of it. the reason, as we clearly know, is that this hole must admit some light to the said dwelling, and the light admitted by it is derived from one or many luminous bodies. if these bodies are of various colours and shapes the rays forming the images are of various colours and shapes, and so will the representations be on the wall. [footnote: . -- . this section has already been published in the "_saggio delle opere di leonardo da vinci_" milan , pp. , . g. govi observes upon it, that leonardo is not to be regarded as the inventor of the camera obscura, but that he was the first to explain by it the structure of the eye. an account of the camera obscura first occurs in cesare cesarini's italian version of vitruvius, pub. , four years after leonardo's death. cesarini expressly names benedettino don papnutio as the inventor of the camera obscura. in his explanation of the function of the eye by a comparison with the camera obscura leonardo was the precursor of g. cardano, professor of medicine at bologna (died ) and it appears highly probable that this is, in fact, the very discovery which leonardo ascribes to himself in section without giving any further details.] . how the images of objects received by the eye intersect within the crystalline humour of the eye. an experiment, showing how objects transmit their images or pictures, intersecting within the eye in the crystalline humour, is seen when by some small round hole penetrate the images of illuminated objects into a very dark chamber. then, receive these images on a white paper placed within this dark room and rather near to the hole and you will see all the objects on the paper in their proper forms and colours, but much smaller; and they will be upside down by reason of that very intersection. these images being transmitted from a place illuminated by the sun will seem actually painted on this paper which must be extremely thin and looked at from behind. and let the little perforation be made in a very thin plate of iron. let _a b e d e_ be the object illuminated by the sun and _o r_ the front of the dark chamber in which is the said hole at _n m_. let _s t_ be the sheet of paper intercepting the rays of the images of these objects upside down, because the rays being straight, _a_ on the right hand becomes _k_ on the left, and _e_ on the left becomes _f_ on the right; and the same takes place inside the pupil. [footnote: this chapter is already known through a translation into french by venturi. compare his '_essai sur les ouvrages physico-mathématiques de l. da vinci avec des fragments tirés de ses manuscrits, apportés de l'italie. lu a la premiere classe de l'institut national des sciences et arts.' paris, an v_ ( ).] the practice of perspective ( . ). . in the practice of perspective the same rules apply to light and to the eye. . the object which is opposite to the pupil of the eye is seen by that pupil and that which is opposite to the eye is seen by the pupil. refraction of the rays falling upon the eye ( . ) . the lines sent forth by the image of an object to the eye do not reach the point within the eye in straight lines. . if the judgment of the eye is situated within it, the straight lines of the images are refracted on its surface because they pass through the rarer to the denser medium. if, when you are under water, you look at objects in the air you will see them out of their true place; and the same with objects under water seen from the air. the intersection of the rays ( - ). . the inversion of the images. all the images of objects which pass through a window [glass pane] from the free outer air to the air confined within walls, are seen on the opposite side; and an object which moves in the outer air from east to west will seem in its shadow, on the wall which is lighted by this confined air, to have an opposite motion. . the principle on which the images of bodies pass in between the margins of the openings by which they enter. what difference is there in the way in which images pass through narrow openings and through large openings, or in those which pass by the sides of shaded bodies? by moving the edges of the opening through which the images are admitted, the images of immovable objects are made to move. and this happens, as is shown in the th which demonstrates: [footnote : _per la a che dicie_. when leonardo refers thus to a number it serves to indicate marginal diagrams; this can in some instances be distinctly proved. the ninth sketch on the page w. l. b corresponds to the middle sketch of the three reproduced.] the images of any object are all everywhere, and all in each part of the surrounding air. it follows that if one of the edges of the hole by which the images are admitted to a dark chamber is moved it cuts off those rays of the image that were in contact with it and gets nearer to other rays which previously were remote from it &c. of the movement of the edge at the right or left, or the upper, or lower edge. if you move the right side of the opening the image on the left will move [being that] of the object which entered on the right side of the opening; and the same result will happen with all the other sides of the opening. this can be proved by the nd of this which shows: all the rays which convey the images of objects through the air are straight lines. hence, if the images of very large bodies have to pass through very small holes, and beyond these holes recover their large size, the lines must necessarily intersect. [footnote: . . in the first of the three diagrams leonardo had drawn only one of the two margins, et _m_.] . necessity has provided that all the images of objects in front of the eye shall intersect in two places. one of these intersections is in the pupil, the other in the crystalline lens; and if this were not the case the eye could not see so great a number of objects as it does. this can be proved, since all the lines which intersect do so in a point. because nothing is seen of objects excepting their surface; and their edges are lines, in contradistinction to the definition of a surface. and each minute part of a line is equal to a point; for _smallest_ is said of that than which nothing can be smaller, and this definition is equivalent to the definition of the point. hence it is possible for the whole circumference of a circle to transmit its image to the point of intersection, as is shown in the th of this which shows: all the smallest parts of the images cross each other without interfering with each other. these demonstrations are to illustrate the eye. no image, even of the smallest object, enters the eye without being turned upside down; but as it penetrates into the crystalline lens it is once more reversed and thus the image is restored to the same position within the eye as that of the object outside the eye. . of the central line of the eye. only one line of the image, of all those that reach the visual virtue, has no intersection; and this has no sensible dimensions because it is a mathematical line which originates from a mathematical point, which has no dimensions. according to my adversary, necessity requires that the central line of every image that enters by small and narrow openings into a dark chamber shall be turned upside down, together with the images of the bodies that surround it. . as to whether the central line of the image can be intersected, or not, within the opening. it is impossible that the line should intersect itself; that is, that its right should cross over to its left side, and so, its left side become its right side. because such an intersection demands two lines, one from each side; for there can be no motion from right to left or from left to right in itself without such extension and thickness as admit of such motion. and if there is extension it is no longer a line but a surface, and we are investigating the properties of a line, and not of a surface. and as the line, having no centre of thickness cannot be divided, we must conclude that the line can have no sides to intersect each other. this is proved by the movement of the line _a f_ to _a b_ and of the line _e b_ to _e f_, which are the sides of the surface _a f e b_. but if you move the line _a b_ and the line _e f_, with the frontends _a e_, to the spot _c_, you will have moved the opposite ends _f b_ towards each other at the point _d_. and from the two lines you will have drawn the straight line _c d_ which cuts the middle of the intersection of these two lines at the point _n_ without any intersection. for, you imagine these two lines as having breadth, it is evident that by this motion the first will entirely cover the other--being equal with it--without any intersection, in the position _c d_. and this is sufficient to prove our proposition. . how the innumerable rays from innumerable images can converge to a point. just as all lines can meet at a point without interfering with each other--being without breadth or thickness--in the same way all the images of surfaces can meet there; and as each given point faces the object opposite to it and each object faces an opposite point, the converging rays of the image can pass through the point and diverge again beyond it to reproduce and re-magnify the real size of that image. but their impressions will appear reversed--as is shown in the first, above; where it is said that every image intersects as it enters the narrow openings made in a very thin substance. read the marginal text on the other side. in proportion as the opening is smaller than the shaded body, so much less will the images transmitted through this opening intersect each other. the sides of images which pass through openings into a dark room intersect at a point which is nearer to the opening in proportion as the opening is narrower. to prove this let _a b_ be an object in light and shade which sends not its shadow but the image of its darkened form through the opening _d e_ which is as wide as this shaded body; and its sides _a b_, being straight lines (as has been proved) must intersect between the shaded object and the opening; but nearer to the opening in proportion as it is smaller than the object in shade. as is shown, on your right hand and your left hand, in the two diagrams _a_ _b_ _c_ _n_ _m_ _o_ where, the right opening _d_ _e_, being equal in width to the shaded object _a_ _b_, the intersection of the sides of the said shaded object occurs half way between the opening and the shaded object at the point _c_. but this cannot happen in the left hand figure, the opening _o_ being much smaller than the shaded object _n_ _m_. it is impossible that the images of objects should be seen between the objects and the openings through which the images of these bodies are admitted; and this is plain, because where the atmosphere is illuminated these images are not formed visibly. when the images are made double by mutually crossing each other they are invariably doubly as dark in tone. to prove this let _d_ _e_ _h_ be such a doubling which although it is only seen within the space between the bodies in _b_ and _i_ this will not hinder its being seen from _f_ _g_ or from _f_ _m_; being composed of the images _a_ _b_ _i_ _k_ which run together in _d_ _e_ _h_. [footnote: . on the original diagram at the beginning of this chapter leonardo has written "_azurro_" (blue) where in the facsimile i have marked _a_, and "_giallo_" (yellow) where _b_ stands.] [footnote: -- . these lines stand between the diagrams i and iii.] [footnote: -- . these lines stand between the diagrams i and ii.] [footnote: -- are written along the left side of diagram i.] . an experiment showing that though the pupil may not be moved from its position the objects seen by it may appear to move from their places. if you look at an object at some distance from you and which is below the eye, and fix both your eyes upon it and with one hand firmly hold the upper lid open while with the other you push up the under lid--still keeping your eyes fixed on the object gazed at--you will see that object double; one [image] remaining steady, and the other moving in a contrary direction to the pressure of your finger on the lower eyelid. how false the opinion is of those who say that this happens because the pupil of the eye is displaced from its position. how the above mentioned facts prove that the pupil acts upside down in seeing. [footnote: . -- . the subject indicated by these two headings is fully discussed in the two chapters that follow them in the original; but it did not seem to me appropriate to include them here.] demostration of perspective by means of a vertical glass plane ( - ). . of the plane of glass. perspective is nothing else than seeing place [or objects] behind a plane of glass, quite transparent, on the surface of which the objects behind that glass are to be drawn. these can be traced in pyramids to the point in the eye, and these pyramids are intersected on the glass plane. . pictorial perspective can never make an object at the same distance, look of the same size as it appears to the eye. you see that the apex of the pyramid _f c d_ is as far from the object _c_ _d_ as the same point _f_ is from the object _a_ _b_; and yet _c_ _d_, which is the base made by the painter's point, is smaller than _a_ _b_ which is the base of the lines from the objects converging in the eye and refracted at _s_ _t_, the surface of the eye. this may be proved by experiment, by the lines of vision and then by the lines of the painter's plumbline by cutting the real lines of vision on one and the same plane and measuring on it one and the same object. . perspective. the vertical plane is a perpendicular line, imagined as in front of the central point where the apex of the pyramids converge. and this plane bears the same relation to this point as a plane of glass would, through which you might see the various objects and draw them on it. and the objects thus drawn would be smaller than the originals, in proportion as the distance between the glass and the eye was smaller than that between the glass and the objects. perspective. the different converging pyramids produced by the objects, will show, on the plane, the various sizes and remoteness of the objects causing them. perspective. all those horizontal planes of which the extremes are met by perpendicular lines forming right angles, if they are of equal width the more they rise to the level of eye the less this is seen, and the more the eye is above them the more will their real width be seen. perspective. the farther a spherical body is from the eye the more you will see of it. the angle of sight varies with the distance ( - ) . a simple and natural method; showing how objects appear to the eye without any other medium. the object that is nearest to the eye always seems larger than another of the same size at greater distance. the eye _m_, seeing the spaces _o v x_, hardly detects the difference between them, and the. reason of this is that it is close to them [footnote : it is quite inconceivable to me why m. ravaisson, in a note to his french translation of this simple passage should have remarked: _il est clair que c'est par erreur que leonard a ècrit_ per esser visino _au lieu de_ per non esser visino. (see his printed ed. of ms. a. p. .)]; but if these spaces are marked on the vertical plane _n o_ the space _o v_ will be seen at _o r_, and in the same way the space _v x_ will appear at _r q_. and if you carry this out in any place where you can walk round, it will look out of proportion by reason of the great difference in the spaces _o r_ and _r q_. and this proceeds from the eye being so much below [near] the plane that the plane is foreshortened. hence, if you wanted to carry it out, you would have [to arrange] to see the perspective through a single hole which must be at the point _m_, or else you must go to a distance of at least times the height of the object you see. the plane _o p_ being always equally remote from the eye will reproduce the objects in a satisfactory way, so that they may be seen from place to place. . how every large mass sends forth its images, which may diminish through infinity. the images of any large mass being infinitely divisible may be infinitely diminished. . objects of equal size, situated in various places, will be seen by different pyramids which will each be smaller in proportion as the object is farther off. . perspective, in dealing with distances, makes use of two opposite pyramids, one of which has its apex in the eye and the base as distant as the horizon. the other has the base towards the eye and the apex on the horizon. now, the first includes the [visible] universe, embracing all the mass of the objects that lie in front of the eye; as it might be a vast landscape seen through a very small opening; for the more remote the objects are from the eye, the greater number can be seen through the opening, and thus the pyramid is constructed with the base on the horizon and the apex in the eye, as has been said. the second pyramid is extended to a spot which is smaller in proportion as it is farther from the eye; and this second perspective [= pyramid] results from the first. . simple perspective. simple perspective is that which is constructed by art on a vertical plane which is equally distant from the eye in every part. complex perspective is that which is constructed on a ground-plan in which none of the parts are equally distant from the eye. . perspective. no surface can be seen exactly as it is, if the eye that sees it is not equally remote from all its edges. . why when an object is placed close to the eye its edges are indistinct. when an object opposite the eye is brought too close to it, its edges must become too confused to be distinguished; as it happens with objects close to a light, which cast a large and indistinct shadow, so is it with an eye which estimates objects opposite to it; in all cases of linear perspective, the eye acts in the same way as the light. and the reason is that the eye has one leading line (of vision) which dilates with distance and embraces with true discernment large objects at a distance as well as small ones that are close. but since the eye sends out a multitude of lines which surround this chief central one and since these which are farthest from the centre in this cone of lines are less able to discern with accuracy, it follows that an object brought close to the eye is not at a due distance, but is too near for the central line to be able to discern the outlines of the object. so the edges fall within the lines of weaker discerning power, and these are to the function of the eye like dogs in the chase which can put up the game but cannot take it. thus these cannot take in the objects, but induce the central line of sight to turn upon them, when they have put them up. hence the objects which are seen with these lines of sight have confused outlines. the relative size of objects with regard to their distance from the eye ( - ). . perspective. small objects close at hand and large ones at a distance, being seen within equal angles, will appear of the same size. . perspective. there is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near. . among objects of equal size that which is most remote from the eye will look the smallest. [footnote: this axiom, sufficiently clear in itself, is in the original illustrated by a very large diagram, constructed like that here reproduced under no. . the same idea is repeated in c. a. i a; i a, stated as follows: _infra le cose d'equal grandeza quella si dimostra di minor figura che sara più distante dall' ochio_.--] . why an object is less distinct when brought near to the eye, and why with spectacles, or without the naked eye sees badly either close or far off [as the case may be]. . perspective. among objects of equal size, that which is most remote from the eye will look the smallest. . perspective. no second object can be so much lower than the first as that the eye will not see it higher than the first, if the eye is above the second. perspective. and this second object will never be so much higher than the first as that the eye, being below them, will not see the second as lower than the first. perspective. if the eye sees a second square through the centre of a smaller one, that is nearer, the second, larger square will appear to be surrounded by the smaller one. perspective--proposition. objects that are farther off can never be so large but that those in front, though smaller, will conceal or surround them. definition. this proposition can be proved by experiment. for if you look through a small hole there is nothing so large that it cannot be seen through it and the object so seen appears surrounded and enclosed by the outline of the sides of the hole. and if you stop it up, this small stopping will conceal the view of the largest object. the apparent size of objects defined by calculation ( - ) . of linear perspective. linear perspective deals with the action of the lines of sight, in proving by measurement how much smaller is a second object than the first, and how much the third is smaller than the second; and so on by degrees to the end of things visible. i find by experience that if a second object is as far beyond the first as the first is from the eye, although they are of the same size, the second will seem half the size of the first and if the third object is of the same size as the nd, and the rd is as far beyond the second as the nd from the first, it will appear of half the size of the second; and so on by degrees, at equal distances, the next farthest will be half the size of the former object. so long as the space does not exceed the length of braccia. but, beyond braccia figures of equal size will lose / and at braccia they will lose / , and / at braccia, and so on diminishing by degrees. this is if the picture plane is distant from you twice your own height. if it is only as far off as your own height, there will be a great difference between the first braccia and the second. [footnote: this chapter is included in dufresne's and manzi's editions of the treatise on painting. h. ludwig, in his commentary, calls this chapter "_eines der wichtigsten im ganzen tractat_", but at the same time he asserts that its substance has been so completely disfigured in the best ms. copies that we ought not to regard leonardo as responsible for it. however, in the case of this chapter, the old ms. copies agree with the original as it is reproduced above. from the chapters given later in this edition, which were written at a subsequent date, it would appear that leonardo corrected himself on these points.] . of the diminution of objects at various distances. a second object as far distant from the first as the first is from the eye will appear half the size of the first, though they be of the same size really. of the degrees of diminution. if you place the vertical plane at one braccio from the eye, the first object, being at a distance of braccia from your eye will diminish to / of its height at that plane; and if it is braccia from the eye, to / ; and if it is braccia off, it will diminish to / of its height and so on by degrees, as the space doubles the diminution will double. . begin from the line _m f_ with the eye below; then go up and do the same with the line _n f_, then with the eye above and close to the gauges on the ground look at _m n_; then as _c m_ is to _m n_ so will _n m_ be to _n s_. if _a n_ goes times into _f b, m p_ will do the same into _p g_. then go backwards so far as that _c d_ goes twice into _a n_ and _p g_ will be equal to _g h_. and _m p_ will go into _h p_ as often as _d c_ into _o p_. [footnote: the first three lines are unfortunately very obscure.] . i give the degrees of the objects seen by the eye as the musician does the notes heard by the ear. although the objects seen by the eye do, in fact, touch each other as they recede, i will nevertheless found my rule on spaces of braccia each; as a musician does with notes, which, though they can be carried on one into the next, he divides into degrees from note to note calling them st, nd, rd, th, th; and has affixed a name to each degree in raising or lowering the voice. . perspective. let _f_ be the level and distance of the eye; and _a_ the vertical plane, as high as a man; let _e_ be a man, then i say that on the plane this will be the distance from the plane to the nd man. . the differences in the diminution of objects of equal size in consequence of their various remoteness from the eye will bear among themselves the same proportions as those of the spaces between the eye and the different objects. find out how much a man diminishes at a certain distance and what its length is; and then at twice that distance and at times, and so make your general rule. . the eye cannot judge where an object high up ought to descend. . perspective. if two similar and equal objects are placed one beyond the other at a given distance the difference in their size will appear greater in proportion as they are nearer to the eye that sees them. and conversely there will seem to be less difference in their size in proportion as they are remote from the eve. this is proved by the proportions of their distances among themselves; for, if the first of these two objects were as far from the eye, as the nd from the first this would be called the second proportion: since, if the first is at braccia from the eye and the nd at two braccia, two being twice as much as one, the first object will look twice as large as the second. but if you place the first at a hundred braccia from you and the second at a hundred and one, you will find that the first is only so much larger than the second as is less than ; and the converse is equally true. and again, the same thing is proved by the th of this book which shows that among objects that are equal, there is the same proportion in the diminution of the size as in the increase in the distance from the eye of the spectator. on natural perspective ( -- ). . of equal objects the most remote look the smallest. the practice of perspective may be divided into ... parts [footnote : _in_ ... _parte_. the space for the number is left blank in the original.], of which the first treats of objects seen by the eye at any distance; and it shows all these objects just as the eye sees them diminished, without obliging a man to stand in one place rather than another so long as the plane does not produce a second foreshortening. but the second practice is a combination of perspective derived partly from art and partly from nature and the work done by its rules is in every portion of it, influenced by natural perspective and artificial perspective. by natural perspective i mean that the plane on which this perspective is represented is a flat surface, and this plane, although it is parallel both in length and height, is forced to diminish in its remoter parts more than in its nearer ones. and this is proved by the first of what has been said above, and its diminution is natural. but artificial perspective, that is that which is devised by art, does the contrary; for objects equal in size increase on the plane where it is foreshortened in proportion as the eye is more natural and nearer to the plane, and as the part of the plane on which it is figured is farther from the eye. and let this plane be _d e_ on which are seen equal circles which are beyond this plane _d e_, that is the circles _a b c_. now you see that the eye _h_ sees on the vertical plane the sections of the images, largest of those that are farthest and smallest of the nearest. . here follows what is wanting in the margin at the foot on the other side of this page. natural perspective acts in a contrary way; for, at greater distances the object seen appears smaller, and at a smaller distance the object appears larger. but this said invention requires the spectator to stand with his eye at a small hole and then, at that small hole, it will be very plain. but since many (men's) eyes endeavour at the same time to see one and the same picture produced by this artifice only one can see clearly the effect of this perspective and all the others will see confusion. it is well therefore to avoid such complex perspective and hold to simple perspective which does not regard planes as foreshortened, but as much as possible in their proper form. this simple perspective, in which the plane intersects the pyramids by which the images are conveyed to the eye at an equal distance from the eye is our constant experience, from the curved form of the pupil of the eye on which the pyramids are intersected at an equal distance from the visual virtue. [footnote : _la prima di sopra_ i. e. the first of the three diagrams which, in the original ms., are placed in the margin at the beginning of this chapter.] . of a mixture of natural and artificial perspective. this diagram distinguishes natural from artificial perspective. but before proceeding any farther i will define what is natural and what is artificial perspective. natural perspective says that the more remote of a series of objects of equal size will look the smaller, and conversely, the nearer will look the larger and the apparent size will diminish in proportion to the distance. but in artificial perspective when objects of unequal size are placed at various distances, the smallest is nearer to the eye than the largest and the greatest distance looks as though it were the least of all; and the cause of this is the plane on which the objects are represented; and which is at unequal distances from the eye throughout its length. and this diminution of the plane is natural, but the perspective shown upon it is artificial since it nowhere agrees with the true diminution of the said plane. whence it follows, that when the eye is somewhat removed from the [station point of the] perspective that it has been gazing at, all the objects represented look monstrous, and this does not occur in natural perspective, which has been defined above. let us say then, that the square _a b c d_ figured above is foreshortened being seen by the eye situated in the centre of the side which is in front. but a mixture of artificial and natural perspective will be seen in this tetragon called _el main_ [footnote : _el main_ is quite legibly written in the original; the meaning and derivation of the word are equally doubtful.], that is to say _e f g h_ which must appear to the eye of the spectator to be equal to _a b c d_ so long as the eye remains in its first position between _c_ and _d_. and this will be seen to have a good effect, because the natural perspective of the plane will conceal the defects which would [otherwise] seem monstrous. _iii._ _six books on light and shade._ _linear perspective cannot be immediately followed by either the_ "prospettiva de' perdimenti" _or the_ "prospettiva de' colori" _or the aerial perspective; since these branches of the subject presuppose a knowledge of the principles of light and shade. no apology, therefore, is here needed for placing these immediately after linear perspective._ _we have various plans suggested by leonardo for the arrangement of the mass of materials treating of this subject. among these i have given the preference to a scheme propounded in no._ iii, _because, in all probability, we have here a final and definite purpose expressed. several authors have expressed it as their opinion that the paris manuscript_ c _is a complete and finished treatise on light and shade. certainly, the principles of light and shade form by far the larger portion of this ms. which consists of two separate parts; still, the materials are far from being finally arranged. it is also evident that he here investigates the subject from the point of view of the physicist rather than from that of the painter._ _the plan of a scheme of arrangement suggested in no._ iii _and adopted by me has been strictly adhered to for the first four books. for the three last, however, few materials have come down to us; and it must be admitted that these three books would find a far more appropriate place in a work on physics than in a treatise on painting. for this reason i have collected in book v all the chapters on reflections, and in book vi i have put together and arranged all the sections of ms._ c _that belong to the book on painting, so far as they relate to light and shade, while the sections of the same ms. which treat of the_ "prospettiva de' perdimenti" _have, of course, been excluded from the series on light and shade._ [footnote iii: this text has already been published with some slight variations in dozio's pamphlet _degli scritti e disegni di leonardo da vinci_, milan , pp. -- . dozio did not transcribe it from the original ms. which seems to have remained unknown to him, but from an old copy (ms. h. in the ambrosian library).] general introduction. prolegomena. . you must first explain the theory and then the practice. first you must describe the shadows and lights on opaque objects, and then on transparent bodies. scheme of the books on light and shade. . introduction. [having already treated of the nature of shadows and the way in which they are cast [footnote : _avendo io tractato._--we may suppose that he here refers to some particular ms., possibly paris c.], i will now consider the places on which they fall; and their curvature, obliquity, flatness or, in short, any character i may be able to detect in them.] shadow is the obstruction of light. shadows appear to me to be of supreme importance in perspective, because, without them opaque and solid bodies will be ill defined; that which is contained within their outlines and their boundaries themselves will be ill-understood unless they are shown against a background of a different tone from themselves. and therefore in my first proposition concerning shadow i state that every opaque body is surrounded and its whole surface enveloped in shadow and light. and on this proposition i build up the first book. besides this, shadows have in themselves various degrees of darkness, because they are caused by the absence of a variable amount of the luminous rays; and these i call primary shadows because they are the first, and inseparable from the object to which they belong. and on this i will found my second book. from these primary shadows there result certain shaded rays which are diffused through the atmosphere and these vary in character according to that of the primary shadows whence they are derived. i shall therefore call these shadows derived shadows because they are produced by other shadows; and the third book will treat of these. again these derived shadows, where they are intercepted by various objects, produce effects as various as the places where they are cast and of this i will treat in the fourth book. and since all round the derived shadows, where the derived shadows are intercepted, there is always a space where the light falls and by reflected dispersion is thrown back towards its cause, it meets the original shadow and mingles with it and modifies it somewhat in its nature; and on this i will compose my fifth book. besides this, in the sixth book i will investigate the many and various diversities of reflections resulting from these rays which will modify the original [shadow] by [imparting] some of the various colours from the different objects whence these reflected rays are derived. again, the seventh book will treat of the various distances that may exist between the spot where the reflected rays fall and that where they originate, and the various shades of colour which they will acquire in falling on opaque bodies. different principles and plans of treatment ( -- ). . first i will treat of light falling through windows which i will call restricted [light] and then i will treat of light in the open country, to which i will give the name of diffused light. then i will treat of the light of luminous bodies. . of painting. the conditions of shadow and light [as seen] by the eye are . of these the first is when the eye and the light are on the same side of the object seen; the nd is when the eye is in front of the object and the light is behind it. the rd is when the eye is in front of the object and the light is on one side, in such a way as that a line drawn from the object to the eye and one from the object to the light should form a right angle where they meet. . of painting. this is another section: that is, of the nature of a reflection (from) an object placed between the eye and the light under various aspects. . of painting. as regards all visible objects things must be considered. these are the position of the eye which sees: that of the object seen [with regard] to the light, and the position of the light which illuminates the object, _b_ is the eye, _a_ the object seen, _c_ the light, _a_ is the eye, _b_ the illuminating body, _c_ is the illuminated object. . let _a_ be the light, _b_ the eye, _c_ the object seen by the eye and in the light. these show, first, the eye between the light and the body; the nd, the light between the eye and the body; the rd the body between the eye and the light, _a_ is the eye, _b_ the illuminated object, _c_ the light. . of painting. of the three kinds of light that illuminate opaque bodies. the first kind of light which may illuminate opaque bodies is called direct light--as that of the sun or any other light from a window or flame. the second is diffused [universal] light, such as we see in cloudy weather or in mist and the like. the rd is subdued light, that is when the sun is entirely below the horizon, either in the evening or morning. . of light. the lights which may illuminate opaque bodies are of kinds. these are: diffused light as that of the atmosphere, within our horizon. and direct, as that of the sun, or of a window or door or other opening. the third is reflected light; and there is a th which is that which passes through [semi] transparent bodies, as linen or paper or the like, but not transparent like glass, or crystal, or other diaphanous bodies, which produce the same effect as though nothing intervened between the shaded object and the light that falls upon it; and this we will discuss fully in our discourse. definition of the nature of shadows ( -- ). . what light and shadow are. shadow is the absence of light, merely the obstruction of the luminous rays by an opaque body. shadow is of the nature of darkness. light [on an object] is of the nature of a luminous body; one conceals and the other reveals. they are always associated and inseparable from all objects. but shadow is a more powerful agent than light, for it can impede and entirely deprive bodies of their light, while light can never entirely expel shadow from a body, that is from an opaque body. . shadow is the diminution of light by the intervention of an opaque body. shadow is the counterpart of the luminous rays which are cut off by an opaque body. this is proved because the shadow cast is the same in shape and size as the luminous rays were which are transformed into a shadow. . shadow is the diminution alike of light and of darkness, and stands between darkness and light. a shadow may be infinitely dark, and also of infinite degrees of absence of darkness. the beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. the forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow. . of the nature of shadow. shadow partakes of the nature of universal matter. all such matters are more powerful in their beginning and grow weaker towards the end, i say at the beginning, whatever their form or condition may be and whether visible or invisible. and it is not from small beginnings that they grow to a great size in time; as it might be a great oak which has a feeble beginning from a small acorn. yet i may say that the oak is most powerful at its beginning, that is where it springs from the earth, which is where it is largest (to return:) darkness, then, is the strongest degree of shadow and light is its least. therefore, o painter, make your shadow darkest close to the object that casts it, and make the end of it fading into light, seeming to have no end. of the various kinds of shadows. ( - ). . darkness is absence of light. shadow is diminution of light. primitive shadow is that which is inseparable from a body not in the light. derived shadow is that which is disengaged from a body in shadow and pervades the air. a cast transparent shadow is that which is surrounded by an illuminated surface. a simple shadow is one which receives no light from the luminous body which causes it. a simple shadow begins within the line which starts from the edge of the luminous body _a b_. . a simple shadow is one where no light at all interferes with it. a compound shadow is one which is somewhat illuminated by one or more lights. . what is the difference between a shadow that is inseparable from a body and a cast shadow? an inseparable shadow is that which is never absent from the illuminated body. as, for instance a ball, which so long as it is in the light always has one side in shadow which never leaves it for any movement or change of position in the ball. a separate shadow may be and may not be produced by the body itself. suppose the ball to be one braccia distant from a wall with a light on the opposite side of it; this light will throw upon the wall exactly as broad a shadow as is to be seen on the side of the ball that is turned towards the wall. that portion of the cast shadow will not be visible when the light is below the ball and the shadow is thrown up towards the sky and finding no obstruction on its way is lost. . how there are kinds of light, one separable from, and the other inseparable from bodies. of the various kinds of light ( , ). separate light is that which falls upon the body. inseparable light is the side of the body that is illuminated by that light. one is called primary, the other derived. and, in the same way there are two kinds of shadow:--one primary and the other derived. the primary is that which is inseparable from the body, the derived is that which proceeds from the body conveying to the surface of the wall the form of the body causing it. . how there are different kinds of light; one being called diffused, the other restricted. the diffused is that which freely illuminates objects. the restricted is that which being admitted through an opening or window illuminates them on that side only. [footnote: at the spot marked _a_ in the first diagram leonardo wrote _lume costretto_ (restricted light). at the spot _b_ on the second diagram he wrote _lume libero_ (diffused light).] general remarks ( . ). . light is the chaser away of darkness. shade is the obstruction of light. primary light is that which falls on objects and causes light and shade. and derived lights are those portions of a body which are illuminated by the primary light. a primary shadow is that side of a body on which the light cannot fall. the general distribution of shadow and light is that sum total of the rays thrown off by a shaded or illuminated body passing through the air without any interference and the spot which intercepts and cuts off the distribution of the dark and light rays. and the eye can best distinguish the forms of objects when it is placed between the shaded and the illuminated parts. . memorandum of things i require to have granted [as axioms] in my explanation of perspective. i ask to have this much granted me--to assert that every ray passing through air of equal density throughout, travels in a straight line from its cause to the object or place it falls upon. first book on light and shade. on the nature of light ( . ). . the reason by which we know that a light radiates from a single centre is this: we plainly see that a large light is often much broader than some small object which nevertheless--and although the rays [of the large light] are much more than twice the extent [of the small body]--always has its shadow cast on the nearest surface very visibly. let _c f_ be a broad light and _n_ be the object in front of it, casting a shadow on the plane, and let _a b_ be the plane. it is clear that it is not the broad light that will cast the shadow _n_ on the plane, but that the light has within it a centre is shown by this experiment. the shadow falls on the plane as is shown at _m o t r_. [footnote : in the original ms. no explanatory text is placed after this title-line; but a space is left for it and the text beginning at line comes next.] why, to two [eyes] or in front of two eyes do objects appear as two? why, when you estimate the direction of an object with two sights the nearer appears confused. i say that the eye projects an infinite number of lines which mingle or join those reaching it which come to it from the object looked at. and it is only the central and sensible line that can discern and discriminate colours and objects; all the others are false and illusory. and if you place objects at half an arm's length apart if the nearer of the two is close to the eye its form will remain far more confused than that of the second; the reason is that the first is overcome by a greater number of false lines than the second and so is rendered vague. light acts in the same manner, for in the effects of its lines (=rays), and particularly in perspective, it much resembles the eye; and its central rays are what cast the true shadow. when the object in front of it is too quickly overcome with dim rays it will cast a broad and disproportionate shadow, ill defined; but when the object which is to cast the shadow and cuts off the rays near to the place where the shadow falls, then the shadow is distinct; and the more so in proportion as the light is far off, because at a long distance the central ray is less overcome by false rays; because the lines from the eye and the solar and other luminous rays passing through the atmosphere are obliged to travel in straight lines. unless they are deflected by a denser or rarer air, when they will be bent at some point, but so long as the air is free from grossness or moisture they will preserve their direct course, always carrying the image of the object that intercepts them back to their point of origin. and if this is the eye, the intercepting object will be seen by its colour, as well as by form and size. but if the intercepting plane has in it some small perforation opening into a darker chamber--not darker in colour, but by absence of light--you will see the rays enter through this hole and transmitting to the plane beyond all the details of the object they proceed from both as to colour and form; only every thing will be upside down. but the size [of the image] where the lines are reconstructed will be in proportion to the relative distance of the aperture from the plane on which the lines fall [on one hand] and from their origin [on the other]. there they intersect and form pyramids with their point meeting [a common apex] and their bases opposite. let _a b_ be the point of origin of the lines, _d e_ the first plane, and _c_ the aperture with the intersection of the lines; _f g_ is the inner plane. you will find that _a_ falls upon the inner plane below at _g_, and _b_ which is below will go up to the spot _f_; it will be quite evident to experimenters that every luminous body has in itself a core or centre, from which and to which all the lines radiate which are sent forth by the surface of the luminous body and reflected back to it; or which, having been thrown out and not intercepted, are dispersed in the air. . the rays whether shaded or luminous have greater strength and effect at their points than at their sides. although the points of luminous pyramids may extend into shaded places and those of pyramids of shadow into illuminated places, and though among the luminous pyramids one may start from a broader base than another; nevertheless, if by reason of their various length these luminous pyramids acquire angles of equal size their light will be equal; and the case will be the same with the pyramids of shadow; as may be seen in the intersected pyramids _a b c_ and _d e f_, which though their bases differ in size are equal as to breadth and light. [footnote: -- : this supplementary paragraph is indicated as being a continuation of line , by two small crosses.] the difference between light and lustre ( -- ). . of the difference between light and lustre; and that lustre is not included among colours, but is saturation of whiteness, and derived from the surface of wet bodies; light partakes of the colour of the object which reflects it (to the eye) as gold or silver or the like. . of the highest lights which turn and move as the eye moves which sees the object. suppose the body to be the round object figured here and let the light be at the point _a_, and let the illuminated side of the object be _b c_ and the eye at the point _d_: i say that, as lustre is every where and complete in each part, if you stand at the point _d_ the lustre will appear at _c_, and in proportion as the eye moves from _d_ to _a_, the lustre will move from _c_ to _n_. . of painting. heigh light or lustre on any object is not situated [necessarily] in the middle of an illuminated object, but moves as and where the eye moves in looking at it. . of light and lustre. what is the difference between light and the lustre which is seen on the polished surface of opaque bodies? the lights which are produced from the polished surface of opaque bodies will be stationary on stationary objects even if the eye on which they strike moves. but reflected lights will, on those same objects, appear in as many different places on the surface as different positions are taken by the eye. what bodies have light upon them without lustre? opaque bodies which have a hard and rough surface never display any lustre in any portion of the side on which the light falls. what bodies will display lustre but not look illuminated? those bodies which are opaque and hard with a hard surface reflect light [lustre] from every spot on the illuminated side which is in a position to receive light at the same angle of incidence as they occupy with regard to the eye; but, as the surface mirrors all the surrounding objects, the illuminated [body] is not recognisable in these portions of the illuminated body. . the relations of luminous to illuminated bodies. the middle of the light and shade on an object in light and shade is opposite to the middle of the primary light. all light and shadow expresses itself in pyramidal lines. the middle of the shadow on any object must necessarily be opposite the middle of its light, with a direct line passing through the centre of the body. the middle of the light will be at _a_, that of the shadow at _b_. [again, in bodies shown in light and shade the middle of each must coincide with the centre of the body, and a straight line will pass through both and through that centre.] [footnote: in the original ms., at the spot marked _a_ of the first diagram leonardo wrote _primitiuo_, and at the spot marked _c_--_primitiva_ (primary); at the spot marked _b_ he wrote _dirivatiuo_ and at _d deriuatiua_ (derived).] experiments on the relation of light and shadow within a room ( -- ). . shows how light from any side converges to one point. although the balls _a b c_ are lighted from one window, nevertheless, if you follow the lines of their shadows you will see they intersect at a point forming the angle _n_. [footnote: the diagram belonging to this passage is slightly sketched on pl. xxxii; a square with three balls below it. the first three lines of the text belonging to it are written above the sketch and the six others below it.] . every shadow cast by a body has a central line directed to a single point produced by the intersection of luminous lines in the middle of the opening and thickness of the window. the proposition stated above, is plainly seen by experiment. thus if you draw a place with a window looking northwards, and let this be _s f_, you will see a line starting from the horizon to the east, which, touching the angles of the window _o f_, reaches _d_; and from the horizon on the west another line, touching the other angles _r s_, and ending at _c_; and their intersection falls exactly in the middle of the opening and thickness of the window. again, you can still better confirm this proof by placing two sticks, as shown at _g h_; and you will see the line drawn from the centre of the shadow directed to the centre _m_ and prolonged to the horizon _n f_. [footnote: _b_ here stands for _cerchio del' orizonte tramontano_ on the original diagram (the circle of the horizon towards the north); _a_ for _levante_ (east) and _c_ for _ponete_ (west).] . every shadow with all its variations, which becomes larger as its distance from the object is greater, has its external lines intersecting in the middle, between the light and the object. this proposition is very evident and is confirmed by experience. for, if _a b_ is a window without any object interposed, the luminous atmosphere to the right hand at _a_ is seen to the left at _d_. and the atmosphere at the left illuminates on the right at _c_, and the lines intersect at the point _m_. [footnote: _a_ here stands for _levante_ (east), _b_ for _ponente_ (west).] . every body in light and shade is situated between pyramids one dark and the other luminous, one is visible the other is not. but this only happens when the light enters by a window. supposing _a b_ to be the window and _r_ the body in light and shade, the light to the right hand _z_ will pass the object to the left and go on to _p_; the light to the left at _k_ will pass to the right of the object at _i_ and go on to _m_ and the two lines will intersect at _c_ and form a pyramid. then again _a_ _b_ falls on the shaded body at _i_ _g_ and forms a pyramid _f_ _i_ _g_. _f_ will be dark because the light _a_ _b_ can never fall there; _i_ _g_ _c_ will be illuminated because the light falls upon it. light and shadow with regard to the position of the eye ( -- ). . every shaded body that is larger than the pupil and that interposes between the luminous body and the eye will be seen dark. when the eye is placed between the luminous body and the objects illuminated by it, these objects will be seen without any shadow. [footnote: the diagram which in the original stands above line is given on plate ii, no . then, after a blank space of about eight lines, the diagram plate ii no is placed in the original. there is no explanation of it beyond the one line written under it.] . why the lights one on each side of a body having two pyramidal sides of an obtuse apex leave it devoid of shadow. [footnote: the sketch illustrating this is on plate xli no .] . a body in shadow situated between the light and the eye can never display its illuminated portion unless the eye can see the whole of the primary light. [footnote: _a_ stands for _corpo_ (body), _b_ for _lume_ (light).] . the eye which looks (at a spot) half way between the shadow and the light which surrounds the body in shadow will see that the deepest shadows on that body will meet the eye at equal angles, that is at the same angle as that of sight. [footnote: in both these diagrams _a_ stands for _lume_ (light) _b_ for _ombra_ (shadow).] . of the different light and shade in various aspects and of objects placed in them. if the sun is in the east and you look towards the west you will see every thing in full light and totally without shadow because you see them from the same side as the sun: and if you look towards the south or north you will see all objects in light and shade, because you see both the side towards the sun and the side away from it; and if you look towards the coming of the sun all objects will show you their shaded side, because on that side the sun cannot fall upon them. the law of the incidence of light. . the edges of a window which are illuminated by lights of equal degrees of brightness will not reflect light of equal brightness into the chamber within. if _b_ is a candle and _a c_ our hemisphere both will illuminate the edges of the window _m_ _n_, but light _b_ will only illuminate _f g_ and the hemisphere _a_ will light all of _d e_. . of painting. that part of a body which receives the luminous rays at equal angles will be in a higher light than any other part of it. and the part which the luminous rays strike between less equal angles will be less strongly illuminated. second book on light and shade. gradations of strength in the shadows ( . ). . that portion of a body in light and shade will be least luminous which is seen under the least amount of light. that part of the object which is marked _m_ is in the highest light because it faces the window _a d_ by the line _a f_; _n_ is in the second grade because the light _b d_ strikes it by the line _b e_; _o_ is in the third grade, as the light falls on it from _c d_ by the line _c h_; _p_ is the lowest light but one as _c d_ falls on it by the line _d v_; _q_ is the deepest shadow for no light falls on it from any part of the window. in proportion as _c d_ goes into _a d_ so will _n r s_ be darker than _m_, and all the rest is space without shadow. [footnote: the diagram belonging to this chapter is no. on plate iii. the letters _a b e d_ and _r_ are not reproduced in facsimile of the original, but have been replaced by ordinary type in the margin. - . the original text of these lines is reproduced within the diagram.--compare no .] . the light which falls on a shaded body at the acutest angle receives the highest light, and the darkest portion is that which receives it at an obtuse angle and both the light and the shadow form pyramids. the angle _c_ receives the highest grade of light because it is directly in front of the window _a b_ and the whole horizon of the sky _m x_. the angle _a_ differs but little from _c_ because the angles which divide it are not so unequal as those below, and only that portion of the horizon is intercepted which lies between _y_ and _x_. although it gains as much on the other side its line is nevertheless not very strong because one angle is smaller than its fellow. the angles _e i_ will have less light because they do not see much of the light _m s_ and the light _v x_ and their angles are very unequal. yhe angle _k_ and the angle _f_ are each placed between very unequal angles and therefore have but little light, because at _k_ it has only the light _p t_, and at _f_ only _t q_; _o g_ is the lowest grade of light because this part has no light at all from the sky; and thence come the lines which will reconstruct a pyramid that is the counterpart of the pyramid _c_; and this pyramid _l_ is in the first grade of shadow; for this too is placed between equal angles directly opposite to each other on either side of a straight line which passes through the centre of the body and goes to the centre of the light. the several luminous images cast within the frame of the window at the points _a_ and _b_ make a light which surrounds the derived shadow cast by the solid body at the points and . the shaded images increase from _o g_ and end at and . [footnote: the diagram belonging to this chapter is no. on plate iii. in the original it is placed between lines and , and in the reproduction these are shown in part. the semi circle above is marked _orizonte_ (horizon). the number at the left hand side, outside the facsimile, is in the place of a figure which has become indistinct in the original.] on the intensity of shadows as dependent on the distance from the light ( - ). . the smaller the light that falls upon an object the more shadow it will display. and the light will illuminate a smaller portion of the object in proportion as it is nearer to it; and conversely, a larger extent of it in proportion as it is farther off. a light which is smaller than the object on which it falls will light up a smaller extent of it in proportion as it is nearer to it, and the converse, as it is farther from it. but when the light is larger than the object illuminated it will light a larger extent of the object in proportion as it is nearer and the converse when they are farther apart. . that portion of an illuminated object which is nearest to the source of light will be the most strongly illuminated. . that portion of the primary shadow will be least dark which is farthest from the edges. the derived shadow will be darker than the primary shadow where it is contiguous with it. on the proportion of light and shade ( - ). . that portion of an opaque body will be more in shade or more in light, which is nearer to the dark body, by which it is shaded, or to the light that illuminates it. objects seen in light and shade show in greater relief than those which are wholly in light or in shadow. . of perspective. the shaded and illuminated sides of opaque objects will display the same proportion of light and darkness as their objects [footnote : the meaning of _obbietti_ (objects) is explained in no , lines - .--between the title-line and the next there is, in the original, a small diagram representing a circle described round a square.]. . of painting. the outlines and form of any part of a body in light and shade are indistinct in the shadows and in the high lights; but in the portions between the light and the shadows they are highly conspicuous. . of painting. among objects in various degrees of shade, when the light proceeds from a single source, there will be the same proportion in their shadows as in the natural diminution of the light and the same must be understood of the degrees of light. . a single and distinct luminous body causes stronger relief in the object than a diffused light; as may be seen by comparing one side of a landscape illuminated by the sun, and one overshadowed by clouds, and so illuminated only by the diffused light of the atmosphere. third book on light and shade. definition of derived shadow ( . ). . derived shadow cannot exist without primary shadow. this is proved by the first of this which says: darkness is the total absence of light, and shadow is an alleviation of darkness and of light, and it is more or less dark or light in proportion as the darkness is modified by the light. . shadow is diminution of light. darkness is absence of light. shadow is divided into two kinds, of which the first is called primary shadow, the second is derived shadow. the primary shadow is always the basis of the derived shadow. the edges of the derived shadow are straight lines. [footnote: the theory of the _ombra_ dirivativa_--a technical expression for which there is no precise english equivalent is elaborately treated by leonardo. but both text and diagrams (as pl. iv, - and pl. v) must at once convince the student that the distinction he makes between _ombra primitiva_ and _ombra dirivativa_ is not merely justifiable but scientific. _ombra dirivativa_ is by no means a mere abstract idea. this is easily proved by repeating the experiment made by leonardo, and by filling with smoke the room in which the existence of the _ombra dirivativa_ is investigated, when the shadow becomes visible. nor is it difficult to perceive how much of leonardo's teaching depended on this theory. the recognised, but extremely complicated science of cast shadows--_percussione dell' ombre dirivative_ as leonardo calls them--is thus rendered more intelligible if not actually simpler, and we must assume this theory as our chief guide through the investigations which follow.] the darkness of the derived shadow diminishes in proportion as it is remote from the primary shadow. different sorts of derived shadows ( - ). . shadow and light. the forms of shadows are three: inasmuch as if the solid body which casts the shadow is equal (in size) to the light, the shadow resembles a column without any termination (in length). if the body is larger than the light the shadow resembles a truncated and inverted pyramid, and its length has also no defined termination. but if the body is smaller than the light, the shadow will resemble a pyramid and come to an end, as is seen in eclipses of the moon. . of simple derived shadows. the simple derived shadow is of two kinds: one kind which has its length defined, and two kinds which are undefined; and the defined shadow is pyramidal. of the two undefined, one is a column and the other spreads out; and all three have rectilinear outlines. but the converging, that is the pyramidal, shadow proceeds from a body that is smaller than the light, and the columnar from a body equal in size to the light, and the spreading shadow from a body larger than the light; &c. of compound derived shadows. compound derived shadows are of two kinds; that is columnar and spreading. . of shadow. derived shadows are of three kinds of which one is spreading, the second columnar, the third converging to the point where the two sides meet and intersect, and beyond this intersection the sides are infinitely prolonged or straight lines. and if you say, this shadow must terminate at the angle where the sides meet and extend no farther, i deny this, because above in the first on shadow i have proved: that a thing is completely terminated when no portion of it goes beyond its terminating lines. now here, in this shadow, we see the converse of this, in as much as where this derived shadow originates we obviously have the figures of two pyramids of shadow which meet at their angles. hence, if, as [my] opponent says, the first pyramid of shadow terminates the derivative shadow at the angle whence it starts, then the second pyramid of shadow--so says the adversary--must be caused by the angle and not from the body in shadow; and this is disproved with the help of the nd of this which says: shadow is a condition produced by a body casting a shadow, and interposed between this shadow and the luminous body. by this it is made clear that the shadow is not produced by the angle of the derived shadow but only by the body casting the shadow; &c. if a spherical solid body is illuminated by a light of elongated form the shadow produced by the longest portion of this light will have less defined outlines than that which is produced by the breadth of the same light. and this is proved by what was said before, which is: that a shadow will have less defined outlines in proportion as the light which causes it is larger, and conversely, the outlines are clearer in proportion as it is smaller. [footnote: the two diagrams to this chapter are on plate iv, no. .] on the relation of derived and primary shadow ( - ). . the derived shadow can never resemble the body from which it proceeds unless the light is of the same form and size as the body causing the shadow. the derived shadow cannot be of the same form as the primary shadow unless it is intercepted by a plane parallel to it. . how a cast shadow can never be of the same size as the body that casts it. if the rays of light proceed, as experience shows, from a single point and are diffused in a sphere round this point, radiating and dispersed through the air, the farther they spread the wider they must spread; and an object placed between the light and a wall is always imaged larger in its shadow, because the rays that strike it [footnote: . the following lines are wanting to complete the logical connection.] would, by the time they have reached the wall, have become larger. . any shadow cast by a body in light and shade is of the same nature and character as that which is inseparable from the body. the centre of the length of a shadow always corresponds to that of the luminous body [footnote : this second statement of the same idea as in the former sentence, but in different words, does not, in the original, come next to the foregoing; sections and are placed between them.]. it is inevitable that every shadow must have its centre in a line with the centre of the light. on the shape of derived shadows ( - ). . of the pyramidal shadow. the pyramidal shadow produced by a columnar body will be narrower than the body itself in proportion as the simple derived shadow is intersected farther from the body which casts it. [footnote : compare the first diagram to no. . if we here conceive of the outlines of the pyramid of shadow on the ground as prolonged beyond its apex this gives rise to a second pyramid; this is what is spoken of at the beginning of no. .] . the cast shadow will be longest when the light is lowest. the cast shadow will be shortest when the light is highest. . both the primary and derived shadow will be larger when caused by the light of a candle than by diffused light. the difference between the larger and smaller shadows will be in inverse proportion to the larger and smaller lights causing them. [footnote: in the diagrams _a_ stands for _celo_ (sky), _b_ for _cadela_ (candle).] . all bodies, in proportion as they are nearer to, or farther from the source of light, will produce longer or shorter derived shadows. among bodies of equal size, that one which is illuminated by the largest light will have the shortest shadow. experiment confirms this proposition. thus the body _m_ _n_ is surrounded by a larger amount of light than the body _p q_, as is shown above. let us say that _v c a b d x_ is the sky, the source of light, and that _s t_ is a window by which the luminous rays enter, and so _m n_ and _p q_ are bodies in light and shade as exposed to this light; _m n_ will have a small derived shadow, because its original shadow will be small; and the derivative light will be large, again, because the original light _c d_ will be large and _p q_ will have more derived shadow because its original shadow will be larger, and its derived light will be smaller than that of the body _m n_ because that portion of the hemisphere _a b_ which illuminates it is smaller than the hemisphere _c d_ which illuminates the body _m n_. [footnote: the diagram, given on pl. iv, no. , stands in the original between lines and , while the text of lines to is written on its left side. in the reproduction of this diagram the letter _v_ at the outer right-hand end has been omitted.] . the shadow _m_ bears the same proportion to the shadow _n_ as the line _b c_ to the line _f c_. . of painting. of different shadows of equal strength that which is nearest the eye will seem the least strong. why is the shadow _e a b_ in the first grade of strength, _b c_ in the second; _c d_ in the third? the reason is that as from _e a b_ the sky is nowhere visible, it gets no light whatever from the sky, and so has no direct [primary] light. _b c_ faces the portion of the sky _f g_ and is illuminated by it. _c d_ faces the sky at _h k_. _c d_, being exposed to a larger extent of sky than _b c_, it is reasonable that it should be more lighted. and thus, up to a certain distance, the wall _a d_ will grow lighter for the reasons here given, until the darkness of the room overpowers the light from the window. . when the light of the atmosphere is restricted [by an opening] and illuminates bodies which cast shadows, these bodies being equally distant from the centre of the window, that which is most obliquely placed will cast the largest shadow beyond it. . these bodies standing apart in a room lighted by a single window will have derivative shadows more or less short according as they are more or less opposite to the window. among the shadows cast by bodies of equal mass but at unequal distances from the opening by which they are illuminated, that shadow will be the longest of the body which is least in the light. and in proportion as one body is better illuminated than another its shadow will be shorter than another. the proportion _n m_ and _e v k_ bear to _r t_ and _v x_ corresponds with that of the shadow _x_ to and _y_. the reason why those bodies which are placed most in front of the middle of the window throw shorter shadows than those obliquely situated is:--that the window appears in its proper form and to the obliquely placed ones it appears foreshortened; to those in the middle, the window shows its full size, to the oblique ones it appears smaller; the one in the middle faces the whole hemisphere that is _e f_ and those on the side have only a strip; that is _q r_ faces _a b_; and _m n_ faces _c d_; the body in the middle having a larger quantity of light than those at the sides is lighted from a point much below its centre, and thus the shadow is shorter. and the pyramid _g_ goes into _l y_ exactly as often as _a b_ goes into _e f_. the axis of every derivative shadow passes through / [footnote : _passa per_ / (passes through / ). the meaning of these words is probably this: each of the three axes of the derived shadow intersects the centre (_mezzo_) of the primary shadow (_ombra originale_) and, by prolongation upwards crosses six lines. this is self evident only in the middle diagram; but it is equally true of the side figures if we conceive of the lines _f_, _x n v m_, _y l k v_, and _e_, as prolonged beyond the semicircle of the horizon.] and is in a straight line with the centre of the primary shadow, with the centre of the body casting it and of the derivative light and with the centre of the window and, finally, with the centre of that portion of the source of light which is the celestial hemisphere, _y h_ is the centre of the derived shade, _l h_ of the primary shadow, _l_ of the body throwing it, _l k_ of the derived light, _v_ is the centre of the window, _e_ is the final centre of the original light afforded by that portion of the hemisphere of the sky which illuminates the solid body. [footnote: compare the diagram on pl. iv, no. . in the original this drawing is placed between lines and ; the rest, from line to line , is written on the left hand margin.] . the farther the derived shadow is prolonged the lighter it becomes. you will find that the proportion of the diameter of the derived shadow to that of the primary shadow will be the same as that between the darkness of the primary shadow and that of the derived shadow. [footnote : compare no. .] let _a b_ be the diameter of the primary shadow and _c d_ that of the derived shadow, i say that _a b_ going, as you see, three times into _d c_, the shadow _d c_ will be three times as light as the shadow _a b_. [footnote : compare no. .] if the size of the illuminating body is larger than that of the illuminated body an intersection of shadow will occur, beyond which the shadows will run off in two opposite directions as if they were caused by two separate lights. on the relative intensity of derived shadows ( - ). . on painting. the derived shadow is stronger in proportion as it is nearer to its place of origin. . how shadows fade away at long distances. shadows fade and are lost at long distances because the larger quantity of illuminated air which lies between the eye and the object seen tints the shadow with its own colour. . _a b_ will be darker than _c d_ in proportion as _c d_ is broader than _a b_. [footnote: in the original ms. the word _lume_ (light) is written at the apex of the pyramid.] . it can be proved why the shadow _o p c h_ is darker in proportion as it is nearer to the line _p h_ and is lighter in proportion as it is nearer to the line _o c_. let the light _a b_, be a window, and let the dark wall in which this window is, be _b s_, that is, one of the sides of the wall. then we may say that the line _p h_ is darker than any other part of the space _o p c h_, because this line faces the whole surface in shadow of [footnote: in the original the diagram is placed between lines and .] the wall _b s_. the line _o c_ is lighter than the other part of this space _o p c h_, because this line faces the luminous space _a b_. where the shadow is larger, or smaller, or equal the body which casts it. [first of the character of divided lights. [footnote : _lumi divisi_. the text here breaks off abruptly.] of the compound shadow _f, r, c, h_ caused by a single light. the shadow _f r c h_ is under such conditions as that where it is farthest from its inner side it loses depth in proportion. to prove this: let _d a_, be the light and _f n_ the solid body, and let _a e_ be one of the side walls of the window that is _d a_. then i say--according to the nd [proposition]: that the surface of any body is affected by the tone of the objects surrounding it,--that the side _r c_, which faces the dark wall _a e_ must participate of its darkness and, in the same way that the outer surface which faces the light _d a_ participates of the light; thus we get the outlines of the extremes on each side of the centre included between them.] this is divided into four parts. the first the extremes, which include the compound shadow, secondly the compound shadow between these extremes. . the action of the light as from its centre. if it were the whole of the light that caused the shadows beyond the bodies placed in front of it, it would follow that any body much smaller than the light would cast a pyramidal shadow; but experience not showing this, it must be the centre of the light that produces this effect. [footnote: the diagram belonging to this passage is between lines and in the original. comp. the reproduction pl. iv, no. . the text and drawing of this chapter have already been published with tolerable accuracy. see m. jordan: "_das malerbuch des leonardo da vinci_". leipzig , p. .] proof. let _a b_ be the width of the light from a window, which falls on a stick set up at one foot from _a c_ [footnote : _bastone_ (stick). the diagram has a sphere in place of a stick.]. and let _a d_ be the space where all the light from the window is visible. at _c e_ that part of the window which is between _l b_ cannot be seen. in the same way _a m_ cannot be seen from _d f_ and therefore in these two portions the light begins to fail. shadow as produced by two lights of different size ( . ). . a body in light and shade placed between two equal lights side by side will cast shadows in proportion to the [amount of] light. and the shadows will be one darker than the other in proportion as one light is nearer to the said body than the other on the opposite side. a body placed at an equal distance between two lights will cast two shadows, one deeper than the other in proportion, as the light which causes it is brighter than the other. [footnote: in the ms. the larger diagram is placed above the first line; the smaller one between l. & .] . a light which is smaller than the body it illuminates produces shadows of which the outlines end within [the surface of] the body, and not much compound shadow; and falls on less than half of it. a light which is larger than the body it illuminates, falls on more than half of it, and produces much compound shadow. the effect of light at different distances. . of the shadow cast by a body placed between equal lights. a body placed between equal lights will cast shadows of itself in the direction of the lines of the lights; and if you move this body placing it nearer to one of the lights the shadow cast towards the nearer light will be less deep than that which falls towards the more distant one. further complications in the derived shadows ( - ). . the greatest depth of shadow is in the simple derived shadow because it is not lighted by either of the two lights _a b, c d_. the next less deep shadow is the derived shadow _e f n_; and in this the shadow is less by half, because it is illuminated by a single light, that is _c d_. this is uniform in natural tone because it is lighted throughout by one only of the two luminous bodies [ ]. but it varies with the conditions of shadow, inasmuch as the farther it is away from the light the less it is illuminated by it [ ]. the third degree of depth is the middle shadow [footnote : we gather from what follows that _q g r_ here means _ombra media_ (the middle shadow).]. but this is not uniform in natural tone; because the nearer it gets to the simple derived shadow the deeper it is [footnote : compare lines - ], and it is the uniformly gradual diminution by increase of distance which is what modifies it [footnote : see footnote ]: that is to say the depth of a shadow increases in proportion to the distance from the two lights. the fourth is the shadow _k r s_ and this is all the darker in natural tone in proportion as it is nearer to _k s_, because it gets less of the light _a o_, but by the accident [of distance] it is rendered less deep, because it is nearer to the light _c d_, and thus is always exposed to both lights. the fifth is less deep in shadow than either of the others because it is always entirely exposed to one of the lights and to the whole or part of the other; and it is less deep in proportion as it is nearer to the two lights, and in proportion as it is turned towards the outer side _x t_; because it is more exposed to the second light _a b_. [footnote: the diagram to this section is given on pl. v. to the left is the facsimile of the beginning of the text belonging to it.] . of simple shadows. why, at the intersections _a_, _b_ of the two compound shadows _e f_ and _m e_, is a simple shadow pfoduced as at _e h_ and _m g_, while no such simple shadow is produced at the other two intersections _c d_ made by the very same compound shadows? answer. compound shadow are a mixture of light and shade and simple shadows are simply darkness. hence, of the two lights _n_ and _o_, one falls on the compound shadow from one side, and the other on the compound shadow from the other side, but where they intersect no light falls, as at _a b_; therefore it is a simple shadow. where there is a compound shadow one light or the other falls; and here a difficulty arises for my adversary since he says that, where the compound shadows intersect, both the lights which produce the shadows must of necessity fall and therefore these shadows ought to be neutralised; inasmuch as the two lights do not fall there, we say that the shadow is a simple one and where only one of the two lights falls, we say the shadow is compound, and where both the lights fall the shadow is neutralised; for where both lights fall, no shadow of any kind is produced, but only a light background limiting the shadow. here i shall say that what my adversary said was true: but he only mentions such truths as are in his favour; and if we go on to the rest he must conclude that my proposition is true. and that is: that if both lights fell on the point of intersection, the shadows would be neutralised. this i confess to be true if [neither of] the two shadows fell in the same spot; because, where a shadow and a light fall, a compound shadow is produced, and wherever two shadows or two equal lights fall, the shadow cannot vary in any part of it, the shadows and the lights both being equal. and this is proved in the eighth [proposition] on proportion where it is said that if a given quantity has a single unit of force and resistance, a double quantity will have double force and double resistance. definition. the intersection _n_ is produced by the shadows caused by the light _b_, because this light _b_ produces the shadow _x b_, and the shadow _s b_, but the intersection _m_ is produced by the light _a_ which causes the shadow _s a_, and the shadow _x a_. but if you uncover both the lights _a b_, then you get the two shadows _n m_ both at once, and besides these, two other, simple shadows are produced at _r o_ where neither of the two lights falls at all. the grades of depth in compound shadows are fewer in proportion as the lights falling on, and crossing them are less numerous. . why the intersections at _n_ being composed of two compound derived shadows, forms a compound shadow and not a simple one, as happens with other intersections of compound shadows. this occurs, according to the nd [diagram] of this [prop.] which says:--the intersection of derived shadows when produced by the intersection of columnar shadows caused by a single light does not produce a simple shadow. and this is the corollary of the st [prop.] which says:--the intersection of simple derived shadows never results in a deeper shadow, because the deepest shadows all added together cannot be darker than one by itself. since, if many deepest shadows increased in depth by their duplication, they could not be called the _deepest_ shadows, but only part-shadows. but if such intersections are illuminated by a second light placed between the eye and the intersecting bodies, then those shadows would become compound shadows and be uniformly dark just as much at the intersection as throughout the rest. in the st and nd above, the intersections _i k_ will not be doubled in depth as it is doubled in quantity. but in this rd, at the intersections _g n_ they will be double in depth and in quantity. . how and when the surroundings in shadow mingle their derived shadow with the light derived from the luminous body. the derived shadow of the dark walls on each side of the bright light of the window are what mingle their various degrees of shade with the light derived from the window; and these various depths of shade modify every portion of the light, except where it is strongest, at _c_. to prove this let _d a_ be the primary shadow which is turned towards the point _e_, and darkens it by its derived shadow; as may be seen by the triangle _a e d_, in which the angle _e_ faces the darkened base _d a e_; the point _v_ faces the dark shadow _a s_ which is part of _a d_, and as the whole is greater than a part, _e_ which faces the whole base [of the triangle], will be in deeper shadow than _v_ which only faces part of it. in consequence of the conclusion [shown] in the above diagram, _t_ will be less darkened than _v_, because the base of the _t_ is part of the base of the _v_; and in the same way it follows that _p_ is less in shadow than _t_, because the base of the _p_ is part of the base of the _t_. and _c_ is the terminal point of the derived shadow and the chief beginning of the highest light. [footnote: the diagram on pl. iv, no. belongs to this passage; but it must be noted that the text explains only the figure on the right-hand side.] fourth book on light and shade. on the shape of the cast shadows ( - ). . the form of the shadow cast by any body of uniform density can never be the same as that of the body producing it. [footnote: comp. the drawing on pi. xxviii, no. .] . no cast shadow can produce the true image of the body which casts it on a vertical plane unless the centre of the light is equally distant from all the edges of that body. . if a window _a b_ admits the sunlight into a room, the sunlight will magnify the size of the window and diminish the shadow of a man in such a way as that when the man makes that dim shadow of himself, approach to that which defines the real size of the window, he will see the shadows where they come into contact, dim and confused from the strength of the light, shutting off and not allowing the solar rays to pass; the effect of the shadow of the man cast by this contact will be exactly that figured above. [footnote: it is scarcely possible to render the meaning of this sentence with strict accuracy; mainly because the grammatical construction is defective in the most important part--line . in the very slight original sketch the shadow touches the upper arch of the window and the correction, here given is perhaps not justified.] . a shadow is never seen as of uniform depth on the surface which intercepts it unless every portion of that surface is equidistant from the luminous body. this is proved by the th which says:--the shadow will appear lighter or stronger as it is surrounded by a darker or a lighter background. and by the th of this:--the background will be in parts darker or lighter, in proportion as it is farther from or nearer to the luminous body. and:--of various spots equally distant from the luminous body those will always be in the highest light on which the rays fall at the smallest angles: the outline of the shadow as it falls on inequalities in the surface will be seen with all the contours similar to those of the body that casts it, if the eye is placed just where the centre of the light was. the shadow will look darkest where it is farthest from the body that casts it. the shadow _c d_, cast by the body in shadow _a b_ which is equally distant in all parts, is not of equal depth because it is seen on a back ground of varying brightness. [footnote: compare the three diagrams on pl. vi, no which, in the original accompany this section.] on the outlines of cast shadows ( - ). . the edges of a derived shadow will be most distinct where it is cast nearest to the primary shadow. . as the derived shadow gets more distant from the primary shadow, the more the cast shadow differs from the primary shadow. . of shadows which never come to an end. the greater the difference between a light and the body lighted by it, the light being the larger, the more vague will be the outlines of the shadow of that object. the derived shadow will be most confused towards the edges of its interception by a plane, where it is remotest from the body casting it. . what is the cause which makes the outlines of the shadow vague and confused? whether it is possible to give clear and definite outlines to the edges of shadows. on the relative size of shadows ( . ). . the body which is nearest to the light casts the largest shadow, and why? if an object placed in front of a single light is very close to it you will see that it casts a very large shadow on the opposite wall, and the farther you remove the object from the light the smaller will the image of the shadow become. why a shadow larger than the body that produces it becomes out of proportion. the disproportion of a shadow which is larger than the body producing it, results from the light being smaller than the body, so that it cannot be at an equal distance from the edges of the body [footnote : h. ludwig in his edition of the old copies, in the vatican library--in which this chapter is included under nos. , and alters this passage as follows: _quella parte ch'e piu propinqua piu cresce che le distanti_, although the vatican copy agrees with the original ms. in having _distante_ in the former and _propinque_ in the latter place. this supposed amendment seems to me to invert the facts. supposing for instance, that on pl. xxxi no. . _f_ is the spot where the light is that illuminates the figure there represented, and that the line behind the figure represents a wall on which the shadow of the figure is thrown. it is evident, that in that case the nearest portion, in this case the under part of the thigh, is very little magnified in the shadow, and the remoter parts, for instance the head, are more magnified.]; and the portions which are most remote are made larger than the nearer portions for this reason [footnote : see footnote ]. why a shadow which is larger than the body causing it has ill-defined outlines. the atmosphere which surrounds a light is almost like light itself for brightness and colour; but the farther off it is the more it loses this resemblance. an object which casts a large shadow and is near to the light, is illuminated both by that light by the luminous atmosphere; hence this diffused light gives the shadow ill-defined edges. . a luminous body which is long and narrow in shape gives more confused outlines to the derived shadow than a spherical light, and this contradicts the proposition next following: a shadow will have its outlines more clearly defined in proportion as it is nearer to the primary shadow or, i should say, the body casting the shadow; [footnote : the lettering refers to the lower diagram, pl. xli, no. .] the cause of this is the elongated form of the luminous body _a c_, &c. [footnote : see footnote ]. effects on cast shadows by the tone of the back ground. . of modified shadows. modified shadows are those which are cast on light walls or other illuminated objects. a shadow looks darkest against a light background. the outlines of a derived shadow will be clearer as they are nearer to the primary shadow. a derived shadow will be most defined in shape where it is intercepted, where the plane intercepts it at the most equal angle. those parts of a shadow will appear darkest which have darker objects opposite to them. and they will appear less dark when they face lighter objects. and the larger the light object opposite, the more the shadow will be lightened. and the larger the surface of the dark object the more it will darken the derived shadow where it is intercepted. a disputed proposition. . of the opinion of some that a triangle casts no shadow on a plane surface. certain mathematicians have maintained that a triangle, of which the base is turned to the light, casts no shadow on a plane; and this they prove by saying [ ] that no spherical body smaller than the light can reach the middle with the shadow. the lines of radiant light are straight lines [ ]; therefore, suppose the light to be _g h_ and the triangle _l m n_, and let the plane be _i k_; they say the light _g_ falls on the side of the triangle _l n_, and the portion of the plane _i q_. thus again _h_ like _g_ falls on the side _l m_, and then on _m n_ and the plane _p k_; and if the whole plane thus faces the lights _g h_, it is evident that the triangle has no shadow; and that which has no shadow can cast none. this, in this case appears credible. but if the triangle _n p g_ were not illuminated by the two lights _g_ and _h_, but by _i p_ and _g_ and _k_ neither side is lighted by more than one single light: that is _i p_ is invisible to _h g_ and _k_ will never be lighted by _g_; hence _p q_ will be twice as light as the two visible portions that are in shadow. [footnote: -- . this passage is so obscure that it would be rash to offer an explanation. several words seem to have been omitted.] on the relative depth of cast shadows ( - ). . a spot is most in the shade when a large number of darkened rays fall upon it. the spot which receives the rays at the widest angle and by darkened rays will be most in the dark; a will be twice as dark as b, because it originates from twice as large a base at an equal distance. a spot is most illuminated when a large number of luminous rays fall upon it. d is the beginning of the shadow _d f_, and tinges _c_ but _a_ little; _d e_ is half of the shadow _d f_ and gives a deeper tone where it is cast at _b_ than at _f_. and the whole shaded space _e_ gives its tone to the spot _a_. [footnote: the diagram here referred to is on pl. xli, no. .] . _a n_ will be darker than _c r_ in proportion to the number of times that _a b_ goes into _c d_. . the shadow cast by an object on a plane will be smaller in proportion as that object is lighted by feebler rays. let _d e_ be the object and _d c_ the plane surface; the number of times that _d e_ will go into _f g_ gives the proportion of light at _f h_ to _d c_. the ray of light will be weaker in proportion to its distance from the hole through which it falls. fifth book on light and shade. principles of reflection ( . ). . of the way in which the shadows cast by objects ought to be defined. if the object is the mountain here figured, and the light is at the point _a_, i say that from _b d_ and also from _c f_ there will be no light but from reflected rays. and this results from the fact that rays of light can only act in straight lines; and the same is the case with the secondary or reflected rays. . the edges of the derived shadow are defined by the hues of the illuminated objects surrounding the luminous body which produces the shadow. on reverberation. . of reverberation. reverberation is caused by bodies of a bright nature with a flat and semi opaque surface which, when the light strikes upon them, throw it back again, like the rebound of a ball, to the former object. where there can be no reflected lights. all dense bodies have their surfaces occupied by various degrees of light and shade. the lights are of two kinds, one called original, the other borrowed. original light is that which is inherent in the flame of fire or the light of the sun or of the atmosphere. borrowed light will be reflected light; but to return to the promised definition: i say that this luminous reverberation is not produced by those portions of a body which are turned towards darkened objects, such as shaded spots, fields with grass of various height, woods whether green or bare; in which, though that side of each branch which is turned towards the original light has a share of that light, nevertheless the shadows cast by each branch separately are so numerous, as well as those cast by one branch on the others, that finally so much shadow is the result that the light counts for nothing. hence objects of this kind cannot throw any reflected light on opposite objects. reflection on water ( . ). . perspective. the shadow or object mirrored in water in motion, that is to say in small wavelets, will always be larger than the external object producing it. . it is impossible that an object mirrored on water should correspond in form to the object mirrored, since the centre of the eye is above the surface of the water. this is made plain in the figure here given, which demonstrates that the eye sees the surface _a b_, and cannot see it at _l f_, and at _r t_; it sees the surface of the image at _r t_, and does not see it in the real object _c d_. hence it is impossible to see it, as has been said above unless the eye itself is situated on the surface of the water as is shown below [ ]. [footnote: _a_ stands for _ochio_ [eye], _b_ for _aria_ [air], _c_ for _acqua_ [water], _d_ for _cateto_ [cathetus].--in the original ms. the second diagram is placed below line .] experiments with the mirror ( - ). . the mirror. if the illuminated object is of the same size as the luminous body and as that in which the light is reflected, the amount of the reflected light will bear the same proportion to the intermediate light as this second light will bear to the first, if both bodies are smooth and white. . describe how it is that no object has its limitation in the mirror but in the eye which sees it in the mirror. for if you look at your face in the mirror, the part resembles the whole in as much as the part is everywhere in the mirror, and the whole is in every part of the same mirror; and the same is true of the whole image of any object placed opposite to this mirror, &c. . no man can see the image of another man in a mirror in its proper place with regard to the objects; because every object falls on [the surface of] the mirror at equal angles. and if the one man, who sees the other in the mirror, is not in a direct line with the image he will not see it in the place where it really falls; and if he gets into the line, he covers the other man and puts himself in the place occupied by his image. let _n o_ be the mirror, _b_ the eye of your friend and _d_ your own eye. your friend's eye will appear to you at _a_, and to him it will seem that yours is at _c_, and the intersection of the visual rays will occur at _m_, so that either of you touching _m_ will touch the eye of the other man which shall be open. and if you touch the eye of the other man in the mirror it will seem to him that you are touching your own. appendix:--on shadows in movement ( . ). . of the shadow and its motion. when two bodies casting shadows, and one in front of the other, are between a window and the wall with some space between them, the shadow of the body which is nearest to the plane of the wall will move if the body nearest to the window is put in transverse motion across the window. to prove this let _a_ and _b_ be two bodies placed between the window _n m_ and the plane surface _o p_ with sufficient space between them as shown by the space _a b_. i say that if the body _a_ is moved towards _s_ the shadow of the body _b_ which is at _c_ will move towards _d_. . of the motion of shadows. the motion of a shadow is always more rapid than that of the body which produces it if the light is stationary. to prove this let _a_ be the luminous body, and _b_ the body casting the shadow, and _d_ the shadow. then i say that in the time while the solid body moves from _b_ to _c_, the shadow _d_ will move to _e_; and this proportion in the rapidity of the movements made in the same space of time, is equal to that in the length of the space moved over. thus, given the proportion of the space moved over by the body _b_ to _c_, to that moved over by the shadow _d_ to _e_, the proportion in the rapidity of their movements will be the same. but if the luminous body is also in movement with a velocity equal to that of the solid body, then the shadow and the body that casts it will move with equal speed. and if the luminous body moves more rapidly than the solid body, the motion of the shadow will be slower than that of the body casting it. but if the luminous body moves more slowly than the solid body, then the shadow will move more rapidly than that body. sixth book on light and shade. the effect of rays passing through holes ( . ). . perspective. if you transmit the rays of the sun through a hole in the shape of a star you will see a beautiful effect of perspective in the spot where the sun's rays fall. [footnote: in this and the following chapters of ms. c the order of the original paging has been adhered to, and is shown in parenthesis. leonardo himself has but rarely worked out the subject of these propositions. the space left for the purpose has occasionally been made use of for quite different matter. even the numerous diagrams, most of them very delicately sketched, lettered and numbered, which occur on these pages, are hardly ever explained, with the exception of those few which are here given.] . no small hole can so modify the convergence of rays of light as to prevent, at a long distance, the transmission of the true form of the luminous body causing them. it is impossible that rays of light passing through a parallel [slit], should not display the form of the body causing them, since all the effects produced by a luminous body are [in fact] the reflection of that body: the moon, shaped like a boat, if transmitted through a hole is figured in the surface [it falls on] as a boatshaped object. [footnote : in the ms. a blank space is left after this question.] why the eye sees bodies at a distance, larger than they measure on the vertical plane?. [footnote: this chapter, taken from another ms. may, as an exception, be placed here, as it refers to the same subject as the preceding section.] on gradation of shadows ( . ). . although the breadth and length of lights and shadow will be narrower and shorter in foreshortening, the quality and quantity of the light and shade is not increased nor diminished. [ ]the function of shade and light when diminished by foreshortening, will be to give shadow and to illuminate an object opposite, according to the quality and quantity in which they fall on the body. [ ]in proportion as a derived shadow is nearer to its penultimate extremities the deeper it will appear, _g z_ beyond the intersection faces only the part of the shadow [marked] _y z_; this by intersection takes the shadow from _m n_ but by direct line it takes the shadow _a m_ hence it is twice as deep as _g z_. _y x_, by intersection takes the shadow _n o_, but by direct line the shadow _n m a_, therefore _x y_ is three times as dark as _z g_; _x f_, by intersection faces _o b_ and by direct line _o n m a_, therefore we must say that the shadow between _f x_ will be four times as dark as the shadow _z g_, because it faces four times as much shadow. let _a b_ be the side where the primary shadow is, and _b c_ the primary light, _d_ will be the spot where it is intercepted,_f g_ the derived shadow and _f e_ the derived light. and this must be at the beginning of the explanation. [footnote: in the original ms. the text of no. precedes the one given here. in the text of no. there is a blank space of about four lines between the lines and . the diagram given on pl. vi, no. is placed between lines and . between lines and there is another space of about three lines and one line left blank between lines and . the reader will find the meaning of the whole passage much clearer if he first reads the final lines -- . compare also line of no. .] on relative proportion of light and shadows ( -- ). . that part of the surface of a body on which the images [reflection] from other bodies placed opposite fall at the largest angle will assume their hue most strongly. in the diagram below, is a larger angle than , since its base _a n_ is larger than _e n_ the base of . this diagram below should end at _a n_ . [ ]that portion of the illuminated surface on which a shadow is cast will be brightest which lies contiguous to the cast shadow. just as an object which is lighted up by a greater quantity of luminous rays becomes brighter, so one on which a greater quantity of shadow falls, will be darker. let be the side of an illuminated surface , surrounding the cast shadow _g e_ . and this spot will be lighter than , because less shadow falls on it than on . since faces only the shadow _i n_; and faces and receives the shadow _a e_ as well as _i n_ which makes it twice as dark. and the same thing happens when you put the atmosphere and the sun in the place of shade and light. [ ] the distribution of shadow, originating in, and limited by, plane surfaces placed near to each other, equal in tone and directly opposite, will be darker at the ends than at the beginning, which will be determined by the incidence of the luminous rays. you will find the same proportion in the depth of the derived shadows _a n_ as in the nearness of the luminous bodies _m b_, which cause them; and if the luminous bodies were of equal size you would still farther find the same proportion in the light cast by the luminous circles and their shadows as in the distance of the said luminous bodies. [footnote: the diagram originally placed between lines and is on pl. vi, no. . in the diagram given above line of the original, and here printed in the text, the words _corpo luminoso_ [luminous body] are written in the circle _m_, _luminoso_ in the circle _b_ and _ombroso_ [body in shadow] in the circle _o_.] . that part of the reflection will be brightest where the reflected rays are shortest. [ ] the darkness occasioned by the casting of combined shadows will be in conformity with its cause, which will originate and terminate between two plane surfaces near together, alike in tone and directly opposite each other. [ ] in proportion as the source of light is larger, the luminous and shadow rays will be more mixed together. this result is produced because wherever there is a larger quantity of luminous rays, there is most light, but where there are fewer there is least light, consequently the shadow rays come in and mingle with them. [footnote: diagrams are inserted before lines and .] . in all the proportions i lay down it must be understood that the medium between the bodies is always the same. [ ] the smaller the luminous body the more distinct will the transmission of the shadows be. [ ] when of two opposite shadows, produced by the same body, one is twice as dark as the other though similar in form, one of the two lights causing them must have twice the diameter that the other has and be at twice the distance from the opaque body. if the object is lowly moved across the luminous body, and the shadow is intercepted at some distance from the object, there will be the same relative proportion between the motion of the derived shadow and the motion of the primary shadow, as between the distance from the object to the light, and that from the object to the spot where the shadow is intercepted; so that though the object is moved slowly the shadow moves fast. [footnote: there are diagrams inserted before lines and but they are not reproduced here. the diagram above line is written upon as follows: at _a lume_ (light), at _b obbietto_ (body), at _c ombra d'obbietto_ (shadow of the object).] . a luminous body will appear less brilliant when surrounded by a bright background. [ ] i have found that the stars which are nearest to the horizon look larger than the others because light falls upon them from a larger proportion of the solar body than when they are above us; and having more light from the sun they give more light, and the bodies which are most luminous appear the largest. as may be seen by the sun through a mist, and overhead; it appears larger where there is no mist and diminished through mist. no portion of the luminous body is ever visible from any spot within the pyramid of pure derived shadow. [footnote: between lines and there is in the original a large diagram which does not refer to this text. ] . a body on which the solar rays fall between the thin branches of trees far apart will cast but a single shadow. [ ] if an opaque body and a luminous one are (both) spherical the base of the pyramid of rays will bear the same proportion to the luminous body as the base of the pyramid of shade to the opaque body. [ ] when the transmitted shadow is intercepted by a plane surface placed opposite to it and farther away from the luminous body than from the object [which casts it] it will appear proportionately darker and the edges more distinct. [footnote: the diagram which, in the original, is placed above line , is similar to the one, here given on page (section ).--the diagram here given in the margin stands, in the original, between lines and .] . a body illuminated by the solar rays passing between the thick branches of trees will produce as many shadows as there are branches between the sun and itself. where the shadow-rays from an opaque pyramidal body are intercepted they will cast a shadow of bifurcate outline and various depth at the points. a light which is broader than the apex but narrower than the base of an opaque pyramidal body placed in front of it, will cause that pyramid to cast a shadow of bifurcate form and various degrees of depth. if an opaque body, smaller than the light, casts two shadows and if it is the same size or larger, casts but one, it follows that a pyramidal body, of which part is smaller, part equal to, and part larger than, the luminous body, will cast a bifurcate shadow. [footnote: between lines and there are in the original two large diagrams.] _iv._ _perspective of disappearance._ _the theory of the_ "prospettiva de' perdimenti" _would, in many important details, be quite unintelligible if it had not been led up by the principles of light and shade on which it is based. the word_ "prospettiva" _in the language of the time included the principles of optics; what leonardo understood by_ "perdimenti" _will be clearly seen in the early chapters, nos._ -- . _it is in the very nature of the case that the farther explanations given in the subsequent chapters must be limited to general rules. the sections given as_ -- _"on indistinctness at short distances" have, it is true, only an indirect bearing on the subject; but on the other hand, the following chapters,_ -- , _"on indistinctness at great distances," go fully into the matter, and in chapters_ -- , _which treat "of the importance of light and shade in the perspective of disappearance", the practical issues are distinctly insisted on in their relation to the theory. this is naturally followed by the statements as to "the effect of light or dark backgrounds on the apparent size of bodies"_ (_nos._ -- ). _at the end i have placed, in the order of the original, those sections from the ms._ c _which treat of the "perspective of disappearance" and serve to some extent to complete the treatment of the subject_ ( -- ). definition ( . ). . of the diminished distinctness of the outlines of opaque bodies. if the real outlines of opaque bodies are indistinguishable at even a very short distance, they will be more so at long distances; and, since it is by its outlines that we are able to know the real form of any opaque body, when by its remoteness we fail to discern it as a whole, much more must we fail to discern its parts and outlines. . of the diminution in perspective of opaque objects. among opaque objects of equal size the apparent diminution of size will be in proportion to their distance from the eye of the spectator; but it is an inverse proportion, since, where the distance is greater, the opaque body will appear smaller, and the less the distance the larger will the object appear. and this is the fundamental principle of linear perspective and it follows:--[ ]every object as it becomes more remote loses first those parts which are smallest. thus of a horse, we should lose the legs before the head, because the legs are thinner than the head; and the neck before the body for the same reason. hence it follows that the last part of the horse which would be discernible by the eye would be the mass of the body in an oval form, or rather in a cylindrical form and this would lose its apparent thickness before its length--according to the nd rule given above, &c. [footnote : compare line .]. if the eye remains stationary the perspective terminates in the distance in a point. but if the eye moves in a straight [horizontal] line the perspective terminates in a line and the reason is that this line is generated by the motion of the point and our sight; therefore it follows that as we move our sight [eye], the point moves, and as we move the point, the line is generated, &c. an illustration by experiment. . every visible body, in so far as it affects the eye, includes three attributes; that is to say: mass, form and colour; and the mass is recognisable at a greater distance from the place of its actual existence than either colour or form. again, colour is discernible at a greater distance than form, but this law does not apply to luminous bodies. the above proposition is plainly shown and proved by experiment; because: if you see a man close to you, you discern the exact appearance of the mass and of the form and also of the colouring; if he goes to some distance you will not recognise who he is, because the character of the details will disappear, if he goes still farther you will not be able to distinguish his colouring, but he will appear as a dark object, and still farther he will appear as a very small dark rounded object. it appears rounded because distance so greatly diminishes the various details that nothing remains visible but the larger mass. and the reason is this: we know very well that all the images of objects reach the senses by a small aperture in the eye; hence, if the whole horizon _a d_ is admitted through such an aperture, the object _b c_ being but a very small fraction of this horizon what space can it fill in that minute image of so vast a hemisphere? and because luminous bodies have more power in darkness than any others, it is evident that, as the chamber of the eye is very dark, as is the nature of all colored cavities, the images of distant objects are confused and lost in the great light of the sky; and if they are visible at all, appear dark and black, as every small body must when seen in the diffused light of the atmosphere. [footnote: the diagram belonging to this passage is placed between lines and ; it is no. on pl. vi. ] a guiding rule. . of the atmosphere that interposes between the eye and visible objects. an object will appear more or less distinct at the same distance, in proportion as the atmosphere existing between the eye and that object is more or less clear. hence, as i know that the greater or less quantity of the air that lies between the eye and the object makes the outlines of that object more or less indistinct, you must diminish the definiteness of outline of those objects in proportion to their increasing distance from the eye of the spectator. an experiment. . when i was once in a place on the sea, at an equal distance from the shore and the mountains, the distance from the shore looked much greater than that from the mountains. on indistinctness at short distances ( - ). . if you place an opaque object in front of your eye at a distance of four fingers' breadth, if it is smaller than the space between the two eyes it will not interfere with your seeing any thing that may be beyond it. no object situated beyond another object seen by the eye can be concealed by this [nearer] object if it is smaller than the space from eye to eye. . the eye cannot take in a luminous angle which is too close to it. . that part of a surface will be better lighted on which the light falls at the greater angle. and that part, on which the shadow falls at the greatest angle, will receive from those rays least of the benefit of the light. . of the eye. the edges of an object placed in front of the pupil of the eye will be less distinct in proportion as they are closer to the eye. this is shown by the edge of the object _n_ placed in front of the pupil _d_; in looking at this edge the pupil also sees all the space _a c_ which is beyond the edge; and the images the eye receives from that space are mingled with the images of the edge, so that one image confuses the other, and this confusion hinders the pupil from distinguishing the edge. . the outlines of objects will be least clear when they are nearest to the eye, and therefore remoter outlines will be clearer. among objects which are smaller than the pupil of the eye those will be less distinct which are nearer to the eye. on indistinctness at great distances ( - ). . objects near to the eye will appear larger than those at a distance. objects seen with two eyes will appear rounder than if they are seen with only one. objects seen between light and shadow will show the most relief. . of painting. our true perception of an object diminishes in proportion as its size is diminished by distance. . perspective. why objects seen at a distance appear large to the eye and in the image on the vertical plane they appear small. perspective. i ask how far away the eye can discern a non-luminous body, as, for instance, a mountain. it will be very plainly visible if the sun is behind it; and could be seen at a greater or less distance according to the sun's place in the sky. [footnote: the clue to the solution of this problem (lines - ) is given in lines - , no. . objects seen with both eyes appear solid since they are seen from two distinct points of sight separated by the distance between the eyes, but this solidity cannot be represented in a flat drawing. compare no. .] the importance of light and shade in the perspective of disappearance ( - ). . an opaque body seen in a line in which the light falls will reveal no prominences to the eye. for instance, let _a_ be the solid body and _c_ the light; _c m_ and _c n_ will be the lines of incidence of the light, that is to say the lines which transmit the light to the object _a_. the eye being at the point _b_, i say that since the light _c_ falls on the whole part _m n_ the portions in relief on that side will all be illuminated. hence the eye placed at _c_ cannot see any light and shade and, not seeing it, every portion will appear of the same tone, therefore the relief in the prominent or rounded parts will not be visible. . of painting. when you represent in your work shadows which you can only discern with difficulty, and of which you cannot distinguish the edges so that you apprehend them confusedly, you must not make them sharp or definite lest your work should have a wooden effect. . of painting. you will observe in drawing that among the shadows some are of undistinguishable gradation and form, as is shown in the rd [proposition] which says: rounded surfaces display as many degrees of light and shade as there are varieties of brightness and darkness reflected from the surrounding objects. . of light and shade. you who draw from nature, look (carefully) at the extent, the degree, and the form of the lights and shadows on each muscle; and in their position lengthwise observe towards which muscle the axis of the central line is directed. . an object which is [so brilliantly illuminated as to be] almost as bright as light will be visible at a greater distance, and of larger apparent size than is natural to objects so remote. the effect of light or dark backgrounds on the apparent size of objects ( - ). . a shadow will appear dark in proportion to the brilliancy of the light surrounding it and conversely it will be less conspicuous where it is seen against a darker background. . of ordinary perspective. an object of equal breadth and colour throughout, seen against a background of various colours will appear unequal in breadth. and if an object of equal breadth throughout, but of various colours, is seen against a background of uniform colour, that object will appear of various breadth. and the more the colours of the background or of the object seen against the ground vary, the greater will the apparent variations in the breadth be though the objects seen against the ground be of equal breadth [throughout]. . a dark object seen against a bright background will appear smaller than it is. a light object will look larger when it is seen against a background darker than itself. . of light. a luminous body when obscured by a dense atmosphere will appear smaller; as may be seen by the moon or sun veiled by mists. of light. of several luminous bodies of equal size and brilliancy and at an equal distance, that will look the largest which is surrounded by the darkest background. of light. i find that any luminous body when seen through a dense and thick mist diminishes in proportion to its distance from the eye. thus it is with the sun by day, as well as the moon and the other eternal lights by night. and when the air is clear, these luminaries appear larger in proportion as they are farther from the eye. . that portion of a body of uniform breadth which is against a lighter background will look narrower [than the rest]. [ ] _e_ is a given object, itself dark and of uniform breadth; _a b_ and _c d_ are two backgrounds one darker than the other; _b c_ is a bright background, as it might be a spot lighted by the sun through an aperture in a dark room. then i say that the object _e g_ will appear larger at _e f_ than at _g h_; because _e f_ has a darker background than _g h_; and again at _f g_ it will look narrower from being seen by the eye _o_, on the light background _b c_. [footnote : the diagram to which the text, lines - , refers, is placed in the original between lines and , and is given on pl. xli, no. . lines to are explained by the lower of the two diagrams on pl. xli, no. . in the original these are placed after line .] that part of a luminous body, of equal breadth and brilliancy throughout, will look largest which is seen against the darkest background; and the luminous body will seem on fire. . why bodies in light and shade have their outlines altered by the colour and brightness of the objects serving as a background to them. if you look at a body of which the illuminated portion lies and ends against a dark background, that part of the light which will look brightest will be that which lies against the dark [background] at _d_. but if this brighter part lies against a light background, the edge of the object, which is itself light, will be less distinct than before, and the highest light will appear to be between the limit of the background _m f_ and the shadow. the same thing is seen with regard to the dark [side], inasmuch as that edge of the shaded portion of the object which lies against a light background, as at _l_, it looks much darker than the rest. but if this shadow lies against a dark background, the edge of the shaded part will appear lighter than before, and the deepest shade will appear between the edge and the light at the point _o_. [footnote: in the original diagram _o_ is inside the shaded surface at the level of _d_.] . an opaque body will appear smaller when it is surrounded by a highly luminous background, and a light body will appear larger when it is seen against a darker background. this may be seen in the height of buildings at night, when lightning flashes behind them; it suddenly seems, when it lightens, as though the height of the building were diminished. for the same reason such buildings look larger in a mist, or by night than when the atmosphere is clear and light. . on light between shadows when you are drawing any object, remember, in comparing the grades of light in the illuminated portions, that the eye is often deceived by seeing things lighter than they are. and the reason lies in our comparing those parts with the contiguous parts. since if two [separate] parts are in different grades of light and if the less bright is conterminous with a dark portion and the brighter is conterminous with a light background--as the sky or something equally bright--, then that which is less light, or i should say less radiant, will look the brighter and the brighter will seem the darker. . of objects equally dark in themselves and situated at a considerable and equal distance, that will look the darkest which is farthest above the earth. . to prove how it is that luminous bodies appear larger, at a distance, than they are. if you place two lighted candles side by side half a braccio apart, and go from them to a distance braccia you will see that by the increased size of each they will appear as a single luminous body with the light of the two flames, one braccio wide. to prove how you may see the real size of luminous bodies. if you wish to see the real size of these luminous bodies, take a very thin board and make in it a hole no bigger than the tag of a lace and place it as close to your eye as possible, so that when you look through this hole, at the said light, you can see a large space of air round it. then by rapidly moving this board backwards and forwards before your eye you will see the light increase [and diminish]. propositions on perspective of disappearance from ms. c. ( - ). . of several bodies of equal size and equally distant from the eye, those will look the smallest which are against the lightest background. every visible object must be surrounded by light and shade. a perfectly spherical body surrounded by light and shade will appear to have one side larger than the other in proportion as one is more highly lighted than the other. . perspective. no visible object can be well understood and comprehended by the human eye excepting from the difference of the background against which the edges of the object terminate and by which they are bounded, and no object will appear [to stand out] separate from that background so far as the outlines of its borders are concerned. the moon, though it is at a great distance from the sun, when, in an eclipse, it comes between our eyes and the sun, appears to the eyes of men to be close to the sun and affixed to it, because the sun is then the background to the moon. . a luminous body will appear more brilliant in proportion as it is surrounded by deeper shadow. [footnote: the diagram which, in the original, is placed after this text, has no connection with it.] . the straight edges of a body will appear broken when they are conterminous with a dark space streaked with rays of light. [footnote: here again the diagrams in the original have no connection with the text.] . of several bodies, all equally large and equally distant, that which is most brightly illuminated will appear to the eye nearest and largest. [footnote: here again the diagrams in the original have no connection with the text.] . if several luminous bodies are seen from a great distance although they are really separate they will appear united as one body. . if several objects in shadow, standing very close together, are seen against a bright background they will appear separated by wide intervals. . of several bodies of equal size and tone, that which is farthest will appear the lightest and smallest. . of several objects equal in size, brightness of background and length that which has the flattest surface will look the largest. a bar of iron equally thick throughout and of which half is red hot, affords an example, for the red hot part looks thicker than the rest. . of several bodies of equal size and length, and alike in form and in depth of shade, that will appear smallest which is surrounded by the most luminous background. . different portions of a wall surface will be darker or brighter in proportion as the light or shadow falls on them at a larger angle. the foregoing proposition can be clearly proved in this way. let us say that _m q_ is the luminous body, then _f g_ will be the opaque body; and let _a e_ be the above-mentioned plane on which the said angles fall, showing [plainly] the nature and character of their bases. then: _a_ will be more luminous than _b_; the base of the angle _a_ is larger than that of _b_ and it therefore makes a greater angle which will be _a m q_; and the pyramid _b p m_ will be narrower and _m o c_ will be still finer, and so on by degrees, in proportion as they are nearer to _e_, the pyramids will become narrower and darker. that portion of the wall will be the darkest where the breadth of the pyramid of shadow is greater than the breadth of the pyramid of light. at the point _a_ the pyramid of light is equal in strength to the pyramid of shadow, because the base _f g_ is equal to the base _r f_. at the point _d_ the pyramid of light is narrower than the pyramid of shadow by so much as the base _s f_ is less than the base _f g_. divide the foregoing proposition into two diagrams, one with the pyramids of light and shadow, the other with the pyramids of light [only]. . among shadows of equal depth those which are nearest to the eye will look least deep. . the more brilliant the light given by a luminous body, the deeper will the shadows be cast by the objects it illuminates. _v._ _theory of colours._ _leonardo's theory of colours is even more intimately connected with his principles of light and shade than his perspective of disappearance and is in fact merely an appendix or supplement to those principles, as we gather from the titles to sections_ , _, and _ _, while others again_ (_nos._ , _) are headed_ prospettiva. _a very few of these chapters are to be found in the oldest copies and editions of the treatise on painting, and although the material they afford is but meager and the connection between them but slight, we must still attribute to them a special theoretical value as well as practical utility--all the more so because our knowledge of the theory and use of colours at the time of the renaissance is still extremely limited._ the reciprocal effects of colours on objects placed opposite each other ( - ). . of painting. the hue of an illuminated object is affected by that of the luminous body. . of shadow. the surface of any opaque body is affected by the colour of surrounding objects. . a shadow is always affected by the colour of the surface on which it is cast. . an image produced in a mirror is affected by the colour of the mirror. . of light and shade. every portion of the surface of a body is varied [in hue] by the [reflected] colour of the object that may be opposite to it. example. if you place a spherical body between various objects that is to say with [direct] sunlight on one side of it, and on the other a wall illuminated by the sun, which wall may be green or of any other colour, while the surface on which it is placed may be red, and the two lateral sides are in shadow, you will see that the natural colour of that body will assume something of the hue reflected from those objects. the strongest will be [given by] the luminous body; the second by the illuminated wall, the third by the shadows. there will still be a portion which will take a tint from the colour of the edges. . the surface of every opaque body is affected by the colour of the objects surrounding it. but this effect will be strong or weak in proportion as those objects are more or less remote and more or less strongly [coloured]. . of painting. the surface of every opaque body assumes the hues reflected from surrounding objects. the surface of an opaque body assumes the hues of surrounding objects more strongly in proportion as the rays that form the images of those objects strike the surface at more equal angles. and the surface of an opaque body assumes a stronger hue from the surrounding objects in proportion as that surface is whiter and the colour of the object brighter or more highly illuminated. . of the rays which convey through the air the images of objects. all the minutest parts of the image intersect each other without interfering with each other. to prove this let _r_ be one of the sides of the hole, opposite to which let _s_ be the eye which sees the lower end _o_ of the line _n o_. the other extremity cannot transmit its image to the eye _s_ as it has to strike the end _r_ and it is the same with regard to _m_ at the middle of the line. the case is the same with the upper extremity _n_ and the eye _u_. and if the end _n_ is red the eye _u_ on that side of the holes will not see the green colour of _o_, but only the red of _n_ according to the th of this where it is said: every form projects images from itself by the shortest line, which necessarily is a straight line, &c. [footnote: . this probably refers to the diagram given under no. .] . of painting. the surface of a body assumes in some degree the hue of those around it. the colours of illuminated objects are reflected from the surfaces of one to the other in various spots, according to the various positions of those objects. let _o_ be a blue object in full light, facing all by itself the space _b c_ on the white sphere _a b e d e f_, and it will give it a blue tinge, _m_ is a yellow body reflected onto the space _a b_ at the same time as _o_ the blue body, and they give it a green colour (by the nd [proposition] of this which shows that blue and yellow make a beautiful green &c.) and the rest will be set forth in the book on painting. in that book it will be shown, that, by transmitting the images of objects and the colours of bodies illuminated by sunlight through a small round perforation and into a dark chamber onto a plane surface, which itself is quite white, &c. but every thing will be upside down. combination of different colours in cast shadows. . that which casts the shadow does not face it, because the shadows are produced by the light which causes and surrounds the shadows. the shadow caused by the light _e_, which is yellow, has a blue tinge, because the shadow of the body _a_ is cast upon the pavement at _b_, where the blue light falls; and the shadow produced by the light _d_, which is blue, will be yellow at _c_, because the yellow light falls there and the surrounding background to these shadows _b c_ will, besides its natural colour, assume a hue compounded of yellow and blue, because it is lighted by the yellow light and by the blue light both at once. shadows of various colours, as affected by the lights falling on them. that light which causes the shadow does not face it. [footnote: in the original diagram we find in the circle _e_ "_giallo_" (yellow) and the cirle _d_ "_azurro"_ (blue) and also under the circle of shadow to the left "_giallo_" is written and under that to the right "_azurro_". in the second diagram where four circles are placed in a row we find written, beginning at the left hand, "_giallo_" (yellow), "_azurro_" (blue), "_verde_" (green), "_rosso_" (red).] the effect of colours in the camera obscura ( - ). . the edges of a colour(ed object) transmitted through a small hole are more conspicuous than the central portions. the edges of the images, of whatever colour, which are transmitted through a small aperture into a dark chamber will always be stronger than the middle portions. . of the intersections of the images in the pupil of the eye. the intersections of the images as they enter the pupil do not mingle in confusion in the space where that intersection unites them; as is evident, since, if the rays of the sun pass through two panes of glass in close contact, of which one is blue and the other yellow, the rays, in penetrating them, do not become blue or yellow but a beautiful green. and the same thing would happen in the eye, if the images which were yellow or green should mingle where they [meet and] intersect as they enter the pupil. as this does not happen such a mingling does not exist. of the nature of the rays composed of the images of objects, and of their intersections. the directness of the rays which transmit the forms and colours of the bodies whence they proceed does not tinge the air nor can they affect each other by contact where they intersect. they affect only the spot where they vanish and cease to exist, because that spot faces and is faced by the original source of these rays, and no other object, which surrounds that original source can be seen by the eye where these rays are cut off and destroyed, leaving there the spoil they have conveyed to it. and this is proved by the th [proposition], on the colour of bodies, which says: the surface of every opaque body is affected by the colour of surrounding objects; hence we may conclude that the spot which, by means of the rays which convey the image, faces--and is faced by the cause of the image, assumes the colour of that object. on the colours of derived shadows ( . ). . any shadow cast by an opaque body smaller than the light causing the shadow will throw a derived shadow which is tinged by the colour of the light. let _n_ be the source of the shadow _e f_; it will assume its hue. let _o_ be the source of _h e_ which will in the same way be tinged by its hue and so also the colour of _v h_ will be affected by _p_ which causes it; and the shadow of the triangle _z k y_ will be affected by the colour of _q_, because it is produced by it. [ ] in proportion as _c d_ goes into _a d_, will _n r s_ be darker than _m_; and the rest of the space will be shadowless [ ]. _f g_ is the highest light, because here the whole light of the window _a d_ falls; and thus on the opaque body _m e_ is in equally high light; _z k y_ is a triangle which includes the deepest shadow, because the light _a d_ cannot reach any part of it. _x h_ is the nd grade of shadow, because it receives only / of the light from the window, that is _c d_. the third grade of shadow is _h e_, where two thirds of the light from the window is visible. the last grade of shadow is _b d e f_, because the highest grade of light from the window falls at _f_. [footnote: the diagram pl. iii, no. belongs to this chapter as well as the text given in no. . lines - (compare lines - of no. ) which are written within the diagram, evidently apply to both sections and have therefore been inserted in both.] . of the colours of simple derived shadows. the colour of derived shadows is always affected by that of the body towards which they are cast. to prove this: let an opaque body be placed between the plane _s c t d_ and the blue light _d e_ and the red light _a b_, then i say that _d e_, the blue light, will fall on the whole surface _s c t d_ excepting at _o p_ which is covered by the shadow of the body _q r_, as is shown by the straight lines _d q o e r p_. and the same occurs with the light _a b_ which falls on the whole surface _s c t d_ excepting at the spot obscured by the shadow _q r_; as is shown by the lines _d q o_, and _e r p_. hence we may conclude that the shadow _n m_ is exposed to the blue light _d e_; but, as the red light _a b_ cannot fall there, _n m_ will appear as a blue shadow on a red background tinted with blue, because on the surface _s c t d_ both lights can fall. but in the shadows only one single light falls; for this reason these shadows are of medium depth, since, if no light whatever mingled with the shadow, it would be of the first degree of darkness &c. but in the shadow at _o p_ the blue light does not fall, because the body _q r_ interposes and intercepts it there. only the red light _a b_ falls there and tinges the shadow of a red hue and so a ruddy shadow appears on the background of mingled red and blue. the shadow of _q r_ at _o p_ is red, being caused by the blue light _d e_; and the shadow of _q r_ at _o' p'_ is blue being caused by the red light _a b_. hence we say that the blue light in this instance causes a red derived shadow from the opaque body _q' r'_, while the red light causes the same body to cast a blue derived shadow; but the primary shadow [on the dark side of the body itself] is not of either of those hues, but a mixture of red and blue. the derived shadows will be equal in depth if they are produced by lights of equal strength and at an equal distance; this is proved. [footnote : the text is unfinished in the original.] [footnote: in the original diagram leonardo has written within the circle _q r corpo obroso_ (body in shadow); at the spot marked _a, luminoso azzurro_ (blue luminous body); at _b, luminoso rosso_ (red luminous body). at _e_ we read _ombra azzurra_ (blue tinted shadow) and at _d ombra rossa_ (red tinted shadow).] on the nature of colours ( . ). . no white or black is transparent. . of painting. [footnote : see footnote ] since white is not a colour but the neutral recipient of every colour [footnote : _il bianco non e colore ma e inpotentia ricettiva d'ogni colore_ (white is not a colour, but the neutral recipient of every colour). leon batt. alberti "_della pittura_" libro i, asserts on the contrary: "_il bianco e'l nero non sono veri colori, ma sono alteratione delli altri colori_" (ed. janitschek, p. ; vienna ).], when it is seen in the open air and high up, all its shadows are bluish; and this is caused, according to the th [prop.], which says: the surface of every opaque body assumes the hue of the surrounding objects. now this white [body] being deprived of the light of the sun by the interposition of some body between the sun and itself, all that portion of it which is exposed to the sun and atmosphere assumes the colour of the sun and atmosphere; the side on which the sun does not fall remains in shadow and assumes the hue of the atmosphere. and if this white object did not reflect the green of the fields all the way to the horizon nor get the brightness of the horizon itself, it would certainly appear simply of the same hue as the atmosphere. on gradations in the depth of colours ( . ). . since black, when painted next to white, looks no blacker than when next to black; and white when next to black looks no whiter than white, as is seen by the images transmitted through a small hole or by the edges of any opaque screen ... . of colours. of several colours, all equally white, that will look whitest which is against the darkest background. and black will look intensest against the whitest background. and red will look most vivid against the yellowest background; and the same is the case with all colours when surrounded by their strongest contrasts. on the reflection of colours ( - ). . perspective. every object devoid of colour in itself is more or less tinged by the colour [of the object] placed opposite. this may be seen by experience, inasmuch as any object which mirrors another assumes the colour of the object mirrored in it. and if the surface thus partially coloured is white the portion which has a red reflection will appear red, or any other colour, whether bright or dark. perspective. every opaque and colourless body assumes the hue of the colour reflected on it; as happens with a white wall. . perspective. that side of an object in light and shade which is towards the light transmits the images of its details more distinctly and immediately to the eye than the side which is in shadow. perspective. the solar rays reflected on a square mirror will be thrown back to distant objects in a circular form. perspective. any white and opaque surface will be partially coloured by reflections from surrounding objects. [footnote . : the title line of these chapters is in the original simply _"pro"_, which may be an abbreviation for either _propositione_ or _prospettiva_--taking prospettiva of course in its widest sense, as we often find it used in leonardo's writings. the title _"pro"_ has here been understood to mean _prospettiva_, in accordance with the suggestion afforded by page b of this same ms., where the first section is headed _prospettiva_ in full (see no. ), while the four following sections are headed merely _"pro"_ (see no. ).] . what portion of a coloured surface ought in reason to be the most intense. if _a_ is the light, and _b_ illuminated by it in a direct line, _c_, on which the light cannot fall, is lighted only by reflection from _b_ which, let us say, is red. hence the light reflected from it, will be affected by the hue of the surface causing it and will tinge the surface _c_ with red. and if _c_ is also red you will see it much more intense than _b_; and if it were yellow you would see there a colour between yellow and red. on the use of dark and light colours in painting ( -- ). . why beautiful colours must be in the [highest] light. since we see that the quality of colour is known [only] by means of light, it is to be supposed that where there is most light the true character of a colour in light will be best seen; and where there is most shadow the colour will be affected by the tone of that. hence, o painter! remember to show the true quality of colours in bright lights. . an object represented in white and black will display stronger relief than in any other way; hence i would remind you o painter! to dress your figures in the lightest colours you can, since, if you put them in dark colours, they will be in too slight relief and inconspicuous from a distance. and the reason is that the shadows of all objects are dark. and if you make a dress dark there is little variety in the lights and shadows, while in light colours there are many grades. . of painting. colours seen in shadow will display more or less of their natural brilliancy in proportion as they are in fainter or deeper shadow. but if these same colours are situated in a well-lighted place, they will appear brighter in proportion as the light is more brilliant. the adversary. the variety of colours in shadow must be as great as that of the colours in the objects in that shadow. the answer. colours seen in shadow will display less variety in proportion as the shadows in which they lie are deeper. and evidence of this is to be had by looking from an open space into the doorways of dark and shadowy churches, where the pictures which are painted in various colours all look of uniform darkness. hence at a considerable distance all the shadows of different colours will appear of the same darkness. it is the light side of an object in light and shade which shows the true colour. on the colours of the rainbow ( . ). . treat of the rainbow in the last book on painting, but first write the book on colours produced by the mixture of other colours, so as to be able to prove by those painters' colours how the colours of the rainbow are produced. . whether the colours of the rainbow are produced by the sun. the colours of the rainbow are not produced by the sun, for they occur in many ways without the sunshine; as may be seen by holding a glass of water up to the eye; when, in the glass--where there are those minute bubbles always seen in coarse glass--each bubble, even though the sun does not fall on it, will produce on one side all the colours of the rainbow; as you may see by placing the glass between the day light and your eye in such a way as that it is close to the eye, while on one side the glass admits the [diffused] light of the atmosphere, and on the other side the shadow of the wall on one side of the window; either left or right, it matters not which. then, by turning the glass round you will see these colours all round the bubbles in the glass &c. and the rest shall be said in its place. that the eye has no part in producing the colours of the rainbow. in the experiment just described, the eye would seem to have some share in the colours of the rainbow, since these bubbles in the glass do not display the colours except through the medium of the eye. but, if you place the glass full of water on the window sill, in such a position as that the outer side is exposed to the sun's rays, you will see the same colours produced in the spot of light thrown through the glass and upon the floor, in a dark place, below the window; and as the eye is not here concerned in it, we may evidently, and with certainty pronounce that the eye has no share in producing them. of the colours in the feathers of certain birds. there are many birds in various regions of the world on whose feathers we see the most splendid colours produced as they move, as we see in our own country in the feathers of peacocks or on the necks of ducks or pigeons, &c. again, on the surface of antique glass found underground and on the roots of turnips kept for some time at the bottom of wells or other stagnant waters [we see] that each root displays colours similar to those of the real rainbow. they may also be seen when oil has been placed on the top of water and in the solar rays reflected from the surface of a diamond or beryl; again, through the angular facet of a beryl every dark object against a background of the atmosphere or any thing else equally pale-coloured is surrounded by these rainbow colours between the atmosphere and the dark body; and in many other circumstances which i will not mention, as these suffice for my purpose. _vi._ _'prospettiva de' colri' (perspective of colour)_ _and_ _'prospettiva aerea' (aerial perspective)._ _leonardo distinctly separates these branches of his subject, as may be seen in the beginning of no._ . _attempts have been made to cast doubts on the results which leonardo arrived at by experiment on the perspective of colour, but not with justice, as may be seen from the original text of section_ . _the question as to the composition of the atmosphere, which is inseparable from a discussion on aerial perspective, forms a separate theory which is treated at considerable length. indeed the author enters into it so fully that we cannot escape the conviction that he must have dwelt with particular pleasure on this part of his subject, and that he attached great importance to giving it a character of general applicability._ general rules ( -- ). . the variety of colour in objects cannot be discerned at a great distance, excepting in those parts which are directly lighted up by the solar rays. . as to the colours of objects: at long distances no difference is perceptible in the parts in shadow. . of the visibility of colours. which colour strikes most? an object at a distance is most conspicuous, when it is lightest, and the darkest is least visible. an exceptional case. . of the edges [outlines] of shadows. some have misty and ill defined edges, others distinct ones. no opaque body can be devoid of light and shade, except it is in a mist, on ground covered with snow, or when snow is falling on the open country which has no light on it and is surrounded with darkness. and this occurs [only] in spherical bodies, because in other bodies which have limbs and parts, those sides of limbs which face each other reflect on each other the accidental [hue and tone] of their surface. an experiment. . all colours are at a distance undistinguishable and undiscernible. all colours at a distance are undistinguishable in shadow, because an object which is not in the highest light is incapable of transmitting its image to the eye through an atmosphere more luminous than itself; since the lesser brightness must be absorbed by the greater. for instance: we, in a house, can see that all the colours on the surface of the walls are clearly and instantly visible when the windows of the house are open; but if we were to go out of the house and look in at the windows from a little distance to see the paintings on those walls, instead of the paintings we should see an uniform deep and colourless shadow. the practice of the prospettiva de colori. . how a painter should carry out the perspective of colour in practice. in order to put into practice this perspective of the variation and loss or diminution of the essential character of colours, observe at every hundred braccia some objects standing in the landscape, such as trees, houses, men and particular places. then in front of the first tree have a very steady plate of glass and keep your eye very steady, and then, on this plate of glass, draw a tree, tracing it over the form of that tree. then move it on one side so far as that the real tree is close by the side of the tree you have drawn; then colour your drawing in such a way as that in colour and form the two may be alike, and that both, if you close one eye, seem to be painted on the glass and at the same distance. then, by the same method, represent a second tree, and a third, with a distance of a hundred braccia between each. and these will serve as a standard and guide whenever you work on your own pictures, wherever they may apply, and will enable you to give due distance in those works. [ ] but i have found that as a rule the second is / of the first when it is braccia beyond it. [footnote: this chapter is one of those copied in the manuscript of the vatican library urbinas , and the original text is rendered here with no other alterations, but in the orthography. h. ludwig, in his edition of this copy translates lines and thus: "_ich finde aber als regel, dass der zweite um vier funftel des ersten abnimmt, wenn er namlich zwanzig ellen vom ersten entfernt ist (?)"_. he adds in his commentary: "_das ende der nummer ist wohl jedenfalls verstummelt_". however the translation given above shows that it admits of a different rendering.] the rules of aerial perspective ( -- ). . of aerial perspective. there is another kind of perspective which i call aerial perspective, because by the atmosphere we are able to distinguish the variations in distance of different buildings, which appear placed on a single line; as, for instance, when we see several buildings beyond a wall, all of which, as they appear above the top of the wall, look of the same size, while you wish to represent them in a picture as more remote one than another and to give the effect of a somewhat dense atmosphere. you know that in an atmosphere of equal density the remotest objects seen through it, as mountains, in consequence of the great quantity of atmosphere between your eye and them--appear blue and almost of the same hue as the atmosphere itself [footnote : _quado il sole e per leuante_ (when the sun is in the east). apparently the author refers here to morning light in general. h. ludwig however translates this passage from the vatican copy "_wenn namlich die sonne (dahinter) im osten steht_".] when the sun is in the east [footnote : see footnote ]. hence you must make the nearest building above the wall of its real colour, but the more distant ones make less defined and bluer. those you wish should look farthest away you must make proportionately bluer; thus, if one is to be five times as distant, make it five times bluer. and by this rule the buildings which above a [given] line appear of the same size, will plainly be distinguished as to which are the more remote and which larger than the others. . the medium lying between the eye and the object seen, tinges that object with its colour, as the blueness of the atmosphere makes the distant mountains appear blue and red glass makes objects seen beyond it, look red. the light shed round them by the stars is obscured by the darkness of the night which lies between the eye and the radiant light of the stars. . take care that the perspective of colour does not disagree with the size of your objects, hat is to say: that the colours diminish from their natural [vividness] in proportion as the objects at various distances dimmish from their natural size. on the relative density of the atmosphere ( -- ). . why the atmosphere must be represented as paler towards the lower portion. because the atmosphere is dense near the earth, and the higher it is the rarer it becomes. when the sun is in the east if you look towards the west and a little way to the south and north, you will see that this dense atmosphere receives more light from the sun than the rarer; because the rays meet with greater resistance. and if the sky, as you see it, ends on a low plain, that lowest portion of the sky will be seen through a denser and whiter atmosphere, which will weaken its true colour as seen through that medium, and there the sky will look whiter than it is above you, where the line of sight travels through a smaller space of air charged with heavy vapour. and if you turn to the east, the atmosphere will appear darker as you look lower down because the luminous rays pass less freely through the lower atmosphere. . of the mode of treating remote objects in painting. it is easy to perceive that the atmosphere which lies closest to the level ground is denser than the rest, and that where it is higher up, it is rarer and more transparent. the lower portions of large and lofty objects which are at a distance are not much seen, because you see them along a line which passes through a denser and thicker section of the atmosphere. the summits of such heights are seen along a line which, though it starts from your eye in a dense atmosphere, still, as it ends at the top of those lofty objects, ceases in a much rarer atmosphere than exists at their base; for this reason the farther this line extends from your eye, from point to point the atmosphere becomes more and more rare. hence, o painter! when you represent mountains, see that from hill to hill the bases are paler than the summits, and in proportion as they recede beyond each other make the bases paler than the summits; while, the higher they are the more you must show of their true form and colour. on the colour of the atmosphere ( - ). . of the colour of the atmosphere. i say that the blueness we see in the atmosphere is not intrinsic colour, but is caused by warm vapour evaporated in minute and insensible atoms on which the solar rays fall, rendering them luminous against the infinite darkness of the fiery sphere which lies beyond and includes it. and this may be seen, as i saw it by any one going up [footnote : with regard to the place spoken of as _m'oboso_ (compare no. line ) its identity will be discussed under leonardo's topographical notes in vol. ii.] monboso, a peak of the alps which divide france from italy. the base of this mountain gives birth to the four rivers which flow in four different directions through the whole of europe. and no mountain has its base at so great a height as this, which lifts itself almost above the clouds; and snow seldom falls there, but only hail in the summer, when the clouds are highest. and this hail lies [unmelted] there, so that if it were not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not happen twice in an age, an enormous mass of ice would be piled up there by the hail, and in the middle of july i found it very considerable. there i saw above me the dark sky, and the sun as it fell on the mountain was far brighter here than in the plains below, because a smaller extent of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun. again as an illustration of the colour of the atmosphere i will mention the smoke of old and dry wood, which, as it comes out of a chimney, appears to turn very blue, when seen between the eye and the dark distance. but as it rises, and comes between the eye and the bright atmosphere, it at once shows of an ashy grey colour; and this happens because it no longer has darkness beyond it, but this bright and luminous space. if the smoke is from young, green wood, it will not appear blue, because, not being transparent and being full of superabundant moisture, it has the effect of condensed clouds which take distinct lights and shadows like a solid body. the same occurs with the atmosphere, which, when overcharged with moisture appears white, and the small amount of heated moisture makes it dark, of a dark blue colour; and this will suffice us so far as concerns the colour of the atmosphere; though it might be added that, if this transparent blue were the natural colour of the atmosphere, it would follow that wherever a larger mass air intervened between the eye and the element of fire, the azure colour would be more intense; as we see in blue glass and in sapphires, which are darker in proportion as they are larger. but the atmosphere in such circumstances behaves in an opposite manner, inasmuch as where a greater quantity of it lies between the eye and the sphere of fire, it is seen much whiter. this occurs towards the horizon. and the less the extent of atmosphere between the eye and the sphere of fire, the deeper is the blue colour, as may be seen even on low plains. hence it follows, as i say, that the atmosphere assumes this azure hue by reason of the particles of moisture which catch the rays of the sun. again, we may note the difference in particles of dust, or particles of smoke, in the sun beams admitted through holes into a dark chamber, when the former will look ash grey and the thin smoke will appear of a most beautiful blue; and it may be seen again in in the dark shadows of distant mountains when the air between the eye and those shadows will look very blue, though the brightest parts of those mountains will not differ much from their true colour. but if any one wishes for a final proof let him paint a board with various colours, among them an intense black; and over all let him lay a very thin and transparent [coating of] white. he will then see that this transparent white will nowhere show a more beautiful blue than over the black--but it must be very thin and finely ground. [footnote : _reta_ here has the sense of _malanno_.] . experience shows us that the air must have darkness beyond it and yet it appears blue. if you produce a small quantity of smoke from dry wood and the rays of the sun fall on this smoke, and if you then place behind the smoke a piece of black velvet on which the sun does not shine, you will see that all the smoke which is between the eye and the black stuff will appear of a beautiful blue colour. and if instead of the velvet you place a white cloth smoke, that is too thick smoke, hinders, and too thin smoke does not produce, the perfection of this blue colour. hence a moderate amount of smoke produces the finest blue. water violently ejected in a fine spray and in a dark chamber where the sun beams are admitted produces these blue rays and the more vividly if it is distilled water, and thin smoke looks blue. this i mention in order to show that the blueness of the atmosphere is caused by the darkness beyond it, and these instances are given for those who cannot confirm my experience on monboso. . when the smoke from dry wood is seen between the eye of the spectator and some dark space [or object], it will look blue. thus the sky looks blue by reason of the darkness beyond it. and if you look towards the horizon of the sky, you will see the atmosphere is not blue, and this is caused by its density. and thus at each degree, as you raise your eyes above the horizon up to the sky over your head, you will see the atmosphere look darker [blue] and this is because a smaller density of air lies between your eye and the [outer] darkness. and if you go to the top of a high mountain the sky will look proportionately darker above you as the atmosphere becomes rarer between you and the [outer] darkness; and this will be more visible at each degree of increasing height till at last we should find darkness. that smoke will look bluest which rises from the driest wood and which is nearest to the fire and is seen against the darkest background, and with the sunlight upon it. . a dark object will appear bluest in proportion as it has a greater mass of luminous atmosphere between it and the eye. as may be seen in the colour of the sky. . the atmosphere is blue by reason of the darkness above it because black and white make blue. . in the morning the mist is denser above than below, because the sun draws it upwards; hence tall buildings, even if the summit is at the same distance as the base have the summit invisible. therefore, also, the sky looks darkest [in colour] overhead, and towards the horizon it is not blue but rather between smoke and dust colour. the atmosphere, when full of mist, is quite devoid of blueness, and only appears of the colour of clouds, which shine white when the weather is fine. and the more you turn to the west the darker it will be, and the brighter as you look to the east. and the verdure of the fields is bluish in a thin mist, but grows grey in a dense one. the buildings in the west will only show their illuminated side, where the sun shines, and the mist hides the rest. when the sun rises and chases away the haze, the hills on the side where it lifts begin to grow clearer, and look blue, and seem to smoke with the vanishing mists; and the buildings reveal their lights and shadows; through the thinner vapour they show only their lights and through the thicker air nothing at all. this is when the movement of the mist makes it part horizontally, and then the edges of the mist will be indistinct against the blue of the sky, and towards the earth it will look almost like dust blown up. in proportion as the atmosphere is dense the buildings of a city and the trees in a landscape will look fewer, because only the tallest and largest will be seen. darkness affects every thing with its hue, and the more an object differs from darkness, the more we see its real and natural colour. the mountains will look few, because only those will be seen which are farthest apart; since, at such a distance, the density increases to such a degree that it causes a brightness by which the darkness of the hills becomes divided and vanishes indeed towards the top. there is less [mist] between lower and nearer hills and yet little is to be distinguished, and least towards the bottom. . the surface of an object partakes of the colour of the light which illuminates it; and of the colour of the atmosphere which lies between the eye and that object, that is of the colour of the transparent medium lying between the object and the eye; and among colours of a similar character the second will be of the same tone as the first, and this is caused by the increased thickness of the colour of the medium lying between the object and the eye. . of painting. of various colours which are none of them blue that which at a great distance will look bluest is the nearest to black; and so, conversely, the colour which is least like black will at a great distance best preserve its own colour. hence the green of fields will assume a bluer hue than yellow or white will, and conversely yellow or white will change less than green, and red still less. _vii._ _on the proportions and on the movements of the human figure._ _leonardo's researches on the proportions and movements of the human figure must have been for the most part completed and written before the year_ ; _for luca paciolo writes, in the dedication to ludovico il moro, of his book_ divina proportione, _which was published in that year:_ "leonardo da venci ... hauedo gia co tutta diligetia al degno libro de pictura e movimenti humani posto fine". _the selection of leonardo's axioms contained in the vatican copy attributes these words to the author:_ "e il resto si dira nella universale misura del huomo". (_manzi, p. ; ludwig, no. _). _lomazzo, again, in his_ idea del tempio della pittura milano , cap. iv, _says:_ "lionardo vinci ... dimostro anco in figura tutte le proporzioni dei membri del corpo umano". _the vatican copy includes but very few sections of the_ "universale misura del huomo" _and until now nothing has been made known of the original mss. on the subject which have supplied the very extensive materials for this portion of the work. the collection at windsor, belonging to her majesty the queen, includes by far the most important part of leonardo's investigations on this subject, constituting about half of the whole of the materials here published; and the large number of original drawings adds greatly to the interest which the subject itself must command. luca paciolo would seem to have had these mss. (which i have distinguished by the initials w. p.) in his mind when he wrote the passage quoted above. still, certain notes of a later date--such as nos. , and , from ms. e, written in -- , sufficiently prove that leonardo did not consider his earlier studies on the proportions and movements of the human figure final and complete, as we might suppose from luca paciolo's statement. or else he took the subject up again at a subsequent period, since his former researches had been carried on at milan between and . indeed it is highly probable that the anatomical studies which he was pursuing zvith so much zeal between -- should have led him to reconsider the subject of proportion. preliminary observations ( . ). . every man, at three years old is half the full height he will grow to at last. . if a man braccia high is too small, one of four is too tall, the medium being what is admirable. between and comes ; therefore take a man of braccia in height and measure him by the rule i will give you. if you tell me that i may be mistaken, and judge a man to be well proportioned who does not conform to this division, i answer that you must look at many men of braccia, and out of the larger number who are alike in their limbs choose one of those who are most graceful and take your measurements. the length of the hand is / of a braccio [ inches] and this is found times in man. and the face [footnote : the account here given of the _braccio_ is of importance in understanding some of the succeeding chapters. _testa_ must here be understood to mean the face. the statements in this section are illustrated in part on pl. xi.] is the same, and from the pit of the throat to the shoulder, and from the shoulder to the nipple, and from one nipple to the other, and from each nipple to the pit of the throat. proportions of the head and face ( - ). . the space between the parting of the lips [the mouth] and the base of the nose is one-seventh of the face. the space from the mouth to the bottom of the chin _c d_ is the fourth part of the face and equal to the width of the mouth. the space from the chin to the base of the nose _e f_ is the third part of the face and equal to the length of the nose and to the forehead. the distance from the middle of the nose to the bottom of the chin _g h_, is half the length of the face. the distance from the top of the nose, where the eyebrows begin, to the bottom of the chin, _i k_, is two thirds of the face. the space from the parting of the lips to the top of the chin _l m_, that is where the chin ends and passes into the lower lip of the mouth, is the third of the distance from the parting of the lips to the bottom of the chin and is the twelfth part of the face. from the top to the bottom of the chin _m n_ is the sixth part of the face and is the fifty fourth part of a man's height. from the farthest projection of the chin to the throat _o p_ is equal to the space between the mouth and the bottom of the chin, and a fourth of the face. the distance from the top of the throat to the pit of the throat below _q r_ is half the length of the face and the eighteenth part of a man's height. from the chin to the back of the neck _s t_, is the same distance as between the mouth and the roots of the hair, that is three quarters of the head. from the chin to the jaw bone _v x_ is half the head and equal to the thickness of the neck in profile. the thickness of the head from the brow to the nape is once and / that of the neck. [footnote: the drawings to this text, lines - are on pl. vii, no. i. the two upper sketches of heads, pl. vii, no. , belong to lines - , and in the original are placed immediately below the sketches reproduced on pl. vii, no. .] . the distance from the attachment of one ear to the other is equal to that from the meeting of the eyebrows to the chin, and in a fine face the width of the mouth is equal to the length from the parting of the lips to the bottom of the chin. . the cut or depression below the lower lip of the mouth is half way between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin. the face forms a square in itself; that is its width is from the outer corner of one eye to the other, and its height is from the very top of the nose to the bottom of the lower lip of the mouth; then what remains above and below this square amounts to the height of such another square, _a_ _b_ is equal to the space between _c_ _d_; _d_ _n_ in the same way to _n_ _c_, and likewise _s_ _r_, _q_ _p_, _h_ _k_ are equal to each other. it is as far between _m_ and _s_ as from the bottom of the nose to the chin. the ear is exactly as long as the nose. it is as far from _x_ to _j_ as from the nose to the chin. the parting of the mouth seen in profile slopes to the angle of the jaw. the ear should be as high as from the bottom of the nose to the top of the eye-lid. the space between the eyes is equal to the width of an eye. the ear is over the middle of the neck, when seen in profile. the distance from to is equal to that from s_ to _r_. [footnote: see pl. viii, no. i, where the text of lines - is also given in facsimile.] . (_a_ _b_) is equal to (_c_ _d_). [footnote: see pl. vii, no. . reference may also be made here to two pen and ink drawings of heads in profile with figured measurements, of which there is no description in the ms. these are given on pl. xvii, no. .--a head, to the left, with part of the torso [w. p. a], no. on the same plate is from ms. a b and in the original occurs on a page with wholly irrelevant text on matters of natural history. m. ravaisson in his edition of the paris ms. a has reproduced this head and discussed it fully [note on page ]; he has however somewhat altered the original measurements. the complicated calculations which m. ravaisson has given appear to me in no way justified. the sketch, as we see it, can hardly have been intended for any thing more than an experimental attempt to ascertain relative proportions. we do not find that leonardo made use of circular lines in any other study of the proportions of the human head. at the same time we see that the proportions of this sketch are not in accordance with the rules which he usually observed (see for instance no. ).] the head _a_ _f_ / larger than _n_ _f_. . from the eyebrow to the junction of the lip with the chin, and the angle of the jaw and the upper angle where the ear joins the temple will be a perfect square. and each side by itself is half the head. the hollow of the cheek bone occurs half way between the tip of the nose and the top of the jaw bone, which is the lower angle of the setting on of the ear, in the frame here represented. from the angle of the eye-socket to the ear is as far as the length of the ear, or the third of the face. [footnote: see pl. ix. the text, in the original is written behind the head. the handwriting would seem to indicate a date earlier than . on the same leaf there is a drawing in red chalk of two horsemen of which only a portion of the upper figure is here visible. the whole leaf measures / centimetres wide by long, and is numbered in the top right-hand corner.] . from _a_ to _b_--that is to say from the roots of the hair in front to the top of the head--ought to be equal to _c_ _d_;--that is from the bottom of the nose to the meeting of the lips in the middle of the mouth. from the inner corner of the eye _m_ to the top of the head _a_ is as far as from _m_ down to the chin _s_. _s_ _c_ _f_ _b_ are all at equal distances from each other. [footnote: the drawing in silver-point on bluish tinted paper--pl. x--which belongs to this chapter has been partly drawn over in ink by leonardo himself.] . from the top of the head to the bottom of the chin is / , and from the roots of the hair to the chin is / of the distance from the roots of the hair to the ground. the greatest width of the face is equal to the space between the mouth and the roots of the hair and is / of the whole height. from the top of the ear to the top of the head is equal to the distance from the bottom of the chin to the lachrymatory duct of the eye; and also equal to the distance from the angle of the chin to that of the jaw; that is the / of the whole. the small cartilage which projects over the opening of the ear towards the nose is half-way between the nape and the eyebrow; the thickness of the neck in profile is equal to the space between the chin and the eyes, and to the space between the chin and the jaw, and it is / of the height of the man. . _a b_, _c d_, _e f_, _g h_, _i k_ are equal to each other in size excepting that _d f_ is accidental. [footnote: see pl. xi.] proportions of the head seen in front ( - ). . _a n o f_ are equal to the mouth. _a c_ and _a f_ are equal to the space between one eye and the other. _n m o f q r_ are equal to half the width of the eye lids, that is from the inner [lachrymatory] corner of the eye to its outer corner; and in like manner the division between the chin and the mouth; and in the same way the narrowest part of the nose between the eyes. and these spaces, each in itself, is the th part of the head, _n o_ is equal to the length of the eye or of the space between the eyes. _m c_ is / of _n m_ measuring from the outer corner of the eyelids to the letter _c_. _b s_ will be equal to the width of the nostril. [footnote: see pl. xii.] . the distance between the centres of the pupils of the eyes is / of the face. the space between the outer corners of the eyes, that is where the eye ends in the eye socket which contains it, thus the outer corners, is half the face. the greatest width of the face at the line of the eyes is equal to the distance from the roots of the hair in front to the parting of the lips. [footnote: there are, with this section, two sketches of eyes, not reproduced here.] . the nose will make a double square; that is the width of the nose at the nostrils goes twice into the length from the tip of the nose to the eyebrows. and, in the same way, in profile the distance from the extreme side of the nostril where it joins the cheek to the tip of the nose is equal to the width of the nose in front from one nostril to the other. if you divide the whole length of the nose--that is from the tip to the insertion of the eyebrows, into equal parts, you will find that one of these parts extends from the tip of the nostrils to the base of the nose, and the upper division lies between the inner corner of the eye and the insertion of the eyebrows; and the two middle parts [together] are equal to the length of the eye from the inner to the outer corner. [footnote: the two bottom sketches on pl. vii, no. face the six lines of this section,--with regard to the proportions of the head in profile see no. .] . the great toe is the sixth part of the foot, taking the measure in profile, on the inside of the foot, from where this toe springs from the ball of the sole of the foot to its tip _a b_; and it is equal to the distance from the mouth to the bottom of the chin. if you draw the foot in profile from the outside, make the little toe begin at three quarters of the length of the foot, and you will find the same distance from the insertion of this toe as to the farthest prominence of the great toe. . for each man respectively the distance between _a b_ is equal to _c d_. . relative proportion of the hand and foot. the foot is as much longer than the hand as the thickness of the arm at the wrist where it is thinnest seen facing. again, you will find that the foot is as much longer than the hand as the space between the inner angle of the little toe to the last projection of the big toe, if you measure along the length of the foot. the palm of the hand without the fingers goes twice into the length of the foot without the toes. if you hold your hand with the fingers straight out and close together you will find it to be of the same width as the widest part of the foot, that is where it is joined onto the toes. and if you measure from the prominence of the inner ancle to the end of the great toe you will find this measure to be as long as the whole hand. from the top angle of the foot to the insertion of the toes is equal to the hand from wrist joint to the tip of the thumb. the smallest width of the hand is equal to the smallest width of the foot between its joint into the leg and the insertion of the toes. the width of the heel at the lower part is equal to that of the arm where it joins the hand; and also to the leg where it is thinnest when viewed in front. the length of the longest toe, from its first division from the great toe to its tip is the fourth of the foot from the centre of the ancle bone to the tip, and it is equal to the width of the mouth. the distance between the mouth and the chin is equal to that of the knuckles and of the three middle fingers and to the length of their first joints if the hand is spread, and equal to the distance from the joint of the thumb to the outset of the nails, that is the fourth part of the hand and of the face. the space between the extreme poles inside and outside the foot called the ancle or ancle bone _a b_ is equal to the space between the mouth and the inner corner of the eye. . the foot, from where it is attached to the leg, to the tip of the great toe is as long as the space between the upper part of the chin and the roots of the hair _a b_; and equal to five sixths of the face. . _a d_ is a head's length, _c b_ is a head's length. the four smaller toes are all equally thick from the nail at the top to the bottom, and are / of the foot. [footnote: see pl. xiv, no. , a drawing of a foot with the text in three lines below it.] . the whole length of the foot will lie between the elbow and the wrist and between the elbow and the inner angle of the arm towards the breast when the arm is folded. the foot is as long as the whole head of a man, that is from under the chin to the topmost part of the head[footnote : _nel modo che qui i figurato_. see pl. vii, no. , the upper figure. the text breaks off at the end of line and the text given under no. follows below. it may be here remarked that the second sketch on w. p. has in the original no explanatory text.] in the way here figured. proportions of the leg ( - ). . the greatest thickness of the calf of the leg is at a third of its height _a b_, and is a twentieth part thicker than the greatest thickness of the foot. _a c_ is half of the head, and equal to _d b_ and to the insertion of the five toes _e f_. _d k_ diminishes one sixth in the leg _g h_. _g h_ is / of the head; _m n_ increases one sixth from _a e_ and is / of the head, _o p_ is / less than _d k_ and is / of the head. _a_ is at half the distance between _b q_, and is / of the man. _r_ is half way between _s_ and _b_[footnote : _b_ is here and later on measured on the right side of the foot as seen by the spectator.]. the concavity of the knee outside _r_ is higher than that inside _a_. the half of the whole height of the leg from the foot _r_, is half way between the prominence _s_ and the ground _b_. _v_ is half way between _t_ and _b_. the thickness of the thigh seen in front is equal to the greatest width of the face, that is / of the length from the chin to the top of the head; _z r_ is / of to _v_; _m n_ is equal to _v_ and is / of _r b_, _x y_ goes times into _r b_, and into _r s_. [footnote - : the sketch illustrating these lines is on pl. xiii, no. .] [footnote : a b _entra in_ c f _e_ _in_ c n. accurate measurement however obliges us to read for .] _a b_ goes six times into _c f_ and six times into _c n_ and is equal to _g h_; _i k l m_ goes times into _d f_, and times into _d n_ and is / of the foot; _p q r s_ goes times into _d f, and times into _b n_; [footnote: . _y_ is not to be found on the diagram and _x_ occurs twice; this makes the passage very obscure.] _x y_ is / of _x f_ and is equal to _n q_. is / of _n f_; is / of _n f_ [footnote: - . compare with this lines - of no. , and the sketch of a leg in profile pl. xv.]. i want to know how much a man increases in height by standing on tip-toe and how much _p g_ diminishes by stooping; and how much it increases at _n q_ likewise in bending the foot. [footnote : _e f_ _dal cazo_. by reading _i_ for _e_ the sense of this passage is made clear.] _e f_ is four times in the distance between the genitals and the sole of the foot; [footnote : is not to be found in the sketch which renders the passage obscure. the two last lines are plainly legible in the facsimile.] is six times from to and is equal to _g h_ and _i k_. [footnote: the drawing of a leg seen in front pl. xiii, no. belongs to the text from lines - . the measurements in this section should be compared with the text no. , lines - , and the sketch of a leg seen in front on pl. xv.] . the length of the foot from the end of the toes to the heel goes twice into that from the heel to the knee, that is where the leg bone [fibula] joins the thigh bone [femur]. . _a n b_ are equal; _c n d_ are equal; _n c_ makes two feet; _n d_ makes feet. [footnote: see the lower sketch, pl. xiv, no. .] . _m n o_ are equal. the narrowest width of the leg seen in front goes times from the sole of the foot to the joint of the knee, and is the same width as the arm, seen in front at the wrist, and as the longest measure of the ear, and as the three chief divisions into which we divide the face; and this measurement goes times from the wrist joint of the hand to the point of the elbow. [ ] the foot is as long as the space from the knee between _a_ and _b_; and the patella of the knee is as long as the leg between _r_ and _s_. [ ] the least thickness of the leg in profile goes times from the sole of the foot to the knee joint and is the same width as the space between the outer corner of the eye and the opening of the ear, and as the thickest part of the arm seen in profile and between the inner corner of the eye and the insertion of the hair. _a b c_ [_d_] are all relatively of equal length, _c d_ goes twice from the sole of the foot to the centre of the knee and the same from the knee to the hip. [ ]_a b c_ are equal; _a_ to _b_ is feet--that is to say measuring from the heel to the tip of the great toe. [footnote: see pl. xv. the text of lines - is to the left of the front view of the leg, to which it refers. lines - are in the middle column and refer to the leg seen in profile and turned to the left, on the right hand side of the writing. lines - are above, to the left and apply to the sketch below them. some farther remarks on the proportion of the leg will be found in no. , lines , .] on the central point of the whole body. . in kneeling down a man will lose the fourth part of his height. when a man kneels down with his hands folded on his breast the navel will mark half his height and likewise the points of the elbows. half the height of a man who sits--that is from the seat to the top of the head--will be where the arms fold below the breast, and below the shoulders. the seated portion--that is from the seat to the top of the head--will be more than half the man's [whole height] by the length of the scrotum. [footnote: see pl. viii, no. .] the relative proportions of the torso and of the whole figure. . the cubit is one fourth of the height of a man and is equal to the greatest width of the shoulders. from the joint of one shoulder to the other is two faces and is equal to the distance from the top of the breast to the navel. [footnote : _dalla detta somita_. it would seem more accurate to read here _dal detto ombilico_.] from this point to the genitals is a face's length. [footnote: compare with this the sketches on the other page of the same leaf. pl. viii, no. .] the relative proportions of the head and of the torso. . from the roots of the hair to the top of the breast _a b_ is the sixth part of the height of a man and this measure is equal. from the outside part of one shoulder to the other is the same distance as from the top of the breast to the navel and this measure goes four times from the sole of the foot to the lower end of the nose. the [thickness of] the arm where it springs from the shoulder in front goes times into the space between the two outside edges of the shoulders and times into the face, and four times into the length of the foot and three into the hand, inside or outside. [footnote: the three sketches pl. xiv, no. belong to this text.] the relative proportions of the torso and of the leg ( . ). . _a b c_ are equal to each other and to the space from the armpit of the shoulder to the genitals and to the distance from the tip of the fingers of the hand to the joint of the arm, and to the half of the breast; and you must know that _c b_ is the third part of the height of a man from the shoulders to the ground; _d e f_ are equal to each other and equal to the greatest width of the shoulders. [footnote: see pl. xvi, no. .] . --top of the chin--hip--the insertion of the middle finger. the end of the calf of the leg on the inside of the thigh.--the end of the swelling of the shin bone of the leg. [ ] the smallest thickness of the leg goes times into the thigh seen in front. [footnote: see pl. xvii, no. , middle sketch.] the relative proportions of the torso and of the foot. . the torso _a b_ in its thinnest part measures a foot; and from _a_ to _b_ is feet, which makes two squares to the seat--its thinnest part goes times into the length, thus making squares. [footnote: see pl, vii, no. , the lower sketch.] the proportions of the whole figure ( - ). . a man when he lies down is reduced to / of his height. . the opening of the ear, the joint of the shoulder, that of the hip and the ancle are in perpendicular lines; _a n_ is equal to _m o_. [footnote: see pl. xvi, no. , the upper sketch.] . from the chin to the roots of the hair is / of the whole figure. from the joint of the palm of the hand to the tip of the longest finger is / . from the chin to the top of the head / ; and from the pit of the stomach to the top of the breast is / , and from the pit below the breast bone to the top of the head / . from the chin to the nostrils / part of the face, the same from the nostrils to the brow and from the brow to the roots of the hair, and the foot is / , the elbow / , the width of the shoulders / . . the width of the shoulders is / of the whole. from the joint of the shoulder to the hand is / , from the parting of the lips to below the shoulder-blade is one foot. the greatest thickness of a man from the breast to the spine is one th of his height and is equal to the space between the bottom of the chin and the top of the head. the greatest width is at the shoulders and goes . the torso from the front and back. . the width of a man under the arms is the same as at the hips. a man's width across the hips is equal to the distance from the top of the hip to the bottom of the buttock, when a man stands equally balanced on both feet; and there is the same distance from the top of the hip to the armpit. the waist, or narrower part above the hips will be half way between the arm pits and the bottom of the buttock. [footnote: the lower sketch pl. xvi, no. , is drawn by the side of line .] vitruvius' scheme of proportions. . vitruvius, the architect, says in his work on architecture that the measurements of the human body are distributed by nature as follows: that is that fingers make palm, and palms make foot, palms make cubit; cubits make a man's height. and cubits make one pace and palms make a man; and these measures he used in his buildings. if you open your legs so much as to decrease your height / and spread and raise your arms till your middle fingers touch the level of the top of your head you must know that the centre of the outspread limbs will be in the navel and the space between the legs will be an equilateral triangle. the length of a man's outspread arms is equal to his height. from the roots of the hair to the bottom of the chin is the tenth of a man's height; from the bottom of the chin to the top of his head is one eighth of his height; from the top of the breast to the top of his head will be one sixth of a man. from the top of the breast to the roots of the hair will be the seventh part of the whole man. from the nipples to the top of the head will be the fourth part of a man. the greatest width of the shoulders contains in itself the fourth part of the man. from the elbow to the tip of the hand will be the fifth part of a man; and from the elbow to the angle of the armpit will be the eighth part of the man. the whole hand will be the tenth part of the man; the beginning of the genitals marks the middle of the man. the foot is the seventh part of the man. from the sole of the foot to below the knee will be the fourth part of the man. from below the knee to the beginning of the genitals will be the fourth part of the man. the distance from the bottom of the chin to the nose and from the roots of the hair to the eyebrows is, in each case the same, and like the ear, a third of the face. [footnote: see pl. xviii. the original leaf is centimetres wide and / long. at the ends of the scale below the figure are written the words _diti_ (fingers) and _palmi_ (palms). the passage quoted from vitruvius is book iii, cap. , and leonardo's drawing is given in the editions of vitruvius by fra giocondo (venezia , fol., firenze , vo.) and by cesariano (como ).] the arm and head. . from _b_ to _a_ is one head, as well as from _c_ to _a_ and this happens when the elbow forms a right angle. [footnote: see pl. xli, no. .] proportions of the arm ( - ). . from the tip of the longest finger of the hand to the shoulder joint is four hands or, if you will, four faces. _a b c_ are equal and each interval is heads. [footnote: lines - are given on pl. xv below the front view of the leg; lines and are below again, on the left side. the lettering refers to the bent arm near the text.] . the hand from the longest finger to the wrist joint goes times from the tip of the longest finger to the shoulder joint. . _a b c_ are equal to each other and to the foot and to the space between the nipple and the navel _d e_ will be the third part of the whole man. _f g_ is the fourth part of a man and is equal to _g h_ and measures a cubit. [footnote: see pl. xix, no. . . _mamolino_ (=_bambino_, little child) may mean here the navel.] . _a b_ goes times into _a c_ and into _a m_. the greatest thickness of the arm between the elbow and the hand goes times into _a m_ and is equal to _r f_. the greatest thickness of the arm between the shoulder and the elbow goes times into _c m_, and is equal to _h n g_. the smallest thickness of the arm above the elbow _x y_ is not the base of a square, but is equal to half the space _h_ which is found between the inner joint of the arm and the wrist joint. [ ]the width of the wrist goes times into the whole arm; that is from the tip of the fingers to the shoulder joint; that is times into the hand and into the arm. the arm when bent is heads. the arm from the shoulder to the elbow in bending increases in length, that is in the length from the shoulder to the elbow, and this increase is equal to the thickness of the arm at the wrist when seen in profile. and the space between the bottom of the chin and the parting of the lips, is equal to the thickness of the middle fingers, and to the width of the mouth and to the space between the roots of the hair on the forehead and the top of the head [footnote: _queste cose_. this passage seems to have been written on purpose to rectify the foregoing lines. the error is explained by the accompanying sketch of the bones of the arm.]. all these distances are equal to each other, but they are not equal to the above-mentioned increase in the arm. the arm between the elbow and wrist never increases by being bent or extended. the arm, from the shoulder to the inner joint when extended. when the arm is extended, _p n_ is equal to _n a_. and when it is bent _n a_ diminishes / of its length and _p n_ does the same. the outer elbow joint increases / when bent; and thus by being bent it increases to the length of heads. and on the inner side, by bending, it is found that whereas the arm from where it joins the side to the wrist, was heads and a half, in bending it loses the half head and measures only two: one from the [shoulder] joint to the end [by the elbow], and the other to the hand. the arm when folded will measure faces up to the shoulder from the elbow and from the elbow to the insertion of the four fingers on the palm of the hand. the length from the base of the fingers to the elbow never alters in any position of the arm. if the arm is extended it decreases by / of the length between _b_ and _h_; and if--being extended--it is bent, it will increase the half of _o e_. [footnote - : the figure sketched in the margin is however drawn to different proportions.] the length from the shoulder to the elbow is the same as from the base of the thumb, inside, to the elbow _a b c_. [footnote - : the arm sketch on the margin of the ms. is identically the same as that given below on pl. xx which may therefore be referred to in this place. in line we read therefore _z c_ for _m n_.] the smallest thickness of the arm in profile _z c_ goes times between the knuckles of the hand and the dimple of the elbow when extended and times in the whole arm and in the whole man [ ]. the greatest thickness of the arm in profile is equal to the greatest thickness of the arm in front; but the first is placed at a third of the arm from the shoulder joint to the elbow and the other at a third from the elbow towards the hand. [footnote: compare pl. xvii. lines - and - are written in two columns below the extended arm, and at the tips of the fingers we find the words: _fine d'unghie_ (ends of the nails). part of the text--lines to --is visible by the side of the sketches on pl. xxxv, no. .] . from the top of the shoulder to the point of the elbow is as far as from that point to the joints of the four fingers with the palm of the hand, and each is faces. [ ]_a e_ is equal to the palm of the hand, _r f_ and _o g_ are equal to half a head and each goes times into _a b_ and _b c_. from _c_ to _m_ is / a head; _m n_ is / of a head and goes times into _c b_ and into _b a_; _a b_ loses / of its length when the arm is extended; _c b_ never alters; _o_ will always be the middle point between _a_ and _s_. _y l_ is the fleshy part of the arm and measures one head; and when the arm is bent this shrinks / of its length; _o a_ in bending loses / and so does _o r_. _a b_ is / of _r c_. _f s_ will be / of _r c_, and each of those measurements is the largest of the arm; _k h_ is the thinnest part between the shoulder and the elbow and it is / of the whole arm _r c_; _o p_ is / of _r l_; _c z_ goes times into _r c_. [footnote: see pl. xx where the text is also seen from lines - .] the movement of the arm ( - ). . in the innermost bend of the joints of every limb the reliefs are converted into a hollow, and likewise every hollow of the innermost bends becomes a convexity when the limb is straightened to the utmost. and in this very great mistakes are often made by those who have insufficient knowledge and trust to their own invention and do not have recourse to the imitation of nature; and these variations occur more in the middle of the sides than in front, and more at the back than at the sides. . when the arm is bent at an angle at the elbow, it will produce some angle; the more acute the angle is, the more will the muscles within the bend be shortened; while the muscles outside will become of greater length than before. as is shown in the example; _d c e_ will shrink considerably; and _b n_ will be much extended. [footnote: see pl. xix, no. .] . of painting. the arm, as it turns, thrusts back its shoulder towards the middle of the back. . the principal movements of the hand are ; that is forwards, backwards, to right and to left, in a circular motion, up or down, to close and to open, and to spread the fingers or to press them together. . of the motions of the fingers. the movements of the fingers principally consist in extending and bending them. this extension and bending vary in manner; that is, sometimes they bend altogether at the first joint; sometimes they bend, or extend, half way, at the nd joint; and sometimes they bend in their whole length and in all the three joints at once. if the first joints are hindered from bending, then the rd joint can be bent with greater ease than before; it can never bend of itself, if the other joints are free, unless all three joints are bent. besides all these movements there are other principal motions of which are up and down, the two others from side to side; and each of these is effected by a single tendon. from these there follow an infinite number of other movements always effected by two tendons; one tendon ceasing to act, the other takes up the movement. the tendons are made thick inside the fingers and thin outside; and the tendons inside are attached to every joint but outside they are not. [footnote : this head line has, in the original, no text to follow.] of the strength [and effect] of the tendons inside the fingers at the joints. the movement of the torso ( - ). . observe the altered position of the shoulder in all the movements of the arm, going up and down, inwards and outwards, to the back and to the front, and also in circular movements and any others. and do the same with reference to the neck, hands and feet and the breast above the lips &c. . three are the principal muscles of the shoulder, that is _b c d_, and two are the lateral muscles which move it forward and backward, that is _a o_; _a_ moves it forward, and _o_ pulls it back; and bed raises it; _a b c_ moves it upwards and forwards, and _c d o_ upwards and backwards. its own weight almost suffices to move it downwards. the muscle _d_ acts with the muscle _c_ when the arm moves forward; and in moving backward the muscle _b_ acts with the muscle _c_. [footnote: see pl. xxi. in the original the lettering has been written in ink upon the red chalk drawing and the outlines of the figures have in most places been inked over.] . of the loins, when bent. the loins or backbone being bent. the breasts are are always lower than the shoulderblades of the back. if the breast bone is arched the breasts are higher than the shoulderblades. if the loins are upright the breast will always be found at the same level as the shoulderblades. [footnote: see pl. xxii, no. .] . _a b_ the tendon and ankle in raising the heel approach each other by a finger's breadth; in lowering it they separate by a finger's breadth. [footnote: see pl. xxii, no. . compare this facsimile and text with pl. iii, no. , and p. of manzi's edition. also with no. of ludwig's edition of the vatican copy.] . just so much as the part _d a_ of the nude figure decreases in this position so much does the opposite part increase; that is: in proportion as the length of the part _d a_ diminishes the normal size so does the opposite upper part increase beyond its [normal] size. the navel does not change its position to the male organ; and this shrinking arises because when a figure stands on one foot, that foot becomes the centre [of gravity] of the superimposed weight. this being so, the middle between the shoulders is thrust above it out of it perpendicular line, and this line, which forms the central line of the external parts of the body, becomes bent at its upper extremity [so as to be] above the foot which supports the body; and the transverse lines are forced into such angles that their ends are lower on the side which is supported. as is shown at _a b c_. [footnote: see pl. xxii, no. .] . of painting. note in the motions and attitudes of figures how the limbs vary, and their feeling, for the shoulderblades in the motions of the arms and shoulders vary the [line of the] back bone very much. and you will find all the causes of this in my book of anatomy. . of [change of] attitude. the pit of the throat is over the feet, and by throwing one arm forward the pit of the throat is thrown off that foot. and if the leg is thrown forward the pit of the throat is thrown forward; and. so it varies in every attitude. . of painting. indicate which are the muscles, and which the tendons, which become prominent or retreat in the different movements of each limb; or which do neither [but are passive]. and remember that these indications of action are of the first importance and necessity in any painter or sculptor who professes to be a master &c. and indicate the same in a child, and from birth to decrepitude at every stage of its life; as infancy, childhood, boyhood, youth &c. and in each express the alterations in the limbs and joints, which swell and which grow thinner. . o anatomical painter! beware lest the too strong indication of the bones, sinews and muscles, be the cause of your becoming wooden in your painting by your wish to make your nude figures display all their feeling. therefore, in endeavouring to remedy this, look in what manner the muscles clothe or cover their bones in old or lean persons; and besides this, observe the rule as to how these same muscles fill up the spaces of the surface that extend between them, which are the muscles which never lose their prominence in any amount of fatness; and which too are the muscles of which the attachments are lost to sight in the very least plumpness. and in many cases several muscles look like one single muscle in the increase of fat; and in many cases, in growing lean or old, one single muscle divides into several muscles. and in this treatise, each in its place, all their peculiarities will be explained--and particularly as to the spaces between the joints of each limb &c. again, do not fail [to observe] the variations in the forms of the above mentioned muscles, round and about the joints of the limbs of any animal, as caused by the diversity of the motions of each limb; for on some side of those joints the prominence of these muscles is wholly lost in the increase or diminution of the flesh of which these muscles are composed, &c. [footnote: de rossi remarks on this chapter, in the roman edition of the trattato, p. : "_non in questo luogo solo, ma in altri ancora osserverà il lettore, che lionardo va fungendo quelli che fanno abuso della loro dottrina anatomica, e sicuramente con ciò ha in mira il suo rivale bonarroti, che di anatomia facea tanta pompa_." note, that leonardo wrote this passage in rome, probably under the immediate impression of michaelangelo's paintings in the sistine chapel and of raphael's isaiah in sant' agostino.] . of the different measurements of boys and men. there is a great difference in the length between the joints in men and boys for, in man, from the top of the shoulder [by the neck] to the elbow, and from the elbow to the tip of the thumb and from one shoulder to the other, is in each instance two heads, while in a boy it is but one because nature constructs in us the mass which is the home of the intellect, before forming that which contains the vital elements. . of painting. which are the muscles which subdivide in old age or in youth, when becoming lean? which are the parts of the limbs of the human frame where no amount of fat makes the flesh thicker, nor any degree of leanness ever diminishes it? the thing sought for in this question will be found in all the external joints of the bones, as the shoulder, elbow, wrists, finger-joints, hips, knees, ankle-bone and toes and the like; all of which shall be told in its place. the greatest thickness acquired by any limb is at the part of the muscles which is farthest from its attachments. flesh never increases on those portions of the limb where the bones are near to the surface. at _b r d a c e f_ the increase or diminution of the flesh never makes any considerable difference. nature has placed in front of man all those parts which feel most pain under a blow; and these are the shin of the leg, the forehead, and the nose. and this was done for the preservation of man, since, if such pain were not felt in these parts, the number of blows to which they would be exposed must be the cause of their destruction. describe why the bones of the arm and leg are double near the hand and foot [respectively]. and where the flesh is thicker or thinner in the bending of the limbs. . of painting. every part of the whole must be in proportion to the whole. thus, if a man is of a stout short figure he will be the same in all his parts: that is with short and thick arms, wide thick hands, with short fingers with their joints of the same character, and so on with the rest. i would have the same thing understood as applying to all animals and plants; in diminishing, [the various parts] do so in due proportion to the size, as also in enlarging. . of the agreement of the proportion of the limbs. and again, remember to be very careful in giving your figures limbs, that they must appear to agree with the size of the body and likewise to the age. thus a youth has limbs that are not very muscular not strongly veined, and the surface is delicate and round, and tender in colour. in man the limbs are sinewy and muscular, while in old men the surface is wrinkled, rugged and knotty, and the sinews very prominent. how young boys have their joints just the reverse of those of men, as to size. little children have all the joints slender and the portions between them are thick; and this happens because nothing but the skin covers the joints without any other flesh and has the character of sinew, connecting the bones like a ligature. and the fat fleshiness is laid on between one joint and the next, and between the skin and the bones. but, since the bones are thicker at the joints than between them, as a mass grows up the flesh ceases to have that superfluity which it had, between the skin and the bones; whence the skin clings more closely to the bone and the limbs grow more slender. but since there is nothing over the joints but the cartilaginous and sinewy skin this cannot dry up, and, not drying up, cannot shrink. thus, and for this reason, children are slender at the joints and fat between the joints; as may be seen in the joints of the fingers, arms, and shoulders, which are slender and dimpled, while in man on the contrary all the joints of the fingers, arms, and legs are thick; and wherever children have hollows men have prominences. the movement of the human figure ( - ). . of the manner of representing the actions of man. repose, movement, running, standing, supported, sitting, leaning, kneeling, lying down, suspended. carrying or being carried, thrusting, pulling, striking, being struck, pressing down and lifting up. [as to how a figure should stand with a weight in its hand [footnote : the original text ends here.] remember]. . a sitting man cannot raise himself if that part of his body which is front of his axis [centre of gravity] does not weigh more than that which is behind that axis [or centre] without using his arms. a man who is mounting any slope finds that he must involuntarily throw the most weight forward, on the higher foot, rather than behind--that is in front of the axis and not behind it. hence a man will always, involuntarily, throw the greater weight towards the point whither he desires to move than in any other direction. the faster a man runs, the more he leans forward towards the point he runs to and throws more weight in front of his axis than behind. a man who runs down hill throws the axis onto his heels, and one who runs up hill throws it into the points of his feet; and a man running on level ground throws it first on his heels and then on the points of his feet. this man cannot carry his own weight unless, by drawing his body back he balances the weight in front, in such a way as that the foot on which he stands is the centre of gravity. [footnote: see pl. xxii, no. .] . how a man proceeds to raise himself to his feet, when he is sitting on level ground. . a man when walking has his head in advance of his feet. a man when walking across a long level plain first leans [rather] backwards and then as much forwards. [footnote - : he strides forward with the air of a man going down hill; when weary, on the contrary he walks like a man going up hill.] . a man when running throws less weight on his legs than when standing still. and in the same way a horse which is running feels less the weight of the man he carries. hence many persons think it wonderful that, in running, the horse can rest on one single foot. from this it may be stated that when a weight is in progressive motion the more rapid it is the less is the perpendicular weight towards the centre. . if a man, in taking a jump from firm ground, can leap braccia, and when he was taking his leap it were to recede / of a braccio, that would be taken off his former leap; and so if it were thrust forward / of a braccio, by how much would his leap be increased? . of drawing. when a man who is running wants to neutralise the impetus that carries him on he prepares a contrary impetus which is generated by his hanging backwards. this can be proved, since, if the impetus carries a moving body with a momentum equal to and the moving body wants to turn and fall back with a momentum of , then one momentum neutralises the other contrary one, and the impetus is neutralised. of walking up and down ( - ) . when a man wants to stop running and check the impetus he is forced to hang back and take short quick steps. [footnote: lines - refer to the two upper figures, and the lower figure to the right is explained by the last part of the chapter.] the centre of gravity of a man who lifts one of his feet from the ground always rests on the centre of the sole of the foot [he stands on]. a man, in going up stairs involuntarily throws so much weight forward and on the side of the upper foot as to be a counterpoise to the lower leg, so that the labour of this lower leg is limited to moving itself. the first thing a man does in mounting steps is to relieve the leg he is about to lift of the weight of the body which was resting on that leg; and besides this, he gives to the opposite leg all the rest of the bulk of the whole man, including [the weight of] the other leg; he then raises the other leg and sets the foot upon the step to which he wishes to raise himself. having done this he restores to the upper foot all the weight of the body and of the leg itself, and places his hand on his thigh and throws his head forward and repeats the movement towards the point of the upper foot, quickly lifting the heel of the lower one; and with this impetus he lifts himself up and at the same time extends the arm which rested on his knee; and this extension of the arm carries up the body and the head, and so straightens the spine which was curved. [ ] the higher the step is which a man has to mount, the farther forward will he place his head in advance of his upper foot, so as to weigh more on _a_ than on _b_; this man will not be on the step _m_. as is shown by the line _g f_. [footnote: see pl. xxiii, no. . the lower sketch to the left belongs to the four first lines.] . i ask the weight [pressure] of this man at every degree of motion on these steps, what weight he gives to _b_ and to _c_. [footnote : these lines are, in the original, written in ink] observe the perpendicular line below the centre of gravity of the man. [footnote: see pl. xxiii, no. .] . in going up stairs if you place your hands on your knees all the labour taken by the arms is removed from the sinews at the back of the knees. [footnote: see pl. xxiii, no. .] . the sinew which guides the leg, and which is connected with the patella of the knee, feels it a greater labour to carry the man upwards, in proportion as the leg is more bent; and the muscle which acts upon the angle made by the thigh where it joins the body has less difficulty and has a less weight to lift, because it has not the [additional] weight of the thigh itself. and besides this it has stronger muscles, being those which form the buttock. . a man coming down hill takes little steps, because the weight rests upon the hinder foot, while a man mounting takes wide steps, because his weight rests on the foremost foot. [footnote: see pl. xxiii, no. .] on the human body in action ( - ). . of the human body in action. when you want to represent a man as moving some weight consider what the movements are that are to be represented by different lines; that is to say either from below upwards, with a simple movement, as a man does who stoops forward to take up a weight which he will lift as he straightens himself. or as a man does who wants to squash something backwards, or to force it forwards or to pull it downwards with ropes passed through pullies [footnote : compare the sketch on page and on (s. k. m. ii. b).]. and here remember that the weight of a man pulls in proportion as his centre of gravity is distant from his fulcrum, and to this is added the force given by his legs and bent back as he raises himself. . again, a man has even a greater store of strength in his legs than he needs for his own weight; and to see if this is true, make a man stand on the shore-sand and then put another man on his back, and you will see how much he will sink in. then take the man from off his back and make him jump straight up as high as he can, and you will find that the print of his feet will be made deeper by the jump than from having the man on his back. hence, here, by methods it is proved that a man has double the strength he requires to support his own body. . of painting. if you have to draw a man who is in motion, or lifting or pulling, or carrying a weight equal to his own, in what way must you set on his legs below his body? [footnote: in the ms. this question remains unanswered.] . of the strength of man. a man pulling a [dead] weight balanced against himself cannot pull more than his own weight. and if he has to raise it he will [be able to] raise as much more than his weight as his strength may be more than that of other men. [footnote : the stroke at the end of this line finishes in the original in a sort of loop or flourish, and a similar flourish occurs at the end of the previous passage written on the same page. m. ravaisson regards these as numbers (compare the photograph of page b in his edition of ms. a). he remarks: "_ce chiffre_ _et, a la fin de l'alinea precedent, le chiffre_ _sont, dans le manuscrit, des renvois_."] the greatest force a man can apply, with equal velocity and impetus, will be when he sets his feet on one end of the balance [or lever] and then presses his shoulders against some stable body. this will raise a weight at the other end of the balance [lever], equal to his own weight and [added to that] as much weight as he can carry on his shoulders. . no animal can simply move [by its dead weight] a greater weight than the sum of its own weight outside the centre of his fulcrum. . a man who wants to send an arrow very far from the bow must be standing entirely on one foot and raising the other so far from the foot he stands on as to afford the requisite counterpoise to his body which is thrown on the front foot. and he must not hold his arm fully extended, and in order that he may be more able to bear the strain he must hold a piece of wood which there is in all crossbows, extending from the hand to the breast, and when he wishes to shoot he suddenly leaps forward at the same instant and extends his arm with the bow and releases the string. and if he dexterously does every thing at once it will go a very long way. . when two men are at the opposite ends of a plank that is balanced, and if they are of equal weight, and if one of them wants to make a leap into the air, then his leap will be made down from his end of the plank and the man will never go up again but must remain in his place till the man at the other end dashes up the board. [footnote: see pl. xxiv, no. .] . of delivering a blow to the right or left. [footnote: four sketches on pl. xxiv, no. belong to this passage. the rest of the sketches and notes on that page are of a miscellaneous nature.] . why an impetus is not spent at once [but diminishes] gradually in some one direction? [footnote : the paper has been damaged at the end of line .] the impetus acquired in the line _a b c d_ is spent in the line _d e_ but not so completely but that some of its force remains in it and to this force is added the momentum in the line _d e_ with the force of the motive power, and it must follow than the impetus multiplied by the blow is greater that the simple impetus produced by the momentum _d e_. [footnote : the sketch no. on pl. xxiv stands, in the original, between lines and . compare also the sketches on pl. liv.] a man who has to deal a great blow with his weapon prepares himself with all his force on the opposite side to that where the spot is which he is to hit; and this is because a body as it gains in velocity gains in force against the object which impedes its motion. on hair falling down in curls. . observe the motion of the surface of the water which resembles that of hair, and has two motions, of which one goes on with the flow of the surface, the other forms the lines of the eddies; thus the water forms eddying whirlpools one part of which are due to the impetus of the principal current and the other to the incidental motion and return flow. [footnote: see pl. xxv. where also the text of this passage is given in facsimile.] on draperies ( -- ). . of the nature of the folds in drapery. that part of a fold which is farthest from the ends where it is confined will fall most nearly in its natural form. every thing by nature tends to remain at rest. drapery, being of equal density and thickness on its wrong side and on its right, has a tendency to lie flat; therefore when you give it a fold or plait forcing it out of its flatness note well the result of the constraint in the part where it is most confined; and the part which is farthest from this constraint you will see relapses most into the natural state; that is to say lies free and flowing. example. [footnote : _a c sia_. in the original text _b_ is written instead of _c_--an evident slip of the pen.] let _a b c_ be the fold of the drapery spoken of above, _a c_ will be the places where this folded drapery is held fast. i maintain that the part of the drapery which is farthest from the plaited ends will revert most to its natural form. therefore, _b_ being farthest from _a_ and _c_ in the fold _a b c_ it will be wider there than anywhere else. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. , and compare the drawing from windsor pl. xxx for farther illustration of what is here stated.] . of small folds in draperies. how figures dressed in a cloak should not show the shape so much as that the cloak looks as if it were next the flesh; since you surely cannot wish the cloak to be next the flesh, for you must suppose that between the flesh and the cloak there are other garments which prevent the forms of the limbs appearing distinctly through the cloak. and those limbs which you allow to be seen you must make thicker so that the other garments may appear to be under the cloak. but only give something of the true thickness of the limbs to a nymph [footnote : _una nifa_. compare the beautiful drawing of a nymph, in black chalk from the windsor collection, pl. xxvi.] or an angel, which are represented in thin draperies, pressed and clinging to the limbs of the figures by the action of the wind. . you ought not to give to drapery a great confusion of many folds, but rather only introduce them where they are held by the hands or the arms; the rest you may let fall simply where it is its nature to flow; and do not let the nude forms be broken by too many details and interrupted folds. how draperies should be drawn from nature: that is to say if youwant to represent woollen cloth draw the folds from that; and if it is to be silk, or fine cloth or coarse, or of linen or of crape, vary the folds in each and do not represent dresses, as many do, from models covered with paper or thin leather which will deceive you greatly. [footnote: the little pen and ink drawing from windsor (w. ), given on pl. xxviii, no. , clearly illustrates the statement made at the beginning of this passage; the writing of the cipher on the same page is in leonardo's hand; the cipher is certainly not.] _viii._ _botany for painters and elements of landscape painting._ _the chapters composing this portion of the work consist of observations on form, light and shade in plants, and particularly in trees summed up in certain general rules by which the author intends to guide the artist in the pictorial representation of landscape._ _with these the first principles of a_ theory of landscape painting _are laid down--a theory as profoundly thought out in its main lines as it is lucidly worked out in its details. in reading these chapters the conviction is irresistible that such a_ botany for painters _is or ought to be of similar importance in the practice of painting as the principles of the proportions and movements of the human figure_ i. e. anatomy for painters. _there can be no doubt that leonardo, in laying down these rules, did not intend to write on botany in the proper scientific sense--his own researches on that subject have no place here; it need only be observed that they are easily distinguished by their character and contents from those which are here collected and arranged under the title 'botany for painters'. in some cases where this division might appear doubtful,--as for instance in no._ --_the painter is directly addressed and enjoined to take the rule to heart as of special importance in his art._ _the original materials are principally derived from ms._ g, _in which we often find this subject treated on several pages in succession without any of that intermixture of other matters, which is so frequent in leonardo's writings. this ms., too, is one of the latest; when it was written, the great painter was already more than sixty years of age, so we can scarcely doubt that he regarded all he wrote as his final views on the subject. and the same remark applies to the chapters from mss._ e _and_ m _which were also written between_ -- . _for the sake of clearness, however, it has been desirable to sacrifice--with few exceptions--the original order of the passages as written, though it was with much reluctance and only after long hesitation that i resigned myself to this necessity. nor do i mean to impugn the logical connection of the author's ideas in his ms.; but it will be easily understood that the sequence of disconnected notes, as they occurred to leonardo and were written down from time to time, might be hardly satisfactory as a systematic arrangement of his principles. the reader will find in the appendix an exact account of the order of the chapters in the original ms. and from the data there given can restore them at will. as the materials are here arranged, the structure of the tree as regards the growth of the branches comes first_ ( - ) _and then the insertion of the leaves on the stems_ ( - ). _then follow the laws of light and shade as applied, first, to the leaves ( - ), and, secondly, to the whole tree and to groups of trees_ ( - ). _after the remarks on the light and shade in landscapes generally_ ( - ), _we find special observations on that of views of towns and buildings_ ( - ). _to the theory of landscape painting belong also the passages on the effect of wind on trees_ ( - ) _and on the light and shade of clouds_ ( - ), _since we find in these certain comparisons with the effect of light and shade on trees_ (e. g.: _in no._ , . ; _and no._ , . ). _the chapters given in the appendix nos._ _and_ _have hardly any connection with the subjects previously treated._ classification of trees. . trees. small, lofty, straggling, thick, that is as to foliage, dark, light, russet, branched at the top; some directed towards the eye, some downwards; with white stems; this transparent in the air, that not; some standing close together, some scattered. the relative thickness of the branches to the trunk ( -- ). . all the branches of a tree at every stage of its height when put together are equal in thickness to the trunk [below them]. all the branches of a water [course] at every stage of its course, if they are of equal rapidity, are equal to the body of the main stream. . every year when the boughs of a plant [or tree] have made an end of maturing their growth, they will have made, when put together, a thickness equal to that of the main stem; and at every stage of its ramification you will find the thickness of the said main stem; as: _i k_, _g h_, _e f_, _c d_, _a b_, will always be equal to each other; unless the tree is pollard--if so the rule does not hold good. all the branches have a direction which tends to the centre of the tree _m_. [footnote: the two sketches of leafless trees one above another on the left hand side of pl. xxvii, no. , belong to this passage.] . if the plant n grows to the thickness shown at m, its branches will correspond [in thickness] to the junction a b in consequence of the growth inside as well as outside. the branches of trees or plants have a twist wherever a minor branch is given off; and this giving off the branch forms a fork; this said fork occurs between two angles of which the largest will be that which is on the side of the larger branch, and in proportion, unless accident has spoilt it. [footnote: the sketches illustrating this are on the right hand side of pi. xxvii, no. i, and the text is also given there in facsimile.] . there is no boss on branches which has not been produced by some branch which has failed. the lower shoots on the branches of trees grow more than the upper ones and this occurs only because the sap that nourishes them, being heavy, tends downwards more than upwards; and again, because those [branches] which grow downwards turn away from the shade which exists towards the centre of the plant. the older the branches are, the greater is the difference between their upper and their lower shoots and in those dating from the same year or epoch. [footnote: the sketch accompanying this in the ms. is so effaced that an exact reproduction was impossible.] . of the scars on trees. the scars on trees grow to a greater thickness than is required by the sap of the limb which nourishes them. . the plant which gives out the smallest ramifications will preserve the straightest line in the course of its growth. [footnote: this passage is illustrated by two partly effaced sketches. one of these closely resembles the lower one given under no. , the other also represents short closely set boughs on an upright trunk.] . of the ramification. the beginning of the ramification [the shoot] always has the central line [axis] of its thickness directed to the central line [axis] of the plant itself. . in starting from the main stem the branches always form a base with a prominence as is shown at _a b c d_. . why, very frequently, timber has veins that are not straight. when the branches which grow the second year above the branch of the preceding year, are not of equal thickness above the antecedent branches, but are on one side, then the vigour of the lower branch is diverted to nourish the one above it, although it may be somewhat on one side. but if the ramifications are equal in their growth, the veins of the main stem will be straight [parallel] and equidistant at every degree of the height of the plant. wherefore, o painter! you, who do not know these laws! in order to escape the blame of those who understand them, it will be well that you should represent every thing from nature, and not despise such study as those do who work [only] for money. the direction of growth ( - ). . of the ramifications of plants. the plants which spread very much have the angles of the spaces which divide their branches more obtuse in proportion as their point of origin is lower down; that is nearer to the thickest and oldest portion of the tree. therefore in the youngest portions of the tree the angles of ramification are more acute. [footnote: compare the sketches on the lower portion of pl. xxvii, no. .] . the tips of the boughs of plants [and trees], unless they are borne down by the weight of their fruits, turn towards the sky as much as possible. the upper side of their leaves is turned towards the sky that it may receive the nourishment of the dew which falls at night. the sun gives spirit and life to plants and the earth nourishes them with moisture. [ ] with regard to this i made the experiment of leaving only one small root on a gourd and this i kept nourished with water, and the gourd brought to perfection all the fruits it could produce, which were about gourds of the long kind, andi set my mind diligently [to consider] this vitality and perceived that the dews of night were what supplied it abundantly with moisture through the insertion of its large leaves and gave nourishment to the plant and its offspring--or the seeds which its offspring had to produce--[ ]. the rule of the leaves produced on the last shoot of the year will be that they will grow in a contrary direction on the twin branches; that is, that the insertion of the leaves turns round each branch in such a way, as that the sixth leaf above is produced over the sixth leaf below, and the way they turn is that if one turns towards its companion to the right, the other turns to the left, the leaf serving as the nourishing breast for the shoot or fruit which grows the following year. [footnote: a french translation of lines - was given by m. ravaisson in the _gazette des beaux arts_, oct. ; his paper also contains some valuable information as to botanical science in the ancient classical writers and at the time of the renaissance.] . the lowest branches of those trees which have large leaves and heavy fruits, such as nut-trees, fig-trees and the like, always droop towards the ground. the branches always originate above [in the axis of] the leaves. . the upper shoots of the lateral branches of plants lie closer to the parent branch than the lower ones. . the lowest branches, after they have formed the angle of their separation from the parent stem, always bend downwards so as not to crowd against the other branches which follow them on the same stem and to be better able to take the air which nourishes them. as is shown by the angle _b a c_; the branch _a c_ after it has made the corner of the angle _a c_ bends downwards to _c d_ and the lesser shoot _c_ dries up, being too thin. the main branch always goes below, as is shown by the branch _f n m_, which does not go to _f n o_. the forms of trees ( -- ). . the elm always gives a greater length to the last branches of the year's growth than to the lower ones; and nature does this because the highest branches are those which have to add to the size of the tree; and those at the bottom must get dry because they grow in the shade and their growth would be an impediment to the entrance of the solar rays and the air among the main branches of the tree. the main branches of the lower part bend down more than those above, so as to be more oblique than those upper ones, and also because they are larger and older. . in general almost all the upright portions of trees curve somewhat turning the convexity towards the south; and their branches are longer and thicker and more abundant towards the south than towards the north. and this occurs because the sun draws the sap towards that surface of the tree which is nearest to it. and this may be observed if the sun is not screened off by other plants. . the cherry-tree is of the character of the fir tree as regards its ramification placed in stages round its main stem; and its branches spring, or five or [together] opposite each other; and the tips of the topmost shoots form a pyramid from the middle upwards; and the walnut and oak form a hemisphere from the middle upwards. . the bough of the walnut which is only hit and beaten when it has brought to perfection... [footnote: the end of the text and the sketch in red chalk belonging to it, are entirely effaced.] the insertion of the leaves ( -- ). . of the insertion of the branches on plants. such as the growth of the ramification of plants is on their principal branches, so is that of the leaves on the shoots of the same plant. these leaves have [footnote : _quattro modi_ (four modes). only three are described in the text, the fourth is only suggested by a sketch. this passage occurs in manzi's edition of the trattato, p. , but without the sketches and the text is mutilated in an important part. the whole passage has been commented on, from manzi's version, in part i of the _nuovo giornale botanico italiano_, by prof. g. uzielli (florence , vol. i). he remarks as to the 'four modes': "_leonardo, come si vede nelle linie sententi da solo tre esempli. questa ed altre inessattezze fanno desiderare, sia esaminato di nuovo il manoscritto vaticano_". this has since been done by d. knapp of tubingen, and his accurate copy has been published by h. ludwig, the painter. the passage in question occurs in his edition as no. ; and there also the drawings are wanting. the space for them has been left vacant, but in the vatican copy '_niente_' has been written on the margin; and in it, as well as in ludwig's and manzi's edition, the text is mutilated.] four modes of growing one above another. the first, which is the most general, is that the sixth always originates over the sixth below [footnote : _la sesta di sotto. "disposizione / o / . leonardo osservo probabilmente soltanto la prima"_ (uzielll).]; the second is that two third ones above are over the two third ones below [footnote : _terze di sotto: "intende qui senza dubbio parlare di foglie decussate, in cui il terzo verticello e nel piano del primo"_ (uzielli).]; and the third way is that the third above is over the third below [footnote : a _di sotto: "disposizione / "_ (uzielli).]. [footnote: see the four sketches on the upper portion of the page reproduced as fig. on p . xxvii.] . a description of the elm. the ramification of the elm has the largest branch at the top. the first and the last but one are smaller, when the main trunk is straight. the space between the insertion of one leaf to the rest is half the extreme length of the leaf or somewhat less, for the leaves are at an interval which is about the rd of the width of the leaf. the elm has more leaves near the top of the boughs than at the base; and the broad [surface] of the leaves varies little as to [angle and] aspect. [footnote: see pl. xxvii, no. . above the sketch and close under the number of the page is the word '_olmo_' (elm).] . in the walnut tree the leaves which are distributed on the shoots of this year are further apart from each other and more numerous in proportion as the branch from which this shoot springs is a young one. and they are inserted more closely and less in number when the shoot that bears them springs from an old branch. its fruits are borne at the ends of the shoots. and its largest boughs are the lowest on the boughs they spring from. and this arises from the weight of its sap which is more apt to descend than to rise, and consequently the branches which spring from them and rise towards the sky are small and slender [ ]; and when the shoot turns towards the sky its leaves spread out from it [at an angle] with an equal distribution of their tips; and if the shoot turns to the horizon the leaves lie flat; and this arises from the fact that leaves without exception, turn their underside to the earth [ ]. the shoots are smaller in proportion as they spring nearer to the base of the bough they spring from. [footnote: see the two sketches on pl xxvii, no. . the second refers to the passage lines - .] . of the insertion of the leaves on the branches. the thickness of a branch never diminishes within the space between one leaf and the next excepting by so much as the thickness of the bud which is above the leaf and this thickness is taken off from the branch above [the node] as far as the next leaf. nature has so placed the leaves of the latest shoots of many plants that the sixth leaf is always above the first, and so on in succession, if the rule is not [accidentally] interfered with; and this occurs for two useful ends in the plant: first that as the shoot and the fruit of the following year spring from the bud or eye which lies above and in close contact with the insertion of the leaf [in the axil], the water which falls upon the shoot can run down to nourish the bud, by the drop being caught in the hollow [axil] at the insertion of the leaf. and the second advantage is, that as these shoots develop in the following year one will not cover the next below, since the come forth on five different sides; and the sixth which is above the first is at some distance. . of the ramifications of trees and their foliage. the ramifications of any tree, such as the elm, are wide and slender after the manner of a hand with spread fingers, foreshortened. and these are seen in the distribution [thus]: the lower portions are seen from above; and those that are above are seen from below; and those in the middle, some from below and some from above. the upper part is the extreme [top] of this ramification and the middle portion is more foreshortened than any other of those which are turned with their tips towards you. and of those parts of the middle of the height of the tree, the longest will be towards the top of the tree and will produce a ramification like the foliage of the common willow, which grows on the banks of rivers. other ramifications are spherical, as those of such trees as put forth their shoots and leaves in the order of the sixth being placed above the first. others are thin and light like the willow and others. . you will see in the lower branches of the elder, which puts forth leaves two and two placed crosswise [at right angles] one above another, that if the stem rises straight up towards the sky this order never fails; and its largest leaves are on the thickest part of the stem and the smallest on the slenderest part, that is towards the top. but, to return to the lower branches, i say that the leaves on these are placed on them crosswise like [those on] the upper branches; and as, by the law of all leaves, they are compelled to turn their upper surface towards the sky to catch the dew at night, it is necessary that those so placed should twist round and no longer form a cross. [footnote: see pl. xxvii, no. .] . a leaf always turns its upper side towards the sky so that it may the better receive, on all its surface, the dew which drops gently from the atmosphere. and these leaves are so distributed on the plant as that one shall cover the other as little as possible, but shall lie alternately one above another as may be seen in the ivy which covers the walls. and this alternation serves two ends; that is, to leave intervals by which the air and sun may penetrate between them. the nd reason is that the drops which fall from the first leaf may fall onto the fourth or--in other trees--onto the sixth. . every shoot and every fruit is produced above the insertion [in the axil] of its leaf which serves it as a mother, giving it water from the rain and moisture from the dew which falls at night from above, and often it protects them against the too great heat of the rays of the sun. light on branches and leaves ( -- ). . that part of the body will be most illuminated which is hit by the luminous ray coming between right angles. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. .] . young plants have more transparent leaves and a more lustrous bark than old ones; and particularly the walnut is lighter coloured in may than in september. . of the accidents of colouring in trees. the accidents of colour in the foliage of trees are . that is: shadow, light, lustre [reflected light] and transparency. of the visibility of these accidents. these accidents of colour in the foliage of trees become confused at a great distance and that which has most breadth [whether light or shade, &c.] will be most conspicuous. the proportions of light and shade in a leaf ( - ). . of the shadows of a leaf. sometimes a leaf has three accidents [of light] that is: shade, lustre [reflected light] and transparency [transmitted light]. thus, if the light were at _n_ as regards the leaf _s_, and the eye at _m_, it would see _a_ in full light, _b_ in shadow and _c_ transparent. . a leaf with a concave surface seen from the under side and up-side-down will sometimes show itself as half in shade, and half transparent. thus, if _o p_ is the leaf and the light _m_ and the eye _n_, this will see _o_ in shadow because the light does not fall upon it between equal angles, neither on the upper nor the under side, and _p_ is lighted on the upper side and the light is transmitted to its under side. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. , the upper sketch on the page. in the original they are drawn in red chalk.] . although those leaves which have a polished surface are to a great extent of the same colour on the right side and on the reverse, it may happen that the side which is turned towards the atmosphere will have something of the colour of the atmosphere; and it will seem to have more of this colour of the atmosphere in proportion as the eye is nearer to it and sees it more foreshortened. and, without exception the shadows show as darker on the upper side than on the lower, from the contrast offered by the high lights which limit the shadows. the under side of the leaf, although its colour may be in itself the same as that of the upper side, shows a still finer colour--a colour that is green verging on yellow--and this happens when the leaf is placed between . the eye and the light which falls upon it from the opposite side. and its shadows are in the same positions as those were of the opposite side. therefore, o painter! when you do trees close at hand, remember that if the eye is almost under the tree you will see its leaves [some] on the upper and [some] on the under side, and the upper side will be bluer in proportion as they are seen more foreshortened, and the same leaf sometimes shows part of the right side and part of the under side, whence you must make it of two colours. of the transparency of leaves ( - ). . the shadows in transparent leaves seen from the under side are the same shadows as there are on the right side of this leaf, they will show through to the underside together with lights, but the lustre [reflected light] can never show through. . when one green has another [green] behind it, the lustre on the leaves and their transparent [lights] show more strongly than in those which are [seen] against the brightness of the atmosphere. and if the sun illuminates the leaves without their coming between it and the eye and without the eye facing the sun, then the reflected lights and the transparent lights are very strong. it is very effective to show some branches which are low down and dark and so set off the illuminated greens which are at some distance from the dark greens seen below. that part is darkest which is nearest to the eye or which is farthest from the luminous atmosphere. . never paint leaves transparent to the sun, because they are confused; and this is because on the transparency of one leaf will be seen the shadow of another leaf which is above it. this shadow has a distinct outline and a certain depth of shade and sometimes is [as much as] half or a third of the leaf which is shaded; and consequently such an arrangement is very confused and the imitation of it should be avoided. the light shines least through a leaf when it falls upon it at an acute angle. the gradations of shade and colour in leaves ( - ). . the shadows of plants are never black, for where the atmosphere penetrates there can never be utter darkness. . if the light comes from _m_ and the eye is at _n_ the eye will see the colour of the leaves _a b_ all affected by the colour of _m_ --that is of the atmosphere; and _b c_ will be seen from the under side as transparent, with a beautiful green colour verging on yellow. if _m_ is the luminous body lighting up the leaf _s_ all the eyes that see the under side of this leaf will see it of a beautiful light green, being transparent. in very many cases the positions of the leaves will be without shadow [or in full light], and their under side will be transparent and the right side lustrous [reflecting light]. . the willow and other similar trees, which have their boughs lopped every or years, put forth very straight branches, and their shadow is about the middle where these boughs spring; and towards the extreme ends they cast but little shade from having small leaves and few and slender branches. hence the boughs which rise towards the sky will have but little shade and little relief; and the branches which are at an angle from the horizon, downwards, spring from the dark part of the shadow and grow thinner by degrees up to their ends, and these will be in strong relief, being in gradations of light against a background of shadow. that tree will have the least shadow which has the fewest branches and few leaves. . of dark leaves in front of transparent ones. when the leaves are interposed between the light and the eye, then that which is nearest to the eye will be the darkest, and the most distant will be the lightest, not being seen against the atmosphere; and this is seen in the leaves which are away from the centre of the tree, that is towards the light. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. , the lower sketch.] . of the lights on dark leaves. the lights on such leaves which are darkest, will be most near to the colour of the atmosphere that is reflected in them. and the cause of this is that the light on the illuminated portion mingles with the dark hue to compose a blue colour; and this light is produced by the blueness of the atmosphere which is reflected in the smooth surface of these leaves and adds to the blue hue which this light usually produces when it falls on dark objects. of the lights on leaves of a yellowish green. but leaves of a green verging on yellow when they reflect the atmosphere do not produce a reflection verging on blue, inasmuch as every thing which appears in a mirror takes some colour from that mirror, hence the blue of the atmosphere being reflected in the yellow of the leaf appears green, because blue and yellow mixed together make a very fine green colour, therefore the lustre of light leaves verging on yellow will be greenish yellow. a classification of trees according to their colours. . the trees in a landscape are of various kinds of green, inasmuch as some verge towards blackness, as firs, pines, cypresses, laurels, box and the like. some tend to yellow such as walnuts, and pears, vines and verdure. some are both yellowish and dark as chesnuts, holm-oak. some turn red in autumn as the service-tree, pomegranate, vine, and cherry; and some are whitish as the willow, olive, reeds and the like. trees are of various forms ... the proportions of light and shade in trees ( - ). . of a generally distributed light as lighting up trees. that part of the trees will be seen to lie in the least dark shadow which is farthest from the earth. to prove it let _a p_ be the tree, _n b c_ the illuminated hemisphere [the sky], the under portion of the tree faces the earth _p c_, that is on the side _o_, and it faces a small part of the hemisphere at _c d_. but the highest part of the convexity a faces the greatest part of the hemisphere, that is _b c_. for this reason--and because it does not face the darkness of the earth--it is in fuller light. but if the tree has dense foliage, as the laurel, arbutus, box or holm oak, it will be different; because, although _a_ does not face the earth, it faces the dark [green] of the leaves cut up by many shadows, and this darkness is reflected onto the under sides of the leaves immediately above. thus these trees have their darkest shadows nearest to the middle of the tree. . of the shadows of verdure. the shadows of verdure are always somewhat blue, and so is every shadow of every object; and they assume this hue more in proportion as they are remote from the eye, and less in proportion as they are nearer. the leaves which reflect the blue of the atmosphere always present themselves to the eye edgewise. of the illuminated part of verdure and of mountains. the illuminated portion, at a great distance, will appear most nearly of its natural colour where the strongest light falls upon it. . of trees that are lighted by the sun and by the atmosphere. in trees that are illuminated [both] by the sun and the atmosphere and that have leaves of a dark colour, one side will be illuminated by the atmosphere [only] and in consequence of this light will tend to blueness, while on the other side they will be illuminated by the atmosphere and the sun; and the side which the eye sees illuminated by the sun will reflect light. . of depicting a forest scene. the trees and plants which are most thickly branched with slender branches ought to have less dark shadow than those trees and plants which, having broader leaves, will cast more shadow. . on painting. in the position of the eye which sees that portion of a tree illuminated which turns towards the light, one tree will never be seen to be illuminated equally with the other. to prove this, let the eye be _c_ which sees the two trees _b d_ which are illuminated by the sun _a_; i say that this eye _c_ will not see the light in the same proportion to the shade, in one tree as in the other. because, the tree which is nearest to the sun will display so much the stronger shadow than the more distant one, in proportion as one tree is nearer to the rays of the sun that converge to the eye than the other; &c. you see that the eye _c_ sees nothing of the tree _d_ but shadow, while the same eye _c_ sees thè tree _b_ half in light and half in shade. when a tree is seen from below, the eye sees the top of it as placed within the circle made by its boughs[ ]. remember, o painter! that the variety of depth of shade in any one particular species of tree is in proportion to the rarity or density of their branches. [footnote: the two lower sketches on the left of pl xxviii, no. , refer to lines - . the upper sketch has apparently been effaced by leonardo himself.] the distribution of light and shade with reference to the position of the spectator ( - ). . the shadows of trees placed in a landscape do not display themselves in the same position in the trees on the right hand and those on the left; still more so if the sun is to the right or left. as is proved by the th which says: opaque bodies placed between the light and the eye display themselves entirely in shadow; and by the th: the eye when placed between the opaque body and the light sees the opaque body entirely illuminated. and by the th: when the eye and the opaque body are placed between darkness and light, it will be seen half in shadow and half in light. [footnote: see the figure on the right hand side of pl. xxviii, no. . the first five lines of the text are written below the diagram and above it are the last eight lines of the text, given as no. .] . of the herbs of the field. of the plants which take a shadow from the plants which spring among them, those which are on this side [in front] of the shadow have the stems lighted up on a background of shadow, and the plants on which the shadows fall have their stems dark on a light background; that is on the background beyond the shadow. of trees which are between the eye and the light. of the trees which are between the eye and the light the part in front will be light; but this light will be broken by the ramifications of transparent leaves--being seen from the under side--and lustrous leaves--being seen from the upper side; and the background below and behind will be dark green, being in shadow from the front portion of the said tree. this occurs in trees placed above the eye. . from whence to depict a landscape landscapes should be represented so that the trees may be half in light and half in shadow; but it is better to do them when the sun is covered with clouds, for then the trees are lighted by the general light of the sky, and the general darkness of the earth. and then they are darkest in certain parts in proportion as those parts are nearest to the middle of the tree and to the earth. the effects of morning light ( - ). . of trees to the south. when the sun is in the east the trees to the south and to the north have almost as much light as shadow. but a greater share of light in proportion as they lie to the west and a greater share of shadow in proportion as they lie to the east. of meadows. if the sun is in the east the verdure of the meadows and of other small plants is of a most beautiful green from being transparent to the sun; this does not occur in the meadows to the west, and in those to the south and north the grass is of a moderately brilliant green. . of the points of the compass [in landscapes]. when the sun is in the east all the portions of plants lighted by it are of a most lively verdure, and this happens because the leaves lighted by the sun within the half of the horizon that is the eastern half, are transparent; and within the western semicircle the verdure is of a dull hue and the moist air is turbid and of the colour of grey ashes, not being transparent like that in the east, which is quite clear and all the more so in proportion as it is moister. the shadows of the trees to the east cover a large portion of them and are darker in proportion as the foliage of the trees is thicker. . of trees in the east. when the sun is in the east the trees seen towards the east will have the light which surrounds them all round their shadows, excepting on the side towards the earth; unless the tree has been pruned [below] in the past year. and the trees to the south and north will be half in shade and half in light, and more or less in shade or in light in proportion as they are more or less to the east or to the west. the [position of] the eye above or below varies the shadows and lights in trees, inasmuch as the eye placed above sees the tree with the little shadow, and the eye placed below with a great deal of shadow. the colour of the green in plants varies as much as their species. . of the shadows in trees. the sun being in the east [to the right], the trees to the west [or left] of the eye will show in small relief and almost imperceptible gradations, because the atmosphere which lies between the eye and those trees is very dense [footnote : _per la a di questo_. this possibly referred to something written on the seventh page of this note book marked _g_. unfortunately it has been cut out and lost.], see the th of this--and they have no shade; for though a shadow exists in every detail of the ramification, it results that the images of the shade and light that reach the eye are confused and mingled together and cannot be perceived on account of their minuteness. and the principal lights are in the middle of the trees, and the shadows to wards the edges; and their separation is shown by the shadows of the intervals between the trees; but when the forests are thick with trees the thin edges are but little seen. . of trees to the east. when the sun is in the east the trees are darker towards the middle while their edges are light. the effects of midday light. . objects in high light show but little, but between light and shadow they stand out well. to represent a landscape choose that the sun shall be at noon and look towards the west or east and then draw. and if you turn towards the north, every object placed on that side will have no shadow, particularly those which are nearest to the [direction of the] shadow of your head. and if you turn towards the south every object on that side will be wholly in shadow. all the trees which are towards the sun and have the atmosphere for their background are dark, and the other trees which lie against that darkness will be black [very dark] in the middle and lighter towards the edges. the appearance of trees in the distance ( . ). . of the spaces [showing the sky] in trees themselves. the spaces between the parts in the mass of trees, and the spaces between the trees in the air, are, at great distances, invisible to the eye; for, where it is an effort [even] to see the whole it is most difficult to discern the parts.--but a confused mixture is the result, partaking chiefly of the [hue] which predominates. the spaces between the leaves consist of particles of illuminated air which are very much smaller than the tree and are lost sight of sooner than the tree; but it does not therefore follow that they are not there. hence, necessarily, a compounded [effect] is produced of the sky and of the shadows of the tree in shade, which both together strike the eye which sees them. of trees which conceal these spaces in one another. that part of a tree will show the fewest spaces, behind which a large number of trees are standing between the tree and the air [sky]; thus in the tree _a_ the spaces are not concealed nor in _b_, as there is no tree behind. but in _c_ only half shows the spaces filled up by the tree _d_, and part of the tree _d_ is filled up by the tree _e_ and a little farther on all the spaces in the mass of the trees are lost, and only that at the side remains. . of trees. what outlines are seen in trees at a distance against the sky which serves as their background? the outlines of the ramification of trees, where they lie against the illuminated sky, display a form which more nearly approaches the spherical on proportion as they are remote, and the nearer they are the less they appear in this spherical form; as in the first tree _a_ which, being near to the eye, displays the true form of its ramification; but this shows less in _b_ and is altogether lost in _c_, where not merely the branches of the tree cannot be seen but the whole tree is distinguished with difficulty. every object in shadow, of whatever form it may be, at a great distance appears to be spherical. and this occurs because, if it is a square body, at a very short distance it loses its angles, and a little farther off it loses still more of its smaller sides which remain. and thus before the whole is lost [to sight] the parts are lost, being smaller than the whole; as a man, who in such a distant position loses his legs, arms and head before [the mass of] his body, then the outlines of length are lost before those of breadth, and where they have become equal it would be a square if the angles remained; but as they are lost it is round. [footnote: the sketch no. , pl. xxviii, belongs to this passage.] the cast shadow of trees ( . ). . the image of the shadow of any object of uniform breadth can never be [exactly] the same as that of the body which casts it. [footnote: see pl. xxviii, no. .] light and shade on groups of trees ( - ). . all trees seen against the sun are dark towards the middle and this shadow will be of the shape of the tree when apart from others. the shadows cast by trees on which the sun shines are as dark as those of the middle of the tree. the shadow cast by a tree is never less than the mass of the tree but becomes taller in proportion as the spot on which it falls, slopes towards the centre of the world. the shadow will be densest in the middle of the tree when the tree has the fewest branches. [footnote: the three diagrams which accompany this text are placed, in the original, before lines - . at the spots marked _b_ leonardo wrote _albero_ (tree). at _a_ is the word _sole_ (sun), at _c monte_ (mountain) at _d piano_ (plain) and at _e cima_ (summit).] every branch participates of the central shadow of every other branch and consequently [of that] of the whole tree. the form of any shadow from a branch or tree is circumscribed by the light which falls from the side whence the light comes; and this illumination gives the shape of the shadow, and this may be of the distance of a mile from the side where the sun is. if it happens that a cloud should anywhere overshadow some part of a hill the [shadow of the] trees there will change less than in the plains; for these trees on the hills have their branches thicker, because they grow less high each year than in the plains. therefore as these branches are dark by nature and being so full of shade, the shadow of the clouds cannot darken them any more; but the open spaces between the trees, which have no strong shadow change very much in tone and particularly those which vary from green; that is ploughed lands or fallen mountains or barren lands or rocks. where the trees are against the atmosphere they appear all the same colour--if indeed they are not very close together or very thickly covered with leaves like the fir and similar trees. when you see the trees from the side from which the sun lights them, you will see them almost all of the same tone, and the shadows in them will be hidden by the leaves in the light, which come between your eye and those shadows. trees at a short distance. [footnote : the heading _alberi vicini_ (trees at a short distance) is in the original manuscript written in the margin.] when the trees are situated between the sun and the eye, beyond the shadow which spreads from their centre, the green of their leaves will be seen transparent; but this transparency will be broken in many places by the leaves and boughs in shadow which will come between you and them, or, in their upper portions, they will be accompanied by many lights reflected from the leaves. . the trees of the landscape stand out but little from each other; because their illuminated portions come against the illuminated portions of those beyond and differ little from them in light and shade. . of trees seen from below and against the light, one beyond the other and near together. the topmost part of the first will be in great part transparent and light, and will stand out against the dark portion of the second tree. and thus it will be with all in succession that are placed under the same conditions. let _s_ be the light, and _r_ the eye, _c d n_ the first tree, _a b c_ the second. then i say that _r_, the eye, will see the portion _c f_ in great part transparent and lighted by the light _s_ which falls upon it from the opposite side, and it will see it, on a dark ground _b c_ because that is the dark part and shadow of the tree _a b c_. but if the eye is placed at _t_ it will see _o p_ dark on the light background _n g_. of the transparent and shadowy parts of trees, that which is nearest to you is the darkest. . that part of a tree which has shadow for background, is all of one tone, and wherever the trees or branches are thickest they will be darkest, because there are no little intervals of air. but where the boughs lie against a background of other boughs, the brighter parts are seen lightest and the leaves lustrous from the sunlight falling on them. . in the composition of leafy trees be careful not to repeat too often the same colour of one tree against the same colour of another [behind it]; but vary it with a lighter, or a darker, or a stronger green. on the treatment of light for landscapes ( - ). . the landscape has a finer azure [tone] when, in fine weather the sun is at noon than at any other time of the day, because the air is purified of moisture; and looking at it under that aspect you will see the trees of a beautiful green at the outside and the shadows dark towards the middle; and in the remoter distance the atmosphere which comes between you and them looks more beautiful when there is something dark beyond. and still the azure is most beautiful. the objects seen from the side on which the sun shines will not show you their shadows. but, if you are lower than the sun, you can see what is not seen by the sun and that will be all in shade. the leaves of the trees, which come between you and the sun are of two principal colours which are a splendid lustre of green, and the reflection of the atmosphere which lights up the objects which cannot be seen by the sun, and the shaded portions which only face the earth, and the darkest which are surrounded by something that is not dark. the trees in the landscape which are between you and the sun are far more beautiful than those you see when you are between the sun and them; and this is so because those which face the sun show their leaves as transparent towards the ends of their branches, and those that are not transparent--that is at the ends--reflect the light; and the shadows are dark because they are not concealed by any thing. the trees, when you place yourself between them and the sun, will only display to you their light and natural colour, which, in itself, is not very strong, and besides this some reflected lights which, being against a background which does not differ very much from themselves in tone, are not conspicuous; and if you are lower down than they are situated, they may also show those portions on which the light of the sun does not fall and these will be dark. in the wind. but, if you are on the side whence the wind blows, you will see the trees look very much lighter than on the other sides, and this happens because the wind turns up the under side of the leaves, which, in all trees, is much whiter than the upper sides; and, more especially, will they be very light indeed if the wind blows from the quarter where the sun is, and if you have your back turned to it. [footnote: at _s_, in the original is the word _sole_ (sun) and at _n parte di nuvolo_ (the side of the clouds).] . when the sun is covered by clouds, objects are less conspicuous, because there is little difference between the light and shade of the trees and of the buildings being illuminated by the brightness of the atmosphere which surrounds the objects in such a way that the shadows are few, and these few fade away so that their outline is lost in haze. . of trees and lights on them. the best method of practice in representing country scenes, or i should say landscapes with their trees, is to choose them so that the sun is covered with clouds so that the landscape receives an universal light and not the direct light of the sun, which makes the shadows sharp and too strongly different from the lights. . of painting. in landscapes which represent [a scene in] winter. the mountains should not be shown blue, as we see in the mountains in the summer. and this is proved [footnote . .: _per la_ _a di questo_. it is impossible to ascertain what this quotation refers to. _questo_ certainly does not mean the ms. in hand, nor any other now known to us. the same remark applies to the phrase in line : _per la_ _a di questo_.] in the th of this which says: among mountains seen from a great distance those will look of the bluest colour which are in themselves the darkest; hence, when the trees are stripped of their leaves, they will show a bluer tinge which will be in itself darker; therefore, when the trees have lost their leaves they will look of a gray colour, while, with their leaves, they are green, and in proportion as the green is darker than the grey hue the green will be of a bluer tinge than the gray. also by the nd of this: the shadows of trees covered with leaves are darker than the shadows of those trees which have lost their leaves in proportion as the trees covered with leaves are denser than those without leaves--and thus my meaning is proved. the definition of the blue colour of the atmosphere explains why the landscape is bluer in the summer than in the winter. . of painting in a landscape. if the slope of a hill comes between the eye and the horizon, sloping towards the eye, while the eye is opposite the middle of the height of this slope, then that hill will increase in darkness throughout its length. this is proved by the th of this which says that a tree looks darkest when it is seen from below; the proposition is verified, since this hill will, on its upper half show all its trees as much from the side which is lighted by the light of the sky, as from that which is in shade from the darkness of the earth; whence it must result that these trees are of a medium darkness. and from this [middle] spot towards the base of the hill, these trees will be lighter by degrees by the converse of the th and by the said th: for trees so placed, the nearer they are to the summit of the hill the darker they necessarily become. but this darkness is not in proportion to the distance, by the th of this which says: that object shows darkest which is [seen] in the clearest atmosphere; and by the th: that shows darkest which stands out against a lighter background. [footnote: the quotation in this passage again cannot be verified.] . of landscapes. the colours of the shadows in mountains at a great distance take a most lovely blue, much purer than their illuminated portions. and from this it follows that when the rock of a mountain is reddish the illuminated portions are violet (?) and the more they are lighted the more they display their proper colour. . a place is most luminous when it is most remote from mountains. on the treatment of light for views of towns ( - ). . of light and shadow in a town. when the sun is in the east and the eye is above the centre of a town, the eye will see the southern part of the town with its roofs half in shade and half in light, and the same towards the north; the eastern side will be all in shadow and the western will be all in light. . of the houses of a town, in which the divisions between the houses may be distinguished by the light which fall on the mist at the bottom. if the eye is above the houses the light seen in the space that is between one house and the next sinks by degrees into thicker mist; and yet, being less transparent, it appears whiter; and if the houses are some higher than the others, since the true [colour] is always more discernible through the thinner atmosphere, the houses will look darker in proportion as they are higher up. let _n o p q_ represent the various density of the atmosphere thick with moisture, _a_ being the eye, the house _b c_ will look lightest at the bottom, because it is in a thicker atmosphere; the lines _c d f_ will appear equally light, for although _f_ is more distant than _c_, it is raised into a thinner atmosphere, if the houses _b e_ are of the same height, because they cross a brightness which is varied by mist, but this is only because the line of the eye which starts from above ends by piercing a lower and denser atmosphere at _d_ than at _b_. thus the line a _f_ is lower at _f_ than at _c_; and the house _f_ will be seen darker at _e_ from the line _e k_ as far as _m_, than the tops of the houses standing in front of it. . of towns or other buildings seen in the evening or the morning through the mist. of buildings seen at a great distance in the evening or the morning, as in mist or dense atmosphere, only those portions are seen in brightness which are lighted up by the sun which is near the horizon; and those portions which are not lighted up by the sun remain almost of the same colour and medium tone as the mist. why objects which are high up and at a distance are darker than the lower ones, even if the mist is uniformly dense. of objects standing in a mist or other dense atmosphere, whether from vapour or smoke or distance, those will be most visible which are the highest. and among objects of equal height that will be the darkest [strongest] which has for background the deepest mist. thus the eye _h_ looking at _a b c_, towers of equal height, one with another, sees _c_ the top of the first tower at _r_, at two degrees of depth in the mist; and sees the height of the middle tower _b_ through one single degree of mist. therefore the top of the tower _c_ appears stronger than the top of the tower _b_, &c. . of the smoke of a town. smoke is seen better and more distinctly on the eastern side than on the western when the sun is in the east; and this arises from two causes; the first is that the sun, with its rays, shines through the particles of the smoke and lights them up and makes them visible. the second is that the roofs of the houses seen in the east at this time are in shadow, because their obliquity does not allow of their being illuminated by the sun. and the same thing occurs with dust; and both one and the other look the lighter in proportion as they are denser, and they are densest towards the middle. . of smoke and dust. if the sun is in the east the smoke of cities will not be visible in the west, because on that side it is not seen penetrated by the solar rays, nor on a dark background; since the roofs of the houses turn the same side to the eye as they turn towards the sun, and on this light background the smoke is not very visible. but dust, under the same aspect, will look darker than smoke being of denser material than smoke which is moist. the effect of wind on trees ( - ). . of representing wind. in representing wind, besides the bending of the boughs and the reversing of their leaves towards the quarter whence the wind comes, you should also represent them amid clouds of fine dust mingled with the troubled air. . describe landscapes with the wind, and the water, and the setting and rising of the sun. the wind. all the leaves which hung towards the earth by the bending of the shoots with their branches, are turned up side down by the gusts of wind, and here their perspective is reversed; for, if the tree is between you and the quarter of the wind, the leaves which are towards you remain in their natural aspect, while those on the opposite side which ought to have their points in a contrary direction have, by being turned over, their points turned towards you. . trees struck by the force of the wind bend to the side towards which the wind is blowing; and the wind being past they bend in the contrary direction, that is in reverse motion. . that portion of a tree which is farthest from the force which strikes it is the most injured by the blow because it bears most strain; thus nature has foreseen this case by thickening them in that part where they can be most hurt; and most in such trees as grow to great heights, as pines and the like. [footnote: compare the sketch drawn with a pen and washed with indian ink on pl. xl, no. . in the vatican copy we find, under a section entitled '_del fumo_', the following remark: _era sotto di questo capitulo un rompimento di montagna, per dentro delle quali roture scherzaua fiame di fuoco, disegnate di penna et ombrate d'acquarella, da uedere cosa mirabile et uiua (ed. manzi, p. . ed. ludwig, vol. i, ). this appears to refer to the left hand portion of the drawing here given from the windsor collection, and from this it must be inferred, that the leaf as it now exists in the library of the queen of england, was already separated from the original ms. at the time when the vatican copy was made.] light and shade on clouds ( - ). . describe how the clouds are formed and how they dissolve, and what cause raises vapour. . the shadows in clouds are lighter in proportion as they are nearer to the horizon. [footnote: the drawing belonging to this was in black chalk and is totally effaced.] . when clouds come between the sun and the eye all the upper edges of their round forms are light, and towards the middle they are dark, and this happens because towards the top these edges have the sun above them while you are below them; and the same thing happens with the position of the branches of trees; and again the clouds, like the trees, being somewhat transparent, are lighted up in part, and at the edges they show thinner. but, when the eye is between the cloud and the sun, the cloud has the contrary effect to the former, for the edges of its mass are dark and it is light towards the middle; and this happens because you see the same side as faces the sun, and because the edges have some transparency and reveal to the eye that portion which is hidden beyond them, and which, as it does not catch the sunlight like that portion turned towards it, is necessarily somewhat darker. again, it may be that you see the details of these rounded masses from the lower side, while the sun shines on the upper side and as they are not so situated as to reflect the light of the sun, as in the first instance they remain dark. the black clouds which are often seen higher up than those which are illuminated by the sun are shaded by other clouds, lying between them and the sun. again, the rounded forms of the clouds that face the sun, show their edges dark because they lie against the light background; and to see that this is true, you may look at the top of any cloud that is wholly light because it lies against the blue of the atmosphere, which is darker than the cloud. [footnote: a drawing in red chalk from the windsor collection (see pl. xxix), representing a landscape with storm-clouds, may serve to illustrate this section as well as the following one.] . of clouds, smoke and dust and the flames of a furnace or of a burning kiln. the clouds do not show their rounded forms excepting on the sides which face the sun; on the others the roundness is imperceptible because they are in the shade. [footnote: the text of this chapter is given in facsimile on pls. xxxvi and xxxvii. the two halves of the leaf form but one in the original. on the margin close to lines and is the note: _rossore d'aria inverso l'orizonte_--(of the redness of the atmosphere near the horizon). the sketches on the lower portion of the page will be spoken of in no. .] if the sun is in the east and the clouds in the west, the eye placed between the sun and the clouds sees the edges of the rounded forms composing these clouds as dark, and the portions which are surrounded by this dark [edge] are light. and this occurs because the edges of the rounded forms of these clouds are turned towards the upper or lateral sky, which is reflected in them. both the cloud and the tree display no roundness at all on their shaded side. on images reflected in water. . painters often deceive themselves, by representing water in which they make the water reflect the objects seen by the man. but the water reflects the object from one side and the man sees it from the other; and it often happens that the painter sees an object from below, and thus one and the same object is seen from hind part before and upside down, because the water shows the image of the object in one way, and the eye sees it in another. of rainbows and rain ( . ). . the colours in the middle of the rainbow mingle together. the bow in itself is not in the rain nor in the eye that sees it; though it is generated by the rain, the sun, and the eye. the rainbow is always seen by the eye that is between the rain and the body of the sun; hence if the sun is in the east and the rain is in the west it will appear on the rain in the west. . when the air is condensed into rain it would produce a vacuum if the rest of the air did not prevent this by filling its place, as it does with a violent rush; and this is the wind which rises in the summer time, accompanied by heavy rain. of flower seeds. . all the flowers which turn towards the sun perfect their seeds; but not the others; that is to say those which get only the reflection of the sun. ix. _the practice of painting._ _it is hardly necessary to offer any excuses for the division carried out in the arrangement of the text into practical suggestions and theoretical enquiries. it was evidently intended by leonardo himself as we conclude from incidental remarks in the mss. (for instance no_ _). the fact that this arrangement was never carried out either in the old ms. copies or in any edition since, is easily accounted for by the general disorder which results from the provisional distribution of the various chapters in the old copies. we have every reason to believe that the earliest copyists, in distributing the materials collected by them, did not in the least consider the order in which the original ms.lay before them._ _it is evident that almost all the chapters which refer to the calling and life of the painter--and which are here brought together in the first section (nos._ - _)--may be referred to two distinct periods in leonardo's life; most of them can be dated as belonging to the year_ _or to_ . _at about this later time leonardo may have formed the project of completing his libro della pittura, after an interval of some years, as it would seem, during which his interest in the subject had fallen somewhat into the background._ _in the second section, which treats first of the artist's studio, the construction of a suitable window forms the object of careful investigations; the special importance attached to this by leonardo is sufficiently obvious. his theory of the incidence of light which was fully discussed in a former part of this work, was to him by no means of mere abstract value, but, being deduced, as he says, from experience (or experiment) was required to prove its utility in practice. connected with this we find suggestions for the choice of a light with practical hints as to sketching a picture and some other precepts of a practical character which must come under consideration in the course of completing the painting. in all this i have followed the same principle of arrangement in the text as was carried out in the theory of painting, thus the suggestions for the perspective of a picture, (nos._ - _), are followed by the theory of light and shade for the practical method of optics (nos._ -- _) and this by the practical precepts or the treatment of aerial perspective (_ -- _)._ _in the passage on portrait and figure painting the principles of painting as applied to a bust and head are separated and placed first, since the advice to figure painters must have some connection with the principles of the treatment of composition by which they are followed._ _but this arrangement of the text made it seem advisable not to pick out the practical precepts as to the representation of trees and landscape from the close connection in which they were originally placed--unlike the rest of the practical precepts--with the theory of this branch of the subject. they must therefore be sought under the section entitled botany for painters._ _as a supplement to the_ libro di pittura _i have here added those texts which treat of the painter's materials,--as chalk, drawing paper, colours and their preparation, of the management of oils and varnishes; in the appendix are some notes on chemical substances. possibly some of these, if not all, may have stood in connection with the preparation of colours. it is in the very nature of things that leonardo's incidental indications as to colours and the like should be now-a-days extremely obscure and could only be explained by professional experts--by them even in but few instances. it might therefore have seemed advisable to reproduce exactly the original text without offering any translation. the rendering here given is merely an attempt to suggest what leonardo's meaning may have been._ _lomazzo tells us in his_ trattato dell'arte della pittura, scultura ed architettura (milano , libro ii, cap. xiv): "va discorrendo ed argomentando leonardo vinci in un suo libro letto da me (?) questi anni passati, ch'egli scrisse di mano stanca ai prieghi di ludovico sforza duca di milano, in determinazione di questa questione, se e piu nobile la pittura o la scultura; dicendo che quanto piu un'arte porta seco fatica di corpo, e sudore, tanto piu e vile, e men pregiata". _but the existence of any book specially written for lodovico il moro on the superiority of painting over sculpture is perhaps mythical. the various passages in praise of painting as compared not merely with sculpture but with poetry, are scattered among mss. of very different dates._ _besides, the way, in which the subject is discussed appears not to support the supposition, that these texts were prepared at a special request of the duke._ i. moral precepts for the student of painting. how to ascertain the dispositions for an artistic career. . a warning concerning youths wishing to be painters. many are they who have a taste and love for drawing, but no talent; and this will be discernible in boys who are not diligent and never finish their drawings with shading. the course of instruction for an artist ( - ). . the youth should first learn perspective, then the proportions of objects. then he may copy from some good master, to accustom himself to fine forms. then from nature, to confirm by practice the rules he has learnt. then see for a time the works of various masters. then get the habit of putting his art into practice and work. [footnote: the vatican copy and numerous abridgements all place this chapter at the beginning of the _trattato_, and in consequence dufresne and all subsequent editors have done the same. in the vatican copy however all the general considerations on the relation of painting to the other arts are placed first, as introductory.] . of the order of learning to draw. first draw from drawings by good masters done from works of art and from nature, and not from memory; then from plastic work, with the guidance of the drawing done from it; and then from good natural models and this you must put into practice. . precepts for drawing. the artist ought first to exercise his hand by copying drawings from the hand of a good master. and having acquired that practice, under the criticism of his master, he should next practise drawing objects in relief of a good style, following the rules which will presently be given. the study of the antique ( . ). . of drawing. which is best, to draw from nature or from the antique? and which is more difficult to do outlines or light and shade? . it is better to imitate [copy] the antique than modern work. [footnote , : these are the only two passages in which leonardo alludes to the importance of antique art in the training of an artist. the question asked in no. remains unanswered by him and it seems to me very doubtful whether the opinion stated in no. is to be regarded as a reply to it. this opinion stands in the ms. in a connection--as will be explained later on--which seems to require us to limit its application to a single special case. at any rate we may suspect that when leonardo put the question, he felt some hesitation as to the answer. among his very numerous drawings i have not been able to find a single study from the antique, though a drawing in black chalk, at windsor, of a man on horseback (pi. lxxiii) may perhaps be a reminiscence of the statue of marcus aurelius at rome. it seems to me that the drapery in a pen and ink drawing of a bust, also at windsor, has been borrowed from an antique model (pl. xxx). g. g. rossi has, i believe, correctly interpreted leonardo's feeling towards the antique in the following note on this passage in manzi's edition, p. : "sappiamo dalla storia, che i valorosi artisti toscani dell'età dell'oro dell'arte studiarono sugli antichi marmi raccolti dal magnifico lorenzo de' medici. pare che il vinci a tali monumenti non si accostasse. quest' uomo sempre riconosce per maestra la natura, e questo principio lo stringeva alla sola imitazione dì essa"--compare no. , -- footnote.] the necessity of anatomical knowledge ( . ). . of painting. it is indispensable to a painter who would be thoroughly familiar with the limbs in all the positions and actions of which they are capable, in the nude, to know the anatomy of the sinews, bones, muscles and tendons so that, in their various movements and exertions, he may know which nerve or muscle is the cause of each movement and show those only as prominent and thickened, and not the others all over [the limb], as many do who, to seem great draughtsmen, draw their nude figures looking like wood, devoid of grace; so that you would think you were looking at a sack of walnuts rather than the human form, or a bundle of radishes rather than the muscles of figures. . how it is necessary to a painter that he should know the intrinsic forms [structure] of man. the painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surround and support the said muscle. thus he will variously and constantly demonstrate the different muscles by means of the various attitudes of his figures, and will not do, as many who, in a variety of movements, still display the very same things [modelling] in the arms, back, breast and legs. and these things are not to be regarded as minor faults. how to acquire practice. . of study and the order of study. i say that first you ought to learn the limbs and their mechanism, and having this knowledge, their actions should come next, according to the circumstances in which they occur in man. and thirdly to compose subjects, the studies for which should be taken from natural actions and made from time to time, as circumstances allow; and pay attention to them in the streets and _piazze_ and fields, and note them down with a brief indication of the forms; [footnote : lines - explained by the lower portion of the sketch no. on pl. xxxi.] thus for a head make an o, and for an arm a straight or a bent line, and the same for the legs and the body, [footnote : lines - explained by the lower portion of the sketch no. on pl. xxxi.] and when you return home work out these notes in a complete form. the adversary says that to acquire practice and do a great deal of work it is better that the first period of study should be employed in drawing various compositions done on paper or on walls by divers masters, and that in this way practice is rapidly gained, and good methods; to which i reply that the method will be good, if it is based on works of good composition and by skilled masters. but since such masters are so rare that there are but few of them to be found, it is a surer way to go to natural objects, than to those which are imitated from nature with great deterioration, and so form bad methods; for he who can go to the fountain does not go to the water-jar. [footnote: this passage has been published by dr. m. jordan, _das malerbuck des l. da vinci_, p. ; his reading however varies slightly from mine.] industry and thoroughness the first conditions ( - .) . what rules should be given to boys learning to paint. we know for certain that sight is one of the most rapid actions we can perform. in an instant we see an infinite number of forms, still we only take in thoroughly one object at a time. supposing that you, reader, were to glance rapidly at the whole of this written page, you would instantly perceive that it was covered with various letters; but you could not, in the time, recognise what the letters were, nor what they were meant to tell. hence you would need to see them word by word, line by line to be able to understand the letters. again, if you wish to go to the top of a building you must go up step by step; otherwise it will be impossible that you should reach the top. thus i say to you, whom nature prompts to pursue this art, if you wish to have a sound knowledge of the forms of objects begin with the details of them, and do not go on to the second [step] till you have the first well fixed in memory and in practice. and if you do otherwise you will throw away your time, or certainly greatly prolong your studies. and remember to acquire diligence rather than rapidity. . how that diligence [accuracy] should first be learnt rather than rapid execution. if you, who draw, desire to study well and to good purpose, always go slowly to work in your drawing; and discriminate in. the lights, which have the highest degree of brightness, and to what extent and likewise in the shadows, which are those that are darker than the others and in what way they intermingle; then their masses and the relative proportions of one to the other. and note in their outlines, which way they tend; and which part of the lines is curved to one side or the other, and where they are more or less conspicuous and consequently broad or fine; and finally, that your light and shade blend without strokes and borders [but] looking like smoke. and when you have thus schooled your hand and your judgment by such diligence, you will acquire rapidity before you are aware. the artist's private life and choice of company ( - ). . of the life of the painter in the country. a painter needs such mathematics as belong to painting. and the absence of all companions who are alienated from his studies; his brain must be easily impressed by the variety of objects, which successively come before him, and also free from other cares [footnote : leonardo here seems to be speaking of his own method of work as displayed in his mss. and this passage explains, at least in part, the peculiarities in their arrangement.]. and if, when considering and defining one subject, a second subject intervenes--as happens when an object occupies the mind, then he must decide which of these cases is the more difficult to work out, and follow that up until it becomes quite clear, and then work out the explanation of the other [footnote : leonardo here seems to be speaking of his own method of work as displayed in his mss. and this passage explains, at least in part, the peculiarities in their arrangement.]. and above all he must keep his mind as clear as the surface of a mirror, which assumes colours as various as those of the different objects. and his companions should be like him as to their studies, and if such cannot be found he should keep his speculations to himself alone, so that at last he will find no more useful company [than his own]. [footnote: in the title line leonardo had originally written _del pictore filosofo_ (the philosophical painter), but he himself struck out_filosofo_. compare in no. _pictora notomista_ (anatomical painter). the original text is partly reproduced on pl. ci.] . of the life of the painter in his studio. to the end that well-being of the body may not injure that of the mind, the painter or draughtsman must remain solitary, and particularly when intent on those studies and reflections which will constantly rise up before his eye, giving materials to be well stored in the memory. while you are alone you are entirely your own [master] and if you have one companion you are but half your own, and the less so in proportion to the indiscretion of his behaviour. and if you have many companions you will fall deeper into the same trouble. if you should say: "i will go my own way and withdraw apart, the better to study the forms of natural objects", i tell you, you will not be able to help often listening to their chatter. and so, since one cannot serve two masters, you will badly fill the part of a companion, and carry out your studies of art even worse. and if you say: "i will withdraw so far that their words cannot reach me and they cannot disturb me", i can tell you that you will be thought mad. but, you see, you will at any rate be alone. and if you must have companions ship find it in your studio. this may assist you to have the advantages which arise from various speculations. all other company may be highly mischievous. the distribution of time for studying ( - ). . of whether it is better to draw with companions or not. i say and insist that drawing in company is much better than alone, for many reasons. the first is that you would be ashamed to be seen behindhand among the students, and such shame will lead you to careful study. secondly, a wholesome emulation will stimulate you to be among those who are more praised than yourself, and this praise of others will spur you on. another is that you can learn from the drawings of others who do better than yourself; and if you are better than they, you can profit by your contempt for their defects, while the praise of others will incite you to farther merits. [footnote: the contradiction by this passage of the foregoing chapter is only apparent. it is quite clear, from the nature of the reasoning which is here used to prove that it is more improving to work with others than to work alone, that the studies of pupils only are under consideration here.] . of studying, in the dark, when you wake, or in bed before you go to sleep. i myself have proved it to be of no small use, when in bed in the dark, to recall in fancy the external details of forms previously studied, or other noteworthy things conceived by subtle speculation; and this is certainly an admirable exercise, and useful for impressing things on the memory. . of the time for studying selection of subjects. winter evenings ought to be employed by young students in looking over the things prepared during the summer; that is, all the drawings from the nude done in the summer should be brought together and a choice made of the best [studies of] limbs and bodies among them, to apply in practice and commit to memory. of positions. after this in the following summer you should select some one who is well grown and who has not been brought up in doublets, and so may not be of stiff carriage, and make him go through a number of agile and graceful actions; and if his muscles do not show plainly within the outlines of his limbs that does not matter at all. it is enough that you can see good attitudes and you can correct [the drawing of] the limbs by those you studied in the winter. [footnote: an injunction to study in the evening occurs also in no. .] on the productive power of minor artists ( - ). . he is a poor disciple who does not excel his master. . nor is the painter praiseworthy who does but one thing well, as the nude figure, heads, draperies, animals, landscapes or other such details, irrespective of other work; for there can be no mind so inept, that after devoting itself to one single thing and doing it constantly, it should fail to do it well. [footnote: in manzi's edition (p. ) the painter g. g. bossi indignantly remarks on this passage. "_parla il vince in questo luogo come se tutti gli artisti avessero quella sublimita d'ingegno capace di abbracciare tutte le cose, di cui era egli dotato"_ and he then mentions the case of claude lorrain. but he overlooks the fact that in leonardo's time landscape painting made no pretensions to independence but was reckoned among the details (_particulari_, lines , ).] . that a painter is not admirable unless he is universal. some may distinctly assert that those persons are under a delusion who call that painter a good master who can do nothing well but a head or a figure. certainly this is no great achievement; after studying one single thing for a life-time who would not have attained some perfection in it? but, since we know that painting embraces and includes in itself every object produced by nature or resulting from the fortuitous actions of men, in short, all that the eye can see, he seems to me but a poor master who can only do a figure well. for do you not perceive how many and various actions are performed by men only; how many different animals there are, as well as trees, plants, flowers, with many mountainous regions and plains, springs and rivers, cities with public and private buildings, machines, too, fit for the purposes of men, divers costumes, decorations and arts? and all these things ought to be regarded as of equal importance and value, by the man who can be termed a good painter. . of the miserable pretences made by those who falsely and unworthily acquire the name of painters. now there is a certain race of painters who, having studied but little, must need take as their standard of beauty mere gold and azure, and these, with supreme conceit, declare that they will not give good work for miserable payment, and that they could do as well as any other if they were well paid. but, ye foolish folks! cannot such artists keep some good work, and then say: this is a costly work and this more moderate and this is average work and show that they can work at all prices? a caution against one-sided study. . how, in important works, a man should not trust entirely to his memory without condescending to draw from nature. any master who should venture to boast that he could remember all the forms and effects of nature would certainly appear to me to be graced with extreme ignorance, inasmuch as these effects are infinite and our memory is not extensive enough to retain them. hence, o! painter, beware lest the lust of gain should supplant in you the dignity of art; for the acquisition of glory is a much greater thing than the glory of riches. hence, for these and other reasons which might be given, first strive in drawing to represent your intention to the eye by expressive forms, and the idea originally formed in your imagination; then go on taking out or putting in, until you have satisfied yourself. then have living men, draped or nude, as you may have purposed in your work, and take care that in dimensions and size, as determined by perspective, nothing is left in the work which is not in harmony with reason and the effects in nature. and this will be the way to win honour in your art. how to acquire universality ( - ). . of variety in the figures. the painter should aim at universality, because there is a great want of self-respect in doing one thing well and another badly, as many do who study only the [rules of] measure and proportion in the nude figure and do not seek after variety; for a man may be well proportioned, or he may be fat and short, or tall and thin, or medium. and a painter who takes no account of these varieties always makes his figures on one pattern so that they might all be taken for brothers; and this is a defect that demands stern reprehension. . how something may be learnt everywhere. nature has beneficently provided that throughout the world you may find something to imitate. . of the means of acquiring universality. it is an easy matter to men to acquire universality, for all terrestrial animals resemble each other as to their limbs, that is in their muscles, sinews and bones; and they do not vary excepting in length or in thickness, as will be shown under anatomy. but then there are aquatic animals which are of great variety; i will not try to convince the painter that there is any rule for them for they are of infinite variety, and so is the insect tribe. . painting. the mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it. therefore you must know, oh painter! that you cannot be a good one if you are not the universal master of representing by your art every kind of form produced by nature. and this you will not know how to do if you do not see them, and retain them in your mind. hence as you go through the fields, turn your attention to various objects, and, in turn look now at this thing and now at that, collecting a store of divers facts selected and chosen from those of less value. but do not do like some painters who, when they are wearied with exercising their fancy dismiss their work from their thoughts and take exercise in walking for relaxation, but still keep fatigue in their mind which, though they see various objects [around them], does not apprehend them; but, even when they meet friends or relations and are saluted by them, although they see and hear them, take no more cognisance of them than if they had met so much empty air. useful games and exercises ( . ). . of games to be played by those who draw. when, oh draughtsmen, you desire to find relaxation in games you should always practise such things as may be of use in your profession, by giving your eye good practice in judging accurately of the breadth and length of objects. thus, to accustom your mind to such things, let one of you draw a straight line at random on a wall, and each of you, taking a blade of grass or of straw in his hand, try to cut it to the length that the line drawn appears to him to be, standing at a distance of braccia; then each one may go up to the line to measure the length he has judged it to be. and he who has come nearest with his measure to the length of the pattern is the best man, and the winner, and shall receive the prize you have settled beforehand. again you should take forshortened measures: that is take a spear, or any other cane or reed, and fix on a point at a certain distance; and let each one estimate how many times he judges that its length will go into that distance. again, who will draw best a line one braccio long, which shall be tested by a thread. and such games give occasion to good practice for the eye, which is of the first importance in painting. . a way of developing and arousing the mind to various inventions. i cannot forbear to mention among these precepts a new device for study which, although it may seem but trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to various inventions. and this is, when you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills in varied arrangement; or again you may see battles and figures in action; or strange faces and costumes, and an endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and well drawn forms. and these appear on such walls confusedly, like the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you choose to imagine. ii. the artist's studio.--instruments and helps for the application of perspective.--on judging of a picture. on the size of the studio. . small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it. on the construction of windows ( - ). . the larger the wall the less the light will be. . the different kinds of light afforded in cellars by various forms of windows. the least useful and the coldest is the window at _a_. the most useful, the lightest and warmest and most open to the sky is the window at _b_. the window at _c_ is of medium utility. [footnote: from a reference to the notes on the right light for painting it becomes evident that the observations made on cellar-windows have a direct bearing on the construction of the studio-window. in the diagram _b_ as well as in that under no. the window-opening is reduced to a minimum, but only, it would seem, in order to emphasize the advantage of walls constructed on the plan there shown.] . of the painter's window and its advantage. the painter who works from nature should have a window, which he can raise and lower. the reason is that sometimes you will want to finish a thing you are drawing, close to the light. let _a b c d_ be the chest on which the work may be raised or lowered, so that the work moves up and down and not the painter. and every evening you can let down the work and shut it up above so that in the evening it may be in the fashion of a chest which, when shut up, may serve the purpose of a bench. [footnote: see pl. xxxi, no. . in this plate the lines have unfortunately lost their sharpness, for the accidental loss of the negative has necessitated a reproduction from a positive. but having formerly published this sketch by another process, in von lutzow's _zeitschrift fur bildende kunst_ (vol. xvii, pg. ) i have reproduced it here in the text. the sharpness of the outline in the original sketch is here preserved but it gives it from the reversed side.] on the best light for painting ( - ). . which light is best for drawing from nature; whether high or low, or large or small, or strong and broad, or strong and small, or broad and weak or small and weak? [footnote: the question here put is unanswered in the original ms.] . of the quality of the light. a broad light high up and not too strong will render the details of objects very agreeable. . that the light for drawing from nature should be high up. the light for drawing from nature should come from the north in order that it may not vary. and if you have it from the south, keep the window screened with cloth, so that with the sun shining the whole day the light may not vary. the height of the light should be so arranged as that every object shall cast a shadow on the ground of the same length as itself. . the kind of light requisite for painting light and shade. an object will display the greatest difference of light and shade when it is seen in the strongest light, as by sunlight, or, at night, by the light of a fire. but this should not be much used in painting because the works remain crude and ungraceful. an object seen in a moderate light displays little difference in the light and shade; and this is the case towards evening or when the day is cloudy, and works then painted are tender and every kind of face becomes graceful. thus, in every thing extremes are to be avoided: too much light gives crudeness; too little prevents our seeing. the medium is best. of small lights. again, lights cast from a small window give strong differences of light and shade, all the more if the room lighted by it be large, and this is not good for painting. . painting. the luminous air which enters by passing through orifices in walls into dark rooms will render the place less dark in proportion as the opening cuts into the walls which surround and cover in the pavement. . of the quality of light. in proportion to the number of times that _a b_ goes into _c d_ will it be more luminous than _c d_. and similarly, in proportion as the point _e_ goes into _c d_ will it be more luminous than _c d;_ and this light is useful for carvers of delicate work. [footnote : for the same reason a window thus constructed would be convenient for an illuminator or a miniature painter.] [footnote: m. ravaisson in his edition of the paris ms. a remarks on this passage: _"la figure porte les lettres_ f _et_ g, _auxquelles rien ne renvoie dans l'explication; par consequent, cette explication est incomplete. la figure semblerait, d'ailleurs, se rapporter a l'effet de la reflexion par un miroir concave."_ so far as i can see the text is not imperfect, nor is the sense obscure. it is hardly necessary to observe that _c d_ here indicate the wall of the room opposite to the window _e_ and the semicircle described by _f g_ stands for the arch of the sky; this occurs in various diagrams, for example under . a similar semicircle, pl iii, no. (and compare no. ) is expressly called '_orizonte_' in writing.] . that the light should fall upon a picture from one window only. this may be seen in the case of objects in this form. if you want to represent a round ball at a certain height you must make it oval in this shape, and stand so far off as that by foreshortening it appears round. . of selecting the light which gives most grace to faces. if you should have a court yard that you can at pleasure cover with a linen awning that light will be good. or when you want to take a portrait do it in dull weather, or as evening falls, making the sitter stand with his back to one of the walls of the court yard. note in the streets, as evening falls, the faces of the men and women, and when the weather is dull, what softness and delicacy you may perceive in them. hence, oh painter! have a court arranged with the walls tinted black and a narrow roof projecting within the walls. it should be braccia wide and braccia long and braccia high and covered with a linen awning; or else paint a work towards evening or when it is cloudy or misty, and this is a perfect light. on various helps in preparing a picture ( - ). . to draw a nude figure from nature, or any thing else, hold in your hand a plumb-line to enable you to judge of the relative position of objects. . of drawing an object. when you draw take care to set up a principal line which you must observe all throughout the object you are drawing; every thing should bear relation to the direction of this principal line. . of a mode of drawing a place accurately. have a piece of glass as large as a half sheet of royal folio paper and set thus firmly in front of your eyes that is, between your eye and the thing you want to draw; then place yourself at a distance of / of a braccia from the glass fixing your head with a machine in such a way that you cannot move it at all. then shut or entirely cover one eye and with a brush or red chalk draw upon the glass that which you see beyond it; then trace it on paper from the glass, afterwards transfer it onto good paper, and paint it if you like, carefully attending to the arial perspective. how to learn to place your figures correctly. if you want to acquire a practice of good and correct attitudes for your figures, make a square frame or net, and square it out with thread; place this between your eye and the nude model you are drawing, and draw these same squares on the paper on which you mean to draw the figure, but very delicately. then place a pellet of wax on a spot of the net which will serve as a fixed point, which, whenever you look at your model, must cover the pit of the throat; or, if his back is turned, it may cover one of the vertebrae of the neck. thus these threads will guide you as to each part of the body which, in any given attitude will be found below the pit of the throat, or the angles of the shoulders, or the nipples, or hips and other parts of the body; and the transverse lines of the net will show you how much the figure is higher over the leg on which it is posed than over the other, and the same with the hips, and the knees and the feet. but always fix the net perpendicularly so that all the divisions that you see the model divided into by the net work correspond with your drawing of the model on the net work you have sketched. the squares you draw may be as much smaller than those of the net as you wish that your figure should be smaller than nature. afterwards remember when drawing figures, to use the rule of the corresponding proportions of the limbs as you have learnt it from the frame and net. this should be braccia and a half high and braccia wide; braccia distant from you and braccio from the model. [footnote: leonardo is commonly credited with the invention of the arrangement of a plate of glass commonly known as the "vertical plane." professor e. von brucke in his _"bruchstucke aus der theorie der bildenden kunste,"_ leipzig , pg. , writes on this contrivance. _"unsere glastafel ist die sogenannte glastafel des leonardo da vinci, die in gestalt einer glastafel vorgestellte bildflache."_] . a method of drawing an object in relief at night. place a sheet of not too transparent paper between the relievo and the light and you can draw thus very well. [footnote: bodies thus illuminated will show on the surface of the paper how the copyist has to distribute light and shade.] . if you want to represent a figure on a wall, the wall being foreshortened, while the figure is to appear in its proper form, and as standing free from the wall, you must proceed thus: have a thin plate of iron and make a small hole in the centre; this hole must be round. set a light close to it in such a position as that it shines through the central hole, then place any object or figure you please so close to the wall that it touches it and draw the outline of the shadow on the wall; then fill in the shade and add the lights; place the person who is to see it so that he looks through that same hole where at first the light was; and you will never be able to persuade yourself that the image is not detached from the wall. [footnote: _uno piccolo spiracelo nel mezzo_. m. ravaisson, in his edition of ms. a (paris), p. , reads _nel muro_--evidently a mistake for _nel mezzo_ which is quite plainly written; and he translates it _"fait lui une petite ouverture dans le mur,"_ adding in a note: _"les mots 'dans le mur' paraissent etre de trop. leonardo a du les ecrire par distraction"_ but _'nel mezzo'_ is clearly legible even on the photograph facsimile given by ravaisson himself, and the objection he raises disappears at once. it is not always wise or safe to try to prove our author's absence of mind or inadvertence by apparent difficulties in the sense or connection of the text.] . to draw a figure on a wall braccia high which shall look braccia high. if you wish to draw a figure or any other object to look braccia high you must do it in this way. first, on the surface _m r_ draw half the man you wish to represent; then the other half; then put on the vault _m n_ [the rest of] the figure spoken of above; first set out the vertical plane on the floor of a room of the same shape as the wall with the coved part on which you are to paint your figure. then, behind it, draw a figure set out in profile of whatever size you please, and draw lines from it to the point _f_ and, as these lines cut _m n_ on the vertical plane, so will the figure come on the wall, of which the vertical plane gives a likeness, and you will have all the [relative] heights and prominences of the figure. and the breadth or thickness which are on the upright wall _m n_ are to be drawn in their proper form, since, as the wall recedes the figure will be foreshortened by itself; but [that part of] the figure which goes into the cove you must foreshorten, as if it were standing upright; this diminution you must set out on a flat floor and there must stand the figure which is to be transferred from the vertical plane _r n_[footnote : _che leverai dalla pariete r n_. the letters refer to the larger sketch, no. on pl. xxxi.] in its real size and reduce it once more on a vertical plane; and this will be a good method [footnote : leonardo here says nothing as to how the image foreshortened by perspective and thus produced on the vertical plane is to be transferred to the wall; but from what is said in nos. and we may conclude that he was familiar with the process of casting the enlarged shadow of a squaring net on the surface of a wall to guide him in drawing the figure. _pariete di rilieuo; "sur une parai en relief"_ (ravaisson). _"auf einer schnittlinie zum aufrichten"_ (ludwig). the explanation of this puzzling expression must be sought in no. , lines - .]. [footnote: see pl. xxxi. . the second sketch, which in the plate is incomplete, is here reproduced and completed from the original to illustrate the text. in the original the larger diagram is placed between lines and . . . c. a. a; a has the similar heading: '_del cressciere della figura_', and the text begins: "_se voli fare a figura grande_ b c" but here it breaks off. the translation here given renders the meaning of the passage as i think it must be understood. the ms. is perfectly legible and the construction of the sentence is simple and clear; difficulties can only arise from the very fullness of the meaning, particularly towards the end of the passage.] . if you would to draw a cube in an angle of a wall, first draw the object in its own proper shape and raise it onto a vertical plane until it resembles the angle in which the said object is to be represented. . why are paintings seen more correctly in a mirror than out of it? . how the mirror is the master [and guide] of painters. when you want to see if your picture corresponds throughout with the objects you have drawn from nature, take a mirror and look in that at the reflection of the real things, and compare the reflected image with your picture, and consider whether the subject of the two images duly corresponds in both, particularly studying the mirror. you should take the mirror for your guide--that is to say a flat mirror--because on its surface the objects appear in many respects as in a painting. thus you see, in a painting done on a flat surface, objects which appear in relief, and in the mirror--also a flat surface--they look the same. the picture has one plane surface and the same with the mirror. the picture is intangible, in so far as that which appears round and prominent cannot be grasped in the hands; and it is the same with the mirror. and since you can see that the mirror, by means of outlines, shadows and lights, makes objects appear in relief, you, who have in your colours far stronger lights and shades than those in the mirror, can certainly, if you compose your picture well, make that also look like a natural scene reflected in a large mirror. [footnote: i understand the concluding lines of this passage as follows: if you draw the upper half a figure on a large sheet of paper laid out on the floor of a room (_sala be piana_) to the same scale (_con le sue vere grosseze_) as the lower half, already drawn upon the wall (lines , )you must then reduce them on a '_pariete di rilievo_,' a curved vertical plane which serves as a model to reproduce the form of the vault.] . of judging your own pictures. we know very well that errors are better recognised in the works of others than in our own; and that often, while reproving little faults in others, you may ignore great ones in yourself. to avoid such ignorance, in the first place make yourself a master of perspective, then acquire perfect knowledge of the proportions of men and other animals, and also, study good architecture, that is so far as concerns the forms of buildings and other objects which are on the face of the earth; these forms are infinite, and the better you know them the more admirable will your work be. and in cases where you lack experience do not shrink from drawing them from nature. but, to carry out my promise above [in the title]--i say that when you paint you should have a flat mirror and often look at your work as reflected in it, when you will see it reversed, and it will appear to you like some other painter's work, so you will be better able to judge of its faults than in any other way. again, it is well that you should often leave off work and take a little relaxation, because, when you come back to it you are a better judge; for sitting too close at work may greatly deceive you. again, it is good to retire to a distance because the work looks smaller and your eye takes in more of it at a glance and sees more easily the discords or disproportion in the limbs and colours of the objects. on the management of works ( . ). . of a method of learning well by heart. when you want to know a thing you have studied in your memory proceed in this way: when you have drawn the same thing so many times that you think you know it by heart, test it by drawing it without the model; but have the model traced on flat thin glass and lay this on the drawing you have made without the model, and note carefully where the tracing does not coincide with your drawing, and where you find you have gone wrong; and bear in mind not to repeat the same mistakes. then return to the model, and draw the part in which you were wrong again and again till you have it well in your mind. if you have no flat glass for tracing on, take some very thin kidts-kin parchment, well oiled and dried. and when you have used it for one drawing you can wash it clean with a sponge and make a second. . that a painter ought to be curious to hear the opinions of every one on his work. certainly while a man is painting he ought not to shrink from hearing every opinion. for we know very well that a man, though he may not be a painter, is familiar with the forms of other men and very capable of judging whether they are hump backed, or have one shoulder higher or lower than the other, or too big a mouth or nose, and other defects; and, as we know that men are competent to judge of the works of nature, how much more ought we to admit that they can judge of our errors; since you know how much a man may be deceived in his own work. and if you are not conscious of this in yourself study it in others and profit by their faults. therefore be curious to hear with patience the opinions of others, consider and weigh well whether those who find fault have ground or not for blame, and, if so amend; but, if not make as though you had not heard, or if he should be a man you esteem show him by argument the cause of his mistake. on the limitations of painting ( - ) . how in small objects errors are less evident than in large ones. in objects of minute size the extent of error is not so perceptible as in large ones; and the reason is that if this small object is a representation of a man or of some other animal, from the immense diminution the details cannot be worked out by the artist with the finish that is requisite. hence it is not actually complete; and, not being complete, its faults cannot be determined. for instance: look at a man at a distance of braccia and judge attentively whether he be handsome or ugly, or very remarkable or of ordinary appearance. you will find that with the utmost effort you cannot persuade yourself to decide. and the reason is that at such a distance the man is so much diminished that the character of the details cannot be determined. and if you wish to see how much this man is diminished [by distance] hold one of your fingers at a span's distance from your eye, and raise or lower it till the top joint touches the feet of the figure you are looking at, and you will see an incredible reduction. for this reason we often doubt as to the person of a friend at a distance. . why a painting can never appear detached as natural objects do. painters often fall into despair of imitating nature when they see their pictures fail in that relief and vividness which objects have that are seen in a mirror; while they allege that they have colours which for brightness or depth far exceed the strength of light and shade in the reflections in the mirror, thus displaying their own ignorance rather than the real cause, because they do not know it. it is impossible that painted objects should appear in such relief as to resemble those reflected in the mirror, although both are seen on a flat surface, unless they are seen with only one eye; and the reason is that two eyes see one object behind another as _a_ and _b_ see _m_ and _n_. _m_ cannot exactly occupy [the space of] _n_ because the base of the visual lines is so broad that the second body is seen beyond the first. but if you close one eye, as at _s_ the body _f_ will conceal _r_, because the line of sight proceeds from a single point and makes its base in the first body, whence the second, of the same size, can never be seen. [footnote: this passage contains the solution of the problem proposed in no. , lines - . leonardo was evidently familiar with the law of optics on which the construction of the stereoscope depends. compare e. von brucke, _bruchstucke aus der theorie der bildenden kunste_, pg. : "_schon leonardo da vinci wusste, dass ein noch so gut gemaltes bild nie den vollen eindruck der korperlichkeit geben kann, wie ihn die natur selbst giebt. er erklart dies auch in kap. liii und kap. cccxli_ (ed. du fresne) _des_ 'trattato' _in sachgemasser weise aus dem sehen mit beiden augen_." chap. of du fresne's edition corresponds to no. of this work.] . why of two objects of equal size a painted one will look larger than a solid one. the reason of this is not so easy to demonstrate as many others. still i will endeavour to accomplish it, if not wholly, at any rate in part. the perspective of diminution demonstrates by reason, that objects diminish in proportion as they are farther from the eye, and this reasoning is confirmed by experience. hence, the lines of sight that extend between the object and the eye, when they are directed to the surface of a painting are all intersected at uniform limits, while those lines which are directed towards a piece of sculpture are intersected at various limits and are of various lengths. the lines which are longest extend to a more remote limb than the others and therefore that limb looks smaller. as there are numerous lines each longer than the others--since there are numerous parts, each more remote than the others and these, being farther off, necessarily appear smaller, and by appearing smaller it follows that their diminution makes the whole mass of the object look smaller. but this does not occur in painting; since the lines of sight all end at the same distance there can be no diminution, hence the parts not being diminished the whole object is undiminished, and for this reason painting does not diminish, as a piece of sculpture does. on the choice of a position ( - ) . how high the point of sight should be placed. the point of sight must be at the level of the eye of an ordinary man, and the farthest limit of the plain where it touches the sky must be placed at the level of that line where the earth and sky meet; excepting mountains, which are independent of it. . of the way to draw figures for historical pictures. the painter must always study on the wall on which he is to picture a story the height of the position where he wishes to arrange his figures; and when drawing his studies for them from nature he must place himself with his eye as much below the object he is drawing as, in the picture, it will have to be above the eye of the spectator. otherwise the work will look wrong. the apparent size of figures in a picture ( - ) . of placing a figure in the foreground of a historical picture. you must make the foremost figure in the picture less than the size of nature in proportion to the number of braccia at which you place it from the front line, and make the others in proportion by the above rule. . perspective. you are asked, o painter, why the figures you draw on a small scale according to the laws of perspective do not appear--notwithstanding the demonstration of distance--as large as real ones--their height being the same as in those painted on the wall. and why [painted] objects seen at a small distance appear larger than the real ones? the right position of the artist, when painting, and of the spectator ( - ) . of painting. when you draw from nature stand at a distance of times the height of the object you wish to draw. . of drawing from relief. in drawing from the round the draughtsman should so place himself that the eye of the figure he is drawing is on a level with his own. this should be done with any head he may have to represent from nature because, without exception, the figures or persons you meet in the streets have their eyes on the same level as your own; and if you place them higher or lower you will see that your drawing will not be true. . why groups of figures one above another are to be avoided. the universal practice which painters adopt on the walls of chapels is greatly and reasonably to be condemned. inasmuch as they represent one historical subject on one level with a landscape and buildings, and then go up a step and paint another, varying the point [of sight], and then a third and a fourth, in such a way as that on one wall there are points of sight, which is supreme folly in such painters. we know that the point of sight is opposite the eye of the spectator of the scene; and if you would [have me] tell you how to represent the life of a saint divided into several pictures on one and the same wall, i answer that you must set out the foreground with its point of sight on a level with the eye of the spectator of the scene, and upon this plane represent the more important part of the story large and then, diminishing by degrees the figures, and the buildings on various hills and open spaces, you can represent all the events of the history. and on the remainder of the wall up to the top put trees, large as compared with the figures, or angels if they are appropriate to the story, or birds or clouds or similar objects; otherwise do not trouble yourself with it for your whole work will be wrong. . a picture of objects in perspective will look more lifelike when seen from the point from which the objects were drawn. if you want to represent an object near to you which is to have the effect of nature, it is impossible that your perspective should not look wrong, with every false relation and disagreement of proportion that can be imagined in a wretched work, unless the spectator, when he looks at it, has his eye at the very distance and height and direction where the eye or the point of sight was placed in doing this perspective. hence it would be necessary to make a window, or rather a hole, of the size of your face through which you can look at the work; and if you do this, beyond all doubt your work, if it is correct as to light and shade, will have the effect of nature; nay you will hardly persuade yourself that those objects are painted; otherwise do not trouble yourself about it, unless indeed you make your view at least times as far off as the greatest width or height of the objects represented, and this will satisfy any spectator placed anywhere opposite to the picture. if you want the proof briefly shown, take a piece of wood in the form of a little column, eight times as high as it is thick, like a column without any plinth or capital; then mark off on a flat wall equal spaces, equal to its width so that between them they make columns resembling your little column; you then must fix, opposite the centre space, and at braccia from the wall, a thin strip of iron with a small round hole in the middle about as large as a big pearl. close to this hole place a light touching it. then place your column against each mark on the wall and draw the outline of its shadow; afterwards shade it and look through the hole in the iron plate. [footnote: in the original there is a wide space between lines and in which we find two sketches not belonging to the text. it is unnecessary to give prominence to the points in which my reading differs from that of m. ravaisson or to justify myself, since they are all of secondary importance and can also be immediately verified from the photograph facsimile in his edition.] . a diminished object should be seen from the same distance, height and direction as the point of sight of your eye, or else your knowledge will produce no good effect. and if you will not, or cannot, act on this principle--because as the plane on which you paint is to be seen by several persons you would need several points of sight which would make it look discordant and wrong--place yourself at a distance of at least times the size of the objects. the lesser fault you can fall into then, will be that of representing all the objects in the foreground of their proper size, and on whichever side you are standing the objects thus seen will diminish themselves while the spaces between them will have no definite ratio. for, if you place yourself in the middle of a straight row [of objects], and look at several columns arranged in a line you will see, beyond a few columns separated by intervals, that the columns touch; and beyond where they touch they cover each other, till the last column projects but very little beyond the last but one. thus the spaces between the columns are by degrees entirely lost. so, if your method of perspective is good, it will produce the same effect; this effect results from standing near the line in which the columns are placed. this method is not satisfactory unless the objects seen are viewed from a small hole, in the middle of which is your point of sight; but if you proceed thus your work will be perfect and will deceive the beholder, who will see the columns as they are here figured. here the eye is in the middle, at the point _a_ and near to the columns. [footnote: the diagram which stands above this chapter in the original with the note belonging to it: "a b _e la ripruova_" (_a b_ is the proof) has obviously no connection with the text. the second sketch alone is reproduced and stands in the original between lines and .] . if you cannot arrange that those who look at your work should stand at one particular point, when constructing your work, stand back until your eye is at least times as far off as the greatest height and width of your work. this will make so little difference when the eye of the spectator moves, that it will be hardly appreciable, and it will look very good. if the point of sight is at _t_ you would make the figures on the circle _d b e_ all of one size, as each of them bears the same relation to the point _t_. but consider the diagram given below and you will see that this is wrong, and why i shall make _b_ smaller than _d e_ [footnote : the second diagram of this chapter stands in the original between lines and .]. it is easy to understand that if objects equal to each other are placed side by side the one at braccia distance looks smaller than that placed at braccia. this however is rather theoretical than for practice, because you stand close by [footnote : instead of '_se preso_' (=_sie presso_) m. ravaisson reads '_sempre se_' which gives rise to the unmeaning rendering: '_parceque toujours_ ...']. all the objects in the foreground, whether large or small, are to be drawn of their proper size, and if you see them from a distance they will appear just as they ought, and if you see them close they will diminish of themselves. [footnote : compare no. line .] take care that the vertical plan on which you work out the perspective of the objects seen is of the same form as the wall on which the work is to be executed. . of painting. the size of the figures represented ought to show you the distance they are seen from. if you see a figure as large as nature you know it appears to be close to the eye. . where a spectator should stand to look at a picture. supposing _a b_ to be the picture and _d_ to be the light, i say that if you place yourself between _c_ and _e_ you will not understand the picture well and particularly if it is done in oils, or still more if it is varnished, because it will be lustrous and somewhat of the nature of a mirror. and for this reason the nearer you go towards the point _c_, the less you will see, because the rays of light falling from the window on the picture are reflected to that point. but if you place yourself between _e_ and _d_ you will get a good view of it, and the more so as you approach the point _d_, because that spot is least exposed to these reflected rays of light. iii. the practical methods of light and shade and aerial perspective. gradations of light and shade. . of painting: of the darkness of the shadows, or i may say, the brightness of the lights. although practical painters attribute to all shaded objects--trees, fields, hair, beards and skin--four degrees of darkness in each colour they use: that is to say first a dark foundation, secondly a spot of colour somewhat resembling the form of the details, thirdly a somewhat brighter and more defined portion, fourthly the lights which are more conspicuous than other parts of the figure; still to me it appears that these gradations are infinite upon a continuous surface which is in itself infinitely divisible, and i prove it thus:--[footnote : see pl. xxxi, no. ; the two upper sketches.] let _a g_ be a continuous surface and let _d_ be the light which illuminates it; i say--by the th [proposition] which says that that side of an illuminated body is most highly lighted which is nearest to the source of light--that therefore _g_ must be darker than _c_ in proportion as the line _d g_ is longer than the line _d c_, and consequently that these gradations of light--or rather of shadow, are not only, but may be conceived of as infinite, because _c d_ is a continuous surface and every continuous surface is infinitely divisible; hence the varieties in the length of lines extending between the light and the illuminated object are infinite, and the proportion of the light will be the same as that of the length of the lines between them; extending from the centre of the luminous body to the surface of the illuminated object. on the choice of light for a picture ( - ). . how the painter must place himself with reference to the light, to give the effect of relief. let _a b_ be the window, _m_ the point of light. i say that on whichever side the painter places himself he will be well placed if only his eye is between the shaded and the illuminated portions of the object he is drawing; and this place you will find by putting yourself between the point _m_ and the division between the shadow and the light on the object to be drawn. . that shadows cast by a particular light should be avoided, because they are equally strong at the ends and at the beginning. the shadows cast by the sun or any other particular light have not a pleasing effect on the body to which they belong, because the parts remain confuse, being divided by distinct outlines of light and shade. and the shadows are of equal strength at the end and at the beginning. . how light should be thrown upon figures. the light must be arranged in accordance with the natural conditions under which you wish to represent your figures: that is, if you represent them in the sunshine make the shadows dark with large spaces of light, and mark their shadows and those of all the surrounding objects strongly on the ground. and if you represent them as in dull weather give little difference of light and shade, without any shadows at their feet. if you represent them as within doors, make a strong difference between the lights and shadows, with shadows on the ground. if the window is screened and the walls white, there will be little difference of light. if it is lighted by firelight make the high lights ruddy and strong, and the shadows dark, and those cast on the walls and on the floor will be clearly defined and the farther they are from the body the broader and longer will they be. if the light is partly from the fire and partly from the outer day, that of day will be the stronger and that of the fire almost as red as fire itself. above all see that the figures you paint are broadly lighted and from above, that is to say all living persons that you paint; for you will see that all the people you meet out in the street are lighted from above, and you must know that if you saw your most intimate friend with a light [on his face] from below you would find it difficult to recognise him. . of helping the apparent relief of a picture by giving it artificial light and shade. to increase relief of a picture you may place, between your figure and the solid object on which its shadow falls, a line of bright light, dividing the figure from the object in shadow. and on the same object you shall represent two light parts which will surround the shadow cast upon the wall by the figure placed opposite [ ]; and do this frequently with the limbs which you wish should stand out somewhat from the body they belong to; particularly when the arms cross the front of the breast show, between the shadow cast by the arms on the breast and the shadow on the arms themselves, a little light seeming to fall through a space between the breast and the arms; and the more you wish the arm to look detached from the breast the broader you must make the light; always contrive also to arrange the figures against the background in such a way as that the parts in shadow are against a light background and the illuminated portions against a dark background. [footnote : compare the two diagrams under no. .] . of situation. remember [to note] the situation of your figures; for the light and shade will be one thing if the object is in a dark place with a particular light, and another thing if it is in a light place with direct sunlight; one thing in a dark place with a diffused evening light or a cloudy sky, and another in the diffused light of the atmosphere lighted by the sun. . of the judgment to be made of a painter's work. first you must consider whether the figures have the relief required by their situation and the light which illuminates them; for the shadows should not be the same at the extreme ends of the composition as in the middle, because it is one thing when figures are surrounded by shadows and another when they have shadows only on one side. those which are in the middle of the picture are surrounded by shadows, because they are shaded by the figures which stand between them and the light. and those are lighted on one side only which stand between the principal group and the light, because where they do not look towards the light they face the group and the darkness of the group is thrown on them: and where they do not face the group they face the brilliant light and it is their own darkness shadowing them, which appears there. in the second place observe the distribution or arrangement of figures, and whether they are distributed appropriately to the circumstances of the story. thirdly, whether the figures are actively intent on their particular business. . of the treatment of the lights. first give a general shadow to the whole of that extended part which is away from the light. then put in the half shadows and the strong shadows, comparing them with each other and, in the same way give the extended light in half tint, afterwards adding the half lights and the high lights, likewise comparing them together. the distribution of light and shade ( - ) . of shadows on bodies. when you represent the dark shadows in bodies in light and shade, always show the cause of the shadow, and the same with reflections; because the dark shadows are produced by dark objects and the reflections by objects only moderately lighted, that is with diminished light. and there is the same proportion between the highly lighted part of a body and the part lighted by a reflection as between the origin of the lights on the body and the origin of the reflections. . of lights and shadows. i must remind you to take care that every portion of a body, and every smallest detail which is ever so little in relief, must be given its proper importance as to light and shade. . of the way to make the shadow on figures correspond to the light and to [the colour] of the body. when you draw a figure and you wish to see whether the shadow is the proper complement to the light, and neither redder nor yellower than is the nature of the colour you wish to represent in shade, proceed thus. cast a shadow with your finger on the illuminated portion, and if the accidental shadow that you have made is like the natural shadow cast by your finger on your work, well and good; and by putting your finger nearer or farther off, you can make darker or lighter shadows, which you must compare with your own. . of surrounding bodies by various forms of shadow. take care that the shadows cast upon the surface of the bodies by different objects must undulate according to the various curves of the limbs which cast the shadows, and of the objects on which they are cast. the juxtaposition of light and shade ( , ). . on painting. the comparison of the various qualities of shadows and lights not infrequently seems ambiguous and confused to the painter who desires to imitate and copy the objects he sees. the reason is this: if you see a white drapery side by side with a black one, that part of the white drapery which lies against the black one will certainly look much whiter than the part which lies against something whiter than itself. [footnote: it is evident from this that so early as in leonardo's writing in perspective was so far advanced that he could quote his own statements.--as bearing on this subject compare what is said in no. .] and the reason of this is shown in my [book on] perspective. . of shadows. where a shadow ends in the light, note carefully where it is paler or deeper and where it is more or less indistinct towards the light; and, above all, in [painting] youthful figures i remind you not to make the shadow end like a stone, because flesh has a certain transparency, as may be seen by looking at a hand held between the eye and the sun, which shines through it ruddy and bright. place the most highly coloured part between the light and shadow. and to see what shadow tint is needed on the flesh, cast a shadow on it with your finger, and according as you wish to see it lighter or darker hold your finger nearer to or farther from your picture, and copy that [shadow]. on the lighting of the background ( - ). . of the backgrounds for painted figures. the ground which surrounds the forms of any object you paint should be darker than the high lights of those figures, and lighter than their shadowed part: &c. . of the background that the painter should adopt in his works. since experience shows us that all bodies are surrounded by light and shade it is necessary that you, o painter, should so arrange that the side which is in light shall terminate against a dark body and likewise that the shadow side shall terminate against a light body. and by [following] this rule you will add greatly to the relief of your figures. . a most important part of painting consists in the backgrounds of the objects represented; against these backgrounds the outlines of those natural objects which are convex are always visible, and also the forms of these bodies against the background, even though the colours of the bodies should be the same as that of the background. this is caused by the convex edges of the objects not being illuminated in the same way as, by the same light, the background is illuminated, since these edges will often be lighter or darker than the background. but if the edge is of the same colour as the background, beyond a doubt it will in that part of the picture interfere with your perception of the outline, and such a choice in a picture ought to be rejected by the judgment of good painters, inasmuch as the purpose of the painter is to make his figures appear detached from the background; while in the case here described the contrary occurs, not only in the picture, but in the objects themselves. . that you ought, when representing objects above the eye and on one side--if you wish them to look detached from the wall--to show, between the shadow on the object and the shadow it casts a middle light, so that the body will appear to stand away from the wall. on the lighting of white objects. . how white bodies should be represented. if you are representing a white body let it be surrounded by ample space, because as white has no colour of its own, it is tinged and altered in some degree by the colour of the objects surrounding it. if you see a woman dressed in white in the midst of a landscape, that side which is towards the sun is bright in colour, so much so that in some portions it will dazzle the eyes like the sun itself; and the side which is towards the atmosphere,--luminous through being interwoven with the sun's rays and penetrated by them--since the atmosphere itself is blue, that side of the woman's figure will appear steeped in blue. if the surface of the ground about her be meadows and if she be standing between a field lighted up by the sun and the sun itself, you will see every portion of those folds which are towards the meadow tinged by the reflected rays with the colour of that meadow. thus the white is transmuted into the colours of the luminous and of the non-luminous objects near it. the methods of aerial ( -- ). . why faces [seen] at a distance look dark. we see quite plainly that all the images of visible objects that lie before us, whether large or small, reach our sense by the minute aperture of the eye; and if, through so small a passage the image can pass of the vast extent of sky and earth, the face of a man--being by comparison with such large images almost nothing by reason of the distance which diminishes it,--fills up so little of the eye that it is indistinguishable. having, also, to be transmitted from the surface to the sense through a dark medium, that is to say the crystalline lens which looks dark, this image, not being strong in colour becomes affected by this darkness on its passage, and on reaching the sense it appears dark; no other reason can in any way be assigned. if the point in the eye is black, it is because it is full of a transparent humour as clear as air and acts like a perforation in a board; on looking into it it appears dark and the objects seen through the bright air and a dark one become confused in this darkness. why a man seen at a certain distance is not recognisable. the perspective of diminution shows us that the farther away an object is the smaller it looks. if you look at a man at a distance from you of an arrow's flight, and hold the eye of a small needle close to your own eye, you can see through it several men whose images are transmitted to the eye and will all be comprised within the size of the needle's eye; hence, if the man who is at the distance of an arrow's flight can send his whole image to your eye, occupying only a small space in the needle's eye how can you [expect] in so small a figure to distinguish or see the nose or mouth or any detail of his person? and, not seeing these you cannot recognise the man, since these features, which he does not show, are what give men different aspects. . the reason why small figures should not be made finished. i say that the reason that objects appear diminished in size is because they are remote from the eye; this being the case it is evident that there must be a great extent of atmosphere between the eye and the objects, and this air interferes with the distinctness of the forms of the object. hence the minute details of these objects will be indistinguishable and unrecognisable. therefore, o painter, make your smaller figures merely indicated and not highly finished, otherwise you will produce effects the opposite to nature, your supreme guide. the object is small by reason of the great distance between it and the eye, this great distance is filled with air, that mass of air forms a dense body which intervenes and prevents the eye seeing the minute details of objects. . whenever a figure is placed at a considerable distance you lose first the distinctness of the smallest parts; while the larger parts are left to the last, losing all distinctness of detail and outline; and what remains is an oval or spherical figure with confused edges. . of painting. the density of a body of smoke looks white below the horizon while above the horizon it is dark, even if the smoke is in itself of a uniform colour, this uniformity will vary according to the variety in the ground on which it is seen. iv. of portrait and figure painting. of sketching figures and portraits ( - ). . of the way to learn to compose figures [in groups] in historical pictures. when you have well learnt perspective and have by heart the parts and forms of objects, you must go about, and constantly, as you go, observe, note and consider the circumstances and behaviour of men in talking, quarrelling or laughing or fighting together: the action of the men themselves and the actions of the bystanders, who separate them or who look on. and take a note of them with slight strokes thus, in a little book which you should always carry with you. and it should be of tinted paper, that it may not be rubbed out, but change the old [when full] for a new one; since these things should not be rubbed out but preserved with great care; for the forms, and positions of objects are so infinite that the memory is incapable of retaining them, wherefore keep these [sketches] as your guides and masters. [footnote: among leonardo's numerous note books of pocket size not one has coloured paper, so no sketches answering to this description can be pointed out. the fact that most of the notes are written in ink, militates against the supposition that they were made in the open air.] . of a method of keeping in mind the form of a face. if you want to acquire facility for bearing in mind the expression of a face, first make yourself familiar with a variety of [forms of] several heads, eyes, noses, mouths, chins and cheeks and necks and shoulders: and to put a case: noses are of types: straight, bulbous, hollow, prominent above or below the middle, aquiline, regular, flat, round or pointed. these hold good as to profile. in full face they are of types; these are equal thick in the middle, thin in the middle, with the tip thick and the root narrow, or narrow at the tip and wide at the root; with the nostrils wide or narrow, high or low, and the openings wide or hidden by the point; and you will find an equal variety in the other details; which things you must draw from nature and fix them in your mind. or else, when you have to draw a face by heart, carry with you a little book in which you have noted such features; and when you have cast a glance at the face of the person you wish to draw, you can look, in private, which nose or mouth is most like, or there make a little mark to recognise it again at home. of grotesque faces i need say nothing, because they are kept in mind without difficulty. the position of the head. . how you should set to work to draw a head of which all the parts shall agree with the position given to it. to draw a head in which the features shall agree with the turn and bend of the head, pursue this method. you know that the eyes, eyebrows, nostrils, corners of the mouth, and sides of the chin, the jaws, cheeks, ears and all the parts of a face are squarely and straightly set upon the face. [footnote: compare the drawings and the text belonging to them on pl. ix. (no. ), pl. x (no. ), pl. xl (no. ) and pl. xii. (no. ).] therefore when you have sketched the face draw lines passing from one corner of the eye to the other; and so for the placing of each feature; and after having drawn the ends of the lines beyond the two sides of the face, look if the spaces inside the same parallel lines on the right and on the left are equal [ ]. but be sure to remember to make these lines tend to the point of sight. [footnote: see pl. xxxi, no. , the slight sketch on the left hand side. the text of this passage is written by the side of it. in this sketch the lines seem intentionally incorrect and converging to the right (compare i. ) instead of parallel. compare too with this text the drawing in red chalk from windsor castle which is reproduced on pl. xl, no. .] of the light on the face ( - ). . how to know which side of an object is to be more or less luminous than the other. let _f_ be the light, the head will be the object illuminated by it and that side of the head on which the rays fall most directly will be the most highly lighted, and those parts on which the rays fall most aslant will be less lighted. the light falls as a blow might, since a blow which falls perpendicularly falls with the greatest force, and when it falls obliquely it is less forcible than the former in proportion to the width of the angle. _exempli gratia_ if you throw a ball at a wall of which the extremities are equally far from you the blow will fall straight, and if you throw the ball at the wall when standing at one end of it the ball will hit it obliquely and the blow will not tell. [footnote: see pl. xxxi. no. ; the sketch on the right hand side.] . the proof and reason why among the illuminated parts certain portions are in higher light than others. since it is proved that every definite light is, or seems to be, derived from one single point the side illuminated by it will have its highest light on the portion where the line of radiance falls perpendicularly; as is shown above in the lines _a g_, and also in _a h_ and in _l a_; and that portion of the illuminated side will be least luminous, where the line of incidence strikes it between two more dissimilar angles, as is seen at _b c d_. and by this means you may also know which parts are deprived of light as is seen at _m k_. where the angles made by the lines of incidence are most equal there will be the highest light, and where they are most unequal it will be darkest. i will make further mention of the reason of reflections. [footnote: see pl. xxxii. the text, here given complete, is on the right hand side. the small circles above the beginning of lines and as well as the circle above the text on pl. xxxi, are in a paler ink and evidently added by a later hand in order to distinguish the text as belonging to the _libro di pittura_ (see prolegomena. no. , p. ). the text on the left hand side of this page is given as nos. and .] . where the shadow should be on the face. general suggestions for historical pictures ( - ). . when you compose a historical picture take two points, one the point of sight, and the other the source of light; and make this as distant as possible. . historical pictures ought not to be crowded and confused with too many figures. . precepts in painting. let you sketches of historical pictures be swift and the working out of the limbs not be carried too far, but limited to the position of the limbs, which you can afterwards finish as you please and at your leisure. [footnote: see pl. xxxviii, no. . the pen and ink drawing given there as no. may also be compared with this passage. it is in the windsor collection where it is numbered .] . the sorest misfortune is when your views are in advance of your work. . of composing historical pictures. of not considering the limbs in the figures in historical pictures; as many do who, in the wish to represent the whole of a figure, spoil their compositions. and when you place one figure behind another take care to draw the whole of it so that the limbs which come in front of the nearer figures may stand out in their natural size and place. how to represent the differences of age and sex ( - ). . how the ages of man should be depicted: that is, infancy, childhood, youth, manhood, old age, decrepitude. [footnote: no answer is here given to this question, in the original ms.] . old men ought to be represented with slow and heavy movements, their legs bent at the knees, when they stand still, and their feet placed parallel and apart; bending low with the head leaning forward, and their arms but little extended. women must be represented in modest attitudes, their legs close together, their arms closely folded, their heads inclined and somewhat on one side. old women should be represented with eager, swift and furious gestures, like infernal furies; but the action should be more violent in their arms and head than in their legs. little children, with lively and contorted movements when sitting, and, when standing still, in shy and timid attitudes. [footnote: _bracci raccolte_. compare pl. xxxiii. this drawing, in silver point on yellowish tinted paper, the lights heightened with white, represents two female hands laid together in a lap. above is a third finished study of a right hand, apparently holding a veil from the head across the bosom. this drawing evidently dates from before and was very probably done at florence, perhaps as a preparatory study for some picture. the type of hand with its slender thin forms is more like the style of the _vierge aux rochers_ in the louvre than any later works--as the mona lisa for instance.] of representing the emotions. . that a figure is not admirable unless it expresses by its action the passion of its sentiment. that figure is most admirable which by its actions best expresses the passion that animates it. how an angry man is to be figured. you must make an angry person holding someone by the hair, wrenching his head against the ground, and with one knee on his ribs; his right arm and fist raised on high. his hair must be thrown up, his brow downcast and knit, his teeth clenched and the two corners of his mouth grimly set; his neck swelled and bent forward as he leans over his foe, and full of furrows. how to represent a man in despair. you must show a man in despair with a knife, having already torn open his garments, and with one hand tearing open the wound. and make him standing on his feet and his legs somewhat bent and his whole person leaning towards the earth; his hair flying in disorder. of representing imaginary animals. . how you should make an imaginary animal look natural. you know that you cannot invent animals without limbs, each of which, in itself, must resemble those of some other animal. hence if you wish to make an animal, imagined by you, appear natural--let us say a dragon, take for its head that of a mastiff or hound, with the eyes of a cat, the ears of a porcupine, the nose of a greyhound, the brow of a lion, the temples of an old cock, the neck of a water tortoise. [footnote: the sketch here inserted of two men on horseback fighting a dragon is the facsimile of a pen and ink drawing belonging to baron edmond de rothschild of paris.] the selection of forms. . of the delusions which arise in judging of the limbs. a painter who has clumsy hands will paint similar hands in his works, and the same will occur with any limb, unless long study has taught him to avoid it. therefore, o painter, look carefully what part is most ill-favoured in your own person and take particular pains to correct it in your studies. for if you are coarse, your figures will seem the same and devoid of charm; and it is the same with any part that may be good or poor in yourself; it will be shown in some degree in your figures. . of the selection of beautiful faces. it seems to me to be no small charm in a painter when he gives his figures a pleasing air, and this grace, if he have it not by nature, he may acquire by incidental study in this way: look about you and take the best parts of many beautiful faces, of which the beauty is confirmed rather by public fame than by your own judgment; for you might be mistaken and choose faces which have some resemblance to your own. for it would seem that such resemblances often please us; and if you should be ugly, you would select faces that were not beautiful and you would then make ugly faces, as many painters do. for often a master's work resembles himself. so select beauties as i tell you, and fix them in your mind. . of the limbs, which ought to be carefully selected, and of all the other parts with regard to painting. . when selecting figures you should choose slender ones rather than lean and wooden ones. . of the muscles of animals. the hollow spaces interposed between the muscles must not be of such a character as that the skin should seem to cover two sticks laid side by side like _c_, nor should they seem like two sticks somewhat remote from such contact so that the skin hangs in an empty loose curve as at _f_; but it should be like _i_, laid over the spongy fat that lies in the angles as the angle _n m o_; which angle is formed by the contact of the ends of the muscles and as the skin cannot fold down into such an angle, nature has filled up such angles with a small quantity of spongy and, as i may say, vesicular fat, with minute bladders [in it] full of air, which is condensed or rarefied in them according to the increase or the diminution of the substance of the muscles; in which latter case the concavity _i_ always has a larger curve than the muscle. . of undulating movements and equipoise in figures and other animals. when representing a human figure or some graceful animal, be careful to avoid a wooden stiffness; that is to say make them move with equipoise and balance so as not to look like a piece of wood; but those you want to represent as strong you must not make so, excepting in the turn of the head. how to pose figures. . of grace in the limbs. the limbs should be adapted to the body with grace and with reference to the effect that you wish the figure to produce. and if you wish to produce a figure that shall of itself look light and graceful you must make the limbs elegant and extended, and without too much display of the muscles; and those few that are needed for your purpose you must indicate softly, that is, not very prominent and without strong shadows; the limbs, and particularly the arms easy; that is, none of the limbs should be in a straight line with the adjoining parts. and if the hips, which are the pole of a man, are by reason of his position, placed so, that the right is higher than the left, make the point of the higher shoulder in a perpendicular line above the highest prominence of the hip, and let this right shoulder be lower than the left. let the pit of the throat always be over the centre of the joint of the foot on which the man is leaning. the leg which is free should have the knee lower than the other, and near the other leg. the positions of the head and arms are endless and i shall therefore not enlarge on any rules for them. still, let them be easy and pleasing, with various turns and twists, and the joints gracefully bent, that they may not look like pieces of wood. of appropriate gestures ( - ). . a picture or representation of human figures, ought to be done in such a way as that the spectator may easily recognise, by means of their attitudes, the purpose in their minds. thus, if you have to represent a man of noble character in the act of speaking, let his gestures be such as naturally accompany good words; and, in the same way, if you wish to depict a man of a brutal nature, give him fierce movements; as with his arms flung out towards the listener, and his head and breast thrust forward beyond his feet, as if following the speaker's hands. thus it is with a deaf and dumb person who, when he sees two men in conversation--although he is deprived of hearing--can nevertheless understand, from the attitudes and gestures of the speakers, the nature of their discussion. i once saw in florence a man who had become deaf who, when you spoke very loud did not understand you, but if you spoke gently and without making any sound, understood merely from the movement of the lips. now perhaps you will say that the lips of a man who speaks loudly do not move like those of one speaking softly, and that if they were to move them alike they would be alike understood. as to this argument, i leave the decision to experiment; make a man speak to you gently and note [the motion of] his lips. [footnote: the first ten lines of this text have already been published, but with a slightly different reading by dr. m. jordan: _das malerbuch leonardo da vinci's_ p. .] . of representing a man speaking to a multitude. when you wish to represent a man speaking to a number of people, consider the matter of which he has to treat and adapt his action to the subject. thus, if he speaks persuasively, let his action be appropriate to it. if the matter in hand be to set forth an argument, let the speaker, with the fingers of the right hand hold one finger of the left hand, having the two smaller ones closed; and his face alert, and turned towards the people with mouth a little open, to look as though he spoke; and if he is sitting let him appear as though about to rise, with his head forward. if you represent him standing make him leaning slightly forward with body and head towards the people. these you must represent as silent and attentive, all looking at the orator's face with gestures of admiration; and make some old men in astonishment at the things they hear, with the corners of their mouths pulled down and drawn in, their cheeks full of furrows, and their eyebrows raised, and wrinkling the forehead where they meet. again, some sitting with their fingers clasped holding their weary knees. again, some bent old man, with one knee crossed over the other; on which let him hold his hand with his other elbow resting in it and the hand supporting his bearded chin. [footnote: the sketches introduced here are a facsimile of a pen and ink drawing in the louvre which herr carl brun considers as studies for the last supper in the church of _santa maria delle grazie_ (see leonardo da vinci, lxi, pp. , and in dohme's _kunst und kunstler_, leipzig, seemann). i shall not here enter into any discussion of this suggestion; but as a justification for introducing the drawing in this place, i may point out that some of the figures illustrate this passage as perfectly as though they had been drawn for that express purpose. i have discussed the probability of a connection between this sketch and the picture of the last supper on p. . the original drawing is / centimetres wide by high.--the drawing in silver point on reddish paper given on pl. lii. no. --the original at windsor castle--may also serve to illustrate the subject of appropriate gestures, treated in nos. and .] . of the disposition of limbs. as regards the disposition of limbs in movement you will have to consider that when you wish to represent a man who, by some chance, has to turn backwards or to one side, you must not make him move his feet and all his limbs towards the side to which he turns his head. rather must you make the action proceed by degrees and through the different joints; that is, those of the foot, the knee and the hip and the neck. and if you set him on the right leg, you must make the left knee bend inwards, and let his foot be slightly raised on the outside, and the left shoulder be somewhat lower than the right, while the nape of the neck is in a line directly over the outer ancle of the left foot. and the left shoulder will be in a perpendicular line above the toes of the right foot. and always set your figures so that the side to which the head turns is not the side to which the breast faces, since nature for our convenience has made us with a neck which bends with ease in many directions, the eye wishing to turn to various points, the different joints. and if at any time you make a man sitting with his arms at work on something which is sideways to him, make the upper part of his body turn upon the hips. [footnote: compare pl. vii, no. . the original drawing at windsor castle is numbered .] . when you draw the nude always sketch the whole figure and then finish those limbs which seem to you the best, but make them act with the other limbs; otherwise you will get a habit of never putting the limbs well together on the body. never make the head turn the same way as the torso, nor the arm and leg move together on the same side. and if the face is turned to the right shoulder, make all the parts lower on the left side than on the right; and when you turn the body with the breast outwards, if the head turns to the left side make the parts on the right side higher than those on the left. [footnote: in the original ms. a much defaced sketch is to be seen by the side of the second part of this chapter; its faded condition has rendered reproduction impossible. in m. ravaisson's facsimile the outlines of the head have probably been touched up. this passage however is fitly illustrated by the drawings on pl. xxi.] . of painting. of the nature of movements in man. do not repeat the same gestures in the limbs of men unless you are compelled by the necessity of their action, as is shown in _a b_. [footnote: see pl. v, where part of the text is also reproduced. the effaced figure to the extreme left has evidently been cancelled by leonardo himself as unsatisfactory.] . the motions of men must be such as suggest their dignity or their baseness. . of painting. make your work carry out your purpose and meaning. that is when you draw a figure consider well who it is and what you wish it to be doing. of painting. with regard to any action which you give in a picture to an old man or to a young one, you must make it more energetic in the young man in proportion as he is stronger than the old one; and in the same way with a young man and an infant. . of setting on the limbs. the limbs which are used for labour must be muscular and those which are not much used you must make without muscles and softly rounded. of the action of the figures. represent your figures in such action as may be fitted to express what purpose is in the mind of each; otherwise your art will not be admirable. v. suggestions for compositions. of painting battle pieces ( - ). . of the way of representing a battle. first you must represent the smoke of artillery mingling in the air with the dust and tossed up by the movement of horses and the combatants. and this mixture you must express thus: the dust, being a thing of earth, has weight; and although from its fineness it is easily tossed up and mingles with the air, it nevertheless readily falls again. it is the finest part that rises highest; hence that part will be least seen and will look almost of the same colour as the air. the higher the smoke mixed with the dust-laden air rises towards a certain level, the more it will look like a dark cloud; and it will be seen that at the top, where the smoke is more separate from the dust, the smoke will assume a bluish tinge and the dust will tend to its colour. this mixture of air, smoke and dust will look much lighter on the side whence the light comes than on the opposite side. the more the combatants are in this turmoil the less will they be seen, and the less contrast will there be in their lights and shadows. their faces and figures and their appearance, and the musketeers as well as those near them you must make of a glowing red. and this glow will diminish in proportion as it is remote from its cause. the figures which are between you and the light, if they be at a distance, will appear dark on a light background, and the lower part of their legs near the ground will be least visible, because there the dust is coarsest and densest [ ]. and if you introduce horses galloping outside the crowd, make the little clouds of dust distant from each other in proportion to the strides made by the horses; and the clouds which are furthest removed from the horses, should be least visible; make them high and spreading and thin, and the nearer ones will be more conspicuous and smaller and denser [ ]. the air must be full of arrows in every direction, some shooting upwards, some falling, some flying level. the balls from the guns must have a train of smoke following their flight. the figures in the foreground you must make with dust on the hair and eyebrows and on other flat places likely to retain it. the conquerors you will make rushing onwards with their hair and other light things flying on the wind, with their brows bent down, [footnote: -- . compare . -- .] . and with the opposite limbs thrust forward; that is where a man puts forward the right foot the left arm must be advanced. and if you make any one fallen, you must show the place where he has slipped and been dragged along the dust into blood stained mire; and in the half-liquid earth arround show the print of the tramping of men and horses who have passed that way. make also a horse dragging the dead body of his master, and leaving behind him, in the dust and mud, the track where the body was dragged along. you must make the conquered and beaten pale, their brows raised and knit, and the skin above their brows furrowed with pain, the sides of the nose with wrinkles going in an arch from the nostrils to the eyes, and make the nostrils drawn up--which is the cause of the lines of which i speak--, and the lips arched upwards and discovering the upper teeth; and the teeth apart as with crying out and lamentation. and make some one shielding his terrified eyes with one hand, the palm towards the enemy, while the other rests on the ground to support his half raised body. others represent shouting with their mouths open, and running away. you must scatter arms of all sorts among the feet of the combatants, as broken shields, lances, broken swords and other such objects. and you must make the dead partly or entirely covered with dust, which is changed into crimson mire where it has mingled with the flowing blood whose colour shows it issuing in a sinuous stream from the corpse. others must be represented in the agonies of death grinding their teeth, rolling their eyes, with their fists clenched against their bodies and their legs contorted. some might be shown disarmed and beaten down by the enemy, turning upon the foe, with teeth and nails, to take an inhuman and bitter revenge. you might see some riderless horse rushing among the enemy, with his mane flying in the wind, and doing no little mischief with his heels. some maimed warrior may be seen fallen to the earth, covering himself with his shield, while the enemy, bending over him, tries to deal him a deathstroke. there again might be seen a number of men fallen in a heap over a dead horse. you would see some of the victors leaving the fight and issuing from the crowd, rubbing their eyes and cheeks with both hands to clean them of the dirt made by their watering eyes smarting from the dust and smoke. the reserves may be seen standing, hopeful but cautious; with watchful eyes, shading them with their hands and gazing through the dense and murky confusion, attentive to the commands of their captain. the captain himself, his staff raised, hurries towards these auxiliaries, pointing to the spot where they are most needed. and there may be a river into which horses are galloping, churning up the water all round them into turbulent waves of foam and water, tossed into the air and among the legs and bodies of the horses. and there must not be a level spot that is not trampled with gore. . of lighting the lower parts of bodies close together, as of men in battle. as to men and horses represented in battle, their different parts will be dark in proportion as they are nearer to the ground on which they stand. and this is proved by the sides of wells which grow darker in proportion to their depth, the reason of which is that the deepest part of the well sees and receives a smaller amount of the luminous atmosphere than any other part. and the pavement, if it be of the same colour as the legs of these said men and horses, will always be more lighted and at a more direct angle than the said legs &c. . of the way to represent a night [scene]. that which is entirely bereft of light is all darkness; given a night under these conditions and that you want to represent a night scene,--arrange that there shall be a great fire, then the objects which are nearest to this fire will be most tinged with its colour; for those objects which are nearest to a coloured light participate most in its nature; as therefore you give the fire a red colour, you must make all the objects illuminated by it ruddy; while those which are farther from the fire are more tinted by the black hue of night. the figures which are seen against the fire look dark in the glare of the firelight because that side of the objects which you see is tinged by the darkness of the night and not by the fire; and those who stand at the side are half dark and half red; while those who are visible beyond the edges of the flame will be fully lighted by the ruddy glow against a black background. as to their gestures, make those which are near it screen themselves with their hands and cloaks as a defence against the intense heat, and with their faces turned away as if about to retire. of those farther off represent several as raising their hands to screen their eyes, hurt by the intolerable glare. of depicting a tempest ( . ). . describe a wind on land and at sea. describe a storm of rain. . how to represent a tempest. if you wish to represent a tempest consider and arrange well its effects as seen, when the wind, blowing over the face of the sea and earth, removes and carries with it such things as are not fixed to the general mass. and to represent the storm accurately you must first show the clouds scattered and torn, and flying with the wind, accompanied by clouds of sand blown up from the sea shore, and boughs and leaves swept along by the strength and fury of the blast and scattered with other light objects through the air. trees and plants must be bent to the ground, almost as if they would follow the course of the gale, with their branches twisted out of their natural growth and their leaves tossed and turned about [footnote : see pl. xl, no. .]. of the men who are there some must have fallen to the ground and be entangled in their garments, and hardly to be recognized for the dust, while those who remain standing may be behind some tree, with their arms round it that the wind may not tear them away; others with their hands over their eyes for the dust, bending to the ground with their clothes and hair streaming in the wind. [footnote : see pl. xxxiv, the right hand lower sketch.] let the sea be rough and tempestuous and full of foam whirled among the lofty waves, while the wind flings the lighter spray through the stormy air, till it resembles a dense and swathing mist. of the ships that are therein some should be shown with rent sails and the tatters fluttering through the air, with ropes broken and masts split and fallen. and the ship itself lying in the trough of the sea and wrecked by the fury of the waves with the men shrieking and clinging to the fragments of the vessel. make the clouds driven by the impetuosity of the wind and flung against the lofty mountain tops, and wreathed and torn like waves beating upon rocks; the air itself terrible from the deep darkness caused by the dust and fog and heavy clouds. of representing the deluge ( - ). . to represent the deluge. the air was darkened by the heavy rain whose oblique descent driven aslant by the rush of the winds, flew in drifts through the air not otherwise than as we see dust, varied only by the straight lines of the heavy drops of falling water. but it was tinged with the colour of the fire kindled by the thunder-bolts by which the clouds were rent and shattered; and whose flashes revealed the broad waters of the inundated valleys, above which was seen the verdure of the bending tree tops. neptune will be seen in the midst of the water with his trident, and [ ] let aeolus with his winds be shown entangling the trees floating uprooted, and whirling in the huge waves. the horizon and the whole hemisphere were obscure, but lurid from the flashes of the incessant lightning. men and birds might be seen crowded on the tall trees which remained uncovered by the swelling waters, originators of the mountains which surround the great abysses [footnote : compare vol. ii. no. .]. . of the deluge and how to represent it in a picture. let the dark and gloomy air be seen buffeted by the rush of contrary winds and dense from the continued rain mingled with hail and bearing hither and thither an infinite number of branches torn from the trees and mixed with numberless leaves. all round may be seen venerable trees, uprooted and stripped by the fury of the winds; and fragments of mountains, already scoured bare by the torrents, falling into those torrents and choking their valleys till the swollen rivers overflow and submerge the wide lowlands and their inhabitants. again, you might have seen on many of the hill-tops terrified animals of different kinds, collected together and subdued to tameness, in company with men and women who had fled there with their children. the waters which covered the fields, with their waves were in great part strewn with tables, bedsteads, boats and various other contrivances made from necessity and the fear of death, on which were men and women with their children amid sounds of lamentation and weeping, terrified by the fury of the winds which with their tempestuous violence rolled the waters under and over and about the bodies of the drowned. nor was there any object lighter than the water which was not covered with a variety of animals which, having come to a truce, stood together in a frightened crowd--among them wolves, foxes, snakes and others--fleing from death. and all the waters dashing on their shores seemed to be battling them with the blows of drowned bodies, blows which killed those in whom any life remained [ ]. you might have seen assemblages of men who, with weapons in their hands, defended the small spots that remained to them against lions, wolves and beasts of prey who sought safety there. ah! what dreadful noises were heard in the air rent by the fury of the thunder and the lightnings it flashed forth, which darted from the clouds dealing ruin and striking all that opposed its course. ah! how many you might have seen closing their ears with their hands to shut out the tremendous sounds made in the darkened air by the raging of the winds mingling with the rain, the thunders of heaven and the fury of the thunder-bolts. others were not content with shutting their eyes, but laid their hands one over the other to cover them the closer that they might not see the cruel slaughter of the human race by the wrath of god. ah! how many laments! and how many in their terror flung themselves from the rocks! huge branches of great oaks loaded with men were seen borne through the air by the impetuous fury of the winds. how many were the boats upset, some entire, and some broken in pieces, on the top of people labouring to escape with gestures and actions of grief foretelling a fearful death. others, with desperate act, took their own lives, hopeless of being able to endure such suffering; and of these, some flung themselves from lofty rocks, others strangled themselves with their own hands, other seized their own children and violently slew them at a blow; some wounded and killed themselves with their own weapons; others, falling on their knees recommended themselves to god. ah! how many mothers wept over their drowned sons, holding them upon their knees, with arms raised spread out towards heaven and with words and various threatening gestures, upbraiding the wrath of the gods. others with clasped hands and fingers clenched gnawed them and devoured them till they bled, crouching with their breast down on their knees in their intense and unbearable anguish. herds of animals were to be seen, such as horses, oxen, goats and swine already environed by the waters and left isolated on the high peaks of the mountains, huddled together, those in the middle climbing to the top and treading on the others, and fighting fiercely themselves; and many would die for lack of food. already had the birds begun to settle on men and on other animals, finding no land uncovered which was not occupied by living beings, and already had famine, the minister of death, taken the lives of the greater number of the animals, when the dead bodies, now fermented, where leaving the depth of the waters and were rising to the top. among the buffeting waves, where they were beating one against the other, and, like as balls full of air, rebounded from the point of concussion, these found a resting place on the bodies of the dead. and above these judgements, the air was seen covered with dark clouds, riven by the forked flashes of the raging bolts of heaven, lighting up on all sides the depth of the gloom. the motion of the air is seen by the motion of the dust thrown up by the horse's running and this motion is as swift in again filling up the vacuum left in the air which enclosed the horse, as he is rapid in passing away from the air. perhaps it will seem to you that you may reproach me with having represented the currents made through the air by the motion of the wind notwithstanding that the wind itself is not visible in the air. to this i must answer that it is not the motion of the wind but only the motion of the things carried along by it which is seen in the air. the divisions. [footnote : these observations, added at the bottom of the page containing the full description of the doluge seem to indicate that it was leonardo's intention to elaborate the subject still farther in a separate treatise.] darkness, wind, tempest at sea, floods of water, forests on fire, rain, bolts from heaven, earthquakes and ruins of mountains, overthrow of cities [footnote : _spianamenti di citta_ (overthrow of cities). a considerable number of drawings in black chalk, at windsor, illustrate this catastrophe. most of them are much rubbed; one of the least injured is reproduced at pl. xxxix. compare also the pen and ink sketch pl. xxxvi.]. whirlwinds which carry water [spouts] branches of trees, and men through the air. boughs stripped off by the winds, mingling by the meeting of the winds, with people upon them. broken trees loaded with people. ships broken to pieces, beaten on rocks. flocks of sheep. hail stones, thunderbolts, whirlwinds. people on trees which are unable to to support them; trees and rocks, towers and hills covered with people, boats, tables, troughs, and other means of floating. hills covered with men, women and animals; and lightning from the clouds illuminating every thing. [footnote: this chapter, which, with the next one, is written on a loose sheet, seems to be the passage to which one of the compilers of the vatican copy alluded when he wrote on the margin of fol. : "_qua mi ricordo della mirabile discritione del diluuio dello autore._" it is scarcely necessary to point out that these chapters are among those which have never before been published. the description in no. may be regarded as a preliminary sketch for this one. as the ms. g. (in which it is to be found) must be attributed to the period of about we may deduce from it the approximate date of the drawings on pl. xxxiv, xxxv, nos. and , xxxvi and xxxvii, since they obviously belong to this text. the drawings no. on pl. xxxv are, in the original, side by side with the text of no. ; lines to are shown in the facsimile. in the drawing in indian ink given on pl. xxxiv we see wind-gods in the sky, corresponding to the allusion to aeolus in no. . .-plates xxxvi and xxxvii form one sheet in the original. the texts reproduced on these plates have however no connection with the sketches, excepting the sketches of clouds on the right hand side. these texts are given as no. . the group of small figures on pl. xxxvii, to the left, seems to be intended for a '_congregatione d'uomini._' see no. , . .] . description of the deluge. let there be first represented the summit of a rugged mountain with valleys surrounding its base, and on its sides let the surface of the soil be seen to slide, together with the small roots of the bushes, denuding great portions of the surrounding rocks. and descending ruinous from these precipices in its boisterous course, let it dash along and lay bare the twisted and gnarled roots of large trees overthrowing their roots upwards; and let the mountains, as they are scoured bare, discover the profound fissures made in them by ancient earthquakes. the base of the mountains may be in great part clothed and covered with ruins of shrubs, hurled down from the sides of their lofty peaks, which will be mixed with mud, roots, boughs of trees, with all sorts of leaves thrust in with the mud and earth and stones. and into the depth of some valley may have fallen the fragments of a mountain forming a shore to the swollen waters of its river; which, having already burst its banks, will rush on in monstrous waves; and the greatest will strike upon and destroy the walls of the cities and farmhouses in the valley [ ]. then the ruins of the high buildings in these cities will throw up a great dust, rising up in shape like smoke or wreathed clouds against the falling rain; but the swollen waters will sweep round the pool which contains them striking in eddying whirlpools against the different obstacles, and leaping into the air in muddy foam; then, falling back, the beaten water will again be dashed into the air. and the whirling waves which fly from the place of concussion, and whose impetus moves them across other eddies going in a contrary direction, after their recoil will be tossed up into the air but without dashing off from the surface. where the water issues from the pool the spent waves will be seen spreading out towards the outlet; and there falling or pouring through the air and gaining weight and impetus they will strike on the water below piercing it and rushing furiously to reach its depth; from which being thrown back it returns to the surface of the lake, carrying up the air that was submerged with it; and this remains at the outlet in foam mingled with logs of wood and other matters lighter than water. round these again are formed the beginnings of waves which increase the more in circumference as they acquire more movement; and this movement rises less high in proportion as they acquire a broader base and thus they are less conspicuous as they die away. but if these waves rebound from various objects they then return in direct opposition to the others following them, observing the same law of increase in their curve as they have already acquired in the movement they started with. the rain, as it falls from the clouds is of the same colour as those clouds, that is in its shaded side; unless indeed the sun's rays should break through them; in that case the rain will appear less dark than the clouds. and if the heavy masses of ruin of large mountains or of other grand buildings fall into the vast pools of water, a great quantity will be flung into the air and its movement will be in a contrary direction to that of the object which struck the water; that is to say: the angle of reflection will be equal to the angle of incidence. of the objects carried down by the current, those which are heaviest or rather largest in mass will keep farthest from the two opposite shores. the water in the eddies revolves more swiftly in proportion as it is nearer to their centre. the crests of the waves of the sea tumble to their bases falling with friction on the bubbles of their sides; and this friction grinds the falling water into minute particles and this being converted into a dense mist, mingles with the gale in the manner of curling smoke and wreathing clouds, and at last it, rises into the air and is converted into clouds. but the rain which falls through the atmosphere being driven and tossed by the winds becomes rarer or denser according to the rarity or density of the winds that buffet it, and thus there is generated in the atmosphere a moisture formed of the transparent particles of the rain which is near to the eye of the spectator. the waves of the sea which break on the slope of the mountains which bound it, will foam from the velocity with which they fall against these hills; in rushing back they will meet the next wave as it comes and and after a loud noise return in a great flood to the sea whence they came. let great numbers of inhabitants--men and animals of all kinds--be seen driven [ ] by the rising of the deluge to the peaks of the mountains in the midst of the waters aforesaid. the wave of the sea at piombino is all foaming water. [footnote . : these two lines are written below the bottom sketch on pl. xxxv, . the ms. leic. being written about the year or later, it does not seem to me to follow that the sketches must have been made at piombino, where leonardo was in the year and possibly returned there subsequently (see vol. ii. topographical notes).] of the water which leaps up from the spot where great masses fall on its surface. of the winds of piombino at piombino. eddies of wind and rain with boughs and shrubs mixed in the air. emptying the boats of the rain water. [footnote: the sketches on pl. xxxv stand by the side of lines to .] of depicting natural phenomena ( . ). . the tremendous fury of the wind driven by the falling in of the hills on the caves within--by the falling of the hills which served as roofs to these caverns. a stone flung through the air leaves on the eye which sees it the impression of its motion, and the same effect is produced by the drops of water which fall from the clouds when it [ ] rains. [ ] a mountain falling on a town, will fling up dust in the form of clouds; but the colour of this dust will differ from that of the clouds. where the rain is thickest let the colour of the dust be less conspicuous and where the dust is thickest let the rain be less conspicuous. and where the rain is mingled with the wind and with the dust the clouds created by the rain must be more transparent than those of dust [alone]. and when flames of fire are mingled with clouds of smoke and water very opaque and dark clouds will be formed [footnote - : compare pl. xl, --the drawing in indian ink on the left hand side, which seems to be a reminiscence of his observations of an eruption (see his remarks on mount etna in vol ii).]. and the rest of this subject will be treated in detail in the book on painting. [footnote: see the sketches and text on pl. xxxviii, no. . lines - are there given on the left hand side, - on the right. the four lines at the bottom on the right are given as no. . above these texts, which are written backwards, there are in the original sixteen lines in a larger writing from left to right, but only half of this is here visible. they treat of the physical laws of motion of air and water. it does not seem to me that there is any reason for concluding that this writing from left to right is spurious. compare with it the facsimile of the rough copy of leonardo's letter to ludovico il moro in vol. ii.] . people were to be seen eagerly embarking victuals on various kinds of hastily made barks. but little of the waves were visible in those places where the dark clouds and rain were reflected. but where the flashes caused by the bolts of heaven were reflected, there were seen as many bright spots, caused by the image of the flashes, as there were waves to reflect them to the eye of the spectator. the number of the images produced by the flash of lightning on the waves of the water were multiplied in proportion to the distance of the spectator's eye. so also the number of the images was diminished in proportion as they were nearer the eye which saw them [footnote . : _com'e provato_. see vol. ii, nos. - and - ], as it has been proved in the definition of the luminosity of the moon, and of our marine horizon when the sun's rays are reflected in it and the eye which receives the reflection is remote from the sea. vi. the artist's materials. of chalk and paper ( -- ). . to make points [crayons] for colouring dry. temper with a little wax and do not dry it; which wax you must dissolve with water: so that when the white lead is thus tempered, the water being distilled, may go off in vapour and the wax may remain; you will thus make good crayons; but you must know that the colours must be ground with a hot stone. . chalk dissolves in wine and in vinegar or in aqua fortis and can be recombined with gum. . paper for drawing upon in black by the aid of your spittle. take powdered gall nuts and vitriol, powder them and spread them on paper like a varnish, then write on it with a pen wetted with spittle and it will turn as black as ink. . if you want to make foreshortened letters stretch the paper in a drawing frame and then draw your letters and cut them out, and make the sunbeams pass through the holes on to another stretched paper, and then fill up the angles that are wanting. . this paper should be painted over with candle soot tempered with thin glue, then smear the leaf thinly with white lead in oil as is done to the letters in printing, and then print in the ordinary way. thus the leaf will appear shaded in the hollows and lighted on the parts in relief; which however comes out here just the contrary. [footnote: this text, which accompanies a facsimile impression of a leaf of sage, has already been published in the _saggio delle opere di l. da vinci_, milano , p. . g. govi observes on this passage: "_forse aveva egli pensato ancora a farsi un erbario, od almeno a riprodurre facilmente su carta le forme e i particolari delle foglie di diverse piante; poiche (modificando un metodo che probabilmente gli eia stato insegnato da altri, e che piu tardi si legge ripetuto in molti ricettarii e libri di segreti), accanto a una foglia di salvia impressa in nero su carta bianca, lascio scritto: questa carta ... erano i primi tentativi di quella riproduzione immediata delle parti vegetali, che poi sotto il nome d'impressione naturale, fu condotta a tanta perfezione in questi ultimi tempi dal signor de hauer e da altri_."] . very excellent will be a stiff white paper, made of the usual mixture and filtered milk of an herb called calves foot; and when this paper is prepared and damped and folded and wrapped up it may be mixed with the mixture and thus left to dry; but if you break it before it is moistened it becomes somewhat like the thin paste called _lasagne_ and you may then damp it and wrap it up and put it in the mixture and leave it to dry; or again this paper may be covered with stiff transparent white and _sardonio_ and then damped so that it may not form angles and then covered up with strong transparent size and as soon as it is firm cut it two fingers, and leave it to dry; again you may make stiff cardboard of _sardonio_ and dry it and then place it between two sheets of papyrus and break it inside with a wooden mallet with a handle and then open it with care holding the lower sheet of paper flat and firm so that the broken pieces be not separated; then have a sheet of paper covered with hot glue and apply it on the top of all these pieces and let them stick fast; then turn it upside down and apply transparent size several times in the spaces between the pieces, each time pouring in first some black and then some stiff white and each time leaving it to dry; then smooth it and polish it. on the preparation and use of colours ( - ). . to make a fine green take green and mix it with bitumen and you will make the shadows darker. then, for lighter [shades] green with yellow ochre, and for still lighter green with yellow, and for the high lights pure yellow; then mix green and turmeric together and glaze every thing with it. to make a fine red take cinnabar or red chalk or burnt ochre for the dark shadows and for the lighter ones red chalk and vermilion and for the lights pure vermilion and then glaze with fine lake. to make good oil for painting. one part of oil, one of the first refining and one of the second. . use black in the shadow, and in the lights white, yellow, green, vermilion and lake. medium shadows; take the shadow as above and mix it with the flesh tints just alluded to, adding to it a little yellow and a little green and occasionally some lake; for the shadows take green and lake for the middle shades. [footnote and : if we may judge from the flourishes with which the writing is ornamented these passages must have been written in leonardo's youth.] . you can make a fine ochre by the same method as you use to make white. . a fine yellow. dissolve realgar with one part of orpiment, with aqua fortis. white. put the white into an earthen pot, and lay it no thicker than a string, and let it stand in the sun undisturbed for days; and in the morning when the sun has dried off the night dews. . to make reddish black for flesh tints take red rock crystals from rocca nova or garnets and mix them a little; again armenian bole is good in part. . the shadow will be burnt ,terra-verte'. . the proportions of colours. if one ounce of black mixed with one ounce of white gives a certain shade of darkness, what shade of darkness will be produced by ounces of black to ounce of white? . remix black, greenish yellow and at the end blue. . verdigris with aloes, or gall or turmeric makes a fine green and so it does with saffron or burnt orpiment; but i doubt whether in a short time they will not turn black. ultramarine blue and glass yellow mixed together make a beautiful green for fresco, that is wall-painting. lac and verdigris make a good shadow for blue in oil painting. . grind verdigris many times coloured with lemon juice and keep it away from yellow (?). of preparing the panel. . to prepare a panel for painting on. the panel should be cypress or pear or service-tree or walnut. you must coat it over with mastic and turpentine twice distilled and white or, if you like, lime, and put it in a frame so that it may expand and shrink according to its moisture and dryness. then give it [a coat] of aqua vitae in which you have dissolved arsenic or [corrosive] sublimate, or times. then apply boiled linseed oil in such a way as that it may penetrate every part, and before it is cold rub it well with a cloth to dry it. over this apply liquid varnish and white with a stick, then wash it with urine when it is dry, and dry it again. then pounce and outline your drawing finely and over it lay a priming of parts of verdigris with one of verdigris with two of yellow. [footnote: m. ravaisson's reading varies from mine in the following passages: ._opero allor [?] bo [alloro?]_ = "_ou bien de [laurier]_." . _fregalo bene con un panno_. he reads _pane_ for _panno_ and renders it. "_frotte le bien avec un pain de facon [jusqu'a ce] qu'il_" etc. . _colla stecca po laua_. he reads "_polacca_" = "_avec le couteau de bois [?] polonais [?]_."] the preparation of oils ( -- ). . oil. make some oil of mustard seed; and if you wish to make it with greater ease mix the ground seeds with linseed oil and put it all under the press. . to remove the smell of oil. take the rank oil and put ten pints into a jar and make a mark on the jar at the height of the oil; then add to it a pint of vinegar and make it boil till the oil has sunk to the level of the mark and thus you will be certain that the oil is returned to its original quantity and the vinegar will have gone off in vapour, carrying with it the evil smell; and i believe you may do the same with nut oil or any other oil that smells badly. . since walnuts are enveloped in a thin rind, which partakes of the nature of ..., if you do not remove it when you make the oil from them, this skin tinges the oil, and when you work with it this skin separates from the oil and rises to the surface of the painting, and this is what makes it change. . to restore oil colours that have become dry. if you want to restore oil colours that have become dry keep them soaking in soft soap for a night and, with your finger, mix them up with the soft soap; then pour them into a cup and wash them with water, and in this way you can restore colours that have got dry. but take care that each colour has its own vessel to itself adding the colour by degrees as you restore it and mind that they are thoroughly softened, and when you wish to use them for tempera wash them five and six times with spring water, and leave them to settle; if the soft soap should be thick with any of the colours pass it through a filter. [footnote: the same remark applies to these sections as to no. and .] . oil. mustard seed pounded with linseed oil. . ... outside the bowl fingers lower than the level of the oil, and pass it into the neck of a bottle and let it stand and thus all the oil will separate from this milky liquid; it will enter the bottle and be as clear as crystal; and grind your colours with this, and every coarse or viscid part will remain in the liquid. you must know that all the oils that have been created in seads or fruits are quite clear by nature, and the yellow colour you see in them only comes of your not knowing how to draw it out. fire or heat by its nature has the power to make them acquire colour. see for example the exudation or gums of trees which partake of the nature of rosin; in a short time they harden because there is more heat in them than in oil; and after some time they acquire a certain yellow hue tending to black. but oil, not having so much heat does not do so; although it hardens to some extent into sediment it becomes finer. the change in oil which occurs in painting proceeds from a certain fungus of the nature of a husk which exists in the skin which covers the nut, and this being crushed along with the nuts and being of a nature much resembling oil mixes with it; it is of so subtle a nature that it combines with all colours and then comes to the surface, and this it is which makes them change. and if you want the oil to be good and not to thicken, put into it a little camphor melted over a slow fire and mix it well with the oil and it will never harden. [footnote: the same remark applies to these sections as to no. and .] on varnishes [or powders] ( - ). . varnish [or powder]. take cypress [oil] and distil it and have a large pitcher, and put in the extract with so much water as may make it appear like amber, and cover it tightly so that none may evaporate. and when it is dissolved you may add in your pitcher as much of the said solution, as shall make it liquid to your taste. and you must know that amber is the gum of the cypress-tree. varnish [or powder]. and since varnish [powder] is the resin of juniper, if you distil juniper you can dissolve the said varnish [powder] in the essence, as explained above. . varnish [or powder]. notch a juniper tree and give it water at the roots, mix the liquor which exudes with nut-oil and you will have a perfect varnish [powder], made like amber varnish [powder], fine and of the best quality make it in may or april. . varnish [or powder]. mercury with jupiter and venus,--a paste made of these must be corrected by the mould (?) continuously, until mercury separates itself entirely from jupiter and venus. [footnote: here, and in no. _mercurio_ seems to mean quicksilver, _giove_ stands for iron, _venere_ for copper and _saturno_ for lead.] on chemical materials ( - ). . note how aqua vitae absorbs into itself all the colours and smells of flowers. if you want to make blue put iris flowers into it and for red solanum berries (?) . salt may be made from human excrement burnt and calcined and made into lees, and dried by a slow fire, and all dung in like manner yields salt, and these salts when distilled are very pungent. . sea water filtered through mud or clay, leaves all its saltness in it. woollen stuffs placed on board ship absorb fresh water. if sea water is distilled under a retort it becomes of the first excellence and any one who has a little stove in his kitchen can, with the same wood as he cooks with, distil a great quantity of water if the retort is a large one. . mould(?). the mould (?) may be of venus, or of jupiter and saturn and placed frequently in the fire. and it should be worked with fine emery and the mould (?) should be of venus and jupiter impasted over (?) venus. but first you will test venus and mercury mixed with jove, and take means to cause mercury to disperse; and then fold them well together so that venus or jupiter be connected as thinly as possible. [footnote: see the note to .] . nitre, vitriol, cinnabar, alum, salt ammoniac, sublimated mercury, rock salt, alcali salt, common salt, rock alum, alum schist (?), arsenic, sublimate, realgar, tartar, orpiment, verdegris. . pitch four ounces virgin wax, four ounces incense, two ounces oil of roses one ounce. . four ounces virgin wax, four ounces greek pitch, two ounces incense, one ounce oil of roses, first melt the wax and oil then the greek pitch then the other things in powder. . very thin glass may be cut with scissors and when placed over inlaid work of bone, gilt, or stained of other colours you can saw it through together with the bone and then put it together and it will retain a lustre that will not be scratched nor worn away by rubbing with the hand. . to dilute white wine and make it purple. powder gall nuts and let this stand days in the white wine; and in the same way dissolve vitriol in water, and let the water stand and settle very clear, and the wine likewise, each by itself, and strain them well; and when you dilute the white wine with the water the wine will become red. . put marcasite into aqua fortis and if it turns green, know that it has copper in it. take it out with saltpetre and soft soap. . a white horse may have the spots removed with the spanish haematite or with aqua fortis or with ... removes the black hair on a white horse with the singeing iron. force him to the ground. . fire. if you want to make a fire which will set a hall in a blaze without injury do this: first perfume the hall with a dense smoke of incense or some other odoriferous substance: it is a good trick to play. or boil ten pounds of brandy to evaporate, but see that the hall is completely closed and throw up some powdered varnish among the fumes and this powder will be supported by the smoke; then go into the room suddenly with a lighted torch and at once it will be in a blaze. . fire. take away that yellow surface which covers oranges and distill them in an alembic, until the distillation may be said to be perfect. fire. close a room tightly and have a brasier of brass or iron with fire in it and sprinkle on it two pints of aqua vitae, a little at a time, so that it may be converted into smoke. then make some one come in with a light and suddenly you will see the room in a blaze like a flash of lightning, and it will do no harm to any one. vii. philosophy and history of the art of painting. the relation of art and nature ( . ). . what is fair in men, passes away, but not so in art. . he who despises painting loves neither philosophy nor nature. if you condemn painting, which is the only imitator of all visible works of nature, you will certainly despise a subtle invention which brings philosophy and subtle speculation to the consideration of the nature of all forms--seas and plains, trees, animals, plants and flowers--which are surrounded by shade and light. and this is true knowledge and the legitimate issue of nature; for painting is born of nature--or, to speak more correctly, we will say it is the grandchild of nature; for all visible things are produced by nature, and these her children have given birth to painting. hence we may justly call it the grandchild of nature and related to god. painting is superior to poetry ( . ). . that painting surpasses all human works by the subtle considerations belonging to it. the eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, which acquires dignity by hearing of the things the eye has seen. if you, historians, or poets, or mathematicians had not seen things with your eyes you could not report of them in writing. and if you, poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness and less tedious to be understood. and if you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. now which is the worse defect? to be blind or dumb? though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings; for, though poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the actual similitude of the forms, in order to represent them. now tell me which is the nearer to the actual man: the name of man or the image of the man. the name of man differs in different countries, but his form is never changed but by death. . and if the poet gratifies the sense by means of the ear, the painter does so by the eye--the worthier sense; but i will say no more of this but that, if a good painter represents the fury of a battle, and if a poet describes one, and they are both together put before the public, you will see where most of the spectators will stop, to which they will pay most attention, on which they will bestow most praise, and which will satisfy them best. undoubtedly painting being by a long way the more intelligible and beautiful, will please most. write up the name of god [christ] in some spot and setup his image opposite and you will see which will be most reverenced. painting comprehends in itself all the forms of nature, while you have nothing but words, which are not universal as form is, and if you have the effects of the representation, we have the representation of the effects. take a poet who describes the beauty of a lady to her lover and a painter who represents her and you will see to which nature guides the enamoured critic. certainly the proof should be allowed to rest on the verdict of experience. you have ranked painting among the mechanical arts but, in truth, if painters were as apt at praising their own works in writing as you are, it would not lie under the stigma of so base a name. if you call it mechanical because it is, in the first place, manual, and that it is the hand which produces what is to be found in the imagination, you too writers, who set down manually with the pen what is devised in your mind. and if you say it is mechanical because it is done for money, who falls into this error--if error it can be called--more than you? if you lecture in the schools do you not go to whoever pays you most? do you do any work without pay? still, i do not say this as blaming such views, for every form of labour looks for its reward. and if a poet should say: "i will invent a fiction with a great purpose," the painter can do the same, as apelles painted calumny. if you were to say that poetry is more eternal, i say the works of a coppersmith are more eternal still, for time preserves them longer than your works or ours; nevertheless they have not much imagination [ ]. and a picture, if painted on copper with enamel colours may be yet more permanent. we, by our arts may be called the grandsons of god. if poetry deals with moral philosophy, painting deals with natural philosophy. poetry describes the action of the mind, painting considers what the mind may effect by the motions [of the body]. if poetry can terrify people by hideous fictions, painting can do as much by depicting the same things in action. supposing that a poet applies himself to represent beauty, ferocity, or a base, a foul or a monstrous thing, as against a painter, he may in his ways bring forth a variety of forms; but will the painter not satisfy more? are there not pictures to be seen, so like the actual things, that they deceive men and animals? painting is superior to sculpture ( . ). . that sculpture is less intellectual than painting, and lacks many characteristics of nature. i myself, having exercised myself no less in sculpture than in painting and doing both one and the other in the same degree, it seems to me that i can, without invidiousness, pronounce an opinion as to which of the two is of the greatest merit and difficulty and perfection. in the first place sculpture requires a certain light, that is from above, a picture carries everywhere with it its own light and shade. thus sculpture owes its importance to light and shade, and the sculptor is aided in this by the nature, of the relief which is inherent in it, while the painter whose art expresses the accidental aspects of nature, places his effects in the spots where nature must necessarily produce them. the sculptor cannot diversify his work by the various natural colours of objects; painting is not defective in any particular. the sculptor when he uses perspective cannot make it in any way appear true; that of the painter can appear like a hundred miles beyond the picture itself. their works have no aerial perspective whatever, they cannot represent transparent bodies, they cannot represent luminous bodies, nor reflected lights, nor lustrous bodies--as mirrors and the like polished surfaces, nor mists, nor dark skies, nor an infinite number of things which need not be told for fear of tedium. as regards the power of resisting time, though they have this resistance [footnote : from what is here said as to painting on copper it is very evident that leonardo was not acquainted with the method of painting in oil on thin copper plates, introduced by the flemish painters of the xviith century. j. lermolieff has already pointed out that in the various collections containing pictures by the great masters of the italian renaissance, those painted on copper (for instance the famous reading magdalen in the dresden gallery) are the works of a much later date (see _zeitschrift fur bildende kunst_. vol. x pg. , and: _werke italienischer master in den galerien von munchen, dresden und berlin_. leipzig , pg. and .)--compare no. , .], a picture painted on thick copper covered with white enamel on which it is painted with enamel colours and then put into the fire again and baked, far exceeds sculpture in permanence. it may be said that if a mistake is made it is not easy to remedy it; it is but a poor argument to try to prove that a work be the nobler because oversights are irremediable; i should rather say that it will be more difficult to improve the mind of the master who makes such mistakes than to repair the work he has spoilt. . we know very well that a really experienced and good painter will not make such mistakes; on the contrary, with sound rules he will remove so little at a time that he will bring his work to a good issue. again the sculptor if working in clay or wax, can add or reduce, and when his model is finished it can easily be cast in bronze, and this is the last operation and is the most permanent form of sculpture. inasmuch as that which is merely of marble is liable to ruin, but not bronze. hence a painting done on copper which as i said of painting may be added to or altered, resembles sculpture in bronze, which, having first been made in wax could then be altered or added to; and if sculpture in bronze is durable, this work in copper and enamel is absolutely imperishable. bronze is but dark and rough after all, but this latter is covered with various and lovely colours in infinite variety, as has been said above; or if you will have me only speak of painting on panel, i am content to pronounce between it and sculpture; saying that painting is the more beautiful and the more imaginative and the more copious, while sculpture is the more durable but it has nothing else. sculpture shows with little labour what in painting appears a miraculous thing to do; to make what is impalpable appear palpable, flat objects appear in relief, distant objects seem close. in fact painting is adorned with infinite possibilities which sculpture cannot command. aphorisms ( - ). . of painting. men and words are ready made, and you, o painter, if you do not know how to make your figures move, are like an orator who knows not how to use his words. . as soon as the poet ceases to represent in words what exists in nature, he in fact ceases to resemble the painter; for if the poet, leaving such representation, proceeds to describe the flowery and flattering speech of the figure, which he wishes to make the speaker, he then is an orator and no longer a poet nor a painter. and if he speaks of the heavens he becomes an astrologer, and philosopher; and a theologian, if he discourses of nature or god. but, if he restricts himself to the description of objects, he would enter the lists against the painter, if with words he could satisfy the eye as the painter does. . though you may be able to tell or write the exact description of forms, the painter can so depict them that they will appear alive, with the shadow and light which show the expression of a face; which you cannot accomplish with the pen though it can be achieved by the brush. on the history of painting ( . ). . that painting declines and deteriorates from age to age, when painters have no other standard than painting already done. hence the painter will produce pictures of small merit if he takes for his standard the pictures of others. but if he will study from natural objects he will bear good fruit; as was seen in the painters after the romans who always imitated each other and so their art constantly declined from age to age. after these came giotto the florentine who--not content with imitating the works of cimabue his master--being born in the mountains and in a solitude inhabited only by goats and such beasts, and being guided by nature to his art, began by drawing on the rocks the movements of the goats of which he was keeper. and thus he began to draw all the animals which were to be found in the country, and in such wise that after much study he excelled not only all the masters of his time but all those of many bygone ages. afterwards this art declined again, because everyone imitated the pictures that were already done; thus it went on from century to century until tomaso, of florence, nicknamed masaccio, showed by his perfect works how those who take for their standard any one but nature--the mistress of all masters--weary themselves in vain. and, i would say about these mathematical studies that those who only study the authorities and not the works of nature are descendants but not sons of nature the mistress of all good authors. oh! how great is the folly of those who blame those who learn from nature [footnote : _lasciando stare li autori_. in this observation we may detect an indirect evidence that leonardo regarded his knowledge of natural history as derived from his own investigations, as well as his theories of perspective and optics. compare what he says in praise of experience (vol ii; _xix_).], setting aside those authorities who themselves were the disciples of nature. . that the first drawing was a simple line drawn round the shadow of a man cast by the sun on a wall. the painter's scope. . the painter strives and competes with nature. _x. studies and sketches for pictures and decorations. an artist's manuscript notes can hardly be expected to contain any thing more than incidental references to those masterpieces of his work of which the fame, sounded in the writings of his contemporaries, has left a glorious echo to posterity. we need not therefore be surprised to find that the texts here reproduced do not afford us such comprehensive information as we could wish. on the other hand, the sketches and studies prepared by leonardo for the two grandest compositions he ever executed: the fresco of the last supper in the refectory of santa maria delle grazie at milan, and the cartoon of the battle of anghiari, for the palazzo della signoria at florence--have been preserved; and, though far from complete, are so much more numerous than the manuscript notes, that we are justified in asserting that in value and interest they amply compensate for the meagerness of the written suggestions. the notes for the composition of the last supper, which are given under nos._ _and_ _occur in a ms. at south kensington, ii , written in the years_ - . _this ms. sketch was noted down not more than three or four years before the painting was executed, which justifies the inference that at the time when it was written the painter had not made up his mind definitely even as to the general scheme of the work; and from this we may also conclude that the drawings of apostles' heads at windsor, in red chalk, must be ascribed to a later date. they are studies for the head of st. matthew, the fourth figure on christ's left hand--see pl. xl vii, the sketch (in black chalk) for the head of st. philip, the third figure on the left hand--see pl. xl viii, for st. peter's right arm--see pl. xlix, and for the expressive head of judas which has unfortunately somewhat suffered by subsequent restoration of outlines,--see pl. l. according to a tradition, as unfounded as it is improbable, leonardo made use of the head of padre bandelli, the prior of the convent, as the prototype of his judas; this however has already been contradicted by amoretti "memorie storiche" cap. xiv. the study of the head of a criminal on pl. li has, it seems to me, a better claim to be regarded as one of the preparatory sketches for the head of judas. the windsor collection contains two old copies of the head of st. simon, the figure to the extreme left of christ, both of about equal merit (they are marked as nos._ _and_ _)--the second was reproduced on pl. viii of the grosvenor gallery publication in_ . _there is also at windsor a drawing in black chalk of folded hands (marked with the old no._ ; _no. lxi of the grosvenor gallery publication) which i believe to be a copy of the hands of st. john, by some unknown pupil. a reproduction of the excellent drawings of heads of apostles in the possession of h. r. h. the grand duchess of weimar would have been out of my province in this work, and, with regard to them, i must confine myself to pointing out that the difference in style does not allow of our placing the weimar drawings in the same category as those here reproduced. the mode of grouping in the weimar drawings is of itself sufficient to indicate that they were not executed before the picture was painted, but, on the contrary, afterwards, and it is, on the face of it, incredible that so great a master should thus have copied from his own work. the drawing of christ's head, in the brera palace at milan was perhaps originally the work of leonardo's hand; it has unfortunately been entirely retouched and re-drawn, so that no decisive opinion can be formed as to its genuineness. the red chalk drawing reproduced on pl. xlvi is in the accademia at venice; it was probably made before the text, nos._ _and_ , _was written. the two pen and ink sketches on pl. xlv seem to belong to an even earlier date; the more finished drawing of the two, on the right hand, represents christ with only st. john and judas and a third disciple whose action is precisely that described in no._ , _pl._ . _it is hardly necessary to observe that the other sketches on this page and the lines of text below the circle (containing the solution of a geometrical problem) have no reference to the picture of the last supper. with this figure of christ may be compared a similar pen and ink drawing reproduced on page_ _below on the left hand; the original is in the louvre. on this page again the rest of the sketches have no direct bearing on the composition of the last supper, not even, as it seems to me, the group of four men at the bottom to the right hand--who are listening to a fifth, in their midst addressing them. moreover the writing on this page (an explanation of a disk shaped instrument) is certainly not in the same style as we find constantly used by leonardo after the year_ . _it may be incidentally remarked that no sketches are known for the portrait of "mona lisa", nor do the ms. notes ever allude to it, though according to vasari the master had it in hand for fully four years. leonardo's cartoon for the picture of the battle of anghiari has shared the fate of the rival work, michaelangelo's "bathers summoned to battle". both have been lost in some wholly inexplicable manner. i cannot here enter into the remarkable history of this work; i can only give an account of what has been preserved to us of leonardo's scheme and preparations for executing it. the extent of the material in studies and drawings was till now quite unknown. their publication here may give some adequate idea of the grandeur of this famous work. the text given as no._ _contains a description of the particulars of the battle, but for the reasons given in the note to this text, i must abandon the idea of taking this passage as the basis of my attempt to reconstruct the picture as the artist conceived and executed it. i may here remind the reader that leonardo prepared the cartoon in the sala del papa of santa maria novella at florence and worked there from the end of october till february , and then was busied with the painting in the sala del consiglio in the palazzo della signoria, till the work was interrupted at the end of may . (see milanesi's note to vasari pp. -- vol. iv ed. .) vasari, as is well known, describes only one scene or episode of the cartoon--the battle for the standard in the foreground of the composition, as it would seem; and this only was ever finished as a mural decoration in the sala del consiglio. this portion of the composition is familiar to all from the disfigured copy engraved by edelinck. mariette had already very acutely observed that edelinck must surely have worked from a flemish copy of the picture. there is in the louvre a drawing by rubens (no. ) which also represents four horsemen fighting round a standard and which agrees with edelinck's engraving, but the engraving reverses the drawing. an earlier flemish drawing, such as may have served as the model for both rubens and edelinck, is in the uffizi collection (see philpots's photograph, no. ). it seems to be a work of the second half of the xvith century, a time when both the picture and the cartoon had already been destroyed. it is apparently the production of a not very skilled hand. raphael trichet du fresne, , mentions that a small picture by leonardo himself of the battle of the standard was then extant in the tuileries; by this he probably means the painting on panel which is now in the possession of madame timbal in paris, and which has lately been engraved by haussoullier as a work by leonardo. the picture, which is very carefully painted, seems to me however to be the work of some unknown florentine painter, and probably executed within the first ten years of the xvith century. at the same time, it would seem to be a copy not from leonardo's cartoon, but from his picture in the palazzo della signoria; at any rate this little picture, and the small flemish drawing in florence are the oldest finished copies of this episode in the great composition of the battle of anghiari. in his life of raphael, vasari tells us that raphael copied certain works of leonardo's during his stay in florence. raphael's first visit to florence lasted from the middle of october till july , and he revisited it in the summer of . the hasty sketch, now in the possession of the university of oxford and reproduced on page also represents the battle of the standard and seems to have been made during his first stay, and therefore not from the fresco but from the cartoon; for, on the same sheet we also find, besides an old man's head drawn in leonardo's style, some studies for the figure of st. john the martyr which raphael used in in his great fresco in the church of san severo at perugia. of leonardo's studies for the battle of anghiari i must in the first place point to five, on three of which--pl. lii , pl. liii, pl. lvi--we find studies for the episode of the standard. the standard bearer, who, in the above named copies is seen stooping, holding on to the staff across his shoulder, is immediately recognisable as the left-hand figure in raphael's sketch, and we find it in a similar attitude in leonardo's pen and ink drawing in the british museum--pl. lii, --the lower figure to the right. it is not difficult to identify the same figure in two more complicated groups in the pen and ink drawings, now in the accademia at venice--pl. liii, and pl. liv--where we also find some studies of foot soldiers fighting. on the sheet in the british museum--pl. lii, --we find, among others, one group of three horses galloping forwards: one horseman is thrown and protects himself with his buckler against the lance thrusts of two others on horseback, who try to pierce him as they ride past. the same action is repeated, with some variation, in two sketches in pen and ink on a third sheet, in the accademia at venice, pl. lv; a coincidence which suggests the probability of such an incident having actually been represented on the cartoon. we are not, it is true, in a position to declare with any certainty which of these three dissimilar sketches may have been the nearest to the group finally adopted in executing the cartoon. with regard, however, to one of the groups of horsemen it is possible to determine with perfect certainty not only which arrangement was preferred, but the position it occupied in the composition. the group of horsemen on pl. lvii is a drawing in black chalk at windsor, which is there attributed to leonardo, but which appears to me to be the work of cesare da sesto, and the commendatore giov. morelli supports me in this view. it can hardly be doubted that da sesto, as a pupil of leonardo's, made this drawing from his master's cartoon, if we compare it with the copy made by raphael--here reproduced, for just above the fighting horseman in raphael's copy it is possible to detect a horse which is seen from behind, going at a slower pace, with his tail flying out to the right and the same horse may be seen in the very same attitude carrying a dimly sketched rider, in the foreground of cesare da sesto's drawing._ _if a very much rubbed drawing in black chalk at windsor--pl. lvi--is, as it appears to be, the reversed impression of an original drawing, it is not difficult to supplement from it the portions drawn by cesare da sesto. nay, it may prove possible to reconstruct the whole of the lost cartoon from the mass of materials we now have at hand which we may regard as the nucleus of the composition. a large pen and ink drawing by raphael in the dresden collection, representing three horsemen fighting, and another, by cesare da sesto, in the uffizi, of light horsemen fighting are a further contribution which will help us to reconstruct it._ _the sketch reproduced on pl. lv gives a suggestive example of the way in which foot-soldiers may have been introduced into the cartoon as fighting among the groups of horsemen; and i may here take the opportunity of mentioning that, for reasons which it would be out of place to enlarge upon here, i believe the two genuine drawings by raphael's hand in his "venetian sketch-book" as it is called--one of a standard bearer marching towards the left, and one of two foot-soldiers armed with spears and fighting with a horseman--to be undoubtedly copies from the cartoon of the battle of anghiari._ _leonardo's two drawings, preserved in the museum at buda-pesth and reproduced on pages and are preliminary studies for the heads of fighting warriors. the two heads drawn in black chalk (pg. ) and the one seen in profile, turned to the left, drawn in red chalk (pg. ), correspond exactly with those of two horsemen in the scene of the fight round the standard as we see them in madame timbal's picture and in the other finished copies. an old copy of the last named drawing by a pupil of leonardo is in ms. c. a. b; b (see saggio, tav. xxii). leonardo used to make such finished studies of heads as those, drawn on detached sheets, before beginning his pictures from his drawings--compare the preparatory studies for the fresco of the last supper, given on pl. xlvii and pl. l. other drawings of heads, all characterised by the expression of vehement excitement that is appropriate to men fighting, are to be seen at windsor (no. ) and at the accademia at venice (iv, ); at the back of one of the drawings at buda-pesth there is the bust of a warrior carrying a spear on his left shoulder, holding up the left arm (see csatakepek a xvi--lk szazadbol osszeallitotta pvlszky karoly). these drawings may have been made for other portions of the cartoon, of which no copies exist, and thus we are unable to identify these preparatory drawings. finally i may add that a sketch of fighting horse and foot soldiers, formerly in the possession of m. thiers and published by charles blanc in his "vies des peintres" can hardly be accepted as genuine. it is not to be found, as i am informed, among the late president's property, and no one appears to know where it now is._ _an attempted reconstruction of the cartoon, which is not only unsuccessful but perfectly unfounded, is to be seen in the lithograph by bergeret, published in charles blanc's "vies des peintres" and reprinted in "the great artists. l. da vinci", p. . this misleading pasticcio may now be rejected without hesitation._ _there are yet a few original drawings by leonardo which might be mentioned here as possibly belonging to the cartoon of the battle; such as the pen and ink sketches on pl. xxi and on pl. xxxviii, no. , but we should risk too wide a departure from the domain of ascertained fact._ _with regard to the colours and other materials used by leonardo the reader may be referred to the quotations from the accounts for the picture in question given by milanesi in his edition of vasari (vol. iv, p. , note) where we find entries of a similar character to those in leonardo's note books for the year ; s. k. m. (see no. )._ _that leonardo was employed in designing decorations and other preparations for high festivals, particularly for the court of milan, we learn not only from the writings of his contemporaries but from his own incidental allusions; for instance in ms. c. l b ( ), l. . in the arrangement of the texts referring to this i have placed those first, in which historical personages are named--nos. - . among the descriptions of allegorical subjects two texts lately found at oxford have been included, nos. and . they are particularly interesting because they are accompanied by large sketches which render the meaning of the texts perfectly clear. it is very intelligible that in other cases, where there are no illustrative sketches, the notes must necessarily remain obscure or admit of various interpretations. the literature of the time affords ample evidence of the use of such allegorical representations, particularly during the carnival and in leonardo's notes we find the carnival expressly mentioned--nos. and . vasari in his life of pontormo, particularly describes that artist's various undertakings for carnival festivities. these very graphic descriptions appear to me to throw great light in more ways than one on the meaning of leonardo's various notes as to allegorical representations and also on mottoes and emblems--nos. - . in passing judgment on the allegorical sketches and emblems it must not be overlooked that even as pictures they were always accompanied by explanations in words. several finished drawings of allegorical compositions or figures have been preserved, but as they have no corresponding explanation in the mss. they had no claim to be reproduced here. the female figure on pl. xxvi may perhaps be regarded as a study for such an allegorical painting, of which the purport would have been explained by an inscription._ on madonna pictures. . [in the autumn of] i began the two madonna [pictures]. [footnote: photographs of this page have been published by braun, no. , and philpot, no. . . _incominciai_. we have no other information as to the two pictures of the madonna here spoken of. as leonardo here tells us that he had begun two madonnas at the same time, the word '_incominciai_' may be understood to mean that he had begun at the same time preparatory studies for two pictures to be painted later. if this is so, the non-existence of the pictures may be explained by supposing that they were only planned and never executed. i may here mention a few studies for pictures of the madonna which probably belong to this early time; particularly a drawing in silver-point on bluish tinted paper at windsor--see pl. xl, no. --, a drawing of which the details have almost disappeared in the original but have been rendered quite distinct in the reproduction; secondly a slight pen and ink sketch in, the codex vallardi, in the louvre, fol. , no. ; again a silver point drawing of a virgin and child drawn over again with the pen in the his de la salle collection also in the louvre, no. . (see vicomte both de tauzia, _notice des dessins de la collection his de la salle, exposes au louvre_. paris , pp. , .) this drawing is, it is true, traditionally ascribed to raphael, but the author of the catalogue very justly points out its great resemblance with the sketches for madonnas in the british museum which are indisputably leonardo's. some of these have been published by mr. henry wallis in the art journal, new ser. no. , feb. . if the non-existence of the two pictures here alluded to justifies my hypothesis that only studies for such pictures are meant by the text, it may also be supposed that the drawings were made for some comrade in verrocchio's atelier. (see vasari, sansoni's ed. florence . vol. iv, p. ): "_e perche a lerenzo piaceva fuor di modo la maniera di lionardo, la seppe cosi bene imitare, che niuno fu che nella pulitezza e nel finir l'opere con diligenza l'imitasse più di lui_." leonardo's notes give me no opportunity of discussing the pictures executed by him in florence, before he moved to milan. so the studies for the unfinished picture of the adoration of the magi--in the uffizi, florence--cannot be described here, nor would any discussion about the picture in the louvre "_la vierge aux rochers_" be appropriate in the absence of all allusion to it in the mss. therefore, when i presently add a few remarks on this painting in explanation of the master's drawings for it, it will be not merely with a view to facilitate critical researches about the picture now in the national gallery, london, which by some critics has been pronounced to be a replica of the louvre picture, but also because i take this opportunity of publishing several finished studies of the master's which, even if they were not made in florence but later in milan, must have been prior to the painting of the last supper. the original picture in paris is at present so disfigured by dust and varnish that the current reproductions in photography actually give evidence more of the injuries to which the picture has been exposed than of the original work itself. the wood-cut given on p. , is only intended to give a general notion of the composition. it must be understood that the outline and expression of the heads, which in the picture is obscured but not destroyed, is here altogether missed. the facsimiles which follow are from drawings which appear to me to be studies for "_la vierge aux rochers_." . a drawing in silver point on brown toned paper of a woman's head looking to the left. in the royal library at turin, apparently a study from nature for the angel's head (pl. xlii). . a study of drapery for the left leg of the same figure, done with the brush, indian ink on greenish paper, the lights heightened with white. the original is at windsor, no. . the reproduction pl. xliii is defective in the shadow on the upper part of the thigh, which is not so deep as in the original; it should also be observed that the folds of the drapery near the hips are somewhat altered in the finished work in the louvre, while the london copy shows a greater resemblance to this study in that particular. . a study in red chalk for the bust of the infant christ--no. in the windsor collection (pl. xliv). the well-known silver-point drawing on pale green paper, in the louvre, of a boy's head (no. in reiset, _notice des dessins, ecoles d'italie_) seems to me to be a slightly altered copy, either from the original picture or from this red chalk study. . a silver-point study on greenish paper, for the head of john the baptist, reproduced on p. . this was formerly in the codex vallardi and is now exhibited among the drawings in the louvre. the lights are, in the original, heightened with white; the outlines, particularly round the head and ear, are visibly restored. there is a study of an outstretched hand--no. in the windsor collection--which was published in the grosvenor gallery publication, , simply under the title of: "no. study of a hand, pointing" which, on the other hand, i regard as a copy by a pupil. the action occurs in the kneeling angel of the paris picture and not in the london copy. these four genuine studies form, i believe, a valuable substitute in the absence of any ms. notes referring to the celebrated paris picture.] bernardo di bandino's portrait. . a tan-coloured small cap, a doublet of black serge, a black jerkin lined a blue coat lined, with fur of foxes' breasts, and the collar of the jerkin covered with black and white stippled velvet bernardo di bandino baroncelli; black hose. [footnote: these eleven lines of text are by the side of the pen and ink drawing of a man hanged--pl. lxii, no. . this drawing was exhibited in at the _ecole des beaux-arts_ in paris and the compilers of the catalogue amused themselves by giving the victim's name as follows: "_un pendu, vetu d'une longue robe, les mains liées sur le dos ... bernardo di bendino barontigni, marchand de pantalons_" (see _catalogue descriptif des dessins de mailres anciens exposes a l'ecole des beaux arts_, paris ; no. , pp. - ). now, the criminal represented here, is none other than bernardino di bandino baroncelli the murderer of giuliano de'medici, whose name as a coadjutor in the conspiracy of the pazzi has gained a melancholy notoriety by the tragedy of the th april . bernardo was descended from an ancient family and the son of the man who, under king ferrante, was president of the high court of justice in naples. his ruined fortunes, it would seem, induced him to join the pazzi; he and francesco pazzi were entrusted with the task of murdering giuliano de'medici on the fixed day. their victim not appearing in the cathedral at the hour when they expected him, the two conspirators ran to the palace of the medici and induced him to accompany them. giuliano then took his place in the chancel of the cathedral, and as the officiating priest raised the host--the sign agreed upon--bernardo stabbed the unsuspecting giuliano in the breast with a short sword; giuliano stepped backwards and fell dead. the attempt on lorenzo's life however, by the other conspirators at the same moment, failed of success. bernardo no sooner saw that lorenzo tried to make his escape towards the sacristy, than he rushed upon him, and struck down francesco nori who endeavoured to protect lorenzo. how lorenzo then took refuge behind the brazen doors of the sacristy, and how, as soon as giuliano's death was made known, the further plans of the conspirators were defeated, while a terrible vengeance overtook all the perpetrators and accomplices, this is no place to tell. bernardo bandini alone seemed to be favoured by fortune; he hid first in the tower of the cathedral, and then escaped undiscovered from florence. poliziano, who was with lorenzo in the cathedral, says in his 'conjurationis pactianae commentarium': "_bandinus fugitans in tiphernatem incidit, a quo in aciem receptus senas pervenit_." and gino capponi in summing up the reports of the numerous contemporary narrators of the event, says: "_bernardo bandini ricoverato in costantinopoli, fu per ordine del sultano preso e consegnato a un antonio di bernardino dei medici, che lorenzo aveva mandato apposta in turchia: così era grande la potenza di quest' uomo e grande la voglia di farne mostra e che non restasse in vita chi aveagli ucciso il fratello, fu egli applicato appena giunto_" (_storia della republica di firenze ii_, , ). details about the dates may be found in the _chronichetta di belfredello strinati alfieri_: "_bernardo di bandino bandini sopradetto ne venne preso da gostantinopoti a dì . dicembre e disaminato, che fu al bargello, fu impiccato alle finestre di detto bargello allato alla doana a dì . dicembre mcccclxxix che pochi dì stette_." it may however be mentioned with reference to the mode of writing the name of the assassin that, though most of his contemporaries wrote bernardo bandini, in the _breve chronicon caroli petri de joanninis_ he is called bernardo di bandini baroncelli; and, in the _sententiae domini matthaei de toscana_, bernardus joannis bandini de baroncellis, as is written on leonardo's drawing of him when hanged. now vasari, in the life of _andrea del castagno_ (vol. ii, ; ed. milanesi ), tells us that in this painter was commissioned by order of the signoria to represent the members of the pazzi conspiracy as traitors, on the facade of the palazzo del podestà--the bargello. this statement is obviously founded on a mistake, for andrea del castagno was already dead in . he had however been commissioned to paint rinaldo degli albizzi, when declared a rebel and exiled in , and his adherents, as hanging head downwards; and in consequence he had acquired the nickname of andrea degl' impiccati. on the st july the council of eight came to the following resolution: "_item servatis etc. deliberaverunt et santiaverunt sandro botticelli pro ejus labore in pingendo proditores flor. quadraginta largos_" (see g. milanesi, _arch. star. vi_ ( ) p. note.) as has been told, giuliano de' medici was murdered on the th april , and we see by this that only three months later botticelli was paid for his painting of the "_proditores_". we can however hardly suppose that all the members of the conspiracy were depicted by him in fresco on the facade of the palace, since no fewer than eighty had been condemned to death. we have no means of knowing whether, besides botticelli, any other painters, perhaps leonardo, was commissioned, when the criminals had been hanged in person out of the windows of the palazzo del podestà to represent them there afterwards in effigy in memory of their disgrace. nor do we know whether the assassin who had escaped may at first not have been provisionally represented as hanged in effigy. now, when we try to connect the historical facts with this drawing by leonardo reproduced on pl. lxii, no. i, and the full description of the conspirator's dress and its colour on the same sheet, there seems to be no reasonable doubt that bernardo bandini is here represented as he was actually hanged on december th, , after his capture at constantinople. the dress is certainly not that in which he committed the murder. a long furred coat might very well be worn at constantinople or at florence in december, but hardly in april. the doubt remains whether leonardo described bernardo's dress so fully because it struck him as remarkable, or whether we may not rather suppose that this sketch was actually made from nature with the intention of using it as a study for a wall painting to be executed. it cannot be denied that the drawing has all the appearance of having been made for this purpose. be this as it may, the sketch under discussion proves, at any rate, that leonardo was in florence in december , and the note that accompanies it is valuable as adding one more characteristic specimen to the very small number of his mss. that can be proved to have been written between and .] notes on the last supper ( - ). . one who was drinking and has left the glass in its position and turned his head towards the speaker. another, twisting the fingers of his hands together turns with stern brows to his companion [ ]. another with his hands spread open shows the palms, and shrugs his shoulders up his ears making a mouth of astonishment [ ]. [ ] another speaks into his neighbour's ear and he, as he listens to him, turns towards him to lend an ear [ ], while he holds a knife in one hand, and in the other the loaf half cut through by the knife. [ ] another who has turned, holding a knife in his hand, upsets with his hand a glass on the table [ ]. [footnote , : in the original ms. there is no sketch to accompany these passages, and if we compare them with those drawings made by leonardo in preparation for the composition of the picture--pl. xlv, xlvi--, (compare also pl. lii, and the drawings on p. ) it is impossible to recognise in them a faithful interpretation of the whole of this text; but, if we compare these passages with the finished picture (see p. ) we shall see that in many places they coincide. for instance, compare no. , . -- , with the fourth figure on the right hand of christ. the various actions described in lines -- , -- are to be seen in the group of peter, john and judas; in the finished picture however it is not a glass but a salt cellar that judas is upsetting.] . another lays his hand on the table and is looking. another blows his mouthful. [ ] another leans forward to see the speaker shading his eyes with his hand. [ ] another draws back behind the one who leans forward, and sees the speaker between the wall and the man who is leaning [footnote: . _chinato_. i have to express my regret for having misread this word, written _cinato_ in the original, and having altered it to _"ciclo"_ when i first published this text, in 'the academy' for nov. , immediately after i had discovered it, and subsequently in the small biography of leonardo da vinci (great artists) p. .]. [footnote: in no. . line i must refer to the furthest figure on the left; , and describe actions which are given to the group of disciples on the left hand of christ.] . christ. count giovanni, the one with the cardinal of mortaro. [footnote: as this note is in the same small manuscript as the passage here immediately preceding it, i may be justified in assuming that leonardo meant to use the features of the person here named as a suitable model for the figure of christ. the celebrated drawing of the head of christ, now hanging in the brera gallery at milan, has obviously been so much restored that it is now impossible to say, whether it was ever genuine. we have only to compare it with the undoubtedly genuine drawings of heads of the disciples in pi. xlvii, xlviii and l, to admit that not a single line of the milan drawing in its present state can be by the same hand.] . philip, simon, matthew, thomas, james the greater, peter, philip, andrew, bartholomew. [footnote: see pi. xlvi. the names of the disciples are given in the order in which they are written in the original, from right to left, above each head. the original drawing is here slightly reduced in scale; it measures centimetres in length by in breadth.] . on the battle of anghiari. florentine neri di gino capponi bernardetto de' medici micheletto, niccolo da pisa conte francesco pietro gian paolo guelfo orsino, messer rinaldo degli albizzi begin with the address of niccolo piccinino to the soldiers and the banished florentines among whom are messer rinaldo degli albizzi and other florentines. then let it be shown how he first mounted on horseback in armour; and the whole army came after him-- squadrons of cavalry, and foot soldiers went with him. very early in the morning the patriarch went up a hill to reconnoitre the country, that is the hills, fields and the valley watered by a river; and from thence he beheld niccolo picinino coming from borgo san sepolcro with his people, and with a great dust; and perceiving them he returned to the camp of his own people and addressed them. having spoken he prayed to god with clasped hands, when there appeared a cloud in which saint peter appeared and spoke to the patriarch.-- cavalry were sent forward by the patriarch to hinder or check the rush of the enemy. in the foremost troop francesco the son of niccolo piccinino [ ] was the first to attack the bridge which was held by the patriarch and the florentines. beyond the bridge to his left he sent forward some infantry to engage ours, who drove them back, among whom was their captain micheletto [ ] whose lot it was to be that day at the head of the army. here, at this bridge there is a severe struggle; our men conquer and the enemy is repulsed. here guido and astorre, his brother, the lord of faenza with a great number of men, re-formed and renewed the fight, and rushed upon the florentines with such force that they recovered the bridge and pushed forward as far as the tents. but simonetto advanced with horse, and fell upon the enemy and drove them back once more from the place, and recaptured the bridge; and behind him came more men with horse soldiers. and thus for a long time they fought with varying fortune. but then the patriarch, in order to divert the enemy, sent forward niccolo da pisa [ ] and napoleone orsino, a beardless lad, followed by a great multitude of men, and then was done another great feat of arms. at the same time niccolo piccinino urged forward the remnant of his men, who once more made ours give way; and if it had not been that the patriarch set himself at their head and, by his words and deeds controlled the captains, our soldiers would have taken to flight. the patriarch had some artillery placed on the hill and with these he dispersed the enemy's infantry; and the disorder was so complete that niccolo began to call back his son and all his men, and they took to flight towards borgo. and then began a great slaughter of men; none escaped but the foremost of those who had fled or who hid themselves. the battle continued until sunset, when the patriarch gave his mind to recalling his men and burying the dead, and afterwards a trophy was erected. [footnote: . this passage does not seem to me to be in leonardo's hand, though it has hitherto been generally accepted as genuine. not only is the writing unlike his, but the spelling also is quite different. i would suggest that this passage is a description of the events of the battle drawn up for the painter by order of the signoria, perhaps by some historian commissioned by them, to serve as a scheme or programme of the work. the whole tenor of the style seems to me to argue in favour of this theory; and besides, it would be in no way surprising that such a document should have been preserved among leonardo's autographs.] allegorical representations referring to the duke of milan ( - ). . ermine with blood galeazzo, between calm weather and a representation of a tempest. [footnote: . only the beginning of this text is legible; the writing is much effaced and the sense is consequently obscure. it seems to refer like the following passage to an allegorical picture.] . il moro with spectacles, and envy depicted with false report and justice black for il moro. labour as having a branch of vine [_or_ a screw] in her hand. . il moro as representing good fortune, with hair, and robes, and his hands in front, and messer gualtieri taking him by the robes with a respectful air from below, having come in from the front [ ]. again, poverty in a hideous form running behind a youth. il moro covers him with the skirt of his robe, and with his gilt sceptre he threatens the monster. a plant with its roots in the air to represent one who is at his last;--a robe and favour. of tricks [_or_ of magpies] and of burlesque poems [_or_ of starlings]. those who trust themselves to live near him, and who will be a large crowd, these shall all die cruel deaths; and fathers and mothers together with their families will be devoured and killed by cruel creatures. [footnote: -- have already been published by _amoretti_ in _memorie storiche_ cap. xii. he adds this note with regard to gualtieri: "_a questo m. gualtieri come ad uomo generoso e benefico scrive il bellincioni un sonetto (pag, ) per chiedergli un piacere; e 'l tantio rendendo ragione a lodovico il moro, perche pubblicasse le rime del bellincioni; ciò hammi imposto, gli dice: l'humano fidele, prudente e sollicito executore delli tuoi comandamenti gualtero, che fa in tutte le cose ove tu possi far utile, ogni studio vi metti._" a somewhat mysterious and evidently allegorical composition--a pen and ink drawing--at windsor, see pl lviii, contains a group of figures in which perhaps the idea is worked out which is spoken of in the text, lines - .] . he was blacker than a hornet, his eyes were as red as a burning fire and he rode on a tall horse six spans across and more than long with six giants tied up to his saddle-bow and one in his hand which he gnawed with his teeth. and behind him came boars with tusks sticking out of their mouths, perhaps ten spans. allegorical representations ( -- ). . above the helmet place a half globe, which is to signify our hemisphere, in the form of a world; on which let there be a peacock, richly decorated, and with his tail spread over the group; and every ornament belonging to the horse should be of peacock's feathers on a gold ground, to signify the beauty which comes of the grace bestowed on him who is a good servant. on the shield a large mirror to signify that he who truly desires favour must be mirrored in his virtues. on the opposite side will be represented fortitude, in like manner in her place with her pillar in her hand, robed in white, to signify ... and all crowned; and prudence with eyes. the housing of the horse should be of plain cloth of gold closely sprinkled with peacock's eyes, and this holds good for all the housings of the horse, and the man's dress. and the man's crest and his neck-chain are of peacock's feathers on golden ground. on the left side will be a wheel, the centre of which should be attached to the centre of the horse's hinder thigh piece, and in the centre prudence is seen robed in red, charity sitting in a fiery chariot and with a branch of laurel in her hand, to signify the hope which comes of good service. [ ] messer antonio grimani of venice companion of antonio maria [ ]. [footnote: _messer antonio gri_. his name thus abbreviated is, there can be no doubt, grimani. antonio grimani was the famous doge who in commanded the venetian fleet in battle against the turks. but after the abortive conclusion of the expedition--ludovico being the ally of the turks who took possession of friuli--, grimani was driven into exile; he went to live at rome with his son cardinal domenico grimani. on being recalled to venice he filled the office of doge from to . _antonio maria_ probably means antonio maria grimani, the patriarch of aquileia.] . fame should be depicted as covered all over with tongues instead of feathers, and in the figure of a bird. . pleasure and pain represent as twins, since there never is one without the other; and as if they were united back to back, since they are contrary to each other. [ ] clay, gold. [footnote: . _oro. fango_: gold, clay. these words stand below the allegorical figure.] if you take pleasure know that he has behind him one who will deal you tribulation and repentance. [ ] this represents pleasure together with pain, and show them as twins because one is never apart from the other. they are back to back because they are opposed to each other; and they exist as contraries in the same body, because they have the same basis, inasmuch as the origin of pleasure is labour and pain, and the various forms of evil pleasure are the origin of pain. therefore it is here represented with a reed in his right hand which is useless and without strength, and the wounds it inflicts are poisoned. in tuscany they are put to support beds, to signify that it is here that vain dreams come, and here a great part of life is consumed. it is here that much precious time is wasted, that is, in the morning, when the mind is composed and rested, and the body is made fit to begin new labours; there again many vain pleasures are enjoyed; both by the mind in imagining impossible things, and by the body in taking those pleasures that are often the cause of the failing of life. and for these reasons the reed is held as their support. [footnote: . the pen and ink drawing on pi. lix belongs to this passage.] [footnote: . _tribolatione_. in the drawing caltrops may be seen lying in the old man's right hand, others are falling and others again are shewn on the ground. similar caltrops are drawn in ms. tri. p. and underneath them, as well as on page the words _triboli di ferro_ are written. from the accompanying text it appears that they were intended to be scattered on the ground at the bottom of ditches to hinder the advance of the enemy. count giulio porro who published a short account of the trivulzio ms. in the "_archivio storico lombardo_", anno viii part iv (dec. , ) has this note on the passages treating of "_triboli_": "_e qui aggiungerò che anni sono quando venne fabbricata la nuova cavallerizza presso il castello di milano, ne furono trovati due che io ho veduto ed erano precisamente quali si trovano descritti e disegnati da leonardo in questo codice_". there can therefore be no doubt that this means of defence was in general use, whether it were originally leonardo's invention or not. the play on the word "_tribolatione_", as it occurs in the drawing at oxford, must then have been quite intelligible.] [footnote: -- . these lines, in the original, are written on the left side of the page and refer to the figure shown on pi. lxi. next to it is placed the group of three figures given in pi. lx no. i. lines and , which are written under it, are the only explanation given.] evil-thinking is either envy or ingratitude. . envy must be represented with a contemptuous motion of the hand towards heaven, because if she could she would use her strength against god; make her with her face covered by a mask of fair seeming; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm branch and by an olive-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth are odious to her. many thunderbolts should proceed from her to signify her evil speaking. let her be lean and haggard because she is in perpetual torment. make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent, and make her with a quiver with tongues serving as arrows, because she often offends with it. give her a leopard's skin, because this creature kills the lion out of envy and by deceit. give her too a vase in her hand full of flowers and scorpions and toads and other venomous creatures; make her ride upon death, because envy, never dying, never tires of ruling. make her bridle, and load her with divers kinds of arms because all her weapons are deadly. toleration. intolerable. no sooner is virtue born than envy comes into the world to attack it; and sooner will there be a body without a shadow than virtue without envy. [footnote: the larger of the two drawings on pi. lxi is explained by the first lines of this passage. l. and , which are written above the space between the two drawings, do not seem to have any reference to either. l. - are below the allegorical twin figure which they serve to explain.] . when pluto's paradise is opened, then there may be devils placed in twelve pots like openings into hell. here will be death, the furies, ashes, many naked children weeping; living fires made of various colours.... . john the baptist saint augustin saint peter paul elisabeth saint clara. bernardino our lady louis bonaventura anthony of padua. saint francis. francis, anthony, a lily and book; bernardino with the [monogram of] jesus, louis with fleur de lys on his breast and the crown at his feet, bonaventura with seraphim, saint clara with the tabernacle, elisabeth with a queen's crown. [footnote: . the text of the first six lines is written within a square space of the same size as the copy here given. the names are written in the margin following the order in which they are here printed. in lines -- the names of those saints are repeated of whom it seemed necessary to point out the emblems.] list of drawings. . a head, full face, of a young man with fine flowing hair, many flowers drawn from nature, a head, full face, with curly hair, certain figures of saint jerome, [ ] the measurements of a figure, drawings of furnaces. a head of the duke, [ ] many designs for knots, studies for the panel of saint angelo a small composition of girolamo da fegline, a head of christ done with the pen, [ ] saint sebastians, several compositions of angels, a chalcedony, a head in profile with fine hair, some pitchers seen in(?) perspective, some machines for ships, some machines for waterworks, a head, a portrait of atalanta raising her face; the head of geronimo da fegline, the head of gian francisco borso, several throats of old women, several heads of old men, several nude figures, complete, several arms, eyes, feet, and positions, a madonna, finished, another, nearly in profile, head of our lady ascending into heaven, a head of an old man with long chin, a head of a gypsy girl, a head with a hat on, a representation of the passion, a cast, a head of a girl with her hair gathered in a knot, a head, with the brown hair dressed. [footnote: . this has already been published by amoretti _memorie storiche_ cap. xvi. his reading varies somewhat from that here given, _e. g._ l. and . _certi sangirolami in su d'una figura_; and instead of i. . _un san bastiano_.] [footnote: . . _molti disegni di gruppi_. vasari in his life of leonardo (iv, , ed. milanesi ) says: "_oltreché perse tempo fino a disegnare_ gruppi _di corde fatti con ordine, e che da un capo seguissi tutto il resto fino all' altro, tanto che s'empiessi un tondo; che se ne vede in istampa uno difficilissimo e molto bello, e nel mezzo vi sono queste parole: leonardus vinci accademia_". _gruppi_ must here be understood as a technical expression for those twisted ornaments which are well known through wood cuts. amoretti mentions six different ones in the ambrosian library. i am indebted to m. delaborde for kindly informing me that the original blocks of these are preserved in his department in the bibliothèque nationale in paris. on the cover of these volumes is a copy from one of them. the size of the original is / centimetres by / . the centre portion of another is given on p. . g. govi remarks on these ornaments (_saggio_ p. ): "_codesti gruppi eran probabilmente destinati a servir di modello a ferri da rilegatori per adornar le cartelle degli scolari (?). fregi somigliantissimi a questi troviamo infatti impressi in oro sui cartoni di vari volumi contemporanei, e li vediam pur figurare nelle lettere iniziali di alcune edizioni del tempo._" dürer who copied them, omitting the inscription, added to the second impressions his own monogram. in his diary he designates them simply as "_die sechs knoten_" (see thausing, life of a. dürer i, , ). in leonardo's mss. we find here and there little sketches or suggestions for similar ornaments. compare too g. mongeri, _l'arte in milano_, p. where an ornament of the same character is given from the old decorations of the vaulted ceiling of the sacristy of s. maria delle grazie.] [footnote: , . the meaning in which the word _coppi_, literally pitchers, is here used i am unable to determine; but a change to _copie_ seems to me too doubtful to be risked.] . stubborn rigour. doomed rigour. [footnote: see pi. lxii, no. , the two upper pen and ink drawings. the originals, in the windsor collection are slightly washed with colour. the background is blue sky; the plough and the instrument with the compass are reddish brown, the sun is tinted yellow]. . obstacles cannot crush me every obstacle yields to stern resolve he who is fixed to a star does not change his mind. [footnote: this text is written to elucidate two sketches which were obviously the first sketches for the drawings reproduced on pl lxii, no. .] . ivy is [a type] of longevity. [footnote: in the original there is, near this text, a sketch of a coat wreathed above the waist with ivy.] . truth the sun. falsehood a mask. innocence, malignity. fire destroys falsehood, that is sophistry, and restores truth, driving out darkness. fire may be represented as the destroy of all sophistry, and as the image and demonstration of truth; because it is light and drives out darkness which conceals all essences [or subtle things]. [footnote: see pi. lxiii. l. - are in the middle of the page; . - to the right below; . - below in the middle column. the rest of the text is below the sketches on the left. there are some other passages on this page relating to geometry.] truth. fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold. truth at last cannot be hidden. dissimulation is of no avail. dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. falsehood puts on a mask. nothing is hidden under the sun. fire is to represent truth because it destroys all sophistry and lies; and the mask is for lying and falsehood which conceal truth. . movement will cease before we are weary of being useful. movement will fail sooner than usefulness. death sooner than i am never weary of weariness. being useful, in serving others i is a motto for carnval. cannot do enough. without fatigue. no labour is sufficient to tire me. hands into which ducats and precious stones fall like snow; they never become tired by serving, but this service is only for its utility and not for our i am never weary own benefit. of being useful. naturally nature has so disposed me. . this shall be placed in the hand of ingratitude. wood nourishes the fire that consumes it. . to represent ingratitude. when the sun appears which dispels darkness in general, you put out the light which dispelled it for you in particular for your need and convenience. . on this side adam and eve on the other; o misery of mankind, of how many things do you make yourself the slave for money! [footnote: see pi. lxiv. the figures of adam and eve in the clouds here alluded to would seem to symbolise their superiority to all earthly needs.] . thus are base unions sundered. [footnote: a much blurred sketch is on the page by this text. it seems to represent an unravelled plait or tissue.] . constancy does not begin, but is that which perseveres. [footnote: a drawing in red chalk, also rubbed, which stands in the original in the middle of this text, seems to me to be intended for a sword hilt, held in a fist.] . love, fear, and esteem,-- write these on three stones. of servants. . prudence strength. . fame alone raises herself to heaven, because virtuous things are in favour with god. disgrace should be represented upside down, because all her deeds are contrary to god and tend to hell. . short liberty. . nothing is so much to be feared as evil report. this evil report is born of life. . not to disobey. . a felled tree which is shooting again. i am still hopeful. a falcon, time. [footnote: i. _albero tagliato_. this emblem was displayed during the carnival at florence in . see vasari vi, , ed. milanesi . but the coincidence is probably accidental.] . truth here makes falsehood torment lying tongues. . such as harm is when it hurts me not, is good which avails me not. [footnote: see pi. lx, no. . compare this sketch with that on pi. lxii, no. . below the two lines of the text there are two more lines: _li gùchi (giunchi) che ritégò le paglucole (pagliucole) chelli (che li) anniegano_.] . he who offends others, does not secure himself. [footnote: see pi. lx, no. .] . ingratitude. [footnote: see pi. lx, no. . below the bottom sketches are the unintelligible words "_sta stilli_." for "_ingratitudo_" compare also nos. and .] . one's thoughts turn towards hope. [footnote: . by the side of this passage is a sketch of a cage with a bird sitting in it.] ornaments and decorations for feasts ( - ). . a bird, for a comedy. [footnote: the biographies say so much, and the author's notes say so little of the invention attributed to leonardo of making artificial birds fly through the air, that the text here given is of exceptional interest from being accompanied by a sketch. it is a very slight drawing of a bird with outspread wings, which appears to be sliding down a stretched string. leonardo's flying machines and his studies of the flight of birds will be referred to later.] . a dress for the carnival. to make a beautiful dress cut it in thin cloth and give it an odoriferous varnish, made of oil of turpentine and of varnish in grain, with a pierced stencil, which must be wetted, that it may not stick to the cloth; and this stencil may be made in a pattern of knots which afterwards may be filled up with black and the ground with white millet.[footnote : the grains of black and white millet would stick to the varnish and look like embroidery.] [footnote: ser giuliano, da vinci the painter's brother, had been commissioned, with some others, to order and to execute the garments of the allegorical figures for the carnival at florence in -- ; vasari however is incorrect in saying of the florentine carnival of : "_equelli che feciono ed ordinarono gli abiti delle figure furono ser piero da vinci, padre di lonardo, e bernardino di giordano, bellissimi ingegni_" (see milanesi's ed. voi. vi, pg. .)] . snow taken from the high peaks of mountains might be carried to hot places and let to fall at festivals in open places at summer time. vinci, volume *** this ebook was produced by charles aldarondo and the distributed proofreaders team. the notebooks of leonardo da vinci volume translated by jean paul richter xi. the notes on sculpture. compared with the mass of manuscript treating of painting, a very small number of passages bearing on the practice and methods of sculpture are to be found scattered through the note books; these are here given at the beginning of this section (nos. - ). there is less cause for surprise at finding that the equestrian statue of francesco sforza is only incidentally spoken of; for, although leonardo must have worked at it for a long succession of years, it is not in the nature of the case that it could have given rise to much writing. we may therefore regard it as particularly fortunate that no fewer than thirteen notes in the master's handwriting can be brought together, which seem to throw light on the mysterious history of this famous work. until now writers on leonardo were acquainted only with the passages numbered , , , and . in arranging these notes on sculpture i have given the precedence to those which treat of the casting of the monument, not merely because they are the fullest, but more especially with a view to reconstructing the monument, an achievement which really almost lies within our reach by combining and comparing the whole of the materials now brought to light, alike in notes and in sketches. a good deal of the first two passages, nos. and , which refer to this subject seems obscure and incomprehensible; still, they supplement each other and one contributes in no small degree to the comprehension of the other. a very interesting and instructive commentary on these passages may be found in the fourth chapter of vasari's introduzione della scultura under the title "come si fanno i modelli per fare di bronzo le figure grandi e picciole, e come le forme per buttarle; come si armino di ferri, e come si gettino di metallo," &c. among the drawings of models of the moulds for casting we find only one which seems to represent the horse in the act of galloping--no. . all the other designs show the horse as pacing quietly and as these studies of the horse are accompanied by copious notes as to the method of casting, the question as to the position of the horse in the model finally selected, seems to be decided by preponderating evidence. "il cavallo dello sforza"--c. boito remarks very appositely in the saggio on page , "doveva sembrare fratello al cavallo del colleoni. e si direbbe che questo fosse figlio del cavallo del gattamelata, il quale pare figlio di uno dei quattro cavalli che stavano forse sull' arco di nerone in roma" (now at venice). the publication of the saggio also contains the reproduction of a drawing in red chalk, representing a horse walking to the left and supported by a scaffolding, given here on pl. lxxvi, no. . it must remain uncertain whether this represents the model as it stood during the preparations for casting it, or whether--as seems to me highly improbable--this sketch shows the model as it was exhibited in on the piazza del castello in milan under a triumphal arch, on the occasion of the marriage of the emperor maximilian to bianca maria sforza. the only important point here is to prove that strong evidence seems to show that, of the numerous studies for the equestrian statue, only those which represent the horse pacing agree with the schemes of the final plans. the second group of preparatory sketches, representing the horse as galloping, must therefore be considered separately, a distinction which, in recapitulating the history of the origin of the monument seems justified by the note given under no. . galeazza maria sforza was assassinated in before his scheme for erecting a monument to his father francesco sforza could be carried into effect. in the following year ludovico il moro the young aspirant to the throne was exiled to pisa, and only returned to milan in when he was lord (governatore) of the state of milan, in after the minister cecco simonetta had been murdered. it may have been soon after this that ludovico il moro announced a competition for an equestrian statue, and it is tolerably certain that antonio del pollajuolo took part in it, from this passage in vasari's life of this artist: "e si trovo, dopo la morte sua, il disegno e modello che a lodovico sforza egli aveva fatto per la statua a cavallo di francesco sforza, duca di milano; il quale disegno e nel nostro libro, in due modi: in uno egli ha sotto verona; nell'altro, egli tutto armato, e sopra un basamento pieno di battaglie, fa saltare il cavallo addosso a un armato; ma la cagione perche non mettesse questi disegni in opera, non ho gia potuto sapere." one of pollajuolo's drawings, as here described, has lately been discovered by senatore giovanni morelli in the munich pinacothek. here the profile of the horseman is a portrait of francesco duke of milan, and under the horse, who is galloping to the left, we see a warrior thrown and lying on the ground; precisely the same idea as we find in some of leonardo's designs for the monument, as on pl. lxvi, lxvii, lxviii, lxix and lxxii no. ; and, as it is impossible to explain this remarkable coincidence by supposing that either artist borrowed it from the other, we can only conclude that in the terms of the competition the subject proposed was the duke on a horse in full gallop, with a fallen foe under its hoofs. leonardo may have been in the competition there and then, but the means for executing the monument do not seem to have been at once forthcoming. it was not perhaps until some years later that leonardo in a letter to the duke (no. ) reminded him of the project for the monument. then, after he had obeyed a summons to milan, the plan seems to have been so far modified, perhaps in consequence of a remonstrance on the part of the artist, that a pacing horse was substituted for one galloping, and it may have been at the same time that the colossal dimensions of the statue were first decided on. the designs given on pl. lxx, lxxi, lxxii, and , lxxiii and lxxiv and on pp. and , as well as three sketches on pl. lxix may be studied with reference to the project in its new form, though it is hardly possible to believe that in either of these we see the design as it was actually carried out. it is probable that in milan leonardo worked less on drawings, than in making small models of wax and clay as preparatory to his larger model. among the drawings enumerated above, one in black chalk, pl. lxxiii--the upper sketch on the right hand side, reminds us strongly of the antique statue of marcus aurelius. if, as it would seem, leonardo had not until then visited rome, he might easily have known this statue from drawings by his former master and friend verrocchio, for verrocchio had been in rome for a long time between and . in pope sixtus iv had this antique equestrian statue restored and placed on a new pedestal in front of the church of san giovanni in luterano. leonardo, although he was painting independently as early as in is still spoken of as working in verrocchio's studio in . two years later the venetian senate decided on erecting an equestrian statue to colleoni; and as verrocchio, to whom the work was entrusted, did not at once move from florence to venice--where he died in before the casting was completed--but on the contrary remained in florence for some years, perhaps even till , leonardo probably had the opportunity of seeing all his designs for the equestrian statue at venice and the red chalk drawing on pl. lxxiv may be a reminiscence of it. the pen and ink drawing on pl. lxxii, no. , reminds us of donatello's statue of gattamelata at padua. however it does not appear that leonardo was ever at padua before , but we may conclude that he took a special interest in this early bronze statue and the reports he could procure of it, form an incidental remark which is to be found in c. a. a; a, and which will be given in vol. ii under ricordi or memoranda. among the studies--in the widest sense of the word--made in preparation statue we may include the anatomy of the horse which lomazzo and vas mention; the most important parts of this work still exist in the queen's li windsor. it was beyond a doubt compiled by leonardo when at milan; only interesting records to be found among these designs are reproduced in nos. a but it must be pointed out that out of sheets of studies of the movements of the belonging to that treatise, a horse in full gallop occurs but once. if we may trust the account given by paulus jovius--about l -- leonardo's horse was represented as "vehementer incitatus et anhelatus". jovius had probably seen the model exhibited at milan; but, need we, in fact, infer from this description that the horse was galloping? compare vasari's description of the gattamelata monument at padua: "egli [donatello] vi ando ben volentieri, e fece il cavallo di bronzo, che e in sulla piazza di sant antonio, nel quale si dimostra lo sbuffamento ed il fremito del cavallo, ed il grande animo e la fierezza vivacissimamente espressa dall'arte nella figura che lo cavalca". these descriptions, it seems to me, would only serve to mark the difference between the work of the middle ages and that of the renaissance. we learn from a statement of sabba da castiglione that, when milan was taken by the french in , the model sustained some injury; and this informant, who, however is not invariably trustworthy, adds that leonardo had devoted fully sixteen years to this work (la forma del cavallo, intorno a cui leonardo avea sedici anni continui consumati). this often-quoted passage has given ground for an assumption, which has no other evidence to support it, that leonardo had lived in milan ever since . but i believe it is nearer the truth to suppose that this author's statement alludes to the fact that about sixteen years must have past since the competition in which leonardo had taken part. i must in these remarks confine myself strictly to the task in hand and give no more of the history of the sforza monument than is needed to explain the texts and drawings i have been able to reproduce. in the first place, with regard to the drawings, i may observe that they are all, with the following two exceptions, in the queen's library at windsor castle; the red chalk drawing on pl. lxxvi no. is in the ms. c. a. (see no. l ) and the fragmentary pen and ink drawing on page is in the ambrosian library. the drawings from windsor on pl. lxvi have undergone a trifling reduction from the size of the originals. there can no longer be the slightest doubt that the well-known engraving of several horsemen (passavant, le peintre-graveur, vol. v, p. , no. ) is only a copy after original drawings by leonardo, executed by some unknown engraver; we have only to compare the engraving with the facsimiles of drawings on pl. lxv, no. , pl. lxvii, lxviii and lxix which, it is quite evident, have served as models for the engraver. on pl. lxv no. , in the larger sketch to the right hand, only the base is distinctly visible, the figure of the horseman is effaced. leonardo evidently found it unsatisfactory and therefore rubbed it out. the base of the monument--the pedestal for the equestrian statue--is repeatedly sketched on a magnificent plan. in the sketch just mentioned it has the character of a shrine or aedicula to contain a sarcophagus. captives in chains are here represented on the entablature with their backs turned to that portion of the monument which more strictly constitutes the pedestal of the horse. the lower portion of the aedicula is surrounded by columns. in the pen and ink drawing pl. lxvi--the lower drawing on the right hand side--the sarcophagus is shown between the columns, and above the entablature is a plinth on which the horse stands. but this arrangement perhaps seemed to leonardo to lack solidity, and in the little sketch on the left hand, below, the sarcophagus is shown as lying under an arched canopy. in this the trophies and the captive warriors are detached from the angles. in the first of these two sketches the place for the trophies is merely indicated by a few strokes; in the third sketch on the left the base is altogether broader, buttresses and pinnacles having been added so as to form three niches. the black chalk drawing on pl. lxviii shows a base in which the angles are formed by niches with pilasters. in the little sketch to the extreme left on pl. lxv, no. , the equestrian statue serves to crown a circular temple somewhat resembling bramante's tempietto of san pietro in montario at rome, while the sketch above to the right displays an arrangement faintly reminding us of the tomb of the scaligers in verona. the base is thus constructed of two platforms or slabs, the upper one considerably smaller than the lower one which is supported on flying buttresses with pinnacles. on looking over the numerous studies in which the horse is not galloping but merely walking forward, we find only one drawing for the pedestal, and this, to accord with the altered character of the statue, is quieter and simpler in style (pl. lxxiv). it rises almost vertically from the ground and is exactly as long as the pacing horse. the whole base is here arranged either as an independent baldaquin or else as a projecting canopy over a recess in which the figure of the deceased duke is seen lying on his sarcophagus; in the latter case it was probably intended as a tomb inside a church. here, too, it was intended to fill the angles with trophies or captive warriors. probably only no. in the text refers to the work for the base of the monument. if we compare the last mentioned sketch with the description of a plan for an equestrian monument to gian giacomo trivulzio (no. ) it seems by no means impossible that this drawing is a preparatory study for the very monument concerning which the manuscript gives us detailed information. we have no historical record regarding this sketch nor do the archives in the trivulzio palace give us any information. the simple monument to the great general in san nazaro maggiore in milan consists merely of a sarcophagus placed in recess high on the wall of an octagonal chapel. the figure of the warrior is lying on the sarcophagus, on which his name is inscribed; a piece of sculpture which is certainly not leonardo's work. gian giacomo trivulzio died at chartres in , only five months before leonardo, and it seems to me highly improbable that this should have been the date of this sketch; under these circumstances it would have been done under the auspices of francis i, but the italian general was certainly not in favour with the french monarch at the time. gian giacomo trivulzio was a sworn foe to ludovico il moro, whom he strove for years to overthrow. on the th september he marched victorious into milan at the head of a french army. in a short time, however, he was forced to quit milan again when ludovico il moro bore down upon the city with a force of swiss troops. on the th of april following, after defeating lodovico at novara, trivulzio once more entered milan as a conqueror, but his hopes of becoming _governatore_ of the place were soon wrecked by intrigue. this victory and triumph, historians tell us, were signalised by acts of vengeance against the dethroned sforza, and it might have been particularly flattering to him that the casting and construction of the sforza monument were suspended for the time. it must have been at this moment--as it seems to me--that he commissioned the artist to prepare designs for his own monument, which he probably intended should find a place in the cathedral or in some other church. he, the husband of margherita di nicolino colleoni, would have thought that he had a claim to the same distinction and public homage as his less illustrious connection had received at the hands of the venetian republic. it was at this very time that trivulzio had a medal struck with a bust portrait of himself and the following remarkable inscription on the reverse:_ deo favente-- --dictvs-- --ia--expvlit--lvdovicv--sf-- (sfortiam) dvc-- (ducem) mli (mediolani)--noie (nomine)--regis--francorvm--eodem--ann --(anno) red't (redit)--lvs (ludovicus)--svperatvs et captvs--est--ab--eo. _in the library of the palazzo trivulzio there is a ms. of callimachus siculus written at the end of the xvth or beginning of the xvith century. at the beginning of this ms. there is an exquisite illuminated miniature of an equestrian statue with the name of the general on the base; it is however very doubtful whether this has any connection with leonardo's design. nos. - , which treat of casting bronze, have probably a very indirect bearing on the arrangements made for casting the equestrian statue of francesco sforza. some portions evidently relate to the casting of cannon. still, in our researches about leonardo's work on the monument, we may refer to them as giving us some clue to the process of bronze casting at that period. some practical hints ( - ). o . of a statue. if you wish to make a figure in marble, first make one of clay, and when you have finished it, let it dry and place it in a case which should be large enough, after the figure is taken out of it, to receive also the marble, from which you intend to reveal the figure in imitation of the one in clay. after you have put the clay figure into this said case, have little rods which will exactly slip in to the holes in it, and thrust them so far in at each hole that each white rod may touch the figure in different parts of it. and colour the portion of the rod that remains outside black, and mark each rod and each hole with a countersign so that each may fit into its place. then take the clay figure out of this case and put in your piece of marble, taking off so much of the marble that all your rods may be hidden in the holes as far as their marks; and to be the better able to do this, make the case so that it can be lifted up; but the bottom of it will always remain under the marble and in this way it can be lifted with tools with great ease. . some have erred in teaching sculptors to measure the limbs of their figures with threads as if they thought that these limbs were equally round in every part where these threads were wound about them. . measurement and division of a statue. divide the head into degrees, and each degree divide into points, and each point into minutes, and the minutes into minims and the minims into semi minims. degree--point--minute--minim. . sculptured figures which appear in motion, will, in their standing position, actually look as if they were falling forward. [footnote: _figure di rilievo_. leonardo applies this term exclusively to wholly detached figures, especially to those standing free. this note apparently refers to some particular case, though we have no knowledge of what that may have been. if we suppose it to refer to the first model of the equestrian statue of francesco sforza (see the introduction to the notes on sculpture) this observation may be regarded as one of his arguments for abandoning the first scheme of the sforza monument, in which the horse was to be galloping (see page ). it is also in favour of this theory that the note is written in a manuscript volume already completed in . leonardo's opinions as to the shortcomings of plastic works when compared with paintings are given under no. and .] notes on the casting of the sforza monument ( - ). . three braces which bind the mould. [if you want to make simple casts quickly, make them in a box of river sand wetted with vinegar.] [when you shall have made the mould upon the horse you must make the thickness of the metal in clay.] observe in alloying how many hours are wanted for each hundredweight. [in casting each one keep the furnace and its fire well stopped up.] [let the inside of all the moulds be wetted with linseed oil or oil of turpentine, and then take a handful of powdered borax and greek pitch with aqua vitae, and pitch the mould over outside so that being under ground the damp may not [damage it?] [to manage the large mould make a model of the small mould, make a small room in proportion.] [make the vents in the mould while it is on the horse.] hold the hoofs in the tongs, and cast them with fish glue. weigh the parts of the mould and the quantity of metal it will take to fill them, and give so much to the furnace that it may afford to each part its amount of metal; and this you may know by weighing the clay of each part of the mould to which the quantity in the furnace must correspond. and this is done in order that the furnace for the legs when filled may not have to furnish metal from the legs to help out the head, which would be impossible. [cast at the same casting as the horse the little door] [footnote: the importance of the notes included under this number is not diminished by the fact that they have been lightly crossed out with red chalk. possibly they were the first scheme for some fuller observations which no longer exist; or perhaps they were crossed out when leonardo found himself obliged to give up the idea of casting the equestrian statue. in the original the first two sketches are above l. , and the third below l. .] . the mould for the horse. make the horse on legs of iron, strong and well set on a good foundation; then grease it and cover it with a coating, leaving each coat to dry thoroughly layer by layer; and this will thicken it by the breadth of three fingers. now fix and bind it with iron as may be necessary. moreover take off the mould and then make the thickness. then fill the mould by degrees and make it good throughout; encircle and bind it with its irons and bake it inside where it has to touch the bronze. of making the mould in pieces. draw upon the horse, when finished, all the pieces of the mould with which you wish to cover the horse, and in laying on the clay cut it in every piece, so that when the mould is finished you can take it off, and then recompose it in its former position with its joins, by the countersigns. the square blocks _a b_ will be between the cover and the core, that is in the hollow where the melted bronze is to be; and these square blocks of bronze will support the intervals between the mould and the cover at an equal distance, and for this reason these squares are of great importance. the clay should be mixed with sand. take wax, to return [what is not used] and to pay for what is used. dry it in layers. make the outside mould of plaster, to save time in drying and the expense in wood; and with this plaster enclose the irons [props] both outside and inside to a thickness of two fingers; make terra cotta. and this mould can be made in one day; half a boat load of plaster will serve you. good. dam it up again with glue and clay, or white of egg, and bricks and rubbish. [footnote: see pl. lxxv. the figure " ," close to the sketch in the middle of the page between lines and has been added by a collector's hand. in the original, below line , a square piece of the page has been cut out about centimetres by and a blank piece has been gummed into the place. lines - are written on the margin. l. and are close to the second marginal sketch. l. is a note written above the third marginal sketch and on the back of this sheet is the text given as no. . compare also no. .] . all the heads of the large nails. [footnote: see pl. lxxvi, no. i. this drawing has already been published in the "_saggio delle opere di l. da vinci_." milano , pl. xxiv, no. i. but, for various reasons i cannot regard the editor's suggestions as satisfactory. he says: "_veggonsi le armature di legname colle quali forse venne sostenuto il modello, quando per le nozze di bianca maria sforza con massimiliano imperatore, esso fu collocato sotto un arco trionfale davanti al castello_." . these bindings go inside. . salt may be made from human excrements, burnt and calcined, made into lees and dried slowly at a fire, and all the excrements produce salt in a similar way and these salts when distilled, are very strong. [footnote: vasari repeatedly states, in the fourth chapter of his _introduzione della scultura_, that in preparing to cast bronze statues horse-dung was frequently used by sculptors. if, notwithstanding this, it remains doubtful whether i am justified in having introduced here this text of but little interest, no such doubt can be attached to the sketch which accompanies it.] . method of founding again. this may be done when the furnace is made [footnote: this note is written below the sketches.] strong and bruised. models for the horse of the sforza monument ( - ). l . messer galeazzo's big genet . messer galeazzo's sicilian horse. [footnote: these notes are by the side of a drawing of a horse with figured measurements.] . measurement of the sicilian horse the leg from behind, seen in front, lifted and extended. [footnote: there is no sketch belonging to this passage. galeazze here probably means galeazze di san severino, the famous captain who married bianca the daughter of ludovico il moro.] occasional references to the sforza monument ( - ). . again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honour of the happy memory of the prince your father, and of the illustrious house of sforza. [footnote: the letter from which this passage is here extracted will be found complete in section xxi. (see the explanation of it, on page ).] . on the rd of april i began this book, and recommenced the horse. . there is to be seen, in the mountains of parma and piacenza, a multitude of shells and corals full of holes, still sticking to the rocks, and when i was at work on the great horse for milan, a large sackful of them, which were found thereabout, was brought to me into my workshop, by certain peasants. . believe me, leonardo the florentine, who has to do the equestrian bronze statue of the duke francesco that he does not need to care about it, because he has work for all his life time, and, being so great a work, i doubt whether he can ever finish it. [footnote: this passage is quoted from a letter to a committee at piacenza for whom leonardo seems to have undertaken to execute some work. the letter is given entire in section xxl; in it leonardo remonstrates as to some unreasonable demands.] . of the horse i will say nothing because i know the times. [footnote: this passage occurs in a rough copy of a letter to ludovico il moro, without date (see below among the letters).] . during ten years the works on the marbles have been going on i will not wait for my payment beyond the time, when my works are finished. [footnote: this possibly refers to the works for the pedestal of the equestrian statue concerning which we have no farther information in the mss. see p. .] the project of the trivulzio monument. . the monument to messer giovanni jacomo da trevulzo. [ ] cost of the making and materials for the horse [ ]. [footnote: in the original, lines - , - , - , are written on the margin. this passage has been recently published by g. govi in vol. v, ser. a, of _transunti, reale accademia dei linea, sed. del giugno, ,_ with the following introductory note: _"desidero intanto che siano stampati questi pochi frammenti perche so che sono stati trascritti ultimamente, e verranno messi in luce tra poco fuori d'italia. li ripubblichi pure chi vuole, ma si sappia almeno che anche tra noi si conoscevano, e s'eran raccolti da anni per comporne, quando che fosse, una edizione ordinata degli scritti di leonardo."_ the learned editor has left out line and has written _pie_ for _piedi_ in line . there are other deviations of less importance from the original.] a courser, as large as life, with the rider requires for the cost of the metal, duc. . and for cost of the iron work which is inside the model, and charcoal, and wood, and the pit to cast it in, and for binding the mould, and including the furnace where it is to be cast ... duc. . to make the model in clay and then in wax......... duc. . to the labourers for polishing it when it is cast. ....... duc. . in all. . duc. . [ ] cost of the marble of the monument [ ]. cost of the marble according to the drawing. the piece of marble under the horse which is braccia long, braccia and inches wide and inches thick hundredweight, at lire and soldi per hundredweight.. duc. . and for braccia and inches of cornice, in. wide and in. thick, hundredweight....... duc. . and for the frieze and architrave, which is br. and in. long, br. wide and in. thick, hundredweight., duc. . and for the capitals made of metal, which are , inches in. square and in. thick, at the price of ducats each, will come to...... duc. . and for columns of br. in., / in. thick, hundredweight duc. . and for bases which are / in. square and in. high hund'.. duc. . and for the slab of the tombstone br. io in. long, br. / in. wide hundredweight....... duc. . and for pedestal feet each br. long and / in. wide and / in. thick, hundredweight come to... duc. . and for the cornice below which is br. and in. long, and br. and in. wide, and in. thick, hund'.. duc. . and for the stone of which the figure of the deceased is to be made which is br. and in. long, and br. and in. wide, and in. thick, hund'.. duc. . and for the stone on which the figure lies which is br. and in. long and br. and in., wide and / in. thick duc. . and for the squares of marble placed between the pedestals which are and are br. long and in. wide, and in. thick, hundredweight . . . duc. . in all. . duc. . [ ]cost of the work in marble[ ]. round the base on which the horse stands there are figures at ducats each ............ duc. . and on the same base there are festoons with some other ornaments, and of these there are at the price of ducats each, and at the price of ducats each ....... duc. . and for squaring the stones duc. . again, for the large cornice which goes below the base on which the horse stands, which is br. and in., at due. per br. ...... duc. . and for br. of frieze at due. per br. ........... duc. . and for br. of architrave at / duc. per br. ....... duc. . and for rosettes which will be the soffit of the monument, at ducats each .......... duc. . and for fluted columns at ducats each ......... duc. . and for bases at ducat each, duc. . and for pedestals, of which are at duc. each, which go above the angles; and at duc. each .. duc. . and for squaring and carving the moulding of the pedestals at duc. each, and there are .... duc. . and for square blocks with figures and trophies, at duc. each .. duc. . and for carving the moulding of the stone under the figure of the deceased .......... duc. . for the statue of the deceased, to do it well .......... duc. . for harpies with candelabra, at ducats each ......... duc. . for squaring the stone on which the statue lies, and carving the moulding ............ duc. . in all .. duc. . the sum total of every thing added together amount to ...... duc. . . mint at rome. it can also be made without a spring. but the screw above must always be joined to the part of the movable sheath: [margin note: the mint of rome.] [footnote: see pl. lxxvi. this passage is taken from a note book which can be proved to have been used in rome.] all coins which do not have the rim complete, are not to be accepted as good; and to secure the perfection of their rim it is requisite that, in the first place, all the coins should be a perfect circle; and to do this a coin must before all be made perfect in weight, and size, and thickness. therefore have several plates of metal made of the same size and thickness, all drawn through the same gauge so as to come out in strips. and out of [ ] these strips you will stamp the coins, quite round, as sieves are made for sorting chestnuts [ ]; and these coins can then be stamped in the way indicated above; &c. [ ] the hollow of the die must be uniformly wider than the lower, but imperceptibly [ ]. this cuts the coins perfectly round and of the exact thickness, and weight; and saves the man who cuts and weighs, and the man who makes the coins round. hence it passes only through the hands of the gauger and of the stamper, and the coins are very superior. [footnote: see pl. lxxvi no. . the text of lines - stands parallel . - . farther evidence of leonardo's occupations and engagements at rome under pope leo x. may be gathered from some rough copies of letters which will be found in this volume. hitherto nothing has been known of his work in rome beyond some doubtful, and perhaps mythical, statements in vasari.] . powder for medals. the incombustible growth of soot on wicks reduced to powder, burnt tin and all the metals, alum, isinglass, smoke from a brass forge, each ingredient to be moistened, with aqua vitae or malmsey or strong malt vinegar, white wine or distilled extract of turpentine, or oil; but there should be little moisture, and cast in moulds. [margin note: on the coining of medals ( . ).] [footnote: the meaning of _scagliuolo_ in this passage is doubtful.] . of taking casts of medals. a paste of emery mixed with aqua vitae, or iron filings with vinegar, or ashes of walnut leaves, or ashes of straw very finely powdered. [footnote: the meaning of _scagliuolo_ in this passage is doubtful.] the diameter is given in the lead enclosed; it is beaten with a hammer and several times extended; the lead is folded and kept wrapped up in parchment so that the powder may not be spilt; then melt the lead, and the powder will be on the top of the melted lead, which must then be rubbed between two plates of steel till it is thoroughly pulverised; then wash it with aqua fortis, and the blackness of the iron will be dissolved leaving the powder clean. emery in large grains may be broken by putting it on a cloth many times doubled, and hit it sideways with the hammer, when it will break up; then mix it little by little and it can be founded with ease; but if you hold it on the anvil you will never break it, when it is large. any one who grinds smalt should do it on plates of tempered steel with a cone shaped grinder; then put it in aqua fortis, which melts away the steel that may have been worked up and mixed with the smalt, and which makes it black; it then remains purified and clean; and if you grind it on porphyry the porphyry will work up and mix with the smalt and spoil it, and aqua fortis will never remove it because it cannot dissolve the porphyry. if you want a fine blue colour dissolve the smalt made with tartar, and then remove the salt. vitrified brass makes a fine red. . stucco. place stucco over the prominence of the..... which may be composed of venus and mercury, and lay it well over that prominence of the thickness of the side of a knife, made with the ruler and cover this with the bell of a still, and you will have again the moisture with which you applied the paste. the rest you may dry [margin note: on stucco ( . ).] [footnote: in this passage a few words have been written in a sort of cipher--that is to say backwards; as in l. _erenev_ for _venere_, l. _oirucrem_ for mercurio, l. _il orreve co ecarob_ for _il everro (?) co borace_. the meaning of the word before _"di giesso"_ in l. is unknown; and the sense, in which _sagoma_ is used here and in other passages is obscure.-- _venere_ and _mercurio_ may mean 'marble' and 'lime', of which stucco is composed. . the meaning of _orreve_ is unknown.] well; afterwards fire it, and beat it or burnish it with a good burnisher, and make it thick towards the side. stucco. powder ... with borax and water to a paste, and make stucco of it, and then heat it so that it may dry, and then varnish it, with fire, so that it shines well. . stucco for moulding. take of butter parts, of wax parts, and as much fine flour as when put with these things melted, will make them as firm as wax or modelling clay. glue. take mastic, distilled turpentine and white lead. on bronze casting generally ( - ). . to cast. tartar burnt and powdered with plaster and cast cause the plaster to hold together when it is mixed up again; and then it will dissolve in water. . to cast bronze in plaster. take to every cups of plaster of ox-horns burnt, mix them together and make your cast with it. . when you want to take a cast in wax, burn the scum with a candle, and the cast will come out without bubbles. . ounces of plaster to a pound of metal;-- walnut, which makes it like the curve. [footnote: the second part of this is quite obscure.] . [dried earth pounds, pounds of metal wet clay ,--of wet ,-half,- which increases ibs. of water,-- of wax, ib. of metal, a little less,-the scrapings of linen with earth, measure for measure.] [footnote: the translation is given literally, but the meaning is quite obscure.] . such as the mould is, so will the cast be. . how casts ought to be polished. make a bunch of iron wire as thick as thread, and scrub them with [this and] water; hold a bowl underneath that it may not make a mud below. how to remove the rough edges from bronze. make an iron rod, after the manner of a large chisel, and with this rub over those seams on the bronze which remain on the casts of the guns, and which are caused by the joins in the mould; but make the tool heavy enough, and let the strokes be long and broad. to facilitate melting. first alloy part of the metal in the crucible, then put it in the furnace, and this being in a molten state will assist in beginning to melt the copper. to prevent the copper cooling in the furnace. when the copper cools in the furnace, be ready, as soon as you perceive it, to cut it with a long stick while it is still in a paste; or if it is quite cold cut it as lead is cut with broad and large chisels. if you have to make a large cast. if you have to make a cast of a hundred thousand pounds do it with two furnaces and with pounds in each, or as much as pounds at most. . how to proceed to break a large mass of bronze. if you want to break up a large mass of bronze, first suspend it, and then make round it a wall on the four sides, like a trough of bricks, and make a great fire therein. when it is quite red hot give it a blow with a heavy weight raised above it, and with great force. . to combine lead with other metal. if you wish for economy in combining lead with the metal in order to lessen the amount of tin which is necessary in the metal, first alloy the lead with the tin and then add the molten copper. how to melt [metal] in a furnace. the furnace should be between four well founded pillars. of the thickness of the coating. the coating should not be more than two fingers thick, it should be laid on in four thicknesses over fine clay and then well fixed, and it should be fired only on the inside and then carefully covered with ashes and cow's dung. of the thickness of the gun. the gun being made to carry ibs. of ball and more, by this rule you will take the measure of the diameter of the ball and divide it into parts and one of these parts will be its thickness at the muzzle; but at the breech it must always be half. and if the ball is to be lbs., / th of the diameter of the ball must be its thickness in front; and if the ball is to be , the eighth of its diameter in front; and if , / th and / [ / ], and if , / th. of the length of the body of the gun. if you want it to throw a ball of stone, make the length of the gun to be , or as much as diameters of the ball; and if the ball is to be of iron make it as much as balls, and if the ball is to be of lead, make it as much as balls. i mean when the gun is to have the mouth fitted to receive lbs. of stone ball, and more. of the thickness of small guns. the thickness at the muzzle of small guns should be from a half to one third of the diameter of the ball, and the length from to balls. . of luting the furnace within. the furnace must be luted before you put the metal in it, with earth from valenza, and over that with ashes. [footnote . .: _terra di valenza_.--valenza is north of alessandria on the po.] of restoring the metal when it is becoming cool. when you see that the bronze is congealing take some willow-wood cut in small chips and make up the fire with it. the cause of its curdling. i say that the cause of this congealing often proceeds from too much fire, or from ill-dried wood. to know the condition of the fire. you may know when the fire is good and fit for your purpose by a clear flame, and if you see the tips of the flames dull and ending in much smoke do not trust it, and particularly when the flux metal is almost fluid. of alloying the metal. metal for guns must invariably be made with or even per cent, that is of tin to one hundred of copper, for the less you put in, the stronger will the gun be. when the tin should be added to the copper. the tin should be put in with the copper when the copper is reduced to a fluid. how to hasten the melting. you can hasten the melting when / ds of the copper is fluid; you can then, with a stick of chestnut-wood, repeatedly stir what of copper remains entire amidst what is melted. _introductory observations on the architectural designs (xii), and writings on architecture (xiii)._ _until now very little has been known regarding leonardo's labours in the domain of architecture. no building is known to have been planned and executed by him, though by some contemporary writers incidental allusion is made to his occupying himself with architecture, and his famous letter to lodovico il moro,--which has long been a well-known document,--in which he offers his service as an architect to that prince, tends to confirm the belief that he was something more than an amateur of the art. this hypothesis has lately been confirmed by the publication of certain documents, preserved at milan, showing that leonardo was not only employed in preparing plans but that he took an active part, with much credit, as member of a commission on public buildings; his name remains linked with the history of the building of the cathedral at pavia and that of the cathedral at milan._ _leonardo's writings on architecture are dispersed among a large number of mss., and it would be scarcely possible to master their contents without the opportunity of arranging, sorting and comparing the whole mass of materials, so as to have some comprehensive idea of the whole. the sketches, when isolated and considered by themselves, might appear to be of but little value; it is not till we understand their general purport, from comparing them with each other, that we can form any just estimate of their true worth._ _leonardo seems to have had a project for writing a complete and separate treatise on architecture, such as his predecessors and contemporaries had composed--leon battista alberti, filarete, francesco di giorgio and perhaps also bramante. but, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that possibly no such scheme was connected with the isolated notes and researches, treating on special questions, which are given in this work; that he was merely working at problems in which, for some reason or other he took a special interest._ _a great number of important buildings were constructed in lombardy during the period between and , and among them there are several by unknown architects, of so high an artistic merit, that it is certainly not improbable that either bramante or leonardo da vinci may have been, directly or indirectly, concerned in their erection._ _having been engaged, for now nearly twenty years, in a thorough study of bramante's life and labours, i have taken a particular interest in detecting the distinguishing marks of his style as compared with leonardo's. in i made researches about the architectural drawings of the latter in the codex atlanticus at milan, for the purpose of finding out, if possible the original plans and sketches of the churches of santa maria delle grazie at milan, and of the cathedral at pavia, which buildings have been supposed to be the work both of bramante and of leonardo. since i have repeatedly examined leonardo's architectural studies in the collection of his manuscripts in the institut de france, and some of these i have already given to the public in my work on_ "les projets primitifs pour la basilique de st. pierre de rome", _p . . in i had the opportunity of examining the manuscript in the palazzo trivulzio at milan, and in dr richter showed me in london the manuscripts in the possession of lord ashburnham, and those in the british museum. i have thus had opportunities of seeing most of leonardo's architectural drawings in the original, but of the manuscripts tliemselves i have deciphered only the notes which accompany the sketches. it is to dr richter's exertions that we owe the collected texts on architecture which are now published, and while he has undertaken to be responsible for the correct reading of the original texts, he has also made it his task to extract the whole of the materials from the various mss. it has been my task to arrange and elucidate the texts under the heads which have been adopted in this work. ms. b. at paris and the codex atlanticus at milan are the chief sources of our knowledge of leonardo as an architect, and i have recently subjected these to a thorough re-investigation expressly with a view to this work._ _a complete reproduction of all leonardo's architectural sketches has not, indeed, been possible, but as far as the necessarily restricted limits of the work have allowed, the utmost completeness has been aimed at, and no efforts have been spared to include every thing that can contribute to a knowledge of leonardo's style. it would have been very interesting, if it had been possible, to give some general account at least of leonardo's work and studies in engineering, fortification, canal-making and the like, and it is only on mature reflection that we have reluctantly abandoned this idea. leonardo's occupations in these departments have by no means so close a relation to literary work, in the strict sense of the word as we are fairly justified in attributing to his numerous notes on architecture._ _leonardo's architectural studies fall naturally under two heads:_ _i. those drawings and sketches, often accompanied by short remarks and explanations, which may be regarded as designs for buildings or monuments intended to be built. with these there are occasionally explanatory texts._ _ii. theoretical investigations and treatises. a special interest attaches to these because they discuss a variety of questions which are of practical importance to this day. leonardo's theory as to the origin and progress of cracks in buildings is perhaps to be considered as unique in its way in the literature of architecture._ _henry de geymuller_ _xii._ _architectural designs._ _i. plans for towns._ _a. sketches for laying out a new town with a double system of high- level and low-level road-ways._ _pl. lxxvii, no. (ms. b, b). a general view of a town, with the roads outside it sloping up to the high-level ways within._ _pl. lxxvii, no. (ms. b, b. see no. ; and ms. b. b, see no. ) gives a partial view of the town, with its streets and houses, with explanatory references._ _pl. lxxvii, no. (ms. b, b; see no. ). view of a double staircaise with two opposite flights of steps._ _pl. lxxviii, nos. and (ms. b, a). sketches illustrating the connection of the two levels of roads by means of steps. the lower galleries are lighted by openings in the upper roadway._ _b. notes on removing houses (ms. br. m., b, see no. )._ . the roads _m_ are braccia higher than the roads _p s_, and each road must be braccia wide and have / braccio slope from the sides towards the middle; and in the middle let there be at every braccio an opening, one braccio long and one finger wide, where the rain water may run off into hollows made on the same level as _p s_. and on each side at the extremity of the width of the said road let there be an arcade, braccia broad, on columns; and understand that he who would go through the whole place by the high level streets can use them for this purpose, and he who would go by the low level can do the same. by the high streets no vehicles and similar objects should circulate, but they are exclusively for the use of gentlemen. the carts and burdens for the use and convenience of the inhabitants have to go by the low ones. one house must turn its back to the other, leaving the lower streets between them. provisions, such as wood, wine and such things are carried in by the doors _n_, and privies, stables and other fetid matter must be emptied away underground. from one arch to the next . must be braccia, each street receiving its light through the openings of the upper streets, and at each arch must be a winding stair on a circular plan because the corners of square ones are always fouled; they must be wide, and at the first vault there must be a door entering into public privies and the said stairs lead from the upper to the lower streets and the high level streets begin outside the city gates and slope up till at these gates they have attained the height of braccia. let such a city be built near the sea or a large river in order that the dirt of the city may be carried off by the water. . the construction of the stairs: the stairs _c d_ go down to _f g_, and in the same way _f g_ goes down to _h k_. . on moving houses. let the houses be moved and arranged in order; and this will be done with facility because such houses are at first made in pieces on the open places, and can then be fitted together with their timbers in the site where they are to be permanent. [ ] let the men of the country [or the village] partly inhabit the new houses when the court is absent [ ]. [footnote: on the same page we find notes referring to romolontino and villafranca with a sketch-map of the course of the "sodro" and the "(lo)cra" (both are given in the text farther on). there can hardly be a doubt that the last sentence of the passage given above, refers to the court of francis i. king of france.--l. - are written inside the larger sketch, which, in the original, is on the right hand side of the page by the side of lines - . the three smaller sketches are below. j. p. r.] _ii. plans for canals and streets in a town. pl. lxxix, . and , (ms. b, b, see no. , and ms. b. a, see no. ). a plan for streets and canals inside a town, by which the cellars of the houses are made accessible in boats. the third text given under no. refers to works executed by leonardo in france._ . the front _a m_ will give light to the rooms; _a e_ will be braccia--_a b_ braccia --_b e_ braccia, in order that the rooms under the porticoes may be lighted; _c d f_ is the place where the boats come to the houses to be unloaded. in order to render this arrangement practicable, and in order that the inundation of the rivers may not penetrate into the cellars, it is necessary to chose an appropriate situation, such as a spot near a river which can be diverted into canals in which the level of the water will not vary either by inundations or drought. the construction is shown below; and make choice of a fine river, which the rains do not render muddy, such as the ticino, the adda and many others. [footnote : _tesino, adda e molti altri, i.e._ rivers coming from the mountains and flowing through lakes.] the construction to oblige the waters to keep constantly at the same level will be a sort of dock, as shown below, situated at the entrance of the town; or better still, some way within, in order that the enemy may not destroy it [ ]. [footnote: l. - are on the left hand side and within the sketch given on pl. lxxix, no. i. then follows after line , the drawing of a sluicegate--_conca_--of which the use is explained in the text below it. on the page a, which comes next in the original ms. is the sketch of an oval plan of a town over which is written "_modo di canali per la citta_" and through the longer axis of it "_canale magior_" is written with "_tesino_" on the prolongation of the canal. j. p. r.] . let the width of the streets be equal to the average height of the houses. . the main underground channel does not receive turbid water, but that water runs in the ditches outside the town with four mills at the entrance and four at the outlet; and this may be done by damming the water above romorantin. [ ]there should be fountains made in each piazza[ ]. [footnote: in the original this text comes immediately after the passage given as no. . the remainder of the writing on the same page refers to the construction of canals and is given later, in the "topographical notes". lines - are written to the right of the plan lines - underneath it. j. p. r.] [footnote : _romolontino_ is romorantin, south of orleans in france.] _iii. castles and villas. a. castles. pl. lxxx, no. (p. v. fol. b; no. d'ordre ). the fortified place here represented is said by vallardi to be the_ "castello" _at milan, but without any satisfactory reason. the high tower behind the_ "rivellino" _ravelin--seems to be intended as a watch-tower. pl. lxxx, no. (ms. b, b). a similarly constructed tower probably intended for the same use. pl. lxxx, no. (ms. b). sketches for corner towers with steps for a citadel. pl. lxxx, no. (w. xvi). a cupola crowning a corner tower; an interesting example of decorative fortification. in this reproduction of the original pen and ink drawing it appears reversed. b. projects for palaces. pl. lxxxi, no. (ms. c. a, b; a, see no. ). project for a royal residence at amboise in france. pl. lxxxii, no. (c. a a; a). a plan for a somewhat extensive residence, and various details; but there is no text to elucidate it; in courts are written the three names: sam cosi giova _(st. mark)_ _(cosmo)_ _(john)_, arch mo nino c. plans for small castles or villas. the three following sketches greatly resemble each other. pl. lxxxii, no. (ms. k b; see no. )._ _pl. lxxxii, no. (ms. b a; see no. ). pl. lxxxiii (w. xvii). the text on this sheet refers to cyprus (see topographical notes no. ), but seems to have no direct connection with the sketches inserted between. pl. lxxxviii, nos. and (ms. b, a; see no. ). a section of a circular pavilion with the plan of a similar building by the side of it. these two drawings have a special historical interest because the text written below mentions the duke and duchess of milan. the sketch of a villa on a terrace at the end of a garden occurs in c. a. ; and in c. a. b; b is another sketch of a villa somewhat resembling the_ belvedere _of pope innocent viii, at rome. in c. a. b; b there is a loggia. pl. lxxxii, no. (c. a. a; a) is a tower-shaped_ loggia _above a fountain. the machinery is very ingeniously screened from view._ . the palace of the prince must have a piazza in front of it. houses intended for dancing or any kind of jumping or any other movements with a multitude of people, must be on the ground- floor; for i have already witnessed the destruction of some, causing death to many persons, and above all let every wall, be it ever so thin, rest on the ground or on arches with a good foundation. let the mezzanines of the dwellings be divided by walls made of very thin bricks, and without wood on account of fire. let all the privies have ventilation [by shafts] in the thickness of the walls, so as to exhale by the roofs. the mezzanines should be vaulted, and the vaults will be stronger in proportion as they are of small size. the ties of oak must be enclosed in the walls in order to be protected from fire. [footnote: the remarks accompanying the plan reproduced on pl. lxxxi, no. are as follows: above, to the left: "_in_ a _angholo stia la guardia de la sstalla_" (in the angle _a_ may be the keeper of the stable). below are the words "_strada dabosa_" (road to amboise), parallel with this "_fossa br _" (the moat braccia) fixing the width of the moat. in the large court surrounded by a portico "_in terre no.--largha br. e lugha br _." to the right of the castle is a large basin for aquatic sports with the words "_giostre colle nave cioe li giostra li stieno sopra le na_" (jousting in boats that is the men are to be in boats). j. p. r.] the privies must be numerous and going one into the other in order that the stench may not penetrate into the dwellings., and all their doors must shut off themselves with counterpoises. the main division of the facade of this palace is into two portions; that is to say the width of the court-yard must be half the whole facade; the nd ... . braccia wide on each side; the lower entrance leads into a hall braccia wide and braccia long with recesses each with a chimney. [footnote: on each side of the castle, pl. lxxxii. no. there are drawings of details, to the left "_camino_" a chimney, to the right the central lantern, sketched in red "_ lati_" _i.e._ an octagon.] . the firststorey [or terrace] must be entirely solid. . the pavilion in the garden of the duchess of milan. the plan of the pavilion which is in the middle of the labyrinth of the duke of milan. [footnote: this passage was first published by amoretti in _memorie storiche_ cap. x: una sua opera da riportarsi a quest' anno fu il bagno fatto per la duchessa beatrice nel parco o giardino del castello. lionardo non solo ne disegno il piccolo edifizio a foggia di padiglione, nel cod. segnato q. , dandone anche separatamente la pianta; ma sotto vi scrisse: padiglione del giardino della duchessa; e sotto la pianta: fondamento del padiglione ch'e nel mezzo del labirinto del duca di milano; nessuna data e presso il padiglione, disegnato nella pagina , ma poco sopra fra molti circoli intrecciati vedesi = luglio = e nella pagina presso ad alcuni disegni di legumi qualcheduno ha letto settembre in vece di , come dovea scriverevi, e probabilmente scrisse lionardo. the original text however hardly bears the interpretation put upon it by amoretti. he is mistaken as to the mark on the ms. as well as in his statements as to the date, for the ms. in question has no date; the date he gives occurs, on the contrary, in another note-book. finally, it appears to me quite an open question whether leonardo was the architect who carried out the construction of the dome-like pavilion here shown in section, or of the ground plan of the pavilion drawn by the side of it. must we, in fact, suppose that "_il duca di milano_" here mentioned was, as has been generally assumed, ludovico il moro? he did not hold this title from the emperor before ; till that date he was only called _governatore_ and leonardo in speaking of him, mentions him generally as "_il moro_" even after . on january , , he married beatrice d'este the daughter of ercole i, duke of ferrara. she died on the nd january , and for the reasons i have given it seems improbable that it should be this princess who is here spoken of as the "_duchessa di milano_". from the style of the handwriting it appears to me to be beyond all doubt that the ms. b, from which this passage is taken, is older than the dated mss. of and . in that case the duke of milan here mentioned would be gian galeazzo ( - ) and the duchess would be his wife isabella of aragon, to whom he was married on the second february . j. p. r.] . the earth that is dug out from the cellars must be raised on one side so high as to make a terrace garden as high as the level of the hall; but between the earth of the terrace and the wall of the house, leave an interval in order that the damp may not spoil the principal walls. _iv. ecclesiastical architecture. a. general observations._ . a building should always be detached on all sides so that its form may be seen. [footnote: the original text is reproduced on pl. xcii, no. to the left hand at the bottom.] . here there cannot and ought not to be any _campanile_; on the contrary it must stand apart like that of the cathedral and of san giovanni at florence, and of the cathedral at pisa, where the campanile is quite detached as well as the dome. thus each can display its own perfection. if however you wish to join it to the church, make the lantern serve for the campanile as in the church at chiaravalle. [footnote: this text is written by the side of the plan given on pl. xci. no. .] [footnote : the abbey of chiaravalle, a few miles from milan, has a central tower on the intersection of the cross in the style of that of the certosa of pavia, but the style is mediaeval (a. d. ). leonardo seems here to mean, that in a building, in which the circular form is strongly conspicuous, the campanile must either be separated, or rise from the centre of the building and therefore take the form of a lantern.] . it never looks well to see the roofs of a church; they should rather be flat and the water should run off by gutters made in the frieze. [footnote: this text is to the left of the domed church reproduced on pl. lxxxvii, no. .] _b. the theory of dome architecture. this subject has been more extensively treated by leonardo in drawings than in writing. still we may fairly assume that it was his purpose, ultimately to embody the results of his investigation in a_ "trattato delle cupole." _the amount of materials is remarkably extensive. ms. b is particularly rich in plans and elevations of churches with one or more domes--from the simplest form to the most complicated that can be imagined. considering the evident connexion between a great number of these sketches, as well as the impossibility of seeing in them designs or preparatory sketches for any building intended to be erected, the conclusion is obvious that they were not designed for any particular monument, but were theoretical and ideal researches, made in order to obtain a clear understanding of the laws which must govern the construction of a great central dome, with smaller ones grouped round it; and with or without the addition of spires, so that each of these parts by itself and in its juxtaposition to the other parts should produce the grandest possible effect. in these sketches leonardo seems to have exhausted every imaginable combination. [footnote : in ms. b, b (see pl. c iii, no. ) we find eight geometrical patterns, each drawn in a square; and in ms. c.a., fol. to form a whole series of patterns done with the same intention.] the results of some of these problems are perhaps not quite satisfactory; still they cannot be considered to give evidence of a want of taste or of any other defect in leonardo s architectural capacity. they were no doubt intended exclusively for his own instruction, and, before all, as it seems, to illustrate the features or consequences resulting from a given principle._ _i have already, in another place,_ [footnote : les projets primitifs pour la basilique de st. pierre de rome, par bramante, raphael etc.,vol. i, p. .] _pointed out the law of construction for buildings crowned by a large dome: namely, that such a dome, to produce the greatest effect possible, should rise either from the centre of a greek cross, or from the centre of a structure of which the plan has some symmetrical affinity to a circle, this circle being at the same time the centre of the whole plan of the building. leonardo's sketches show that he was fully aware, as was to be expected, of this truth. few of them exhibit the form of a latin cross, and when this is met with, it generally gives evidence of the determination to assign as prominent a part as possible to the dome in the general effect of the building. while it is evident, on the one hand, that the greater number of these domes had no particular purpose, not being designed for execution, on the other hand several reasons may be found for leonardo's perseverance in his studies of the subject. besides the theoretical interest of the question for leonardo and his_ trattato _and besides the taste for domes prevailing at that time, it seems likely that the intended erection of some building of the first importance like the duomos of pavia and como, the church of sta. maria delle grazie at milan, and the construction of a dome or central tower_ (tiburio) _on the cathedral of milan, may have stimulated leonardo to undertake a general and thorough investigation of the subject; whilst leonardo's intercourse with bramante for ten years or more, can hardly have remained without influence in this matter. in fact now that some of this great architect's studies for s. peter's at rome have at last become known, he must be considered henceforth as the greatest master of dome-architecture that ever existed. his influence, direct or indirect even on a genius like leonardo seems the more likely, since leonardo's sketches reveal a style most similar to that of bramante, whose name indeed, occurs twice in leonardo's manuscript notes. it must not be forgotten that leonardo was a florentine; the characteristic form of the two principal domes of florence, sta. maria del fiore and the battisterio, constantly appear as leading features in his sketches. the church of san lorenzo at milan, was at that time still intact. the dome is to this day one of the most wonderful cupolas ever constructed, and with its two smaller domes might well attract the attention and study of a never resting genius such as leonardo. a whole class of these sketches betray in fact the direct influence of the church of s. lorenzo, and this also seems to have suggested the plan of bramante's dome of st. peter's at rome. in the following pages the various sketches for the construction of domes have been classified and discussed from a general point of view. on two sheets: pl. lxxxiv (c.a. b; a) and pl. lxxxv, nos. - (ash. ii, b) we see various dissimilar types, grouped together; thus these two sheets may be regarded as a sort of nomenclature of the different types, on which we shall now have to treat._ _ . churches formed on the plan of a greek cross. group i. domes rising from a circular base. the simplest type of central building is a circular edifice. pl. lxxxiv, no. . plan of a circular building surrounded by a colonnade. pl. lxxxiv, no. . elevation of the former, with a conical roof. pl. xc. no. . a dodecagon, as most nearly approaching the circle. pl. lxxxvi, no. , , . four round chapels are added at the extremities of the two principal axes;--compare this plan with fig. on p. and fig. on p. (w. p. b) where the outer wall is octagonal. group ii. domes rising from a square base. the plan is a square surrounded by a colonnade, and the dome seems to be octagonal. pl. lxxxiv. the square plan below the circular building no. , and its elevation to the left, above the plan: here the ground-plan is square, the upper storey octagonal. a further development of this type is shown in two sketches c. a. a (not reproduced here), and in pl. lxxxvi, no. (which possibly belongs to no. on pl. lxxxiv). pl, lxxxv, no. , and p. , fig. , a greek cross, repeated p. , fig. , is another development of the square central plan. the remainder of these studies show two different systems; in the first the dome rises from a square plan,--in the second from an octagonal base._ _group iii. domes rising from a square base and four pillars. [footnote : the ancient chapel san satiro, via del falcone, milan, is a specimen of this type.]_ a) first type. _a dome resting on four pillars in the centre of a square edifice, with an apse in the middle, of each of the four sides. we have eleven variations of this type. aa) pl. lxxxviii, no. . bb) pl. lxxx, no. . cc) pl. lxxxv, nos. , , . dd) pl. lxxxiv, no. and beneath. ee) pl. lxxxv, nos. , , , ._ b) second type. _this consists in adding aisles to the whole plan of the first type; columns are placed between the apses and the aisles; the plan thus obtained is very nearly identical with that of s. lorenzo at milan. fig. on p. . (ms. b, a) shows the result of this treatment adapted to a peculiar purpose about which we shall have to say a few words later on. pl. xcv, no. , shows the same plan but with the addition of a short nave. this plan seems to have been suggested by the general arrangement of s. sepolcro at milan. ms. b. b (see the sketch reproduced on p. ). by adding towers in the four outer angles to the last named plan, we obtain a plan which bears the general features of bramante's plans for s. peter's at rome. [footnote : see_ les projets primitifs _etc., pl. - .] (see p. fig. .) group iv. domes rising from an octagonal base. this system, developed according to two different schemes, has given rise to two classes with many varieties. in a) on each side of the octagon chapels of equal form are added. in b) the chapels are dissimilar; those which terminate the principal axes being different in form from those which are added on the diagonal sides of the octagon. a. first class. the chapel_ "degli angeli," _at florence, built only to a height of about feet by brunellesco, may be considered as the prototype of this group; and, indeed it probably suggested it. the fact that we see in ms. b. b (pl. xciv, no. ) by the side of brunellesco's plan for the basilica of sto. spirito at florence, a plan almost identical with that of the_ capella degli angeli, _confirms this supposition. only two small differences, or we may say improvements, have been introduced by leonardo. firstly the back of the chapels contains a third niche, and each angle of the octagon a folded pilaster like those in bramante's_ sagrestia di s. m. presso san satiro _at milan, instead of an interval between the two pilasters as seen in the battistero at florence and in the sacristy of sto. spirito in the same town and also in the above named chapel by brunellesco. the first set of sketches which come under consideration have at first sight the appearance of mere geometrical studies. they seem to have been suggested by the plan given on page fig. (ms. b, a) in the centre of which is written_ "santa maria in perticha da pavia", _at the place marked a on the reproduction. a) (ms. b, b, page fig. ). in the middle of each side a column is added, and in the axes of the intercolumnar spaces a second row of columns forms an aisle round the octagon. these are placed at the intersection of a system of semicircles, of which the sixteen columns on the sides of the octagon are the centres. b) the preceding diagram is completed and becomes more monumental in style in the sketch next to it (ms. b, a, see p. fig. ). an outer aisle is added by circles, having for radius the distance between the columns in the middle sides of the octagon. c) (ms. b. b, see p. fig. ). octagon with an aisle round it; the angles of both are formed by columns. the outer sides are formed by niches forming chapels. the exterior is likewise octagonal, with the angles corresponding to the centre of each of the interior chapels. pl. xcii, no. (ms. b. b). detail and modification of the preceding plan--half columns against piers--an arrangement by which the chapels of the aisle have the same width of opening as the inner arches between the half columns. underneath this sketch the following note occurs:_ questo vole - avere facce - co tabernaculi - come - _a_ - _b_. _(this will have twelve sides with twelve tabernacles as_ a b._) in the remaining sketches of this class the octagon is not formed by columns at the angles. the simplest type shows a niche in the middle of each side and is repeated on several sheets, viz: ms. b ; ms. c.a. b (see pl. lxxxiv, no. ) and ms. ash ii b; (see pl. lxxxv, no. and the elevations no. ; pl. xcii, no. ; ms. b. b [not reproduced here] and pl. lxxxiv, no. )._ _pl. xcii, (ms. b, b) corresponds to a plan like the one in ms. b a, in which the niches would be visible outside or, as in the following sketch, with the addition of a niche in the middle of each chapel. pl. xc, no. . the niches themselves are surrounded by smaller niches (see also no. on the same plate). octagon expanded on each side. a. by a square chapel: ms. b. b (not reproduced here). b. by a square with niches: ms. b. b (see pl. xciv, no. ). c. by octagonal chapels: a) ms. b, a; pl. lxxxviii, no. . b) no. on the same plate. underneath there is the remark:_ "quest'e come le cappele ano a essere facte" _(this is how the eight chapels are to be executed). c) pl. lxxxviii, no. . elevation to the plans on the same sheet, it is accompanied by the note:_ "ciasscuno de' tiburi no'uole - passare l'alteza - di - - quadri" _(neither of the domes must exceed the height of two squares). d) pl. lxxxviii, no. . inside of the same octagon. ms. b, a, and b; these are three repetitions of parts of the same plan with very slight variations. d. by a circular chapel: ms. b, a (see fig. on page ) gives the plan of this arrangement in which the exterior is square on the ground floor with only four of the chapels projecting, as is explained in the next sketch. pl. lxxxix, ms. b, b. elevation to the preceding plan sketched on the opposite side of the sheet, and also marked a. it is accompanied by the following remark, indicating the theoretical character of these studies:_ questo - edifitio - anchora - starebbe - bene affarlo dalla linja - _a_ - _b_ - _c_ - _d_ - insu. _("this edifice would also produce a good effect if only the part above the lines_ a b, c d, _were executed"). pl. lxxxiv, no. . the exterior has the form of an octagon, but the chapels project partly beyond it. on the left side of the sketch they appear larger than on the right side. pl. xc, no. , (ms. b, b); repetition of pl. lxxxiv, no. . pl. xc, no. . elevation to the plan no. , and also to no. of the same sheet._ _e. by chapels formed by four niches: pl. lxxxiv, no. (the circular plan on the left below) shows this arrangement in which the central dome has become circular inside and might therefore be classed after this group. [footnote : this plan and some others of this class remind us of the plan of the mausoleum of augustus as it is represented for instance by durand. see_ cab. des estampes, bibliotheque nationale, paris, topographie de rome, v, , ._] the sketch on the right hand side gives most likely the elevation for the last named plan. f. by chapels of still richer combinations, which necessitate an octagon of larger dimensions: pl. xci, no. (ms. ash. . b) [footnote : the note accompanying this plan is given under no. .]; on this plan the chapels themselves appear to be central buildings formed like the first type of the third group. pl. lxxxviii, no. . pl. xci, no. above; the exterior of the preceding figure, particularly interesting on account of the alternation of apses and niches, the latter containing statues of a gigantic size, in proportion to the dimension of the niches. b. second class. composite plans of this class are generally obtained by combining two types of the first class--the one worked out on the principal axes, the other on the diagonal ones. ms. b. shows an elementary combination, without any additions on the diagonal axes, but with the dimensions of the squares on the two principal axes exceeding those of the sides of the octagon. in the drawing w. p. b (see page fig. ) the exterior only of the edifice is octagonal, the interior being formed by a circular colonnade; round chapels are placed against the four sides of the principal axes. the elevation, drawn on the same sheet (see page fig. ), shows the whole arrangement which is closely related with the one on pl. lxxxvi no. , . ms. b. a shows: a) four sides with rectangular chapels crowned by pediments pl. lxxxvii no. (plan and elevation); b) four sides with square chapels crowned by octagonal domes. pl. lxxxvii no. ; the plan underneath. ms. b. a shows a variation obtained by replacing the round chapels in the principal axes of the sketch ms. b. l a by square ones, with an apse. leonardo repeated both ideas for better comparison side by side, see page . fig. . pl. lxxxix (ms. b. b). elevation for the preceding figure. the comparison of the drawing marked m with the plan on page fig. , bearing the same mark, and of the elevation on pl. lxxxix below (marked a) with the corresponding plan on page is highly instructive, as illustrating the spirit in which leonardo pursued these studies. pl. lxxxiv no. shows the design pl. lxxxvii no. combined with apses, with the addition of round chapels on the diagonal sides. pl. lxxxiv no. is a variation of the preceding sketch. pl. xc no. . ms. b. b. the round chapels of the preceding sketch are replaced by octagonal chapels, above which rise campaniles. pl. xc no. is the elevation for the preceding plan. pl. xcii no. . (ms. b. b.); the plan below. on the principal as well as on the diagonal axes are diagonal chapels, but the latter are separated from the dome by semicircular recesses. the communication between these eight chapels forms a square aisle round the central dome. above this figure is the elevation, showing four campaniles on the angles. [footnote : the note accompanying this drawing is reproduced under no. .] pl. lxxxiv no. . on the principal axes are square chapels with three niches; on the diagonals octagonal chapels with niches. cod. atl. b gives a somewhat similar arrangement. ms. b. . the principal development is thrown on the diagonal axes by square chapels with three niches; on the principal axes are inner recesses communicating with outer ones. the plan pl. xciii no. (ms. b. ) differs from this only in so far as the outer semicircles have become circular chapels, projecting from the external square as apses; one of them serves as the entrance by a semicircular portico. the elevation is drawn on the left side of the plan. ms. b. . a further development of ms. b. , by employing for the four principal chapels the type pl. lxxxviii no. , as we have already seen in pl. xci no. ; the exterior presents two varieties. a) the outer contour follows the inner. [footnote : these chapels are here sketched in two different sizes; it is the smaller type which is thus formed.] b) it is semicircular. pl. lxxxvii no. (ms. b. b) elevation to the first variation ms. b. . if we were not certain that this sketch was by leonardo, we might feel tempted to take it as a study by bramante for st. peter's at rome. [footnote : see_ les projets primitifs pl. ._]_ _ms. p. v. b. in the principal axes the chapels of ms. b. , and semicircular niches on the diagonals. the exterior of the whole edifice is also an octagon, concealing the form of the interior chapels, but with its angles on their axes. group v. suggested by san lorenzo at milan. in ms. c. a. iib, l b there is a plan almost identical with that of san lorenzo. the diagonal sides of the irregular octagon are not indicated. if it could be proved that the arches which, in the actual church, exist on these sides in the first story, were added in by martimo bassi, then this plan and the following section would be still nearer the original state of san lorenzo than at present. a reproduction of this slightly sketched plan has not been possible. it may however be understood from pl. lxxxviii no. , by suppressing the four pillars corresponding to the apses. pl. lxxxvii no. shows the section in elevation corresponding with the above-named plan. the recessed chapels are decorated with large shells in the halfdomes like the arrangement in san lorenzo, but with proportions like those of bramante's sacristy of santa maria presso s. satiro. ms. c. a. ; a sheet containing three views of exteriors of domes. on the same sheet there is a plan similar to the one above-named but with uninterrupted aisles and with the addition of round chapels in the axes (compare pl. xcvii no. and page fig. ), perhaps a reminiscence of the two chapels annexed to san lorenzo.--leonardo has here sketched the way of transforming this plan into a latin cross by means of a nave with side aisles. pl. xci no. . plan showing a type deprived of aisles and comprised in a square building which is surrounded by a portico. it is accompanied by the following text:_ . this edifice is inhabited [accessible] below and above, like san sepolcro, and it is the same above as below, except that the upper story has the dome _c d_; and the [footnote: the church of san sepolcro at milan, founded in and repeatedly rebuilt after the middle of the xvith century, still stands over the crypt of the original structure.] lower has the dome _a b_, and when you enter into the crypt, you descend steps, and when you mount into the upper you ascend steps, which, with / braccio for each, make braccia, and this is the height between one floor of the church and the other. _above the plan on the same sheet is a view of the exterior. by the aid of these two figures and the description, sections of the edifice may easily be reconstructed. but the section drawn on the left side of the building seems not to be in keeping with the same plan, notwithstanding the explanatory note written underneath it: "dentro il difitio di sopra" (interior of the edifice above)[footnote : _the small inner dome corresponds to_ a b _on the plan--it rises from the lower church into the upper-- above, and larger, rises the dome_ c d. _the aisles above and below thus correspond_ (e di sopra come di sotto, salvoche etc.). _the only difference is, that in the section leonardo has not taken the trouble to make the form octagonal, but has merely sketched circular lines in perspective._ j. p. r._]. _before leaving this group, it is well to remark that the germ of it seems already indicated by the diagonal lines in the plans pl. lxxxv no. and no. . we shall find another application of the same type to the latin cross in pl. xcvii no. . _ . churches formed on the plan of a latin cross. we find among leonardo's studies several sketches for churches on the plan of the latin cross; we shall begin by describing them, and shall add a few observations. a. studies after existing monuments. pl. xciv no. . (ms. b. b.) plan of santo spirito at florence, a basilica built after the designs of brunellesco.--leonardo has added the indication of a portico in front, either his own invention or the reproduction of a now lost design. pl. xcv no. . plan accompanied by the words: "a_ e santo sepolcro di milano di sopra"(a _is the upper church of s. sepolcro at milan); although since leonardo's time considerably spoilt, it is still the same in plan. the second plan with its note: "b_ e la sua parte socto tera" (b _is its subterranean part [the crypt]) still corresponds with the present state of this part of the church as i have ascertained by visiting the crypt with this plan. excepting the addition of a few insignificant walls, the state of this interesting part of the church still conforms to leonardo's sketch; but in the vestibolo the two columns near the entrance of the winding stairs are absent. b. designs or studies. pl. xcv no. . plan of a church evidently suggested by that of san sepolcro at milan. the central part has been added to on the principle of the second type of group iii. leonardo has placed the_ "coro" _(choir) in the centre._ _pl. xcvi no. . in the plan the dome, as regards its interior, belongs to the first class of group iv, and may be grouped with the one in ms. b. a. the nave seems to be a development of the type represented in pl. xcv no. , b. by adding towers and two lateral porticos[footnote : already published in les projets primitifs pl. xliii.]. on the left is a view of the exterior of the preceding plan. it is accompanied by the following note:_ . this building is inhabited below and above; the way up is by the campaniles, and in going up one has to use the platform, where the drums of the four domes are, and this platform has a parapet in front, and none of these domes communicate with the church, but they are quite separate. _pl. xcvi no. (ms. c. a. b; a). perspective view of a church seen from behind; this recalls the duomo at florence, but with two campaniles[footnote : already published in the saggio pl. ix.]. pl. xcvii no. (ms. b. a). the central part is a development of s. lorenzo at milan, such as was executed at the duomo of pavia. there is sufficient analogy between the building actually executed and this sketch to suggest a direct connection between them. leonardo accompanied francesco di giorgio[footnote : see malaspina, il duomo di pavia. documents.] when the latter was consulted on june st, as to this church; the fact that the only word accompanying the plan is:_ "sagrestia", _seems to confirm our supposition, for the sacristies were added only in , i. e. four years after the beginning of the cathedral, which at that time was most likely still sufficiently unfinished to be capable of receiving the form of the present sketch. pl. xcvii no. shows the exterior of this design. below is the note:_ edifitio al proposito del fodameto figurato di socto _(edifice proper for the ground plan figured below). here we may also mention the plan of a latin cross drawn in ms. c. a. fol. (see p. ). pl. xciv no. (ms. l. b). external side view of brunellesco's florentine basilica san lorenzo, seen from the north. pl. xciv no. (v. a. v, ). principal front of a nave, most likely of a church on the plan of a latin cross. we notice here not only the principal features which were employed afterwards in alberti's front of s. maria novella, but even details of a more advanced style, such as we are accustomed to meet with only after the year . in the background of leonardo's unfinished picture of st. jerome (vatican gallery) a somewhat similar church front is indicated (see the accompanying sketch). [illustration with caption: the view of the front of a temple, apparently a dome in the centre of four corinthian porticos bearing pediments (published by amoretti tav. ii. b as being by leonardo), is taken from a drawing, now at the ambrosian gallery. we cannot consider this to be by the hand of the master.]_ _c. studies for a form of a church most proper for preaching. the problem as to what form of church might answer the requirements of acoustics seems to have engaged leonardo's very particular attention. the designation of_ "teatro" _given to some of these sketches, clearly shows which plan seemed to him most favourable for hearing the preacher's voice. pl. xcvii, no. (ms. b, ). rectangular edifice divided into three naves with an apse on either side, terminated by a semicircular theatre with rising seats, as in antique buildings. the pulpit is in the centre. leonardo has written on the left side of the sketch_: "teatro da predicare" _(theatre for preaching). ms. b, a (see page , fig. ). a domed church after the type of pl. xcv, no. , shows four theatres occupying the apses and facing the square_ "coro" _(choir), which is in the centre between the four pillars of the dome.[footnote : the note_ teatro de predicar, _on the right side is, i believe, in the handwriting of pompeo leoni. j. p. r.] the rising arrangement of the seats is shown in the sketch above. at the place marked_ b _leonardo wrote_ teatri per uldire messa _(rows of seats to hear mass), at_ t teatri,_ and at_ c coro _(choir). in ms. c.a. , are slight sketches of two plans for rectangular choirs and two elevations of the altar and pulpit which seem to be in connection with these plans. in ms. ash ii, a (see p. and . fig. and )._ "locho dove si predica" _(place for preaching). a most singular plan for a building. the interior is a portion of a sphere, the centre of which is the summit of a column destined to serve as the preacher's pulpit. the inside is somewhat like a modern theatre, whilst the exterior and the galleries and stairs recall the ancient amphitheatres. [illustration with caption: page , fig. . a plan accompanying the two preceding drawings. if this gives the complete form leonardo intended for the edifice, it would have comprised only about two thirds of the circle. leonardo wrote in the centre_ "fondamento", _a word he often employed for plans, and on the left side of the view of the exterior:_ locho dove si predicha _(a place for preaching in)._] _d. design for a mausoleum. pl. xcviii (p. v., ._ no. d'ordre ). in the midst of a hilly landscape rises an artificial mountain in the form of a gigantic cone, crowned by an imposing temple. at two thirds of the height a terrace is cut out with six doorways forming entrances to galleries, each leading to three sepulchral halls, so constructed as to contain about five hundred funeral urns, disposed in the customary antique style. from two opposite sides steps ascend to the terrace in a single flight and beyond it to the temple above. a large circular opening, like that in the pantheon, is in the dome above what may be the altar, or perhaps the central monument on the level of the terrace below. the section of a gallery given in the sketch to the right below shows the roof to be constructed on the principle of superimposed horizontal layers, projecting one beyond the other, and each furnished with a sort of heel, which appears to be undercut, so as to give the appearance of a beam from within. granite alone would be adequate to the dimensions here given to the key stone, as the thickness of the layers can hardly be considered to be less than a foot. in taking this as the basis of our calculation for the dimensions of the whole construction, the width of the chamber would be about feet but, judging from the number of urns it contains--and there is no reason to suppose that these urns were larger than usual--it would seem to be no more than about or feet. the construction of the vaults resembles those in the galleries of some etruscan tumuli, for instance the regulini galeassi tomb at cervetri (lately discovered) and also that of the chamber and passages of the pyramid of cheops and of the treasury of atreus at mycenae. the upper cone displays not only analogies with the monuments mentioned in the note, but also with etruscan tumuli, such as the cocumella tomb at vulci, and the regulini galeassi tomb_[footnote : _see_ fersguson, _handbook of architecture, i,_ .]. _the whole scheme is one of the most magnificent in the history of architecture. it would be difficult to decide as to whether any monument he had seen suggested this idea to leonardo, but it is worth while to enquire, if any monument, or group of monuments of an earlier date may be supposed to have done so._[footnote : _there are, in algiers, two monuments, commonly called_ "le madracen" _and_ "le tombeau de la chretienne," _which somewhat resemble leonardo's design. they are known to have served as the mausolea of the kings of mauritania. pomponius mela, the geographer of the time of the emperor claudius, describes them as having been_ "monumentum commune regiae gentis." _see_ le madracen, rapport fait par m. le grand rabbin ab. cahen, constantine --memoire sur les fouilles executees au madras'en .. par le colonel brunon, constantine l .--deux mausolees africains, le madracen et le tombeau de la chretienne par m. j. de lauriere, tours l .--le tombeau de la chretienne, mausolee des rois mauritaniens par m. berbrugger, alger .--_i am indebted to m. le blanc, of the institut, and m. lud, lalanne, bibliothecaire of the institut for having first pointed out to me the resemblance between these monuments; while m. ant. heron de vlllefosse of the louvre was kind enough to place the abovementioned rare works at my disposal. leonardo's observations on the coast of africa are given later in this work. the herodium near bethlehem in palestine_ (jebel el fureidis, _the frank mountain) was, according to the latest researches, constructed on a very similar plan. see_ der frankenberg, von baurath c. schick in jerusalem, zeitschrift des deutschen palastina-vereins, _leipzag_ , _vol. iii, pages_ - _and plates iv and v._ j. p. r.] _e. studies for the central tower, or tiburio of milan cathedral. towards the end of the fifteenth century the fabbricceria del duomo had to settle on the choice of a model for the crowning and central part of this vast building. we learn from a notice published by g. l. calvi [footnote: g. l. calvi, notizie sulla vita e sulle opere dei principali architetti scultori e pittori che fiorirono in milano, part iii, . see also: h. de geymuller, les projets primitifs etc. i, and - .--the fabbricceria of the duomo has lately begun the publication of the archives, which may possibly tell us more about the part taken by leonardo, than has hitherto been known.] that among the artists who presented models in the year were: bramante, pietro da gorgonzola, luca paperio (fancelli), and leonardo da vinci.-- several sketches by leonardo refer to this important project: pl. xcix, no. (ms. s. k. iii, no. a) a small plan of the whole edifice.--the projecting chapels in the middle of the transept are wanting here. the nave appears to be shortened and seems to be approached by an inner "vestibolo".-- pl. c, no. (tr. ). plan of the octagon tower, giving the disposition of the buttresses; starting from the eight pillars adjoining the four principal piers and intended to support the eight angles of the tiburio. these buttresses correspond exactly with those described by bramante as existing in the model presented by omodeo. [footnote: bramante's opinion was first published by g. mongerl, arch. stor. lomb. v, fasc. and afterwards by me in the publication mentioned in the preceding note.] pl. c, (ms. tr. ). two plans showing different arrangements of the buttresses, which seem to be formed partly by the intersection of a system of pointed arches such as that seen in ** pl. c, no. (ms. b, a) destined to give a broader base to the drum. the text underneath is given under no. . ms. b, --three slight sketches of plans in connexion with the preceding ones._ _pl. xcix, no. (ms. tr. ) contains several small sketches of sections and exterior views of the dome; some of them show buttress-walls shaped as inverted arches. respecting these leonardo notes:_ . l'arco rivescio e migliore per fare spalla che l'ordinario, perche il rovescio trova sotto se muro resistete alla sua debolezza, e l'ordinario no trova nel suo debole se non aria the inverted arch is better for giving a shoulder than the ordinary one, because the former finds below it a wall resisting its weakness, whilst the latter finds in its weak part nothing but air. [footnote: _three slight sketches of sections on the same leaf--above those reproduced here--are more closely connected with the large drawing in the centre of pl. c, no. (m.s, tr. ) which shows a section of a very elevated dome, with double vaults, connected by ribs and buttresses ingeniously disposed, so as to bring the weight of the lantern to bear on the base of the dome. a sketch underneath it shows a round pillar on which is indicated which part of its summit is to bear the weight: "il pilastro sara charicho in . a . b." (the column will bear the weight at a b.) another note is above on the right side:_ larcho regiera tanto sotto asse chome di sopra se _(the arch supports as much below it [i. e. a hanging weight] as above it). pl. c, no. (c. a. a). larger sketch of half section of the dome, with a very complicated system of arches, and a double vault. each stone is shaped so as to be knit or dovetailed to its neighbours. thus the inside of the dome cannot be seen from below. ms. c. a. b. a repetition of the preceding sketch with very slight modifications._] [figs. . and fig. . two sketeches of the dome] ms. tr. (see fig. and ). section of the dome with reverted buttresses between the windows, above which iron anchors or chains seem to be intended. below is the sketch of the outside._ _pi. xcix, no. (c. a., a) four sketches of the exterior of the dome. c. a. . section, showing the points of rupture of a gothic vault, in evident connection with the sketches described above. it deserves to be noticed how easily and apparently without effort, leonardo manages to combine gothic details and structure with the more modern shape of the dome. the following notes are on the same leaf,_ oni cosa poderosa, _and_ oni cosa poderosa desidera de(scendere); _farther below, several multiplications most likely intended to calculate the weight of some parts of the dome, thus x = ; x = , next to which is written:_ peso del pilastro di teste _(weight of the pillar diameters high). below:_ x = ; _and below:_ semjlio e se ce (?) il peso del tiburio _(six millions six hundred (?) the weight of the dome). bossi hazarded the theory that leonardo might have been the architect who built the church of sta. maria delle grazie, but there is no evidence to support this, either in documents or in the materials supplied by leonardos manuscripts and drawings. the sketch given at the side shows the arrangement of the second and third socle on the apses of the choir of that church; and it is remarkable that those sketches, in ms. s. k. m. ii , a and ib, occur with the passage given in volume i as no. and referring to the composition of the last supper in the refectory of that church._] _f. the project for lifting up the battistero of florence and setting it on a basement._ _among the very few details vasari gives as to the architectural studies of leonardo, we read: "and among these models and designs there was one by way of which he showed several times to many ingenious citizens who then governed florence, his readiness to lift up without ruining it, the church of san giovanni in florence (the battistero, opposite the duomo) in order to place under it the missing basement with steps; he supported his assertions with reasons so persuasive, that while he spoke the undertaking seemed feasable, although every one of his hearers, when he had departed, could see by himself the impossibility of so vast an undertaking."_ [footnote: _this latter statement of vasari's must be considered to be exaggerated. i may refer here to some data given by_ libri, histoire des sciences mathematiques en italie (ii, , ): "on a cru dans ces derniers temps faire un miracle en mecanique en effectuant ce transport, et cependant des l'annee , gaspard nadi et aristote de fioravantio avaient transporte, a une distance considerable, la tour de la magione de bologne, avec ses fondements, qui avait presque quatre-vingts pieds de haut. le continuateur de la chronique de pugliola dit que le trajet fut de pieds et que durant le transport auquel le chroniqueur affirme avoir assiste, il arriva un accident grave qui fit pencher de trois pieds la tour pendant qu'elle etait suspendue, mais que cet accident fut promptement repare (muratori, scriptores rer. ital. tom. xviii, col. , ). alidosi a rapporte une note ou nadi rend compte de ce transport avec une rare simplicite. d'apres cette note, on voit que les operations de ce genre n'etaient pas nouvelles. celle-ci ne couta que livres (monnaie d'alors) y compris le cadeau que le legat fit aux deux mecaniciens. dans la meme annee, aristote redressa le clocher de cento, qui penchait de plus de cinq pieds (alidosi, instruttione p. -- muratori, scriptores rer. ital., tom. xxiii, col. .--bossii, chronica mediol., , in-fol. ad ann. ). on ne concoit pas comment les historiens des beaux-arts ont pu negliger de tels hommes." j. p. r.] _in the ms. c. a. fol. , there are two sketches which possibly might have a bearing on this bold enterprise. we find there a plan of a circular or polygonal edifice surrounded by semicircular arches in an oblique position. these may be taken for the foundation of the steps and of the new platform. in the perspective elevation the same edifice, forming a polygon, is shown as lifted up and resting on a circle of inverted arches which rest on an other circle of arches in the ordinary position, but so placed that the inverted arches above rest on the spandrels of the lower range._ _what seems to confirm the supposition that the lifting up of a building is here in question, is the indication of engines for winding up, such as jacks, and a rack and wheel. as the lifting apparatus represented on this sheet does not seem particularly applicable to an undertaking of such magnitude, we may consider it to be a first sketch or scheme for the engines to be used._ _g. description of an unknown temple._ . twelve flights of steps led up to the great temple, which was eight hundred braccia in circumference and built on an octagonal plan. at the eight corners were eight large plinths, one braccia and a half high, and three wide, and six long at the bottom, with an angle in the middle; on these were eight great pillars, standing on the plinths as a foundation, and twenty four braccia high. and on the top of these were eight capitals three braccia long and six wide, above which were the architrave frieze and cornice, four braccia and a half high, and this was carried on in a straight line from one pillar to the next and so, continuing for eight hundred braccia, surrounded the whole temple, from pillar to pillar. to support this entablature there were ten large columns of the same height as the pillars, three braccia thick above their bases which were one braccia and a half high. the ascent to this temple was by twelve flights of steps, and the temple was on the twelfth, of an octagonal form, and at each angle rose a large pillar; and between the pillars were placed ten columns of the same height as the pillars, rising at once from the pavement to a height of twenty eight braccia and a half; and at this height the architrave, frieze and cornice were placed which surrounded the temple having a length of eight hundred braccia. at the same height, and within the temple at the same level, and all round the centre of the temple at a distance of braccia farther in, are pillars corresponding to the eight pillars in the angles, and columns corresponding to those placed in the outer spaces. these rise to the same height as the former ones, and over these the continuous architrave returns towards the outer row of pillars and columns. [footnote: either this description is incomplete, or, as seems to me highly probable, it refers to some ruin. the enormous dimensions forbid our supposing this to be any temple in italy or greece. syria was the native land of colossal octagonal buildings, in the early centuries a. d. the temple of baalbek, and others are even larger than that here described. j. p. r.] _v. palace architecture. but a small number of leonardo's drawings refer to the architecture of palaces, and our knowledge is small as to what style leonardo might have adopted for such buildings. pl. cii no. (w. xviii). a small portion of a facade of a palace in two stories, somewhat resembling alberti's palazzo rucellai.--compare with this bramante's painted front of the casa silvestri, and a painting by montorfano in san pietro in gessate at milan, third chapel on the left hand side and also with bramante's palaces at rome. the pilasters with arabesques, the rustica between them, and the figures over the window may be painted or in sgraffito. the original is drawn in red chalk. pl. lxxxi no. (ms. tr. ). sketch of a palace with battlements and decorations, most likely graffiti; the details remind us of those in the castello at vigevano._ [footnote : _count giulio porro, in his valuable contribution to the_ archivio storico lombardo, anno viii, fasc. iv ( dec. ): leonardo da vinci, libro di annotazioni e memorie, _refers to this in the following note:_ "alla pag. vi e uno schizzo di volta ed accanto scrisse: 'il pilastro sara charicho in su ' e potrebbe darsi che si riferisse alla cupola della chiesa delle grazie tanto piu che a pag. vi e un disegno che rassomiglia assai al basamento che oggi si vede nella parte esterna del coro di quella chiesa." _this may however be doubted. the drawing, here referred to, on page of the same manuscript, is reproduced on pl. c no. and described on page as being a study for the cupola of the duomo of milan._ j. p. r.] _ms. mz. ", contains a design for a palace or house with a loggia in the middle of the first story, over which rises an attic with a pediment reproduced on page . the details drawn close by on the left seem to indicate an arrangement of coupled columns against the wall of a first story. pl. lxxxv no. (ms. s. k. m. ill a) contains a very slight sketch in red chalk, which most probably is intended to represent the facade of a palace. inside is the short note he ( and )._ _ms. j a (see pages fig. and ) contains a view of an unknown palace. its plan is indicated at the side._ _in ms. br. m. a(see fig. on page ) there is a sketch of a house, on which leonardo notes; casa con tre terrazi (house with three terraces)._ _pl. cx, no. (ms. l. b) represents the front of a fortified building drawn at cesena in (see no. )._ _here we may also mention the singular building in the allegorical composition represented on pl. lviii in vol. i. in front of it appears the head of a sphinx or of a dragon which seems to be carrying the palace away._ _the following texts refer to the construction of palaces and other buildings destined for private use:_ . in the courtyard the walls must be half the height of its width, that is if the court be braccia, the house must be high as regards the walls of the said courtyard; and this courtyard must be half as wide as the whole front. [footnote: see pl. ci, no. , and compare the dimensions here given, with no. lines - ; and the drawing belonging to it pl. lxxxi, no. .] on the dispositions of a stable. . for making a clean stable. the manner in which one must arrange a stable. you must first divide its width in parts, its depth matters not; and let these divisions be equal and braccia broad for each part and high, and the middle part shall be for the use of the stablemasters; the side ones for the horses, each of which must be braccia in width and in length, and be half a braccio higher at the head than behind. let the manger be at braccia from the ground, to the bottom of the rack, braccia, and the top of it braccia. now, in order to attain to what i promise, that is to make this place, contrary to the general custom, clean and neat: as to the upper part of the stable, i. e. where the hay is, that part must have at its outer end a window braccia high and broad, through which by simple means the hay is brought up to the loft, as is shown by the machine _e_; and let this be erected in a place braccia wide, and as long as the stable, as seen at _k p_. the other two parts, which are on either side of this, are again divided; those nearest to the hay-loft are braccia, _p s_, and only for the use and circulation of the servants belonging to the stable; the other two which reach to the outer walls are braccia, as seen at _s k_, and these are made for the purpose of giving hay to the mangers, by means of funnels, narrow at the top and wide over the manger, in order that the hay should not choke them. they must be well plastered and clean and are represented at _f s_. as to the giving the horses water, the troughs must be of stone and above them [cisterns of] water. the mangers may be opened as boxes are uncovered by raising the lids. [footnote: see pl. lxxviii, no. .] decorations for feasts. . the way to construct a frame-work for decorating buildings. the way in which the poles ought to be placed for tying bunches of juniper on to them. these poles must lie close to the framework of the vaulting and tie the bunches on with osier withes, so as to clip them even afterwards with shears. let the distance from one circle to another be half a braccia; and the juniper [sprigs] must lie top downwards, beginning from below. round this column tie four poles to which willows about as thick as a finger must be nailed and then begin from the bottom and work upwards with bunches of juniper sprigs, the tops downwards, that is upside down. [footnote: see pl. cii, no. . the words here given as the title line, lines -- , are the last in the original ms.--lines -- are written under fig. .] . the water should be allowed to fall from the whole circle _a b_. [footnote: other drawings of fountains are given on pl. ci (w. xx); the original is a pen and ink drawing on blue paper; on pl. ciii (ms. b.) and pl. lxxxii.] _vi. studies of architectural details._ _several of leonardo's drawings of architectural details prove that, like other great masters of that period, he had devoted his attention to the study of the proportion of such details. as every organic being in nature has its law of construction and growth, these masters endeavoured, each in his way, to discover and prove a law of proportion in architecture. the following notes in leonardo's manuscripts refer to this subject._ _ms. s. k. m. ill, b (see fig. ). a diagram, indicating the rules as given by vitruvius and by leon battista alberti for the proportions of the attic base of a column._ _ms. s. k. m. ill a (see fig. ). diagram showing the same rules._ . b toro superiore . . . . . toro superiore b nestroli . . . . . . astragali quadre b orbiculo . . . . . . . . troclea b nestroli . . . . . . astragali quadre b toro iferiore . . . . . . toro iferiore b latastro . . . . . . . . plintho [footnote: no explanation can be offered of the meaning of the letter b, which precedes each name. it may be meant for _basa_ (base). perhaps it refers to some author on architecture or an architect (bramante?) who employed the designations, thus marked for the mouldings. . _troclea._ philander: _trochlea sive trochalia aut rechanum._ . _laterculus_ or _latastrum_ is the latin name for _plinthus_ (pi lambda xiv) but vitruvius adopted this greek name and "latastro" seems to have been little in use. it is to be found besides the text given above, as far as i am aware, only two drawings of the uffizi collection, where in one instance, it indicates the _abacus_ of a doric capital.] . steps of urrbino. the plinth must be as broad as the thickness of the wall against which the plinth is built. [footnote: see pl. cx no. . the hasty sketch on the right hand side illustrates the unsatisfactory effect produced when the plinth is narrower than the wall.] . the ancient architects ...... beginning with the egyptians (?) who, as diodorus siculus writes, were the first to build and construct large cities and castles, public and private buildings of fine form, large and well proportioned ..... the column, which has its thickness at the third part .... the one which would be thinnest in the middle, would break ...; the one which is of equal thickness and of equal strength, is better for the edifice. the second best as to the usefulness will be the one whose greatest thickness is where it joins with the base. [footnote: see pl. ciii, no. , where the sketches belonging to lines -- are reproduced, but reversed. the sketch of columns, here reproduced by a wood cut, stands in the original close to lines -- .] the capital must be formed in this way. divide its thickness at the top into ; at the foot make it / , and let it be / high and you will have a square; afterwards divide the height into parts as you did for the column, and then take / for the echinus and another eighth for the thickness of the abacus on the top of the capital. the horns of the abacus of the capital have to project beyond the greatest width of the bell / , i. e. sevenths of the top of the bell, so / falls to the projection of each horn. the truncated part of the horns must be as broad as it is high. i leave the rest, that is the ornaments, to the taste of the sculptors. but to return to the columns and in order to prove the reason of their strength or weakness according to their shape, i say that when the lines starting from the summit of the column and ending at its base and their direction and length ..., their distance apart or width may be equal; i say that this column ... . the cylinder of a body columnar in shape and its two opposite ends are two circles enclosed between parallel lines, and through the centre of the cylinder is a straight line, ending at the centre of these circles, and called by the ancients the axis. [footnote: leonardo wrote these lines on the margin of a page of the trattato di francesco di giorgio, where there are several drawings of columns, as well as a head drawn in profile inside an outline sketch of a capital.] . _a b_ is / of _n m_; _m o_ is / of _r o_. the ovolo projects / of _r o_; _s_ / of _r o_, _a b_ is divided into / ; the abacus is / the ovolo / , the bead-moulding and the fillet / and / . [footnote: see pl. lxxxv, no. . in the original the drawing and writing are both in red chalk.] _pl. lxxxv no. (ms. ash. ii b) contains a small sketch of a capital with the following note, written in three lines:_ i chorni del capitelo deono essere la quarta parte d'uno quadro _(the horns of a capital must measure the fourth part of a square)._ _ms. s. k. m. iii b contains two sketches of ornamentations of windows._ _in ms. c. a. a; a (see pl. lxxxii no. ) there are several sketches of columns. one of the two columns on the right is similar to those employed by bramante at the canonica di s. ambrogio. the same columns appear in the sketch underneath the plan of a castle. there they appear coupled, and in two stories one above the other. the archivolls which seem to spring out of the columns, are shaped like twisted cords, meant perhaps to be twisted branches. the walls between the columns seem to be formed out of blocks of wood, the pedestals are ornamented with a reticulated pattern. from all this we may suppose that leonardo here had in mind either some festive decoration, or perhaps a pavilion for some hunting place or park. the sketch of columns marked " " gives an example of columns shaped like candelabra, a form often employed at that time, particularly in milan, and the surrounding districts for instance in the cortile di casa castiglione now silvestre, in the cathedral of como, at porta della rana &c._ . concerning architraves of one or several pieces. an architrave of several pieces is stronger than that of one single piece, if those pieces are placed with their length in the direction of the centre of the world. this is proved because stones have their grain or fibre generated in the contrary direction i. e. in the direction of the opposite horizons of the hemisphere, and this is contrary to fibres of the plants which have ... [footnote: the text is incomplete in the original.] _the proportions of the stories of a building are indicated by a sketch in ms. s. k. m. ii b (see pl. lxxxv no. ). the measures are written on the left side, as follows: br / -- / --br / -- br-- e / -- / --br --o --o [br=braccia; o=oncie]. pl. lxxxv no. (ms. b. a) and pl. xciii no. . (ms. b. a) give a few examples of arches supported on piers._ _xiii. theoretical writings on architecture. leonardo's original writings on the theory of architecture have come down to us only in a fragmentary state; still, there seems to be no doubt that he himself did not complete them. it would seem that leonardo entertained the idea of writing a large and connected book on architecture; and it is quite evident that the materials we possess, which can be proved to have been written at different periods, were noted down with a more or less definite aim and purpose. they might all be collected under the one title: "studies on the strength of materials". among them the investigations on the subject of fissures in walls are particularly thorough, and very fully reported; these passages are also especially interesting, because leonardo was certainly the first writer on architecture who ever treated the subject at all. here, as in all other cases leonardo carefully avoids all abstract argument. his data are not derived from the principles of algebra, but from the laws of mechanics, and his method throughout is strictly experimental. though the conclusions drawn from his investigations may not have that precision which we are accustomed to find in leonardo's scientific labours, their interest is not lessened. they prove at any rate his deep sagacity and wonderfully clear mind. no one perhaps, who has studied these questions since leonardo, has combined with a scientific mind anything like the artistic delicacy of perception which gives interest and lucidity to his observations. i do not assert that the arrangement here adopted for the passages in question is that originally intended by leonardo; but their distribution into five groups was suggested by the titles, or headings, which leonardo himself prefixed to most of these notes. some of the longer sections perhaps should not, to be in strict agreement with this division, have been reproduced in their entirety in the place where they occur. but the comparatively small amount of the materials we possess will render them, even so, sufficiently intelligible to the reader; it did not therefore seem necessary or desirable to subdivide the passages merely for the sake of strict classification._ _the small number of chapters given under the fifth class, treating on the centre of gravity in roof-beams, bears no proportion to the number of drawings and studies which refer to the same subject. only a small selection of these are reproduced in this work since the majority have no explanatory text._ i. on fissures in walls. . first write the treatise on the causes of the giving way of walls and then, separately, treat of the remedies. parallel fissures constantly occur in buildings which are erected on a hill side, when the hill is composed of stratified rocks with an oblique stratification, because water and other moisture often penetrates these oblique seams carrying in greasy and slippery soil; and as the strata are not continuous down to the bottom of the valley, the rocks slide in the direction of the slope, and the motion does not cease till they have reached the bottom of the valley, carrying with them, as though in a boat, that portion of the building which is separated by them from the rest. the remedy for this is always to build thick piers under the wall which is slipping, with arches from one to another, and with a good scarp and let the piers have a firm foundation in the strata so that they may not break away from them. in order to find the solid part of these strata, it is necessary to make a shaft at the foot of the wall of great depth through the strata; and in this shaft, on the side from which the hill slopes, smooth and flatten a space one palm wide from the top to the bottom; and after some time this smooth portion made on the side of the shaft, will show plainly which part of the hill is moving. [footnote: see pl. civ.] . the cracks in walls will never be parallel unless the part of the wall that separates from the remainder does not slip down. what is the law by which buildings have stability. the stability of buildings is the result of the contrary law to the two former cases. that is to say that the walls must be all built up equally, and by degrees, to equal heights all round the building, and the whole thickness at once, whatever kind of walls they may be. and although a thin wall dries more quickly than a thick one it will not necessarily give way under the added weight day by day and thus, [ ] although a thin wall dries more quickly than a thick one, it will not give way under the weight which the latter may acquire from day to day. because if double the amount of it dries in one day, one of double the thickness will dry in two days or thereabouts; thus the small addition of weight will be balanced by the smaller difference of time [ ]. the adversary says that _a_ which projects, slips down. and here the adversary says that _r_ slips and not _c_. how to prognosticate the causes of cracks in any sort of wall. the part of the wall which does not slip is that in which the obliquity projects and overhangs the portion which has parted from it and slipped down. on the situation of foundations and in what places they are a cause of ruin. when the crevice in the wall is wider at the top than at the bottom, it is a manifest sign, that the cause of the fissure in the wall is remote from the perpendicular line through the crevice. [footnote: lines - refer to pl. cv, no. . line _alle due anteciedete_, see on the same page. lines - . the translation of this is doubtful, and the meaning in any case very obscure. lines - are on the right hand margin close to the two sketches on pl. cii, no. .] . of cracks in walls, which are wide at the bottom and narrow at the top and of their causes. that wall which does not dry uniformly in an equal time, always cracks. a wall though of equal thickness will not dry with equal quickness if it is not everywhere in contact with the same medium. thus, if one side of a wall were in contact with a damp slope and the other were in contact with the air, then this latter side would remain of the same size as before; that side which dries in the air will shrink or diminish and the side which is kept damp will not dry. and the dry portion will break away readily from the damp portion because the damp part not shrinking in the same proportion does not cohere and follow the movement of the part which dries continuously. of arched cracks, wide at the top, and narrow below. arched cracks, wide at the top and narrow below are found in walled-up doors, which shrink more in their height than in their breadth, and in proportion as their height is greater than their width, and as the joints of the mortar are more numerous in the height than in the width. the crack diminishes less in _r o_ than in _m n_, in proportion as there is less material between _r_ and _o_ than between _n_ and _m_. any crack made in a concave wall is wide below and narrow at the top; and this originates, as is here shown at _b c d_, in the side figure. . that which gets wet increases in proportion to the moisture it imbibes. . and a wet object shrinks, while drying, in proportion to the amount of moisture which evaporates from it. [footnote: the text of this passage is reproduced in facsimile on pl. cvi to the left. l. - are written inside the sketch no. . l. - are partly written over the sketch no. to which they refer.] . of the causes of fissures in [the walls of] public and private buildings. the walls give way in cracks, some of which are more or less vertical and others are oblique. the cracks which are in a vertical direction are caused by the joining of new walls, with old walls, whether straight or with indentations fitting on to those of the old wall; for, as these indentations cannot bear the too great weight of the wall added on to them, it is inevitable that they should break, and give way to the settling of the new wall, which will shrink one braccia in every ten, more or less, according to the greater or smaller quantity of mortar used between the stones of the masonry, and whether this mortar is more or less liquid. and observe, that the walls should always be built first and then faced with the stones intended to face them. for, if you do not proceed thus, since the wall settles more than the stone facing, the projections left on the sides of the wall must inevitably give way; because the stones used for facing the wall being larger than those over which they are laid, they will necessarily have less mortar laid between the joints, and consequently they settle less; and this cannot happen if the facing is added after the wall is dry. _a b_ the new wall, _c_ the old wall, which has already settled; and the part _a b_ settles afterwards, although _a_, being founded on _c_, the old wall, cannot possibly break, having a stable foundation on the old wall. but only the remainder _b_ of the new wall will break away, because it is built from top to bottom of the building; and the remainder of the new wall will overhang the gap above the wall that has sunk. . a new tower founded partly on old masonry. . of stones which disjoin themselves from their mortar. stones laid in regular courses from bottom to top and built up with an equal quantity of mortar settle equally throughout, when the moisture that made the mortar soft evaporates. by what is said above it is proved that the small extent of the new wall between _a_ and _n_ will settle but little, in proportion to the extent of the same wall between _c_ and _d_. the proportion will in fact be that of the thinness of the mortar in relation to the number of courses or to the quantity of mortar laid between the stones above the different levels of the old wall. [footnote: see pl. cv, no. . the top of the tower is wanting in this reproduction, and with it the letter _n_ which, in the original, stands above the letter _a_ over the top of the tower, while _c_ stands perpendicularly over _d_.] . this wall will break under the arch _e f_, because the seven whole square bricks are not sufficient to sustain the spring of the arch placed on them. and these seven bricks will give way in their middle exactly as appears in _a b_. the reason is, that the brick _a_ has above it only the weight _a k_, whilst the last brick under the arch has above it the weight _c d x a_. _c d_ seems to press on the arch towards the abutment at the point _p_ but the weight _p o_ opposes resistence to it, whence the whole pressure is transmitted to the root of the arch. therefore the foot of the arch acts like , which is more than double of _x z_. ii. on fissures in niches. . on fissures in niches. an arch constructed on a semicircle and bearing weights on the two opposite thirds of its curve will give way at five points of the curve. to prove this let the weights be at _n m_ which will break the arch _a_, _b_, _f_. i say that, by the foregoing, as the extremities _c_ and _a_ are equally pressed upon by the thrust _n_, it follows, by the th, that the arch will give way at the point which is furthest from the two forces acting on them and that is the middle _e_. the same is to be understood of the opposite curve, _d g b_; hence the weights _n m_ must sink, but they cannot sink by the th, without coming closer together, and they cannot come together unless the extremities of the arch between them come closer, and if these draw together the crown of the arch must break; and thus the arch will give way in two places as was at first said &c. i ask, given a weight at _a_ what counteracts it in the direction _n_ _f_ and by what weight must the weight at _f_ be counteracted. . on the shrinking of damp bodies of different thickness and width. the window _a_ is the cause of the crack at _b_; and this crack is increased by the pressure of _n_ and _m_ which sink or penetrate into the soil in which foundations are built more than the lighter portion at _b_. besides, the old foundation under _b_ has already settled, and this the piers _n_ and _m_ have not yet done. hence the part _b_ does not settle down perpendicularly; on the contrary, it is thrown outwards obliquely, and it cannot on the contrary be thrown inwards, because a portion like this, separated from the main wall, is larger outside than inside and the main wall, where it is broken, is of the same shape and is also larger outside than inside; therefore, if this separate portion were to fall inwards the larger would have to pass through the smaller--which is impossible. hence it is evident that the portion of the semicircular wall when disunited from the main wall will be thrust outwards, and not inwards as the adversary says. when a dome or a half-dome is crushed from above by an excess of weight the vault will give way, forming a crack which diminishes towards the top and is wide below, narrow on the inner side and wide outside; as is the case with the outer husk of a pomegranate, divided into many parts lengthwise; for the more it is pressed in the direction of its length, that part of the joints will open most, which is most distant from the cause of the pressure; and for that reason the arches of the vaults of any apse should never be more loaded than the arches of the principal building. because that which weighs most, presses most on the parts below, and they sink into the foundations; but this cannot happen to lighter structures like the said apses. [footnote: the figure on pl. cv, no. belongs to the first paragraph of this passage, lines - ; fig. is sketched by the side of lines l --and following. the sketch below of a pomegranate refers to line . the drawing fig. is, in the original, over line and fig. over line .] which of these two cubes will shrink the more uniformly: the cube _a_ resting on the pavement, or the cube _b_ suspended in the air, when both cubes are equal in weight and bulk, and of clay mixed with equal quantities of water? the cube placed on the pavement diminishes more in height than in breadth, which the cube above, hanging in the air, cannot do. thus it is proved. the cube shown above is better shown here below. the final result of the two cylinders of damp clay that is _a_ and _b_ will be the pyramidal figures below _c_ and _d_. this is proved thus: the cylinder _a_ resting on block of stone being made of clay mixed with a great deal of water will sink by its weight, which presses on its base, and in proportion as it settles and spreads all the parts will be somewhat nearer to the base because that is charged with the whole weight. iii. on the nature of the arch. . what is an arch? the arch is nothing else than a force originated by two weaknesses, for the arch in buildings is composed of two segments of a circle, each of which being very weak in itself tends to fall; but as each opposes this tendency in the other, the two weaknesses combine to form one strength. of the kind of pressure in arches. as the arch is a composite force it remains in equilibrium because the thrust is equal from both sides; and if one of the segments weighs more than the other the stability is lost, because the greater pressure will outweigh the lesser. of distributing the pressure above an arch. next to giving the segments of the circle equal weight it is necessary to load them equally, or you will fall into the same defect as before. where an arch breaks. an arch breaks at the part which lies below half way from the centre. second rupture of the arch. if the excess of weight be placed in the middle of the arch at the point _a_, that weight tends to fall towards _b_, and the arch breaks at / of its height at _c e_; and _g e_ is as many times stronger than _e a_, as _m o_ goes into _m n_. on another cause of ruin. the arch will likewise give way under a transversal thrust, for when the charge is not thrown directly on the foot of the arch, the arch lasts but a short time. . on the strength of the arch. the way to give stability to the arch is to fill the spandrils with good masonry up to the level of its summit. on the loading of round arches. on the proper manner of loading the pointed arch. on the evil effects of loading the pointed arch directly above its crown. on the damage done to the pointed arch by throwing the pressure on the flanks. an arch of small curve is safe in itself, but if it be heavily charged, it is necessary to strengthen the flanks well. an arch of a very large curve is weak in itself, and stronger if it be charged, and will do little harm to its abutments, and its places of giving way are _o p_. [footnote: inside the large figure on the righi is the note: _da pesare la forza dell' archo_.] . on the remedy for earthquakes. the arch which throws its pressure perpendicularly on the abutments will fulfil its function whatever be its direction, upside down, sideways or upright. the arch will not break if the chord of the outer arch does not touch the inner arch. this is manifest by experience, because whenever the chord _a o n_ of the outer arch _n r a_ approaches the inner arch _x b y_ the arch will be weak, and it will be weaker in proportion as the inner arch passes beyond that chord. when an arch is loaded only on one side the thrust will press on the top of the other side and be transmitted to the spring of the arch on that side; and it will break at a point half way between its two extremes, where it is farthest from the chord. . a continuous body which has been forcibly bent into an arch, thrusts in the direction of the straight line, which it tends to recover. . in an arch judiciously weighted the thrust is oblique, so that the triangle _c n b_ has no weight upon it. . i here ask what weight will be needed to counterpoise and resist the tendency of each of these arches to give way? [footnote: the two lower sketches are taken from the ms. s. k. m. iii, a; they have there no explanatory text.] . on the strength of the arch in architecture. the stability of the arch built by an architect resides in the tie and in the flanks. on the position of the tie in the above named arch. the position of the tie is of the same importance at the beginning of the arch and at the top of the perpendicular pier on which it rests. this is proved by the nd "of supports" which says: that part of a support has least resistance which is farthest from its solid attachment; hence, as the top of the pier is farthest from the middle of its true foundation and the same being the case at the opposite extremities of the arch which are the points farthest from the middle, which is really its [upper] attachment, we have concluded that the tie _a b_ requires to be in such a position as that its opposite ends are between the four above-mentioned extremes. the adversary says that this arch must be more than half a circle, and that then it will not need a tie, because then the ends will not thrust outwards but inwards, as is seen in the excess at _a c_, _b d_. to this it must be answered that this would be a very poor device, for three reasons. the first refers to the strength of the arch, since it is proved that the circular parallel being composed of two semicircles will only break where these semicircles cross each other, as is seen in the figure _n m;_ besides this it follows that there is a wider space between the extremes of the semicircle than between the plane of the walls; the third reason is that the weight placed to counterbalance the strength of the arch diminishes in proportion as the piers of the arch are wider than the space between the piers. fourthly in proportion as the parts at _c a b d_ turn outwards, the piers are weaker to support the arch above them. the th is that all the material and weight of the arch which are in excess of the semicircle are useless and indeed mischievous; and here it is to be noted that the weight placed above the arch will be more likely to break the arch at _a b_, where the curve of the excess begins that is added to the semicircle, than if the pier were straight up to its junction with the semicircle [spring of the arch]. an arch loaded over the crown will give way at the left hand and right hand quarters. this is proved by the th of this which says: the opposite ends of the support are equally pressed upon by the weight suspended to them; hence the weight shown at _f_ is felt at _b c_, that is half at each extremity; and by the third which says: in a support of equal strength [throughout] that portion will give way soonest which is farthest from its attachment; whence it follows that _d_ being equally distant from _f, e_ ..... if the centering of the arch does not settle as the arch settles, the mortar, as it dries, will shrink and detach itself from the bricks between which it was laid to keep them together; and as it thus leaves them disjoined the vault will remain loosely built, and the rains will soon destroy it. . on the strength and nature of arches, and where they are strong or weak; and the same as to columns. that part of the arch which is nearer to the horizontal offers least resistance to the weight placed on it. when the triangle _a z n_, by settling, drives backwards the / of each / circle that is _a s_ and in the same way _z m_, the reason is that _a_ is perpendicularly over _b_ and so likewise _z_ is above _f_. either half of an arch, if overweighted, will break at / of its height, the point which corresponds to the perpendicular line above the middle of its bases, as is seen at _a b_; and this happens because the weight tends to fall past the point _r_.--and if, against its nature it should tend to fall towards the point _s_ the arch _n s_ would break precisely in its middle. if the arch _n s_ were of a single piece of timber, if the weight placed at _n_ should tend to fall in the line _n m_, the arch would break in the middle of the arch _e m_, otherwise it will break at one third from the top at the point a because from _a_ to _n_ the arch is nearer to the horizontal than from _a_ to _o_ and from _o_ to _s_, in proportion as _p t_ is greater than _t n_, _a o_ will be stronger than _a n_ and likewise in proportion as _s o_ is stronger than _o a_, _r p_ will be greater than _p t_. the arch which is doubled to four times of its thickness will bear four times the weight that the single arch could carry, and more in proportion as the diameter of its thickness goes a smaller number of times into its length. that is to say that if the thickness of the single arch goes ten times into its length, the thickness of the doubled arch will go five times into its length. hence as the thickness of the double arch goes only half as many times into its length as that of the single arch does, it is reasonable that it should carry half as much more weight as it would have to carry if it were in direct proportion to the single arch. hence as this double arch has times the thickness of the single arch, it would seem that it ought to bear times the weight; but by the above rule it is shown that it will bear exactly times as much. that pier, which is charged most unequally, will soonest give way. the column _c b_, being charged with an equal weight, [on each side] will be most durable, and the other two outward columns require on the part outside of their centre as much pressure as there is inside of their centre, that is, from the centre of the column, towards the middle of the arch. arches which depend on chains for their support will not be very durable. that arch will be of longer duration which has a good abutment opposed to its thrust. the arch itself tends to fall. if the arch be braccia and the interval between the walls which carry it be , we know that cannot pass through the unless becomes likewise . hence the arch being crushed by the excess of weight, and the walls offering insufficient resistance, part, and afford room between them, for the fall of the arch. but if you do not wish to strengthen the arch with an iron tie you must give it such abutments as can resist the thrust; and you can do this thus: fill up the spandrels _m n_ with stones, and direct the lines of the joints between them to the centre of the circle of the arch, and the reason why this makes the arch durable is this. we know very well that if the arch is loaded with an excess of weight above its quarter as _a b_, the wall _f g_ will be thrust outwards because the arch would yield in that direction; if the other quarter _b c_ were loaded, the wall _f g_ would be thrust inwards, if it were not for the line of stones _x y_ which resists this. . plan. here it is shown how the arches made in the side of the octagon thrust the piers of the angles outwards, as is shown by the line _h c_ and by the line _t d_ which thrust out the pier _m_; that is they tend to force it away from the centre of such an octagon. . an experiment to show that a weight placed on an arch does not discharge itself entirely on its columns; on the contrary the greater the weight placed on the arches, the less the arch transmits the weight to the columns. the experiment is the following. let a man be placed on a steel yard in the middle of the shaft of a well, then let him spread out his hands and feet between the walls of the well, and you will see him weigh much less on the steel yard; give him a weight on the shoulders, you will see by experiment, that the greater the weight you give him the greater effort he will make in spreading his arms and legs, and in pressing against the wall and the less weight will be thrown on the steel yard. iv. on foundations, the nature of the ground and supports. . the first and most important thing is stability. as to the foundations of the component parts of temples and other public buildings, the depths of the foundations must bear the same proportions to each other as the weight of material which is to be placed upon them. every part of the depth of earth in a given space is composed of layers, and each layer is composed of heavier or lighter materials, the lowest being the heaviest. and this can be proved, because these layers have been formed by the sediment from water carried down to the sea, by the current of rivers which flow into it. the heaviest part of this sediment was that which was first thrown down, and so on by degrees; and this is the action of water when it becomes stagnant, having first brought down the mud whence it first flowed. and such layers of soil are seen in the banks of rivers, where their constant flow has cut through them and divided one slope from the other to a great depth; where in gravelly strata the waters have run off, the materials have, in consequence, dried and been converted into hard stone, and this happened most in what was the finest mud; whence we conclude that every portion of the surface of the earth was once at the centre of the earth, and _vice_versa_ &c. . the heaviest part of the foundations of buildings settles most, and leaves the lighter part above it separated from it. and the soil which is most pressed, if it be porous yields most. you should always make the foundations project equally beyond the weight of the walls and piers, as shown at _m a b_. if you do as many do, that is to say if you make a foundation of equal width from the bottom up to the surface of the ground, and charge it above with unequal weights, as shown at _b e_ and at _e o_, at the part of the foundation at _b e_, the pier of the angle will weigh most and thrust its foundation downwards, which the wall at _e o_ will not do; since it does not cover the whole of its foundation, and therefore thrusts less heavily and settles less. hence, the pier _b e_ in settling cracks and parts from the wall _e o_. this may be seen in most buildings which are cracked round the piers. . the window _a_ is well placed under the window _c_, and the window _b_ is badly placed under the pier _d_, because this latter is without support and foundation; mind therefore never to make a break under the piers between the windows. . of the supports. a pillar of which the thickness is increased will gain more than its due strength, in direct proportion to what its loses in relative height. example. if a pillar should be nine times as high as it is broad--that is to say, if it is one braccio thick, according to rule it should be nine braccia high--then, if you place such pillars together in a mass this will be ten braccia broad and high; and if the first pillar could carry pounds the second being only about as high as it is wide, and thus lacking parts of its proper length, it, that is to say, each pillar thus united, will bear eight times more than when disconnected; that is to say, that if at first it would carry ten thousand pounds, it would now carry thousand. v. on the resistance of beams. . that angle will offer the greatest resistance which is most acute, and the most obtuse will be the weakest. [footnote: the three smaller sketches accompany the text in the original, but the larger one is not directly connected with it. it is to be found on fol. a of the same manuscript and there we read in a note, written underneath, _coverchio della perdicha del castello_ (roof of the flagstaff of the castle),--compare also pl. xciii, no. .] . if the beams and the weight _o_ are pounds, how much weight will be wanted at _ae_ to resist such a weight, that it may not fall down? . on the length of beams. that beam which is more than times as long as its greatest thickness will be of brief duration and will break in half; and remember, that the part built into the wall should be steeped in hot pitch and filleted with oak boards likewise so steeped. each beam must pass through its walls and be secured beyond the walls with sufficient chaining, because in consequence of earthquakes the beams are often seen to come out of the walls and bring down the walls and floors; whilst if they are chained they will hold the walls strongly together and the walls will hold the floors. again i remind you never to put plaster over timber. since by expansion and shrinking of the timber produced by damp and dryness such floors often crack, and once cracked their divisions gradually produce dust and an ugly effect. again remember not to lay a floor on beams supported on arches; for, in time the floor which is made on beams settles somewhat in the middle while that part of the floor which rests on the arches remains in its place; hence, floors laid over two kinds of supports look, in time, as if they were made in hills [footnote: m. ravaisson, in his edition of ms. a gives a very different rendering of this passage translating it thus: _les planchers qui sont soutenus par deux differentes natures de supports paraissent avec le temps faits en voute a cholli_.] remarks on the style of leonardo's architecture. a few remarks may here be added on the style of leonardo's architectural studies. however incomplete, however small in scale, they allow us to establish a certain number of facts and probabilities, well worthy of consideration. when leonardo began his studies the great name of brunellesco was still the inspiration of all florence, and we cannot doubt that leonardo was open to it, since we find among his sketches the plan of the church of santo spirito[footnote : see pl. xciv, no. . then only in course of erection after the designs of brunellesco, though he was already dead; finished in .] and a lateral view of san lorenzo (pl. xciv no. ), a plan almost identical with the chapel degli angeli, only begun by him (pl. xciv, no. ) while among leonardo's designs for domes several clearly betray the influence of brunellesco's cupola and the lantern of santa maria del fiore[footnote : a small sketch of the tower of the palazzo della signoria (ms. c.a. ) proves that he also studied mediaeval monuments.] the beginning of the second period of modern italian architecture falls during the first twenty years of leonardo's life. however the new impetus given by leon battista alberti either was not generally understood by his contemporaries, or those who appreciated it, had no opportunity of showing that they did so. it was only when taken up by bramante and developed by him to the highest rank of modern architecture that this new influence was generally felt. now the peculiar feature of leonardo's sketches is that, like the works of bramante, they appear to be the development and continuation of alberti's. _but a question here occurs which is difficult to answer. did leonardo, till he quitted florence, follow the direction given by the dominant school of brunellesco, which would then have given rise to his "first manner", or had he, even before he left florence, felt alberti's influence--either through his works (palazzo ruccellai, and the front of santa maria novella) or through personal intercourse? or was it not till he went to milan that alberti's work began to impress him through bramante, who probably had known alberti at mantua about and who not only carried out alberti's views and ideas, but, by his designs for st. peter's at rome, proved himself the greatest of modern architects. when leonardo went to milan bramante had already been living there for many years. one of his earliest works in milan was the church of santa maria presso san satiro, via del falcone[footnote : evidence of this i intend to give later on in a life of bramante, which i have in preparation.]. now we find among leonardos studies of cupolas on plates lxxxiv and lxxxv and in pl. lxxx several sketches which seem to me to have been suggested by bramante's dome of this church. the mss. b and ash. ii contain the plans of s. sepolcro, the pavilion in the garden of the duke of milan, and two churches, evidently inspired by the church of san lorenzo at milan. ms. b. contains besides two notes relating to pavia, one of them a design for the sacristy of the cathedral at pavia, which cannot be supposed to be dated later than , and it has probably some relation to leonardo's call to pavia june , [footnote : the sketch of the plan of brunellesco's church of santo spirito at florence, which occurs in the same manuscript, may have been done from memory.]. these and other considerations justify us in concluding, that leonardo made his studies of cupolas at milan, probably between the years and in anticipation of the erection of one of the grandest churches of italy, the cathedral of pavia. this may explain the decidedly lombardo-bramantesque tendency in the style of these studies, among which only a few remind us of the forms of the cupolas of s. maria del fiore and of the baptistery of florence. thus, although when compared with bramante's work, several of these sketches plainly reveal that master's influence, we find, among the sketches of domes, some, which show already bramante's classic style, of which the tempietto of san pietro in montorio, his first building executed at rome, is the foremost example[footnote : it may be mentioned here, that in bramante made a similar design for the lantern of the cupola of the church of santa maria delle grazie.]. on plate lxxxiv is a sketch of the plan of a similar circular building; and the mausoleum on pl. xcviii, no less than one of the pedestals for the statue of francesco sforza (pl. lxv), is of the same type. the drawings pl. lxxxiv no. , pl. lxxxvi no. and and the ground flour ("flour" sic but should be "floor" ?) of the building in the drawing pl. xci no. , with the interesting decoration by gigantic statues in large niches, are also, i believe, more in the style bramante adopted at rome, than in the lombard style. are we to conclude from this that leonardo on his part influenced bramante in the sense of simplifying his style and rendering it more congenial to antique art? the answer to this important question seems at first difficult to give, for we are here in presence of bramante, the greatest of modern architects, and with leonardo, the man comparable with no other. we have no knowledge of any buildings erected by leonardo, and unless we admit personal intercourse--which seems probable, but of which there is no proof--, it would be difficult to understand how leonardo could have affected bramante's style. the converse is more easily to be admitted, since bramante, as we have proved elsewhere, drew and built simultaneously in different manners, and though in lombardy there is no building by him in his classic style, the use of brick for building, in that part of italy, may easily account for it._ _bramante's name is incidentally mentioned in leonardo's manuscripts in two passages (nos. and ). on each occasion it is only a slight passing allusion, and the nature of the context gives us no due information as to any close connection between the two artists._ _it might be supposed, on the ground of leonardo's relations with the east given in sections xvii and xxi of this volume, that some evidence of oriental influence might be detected in his architectural drawings. i do not however think that any such traces can be pointed out with certainty unless perhaps the drawing for a mausoleum, pl. xc viii._ _among several studies for the construction of cupolas above a greek cross there are some in which the forms are decidedly monotonous. these, it is clear, were not designed as models of taste; they must be regarded as the results of certain investigations into the laws of proportion, harmony and contrast._ _the designs for churches, on the plan of a latin cross are evidently intended to depart as little as possible from the form of a greek cross; and they also show a preference for a nave surrounded with outer porticos._ _the architectural forms preferred by leonardo are pilasters coupled (pl. lxxxii no. ; or grouped (pl. lxxx no. and xciv no. ), often combined with niches. we often meet with orders superposed, one in each story, or two small orders on one story, in combination with one great order (pl. xcvi no. )._ the drum (tamburo) of these cupolas is generally octagonal, as in the cathedral of florence, and with similar round windows in its sides. in pl. lxxxvii no. it is circular like the model actually carried out by michael angelo at st. peter's. the cupola itself is either hidden under a pyramidal roof, as in the baptistery of florence, san lorenzo of milan and most of the lombard churches (pl. xci no. and pl. xcii no. ); but it more generally suggests the curve of sta maria del fiore (pl. lxxxviii no. ; pl. xc no. ; pl. lxxxix, m; pl xc no. , pl. xcvi no. ). in other cases (pl. lxxx no. ; pl. lxxxix; pl. xc no. ) it shows the sides of the octagon crowned by semicircular pediments, as in brunellesco's lantern of the cathedral and in the model for the cathedral of pavia. finally, in some sketches the cupola is either semicircular, or as in pl. lxxxvii no. , shows the beautiful line, adopted sixty years later by michael angelo for the existing dome of st. peter's. it is worth noticing that for all these domes leonardo is not satisfied to decorate the exterior merely with ascending ribs or mouldings, but employs also a system of horizontal parallels to complete the architectural system. not the least interesting are the designs for the tiburio (cupola) of the milan cathedral. they show some of the forms, just mentioned, adapted to the peculiar gothic style of that monument. the few examples of interiors of churches recall the style employed in lombardy by bramante, for instance in s. maria di canepanuova at pavia, or by dolcebuono in the monastero maggiore at milan (see pl. ci no. [c. a. b; b]; pl. lxxxiv no. ). the few indications concerning palaces seem to prove that leonardo followed alberti's example of decorating the walls with pilasters and a flat rustica, either in stone or by graffitti (pl. cii no. and pl. lxxxv no. ). by pointing out the analogies between leonardo's architecture and that of other masters we in no way pretend to depreciate his individual and original inventive power. these are at all events beyond dispute. the project for the mausoleum (pl. xcviii) would alone suffice to rank him among the greatest architects who ever lived. the peculiar shape of the tower (pl. lxxx), of the churches for preaching (pl. xcvii no. and pages and , fig. - ), his curious plan for a city with high and low level streets (pl. lxxvii and lxxviii no. and no. ), his loggia with fountains (pl. lxxxii no. ) reveal an originality, a power and facility of invention for almost any given problem, which are quite wonderful. _in addition to all these qualities he propably stood alone in his day in one department of architectural study,--his investigations, namely, as to the resistance of vaults, foundations, walls and arches._ _as an application of these studies the plan of a semicircular vault (pl. ciii no. ) may be mentioned here, disposed so as to produce no thrust on the columns on which it rests:_ volta i botte e non ispignie ifori le colone. _above the geometrical patterns on the same sheet, close to a circle inscribed in a square is the note:_ la ragio d'una volta cioe il terzo del diamitro della sua ... del tedesco in domo. _there are few data by which to judge of leonardo's style in the treatment of detail. on pl. lxxxv no. and pl. ciii no. , we find some details of pillars; on pl. ci no. slender pillars designed for a fountain and on pl. ciii no. ms. b, is a pen and ink drawing of a vase which also seems intended for a fountain. three handles seem to have been intended to connect the upper parts with the base. there can be no doubt that leonardo, like bramante, but unlike michael angelo, brought infinite delicacy of motive and execution to bear on the details of his work._ _xiv._ _anatomy, zoology and physiology._ _leonardo's eminent place in the history of medicine, as a pioneer in the sciences of anatomy and physiology, will never be appreciated till it is possible to publish the mass of manuscripts in which he largely treated of these two branches of learning. in the present work i must necessarily limit myself to giving the reader a general view of these labours, by publishing his introductory notes to the various books on anatomical subjects. i have added some extracts, and such observations as are scattered incidentally through these treatises, as serving to throw a light on leonardo's scientific attitude, besides having an interest for a wider circle than that of specialists only._ _vasari expressly mentions leonardo's anatomical studies, having had occasion to examine the manuscript books which refer to them. according to him leonardo studied anatomy in the companionship of marc antonio della torre_ "aiutato e scambievolmente aiutando."_--this learned anatomist taught the science in the universities first of padua and then of pavia, and at pavia he and leonardo may have worked and studied together. we have no clue to any exact dates, but in the year marc antonio della torre seems to have not yet left padua. he was scarcely thirty years old when he died in , and his writings on anatomy have not only never been published, but no manuscript copy of them is known to exist._ _this is not the place to enlarge on the connection between leonardo and marc antonio della torre. i may however observe that i have not been able to discover in leonardo's manuscripts on anatomy any mention of his younger contemporary. the few quotations which occur from writers on medicine--either of antiquity or of the middle ages are printed in section xxii. here and there in the manuscripts mention is made of an anonymous "adversary"_ (avversario) _whose views are opposed and refuted by leonardo, but there is no ground for supposing that marc antonio della torre should have been this "adversary"._ _only a very small selection from the mass of anatomical drawings left by leonardo have been published here in facsimile, but to form any adequate idea of their scientific merit they should be compared with the coarse and inadequate figures given in the published books of the early part of the xvi. century. william hunter, the great surgeon--a competent judge--who had an opportunity in the time of george iii. of seeing the originals in the king's library, has thus recorded his opinion: "i expected to see little more than such designs in anatomy as might be useful to a painter in his own profession. but i saw, and indeed with astonishment, that leonardo had been a general and deep student. when i consider what pains he has taken upon every part of the body, the superiority of his universal genius, his particular excellence in mechanics and hydraulics, and the attention with which such a man would examine and see objects which he has to draw, i am fully persuaded that leonardo was the best anatomist, at that time, in the world ... leonardo was certainly the first man, we know of, who introduced the practice of making anatomical drawings" (two introductory letters. london , pages and ). the illustrious german naturalist johan friedrich blumenback esteemed them no less highly; he was one of the privileged few who, after hunter, had the chance of seeing these manuscripts. he writes: _der scharfblick dieses grossen forschers und darstellers der natur hat schon auf dinge geachtet, die noch jahrhunderte nachher unbemerkt geblieben sind_" (see _blumenbach's medicinische bibliothek_, vol. , st. , . page ). these opinions were founded on the drawings alone. up to the present day hardly anything has been made known of the text, and, for the reasons i have given, it is my intention to reproduce here no more than a selection of extracts which i have made from the originals at windsor castle and elsewhere. in the bibliography of the manuscripts, at the end of this volume a short review is given of the valuable contents of these anatomical note books which are at present almost all in the possession of her majesty the queen of england. it is, i believe, possible to assign the date with approximate accuracy to almost all the fragments, and i am thus led to conclude that the greater part of leonardo's anatomical investigations were carried out after the death of della torre. merely in reading the introductory notes to his various books on anatomy which are here printed it is impossible to resist the impression that the master's anatomical studies bear to a very great extent the stamp of originality and independent thought. i. anatomy. . a general introduction i wish to work miracles;--it may be that i shall possess less than other men of more peaceful lives, or than those who want to grow rich in a day. i may live for a long time in great poverty, as always happens, and to all eternity will happen, to alchemists, the would-be creators of gold and silver, and to engineers who would have dead water stir itself into life and perpetual motion, and to those supreme fools, the necromancer and the enchanter. [footnote : the following seems to be directed against students of painting and young artists rather than against medical men and anatomists.] and you, who say that it would be better to watch an anatomist at work than to see these drawings, you would be right, if it were possible to observe all the things which are demonstrated in such drawings in a single figure, in which you, with all your cleverness, will not see nor obtain knowledge of more than some few veins, to obtain a true and perfect knowledge of which i have dissected more than ten human bodies, destroying all the other members, and removing the very minutest particles of the flesh by which these veins are surrounded, without causing them to bleed, excepting the insensible bleeding of the capillary veins; and as one single body would not last so long, since it was necessary to proceed with several bodies by degrees, until i came to an end and had a complete knowledge; this i repeated twice, to learn the differences [ ]. [footnote: lines - and - are written in two parallel columns. when we here find leonardo putting himself in the same category as the alchemists and necromancers, whom he elsewhere mocks at so bitterly, it is evidently meant ironically. in the same way leonardo, in the introduction to the books on perspective sets himself with transparent satire on a level with other writers on the subject.] and if you should have a love for such things you might be prevented by loathing, and if that did not prevent you, you might be deterred by the fear of living in the night hours in the company of those corpses, quartered and flayed and horrible to see. and if this did not prevent you, perhaps you might not be able to draw so well as is necessary for such a demonstration; or, if you had the skill in drawing, it might not be combined with knowledge of perspective; and if it were so, you might not understand the methods of geometrical demonstration and the method of the calculation of forces and of the strength of the muscles; patience also may be wanting, so that you lack perseverance. as to whether all these things were found in me or not [footnote : leonardo frequently, and perhaps habitually, wrote in note books of a very small size and only moderately thick; in most of those which have been preserved undivided, each contains less than fifty leaves. thus a considerable number of such volumes must have gone to make up a volume of the bulk of the '_codex atlanticus_' which now contains nearly detached leaves. in the passage under consideration, which was evidently written at a late period of his life, leonardo speaks of his manuscript note-books as numbering o; but we should hardly be justified in concluding from this passage that the greater part of his manuscripts were now missing (see _prolegomena_, vol. i, pp. - ).], the hundred and twenty books composed by me will give verdict yes or no. in these i have been hindered neither by avarice nor negligence, but simply by want of time. farewell [ ]. plans and suggestions for the arrangement of materials ( - ). . of the order of the book. this work must begin with the conception of man, and describe the nature of the womb and how the foetus lives in it, up to what stage it resides there, and in what way it quickens into life and feeds. also its growth and what interval there is between one stage of growth and another. what it is that forces it out from the body of the mother, and for what reasons it sometimes comes out of the mother's womb before the due time. then i will describe which are the members, which, after the boy is born, grow more than the others, and determine the proportions of a boy of one year. then describe the fully grown man and woman, with their proportions, and the nature of their complexions, colour, and physiognomy. then how they are composed of veins, tendons, muscles and bones. this i shall do at the end of the book. then, in four drawings, represent four universal conditions of men. that is, mirth, with various acts of laughter, and describe the cause of laughter. weeping in various aspects with its causes. contention, with various acts of killing; flight, fear, ferocity, boldness, murder and every thing pertaining to such cases. then represent labour, with pulling, thrusting, carrying, stopping, supporting and such like things. further i would describe attitudes and movements. then perspective, concerning the functions and effects of the eye; and of hearing--here i will speak of music--, and treat of the other senses. and then describe the nature of the senses. this mechanism of man we will demonstrate in ... figures; of which the three first will show the ramification of the bones; that is: first one to show their height and position and shape: the second will be seen in profile and will show the depth of the whole and of the parts, and their position. the third figure will be a demonstration of the bones of the backparts. then i will make three other figures from the same point of view, with the bones sawn across, in which will be shown their thickness and hollowness. three other figures of the bones complete, and of the nerves which rise from the nape of the neck, and in what limbs they ramify. and three others of the bones and veins, and where they ramify. then three figures with the muscles and three with the skin, and their proper proportions; and three of woman, to illustrate the womb and the menstrual veins which go to the breasts. [footnote: the meaning of the word _nervo_ varies in different passages, being sometimes used for _muscolo_ (muscle).] . the order of the book. this depicting of mine of the human body will be as clear to you as if you had the natural man before you; and the reason is that if you wish thoroughly to know the parts of man, anatomically, you--or your eye--require to see it from different aspects, considering it from below and from above and from its sides, turning it about and seeking the origin of each member; and in this way the natural anatomy is sufficient for your comprehension. but you must understand that this amount of knowledge will not continue to satisfy you; seeing the very great confusion that must result from the combination of tissues, with veins, arteries, nerves, sinews, muscles, bones, and blood which, of itself, tinges every part the same colour. and the veins, which discharge this blood, are not discerned by reason of their smallness. moreover integrity of the tissues, in the process of the investigating the parts within them, is inevitably destroyed, and their transparent substance being tinged with blood does not allow you to recognise the parts covered by them, from the similarity of their blood-stained hue; and you cannot know everything of the one without confusing and destroying the other. hence, some further anatomy drawings become necessary. of which you want three to give full knowledge of the veins and arteries, everything else being destroyed with the greatest care. and three others to display the tissues; and three for the sinews and muscles and ligaments; and three for the bones and cartilages; and three for the anatomy of the bones, which have to be sawn to show which are hollow and which are not, which have marrow and which are spongy, and which are thick from the outside inwards, and which are thin. and some are extremely thin in some parts and thick in others, and in some parts hollow or filled up with bone, or full of marrow, or spongy. and all these conditions are sometimes found in one and the same bone, and in some bones none of them. and three you must have for the woman, in which there is much that is mysterious by reason of the womb and the foetus. therefore by my drawings every part will be known to you, and all by means of demonstrations from three different points of view of each part; for when you have seen a limb from the front, with any muscles, sinews, or veins which take their rise from the opposite side, the same limb will be shown to you in a side view or from behind, exactly as if you had that same limb in your hand and were turning it from side to side until you had acquired a full comprehension of all you wished to know. in the same way there will be put before you three or four demonstrations of each limb, from various points of view, so that you will be left with a true and complete knowledge of all you wish to learn of the human figure[footnote : compare pl. cvii. the original drawing at windsor is / x / centimetres. the upper figures are slightly washed with indian ink. on the back of this drawing is the text no. .]. thus, in twelve entire figures, you will have set before you the cosmography of this lesser world on the same plan as, before me, was adopted by ptolemy in his cosmography; and so i will afterwards divide them into limbs as he divided the whole world into provinces; then i will speak of the function of each part in every direction, putting before your eyes a description of the whole form and substance of man, as regards his movements from place to place, by means of his different parts. and thus, if it please our great author, i may demonstrate the nature of men, and their customs in the way i describe his figure. and remember that the anatomy of the nerves will not give the position of their ramifications, nor show you which muscles they branch into, by means of bodies dissected in running water or in lime water; though indeed their origin and starting point may be seen without such water as well as with it. but their ramifications, when under running water, cling and unite--just like flat or hemp carded for spinning--all into a skein, in a way which makes it impossible to trace in which muscles or by what ramification the nerves are distributed among those muscles. . the arrangement of anatomy first draw the bones, let us say, of the arm, and put in the motor muscle from the shoulder to the elbow with all its lines. then proceed in the same way from the elbow to the wrist. then from the wrist to the hand and from the hand to the fingers. and in the arm you will put the motors of the fingers which open, and these you will show separately in their demonstration. in the second demonstration you will clothe these muscles with the secondary motors of the fingers and so proceed by degrees to avoid confusion. but first lay on the bones those muscles which lie close to the said bones, without confusion of other muscles; and with these you may put the nerves and veins which supply their nourishment, after having first drawn the tree of veins and nerves over the simple bones. . begin the anatomy at the head and finish at the sole of the foot. . men complete, with bones and nerves, with the bones only. here we have demonstrations of entire figures. . when you have finished building up the man, you will make the statue with all its superficial measurements. [footnote: _cresciere l'omo_. the meaning of this expression appears to be different here and in the passage c.a. a, a (see no. , note . ). here it can hardly mean anything else than modelling, since the sculptor forms the figure by degrees, by adding wet clay and the figure consequently increases or grows. _tu farai la statua_ would then mean, you must work out the figure in marble. if this interpretation is the correct one, this passage would have no right to find a place in the series on anatomical studies. i may say that it was originally inserted in this connection under the impression that _di cresciere_ should be read _descrivere_.] plans for the representation of muscles by drawings ( - ). . you must show all the motions of the bones with their joints to follow the demonstration of the first three figures of the bones, and this should be done in the first book. . remember that to be certain of the point of origin of any muscle, you must pull the sinew from which the muscle springs in such a way as to see that muscle move, and where it is attached to the ligaments of the bones. note. you will never get any thing but confusion in demonstrating the muscles and their positions, origin, and termination, unless you first make a demonstration of thin muscles after the manner of linen threads; and thus you can represent them, one over another as nature has placed them; and thus, too, you can name them according to the limb they serve; for instance the motor of the point of the great toe, of its middle bone, of its first bone, &c. and when you have the knowledge you will draw, by the side of this, the true form and size and position of each muscle. but remember to give the threads which explain the situation of the muscles in the position which corresponds to the central line of each muscle; and so these threads will demonstrate the form of the leg and their distance in a plain and clear manner. i have removed the skin from a man who was so shrunk by illness that the muscles were worn down and remained in a state like thin membrane, in such a way that the sinews instead of merging in muscles ended in wide membrane; and where the bones were covered by the skin they had very little over their natural size. [footnote: the photograph no. of grosvenor gallery publications: a drawing of the muscles of the foot, includes a complete facsimile of the text of this passage.] . which nerve causes the motion of the eye so that the motion of one eye moves the other? of frowning the brows, of raising the brows, of lowering the brows,--of closing the eyes, of opening the eyes,--of raising the nostrils, of opening the lips, with the teeth shut, of pouting with the lips, of smiling, of astonishment.-- describe the beginning of man when it is caused in the womb and why an eight months child does not live. what sneezing is. what yawning is. falling sickness, spasms, paralysis, shivering with cold, sweating, fatigue, hunger, sleepiness, thirst, lust. of the nerve which is the cause of movement from the shoulder to the elbow, of the movement from the elbow to the hand, from the joint of the hand to the springing of the fingers. from the springing of the fingers to the middle joints, and from the middle joints to the last. of the nerve which causes the movement of the thigh, and from the knee to the foot, and from the joint of the foot to the toes, and then to the middle of the toes and of the rotary motion of the leg. . anatomy. which nerves or sinews of the hand are those which close and part the fingers and toes latteraly? . remove by degrees all the parts of the front of a man in making your dissection, till you come to the bones. description of the parts of the bust and of their motions. . give the anatomy of the leg up to the hip, in all views and in every action and in every state; veins, arteries, nerves, sinews and muscles, skin and bones; then the bones in sections to show the thickness of the bones. [footnote: a straightened leg in profile is sketched by the side of this text.] on corpulency and leanness ( - ). . make the rule and give the measurement of each muscle, and give the reasons of all their functions, and in which way they work and what makes them work &c. [ ] first draw the spine of the back; then clothe it by degrees, one after the other, with each of its muscles and put in the nerves and arteries and veins to each muscle by itself; and besides these note the vertebrae to which they are attached; which of the intestines come in contact with them; and which bones and other organs &c. the most prominent parts of lean people are most prominent in the muscular, and equally so in fat persons. but concerning the difference in the forms of the muscles in fat persons as compared with muscular persons, it shall be described below. [footnote: the two drawings given on pl. cviii no. come between lines and . a good and very early copy of this drawing without the written text exists in the collection of drawings belonging to christ's college oxford, where it is attributed to leonardo.] . describe which muscles disappear in growing fat, and which become visible in growing lean. and observe that that part which on the surface of a fat person is most concave, when he grows lean becomes more prominent. where the muscles separate one from another you must give profiles and where they coalesce ... . of the human figure. which is the part in man, which, as he grows fatter, never gains flesh? or what part which as a man grows lean never falls away with a too perceptible diminution? and among the parts which grow fat which is that which grows fattest? among those which grow lean which is that which grows leanest? in very strong men which are the muscles which are thickest and most prominent? in your anatomy you must represent all the stages of the limbs from man's creation to his death, and then till the death of the bone; and which part of him is first decayed and which is preserved the longest. and in the same way of extreme leanness and extreme fatness. the divisions of the head ( . ). . anatomy. there are eleven elementary tissues:-- cartilage, bones, nerves, veins, arteries, fascia, ligament and sinews, skin, muscle and fat. of the head. the divisions of the head are , viz. external and internal, the external are the hair, skin, muscle, fascia and the skull; the internal are the dura mater, the pia mater, [which enclose] the brain. the pia mater and the dura mater come again underneath and enclose the brain; then the rete mirabile, and the occipital bone, which supports the brain from which the nerves spring. . _a_. hair _n_. skin _c_. muscle _m_. fascia _o_. skull _i.e._ bone _b_. dura mater _d_. pia mater _f_. brain _r_. pia mater, below _t_. dura mater _l_. rete mirablile _s_. the occipitul bone. [footnote: see pl. cviii, no. .] physiological problems ( . ). . of the cause of breathing, of the cause of the motion of the heart, of the cause of vomiting, of the cause of the descent of food from the stomach, of the cause of emptying the intestines. of the cause of the movement of the superfluous matter through the intestines. of the cause of swallowing, of the cause of coughing, of the cause of yawning, of the cause of sneezing, of the cause of limbs getting asleep. of the cause of losing sensibility in any limb. of the cause of tickling. of the cause of lust and other appetites of the body, of the cause of urine and also of all the natural excretions of the body. [footnote: by the side of this text stands the pen and ink drawing reproduced on pl. cviii, no. ; a skull with indications of the veins in the fleshy covering.] . the tears come from the heart and not from the brain. define all the parts, of which the body is composed, beginning with the skin with its outer cuticle which is often chapped by the influence of the sun. ii. zoology and comparative anatomy. the divisions of the animal kingdom ( . ). . _man_. the description of man, which includes that of such creatures as are of almost the same species, as apes, monkeys and the like, which are many, _the lion_ and its kindred, as panthers. [footnote : _leonza_--wild cat? "_secondo alcuni, lo stesso che leonessa; e secondo altri con piu certezza, lo stesso che pantera_" fanfani, _vocabolario_ page .] wildcats (?) tigers, leopards, wolfs, lynxes, spanish cats, common cats and the like. _the horse_ and its kindred, as mule, ass and the like, with incisor teeth above and below. _the bull_ and its allies with horns and without upper incisors as the buffalo, stag fallow deer, wild goat, swine, goat, wild goats muskdeers, chamois, giraffe. . describe the various forms of the intestines of the human species, of apes and such like. then, in what way the leonine species differ, and then the bovine, and finally birds; and arrange this description after the manner of a disquisition. miscellaneous notes on the study of zoology ( - ). . procure the placenta of a calf when it is born and observe the form of the cotyledons, if their cotyledons are male or female. . describe the tongue of the woodpecker and the jaw of the crocodile. . of the flight of the th kind of butterflies that consume winged ants. of the three principal positions of the wings of birds in downward flight. [footnote: a passing allusion is all i can here permit myself to leonardo's elaborate researches into the flight of birds. compare the observations on this subject in the introduction to section xviii and in the bibliography of manuscripts at the end of the work.] . of the way in which the tail of a fish acts in propelling the fish; as in the eel, snake and leech. [footnote: a sketch of a fish, swimming upwards is in the original, inserted above this text.--compare no. .] comparative study of the structure of bones and of the action of muscles ( - ). . of the palm of the hand. then i will discourse of the hands of each animal to show in what they vary; as in the bear, which has the ligatures of the sinews of the toes joined above the instep. . a second demonstration inserted between anatomy and [the treatise on] the living being. you will represent here for a comparison, the legs of a frog, which have a great resemblance to the legs of man, both in the bones and in the muscles. then, in continuation, the hind legs of the hare, which are very muscular, with strong active muscles, because they are not encumbered with fat. [footnote: this text is written by the side of a drawing in black chalk of a nude male figure, but there is no connection between the sketch and the text.] . here i make a note to demonstrate the difference there is between man and the horse and in the same way with other animals. and first i will begin with the bones, and then will go on to all the muscles which spring from the bones without tendons and end in them in the same way, and then go on to those which start with a single tendon at one end. [footnote: see pl. cviii, no. .] . note on the bendings of joints and in what way the flesh grows upon them in their flexions or extensions; and of this most important study write a separate treatise: in the description of the movements of animals with four feet; among which is man, who likewise in his infancy crawls on all fours. . of the way of walking in man. the walking of man is always after the universal manner of walking in animals with legs, inasmuch as just as they move their feet crosswise after the manner of a horse in trotting, so man moves his limbs crosswise; that is, if he puts forward his right foot in walking he puts forward, with it, his left arm and vice versa, invariably. iii. physiology. comparative study of the organs of sense in men and animals. . i have found that in the composition of the human body as compared with the bodies of animals the organs of sense are duller and coarser. thus it is composed of less ingenious instruments, and of spaces less capacious for receiving the faculties of sense. i have seen in the lion tribe that the sense of smell is connected with part of the substance of the brain which comes down the nostrils, which form a spacious receptacle for the sense of smell, which enters by a great number of cartilaginous vesicles with several passages leading up to where the brain, as before said, comes down. the eyes in the lion tribe have a large part of the head for their sockets and the optic nerves communicate at once with the brain; but the contrary is to be seen in man, for the sockets of the eyes are but a small part of the head, and the optic nerves are very fine and long and weak, and by the weakness of their action we see by day but badly at night, while these animals can see as well at night as by day. the proof that they can see is that they prowl for prey at night and sleep by day, as nocturnal birds do also. advantages in the structure of the eye in certain animals ( - ). . every object we see will appear larger at midnight than at midday, and larger in the morning than at midday. this happens because the pupil of the eye is much smaller at midday than at any other time. in proportion as the eye or the pupil of the owl is larger in proportion to the animal than that of man, so much the more light can it see at night than man can; hence at midday it can see nothing if its pupil does not diminish; and, in the same way, at night things look larger to it than by day. . of the eyes in animals. the eyes of all animals have their pupils adapted to dilate and diminish of their own accord in proportion to the greater or less light of the sun or other luminary. but in birds the variation is much greater; and particularly in nocturnal birds, such as horned owls, and in the eyes of one species of owl; in these the pupil dilates in such away as to occupy nearly the whole eye, or diminishes to the size of a grain of millet, and always preserves the circular form. but in the lion tribe, as panthers, pards, ounces, tigers, lynxes, spanish cats and other similar animals the pupil diminishes from the perfect circle to the figure of a pointed oval such as is shown in the margin. but man having a weaker sight than any other animal is less hurt by a very strong light and his pupil increases but little in dark places; but in the eyes of these nocturnal animals, the horned owl--a bird which is the largest of all nocturnal birds--the power of vision increases so much that in the faintest nocturnal light (which we call darkness) it sees with much more distinctness than we do in the splendour of noon day, at which time these birds remain hidden in dark holes; or if indeed they are compelled to come out into the open air lighted up by the sun, they contract their pupils so much that their power of sight diminishes together with the quantity of light admitted. study the anatomy of various eyes and see which are the muscles which open and close the said pupils of the eyes of animals. [footnote: compare no. , lines and fol.] . _a b n_ is the membrane which closes the eye from below, upwards, with an opaque film, _c n b_ encloses the eye in front and behind with a transparent membrane. it closes from below, upwards, because it [the eye] comes downwards. when the eye of a bird closes with its two lids, the first to close is the nictitating membrane which closes from the lacrymal duct over to the outer corner of the eye; and the outer lid closes from below upwards, and these two intersecting motions begin first from the lacrymatory duct, because we have already seen that in front and below birds are protected and use only the upper portion of the eye from fear of birds of prey which come down from above and behind; and they uncover first the membrane from the outer corner, because if the enemy comes from behind, they have the power of escaping to the front; and again the muscle called the nictitating membrane is transparent, because, if the eye had not such a screen, they could not keep it open against the wind which strikes against the eye in the rush of their rapid flight. and the pupil of the eye dilates and contracts as it sees a less or greater light, that is to say intense brilliancy. . if at night your eye is placed between the light and the eye of a cat, it will see the eye look like fire. remarks on the organs of speech ( . ). . _a e i o u ba be bi bo bu ca ce ci co cu da de di do du fa fe fi fo fu ga ge gi go gu la le li lo lu ma me mi mo mu na ne ni no nu pa pe pi po pu qa qe qi qo qu ra re ri ro ru sa se si so su ta te ti to tu_ the tongue is found to have muscles which correspond to the six muscles which compose the portion of the tongue which moves in the mouth. and when _a o u_ are spoken with a clear and rapid pronunciation, it is necessary, in order to pronounce continuously, without any pause between, that the opening of the lips should close by degrees; that is, they are wide apart in saying _a_, closer in saying _o_, and much closer still to pronounce _u_. it may be shown how all the vowels are pronounced with the farthest portion of the false palate which is above the epiglottis. . if you draw in breath by the nose and send it out by the mouth you will hear the sound made by the division that is the membrane in [footnote : the text here breaks off.]... on the conditions of sight ( . ). . of the nature of sight. i say that sight is exercised by all animals, by the medium of light; and if any one adduces, as against this, the sight of nocturnal animals, i must say that this in the same way is subject to the very same natural laws. for it will easily be understood that the senses which receive the images of things do not project from themselves any visual virtue [footnote : compare no. .]. on the contrary the atmospheric medium which exists between the object and the sense incorporates in itself the figure of things, and by its contact with the sense transmits the object to it. if the object--whether by sound or by odour--presents its spiritual force to the ear or the nose, then light is not required and does not act. the forms of objects do not send their images into the air if they are not illuminated [ ]; and the eye being thus constituted cannot receive that from the air, which the air does not possess, although it touches its surface. if you choose to say that there are many animals that prey at night, i answer that when the little light which suffices the nature of their eyes is wanting, they direct themselves by their strong sense of hearing and of smell, which are not impeded by the darkness, and in which they are very far superior to man. if you make a cat leap, by daylight, among a quantity of jars and crocks you will see them remain unbroken, but if you do the same at night, many will be broken. night birds do not fly about unless the moon shines full or in part; rather do they feed between sun-down and the total darkness of the night. [footnote : see no. - .] no body can be apprehended without light and shade, and light and shade are caused by light. . why men advanced in age see better at a distance. sight is better from a distance than near in those men who are advancing in age, because the same object transmits a smaller impression of itself to the eye when it is distant than when it is near. the seat of the common sense. . the common sense, is that which judges of things offered to it by the other senses. the ancient speculators have concluded that that part of man which constitutes his judgment is caused by a central organ to which the other five senses refer everything by means of impressibility; and to this centre they have given the name common sense. and they say that this sense is situated in the centre of the head between sensation and memory. and this name of common sense is given to it solely because it is the common judge of all the other five senses _i.e._ seeing, hearing, touch, taste and smell. this common sense is acted upon by means of sensation which is placed as a medium between it and the senses. sensation is acted upon by means of the images of things presented to it by the external instruments, that is to say the senses which are the medium between external things and sensation. in the same way the senses are acted upon by objects. surrounding things transmit their images to the senses and the senses transfer them to the sensation. sensation sends them to the common sense, and by it they are stamped upon the memory and are there more or less retained according to the importance or force of the impression. that sense is most rapid in its function which is nearest to the sensitive medium and the eye, being the highest is the chief of the others. of this then only we will speak, and the others we will leave in order not to make our matter too long. experience tells us that the eye apprehends ten different natures of things, that is: light and darkness, one being the cause of the perception of the nine others, and the other its absence:-- colour and substance, form and place, distance and nearness, motion and stillness [footnote : compare no. .]. on the origin of the soul. . though human ingenuity may make various inventions which, by the help of various machines answering the same end, it will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than nature does; because in her inventions nothing is wanting, and nothing is superfluous, and she needs no counterpoise when she makes limbs proper for motion in the bodies of animals. but she puts into them the soul of the body, which forms them that is the soul of the mother which first constructs in the womb the form of the man and in due time awakens the soul that is to inhabit it. and this at first lies dormant and under the tutelage of the soul of the mother, who nourishes and vivifies it by the umbilical vein, with all its spiritual parts, and this happens because this umbilicus is joined to the placenta and the cotyledons, by which the child is attached to the mother. and these are the reason why a wish, a strong craving or a fright or any other mental suffering in the mother, has more influence on the child than on the mother; for there are many cases when the child loses its life from them, &c. this discourse is not in its place here, but will be wanted for the one on the composition of animated bodies--and the rest of the definition of the soul i leave to the imaginations of friars, those fathers of the people who know all secrets by inspiration. [footnote : _lettere incoronate_. by this term leonardo probably understands not the bible only, but the works of the early fathers, and all the books recognised as sacred by the roman church.] i leave alone the sacred books; for they are supreme truth. on the relations of the soul to the organs of sense. . how the five senses are the ministers of the soul. the soul seems to reside in the judgment, and the judgment would seem to be seated in that part where all the senses meet; and this is called the common sense and is not all-pervading throughout the body, as many have thought. rather is it entirely in one part. because, if it were all-pervading and the same in every part, there would have been no need to make the instruments of the senses meet in one centre and in one single spot; on the contrary it would have sufficed that the eye should fulfil the function of its sensation on its surface only, and not transmit the image of the things seen, to the sense, by means of the optic nerves, so that the soul--for the reason given above-- may perceive it in the surface of the eye. in the same way as to the sense of hearing, it would have sufficed if the voice had merely sounded in the porous cavity of the indurated portion of the temporal bone which lies within the ear, without making any farther transit from this bone to the common sense, where the voice confers with and discourses to the common judgment. the sense of smell, again, is compelled by necessity to refer itself to that same judgment. feeling passes through the perforated cords and is conveyed to this common sense. these cords diverge with infinite ramifications into the skin which encloses the members of the body and the viscera. the perforated cords convey volition and sensation to the subordinate limbs. these cords and the nerves direct the motions of the muscles and sinews, between which they are placed; these obey, and this obedience takes effect by reducing their thickness; for in swelling, their length is reduced, and the nerves shrink which are interwoven among the particles of the limbs; being extended to the tips of the fingers, they transmit to the sense the object which they touch. the nerves with their muscles obey the tendons as soldiers obey the officers, and the tendons obey the common [central] sense as the officers obey the general. [ ] thus the joint of the bones obeys the nerve, and the nerve the muscle, and the muscle the tendon and the tendon the common sense. and the common sense is the seat of the soul [ ], and memory is its ammunition, and the impressibility is its referendary since the sense waits on the soul and not the soul on the sense. and where the sense that ministers to the soul is not at the service of the soul, all the functions of that sense are also wanting in that man's life, as is seen in those born mute and blind. [footnote: the peculiar use of the words _nervo_, _muscolo_, _corda_, _senso comune_, which are here literally rendered by nerve, muscle cord or tendon and common sense may be understood from lines and .] on involuntary muscular action. . how the nerves sometimes act of themselves without any commands from the other functions of the soul. this is most plainly seen; for you will see palsied and shivering persons move, and their trembling limbs, as their head and hands, quake without leave from their soul and their soul with all its power cannot prevent their members from trembling. the same thing happens in falling sickness, or in parts that have been cut off, as in the tails of lizards. the idea or imagination is the helm and guiding-rein of the senses, because the thing conceived of moves the sense. pre-imagining, is imagining the things that are to be. post-imagining, is imagining the things that are past. miscellaneous physiological observations ( - ). . there are four powers: memory and intellect, desire and covetousness. the two first are mental and the others sensual. the three senses: sight, hearing and smell cannot well be prevented; touch and taste not at all. smell is connected with taste in dogs and other gluttonous animals. . i reveal to men the origin of the first, or perhaps second cause of their existence. . lust is the cause of generation. appetite is the support of life. fear or timidity is the prolongation of life and preservation of its instruments. the laws of nutrition and the support of life ( - ). . how the body of animals is constantly dying and being renewed. the body of any thing whatever that takes nourishment constantly dies and is constantly renewed; because nourishment can only enter into places where the former nourishment has expired, and if it has expired it no longer has life. and if you do not supply nourishment equal to the nourishment which is gone, life will fail in vigour, and if you take away this nourishment, the life is entirely destroyed. but if you restore as much is destroyed day by day, then as much of the life is renewed as is consumed, just as the flame of the candle is fed by the nourishment afforded by the liquid of this candle, which flame continually with a rapid supply restores to it from below as much as is consumed in dying above: and from a brilliant light is converted in dying into murky smoke; and this death is continuous, as the smoke is continuous; and the continuance of the smoke is equal to the continuance of the nourishment, and in the same instant all the flame is dead and all regenerated, simultaneously with the movement of its own nourishment. . king of the animals--as thou hast described him--i should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest--because thou hast spared slaying them, in order that they may give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and i would say still more, if it were allowed me to speak the entire truth [ ]. but we do not go outside human matters in telling of one supreme wickedness, which does not happen among the animals of the earth, inasmuch as among them are found none who eat their own kind, unless through want of sense (few indeed among them, and those being mothers, as with men, albeit they be not many in number); and this happens only among the rapacious animals, as with the leonine species, and leopards, panthers lynxes, cats and the like, who sometimes eat their children; but thou, besides thy children devourest father, mother, brothers and friends; nor is this enough for thee, but thou goest to the chase on the islands of others, taking other men and these half-naked, the ... and the ... thou fattenest, and chasest them down thy own throat[ ]; now does not nature produce enough simples, for thee to satisfy thyself? and if thou art not content with simples, canst thou not by the mixture of them make infinite compounds, as platina wrote[footnote : _come scrisse il platina_ (bartolomeo sacchi, a famous humanist). the italian edition of his treatise _de arte coquinaria_, was published under the title _de la honestra voluptate, e valetudine, venezia_ .], and other authors on feeding? [footnote: we are led to believe that leonardo himself was a vegetarian from the following interesting passage in the first of andrea corsali's letters to giuliano de'medici: _alcuni gentili chiamati guzzarati non si cibano di cosa, alcuna che tenga sangue, ne fra essi loro consentono che si noccia ad alcuna cosa animata, come il nostro leonardo da vinci_. - . amerigo vespucci, with whom leonardo was personally acquainted, writes in his second letter to pietro soderini, about the inhabitants of the canary islands after having stayed there in : "_hanno una scelerata liberta di viuere; ... si cibano di carne humana, di maniera che il padre magia il figliuolo, et all'incontro il figliuolo il padre secondo che a caso e per sorte auiene. io viddi un certo huomo sceleratissimo che si vantaua, et si teneua a non piccola gloria di hauer mangiato piu di trecento huomini. viddi anche vna certa citta, nella quale io dimorai forse ventisette giorni, doue le carni humane, hauendole salate, eran appicate alli traui, si come noi alli traui di cucina_ _appicchiamo le carni di cinghali secche al sole o al fumo, et massimamente salsiccie, et altre simil cose: anzi si marauigliauano gradem ete che noi non magiaissimo della carne de nemici, le quali dicono muouere appetito, et essere di marauiglioso sapore, et le lodano come cibi soaui et delicati (lettere due di amerigo vespucci fiorentino drizzate al magnifico pietro soderini, gonfaloniere della eccelsa republica di firenze_; various editions).] . our life is made by the death of others. in dead matter insensible life remains, which, reunited to the stomachs of living beings, resumes life, both sensual and intellectual. . here nature appears with many animals to have been rather a cruel stepmother than a mother, and with others not a stepmother, but a most tender mother. . man and animals are really the passage and the conduit of food, the sepulchre of animals and resting place of the dead, one causing the death of the other, making themselves the covering for the corruption of other dead [bodies]. on the circulation of the blood ( - ). . death in old men, when not from fever, is caused by the veins which go from the spleen to the valve of the liver, and which thicken so much in the walls that they become closed up and leave no passage for the blood that nourishes it. [ ]the incessant current of the blood through the veins makes these veins thicken and become callous, so that at last they close up and prevent the passage of the blood. . the waters return with constant motion from the lowest depths of the sea to the utmost height of the mountains, not obeying the nature of heavier bodies; and in this they resemble the blood of animated beings which always moves from the sea of the heart and flows towards the top of the head; and here it may burst a vein, as may be seen when a vein bursts in the nose; all the blood rises from below to the level of the burst vein. when the water rushes out from the burst vein in the earth, it obeys the law of other bodies that are heavier than the air since it always seeks low places. [footnote: from this passage it is quite plain that leonardo had not merely a general suspicion of the circulation of the blood but a very clear conception of it. leonardo's studies on the muscles of the heart are to be found in the ms. w. an. iii. but no information about them has hitherto been made public. the limits of my plan in this work exclude all purely anatomical writings, therefore only a very brief excerpt from this note book can be given here. william harvey (born and professor of anatomy at cambridge from ) is always considered to have been the discoverer of the circulation of the blood. he studied medicine at padua in , and in brought out his memorable and important work: _de motu cordis et sanguinis_.] . that the blood which returns when the heart opens again is not the same as that which closes the valves of the heart. some notes on medicine ( - ). . make them give you the definition and remedies for the case ... and you will see that men are selected to be doctors for diseases they do not know. . a remedy for scratches taught me by the herald to the king of france. ounces of virgin wax, ounces of colophony, ounces of incense. keep each thing separate; and melt the wax, and then put in the incense and then the colophony, make a mixture of it and put it on the sore place. . medicine is the restoration of discordant elements; sickness is the discord of the elements infused into the living body. . those who are annoyed by sickness at sea should drink extract of wormwood. . to keep in health, this rule is wise: eat only when you want and relish food. chew thoroughly that it may do you good. have it well cooked, unspiced and undisguised. he who takes medicine is ill advised. [footnote: this appears to be a sketch for a poem.] . i teach you to preserve your health; and in this you will succed better in proportion as you shun physicians, because their medicines are the work of alchemists. [footnote: this passage is written on the back of the drawing pl. cviii. compare also no. .] _xv_. _astronomy_. _ever since the publication by venturi in_ _and libri in_ _of some few passages of leonardo's astronomical notes, scientific astronomers have frequently expressed the opinion, that they must have been based on very important discoveries, and that the great painter also deserved a conspicuous place in the history of this science. in the passages here printed, a connected view is given of his astronomical studies as they lie scattered through the manuscripts, which have come down to us. unlike his other purely scientific labours, leonardo devotes here a good deal of attention to the opinions of the ancients, though he does not follow the practice universal in his day of relying on them as authorities; he only quotes them, as we shall see, in order to refute their arguments. his researches throughout have the stamp of independent thought. there is nothing in these writings to lead us to suppose that they were merely an epitome of the general learning common to the astronomers of the period. as early as in the xivth century there were chairs of astronomy in the universities of padua and bologna, but so late as during the entire xvith century astronomy and astrology were still closely allied._ _it is impossible now to decide whether leonardo, when living in florence, became acquainted in his youth with the doctrines of paolo toscanelli the great astronomer and mathematician (died_ _), of whose influence and teaching but little is now known, beyond the fact that he advised and encouraged columbus to carry out his project of sailing round the world. his name is nowhere mentioned by leonardo, and from the dates of the manuscripts from which the texts on astronomy are taken, it seems highly probable that leonardo devoted his attention to astronomical studies less in his youth than in his later years. it was evidently his purpose to treat of astronomy in a connected form and in a separate work (see the beginning of nos._ _and_ _; compare also no._ _). it is quite in accordance with his general scientific thoroughness that he should propose to write a special treatise on optics as an introduction to astronomy (see nos._ _and_ _). some of the chapters belonging to this section bear the title "prospettiva" _(see nos._ _and_ _), this being the term universally applied at the time to optics as well as perspective (see vol. i, p._ , _note to no._ , _l._ _)_. _at the beginning of the xvith century the ptolemaic theory of the universe was still universally accepted as the true one, and leonardo conceives of the earth as fixed, with the moon and sun revolving round it, as they are represented in the diagram to no._ . _he does not go into any theory of the motions of the planets; with regard to these and the fixed stars he only investigates the phenomena of their luminosity. the spherical form of the earth he takes for granted as an axiom from the first, and he anticipates newton by pointing out the universality of gravitation not merely in the earth, but even in the moon. although his acute research into the nature of the moon's light and the spots on the moon did not bring to light many results of lasting importance beyond making it evident that they were a refutation of the errors of his contemporaries, they contain various explanations of facts which modern science need not modify in any essential point, and discoveries which history has hitherto assigned to a very much later date_. _the ingenious theory by which he tries to explain the nature of what is known as earth shine, the reflection of the sun's rays by the earth towards the moon, saying that it is a peculiar refraction, originating in the innumerable curved surfaces of the waves of the sea may be regarded as absurd; but it must not be forgotten that he had no means of detecting the fundamental error on which he based it, namely: the assumption that the moon was at a relatively short distance from the earth. so long as the motion of the earth round the sun remained unknown, it was of course impossible to form any estimate of the moon's distance from the earth by a calculation of its parallax_. _before the discovery of the telescope accurate astronomical observations were only possible to a very limited extent. it would appear however from certain passages in the notes here printed for the first time, that leonardo was in a position to study the spots in the moon more closely than he could have done with the unaided eye. so far as can be gathered from the mysterious language in which the description of his instrument is wrapped, he made use of magnifying glasses; these do not however seem to have been constructed like a telescope--telescopes were first made about_ . _as libri pointed out_ (histoire des sciences mathematiques iii, ) _fracastoro of verona_ ( - ) _succeeded in magnifying the moon's face by an arrangement of lenses (compare no._ , _note), and this gives probability to leonardo's invention at a not much earlier date._ i. the earth as a planet. the earth's place in the universe ( . ). . the equator, the line of the horizon, the ecliptic, the meridian: these lines are those which in all their parts are equidistant from the centre of the globe. . the earth is not in the centre of the sun's orbit nor at the centre of the universe, but in the centre of its companion elements, and united with them. and any one standing on the moon, when it and the sun are both beneath us, would see this our earth and the element of water upon it just as we see the moon, and the earth would light it as it lights us. the fundamental laws of the solar system ( - ). . force arises from dearth or abundance; it is the child of physical motion, and the grand-child of spiritual motion, and the mother and origin of gravity. gravity is limited to the elements of water and earth; but this force is unlimited, and by it infinite worlds might be moved if instruments could be made by which the force could be generated. force, with physical motion, and gravity, with resistance are the four external powers on which all actions of mortals depend. force has its origin in spiritual motion; and this motion, flowing through the limbs of sentient animals, enlarges their muscles. being enlarged by this current the muscles are shrunk in length and contract the tendons which are connected with them, and this is the cause of the force of the limbs in man. the quality and quantity of the force of a man are able to give birth to other forces, which will be proportionally greater as the motions produced by them last longer. [footnote: only part of this passage belongs, strictly speaking, to this section. the principle laid down in the second paragraph is more directly connected with the notes given in the preceding section on physiology.] . why does not the weight _o_ remain in its place? it does not remain because it has no resistance. where will it move to? it will move towards the centre [of gravity]. and why by no other line? because a weight which has no support falls by the shortest road to the lowest point which is the centre of the world. and why does the weight know how to find it by so short a line? because it is not independant and does not move about in various directions. [footnote: this text and the sketch belonging to it, are reproduced on pl. cxxi.] . let the earth turn on which side it may the surface of the waters will never move from its spherical form, but will always remain equidistant from the centre of the globe. granting that the earth might be removed from the centre of the globe, what would happen to the water? it would remain in a sphere round that centre equally thick, but the sphere would have a smaller diameter than when it enclosed the earth. [footnote: compare no. , lines - ; and no. .] . supposing the earth at our antipodes which supports the ocean were to rise and stand uncovered, far out of the sea, but remaining almost level, by what means afterwards, in the course of time, would mountains and vallies be formed? and the rocks with their various strata? . each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth. . mem.: that i must first show the distance of the sun from the earth; and, by means of a ray passing through a small hole into a dark chamber, detect its real size; and besides this, by means of the aqueous sphere calculate the size of the globe ... here it will be shown, that when the sun is in the meridian of our hemisphere [footnote : _antipodi orientali cogli occidentali_. the word _antipodes_ does not here bear its literal sense, but--as we may infer from the simultaneous reference to inhabitants of the north and south-- is used as meaning men living at a distance of degrees from the zenith of the rational horizon of each observer.], the antipodes to the east and to the west, alike, and at the same time, see the sun mirrored in their waters; and the same is equally true of the arctic and antarctic poles, if indeed they are inhabited. how to prove that the earth is a planet ( - ). . that the earth is a star. . in your discourse you must prove that the earth is a star much like the moon, and the glory of our universe; and then you must treat of the size of various stars, according to the authors. . the method of proving that the earth is a star. first describe the eye; then show how the twinkling of a star is really in the eye and why one star should twinkle more than another, and how the rays from the stars originate in the eye; and add, that if the twinkling of the stars were really in the stars --as it seems to be--that this twinkling appears to be an extension as great as the diameter of the body of the star; therefore, the star being larger than the earth, this motion effected in an instant would be a rapid doubling of the size of the star. then prove that the surface of the air where it lies contiguous to fire, and the surface of the fire where it ends are those into which the solar rays penetrate, and transmit the images of the heavenly bodies, large when they rise, and small, when they are on the meridian. let _a_ be the earth and _n d m_ the surface of the air in contact with the sphere of fire; _h f g_ is the orbit of the moon or, if you please, of the sun; then i say that when the sun appears on the horizon _g_, its rays are seen passing through the surface of the air at a slanting angle, that is _o m_; this is not the case at _d k_. and so it passes through a greater mass of air; all of _e m_ is a denser atmosphere. . beyond the sun and us there is darkness and so the air appears blue. [footnote: compare vol. i, no. .] . perspective. it is possible to find means by which the eye shall not see remote objects as much diminished as in natural perspective, which diminishes them by reason of the convexity of the eye which necessarily intersects, at its surface, the pyramid of every image conveyed to the eye at a right angle on its spherical surface. but by the method i here teach in the margin [ ] these pyramids are intersected at right angles close to the surface of the pupil. the convex pupil of the eye can take in the whole of our hemisphere, while this will show only a single star; but where many small stars transmit their images to the surface of the pupil those stars are extremely small; here only one star is seen but it will be large. and so the moon will be seen larger and its spots of a more defined form [footnote and fol.: telescopes were not in use till a century later. compare no. and page .]. you must place close to the eye a glass filled with the water of which mention is made in number of book "on natural substances" [footnote : _libro_ . this is perhaps the number of a book in some library catalogue. but it may refer, on the other hand, to one of the books mentioned in no. . l. .]; for this water makes objects which are enclosed in balls of crystalline glass appear free from the glass. of the eye. among the smaller objects presented to the pupil of the eye, that which is closest to it, will be least appreciable to the eye. and at the same time, the experiments here made with the power of sight, show that it is not reduced to speck if the &c. [ ][footnote : compare with this the passage in vol. i, no. , written about twenty years earlier.]. read in the margin. [ ]those objects are seen largest which come to the eye at the largest angles. but the images of the objects conveyed to the pupil of the eye are distributed to the pupil exactly as they are distributed in the air: and the proof of this is in what follows; that when we look at the starry sky, without gazing more fixedly at one star than another, the sky appears all strewn with stars; and their proportions to the eye are the same as in the sky and likewise the spaces between them [ ]. [footnote: . . _in margine:_ lines - are, in the original, written on the margin and above them is the diagram to which leonardo seems to refer here.] . perspective. among objects moved from the eye at equal distance, that undergoes least diminution which at first was most remote. when various objects are removed at equal distances farther from their original position, that which was at first the farthest from the eye will diminish least. and the proportion of the diminution will be in proportion to the relative distance of the objects from the eye before they were removed. that is to say in the object _t_ and the object _e_ the proportion of their distances from the eye _a_ is quintuple. i remove each from its place and set it farther from the eye by one of the parts into which the proposition is divided. hence it happens that the nearest to the eye has doubled the distance and according to the last proposition but one of this, is diminished by the half of its whole size; and the body _e_, by the same motion, is diminished / of its whole size. therefore, by that same last proposition but one, that which is said in this last proposition is true; and this i say of the motions of the celestial bodies which are more distant by miles when setting than when overhead, and yet do not increase or diminish in any sensible degree. . _a b_ is the aperture through which the sun passes, and if you could measure the size of the solar rays at _n m_, you could accurately trace the real lines of the convergence of the solar rays, the mirror being at _a b_, and then show the reflected rays at equal angles to _n m_; but, as you want to have them at _n m_, take them at the. inner side of the aperture at cd, where they maybe measured at the spot where the solar rays fall. then place your mirror at the distance _a b_, making the rays _d b_, _c a_ fall and then be reflected at equal angles towards _c d_; and this is the best method, but you must use this mirror always in the same month, and the same day, and hour and instant, and this will be better than at no fixed time because when the sun is at a certain distance it produces a certain pyramid of rays. . _a_, the side of the body in light and shade _b_, faces the whole portion of the hemisphere bed _e f_, and does not face any part of the darkness of the earth. and the same occurs at the point _o_; therefore the space a _o_ is throughout of one and the same brightness, and s faces only four degrees of the hemisphere _d e f g h_, and also the whole of the earth _s h_, which will render it darker; and how much must be demonstrated by calculation. [footnote: this passage, which has perhaps a doubtful right to its place in this connection, stands in the manuscript between those given in vol. i as no. and no. .] . the reason of the increased size of the sun in the west. some mathematicians explain that the sun looks larger as it sets, because the eye always sees it through a denser atmosphere, alleging that objects seen through mist or through water appear larger. to these i reply: no; because objects seen through a mist are similar in colour to those at a distance; but not being similarly diminished they appear larger. again, nothing increases in size in smooth water; and the proof of this may be seen by throwing a light on a board placed half under water. but the reason why the sun looks larger is that every luminous body appears larger in proportion as it is more remote. [footnote: lines and are thus rendered by m. ravaisson in his edition of ms. a. "_de meme, aucune chose ne croit dans l'eau plane, et tu en feras l'experience_ en calquant un ais sous l'eau."--compare the diagrams in vol. i, p. .] on the luminosity of the earth in the universal space ( - ). . in my book i propose to show, how the ocean and the other seas must, by means of the sun, make our world shine with the appearance of a moon, and to the remoter worlds it looks like a star; and this i shall prove. show, first that every light at a distance from the eye throws out rays which appear to increase the size of the luminous body; and from this it follows that ...[footnote : here the text breaks off; lines and fol. are written in the margin.]. [ ]the moon is cold and moist. water is cold and moist. thus our seas must appear to the moon as the moon does to us. . the waves in water magnify the image of an object reflected in it. let _a_ be the sun, and _n m_ the ruffled water, _b_ the image of the sun when the water is smooth. let _f_ be the eye which sees the image in all the waves included within the base of the triangle _c e f_. now the sun reflected in the unruffled surface occupied the space _c d_, while in the ruffled surface it covers all the watery space _c e_ (as is proved in the th of my "perspective") [footnote : _nel quarto della mia prospettiva_. if this reference is to the diagrams accompanying the text--as is usual with leonardo--and not to some particular work, the largest of the diagrams here given must be meant. it is the lowest and actually the fifth, but he would have called it the fourth, for the text here given is preceded on the same page of the manuscript by a passage on whirlpools, with the diagram belonging to it also reproduced here. the words _della mia prospettiva_ may therefore indicate that the diagram to the preceding chapter treating on a heterogeneal subject is to be excluded. it is a further difficulty that this diagram belongs properly to lines - and not to the preceding sentence. the reflection of the sun in water is also discussed in the theoretical part of the book on painting; see vol. i, no. , .] and it will cover more of the water in proportion as the reflected image is remote from the eye [ ]. [footnote: in the original sketch, inside the circle in the first diagram, is written _sole_ (sun), and to the right of it _luna_ (moon). thus either of these heavenly bodies may be supposed to fill that space. within the lower circle is written _simulacro_ (image). in the two next diagrams at the spot here marked _l_ the word _luna_ is written, and in the last _sole_ is written in the top circle at _a_.] the image of the sun will be more brightly shown in small waves than in large ones--and this is because the reflections or images of the sun are more numerous in the small waves than in large ones, and the more numerous reflections of its radiance give a larger light than the fewer. waves which intersect like the scales of a fir cone reflect the image of the sun with the greatest splendour; and this is the case because the images are as many as the ridges of the waves on which the sun shines, and the shadows between these waves are small and not very dark; and the radiance of so many reflections together becomes united in the image which is transmitted to the eye, so that these shadows are imperceptible. that reflection of the sun will cover most space on the surface of the water which is most remote from the eye which sees it. let _a_ be the sun, _p q_ the reflection of the sun; _a b_ is the surface of the water, in which the sun is mirrored, and _r_ the eye which sees this reflection on the surface of the water occupying the space _o m_. _c_ is the eye at a greater distance from the surface of the water and also from the reflection; hence this reflection covers a larger space of water, by the distance between _n_ and _o_. . it is impossible that the side of a spherical mirror, illuminated by the sun, should reflect its radiance unless this mirror were undulating or filled with bubbles. you see here the sun which lights up the moon, a spherical mirror, and all of its surface, which faces the sun is rendered radiant. whence it may be concluded that what shines in the moon is water like that of our seas, and in waves as that is; and that portion which does not shine consists of islands and terra firma. this diagram, of several spherical bodies interposed between the eye and the sun, is given to show that, just as the reflection of the sun is seen in each of these bodies, in the same way that image may be seen in each curve of the waves of the sea; and as in these many spheres many reflections of the sun are seen, so in many waves there are many images, each of which at a great distance is much magnified to the eye. and, as this happens with each wave, the spaces interposed between the waves are concealed; and, for this reason, it looks as though the many suns mirrored in the many waves were but one continuous sun; and the shadows,, mixed up with the luminous images, render this radiance less brilliant than that of the sun mirrored in these waves. [footnote: in the original, at letter _a_ in the diagram "_sole_" (the sun) is written, and at _o_ "_occhio_" (the eye).] . this will have before it the treatise on light and shade. the edges in the moon will be most strongly lighted and reflect most light, because, there, nothing will be visible but the tops of the waves of the water [footnote : i have thought it unnecessary to reproduce the detailed explanation of the theory of reflection on waves contained in the passage which follows this.]. . the sun will appear larger in moving water or on waves than in still water; an example is the light reflected on the strings of a monochord. ii. the sun. the question of the true and of the apparent size of the sun ( - ). . in praise of the sun. if you look at the stars, cutting off the rays (as may be done by looking through a very small hole made with the extreme point of a very fine needle, placed so as almost to touch the eye), you will see those stars so minute that it would seem as though nothing could be smaller; it is in fact their great distance which is the reason of their diminution, for many of them are very many times larger than the star which is the earth with water. now reflect what this our star must look like at such a distance, and then consider how many stars might be added--both in longitude and latitude--between those stars which are scattered over the darkened sky. but i cannot forbear to condemn many of the ancients, who said that the sun was no larger than it appears; among these was epicurus, and i believe that he founded his reason on the effects of a light placed in our atmosphere equidistant from the centre of the earth. any one looking at it never sees it diminished in size at whatever distance; and the rea- [footnote - : what leonardo says of epicurus-- who according to lewis, _the astronomy of the ancients_, and madler, _geschichte der himmelskunde_, did not devote much attention to the study of celestial phenomena--, he probably derived from book x of diogenes laertius, whose _vitae philosophorum_ was not printed in greek till , but the latin translation appeared in .] . sons of its size and power i shall reserve for book . but i wonder greatly that socrates [footnote : _socrates;_ i have little light to throw on this reference. plato's socrates himself declares on more than one occasion that in his youth he had turned his mind to the study of celestial phenomena (metewpa) but not in his later years (see g. c. lewis, _the astronomy of the ancients_, page ; madler, _geschichte der himmelskunde_, page ). here and there in plato's writings we find incidental notes on the sun and other heavenly bodies. leonardo may very well have known of these, since the latin version by ficinus was printed as early as ; indeed an undated edition exists which may very likely have appeared between -- . there is but one passage in plato, epinomis (p. ) where he speaks of the physical properties of the sun and says that it is larger than the earth. aristotle who goes very fully into the subject says the same. a complete edition of aristotele's works was first printed in venice - , but a latin version of the books _de coelo et mundo_ and _de physica_ had been printed in venice as early as in (h. muller-strubing).] should have depreciated that solar body, saying that it was of the nature of incandescent stone, and the one who opposed him as to that error was not far wrong. but i only wish i had words to serve me to blame those who are fain to extol the worship of men more than that of the sun; for in the whole universe there is nowhere to be seen a body of greater magnitude and power than the sun. its light gives light to all the celestial bodies which are distributed throughout the universe; and from it descends all vital force, for the heat that is in living beings comes from the soul [vital spark]; and there is no other centre of heat and light in the universe as will be shown in book ; and certainly those who have chosen to worship men as gods--as jove, saturn, mars and the like--have fallen into the gravest error, seeing that even if a man were as large as our earth, he would look no bigger than a little star which appears but as a speck in the universe; and seeing again that these men are mortal, and putrid and corrupt in their sepulchres. marcellus [footnote : i have no means of identifying _marcello_ who is named in the margin. it may be nonius marcellus, an obscure roman grammarian of uncertain date (between the iind and vth centuries a. c.) the author of the treatise _de compendiosa doctrina per litteras ad filium_ in which he treats _de rebus omnibus et quibusdam aliis_. this was much read in the middle ages. the _editto princeps_ is dated (h. muller-strubing).] and many others praise the sun. . epicurus perhaps saw the shadows cast by columns on the walls in front of them equal in diameter to the columns from which the shadows were cast; and the breadth of the shadows being parallel from beginning to end, he thought he might infer that the sun also was directly opposite to this parallel and that consequently its breadth was not greater than that of the column; not perceiving that the diminution in the shadow was insensibly slight by reason of the remoteness of the sun. if the sun were smaller than the earth, the stars on a great portion of our hemisphere would have no light, which is evidence against epicurus who says the sun is only as large as it appears. [footnote: in the original the writing is across the diagram.] . epicurus says the sun is the size it looks. hence as it looks about a foot across we must consider that to be its size; it would follow that when the moon eclipses the sun, the sun ought not to appear the larger, as it does. then, the moon being smaller than the sun, the moon must be less than a foot, and consequently when our world eclipses the moon, it must be less than a foot by a finger's breadth; inasmuch as if the sun is a foot across, and our earth casts a conical shadow on the moon, it is inevitable that the luminous cause of the cone of shadow must be larger than the opaque body which casts the cone of shadow. . to measure how many times the diameter of the sun will go into its course in hours. make a circle and place it to face the south, after the manner of a sundial, and place a rod in the middle in such a way as that its length points to the centre of this circle, and mark the shadow cast in the sunshine by this rod on the circumference of the circle, and this shadow will be--let us say-- as broad as from _a_ to _n_. now measure how many times this shadow will go into this circumference of a circle, and that will give you the number of times that the solar body will go into its orbit in hours. thus you may see whether epicurus was [right in] saying that the sun was only as large as it looked; for, as the apparent diameter of the sun is about a foot, and as that sun would go a thousand times into the length of its course in hours, it would have gone a thousand feet, that is braccia, which is the sixth of a mile. whence it would follow that the course of the sun during the day would be the sixth part of a mile and that this venerable snail, the sun will have travelled braccia an hour. . posidonius composed books on the size of the sun. [footnote: poseidonius of apamea, commonly called the rhodian, because he taught in rhodes, was a stoic philosopher, a contemporary and friend of cicero's, and the author of numerous works on natural science, among them. strabo quotes no doubt from one of his works, when he says that poseidonius explained how it was that the sun looked larger when it was rising or setting than during the rest of its course (iii, p. ). kleomedes, a later greek naturalist also mentions this observation of poseidonius' without naming the title of his work; however, as kleomedes' cyclia theorica was not printed till , leonardo must have derived his quotation from strabo. he probably wrote this note in , and as the original greek was first printed in venice in , we must suppose him to quote here from the translation by guarinus veronensis, which was printed as early as , also at venice (h. muller-strubing).] of the nature of sunlight. . of the proof that the sun is hot by nature and not by virtue. of the nature of sunlight. that the heat of the sun resides in its nature and not in its virtue [or mode of action] is abundantly proved by the radiance of the solar body on which the human eye cannot dwell and besides this no less manifestly by the rays reflected from a concave mirror, which--when they strike the eye with such splendour that the eye cannot bear them--have a brilliancy equal to the sun in its own place. and that this is true i prove by the fact that if the mirror has its concavity formed exactly as is requisite for the collecting and reflecting of these rays, no created being could endure the heat that strikes from the reflected rays of such a mirror. and if you argue that the mirror itself is cold and yet send forth hot rays, i should reply that those rays come really from the sun and that it is the ray of the concave mirror after having passed through the window. considerations as to the size of the sun ( - ). . the sun does not move. [footnote: this sentence occurs incidentally among mathematical notes, and is written in unusually large letters.] . proof that the nearer you are to the source of the solar rays, the larger will the reflection of the sun from the sea appear to you. [footnote: lines and fol. compare vol. i, nos. , .] if it is from the centre that the sun employs its radiance to intensify the power of its whole mass, it is evident that the farther its rays extend, the more widely they will be divided; and this being so, you, whose eye is near the water that mirrors the sun, see but a small portion of the rays of the sun strike the surface of the water, and reflecting the form of the sun. but if you were near to the sun--as would be the case when the sun is on the meridian and the sea to the westward--you would see the sun, mirrored in the sea, of a very great size; because, as you are nearer to the sun, your eye taking in the rays nearer to the point of radiation takes more of them in, and a great splendour is the result. and in this way it can be proved that the moon must have seas which reflect the sun, and that the parts which do not shine are land. . take the measure of the sun at the solstice in mid-june. . why the sun appears larger when setting than at noon, when it is near to us. every object seen through a curved medium seems to be of larger size than it is. [footnote: at a is written _sole_ (the sun), at b _terra_ (the earth).] . because the eye is small it can only see the image of the sun as of a small size. if the eye were as large as the sun it would see the image of the sun in water of the same size as the real body of the sun, so long as the water is smooth. . a method of seeing the sun eclipsed without pain to the eye. take a piece of paper and pierce holes in it with a needle, and look at the sun through these holes. iii. the moon. on the luminousity of the moon ( - ). . of the moon. as i propose to treat of the nature of the moon, it is necessary that first i should describe the perspective of mirrors, whether plane, concave or convex; and first what is meant by a luminous ray, and how it is refracted by various kinds of media; then, when a reflected ray is most powerful, whether when the angle of incidence is acute, right, or obtuse, or from a convex, a plane, or a concave surface; or from an opaque or a transparent body. besides this, how it is that the solar rays which fall on the waves of the sea, are seen by the eye of the same width at the angle nearest to the eye, as at the highest line of the waves on the horizon; but notwithstanding this the solar rays reflected from the waves of the sea assume the pyramidal form and consequently, at each degree of distance increase proportionally in size, although to our sight, they appear as parallel. st. nothing that has very little weight is opaque. dly. nothing that is excessively weighty can remain beneath that which is heavier. dly. as to whether the moon is situated in the centre of its elements or not. and, if it has no proper place of its own, like the earth, in the midst of its elements, why does it not fall to the centre of our elements? [footnote : the problem here propounded by leonardo was not satisfactorily answered till newton in formulated the law of universal attraction and gravitation. compare no. , lines - .] and, if the moon is not in the centre of its own elements and yet does not fall, it must then be lighter than any other element. and, if the moon is lighter than the other elements why is it opaque and not transparent? when objects of various sizes, being placed at various distances, look of equal size, there must be the same relative proportion in the distances as in the magnitudes of the objects. [footnote: in the diagram leonardo wrote _sole_ at the place marked _a_.] . of the moon and whether it is polished and spherical. the image of the sun in the moon is powerfully luminous, and is only on a small portion of its surface. and the proof may be seen by taking a ball of burnished gold and placing it in the dark with a light at some distance from it; and then, although it will illuminate about half of the ball, the eye will perceive its reflection only in a small part of its surface, and all the rest of the surface reflects the darkness which surrounds it; so that it is only in that spot that the image of the light is seen, and all the rest remains invisible, the eye being at a distance from the ball. the same thing would happen on the surface of the moon if it were polished, lustrous and opaque, like all bodies with a reflecting surface. show how, if you were standing on the moon or on a star, our earth would seem to reflect the sun as the moon does. and show that the image of the sun in the sea cannot appear one and undivided, as it appears in a perfectly plane mirror. . how shadows are lost at great distances, as is shown by the shadow side of the moon which is never seen. [footnote: compare also vol. i, nos. - .] . either the moon has intrinsic luminosity or not. if it has, why does it not shine without the aid of the sun? but if it has not any light in itself it must of necessity be a spherical mirror; and if it is a mirror, is it not proved in perspective that the image of a luminous object will never be equal to the extent of surface of the reflecting body that it illuminates? and if it be thus [footnote : at a, in the diagram, leonardo wrote "_sole_" (the sun), and at b "_luna o noi terra_" (the moon or our earth). compare also the text of no. .], as is here shown at _r s_ in the figure, whence comes so great an extent of radiance as that of the full moon as we see it, at the fifteenth day of the moon? . of the moon. the moon has no light in itself; but so much of it as faces the sun is illuminated, and of that illumined portion we see so much as faces the earth. and the moon's night receives just as much light as is lent it by our waters as they reflect the image of the sun, which is mirrored in all those waters which are on the side towards the sun. the outside or surface of the waters forming the seas of the moon and of the seas of our globe is always ruffled little or much, or more or less--and this roughness causes an extension of the numberless images of the sun which are repeated in the ridges and hollows, the sides and fronts of the innumerable waves; that is to say in as many different spots on each wave as our eyes find different positions to view them from. this could not happen, if the aqueous sphere which covers a great part of the moon were uniformly spherical, for then the images of the sun would be one to each spectator, and its reflections would be separate and independent and its radiance would always appear circular; as is plainly to be seen in the gilt balls placed on the tops of high buildings. but if those gilt balls were rugged or composed of several little balls, like mulberries, which are a black fruit composed of minute round globules, then each portion of these little balls, when seen in the sun, would display to the eye the lustre resulting from the reflection of the sun, and thus, in one and the same body many tiny suns would be seen; and these often combine at a long distance and appear as one. the lustre of the new moon is brighter and stronger, than when the moon is full; and the reason of this is that the angle of incidence is more obtuse in the new than in the full moon, in which the angles [of incidence and reflection] are highly acute. the waves of the moon therefore mirror the sun in the hollows of the waves as well as on the ridges, and the sides remain in shadow. but at the sides of the moon the hollows of the waves do not catch the sunlight, but only their crests; and thus the images are fewer and more mixed up with the shadows in the hollows; and this intermingling of the shaded and illuminated spots comes to the eye with a mitigated splendour, so that the edges will be darker, because the curves of the sides of the waves are insufficient to reflect to the eye the rays that fall upon them. now the new moon naturally reflects the solar rays more directly towards the eye from the crests of the waves than from any other part, as is shown by the form of the moon, whose rays a strike the waves _b_ and are reflected in the line _b d_, the eye being situated at _d_. this cannot happen at the full moon, when the solar rays, being in the west, fall on the extreme waters of the moon to the east from _n_ to _m_, and are not reflected to the eye in the west, but are thrown back eastwards, with but slight deflection from the straight course of the solar ray; and thus the angle of incidence is very wide indeed. the moon is an opaque and solid body and if, on the contrary, it were transparent, it would not receive the light of the sun. the yellow or yolk of an egg remains in the middle of the albumen, without moving on either side; now it is either lighter or heavier than this albumen, or equal to it; if it is lighter, it ought to rise above all the albumen and stop in contact with the shell of the egg; and if it is heavier, it ought to sink, and if it is equal, it might just as well be at one of the ends, as in the middle or below [ ]. [footnote - : compare no. .] the innumerable images of the solar rays reflected from the innumerable waves of the sea, as they fall upon those waves, are what cause us to see the very broad and continuous radiance on the surface of the sea. . that the sun could not be mirrored in the body of the moon, which is a convex mirror, in such a way as that so much of its surface as is illuminated by the sun, should reflect the sun unless the moon had a surface adapted to reflect it--in waves and ridges, like the surface of the sea when its surface is moved by the wind. [footnote: in the original diagrams _sole_ is written at the place marked _a; luna_ at _c,_ and _terra_ at the two spots marked _b_.] the waves in water multiply the image of the object reflected in it. these waves reflect light, each by its own line, as the surface of the fir cone does [footnote : see the diagram p. .] these are figures one different from the other; one with undulating water and the other with smooth water. it is impossible that at any distance the image of the sun cast on the surface of a spherical body should occupy the half of the sphere. here you must prove that the earth produces all the same effects with regard to the moon, as the moon with regard to the earth. the moon, with its reflected light, does not shine like the sun, because the light of the moon is not a continuous reflection of that of the sun on its whole surface, but only on the crests and hollows of the waves of its waters; and thus the sun being confusedly reflected, from the admixture of the shadows that lie between the lustrous waves, its light is not pure and clear as the sun is. [footnote : this refers to the small diagram placed between _b_ and _b_.--]. the earth between the moon on the fifteenth day and the sun. [footnote : see the diagram below the one referred to in the preceding note.] here the sun is in the east and the moon on the fifteenth day in the west. [footnote . : refers to the diagram below the others.] the moon on the fifteenth [day] between the earth and the sun. [ ]here it is the moon which has the sun to the west and the earth to the east. . what sort of thing the moon is. the moon is not of itself luminous, but is highly fitted to assimilate the character of light after the manner of a mirror, or of water, or of any other reflecting body; and it grows larger in the east and in the west, like the sun and the other planets. and the reason is that every luminous body looks larger in proportion as it is remote. it is easy to understand that every planet and star is farther from us when in the west than when it is overhead, by about miles, as is proved on the margin [footnote : refers to the first diagram.--a = _sole_ (the sun), b = _terra_ (the earth), c = _luna_ (the moon).], and if you see the sun or moon mirrored in the water near to you, it looks to you of the same size in the water as in the sky. but if you recede to the distance of a mile, it will look times larger; and if you see the sun reflected in the sea at sunset, its image would look to you more than miles long; because that reflected image extends over more than miles of sea. and if you could stand where the moon is, the sun would look to you, as if it were reflected from all the sea that it illuminates by day; and the land amid the water would appear just like the dark spots that are on the moon, which, when looked at from our earth, appears to men the same as our earth would appear to any men who might dwell in the moon. [footnote: this text has already been published by libri: _histoire des sciences,_ iii, pp. , .] of the nature of the moon. when the moon is entirely lighted up to our sight, we see its full daylight; and at that time, owing to the reflection of the solar rays which fall on it and are thrown off towards us, its ocean casts off less moisture towards us; and the less light it gives the more injurious it is. . of the moon. i say that as the moon has no light in itself and yet is luminous, it is inevitable but that its light is caused by some other body. . of the moon. all my opponent's arguments to say that there is no water in the moon. [footnote: the objections are very minutely noted down in the manuscript, but they hardly seem to have a place here.] . answer to maestro andrea da imola, who said that the solar rays reflected from a convex mirror are mingled and lost at a short distance; whereby it is altogether denied that the luminous side of the moon is of the nature of a mirror, and that consequently the light is not produced by the innumerable multitude of the waves of that sea, which i declared to be the portion of the moon which is illuminated by the solar rays. let _o p_ be the body of the sun, _c n s_ the moon, and _b_ the eye which, above the base _c n_ of the cathetus _c n m_, sees the body of the sun reflected at equal angles _c n_; and the same again on moving the eye from _b_ to _a_. [footnote: the large diagram on the margin of page belongs to this chapter.] explanation of the lumen cinereum in the moon. . of the moon. no solid body is less heavy than the atmosphere. [footnote: . on the margin are the words _tola romantina, tola--ferro stagnato_ (tinned iron); _romantina_ is some special kind of sheet-iron no longer known by that name.] having proved that the part of the moon that shines consists of water, which mirrors the body of the sun and reflects the radiance it receives from it; and that, if these waters were devoid of waves, it would appear small, but of a radiance almost like the sun; --[ ] it must now be shown whether the moon is a heavy or a light body: for, if it were a heavy body--admitting that at every grade of distance from the earth greater levity must prevail, so that water is lighter than the earth, and air than water, and fire than air and so on successively--it would seem that if the moon had density as it really has, it would have weight, and having weight, that it could not be sustained in the space where it is, and consequently that it would fall towards the centre of the universe and become united to the earth; or if not the moon itself, at least its waters would fall away and be lost from it, and descend towards the centre, leaving the moon without any and so devoid of lustre. but as this does not happen, as might in reason be expected, it is a manifest sign that the moon is surrounded by its own elements: that is to say water, air and fire; and thus is, of itself and by itself, suspended in that part of space, as our earth with its element is in this part of space; and that heavy bodies act in the midst of its elements just as other heavy bodies do in ours [footnote : this passage would certainly seem to establish leonardo's claim to be regarded as the original discoverer of the cause of the ashy colour of the new moon (_lumen cinereum_). his observations however, having hitherto remained unknown to astronomers, moestlin and kepler have been credited with the discoveries which they made independently a century later. some disconnected notes treat of the same subject in ms. c. a. b; b and b; "_perche la luna cinta della parte alluminata dal sole in ponente, tra maggior splendore in mezzo a tal cerchio, che quando essa eclissava il sole. questo accade perche nell' eclissare il sole ella ombrava il nostro oceano, il qual caso non accade essendo in ponente, quando il sole alluma esso oceano_." the editors of the "_saggio_" who first published this passage (page ) add another short one about the seasons in the moon which i confess not to have seen in the original manuscript: "_la luna ha ogni mese un verno e una state, e ha maggiori freddi e maggiori caldi, e i suoi equinozii son piu freddi de' nostri._"] when the eye is in the east and sees the moon in the west near to the setting sun, it sees it with its shaded portion surrounded by luminous portions; and the lateral and upper portion of this light is derived from the sun, and the lower portion from the ocean in the west, which receives the solar rays and reflects them on the lower waters of the moon, and indeed affords the part of the moon that is in shadow as much radiance as the moon gives the earth at midnight. therefore it is not totally dark, and hence some have believed that the moon must in parts have a light of its own besides that which is given it by the sun; and this light is due, as has been said, to the above- mentioned cause,--that our seas are illuminated by the sun. again, it might be said that the circle of radiance shown by the moon when it and the sun are both in the west is wholly borrowed from the sun, when it, and the sun, and the eye are situated as is shown above. [footnote . : the larger of the two diagrams reproduced above stands between these two lines, and the smaller one is sketched in the margin. at the spot marked _a_ leonardo wrote _corpo solare_ (solar body) in the larger diagram and _sole_ (sun) in the smaller one. at _c luna_ (moon) is written and at _b terra_ (the earth).] some might say that the air surrounding the moon as an element, catches the light of the sun as our atmosphere does, and that it is this which completes the luminous circle on the body of the moon. some have thought that the moon has a light of its own, but this opinion is false, because they have founded it on that dim light seen between the hornes of the new moon, which looks dark where it is close to the bright part, while against the darkness of the background it looks so light that many have taken it to be a ring of new radiance completing the circle where the tips of the horns illuminated by the sun cease to shine [footnote : see pl. cviii, no. .]. and this difference of background arises from the fact that the portion of that background which is conterminous with the bright part of the moon, by comparison with that brightness looks darker than it is; while at the upper part, where a portion of the luminous circle is to be seen of uniform width, the result is that the moon, being brighter there than the medium or background on which it is seen by comparison with that darkness it looks more luminous at that edge than it is. and that brightness at such a time itself is derived from our ocean and other inland-seas. these are, at that time, illuminated by the sun which is already setting in such a way as that the sea then fulfils the same function to the dark side of the moon as the moon at its fifteenth day does to us when the sun is set. and the small amount of light which the dark side of the moon receives bears the same proportion to the light of that side which is illuminated, as that... [footnote : here the text breaks off; lines - are written on the margin.]. if you want to see how much brighter the shaded portion of the moon is than the background on which it is seen, conceal the luminous portion of the moon with your hand or with some other more distant object. on the spots in the moon ( - ). . the spots on the moon. some have said that vapours rise from the moon, after the manner of clouds and are interposed between the moon and our eyes. but, if this were the case, these spots would never be permanent, either as to position or form; and, seeing the moon from various aspects, even if these spots did not move they would change in form, as objects do which are seen from different sides. . of the spots on the moon. others say that the moon is composed of more or less transparent parts; as though one part were something like alabaster and others like crystal or glass. it would follow from this that the sun casting its rays on the less transparent portions, the light would remain on the surface, and so the denser part would be illuminated, and the transparent portions would display the shadow of their darker depths; and this is their account of the structure and nature of the moon. and this opinion has found favour with many philosophers, and particularly with aristotle, and yet it is a false view--for, in the various phases and frequent changes of the moon and sun to our eyes, we should see these spots vary, at one time looking dark and at another light: they would be dark when the sun is in the west and the moon in the middle of the sky; for then the transparent hollows would be in shadow as far as the tops of the edges of those transparent hollows, because the sun could not then fling his rays into the mouth of the hollows, which however, at full moon, would be seen in bright light, at which time the moon is in the east and faces the sun in the west; then the sun would illuminate even the lowest depths of these transparent places and thus, as there would be no shadows cast, the moon at these times would not show us the spots in question; and so it would be, now more and now less, according to the changes in the position of the sun to the moon, and of the moon to our eyes, as i have said above. . of the spots on the moon. it has been asserted, that the spots on the moon result from the moon being of varying thinness or density; but if this were so, when there is an eclipse of the moon the solar rays would pierce through the portions which were thin as is alleged [footnote - : _eclissi_. this word, as it seems to me, here means eclipses of the sun; and the sense of the passage, as i understand it, is that by the foregoing hypothesis the moon, when it comes between the sun and the earth must appear as if pierced,--we may say like a sieve.]. but as we do not see this effect the opinion must be false. others say that the surface of the moon is smooth and polished and that, like a mirror, it reflects in itself the image of our earth. this view is also false, inasmuch as the land, where it is not covered with water, presents various aspects and forms. hence when the moon is in the east it would reflect different spots from those it would show when it is above us or in the west; now the spots on the moon, as they are seen at full moon, never vary in the course of its motion over our hemisphere. a second reason is that an object reflected in a convex body takes up but a small portion of that body, as is proved in perspective [footnote : _come e provato_. this alludes to the accompanying diagram.]. the third reason is that when the moon is full, it only faces half the hemisphere of the illuminated earth, on which only the ocean and other waters reflect bright light, while the land makes spots on that brightness; thus half of our earth would be seen girt round with the brightness of the sea lighted up by the sun, and in the moon this reflection would be the smallest part of that moon. fourthly, a radiant body cannot be reflected from another equally radiant; therefore the sea, since it borrows its brightness from the sun,--as the moon does--, could not cause the earth to be reflected in it, nor indeed could the body of the sun be seen reflected in it, nor indeed any star opposite to it. . if you keep the details of the spots of the moon under observation you will often find great variation in them, and this i myself have proved by drawing them. and this is caused by the clouds that rise from the waters in the moon, which come between the sun and those waters, and by their shadow deprive these waters of the sun's rays. thus those waters remain dark, not being able to reflect the solar body. . how the spots on the moon must have varied from what they formerly were, by reason of the course of its waters. on the moon's halo. . of halos round the moon. i have found, that the circles which at night seem to surround the moon, of various sizes, and degrees of density are caused by various gradations in the densities of the vapours which exist at different altitudes between the moon and our eyes. and of these halos the largest and least red is caused by the lowest of these vapours; the second, smaller one, is higher up, and looks redder because it is seen through two vapours. and so on, as they are higher they will appear smaller and redder, because, between the eye and them, there is thicker vapour. whence it is proved that where they are seen to be reddest, the vapours are most dense. on instruments for observing the moon ( . ). . if you want to prove why the moon appears larger than it is, when it reaches the horizon; take a lens which is highly convex on one surface and concave on the opposite, and place the concave side next the eye, and look at the object beyond the convex surface; by this means you will have produced an exact imitation of the atmosphere included beneath the sphere of fire and outside that of water; for this atmosphere is concave on the side next the earth, and convex towards the fire. . construct glasses to see the moon magnified. [footnote: see the introduction, p. , fracastoro says in his work homocentres: "_per dua specilla ocularla si quis perspiciat, alteri altero superposito, majora multo et propinquiora videbit omnia.--quin imo quaedam specilla ocularia fiunt tantae densitatis, ut si per ea quis aut lunam, aut aliud siderum spectet, adeo propinqua illa iudicet, ut ne turres ipsas excedant_" (sect. ii c. and sect. iii, c. ).] i. the stars. on the light of the stars ( - ). . the stars are visible by night and not by day, because we are eneath the dense atmosphere, which is full of innumerable articles of moisture, each of which independently, when the ays of the sun fall upon it, reflects a radiance, and so these umberless bright particles conceal the stars; and if it were not or this atmosphere the sky would always display the stars against ts darkness. [footnote: see no. , which also refers to starlight.] . whether the stars have their light from the sun or in themselves. some say that they shine of themselves, alledging that if venus nd mercury had not a light of their own, when they come between ur eye and the sun they would darken so much of the sun as they ould cover from our eye. but this is false, for it is proved that dark object against a luminous body is enveloped and entirely oncealed by the lateral rays of the rest of that luminous body nd so remains invisible. as may be seen when the sun is seen hrough the boughs of trees bare of their leaves, at some distance he branches do not conceal any portion of the sun from our eye. he same thing happens with the above mentioned planets which, hough they have no light of their own, do not--as has been said-- onceal any part of the sun from our eye [ ]. second argument. some say that the stars appear most brilliant at night in proportion as they are higher up; and that if they had no light of their own, the shadow of the earth which comes between them and the sun, would darken them, since they would not face nor be faced by the solar body. but those persons have not considered that the conical shadow of the earth cannot reach many of the stars; and even as to those it does reach, the cone is so much diminished that it covers very little of the star's mass, and all the rest is illuminated by the sun. footnote: from this and other remarks (see no. ) it is clear hat leonardo was familiar with the phenomena of irradiation.] . why the planets appear larger in the east than they do overhead, whereas the contrary should be the case, as they are miles nearer to us when in mid sky than when on the horizon. all the degrees of the elements, through which the images of the celestial bodies pass to reach the eye, are equal curves and the angles by which the central line of those images passes through them, are unequal angles [footnote : _inequali_, here and elsewhere does not mean unequal in the sense of not being equal to each other, but angles which are not right angles.]; and the distance is greater, as is shown by the excess of _a b_ beyond _a d_; and the enlargement of these celestial bodies on the horizon is shown by the th of the th. observations on the stars. . to see the real nature of the planets open the covering and note at the base [footnote : _basa_. this probably alludes to some instrument, perhaps the camera obscura.] one single planet, and the reflected movement of this base will show the nature of the said planet; but arrange that the base may face only one at the time. on history of astronomy. . cicero says in [his book] de divinatione that astrology has been practised five hundred seventy thousand years before the trojan war. . [footnote: the statement that cicero, _de divin._ ascribes the discovery of astrology to a period years before the trojan war i believe to be quite erroneous. according to ernesti, _clavis ciceroniana,_ ch. g. schulz (_lexic. cicer._) and the edition of _de divin._ by giese the word astrologia occurs only twice in cicero: _de divin. ii_, . _ad chaldaeorum monstra veniamus, de quibus eudoxus, platonis auditor, in astrologia judicio doctissimorum hominum facile princeps, sic opinatur (id quod scriptum reliquit): chaldaeis in praedictione et in notatione cujusque vitae ex natali die minime esse credendum._" he then quotes the condemnatory verdict of other philosophers as to the teaching of the chaldaeans but says nothing as to the antiquity and origin of astronomy. cicero further notes _de oratore_ i, that aratus was "_ignarus astrologiae_" but that is all. so far as i know the word occurs nowhere else in cicero; and the word _astronomia_ he does not seem to have used at all. (h. muller-strubing.)] of time and its divisions ( - ). . although time is included in the class of continuous quantities, being indivisible and immaterial, it does not come entirely under the head of geometry, which represents its divisions by means of figures and bodies of infinite variety, such as are seen to be continuous in their visible and material properties. but only with its first principles does it agree, that is with the point and the line; the point may be compared to an instant of time, and the line may be likened to the length of a certain quantity of time, and just as a line begins and terminates in a point, so such a space of time. begins and terminates in an instant. and whereas a line is infinitely divisible, the divisibility of a space of time is of the same nature; and as the divisions of the line may bear a certain proportion to each other, so may the divisions of time. [footnote: this passage is repeated word for word on page b of the same manuscript and this is accounted for by the text in vol. i, no. . compare also no. .] . describe the nature of time as distinguished from the geometrical definitions. . divide an hour into parts, and this you can do with a clock by making the pendulum lighter or heavier. _xvi. physical geography. leonardo's researches as to the structure of the earth and sea were made at a time, when the extended voyages of the spaniards and portuguese had also excited a special interest in geographical questions in italy, and particularly in tuscany. still, it need scarcely surprise us to find that in deeper questions, as to the structure of the globe, the primitive state of the earth's surface, and the like, he was far in advance of his time. the number of passages which treat of such matters is relatively considerable; like almost all leonardo's scientific notes they deal partly with theoretical and partly with practical questions. some of his theoretical views of the motion of water were collected in a copied manuscript volume by an early transcriber, but without any acknowledgment of the source whence they were derived. this copy is now in the library of the barberini palace at rome and was published under the title: "de moto e misura dell'acqua," by francesco cardinali, bologna_ . _in this work the texts are arranged under the following titles:_ libr. i. della spera dell'acqua; libr. ii. del moto dell'acqua; libr. iii. dell'onda dell'acqua; libr. iv. dei retrosi d'acqua; libr. v. dell'acqua cadente; libr. vi. delle rotture fatte dall'acqua; libr. vii delle cose portate dall'acqua; libr. viii. dell'oncia dell'acqua e delle canne; libr. ix. de molini e d'altri ordigni d'acqua. _the large number of isolated observations scattered through the manuscripts, accounts for our so frequently finding notes of new schemes for the arrangement of those relating to water and its motions, particularly in the codex atlanticus: i have printed several of these plans as an introduction to the physical geography, and i have actually arranged the texts in accordance with the clue afforded by one of them which is undoubtedly one of the latest notes referring to the subject (no._ _). the text given as no._ _which is also taken from a late note-book of leonardo's, served as a basis for the arrangement of the first of the seven books--or sections--, bearing the title: of the nature of water_ (dell'acque in se). _as i have not made it any part of this undertaking to print the passages which refer to purely physical principles, it has also been necessary to exclude those practical researches which, in accordance with indications given in_ , _ought to come in as books_ , _and_ . _i can only incidentally mention here that leonardo--as it seems to me, especially in his youth--devoted a great deal of attention to the construction of mills. this is proved by a number of drawings of very careful and minute execution, which are to be found in the codex atlanticus. nor was it possible to include his considerations on the regulation of rivers, the making of canals and so forth (no._ , _books_ , _and_ _); but those passages in which the structure of a canal is directly connected with notices of particular places will be found duly inserted under section xvii (topographical notes). in vol. i, no._ _the text refers to canal-making in general._ _on one point only can the collection of passages included under the general heading of physical geography claim to be complete. when comparing and sorting the materials for this work i took particular care not to exclude or omit any text in which a geographical name was mentioned even incidentally, since in all such researches the chief interest, as it appeared to me, attached to the question whether these acute observations on the various local characteristics of mountains, rivers or seas, had been made by leonardo himself, and on the spot. it is self-evident that the few general and somewhat superficial observations on the rhine and the danube, on england and flanders, must have been obtained from maps or from some informants, and in the case of flanders leonardo himself acknowledges this (see no._ _). but that most of the other and more exact observations were made, on the spot, by leonardo himself, may be safely assumed from their method and the style in which he writes of them; and we should bear it in mind that in all investigations, of whatever kind, experience is always spoken of as the only basis on which he relies. incidentally, as in no._ , _he thinks it necessary to allude to the total absence of all recorded observations._ i. introduction. schemes for the arrangement of the materials ( - ). . these books contain in the beginning: of the nature of water itself in its motions; the others treat of the effects of its currents, which change the world in its centre and its shape. . divisions of the book. book of water in itself. book of the sea. book of subterranean rivers. book of rivers. book of the nature of the abyss. book of the obstacles. book of gravels. book of the surface of water. book of the things placed therein. book of the repairing of rivers. book of conduits. book of canals. book of machines turned by water. book of raising water. book of matters worn away by water. . first you shall make a book treating of places occupied by fresh waters, and the second by salt waters, and the third, how by the disappearance of these, our parts of the world were made lighter and in consequence more remote from the centre of the world. . first write of all water, in each of its motions; then describe all its bottoms and their various materials, always referring to the propositions concerning the said waters; and let the order be good, for otherwise the work will be confused. describe all the forms taken by water from its greatest to its smallest wave, and their causes. . book , of accidental risings of water. . the order of the book. place at the beginning what a river can effect. . a book of driving back armies by the force of a flood made by releasing waters. a book showing how the waters safely bring down timber cut in the mountains. a book of boats driven against the impetus of rivers. a book of raising large bridges higher. simply by the swelling of the waters. a book of guarding against the impetus of rivers so that towns may not be damaged by them. . a book of the ordering of rivers so as to preserve their banks. a book of the mountains, which would stand forth and become land, if our hemisphere were to be uncovered by the water. a book of the earth carried down by the waters to fill up the great abyss of the seas. a book of the ways in which a tempest may of itself clear out filled up sea-ports. a book of the shores of rivers and of their permanency. a book of how to deal with rivers, so that they may keep their bottom scoured by their own flow near the cities they pass. a book of how to make or to repair the foundations for bridges over the rivers. a book of the repairs which ought to be made in walls and banks of rivers where the water strikes them. a book of the formation of hills of sand or gravel at great depths in water. . water gives the first impetus to its motion. a book of the levelling of waters by various means, a book of diverting rivers from places where they do mischief. a book of guiding rivers which occupy too much ground. a book of parting rivers into several branches and making them fordable. a book of the waters which with various currents pass through seas. a book of deepening the beds of rivers by means of currents of water. a book of controlling rivers so that the little beginnings of mischief, caused by them, may not increase. a book of the various movements of waters passing through channels of different forms. a book of preventing small rivers from diverting the larger one into which their waters run. a book of the lowest level which can be found in the current of the surface of rivers. a book of the origin of rivers which flow from the high tops of mountains. a book of the various motions of waters in their rivers. . [ ] of inequality in the concavity of a ship. [footnote : the first line of this passage was added subsequently, evidently as a correction of the following line.] [ ] a book of the inequality in the curve of the sides of ships. [ ] a book of the inequality in the position of the tiller. [ ] a book of the inequality in the keel of ships. [ ] a book of various forms of apertures by which water flows out. [ ] a book of water contained in vessels with air, and of its movements. [ ] a book of the motion of water through a syphon. [footnote : _cicognole_, see no. , , .] [ ] a book of the meetings and union of waters coming from different directions. [ ] a book of the various forms of the banks through which rivers pass. [ ] a book of the various forms of shoals formed under the sluices of rivers. [ ] a book of the windings and meanderings of the currents of rivers. [ ] a book of the various places whence the waters of rivers are derived. [ ] a book of the configuration of the shores of rivers and of their permanency. [ ] a book of the perpendicular fall of water on various objects. [ ] abook of the course of water when it is impeded in various places. [ ] a book of the various forms of the obstacles which impede the course of waters. [ ] a book of the concavity and globosity formed round various objects at the bottom. [ ] abook of conducting navigable canals above or beneath the rivers which intersect them. [ ] a book of the soils which absorb water in canals and of repairing them. [ ] abook of creating currents for rivers, which quit their beds, [and] for rivers choked with soil. general introduction. . the beginning of the treatise on water. by the ancients man has been called the world in miniature; and certainly this name is well bestowed, because, inasmuch as man is composed of earth, water, air and fire, his body resembles that of the earth; and as man has in him bones the supports and framework of his flesh, the world has its rocks the supports of the earth; as man has in him a pool of blood in which the lungs rise and fall in breathing, so the body of the earth has its ocean tide which likewise rises and falls every six hours, as if the world breathed; as in that pool of blood veins have their origin, which ramify all over the human body, so likewise the ocean sea fills the body of the earth with infinite springs of water. the body of the earth lacks sinews and this is, because the sinews are made expressely for movements and, the world being perpetually stable, no movement takes place, and no movement taking place, muscles are not necessary. --but in all other points they are much alike. i. of the nature of water. the arrangement of book i. . the order of the first book on water. define first what is meant by height and depth; also how the elements are situated one inside another. then, what is meant by solid weight and by liquid weight; but first what weight and lightness are in themselves. then describe why water moves, and why its motion ceases; then why it becomes slower or more rapid; besides this, how it always falls, being in contact with the air but lower than the air. and how water rises in the air by means of the heat of the sun, and then falls again in rain; again, why water springs forth from the tops of mountains; and if the water of any spring higher than the ocean can pour forth water higher than the surface of that ocean. and how all the water that returns to the ocean is higher than the sphere of waters. and how the waters of the equatorial seas are higher than the waters of the north, and higher beneath the body of the sun than in any part of the equatorial circle; for experiment shows that under the heat of a burning brand the water near the brand boils, and the water surrounding this ebullition always sinks with a circular eddy. and how the waters of the north are lower than the other seas, and more so as they become colder, until they are converted into ice. definitions ( . ). . of what is water. among the four elements water is the second both in weight and in instability. . the beginning of the book on water. sea is the name given to that water which is wide and deep, in which the waters have not much motion. [footnote: only the beginning of this passage is here given, the remainder consists of definitions which have no direct bearing on the subject.] of the surface of the water in relation to the globe ( - ). . the centres of the sphere of water are two, one universal and common to all water, the other particular. the universal one is that which is common to all waters not in motion, which exist in great quantities. as canals, ditches, ponds, fountains, wells, dead rivers, lakes, stagnant pools and seas, which, although they are at various levels, have each in itself the limits of their superficies equally distant from the centre of the earth, such as lakes placed at the tops of high mountains; as the lake near pietra pana and the lake of the sybil near norcia; and all the lakes that give rise to great rivers, as the ticino from lago maggiore, the adda from the lake of como, the mincio from the lake of garda, the rhine from the lakes of constance and of chur, and from the lake of lucerne, like the tigris which passes through asia minor carrying with it the waters of three lakes, one above the other at different heights of which the highest is munace, the middle one pallas, and the lowest triton; the nile again flows from three very high lakes in ethiopia. [footnote : _pietra pana_, a mountain near florence. if for norcia, we may read norchia, the remains of the etruscan city near viterbo, there can be no doubt that by '_lago della sibilla_'--a name not known elsewhere, so far as i can learn--leonardo meant _lago di vico_ (lacus ciminus, aen. ).] . of the centre of the ocean. the centre of the sphere of waters is the true centre of the globe of our world, which is composed of water and earth, having the shape of a sphere. but, if you want to find the centre of the element of the earth, this is placed at a point equidistant from the surface of the ocean, and not equidistant from the surface of the earth; for it is evident that this globe of earth has nowhere any perfect rotundity, excepting in places where the sea is, or marshes or other still waters. and every part of the earth that rises above the water is farther from the centre. . of the sea which changes the weight of the earth. the shells, oysters, and other similar animals, which originate in sea-mud, bear witness to the changes of the earth round the centre of our elements. this is proved thus: great rivers always run turbid, being coloured by the earth, which is stirred by the friction of their waters at the bottom and on their shores; and this wearing disturbs the face of the strata made by the layers of shells, which lie on the surface of the marine mud, and which were produced there when the salt waters covered them; and these strata were covered over again from time to time, with mud of various thickness, or carried down to the sea by the rivers and floods of more or less extent; and thus these layers of mud became raised to such a height, that they came up from the bottom to the air. at the present time these bottoms are so high that they form hills or high mountains, and the rivers, which wear away the sides of these mountains, uncover the strata of these shells, and thus the softened side of the earth continually rises and the antipodes sink closer to the centre of the earth, and the ancient bottoms of the seas have become mountain ridges. . let the earth make whatever changes it may in its weight, the surface of the sphere of waters can never vary in its equal distance from the centre of the world. of the proportion of the mass of water to that of the earth ( . ). . whether the earth is less than the water. some assert that it is true that the earth, which is not covered by water is much less than that covered by water. but considering the size of miles in diameter which is that of this earth, we may conclude the water to be of small depth. . of the earth. the great elevations of the peaks of the mountains above the sphere of the water may have resulted from this that: a very large portion of the earth which was filled with water that is to say the vast cavern inside the earth may have fallen in a vast part of its vault towards the centre of the earth, being pierced by means of the course of the springs which continually wear away the place where they pass. sinking in of countries like the dead sea in syria, that is sodom and gomorrah. it is of necessity that there should be more water than land, and the visible portion of the sea does not show this; so that there must be a great deal of water inside the earth, besides that which rises into the lower air and which flows through rivers and springs. [footnote: the small sketch below on the left, is placed in the original close to the text referring to the dead sea.] the theory of plato. . the figures of the elements. of the figures of the elements; and first as against those who deny the opinions of plato, and who say that if the elements include one another in the forms attributed to them by plato they would cause a vacuum one within the other. i say it is not true, and i here prove it, but first i desire to propound some conclusions. it is not necessary that the elements which include each other should be of corresponding magnitude in all the parts, of that which includes and of that which is included. we see that the sphere of the waters varies conspicuously in mass from the surface to the bottom, and that, far from investing the earth when that was in the form of a cube that is of angles as plato will have it, that it invests the earth which has innumerable angles of rock covered by the water and various prominences and concavities, and yet no vacuum is generated between the earth and water; again, the air invests the sphere of waters together with the mountains and valleys, which rise above that sphere, and no vacuum remains between the earth and the air, so that any one who says a vacuum is generated, speaks foolishly. but to plato i would reply that the surface of the figures which according to him the elements would have, could not exist. that the flow of rivers proves the slope of the land. . proves how the earth is not globular and not being globular cannot have a common centre. we see the nile come from southern regions and traverse various provinces, running towards the north for a distance of miles and flow into the mediterranean by the shores of egypt; and if we will give to this a fall of ten braccia a mile, as is usually allowed to the course of rivers in general, we shall find that the nile must have its mouth ten miles lower than its source. again, we see the rhine, the rhone and the danube starting from the german parts, almost the centre of europe, and having a course one to the east, the other to the north, and the last to southern seas. and if you consider all this you will see that the plains of europe in their aggregate are much higher than the high peaks of the maritime mountains; think then how much their tops must be above the sea shores. theory of the elevation of water within the mountains. . of the heat that is in the world. where there is life there is heat, and where vital heat is, there is movement of vapour. this is proved, inasmuch as we see that the element of fire by its heat always draws to itself damp vapours and thick mists as opaque clouds, which it raises from seas as well as lakes and rivers and damp valleys; and these being drawn by degrees as far as the cold region, the first portion stops, because heat and moisture cannot exist with cold and dryness; and where the first portion stops the rest settle, and thus one portion after another being added, thick and dark clouds are formed. they are often wafted about and borne by the winds from one region to another, where by their density they become so heavy that they fall in thick rain; and if the heat of the sun is added to the power of the element of fire, the clouds are drawn up higher still and find a greater degree of cold, in which they form ice and fall in storms of hail. now the same heat which holds up so great a weight of water as is seen to rain from the clouds, draws them from below upwards, from the foot of the mountains, and leads and holds them within the summits of the mountains, and these, finding some fissure, issue continuously and cause rivers. the relative height of the surface of the sea to that of the land ( - ). . of the sea, which to many fools appears to be higher than the earth which forms its shore. _b d_ is a plain through which a river flows to the sea; this plain ends at the sea, and since in fact the dry land that is uncovered is not perfectly level--for, if it were, the river would have no motion--as the river does move, this place is a slope rather than a plain; hence this plain _d b_ so ends where the sphere of water begins that if it were extended in a continuous line to _b a_ it would go down beneath the sea, whence it follows that the sea _a c b_ looks higher than the dry land. obviously no portions of dry land left uncovered by water can ever be lower than the surface of the watery sphere. . of certain persons who say the waters were higher than the dry land. certainly i wonder not a little at the common opinion which is contrary to truth, but held by the universal consent of the judgment of men. and this is that all are agreed that the surface of the sea is higher than the highest peaks of the mountains; and they allege many vain and childish reasons, against which i will allege only one simple and short reason; we see plainly that if we could remove the shores of the sea, it would invest the whole earth and make it a perfect sphere. now, consider how much earth would be carried away to enable the waves of the sea to cover the world; therefore that which would be carried away must be higher than the sea-shore. . the opinion of some persons who say that the water of some seas is higher than the highest summits of mountains; and nevertheless the water was forced up to these summits. water would not move from place to place if it were not that it seeks the lowest level and by a natural consequence it never can return to a height like that of the place where it first on issuing from the mountain came to light. and that portion of the sea which, in your vain imagining, you say was so high that it flowed over the summits of the high mountains, for so many centuries would be swallowed up and poured out again through the issue from these mountains. you can well imagine that all the time that tigris and euphrates . have flowed from the summits of the mountains of armenia, it must be believed that all the water of the ocean has passed very many times through these mouths. and do you not believe that the nile must have sent more water into the sea than at present exists of all the element of water? undoubtedly, yes. and if all this water had fallen away from this body of the earth, this terrestrial machine would long since have been without water. whence we may conclude that the water goes from the rivers to the sea, and from the sea to the rivers, thus constantly circulating and returning, and that all the sea and the rivers have passed through the mouth of the nile an infinite number of times [footnote: _moti armeni, ermini_ in the original, in m. ravaisson's transcript _"monti ernini [le loro ruine?]"_. he renders this _"le tigre et l'euphrate se sont deverses par les sommets des montagnes [avec leurs eaux destructives?] on pent cro're" &c. leonardo always writes _ermini, erminia_, for _armeni, armenia_ (arabic: _irminiah_). m. ravaisson also deviates from the original in his translation of the following passage: "_or tu ne crois pas que le nil ait mis plus d'eau dans la mer qu'il n'y en a a present dans tout l'element de l'eau. il est certain que si cette eau etait tombee_" &c.] ii. on the ocean. refutation of pliny's theory as to the saltness of the sea ( . ). . why water is salt. pliny says in his second book, chapter , that the water of the sea is salt because the heat of the sun dries up the moisture and drinks it up; and this gives to the wide stretching sea the savour of salt. but this cannot be admitted, because if the saltness of the sea were caused by the heat of the sun, there can be no doubt that lakes, pools and marshes would be so much the more salt, as their waters have less motion and are of less depth; but experience shows us, on the contrary, that these lakes have their waters quite free from salt. again it is stated by pliny in the same chapter that this saltness might originate, because all the sweet and subtle portions which the heat attracts easily being taken away, the more bitter and coarser part will remain, and thus the water on the surface is fresher than at the bottom [footnote : compare no. .]; but this is contradicted by the same reason given above, which is, that the same thing would happen in marshes and other waters, which are dried up by the heat. again, it has been said that the saltness of the sea is the sweat of the earth; to this it may be answered that all the springs of water which penetrate through the earth, would then be salt. but the conclusion is, that the saltness of the sea must proceed from the many springs of water which, as they penetrate into the earth, find mines of salt and these they dissolve in part, and carry with them to the ocean and the other seas, whence the clouds, the begetters of rivers, never carry it up. and the sea would be salter in our times than ever it was at any time; and if the adversary were to say that in infinite time the sea would dry up or congeal into salt, to this i answer that this salt is restored to the earth by the setting free of that part of the earth which rises out of the sea with the salt it has acquired, and the rivers return it to the earth under the sea. [footnote: see pliny, hist. nat. ii, ciii [c]. _itaque solis ardore siccatur liquor: et hoc esse masculum sidus accepimus, torrens cuncta sorbensque._ (cp. civ.) _sic mari late patenti saporem incoqui salis, aut quia exhausto inde dulci tenuique, quod facillime trahat vis ignea, omne asperius crassiusque linquatur: ideo summa aequorum aqua dulciorem profundam; hanc esse veriorem causam, quam quod mare terrae sudor sit aeternus: aut quia plurimum ex arido misceatur illi vapore: aut quia terrae natura sicut medicatas aquas inficiat_ ... (cp. cv): _altissimum mare xv. stadiorum fabianus tradit. alii n ponto coadverso coraxorum gentis (vocant b ponti) trecentis fere a continenti stadiis immensam altitudinem maris tradunt, vadis nunquam repertis._ (cp. cvi [ciii]) _mirabilius id faciunt aquae dulces, juxta mare, ut fistulis emicantes. nam nec aquarum natura a miraculis cessat. dulces mari invehuntur, leviores haud dubie. ideo et marinae, quarum natura gravior, magis invecta sustinent. quaedam vero et dulces inter se supermeant alias._] . for the third and last reason we will say that salt is in all created things; and this we learn from water passed over the ashes and cinders of burnt things; and the urine of every animal, and the superfluities issuing from their bodies, and the earth into which all things are converted by corruption. but,--to put it better,--given that the world is everlasting, it must be admitted that its population will also be eternal; hence the human species has eternally been and would be consumers of salt; and if all the mass of the earth were to be turned into salt, it would not suffice for all human food [footnote : that is, on the supposition that salt, once consumed, disappears for ever.]; whence we are forced to admit, either that the species of salt must be everlasting like the world, or that it dies and is born again like the men who devour it. but as experience teaches us that it does not die, as is evident by fire, which does not consume it, and by water which becomes salt in proportion to the quantity dissolved in it,--and when it is evaporated the salt always remains in the original quantity--it must pass through the bodies of men either in the urine or the sweat or other excretions where it is found again; and as much salt is thus got rid of as is carried every year into towns; therefore salt is dug in places where there is urine.-- sea hogs and sea winds are salt. we will say that the rains which penetrate the earth are what is under the foundations of cities with their inhabitants, and are what restore through the internal passages of the earth the saltness taken from the sea; and that the change in the place of the sea, which has been over all the mountains, caused it to be left there in the mines found in those mountains, &c. the characteristics of sea water ( . ). . the waters of the salt sea are fresh at the greatest depths. . that the ocean does not penetrate under the earth. the ocean does not penetrate under the earth, and this we learn from the many and various springs of fresh water which, in many parts of the ocean make their way up from the bottom to the surface. the same thing is farther proved by wells dug beyond the distance of a mile from the said ocean, which fill with fresh water; and this happens because the fresh water is lighter than salt water and consequently more penetrating. which weighs most, water when frozen or when not frozen? fresh water penetrates more against salt water than salt water against fresh water. that fresh water penetrates more against salt water, than salt water against fresh is proved by a thin cloth dry and old, hanging with the two opposite ends equally low in the two different waters, the surfaces of which are at an equal level; and it will then be seen how much higher the fresh water will rise in this piece of linen than the salt; by so much is the fresh lighter than the salt. on the formation of gulfs ( . ). . all inland seas and the gulfs of those seas, are made by rivers which flow into the sea. . here the reason is given of the effects produced by the waters in the above mentioned place. all the lakes and all the gulfs of the sea and all inland seas are due to rivers which distribute their waters into them, and from impediments in their downfall into the mediterranean --which divides africa from europe and europe from asia by means of the nile and the don which pour their waters into it. it is asked what impediment is great enough to stop the course of the waters which do not reach the ocean. on the encroachments of the sea on the land and vice versa ( - ). . of waves. a wave of the sea always breaks in front of its base, and that portion of the crest will then be lowest which before was highest. [footnote: the page of francesco di giorgio's _trattato_, on which leonardo has written this remark, contains some notes on the construction of dams, harbours &c.] . that the shores of the sea constantly acquire more soil towards the middle of the sea; that the rocks and promontories of the sea are constantly being ruined and worn away; that the mediterranean seas will in time discover their bottom to the air, and all that will be left will be the channel of the greatest river that enters it; and this will run to the ocean and pour its waters into that with those of all the rivers that are its tributaries. . how the river po, in a short time might dry up the adriatic sea in the same way as it has dried up a large part of lombardy. the ebb and flow of the tide ( - ). . where there is a larger quantity of water, there is a greater flow and ebb, but the contrary in narrow waters. look whether the sea is at its greatest flow when the moon is half way over our hemisphere [on the meridian]. . whether the flow and ebb are caused by the moon or the sun, or are the breathing of this terrestrial machine. that the flow and ebb are different in different countries and seas. [footnote: . allusion may here be made to the mythological explanation of the ebb and flow given in the edda. utgardloki says to thor (gylfaginning ): "when thou wert drinking out of the horn, and it seemed to thee that it was slow in emptying a wonder befell, which i should not have believed possible: the other end of the horn lay in the sea, which thou sawest not; but when thou shalt go to the sea, thou shalt see how much thou hast drunk out of it. and that men now call the ebb tide." several passages in various manuscripts treat of the ebb and flow. in collecting them i have been guided by the rule only to transcribe those which named some particular spot.] . book of the meeting of rivers and their flow and ebb. the cause is the same in the sea, where it is caused by the straits of gibraltar. and again it is caused by whirlpools. . of the flow and ebb. all seas have their flow and ebb in the same period, but they seem to vary because the days do not begin at the same time throughout the universe; in such wise as that when it is midday in our hemisphere, it is midnight in the opposite hemisphere; and at the eastern boundary of the two hemispheres the night begins which follows on the day, and at the western boundary of these hemispheres begins the day, which follows the night from the opposite side. hence it is to be inferred that the above mentioned swelling and diminution in the height of the seas, although they take place in one and the same space of time, are seen to vary from the above mentioned causes. the waters are then withdrawn into the fissures which start from the depths of the sea and which ramify inside the body of the earth, corresponding to the sources of rivers, which are constantly taking from the bottom of the sea the water which has flowed into it. a sea of water is incessantly being drawn off from the surface of the sea. and if you should think that the moon, rising at the eastern end of the mediterranean sea must there begin to attract to herself the waters of the sea, it would follow that we must at once see the effect of it at the eastern end of that sea. again, as the mediterranean sea is about the eighth part of the circumference of the aqueous sphere, being miles long, while the flow and ebb only occur times in hours, these results would not agree with the time of hours, unless this mediterranean sea were six thousand miles in length; because if such a superabundance of water had to pass through the straits of gibraltar in running behind the moon, the rush of the water through that strait would be so great, and would rise to such a height, that beyond the straits it would for many miles rush so violently into the ocean as to cause floods and tremendous seething, so that it would be impossible to pass through. this agitated ocean would afterwards return the waters it had received with equal fury to the place they had come from, so that no one ever could pass through those straits. now experience shows that at every hour they are passed in safety, but when the wind sets in the same direction as the current, the strong ebb increases [footnote : in attempting to get out of the mediterranean, vessels are sometimes detained for a considerable time; not merely by the causes mentioned by leonardo but by the constant current flowing eastwards through the middle of the straits of gibraltar.]. the sea does not raise the water that has issued from the straits, but it checks them and this retards the tide; then it makes up with furious haste for the time it has lost until the end of the ebb movement. . that the flow and ebb are not general; for on the shore at genoa there is none, at venice two braccia, between england and flanders braccia. that in the straits of sicily the current is very strong because all the waters from the rivers that flow into the adriatic pass there. [footnote: a few more recent data may be given here to facilitate comparison. in the adriatic the tide rises and / feet, at terracina / . in the english channel between calais and kent it rises from to feet. in the straits of messina it rises no more than / feet, and that only in stormy weather, but the current is all the stronger. when leonardo accounts for this by the southward flow of all the italian rivers along the coasts, the explanation is at least based on a correct observation; namely that a steady current flows southwards along the coast of calabria and another northwards, along the shores of sicily; he seems to infer, from the direction of the fust, that the tide in the adriatic is caused by it.] . in the west, near to flanders, the sea rises and decreases every hours about braccia, and when the moon is in its favour; but braccia is the general rule, and this rule, as it is evident, cannot have the moon for its cause. this variation in the increase and decrease of the sea every hours may arise from the damming up of the waters, which are poured into the mediterranean by the quantity of rivers from africa, asia and europe, which flow into that sea, and the waters which are given to it by those rivers; it pours them to the ocean through the straits of gibraltar, between abila and calpe [footnote : _abila_, lat. _abyla_, gr. , now sierra _ximiera_ near ceuta; _calpe_, lat. _calpe_. gr., now gibraltar. leonardo here uses the ancient names of the rocks, which were known as the pillars of hercules.]. that ocean extends to the island of england and others farther north, and it becomes dammed up and kept high in various gulfs. these, being seas of which the surface is remote from the centre of the earth, have acquired a weight, which as it is greater than the force of the incoming waters which cause it, gives this water an impetus in the contrary direction to that in which it came and it is borne back to meet the waters coming out of the straits; and this it does most against the straits of gibraltar; these, so long as this goes on, remain dammed up and all the water which is poured out meanwhile by the aforementioned rivers, is pent up [in the mediterranean]; and this might be assigned as the cause of its flow and ebb, as is shown in the st of the th of my theory. iii. subterranean water courses. theory of the circulation of the waters ( . ). . very large rivers flow under ground. . this is meant to represent the earth cut through in the middle, showing the depths of the sea and of the earth; the waters start from the bottom of the seas, and ramifying through the earth they rise to the summits of the mountains, flowing back by the rivers and returning to the sea. observations in support of the hypothesis ( - ). . the waters circulate with constant motion from the utmost depths of the sea to the highest summits of the mountains, not obeying the nature of heavy matter; and in this case it acts as does the blood of animals which is always moving from the sea of the heart and flows to the top of their heads; and here it is that veins burst--as one may see when a vein bursts in the nose, that all the blood from below rises to the level of the burst vein. when the water rushes out of a burst vein in the earth it obeys the nature of other things heavier than the air, whence it always seeks the lowest places. [ ] these waters traverse the body of the earth with infinite ramifications. [footnote: the greater part of this passage has been given as no. in the section on anatomy.] . the same cause which stirs the humours in every species of animal body and by which every injury is repaired, also moves the waters from the utmost depth of the sea to the greatest heights. . it is the property of water that it constitutes the vital human of this arid earth; and the cause which moves it through its ramified veins, against the natural course of heavy matters, is the same property which moves the humours in every species of animal body. but that which crowns our wonder in contemplating it is, that it rises from the utmost depths of the sea to the highest tops of the mountains, and flowing from the opened veins returns to the low seas; then once more, and with extreme swiftness, it mounts again and returns by the same descent, thus rising from the inside to the outside, and going round from the lowest to the highest, from whence it rushes down in a natural course. thus by these two movements combined in a constant circulation, it travels through the veins of the earth. . whether water rises from the sea to the tops of mountains. the water of the ocean cannot make its way from the bases to the tops of the mountains which bound it, but only so much rises as the dryness of the mountain attracts. and if, on the contrary, the rain, which penetrates from the summit of the mountain to the base, which is the boundary of the sea, descends and softens the slope opposite to the said mountain and constantly draws the water, like a syphon [footnote : cicognola, syphon. see vol. i, pl. xxiv, no. .] which pours through its longest side, it must be this which draws up the water of the sea; thus if _s n_ were the surface of the sea, and the rain descends from the top of the mountain _a_ to _n_ on one side, and on the other sides it descends from _a_ to _m_, without a doubt this would occur after the manner of distilling through felt, or as happens through the tubes called syphons [footnote : cicognola, syphon. see vol. i, pl. xxiv, no. .]. and at all times the water which has softened the mountain, by the great rain which runs down the two opposite sides, would constantly attract the rain _a n_, on its longest side together with the water from the sea, if that side of the mountain _a m_ were longer than the other _a n_; but this cannot be, because no part of the earth which is not submerged by the ocean can be lower than that ocean. . of springs of water on the tops of mountains. it is quite evident that the whole surface of the ocean--when there is no storm--is at an equal distance from the centre of the earth, and that the tops of the mountains are farther from this centre in proportion as they rise above the surface of that sea; therefore if the body of the earth were not like that of man, it would be impossible that the waters of the sea--being so much lower than the mountains--could by their nature rise up to the summits of these mountains. hence it is to be believed that the same cause which keeps the blood at the top of the head in man keeps the water at the summits of the mountains. [footnote: this conception of the rising of the blood, which has given rise to the comparison, was recognised as erroneous by leonardo himself at a later period. it must be remembered that the ms. a, from which these passages are taken, was written about twenty years earlier than the ms. leic. (nos. and ) and twenty-five years before the ms. w. an. iv. there is, in the original a sketch with no. which is not reproduced. it represents a hill of the same shape as that shown at no. . there are veins, or branched streams, on the side of the hill, like those on the skull pl. cviii, no. ] . in confirmation of why the water goes to the tops of mountains. i say that just as the natural heat of the blood in the veins keeps it in the head of man,--for when the man is dead the cold blood sinks to the lower parts--and when the sun is hot on the head of a man the blood increases and rises so much, with other humours, that by pressure in the veins pains in the head are often caused; in the same way veins ramify through the body of the earth, and by the natural heat which is distributed throughout the containing body, the water is raised through the veins to the tops of mountains. and this water, which passes through a closed conduit inside the body of the mountain like a dead thing, cannot come forth from its low place unless it is warmed by the vital heat of the spring time. again, the heat of the element of fire and, by day, the heat of the sun, have power to draw forth the moisture of the low parts of the mountains and to draw them up, in the same way as it draws the clouds and collects their moisture from the bed of the sea. . that many springs of salt water are found at great distances from the sea; this might happen because such springs pass through some mine of salt, like that in hungary where salt is hewn out of vast caverns, just as stone is hewn. [footnote: the great mine of wieliczka in galicia, out of which a million cwt. of rock-salt are annually dug out, extends for metres from west to east, and metres from north to south.] iv. of rivers. on the way in which the sources of rivers are fed. . of the origin of rivers. the body of the earth, like the bodies of animals, is intersected with ramifications of waters which are all in connection and are constituted to give nutriment and life to the earth and to its creatures. these come from the depth of the sea and, after many revolutions, have to return to it by the rivers created by the bursting of these springs; and if you chose to say that the rains of the winter or the melting of the snows in summer were the cause of the birth of rivers, i could mention the rivers which originate in the torrid countries of africa, where it never rains--and still less snows--because the intense heat always melts into air all the clouds which are borne thither by the winds. and if you chose to say that such rivers, as increase in july and august, come from the snows which melt in may and june from the sun's approach to the snows on the mountains of scythia [footnote : scythia means here, as in ancient geography, the whole of the northern part of asia as far as india.], and that such meltings come down into certain valleys and form lakes, into which they enter by springs and subterranean caves to issue forth again at the sources of the nile, this is false; because scythia is lower than the sources of the nile, and, besides, scythia is only miles from the black sea and the sources of the nile are miles distant from the sea of egypt into which its waters flow. the tide in estuaries. . book , of the meeting of rivers and of their ebb and flow. the cause is the same in the sea, where it is caused by the straits of gibraltar; and again it is caused by whirlpools. [ ] if two rivers meet together to form a straight line, and then below two right angles take their course together, the flow and ebb will happen now in one river and now in the other above their confluence, and principally if the outlet for their united volume is no swifter than when they were separate. here occur instances. [footnote: the first two lines of this passage have already been given as no. . in the margin, near line of this passage, the text given as no. is written.] on the alterations, caused in the courses of rivers by their confluence ( - ). . when a smaller river pours its waters into a larger one, and that larger one flows from the opposite direction, the course of the smaller river will bend up against the approach of the larger river; and this happens because, when the larger river fills up all its bed with water, it makes an eddy in front of the mouth of the other river, and so carries the water poured in by the smaller river with its own. when the smaller river pours its waters into the larger one, which runs across the current at the mouth of the smaller river, its waters will bend with the downward movement of the larger river. [footnote: in the original sketches the word _arno_ is written at the spot here marked _a_, at _r. rifredi_, and at _m. mugnone_.] . when the fulness of rivers is diminished, then the acute angles formed at the junction of their branches become shorter at the sides and wider at the point; like the current _a n_ and the current _d n_, which unite in _n_ when the river is at its greatest fulness. i say, that when it is in this condition if, before the fullest time, _d n_ was lower than _a n_, at the time of fulness _d n_ will be full of sand and mud. when the water _d n_ falls, it will carry away the mud and remain with a lower bottom, and the channel _a n_ finding itself the higher, will fling its waters into the lower, _d n_, and will wash away all the point of the sand-spit _b n c_, and thus the angle _a c d_ will remain larger than the angle _a n d_ and the sides shorter, as i said before. [footnote: above the first sketch we find, in the original, this note: "_sopra il pote rubaconte alla torricella_"; and by the second, which represents a pier of a bridge, "_sotto l'ospedal del ceppo._"] . water. of the movement of a sudden rush made by a river in its bed previously dry. in proportion as the current of the water given forth by the draining of the lake is slow or rapid in the dry river bed, so will this river be wider or narrower, or shallower or deeper in one place than another, according to this proposition: the flow and ebb of the sea which enters the mediterranean from the ocean, and of the rivers which meet and struggle with it, will raise their waters more or less in proportion as the sea is wider or narrower. [footnote: in the margin is a sketch of a river which winds so as to form islands.] whirlpools. . whirlpools, that is to say caverns; that is to say places left by precipitated waters. on the alterations in the channels of rivers. . of the vibration of the earth. the subterranean channels of waters, like those which exist between the air and the earth, are those which unceasingly wear away and deepen the beds of their currents. the origin of the sand in rivers ( . ). . a river that flows from mountains deposits a great quantity of large stones in its bed, which still have some of their angles and sides, and in the course of its flow it carries down smaller stones with the angles more worn; that is to say the large stones become smaller. and farther on it deposits coarse gravel and then smaller, and as it proceeds this becomes coarse sand and then finer, and going on thus the water, turbid with sand and gravel, joins the sea; and the sand settles on the sea-shores, being cast up by the salt waves; and there results the sand of so fine a nature as to seem almost like water, and it will not stop on the shores of the sea but returns by reason of its lightness, because it was originally formed of rotten leaves and other very light things. still, being almost--as was said--of the nature of water itself, it afterwards, when the weather is calm, settles and becomes solid at the bottom of the sea, where by its fineness it becomes compact and by its smoothness resists the waves which glide over it; and in this shells are found; and this is white earth, fit for pottery. . all the torrents of water flowing from the mountains to the sea carry with them the stones from the hills to the sea, and by the influx of the sea-water towards the mountains; these stones were thrown back towards the mountains, and as the waters rose and retired, the stones were tossed about by it and in rolling, their angles hit together; then as the parts, which least resisted the blows, were worn off, the stones ceased to be angular and became round in form, as may be seen on the banks of the elsa. and those remained larger which were less removed from their native spot; and they became smaller, the farther they were carried from that place, so that in the process they were converted into small pebbles and then into sand and at last into mud. after the sea had receded from the mountains the brine left by the sea with other humours of the earth made a concretion of these pebbles and this sand, so that the pebbles were converted into rock and the sand into tufa. and of this we see an example in the adda where it issues from the mountains of como and in the ticino, the adige and the oglio coming from the german alps, and in the arno at monte albano [footnote : at the foot of _monte albano_ lies vinci, the birth place of leonardo. opposite, on the other bank of the arno, is _monte lupo_.], near monte lupo and capraia where the rocks, which are very large, are all of conglomerated pebbles of various kinds and colours. v. on mountains. the formation of mountains ( - ). . mountains are made by the currents of rivers. mountains are destroyed by the currents of rivers. [footnote: compare .] . that the northern bases of some alps are not yet petrified. and this is plainly to be seen where the rivers, which cut through them, flow towards the north; where they cut through the strata in the living stone in the higher parts of the mountains; and, where they join the plains, these strata are all of potter's clay; as is to be seen in the valley of lamona where the river lamona, as it issues from the appenines, does these things on its banks. that the rivers have all cut and divided the mountains of the great alps one from the other. this is visible in the order of the stratified rocks, because from the summits of the banks, down to the river the correspondence of the strata in the rocks is visible on either side of the river. that the stratified stones of the mountains are all layers of clay, deposited one above the other by the various floods of the rivers. that the different size of the strata is caused by the difference in the floods--that is to say greater or lesser floods. . the summits of mountains for a long time rise constantly. the opposite sides of the mountains always approach each other below; the depths of the valleys which are above the sphere of the waters are in the course of time constantly getting nearer to the centre of the world. in an equal period, the valleys sink much more than the mountains rise. the bases of the mountains always come closer together. in proportion as the valleys become deeper, the more quickly are their sides worn away. . in every concavity at the summit of the mountains we shall always find the divisions of the strata in the rocks. . of the sea which encircles the earth. i find that of old, the state of the earth was that its plains were all covered up and hidden by salt water. [footnote: this passage has already been published by dr. m. jordan: _das malerbuch des l. da vinci, leipzig_ , p. . however, his reading of the text differs from mine.] the authorities for the study of the structure of the earth. . since things are much more ancient than letters, it is no marvel if, in our day, no records exist of these seas having covered so many countries; and if, moreover, some records had existed, war and conflagrations, the deluge of waters, the changes of languages and of laws have consumed every thing ancient. but sufficient for us is the testimony of things created in the salt waters, and found again in high mountains far from the seas. vi. geological problems. . in this work you have first to prove that the shells at a thousand braccia of elevation were not carried there by the deluge, because they are seen to be all at one level, and many mountains are seen to be above that level; and to inquire whether the deluge was caused by rain or by the swelling of the sea; and then you must show how, neither by rain nor by swelling of the rivers, nor by the overflow of this sea, could the shells--being heavy objects--be floated up the mountains by the sea, nor have carried there by the rivers against the course of their waters. doubts about the deluge. . a doubtful point. here a doubt arises, and that is: whether the deluge, which happened at the time of noah, was universal or not. and it would seem not, for the reasons now to be given: we have it in the bible that this deluge lasted days and nights of incessant and universal rain, and that this rain rose to ten cubits above the highest mountains in the world. and if it had been that the rain was universal, it would have covered our globe which is spherical in form. and this spherical surface is equally distant in every part, from the centre of its sphere; hence the sphere of the waters being under the same conditions, it is impossible that the water upon it should move, because water, in itself, does not move unless it falls; therefore how could the waters of such a deluge depart, if it is proved that it has no motion? and if it departed how could it move unless it went upwards? here, then, natural reasons are wanting; hence to remove this doubt it is necessary to call in a miracle to aid us, or else to say that all this water was evaporated by the heat of the sun. [footnote: the passages, here given from the ms. leic., have hitherto remained unknown. some preliminary notes on the subject are to be found in ms. f oa and ob; but as compared with the fuller treatment here given, they are, it seems to me, of secondary interest. they contain nothing that is not repeated here more clearly and fully. libri, _histoire des sciences mathematiques iii_, pages -- , has printed the text of f a and b, therefore it seemed desirable to give my reasons for not inserting it in this work.] that marine shells could not go up the mountains. . of the deluge and of marine shells. if you were to say that the shells which are to be seen within the confines of italy now, in our days, far from the sea and at such heights, had been brought there by the deluge which left them there, i should answer that if you believe that this deluge rose cubits above the highest mountains-- as he who measured it has written--these shells, which always live near the sea-shore, should have been left on the mountains; and not such a little way from the foot of the mountains; nor all at one level, nor in layers upon layers. and if you were to say that these shells are desirous of remaining near to the margin of the sea, and that, as it rose in height, the shells quitted their first home, and followed the increase of the waters up to their highest level; to this i answer, that the cockle is an animal of not more rapid movement than the snail is out of water, or even somewhat slower; because it does not swim, on the contrary it makes a furrow in the sand by means of its sides, and in this furrow it will travel each day from to braccia; therefore this creature, with so slow a motion, could not have travelled from the adriatic sea as far as monferrato in lombardy [footnote: _monferrato di lombardia_. the range of hills of monferrato is in piedmont, and casale di monferrato belonged, in leonardo's time, to the marchese di mantova.], which is miles distance, in days; which he has said who took account of the time. and if you say that the waves carried them there, by their gravity they could not move, excepting at the bottom. and if you will not grant me this, confess at least that they would have to stay at the summits of the highest mountains, in the lakes which are enclosed among the mountains, like the lakes of lario, or of como and il maggiore [footnote: _lago di lario._ lacus larius was the name given by the romans to the lake of como. it is evident that it is here a slip of the pen since the the words in the ms. are: _"come lago di lario o'l magare e di como,"_ in the ms. after line we come upon a digression treating of the weight of water; this has here been omitted. it is lines long.] and of fiesole, and of perugia, and others. and if you should say that the shells were carried by the waves, being empty and dead, i say that where the dead went they were not far removed from the living; for in these mountains living ones are found, which are recognisable by the shells being in pairs; and they are in a layer where there are no dead ones; and a little higher up they are found, where they were thrown by the waves, all the dead ones with their shells separated, near to where the rivers fell into the sea, to a great depth; like the arno which fell from the gonfolina near to monte lupo [footnote: _monte lupo_, compare , ; it is between empoli and florence.], where it left a deposit of gravel which may still be seen, and which has agglomerated; and of stones of various districts, natures, and colours and hardness, making one single conglomerate. and a little beyond the sandstone conglomerate a tufa has been formed, where it turned towards castel florentino; farther on, the mud was deposited in which the shells lived, and which rose in layers according to the levels at which the turbid arno flowed into that sea. and from time to time the bottom of the sea was raised, depositing these shells in layers, as may be seen in the cutting at colle gonzoli, laid open by the arno which is wearing away the base of it; in which cutting the said layers of shells are very plainly to be seen in clay of a bluish colour, and various marine objects are found there. and if the earth of our hemisphere is indeed raised by so much higher than it used to be, it must have become by so much lighter by the waters which it lost through the rift between gibraltar and ceuta; and all the more the higher it rose, because the weight of the waters which were thus lost would be added to the earth in the other hemisphere. and if the shells had been carried by the muddy deluge they would have been mixed up, and separated from each other amidst the mud, and not in regular steps and layers-- as we see them now in our time. the marine shells were not produced away from the sea. . as to those who say that shells existed for a long time and were born at a distance from the sea, from the nature of the place and of the cycles, which can influence a place to produce such creatures--to them it may be answered: such an influence could not place the animals all on one line, except those of the same sort and age; and not the old with the young, nor some with an operculum and others without their operculum, nor some broken and others whole, nor some filled with sea-sand and large and small fragments of other shells inside the whole shells which remained open; nor the claws of crabs without the rest of their bodies; nor the shells of other species stuck on to them like animals which have moved about on them; since the traces of their track still remain, on the outside, after the manner of worms in the wood which they ate into. nor would there be found among them the bones and teeth of fish which some call arrows and others serpents' tongues, nor would so many [footnote: i. scilla argued against this hypothesis, which was still accepted in his days; see: _la vana speculazione, napoli_ .] portions of various animals be found all together if they had not been thrown on the sea shore. and the deluge cannot have carried them there, because things that are heavier than water do not float on the water. but these things could not be at so great a height if they had not been carried there by the water, such a thing being impossible from their weight. in places where the valleys have not been filled with salt sea water shells are never to be seen; as is plainly visible in the great valley of the arno above gonfolina; a rock formerly united to monte albano, in the form of a very high bank which kept the river pent up, in such a way that before it could flow into the sea, which was afterwards at its foot, it formed two great lakes; of which the first was where we now see the city of florence together with prato and pistoia, and monte albano. it followed the rest of its bank as far as where serravalle now stands. >from the val d'arno upwards, as far as arezzo, another lake was formed, which discharged its waters into the former lake. it was closed at about the spot where now we see girone, and occupied the whole of that valley above for a distance of miles in length. this valley received on its bottom all the soil brought down by the turbid waters. and this is still to be seen at the foot of prato magno; it there lies very high where the rivers have not worn it away. across this land are to be seen the deep cuts of the rivers that have passed there, falling from the great mountain of prato magno; in these cuts there are no vestiges of any shells or of marine soil. this lake was joined with that of perugia [footnote: see pi. cxiii.] a great quantity of shells are to be seen where the rivers flow into the sea, because on such shores the waters are not so salt owing to the admixture of the fresh water, which is poured into it. evidence of this is to be seen where, of old, the appenines poured their rivers into the adriatic sea; for there in most places great quantities of shells are to be found, among the mountains, together with bluish marine clay; and all the rocks which are torn off in such places are full of shells. the same may be observed to have been done by the arno when it fell from the rock of gonfolina into the sea, which was not so very far below; for at that time it was higher than the top of san miniato al tedesco, since at the highest summit of this the shores may be seen full of shells and oysters within its flanks. the shells did not extend towards val di nievole, because the fresh waters of the arno did not extend so far. that the shells were not carried away from the sea by the deluge, because the waters which came from the earth although they drew the sea towards the earth, were those which struck its depths; because the water which goes down from the earth, has a stronger current than that of the sea, and in consequence is more powerful, and it enters beneath the sea water and stirs the depths and carries with it all sorts of movable objects which are to be found in the earth, such as the above-mentioned shells and other similar things. and in proportion as the water which comes from the land is muddier than sea water it is stronger and heavier than this; therefore i see no way of getting the said shells so far in land, unless they had been born there. if you were to tell me that the river loire [footnote: leonardo has written era instead of loera or loira--perhaps under the mistaken idea that _lo_ was an article.],which traverses france covers when the sea rises more than eighty miles of country, because it is a district of vast plains, and the sea rises about braccia, and shells are found in this plain at the distance of miles from the sea; here i answer that the flow and ebb in our mediterranean sea does not vary so much; for at genoa it does not rise at all, and at venice but little, and very little in africa; and where it varies little it covers but little of the country. the course of the water of a river always rises higher in a place where the current is impeded; it behaves as it does where it is reduced in width to pass under the arches of a bridge. further researches ( - ). . a confutation of those who say that shells may have been carried to a distance of many days' journey from the sea by the deluge, which was so high as to be above those heights. i say that the deluge could not carry objects, native to the sea, up to the mountains, unless the sea had already increased so as to create inundations as high up as those places; and this increase could not have occurred because it would cause a vacuum; and if you were to say that the air would rush in there, we have already concluded that what is heavy cannot remain above what is light, whence of necessity we must conclude that this deluge was caused by rain water, so that all these waters ran to the sea, and the sea did not run up the mountains; and as they ran to the sea, they thrust the shells from the shore of the sea and did not draw them to wards themselves. and if you were then to say that the sea, raised by the rain water, had carried these shells to such a height, we have already said that things heavier than water cannot rise upon it, but remain at the bottom of it, and do not move unless by the impact of the waves. and if you were to say that the waves had carried them to such high spots, we have proved that the waves in a great depth move in a contrary direction at the bottom to the motion at the top, and this is shown by the turbidity of the sea from the earth washed down near its shores. anything which is lighter than the water moves with the waves, and is left on the highest level of the highest margin of the waves. anything which is heavier than the water moves, suspended in it, between the surface and the bottom; and from these two conclusions, which will be amply proved in their place, we infer that the waves of the surface cannot convey shells, since they are heavier than water. if the deluge had to carry shells three hundred and four hundred miles from the sea, it would have carried them mixed with various other natural objects heaped together; and we see at such distances oysters all together, and sea-snails, and cuttlefish, and all the other shells which congregate together, all to be found together and dead; and the solitary shells are found wide apart from each other, as we may see them on sea-shores every day. and if we find oysters of very large shells joined together and among them very many which still have the covering attached, indicating that they were left here by the sea, and still living when the strait of gibraltar was cut through; there are to be seen, in the mountains of parma and piacenza, a multitude of shells and corals, full of holes, and still sticking to the rocks there. when i was making the great horse for milan, a large sack full was brought to me in my workshop by certain peasants; these were found in that place and among them were many preserved in their first freshness. under ground, and under the foundations of buildings, timbers are found of wrought beams and already black. such were found in my time in those diggings at castel fiorentino. and these had been in that deep place before the sand carried by the arno into the sea, then covering the plain, had heen raised to such a height; and before the plains of casentino had been so much lowered, by the earth being constantly carried down from them. [footnote: these lines are written in the margin.] and if you were to say that these shells were created, and were continually being created in such places by the nature of the spot, and of the heavens which might have some influence there, such an opinion cannot exist in a brain of much reason; because here are the years of their growth, numbered on their shells, and there are large and small ones to be seen which could not have grown without food, and could not have fed without motion--and here they could not move [footnote: these lines are written in the margin.] . that in the drifts, among one and another, there are still to be found the traces of the worms which crawled upon them when they were not yet dry. and all marine clays still contain shells, and the shells are petrified together with the clay. from their firmness and unity some persons will have it that these animals were carried up to places remote from the sea by the deluge. another sect of ignorant persons declare that nature or heaven created them in these places by celestial influences, as if in these places we did not also find the bones of fishes which have taken a long time to grow; and as if, we could not count, in the shells of cockles and snails, the years and months of their life, as we do in the horns of bulls and oxen, and in the branches of plants that have never been cut in any part. besides, having proved by these signs the length of their lives, it is evident, and it must be admitted, that these animals could not live without moving to fetch their food; and we find in them no instrument for penetrating the earth or the rock where we find them enclosed. but how could we find in a large snail shell the fragments and portions of many other sorts of shells, of various sorts, if they had not been thrown there, when dead, by the waves of the sea like the other light objects which it throws on the earth? why do we find so many fragments and whole shells between layer and layer of stone, if this had not formerly been covered on the shore by a layer of earth thrown up by the sea, and which was afterwards petrified? and if the deluge before mentioned had carried them to these parts of the sea, you might find these shells at the boundary of one drift but not at the boundary between many drifts. we must also account for the winters of the years during which the sea multiplied the drifts of sand and mud brought down by the neighbouring rivers, by washing down the shores; and if you chose to say that there were several deluges to produce these rifts and the shells among them, you would also have to affirm that such a deluge took place every year. again, among the fragments of these shells, it must be presumed that in those places there were sea coasts, where all the shells were thrown up, broken, and divided, and never in pairs, since they are found alive in the sea, with two valves, each serving as a lid to the other; and in the drifts of rivers and on the shores of the sea they are found in fragments. and within the limits of the separate strata of rocks they are found, few in number and in pairs like those which were left by the sea, buried alive in the mud, which subsequently dried up and, in time, was petrified. . and if you choose to say that it was the deluge which carried these shells away from the sea for hundreds of miles, this cannot have happened, since that deluge was caused by rain; because rain naturally forces the rivers to rush towards the sea with all the things they carry with them, and not to bear the dead things of the sea shores to the mountains. and if you choose to say that the deluge afterwards rose with its waters above the mountains, the movement of the sea must have been so sluggish in its rise against the currents of the rivers, that it could not have carried, floating upon it, things heavier than itself; and even if it had supported them, in its receding it would have left them strewn about, in various spots. but how are we to account for the corals which are found every day towards monte ferrato in lombardy, with the holes of the worms in them, sticking to rocks left uncovered by the currents of rivers? these rocks are all covered with stocks and families of oysters, which as we know, never move, but always remain with one of their halves stuck to a rock, and the other they open to feed themselves on the animalcules that swim in the water, which, hoping to find good feeding ground, become the food of these shells. we do not find that the sand mixed with seaweed has been petrified, because the weed which was mingled with it has shrunk away, and this the po shows us every day in the debris of its banks. other problems ( - ). . why do we find the bones of great fishes and oysters and corals and various other shells and sea-snails on the high summits of mountains by the sea, just as we find them in low seas? . you now have to prove that the shells cannot have originated if not in salt water, almost all being of that sort; and that the shells in lombardy are at four levels, and thus it is everywhere, having been made at various times. and they all occur in valleys that open towards the seas. . >from the two lines of shells we are forced to say that the earth indignantly submerged under the sea and so the first layer was made; and then the deluge made the second. [footnote: this note is in the early writing of about -- . on the same sheet are the passages no. and . compare also no. . all the foregoing chapters are from manuscripts of about . this explains the want of connection and the contradiction between this and the foregoing texts.] vii. on the atmosphere. constituents of the atmosphere. . that the brightness of the air is occasioned by the water which has dissolved itself in it into imperceptible molecules. these, being lighted by the sun from the opposite side, reflect the brightness which is visible in the air; and the azure which is seen in it is caused by the darkness that is hidden beyond the air. [footnote: compare vol. i, no. .] on the motion of air ( -- ). . that the return eddies of wind at the mouth of certain valleys strike upon the waters and scoop them out in a great hollow, whirl the water into the air in the form of a column, and of the colour of a cloud. and i saw this thing happen on a sand bank in the arno, where the sand was hollowed out to a greater depth than the stature of a man; and with it the gravel was whirled round and flung about for a great space; it appeared in the air in the form of a great bell-tower; and the top spread like the branches of a pine tree, and then it bent at the contact of the direct wind, which passed over from the mountains. . the element of fire acts upon a wave of air in the same way as the air does on water, or as water does on a mass of sand --that is earth; and their motions are in the same proportions as those of the motors acting upon them. . of motion. i ask whether the true motion of the clouds can be known by the motion of their shadows; and in like manner of the motion of the sun. . to know better the direction of the winds. [footnote: in connection with this text i may here mention a hygrometer, drawn and probably invented by leonardo. a facsimile of this is given in vol. i, p. with the note: _'modi di pesare l'arie eddi sapere quando s'a arrompere il tepo'_ (mode of weighing the air and of knowing when the weather will change); by the sponge _"spugnea"_ is written.] the globe an organism. . nothing originates in a spot where there is no sentient, vegetable and rational life; feathers grow upon birds and are changed every year; hairs grow upon animals and are changed every year, excepting some parts, like the hairs of the beard in lions, cats and their like. the grass grows in the fields, and the leaves on the trees, and every year they are, in great part, renewed. so that we might say that the earth has a spirit of growth; that its flesh is the soil, its bones the arrangement and connection of the rocks of which the mountains are composed, its cartilage the tufa, and its blood the springs of water. the pool of blood which lies round the heart is the ocean, and its breathing, and the increase and decrease of the blood in the pulses, is represented in the earth by the flow and ebb of the sea; and the heat of the spirit of the world is the fire which pervades the earth, and the seat of the vegetative soul is in the fires, which in many parts of the earth find vent in baths and mines of sulphur, and in volcanoes, as at mount aetna in sicily, and in many other places. [footnote: compare no. .] _xvii._ _topographical notes._ _a large part of the texts published in this section might perhaps have found their proper place in connection with the foregoing chapters on physical geography. but these observations on physical geography, of whatever kind they may be, as soon as they are localised acquire a special interest and importance and particularly as bearing on the question whether leonardo himself made the observations recorded at the places mentioned or merely noted the statements from hearsay. in a few instances he himself tells us that he writes at second hand. in some cases again, although the style and expressions used make it seem highly probable that he has derived his information from others-- though, as it seems to me, these cases are not very numerous--we find, on the other hand, among these topographical notes a great number of observations, about which it is extremely difficult to form a decided opinion. of what the master's life and travels may have been throughout his sixty-seven years of life we know comparatively little; for a long course of time, and particularly from about to , we do not even know with certainty that he was living in italy. thus, from a biographical point of view a very great interest attaches to some of the topographical notes, and for this reason it seemed that it would add to their value to arrange them in a group by themselves. leonardo's intimate knowledge with places, some of which were certainly remote from his native home, are of importance as contributing to decide the still open question as to the extent of leonardo's travels. we shall find in these notes a confirmation of the view, that the mss. in which the topographical notes occur are in only a very few instances such diaries as may have been in use during a journey. these notes are mostly found in the mss. books of his later and quieter years, and it is certainly remarkable that leonardo is very reticent as to the authorities from whom he quotes his facts and observations: for instance, as to the straits of gibraltar, the nile, the taurus mountains and the tigris and euphrates. is it likely that he, who declared that in all scientific research, his own experience should be the foundation of his statements (see xix philosophy no. -- ,) should here have made an exception to this rule without mentioning it?_ _as for instance in the discussion as to the equilibrium of the mass of water in the mediterranean sea--a subject which, it may be observed, had at that time attracted the interest and study of hardly any other observer. the acute remarks, in nos. -- , on the presence of shells at the tops of mountains, suffice to prove--as it seems to me--that it was not in his nature to allow himself to be betrayed into wide generalisations, extending beyond the limits of his own investigations, even by such brilliant results of personal study._ _most of these topographical notes, though suggesting very careful and thorough research, do not however, as has been said, afford necessarily indisputable evidence that that research was leonardo's own. but it must be granted that in more than one instance probability is in favour of this idea._ _among the passages which treat somewhat fully of the topography of eastern places by far the most interesting is a description of the taurus mountains; but as this text is written in the style of a formal report and, in the original, is associated with certain letters which give us the history of its origin, i have thought it best not to sever it from that connection. it will be found under no. xxi (letters)._ _that florence, and its neighbourhood, where leonardo spent his early years, should be nowhere mentioned except in connection with the projects for canals, which occupied his attention for some short time during the first ten years of the xvith century, need not surprise us. the various passages relating to the construction of canals in tuscany, which are put together at the beginning, are immediately followed by those which deal with schemes for canals in lombardy; and after these come notes on the city and vicinity of milan as well as on the lakes of north italy._ _the notes on some towns of central italy which leonardo visited in , when in the service of cesare borgia, are reproduced here in the same order as in the note book used during these travels (ms. l., institut de france). these notes have but little interest in themselves excepting as suggesting his itinerary. the maps of the districts drawn by leonardo at the time are more valuable (see no. note). the names on these maps are not written from right to left, but in the usual manner, and we are permitted to infer that they were made in obedience to some command, possibly for the use of cesare borgia himself; the fact that they remained nevertheless in leonardo's hands is not surprising when we remember the sudden political changes and warlike events of the period. there can be no doubt that these maps, which are here published for the first time, are original in the strictest sense of the word, that is to say drawn from observations of the places themselves; this is proved by the fact--among others--that we find among his manuscripts not only the finished maps themselves but the rough sketches and studies for them. and it would perhaps be difficult to point out among the abundant contributions to geographical knowledge published during the xvith century, any maps at all approaching these in accuracy and finish._ _the interesting map of the world, so far as it was then known, which is among the leonardo mss. at windsor (published in the_ 'archaeologia' _vol. xi) cannot be attributed to the master, as the marchese girolamo d'adda has sufficiently proved; it has not therefore been reproduced here._ _such of leonardo's observations on places in italy as were made before or after his official travels as military engineer to cesare borgia, have been arranged in alphabetical order, under nos. - . the most interesting are those which relate to the alps and the appenines, nos. - ._ _most of the passages in which france is mentioned have hitherto remained unknown, as well as those which treat of the countries bordering on the mediterranean, which come at the end of this section. though these may be regarded as of a more questionable importance in their bearing on the biography of the master than those which mention places in france, it must be allowed that they are interesting as showing the prominent place which the countries of the east held in his geographical studies. he never once alludes to the discovery of america._ i. italy. canals in connection with the arno ( - ). . canal of florence. sluices should be made in the valley of la chiana at arezzo, so that when, in the summer, the arno lacks water, the canal may not remain dry: and let this canal be braccia wide at the bottom, and at the top , and braccia deep, or , so that two of these braccia may flow to the mills and the meadows, which will benefit the country; and prato, pistoia and pisa, as well as florence, will gain two hundred thousand ducats a year, and will lend a hand and money to this useful work; and the lucchese the same, for the lake of sesto will be navigable; i shall direct it to prato and pistoia, and cut through serravalle and make an issue into the lake; for there will be no need of locks or supports, which are not lasting and so will always be giving trouble in working at them and keeping them up. and know that in digging this canal where it is braccia deep, it will cost dinari the square braccio; for twice the depth dinari, if you are making braccia [footnote: this passage is illustrated by a slightly sketched map, on which these places are indicated from west to east: pisa, luccha, lago, seravalle, pistoja, prato, firenze.] and there are but banks; that is to say one from the bottom of the trench to the surface of the edges of it, and the other from these edges to the top of the ridge of earth which will be raised on the margin of the bank. and if this bank were of double the depth only the first bank will be increased, that is braccia increased by half the first cost; that is to say that if at first dinari were paid for banks, for it would come to , at dinari the bank, if the trench measured braccia at the bottom; again, if the trench were braccia wide and deep, coming to lire for the work, milan dinari the square braccio; a trench which was braccia at the bottom would come to dinari the square braccio. . >from the wall of the arno at [the gate of] la giustizia to the bank of the arno at sardigna where the walls are, to the mills, is braccia, that is miles and braccia and beyond the arno is braccia. [footnote: . _giustizia_. by this the porta della giustizia seems to be meant; from the xvth to the xvith centuries it was also commonly known as porta guelfa, porta san francesco del renaio, porta nuova, and porta reale. it was close to the arno opposite to the porta san niccolo, which still exists.] . by guiding the arno above and below a treasure will be found in each acre of ground by whomsoever will. . the wall of the old houses runs towards the gate of san nicolo. [footnote: by the side of this text there is an indistinct sketch, resembling that given under no. . on the bank is written the word _casace_. there then follows in the original a passage of lines in which the consequences of the windings of the river are discussed. a larger but equally hasty diagram on the same page represents the shores of the arno inside florence as in two parallel lines. four horizontal lines indicate the bridges. by the side these measures are stated in figures: i. (at the ponte alla carraja): _ --largho br. e di spoda e di pile e a pilastri;_ . (at the ponte s. trinita); _l --largho br. e di spode he di pilastri for delle spode e pilastri so ;_ . (at the ponte vecchio); _pote lung br. e largo;_ . (at the ponte alle grazie): _ ellargo e di spode e di pili._ there is, in ms. w. l. l b, a sketched plan of florence, with the following names of gates: _nicholo--saminiato--giorgo--ghanolini--porta san fredian --prato--faenza--ghallo--pinti--giustitia_.] . the ruined wall is braccia; is the wall remaining with the mill; braccia were broken in years by bisarno. . they do not know why the arno will never remain in a channel. it is because the rivers which flow into it deposit earth where they enter, and wear it away on the opposite side, bending the river in that direction. the arno flows for miles between la caprona and leghorn; and for through the marshes, which extend miles, and from la caprona up the river, which makes ; by the arno from florence beyond miles; to vico miles, and the canal is ; from florence to fucechio it is miles by the river arno. miles by the arno from florence to vico; by the pistoia canal it is miles. thus it is miles shorter by the canal than by the arno. [footnote: this passage is written by the side of a map washed in indian ink, of the course of the arno; it is evidently a sketch for a completer map. these investigations may possibly be connected with the following documents. _francesco guiducci alla balia di firenze. dal campo contro pisa_ _luglio_ (_archivio di stato, firenze, lettere alla balia_; published by j. gaye, _carteggio inedito d'artisti, firenze_ , _tom. ii_, p. ): _ex castris, franciscus ghuiduccius,_ . _jul._ . _appresso fu qui hieri con una di v. signoria alexandro degli albizi insieme con leonardo da vinci et certi altri, et veduto el disegno insieme con el ghovernatore, doppo molte discussioni et dubii conclusesi che l'opera fussi molto al proposito, o si veramente arno volgersi qui, o restarvi con un canale, che almeno vieterebbe che le colline da nemici non potrebbono essere offese; come tucto referiranno loro a bocha v. s._ and, _archivio di stato, firenze, libro d'entrata e uscita di cassa de' magnifici signori di luglio e agosto_ _a_ _t.: andata di leonardo al campo sotto pisa. spese extraordinarie dieno dare a di xxvi di luglio l. lvi sol. xii per loro a giovanni piffero; e sono per tanti, asegnia avere spexi in vetture di sei chavalli a spese di vitto per andare chon lionardo da vinci a livellare arno in quello di pisa per levallo del lilo suo._ (published by milanesi, _archivio storico italiano, serie iii, tom. xvi._} vasari asserts: _(leonardo) fu il primo ancora, che giovanetto discorresse sopra il fiume d'arno per metterlo in canale da pisa a fiorenza_ (ed. sansoni, iv, ). the passage above is in some degree illustrated by the map on pl. cxii, where the course of the arno westward from empoli is shown.] . the eddy made by the mensola, when the arno is low and the mensola full. [footnote: _mensola_ is a mountain stream which falls into the arno about a mile and a half above florence. a=arno, i=isola, m=mvgone, p=pesa, n=mesola.] . that the river which is to be turned from one place to another must be coaxed and not treated roughly or with violence; and to do this a sort of floodgate should be made in the river, and then lower down one in front of it and in like manner a third, fourth and fifth, so that the river may discharge itself into the channel given to it, or that by this means it may be diverted from the place it has damaged, as was done in flanders--as i was told by niccolo di forsore. how to protect and repair the banks washed by the water, as below the island of cocomeri. ponte rubaconte (fig. ); below [the palaces] bisticci and canigiani (fig. ). above the flood gate of la giustizia (fig. ); _a b_ is a sand bank opposite the end of the island of the cocomeri in the middle of the arno (fig. ). [footnote: the course of the river arno is also discussed in nos. and .] canals in the milanese ( - ). . the canal of san cristofano at milan made may rd . [footnote: this observation is written above a washed pen and ink drawing which has been published as tav. vi in the _,,saggio."_ the editors of that work explain the drawing as _"uno studio di bocche per estrazione d'acqua."_] . of the canal of martesana. by making the canal of martesana the water of the adda is greatly diminished by its distribution over many districts for the irrigation of the fields. a remedy for this would be to make several little channels, since the water drunk up by the earth is of no more use to any one, nor mischief neither, because it is taken from no one; and by making these channels the water which before was lost returns again and is once more serviceable and useful to men. [footnote: _"el navilio di martagano"_ is also mentioned in a note written in red chalk, ms. h a leonardo has, as it seems, little to do with lodovico il moro's scheme to render this canal navigable. the canal had been made in by bertonino da novara. il moro issued his degree in , but leonardo's notes about this canal were, with the exception of one (no. ), written about sixteen years later.] . no canal which is fed by a river can be permanent if the river whence it originates is not wholly closed up, like the canal of martesana which is fed by the ticino. . >from the beginning of the canal to the mill. >from the beginning of the canal of brivio to the mill of travaglia is trabochi, that is braccia, which is more than miles and two thirds; and here the canal is braccia higher than the surface of the water of the adda, giving a fall of two inches in every hundred trabochi; and at that spot we propose to take the opening of our canal. [footnote: the following are written on the sketches: at the place marked _n: navilio da dacquiue_ (canal of running water); at _m: molin del travaglia_ (mill of travaglia); at _r: rochetta ssanta maria_ (small rock of santa maria); at _a: adda;_ at _l: lagho di lecho ringorgato alli corni in adda,--concha perpetua_ (lake of lecco overflowing at tre corni, in adda,-- a permanent sluice). near the second sketch, referring to the sluice near _q: qui la chatena ttalie d'u peso_ (here the chain is in one piece). at _m_ in the lower sketch: _mol del travaglia, nel cavare la concha il tereno ara chotrapero co cassa d'acqua._ (mill of travaglia, in digging out the sluice the soil will have as a counterpoise a vessel of water).] . if it be not reported there that this is to be a public canal, it will be necessary to pay for the land; [footnote : _il re_. louis xii or francis i of france. it is hardly possible to doubt that the canals here spoken of were intended to be in the milanese. compare with this passage the rough copy of a letter by leonardo, to the _"presidente dell' ufficio regolatore dell' acqua"_ on no. . see also the note to no. , . .] and the king will pay it by remitting the taxes for a year. estimates and preparatory studies for canals ( . ). . canal. the canal which may be braccia wide at the bottom and at the top, we may say is on the average braccia wide, and if it is braccia deep, at dinari the square braccia; it will only cost ducats, to excavate by the mile, if the square braccio is calculated in ordinary braccia; but if the braccia are those used in measuring land, of which every are equal to / and if by the mile we understand three thousand ordinary braccia; turned into land braccia, these braccia will lack / ; there remain braccia, which at dinari the braccio will amount to ducats a mile. at dinari the square braccio, the mile will amount to / ducats so that the excavation of miles of the canal will amount to / ducats. . to make the great canal, first make the smaller one and conduct into it the waters which by a wheel will help to fill the great one. notes on buildings in milan ( - ) . indicate the centre of milan. moforte--porta resa--porta nova--strada nova--navilio--porta cumana--barco--porta giovia--porta vercellina--porta sco anbrogio--porta tesinese--torre dell' imperatore-- porta lodovica--acqua. [footnote: see pl. cix. the original sketch is here reduced to about half its size. the gates of the town are here named, beginning at the right hand and following the curved line. in the bird's eye view of milan below, the cathedral is plainly recognisable in the middle; to the right is the tower of san gottardo. the square, above the number , is the lazzaretto, which was begun in . on the left the group of buildings of the _'castello'_ will be noticed. on the sketched plan of florence (see no. note) leonardo has written on the margin the following names of gates of milan: vercellina --ticinese--ludovica--romana--orientale-- nova--beatrice--cumana--compare too no. , . , .] . the moat of milan. canal braccia wide. the castle with the moats full. the filling of the moats of the castle of milan. . the bath. to heat the water for the stove of the duchess take four parts of cold water to three parts of hot water. [footnote: _duchessa di milano_, beatrice d'este, wife of ludovico il moro to whom she was married, in . she died in june .] . in the cathedral at the pulley of the nail of the cross. item. to place the mass _v r_ in the... [footnote: on this passage amoretti remarks _(memorie storiche_ chap. ix): _nell'anno stesso lo veggiamo formare un congegno di carucole e di corde, con cui trasportare in piu venerabile e piu sicuro luogo, cioe nell'ultima arcata della nave di mezzo della metropolitana, la sacra reliquia del santo chiodo, che ivi ancor si venera. al fol. del codice segnato q. r. in , egli ci ha lasciata di tal congegno una doppia figura, cioe una di quattro carucole, e una di tre colle rispettive corde, soggiugnandovi: in domo alla carucola del chiodo della croce._ amoretti's views as to the mark on the ms, and the date when it was written are, it may be observed, wholly unfounded. the ms. l, in which it occurs, is of the year , and it is very unlikely that leonardo was in milan at that time; this however would not prevent the remark, which is somewhat obscure, from applying to the cathedral at milan.] . of the force of the vacuum formed in a moment. i saw, at milan, a thunderbolt fall on the tower della credenza on its northern side, and it descended with a slow motion down that side, and then at once parted from that tower and carried with it and tore away from that wall a space of braccia wide and two deep; and this wall was braccia thick and was built of thin and small old bricks; and this was dragged out by the vacuum which the flame of the thunderbolt had caused, &c. [footnote: with reference to buildings at milan see also nos. and , and pl. xcv, no. (explained on p. ), pl. c (explained on pages - ). see also pages , and .] remarks on natural phenomena in and near milan ( . ). . i have already been to see a great variety (of atmospheric effects). and lately over milan towards lago maggiore i saw a cloud in the form of an immense mountain full of rifts of glowing light, because the rays of the sun, which was already close to the horizon and red, tinged the cloud with its own hue. and this cloud attracted to it all the little clouds that were near while the large one did not move from its place; thus it retained on its summit the reflection of the sunlight till an hour and a half after sunset, so immensely large was it; and about two hours after sunset such a violent wind arose, that it was really tremendous and unheard of. [footnote: _di arie_ is wanting in the original but may safely be inserted in the context, as the formation of clouds is under discussion before this text.] . on the th day of december at o'clock a. m. fire was set to the place. on the l th day of december at o'clock a. m. this second fire was kindled by the swiss at milan at the place called dcxc. [footnote: with these two texts, (l. -- and l. -- are in the original side by side) there are sketches of smoke wreaths in red chalk.] note on pavia. . the chimneys of the castle of pavia have rows of openings and from each to the other is one braccio. [footnote: other notes relating to pavia occur on p. and p. (pl. xcviii, no. ). compare no. , .] notes on the sforzesca near vigevano ( - ). . on the nd day of february . at sforzesca i drew twenty five steps, / braccia to each, and braccia wide. [footnote: see pl. cx, no. . the rest of the notes on this page refer to the motion of water. on the lower sketch we read: _br._ (four braccia) and _giara_ (for _ghiaja_, sand, gravel).] . the vineyards of vigevano on the th day of march . [footnote: on one side there is an effaced sketch in red chalk.] . to lock up a butteris at vigevano. . again if the lowest part of the bank which lies across the current of the waters is made in deep and wide steps, after the manner of stairs, the waters which, in their course usually fall perpendicularly from the top of such a place to the bottom, and wear away the foundations of this bank can no longer descend with a blow of too great a force; and i find the example of this in the stairs down which the water falls in the fields at sforzesca at vigevano over which the running water falls for a height of braccia. . stair of vigevano below la sforzesca, steps, / braccio high and / braccio wide, down which the water falls, so as not to wear away anything at the end of its fall; by these steps so much soil has come down that it has dried up a pool; that is to say it has filled it up and a pool of great depth has been turned into meadows. notes on the north italian lake. ( - ) . in many places there are streams of water which swell for six hours and ebb for six hours; and i, for my part, have seen one above the lake of como called fonte pliniana, which increases and ebbs, as i have said, in such a way as to turn the stones of two mills; and when it fails it falls so low that it is like looking at water in a deep pit. [footnote: the fountain is known by this name to this day: it is near torno, on the eastern shore of como. the waters still rise and fall with the flow and ebb of the tide as pliny described it (epist. iv, ; hist. nat. ii, ).] . lake of como. valley of chiavenna. above the lake of como towards germany is the valley of chiavenna where the river mera flows into this lake. here are barren and very high mountains, with huge rocks. among these mountains are to be found the water-birds called gulls. here grow fir trees, larches and pines. deer, wildgoats, chamois, and terrible bears. it is impossible to climb them without using hands and feet. the peasants go there at the time of the snows with great snares to make the bears fall down these rocks. these mountains which very closely approach each other are parted by the river. they are to the right and left for the distance of miles throughout of the same nature. >from mile to mile there are good inns. above on the said river there are waterfalls of braccia in height, which are fine to see; and there is good living at soldi the reckoning. this river brings down a great deal of timber. val sasina. val sasina runs down towards italy; this is almost the same form and character. there grow here many _mappello_ and there are great ruins and falls of water [footnote : the meaning of _mappello_ is unknown.]. valley of introzzo. this valley produces a great quantity of firs, pines and larches; and from here ambrogio fereri has his timber brought down; at the head of the valtellina are the mountains of bormio, terrible and always covered with snow; marmots (?) are found there. bellaggio. opposite the castle bellaggio there is the river latte, which falls from a height of more than braccia from the source whence it springs, perpendicularly, into the lake with an inconceivable roar and noise. this spring flows only in august and september. valtellina. valtellina, as it is called, is a valley enclosed in high and terrible mountains; it produces much strong wine, and there is so much cattle that the natives conclude that more milk than wine grows there. this is the valley through which the adda passes, which first runs more than miles through germany; this river breeds the fish _temolo_ which live on silver, of which much is to be found in its sands. in this country every one can sell bread and wine, and the wine is worth at most one soldo the bottle and a pound of veal one soldo, and salt ten dinari and butter the same and their pound is ounces, and eggs are one soldo the lot. . at bormio. at bormio are the baths;--about eight miles above como is the pliniana, which increases and ebbs every six hours, and its swell supplies water for two mills; and its ebbing makes the spring dry up; two miles higher up there is nesso, a place where a river falls with great violence into a vast rift in the mountain. these excursions are to be made in the month of may. and the largest bare rocks that are to be found in this part of the country are the mountains of mandello near to those of lecco, and of gravidona towards bellinzona, miles from lecco, and those of the valley of chiavenna; but the greatest of all is that of mandello, which has at its base an opening towards the lake, which goes down steps, and there at all times is ice and wind. in val sasina. in val sasina, between vimognio and introbbio, to the right hand, going in by the road to lecco, is the river troggia which falls from a very high rock, and as it falls it goes underground and the river ends there. miles farther we find the buildings of the mines of copper and silver near a place called pra' santo pietro, and mines of iron and curious things. la grigna is the highest mountain there is in this part, and it is quite bare. [footnote: and . from the character of the handwriting we may conclude that these observations were made in leonardo's youth; and i should infer from their contents, that they were notes made in anticipation of a visit to the places here described, and derived from some person (unknown to us) who had given him an account of them.] . the lake of pusiano flows into the lake of segrino [footnote : the statement about the lake segrino is incorrect; it is situated in the valle assina, above the lake of pusiano.] and of annone and of sala. the lake of annone is braccia higher at the surface of its water than the surface of the water of the lake of lecco, and the lake of pusiano is braccia higher than the lake of annone, which added to the afore said braccia make braccia and this is the greatest height of the surface of the lake of pusiano above the surface of the lake of lecco. [footnote: this text has in the original a slight sketch to illustrate it.] . at santa maria in the valley of ravagnate [footnote : _ravagnate_ (leonardo writes _ravagna_) in the brianza is between oggiono and brivio, south of the lake of como. m. ravaisson avails himself of this note to prove his hypothesis that leonardo paid two visits to france. see gazette des beaux arts, pag. : _au recto du meme feuillet, on lit encore une note relative a une vallee "nemonti brigatia"; il me semble qu'il s'agit bien des monts de briancon, le brigantio des anciens. briancon est sur la route de lyon en italie. ce fut par le mont viso que passerent, en aout , les troupes francaises qui allaient remporter la victoire de marignan. leonard de vinci, ingenieur de francois ier, comme il l'avait ete de louis xii, aurait-il ete pour quelque chose dans le plan du celebre passage des alpes, qui eut lieu en aout , et a la suite duquel on le vit accompagner partout le chevaleresque vainqueur? auraitil ete appele par le jeune roi, de rome ou l'artiste etait alors, des son avenement au trone?_] in the mountains of brianza are the rods of chestnuts of braccia and one out of an average of will be braccia. at varallo di ponbia near to sesto on the ticino the quinces are white, large and hard. [footnote : varallo di ponbia, about ten miles south of arona is distinct from varallo the chief town in the val di sesia.] notes on places in central italy, visited in ( - ). . pigeon-house at urbino, the th day of july . [footnote: an indistinct sketch is introduced with this text, in the original, in which the word _scolatoro_ (conduit) is written.] . made by the sea at piombino. [footnote: below the sketch there are eleven lines of text referring to the motion of waves.] . acquapendente is near orvieto. [footnote: _acquapendente_ is about miles west of orvieto, and is to the right in the map on pl. cxiii, near the lake of bolsena.] . the rock of cesena. [footnote: see pl. xciv no. , the lower sketch. the explanation of the upper sketch is given on p. .] . siena, _a b_ braccia, _a c_ braccia. steps at [the castle of] urbino. [footnote: see pl. cx no. ; compare also no. .] . the bell of siena, that is the manner of its movement, and the place of the attachment of the clapper. [footnote: the text is accompanied by an indistinct sketch.] . on st. mary's day in the middle of august, at cesena, . [footnote: see pl. cx, no. .] . stairs of the [palace of the] count of urbino,--rough. [footnote: the text is accompanied by a slight sketch.] . at the fair of san lorenzo at cesena. . . windows at cesena. [footnote: there are four more lines of text which refer to a slightly sketched diagram.] . at porto cesenatico, on the th of september at o'clock a. m. the way in which bastions ought to project beyond the walls of the towers to defend the outer talus; so that they may not be taken by artillery. [footnote: an indistinct sketch, accompanies this passage.] . the rock of the harbour of cesena is four points towards the south west from cesena. . in romagna, the realm of all stupidity, vehicles with four wheels are used, of which o the two in front are small and two high ones are behind; an arrangement which is very unfavourable to the motion, because on the fore wheels more weight is laid than on those behind, as i showed in the first of the th on "elements". . thus grapes are carried at cesena. the number of the diggers of the ditches is [arranged] pyramidically. [footnote: a sketch, representing a hook to which two bunches of grapes are hanging, refers to these first two lines. cesena is mentioned again fol. a: _carro da cesena_ (a cart from cesena).] . there might be a harmony of the different falls of water as you saw them at the fountain of rimini on the th day of august, . . the fortress at urbino. [footnote: . in the original the text is written inside the sketch in the place here marked _n_.] . imola, as regards bologna, is five points from the west, towards the north west, at a distance of miles. castel san piero is seen from imola at four points from the west towards the north west, at a distance of miles. faenza stands with regard to imola between east and south east at a distance of ten miles. forli stands with regard to faenza between south east and east at a distance of miles from imola and ten from faenza. forlimpopoli lies in the same direction at miles from imola. bertinoro, as regards imola, is five points from the east to wards the south east, at miles. . imola as regards bologna is five points from the west towards the north west at a distance of miles. castel san pietro lies exactly north west of imola, at a distance of miles. faenza, as regards imola lies exactly half way between the east and south east at a distance of miles; and forli lies in the same direction from imola at a distance of miles; and forlimpopolo lies in the same direction from forli at a distance of miles. bertinoro is seen from imola two points from the east towards the south east at a distance of miles. [footnote: leonardo inserted this passage on the margin of the circular plan, in water colour, of imola--see pl. cxi no. .--in the original the fields surrounding the town are light green; the moat, which surrounds the fortifications and the windings of the river santerno, are light blue. the parts, which have come out blackish close to the river are yellow ochre in the original. the dark groups of houses inside the town are red. at the four points of the compass drawn in the middle of the town leonardo has written (from right to left): _mezzodi_ (south) at the top; to the left _scirocho_ (south east), _levante_ (east), _greco_ (north east), _septantrione_ (north), _maesstro_ (north west), _ponente_ (west) _libecco_ (south west). the arch in which the plan is drawn is, in the original, centimetres across. at the beginning of october cesare borgia was shut up in imola by a sudden revolt of the condottieri, and it was some weeks before he could release himself from this state of siege (see gregorovius, _geschichte der stadt rom im mittelalter_, vol. vii, book xiii, , ). besides this incident imola plays no important part in the history of the time. i therefore think myself fully justified in connecting this map, which is at windsor, with the siege of and with leonardo's engagements in the service of cesare borgia, because a comparison of these texts, nos. and , raise, i believe, the hypothesis to a certainty.] . >from bonconventi to casa nova are miles, from casa nova to chiusi miles, from chiusi to perugia, from, perugia to santa maria degli angeli, and then to fuligno. [footnote: most of the places here described lie within the district shown in the maps on pl. cxiii.] . on the first of august , the library at pesaro. . of painting. on the tops and sides of hills foreshorten the shape of the ground and its divisions, but give its proper shape to what is turned towards you. [footnote: this passage evidently refers to the making of maps, such as pl. cxii, cxiii, and cxiv. there is no mention of such works, it is true, excepting in this one passage of ms. l. but this can scarcely be taken as evidence against my view that leonardo busied himself very extensively at that time in the construction of maps; and all the less since the foregoing chapters clearly prove that at a time so full of events leonardo would only now and then commit his observations to paper, in the ms. l. by the side of this text we find, in the original, a very indistinct sketch, perhaps a plan of a position. instead of this drawing i have here inserted a much clearer sketch of a position from the same ms., l. b and a. they are the only drawings of landscape, it may be noted, which occur at all in that ms.] alessandria in piedmont ( . ). . at candia in lombardy, near alessandria della paglia, in making a well for messer gualtieri [footnote : messer gualtieri, the same probably as is mentioned in nos. and .] of candia, the skeleton of a very large boat was found about braccia underground; and as the timber was black and fine, it seemed good to the said messer gualtieri to have the mouth of the well lengthened in such a way as that the ends of the boat should be uncovered. . at alessandria della paglia in lombardy there are no stones for making lime of, but such as are mixed up with an infinite variety of things native to the sea, which is now more than miles away. the alps ( - ). . at monbracco, above saluzzo,--a mile above the certosa, at the foot of monte viso, there is a quarry of flakey stone, which is as white as carrara marble, without a spot, and as hard as porphyry or even harder; of which my worthy gossip, master benedetto the sculptor, has promised to give me a small slab, for the colours, the second day of january . [footnote: saluzzo at the foot of the alps south of turin.] [footnote . .: _maestro benedetto scultore_; probably some native of northern italy acquainted with the place here described. hardly the florentine sculptor benedetto da majano. amoretti had published this passage, and m. ravaisson who gave a french translation of it in the _gazette des beaux arts_ ( , pag. ), remarks as follows: _le maitre sculpteur que leonard appelle son "compare" ne serait-il pas benedetto da majano, un de ceux qui jugerent avec lui de la place a donner au david de michel-ange, et de qui le louvre a acquis recemment un buste d'apres philippe strozzi?_ to this it may be objected that benedetto da majano had already lain in his grave fourteen years, in the year , when he is supposed to have given the promise to leonardo. the colours may have been given to the sculptor benedetto and the stone may have been in payment for them. >from the description of the stone here given we may conclude that it is repeated from hearsay of the sculptor's account of it. i do not understand how, from this observation, it is possible to conclude that leonardo was on the spot.] . that there are springs which suddenly break forth in earthquakes or other convulsions and suddenly fail; and this happened in a mountain in savoy where certain forests sank in and left a very deep gap, and about four miles from here the earth opened itself like a gulf in the mountain, and threw out a sudden and immense flood of water which scoured the whole of a little valley of the tilled soil, vineyards and houses, and did the greatest mischief, wherever it overflowed. . the river arve, a quarter of a mile from geneva in savoy, where the fair is held on midsummerday in the village of saint gervais. [footnote: an indistinct sketch is to be seen by the text.] . and this may be seen, as i saw it, by any one going up monbroso [footnote: i have vainly enquired of every available authority for a solution of the mystery as to what mountain is intended by the name monboso (comp. vol. i nos. and ). it seems most obvious to refer it to monte rosa. rosa derived from the keltic ros which survives in breton and in gaelic, meaning, in its first sense, a mountain spur, but which also--like horn--means a very high peak; thus monte rosa would mean literally the high peak.], a peak of the alps which divide france from italy. the base of this mountain gives birth to the rivers which flow in four different directions through the whole of europe. and no mountain has its base at so great a height as this, which lifts itself above almost all the clouds; and snow seldom falls there, but only hail in the summer, when the clouds are highest. and this hail lies [unmelted] there, so that if it were not for the absorption of the rising and falling clouds, which does not happen more than twice in an age, an enormous mass of ice would be piled up there by the layers of hail, and in the middle of july i found it very considerable; and i saw the sky above me quite dark, and the sun as it fell on the mountain was far brighter here than in the plains below, because a smaller extent of atmosphere lay between the summit of the mountain and the sun. [footnote : _in una eta._ this is perhaps a slip of the pen on leonardo's part and should be read _estate_ (summer).] leic. b] . in the mountains of verona the red marble is found all mixed with cockle shells turned into stone; some of them have been filled at the mouth with the cement which is the substance of the stone; and in some parts they have remained separate from the mass of the rock which enclosed them, because the outer covering of the shell had interposed and had not allowed them to unite with it; while in other places this cement had petrified those which were old and almost stripped the outer skin. . bridge of goertz-wilbach (?). [footnote: there is a slight sketch with this text, leonardo seems to have intended to suggest, with a few pen-strokes, the course of the isonzo and of the wipbach in the vicinity of gorizia (goerz). he himself says in another place that he had been in friuli (see no. . ).] the appenins ( - ). . that part of the earth which was lightest remained farthest from the centre of the world; and that part of the earth became the lightest over which the greatest quantity of water flowed. and therefore that part became lightest where the greatest number of rivers flow; like the alps which divide germany and france from italy; whence issue the rhone flowing southwards, and the rhine to the north. the danube or tanoia towards the north east, and the po to the east, with innumerable rivers which join them, and which always run turbid with the soil carried by them to the sea. the shores of the sea are constantly moving towards the middle of the sea and displace it from its original position. the lowest portion of the mediterranean will be reserved for the bed and current of the nile, the largest river that flows into that sea. and with it are grouped all its tributaries, which at first fell into the sea; as may be seen with the po and its tributaries, which first fell into that sea, which between the appenines and the german alps was united to the adriatic sea. that the gallic alps are the highest part of europe. . and of these i found some in the rocks of the high appenines and mostly at the rock of la vernia. [footnote : _sasso della vernia._ the frowning rock between the sources of the arno and the tiber, as dante describes this mountain, which is metres in height. this note is written by the side of that given as no. ; but their connection does not make it clear what leonardo's purpose was in writing it.] . at parma, at 'la campana' on the twenty-fifth of october . [footnote : _capano_, an inn.] a note on the petrifactions, or fossils near parma will be found under no. .] . a method for drying the marsh of piombino. [footnote: there is a slight sketch with this text in the original.--piombino is also mentioned in nos. , l. - (compare pl. xxxv, , below). also in no. .] . the shepherds in the romagna at the foot of the apennines make peculiar large cavities in the mountains in the form of a horn, and on one side they fasten a horn. this little horn becomes one and the same with the said cavity and thus they produce by blowing into it a very loud noise. [footnote: as to the romagna see also no. .] . a spring may be seen to rise in sicily which at certain times of the year throws out chesnut leaves in quantities; but in sicily chesnuts do not grow, hence it is evident that that spring must issue from some abyss in italy and then flow beneath the sea to break forth in sicily. [footnote: the chesnut tree is very common in sicily. in writing _cicilia_ leonardo meant perhaps cilicia.] ii. france. . germany. france. a. austria, a. picardy. b. saxony. b. normandy. c. nuremberg. c. dauphine. d. flanders. spain. a. biscay. b. castille. c. galicia. d. portugal. e. taragona. f. granada. [footnote: two slightly sketched maps, one of europe the other of spain, are at the side of these notes.] . perpignan. roanne. lyons. paris. ghent. bruges. holland. [footnote: _roana_ does not seem to mean here rouen in normandy, but is probably roanne (rodumna) on the upper loire, lyonnais (dep. du loire). this town is now unimportant, but in leonardo's time was still a place of some consequence.] . at bordeaux in gascony the sea rises about braccia before its ebb, and the river there is filled with salt water for more than a hundred and fifty miles; and the vessels which are repaired there rest high and dry on a high hill above the sea at low tide. [footnote : this is obviously an exaggeration founded on inaccurate information. half of miles would be nearer the mark.] . the rhone issues from the lake of geneva and flows first to the west and then to the south, with a course of miles and pours its waters into the mediterranean. . _c d_ is the garden at blois; _a b_ is the conduit of blois, made in france by fra giocondo, _b c_ is what is wanting in the height of that conduit, _c d_ is the height of the garden at blois, _e f_ is the siphon of the conduit, _b c_, _e f_, _f g_ is where the siphon discharges into the river. [footnote: the tenor of this note (see lines and ) seems to me to indicate that this passage was not written in france, but was written from oral information. we have no evidence as to when this note may have been written beyond the circumstance that fra giocondo the veronese architect left france not before the year . the greater part of the magnificent chateau of blois has now disappeared. whether this note was made for a special purpose is uncertain. the original form and extent of the chateau is shown in androvet, _les plus excellents bastiments de france, paris mdcvii,_ and it may be observed that there is in the middle of the garden a pavilion somewhat similar to that shown on pl. lxxxviii no. . see s. de la saussaye, _histoire du chateau de blois eme edition blois et paris_ p. : _en mariant sa fille ainee a francois, comte d'angouleme, louis xii lui avait constitue en dot les comtes de blois, d'asti, de coucy, de montfort, d'etampes et de vertus. une ordonnance de francois i. lui laissa en_ _l'administration du comte de blois. le roi fit commencer, dans la meme annee, les travaux de celle belle partie du chateau, connue sous le nom d'aile de francois i, et dont nous avons donne la description au commencement de ce livre. nous trouvons en effet, dans les archives du baron de foursanvault, une piece qui en fixe parfaitement la date. on y lit: "je, baymon philippeaux, commis par le roy a tenir le compte et fair le payement des bastiments, ediffices et reparacions que le dit seigneur fait faire en son chastu de blois, confesse avoir eu et receu ... la somme de trois mille livres tournois ... le cinquieme jour de juillet, l'an mil cinq cent et seize._ p. : _les jardins avaient ete decores avec beaucoup de luxe par les differents possesseurs du chateau. il ne reste de tous les batiments qu'ils y eleverent que ceux des officiers charges de l'ad_ministration et de la culture des jardins, et un pavilion carre en pierre et en brique flanque de terrasses a chacun de ses angles. quoique defigure par des mesures elevees sur les terrasses, cet edifice est tris-digne d'interet par l'originalite du plan, la decoration architecturale et le souvenir d'anne de bretagne qui le fit construire._ felibien describes the garden as follows: _le jardin haut etait fort bien dresse par grands compartimens de toutes sortes de figures, avec des allees de meuriers blancs et des palissades de coudriers. deux grands berceaux de charpenterie separoient toute la longueur et la largeur du jardin, et dans les quatres angles des allees, ou ces berceaux se croissent, il y auoit cabinets, de mesme charpenterie ... il y a pas longtemps qu'il y auoit dans ce mesme jardin, a l'endroit ou se croissent les allees du milieu, un edifice de figure octogone, de plus de thoises de diametre et de plus de neuf thoises de haut; avec enfoncements en forme de niches dans les angles des allies. ce bastiment.... esloit de charpente mais d'un extraordinairement bien travaille. on y voyait particulierement la cordiliere qui regnati tout autour en forme de cordon. car la reyne affectait de la mettre nonseulement a ses armes et a ses chiffres mais de la faire representer en divers manieres dans tous les ouvrages qu'on lui faisait pour elle ... le bastiment estati couvert en forme de dome qui dans son milieu avait encore un plus petit dome, ou lanterne vitree au-dessus de laquelle estait une figure doree representant saint michel. les deux domes estoient proprement couvert d'ardoise et de plomb dore par dehors; par dedans ils esloient lambrissez d'une menuiserie tres delicate. au milieu de ce salon il y avait un grand bassin octogone de marbre blanc, dont toutes les faces estoient enrichies de differentes sculptures, avec les armes et les chiffres du roy louis xii et de la reine anne, dans ce bassin il y en avait un autre pose sur un piedestal lequel auoit sept piedz de diametre. il estait de figure ronde a godrons, avec des masques et d'autres ornements tres scauamment taillez. du milieu de ce deuxiesme bassin s'y levoit un autre petit piedestal qui portait un troisiesme bassin de trois pieds de diametre, aussy parfaitement bien taille; c'estoit de ce dernier bassin que jallissoit l'eau qui se rependoit en suitte dans les deux autres bassins. les beaux ouvrages faits d'un marbre esgalement blanc et poli, furent brisez par la pesanteur de tout l'edifice, que les injures de l'air renverserent de fond en comble.] . the river loire at amboise. the river is higher within the bank _b d_ than outside that bank. the island where there is a part of amboise. this is the river that passes through amboise; it passes at _a b c d_, and when it has passed the bridge it turns back, against the original current, by the channel _d e_, _b f_ in contact with the bank which lies between the two contrary currents of the said river, _a b_, _c d_, and _d e_, _b f_. it then turns down again by the channel _f l_, _g h_, _n m_, and reunites with the river from which it was at first separated, which passes by _k n_, which makes _k m_, _r t_. but when the river is very full it flows all in one channel passing over the bank _b d_. [footnote: see pl. cxv. lines - are above, lines - in the middle of the large island and the word _isola_ is written above _d_ in the smaller island; _a_ is written on the margin on the bank of the river above . i; in the reproduction it is not visible. as may be seen from the last sentence, the observation was made after long study of the river's course, when leonardo had resided for some time at, or near, amboise.] . the water may be dammed up above the level of romorantin to such a height, that in its fall it may be used for numerous mills. . the river at villefranche may be conducted to romorantin which may be done by the inhabitants; and the timber of which their houses are built may be carried in boats to romorantin [footnote: compare no. .]. the river may be dammed up at such a height that the waters may be brought back to romorantin with a convenient fall. . as to whether it is better that the water should all be raised in a single turn or in two? the answer is that in one single turn the wheel could not support all the water that it can raise in two turns, because at the half turn of the wheel it would be raising pounds and no more; and if it had to raise the whole, pounds in one turn, it could not raise them unless the wheel were of double the diameter and if the diameter were doubled, the time of its revolution would be doubled; therefore it is better and a greater advantage in expense to make such a wheel of half the size (?) the land which it would water and would render the country fertile to supply food to the inhabitants, and would make navigable canals for mercantile purposes. the way in which the river in its flow should scour its own channel. by the ninth of the third; the more rapid it is, the more it wears away its channel; and, by the converse proposition, the slower the water the more it deposits that which renders it turbid. and let the sluice be movable like the one i arranged in friuli [footnote : this passage reveals to us the fact that leonardo had visited the country of friuli and that he had stayed there for some time. nothing whatever was known of this previously.], where when one sluice was opened the water which passed through it dug out the bottom. therefore when the rivers are flooded, the sluices of the mills ought to be opened in order that the whole course of the river may pass through falls to each mill; there should be many in order to give a greater impetus, and so all the river will be scoured. and below the site of each of the two mills there may be one of the said sluice falls; one of them may be placed below each mill. . a trabocco is four braccia, and one mile is three thousand of the said braccia. each braccio is divided into inches; and the water in the canals has a fall in every hundred trabocchi of two of these inches; therefore inches of fall are necessary in two thousand eight hundred braccia of flow in these canals; it follows that inches of fall give the required momentum to the currents of the waters in the said canals, that is one braccio and a half in the mile. and from this it may be concluded that the water taken from the river of ville-franche and lent to the river of romorantin will..... where one river by reason of its low level cannot flow into the other, it will be necessary to dam it up, so that it may acquire a fall into the other, which was previously the higher. the eve of saint antony i returned from romorantin to amboise, and the king went away two days before from romorantin. >from romorantin as far as the bridge at saudre it is called the saudre, and from that bridge as far as tours it is called the cher. i would test the level of that channel which is to lead from the loire to romorantin, with a channel one braccio wide and one braccio deep. [footnote: lines - are partly reproduced in the facsimile on p. , and the whole of lines - . the following names are written along the rivers on the larger sketch, _era f_ (the loire) _scier f_ (the cher) three times. _pote sodro_ (bridge of the soudre). _villa francha_ (villefranche) _banco_ (sandbank) _sodro_ (soudre). the circle below shows the position of romorantin. the words '_orologio del sole_' written below do not belong to the map of the rivers. the following names are written by the side of the smaller sketch-map:--_tors_ (tours), _abosa_ (amboise) _bres_--for bles (blois) _mo rica_ (montrichard). _lione_ (lyons). this map was also published in the 'saggio' (milano, ) pl. xxii, and the editors remark: _forse la linia retta che va da amboise a romorantin segna l'andamento proposto d'un canale, che poi rembra prolungarsi in giu fin dove sta scritto lione._ m. ravaisson has enlarged on this idea in the gazette des beaux arts ( p. ): _les traces de leonard permettent d'entrevoir que le canal commencant soit aupres de tours, soit aupres de blois et passant par romorantin, avec port d'embarquement a villefranche, devait, au dela de bourges, traverser l'allier au-dessous des affluents de la dore et de la sioule, aller par moulins jusqu' a digoin; enfin, sur l'autre rive de la loire, depasser les monts du charolais et rejoindre la saone aupres de macon._ it seems to me rash, however, to found so elaborate an hypothesis on these sketches of rivers. the slight stroke going to _lione_ is perhaps only an indication of the direction.--with regard to the loire compare also no. . l. .] . the road to orleans at / from the south to the south east. at / from the south to the south east. at / from the south to the south east. at / from the south to the south east. between the south west and south, to the east bearing to the south; from the south towards the east / ; thence to the west, between the south and south west; at the south. [footnote: the meaning is obscure; a more important passage referring to france is to be found under no. ] on the germans ( . ). . the way in which the germans closing up together cross and interweave their broad leather shields against the enemy, stooping down and putting one of the ends on the ground while they hold the rest in their hand. [footnote: above the text is a sketch of a few lines crossing each other and the words _de ponderibus_. the meaning of the passage is obscure.] . the germans are wont to annoy a garrison with the smoke of feathers, sulphur and realgar, and they make this smoke last or hours. likewise the husks of wheat make a great and lasting smoke; and also dry dung; but this must be mixed with olive husks, that is olives pressed for oil and from which the oil has been extracted. [footnote: there is with this passage a sketch of a round tower shrouded in smoke.] the danube. . that the valleys were formerly in great part covered by lakes the soil of which always forms the banks of rivers,--and by seas, which afterwards, by the persistent wearing of the rivers, cut through the mountains and the wandering courses of the rivers carried away the other plains enclosed by the mountains; and the cutting away of the mountains is evident from the strata in the rocks, which correspond in their sections as made by the courses of the rivers [footnote : _emus_, the balkan; _dardania_, now servia.], the haemus mountains which go along thrace and dardania and join the sardonius mountains which, going on to the westward change their name from sardus to rebi, as they come near dalmatia; then turning to the west cross illyria, now called sclavonia, changing the name of rebi to albanus, and going on still to the west, they change to mount ocra in the north; and to the south above istria they are named caruancas; and to the west above italy they join the adula, where the danube rises [ ], which stretches to the east and has a course of miles; its shortest line is about l miles, and the same or about the same is that branch of the adula mountains changed as to their name, as before mentioned. to the north are the carpathians, closing in the breadth of the valley of the danube, which, as i have said extends eastward, a length of about miles, and is sometimes and in some places miles wide; and in the midst flows the danube, the principal river of europe as to size. the said danube runs through the middle of austria and albania and northwards through bavaria, poland, hungary, wallachia and bosnia and then the danube or donau flows into the black sea, which formerly extended almost to austria and occupied the plains through which the danube now courses; and the evidence of this is in the oysters and cockle shells and scollops and bones of great fishes which are still to be found in many places on the sides of those mountains; and this sea was formed by the filling up of the spurs of the adula mountains which then extended to the east joining the spurs of the taurus which extend to the west. and near bithynia the waters of this black sea poured into the propontis [marmora] falling into the aegean sea, that is the mediterranean, where, after a long course, the spurs of the adula mountains became separated from those of the taurus. the black sea sank lower and laid bare the valley of the danube with the above named countries, and the whole of asia minor beyond the taurus range to the north, and the plains from mount caucasus to the black sea to the west, and the plains of the don this side--that is to say, at the foot of the ural mountains. and thus the black sea must have sunk about braccia to uncover such vast plains. [footnote : _danubio_, in the original _reno_; evidently a mistake as we may infer from _come dissi_ l. &c.] iii. the countries of the western end of the mediterranean. the straits of gibraltar ( - ). . why the sea makes a stronger current in the straits of spain than elsewhere. a river of equal depth runs with greater speed in a narrow space than in a wide one, in proportion to the difference between the wider and the narrower one. this proposition is clearly proved by reason confirmed by experiment. supposing that through a channel one mile wide there flows one mile in length of water; where the river is five miles wide each of the square miles will require / of itself to be equal to the square mile of water required in the sea, and where the river is miles wide each of these square miles will require the third of its volume to make up the amount of the square mile of the narrow part; as is demonstrated in _f g h_ at the mile marked _n_. [footnote: in the place marked a in the diagram _mare mediterano_ (mediterranean sea) is written in the original. and at b, _stretto di spugna_ (straits of spain, _i.e._ gibraltar). compare no. .] . why the current of gibraltar is always greater to the west than to the east. the reason is that if you put together the mouths of the rivers which discharge into the mediterranean sea, you would find the sum of water to be larger than that which this sea pours through the straits into the ocean. you see africa discharging its rivers that run northwards into this sea, and among them the nile which runs through miles of africa; there is also the bagrada river and the schelif and others. [footnote : _bagrada_ (leonardo writes bragada) in tunis, now medscherda; _mavretano_, now schelif.] likewise europe pours into it the don and the danube, the po, the rhone, the arno, and the tiber, so that evidently these rivers, with an infinite number of others of less fame, make its great breadth and depth and current; and the sea is not wider than miles at the most westerly point of land where it divides europe from africa. . the gulf of the mediterranean, as an inland sea, received the principal waters of africa, asia and europe that flowed towards it; and its waters came up to the foot of the mountains that surrounded it and made its shores. and the summits of the apennines stood up out of this sea like islands, surrounded by salt water. africa again, behind its atlas mountains did not expose uncovered to the sky the surface of its vast plains about miles in length, and memphis [footnote : _mefi._ leonardo can only mean here the citadel of cairo on the mokattam hills.] was on the shores of this sea, and above the plains of italy, where now birds fly in flocks, fish were wont to wander in large shoals. . tunis. the greatest ebb made anywhere by the mediterranean is above tunis, being about two and a half braccia and at venice it falls two braccia. in all the rest of the mediterranean sea the fall is little or none. . libya. describe the mountains of shifting deserts; that is to say the formation of waves of sand borne by the wind, and of its mountains and hills, such as occur in libya. examples may be seen on the wide sands of the po and the ticino, and other large rivers. . majorca. circumfulgore is a naval machine. it was an invention of the men of majorca. [footnote: the machine is fully described in the ms. and shown in a sketch.] . the tyrrhene sea. some at the tyrrhene sea employ this method; that is to say they fastened an anchor to one end of the yard, and to the other a cord, of which the lower end was fastened to an anchor; and in battle they flung this anchor on to the oars of the opponent's boat and by the use of a capstan drew it to the side; and threw soft soap and tow, daubed with pitch and set ablaze, on to that side where the anchor hung; so that in order to escape that fire, the defenders of that ship had to fly to the opposite side; and in doing this they aided to the attack, because the galley was more easily drawn to the side by reason of the counterpoise. [footnote: this text is illustrated in the original by a pen and ink sketch.] iv. the levant. the levantine sea. . on the shores of the mediterranean rivers flow, and , ports. and this sea is miles long. many times has the increase of its waters, heaped up by their backward flow and the blowing of the west winds, caused the overflow of the nile and of the rivers which flow out through the black sea, and have so much raised the seas that they have spread with vast floods over many countries. and these floods take place at the time when the sun melts the snows on the high mountains of ethiopia that rise up into the cold regions of the air; and in the same way the approach of the sun acts on the mountains of sarmatia in asia and on those in europe; so that the gathering together of these three things are, and always have been, the cause of tremendous floods: that is, the return flow of the sea with the west wind and the melting of the snows. so every river will overflow in syria, in samaria, in judea between sinai and the lebanon, and in the rest of syria between the lebanon and the taurus mountains, and in cilicia, in the armenian mountains, and in pamphilia and in lycia within the hills, and in egypt as far as the atlas mountains. the gulf of persia which was formerly a vast lake of the tigris and discharged into the indian sea, has now worn away the mountains which formed its banks and laid them even with the level of the indian ocean. and if the mediterranean had continued its flow through the gulf of arabia, it would have done the same, that is to say, would have reduced the level of the mediterranean to that of the indian sea. the red sea. ( . ). . for a long time the water of the mediterranean flowed out through the red sea, which is miles wide and long, and full of reefs; and it has worn away the sides of mount sinai, a fact which testifies, not to an inundation from the indian sea beating on these coasts, but to a deluge of water which carried with it all the rivers which abound round the mediterranean, and besides this there is the reflux of the sea; and then, a cutting being made to the west miles away from this place, gibraltar was separated from ceuta, which had been joined to it. and this passage was cut very low down, in the plains between gibraltar and the ocean at the foot of the mountain, in the low part, aided by the hollowing out of some valleys made by certain rivers, which might have flowed here. hercules [footnote : leonardo seems here to mention hercules half jestingly and only in order to suggest to the reader an allusion to the legend of the pillars of hercules.] came to open the sea to the westward and then the sea waters began to pour into the western ocean; and in consequence of this great fall, the red sea remained the higher; whence the water, abandoning its course here, ever after poured away through the straits of spain. . the surface of the red sea is on a level with the ocean. a mountain may have fallen and closed the mouth of the red sea and prevented the outlet of the mediterranean, and the mediterranean sea thus overfilled had for outlet the passage below the mountains of gades; for, in our own times a similar thing has been seen [footnote : compare also no. , ll. , and .-- paolo giovio, the celebrated historian (born at como in ) reports that in at the foot of the alps, above bellinzona, on the road to switzerland, a mountain fell with a very great noise, in consequence of an earthquake, and that the mass of rocks, which fell on the left (western) side blocked the river breno (t. i p. and of d. sauvage's french edition, quoted in alexis percy, _memoire des tremblements de terre de la peninsule italique; academie royale de belgique._ t. xxii).--]; a mountain fell seven miles across a valley and closed it up and made a lake. and thus most lakes have been made by mountains, as the lake of garda, the lakes of como and lugano, and the lago maggiore. the mediterranean fell but little on the confines of syria, in consequence of the gaditanean passage, but a great deal in this passage, because before this cutting was made the mediterranean sea flowed to the south east, and then the fall had to be made by its run through the straits of gades. at _a_ the water of the mediterranean fell into the ocean. all the plains which lie between the sea and mountains were formerly covered with salt water. every valley has been made by its own river; and the proportion between valleys is the same as that between river and river. the greatest river in our world is the mediterranean river, which moves from the sources of the nile to the western ocean. and its greatest height is in outer mauritania and it has a course of ten thousand miles before it reunites with its ocean, the father of the waters. that is miles for the mediterranean, for the nile, as far as discovered and for the nile which flows to the east, &c. [footnote: see pl. cxi , a sketch of the shores of the mediterranean sea, where lines to may be seen. the large figures are not in leonardo's writing. the character of the writing leads us to conclude that this text was written later than the foregoing. a slight sketch of the mediterranean is also to be found in ms. i', a.] the nile ( - ). . therefore we must conclude those mountains to be of the greatest height, above which the clouds falling in snow give rise to the nile. . the egyptians, the ethiopians, and the arabs, in crossing the nile with camels, are accustomed to attach two bags on the sides of the camel's bodies that is skins in the form shown underneath. in these four meshes of the net the camels for baggage place their feet. [footnote: unfortunately both the sketches which accompany this passage are too much effaced to be reproduced. the upper represents the two sacks joined by ropes, as here described, the other shows four camels with riders swimming through a river.] . the tigris passes through asia minor and brings with it the water of three lakes, one after the other of various elevations; the first being munace and the middle pallas and the lowest triton. and the nile again springs from three very high lakes in ethiopia, and runs northwards towards the sea of egypt with a course of miles, and by the shortest and straightest line it is miles. it is said that it issues from the mountains of the moon, and has various unknown sources. the said lakes are about braccia above the surface of the sphere of water, that is mile and / , giving to the nile a fall of braccia in every mile. [footnote : _incogniti principio._ the affluents of the lakes are probably here intended. compare, as to the nile, nos. , and .] . very many times the nile and other very large rivers have poured out their whole element of water and restored it to the sea. . why does the inundation of the nile occur in the summer, coming from torrid countries? . it is not denied that the nile is constantly muddy in entering the egyptian sea and that its turbidity is caused by soil that this river is continually bringing from the places it passes; which soil never returns in the sea which receives it, unless it throws it on its shores. you see the sandy desert beyond mount atlas where formerly it was covered with salt water. customs of asiatic nations ( . ). . the assyrians and the people of euboea accustom their horses to carry sacks which they can at pleasure fill with air, and which in case of need they carry instead of the girth of the saddle above and at the side, and they are well covered with plates of cuir bouilli, in order that they may not be perforated by flights of arrows. thus they have not on their minds their security in flight, when the victory is uncertain; a horse thus equipped enables four or five men to cross over at need. . small boats. the small boats used by the assyrians were made of thin laths of willow plaited over rods also of willow, and bent into the form of a boat. they were daubed with fine mud soaked with oil or with turpentine, and reduced to a kind of mud which resisted the water and because pine would split; and always remained fresh; and they covered this sort of boats with the skins of oxen in safely crossing the river sicuris of spain, as is reported by lucant; [footnote : see lucan's pharsalia iv, : _utque habuit ripas sicoris camposque reliquit, primum cana salix madefacto vimine parvam texitur in puppim, calsoque inducto juvenco vectoris patiens tumidum supernatat amnem. sic venetus stagnante pado, fusoque britannus navigat oceano, sic cum tenet omnia nilus, conseritur bibula memphitis cymbo papyro. his ratibus transjecta manus festinat utrimque succisam cavare nemus ] the spaniards, the scythians and the arabs, when they want to make a bridge in haste, fix hurdlework made of willows on bags of ox-hide, and so cross in safety. rhodes ( . ). . in [fourteen hundred and] eighty nine there was an earthquake in the sea of atalia near rhodes, which opened the sea--that is its bottom--and into this opening such a torrent of water poured that for more than three hours the bottom of the sea was uncovered by reason of the water which was lost in it, and then it closed to the former level. [footnote: _nello ottanto_ . it is scarcely likely that leonardo should here mean ad. dr. h. muller- strubing writes to me as follows on this subject: "with reference to rhodes ross says (_reise auf den griechischen inseln, iii_ _ff_. ), that ancient history affords instances of severe earthquakes at rhodes, among others one in the second year of the th olympiad= b. c.; a remarkably violent one under antoninus pius (a. d. - ) and again under constantine and later. but leonardo expressly speaks of an earthquake "_nel mar di atalia presso a rodi_", which is singular. the town of attalia, founded by attalus, which is what he no doubt means, was in pamphylia and more than english miles east of rhodes in a straight line. leake and most other geographers identify it with the present town of adalia. attalia is rarely mentioned by the ancients, indeed only by strabo and pliny and no earthquake is spoken of. i think therefore you are justified in assuming that leonardo means ". in the elaborate catalogue of earthquakes in the east by sciale dshelal eddin sayouthy (an unpublished arabic ms. in the possession of prof. schefer, (membre de l'institut, paris) mention is made of a terrible earthquake in the year of the mohamedan era corresponding to the year , and it is there stated that a hundred persons were killed by it in the fortress of kerak. there are three places of this name. kerak on the sea of tiberias, kerak near tahle on the libanon, which i visited in the summer of l --but neither of these is the place alluded to. possibly it may be the strongly fortified town of kerak=kir moab, to the west of the dead sea. there is no notice about this in alexis percy, _memoire sur les tremblements de terres ressentis dans la peninsule turco- hellenique et en syrie (memoires couronnes et memoires des savants etrangers, academie royale de belgique, tome xxiii)._] . rhodes has in it houses. cyprus ( . ). . site for [a temple of] venus. you must make steps on four sides, by which to mount to a meadow formed by nature at the top of a rock which may be hollowed out and supported in front by pilasters and open underneath in a large portico, [footnote: see pl. lxxxiii. compare also p. of this vol. the standing male figure at the side is evidently suggested by michael angelo's david. on the same place a slight sketch of horses seems to have been drawn first; there is no reason for assuming that the text and this sketch, which have no connection with each other, are of the same date. _sito di venere._ by this heading leonardo appears to mean cyprus, which was always considered by the ancients to be the home and birth place of aphrodite (kirpic in homer).] in which the water may fall into various vases of granite, porphyryand serpentine, within semi-circular recesses; and the water may overflow from these. and round this portico towards the north there should be a lake with a little island in the midst of which should be a thick and shady wood; the waters at the top of the pilasters should pour into vases at their base, from whence they should flow in little channels. starting from the shore of cilicia towards the south you discover the beauties of the island of cyprus. the caspian sea ( . ). . >from the shore of the southern coast of cilicia may be seen to the south the beautiful island of cyprus, which was the realm of the goddess venus, and many navigators being attracted by her beauty, had their ships and rigging broken amidst the reefs, surrounded by the whirling waters. here the beauty of delightful hills tempts wandering mariners to refresh themselves amidst their flowery verdure, where the winds are tempered and fill the island and the surrounding seas with fragrant odours. ah! how many a ship has here been sunk. ah! how many a vessel broken on these rocks. here might be seen barks without number, some wrecked and half covered by the sand; others showing the poop and another the prow, here a keel and there the ribs; and it seems like a day of judgment when there should be a resurrection of dead ships, so great is the number of them covering all the northern shore; and while the north gale makes various and fearful noises there. . write to bartolomeo the turk as to the flow and ebb of the black sea, and whether he is aware if there be such a flow and ebb in the hyrcanean or caspian sea. [footnote: the handwriting of this note points to a late date.] . why water is found at the top of mountains. >from the straits of gibraltar to the don is miles, that is one mile and / , giving a fall of one braccio in a mile to any water that moves gently. the caspian sea is a great deal higher; and none of the mountains of europe rise a mile above the surface of our seas; therefore it might be said that the water which is on the summits of our mountains might come from the height of those seas, and of the rivers which flow into them, and which are still higher. the sea of azov. . hence it follows that the sea of azov is the highest part of the mediterranean sea, being at a distance of miles from the straits of gibraltar, as is shown by the map for navigation; and it has braccia of descent, that is, one mile and / ; therefore it is higher than any mountains which exist in the west. [footnote: the passage before this, in the original, treats of the exit of the waters from lakes in general.] the dardanelles. . in the bosphorus the black sea flows always into the egean sea, and the egean sea never flows into it. and this is because the caspian, which is miles to the east, with the rivers which pour into it, always flows through subterranean caves into this sea of pontus; and the don does the same as well as the danube, so that the waters of pontus are always higher than those of the egean; for the higher always fall towards the lower, and never the lower towards the higher. constantinople. . the bridge of pera at constantinople, braccia wide, braccia high above the water, braccia long; that is over the sea and on the land, thus making its own abutments. [footnote: see pl. cx no. . in by order of sultan mohamed ii. the golden horn was crossed by a pontoon bridge laid on barrels (see joh. dukas' history of the byzantine empire xxxviii p. ). --the biographers of michelangelo, vasari as well as condivi, relate that at the time when michelangelo suddenly left rome, in , he entertained some intention of going to constantinople, there to serve the sultan, who sought to engage him, by means of certain franciscan monks, for the purpose of constructing a bridge to connect constantinople with pera. see vasari, _vite_ (ed. sansoni vii, ): _michelangelo, veduto questa furia del papa, dubitando di lui, ebbe, secondo che si dice, voglia di andarsene in gostantinopoli a servire il turco, per mezzo di certi frati di san francesco, che desiderava averlo per fare un ponte che passassi da gostantinopoli a pera._ and condivi, _vita di m. buonaroti chap._ _; michelangelo allora vedendosi condotto a questo, temendo dell'ira del papa, penso d'andarsene in levante; massimamente essendo stato dal turco ricercato con grandissime promesse per mezzo di certi frati di san francesco, per volersene servire in fare un ponte da costantinopoli a pera ed in altri affari._ leonardo's plan for this bridge was made in . we may therefore conclude that at about that time the sultan bajazet ii. had either announced a competition in this matter, or that through his agents leonardo had first been called upon to carry out the scheme.] the euphrates. . if the river will turn to the rift farther on it will never return to its bed, as the euphrates does, and this may do at bologna the one who is disappointed for his rivers. centrae asia. . mounts caucasus, comedorum, and paropemisidae are joined together between bactria and india, and give birth to the river oxus which takes its rise in these mountains and flows miles towards the north and as many towards the west, and discharges its waters into the caspian sea; and is accompanied by the oxus, dargados, arthamis, xariaspes, dargamaim, ocus and margus, all very large rivers. from the opposite side towards the south rises the great river indus which sends its waters for miles southwards and receives as tributaries in this course the rivers xaradrus, hyphasis, vadris, vandabal bislaspus to the east, suastes and coe to the west, uniting with these rivers, and with their waters it flows miles to the west; then, turning back by the arbiti mountains makes an elbow and turns southwards, where after a course of about miles it finds the indian sea, in which it pours itself by seven branches. on the side of the same mountains rises the great ganges, which river flows southwards for miles and to the southwest a thousand ... and sarabas, diarnuna, soas and scilo, condranunda are its tributaries. it flows into the indian sea by many mouths. on the natives of hot countries. . men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them; and therefore they are of the colour of night, that is black. and in cold countries it is just the contrary. [footnote: the sketch here inserted is in ms. h b.] _xviii._ _naval warfare.--mechanical appliances.--music._ _such theoretical questions, as have been laid before the reader in sections xvi and xvii, though they were the chief subjects of leonardo's studies of the sea, did not exclusively claim his attention. a few passages have been collected at the beginning of this section, which prove that he had turned his mind to the practical problems of navigation, and more especially of naval warfare. what we know for certain of his life gives us no data, it is true, as to when or where these matters came under his consideration; but the fact remains certain both from these notes in his manuscripts, and from the well known letter to ludovico il moro (no._ _), in which he expressly states that he is as capable as any man, in this very department._ _the numerous notes as to the laws and rationale of the flight of birds, are scattered through several note-books. an account of these is given in the bibliography of the manuscripts at the end of this work. it seems probable that the idea which led him to these investigations was his desire to construct a flying or aerial machine for man. at the same time it must be admitted that the notes on the two subjects are quite unconnected in the manuscripts, and that those on the flight of birds are by far the most numerous and extensive. the two most important passages that treat of the construction of a flying machine are those already published as tav. xvi, no._ _and tav. xviii in the_ "saggio delle opere di leonardo da vinci" _(milan_ _). the passages--nos._ - --_here printed for the first time and hitherto unknown--refer to the same subject and, with the exception of one already published in the saggio-- no._ --_they are, so far as i know, the only notes, among the numerous observations on the flight of birds, in which the phenomena are incidentally and expressly connected with the idea of a flying machine._ _the notes on machines of war, the construction of fortifications, and similar matters which fall within the department of the engineer, have not been included in this work, for the reasons given on page_ _of this vol. an exception has been made in favour of the passages nos._ _and_ , _because they have a more general interest, as bearing on the important question: whence the master derived his knowledge of these matters. though it would be rash to assert that leonardo was the first to introduce the science of mining into italy, it may be confidently said that he is one of the earliest writers who can be proved to have known and understood it; while, on the other hand, it is almost beyond doubt that in the east at that time, the whole science of besieging towns and mining in particular, was far more advanced than in europe. this gives a peculiar value to the expressions used in no._ . _i have been unable to find in the manuscripts any passage whatever which throws any light on leonardo's great reputation as a musician. nothing therein illustrates vasarps well-known statement:_ avvenne che morto giovan galeazze duca di milano, e creato lodovico sforza nel grado medesimo anno , fu condotto a milano con gran riputazione lionardo al duca, il quale molto si dilettava del suono della lira, perche sonasse; e lionardo porto quello strumento ch'egli aveva di sua mano fabbricato d'argento gran parte, in forma d'un teschio di cavallo, cosa bizzarra e nuova, acciocche l'armonia fosse con maggior tuba e piu sonora di voce; laonde supero tutti i musici che quivi erano concorsi a sonare. _the only notes on musical matters are those given as nos._ _and_ , _which explain certain arrangements in instruments._ the ship's logs of vitruvius, of alberti and of leonardo . on movements;--to know how much a ship advances in an hour. the ancients used various devices to ascertain the distance gone by a ship each hour, among which vitruvius [footnote : see vitruvius, _de architectura lib. x._ c. (p. in the edition of rose and muller- strubing). the german edition published at bale in has, on fol. , an illustration of the contrivance, as described by vitruvius.] gives one in his work on architecture which is just as fallacious as all the others; and this is a mill wheel which touches the waves of the sea at one end and in each complete revolution describes a straight line which represents the circumference of the wheel extended to a straightness. but this invention is of no worth excepting on the smooth and motionless surface of lakes. but if the water moves together with the ship at an equal rate, then the wheel remains motionless; and if the motion of the water is more or less rapid than that of the ship, then neither has the wheel the same motion as the ship so that this invention is of but little use. there is another method tried by experiment with a known distance between one island and another; and this is done by a board or under the pressure of wind which strikes on it with more or less swiftness. this is in battista alberti [footnote : leon battista alberti, _de architectura lib. v._, c. treats '_de le navi e parti loro_', but there is no reference to the machine, mentioned by leonardo. alberti says here: _noi abbiamo trattato lungamente in altro luogo de' modi de le navi, ma in questo luogo ne abbiamo detto quel tanto che si bisogna_. to this the following note is added in the most recent italian edition: _questo libro e tuttora inedito e porta il titolo, secondo gesnero di_ '_liber navis_'.]. battista alberti's method which is made by experiment on a known distance between one island and another. but such an invention does not succeed excepting on a ship like the one on which the experiment was made, and it must be of the same burden and have the same sails, and the sails in the same places, and the size of the waves must be the same. but my method will serve for any ship, whether with oars or sails; and whether it be small or large, broad or long, or high or low, it always serves [footnote : leonardo does not reveal the method invented by him.]. methods of staying and moving in water . how an army ought to cross rivers by swimming with air-bags ... how fishes swim [footnote : compare no. .]; of the way in which they jump out of the water, as may be seen with dolphins; and it seems a wonderful thing to make a leap from a thing which does not resist but slips away. of the swimming of animals of a long form, such as eels and the like. of the mode of swimming against currents and in the rapid falls of rivers. of the mode of swimming of fishes of a round form. how it is that animals which have not long hind quartres cannot swim. how it is that all other animals which have feet with toes, know by nature how to swim, excepting man. in what way man ought to learn to swim. of the way in which man may rest on the water. how man may protect himself against whirlpools or eddies in the water, which drag him down. how a man dragged to the bottom must seek the reflux which will throw him up from the depths. how he ought to move his arms. how to swim on his back. how he can and how he cannot stay under water unless he can hold his breath [ ]. how by means of a certain machine many people may stay some time under water. how and why i do not describe my method of remaining under water, or how long i can stay without eating; and i do not publish nor divulge these by reason of the evil nature of men who would use them as means of destruction at the bottom of the sea, by sending ships to the bottom, and sinking them together with the men in them. and although i will impart others, there is no danger in them; because the mouth of the tube, by which you breathe, is above the water supported on bags or corks [ ]. [footnote: l. - will also be found in vol. i no. .] on naval warfare ( . ). . supposing in a battle between ships and galleys that the ships are victorious by reason of the high of heir tops, you must haul the yard up almost to the top of the mast, and at the extremity of the yard, that is the end which is turned towards the enemy, have a small cage fastened, wrapped up below and all round in a great mattress full of cotton so that it may not be injured by the bombs; then, with the capstan, haul down the opposite end of this yard and the top on the opposite side will go up so high, that it will be far above the round-top of the ship, and you will easily drive out the men that are in it. but it is necessary that the men who are in the galley should go to the opposite side of it so as to afford a counterpoise to the weight of the men placed inside the cage on the yard. . if you want to build an armada for the sea employ these ships to ram in the enemy's ships. that is, make ships feet long and feet wide, but arranged so that the left hand rowers may have their oars to the right side of the ship, and the right hand ones to the left side, as is shown at m, so that the leverage of the oars may be longer. and the said ship may be one foot and a half thick, that is made with cross beams within and without, with planks in contrary directions. and this ship must have attached to it, a foot below the water, an iron-shod spike of about the weight and size of an anvil; and this, by force of oars may, after it has given the first blow, be drawn back, and driven forward again with fury give a second blow, and then a third, and so many as to destroy the other ship. the use of swimming belts. . a method of escaping in a tempest and shipwreck at sea. have a coat made of leather, which must be double across the breast, that is having a hem on each side of about a finger breadth. thus it will be double from the waist to the knee; and the leather must be quite air-tight. when you want to leap into the sea, blow out the skirt of your coat through the double hems of the breast; and jump into the sea, and allow yourself to be carried by the waves; when you see no shore near, give your attention to the sea you are in, and always keep in your mouth the air-tube which leads down into the coat; and if now and again you require to take a breath of fresh air, and the foam prevents you, you may draw a breath of the air within the coat. [footnote: amoretti, _memorie storiche_, tav. ii. b. fig. , gives the same figure, somewhat altered. . _la canna dell' aria_. compare vol. i. no. i. note] on the gravity of water. . if the weight of the sea bears on its bottom, a man, lying on that bottom and having l braccia of water on his back, would have enough to crush him. diving apparatus and skating ( - ). . of walking under water. method of walking on water. [footnote: the two sketches belonging to this passage are given by amoretti, _memorie storiche_. tav. ii, fig. and .] . just as on a frozen river a man may run without moving his feet, so a car might be made that would slide by itself. [footnote: the drawings of carts by the side of this text have no direct connection with the problem as stated in words.--compare no. , l. .] . a definition as to why a man who slides on ice does not fall. [footnote: an indistinct sketch accompanies the passage, in the original.] on flying machines ( - ). . man when flying must stand free from the waist upwards so as to be able to balance himself as he does in a boat so that the centre of gravity in himself and in the machine may counterbalance each other, and be shifted as necessity demands for the changes of its centre of resistance. . remember that your flying machine must imitate no other than the bat, because the web is what by its union gives the armour, or strength to the wings. if you imitate the wings of feathered birds, you will find a much stronger structure, because they are pervious; that is, their feathers are separate and the air passes through them. but the bat is aided by the web that connects the whole and is not pervious. . to escape the peril of destruction. destruction to such a machine may occur in two ways; of which the first is the breaking of the machine. the second would be when the machine should turn on its edge or nearly on its edge, because it ought always to descend in a highly oblique direction, and almost exactly balanced on its centre. as regards the first--the breaking of the machine--, that may be prevented by making it as strong as possible; and in whichever direction it may tend to turn over, one centre must be very far from the other; that is, in a machine braccia long the centres must be braccia one from the other. [footnote: compare no. .] . bags by which a man falling from a height of braccia may avoid hurting himself, by a fall whether into water or on the ground; and these bags, strung together like a rosary, are to be fixed on one's back. . an object offers as much resistance to the air as the air does to the object. you may see that the beating of its wings against the air supports a heavy eagle in the highest and rarest atmosphere, close to the sphere of elemental fire. again you may see the air in motion over the sea, fill the swelling sails and drive heavily laden ships. from these instances, and the reasons given, a man with wings large enough and duly connected might learn to overcome the resistance of the air, and by conquering it, succeed in subjugating it and rising above it. [footnote: a parachute is here sketched, with an explanatory remark. it is reproduced on tav. xvi in the saggio, and in: _leonardo da vinci als ingenieur etc., ein beitrag zur geschichte der technik und der induktiven wissenschaften, von dr. hermann grothe, berlin_ , p. .] of mining. . if you want to know where a mine runs, place a drum over all the places where you suspect that it is being made, and upon this drum put a couple of dice, and when you are over the spot where they are mining, the dice will jump a little on the drum at every blow which is given underground in the mining. there are persons who, having the convenience of a river or a lake in their lands, have made, close to the place where they suspect that a mine is being made, a great reservoir of water, and have countermined the enemy, and having found them, have turned the water upon them and destroyed a great number in the mine. of greek fire. . greek fire. take charcoal of willow, and saltpetre, and sulphuric acid, and sulphur, and pitch, with frankincense and camphor, and ethiopian wool, and boil them all together. this fire is so ready to burn that it clings to the timbers even under water. and add to this composition liquid varnish, and bituminous oil, and turpentine and strong vinegar, and mix all together and dry it in the sun, or in an oven when the bread is taken out; and then stick it round hempen or other tow, moulding it into a round form, and studding it all over with very sharp nails. you must leave in this ball an opening to serve as a fusee, and cover it with rosin and sulphur. again, this fire, stuck at the top of a long plank which has one braccio length of the end pointed with iron that it may not be burnt by the said fire, is good for avoiding and keeping off the ships, so as not to be overwhelmed by their onset. again throw vessels of glass full of pitch on to the enemy's ships when the men in them are intent on the battle; and then by throwing similar burning balls upon them you have it in your power to burn all their ships. [footnote: venturi has given another short text about the greek fire in a french translation (essai section xiv). he adds that the original text is to be found in ms. b. (?). libri speaks of it in a note as follows (_histoire des sciences mathematiques en italie vol. ii_ p. ): _la composition du feu gregeois est une des chases qui ont ete les plus cherchees et qui sont encore les plus douteuses. on dit qu'il fut invente au septieme siecle de l'ere chretienne par l'architecte callinique (constantini porphyrogenetae opera, lugd. batav._ ,-- _in-_ vo; p. , _de admin, imper. exp._ _), et il se trouve souvent mentionne par les historiens byzantins. tantot on le langait avec des machines, comme on lancerait une banche, tantot on le soufflait avec de longs tubes, comme on soufflerait un gaz ou un liquide enflamme (annae comnenae alexias_, p. , _lib. xi.--aeliani et leonis, imperatoris tactica, lugd.-bat._ , _in_- . part. a, p. , _leonis tact. cap._ l .--_joinville, histoire du saint louis collect. petitot tom. ii,_ p. ). _les ecrivains contemporains disent que l'eau ne pouvait pas eteindre ce feu, mais qu'avec du vinaigre et du sable on y parvenait. suivant quelques historiens le feu gregeois etait compose de soufre et de resine. marcus graecus (liber ignium, paris,_ , _in_- _) donne plusieurs manieres de le faire qui ne sont pas tres intelligibles, mais parmi lesquelles on trouve la composition de la poudre a canon. leonard de vinci (mss. de leonard de vinci, vol. b. f. ,) dit qu'on le faisait avec du charbon de saule, du salpetre, de l'eau de vie, de la resine, du soufre, de la poix et du camphre. mais il est probable que nous ne savons pas qu'elle etait sa composition, surtout a cause du secret qu'en faisaient les grecs. en effet, l'empereur constantin porphyrogenete recommende a son fils de ne jamais en donner aux barbares, et de leur repondre, s'ils en demandaient, qu'il avait ete apporti du ciel par un ange et que le secret en avait ete confie aux chretiens (constantini porphyrogennetae opera,_ p. - , _de admin. imper., cap. _ _)._] of music ( . ). . a drum with cogs working by wheels with springs [ ]. [footnote: this chapter consists of explanations of the sketches shown on pl. cxxi. lines and of the text are to be seen at the top at the left hand side of the first sketch of a drum. lines - refer to the sketch immediately below this. line is written as the side of the seventh sketch, and lines and at the side of the eighth. lines - are at the bottom in the middle. the remainder of the text is at the side of the drawing at the bottom.] a square drum of which the parchment may be drawn tight or slackened by the lever _a b_ [ ]. a drum for harmony [ ]. [ ] a clapper for harmony; that is, three clappers together. [ ] just as one and the same drum makes a deep or acute sound according as the parchments are more or less tightened, so these parchments variously tightened on one and the same drum will make various sounds [ ]. keys narrow and close together; (bicchi) far apart; these will be right for the trumpet shown above. _a_ must enter in the place of the ordinary keys which have the ... in the openings of a flute. . tymbals to be played like the monochord, or the soft flute. [ ] here there is to be a cylinder of cane after the manner of clappers with a musical round called a canon, which is sung in four parts; each singer singing the whole round. therefore i here make a wheel with teeth so that each tooth takes by itself the part of a singer. [footnote: in the original there are some more sketches, to which the text, from line , refers. they are studies for a contrivance exactly like the cylinder in our musical boxes.] . of decorations. white and sky-blue cloths, woven in checks to make a decoration. cloths with the threads drawn at _a b c d e f g h i k_, to go round the decoration. _xix._ _philosophical maxims. morals. polemics and speculations_. _vasari indulges in severe strictures on leonardo's religious views. he speaks, among other things, of his_ "capricci nel filosofar delle cose naturali" _and says on this point:_ "per il che fece nell'animo un concetto si eretico che e' non si accostava a qualsi voglia religione, stimando per avventura assai piu lo esser filosofo che cristiano" _(see the first edition of_ 'le vite'_). but this accusation on the part of a writer in the days of the inquisition is not a very serious one--and the less so, since, throughout the manuscripts, we find nothing to support it._ _under the heading of "philosophical maxims" i have collected all the passages which can give us a clear comprehension of leonardo's ideas of the world at large. it is scarcely necessary to observe that there is absolutely nothing in them to lead to the inference that he was an atheist. his views of nature and its laws are no doubt very unlike those of his contemporaries, and have a much closer affinity to those which find general acceptance at the present day. on the other hand, it is obvious from leonardo's will (see no._ _) that, in the year before his death, he had professed to adhere to the fundamental doctrines of the roman catholic faith, and this evidently from his own personal desire and impulse._ _the incredible and demonstrably fictitious legend of leonardo's death in the arms of francis the first, is given, with others, by vasari and further embellished by this odious comment:_ "mostrava tuttavia quanto avea offeso dio e gli uomini del mondo, non avendo operato nell'arte come si conveniva." _this last accusation, it may be remarked, is above all evidence of the superficial character of the information which vasari was in a position to give about leonardo. it seems to imply that leonardo was disdainful of diligent labour. with regard to the second, referring to leonardo's morality and dealings with his fellow men, vasari himself nullifies it by asserting the very contrary in several passages. a further refutation may be found in the following sentence from the letter in which melsi, the young milanese nobleman, announces the master's death to leonardo's brothers:_ credo siate certificati della morte di maestro lionardo fratello vostro, e mio quanto optimo padre, per la cui morte sarebbe impossibile che io potesse esprimere il dolore che io ho preso; e in mentre che queste mia membra si sosterranno insieme, io possedero una perpetua infelicita, e meritamente perche sviscerato et ardentissimo amore mi portava giornalmente. e dolto ad ognuno la perdita di tal uomo, quale non e piu in podesta della natura, ecc. _it is true that, in april_ , _we find the names of leonardo and verrocchio entered in the_ "libro degli uffiziali di notte e de' monasteri" _as breaking the laws; but we immediately after find the note_ "absoluti cum condizione ut retamburentur" (tamburini _was the name given to the warrant cases of the night police). the acquittal therefore did not exclude the possibility of a repetition of the charge. it was in fact repeated, two months later, and on this occasion the master and his pupil were again fully acquitted. verrocchio was at this time forty and leonardo four-and-twenty. the documents referring to this affair are in the state archives of florence; they have been withheld from publication, but it seemed to me desirable to give the reader this brief account of the leading facts of the story, as the vague hints of it, which have recently been made public, may have given to the incident an aspect which it had not in reality, and which it does not deserve._ _the passages here classed under the head "morals" reveal leonardo to us as a man whose life and conduct were unfailingly governed by lofty principles and aims. he could scarcely have recorded his stern reprobation and unmeasured contempt for men who do nothing useful and strive only for riches, if his own life and ambitions had been such as they have so often been misrepresented._ _at a period like that, when superstition still exercised unlimited dominion over the minds not merely of the illiterate crowd, but of the cultivated and learned classes, it was very natural that leonardo's views as to alchemy, ghosts, magicians, and the like should be met with stern reprobation whenever and wherever he may have expressed them; this accounts for the argumentative tone of all his utterances on such subjects which i have collected in subdivision iii of this section. to these i have added some passages which throw light on leonardo's personal views on the universe. they are, without exception, characterised by a broad spirit of naturalism of which the principles are more strictly applied in his essays on astronomy, and still more on physical geography._ _to avoid repetition, only such notes on philosophy, morals and polemics, have been included in this section as occur as independent texts in the original mss. several moral reflections have already been given in vol. i, in section "allegorical representations, mottoes and emblems". others will be found in the following section. nos._ _to_ , _vol. i, are also passages of an argumentative character. it did not seem requisite to repeat here these and similar passages, since their direct connection with the context is far closer in places where they have appeared already, than it would be here._ i. philosophical maxims. prayers to god ( . ). . i obey thee lord, first for the love i ought, in all reason to bear thee; secondly for that thou canst shorten or prolong the lives of men. . a prayer. thou, o god, dost sell us all good things at the price of labour. the powers of nature ( - ). . o admirable impartiality of thine, thou first mover; thou hast not permitted that any force should fail of the order or quality of its necessary results. . necessity is the mistress and guide of nature. necessity is the theme and the inventress, the eternal curb and law of nature. . in many cases one and the same thing is attracted by two strong forces, namely necessity and potency. water falls in rain; the earth absorbs it from the necessity for moisture; and the sun evaporates it, not from necessity, but by its power. . weight, force and casual impulse, together with resistance, are the four external powers in which all the visible actions of mortals have their being and their end. . our body is dependant on heaven and heaven on the spirit. . the motive power is the cause of all life. psychology ( - ). . and you, o man, who will discern in this work of mine the wonderful works of nature, if you think it would be a criminal thing to destroy it, reflect how much more criminal it is to take the life of a man; and if this, his external form, appears to thee marvellously constructed, remember that it is nothing as compared with the soul that dwells in that structure; for that indeed, be it what it may, is a thing divine. leave it then to dwell in his work at his good will and pleasure, and let not your rage or malice destroy a life--for indeed, he who does not value it, does not himself deserve it [footnote : in ms. ii a is the note: _chi no stima la vita, non la merita._]. [footnote: this text is on the back of the drawings reproduced on pl. cvii. compare no. , note on p. : compare also no. and .] . the soul can never be corrupted with the corruption of the body,, but is in the body as it were the air which causes the sound of the organ, where when a pipe bursts, the wind would cease to have any good effect. [footnote: compare no. .] . the part always has a tendency to reunite with its whole in order to escape from its imperfection. the spirit desires to remain with its body, because, without the organic instruments of that body, it can neither act, nor feel anything. . if any one wishes to see how the soul dwells in its body, let him observe how this body uses its daily habitation; that is to say, if this is devoid of order and confused, the body will be kept in disorder and confusion by its soul. . why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than with the imagination being awake? . the senses are of the earth; reason, stands apart in contemplation. [footnote: compare no. .] . every action needs to be prompted by a motive. to know and to will are two operations of the human mind. discerning, judging, deliberating are acts of the human mind. . all our knowledge has its origin in our preceptions. science, its principles and rules ( -- ) . science is the observation of things possible, whether present or past; prescience is the knowledge of things which may come to pass, though but slowly. . experience, the interpreter between formative nature and the human race, teaches how that nature acts among mortals; and being constrained by necessity cannot act otherwise than as reason, which is its helm, requires her to act. . wisdom is the daughter of experience. . nature is full of infinite causes that have never occured in experience. . truth was the only daughter of time. . experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments. experience does not err; only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power. men wrongly complain of experience; with great abuse they accuse her of leading them astray but they set experience aside, turning from it with complaints as to our ignorance causing us to be carried away by vain and foolish desires to promise ourselves, in her name, things that are not in her power; saying that she is fallacious. men are unjust in complaining of innocent experience, constantly accusing her of error and of false evidence. . instrumental or mechanical science is of all the noblest and the most useful, seeing that by means of this all animated bodies that have movement perform all their actions; and these movements are based on the centre of gravity which is placed in the middle dividing unequal weights, and it has dearth and wealth of muscles and also lever and counterlever. . of mechanics. mechanics are the paradise of mathematical science, because here we come to the fruits of mathematics. [footnote: compare no. , . -- (vol. i., p. ). . every instrument requires to be made by experience. . the man who blames the supreme certainty of mathematics feeds on confusion, and can never silence the contradictions of sophistical sciences which lead to an eternal quackery. . there is no certainty in sciences where one of the mathematical sciences cannot be applied, or which are not in relation with these mathematics. . any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, i will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition. . science is the captain, and practice the soldiers. . of the errors of those who depend on practice without science. those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going. ii. morals. what is life? ( . ). . now you see that the hope and the desire of returning home and to one's former state is like the moth to the light, and that the man who with constant longing awaits with joy each new spring time, each new summer, each new month and new year--deeming that the things he longs for are ever too late in coming--does not perceive that he is longing for his own destruction. but this desire is the very quintessence, the spirit of the elements, which finding itself imprisoned with the soul is ever longing to return from the human body to its giver. and you must know that this same longing is that quintessence, inseparable from nature, and that man is the image of the world. . o time! consumer of all things; o envious age! thou dost destroy all things and devour all things with the relentless teeth of years, little by little in a slow death. helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the withered wrinkles made in her face by old age, wept and wondered why she had twice been carried away. o time! consumer of all things, and o envious age! by which all things are all devoured. death. . every evil leaves behind a grief in our memory, except the supreme evil, that is death, which destroys this memory together with life. how to spend life ( - ). . sleepers! what a thing is slumber! sleep resembles death. ah, why then dost thou not work in such wise as that after death thou mayst retain a resemblance to perfect life, when, during life, thou art in sleep so like to the hapless dead? [footnote: compare no. , vol. i. p. .] . one pushes down the other. by these square-blocks are meant the life and the studies of men. . the knowledge of past times and of the places on the earth is both an ornament and nutriment to the human mind. . to lie is so vile, that even if it were in speaking well of godly things it would take off something from god's grace; and truth is so excellent, that if it praises but small things they become noble. beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness; and this truth is in itself so excellent that, even when it dwells on humble and lowly matters, it is still infinitely above uncertainty and lies, disguised in high and lofty discourses; because in our minds, even if lying should be their fifth element, this does not prevent that the truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects, though not of wandering wits. but you who live in dreams are better pleased by the sophistical reasons and frauds of wits in great and uncertain things, than by those reasons which are certain and natural and not so far above us. . avoid studies of which the result dies with the worker. . men are in error when they lament the flight of time, accusing it of being too swift, and not perceiving that it is sufficient as it passes; but good memory, with which nature has endowed us, causes things long past to seem present. . learning acquired in youth arrests the evil of old age; and if you understand that old age has wisdom for its food, you will so conduct yourself in youth that your old age will not lack for nourishment. . the acquisition of any knowledge is always of use to the intellect, because it may thus drive out useless things and retain the good. for nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first known. . as a day well spent procures a happy sleep, so a life well employed procures a happy death. . the water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. thus it is with time present. life if well spent, is long. . just as food eaten without caring for it is turned into loathsome nourishment, so study without a taste for it spoils memory, by retaining nothing which it has taken in. . just as eating against one's will is injurious to health, so study without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in. . on mount etna the words freeze in your mouth and you may make ice of them.[footnote : there is no clue to explain this strange sentence.] just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use. you do ill if you praise, and still worse if you reprove in a matter you do not understand. when fortune comes, seize her in front with a sure hand, because behind she is bald. . it seems to me that men of coarse and clumsy habits and of small knowledge do not deserve such fine instruments nor so great a variety of natural mechanism as men of speculation and of great knowledge; but merely a sack in which their food may be stowed and whence it may issue, since they cannot be judged to be any thing else than vehicles for food; for it seems to me they have nothing about them of the human species but the voice and the figure, and for all the rest are much below beasts. . some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them. on foolishness and ignorance ( -- ). . the greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions. . folly is the shield of shame, as unreadiness is that of poverty glorified. . blind ignorance misleads us thus and delights with the results of lascivious joys. because it does not know the true light. because it does not know what is the true light. vain splendour takes from us the power of being .... behold! for its vain splendour we go into the fire, thus blind ignorance does mislead us. that is, blind ignorance so misleads us that ... o! wretched mortals, open your eyes. on riches ( -- ). . that is not riches, which may be lost; virtue is our true good and the true reward of its possessor. that cannot be lost; that never deserts us, but when life leaves us. as to property and external riches, hold them with trembling; they often leave their possessor in contempt, and mocked at for having lost them. . every man wishes to make money to give it to the doctors, destroyers of life; they then ought to be rich. [footnote : compare no. .] man has much power of discourse which for the most part is vain and false; animals have but little, but it is useful and true, and a small truth is better than a great lie. . he who possesses most must be most afraid of loss. . he who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year. . that man is of supreme folly who always wants for fear of wanting; and his life flies away while he is still hoping to enjoy the good things which he has with extreme labour acquired. rules of life ( - ). . if you governed your body by the rules of virtue you would not walk on all fours in this world. you grow in reputation like bread in the hands of a child. [footnote: the first sentence is obscure. compare nos. , .] . savage he is who saves himself. . we ought not to desire the impossible. [footnote: the writing of this note, which is exceedingly minute, is reproduced in facsimile on pl. xli no. above the first diagram. . ask counsel of him who rules himself well. justice requires power, insight, and will; and it resembles the queen-bee. he who does not punish evil commands it to be done. he who takes the snake by the tail will presently be bitten by it. the grave will fall in upon him who digs it. . the man who does not restrain wantonness, allies himself with beasts. you can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself. he who thinks little, errs much. it is easier to contend with evil at the first than at the last. no counsel is more loyal than that given on ships which are in peril: he may expect loss who acts on the advice of an inexperienced youth. . where there is most feeling, there is the greatest martyrdom;--a great martyr. . the memory of benefits is a frail defence against ingratitude. reprove your friend in secret and praise him openly. be not false about the past. . a simile for patience. patience serves us against insults precisely as clothes do against the cold. for if you multiply your garments as the cold increases, that cold cannot hurt you; in the same way increase your patience under great offences, and they cannot hurt your feelings. . to speak well of a base man is much the same as speaking ill of a good man. . envy wounds with false accusations, that is with detraction, a thing which scares virtue. . we are deceived by promises and time disappoints us ... [footnote : the rest of this passage may be rendered in various ways, but none of them give a satisfactory meaning.] . fear arises sooner than any thing else. . just as courage imperils life, fear protects it. threats alone are the weapons of the threatened man. wherever good fortune enters, envy lays siege to the place and attacks it; and when it departs, sorrow and repentance remain behind. he who walks straight rarely falls. it is bad if you praise, and worse if you reprove a thing, i mean, if you do not understand the matter well. it is ill to praise, and worse to reprimand in matters that you do not understand. . words which do not satisfy the ear of the hearer weary him or vex him, and the symptoms of this you will often see in such hearers in their frequent yawns; you therefore, who speak before men whose good will you desire, when you see such an excess of fatigue, abridge your speech, or change your discourse; and if you do otherwise, then instead of the favour you desire, you will get dislike and hostility. and if you would see in what a man takes pleasure, without hearing him speak, change the subject of your discourse in talking to him, and when you presently see him intent, without yawning or wrinkling his brow or other actions of various kinds, you may be certain that the matter of which you are speaking is such as is agreeable to him &c. . the lover is moved by the beloved object as the senses are by sensible objects; and they unite and become one and the same thing. the work is the first thing born of this union; if the thing loved is base the lover becomes base. when the thing taken into union is perfectly adapted to that which receives it, the result is delight and pleasure and satisfaction. when that which loves is united to the thing beloved it can rest there; when the burden is laid down it finds rest there. politics ( . ). . there will be eternal fame also for the inhabitants of that town, constructed and enlarged by him. all communities obey and are led by their magnates, and these magnates ally themselves with the lords and subjugate them in two ways: either by consanguinity, or by fortune; by consanguinity, when their children are, as it were, hostages, and a security and pledge of their suspected fidelity; by property, when you make each of these build a house or two inside your city which may yield some revenue and he shall have...; towns, five thousand houses with thirty thousand inhabitants, and you will disperse this great congregation of people which stand like goats one behind the other, filling every place with fetid smells and sowing seeds of pestilence and death; and the city will gain beauty worthy of its name and to you it will be useful by its revenues, and the eternal fame of its aggrandizement. [footnote: these notes were possibly written in preparation for a letter. the meaning is obscure.] . to preserve nature's chiefest boon, that is freedom, i can find means of offence and defence, when it is assailed by ambitious tyrants, and first i will speak of the situation of the walls, and also i shall show how communities can maintain their good and just lords. [footnote: compare no. .] iii. polemics.--speculation. against speculators ( . ). . oh! speculators on things, boast not of knowing the things that nature ordinarily brings about; but rejoice if you know the end of those things which you yourself devise. . oh! speculators on perpetual motion how many vain projects of the like character you have created! go and be the companions of the searchers for gold. [footnote: another short passage in ms. i, referring also to speculators, is given by libri (_hist, des sciences math._ iii, ): _sicche voi speculatori non vi fidate delli autori che anno sol col immaginatione voluto farsi interpreti tra la natura e l'omo, ma sol di quelli che non coi cienni della natura, ma cogli effetti delle sue esperienze anno esercitati i loro ingegni._] against alchemists ( . ). . the false interpreters of nature declare that quicksilver is the common seed of every metal, not remembering that nature varies the seed according to the variety of the things she desires to produce in the world. . and many have made a trade of delusions and false miracles, deceiving the stupid multitude. against friars. . pharisees--that is to say, friars. [footnote: compare no. , . - , no. (p. and ), and no. (p. ).] against writers of epitomes. . abbreviators do harm to knowledge and to love, seeing that the love of any thing is the offspring of this knowledge, the love being the more fervent in proportion as the knowledge is more certain. and this certainty is born of a complete knowledge of all the parts, which, when combined, compose the totality of the thing which ought to be loved. of what use then is he who abridges the details of those matters of which he professes to give thorough information, while he leaves behind the chief part of the things of which the whole is composed? it is true that impatience, the mother of stupidity, praises brevity, as if such persons had not life long enough to serve them to acquire a complete knowledge of one single subject, such as the human body; and then they want to comprehend the mind of god in which the universe is included, weighing it minutely and mincing it into infinite parts, as if they had to dissect it! oh! human stupidity, do you not perceive that, though you have been with yourself all your life, you are not yet aware of the thing you possess most of, that is of your folly? and then, with the crowd of sophists, you deceive yourselves and others, despising the mathematical sciences, in which truth dwells and the knowledge of the things included in them. and then you occupy yourself with miracles, and write that you possess information of those things of which the human mind is incapable and which cannot be proved by any instance from nature. and you fancy you have wrought miracles when you spoil a work of some speculative mind, and do not perceive that you are falling into the same error as that of a man who strips a tree of the ornament of its branches covered with leaves mingled with the scented blossoms or fruit....... [footnote : _givstino_, marcus junianus justinus, a roman historian of the second century, who compiled an epitome from the general history written by trogus pompeius, who lived in the time of augustus. the work of the latter writer no longer exist.] as justinus did, in abridging the histories written by trogus pompeius, who had written in an ornate style all the worthy deeds of his forefathers, full of the most admirable and ornamental passages; and so composed a bald work worthy only of those impatient spirits, who fancy they are losing as much time as that which they employ usefully in studying the works of nature and the deeds of men. but these may remain in company of beasts; among their associates should be dogs and other animals full of rapine and they may hunt with them after...., and then follow helpless beasts, which in time of great snows come near to your houses asking alms as from their master.... on spirits ( -- ). . o mathematicians shed light on this error. the spirit has no voice, because where there is a voice there is a body, and where there is a body space is occupied, and this prevents the eye from seeing what is placed behind that space; hence the surrounding air is filled by the body, that is by its image. . there can be no voice where there is no motion or percussion of the air; there can be no percussion of the air where there is no instrument, there can be no instrument without a body; and this being so, a spirit can have neither voice, nor form, nor strength. and if it were to assume a body it could not penetrate nor enter where the passages are closed. and if any one should say that by air, compressed and compacted together, a spirit may take bodies of various forms and by this means speak and move with strength--to him i reply that when there are neither nerves nor bones there can be no force exercised in any kind of movement made by such imaginary spirits. beware of the teaching of these speculators, because their reasoning is not confirmed by experience. . of all human opinions that is to be reputed the most foolish which deals with the belief in necromancy, the sister of alchemy, which gives birth to simple and natural things. but it is all the more worthy of reprehension than alchemy, because it brings forth nothing but what is like itself, that is, lies; this does not happen in alchemy which deals with simple products of nature and whose function cannot be exercised by nature itself, because it has no organic instruments with which it can work, as men do by means of their hands, who have produced, for instance, glass &c. but this necromancy the flag and flying banner, blown by the winds, is the guide of the stupid crowd which is constantly witness to the dazzling and endless effects of this art; and there are books full, declaring that enchantments and spirits can work and speak without tongues and without organic instruments-- without which it is impossible to speak-- and can carry heaviest weights and raise storms and rain; and that men can be turned into cats and wolves and other beasts, although indeed it is those who affirm these things who first became beasts. and surely if this necromancy did exist, as is believed by small wits, there is nothing on the earth that would be of so much importance alike for the detriment and service of men, if it were true that there were in such an art a power to disturb the calm serenity of the air, converting it into darkness and making coruscations or winds, with terrific thunder and lightnings rushing through the darkness, and with violent storms overthrowing high buildings and rooting up forests; and thus to oppose armies, crushing and annihilating them; and, besides these frightful storms may deprive the peasants of the reward of their labours.--now what kind of warfare is there to hurt the enemy so much as to deprive him of the harvest? what naval warfare could be compared with this? i say, the man who has power to command the winds and to make ruinous gales by which any fleet may be submerged, --surely a man who could command such violent forces would be lord of the nations, and no human ingenuity could resist his crushing force. the hidden treasures and gems reposing in the body of the earth would all be made manifest to him. no lock nor fortress, though impregnable, would be able to save any one against the will of the necromancer. he would have himself carried through the air from east to west and through all the opposite sides of the universe. but why should i enlarge further upon this? what is there that could not be done by such a craftsman? almost nothing, except to escape death. hereby i have explained in part the mischief and the usefulness, contained in this art, if it is real; and if it is real why has it not remained among men who desire it so much, having nothing to do with any deity? for i know that there are numberless people who would, to satisfy a whim, destroy god and all the universe; and if this necromancy, being, as it were, so necessary to men, has not been left among them, it can never have existed, nor will it ever exist according to the definition of the spirit, which is invisible in substance; for within the elements there are no incorporate things, because where there is no body, there is a vacuum; and no vacuum can exist in the elements because it would be immediately filled up. turn over. . of spirits. we have said, on the other side of this page, that the definition of a spirit is a power conjoined to a body; because it cannot move of its own accord, nor can it have any kind of motion in space; and if you were to say that it moves itself, this cannot be within the elements. for, if the spirit is an incorporeal quantity, this quantity is called a vacuum, and a vacuum does not exist in nature; and granting that one were formed, it would be immediately filled up by the rushing in of the element in which the vacuum had been generated. therefore, from the definition of weight, which is this--gravity is an accidental power, created by one element being drawn to or suspended in another--it follows that an element, not weighing anything compared with itself, has weight in the element above it and lighter than it; as we see that the parts of water have no gravity or levity compared with other water, but if you draw it up into the air, then it would acquire weight, and if you were to draw the air beneath the water then the water which remains above this air would acquire weight, which weight could not sustain itself by itself, whence collapse is inevitable. and this happens in water; wherever the vacuum may be in this water it will fall in; and this would happen with a spirit amid the elements, where it would continuously generate a vacuum in whatever element it might find itself, whence it would be inevitable that it should be constantly flying towards the sky until it had quitted these elements. as to whether a spirit has a body amid the elements. we have proved that a spirit cannot exist of itself amid the elements without a body, nor can it move of itself by voluntary motion unless it be to rise upwards. but now we will say how such a spirit taking an aerial body would be inevitably melt into air; because if it remained united, it would be separated and fall to form a vacuum, as is said above; therefore it is inevitable, if it is to be able to remain suspended in the air, that it should absorb a certain quantity of air; and if it were mingled with the air, two difficulties arise; that is to say: it must rarefy that portion of the air with which it mingles; and for this cause the rarefied air must fly up of itself and will not remain among the air that is heavier than itself; and besides this the subtle spiritual essence disunites itself, and its nature is modified, by which that nature loses some of its first virtue. added to these there is a third difficulty, and this is that such a body formed of air assumed by the spirits is exposed to the penetrating winds, which are incessantly sundering and dispersing the united portions of the air, revolving and whirling amidst the rest of the atmosphere; therefore the spirit which is infused in this . air would be dismembered or rent and broken up with the rending of the air into which it was incorporated. as to whether the spirit, having taken this body of air, can move of itself or not. it is impossible that the spirit infused into a certain quantity of air, should move this air; and this is proved by the above passage where it is said: the spirit rarefies that portion of the air in which it incorporates itself; therefore this air will rise high above the other air and there will be a motion of the air caused by its lightness and not by a voluntary movement of the spirit, and if this air is encountered by the wind, according to the rd of this, the air will be moved by the wind and not by the spirit incorporated in it. as to whether the spirit can speak or not. in order to prove whether the spirit can speak or not, it is necessary in the first place to define what a voice is and how it is generated; and we will say that the voice is, as it were, the movement of air in friction against a dense body, or a dense body in friction against the air,--which is the same thing. and this friction of the dense and the rare condenses the rare and causes resistance; again, the rare, when in swift motion, and the rare in slow motion condense each other when they come in contact and make a noise and very great uproar; and the sound or murmur made by the rare moving through the rare with only moderate swiftness, like a great flame generating noises in the air; and the tremendous uproar made by the rare mingling with the rare, and when that air which is both swift and rare rushes into that which is itself rare and in motion, it is like the flame of fire which issues from a big gun and striking against the air; and again when a flame issues from the cloud, there is a concussion in the air as the bolt is generated. therefore we may say that the spirit cannot produce a voice without movement of the air, and air in it there is none, nor can it emit what it has not; and if desires to move that air in which it is incorporated, it is necessary that the spirit should multiply itself, and that cannot multiply which has no quantity. and in the th place it is said that no rare body can move, if it has not a stable spot, whence it may take its motion; much more is it so when an element has to move within its own element, which does not move of itself, excepting by uniform evaporation at the centre of the thing evaporated; as occurs in a sponge squeezed in the hand held under water; the water escapes in every direction with equal movement through the openings between the fingers of the hand in which it is squeezed. as to whether the spirit has an articulate voice, and whether the spirit can be heard, and what hearing is, and seeing; the wave of the voice passes through the air as the images of objects pass to the eye. nonentity. . every quantity is intellectually conceivable as infinitely divisible. [amid the vastness of the things among which we live, the existence of nothingness holds the first place; its function extends over all things that have no existence, and its essence, as regards time, lies precisely between the past and the future, and has nothing in the present. this nothingness has the part equal to the whole, and the whole to the part, the divisible to the indivisible; and the product of the sum is the same whether we divide or multiply, and in addition as in subtraction; as is proved by arithmeticians by their tenth figure which represents zero; and its power has not extension among the things of nature.] [what is called nothingness is to be found only in time and in speech. in time it stands between the past and future and has no existence in the present; and thus in speech it is one of the things of which we say: they are not, or they are impossible.] with regard to time, nothingness lies between the past and the future, and has nothing to do with the present, and as to its nature it is to be classed among things impossible: hence, from what has been said, it has no existence; because where there is nothing there would necessarily be a vacuum. [footnote: compare no. .] reflections on nature ( - ). . example of the lightning in clouds. [o mighty and once living instrument of formative nature. incapable of availing thyself of thy vast strength thou hast to abandon a life of stillness and to obey the law which god and time gave to procreative nature.] ah! how many a time the shoals of terrified dolphins and the huge tunny-fish were seen to flee before thy cruel fury, to escape; whilst thy fulminations raised in the sea a sudden tempest with buffeting and submersion of ships in the great waves; and filling the uncovered shores with the terrified and desperate fishes which fled from thee, and left by the sea, remained in spots where they became the abundant prey of the people in the neighbourhood. o time, swift robber of all created things, how many kings, how many nations hast thou undone, and how many changes of states and of various events have happened since the wondrous forms of this fish perished here in this cavernous and winding recess. now destroyed by time thou liest patiently in this confined space with bones stripped and bare; serving as a support and prop for the superimposed mountain. [footnote: the character of the handwriting points to an early period of leonardo's life. it has become very indistinct, and is at present exceedingly difficult to decipher. some passages remain doubtful.] [footnote: compare no. , written on the same sheet.] . the watery element was left enclosed between the raised banks of the rivers, and the sea was seen between the uplifted earth and the surrounding air which has to envelope and enclose the complicated machine of the earth, and whose mass, standing between the water and the element of fire, remained much restricted and deprived of its indispensable moisture; the rivers will be deprived of their waters, the fruitful earth will put forth no more her light verdure; the fields will no more be decked with waving corn; all the animals, finding no fresh grass for pasture, will die and food will then be lacking to the lions and wolves and other beasts of prey, and to men who after many efforts will be compelled to abandon their life, and the human race will die out. in this way the fertile and fruitful earth will remain deserted, arid and sterile from the water being shut up in its interior, and from the activity of nature it will continue a little time to increase until the cold and subtle air being gone, it will be forced to end with the element of fire; and then its surface will be left burnt up to cinder and this will be the end of all terrestrial nature. [footnote: compare no. , written on the same sheet.] . why did nature not ordain that one animal should not live by the death of another? nature, being inconstant and taking pleasure in creating and making constantly new lives and forms, because she knows that her terrestrial materials become thereby augmented, is more ready and more swift in her creating, than time in his destruction; and so she has ordained that many animals shall be food for others. nay, this not satisfying her desire, to the same end she frequently sends forth certain poisonous and pestilential vapours upon the vast increase and congregation of animals; and most of all upon men, who increase vastly because other animals do not feed upon them; and, the causes being removed, the effects would not follow. this earth therefore seeks to lose its life, desiring only continual reproduction; and as, by the argument you bring forward and demonstrate, like effects always follow like causes, animals are the image of the world. _xx._ _humorous writings._ _just as michaelangelo's occasional poems reflect his private life as well as the general disposition of his mind, we may find in the writings collected in this section, the transcript of leonardo's fanciful nature, and we should probably not be far wrong in assuming, that he himself had recited these fables in the company of his friends or at the court festivals of princes and patrons._ era tanto piacevole nella conversazione-- _so relates vasari_--che tirava a se gli animi delle genti. _and paulus jovius says in his short biography of the artist:_ fuit ingenio valde comi, nitido, liberali, vultu autem longe venustissimo, et cum elegantiae omnis deliciarumque maxime theatralium mirificus inventor ac arbiter esset, ad lyramque scito caneret, cunctis per omnem aetatem principibus mire placuit. _there can be no doubt that the fables are the original offspring of leonardo's brain, and not borrowed from any foreign source; indeed the schemes and plans for the composition of fables collected in division v seem to afford an external proof of this, if the fables themselves did not render it self-evident. several of them-- for instance no._ l --_are so strikingly characteristic of leonardo's views of natural science that we cannot do them justice till we are acquainted with his theories on such subjects; and this is equally true of the 'prophecies'_. _i have prefixed to these quaint writings the 'studies on the life and habits of animals' which are singular from their peculiar aphoristic style, and i have transcribed them in exactly the order in which they are written in ms. h. this is one of the very rare instances in which one subject is treated in a consecutive series of notes, all in one ms., and leonardo has also departed from his ordinary habits, by occasionally not completing the text on the page it is begun. these brief notes of a somewhat mysterious bearing have been placed here, simply because they may possibly have been intended to serve as hints for fables or allegories. they can scarcely be regarded as preparatory for a natural history, rather they would seem to be extracts. on the one hand the names of some of the animals seem to prove that leonardo could not here be recording observations of his own; on the other hand the notes on their habits and life appear to me to dwell precisely on what must have interested him most--so far as it is possible to form any complete estimate of his nature and tastes._ _in no._ _lines_ - , _we have a sketch of a scheme for grouping the prophecies. i have not however availed myself of it as a clue to their arrangement here because, in the first place, the texts are not so numerous as to render the suggested classification useful to the reader, and, also, because in reading the long series, as they occur in the original, we may follow the author's mind; and here and there it is not difficult to see how one theme suggested another. i have however regarded leonardo's scheme for the classification of the prophecies as available for that of the fables and jests, and have adhered to it as far as possible._ _among the humourous writings i might perhaps have included the_ 'rebusses', _of which there are several in the collection of leonardo's drawings at windsor; it seems to me not likely that many or all of them could be solved at the present day and the mss. throw no light on them. nor should i be justified if i intended to include in the literary works the well-known caricatures of human faces attributed to leonardo-- of which, however, it may be incidentally observed, the greater number are in my opinion undoubtedly spurious. two only have necessarily been given owing to their presence in text, which it was desired to reproduce: vol. i page_ , _and pl. cxxii. it can scarcely be doubted that some satirical intention is conveyed by the drawing on pl. lxiv (text no. _ _). my reason for not presenting leonardo to the reader as a poet is the fact that the maxims and morals in verse which have been ascribed to him, are not to be found in the manuscripts, and prof. uzielli has already proved that they cannot be by him. hence it would seem that only a few short verses can be attributed to him with any certainty._ i. studies on the life and habits of animals. . the love of virtue. the gold-finch is a bird of which it is related that, when it is carried into the presence of a sick person, if the sick man is going to die, the bird turns away its head and never looks at him; but if the sick man is to be saved the bird never loses sight of him but is the cause of curing him of all his sickness. like unto this is the love of virtue. it never looks at any vile or base thing, but rather clings always to pure and virtuous things and takes up its abode in a noble heart; as the birds do in green woods on flowery branches. and this love shows itself more in adversity than in prosperity; as light does, which shines most where the place is darkest. . envy. we read of the kite that, when it sees its young ones growing too big in the nest, out of envy it pecks their sides, and keeps them without food. cheerfulness. cheerfulness is proper to the cock, which rejoices over every little thing, and crows with varied and lively movements. sadness. sadness resembles the raven, which, when it sees its young ones born white, departs in great grief, and abandons them with doleful lamentations, and does not feed them until it sees in them some few black feathers. . peace. we read of the beaver that when it is pursued, knowing that it is for the virtue [contained] in its medicinal testicles and not being able to escape, it stops; and to be at peace with its pursuers, it bites off its testicles with its sharp teeth, and leaves them to its enemies. rage. it is said of the bear that when it goes to the haunts of bees to take their honey, the bees having begun to sting him he leaves the honey and rushes to revenge himself. and as he seeks to be revenged on all those that sting him, he is revenged on none; in such wise that his rage is turned to madness, and he flings himself on the ground, vainly exasperating, by his hands and feet, the foes against which he is defending himself. . gratitude. the virtue of gratitude is said to be more [developed] in the birds called hoopoes which, knowing the benefits of life and food, they have received from their father and their mother, when they see them grow old, make a nest for them and brood over them and feed them, and with their beaks pull out their old and shabby feathers; and then, with a certain herb restore their sight so that they return to a prosperous state. avarice. the toad feeds on earth and always remains lean; because it never eats enough:-- it is so afraid lest it should want for earth. . ingratitude. pigeons are a symbol of ingratitude; for when they are old enough no longer to need to be fed, they begin to fight with their father, and this struggle does not end until the young one drives the father out and takes the hen and makes her his own. cruelty. the basilisk is so utterly cruel that when it cannot kill animals by its baleful gaze, it turns upon herbs and plants, and fixing its gaze on them withers them up. . generosity. it is said of the eagle that it is never so hungry but that it will leave a part of its prey for the birds that are round it, which, being unable to provide their own food, are necessarily dependent on the eagle, since it is thus that they obtain food. discipline. when the wolf goes cunningly round some stable of cattle, and by accident puts his foot in a trap, so that he makes a noise, he bites his foot off to punish himself for his folly. . flatterers or syrens. the syren sings so sweetly that she lulls the mariners to sleep; then she climbs upon the ships and kills the sleeping mariners. prudence. the ant, by her natural foresight provides in the summer for the winter, killing the seeds she harvests that they may not germinate, and on them, in due time she feeds. folly. the wild bull having a horror of a red colour, the hunters dress up the trunk of a tree with red and the bull runs at this with great frenzy, thus fixing his horns, and forthwith the hunters kill him there. . justice. we may liken the virtue of justice to the king of the bees which orders and arranges every thing with judgment. for some bees are ordered to go to the flowers, others are ordered to labour, others to fight with the wasps, others to clear away all dirt, others to accompagny and escort the king; and when he is old and has no wings they carry him. and if one of them fails in his duty, he is punished without reprieve. truth. although partridges steal each other's eggs, nevertheless the young born of these eggs always return to their true mother. . fidelity, or loyalty. the cranes are so faithful and loyal to their king, that at night, when he is sleeping, some of them go round the field to keep watch at a distance; others remain near, each holding a stone in his foot, so that if sleep should overcome them, this stone would fall and make so much noise that they would wake up again. and there are others which sleep together round the king; and this they do every night, changing in turn so that their king may never find them wanting. falsehood. the fox when it sees a flock of herons or magpies or birds of that kind, suddenly flings himself on the ground with his mouth open to look as he were dead; and these birds want to peck at his tongue, and he bites off their heads. . lies. the mole has very small eyes and it always lives under ground; and it lives as long as it is in the dark but when it comes into the light it dies immediately, because it becomes known;--and so it is with lies. valour. the lion is never afraid, but rather fights with a bold spirit and savage onslaught against a multitude of hunters, always seeking to injure the first that injures him. fear or cowardice. the hare is always frightened; and the leaves that fall from the trees in autumn always keep him in terror and generally put him to flight. . magnanimity. the falcon never preys but on large birds; and it will let itself die rather than feed on little ones, or eat stinking meat. vain glory. as regards this vice, we read that the peacock is more guilty of it than any other animal. for it is always contemplating the beauty of its tail, which it spreads in the form of a wheel, and by its cries attracts to itself the gaze of the creatures that surround it. and this is the last vice to be conquered. . constancy. constancy may be symbolised by the phoenix which, knowing that by nature it must be resuscitated, has the constancy to endure the burning flames which consume it, and then it rises anew. inconstancy. the swallow may serve for inconstancy, for it is always in movement, since it cannot endure the smallest discomfort. continence. the camel is the most lustful animal there is, and will follow the female for a thousand miles. but if you keep it constantly with its mother or sister it will leave them alone, so temperate is its nature. . incontinence. the unicorn, through its intemperance and not knowing how to control itself, for the love it bears to fair maidens forgets its ferocity and wildness; and laying aside all fear it will go up to a seated damsel and go to sleep in her lap, and thus the hunters take it. humility. we see the most striking example of humility in the lamb which will submit to any animal; and when they are given for food to imprisoned lions they are as gentle to them as to their own mother, so that very often it has been seen that the lions forbear to kill them. . pride. the falcon, by reason of its haughtiness and pride, is fain to lord it and rule over all the other birds of prey, and longs to be sole and supreme; and very often the falcon has been seen to assault the eagle, the queen of birds. abstinence. the wild ass, when it goes to the well to drink, and finds the water troubled, is never so thirsty but that it will abstain from drinking, and wait till the water is clear again. gluttony. the vulture is so addicted to gluttony that it will go a thousand miles to eat a carrion [carcase]; therefore is it that it follows armies. . chastity. the turtle-dove is never false to its mate; and if one dies the other preserves perpetual chastity, and never again sits on a green bough, nor ever again drinks of clear water. unchastity. the bat, owing to unbridled lust, observes no universal rule in pairing, but males with males and females with females pair promiscuously, as it may happen. moderation. the ermine out of moderation never eats but once in the day; it will rather let itself be taken by the hunters than take refuge in a dirty lair, in order not to stain its purity. . the eagle. the eagle when it is old flies so high that it scorches its feathers, and nature allowing that it should renew its youth, it falls into shallow water [footnote : the meaning is obscure.]. and if its young ones cannot bear to gaze on the sun [footnote : the meaning is obscure.]--; it does not feed them with any bird, that does not wish to die. animals which much fear it do not approach its nest, although it does not hurt them. it always leaves part of its prey uneaten. lumerpa,--fame. this is found in asia major, and shines so brightly that it absorbs its own shadow, and when it dies it does not lose this light, and its feathers never fall out, but a feather pulled out shines no longer. . the pelican. this bird has a great love for its young; and when it finds them in its nest dead from a serpent's bite, it pierces itself to the heart, and with its blood it bathes them till they return to life. the salamander. this has no digestive organs, and gets no food but from the fire, in which it constantly renews its scaly skin. the salamander, which renews its scaly skin in the fire,--for virtue. the cameleon. this lives on air, and there it is the prey of all the birds; so in order to be safer it flies above the clouds and finds an air so rarefied that it cannot support the bird that follows it. at that height nothing can go unless it has a gift from heaven, and that is where the chameleon flies. . the alepo, a fish. the fish _alepo_ does not live out of water. the ostrich. this bird converts iron into nourishment, and hatches its eggs by its gaze;--armies under commanders. the swan. the swan is white without any spot, and it sings sweetly as it dies, its life ending with that song. the stork. this bird, by drinking saltwater purges itself of distempers. if the male finds his mate unfaithful, he abandons her; and when it grows old its young ones brood over it, and feed it till it dies. . the grasshopper. this silences the cuckoo with its song. it dies in oil and revives in vinegar. it sings in the greatest heats the bat. the more light there is the blinder this creature becomes; as those who gaze most at the sun become most dazzled.--for vice, that cannot remain where virtue appears. the partridge. this bird changes from the female into the male and forgets its former sex; and out of envy it steals the eggs from others and hatches them, but the young ones follow the true mother. the swallow. this bird gives sight to its blind young ones by means of celandine. . the oyster.--for treachery. this creature, when the moon is full opens itself wide, and when the crab looks in he throws in a piece of rock or seaweed and the oyster cannot close again, whereby it serves for food to that crab. this is what happens to him who opens his mouth to tell his secret. he becomes the prey of the treacherous hearer. the basilisk.--cruelty. all snakes flie from this creature; but the weasel attacks it by means of rue and kills it. the asp. this carries instantaneous death in its fangs; and, that it may not hear the charmer it stops its ears with its tail. . the dragon. this creature entangles itself in the legs of the elephant which falls upon it, and so both die, and in its death it is avenged. the viper. she, in pairing opens her mouth and at last clenches her teeth and kills her husband. then the young ones, growing within her body rend her open and kill their mother. the scorpion. saliva, spit out when fasting will kill a scorpion. this may be likened to abstinence from greediness, which removes and heals the ills which result from that gluttony, and opens the path of virtue. . the crocodile. hypocrisy. this animal catches a man and straightway kills him; after he is dead, it weeps for him with a lamentable voice and many tears. then, having done lamenting, it cruelly devours him. it is thus with the hypocrite, who, for the smallest matter, has his face bathed with tears, but shows the heart of a tiger and rejoices in his heart at the woes of others, while wearing a pitiful face. the toad. the toad flies from the light of the sun, and if it is held there by force it puffs itself out so much as to hide its head below and shield itself from the rays. thus does the foe of clear and radiant virtue, who can only be constrainedly brought to face it with puffed up courage. . the caterpillar.--for virtue in general. the caterpillar, which by means of assiduous care is able to weave round itself a new dwelling place with marvellous artifice and fine workmanship, comes out of it afterwards with painted and lovely wings, with which it rises towards heaven. the spider. the spider brings forth out of herself the delicate and ingenious web, which makes her a return by the prey it takes. [footnote: two notes are underneath this text. the first: _'nessuna chosa e da ttemere piu che lla sozza fama'_ is a repetition of the first line of the text given in vol. i no. . the second: _faticha fugga cholla fama in braccio quasi ochultata c_ is written in red chalk and is evidently an incomplete sentence.] . the lion. this animal, with his thundering roar, rouses his young the third day after they are born, teaching them the use of all their dormant senses and all the wild things which are in the wood flee away. this may be compared to the children of virtue who are roused by the sound of praise and grow up in honourable studies, by which they are more and more elevated; while all that is base flies at the sound, shunning those who are virtuous. again, the lion covers over its foot tracks, so that the way it has gone may not be known to its enemies. thus it beseems a captain to conceal the secrets of his mind so that the enemy may not know his purpose. . the tarantula. the bite of the tarantula fixes a man's mind on one idea; that is on the thing he was thinking of when he was bitten. the screech-owl and the owl. these punish those who are scoffing at them by pecking out their eyes; for nature has so ordered it, that they may thus be fed. . the elephant. the huge elephant has by nature what is rarely found in man; that is honesty, prudence, justice, and the observance of religion; inasmuch as when the moon is new, these beasts go down to the rivers, and there, solemnly cleansing themselves, they bathe, and so, having saluted the planet, return to the woods. and when they are ill, being laid down, they fling up plants towards heaven as though they would offer sacrifice. --they bury their tusks when they fall out from old age.--of these two tusks they use one to dig up roots for food; but they save the point of the other for fighting with; when they are taken by hunters and when worn out by fatigue, they dig up these buried tusks and ransom themselves. . they are merciful, and know the dangers, and if one finds a man alone and lost, he kindly puts him back in the road he has missed, if he finds the footprints of the man before the man himself. it dreads betrayal, so it stops and blows, pointing it out to the other elephants who form in a troop and go warily. these beasts always go in troops, and the oldest goes in front and the second in age remains the last, and thus they enclose the troop. out of shame they pair only at night and secretly, nor do they then rejoin the herd but first bathe in the river. the females do not fight as with other animals; and it is so merciful that it is most unwilling by nature ever to hurt those weaker than itself. and if it meets in the middle of its way a flock of sheep . it puts them aside with its trunk, so as not to trample them under foot; and it never hurts any thing unless when provoked. when one has fallen into a pit the others fill up the pit with branches, earth and stones, thus raising the bottom that he may easily get out. they greatly dread the noise of swine and fly in confusion, doing no less harm then, with their feet, to their own kind than to the enemy. they delight in rivers and are always wandering about near them, though on account of their great weight they cannot swim. they devour stones, and the trunks of trees are their favourite food. they have a horror of rats. flies delight in their smell and settle on their back, and the beast scrapes its skin making its folds even and kills them. . when they cross rivers they send their young ones up against the stream of the water; thus, being set towards the fall, they break the united current of the water so that the current does not carry them away. the dragon flings itself under the elephant's body, and with its tail it ties its legs; with its wings and with its arms it also clings round its ribs and cuts its throat with its teeth, and the elephant falls upon it and the dragon is burst. thus, in its death it is revenged on its foe. the dragon. these go in companies together, and they twine themselves after the manner of roots, and with their heads raised they cross lakes, and swim to where they find better pasture; and if they did not thus combine . they would be drowned, therefore they combine. the serpent. the serpent is a very large animal. when it sees a bird in the air it draws in its breath so strongly that it draws the birds into its mouth too. marcus regulus, the consul of the roman army was attacked, with his army, by such an animal and almost defeated. and this animal, being killed by a catapult, measured feet, that is / braccia and its head was high above all the trees in a wood. the boa(?) this is a very large snake which entangles itself round the legs of the cow so that it cannot move and then sucks it, in such wise that it almost dries it up. in the time of claudius the emperor, there was killed, on the vatican hill, . one which had inside it a boy, entire, that it had swallowed. the macli.--caught when asleep. this beast is born in scandinavia. it has the shape of a great horse, excepting that the great length of its neck and of its ears make a difference. it feeds on grass, going backwards, for it has so long an upper lip that if it went forwards it would cover up the grass. its legs are all in one piece; for this reason when it wants to sleep it leans against a tree, and the hunters, spying out the place where it is wont to sleep, saw the tree almost through, and then, when it leans against it to sleep, in its sleep it falls, and thus the hunters take it. and every other mode of taking it is in vain, because it is incredibly swift in running. . the bison which does injury in its flight. this beast is a native of paeonia and has a neck with a mane like a horse. in all its other parts it is like a bull, excepting that its horns are in a way bent inwards so that it cannot butt; hence it has no safety but in flight, in which it flings out its excrement to a distance of braccia in its course, and this burns like fire wherever it touches. lions, pards, panthers, tigers. these keep their claws in the sheath, and never put them out unless they are on the back of their prey or their enemy. the lioness. when the lioness defends her young from the hand of the hunter, in order not to be frightened by the spears she keeps her eyes on the ground, to the end that she may not by her flight leave her young ones prisoners. . the lion. this animal, which is so terrible, fears nothing more than the noise of empty carts, and likewise the crowing of cocks. and it is much terrified at the sight of one, and looks at its comb with a frightened aspect, and is strangely alarmed when its face is covered. the panther in africa. this has the form of the lioness but it is taller on its legs and slimmer and long bodied; and it is all white and marked with black spots after the manner of rosettes; and all animals delight to look upon these rosettes, and they would always be standing round it if it were not for the terror of its face; . therefore knowing this, it hides its face, and the surrounding animals grow bold and come close, the better to enjoy the sight of so much beauty; when suddenly it seizes the nearest and at once devours it. camels. the bactrian have two humps; the arabian one only. they are swift in battle and most useful to carry burdens. this animal is extremely observant of rule and measure, for it will not move if it has a greater weight than it is used to, and if it is taken too far it does the same, and suddenly stops and so the merchants are obliged to lodge there. . the tiger. this beast is a native of hyrcania, and it is something like the panther from the various spots on its skin. it is an animal of terrible swiftness; the hunter when he finds its young ones carries them off hastily, placing mirrors in the place whence he takes them, and at once escapes on a swift horse. the panther returning finds the mirrors fixed on the ground and looking into them believes it sees its young; then scratching with its paws it discovers the cheat. forthwith, by means of the scent of its young, it follows the hunter, and when this hunter sees the tigress he drops one of the young ones and she takes it, and having carried it to the den she immediately returns to the hunter and does . the same till he gets into his boat. catoblepas. it is found in ethiopia near to the source nigricapo. it is not a very large animal, is sluggish in all its parts, and its head is so large that it carries it with difficulty, in such wise that it always droops towards the ground; otherwise it would be a great pest to man, for any one on whom it fixes its eyes dies immediately. [footnote: leonardo undoubtedly derived these remarks as to the catoblepas from pliny, hist. nat. viii. (al. ): _apud hesperios aethiopas fons est nigris_ (different readings), _ut plerique existimavere, nili caput.-----juxta hunc fera appellatur catoblepas, modica alioquin, ceterisque membris iners, caput tantum praegrave aegre ferens; alias internecio humani generis, omnibus qui oculos ejus videre, confestim morientibus._ aelian, _hist. an._ gives a far more minute description of the creature, but he says that it poisons beasts not by its gaze, but by its venomous breath. athenaeus b, mentions both. if leonardo had known of these two passages, he would scarcely have omitted the poisonous breath. (h. muller-strubing.)] the basilisk. this is found in the province of cyrenaica and is not more than fingers long. it has on its head a white spot after the fashion of a diadem. it scares all serpents with its whistling. it resembles a snake, but does not move by wriggling but from the centre forwards to the right. it is said that one . of these, being killed with a spear by one who was on horse-back, and its venom flowing on the spear, not only the man but the horse also died. it spoils the wheat and not only that which it touches, but where it breathes the grass dries and the stones are split. the weasel. this beast finding the lair of the basilisk kills it with the smell of its urine, and this smell, indeed, often kills the weasel itself. the cerastes. this has four movable little horns; so, when it wants to feed, it hides under leaves all of its body except these little horns which, as they move, seem to the birds to be some small worms at play. then they immediately swoop down to pick them and the cerastes suddenly twines round them and encircles and devours them. . the amphisboena. this has two heads, one in its proper place the other at the tail; as if one place were not enough from which to fling its venom. the iaculus. this lies on trees, and flings itself down like a dart, and pierces through the wild beast and kills them. the asp. the bite of this animal cannot be cured unless by immediately cutting out the bitten part. this pestilential animal has such a love for its mate that they always go in company. and if, by mishap, one of them is killed the other, with incredible swiftness, follows him who has killed it; and it is so determined and eager for vengeance that it overcomes every difficulty, and passing by every troop it seeks to hurt none but its enemy. and it will travel any distance, and it is impossible to avoid it unless by crossing water and by very swift flight. it has its eyes turned inwards, and large ears and it hears better than it sees. . the ichneumon. this animal is the mortal enemy of the asp. it is a native of egypt and when it sees an asp near its place, it runs at once to the bed or mud of the nile and with this makes itself muddy all over, then it dries itself in the sun, smears itself again with mud, and thus, drying one after the other, it makes itself three or four coatings like a coat of mail. then it attacks the asp, and fights well with him, so that, taking its time it catches him in the throat and destroys him. the crocodile. this is found in the nile, it has four feet and lives on land and in water. no other terrestrial creature but this is found to have no tongue, and it only bites by moving its upper jaw. it grows to a length of forty feet and has claws and is armed with a hide that will take any blow. by day it is on land and at night in the water. it feeds on fishes, and going to sleep on the bank of the nile with its mouth open, a bird called . trochilus, a very small bird, runs at once to its mouth and hops among its teeth and goes pecking out the remains of the food, and so inciting it with voluptuous delight tempts it to open the whole of its mouth, and so it sleeps. this being observed by the ichneumon it flings itself into its mouth and perforates its stomach and bowels, and finally kills it. the dolphin. nature has given such knowledge to animals, that besides the consciousness of their own advantages they know the disadvantages of their foes. thus the dolphin understands what strength lies in a cut from the fins placed on his chine, and how tender is the belly of the crocodile; hence in fighting with him it thrusts at him from beneath and rips up his belly and so kills him. the crocodile is a terror to those that flee, and a base coward to those that pursue him. . the hippopotamus. this beast when it feels itself over-full goes about seeking thorns, or where there may be the remains of canes that have been split, and it rubs against them till a vein is opened; then when the blood has flowed as much as he needs, he plasters himself with mud and heals the wound. in form he is something like a horse with long haunches, a twisted tail and the teeth of a wild boar, his neck has a mane; the skin cannot be pierced, unless when he is bathing; he feeds on plants in the fields and goes into them backwards so that it may seem, as though he had come out. the ibis. this bird resembles a crane, and when it feels itself ill it fills its craw with water, and with its beak makes an injection of it. the stag. these creatures when they feel themselves bitten by the spider called father-long-legs, eat crabs and free themselves of the venom. . the lizard. this, when fighting with serpents eats the sow-thistle and is free. the swallow. this [bird] gives sight to its blind young ones, with the juice of the celandine. the weasel. this, when chasing rats first eats of rue. the wild boar. this beast cures its sickness by eating of ivy. the snake. this creature when it wants to renew itself casts its old skin, beginning with the head, and changing in one day and one night. the panther. this beast after its bowels have fallen out will still fight with the dogs and hunters. . the chameleon. this creature always takes the colour of the thing on which it is resting, whence it is often devoured together with the leaves on which the elephant feeds. the raven. when it has killed the chameleon it takes laurel as a purge. . moderation checks all the vices. the ermine will die rather than besmirch itself. of foresight. the cock does not crow till it has thrice flapped its wings; the parrot in moving among boughs never puts its feet excepting where it has first put its beak. vows are not made till hope is dead. motion tends towards the centre of gravity. . magnanimity. the falcon never seizes any but large birds and will sooner die than eat [tainted] meat of bad savour. ii. fables. fables on animals ( - ). . a fable. an oyster being turned out together with other fish in the house of a fisherman near the sea, he entreated a rat to take him to the sea. the rat purposing to eat him bid him open; but as he bit him the oyster squeezed his head and closed; and the cat came and killed him. . a fable. the thrushes rejoiced greatly at seeing a man take the owl and deprive her of liberty, tying her feet with strong bonds. but this owl was afterwards by means of bird-lime the cause of the thrushes losing not only their liberty, but their life. this is said for those countries which rejoice in seeing their governors lose their liberty, when by that means they themselves lose all succour, and remain in bondage in the power of their enemies, losing their liberty and often their life. . a fable. a dog, lying asleep on the fur of a sheep, one of his fleas, perceiving the odour of the greasy wool, judged that this must be a land of better living, and also more secure from the teeth and nails of the dog than where he fed on the dog; and without farther reflection he left the dog and went into the thick wool. there he began with great labour to try to pass among the roots of the hairs; but after much sweating had to give up the task as vain, because these hairs were so close that they almost touched each other, and there was no space where fleas could taste the skin. hence, after much labour and fatigue, he began to wish to return to his dog, who however had already departed; so he was constrained after long repentance and bitter tears, to die of hunger. . a fable. the vain and wandering butterfly, not content with being able to fly at its ease through the air, overcome by the tempting flame of the candle, decided to fly into it; but its sportive impulse was the cause of a sudden fall, for its delicate wings were burnt in the flame. and the hapless butterfly having dropped, all scorched, at the foot of the candlestick, after much lamentation and repentance, dried the tears from its swimming eyes, and raising its face exclaimed: o false light! how many must thou have miserably deceived in the past, like me; or if i must indeed see light so near, ought i not to have known the sun from the false glare of dirty tallow? a fable. the monkey, finding a nest of small birds, went up to it greatly delighted. but they, being already fledged, he could only succeed in taking the smallest; greatly delighted he took it in his hand and went to his abode; and having begun to look at the little bird he took to kissing it, and from excess of love he kissed it so much and turned it about and squeezed it till he killed it. this is said for those who by not punishing their children let them come to mischief. . a fable. a rat was besieged in his little dwelling by a weasel, which with unwearied vigilance awaited his surrender, while watching his imminent peril through a little hole. meanwhile the cat came by and suddenly seized the weasel and forthwith devoured it. then the rat offered up a sacrifice to jove of some of his store of nuts, humbly thanking his providence, and came out of his hole to enjoy his lately lost liberty. but he was instantly deprived of it, together with his life, by the cruel claws and teeth of the lurking cat. . a fable. the ant found a grain of millet. the seed feeling itself taken prisoner cried out to her: "if you will do me the kindness to allow me accomplish my function of reproduction, i will give you a hundred such as i am." and so it was. a spider found a bunch of grapes which for its sweetness was much resorted to by bees and divers kinds of flies. it seemed to her that she had found a most convenient spot to spread her snare, and having settled herself on it with her delicate web, and entered into her new habitation, there, every day placing herself in the openings made by the spaces between the grapes, she fell like a thief on the wretched creatures which were not aware of her. but, after a few days had passed, the vintager came, and cut away the bunch of grapes and put it with others, with which it was trodden; and thus the grapes were a snare and pitfall both for the treacherous spider and the betrayed flies. an ass having gone to sleep on the ice over a deep lake, his heat dissolved the ice and the ass awoke under water to his great grief, and was forthwith drowned. a falcon, unable to endure with patience the disappearance of a duck, which, flying before him had plunged under water, wished to follow it under water, and having soaked his feathers had to remain in the water while the duck rising to the air mocked at the falcon as he drowned. the spider wishing to take flies in her treacherous net, was cruelly killed in it by the hornet. an eagle wanting to mock at the owl was caught by the wings in bird-lime and was taken and killed by a man. fables on lifeless objects ( -- ). . the water finding that its element was the lordly ocean, was seized with a desire to rise above the air, and being encouraged by the element of fire and rising as a very subtle vapour, it seemed as though it were really as thin as air. but having risen very high, it reached the air that was still more rare and cold, where the fire forsook it, and the minute particles, being brought together, united and became heavy; whence its haughtiness deserting it, it betook itself to flight and it fell from the sky, and was drunk up by the dry earth, where, being imprisoned for a long time, it did penance for its sin. . a fable. the razor having one day come forth from the handle which serves as its sheath and having placed himself in the sun, saw the sun reflected in his body, which filled him with great pride. and turning it over in his thoughts he began to say to himself: "and shall i return again to that shop from which i have just come? certainly not; such splendid beauty shall not, please god, be turned to such base uses. what folly it would be that could lead me to shave the lathered beards of rustic peasants and perform such menial service! is this body destined for such work? certainly not. i will hide myself in some retired spot and there pass my life in tranquil repose." and having thus remained hidden for some months, one day he came out into the air, and issuing from his sheath, saw himself turned to the similitude of a rusty saw while his surface no longer reflected the resplendent sun. with useless repentance he vainly deplored the irreparable mischief saying to himself: "oh! how far better was it to employ at the barbers my lost edge of such exquisite keenness! where is that lustrous surface? it has been consumed by this vexatious and unsightly rust." the same thing happens to those minds which instead of exercise give themselves up to sloth. they are like the razor here spoken of, and lose the keenness of their edge, while the rust of ignorance spoils their form. a fable. a stone of some size recently uncovered by the water lay on a certain spot somewhat raised, and just where a delightful grove ended by a stony road; here it was surrounded by plants decorated by various flowers of divers colours. and as it saw the great quantity of stones collected together in the roadway below, it began to wish it could let itself fall down there, saying to itself: "what have i to do here with these plants? i want to live in the company of those, my sisters." and letting itself fall, its rapid course ended among these longed for companions. when it had been there sometime it began to find itself constantly toiling under the wheels of the carts the iron-shoed feet of horses and of travellers. this one rolled it over, that one trod upon it; sometimes it lifted itself a little and then it was covered with mud or the dung of some animal, and it was in vain that it looked at the spot whence it had come as a place of solitude and tranquil place. thus it happens to those who choose to leave a life of solitary comtemplation, and come to live in cities among people full of infinite evil. . some flames had already lasted in the furnace of a glass-blower, when they saw a candle approaching in a beautiful and glittering candlestick. with ardent longing they strove to reach it; and one of them, quitting its natural course, writhed up to an unburnt brand on which it fed and passed at the opposite end out by a narrow chink to the candle which was near. it flung itself upon it, and with fierce jealousy and greediness it devoured it, having reduced it almost to death, and, wishing to procure the prolongation of its life, it tried to return to the furnace whence it had come. but in vain, for it was compelled to die, the wood perishing together with the candle, being at last converted, with lamentation and repentance, into foul smoke, while leaving all its sisters in brilliant and enduring life and beauty. . a small patch of snow finding itself clinging to the top of a rock which was lying on the topmost height of a very high mountain and being left to its own imaginings, it began to reflect in this way, saying to itself: "now, shall not i be thought vain and proud for having placed myself--such a small patch of snow--in so lofty a spot, and for allowing that so large a quantity of snow as i have seen here around me, should take a place lower than mine? certainly my small dimensions by no means merit this elevation. how easily may i, in proof of my insignificance, experience the same fate as that which the sun brought about yesterday to my companions, who were all, in a few hours, destroyed by the sun. and this happened from their having placed themselves higher than became them. i will flee from the wrath of the sun, and humble myself and find a place befitting my small importance." thus, flinging itself down, it began to descend, hurrying from its high home on to the other snow; but the more it sought a low place the more its bulk increased, so that when at last its course was ended on a hill, it found itself no less in size than the hill which supported it; and it was the last of the snow which was destroyed that summer by the sun. this is said for those who, humbling themselves, become exalted. fables on plants ( - ). . the cedar, being desirous of producing a fine and noble fruit at its summit, set to work to form it with all the strength of its sap. but this fruit, when grown, was the cause of the tall and upright tree-top being bent over. the peach, being envious of the vast quantity of fruit which she saw borne on the nut-tree, her neighbour, determined to do the same, and loaded herself with her own in such a way that the weight of the fruit pulled her up by the roots and broke her down to the ground. the nut-tree stood always by a road side displaying the wealth of its fruit to the passers by, and every one cast stones at it. the fig-tree, having no fruit, no one looked at it; then, wishing to produce fruits that it might be praised by men, it was bent and broken down by them. the fig-tree, standing by the side of the elm and seeing that its boughs were bare of fruit, yet that it had the audacity to keep the sun from its own unripe figs with its branches, said to it: "oh elm! art thou not ashamed to stand in front of me. but wait till my offspring are fully grown and you will see where you are!" but when her offspring were mature, a troop of soldiers coming by fell upon the fig-tree and her figs were all torn off her, and her boughs cut away and broken. then, when she was thus maimed in all her limbs, the elm asked her, saying: "o fig-tree! which was best, to be without offspring, or to be brought by them into so miserable a plight!" . the plant complains of the old and dry stick which stands by its side and of the dry stakes that surround it. one keeps it upright, the other keeps it from low company. . a fable. a nut, having been carried by a crow to the top of a tall campanile and released by falling into a chink from the mortal grip of its beak, it prayed the wall by the grace bestowed on it by god in allowing it to be so high and thick, and to own such fine bells and of so noble a tone, that it would succour it, and that, as it had not been able to fall under the verdurous boughs of its venerable father and lie in the fat earth covered up by his fallen leaves it would not abandon it; because, finding itself in the beak of the cruel crow, it had there made a vow that if it escaped from her it would end its life in a little hole. at these words the wall, moved to compassion, was content to shelter it in the spot where it had fallen; and after a short time the nut began to split open and put forth roots between the rifts of the stones and push them apart, and to throw out shoots from its hollow shell; and, to be brief, these rose above the building and the twisted roots, growing thicker, began to thrust the walls apart, and tear out the ancient stones from their old places. then the wall too late and in vain bewailed the cause of its destruction and in a short time, it wrought the ruin of a great part of it. . a fable. the privet feeling its tender boughs loaded with young fruit, pricked by the sharp claws and beak of the insolent blackbird, complained to the blackbird with pitious remonstrance entreating her that since she stole its delicious fruits she should not deprive it of the leaves with which it preserved them from the burning rays of the sun, and that she should not divest it of its tender bark by scratching it with her sharp claws. to which the blackbird replied with angry upbraiding: "o, be silent, uncultured shrub! do you not know that nature made you produce these fruits for my nourishment; do you not see that you are in the world [only] to serve me as food; do you not know, base creature, that next winter you will be food and prey for the fire?" to which words the tree listened patiently, and not without tears. after a short time the blackbird was taken in a net and boughs were cut to make a cage, in which to imprison her. branches were cut, among others from the pliant privet, to serve for the small rods of the cage; and seeing herself to be the cause of the blackbird's loss of liberty it rejoiced and spoke as follows: "o blackbird, i am here, and not yet burnt by fire as you said. i shall see you in prison before you see me burnt." a fable. the laurel and the myrtle seeing the pear tree cut down cried out with a loud voice: "o pear-tree! whither are you going? where is the pride you had when you were covered with ripe fruits? now you will no longer shade us with your mass of leaves." then the pear-tree replied: "i am going with the husbandman who has cut me down and who will take me to the workshop of a good sculptor who by his art will make me take the form of jove the god; and i shall be dedicated in a temple and adored by men in the place of jove, while you are bound always to remain maimed and stripped of your boughs, which will be placed round me to do me honour. a fable. the chesnut, seeing a man upon the fig-tree, bending its boughs down and pulling off the ripe fruits, which he put into his open mouth destroying and crushing them with his hard teeth, it tossed its long boughs and with a noisy rustle exclaimed: "o fig! how much less are you protected by nature than i. see how in me my sweet offspring are set in close array; first clothed in soft wrappers over which is the hard but softly lined husk; and not content with taking this care of me, and having given them so strong a shelter, on this she has placed sharp and close-set spines so that the hand of man cannot hurt me." then the fig-tree and her offspring began to laugh and having laughed she said: "i know man to be of such ingenuity that with rods and stones and stakes flung up among your branches he will bereave you of your fruits; and when they are fallen, he will trample them with his feet or with stones, so that your offspring will come out of their armour, crushed and maimed; while i am touched carefully by their hands, and not like you with sticks and stones." . the hapless willow, finding that she could not enjoy the pleasure of seeing her slender branches grow or attain to the height she wished, or point to the sky, by reason of the vine and whatever other trees that grew near, but was always maimed and lopped and spoiled, brought all her spirits together and gave and devoted itself entirely to imagination, standing plunged in long meditation and seeking, in all the world of plants, with which of them she might ally herself and which could not need the help of her withes. having stood for some time in this prolific imagination, with a sudden flash the gourd presented itself to her thoughts and tossing all her branches with extreme delight, it seemed to her that she had found the companion suited to her purpose, because the gourd is more apt to bind others than to need binding; having come to this conclusion she awaited eagerly some friendly bird who should be the mediator of her wishes. presently seeing near her the magpie she said to him: "o gentle bird! by the memory of the refuge which you found this morning among my branches, when the hungry cruel, and rapacious falcon wanted to devour you, and by that repose which you have always found in me when your wings craved rest, and by the pleasure you have enjoyed among my boughs, when playing with your companions or making love--i entreat you find the gourd and obtain from her some of her seeds, and tell her that those that are born of them i will treat exactly as though they were my own flesh and blood; and in this way use all the words you can think of, which are of the same persuasive purport; though, indeed, since you are a master of language, i need not teach you. and if you will do me this service i shall be happy to have your nest in the fork of my boughs, and all your family without payment of any rent." then the magpie, having made and confirmed certain new stipulations with the willow,--and principally that she should never admit upon her any snake or polecat, cocked his tail, and put down his head, and flung himself from the bough, throwing his weight upon his wings; and these, beating the fleeting air, now here, now there, bearing about inquisitively, while his tail served as a rudder to steer him, he came to a gourd; then with a handsome bow and a few polite words, he obtained the required seeds, and carried them to the willow, who received him with a cheerful face. and when he had scraped away with his foot a small quantity of the earth near the willow, describing a circle, with his beak he planted the grains, which in a short time began to grow, and by their growth and the branches to take up all the boughs of the willow, while their broad leaves deprived it of the beauty of the sun and sky. and not content with so much evil, the gourds next began, by their rude hold, to drag the ends of the tender shoots down towards the earth, with strange twisting and distortion. then, being much annoyed, it shook itself in vain to throw off the gourd. after raving for some days in such plans vainly, because the firm union forbade it, seeing the wind come by it commended itself to him. the wind flew hard and opened the old and hollow stem of the willow in two down to the roots, so that it fell into two parts. in vain did it bewail itself recognising that it was born to no good end. iii. jests and tales. . a jest. a priest, making the rounds of his parish on easter eve, and sprinkling holy water in the houses as is customary, came to a painter's room, where he sprinkled the water on some of his pictures. the painter turned round, somewhat angered, and asked him why this sprinkling had been bestowed on his pictures; then said the priest, that it was the custom and his duty to do so, and that he was doing good; and that he who did good might look for good in return, and, indeed, for better, since god had promised that every good deed that was done on earth should be rewarded a hundred-fold from above. then the painter, waiting till he went out, went to an upper window and flung a large pail of water on the priest's back, saying: "here is the reward a hundred-fold from above, which you said would come from the good you had done me with your holy water, by which you have damaged my pictures." . when wine is drunk by a drunkard, that wine is revenged on the drinker. . wine, the divine juice of the grape, finding itself in a golden and richly wrought cup, on the table of mahomet, was puffed up with pride at so much honour; when suddenly it was struck by a contrary reflection, saying to itself: "what am i about, that i should rejoice, and not perceive that i am now near to my death and shall leave my golden abode in this cup to enter into the foul and fetid caverns of the human body, and to be transmuted from a fragrant and delicious liquor into a foul and base one. nay, and as though so much evil as this were not enough, i must for a long time lie in hideous receptacles, together with other fetid and corrupt matter, cast out from human intestines." and it cried to heaven, imploring vengeance for so much insult, and that an end might henceforth be put to such contempt; and that, since that country produced the finest and best grapes in the whole world, at least they should not be turned into wine. then jove made that wine drunk by mahomet to rise in spirit to his brain; and that in so deleterious a manner that it made him mad, and gave birth to so many follies that when he had recovered himself, he made a law that no asiatic should drink wine, and henceforth the vine and its fruit were left free. as soon as wine has entered the stomach it begins to ferment and swell; then the spirit of that man begins to abandon his body, rising as it were skywards, and the brain finds itself parting from the body. then it begins to degrade him, and make him rave like a madman, and then he does irreparable evil, killing his friends. . an artizan often going to visit a great gentleman without any definite purpose, the gentleman asked him what he did this for. the other said that he came there to have a pleasure which his lordship could not have; since to him it was a satisfaction to see men greater than himself, as is the way with the populace; while the gentleman could only see men of less consequence than himself; and so lords and great men were deprived of that pleasure. . franciscan begging friars are wont, at certain times, to keep fasts, when they do not eat meat in their convents. but on journeys, as they live on charity, they have license to eat whatever is set before them. now a couple of these friars on their travels, stopped at an inn, in company with a certain merchant, and sat down with him at the same table, where, from the poverty of the inn, nothing was served to them but a small roast chicken. the merchant, seeing this to be but little even for himself, turned to the friars and said: "if my memory serves me, you do not eat any kind of flesh in your convents at this season." at these words the friars were compelled by their rule to admit, without cavil, that this was the truth; so the merchant had his wish, and eat the chicken and the friars did the best they could. after dinner the messmates departed, all three together, and after travelling some distance they came to a river of some width and depth. all three being on foot--the friars by reason of their poverty, and the other from avarice--it was necessary by the custom of company that one of the friars, being barefoot, should carry the merchant on his shoulders: so having given his wooden shoes into his keeping, he took up his man. but it so happened that when the friar had got to the middle of the river, he again remembered a rule of his order, and stopping short, he looked up, like saint christopher, to the burden on his back and said: "tell me, have you any money about you?"--"you know i have", answered the other, "how do you suppose that a merchant like me should go about otherwise?" "alack!" cried the friar, "our rules forbid as to carry any money on our persons," and forthwith he dropped him into the water, which the merchant perceived was a facetious way of being revenged on the indignity he had done them; so, with a smiling face, and blushing somewhat with shame, he peaceably endured the revenge. . a jest. a man wishing to prove, by the authority of pythagoras, that he had formerly been in the world, while another would not let him finish his argument, the first speaker said to the second: "it is by this token that i was formerly here, i remember that you were a miller." the other one, feeling himself stung by these words, agreed that it was true, and that by the same token he remembered that the speaker had been the ass that carried the flour. a jest. it was asked of a painter why, since he made such beautiful figures, which were but dead things, his children were so ugly; to which the painter replied that he made his pictures by day, and his children by night. . a man saw a large sword which another one wore at his side. said he "poor fellow, for a long time i have seen you tied to that weapon; why do you not release yourself as your hands are untied, and set yourself free?" to which the other replied: "this is none of yours, on the contrary it is an old story." the former speaker, feeling stung, replied: "i know that you are acquainted with so few things in this world, that i thought anything i could tell you would be new to you." . a man gave up his intimacy with one of his friends because he often spoke ill of his other friends. the neglected friend one day lamenting to this former friend, after much complaining, entreated him to say what might be the cause that had made him forget so much friendship. to which he answered: "i will no longer be intimate with you because i love you, and i do not choose that you, by speaking ill of me, your friend, to others, should produce in others, as in me, a bad impression of yourself, by speaking evil to them of me, your friend. therefore, being no longer intimate together, it will seem as though we had become enemies; and in speaking evil of me, as is your wont, you will not be blamed so much as if we continued intimate. . a man was arguing and boasting that he knew many and various tricks. another among the bystanders said: "i know how to play a trick which will make whomsoever i like pull off his breeches." the first man-- the boaster--said: "you won't make me pull off mine, and i bet you a pair of hose on it." he who proposed the game, having accepted the offer, produced breeches and drew them across the face of him who bet the pair of hose and won the bet [ ]. a man said to an acquaintance: "your eyes are changed to a strange colour." the other replied: "it often happens, but you have not noticed it." "when does it happen?" said the former. "every time that my eyes see your ugly face, from the shock of so unpleasing a sight they suddenly turn pale and change to a strange colour." a man said to another: "your eyes are changed to a strange colour." the other replied: "it is because my eyes behold your strange ugly face." a man said that in his country were the strangest things in the world. another answered: "you, who were born there, confirm this as true, by the strangeness of your ugly face." [footnote: the joke turns, it appears, on two meanings of trarre and is not easily translated.] . an old man was publicly casting contempt on a young one, and boldly showing that he did not fear him; on which the young man replied that his advanced age served him better as a shield than either his tongue or his strength. . a jest. a sick man finding himself in _articulo mortis_ heard a knock at the door, and asking one of his servants who was knocking, the servant went out, and answered that it was a woman calling herself madonna bona. then the sick man lifting his arms to heaven thanked god with a loud voice, and told the servants that they were to let her come in at once, so that he might see one good woman before he died, since in all his life he had never yet seen one. . a jest. a man was desired to rise from bed, because the sun was already risen. to which he replied: "if i had as far to go, and as much to do as he has, i should be risen by now; but having but a little way to go, i shall not rise yet." . a man, seeing a woman ready to hold up the target for a jousting match, exclaimed, looking at the shield, and considering his spear: "alack! this is too small a workman for so great a business." iv. prophecies. . the division of the prophecies. first, of things relating to animals; secondly, of irrational creatures; thirdly of plants; fourthly, of ceremonies; fifthly, of manners; sixthly, of cases or edicts or quarrels; seventhly, of cases that are impossible in nature [paradoxes], as, for instance, of those things which, the more is taken from them, the more they grow. and reserve the great matters till the end, and the small matters give at the beginning. and first show the evils and then the punishment of philosophical things. (of ants.) these creatures will form many communities, which will hide themselves and their young ones and victuals in dark caverns, and they will feed themselves and their families in dark places for many months without any light, artificial or natural. [footnote: lines -- l are in the original written in one column, beginning with the text of line . at the end of the column is the programme for the arrangement of the prophecies, placed here at the head: lines -- form a second column, lines -- a third one (see the reproduction of the text on the facsimile pi. cxviii). another suggestion for the arrangement of the prophecies is to be found among the notes -- on page .] (of bees.) and many others will be deprived of their store and their food, and will be cruelly submerged and drowned by folks devoid of reason. oh justice of god! why dost thou not wake and behold thy creatures thus ill used? (of sheep, cows, goats and the like.) endless multitudes of these will have their little children taken from them ripped open and flayed and most barbarously quartered. (of nuts, and olives, and acorns, and chesnuts, and such like.) many offspring shall be snatched by cruel thrashing from the very arms of their mothers, and flung on the ground, and crushed. (of children bound in bundles.) o cities of the sea! in you i see your citizens--both females and males--tightly bound, arms and legs, with strong withes by folks who will not understand your language. and you will only be able to assuage your sorrows and lost liberty by means of tearful complaints and sighing and lamentation among yourselves; for those who will bind you will not understand you, nor will you understand them. (of cats that eat rats.) in you, o cities of africa your children will be seen quartered in their own houses by most cruel and rapacious beasts of your own country. (of asses that are beaten.) [footnote : compare no. .] o nature! wherefore art thou so partial; being to some of thy children a tender and benign mother, and to others a most cruel and pitiless stepmother? i see children of thine given up to slavery to others, without any sort of advantage, and instead of remuneration for the good they do, they are paid with the severest suffering, and spend their whole life in benefitting those who ill treat them. (of men who sleep on boards of trees.) men shall sleep, and eat, and dwell among trees, in the forests and open country. (of dreaming.) men will seem to see new destructions in the sky. the flames that fall from it will seem to rise in it and to fly from it with terror. they will hear every kind of animals speak in human language. they will instantaneously run in person in various parts of the world, without motion. they will see the greatest splendour in the midst of darkness. o! marvel of the human race! what madness has led you thus! you will speak with animals of every species and they with you in human speech. you will see yourself fall from great heights without any harm and torrents will accompany you, and will mingle with their rapid course. (of christians.) many who hold the faith of the son only build temples in the name of the mother. (of food which has been alive.) [ ] a great portion of bodies that have been alive will pass into the bodies of other animals; which is as much as to say, that the deserted tenements will pass piecemeal into the inhabited ones, furnishing them with good things, and carrying with them their evils. that is to say the life of man is formed from things eaten, and these carry with them that part of man which dies . . . . (of funeral rites, and processions, and lights, and bells, and followers.) the greatest honours will be paid to men, and much pomp, without their knowledge. [footnote: a facsimile of this text is on pi. cxvi below on the right, but the writing is larger than the other notes on the same sheet and of a somewhat different style. the ink is also of a different hue, as may be seen on the original sheet at milan.] . (of the avaricious.) there will be many who will eagerly and with great care and solicitude follow up a thing, which, if they only knew its malignity, would always terrify them. (of those men, who, the older they grow, the more avaricious they become, whereas, having but little time to stay, they should become more liberal.) we see those who are regarded as being most experienced and judicious, when they least need a thing, seek and cherish it with most avidity. (of the ditch.) many will be busied in taking away from a thing, which will grow in proportion as it is diminished. (of a weight placed on a feather-pillow.) and it will be seen in many bodies that by raising the head they swell visibly; and by laying the raised head down again, their size will immediately be diminished. (of catching lice.) and many will be hunters of animals, which, the fewer there are the more will be taken; and conversely, the more there are, the fewer will be taken. (of drawing water in two buckets with a single rope.) and many will be busily occupied, though the more of the thing they draw up, the more will escape at the other end. (of the tongues of pigs and calves in sausage-skins.) oh! how foul a thing, that we should see the tongue of one animal in the guts of another. (of sieves made of the hair of animals.) we shall see the food of animals pass through their skin everyway excepting through their mouths, and penetrate from the outside downwards to the ground. (of lanterns.) [footnote : lanterns were in italy formerly made of horn.] the cruel horns of powerful bulls will screen the lights of night against the wild fury of the winds. (of feather-beds.) flying creatures will give their very feathers to support men. (of animals which walk on trees--wearing wooden shoes.) the mire will be so great that men will walk on the trees of their country. (of the soles of shoes, which are made from the ox.) and in many parts of the country men will be seen walking on the skins of large beasts. (of sailing in ships.) there will be great winds by reason of which things of the east will become things of the west; and those of the south, being involved in the course of the winds, will follow them to distant lands. (of worshipping the pictures of saints.) men will speak to men who hear not; having their eyes open, they will not see; they will speak to these, and they will not be answered. they will implore favours of those who have ears and hear not; they will make light for the blind. (of sawyers.) there will be many men who will move one against another, holding in their hands a cutting tool. but these will not do each other any injury beyond tiring each other; for, when one pushes forward the other will draw back. but woe to him who comes between them! for he will end by being cut in pieces. (of silk-spinning.) dismal cries will be heard loud, shrieking with anguish, and the hoarse and smothered tones of those who will be despoiled, and at last left naked and motionless; and this by reason of the mover, which makes every thing turn round. (of putting bread into the mouth of the oven and taking it out again.) in every city, land, castle and house, men shall be seen, who for want of food will take it out of the mouths of others, who will not be able to resist in any way. (of tilled land.) the earth will be seen turned up side down and facing the opposite hemispheres, uncovering the lurking holes of the fiercest animals. (of sowing seed.) then many of the men who will remain alive, will throw the victuals they have preserved out of their houses, a free prey to the birds and beasts of the earth, without taking any care of them at all. (of the rains, which, by making the rivers muddy, wash away the land.) [footnote : compare no. .] something will fall from the sky which will transport a large part of africa which lies under that sky towards europe, and that of europe towards africa, and that of the scythian countries will meet with tremendous revolutions [footnote : compare no. .]. (of wood that burns.) the trees and shrubs in the great forests will be converted into cinder. (of kilns for bricks and lime.) finally the earth will turn red from a conflagration of many days and the stones will be turned to cinders. (of boiled fish.) the natives of the waters will die in the boiling flood. (of the olives which fall from the olive trees, shedding oil which makes light.) and things will fall with great force from above, which will give us nourishment and light. (of owls and screech owls and what will happen to certain birds.) many will perish of dashing their heads in pieces, and the eyes of many will jump out of their heads by reason of fearful creatures come out of the darkness. (of flax which works the cure of men.) that which was at first bound, cast out and rent by many and various beaters will be respected and honoured, and its precepts will be listened to with reverence and love. (of books which teach precepts.) bodies without souls will, by their contents give us precepts by which to die well. (of flagellants.) men will hide themselves under the bark of trees, and, screaming, they will make themselves martyrs, by striking their own limbs. (of the handles of knives made of the horns of sheep.) we shall see the horns of certain beasts fitted to iron tools, which will take the lives of many of their kind. (of night when no colour can be discerned.) there will come a time when no difference can be discerned between colours, on the contrary, everything will be black alike. (of swords and spears which by themselves never hurt any one.) one who by himself is mild enough and void of all offence will become terrible and fierce by being in bad company, and will most cruelly take the life of many men, and would kill many more if they were not hindered by bodies having no soul, that have come out of caverns--that is, breastplates of iron. (of snares and traps.) many dead things will move furiously, and will take and bind the living, and will ensnare them for the enemies who seek their death and destruction. (of metals.) that shall be brought forth out of dark and obscure caves, which will put the whole human race in great anxiety, peril and death. to many that seek them, after many sorrows they will give delight, and to those who are not in their company, death with want and misfortune. this will lead to the commission of endless crimes; this will increase and persuade bad men to assassinations, robberies and treachery, and by reason of it each will be suspicious of his partner. this will deprive free cities of their happy condition; this will take away the lives of many; this will make men torment each other with many artifices deceptions and treasons. o monstrous creature! how much better would it be for men that every thing should return to hell! for this the vast forests will be devastated of their trees; for this endless animals will lose their lives. (of fire.) one shall be born from small beginnings which will rapidly become vast. this will respect no created thing, rather will it, by its power, transform almost every thing from its own nature into another. (of ships which sink.) huge bodies will be seen, devoid of life, carrying, in fierce haste, a multitude of men to the destruction of their lives. (of oxen, which are eaten.) the masters of estates will eat their own labourers. (of beating beds to renew them.) men will be seen so deeply ungrateful that they will turn upon that which has harboured them, for nothing at all; they will so load it with blows that a great part of its inside will come out of its place, and will be turned over and over in its body. (of things which are eaten and which first are killed.) those who nourish them will be killed by them and afflicted by merciless deaths. (of the reflection of walls of cities in the water of their ditches.) the high walls of great cities will be seen up side down in their ditches. (of water, which flows turbid and mixed with soil and dust; and of mist, which is mixed with the air; and of fire which is mixed with its own, and each with each.) all the elements will be seen mixed together in a great whirling mass, now borne towards the centre of the world, now towards the sky; and now furiously rushing from the south towards the frozen north, and sometimes from the east towards the west, and then again from this hemisphere to the other. (the world may be divided into two hemispheres at any point.) all men will suddenly be transferred into opposite hemispheres. (the division of the east from the west may be made at any point.) all living creatures will be moved from the east to the west; and in the same way from north to south, and vice versa. (of the motion of water which carries wood, which is dead.) bodies devoid of life will move by themselves and carry with them endless generations of the dead, taking the wealth from the bystanders. (of eggs which being eaten cannot form chickens.) oh! how many will they be that never come to the birth! (of fishes which are eaten unborn.) endless generations will be lost by the death of the pregnant. (of the lamentation on good friday.) throughout europe there will be a lamentation of great nations over the death of one man who died in the east. (of dreaming.) men will walk and not stir, they will talk to those who are not present, and hear those who do not speak. (of a man's shadow which moves with him.) shapes and figures of men and animals will be seen following these animals and men wherever they flee. and exactly as the one moves the other moves; but what seems so wonderful is the variety of height they assume. (of our shadow cast by the sun, and our reflection in the water at one and the same time.) many a time will one man be seen as three and all three move together, and often the most real one quits him. (of wooden chests which contain great treasures.) within walnuts and trees and other plants vast treasures will be found, which lie hidden there and well guarded. (of putting out the light when going to bed.) many persons puffing out a breath with too much haste, will thereby lose their sight, and soon after all consciousness. (of the bells of mules, which are close to their ears.) in many parts of europe instruments of various sizes will be heard making divers harmonies, with great labour to those who hear them most closely. (of asses.) the severest labour will be repaid with hunger and thirst, and discomfort, and blows, and goadings, and curses, and great abuse. (of soldiers on horseback.) many men will be seen carried by large animals, swift of pace, to the loss of their lives and immediate death. in the air and on earth animals will be seen of divers colours furiously carrying men to the destruction of their lives. (of the stars of spurs.) by the aid of the stars men will be seen who will be as swift as any swift animal. (of a stick, which is dead.) the motions of a dead thing will make many living ones flee with pain and lamentation and cries. (of tinder.) with a stone and with iron things will be made visible which before were not seen. . (of going in ships.) we shall see the trees of the great forests of taurus and of sinai and of the appenines and others, rush by means of the air, from east to west and from north to south; and carry, by means of the air, great multitudes of men. oh! how many vows! oh! how many deaths! oh! how many partings of friends and relations! oh! how many will those be who will never again see their own country nor their native land, and who will die unburied, with their bones strewn in various parts of the world! (of moving on all saints' day.) many will forsake their own dwellings and carry with them all their belongings and will go to live in other parts. (of all souls' day.) how many will they be who will bewail their deceased forefathers, carrying lights to them. (of friars, who spending nothing but words, receive great gifts and bestow paradise.) invisible money will procure the triumph of many who will spend it. (of bows made of the horns of oxen.) many will there be who will die a painful death by means of the horns of cattle. (of writing letters from one country to another.) men will speak with each other from the most remote countries, and reply. (of hemispheres, which are infinite; and which are divided by an infinite number of lines, so that every man always has one of these lines between his feet.) men standing in opposite hemispheres will converse and deride each other and embrace each other, and understand each other's language. (of priests who say mass.) there will be many men who, when they go to their labour will put on the richest clothes, and these will be made after the fashion of aprons [petticoats]. (of friars who are confessors.) and unhappy women will, of their own free will, reveal to men all their sins and shameful and most secret deeds. (of churches and the habitations of friars.) many will there be who will give up work and labour and poverty of life and goods, and will go to live among wealth in splendid buildings, declaring that this is the way to make themselves acceptable to god. (of selling paradise.) an infinite number of men will sell publicly and unhindered things of the very highest price, without leave from the master of it; while it never was theirs nor in their power; and human justice will not prevent it. (of the dead which are carried to be buried.) the simple folks will carry vast quantities of lights to light up the road for those who have entirely lost the power of sight. (of dowries for maidens.) and whereas, at first, maidens could not be protected against the violence of men, neither by the watchfulness of parents nor by strong walls, the time will come when the fathers and parents of those girls will pay a large price to a man who wants to marry them, even if they are rich, noble and most handsome. certainly this seems as though nature wished to eradicate the human race as being useless to the world, and as spoiling all created things. (of the cruelty of man.) animals will be seen on the earth who will always be fighting against each other with the greatest loss and frequent deaths on each side. and there will be no end to their malignity; by their strong limbs we shall see a great portion of the trees of the vast forests laid low throughout the universe; and, when they are filled with food the satisfaction of their desires will be to deal death and grief and labour and wars and fury to every living thing; and from their immoderate pride they will desire to rise towards heaven, but the too great weight of their limbs will keep them down. nothing will remain on earth, or under the earth or in the waters which will not be persecuted, disturbed and spoiled, and those of one country removed into another. and their bodies will become the sepulture and means of transit of all they have killed. o earth! why dost thou not open and engulf them in the fissures of thy vast abyss and caverns, and no longer display in the sight of heaven such a cruel and horrible monster. . prophecies. there will be many which will increase in their destruction. (the ball of snow rolling over snow.) there will be many who, forgetting their existence and their name, will lie as dead on the spoils of other dead creatures. (sleeping on the feathers of birds.) the east will be seen to rush to the west and the south to the north in confusion round and about the universe, with great noise and trembling or fury. (in the east wind which rushes to the west.) the solar rays will kindle fire on the earth, by which a thing that is under the sky will be set on fire, and, being reflected by some obstacle, it will bend downwards. (the concave mirror kindles a fire, with which we heat the oven, and this has its foundation beneath its roof.) a great part of the sea will fly towards heaven and for a long time will not return. (that is, in clouds.) there remains the motion which divides the mover from the thing moved. those who give light for divine service will be destroyed.(the bees which make the wax for candles) dead things will come from underground and by their fierce movements will send numberless human beings out of the world. (iron, which comes from under ground is dead but the weapons are made of it which kill so many men.) the greatest mountains, even those which are remote from the sea shore, will drive the sea from its place. (this is by rivers which carry the earth they wash away from the mountains and bear it to the sea-shore; and where the earth comes the sea must retire.) the water dropped from the clouds still in motion on the flanks of mountains will lie still for a long period of time without any motion whatever; and this will happen in many and divers lands. (snow, which falls in flakes and is water.) the great rocks of the mountains will throw out fire; so that they will burn the timber of many vast forests, and many beasts both wild and tame. (the flint in the tinder-box which makes a fire that consumes all the loads of wood of which the forests are despoiled and with this the flesh of beasts is cooked.) oh! how many great buildings will be ruined by reason of fire. (the fire of great guns.) oxen will be to a great extent the cause of the destruction of cities, and in the same way horses and buffaloes. (by drawing guns.) . the lion tribe will be seen tearing open the earth with their clawed paws and in the caves thus made, burying themselves together with the other animals that are beneath them. animals will come forth from the earth in gloomy vesture, which will attack the human species with astonishing assaults, and which by their ferocious bites will make confusion of blood among those they devour. again the air will be filled with a mischievous winged race which will assail men and beasts and feed upon them with much noise-- filling themselves with scarlet blood. . blood will be seen issuing from the torn flesh of men, and trickling down the surface. men will have such cruel maladies that they will tear their flesh with their own nails. (the itch.) plants will be seen left without leaves, and the rivers standing still in their channels. the waters of the sea will rise above the high peaks of the mountains towards heaven and fall again on to the dwellings of men. (that is, in clouds.) the largest trees of the forest will be seen carried by the fury of the winds from east to west. (that is across the sea.) men will cast away their own victuals. (that is, in sowing.) . human beings will be seen who will not understand each other's speech; that is, a german with a turk. fathers will be seen giving their daughters into the power of man and giving up all their former care in guarding them. (when girls are married.) men will come out their graves turned into flying creatures; and they will attack other men, taking their food from their very hand or table. (as flies.) many will there be who, flaying their mother, will tear the skin from her back. (husbandmen tilling the earth.) happy will they be who lend ear to the words of the dead. (who read good works and obey them.) . feathers will raise men, as they do birds, towards heaven (that is, by the letters which are written with quills.) the works of men's hands will occasion their death. (swords and spears.) men out of fear will cling to the thing they most fear. (that is they will be miserable lest they should fall into misery.) things that are separate shall be united and acquire such virtue that they will restore to man his lost memory; that is papyrus [sheets] which are made of separate strips and have preserved the memory of the things and acts of men. the bones of the dead will be seen to govern the fortunes of him who moves them. (by dice.) cattle with their horns protect the flame from its death. (in a lantern [footnote : see note page .].) the forests will bring forth young which will be the cause of their death. (the handle of the hatchet.) . men will deal bitter blows to that which is the cause of their life. (in thrashing grain.) the skins of animals will rouse men from their silence with great outcries and curses. (balls for playing games.) very often a thing that is itself broken is the occasion of much union. (that is the comb made of split cane which unites the threads of silk.) the wind passing through the skins of animals will make men dance. (that is the bag-pipe, which makes people dance.) . (of walnut trees, that are beaten.) those which have done best will be most beaten, and their offspring taken and flayed or peeled, and their bones broken or crushed. (of sculpture.) alas! what do i see? the saviour cru- cified anew. (of the mouth of man, which is a sepulchre.) great noise will issue from the sepulchres of those who died evil and violent deaths. (of the skins of animals which have the sense of feeling what is in the things written.) the more you converse with skins covered with sentiments, the more wisdom will you acquire. (of priests who bear the host in their body.) then almost all the tabernacles in which dwells the corpus domini, will be plainly seen walking about of themselves on the various roads of the world. . and those who feed on grass will turn night into day (tallow.) and many creatures of land and water will go up among the stars (that is planets.) the dead will be seen carrying the living (in carts and ships in various places.) food shall be taken out of the mouth of many ( the oven's mouth.) and those which will have their food in their mouth will be deprived of it by the hands of others (the oven.) . (of crucifixes which are sold.) i see christ sold and crucified afresh, and his saints suffering martyrdom. (of physicians, who live by sickness.) men will come into so wretched a plight that they will be glad that others will derive profit from their sufferings or from the loss of their real wealth, that is health. (of the religion of friars, who live by the saints who have been dead a great while.) those who are dead will, after a thou- sand years be those who will give a livelihood to many who are living. (of stones converted into lime, with which prison walls are made.) many things that have been before that time destroyed by fire will deprive many men of liberty. . (of children who are suckled.) many franciscans, dominicans and benedictines will eat that which at other times was eaten by others, who for some months to come will not be able to speak. (of cockles and sea snails which are thrown up by the sea and which rot inside their shells.) how many will there be who, after they are dead, will putrefy inside their own houses, filling all the surrounding air with a fetid smell. . (of mules which have on them rich burdens of silver and gold.) much treasure and great riches will be laid upon four-footed beasts, which will convey them to divers places. . (of the shadow cast by a man at night with a light.) huge figures will appear in human shape, and the nearer you get to them, the more will their immense size diminish. [footnote page : it seems to me probable that this note, which occurs in the note book used in , when leonardo, in the service of cesare borgia, visited urbino, was suggested by the famous pillage of the riches of the palace of guidobaldo, whose treasures cesare borgia at once had carried to cesena (see gregorovius, _geschichte der stadt rom im mittelalter_. xiii, , ). ] . (of snakes, carried by storks.) serpents of great length will be seen at a great height in the air, fighting with birds. (of great guns, which come out of a pit and a mould.) creatures will come from underground which with their terrific noise will stun all who are near; and with their breath will kill men and destroy cities and castles. . (of grain and other seeds.) men will fling out of their houses those victuals which were intended to sustain their life. (of trees, which nourish grafted shoots.) fathers and mothers will be seen to take much more delight in their step-children then in their own children. (of the censer.) some will go about in white garments with arrogant gestures threatening others with metal and fire which will do no harm at all to them. . (of drying fodder.) innumerable lives will be destroyed and innumerable vacant spaces will be made on the earth. (of the life of men, who every year change their bodily substance.) men, when dead, will pass through their own bowels. . (shoemakers.) men will take pleasure in seeing their own work destroyed and injured. . (of kids.) the time of herod will come again, for the little innocent children will be taken from their nurses, and will die of terrible wounds inflicted by cruel men. v. draughts and schemes for the humorous writings. schemes for fables, etc. ( - ). . a fable. the crab standing under the rock to catch the fish which crept under it, it came to pass that the rock fell with a ruinous downfall of stones, and by their fall the crab was crushed. the same. the spider, being among the grapes, caught the flies which were feeding on those grapes. then came the vintage, and the spider was cut down with the grapes. the vine that has grown old on an old tree falls with the ruin of that tree, and through that bad companionship must perish with it. the torrent carried so much earth and stones into its bed, that it was then constrained to change its course. the net that was wont to take the fish was seized and carried away by the rush of fish. the ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy mountains, increases in size as it falls. the willow, which by its long shoots hopes as it grows, to outstrip every other plant, from having associated itself with the vine which is pruned every year was always crippled. . fable of the tongue bitten by the teeth. the cedar puffed up with pride of its beauty, separated itself from the trees around it and in so doing it turned away towards the wind, which not being broken in its fury, flung it uprooted on the earth. the traveller's joy, not content in its hedge, began to fling its branches out over the high road, and cling to the opposite hedge, and for this it was broken away by the passers by. . the goldfinch gives victuals to its caged young. death rather than loss of liberty. [footnote: above this text is another note, also referring to liberty; see no. .] . (of bags.) goats will convey the wine to the city. . all those things which in winter are hidden under the snow, will be uncovered and laid bare in summer. (for falsehood, which cannot remain hidden). . a fable. the lily set itself down by the shores of the ticino, and the current carried away bank and the lily with it. . a jest. why hungarian ducats have a double cross on them. . a simile. a vase of unbaked clay, when broken, may be remoulded, but not a baked one. . seeing the paper all stained with the deep blackness of ink, it he deeply regrets it; and this proves to the paper that the words, composed upon it were the cause of its being preserved. . the pen must necessarily have the penknife for a companion, and it is a useful companionship, for one is not good for much without the other. schemes for prophecies ( - ). . the knife, which is an artificial weapon, deprives man of his nails, his natural weapons. the mirror conducts itself haughtily holding mirrored in itself the queen. when she departs the mirror remains there ... . flax is dedicated to death, and to the corruption of mortals. to death, by being used for snares and nets for birds, animals and fish; to corruption, by the flaxen sheets in which the dead are wrapped when they are buried, and who become corrupt in these winding sheets.-- and again, this flax does not separate its fibre till it has begun to steep and putrefy, and this is the flower with which garlands and decorations for funerals should be made. . (of peasants who work in shirts) shadows will come from the east which will blacken with great colour darkness the sky that covers italy. (of the barbers.) all men will take refuge in africa. . the cloth which is held in the hand in the current of a running stream, in the waters of which the cloth leaves all its foulness and dirt, is meant to signify this &c. by the thorn with inoculated good fruit is signified those natures which of themselves were not disposed towards virtue, but by the aid of their preceptors they have the repudation of it. . a common thing. a wretched person will be flattered, and these flatterers are always the deceivers, robbers and murderers of the wretched person. the image of the sun where it falls appears as a thing which covers the person who attempts to cover it. (money and gold.) out of cavernous pits a thing shall come forth which will make all the nations of the world toil and sweat with the greatest torments, anxiety and labour, that they may gain its aid. (of the dread of poverty.) the malicious and terrible [monster] will cause so much terror of itself in men that they will rush together, with a rapid motion, like madmen, thinking they are escaping her boundless force. (of advice.) the man who may be most necessary to him who needs him, will be repaid with ingratitude, that is greatly contemned. . (of bees.) they live together in communities, they are destroyed that we may take the honey from them. many and very great nations will be destroyed in their own dwellings. . why dogs take pleasure in smelling at each other. this animal has a horror of the poor, because they eat poor food, and it loves the rich, because they have good living and especially meat. and the excrement of animals always retains some virtue of its origin as is shown by the faeces ... now dogs have so keen a smell, that they can discern by their nose the virtue remaining in these faeces, and if they find them in the streets, smell them and if they smell in them the virtue of meat or of other things, they take them, and if not, they leave them: and to return to the question, i say that if by means of this smell they know that dog to be well fed, they respect him, because they judge that he has a powerful and rich master; and if they discover no such smell with the virtue of meet, they judge that dog to be of small account and to have a poor and humble master, and therefore they bite that dog as they would his master. . the circular plans of carrying earth are very useful, inasmuch as men never stop in their work; and it is done in many ways. by one of these ways men carry the earth on their shoulders, by another in chests and others on wheelbarrows. the man who carries it on his shoulders first fills the tub on the ground, and he loses time in hoisting it on to his shoulders. he with the chests loses no time. [footnote: the subject of this text has apparently no connection with the other texts of this section.] irony ( ). . if petrarch was so fond of bay, it was because it is of a good taste in sausages and with tunny; i cannot put any value on their foolery. [footnote: conte porro has published these lines in the _archivio stor. lombarda_ viii, iv; he reads the concluding line thus: _i no posso di loro gia (sic) co' far tesauro._--this is known to be by a contemporary poet, as senatore morelli informs me.] tricks ( - ). . we are two brothers, each of us has a brother. here the way of saying it makes it appear that the two brothers have become four. . tricks of dividing. take in each hand an equal number; put from the right hand into the left; cast away the remainder; cast away an equal number from the left hand; add , and now you will find in this [left] hand; that is-i made you put from the right hand into the left, and cast away the remainder; now your right hand has more; then i make you throw away as many from the right as you threw away from the left; so, throwing from each hand a quantity of which the remainder may be equal, you now have and , which make , and that the trick may not be detec- ted i made you put more, which made . tricks of dividing. take any number less than that you please; then take of mine enough to make up the number , and that which remains to me is the number which you at first had; because when i said, take any number less than as you please, i took into my hand, and of that you took such a number as made up your number of ; and what you added to your number, you took from mine; that is, if you had to go as far as to , you took of my , ; hence this transferred from me to you reduced my to a remainder of , and your became ; so that my is equal to your , before it was made . [footnote : g. govi _says in the_ 'saggio' p. : _si dilett leonarda, di giuochi di prestigi e molti (?) ne descrisse, che si leggono poi riportati dal paciolo nel suo libro:_ de viribus quantitatis, _e che, se non tutti, sono certo in gran parte invenzioni del vinci._] . if you want to teach someone a subject you do not know yourself, let him measure the length of an object unknown to you, and he will learn the measure you did not know before;--master giovanni da lodi. _xxi._ _letters. personal records. dated notes._ _when we consider how superficial and imperfect are the accounts of leonardo's life written some time after his death by vasari and others, any notes or letters which can throw more light on his personal circumstances cannot fail to be in the highest degree interesting. the texts here given as nos._ -- , _set his residence in rome in quite a new aspect; nay, the picture which irresistibly dwells in our minds after reading these details of his life in the vatican, forms a striking contrast to the contemporary life of raphael at rome._ _i have placed foremost of these documents the very remarkable letters to the defterdar of syria. in these leonardo speaks of himself as having staid among the mountains of armenia, and as the biographies of the master tell nothing of any such distant journeys, it would seem most obvious to treat this passage as fiction, and so spare ourselves the onus of proof and discussion. but on close examination no one can doubt that these documents, with the accompanying sketches, are the work of leonardo's own hand. not merely is the character of the handwriting his, but the spelling and the language are his also. in one respect only does the writing betray any marked deviation from the rest of the notes, especially those treating on scientific questions; namely, in these observations he seems to have taken particular pains to give the most distinct and best form of expression to all he had to say; we find erasures and emendations in almost every line. he proceeded, as we shall see, in the same way in the sketches for letters to giuliano de' medici, and what can be more natural, i may ask, than to find the draft of a letter thus altered and improved when it is to contain an account of a definite subject, and when personal interests are in the scale? the finished copies as sent off are not known to exist; if we had these instead of the rough drafts, we might unhesitatingly have declared that some unknown italian engineer must have been, at that time, engaged in armenia in the service of the egyptian sultan, and that leonardo had copied his documents. under this hypothesis however we should have to state that this unknown writer must have been so far one in mind with leonardo as to use the same style of language and even the same lines of thought. this explanation might--as i say--have been possible, if only we had the finished letters. but why should these rough drafts of letters be regarded as anything else than what they actually and obviously are? if leonardo had been a man of our own time, we might perhaps have attempted to account for the facts by saying that leonardo, without having been in the east himself, might have undertaken to write a romance of which the scene was laid in armenia, and at the desire of his publisher had made sketches of landscape to illustrate the text. i feel bound to mention this singular hypothesis as it has actually been put forward (see no. note ); and it would certainly seem as though there were no other possible way of evading the conclusion to which these letters point, and their bearing on the life of the master,--absurd as the alternative is. but, if, on a question of such importance, we are justified in suggesting theories that have no foundation in probability, i could suggest another which, as compared with that of a fiction by leonardo, would be neither more nor less plausible; it is, moreover the only other hypothesis, perhaps, which can be devised to account for these passages, if it were possible to prove that the interpretation that the documents themselves suggest, must be rejected a priori; viz may not leonardo have written them with the intention of mystifying those who, after his death, should try to decipher these manuscripts with a view to publishing them? but if, in fact, no objection that will stand the test of criticism can be brought against the simple and direct interpretation of the words as they stand, we are bound to regard leonardo's travels in the east as an established fact. there is, i believe nothing in what we know of his biography to negative such a fact, especially as the details of his life for some few years are wholly unknown; nor need we be at a loss for evidence which may serve to explain--at any rate to some extent--the strangeness of his undertaking such a journey. we have no information as to leonardo's history between and ; it cannot be proved that he was either in milan or in florence. on the other hand the tenor of this letter does not require us to assume a longer absence than a year or two. for, even if his appointment_ (offitio) _as engineer in syria had been a permanent one, it might have become untenable--by the death perhaps of the defterdar, his patron, or by his removal from office--, and leonardo on his return home may have kept silence on the subject of an episode which probably had ended in failure and disappointment. from the text of no. we can hardly doubt that leonardo intended to make an excursion secretly from rome to naples, although so far as has hitherto been known, his biographers never allude to it. in another place (no. ) he says that he had worked as an engineer in friuli. are we to doubt this statement too, merely because no biographer has hitherto given us any information on the matter? in the geographical notes leonardo frequently speaks of the east, and though such passages afford no direct proof of his having been there, they show beyond a doubt that, next to the nile, the euphrates, the tigris and the taurus mountains had a special interest in his eyes. as a still further proof of the futility of the argument that there is nothing in his drawings to show that he had travelled in the east, we find on pl. cxx a study of oriental heads of armenian type,--though of course this may have been made in italy. if the style of these letters were less sober, and the expressions less strictly to the point throughout, it miglit be possible to regard them as a romantic fiction instead of a narrative of fact. nay, we have only to compare them with such obviously fanciful passages as no. , nos. - , and the fables and prophecies. it is unnecessary to discuss the subject any further here; such explanations as the letter needs are given in the foot notes. the drafts of letters to lodovico il moro are very remarkable. leonardo and this prince were certainly far less closely connected, than has hitherto been supposed. it is impossible that leonardo can have remained so long in the service of this prince, because the salary was good, as is commonly stated. on the contrary, it would seem, that what kept him there, in spite of his sore need of the money owed him by the prince, was the hope of some day being able to carry out the project of casting the_ 'gran cavallo'. drafts of letters and reports referring to armenia ( . ). . to the devatdar of syria, lieutenant of the sacred sultan of babylon. [ ] the recent disaster in our northern parts which i am certain will terrify not you alone but the whole world, which [footnote: lines - are reproduced in facsimile on pl. cxvi. . _diodario._ this word is not to be found in any italian dictionary, and for a long time i vainly sought an explanation of it. the youthful reminiscences of my wife afforded the desired clue. the chief town of each turkish villayet, or province --such as broussa, for instance, in asia minor, is the residence of a defterdar, who presides over the financial affairs of the province. _defterdar hane_ was, in former times, the name given to the ministry of finance at constantinople; the minister of finance to the porte is now known as the _mallie-nazri_ and the _defterdars_ are his subordinates. a _defterdar_, at the present day is merely the head of the finance department in each provincial district. with regard to my suggestion that leonardo's _diodario_ might be identical with the defterdar of former times, the late m. c. defremerie, arabic professor, and membre de l'institut de france wrote to me as follows: _votre conjecture est parfaitement fondee; diodario est vequivalent de devadar ou plus exactement devatdar, titre d'une importante dignite en egypt'e, sous les mamlouks._ the word however is not of turkish, but of perso-arabie derivation. [defter written in arab?] literally _defter_ (arabic) meaning _folio_; for _dar_ (persian) bookkeeper or holder is the english equivalent; and the idea is that of a deputy in command. during the mamelook supremacy over syria, which corresponded in date with leonardo's time, the office of defterdar was the third in importance in the state. _soltano di babilonia_. the name of babylon was commonly applied to cairo in the middle ages. for instance breidenbach, _itinerarium hierosolyma_ p. says: "at last we reached babylon. but this is not that babylon which stood on the further shore of the river chober, but that which is called the egyptian babylon. it is close by cairo and the twain are but one and not two towns; one half is called cairo and the other babylon, whence they are called together cairo-babylon; originally the town is said to have been named memphis and then babylon, but now it is called cairo." compare no. , . egypt was governed from till by the borgite or tcherkessian dynasty of the mamelook sultans. one of the most famous of these, sultan kait bey, ruled from - during whose reign the gama (or mosque) of kait bey and tomb of kait bey near the okella kait bey were erected in cairo, which preserve his name to this day. under the rule of this great and wise prince many foreigners, particularly italians, found occupation in egypt, as may be seen in the 'viaggio di josaphat barbaro', among other travellers. "next to leonardo (so i learn from prof. jac. burckhardt of bale) kait bey's most helpful engineer was a german who in about , superintended the construction of the mole at alexandria. felix fabri knew him and mentions him in his _historia suevorum_, written in ." . _il nuovo accidente accaduto_, or as leonardo first wrote and then erased, _e accaduto un nuovo accidente_. from the sequel this must refer to an earthquake, and indeed these were frequent at that period, particularly in asia minor, where they caused immense mischief. see no. note.] shall be related to you in due order, showing first the effect and then the cause. [footnote : the text here breaks off. the following lines are a fresh beginning of a letter, evidently addressed to the same person, but, as it would seem, written at a later date than the previous text. the numerous corrections and amendments amply prove that it is not a copy from any account of a journey by some unknown person; but, on the contrary, that leonardo was particularly anxious to choose such words and phrases as might best express his own ideas.] finding myself in this part of armenia [footnote : _parti d'erminia_. see no. , note. the extent of armenia in leonardo's time is only approximately known. in the xvth century the persians governed the eastern, and the arabs the southern portions. arabic authors--as, for instance abulfeda--include cilicia and a part of cappadocia in armenia, and greater armenia was the tract of that country known later as turcomania, while armenia minor was the territory between cappadocia and the euphrates. it was not till , or even that the whole country came under the dominion of the ottoman turks, in the reign of selim i. the mamelook sultans of egypt seem to have taken a particular interest in this, the most northern province of their empire, which was even then in danger of being conquered by the turks. in the autumn of sultan kait bey made a journey of inspection, visiting antioch and the valleys of the tigris and euphrates with a numerous and brilliant escort. this tour is briefly alluded to by _moodshireddin_ p. ; and by weil, _geschichte der abbasiden_ v, p. . an anonymous member of the suite wrote a diary of the expedition in arabic, which has been published by r. v. lonzone (_'viaggio in palestina e soria di kaid ba xviii sultano della ii dinastia mamelucca, fatto nel . testo arabo. torino '_, without notes or commentary). compare the critique on this edition, by j. gildemeister in _zeitschrift des deutschen palaestina vereins_ (vol. ill p. -- ). lanzone's edition seems to be no more than an abridged copy of the original. i owe to professor sche'fer, membre de l'institut, the information that he is in possession of a manuscript in which the text is fuller, and more correctly given. the mamelook dynasty was, as is well known, of circassian origin, and a large proportion of the egyptian army was recruited in circassia even so late as in the xvth century. that was a period of political storms in syria and asia minor and it is easy to suppose that the sultan's minister, to whom leonardo addresses his report as his superior, had a special interest in the welfare of those frontier provinces. only to mention a few historical events of sultan kait bey's reign, we find that in he assisted the circassians to resist the encroachments of alaeddoulet, an asiatic prince who had allied himself with the osmanli to threaten the province; the consequence was a war in cilicia by sea and land, which broke out in the following year between the contending powers. only a few years earlier the same province had been the scene of the so-called caramenian war in which the united venetian, neapolitan and sclavonic fleets had been engaged. (see corialano cippico, _della guerra dei veneziani nell' asia dal_ -- . venezia , p. ) and we learn incidentally that a certain leonardo boldo, governor of scutari under sultan mahmoud,--as his name would indicate, one of the numerous renegades of italian birth--played an important part in the negotiations for peace. _tu mi mandasti_. the address _tu_ to a personage so high in office is singular and suggests personal intimacy; leonardo seems to have been a favourite with the diodario. compare lines and . i have endeavoured to show, and i believe that i am also in a position to prove with regard to these texts, that they are draughts of letters actually written by leonardo; at the same time i must not omit to mention that shortly after i had discovered these texts in the codex atlanticus and published a paper on the subject in the _zeitschrift fur bildende kunst (vol. xvi)_, prof. govi put forward this hypothesis to account for their origin: _"quanto alle notizie sul monte tauro, sull'armenia e sull' asia minore che si contengono negli altri frammenti, esse vennero prese da qualche geografro o viaggiatore contemporaneo. dall'indice imperfetto che accompagna quei frammenti, si potrebbe dedurre che leonardo volesse farne un libro, che poi non venne compiuto. a ogni modo, non e possibile di trovare in questi brani nessun indizio di un viaggio di leonardo in oriente, ne della sua conversione alla religione di maometto, come qualcuno pretenderebbe. leonardo amava con passione gli studi geografici, e nel suoi scritti s'incontran spesso itinerart, indicazioni, o descrizioni di luoghi, schizzi di carte e abbozzi topografici di varie regioni, non e quindi strano che egli, abile narratore com'era, si fosse proposto di scrivere una specie di romanzo in forma epistolare svolgendone pintreccio nell'asia minore, intorno alla quale i libri d'allora, e forse qualche viaggiatore amico suo, gli avevano somministrato alcuni elementi piu o meno_ fantastici. (see transunti della reale accademia dei lincei voi. v ser. ). it is hardly necessary to point out that prof. govi omits to name the sources from which leonardo could be supposed to have drawn his information, and i may leave it to the reader to pronounce judgment on the anomaly which is involved in the hypothesis that we have here a fragment of a romance, cast in the form of a correspondence. at the same time, i cannot but admit that the solution of the difficulties proposed by prof. govi is, under the circumstances, certainly the easiest way of dealing with the question. but we should then be equally justified in supposing some more of leonardo's letters to be fragments of such romances; particularly those of which the addresses can no longer be named. still, as regards these drafts of letters to the diodario, if we accept the romance theory, as pro- posed by prof. govi, we are also compelled to assume that leonardo purposed from the first to illustrate his tale; for it needs only a glance at the sketches on pi. cxvi to cxix to perceive that they are connected with the texts; and of course the rest of leonardo's numerous notes on matters pertaining to the east, the greater part of which are here published for the first time, may also be somehow connected with this strange romance. . _citta de calindra (chalindra)_. the position of this city is so exactly determined, between the valley of the euphrates and the taurus range that it ought to be possible to identify it. but it can hardly be the same as the sea port of cilicia with a somewhat similar name celenderis, kelandria, celendria, kilindria, now the turkish gulnar. in two catalonian portulans in the bibliotheque natio- nale in paris-one dating from the xv'h century, by wilhelm von soler, the other by olivez de majorca, in l -i find this place called calandra. but leonardo's calindra must certainly have lain more to the north west, probably somewhere in kurdistan. the fact that the geographical position is so care- fully determined by leonardo seems to prove that it was a place of no great importance and little known. it is singular that the words first written in . were divisa dal lago (lake van?), altered afterwards to dall'eitfrates. nostri confini, and in . proposito nostro. these refer to the frontier and to the affairs of the mamelook sultan, lines and throw some light on the purpose of leonardo's mission. . _i_ corni del gra mote tauro. compare the sketches pi. cxvi-cxviii. so long as it is im- possible to identify the situation of calindra it is most difficult to decide with any certainty which peak of the taurus is here meant; and i greatly regret that i had no foreknowledge of this puzzling topographical question when, in , i was pursuing archaeological enquiries in the provinces of aleppo and cilicia, and had to travel for some time in view of the imposing snow-peaks of bulghar dagh and ala tepessi. - . the opinion here expressed as to the height of the mountain would be unmeaning, unless it had been written before leonardo moved to milan, where monte rosa is so conspicuous an object in the landscape. _ore inanzi_ seems to mean, four hours before the sun's rays penetrate to the bottom of the valleys.] to carry into effect with due love and care the task for which you sent me [footnote: ][ ]; and to make a beginning in a place which seemed to me to be most to our purpose, i entered into the city of calindrafy[ ], near to our frontiers. this city is situated at the base of that part of the taurus mountains which is divided from the euphrates and looks towards the peaks of the great mount taurus [ ] to the west [ ]. these peaks are of such a height that they seem to touch the sky, and in all the world there is no part of the earth, higher than its summit[ ], and the rays of the sun always fall upon it on its east side, four hours before day-time, and being of the whitest stone [footnote :_pietra bianchissima_. the taurus mountains consist in great part of limestone.] it shines resplendently and fulfils the function to these armenians which a bright moon-light would in the midst of the darkness; and by its great height it outreaches the utmost level of the clouds by a space of four miles in a straight line. this peak is seen in many places towards the west, illuminated by the sun after its setting the third part of the night. this it is, which with you [footnote : _appresso di voi_. leonardo had at first written _noi_ as though his meaning had,been: this peak appeared to us to be a comet when you and i observed it in north syria (at aleppo? at aintas?). the description of the curious reflection in the evening, resembling the "alpine-glow" is certainly not an invented fiction, for in the next lines an explanation of the phenomenon is offered, or at least attempted.] we formerly in calm weather had supposed to be a comet, and appears to us in the darkness of night, to change its form, being sometimes divided in two or three parts, and sometimes long and sometimes short. and this is caused by the clouds on the horizon of the sky which interpose between part of this mountain and the sun, and by cutting off some of the solar rays the light on the mountain is intercepted by various intervals of clouds, and therefore varies in the form of its brightness. the divisions of the book [footnote : the next lines are evidently the contents of a connected report or book, but not of one which he had at hand; more probably, indeed, of one he purposed writing.]. the praise and confession of the faith [footnote : _persuasione di fede_, of the christian or the mohammedan faith? we must suppose the latter, at the beginning of a document addressed to so high a mohammedan official. _predica_ probably stands as an abbreviation for _predicazione_ (lat. _praedicatio_) in the sense of praise or glorification; very probably it may mean some such initial doxology as we find in mohammedan works. (comp. . .)]. the sudden inundation, to its end. [ ] the destruction of the city. [ ]the death of the people and their despair. the preacher's search, his release and benevolence [footnote : the phraseology of this is too general for any conjecture as to its meaning to be worth hazarding.] description of the cause of this fall of the mountain [footnote : _ruina del monte_. of course by an earthquake. in a catalogue of earthquakes, entitled _kechf aussalssaleb an auasf ezzel-zeleh_, and written by djelal eddin]. the mischief it did. [ ] fall of snow. the finding of the prophet [ ]. his prophesy. [ ] the inundation of the lower portion of eastern armenia, the draining of which was effected by the cutting through the taurus mountains. how the new prophet showed [footnote :_nova profeta, . , profeta_. mohammed. leonardo here refers to the koran: in the name of the most merciful god.--when the earth shall be shaken by an earthquake; and the earth shall cast forth her burdens; and a man shall say, what aileth her? on that day the earth shall declare her tidings, for that thy lord will inspire her. on that day men shall go forward in distinct classes, that they may behold their works. and whoever shall have wrought good of the weight of an ant, shall behold the same. and whoever shall have wrought evil of the weight of an ant, shall behold the same. (the koran, translated by g. sale, chapter xcix, p. ).] that this destruction would happen as he had foretold. description of the taurus mountains [ ] and the river euphrates. why the mountain shines at the top, from half to a third of the night, and looks like a comet to the inhabitants of the west after the sunset, and before day to those of the east. why this comet appears of variable forms, so that it is now round and now long, and now again divided into two or three parts, and now in one piece, and when it is to be seen again. of the shape of the taurus mountains [footnote - : the facsimile of this passage is given on pl. cxvii.]. i am not to be accused, oh devatdar, of idleness, as your chidings seem to hint; but your excessive love for me, which gave rise to the benefits you have conferred on me [footnote ] is that which has also compelled me to the utmost painstaking in seeking out and diligently investigating the cause of so great and stupendous an effect. and this could not be done without time; now, in order to satisfy you fully as to the cause of so great an effect, it is requisite that i should explain to you the form of the place, and then i will proceed to the effect, by which i believe you will be amply satisfied. [footnote : _tagliata di monte tauro_. the euphrates flows through the taurus range near the influx of the kura shai; it rushes through a rift in the wildest cliffs from to feet high and runs on for miles in falls or rapids till it reaches telek, near which at a spot called gleikash, or the hart's leap, it measures only paces across. compare the map on pl. cxix and the explanation for it on p. .] [footnote : the foregoing sketch of a letter, lines . , appears to have remained a fragment when leonardo received pressing orders which caused him to write immediately and fully on the subject mentioned in line .] [footnote : this passage was evidently intended as an improvement on that immediately preceding it. the purport of both is essentially the same, but the first is pitched in a key of ill-disguised annoyance which is absent from the second. i do not see how these two versions can be reconciled with the romance-theory held by prof. govi.] do not be aggrieved, o devatdar, by my delay in responding to your pressing request, for those things which you require of me are of such a nature that they cannot be well expressed without some lapse of time; particularly because, in order to explain the cause of so great an effect, it is necessary to describe with accuracy the nature of the place; and by this means i can afterwards easily satisfy your above-mentioned request. [footnote : this passage was evidently intended as an improvement on that immediately preceding it. the purport of both is essentially the same, but the first is pitched in a key of ill-disguised annoyance which is absent from the second. i do not see how these two versions can be reconciled with the romance-theory held by prof. govi.] i will pass over any description of the form of asia minor, or as to what seas or lands form the limits of its outline and extent, because i know that by your own diligence and carefulness in your studies you have not remained in ignorance of these matters [ ]; and i will go on to describe the true form of the taurus mountain which is the cause of this stupendous and harmful marvel, and which will serve to advance us in our purpose [ ]. this taurus is that mountain which, with many others is said to be the ridge of mount caucasus; but wishing to be very clear about it, i desired to speak to some of the inhabitants of the shores of the caspian sea, who give evidence that this must be the true caucasus, and that though their mountains bear the same name, yet these are higher; and to confirm this in the scythian tongue caucasus means a very high [footnote : caucasus; herodot kaoxaais; armen. kaukaz.] peak, and in fact we have no information of there being, in the east or in the west, any mountain so high. and the proof of this is that the inhabitants of the countries to the west see the rays of the sun illuminating a great part of its summit for as much as a quarter of the longest night. and in the same way, in those countries which lie to the east. of the structure and size of mount taurus. [footnote : the statements are of course founded on those of the 'inhabitants' spoken of in . .] the shadow of this ridge of the taurus is of such a height that when, in the middle of june, the sun is at its meridian, its shadow extends as far as the borders of sarmatia, twelve days off; and in the middle of december it extends as far as the hyperborean mountains, which are at a month's journey to the north [ ]. and the side which faces the wind is always free from clouds and mists, because the wind which is parted in beating on the rock, closes again on the further side of that rock, and in its motion carries with it the clouds from all quarters and leaves them where it strikes. and it is always full of thunderbolts from the great quantity of clouds which accumulate there, whence the rock is all riven and full of huge debris [footnote : sudden storms are equally common on the heights of ararat. it is hardly necessary to observe that ararat cannot be meant here. its summit is formed like the crater of vesuvius. the peaks sketched on pl. cxvi-cxviii are probably views of the same mountain, taken from different sides. near the solitary peak, pl. cxviii these three names are written _goba, arnigasar, caruda_, names most likely of different peaks. pl. cxvi and cxvii are in the original on a single sheet folded down the middle, centimetres high and / wide. on the reverse of one half of the sheet are notes on _peso_ and _bilancia_ (weight and balance), on the other are the 'prophecies' printed under nos. and . it is evident from the arrangement that these were written subsequently, on the space which had been left blank. these pages are facsimiled on pl. cxviii. in pl. cxvi-cxviii the size is smaller than in the original; the map of armenia, pl. cxviii, is on pl. cxix slightly enlarged. on this map we find the following names, beginning from the right hand at the top: _pariardes mo_ (for paryadres mons, arm. parchar, now barchal or kolai dagh; trebizond is on its slope). _aquilone_ --north, _antitaurus antitaurus psis mo_ (probably meant for thospitis = lake van, arm. dgov vanai, tospoi, and the mountain range to the south); _gordis mo_ (mountains of gordyaea), the birth place of the tigris; _oriente_ --east; _tigris_, and then, to the left, _eufrates_. then, above to the left _argeo mo_ (now erdshigas, an extinct volcano, feet high); _celeno mo_ (no doubt sultan dagh in pisidia). celeno is the greek town of keaouvat-- see arian i, , i--now the ruins of dineir); _oriente_ --east; _africo libezco_ (for libeccio--south west). in the middle of the euphrates river on this small map we see a shaded portion surrounded by mountains, perhaps to indicate the inundation mentioned in l. . the affluent to the euphrates shown as coming with many windings from the high land of 'argeo' on the west, is the tochma su, which joins the main river at malatie. i have not been able to discover any map of armenia of the xvth or xvith century in which the course of the euphrates is laid down with any thing like the correctness displayed in this sketch. the best i have seen is the catalonian portulan of olivez de majorca, executed in , and it is far behind leonardo's.]. this mountain, at its base, is inhabited by a very rich population and is full of most beautiful springs and rivers, and is fertile and abounding in all good produce, particularly in those parts which face to the south. but after mounting about three miles we begin to find forests of great fir trees, and beech and other similar trees; after this, for a space of three more miles, there are meadows and vast pastures; and all the rest, as far as the beginning of the taurus, is eternal snows which never disappear at any time, and extend to a height of about fourteen miles in all. from this beginning of the taurus up to the height of a mile the clouds never pass away; thus we have fifteen miles, that is, a height of about five miles in a straight line; and the summit of the peaks of the taurus are as much, or about that. there, half way up, we begin to find a scorching air and never feel a breath of wind; but nothing can live long there; there nothing is brought forth save a few birds of prey which breed in the high fissures of taurus and descend below the clouds to seek their prey. above the wooded hills all is bare rock, that is, from the clouds upwards; and the rock is the purest white. and it is impossible to walk to the high summit on account of the rough and perilous ascent. . [footnote: . on comparing this commencement of a letter l. - with that in l. and of no. it is quite evident that both refer to the same event. (compare also no. l. -l and with no. l. , and .) but the text no. , including the fragment l. - , was obviously written later than the draft here reproduced. the _diodario_ is not directly addressed--the person addressed indeed is not known--and it seems to me highly probable that it was written to some other patron and friend whose name and position are not mentioned.] having often made you, by my letters, acquainted with the things which have happened, i think i ought not to be silent as to the events of the last few days, which--[ ]... having several times-- having many times rejoiced with you by letters over your prosperous fortunes, i know now that, as a friend you will be sad with me over the miserable state in which i find myself; and this is, that during the last few days i have been in so much trouble, fear, peril and loss, besides the miseries of the people here, that we have been envious of the dead; and certainly i do not believe that since the elements by their separation reduced the vast chaos to order, they have ever combined their force and fury to do so much mischief to man. as far as regards us here, what we have seen and gone through is such that i could not imagine that things could ever rise to such an amount of mischief, as we experienced in the space of ten hours. in the first place we were assailed and attacked by the violence and fury of the winds [ ]; to this was added the falling of great mountains of snow which filled up all this valley, thus destroying a great part of our city [footnote : _della nostra citta_ (leonardo first wrote _di questa citta_). from this we may infer that he had at some time lived in the place in question wherever it might be.]. and not content with this the tempest sent a sudden flood of water to submerge all the low part of this city [ ]; added to which there came a sudden rain, or rather a ruinous torrent and flood of water, sand, mud, and stones, entangled with roots, and stems and fragments of various trees; and every kind of thing flying through the air fell upon us; finally a great fire broke out, not brought by the wind, but carried as it would seem, by ten thousand devils, which completely burnt up all this neighbourhood and it has not yet ceased. and those few who remain unhurt are in such dejection and such terror that they hardly have courage to speak to each other, as if they were stunned. having abandoned all our business, we stay here together in the ruins of some churches, men and women mingled together, small and great [footnote : _certe ruine di chiese_. either of armenian churches or of mosques, which it was not unusual to speak of as churches. _maschi e femmini insieme unite_, implies an infringement of the usually strict rule of the separation of the sexes.], just like herds of goats. the neighbours out of pity succoured us with victuals, and they had previously been our enemies. and if [footnote : _i vicini, nostri nimici_. the town must then have stood quite close to the frontier of the country. compare . l. . _vicini ai nostri confini_. dr. m. jordan has already published lines - (see _das malerbuch, leipzig_, , p. :--his reading differs from mine) under the title of "description of a landscape near lake como". we do in fact find, among other loose sheets in the codex atlanticus, certain texts referring to valleys of the alps (see nos. , and note p. ) and in the arrangement of the loose sheets, of which the codex atlanticus has been formed, these happen to be placed close to this text. the compiler stuck both on the same folio sheet; and if this is not the reason for dr. jordan's choosing such a title (description &c.) i cannot imagine what it can have been. it is, at any rate, a merely hypothetical statement. the designation of the population of the country round a city as "the enemy" (_nemici_) is hardly appropriate to italy in the time of leonardo.] it had not been for certain people who succoured us with victuals, all would have died of hunger. now you see the state we are in. and all these evils are as nothing compared with those which are promised to us shortly. i know that as a friend you will grieve for my misfortunes, as i, in former letters have shown my joy at your prosperity ... notes about events observed abroad ( - ). . book . of the movement of air enclosed in water. i have seen motions of the air so furious that they have carried, mixed up in their course, the largest trees of the forest and whole roofs of great palaces, and i have seen the same fury bore a hole with a whirling movement digging out a gravel pit, and carrying gravel, sand and water more than half a mile through the air. [footnote: the first sixteen lines of this passage which treat of the subject as indicated on the title line have no place in this connexion and have been omitted.] [footnote : _ho veduto movimenti_ &c. nothing of the kind happened in italy during leonardo's lifetime, and it is therefore extremely probable that this refers to the natural phenomena which are so fully described in the foregoing passage. (compare too, no. .) there can be no doubt that the descriptions of the deluge in the libro di pittura (vol. i, no. - ), and that of the fall of a mountain no. , l. - were written from the vivid impressions derived from personal experience. compare also pl. xxxiv-xl.] . [footnote: it may be inferred from the character of the writing, which is in the style of the note in facsimile vol. i, p. , that this passage was written between and . as the figure at the end of the text indicates, it was continued on another page, but i have searched in vain for it. the reverse of this leaf is coloured red for drawing in silver point, but has not been used for that purpose but for writing on, and at about the same date. the passages are given as nos. , , , and no. (see note page ). the text given above is obviously not a fragment of a letter, but a record of some personal experience. no. also seems to refer to leonardo's journeys in southern italy.] like a whirling wind which rushes down a sandy and hollow valley, and which, in its hasty course, drives to its centre every thing that opposes its furious course ... no otherwise does the northern blast whirl round in its tempestuous progress ... nor does the tempestuous sea bellow so loud, when the northern blast dashes it, with its foaming waves between scylla and charybdis; nor stromboli, nor mount etna, when their sulphurous flames, having been forcibly confined, rend, and burst open the mountain, fulminating stones and earth through the air together with the flames they vomit. nor when the inflamed caverns of mount etna [footnote : mongibello is a name commonly given in sicily to mount etna (from djebel, arab.=mountain). fr. ferrara, _descrizione dell' etna con la storia delle eruzioni_ (palermo, , p. ) tells us, on the authority of the _cronaca del monastero benedettino di licordia_ of an eruption of the volcano with a great flow of lava on sept. , . the next records of the mountain are from the years and . a. percy neither does mention any eruptions of etna during the years to which this note must probably refer _memoire des tremblements de terre de la peninsule italique, vol. xxii des memoires couronnees et memoires des savants etrangers. academie royal de belgique_). a literal interpretation of the passage would not, however, indicate an allusion to any great eruption; particularly in the connection with stromboli, where the periodical outbreaks in very short intervals are very striking to any observer, especially at night time, when passing the island on the way from naples to messina.], rejecting the ill-restained element vomit it forth, back to its own region, driving furiously before it every obstacle that comes in the way of its impetuous rage ... unable to resist my eager desire and wanting to see the great ... of the various and strange shapes made by formative nature, and having wandered some distance among gloomy rocks, i came to the entrance of a great cavern, in front of which i stood some time, astonished and unaware of such a thing. bending my back into an arch i rested my left hand on my knee and held my right hand over my down-cast and contracted eye brows: often bending first one way and then the other, to see whether i could discover anything inside, and this being forbidden by the deep darkness within, and after having remained there some time, two contrary emotions arose in me, fear and desire--fear of the threatening dark cavern, desire to see whether there were any marvellous thing within it ... drafts of letters to lodovico il moro ( - ). . [footnote: the numerous corrections, the alterations in the figures (l. ) and the absence of any signature prove that this is merely the rough draft of a letter to lodovico il moro. it is one of the very few manuscripts which are written from left to right--see the facsimile of the beginning as here reproduced. this is probably the final sketch of a document the clean of which copy was written in the usual manner. leonardo no doubt very rarely wrote so, and this is probably the reason of the conspicuous dissimilarity in the handwriting, when he did. (compare pl. xxxviii.) it is noteworthy too that here the orthography and abbreviations are also exceptional. but such superficial peculiarities are not enough to stamp the document as altogether spurious. it is neither a forgery nor the production of any artist but leonardo himself. as to this point the contents leave us no doubt as to its authenticity, particularly l. (see no. , where this passage is repeated). but whether the fragment, as we here see it, was written from leonardo's dictation--a theory favoured by the orthography, the erasures and corrections--or whether it may be a copy made for or by melzi or mazenta is comparatively unimportant. there are in the codex atlanticus a few other documents not written by leonardo himself, but the notes in his own hand found on the reverse pages of these leaves amply prove that they were certainly in leonardo's possession. this mark of ownership is wanting to the text in question, but the compilers of the codex atlanticus, at any rate, accepted it as a genuine document. with regard to the probable date of this projected letter see vol. ii, p. .] most illustrious lord, having now sufficiently considered the specimens of all those who proclaim themselves skilled contrivers of instruments of war, and that the invention and operation of the said instruments are nothing different to those in common use: i shall endeavour, without prejudice to any one else, to explain myself to your excellency showing your lordship my secrets, and then offering them to your best pleasure and approbation to work with effect at opportune moments as well as all those things which, in part, shall be briefly noted below. ) i have a sort of extremely light and strong bridges, adapted to be most easily carried, and with them you may pursue, and at any time flee from the enemy; and others, secure and indestructible by fire and battle, easy and convenient to lift and place. also methods of burning and destroying those of the enemy. ) i know how, when a place is besieged, to take the water out of the trenches, and make endless variety of bridges, and covered ways and ladders, and other machines pertaining to such expeditions. ) item. if, by reason of the height of the banks, or the strength of the place and its position, it is impossible, when besieging a place, to avail oneself of the plan of bombardment, i have methods for destroying every rock or other fortress, even if it were founded on a rock, &c. ) again i have kinds of mortars; most convenient and easy to carry; and with these can fling small stones almost resembling a storm; and with the smoke of these causing great terror to the enemy, to his great detriment and confusion. ) [ ] and when the fight should be at sea i have kinds of many machines most efficient for offence and defence; and vessels which will resist the attack of the largest guns and powder and fumes. ) item. i have means by secret and tortuous mines and ways, made without noise to reach a designated [spot], even if it were needed to pass under a trench or a river. ) item. i will make covered chariots, safe and unattackable which, entering among the enemy with their artillery, there is no body of men so great but they would break them. and behind these, infantry could follow quite unhurt and without any hindrance. ) item. in case of need i will make big guns, mortars and light ordnance of fine and useful forms, out of the common type. ) where the operation of bombardment should fail, i would contrive catapults, mangonels, _trabocchi_ and other machines of marvellous efficacy and not in common use. and in short, according to the variety of cases, i can contrive various and endless means of offence and defence. ) in time of peace i believe i can give perfect satisfaction and to the equal of any other in architecture and the composition of buildings public and private; and in guiding water from one place to another. item: i can carry out sculpture in marble, bronze or clay, and also in painting whatever may be done, and as well as any other, be he whom he may. [ ] again, the bronze horse may be taken in hand, which is to be to the immortal glory and eternal honour of the prince your father of happy memory, and of the illustrious house of sforza. and if any one of the above-named things seem to any one to be impossible or not feasible, i am most ready to make the experiment in your park, or in whatever place may please your excellency--to whom i commend myself with the utmost humility &c. . to my illustrious lord, lodovico, duke of bari, leonardo da vinci of florence-- leonardo. [footnote: evidently a note of the superscription of a letter to the duke, and written, like the foregoing from left to right. the manuscript containing it is of the year . lodovico was not proclaimed and styled duke of milan till september . the dukedom of bari belonged to the sforza family till .] . you would like to see a model which will prove useful to you and to me, also it will be of use to those who will be the cause of our usefulness. [footnote: . . these two notes occur in the same not very voluminous ms. as the former one and it is possible that they are fragments of the same letter. by the _modello_, the equestrian statue is probably meant, particularly as the model of this statue was publicly exhibited in this very year, , on tne occasion of the marriage of the emperor maximilian with bianca maria sforza.] . there are here, my lord, many gentlemen who will undertake this expense among them, if they are allowed to enjoy the use of admission to the waters, the mills, and the passage of vessels and when it is sold to them the price will be repaid to them by the canal of martesana. . i am greatly vexed to be in necessity, but i still more regret that this should be the cause of the hindrance of my wish which is always disposed to obey your excellency. perhaps your excellency did not give further orders to messer gualtieri, believing that i had money enough. i am greatly annoyed that you should have found me in necessity, and that my having to earn my living should have hindered me ... [ ] it vexes me greatly that having to earn my living has forced me to interrupt the work and to attend to small matters, instead of following up the work which your lordship entrusted to me. but i hope in a short time to have earned so much that i may carry it out quietly to the satisfaction of your excellency, to whom i commend myself; and if your lordship thought that i had money, your lordship was deceived. i had to feed men for months, and have had ducats. . and if any other comission is given me by any ... of the reward of my service. because i am not [able] to be ... things assigned because meanwhile they have ... to them ... ... which they well may settle rather than i ... not my art which i wish to change and ... given some clothing if i dare a sum ... my lord, i knowing your excellency's mind to be occupied ... to remind your lordship of my small matters and the arts put to silence that my silence might be the cause of making your lordship scorn ... my life in your service. i hold myself ever in readiness to obey ... [footnote : see no. , where this passage is repeated.] of the horse i will say nothing because i know the times [are bad] to your lordship how i had still to receive two years' salary of the ... with the two skilled workmen who are constantly in my pay and at my cost that at last i found myself advanced the said sum about lire ... works of fame by which i could show to those who shall see it that i have been everywhere, but i do not know where i could bestow my work [more] ... [footnote : see no. l. .] i, having been working to gain my living ... i not having been informed what it is, i find myself ... [footnote : in april, , leonardo was engaged in painting the saletta nigra of the castello at milan. (see g. mongeri, _l'arte in milano_, , p. .)] remember the commission to paint the rooms ... i conveyed to your lordship only requesting you ... [footnote: the paper on which this is written is torn down the middle; about half of each line remains.] draft of letter to be sent to piacenza ( . ). [footnote: . . piacenza belonged to milan. the lord spoken of in this letter, is no doubt lodovico il moro. one may infer from the concluding sentence (no. , l. . and no. ), that leonardo, who no doubt compiled this letter, did not forward it to piacenza himself, but gave it to some influential patron, under whose name and signature a copy of it was sent to the commission.] . magnificent commissioners of buildings i, understanding that your magnificencies have made up your minds to make certain great works in bronze, will remind you of certain things: first that you should not be so hasty or so quick to give the commission, lest by this haste it should become impossible to select a good model and a good master; and some man of small merit may be chosen, who by his insufficiency may cause you to be abused by your descendants, judging that this age was but ill supplied with men of good counsel and with good masters; seeing that other cities, and chiefly the city of the florentines, has been as it were in these very days, endowed with beautiful and grand works in bronze; among which are the doors of their baptistery. and this town of florence, like piacenza, is a place of intercourse, through which many foreigners pass; who, seeing that the works are fine and of good quality, carry away a good impression, and will say that that city is well filled with worthy inhabitants, seeing the works which bear witness to their opinion; and on the other hand, i say seeing so much metal expended and so badly wrought, it were less shame to the city if the doors had been of plain wood; because, the material, costing so little, would not seem to merit any great outlay of skill... now the principal parts which are sought for in cities are their cathedrals, and of these the first things which strike the eye are the doors, by which one passes into these churches. beware, gentlemen of the commission, lest too great speed in your determination, and so much haste to expedite the entrusting of so great a work as that which i hear you have ordered, be the cause that that which was intended for the honour of god and of men should be turned to great dishonour of your judgments, and of your city, which, being a place of mark, is the resort and gathering-place of innumerable foreigners. and this dishonour would result if by your lack of diligence you were to put your trust in some vaunter, who by his tricks or by favour shown to him here should obtain such work from you, by which lasting and very great shame would result to him and to you. thus i cannot help being angry when i consider what men those are who have conferred with you as wishing to undertake this great work without thinking of their sufficiency for it, not to say more. this one is a potter, that one a maker of cuirasses, this one is a bell-founder, another a bell ringer, and one is even a bombardier; and among them one in his lordship's service, who boasted that he was the gossip of messer ambrosio ferrere [footnote : messer ambrogio ferrere was farmer of the customs under the duke. piacenza at that time belonged to milan.], who has some power and who has made him some promises; and if this were not enough he would mount on horseback, and go to his lord and obtain such letters that you could never refuse [to give] him the work. but consider where masters of real talent and fit for such work are brought when they have to compete with such men as these. open your eyes and look carefully lest your money should be spent in buying your own disgrace. i can declare to you that from that place you will procure none but average works of inferior and coarse masters. there is no capable man,--[ ] and you may believe me,--except leonardo the florentine, who is making the equestrian statue in bronze of the duke francesco and who has no need to bring himself into notice, because he has work for all his life time; and i doubt, whether being so great a work, he will ever finish it [ ]. the miserable painstakers ... with what hope may they expect a reward of their merit? . there is one whom his lordship invited from florence to do this work and who is a worthy master, but with so very much business he will never finish it; and you may imagine that a difference there is to be seen between a beautiful object and an ugly one. quote pliny. letter to the cardinal ippolito d' este. . [footnote: this letter addressed to the cardinal ippolito d'este is here given from marchese g. campori's publication: _nuovi documenti per la vita di leonardo da vinci. atti e memorie delle r. r. deputazioni di storia patria per la provincie modenesi e parmenesi, vol. iii._ it is the only text throughout this work which i have not myself examined and copied from the original. the learned discoverer of this letter--the only letter from leonardo hitherto known as having been sent--adds these interesting remarks: _codesto cardinale nato ad ercole i. nel , arcivescovo di strigonia a sette anni, poi d'agra, aveva conseguito nel la pingue ed ambita cattedra di milano, la dove avra conosciuto il vinci, sebbene il poco amore ch'ei professava alle arti lasci credere che le proteste di servitu di leonardo piu che a gratitudine per favori ricevuti e per opere a lui allogate, accennino a speranza per un favore che si aspetta. notabile e ancora in questo prezioso documento la ripetuta signatura del grande artista 'che si scrive vincio e vincius, non da vinci come si tiene comunemente, sebbene l'una e l'altra possano valere a significare cosi il casato come il paese; restando a sapere se il nome del paese di vinci fosse assunto a cognome della famiglia di leonardo nel qual supposto piu propriamento avrebbe a chiamarsi leonardo vinci, o vincio (latinamente vincius) com'egli stesso amo segnarsi in questa lettera, e come scrissero parecchi contenporanei di lui, il casio, il cesariano, geoffrey tory, il gaurico, il bandello, raffaelle maffei, il paciolo. per ultimo non lascero d'avvertire come la lettera del vinci e assai ben conservata, di nitida e larga scrittura in forma pienemente corrispondente a quella dei suoi manoscritti, vergata all'uso comune da sinistra a destra, anziche contrariamente come fu suo costume; ma indubbiamente autentica e fornita della menzione e del suggello che fresca ancora conserva l'impronta di una testa di profilo da un picciolo antico cammeo._ (compare no. , note.)] most illustrious and most reverend lord. the lord ippolito, cardinal of este at ferrare. most illustrious and most reverend lord. i arrived from milan but a few days since and finding that my elder brother refuses to carry into effect a will, made three years ago when my father died--as also, and no less, because i would not fail in a matter i esteem most important--i cannot forbear to crave of your most reverend highness a letter of recommendation and favour to ser raphaello hieronymo, at present one of the illustrious members of the signoria before whom my cause is being argued; and more particularly it has been laid by his excellency the gonfaloniere into the hands of the said ser raphaello, that his worship may have to decide and end it before the festival of all saints. and therefore, my lord, i entreat you, as urgently as i know how and am able, that your highness will write a letter to the said ser raphaello in that admirable and pressing manner which your highness can use, recommending to him leonardo vincio, your most humble servant as i am, and shall always be; requesting him and pressing him not only to do me justice but to do so with despatch; and i have not the least doubt, from many things that i hear, that ser raphaello, being most affectionately devoted to your highness, the matter will issue _ad votum_. and this i shall attribute to your most reverend highness' letter, to whom i once more humbly commend myself. _et bene valeat_. florence xviiia bris . e. v. r. d. your humble servant leonardus vincius, pictor. draft of letter to the governor of milan. . i am afraid lest the small return i have made for the great benefits, i have received from your excellency, have not made you somewhat angry with me, and that this is why to so many letters which i have written to your lordship i have never had an answer. i now send salai to explain to your lordship that i am almost at an end of the litigation i had with my brother; that i hope to find myself with you this easter, and to carry with me two pictures of two madonnas of different sizes. these were done for our most christian king, or for whomsoever your lordship may please. i should be very glad to know on my return thence where i may have to reside, for i would not give any more trouble to your lordship. also, as i have worked for the most christian king, whether my salary is to continue or not. i wrote to the president as to that water which the king granted me, and which i was not put in possession of because at that time there was a dearth in the canal by reason of the great droughts and because [footnote:compare nos. and . leonardo has noted the payment of the pension from the king in .] its outlets were not regulated; but he certainly promised me that when this was done i should be put in possession. thus i pray your lordship that you will take so much trouble, now that these outlets are regulated, as to remind the president of my matter; that is, to give me possession of this water, because on my return i hope to make there instruments and other things which will greatly please our most christian king. nothing else occurs to me. i am always yours to command. [footnote: . charles d'amboise, marechal de chaumont, was governor of milan under louis xii. leonardo was in personal communication with him so early as in . he was absent from milan in the autumn of and from october l l --when he besieged pope julius ii. in bologna--till his death, which took place at correggio, february , . francesco vinci, leonardo's uncle, died--as amoretti tells us--in the winter of l l - (or according to uzielli in ?), and leonardo remained in florence for business connected with his estate. the letter written with reference to this affair, no. , is undoubtedly earlier than the letters nos. and . amoretti tells us, _memorie storiche_, ch. ii, that the following note existed on the same leaf in ms. c. a. i have not however succeeded in finding it. the passage runs thus: _jo sono quasi al fine del mio letizio che io o con mie fratetgli ... ancora ricordo a v. excia la facenda che o cum ser juliana mio fratello capo delli altri fratelli ricordandoli come se offerse di conciar le cose nostre fra noi fratelli del comune della eredita de mio zio, e quelli costringa alla expeditione, quale conteneva la lettera che lui me mando._] drafts of letters to the superintendent of canals and to fr. melzi. . magnificent president, i am sending thither salai, my pupil, who is the bearer of this, and from him you will hear by word of mouth the cause of my... magnificent president, i... magnificent president:--having ofttimes remembered the proposals made many times to me by your excellency, i take the liberty of writing to remind your lordship of the promise made to me at my last departure, that is the possession of the twelve inches of water granted to me by the most christian king. your lordship knows that i did not enter into possession, because at that time when it was given to me there was a dearth of water in the canal, as well by reason of the great drought as also because the outlets were not regulated; but your excellency promised me that as soon as this was done, i should have my rights. afterwards hearing that the canal was complete i wrote several times to your lordship and to messer girolamo da cusano,who has in his keeping the deed of this gift; and so also i wrote to corigero and never had a reply. i now send thither salai, my pupil, the bearer of this, to whom your lordship may tell by word of mouth all that happened in the matter about which i petition your excellency. i expect to go thither this easter since i am nearly at the end of my lawsuit, and i will take with me two pictures of our lady which i have begun, and at the present time have brought them on to a very good end; nothing else occurs to me. my lord the love which your excellency has always shown me and the benefits that i have constantly received from you i have hitherto... i am fearful lest the small return i have made for the great benefits i have received from your excellency may not have made you somewhat annoyed with me. and this is why, to many letters which i have written to your excellency i have never had an answer. i now send to you salai to explain to your excellency that i am almost at the end of my litigation with my brothers, and that i hope to be with you this easter and carry with me two pictures on which are two madonnas of different sizes which i began for the most christian king, or for whomsoever you please. i should be very glad to know where, on my return from this place, i shall have to reside, because i do not wish to give more trouble to your lordship; and then, having worked for the most christian king, whether my salary is to be continued or not. i write to the president as to the water that the king granted me of which i had not been put in possession by reason of the dearth in the canal, caused by the great drought and because its outlets were not regulated; but he promised me certainly that as soon as the regulation was made, i should be put in possession of it; i therefore pray you that, if you should meet the said president, you would be good enough, now that the outlets are regulated, to remind the said president to cause me to be put in possession of that water, since i understand it is in great measure in his power. nothing else occurs to me; always yours to command. good day to you messer francesco. why, in god's name, of all the letters i have written to you, have you never answered one. now wait till i come, by god, and i shall make you write so much that perhaps you will become sick of it. dear messer francesco. i am sending thither salai to learn from his magnificence the president to what end the regulation of the water has come since, at my departure this regulation of the outlets of the canal had been ordered, because his magnificence the president promised me that as soon as this was done i should be satisfied. it is now some time since i heard that the canal was in order, as also its outlets, and i immediately wrote to the president and to you, and then i repeated it, and never had an answer. so you will have the goodness to answer me as to that which happened, and as i am not to hurry the matter, would you take the trouble, for the love of me, to urge the president a little, and also messer girolamo cusano, to whom you will commend me and offer my duty to his magnificence. [footnote: . - . draft of a letter to francesco melzi, born l --a youth therefore of about in . leonardo addresses his young friend as "messer", as being the son of a noble house. melzi practised art under leonardo as a dilettante and not as a pupil, like cesare da sesto and others (see lermolieff, _die galerien_ &c., p. ).] drafts of a letter to giuliano de' medici ( - ). l. [most illustrious lord. i greatly rejoice most illustrious lord at your...] i was so greatly rejoiced, most illustrious lord, by the desired restoration of your health, that it almost had the effect that [my own health recovered]--[i have got through my illness]--my own illness left me-- --of your excellency's almost restored health. but i am extremely vexed that i have not been able completely to satisfy the wishes of your excellency, by reason of the wickedness of that deceiver, for whom i left nothing undone which could be done for him by me and by which i might be of use to him; and in the first place his allowances were paid to him before the time, which i believe he would willingly deny, if i had not the writing signed by myself and the interpreter. and i, seeing that he did not work for me unless he had no work to do for others, which he was very careful in solliciting, invited him to dine with me, and to work afterwards near me, because, besides the saving of expense, he [footnote . : it is clear from the contents of this notes that they refer to leonardo's residence in rome in - . nor can there be any doubt that they were addressed to leonardo's patron at the time: giuliano de' medici, third son of lorenzo the magnificent and brother of pope leo x (born ). in he became the head of the florentine republic. the pope invited him to rome, where he settled; in he was named patrician with much splendid ceremonial. the medal struck in honour of the event bears the words mag. ivlian. medices. leonardo too uses the style "magnifico", in his letter. compare also no. . glno capponi (_storia della repubblica di firenze_, vol. iii, p. ) thus describes the character of giuliano de' medici, who died in : _era il migliore della famiglia, di vita placida, grande spenditore, tenendo intorno a se uomini ingegnosi, ed ogni nuova cosa voleva provare._ see too gregorovius, _geschichte der stadi rom_, viii (book xiv. iii, ): _die luftschlosser furstlicher grosse, wozu ihn der papst hatte erheben wollen zerfielen. julian war der edelste aller damaligen medici, ein mensch von innerlicher richtung, unbefriedigt durch das leben, mitten im sonnenglanz der herrlichkeit leo's x. eine dunkle gestalt die wie ein schatten voruberzog._ giuliano lived in the vatican, and it may be safely inferred from no. l. , and no. l. , that leonardo did the same. from the following unpublished notice in the vatican archives, which m. eug. muntz, librarian of the ecole des beaux arts, paris, has done me the favour to communicate to me, we get a more accurate view of leonardo's relation to the often named giorgio tedesco: _nota delle provisione_ (sic) _a da pagare per me in nome del nostro ill. s. bernardo bini e chompa di roma, e prima della illma sua chonsorte ogni mese d. . a ldo da vinci per sua provisione d. xxxiii, e piu d. vii al detto per la provisione di giorgio tedescho, che sono in tutto d. . from this we learn, that seven ducats formed the german's monthly wages, but according to no. l. he pretended that eight ducats had been agreed upon.] would acquire the italian language. he always promised, but would never do so. and this i did also, because that giovanni, the german who makes the mirrors, was there always in the workshop, and wanted to see and to know all that was being done there and made it known outside ... strongly criticising it; and because he dined with those of the pope's guard, and then they went out with guns killing birds among the ruins; and this went on from after dinner till the evening; and when i sent lorenzo to urge him to work he said that he would not have so many masters over him, and that his work was for your excellency's wardrobe; and thus two months passed and so it went on; and one day finding gian niccolo of the wardrobe and asking whether the german had finished the work for your magnificence, he told me this was not true, but only that he had given him two guns to clean. afterwards, when i had urged him farther, be left the workshop and began to work in his room, and lost much time in making another pair of pincers and files and other tools with screws; and there he worked at mills for twisting silk which he hid when any one of my people went in, and with a thousand oaths and mutterings, so that none of them would go there any more. i was so greatly rejoiced, most illustrious lord, by the desired restoration of your health, that my own illness almost left me. but i am greatly vexed at not having been able to completely satisfy your excellency's wishes by reason of the wickedness of that german deceiver, for whom i left nothing undone by which i could have hope to please him; and secondly i invited him to lodge and board with me, by which means i should constantly see the work he was doing and with greater ease correct his errors while, besides this, he would learn the italian tongue, by means of which be could with more ease talk without an interpreter; his moneys were always given him in advance of the time when due. afterwards he wanted to have the models finished in wood, just as they were to be in iron, and wished to carry them away to his own country. but this i refused him, telling him that i would give him, in drawing, the breadth, length, height and form of what he had to do; and so we remained in ill-will. the next thing was that he made himself another workshop and pincers and tools in his room where he slept, and there he worked for others; afterwards he went to dine with the swiss of the guard, where there are idle fellows, in which he beat them all; and most times they went two or three together with guns, to shoot birds among the ruins, and this went on till evening. at last i found how this master giovanni the mirror-maker was he who had done it all, for two reasons; the first because he had said that my coming here had deprived him of the countenance and favour of your lordship which always... the other is that he said that his iron-workers' rooms suited him for working at his mirrors, and of this he gave proof; for besides making him my enemy, he made him sell all he had and leave his workshop to him, where he works with a number of workmen making numerous mirrors to send to the fairs. . i was so greatly rejoiced, most illustrious lord, by the wished for recovery of your health, that my own ills have almost left me; and i say god be praised for it. but it vexes me greatly that i have not been able completely to satisfy your excellency's wishes by reason of the wickedness of that german deceiver, for whom i left nothing undone by which i could hope to please him; and secondly i invited him to lodge and board with me, by which means i should see constantly the work he was doing, for which purpose i would have a table fixed at the foot of one of these windows, where he could work with the file and finish the things made below; and so i should constantly see the work he might do, and it could be corrected with greater ease. draft of letter written at rome. . this other hindered me in anatomy, blaming it before the pope; and likewise at the hospital; and he has filled [ ] this whole belvedere with workshops for mirrors; and he did the same thing in maestro giorgio's room. he said that he had been promised [ ] eight ducats every month, beginning with the first day, when he set out, or at latest when he spoke with you; and that you agreed. seeing that he seldom stayed in the workshop, and that he ate a great deal, i sent him word that, if he liked i could deal with him separately for each thing that he might make, and would give him what we might agree to be a fair valuation. he took counsel with his neighbour and gave up his room, selling every thing, and went to find... miscellaneous records ( . ). . [footnote: a puzzling passage, meant, as it would seem, for a jest. compare the description of giants in dante, _inf_. xxi and xxii. perhaps leonardo had the giant antaeus in his mind. of him the myth relates that he was a son of ge, that he fed on lions; that he hunted in libya and killed the inhabitants. he enjoyed the peculiarity of renewing his strength whenever he fell and came in contact with his mother earth; but that hercules lifted him up and so conquered and strangled him. lucan gives a full account of the struggle. pharsalia iv, . the reading of this passage, which is very indistinctly written, is in many places doubtful.] dear benedetto de' pertarti. when the proud giant fell because of the bloody and miry state of the ground it was as though a mountain had fallen so that the country shook as with an earthquake, and terror fell on pluto in hell. from the violence of the shock he lay as stunned on the level ground. suddenly the people, seeing him as one killed by a thunderbolt, turned back; like ants running wildly over the body of the fallen oak, so these rushing over his ample limbs.......... them with frequent wounds; by which, the giant being roused and feeling himself almost covered by the multitude, he suddenly perceives the smarting of the stabs, and sent forth a roar which sounded like a terrific clap of thunder; and placing his hands on the ground he raised his terrible face: and having lifted one hand to his head he found it full of men and rabble sticking to it like the minute creatures which not unfrequently are found there; wherefore with a shake of his head he sends the men flying through the air just as hail does when driven by the fury of the winds. many of these men were found to be dead; stamping with his feet. and clinging to his hair, and striving to hide in it, they behaved like sailors in a storm, who run up the ropes to lessen the force of the wind [by taking in sail]. news of things from the east. be it known to you that in the month of june there appeared a giant, who came from the lybian desert... mad with rage like ants.... struck down by the rude. this great giant was born in mount atlas and was a hero ... and had to fight against the egyptians and arabs, medes and persians. he lived in the sea on whales, grampuses and ships. mars fearing for his life took refuge under the... of jove. and at the great fall it seemed as though the whole province quaked. . this spirit returns to the brain whence it had departed, with a loud voice and with these words, it moved... and if any man though he may have wisdom or goodness ......... [footnote: this passage, very difficult to decipher, is on the reverse of a drawing at windsor, pl. cxxii, which possibly has some connection with it. the drawing is slightly reduced in this reproduction; the original being cm. high by cm. wide.] o blessed and happy spirit whence comest thou? well have i known this man, much against my will. this one is a receptacle of villainy; he is a perfect heap of the utmost ingratitude combined with every vice. but of what use is it to fatigue myself with vain words? nothing is to be found in them but every form of sin ... and if there should be found among them any that possesses any good, they will not be treated differently to myself by other men; and in fine, i come to the conclusion that it is bad if they are hostile, and worse if they are friendly. miscellaneous drafts of letters and personal records ( -- ). . all the ills that are or ever were, if they could be set to work by him, would not satisfy the desires of his iniquitous soul; and i could not in any length of time describe his nature to you, but i conclude... . i know one who, having promised me much, less than my due, being disappointed of his presumptuous desires, has tried to deprive me of all my friends; and as he has found them wise and not pliable to his will, he has menaced me that, having found means of denouncing me, he would deprive me of my benefactors. hence i have informed your lordship of this, to the end [that this man who wishes to sow the usual scandals, may find no soil fit for sowing the thoughts and deeds of his evil nature] so that he, trying to make your lordship, the instrument of his iniquitous and maliceous nature may be disappointed of his desire. . [footnote: below this text we read gusstino--giustino and in another passage on the same page justin is quoted (no. , . ). the two have however no real connection.] and in this case i know that i shall make few enemies seeing that no one will believe what i can say of him; for they are but few whom his vices have disgusted, and he only dislikes those men whose natures are contrary to those vices. and many hate their fathers, and break off friendship with those who reprove their vices; and he will not permit any examples against them, nor any advice. if you meet with any one who is virtuous do not drive him from you; do him honour, so that he may not have to flee from you and be reduced to hiding in hermitages, or caves or other solitary places to escape from your treachery; if there is such an one among you do him honour, for these are our saints upon earth; these are they who deserve statues from us, and images; but remember that their images are not to be eaten by you, as is still done in some parts of india [footnote : in explanation of this passage i have received the following communication from dr. g. w. leitner of lahore: "so far as indian customs are known to us, this practice spoken of by leonardo as 'still existing in some parts of india' is perfectly unknown; and it is equally opposed to the spirit of hinduism, mohammedanism and sikhism. in central thibet the ashes of the dead, when burnt, are mixed with dough, and small figures--usually of buddha--are stamped out of them and some are laid in the grave while others are distributed among the relations. the custom spoken of by leonardo may have prevailed there but i never heard of it." possibly leonardo refers here to customs of nations of america.] where, when the images have according to them, performed some miracle, the priests cut them in pieces, being of wood, and give them to all the people of the country, not without payment; and each one grates his portion very fine, and puts it upon the first food he eats; and thus believes that by faith he has eaten his saint who then preserves him from all perils. what do you think here, man, of your own species? are you so wise as you believe yourselves to be? are these things to be done by men? . as i told you in past days, you know that i am without any.... francesco d'antonio. bernardo di maestro jacopo. . tell me how the things happened. . j lorezo\\\ inbiadali\\\ inferri de\\\ in lorezo\\\ [inno abuil]\\ in acocatu\\\ per la sella\\\ colte di lor\\\ v cavallott\\\ i el uiagg\\\ iial\\\ i a lurez\\\ in biada\\\ inferri\\\ abuss\\\ in viagg\\\ alorz\\\ [footnote: this seems to be the beginning of a letter, but only the first words of the lines have been preserved, the leaf being torn down the middle. no translation is possible.] . and so may it please our great author that i may demonstrate the nature of man and his customs, in the way i describe his figure. [footnote: a preparatory note for the passage given as no. , . -- .] . this writing distinctly about the kite seems to be my destiny, because among the first recollections of my infancy, it seemed to me that, as i was in my cradle, a kite came to me and opened my mouth with its tail, and struck me several times with its tail inside my lips. [footnote: this note probably refers to the text no. .] . [when i did well, as a boy you used to put me in prison. now if i do it being grown up, you will do worse to me.] . tell me if anything was ever done. . tell me if ever i did a thing which me .... . do not reveal, if liberty is precious to you; my face is the prison of love. [footnote: this note seems to be a quotation.] . maestro leonardo of florence. [footnote: so leonardo writes his name on a sheet with sundry short notes, evidently to try a pen. compare the signature with those in nos. , and (see also no. , l. ). the form "lionardo" does not occur in the autographs. the portrait of the master in the royal library at turin, which is reproduced--slightly diminished--on pl. i, has in the original two lines of writing underneath; one in red chalk of two or three words is partly effaced: _lionardo it... lm_ (or _lai_?); the second written in pencil is as follows: _fatto da lui stesso assai vecchio_. in both of these the writing is very like the master's, but is certainly only an imitation.] notes bearing dates ( -- ). . the day of santa maria _della neve_ [of the snows] august the nd . [footnote: w. an. i. . . this date is on a drawing of a rocky landscape. see _chronique des arts_ no. : _leonard de vinci a-t-il ete au righi le aout _? letter by h. de geymuller. the next following date in the mss. is (see no. ). . on the nd of april , book entitled 'of the human figure'. [footnote: while the letters in the ms. notes of and are very ornate, this note and the texts on anatomy on the same sheet (for instance no. ) are in the same simple hand as we see on pl. cxvi and cxix. no is the only dated note of the years between and , and the characters are in all essential points identical with those that we see in the latest manuscripts written in france (compare the facsimiles on pl. cxv and p. ), so that it is hardly possible to determine exactly the date of a manuscript from the style of the handwriting, if it does not betray the peculiarities of style as displayed in the few notes dated previous to l .--compare the facsimile of the manuscripts on pl.lxii, no. ; no. , note, vol. i p. . this shows already a marked simplicity as compared with the calligraphy of i . the text no. belongs to the year ; no. to the year ; no. , no. and no. to the year ; no. , no. , no. , and to the year ; nos. and to the year . . on the st of august , i wrote here of motion and of weight. [footnote: . _scrissi qui_. leonardo does not say where; still we may assume that it was not in milan. amoretti writes, _memorie storiche_, chap. xix: _sembra pertanto che non nel ma nel , dopo il ritorno e la prigionia del duca, sia da qui partito lionardo per andare a firenze; ed e quindi probabile, che i mesi di governo nuovo e incerto abbia passati coll' amico suo francesco melzi a vaprio, ove meglio che altrove studiar potea la natura, e soprattutta le acque, e l'adda specialmente, che gia era stato l'ogetto delle sue idrostatiche ricerche_. at that time melzi was only six years of age. the next date is ; to this year belong no. , , , and . the note no. belongs to the year .] . on the th of july , wednesday, at seven o'clock, died ser piero da vinci, notary at the palazzo del podesta, my father, --at seven o'clock, being eighty years old, leaving behind ten sons and two daughters. [footnote: this statement of ser piero's age contradicts that of the _riassunto della portata di antonio da vinci_ (leonardo's grandfather), who speaks of ser piero as being thirty years old in ; and that of the _riassunto della portata di ser piero e francesco_, sons of antonia da vinci, where ser piero is mentioned as being forty in . these documents were published by g. uzielli, _ricerche intorno a l. da vinci, firenze_, , pp. and . leonardo was, as is well known, a natural son. his mother 'la catarina' was married in to acchattabriga di piero del vaccha da vinci. she died in . leonardo never mentions her in the manuscripts. in the year of leonardo's birth ser piero married albiera di giovanni amadoci, and after her death at the age of thirty eight he again married, francesca, daughter of ser giovanni lanfredi, then only fifteen. their children were leonardo's halfbrothers, antonio (b. ), ser giuliano (b. ), lorenzo (b. ), a girl, violante (b. ), and another boy domenico (b. ); domenico's descendants still exist as a family. ser piero married for the third time lucrezia di guglielmo cortigiani by whom he had six children: margherita (b. ), benedetto (b. ), pandolfo (b. ), guglielmo (b. ), bartolommeo (b. ), and giovanni) date of birth unknown). pierino da vinci the sculptor (about - ) was the son of bartolommeo, the fifth of these children. the dates of their deaths are not known, but we may infer from the above passage that they were all still living in .] . on wednesday at seven o'clock died ser piero da vinci on the th of july . [footnote: this and the previous text it may be remarked are the only mention made by leonardo of his father; nos. , and no. are of the year .] . begun by me, leonardo da vinci, on the l th of july . [footnote: thus he writes on the first page of the ms. the title is on the foregoing coversheet as follows: _libro titolato disstrafformatione coe_ (cioe) _d'un corpo nvn_ (in un) _altro sanza diminuitione e acresscemento di materia._] . begun at milan on the l th of september . [footnote: no. and no. belong to the same year. the text vol. i, no. belongs to the following year ( old style); so also does no. .-- nos. , and belong to .] . on the th of january . [footnote: no. belongs to the same year. no. has the next date .] . the magnifico giuliano de' medici left rome on the th of january , just at daybreak, to take a wife in savoy; and on the same day fell the death of the king of france. [footnote: giuliano de medici, brother to pope leo x.; see note to nos. - . in february, , he was married to filiberta, daughter of filippo, duke of savoy, and aunt to francis i, louis xii's successor on the throne of france. louis xii died on jan. st, and not on jan. th as is here stated.-- this addition is written in paler ink and evidently at a later date.] . on the th of june, st john's day, at amboise, in the palace of... [footnote: _castello del clli_. the meaning of this word is obscure; it is perhaps not written at full length.] _xxii._ _miscellaneous notes._ _the incidental memoranda scattered here and there throughout the mss. can have been for the most part intelligible to the writer only; in many cases their meaning and connection are all the more obscure because we are in ignorance about the persons with whom leonardo used to converse nor can we say what part he may have played in the various events of his time. vasari and other early biographers give us a very superficial and far from accurate picture of leonardo's private life. though his own memoranda, referring for the most part to incidents of no permanent interest, do not go far towards supplying this deficiency, they are nevertheless of some importance and interest as helping us to solve the numerous mysteries in which the history of leonardo's long life remains involved. we may at any rate assume, from leonardo's having committed to paper notes on more or less trivial matters on his pupils, on his house-keeping, on various known and unknown personages, and a hundred other trifies--that at the time they must have been in some way important to him._ _i have endeavoured to make these 'miscellaneous notes' as complete as possible, for in many cases an incidental memorandum will help to explain the meaning of some other note of a similar kind. the first portion of these notes (nos. l --l ), as well as those referring to his pupils and to other artists and artificers who lived in his house ( -- ,) are arranged in chronological order. a considerable proportion of these notes belong to the period between and , when leonardo was living at milan under the patronage of lodovico il moro, a time concerning which we have otherwise only very scanty information. if leonardo did really--as has always been supposed,--spend also the greater part of the preceding decade in milan, it seems hardly likely that we should not find a single note indicative of the fact, or referring to any event of that period, on the numerous loose leaves in his writing that exist. leonardo's life in milan between and must have been comparatively uneventful. the mss. and memoranda of those years seem to prove that it was a tranquil period of intellectual and artistic labour rather than of bustling court life. whatever may have been the fate of the mss. and note books of the foregoing years--whether they were destroyed by leonardo himself or have been lost--it is certainly strange that nothing whatever exists to inform us as to his life and doings in milan earlier than the consecutive series of manuscripts which begin in the year ._ _there is nothing surprising in the fact that the notes regarding his pupils are few and meagre. excepting for the record of money transactions only very exceptional circumstances would have prompted him to make any written observations on the persons with whom he was in daily intercourse, among whom, of course, were his pupils. of them all none is so frequently mentioned as salai, but the character of the notes does not--as it seems to me--justify us in supposing that he was any thing more than a sort of factotum of leonardo's (see , note)._ _leonardo's quotations from books and his lists of titles supply nothing more than a hint as to his occasional literary studies or recreations. it was evidently no part of his ambition to be deeply read (see nrs. , , ) and he more than once expressly states (in various passages which will be found in the foregoing sections) that he did not recognise the authority of the ancients, on scientific questions, which in his day was held paramount. archimedes is the sole exception, and leonardo frankly owns his admiration for the illustrious greek to whose genius his own was so much akin (see no. ). all his notes on various authors, excepting those which have already been inserted in the previous section, have been arranged alphabetically for the sake of convenience ( -- )._ _the passages next in order contain accounts and inventories principally of household property. the publication of these--often very trivial entries--is only justifiable as proving that the wealth, the splendid mode of life and lavish expenditure which have been attributed to leonardo are altogether mythical; unless we put forward the very improbable hypothesis that these notes as to money in hand, outlay and receipts, refer throughout to an exceptional state of his affairs, viz. when he was short of money._ _the memoranda collected at the end (no. -- ) are, in the original, in the usual writing, from left to right. besides, the style of the handwriting is at variance with what we should expect it to be, if really leonardo himself had written these notes. most of them are to be found in juxtaposition with undoubtedly authentic writing of his. but this may be easily explained, if we take into account the fact, that leonardo frequently wrote on loose sheets. he may therefore have occasionally used paper on which others had made short memoranda, for the most part as it would seem, for his use. at the end of all i have given leonardo's will from the copy of it preserved in the melzi library. it has already been printed by amoretti and by uzielli. it is not known what has become of the original document._ memoranda before ( -l ). . find longhi and tell him that you wait for him at rome and will go with him to naples; make you pay the donation [footnote : _libro di vitolone_ see no. note.] and take the book by vitolone, and the measurements of the public buildings. [ ] have two covered boxes made to be carried on mules, but bed-covers will be best; this makes three, of which you will leave one at vinci. [ ] obtain the.............. from giovanni lombardo the linen draper of verona. buy handkerchiefs and towels,.... and shoes, pairs of hose, a jerkin of... and skins, to make new ones; the lake of alessandro. [footnote: and fol. it would seem from the text that leonardo intended to have instructions in painting on paper. it is hardly necessary to point out that the art of illuminating was quite separate from that of painting.] sell what you cannot take with you. get from jean de paris the method of painting in tempera and the way of making white [footnote: the mysterious looking words, quite distinctly written, in line : _ingol, amor a, ilopan a_ and on line : _enoiganod al_ are obviously in cipher and the solution is a simple one; by reading them backwards we find for _ingol_: logni-probably _longi_, evidently the name of a person; for _amor a_: _a roma_, for _ilopan a_: _a napoli_. leonardo has done the same in two passages treating on some secrets of his art nos. and , the only other places in which we find this cipher employed; we may therefore conclude that it was for the sake of secrecy that he used it. there can be no doubt, from the tenor of this passage, that leonardo projected a secret excursion to naples. nothing has hitherto been known of this journey, but the significance of the passage will be easily understood by a reference to the following notes, from which we may infer that leonardo really had at the time plans for travelling further than naples. from lines , and it is evident that he purposed, after selling every thing that was not easily portable, to leave a chest in the care of his relations at vinci. his luggage was to be packed into two trunks especially adapted for transport by mules. the exact meaning of many sentences in the following notes must necessarily remain obscure. these brief remarks on small and irrelevant affairs and so forth are however of no historical value. the notes referring to the preparations for his journey are more intelligible.] salt, and how to make tinted paper; sheets of paper folded up; and his box of colours; learn to work flesh colours in tempera, learn to dissolve gum lac, linseed ... white, of the garlic of piacenza; take 'de ponderibus'; take the works of leonardo of cremona. remove the small furnace ... seed of lilies and of... sell the boards of the support. make him who stole it, give you the ... learn levelling and how much soil a man can dig out in a day. . this was done by leone in the piazza of the castle with a chain and an arrow. [footnote: this note must have been made in milan; as we know from the date of the ms.] . names of engineers. callias of rhodes, epimachus the athenian, diogenes, a philosopher, of rhodes, calcedonius of thrace, febar of tyre, callimachus the architect, a master of fires. [footnote: callias, architect of aradus, mentioned by vitruvius (x, , ).--epimachus, of athens, invented a battering-enginee for demetrius poliorketes (vitruvius x, , ).--callimachus, the inventor of the corinthian capital (vitr. iv, i, ), and of the method of boring marble (paus. i, , ), was also famous for his casts in bronze (plin. xxxiv, , ). he invented a lamp for the temple of athene polias, on the acropolis of athens (paus. i, , )--the other names, here mentioned, cannot be identified.] . ask maestro lodovico for 'the conduits of water'. [footnote: condotti d'acqua. possibly a book, a ms. or a map.] . ... at pistoja, fioravante di domenico at florence is my most beloved friend, as though he were my [brother]. [footnote: on the same sheet is the text no. .] . on the th day of july. caterina came on th day of july, . messer mariolo's morel the florentin, has a big horse with a fine neck and a beautiful head. the white stallion belonging to the falconer has fine hind quarters; it is behind the comasina gate. the big horse of cermonino, of signor giulio. [footnote: compare nos. and . caterina seems to have been his housekeeper.] . of the instrument. any one who spends one ducat may take the instrument; and he will not pay more than half a ducat as a premium to the inventor of the instrument and one grosso to the workman every year. i do not want sub-officials. [footnote: refers perhaps to the regulation of the water in the canals.] . maestro giuliano da marliano has a fine herbal. he lives opposite to strami the carpenters. [footnote: compare no. , note. . legnamiere (milanese dialect) = legnajuolo.] . christofano da castiglione who lives at the pieta has a fine head. . work of ... of the stable of galeazzo; by the road of brera [footnote : brera, see no. , ii, ]; benefice of stanghe [footnote :stanghe, see no. .]; benefice of porta nuova; benefice of monza; indaco's mistake; give first the benefices; then the works; then ingratitude, indignity and lamentations. . chiliarch--captain of . prefects--captains. a legion, six thousand and sixty three men. . a nun lives at la colomba at cremona; she works good straw plait, and a friar of saint francis. [footnote: _la colomba_ is to this day the name of a small house at cremona, decorated with frescoes.] . needle,--niccolao,--thread,--ferrando, -lacopo andrea,--canvas,--stone,--colours, --brushes,--pallet,--sponge,--the panel of the duke. . messer gian domenico mezzabarba and messer giovanni franceso mezzabarba. by the side of messer piero d'anghiera. . conte francesco torello. . giuliano trombetta,--antonio di ferrara, --oil of .... [footnote: near this text is the sketch of a head drawn in red chalk.] . paul was snatched up to heaven. [footnote: see the facsimile of this note on pl. xxiii no. .] . giuliano da maria, physician, has a steward without hands. . have some ears of corn of large size sent from florence. . see the bedstead at santa maria. secret. . arrigo is to have gold ducats. arrigo is to have gold ducats in the middle of august. . give your master the instance of a captain who does not himself win the victory, but the soldiers do by his counsels; and so he still deserves the reward. . messer pier antonio. . oil,--yellow,--ambrosio,--the mouth, --the farmhouse. . my dear alessandro from parma, by the hand of ... . giovannina, has a fantastic face,--is at santa caterina, at the hospital. [footnote: compare the text on the same page: no. .] . tavole make perch. trabochi make tavola. braccia and a half make a trabocco. a perch contains square braccia, or . . the road of messer mariolo is / braccia wide; the house of evangelista is . it enters / braccia in the house of mariolo. [footnote: on this page and that which faces it, ms.i la, are two diagrams with numerous reference numbers, evidently relating to the measurements of a street.] . i ask at what part of its curved motion the moving cause will leave the thing moved and moveable. speak to pietro monti of these methods of throwing spears. . antonio de' risi is at the council of justice. . paolo said that no machine that moves another .... [footnote: the passage, of which the beginning is here given, deals with questions in mechanics. the instances in which leonardo quotes the opinions of his contemporaries on scientific matters are so rare as to be worth noticing. compare no. . ] . caravaggio. [footnote: _caravaggio_, a village not far from the adda between milan and brescia, where polidoro and michelangelo da caravaggio were born. this note is given in facsimile on pl. xiii, no. i (above, to the left). on pl. xiii, no. above to the right we read _cerovazo_.] . pulleys,--nails,--rope,--mercury,--cloth, monday. . memorandum. maghino, speculus of master giovanni the frenchman; galenus on utility. . near to cordusio is pier antonio da tossano and his brother serafino. [footnote: this note is written between lines and of the text no. . corduso, cordusio (_curia ducis_) = cordus in the milanese dialect, is the name of a piazza between the via del broletto and the piazza de' mercanti at milan.. in the time of il moro it was the centre of the town. the persons here named were members of the noble milanese family de'fossani; ambrogio da possano, the contemporary painter, had no connection with them.] . memoranda after ( -- ) . paul of vannochio at siena ... the upper chamber for the apostles. [ ] buildings by bramante. the governor of the castle made a prisoner. [ ] visconti carried away and his son killed. [footnote : visconti. _chi fosse quel visconte non sapremmo indovinare fra tanti di questo nome. arluno narra che allora atterrate furono le case de' viconti, de' castiglioni, de' sanseverini, e de' botta e non è improbabile che ne fossero insultati e morti i padroni. molti visconti annovera lo stesso cronista che per essersi rallegrati del ritorno del duca in milano furono da' francesi arrestati, e strascinati in francia come prigionieri di stato; e fra questi messer francesco visconti, e suo figliuolo battista_. (amoretti, mem. stor. xix.).] giovanni della rosa deprived of his money. borgonzio began ....; and moreover his fortunes fled. [footnote : borgonzio o brugonzio botta fu regolatore delle ducali entrate sotto il moro, alla cui fuga la casa sua fu pur messa a sacco da' partitanti francesi. (amoretti, l. c.)] the duke has lost the state, property and liberty and none of his entreprises was carried out by him. [footnote: l. -- this passage evidently refers to events in milan at the time of the overthrow of ludovico il moro. amoretti published it in the '_memorie storiche_' and added copious notes.] . ambrosio petri, st. mark, boards for the window, ..., the saints of chapels, the genoese at home. . piece of tapestry,--pair of compasses,-- tommaso's book,--the book of giovanni benci,--the box in the custom-house,--to cut the cloth,--the sword-belt,--to sole the boots, --a light hat,--the cane from the ruined houses,--the debt for the table linen, --swimming-belt,--a book of white paper for drawing,--charcoal.--how much is a florin ...., a leather bodice. . borges shall get for you the archimedes from the bishop of padua, and vitellozzo the one from borgo a san sepolcro [footnote : borgo a san sepolcro, where luca paciolo, leonardo's friend, was born.] [footnote: borges. a spanish name.] . marzocco's tablet. . marcello lives in the house of giacomo da mengardino. . where is valentino?--boots,--boxes in the custom-house,...,--[footnote : carmine. a church and monastery at florence.] the monk at the carmine,--squares,--[footnotes and : martelli, borgherini; names of florentine families. see no. .] piero martelli,--[ ] salvi borgherini,--send back the bags,--a support for the spectacles,--[footnote : san gallo; possibly giuliano da san gallo, the florentine architect.] the nude study of san gallo,--the cloak. porphyry,--groups,--square,--[footnote : pandolfini, see no. note.] pandolfino. [footnote: valentino. cesare borgia is probably meant. after being made archbishop of valence by alexander vi he was commonly called valentinus or valentino. with reference to leonardo's engagements by him see pp. and , note.] . concave mirrors; philosophy of aristotle;[footnote : _avicenna_ (leonardo here writes it avinega) the arab philosopher, - , for centuries the unimpeachable authority on all medical questions. leonardo possibly points here to a printed edition: _avicennae canonum libri v, latine_ _patavis._ other editions are, padua , and venice .] the books of avicenna italian and latin vocabulary; messer ottaviano palavicino or his vitruvius [footnote : _vitruvius._ see vol. i, no. note.]. bohemian knives; vitruvius[footnote : _vitruvius._ see vol. i, no. note.]; go every saturday to the hot bath where you will see naked men; 'meteora' [footnote : _meteora._ see no. , .], archimedes, on the centre of gravity; [footnote : the works of archimedes were not printed during leonardo's life-time.] anatomy [footnote : compare no. .] alessandro benedetto; the dante of niccolo della croce; inflate the lungs of a pig and observe whether they increase in width and in length, or in width diminishing in length. [footnote : _johannes marliani sua etate philosophorum et medicorum principis et ducalis phisic. primi de proportione motuum velocitate questio subtilissima incipit ex ejusdem marliani originali feliciter extracta, m(ilano)_ . another work by him has the title: _marlianus mediolanensis. questio de caliditate corporum humanorum tempore hiemis ed estatis et de antiparistasi ad celebrem philosophorum et medicorum universitatem ticinensem._ .] marliano, on calculation, to bertuccio. albertus, on heaven and earth [footnote : see no. , . .], [from the monk bernardino]. horace has written on the movements of the heavens. [footnote: _filosofia d'aristotele_ see no. note.] . of the three regular bodies as opposed to some commentators who disparage the ancients, who were the originators of grammar and the sciences and ... . the room in the tower of vaneri. [footnote: this note is written inside the sketch of a plan of a house. on the same page is the date (see no. ).] . the figures you will have to reserve for the last book on shadows that they may appear in the study of gerardo the illuminator at san marco at florence. [go to see melzo, and the ambassador, and maestro bernardo]. [footnote: l. - are in the original written between lines and of no. . but the sense is not clear in this connection. it is scarcely possible to devine the meaning of the following sentence. . . _gherardo_ miniatore, a famous illuminator, - , to whom vasari dedicated a section of his lives (vol. ii pp. - , ed. sansoni ). . _bernardo_, possibly the painter bernardo zenale.] . hermes the philosopher. . suisset, viz. calculator,--tisber, --angelo fossobron,--alberto. . the structure of the drawbridge shown me by donnino, and why _c_ and _d_ thrust downwards. [footnote: the sketch on the same page as this text represents two poles one across the other. at the ends of the longest are the letter _c_ and _d_. the sense of the passage is not rendered any clearer.] . the great bird will take its first flight;-- on the back of his great swan,--filling the universe with wonders; filling all writings with his fame and bringing eternal glory to his birthplace. [footnote: this seems to be a speculation about the flying machine (compare p. ).] . this stratagem was used by the gauls against the romans, and so great a mortality ensued that all rome was dressed in mourning. [footnote: leonardo perhaps alludes to the gauls under brennus, who laid his sword in the scale when the tribute was weighed.] . alberto da imola;--algebra, that is, the demonstration of the equality of one thing to another. . johannes rubicissa e robbia. . ask the wife of biagio crivelli how the capon nurtures and hatches the eggs of the hen,--he being drunk. . the book on water to messer marco antonio. [footnote: possibly marc-antonio della torre, see p. .] . have avicenna's work on useful inventions translated; spectacles with the case, steel and fork and...., charcoal, boards, and paper, and chalk and white, and wax;.... .... for glass, a saw for bones with fine teeth, a chisel, inkstand ........ three herbs, and agnolo benedetto. get a skull, nut,--mustard. boots,--gloves, socks, combs, papers, towels, shirts,.... shoe-tapes,--..... shoes, penknife, pens. a skin for the chest. [footnote: . lapis. compare condivi, _vita di michelagnolo buonarotti_, chap. xviii.: _ma egli_ (michelangelo) _non avendo che mostrare, prese una penna (percioche in quel tempo il lapis non era in uso) e con tal leggiadria gli dipinse una mano ecc._ the incident is of the year l .--lapis means pencil, and chalk (_matita_). between lines and are the texts given as nos. and no. .] undated memoranda ( - ). . the book of piero crescenze,--studies from the nude by giovanni ambrosio,--compasses, --the book of giovanni giacomo. . memorardum. to make some provisions for my garden, --giordano, _de ponderibus_[footnote : _giordano_. jordanus nemorarius, a mathematician of the beginning of the xiiith century. no particulars of his life are known. the title of his principal work is: _arithmetica decem libris demonstrata_, first published at paris . in appeared at nuremberg: _liber jordani nemorarii de ponderibus, propositiones xiii et earundem demonstrationes, multarumque rerum rationes sane pulcherrimas complectens, nunc in lucem editus._],--the peacemaker, the flow and ebb of the sea,--have two baggage trunks made, look to beltraffio's [footnote : _beltraffio_, see no. , note . there are sketches by the side of lines and .] lathe and have taken the stone,--out leave the books belonging to messer andrea the german,-- make scales of a long reed and weigh the substance when hot and again when cold. the mirror of master luigi; _a b_ the flow and ebb of the water is shown at the mill of vaprio,--a cap. . giovanni fabre,--lazaro del volpe,-- the common,--ser piero. [footnote: these names are inserted on a plan of plots of land adjoining the arno.] . [lactantius], [the book of benozzo], groups,--to bind the book,--a lantern,--ser pecantino,--pandolfino.--[rosso]--a square, --small knives,--carriages,--curry combs-- cup. . quadrant of carlo marmocchi,--messer francesco araldo,--ser benedetto d'accie perello,--benedetto on arithmetic,--maestro paulo, physician,--domenico di michelino,-- ...... of the alberti,--messer giovanni argimboldi. . colours, formula,--archimedes,--marcantonio. tinned iron,--pierced iron. . see the shop that was formerly bartolommeo's, the stationer. [footnote: . _marc antonio_, see no. .] . the first book is by michele di francesco nabini; it treats on science. . messer francesco, physician of lucca, with the cardinal farnese. [footnote: _alessandro farnese_, afterwards pope paul iii was created in cardinal di san cosimo e san damiano, by alexander vi.] . pandolfino's book [footnote : _pandolfino, agnolo_, of florence. it is to this day doubtful whether he or l. b. alberti was the author of the famous work '_del governo della famiglia_'. it is the more probable that leonardo should have meant this work by the words _il libro_, because no other book is known to have been written by pandolfino. this being the case this allusion of leonardo's is an important evidence in favour of pandolfino's authorship (compare no. , line ).],--knives,--a pen for ruling,--to have the vest dyed,--the library at st.-mark's,--the library at santo spirito,--lactantius of the daldi [footnote : the works of lactantius were published very often in italy during leonardo's lifetime. the first edition published in "_in monastero sublacensi_" was also the first book printed in italy.],--antonio covoni,--a book by maestro paolo infermieri, --boots, shoes and hose,--(shell)lac, --an apprentice to do the models for me. grammar, by lorenzo de medici,--giovanni del sodo,--sansovino, [footnote : _sansovino_, andrea--the _sculptor_; - .]--a ruler,--a very sharp knife,--spectacles,--fractions...., --repair.........,--tomaso's book,-- michelagnolo's little chain; learn the multiplication of roots from maestro luca;--my map of the world which giovanni benci has [footnote : leonardo here probably alludes to the map, not executed by him (see p. ), which is with the collection of his mss. at windsor, and was published in the _archaeologia_ vol. xi (see p. ).];-socks,--clothes from the customhouse-officier,--red cordova leather,--the map of the world, of giovanni benci,--a print, the districts about milan--market book. get the friar di brera to show you [the book] '_de ponderibus_' [footnote : _brera_, now _palazzo delle scienze ed arti. until it was the monastery of the order of the umiliati and afterwards of the jesuits. _de ponderibus_, compare no. , .],-- of the measurement of san lorenzo,-- i lent certain groups to fra filippo de brera, [footnote : _brera_, now _palazzo delle scienze ed arti. until it was the monastery of the order of the umiliati and afterwards of the jesuits. _de ponderibus_, compare no. , .]-- memorandum: to ask maestro giovannino as to the mode in which the tower of ferrara is walled without loopholes,-- ask maestro antonio how mortars are placed on bastions by day or by night,-- ask benedetto portinari how the people go on the ice in flanders,-- on proportions by alchino, with notes by marliano, from messer fazio,-- the measurement of the sun, promised me by maestro giovanni, the frenchman,-- the cross bow of maestro gianetto,-- the book by giovanni taverna that messer fazio,-- you will draw milan [ ],-- the measurement of the canal, locks and supports, and large boats; and the expense,-- plan of milan [footnote : _fondamento_ is commonly used by leonardo to mean ground-plan. see for instance p. .],-- groups by bramante [footnote : _gruppi_. see vol. i p. , no. , note .],-- the book on celestial phenomena by aristoteles, in italian [footnote : _meteora_. by this leonardo means no doubt the four books. he must refer here to a ms. translation, as no italian translation is known to have been published (see no. note).],-- try to get vitolone, which is in the library at pavia [footnote : _vitolone_ see no. , note. _libreria di pavia_. one of the most famous of italian libraries. after the victory of novara in april , louis xii had it conveyed to france, '_come trofeo di vittoria_'!] and which treats of mathematics,--he had a master [learned] in waterworks and get him to explain the repairs and the costs, and a lock and a canal and a mill in the lombard fashion. a grandson of gian angelo's, the painter has a book on water which was his fathers. paolino scarpellino, called assiolo has great knowledge of water works. [footnote : _sco lorenzo_. a church at milan, see pp. , and .] [footnote . : _gruppi_. see vol. i p. , no. , note .] [footnote : the _portinari_ were one of the great merchant- families of florence.] . francesco d'antonio at florence. . giuliano condi[ ],--tomaso ridolfi,-- tomaso paganelli,--nicolo del nero,--simone zasti,--nasi,--the heir of lionardo manelli, --guglielmo di ser martino,--bartolomeo del tovaglia,--andrea arrigucci,-- nicolo capponi,--giovanni portinari. [footnote: i. _guiliano gondi_. ser piero da vinci, leonardo's father, lived till , in a house belonging to giuliano gondi. in this was pulled down to make room for the fine palazzo built on the piazza san firenze by giuliano di san gallo, which still exists. in the _riassunto del catasto di ser piero da vinci_, , leonardo is not mentioned; it is evident therefore that he was living elsewhere. it may be noticed incidentally that in the _catasto di giuliano gondi_ of the same year the following mention is made of his four eldest sons: _lionardo mio figliuolo d'eta d'anni , non fa nulla, giovambatista d'eta d'anni in ghostantinopoli, billichozo d'eta d'anni a napoli, simone d'eta d'anni in ungheria._ he himself was a merchant of gold filigree (_facciamo lavorare una bottegha d'arte di seta ... facciamo un pocho di trafico a napoli_}. as he was years old in , he certainly would not have been alive at the time of leonardo's death. but leonardo must have been on intimate terms with the family till the end of his life, for in a letter dated june . , in which fr. melzi, writing from amboise, announces leonardo's death to giuliano da vinci at florence (see p. ), he says at the end "_datemene risposta per i gondi_" (see uzielli, _ricerche_, passim). most of the other names on the list are those of well-known florentine families.] . pandolfino. . vespuccio will give me a book of geometry. [footnote: see no. , note, p. .] . marcantonio colonna at santi apostoli. [footnote: in july pope julius ii gave donna lucrezia della rovere, the daughter of his sister lucchina, in marriage to the youthful marcantonio colonna, who, like his brothers prospero and fabrizio, became one of the most famous captains of his family. he gave to him frascati and made him a present of the palazzo he had built, when cardinal, near the church of santi apostoli which is now known as the palazzo colonna (see gregorovius, _gesch. der stadt rom._ vol. viii, book xiv i, . and coppi, _mem. colonnesi_ p. ).] . a box, a cage,-- a square, to make the bird [footnote : vasari states that leonardo invented mechanical birds which moved through the air. compare no. .],-- pandolfino's book, mortar [?],-- small knives, venieri for the [footnote: much of no. is repeated in this memorandum.] pen for ruling, stone,--star,-- to have the vest dyed, alfieri's tazza,-- the libraries, the book on celestial phenomena,-- lactantius of the go to the house of daldi,-- the pazzi, book from maestro small box,-- paolo infermieri,-- boots, shoes and small gimlet,-- hose, lac, .......,-- an apprentice for .....,-- models, grammar of lo- the amount of the renzo de' medici, ... giovanni del sodo ..... for...,--the broken sansovino, the.... piero di cosino the wings,-- [footnote : _pier di cosimo_ the well known florentine painter - . see vasari, _vite_ (vol. iv, p. ed. sansoni ) about leonardo's influence on piero di cosimo's style of painting.] filippo and lorenzo [footnote : _filippo e lorenzo_; probably the painters filippino lippi and lorenzo di credi. l. di credi's pictures and vasari's history of that painter bear ample evidence to his intimate relations with leonardo.],--a ruler-,-- spectacles,--to do the..... again,--tomaso's book,--michelagnolo's chain,--the multiplication of roots,--of the bow and strinch,--the map of the world from benci,-- socks,--the clothes from the custom-house officier,--cordova leather,--market books, --waters of cronaca,--waters of tanaglino..., --the caps,--rosso's mirror; to see him make it,-- / of which i have / ,--on the celestial phenomena, by aristotle [footnote : _meteora_. see no. , .],--boxes of lorenzo di pier francesco [footnote : _lorenzo di pier francesco_ and his brother _giovanni_ were a lateral branch of the _medici_ family and changed their name for that of popolani.],--maestro piero of the borgo,--to have my book bound,--show the book to serigatto,-- and get the rule of the clock [footnote : possibly this refers to the clock on the tower of the palazzo vecchio at florence. in february it had been repaired, and so arranged as to indicate the hours after the french manner (twelve hours a. m. and as many p. m.).],-- ring,--nutmeg,--gum,--the square,--giovan' batista at the piazza, de' mozzi,--giovanni benci has my book and jaspers,--brass for the spectacles. . search in florence for...... . bernardo da ponte ... val di lugano ... many veins for anatomical demonstration. [footnote: this fragmentary note is written on the margin of a drawing of two legs.] . paolo of tavechia, to see the marks in the german stones. [footnote: this note occurs on a pen and ink drawing made by leonardo as a sketch for the celebrated large cartoon in the possession of the royal academy of arts, in london. this cartoon is commonly supposed to be identical with that described and lauded by vasari, which was exhibited in florence at the time and which now seems to be lost. mr. alfred marks, of long ditton, in his valuable paper (read before the royal soc. of literature, june , ) "on the st. anne of leonardo da vinci", has adduced proof that the cartoon now in the royal academy was executed earlier at milan. the note here given, which is written on the sheet containing the study for the said cartoon, has evidently no reference to the drawing on which it is written but is obviously of the same date. though i have not any opening here for discussing this question of the cartoon, it seemed to me important to point out that the character of the writing in this note does not confirm the opinion hitherto held that the royal academy cartoon was the one described by vasari, but, on the contrary, supports the hypothesis put forward by mr. marks.] notes on pupils ( - .) . giacomo came to live with me on st.-mary magdalen's[footnote: _il di della maddalena._ july .] day, , aged years. the second day i had two shirts cut out for him, a pair of hose, and a jerkin, and when i put aside some money to pay for these things he stole _lire_ the money out of the purse; and i could never make him confess, though i was quite certain of the fact.--thief, liar, obstinate, glutton. the day after, i went to sup with giacomo andrea, and the said giacomo supped for two and did mischief for four; for he brake cruets, spilled the wine, and after this came to sup where i .... item: on the th day of september he stole a silver point of the value of soldi from marco[footnote : _marco_, probably leonardo's pupil marco d'oggionno; is supposed to be the date of his birth and of his death. _che stava con meco._ we may infer from this that he left the master shortly after this, his term of study having perhaps expired.] who was living with me, _lire_ this being of silver; and he took it from his studio, and when the said marco had searched for it a long while he found it hidden in the said giacomo's box _lire_. item: on the th january following, i, being in the house of messer galeazzo da san severino [footnote : galeazzo. see no. note.], was arranging the festival for his jousting, and certain footmen having undressed to try on some costumes of wild men for the said festival, giacomo went to the purse of one of them which lay on the bed with other clothes, lire s, and took out such money as was in it. item: when i was in the same house, maestro agostino da pavia gave to me a turkish hide to have ( lire.) a pair of short boots made of it; this giacomo stole it of me within a month and sold it to a cobbler for soldi, with which money, by his own confession, he bought anise comfits. item: again, on the nd april, giovan antonio [footnote : giovan antonio, probably beltraffio, to .] having left a silver point on a drawing of his, giacomo stole it, and this was of the value of soldi ( lira s.) the first year- a cloak, lire, shirts, lire, jerkins, lire, pairs of hose, lire soldi, lined doublet, lire, pairs of shoes, lire soldi, a cap, lira, laces, lira. [footnote: leonardo here gives a detailed account not only of the loss he and others incurred through giacomo but of the wild tricks of the youth, and we may therefore assume that the note was not made merely as a record for his own use, but as a report to be forwarded to the lad's father or other responsible guardian.] . on the last day but one of september; thursday the th day of september maestro tommaso came back and worked for himself until the last day but one of february. on the th day of march, , giulio, a german, came to live with me,--lucia, piero, leonardo. on the th day of october. . . on the st day of november we settled accounts. giulio had to pay months; and maestro tommaso months; maestro tommaso afterwards made candlesticks, days' work; giulio some fire-tongs days work. then he worked for himself till the th may, and worked for me at a lever till the th july; then for himself till the th of august, and for one day, on the fifteenth, for a lady. then again for me at locks until the th of august. . on the rd day of august, lire from pulisona. on the th of march , galeazzo came to live with me, agreeing to pay lire a month for his cost paying on the l th day of each month. his father gave me rhenish florins. on the l th of july, i had from galeazzo rhenish florins. . on the th day of september giulio began the lock of my studio . . saturday morning the rd of august jacopo the german came to live with me in the house, and agreed with me that i should charge him a carlino a day. . . on the th of september antonio broke his leg; he must rest days. [footnote: this note refers possibly to beltraffio.] . i left milan for rome on the th day of september, , with giovanni [footnote : _giovan;_ it is not likely that leonardo should have called giovan' antonio beltraffio at one time giovanni, as in this note and another time antonio, as in no. while in no. l. we find _giovan'antonio_, and in no. , l. _beltraffio_. possibly the giovanni here spoken of is leonardo's less known pupil giovan pietrino (see no. , ).], francesco di melzi [footnote , : _francesco de' melzi_ is often mentioned, see nos. .], salai [footnote : _salai_. see no. note.], lorenzo and il fanfoia. [footnote : _lorenzo_. see no. , l. (p. ). amoretti gives the following note in _mem. stor. xxiii:_ . _martedi--sera a di d'aprile. venne lorenzo a stare con mecho: disse essere d'eta d'anni .. a di del detto aprile ebbi scudi d'oro dal chamerlingo di santa maria nuova._ this, he asserts is derived from a ms. marked s, in quarto. this ms. seems to have vanished and left no trace behind; amoretti himself had not seen it, but copied from a selection of extracts made by oltrocchi before the leonardo mss. were conveyed to paris on the responsibility of the first french republic. lorenzo, by this, must have been born in . the sculptor lorenzetto was born in . amoretti has been led by the above passage to make the following absurd observations: _cotesto lorenzo, che poi gli fu sempre compagno, almeno sin che stette in italia, sarebb' egli lorenzo lotto bergamasco? sappiamo essere stato questo valente dipintore uno de'bravi scolari del vinci_ (?). _il fafoia_, perhaps a nickname. cesare da sesto, leonardo's pupil, seems to have been in rome in these years, as we learn from a drawing by him in the louvre. . on the rd day of january. benedetto came on the th of october; he stayed with me two months and days of last year, in which time he earned lire, soldi and dinari; he had of this lire and soldi, and there remains to be paid for the past year lire soldi. giodatti (?) came on the th day of september, at soldi a month, and stayed with me months and days, and earned lire soldi and dinari; he has had lire, soldi, there remains to pay lire, soldi and dinari. benedetto, grossoni. [footnote: this seems to be an account for two assistants. the name of the second is scarcely legible. the year is not given. the note is nevertheless of chronological value. the first line tells us the date when the note was registered, january d, and the observations that follow refer to events of the previous month 'of last year' _(dell'anno passato)_. leonardo cannot therefore have written thus in florence where the year was, at that period, calculated as beginning in the month of march (see vol. i, no. , note ). he must then have been in milan. what is more important is that we thus learn how to date the beginning of the year in all the notes written at milan. this clears up uzielli's doubts: _a milano facevasi cominciar l'anno ab incarnatione, cioe il marzo e a nativitate, cioe il decembre. ci sembra probabile che leonardo dovesse prescegliere lo stile che era in uso a firenze._ (_ricerche_, p. , note.)] . gian maria , benedetto , gian pietro [ ] , salai , bartolomeo , gherardo . . salai, lire, bonifacio, lire, bartolomeo, lire, arrigo [harry], lire. quotations and notes on books and authors ( - ). . book on arithmetic [footnote : _"la nobel opera de arithmethica ne la qual se tracta tute cosse amercantia pertinente facta & compilata per piero borgi da veniesia", in- . in fine: "nela inclita cita di venetia a corni. augusto. . fu imposto fine ala presente opera." segn. a--p. quaderni. v'ha pero un' altra opera simile di filippo calandro, . e da consultarsi su quest' ultimo, federici: memorie trevigiane, fiore di virtu: pag. . "libricciuolo composto di bello stile verso il e piu volte impresso nel secolo xv (ristampato poi anche piu tardi). gli accademici della crusca lo ammettono nella serie dei testi di lingua. vedasi gamba, razzolini, panzer, brunet, lechi, ecc._ (g. d'a.)], 'flowers of virtue', pliny [footnote : _"historia naturale di c. plinio secondo, tradocta di lingua latina in fiorentina per christophoro laudino & opus nicolai jansonis gallici imp. anno salutis m.cccc.lxxvi. venetiis" in-fol.--diogene laertio. incomincia: "el libro de la vita de philosophi etc.: impressum venetiis" per bernardinum celerium de luere, ", in- _ (g. d'a.).], 'lives of the philosophers', the bible [footnote : _"la bibia volgare historiata (per nicolo di mallermi) venecia ... m.cccc.lxxi in kalende di augusto (per vindelino de spira)" vol. in-fol. a col. di lin,; od altra ediz. della stessa versione del mallermi, venetia , e sempre: "venecia per gabriel de piero ," in-fol.; vol.; ottavio scotto da modoetia ," "venetia per joan rosso vercellese," " giovanni ragazo di monteferato a instantia di luchanthonio di giunta, ecc."--lapidario teofrasto? mandebille: "le grand lapidaire," versione italiana ms.?... giorgio agricola non puo essere, perche nato nel , forse alberto magno: de mineralibus. potrebbe essere una traduzione del poema latino (liber lapidum seu de gemmis) di marbordio veterio di rennes (morto nel da lui stesso tradotto in francese dal greco di evao re d'arabia celebre medico che l'aveva composto per l'imperatore tiberio. marbodio scrisse il suo prima per filippo augusto re di francia. vi sono anche traduzioni in prosa. "il lapidario o la forza e la virtu delle pietre preziose, delle erbe e degli animali."_ (g. d'a.)], 'lapidary', 'on warfare' [footnote : _il vegezio? ... il frontino? ... il cornazzano?... noi crediamo piuttosto il valturio. questo libro doveva essere uno de'favoriti di leonardo poiche libro di scienza e d'arte nel tempo stesso._], 'epistles of filelfo', [footnote: the late marchese girolamo d'adda published a highly valuable and interesting disquisition on this passage under the title: _leonardo da vinci e la sua libreria, note di un bibliofilo (milano . ed. di soli esemplari_; privately printed). in the autumn of the marchese d'adda showed me a considerable mass of additional notes prepared for a second edition. this, as he then intended, was to come out after the publication of this work of mine. after the much regretted death of the elder marchese, his son, the marchese gioachino d'adda was so liberal as to place these ms. materials at my disposal for the present work, through the kind intervention of signor gustavo frizzoni. the following passages, with the initials g. d'a. are prints from the valuable notes in that publication, the ms. additions i have marked. i did not however think myself justified in reproducing here the acute and interesting observations on the contents of most of the rare books here enumerated.] [footnote: . . see no. , .] the first decade, [ ] 'on the preservation of health', the third decade, [ ] ciecho d'ascoli, the fourth decade, [ ] albertus magnus, guido, [ ] new treatise on rhetorics, piero crescentio, [ ] cibaldone, 'quadriregio', [ ] aesop, donato, [footnote : "_donatus latine & italice: impressum venetiis impensis johannis baptistae de sessa anno_ , _in_- °".-- "_el psalterio de david in lingua volgare (da malermi venetia nel m.cccc.lxxvi,_" in-fol. s. n._ (g. d'a.)] psalms, justinus, [footnote : compare no. , .--_la versione di girolamo squarzafico:_ "_il libro di justino posto diligentemente in materna lingua. venetia ale spesse (sic) di johane de colonia & johane gheretze_ ... l ," _in-fol._--"_marsilii ficini, theologia platonica, sive de animarum immortalitate, florentine, per ant. misconimum_ ," _in-fol., ovvero qualche versione italiana di questo stesso libro, ms._ (g. d'a.)] 'on the immortality of the soul, guido [footnote : _forse_ "_la historia trojana guidonis_" _od il _"_manipulus_" _di_ "_guido da monterocherii_"_ ma piu probabilmente _"_guido d'arezzo_"_ il di cui libro: _"_micrologus, seu disciplina artis musicae_"_ poteva da leonardo aversi ms.; di questi ne esistono in molto biblioteche, e fu poi impresso nel dal gerbert._ _molte sono le edizione dei sonetti di burchiello fiorentino, impresse nel secolo xv. la prima e piu rara e recercata:_ "_incominciano li sonetti, ecc. (per christoforo arnaldo)_"_, in_- ° _senza numeri, richiami o segnature, del_ , _e fors' anche del_ , _secondo morelli e dibdin, ecc._ (g. d'a.)] burchiello, 'doctrinale' [footnote : _versione italiana det "doctrinal de sapience" di guy de roy, e foris'anche l'originale in lingua francese.--_ _di pulci luigi, benche nell' edizione:_ "_florentiae_ " _in_- ° si dica: _"_il driadeo composto in rima octava per lucio pulcro_"_ altre ediz, del secolo xv, _"_florentie miscomini_ , _in_- , _firenze, apud s. jacob, de ripoli,_ ,_" _in_- ° _e "antoni de francesco,_ ," _in_- ° _e francesco di jacopo_ ,_in_- ° _ed altre ancora di venezia e senza alcuna nota ecc._ (g. d'a.)] driadeo, morgante [footnote : _una delle edizioni del morgante impresse nel secolo xv, ecc.--_ _quale delle opere di francesco petrarca, sarebbe malagevole l'indovinare, ma probabilmente il canzoniere._ (g. d'a.)] petrarch. john de mandeville [footnote : _sono i viaggi del cavaliere_ "_mandeville_" _gentiluomo inglese. scrisse il suo libro in lingua francese. fu stampato replicatamente nel secolo xv in francese, in inglese ed in italiano ed in tedesco; del secolo xv ne annoverano forse piu di edizioni, di cui ne conosciamo_ _in francese, quattro in latino, sei in tedesco e molte altre in volgare._ (g. d'a.)] 'on honest recreation' [footnote : _il platina (bartolomeo sacchi) la versione italiana_ "_de la honesta voluptate, & valetudine (& de li obsonnii) venetia (senza nome di tipografo)_ ," _piccolo in_- ° _gotico._ (g. d'a.)--compare no. , .] manganello, [footnote : _il manganello: satira eccessivamente vivace contro le donne ad imitazione della sesta di giovenale. manganello non e soltanto il titolo del libricino, sua ben anche il nome dell'autore ch'era un_ "_milanese_". _di questo libercolo rarissimo, che sembra impresso a venezia dallo zoppino (nicolo d'aristotile detto il), senza data, ma dei primissimi anni del secolo xvi, e forse piu antico, come vedremo in appresso, non se ne conoscono fra biblioteche pubbliche e private che due soli esemplari in europa._ (g. d'a.)] the chronicle of isidoro, [footnote : "_cronica desidero_", _sembra si deggia leggere piuttosto_ "_cronico disidoro_"_; ed in questo caso s'intenderebbe la_ "_cronica d'isidoro_" _tanto in voga a quel tempo_ "_comenza la cronica di sancto isidoro menore con alchune additione cavate del testo & istorie de la bibia & del libro di paulo oroso .... impresso in ascoli in casa del reverendo misser pascale ..... per mano di guglielmo de linis de alamania m.cccc.lxxvii_" _in_- ° _di_ _ff. e il primo libro impresso ad ascoli e l'edizione principe di questa cronica in oggi assai rara. non lo e meno l'edizione di cividal del friuli_, , _e quella ben anche di aquila_, , _sempre in-_ °. _vedasi panzer, hain, brunet e p. dechamps._ (g. d'a.)] the epistles of ovid, [footnote : "_le pistole di ovidio tradotte in prosa. napoli sixt. riessinger_", _in_- °, _oppure:_ "_epistole volgarizzate_ ," _in_- ° _a due col._ "_impresse ne la cita (sic) di bressa per pre: baptista de farfengo,_" _(in ottave) o:_ "_el libro dele epistole di ovidio in rima volgare per messere dominico de monticelli toschano. brescia farfengo_," _in_- ° _got. (in rima volgare)_, , _ed anche la versione di luca pulci. firenze, mischomini_, , _in_- °. (g. d'a.) ] epistles of filelfo, [footnote : see l. .] sphere, [footnote : "_jo: de sacrobusto_," _o_ "_goro dati_," _o_ "_tolosano da colle_" _di cui molteplici edizioni del secolo xv._ (g. d'a.)] the jests of poggio, [footnote : _tre edizioni delle facezie del poggio abbiamo in lingua italiana della fine del secolo xv, tutte senza data. "facetie de poggio fiorentino traducte de latino in vulgare ornatissimo," in- , segn. a--e in caratteri romani; l'altra: "facetie traducte de latino in vulgare," in- , caratteri gotici, ecc._ (g. d'a.)] chiromancy, [footnote : "_die kunst cyromantia etc, in tedesco. ff. di testo e figure il tutte eseguito su tavole di legno verso la fine del secolo xv da giorgio schapff". dibdin, heinecken, sotheby e chatto ne diedero una lunga descrizione; i primi tre accompagnati da fac-simili. la data che si legge alla fine del titolo si riferisce al periodo della composizione del testo, non a quello della stampa del volume benche tabellario. altri molti libri di chiromanzia si conoscono di quel tempo e sarebbe opera vana il citarli tutti._ (g. d'a.)] formulary of letters, [footnote : _miniatore bartolomeo. "formulario de epistole vulgare missive e responsive, & altri fiori de ornali parlamenti al principe hercule d'esti ecc. composto ecc. bologna per ugo di rugerii," in- , del secolo xv. altra edizione di "venetia bernardino di novara, " e "milano per joanne angelo scinzenzeler ," in- ._ (g. d'a.) five books out of this list are noted by leonardo in another ms. (tr. ): _donato, -- lapidario, -- plinio, -- abacho, -- morgante._] . nonius marcellus, festus pompeius, marcus varro. [footnote: nonius marcellus and sextus pompeius festus were roman grammarians of about the fourth century a. d. early publications of the works of marcellus are: _de proprietate sermonis, romae_ (about ), and (place of publication unknown). _compendiosa doctrina, ad filium, de proprietate sermonum._ venice, . brunet, _manuel du libraire_ (iv, p. ) notes: _le texte de cet ancien grammairien a ete reimprime plusieurs fois a la fin du xve siecle, avec ceux de pomponius festus et de terentius varro. la plus ancienne edition qui reunisse ces trois auteurs est celle de parme, ... celles de venise, , , , et de milan, , toutes in-fol., ont peu de valeur._] . map of elephanta in india which antonello merciaio has from maestro maffeo;--there for seven years the earth rises and for seven years it sinks;--enquire at the stationers about vitruvius. . see 'on ships' messer battista, and frontinus 'on acqueducts' [footnote : . _vitruvius de arch., et frontinus de aquedoctibus._ florence, .--this is the earliest edition of frontinus.--the note referring to this author thus suggests a solution of the problem of the date of the leicester manuscript.]. [footnote: compare no. , .] . anaxagoras: every thing proceeds from every thing, and every thing becomes every thing, and every thing can be turned into every thing else, because that which exists in the elements is composed of those elements. . the archimedes belonging to the bishop of padua. [footnote: see no. , . , and vol. i, no. .] . archimedes gave the quadrature of a polygonal figure, but not of the circle. hence archimedes never squared any figure with curved sides. he squared the circle minus the smallest portion that the intellect can conceive, that is the smallest point visible. [footnote: compare no. .] . if any man could have discovered the utmost powers of the cannon, in all its various forms and have given such a secret to the romans, with what rapidity would they have conquered every country and have vanquished every army, and what reward could have been great enough for such a service! archimedes indeed, although he had greatly damaged the romans in the siege of syracuse, nevertheless did not fail of being offered great rewards from these very romans; and when syracuse was taken, diligent search was made for archimedes; and he being found dead greater lamentation was made for him by the senate and people of rome than if they had lost all their army; and they did not fail to honour him with burial and with a statue. at their head was marcus marcellus. and after the second destruction of syracuse, the sepulchre of archimedes was found again by cato[ ], in the ruins of a temple. so cato had the temple restored and the sepulchre he so highly honoured.... whence it is written that cato said that he was not so proud of any thing he had done as of having paid such honour to archimedes. [footnote: where leonardo found the statement that cato had found and restored the tomb of archimedes, i do not know. it is a merit that cicero claims as his own (tusc. v, ) and certainly with a full right to it. none of archimedes' biographers --not even the diligent mazzucchelli, mentions any version in which cato is named. it is evidently a slip of the memory on leonardo's part. besides, according to the passage in cicero, the grave was not found _'nelle ruine d'un tempio'_--which is highly improbable as relating to a greek--but in an open spot (h. muller-strubing).--see too, as to archimedes, no. . leonardo says somewhere in ms. c.a.: _architronito e una macchina di fino rame, invenzlon d' archimede_ (see _'saggio'_, p. ).] . aristotle, book of the physics, and albertus magnus, and thomas aquinas and the others on the rebound of bodies, in the th on physics, on heaven and earth. . aristotle says that if a force can move a body a given distance in a given time, the same force will move half the same body twice as far in the same time. . aristotle in book of the ethics: man merits praise or blame solely in such matters as lie within his option to do or not to do. . aristotle says that every body tends to maintain its nature. . on the increase of the nile, a small book by aristotle. [footnote: _de inundatione nili_, is quoted here and by others as a work of aristotle. the greek original is lost, but a latin version of the beginning exists (arist. opp. iv p. ed. did. par.). in his quotations from aristotle leonardo possibly refers to one of the following editions: _aristotelis libri iv de coelo et mundo; de anima libri iii; libri viii physi- corum; libri de generatione et corruptione; de sensu et sensato... omnia latine, interprete averroe, venetiis _ (first latin edition). there is also a separate edition of _liber de coelo et mundo_, dated .] . avicenna will have it that soul gives birth to soul as body to body, and each member to itself. [footnote: avicenna, see too no. , . .] . avicenna on liquids. . roger bacon, done in print. [footnote: the earliest printed edition known to brunet of the works of roger bacon, is a french translation, which appeared about fourty years after leonardo's death.] . cleomedes the philosopher. [footnote: cleomede. a greek mathematician of the ivth century b. c. we have a cyclic theory of meteorica by him. his works were not published before leonardo's death.] . cornelius celsus. the highest good is wisdom, the chief evil is suffering in the body. because, as we are composed of two things, that is soul and body, of which the first is the better, the body is the inferior; wisdom belongs to the better part, and the chief evil belongs to the worse part and is the worst of all. as the best thing of all in the soul is wisdom, so the worst in the body is suffering. therefore just as bodily pain is the chief evil, wisdom is the chief good of the soul, that is with the wise man; and nothing else can be compared with it. [footnote: _aulus cornelius celsus_, a roman physician, known as the roman hippocrates, probably contemporary with augustus. only his eight books 'de medicina', are preserved. the earliest editions are: _cornelius celsus, de medicina libr. viii._, milan venice and .] . demetrius was wont to say that there was no difference between the speech and words of the foolish and ignorant, and the noises and rumblings of the wind in an inflated stomach. nor did he say so without reason, for he saw no difference between the parts whence the noise issued; whether their lower parts or their mouth, since one and the other were of equal use and importance. [footnote: compare vol. i, no. .] . maestro stefano caponi, a physician, lives at the piscina, and has euclid _de ponderibus_. . th book of euclid. first definition: a part is a quantity of less magnitude than the greater magnitude when the less is contained a certain number of times in the greater. a part properly speaking is that which may be multiplied, that is when, being multiplied by a certain number, it forms exactly the whole. a common aggregate part ... second definition. a greater magnitude is said to be a multiple of a less, when the greater is measured by the less. by the first we define the lesser [magnitude] and by the second the greater is defined. a part is spoken . of in relation to the whole; and all their relations lie between these two extremes, and are called multiples. . hippocrates says that the origin of men's sperm derives from the brain, and from the lungs and testicles of our parents, where the final decocture is made, and all the other limbs transmit their substance to this sperm by means of expiration, because there are no channels through which they might come to the sperm. [footnote: the works of hippocrates were printed first after leonardo's death.] . lucretius in his third [book] 'de rerum natura'. the hands, nails and teeth were ( ) the weapons of ancient man. they also use for a standard a bunch of grass tied to a pole ( ). [footnote: _lucretius, de rerum natura libri vi_ were printed first about , at verona in , at brescia in , at venice in and in , and at florence in . the numbers and noted by leonardo at the end of the two passages seem to indicate pages, but if so, none of the editions just mentioned can here be meant, nor do these numbers refer to the verses in the poems of lucretius.] . ammianus marcellinus asserts that seven hundred thousand volumes of books were burnt in the siege of alexandria in the time of julius cesar. [footnote: _ammiani marcellini historiarum libri qui extant xiii_, published at rome in .] . mondino says that the muscles which raise the toes are in the outward side of the thigh, and he adds that there are no muscles in the back [upper side] of the feet, because nature desired to make them light, so as to move with ease; and if they had been fleshy they would be heavier; and here experience shows ... [footnote: _"mundini anatomia. mundinus, anothomia (sic). mundini praestantissimorum doctorum almi studii ticiensis (sic) cura diligentissime emendata. impressa papiae per magistrum antonium de carfano ," in-fol.; ristampata: "bononiae johan. de noerdlingen, ," in-fol.; "padova per mattheum cerdonis de vuindischgretz, ," in- ; "lipsia, ," in- ; "venezia, ," in- e ivi " ," con fig. queste figure per altro non sono, come si e preteso, le prime che fossero introdotte in un trattato di notamia. nel 'fasciculus medicinae' di giovanni ketham, che riproduce l''anatomia' del mundinus, impresso pure a venezia da j. e g. de gregoriis, , in-fol., contengonsi intagli in legno (si vogliono disegnati non gia incisi da andrea mantegna) di grande dimensione, e che furono piu volte riprodotti negli anni successivi. quest' edizione del "fasciculus" del , sta fra nostri libri e potrebbe benissimo essere il volume d'anatomia notato da leonardo._ (g. d'a.)] . of the error of those who practice without knowledge;--[ ] see first the 'ars poetica' of horace [ ]. [footnote: a - are written on the margin at the side of the title line of the text given, entire as no. ] . the heirs of maestro giovanni ghiringallo have the works of pelacano. . the catapult, as we are told by nonius and pliny, is a machine devised by those &c. [footnote: _plinius_, see no. .] . i have found in a history of the spaniards that in their wars with the english archimedes of syracuse who at that time was living at the court of ecliderides, king of the cirodastri. and in maritime warfare he ordered that the ships should have tall masts, and that on their tops there should be a spar fixed [footnote : compare no. .] of feet long and one third of a foot thick. at one end of this was a small grappling iron and at the other a counterpoise; and there was also attached feet of chain; and, at the end of this chain, as much rope as would reach from the chain to the base of the top, where it was fixed with a small rope; from this base it ran down to the bottom of the mast where a very strong spar was attached and to this was fastened the end of the rope. but to go on to the use of his machine; i say that below this grappling iron was a fire [footnote : compare no. .] which, with tremendous noise, threw down its rays and a shower of burning pitch; which, pouring down on the [enemy's] top, compelled the men who were in it to abandon the top to which the grappling-iron had clung. this was hooked on to the edges of the top and then suddenly the cord attached at the base of the top to support the cord which went from the grappling iron, was cut, giving way and drawing in the enemy's ship; and if the anchor--was cast ... [footnote: archimedes never visited spain, and the names here mentioned cannot be explained. leonardo seems to quote here from a book, perhaps by some questionable mediaeval writer. prof. c. justi writes to me from madrid, that spanish savants have no knowledge of the sources from which this story may have been derived.] . theophrastus on the ebb and flow of the tide, and of eddies, and on water. [footnote: the greek philosophers had no opportunity to study the phenomenon of the ebb and flow of the tide and none of them wrote about it. the movement of the waters in the euripus however was to a few of them a puzzling problem.] . tryphon of alexandria, who spent his life at apollonia, a city of albania ( ). [footnote: tryphon of alexandria, a greek grammarian of the time of augustus. his treatise ttaoy aeijecu appeared first at milan in , in constantin laskaris's greek grammar.] . messer vincenzio aliprando, who lives near the inn of the bear, has giacomo andrea's vitruvius. . vitruvius says that small models are of no avail for ascertaining the effects of large ones; and i here propose to prove that this conclusion is a false one. and chiefly by bringing forward the very same argument which led him to this conclusion; that is, by an experiment with an auger. for he proves that if a man, by a certain exertion of strength, makes a hole of a given diameter, and afterwards another hole of double the diameter, this cannot be made with only double the exertion of the man's strength, but needs much more. to this it may very well be answered that an auger . of double the diameter cannot be moved by double the exertion, be- cause the superficies of a body of the same form but twice as large has four times the extent of the superficies of the smaller, as is shown in the two figures a and n. . of squaring the circle, and who it was that first discovered it by accident. vitruvius, measuring miles by means of the repeated revolutions of the wheels which move vehicles, extended over many stadia the lines of the circumferences of the circles of these wheels. he became aware of them by the animals that moved the vehicles. but he did not discern that this was a means of finding a square equal to a circle. this was first done by archimedes of syracuse, who by multiplying the second diameter of a circle by half its circumference produced a rectangular quadrilateral equal figure to the circle [footnote : compare no. .]. [footnote: _vitruvius_, see also nos. and .] . virgil says that a blank shield is devoid of merit because among the people of athens the true recognition confirmed by testimonies ... [footnote: the end of the text cannot be deciphered.] . in vitolone there are conclusions [problems] in perspective. [footnote: _(witelo, vitellion, vitellon) vitellione. e da vedersi su questo ottico prospettico del secolo xiii luca pacioli, paolo lomazzo, leonardo da vinci, ecc. e fra i moderni il graesse, il libri, il brunet, e le memorie pubblicate dal principe boncompagni, e 'sur l' orthographe du nom et sur la patrie de witelo (vitellion) note de maximilien curtze, professeur a thorn', ove sono descritti i molti codici esistenti nelle biblioteche d' europa. bernardino baldi nelle sue 'vite de'matematici', manoscritto presso il principe boncompagni, ha una biografia del vitellione. questo scritto del baldi reca la data agosto . discorsero poi di lui federigo risnerio e giovanni di monteregio nella prefazione dell' alfagrano, giovanni boteone, girolamo cardano, 'de subtilitate', che nota gli errori di vitellione. visse, secondo il baldi, intorno all' anno , ma secondo il reinoldo fioriva nel , avendo dedicata la sua opera ad un frate guglielmo di monteca, che visse di que' tempi. intorno ad un manoscritto dell' ottica di vitellione, citato da luca pacioli v'ha un secondo esemplare del kurlz, con aggiunte del principe boncompagni, e le illustrazioni del cav. enrico narducci. nel 'catalogo di manoscritti' posseduti da d. baldassare de' principi boncompagni, compilato da esso narducci, roma, , sotto al n. , troviamo citato: vitellio, 'perspectiva', manoscritto del secolo xiv. la 'prospettiva di vitelleone' (sic) thuringo-poloni e citata due volte da paolo lomazzo nel trattato dell' arte della pittura. vitellio o vitello o witelo. il suo libro fu impresso in foglio a norimberga nel ; la secondo edizione e del , sempre di norimberga, ed una terza di basilea, ._ (see _indagini storiche ... sulla libreria-visconteo-sforzesca del castello di pavia ... per cura di_ g. d'a., _milano . p. i. appendice p. . )._] . vitolone, at saint mark's. [footnote: _altro codice di cotesta 'prospettiva' del vitolone troviamo notato nel 'canone bibliographico di nicolo v', conservato alla, magliabecchiana, in copia dell' originale verosimilmente inviato dal parentucelli a cosimo de' medici (magliab. cod. segn. vii, carte da a ). proviene dal convento di san marco e lo aveva trascritto frate leonardo scruberti fiorentino, dell' ordine dei predicatori che fu anche bibliotecario della medicea pubblica in san marco_ (see _indagini storiche ... per cura di_ g. d'a. _parte i, p. )._] . how this proposition of xenophon is false. if you take away unequal quantities from unequal quantities, but in the same proportion, &c. [footnote: xenophon's works were published several times during leonardo's lifetime.] inventories and accounts ( -- ). . on the th day of april i received from the marchesino lire and dinari. [footnote: instead of the indication of the year there is a blank space after _d'aprile_.--marchesino stange was one of lodovico il moro's officials.--compare no. .] . on the th day of july in rhenish florins . in dinari of soldi . s in dinari of / soldi . s in gold and scudi . ----------------------------- . in all . on the first day of february, lire . . the hall towards the court is paces long and braccia wide. . the narrow cornice above the hall lire . the cornice beneath that, being one for each picture, lire , and for the cost of blue, gold, white, plaster, indigo and glue lire; time days. the pictures below these mouldings with their pilasters, lire each. i calculate the cost for smalt, blue and gold and other colours at / lire. the days i calculate at , for the invention of the composition, pilasters and other things. . item for each vault lire outlay for blue and gold / time, days for the windows / the cornice below the windows soldi per braccio item for pictures of roman history lire each the philosophers lire the pilasters, one ounce of blue soldi for gold soldi total and / lire. . the cornice above lire the cornice below lire the compositions, one with another lire . salai, lire ... soldi ... soldi for a chain;-- on the l th of march i had lire s. ; lire remain. . how many braccia high is the level of the walls?-- braccia how large is the hall? how large is the garland? ducats. on the th day of january, cloth for hose lire s lining s making s to salai s a jasper ring s a sparkling stone s to caterina s to caterina s . the wheel lire the tire lire the shield lire the cushion lire the ends of the axle-tree lire bed and frame lire conduit lire s.k.m.ii. a] . parsley parts mint part thyme part vinegar ... and a little salt two pieces of canvas for salai. [footnote: this note, of about the year , is the earliest mention of salai, and the last is of the year (see no. , ). from the various notes in the mss. he seems to have been leonardo's assistant and keeper only, and scarcely himself a painter. at any rate no signed or otherwise authenticated picture by him is known to exist. vasari speaks somewhat doubtfully on this point.] . on tuesday i bought wine for morning [drinking]; on friday the th day of september the same. [footnote: this note enables us to fix the date of the manuscript, in which it is to be found. in the th of september fell on a friday; the contents of the manuscript do not permit us to assign it to a much earlier or later date (compare no. , and note).] . the cistern ... at the hospital, -- ducats, --beans, --white maize, --red maize, --millet, --buckwheat, --kidney beans, --beans, --peas. . expenses of the interment of caterina. for the lbs of tapers s for the bier s a pall over the bier s for bearing and placing the cross s for bearing the body s for priests and clerks s bell, book and sponge s for the gravediggers s to the senior s for a license from the authorities s s the doctor s sugar and candles s s [footnote: see nos. and .] . salai's cloak, the th of april . braccia of silver cloth l. s green velvet to trim it l. s -- binding l.-- s loops l.-- s the making l. s binding for the front l.-- s stitching _________ here are grossoni of his l. s salai stole the soldi. . on monday i bought braccia of cloth lire s / on the th of, october . . memorandum. that on the th day of april , i, leonardo da vinci, lent to vante, miniature painter gold ducats, in gold. salai carried them to him and gave them into his own hand, and he said he would repay within the space of days. memorandum. that on the same day i paid to salai gold ducats which he said he wanted for a pair of rose-coloured hose with their trimming; and there remain ducats due to him--excepting that he owes me ducats, that is i lent him at milan, and at venice. memorandum. that i gave salai braccia of cloth to make a shirt, at soldi the braccio, which i gave him on the th day of april . [footnote: with regard to vante or attavante, the miniature painter (not nanni as i formerly deciphered this name, which is difficult to read; see _zeitschrift fur bild. kunst_, , p. ), and vasari, lives of frate giovanni da fiesole, of bartolommeo della gatta, and of gherardo, _miniatore._ he, like leonardo, was one of the committee of artists who, in , considered the erection and placing of michel angelo's david. the date of his death is not known; he was of the same age as leonardo. further details will be found in '_notizie di attavante miniatore, e di alcuni suoi lavori_' (milanese's ed. of vasari, iii, - ).] . on the morning of san peter's day, june th, , i took io ducats, of which i gave one to tommaso my servant to spend. on monday morning florin to salai to spend on the house. on thursday i took florin for my own spending. wednesday evening florin to tommaso, before supper. saturday morning florin to tommaso. monday morning florin less soldi. thursday to salai florin less soldi. for a jerkin, florin. for a jerkin and a cap florins. to the hosier, florin. to salai, florin. friday morning, the th of july, florin, less soldi. i have fl. left, and in the box. tuesday, the th day of july, florin to tommaso. monday morning, to tommaso florin. [wednesday morning fl. to tommaso.] thursday morning the st day of august fl. to tommaso. sunday, the th of august, florin. friday, the th day of august , i took ducats out of the box. . . on the th day of august, , i took florins in gold[ ] ... [ ] on friday the th day of august fifteen grossoni that is fl. s ... given to me florin in gold on the th day of august [ ] ... on the th of august, grossoni to tommaso. on the th of the same grossoni to salai. on the th of september grossoni to the workman to spend; that is on the day of our lady's birth. on the th day of september i gave grossoni to tommaso: on a sunday. [footnote: in the original, the passage given as no. is written between lines and of this text, and it is possible that the entries in lines and refer to the payments of jacopo tedesco, who is there mentioned. the first words of these lines are very illegible.] [footnote : _al fattore._ il fattore, was, as is well known, the nick-name of giovanni franceso penni, born in florence in , and subsequently a pupil of raphael's. according to vasari he was known by it even as a boy. whether he is spoken of in this passage, or whether the word fattore should be translated literally, i will not undertake to decide. the latter seems to me more probably right.] . on the day of october, , i had scudi; i lent to salai to make up his sister's dowry, and i have left. . memorandum of the money i have had from the king as my salary from july till april next . first scudi, then , then , then and then florins at soldi the florin. [footnote: compare no. and .] . saturday the nd day of march i had from santa maria novella gold ducats, leaving . of these i gave the same day to salai, who had lent them to me. [footnote: see '_conto corrente di leonardo da vinci con lo spedale di s. maria nuova_' [ a , - ] published by g. uzielli, _ricerche intorno a leonardo da vinci, firenze,_ , pp. , , and . the date here given by leonardo does not occur in either of the accounts.] . thursday, the eighth day of june, i took grossoni, soldi; on the same thursday in the morning i gave to salai soldi for the expenses. . to salai grossoni, and for one braccio of velvet, lire, and / ; viz. soldi for loops of silver; salai soldi for binding, the making of the cloak soldi. [footnote: compare no. .] . i gave to salai lire soldi, of which i have had lire and there remain lire soldi. . to salai s dozen of laces s for papers s d a pair of shoes s for velvet s a sword and knife s to the barber s to paolo for a ... s for having his fortune told s . on friday morning, one florin to salai to spend; soldi received bread s.. d wine s.. d grapes s.. d mushrooms s.. d fruit s.. d [footnote : compare nos. , l. and , with similar entries for horse's fodder.] bran s.. d at the barber's s.. d for shoes s.. d . on thursday morning one florin. . on saint ambrose's day from the morning to thursday soldi. . the moneys i have had from ser matteo; first grassoni, then on occasions f. and then grassoni, then , and then ; soldi grossoni. . for paper s for canvas s for paper s d total s . pounds of german blue, at one ducat the pound lire s d pounds of white, s.. the pound lire s d / pound at s the pound lire s d pounds of cinnabar at s the pound lire s d pounds of green at s the pound lire s d pounds of yellow at s the pound lire s d pound of minium at s the pound lire s d pounds of ... at s the pound lire s d pounds of ochre at s the pound lire s d black ... at s the pound for lire s d wax to make the stars pounds at s--the pound lire s d pounds of oil for painting at soldi the pound lire s d altogether lire d without the gold. tin for putting on the gold . two large hatchets and one very small one, brass spoons, tablecloths, towels, small napkins, coarse napkins, coarse cloths, wrappers, pairs of sheets, pairs new and old. . bed s ring crockery gardener ..... porters glasses fuel a lock section title: miscellaneous notes. . new tin-ware pairs of sheets small bowls, each of breadths, bowls, small sheets, large dishes, tablecloths and / , dishes medium size, coarse cloths, small ones shirts, old tin-ware napkins, small bowls, hand-towels. bowls, square stones, small bowls, large bowl, platter, candlesticks, small candlestick. . hose s straw s wheat s wine s bread s meat s eggs s salad s the barber s d horses s . sunday meat s d wine s d bran s d herbs s d buttermilk s d melon s d bread s d ____________________ monday s ____________________ ..... s d wine s d bran s d buttermilk s d herbs s d ____________________ tuesday s d _____________________ meat s d wine s d bread s d meal s d herbs s d _____________________ wednesday _____________________ wine s d melon s d meal s d vegetables s notes by unknown persons among the mss. ( - ). . miseracione divina sacro sancte romane ecclesie tituli n cardinalis wulgariter nuncupatus venerabili religioso fratri johanni mair d'nustorf ordinis praedicatorum provintie teutonie (?) conventus wiennensis capellano nostro commensali salutem in dno sempiternam religione zelus rite ac in [ferite?] honestas aliarumque laudabilium probitatis et virtutum merita quibus apud nos fide digno commendationis testimonio magistri videlicet ordinis felicis recordacionis leonardi de mansuetis de perusio sigillo suo ... us dans tibi ad ... opera virtutum comen(salem)? locum et tempus success(ores) cujus similiter officium ministratus qui praedecessoris sui donum (?) confirmavit et de novo dedit aliorumque plurima [laudatis] qui opera tua laudant nos inducunt ut tibi (?) reddamus ad gratiam liberalem hinc est quod nos cupientes. [footnote: the meaning of this document, which is very difficult to decipher, and is written in unintelligible latin, is, that leonardo di mansuetis recommends the rev. mair of nusdorf, chaplain at vienna, to some third person; and says also that something, which had to be proved, has been proved. the rest of the passages on the same leaf are undoubtedly in leonardo's hand. (nos. , , , , , , and .)] . johannes antonius di johannes ambrosius de bolate. he who lets time pass and does not grow in virtue, the more i think of it the more i grieve. no man has it in him to be virtuous who will give up honour for gain. good fortune is valueless to him who knows not toil. the man becomes happy who follows christ. there is no perfect gift without great suffering. our glories and our triumphs pass away. foul lust, and dreams, and luxury, and sloth have banished every virtue from the world; so that our nature, wandering and perplexed, has almost lost the old and better track. henceforth it were well to rouse thyself from sleep. the master said that lying in down will not bring thee to fame; nor staying beneath the quilts. he who, without fame, burns his life to waste, leaves no more vestige of himself on earth than wind-blown smoke, or the foam upon the sea. [footnote: from the last sentence we may infer that this text is by the hand of a pupil of leonardo's.-- on the same sheet are the notes nos. and in leonardo's own handwriting.] . on the morning of santo zanobio the th of may , i had from lionardo vinci gold ducats and began to spend them. to mona margarita s d to remake the ring s d clothes s good beef s eggs s debt at the bank s velvet s wine s d meat s mulberries s d mushrooms s d salad s fruit s d candles s ... s flour s sunday bread s wine s d meat s soup s fruit s d candles s d monday bread s d meat s d wine s d fruit s soup s d . tuesday bread s meat s wine s fruit s soup s salad s [footnote and : on the same sheet is the text no. in leonardo's own handwriting.] . to monna margarita s to tomaso s to monna margarita d s on the day of san zanobi left ... after payment d s d of monna margarita altogether d s d . on monday, the l th of february, i lent lire s to lionardo to spend, friday d . [footnote: this note is followed by an account very like the one given as no. .] . stephano chigi, canonico ..., servant of the honorable count grimani at s. apostoli. [footnote: compare no. , - .] . having become anxious ... bernardo di simone, silvestro di stefano, bernardo di jacopo, francesco di matteo bonciani, antonio di giovanni ruberti, antonio da pistoia.... antonio; he who has time and waits for time, will lose his friends and his money. . reverend maestro, domino giovanni, i spoke to maestro zacaria as a brother about this business, and i made him satisfied with the arrangement that i had wished; that is, as regards the commission that i had from the parties and i say that between us there is no need to pay money down, as regard the pictures of the ... . of things seen through a mist that which is nearest its farthest limit will be least visible, and all the more so as they are more remote. . theodoricus rex semper augustus. . either you say hesperia alone, and it will mean italy, or you add ultima, and it will mean spain. umbria, part of tuscany. [footnote: the notes in greek, nos. , and stand in close connection with each other, but the meaning of some words is very doubtful, and a translation is thus rendered impossible.] . [footnote: greek characters] . canonica of ... on the th of july ; my dearly beloved mother, sisters and cousin i herewith inform you that thanks to god i am ... about the sword which i ... bring it to maso at the piazza ... and i will settle the business of piero so that ... [footnote: amoretti, _mem. stor. xxiv_, quotes the first three lines of this letter as by leonardo. the character of the writing however does not favour this hypothesis, and still less the contents. i should regard it rather a rough draft of a letter by young melzi. i have not succeeded in deciphering completely the lines of this text. amoretti reads at the beginning _canonica di vaprio_, but _vaprio_ seems to me a very doubtful reading.] . ut bene respondet naturae ars docta! dedisset vincius, ut tribuit cetera - sic animam - noluit ut similis magis haec foret: altera sic est: possidet illius maurus amans animam. [footnote: these three epigrams on the portrait of lucrezia crivelli, a picture by leonardo which must have been lost at a very early date, seem to have been dedicated to leonardo by the poet. leonardo used the reverse of the sheet for notes on geometry.] hujus quam cernis nomen lucretia, divi omnia cui larga contribuere manu. rara huic forma data est; pinxit leonardos, amavit maurus, pictorum primus hic, ille ducum. naturam, ac superas hac laesit imagine divas pictor: tantum hominis posse manum haec doluit, illae longa dari tam magnae tempera formae, quae spatio fuerat deperitura brevi. . egidius romanus on the formation of the human body in the mother's womb [footnote : _liber magistri egidii de pulsibus matrice conipositus (cum commentario gentilis de fulgineo)_ published in at padova, in and in at venice, and in at lyons.]. [footnote : . this text appears to be in a handwriting different from that in the note, l. . here the reading is not so simple as amoretti gave it, _mem. star. xxv: a monsieur lyonard peintre du roy pour amboyse_. he says too that this address is of the year , and mr. ravaisson remarks: "_de cette suscription il semble qu'on peut inferer que leonard etait alors en france, a la cour de louis xii ... pour conclure je crois qu'il n'est pas prouve que leonard de vinci n'ait pas fait un voyage de quelques mois en france sous louis xii, entre le printemps de et l'automne de_ ."--i must confess that i myself have not succeeded in deciphering completely this french writing of which two words remain to me doubtful. but so much seems to be quite evident that this is not an address of a letter at all, but a certificate or note. _amboise_[l. ] i believe to be the signature of charles d'amboise the governor of milan. if this explanation is the right one, it can be easily explained by the contents of nos. and . the note, line , was perhaps added later by another hand; and leonardo himself wrote afterwards on the same sheet some geometrical explanations. i must also point out that the statement that this sheet belongs to the year has absolutely no foundation in fact. there is no clue whatever for giving a precise date to this note.] to monsieur le vinci,--the horses of the king's equerry.... continue the payment to ms. lyonard, painter to the king. [ ] amboise. . [footnote: greek characters] . memorandum to maestro lionardo to have ... the state of florence. . to remind your excellency that ridolfo manini brought to florence a quantity of crystal besides other stones such as are ... . xvi c. de ciuitate dei, se antipodes. [footnote: a facsimile of this note, which refers to a well known book by st. augustin, is given on page .] . leonardo's will. be it known to all persons, present and to come that at the court of our lord the king at amboise before ourselves in person, messer leonardo da vinci painter to the king, at present staying at the place known as cloux near amboise, duly considering the certainty of death and the uncertainty of its time, has acknowledged and declared in the said court and before us that he has made, according to the tenor of these presents, his testament and the declaration of his last will, as follows. and first he commends his soul to our lord, almighty god, and to the glorious virgin mary, and to our lord saint michael, to all the blessed angels and saints male and female in paradise. item. the said testator desires to be buried within the church of saint florentin at amboise, and that his body shall be borne thither by the chaplains of the church. item. that his body may be followed from the said place to the said church of saint florentin by the _collegium_ of the said church, that is to say by the rector and the prior, or by their vicars and chaplains of the church of saint denis of amboise, also the lesser friars of the place, and before his body shall be carried to the said church this testator desires, that in the said church of saint florentin three grand masses shall be celebrated by the deacon and sub-deacon and that on the day when these three high masses are celebrated, thirty low masses shall also be performed at saint gregoire. item. that in the said church of saint denis similar services shall be performed, as above. item. that the same shall be done in the church of the said friars and lesser brethren. item. the aforesaid testator gives and bequeaths to messer francesco da melzo, nobleman, of milan, in remuneration for services and favours done to him in the past, each [footnote: see page .] and all of the books the testator is at present possessed of, and the instruments and portraits appertaining to his art and calling as a painter. item. the same testator gives and bequeaths henceforth for ever to battista de vilanis his servant one half, that is the moity, of his garden which is outside the walls of milan, and the other half of the same garden to salai his servant; in which garden aforesaid salai has built and constructed a house which shall be and remain henceforth in all perpetuity the property of the said salai, his heirs and successors; and this is in remuneration for the good and kind services which the said de vilanis and salai, his servants have done him in past times until now. item. the said testator gives to maturina his waiting woman a cloak of good black cloth lined with fur, a ... of cloth and two ducats paid once only; and this likewise is in remuneration for good service rendered to him in past times by the said maturina. item. he desires that at his funeral sixty tapers shall be carried which shall be borne by sixty poor men, to whom shall be given money for carrying them; at the discretion of the said melzo, and these tapers shall be distributed among the four above mentioned churches. item. the said testator gives to each of the said churches ten lbs. of wax in thick tapers, which shall be placed in the said churches to be used on the day when those said services are celebrated. item. that alms shall be given to the poor of the hotel-dieu, to the poor of saint lazare d'amboise and, to that end, there shall be given and paid to the treasurers of that same fraternity the sum and amount of seventy soldi of tours. item. the said testator gives and bequeaths to the said messer francesco melzo, being present and agreeing, the remainder of his pension and the sums of money which are owing to him from the past time till the day of his death by the receiver or treasurer-general m. johan sapin, and each and every sum of money that he has already received from the aforesaid sapin of his said pension, and in case he should die before the said melzo and not otherwise; which moneys are at present in the possession of the said testator in the said place called cloux, as he says. and he likewise gives and bequeaths to the said melzo all and each of his clothes which he at present possesses at the said place of cloux, and all in remuneration for the good and kind services done by him in past times till now, as well as in payment for the trouble and annoyance he may incur with regard to the execution of this present testament, which however, shall all be at the expense of the said testator. and he orders and desires that the sum of four hundred scudi del sole, which he has deposited in the hands of the treasurer of santa maria nuova in the city of florence, may be given to his brothers now living in florence with all the interest and usufruct that may have accrued up to the present time, and be due from the aforesaid treasurer to the aforesaid testator on account of the said four hundred crowns, since they were given and consigned by the testator to the said treasurers. item. he desires and orders that the said messer francesco de melzo shall be and remain the sole and only executor of the said will of the said testator; and that the said testament shall be executed in its full and complete meaning and according to that which is here narrated and said, to have, hold, keep and observe, the said messer leonardo da vinci, constituted testator, has obliged and obliges by these presents the said his heirs and successors with all his goods moveable and immoveable present and to come, and has renounced and expressly renounces by these presents all and each of the things which to that are contrary. given at the said place of cloux in the presence of magister spirito fieri vicar, of the church of saint denis at amboise, of m. guglielmo croysant priest and chaplain, of magister cipriane fulchin, brother francesco de corion, and of francesco da milano, a brother of the convent of the minorites at amboise, witnesses summoned and required to that end by the indictment of the said court in the presence of the aforesaid m. francesco de melze who accepting and agreeing to the same has promised by his faith and his oath which he has administered to us personally and has sworn to us never to do nor say nor act in any way to the contrary. and it is sealed by his request with the royal seal apposed to legal contracts at amboise, and in token of good faith. given on the xxiiird day of april mdxviii, before easter. and on the xxiiird day of this month of april mdxviii, in the presence of m. guglielmo borian, royal notary in the court of the bailiwick of amboise, the aforesaid m. leonardo de vinci gave and bequeathed, by his last will and testament, as aforesaid, to the said m. baptista de vilanis, being present and agreeing, the right of water which the king louis xii, of pious memory lately deceased gave to this same de vinci, the stream of the canal of santo cristoforo in the duchy of milan, to belong to the said vilanis for ever in such wise and manner that the said gentleman made him this gift in the presence of m. francesco da melzo, gentleman, of milan and in mine. and on the aforesaid day in the said month of april in the said year mdxviii the same m. leonardo de vinci by his last will and testament gave to the aforesaid m. baptista de vilanis, being present and agreeing, each and all of the articles of furniture and utensils of his house at present at the said place of cloux, in the event of the said de vilanis surviving the aforesaid m. leonardo de vinci, in the presence of the said m. francesco melzo and of me notary &c. borean. pictures every child should know a selection of the world's art masterpieces for young people by dolores bacon illustrated from great paintings acknowledgments besides making acknowledgments to the many authoritative writers upon artists and pictures, here quoted, thanks are due to such excellent compilers of books on art subjects as sadakichi hartmann, muther, c. h. caffin, ida prentice whitcomb, russell sturgis and others. introduction man's inclination to decorate his belongings has always been one of the earliest signs of civilisation. art had its beginning in the lines indented in clay, perhaps, or hollowed in the wood of family utensils; after that came crude colouring and drawing. among the first serious efforts to draw were the egyptian square and pointed things, animals and men. the most that artists of that day succeeded in doing was to preserve the fashions of the time. their drawings tell us that men wore their beards in bags. they show us, also, many peculiar head-dresses and strange agricultural implements. artists of that day put down what they saw, and they saw with an untrained eye and made the record with an untrained hand; but they did not put in false details for the sake of glorifying the subject. one can distinguish a man from a mountain in their work, but the arms and legs embroidered upon mathilde's tapestry, or the figures representing family history on an oriental rug, are quite as correct in drawing and as little of a puzzle. as men became more intelligent, hence spiritualised, they began to express themselves in ideal ways; to glorify the commonplace; and thus they passed from egyptian geometry to gracious lines and beautiful colouring. indian pottery was the first development of art in america and it led to the working of metals, followed by drawing and portraiture. among the americans, as soon as that term ceased to mean indians, art took a most distracting turn. europe was old in pictures, great and beautiful, when america was worshipping at the shrine of the chromo; but the chromo served a good turn, bad as it was. it was a link between the black and white of the admirable wood-cut and the true colour picture. some of the colonists brought over here the portraits of their ancestors, but those paintings could not be considered "american" art, nor were those early settlers americans; but the generation that followed gave to the world benjamin west. he left his mother country for england, where he found a knighthood and honours of every kind awaiting him. the earliest artists of america had to go away to do their work, because there was no place here for any men but those engaged in clearing land, planting corn, and fighting indians. sir benjamin west was president of the royal academy while america was still revelling in chromos. the artists who remained chose such objects as davy crockett in the trackless forest, or made pictures of the continental congress. after the chromo in america came the picture known as the "buckeye," painted by relays of artists. great canvases were stretched and blocked off into lengths. the scene was drawn in by one man, who was followed by "artists," each in turn painting sky, water, foliage, figures, according to his specialty. thus whole yards of canvas could be painted in a day, with more artists to the square inch than are now employed to paint advertisements on a barn. the centennial exhibition of came as a glorious flashlight. for the first time real art was seen by a large part of our nation. every farmer took home with him a new idea of the possibilities of drawing and colour. the change that instantly followed could have occurred in no other country than the united states, because no other people would have travelled from the four points of the compass to see such an exhibition. thus it was the american's _penchant_ for travel which first opened to him the art world, for he was conscious even then of the educational advantages to be found somewhere, although there seemed to be few of them in the united states. after the centennial arose a taste for the painting of "plaques," upon which were the heads of ladies with strange-coloured hair; of leather-covered flatirons bearing flowers of unnatural colour, or of shovels decorated with "snow scenes." the whole nation began to revel in "art." it was a low variety, yet it started toward a goal which left the chromo at the rear end of the course, and it was a better effort than the mottoes worked in worsted, which had till then been the chief decoration in most homes. if the "buckeye" was hand-painting, this was "single-hand" painting, and it did not take a generation to bring the change about, only a season. after the philadelphia exhibition the daughter of the household "painted a little" just as she played the piano "a little." to-day, much less than a man's lifetime since then, there is in america a universal love for refined art and a fair technical appreciation of pictures, while already the nation has worthily contributed to the world of artists. sir benjamin west, sully, and sargent are ours: inness, inman, and trumbull. the curator of the metropolitan museum in new york has declared that portrait-painting must be the means which shall save the modern artists from their sins. to quote him: "an artist may paint a bright green cow, if he is so minded: the cow has no redress, the cow must suffer and be silent; but human beings who sit for portraits seem to lean toward portraits in which they can recognise their own features when they have commissioned an artist to paint them. a man _will_ insist upon even the most brilliant artist painting him in trousers, for instance, instead of in petticoats, however the artist-whim may direct otherwise; and a woman is likely to insist that the artist who paints her portrait shall maintain some recognised shade of brown or blue or gray when he paints her eye, instead of indulging in a burnt orange or maybe pink! these personal preferences certainly put a limit to an artist's genius and keep him from writing himself down a madman. thus, in portrait-painting, with the exactions of truth upon it, lies the hope of art-lovers!" it is the same authority who calls attention to the danger that lies in extremes; either in finding no value in art outside the "old masters," or in admiring pictures so impressionistic that the objects in them need to be labelled before they can be recognised. the true art-lover has a catholic taste, is interested in all forms of art; but he finds beauty where it truly exists and does not allow the nightmare of imagination to mislead him. that which is not beautiful from one point of view or another is not art, but decadence. that which is technical to the exclusion of other elements remains technique pure and simple, workmanship--the bare bones of art. a thing is not art simply because it is fantastic. it may be interesting as showing to what degree some imaginations can become diseased, but it is not pleasing nor is it art. there are fully a thousand pictures that every child should know, since he can hardly know too much of a good thing; but there is room in this volume only to acquaint him with forty-eight and possibly inspire him with the wish to look up the neglected nine hundred and fifty-two. contents introduction i. andrea del sarto, florentine school, - ii. michael angelo (buonarroti), florentine school, - iii. arnold böcklin, modern german school, - iv. marie-rosa bonheur, french school, - v. alessandro botticelli, florentine school, - vi. william adolphe bouguereau, french (genre) school - vii. sir edward burne-jones, english (pre-raphaelite) school, - viii. john constable, english school, - ix. john singleton copley, english school, - x. jean baptiste camille corot, fontainebleau-barbizon school, - xi. correggio (antonio allegri), school of parma, (?)-- xii. paul gustave doré, french school, - xiii. albrecht dürer, nuremberg school, - xiv. mariano fortuny, spanish school, - xv. thomas gainsborough, english school, - xvi. jean léon gérôme, french semi-classical school, - xvii. ghirlandajo, florentine school, - xviii. giotto (di bordone), florentine school, - xix. franz hals, dutch school, - - xx. meyndert hobbema, dutch school, - xxi. william hogarth, school of hogarth (english), - xxii. hans holbein, the younger, german school, - xxiii. william holman hunt, english (pre-raphaelite) school, - xxiv. george inness, american, - xxv. sir edwin henry landseer, english school, - xxvi. claude lorrain (gellée), classical french school, - xxvii. masaccio (tommaso guidi), florentine school, - xxviii. jean louis ernest meissonier, french school, - xxix. jean françois millet, fontainebleau-barbizon school, - xxx. claude monet, impressionist school of france, - xxxi. murillo (bartolomé estéban), andalusian school, - xxxii. raphael (sanzio), umbrian, florentine, and roman schools, - xxxiii. rembrandt (van rijn), dutch school, - xxxiv. sir joshua reynolds, english school, - xxxv. peter paul rubens, flemish school, - xxxvi. john singer sargent, american and foreign schools, - xxxvii. tintoretto (jacopo robusti), venetian school, - xxxviii. titian (tiziano vecelli), venetian school, - xxxix. joseph mallord william turner, english, - xl. sir anthony van dyck, flemish school, - xli. velasquez (diego rodriguez de silva), castilian school, - xlii. paul veronese (paolo cagliari), venetian school, - . xliii. leonardo da vinci, florentine school, - . xliv. jean antoine watteau, french (genre) school, - xlv. sir benjamin west, american, - index illustrations frontispiece the avenue, middleharnis, holland--_hobbema_ madonna of the sack--_andrea del sarto_ daniel--_michael angelo (buonarroti)_ the isle of the dead--_arnold böcklin_ the horse fair--_rosa bonheur_ spring--_alessandro botticelli_ the hay wain--_john constable_ a family picture--_john singleton copley_ the holy night--_correggio (antonio allegri)_ dance of the nymphs--_jean baptiste camille corot_ the virgin as consoler--_wm. adolphe bouguereau_ the love song--_sir edward burne-jones_ the mystic marriage of st. catherine--_correggio_ moses breaking the tablets of the law--_paul gustave doré_ the nativity--_albrecht dürer_ the spanish marriage--_mariana fortuny_ mrs. richard brinsley sheridan--_thomas gainsborough_ the sword dance--_jean léon gérôme_ portrait of giovanna degli albizi--_ghirlandajo (domenico bigordi)_ the nurse and the child--_franz hals_ the meeting of st. john and st. anna at jerusalem--_giotto (di bordone)_ the avenue--_meyndert hobbema_ the marriage contract--_wm. hogarth_ the light of the world--_william holman hunt_ robert cheseman with his falcon--_hans holbein, the younger_ the berkshire hills--_george inness_ the old shepherd's chief mourner--_sir edwin henry landseer_ the artist's portrait--_tommaso masaccio_ acis and galatea--_claude lorrain_ retreat from moscow--_jean louis ernest meissonier_ the angelus--_jean françois millet_ the immaculate conception--_murillo (bartolomé estéban)_ haystack in sunshine--_claude monet_ the sistine madonna--_raphael (sanzio)_ the night watch--_rembrandt (van rijn)_ the duchess of devonshire and her daughter--_sir joshua reynolds_ the infant jesus and st. john--_peter paul rubens_ carmencita--_john singer sargent_ the miracle of st. mark--_tintoretto (jacopo robusti)_ the artist's daughter, lavinia--_titian (tiziano vecelli)_ the fighting téméraire--_joseph mallord william turner_ the children of charles the first--_sir anthony van dyck_ equestrian portrait of don balthasar carlos--_velasquez (diego rodriguez de silva)_ the marriage at cana--_paul veronese_ the death of wolfe--_sir benjamin west_ the artist's two sons--_peter paul rubens_ the last supper--_leonardo da vinci_ fête champêtre--_jean antoine watteau_ i andrea del sarto (pronounced ahn'dray-ah del sar'to) _florentine school_ - _pupil of piero di cosimo_ italian painters received their names in peculiar ways. this man's father was a tailor; and the artist was named after his father's profession. he was in fact "the tailor's andrea," and his father's name was angelo. one story of this brilliant painter which reads from first to last like a romance has been told by the poet, browning, who dresses up fact so as to smother it a little, but there is truth at the bottom. andrea married a wife whom he loved tenderly. she had a beautiful face that seemed full of spirituality and feeling, and andrea painted it over and over again. the artist loved his work and dreamed always of the great things that he should do; but he was so much in love with his wife that he was dependent on her smile for all that he did which was well done, and her frown plunged him into despair. andrea's wife cared nothing for his genius, painting did not interest her, and she had no worthy ambition for her husband, but she loved fine clothes and good living, and so encouraged him enough to keep him earning these things for her. as soon as some money was made she would persuade him to work no more till it was spent; and even when he had made agreements to paint certain pictures for which he was paid in advance she would torment him till he gave all of his time to her whims, neglected his duty and spent the money for which he had rendered no service. thus in time he became actually dishonest, as we shall see. it is a sad sort of story to tell of so brilliant a young man. andrea was born in the gualfonda quarter of florence, and there is some record of his ancestors for a hundred years before that, although their lives were quite unimportant. andrea was one of four children, and as usual with italians of artistic temperament, he was set to work under the eye of a goldsmith. this craftsmanship of a fine order was as near to art as a man could get with any certainty of making his living. it was a time when the italian world bedecked itself with rare golden trinkets, wreaths for women's hair, girdles, brooches, and the like, and the finest skill was needed to satisfy the taste. thus it required talent of no mean order for a man to become a successful goldsmith. andrea did not like the work, and instead of fashioning ornaments from his master's models he made original drawings which did not do at all in a shop where an apprentice was expected to earn his salt. certain fashions had to be followed and people did not welcome fantastic or new designs. because of this, andrea was early put out of his master's shop and set to learn the only business that he could be got to learn, painting. this meant for him a very different teacher from the goldsmith. the artist may be said to have been his own master, because, even when he was apprenticed to a painter he was taught less than he already knew. that first teacher was barile, a coarse and unpleasing man, as well as an incapable one; but he was fair minded, after a fashion, and put andrea into the way of finding better help. after a few years under the direction of piero di cosimo, andrea and a friend, francia bigio, decided to set up shop for themselves. the two devoted friends pitched their tent in the piazza del grano, and made a meagre beginning out of which great things were to grow. they began a series of pictures which was to lead at least one of them to fame. it was in the little piazza, del grano studio that the "baptism of christ" was painted, a partnership work that had been planned in the campagnia dello scalzo. "the baptism" was not much of a picture as great pictures go, but it was a beginning and it was looked at and talked about, which was something at a time when titian and leonardo had set the standard of great work. in the piazza del grano, andrea and his friend lived in the stables of the tuscan grand dukes, with a host of other fine artists, and they had gay times together. andrea was a shy youth, a little timid, and by no means vain of his own work, but he painted with surprising swiftness and sureness, and had a very brilliant imagination. its was his main trouble that he had more imagination than true manhood; he sacrificed everything good to his imagination. after the partnership with his friend, he undertook to paint some frescoes independently, and that work earned for him the name of "andrea senza errori"--andrea the unerring. then, as now, each artist had his own way of working, and andrea's was perhaps the most difficult of all, yet the most genius-like. there were those, michael angelo for example, who laid in backgrounds for their paintings; but andrea painted his subject upon the wet plaster, precisely as he meant it to be when finished. he was unlike the moody michael angelo; unlike the gentle raphael; unlike the fastidious van dyck who came long afterward; he was hail-fellow-well-met among his associates, though often given over to dreaminess. he belonged to a jolly club named the "kettle club," literally, the company of the kettle; and to another called "the trowel," both suggesting an all around good time and much good fellowship the members of these clubs were expected to contribute to their wonderful suppers, and andrea on one occasion made a great temple, in imitation of the baptistry, of jelly with columns of sausages, white birds and pigeons represented the choir and priests. besides being "andrew the unerring," and a "merry andrew," he was also the "tailor's andrew," a man in short upon whom a nickname sat comfortably. he helped to make the history of the "company of the kettle," for he recited and probably composed a touching ballad called "the battle of the mice and the frogs," which doubtless had its origin in a poem of homer's. but all at once, in the midst of his gay careless life came his tragedy; he fell in love with a hatter's wife. this was quite bad enough, but worse was to come, for the hatter shortly died, and the widow was free to marry andrea. after his marriage andrea began painting a series of madonnas, seemingly for no better purpose than to exhibit his wife's beauty over and over again. he lost his ambition and forgot everything but his love for this unworthy woman. she was entirely commonplace, incapable of inspiring true genius or honesty of purpose. a great art critic, vasari, who was andrea's pupil during this time, has written that the wife, lucretia, was abominable in every way. a vixen, she tormented andrea from morning till night with her bitter tongue. she did not love him in the least, but only what his money could buy for her, for she was extravagant, and drove the sensitive artist to his grave while she outlived him forty years. about the time of the artist's marriage he painted one fresco, "the procession of the magi," in which he placed a very splendid substitute for his wife, namely himself. afterward he painted the dead christ which found its way to france and it laid the foundation for andrea's wrongdoing. this picture was greatly admired by the king of france who above all else was a lover of art. francis i. asked andrea to go to his court, as he had commissions for him. he made andrea a money offer and to court he went. he took a pupil with him, but he left his wife at home. at the court of francis i. he was received with great honours, and amid those new and gracious surroundings, away from the tantalising charms of his wife and her shrewish tongue, he began to have an honest ambition to do great things. his work for france was undertaken with enthusiasm, but no sooner was he settled and at peace, than the irrepressible wife began to torment him with letters to return. each letter distracted him more and more, till he told the king in his despair, that he must return home, but that he would come back to france and continue his work, almost at once. francis i., little suspecting the cause of andrea's uneasiness, gave him permission to go, and also a large sum of money to spend upon certain fine works of art which he was to bring back to france. we can well believe that andrea started back to his home with every good intention; that he meant to appease his wife and also his own longing to see her; to buy the king his pictures with the money entrusted to him, and to return to france and finish his work; but, alas, he no sooner got back to his wife than his virtuous purpose fled. she wanted this; she wanted that--and especially she wanted a fine house which could just about be built for the sum of money which the king of france had entrusted to andrea. andrea is a pitiable figure, but he was also a vagabond, if we are to believe vasari. he took the king's money, built his wretched wife a mansion, and never again dared return to france, where his dishonesty made him forever despised. afterward he was overwhelmed with despair for what he had done, and he tried to make his peace with francis; but while that monarch did not punish him directly for his knavery; he would have no more to do with him, and this was the worst punishment the artist could have had. however, his genius was so great that other than french people forgot his dishonesty and he began life anew in his native place. almost all his pictures were on sacred subjects; and finally, when driven from florence to luco by the plague, taking with him his wife and stepdaughter, he began a picture called the "madonna del sacco" (the madonna of the sack). this fresco was to adorn the convent of the servi, and the sketches for it were probably made in luco. when the plague passed and the artist was able to return to florence, he began to paint it upon the cloister walls. andrea, like leonardo, painted a famous "last supper," although the two pictures cannot be compared. in andrea's picture it is said that all the faces are portraits. just before the plague sent him and his family from florence a most remarkable incident took place. raphael had painted a celebrated portrait of pope leo x. in a group, and the picture belonged to ottaviano de medici. duke frederick ii., of mantua, longed to own this picture, and at last requested the medici to give it to him. the duke could not well be refused, but ottaviano wanted to keep so great a work for himself. what was to be done? he was in great trouble over the affair. the situation seemed hopeless. it seemed certain that he must part with his beloved picture to the duke of mantua; but one day andrea del sarto declared that he could make a copy of it that even raphael himself could not tell from his original. ottaviano could scarcely believe this, but he begged andrea to set about it, hoping that it might be true. going at the work in good earnest, andrea painted a copy so exact that the pupil of raphael, who had more or less to do with the original picture, could not tell which was which when he was asked to choose. this pupil, giulio romano, was so familiar with every stroke of raphael's that if he were deceived surely any one might be; so the replica was given to the duke of mantua, who never found out the difference. years afterward giulio romano showed the picture to vasari, believing it to be the original raphael, neither andrea nor the medici having told romano the truth. but vasari, who knew the whole story, declared to romano that what he showed him was but a copy. romano would not believe it, but vasari told him that he would find upon the canvas a certain mark, known to be andrea's. romano looked, and behold, the original raphael became a del sarto! the original picture hangs in the pitti palace, while the copy made by andrea is in the naples gallery. the introduction of andrea to vasari was one of the few gracious things, that michael angelo ever did. about andrea he said to raphael at the time: "there is a little fellow in florence who will bring sweat to your brows if ever he is engaged in great works." raphael, would certainly have agreed, with him had he known what was to happen in regard to the leo x. picture. notwithstanding andrea's unfortunate temperament, which caused him to be guided mostly by circumstances instead of guiding them, he was said to be improving all the time in his art. he had a great many pupils, but none of them could tolerate his wife for long, so they were always changing. throughout his life the artist longed for tenderness and encouragement from his wife, and finally, without ever receiving it, he died in a desolate way, untended even by her. after the siege of florence there came a pestilence, and andrea was overtaken by it. his wife, afraid that she too would become ill, would have nothing to do with him. she kept away and he died quite alone, few caring that he was dead and no one taking the trouble to follow him to his grave. thus one of the greatest of florentine painters lived and died. years after his death, the artist jacopo da empoli, was copying andrea's "birth of the virgin" when an old woman of about eighty years on her way to mass stopped to speak with him. she pointed to the beautiful virgin's face in the picture and said: "i am that woman." and so she was--the widow of the great andrea. though she had treated him so cruelly, she was glad to have it known that she was the widow of the dead genius. plate--the madonna del sacco _(madonna of the sack)_ this picture is a fresco in the cloister of the annunziata at florence, and it is called "of the sack" because joseph is posed leaning against a sack, a book open upon his knees. doubtless the model for this madonna is andrea del sarto's abominable wife, but she looks very sweet and simple in the picture. the folds of mary's garments are beautifully painted, so is the poise of her head, and all the details of the picture except the figure of the child. there is a line of stiffness there and it lacks the softness of many other pictures of the infant jesus. plate--the holy family in this picture in the pitti palace, florence, andrea del sarto represents all the characters in a serious mood. there are st. john and elizabeth, mary and the infant jesus, and there is no touch of playfulness such as may be found in similar groups by other artists of the time. attention is concentrated upon jesus who seems to be learning from his young cousin. the left hand, resting upon mary's arm is badly drawn and in character does not seem to belong to the figure of the child. a full, overhanging upper lip is a dominant feature in each face. other works of andrea del sarto are "charity," which is in the louvre; "madonna dell' arpie," "a head of christ," "the dead christ," "four saints," "joseph in egypt," his own portrait, and "joseph's dream." ii michael angelo (buonarroti) (pronounced meek-el-ahn-jel-o (bwone-ar-ro'tee)) _florentine school_ - _pupil of ghirlandajo_ this wonderful man did more kinds of things, at a time when almost all artists were versatile, than any other but one. probably leonardo da vinci was gifted in as many different ways as michael angelo, and in his own lines was as powerful. this florentine's life was as tragic as it was restless. there is a tablet in a room of a castle which stands high upon a rocky mount, near the village of caprese, which tells that michael angelo was born in that place. the great castle is now in ruins, and more than four hundred years of fame have passed since the little child was born therein. the unhappy existence of the artist seems to have been foreshadowed by an accident which happened to his mother before he was born. she was on horseback, riding with her husband to his official post at chiusi, for he was governor of chiusi and caprese. her horse stumbled, fell, and badly hurt her. this was two months before michael angelo was born, and misfortune ever pursued him. the father of angelo was descended from an aristocratic house--the counts of canossa were his ancestors--and in that day the profession of an artist was not thought to be dignified. hence the father had quite different plans for the boy; but the son persisted and at last had his way. when he was still a little child his father finished his work as an official at caprese and returned to florence; but he left the little angelo behind with his nurse. that nurse was the wife of a stonemason, and almost as soon as the boy could toddle he used to wander about the quarries where the stonecutters worked, and doubtless the baby joy of angelo was to play at chiseling as it is the pleasure of modern babies to play at peg-top. after a time he was sent for to go to florence to begin his education. in florence he fell in with a young chap who, like himself, loved art, but who was fortunate enough already to be apprenticed to the great painter of his time--ghirlandajo. one happy day this young granacci volunteered to take michael angelo to his master's studio, and there angelo made such an impression on ghirlandajo that he was urged by the artist to become his pupil. all the world began to seem rose coloured to the ambitious boy, and he started his life-work with enthusiasm. at that time he was thirteen years old, full of hope and of love for his kind; but his good fortune did not last long. he had hardly settled to work in ghirlandajo's studio than his genius, which should have made him beloved, made him hated by his master. angelo drew superior designs, created new art-ideas, was more clever in all his undertakings than any other pupil--even ahead of his master; and almost at once ghirlandajo became furiously jealous. this enmity between pupil and master was the beginning of angelo's many misfortunes. one day he got into a dispute with a fellow student, torregiano, who broke his nose. this deformity alone was a tragedy to one like michael angelo who loved everything beautiful, yet must go through life knowing himself to be ill-favoured. in height he was a little man, topped by an abnormally large head which was part of the penalty he had to pay for his talents. he had a great, broad forehead, and an eye that did not gleam nor express the beauty of his creative mind, but was dull, and lustreless, matching his broken, flattened nose. indeed he was a tragedy to himself. in the "history of painting" muther describes his unhappy disposition: "in his youthful years he never learned what love meant. 'if thou wishest to conquer me,' in old age he addresses love, 'give me back my features, from which nature has removed all beauty.' whenever in his sonnets he speaks of passion, it is always of pain and tears, of sadness and unrequited longing, never of the fulfilment of his wishes." then, too, michael angelo had a quarrelsome disposition, and he was harsh in his criticism of others. he hated leonardo da vinci more for his great physical beauty than for his genius. he quarreled with most of his contemporaries, never joined the assemblies of his brother artists, but dwelt altogether apart. his was a gloomy and melancholy disposition and he never found relief outside his work. he was all kinds of an artist--poet, sculptor, architect, painter--and although he worked with the irregularity of true genius, he worked indefatigably when once he began. it is said that when he was making his "david" he never removed his clothing the whole time he was employed upon the work, but dropped down when too exhausted to work more, and slept wherever he fell. his first flight from the workshop of ghirlandajo was to the gardens of the great florentine prince, lorenzo de' medici, who had sent to ghirlandajo for two of his best pupils. he wished them to come to his gardens and study the beautiful greek statues which ornamented them. the choice fell to angelo and granacci. probably those statues in lorenzo's garden were the first glimpses of really great art that michael angelo ever had. certain it is that he was overwhelmed with happiness when he was given permission to copy what he would, and at once he fell to work with his chisel. his first work in that garden was upon the head of an old faun; and lorenzo, walking by, curious to know to what use the lad was putting his opportunity, made a criticism: "you have made your faun old," he said, "yet you have left all the teeth; at such an age, generally the teeth are wanting." angelo had nothing to say and the prince walked on, but when next he came that way, he found that angelo had broken off two of the faun's teeth; and this recognition of his criticism pleased lorenzo so much that he invited angelo to live with him. at first his father objected. he felt himself to be an aristocrat, and sculpture and painting were indeed low occupations for his son, who he had resolved should be nothing less than a silk merchant. nevertheless, the prince's command, united with the son's pleading, compelled the father to give up his cherished dream of making a merchant of him, and angelo went to live in the palace. then indeed what seemed a beautiful life opened out. he was dressed in fine clothing, dined with princes, and possibly he was grateful to his patron. some historians say so, and add that when lorenzo died angelo wept, and returned sadly to his father's house to mourn, but this tale seems at odds with what else we know of angelo's unangelic, envious and bitter disposition. it is quite certain, however, that with the death of lorenzo, angelo's, fortunes became greatly changed. another prince followed in line--pietro de' medici--but he was a poor thing, who brought little good to anybody. he had small use for michael angelo's genius, but it is said that he did give him one commission. after a great storm one day, he asked him to make a snow-man for him, and angelo obligingly complied. it was doubtless a very beautiful snow-man, but although it was angelo's it melted in the night, even as if it had been johnny's or tommy's snow-man, and left no trace behind. in rome there was a high and haughty pope on the throne--julius ii.--who had probably not his match for obstinacy and haughtiness, excepting in the great painter and sculptor. when angelo went to rome, he was bound to come in conflict with julius for it was popes and princes who gave art any reason for being in those days, and the church prescribed what kind of art should be cultivated. michael was to come directly under the command of the pope and such a combination promised trouble. kings themselves had to remove their crowns and hats to julius, and why not michael angelo? yet there he stood, covered, before the pope, opposing his greatness to that of the pope. soderini says that angelo treated the pope as the king of france never would have dared treat him; but angelo may have known that kings of france might be born and die, times without number, while there would never be born another michael angelo. there could be nothing but antagonism between angelo and julius, and soon after the artist returned to florence; but the necessity for following his profession enabled julius to tame him after all, and it is said that the pope led him back to rome, later, "with a halter about his neck." this must have been agony to angelo. back in rome, he was commissioned to make a tomb for the pope. he had no sooner set about the preliminaries--the getting of suitable marble for his work--than he began to quarrel with the men who were to hew it. when that difficulty was settled, and the marble was got out, he had a set-to with the shipowners who were to transport the stone, and that row became so serious that the sculptor was besieged in his own house. at another and later time, when he was engaged upon the frescoes of the sistine chapel, he was made to work by force. he accused the man who had built the scaffolding upon which he must stand, or lie, to paint, of planning his destruction. he suspected the very assistants whom he, himself, had chosen to go from florence, of having designs upon his life. he locked the chapel against them, and they had to turn away when they went to begin work. because of his insane suspicion he did alone the enormous work of the frescoes. doubtless he was half mad, just as he was wholly a genius. by the time he had finished those frescoes he was so exhausted and overworked that he wrote piteously to his people at home, "i have not a friend in rome, neither do i wish nor have use for any." this of course was not true; or he would not have made the statement. "i hardly find time to take nourishment. not an ounce more can i bear than already rests upon my shoulders." even when the work was done he felt no happiness because of it, but complained about everything and everybody. if angelo thought this an unhappy day, worse was in store for him. julius ii. died and in his place there came to reign upon the papal throne, leo x. if michael angelo had been restricted in his work before, he was almost jailed under leo x. julius had been a virile, forceful man, and michael angelo was the same. since he must be restrained and dictated to, it was possible for the artist to listen to a man who was in certain respects strong like himself, but to be under the thumb of a weak, effeminate person like leo, was the tragedy of tragedies to angelo. that was a marvellous time in rome. all its citizens had become so pleasure-loving that the world, stood still to wonder. when the pope banqueted, he had the golden plates from which fair women had eaten hurled into the tiber, that they might never be profaned by a less noble use than they had known. from all this riot and madness of pleasure, michael angelo stood aside with frowning brow and scornful mien. he approved of nothing and of nobody--despising even raphael, the gentle and loving man whom the pleasure-crazed people of rome paused to smile upon and love. the pope said that angelo was "terrible," and that he filled everybody with fear. finally, rome so resented his frowning looks and his surly ways that work was provided for him at a distance. he was sent to florence again to build a facade. while there, the city was conquered, and angelo was one who fought for its freedom, but even so, he fled just at the crisis. thus he ever did the wrong thing--excepting when he worked. in florence he had planned to do mighty things, but he never accomplished any one of them. he planned to make a wonderful colossal statue on a cliff near carrara, and also he resolved to make the tomb of julius the nucleus of a "forest of statues." michael angelo never married, but he was burdened with a family and all its cares. he supported his brothers and even his nephews, and took care of his father. all of those people came to him with their difficulties and with their demands for money. he chided, quarreled, repelled, yet met every obligation. he would sit beside the sick-bed of a servant the night through, but growl at the demands of his near relatives--and it is not unlikely that he had good reason. at last he withdrew himself from all human society but that of little children, whom he cared to speak with and to please. he would have naught to do with men of genius like himself; and when he fell from a scaffolding and injured himself, the physician had to force his way through a barred window, in order to get into the sick man's presence to serve him. an illustration of his determined solitude is given in the "young people's story of art:" "there had long been lying idle in florence an immense block of marble. one hundred years before a sculptor had tried to carve something from it, but had failed. this was now given to michael angelo. he was to be paid twelve dollars a month, and to be allowed two years in which to carve a statue. he made his design in wax; and then built a tower around the block, so that he might work inside without being seen." everything angelo undertook bore the marks of gigantic enterprise. although he never succeeded in making the tomb of julius ii. the central piece in his forest of statues, the undertaking was marvellous enough. his original plan was to make the tomb three stories high and to ornament it with forty statues, and if st. peter's church was large enough to hold it, the work was to be placed therein; but if not, a church was to be built specially to hold the tomb. when at last, in spite of his difficulties with workmen and shipowners, the marbles were deposited in the great square before st. peter's, they filled the whole place; and the pope, wishing to watch the progress of the work and not himself to be observed, had a covered way built from the vatican to the workshop of angelo in the square, by which he might come and go as he chose, while an order was issued that the sculptor was to be admitted at all times to the vatican. no sooner was this arrangement completed than angelo's enemies frightened the pope by telling him there was danger in making his tomb before his death; and with these superstitions haunting him julius ii. stopped the work, leaving angelo without the means to pay for his marbles. with the doors of the vatican closed to him, angelo withdrew, post haste to florence--and who can blame him? nevertheless, the work was resumed after infinite trouble on the pope's part. he had to send again and again for angelo and after forty years, the work was finished. there the sequel of the sculptor's forty-years war with self and the world stands to-day in "moses," the wonderful, commanding central figure which seems to reflect all the fierce power which angelo had to keep in check during a life-time. the command of julius that he should paint the ceiling of the sistine chapel aroused all his fierce resistance. he did it under protest, all the while accusing those about him of having designs upon his life. "i am not a painter, but a sculptor," he said. "such a man as thou is everything that he wishes to be," the pope replied. "but this is an affair of raphael. give him this room to paint and let me carve a mountain!" but no, he must paint the ceiling; but to render it easier for him the pope told him he might fill in the spaces with saints, and charge a certain amount for each. this angelo, who was first of all an artist, refused to do. he would do the work rightly or not at all. so he made his own plans and cut himself a cardboard helmet, into the front of which he thrust a candle, as if it were a davy lamp, and he lay upon his back to work day and night at the hated task. during those months he was compelled to look up so continually, that never afterward was he able to look down without difficulty. when he had finished the work julius had some criticisms to make. "those dresses on your saints are such poor things," he said. "not rich enough--such very poor things!" "well, they were poor things," was angelo's answer. "the saints did not wear golden ornaments, nor gold on their garments." after julius ii. and leo x. came pope paul iii., and he, like the other two, determined to have angelo for his workman. indeed all his life, michael angelo's gifts were commanded by the church of rome. it was for paul iii. he painted the "last judgment." his former work upon the sistine chapel had been the story of the creation. all his work was of a mighty and allegorical nature; tremendous shoulders, mighty limbs, herculean muscles that seemed fit to support the universe. these allegories are made of hundreds of figures. to-day they are still there, though dimmed by the smoke of centuries of incense, and dismembered by the cracking of plaster and disintegration of materials. angelo's methods of work, as well as their results, were oppressive. in his youth, while trying to perfect himself in his study of the human form, he drew or modelled, from nude corpses. he had these conveyed by stealth from the hospital into the convent of santo spirito, where he had a cell and there he worked, alone. he was concentrated, mentally and emotionally, upon himself. the only remark he made after the blow from torregiano was, "you will be remembered only as the man who broke my nose!" this proved nearly true, since torregiano was banished, and murdered by the spanish inquisition. all sorts of anecdotes have floated through the centuries concerning this man and his work. for example, he made a statue of a sleeping cupid, which was buried in the ground for a time that it might assume the appearance of age, and pass for an antique. afterward it was sold to the cardinal san giorgio for two hundred ducats, though michael angelo received only thirty. nevertheless, he died a rich man, after having cared for a numerous family, while he himself lived like a man without means. all the tranquillity he ever knew he enjoyed in his old age. it was characteristic of his perversity that he left his name upon nothing that he made, with one exception. vasari relates the story of that exception: "the love and care which michael angelo had given to this group, 'in paradise,' were such that he there left his name--a thing he never did again for any work--on the cincture which girdles the robe of our lady; for it happened one day that michael angelo, entering the place where it was erected, found a large assemblage of strangers from lombardy there, who were praising it highly; one of them asking who had done it, was told, 'our hunchback of milan'; hearing which michael angelo remained silent, although surprised that his work should be attributed to another. but one night he repaired to st. peter's with a light and his chisels, to engrave his name on the figure, which seems to breathe a spirit as perfect as her form and countenance." if his youth had been given to sculpture, his maturity to the painting of wondrous frescoes, so his old age was devoted to architecture, and as architect he rebuilt the decaying st. peter's. in this work he felt that he partly realised his ideal. sculpture meant more to him, "did more for the glory of god," than any other form of art. when he had finished his work on st. peter's, he is said to have looked upon it and exclaimed: "i have hung the pantheon in the air!" this colossal genius died in rome, and was carried by the light of torches from that city back to his better loved florence, where he was buried. his tomb was made in the santa croce, and upon it are three female figures representing michael angelo's three wonderful arts: architecture, sculpture and painting. no artist was greater than he. his will committed "his soul to god, his body to the earth, and his property to his nearest relatives." plate--daniel this wonderful painting is a part of the decoration of the sistine chapel in rome. the picture of the prophet tells so much in itself, that a description seems absurd. it is enough to call attention to the powerful muscles in the arm, the fall of the hand, and then to speak of the main characteristics of the artist's pictures. it is extraordinary that there is no blade of grass to be found in any painting by michael angelo. he loved to paint but one thing, and that was the naked man, the powerful muscles, or the twisted limbs of those in great agony. he loved only to work upon vast spaces of ceiling or wall. look at this picture of daniel and see how like sculpture the pose and modelling appear to be. first of all, michael angelo was a sculptor, and most of the painting which fate forced him to do has the characteristics of sculpture. one critic has remarked that he loves to think of this strange man sitting before the marble quarry of pietra santa and thinking upon all the beings hidden in the cliff--beings which he should fashion from the marble. it was said that in michael angelo's hands the holy family became a race of titans, and where others would have put plants or foliage, angelo placed men and naked limbs to fill the space. when his subject made some sort of herbage necessary, he invented a kind of mediæval fern in place of grass and familiar leaves. everything appears brazen and hard and mighty, suggestive of angelo's own throbbing spirit and maddened soul. most of his work, when illustrated, must be shown not as a whole but in sections, but one can best mention them as entire picture themes. on the ceiling of the sistine chapel are nine frescoes describing "the creation of the world," "the fall of man" and "the deluge." "the last judgment" occupies the entire altar wall in the same chapel of the vatican. "the holy family" is in the uffizi gallery, florence. iii arnold bÖcklin (pronounced bek'-lin) _modern german school (düsseldorf)_ - this splendid artist is so lately dead that it does not seem proper yet to discuss his personal history, but we can speak understandingly of his art, for we already know it to be great art, which will stand the test of time. his imagination turned toward subjects of solemn grandeur and his work is very impressive and beautiful. he was born in basel, "one of the most prosaic towns in europe." his father was a swiss merchant, and not poor; thus the son had ordinarily good chances to make an artist of himself. he was born at a time when to be an artist had long ceased to be a reproach, and men no longer discouraged their sons who felt themselves inspired to paint great pictures. when böcklin was nineteen years old he took himself to düsseldorf, with his merchant father's permission, and settled down to learn his art, but in that city he found mostly "sentimental and anecdotal" pictures being painted, which did not suit him at all. then he took himself off to brussels, where again he was not satisfied, and so went to paris. but while in brussels he had copied many old masters, and had advanced himself very much, so that he did not present himself in paris raw and untried in art. at first he studied in the louvre, then went to rome, seeking ever the best, and being hard to satisfy. he found rest and tranquillity in zürich, a city in his native country, but it was italy that had most influenced his work. he loved the campagna of rome with its ruins and the sad grandeur of the crumbling tombs lining its way, and therefore a certain mysterious, grand, and solemn character made his pictures unlike those of any other artist. he loved to paint in vertical (up-and-down) fines, rather than with the conventional horizontal outlines that we find in most paintings. this method gives his pictures a different quality from any others in the world. he loved best of all to paint landscape, and it is said of him that "as the greeks peopled their streams and woods and waves with creatures of their imagination, so böcklin makes the waterfall take shape as a nymph, or the mists which rise above the water source wreathe into forms of merry children; or in some wild spot hurls centaurs together in fierce combat, or makes the slippery, moving wave give birth to nereids and tritons." muther, art-critic and biographer, calls our attention to the similarity between wagner's music and böcklin's painting. while wagner was "luring the colours of sound from music," böcklin's "symphonies of colour streamed forth like a crashing orchestra," and he calls him the greatest colour-poet of the time. in appearance böcklin was fine of form, healthy and wholesome in all his thoughts and way of living. in he took part in revolutionary politics and later this did him great harm. only the influence of his friends kept him from ruin. after the franco-prussian war he was made minister of fine arts. in this office he rendered great service; but because he had to witness the wrecking of the column vendôme in order to save the louvre and the luxembourg from the mob, he was censured; indeed so heavy a fine was imposed that it took his whole fortune to pay it; and he was banished into the bargain. from to he lived in or near florence, and he died at fiesole, january th, . plate--the isle of the dead this picture is perhaps the greatest of the many great arnold böcklin paintings, and it is both fascinating and awe-inspiring. it best shows his liking for vertical lines in art. the isle of the dead is of a rocky, shaft-like formation in which we may see hewn-out tombs; and there, tall cypress trees are growing. the traces of man's work in the midst of this sombre, ideal, and mystic scene add to the impressiveness of the picture. the isle stands high and lonely in the midst of a sea. the water seems silently to lap the base of the rocks and the trees are in black shadow, massed in the centre. it looks very mysterious and still. there is a stone gateway touched with the light of a dying day. it is sunset and the dead is being brought to its resting place in a tiny boat, all the smaller for its relation to the gloomy grandeur of the isle which it is approaching. one figure is standing in the boat, facing the island, and the sunlight falls full upon his back and touches the boat, making that spot stand out brilliantly from all the rest of the picture. among böcklin's paintings are "naiads at play," which hangs in the museum at basel, "a villa by the sea," "the sport of the waves," "regions of joy," "flora," and "venus dispatching cupid." iv marie-rosa bonheur (pronounced rosa bon-er) _french school_ - _pupil of raymond b. bonheur_ rosa bonheur, landseer, and murillo maybe called "children's painters" in this book because they painted things that children, as well as grown-ups, certainly can enjoy. to be sure, murillo was a very different sort of artist from rosa bonheur or landseer, but if the two latter painted the most beautiful, animals--dogs, sheep, and horses--murillo painted the loveliest little children. rosa was the best pupil of her father; raymond b. bonheur. in bordeaux they lived together the peaceful life of artists, the father being already a well known painter when his daughter was born. she became, as mr. hamerton, who knew her, said, "the most accomplished female painter who ever lived ... a pure, generous woman as well and can hardly be too much admired ... as a woman or an artist. she is simple in her tastes and habits of life and many stories are told of her generosity to others." after a time the bonheurs moved to paris where young rosa could have better opportunities; and there she put on man's clothing, which she wore all her life thereafter. she wore a workingman's blouse and trousers, and tramped about looking more like a man than a woman with her short hair. this, made everybody stare at her and think her very queer, but people no longer believe that she dressed herself thus in order to advertise herself and attract attention; but because it was the most convenient costume for her to get about in. she went to all sorts of places; the stockyards, slaughter houses, all about the streets of paris, to learn of things and people, especially of animals, which she wished most to paint. she could hardly have gone about thus if she had worn women's clothing. rosa bonheur exhibited her first painting at the _salon_ in , and this was twelve years before her beloved father died; thus he had the happiness of knowing that the daughter whom he had taught so lovingly was on the road to success and fortune. he knew that when fortune should come to her she would use it well. the year that she exhibited her work in the _salon_ she painted only two little pictures--one of rabbits, the other of sheep and goats--but they were so splendidly done that all the critics knew a great woman artist had arrived. it was then that her enemies, those who were becoming jealous of her work, said that she was wearing men's clothing in order to attract attention to herself. soon her work began to be bought by the french government, which was a sure sign of her power. she was already much beloved by the people. in the meantime we in america and others in england had heard of mademoiselle bonheur, but we heard far less about her painting than we did about her masculine garb. we thought of her mostly as an eccentric woman; but one day came "the horse fair," and all the world heard of that, so the artist was to be no longer judged by the clothes she wore but by her art. finally, she received the cross of the legion of honour, and also was made a member of the institute of antwerp. she lived near fontainebleau; her studio a peaceful retired home, till the franco-prussian war came about. then she and others began to fear that her studio and pictures would be destroyed, so the artist was forced to stop her work and prepared to go elsewhere. but the crown prince of prussia himself ordered that mademoiselle bonheur should not even be disturbed. her work had made her belong to all the world and all the world was to protect her if need be. rosa bonheur had a brother who, some critics said, was the better artist, but if that were true it is likely that his popularity would in some degree have approached that of his sister. rosa bonheur did not paint many large canvases, but mostly small ones, or only moderately large; but when she painted sheep it seems that one might shear the wool, it stands so fleecy and full; while her horses rampage and curvet, showing themselves off as if they were alive. plate--the horse fair this picture was exhibited all over the world very nearly. it was carried to england and to america, and won admiration wherever it was seen. finally it was sold in america. it was first exhibited in , the year in which the artist's father died. mr. ernest gambart was the first who bought the picture, and he wrote of it to his friend, mr. s.p. avery: "i will give you the real history of 'the horse fair,' now in new york. it was painted in , by rosa bonheur, then in her thirtieth year, and exhibited in the next _salon_. though much admired it did not find a purchaser. it was soon after exhibited in ghent, meeting again with much appreciation, but was not sold, as art did not flourish at the time. in the picture was sent by rosa bonheur to her native town of bordeaux and exhibited there. she offered to sell it to the town at the very low price , francs ($ , ). while there, i asked her if she would sell it to me, and allow me to take it to england and have it engraved. she said: 'i wish to have my picture remain in france. i will once more impress on my countrymen, my wish to sell it to them for , francs. if they refuse, you can have it, but if you take it abroad, you must pay me , francs.' the town failing to make the purchase, i at once accepted these terms, and rosa bonheur then placed the picture at my disposal. i tendered her the , francs and she said: 'i am much gratified at your giving me such a noble price, but i do not like to feel that i have taken advantage of your liberality; let us see how we can combine in the matter. you will not be able to have an engraving made from so large a canvas. suppose i paint you a small one from the same subject, of which i will make you a present.' of course i accepted the gift, and thus it happened that the large work went travelling over the kingdom on exhibition, while thomas landseer was making an engraving from the quarter-size replica. "after some time (in i think), i sold the original picture to mr. william p. wright, new york (whose picture gallery and residence were at weehawken, n.j.), for the sum of , francs, but later i understood that mr. stewart paid a much larger price for it on the breaking up of mr. wright's gallery. the quarter size replica, from which the engraving was made, i finally sold to mr. jacob bell, who gave it in to the nation, and it is now in the national gallery, london. a second, still smaller replica, was painted a few years later, and was resold some time ago in london for £ , ($ , ). there is also a smaller water-colour drawing which was sold to mr. bolckow for , guineas ($ , ), and is now an heirloom belonging to the town of middlesbrough. that is the whole history of this grand work. the stewart canvas is the real and true original, and only large size 'horse-fair.' "once in mr. stewart's collection, it never left his gallery until the auction sale of his collection, march th, , when it was purchased by mr. cornelius vanderbilt for the sum of $ , , and presented to the metropolitan museum of art." and thus we have the whole story of the "horse-fair." the picture is - / inches high, and inches wide, and it contains a great number of horses, some of which are ridden, while others are led, and all are crowding with wild gaiety toward the fair where it is quite plain they know they are about to be admired and their beauty shown to the best advantage. other well-known rosa bonheurs are "ploughing," "shepherd guarding sheep," "highland sheep," "scotch deer," "american mustangs," and "the study of a lioness." v alessandro botticelli (pronounced ah-lays-sahn'dro bo't-te-chel'lee) _florentine school,_ - (vasari's dates) _pupil of filippo lippi and verrocchio_ botticelli took his name from his first master, as was the fashion in those days. the relation of master and apprentice was very close, not at all like the relation of pupil and teacher to-day. botticelli's father was a florentine citizen, mariano filipepi, and he wished his son to become a goldsmith; hence the lad was soon apprenticed to botticelli, the goldsmith. as a scholar, the little goldsmith had not distinguished himself. indeed it is said that as a boy he would not "take to any sort of schooling in reading, writing, or arithmetic." it cannot be said that this failure distinguished him as a genius, or the world would be full of genius-boys; but the result was that he early began to learn his trade. fortunately for him and us, botticelli, the smith, was a man of some wisdom and when he saw that the lad originated beautiful designs and had creative genius he did not treat the matter with scorn, as the master of andrea del sarto had done, but sent him instead to fra filippo (lippo lippi) to be taught the art of painting. so kind a deed might well establish a feeling of devotion on little alessandro's part and make him wish to take his master's name. fra filippo was a carmelite monk, merry and kindly; simple, good, and gifted, but his temperament did not seem to influence his young pupil. of all unhappy, morbid men, botticelli seems to have been the most so, unless we are to except michael angelo. after studying with the monk, botticelli was summoned by pope sixtus iv. to rome to decorate a new chapel in the vatican. before that time his whole life had been greatly influenced by the teachings of savonarola who had preached both passionately and learnedly in florence, advocating liberty. from the time he fell under savonarola's wonderful power, the artist grew more and more mystic and morbid. in rome it was the custom to have the portraits of conspirators, or persons of high degree who were revolutionary or otherwise objectionable to the state, hung outside the public palace, and in botticelli's time there was a famous disturbance among the aristocrats of the state. in the powerful pazzi family conspired against the medici family, which then actually had control. it was botticelli who was engaged to paint the portraits of the pazzi family, which to their shame and humiliation were to be displayed upon the palace walls. one peculiarity of this artist's pictures was that he used actual goldleaf to make the high lights upon hair, leaves, and draperies. the effect of the use of this gold was very beautiful, if unusual, and it may have been that his apprenticeship as a goldsmith suggested to him such a device. also it was he who created certain characteristics of painting that have since been thought original with burne-jones. this was the use of long stiff lily-stalks or other upright details in his compositions. examples of this idea, which produced so weird an effect, will be found in his allegory of "spring," where stiff tree-trunks form a part of the background. in the "madonna of the palms" upright lily-stalks are held in pale and trembling hands. like michael angelo, who came years afterward, botticelli was a guest of the great lorenzo the "magnificent," in florence. it was by botticelli's hand that the greater painter sent a letter to lorenzo from a duchess friend who was also his patron. this was in angelo's youth; in botticelli's old age. all his life was a drama of morbid seeking after the unattainable, and finally he became so poor and helpless that in his old age he would have starved had lorenzo de' medici not taken care of him. lorenzo and other friends who in spite of his gloominess admired his real piety, gathered about him and kept him from starvation. on his "nativity," botticelli wrote: "this picture i, alessandro, painted at the end of the year in the troubles of italy, in the halftime after the time, during the fulfilment of the eleventh of john, in the second woe of the apocalypse, in the loosing the devil for three and a half years. afterward he shall be chained according to the twelfth of john, and see him trodden down as in this picture." all of this is interesting because botticelli himself wrote it, but it is not very easily understood by any child, nor by many grown people. botticelli did some very extraordinary things, but whether they are beautiful or not one must decide for himself. they are paintings so characteristic that one must think them very beautiful or else not at all so. plate--la primavera _(spring)_ in this picture we have the forerunner of a modern painter, because we see in it certain, qualities that we find in böcklin. look at the effect of vertical lines; the tree trunks, and the poses of the slender women. over all hovers a cupid who is sending love-shafts into the hearts of all in springtime. notice the lacy effect of the flowers that bestar the wind-blown gown of "la primavera," the fern-like leaves that fleck the background; the draperies that do not conceal the forms of the nymphs of the lovely springtime. the very spirit of spring is seen in all the half-floating, half-dancing, gliding, diaphanous figures of the forest. the flowers of "la primavera's" crown are blue and white cornflowers and primroses. she scatters over the earth tulips, anemones, and narcissus. the painting is allegorical and unique. never were such fluttering odds and ends of draperies painted before, nor such fascinating effects had from canvas, paint, or brush. the picture hangs in florence in the uffizi gallery. a german critic tells us that the "realm of venus," is a better title for this picture, and that it was painted after a poem of that name. other pictures by this artist are: "the birth of venus," "pallas," "judith," "holofernes," "st. augustine," "adoration of the magi," and "st. sebastian." vi william adolphe bouguereau (pronounced w. a'dolf bou-gair-roh) _french (genre) school_ - _pupil of picot and the ecole des beaux-arts_ bouguereau's business-like father meant his son also to be business-like, but he made the mistake of permitting him to go to a drawing school in bordeaux and there, to his father's chagrin, the youngster took the annual prize. after that there seemed nothing for the father to do but grin and bear it, because the son decided to be an artist and had fairly won his right to be one. young bouguereau had no money, and therefore he went to live with an uncle at saintonge, a priest, who had much sympathy with the boy's wish to paint, and he left him free to do the best he could for himself in art. he got a chance to paint some portraits, and when he and his uncle talked the matter over it was decided that he should take the money got for them, and go to paris. it was there that he sought picot, his first truly helpful teacher; and there, for the first time he learned more than he already knew about art. all bouguereau's opportunities in life were made by himself, by his own genius. no one gave him anything; he earned all. he longed to go to italy, and in the ecole des beaux-arts he won the prix de rome, which made possible a journey to the land of great artists. the french government began to buy his work, and he began to receive commissions to decorate walls in great buildings; thus, gradually, he made for himself fame and fortune. when this artist undertook to paint sacred subjects, of great dignity, he was not at his best; but when he chose children and mothers and everyday folk engaged about their everyday business, he painted beautifully. americans have bought many of his pictures and he has had more popularity in this country than anywhere outside of france. some authorities give the birthplace of bouguereau as la rochelle; at any rate he died there at midnight, on the nineteenth of august, . plate--the virgin as consoler the main distinction about this artist's pictured faces is the peculiarly earnest expression he has given to the eyes. in this picture of the virgin there is great genius in the pose and death-look of the little child whose mother has flung herself across the lap of mary, abandoned to her agony. this painting is hung in the luxembourg. others by the same master are called "psyche and cupid" "birth of venus," "innocence," and "at the well." vii sir edward burne-jones _english (pre-raphaelite) school_ - _pupil of rossetti_ this artist has been called the most original of all contemporaneous artists. he has also been called the "lyric painter"; meaning that he is to painting what the lyric poet is to literature. his work once known can almost always be recognised wherever seen afterward. he did not slavishly follow the pre-raphaelite school, yet he drew most of his ideas from its methods. he was, in the use of stiff lines, a follower of botticelli, and not original in that detail, as some have seemed to think. plate--chant d'amour _(the love-song)_ this is a picture in the true burne-jones style: a beautiful woman in billowy draperies, playing upon a harp forms the central figure of the group of three--a listener on either side of her. there is the attractiveness of the burne-jones method about this picture, but after all there seems to be no very good reason for its having been painted. the subject thus treated has only a negative value, and little suggestion of thought or dramatic idea. another picture of this artist, in which his use of stiff draperies is specially shown, is that of the women at the tomb of christ, when they find the stone rolled away and, looking around, see the saviour's figure before them. the scene is low and cavern-like, with a brilliant light surrounding the tomb. this artist also painted "the vestal virgin," "king cophetua and the beggar maid," "pan and psyche," "the golden stairs," and "love among the ruins." viii john constable _english school_ - _pupil of the royal academy_ john constable was the son of a "yeoman farmer" who meant to make him also a yeoman farmer. mostly we find that the fathers of our artists had no higher expectations for their sons than to have them take up their own business; to begin as they had, and to end as they expected to. but in john constable's case, as with all the others, the father's methods of living did not at all please the son, and having most of all a liking for picture-making; young john set himself to planning his own affairs. nevertheless, the foundation of john's art was laid right there in the suffolk farmer's home and conditions. he was born in east bergholt, and the father seems to have believed in windmills, for early in life the signs of wind and weather became a part of the son's education. he learned a deal more of atmospheric conditions there on his father's windmill planted farm than he could possibly have learned shut up in a studio, french fashion. as a little boy he came to know all the signs of the heavens; the clouds gathering for storm or shine; the bending of the trees in the blast; all of these he loved, and later on made the principal subjects of his art. he learned to observe these things as a matter of business and at his father's command; thus we may say that he studied his life-work from his very infancy. all about him were beautiful hedgerows, picturesque cottages with high pitched roofs covered with thatch, and it was these beauties which bred one other great landscape painter besides constable, of whom we shall presently speak, gainsborough. at last, graduating from windmills, john went to london. he had a vacation from the work set him by his father, and for two years he painted "cottages, studied anatomy," and did the drudgery of his art; but there was little money in it for him, and soon he had to go into his father's counting house, for windmills seemed to have paid the elder constable, considerably better than painting promised to pay young john. john doubtless liked counting-house work even less than he had done the study of windmills and weather in his father's fields. he was a most persistent fellow, however, and finally he returned to london, to study again the art he loved, this time in the royal academy, which meant that he had made some progress. his father gave him very little aid to do the things he longed to do, but after his father's death he found that a little money was coming to him from the estate--£ , . he had already triumphed over his difficulties by painting his first fine pictures; he now knew that he was to become a successful artist, and be able to take care of himself and a wife. though in love, he had hitherto been too poor to marry. his first splendid work was "dedham vale." though things were going very well with him, it was not until paris discovered him that he achieved great success. in he painted two large pictures which he took to paris, and there he found fame. the best landscape painting in france dates from the time when constable's works were hung in the louvre, to become the delight of all art-lovers. he received a gold medal from charles x., and became more honoured abroad than he had ever been at home. constable had many enemies, and made many more after he became an academician. some artists, who would have liked that honour and who could not gain it for themselves, declared that constable painted "with a palette knife," though it certainly would not have mattered if he had, since he made great pictures. he painted things exactly as he saw them, and was not a popular artist. most of all, he loved to paint the scenes that he had known so well in his youth, and he did them over and over again, as if the subject was one in which he wished to reach perfection. when he died he left a picture, "arundel castle and mill," standing with its paint wet upon his easel for he passed away very suddenly, on april st, leaving behind him many unsold paintings. he was a sensitive chap, and throughout his youth was greatly distressed by the differences of opinion between himself and his father. he was torn asunder between a sense of duty and his own wish to be an artist; and his greatest consolation in this situation was in the friendship he had formed for a plumber, who, like himself, dearly loved art. the plumber's name was john dunthorne, and the two men wandered about the country, when not employed at their regular work, and together, by streams and in fields, painted the same scenes. at one time they hired a little room in the neighbouring village which they made into a studio. constable was a handsome fellow in his youth and was known to all as the "handsome miller." his father, the yeoman farmer with the windmills, was also a miller. in london he became acquainted with one john smith, known as "antiquity smith," who taught him something of etching. after he was recalled to his father's business, his mother wrote to "antiquity smith," that she hoped john "would now attend to business, by which he will please me and his father, and ensure his own respectability and comfort"--a complete expression of the middle-class british mind. her satisfaction was short-lived, for her son soon returned to london. when his first pictures were rejected by the royal academy he showed one of them to sir benjamin west, who said hopefully: "don't be disheartened, young man, we shall hear of you again; you must have loved nature very much before you could have painted this." about that time he tried to paint many kinds of pictures, such as portraits and sacred subjects, but he did not seem to succeed in anything except the scenes of his boyhood, which he truly loved. hence he gave up attempting that which he could do only passably, and kept to what he could do supremely well. when his friends wished him to continue portrait painting, the only thing that was well paid at that time, constable wrote: "you know i have always succeeded best with my native scenes. they have always charmed me, and i hope they always will. i have now a path marked out very distinctly for myself, and i am desirous of pursuing it uninterruptedly." about the time he fell in love and before his father's death, his health began to fail, and the young woman's mother would have none of him. her father was in favour of constable, but he could not hold out against the chance of his daughter losing her grandfather's fortune by marrying the wrong man. the lady was not so distractingly in love as young constable was, and she did not entirely like the idea of poverty, even with john, so she held off, and with so much anxiety constable became downright ill. for five years the pair lived apart, and then the artist and the young woman, whose name was maria bicknell, lost their mothers about the same time, this drew them very closely together; and to help the matter on, john's attendance upon his father in his last illness brought him to the same town as miss bicknell. after his father's death, he urged the young lady so strongly to be his wife that she consented they were married and her father soon forgave her, but not so her grandfather, who declared that he never would forgive her, but he really must have done so from the first, for when he died it was found that he had left her a little fortune of £ , . this was about the same amount the artist had received from his father, so that they were able to get on very well. after constable's marriage he went on a visit to sir george beaumont, and there an amusing incident occurred which is known to-day as the story of sir george's "brown tree." it seems that constable's ideas of colour for his landscapes were so true to nature that a good many people did not approve of them, and one day while painting, sir george declared that the colour of an old cremona fiddle was the best model of colour tone that a landscape could have. constable's only answer was to place the fiddle on the green lawn in front of the house. at another time his host asked the artist, "do you not find it very difficult to determine where to place your brown tree?" "not at all," was constable's reply, "for i never put such a thing into a picture in my life." in painting one picture many times he declared, "its light cannot be put out because it is the light of nature." a frenchman called attention to one of his pictures thus: "look at these landscapes by an englishman. the ground appears to be covered with dew." notwithstanding the little fortune of his wife and himself, constable was not quite carefree, because he had to raise a good sized family of six children so that when his wife's father died and left his daughter £ , he said to a friend: "now i shall stand before a six-foot canvas with a mind at ease, thank god!" in the very midst of this happiness, his beloved wife became ill with consumption, and was certain to die. he no longer cared very much for life and wrote very sadly: "i have been ill, but am endeavouring to get work again, and could i get afloat upon a canvas of six feet, i might have a chance of being carried from myself." when he became a member of the royal academy, he said: "it has been delayed until i am solitary and cannot impart it," meaning that without his dear wife to share his good fortune, it seemed an empty honour to him. strange things are told which show how little his work was valued by his countrymen. after he had become a member of the academy one of his small pictures was entered but rejected; nobody knowing anything about it. it was put on one side among the "outsiders." finally, one of his fellow members glancing at it was attracted. "stop a bit! i rather like that. why not say 'doubtful'?" later constable acknowledged the picture as his, and then they wished to hang it, but he refused to let them. another academy story is about his picture "hadleigh castle." on varnishing day, chartney, a brilliant critic, told constable that the foreground of the picture was "too cold," and so he undertook to "warm it," by giving it a strong glaze with asphaltum with constable's brush which he snatched from the artist's hand. constable gazed at him in horror. "oh! there goes all my dew," he cried, and when chartney's back was turned he hurriedly wiped the "warmth" all away and got back his "dew." even the amusing things that happened to him, seem to have a little sadness about them. he wrote to a friend: "beechey was here yesterday, and said: 'why d--n it constable, what a d--n fine picture you are making; but you look d--n ill, and you've got a d--n bad cold!' so," added constable, "you have evidence on oath of my being about a fine picture and that i am looking ill." an illustration of his painstaking and truthfulness to nature is that he once took home with him from a visit bottles of coloured sand and fragments of stone which he meant to introduce into a picture; and on passing some slimy posts near a mill, he said to his host, "i wish you could cut those off and send their tops to me." constable was a loyal friend, the most persistent of men, and several anecdotes are told of his characteristics. his friend fisher said to him: "where real business is to be done, you are the most energetic and punctual of men. in smaller matters, such as putting on your breeches, you are apt to lose time in deciding which leg shall go in first." plate--the hay wain this picture was first called "landscape," and it was painted in . in his letters about it, however, constable also called it "noon," and others wrote of it as "midsummer noon." this tells us what a wealth of hot sunlight is suggested by the painting. it shows a little farmhouse upon the bank of a stream, a spot well known as "willy lott's cottage." the owner had been born there and he died there eighty-eight years later, without ever having left his cottage for four whole days in all those years. upon the tombstone of lott, which is in the bergholt burial ground, his epitaph calls the house "gibeon farm." it was a favourite scene with constable, and he painted it many times from every side. it is the same house we see in the "mill stream," another constable painting, and again in "valley farm." in this last picture he painted the side opposite to the one shown in the "hay wain." the stream near which the house stands spreads out into a ford, and in the picture the hay cart, with two men upon it, is passing through the ford. the horses are decked out with red tassels. on the right of the stream there is a broad meadow, golden green in the sunlight, "with groups of trees casting cool shadows on the grass, and backed by a distant belt of woodland of rich blues and greens." on the right is a fisherman, half hidden by a bush, standing near his punt. constable wrote to his friend, fisher, "my picture goes to the academy on the tenth." this was written on april st, . "it is not so grand as tinney's." this shows us, that constable had not vanity enough to interfere with his self-criticism. again in a letter written to him by a friend: "how does the 'hay wain' look now it has got into your own room again?" adding that he wished to see it there, away from the academy which to him was always "like a great pot of boiling varnish." later fisher wrote: "i have a great desire to possess your 'wain,' but i cannot now reach what it is worth;" and he begged constable not to sell it without giving him a chance to try once more to raise the money to buy it. he wrote that the picture would become of greater value to his children if the artist left it hanging upon the walls of the academy, "till you join the society of ruysdael, wilson, and claude. as praise and money will then be of no value to you, the world will liberally bestow both." later a frenchman wished to buy it for exhibition purposes, and when constable wrote to fisher of this, his friend replied that he had better sell it to the frenchman "for the sake of the _éclat_ it may give you. the stupid english public, which has no judgment of its own, will begin to think there is something in it if the french make your works national property. you have long lain under a mistake; men do not purchase pictures because they admire them, but because others covet them." finally, the "hay wain" was sold to the french dealer for £ , and constable threw in a picture of yarmouth for good measure. later a friend declared that he had created a good deal of argument about landscape painting, and that there had come to be two divisions, for he had practically founded a new school. he received a gold medal for the "hay wain," and the french nation tried to buy it. in the louvre are "the cottage," "weymouth bay," and "the glebe farm." elsewhere are "hampstead heath," "salisbury cathedral," "the lock on the stour," "dedham mill," "the valley farm," "gillingham mill," "the cornfield," "boat-building," "flatford mill on the river stour," besides many others. ix john singleton copley _english school_ - a little boy with a squirrel was the first picture that pointed this artist toward fame and that was painted in england and exhibited at the society of arts. this american-born irishman had no family or ancestry of account, but he himself was to become the father of lord chancellor lyndhurst, and he did some truly fine things in art. about the same time america had another painter, benjamin west, marked out for fame, but he got his start in europe while copley had already become a successful artist before he left boston, his native place. he liked best to paint "interiors"--rooms with fine furniture and curtains, women in fine clothing and men in embroidered waistcoats and bejewelled buckles. in he got into the royal academy, and on the whole had considerable influence on european art. if we study the portraits that he painted while in boston, we can get a very complete idea of the surroundings of the "royalists" at the time of our colonial history. plate--the copley family group in this picture there are seven figures with an open landscape forming the background. the baby of the family plays, with uplifted arms, upon grandfather's knee. the mother on the couch, surrounded by her three other children, is kissing one while another clings to her. before her stands a prim little maid, gowned in the fashion of grown-folks of her day. a little lock of hair falling upon her forehead suggests that when she was good she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was horrid! she wears a little cap. at the back is the artist himself in a wig and other fashions of the time. a great column rises behind him, forming a part of the architecture or the landscape, one hardly knows which in so artificially constructed a picture. copley painted also john hancock, judge graham, jeremiah lee, and general joseph warren. x jean baptiste camille corot (pronounced zhahn bah-teest' cah-mee'yel coh'roh) _fontainebleau-barbizon school_ - _pupil of michallon_ about three hundred years before corot's time there was a fontainebleau school of artists, made up of the pathetic andrea del sarto, the wonderful leonardo da vinci, and cellini. these painters had been summoned from their italian homes by francis i., to decorate the palace of fontainebleau. the second great group of painters who had studios in the forest and beside the stream were rousseau, dupré, diaz, and daubigny; troyon, van marcke, jacque; then millet, the painter of peasants. corot was born in paris and received what education the ordinary school at rouen could give him. he was intended by his parents for something besides art, as it would seem that every artist in the world was intended. corot was to grow up and become a respectable draper; at any rate a draper. the young chap did as his father wished, until he was twenty-six years old, and dreary years those must have been to him. he did not get on well with his master, nor did the world treat him very well. he found neither riches nor the fame that was his due till he was an old man of seventy. at that age he had become as rich a man as he might have been had he remained a sensible draper. best of all, corot loved to paint clouds and dewy nights, pale moons and early day, and of all amusements in the world, he preferred the theatre. there he would sit; gay or sad as the play might make him, weeping or laughing and as interested as a little child. after he had anything to give away, corot was the most madly generous of men. it was he who gave a pension to the widow of his brother artist, millet, on which she lived all the rest of her days. he gave money to his brother painters and to all who went to him for aid; and he always gave gaily, freely, as if giving were the greatest joy, outside of the theatre, a man could have. everyone who knew him loved him, and there was no note of sadness in his daily life, though there seems to be one in his poetical pictures. because of his generous ways he was known as "pere corot." he sang as he worked, and loved his fellowmen all the time; but most of all, he loved his sister. "rousseau is an eagle," he used to say in speaking of his fellow artist. "as for me, i am only a lark, putting forth some little songs in my gray clouds." it has been noted that most great landscape painters have been city-bred, a remarkable fact. constable and gainsborough were born and bred in the country, but they are exceptions to the rule. corot's parents were parisians of the purest dye, having been court-dressmakers to napoleon i.; and when corot finally determined to leave the draper's shop and become a painter, his father said: "you shall have a yearly allowance of , francs, and if you can live on that, you can do as you please." when his son was made a member of the legion of honour, after twenty-three years of earnest work, his father thought the matter over, and presently doubled the allowance, "for camille seems to have some talent after all," he remarked as an excuse for his generosity. it is told that when he first went to study in italy, corot longed to transfer the moving scenes before him to canvas; but people moved too quickly for him, so he methodically set about learning how to do with a few strokes what he would otherwise have laboured over. so he reduced his sketching to such a science that he became able to sketch a ballet in full movement; and it is remarked that this practice trained him for presenting the tremulousness of leaves of trees, which he did so exquisitely. one learns something of this painter of early dawn and soft evening from a letter he wrote to his friend dupré: one gets up at three in the morning, before the sun; one goes and sits at the foot of a tree; one watches and waits. one sees nothing much at first. nature resembles a whitish canvas on which are sketched scarcely the profiles of some masses; everything is perfumed, and shines in the fresh breath of dawn. bing! the sun grows bright but has not yet torn aside the veil behind which lie concealed the meadows, the dale, and hills of the horizon. the vapours of night still creep, like silvery flakes over the numbed-green vegetation. bing! bing!--a first ray of sunlight--a second ray of sunlight--the little flowers seem to wake up joyously. they all have their drop of dew which trembles--the chilly leaves are stirred with the breath of morning--in the foliage the birds sing unseen--all the flowers seem to be saying their prayers. loves on butterfly wings frolic over the meadows and make the tall plants wave--one sees nothing--yet everything is there--the landscape is entirely behind the veil of mist, which mounts, mounts, sucked up by the sun; and as it rises, reveals the river, plated with silver, the meadow, the trees, cottages, the receding distance--one distinguishes at last everything that one had divined at first. in all the world there can hardly be a more exquisite story of daybreak than this; and so beautiful was the mood into which corot fell at eventime, as he himself describes it, that it would be a mistake to leave it out. this is his story of the night: nature drowses--the fresh air, however, sighs among the leaves--the dew decks the velvety grass with pearls. the nymphs fly--hide themselves--and desire to be seen. bing! a star in the sky which pricks its image on the pool. charming star--whose brilliance is increased by the quivering of the water, thou watchest me--thou smilest to me with half-closed eye! bing!--a second star appears in the water, a second eye opens. be the harbingers of welcome, fresh and charming stars. bing! bing! bing!--three, six, twenty stars. all the stars in the sky are keeping tryst in this happy pool. everything darkens, the pool alone sparkles. there is a swarm of stars--all yields to illusion. the sun being gone to bed, the inner sun of the soul, the sun of art awakens. bon! there is my picture done! in writing those letters, corot made literature as well as pictures. that little word "bing!" appears also in his paintings, as little leaves or bits of tree-trunk, some small detail which, high-lightened, accents the whole. plate--dance of the nymphs there could hardly be a more charming painting than this which hangs in the louvre. it is of a half-shut-in landscape of tall trees, their branches mingling; and all the atmospheric effects that belong to corot's work can here be seen. on the open greensward is a group of nymphs dancing gaily, while over all the scene is the veil of fairy-land or of something quite mysterious. at the back and side, satyrs can be seen watching the nymphs. there is here less of the blur of leaves than that seen in later pictures, but the same soft effect is found, and the little "bings" are the accents of light placed upon a leaf, a nymph's shoulder, or a tree-trunk. this picture was painted in , when corot had not yet developed that style which was to mark all his later work. besides this picture he painted "paysage," "the bathers" "ville d'arvay," "willows near arras," "the bent tree," "a gust of wind," and others. xi correggio (antonio allegri) (pronounced cor-rage'jyo ahl-lay'gree) _school of parma_ (?)- _pupil of mantegna_ when correggio was a little boy, he lived in the odour of spices, which were kept upon his father's shop-shelves. he was a highly-spiced little boy and man, although the most timid and shrinking. his imagination was the liveliest possible. the spice merchant lived in the town of correggio, and thus the artist got his name. correggio knew what should be inside the lovely flesh of his painted figures before he began to paint them, because he studied anatomy in a truly scientific manner before he studied painting. probably no other artist up to that time, had ever begun with the bare bones of his models, but correggio may be said to have worked from the inside out. he learned about the structure of the human frame from dr. giovanni battista lombardi, and showed his gratitude to his teacher by painting a picture "il medico del correggio" (correggio's physician), and presenting it to doctor lombardi. now correggio's childhood, or at least his early manhood, could not have been spent in poverty, because it is known that he used the most expensive colours to paint with, painted upon the finest of canvas, while greater artists had often to be content with boards. he also painted upon copper plates, and it is said that he hired begarelli, a sculptor of much fame, to make models in relief for him to copy for the pictures he painted on the cupolas of the churches in parma. that sculptor's services must have been expensive. on the lovely island of capri, in the franciscan convent, will be found one of his first pictures, painted when correggio was about nineteen years old. he was highly original in many ways. although he had never seen the work of any great artist, he painted the most extraordinary fore-shortened pictures; and fore-shortening was a technicality in art then uncommon. he also was the first to paint church cupolas. fore-shortening produces some peculiar as well as great results, and being a feature of art with which people were not then familiar, correggio's work did not go uncriticised. indeed one artist, gazing up into one of the cupolas where correggio's fore-shortened figures were placed, remarked that to him it appeared a "hash of frogs." but when titian saw that cupola, he said: "reverse the cupola, fill it with gold, and even then that will not be its money's worth." correggio did not receive very large sums for his work, and since he was married and took good care of his family, he must have had some source of income besides his brush. he received some interesting rewards for his paintings. for example, for "st. jerome," called "il giorno," he was given " gold imperials, some cartloads of faggots and measures of wheat, and a fat pig." that picture is in the parma gallery, and all the cupolas which he painted are in parma churches. some of his pictures are signed; "leito," a synonym for his name, "allegri." this indicates his style of art. there is an interesting story told of how correggio stood entranced before a picture of raphael's, and after long study of it he exclaimed: "i too, am a painter!" showing at once his appreciation of raphael's greatness and satisfaction at his own genius. doubtless a good share of correggio's comfortable living came from the lady he married, since she was considered a rich woman for those times and in that locality. her name was girolama merlini, and she lived in mantua, the place where the montagues and capulets lived of whom shakespeare wrote the most wonderful love story ever imagined. this young woman was only sixteen years old when correggio met and loved her, and very beautiful and later on he painted a picture, "zingarella," for which his wife is said to have been the model. it seems to have been a stroke of economy and enterprise for painters to marry, since we read of so many who made fame and fortune through the beauty of their wives. they were very happy together, correggio and his wife, and they had four children. their happiness was not for long, because correggio seems to have been but thirty-four years old when she died, nor did he live to be old. there is a most curious tale of his death which is probably not true, but it is worth telling since many have believed it. he is supposed to have died in correggio, of pleurisy, but the story is that he had made a picture for one who had some grudge against him, and who in order to irritate him paid him in copper, fifty scudi. this was a considerable burden, and in order to save expense and time, it is said that correggio undertook to carry it home alone. it was a very hot day, and he became so overheated and exhausted with his heavy load that he took ill and died, and he may be said literally to have been killed by "too much money," if this were true. vasari, a biographer to be generally believed, says it is a fact. correggio said that he always had his "thoughts at the end of his pencil," and there are those who impudently declare that is the only place he _did_ have them, but that is a carping criticism, because he was a very great artist, his greatest power being the presentation of soft blendings of light and shade. there seem to have been few unusual events in correggio's life; very little that helps us to judge the man, but there is a general opinion that he was a kind and devoted father and husband, as well as a good citizen. with little demand upon his moral character, he did his work, did it well, and his work alone gave him place and fame. he became the head of a school of painting and had many imitators, but we hear little of his pupils, except that one of them was his own son, pompino, who lived to be very old, and in his turn was successful as an artist. correggio was buried with honours in the arrivabene chapel, in the franciscan church at correggio. plate--the holy night this painting is not characteristic of correggio's work, but nevertheless it is very beautiful. the brilliant warm light which comes from the infant jesus in his mother's arms is reflected upon the faces of those gathered about, and even illuminates the angelic group hovering above him. the slight landscape forming the background is also suggestive, and the conditions of the birth are indicated by the ass which may be seen in the middle distance. the faces of all are joyous yet full of wonderment, the whole scene intimate and human. the picture is also called the "adoration of the shepherds," and that title best tells the story. see the shepherdess shading her face with one hand and offering two turtle-doves with the other. the ass in the distance is the one on which mary rode to bethlehem, and joseph is caring for it. even the cold light of the dawning day is softened by the beauty of the group below. this picture is in the royal gallery in dresden. plate--the mystic marriage of st. catherine the infant jesus sits upon his mother's lap, and places the ring upon st. catherine's finger, while mary's hand helps to guide that of her child. this action brings the three hands close together and adds to the beauty of the composition. all of the faces are full of pleasure and kindliness, while that of st. sebastian fairly glows with happy emotion. the light is concentrated upon the body of the child and is reflected upon the faces of the women. this painting hangs in the louvre. other great correggio pictures are the "school of cupid," which is more characteristic of his work; "antiope," "leda," "danae," and "ecce homo." xii paul gustave dore _french school_ - this artist died in paris twenty-five years ago, but there is little as yet to be told of his life history. he was educated in paris at the lycée charlemagne, having gone there from strasburg, where he was born. he was a painter of fantastic and grotesque subjects, and as far as we know, he began his career when a boy. he made sketches before his eighth year which attracted much attention, and he earned considerable money while still at school. he was at that time engaged to illustrate for journals, at a good round sum, and before he left the lycée he had made hundreds of drawings, somewhat after the satirical fashion of hogarth. his work is very characteristic and once seen is likely to be always recognised. he first worked for the _journal pour rire_, but then he undertook to illustrate the work of rabelais, the great satirist, whose text just suited doré's pencil. after rabelais he illustrated balzac, also the "wandering jew," "don quixote," and dante's "divine comedy." he undertook to do things which he could not do well, simply for the money there was in the commissions. he had but a poor idea of colour and his work was coarse, but it had such marked peculiarities that it became famous. he did a little sculpture as well, and even that showed his eccentricities of thought. plate--moses breaking the tablets of the law this is one of the illustrations of the doré bible, published in - . the story is well known of how moses went up into the mount of the lord to receive the laws for the israelites, which were written upon tables of stone. upon his descent from the mount he found that his followers had set up a golden calf, which they were worshipping; and in his wrath moses broke the tablets on which the law was inscribed. the power shown in his attitude, the affrighted faces of the cowering jews, the thunder and lightning as an expression of the wrath of the almighty are all painted in doré's best manner. xiii albrecht dÜrer (pronounced dooer-rer') _nuremberg school_ - _pupil of wolgemuth and schongauer_ albrecht dürer by nationality was a hungarian, but he was born in the city of nuremberg. his father had come from the little hungarian town of eytas to nuremberg that he might practise the craft of a goldsmith. notwithstanding his hungarian origin, the name is german and the family "bearing," or sign, is the open door. this device suggests that the name was first formed from "thurer," which means "carpenter," maker of doors. the father became the goldworker for a master goldsmith of nuremberg named hieronymus holper, and very soon the new employee had fallen in love with his master's daughter. the daughter was very young and very beautiful; her name was barbara, and as herr dürer was quite forty years of age, while she was but fifteen, the match seemed most unlikely, but they married and had eighteen children! the great painter was one of them. albrecht loved his parents most tenderly, and from first to last we hear no word of disagreement among any members of that immense household. young albrecht was especially the companion of his father, being brilliant, generous, and hard-working in a family where everyone needed to do his best to help along. this love and companionship never ceased until death, and after his parents died albrecht wrote in a touching manner of their death, describing his love for them, and their many virtues. he was an author and a poet as well as a painter, and only leonardo da vinci matched him for greatness and versatility. we may know what dürer's father looked like, since the son made two portraits of him; one is to be seen in the uffizi gallery at florence and the other belongs to the duke of northumberland's collection. the latter portrait has been reproduced in an engraving, so that it is familiar to most people. in the days when the great artist was growing up, nuremberg was the centre of all intellectuality and art in the north. the city of augsburg also followed art fashions, but it was far less important than nuremberg, because in the latter city every sort of art-craft was followed in sincerity and with great originality. in those days, the craft of the goldsmith was closely allied with the profession of the painter, because the smith had to create his own designs, and that called for much talent. thus it was but a step from designing in precious metals to the use of colour, and to engraving. in making wood engravings, however, the drudgery of it was left almost entirely to workmen, not artists. nuremberg was also the seat of musical learning. wagner makes this fact pathetic, comical, and altogether charming in his "mastersingers of nuremberg." till dürer's time, however, there had been little painting that could be regarded as art, and when he came to study it there was but little opportunity in his own land, but dürer was destined to bring art to nuremberg. if he went elsewhere to study, it was only for a little time, because he was above all things patriotic and dearly loved his home. with seventeen brothers and sisters, young dürer's problem was a serious one. his father not only meant him to become a goldsmith like himself--a craft in which there was much money to be made at a time when people dressed with great ornamentation and used gold to decorate with--it was highly necessary with so large a family that he should learn to do that which could make him helpful to his father. hence the young boy entered his father's shop. if he had not been handicapped with so many to help to maintain, he would have laid up a considerable fortune, because from the very beginning he was master of all that he undertook; doing the least thing better than any other did it, putting conscience and painstaking into all. "my father took special delight in me," the son said, "seeing that i was industrious in working and learning, he put me to school; and when i had learned to read and write, he took me home from my school and taught me the goldsmith's trade." the family were good and kind; excellent neighbours, deeply religious, and little albrecht certainly was comely. he was beautiful as a little child, and as a man was very handsome, with long light hair sweeping his shoulders, and gentle eyes. he was very tall, stately, and full of dignity. in his father's shop he made little clay figures which were afterward moulded in metal; also he learned to carve wood and ivory, and he added the touch of originality to all that he did. he was the leonardo da vinci of germany, an intellectual man, a poet, painter, sculptor, engraver, and engineer. he approached everything that he did from an intellectual point of view, looking for the reasons of things. after a while in his father's shop, he found mere craftsmanship irksome, and he begged to be allowed to enter a studio. this was a great disappointment to the father, even a distress, because he could see no very quick nor large returns in money for an artist, and he sorely needed the help of his son; but being kind and reasonable, he consented albrecht was apprenticed to the only artist of any repute then in nuremberg, wolgemuth. to his studio albrecht went, at the age of fifteen, and if he did not learn much more of painting, under that artist's direction, than his own genius had already taught him, he learned the drudgery of his work; how to grind colours and to mix them, and he studied wood engraving also. in wolgemuth's studio he remained for the three years of his apprenticeship, and then he fled to better things. for a time he followed the methods of another german artist, schongauer, but finally he went forth to try his luck alone. he wandered from place to place, practising all his trades, goldsmithing, engraving, whatever would support him, yet always and everywhere painting. it is thought that he may have gone as far as italy, but it is not certain whether he went there in his first wanderings or later on. however, he was soon recalled home, for his father had found a suitable wife for him. she was the daughter of a rich citizen and her name was agnes frey. she was pretty as well as rich, but had she been neither albrecht would have returned at his father's bidding. there was never any resistance to the fine and proper things of life on albrecht dürer's part. he was the well balanced, reasonable man from youth up. there have been extraordinary tales told of the artist's wife. she has been called hateful and spiteful as xantippe, the wife of socrates, but we think this is calumny. the stories came about in this way: dürer had a life-long friend, wilibald pirkheimer, who in his old age became the most malicious and quarrelsome of old fellows. he lived longer than dürer did, and dürer's wife also outlived her husband. pirkheimer wanted a set of antlers which had belonged to dürer and which he thought the wife should give him after dürer was dead, but agnes thought otherwise and would not give them up. then, full of rage, the old man wrote the most outrageous letters about poor agnes, saying that she was a shrew and had compelled dürer to work himself to death; that she was a miser and had led the artist an awful dance through life. this is the only evidence against her, and that so sane and sensible a man as the artist lived with her all his life and cherished her, is evidence enough that pirkheimer didn't tell the truth. when dürer died he was in good circumstances and instead of being overworked, he for many years had done no "pot-boiling," but had followed investigations along lines that pleased him. after his death, the widow treated his brothers and sisters generously, giving them properties of dürer's and being of much help to them. during the artist's life he and she had travelled everywhere together and had appeared to love each other tenderly; hence we may conclude that the old pirkheimer was simply a disgruntled, gouty old man without a good word for anybody. if dürer's father and mother had eighteen children, albrecht and agnes struck a balance, for they had none. whether or not dürer went to italy before his marriage in , certain it is that he was in venice, the home of titian, in . titian was six years younger than dürer, who was then about thirty-five years old. it is said that he started for italy in and that he went the whole of the way, over the alps, through forests and streams, on horseback. who knows but it was during that very journey, while travelling alone, often finding himself in lonely ways, and full of the speculative thoughts that were characteristic of him, that he did not think first of his subject, "knight, death, and the devil," which helped make his fame. in that picture we have a knight, helmeted, carrying his lance, mounted upon his horse, riding in a lonely forest, with death upon a "pale horse" by his side, holding an hour glass to remind the knight of the fleeting of time. behind comes the devil, with trident and horn, represented as a frightful and disgusting beast, which follows hot-foot after the lonely knight, who looks neither to right nor left, but persistently goes his way. titian's teacher, bellini, was still living, and he was one of dürer's greatest admirers. especially did he believe that he could paint the finest hair of any artist in the world. one day, while studying dürer's work, and being especially fascinated by the hair of one of his figures, the old man took dürer's brush and tried to reproduce as beautiful a tress. presently he put down the brush in despair, but the younger artist took it up, still wet with the same colours, and in a few brilliant strokes produced a lovely lock of woman's hair. while luxuriating in venetian heat, dürer wrote home to his friend pirkheimer: "oh, how i shall freeze after this sunshine!" he was a lover of warm, beautiful colour, gay and tender life. most of all he loved the fatherland, and all the honours paid him and all the invitations pressed upon him could not keep him long from nuremberg. the journey homeward was not uneventful because he was taken ill, and had to stop at a house on his way, where he was cared for till he was strong enough to proceed. before he went his way he painted upon the wall of that house a fine picture, to show his gratitude for the kind treatment he had received. imagine a people so settled in their homes that it would be worth while for an artist who came along to leave a picture upon the walls to-day--we should have moved to a new house or a new flat almost before dürer could have washed his brushes and turned the corner. back in nuremberg, he settled down into the life of a responsible citizen, lived in a fine new house, in time became a member of the council, and his studio was a veritable workshop. studios were quite different from those of to-day. then the pupils turned to and ground colours, did much of their own manufacturing, engaged at first in such commonplace occupations, which were nevertheless teaching them the foundation of their art, while they watched the work of the master. such a studio as dürer's must have been full of young men coming and going, not all working at the art of painting, but engraving, preparing materials for such work, designing, and executing many other details of art work. after this time dürer made his smallest picture, which is hardly more than an inch in diameter. on that tiny surface he painted the whole story of the crucifixion, and it is now in the dresden gallery. to those of us who see little mentality in the faces of the italian subjects, the german art of dürer, often ugly in the choice of models, and so exact as to bring out unpleasing details, is nevertheless the greater; because in all cases, the faces have sincere expressions. they exhibit human purposes and emotions which we can understand, and despise or love as the case may be. they say that his madonna is generally a "much-dressed round-faced german mother, holding a merry little german boy." that may be true; but at any rate, she is every inch a mother and he a well-beloved little boy, which is considerably more than can be said of some italian performances. dürer made a painting of "praying hands," a queer subject for a picture, but those hands are nothing _but_ praying hands. the story of them is touching. it is said that for several years dürer had won a prize for which a friend of his had also competed, and upon losing the prize the last time he tried for it, the friend raised his hands and prayed for the power to accept his failure with resignation and humility. dürer, looking at him, was impressed with the eloquence of the gesture; thus the "praying hands" was conceived. dürer was also called the _father of picture books_, because he designed so many woodcuts that he first made possible the illustration of stories. he printed his own illustrations in his own house, and was well paid for it. the emperor maximillian visited nuremberg, and wishing to honour dürer, commanded him to make a triumphal arch. "it was not to be fashioned in stone like the arches given to the victorious roman emperors; but instead it was to be composed of engravings. dürer made for this purpose ninety-two separate blocks of woodcuts. on these were represented maximillian's genealogical tree and the principal events of his life. all these were arranged in the form of an arch, feet wide and - / feet high. it took dürer three years to do this work, and he was never well paid," so says one who has compiled many incidents of his life. "while the artist worked, the emperor often visited his studio; and as dürer's pet cats often visited it at the same time, the expression arose, 'a cat may look at a king!'" on the occasion of one of these kingly visits, maximillian tried to do a little art-work on his own account. taking a piece of charcoal he tried to sketch, but the charcoal kept breaking and he asked dürer why it did so. "that is my sceptre; your majesty has other and greater work to do," was the tactful reply. it is a question with us to-day whether the king ever did a greater work than albrecht dürer, king of painters, was doing. after this, maximillian gave dürer a pension, but when the emperor died the artist found it necessary to apply to the monarch who came after him, in order to have the gift confirmed. this was the occasion for his journey to the low countries, and he took his wife agnes with him. in the netherlands he was received with much honour and was invited to become court painter; and what was more, his pension was fixed upon him for life. the great work of his life was his illustration of the apocalypse. for this he made sixteen extraordinary woodcuts, of great size. on his journey to see charles v., maximillian's successor, dürer kept a diary in which he noted the minutest details of all that happened to him. he told of the coronation of charles; of hearing about a whale that had been cast upon the shore; of his disappointment that it had been removed before he had reached the place. he wrote with great indignation about the supposed kidnapping of martin luther, while he was on his way home from the diet of worms. while dürer was in the low countries, a fever came upon him, and when he returned home, it still followed him. indeed, although he lived for seven years after his return, he was never well again. among his effects there was a sketch made to indicate to his physician the seat of his illness. dürer did not paint great frescoes upon walls as did raphael, michael angelo, and all great italian artists; but instead he painted on wood, canvas, and in oils. in all the civilised world dürer was honoured equally with the great italian painters of his time. he was a man of much conscientiousness, dignity, and tenderness. he was devoted to his home and country, and regarded the problems of life intellectually. when he came to die, his end was so unexpected that those dearest to him could not reach his bedside. he was buried in st. john's cemetery in nuremberg. after his death, martin luther wrote as follows to their mutual friend, eoban hesse: "as for dürer; assuredly affection bids us mourn for one who was the best of men, yet you may well hold him happy that he has made so good an end, and that christ has taken him from the midst of this time of troubles, and from yet greater troubles in store, lest he, that deserved to behold nothing but the best, should be compelled to behold the worst. therefore may he rest in peace with his fathers, amen." plate--the nativity our description of this painting calls attention to the fact that the columns and arches of the picturesque ruin belong to a much later period in history than the birth of christ. dürer was not acquainted with any earlier style of architecture than the romanesque and therefore he used it here. "the ruin serves as a stable. a roof of board is built out in front of the side-room which shelters the ox and ass, and under this lean-to lies the new born babe surrounded by angels who express their childish joy. mary kneels and contemplates her child with glad emotion. joseph, also deeply moved, kneels down on the other side of the child, outside the shelter of the roof. some shepherds to whom the angel, who is still seen hovering in the air, has announced the tidings, are already entering from without the walls." (knackfuss). the picture is the central panel of an altar-piece now in the old pinakothek at munich. dürer's oil painting of the four apostles--john, peter, mark, and paul--is in the same gallery. other dürer pictures are: "the knight, death and the devil," "the adoration of the magi," "melancholy," and portraits of himself. xiv mariano fortuny (pronounced mah-ree-ah-no' for-tu'ne) _spanish school_ - _pupil of claudio lorenzalez_ fortuny won his own opportunities. he took a prize, while still very young, which made it possible for him to go to rome where he wished to study art. he did not spend his time studying and copying the old masters as did most artists who went there, but, instead, he studied the life of the roman streets. he had already been at the academy of barcelona, but he did not follow his first master; instead, he struck out a line of art for himself. after a year in rome the artist went to war; but he did not go to fight men, he was still fighting fate, and his weapon was his sketch book. he went with general prim, and he filled his book with warlike scenes and the brilliant skies of morocco. from that time his work was inspired by his moorish experiences. after going to war without becoming a soldier, fortuny returned to paris and there he became fast friends with meissonier, so that a good deal of his work was influenced by that artist's genius. after a time fortuny's paintings came into great vogue and far-off americans began buying them, as well as europeans. there was a certain rich dry-goods merchant in the united states who had made a large fortune for those days, and while he knew nothing about art, he wanted to spend his money for fine things. so he employed people who did understand the matter to buy for him many pictures whose excellence he, himself, could not understand, but which were to become a fine possession for succeeding generations. this was about , and this man, a.t. stewart, bought two of fortuny's pictures at high prices. "the serpent charmer," and "a fantasy of morocco." when fortuny was thirty years old he married the daughter of a spaniard called madrazo, director of the royal museum. his wife's family had several well known artists in it, and the marriage was a very happy one. because of this, fortuny was inspired to paint one of the greatest of his pictures, "the spanish marriage." in it are to be seen the portraits of his wife and his friend regnault. after a time he went to live in granada; but he could never forget the beautiful, barbaric scenes in morocco, and so he returned there. afterward he went with his wife to live in rome, and there they had a fine home and everything exquisite about them, while fortune and favour showered upon them; but he fell ill with roman fever, because of working in the open air, and he died while he was comparatively a young man. plate--the spanish marriage fortuny is said to "split the light into a thousand particles, till his pictures sparkle like jewels and are as brilliant as a kaleidoscope.... he set the fashion for a class of pictures, filled with silks and satins, bric-à-brac and elegant trifling." look at the brilliant scene in this picture! the priest rising from his chair and leaning over the table is watching the bridegroom sign his name. this chap is an old fop, bedecked in lilac satin, while the bride is a dainty young woman, without much interest in her husband, for she is fingering her beautiful fan and gossiping with one of her girl friends. she wears orange-blossoms in her black hair and is in full bridal array. one couple, two men, sit on an elegantly carved seat and are looking at the goings-on with amusement, while an old gentleman sits quite apart, disgusted with the whole unimpressive scene. everybody is trifling, and no one is serious for the occasion. the furnishings of the room are beautiful, delicate, almost frivolous. people are strewn about like flowers, and the whole effect is airy and inconsequent. fortuny painted also "the praying arab," "a fantasy of morocco," "snake charmers," "camels at rest," etc. xv thomas gainsborough _english school_ - _pupil of gravelot and of hayman_ there seems to have been no artist, with the extraordinary exceptions of dürer and leonardo, who learned his lessons while at school. little painters have uniformly begun as bad spellers. gainsborough's father was in the business of woolen-crape making, while his mother painted flowers, very nicely, and it was she who taught the small thomas. there were nine little gainsboroughs and, shocking to relate, the artist of the family was so ready with his pencil that when he was ten years old he forged his father's name to a note which he took to the schoolmaster, and thereby gained himself a holiday. there is no account of any other wicked use to which he put his talent. it is said that he could copy any writing that he saw, and his ready pencil covered all his copy-books with sketches of his schoolmasters. it was thought better for him finally to follow his own ideas of education, namely, to roam the woodlands and make beautiful pictures. his father's heart was not softened till one day little gainsborough brought home a sketch of the orchard into which the head of a man had thrust itself, painted with great ability. this man was a poacher, and father gainsborough recognised him by the portrait. there seemed to be utility in art of this kind, and before long the boy found himself apprenticed to a silversmith. through the silversmith the artist got admission to an art school and began his studies; but his master was a dissolute fellow, and before long the pupil left him. gainsborough was born in the town of sudbury on the river stour, the same which inspired another great painter half a century later. gainsborough is best known by his portraits, in particular as the inventor of "the gainsborough hat," but he was first of all a truly great landscape painter, and learned his art as constable did after him, along the beautiful shores of the river that flowed past his native town. the old black horse inn is still to be seen, and it was in the orchard behind it that he studied nature, the same in which he made the first of his famous portraits, that of the poacher. it is known to this day as the portrait of "tom pear-tree." that picture was copied on a piece of wood cut into the shape of a man, and it is in the possession of mr. jackson, who lent it for the exhibition of gainsborough's work held at the grosvenor gallery, in . while thomas was with his first master, by no means a good companion for a lad of fifteen, he lived a busy, self-respecting life, since he was devoted to his home and to his parents. only three years after he set out to learn his art he married a young lady of sudbury. the pair were by no means rich, gainsborough having only eighteen years of experience in this world, besides his brush, and a maker of woolen-crape shrouds for a father--who was not over pleased to have an artist for a son. the lady had two hundred pounds but this did not promise a very luxurious living, so they took a house for six pounds a year, at ipswich. thus the two young lovers began their life together. there was a good deal of romance in the story of his wife, whose name was supposed to be margaret burr. the two hundred pounds that helped to pay the ipswich rent did not come from the man accepted as her father, but from her real father, who was either the duke of bedford, or an exiled prince. this would seem to be just the sort of story that should surround a great painter and his affairs. while he lived at ipswich gainsborough used to say of himself that he was "chiefly in the face-way" meaning that for the most part he made portraits. he loved best to paint the scenes of his boyhood, as constable afterward did, but he soon found there was more money in portraits, and so he decided to go to live in bath, the fashionable resort of english people in that day, where he was likely to find rich folk who wanted to see themselves on canvas. he settled down there with his wife, whom he loved dearly, and his two daughters and at once began to make money. it is said he painted five hours a day and all the rest of the time studied music. as the theatre was corot's greatest happiness, so did music most delight gainsborough, and he could play well on nearly every known instrument; he became so excellent a musician that he even gave concerts. he had the most delightful people about him, people who loved art and who appreciated him, and then there were the other people who paid for having themselves painted. altogether it was an ideal situation. his studio was in the place known as the "circus" at bath, and people came and went all day, for it became the fashionable resort for all the fine folks. from five guineas for half length portraits, he soon raised his price to forty; he had charged eight for full length portraits, but now they went for one hundred. he painted some famous men of the time. the very thought is inspiring of such a company of geniuses with gainsborough in the centre of the group. he painted laurence sterne, who wrote "the sentimental journey," and a few other delightful things; also garrick, the renowned actor. even the encyclopædia reads thrillingly upon this subject and one can afford to quote it, with the feeling that the quotation will be read: "his house harboured italian, german, french and english musicians. he haunted the green room of palmer's theatre, and painted gratuitously the portraits of many of the actors. he gave away his sketches and landscapes to any one who had taste or assurance enough to ask for them." this sounds royal and exciting. after that gainsborough went up to london with plenty of money and plenty of confidence and instead of six pounds a year for his house, he paid three hundred pounds, which suggests much more comfort. there were two other great painters of the time in london, sir benjamin west--an american, by the way--and sir joshua reynolds. west was court favourite, but gainsborough too was called upon to paint royalty, and share west's honours. reynolds was the favourite of the town, but he too had to divide honours with gainsborough when the latter painted richard brinsley sheridan, edmund burke and sir william blackstone. notwithstanding, his landscapes, for which he should have been most famous, did not sell. everybody approved of them, but it is said they were returned to him till they "stood ranged in long lines from his hall to his painting room" gainsborough was a member of the royal academy and also a true bohemian. he cared little for elegant society, but made his friends among men of genius of all sorts. he was very handsome and impulsive, tall and fair, and generous in his ways; but he had much sorrow on account of one of his daughters, mary, who married fischer, a hautboy player, against her father's wishes. the girl became demented--at least she had spells of madness. when mary gainsborough married, her father wrote the following letter to his sister, which shows that he was a man of tender feeling for those whom he truly loved: " ... i had not the least suspicion of the attachment being so long and deeply seated; and as it was too late for me to alter anything without being the cause of total unhappiness on both sides, my consent ... i needs must give ... and accordingly they were married last monday and settled for the present in a ready-furnished little house in curzon street, mayfair ... i can't say i have any reason to doubt the man's honesty or goodness of heart, as i never heard anyone speak anything amiss of him, and as to his oddities and temper, she must learn to like them as she likes his person ... peggy has been very unhappy about it, but i endeavour to comfort her." peggy was his wife. the abominable fischer died twenty-years before mary did--she lived to be an old, old woman. among those whom gainsborough loved best was the man called wiltshire who carried his pictures to and from london. he was a public "carrier" but would never take any money for his services to the artist, because he loved his work. all he asked was "a little picture"--and he got so many of these, given in purest affection, that he might have gone out of business as a carrier, had he chosen to sell them. four of those little pictures are now very great ones worth thousands of pounds and known everywhere to fame. they are "the parish clerk," "portrait of quin," "a landscape with cattle," and "the harvest waggon." we have a good many stories of gainsborough's bad manners. the artists of his day tried to treat him with every consideration, but in return he treated them very badly, especially sir joshua reynolds. reynolds, who was then president of the academy greatly admired gainsborough but the latter would not return sir joshua's call, and when reynolds asked him to paint his portrait for him, gainsborough undertook it thanklessly. sir joshua left town for bath for a time, and when he returned he tried to learn how soon the portrait would be finished, but gainsborough would not even reply to his inquiry. there seems to have been no reason for this behaviour unless it was jealousy, but it made a most uncomfortable situation between fellow artists. gainsborough has told some not very pleasing stories about himself, but one of them shows us what a knack he had for seeing the comic side of things, and perhaps for seeing comedy where it never existed. upon one occasion he was invited to a friend's house where the family were in the habit of assembling for prayers, and he had no sooner got inside, than he began to fear he should laugh, when prayer time came, at the chaplain. in a rush of shyness he fled, leaving his host to look for him, till he stumbled over a servant who said that mr. gainsborough had charged him to say he had gone to breakfast at salisbury. even respect for the customs of others could not make him control himself. it was through his intimacy with king george's family that his quarrel with the royal academy came about. he had painted the three princesses--the princess royal, princesses augusta and elizabeth, and these were to be hung at a certain height in carlton house, but when he sent the first to the academy he asked it to be specially hung and his request was refused. then he sent a note as follows: "he begs pardon for giving them so much trouble, but he has painted the picture of the princesses in so tender a light that, notwithstanding he approves very much of the established line for strong effects, he cannot possibly consent to have it placed higher than eight feet and a half, because the likeness and the work of the picture will not be seen any higher, therefore at a word he will not trouble the gentlemen against their inclination, but will beg the best of his pictures back again." immediately, the academy returned his pictures, although it would seem that they might better have accommodated gainsborough than have lost such a fine exhibition. he never again would send anything to them. he was inclined to be irritated by inartistic points in his sitters, and is said to have muttered when he was painting the portrait of mrs. siddons, the great actress: "damn your nose madam; there is no end to it." the nose in question must have been an "eyesore" to more than gainsborough, for a famous critic is said to have declared that "mrs. siddons, with all her beauty was a kind of female johnson ... her nose was not too long for nothing." notwithstanding that his landscapes were not popular, he used to go off into the country to indulge his taste for painting them, and once he wrote to a friend that he meant to mount "all the lakes at the next exhibition in the great style, and you know, if people don't like them, it's only jumping into one of the deepest of them from off a wooded island and my reputation will be fixed forever." an old lady, whose guest he was, down in the country, told how he was "gay, very gay, and good looking, creating a great sensation, in a rich suit of drab with laced ruffles and cocked hat." one of the boys he saw in the country he delighted to paint, and he also grew so much attached to him that he took him to london and kept him with him as his own son. that boy's name was jack hill and he did not care for city life, nor maybe for gainsborough's eccentricities, so he ran away. he was found again and again, till one day he got away for good, and never came back. all his later life gainsborough was happy. his daughter, who had married fischer, the hautboy-player, came back home to live, and her disorder was not bad enough to prevent her being a cause of great happiness to her father. the other daughter never married. gainsborough says that he spent a thousand pounds a year, but he also gave to everybody who asked of him, and to many who asked nothing, so that he must have made a great deal of money during his lifetime, by his art. it is said that the "boy at the stile" was bestowed on colonel hamilton for his fine playing of a solo on the violin. a lady who had done the artist some trifling service received twenty drawings as a reward, which she pasted on the walls of her rooms without the slightest idea of their value. gainsborough got up early in the morning, but did not work more than five hours. he liked his friends, his music, and his wife, and spent much time with them. he was witty, and while he sketched pictures in the evening, with his wife and daughters at his side, he kept them laughing with his droll sayings. the last days of gainsborough showed him to be a hero. he died of cancer, and some time before he knew what his disease was he must have suffered a great deal. there is a story that is very pathetic of a dinner with his friends, beaumont and sheridan. usually, he was the gayest of the gay, but of late all his friends had noticed that gaiety came to him with effort. upon the night of this dinner, sheridan had been his wittiest, and had tried his hardest to make gainsborough cheer up, till finally, the artist, finding it impossible to get out of his sad mood, asked sheridan if he would leave the table and speak with him alone. the two friends went out together. "now don't laugh, but listen," gainsborough said; "i shall soon die. i know it; i feel it. i have less time to live than my looks infer, but i do not fear death. what oppresses my mind is this: i have many acquaintances, few friends; and as i wish to have one worthy man to accompany me to the grave, i am desirous of bespeaking you. will you come? aye or no!" at that sheridan, who was greatly shocked, tried to cheer him, but gainsborough would not return to the table, till he got the promise, which of course sheridan made. it was not very long after this that a famous trial took place--that of warren hastings. it was in westminster hall, and gainsborough went to listen several times. on the last occasion, he became so interested in what was happening that he did not notice a window open at his back. after a little he said to a friend that he "felt something inexpressibly cold" touch his neck. on his return home he told of the strange feeling to his wife. then he sent for a doctor, and there was found a little swelling. the doctor said it was not serious and that when the weather grew warmer it would disappear; but all the while gainsborough felt certain that it would mean his death. a short time after that he told his sister that he knew himself to have a cancer, and that was true. when he felt that he must die, he fell to thinking of many things in the past, and wished to right certain mistakes of his behaviour as far as possible. he sent to sir joshua reynolds and asked him to come and see him, since he could not go to see sir joshua. reynolds went and then gainsborough told him of his regret that he had shown so much ill-will and jealousy toward so great and worthy a rival. reynolds was very generous and tried to make gainsborough understand that all was forgiven and forgotten. he left his brother artist much relieved and happier, and he afterward said: "the impression on my mind was that his regret at losing life was principally the regret of leaving his art." as reynolds left the dying man's room, gainsborough called after him: "we are all going to heaven--and van dyck is of the company." he was buried in kew churchyard and the ceremonies were followed by reynolds and five of the royal academicians, who forgot all gainsborough's eccentricities of conduct toward them in their honest grief over his death. he was one of the first three dozen original members of the royal academy. plate--portrait of mrs. richard brinsley sheridan this picture is now in the collection of lord rothschild, london. mrs. sheridan was the loveliest lady of her time. she was the daughter of thomas linley, and a singer. she came from a home which was called "a nest of nightingales," because all in it were musicians. the father had a large family and made up his mind to become the best musician of his time in his locality in order to support them. he was successful, and in turn most of his children became musicians. his lovely daughter, eliza (mrs. sheridan), he bound to himself as an apprentice and taught her till she was twenty-one, insisting that she "serve out her time" to him, that she might become a perfect singer. the story of this beautiful lady seems to belong to the story of gainsborough's portrait and shall be told here. when she was a very little girl, no more than eight years old, she was so beautiful that as she stood at the door of the pump room in bath to sell tickets for her father's concerts, everyone bought them from her. when she was a very young woman her father engaged her to marry a mr. long, sixty years old. she did not seem to mind what arrangements her father made for her, but continued to sing and attend to her business, till after the wedding gowns were all made and everything ready for the marriage, when she happened to meet the brilliant richard brinsley sheridan, whose plays were so fashionable, and she fell deeply in love with him. she told mr. long she would not marry him, and without much objection he gave her up, but her father was very angry and he threatened to sue mr. long for letting his daughter go. then the beautiful lady ran away to calais and married mr. sheridan without her father's permission; but she came home again and said nothing of what she had done, kept on singing and helping her father earn money for his family. one day, mr. sheridan was wounded in a duel which he had fought with one of his wife's admirers, and when she heard the news she screamed, "my husband, my husband," so that everybody knew she was married to the fascinating playwright. sheridan for some reason did not at once come and get her, nor arrange for them to have a home together. for a good while she continued to sing; and once hearing her in oratorio, sheridan fell in love with his wife all over again. he took her from her home and would never let her sing again in public. they remarried publicly and went to live in london. he was not at all a rich and famous man at that time--only a poor law-student--but he would not let his wife make the fortune she might easily have made, by singing. this must have made his beautiful wife very sad, but she made no complaint at giving up her music and letting him silence her lovely voice, but turned all her attention to advancing his fortunes. she worked for him even harder than she had for her father, and that was saying a great deal. when he became a great writer of plays his wife took charge of all the accounts of his drury lane theatre, and when he was in the house of commons she acted as his secretary. sheridan died in great poverty and wretchedness, and it is believed had his self-sacrificing wife not died before him she would have looked after his affairs so well that he would not have lost his fortune. gainsborough painted the portraits of sheridan's father-in-law, and of samuel linley; and it was said that this last portrait was painted in forty-eight minutes. among his other portraits are: eight of george iii., sir john skynner, admiral hood, colonel st. leger, and "the blue boy"; but he was first and last a landscape painter of highest genius. xvi jean leon gerome (pronounced zhahn lay'on zhay-rome) _french, semi-classical school_ - _pupil of delaroche_ one cannot write much more than the date of birth and death of a man who lived until three or four years of the time of writing, so we may only say that gérôme was one of the most brilliant of modern french painters. he was born at vesoul and his father was a goldsmith. thus he probably had no very great difficulty in getting a start in his work. the prejudice against having an artist in the family was dying out, and as a prosperous goldsmith we may believe that his father had means enough to give his son good opportunities. gérôme, like millet, studied under delaroche, but became no such characteristic painter as he. while studying with delaroche he also was taking the course in l'ecole des beaux-arts. his first exhibited picture was "the cock fight," and he won a third class medal by it. almost always this painter has chosen his subjects from ancient or classic life, and his pictures are not always decent, but he painted with much care, the details of his work are very finely done and their vivid colour is fascinating. plate--the sword dance this painting may be seen in the metropolitan museum of art in new york city. the scene is full of action and interest, but perhaps the details of dress, mosaic decoration upon the walls, patterns of the rugs, the coloured and jewelled lamps and windows are the most splendidly painted of all. the central figure is a dancing girl, only partly draped, balancing a sword on her head, while a brilliant green veil flies from head and face. other oriental women squat upon the floor watching her with a half indolent expression, while their oriental masters and their friends sit in pomp at one side, absorbed in the dance and in the girl. the expressions upon all the faces are excellent and, the jewelled light that falls upon the group, the rich clothing, the grace of the dancer--all make a fascinating picture of a genre type. other gérômes are "daphnis and chloe," "leda," and "the duel after the masked ball." xvii ghirlandajo (pronounced geer-lan-da'yo) _florentine school_ - _pupil of fra bartolommeo_ it is a good deal of a name--domenico di tommaso di currado bigordi--and it would appear that the child who bore it was under obligation to become a good deal of a something before he died. italian and spanish painters generally had large names to live up to, and the one known as ghirlandajo did nobly. his father was a goldsmith and a popular part of his work was the making of golden garlands for the hair of rich italian ladies. his work was so beautiful that it gained for him the name of ghirlandajo, meaning the garland-twiner, a name that lived after him, in the great art of his son. domenico began as a worker in mosaic, a maker of pictures or designs with many coloured pieces of glass or stone. ghirlandajo's art was no improvement on that of his teacher, but he in turn became the teacher of michael angelo. the florentine school of painting, to which ghirlandajo belonged, was not so famous for colour as the venetian school, but it had many other elements to commend it. one cannot expect ghirlandajo to rank with titian, rubens, or other "colourists" of his own and later periods, but he did the very best work of his day and school. he attained to fame through his choice of types of faces for his models, and by his excellent grouping of figures. until his day, the faces introduced into paintings were likely to be unattractive, but he chose pleasing ones, and he painted the folds of garments beautifully. he was not entirely original in his ideas, but he carried out those which others had thus far failed to make interesting. often, in his wish to paint exactly what he saw, he softened nothing and therefore his figures were repulsive, but fra bartolommeo's pupil gave promise of what michael angelo was to fulfill. ghirlandajo and michael angelo were a good deal alike in their emotional natures. both sought great spaces in which to paint, and both chose to paint great frescoes. indeed ghirlandajo had the extraordinary ambition to put frescoes on all the fortification walls about florence. it certainly would have made the city a great picture gallery to have had its walls forever hung with the pictures of one master. had he painted them, inside and out, when such an enemy as napoleon came along, with his love of art, and his fashion of taking all that he saw to paris, he would likely enough have camped outside the walls while he decided what part of the gallery he would transfer to the louvre. one of the reasons that ghirlandajo is famous is that he often chose well known personages for his models, and as he painted just what he saw, did not idealise his subject, he gave to the world amazing portraits, as well as fine paintings. the same thing was done by painters of a far different school, at another period. the dutch and flemish painters were in the habit of using their neighbours as models. ghirlandajo is classed among religious painters, but let us compare some of his "religious" paintings with those of raphael or murillo, and see the result. he painted seven frescos on the walls of the santa maria novella in florence, all scenes of biblical history, as ghirlandajo imagined them. they show him to have been a fine artist, but to have had not much idea of history, and to have had little sense of fitness. ghirlandajo's seven subjects are taken from legends of the virgin, and the greatest represents mary's visit to elizabeth; it is called "the visitation," and it is a fresco about eighteen feet long painted on the choir wall. let us imagine the possible scene. the virgin mary came from cana, a little town in galilee placed in the hills about nine miles from nazareth, the home of the lowliest and the poorest, of a kindly pastoral people living in the open air, needing and wanting very little, simple in their habits. elizabeth, mary's old cousin, lived in judea, and st. luke writes thus: "mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of judea; and entered into the house of zacharias" (elizabeth's husband) "and saluted elizabeth." this record had been made at least eleven hundred years before ghirlandajo painted in the santa maria novella, and from it one cannot imagine that mary made any preparation for her journey, nor does it suggest that elizabeth had any chance to arrange a reception for her. even had she done so, it must have been of the simplest description, at that time among those people. one can imagine a lowly home; an aged woman coming out to meet her young relative either at her door or in the high road. there may have been surroundings of fruit and flowers, a stretch of highroad or a hospitable doorway; but the wildest imagination could not picture what ghirlandajo did. he paints elizabeth flanked with handmaidens, as if she were some royal personage, instead of a priest's wife in fairly comfortable circumstances where comfort was easily obtained. mary appears to be escorted by ladies-in-waiting, hardly a likely circumstance since she was affianced to no richer or more important person than a carpenter of galilee. possibly the three ladies that stand behind mary in, the picture are merely lookers-on, but in that case the visit of mary would seem to have been of public importance, especially as there are youths near by who are also much interested in one woman's hasty visit to another. the rich brocades worn by elizabeth's waiting ladies are splendid indeed and the landscape is fine--a rich italian landscape with architecture of the most up-to-date sort--showing, in short, that the artist lacked historical imagination. he found some models, made a purely decorative painting with an italian setting and called it "the visitation." the doorway on the right is distinctly renaissance. such a painting as this is not "religious," nor is it historic, nor does it suggest a subject; it is merely a fine picture better coloured than most of those of the florentine school. there is another painting of this same subject by ghirlandajo in the louvre, but it is no nearer truth than the one in the santa maria. ghirlandajo painted other than religious subjects, and one of them, at least, is quite repulsive. it is the picture of an old man, with a beautiful little child embracing him. the old man may have tenderness and love in his face, but his heavy features, his warty nose, do not make one think of pleasant things and one does not care to imagine the dear little child kissing the grotesque old fellow. it was before ghirlandajo's time that another painter had discovered the use of oil in mixing paints. previously colours had been mixed in water with some gelatinous substance, such as the white and yolk of an egg, to give the paint a proper texture or consistency. this preparation was called "distemper," and frescoes were made by using this upon plaster while it was still wet. plaster and colours dried together, and the painting became a part of the wall, not to be removed except by taking the plaster with it. the different gluey substances used had often the effect of making the colours lose their tone and they presented a glazed surface when used upon wood, a favourite material with artists. there are numberless anecdotes written of this artist and his brother, and one of these shows he had a temper. the brothers were engaged in a monastery at passignano painting a picture of the "last supper." while at work upon it, they lived in the house. the coarse fare did not suit ghirlandajo, and one night he could endure it no longer. springing from his seat in the refectory he flung the soup all over the monk who had served it, and taking a great loaf of bread he beat him with it so hard that the poor monk was carried to his cell, nearly dead. the abbot had gone to bed, but hearing the rumpus he thought it was nothing less than the roof falling in, and he hurried to the room where he found the brothers still raging over their dinner. david shouted out to him, when the abbot tried to reprove the artist, that his brother was worth more than any "pig of an abbot who ever lived!" it is recorded in the documents found in the confraternity of st. paul that: domenico de ghurrado bighordi, painter, called del grillandaio, died on saturday morning, on the th day of january, (o.s.), of a pestilential fever, and the overseers allowed no one to see the dead man, and would not have him buried by day. so he was buried, in santa maria novella, on saturday night after sunset, and may god forgive him! this was a very great loss for he was highly esteemed for his many qualities, and is universally lamented. the artist left nine children behind him. ghirlandajo's pictures may be found in the louvre, the berlin museum, the dresden, munich, and london galleries. most children will find it hard to see their beauty. great men are likely to come in groups, and with ghirlandajo there are associated botticelli and fra filippo lippi. plate--portrait of giovanna degli albizi this lovely lady was the wife of one of the painter's patrons, giovanni tornabuoni, through whom he received the commission for a series of frescoes in the choir of the santa maria novella, florence. the subjects chosen were sacred, but since ghirlandajo, no more than his neighbours, knew what the virgin or her contemporaries looked like, he saw no reason why he should not compliment some of the great ones of his own city and his own time by painting them in to represent the different characters of holy writ. so, as one of the ladies attendant upon elizabeth when mary comes to visit her, we have this signora of the fifteenth century. the artist made another picture of her, the one here shown, but in the same dress and posed the same as she had been for the church fresco. this accounts for its dignity and simplicity. it would seem like a bas-relief cut out of marble were it not for its wonderful colouring. it is in the rudolf kann collection, paris. this artist's other pictures are "adoration of the shepherds," "adoration of the magi," "madonna and child with saints," "three saints and god the father," "coronation of the virgin," and "portrait of old man and boy." xviii giotto (di bordone) (pronounced jot-to) _florentine school_ - _pupil of cimabue_ giotto painted upon wood, and in "distemper"--the mixture of colour with egg or some other jelly-like substance. we know nothing of his childhood except that he was a shepherd, as we learn from a story told of him and his teacher, cimabue. the story runs that one day while giotto was watching his sheep, high up on a mountain, cimabue was walking abroad to study nature, and he ran across a shepherd boy who was drawing the figure of a sheep, with a piece of slate upon a stone. in those days we can imagine how rare it was to find one who could draw anything, ever so rudely. immediately cimabue saw a chance to make an artist and he asked the little shepherd if he would like to be taught art in his studio. giotto was overjoyed at the opportunity, and at once he left the mountains for the town, the shepherd's crook for the brush. in those days the studio of one like cimabue was really a workshop. artists had to grind their own colours, prepare their own panels upon which to paint, and do a hundred other things of a workman rather than an artist kind in connection with their painting. such a studio was crowded with apprentices--boys who did these jobs while learning from the master. their teaching consisted in watching the artist and now and then receiving advice from him. it was into such a shop as this, in florence, that giotto went, and soon he was to become greater than his master. even so, we cannot think him great, excepting for his time, because his pictures, compared with later art, are crude, stiff, and strange. no pupil was permitted to use a brush till he had learned all the craft of colour grinding and the like, and this was supposed to take about six years. these workshops were likely to be dull, gloomy places, and only a strong desire to do such things as they saw their master doing, would induce a boy to persevere through the first drudgery of the work. giotto persevered, and not only became an original painter, at a time when even cimabue hardly made figures appear human in outline, but he designed the great campanile in florence, and he saw it partly finished before he died. the campanile is a wonder of architecture, but giotto's madonnas had to be improved upon, as certainly as he had improved upon those of cimabue. there are many amusing stories of giotto, mainly telling of his good nature, and his ugly appearance, which everyone forgot in appreciation of his truly kind heart. once a visit was made to his studio by the king of naples, after the artist had become famous. giotto was painting busily, though the day was very hot. the king entered, and bade giotto not to be disturbed but to continue his work, adding: "still, if i were you, i should not paint in such hot weather." giotto looked up with a laugh in his eye: "neither would i--if i were you, sire!" he answered. there is a famous saying: "as round as giotto's "o," and this is how it came about. the pope wanted the best of the florentine artists to do some work in rome for him and he sent out to them for examples of their work. when the pope's messenger came to giotto the artist was very busy. when asked for some of his work to show the pope, he paused, snatched a piece of paper and with the brush he had been using, which was full of red paint, he hurriedly drew a circle and gave it to the messenger who stared at him. "but--is this _all_?" he asked. "all--yes--and too much. put it with the others." this perfect circle and the account the messenger gave of his visit so delighted the pope that giotto was chosen from all the florentine artists to decorate the roman buildings. thus giotto worked till he was fifty-seven or eight years old when he put aside his brush and turned to sculpture and architecture. meantime he had far outstripped his master in art. the arrangement of the groups is about the same, but the figures look human and the draperies are more natural, while he gives the appearance of length, breadth, and thickness to his thrones and enclosures. we shall not choose a madonna for illustration, but another of giotto's masterpieces, remembering that good as he was in his time, he seems amazingly bad compared with those who came after him. plate--the meeting of st. john and st. anna at jerusalem. in a certain enrico scrovegno had a private chapel built in the arena at padua and he sent for giotto to come there and adorn the whole of its walls and ceiling with frescoes. these remain, though the chapel is now emptied of all else, and they suffice to bring scores of art-lovers to padua. the picture here reproduced represents the meeting and reconciliation between the father and mother of the virgin before her birth. the peculiarly shaped eyes and eyebrows that giotto gives to all his characters are specially noteworthy here as in every one of the thirty-eight frescoes. there are three rows of pictures, one above the other and in them are portrayed the principal scenes in the lives of christ and the virgin. the painter here reached his high-water mark, showed the very best he could produce in sincere, restrained art. xix franz hals _dutch school_ - - _pupil of karel van mander_ franz hals belonged to a family which for two hundred years had been highly respected in haarlem in the netherlands. the father of the painter left that town for political reasons in , and it was at antwerp that franz was born sometime between that date and . his parents took him back to haarlem as an infant, and that is the town with which his name and fame are most closely associated. little is known of his early life except that he began his studies with karel van mander and cornelis cornelissen. what we know of his family life is not to his credit. in the parish register of is recorded the birth of a son to franz hals and five years later he is on the public records for abusing his wife, who died shortly afterward. he married again within a year and the second wife bore him many children and survived him ten years. five of his seven sons became painters. franz hals drank too much and mixed too freely with the kind of disreputable people he loved to paint, but he never became so degraded that his hand lost its cunning, or his eye its keen vision for that which he wished to portray. in , he was made a director of the guild of st. lucas, an institution for the protection of arts and crafts in haarlem, but from that time onward he sank in popular esteem, deservedly. he fell into debt, then into pauperism, and when he died, about the age of eighty-six, he was buried at public expense in the choir of st. bavon church in haarlem. it was in the year that hals first became known as a master of his art by the painting of the st. jovis shooting company, one of the clubs composed of volunteers banded together for the defence of the town should occasion arise. such guilds were common throughout holland, and they became a favourite subject with hals, as with other painters of the time, who vied with one another in portraiture of the different members. these groups were hung upon the walls of the chambers where meetings were held for social purposes in times of peace. the men of highest rank are always given the most conspicuous places in the pictures. the flag is generally the one bit of gorgeous colour in the scene; but franz hals seized the opportunity to show his wonderful skill in detail while painting the cuffs and ruffs worn by these grandees. in all his work there is an impression of strength rather than of beauty; it is the charm of expressiveness he is aiming at, rather than the charm of grace and colour to which the italian school was devoted. he differed from that school, also, in his choice of subjects, for he was distinctly and almost entirely a portrait painter, and within his own limited range he is unsurpassed. a wonderful collection of his works is to be seen in the haarlem town hall. plate--the nurse and the child considering the woeful life that franz hals led, it is amazing to think that he of all artists is the best painter of good humour. he puts a smile on the face of nearly every one of his "leading characters," whether it be a modest young girl, a hideous old woman, a strolling musician, or a riotous soldier, and in every case the laugh suits the subject. it may have been his own easygoing shiftlessness, his way of casting care aside with a jest that enabled him to live so long and to accomplish so much in spite of his poverty and other misfortunes. the roguish look upon the face of this baby of the house of ilpenstein makes it appear older than the pleasant faced nurse. the dress of the child is such as hals delighted to spend his talents upon. the picture is in the berlin gallery. among his best known paintings are "the laughing cavalier," "the fool," "the man with the sword," and "hille bobbe. the witch of haarlem." xx meyndert hobbema _dutch school_ - _pupil of jacob van ruisdael_ when a man becomes famous many people claim his acquaintance, and often many places his birthplace. in hobbema's case it has never been decided whether he was born in the little town of koeverdam, or in the city of haarlem or in amsterdam. nor is it quite certain when he was born; but what he did afterward, we are all acquainted with. no one knows much about the life of this artist, but his master was doubtless his uncle, van ruisdael. hobbema was dead a hundred years before the world acknowledged his genius, thus he reaped no reward for hard work and ambition. he, like rembrandt, died in great poverty, and with nearly the same surroundings. rembrandt died forsaken in roosegraft street, amsterdam, and hobbema died in the same locality. we must speak chiefly about his work, since we know little of his personality or affairs. if böcklin's pictures seem to be composed of vertical lines, hobbema's are as startling in their positive vertical and horizontal lines combined. we are not likely to find elevations or gentle, gradual depressions in his landscapes, but straight horizons, long trunked, straight limbed trees; and the landscape seems to be punctured here and there by an upright house or a spire. it is startlingly beautiful, and so characteristic that after seeing one or two of hobbema's pictures we are likely to know his work again wherever we may find it. hobbema got at the soul of a landscape. it was as if one painted a face that was dear to one, and not only made it a good likeness but also painted the person as one felt him to be--all the tenderness, or maybe all the sternness. it may be that hobbema's failure to get money and honours, or at the very least, kind recognition as a great artist, while he lived, influenced his painting, and made him see mostly the sad side of beauty, nor it is certain that his landscapes give one a strange feeling of sadness and desolation, even when he paints a scene of plenty and fulness. the french have made a phrase for his kind of work, _paysage intime_--meaning the beloved country--the one best known. it is a fine phrase, and it was first used to describe rousseau's and corot's work; but it especially applies to hobbema's. while this artist was not yet recognised, his uncle van ruisdael was known as a great artist. the family must have been rich in spirit that gave so much genius to the world. hobbema certainly loved his art above all things, for he had no return during his lifetime, save what was given by the joy of work. there are those who complain that hobbema was a poor colourist. true, he used little besides grays and a peculiar green, which seemed especially to please him; but since that colouring belonged to the subjects he chose, one cannot complain on the ground that what he did was unsatisfying. for lack of knowledge about him we can think of him as a man of moods, sad, desolate ones at that; because his work is too extreme and uniform in its character for us to believe his method was affected. plate--the avenue, middelharnis, holland this perhaps is one of the most characteristic of hobbema's pictures. note a strange hopelessness in the scene, as well as beauty. the tall and solemn trees, the high light upon the road, suggesting to us all sorts of joys struggling through the cheerlessness of life. what other artist would have chosen such a corner of nature for a subject to paint? to quote a fine description: "he loved the country-side, studied it as a lover, and has depicted it with such intimacy of truth that the road to middelharnis seems as real to-day as it did over a hundred years ago to the artist. we see the poplars, with their lopped stems, lifting their bushy tops against that wide, high sky which floats over a flat country, full of billowy clouds as the sky near the north sea is apt to be. deep ditches skirt the road, which drain and collect the water for purposes of irrigation, and later on will join some deeper, wider canal, for purposes of navigation. we get a glimpse on the right, of patient perfection of gardening, where a man is pruning his grafted fruit trees; farther on a group of substantial farm buildings. on the opposite side of the road stretches a long, flat meadow, or "polder," up to the little village which nestles so snugly around its tall church tower; the latter fulfilling also the purpose of a beacon, lit by night, to guide the wayfarer on sea and land; scene of tireless industry, comfortable prosperity, and smiling peace. ... pride and love of country breathe through the whole scene. to many of us the picture smiles less than it thrills with sadness. perhaps it speaks thus only to those who find a kind of hurt in the revival of the spring, which promises so much and may fulfill so little." hobbema's "watermill" is very well-known and so are his "wooded landscape," and "haarlem's little forest." xxi william hogarth _school of hogarth (english)_ - william hogarth, like watteau, originated his own school; in short there never was anybody like him. he was an editorial writer in charcoal and paint, or in other words he had a story to tell every time he made a picture, and there was an argument in it, a right and a wrong, and he presented his point of view by making pictures. english artists in literature and in painting have done some great reformatory work. charles dickens overthrew some dreadful abuses by writing certain novels. the one which has most interest for children is the awful story of dotheboys' hall, which exposed the ill treatment of pupils in a certain class of english schools. what dickens and charles reade did in literature, hogarth undertook to do in painting. he described social shams; painted things as they were, thus making many people ashamed and possibly better. italians had always painted saints and madonnas, but hogarth pretended to despise that sort of work, and painted only human beings. he did not really despise raphael, titian, and their brother artists, but he was so disgusted with the use that had been made of them and their schools of art, to the entire exclusion of more familiar subjects, that he turned satirist and ridiculed everything. first of all, hogarth was an engraver. he was born in london on the th december, , and eighteen days later was baptised in the church of st. bartholemew the great. his father was a school teacher and a "literary hack," which means that in literature he did whatever he could find to do, reporting, editing, and so on. hogarth must early have known something of vagabond life, for his father's life during his own youth must have brought him into association with all sorts of people. he knew how madhouses were run, how kings dined, how beggars slept in goods boxes, and many other useful items. hogarth said of himself: "shows of all sorts gave me uncommon pleasure when an infant, and mimicry, common to all children, was remarkable in me.... my exercises, when at school, were more remarkable for the ornaments which adorned them, than for the exercises themselves." he became an engraver or silver-plater, being apprenticed to mr. ellis gamble, at the sign of the "golden angel," cranbourne alley, leicester fields. engraving on silver plate was all well enough, but hogarth aspired to become an engraver on copper, and he has said that this was about the highest ambition he had while he was in cranbourne alley. the shop-card which he engraved for mr. ellis gamble may have been the first significant piece of work he undertook. the card is still among the hogarth relics. he set up as an engraver on his own account, though he did study a little in sir james thornhill's art school; but whatever he learned he turned to characteristic account. he continued to make shop-cards, shop-bills, and book-plates. finally, in , a maker of tapestry engaged hogarth to sketch him a design end he set to work ambitiously he worked throughout that year upon the design, but when he took it to the man it was refused. the truth was that the man who had commissioned the work had heard that hogarth was "an engraver and no painter," and he had so little intelligence that he did not intend to accept his design, however much it might have pleased him. hogarth sued the man for his refusal and he won the suit. he next began to make what he called "conversation pieces," little paintings about a foot high of groups of people, the figures being all portraits. these were very fashionable for a time and made some money for the artist. both he and watteau were fond of the stage, and both painted scenes from operas and plays. in time he moved into lodgings at the "golden head," in leicester fields, and there he made his home. he had already begun the great paintings which were to make him famous among artists. these were a series of pictures, telling stories of fashionable and other life. his own story of how he came to think of the picture series was that he had always wished to present dramatic stories--present them in scenes as he saw them on the stage. he had married the daughter of sir james thornhill, and had never been thought of kindly by his father-in-law till he made so much stir with his first series. then sir james approved of him, and hogarth found life more pleasing. there are very few anecdotes to tell of the artist's life, and the story of his pictures is much more amusing. one of his first satires was made into a pantomime by theophilus gibber, and another person made it into an opera. many pamphlets and poems were written about it, and finally china was painted with its scenes and figures. there was as much to cry as to laugh over in hogarth's pieces and that is what made them so truly great. one of his great picture series was called the "rake's progress" and it was a warning to all young men against leading too gay a life. it showed the "rake" at the beginning of his misfortunes, gambling, and in the last reaping the reward of his follies in a debtor's prison and the madhouse. there are eight pictures in that set. in this series, especially in the fifth picture, there are extraordinary proofs of hogarth's completeness of ideas. upon the wall in the room wherein the "rake" marries an old woman for her money, the ten commandments are hung, all cracked, and the creed also is cracked and nearly smudged out; while the poor-box is covered with cobwebs. the eight pictures brought to hogarth only seventy guineas. one of his pictures was suggested to him by an incident which greatly angered him. he had started for france on some errand of his own, and was in the very act of sketching the old gate at calais, when he was arrested as a spy. now hogarth was a hard-headed englishman, and when he was hustled back to england without being given time for argument, he was so enraged that he made his picture as grotesque as possible, to the lasting chagrin of france. he painted the french soldiers as the most absurd, thin little fellows imaginable, and that picture has largely influenced people's idea of the french soldier all over the english-speaking world. as hogarth grew old he grew also a little bitter and revengeful toward his enemies, often taking his revenge in the ordinary way of belittling the people he disliked, in his paintings. hogarth came before reynolds or gainsborough; in short, was the first great english artist, and his chief power lay in being able instantly to catch a fleeting expression, and to interpret it. an incident of hogarth's youth illustrates this. he had got into a row in a pot-house with one of the hangers-on, and when someone struck the brawler over the head with a pewter pot, there, in the midst of excitement and rioting, hogarth whipped out his pencil and hastily sketched the expression of the chap who had been hit. hogarth was friends with most of the theatre managers, and one of his souvenirs was a gold pass given him by tyers, the director of vauxhall gardens, which entitled hogarth and his family to entrance during their lives. this was in return for some "passes," which hogarth had engraved for tyer. upon one occasion hogarth set off with some companions for a trip to the isle of sheppey. incidentally forest wrote a sketch of their journey and hogarth illustrated it. that work is to be found, carefully preserved, in the british museum. the repeated copying and reproduction for sale of his pictures brought about the first effort to protect his works of art by copyright. but it was not till he had done the "rake's progress" that he was able to protect himself at all, and even then not completely. just before his death he was staying at chiswick, but the day before he died he was removed to his house in leicester fields. he was buried in the chiswick churchyard; and in that suburb of london may still be seen his old house and a mulberry tree where he often sat amusing children for whom he cared very much. garrick wrote the following epitaph for his tomb: if genius fire thee, reader, stay; if nature touch thee, drop a tear; if neither move thee, turn away, for hogarth's honour'd dust lies here. farewell, great painter of mankind! who reached the noblest point of art, whose pictured morals charm the mind and through the eye correct the heart. plate--the marriage contract the picture used in illustration here is part of probably the very greatest art-sermon ever painted, called "marriage à la mode." the story of it is worth telling: "the first act is laid in the drawing-room of the viscount squanderfield"--is not that a fine name for the character? "on the left, his lordship is seated, pointing with complacent pride to his family tree, which has its roots in william the conqueror. but his rent roll had been squandered, the gouty foot suggesting whither some of it has gone; and to restore his fortunes he is about to marry his heir to the daughter of a rich alderman. the latter is seated awkwardly at the table, holding the marriage contract duly sealed, signed and delivered; the price paid for it, being shown by the pile of money on the table and the bunch of cancelled mortgages which the lawyer is presenting to the nobleman, who refuses to soil his elegant fingers with them. over on the left is his weakling son, helping himself at this critical turn of his affairs, to a pinch of snuff while he gazes admiringly at his own figure in the mirror. the lady is equally indifferent; she has strung the ring on to her finger and is toying with it, while she listens to the compliments being paid to her by counsellor silver-tongue. through an open window another lawyer is comparing his lordship's new house, that is in the course of building, with the plan in his hand. a marriage so begun could only end in misery." this is the first act, and the pictures that follow show all the steps of unhappiness which the couple take. there are five more acts to that painted drama, which is in the national gallery, london. xxii hans holbein, the younger (pronounced hahntz hol'bine) _german school_ - _pupil of holbein, the elder_ there were three generations of painters in the holbein family, and the hans of whom we speak was of the third. his grandfather was called "old holbein," and when more painters of the same name and family came along it became necessary to distinguish them from each other thus: "old holbein," the "elder holbein," and "young holbein." the first one was not much of an artist; still, in a locality where at best there was not much art he was good enough to be remembered. "young holbein" was born in augsburg, which is in swabia, in southern germany; "elder holbein" and his father, michael, "old holbein," had moved there from schonenfeld, a neighbouring village, about forty three years before little hans was born, the old michael bringing his family to the larger town where it was easier to make a living. the "elder holbein" was a really good artist and well thought of in augsburg, and when little hans's turn came he had no teacher but his father, unless indeed we were to call him also a pupil of his elder brother, ambrosius. his uncle sigismund, too, taught him something of art, for the whole holbein family seem to have been artists. young holbein was never regularly apprenticed to any outsider. art was not then taught as it is now. the work of a beginner was often to paint for his master certain details which it was thought that he might handle properly, while the master occupied himself with what he thought to be some more important part of the picture. it is said that hans often painted the draperies of his father's figures when his father was engaged upon the altar pieces so fashionable at the time. the holbeins one and all must have been bad managers or improvident; at any rate, hans did not turn out well as a man and we read that his father was always in debt and difficulty although he received much money for his work and was not handicapped, like dürer's father, by a family of eighteen children. the story of the holbeins is quite unlike that of the dürers, and not nearly so attractive. some time before hans was twenty years of age, the entire family had packed up and gone to live in lucerne, while hans and his brother, ambrosius, went travelling together, as most young germans went at that time before they settled down to the serious work of life. the last we hear of ambrosius he had joined the painters' guild in basel, and probably he died not long afterward, or at any rate while he was still young. there was in basel a certain hans bar, for whose wedding occasion hans holbein designed a table, on which he pictured an allegory of "st. nobody." this was very likely such work as our cartoonists do to-day, but being the work of holbein, it had great artistic value. besides that, he painted a schoolmaster's sign to be hung outside the door. as an illustrator, holbein made the acquaintance of several authors about that time and started on the high road to fame. he was a man of very little conscience or fine feeling, and there could hardly be a greater contrast than that between the clean sweet life of dürer and the brawling, unfeeling one that hans holbein led. dürer married, had no children, but tenderly loved and cared for his wife, taking her with him upon his journeys and making her happy. holbein married and beat his wife; had several children and took care of none of them. his wife grew to look old and worn while he remained a gay looking sport, quite tired of one whom he had had on his hands for ten years. he wandered everywhere and left his family to shift for itself. one writer in speaking of the two men says: "dürer would never have deserted his wife whom he took with him even on his journey to the netherlands; and he was bound by the same tenderness to his native town. however much he rejoiced to receive a visit from bellini at venice, or when at antwerp, the artists instituted, a torch-light procession in his honour, nothing could have moved him to leave nuremberg." dürer loved his home; holbein hated his. holbein had a cold, light-blue eye; dürer a soft and tender glance. while dürer lived he was the mainstay of his family--father and brothers. holbein's father died in misery and his brother's life was disastrous, hans doing nothing to serve them and looking on at their sufferings indifferently. there is a court document in existence which tells the particulars of hans holbein's arrest for getting into a brawl with a lot of goldsmiths' apprentices during a night of carousal. the court warned him that he would be more severely punished if he did not cease his lawless life and he was made to promise not to "jostle, pinch, nor beat his lawful spouse." when he died he made no provision in his will for his family. there is a picture of his wife, elizabeth schmidt, to be seen in his "madonna" at solothurn holbein used her for the model. she then was young and blooming and the model for the child was his own baby; at that time he found them useful. his life of folly can hardly be excused by impulsiveness or emotion, for his pictures show little of either. he was best at portrait painting. at that time guilds and town councils wanted the portraits of their members preserved in some way, and it was the habit of painters like holbein to form picturesque groups and give to such dramatic groupings the features of townsmen. rembrandt did this much later than holbein, when he painted the "night watch," or as it is more properly called, "the sortie." probably holbein's first important work was to make title pages for the second edition of martin luther's translation of the new testament. this ms. was made about the time that holbein's work began to be of interest to the public, and so the commission was given to him. after a time this artist went to england with letters of introduction to sir thomas more, chancellor to king henry viii. sir thomas treated him very kindly and set him to work making portraits of his own family. during the time he was living at more's home in chelsea, the king himself, used frequently to visit there, and on one occasion he saw the brilliant portraits of the more family and inquired about the artist. sir thomas offered the king any of the pictures he liked, but henry viii. asked to see the artist. when brought before him, holbein's fortune seemed to be made for the king asked him to go to court and paint for him, remarking that "now he had the artist he did not care about the pictures." holbein seems to have been a favourite with henry and many anecdotes are told of his life at whitehall, where he went to live. once while holbein was engaged upon a portrait, a nobleman insisted upon entering his studio, after the artist had told him that he was painting the portrait of a lady, by order of the king. the nobleman insisted upon seeing it, but holbein seized him and threw him down the stairs; then he rushed to the king and told what had happened. he had no sooner finished than the nobleman appeared and told his story. the king blamed the nobleman for his rudeness. "you have not to do with holbein," he said, "but with me. i tell you, of seven peasants i can make seven lords, but of seven lords i cannot make one holbein. begone! and remember that if you ever attempt to avenge yourself, i shall look upon any injury offered to the painter as done to myself." it was holbein who, visiting a brother artist and finding a picture on the easel, painted a fly upon it. when the artist returned he tried to brush the fly off, then set about looking for the one who had deceived him. his portrait painting was so superb that he received many commissions. meantime, sir thomas more had fallen into disfavour with the king and was to lose his head, but it is written that the artist's portraits "betray nothing of this tragedy." he was as ready to climb to fame by the favour of his generous patron's enemies as he had been to accept the offices of sir thomas more. he painted the portraits of several of the wives of henry viii., and it may be said that there was a good deal of that monarch's temperament to be found in holbein himself. take him all in all, hans was as detestable as a man as he was excellent as a painter. in his adopted home in lucerne, holbein had painted frescoes, both on the inside and the outside of a citizen's house, and this house stood until , when it was torn down to make way for street improvements, but several artists hastily copied the frescoes so that they are not entirely lost. before he left germany for england, holbein had been commissioned to decorate the town hall in basel, and a certain amount of money was voted for the work, but after he had finished three walls, he decided that the money was only enough to pay him for what he had already done. the councillors agreed with him, but as money was a little "close" in basel at that time, they felt unable to give him more, and so voted to "let the back wall alone, till further notice." he painted one madonna whom he surrounded with the entire family of burgomaster meyer, including even the burgomaster's first wife, who was dead. this work is called the "meyer madonna." it is said that after holbein's return to basel he, with others, was persecuted for his "religious principles," but if this were true, his persecutors went to considerable pains for nothing, because holbein was never known to have any sort of principles, religious or otherwise. he was neither a protestant, nor a catholic but a painter, a man without convictions and without thought. he did not care for family, country, friends, politics, religion, nor for anything else, so far as any one knows. when he was asked why he had not partaken of the sacrament, he answered that he wanted to understand the matter better before he did so. thus he escaped punishment, and when matters were explained to him, he did whatever seemed safest and most convenient under the circumstances. on his return to england, he settled among the colony of german and netherland merchants, who were in the habit of meeting at a place called "the steelyard," as their home and warehouses were grouped in that locality, with a guild hall and a wineshop they alone patronised. while associated with his compatriots holbein made portraits of many of them, and these are magnificent works of art. he painted them separately or in groups; in their offices and in their guild hall, as the case might be. the men whom he thus painted were: gorg gisze, hans of antwerp, derich berck, geryck tybis, ambrose fallen, and many others. he designed the arch which the guild erected upon the occasion of anne boleyn's coronation, and he painted henry's next queen, jane seymour. holbein painted many portraits of henry viii. and probably all those dated after were either copies or founded upon the portrait which holbein made and which was destroyed with whitehall. while he painted for henry, holbein received a sort of retainer's fee of thirty pounds a year, but he may have received sums for outside commissions which he undertook. on one occasion, when he took a journey to upper burgundy to paint a portrait of the duchess whom henry contemplated making his next wife, the king gave him ten pounds out of his own purse. we have no record of vast sums such as raphael received. henry did not succeed in making the duchess his wife, so holbein was sent to paint another--anne of cleves--that henry might see what he thought of her before he undertook to make her his queen. holbein did a disastrous deed, for he made anne a very acceptable looking woman, (the portrait hangs in the louvre) and henry negotiated for her on the strength of that portrait. later, when he saw her, he was utterly disgusted and disappointed. holbein, notwithstanding this trick, was employed to paint the next wife of henry, and doubtless he also made the miniature of catherine howard which is in windsor castle. holbein finally died of the plague and no one knows where he was buried. his wife died later, and it was left for his son, philip, who was said to be "a good well-behaved lad," to bring honours to the family. he was apprenticed in paris, and, settling later in augsburg, he founded a branch of the holbein family on which the emperor matthias conferred a patent of nobility, making them the holbeins of holbeinsberg. plate--robert cheseman with his falcon this is one of the best of the many splendid portraits holbein painted. it hangs in the hague gallery. the gentleman was forty-eight years old and in the portrait he wears a purplish-red doublet of silk and a black overcoat, which was the fashion of the day, all trimmed with fur. he has curly hair, just turning gray. his left hand is gloved and on it he holds his falcon, while with the other hand he strokes its feathers. of all sports at that time, falconry was the most fashionable and every fine gentleman had his sporting birds. robert cheseman lived in essex. he was rich and a leader in english politics. his father was "keeper of the wardrobe to henry viii." and he himself served in many public offices. he was one of the gentleman chosen to welcome anne of cleves when she landed on english soil to marry henry viii. these details were first published by mr. arthur chamberlain and are taken from his sketch of holbein and his works. among holbein's other famous pictures are: "the ambassadors," "hans of antwerp," "christina of denmark," "jane seymour," "anne of cleves," and "st. george and the dragon." xxiii william holman hunt _english (pre-raphaelite) school_ -- _pupil of academy school_ the story of the pre-raphaelites is all by itself a story of art. holman hunt was one of three who formed this "brotherhood"; and he, with one other, are the only ones whom some of us think worthy of giving a place in art. this is to be the story of the brotherhood rather than a story of one man. the last great artist england had had before this extraordinary group, was j. m. w. turner, truly a wonderful man, but after him england's painters became more and more commonplace, drawing further and further away from truth, there was one, j. f. lewis, who went away to syria and lived a lonely and studious life, trying to paint with fidelity sacred scenes, but he was not great enough to do what his conscience and desires demanded of him; and, finally, constable declared that the end of art in england had come. but it had not, for up in london, in the very heart of the city, in cheapside (wood street) there was born, in april, , a child destined to be a brilliant and wonderful man, who was actually to rescue english art from death. many do not think thus, but enough of us do to warrant the statement. the new artist was holman hunt. he was the son of a london warehouseman, with no inclination whatever for learning, so that it seemed simply a waste of time to send him to school. this continually repeated history of artists who seem to know nothing outside their brushes and colours, is astonishing, but it is true that artists for the most part must be regarded as artists, pure and simple, and not as men of even reasonably good intellectual attainments, and more or less this accounts for their low estate centuries ago. one does not associate "learning" and the artist. when we have such splendid examples as dürer and two or three others we discuss their intellectuality because they are so unusual. holman hunt was like most of his brother artists in all but his art. he hated school and at twelve years of age was taken from it. his father wanted him to become a warehouse merchant like himself, and he began life as clerk or apprentice to an auctioneer. he next went into the employment of some calico-printers of manchester. the designing of calicoes can hardly be called art, even if the department of design had fallen to holman hunt's lot and we have no evidence that it did, but he started to be an artist nevertheless, there in the print-shop. he found in his new place another clerk who cared for art; and this sympathy encouraged him to fix his mind upon painting more than ever. he used to draw such natural flies upon the window panes that his employer tried one day to "shoo away a whole colony of flies that seemed miraculously to have settled." this gave the clerks much amusement, and also attracted attention to holman hunt's genius. his very small salary was spent, not on his support, but in lessons from a portrait painter of the city. his parents did not like this, but they could not help themselves, and thus this greatest of the pre-raphaelites began his work. the pre-raphaelites were a little group of men who believed that artists were drawing too much on their imaginations, not painting things as they saw them, and that the painter had become incapable of close observation. he worked in his studio, did not get near enough to nature, and instead of trying to follow along this line, this group of men, with their new and partly correct ideas, meant to go back further than the great masters themselves and present an elemental art. this was a part of their scheme and partly it was justified, but of all the men who undertook to make a new school, holman hunt was the only one who remained, and will remain forever, a representative. he alone stuck to the original purpose of the group and developed it into a truly great school; so that it is he alone we need to know. after he began to take lessons of the portrait painter in london, he developed so quickly that he found by painting portraits three days a week, he could pay his own expenses, and the rest of the time he devoted to study. he tried to be admitted to the academy schools twice and was twice refused before they would receive him. it was there in the academy the three original pre-raphaelites met for the first time; they were holman hunt, dante gabriel rossetti, and millais. after entering the school hunt painted and sold four excellent pictures, but they all seem to have been lost; nobody can trace them. he was not yet a "pre-raphaelite." all this time hunt was half ill because he knew that he was grieving his father of whom he was devotedly fond, and the strain of trying to work while he was unhappy nearly destroyed him. the pictures that he exhibited at the royal academy were so poor that the commission declared they should not only be removed but that hunt ought really to be forbidden to exhibit any more. this must have been a great blow to the young and struggling artist, and to add to this trouble, his father was being jeered at for having such a good-for-nothing son. hunt's pictures in the academy were so much despised that his father was told his son was a disgrace to him, and we may be sure that did not help the young fellow, who meantime was earning a living, not by painting pictures, but by cleaning up those of another man. dyce, who had painted on the walls of trinity house, engaged him to clean and restore those paintings, and hunt was doing this for his bread and butter. at that time he became so downhearted and discouraged that he almost decided to leave england altogether and go to live in canada away from his friends who jeered, and his family who reproached him; but just then millais, one of the successful painters whom he had met in the academy school, who could afford to be generous, came to hunt's aid and gave him the means of living while he painted "the hireling shepherd." this was destined to be the turning point in hunt's luck, for that painting was properly hung at the exhibition, and it received recognition. after that he painted a picture which he sold on the installment plan--being paid by the purchaser so much a month. meantime he owed his landlady a large sum, and he says himself that he "suffered almost unbearable pain at passing her and her husband week after week without being able to even talk of annulling his debts." in time he not only settled that bill which distressed him, but paid back his friend millais the money loaned by him. hunt rarely took a commission, because to do so meant that he must paint a picture after the manner his employer wished, and hunt had certain ideas of art in which he believed and therefore would not bind himself to depart from them; but after a little success, which enabled him to pay his bills, he did undertake a commission from sir thomas fairbairn, and it was called "the awakened conscience." he finished this picture on a january day late in the afternoon, and that very night he left england, setting out upon a longed-for journey to the holy land, where he meant to study the country and people till he believed himself able to paint a truthful picture of sacred scenes. he refused to paint pictures of eastern jews who should look like parisians, with venetian backgrounds. he meant to paint oriental scenes as nearly as he could, as they might have taken place. he came back to his english home just two years and one month from the time he had left it, and he brought back a picture of the goat upon which the jews loaded their sins and then turned loose in waste-places to wander and die. "the scapegoat" was a great picture, but before he left england he had painted a greater--the one we see here--"the light of the world." he had depended upon the sale of the "scapegoat" to pay his way for a time after his return home, and alas, it did not sell. more than that, his beloved father died and this added to his sense of desolation, for he had not been sufficiently successful before his death to justify himself in his father's eyes. these things so overwhelmed his sensitive mind with trouble, that his condition became very serious, and if certain good friends had not stood by him loyally, he would probably never have painted again. he began at last another ambitious picture--"finding of christ in the temple"--but while he was engaged upon this, he had to paint mere pot-boilers also in order to get on at all, and he says that half the time the great picture "stood with its face to the wall" while he was trying merely to earn bread and butter. the wonderful louis blanc tried once to plan a way by which all deserving people should have in this world equal opportunity to try. this has never been "worked out." it never will be, but holman hunt reminds us how much the world loses by not providing that "equal opportunity." no one deserves more than his chance; but such struggles of genius tell us that all is not fair. hunt persevered with this christ in the temple and when finished he sold it for , guineas--a larger sum than he had ever before been given for a painting. he no sooner received his money for this great picture than off he went once more to the holy land. he was conscientious in everything he did, and never before had an artist painted scenes of christ that carried such a sense of truth with them. the set haloes seen about the heads of the saints and of holy people even in raphael's pictures and in those of the very greatest artists of his time, disappeared with holman hunt's coming. in the "light of the world," the halo is an accident--the great white moon, happening to rise behind the christ's head--and there we have the halo, simple, natural, only suggestive, not artificial. then, too, in the "shadow of death," there is a menacing shadow of the cross--made upon the wall by christ's body, as he naturally stretches out his arms, after his work in the carpenter shop. there is not one false note that shocks us, or makes us feel that after all the story itself is affected and artificial. everything that is symbolical is brought about naturally. they are sincere, truthful pictures that speak to the mind as well as to the eye. hunt's colouring and many other technical matters are often far from perfect, but there is something besides technicality to be considered in judging a picture. for a time, while the three men, hunt, rossetti, and millais, kept together, their pictures were signed p. r. b., as a sign of their league; but this did not last very long, and afterward hunt signed his pictures independently. after the "brotherhood" had worked against the greatest discouragements for a long time, and felt nearly hopeless of success, john ruskin, one of the greatest of critics and most fearless of men, who was so much respected that his words had great influence, suddenly published a defence of these pre-raphaelites. he declared that they were the greatest artists of the time, and while scorning their critics he applauded those three young men, till he turned the tide, and everybody began to know what truly brilliant work they were doing. ruskin's words came, hunt said, "as thunder out of a clear sky." when the "brotherhood" was formed the three young men thought they should have a paper--a periodical of some sort, in which they might tell of their purposes and express their ideas; and so rossetti, who wrote as well as painted, proposed that they print such a periodical once a month, and call it the _germ_; and the p. r. b's. were to be joint proprietors. rossetti had first thought of a different title, _thoughts toward nature_, and his brother, w. m. rossetti, who was going to take charge of the monthly, thought that expressed the pre-raphaelites' idea; but it was finally agreed to call it the _germ_. only two numbers could be published by the pre-raphaelites, because nobody bought it and the young men's money gave out, but the printers came to the rescue, and put up the money to issue two or three more _germs_. although that journal failed utterly, its four numbers were worth publishing, and are to-day worth reading. they were truly valuable, for they contained a story and poem by dante gabriel rossetti, besides work of the other p. r. b's. above all things hunt was conscientious in his work, trying with all his might to represent things as be believed them to be. when he made his "scapegoat," he went to the shores of the dead sea to paint, accompanied only by arab guides, and there he found the desolate, hard landscape for his picture. the hardships he experienced were very many. the wretched goat he took with him died in the desert of that dreary place after it had been no more than sketched in, but back in jerusalem hunt finished the goat. ruskin's description of the picture helps one to feel all the desolation of the subject: "the salt sand of the wilderness of ziph, where the weary goat is dying. the neighbourhood is stagnant and pestiferous, polluted by the decaying vegetables brought down by the jordan in its floods, and the bones of the beasts of burden that have died by the way of the sea, lie like wrecks upon its edge, bared by the vultures and bleached by the salt ooze." even the superstitious arabs would not go near the spot which hunt chose as the scene of his picture, but hunt endured all things, believing it due to his art. when he painted "christ in the temple," he needed jewish models, and it was almost impossible for him to get them. he could not let them know what they were to represent, or they would not have sat for him at all but he succeeded in painting the "first semitic presentment of the semitic scriptures." in jerusalem the jews heard that he had come "to traffic with the souls of the faithful," and they forbade him to have any jews come into his studio; so that he could not finish the picture there. back in london he had to find his models in the jewish school. he left the figures of christ and the virgin till the last and then painted them "from a lady of the ancient race, distinguished alike for her amiability and beauty, and a lad in one of the jewish schools, to which the husband of the lady furnished a friendly introduction." thus, step by step, through the greatest difficulties, holman hunt established a new school of painting--allegory with a modern treatment which all could understand. plate--the light of the world this is the most popular picture of a sacred subject, ever painted; and john ruskin's description of it, here quoted, is the best ever written or that can be written. "on the left of the picture is seen the door of the human soul. it is fast barred, its bars and nails are rusty; it is knitted and bound to its stanchions by creeping tendrils of ivy, showing that it has never been opened. a bat hovers over it; its threshold is overgrown with brambles, nettles and fruitless corn.... christ approaches in the night time, ... he wears the white robe, representing the power of the spirit upon him; the jewelled robe and breastplate, representing the sacredotal investitude; the rayed crown of gold, interwoven with the crown of thorns; not dead thorns, but now bearing soft leaves, for the healing of the nations.... the lantern carried in christ's left hand is the light of conscience.... its fire is red and fierce; it falls only on the closed door, on the weeds that encumber it, and on an apple shaken from one of the trees of the orchard, thus marking that the entire awakening of the conscience is not to one's own guilt alone, but to the guilt of the world, or, 'hereditary guilt.'... "this light is suspended by a chain, wrapt around the wrist of the figure, showing that the light which reveals sin to the sinner appears also to chain the hand of christ. the light which proceeds from the head of the figure--is that of the hope of salvation; it springs from the crown of thorns, and, though itself sad, subdued and full of softness, is yet so powerful, that it entirely melts into the glow of it the forms of the leaves and boughs which it crosses, showing that every earthly object must be hidden by this light, where its sphere extends." if you will study every detail of this reproduction, finding all the objects--the apple, the rusty bolts--noting how the full risen moon has formed a natural nimbus for the sacred head, and then re-read what ruskin has said, you will discover the rarest truths in holman hunt's picture. the several pictures which he painted, but which cannot now be found are: "hark!" which was first exhibited in the royal academy; "scene from woodstock," "the eve of st. agnes," "jerusalem by moonlight," "the king of hearts," "moonlight at salerno," "interior of the mosque of omar," "the pathless water," "winter," "afternoon," "sussex downs," "penzance," "the archipelago," "will-o'-the-wisp," "ivybridge," "the foal of an ass," "road over the downs," "the haunt of the gazelle," "'oh, pearl,' quoth i," "miss flamborough," "the school-girl's hymn." portraits: mr. martineau; mr. j. b. brice. small sketch of the "scapegoat," "sunset on the sea," "morning prayer," "bianca," "past and present," and "dead mallard." should you ever find one of these pictures bearing the initials p. r. b. or those of holman hunt, you will have made an interesting discovery and should make it known to others. xxiv george inness _american_ - _pupil of regis gignoux_ george inness was destined to keep a grocery store as his father had kept one before him, and had grown rich in it. when george was a young man he was given a grocery store in newark, new jersey, a very small store indeed, and it is not surprising that the young man preferred art to butter and eggs. the inness family had just moved from newburg, probably the elder innes seeking in newark a good location for his son's beginning. the first art-work inness did was engraving; as he had been apprenticed to that business, but afterward he studied with gignoux, a pupil of delaroche. at that time there was what is known as the hudson river school. its ideas were set and formal, and not very inspiring, aside from the subjects treated. church was then a young man like inness, and he was studying in the hudson river school, but the young grocer struck out a line for himself. he was forty years old before he got to paris, but once there, he turned to the men at barbizon--rousseau, millet, corot, and the rest--for inspiration, and began to do beautiful things indeed. rousseau became his friend, and the art of inness grew large and rich through such influences. inness had inherited much religious feeling from his scotch ancestors, and all his work was conscientious, very carefully done. when inness returned from paris he was not yet well known. he went to montclair, new jersey, to live and it was there that he did his best work. finally, after he was fifty years old, he became known as a truly splendid painter. he loved best to paint quiet scenes of morning, evening sunset, and the like. his pictures began to gain value, and one that he had sold for three hundred dollars jumped in price to ten thousand and more. his work is not equally good, because his moods greatly influenced him. plate--berkshire hills this picture in the george a. hearn collection is full of the sense of restfulness that the works of this artist always convey. the trees are as motionless as the distant hills, and if the oxen are moving at all it is but slowly. some other inness paintings are the "georgia pines," "sunset on the passaic," "the wood gatherers" and "after a summer shower." xxv sir edwin henry landseer _english school_ - _pupil of his father, john landseer_ it is pleasant to speak of one artist whose good work began in the companionship of his father; the case of edwin landseer is most unusual. his father was a skilful engraver who loved art, and encouraged the cultivation of it in his son, as other fathers of painters encouraged them to become priests or haberdashers or bakers, as the case might be. little landseer's beginning has been described by his father as he and a friend stood looking upon one of the scenes of his childhood: "these two fields were edwin's first studio. many a time have i lifted him over this very stile. i then lived in foley street, and nearly all the way between marylebone and hampstead was open fields. it was a favourite walk with my boys; and one day when i had accompanied them, edwin stopped by this stile to admire some sheep and cows which were quietly grazing. at his request i lifted him over, and finding a scrap of paper and a pencil in my pocket, i made him sketch the cow. he was very young indeed, then--not more than six or seven years old. "after this we came on several occasions, and as he grew older this was one of his favourite spots for sketching. he would start off alone, or with john (thomas?) or charles, and remain till i fetched him in the afternoon. i would then criticise his work, and make him correct defects before we left the spot. sometimes he would sketch in one field, sometimes in the other, but generally in the one beyond the old oak we see there, as it was more pleasant and sunny." all the landseer men were gifted, and the mother was the beautiful woman whom reynolds painted as a gleaner, carrying a bundle of wheat upon her head. there were seven little landseers, the oldest of them being thomas, the famous engraver, whose reproduction of his brother's works will preserve them to us always, even after the originals are gone. the first of edwin's drawings which seemed to his family worthy of publishing was a great st. bernard dog, such a wonderful performance for a little fellow of thirteen that thomas engraved it and distributed it all over england. little edwin had seen this beautiful dog one day in the streets of london in a servant's charge, and he was so delighted with its beauty, that he followed the two home and asked the dog's owner if he might sketch him. the st. bernard was six feet four inches long "and at the middle of his back, stood two feet seven inches in height." a great critic said that this drawing was one of the very finest that any master of art had ever made, though it was done by a little child of thirteen years and it is also said that landseer himself never did anything better than that little-boy work. a live dog who was let into the room with it--as critic, maybe--proved to be the most flattering of such, because he bristled instantly for a fight. while the boy was still thirteen--which seems to have been a magic and not a tragic number to him--he exhibited pictures in the royal academy. these were a mule, and a dog with a puppy. in the stories of "famous artists" we are told that he was a fine, manly little chap with light curly hair and very well behaved. when he became a student of the academy the keeper, fuseli, used to look about among the students and cry: "where is my little dog boy?" if landseer was not in his place. the little chap's favourite dog was his own brutus, which he painted lying at full length; and though the picture was small, it sold for seventy guineas. this means an earning capacity indeed, for a small boy. when he was but seven years old he had made pictures of lions and tigers, each with a different expression from the other and each with a character of its own. critics spoke specially of the tiger's whiskers as "admirable in the rendering of foreshortened curves." tigers' whiskers were thought to be most difficult things to make, but in landseer's pictures, they were as "natural as life." the great success of the artist's animal pictures was that he made them seem to have human intelligence, and it was also said that if one only saw the dog's collar, as landseer painted it, he would know it to be the work of a great artist, that a great dog-picture must be attached to it. at least one of his pictures had a remarkable history. he had been commissioned by the hon. h. pierrpont to paint a "white horse in a stable." after the painting was ready for delivery it disappeared, and for twenty-four years it could not be found. at last it was discovered in a hay-loft! it had been stolen by a servant and hidden there. in spite of the long years that had passed, landseer sent it at once to the man for whom it had been made, with the message that he had not retouched it nor changed it in the least, "because," said he, "i thought it better not to mingle the style of my youth with that of my old age." one of landseer's early advisers had told him he must dissect animals to get the proper effects in painting them, as it was necessary for him to understand their construction. so, one time, when a famous old lion died in the exeter exchange menagerie landseer got its body and dissected it, and immediately afterward he painted three great lion pictures: "the lion disturbed at his repast," "a lion enjoying his repast," and "a prowling lion." sir walter scott became so enchanted with landseer's pictures that the great novelist came to london to take the young artist to his home at abbotsford. "his dogs are the most magnificent things i ever saw," said scott, "leaping and bounding and grinning all over the canvas." landseer lived in the centre of london till he was more than thirty years old, and then, looking for more quiet and space he bought a very small house and garden at no. , st. john's wood. there was not much room in the house but it had a stable attached which made a fine studio, and there landseer lived with a sister of his, for nearly fifty years. when he first wished to rent the house, the landlord asked him a hundred pounds premium which landseer felt that he could not pay and he was about to give it up, when a friend declared that if the matter of money was all that prevented him, he was to rent it immediately, and he could repay him as he chose. landseer then took the house, his friend paying down the premium, and landseer returned the money twenty-pounds at a time, till all the debt was paid. landseer made this a famous and hospitable house, and it is said that more great people gathered under his roof than had ever gathered about any other artist with the exception of sir joshua reynolds. that was the house in which landseer's loving old father spent his last days and finally died. a story is told of the witty d'orsay, who would call out at the door, when he went to visit the artist: "landseer, keep de dogs off me, i want to come in and some of dem will bite me--and dat fellow in de corner is growling furiously." on one of his several visits to abbotsford, where he went many times after his first invitation, to enjoy scott's delightful hospitality, he painted a famous dog of sir walter's called maida, which died six weeks afterward. there are several such stories about dogs who died rather tragically and were also painted by landseer. the two king charles spaniels which he painted both died soon after sitting to the great painter. they had been pets of mr. vernon, who commissioned the painting, and the white blenheim spaniel fell from a table and was killed, while the king charles fell through the railings of a staircase and was picked up dead. the great bloodhound, countess, belonging to mr. bell who gave her picture to the academy, was watching for her master's return one dark night and when she heard the wheels of his carriage, then his voice, she leaped from the balcony, but missed her footing and fell nearly dead at mr. bell's feet. that gentleman loved the dog so much that he was distracted, and taking her into his gig, knowing that she must die, he raced in to london again that same night, and rousing sir edwin, begged him to paint the dog before it was too late. then and there was the sketch of the dying animal made. sir edwin landseer was the most versatile and entertaining of artists. he was a wit, and could also perform all sorts of sleight of hand tricks, besides being so quick with his pencil that his doings seemed miraculous. one evening, during a conversation with many friends, someone declared that in point of time sir edwin could do a record-sketch. one young woman spoke up and said: "there is one thing that even he cannot do--he cannot make two different pictures at the same time." "think not?" cried sir edwin. "let us see!" gaily taking two pencils, he rapidly drew a stag's head with one hand and a horse's head with the other. landseer became the guest of royalty, a favourite of queen victoria, whose dog dash was one of the many famous dogs painted by him. dash was the favourite spaniel of the duchess of kent, victoria's mother; and the queen's biographer says that she too loved him very much. on coronation day she had been away from him longer than usual, and when the great state coach rolled up to the palace steps she could hear dash barking for her in the hall. "oh," she exclaimed, "there's dash," and throwing aside the ball and sceptre which she carried, she hurried to change her fine robes, in order to wash the dog. this is a very homelike and picturesque story, but it is possibly not true. doubtless the little queen heard the dog bark--and was glad to see him. at windsor landseer painted another royal dog, islay, the pet terrier of victoria; also dandie dinmont, belonging to the princess alice; then eos, who was prince albert's--king edward's--dog. all the last years of sir edwin landseer' life, the royal family were his devoted and comforting friends. the painter suffered much and during his visits to balmoral he wrote to his sister how the queen used to go several times a day to his room, to look after his comfort and to inquire about his condition. he wrote: "the queen kindly commands me to get well here. she has to-day been twice to my room to show additions recently added to her already rich collection of photographs. why, i know not, but since i have been in the high lands i have for the first time felt wretchedly weak, without appetite. the easterly winds, and now again the unceasing cold rain, may possibly account for my condition, but i can't get out. drawing tires me; however, i have done a little better to-day. the doctor residing in the castle has taken me in hand, and gives me leave to dine to-day with the queen and the rest of the royal family.... flogging would be mild compared with my sufferings. no sleep, fearful cramp at night, accompanied by a feeling of faintness and distressful feebleness." when he was well, he was gay and cheerful; and dickens, thackeray, and many other noted men were his friends. we are told that above all things. sir edwin was a great mimic and that one night at dinner he threw everybody into fits of laughter by imitating his friend the sculptor sir francis chantry. it was at the sculptor's table, where a large party was assembled. chantry called sir edwin's attention, when the cloth was removed, to the reflection of light in the highly polished table. "come here and sit in my place," said chantry, "and see the perspective you can get." then he went and stood by the fire, while landseer sat in his place. seated then in chantry's chair, landseer called out in perfect imitation of his host: "come, young man, you think yourself ornamental; now make yourself useful, and ring the bell." chantry did so, and when the butler came in he was confused and amazed to hear his master's voice from where landseer sat in chantry's place at the table. the voice of his master from the head of the table ordered claret, while his master really stood before the fire with his hands under his coat-tails. we are told that landseer stood his pictures on their heads, or upon one corner or looked at them from between his legs, any way, every way, to get a complete view of them from all quarters. he went to bed very late and got up very late, but in the mornings, while lying in bed he mostly thought out the subjects of his pictures. he was not much of a sportsman, preferring to paint animals rather than to kill them, and one day when hunting, he saw a fine stag before him. instead of firing at it, he thrust his gun into a gillie's hands, crying: "hold that! hold that!" and whipping out his pencil and pad he began to sketch the stag. whereupon the gillies were disgusted that he should miss so fine a shot, and they said something to each other in gaelic, which sir edwin must have understood, for he became very angry. "it was a pity," wrote one who knew all his qualities, "that landseer, who might have done so much for the good of the animal kind, never wrote on the subject of their treatment. he had a strong feeling against the way some dogs are tied up, only allowed their freedom now and then. he used to say a man would fare better tied up than a dog, because the former can take his coat off, but a dog lives in his forever. he declared a tied-up dog, without daily exercise, goes mad, or dies, in three years." he had a wonderful power over dogs, and he told one lady it was because he had "peeped into their hearts." a great mastiff rushed delightedly upon him one day and someone remarked how the dog loved him. "i never saw the dog before in my life," the artist said. while teaching some horses tricks for astley's, he showed his friends some sugar in his hand and said: "here is my whip." his studio was full of pets, and one dog used as a model used to bring the master's hat and lay it at his feet when he got tired of posing. this charming man suffered a great deal before his death, and had dreadful fits of depression. during one of these he wrote: "i have got trouble enough; ten or twelve pictures about which i am tortured, and a large national monument to complete." that monument was the one in trafalgar square, for which he designed the lions at the base. "if i am bothered about anything and everything, no matter what, i know my head will not stand it much longer." later he wrote: "my health (or rather condition), is a mystery beyond human intelligence. i sleep seven hours, and awake tired and jaded, and do not rally till after luncheon. j. l. came down yesterday and did her best to cheer me... i return to my own home in spite of kind invitations from mr. and mrs. gladstone to meet princess louise at breakfast." of the many anecdotes told of this great man, his introduction to the king of portugal furnishes the most amusing. "i am delighted to make your acquaintance," the king said, "i am so fond of beasts." before he died he had made a large fortune from his work, and during his illness he was tended most lovingly by his friends and sister. one day, walking in his garden, much depressed, he said sadly: "i shall never see the green leaves again," but he did live through other seasons. he wished to die in his studio, and at one time when he was much distracted the queen wrote him not to fear, but to trust those who were doing all they could for him, that her confidence in his physicians and nurses was complete. at last with brother, sister, friends and fortune about him the great animal painter died, and on october , , and was buried with great honours in st. paul's cathedral. plate--the old shepherd's chief mourner of all the dogs landseer loved to paint, the sheep collie has the most character; and here he shows us one expressing in every line of his face and form the most profound grief. the glengarry bonnet on the floor beside the shepherd's staff, the spectacles lying on the bible, the ram's horn, the vacant chair, the black and white shawl known as a "shepherd's plaid"--all these things have failed to comfort this humble follower. we can imagine him, not bounding ahead with a joyous bark, but walking staidly behind the coffin when it is borne away and laying himself down upon his master's grave, perhaps to die of starvation, as some of his kind have been known to do. the painting is one of the sheepshanks collection in the south kensington museum. among landseer's other famous dog pictures are "low life and high life," "dignity and impudence" and "the sleeping bloodhound," all in the national gallery. xxvi claude lorrain (gellee) _classical french school_ - _pupil of godfrey wals_ of all the contrasts between the early and later lives of great artists, claude lorrain gives us the most complete. he was born to make pastry. his family may have been all pastry cooks, because people of lorrain were famous for that work; anyway as a little chap he was apprenticed to one. his parents were poor, lived in the duchy of lorrain and from that political division the artist was named. the town in which he was born was chamagne, and his real name was gellée. as a pastry cook's apprentice he served his time, and then, without any thought of becoming anything else in the world, he set off with several other pastry cooks to go to rome, where their talents were to be well rewarded. but how strangely things fall out! in rome he was engaged to make tarts for agostine tassi, a landscape painter. his work was not simply to furnish his master with desserts, but to do general housekeeping, and it fell to his lot to clean tassi's paint brushes. so far as we know, this was the first introduction of claude lorrain to art other than culinary. from cleaning brushes it was but a step to trying to use them upon canvas, and tassi being a good-natured man, began to give lorrain instruction, till the pastry cook became his master's assistant in the studio. this led to a larger and larger life for the young frenchman, and he copied great masters, did original things, and finally in his twenty-fifth year returned to france a full-fledged artist. he remained there two years, and then went back to italy, where he lived till he died. the visit to france turned out fortunately because on his way back he fell in with one of the original twelve members of the french academy, charles errard, who became the first director of the academy in rome. a warm friendship sprang up between the men, and errard was very helpful to the young artist. nevertheless, lorrain did not gain much fame till about his fortieth year, when he was noticed by cardinal bentivoglio, and was given certain commissions by him. he grew in bentivoglio's favour so much that the cardinal introduced him to the pope. the catholic church set the fashions in art, politics, and history of all sorts at that time, so that lorrain could not have had better luck than to become its favourite. the pope was urban viii., whose main business was to hold the power of the church and make it stronger if he could, so that he was continually building fortresses and other fortifications, and he had use for artists and decorators. lorrain's fame outlasted the life of urban viii., and he became a favourite in turn with each of the three succeeding popes. all this time he was doing fine work in italy and for italy, besides receiving orders for pictures from france, holland, germany, spain, and england, for his fame had reached throughout the world. besides leaving many paintings behind him when he died, he left half a hundred etchings; also a more precise record of his work than most artists have left. he executed two hundred sketches in pen or pencil, washed in with brown or india ink, the high lights being brought out with touches of white. on the backs of them the artist noted the date on which the sketch was developed into a picture, and for whom the latter was intended. the story is that his popularity produced many imitators, and that he adopted this means to establish the identity of his own work and distinguish it from the many copies made. these sketches were collected in a volume by lorrain and called "liber veritatis," and for more than a hundred years the dukes of westminster have owned this. plate--acis and galatea this picture in the dresden gallery is a scene from the mythical story of a goddess who fell in love with the youthful son of a faun and a naiad. thus she excited the jealous fury of the cyclops, polythemus, who is seen in the picture herding his flock of sheep upon the high cliff at the right. soon he will rise and hurl a rock upon acis, crushing the life out of him, so that there will be nothing left for galatea to do but to turn him into the river acis, but meanwhile the lovers are unconscious and happy. venus is reposing near them on the waves and cupid is closer still, while the sea in the background seems to be stirred with a fresh morning breeze. some of the famous lorrains in the louvre are: "seaport at sunset," "cleopatra landing at tarsus," and "the village festival." xxvii masaccio (tommaso guidi) (pronounced tome-mah'so mah'sahch'cheeo) _florentine school_ - _pupil of ghibertio, donatello, and brunellesco_ this artist, who lived and died within the century that witnessed the discovery of america, was famous for more than his painting. he was the original inventor who first learned and taught the mixing of colours with oils, thus making the peculiar "distemper" unnecessary. the story of italian artists includes a history of their names, for the italians seem to have had most remarkable reasons for naming children. for example, this artist, masaccio, was born on st. thomas's day, hence, his name of tommaso. presently, for short, or for love, he was called maso, and to cap all, being a careless lad, his friends added the derogatory "accio," and there we have the artist completely named. he owed nothing of this to his father, who was plain, or ornamentally, ser giovanni di simone guidi, of castello san giovanni, in the valdamo. as a very little boy, it was plain to be seen that slovenly thomas was going to be a great artist, and no time was lost in putting him to work with the best of masters. he was a veritable inventive genius. until his time difficulties in drawing had been overcome mostly by ignoring them. since no artist had been able to draw a foreshortened foot, it had been the fashion in art to paint people standing upon their tiptoes, to make it possible for an artist to paint the foot. the enterprising thomas came along and he decided that feet must be painted both flat and crossed, on tiptoe or otherwise; in short he did not mean to lose by a foot. he worked at this problem day and night, till at last the naturally poised foot came into existence for the artist. never after masaccio's time did an artist paint the foot stretched upon the toes. moreover, until his time flesh had never been painted of a remotely natural colour, so masaccio set about combining colours till he made one that had the tint of real flesh. thus he was the first to overcome the difficulties of drawing and the first to discover a mixture that would not leave a glazed, hard, unnatural appearance and be likely to crack and destroy the finest effort of an artist. he worked during his youth in pisa, where the "leaning tower" stands; then he worked in florence, finally in rome, but those early pictures are long since gone. it was a century of adventure and discovery as well as of art, and with so much change, so many wars and rumours of wars, many great art works were lost. besides, the horrible plague swept italy east, west, north, and south. who was to concern himself with saving works of art, when human life was going out wholesale all over the land? masaccio was certainly very poor most of his life. he lived with his mother and his brother giovanni, an artist like himself, but not nearly so brilliant. masaccio could not spend his life in painting but had to eke out the family fortunes by keeping a little shop near the old badia, and being pestered day and night by his creditors he was forced again and again to go to the pawn shop. somewhere about , careless thomas painted his greatest picture which was doomed to destruction too early for us to know much about it; but it was named "san paolo" and it was painted in the bell-room of the church of the carmine in florence. the figure for his model was an illustrious personage, bartoli d'angiolini, who had held many honourable offices in florence for many years. a critic and friend of artists tells us that the portrait was so great it lacked only the power of speech. in this picture masaccio made his first great triumph in the foreshortening of feet. he undertook to celebrate the consecration of the church of the carmine, and for this he made many frescoes, among which was a correct painting of the procession as it entered from the cloisters of the church. "among the citizens who followed in its wake, portraits are introduced of brunellesco, donatello, masolino, felice brancacci (the founder of the chapel) giovanni di bicci de' medici, and others, including the porter of the convent with the key of the door in his hand." this work was thought to be very wonderful because the figures grew smaller in the distance, thereby giving "perspective" for the first time. imagine how crude a thing was painting in the day of careless thomas. that fresco is long since gone, but drawings of it still exist which tell us something of the people of christopher columbus's day--previous to their appearance, and their conditions. after masaccio had finished the procession he went back to his painting of the chapel and in the end covered three of its four walls with his works. many of those paintings are scenes from the life of st. peter, and several were worked at by other artists than masaccio. masaccio was greater than raphael, greater than michael angelo in so far as he pointed the way that they were to go, having solved for them all the problems that had kept artists from being great before him. sir joshua reynolds says that "he appeared to be the first who discovered the path that leads to every excellence to which the art afterward arrived; and may therefore be justly considered one of the great fathers of modern art." the artist lived but a little time, and was most likely poisoned. nobody knows, but it is said that other painters were so wildly jealous of his original genius that they wished him out of the way, and his death was at least mysterious. he drew very rapidly and let the details go, caring only to represent motion and action. because he painted so many portraits into his pictures there was great life and animation in them, and people said of him that he painted not only the body but the soul. plate--artist's portrait [footnote: many artists have left us portraits of themselves, painted, no doubt, with the aid of a mirror, in a group or alone. this one of masaccio in the naples museum, shows him to have been a picturesque model.] some of his known pictures are the frescoes in the church of st. clemente in rome; the frescoes in the brancacci chapel in the church of the carmine, "st. peter baptising" and the "madonna and child, with st. anne," which is in the accademia at florence. xxviii jean louis ernest meissonier (pronounced may-sohn-yay) _french school_ - _pupil of léon cogniet_ this artist was born at lyons. his father was a salesman and an art-training seemed impossible for the young man because the meissoniers were poor people. nevertheless, he was so persevering that while still a young man he got to paris and began to paint in the louvre. he was but nineteen at that time, and his fate seemed so hard and bitter that later in life he refused to talk of those days. he sat for many days in the louvre, by daubigny's side, painting pictures for which we are told he received a dollar a yard. we can think of nothing more discouraging to a genius than having to paint by the yard. it is said that his poverty permitted him to sleep only every other night, because he must work unceasingly, and someone declares that he lived at one time on ten cents a week. this is a frightful picture of poverty and distress. meissonier's first paying enterprise was the painting of bon-bon boxes and the decorating of fans, and he tried to sell illustrations for children's stories, but for these he found no market. a brilliant compiler of meissonier's life has written that "his first illustrations in some unknown journal were scenes from the life of 'the old bachelor.' in the first picture he is represented making his toilet before the mirror, his wig spread out on the table; in the second, dining with two friends; in the third, on his death-bed, surrounded by greedy relations and in the fifth, the servants ransacking the death chamber for the property." this was very likely a vision of his own possible fate, for meissonier must have been at that time a lonely and unhappy man. there are many stories of his first exhibited work, which caffin declares was the "visit to the burgomaster," but mrs. bolton, who is almost always correct in her statements, tells us that it was called "the visitor," and that it sold for twenty dollars. at the end of a six years struggle in paris, his pictures were selling for no more. until this artist's time people had been used only to great canvases, and had grown to look for fine work, only in much space, but here was an artist who could paint exquisitely a whole interior on a space said to be no "larger than his thumb nail." his work was called "microscopic," which meant that he gave great attention to details, painting very slowly. during the italian war of , and in the german war of , this wonderful artist was on the staff of napoleon iii. during the siege of paris he held the rank of colonel, and he lost no chance to learn details of battles which he might use later, in making great pictures. thus he gained the knowledge and inspiration to paint his picture "friedland," which was bought by a. t. stewart and is now in the metropolitan museum. he, himself, wrote of that picture: "i did not intend to paint a battle--i wanted to paint napoleon at the zenith of his glory; i wanted to paint the love, the adoration of the soldiers for the great captain in whom they had faith, and for whom they were ready to die.... it seemed to me i did not have colours sufficiently dazzling. no shade should be on the imperial face.... the battle already commenced, was necessary to add to the enthusiasm of the soldiers, and make the subject stand forth, but not to diminish it by saddening details. all such shadows i have avoided, and presented nothing but a dismounted cannon, and some growing wheat which should never ripen. "this was enough. "the men and the emperor are in the presence of each other. the soldiers cry to him that they are his, and the impressive chief, whose imperial will directs the masses that move around, salutes his devoted army. he and they plainly comprehend each other and absolute confidence is expressed in every face." this great work was sold at auction for $ , and given to the metropolitan museum. it is said that when he painted the "retreat from russia," meissonier obtained the coat which napoleon had worn at the time, and had it copied, "crease for crease and button for button." he painted the picture mostly out of doors in midwinter when the ground was covered with snow, and he writes: "sometimes i sat at my easel for five or six hours together, endeavouring to seize the exact aspect of the winter atmosphere. my servant placed a hot foot-stove under my feet, which he renewed from time to time, but i used to get half-frozen and terribly tired." so attentive was he to truthfulness in detail that he had a wooden horse made in imitation of the white charger of the emperor; and seating himself on this, he studied his own figure in a mirror. at last this conscientious man was made an officer of the legion of honour, having already become president of the academy. edmund about writes that "to cover m. meissonier's pictures with gold pieces simply would be to buy them for nothing; and the practice has now been established of covering them with bank-notes." meissonier seldom painted the figure of a woman in his pictures, but all of his subjects were wholesome and fine. one time an admirer said to him "i envy you; you can afford to own as many meissonier pictures as you please!" "oh no, i can't," the distinguished artist replied. "that would ruin me. they are a good deal too dear for me." in his maturity he became very rich, and his homes were dreams of beauty, filled with rare possessions such as bridles of black leather once owned by murat, rare silver designed by the artist himself, great pictures, and flowers of the rarest description besides valuable dogs and horses. yet it was said that "this man who lives in a palace is as moderate as a soldier on the march. this artist, whose canvases are valued by the half-million, is as generous as a nabob. he will give to a charity sale a picture worth the price of a house. praised as he is by all he has less conceit in his nature than a wholesale painter." on the st of january in his country house at poissy, this great man, whose life reads like a romance, died, after a short illness. his funeral services were held in the madeleine, and he was buried at poissy, near versailles, a great military procession following him to the grave. plate--retreat from moscow in the painting of this picture we have already told how every detail was mastered by actual experience of most of them. meissonier made dozens of studies for it--"a horse's head, an uplifted leg, cuirasses, helmets, models of horses in red wax, etc. he also prepared a miniature landscape, strewn with white powder resembling snow, with models of heavy wheels running through it, that he might study the furrow made in that terrible march home from burning moscow. all this work--hard, patient, exacting work." some of his other pictures are "the emperor at solferino," "moreau and his staff before hohenlinden," "a reading at diderot's" and the "chess players." xxix jean franÇois millet _fontainebleau-barbizon school_ - _pupil of delaroche_ two great artists painted peasants and little else. one was the artist of whom we shall speak, and the other was jules breton. one was realistic, the other idealistic. both did wonderful work, but millet painted the peasant, worn, patient steadfast, overwhelmed with toil; breton, a peasant full of energy, grace, vitality, and joy. millet painted peasants as he knew them, and hardly any one could have known them better, for he was himself peasant-born. his youth was hard, and the scenes of his childhood were such as in after life he became famous by painting. millet lived in the department of manche, in the village of gruchy, near cherbourg. manche juts into the sea, at the english channel, and whichever way millet looked he must have seen the sea. his old grandmother looked after the household affairs, while his father and mother worked in the fields and millet must have seen them hundreds of times, standing at evening, with bowed heads, listening to the angelus bell. he toiled, too, as did other lads in his position. his grandmother was a religious old woman, and nearly all the pictures he ever saw in his boyhood were those in the bible, which he copied again and again, drawing them upon the stone walls in white chalk. the old grandmother watched him, never doubting that her boy would become an artist. it was she who had named him--françois, after her favourite saint, francis, and it was she, who, beside the evening fire, would tell him legends of st. francis. it was she alone who had time and strength left, after the day's work, to teach him the little he learned as a boy and to fix in his mind pictures of home. his father and mother were worn, like pack-horses, after their day in the fields. the mother very likely had to hitch herself up with the donkey, or the big dog, after the fashion of these people, as she helped draw loads about the field. who can look for breton's ideal stage peasants from millet who knew the truth as he saw it every day? many years after his life in the gruchy home, millet painted the portrait of the grandmother whom he had loved so much that he cried out: "i wish to paint her soul!" no one could desire a better reward than such a tribute. millet had an uncle who was a priest and he did what he could to give the boy a start in learning. he taught him to read virgil and the latin testament; and all his life those two books were millet's favourites. besides drawing pictures on the walls of his home, he drew them on his sabots. pity some one did not preserve those old wooden shoes! he did his share of the farm work, doing his drawing on rainy days. when he was about eighteen years old, coming from mass one day, he was impressed with the figure of an old man going along the road, and taking some charcoal from his pocket he drew the picture of him on a stone wall. the villagers passing, at once knew the likeness; they were pleased and told millet so. old millet, the father, also was delighted for he, too, had wished to be an artist, but fate had been against him. seeing the wonderful things his son could do, he decided that he should become what he himself had wished to be, and that he should go to cherbourg to study. françois set off with his father, carrying a lot of sketches to show, and upon telling the master in cherbourg what he wanted and showing the sketches, he was encouraged to stay and begin study in earnest. so back the old father went, with the news to the mother and grandmother and the priest uncle, that françois had begun his career. he stayed in cherbourg studying till his father died, when he thought it right to go home and do the work his father had always done. he returned, but the women-folk would not agree to him staying. "you go back at once," said the grandmother, "and stick to your art. we shall manage the farm." she sewed up in his belt all the money she had saved, and started him off again, for he had then been studying only two months. now he remained till he was twenty-three, a fine, strapping, broad-shouldered country fellow. he had long fair hair and piercing dark blue eyes. all the time he was with delaroche he was dissatisfied with his work--and with his master's, which seemed to millet artificial, untrue. he knew nothing of the classical figures the master painted and wished him to paint, for his heart and mind were back in gruchy among the scenes that bore a meaning for him. he wished to study elsewhere, and by this time he had done so well that one of the artists with whom he had studied went to the mayor of millet's home town, and begged him to furnish through the town-council money enough to send millet to paris. this was done, and millet began to hope. he was very shy and afraid of seeming awkward and out of place. the night he got to paris was snowy, full of confusion and strange things to him, and an awful loneliness overwhelmed him. the next morning he set out to find the louvre, but would not ask his way for fear of seeming absurd to some one, so that he rambled about alone, looking for the great gallery till he found it unaided. he spent most of the days that followed gazing in ecstasy at the pictures. he liked angelo, titian, and rubens best. he had come to paris to enter a studio, but he put off his entrance from day to day, for his shyness was painful and he feared above all things to be laughed at by city students. at last one day, he got up enough courage to apply to delaroche, whose studio he had decided to enter if he could, as he liked his work best. the students in that studio were full of curiosity about the new chap, with his peasant air, his bushy hair and great frame, so sturdy and awkward. they at once nicknamed him "the man of the woods," and they nagged at him and laughed at the idea that he could learn to paint, till one day, exasperated nearly to death, he shook his fist at them. from that moment he heard no more from them, for they were certain that if he could not paint he could use his fists a good deal better than any of them. delaroche liked the peasant but did not understand him very well, and millet was not too fond of his painting, so after two years he and a friend withdrew from that studio and set up one for themselves. thus eight years passed, the friends living from hand to mouth, doing all sorts of things: sign-painting, advertisements, and the like; and millet, in the midst of his poverty, got married. he went home, returning to paris with his wife, and after starving regularly, he became desperate enough to paint a single picture as he wished. it seemed at the time the maddest kind of thing to do. who would see ugly, toil-worn peasants upon his _salon_ walls? paris wanted dainty, aesthetic art, and an academy artist would have scoffed at the idea; but the millets were starving anyway, so why not starve doing at least what one chose. so millet painted his first wonderful peasant picture "the winnower," and just as the family were starving he sold it--for $ . he had done at last the right thing, in doing as he pleased. this was a sign to him that there was after all a place for truth and emotion in art. but the millets must change their place of living, and go to some place where the money made would not at once be eaten up. jacque--the friend with whom millet had set up shop, and who also became famous, later--advised them to go to a little place he knew about, which had a name ending in "zon." it was near the forest of fontainebleau, he said and they could live there very cheaply, and it was quiet and decent. the millets got into a rumbling old cart and started in search of the place which ended in "zon" near the forest of fontainebleau. jacque had also decided to take his family there and they all went together. when they got to fontainebleau they got down from the car and went a-foot through the forest. they arrived tired and hungry toward evening, and went to ganne's inn, where there were rousseau, diaz, and other artists who like themselves had come in search of a nice, clean, picturesque place in which to starve, if they had to. those who were just sitting down to supper welcomed the newcomers, for they had been there long enough to form a colony and fraternity ways. one of these was to take a certain great pipe from the wall, and ask the newcomer to smoke; and according to the way he blew his "rings" he was pronounced a "colourist" or "classicist." the two friends blew the smoke, and at once the other artists were able to place jacque. he was a colourist; but what were they to say about millet who blew rings after his own fashion. "oh, well!" he cried. "don't trouble about it. just put me down in a class of my own!" "a good answer!" diaz answered. "and he looks strong and big enough to hold his own in it!" thus the newcomers took their places in the life of barbizon--the place whose name ended in "zon," and millet's real work began. his first wife lived only two years, but he married again. all this time he was following his conscience in the matter of his work, and selling almost nothing. in a letter to a friend he tells how dreadfully poor they are, although his new wife was the most devoted helpful woman imaginable, known far and near as "mère millet." the artist wrote to sensier, his friend, who aided him: "i have received the hundred francs. they came just at the right time. neither my wife nor i had tasted food in twenty-four hours. it is a blessing that the little ones, at any rate, have not been in want." the revolution of had come before millet went to barbizon, and he like other men had to go to war. then the cholera appeared, and these things interrupted his work; and after such troubles people did not begin buying pictures at once. rousseau was famous now, but millet lived by the hardest toil until one day he sold the "woodcutter" to rousseau himself, for four hundred francs. rousseau had been very poor, and it grieved him to see the trials and want of his friend, so he pretended that he was buying the picture for an american. that picture was later sold at the hartmann sale for , francs. millet was now forty years old, and had not yet been recognised as a wonderful man by any but his brother artists. he was truly "in a class of his own." he had learned to love barbizon, and cried: "better a thatched cottage here than a palace in paris!" and we have the picture in our minds of millet followed patiently and lovingly by "mère millet" in the peasant dress which she always wore, that she might be ready at a moment's notice to pose for his figures. then there were his little children and his sunny, simple, fraternal surroundings, which make his life the most picturesque of all artists. his paintings had the simplest stories with seldom more than two or three figures in them. it was said that he needed only a field and a peasant to make a great picture. when he painted the "man with the hoe," he did it so truthfully, in a way to make the story so well understood by all who looked upon it, that he was called a socialist. no one was so much surprised as millet by that name. "i never dreamed of being a leader in any cause," he said. "i am a peasant--only a peasant." of his picture "the reaper" a critic wrote, "he might have reaped the whole earth." all his pictures were sermons, he called them "epics of the fields." he pretended to nothing except to present things just as they were, as he writes in a letter to a friend about "the water carrier:" in the woman coming from drawing water i have endeavoured that she shall be neither a water-carrier nor a servant, but the woman who has just drawn water for the house, the water for her husband's and her children's soup; that she shall seem to be carrying neither more nor less than the weight of the full buckets; that beneath the sort of grimace which is natural on account of the strain on her arms, and the blinking of her eyes caused by the light, one may see a look of rustic kindliness on her face. i have always shunned with a kind of horror everything approaching the sentimental. i have desired on the other hand, that this woman should perform simply and good-naturedly, without regarding it as irksome, an act which, like her other household duties, is one she is accustomed to perform every day of her life. also i wanted to make people imagine the freshness of the fountain, and that its antiquated appearance should make it clear that many before her had come to draw water from it. at forty he was in about the same condition as he had been on that evening ten or twelve years before, when he had entered barbizon carrying his two little daughters upon his shoulders, his wife following with the servant and a basket of food, to settle themselves down to hardship made sweet by kind comradeship and hope. now a change came. millet painted "the angelus." he was dreadfully poor at that time and sold the picture cheaply, but it laid the foundation of his fame and fortune. he had worked upon the canvas till he said he could hear the sound of the bell. although its first purchaser paid very little for it, it has since been sold for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. at last, having struggled through his worst days, without recognition, and with nine little children to feed and clothe, he was given the white cross of the legion of honour; and as if to make up for the days of his starvation, he was nearly feasted to death in paris. he was placed upon the hanging committee of the _salon_, and took a dignified place among artists. he and mère millet travelled a little, but always he returned to barbizon, till the war came and he had to move to normandy to work. afterward he returned to barbizon, to the scenes and the old friends he loved so well, and there he died. he had come back ill and tired with the long struggle, and he instructed his friends to give him a simple funeral. this was done. they carried his coffin, while his wife and children walked beside him to the cemetery, and he was buried near the little church of chailly, whose spire is seen in "the angelas," and where rousseau, whom he loved, had already been laid. there in barbizon, to-day, may be seen rousseau's cottage and millet's studio. "the peasants sow and reap and glean as in the days of millet; troyon's oxen and sheep are still standing in the meadow; jacque's poultry are feeding in the barnyard. the leaves on rousseau's grand old trees are trembling in the forest; corot's misty morning is as fresh and soft as ever; while diaz's ruddy sunsets still penetrate the branches; and the peasant pauses daily as the angelus from the chailly church calls him to silent prayer." plate--the angelus in "the angelus" you may see far-off the spire of the church at chailly, from which the bell sounds. the day's work is drawing to a close. the peasant man and woman have been digging potatoes--the man uncovering them, while his wife has been putting them in the basket. as the angelus floats across the fields, the two pause and bow their heads in prayer. the man has dropped his fork and uncovered his head, and his wife has clasped her hands devoutly before her. all the air seems still and full of tender sound and colour, and we, like millet, seem "to hear the bell." this is the only picture he painted which is full of the sentimentality he so much disliked. it is a great picture, but we need to know the title in order to interpret it. besides this one, millet painted "the gleaners," "the woodcutters," "the sower," "the man with the hoe;" "the water carrier," "the reaper," and many other stories of the peasant poor. xxx claude monet (_pronounced claude mo-nay_) _impressionist school of france_ -- another--manet--was the founder of this school among modern painters, but monet is always considered his most conspicuous follower. monet's remarkable method of putting his colours upon canvas does not mean impressionism. he is an impressionist but also _monet_--an artist with a method entirely different from that of any other. he belongs to what in france is called the _pointillistes_. the word means nothing more nor less than an effort to accomplish the impossible. if you stand a little way from a very hot stove you may be able to see a kind of movement in the air, a quivering of particles or molecular motion, and this is what the _pointillistes_ try to show in their paintings--monet most of all. the theory is that by putting little dabs of primitive colours, close together upon canvas, without mixing them, just separate dabs of red, yellow, blue, etc., the effect of movement is produced. needless to say, none of them ever have produced such an effect, but they have made such grotesque, ugly pictures that they have attracted attention even as a humpbacked person does. the first who painted thus was a frenchman named seurat, who tried it after closely studying experiments made in light and colour by professor rood, of columbia university. after him came pissarro, and then monet. america also has such a painter, childe hassam, but nobody is so grotesque as monet. he was born in paris but spent most of his youth in havre, where he met a painter of harbours and shipping scenes called boudin. through his influence monet studied out-of-door effects, and was beginning to do fairly good work, when he was drawn as a conscript and sent to algeria. it is written that monet discovered that "green, seen under strong sunshine is not green, but yellow; that the shadows cast by sunlight upon snow or upon brightly lighted surfaces are not black, but blue; and that a white dress, seen under the shade of trees on a bright day, has violet or lilac tones." this only means that these things have been scientifically determined, not that the naked eye ever perceives them, and it is for the natural, unscientific eye that art exists. none of us see the separate colours of the spectrum, as we look about in every-day fashion upon every-day objects. professor rood managed to produce an intelligent effect by putting separate colours on discs and whirling these round so that the colours mingled. monet tried to do the same by dotting his original colours close together, and leaving the picture to its own destruction. it ought to revolve, if the scientific idea is to be carried out. nothing desirable can be made out of his pictures even when viewed from far off, while at close range they are simply grotesque, and photographs of them give the impression that the entire landscape is wabbling to the ground. i wonder if anyone, small or grown up, can understand this: "it was indeed a higher kind of impressionism that monet originated, one that reveals a vivid rendering, not of the natural and concrete facts, but of their influence upon the spirit when they are wrapped in the infinite diversities of that impalpable, immaterial, universal medium which we call light, when the concrete loses itself in the abstract, and what is of time and matter impinges on the eternal and the universal." monet's pictures look just as that explanation of them sounds! the same writer says that monet was greater than corot because he was more sensitive to colour; but if monet had been as sensitive to colour as corot, he could not have lived and looked at his own pictures. plate--haystack in sunshine the main feature of this picture is such a hay stack as never existed anywhere, of indescribable lurid colour, against a background of blue such as never was seen. all about there are violet and rose-coloured trees, and it is a picture that every child should know, because he is likely never to have another such opportunity. monet has made two interesting pictures of churches, one at vernon, the other at varangeville. xxxi murillo (bartolome esteban) (pronounced moo-reel'oh bar-tol-o-may' a-stay'bahn) _andalusian school_ - _pupil of juan del castillo_ the story of murillo has been delightfully told by mrs. sarah bolton. like velasquez, he was born in seville, a city called "the glory of the spanish realms," and was baptised on new year's day, , in the church of the magdalen. murillo's father paid his rent in work, instead of in money. he made a bargain with the convent who owned his house that he would keep it in repair if he might have it free of rent, so there gaspar estéban and his wife, maria perez, settled. "perez" was the family name of murillo's mother, who had very good connections; one of her brothers, juan del castillo, being a man who encouraged all art and had an art school of his own. little murillo therefore had encouragement from the start, an unusual circumstance at a time when parents rarely wished to think of their sons as painters. as a matter of fact, his mother would have preferred that he should become a priest, but she was kind and sensible, and put no difficulties in the way of the little murillo doing as he wished. the story goes that the perez family had been very rich, but, however it may have been, that was not the case when the artist was born. one day after his mother had gone to church, murillo being left at home alone, retouched a picture that hung upon the wall. it was a picture of sacred subject--"jesus and the lamb." he thought he could make some improvements in it, so he painted his own hat upon the head of jesus and changed the lamb into a little dog. his mother was a good deal shocked at what seemed to her an irreligious act, though it showed the family genius. after that the boy was found to be painting upon the walls of his schoolroom, and making sketches upon the margins of his books, though he did little else at school. he had one sister, therese, and they were left without father or mother before the artist was eleven years old. it was at that time that he received the name of "murillo" by which he is known. it came about thus: after the death of his parents he went to live with his mother's sister, the doña anna murillo, who had married a surgeon called juan agustin lagares, and since the little artist was to live with his aunt, he soon became known by her family name. there, in her home, he and his sister therese, were brought up, but he was not to become a surgeon like his uncle-in-law, but an artist like his uncle juan, the teacher in seville. that uncle took him in hand, taught the boy to draw, to mix colours, to stretch his canvas, and soon murillo's genius won the love of master and pupils. in peace and reasonable comfort he served a nine years apprenticeship, and painted his first important, if not especially great, pictures. these were two madonnas, one of them "the story of the rosary." st. dominic had instituted the rosary; using fifteen large and one hundred and fifty small beads upon which to keep record of the number of prayers he had said; the large beads representing the _paternosters and glorias_ and the small ones, the _aves_. this practical way of indicating duties helped the heedless to concentrate their attention, and did much to increase the number of prayers offered. indeed, it is said that "by this single expedient dominic did more to excite the devotion of the lower orders, especially of the women, and made more converts, than by all his orthodoxy, learning, arguments, and eloquence." it was this incident in the history of the catholic church that murillo commemorated. when the artist was twenty-two years old, his uncle, juan del castillo, broke up his home and went elsewhere to live, leaving the artist without home or means, and with his little sister to take care of. without vanity or ambition, but with only the wish to care for his sister and to get food, the marvellous painter took himself to the market place, and there, wedged in between stalls, old clothes, vegetables, all sorts of wares, like a wanderer and a gypsy, he began his career. at the weekly market--the _feria_ or fair, opposite the church of all saints--his brotherly, kindly feeling for the vagabonds he daily met is shown in the treatment he gives them in his wonderful pictures. during the two years that he worked in that open-air studio he had flower-girls, muleteers, hucksters all about him, and he painted dozens of rough pictures which found quick sale among the patrons of the market. what velasquez was doing in the court of madrid, murillo was doing in the streets of seville; the one painting cardinals, kings, and courtiers; the other painting beggars, _gamins_, and waifs. between the two, the world has been shown the social history of spain as it then existed. through a peculiar happening, the american indian saw the beauties of murillo's work before europe was even conscious there was such a man. in his old home, his uncle's studio, murillo had had a dear comrade, moya. they had not met for two years or more, and when they did come together again moya told murillo he had been travelling, that he had been to flanders with the spanish army, and thence to london, in both places seeing gorgeous paintings and other inspiring things. he opened the eyes of murillo to the splendours the world contained, and the artist became wild with desire to go and see them for himself, but he had no money. he was painting pictures in the market place of seville and getting so little for his hasty work that he could barely support himself and little therese. what must he do in order to get to london and see the world? what he did do was to buy a piece of linen, cut it into six pieces and hide himself long enough to paint upon them "saints, flowers, fruit and landscapes," and then he went forth to sell them. he actually sold those pictures to a ship-owner who was sending his ship to the west indies. eventually they were hung upon the walls of a mission in wild, far off america. it is said that after this murillo made no little money by painting such pictures, destined to give the american savage an idea of the christian religion. one cannot but wonder if there may not be, all unknown to us, murillo pictures, made in the market-place of seville nearly three hundred years ago, hidden away in the remains of those old spanish missions, even to-day. such a picture would be more rare than the greatest that he ever painted. after selling his six pictures murillo started a-foot, not to london but on a terrible journey across the sierra mountains, to madrid--the home of velasquez. murillo knew that this native of seville had become a famous artist. he was powerful and rich and at the court of philip ii., while murillo had no place to lay his head, and besides he had left therese behind in seville in the care of friends. he had no claim upon the kindness of velasquez but he determined to see him; to introduce himself and possibly to gain a friend. it was under these forlorn circumstances he made himself known to the great spanish court painter. the story of their meeting is a fine one. for murillo velasquez had a warm embrace, a kind and hospitable word. the stranger told velasquez how he had crossed the mountains on foot, was penniless, but could use his brush. instead of jealousy and suspicion, the young man met with nothing but the most cheerful encouragement, found the velasquez home open to him, took up his lodging there and established his workshop with nothing around him but friendship and the sympathy his nature craved. from the market-place to the home of velasquez and the palace of philip ii.! it was a beautiful dream to murillo. with what splendour of colour and mastery of design he illuminated the annals of the poor! coming forth from some dim chancel or palace-hall in which he had been working on a majestic madonna picture, he would sketch in, with the brush still loaded with the colours of celestial glory, the lineaments of the beggar crouching by the wall, or the gypsy calmly reposing in the black shadow of an archway. such versatility had never before been seen west of the mediterranean, and it commanded the admiration of his countrymen. all his beggarly little children, neglected and houseless, appeared only to be full of cheer and merriment, with soft eyes and contented faces. it was a happy, care-free, gay, and kindly beggardom that he painted, with nothing in it to sadden the heart. thus he lived for three years; working in the galleries of the king, making friends at court, painting beautiful women, gallant cavaliers and fascinating little beggars. in the course of time, however, he grew restless, and velasquez wished to give him letters of introduction to roman artists and people of quality, advising him to go to rome to study the greatest art in the world. this was an alluring plan to murillo, but after all he longed for his own home and chose to return there rather than go to rome. besides, his sister therese was still in seville. once more in his home, at one stroke of his magic brush murillo raised himself and a monastic order from obscurity to greatness. in his native city was the order of san francisco. the monks had long wished to have their convent decorated in a worthy manner by some artist of repute; but they were poor and had never been able to engage such a painter. when murillo got back home, he was as badly in need of work as the franciscans were in want of an artist. the monks held a council and finally agreed upon a price which they could pay and which murillo could live upon. then he began a wonderful set of eleven large paintings. among them were many saints, dark and rich in colouring, and no sooner was it known that the paintings were being made than all the rich and powerful people of seville flocked to the convent to see the work. they gathered about the young artist, overwhelmed him with honours and praise, and the monastery was crowded from morning till night with those who wished to study his work. from that moment murillo's fame, if not his fortune, was made. he married a rich and noble lady with the tremendous name of doña beatriz de cabrera y sotomayer. he had fallen in love with her while painting her as an angel. about that time he formed a strange partnership with a landscape painter, who agreed to supply the backgrounds that his pictures needed, if murillo would paint figures into his landscapes. this plan did very well for a little time, but it did not last long. murillo painted in three distinct styles, and these have come to be known as the "warm," the "cold," and the "vaporous." he painted pictures in the great cathedral of the escorial and the "guardian angel" was one of them. also, he painted "st. anthony of padua," and of this picture there is one of those absurd stories meant to illustrate the perfection of art. it is said that the lilies in it are so natural that the birds flew down the cathedral aisles to pluck at them. many artists have painted this saint, but murillo's is the best picture of all. when the nephew of his first master, murillo's cousin, saw that work he said: "it is all over with castillo! is it possible that murillo, that servile imitator of my uncle, can be the author of all this grace and beauty of colouring?" the duke of wellington offered for this picture as many gold pieces "as would cover its surface of fifteen square feet." this would have been about two hundred and forty thousand dollars; but we need not imagine that murillo received any such sum for the work. this picture has a further interesting history. the canvas was cut from the frame by thieves in , and later it was sold to mr. schaus, the connoisseur and picture dealer of new york. he paid $ for it, and at once put it into the hands of the spanish consul, who restored it to the cathedral. the story of the saint whom murillo painted is as interesting as murillo's own. among the many wonderful things said to have happened to him was that a congregation of fishes hearing his voice as he preached beside the sea, came to the top and lifted up their heads to listen. while murillo was doing his work, he was living a happy, domestic life. he had three children, and doubtless he used them as models for his lively cherubs, as he used his wife's face for madonnas and angels. he founded an academy of painting in seville, for the entrance to which a student could not qualify unless he made the following declaration: "praised be the most holy sacrament and the pure conception of our lady." the most delightful stories are told of murillo's kindness and sweetness of disposition. he had a slave who loved him and who, one day while murillo was gone from the studio, painted in the head of the virgin which the master had left incomplete. when murillo returned and saw the excellent work he cried: "i am fortunate, sebastian"--the slave's name--"for i have not created only pictures but an artist!" this slave was set free by murillo and in the course of time he painted many splendid pictures which are to-day highly prized in seville. this is a description of murillo's house which is still to be seen near the church of santa cruz: "the courtyard contains a marble fountain, amidst flowering shrubs, and is surrounded on three sides by an arcade upheld by marble pillars. at the rear is a pretty garden, shaded by cypress and citron trees, and terminated by a wall whereon are the remains of ancient frescoes which have been attributed to the master himself. the studio is on the upper floor, and overlooks the moorish battlements, commanding a beautiful view to the eastward, over orange groves and rich corn-lands, out to the gray highlands about alcala." murillo's fame brought fortune to his little sister, therese. she married a nobleman of burgos, a knight of santiago and judge of the royal colonial court. he became the chief secretary of state for madrid. murillo made money, but gave almost all that he made to the poor, though he did not make money in the service of the church, as velasquez made it in the service of the king. his work of more than twenty pictures in the capuchin church of seville occupied him for three years, and in that time he did not leave the convent for a single day. of all the charming stories told of this glorious artist, one which is connected with his work in that church is the most picturesque. it seems that every one within the walls loved him, and among others a lay brother who was cook. this man begged for some little personal token from murillo and since there was no canvas at hand, the artist bade the cook leave the napkin which he had brought to cover his food, and during the day he painted upon it a madonna and child, so natural that one of his biographers declares the child seems about to spring from mary's arms. this souvenir made for the cook of the capuchin, convent has been reproduced again and again, as one of the artist's greatest performances. toward the close of his happy life, he became more and more devout, spending many hours before an altar-piece in the church of santa cruz where was a picture of "the descent from the cross," by pedro campana. "why do you always tarry before 'the descent from the cross?'" the sacristan once asked of him. "i am waiting till those men have brought the body of our blessed lord down the ladder." murillo answered. his wife had died, his daughter had become a nun, and all that was left to him was his dear son gaspar, when in his sixty-third year he began his last work, "the marriage of st. catherine." he had not finished this when he fell from the scaffolding upon which he was working, and fatally hurt himself. he died, with his son beside him. he was a much loved man, and when he was buried, his bier was carried by "two marquises and four knights and followed by a great concourse of people." he chose to be buried beneath the picture he loved so much--"the descent from the cross," and upon his grave was laid a stone carved with his name, a skeleton and an inscription in latin which means "live as one who is about to die." the church has since been destroyed, and on its site is the plaza santa cruz, but murillo's grave is marked by a tablet. each country seems to have had at least one man of beautiful heart and mind, to represent its art. raphael in italy, murillo in spain, were types of gentle and greatly beloved men. leonardo in italy and dürer in nuremberg, were types of forceful, intellectual men, highly respected and of great benefit to the world. of all the painters who ever lived, murillo was the one who painted little children with the most loving and fascinating touch. plate--the immaculate conception besides the little angels in this picture, we have a bewildering choice among many other beauties. many pictures of this subject have been painted, and many were painted by murillo, but the one presented here is the greatest of all. it hangs in the louvre, salle vi. mary seems to be suspended in the heavens, not standing upon clouds. under the hem of her garments is the circle of the moon, while there is the effect of hundreds of little cherub children massed about her feet, in a little swarm at the right, where the shadow falls heaviest, and still others, half lost in the vapoury background at the left, where the heavenly light streams upon them, and brilliantly lights up the virgin's gown. in this picture are all murillo's beloved child figures, some carrying little streamers, their tiny wings a-flutter and all crowding lovingly about mary. far below this gorgeous group we can imagine the dark and weary earth lost in shadow. among murillo's most famous paintings are: "the birth of the virgin," "two beggar boys," "the madonna of the rosary," "the annunciation," "adoration of the shepherds," "holy family," "education of mary," "the dice players," and "the vision of st. anthony." xxxii raphael (sanzio) (pronounced rah'fay-el (sahnt'syoh)) - _umbrian, florentine, and roman schools_ _pupil of perugino_ it was said of raphael that "every evil humour vanished when his comrades saw him, every low thought fled from their minds"; and this was because they felt themselves vanquished by his pleasant ways and sweet nature. imagine his beautiful face, with its sunny eyes, reflecting no shadow of sadness or pain. such a one was sure to be beloved by all. the father of raphael was giovanni santi, himself an able artist. both he and raphael studied in many schools and took the best from each. the son was brought up in an italian court, that of guidobaldo of urbino, where the father was a favourite poet and painter, so that he had at least one generation of art-lovers behind him, at a time when learning and art were much prized. nothing ever entered into his life that was sad or sorrowful; his whole existence was a triumph of beautiful achievements. there were three great artists of that time, the other two being michael angelo and leonardo da vinci, both of whom were absolutely unlike raphael in their art and in their characters. raphael was born on april th at contrada del monte in the ducal city of urbino. his mother's name was magia ciarla, and she was the daughter of an urbino merchant. she had three children besides the great painter, all of whom died young, and when raphael was but eight years old his mother died also. it is said that it was from her raphael inherited his beauty, goodness, mildness, and genius. his father's patron, the duke of urbino, was a fine soldier, but he also cherished scholarship and art, and kept at his court not less than twenty or thirty persons at work copying greek and latin manuscript which he wished to add to his library. raphael had a stepmother, bernardina, the daughter of a goldsmith, a good and forceful woman, but not gentle like the first wife; and when raphael was eleven years of age his father, too, died. by his father's will raphael became the charge of his uncle bartolommeo, a priest, but the property was left to the stepmother so long as she remained unmarried. almost at once the priest and the stepmother fell to quarreling over the spoils, and thus raphael was left pretty much to his own devices, but just when life began to look dark and sad for him, his mother's brother took a hand in the situation. he settled the dispute between the priest and the second wife, and arranged that raphael should be placed in the studio of some great painter, for the loving lad had already worked in his father's studio, and had given promise of his wonderful gifts. so he became the pupil of perugino, a painter noted for his fine colouring and sympathetic handling of his subjects. at that time, italian schools were less wonderful in colouring than in other matters of technique. "let him become my pupil," said perugino, when raphael was brought to him and some of his work was exhibited; "soon he will be my master." a very different attitude from that of ghirlandajo toward michael angelo. raphael and his master became friends and worked together for nine years. his first work was not conceived until raphael was seventeen. it was to be a surprise to his master who had gone to florence. a banner was wanted for the church of s. trinita at citta di castello, and raphael undertook it, painting the "trinity," on one canvas and the "creation of man" on another. then he painted the "crucifixion," which was bought by cardinal fesch, who lived in rome. that painting is now in a collection of the earl of dudley. it was sold away from rome in , for twelve thousand dollars--or a little more. no one will deny that this is an unusual sum for an artist's first work, but about the same time he did a much more wonderful thing. he painted a little picture, six and three-quarter inches square. it was of the virgin walking in the springtime, before the leaves had appeared upon the trees, and with snow-capped mountains behind her. she holds the infant jesus in her arms while she reads from a small book, and the little child looks upon the page with her. this six inches of beauty sold to the emperor of russia, in , for sixty thousand dollars. before raphael was twenty-one, he had left his master's studio and had gone into the splendid world of rome, where angelo was straining at his bonds. but how differently each accepted his life! the gentle raphael, who took the best of the ideas of all great painters, and gave to them his own exquisite characteristics, was beloved of all, shed light upon art and friends alike. to such a one all life was joyous. michael angelo, trying ever to do the impossible, betraying his hatred of limitations in all that he did, doing always that which aroused horror, distress, longing, elemental feelings, in those who studied his wonderful work, and giving hope and satisfaction and peace to none--to such as he life must ever have been hateful and painful. these men lived at the same time, among the same people. one of raphael's greatest pictures came into the possession of a poor widow, who being hard pressed by poverty, sold it to a bookseller for twelve scudi. in time it was bought from the bookseller by grand duke ferdinand iii. of tuscany, who prayed before it night and morning, taking it with him on his travels. that picture is now in the pitti palace at florence and it is called the "madonna del granduca." the berlin museum purchased a raphael madonna for $ , which was painted about the same time as these others, but after a little the artist left florence where he had been studying the methods of leonardo and angelo and returned to urbino, the home he loved, where his conduct was such that all the world seems to have become his lover. it is written that he was "the only very distinguished man of whom we read, who lived and died without an enemy or detractor!" no better can ever be said of any one. while he dwelt in perugia and urbino he had painted the "ansidei madonna," so called because that was the name of the family for which it was painted. that madonna was sold in to the national gallery, by the duke of marlborough for $ , . a madonna on a round plaque-like canvas, - / inches in diameter, was bought by the duke of bridgewater for $ , . it is the "holy family under a palm tree," painted originally for a friend, taddeo taddei, who was a florentine scholar. many of the pictures which after many vicissitudes have landed far from home and been bought for fabulous sums were painted for love of some friend, or were paid for by modest sums at the time the artist received the commissions. lord ellesmere in london now owns the "holy family under a palm tree." it is said of raphael that whenever another painter, known to him or not, requested any design or assistance of any kind at his hands, he would invariably leave his work to perform the service. he continually kept a large number of artists employed, all of whom he assisted and instructed with an affection which was rather that of a father to his children than merely of an artist to artists. from this it followed that he was never seen to go to court, except surrounded and accompanied, as he left his house, by some fifty painters, all men of ability and distinction, who attended him, thus to give evidence of the honour in which they held him. he did not, in short, live the life of a painter, but that of a prince. there is something wonderfully inspiring about such a life. we read of emperors and the homage paid to them; of the esteem in which men who accomplish deeds of universal value are held, but nowhere do we behold the power of a beautiful and exquisite personality and character, allied with a single art, so impressively exhibited. he urged nothing, yet won all things by the force of his loving and sympathetic mind. "how is it, dear cesare that we live in such good friendship, but that in the art of painting we show no deference to each other?" he asked of cesare da sesto, who was da vinci's greatest pupil. in discussing the great ones of the earth, herman grimm, son of the collector of fairy tales, says: "can we mention a violent act of raphael's, goethe's or shakespeare's? no, it is restful only to recall these wonderful men." one of raphael's most beautiful virgins was modeled from a beautiful flower-girl whom he loved, "la belle jardinière." raphael as well as michael angelo was summoned by pope julius ii., but how different were the two occasions! michael angelo had stood with dogged, gloomy self-assertiveness before the pope, head covered, knee unbent. uncompromising, while yet no injury had been done him, resentful before he had received a single cause for resentment, the attitude was typical of his art and his unhappy life. when raphael appeared, his bent knee, his "chestnut locks falling upon his shoulders, the pope exclaimed: 'he is an innocent angel. i will give him cardinal bembo for a teacher, and he shall fill my walls with historical pictures.'" the artist's behaviour was no sign of servility, but the simple recognition of forms and customs which the people themselves had made and by which they had decided they should graciously be bound. the attitude of angelo was not heroic but vulgar; that of raphael not servile, but in good taste, showing a reasonable mind. pope julius had summoned raphael for a special reason. alexander vi., his predecessor in the vatican, had been a depraved man. the fair and virile julius had a healthy sentiment against occupying rooms which must continually remind him of the notorious alexander's mode of life. some one suggested that he have all the portraits of the former pope removed, but julius declared: "even if the portraits were destroyed, the walls themselves would remind me of that simoniac, that jew!" the word 'jew' was then execrated by all christians, for the world was not yet christian enough to know better. raphael was summoned to decorate the vatican, that julius might have a place which reminded him not at all of alexander. it is said that when raphael had completed one of his masterpieces the pope threw himself upon the ground and cried, "i thank thee, god, that thou hast sent me so great a painter!" while at work upon his first fresco at the vatican--"la disputa," the dispute over the holy sacrament--raphael met a woman with whom he fell deeply in love. her father was a soda manufacturer and her name was margherita. missirini relates this incident in raphael's career. "she lived on the other side of the tiber. a small house, no. , in the street of santa dorothea, the windows of which are decorated with a pretty frame work of earthenware, is pointed out as the house where she was born. "the beautiful girl was very frequently in a little garden adjoining the house, where, the wall not being very high, it was easy to see her from the outside. so the young men, especially artists--always passionate admirers of beauty--did not fail to come and look at her, by climbing up above the wall. "raphael is said to have seen her for the first time as she was bathing her pretty feet in a little fountain in the garden. struck by her perfect beauty, he fell deeply in love with her, and after having made acquaintance with her, and discovered that her mind was as beautiful as her body, he became so much attached as to be unable to live without her." she is spoken of to-day as the "fornarina," because at first she was supposed to have been the daughter of a baker (_fornajo_). raphael made many rough studies for his picture "la disputa," and upon them he left three sonnets, written to the woman so dear to him. these sonnets have been translated by the librarian of l'ecole nationale des beaux-arts, as follows: "love, thou hast bound me with the light of two eyes which torment me, with a face like snow and roses, with sweet words and tender manners. so great is my ardour that no river or sea could extinguish my fire. but i do not complain, for my ardour makes me happy.... how sweet was the chain, how light the yoke of her white arms about my neck. when these bonds were loosed, i felt a mortal grief. i will say no more; a great joy kills, and, though my thoughts turn to thee, i will keep silence." although he had been a man of many loves, raphael must have found in the manufacturer's daughter his best love, because he remained faithful and devoted to her for the twelve years of life that were left to him. it was said some years later, while he was engaged upon a commission for a rich banker, that "raphael was so much occupied with the love that he bore to the lady of his choice that he could not give sufficient attention to his work. agostino (the banker) therefore, falling at length into despair of seeing it finished, made so many efforts by means of friends and by his own care that after much difficulty he at length prevailed on the lady to take up her abode in his house, where she was accordingly installed, in apartments near those which raphael was painting; in this manner the work was ultimately brought to a conclusion." raphael painted this beautiful lady-love many times, and in a picture in which she wears a bracelet he has placed his name upon the ornament. after this time he painted the "madonna della casa d'alba," which the duchess d'alba gave to her physician for curing her of a grave disorder. she died soon afterward, and the physician was arrested on the charge of having poisoned her. in course of time the picture was purchased for $ , by the russian emperor, and it is now in "the hermitage," st. petersburg. a writer telling of that time, relates the following anecdote: "raphael of urbino had painted for agostino chigi (the rich banker already mentioned) at santa maria della pace, some prophets and sibyls, on which he had received an advance of five hundred scudi. one day he demanded of agostino's cashier (giulio borghesi) the remainder of the sum at which he estimated his work. the cashier, being astounded at this demand, and thinking that the sum already paid was sufficient, did not reply. 'cause the work to be estimated by a judge of painting,' replied raphael, 'and you will see how moderate my demand is.' "giulio borghesi thought of michael angelo for this valuation, and begged him to go to the church and estimate the figures of raphael. possibly he imagined that self-love, rivalry, and jealousy would lead the florentine to lower the price of the pictures. "michael angelo went, accompanied by the cashier, to santa maria della pace, and, as he was contemplating the fresco without uttering a word, borghesi questioned him. 'that head,' replied michael angelo, pointing to one of the sibyls, 'that head is worth a hundred scudi.' ... 'and the others?' asked the cashier. 'the others are not less.' "someone who witnessed this scene related it to chigi. he heard every particular and, offering in addition to the five hundred scudi for five heads a hundred scudi to be paid for each of the others, he said to his cashier, 'go and give that to raphael in payment for his heads, and behave very politely to him, so that he may be satisfied; for if he insists on my paying also for the drapery, we should probably be ruined!'" by the time raphael was thirty-one he was a rich man, and had built himself a beautiful house near the vatican, on the via di borgo nuova. naught remains of that dwelling except an angle of the right basement, which has been made a part of the accoramboni palace. his friends wished him above all things to marry, but he was still true to margherita though he had become engaged to the daughter of his nephew. he put the marriage off year after year, till finally the lady he was to have married died, and was buried in raphael's chapel in the pantheon. margherita was with him when he died, and it was to her that he left much of his wealth. in the time of raphael excavations were being made about rome, and many beautiful statues uncovered, and he was charged with the supervision of this work in order that no art treasure should be lost or overlooked. the pope decreed that if the excavators failed to acquaint raphael with every stone and tablet that should he unearthed, they should be fined from one to three hundred gold crowns. raphael had his many paintings copied under his own eye and engraved, and then distributed broadcast, so that not only men of great wealth but the common people might study them. henry viii. invited him to visit england, and become court painter, and francis i. wished him to become the court painter of france. he loved history, and wished to write certain historical works. he loved poetry and wrote it. he loved philosophy and lived it--the philosophy of generous feeling and kindly thought for all the world. he kept poor artists in his own home and provided for them. raphael died on good friday night, april th, in his thirty-seventh year, and all rome wept. he lay in state in his beautiful home, with his unfinished picture of the "transfiguration," as background for his catafalque. that painting with its colours still wet, was carried in the procession to his burial place in the pantheon. when his death was announced, the pope, leo x., wept and cried _"ora pro nobis!"_ while the ambassador from mantua wrote home that "nothing is talked of here but the loss of the man who at the close of his six-and-thirtieth year has now ended his first life; his second, that of his posthumous fame, independent of death and transitory things, through his works, and in what the learned will write in his praise, must continue forever." raphael painted two hundred and eighty-seven pictures in his thirty-seven years of life. plate--the sistine madonna it is said that the "sistine madonna," while painted from an italian model--doubtless the lady whom raphael so dearly loved--has universal characteristics, so that she may "be understood by everyone." he lived only three years after painting this picture and it was the last "holy family" painted by him. the madonna stands upon a curve of the earth, which is scarcely to be seen, and looming mistily in front of her is a mass of white vaporous clouds. on either side are figures, st. sixtus (for whom the picture was named) and st. barbara. beside st. sixtus we see a crown or tiara; and the little tower at st. barbara's side is a part of her story. barbara was the daughter of an eastern nobleman who feared that her great beauty might lead to her being carried off; therefore he caused her to be shut up in a great tower. while thus imprisoned barbara became a christian through the influence of a holy man, and she begged her father to make three windows in her gloomy tower: one, to let the light of the father stream upon her, another to admit the light of the son, and the third that she might bathe in the light of the holy ghost. both st. barbara and st. sixtus were martyrs for their faith. this madonna is painted as if enclosed by green velvet curtains, which have been drawn aside, letting the golden light of the picture blaze upon the one who looks; then upon a little ledge below, looking out from the heavens, are two little cherubs--known to all the world. they look wistful, wise, roguish, and beautiful, with fat little arms resting comfortably upon the ledge. raphael is said to have found his models for these little angels in the street, leaning wistfully upon the ledge of a baker's window, looking at the good things to eat, which were within. raphael took them, put wings to them, placed them at the feet of mary, and made two little images which have brought smiles and tears to a multitude of people. the "sistine madonna" hangs alone in a room in the dresden gallery. among raphael's greatest works are: the "madonna della sedia" (of the chair), "la belle jardinière," "the school of athens," "saint cecilia," "the transfiguration," "death of ananias" (a cartoon for a series of tapestries), "madonna del pesce," "la disputa," "the marriage of mary and joseph," "st. george slaying the dragon," "st. michael attacking satan" and the "coronation of the virgin." xxxiii rembrandt (van rijn) _dutch school_ - _pupil of van swanenburch_ here are a few of the titles that have been given to the greatest dutch painter that ever lived: the shakespeare of painting; the prince of etchers; the king of shadows; the painter of painters. muther calls him a "hero from cloudland," and not only does he alone wear these titles of greatness, but he alone in his family had the name of rembrandt. one writer has said that the great painter was born "in a windmill," but this is not true. he was born in leyden for certain, though not a great deal is known about his youth; and his father was a miller, his mother a baker's daughter. when the pilgrim fathers, who had sought safety in leyden, were starting for america, where they were going to oppress others as they had been oppressed, rembrandt was just beginning his apprenticeship in art. he was born at no. , weddesteg, a house on the rampart looking out upon the rhine whose two arms meet there. in front of it whirled the great arms of his father's windmill, though he was not born in it; and of all the women rembrandt ever knew, it is not likely that he ever admired or loved one as passionately as he admired and loved his mother. he painted and etched her again and again, with a touch so tender that his deepest emotion is placed before us. rembrandt had brothers and sisters--five: adriaen, gerrit, machteld, cornelis, and willem. of these, adriaen became a miller like his father, and presumably the old historic windmill fell to him; willem became a baker, but rembrandt, the fourth child, it was determined should be a learned man, and belong to one of the honoured professions, such as the law. so he was sent to the leyden academy, but here again we have an artist who decided he knew enough of all else but art before he was twelve years old. he found himself at that age in the studio of his first art-master, jacob van swanenburch, a relative, who had studied art in italy, and was a good master for the lad; but rembrandt became so brilliant a painter in three years' time, that he was sent to amsterdam to learn of abler men. the lad could not in those days get far from his adored mother; so he stayed only a little time, before he went back to leyden where she was. there was his heart, and, painting or no painting, he must be near it. until the past thirty years no one has seemed to know a great deal of rembrandt's early history, but much was written of him as a boorish, gross, vulgar fellow. those stories were false. he was a devoted son, handsome, studious in art, and earnest in all that he did, and after he had made his first notable painting he was compelled by the demands of his work to move to amsterdam for good. he hired an apartment over a shop on the quay bloemgracht; it is probable that his sister went with him to keep his house, and that it is her face repeated so frequently in the many pictures which he painted at that time. this does not suggest coarse doings or a careless life, but permits us to imagine a quiet, sober, unselfish existence for the young bachelor at that time. soon, however, he fell in love. he saw one other woman to place in his heart and memory beside his mother. his wife was saskia van ulenburg, the daughter of an aristocrat, refined and rich. he met her through her cousin, an art dealer, who had ordered rembrandt to paint a portrait of his dainty cousin. rembrandt could have been nothing but what was delightful and good, since he was loved by so charming a girl as saskia. he painted her sitting upon his knee, and used her as model in many pictures. first, last, and always he loved her tenderly. in one portrait she is dressed in "red and gold-embroidered velvets"; the mantle she wore he had brought from leyden. in another picture she is at her toilet, having her hair arranged; again she is painted in a great red velvet hat, and then as a jewish bride, wearing pearls, and holding a shepherd's staff in her hand. again, rembrandt painted himself as a giant at the feet of a dainty woman, and in every way his work showed his love for her. after he married her, in june , he painted the picture, "samson's wedding," "saskia, dainty and serene, sitting like a princess in a circle of her relatives, he himself appearing as a crude plebeian, whose strange jokes frighten more than they amuse the distinguished company. ... the early years of his marriage were spent in joy and revelry. surrounded by calculating business men who kept a tight grasp on their money bags, he assumed the rôle of an artist scattering money with a free hand; surrounded by small townsmen most proper in demeanour, he revealed himself as the bold lasquenet, frightening them by his cavalier manners. he brought together all manner of oriental arms, ancient fabrics, and gleaming jewellery; and his house became one of the sights of amsterdam." his existence reads like a fairy tale. it is said that saskia strutted about decked in gold and diamonds, till her relatives "shook their heads" in alarm and amazement at such wild goings on. before he married saskia he had painted a remarkable picture, named the "school of anatomy." it represents a great anatomist, the friend of rembrandt--nicholaus tulp,--and a group of physicians who were members of the guild of surgeons of amsterdam. it is so wonderful a picture that even the dead man, who is being used as a subject by the anatomist, does not too greatly disturb us as we look upon him. the thoughtful, interested faces of the surgeons are so strong that we half lose ourselves in their feeling, and forget to start in repulsion at sight of the dead body. a fine description of this painting can be found in sarah k. bolton's book "famous artists" and it includes the description given by another excellent authority. the artist was twenty-six years old when he painted the "school of anatomy." this picture is now at the hague and two hundred years after it was painted the dutch government gave , florins for it. rembrandt painted a good many "samsons" first and last--himself evidently being the strong man; and the pictures beyond doubt express his own mood and his idea of his relation to things. after a little son was born to the artist, he painted still another samson--this time menacing his father-in-law but as the artist had named his son after his father-in-law,--rombertus--we cannot believe that there was any menace in the heart of rembrandt--samson. soon his son died, and rembrandt thought he should never again know happiness, or that the world could hold a greater grief, but one day he was to learn otherwise. a little girl was born to the artist, named cornelia, after rembrandt's mother, and he was again very happy. meantime his brothers and sisters had died, and there came some trouble over rembrandt's inheritance, but what angered him most of all, was that saskia's relatives said she "had squandered her heritage in ornaments and ostentation." this made rembrandt wild with rage, and he sued her slanderers, for he himself had done the squandering, buying every beautiful thing he could find or pay for, to deck saskia in, and he meant to go on doing so. at this time he painted a picture of "the feast of ahasuerus" (or the "wedding of samson") and he placed saskia in the middle of the table to represent esther or delilah as the case might be, dressed in a way to horrify her critical relatives, for she looked like a veritable princess laden with gorgeous jewels. one of his pictures he wished to have hung in a strong light, for he said: "pictures are not made to be smelt. the odour of the colours is unhealthy." the first baby girl died and on the birth of another daughter she too was named cornelia, but that baby girl also died, and next came a son, titus, named for saskia's sister, titia, and then saskia died. thus rembrandt knew the deepest sorrow of his life. he painted her portrait once again from memory, and that picture is quite unlike the others for it is no longer full of glowing life, but daintier, suggestive of a more spiritual life, as if she were growing fragile. it is written that "from this time, while he did much remarkable work, he seemed like a man on a mountain top, looking on one side to sweet meadows filled with flowers and sunlight, and on the other to a desolate landscape over which a clouded sun is setting." with saskia died the best of rembrandt. he made only one more portrait of himself--before this he had made many; and in it he makes himself appear a stern and fateful man. it was after saskia's death that he painted the "night watch," or more properly, "the sortie." rembrandt's home, where he and saskia were so happy, is still to be seen on a quay of the river amstel. it is a house of brick and cut stone, four stories high. the vestibule used to have a flag-stone pavement covered with fir-wood. there were also "black-cushioned, spanish chairs for those who wait," and all about were twenty-four busts and paintings. there was an ante-chamber, very large, with seven spanish chairs covered with green velvet, and a walnut table covered with "a tournay cloth"; there was a mirror with an ebony frame, and near by a marble wine-cooler. upon the wall of this _salon_ were thirty-nine pictures and most of them had beautiful frames. "there were religious scenes, landscapes, architectural sketches, works of pinas, brouwer, lucas van leyden, and other dutch masters; sixteen pictures by rembrandt; and costly paintings by palma vecchio, bassano, and raphael." in the next room was a real art museum, containing splendid pictures, an oaken press and other things which suggest that this was the workroom where rembrandt's etchings were made and printed. in the drawing-room was a huge mirror, a great oaken table covered with a rich embroidered cloth, "six chairs with blue coverings, a bed with blue hangings, a cedar wardrobe, and a chest of the same wood." the walls were literally covered with pictures, among which was a raphael. above was a sort of museum and rembrandt's studio. there was rare glass from venice, busts, sketches, paintings, cloths, weapons, armour, plants, stuffed birds and shells, fans, and books and globes. in short, this was a most wonderful house and no other interior can we reconstruct as we can this, because no other such detailed inventory can be found of a great man's effects as that from which these notes are taken: a legal inventory made in , long after saskia had died and possibly at a time when rembrandt wished to close his doors forever and forget the scenes in which he had been so happy. holland being truly a protestant country, its artists have given us no great madonna pictures, although they painted loving, happy dutch mothers and little babes, but on the whole their subjects are quite different from those of the painters of italy, france, and spain. rembrandt's studio was different from any other. when he first began to work independently and to have pupils, he fitted it up with many little cells, properly lighted, so that each student might work alone, as he knew far better work could be done in that way. it is said that his pictures of beggars would, by themselves, fill a gallery. he had a kindly sympathy for the poor and unfortunate, and tramps knew this, so that they swarmed about his studio doors, trying to get sittings. there is a story which doubtless had for its germ a joke regarding the slowness of an errand boy in a friend's household, but which at the same time shows us how rapidly rembrandt worked. the artist had been carried off to the country to lunch with his friend jan six, and as they sat down at the table, six discovered there was no mustard. he sent his boy, hans, for it, and as the boy went out, rembrandt wagered that he could make an etching before the boy got back. six took the wager, and the artist pulled a copper plate from his pocket--he always carried one--and on its waxed surface began to etch the landscape before him. just as hans returned, rembrandt gleefully handed six the completed picture. he was a great portrait painter, but he loved certain effects of shadow so well that he often sacrificed his subject's good looks to his artistic purpose, and very naturally his sitters became displeased, so that in time he had fewer commissions than if he had been entirely accommodating. his meals in working time were very simple, often just bread and cheese, eaten while sitting at his easel, and after saskia died he became more and more careless of all domestic details. rembrandt finally married again, the second time choosing his housekeeper, a good and helpful woman, who was properly bringing up his little son, and making life better ordered for the artist, but he had grown poor by this time for he was never a very good business man. his beautiful house was at last sold to a rich shoemaker. every picture latterly reflected his condition and mood. he chose subjects in which he imagined himself always to be the actor, and when his second wife died he painted a picture of "youth surprised by death"; he had not long to live. he became more and more melancholy; and sleeping by day, would wander about the country at night, disconsolate and sad. finally, when he died, an inventory of his effects, showed him to be possessed of only a few old woollen clothes and his brushes the miracle in rembrandt's painting is the deep, impenetrable shadow, in which nevertheless one can see form and outline, punctuated with wonderful explosions of light. nothing like it has ever been seen. it is the most dramatic work in the world, and the most powerful in its effect. other men have painted light and colour; rembrandt makes gloom and shadow living things. this miracle-worker's funeral cost ten dollars; he died in amsterdam and was buried in the wester kirk. plate--the sortie this picture is generally known as "the night watch," but it is really "the sortie" of a company of musketeers under the command of a standard bearer. captain frans banning-cock and all his company were to pay rembrandt for painting their portraits in a group and in action, and they expected to see themselves in heroic and picturesque dress, in the full blaze of day, but rembrandt had found a magnificent subject for his wonderful shadows, and the artist was not going to sacrifice it to the vanity of the archers. this picture was called the "patrouille de nuit," by the french and the "night watch," by sir joshua reynolds because upon its discovery the picture was so dimmed and defaced by time that it was almost indistinguishable and it looked quite like a night scene. after it was cleaned up, it was discovered to represent broad day--a party of archers stepping from a gloomy courtyard into the blinding sunlight. "how this different light is painted, which encircles the figures, here sunny, there gloomy!... rembrandt runs through the entire range of his colours, from the lightest yellow through all shades of light and dark red to the gloomiest black." one writer describes it thus: "it is more than a picture; it is a spectacle, and an amazing one... a great crowd of human figures, a great light, a great darkness--at the first glance this is what strikes you, and for a moment you know not where to fix your eyes in order to comprehend that grand and splendid confusion... there are officers, halberdiers, boys running, arquebusiers loading and firing, youths beating drums, people bowing talking, calling out, gesticulating--all dressed in different costumes, with round hats, plumes, casques, morions, iron corgets, linen collars, doublets embroidered with gold, great boots, stockings of all colours, arms of every form; and all this tumultuous and glittering throng start out from the dark background of the picture and advance toward the spectator. the two first personages are frans banning-cock, lord of furmerland and ilpendam, captain of the company, and his lieutenant, willem van ruijtenberg, lord of vlaardingen, the two marching side by side. the only figures that are in full light are this lieutenant, dressed in a doublet of buffalo-hide, with gold ornaments, scarf, gorget, and white plume, with high boots, and a girl who comes behind, with blond hair ornamented with pearls, and a yellow satin dress; all the other figures are in deep shadow, excepting the heads, which are illuminated. by what light? here is the enigma. is it the light of the sun? or of the moon? or of the torches? there are gleams of gold and silver, moonlight coloured reflections, fiery lights; personages which, like the girl with blond tresses, seem to shine by a light of their own.... the more you look at it, the more it is alive and glowing; and, even seen only at a glance, it remains forever in the memory, with all its mystery and splendour, like a stupendous vision." charles blanc has said: "to tell the truth, this is only a dream of night, and no one can decide what the light is that falls on the groups of figures. it is neither the light of the sun or of the moon, nor does it come from the torches; it is rather the light from the genius of rembrandt." this wonderful picture was painted in and many of the archer's guild who gave rembrandt the commission would not pay their share because their faces were not plainly seen. this picture which alone was enough to make him immortal, was the very last commission that any of the guilds were willing to give the artist, because he would not make their portraits beautiful or fine looking to the disadvantage of the whole picture. this work hangs in the rijks museum in amsterdam. he painted more than six hundred and twenty-five pictures and some of them are: "the anatomy lesson," "the syndics of the cloth hall," "the descent from the cross," "samson threatening his step father," "the money changer," "holy family," "the presentation of christ in the temple," "the marriage of samson," "the rape of ganymede," "susanna and the elders," "manoah's sacrifice," "the storm," "the good samaritan," "pilate washing his hands," "ecce home," and pictures of his wife, saskia. xxxiv sir joshua reynolds _english school_ - _pupil of thomas hudson_ when reynolds was "little josh," instead of "sir joshua" he grew tired in church one day, and sketched upon the nail of his thumb the portrait of the rev. mr. smart who was preaching. after service he ran to a boat-house near, and with ship's paint, upon an old piece of sail, he painted in full and flowing colours that reverend gentleman's portrait. after that there was not the least possible excuse for his father to deny him the right to become an artist. the father himself was a clergyman with a good education, and he had meant that his son should also be well educated and become a physician; but a lad who at eight years of age can draw the plympton school house--he was born at plympton earl, in devonshire--has a right to choose his own profession. at twenty-three years of age sir joshua was painting the portraits of great folk, and being well paid for it, as well as lavishly praised. his first real sorrow came at a christmas time when he was summoned home from london where he was working, to his father's deathbed. after that the artist turned his thoughts toward italy, but where was the money to come from? earning a living did not include travelling expenses, but a good friend, captain keppel, was going out to treat with the dey of algiers about his piracies, and learning that the artist wished to go to italy he invited him to go with him on his own ship, the _centurion._ so while the captain was discussing pirates with the dey, sir joshua stopped with the governor of minorca and painted many of the people of that locality. thence on to rome! strange to say, raphael's pictures disappointed the english artist, and he said so; but michael angelo was to reynolds the most wonderful of painters, and he said that his pictures influenced him all the rest of his life. he wished his name to be the last upon his lips, and while that was not so, yet it was the last he pronounced to his fellow academicians in his final address. it was in italy that a distressing misfortune came upon sir joshua. he meant to learn all that a man could learn in a given time of the art treasures there, and while he was working in a draughty corridor of the vatican, he caught a severe cold which rendered him deaf. he continued deaf till the end of his life and had to use an ear-trumpet when people talked with him. when he got back to england, hudson, his old master, said discouragingly: "reynolds, you don't paint as well as when you left england." on the whole his reception at home, after his long absence, was not all that he could have wished, but he took a place in leicester square, settled down to live there for the rest of his life, and went at painting in earnest. although artists criticised him more or less after his return, the public appreciated him and very soon orders for portraits began to pour in upon him, and the flow of wealth never ceased so long as he lived. it was said that all the fashionables came to him that did not go to gainsborough, but those who were partial to sir joshua declared that all who could not go to him went to gainsborough. the two great artists controlled the art world in their time, dividing honours about equally. it was said that all those women and men sat to sir joshua for portraits "who wished to be transmitted as angels... and who wished to appear as heroes or philosophers." sir joshua was a charming man, generous in feeling--as gainsborough was not--and his closest friend was dr. johnson, the most different man from the artist imaginable, but reynolds's art and johnson's philosophy made a fine combination, each giving the other great pleasure. besides johnson, his friends were goldsmith, garrick, bishop percy, and other famous men of the time. these and others formed the "literary club" at sir joshua's suggestion. about that time there was the first public exhibition of the work of english artists, and sir benjamin west and sir joshua reynolds built the royal academy for that first exhibition, with the help of king george's patronage. joshua reynolds was knighted when he was made the first president of that great body. soon after the academy was established, reynolds began a series of "discourses," which in time became famous for their splendid literary quality, and some people, knowing his close friendship with burke and dr. johnson, declared that the artist got one of them to write his "discourses" for him. this threw johnson and burke into a fury of resentment for their friend, and the doctor declared indignantly that "sir joshua would as soon get me to paint for him as to write for him!" burke denied the story no less emphatically. besides these speeches, which were a great advantage to the members of the academy, sir joshua instituted the annual banquet to the members, and king george--who just before had given the commission of court painter to one less talented than sir joshua--bade him paint his portrait and the queen's, to hang in the academy. this was a great thing for the new society and advanced its fortunes very much. barry and gainsborough were both churlish enough to envy sir joshua and to quarrel with his good feeling for them, but both men had the grace to be sorry for behaviour that had no excuse, and both made friends with him before they died--gainsborough on his death-bed. toward his last days the artist was attacked with paralysis, but grew better and was able to paint again; then he began to go blind--he was already deaf--and this affliction made painting impossible. shortly before his death, he undertook to raise funds for a monument to his dead friend, dr. johnson, but he grew more and more ill, "and on the d february, , this great artist and blameless gentleman passed peacefully away." that he was very painstaking in his work is shown by an anecdote about his infant "hercules." "how did you paint that part of the picture?" some one asked him. "how can i tell! there are ten pictures below this, some better, some worse"--showing that in his desire for perfection he painted and repainted. so untiring was he in seeking out the secrets of the old masters that he bought works of titian and rubens, and scraped them, to learn their methods, insisting that they had some secret underlying their work. so anxious was he to get the most brilliant effects of colours that he mixed his paints with asphaltum, egg, varnish, wax, and the like, till one artist said: "the wonder is that the picture did not crack beneath the brush." many of these great pictures did go to pieces because of the chances sir joshua took in mixing things that did not belong together, in order to make wonderful results. sir george beaumont recommended a friend to go to reynolds for his portrait and the friend demurred, because "his colours fade and his pictures die before the man." "never mind that!" sir george declared; "a faded portrait by reynolds is better than a fresh one by anybody else." the same tender, sensitive and devoted nature which caused sir joshua's mother to weep herself blind upon her husband's death, belonged to the artist. all of his life he was surrounded by loving friends, and his devotion to them was conspicuous. he, like dürer and several other painters, was a seventh son, and his father's disappointment was keen when he took to art instead of to medicine. so little did his father realise what his future might be, that he wrote under the sketch of a wall with a window in it, drawn upon a latin exercise book: "this is drawn by joshua in school, out of pure idleness." but by the time joshua was eight years old and had drawn a fine "sketch of the grammar-school with its cloister... the astonished father said: 'now, this exemplifies what the author of "perspective" says in his preface: "that, by observing the rules laid down in this book, a man may do wonders"--for this is wonderful.'" sir joshua laid down--even wrote out--a great many rules of conduct for himself. some of these were: "the great principle of being happy in this world is not to mind or be affected with small things." also: "if you take too much care of yourself, nature will cease to take care of you." when samuel reynolds, joshua's father, consulted with his friend mr. craunch, as to whether a boy who made wonderful paintings at twelve years of age, would be likely to be a successful apothecary, he told craunch that joshua himself had declared that he would rather be a good apothecary than a poor artist, but if he could be bound to a good master of painting he would prefer that above everything in the world. this was how he came to be apprenticed to hudson, the painter. young reynolds's sister paid for his instruction at first--or for half of it, with the understanding that reynolds was to pay her back when he was earning. at that time reynolds wrote to his father: "while i am doing this i am the happiest creature alive." one day, while in an art store, buying something for hudson, reynolds saw alexander pope, the poet, come in, and every one bowed to him and made way for him as if for a prince. pope shook hands with young reynolds, and in writing home, describing the poet, the artist said that he was "about four feet six inches high; very humpbacked and deformed. he wore a black coat and according to the fashion of that time, had on a little sword. he had a large and very fine eye, and a long handsome nose; his mouth had those peculiar marks which are always found in the mouths of crooked persons, and the muscles which run across the cheeks were so strongly marked that they seemed like small cords." this is a masterly description of one famous man by another. he finally was dismissed from his master's studio on the ground that he had neglected to carry a picture to its owner at the time set by hudson, but the fact was the older artist had become jealous of the work of his pupil, and would no longer have him in his studio. afterwards, while he was painting down in devonshire--thirty portraits of country squires for fifteen dollars apiece--he said: "those who are determined to excel must go to their work whether willing or unwilling, morning, noon, and night, and they will find it to be no play, but, on the contrary, very hard labour." this shows that reynolds's idea of genius was "an infinite capacity for hard work." while reynolds was on his memorable journey to rome, he made several volumes of notes about the pictures of great italian artists--raphael, titian, etc. and one of those volumes is in the lenox library, new york city. he made a most characteristic and delightful remark in regard to his disappointment in raphael's pictures. "i did not for a moment conceive or suppose that the name of raphael, and those admirable paintings in particular, owed their reputation to the _ignorance_ ... of mankind; on the contrary, my not relishing them, as i was conscious i ought to have done was one of the most humiliating things that ever happened to me." he loved home and country so much that while in venice he heard a familiar ballad sung in an opera, and it brought the tears to his eyes because of its association with "home." his young sister, was so undecided in her ways and opinions as to make it impossible for reynolds long to live with her, but she undertook to be his housekeeper when he returned to london, and she also tried to copy his pictures reynolds said the results "made other people laugh, but they made me cry." reynolds painted the portraits of two irish sisters--the countess of coventry and the duchess of hamilton--two of the most beautiful women in all the british empire. "seven hundred people sat up all night, in and about a yorkshire inn, to see the duchess of hamilton get into her postchaise in the morning, while a worcester shoemaker made money by showing the shoe he was making for the countess of coventry." sir joshua declared that whenever a new sitter came to him, even till the last years of his life, he always began his portrait with the determination that that one should be the best he had ever painted. success was bound to attend that sort of man. he painted every picture almost as an experiment; meaning to learn something new with every work, and he spent more than he made in perfecting his art. as he said: "he would be content to ruin himself" in order to own one of the best works of titian. his deeds of kindness are beyond counting. he rescued his friend dr. johnson from debt--thereby saving him from prison; and when a young lad, "a son of dr. mudge," who was very anxious to visit his father on the occasion of his sixteenth birthday, grew too ill to make the journey. reynolds said gaily: "no matter my boy. _i_ will send you to your father." he painted a splendid portrait of the boy and sent it to dr. mudge. this gift of a picture, however, was very unusual with reynolds, who, unlike gainsborough who gave his by the bushel to everyone, declared that his pictures were not valued unless paid for. when sir william lowther, a gay and rich young man of london, died, he left twenty-five thousand dollars to each of thirteen friends, and each of the thirteen commissioned the painter to make a portrait of lowther, their benefactor. his work room was of interest: "the chair for his sitters was raised eighteen inches from the floor, and turned on casters. his palettes were those which are held by a handle, not those held on the thumb. the stocks of his pencils were long, measuring about nineteen inches. he painted in that part of the room nearest to the window, and never sat down when he painted." the chariot in which he drove about had the four seasons allegorically painted upon its panels, and his liveries were "laced with silver"; while the wheels of his coach were carved with foliage and gilded. sir joshua knew that it paid to advertise, and as he had no time to go about in that gorgeous chariot he made his sister go, for he declared that people seeing that magnificent coach would ask: "whose chariot is that?" and upon being told could not fail to be impressed with his prestige. the comical inconsequence of this anecdote concerning a man so important robs it of vulgarity. the graceful anecdotes told of reynolds are without number, but one and all are to his advantage and show him to have been good and gentle, a devoted and high-bred man. plate--the duchess of devonshire and her daughter this is generally considered one of the finest of sir joshua's pictures, if not the most beautiful of all. he was such a welcome guest at the houses of grandees that perchance he had noticed the lovely duchess playing with her still more lovely baby, and thought what a charming picture the two would make. as a representation of the artist's ability to portray grace and sweetness it can hardly be surpassed. he painted it in , half a dozen years before his death, and it now hangs in chatsworth, the home of the present duke of devonshire. other well known reynolds paintings are "the hon. ann bingham," "the countess of spencer," the "nieces of sir horace walpole," and the "angels' heads" in the national gallery. xxxv peter paul rubens. _flemish school_ - _pupil of tobias verhaecht_ the story of peter paul rubens, whose birthday falling upon the saint days of peter and paul gave to him his name, is hardly more interesting than that of his parents, although it is quite different. the story of rubens's parents seems a part of the artist's story, because it must have had something to do with influencing his life, so let us begin with that. john rubens was peter paul's father, and he was a learned man, a druggist, but he had also studied law, and had been town councillor and alderman in the town where he was born. life went easily enough with him till the reformation wrought by martin luther began to change john rubens's way of thinking, and he turned from catholic to lutheran. from being a good catholic john rubens became a rabid reformer; and when, under the new faith, the antwerp churches were stripped of their treasures, the magistrates were called to account for it. john rubens, as councillor, was among those summoned. the magistrates declared that they were all good catholics, but a list of the reformers fell into the duke of alva's hands and rubens's name was there. this meant death unless he should succeed in flying from the country, which he instantly did. that was in , when he had four children, but peter paul was not one of them--since he was a seventh son. the rubens family went to live in cologne, where the father found his learning of great use to him, and he was honoured by being made legal adviser to anne of saxony who was william the silent's second queen. john rubens's behaviour was not entirely honourable and before long he was thrown into prison, but his good wife, maria pypelincx undertook to free him. he had treated her very badly, but her devotion to his cause was as great as if he had treated her well. despite his wife's efforts he was kept a prisoner in the dungeon at dillenburg for two years, and afterward he was removed to siegen, the place where peter paul was born. in the sixteenth century there were no records of any sort kept in the town of siegen, and so we cannot be absolutely sure that peter paul was born there, but his mother was certainly there just before and after the date of his birth, which was the th of june . after his birth, his father was set free in siegen and allowed to go back to the city in which he had misbehaved himself. in cologne he became once more a catholic, and he died in that faith. meantime, ten years had passed since peter paul's birth, and both his father and mother were determined above all things their son should have a fine education, quite unlike other artists, for the boy seemed capable of learning. while he was still very small he could speak to his tutor in french, to his mother in flemish, and to his father in latin. besides these languages he spoke also italian and english. before he was an artist, rubens, like dürer and leonardo da vinci, was a child of rare intelligence. as a little chap he went to antwerp with his mother--this was after his father's death--and in belgium he took for the first time the rôle of courtier, in which he was to become so successful later in life. the charming little fellow, dressed in velvet and lace, took his place in the household of the countess of lalaing, in brussels. very soon after entering that household, rubens was permitted by his mother to leave it for the studio of the painter who was his first master, though not the one who really taught him much. rubens did not stay there long, but went instead to the studio of adam van noort, an excellent painter of the time. after that he studied under another artist, who was both a scholar and a gentleman, van veen, and with him peter paul was able to speak in latin and in his many other languages, while learning to paint at the same time. thus we find rubens's lot was always cast, not among the rich, but among the intelligent, the well bred, and the cultivated. this fact alone would prepare us to anticipate pleasant things for him and from him. in those days of guilds, there were many rules and regulations. van noort, rubens's teacher, was dean of the painters' guild and through his influence the guild recognised rubens as "master," which meant that he was qualified to take pupils; thus he was pupil and teacher at the same time. one is unable to think of rubens as having low tastes, as being morose, erratic, or anything but a refined, gracious, and brilliant gentleman. he began well, lived well, and ended well. none of his teachers really impressed their style of art upon him. he was the model for others. rubens became nothing but rubens, but all the art world wished to become "rubenesque." rubens went to mantua to see the art of italy, and while there he met the duke of mantua who was vincenzo gonzaga, the richest, most powerful personage of that region and time. the duke engaged rubens to paint the portraits of many beautiful women--just the sort of commission that rubens's pupil, van dyck, would have loved; but rubens's art was of sterner stuff, and the work by no means delighted him. he had great ideas, profound purposes, and wished to undertake them, but just then it seemed best that he perform that which the duke of mantua wanted him to do; hence he set about it. later rubens went to the spanish court, not as a painter, but as a cavalier upon a diplomatic mission. bearing many beautiful presents to king philip iii., he went to madrid, where his elegance, manly beauty, dashing manner, and ability to speak several languages made him a wonderful success. he remained for three years at the court and studied the methods of spanish painters. he also painted the members of the spanish court, as velasquez had done, but they looked like people of another world. the spanish aristocracy had always been painted with pallid faces, languid and elegant poses; but rubens gave them a touch of the life he loved--made them robust and apparently healthy-minded. of all great colourists, rubens took the lead. titian with his golden hues and warm haired women was very great, but rubens, "the fleming" as he was called, revelled in richness of colouring, and flamed through art like a glorious comet. rubens had long been wanted in his own country. his sovereigns, albert and isabella, wished him to return and become their painter, but they were unable to free him from his engagements in italy and spain. at last rubens received word that his mother, whom he loved devotedly, was likely to die, and what kings could not do his love for her accomplished. although his patron, the duke of mantua, was absent, and his consent could not be secured, rubens set off post-haste to his mother's home. he arrived in antwerp too late to see maria pypelincx, who had died before he reached her. once more on his native soil, albert and isabella determined to induce him to remain. he had intended to go back to mantua and continue his work under the duke, but since he was now in belgium he decided to stay there, and thus he became the court painter in his own country, which after all he greatly preferred to any other. he was to have a salary of five hundred livres ($ ) a year, also "the rights, honours, privileges, exemptions, etc." that belonged to those of the royal household; and he was given a gold chain. in this day of large doings there is something about such details that seems childish, but a "gold chain" was by no means a small affair at a time when $ was considered an ample money-provision for an artist. that gorgeous gold chain, a mark of distinction rather than a reward, is to be seen in all its glory in one of rubens's great paintings. the artist himself is mounted upon a horse, the chain about his neck, while he is surrounded by "no fewer than eight-and-twenty life-size figures, many in gorgeous attire, warriors in steel armour, horsemen, slaves, camels, etc." this picture, "the adoration of the magi," was twelve feet by seventeen, and was painted at the town's expense. it was later sent to spain and placed in the madrid gallery. one of the greatest honours that could come to students of that day, was to be admitted to rubens's studio to paint under his direction, and it is said that "hundreds of young men waited their turn, painting meanwhile in the studios of inferior artists, till they should be admitted to the studio of the great master." rubens was a king among painters, as well as a painter patronised by kings. he had two wives, and he married the first one in . her name was isabella brant. sir joshua reynolds said of her: "his wife is very handsome and has an agreeable countenance, but the picture is rather hard in manner"--by which he meant a picture which rubens had painted of her. one of his greatest privileges when he was engaged at the court of albert and isabella, had been that he need obey none of the exactions of the guild of st. luke, none of their rigid rules concerning the employment of art students. rubens could take into his service whom he pleased, whether they had been admitted as members of the guild or not, though to be a member of the guild was a testimony to their qualifications. in the end, this did a good deal of harm, for rubens employed students to do the preliminary work of his pictures, who had not been his pupils and who were not otherwise qualified. thus we read criticisms like that of sir joshua's; and many of rubens's pictures are marred in this manner. a story is told of van dyck and other pupils of rubens breaking into the master's studio and smudging a picture which van dyck afterward repaired by painting in the damaged portion most successfully. we are also told in connection with rubens's picture, "the descent from the cross," that van dyck restored an arm and shoulder of mary of magdala, but certainly van dyck did not become a pupil of rubens till some time after that picture was painted. the work of a wonderful period in rubens's art was completely destroyed. in two years time he painted forty ceilings of churches in antwerp, all of which were burned, but there is a record of them in the copies made by de witt, in water colours from which etchings were afterward made. this work of rubens was the first example of foreshortening done by a flemish painter. above all things rubens liked to paint big pictures, on very large surfaces, as did michael angelo. "the large size of picture gives us painters more courage to present our ideas with the utmost freedom and semblance of reality. ... i confess myself to be, by a natural instinct, better fitted to execute works of the largest size." he wrote this to the english diplomat trumbull in . in the midst of rubens's greatest success as a painter came his diplomatic services. it was desirable that spain and england should be friends, and rubens always moving about because of his work, and being so very clever, the spanish powers thought him a good one to negotiate with england. while on a professional visit to paris, the english duke of buckingham and the artist met, and this seemed to open a way for business. the infanta consented to have rubens undertake this delicate piece of statesmanship, but philip of spain did not like the idea of an artist--a wandering fellow, as an artist was then thought to be--entering into such a dignified affair. the real negotiator on the english side, was gerbier, by birth also a fleming, and strange to tell, he too had been an artist. the english engaged him to look after their interests in the affair, and as soon as philip learned that their diplomat was also an artist, his prejudices against rubens as a statesman, disappeared. so it was decided that the two flemings, artists and diplomats, should meet in holland to discuss matters. about that time sir dudley carleton wrote to lord conway: "rubens is come hither to holland, where he now is, and gerbier in his company, walking from town to town, upon their pretence of taking pictures, which may serve him for a few days if he dispatch and be gone; but yf he entertayne tyme here long, he will infallibly be layd hold of, or sent with disgrace out of the country ... this i have made known to rubens lest he should meet with a skorne what may in some sort reflect upon others." the two clever men got through with their talk, nothing unfortunate happened, and rubens got off to spain where he laid the result of his talk with gerbier before the spanish powers. he was given a studio in philip's palace, where he carried on his art and his diplomacy. the king became delighted with him as a man and an artist, and as well as attending to state business, he did some wonderful painting while in madrid. he was there nine months or more, and then started off for england to tell charles i. of philip iii.'s wishes. but upon his arrival he learned that a peace had just been concluded between france and england, and all was excitement. he was received in england as a great artist; every honour was showered upon him, and when he made philip's request to charles, that he should not act in a manner hostile to spain, charles agreed, and kept that agreement though france and venice urged him to break it. charles knighted rubens while he was in england, and the university of cambridge made him master of arts. the sword used by the king at the time he gave the accolade is still kept by rubens's descendants. while he was in london rubens was very nearly drowned in the thames going down to greenwich in a boat. when he first went from italy to spain on a mission of state, he carried a note or passport bearing the following lines: "with these presents" (he took magnificent gifts to philip, among them a carriage and six neapolitan horses) "comes peter paul, a fleming. peter paul will say all that is proper, like the well informed man that he is. peter paul is very successful in painting portraits. if any ladies of quality wish their pictures, let them take advantage of his presence." when he visited england there was no longer need of such introduction; he went in all the magnificence that his genius had earned for him. rubens was always a happy man, so far as history shows. he married the first time, a woman who was beautiful and who loved him, as he loved her. he was able to build for himself a beautiful house in antwerp. in the middle of it was a great _salon_, big enough to hold all his collection of pictures, vases, bronzes, and beautiful jewels. there was also a magnificent staircase, up which his largest pictures could be easily carried, for it was built especially to accommodate the requirements of his work. rubens's greatest picture was painted through a strange happening when this beautiful house was being built. the land next to his belonged to the archers' guild and when the workmen came to dig rubens's cellar, they went too far and invaded the adjoining property. the archers made complaint, and there seemed no way to adjust the matter, till some one suggested that rubens make them a picture which should be accepted as compensation for the harm done. this rubens did, and the picture was to be st. christopher--the archers' patron saint; but when the work was done "rubens surprised them" by exhibiting a picture "of all who could ever have been called 'christ-bearers.'" this was "the descent from the cross"--not a single picture but a picture within a picture, for there were shutters folding in front of it, and on these was painted the archers' patron, st. christopher. rubens's daily life is described thus: "his life was very methodical. he rose at four, attended mass, breakfasted, and painted for hours; then he rested, dined, worked until late afternoon; then, after riding for an hour or two one of his spirited horses, and later supping, he would spend the evening with his friends. "he was fond of books, and often a friend would read aloud to him while he worked." this is a pleasant picture of a reasonable and worthy life. it is said that once he painted eighteen pictures in eighteen days, and it is known that he valued his time at fifty dollars a day. his pupil, van dyck, being pushed for money, turned alchemist and tried to manufacture gold, but when rubens was approached by a visionary who wanted him to lend him money by which he might pursue such a work, promising rubens a fortune when he should have discovered how to make his gold, the artist laughed and said: "you are twenty years too late, friend. when i wield these," indicating his palette and brush, "i turn all to gold." many are the delightful anecdotes told of rubens. it is said that while he was at the english court he was painting the ceiling of the king's banqueting hall, and a courtier who stood watching, wished to say something _pour passer le temps_, so he asked: "does the ambassador of his catholic majesty sometimes amuse himself with painting?" "no--but he sometimes amuses himself with being an ambassador," was the witty retort, which showed how he valued his two commissions. when king charles i. knighted rubens he gave him, beside the jewelled sword, a golden chain to which his miniature was attached. if rubens had gone about with all the chains and decorations given him by kings and other great ones of the earth he would have been weighted down, and would have needed two pairs of shoulders on which to display them. rubens's first wife died; and when he married again, he was as fond of painting pictures of the second wife as he had been of the first. the name of the second was helena fourment, and she is called by one author "a spicy blonde." certainly she was very gay, big, and robust, and only sixteen years old when she married rubens who was then a man of fifty-three. of one picture, "the straw hat," for which he is supposed to have used his wife's sister as model, he was so fond that he would not sell it at any price. rubens had a rare mother, as shown in her letters to her husband, john, when he was in prison for his wrongdoing. it would seem that such a mother must have a strong, forceful son, and rubens is less of a surprise than many artists who had no such influence in their childhood. the history of rubens's mother is worthy of being told even had she not had a famous son who painted a beautiful picture of her. rubens's "holy families" are like those of no other painter. the virgin, the child, all the others in the picture, are quite different from the italian figures. these are human beings, good to look upon; full of love and joy, softness and beauty. it was his learning that first won favour for him in italy. the duke of mantua hearing him read from virgil, spoke to him in latin, and being answered in that tongue was so charmed that the foundation of their friendship and the duke's patronage was laid. in italy he was called "the antiquary and apelles of our time." his nephew-biographer writes of him: "he never gave himself the pastime of going to parties where there was drinking and card-playing, having always had a dislike for such." as rubens grew in fame, he found that many were jealous of him, and on one occasion a rival proposed that he and rubens each paint a picture upon a certain subject and leave it to judges to decide which work was the best--rubens's or his own. "no," said rubens. "my attempts have been subjected to the scrutiny of connoisseurs in italy and spain. they are to be found in public collections and private galleries in those countries; gentlemen are at liberty to place their works beside them, in order that comparison may be made." this was a dignified way of disposing of the case. rubens loved to paint animals, and he had a great lion brought to his home, that he might study its poses and movements. the flesh of his figures was so lifelike that guido declared he must mix blood with his paints. he was called "the painter of life." rubens, a seventh child, had also seven children, two belonging to his first wife, five to the second. many stories are told of his patience and his kindness. it is said that at one time his old pupil, van dyck, returned to antwerp after an absence, greatly depressed and in need of money. rubens bought all his unsold pictures, and he did this charitable act more than once, and is known to have done the same thing for a rival and enemy, out of sheer goodness of heart. kings and queens came to the rubens house, people of many nations did him honour; and toward his closing days, when gout had disabled him, ambassadors visited him, since he could not go to them. in a description of his death and burial which took place at antwerp we read: "he was buried at night as was the custom, a great concourse of citizens ... and sixty orphan children with torches followed the body." he was placed in the vault of the fourment family, and as he had requested, "the holy family" was hung above him. in that picture, we find the st. george to be rubens himself; st. jerome, his father; an angel, his youngest son, while martha and mary are isabella and helena, his two wives. he left many sketches "to whichever of his sons became an artist, or to the husband of his daughter who should marry an artist." but there were none such to claim the bequest. plate--the infant jesus and st. john the little girl behind jesus is supposed to represent his future bride, the christian church. the thoughtful, far-seeing look upon the face of the christ-child, though it does not clash with his youthful charm, is meant to suggest that he has a premonition of his work in the world. the other joyous little figures also demonstrate the artist's love for children. he brings them into his pictures, as cherubs, wherever he can, and they are frequently just as well painted and more universally appreciated than his stout women. in this picture he has a good opportunity to show his adorable flesh tints, combined with the movement and freedom naturally associated with child life. the original painting is in the court museum at vienna, but it has always been so popular that many copies of it have been made, and one of these is in the berlin gallery. plate--the artist's two sons _(see frontispiece_) this picture hangs in the lichtenstein gallery at vienna; the two boys, eleven and seven years of age, are the sons of rubens by his first wife, isabella brant; and albert, the elder of the two, greatly resembles his mother. he is evidently a student, for he wears the dress of one and carries a book in one hand. the other is placed affectionately upon the shoulder of his little brother, nicolas, whose face, figure, and attire are all much the more childish of the two. critics consider this painting to mark the highest point which rubens reached in portraiture. it has all the colour, character, and vitality of his best work. some of his other pictures are: "coronation of marie de medicis," "the kirmesse," "slaughter of the innocents," "susanna's bath," "capture of samson," "a lion hunt" and "the rape of the daughters of leucippus." xxxvi john singer sargent _american and foreign schools_ - _pupil of carolus durand_ this artist was born in europe, of american parents; thus we may say that he was "american," though he owed nothing but dollars to the united states, since his instruction was obtained in italy and france, and all his associations in art and friendship were there. he was probably the most brilliant of the artists termed american. his great mural work in the boston public library, is hardly to be surpassed. above all, sargent's portraits are masterly. he was famous in that branch of art before he was twenty-eight years old. among his finest portraits is that of "carmencita," a spanish dancer, who for a time set the world wild with pleasure. the list of his famous portraits is very long. sargent's father was a philadelphia physician; who originally came from new england, but the artist himself was born in florence. he was given a good education and grew up with the beauties of florence all about him, in a refined and charming home. he was the delight of his master, carolus durand for he was modest and refined, yet full of enthusiasm and energy. in his twenty-third year he painted a fine picture of his master. sargent was a musician as well as a painter; a man of great versatility, as if the gods and all the muses had presided at his birth. plate--carmencita in this picture of the famous spanish dancer sargent shows all the life and character he can put into a portrait. the girl seems on the point of springing into motion. she is poised, ready for flight and the proud lift of her head makes one believe that she will accomplish the most difficult steps she attempts. the painting is in the luxembourg, paris. other noted sargent portraits are "mr. marquand" in the metropolitan museum of art, "lady elcho, mrs. arden, mrs. tennant," "mrs. meyer and children," "homer st. gaudens," "henschel," and "mr. penrose." xxxvii tintoretto (jacopo robusti) _venetian school_ - _pupil of titian_ tintoretto was born with an ideal. as a young boy he wrote upon his studio wall: "the drawing of michael angelo, the colouring of titian," and that was the end he tried to reach. his father was a "tintore"--a dyer of silk, a tinter--and it was from the character of that work the artist took his name. he helped his father with the dyeing of silks, while he was still a child, and was called "ii tintoretto," little dyer. as the little tinter showed great genius for painting, his father placed him in titian's studio, but for some reason he only stayed there a few days, long enough, however, to permit us to call him a pupil of titian; especially as he wrote that master's name upon his wall and determined to imitate him. after his few days with titian, tintoretto studied with schiavone and afterward set up a studio for himself. as a determined lad in this studio of his, tintoretto tried every means of developing his art. he studied the figures upon medicean tombs made by michael angelo, taking plaster casts of them and copying them in his studio. he used to hang little clay figures up by strings attached to his ceiling, that he might get the effect of them high in air. by looking at them thus from below he gained an idea of foreshortening. although this artist nearly succeeded in getting into line with michael angelo, he did not colour after the fashion of his master, titian. tintoretto was about twenty-eight years old before he got any very big commission, but at that age a chance came to him. in the church of santa maria del orto were two great bare spaces, unsightly and vast, about fifty feet high and twenty broad. in that day anything and everything was decorated with masterpieces, and it was almost disgraceful for a church to let such a space as that go unfrescoed. tintoretto saw an opportunity, and finally offered to paint pictures there for nothing if the church would agree to pay for the materials he needed. the church certainly was not going to refuse such an offer, even if tintoretto was not thought to be much of an artist at the time. if the work was poor, one day they could choose to have it repainted. thus tintoretto got his first great opportunity. he painted on those walls "the last judgment" and "the golden calf." they made him famous, and gained him the commission to paint the picture which is used as an illustration here. the brothers of the scuola di san rocco asked him to compete with veronese, in painting the ceilings after he had done four pictures for their walls. tintoretto consented, and veronese and two others who were in the competition set about making their sketches which they were to present for the brothers' consideration. finaly the day of decision came. all were assembled, the artists armed with sketches of their plans. "where are yours, tintoretto?" the others asked. "we expect a drawing of your idea." "well, there it is," the artist answered, drawing a screen from the ceiling. behold! he had already painted it to suit himself. the work was complete. "that is the way i make my sketches," he said. though the work was magnificent it had not been done according to the monks' ideas of business and order. they objected and objected. "very well," the artist cried; "i will make the ceiling a present to you." as there was a rule of their order forbidding them to refuse a present, they had to accept tintoretto's. this did not promise very good business at the time, but the work was so splendid and tintoretto so reasonable that they finally agreed to give him all the work of their order--nearly enough to keep him employed during a lifetime. after that he painted sixty great pictures upon their walls. he painted so much and so fast that he did not always do good work, and one critic declares that "while tintoretto was the equal of titian, he was often inferior to tintoretto"--which after all is a very fine compliment. his life was so tranquil and uneventful that there is little to say of it; but there is much to say of his art. he lived mostly in his studio, and when he died he was buried in the santa maria del orto--the church in which he had done his first work. veronese had given to venice a brilliant, glowing, rich, ravishing riot of colour and figures, but tintoretto was said to rise up "against the joyful veronese as the black knight of the middle ages, the sombre priest of a gloomy art." tintoretto was of stormy temperament, and upon one occasion he proved it by thrusting a pistol under a critic's nose, after he had invited him to his studio; it is this half savage spirit that may be seen in his paintings. he had deep-set, staring eyes, it is said, a furrowed brow and hollow cheeks, indicative of his passionate spirit. he painted very few female figures, but mostly men. when he did paint a woman, she looked mannish and not beautiful. when he painted gorgeous subjects, like doges and senators, he gave to them gloomy backgrounds, awe-inspiring poses, and he seldom painted a figure "full-face" but three-quarter, or half, so that he did not give himself a chance to present human figures in beautiful postures. he is said to have been the first who painted groups of well-known men in pictures intended for the decoration of public buildings. one great critic has written that "while the dutch, in order to unite figures, represented them at a banquet, tintoretto's _nobili_ (aristocrats) were far too proud to show themselves to the people" in so gay and informal a situation. with the coming of tintoretto it was said "a dark cloud had overcast the bright heaven of venetian art. instead of smiling women, bloody martyrs and pale ascetics" were painted by him. he dissected the dead in order to learn the structure of the human body. in his paintings "his women, especially, with their pale livid features and encircled eyes, strangely sparkling as if from black depths, have nothing in common with the soft" painted flesh which he pictured in his youth while he was following titian as closely as he could. as he grew older and his art more fixed, he followed michael angelo more and more. titian's colouring was that of "an autumn day" but tintoretto's that of a "dismal night." yet these very qualities in tintoretto's work made him great. plate--the miracle of st. mark this painting in the academy at venice tells the story of how a christian slave who belonged to a pagan nobleman went to worship at the shrine of st. mark. that was unlawful. the nobleman had his slave taken before the judge, who ordered him to be tortured. just as the executioner raised the hammer with which he was finally to kill the slave, st. mark himself came down from heaven, broke the weapon and rescued the slave. the figure of the patron saint of venice is swooping down, head first, above the group, his garments flying in the air. a bright light touches the slave's naked body, as he lies upon his back, the executioner having turned away and raised his hammer aloft, while others have drawn back in fright at the appearance of the patron saint. we may imagine that tintoretto was trying to acquire this power of painting wonderful figures hovering in the air when he hung his little clay images from the ceiling of his studio years before. other pictures of his are: "the marriage of bacchus and ariadne," "martyrdom of st. agnes," "st. rocco healing the sick," "the annunciation," "the crucifixion," and many others. xxxviii titian (tiziano vecelli) (pronounced tit-zee-ah'no (vay-chel'lee)) _venetian school_ - _pupil of giovanni and gentile bellini_ titian was a child of the tirol mountains, handsome, strong, full of health and fine purposes, even as a boy. he was born in a little cottage at pieve, in the valley of cadore, through which flows the river piave; and he wandered daily beside its banks, gathering flowers from which he squeezed the juices to paint with. when he grew up he became a wonderful colourist, and from his boyhood nothing so much delighted him as the brilliant colours flaunted by the flowers of wood and field. gathered about his good father's hearth were many children, caterina, francesco, orsa, and the rest, living in peace and happiness, closely bound together by love. titian had a gentle, loving mother named lucia, while his father was a soldier and an honoured man. in the little town where they lived, he was councillor and also superintendent of the castle and inspector of mines, no light honours among those simple country people. doubtless titian inherited his splendid bearing and his determined character from his soldier father. even while a little child, the man who was destined to become a great artist began his work with the juices of the wild-flowers, which he daubed upon the wall of the humble home in the tirol valley, making a madonna with angels at her feet and a little jesus upon her knee. but if titian was a great painter, he was never even a fair scholar. he went to school, but would not, or could not, study. his father soon saw that he was wasting his time and being made very unhappy through being forced to do that for which he had no ability; so he was soon released from book-learning and sent to venice, seventy-five miles from home, to learn art. in venice, the vecelli family had an uncle, and it was with him that titian lived, though he studied first with sebastian zuccato, the head of the venetian guild of mosaic workers, and a pretty good teacher in his way. he was not able to teach titian very much, for the boy was an inspired artist and needed a good master; so, after a little, the family held a consultation and it was decided that titian should become the pupil of gentile bellini, a very clever artist indeed. there was an interesting story told about this master which made the vecellis feel that their boy would do well to be under the influence of a kind-hearted man, as well as a genius. it seems that bellini's fame had become so great that the sultan had sent for him to paint the portraits of himself and the sultana. bellini went gladly to turkey to do this; but he took with him certain pictures to show his patron. among them was one of st. john the baptist having his head cut off. the sultan looked at it, and cutting heads off being a large part of his business, he saw that bellini had not scientifically painted it, and in order to show him the true way to conduct such matters, he sent for a slave and ordered his head chopped off in bellini's presence. bellini was so terrified and sickened by the dreadful sight that he fled from turkey and would not paint its ruler, the sultana nor anyone else who had to do with such cruel things as he had witnessed. it was into this man's studio that titian went as a young boy, but after a little he displeased gentile bellini, who complained that his pupil worked too fast, and therefore could not expect to do great work. he declared that picture painting was serious and careful work, and that titian was too careless and quick. as a matter of fact, titian was too wonderful for bellini ever to do much for; and since he could not get on with him, he went to another master--gentile bellini's brother, giovanni. one of titian's chief troubles in the studio of gentile had been that he was not allowed to use the gorgeous colouring he loved, but in the brother's studio he found to his joy that colour was more valued, and he was given more freedom to use it. also there was a young peasant pupil with giovanni, who, like titian, loved to use beautiful colours, and he and the newcomer became fast friends. the other artist's name was giorgione, and he had the most delightful ways about him, winning friends wherever he went, so it was no wonder that the warm-hearted titian sought his companionship. one day those two young comrades left their master's studio, to have a good time off by themselves. there was a stated hour for their return; but they had spent all their money, and forgot that giovanni bellini was expecting them home. when they did return the door was closed and locked. what were they to do? they did the only thing they could. as comrades in misfortune they joined forces, set up a studio of their own, and went to work to earn their living as best they might. at first it was hard sledding, but in time they got a good job, namely to decorate the walls of a public building in venice which was used by foreign merchants for the transaction of their business, a sort of "exchange," as we understand it. this was the fondaco de' tedeschi, and it had two great halls, eighty rooms, and twenty-six warehouses. it was indeed a big undertaking for the two young men, and they divided the business between them. their joy was great, their cartoons successfully made and the work well begun, when, alas, they fell to quarreling simply because someone had declared that titian's work upon the building was a little better than giorgione's. this dispute parted the two friends, who had had good times together, and it must have been giorgione's fault, because ludovico dolce, one who knew titian well, said that "he was most modest ... he never spoke reproachfully of other painters ... in his discourse he was ever ready to give honour where honour was due ... he was, moreover, an eloquent speaker, having an excellent wit and perfect judgment in all things; of a most sweet and gentle nature, affable and most courteous in manner; so that whoever once conversed with him could not choose but love him henceforth forever." that is a most loving and splendid tribute for one man to pay another. not long after giorgione died, and titian took up his unfinished work, doing it as well as his own. there was a brilliant and mature artist called palma vecchio, in venice, and titian painted in his studio, where he saw and loved vecchio's daughter, violante. the young artist was not very well off financially, and therefore could not marry; hence he was not specially happy over his love affair. about that time he took to painting after the manner of vecchio, through being so much influenced by his soft feelings for the older artist's daughter. he used the lovely violante again and again for his model, and many of the beautiful faces which titian painted at that time show the features of his lady-love. with his new love titian's serious work seemed to begin, and at twenty-one he painted his first truly great picture, "sacred and profane love." to day this picture hangs upon the walls of the borghese palace, in rome. raphael painted a great many pictures, but titian must have painted more. at least one thousand have his signature. now came wars and troubles for venice. the turks, french, and venetians became at odds, and during the strife many fine works of art were lost, among them many of titian's pictures. he had painted bishops, also the wicked borgias, and many other great personages, but all of these are gone and to this day, no one knows what became of them. at last titian began one of his greatest paintings, "the tribute money," and he set about it because he had been criticised. some german travellers in venice visited titian's studio, and though they found his work very fine, one of them said that after all there was only one master able to finish a painting as it should be finished, and that was the great dürer. the german pointed out the differences between titian's method and dürer's, and declared that venetian painters never quite came up to the promise of their first pictures. dürer's wonderful pictures were quite different from titian's, inasmuch as his work was fuller of detail and careful finishing, but titian was as great in another way. his effects were broader, but quite as satisfying. however, the german criticism put him on his mettle, and he answered that if he had thought the greatest value of a painting lay in its fiddling little details of finishing, he too would have painted them. to show that he could paint after dürer's fashion, as well as his own, he undertook the "tribute money," and the result was a wonderful picture. soon rome sent for titian. the florentines, raphael and michael angelo, were already there doing marvellous things, but the pope wished to add the genius of titian to theirs and made him a great offer to go and live in rome and do his future work for that city. this was an honour, but amid all his fame and the homage paid him, titian had remembered the old home in the vale of cadore. it was there his heart was, and he determined to return to the home of his boyhood to do his best work. so he sent his thanks and refusal to the pope, and he wrote as follows to his home folks, through the council of his town: "i, titian of cadore, having studied painting from childhood upward, and desirous of fame rather than profit, wish to serve the doge and signorini, rather than his highness the pope and other signori, who in past days, and even now, have urgently asked to employ me. i am therefore anxious, if it should appear feasible to paint the hall of council, beginning, if it pleases their sublimity, with the canvas of the battle on the side toward the piazza, which is so difficult that no one as yet has had the courage to attempt it." then in stating his terms he asked for a very moderate sum of money and a "brokerage" for life. the government did not have to think over the matter long. titian's father had been honoured among them, titian's genius was well known, and the commission was gladly given him. as soon as he got this business affair settled he moved into the palace of the duke of milan "at san samuele; on the grand canal, where he remained for sixteen years," so says his biographer. titian's affairs were not yet entirely smooth, because both of the bellinis having painted for his patrons, they naturally considered titian an intruder, and thought that the work should have been given to them. they did all they could to make trouble for the younger artist, but after a time titian came into his rights, receiving his "brokerage" which gave to him a yearly sum of money crowns, $ . . his taxes were taken off for the future, provided he would agree to paint all the doges that should rule during his lifetime. titian undertook to do this, but he did not keep his word, for he painted only five doges, though many more followed. he had no sooner received his commission from the council of his native place than he began to neglect it, and to paint for the husband of the wicked poisoner--lucretia borgia--whose name was alfonso d'este, the duke of ferrara. it was for him he painted the "venus worship," now in the museum of madrid, also "the three ages," which belongs to lord ellesmere, and the "virgin's rest near bethlehem," now in the national gallery. afterward he painted "noli me tangere," which is in the same london gallery. there is a picture of great size in the academy of arts in venice, which was first seen on a public holiday nearly four hundred years ago. it is the "assumption of the virgin," first shown on st. bernardino's day, when all the public offices were closed by order of the senate, and the whole city had a gay time. this occasion made titian the most honoured artist of his time, but still the venetians had cause to complain; because now their painter took so much work in hand that he nearly ceased doing the work on the council hall. the council sent him word that unless he attended to business the paintings should be finished by some one else and he would have to pay the new artist out of his own pocket; but in waywardness he paid no attention to this summons. lucretia borgia died, and her husband having never loved her, fell at once in love with a girl of a lower class, who was very good and worthy to be loved. the duke wanted titian to paint them both, and so once more the great painter neglected his contract with the council. the girl's name was laura, and titian painted her and the duke in one picture, which now hangs in the louvre. at last, after seven years of his neglecting to do his promised work the council became enraged and threatened to take the artist's property away from him. that frightened titian very much, and he began frantically to work on the battle piece on the hall wall. it was about this time that he married. he had probably forgotten violante in the passing of so many years; at any rate it was not she whom he married, but a lady whose first name was cecilia. soon he had a little family of children, but one of them was destined to make titian very unhappy. this was pomponic who became a priest, but he was also a wicked spendthrift, and kept his father forever in trouble, trying to pay his debts and keep him out of scrapes. another son became an artist; not great like his father, but very helpful and a comfort to him. then his wife died, and titian had loved her so dearly that for a long time he had not the heart to paint much. his sister, orsa, came to live at his home and take care of his motherless children. he left the palace on the grand canal and bought a home north of venice, with beautiful gardens attached, and there he lived and worked, entertaining the most illustrious men. titian's house and gardens became the show place of the country, so many geniuses and famous people visited there. it was there that he painted "the martyrdom of saint peter," and the picture was so loved by the venetians that the signori threatened with death any one who should take the picture from the chapel where it hung. in spite of this caution the picture was burned in the fire that destroyed the chapel in . titian was now getting to be old, but he was yet to do great work and to have kingly patrons. charles v. visited bologna, and, seeing titian's great work, wanted him to paint his portrait. so the artist went to bologna and painted the portrait of the king, clothed in armour, but without any head-covering, making charles v. look so fine a personage, that he was delighted. charles said he had always been painted to look so much uglier than he really was that when people who had seen his portraits, actually saw himself they were pleasantly disappointed. while titian was painting his picture, lombardi, the sculptor, wished above all things to see charles, so titian said: "you come with me to the sittings, and act as if you were some apprentice, carrying my colours and brushes, and then you can watch the king as easily as possible." lombardi did as titian suggested, but he hid in his big and baggy sleeve a tablet of wax, on which to make a relief picture of charles. one day the king surprised the sculptor and demanded to be shown what he was doing. thereupon he was so much pleased that he commissioned lombardi to make the model in marble. while the king was sitting for two portraits to titian, the artist one day dropped his brush. the king looked at the courtiers who were lounging about watching the work, but none of them picked it up, so the king himself did so. titian was distressed over this and apologised to the king. "there may be many kings," said charles, "but there will never be more than one titian--and he deserves to be served by caesar himself." after that he would allow no other artist to paint his portrait, declaring that titian alone could do it properly, and for the two pictures titian received two thousand scudi in gold, was made a count of the lateran palace, of the aulic council and of the consistory; with the title of count palatine and all the advantages attached to those dignities. his children were thereby raised to the rank of nobles of the empire, with all the honours appertaining to families with four generations of ancestors. he was also made knight of the golden spur, with the right of entrance to court. this was great return for two portraits of a king, but it shows what a king could do if he chose. titian had a brother who also became an artist, less famous than himself, and it was that brother, who, when their father died in the cadore home, went back to care for the old place and to keep it in readiness so that the famous titian might return to it for rest and peace. foreign sovereigns had invited titian to end his days with them, but they could not tempt him from that vale of cadore nor his country home in venice. all this time he had been neglecting the work upon the hall of council, and at last, the councillors gave the work to another, took away titian's "brokerage" and told him he must return to venice all the moneys they had given him for twenty years back. this finally cured him of his neglect, and he went to work in earnest painting so rapidly that he finished the work in two years. before he died titian went to rome, where he painted pope paul's portrait, and the story is told that when the portrait was set to dry upon the terrace--which it probably was not,--the people who passed took off their hats to it, thinking it was the pope himself. besides his bad son and his good one, titian had a beautiful daughter whom he painted again and again. he went to augsburg once more to paint king charles, who for that work added a pension of five hundred scudi to what he had already done for him. this made the artist "as rich as a prince, instead of poor as a painter." king philip ii. loved art as his father had, and he took a painting of titian's with him to the convent of yuste, where he went to die, wishing to have it near to console him. in those days art had become a religion for high and low. great personages still went to casa grande, titian's venetian home, where he entertained like a prince. no one knew better than he how princes behaved, and when a cardinal came to dine with him, he threw his purse to his servant, crying: "prepare a feast, for all the world is dining with me!" henry iii. of france visited titian and ordered sent to him every picture of which he had asked the price. his friends stood by him all his life, but in his old age his beautiful daughter, lavinia, died, leaving behind her six children for him to love as his own. the brother had died before that, in the old home at cadore, and at more than eighty years of age titian was still painting from morning till night. about this time he sent to king philip "the last supper," which was to be hung in the escorial. the monks found it too high to fill the space, and though the artist in charge, navarrette, begged them to let it be, they cut a piece off the top, that it might be hung where they wanted it. titian had so far had to pay no taxes, but at that time an account of his property was demanded and this is what he owned: "several houses, pieces of land, sawmills, and the like," and he was blamed because he did not state the full value of his possessions. at ninety-one he painted a picture which became the guide of rubens and his brother artists, so wonderful was it. again, at ninety-nine he began a picture, which was to be given to the monks of the frari in return for a burial place for the artist within the convent walls, but he never finished it. he died during the time of the plague, but of old age alone, though his son, orzio, died of the disease. the alarm of the people was so great that a law had been passed to bury all who died at that time, instantly and without ceremony, but that law was waived for the painter. titian, in the midst of a nation's tragedy was borne to the convent of the frari, with honours. two centuries later the austrian emperor commanded the great sculptor, canova, to make a mausoleum above the tomb. it was said that shortly before he died titian began to be less sure in his use of colours, and would often daub on great masses, but his students came in the night and rubbed them off, so that the master never felt his failing. as king charles had said, there was never but one such artist in the world. titian prepared his canvas by painting upon it a solid colour to serve for the bed upon which the picture itself was to be painted. to quote more exactly from a good description--some of these foundation colours were laid on with resolute strokes of his brush which was heavily laden with colour, while the half-tints were made with pure red earth, the lights with pure white, softened into the rest of the foundation painting with touches of the same brush dipped into red, black, and yellow. in this way he could give the "promise" of a figure in four strokes. after laying this foundation, he turned his picture toward the wall and left it there for months at a time, frequently turning it around that he might criticise it. if, during this time of waiting, he thought any part of the work already done was poor, he made it right, changing the shape of an arm, adding flesh where he thought it was needed, reducing flesh where it seemed to him out of proportion, and then he would again turn the canvas face to the wall. after months of self-criticism and retouching he would have the first layer of flesh painted upon his figures, and a good beginning made. "it was contrary to his habit to finish at one painting, and he used to say that a poet who improvises cannot hope to form pure verses." he would often produce a half-light with a rub of his finger, "or with a touch of the thumb he would dab a spot of dark pigment into some corner to strengthen it; or throw in a reddish stroke--a tear of blood so to speak--to break the parts ... in fact when finishing he painted more with his fingers than with his brush." he used to say, "white, red, and black, these are all the colours that a painter needs, but one must know how to use them." plate--the artist's daughter, lavinia. previous to the time of titian, it had been the custom to paint portraits of beautiful ladies merely to their waists, just far enough to show their hands. he went further, and produced "knee portraits," which gave him an opportunity to paint their gorgeous gowns as well. he has done so in making this picture of his daughter lavinia, probably just before her marriage to cornelio sarcinelli which took place in . she is attired in gold-coloured brocade with pearls about her neck. her dress, combined with the dish of fruit she holds so high, gives titian the colour effects he always sought. a yellow lemon is specially striking, and the red curtain to the left harmonises with the whole. the uplift of the arms and the turn of the head give the desired amount of action. it is not titian's customary style of work; he seldom did anything so intimate and personal, and the picture is the more interesting on that account. it is in the berlin gallery. some of titian's famous pictures are: his own portrait; "flora," "holy family and st. bridget," "the last judgment," "the entombment," "the magdalene," "bacchanal," "st. sebastian," "bacchus and ariadne," and "the sleeping venus." xxxix joseph mallord william turner _english_ - _pupil of the royal academy_ if the occupation of a shepherd produced a poet, no less did an artist of the first water come out of a barber shop. turner's father was a jolly little fellow who dressed hair for english dandies and did all of those things which in those days fell to men of his profession. it was in this little shop that the great artist grew up. father turner was ambitious for his son, who was anxious to study art. the less said of the artist's mother the better, for she was a termagant and finally went crazy, so that the father and his little boy were soon left alone, to plan and work and strive to make each other happy. the pair were never apart. turner's art beginning was at six years of age, on the occasion of a visit his father paid to a goldsmith of whose hair curling and peruquing he had charge. perched upon a chair too high for a little boy's comfort, and feeling that it took his father very long indeed to satisfy the customer, joseph's eye lighted upon a silver lion which ornamented a silver tray. he studied every detail of that lion while waiting for his father, and finally when they got home, he sat down and drew it from memory. by tea time he had a lion in full action upon the paper. this delighted his father above everything, and it was settled then and there that the little fellow should have a chance to learn art. the father could not give much time to his upbringing, but he taught him to be honest and kind-hearted and to save his money. his playground was generally the bank of the thames, and under london bridge where, roving with the sailors, he learned to love the ships, the setting-suns and evening waters from a daily study of them. he did not do much at school, because the other pupils at new brentford, learning that he could draw wonderful things upon the schoolroom walls, used to do his "sums" for him, while he sketched for them. after a while father turner began to hang up some of his son's sketches upon the walls of the barber shop, among the wigs and curls and _toupées_, and he put little tags upon them, telling the price. the extraordinary work of his little boy began to attract the attention of the jolly barber's patrons, and by the time he was twelve years old the child had a picture upon the walls of the royal academy--a far-cry from barber shop to academy! one authority says that this first exhibition occurred in his fourteenth year, but by that time he was a pupil of the academy, and it is not unlikely that he had shown his mettle before. he now began to earn his own living, but he still dwelt in the barber shop with his father. while in the academy he coloured prints, made backgrounds for other painters, drew architect's plans, and in that way made money. he had been sent to a drawing master to study "the art of perspective," but having no mathematical knowledge he had been unable to learn it, and the teacher had advised his father to put little turner to cobbling or making clothes. however, william was to learn perspective, and even to be made master of that branch of art in the academy itself. in after years, when he had become a great artist, someone spoke pityingly of the drudgery he had had to do to make money as a young boy--referring to his painting of backgrounds and the like. "well! and what could be better practice?" turner answered cheerfully. he used to go to the house of dr. munro, who lived in fine style on the strand. this gentleman owned rembrandts, rubenses, titians, and other great masterpieces, and in that house the "little barber" had a chance to see the best of art, and also to copy it. this was a great opportunity for him and he made the most of it. besides the chance for study, he earned about half a crown an evening and his supper, for his copying. turner was the first painter to make "warm moonlight." all other artists had given cold, silvery effects to a moonlit atmosphere, but turner had seen a mellow, sympathetic moon, and he first showed it to others. about this time he went travelling; for an engraver of the _copper plate magazine_ had engaged the young boy to go into wales and make sketches for his work. turner set off on a pony which a friend had lent him, with his baggage done up in a bundle--it did not make a very big one--and thus he voyaged. it was a fine experience, and he came home with many beautiful scenes on paper, which he in after years made into complete pictures. next he made the acquaintance of thomas girtin, the first in his country of a fine school of water-colour painters, and this acquaintance grew into a close friendship. the two were devoted to each other and worked together at any sort of mechanical art work that would bring them a living. when girtin died turner said: "had tim girtin lived, i should have starved," showing how highly he valued girtin's work. turner is said to have been "a stout, clumsy little fellow, who never cared how he looked. he wore an ill-fitting suit, and his luggage tied up in a handkerchief was slung over his shoulder on a cane. sometimes he carried a small valise and an old umbrella, the handle of which he converted into a fishing rod, for turner dearly loved both hunting and fishing." the hero travelled a great deal, because above every thing he loved the fields and streams, and to tramp alone. it is said that it was his habit to walk twenty-five miles a day, seeing everything on the way, letting no peculiarity of nature escape him. his sketchbook was a curiosity, because he not only made sketches in it, but jotted down his travelling expenses, what he thought about things that he saw, and all the gossip he heard in the towns through which he passed. because he liked best to travel alone he was called "the great hermit of nature." one memorable day--of which he thought but little at the time--he stopped on the road to make a sketch of norham castle. later he completed the picture, and it became famous, so successful that from that hour he had all the work he could do. years afterward, when passing that way again in company with a friend, he was seen to take off his hat to the castle. "why are you doing that?" his friend asked, in amazement. "well, that castle laid the foundation of my success," he answered, "and i am pleased to salute it." during his young manhood turner had fallen in love with a girl, and planned to marry, but after he returned from one of his country trips he found she had married another, and from that moment the artist was a changed man. he had been generous and gay before, now he began to save his money, so that people thought him miserly--but he was forgiven when it became known what he finally did with his fortune. after the young woman deserted him he wandered more than ever, and one of his fancies was to keep boys from robbing birds' nests. he looked after the little birds so carefully that the boys named him "old blackbirdy." he had already begun those wonderful pictures of ships and seas, and his house was ornamented with full-rigged little ships and water plants, which he carefully raised to put into his pictures. by that time he had bought a home of his own in the country, and his father the barber went to live with him. the old man's trade had fallen off, because the fashions had changed, wigs were less worn, and hair was not so elaborately dressed. in the country home the old man took charge of all the household affairs, prepared his son's canvases for him, and after the pictures were painted it was the ex-barber who varnished them, so that turner said, "father begins and finishes all my pictures." there the father and son lived, in perfect peace and affection, till turner decided to sell the place and move into town, "because," said he, "dad is always working in the garden and catching cold." meanwhile he had been made master of perspective in the academy, and it was expected that he would lecture to the students, but he was not cut out for a lecturer. he was not elegant in his manners, nor impressive in his speech. on one occasion, when he had risen to deliver a speech, he looked helplessly about him and finally blurted out: "gentlemen! i've been and left my lecture in the hackney coach!" during these years he had tried to establish a studio like other masters and to have pupils and apprentices about him; but the stupid ones he could not endure, having no patience with them, and he treated all the fashionable ones so bluntly they would not stay; so the idea had to be given up. he became a visitor at farnley hall in yorkshire, where a friend, mr. hawksworth fawkes lived, and in the course of his lifetime fawkes put fifty thousand dollars worth of turner's pictures upon his walls. the fawkes family described turner as a most delightful man: "the fun, frolic, and shooting we enjoyed together, and which, whatever may be said by others of his temper and disposition, have proved to me that he was, in his hours of distraction from his professional labours as kindly hearted a man and as capable of enjoyment and fun of all kinds as any i ever knew." another friend writes: "of all light-hearted, merry creatures i ever knew, turner was the most so; and the laughter and fun that abounded when he was an inmate of our cottage was inconceivable, particularly with the juvenile members of our family." the story of his disappointment in marriage is an interesting one. it is said that the young lady whom he loved was the sister of a schoolmate. they had been engaged for some time, but while he was on one of his travels his letters were stolen and kept from the young woman. she believed he had forgotten her, and her stepmother, who had taken the letters, persuaded the girl to engage herself to another. turner returned just a week before her marriage and tried to win her back, but although she loved him, she felt herself then bound to her new suitor and therefore married him. her marriage was very unhappy and her misery, as well as his own, distressed the artist till his death. almost all his life, in spite of his seeming gaiety, he worked like a slave, rising at four o'clock in the morning and working while light lasted. when remonstrated with about this he would sadly say: "there are no holidays for me." all his ways were honest and simple, and his election to the academy was very exceptional in the way it came about. most academicians had graces and airs and good fellowship to commend them, as well as their works, but turner had none of these things. he had given no dinners, nor played a social part in order to get the membership. when the news was brought him that he was elected, some one advised him to go and thank his fellow academicians for the honour, as that was the custom; but turner saw no reason in it. "since i am elected, it must have been because they thought my pictures made me worthy. why, then should i thank them? why thank a man for performing a simple duty." in half a century turner was absent only three times from the academy exhibitions, and his membership was of very great value to him. at this time turner had an idea for an art publication to be called _liber studiorum_. he meant to issue this in dark blue covers and to include in each number five plates. there was to be a series of five hundred plates altogether, and these were to be divided, according to subject, into historical, landscape, pastoral, mountainous, marine, and architectural studies. after seventy plates had been, published, the enterprise fell through, because no one bought the periodical, and there was no money to keep it going. the engraver of the plates, charles turner, became so disgusted with the failure that he even used the proofs of these wonderful studies to kindle the fire with. many years later, a great print-dealer, colnaghi, made turner, the engraver, hunt up all the proofs that he had not used for kindling paper, and these he bought for £ , . "good god!" cried charles turner, "i have been burning banknotes all my life." some years later still £ , was paid for a single copy of the _liber studiorum_. turner was a most conscientious man, and many stories are told of his manner of teaching. he could not talk eloquently nor give very clear instructions, talking not being his forte, but he would lean over a student's shoulder, point out the defects in his work, and then on a paper beside him make a few marks to illustrate what he had said. if the artist had genius enough then to imitate him, well and good; if not, turner simply went away and left him. his own ways of working were remarkable. he often painted with a sponge and used his thumbnail to "tear up a sea." it mattered little to him how he produced his effects so long as he did it. his impressionistic style confused many of his critics, and it is told how a fine lord once looked at a picture be had made, and snorted: "nothing but daubs, nothing but daubs!" then catching the inspiration, he leaned close to the canvas, and said: "no! painting! so it is!" "i find, mr. turner," said a lady, "that in copying your pictures, touches of red, blue and yellow appear all through the work." "well, madam, don't you see that yourself, in nature? because if you don't, heaven help you!" was the reply. "once, after painting a summer evening, he thought that the picture needed a dark spot in front by way of contrast; so he cut out a dog from black paper and stuck it on. that dog still appears in the picture." another time he painted "a snow-storm at sea," which some critics called "soap-suds and whitewash." turner, who had been for hours lashed to the mast of a ship in order to catch the proper effect, was naturally much hurt by the criticism. "what would they have!" he exclaimed. "i wonder what they think a storm is like. i wish they'd been in it." turner was conscientiously fond of his work, and when he sold a picture he said that he had lost one of his children. he grew rich, but he never was knighted, because his manners were not fine enough to suit the king. he wished to become president of the royal academy, but that was impossible because he was not polished enough to carry the honour gracefully. after selling his place in the country turner bought a house in harley street, where he lived a strange and lonely life. a gentleman has written about this incident, which shows us his manner of living: "two ladies called upon turner while he lived in harley street. on sending in their names, after having ascertained that he was at home, they were politely requested to walk in, and were shown into a large sitting-room without a fire. this was in the depth of winter; and lying about in various places were several cats without tails. in a short time our talented friend made his appearance, asking the ladies if they felt cold. the youngest replied in the negative; her companion, more curious, wished she had stated otherwise, as she hoped they might have been shown into his sanctum or studio. after a little conversation he offered them biscuits, which they partook of for the novelty--such an event being almost unprecedented in his house. one of the ladies bestowing some notice upon the cats, he was induced to remark that he had seven, and that they came from the isle of man." thus we learn that turner's desolate house was full of manx cats, and of many other pets. when he had moved elsewhere--to queen anne street--one of the pictures he cared most for, "bligh shore," was put up as a covering to the window and a cat wishing to come in, scratched it hopelessly. the housekeeper started to punish it for this but turner said indulgently, "oh, never mind!" and saved the cat from chastisement. the place he lived in, where his "dad was always working in the garden and catching cold," he called solus lodge, because he wished his acquaintances to understand that he wanted to be alone. one picture painted by him to order, was to have brought him $ , ; but when it was finished the man was disappointed with it and would not take it. later, turner was offered $ , for it, but would not sell it. turner again fell in love, but his bashfulness ruined his chances. he wrote to the brother of the lady. "if she would only waive her bashfulness, or, in other words, make an offer instead of expecting one, the same (solus lodge) might change occupiers." faint heart certainly did not win fair lady in this case, for she married another. before he died turner was offered $ , for two pictures which he would not sell. "no" he said. "i have willed them and cannot sell them." he disposed of several great works as legacies. one picture of which he was very fond, "carthage," was the occasion of an amusing anecdote. "chantry," he said to his friend the sculptor, "i want you to promise that when i am dead you will see me rolled in that canvas when i'm buried." "all right," said chantry, "i'll do it, but i'll promise to have you taken up and unrolled, also." a remarkable incident of generosity is told of turner. in he hung two exquisite pictures in the academy. one, "cologne," having a most beautiful, golden effect. this was hung between two portraits by sir thomas lawrence. the golden colouring of turner's picture entirely destroyed the effect of the lawrence pictures, and without a word, turner washed his lovely picture over with lampblack. this gave the lawrence, pictures their full colour value. a friend who had been enthusiastic about the "cologne" was provoked with turner. "what in the world did you do that for?" he demanded. "well, poor lawrence was so unhappy. it will all wash off after the exhibition." turner had his reward in cash, for the picture sold for , guineas. above all things turner hated engravings, or any process that cheapened art, and one day he stated this to his friend lawrence. "i don't choose to be a basket engraver," he declared. "what do you mean by that," sir thomas inquired. "why when i got off the coach t' other day at hastings, a woman came up with a basket of your 'mrs. peel,' and offered to sell me one for a sixpence." turner dearly loved his friends, and the story of chantry's death, illustrates it. he was in his room when the sculptor breathed his last, and just as he died, the artist turned to another friend, george jones, and with tears streaming down his face, wrung jones's hand and rushed from the room, unable to speak. again, when william frederick wells, another friend, died, turner rushed to the house of clara wells, his daughter, and cried: "oh clara, clara! these are iron tears. i have lost the best friend i ever had in my life." in his old age turner suddenly disappeared from all his haunts, and his friends could not find him. they were much troubled, but one day his old housekeeper found a note in a pocket of an old coat, which made her think he had gone to chelsea. she looked there for him, and found him very ill, in a little cottage on the thames river. everybody about called him admiral booth, believing him to be a retired admiral. he had felt his death near and had tried to meet it quite alone. he died the very day after his friends found him, as he was being wheeled by them to the window to look out upon the river for the last time. he was buried in st. paul's cathedral between sir joshua reynolds and james barry. he left his drawings and pictures to a "turner gallery," and $ , to the royal academy, to be used for a medal to be struck every two years for the best exhibitor. the rest of his fortune went to care for "poor and decayed male artists born in england and of english parents only." this was to be known as turner's gift, and that is why he had saved money all his life. a few more of the numberless stories of his generosity should be told. a picture had been sent to the academy by a painter named bird it was very fine, and turner was full of its praise, but when they came to hang it no place could be found. "it can't be hung," the others of the committee said. "it must be hung," returned turner, but nothing could be done about it, for there was absolutely no place. then turner went aside with the picture and sat studying it a long time. finally he got up, took down a picture of his own and hung bird's in its place. "there!" he said. "it is hung!" again, an old drawing-master died and turner who had known the family for a long time, was aware that they were destitute, so he gave the widow a good sum of money with which to bury her husband and to meet general expenses. after some time she came to him with the money; but turner put his hands in his pockets. "no," he said; "keep it. use it to send the children to school and to church." on one occasion when he had irritably sent a beggar from his house, he ran out and called her back, thrusting a £ note into her hand before letting her go. there was a man who in turner's youth, while the little fellow was making pictures in the cheerless barber shop bought all of these drawings he could find. he often raised the price and in every way tried to help turner. in after years that old patron went bankrupt. turner heard that his steward had been instructed to cut down some fine old trees on this man's estate, and sell them. turner, without letting himself be known in the matter, at once stopped the cutting and put into his old patron's hands about £ , . the rescued man, afterward, through the same channels that he had received the money, paid it all back. years passed, and the son of that same man got into the same difficulties, and again, without being known in the matter, turner restored his fortune. that son, in his turn, honestly paid back the full amount. this was the miser who saved all his money--to do good deeds to his friends. ruskin wrote that in all his life he had never heard from turner one unkind or blameful word for others. plate--the fighting tÉmÉraire this was the picture which turner loved best of all, the one he would never sell; but at his death ho gave it to the english nation. "many years before he painted it, he had gone down to portsmouth one day to see nelson's fleet come in after the glorious victory of trafalgar. the _téméraire_ was pointed out to him--a battle ship that had very proudly borne the english flag, for during the battle it had run in between two french frigates and captured them both. "and now between thirty and forty years later, he lingered one afternoon on the banks of the thames. as he looked over the water he saw the grand old hulk being towed down the river by a noisy little tug to be broken up at deptford. 'there's a fine subject!' he exclaimed as he looked at the heroic ship that had known many glorious years; and in his thought he compared it to 'a battle-scarred warrior borne to the grave.' "then he painted the picture. the glow of the setting sun irradiates the scene and bids farewell to the old ship. twilight is coming on, and the new moon has just risen in its pearly light. it is a pathetic picture," and well illustrates how truly a "master of sunsets and waves" the artist was. among his other paintings are several of venice; "the slave ship" and many other sea pieces. xl sir anthony van dyck _flemish school_ - _pupil of rubens_ anthony van dyke's father was neither a gentleman nor an ill-born person. he was "betwixt-and-between," being a silk merchant, who met so many fine folk that he seemed to be "fine folk" himself; and by the time anthony had grown up, he actually believed himself to be one of them. if manners stand for fineness sir anthony must have been superfine, because he was almost overburdened with "manners." he became a wonderful, be-laced, perfumed, shiny gentleman who never stooped to paint anything less than royalty and its associates, nor in anything less than velvets and laces. like rembrandt and gainsborough, he set a fashion--or rather the style in which he painted came to be known after his name. we are all familiar with the kind of ornamentation on clothes called van dyck--pointed lace, or trimmings--and pointed beards. as a very young lad he was almost too dainty to be liked by healthy boys; and the worst of it was he did not care whether healthy, robust chaps liked him or not; certainly he did not care for them. he liked to sit in his father's shop and be smiled upon by the great ladies who came to buy, and in turn to smile shyly at them; this tendency became stronger as he grew to be a man. anthony's mother made the most exquisite embroideries, and this may mean that some part of his art was inherited. she handled lovely colours, and tried to fashion beautiful flower shapes for customers. she was a fragile, tender sort of woman, while the father was doubtless a dapper, over-nice little fellow. anthony was born in antwerp, and the facts concerning his education, as in the case of most artists, are lost to our knowledge. he probably had a little of some sort outside of painting, but it certainly was not enough to hurt him, nor to make a fine healthy man of him. he was very beautiful, in a lady-like, faint-coloured way, not in the least resembling the handsome, gorgeous, elegant, robust rubens, a true cavalier, of a dashing sort. he was apprenticed to a painter when he was ten years old, and later on became the pupil of rubens. he painted a whole series of apostles' heads, about which a lawsuit took place. the papers relating to this were found about twenty years ago, though the lawsuit occurred as far back as . several of the apostles' heads that brought about the suit are to-day to be seen in the gallery at dresden. everything in those days--especially in germany and holland--was represented by a "guild." in reading about the mastersingers of nuremberg we are told that on the day when the trial of singers was to take place, dozens of "guilds" assembled in the meadow--guilds of bakers, of shoemakers--of which hans sachs was the head--guilds of goldsmiths, etc. van dyck was a member of the painters' guild when he was no more than nineteen. his work at that time showed so much strength that there is a picture of his, an old gentleman and lady, in the dresden gallery, which for a long time was supposed to have been painted by his master, rubens. an intimate friend of van dyck, kenelm digby, says that van dyck's first relations with rubens came about by van dyck being employed to make engravings for the reproduction of rubens's great works. after that he studied painting with him. one of his friends of that time wrote that at twenty van dyck was nearly as great as rubens, though this is hardly substantiated by the verdict of time, and that being a man with very rich family connections, he could hardly be expected to leave home. on every hand we have signs of the artist's affected feeling about himself and other people. however, an annual pension from the king of england seems to have made travelling possible to this fine gentleman of lace ruffles, pale face, and lady-like ways. there is an entry about him on the royal account book of "special service ... performed for his majesty." also "antonio van dyck, gent., _his majesty's servant_, is allowed to travaile months, he havinge obtayneid his majesty's leave in that behalf, as was signified to the e. of arundel." certainly by that time van dyck had become a truly great portrait painter; not the greatest, because every picture showed the same characteristics in its subject--elegance, fine clothes, languid manners, without force of great truth or any excellent moral quality to distinguish one from another. nevertheless, the kind of painting that he did, he did better than anyone else had ever done, or probably ever will do. while in england he painted all the royalties and many aristocrats, and wherever he went he was always painting pictures of himself. he travelled about a good deal, always painting people of the same class--kings and queens and fine folk, and painting them pretty nearly all alike. when he went to italy he was everywhere received as a great painter, but while artists agreed that his work was excellent he was not much liked by them, and many tales are told about that journey which are interesting, if not entirely true. van dyck was the sort of man about whom tales would be made up. one, however, sounds true. it is said that he fell in love--which of course he was always doing--with a beautiful country girl, and that for love of her he painted an altar piece into which he put himself, seated on the great gray horse which rubens had given him. that picture is in st. martin's church at saventhem, near brussels, but although one is inclined to believe this story because it was quite the sort of thing which might be expected of van dyck, even this is not true, because the painting was done long after the artist had made his italian journey, and it was commissioned by a gentleman living at saventhem, whose daughter van dyck undoubtedly liked pretty well; but he made the picture for money, not for love. while he was in italy he lived with a cardinal, and painted languid pictures of sacred subjects, which were far from being his best work. the best that he did was in portraiture. distinguished though he was, he did not have a very good time in italy, because he would not join the artists who worked there, nor associate with them in the least, and naturally this made him disliked. we see a good many portraits painted by van dyck, of persons mounted upon or standing beside the gray horse, and these were painted about the time of that italian journey. he used the rubens horse in many paintings. of all the people with whom he painted, he most valued the knowledge he got from a blind woman painter of sicily, called sofonisba anguisciola, and he often said that he had learned more from a blind woman than from all the open-eyed men he ever knew. this woman artist was over ninety years old at the time he learned from her. while he was in italy the plague broke out, and van dyck fled for his life, leaving an unfinished picture behind him, one ordered by the english king, the subject being rinaldo and armida, which had gained for the artist his knighthood pension. it is said that during his first year in england he painted the king and queen twelve times. he had an extraordinary record for industry, and painted very quickly, as he had need to do, because it took a great deal of money to buy the sort of things van dyck liked--fine laces and velvets, perfumes and satins. his plan was to sketch his subject first on gray paper with black and white chalk, and after that he gave the sketch to an assistant who increased it to the size he wished to paint. the next step was to set his painter to work upon the clothing of his figures. this was painted in roughly, together with background and any architectural effect van dyck wanted. after this the artist himself sat down and in three or four sittings, of not more than an hour each, he was able to finish a picture worth to-day thousands of dollars. he painted hands specially well, and kept certain models for them alone. van dyck had eleven brothers and sisters, whom he always kept in mind. some of his sisters had become nuns while some of his brothers were priests, and van dyck's influence got a monkish brother called to the dutch court to act as chaplain to the queen. by this time every royal personage in the world, nearly, had sent for van dyck to paint his portrait, for he could make one look handsomer than could any other painter in existence. if the king was very ugly, van dyck painted such beautiful clothes upon him that nobody noticed the plainness of the features. when van dyck was about thirty-six years old he married a great lady, the lady mary ruthven, granddaughter of the earl of gowrie, but before that he had had a lady-love, margaret lemon, whom he painted as the virgin and in several other pictures. when he married lady mary, margaret lemon was so furiously jealous that she tried to injure van dyck's right hand so that he could paint no more. about this time rubens died in flanders, leaving behind him an unfinished series of pictures which had been commissioned by the king of spain. van dyck was asked to finish these, but declined until he was asked to make an independent picture, to complete the series, and this he was delighted to do. ferdinand of austria wrote to the king of spain that van dyck had returned in great haste to london to arrange for his change of home, in order to do the work. "possibly he may still change his mind," he added, "for he is stark mad." this shows how van dyck's erratic ways appeared to some people. he had a sister, justiniana, who was also something of an artist and she married a nobleman when she was about twelve years old. when van dyck died he was buried in st. paul's, london, and charles i. placed an inscription on his tomb. in the "young people's story of art," is the following anecdote: "a visit was once paid by a courtly looking stranger passing through haarlem, to franz hals, the distinguished dutch painter. "hals was not at home but he was sent for to the tavern and hastily returned. the stranger told him that he had heard of his reputation--had just two hours to spare--and wished to have his portrait painted. hals, seizing canvas and brushes fell vigorously to work; and before the given time had elapsed, he said, 'have the goodness to rise, sir, and examine your portrait!' the stranger looked at it, expressed his satisfaction, and then said, 'painting seems such a very easy thing, suppose we change places and see what i can do!' "hals assented, and took his position as the sitter. the unknown began, and as hals watched him, he saw that he wielded the brush so quickly, he must be a painter. his work, too, was rapidly finished, and as hals looked at it he exclaimed, 'you must be van dyck! no one else could paint such a portrait!' "no two portraits could have been more unlike. the story adds that the famous dutch and flemish masters heartily embraced each other." the stories of van dyck's youth are interesting, and probably true. it is said that he drew so well when he was a pupil of rubens that the great master often allowed him to retouch his own works. once in rubens's studio, some of the students got the key and went in to see what the master was doing, when he was absent. rubens had left a painting fresh upon the easel, and in looking about them one of the boys rubbed against it. this frightened them all. what should they do? rubens would find his picture ruined and know that they had broken in. after consultation they decided there was no one with them who could repair the damage as well as van dyck, who set about it, and soon he had painted in the smudged part so perfectly that when rubens saw it, he did not for some time know that anything had happened to his picture. later he suspected something, and when he learned of the prank and its outcome, he was so delighted with van dyck's work that he praised him instead of blaming him for it. van dyck had a very precise method of working. when sitters came to him he would paint for just one hour. then he would politely dismiss them, and his servant would wash his brushes, and clear the way for the next sitter. he dined with his sitters often that he might surprise in them the expression which he wanted to paint. also, he had their clothing sent to his studio, that it might be exactly imitated by himself or by those assistants who painted in the foundation for his finished work. while attached to king charles i.'s court, van dyck was given a fine house at blackfriars, on the thames, and he had a private landing place made for boats, so that the royal family might visit him at their convenience. charles i. used often to go to van dyck's studio to escape his many troubles, and thus the artist's home became as fashionable a gathering place, as gainsborough's studio was in bath. he painted queen henrietta not less than twenty-five times. he often furnished concerts for his sitters, for he himself was passionately fond of music, and moreover he believed that music often brought to the faces of his sitters, an expression that he loved to paint. he painted so many pictures of a certain kind of little dog, in the pictures of king charles i. that ever since that breed has been known as the king charles spaniel. after a while van dyck got heavily into debt. king charles himself was in great trouble, and he had no money with which to pay his painter's pension. the artist had lived so extravagantly that he did not know at last which way to turn, so in desperation he thought to try alchemy and maybe to learn the secret of making gold. he wasted much time at this, as cleverer men have done, but at last he became too ill for that or for his own proper work, and badly off though charles was himself, he offered his court physician a large sum if he could cure his court painter. but van dyck had enjoyed life too well, and nothing could be done for him. he was the seventh child of his parents--which some have thought had something to do with his genius and success; he lived gaily all the years of his life, going restlessly from place to place, and having many acquaintances but probably few friends, outside of his old master, rubens, who loved him for his genius. plate--children of charles the first van dyck painted the family of the unfortunate king of england four times. there are five children in the windsor castle picture, and this one, which hangs in the turin gallery, was probably painted before the birth of the fourth child in . it is celebrated for its colouring as well as for its great artistic merit. the children are surely childlike enough, despite their stately attire, and they little dream of the sad fate awaiting the whole of the stuart family to which they belong. other van dycks are: "the blessed herman joseph," "lords digby and russell," "lord wharton," "countess folkestone," and "william prince of orange." xli velasquez (diego rodriguez de silva) (pronounced vay-lahs'keth) _castilian school_ - _pupil of herrera_ it is pretty difficult to find out why a man was named so-and-so in the days of the early italian and spanish painters. more likely than not they would be called after the master to whom they had been first apprenticed; or after their trade; after the town from which they came, and rarely because their father had had the name before them. in velasquez's case, he was named after his mother. no one seemed to be certain what to call him, but he generally wrote his name "diego de silva velasquez." his father was rodriguez de silva, a lawyer, but in calling the boy velasquez the family followed a universal spanish custom of naming children after their mothers. little velasquez was well taught in his childhood; he studied many languages and philosophy, for he was intended to be a lawyer or something learned, anything but a painter. the disappointment of parents in those days, when they found a child was likely to become an artist is touching. despite his equipment for a useful life, according to the ideas of his parents, this little chap was bound to become nothing but a maker of pictures. herrera was a bad-tempered master and little velasquez could not get on with him, so after a year of harsh treatment, he went to another master, pacheco, but by that time he had learned a secret that was to help make his work great. herrera had taught him to use a brush with very long bristles, which had the effect of spreading the paint, making it look as if his "colours had floated upon the canvas," in a way that was the "despair of those who came after him." velasquez was born in seville at a time when about all the art of the world was italian or german; thus he became the creator of a new school of painting. he stayed five years in pacheco's studio and pupil and master became very fond of each other. pacheco was not a great master--not so good as herrera--but he was easy to get on with, and knew a good deal about painting, so that as velasquez had the genius, he was as well placed as he needed to be. in pacheco's studio there was a peasant boy whose face was very mobile, showed every passing feeling; and velasquez used to make him laugh and weep, till, surprising some good expression, he would quickly sketch him. with this excellent model, velasquez did a surprising amount of good work. spain had just then conquered the far-off provinces of mexico and peru, and was continually receiving from its newly got lands much valuable merchandise. rapidly growing rich, this latin country loved art and all things beautiful, so its money was bound to be spent freely in such ways. madrid had been made its capital, and at that time there were few fine pictures to be found there. the moors who had conquered spain had forbidden picture making, because it was contrary to their religion to represent the human figure, or even the figures of birds and beasts. then the inquisition had hindered art by its rules, one of which was that the virgin mary should always be painted with her feet covered; another, that all saints should be beardless. there were many more exactions. while cathedrals were being built elsewhere, the moors had been in control of spanish lands, so that no cathedral had been built there, and when velasquez came upon the scene the time of great cathedral building was past. it had ceased to be the fashion. although there had been such painters as beneguette, morales, navarrette, and ribera, all spanish and of considerable genius, they had been too badly handicapped to make painting a great art in spain. when madrid became the capital of spain, it had no unusual buildings, unless it was an old fortress of the moors, the alcazar, caesar's house, but the nation was buying paintings from italy, and it began to beautify madrid, which had the advantage of the former moorish luxury and art, very beautiful, though not pictorial. in madrid, then, there seemed to be great opportunity for a fine artist like velasquez, and his master urged him to go there and try his fortune. so he set out on mule-back, attended by his slave, but unless he could get the ear of the king, it was useless for him to seek advancement in madrid. without the king as patron at that time, an artist could not accomplish much. after trying again and again, velasquez had to return to his old master, without having seen the king; but after a time a picture of his was seen by philip iv., and he was so much pleased with it that he summoned the artist. through his minister, olivares, he offered him $ . in gold (fifty ducats) to pay his return expenses. the next year he gave him $ . to move his family to madrid. at last the artist had found a place in the rich city, and he went to live at the court where the warmest friendship grew between him and the king. the latter was an author and something of a painter, so that they loved the same things. this friendship lasted all their lives, and they were together most of the time, the king always being found, in velasquez's studio in the palace when his duties did not call him elsewhere. during the many many years--nearly thirty-seven--that velasquez lived with philip iv. he employed himself in painting the scenes at court. thus he became the pictorial historian of the spanish capital. he was a man of good disposition, kindly and generous in conduct and in feeling, so that he was always in the midst of friends and well-wishers. philip iv. was indeed a noble companion, but he was not a gay one, being known as the king who never laughed--or at least whose laughter was so rare, the few times he did laugh became historic. one would expect this serious and depressing atmosphere to have had an effect upon a painter's art; but it chanced that rubens visited spain, and there, velasquez being the one famous artist, it was natural they should become interested in each other. rubens told velasquez of the wonders of italian painting, till the spaniard could think of nothing else, and finally he begged philip to let him journey to italy that he might see some of those wonders for himself. the request made the king unhappy at first, but at last he gave his consent and velasquez set out for italy. the king gave him money and letters of introduction, and he went in company with the marquis of spinola. after velasquez had stayed eighteen months in italy, philip began to long for his friend and sent for him to return. he came back full of the stories of brilliant italy, and charmed the king completely. there is as absurd a story of velasquez's perfection in painting as that of raphael's, whose portrait of the pope, left upon the terrace to dry, imposed upon passers by. it is said of velasquez's work that when he had painted an admiral whom the king had ordered to sea, and left it exposed in his studio, the king, entering, thought it was the admiral himself, and angrily inquired why he had not put to sea according to orders. on the face of them these stories are false, but they serve to suggest the perfection of these artists' paintings. philip, being a melancholy man, had his court full of jesters, poor misshapen creatures--dwarfs and hunchbacks--who were supposed to appear "funny," and velasquez, as court painter, painted those whom he continually saw about him, who formed the court family. thus we have pictures of strange groups--dwarfs, little princesses, dressed precisely as the elders were dressed, favourite dogs, and velasquez himself at his easel. in , while still with his master, pacheco, he had married the master's daughter, a big, portly woman. before he left seville he bad two daughters. these were all the children he had, although he painted a picture of "velasquez's family" which includes a great number of people. the figures in that painting are the children of his daughter, not his own; and this may account for one biographer's statement that the artist had "seven children." he was devoted to and happy in his family of children and grandchildren. he did not grow rich, but received regularly during his life in madrid, twenty gold ducats ($ . ) a month to live upon, and besides this his medical attendance, lodging, and additional payment for every picture. the one which brought him this good fortune was an equestrian portrait of philip; first uncovered on the steps of san felipe. everywhere the people were delighted with it, poets sung of it, and the king declared no other should ever paint his portrait. this picture has long since disappeared. in velasquez won the prize for a picture representing the expulsion of the moors from spain and was rewarded by "being appointed gentleman usher. to this was shortly afterward added a daily allowance of twelve reals--the same amount which was allowed to court barbers--and ninety gold ducats ($ . ) a year for dress, which was also paid to the dwarfs, buffoons, and players about the king's person--truly a curious estimate of talent at the court of spain." the record of philip iv. with unpleasing, even degenerate characters, about him, is brightened by the thought of his loyalty to his court painter and life-long friend. when the king's favourites fell, those who had been the friends of velasquez, the artist loyally remained their friend in adversity as he had been while they were powerful. this constancy, even to the royal enemies, was never resented by philip. he honoured the faithfulness of his artist, even as he himself was faithful in this friendship. philip's court was such that there was little to paint that was ennobling, and so velasquez lacked the inspiration of such surroundings as the italian painters had. philip iv. was hail-fellow-well-met with his stablemen, his huntsmen, his cooks, and yet he seems to have had no sense of humour, was long faced and forbidding to look at, and despite his strange habits considered himself the most mighty and haughty man in the world. he felt himself free to behave as he chose, because he was philip of spain; and he chose to do a great many absurd and outrageous things. in all philip's portraits, painted by velasquez, he wears a stiff white linen collar of his own invention, and he was so proud of this that he celebrated it by a festival. he went in procession to church to thank god for the wonderful blessing of the _golilla_--the name of his collar. this unsightly thing became the fashion, and all portraits of men of that time were painted with it. "in regard to the wonderful structure of philip's moustaches it is said, that, to preserve their form they were encased during the night in perfumed leather covers called _bigoteras_." such absurdities in a king, who had the responsibilities of a nation upon him, seem incredible. velasquez made in all three journeys to italy, and the last one was on a mission for the king, which was much to the latter's credit. philip had determined to have a fine art gallery in madrid, for spain had by this time many pictures, but no statuary; so he commissioned his painter to buy whatever he thought well of and _could_ buy, in italy. hence the artist set off again with his slave--the same one with whom he had journeyed to madrid so long before. his name was pareja, and his master had already made an excellent artist of him. they went to genoa, thence to the great art-centres of italy, were received everywhere with honour, and the artist bought wisely. velasquez did not care for raphael's paintings as much as for titian's, and he said so to salvator rosa, an honoured painter in italy. while in rome velasquez painted the pope, also his own slave, pareja. when he returned to spain he took with him three hundred statues, but a large number of them were nude, and the spanish court, not over particular about most things, was very particular about naked statues, so that after philip's death, they nearly all disappeared. after his return, and after the queen had died and philip had married again, velasquez was made quartermaster-general, no easy post but not without honour, though it interfered with his picture painting a good deal. he had to look after the comfort of all the court, and to see that the apartments it occupied, at home or when it visited, were suitable. "even the powerful king of spain could not make his favourite a belted knight without a commission to inquire into the purity of his lineage on both sides of the house. fortunately, the pedigree could bear scrutiny, as for generations the family was found free from all taint of heresy, from all trace of jewish or moorish blood, and from contamination from trade or commerce. the difficulty connected with the fact that he was a painter was got over by his being painter to the king and by the declaration that he did not sell his pictures." the red cross of santiago conferred upon him by philip, made velasquez a knight and freed him also from the rulings of the inquisition, which directed so largely what artists could and could not do. thus it is that we come to have certain great pictures from velasquez's brush which could not otherwise have been painted. this action of the king, setting free the artist, made two schools of art, of which the court painter represented one; and murillo the other, under the command of the church. although not so rich perhaps as raphael, velasquez lived and died in plenty, while murillo, the artist of the church of rome, was a poverty-stricken man. finally, while in the midst of honours, and fulfilling his official duty to the court of spain, velasquez contracted the disease which killed him. the infanta, maria theresa, was to wed louis xiv., and the ceremony was to take place on a swampy little island called the island of pheasants. there he went to decorate a pavilion and other places of display. he became ill with a fever and died soon after he returned to madrid. he made his wife, his old master pacheco's daughter, his executor, and was buried in the church of san juan, in the vault of fuensalida; but within a week his devoted wife was dead, and in eight days' time she was buried beside him. he left his affairs--accounts between him and the court--badly entangled, and it was many years before they were straightened out. his many deeds of kindness lived after him. he made of his slave a good artist and a devoted friend, and by his efforts the slave became a freedman. the story of his kindly help to murillo when that exquisite painter came, unknown and friendless to madrid, has already been told. the church where velasquez was buried was destroyed by the french in , and all trace of the resting place of the great spanish artist is forever lost to us. he is called not only "painter to the king," but "king of painters." plate--equestrian portrait of don balthasar carlos. philip of spain had long prayed for a son and when at last one was granted him his pride in his young heir was unbounded. the little don carlos was not unworthy, for he was a cheerful, hearty boy, trained to horsemanship, from his fourth year, for his father was a noted rider and had the best instructors for his son. the prince was a brave hunter too and we are told that he shot a wild boar when he was but nine years of age. in this portrait which is in the museo del prado he is six years old, and it was neither the first nor the last that velasquez made of him. it was one of the court painter's chief duties to see that the heir to the throne was placed upon canvas at every stage of his career, and he painted him from two years of age till his lamented death at sixteen. the young prince wears in this picture a green velvet jacket with white sleeves and his scarf is crimson embroidered with gold. the lively pony is a light chestnut and the foreshortening of its body must be noticed. the steady grave eyes of the lad are gazing far ahead as they would naturally be if he were riding rapidly, but his princely dignity is shown in his firm seat in the saddle and his manner of holding his marshal's batôn. the great art of the painter is also shown in the way he subordinates the landscape to the figure. he will not allow even a tree to come near the young horseman, but brings his young activity into vivid contrast with the calm peacefulness of the distant view. with the death of don carlos the downfall of his father's dynasty was assured, though for a time his little sister, the infanta maria theresa, was upheld as the heiress. she married louis xiv. and had a weary time of it in france. velasquez painted her picture too, in the grown up dress of the children of that day. it is in the vienna gallery. among his best known pictures are "the surrender of breda," "alessandro del borro," and "philip iv." xlii paul veronese (paolo cagliari) (pronounced vay-ro-nay'zay and pah'o-lah cal-ee-ah'ree) _venetian school_ - _pupil of titian_ "one has never done well enough, when one can do better; one never knows enough when he can learn more!" this was the motto of paul veronese. this artist was born in verona--whence he took his name--and spent much of his life with the monks in the monastery of st. sebastian. his father was a sculptor, and taught his son. veronese himself was a lovable fellow, had a kind feeling for all, and in return received the good will of most people. when he first went to venice to study he took letters of introduction to the monks of st. sebastian, and finally went to live with them, for his uncle was prior of the monastery, and it was upon its walls that he did his first work in venice. his subject was the story of esther, which he illustrated completely. he became known in time as "the most magnificent of magnificent painters." he loved the gaieties of venice; the lords and ladies; the exquisite colouring; the feasting and laughter, and everything he painted, showed this taste. when he chose great religious subjects he dressed all his figures in elegant venetian costumes, in the midst of elegant venetian scenes. his virgins, or other biblical people, were not jews of palestine, but venetians of venice, but so beautiful were they and so inspiring, that nobody cared to criticise them on that score. he loved to paint festival scenes such as, "the marriage at cana," "banquet in levi's house," or "feast in the house of simon." he painted nothing as it could possibly have been, but everything as he would have liked it to be. into the "wedding feast at cana," where jesus was said to have turned the water into wine, he introduced a great host of his friends, people then living. titian is there, and several reigning kings and queens, including francis i. of france and his bride, for whom the picture was made. this treatment of the bible story startles the mind, but delights the eye. it was said that his "red recurred like a joyful trumpet blast among the silver gray harmonies of his paintings." muther, one who has written brilliantly about him, tells us that "veronese seems to have come into the world to prove that the painter need have neither head nor heart, but only a hand, a brush, and a pot of paint in order to clothe all the walls of the world with oil paintings" and that "if he paints mary, she is not the handmaid of the lord or even the queen of heaven, but a woman of the world, listening with approving smile to the homage of a cavalier. in light red silk morning dress, she receives the angel of the annunciation and hears without surprise--for she has already heard it--what he has to say; and at the entombment she only weeps in order to keep up appearances." such criticism raises a smile, but it is quite just, and what is more, the veronese pictures are so beautiful that one is not likely to quarrel with the painter for having more good feeling than understanding. his joyous temperament came near to doing him harm, for he was summoned before the inquisition for the manner in which he had painted "the last supper." after the esther pictures in st. sebastian, the artist painted there the "martyrdom of st. sebastian," and there is a tradition that he did his work while hiding in the monastery because of some mischief of which he had been guilty. at that time he was not much more than twenty-six or eight, while the great painter tintoretto was forty-five, yet his work in st. sebastian made him as famous as the older artist. there is very little known of the private affairs of veronese. he signed a contract for painting the "marriage at cana," for the refectory of the monastery of st. giorgio maggiore, in june , and that picture, stupendous as it is, was finished eighteen months later. he received $ . for it, as well as his living while he was at work upon it, and a tun of wine. one picture he is supposed to have left behind him at a house where he had been entertained, as an acknowledgment of the courtesy shown him. paul had a brother, benedetto, ten years younger than himself, and it is said that he greatly helped paul in his work, by designing the architectural backgrounds of his pictures. if that is so, benedetto must have been an artist of much genius, for those backgrounds in the paintings are very fine. veronese married, and had two sons; the younger being named carletto. he was also the favourite, and an excellent artist, who did some fine painting, but he died while he was still young. gabriele the elder son, also painted, but he was mainly a man of affairs, and attended to business rather than to art. veronese was a loving father and brother, and beyond doubt a happy man. after his death both his sons and his brother worked upon his unfinished paintings, completing them for him. he was buried in the church of st. sebastian. plate--the marriage at cana this painting is most characteristic of veronese's methods. he has no regard for the truth in presenting the picture story. at the marriage at cana everybody must have been very simply dressed, and there could have been no beautiful architecture, such as we see in the picture. in the painting we find courtier-like men and women dressed in beautiful silks. some of the costumes appear to be a little russian in character, the others venetian; and jesus himself wears the loose every-day robe of the pastoral people to whom he belonged. we think of luxury and rich food and a splendid house when we look at this painting, when as a matter of fact nothing of this sort could have belonged to the scene which veronese chose to represent. perhaps no painter was more lacking in imagination than was veronese in painting this particular picture. he chose to place historical or legendary characters, in the midst of a scene which could not have existed co-incidently with the event. among his other pictures are "europa and the bull," "venice enthroned," and the "presentation of the family of darius to alexander." xliii leonardo da vinci (pronounced lay-o-nar'do dah veen'chee) _florentine school_ - _pupil of verrocchio_ leonardo da vinci was the natural son of a notary, ser pier, and he was born at the castello of vinci, near empoli. from the very hour that he was apprenticed to his master, verrocchio, he proved that he was the superior of his master in art. da vinci was one of the most remarkable men who ever lived, because he not only did an extraordinary number of things, but he did all of them well. he was an engineer, made bridges, fortifications, and plans which to this day are brilliant achievements. he was a sculptor, and as such did beautiful work. he was a naturalist, and as such was of use to the world. he was an author and left behind him books written backward, of which he said that only he who was willing to devote enough study to them to read them in that form, was able to profit by what he had written. finally, and most wonderfully, he was a painter. he had absolute faith in himself. before he constructed his bridge he said that he could build the best one in the world, and a king took him at his word and was not disappointed by the result. he stated that he could paint the finest picture in the world--but let us read what he himself said of it, in so sure and superbly confident a way that it robbed his statement of anything like foolish vanity. such as he could afford to speak frankly of his greatness, without appearing absurd. he wrote: "in time of peace, i believe i can equal anyone in architecture, in constructing public and private buildings, and in conducting water from one place to another. i can execute sculpture, whether in marble, bronze, or terra cotta, and in painting i can do as much as any other man, be he who he may. further, i could engage to execute the bronze horse in eternal memory of your father and the illustrious house of sforza." he was writing to ludovico sforza whose house then ruled at milan. "if any of the above-mentioned things should appear to you impossible or impracticable, i am ready to make trial of them in your park, or in any other place that may please your excellency, to whom i commend myself in proud humility." leonardo's experiments with oils and the mixing of his pigments has nearly lost to us his most remarkable pictures. his first fourteen years of work as an artist were spent in milan, where he was employed to paint by the duke of milan, and never again was his life so peaceful; it was ever afterward full of change. he went from milan to venice, to rome, to florence, and back to milan where his greatest work was done. while leonardo was a baby he lived in the castle of vinci. he was beautiful as a child and very handsome as a man. when a child he wore long curls reaching below his waist. he was richly clothed, and greatly beloved. his body seemed no less wonderful than his mind. he wished to learn everything, and his memory was so wonderful that he remembered all that he undertook to learn. his muscles were so powerful that he could bend iron, and all animals seemed to love him. it is said he could tame the wildest horses. indeed his life and accomplishments read as if he were one enchanted. one writer tells us that "he never could bear to see any creature cruelly treated, and sometimes he would buy little caged birds that he might just have the pleasure of opening the doors of their cages, and setting them at liberty." the story told of his first known work is that his master, being hurried in finishing a picture, permitted leonardo to paint in an angel's head, and that it was so much better than the rest of the picture, that verrocchio burned his brushes and broke his palette, determined never to paint again, but probably this is a good deal of a fairy tale and one that is not needed to impress us with the artist's greatness, since there is so much to prove it without adding fable to fact. leonardo was also a very far seeing inventor and most ingenious. he made mechanical toys that "worked" when they were wound up. he even devised a miniature flying machine; however, history does not tell us whether it flew or not. he thought out the uses of steam as a motive power long before fulton's time. leonardo haunted the public streets, sketchbook in hand, and when attracted by a face, would follow till he was able to transfer it to paper. ida prentice whitcomb, who has compiled many anecdotes of da vinci, says that it was also his habit to invite peasants to his house, and there amuse them with funny stories till he caught some fleeting expression of mirth which he was pleased to reproduce. as a courtier leonardo was elegant and full of amusing devices. he sang, accompanying himself on a silver lute, which he had had fashioned in imitation of a horse's skull. after he attached himself to the court of the duke of milan, his gift of invention was constantly called into use, and one of the surprises he had in store for the duke's guests was a great mechanical lion, which being wound up, would walk into the presence of the court, open its mouth and disclose a bunch of flowers inside. leonardo worked very slowly upon his paintings, because he was never satisfied with a work, and would retouch it day after day. then, too, he was a man of moods, like most geniuses, and could not work with regularity. the picture of the "last supper" was painted in milan, by order of his patron, the duke, and there are many picturesque stories written of its production. it was painted upon the refectory wall of a dominican convent, the santa maria delle grazie; and at first the work went off well, and the artist would remain upon his scaffolding from morning till night, absorbed in his painting. it is said that at such times he neither ate nor drank, forgetting all but his great work. he kept postponing the painting of two heads--christ and judas. he had worked painstakingly and with enthusiasm till that point, but deferred what he was hardly willing to trust himself to perform. he had certain conceptions of these features which he almost feared to execute, so tremendous was his purpose. he let that part of the work go, month after month, and having already spent two years upon the picture, the monks began to urge him to a finish. he was not the man to endure much pressure, and the more they urged the more resentful he became. finally, he began to feel a bitter dislike for the prior, the man who annoyed him most. one day, when the prior was nagging him about the picture, wanting to know why he didn't get to work upon it again, and when would it be finished, leonardo said suavely: "if you will sit for the head of judas, i'll be able to finish the picture at once." the prior was enraged, as leonardo meant he should be; but leonardo is said actually to have painted him in as judas. afterward he painted in the face of christ with haste and little care, simply because he despaired of ever doing the wonderful face that his art soul demanded christ should wear. the one bitter moment in leonardo's life, in all probability, was when he came in dire competition with michael angelo. when he removed to florence he was required to submit sketches for the town hall--the palazzo vecchio--and michael angelo was his rival. the choice fell to angelo, and after a life of supremacy leonardo could not endure the humiliation with grace. added to disappointment, someone declared that leonardo's powers were waning because he was growing old. this was more than he could bear, and he left italy for france, where the king had invited him to come and spend the remainder of his life. francis i. had wished to have the picture in the milan monastery taken to france, but that was not to be done. doubtless the king expected leonardo to do some equally great work after he became the nation's guest. before leaving italy, leonardo had painted his one other "greatest" picture--"la gioconda" (mona lisa)-and he took that wonderful work with him to france, where the king purchased it for $ , , and to this day it hangs in the louvre. but leonardo was to do no great work in france, for in truth he was growing old. his health had failed, and although he was still a dandy and court favourite, setting the fashion in clothing and in the cut of hair and beard, he was no longer the brilliant, active leonardo. bernard berensen, has written of him: "painting ... was to leonardo so little of a preoccupation that we must regard it as merely a mode of expression used at moments by a man of universal genius." by which berensen means us to understand that leonardo was so brilliant a student and inventor, so versatile, that art was a mere pastime. "no, let us not join in the reproaches made to leonardo for having painted so little; because he had so much more to do than to paint, he has left all of us heirs to one or two of the supremest works of art ever created." another author writes that "in leonardo da vinci every talent was combined in one man." leonardo was the third person of the wonderful trinity of florentine painters, raphael and michael angelo being the other two. he knew so much that he never doubted his own powers, but when he died, after three years in france, he left little behind him, and that little he had ever declared to be unfinished--the "mona lisa" and the "last supper." he died in the château de cloux, at amboise, and it is said that "sore wept the king when he heard that leonardo was dead." in milan, near the cathedral, there stands a monument to his memory, and about it are placed the statues of his pupils. to this day he is wonderful among the great men of the world. plate--the last supper this, as we have said, is in the former convent of santa maria delle grazie, in milan. it was the first painted story of this legendary event in which natural and spontaneous action on the part of all the company was presented. to-day the picture is nearly ruined by smoke, time, and alterations in the place, for a great door lintel has been cut into the picture. leonardo used the words of the christ: "verily, i say unto you that one of you shall betray me," as the starting point for this painting. it is after the utterance of these words that we see each of the disciples questioning horrified, frightened, anxious, listening, angered--all these emotions being expressed by the face or gestures of the hands or pose of the figures. it is a most wonderful picture and it seems as if the limit of genius was to be found in it. the company is gathered in a half-dark hall, the heads outlined against the evening light that comes through the windows at the back. we look into a room and seem to behold the greatest tragedy of legendary history: treachery and sorrow and consternation brought to jesus of nazareth and his comrades. this great picture was painted in oil instead of in "distemper," the proper kind of mixture for fresco, and therefore it was bound to be lost in the course of time. besides, it has known more than ordinary disaster. the troops of napoleon used this room, the convent refectory, for a stable, and that did not do the painting any good. the reason we have so complete a knowledge of it, however, is that leonardo's pupils made an endless number of copies of it, and thus it has found its way into thousands of homes. the following is the order in which leonardo placed the disciples at the table: jesus of nazareth in the centre, bartholomew the last on the left, after him is james, andrew, peter, judas--who holds the money bag--and john. on the right, next to jesus, comes thomas, the doubting one; james the greater, philip, matthew, thaddeus, and simon. jesus has just declared that one of them shall betray him, and each in his own way seems to be asking "lord, is it i?" in the south kensington museum in london will be found carefully preserved a description, written out fairly in leonardo's own hand, to guide him in painting the last supper. it is most interesting and we shall quote it: "one, in the act of drinking puts down his glass and turns his head to the speaker. another twisting his fingers together, turns to his companion, knitting his eyebrows. another, opening his hands and turning the palm toward the spectator, shrugs his shoulders, his mouth expressing the liveliest surprise. another whispers in the ear of a companion, who turns to listen, holding in one hand a knife, and in the other a loaf, which he has cut in two. another, turning around with a knife in his hand, upsets a glass upon the table and looks; another gasps in amazement; another leans forward to look at the speaker, shading his eyes with his hand; another, drawing back behind the one who leans forward, looks into the space between the wall and the stooping disciple." other paintings of leonardo's are: "mona lisa," "head of medusa," "adoration of the magi," and the "madonna della caraffa." xliv jean antoine watteau (pronounced in french, vaht-toh; english, wot-toh) _french (genre) school_ - _pupil of gillot and audran_ watteau's father was a tiler in a flemish town--valenciennes. he meant that his son should be a carpenter, but that son tramped from valenciennes to paris with the purpose of becoming a great painter. he did more, he became a "school" of painting, all by himself. there is no sadder story among artists than that of this lowly born genius. he was not good to look upon, being the very opposite of all that he loved, having no grace or charm in appearance. he had a drooping mouth, red and bony hands, and a narrow chest with stooping shoulders. because of a strange sensitiveness he lived all his life apart from those he would have been happy with, for he mistrusted his own ugliness, and thought he might be a burden to others. such a man has painted the gayest, gladdest, most delicate and exquisite pictures imaginable. he entered paris as a young man, without friends, without money or connections of any kind, and after wandering forlornly, about the great city, he found employment with a dealer who made hundreds of saints for out-of-town churches. it is said that for this first employer watteau made dozens and dozens of pictures of st. nicholas; and when we think of the beautiful figures he was going to make, pictures that should delight all the world, there seems something tragic in the monotony and common-placeness of that first work he was forced by poverty to do. certainly st. nicholas brought one man bread and butter, even if he forgot him at christmas time. after that hard apprenticeship, watteau's condition became slightly better. he had been employed near the pont notre dame, at three francs a week, but now in the studio of a scene painter, gillot, he did work of coarse effect, very different from that exquisite school of art which he was to bring into being. after gillot's came the studio of claude audran, the conservator of the luxembourg, and with him watteau did decorative work. in reality he had no master, learned from nobody, grovelled in poverty, and at first, forced a living from the meanest sources. with this in mind, it remains a wonder that he should paint as no other ever could, scenes of exquisite beauty and grace; scenes of high life, courtiers and great ladies assembled in lovely landscapes, doing elegant and charming things, dressed in unrivalled gowns and costumes. until watteau went to the luxembourg he had seen absolutely nothing of refined or gracious living. he had come from country scenes, and in paris had lived among workmen and bird-fanciers, flower sellers, hucksters and the like. this is very likely the secret of his peculiar art. watteau would have been a wonderful artist under any circumstances, no matter what sort of pictures he had painted; but circumstances gave his imagination a turn toward the exquisite in colourand composition. doubtless when he first looked down from the palace windows of the luxembourg and saw gorgeous women and handsome men languishing and coquetting and revelling in a life of ease and beauty, he was transported. he must have thought himself in fairyland, and the impulse to paint, to idealise the loveliness that he saw, must have been greater in him than it would have been in one who had lived so long among such scenes that they had become familiar with them. after watteau there were artists who tried to do the kind of work he had done, but no one ever succeeded. watteau clothed all his shepherdesses in fine silken gowns, with a plait in the back, falling from the shoulders, and to-day we have a fashion known as the "watteau back"--gowns made with this shoulder-plait. he put filmy laces or softest silks upon his dairy maids, as upon his court ladies, dressing his figures exquisitely, and in the loveliest colours. he had suffered from poverty and from miserable sights, so when he came to paint pictures, he determined to reproduce only the loveliest objects. at that time french fashions were very unusual, and it was quite the thing for ladies to hold a sort of reception while at their toilet. a description of one of these affairs was written by madame de grignon to her daughter: "nothing can be more delightful than to assist at the toilet of madame la duchesse (de bourgoyne), and to watch her arrange her hair. i was present the other day. she rose at half past twelve, put on her dressing gown, and set to work to eat a _méringue_. she ate the powder and greased her hair. the whole formed an excellent breakfast and charming _coiffure_." watteau has caught the spirit of this strange airy, artificial, incongruous existence. his ladies seem to be eating _meringues_ and powdering their hair and living on a diet of the combination. one hardly knows which is toilet and which is real life in looking at his paintings. he quarreled with audran at the luxembourg, and having sold his first picture, he went back to his valenciennes home, to see his former acquaintances, no doubt being a little vain of his performance. after that he painted another picture which sold well enough to keep him from poverty for a time, and on his return to paris he was warmly greeted by a celebrated and influential artist, crozat. watteau tried for a prize, and though his picture came second it had been seen by the academy committee. his greatness was acknowledged, and he was immediately admitted to the academy and granted a pension by the crown, with which he was able to go to italy, the mecca of all artists the world over. from italy he went to london, but there the fogs and unsuitable climate made his disease much worse and he hurried back to france, where he went to live with a friend who was a picture dealer. it was then that he painted a sign for this friend, gersaint, a sign so wonderful that it is reckoned in the history of watteau's paintings. soon he grew so sensitive over his illness, that he did not wish to remain near his dearest friends, but one of them, the abbé haranger, insisted upon looking after his welfare, and got lodgings for him at nogent, where he could have country air and peace. watteau died very soon after going to nogent in july, , and he left nine thousand livres to his parents, and his paintings to his best friends, the abbé, gersaint, monsieur henin, and monsieur julienne. he is called the "first french painter" and so he was--though he was flemish, by birth. plate--fÊte champÊtre this exquisite picture displays nearly all the characteristics of watteau's painting. he was said to paint with "honey and gold," and his method was certainly remarkable. his clear, delicate colours were put upon a canvas first daubed with oil, and he never cleaned his palette. his "oil-pot was full of dust and dirt and mixed with the washings of his brush." one would think that only the most slovenly results could come from such habits of work, but the artist made a colour which no one could copy, and that was a sort of creamy, opalescent white. this was original with watteau, and most beautiful. in this "fête champêtre," which is now in the national gallery at edinburgh, he paints an elegant group of ladies and gentlemen indulging in an open air dance of some sort. one couple are doing steps facing one another, to the music of a set of pipes, while the rest flirt and talk, decorously, round about. there is no boisterous rusticity here; all is dainty and refined. the same characteristics are to be found in watteau's other pictures such as, "embarkation for the island of cythera," "the judgment of paris," and "gay company in a park." xlv sir benjamin west _american_ - _pupil of the italian school_ the beautiful smile of his little niece helped to make this man an artist. this is the story: benjamin west was born down in pennsylvania, at westdale, a small village in the township of springfield, of quaker parentage. the family was poor perhaps, but in america at a time when everybody was struggling with a new civilisation it did not seem to be such binding poverty as the same condition in europe would have been. benjamin had a married sister whose baby he greatly loved, and he gave it devoted attention. one day while it was sleeping and the undiscovered artist was sitting beside it he saw it smile, and the beauty of the smile inspired him to keep it forever if he could. he got paper and pencil and forthwith transferred that "angel's whisper." no child of to-day can imagine the difficulties a boy must have had in those days in america, to get an art education, and having learned his art, how impossible it was to live by it. men were busy making a new country and pictures do not take part in such pioneer work; they come later. still, there were bound to be born artistic geniuses then, just as there were men for the plough and men for politics and for war. he who happened to be the artist was the quaker boy, west. he took his first inspiration from the cherokees, for it was the indian in all the splendour of his strength and straightness that formed west's ideal of beautiful physique. when he first saw the apollo belvedere, he exclaimed: "a young mohawk warrior!" to the disgust of every one who heard him, but he meant to compliment the noblest of forms. europeans did not know how magnificent a figure the "young mohawk warrior" could be; but west knew. after his indian impetus toward art he went to philadelphia, and settled himself in a studio, where he painted portraits. his sitters went to him out of curiosity as much as anything else, but at last a philadelphia gentleman, who knew what art meant, recognised benjamin west's talent, and made some arrangement by which the young man went to italy. life began to look beautiful and promising to the pennsylvanian. he was in italy for three years, and in that home of art the young man who had made the smile of his sister's sleeping baby immortal was given highest honours. he was elected a member of all the great art societies in italy, and studied with the best artists of the time. he began to earn his living, we may be sure, and then he went to england, where, in spite of the prejudice there must have been against the colonists, he became at once a favourite of george iii., a friend of reynolds and of all the english artists of repute--unless perhaps of gainsborough, who made friends with none. west was appointed "historical painter" to his majesty, george iii., and he was chosen to be one of four who should draw plans for a royal academy. he was one of the first members of that great organisation, and when sir joshua reynolds, the first president, died, west became president, remaining in office for twenty-eight years. about that time came the peace of amiens, and west was able to go to paris, where he could see the greatest art treasures of europe, which had been brought to france from every quarter as a consequence of the war. at that time, before paris began to return these, and when she had just pillaged every great capital of europe, artists need take but a single trip to see all the art worth seeing in the whole world. after a long service in the academy, west quarreled with some of the academicians and sent in his resignation; but his fellow artists had too much sense and good feeling to accept it, and begged him to reconsider his action. he did so, and returned to his place as president. when west was sixty-five years old he made a picture, "christ healing the sick," which he meant to give to the quakers in philadelphia, who were trying to get funds with which to build a hospital. this picture was to be sold for the fund; but it was no sooner finished and exhibited in london before being sent to america, than it was bought for , guineas for great britain. west did not contribute this money to the hospital fund, but he made a replica for the quakers, and sent that instead of the original. west was eighty-two years old when he died and he was buried in st. paul's cathedral after a distinguished and honoured life. since europe gave him his education and also supported him most of his life, we must consider him more english than american, his birth on american soil being a mere accident. plate--the death of wolfe this death scene upon the plains of abraham, without the walls of quebec in , must not be taken as a realistic picture of an historic event. west drew upon his imagination and upon portraits of the prominent men supposed to have been grouped around the dying general, and he has produced a dramatic effect. one can imagine it is the two with fingers pointing backward who have just brought the memorable tidings, "they run! they run!" "who run?" asks wolfe, for when he had fallen the issues of the fight were still undecided. "the french, sir. they give way everywhere." "thank god! i die in peace," replied the english hero. at a time when the momentous results of this battle had set the whole of great britain afire with enthusiasm it is easy to understand the popularity of a picture such as this. it was sold in for £ , and now belongs to the duke of westminster. there is a replica of it in the queen's drawing-room at hampton court. another famous historical picture by west is "the battle of la hogue." index about, edmund academia, florence academy, french rome, royal, london, venice "acis and galatea" adoration of the magi "adoration of the shepherds" "after a summer shower" "afternoon" albert, king "alessandro del borro" alexander vi. alice, princess allegri, antonio. _see_ correggi allegri, pompino "ambassadors, the" "american mustangs" "anatomy lesson, the" andrea del sarto angelo, michael "angels' heads" "angelas, the" anguisciola, sofonisba anne of cleves anne of saxony annunciata, cloister of the "annunciation, the" "ansidei madonna, the" "antiope" apocalypse apollo belvedere apostles, the four apostles' heads appelles "archipelago" arena chapel arrivabene chapel "artist's two sons, the" "arundel castle and mill" "assumption of the virgin" "at the well" audran augusta, princess "avenue, middelharnis, holland" "awakened conscience, the" "bacchanal" "bacchus and ariadne" balzac "banquet in levi's house" "baptism of christ, the" barbizon barile barry, james bartoli d'angiolini bartolommeo, fra bassano "bathers" "battle of la hogue" beaumont, sir george beaux-arts, l'ecole des begarelli bellini, gentile bellini, giovanni bembo, cardinal beneguette "bent tree" bentivoglio, cardinal berck, derich berensen, bernard bergholt, east "berkshire hills" "bianca" bicknell, maria bigio, francia bigordi. _see_ ghirlandajo bird "birth of the virgin" (andrea del sarto) (murillo) "birth of venus" blanc, charles "blessed herman joseph, the" "bligh shore" "blue boy, the" böcklin, arnold "boat-building" boleyn, anne bolton, mrs. sarah k. bonheur, marie-rosea bonheur, raymond b. bordeaux bordone. _see_ giotto borghese palace borgia family borgia, lucretia botticelli boudin bouguereau, william adolphe "boy at the stile, the" brancacci chapel brant, isabella breton, jules brice, j. b. brouwer browning brunellesco "brutus" buckingham, duke of buonarroti. _see_ angelo michael burgundy, duchess of burke, edmund burne-jones, sir edward burr, margaret caffin cagliari, benedetto cagliari, carletto cagliari, gabriele cagliari, paolo. _see_ veronese cambridge, university of "camels at rest" campagna campana, pedro campanile, florence canova caprese "capture of samson" capuchin church capuchin convent carlos, don "carmencita" carmine, church of the "carthage" castillo, juan del cecelia, wife of titian cellini centennial exhibition chamberlain, arthur "chant d'amour" chantry, sir francis "charity" charles, i. charles v. charles x. cherokees "chess players, the" "children of charles i." "christ healing the sick" "christ in the temple" "christina of denmark" church cibber, theophilus cimabue claude "cleopatra landing at tarsus" "cock fight" cogniet, léon colnaghi "cologne" constable, john copley, john singleton copper plate magazine cornelia, rembrandt's daughter cornelissen, cornelis "cornfield" "coronation of marie de medicis" "coronation of the virgin" (ghirlandajo) (raphael) corot, jean baptiste camille correggio cosimo, piero di "cottage, the" "countess folkstone" "countess of spencer" coventry, countess of "creation of man, the" "creation of the world, the" crozat "crucifixion, the" (raphael) (tintoretto) "danaë" dandie dinmont "daniel" dante "daphnis and chloe" daubigny "david" "dead christ, the" "dead mallard" "death of ananias, the" "death of wolfe, the" "dedham mill" "dedham vale" delaroche "deluge, the" "descent from the cross, the" (campana) (rembrandt) (rubens) de witt diaz "dice players, the" dickens, charles digby, kenelm "dignity and impudence" "divine comedy" dolce, ludovico donatello "don quixote" doré, paul gustave d'orsay "duchess of devonshire and her daughter, the" "duel after the masked ball" dunthorne, john dupré durand, carolus dürer, albrecht dyce "ecce homo" "education of mary, the" edward, king egyptian art elizabeth, cousin of the virgin elizabeth, princess "embarkation for the island of cythera" "emperor at solferino, the" engravers and engraving "entombment, the" (titian) (veronese) eos "equestrian portrait of don balthasar carlos" errard, charles escorial, the estéban, bartolomé. see murillo estéban, gaspar estéban, therese etchers and etching "europa and the bull" "eve of st. agnes, the" fallen, ambrose "fall of man, the" "fantasy of morocco" fawkes, hawksworth "feast in the house of simon" "feast of ahasuerus" "ferdinand of austria" ferdinand iii., grand duke ferrara, duke of "fête champêtre" "fighting téméraire, the" filipepi, mariano "finding of christ in the temple, the" "flamborough, miss" "flatford mill on the river stour" "flora" (böcklin) (titian) "foal of an ass, the" fondato de' tedeschi fontainebleau "fool, the" "fornarina, the" fortuny, mariano fourment family fourment, helena "four saints" francis i. frari, monks of the frey, agnes "friedland" gainsborough, mary gainsborough, thomas gallery, berlin dresden grosvenor hague, the hermitage, the lichtenstein, vienna louvre luxembourg madrid naples national, edinburgh national, london old pinakothek, munich parma pitti palace uffizi vienna garrick "gay company in a park" gellée. see claude lorrain george iii. "georgia pines" gerbier germ, the gérôme, jean léon gersaint ghibertio ghirlandajo "gibeon farm" gignoux, regis "gillingham mill" gillot giorgione giotto "giovanna degli albizi" girten, thomas gisze, gorg gladstone, mr. and mrs. "gleaners, the" "glebe farm" goethe "golden calf, the" "golden stairs, the" goldsmith, craft of the goldsmith, oliver gonzaga, vincenzo "good samaritan, the" graham, judge granacci gravelot grignon, madame de gualfonda "guardian angel, the" guidi, giovanni guidi, simone guidi. tommaso. _see_ masaccio guido guidobaldo of urbino guilds "gust of wind" haarlem town hall "haarlem's little forest" "hadleigh castle" hals, franz hamerton hamilton, duchess of "hampstead heath" hancock, john "hans of antwerp" haranger, abbé "hark!" "harvest waggon, the" hassam, childe hastings, warren "haunt of the gazelle, the" hayman "haystack in sunshine" "hay wain, the" "head of christ" "head of medusa" hearn, george a. henin henrietta, queen henry iii. henry viii. "henschel" "hercules" herrera "highland sheep" "hille bobbe, the witch of haarlem" hill, jack "hireling shepherd, the" hobbema, meindert hogarth, william holbein, ambrosius holbein, hans, the younger holbein, michael holbein, philip holbein, sigismund holbein, the elder "holofernes" holper, barbara "holy family and st. bridget" holy family in art, the "holy family under a palm tree, the" "holy night, the" "homer st. gaudens" "hon. ann bingham, the" hood, admiral "horse fair, the" howard, catherine hudson, thomas hunt, william holman "ii giorno" "ii medico del correggio" "immaculate conception, the" indian pottery infanta "infant jesus and st. john, the" inman inness "innocence" "in paradise" inquisition, spanish "interior of the mosque of omar" isabella, queen islay "isle of the dead, the" "ivybridge" jacopo da empoli jacque "jane seymour" "jerusalem by moonlight" "jesus and the lamb" jesus in art johnson, dr. jones, george joseph in art "joseph in egypt" "joseph's dream" "judgment of paris, the" "judith" julienne julius ii. justiniana kann, rudolf "king cophetua and the beggar maid" "king of hearts" "kirmesse, the" knackfuss "knight, death and the devil, the" "la belle jardinière" "la disputa" "lady elcho, mrs. arden, mrs. tennant" "la gioconda" "landscape with cattle." landseer, john landseer, sir edwin henry landseer, thomas "la primavera" "last judgment, the" (angelo) (tintoretto) (titian) "last supper, the" (andrea del sarto) (ghirlandajo) (veronese) (leonardo da vinci) "laughing cavalier, the" laura lavinia, daughter of titian "lavinia, the artist's daughter" lawrence, sir thomas "leda" (correggio) (gérome) lee, jeremiah legion of honour lemon, margaret leonardo. see da vinci leo x. lewis, j. f. _liber studiorium_ "liber veritas" library, boston public "light of the world, the" linley, thomas linley, samuel "lion disturbed at his repast" "lion enjoying his repast" "lioness, the study off a" "lion hunt, a" lippi, fra filippo "lock on the stour" lombardi "lords digby and russell" "lord wharton" lorenzalez, claudio lorrain, claude lott, willy louis xiv. louise, princess "love among the ruins" "low life and high life" lowther, sir william lucas van leyden lucia, mother of titian lucretia, wife of andrea del sarto luther, martin madonna and child "madonna and child with st. anne" "madonna and child with saints" "madonna del'arpie" "madonna della caraffa" "madonna della casa d'alba" "madonna della sedia" "madonna del granduca" "madonna del pesce" "madonna del sacco" "madonna of the palms" "madonna of the rosary." madrazo "magdalene, the" manet "manoah's sacrifice" mantegna mantua, duke of mantua, duke frederick ii. of "man with the hoe, the" "man with the sword, the" margherita maria theresa "marriage à la mode" "marriage at cana, the" "marriage contract, the" "marriage of bacchus and ariadne, the" "marriage of mary and joseph, the" "marriage of st. catherine, the" "marriage of samson, the" martineau "martyrdom of st. agnes, the" "martyrdom of st. peter, the" "martyrdom of st. sebastian, the" mary, the virgin, in art masaccio (tommasco guidi) masoline mastersingers, nuremberg maximillian, emperor medici family medici, giovanni di bicci de' medici, lorenzi de' medici, ottaviano de' medici, pietro de' "meeting of st. john and st. anna at jerusalem" meissonier, jean louis ernest "melancholy" merlini, girolama "meyer madonna, the" michallon "midsummer noon" millais millet, jean françois millet, mère "mill stream" "miracle of st. mark, the" missions, spanish missirini "mr. marquand" "mr. penrose" "mrs. meyer and children" "mrs. peel" mohawk mona lisa monet, claude "money changers, the" "moonlight at salerno" morales "moreau and his staff before hohenlinden" more, sir thomas "morning prayer, the" "moses" "moses breaking the tablets of the law" mudge, dr. murat murillo (bartolomé estéban) murillo, doña anna museum of art, basel berlin court, vienna madrid metropolitan, new york prado rijks, amsterdam south kensington muther "mystic marriage of st. catherine, the" "naiads at play" napoleon "nativity, the" (botticelli) (dürer) navarrette "nieces of sir horace walpole" "night watch, the" "noli me tangere" norham castle nuremberg "nurse and the child, the" "'oh, pearl' quoth i" "old bachelor, the" "old shepherd's chief mourner, the" olivares pacheco "pallas" "pan and psyche" pantheon pareja "parish clerk, the" 'past and present" passignano "pathless water, the" paul iii. "paysage" pazzi family "penzance" percy, bishop perez family perez, maria perugino philip ii. philip iii. philip iv. picot "pilate washing his hands" pinas pirkneimer pissaro "ploughing" pope, alexander "portrait of old man and boy" portraits of artists by themselves "praying arab" "praying hands" pre-raphaelites "presentation of christ in the temple" "presentation of the family of darius to alexander" prim, general "procession of the magi" "prowling lion, the" "psyche and cupid" pypelincx, maria quakers "quin, portrait of" rabelais "rake's progress, the" "rape of ganymede, the" "rape of the daughters of leucippus, the" raphael (sanzio) reade, charles "reading at diderot's, a" "reaper, the" "regions of joy" rembrandt (van rijn) "retreat from russia" reynolds, samuel reynolds, sir joshua ribera rinaldo and armida "road over the downs, the" "robert cheseman with his falcon" robusto, jacopo. _see_ tintoretto romano, guilio rood, professor "rosary, story of the" rossetti, dante gabriel rossetti, w. m. rothschild, lord rousseau royal princess rubens, albert rubens, john rubens, nicholas rubens, peter paul ruisdael, jacob van ruskin, john ruthven, lady mary sachs, hans "sacred and profane love" "st. anthony of padua" "st. augustine" "st. barbara" st. bernard dog st. bernardino "saint cecelia" st. christopher st. clemente st. dominic st. george "st. george and the dragon" "st. george slaying the dragon" st. giorgio maggiore "st. jerome" st, john the baptist st. jovis shooting company st. leger, colonel st. lucas, guild of st. luke, guild of st. mark st. martin's church "st. michael attacking satan." "st. nobody" st. paul's cathedral st. peter "st. peter baptising" st. peter's church "st. rocco healing the sick" "st. sebastian." (botticelli) (correggio) (titian) st. sebastian, church of st. sebastian, monastery of st. sixtus st. trinita, church of "salisbury cathedral" salon salvator rosa "samson" "samson threatening his stepfather" "samson's wedding" san francisco santa croce santa maria della pace santa maria delle grazte santa maria del orto santa maria novella santi, bartolommeo santi giovanni santo cruz, church of santo spirito, convent of sanzio. _see_ raphael sarcinelli, cornelio sargent, john singer sarto, andrea del. _see_ andrea saskia savonarola "scapegoat, the" "scene from woodstock" schiavone schmidt, elizabeth schongauer school girl's hymn "school of anatomy, the" school of art, academy, london american andalusian castilian düsseldorf dutch english flemish florentine fontainebleau-barbizon foreign french in german hudson river impressionist italian nuremberg parma roman spanish umbrian venetian "school, of athens, the" "school, of cupid, the" "scotch deer" scott, sir walter scrovegno, enrico scuola di san rocco "seaport at sunset" sebastian "serpent charmer, the" servi, convent of the sesto, cesare de seurat sforza, ludovico "shadow of death, the" shakespeare sheepshanks collection "shepherd guarding sheep" sheppey, isle of sheridan, mrs. richard brinsley sheridan, richard brinsley siddons, mrs. silva, rodriguez de sistine chapel "sistine madonna, the" six, jan sixtus iv. skynner, sir john "slaughter of the innocents, the" "slave ship, the" "sleeping bloodhound, the" "sleeping venus, the" smith, john "snake charmers, the" "snow-storm at sea, a" society of arts soderini solus lodge "sortie, the" _see also_ night watch sotomayer, doña beatriz de cabrera y "sower, the" spaniel, king charles "spanish marriage, the" spinola, marquis of "sport of the waves" "spring" sterne, lawrence "storm, the" stour, river "straw hat, the" sudbury sully sultan of turkey "sunset on the passaic" "sunset on the sea" "surrender of breda" "susanna and the elders" "susanna's bath" "sussex downs" swanenburch, jacob van "sword-dance, the" "syndics of the cloth hall" taddei, taddeo tassi, agostine thackeray thornhill, sir james "three ages, the" "three saints and god the father" tintoretto (jacopo robusti) titian (tiziano vecelli) tornabuoni, giovanni torregiano trafalgar square "transfiguration, the" "tribute money, the" "trinity" troyon trumbull, american painter trumbull, english diplomat tulp, nicholaus turner, charles turner, joseph mallord william "two beggar boys" tybis, geryck ulenberg, saskia van urban viii. urbino, duke of "valley farm, the" van dyck, sir anthony van mander, karel van marcke van noort, adam van rijn. _see_ rembrandt van veen varangeville vasari vatican vecchio, palazzo vecchio, palma vecelli family vecelli, orsa vecelli, orzio vecelli, pompino vecelli, tiziano. _see_ titian velasquez (diego rodriguez de silva) "venice enthroned" "venus dispatching cupid" "venus worship" verhaecht, tobias vernon veronese, paul (paolo cagliari) verrocchio "vestal virgin, the" victoria, queen "villa by the sea" "village festival, the" "ville d'avray" vinci, leonardo da violante "virgin as consoler, the" "virgin's rest near bethlehem" "vision of st. anthony, the" "visitation, the" "visitor, the" "visit to the burgomaster" warren, general joseph "water carrier, the" "watermill, the" watteau, jean antoine "wedding feast at cana, the" wells, frederick west, sir benjamin "weymouth bay" whitcomb, ida prentice "william, prince of orange" william the silent "will-o'-the-wisp" "willows near arras" wilson "winnower, the" "winter" wolgemuth "woodcutters, the" "wooded landscape" "wood gatherers, the" yarmouth "young people's story of art" "youth surprised by death" "zingarella" zuccato, sebastian page images generously provided by the cwru preservation department digital library. [transcriber's note: the printing errors of the original have been retained in this etext.] albert dÜrer by t. sturge moore preface when the late mr. arthur strong asked me to undertake the present volume, i pointed out to him that, to fulfil the advertised programme of the series he was editing, was more than could be hoped from my attainments. he replied, that in the case of dürer a book, fulfilling that programme, was not called for, and that what he wished me to attempt, was an appreciation of this great artist in relation to general ideas. i had hoped to benefit very largely by my editor's advice and supervision, but this his illness and death prevented. his great gifts and brilliant accomplishments, already darkened and distressed by disease, were all too soon to be utterly quenched; and i can but here express, not only my sense of personal loss in the hopes which his friendly welcome and generous intercourse had created and which have been so cruelly dashed by the event, but also that of the void which his disappearance has left in the too thin ranks of those who, filled with reverence and enthusiasm for the great traditions of the past, seem nevertheless eager and capable of grappling with the unwieldy present. let and restricted had been the recognition of his maturing worth, and now we must do without both him and the impetus of his so nearly assured success. the present volume, then, is not the result of new research; nor is it an abstract resuming historical and critical discoveries on its subject up to date. of this latter there are several already before the british public; the former, as i said, it was not for me to attempt. nor do i feel my book to be altogether even what it was intended to be; but am conscious that too much space has been given to the enumeration of dürer's principal works and the events of his life without either being made exhaustive. still, i hope that even these parts may be found profitable by those who are not already familiar with the subjects with which they deal. to those for whom these subjects are well known, i should like to point out that parts i. and iv. and very much of part iii. embody my chief intention; that chapter of part i. finds a further illustration in division iii. of chapter , part ii.; and that division vi., chapter , part ii., should be taken as prefatory to chapter , part iv. should exception be taken to the works chosen as illustrations, i would explain that the means of reproduction, the degree of reduction necessitated by the size of the page, and other outside considerations, have severely limited my choice. it is entirely owing to the extreme kindness of the dürer society--more especially of its courteous and enthusiastic secretaries, mr. campbell dodgson and mr. peartree--that four copper-plates have so greatly enhanced the adequacy of the volume in this respect. i have gratefully to acknowledge sir martin conway's kindness in permitting me to quote so liberally from his "literary remains of albrecht dürer," by far the best book on this great artist known to me. mr. charles eaton's translation of thausing's "life of dürer," the "portfolios of the dürer society," and dr. lippmanb "drawings of albrecht dürer," are the only other works on my subject to which i feel bound to acknowledge my indebtedness. lastly, i must express deep gratitude to my learned friend, mr. campbell dodgson, for having so generously consented, by reading the proofs, to mitigate my defect in scholarship. contents preface part i concerning general ideas important to the comprehension of dÜrer's life and art i. the idea of proportion ii the influence of religion on the creative impulse part ii dÜrer's life in relation to the times in which he lived i. dÜrer's origin, youth, and education ii. the world in which he lived iii. dÜrer at venice iv. his patrons and friends v. dÜrer, luther, and the humanists vi. dÜrer's journey to the netherlands vii. dÜrer's last years part iii dÜrer as a creator i. dÜrer's pictures ii. dÜrer's portraits iii. dÜrer's drawings iv. dÜrer's metal engravings v. dÜrer's woodcuts vi. dÜrer's influences and verses part iv dÜrer's ideas i. the idea of a canon of proportion for the human figure ii. the importance of docility iii. the last tradition iv. beauty v. nature vi. the choice of an artist vii. technical precepts viii. in conclusion illustrations apollo and diana, metal engraving water-colour drawing of a hare pilate washing his hands. metal engraving agnes frey "mein angnes" wilibald pirkheimer hans burgkmair adoration of the trinity st. christopher assumption of the magdalen dürer's mother maximilian frederick the wise silver-point portrait erasmus drawing of a lion lucas van der leyden peter and john at the beautiful gate. metal engraving st. george and st. eustache martyrdom of ten thousand saints road to calvary portrait of dürer portrait of dürer albert dürer the elder gswolt krel portrait at hampton court portrait of a lady michel wolgemuth hans imhof "jakob muffel" study of a hound memento mei silver-point portrait portrait in black chalk cherub for a crucifixion apollo and diana an old castle melancholia detail from "the agony in the garden" angel with sudarium the small horse the great fortune, or nemesis silver-point drawing st. michael and the dragon detail from "the meeting at the golden gate" detail from "the nativity" dürer's armorial bearings christ haled before annas the last supper saint antony, metal engraving "in the eighteenth year" "una vilana wendisch" charcoal drawing part i concerning general ideas important to the comprehension of dÜrer's life and art chapter i the idea of proportion i ich hab vernomen wie der siben weysen aus kriechenland ainer gelert hab das dymass in allen dingen sitlichen und naturlichen das pest sey. dÜrer, british museum ms., vol. iv., a. i have heard how one of the seven sages of greece taught that measure is in all things, physical and moral, best. la souveraine habileté consiste à bien connaitre le prix des choses. la rochefoucauld, iii. . sovereign skill consists in thoroughly understanding the value of things. the attempt that the last quarter century has witnessed, to introduce the methods of science into the criticism of works of art, has tended, it seems to me, to put the question of their value into the background. the easily scandalous inquiries, "who?" "when?" "where?" have assumed an impertinent predominance. when i hear people very decidedly asserting that such a picture was painted by such an one, not generally supposed to be the author, at such a time, &c. &c., i often feel uneasy in the same way as one does on being addressed in a loud voice in a church or a picture gallery, where other persons are absorbed in an acknowledged and respected contemplation or study. i feel inclined to blush and whisper, for fear of being supposed to know the speaker too well. it is an awkward moment with me, for i am in fact very good friends with many such persons. "sovereign skill consists in thoroughly understanding the value of things"--not their commercial value only, though that is sovereign skill on the exchange, but their value for those whose chief riches are within them. the value of works of art is an intimate experience, and cannot be estimated by the methods of exact science as the weight of a planet can. there are and have been forgeries that are more beautiful, therefore more valuable, than genuine specimens of the class of work which they figure as. i feel that the specialist, with his special measure and point of view, often endangers the fair name and good repute of the real estimate; and that nothing but the dominion and diffusion of general ideas can defend us against the specialist and keep the specialist from being carried away by bad habits resulting from his devotion to a single inquiry. there was one general idea, of the greatest importance in determining the true value of things, which preoccupied dürer's mind and haunted his imagination: the idea of proportion. i propose therefore to attempt to make clear to myself and my readers what the idea of proportion really implies, and of what service a sense for proportion really is; secondly, to determine the special use of the term in relation to the appreciation of works of art; thirdly, in relation to their internal structure;--before proceeding to the special studies of dürer as a man and an artist. ii i conceive the human reason to be the antagonist of all known forces other than itself, and that therefore its most essential character is the hope and desire to control and transform the universe; or, failing that, to annihilate, if not the universe, at least itself and the consciousness of a monster fact which it entirely condemns. in this conception i believe myself to be at one with those by whom men have been most influenced, and who, with or without confidence in the support of unknown powers, have set themselves deliberately against the face of things to die or conquer. this being so, and man individually weak, it has been the avowed object of great characters--carrying with them the instinctive consent of nations--to establish current values for all things, according as their imagination could turn them to account as effective aids of reason: that is, as they could be made to advance her apparent empire over other elemental forces, such as motion, physical life, &c. this evaluation, in so far as it is constant, results in what we call civilisation, and is the only bond of society. with difficulty is the value of new acquisitions recognised even in the realm of science, until the imagination can place them in such a light as shall make them appear to advance reason's ends, which accounts for the reluctance that has been shown to accept many scientific results. reason demands that the world she would create shall be a fact, and declares that the world she would transform is the real world, but until the imagination can find a function for it in reason's ideal realm, every piece of knowledge remains useless, or even an obstacle in the way of our intended advance. this applies to individuals just as truly as it does to mankind. and since man's reason is a natural phenomenon and does apparently belong to the class of elemental forces, this warfare against the apparent fact, and the fortitude and hope which its whole-hearted prosecution begets, appear as a natural law to the intelligence and as a command and promise to the reason. the alternative between the will to cease and the will to serve reason, with which i start out, may not seem necessary to all. "forgive their sin--and if not, blot me i pray thee out of thy book," was moses' prayer; and to me it seems that only by lethargy can any soul escape from facing this alternative. the human mind in so far as it is active always postulates, "let that which i desire come to pass, or let me cease!" nor is there any diversity possible as to what really is desirable: man desires the full and harmonious development of his faculties. as to how this end may most probably be attained, there is diversity enough to represent every possible blend of ignorance with knowledge, of lethargy with energy, of cowardice with courage. "so endless and exorbitant are the desires of men, whether considered in their persons or their states, that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less."[ ] so writes the most powerful of english prose-writers. and this hope and desire, which is reason, once thrown down, the most powerful among poets has brought from human lips this estimate of life-- "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." no one knows whether reason's object will or can be attained; but for the present each man finds confidence and encouragement in so far as he is able to imagine all things working together for the good of those who desire good--in short, for "reasonable beings."[ ] the more he knows, the greater labour it is for him to imagine this; but the more he concentrates his faculties on doing good and creating good things, the more his imagination glows and shines and discovers to him new possibilities of success: the better he is able to find-- "sermons in stones and good in everything;" "and make a moral of the devil himself." but how is it that reason can accept an imagination that makes what in a cold light she considers her enemy, appear her friend? all things impress the mind with two contradictory notions--their actual condition and their perfection. even the worst of its kind impresses on us an idea of what the best would be, or we could not know it for the worst. reason, then, seizes on this aspect of things which suggests their perfection, and awards them her attention in proportion as such aspect makes their perfection seem near, or as it may further her in transforming the most pressing of other evils. all life tends to affirm its own character; and the essential characteristic of man is reason, which labours to perfect all things that he judges to be good, and to transform all evil. ultimate results are out of sight for all human faculties except the early-waking eyes of long-chastened hope; but reason loves this visionary mood, though she prefer that it be sung, and find that less lyrical speech brings on it something of ridicule; for such a rendering betrays, as a rule, faint desire or small power to serve her in those who use it. the sense of proportion, then, is that fineness of susceptibility by which we appreciate in a given object, person, force, or mood, serviceableness in regard to reason's work; in other words, by which we estimate the capacity to transform the universe in such a way that men may ultimately be enabled to give their hearty consent to its existence, which at present no man rationally can. iii now, art appeals to fine susceptibilities; for, as i have explained elsewhere,[ ] the value of works of art depends on their having come as "real and intimate experiences to a large number of gifted men"--men who have some kinship to that "finely touched and gifted man, the [greek _heuphnaes_] of the greeks," to use the phrase of our greatest modern critic. and in so far as we are able to judge between works successfully making such an appeal, we must be governed by this sense of proportion, which measures how things stand in regard to reason; that is, not merely intellect, not merely emotion, but the alliance of both by means of the imagination in aid of man's most central demand--the demand for nobler life. perhaps i ought to point out before proceeding, that this position is not that of the writers on art most in view at the present day. it is the negation of the so-called scientific criticism, and also of the personal theory that reduces art to an expression of, and an appeal to, individual temperaments; it is the assertion of the sovereignty of the aesthetic conscience on exactly the same grounds as sovereignty is claimed for the moral conscience. Æsthetics deals with the morality of appeals addressed to the senses. that is, it estimates the success of such appeals in regard to the promotion of fuller and more harmonious life. flaubert wrote: "le génie n'est pas rare maintenant, mais ce que personne n'a plus et ce qu'il faut tacher d'avoir, c'est la conscience." ("genius is not rare nowadays, but conscience is what nobody has and what one should strive after.") to-day i am thinking of a painter. painting is an art addressed primarily to the eye, and not to the intelligence, not to the imagination, save as these may be reached through the eye--that most delicate organ of infinite susceptibility, which teaches us the meaning of the word light--a word so often uttered with stress of ecstasy, of longing, of despair, and of every other shade of emotion, that the sound of it must soon be almost as powerful with the young heart, almost as immediate in its effect, as the break of day itself, gladdening the eyes and glorifying the earth. and how often is this joy received through the eye entrusted back to it for expression? for the eye can speak with varieties, delicacies, and subtle shades of motion far beyond the attainment of any other organ. "this art of painting is made for the eyes, for sight is the noblest sense of man,"[ ] says dürer; and again: "it is ordained that never shall any man be able, out of his own thoughts, to make a beautiful figure, unless, by much study, he hath well stored his mind. that then is no longer to be called his own; it is art acquired and learnt, which soweth, waxeth, and beareth fruit after its kind. thence the gathered secret treasure of the heart is manifested openly in the work, and the new creature which a man createth in his heart, appeareth in the form of a thing."[ ] yes, indeed, the function of art is far from being confined to telling us what we see, whatever some may pretend, or however naturally any small nature may desire to continue, teach, or regulate great ones. all so-called scientific methods of creating or criticising works of art are inadequate, because the only truly scientific statements that can be made about these inquiries are that nothing is certain--that no method ensures success, and that no really important quality can be defined; for what man can say why one cloud is more beautiful than another in the same sky, any more than he can explain why, of two men equally absorbed in doing their duty, one impresses him as being more holy than the other? the degrees essential to both kinds of judgment escape all definition; only the imagination can at times bring them home to us, only the refined taste or chastened conscience, as the case may be, witnesses with our spirit that its judgment is just, and bids us recognise a master in him who delivers it. as the expression on a face speaks to a delicate sense, often communicating more, other, and better than can be seen, so the proportion, harmony, rhythm of a painting may beget moods and joys that require the full resources of a well-stored mind and disciplined character in order that they may be fully relished--in brief, demand that maturity of reason which is the mark of victorious man. such being my conception, it will easily be perceived how anxious i must be to truly discern and express the relation between such objects as works of art by common consent so highly honoured, and at the same time so active in their effect upon the most exquisitely endowed of mankind. especially since to-day caprice, humour and temperament are, by the majority of writers on art, acclaimed for the radical characteristic of the human creative faculty, instead of its perversion and disease; and it is thought that to be whimsical, moody, or self-indulgent best fits a man both to create and appraise works of art, whereas to become so really is the only way in which a man capable of such high tasks can with certainty ruin and degrade his faculties. precious, surpassingly precious indeed, must every manifestation of such faculty before its final extinction remain, since the race produces comparatively few endowed after this kind. perhaps a sufficient illustration of this prevalent fallacy may be drawn from mr. whistler's "ten o'clock," where he speaks of art: "a whimsical goddess, and a capricious, her strong sense of joy tolerates no dulness, and, live we never so spotlessly, still may she turn her back upon us." "as from time immemorial, she has done upon the swiss in their mountains." here is no proof of caprice, save on the witty writer's part; for men who fast are not saved from bad temper, nor have the kindly necessarily discreet tongues. the swiss may be brave and honest, and yet dull. virtue is her own reward, and art her own. virtue rewards the saint, art the artist; but men are rewarded for attention to morality by some measure of joy in virtue, for attention to beauty by some measure of joy in works of art. between the artist and the philistine is no great gulf fixed, in the sense that the witty "master of the butterfly" pretends to assume, but an infinite and gentle decline of persons representing every possible blend of the virtues and faults of these two types. again, an artist is miscalled "master of art." "where he is, there she appears," is airy impudence. "where she wills to be, there she chooses a man to serve her," would not only have been more gallant but more reasonable; for that "the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the spirit," and that "many are called, few chosen," are sayings as true of the influence which kindleth art as of that which quickeneth to holiness. art is not dignified by being called whimsical--or capricious. what can a man explain? the intention, behind the wind, behind the spirit, behind the creative instinct, is dark. but man is true to his own most essential character when, if he cannot refrain from prating of such mysteries, he qualifies them as hope would have him, with the noblest of his virtues; not when he speaks of the unknown, in whose hands his destiny so largely rests, slightingly, as of a woman whom he has seduced because he despised her--calling her capricious because she answered to his caprice, whimsical, because she was as flighty as his error. it is not art's function to reward virtue. but, caprices and whimseys being ascribed to a goddess, it will be natural to expect them in her worshipper; and mr. whistler revealed the limitations of his genius by whimseys and caprice. though it was in their relations to the world that this goddess and her devotee claimed freedoms so far from perfect, yet this, their avowed characteristic abroad, i think in some degree disturbed their domestic relations, though others have underlined the absurdity of this theory by applying themselves to it with more faith and less sense, i have chosen to quote from the "ten o'clock," because i admire it and accept most of the ideas about art advanced therein. the artist who wrote it was able, in dürer's phrase, "to prove" what he wrote "with his hand." most of those who have elaborated what was an occasional unsoundness of his doctrine into ridiculous religions are as unable to create as they are to think; there is no need to record names which it is wisdom to forget. but it may be well to point out that mr. whistler does not succeed in glorifying great artists when he declares that beauty "to them was as much a matter of certainty and triumph as is to the astronomer the verification of the result, foreseen with the light granted to him alone." no, he only sets up a false analogy; for the true parallel to the artist is the saint, not the astronomer; both are convinced, neither understands. art is no more the reward of intelligence than of virtue. she permits no caprice in her own realm. loyalty is the only virtue she insists on, loyalty in regard to her servant's experience of beauty; he may be immoral in every other way and she not desert him; but let him turn balaam and declare beauty absent where he feels its presence--though in doing this he hopes to advance virtue or knowledge, she needs no better than an ass to rebuke him. nothing effects more for anarchy than these notions that art derives from individual caprice, or defends virtue, or demonstrates knowledge; for they are all based on those flattering hopes of the unsuccessful, that chance, rules both in life and art, or that it is possible to serve two masters. doctrines often repeated gain easy credence; and, since art demands leisure in order to be at all enjoyed, ideas about it, in so fatiguing a life as ours has become, take men off their guard, when their habitual caution is laid to sleep, and, by an over-easiness, they are inclined to spoil both their sense of distinction and their children. yes, they consent to theatres that degrade them, because they distract and amuse; and read journals that are smart and diverting at the expense of dignity and truth--in the same way as they smile at the child whom reason bids them reprove, and with the like tragic result; for they become incapable of enjoying works of art, as the child is incapacitated for the best of social intercourse. to prophesy smooth things to people in this condition, and flatter their dulness, is to be no true friend; and so the modern art-critic and journalist is often the insidious enemy of the civilisation he contents. nothing strikes the foreigner coming to england more than our lack of general ideas. our art criticism is no exception; it, like our literature and politics, is happy-go-lucky and delights in the pot-shot. we often hear this attributed admiringly to "the sporting instinct." "if god, in his own time, granteth me to write something further about matters connected with painting, i will do so, in hope that this art may not rest upon use and wont alone, but that in time it may be taught on true and orderly principles, and may be understood to the praise of god and the use and pleasure of all lovers of art."[ ] our art is still worse off than our trade or our politics, for it does not even rest upon use and wont, but is wholly in the air. yet the typical modern aesthete has learnt where to take cover, for, though destitute of defence, he has not entirely lost the instinct for self-preservation; and, when he finds the eye of reason upon him, he immediately flies to the diversity of opinions. but dürer follows him even there with the perfect good faith of a man in earnest. "men deliberate and hold numberless differing opinions about beauty, and they seek after it in many different ways, although ugliness is thereby rather attained. being then, as we are, in such a state of error, i know not certainly what the ultimate measure of true beauty is, and cannot describe it aright. but glad should i be to render such help as i can, to the end that the gross deformities of our work might be and remain pruned away and avoided, unless indeed any one prefers to bestow great labour upon the production of deformities. we are brought back, therefore, to the aforesaid judgment of men, which considereth one figure beautiful at one time and another at another.... "because now we cannot altogether attain unto perfection, shall we therefore wholly cease from learning? by no means. let us not take unto ourselves thoughts fit for cattle. for evil and good lie before men, wherefore it behoveth the rational man to choose the good."[ ] a man may see, if he will but watch, who is more finely touched and gifted than himself. in all the various fields of human endeavour, on such men he should try to form himself; for only thus can he enlarge his nature, correct his opinions. something he can learn from this man, something from that, and it is rational to learn and be taught. are we to be cattle or gods? "is it not written in your law, i said, 'ye are gods?'" reason demands that each man form himself on the pattern of a god, and god is an empty name if reason be not the will of god. then he whom reason hath brought up may properly be called a son of god, a son of man, a child of light. but it is easier to bob to such phrases than to understand them. however, their mechanical repetition does not prevent their having meant something once, does not prevent their meaning being their true value. it is time we understood our art, just as it is time we understood our religion. docility, as i have pointed out elsewhere, is one of the marks of genius. dürer's spirit is the spirit of the great artist who will learn even from "dull men of little judgment." "let none be ashamed to learn, for a good work requireth good counsel. nevertheless, whosoever taketh counsel in the arts, let him take it from one thoroughly versed in those matters, who can prove what he saith with his hand. howbeit any one may give thee counsel; and when thou hast done a work pleasing to thyself, it is good for thee to show it to dull men of little judgment that they may give their opinion of it. as a rule they pick out the most faulty points, whilst they entirely pass over the good. if thou findest something they say true, thou mayst thus better thy work."[ ] those who are thoroughly versed in art are the great artists; we have guides then, and we have a way--the path they have trodden--and we have company, the gifted and docile men of to-day whom we see to be improving themselves; and, in so far as we are reasonable, a sense of proportion is ours, which we may improve; and it will help us to catch up better and yet better company until we enjoy the intimacy of the noblest, and know as we are known. then: "may we not consider it a sign of sanity when we regard the human spirit as ... a poet, and art as a half written poem? shall we not have a sorry disappointment if its conclusion is merely novel, and not the fulfilment and vindication of those great things gone before?"[ ] for my own part, those appear to me the grandest characters who, on finding that there is no other purchase for effort but only hope, and that they can never cease from hope but by ceasing to live, clear their minds of all idle acquiescence in what could never be hoped, and concentrate their energies on conquering whatever in their own nature, and in the world about them, militates against their most essential character--reason, which seeks always to give a higher value to life. iv when we speak of the sense of proportion displayed in the design of a building, many will think that the word is used in quite a different sense, and one totally unrelated to those which i have been discussing. but no; life and art are parallel and correspond throughout; ethics are the esthetics of life, religion the art of living. taste and conscience only differ in their provinces, not in their procedure. both are based on instinctive preferences; the canon of either is merely so many of those preferences as, by their constant recurrence to individuals gifted with the power of drawing others after them, are widely accepted. the preference of serenity to melancholy, of light to darkness, are among the most firmly established in the canon, that is all. the sense of proportion within a design is employed to stimulate and delight the eye. ordinary people may fear there is some abstruse science about this. not at all; it is as simple as relishing milk and honey, and its development an exact parallel to the training of the palate to distinguish the flavours of teas, coffees and wines. "taste and see" is the whole business. there are many people who have no hesitation in picking out what to their eye is the wainscot panel with the richest grain: they see it at once. so with etchings; if people would only forget that they are works of art, forget all the false or ill-understood standards which they have been led to suppose applicable, and look at them as they might at agate stones; or choose out the richest in effect: the most suitable for a gay room, or a hall, or a library, as though they were patterned stuffs for curtains; they would come a thousand times nearer a right appreciation of dürer's success than by making a pot-shot to lasso the masterpiece with the tangle of literary rubbish which is known as art criticism. the harmonies and contrasts of juxtaposed colours or textures are affected by quantity, and a sense of proportion decides what quantities best produce this effect and what that. the correctness or amount of information to be conveyed in the delineation of some object, in relation to the mood which the artist has chosen shall dominate his work, is determined by his sense of proportion. he may distort an object to any extent or leave it as vague as the shadow on a wall in diffused light, or he may make it precise and particular as ever jan van eyck did; so only that its distortion or elaboration is so proportioned to the other objects and intentions of his work as to promote its success in the eyes of the beholder. there are no fallacies greater than the prevalent ones conveyed by the expressions "out of drawing" or "untrue to nature." there is no such thing as correct drawing or an outside standard of truth for works of art. "the conception of every work of art carries within it its own rule and method, which must be found out before it can be achieved." "chaque oeuvre à faire a sa poétique en soi, qu'il faut trouver," said flaubert. truth in a work of art is sincerity. that a man says what he really means--shows us what he really thinks to be beautiful--is all that reason bids us ask for. no science or painstaking can make up for his not doing this. no lack of skill or observation can entirely frustrate his communicating his intention to kindred natures if he is utterly sincere. an infant communicates its joy. it is probable that the inexpressible is never felt. stammering becomes more eloquent than oratory, a child's impulsiveness wiser than circumlocutory experience. when a single intention absorbs the whole nature, communication is direct and immediate, and makes impotence itself a means of effectiveness. so the naïveties of early art put to shame the purposeless parade of prodigious skill. wherever there is communication there is art; but there are evil communications and there is vicious art, though, perhaps, great sincerity is incompatible with either. for an artist to be deterred by other people's demands means that he is not artist enough; it is what his reason teaches him to demand of himself that matters, though, doubtless, the good desire the approval of kindred natures. a work of art addresses the eye by means of chosen proportions; it may present any number of facts as exactly as may be, but if it offend the eye it is a mere misapplication of industry, or the illustration of a scientific treatise out of place; and those that choose ribbons well are better artists than the man that made it. or again it may overflow with poetical thought and suggestion, or have the stuff to make a first-rate story in it; but, if it offend the eye, it is merely a misapplication of imagination, invention or learning, and the girl who puts a charming nosegay together is a better artist than he who painted it. on the other hand, though it have no more significance than a glass of wine and a loaf of bread, if the eye is rejoiced by gazing on the paint that expresses them, it is a work of art and a fine achievement. still, it may be as fanciful as a fairy-tale, or as loaded with import as the crucifixion; and, if it stimulates the eye to take delight in its surfaces over and above mere curiosity, it is a work of art, and great in proportion as the significance of what it conveys is brought home to us by the very quality of the stimulus that is created in return for our gaze. for painting is the result of a power to speak beautifully with paint, as poetry is of a power to express beautifully by means of words either simple things or those which demand the effort of a welltrained mind in order to be received and comprehended. the mistake made by impressionists, luminarists, and other modern artists, is that a true statement of how things appear to them will suffice; it will not, unless things appear beautiful to them, and they render them beautifully. it will not, because science is not art, because knowledge is a different thing from beauty. a true statement may be repulsive and degrading; whereas an affirmation of beauty, whether it be true or fancied, is always moving, and if delivered with corresponding grace is inspiring--is a work of art and "a joy for ever." for reason demands that all the eye sees shall be beautiful, and give such pleasure as best consists with the universe becoming what reason demands that it shall become. this demand of reason is perfectly arbitrary? yes, but it is also inevitable, necessitated by the nature of the human character. it is equally arbitrary and equally inevitable that man must, where science is called for, in the long run prefer a true statement to a lie. from art reason demands beautiful objects, from science true statements: such is human nature; for the possession of this reason that judges and condemns the universe, and demands and attempts to create something better, is that which differentiates human life from all other known forces--is that by which men may be more than conquerors, may make peace with the universe; for "a peace is of the nature of a conquest; for then both parties nobly are subdued and neither party loser." of such a nature is the only peace that the soul can make with the body--that man can make with nature--that habit can make with instinct--that art can make with impulse. in order to establish such a peace the imagination must train reason to see a friend in her enemy, the physical order. for, as reynolds says of the complete artist: "he will pick up from dunghills, what, by a nice chemistry, passing through his own mind, shall be converted into pure gold, and under the rudeness of gothic essays, he will find original, rational, and even sublime inventions."[ ] it is not too much to say that the nature both of the artist and of the dunghills is "subdued" by such a process, and yet neither is a "loser." goethe profoundly remarked that the highest development of the soul was reached through worship first of that which was above, then of that which was beneath it. this great critic also said, "only with difficulty do we spell out from that which nature presents to us, the _desired_ word, the congenial. men find what the artist brings intelligible and to their taste, stimulating and alluring, genial and friendly, spiritually nourishing, formative and elevating. thus the artist, grateful to the nature that made him, weaves a second nature--but a conscious, a fuller, a more perfectly human nature." [illustration: water-colour drawing of a hare] footnotes: [footnote : swift, "contests and dissensions in athens and rome."] [footnote : it may be urged that diversities of opinion exist as to what good is. the convenience of the words "good" and "evil" corresponds to a need created by a common experience in the same way as the convenience of the words "light" and "darkness" does. a child might consider that a diamond generated light in the same way as a candle does. he would be mistaken, but this would not affect the correctness of his application of the word "light" to his experience; if he confused light with darkness he must immediately become unintelligible. good and light are perceived and named--no one can say more of them; the effects of both may be described with more or less accuracy. to say that light is a mode of motion does not define it; we ask at once, what mode? and the only answer is, that which produces the effect of light. a man born blind, though he knew what was meant by motion, could never deduce from this knowledge a conception of light.] [footnote : the monthly review, october , "rodin."] [footnote : "literary remains of albrecht dürer," p. .] [footnote : ibid. p. .] [footnote : "literary remains of albrecht dürer," p. .] [footnote : "literary remains of albrecht dürer," pp, and .] [footnote : "literary remains of albrecht dürer," p. .] [footnote : the monthly review, april , "in defence of reynolds."] [footnote : sixth discourse.] chapter ii the influence of religion on the creative impulse i there are some artists of whom one would naturally write in a lyrical strain, with praise of the flesh, and those things which add to its beauty, freshness, and mystery--fair scenes of mountain, woodland, or sea-shore; blue sky, white cloud and sunlight, or the deep and starry night; youth and health, strength and fertility, frankness and freedom. and, in such a strain, one would insist that the fondness and intoxication which these things quicken was natural, wise, and lovely. but, quite as naturally, when one has to speak of dürer, the mind becomes filled with the exhilaration and the staidness that the desire to know and the desire to act rightly beget; with the dignity of conscious comprehension, the serenity of accomplished duty with all the strenuousness and ardour of which the soul is capable; with science and religion. it is natural to refer often to the towering eminence of these virtues in michael angelo; both he and dürer were not only great artists, and active and powerful minds, but men imbued with, and conservative of, piety. and it seems to me, if we are to appreciate and sympathise deeply with such men, we must try to understand the religion they believed in; to estimate, not only what its value was supposed to be in those days, but what value it still has for us. surely what they prized so highly must have had real and lasting worth? surely it can only be the relation of that value to common speech and common thought which has changed, not its relation to man's most essential nature? therefore i will first try to arrive at a general notion of the real worth of their ideas,--that is, the worth that is equally great from their point of view and ours. the whole of that period, the period of the so belauded renascence, had within it (or so it seems to me) an incurable insufficiency, which troubles the affections of those who praise or condemn it; so that they show themselves more passionate than those who praise or condemn the art and life of ancient greece. this insufficiency i believe to have been due to the fact that christian ideas were more firmly rooted in, than they were understood by, the society of those days. and to-day i think the same cause continues to propagate a like insufficiency, a like lack of correspondence between effort and aim. certain ideas found in the reported sayings of jesus have so fastened upon the european intellect that they seem well-nigh inseparable from it. we are told that the effort of the greek, of aristotle, was to "submit to the empire of fact." the effort of the jew was very similar; for the prophets, what happened was the will of god, what will happen is what god intends. now it is noteworthy that aristotle did not wish to submit to ignorance, though it and the causes which produce it and preserve it in human minds are among the most horrible and tremendous of facts; and it is the imperishable glory of the prophets, that, whatever the priest the king, the sadducee or pharisee might do, _they_ could not rest in or abide the idea that god's will was ever evil; no inconsistency was too glaring to check their indignation at eastern fatalism which quietly supposed that as things went wrong it was their nature to do so;--vanity, vanity, all is vanity!--or that if men did wrong and prospered, it was god's doing, and showed that they had pleased him with sacrifices and performances. ii 'wherever poetry, imagination, or art had been busy, there had appeared, both in judea and greece, some degree of rebellion against the empire of fact.. when jesus said: "the kingdom of heaven is within you," he recognised that the human reason was the antagonist of all other known forces, and he declared war on the god of this world and prophesied the downfall of--the empire of the apparent fact;--not with fume and fret, not with rant and rage, as poets and seers had done, but mildly affirming that with the soul what is best is strongest, has in the long run most influence; that there is one fact in the essential nature of man which, antagonist to the influence of all other facts, wields an influence destined to conquer or absorb all other influences. he said: "my father which is in heaven, the master influence within me, has declared that i shall never find rest to my soul until i prefer his kingdom, the conception of my heart, to the kingdoms of earth and the glory of the earth." 'we have seen that dürer describes the miracle; the work of art, thus: "the secret treasure which a man conceived in his heart shall appear as a thing" (see page ). and we know that he prized this, the master thing, the conception of the heart, above everything else. much learning is not evil to a man, though some be stiffly set against it, saying that art puffeth up. were that so, then were none prouder than god who hath formed all arts, but that cannot be, for god is perfect in goodness. the more, therefore, a man learneth, so much the better doth he become, and so much the more love doth he win for the arts and for things exalted. the learning dürer chiefly intends is not book-learning or critical lore, but knowledge how to make, by which man becomes a creator in imitation of god; for this is of necessity the most perfect knowledge, rivalling the sureness of intuition and instinct. iii "heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." every one knows how anxious great artists become for the preservation of their works, how highly they value permanence in the materials employed, and immunity from the more obvious chances of destruction in the positions they are to occupy. michael angelo is said to have painted cracks on the sistina ceiling to force the architect to strengthen the roof. when jesus made the assertion that his teaching would outlast the influence of the visible world of nature and the societies of men--the kingdoms of earth and the glory of the earth--he did no more than every victorious soul strives to effect, and to feel assured that it has in some large degree effected; the difference between him and them is one of degree. it may be objected that different hearts harbour and cherish contradictory conceptions. doubtless; but does the desire to win the co-operation and approval of other men consist with the higher developments of human faculties? is it, perhaps, essential to them? if so, in so far as every man increases in vitality and the employment of his powers, he will be forced to reverence and desire the solidarity of the race, and consequently to relinquish or neglect whatever in his own ideal militates against such solidarity. and this will be the case whether he judge such eccentric elements to be nobler or less noble than the qualities which are fostered in him by the co-operation of his fellows. jesus, at any rate, affirmed that the law of the kingdom within a man's soul was: "love thy neighbour as thyself"; and that obedience to it would work in every man like leaven, which is lost sight of in the lump of dough, and seems to add nothing to it, yet transforms the whole in raising up the loaf; or as the corn of wheat which is buried in the glebe like a dead body, yet brings forth the blade, and nourishes a new life. so he that should follow jesus by obeying the laws of the kingdom, by loving god (the begetter or fountainhead of a man's most essential conception of what is right and good) and his neighbour, was assured by his mild and gracious master that he would inherit, by way of a return for the sacrifices which such obedience would entail, a new and better life. (follow me, i laid down my life in order that i might take it again. he that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life _for_ my _sake_--as i did, in imitation of me--shall find it.) for in order to make this very difficult obedience possible, it was to be turned into a labour of love done for the master's sake. as goethe said: "against the superiority of another, there is no remedy but love." is it not true that the superiority of another man humiliates, crushes and degrades us in our own eyes, if we envy it or hate it instead of loving it? while by loving it we make it in a sense ours, and can rejoice in it. so jesus affirmed that he had made the superiority of the ideal his; so that he was in it, and it was in him, so that men who could no longer fix their attention on it in their own souls might love it in him. he was their master-conception, their true ideal, acting before them, captivating the attention of their senses and emotions. this is what a man of our times, possessed of rare receptivity and great range of comprehension, considered to be the pith of jesus' teaching. matthew arnold gave much time and labour to trying to persuade men that this was what the religion they professed, or which was professed around them, most essentially meant. and he reminded us that the adequacy of such ideas for governing man's life depended not on the authority of a book or writings by eye-witnesses with or without intelligence, but on whether they were true in experience. he quoted goethe's test for every idea about life, "but is it true, is it true for me, now?" "taste and see," as the prophets put it; or as jesus said, "follow me." for an ideal must be followed, as a man woos a woman; the pursuit may have to be dropped, in order to be more surely recovered; an ideal must be humoured, not seized at once as a man seizes command over a machine. this _secret of success was_ was only to be won by the development of a temper, a spirit of docility. to love it in an example was the best, perhaps the only way of gaining possession of it. iv as we are placed, what hope can we have but to learn? and what is there from which we might not learn? an artist is taught by the materials he uses more essentially than by the objects he contemplates; for these teach him "how," and perfect him in creating, those only teach him "what," and suggest forms to be created. but for men in general the "what" is more important than the "how"; and only very powerful art can exhilarate and refine them by means of subjects which they dislike or avoid. every seer of beauty is not a creator of beautiful things; and in art the "how" is so much more essential than the "what," that artists create unworthy or degrading objects beautifully, so that we admire their art as much as we loathe its employment; in nature, too, such objects are met with, created by the god of this world. a good man, too, may create in a repulsive manner objects whose every association is ennobling or elevating. "the kingdom of heaven is within you," but hell is also within. "hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place; for where we are is hell and where hell is, must we for ever be: and, to conclude, when all the world dissolves, and every creature shall be purified, all places shall be hell that are not heaven," as marlowe makes his mephistophilis say: and the best art is the most perfect expression of that which is within, of heaven or of hell. goethe said: "in the greeks, whose poetry and rhetoric was simple and positive, we encounter expressions of approval more often than of disapproval. with the romans, on the other hand, the contrary holds good; and the more corrupted poetry and rhetoric become, the more will censure grow and praise diminish." i have sometimes thought that the difference between classic and more or less decadent art lies in the fact that by the one things are appreciated for what they most essentially are--a young man, a swift horse, a chaste wife, &c.--by the other for some more or less peculiar or accidental relation that they hold to the creator. such writers lament that the young are not old, the old not young, prostitutes not pure, that maidens are cold and modest or matrons portly. they complain of having suffered from things being cross, or they take malicious pleasure in pointing that crossness out; whereas classical art always rebounds from the perception that things are evil to the assertion of what ought to be or shall be. it triumphs over the prince of darkness, and covers a multitude of sins, as dew or hoar frost cover and make beautiful a dunghill. dunghills exist; but he who makes of macbeth's or clytemnestra's crimes an elevating or exhilarating spectacle triumphs over the god of this world, as jesus did when he made the most ignominious death the symbol, of his victory and glory. little wonder that albert dürer, and michael angelo found such deep satisfaction in him as the object of their worship--his method of docility was next-of-kin to that of their art. respect and solicitude create the soul, and these two pre-eminently docile passions preside over the soul's creation, whether it be a society, a life, or a thing of beauty. v here, when art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, lived and laboured albrecht dürer, the evangelist of art. these jingling lines would scarcely merit consideration but that they express a common notion which has its part of truth as well as of error. let us examine the first assertion (that art has been religion.) baudelaire, in his _curiosités esthétiques_ says: _la première affaire d'un artiste est de substituer l'homme à la nature et de protester contre elle_. ("the first thing for an artist is to substitute man for nature and to protest against her.") the beginners and the smatterers are always "students of nature," and suppose that to be so will suffice; but when the understanding and imagination gain width and elasticity, life is more and more understood as a long struggle to overcome or humanise nature by that which most essentially distinguishes man from other animals and inanimate nature. religion should be the drill and exercise of the human faculties to fit them and maintain them in readiness for this struggle; the work of art should be the assertion of victory. a life worthy of remembrance is a work of art, a life worthy of universal remembrance is a masterpiece: only the materials employed differentiate it from any other work of art. the life of jesus is considered as such a masterpiece. thus we can say that if art has never been religion, religion has always been and ever will be an art. now let us examine the second assertion that dürer was an evangelist. what kind of character do we mean to praise when we say a man is an evangelist? two only of the four evangelists can be said to reveal any ascertainable personality, and only st. john is sufficiently outlined to stand as a type; but i do not think we mean to imply a resemblance to st. john. the bringer of good news, the evangelist par excellence, was jesus. he it was who made it evident that the sons of men have power to forgive sins. victory over evil possible--this was the good news. no doubt every sincere christian is supposed to be a more or less successful imitator of jesus; and as such, dürer may rightly be called an evangelist. but more than this is i think, implied in the use of the word; an evangelist is, for us above all a bringer of good news in something of the same manner as jesus brought it, by living among sinners for those sinners' sake, among paupers for those paupers' sake; to see a man sweet, radiant, and victorious under these circumstances, is to see an evangelist. goethe's final claim is that, "after all, there are honest people up and down the world who have got light from my books; and whoever reads them, and gives himself the trouble to understand me, will acknowledge that he has acquired thence a certain inward freedom"; and for this reason i have been tempted to call him the evangelist of the modern world. but it is best to use the word as i believe it is most correctly employed, and not to yield to the temptation (for tempting it is) to call men like dürer and goethe evangelists. they are teachers who charm as well as inform us, as jesus was; but they are not evangelists in the sense that he was, for they did not deal directly with human life where it is forced most against its distinctive desire for increase in nobility, or is most obviously degraded by having betrayed it.'[ ] vi i have often heard it objected that jesus is too feminine an ideal, too much based on renunciation and the effort to make the best of failure. no doubt that as women are, by the necessity of their function, more liable to the ship-wreck of their hopes, the bankruptcy of their powers, they have been drawn to cling to this hope of salvation in greater numbers, and with more fervour; so that the most general idea of jesus may be a feminine one. it does not follow that this is the most correct or the best: every object, every person will appear differently to different natures. and it still remains true that there have been a great many men of very various types who have drawn strength and beauty from the contemplation and reverence of jesus. that this ideal is too much based on making the best of failure is an objection that makes very little impression on me, for i think i perceive that failure is one of the most constant and widespread conditions of the universe, and even more certainly of human life. vii it remains now to see in what degree these ideas were felt or made themselves felt through the romanism and lutheranism of the renascence period. perhaps we english shall best recognise the presence of these ideas, the working of this leaven--this docility, the necessary midwife of 'genius, who transforms the difficult tasks which the human reason sets herself into labours of love--in an englishman; so my first example shall be taken from erasmus' portrait of dean colet. it was then that my acquaintance with him began, he being then thirty, i two or three months his junior. he had no theological degree, but the whole university, doctors and all, went to hear him. henry vii took note of him, and made him dean of st. paul's. his first step was to restore discipline in the chapter, which had all gone to wreck. he preached every saint's day to great crowds. he cut down household expenses, and abolished suppers and evening parties. at dinner a boy reads a chapter from scripture; colet takes a passage from it and discourses to the universal delight. conversation is his chief pleasure, and he will keep it up till midnight if he finds a companion. me he has often taken with him on his walks, and talks all the time of christ. he hates coarse language, furniture, dress, food, books, all clean and tidy, but scrupulously plain; and he wears grey woollen when priests generally go in purple. with the large fortune which he inherited from his father, he founded and endowed a school at st. paul's entirely at his own cost-- masters, houses, salaries, everything. he is a man of genuine piety. he was not born with it. he was naturally hot, impetuous and resentful--indolent, fond of pleasure and of women's society--disposed to make a joke of everything. he told me that he had fought against his faults with study, fasting and prayer, and thus his whole life was in fact unpolluted with the world's defilements. his money he gave all to pious uses, worked incessantly, talked always on serious subjects, to conquer his disposition to levity; not but what you could see traces of the old adam when wit was flying at feast or festival. he avoided large parties for this reason. he dined on a single dish, with a draught or two of light ale. he liked good wine, but abstained on principle. i never knew a man of sunnier nature. no one ever more enjoyed cultivated society; but here, too, he denied himself, and was always thinking of the life to come. his opinions were peculiar, and he was reserved in expressing them for fear of exciting suspicion. he knew how unfairly men judge each other, how credulous they are of evil, how much easier it is for a lying tongue to stain a reputation than for a friend to clear it. but among his friends he spoke his mind freely. he admitted privately that many things were generally taught which he did not believe, but he would not create a scandal by blurting out his objections. no book could be so heretical but he would read it, and read it carefully. he learnt more from such books than he learnt from dogmatism and interested orthodoxy.[ ] some may wonder what colet could have found to say about christ which could not only interest but delight the young and witty erasmus; and may judge that at any rate to-day such a subject is sufficiently fly-blown. the proper reflection to make is, "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." whether we say christ or perfection does not matter, it is what we mean which is either enthralling or dull, fresh or fusty; "there's nothing in a name." "when colet speaks i might be listening to plato," says erasmus in another place, at a time when he was still younger and had just come from what had been a gay and perhaps in some measure a dissolute life in paris: not that it is possible to imagine erasmus as at any time committing great excesses, or deeply sinning against the sense of proportion and measure. success is the only criterion, as in art, so in religion: the man that plucks out his eye and casts it from him, and remains the dull, greedy, distressful soul he was before, is a damned fool; but the man who does the same and becomes such that his younger friends report of him, "i never knew a sunnier nature," is an artist in life, a great artist in the sense that christ is supposed to have been a great master; one who draws men to him, as bees are drawn to flowers. colet drew the young henry the eighth as well as erasmus. "the king said: 'let every man choose his own doctor. dean colet shall be mine!'" though no doubt charlatans have often fascinated young scholars and monarchs, yet it is peculiarly impossible to think of colet as a charlatan. viii next let us take a sonnet and a sentence from michael angelo: yes! hope may with my strong desire keep pace, and i be undeluded, unbetrayed; for if of our affections none finds grace in sight of heaven, then, wherefore hath god made the world which we inhabit? better plea love cannot have than that in loving thee glory to that eternal peace is paid, who such divinity to thee imparts, as hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts. his hope is treacherous only whose love dies with beauty, which is varying every hour; but in chaste hearts, uninfluenced by the power of outward change, there blooms a deathless flower, that breathes on earth the air of paradise.[ ] it is very remarkable how strongly the conviction of permanence, and the preference for the inward conception over external beauty are expressed in this fine sonnet; and also that the reason given for accepting the discipline of love is that experience shows how it "hallows and makes pure all gentle hearts." in such a love poem--the object of which might very well have been jesus--i seem to find more of the spirit of his religion, whereby he binds his disciples to the father that ruled within him, till they too feel the bond of parentage as deeply as himself and become sons with him of his father;--more of that binding power of jesus is for me expressed in this fine sonnet than in luther's catechism. the religion that enables a great artist to write of love in this strain, is the religion of docility, of the meek and lowly heart. for michael angelo was not a man by nature of a meek and lowly heart, any more than colet was a man naturally saintly or than luther was a man naturally refined. but because michael angelo thus prefers the kingdom of heaven to external beauty, one must not suppose that he, its arch high-priest, despised it. nobody had a more profound respect for the thing of beauty, whether it was the creation of god or man. he said: "nothing makes the soul so pure, so religious, as the endeavour to create something perfect; for god is perfection, and whoever strives for perfection, strives for something that is god-like." now we can perceive how the same spirit worked in a great artist, not at nuremberg or london, but at rome, the centre of the world, where a borgia could be pope. ix erasmus, the typical humanist, the man who loved humanity so much that he felt that his love for it might tempt him to fight against god, travelled from the one world to the other; passed from the society of cardinals and princes to the seclusion of burgher homes in london, or to chat with dürer at antwerp. he belonged perhaps to neither world at heart; but how greatly his love and veneration of the one exceeded his admiration and sense of the practical utility of the other, a comparison of his sketch of colet with such a note as this from his new testament makes abundantly plain: "i saw with my own eyes pope julius ii. at bologna, and afterwards at rome, marching at the head of a triumphal procession as if he were pompey or cæsar. st. peter subdued the world with faith, not with arms or soldiers or military engines. st. peter's successors would win as many victories as st. peter won if they had peter's spirit." but we must not forget that the book in which these notes appeared was published with the approval of a pope, and that he and others sought its author for advice as to how to cope best with their more hot-headed enemy martin luther. we must also remember that we are told that colet "was not very hard on priests and monks who only sinned with women. he did not make light of impurity, but thought it less criminal than spite and malice and envy and vanity and ignorance. the loose sort were at least made human and modest by their very faults, and he regarded avarice and arrogance as blacker sins in a priest than a hundred concubines." this spirit was not that of the reformation which came to stop, yet it existed and was widespread at that time; it was i think the spirit which either formed or sustained most of the great artists. at any rate it both formed and sustained albert dürer. yet the true nature of these ideas, derived from jesus, could not be understood even by colet, even by erasmus. for them it was tradition which gave value and assured truth to christ's ideas, not the truth of those ideas which gave value to the traditions and legends concerning him. the value of those ideas was felt, sometimes nearer, sometimes further off; it was loved and admired; their lives were apprehended by it, and spent in illustrating and studying it, as were also those of albert dürer and michael angelo. to understand the life and work of such men, we must form some conception of the true nature and value of those ideas, as i have striven to do in this chapter. otherwise we shall merely admire and love them, as they admired and loved jesus; and it has now become a point of honour with educated men not only to love and admire, but to make the effort to understand. even they desired to do this. and i think we may rejoice that the present time gives us some advantage over those days, at least in this respect. x and lastly, in order to bring us back to our main subject, let us quote from a stray leaf of a lost ms. book of dürer's, which contains the description of his father's death. ... desired. so the old wife helped him up, and the night-cap on his head had suddenly become wet with drops of sweat. then he asked to drink, so she gave him a little reinfell wine. he took a very little of it, and then desired to get into bed again and thanked her. and when he had got into bed he fell at once into his last agony. the old wife quickly kindled the candle for him and repeated to him s. bernard's verses, and ere she had said the third he was gone. god be merciful to him! and the young maid, when she saw the change, ran quickly to my chamber and woke me, but before i came down he was gone. i saw the dead with great sorrow, because i had not been worthy to be with him at his end. and thus in the night before s. matthew's eve my father passed away, in the year above mentioned (sept. , ) --the merciful god help me also to a happy end--and he left my mother an afflicted widow behind him. he was ever wont to praise her highly to me, saying what a good wife she was, wherefore i intend never to forsake her. i pray you for god's sake, all ye my friends, when you read of the death of my father, to remember his soul with an "our father" and an "ave maria"; and also for your own sake, that we may so serve god as to attain a happy life and the blessing of a good end. for it is not possible for one who has lived well to depart ill from this world, for god is full of compassion. through which may he grant us, after this pitiful life, the joy of everlasting salvation--in the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, at the beginning and at the end, one eternal governor. amen. the last sentences of this may seem to share in the character of the vain repetitions of words with which professed believers are only too apt to weary and disgust others. they are in any case commonplaces: the image has taken the place of the object; the father in heaven is not considered so much as the paternal governor of the inner life as the ruler of a future life and of this world. the use of such phrases is as much idolatry as the worship of statue and picture, or as little, if the words are repeated, as i think in this case they were, out of a feeling of awe and reverence for preceding mental impressions and experiences, and not because their repetition in itself was counted for righteousness. their use, if this was so, is no more to be found fault with than the contemplation of pictures or statues of holy personages in order to help the mind to attend to their ensample, or the reading of a poem, to fill the mind with ennobling emotions. idolatry is natural and right in children and other simple souls among primitive peoples or elsewhere. it is a stage in mental development. lovers pass through the idolatrous stage of their passion just as children cut their teeth. it is a pity to see individuals or nations remain childish in this respect just as much as in any other, or to see them return to it in their decrepitude. but a temper, a spirit, an influence cannot easily be apprehended apart from examples and images; and perhaps the clearest reason is only the exercise of an infinitely elastic idolatry, which with sprightly efficiency finds and worships good in everything, just as the devout, in dürer's youth, found sermons in stones, carved stones representing saint, bishop, or virgin. and dürer all his life long continued to produce pictures and engravings which were intended to preach such sermons. goethe admirably remarks: "_superstition_ is the poetry of life; the poet therefore suffers no harm from being _superstitious_." (aberglaube.) superstition and idolatry are an expenditure of emotion of a kind and degree which the true facts would not warrant; poetry when least superstitious is a like exercise of the emotions in order to raise and enhance them; superstition when most poetical unconsciously effects the same thing. this glimpse he gives of the way in which death visited his home, and how the visitation impressed him, is coloured and glows with that temper of docility which made colet school himself so severely, and was the source of michael angelo's so fervent outpourings. and all through the accounts which remain of his life, we may trace the same spirit ever anew setting him to school, and renewing his resolution to learn both from his feelings and from his senses. xi as i took a sentence from michael angelo, i will now take a sentence from dürer, one showing strongly that evangelical strain so characteristic of him, born of his intuitive sense for human solidarity. after an argument, which will be found on page , he concludes: "it is right, therefore, for one man to teach another. he that doeth so joyfully, upon him shall much be bestowed by god."[ ] these last words, like the last phrases of my former quotation from him, may stand perhaps in the way of some, as nowadays they may easily sound glib or irreverent. but are we less convinced that only tasks done joyfully, as labours of love, deserve the reward of fuller and finer powers, and obtain it? when dürer thought of god, he did not only think of a mythological personage resembling an old king; he thought of a mind, an intention, "for god is perfect in goodness." words so easily come to obscure what they were meant to reveal; and if we think how the notion of perfect goodness rules and sways such a man's mind, we shall not wonder that he did not stumble at the omnipotency which revolts us, cowed as we are by the presence of evil. the old gentleman dressed like a king;--this was not the part of his ideas about god which occupied dürer's mind. he accepted it, but did not think about it: it filled what would otherwise have been a blank in his mind and in the minds of those about him. but he was constantly anxious about what he ought to do and study in order to fulfil the best in himself, and about what ought to be done by his town, his nation, and the civilisation that then was, in order to turn man's nature and the world to an account answerable to the beauty of their fairer aspects. god was the will that commanded that "consummation devoutly to be wished." obedience to his law revealed in the bible was the means by which this command could be carried out; and to a man turning from the church as it then existed to the newly translated bible texts, the commands of god as declared in those texts seemed of necessity reason itself compared with the commands of the popes; were, in fact, infinitely more reasonable, infinitely more akin to a good man's mind and will. luther's revolt is for us now characterised by those elements in it which proved inadequate--were irrational; but then these were insignificant in comparison with the light which his downright honesty shed on the monstrous and amazingly irrational church. this huge closed society of bigots and worldlings which arrogated to itself all powers human and divine, and used them according to the lusts and intemperance of an alexander borgia, a julius ii., and a leo x., was that farce perception of which made rabelais shake the world with laughter, and which roused such consuming indignation in luther and calvin that they created the gloomy puritanical asylums in which millions of germans, english, and americans were shut up for two hundred years, as matthew arnold puts it. but dürer was not so immured: even luther at heart neither was himself, nor desired that others should be, prevented from enjoying the free use of their intellectual powers. it was because he was less perspicacious than erasmus that he did not see that this was what he was inevitably doing in his wrath and in his haste. xii erasmus was, perhaps, the man in europe who at that time displayed most docility; the man whom neither sickness, the desire for wealth and honour, the hope to conquer, the lust to engage in disputes, nor the adverse chances that held him half his life in debt and necessitous straits, and kept him all his life long a vagrant, constantly upon the road--the man in whom none of these things could weaken a marvellous assiduity to learn and help others to learn. he it was who had most kinship with dürer among the artists then alive; for dürer is very eminent among them for this temper of docility. it is interesting to see how he once turned to erasmus in a devout meditation, written in the journal he kept during his journey to the netherlands. his voice comes to us from an atmosphere charged with the electric influence of the greatest reformer, martin luther, who had just disappeared, no man knew why or whither; though all men suspected foul play. in his daily life, by sweetness of manner, by gentle dignity and modesty, dürer showed his religion, the admiration and love that bound his life, in a way that at all times and in all places commands applause. the burning indignation of the following passage may in times of spiritual peace or somnolence appear over-wrought and uncouth. we must remember that all that dürer loved had been bound by his religion to the teaching and inspiration of jesus, and had become inseparable from it. all that he loved--learning, clear and orderly thought, honesty, freedom to express the worship of his heart without its being turned to a mockery by cynical monk, priest, or prelate;--these things directly, and indirectly art itself, seemed to him threatened by the corruption of the papal power. we must remember this; for we shall naturally feel, as erasmus did, that the path of martyrdom was really a short cut, which a wider view of the surrounding country would have shown him to be likely to prove the longest way in the end. indeed the world is not altogether yet arrived where he thought erasmus could bring it in less than two years. and luther himself returned to the scene and was active, without any such result, a dozen years and more. oh all ye pious christian men, help me deeply to bewail this man, inspired of god, and to pray him yet again to send us an enlightened man. oh erasmus of rotterdam, where wilt thou stop? behold how the wicked tyranny of worldly power, the might of darkness, prevails. hear, thou knight of christ! ride on by the side of the lord jesus. guard the truth. attain the martyr's crown. already indeed art thou a little old man, and myself have heard thee say that thou givest thyself but two years more wherein thou mayest still be fit to accomplish somewhat. lay out the same well for the good of the gospel, and of the true christian faith, and make thyself heard. so, as christ says, shall the gates of hell in no wise prevail against thee. and if here below thou wert to be like thy master christ, and sufferest infamy at the hands of the liars of this time, and didst die a little sooner, then wouldst thou the sooner pass from death unto life and be glorified in christ. for if thou drinkest of the cup which he drank of, _with him shalt thou reign and judge with justice those who_ have _dealt unrighteously_. oh! erasmus! cleave to this, that god himself may be thy praise, even as it is written of david. for thou mayest, yea, verily thou mayest overthrow goliath. because god stands by the holy christian church, even as he alone upholds the roman church, according to his godly will. may he help us to everlasting salvation, who is god the father, the son, and holy ghost, one eternal god! amen!! "with him shalt thou reign and judge with justice those that have dealt unrighteously." this will seem to many a mere cry for revenge; and so perhaps it was. still it may have been, as it seems to me to have been, uttered rather in the spirit of moses' "forgive their sin--and if not, blot me, i pray thee, out of thy book"; or the "heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away" of jesus. if the necessity for victory was uppermost, the opportunity for revenge may scarcely have been present to dürer's mind. it is now more generally recognised than in luther's day that however sweet vengeance may be, it is not admirable, either in god or man. the total impression produced by dürer's life and work must help each to decide for himself which sense he considers most likely. the truth, as in most questions of history, remains for ever in the balance, and cannot be ascertained. xiii i have called docility the necessary midwife of genius, for so it is; and religion is a discipline that constrains us to learn. the religion of jesus constrains us to learn the most difficult things, binds us to the most arduous tasks that the mind of man sets itself, as a lover is bound by his affection to accomplish difficult feats for his mistress' sake. such tasks as michael angelo and dürer set themselves require that the lover's eagerness and zest shall not be exhausted; and to keep them fresh and abundant, in spite of cross circumstances, a discipline of the mind and will is required. this is what they found in the worship of jesus. the influence of this religious hopefulness and self-discipline on the creative power prevents its being exhausted, perverted, or embittered; and in order that it may effect this perfectly, that influence must be abundant not only within the artist, as it was in michael angelo and dürer, but in the world about them. this, then, is the value of religious influence to creative art: and though we to-day necessarily regard the personages, localities, and events of the creed as coming under the category of "things that are not," we may still as fervently hope and expect that the things of that category may "bring to nought the things that are," including the superstitious reverence for the creed and its unprovable statements; for has not the victory in human things often been with the things that were not, but which were thus ardently desired and expected? to inquire which of those things are best calculated to advance and nourish creative power, and in what manner, should engage the artist's attention far more than it has of late years. for what he loves, what he hopes, and what he expects would seem, if we study past examples, to exercise as important an influence on a man's creative power as his knowledge of, and respect for, the materials and instruments which he controls do upon his executive capacity. the universe in which man finds himself may be evil, but not everything it contains is so: then it must for ever remain our only wisdom to labour to transform those parts which we judge to be evil into likeness or conformity to those we judge to be good: and surely he who neglects the forces of hope and adoration in that effort, neglects the better half of his practical strength? the central proposition of christianity, that this end can only be attained by contemplation and imitation of an example, is, we shall in another place (pp. [ - ]) find, maintained as true in regard to art by dürer, and by reynolds, our greatest writer on aesthetics. these great artists, so dissimilar in the outward aspects of their creations, agree in considering that the only way of advancement open to the aspirant is the attempt to form himself on the example of others, by imitating them not slavishly or mechanically, but in the same spirit in which they imitated their forerunners: even as the christian is bound to seek union with christ in the same spirit or way in which jesus had achieved union with his father--that is, by laying down life to take it again, in meekness and lowliness of heart. docility is the sovran help to perfection for dürer and reynolds, and more or less explicitly for all other great artists who have treated of these questions. footnotes: [footnote : of course all that may have been meant by the phrase "the evangelist of art" is that dürer illustrated the narrative of the passion; but by this he is not distinguished from many others, and the phrase is suggestive of far more.] [footnote : froude's "life of erasmus," lecture vi.] [footnote : wordsworth's translation,] [footnote : "literary remains of albrecht dürer," p. .] part ii dÜrer's life in relation to the times in which he lived [illustration] chapter i dÜrer's origin, youth and education i who was dürer? he has told us himself very simply, and more fully than men of his type generally do; for he was not, like montaigne, one whose chief study was himself. yet, though he has done this, it is not easy for us to fully understand him. it is perhaps impossible to place oneself in the centre of that horizon which was of necessity his and belonged to his day, a vast circle from which men could no more escape than we from ours; this cage of iron ignorance in which every human soul is trapped, and to widen and enlarge which every heroic soul lives and dies. this cage appeared to his eyes very different from what it does to ours; yet it has always been a cage, and is only lost sight of at times when the light from within seems to flow forth, and with its radiant sapphire heaven of buoyancy and desire to veil the eternal bars. it is well to remind ourselves that ignorance was the most momentous, the most cruel condition of his life, as of our own; and that the effort to relieve himself of its pressure, either by the pursuit of knowledge, or by giving spur and bridle to the imagination that it might course round him dragging the great woof of illusion, and tent him in the ethereal dream of the soul's desire, was the constant effort and resource of his days. ii at the age of fifty-three he took the pen and commenced: in the year , i, albrecht dürer the younger, have put together from my father's papers the facts as to whence he was, how he came hither, lived here, and drew to a happy end. god be gracious to him and us! amen. like his relatives, albrecht dürer the elder was born in the kingdom of hungary, in a little village named eytas, situated not far from a little town called gyula, eight miles below grosswardein; and his kindred made their living from horses and cattle. my father's father was called anton dürer; he came as a lad to a goldsmith in the said little town and learnt the craft under him. he afterwards married a girl named elizabeth, who bare him a daughter, katharina, and three sons. the first son he named albrecht; he was my dear father. he too became a goldsmith, a pure and skilful man. the second son he called ladislaus; he was a saddler. his son is my cousin niklas dürer, called niklas the hungarian, who is settled at köln. he also is a goldsmith, and learnt the craft here in nürnberg with my father. the third son he called john. him he set to study, and he afterwards became a parson at grosswardein, and continued there thirty years. so albrecht dürer, my dear father, came to germany. he had been a long time with the great artists in the netherlands. at last he came hither to nürnberg in the year, as reckoned from the birth of christ, , on s. elogius' day (june ). and on the same day philip pirkheimer had his marriage feast at the veste, and there was a great dance under the big lime tree. for a long time after that my dear father, albrecht dürer, served my grandfather, old hieronymus holper, till the year reckoned after the birth of christ. my grandfather then gave him his daughter, a pretty upright girl, fifteen years old, named barbara; and he was wedded to her eight days before s. vitus (june ). it may also be mentioned that my grandmother, my mother's mother, was the daughter of oellinger of weissenburg, and her name was kunigunde. and my dear father had by his marriage with my dear mother the following children born--which i set down here word for word as he wrote it in his book: here follow eighteen items, only one of which, the third, is of interest. . item, in the year after the birth of christ, in the sixth hour of the day, on s. prudentia's day, a tuesday in rogation week (may ), my wife bare me my second son. his godfather was anton koburger, and he named him albrecht after me, &c. &c. all these, my brothers and sisters, my dear father's children, are now dead, some in their childhood, others as they were growing up; only we three brothers still live, so long as god will, namely: i, albrecht, and my brother andreas and my brother hans, the third of the name, my father's children. this albrecht dürer the elder passed his life in great toil and stern hard labour, having nothing for his support save what he earned with his hand for himself, his wife and his children, so that he had little enough. he underwent moreover manifold afflictions, trials, and adversities. but he won just praise from all who knew him, for he lived an honourable, christian life, was a man of patient spirit, mild and peaceable to all, and very thankful towards god. for himself he had little need of company and worldly pleasures; he was also of few words, and was a god-fearing man. iii we shall, i think, often do well, when considering the superb ostentation of dürer's workmanship, with its superabundance of curve and flourish, its delight in its own ease and grace, to think of those young men among his ancestors who made their living from horses on the wind-swept plains of hungary. the perfect control which it is the delight of lads brought up and developing under such conditions to obtain over the galloping steed, is similar to the control which it gratified dürer to perfect over the dashing stroke of pen or brush, which, however swift and impulsive, is yet brought round and performs to a nicety a predetermined evolution. and the way he puts a little portrait of himself, finely dressed, into his most important pictures, may also carry our thoughts away to the banks of the danube where it winds and straggles over the steppes, to picture some young horse-breeder, whose costume and harness are his only wealth; who rides out in the morning as the cock-bustard that, having preened himself, paces before the hen birds on the plains that he can scour when his wings, which are slow in the air, join with his strong legs to make nothing of grassy leagues on leagues. and first, this life with its free sweeping horizon, and the swallow-like curves of its gallops for the sake of galloping, or those which the long lashes of its whips trace in deploying, and which remind us of the lithe tendrils in which terminate dürer's ornamental flourishes; this life in which the eye is trained to watch the lasso, as with well-calculated address it swirls out and drops over the frighted head of an unbroken colt;--this life is first pent up in a little goldsmith's shop, in a country even to-day famous for the beauty and originality of its peasant jewelry: and here it is trained to follow and answer the desire of the bright dark eyes of girls in love;--in love, where love and the beauty that inspires it are the gifts of nature most guarded and most honoured, from which are expected the utmost that is conceived of delicacy in delight by a virile and healthy race. "a pure and skilful man." patient already has this life become, for a jeweller can scarcely be made of impatient stuff; patient even before the admixture of german blood when albert the elder married his barbara holper. the two eldest sons were made jewellers; but the third, john, is set to study and becomes a parson, as if already learning and piety stood next in the estimation of this life after thrift, skill and the creation of ornament. and germany boasts of this life beyond that of any of her sons; but her blood was probably of small importance to the efficiency that it attained to in the great albert dürer. the german name of dürer or thürer, a door, is quite as likely to be the translation, correct or otherwise, of some hungarian name, as it is an indication that the family had originally emigrated from germany. in any case, a large admixture by intermarriage of slavonic blood would correspond to the unique distinction among germans, attained in the dignity, sweetness and fineness which signalised dürer. of course, in such matters no sane man looks for proof; but neither will he reject a probable suggestion which may help us to understand the nature of an exceptional man. iv dürer continues to speak of his childhood: and my father took special pleasure in me, because he saw that i was diligent to learn. so he sent me to school, and when i had learnt to read and write he took me away from it, and taught me the goldsmith's craft. but when i could work neatly, my liking drew me rather to painting than to goldsmith's work, so i laid it before my father; but he was not well pleased, regretting the time lost while i had been learning to be a goldsmith. still he let it be as i wished, and in (reckoned from the birth of christ) on s. andrew's day (november ) my father bound me apprentice to michael wolgemut, to serve him three years long. during that time god gave me diligence, so that i learnt well, but i had much to suffer from his lads. when i had finished my learning my father sent me off, and i stayed away four years till he called me back again. as i had gone forth in the year after easter (easter sunday was april ), so now i came back again in as it is reckoned after whitsuntide (whit sunday was may ). erasmus tells us that german disorders were "partly due to the natural fierceness of the race, partly to the division into so many separate states, and partly to the tendency of the people to serve as mercenaries." that there were many swaggerers and bullies about, we learn from dürer's prints. in every crowd these gentlemen in leathern tights, with other ostentatious additions to their costume, besides poniards and daggers to emphasise the brutal male, strut straddle-legged and self-assured; and of course raw lads and loutish prentices yielded them the sincerest flattery. we can well understand that the model boy, to whom "god had given diligence," with his long hair lovely as a girl's, and his consciousness of being nearly always in the right, had much to suffer from his fellow prentices. besides, very likely, he already consorted with willibald pirkheimer and his friends, who were the aristocrats of the town. and though he may have been meek and gentle, there must have appeared in everything he did and was an assertion of superiority, all the more galling for its being difficult to define and as ready to blush as the innocent truth herself. v it is much argued as to where dürer went when his father "sent him off." we have the direct statement of a contemporary, christopher scheurl, that he visited colmar and basle; and what is well nigh as good, for a visit to venice. for scheurl wrote in : _qui quum nuper in italiam rediset, tum a venetis, tum a bononiensibus artificibus, me saepe interprete cansalutatus est alter apelles._ "when he lately _returned_ to italy, he was often greeted as a second apelles, by the craftsmen both of venice and bologna (i acting as their interpreter)." before we accept any of these statements it is well to remember how easily quite intimate friends make mistakes as to where one has been and when; even about journeys that in one's own mind either have been or should have been turning-points in one's life. for they will attribute to the past experiences which were never ours, or forget those which we consider most unforgettable. no one who has paid attention to these facts will consider that historians prove so much or so well as they often fancy themselves to do. in the present case what is really remarkable is, that none of these sojournings of the young artist in foreign art centres seem to have produced such a change in his art as can now be traced with assurance. at colmar he saw the masterpieces and the brothers of the "admirable martin," as he always calls schongauer. at basle there is still preserved a cut wood-block representing st. jerome, on the back of which is an authentic signature; there is besides a series of uncut wood-blocks, the designs on which it is easy to imagine to have been produced by the travelling journeyman that dürer then seemed to the printers and painters of the towns he passed through. by those processes by which anything can be made of anything, much has been done to give substantiality to the implied first visit to venice. there are drawings which were probably made there, representing ladies resembling those in pictures by carpaccio as to their garments, the dressing of their hair, and the type of their faces. of course it is not impossible that such a lady or ladies may have visited nuremberg, or been seen by the young wanderer at basle or elsewhere. and the resemblance between a certain drawing in the albertina and one of the carved lions in red marble now on the piazzetta de' leoni does not count for much, when we consider that there is nothing in the workmanship of these heads to suggest that they were done after sculptured originals;--the manes, &c., being represented by an easy penman's convention, as they might have been whether the models were living or merely imagined. nor is there any good reason for dating the drawings of sites in the tyrol, supposed to have been sketched on the road, rather this year than another. lastly, the famous sentence in a letter written from venice during dürer's authenticated visit there, in , may be construed in more than one sense. the passage is generally rather curtailed when quoted. he (giovanni bellini) is very old, but is still the best painter of them all. the thing that pleased me so well eleven years ago, pleases me now no more; if i had not seen it for myself, i should never have believed any one who told me. you must know, too, that there are many better painters here than master jacob (jacopo de' barbari) is abroad; yet anton kolb would swear an oath that no better painter than jacob lives. if "the thing that pleased so well eleven years before" was a picture or pictures by master jacob or by andrea mantegna, as is usually supposed, the phrase, "if i had not seen it for myself i should never have believed any one who told me" is extremely strange. it is not usual to expect to change one's opinion of a work of art by hearsay, or to imagine others, when they have not done so, predicting with assurance that we shall change a decided opinion upon the merits of a work of art; yet one of these two suppositions seems certainly to be implied. i do not say that it is impossible to conceive of either, only that such cursory reference to such conceptions is extremely strange. again, if work by jacopo de' barbari is referred to, it might very well have been seen elsewhere than at venice eleven years ago; and indeed the last sentence in the passage might be taken to imply as much. to me at least the truth appears to be that these hints, which we may well have misunderstood, point to something which the imagination is only too delighted to entertain. it is a charming dream--the young dürer, just of age, trudging from town to town, designing wood-blocks for a printer here, questioning the brothers of the "admirable martin" there, or again painting a sign in yet another place, such as holbein painted for the schoolmaster at basle; and at last arriving in venice--venice untouched as yet by the conflicting ideals that were even then being brought to birth anew: mediaeval venice, such as we see her in the pictures of gentile bellini and carpaccio. one painting of real importance in the work of dürer remains to us from this period: the greatest of modern critics has described it and its effect on him in a way which would make any second attempt impertinent. i consider as invaluable albrecht dürer's portrait of himself painted in , when he was in his twenty-second year. it is a bust half life-size, showing the two hands and the forearms. crimson cap with short narrow strings, the throat bare to below the collar bone, an embroidered shirt, the folds of the sleeves tied underneath with peach-coloured ribbons, and a blue-grey, fur-edged cloak with yellow laces, compose a dainty dress befitting a well-bred youth. in his hand he significantly carries a blue _eryngo_, called in german "mannstreu." he has a serious, youthful face, the mouth and chin covered with an incipient beard. the whole splendidly drawn, the composition simple, grand and harmonious; the execution perfect and in every way worthy of dürer, though the colour is very thin, and has cracked in some places. such is the figure which we may imagine making its way among the crowd in gentile bellini's procession of the "true cross" before st. mark's, with eyes all wonder and lips often consciously imprisoning the german tongue, which cannot make itself understood. how comes he so finely dressed, the son of the modest nuremberg goldsmith? has he won the friendship of some rich burgher prince at augsburg, or strasburg, or basle? has he been enabled to travel in his suite as far as venice? or has he earned a large sum for painting some lord's or lady's portrait, which, if it were not lost, would now stand as the worthy compeer of this splendid portrait of the "true man" far from home; true to that home only, or true to agnes frey?--for some suppose the sprig of eryngo to signify that he was already betrothed to her. or perhaps he has joined willibald pirkheimer at basle or elsewhere, and they two, crossing the alps together, have become friends for life? will they part here ere long, the young burgher prince to proceed to the universities of padua and mantua, the future great painter to trudge back over the alps, getting a lift now and again in waggon or carriage or on pillion? let the man of pretentious science say it is bootless to ask such questions; those who ask them know that it is delightful; know that it is the true way to make the past live for them; guess that would historians more generally ask them, their books would be less often dry as dust. vi it may be that to this period belongs the meeting with jacopo de' barbari to which a passage in his ms. books (now in the british museum) refers: and that already he began to be exercised on the subject of a canon of proportions for the human figure. in the chapter which i devote to his studies on this subject it will be seen how the determination to work the problem out by experiment, since jacopo refused to reveal, and vitruvius only hinted at the secret, led to his discovering something of far more value than it is probable that either could have given him. and yet the belief that there was a hidden secret probably hindered him from fully realising the importance of his discovery, or reaping such benefit from it as he otherwise might have done. how often has not the belief that those of old time knew what is ignored to-day, prevented men from taking full advantage of the conquests over ignorance that they have made themselves! because what they know is not so much as they suppose might be or has been known, they fail to recognise the most that has yet been known--the best foundation for a new building that has yet been discovered--and search for what they possess, and fail to rival those whose superiority over themselves is a delusion of their own hearts. so early dürer may have begun this life-long labour which, though not wholly vain, was never really crowned to the degree it merited: while others living in more fertile lands reaped what they had not sown, he could only plough and scatter seed. as raphael is supposed to have said, all that was lacking to him was knowledge of the antique. perhaps many will blame me for writing, unlearned, as i am; in my opinion they are not wrong; they speak truly. for i myself had rather hear and read a learned man and one famous in this art than write of it myself, being unlearned. howbeit i can find none such who hath written aught about how to form a canon of human proportions, save one man, jacopo (de' barbari) by name, born at venice and a charming painter. he showed me the figures of a man and woman, which he had drawn according to a canon of proportions; and now i would rather be shown what he meant (_i.e._, upon what principles the proportions were constructed) than behold a new kingdom. if i had it (his canon), i would put it into print in his honour, for the use of all men. then, however, i was still young and had not heard of such things before. howbeit i was very fond of art, so i set myself to discover how such a canon might be wrought out. for this aforesaid jacopo, as i clearly saw, would not explain to me the principles upon which he went. accordingly i set to work on my own idea and read vitruvius, who writes somewhat about the human figure. thus it was from, or out of, these two men aforesaid that i took my start, and thence, from day to day, have i followed up my search according to my own notions. vii when i returned home, hans prey treated with my father and gave me his daughter, mistress agnes by name, and with her he gave me two hundred florins, and we were wedded; it was on monday before margaret's (july ) in the year . the general acceptance of the gouty and irascible pirkheimer's defamation of frau dürer as a miser and a shrew called forth a display of ingenuity on the part of professor thausing to prove the contrary. and i must confess that if he has not quite done that, he seems to me to have very thoroughly discredited pirkheimer's ungallant abuse. sir martin conway bids us notice that dürer speaks of his "dear father" and his "dear mother" and even of his "dear father-in-law," but that he never couples that adjective with his wife's name. it is very dangerous to draw conclusions from such a fact, which may be merely an accident: or may, if it represents a habit of dürer's, bear precisely the opposite significance. for some men are proud to drop such outward marks of affection, in cases where they know that every day proves to every witness that they are not needed. he also considers that her portraits show her, when young, to have been "empty-headed," when older, a "frigid shrew." for my own part, if the portrait at bremen (see opposite) represents "mein angnes," as its resemblance to the sketch at vienna (see illus.) convinces me it does, i cannot accept either of these conclusions arrived at by the redoubtable science of physiognomy. the bremen portrait shows us a refined, almost an eccentric type of beauty; one can easily believe it to have been possessed by a person of difficult character, but one certainly who must have had compensating good qualities. the "mein angnes" on the sketch may well be set against the absent "dears" in the other mentions her husband made of her, especially when we consider that he couples this adjective with the emperor's name, "my dear prince max." of her relations to him nothing is known except what pirkheimer wrote in his rage, when he was writing things which are demonstrably false. we know, however, that she was capable, pious, and thrifty; and on several occasions, in the netherlands, shared in the honours done to her husband. it is natural to suppose that as they were childless, there may have existed a moral equivalent to this infertility; but also, with a man such as we know dürer to have been, and a woman in every case not bad, have we not reason to expect that this moral barrenness which may have afflicted their union was in some large measure conquered by mutual effort and discipline, and bore from time to time those rarer flowers whose beauty and sweetness repay the conscious culture of the soul? it seems difficult to imagine that a man who succeeded in charming so many different acquaintances, and in remaining life-long friends with the testy and inconsiderate pirkheimer, should have altogether failed to create a relation kindly and even beautiful with his agnes, whose portrait we surely have at her best in the drawing at bremen. considerations as to the general position of married women in those days need not prevent us of our natural desire to think as well as possible of dürer and his circumstances. we know that for a great many men the wife was not simply counted among their goods and chattels, or regarded as a kind of superior servant. we are able to take a peep at many a fireside of those days, where the relations that obtained, however different in certain outward characters, might well shame the greater number of the respectable even in the present year of grace. we know what luther was in these respects; and have rather more than less reason to expect from the refined and gracious dürer the creation of a worthy and kindly home. why should we expect him to have been less successful than his parents in these respects? [illustration: agnes frey. dÜrer's wife (?)--silver-point drawing heightened with white on a dun paper. kunsthalle, bremen] [illustration: "mein angnes"--pen sketch of the artist's wife, in the albertina at vienna] viii some time after the marriage it happened that my father was so ill with dysentery that no one could stop it. and when he saw death before his eyes he gave himself willingly to it, with great patience, and he commended my mother to me, and exhorted me to live in a manner pleasing to god. he received the holy sacraments and passed away christianly (as i have described at length in another book) in the year , after midnight, before s. matthew's eve (september ). god be gracious and merciful to him. the only leaf of the "other book" referred to that has survived is that which i have already quoted at length. chapter ii the world in which he lived i now let us consider what the world was like in which this virile, accurate and persevering spirit had grown up. over and over again, the story of the new birth has been told; how it began in france, and met an untimely fate at the hands of english invaders, then took refuge in italy, where it grew to be the wonder of the world; and how the corruption of the ruling classes and of the church, with the indignation and rebellion that this gave rise to, combined to frustrate the promise of earlier days. when the roman empire gradually became an anarchy of hostile fragments, every large monastery, every small town, girded itself with walls and tended to become the germ of a new civilisation. popes, kings, and great lords, haunted by reminiscence of the vanished empire, made spasmodic attempts to subject such centres to their rule and tax them for their maintenance. in the first times, the church--the see of rome--made by far the most successful attempt to get its supremacy acknowledged, and had therefore fewer occasions to resort to violence. it was more respected and more respectable than the other powers which claimed to rule and tax these immured and isolated communities dotted over europe; but as time went on, the church became less and less beneficent, more and more tyrannical. meanwhile kings and emperors, having learned wisdom by experience, found themselves in a position to take advantage of the growing bad odour of the church; and by favouring the civil communities and creating a stable hierarchy among the class of lords and barons from which they had emerged, were at last able to face the church, with its _protégés,_ the religious communities, on an equal footing. the religious communities, owing to the vow of celibacy, had become more and more stagnant, while the civil communities increased in power to adapt themselves to the age. all that was virile and creative combined in the towns; all that was inadequate, sterile, useless, coagulated in the monasteries, which thus became cesspools, and ultimately took on the character of festering sores by which the civil bodies which had at first been purged into them were endangered. luther tells us how there was a bishop of würzburg who used to say when he saw a rogue, "'to the cloister with you. thou art useless to god or man.' he meant that in the cloister were only hogs and gluttons, who did nothing but eat and drink and sleep, and were of no more profit than as many rats." and the loathing that another of these sties created in the young erasmus, and the difficulty he had to escape from the clutches of its inmates--never feeling safe till the pope had intervened--show us that by their wealth and by the engine of their malice, the confessional (which they had usurped from the regular clergy), they were as formidable as they were useless. it became necessary that this antiquated system of social drainage should be superseded. in england and germany it was swept away. in centres like nuremberg, the desire for reformation and the horror of false doctrine were grounded in practical experience of intolerable inconveniences, not in a clear understanding of the questions at issue. intellectually, the leaders of the reformation had no better foundation than those they opposed: for them, as for their opponents, the question was not to be solved by an appeal to evident truths and experience, but to historical documents and traditions, supposed, to be infallible. for a clear intelligence, there is nothing to choose between the infallibility of oecumenical councils or of popes, and that of the bible. both have been in their time the expression of very worthy and very human sentiments; both are incapable of rational demonstration. ii scattered over europe, wherever the free intelligence was waking and had rubbed her eyes, were men who desired that nuisances should be removed and reforms operated without schism or violence. to these erasmus spoke. his policy was tentative, and did not proceed, like that of other parties, by declaring that a perfect solution was to hand. luther's action divided these honest, upright souls, and would-be children of light, into three unequal camps. as a rule the downright, headstrong, and impatient became reformers. the respectful, cautious and long-suffering, such as more, warham, and adrian iv., clung to the roman establishment, were martyred for it or broke their hearts over it. erasmus and a handful of others remained true to a tentative policy, and, compared with their contemporaries, were meek and lowly in heart--became children of light. to them we now look back wistfully, and wish that they might have been, if not as numerous as the churchmen and beformers, at least a sufficient body to have made their influence an effective force, with the advantage of more light and more patience that was really theirs. but, alas! they only counted as the first dissolvent which set free more corrosive and detrimental acids. the exhilaration of action and battle was for others; for them the sad conviction that neither side deserved to be trusted with a victory. yet, beyond the world whose chief interest was the reformation, we may be sure that such men as charles v., michael angelo, rabelais, montaigne, and all those whom they may be taken to represent, were in essential agreement with erasmus. luther and machiavelli alone rejected the papacy as such: the latter's more stringent intellectual development led him also to discard every ideal motive or agent of reform for violent means. he was ready even to regard the passions of men like caesar borgia, tyrants in the fullest sense of the word, as the engines by which civilisation, learning, art, and manners, might be maintained. whereas luther appealed to the passions of common honest men, the middle classes in fact. it is easy to let either luther or machiavelli steal away our entire sympathy. on the one hand, no compromise, not even the slightest, seems possible with criminal ruffians such as a julius ii. and an alexander borgia; on the other hand, the power swollen by the tide of minor corruption, which such men ruled by might, did come into the hands of a leo x., an adrian iv.; and though that power was obviously tainted through and through, it might have been mastered and wielded in the cause of reform. erasmus hoped for this. even julius ii. protected him from the superiors of his convent. even julius ii. patronised michael angelo and raphael and everything that had a definite character in the way of creative power or scholarship; and could appreciate at least the respect which what he patronised commanded. he could appreciate the respect commanded by the austerity and virtue of those who rebelled against him and denounced his cynical abuse of all his powers, whether natural or official. he liked to think he had enemies worth beating. such a ruler is a sore temptation to a keen intellect. "everything great is formative," and this pope was colossal--a colossal bully and robber if you like--but the good he did by his patronage was real good, was practical. michael angelo and raphael could work as splendidly as they desired. erasmus was helped and encouraged. timid honesty is often petty, does nothing, criticises and finds fault with artists and with learning, runs after them like sancho panza after don quixote, is helpless and ridiculous and horribly in the way. leo x. was intelligent and well-meaning; wisdom herself might hope from such a man. be the throne he is sitting on as monstrous and corrupt a contrivance as it may, yet it is there, it does give him authority; he is on it and dominates the world. it is easy to say, "but the period of the renascence closed, its glory died away." suppose luther had been as subtle as he was whole-hearted, and had added to his force of character a delicacy and charm like that of st. francis; or suppose that erasmus instead of his schoolfellow adrian iv. had become pope; what a different tale there might have been to tell! who will presume to point out the necessity by which these things were thus and not otherwise? "regrets for what 'might have been' are proverbially idle," cries the historian from whom i have chiefly quoted. i do not recollect the proverb, unless he refers to "it is no use crying over spilt milk;" but in any case such regrets are far from being necessarily idle. "what might have been" is even generally "what ought to have been;" and no study has been or is likely to be so pregnant for us as the study of the contrast between "what was" and "what ought to have been," though such studies are inevitably mingled with regrets. we have every reason to regret that the reformation was so hasty and ill-considered, and that the papacy was as purblind as it was arrogant. the plant of the roman church machinery, which it had taken centuries to lay down, came into the hands of men who grossly ignored its function and the conditions of its working. they used its power partly for the benefit of the human race, by patronising art and scholarship; but chiefly in self-indulgence. if honest intelligence had been given control, a man so partially equipped for his task would not have been goaded into action; but only force, moral or physical, can act at a disadvantage; light and reason must have the advantage of dominant position to effect anything immediate. if they are not on the throne, all they can do is to sow seed, and bewail the present while looking forward to a better future. now, most educated men are for tolerance, and see as erasmus saw. we see that savonarola and luther were not so right as they thought themselves to be; we see that what they condemned as arrogancy and corruption is partly excusable--is in some measure a condition of efficiency in worldly spheres where one has to employ men already bad. true, the great princes and cardinals of those days not only connived at corruption and ruled by it, but often even professed it. still in every epoch, under all circumstances, the majority of those who have governed men have more or less cynically employed means that will not bear the light of day. while these magnificoes of the renascence do stand alone, or almost alone, by the ample generosity of their conception of the objects that power should be exerted in furtherance of; their outlook on life was more commensurate with the variety and competence of human nature than perhaps that of any ruling class has been before or since. as shakespeare is the amplest of poets, so were theirs the most fruitful of courts. from the great medicis to our own elizabeth they all partake of a certain grandiose vitality and variety of intention. iii greatness demands self-assertion; self-assertion is a great virtue even in a julius ii. there is a vast deal of humbug in the use we make of the word humility. we talk about christ's humility, but whose self-assertion has ever been more unmitigated? "i am the way, the truth, and the light." "learn of me that i am meek and lowly, and ye shall find rest to your souls." no doubt it is the quality of the self asserted that justifies in our eyes the assertion; humility then is not opposed to self-assertion. when michael angelo shows that he thinks himself the greatest artist in the world, he is not necessarily lacking in humility; nor is luther, asserting the authority of his conscience against the pope and emperor; nor dürer, saying to us in those little finely-dressed portraits with which he signs his pictures, "i am that i am--namely, one of the handsomest of men and the greatest artist north of the alps." or when erasmus lets us see that he thinks himself the most learned man living,--if he is the most learned, so much the better that he should know this also as well as the rest. the artist and the scholar were bound to feel gratitude for the corrupt but splendid church and courts, which gave them so much both in the way of maintenance and opportunity. it may be asked, has all the honesty and the not always evident purity of protestantism done so much for the world as those dissolute popes and princes? and the artist, judging with a hasty bias perhaps, is likely to answer no. iv for us nowadays the pith of history seems no more to be the lives of monarchs, or the fighting of battles, or even the deliberations of councils; these things we have more and more come to regard merely as tools and engines for the creation of societies, homes, and friends. and so, though religion and religious machinery dominated the life of those days, it is not in theological disputes, neither is it in oecumenical councils and popes, nor in sermons, reformers, and synods, that we find the essence of the soul's life. rather to us, the pictures, the statues, the books, the furniture, the wardrobes, the letters, and the scandals that have been left behind, speak to us of those days; for these we value them. and we are right, the value of the renaissance lies in these things, i say "the scandals" of those days; for a part of what comes under that head was perhaps the manifestation of a morality based on a wider experience; though its association with obvious vices and its opposition to the old and stale ideals gave it an illegitimate character; while the re-establishment of the more part of those ideals has perpetuated its reproach. there can be no intellectual charity if the machinery and special sentences of current morality are supposed to be final or truly adequate. their tentative and inadequate character, which every free intelligence recognises, is what endorses the wisdom of jesus', saying, "judge not that ye be not judged." ordinary honest and good citizens do not realise how much that is in every way superior to the gifts of any single one of themselves is yearly sacrificed and tortured for their preservation as a class. on what agonies of creative and original minds is the safety of their homes based? these respectable molochs who devour both the poor and the exceptionally gifted, and are so little better for their meal, were during the renascence for a time gainsaid and abashed; yet even then their engines, the traditional secular and ecclesiastic policies, were a foreign encumbrance with which the human spirit was loaded, and which helped to prevent it from reaping the full result of its mighty upheaval. to see things as they are, and above all to value them for what is most essential in them with regard to the development of our own characters;--that is, i take it, consciously or unconsciously, the main effort of the modern spirit. on the world, the flesh, and the devil, we have put new values; and it was the first assertion of these new values which caused the renascence. fine manners, fine clothes, and varied social interchange make the world admirable in our eyes, not at all a bogey to frighten us. health, frankness, and abundant exercise make the flesh a pure delight in our eyes; lastly, this new-born spirit has made "a moral of the devil himself," and so for us he has lost his terror. rabelais was right when he laughed the old outworn values down, and declared that women were in the first place female, men in the first place male; that the written word should be a self-expression, a sincerity, not a task or a catalogue or a penance, but, like laughter and speech, essentially human, making all men brothers, doing away with artificial barriers and distinctions, making the scholar shake in time with the toper, and doubling the divine up with the losel; bidding even the lady hold her sides in company with the harlot. eating and drinking were seen to be good in themselves; the eye and the nose and the palate were not only to be respected but courted; free love was better than married enmity. no rite, no church, no god, could annihilate these facts or restrain their influence any more than the sea could be tamed. dürer was touched with this spirit; we see it in his fine clothes, in his collector's rapacity, above all in his letters to his friend pirkheimer--a man more typical of that rabelaisian age than dürer and michael angelo, who were both of them not only modern men but men conservative of the best that had been--men in travail for the future, absorbed by the responsibility of those who create. pirkheimer, one year dürer's senior, was a gross fat man early in life, enjoying the clinking of goblets, the music of fork and knife, and the effrontery of obscene jests. a vain man, a soldier and a scholar, pedantic, irritable, but in earnest; a complimenter of emperors, a leader of the reform party, a partisan of luther's, the friend and correspondent of erasmus, the elective brother of dürer. the man was typical; his fellows were in all lands. dürer was surprised to find how many of them there were at venice--men who would delight pirkheimer and delight in him. "my friend, there are so many italians here who look exactly like you i don't know how it happens! ... men of sense and knowledge, good lute players and pipers, judges of painting, men of much noble sentiment and honest virtue; and they show me much honour and friendship." something of all this was doubtless in dürer too; but in him it was refined and harmonised by the sense and serious concern, not only for the things of to-day, but for those of to-morrow and yesterday; the sense of solidarity, the passion for permanent effect, eternal excellence. these things, in men like pirkheimer, still more in erasmus, and even in rabelais and montaigne, are not absent; but they are less stringent, less religious, than they are in a dürer or a michael angelo. chapter iii dÜrer at venice i there are several reasons which may possibly have led dürer to visit venice in . the fondaco dei tedeschi, or exchange of the german merchants at venice, had been burned down the winter before, and they were in haste to complete a new one. dürer may have received assurance that the commission to paint the altar-piece for the new chapel would be his did he desire it. at any rate he seems to have set to work on such a picture almost as soon as he arrived there. it is strange to think that giorgione and titian probably began to paint the frescoes on the facade while he was still at work in the chapel, or soon after he left. the plague broke out in nuremberg before he came away; but this is not likely to have been his principal motive for leaving home, as many richer men, such as his friend pirkheimer, from whom he borrowed money for the journey, stayed where they were. nor do dürer's letters reveal any alarm for his friend's, his mother's, his wife's, or his brother's safety. he took with him six small pictures, and probably a great number of prints, for venice was a first-rate market. ii the letters which follow are like a glimpse of a distant scene in a _camera obscura_, and, like life itself, they are full of repetitions and over-insistence on what is insignificant or of temporary interest. to-day they call for our patience and forbearance, and it will depend upon our imaginative activity in what degree they repay them; even as it depends upon our power of affectionate assimilation in what degree and kind every common day adds to our real possessions. i have made my citations as ample as possible, so as to give the reader a just idea of their character while making them centre as far as possible round points of special interest. _to the honourable, wise master wilibald pirkheimer, burgher of nürberg, my kind master_. venice, _january , ._ i wish you and yours many good, happy new years. my willing service, first of all, to you dear master pirkheimer! know that i am in good health; i pray god far better things than that for you. as to those pearls and precious stones which you gave me commission to buy, you must know that i can find nothing good or even worth its price. everything is snapped up by the germans who hang about the riva. they always want to get four times the value for anything, for they are the falsest knaves alive. no one need look for an honest service from any of them. some good fellows have warned me to beware of them, they cheat man and beast. you can buy better things at a lower price at frankfurt than at venice. [illustration: wilibald pirkheimer--charcoal drawing, dumesnil collection, paris _face p._ ] about the books which i was to order for you, the imhofs have already seen after them; but if there is anything else you want, let me know and i will attend to it for you with all zeal. would to god i could do you a right good service! gladly would i accomplish it, seeing, as i do, how much you do for me. and i pray you be patient with my debt, for indeed i think much oftener of it than you do. when god helps me home i will honourably repay you with many thanks; for i have a panel to paint for the germans for which they are to pay me a hundred and ten rhenish florins--it will not cost me as much as five. i shall have scraped it and laid on the ground and made it ready within eight days; then i shall at once begin to paint and, if god will, it shall be in its place above the altar a month after easter. * * * * * venice, _february _, . how i wish you were here at venice! there are so many nice men among the italians who seek my company more and more every day--which is very pleasing to one--men of sense and knowledge, good lute-players and pipers, judges of painting, men of much noble sentiment and 'honest virtue, and they show me much honour and friendship. on the other hand there are also amongst them some of the most false, lying, thievish rascals; i should never have believed that such were living in the world. if one did not know them, one would think them the nicest men the earth could show. for my own part i cannot help laughing at them whenever they talk to me. they know that their knavery is no secret but they don't mind. amongst the italians i have many good friends who warn me not to eat and drink with their painters. many of them are my enemies and they copy my work in the churches and wherever they can find it; and then they revile it and say that the style is not _antique_ and so not good. but giovanni bellini has highly praised me before many nobles. he wanted to have something of mine, and himself came to me and asked me to paint him something and he would pay well for it. and all men tell me what an upright man he is, so that i am really friendly with him. he is very old, but is still the best painter of them all. and that which so well pleased me eleven years ago pleases me no longer, if i had not seen it for myself i should not have believed any one who told me. you must know too that there are many better painters here than master jacob (jacopo de' barbari) is abroad (_wider darvsen meister j._), yet anton kolb would swear an oath that no better painter lives than jacob. others sneer at him, saying if he were good he would stay here, and so forth. i have only to-day begun to sketch in my picture, for my hands were so scabby (_grindig_) that i could do no work with them, but i have got them cured. now be lenient with me and don't get in a passion so easily, but be gentle like me. i don't know why you will not learn from me. my friend! i should like to know if any one of your loves is dead--that one close by the water for instance, or the one called [illustration] or [illustration] or a [illustration] so that you might supply her place by another. albrecht dÜrer. venice, february , . i wish you had occasion to come here, i know you would not find time hang on your hands, for there are so many nice men in this country, right good artists. i have such a throng of italians about me that at times i have to shut myself up. the nobles all wish me well, but few of the painters. * * * * * venice, _april_ , . the painters here, let me tell you, are very unfriendly to me. they have summoned me three times before the magistrates, and i have had to pay four florins to their school. you must also know that i might have gained a great deal of money if i had not undertaken to paint the german picture. there is much work in it and i cannot get it quite finished before whitsuntide. yet they only pay me eighty-five ducats for it. now you know how much it costs to live, and then i have bought some things and sent some money away, so that i have not much before me now. but don't misunderstand me, i am firmly purposed not to go away hence till god enables me to repay you with thanks and to have a hundred florins over besides. i should easily earn this if i had not got the german picture to paint, for all men except the painters wish me well. tell my mother to speak to wolgemut about my brother, and to ask him whether he can make use of him and give him work till i come, or whether he can put him with some one else. i should gladly have brought him with me to venice, and that would have been useful both to me and him, and he would have learnt the language, but my mother was afraid that the sky would fall on him. pray keep an eye on him yourself, the women are no use for that. tell the lad, as you so well can, to be studious and honest till i come, and not to be a trouble to his mother; if i cannot arrange everything i will at all events do all that i can. alone i certainly should not starve, but to support many is too hard for me, for no one throws his gold away. now i commend myself to you. tell my mother to be ready to sell at the crown-fair (_heiligthumsfest_). i am arranging for my wife to have come home by then; i have written to her too about everything. i will not take any steps about buying the diamond ornament till i get your next letter. i don't think i shall be able to come home before next autumn, when what i earned for the picture, which was to have been ready by whitsuntide, will be quite used up in living expenses, purchases, and payments; what, however, i gain afterwards i hope to save. if you see fit don't speak of this further, and i will keep putting off my leaving from day to day and writing as though i was just coming. i am indeed very uncertain what to do next. write to me again soon. given on thursday before palm sunday in the year . albrecht dÜrer, your servant. venice, _august_ , . _to the first, greatest man in the world. your servant and slave albrecht dürer sends salutation to his magnificent master wilibald_ pirkheimer. _my truth! i hear gladly and with great satisfaction of your health and great honours. i wonder how it is possible for a man like you to stand against_ so many _wisest princes,_ swaggerers _and soldiers; it must be by some special grace of god. when i read your letter about this terrible grimace, it gave me a great fright and i thought it was a most important thing,_[ ] but i warrant that you frightened even schott's men,[ ] you with your fierce look and your holiday hopping step. but it is very improper for such folk to smear themselves with civet. you want to become a real silk-tail and you think that, if only you manage to please the girls, the thing is done. if you were only as taking a fellow as i am, it would not provoke me so. you have so many loves that merely to pay each one a visit you would take a month or more before you got through the list. for one thing i return you my thanks, namely, for explaining my position in the best way to my wife; but i know that there is no lack of wisdom in you. if only you had my meekness you would have all virtues. thank you also for all the good you have done me, if only you would not bother me about the rings! if they don't please you, break their heads off and pitch them out on to the dunghill as peter weisweber says. what do you mean by setting me to such dirty work? _i_ have become a _gentleman_ at venice. i have also heard that you can make lovely rhymes; you would be a find for our fiddlers here; they fiddle so beautifully that they can't help weeping over it themselves. would god our rechenmeister girl could hear them, she would cry too. at your bidding i will again lay aside my anger and bear myself even more bravely than usual. now let me commend myself to you; give my willing service to our prior for me; tell him to pray god for me that i may be protected, and especially from the french sickness; i know of nothing that i now dread more than that, for well nigh every one has got it. many men are quite eaten up and die of it. venice, _september_ , . most learned, approved, wise, knower of many languages, sharp to detect all encountered lies and quick to recognise plain truth! honourable much-regarded herr wilibald pirkheimer. your humble servant albrecht dürer wishes you all hail, great and worthy honour _in the devil's name,_ so much for the twaddle of which you are so fond. i wager that for this[ ] you would think me too an orator of a hundred parts. a chamber must have more than four corners which is to contain the gods of memory. i am not going to cram my head full of them; that i leave to you; for i believe that however many chambers there might be in the head, you would have something in each of them. the margrave would not grant an audience long enough!--a hundred headings and to each heading, say, a hundred words, that takes days hours minutes, not counting the sighs which i have not yet reckoned in. in fact you could not get through the whole at one go; it would stretch itself out like the speech of some old driveller. i have taken all manner of trouble about the carpets but cannot find any broad ones; they are all narrow and long. however i still look about every day for them and so does anton kolb. i have given bernhard hirschvogel your greeting and he sent you his service. he is full of sorrow for the death of his son, the nicest lad i ever saw. i can get none of your foolish featherlets. oh, if only you were here! how you would like these fine italian soldiers! how often i think of you! would to god that you and kunz kamerer could see them! they have great scythe-lances with points, if they only touch a man with them he dies, for they are all poisoned. hey! i can do it well, i'll be an italian soldier. the venetians as well as the pope and the king of france are collecting many men; what will come of it i don't know, but people ridicule our king very much. wish stephan paumgartner much happiness from me. i don't wonder at his having taken a wife. give my greeting to borsch, herr lorenz, and our fair friends, as well as to your rechenmeister girl, and thank that head-chamber of yours alone for remembering her greeting; tell her she's a nasty one. [illustration] i sent you olive-wood from venice to augsburg, where i directed it to be left, a full ten hundredweight. she says she would not wait for it; _whence the stink_. my picture, you must know, says it would give a ducat for you to see it, it is well painted and beautifully coloured. i have earned much praise but little profit by it. in the time it took to paint i could easily have earned ducats, and now i have declined much work, in order that i may come home. i have stopped the mouths of all the painters who used to say that i was good at engraving but, as to painting. i did not know how to handle my colours. now every one says that better colouring they have never seen. my french mantle greets you and my italian coat also. it strikes me that there is an odour of gallantry about you; i can scent it out even at this distance; and they tell me here that when you go a-courting you pretend not to be more than twenty-five years old--oh, yes! double that and i'll believe it. my friend, there are so many italians here who look exactly like you; i don't know how it happens! the doge and the patriarch have also seen my picture. herewith let me commend myself to you as your servant. i must really go to sleep as it is striking the seventh hour of the night, and i have already written to the prior of the augustines, to my father-in-law, to mistress dietrich, and to my wife, and they are all downright whole sheets full. so i have had to hurry over this letter, read it according to the sense. you would doubtless do better if you were writing to a lot of princes. many good nights and days too. given at venice on our lady's day in september. you need not lend my wife and mother anything; they have got money enough, albrecht dÜrer. venice, _september _, . your letter telling me of the praise that you get to overflowing from princes and nobles gave me great delight. you must be altogether altered to have become so gentle; i shall hardly know you when i meet you again. you must know that my picture is finished as well as another _quadro_[ ] the like of which i have never painted before. and as you are so pleased with yourself, let me tell you that there is no better madonna picture in the land than mine; for all the painters praise it, as the nobles do you. they say that they have never seen a nobler, more charming painting, and so forth. * * * * * but in order to come home as soon as possible, i have, since my picture was finished, refused work that would have yielded me more than ducats. this all men know who live about me here. bernhard holzbeck has told me great things of you, though i think he does so because you have become his brother-in-law. but nothing makes me more angry than when any one says that you are good-looking; if that were so i should become really ugly. that could make me mad. i have found a grey hair on myself, it is the result of so much excitement. and i fear that while i play such pranks with myself there are still bad days before me, &c. my french mantle, my doublet, and my brown coat send you a hearty greeting, i should be glad to see what great thing your head-piece can produce that you hold yourself so high. venice, _about october_ , . knowing that you are aware of my devotion to your service there is no need for me to write to you about it; but so much the more necessary is it for me to tell you of the great pleasure it gives me to hear of the high honour and fame which your manly wisdom and learned skill have brought you. this is the more to be wondered at, for seldom or never in a young body can the like be found. it comes to you, however, as to me, by a special grace of god. how pleased we both are when we fancy ourselves worth somewhat--i with my painting, and you with your wisdom. when any one praises us, we hold up our heads and believe him. yet perhaps he is only some false flatterer who is scorning us all the time. so don't credit any one who praises you, for you've no notion how utterly and entirely unmannerly you are. i can quite see you standing before the margrave and speaking so pleasantly--behaving exactly as if you were flirting with mistress rosentaler, cringing as you do. it did not escape me that, when you wrote your last letter, you were quite full of amorous thoughts. you ought to be ashamed of yourself, an old fellow like you pretending to be so good-looking. flirting pleases you in the same way that a shaggy old dog likes a game with a kitten. if you were only as fine and gentle a man as i, i could understand it. if i become burgomaster i will serve you with the luginsland.[ ] as you do to pious zamesser and me. i will have you for once shut up there with the ladies rechenmeister, rosentaler, gärtner, schutz, and pör, and many others whom for shortness i will not name; they must deal with you. people enquire more after me than you, for you yourself write that both girls and honourable wives ask after me--that is a sign of my virtue. when, however, god helps me home i don't know how i shall any longer stand you with your great wisdom; but for your virtue and good temper i am glad, and your dogs will be the better for it, for you will no longer strike them lame. now however that you are thought so much of at home, you won't dare to talk to a poor painter in the street any more; to be seen with the painter varlet would be a great disgrace for you. o, dear herr pirkheimer, just now while i was writing to you, the alarm of fire was raised and six houses over by pietro venier are burnt, and a woollen cloth of mine, for which only yesterday i paid eight ducats, is burnt, so i too am in trouble. there is much excitement here about the fire. as to your summons to me to come home soon, i shall come as soon as ever i can, but i must first gain money for my expenses. i have paid away about ducats for colours and other things. i have ordered you two carpets for which i shall pay to-morrow, but i could not get them cheap. i will pack them in with my linen. and as to your threat that, unless i come home soon, you will make love to my wife, don't attempt it--a ponderous fellow like you would be the death of her. i must tell you that i set to work to learn dancing and went twice to the school, for which i had to pay the master a ducat. no one could get me to go there again. to learn dancing i should have had to pay away all that i have earned, and at the end i should have known nothing about it. [illustration: hans burgkmair--black chalk drawing on yellowish prepared ground. the lights and background in watercolor may possibly have been added later at oxford] in reply to your question when i shall come home, i tell you, so that my lords may also make their arrangements, that i shall have finished here in ten days; after that i should like to ride to bologna to learn the secrets of the art of perspective, which a man is willing to teach me. i should stay there eight or ten days and then return to venice. after that i shall come with the next messenger. how i shall freeze after this sun! here i am a gentleman, at home only a parasite. iii sir martin conway writes: he (dürer) enjoyed venice; he liked the italians; he was oppressed with orders for work; the climate suited him, and the warm sun was a pleasant contrast to the snows and frost of a franconian winter. but dürer's german heart was true; its truth was the secret of his success.... the syren voice of italy charmed to their destruction most germans who listened to it. brought face to face with the italian ideal of grace, they one after another abandoned for it the ideal of strength peculiarly their own. we do not resort to these arguments to approve holbein or van dyck for their long residence in england. i am not sure how much false sentiment inspired thausing when he first praised dürer in this strain; but i must confess i suspect it was no little. i incline to think that the best country for an artist is not always the one he was born in, but often that one where his art finds the best conditions to foster it. we do not honour dürer by supposing that he would have been among that majority of dutch and german artists who, weaker than roger van der weyden and burgkmair, returned from italy injured and enfeebled; even if he had passed the greater portion of his life with her syren voice in his ears. dürer could not bring himself to undergo for art's sake what michael angelo endured; years of exile from a beloved native city, and, still worse, years of exile from the most congenial spiritual atmosphere. nevertheless, we must remember that the difference of language would have made life in venice for dürer a much more complete exile than life in verona was for dante, or life in rome for michael angelo. so he did not share the patronage and generous recognition which gave titian such a splendid opportunity. he ceased for a time at least to be a gentleman to become a hanger-on, a parasite once more. at antwerp he once more was met by the same generosity and recognition only to refuse again to accept it as a gift for life and return to his beloved nuremberg, where it is true his position continually improved, though it never equalled what had been offered at venice and antwerp. iv the tone of some of the pleasantries in these letters may rather astonish good people who, having accepted the fact that dürer was a religious man, have at once given him the tone and address of a meeting of churchwardens, if they have not conjured up a vision of him in a frock coat. "things are what they are," said bishop butler, and so are women; boys will be boys. the distinctive functions of the two sexes were in those days kept more in view if not more in mind than is the case to-day. the fashions in dress and in deportment were particularly frank upon this point, especially for the young. one may allow as much as is desired for the corruption of manners produced by the civil and religious mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, and friars. there will always remain a certain truth and propriety, a certain grace and charm in those costumes and that deportment, as also in the freedom of jest which characterises even the most modest of shakespeare's heroines; and under the influence of their spell we shall feel that all has not been gain in the change that has gradually been operated. no doubt virtue is a victory over nature, and chastity a refinement; but among conquerors some are easy and good-natured, others tactless, awkward, insulting; and among the chaste some are fearless and enjoy the freedom which courage and clear conscience give, others timid and suffer the oppression of their fears. even among sinners some make the best of weaknesses and redeem them a great deal more than half, while others magnify smaller faults by lack of self-possession till they are an insupportable nuisance. we may well admit that from the successes of those days, those who succeed to our delight to-day may glean additional attractions. v we know that dürer stopped on at venice into the year , by a note which he made in a copy of euclid, now in the library at wolfenbüttel. "this book have i bought at venice for a ducat in the year . albrecht dürer"; and by another stray note we learn the state of his worldly affairs on his return. the following is my property, which i have with difficulty acquired by the labour of my hand, for i have had no opportunity of great gain. i have moreover suffered much loss by lending what was not repaid me, and by apprentices who never paid their fees, and one died at rome whereby i lost my wares. in the thirteenth year of my wedlock (le., - ) i have paid great debts with what i earned at venice. i possess fairly good household furniture, good clothes, chests, some good pewter vessels, good materials for my work, bedding and cupboards, and good colours worth florins rhenish. the wares that dürer lost in rome were doubtless chiefly woodcuts and engravings which his prentice had taken to sell during his _wanderjahre_, as dürer himself during his own had very likely sold prints for wolgemut. one of the reasons which had taken him to venice may have been to summon marc antonio before the signoria, for having copied not only his engravings, but the monogram with which he signed them; in any case he obtained a decree defending him against such artistic forgery. dürer's most steady resource seems to have been the sale of prints; it is these that his wife had sold in his absence, and in the diary of his journey to the netherlands there is constant mention of such sales. nuremberg was very much behind antwerp or venice in the price paid for works of art; and the possibilities of such a market as rome had very likely tempted dürer to trust his prentice with an unusual quantity of prints. his worldly affairs were neither brilliant nor secure; yet we shall find him tempted on receiving an important commission to spend so much in time and material as to make it impossible for him to realise a profit. we are accustomed to think that these trials were spared to artists in the past by the munificence of patrons: but apart from the fact that patrons often paid only with promises or by granting credit, at nuremberg there were few magnificent patrons, and its burghers were in no way so generous or so extravagant as those of venice or antwerp. in fact, dürer's position was very similar to that of the modern artist, who finds little and insufficient patronage, and can make more if he is lucky by the reproduction of his creations for the great public. but dürer still had one advantage over his fellow-sufferers of to-day--that of being his own publisher. doubtless portraits were as popular then as nowadays; but if the public taste had not been prostituted by a seductive commercialism to the degree that at present obtains, on the other hand, at nuremberg at least, the fashion seems to have been very little developed; and most of dürer's important portraits seem to have been the result of his sojourns away from home. footnotes: [footnote : thus far the original is in bad italian.] [footnote : the retainers of konz schott, a neighbouring baron, at one time a conspicuous enemy of nürnberg.] [footnote : these words are in italian in the original.] [footnote : prof. thausing suggests that this "other _quadro_" is the "christ among the doctors" in the barberini gallery at rome--a picture containing seven life-size half-figures or heads, and dated . the inscription states it to have been _opus quinque dierum_. at brunswick there is an old copy of it. the original studies for the hands are likewise in existence. in lorenzo lotto's madonna of in the borghese gallery at rome, the head of st. onuphrius is taken from the model who sat for the front pharisee on the left in dürer's picture.] [footnote : a nürnberg prison.] chapter iv dÜrer and his patrons and friends i dürer had hitherto occasionally enjoyed the patronage of the wise elector, frederick of saxony, for whom he painted the brilliant _adoration of the magi_ in the uffizi. he was soon to obtain that of maximilian, but this genial and eccentric emperor proved a fussy patron, as quick to change his mind and to interfere with impossible demands and criticisms, as he was slow to pay and deficient in means for being truly generous. there are a certain number of letters which give a glimpse of dürer's relations with his clients; they show him appealing always to the judgment of artists against the ignorant buyer, and giving more than he bargained to give, though thereby he eats up his legitimate profits; lastly, they show him vowing never again to enter upon work so unprofitable, but to give all his time to the creation of engravings and woodcuts. the first is written to michael behaim, who died in , and had commissioned him to make a design for a woodcut of his coat of arms. dear master michael behaim,--i send you back the coat of arms again. pray let it stay as it is. no one could improve it for you, for i made it artistically and with care. those who see it and understand such matters will tell you so. if the leafwork on the helm were tossed up backward, it would hide the fillet. your humble servant, albrecht dÜrer. [illustration: photograph j. lowy--the adoration of the trinity, --from the painting at vienna] the other letters concern the lost _coronation of the virgin_, the centre panel of an altar-piece of which the wings are still at frankfurt, of which town jacob heller, who commissioned it, was a burgher. they were to be studio work, and are supposed to be chiefly due to dürer's brother hans. there is, however, one picture extant which gives an idea of the execution of the missing centre panel, the _holy trinity and all saints_ at vienna; which, in spite of his vow never to do such work again, was commenced shortly after the _coronation_, and for a nuremberg patron. how much he was paid for it is not known; but it cannot have been a really adequate sum, as towards the end of his life he writes to the nuremberg council, "i have not received from people in this town work worth five hundred florins, truly a trifling and ridiculous sum, and not the fifth part of that has been profit." the preceding picture, referred to in the first letters, is the _martyrdom of the ten thousand by sapor ii_. all three pictures were signed, like the _feast of the rose garlands_ by little finely-dressed portraits of the painter. nÜrnberg, _august_ , . i did not want to receive any money in advance on it till i began to paint it, which, if god will, shall be the next thing after the prince's work;[ ] for i prefer not to begin too many things at once and then i do not become wearied. the prince too will not be kept waiting, as he would be if i were to paint his and your pictures at the same time, as i had intended. at all events have confidence in me, for, so far as god permits, i will yet according to my power make something that not many men can equal. now many good nights to you. given at nürnberg on augustine's day, . albrecht dÜrer. * * * * * nÜrnberg, march , _ _. dear herr jacob heller. in a fortnight i shall be ready with duke friedrich's work; after that i shall begin yours, and, as my custom is, i will not paint any other picture till it is finished. i will be sure carefully to paint the middle panel with my own hand; apart from that, the outer sides of the wings are already sketched in--they will be in stone colour; i have also had the ground laid. so much for news. i wish you could see my gracious lord's picture; i think it would please you. i have worked at it straight on for a year and gained very little by it; for i only get rhenish gulden for it, and i have spent all that in the time. * * * * * nÜrnberg, _august , _. now i commend myself to you. i want you also to know that in all my days i have never begun any work that pleased me better than this picture of yours which i am painting. till i finish it i will not do any other work; i am only sorry that the winter will so soon come upon me. the days grow so short that one cannot do much. i have still one thing to ask you; it is about the _madonna_[ ] that you saw at my house; if you know of any one near you who wants a picture pray offer it to him. if a proper frame was put to it, it would be a beautiful picture, and you know that it is nicely done. i will let you have it cheap. i would not take less than fifty florins to paint one like it. as it stands finished in the house it might be damaged for me, so i would give you full power to sell it for me cheap for thirty florins--indeed, rather than that it should not be sold i would even let it go for twenty-five florins. i have certainly lost much food over it. * * * * * nürnberg, _november_ , . i am justly surprised at what you say in it about my last letter: seeing that you can accuse me of not holding to my promises to you. from such a slander each and everyone exempts me, for i bear myself, i trust, so as to take my stand amongst other straightforward men. besides i know well what i have written and promised to you, and you know that in my cousin's house i refused to promise you to make a good thing, because i cannot. but to this i did pledge myself, that i would make something for you that not many men can. now i have given such exceeding pains to your picture, that i was led to send you the aforesaid letter. i know that when the picture is finished all artists will be well pleased with it. it will not be valued at less than florins. i would not paint another like it for three times the price agreed, for i neglect myself for it, suffer loss, and earn anything but thanks from you. you further reproach me with having promised you that i would paint your picture with the greatest possible care that ever i could. that i certainly never said, or if i did i was out of my senses, for in my whole lifetime i should scarcely finish it. with such extraordinary care i can hardly finish a face in half a year; now your picture contains fully faces, not reckoning the drapery and landscape and other things in it. besides, who ever heard of making such a work for an altar-piece? no one could see it. but i think it was thus that i wrote to you--that i would paint the picture with great or more than ordinary pains because of the time which you waited for me. you need not look about for a purchaser for my madonna, for the bishop of breslau has given me seventy-two florins for it, so i have sold it well. i commend myself to you. given at nürnberg in the year , on the sunday after all saints' day. albrecht dÜrer. * * * * * nÜrnberg, _march_ , . i only care for praise from those who are competent to judge; and if martin hess praises it to you, that may give you the more confidence. you might also inquire from some of your friends who have seen it; they will tell you how it is done. and if you do not like the picture when you see it, i will keep it myself, for i have been begged to sell it and make you another. but be that far from me! i will right honourably hold with you to that which i have promised, taking you, as i do, for an upright man. * * * * * nÜrnberg, _july_ , . as you go on to say that if you had not bargained with me for the picture you would never do so now, and that i may keep it--i return you this answer: to retain your friendship, if i had to suffer loss by the picture, i would have done so, but now since you regret the whole business and provoke me to keep the picture i will do so, and that gladly, for i know how to get florins more for it than you would have given me. in future i would not take florins to paint another such as this. albrecht dÜrer. nÜrnberg, _july_ , . dear herr heller, i have read the letter which you addressed to me. you write that you did not mean to decline taking the picture from me. to that i can only say that i don't understand what you do mean. when you write that if you had not ordered the picture you would not make the bargain again, and that i may keep it as long as i like and so on--i can only think that you have repented of the whole business, so i gave you my answer in my last letter. but, at hans imhof's persuasion, and having regard to the fact that you ordered the picture of me, and also because i should prefer it to find a place at frankfurt rather than anywhere else, i have consented to send it to you for florins less than it might well have brought me. i am reckoning that i shall thus render you a pleasing service; otherwise i know well how i could draw far greater pecuniary advantage from it, but your friendship is dearer to me than any such trifling sum of money. i trust however that you would not wish me to suffer loss over it when you are better off than i. make therefore your own arrangements and commands. given at nürnberg on wine-tuesday before james'. albrecht dÜrer. nÜrnberg, _august _, . first my willing service to you, dear herr jacob heller. in accordance with your last letter i am sending the picture well packed and seen to in all needful points. i have handed it over to hans imhof and he has paid me another florins. yet believe me, on my honour, i am still out of pocket over it besides losing the time which i have bestowed upon it. here in nürnberg they were ready to give florins for it, which extra florins would have done very nicely for me had i not preferred to please and serve you by sending you the picture. for i value the keeping of your friendship at more than florins. i would also rather have this painting at frankfurt than anywhere else in all germany. if you think that i have behaved unfairly in not leaving the payment to your own free-will, you must bear in mind that this would not have happened if you had not written by hans imhof that i might keep the picture as long as i liked. i should otherwise gladly have left it to you even if thereby i had suffered a greater loss still. my impression of you is that, supposing i had promised to make you something for about ten florins and it cost me twenty, you yourself would not wish me to lose by it. so pray be content with the fact that i took florins less from you than i might have got for the picture--for i tell you that they wanted to take it from me, so to speak, by force. i have painted it with great care, as you will see, using none but the best colours i could get. it is painted with good ultramarine under, and over, and over that again, some five or six times; and then after it was finished i painted it again twice over so that it may last a long time. if it is kept clean i know it will remain bright and fresh years, for it is not done as men are wont to paint. so have it kept clean and don't let it be touched or sprinkled with holy water. i feel sure it will not be criticised, or only for the purpose of annoying me; and i answer for it it will please you well. no one shall ever compel me to paint a picture again with so much labour. herr georg tausy himself besought me to paint him a madonna in a landscape with the same care and of the same size as this picture, and he would give me florins for it. that i flatly refused to do, for it would have made a beggar of me. of ordinary pictures i will in a year paint a pile which no one would believe it possible for one man to do in the time. but very careful nicety does not pay. so henceforth i shall stick to my engraving, and had i done so before i should to-day have been a richer man by florins. i may tell you also that, at my own expense, i have had for the middle panel a new frame made which has cost me more than six florins. the old one i have broken off, for the joiner had made it roughly; but i have not had the other fastened on, for you wished it not to be. it would be a very good thing to have the rims screwed on so that the picture may not be shaken. if anyone wants to see it, let it hang forward two or three finger breadths, for then the light is good to see it by. and when i come over to you, say in one, two, or three years' time, if the picture is properly dry, it must be taken down and i will varnish it over anew with some excellent varnish, which no one else can make; it will then last years longer than it would before. but don't let anybody else varnish it, for all other varnishes are yellow, and the picture would be ruined for you. and if a thing, on which i have spent more than a year's work, were ruined it would be grief to me. when you have it set up be present yourself to see that it gets no harm. deal carefully with it, for you will hear from your own and from foreign painters how it is done. give my greeting to your painter martin hess. my wife asks you for a _trinkgeld_, but that is as you please, i screw you no higher, &c. and now i hold myself commended to you. read by the sense, for i write in haste. given at nürnberg on sunday after bartholomew's, . albrecht dÜrer. nÜrnberg, _october _, . dear herr jacob heller, i am glad to hear that my picture pleases you, so that my labour has not been bestowed in vain. i am also happy that you are content about the payment--and that rightly, for i could have got florins more for it than you have given me. but i preferred to let you have it, hoping, as i do, thereby to retain you as my friend down in your parts. my wife thanks you very much for the present you have made her; she will wear it in your honour. my young brother also thanks you for the two florins _trinkgeld_ you sent him. and now i too thank you myself for all the honour &c. in reply to your question how the picture should be adorned i send you a slight design of what i should do if it were mine, but you must do what you like. now, many happy times to you. given on friday before gall's, . albrecht dÜrer. dürer must have commenced the all saints picture almost immediately after having finished heller's _coronation of the virgin_. perhaps he had practically accepted the commission from matthsus landauer before he wrote to heller that he would never again undertake a picture with so much work and labour in it, for he afterwards was as good as his word. this new work was for the chapel of an almshouse founded by landauer and erasmus schiltkrot for twelve old men citizens of nuremberg. the original frame designed by dürer is now in the germanic museum, though a copy has replaced the picture. after the completion of the _trinity and all saints_, dürer apparently carried out his threat and gave up painting for a dozen years, devoting his energies more especially to a magnificent series of engravings on copper. he also completed his series of wood engravings and published them with text, and produced a number of single cuts, many of them among his very best, like the _assumption of the magdalen_, and the _st. christopher_, here reproduced. [illustration: st. christopher woodcut, b. ] [illustration: the assumption of the magdalen woodcut, b. ] ii in his mother died. he has recounted her death twice over, as he did that of his father already cited; for the single surviving leaf of the "other book" happens to contain this also. in the briefer chronicle he says: two years after my father's death (i.e., ) i took my mother into my house, for she had nothing more to live upon. so she dwelt with me till the year , as they reckon it; when, early one tuesday morning, she was taken suddenly and deadly ill, and thus she lay a whole year long. and a whole year after the day she was first taken ill, she received the holy sacraments and christianly passed away two hours before nightfall--it was on a tuesday, the th day of may in the year . i said the prayers for her myself. god almighty be gracious to her. the account in the "other book" is more circumstantial: now you must know that, in the year , on a tuesday before rogation week, my poor afflicted mother, whom two years after my father's death, as she was quite poor, i took into my house, and after she had lived nine years with me, was one morning suddenly taken so deadly ill that we broke into her chamber; otherwise, as she could not open, we had not been able to come to her. so we carried her into a room downstairs and she received both sacraments, for every one thought she would die, because ever since my father's death she had never been in good health. her most frequent habit was to go much to the church. she always upbraided me well if i did not do right, and she was ever in great anxiety about my sins and those of my brother. and if i went out or in her saying was always, "go in the name of christ." she constantly gave us holy admonitions with deep earnestness and she always had great thought for our souls' health. i cannot enough praise her good works and the compassion she showed to all, as well as her high character. this my pious mother bare and brought up eighteen children; she often had the plague and many other severe and strange illnesses, and she suffered great poverty, scorn, contempt, mocking words, terrors, and great adversities. yet she bore no malice. in (as they reckon it), on a tuesday--it was the th day of may--two hours before nightfall and more than a year after the above-mentioned day in which she was taken ill, my mother, barbara dürer, christianly passed away, with all the sacraments, absolved by papal power from pain and sin. but she first--gave me her blessing and wished me the peace of god, exhorting me very beautifully to keep myself from sin. she asked also to drink s. john's blessing, which she then did. she feared death much, but she said that to come before god she feared not. also she died hard, and i marked that she saw something dreadful, for she asked for the holy-water, although, for a long time, she had not spoken. immediately afterwards her eyes closed over. i saw also how death smote her two great strokes to the heart, and how she closed mouth and eyes and departed with pain. i repeated to her the prayers. i felt so grieved for her that i cannot express it. god be merciful to her. to speak of god was ever her greatest delight, and gladly she beheld the honour of god. she was in her sixty-third year when she died and i have buried her honourably according to my means. [illustration: " , on oculi sunday (march ). this is albrecht dürer's mother; she was years of age." after her death he added in ink, "and departed this life in the year on tuesday holy cross day (may ) at two o'clock in the night" charcoal-drawing. royal print room, berlin] god, the lord, grant me that i too may attain a happy end, and that god with his heavenly host, my father, mother, relations, and friends may come to my death. and may god almighty give unto us eternal life. amen. and in her death she looked much sweeter than when she was still alive. iii such was the home life of this great artist; and from homes presenting variations on this type proceeded probably all the giants of the renaissance, whose work we think so surpasses in effort, in scope, and in efficiency, all that has been achieved since. this christianity was unreformed; it existed side by side with dissolute monasteries and worldly cynical prelates, surrounded by sordid hucksters and brutal soldiery. turn to erasmus' portrait of dean colet, and we see that it existed in london, among the burghers, even in the household of a lord mayor. we are almost forced on the reflection that nothing that has succeeded to it has produced men equal to those who sprang immediately out of it. however much and however justly the assurance of christian assertion in the realm of theory may be condemned, the success of the christian life, wherever it has approached a conscientious realisation, stands out among the multitudinous forms of its corruption; and those who catch sight of it are almost bound to exclaim in the spirit of shakespeare's: "how far that little candle throws his beams! so shines a good deed in a naughty world." i have heard a royal academician remark how even the poorest copies and reproductions of the masterpieces of greek sculpture retain something of the charm and dignity of the original: whereas the quality of modern work is quickly lost in a reduction or even in a cast. i believe this may be best explained by the fact that the chief research of the greek artist was to establish a beautiful proportion between the parts and the whole; and that fidelity to nature, dexterity of execution, the symbolism of the given subject, and even the finish of the surfaces, were always when necessary sacrificed to this. whereas in modern work, even when the proportions of the whole are considered, which is rarely the case, they are almost without exception treated as secondary to one or more of these other qualities. is it not possible that jesus in his life laid down a proportion, similar to that of greek masterpieces for the body, between the efforts and intentions which create the soul and pour forth its influence?--a proportion which, when it has been once thoroughly apprehended, may be subtly varied to suit new circumstances, and produce a similar harmony in spheres of activity with which jesus himself had not even a distant connection? we often find that the rudest copies from copies of his actual life are like the biscuit china venus of milo sold by the italian pedlar, which still dimly reflects the main beauties of the marble in the louvre. iv in kaiser maximilian came to nuremberg, and soon afterward dürer began working for him. the employment he found for the greatest artist north of the alps was sufficiently ludicrous; and perhaps dürer showed that he felt this, by treating the major portion as studio work; though, no doubt, the impatience of his imperial patron in a measure necessitated the employment of many aids. it is difficult to do justice to the fine qualities of maximilian. perhaps he was not really so eccentric as he seems. the oddity of his doings and sayings may be perhaps more properly attributed to his having been a thorough german. the genial men of that nation, even to-day and since it has come more into line in point of culture with france and england, are apt to have a something ludicrous or fantastic clinging to them; even goethe did not wholly escape. maximilian was strong in body and in mind, and brimming over with life and interest. we are told that when a young man he climbed the tower of ulm cathedral by the help of the iron rings that served to hold the torches by which it was illuminated on high days and holidays. again we read: "a secretary had embezzled gulden. maximilian sent for him and asked what should be done to a confidential servant who had robbed his master. the secretary recommended the gallows. 'nay, nay,' the emperor said, and tapped him on the shoulder, 'i cannot spare you yet'"; an anecdote which reveals more good sense and a larger humanity than either monarchs or others are apt to have at hand on such vexing occasions. thausing says admirably, "a happy imagination and a great idea of his exalted position made up to him for any want of success in his many wars and political negotiations," and elsewhere calls him the last of the "nomadic emperors," who spent their lives travelling from palace to palace and from city to city, beseeching, cajoling, or threatening their subjects into obedience. he himself said, "i am a king of kings. if i give an order to the princes of the empire, they obey if they please, if they do not please they disobey." he was even then called "the last of the knights," because he had an amateurish passion for a chivalry that was already gone, and was constantly attempting to revive its costumes and ordinances. then, like certain of the pharaohs of egypt, he was pleased to read of, and see illustrated by brush and graver, victories he had never won, and events in which he had not shone. he himself dictated or planned out those wonderful lives or allegories of a life which might have been his. it was on such a work of futile self-glorification that he now wished to employ dürer. the novelty of the art of printing, and the convenience to a nomadic emperor of a monument that could be rolled up, suggested the form of this last absurdity--a monster woodcut in blocks which, when joined together, produced a picture feet by , representing what had at first been intended as an imitation of a roman triumphal arch; but so much information about so many more or less dubious ancestors, &c., had to be conveyed by quaint and conceited inventions, that in the end it was rather comparable to the confusion of a juggernaut car, which never-the-less imposes by a barbarous wealth and magnificence of fantastic detail. and to this was to be joined another monster, representing on several yards of paper a triumphal procession of the emperor, escorted by his family, and the virtues of himself and ancestors, &c. such is fortune's malice that dürer, who alone or almost alone had conceived of the simplicity of true dignity and the beauty of choice proportions and propriety, should have been called upon by his only royal patron to superintend a production wherein the rank and flaccid taste of the time ran riot. the absurdity, barbarism, and grotesque quaintness of this monument to vanity cannot be laid exclusively at maximilian's door; for the architecture, particularly of the fountains, in altdorfer's or manuel's designs, and in those of many others, reveals a like wantonness in delighted elaboration of the impossible and unstructural. the scholars and pedantic posturers who surrounded the emperor no doubt improved and abetted. probably it was this juggernaut element, inherited from the gothic gargoyle, which goethe censured when he said that "dürer was retarded by a gloomy fantasy devoid of form or foundation." perhaps this was written at a period when the great critic was touched with that resentment against the middle ages begotten by the feeling that his own art was still encumbered by its irrational and confused fantasy. we who certainly are able to take a more ample view of dürer's situation in the art of his times, see that he is rather characterised by an effort which lay in exactly the same direction as that of goethe's own; and while sympathising with the irritation expressed, can also admire the great engraver for having freed himself in so large a degree from the influence of fantasy "devoid of form and foundation," even as the justest shakespearean criticism admires the degree in which the author of othello freed himself from elizabethan conceits. it is difficult to appreciate the difference for a great artist in having the general taste with rather than against the purer tendencies of his art. probably the greeks and certain italians owe their freedom from eccentricity, in a very large measure, to this cause. but i intend to treat these questions more at length in dealing with dürer's character as an artist and creator. it was necessary to touch on the subject here, because maximilian embodies the peculiar and fantastic aftergrowth, which sprouted up in some northern minds from the old stumps remaining from the great mediaeval forest of thoughts and sentiments which had gradually fallen into decay. all around, even in the same minds, waved the saplings of the new birth when these old stumps put forth their so fantastic second youth, seeming for a time to share in the new vigour, though they were never to attain expansion and maturity. v thausing shrewdly remarks, "this love of fame and naïve delight in the glorification of his own person are further proofs that the emperor max was the true child of his age. no one was so akin to him in this respect as the painter of his choice, albert dürer." this last is a reference to those strutting, finely-dressed portraits of the artist which stand beside the entablatures bearing his name, that of his birthplace, the date, &c., in four out of the five most elaborate pictures which dürer painted. but i would like to suggest that probably this apparent resemblance to his royal patron is not thus altogether well accounted for. may there not have been something of homer's invocation of his muse, or of that sincerity which makes dante play such a large part in the "divine comedy"?--something resembling the ninth verse of the apocalypse: "i john, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation ... was in the isle that is called patmos ... and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet, saying...." those little strutting portraits of himself sprung, perhaps, out of this relation to those about him of the man by native gift very superior, who is not made contemptuous or inclined to emphasise his isolation, but who is ever ready to say, "it is i, be not afraid." the man who painted and conceived this is the man you know, whom you have admired because he carried his fine clothes so well in your streets. here i am even in the midst of this massacre of saints, i have conceived it all and taken a whole year to elaborate it; and since you see me looking so cool and well-dressed in the midst of it, you need not be offended or overwhelmed. such is ever the naïvety of great souls among those whose culture is primitive. it is like the boasted bravery of the eldest among little children, wholly an act of kindness and consideration, not a selfish vaunt. that they should be admired and trusted is for them a foregone conclusion; and when they call on that admiration and trust, they do it merely for the sake of those whom they would encourage and console, for whose sakes they will even hide whatever in them is really unworthy of such admiration and such trust. we do not easily realise the corporate character of life in those days. very much that seems to us quaint and absurd drew proper significance from the practical solidarity that then obtained; what appears to us a strange vanity or parade may have appeared to them respect for the guild, the town, the country to which they belonged. dürer signed "noricus,"--of nuremberg;--and preferred its little lucrative citizenship to those more remunerative offered by venice and antwerp. "let all the world behold how fine the artist of nuremberg is." just as he says, "god gave me diligence," so it seems natural to him to attribute a large half of his fame and glory to his native town. in many respects the great man of those days felt less individual than an ordinary man does now; for classes did not so merge one into the other, and their character was more distinct and authoritative. the little portrait of himself added to those wonderful _tours-de-force_ made them something that belonged to nuremberg and to germans. even so it would be with some treasure cup, all gold and jewels, belonging to a village schoolmaster, which none of his neighbours dared look at save in his presence; for he was the son of a great baron whom his elder brothers robbed of everything except this, and his presence among them alone made them able to feel that it really belonged to their village, was theirs in a fashion. these suggestions will not, i think, appear fantastic to those who ponder on the apparently vainglorious address of much of dürer's work, and keep in mind such a passage from his writings as this: "i would gladly give everything i know to the light, for the good of cunning students who prize such art more highly than silver and gold. i further admonish all who have any knowledge in these matters that they write it down. do it truly and plainly, not toilsomely and at great length, for the sake of those who seek and are glad to learn, to the great honour of god and your own praise. if i then set something burning, and ye all add to it skilful furthering, a blaze may in time arise therefrom which shall shine throughout the whole world."[ ] but still, even if such considerations may bring many to accept my explanation of this contrast, i do not want to over-insist on it. i think that wherever men have been superior in character, as well as in gift or rank, to those about them, something of this spirit of the good eldest child in a family is bound to be manifested. but just as such a child may be veritably boastful and vain at other times,--however purely now and then, in crises of apparent difficulty or danger, its vaunt and strut may spring from real kindness and a considerate wish to inspire courage in the younger and weaker;--so doubtless there was a haughtiness, sometimes a fault, in dürer as in milton. vi but we have been led a long way from kaiser max and his portable monument. the reader will re-picture how the court arrived at nuremberg like a troop of actors, whose performance was really their life, and was taken quite seriously and admired heartily by the good and solid burghers. this old comedy, often farce, entitled "the importance of authority," is no longer played with such a telling make-up, or with such showy properties as formerly, but is still as popular as ever; as we londoners know, since the last few years have given us perhaps an over-dose of processions, illuminations, &c. &c. in this case the chief actors in the show piece were men of mark of an exceptionally entertaining character; with many of them dürer and pirkheimer were soon on the best of terms. foremost, johann stabius, the companion of the emperor for sixteen years without intermission in war and in peace, who was associated with dürer to provide the written accompaniment for the monument; a literary jack-of-all-trades of ready wit and lively presence. a contemporary records: "the emperor took constant pleasure in the strange things which stabius devised, and esteemed him so highly that he instituted a new chair of astronomy and mathematics for him at vienna," in the collegium poetarum et mathematicorum founded in the year , under the presidency of conrad celtes. in all probability there would have been besides the learned protonotary of the supreme court, ulrich varenbuler, often mentioned as a friend in the letters of erasmus and pirkheimer, and the subject of the largest of dürer's portrait woodcuts, which shows him to us some ten years later, still a handsome trenchant personality, with a liking for fine clothes, and the self-reliant expression of a man who is conscious that the thought he takes for the morrow is not likely to be in vain. it may be that dürer then met for the first time too the imperial architect, johannes tscherte, for whom he afterwards drew two armillary spheres, to take the place of those on which he had cast ridicule; for pirkheimer wrote to tscherte: "i wish you could have heard how albert dürer spoke to me about your plate, in which there is not one good stroke, and laughed at me. what honour it will do us when it makes its appearance in italy, and the clever painters there see it!" to which tscherte replied: "albert dürer knows me well, he is also well aware that i love art, though i am no expert at it; let him if he likes despise my plate, i never pretended it was a work of art." and in a later letter he speaks "of the armillary spheres drawn by our common friend albert dürer." he was one of those who helped dürer in his mathematical and geometrical studies; and he, like pirkheimer, dedicated books to him. although the mathematics of those times are hardly considered seriously nowadays, they then ranked with verse-making as a polite accomplishment, and had all the charm of novelty. dürer, no doubt, had some gift that way, as he seems to have made a hobby of them during many years. besides those who came in the imperial troop, dürer had many opportunities of meeting men of this kind, for such were constantly passing through nuremberg. dürer has left us what are evidently portraits of some whose names are lost: of others we have both name and likeness, among them the english ambassador, lord morley. in "rafahel de' urbin, who is held in such high esteem by the pope, he made these naked figures and sent them to albrecht dürer at nuremberg to show him his hand." this shows us that travellers through nuremberg sometimes brought with them something of the breath of the great renaissance in italy. the drawing, which bears the above inscription in dürer's own handwriting on the back, is a fine one in red sanguine, representing the same male model in two different poses, in the albertina. raphael had, we are told by lodovico dolce, drawings, engravings, and woodcuts of dürer's hanging in his studio; and vasari tells us he said: "if dürer had been acquainted with the antique he would have surpassed us all." the nuremberg master, in return for the drawing, sent a portrait of himself to raphael, which has unfortunately been lost. there appears to have been quite a rage for dürer's work in italy, and above all at rome: we know that it provoked michael angelo to remonstrate; probably on many lips it was merely a vaunt of superior knowledge or taste, as rapture over the conjectural friends or aids of a great quatrocentist is to-day. the tokens of esteem which he won from distinguished travellers, and this drawing which reached him testifying to the interest and friendship felt for him by the italian whose fame was most widespread, must have been full of encouragement, and have compensated in some measure for the feeling he had that he was only a hanger-on at nuremberg, though he might still have been "a gentleman" in venice. yet nuremberg itself furnished many desirable or notable acquaintances. there was dürer's neighbour, the jurist, lazarus spengler; later the most prominent reformer in nuremberg, who in dedicated to him his "exhortation and instruction towards the leading of a virtuous life," addressing him as "his particular and confidential friend and brother," whom he considers, "without any flattery, to be a man of understanding, inclined to honesty and every virtue, who has often in our daily familiar intercourse been to me in no common degree a pattern and an example to a more circumspect way of life;" whom, finally, he asks to improve his little book to the best of his ability. dürer had before this rendered him service in designing his coat of arms for a woodcut and furnishing a frontispiece to his translation of eusebius' "life of st. jerome." he was, moreover, a poet, author of "an often-translated song"; he wrote verses to discourage dürer from spending his time in producing the doggerel rhymes which at one time he was moved to attempt,--framing poems of didactic import, and publishing one or two on separate sheets with a woodcut at the top, in spite of the inappreciative reception given to them by spengler and pirkheimer. besides spengler, there were "christopher kress, a soldier, a traveller, and a town councillor;" and caspar nützel, of one of the oldest families, and captain-general of the town bands. both of these went with dürer to the diet at augsburg in . the martial paumgartners were two brothers for whom dürer painted the early triptych at munich (see page ). one of them is supposed to figure as st. george in the all saints picture. lastly, there were the imhoffs, the merchant princes of nuremberg, as the fuggers were at augsburg. a son of the family married felicitas, pirkheimer's favourite daughter, in , and dürer stood godfather to their little hieronymus in . it is easy to imagine that there was many a supper and dinner, when a thousand strange subjects were even more strangely discussed; when pirkheimer now made them roar with a hazardous joke, or again dumbfounded them with greek quotations pompously done into german, or made their flesh creep and the superstitions of their race stir in them by mysteriously enlarging on his astrological lore,--for to his many weaknesses he added this, which was then scarcely recognised as one. vii in spite of all his wealthy and influential friends, dürer found it difficult to get the emperor to indemnify him for his labours, though the town council had received a royal mandate as early as from landau. the following is an extract: whereas our and the empire's trusty albrecht dürer has devoted much zeal to the drawings he has made for us at our command, and has promised henceforth ever to do the like, whereat we have received particular pleasure; and whereas we are informed on all hands that the said dürer is famous in the art of painting before all other masters: we have therefore felt ourself moved, to further him with our especial grace, and we accordingly desire you with earnest solicitude, for the affection you bear us, to make the said dürer free of all town imposts, having regard to our grace and to his famous art, which should fairly turn to his profit with you, &c. the town councillors sent some of their principal members to treat with dürer, and he resigned his claim "in order to honour the said councillors and to maintain their privileges, usages, and rights." in the drawings for the "gate of honour" were finished, and dürer began to press again for pay. stabius had promised to speak for him, but nothing had come of it. albrecht thought christoph kress could be of more avail; so he wrote to him: (no date, but certainly ). dear herr kress, the first thing i have to ask you is to find out from herr stabius whether he has done anything in my business with his imperial majesty, and how it stands. let me know this in the next letter you write to my lords. should it happen that herr stabius has made no move in the matter, ... point out in particular to his imperial majesty that i have served his majesty for three years, spending my own money in so doing, and if i had not been diligent the ornamental work would have been nowise so successfully finished. i therefore pray his imperial majesty to recompense me with the florins--all which you know well how to do. you must know also that i made many other drawings for his majesty besides the "triumph." not long after this, maximilian, by a _privilegium_ (dated innsbruck, september , ), settled an annual pension of florins on the artist. we maximilian, by god's grace, &c., make openly known by this letter for ourself and our successors in the empire, and to each and every one to wit, that we have regarded and considered the art, skill, and intelligence for which our and the empire's trusty and well-beloved albrecht dürer has been praised before us, and likewise the pleasing, honest and useful services which he has often and willingly done for us and the holy empire and also for our own person in many ways, and which he still daily does and henceforward may and shall do: and that we therefore, of set purpose, after mature deliberation, and with the full knowledge of ourself and the princes and estates of the empire, have graciously promised and granted to this same dürer what we herewith and by virtue of this letter make known: _that is to say_, that one hundred florins rhenish shall be yielded, given, and paid by the honourable, our and the empire's trusty and well-beloved burgomaster and council of the town of nürnberg and their successors unto the said albrecht dürer, against his quittance, all his life long and no longer, yearly and in every year, on our behalf, out of the customary town contributions which the said burgomaster and council of the town of nürnberg are bound to yield and pay, yearly and in every year, into our treasury. and whatever the said burgomaster and council of the town of nürnberg and their successors shall yield, give, and pay to the said albrecht dürer, as stands written above, against his quittance, the same sum shall be accepted and reckoned to them as paid and yielded for the customary town contributions which they, as stands written above, are bound to pay into our treasury, as if they had paid the same into our own hands and received our quittance therefor, and no harm or detriment shall in anywise be done therefor unto them or their successors by us or our successors in the empire. whereof this letter, sealed with our affixed seal, is witness. given, &c. thus dürer became court painter: in return for his salary he had to work. as soon as the "gate of honour" was finished, there was the "car of triumph" to be taken in hand, the first sketch for it (now in the albertina) having already been made about - . in december schönsperger, the augsburg printer, printed a splendid "book of hours" for maximilian. the type was specially made for the book, and only a few copies were printed, some on fine vellum with large margins. one copy which maximilian intended for his own use was sent to dürer that he might decorate the margins with pen-drawings in various coloured inks. of this work there exist forty-three pages by dürer himself and eight by cranach at munich, and at besançon thirty-five pages by burgkmair, altdorfer, baldung grien, and hans dürer. marvellously deft and light-handed as are dürer's freehand arabesques, embellished by racy sketches of which these borders consist, they are nevertheless touched with a like unsatisfactory character with the other works undertaken for maximilian, and are almost as far removed from the spirit and performance of the best period for this kind of work, as is the _triumphal arch_ from that of titus. dürer was also employed on another woodcut representing a long row of saintly ancestors of this eccentric sovereign. he accompanied caspar nützel and lazarus spengler, the representatives of nuremberg, to the diet of augsburg, and there made some drawings of his royal patron, on one of which is written, "this is my dear prince max, whom i, albrecht dürer, drew at augsburg in his little room upstairs in the palace, in the year , on the monday after st. john the baptist's day." (_see opposite_.) and melanchthon narrates that "once max himself took the charcoal in hand to make his mind clear to his trusty albert, and was vexed to find that the charcoal kept breaking short in his hand when dürer said; 'most gracious emperor, i would not that your majesty should draw so well as i do!' by which he meant, 'i am practised in this, and it is my province; thou, emperor, hast harder tasks and another calling.'" [illustration: _by permission of messrs. braun, clément & co. dornach._--"this is the emperor maximilian, whose likeness i, albrecht dürer, have taken, at augsburg, high up in the palace in his little chamber, in the year of grace , on monday after st. john the baptist's day" charcoal-drawing. albertina, vienna] viii a charming letter from charitas pirkheimer gives us a little sunlit glimpse of the tone of dürer's lighter hours. the prudent and wise masters caspar nützel, lazarus spengler, and albrecht dürer, for the time being at augsburg, our gracious masters and good friends. jesus. as a friendly greeting, prudent, wise, gracious masters and especially good friends, cousins, and wellwishers, i desire every good thing for you, from the highest good. i received with great pleasure your friendly letter and its news of a kind suited to my order, or rather my trade; and i read it with such great devotion that more than once tears ran down my eyes over it--truly rather tears of laughter than of sorrow. i consider it a subject for great thankfulness that, with such important business and so much gaiety on hand, your wisdoms do not forget me, but find time to instruct me, poor little nun, about the monastic life whereof you now have a clear reflection before your eyes. i conclude from this that doubtless some good spirit drove you, my gracious and dear masters, to augsburg, so that you might learn from the example of the free swabian spirits how to instruct and govern the poor imprisoned sand-bares.[ ] for since our trusty master warden (caspar nützel), as a lover of the church, likes to help in a thorough reformation, he should first behold a pattern of holy observance in the swabian league. let master lazarus spengler, too, inform himself well about the apostolic mode of common life, so that at the annual audit he may be able to give us and others counsel and guidance, how we may run through everything, that nought remain over. and master albrecht dürer, also, who is such a genius and master at drawing, he may very carefully inspect the stately buildings, and then if some day we want to alter our choir he will know how to give us advice and help in making ample slide-windows (? blinds), so that our eyes may not be quite blinded. i shall not further trouble you, however, to bring us music to learn to sing by notes, for our beer is now so very sour that i fear the dregs might stick fast among the four reeds or voices, and produce such strange sounds that the dogs would fly out of the church. but i must humbly pray you not quite to wear out your eyes over the black and white magpies, so as no longer to know the little grey wolves at nürnberg. i have heard much of the sharp-witted swabians all my life, but it would be well if we learnt more from them, now that they are so wisely labouring with his imperial majesty to save the apostolic life from being done away with. it is easy to see what very different lovers of the church they are from our masters here. pardon me, my dear and gracious masters, this my playful letter. it is all done _in caritate--summa summarum_; and the end of it is that i should rejoice at your speedy return in health and happiness with the glad accomplishment of the business committed to you. for this i and my sisters heartily pray god day and night; still we cannot carry it through alone, so i counsel you to entreat the pious and pure hearts (of augsburg) to sing in high quavers that thereby things may speed well. and now many happy times to you! given at nürnberg on september , . sister charitas, unprofitable abbess of s. clara's at nürnberg. dürer returned with a letter to the town council of nürnberg, from which the following extract is taken: honourable, trusty, and well-beloved, whereas you are bound to pay us on next st. martin's day year a remainder, to wit florins rhenish, out of the accustomed town contribution which you are wont to render into our and the empire's treasury....we earnestly charge you to deliver and pay the said florins, accepting our quittance therefor, unto our and the empire's trusty and well-beloved albrecht dürer, our painter, on account of his honest services, willingly rendered to us at our command for our "car of triumph" and in other ways; and, at the said time, these florins shall be deducted for you from the accustomed town contribution. thus you will perform our earnest desire. given, &c. dürer procured a receipt for the florins, signed by the emperor himself. but before "next st. martin's day year," maximilian was dead, and the florins no longer his to dispose of, being due to the new emperor charles v. the municipal authorities of nürnberg refused to pay until his privilegium had been confirmed by maximilian's successor. dürer wrote the following letter to the council: nÜrnberg, april , . prudent, honourable and wise, gracious, dear lords. your honours are aware that, at the diet lately holden by his imperial roman majesty, our most gracious lord of very praiseworthy memory, i obtained a gracious assignment from his imperial majesty of florins from the yearly payable town contributions of nürnberg. this assignment was granted to me, after many applications and much trouble, in return for the zealous work and labour, which, for a long time previously, i had devoted to his majesty. and he sent you order and command to that effect, signed with his accustomed signature, and quittance in all form, which quittance, duly sealed, is in my hands. now i rest humbly confident that your honours will graciously remember me as your obedient burgher, who has employed much time in the service and work of his imperial majesty, our most rightful lord, with but small recompense, and has thereby lost both profit and advantage in other ways. and therefore i trust that you will now deliver me these florins to his imperial majesty's order and quittance, that so i may receive a fitting reward and satisfaction for my care, pains, and work--as, no doubt, was his imperial majesty's intention. but seeing that some emperor or king might in the future claim these florins from your honours, or might not be willing to spare them, but might some day demand them back again from me, i am, therefore, willing to relieve your honours and the town of this chance, by appointing and mortgaging, as security and pledge therefor, my tenement situated at the corner under the veste, and which belonged to my late father, that so your honours may suffer neither prejudice nor loss thereby. thus am i ready to serve your honours, my gracious rulers and lords. your wisdoms' willing burgher, albrecht dÜrer. [illustration: frederick the wise. silver-point drawing, british museum.] dürer next wrote "to the honourable, most learned master georg spalatin, chaplain to my most gracious lord, duke friedrich, the elector" of saxony. the letter is undated, but clearly belongs to the early part of the year . most worthy and dear master, i have already sent you my thanks in the short letter, for then i had only read your brief note. it was not till afterwards, when the bag in which the little book was wrapped was turned inside out, that i for the first time found the real letter in it, and learnt that it was my most gracious lord himself who sent me luther's little book. so i pray your worthiness to convey most emphatically my humble thanks to his electoral grace, and in all humility to beseech his electoral grace to take the praiseworthy dr. martin luther under his protection for the sake of christian truth. for that is of more importance to us than all the power and riches of this world; because all things pass away with time, truth alone endures for ever. god helping me, if ever i meet dr. martin luther, i intend to draw a careful portrait of him from the life and to engrave it on copper, for a lasting remembrance of a christian man who helped me out of great distress. and i beg your worthiness to send me for my money anything new that dr. martin may write. as to spengler's "apology for luther," about which you write, i must tell you that no more copies are in stock; but it is being reprinted at augsburg, and i will send you some copies as soon as they are ready. but you must know that, though the book was printed here, it is condemned in the pulpit as heretical and meet to be burnt, and the man who published it anonymously is abused and defamed. it is reported that dr. eck wanted to burn it in public at ingolstadt, as was done to dr. reuchlin's book. with this letter i send for my most gracious lord three impressions of a copper-plate of my most gracious lord of mainz, which i engraved at his request. i sent the copper-plate with impressions as a present to his electoral grace, and he graciously sent me in return florins in gold and ells of damask for a coat. i joyfully and thankfully accepted them, especially as i was in want of them at that time. his imperial majesty also, of praiseworthy memory, who died too soon for me, had graciously made provision for me, because of the great and long-continued labour, pains, and care, which i spent in his service. but now the council will no longer pay me the florins, which i was to have received every year of my life from the town taxes, and which was yearly paid to me during his majesty's lifetime. so i am to be deprived of it in my old age and to see the long time, trouble, and labour all lost which i spent for his imperial majesty. as i am losing my sight and freedom of hand my affairs do not look well. i don't care to withhold this from you, kind and trusted sir. if my gracious lord remembers his debt to me of the staghorns, may i ask your worship to keep him in mind of them, so that i may get a fine pair. i shall make two candlesticks of them. i send you here two little prints of the cross from a plate engraved in gold. one is for your worship. give my service to hirschfeld and albrecht waldner. now, your worship, commend me faithfully to my most gracious lord, the elector. your willing albrecht dÜrer at nürnberg. footnotes: [footnote : _the massacre of the ten thousand saints._] [footnote : supposed to be the _madonna with the iris_.] [footnote : "literary remains of albrecht dürer," p. .] [footnote : the soil about nürnberg is sandy.] chapter v dÜrer, luther and the humanists i but while dürer was thus busily at work or dunning his great debtors, luther had appeared. in he nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of wittenberg church, and cardinal caietan by the unlucky leo x. was poured like oil upon the fire which they had lighted. luther had been summoned to meet the cardinal at the diet of augsburg, where dürer went to see maximilian, though he only arrived there after our friends from nuremberg had departed. however, luther passed through nuremberg on foot, and borrowed a coat of a friend there in order to figure with decency before the diet. yet dürer probably did not meet him, although the words in the letter to george spalatin, quoted above, "if ever i meet dr. martin luther, i intend to draw a careful portrait of him and engrave it on copper," do not forbid the possibility of this early meeting before the reformer had become so famous. next the pope tried to soothe by sending miltitz with flatteries and promises--a man that could smile and weep to order, but who succeeded neither with the elector frederic, nor with luther, nor with germany. at nuremberg the preacher wenzel link soon formed a little reformed congregation, to which dürer, pirkheimer, spengler, nützel, scheurl, ebner, holzschurher, and others belonged. we have already seen how, soon after this, dürer was anxious for luther's safety, by the letter to the wise elector, quoted above; and in he sent luther a number of his prints, and soon after joined with others of link's hearers to send a greeting of encouragement. and before long we find him jotting down a list of sixteen of luther's tracts, either because he intended to get and read them, or because they were already his; and on the back of a drawing we find the following outline of the faith such as he then apprehended it, in which we see clearly that christ has become the voice of conscience--the power in a man by which he recognises and creates good. seeing that through disobedience of sin we have fallen into everlasting death, no help could have reached us save through the incarnation of the son of god, whereby he through his innocent suffering might abundantly pay the father all our guilt, so that the justice of god might be satisfied. for he has repented, of and made atonement for the sins of the whole world, and has obtained of the father everlasting life. therefore christ jesus is the son of god, the highest power, who can do all things, and he is the eternal life. into whomsoever christ comes he lives, and himself lives in christ. therefore all things are in christ good things. there is nothing good in us except it becomes good in christ. whosoever, therefore, will altogether justify himself is unjust. _if we will what is good, christ wills it in us_. no human repentance is enough to equalise deadly sin and be fruitful. in this the old mythological language is retained, but it has received a new interpretation or significance, and this quite without the writer's perceiving what he is doing. christ is affirmed to have repented of the sins of the whole world. among the early heresiarchs there were, i believe, some who went so far as to hold that he had committed the sins before he repented of them, and triumphed over their effects by his sufferings and death. in any case, a similar feeling is expressed by our odd mystic blake in his "everlasting gospel": "if he (jesus) intended to take on sin, his mother should an harlot have bin." the actual records of christ are too meagre the moment he is regarded as an allegory of human life; and such additions to the creed spring naturally out of the ardent seeker's desire to realise the universality implied in the dogma of his godhead, which is accepted even by blake as a historical fact beyond question. it was not the character of so much as can be perceived of the universe which daunted luther and dürer, as it daunts the serious man to-day. they accepted what appears to us a cheap and easy subterfuge, because they believed it to have been prescribed by god; the ambiguous inferences which such a prescription must logically cast on the divine character did not arrest their attention. what they gained was a free conscience, a conscience in which christ was, to use their language, and which was in christ; and for practical piety this was sufficient. they themselves had not made up their minds on theoretical points; it was only in the face of their opponents that they thought of arming themselves with like weapons, and sought a mechanical agreement upon questions about which no one ever has known, or probably ever can know, anything at all. this was where luther's pugnacity betrayed him; so that little by little he seems to lose spiritual beauty, as the monk, all fire and intensity, is transformed into the "plump doctor," and again into the bird of ill omen who croaked. "the arts are growing as if there was to be a new start and the world was to become young again. i hope god will finish with it. we have come already to the white horse. another hundred years and all will be over." compare this with dürer's: "sure am i that many notable men will arise, all of whom will write both well and better about this art than i." "would to god that it were possible for me to see the work and art of the mighty masters to come, who are yet unborn, for i know that i might be improved." i do not want to judge luther harshly; he had done splendidly, and it is difficult to meddle with worldly things without soiling one's fingers and depressing one's heart; but i ask which of these two quotations expresses man's most central character best--the desire for nobler life--which reveals the more admirable temper? (dürer had been touched by the spirit of the renaissance as well as by that of the reformation; we can distinguish easily when he is speaking under the one influence, when under the other, and the contrast often impresses one as the contrast between the above quotations. and it gives us great reason to deplore that the two spirits could not work side by side as they did in dürer and a few rare souls, but that in the world there was war between them.) it seems inevitable that the things men fight about should always be spoiled. the best part of written thought is something that cannot be analysed, cannot therefore be defended or used for offence; it is a spirit, an emanation, something that influences us more subtly than we know how to describe. we see by the passage quoted that dürer was not only influenced by luther's heroism, but by his doctrinal theorising. unfortunately we do not know whether he outgrew this second and less admirable influence. did he feel like his friend pirkheimer in the end, that "the new evangelical knaves made the old popish knaves seem pious by contrast?" milton under similar circumstances came to think that "new presbyter is but old priest writ large." probably not; for just as we know he did not abandon what seemed to him beautiful and helpful in old catholic ceremonies, usages, and conceptions, so probably he would not confuse what had been real gain in the reformation with the excesses of anabaptists or socialists, or even of luther himself or his followers. there is no reason to suppose he would have judged so hastily as the gouty irascible pirkheimer, however much he may have deplored the course of events. it must have been evident to thoughtful men, then, that it was impossible for so large an area to be furnished with properly trained pastors in so short a time, and that therefore more or less deplorable material was bound to be mingled in the official _personnel_ of the new sect. it is impossible, when we consider how he solved the precisely parallel difficulty in aesthetics, not to feel that if he had had time given him, he would have arrived in point of doctrine at a moderation similar to that of erasmus. men deliberate and hold numberless differing opinions about beauty.... being then, as we are, in such a state of error, i know not certainly what the ultimate measure of true beauty is.... because now we cannot altogether attain unto perfection shall we, therefore, wholly cease from learning? by no means ... for it behoveth the rational man to choose the good. (see the passage complete on page .) luther imagined that the faith that saved was entire confidence in the fact that a bargain had been struck between the persons of the trinity, according to which christ's sacrifice should be accepted as satisfying the justice of his father, outraged by adam's fault. to-day this appears to the majority of educated men a fantastic conception. for them the faith that saves is love of goodness, as love of beauty saves the artist from mistakes into which his intelligence would often plunge him. jesus has no claim upon us superior to his goodness and his beauty; nor can we conceive of the possibility of such a claim. but we recognise with dürer that we do not know what the true measure of goodness and beauty is, and all that we can do is to choose always the good and the beautiful according to the measure of our reason--to the fulness of the light at present granted to us. ii the curiosity of the modern man of science no doubt is descended from that of men like leonardo and the early humanists, but it differs from almost more than it resembles it. the motive power behind both is no doubt the confidence of the healthy mind that the human intelligence will ultimately prove adequate to comprehend the spectacle of the universe. but for the humanists, for dürer and his friends, the consciousness of the irreconcilableness of that spectacle with the necessary ideals of human nature had not produced, as in our contemporaries and our immediate forerunners it has produced, either the atrophy of expectation which afflicts some, or the extravagance of ingenuity that cannot rest till it has rationalised hope, which torments others. they were saddled with neither the indifference nor the restlessness of the modern intellect. they escaped like boys on a holiday. they felt conscious of doing what their schoolmaster meant them to do, though they were actually doing just what they liked. it was all for the glory of god in dürer's mind; but how or why god should be pleased with what he did, did not trouble him. he engraved and sold impressions of a plate representing a sow with eight legs; he made a drawing, which is at oxford, of an infant girl with two heads and four arms, and calmly wrote beneath it:-- item, in the year reckoned , after the birth of christ, such a creature (_frucht_) as is represented above, was born in bavaria, on the lord of werdenberg's land, in a village named ertingen over against riedlingen. it was on the th of the hay month (july), and they were baptized, the one head elspett, the other margrett. just so, luther is no more than st. paul abashed to say that god had need of some men intended for dishonour, as a potter makes some vessels for honourable, some for dishonourable uses. the modern mind at once reflects: "if that is the case, so much the worse for god; by so much is it impossible that i should ever worship him;" and it will prefer any prolongation of "that most wholesome frame of mind, a suspended judgment," to accepting a solution so cheap as that offered by the apostle and reformer, which has come to seem simply injurious. the spirit of the enlarged schoolboy was, i think, really the attitude of the best minds then and onwards to descartes and spinoza. they gave themselves up to the study of nature without ceasing to belong to their school, yet freed, as on a holiday, from the constraint of being actually in it. yet, in regard to their personal and social life, at least north of the alps, the majority of such men were very consciously and dutifully under "their great taskmaster's eye"; and in that also they differ in a measure from the more part of modern scientists. dürer made up a rhinoceros from a sketch and description sent to him from portugal, whither the uncouth creature had been brought in a ship from goa. dürer's drawing was engraved and became the parent of innumerable rhinoceroses in lesson-books, doing service right down well into the late century, as thausing assures us. the unfortunate original was sent as a present to leo x., who wanted to see him fight with an elephant which had made him laugh by squirting water and kneeling down to be blessed as sensibly as a christian. so the poor beast was shipped again, only to be shipwrecked near porto venere, where he was last seen swimming valiantly, but hopelessly impeded by his chain, and baffled by the rocky shore. in the netherlands, dürer's curiosity to see a whale nearly resulted in his own shipwreck, and indirectly produced the malady which finally killed him. but dürer's curiosity was really most scientific where it was most artistic; in his portraits, in his studies of plants and birds and the noses of stags, or the slumber of lions. doubtless it was not a very dissimilar motive which gained him entrance into the women's bath at nuremberg, for we see he must have been there by the beautiful pen drawing at bremen and the slighter one of the same subject at chatsworth. these drawings may also illustrate what in his book on the proportion he calls the words of difference--stout, lean, short, tall, &c. (see p. ), as he would seem to have chosen types as various as possible, ranging from the human sow to the slim and dignified beauty. in the same spirit he studied perspective and the art of measuring; he felt the importance to art of inquiry in these directions; nevertheless, to seize the beautiful elements in nature was ever the object of his efforts, however, roundabout they may sometimes appear to us. "the sight of a fine human figure is above all things the most pleasing to us, wherefore i will first construct the right proportions of a man." (see p. .) his aesthetic curiosity had nothing in common with that which considers all objects and appearances as equally interesting. what he meant by nature, when he bid the artist have continual recourse to her, was far from being the momentary and accidental appearance of any thing or things anywhere,--which the modern "student of nature" admires because he has neither sufficient force of character to prefer, nor sufficient right feeling to defer to the preferences of those who have more. leonardo's natural history is delightful reading, because it combines such fantastic and inventive fables as surpass even the happiest efforts of our nonsense writers with a beautiful openness of mind which we see oftener in children than in sages,--which is, in fact, the seriousness of those who are truly learning, and are not too conscious of what has already been learnt. as a boy adds to the pleasure he has in adventuring further and further into a cave the delight of awesome supposition--for what may not the next turn reveal?--and is pleased to feel all his young machinery ready instantly to enact a panic if his torch should blow out, and laughs at each furtive rehearsal of his own terror in which he indulges;--so the humanists turned from astronomy to astrology, and used their skill in mathematics to play with horoscopes which they more than half believed might bite. there was just enough doubt as to whether any given wonder was a miracle to make it interesting; and at any moment the pall of superstition might stifle the flickering light of inquiry, as we feel was the case when dürer writes: the most wonderful thing i ever saw occurred in the year , when crosses fell upon many persons, and especially on children rather than on elder people. amongst others, i saw one of the form which i have represented below. it had fallen into eyrer's maid's shift, as she was sitting in the house at the back of pirkheimer's (i.e., in the house where dürer was born). she was so troubled about it that she wept and cried aloud, for she feared that she must die because of it. i have also seen a comet in the sky. and again, the terror caused by a very bad and strange dream passes the bounds of play; and one feels that the belief that a vision of the night might produce or prefigure dreadful change was for him something a great deal more serious than for the dilettante spiritualist and wonder-tickler of to-day. he writes: in the night between wednesday and thursday after whit sunday (may - , ), i saw this appearance in my sleep--how many great waters fell from heaven. the first struck the earth about four miles away from me with terrific force and tremendous noise, and it broke up and drowned the whole land. i was so sore afraid that i awoke from it. then the other waters fell, and as they fell they were very powerful, and there were many of them, some further away, some nearer. and they came down from so great a height that they all seemed to fall with an equal slowness. but when the first water that touched the earth had very nearly reached it, it fell with such swiftness, with wind and roaring, and i was so sore afraid that when i awoke my whole body trembled, and for a long while i could not recover myself. so when i arose in the morning, i painted it above here as i saw it god turn all these things to the best. albrecht dÜrer. the instinct for recording which dictates such a note as this is characteristic of dürer, and called into being many of his drawings. many such naïve and explicit records as that on the drawing which raphael sent him are to be found in the flyleaves of books and on the margins of prints and drawings, his possessions. in such notes we may see not only an effect of the curiosity, and desire to arrange and co-ordinate information, which resulted in modern science; but something that is akin to that worship and respect for the deeds and productions of those long dead or in distant countries, in which the human spirit relieved itself from the oppressive expectation of judgment and vengeance which had paralysed it, as the beauty of the supernatural world was lost sight of behind its terrors, and witches and wizards engrossed the popular mind, in which for a time saints and angels had held the ascendancy. the future now became the return of a golden age; not a garish and horrible novelty called heaven and hell, but a human society beautiful as that of the greeks, grand as that of republican rome, sweet and hospitable as the household of jesus and mary. the reformation is in part a return of the old fears; but dürer has recorded only one bad dream, whereas he tells that he was often visited by dreams worthy of the glorious renascence. "would to god it were possible for me to see the work and art of the mighty masters to come, who are yet unborn, for i know that i might be improved. ah! _how often in my_ sleep do i behold great works of art and beautiful things, the like whereof never appear to me awake, but so soon as i awake even the remembrance of them leaveth me!" why was he not sent to rome to see the ceiling of the sistina and raphael's stanze? perchance it was these that he saw in his dreams? chapter vi dÜrer's journey to the netherlands i it is even more the case with dürer's journal written in the netherlands than with the letters from venice that, like life itself, it is full of repetitions and over-insistence on what is insignificant. i quote the most interesting passages, and as there is never a good reason for doing again what has already been well done; i am happy to quote sir martin conway's excellent notes, having found occasion to add only one. dürer set out on july , , with his wife and her maid susanna. it was probably this susanna who three years later married georg penz, one of "the three godless painters." dürer took a great many prints and woodcuts, books both to sell and to give as presents; and besides he took a sketch book in which he made silver-point sketches and portraits. a good number of its pages have come down to us, and a great many of the portraits he mentions having taken were done in it, and then cut out to give to the sitter. all these drawings are on the same sized paper. we reproduce one of them here (see page ). besides this sketch-book he evidently had a memorandum-book in which he recorded what he did, what he spent, whom he saw, and occasionally what he felt or what he wished. the original is lost, but an old copy of it is in the bamberg library. _july_ .--on thursday after kilian's, i, albrecht dürer, at my own charges and costs, took myself and my wife (and maid susanna) away to the netherlands. and the same day, after passing through erlangen, we put up for the night at baiersdorf and spent there pounds less pfennigs. july .--next day, friday, we came to forchheim, and there i paid pf. for the convoy. thence i journeyed to bamberg, where i presented the bishop (georg iii. schenk von limburg[ ]) with a madonna painting, a life of our lady, an apocalypse, and a horin's worth of engravings. he invited me as his guest, gave me a toll-pass[ ] and three letters of introduction, and paid my bill at the inn, where i had spent about a florin. i paid six florins in gold to the boatman who took me from bamberg to frankfurt. master lukas benedict and hans,[ ] the painter, sent me wine. * * * * * antwerp, _august_ - , . at antwerp i went to jobst plankfelt's[ ] inn, and the same evening at fuggers' factor,[ ] bernhard stecher invite and gave us a costly meal. my wife, however, dined at the inn. i paid the driver three gold florins for bringing us three, and one st. i paid for carrying the goods. _august_ .--on saturday after the feast of st. peter in chains my host took me to see the burgomaster's (arnold van liere) house at antwerp. it is newly built and beyond measure large, and very well ordered, with spacious and exceedingly beautiful chambers, a tower splendidly ornamented, a very large garden--altogether a noble house, the like of which i have nowhere seen in all germany. the house also is reached from both sides by a very long street, which has been quite newly built according to the burgomaster's liking and at his charges. i paid three st. to the messenger, two pf. for bread, two pf. for ink. august .--on sunday, it was st. oswald's day, the painters invited me to the hall of their guild, with my wife and maid. all their service was of silver, and they had other splendid ornaments and very costly meats. all their wives also were there. and as i was being led to the table the company stood on both sides as if they were leading some great lord. and there were amongst them men of very high position, who all behaved most respectfully towards me with deep courtesy, and promised to do everything in their power agreeable to me that they knew of. and as i was sitting there in such honour the syndic (adrian horebouts) of antwerp came, with two servants, and presented me with four cans of wine in the name of the town councillors of antwerp, and they had bidden him say that they wished thereby to show their respect for me and to assure me of their good will. wherefore i returned them my humble thanks and offered my humble service. after that came master peeter (frans), the town-carpenter, and presented me with two cans of wine, with the offer of his willing services. so when we had spent a long and merry time together till late in the night, they accompanied us home with lanterns in great honour. and they begged me to be ever assured and confident of their good will, and promised that in whatever i did they would be all-helpful to me. so i thanked them and laid me down to sleep. the treasurer (lorenz sterk) also gave me a child's head (painted) on linen, and a wooden weapon from calicut, and one of the light wood reeds. tomasin, too, has given me a plaited hat of alder bark. i dined once with the portuguese, and have given a brother of tomasin's three fl. worth of engravings. herr erasmus[ ] has given me a small spanish _mantilla_ and three men's portraits. i took the portrait of herr niklas kratzer,[ ] an astronomer. he lives with the king of england, and has been very helpful and useful to me in many matters. he is a german, a native of munich. i also made the portrait of tomasin's daughter, mistress zutta by name. hans pfaffroth[ ] gave me one philips fl. for taking his portrait in charcoal. i have dined once more with tomasin. my host's brother-in-law entertained me and my wife once. i changed two light florins for twenty-four st. for living expenses, and i gave one st. _t&k&d_ to a man who let me see an altar-piece. [illustration: silver-point drawing on a white ground, in the berlin print room] _august_ .--on the sunday after our dear lady's assumption i saw the great procession from the church of our lady at antwerp, when the whole town of every craft and rank was assembled, each dressed in his best according to his rank. and all ranks and guilds had their signs, by which they might be known. in the intervals great costly pole-candles were borne, and their long old frankish trumpets of silver. there were also in the german fashion many pipers and drummers. all the instruments were loudly and noisily blown and beaten. i saw the procession pass along the street, the people being arranged in rows, each man some distance from his neighbour, but the rows close one behind another. there were the goldsmiths, the painters, the masons, the broderers, the sculptors, the joiners, the carpenters, the sailors, the fishermen, the butchers, the leatherers, the clothmakers, the bakers, the tailors, the cordwainers--indeed, workmen of all kinds, and many craftsmen and dealers who work for their livelihood. likewise the shopkeepers and merchants and their assistants of all kinds were there. after these came the shooters with guns, bows, and cross-bows, and the horsemen and foot-soldiers also. then followed the watch of the lords magistrates. then came a fine troop all in red, nobly and splendidly clad. before them, however, went all the religious orders and the members of some foundations very devoutly, all in their different robes. a very large company of widows also took part in this procession. they support themselves with their own hands and observe a special rule. they were all dressed from head to foot in white linen garments, made expressly for the occasion, very sorrowful to see. among them i saw some very stately persons. last of all came the chapter of our lady's church, with all their clergy, scholars, and treasurers. twenty persons bore the image of the virgin mary with the lord jesus, adorned in the costliest manner, to the honour of the lord god. in this procession very many delightful things were shown, most splendidly got up. waggons were drawn along with masques upon ships and other structures. behind them came the company of the prophets in their order, and scenes from the new testament, such as the annunciation, the three holy kings riding on great camels and on other rare beasts, very well arranged; also how our lady fled to egypt--very devout--and many other things, which for shortness i omit. at the end came a great dragon which st. margaret and her maidens led by a girdle; she was especially beautiful. behind her came st. george with his squire, a very goodly knight in armour. in this host also rode boys and maidens most finely and splendidly dressed in the costumes of many lands, representing various saints. from beginning to end the procession lasted more than two hours before it was gone past our house. and so many things were there that i could never write them all in a book, so i let it well alone. * * * * * brussels _august_ -_september_ , . in the golden chamber in the townhall at brussels i saw the four paintings which the great master roger van der weyden[ ] made. and i saw out behind the king's house at brussels the fountains, labyrinth, and beast-garden[ ]; anything more beautiful and pleasing to me and more like a paradise i have never seen. erasmus is the name of the little man who wrote out my supplication at herr jacob de bannisis' house. at brussels is a very splendid townhall, large, and covered with beautiful carved stonework, and it has a noble open tower. i took a portrait at night by candlelight of master konrad of brussels, who was my host; i drew at the same time doctor lamparter's son in charcoal, also the hostess. i saw the things which have been brought to the king from the new land of gold (mexico), a sun all of gold a whole fathom broad, and a moon all of silver of the same size, also two rooms full of the armour of the people there, and all manner of wondrous weapons of theirs, harness and darts, very strange clothing, beds, and all kinds of wonderful objects of human use, much better worth seeing than prodigies. these things were all so precious that they are valued at , florins. all the days of my life i have seen nothing that rejoiced my heart so much as these things, for i saw amongst them wonderful works of art, and i marvelled at the subtle _ingenia_ of men in foreign lands. indeed, i cannot express all that i thought there. at brussels i saw many other beautiful things besides, and especially i saw a fish bone there, as vast as if it had been built up of squared stones. it was a fathom long and very thick, it weighs up to cwt., and its form resembles that drawn here. it stood up behind on the fish's head. i was also in the count of nassau's house,[ ] which is very splendidly built and as beautifully adorned. i have again dined with my lords (of nürnberg). when i was in the nassau house in the chapel there, i saw the good picture[ ] that master hugo van der goes painted, and i saw the two fine large halls and the treasures everywhere in the house, also the great bed wherein fifty men can lie. and i _saw_ the great stone which the storm cast down in the field near the lord of nassau. the house stands high, and from it there is a most beautiful view, at which one cannot but wonder: and i do not believe that in all the german lands the like of it exists. master bernard van orley, the painter, invited me and prepared so costly a meal that i do not think ten fl. will pay for it. lady margaret's treasurer (jan de marnix), whom i drew, and the king's steward, jehan de metenye by name, and the town-treasurer named van busleyden invited themselves to it, to get me good company. i gave master bernard a _passion_ engraved in copper, and he gave me in return a black spanish bag worth three fl. i have also given erasmus of rotterdam a _passion_ engraved in copper. i have once more taken erasmus of rotterdam's portrait[ ] i gave lorenz sterk a sitting _jerome_ and the _melancholy_, and took a portrait of my hostess' godmother. six people whose portraits i drew at brussels have given me nothing. i paid three st. for two buffalo horns, and one st. for two eulenspiegels.[ ] antwerp, _september -october _, . i have paid one st for the printed "entry into antwerp," telling how the king was received with a splendid triumph--the gates very costly adorned--and with plays, great joy, and graceful maidens whose like i have seldom seen.[ ] i changed one fl. for expenses. i saw at antwerp the bones of the giant. his leg above the knee is - / ft. long and beyond measure heavy and very thick; so with his shoulder blades--a single one is broader than a strong man's back--and his other limbs. the man was ft. high, had ruled at antwerp and done wondrous great feats, as is more fully written about him in an old book,[ ] which the lords of the town possess. [illustration: erasmus from a reproduction of the drawing in the "léon bonnat" collection, bayonne _face p._ ] the studio (school) of raphael of urbino has quite broken up since his death,[ ] but one of his scholars, tommaso vincidor of bologna[ ] by name, a good painter, desired to see me. so he came to me and has given me an antique gold ring with a very well cut stone. it is worth five fl., but already i have been offered the double for it. i gave him six fl. worth of my best prints for it. i bought a piece of calico for three st.; i paid the messenger one st.; three st. i spent in company. i have presented a whole set of all my works to lady margaret, the emperor's daughter, and have drawn her two pictures on parchment with the greatest pains and care. all this i set at as much as thirty fl. and i have had to draw the design of a house for her physician the doctor, according to which he intends to build one; and for drawing that i would not care to take less than ten fl. i have given the servant one st., and paid one st. for brick-colour. * * * * * october .--on monday after michaelmas, , i gave thomas of bologna a whole set of prints to send for me to rome to another painter who should send me raphael's work[ ] in return. i dined once with my wife. i paid three st. for the little tracts. the bolognese has made my portrait;[ ] he means to take it with him to rome. * * * * * aachen, _october - , _. _october_ .--at aachen i saw the well-proportioned pillars,[ ] with their good capitals of green and red porphyry (_gassenstein_) which charles the great had brought from rome thither and there set up. they are correctly made according to vitruvius' writings. _october_ .--on october king karl was crowned at aachen. there i saw all manner of lordly splendour, more magnificent than anything that those who live in our parts have seen--all, as it has been described. * * * * * kÖln, _october --november , _. i bought a tract of luther's for five white pf., and the "condemnation of luther," the pious man, for one white pf.; also a rosary for one white pf. and a girdle for two white pf., a pound of candles for one white pf. _november_ .--i have made the nun's portrait. i gave the nun seven white pf. and three half-sheet engravings. my confirmation[ ] from the emperor came to my lords of nürnberg for me on monday after martin's, in the year , after great trouble and labour. antwerp, _november_ %--_december_ , . at zierikzee, in zeeland, a whale has been stranded by a high tide and a gale of wind. it is much more than fathoms long, and no man living in zeeland has seen one even a third as long as this is. the fish cannot get off the land; the people would gladly see it gone, as they fear the great stink, for it is so large that they say it could not be cut in pieces and the blubber boiled down in half a year. zeeland, _december_ - , . _december_ .--i went to middelburg. there, in the abbey, is a great picture painted by jan de mabuse--not so good in the modelling (_hauptstreichen_) as in the colouring. i went next to the veere, where lie ships from all lands; it is a very fine little town. at arnemuiden, where i landed before, a great misfortune befel me. as we were pushing ashore and getting out our rope, a great ship bumped hard against us, as we were in the act of landing, and in the crush i had let every one get out before me, so that only i, georg kotzler,[ ] two old wives, and the skipper with a small boy were left in the ship. when now the other ship bumped against us, and i with those named was still in the ship and could not get out, the strong rope broke; and thereupon, in the same moment, a storm of wind arose, which drove our ship back with force. then we all cried for help, but no one would risk himself for us. and the wind carried us away out to sea. thereupon the skipper tore his hair and cried aloud, for all his men had landed and the ship was unmanned. then were we in fear and danger, for the wind was strong and only six persons in the ship. so i spoke to the skipper that he should take courage (_er sollt ein herz fahen_) and have hope in god, and that he should consider what was to be done. so he said that if he could haul up the small sail he would try if we could come again to land. so we toiled all together and got it feebly about half-way up, and went on again towards the land. and when the people on shore, who had already given us up, saw how we helped ourselves, they came to our aid and we got to land. middelburg is a good town; it has a very beautiful townhall with a fine tower. there is much art shown in all things here. in the abbey the stalls are very costly and beautiful, and there is a splendid gallery of stone; and there is a fine parish church. the town was besides excellent for sketching (_köstlich au konterfeyen_). zeeland is fine and wonderful to see because of the water, for it stands higher than the land. i made a portrait of my host at arnemuiden. master hugo and alexander imhof and friedrich the hirschvogels' servant gave me, each of them, an indian cocoa-nut which they had won at play, and the host gave me a sprouting bulb. _december_ --early on monday we started again by ship and went by the veere and zierikzee and tried to get sight of the great fish,[ ] but the tide had carried him off again. antwerp, _december_ --_april_ , i have eaten alone thus often. i took portraits of gerhard bombelli and the daughter of sebastian the procurator. _february_ .--on carnival sunday the goldsmiths invited me to dinner early with my wife. amongst their assembled guests were many notable men. they had prepared a most splendid meal, and did me exceeding great honour. and in the evening the old bailiff of the town[ ] invited me and gave a splendid meal, and did me great honour. many strange masquers came there. i have drawn the portrait in charcoal of florent nepotis, lady margaret's organist. on monday night herr lopez invited me to the great banquet on shrove-tuesday, which lasted till two o'clock, and was very costly. herr lorenz sterk gave me a spanish fur. to the above-mentioned feast very many came in costly masks, and especially tomasin and brandan. i won two fl. at play. i dined once with the frenchman, twice with the hirschvogels' fritz, and once with master peter aegidius[ ] the secretary, when erasmus of rotterdam also dined with us. i have twice more drawn with the metal-point the portrait of the beautiful maiden for gerhard. i made tomasin a design, drawn and tinted in half colours, after which he intends to have his house painted. i bought the five silk girdles, which i mean to give away, for three fl. sixteen st.; also a border (_borte_) for twenty st. these six borders i sent to the wives of caspar nützel, hans imhof, sträub, the two spenglers, and löffelholz,[ ] and to each a good pair of gloves. to pirkheimer i sent a large cap, a costly inkstand of buffalo horn, a silver emperor, one pound of pistachios, and three sugar canes. to caspar nützel i sent a great elk's foot, ten large fir cones, and cones of the stone-pine. to jacob muffel i sent a scarlet breastcloth of one ell; to hans imhof's child an embroidered scarlet cap and stone-pine nuts; to kramer's wife four ells of silk worth four fl.; to lochinger's wife one ell of silk worth one fl.; to the two spenglers a bag and three fine horns each; to herr hieronymus holzschuher a very large horn. bruges and ghent, _april_ - , . i saw the chapel[ ] there which roger painted, and some pictures by a great old master. i gave one st. to the man who showed us them. then i bought three ivory combs for thirty st. they took me next to st. jacob's and showed me the precious pictures by roger and hugo,[ ] who were both great masters. then i saw in our lady's church the alabaster[ ] madonna, sculptured by michael angelo of rome. after that they took me to many more churches and showed me all the good pictures, of which there is an abundance there; and when i had seen the jan van eyck[ ] and all the other works, we came at last to the painters' chapel, in which there are good things. then they prepared a banquet for me, and i went with them from it to their guild-hall, where many honourable men were gathered together, both goldsmiths, painters and merchants, and they made me sup with them. they gave me presents, sought to make my acquaintance, and did me great honour. the two brothers, jacob and peter mostaert, the councillors, gave me twelve cans of wine; and the whole assembly, more than sixty persons, accompanied me home with many torches. i also saw at their shooting court the great fish-tub on which they eat; it is feet long, feet high, and feet wide. so early on tuesday we went away, but before that i drew with the metal-point the portrait of jan prost, and gave his wife ten st. at parting. * * * * * on my arrival at ghent the dean of the painters came to me and brought with him the first masters in painting; they showed me great honour, received me most courteously, offered me their goodwill and service, and supped with me. on wednesday they took me early to the belfry of st. john, whence i looked over the great wonderful town, yet in which even i had just been taken for something great. then i saw jan van eycks picture;[ ] it is a most precious painting, full of thought (_ein überköstlich hochverständig gemühl_), and the eve, mary, and god the father are specially good. next i saw the lions and drew one with the metal-point.[ ] and i saw at the place where men are beheaded on the bridge, the two statues erected (in ) as a sign that there a son beheaded his father.[ ] ghent is a fine and remarkable town; four great waters flow through it. i gave the sacristan (at st. bavon's) and the lions' keepers three st. _trinkgeld_. i saw many wonderful things in ghent besides, and the painters with their dean did not leave me alone, but they ate with me morning and evening and paid for everything, and were very friendly to me. i gave away five st. at the inn at leaving. antwerp, _april_ -_may_ , . in the third week after easter (april - ) a violent fever seized me, with great weakness, nausea, and headache. and before, when i was in zeeland, a wondrous sickness overcame me, such as i never heard of from any man, and this sickness remains with me. i paid six st. for cases. the monk has bound two books for me in return for the art-wares which i gave him. i bought a piece of arras to make two mantles for my mother-in-law and my wife, for ten fl. eight st. i paid the doctor eight st., and three st. to the apothecary. i also changed one fl. for expenses, and spent three st. in company. paid the doctor ten st. i again paid the doctor six st. during my illness rodrigo has sent me many sweetmeats. i gave the lad four st. _trinkgeld_. [illustration: drawing in silver-point on prepared ground, from the netherlands sketch-book, in the imperial library, vienna] on friday (may ) before whit sunday in the year , came tidings to me at antwerp, that martin luther had been so treacherously taken prisoner; for he trusted the emperor karl, who had granted him his herald and imperial safe conduct. but as soon as the herald had conveyed him to an unfriendly place near eisenach he rode away, saying that he no longer needed him. straightway there appeared ten knights, and they treacherously carried off the pious man, betrayed into their hands, a man enlightened by the holy ghost, a follower of the true christian faith. and whether he yet lives i know not, or whether they have put him to death; if so, he has suffered for the truth of christ and because he rebuked the unchristian papacy, which strives with its heavy load of human laws against the redemption of christ. and if he has suffered it is that we may again be robbed and stripped of the truth of our blood and sweat, that the same may be shamefully and scandalously squandered by idle-going folk, while the poor and the sick therefore die of hunger. but this is above all most grievous to me, that, may be, god will suffer us to remain still longer under their false, blind doctrine, invented and drawn up by the men alone whom they call fathers, by whom also the precious word of god is in many places wrongly expounded or utterly ignored. oh god of heaven, pity us! oh lord jesus christ, pray for thy people! deliver us at the fit time. call together thy far-scattered sheep by thy voice in the scripture, called thy godly word. help us to know this thy voice and to follow no other deceiving cry of human error, so that we, lord jesus christ, may not fall away from thee. call together again the sheep of thy pasture, who are still in part found in the roman church, and with them also the indians, muscovites, russians, and greeks, who have been scattered by the oppression and avarice of the pope and by false appearance of holiness. oh god, redeem thy poor people constrained by heavy ban and edict, which it nowise willingly obeys, continually to sin against its conscience if it disobeys them. never, oh god, hast thou so horribly burdened a people with human laws as us poor folk under the roman chair, who daily long to be free christians, ransomed by thy blood. oh highest, heavenly father, pour into our hearts, through thy son, jesus christ, such a light, that by it we may know what messenger we are bound to obey, so that with good conscience we may lay aside the burdens of others and serve thee, eternal, heavenly father, with happy and joyful hearts. and if we have lost this man, who has written more clearly than any that has lived for years, and to whom thou hast given such a spirit of the gospel, we pray thee, oh heavenly father, that thou wouldst again give thy holy spirit to one, that he may gather anew everywhere together thy holy christian church, that we may again live free and in christian manner, and so, by our good works, all unbelievers, as turks, heathen, and calicuts, may of themselves turn to us and embrace the christian faith. but, ere thou judgest, oh lord, thou wiliest that, as thy son, jesus christ, was fain to die by the hands of the priests, and to rise from the dead and after to ascend up to heaven, so too in like manner it should be with thy follower martin luther, whose life the pope compasseth with his money, treacherously towards god. him wilt thou quicken again. and as thou, oh my lord, ordainedst thereafter that jerusalem should for that sin be destroyed, so wilt thou also destroy this self-assumed authority of the roman chair. oh lord, give us then the new beautified jerusalem, which descendeth out of heaven, whereof the apocalypse writes, the holy, pure gospel, which is not obscured by human doctrine. every man who reads martin luther's books may see how clear and transparent is his doctrine, because he sets forth the holy gospel. wherefore his books are to be held in great honour, and not to be burnt; unless indeed his adversaries, who ever strive against the truth and would make gods out of men, were also cast into the fire, they and all their opinions with them, and afterwards a new edition of luther's works were prepared. oh god, if luther be dead, who will henceforth expound to us the holy gospel with such clearness? what, oh god, might he not still have written for us in ten or twenty years! oh all ye pious christian men, help me deeply to bewail this man, inspired of god, and to pray him yet again to send us an enlightened man. oh erasmus of rotterdam, where wilt thou stop? behold how the wicked tyranny of worldly power, the might of darkness, prevails. hear, thou knight of christ! ride on by the side of the lord jesus. guard the truth. attain the martyr's crown. already indeed art thou an aged little man (_ein altes männiken_), and myself have heard thee say that thou givest thyself but two years more wherein thou mayest still be fit to accomplish somewhat. lay out the same well for the good of the gospel and of the true christian faith, and make thyself heard. so, as christ says, shall the gates of hell (the roman chair) in no wise prevail against thee. and if here below thou wert to be like thy master christ and sufferedst infamy at the hands of the liars of this time, and didst die a little the sooner, then wouldst thou the sooner pass from death unto life and be glorified in christ. for if thou drinkest of the cup which he drank of, with him shalt thou reign and judge with justice those who have dealt unrighteously. oh erasmus, cleave to this that god himself may be thy praise, even as it is written of david. for thou mayest, yea verily thou mayest overthrow goliath. because god stands by the holy christian church, even as he only upholds the roman church, according to his godly will. may he help us to everlasting salvation, who is god, the father, the son, and holy ghost, one eternal god. amen. oh ye christian men, pray god for help, for his judgment draweth nigh and his justice shall appear. then shall we behold the innocent blood which the pope, priests, bishops, and monks have shed, judged and condemned (_apocal._). these are the slain who lie beneath the altar of god and cry for vengeance, to whom the voice of god answereth: await the full number of the innocent slain, then will i judge. * * * * * antwerp, _may_ --_june_ , . master gerhard,[ ] the illuminator, has a daughter about eighteen years old named susanna. she has illuminated a _salvator_ on a little sheet, for which i gave her one fl. it is very wonderful that a woman can do so much. i lost six st. at play. i saw the great procession at antwerp on holy trinity day. master konrad gave me a fine pair of knives, so i gave his little old man a _life of our lady_ in return. i have made a portrait in charcoal of master jan,[ ] goldsmith of brussels, also one of his wife. i have been paid two fl. for prints. master jan, the brussels goldsmith, paid me three philips fl. for what i did for him, the drawing for the seal and the two portraits. i gave the veronica, which i painted in oils, and the _adam and eve_ which franz did, to jan, the goldsmith, in exchange for a jacinth and an agate, on which a lucretia is engraved. each of us valued his portion at fourteen fl. further, i gave him a whole set of engravings for a ring and six stones. each valued his portion at seven fl. i bought two pairs of shoes for fourteen st., and two small boxes for two st. i changed two philips fl. for expenses. i drew three _leadings-forth_[ ] and two mounts of olives on five half-sheets. i took three portraits in black and white on grey paper. i also sketched in black and white on grey paper two netherland costumes. i painted for the englishman his coat of arms, and he gave me one fl. i have also at one time and another done many drawings and other things to serve different people, and for the more part of my work have received nothing. andreas of krakau paid me one philips fl. for a shield and a child's head. changed one il. for expenses. i paid two fl. for sweeping-brushes. i saw the great procession at antwerp on corpus christi day; it was very splendid. i gave four st. as trinkgeld. i paid the doctor six st. and one st. for a box. i have dined five times with tomasin. i paid ten st. at the apothecary's, and gave his wife fourteen st. for the clyster and himself.... to the monk who confessed my wife i gave eight st. * * * * * mechlin, _june and , _. * * * * * at mechlin i lodged with master heinrich, the painter, at the sign of the golden head.[ ] and the painters and sculptors bade me as guest at my inn and did me great honour in their gathering. i went also to poppenreuter[ ] the gunmaker's house, and found wonderful things there. and i went to lady margaret's and showed her my _emperor,_[ ] and would have presented it to her, but she so disliked it that i took it away with me. and on friday lady margaret showed me all her beautiful things. amongst them i saw about forty small oil pictures, the like of which for precision and excellence i have never beheld. there also i saw more good works by jan (de mabuse), and jacob walch.[ ] i asked my lady for jacob's little book, but she said she had already promised it to her painter.[ ] then i saw many other costly things and a precious library.[ ] antwerp, _june_ --_july_ , . master lukas, who engraves in copper, asked me as his guest. he is a little man, born at leyden in holland; he was at antwerp. i have drawn with the metal-point the portrait of master lukas van leyden.[ ] the man with the three rings has overreached me by half. i did not understand the matter. i bought a red cap for my god-child[ ]for eighteen st. lost twelve st. at play. drank two st. cornelius grapheus, the secretary, gave me luther's "babylonian captivity,"[ ] in return for which i gave him my three large books. [illustration: lucas van der leyden drawing in charcoal formerly in the collection at warwick castle.] i reckoned up with jobst and found myself thirty-one fl. in his debt, which i paid him; therein were charged and deducted the two portrait heads which i painted in oils, for which he gave five pounds of borax netherlands weight. in all my doings, spendings, sales, and other dealings, in all my connections with high and low, i have suffered loss in the netherlands; and lady margaret in particular gave me nothing for what i made and presented to her. and this settlement with jobst was made on st. peter and paul's day. on our lady's visitation, as i was just about to leave antwerp, the king of denmark sent to me to come to him at once, and take his portrait, which i did in charcoal. i also did that of his servant anton, and i was made to dine with the king, and he behaved graciously towards me. i have entrusted my bale to leonhard tucher and given over my white cloth to him. the carrier with whom i bargained did not take me; i fell out with him. gerhard gave me some italian seeds. i gave the new carrier (_vicarius_) the great turtle shell, the fish-shield, the long pipe, the long weapon, the fish-fins, and the two little casks of lemons and capers to take home for me, on the day of our lady's visitation, . brussels, _july_ - , . i noticed how the people of antwerp marvelled greatly when they saw the king of denmark, to find him such a manly, handsome man and come hither through his enemy's land with only two attendants. i saw, too, how the emperor rode forth from brussels to meet him, and received him honourably with great pomp. then i saw the noble, costly banquet, which the emperor and lady margaret held next day in his honour. thomas bologna has given me an italian work of art; i have also bought a work for one st. a few days later when the dürers arrived at cologne the journal breaks off abruptly, as the last few leaves are missing: but there is every reason to suppose that they got back safely to nuremberg two or three weeks later. ii this journal shows us how the influence of a greater centre of civilisation strengthened the spirit of the renascence in dürer: it is marked by his having again taken up the paint brushes to do the best sort of work, by a new out-break of the collector's acquisitiveness, lastly by the tone of such a passage as that wherein the procession on the sunday after our lady's assumption (p. ) is spoken of with admiration. "twenty persons bore the image of the virgin mary with the lord jesus, adorned in the costliest manner, to the honour of the lord god." such a spectacle has a very different significance to his mind from that of another procession in honour of the virgin, depicted in a woodcut by michael ostendorfer, which presents a large space in front of a temporary church; in the midst is a gaudy statue of the virgin set upon a pillar, around whose base seven or eight persons of both sexes, whom one might suppose from their attitudes to be drunk, are seen writhing, while a procession headed by huge cierges and a cardinal's hat on a pole encircles the whole building; those in the procession carrying offerings or else candles, two men being naked save for scanty hair shirts. on the margin of the copy now at coburg dürer has written: " , this spectre, contrary to holy scripture, has set itself up at regensburg and has been dressed out by the bishop. god help us that we should not so dishonour his precious mother but (honour her?) in christ jesus. amen." indeed, it would be difficult to distinguish between the kind of honour done the virgin in many of dürer's pictures and etchings and that done her in the antwerp procession; but both are infinitely removed from the degradation of emotion produced by an orgy of superstition such as that depicted in ostendorfer's print, which is truly nearer akin to the scenes that occasionally occur in salvation army or methodist revivals, and is even more repugnant to the spirit of the renascence than to that of the reformation as luther and dürer conceived of it. it is well to remind ourselves, by reading such a passage and by gazing at dürer's virgins enthroned and crowned with stars, that the attitude of later protestants in regard to the worship of the virgin was in no sense shared by dürer. and we touch the very pulse of the renaissance in the phrase, "being a painter, i looked about me a little more boldly,"--by which dürer explains that the beautiful maidens, almost naked, who figured in the mythological groups along the route of charles v.'s triumphal entry into antwerp received a very different reward, in his attentive gaze, to that which was meted to them by the young, austere, and unreformed charles. one might almost be listening to vasari when dürer says: "i saw out behind the king's house at brussels the fountains, labyrinth and beast-garden; anything more beautiful and pleasing to me and more like paradise i have never seen." dürer's admiration for luther was like michael angelo's for savonarola, and he never doubted that fiery indignation was directed against the abuse of wealth, force, and beauty, not against their use; though perhaps both the italian and the german reformer occasionally confused the two. iii duress journey was successful in that he obtained from charles v. what he sought--the confirmation of his privilegium. charles, by god's grace, roman emperor elect, etc. honourable, trusty, and well-beloved, whereas the most illustrious prince, emperor maximilian, our dear lord and grandfather of praiseworthy memory, appointed and assigned unto our and the empire's trusty and well-beloved albrecht dürer the sum of florins rhenish every year of his life to be paid from and out of our and the empire's customary town contributions, which you are bound to render yearly into our imperial treasury; and whereas we, as roman emperor, have graciously agreed thereto, and have granted anew this life pension unto him according to the terms of the above letter; we therefore earnestly command you, and it is our will, that you render and give unto the said albrecht dürer henceforward every year of his life, from and out of the said town contributions and in return for his proper quittance, the said life pension of florins rhenish, together with whatever part of it stands over unpaid since the emperor maximilian's grant; etc. given at our and the holy empire's town köln on the fourth day of the month november ( ), etc. (signed) karl. (signed) albrecht, cardinal, archbishop of mainz, chancellor. besides, he got back to nuremberg without falling in with highwaymen, though the following little letter shows us that in this he was fortunate. dear master wolf stromer,--my most gracious lord of salzburg has sent me a letter by the hand of his glass-painter. i shall be glad to do anything i can to help him. he is to buy glass and materials here. he tells me that near freistadtlein he was robbed and had twenty florins taken from him. he has asked me to send him to you, for his gracious lord told him if he wanted anything to let you know. i send him, therefore, to your wisdom with my apprentice. your wisdom's, albrecht dÜrer. no doubt he had enriched his mind and cheered his heart in the company of prosperous, go-ahead, and earnest men; but as he says, "when i was in zeeland, a wondrous sickness overcame me, such as i never heard of from any man, and this sickness remains with me" (see p. ). and, alas! it was to remain with him till he died of it. so that his journey cannot be considered as altogether fortunate. footnotes: [footnote : he was one of the leading humanists of the time. the madonna referred to was still at bamberg, at the beginning of the present century.] [footnote : owing to the existence of some rudimentary form of zollverein, dürer's pass not only freed him of dues in the bamberg district but as far down the rhine as köln.] [footnote : hans wolf, successor to hans wolfgang katzheimer.] [footnote : there is a portrait drawing of jobst plankfelt by dürer in the städel collection at frankfurt.] [footnote : that is the head of the fuggers' branch house at antwerp.] [footnote : erasmus of rotterdam, the famous humanist.] [footnote : holbein also painted a portrait of this man in . the picture is in the louvre.] [footnote : a pen-and-ink likeness of him by dürer is in the possession of the painter bendemann, of düsseldorf. it bears the inscription in dürer's hand, " . _hans pfaffroth van dantzgen ein starkmann_."] [footnote : these were four pictures painted upon linen. they represented _the justice of trajan, pope gregory praying for the heathen_, and two incidents in the story of erkenbald. the pictures were burnt in , but their compositions are reproduced in the well-known burgundian tapestries at bern. see pinchart, in the _bulletins de l'academie de bruxelles_, nd series, xvii.: also kinkel, _die brusseler rathhausbilder_, &c., zurich, .] [footnote : a rapid sketch made by dürer in this place is in the academy at vienna. it is dated , and inscribed, "that is the pleasure and beast-garden at brussels, seen down behind out of the palace."] [footnote : a reproduction of an old view of this house will be found in _l'art_, , i. p. .] [footnote : this picture was painted on four panels and represented the seven sacraments and a crucifix. it is now lost. a similar picture is in the antwerp gallery, ascribed to roger van der weyden.] [footnote : this is perhaps the drawing in the bounat collection at paris; it has been photographed by braun (see illus. opposite).] [footnote : it is believed that dürer here refers to an edition of the satirical tale edited by thomas murner, and published at strassburg in .] [footnote : "he afterwards particularly described to melanchthon the splendid spectacles he had beheld, and how in what were plainly mythological groups, the most beautiful maidens figured almost naked, and covered only with a thin transparent veil. the young emperor did not hocour them with a single glance, but dürer himself was very glad to get near, not less for the purpose of seeing the tableaux than to have the opportunity of observing closely the perfect figures of the young girls." as he himself says, "being a painter, i looked about me a little more boldly."--see thausing's "life of dürer," vol. ii., p. .] [footnote : _het oud register van diversche mandementen_, a fifteenth-century folio manuscript, still preserved in the antwerp archives.] [footnote : on april , .] [footnote : tommaso was sent to flanders in by pope leo x. to oversee the manufacture of the "second series" of tapestries. the painter does not seem to have returned to italy.] [footnote : engravings by marcantonio from raphael's designs.] [footnote : the picture is lost, but an engraving of it made by and. stock in is well-known.] [footnote : the fine monoliths brought from ravenna and still to be seen in aachen cathedral.] [footnote : the confirmation of his pension; _see_ p. .] [footnote : member of a nürnberg family.] [footnote : the object of the whole expedition was doubtless, that dürer might see and sketch the whale. in the british museum is a study of a walrus by dürer, dated , and inscribed, "the animal whose head i have drawn here was taken in the netherlandish sea, and was twelve brabant ells long and had four feet."] [footnote : gerhard van de werve.] [footnote : pupil and afterwards friend of erasmus.] [footnote : these people were dürer's principal nürnberg friends.] [footnote : it is assumed by commentators that _chapel_ means _altar-piece_, and it is guessed that the particular altar-piece is the one in the berlin museum which charles v. is reported to have carried about with him, and which belonged to the miraflores convent. the guesses are worthless.] [footnote : in st. jacob's was the _entombment_ by hugo van der goes.] [footnote : it is in white marble. it was sculpted about - . some critics have refused to accept it as a genuine work. dürer ought to have been in a position to know the truth.] [footnote : at this time there were plenty of his pictures at bruges. dürer doubtless saw his madonna in st. donatien's, now in the academy of the same town.] [footnote : the famous altar-piece painted by hubert and jan van eyck, of which the central part is still in its original place and the wings are divided, two of their panels being at brussels and the rest at berlin.] [footnote : this drawing from dürer's sketch-book is in the court library at vienna (see pl. opposite).] [footnote : the story is recounted in _flandria illustrata_ (a. sanderi, colon., , i. .)] [footnote : gerhard horeboul of ghent. charles v.'s 'book of hours' in the vienna library is his work. he also had a hand in the grimani breviary. after he went to england and entered the service of henry viii. his daughter susanna was likewise in the service of the english king. she married and died in england.] [footnote : perhaps jan van den perre, afterwards goldsmith to charles v.] [footnote : that is to say, drawings representing _christ bearing his cross_. _mount of olives_ means the agony _in the_ garden.] [footnote : the inn-keeper of the _golden head_ is known to have been a painter. his name was heinrich keldermann.] [footnote : though born at köln, he was called hans von nürnberg. he was cannon-founder and gun-maker to charles v.] [footnote : doubtless dürer's portrait of maximilian, now in the gallery at vienna, dated . (_see_ p. ).] [footnote : jacopo de' barbari.] [footnote : bernard van orley.] [footnote : the catalogue of this library exists in the inventory of the archduchess' possessions.] [footnote : this is in the musée wicar at lille; another portrait of lukas van leyden by dürer was in the earl of warwick's collection (_see_ opposite).] [footnote : hieronymus imhof.] [footnote : a quarto tract by luther, printed in (without place or date), entitled _von der babylonischen gefenglnuss der kirchen_.] chapter vii dÜrer's last years i dürer came back home with health broken: yet it is to this period that the magnificent portraits at berlin of nuremberg councillors belong, and certainly his hand and eye had never been more sure than when he produced them. the hall of the rathhaus was decorated under his direction and from his designs, the actual painting being, it is supposed, chiefly the work of george penz, who with his fellow prentices became famous in as one of "the three godless painters." we now come to a letter dated nÜrnberg, _december_ , , sunday after andrew's my dear and gracious master frey--i have received the little book you sent to master (ulrich) varnbüler and me; when he has finished reading it i will read it too. as to the monkey-dance you want me to draw for you, i have drawn this one here, unskilfully enough, for it is a long time since i saw any monkeys; so pray put up with it. convey my willing service to herr zwingli (the reformer), hans leu (a protestant painter), hans urich, and my other good masters. albrecht dÜrer. divide these five little prints amongst you: i have nothing else new. this master felix frey was a reformer at zurich: he was probably not closely related to hans frey, dürer's father-in-law, whose death is thus recorded in dürer's book: in the year (as they reckon it), on our dear lady's day, when she was offered in the temple, early, before the morning chimes, hans frey, my dear father-in-law, passed away. he had lain ill for almost six years and suffered quite incredible adversities in this world. he received the sacraments before he died. god almighty be gracious to him. next we have letters from and to niklas kratzer, astronomer to henry viii. he had been present when dürer drew erasmus' portrait at antwerp. dürer had also made a drawing of kratzer, and later on holbein was to paint his masterpiece in the louvre from the oxford professor. to the honourable and accomplished albrecht dürer, burgher of nürnberg, my dear master and friend. london, _october_ , . honourable, dear sir, i am very glad to hear of your good health and that of your wife. i have had hans pomer staying with me in england. now that you are all evangelical in nürnberg i must write to you. god grant you grace to persevere; the adversaries, indeed, are strong, but god is stronger, and is wont to help the sick who call upon him and acknowledge him. i want you, dear herr albrecht dürer, to make a drawing for me of the instrument you saw at herr pirkheimer's, wherewith they measure distances both far and wide. you told me about it at antwerp. or perhaps herr pirkheimer would send me the design of it--he would be doing me a great favour. i want also to know how much a set of impressions of all your prints costs, and whether anything new has come out at nürnberg relating to my art. i hear that our friend hans, the astronomer, is dead. would you write and tell me what instruments and the like he has left, and also where our stabius' prints and wood-blocks are to be found? greet herr pirkheimer for me. i hope to make him a map of england, which is a great country, and was unknown to ptolemy. he would like to see it. all those who have written about england have seen no more than a small part of it. you cannot write to me any longer through hans pomer. pray send me the woodcut which represents stabius as s. koloman.[ ]i have nothing more to say that would interest you, so god bless you. given at london, october . your servant, niklas kratzeh. greet your wife heartily for me. to the honourable and venerable herr niklas kratzer, servant to his royal majesty in england, my gracious master and friend. nÜrnberg, monday after barbara's (_december_ ), . first my most willing service to you, dear herr niklas. i have received and read your letter with pleasure, and am glad to hear that things are going well with you. i have spoken for you to herr wilibald pirkheimer about the instrument you wanted to have. he is having one made for you, and is going to send it to you with a letter. the things herr hans left when he died have all been scattered; as i was away at the time of his death i cannot find out where they are gone to. the same has happened to stabius' things; they were all taken to austria, and i can tell you no more about them. i should like to know whether you have yet begun to translate euclid into german, as you told me, if you had time, you would do. we have to stand in disgrace and danger for the sake of the christian faith, for they abuse us as heretics; but may god grant us his grace and strengthen us in his word, for we must obey him rather than men. it is better to lose life and goods than that god should cast us, body and soul, into hell-fire. therefore, may he confirm us in that which is good, and enlighten our adversaries, poor, miserable, blind creatures, that they may not perish in their errors. now god bless you! i send you two likenesses, printed from copper, which you will know well. at present i have no good news to write you, but much evil. however, only god's will cometh to pass. your wisdom's, albrecht dÜrer. another letter to dürer from cornelius grapheus at antwerp gives us some help towards understanding how the reformation affected dürer and his friends. to master albrecht dürer, unrivalled chief in the art of painting, my friend and most beloved brother in christ, at nürnberg; or in his absence to wilibald pirkheimer. i wrote a good long letter to you, some time ago, in the name of our common friend thomas bombelli, but we have received no answer from you. we are, therefore, the more anxious to hear even three words from you, that we may know how you are and what is going on in your parts, for there is no doubt that great events are happening. thomas bombelli sends you his heartiest greeting. i beg you, as i did in my last letter, to greet wilibald pirkheimer a score of times for me. of my own condition i will tell you nothing. the bearers of this letter will be able to acquaint you with everything. they are very good men and most sincere christians. i commend, them to you and my friend pirkheimer as if they were myself; for they, themselves the best of men, merit the highest recommendation to the best of men. farewell, dearest albrecht. amongst us there is a great and daily increasing persecution on account of the gospel. our brethren, the bearers, will tell you all about it more openly. again farewell. wholly yours, cornelius grapheus. antwerp, _february_ , . ii the events which made dürer an ardent evangelical and reformer in a coarser paste proved a leaven of anarchy and subversion. young, hot-headed nobles like ulrich von hutten became iconoclastic, were foremost at the dispersion of convents and nunneries, often playing a part on such occasions that was anything but a credit to the cause they were championing. among the prentice lads and among the peasants, the unrest, discontent, and appetite for change took forms if not more offensive at least more alarming. the peasants' war gave rulers a foretaste of the panic they were to undergo at the time of the french revolution. and in the towns men like "the three godless painters" made the burghers shake in their shoes for the social order which kept them rich and respected and others poor and servile. it is strange that all three should have come from dürer's workshop. probably they were the most talented prentices of the craft, since the great master chose them: besides, painting was an occupation which allowed of a certain intellectual development. they may have often listened with hungry ears to disputes between pirkheimer and dürer, and envied the good luck, grace and gift which had enabled the latter to bridge over a gulf as great as that which separated them from him, between him and pirkheimer or vambüler. all this and much more we can by taking thought imagine to our satisfaction; but the point which we would most desire to satisfactorily conjecture we are utterly in the dark about. though his prentices were tried, dürer appeared neither for nor against them; nor can we help ourselves to understand a fact so strange by any other mention of his attitude. he had a year or two previously married his servant, (perhaps the girl that his wife took with her to the netherlands), to georg penz, who went the farthest in his scepticism, recanted soonest, and possessed least talent of the three. but this fact, which is not quite assured, narrows the grounds of conjecture but little; we still face an almost boundless blank. it is difficult to imagine that dürer was quite as shocked as the town council by a man who said "he had some idea that there was a god, but did not know rightly what conception to form of him," who was so unfortunate as to think "nothing" of christ, and could not believe in the holy gospel or in the word of god; and who failed to recognise "a master of himself, his goods and everything belonging to him" in the council of nuremberg. now-a-days, when we think of the licence of assertion that has obtained on these questions, we are inclined to admire the honesty and intellectual clarity of such a confession. and dürer, who resolved the similar question of authority as to "things beautiful" in a manner much the same as this, may, we can at least hope, have viewed his prentices with more of pity than of anger. all the three "godless painters" were banished from reformed nuremberg; but georg, whose confession had been most godless, recanted and was allowed to return. the others, sebald and barthel beham, managed to perpetuate their names as "little masters" without the approbation of the town councillors, and are to-day less forgotten than those who condemned them. hieronymus andreae, the most skilful and famous of dürer's wood engravers, caused the council the same kind of alarm and concern. he took part with the peasants in their rebellion; but rebellion against a known authority was more pardonable than that against the unknown, or else his services were of greater value. at any rate he was pardoned not once but many times, being apparently an obstreperous character. iii if we can form no conjecture as to dürer's relations with his heretical aids, we have evidence as to his relations with their judges; for in he wrote to the town council thus: prudent, honourable and wise, most gracious masters,--during long years, by hardworking pains and labour under gods blessing, i have saved out of my earnings as much as florins rhenish, which i should now be glad to invest for my support. i know, indeed, that your honours are not often wont at the present time to grant interest at the rate of one florin for twenty; and i have been told that before now other applications of a like kind have been refused. it is not, therefore, without scruple that i address your honours in this matter. yet my necessities impel me to prefer this request to your honours, and i am encouraged to do so above all by the particularly gracious favour which i have always received from your honourable wisdoms, as well as by the following considerations. your wisdoms know how i have always hitherto shown myself dutiful, willing, and zealous in all matters that concerned your wisdoms and the common weal of the town. you know, moreover, how, before now, i have served many individual members of the council, as well as of the community here, gratuitously rather than for pay, when they stood in need of my help, art, and labour. i can also write with truth that, during the thirty years i have stayed at home, i have not received from people in this town work worth florins--truly a trifling and ridiculous sum--and not a fifth part of that has been profit. i have, on the contrary, earned and attained all my property (which, god knows, has grown irksome to me) from princes, lords, and other foreign persons, so that i only spend in this town what i have earned from foreigners. doubtless, also, your honours remember that at one time emperor maximilian, of most praiseworthy memory, in return for the manifold services which i had performed for him, year after year, of his own impulse and imperial charity wanted to make me free of taxes in this town. at the instance, however, of some of the elder councillors, who treated with me in the matter in the name of the council, i willingly resigned that privilege, in order to honour the said councillors and to maintain their privileges, usages, and rights. again, nineteen years ago, the government of venice offered to appoint me to an office and to give me a salary of ducats a year. so, too, only a short time ago when i was in the netherlands, the council of antwerp would have given me philipsgulden a year, kept me there free of taxes, and honoured me with a well-built house; and besides i should have been paid in addition at both places for all the work i might have done for the gentry. but i declined all this, because of the particular love and affection which i bear to your honourable wisdoms and to my fatherland, this honourable town, preferring, as i did, to live under your wisdoms in a moderate way rather than to be rich and held in honour in other places. it is, therefore, my most submissive prayer to your honours, that you will be pleased graciously to take these facts into consideration, and to receive from me on my account these florins, paying me florins a year as interest. i could, indeed, place them well with other respectable parties here and elsewhere, but i should prefer to see them in the hands of your wisdoms. i and my wife will then, now that we are both growing daily older, feebler, and more helpless, possess the certainty of a fitting household for our needs; and we shall experience thereby, as formerly, your honourable wisdoms' favour and goodwill. to merit this from your honours with all my powers i shall ever be found willing. your wisdoms' willing, obedient burgher, albrecht dÜrer. dürer obtained the desired five per cent. on his savings annually until his death, and afterwards his widow received four per cent. until her death. in the grateful artist finished and dedicated to his fellow-townsmen his most important picture, representing the four temperaments in the persons of st. john, st. peter, st. paul, and st. mark; he wrote thus to the council: prudent, honourable, wise, dear masters,--i have been intending, for a long time past, to show my respect for your wisdoms by the presentation of some humble picture of mine as a remembrance; but i have been prevented from so doing by the imperfection and insignificance of my works, for i felt that with such i could not well stand before your wisdoms. now, however, that i have just painted a panel upon which i have bestowed more trouble than on any other painting, i considered none more worthy to keep it as a remembrance than your wisdoms. therefore, i present it to your wisdoms with the humble and urgent prayer that you will favourably and graciously receive it, and will be and continue, as i have ever found you, my kind and dear masters. thus shall i be diligent to serve your wisdoms in all humility. your wisdoms' humble albrecht dÜrer. the gift was accepted, and the council voted dürer florins, his wife , and his apprentice . underneath the two panels which form the picture, the following was inscribed; the texts being from luther's bible: all worldly rulers in these dangerous times should give good heed that they receive not human misguidance for the word of god, for god will have nothing added to his word nor taken away from it. hear, therefore, these four excellent men, peter, john, paul, and mark, their warning. peter says in his second epistle in the second chapter: there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. and many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. and through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. john in his first epistle in the fourth chapter writes thus: beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of god: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. hereby know ye the spirit of god: every spirit that confesseth that jesus christ is come in the flesh, is of god: and every spirit that confesseth not that jesus christ is come in the flesh, is not of god: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. in the second epistle to timothy in the third chapter st. paul writes: this know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. for men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of god; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. for of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. st. mark writes in his gospel in the twelfth chapter: he said unto them in his doctrine, beware of the scribes, which love to go in long clothing, and love salutations in the market-places, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts; which devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayers: these shall receive greater damnation. these rather tremendous texts may make one fear that the "three godless painters" had found little pity in their master; but most sincere christians are better than their creeds, and more charitable than the old-world imprecations, admonitions, and denunciations, with which they soothe their cerberus of an old adam, who is not allowed to use his teeth to the full extent that their formidable nature would seem to warrant. for have they not been told above all things to love their enemies, and do good to those whom they would naturally hate, by a master whom they really love and strive to imitate? iv dürer's last years were given more and more to writing down his ideas for the sake of those who, coming after him, would, he was persuaded, go on far before him in the race for perfection. in he published his first book--"instruction in the measurement with the compass, and rules of lines, surfaces, and solid bodies, drawn up by albert dürer, and printed, for the use of all lovers of art, with appropriate diagrams." it contains a course of applied geometry in connection with euclid's elements. dürer states from the very commencement that "his book will be of no use to any one who understands the geometry of the 'very acute' euclid; for it has been written only for the young, and for those who have had no one to instruct them accurately." thausing tells us his work shows certain resemblances to that of luca pacioli, a companion of leonardo's, who may have been the "man who is willing to teach me the secrets of the art of perspective," and whom dürer in travelled from venice to bologna to see; it is even possible that he saw leonardo himself in the latter town. in he issued an essay on the "art of fortification," which the development of artillery was then transforming; and authorities on this very special science tell us that dürer is the true author of the ideas on which the "new prussian system" was founded. it was dread of the unchristian turk who was then besieging vienna which called forth from dürer this excursion. he dedicated it in the following terms: to the most illustrious, mighty prince and lord, lord ferdinand, king of hungary and bohemia, infant of spain, archduke of austria, duke of burgundy and brabant, count of hapsburg, flanders, and tirol, his roman imperial majesty, our most gracious lord, regent in the holy empire, my most gracious sire. most illustrious mighty king, most gracious sire,--during the lifetime of the most illustrious and mighty emperor maximilian of praiseworthy memory, your majesty's lord and grandsire, i experienced grace and favour from his imperial majesty; wherefore i consider myself no less bound to serve your majesty according to my small powers. as it happeneth that your majesty has commanded some towns and places to be fortified, i am induced to make known what little i know about these matters, if perchance it may please your majesty to gather somewhat therefrom. for though my theory may not be accepted in every point, still i believe something will arise from it, here and there, useful not to your majesty only, but to all other princes, lords, and towns, that would gladly protect themselves against violence and unjust oppression. i therefore humbly pray your majesty graciously to accept from me this evidence of my gratitude, and to be my most gracious lord, your royal majesty's most humble albrecht dÜrer. it seems that at any rate the kronenburg gate and roseneck bastion of strasburg were actually constructed in accordance with dürer's method. when, on april , , dürer died suddenly, two volumes of his great work on "human proportions" were ready for the press, and enough raw material, notes, drawings, &c., to enable his friend pirkheimer to prepare and issue the remaining two with them. of the misunderstanding of this the most important of dürer's writings i shall say nothing here, as i have devoted a separate chapter to it. v it seems probable that the "wondrous sickness which overcame me in zeeland, such as i never heard of from any man, and which sickness remains with me" of the netherlands journal (p. ) was an intermittent fever. there exists at bremen a sketch of dürer, nude down to the waist, and pointing with his finger to a spot between the pit of the stomach and the groin, which spot he has coloured yellow; and from its size, with the other descriptions of his malady, the skilful have arrived at the above diagnosis. the words on the sketch, "the yellow spot to which my finger points is where it pains me," seem to indicate that he had made it to send to some skilled physician. thausing suggests either master jacob or master braun, whom he had met at antwerp, and deduces from the length of his hair and the apparent vigour of his body, that the drawing was made soon after the disease was contracted. all doubt as to its nature would be removed, could it be made certain that by the words, "i have sent to your grace early this year before i became ill," in a letter to the elector albert dated september , , dürer meant to imply that at a certain period he became ill every year; but of course it is impossible to be sure of this. vi if not rich, dürer died comfortably off. thausing tells us that his "widow entered into possession of his whole fortune;" a fourth part belonged, according to nuremberg law, to his brothers, but she was not bound to render it to them before her death. on june , , however, she "of her own desire, and on account of the friendly feeling which she entertained for them for her husband's sake, and as her dear brothers-in-law," made over both to andreas dürer, goldsmith, and to caspar altmulsteiner, on behalf of hans dürer, then in the service of the king of poland, a sum of florins, three pounds, eleven pfennigs, and gave them a mortgage for the remaining sum of florins, two pounds, twenty-four pfennigs on the corner house in the zistelgasse, now called the dürer house; for the property had been valued at florins, seven pounds, twenty-four pfennigs. johann neudörffer, who lived opposite the dürers, has recorded the fact that dürer's brother endres inherited all his expensive colours, his copper plates and wood blocks, as well as any impressions there were, and all his drawings beside. and a year before her death, agnes dürer gave the interest on the florins invested in the town to found a scholarship for theological students at the university of wittenberg; about which melanchthon wrote to von dietrich that he thanked god for this aid to study, and that he had praised this good deed of the widow dürer before luther and others. and yet pirkheimer, in his spleen at having lost the chance of procuring some stags' antlers which had belonged to his friend, and which he coveted, could write of agues dürer: "she watched him day and night and drove him to work ... that he might earn money and leave it her when he died. for she always thought she was on the borders of ruin--as for the matter of that she does still--though albrecht left her property worth as much as six thousand florins. but there! nothing was enough; and, in fact, she alone is the cause of his death!" we know that what with the four apostles and his books dürer's last years were not spent on remunerative labours; nor does the netherlands journal contain any hint that his wife tried to restrict the employment either of his time or money. his journey into zeeland was a pure extravagance; for the sale of a copper engraving or woodcut of a whale would have taken some time to make up for such an expense, and, as it turned out, no whale was seen or drawn; and there is no hint that frau dürer made reproach or complaint. on the other hand, pirkheimer's words probably had some slight basis; and as dürer's sickness increased upon him, while at the same time he applied himself less and less to making money, the anxious frau may have become fretful or even nagging at times; and pirkheimer, whose companionship was probably a cause of extravagances to dürer, may have been scolded by agnes, or heard his friend excuse himself from taking part in some convivial meeting, on the plea that his wife found he was spending out of proportion to his takings at the moment. vii we have the testimony of a good number of dürer's friends as to the value of his character; and first let us quote from pirkheimer--writing immediately after dürer's death and before' the loss of the coveted antlers had vexed him--to a common friend ulrich, probably ulrich varnbüler. what can be more grievous for a man than to have continually to mourn, not only children and relations whom death steals from him, but friends also, and among them those whom he loved best? and though i have often had to mourn the loss of relations, still i do not know that any death ever caused me such grief as fills me now at the sudden departure of our good and dear albrecht dürer. nor is this without reason, for of all men not united to me by ties of blood, i have never loved or esteemed any like him for his countless virtues and rare uprightness. and because i know, my dear ulrich, that this blow has struck both you and me alike, i have not been afraid to give vent to my grief before you of all others, so that together we may pay the fitting tribute of tears to such a friend. he is gone, good ulrich; our albrecht is gone! oh, inexorable decree of fate! oh, miserable lot of man! oh, pitiless severity of death! such a man, yea, such a man, is torn from us, while so many useless and worthless men enjoy lasting happiness, and live only too long! thausing insists on the fact that in this letter there is no mention of dürer's death having been caused by his wife's behaviour; but as the relation of ulrich to the deceased seems to have been well-nigh as intimate as his own, there may have been no need to mention a fact painfully present to both their minds. on the other hand, it is at least as probable that the idea was not present even to the mind of the writer, who, in a style less studiously commonplace, inscribed on dürer's tomb: me. al. du. qvicqvid alberti dvreri mortale fvit, svb hoc conditvr tvmvlo. emigravit viii idvs aprilis mdxxviii. (to the memory of albrecht dürer. all that was mortal of albrecht dürer is laid beneath this mound. he departed on april , .) luther wrote to eoban hesse: as to dürer, it is natural and right to weep for so excellent a man; still you should rather think him blessed, as one whom christ has taken in the fulness of his wisdom, and by a happy death, from these most troublous times, and perhaps from times even more troublous which are to come, lest one who was worthy to look upon nothing but excellence should be forced to behold things most vile. may he rest in peace. amen. erasmus had some months before written and printed in a treatise on the right pronunciation of latin and greek an eulogy of dürer. it is not known whether a copy had reached him before his death; in any case to most people it came like a funeral oration from the greatest scholar on the greatest artist north of the alps. thausing quotes the following passage from it: i have known dürer's name for a long time as that of the first celebrity in the art of painting. some call him the apelles of our time. but i think that did apelles live now, he, as an honourable man, would give the palm to dürer. apelles, it is true, made use of few and unobtrusive colours, but still he used colours; while dürer,--admirable as he is, too, in other respects,--what can he not express with a single colour--that is to say, with black lines? he can give the effect of light and shade, brightness, foreground and background. moreover, he reproduces _not merely the natural aspect of a thing, but also observes the laws of perfect symmetry and harmony with regard to the position of it_. he can also transfer by enchantment, so to say, upon the canvas, things which it seems not possible to represent, such as fire, sunbeams, storms, lightning, and mist; he can portray every passion, show us the whole soul of a man shining through his outward form; nay, even make us hear his very speech. all this he brings so happily before the eye with those black lines, that the picture would lose by being clothed in colour. is it not more worthy of admiration to achieve without the winning charm of colour what apelles only realised with its assistance? melanchthon wrote in a letter to camerarius: "it grieves me to see germany deprived of such an artist and such a man." and we learn from his son-in-law, caspar penker, that he often spoke of dürer with affection and respect; he writes: melanchthon was often, and many hours together, in pirkheimer's company, at the time when they were advising together about the churches and schools at nürnberg; and dürer, the painter, used _also_ to be invited to dinner with them. dürer was a man of great shrewdness, and melanchthon used to say of him that though he excelled in the art of painting, it was the least of his accomplishments. disputes often arose between pirkheimer and dürer on these occasions about the matters recently discussed, and pirkheimer used vehemently to oppose dürer. dürer was an excessively subtle disputant, and refuted his adversary's arguments, just as if he had come fully prepared for the discussion. thereupon pirkheimer, who was rather a choleric man and liable to very severe attacks of the gout, fired up and burst forth again and again into such words as these, "what you say cannot be painted." "nay!" rejoined dürer, "but what you advance cannot be put into words or even figured to the mind." i remember hearing melanchthon often tell this story, and in relating it he confessed his astonishment at the ingenuity and power manifested by a painter in arguing with a man of pirkheimer's renown. such scenes no doubt took place during the years after dürer's return from the netherlands. melanchthon also wrote in a letter to george von anhalt: i remember how that great man, distinguished alike by his intellect and his virtue, albrecht dürer the painter, said that as a youth he had loved bright pictures full of figures, and when considering his own productions had always admired those with the greatest variety in them. but as an older man, he had begun to observe nature and reproduce it in its native forms, and had learned that this simplicity was the greatest ornament of art. being unable completely to attain to this ideal, he said that he was no longer an admirer of his works as heretofore, but often sighed when he looked at his pictures and thought over his want of power. and in another letter he remembers that dürer would say that in his youth he had found great pleasure in representing monstrous and unusual figures, but that in his later years he endeavoured to observe nature, and to imitate her as closely as possible; experience, however, had taught him how difficult it was not to err. and thausing continues: "melanchthon speaks even more frequently of how dürer was pleased with pictures he had just finished, but when he saw them after a time, was ashamed of them; and those he had painted with the greatest care displeased him so much at the end of three years that he could scarcely look at them without great pain." and this on his appreciation of luther's writings: albrecht dürer, painter of nürnberg, a shrewd man, once said that there was this difference between the writings of luther and other theologians. after reading three or four paragraphs of the first page of one of luther's works he could grasp the problem to be worked out in the whole. this clearness and order of arrangement was, he observed, the glory of luther's writings. he used, on the contrary, to say of other writers that, after reading a whole book through, he had to consider attentively what idea it was that the author intended to convey. lastly, camerarius, the professor of greek and latin in the new school of nuremberg, in his latin translation of dürer's book on "human proportions," writes thus: it is not my present purpose to talk about art. my purpose was to speak somewhat, as needs must be, of the artificer, the author of this book. he, i trust, has become known by his virtue and his deserts, not only to his own country, but to foreign nations also. full well i know that his praises need not our trumpetings to the world, since by his excellent works he is exalted and honoured with undying glory. yet, as we were publishing his writings, and an opportunity arose of committing to print the life and habits of a remarkable man and a very dear friend of ours, we have judged it expedient to put together some few scraps of information, learnt partly from the conversations of others and partly from our own intercourse with him. this will give some indication of his singular skill and genius as artist and man, and cannot fail of affording pleasure to the reader. we have heard that our albrecht was of hungarian extraction, but that his forefathers emigrated to germany. we can, therefore, have but little to say of his origin and birth. though they were honourable, there can be no question but that they gained more glory from him than he from them. nature bestowed on him a body remarkable in build and stature, and not unworthy of the noble mind it contained; that in this, too, nature's justice, extolled by hippocrates, might not be forgotten--that justice, which, while it assigns a grotesque form to the ape's grotesque soul, is wont also to clothe noble minds in bodies worthy of them. his head was intelligent,[ ] his eyes flashing, his nose nobly formed, and, as the greeks say, tetrágônon. his neck was rather long, his chest broad, his body not too stout, his thighs muscular, his legs firm and steady. but his fingers--you would vow you had never seen anything more elegant. his conversation was marked by so much sweetness and wit, that nothing displeased his hearers so much as the end of it. letters, it is true, he had not cultivated, but the great sciences of physics and mathematics, which are perpetuated by letters, he had almost entirely mastered. he not only understood principles and knew how to apply them in practice, but he was able to set them forth in words. this is proved by his geometrical treatises, wherein i see nothing omitted, except what he judged to be beyond the scope of his work. an ardent zeal impelled him towards the attainment of all virtue in conduct and life, the display of which caused him to be deservedly held a most excellent man. yet he was not of a melancholy severity nor of a repulsive gravity; nay, whatever conduced to pleasantness and cheerfulness, and was not inconsistent with honour and rectitude, he cultivated all his life and approved even in his old age. the works he has left on gymnastic and music are of such character. but nature had specially designed him for a painter, and therefore he embraced the study of that art with all his energies, and was ever desirous of observing the works and principles of the famous painters of every land, and of imitating whatever he approved in them. moreover, with respect to those studies, he experienced the generosity and won the favour of the greatest kings and princes, and even of maximilian himself and his grandson the emperor charles; and he was rewarded by them with no contemptible salary. but after his hand had, so to speak, attained its maturity, his sublime and virtue-loving genius became best discoverable in his works, for his subjects were fine and his treatment of them noble. you may judge the truth of these statements from his extant prints in honour of maximilian, and his memorable astronomical diagrams, not to mention other works, not one of which but a painter of any nation or day would be proud to call his own. the nature of a man is never more certainly and definitely shown than in the works he produces as the fruit of his art.... what single painter has there ever been who did not reveal his character in his works? instead of instances from ancient history, i shall content myself with examples from our own time. no one can fail to see that many painters have sought a vulgar celebrity by immodest pictures. it is not credible that those artists can be virtuous, whose minds and fingers composed such works. we have also seen pictures minutely finished and fairly well coloured, wherein, it is true, the master showed a certain talent and industry; but art was wanting. albrecht, therefore, shall we most justly admire as an earnest guardian of piety and modesty, and as one who showed, by the magnitude of his pictures, that he was conscious of his own powers, although none even of his lesser works is to be despised. you will not find in them a single line carelessly or wrongly drawn, not a single superfluous dot. what shall i say of the steadiness and exactitude of his hand? you might swear that rule, square, or compasses had been employed to draw lines, which he, in fact, drew with the brush, or very often with pencil or pen, unaided by artificial means, to the great marvel of those who watched him. why should i tell how his hand so closely followed the ideas of his mind that, in a moment, he often dashed upon paper, or, as painters say, composed, sketches of every kind of thing with pencil or pen? i see i shall not be believed by my readers when i relate, that sometimes he would draw separately, not only the different parts of a composition, but even the different parts of bodies, which, when joined together, agreed with one another so well that nothing could have fitted better. in fact this consummate artist's mind endowed with all knowledge and understanding of the truth and of the agreement of the parts one with another, governed and guided his hand and bade it trust to itself without any other aids. with like accuracy he held the brush, wherewith he drew the smallest things on canvas or wood without sketching them in beforehand, so that, far from giving ground for blame, they always won the highest praise. and this was a subject of greatest wonder to most distinguished painters, who, from their own great experience, could understand the difficulty of the thing. i cannot forbear to tell, in this place, the story of what happened between him and giovanni bellini. bellini had the highest reputation as a painter at venice, and indeed throughout all italy. when albrecht was there he easily became intimate with him, and both artists naturally began to show one another specimens of their skill. albrecht frankly admired and made much of all bellini's works. bellini also candidly expressed his admiration of various features of albrecht's skill, and particularly the fineness and delicacy with which he drew hairs. it chanced one day that they were talking about art, and when their conversation was done bellini said: "will you be so kind, albrecht, as to gratify a friend in a small matter?" "you shall soon see," says albrecht, "if you will ask of me anything i can do for you." then says bellini: "i want you to make me a present of one of the brushes with which you draw hairs." dürer at once produced several, just like other brushes, and, in fact, of the kind bellini himself used, and told him to choose those he liked best, or to take them all if he would. but bellini, thinking he was misunderstood, said: "no, i don't mean these, but the ones with which you draw several hairs with one stroke; they must be rather spread out and more divided, otherwise in a long sweep such regularity of curvature and distance could not be preserved." "i use no other than these," says albrecht, "and to prove it, you may watch me." then, taking up one of the same brushes, he drew some very long wavy tresses, such as women generally wear, in the most regular order and symmetry. bellini looked on wondering, and afterwards confessed to many that no human being could have convinced him by report of the truth of that which he had seen with his own eyes. a similar tribute was given him, with conspicuous candour, by andrea mantegna, who became famous at mantua by reducing painting to some severity of law--a fame which he was the first to merit, by digging up broken and scattered statues, and setting them up as examples of art. it is true all his work is hard and stiff, inasmuch as his hand was not trained to follow the perception and nimbleness of his mind; still it is held that there is nothing better or more perfect in art. while andrea was lying ill at mantua he heard that albrecht was in italy, and had him summoned to his side at once, in order that he might fortify his (albrecht's) facility and certainty of hand with scientific knowledge and principles. for andrea often lamented in conversation with his friends that albrecht's facility in drawing had not been granted to him nor his learning to albrecht. on receiving the message albrecht, leaving all other engagements, prepared for the journey without delay. but before he could reach mantua andrea was dead, and dürer used to say that this was the saddest event in all his life; for, high as albrecht stood, his great and lofty mind was ever striving after something yet above him. almost with awe have we gazed upon the bearded face of the man, drawn by himself, in the manner we have described, with the brush on the canvas and without any previous sketch. the locks of the beard are almost a cubit long, and so exquisitely and cleverly drawn, at such regular distances and in so exact a manner, that the better any one understands art, the more he would admire it, and the more certain would he deem it that in fashioning these locks the hand had employed artificial aid. further, there is nothing foul, nothing disgraceful in his work. the thoughts of his most pure mind shunned all such things. artist worthy of success! how like, too, are his portraits! how unerring! how true! all these perfections he attained by reducing mere practice to art and method, in a way new at least to german painters. with albrecht all was ready, certain, and at hand, because he had brought painting into the fixed track of rule and recalled it to scientific principles; without which, as cicero said, though some things may be well done by help of nature, yet they cannot always be ready to hand, because they are done by chance. he first worked his principles out for his own use; afterwards with his generous and open nature he attempted to explain them in books, written to the illustrious and most learned wilibald pirkheimer. and he dedicated them to him in a most elegant letter which we have not translated, because we felt it to be beyond our power to render it into latin without, so to speak, disfiguring its natural countenance. but before he could complete and publish the books, as he had hoped, he was carried off by death--a death, calm indeed and enviable, but in our view premature. if there was anything at all in that man which could seem like a fault, it was his excessive industry, which often made unfair demands upon him. death, as we have said, removed him from the publication of the work which he had begun, but his friends completed the task from his own manuscript. about this, in the next place, and about our own version, we shall say a few words. the work, being founded on a sort of geometrical system, is unpolished and devoid of literary style; so it seems rather rugged. but that is easily forgiven in consideration of the excellence of the matter. he requested me himself, only a few days before his death, to translate it into latin while he should correct it; and i willingly turned my attention and studies to the work. but death, which takes everything, took from him his power of supervision and correction. his friends subsequently, after publishing the work, prevailed on me, by their claims rather than their requests, to undertake the latin translation, and to complete after his death the task dürer had laid upon me in his life. if i find that my industry and devotion in this matter meet with my readers' approval, i shall be encouraged to translate into latin the rest of albrecht's treatise on painting, a work at once more finished and more laborious than the present. moreover, his writings on other subjects will also be looked for, his geometries and tichismatics, in which he explained the fortification of towns according to the system of the present day. these, however, appear to be all the subjects on which he wrote books. as to the promise, which i hear certain persons are making in conversation or in writing, to publish a book by dürer on the symmetry of the parts of the horse, i cannot but wonder from what source they will obtain after his death what he never completed during his life. although i am well aware that albrecht had begun to investigate the law of truth in this matter too, and had made a certain number of measurements, i also know that he lost all he had done through the treachery of certain persons, by whose means it came about that the author's notes were stolen, so that he never cared to begin the work afresh. he had a suspicion, or rather a certainty, as to the source whence came the drones who had invaded his store; but the great man preferred to hide his knowledge, to his own loss and pain, rather than to lose sight of generosity and kindness in the pursuit of his enemies. we shall not, therefore, suffer anything that may appear to be attributed to albrecht's authorship, unworthy as it must evidently be of so great an artist. a few years ago some tracts also appeared in german, containing rules, in general faulty and inappropriate, about the same matter. on these i do not care now to waste words, though the author, unless i am much mistaken, has not once repented of his publication. but these rules above-mentioned, which are easily proved to be albrecht's, not only because he prepared them himself for publication, but also because of their own excellence, you will, i think, obtain considerably better here than from other sources. not that they are more finished in point of erudition and learning in the present book than elsewhere, but because those who interpret them in the author's own workshop, among the expansions and corrections of his autograph manuscripts and the variations of his different copies, stand in the light about many points, which must of necessity seem obscure to others, however learned they may be. this will be seen in the case of the book on geometry, which a learned man has in hand and will shortly publish in a more elaborate form, and with more explanation of certain points than it possesses at present. for it will be increased by no less than twenty-six [greek: schêmata] (figures) and countless corrections or improvements of earlier editions. the author himself on rereading had thus improved and amplified what had already been issued. as though he foresaw that he would publish no more, he had directed his future editors as to what was to be done about the letterpress and figures; and we shall take care that it is published at the earliest possible date in the german language, in which the author wrote it. it is only to be expected that this will be welcome to the public, who will thus return thanks for the author's burning desire to do something by his discoveries for the public good, and for our own labour and eagerness in publishing to all nations what appears to be written only for one. though these testimonies may often seem either trifling, or obscured by the pedantic affectation of the writers, they, like the signatures of well-respected men, endorse the impression produced by dürer's works and writings. as we study the character of dürer's creative gift in relation to his works, several of the phrases used by erasmus, camerarius, and melanchthon should take added significance, being probably remembered from conversations with the great artist himself.[ ] dürer, like luther, was depressed and distressed at the course the reformation had run; but, like erasmus, though regretting and disparaging the present, he looked forward to the future, and knew "that he would be surpassed," and had no morbid inclination to see the end and final failure of human effort in his own exhaustion. footnotes: [footnote : b. , published in . the block is in the court library at vienna. thawing says it was designed by burgkmair or springinklee.] [footnote : "_caput argutum_". the phrase is from virgil's description of the thorough-bred horse (_georg. iii_). the above passage is introduced (with modifications) into melchior adam's _vitae germ. philos._ (p. ). where this sentence runs: "the deep-thinking, serene-souled artist was seen unmistakably in his _arched_ and _lofty_ brow and in the fiery glance of his eye."] [footnote : in the foregoing quotations the sentences which seem to me most reminiscent of dürer's ideas are printed in italics.] part iii dÜrer as a creator [illustration] chapter i dÜrer's pictures i dürer's paintings have suffered more by the malignity of fortune than any of his other works. several have disappeared entirely, and several are but wrecks of what they once were. others are, as he tells us, "ordinary pictures," of which "i will in a year paint a pile which no one would believe it possible for one man to do in the time," and are perhaps more the work of assistants than of the master. others, again, have since been repainted, more or less disastrously. yet enough remain to show us that dürer was not a painter born, in the sense that titian and correggio or rembrandt and rubens are; nay, not even in the sense that a jan van eyck or a mantegna is. mantegna is certainly the painter with whom dürer has most affinity, and whose method of employing pigment is least removed from his; but mantegna is a born colourist--a man whose eye for colour is like a musician's ear for melody--while dürer is at best with difficulty able to avoid glaring discords, and, if we are to judge by the "ordinary pictures," did not avoid them. again, mantegna is not so dependent on line as dürer--nearly the whole of whose surface is produced by hatching with the brush point. these facts may, perhaps, account for the large portion of dürer's time devoted to engraving. as an engraver he early found a style for himself, which he continued to develop to the end of his life. as a painter he was for ever experimenting, influenced now by jacopo de' barbari, again by bellini and the pictures he saw at venice, and yet again by those he saw in the netherlands. as velasquez, after each of his journeys to italy, returns to attempt a mythological picture in the grand style, so dürer turns to painting after his return from venice or from the netherlands; and his pictures divide themselves into three groups: those painted after or during his _wanderjahre_ and before he went to venice in , those painted there and during the next five years after his return, and those painted in the netherlands or commenced immediately on his return thence. ii the mediums of oil and tempera lend themselves to the production of broad-coloured surfaces that merge imperceptibly into one another. there are men the fundamental unit of whose picture language is a blot or shape; as children or as savages, they would find these most capable of expressing what they saw. there are others for whom the scratch or line is the fundamental unit, for whom every object is most naturally expressed by an outline. there are, of course, men who present us with every possible blend of these two fundamental forms of picture language. the mediums of oils and tempera are especially adapted to the requirements of those who see things rather as a diaper of shapes than as a map of lines; while for these last the point of pen, burin, or etching-needle offers the most congenial implement. dürer was very greatly more inclined to express objects by a map of lines than as a diaper of coloured shapes; and for this reason i say that he was not a painter born. if this be true, as a painter he must have been at a disadvantage. in this preponderance of the draughtsman qualities he resembles many artists of the florentine school, as also in his theoretic pre-occupation with perspective, proportion, architecture, and technical methods. we are impressed by a coldness of approach, an austerity, a dignity not altogether justified by the occasion, but as it were carried over from some precedent hour of spiritual elevation; the prophet's demeanour in between the days of visitation, a little too consciously careful not to compromise the divinity which informs him no longer. this tendency to fall back on manner greatly acquired indeed, but no longer consonant with the actual mood, which is really too vacant of import to parade such importance, is often a fault of natures whose native means of expression is the thin line, the geometer's precision, the architect's foresight in measurement. and by allowing for it i think we can explain the contradiction apparent between the critics' continual insistence on what they call dürer's great thoughts, and the sparsity of intellectual creativeness which strikes one in turning over his engravings, so many are there of which either the occasion or the conception are altogether trivial when compared with the grandiose aspect of the composition or the impeccable mechanical performance. dürer's literary remains sufficiently prove his mind to have been constantly exercised upon and around great thoughts, and their influence may be felt in the austerity and intensity of his noblest portraits and other creations. but "great thoughts" in respect of works of art either means the communication of a profound emotion by the creation of a suitable arabesque for a deeply significant subject, as in the flowing masses of michael angelo's _creation of man_, or it means the pictorial enhancing of the telling incidents of a dramatic situation such as we find it in rembrandt's treatment of the crucifixion, deposition, or entombment. now it seems to me the paucity of successes on these lines in one who nevertheless occasionally entirely succeeds, is what is most striking in dürer. perhaps when dealing with the graphic arts one should rather speak of great character than great thoughts; yet dürer, while constantly impressing us as a great character, seems to be one who was all too rarely wholly himself. the abundant felicity in expression of rembrandt or shakespeare is altogether wanting. the imperial imposition of mood which michael angelo affects is perhaps never quite certainly his, even in the _melancholy_. yet we feel that not only has he a capacity of the same order as those men, but that he is spiritually akin to them, despite his coldness, despite his ostentation. but not only is dürer praised for "great thoughts," but he is praised for realism, and sometimes accused of having delighted in ugliness; or, as it is more cautiously expressed, of having preferred truth to grace. this is a point which i consider may better be discussed in respect to his drawings than his pictures, which nearly always have some obvious conventional or traditional character, so that the word realism cannot be applied to them. even in his portraits his signature or an inscription is often added in such a manner as insists that this is a painting, a panel;--not a view through a window, or an attempt to deceive the eye with a make-believe reality. iii the altar-piece, consisting of a centre, the virgin mary adoring her baby son in the carpenter's shop at nazareth, and two wings, st. anthony and st. sebastian, though the earliest of dürer's pictures which has survived, is perhaps the most beautiful of them all, at least as far as the two wings are concerned. the centre has been considerably damaged by repainting, and was probably, owing to the greater complication of motives in it, never quite so successful. whether at venice or elsewhere, it would seem almost necessary that the young painter had seen and been impressed by pictures by gentile bellini and andrea mantegna, both of whom have painted in the same thin tempera on fine canvas, obtaining similar beauties of colour and surface. it is hardly possible to imagine one who had seen none but german or flemish pictures painting the st. sebastian. the treatment of the still life in the foreground is in itself almost a proof of this. perhaps this thin, flat tempera treatment was that most suited to dürer's native bias, and we should regret his having been tempted to overcome the more brilliant and exacting medium of oils. in any case he more than once reverted to it in portraits and studies, while the majority of the pictures painted before he went to venice in have more or less kinship with it. the supposed portrait of frederic the wise is another masterpiece in this kind, and the _hercules slaying the birds of the stymphalian lake_ in the germanic museum, nuremberg, , was probably another. for though now considerably damaged by restorations and dirt, it suggests far greater pleasures than it actually imparts. the contrast between "the sea-worn face sad as mortality, divine with yearning after fellowship," and the blond richly curling hair blown back from it, is extremely fine and entirely suited to the treatment; as is also the similar contrast between the richly inlaid bow, shield, and arrows, and the broad and flowing modulation of the energetic limbs and back. the paumgartner altar-piece, , stands out from the "ordinary pictures" belonging to this early period. it consists of a charming and gay nativity in the centre, and two knights in armour on the wings, probably portraits of the donors, stephan and lucas paumgartner, figuring as warlike saints. stephan, a personal friend of dürer's, figured again as st. george in the _trinity and all saints_ picture painted in . there were originally two panels with female saints beyond these again, but no trace of them remains. now that the landscape backgrounds have been removed from the side panels, there is no reason to suppose that any one but dürer had a hand in these works. but in writing to heller, he tells him that it was unheard of to put so much work into an altar-piece as he was then putting into his _coronation of the virgin_, and we may feel certain that dürer regarded this picture as in the altar-piece category. the two knights are represented against black grounds, and their silhouettes form a very fine arabesque, which the streamers of their lances, artificially arranged, complete and emphasise. this black ground points probably to the influence of jacopo de' barbari, whom dürer had met and been mystified by. (see p. .) [illustration: st. george and st. eustace side panels in oils of the paumgartner altar-piece in the alt pinakothek, munich] no doubt there was much in such a background that appealed to the draughtsman in dürer. it insisted on the outline which had probably been the starting-point of his conception. nothing could be less painter-like, or make the modelling of figures more difficult, as dürer, perhaps, realised when he later on painted the _adam and eve_ at madrid. these two warriors are, however, most successful and imposing, and immeasurably enhanced now that the spurious backgrounds, artfully concocted out of dürer's own prints by an ingenious improver of his betters, have been removed. this person had also tinkered the centre picture, painting out two heraldic groups of donors, far smaller in scale than the actual personages of the scene, but very useful in the composition, as giving a more ample base to the masses of broken and fretted quality; useful also now as an additional proof of how free from the fetters of an impertinent logic of realism dürer ever was. these little kneeling donors and their coats of arms emphasise the surface, and are delightful in their naïvety, while they serve to render the gay, almost gaudy panel more homely, and give it a place and a function in the world. for they help us to realise that it answered a demand, and was not the uncalled-for and slightly frigid excursion of the aesthetic imagination which it must otherwise appear. in the same way the brilliant _adoration of the magi_ (dated ) in the uffizi, also somewhat gaudy and frigid, could we but see it where it originally hung in luther's church at wittenberg, might invest itself with some charm that one vainly seeks in it now. the failure in emotion might seem more natural if we saw the wise elector discussing his new purchase; we might have felt what dürer meant when a year later he wrote from venice: "i am a gentleman here and only a hanger-on at home." the expectation and prophecy of his success in those who surround a painter,--even if it be chiefly expressed by bitter rivalry, or the craft by which one greedy purchaser tries to over-reach another, even if he has to be careful not to eat at some tables for fear of being poisoned by a host whose ambition his present performance may have dashed--even expressed in this truly venetian manner, the expectation and prophecy of his success in those about him make it easier for a painter to soar, and may touch his work with an indefinable glow that the approval of honest and astute electors or solid burghers may have been utterly powerless to impart. iv at venice, perhaps the occasion for his journey thither, dürer undertook a more important work than any he had yet attempted. _the feast of the rose garlands_ was painted for the high altar of the church of san bartolommeo, belonging to the german merchants' exchange, and close to their pondaco.[ ] in it we find a very considerable influence of italy in general, and giovanni bellini in particular; it is a splendid and pompous parade piece, and probably the portraits of the german merchants which it contained were the part of the work which was most successful, as it was certainly that most congenial to dürer's genius. the _christ among the doctors_, dated , and now in the barberini palace at rome, might seem to have been painted chiefly to justify giovanni bellini's astonishment at the calligraphical painting of hair. it is one of those pictures of which a literary description would please more than the work itself. though the contrast between the sweet childish face and those of the old worldly scribes is well conceived, it is in reality so violent as to be grotesque, and the play of hands produces the effect of a diagram explanatory of a conjuring trick, or a deaf and dumb alphabet, instead of conveying the inner sense of the scene represented after rossetti's fashion, who so often succeeded in making hands speak. another work, which dates from venice, is the little _crucifixion_ (at dresden.) perhaps the landscape and suffering body are just sufficiently touched with acute emotion to make the arabesque of the two floating ends of the loin-cloth appear a little out of place; for in spite of the delicacy and all but tenderness which dürer has for once attained to in the workmanship, one's satisfaction seems let and hindered. v shortly after his return from venice, dürer completed two life-size panels representing adam and eve; there are drawings for them dated during his stay at venice, but as a work of art they are far less interesting than the engraving of the same subject completed three years earlier. the treatment, even the conception, has been inadequately influenced by the proposed scale of the work. probably they were like the earlier hercules, done to please the artist himself rather than some patron; they are an effort to prove that he could do something which was after all too hard for him. not only had he set himself the problem which the greeks and michael angelo, and raphael with their aid alone, had solved, of finding proportions suitable to express harmoniously the infinite capacity for complex motion combined with that constancy of intention which gives dignity to men and women alone among animals; but the technical problems involved in representing life-size nude figures against a plain black ground were indeed an unconscious confession that dürer did not understand paint. there is a copy of these panels, recently attributed to baldung grien, in the pitti. animals and birds have been added from drawings made by dürer, but the picture is still farther from success, though grien may not improbably have executed it with dürer at his elbow. dürer made one more attempt at representing a life-size nude, the _lucretia_, finished in , at a period when his powers seem to have been clouded, for the few pictures which belong to it are all inferior. however, studies for the figure exist dated , so we may suppose it was a project brought back from venice. his ill-success with this subject may remind us of shakespeare's long pedantic exercise in rhyme on the same theme. the pictorial motive of dürer's work is beautiful and worthy of a greek: indeed it is identical with that of watts' _psyche_, of which the version in private hands is very superior to that in the tate gallery. the position of the bed, the idea of the draperies all are parallel. no doubt the lonely feather shed from love's wing at which psyche gazes is both more of a poet's and of a painter's invention than the cold steel of lucretia's dagger. and in spite of his wide knowledge of greek and italian art, our english master could scarcely have produced a work of such classic dignity with the more violent motive of the dagger, which seems to call for "the torch that flames with many a lurid flake," or at least the torpid glow of smouldering embers, to light it in such a manner as would make a really pictorial treatment possible. no doubt dürer has been misled by a too tyrannous notion as to what ought to be the physical build of so chaste a matron, and in his anxiety to make chastity self-evident, has forgotten to explain the need for it by such a degree of attractiveness as might tempt a tyrant to be dangerous. just as shakespeare, in attempting to exhaust every possible motive which the situation comports, has forgotten that for a character that can move us a selection is needed. another elaborate piece of frigid invention is the _massacre of the ten thousand saints in the reign of sapor ii. of persia_, in the imperial gallery at vienna, dated . however, in this case no doubt dürer could plead that the subject was not of his own choice, for he was commissioned by the elector, frederic the wise, whose wisdom probably did not extend to a knowledge of what subjects lend themselves to pictorial treatment. still, making every allowance for these facts, it cannot be admitted that dürer did the best possible with his subject. probably it did not move him, and neither does he us. peter breughel and albrecht altdorfer would certainly have done far better so far as the conception of the picture is concerned, though neither of them had so much skill to waste on its realisation. nevertheless, this tour _de force_ is the picture of dürer's most pleasing in surface and colour, with the exception of the wings _of the dresden altar-piece_. it contains beautiful groups and figures, and is extremely well executed; so that it may amuse and delight the eye for a long time while the significance of the subject is forgotten. [illustration: the martyrdom of ten thousand saints under sapor ii. of persia--oil picture. "iste faciebat anno domini albertus dürer alemanus"] vi we now turn to the third and fourth of the half-dozen pictures of dürer, which stand out from all the rest by their elaboration and importance. the _coronation of the virgin (see_ p. ), painted as the centre panel of the altar-piece commissioned by jacob heller at frankfort, was unfortunately burnt with the palace at munich on the night of april , ; the elector maximilian of bavaria having forced or cajoled the dominicans, to whose church heller had left it, to sell it to him. it is now represented by a copy made by paul juvenal in its original position, where the almost ruined portraits of heller and his wife are supposed to have been partly dürer's, though the other panels are obviously the work of assistants. this work exists for us in a series of magnificent brush drawings in black and white line on grey paper, rather than in the copy, and we can in a measure imagine its appearance by the perfectly- preserved _trinity and all saints_ commenced immediately after it for matthew landauer, and now in the imperial gallery at vienna. nothing can surpass this last picture in elaboration and finish; the colour, if not beautiful, is rich and luminous; and though it is separate faces and draperies which chiefly delight the eye, the composition of the whole is an adequate adaptation of the traditional treatment for such themes which had been handed down through the middle ages. it invites comparison rather with the similar subjects painted by fra angelico than with the _disputa_ of raphael, to which german critics compare it; however, it possesses as little of angelico's sweet blissfulness as the dominican painter possessed of dürer's accuracy of hand and searching intensity of visual realisation. both painters are interested in individuals, and, representing crowds of faces, make every one a portrait; both evince a dramatic sense of propriety in gesture, both revel in bright, clear colours, especially azure; but as the light in dürer's masterpiece has a rosy hotness, which ill bears comparison with the virginal pearliness of angelico's heaven, so the costumes and the figures of the florentine are doll-like, when compared with the unmistakable quality of the stuffs in which the fully-resurrected bodies of dürer's saints rumple and rustle. the wings of his angels are at least those of birds, though coloured to fancy, while angelico's are of pasteboard tinsel and paint. but in spite of the comparative genuineness of his upholstery, as a vision of heaven there can be no hesitation in preferring that of the florentine. in a frame designed by dürer and carved under his supervision, this monument to thoroughness and skill was ensconced in a little chapel dedicated to all saints, which in style approaches our tudor buildings. there the frame remained till lately with a poor copy of the picture and an inscription in old german to this effect: ('matthew landauer completed the dedication of this chapel of the twelve brethren, together with the foundation attached to it, and this picture, in the year after the birth of christ,') dürer signed his picture with the same latin formula as that of the _coronation_: "albrecht dürer of nuremberg did this the year from when the virgin brought forth ." vii of all dürer's paintings of the madonna, there is only one which, by its superb design, deserves special notice among his masterpieces. this _madonna with the iris_ exists in two versions, both unfinished; one the property of sir frederick cook, the other at prague, in the rudolphium. this latter mr. campbell dodgson considers to be a poor copy. the panel is badly cracked, and weeds and long grasses have been added, apparently with a view to masking the cracks. judging from a photograph alone, many of these additions seem so appropriately placed and freely sketched that i feel it at least to be possibly a work by the master himself. on the other hand, sir frederick's picture is so sleepy and clumsy in handling, that though it is unfinished, and perhaps in part damaged by some restorer, i feel great hesitation in regarding it as dürer's handiwork. in both cases the magnificent design is his, and that alone in either is fully representative of him. mr. campbell dodgson ventures to criticise the profusion of drapery as excessive, but my feeling, i must confess, endorses dürer's in this, rather than that of his learned critic. to me this profusion, and the grandeur it gives as a mass in the design, is of the very essence of what is most peculiarly creative in dürer's imagination. the last picture of which it is necessary to speak is that of the _four apostles_ or the _four preachers_, as they have been more appropriately called; it was perhaps the last he painted, and is in many respects the most successful. it is the only one by which the comparison with raphael, so dear to german critics, seems at all warranted: there is certainly some kinship between dürer's st. john and st. paul and apostolic figures in the cartoons or on the vatican walls. the german artist's manner is less rhetorical, but his conception is hardly less grandiose; and his taste does not so closely border on over-emphasis, but neither is it so conscious or so fluent. technically it seems to me that the chief influence is a recollection of the large canvases of jan and hubert van eyck and hubert van der goes which dürer had admired in the netherlands; these had strengthened and directed the bias of his self-culture towards simple masses on a large scale.[ ] he may very well have sought to combine what he learnt from them with hints he found in the engravings after raphael which he obtained in antwerp. his increasing sickness may probably account for the fact that the white mantle of st. paul is the only portion quite finished. the assertion of the writing-master, johann neudörffer, who in his youth had known dürer, that the four figures are typical of the four temperaments, the sanguine, the choleric, the phlegmatic, and the melancholic,--into which categories an amateurish psychology arbitrarily divided human characters,--is as likely to be correct as it is certain that it adds nothing to the power and beauty of the presentation. though dürer in his work on human proportions describes the physical build of these different types, we do not know exactly what degree of precision he imagined it possible to attain in discerning them, or to what extent their names were merely convenient handles for certain types which he had chosen æsthetically. to us to-day this classification is merely a trace of an obsolete pedantry, which it would be a vain curiosity to attempt to follow with the object of identifying its imaginary bases. the four preachers have all the air of being striking likenesses of actual people which it is possible for work so broadly and grandly conceived to have. these panels are interesting, even more than by their actual success, as showing us what a scholar dürer was to the end; how he learned from every defeat as well as every victory, and constantly approached a conception and a rendering of human beauty which seems intimately connected with man's fullest intellectual and spiritual freedom--a conception and rendering of human beauty which raphael himself had to learn from the greeks and michael angelo. the work has suffered, it is supposed, from restorers, and also from the munich monarch, maximilian, who had the tremendous texts (see page ) which dürer had inscribed beneath the two panels sawn off in order to spare the feelings of the jesuits, who were dominant at his court, for their conception of religion did not consist with terrors to come for those who, abuse their trust as governors and directors of mankind. lastly, mention must be made of dürer's monochrome masterpiece, the road to calvary . (see illus.), in the collection of sir frederick cook. a poor copy of this work is at dresden, a better one at bergamo. the effect of it, and several elaborate water-colour designs of the same class, is akin to the peculiar richness of chased metal work; glinting light hovers over crowds of little figures. footnotes: [footnote : the original, now in the monastery of strahow-prague, is very much damaged, and in part repainted. there are copies in the imperial gallery at vienna (no. ), and in the possession of a. w. miller, esq., of sevenoaks. it is to be regretted that the dürer society published a photogravure of this latter work, which, though till then unknown, is far less interesting than the original, of which they only gave a reproduction in the text, an exhaustive history of its fortunes from the learned pen of mr. cambell dodgson. this picture, which is so frequently referred to in the letters from venice, contains portraits of the emperor maximilian and pope julius ii., though neither of them from life, and in the background those of dürer and pirkheimer.] [footnote : see what melanchthon says, p. .] chapter ii dÜrer's portraits i if dürer's pictures are as a whole the least satisfactory section of his work, in his portraits he makes us abundant amends for the time he might otherwise have been reproached for wasting to obtain a vain mastery over brushes and pigment. unfortunately it is probable that many even of these have been lost or destroyed, while of his most interesting sitters we have nothing but drawings. he did not paint his friend, the boisterous and learned pirkheimer; and what would we not give for a painted portrait of erasmus, or a portrait of kratzer, the astronomer royal, to compare with the two masterpieces by holbein in the louvre? even the posthumous portrait of his imperial patron maximilian is less interesting than the drawings from which it was done, the eccentric sitter not having the time to spare for so sensible a monument. [illustration: portrait of the artist pen drawing in dark brown ink at erlangen (this drawing has been cut down for reproduction)] ii however, dürer had one sitter who was perhaps the most beautiful of all the sons of men, whose features combined in an equal measure nobleness of character, intellectual intensity and physical beauty; and, finding him also most patient and accessible, he painted him frequently. the two earliest portraits of himself are the drawings which show him at the ages of thirteen and nineteen(?) respectively (see illustration). then, as a young man with a sprouting chin, we have the picture till recently at leipzig of which goethe's enthusiastic description has already been quoted (p. ). it is probable that neither titian nor holbein could have shown at so early an age a portrait so admirably conceived and executed. it is a masterpiece, even now that the inevitable improvements which those who lack all relish of genius rarely lack the opportunity, never the inclination, to add to a masterpiece, have confused the drawing of the eyes, and reduced the bloom and delicacy that the features traced by a master hand, even when they become an almost complete wreck, often retain; for time and fortune are not so conscientiously destructive as the imbecility of the incapable. next we have a portrait of dürer when only five years older, in perfect preservation,--that in the prado at madrid. this charming picture must certainly have drawn a sonnet from the shakespeare who wrote _love's labour lost_, could he have seen it. for it presents a young dandy, the delicacy and sensitiveness of whose features seem to demand and warrant the butterfly-like display of the white and black costume hemmed with gold, and of a cap worthy to crown those flowing honey-coloured locks. there is a good copy of this delightful work in the uffizi, where, in a congregation of self-painted artists, it does all but justice to the most beautiful of them all. for fineness of touch the original has never been surpassed by any hand of european or even chinese master. next there are the dapper little full-length portraits which dürer inserted in his chief paintings. he stands beside his friend pirkheimer at the back of the adoring crowd in the _feast of the roses_, and again in the midst of the mountain slope, where on all sides of them the ten thousand saints suffer martyrdom. dürer stands alone beside an inscription in a gentle pastoral landscape beneath the vision of the virgin's assumption seen over the heads of the apostles, who gaze up in rapture; and again he is alone beside a broad peaceful river beneath the vision of the holy trinity and all saints. i know of no parallel to these little portraits. rembrandt and botticelli and many others have introduced portraits of themselves into religious pictures, but always in disguise, as a personage in the crowd or an actor in the scene. only the master who was really most exceptional for his good looks, has had the kindness, in spite of every incongruity, to present himself before us on all important occasions, like the court beauty in whom it is charity rather than vanity to appear in public. it is expected that the very beautiful be gracious thus. emerson tells us that two centuries ago the town council of montpelier passed a law to constrain two beautiful sisters to sit for a certain time on their balcony every other day, that all might enjoy the sight of what was most beautiful in their town. it was one of the most gracious traits of jeanne d'arc's character that she liked to wear beautiful clothes, because it pleased the poor people to see her thus. and palm sunday commemorates another historical example of such grace and truth. dürer's face had a striking resemblance to the traditional type for jesus, adding to it just that element of individual peculiarity, the absence of which makes it ever liable to appear a little vacant and unconvincing. the perception of this would seem to have dictated the general arrangement of dürer's crowning portrait of himself, that at munich dated (see illus.), "before which" (mr. ricketts writes in his recently published volume on the prado) "one forgets all other portraits whatsoever, in the sense that this perfect realisation of one of the world's greatest men is equal to the occasion." the most exhaustive visual power and executive capacity meet in this picture, which would seem to have traversed the many perils to which it has been exposed without really suffering so much as their enumeration makes one expect. thausing tells us: the following is the story of the picture's wanderings, as told at nuremberg. it was lent by the magistrates, after they had taken the precaution of placing a seal and strings on the back of the panel, to the painter and engraver kügner, to copy. he, however, carefully sawed the panel in half (layer-wise) and glued to the authentic back his miserable copy, which now hangs in the town hall. the original he sold, and it eventually came into the possession of king ludwig i., before nuremberg belonged to bavaria. [illustration: _hanfstaengl_ "i, albert dürer of nuremberg, painted my own portrait here in the proper colours at the age of twenty-eight" oil-painting. alt pinakothek, munich] he suggests that the colour was once bright and varied, and that by varnish and glazes it has been reduced to its present harmonious condition. the hair is certainly much darker than the other portraits would have led one to expect, and the almost walnut brown of the general colour scheme is unique in dürer's work. however, if some such transmogrification has been effected, it is marvellous that it should have obliterated so little of the inimitable handiwork of the master. thausing considered the date ( ), monogram and inscription on the back to be forgeries, and it certainly looks as if it ought to come nearer to the portrait in the _feast of the rose garlands_ ( ) than to that at madrid ( ). a genuine scalloped tablet is faintly visible under the dark glazes which cover the background; and this, no doubt, bears the original inscription and date. what may not have happened to a picture after or before it left the artist's studio? critics are too quick to determine that such changes have been introduced by others. in this case we must remember how experimental dürer was, even with regard to his engravings on metal. he tries iron plates and etching, and finally settles on a method of commencing with etching and finishing with the burin; and this was in a medium in which he soon found himself at home. but with painting he was vastly more experimental, and never satisfied with his results, as he told melanchthon (see p. ). then we must remember that this picture probably was during dürer's lifetime, if not in his own possession, at least never out of his reach; and no doubt he was aware that it was the grandest and most perfectly finished of all his portraits--therefore, as he came more and more, especially after his visit to the netherlands, to desire and seek after simplicity, he may himself have added the dark glazes. if the original inscription contained a dedication to pirkheimer or some other notable nuremberger, there was every reason for the artist who stole the picture to obliterate this and add a new one: or this may have been done when it became the property of the town, for those who sold it may have wished that it should not be known that it might have been an heirloom in their family. infinite are the possibilities, those only decide in such cases who have a personal motive for doing so; "la rage de conclure" (as flaubert saw) is the pitfall of those who are vain of their knowledge. [illustration: oswolt krel oil portrait in the alt pinakothek at munich] [illustration: _by permission_ of the "_burlington_ magazine" albert dÜrer the elder, national gallery] iii though fearing that it will appear but tedious, i will now attempt briefly to describe in succession the remaining master portraits which we owe to dürer, and the effect that each produces. it is by these works and not by his creative pictures that his ranks among the greatest names of painting. these might be compared with the very finest portraits by raphael and holbein, and the precedence would remain a question of personal predilection; since nothing reasoned, no distinguishable superiority over dürer in vision or execution could be urged for either. rather, if mere capacity were regarded, he must have the palm; nor did either of his compeers light upon a happier subject than was dürer's when he represented himself; nor did they achieve nobler designs. in effect upon our emotions and sensations, these portraits may compete with the masterpieces of titian and rembrandt, though the method of expression is in their case too different to render comparison possible. whatever in the glow of light, in the power of shadow, to envelop and enhance the features portrayed, is theirs and not his, his superiority of searching insight, united with its equivalent of unique facility in definition, seems more than to outweigh. before he left for venice, besides the renderings of himself already mentioned, dürer had painted his father twice, in and in . the latter was the pair to and compeer of his own portrait at madrid,; and, hitherto unknown, was lent last year by lord northampton to the royal academy, and has since been bought for the national gallery. this beautiful work is unique even among the works of the master, and is not so much the worse for repainting as some make out. the majority of dürer's portraits stand alone. in each the esthetic problem has been approached and solved in a strikingly different manner. this picture and its fellow, the portrait of the painter at madrid, the _oswolt krel_, the portrait of a lady seen against the sea at berlin, the _wolgemut_, and dürer's own portrait at munich, though seen by the same absorbing eyes, are rendered each in quite a different manner. no man has ever been better gifted for portraying a likeness than dürer; but the absence of a native comprehension of pigment made him ever restless, and it might be possible to maintain that each of these pictures presented us with a differing strategy to enforce pigment, to subserve the purposes of a draughtsman. still this would seem to imply a greater sacrifice of ease and directness than those brilliant masterpieces can be charged with. they none of them lack beauty of colour, of surface, or of handling, though each so unlike the other. in this portrait of his father, dürer has developed a shaken brushline, admirably adapted to suggest the wrinkled features of an old man, but in complete contrast to the rapid sweep of the caligraphic work in the _oswolt krel_; and it is to be noticed how in both pictures the touch seems to have been invented to facilitate the rendering of the peculiar curves and lines of the sitter's features, and further variations of it developed to express the draperies and other component parts of the picture. it is this inventiveness in handling which most distinguishes dürer from painters like raphael and holbein, and makes his work comparable with the masterpieces of rembrandt and titian, in spite of the extreme opposition in aspect between their work and his. the noble portrait of a middle-aged man, no. c, in the royal gallery at berlin, (supposed to represent frederick the wise, elector of saxony, dürer's first patron), gives us a master portrait, in which the technical treatment is comparable to that of the early triptych at dresden, and which is a monument of sober power and distinction, though again very difficult to compare with the other splendid portraits by the same hand which hang beside or near it in that gallery. the vivid _oswolt krel_ at munich shows the peculiarity of dürer's caligraphic touch better than perhaps any other of his portraits. the finish is not carried so far as in the madrid portrait of himself, where even the texture of the gloves has been softened by touches of the thumb, and the absence of these extra refinements leaves it the most spontaneous and vigorously bold of all dürer's paintings. the concentrated energy of the sitter's features demanded such a treatment; he seems to burn with the inconsiderate atheism of a marlowe. young, and less surprised than indignant to be alone awake in a sleepy and bigoted world, he seems convinced of a mission to chastise, _even_ to scandalise his easy-going neighbours. let us hope he met with better luck than the marlowes, shelleys, and rimbauds, whose tragedies we have read; for one can but regret, as one meets his glance so much fiercer than need be, that he is not known to history. [illustration: oil portrait of a lady seen against the sea in the berlin gallery] [illustration: oil portrait, dated , at hampton court] the fine portrait of hans tucher, , in the grand ducal museum at weimar should, judging from a photograph alone, be mentioned here. it has obvious affinities with the _oswolt krel_, but the caligraphic method is again modified in harmony with the character of the sitter's features. the companion piece, representing felicitas tucherin, would seem at some period to have been restored to the insignificance and obscurity that belonged to the sitter before dürer painted her. iv the portraits which dürer painted at venice, or soon after his return, betray the influence of other masterpieces on his own. mr. ricketts has pointed to that of antonello da messina in the portraits of young men at vienna ( ) and at hampton court ( ). the former of these has an allegorical sketch of avarice, painted on the back in a thick impasto, such as seems almost a presage of after developments of the venetian school, and may possibly show the influence of some early experiment by giorgione which dürer wished to show that he could imitate if he liked. the latter represents a personage who appears on the left of the _feast of rose wreaths_ in exactly the same cap and with the same fastening to his jerkin, crossing his white shirt (see illustration opposite). not improbably dürer may have painted separate portraits of nearly all the members of the german guild at venice who appear in the _rose garlands_. in any case much of his work during his stay there has disappeared. it was here that he painted that beautiful head of a woman (no. g in the berlin gallery) with soft, almost leonardesque shadows, seen against the luminous hazy sea and sky, which remains absolutely unique in method and effect among his works, and makes one ask oneself unanswerable questions as to what might not have been the result if he could but have brought himself to accept the offered citizenship and salary, and stop on at venice. a dürer, not only secluded from luther and his troubling denunciations, but living to see titian and giorgione's early masterpieces, perhaps forming friendships with them, and later visiting rome, standing in the sistine chapel, seated in the stanze between the school of athens and the disputa! i at least cannot console myself for these missed opportunities, as so many of his critics and biographers have done, by saying that doubtless had he stayed he would have been spoiled like those second-class german and dutch painters, for whom the siren art of italy proved a baneful influence. one could almost weep to think of what has been probably lost to the world because dürer could not bring himself to stay on at venice. it _was_ here he painted the tiny panel representing the head of a girl in gay apparel dated (in the berlin gallery), that makes one think, even more than do holbein's _venus_ and _lais_ at basle, of the triumphs that were reserved for italians in the treatment of similar subjects. after his return the influence of venetian methods gradually waned, till we find in the masterly and refined portrait of _wolgemut_ ( ) (see illustration); something of a return to the caligraphic method so noticeable in the _oswolt krel_. about the same time dürer recommenced painting in tempera in a manner resembling the early dresden _madonna_ and the _hercules_, as we see by the rather unpleasant heads of apostles in the uffizi and the tine one of an old man in a vermilion cap in the louvre, &c. &c. [illustration: _bruckmann_--"albrecht dürer took this likeness of his master, michael wolgemut, in the year , and he was years of age, and lived to the year , and then departed on saint andrew's day, very early before sunrise"--oil-painting. alt pinakothek, munich] [illustration: hans imhof (?)--from the painting in the royal gallery at madrid--(by permission _of messrs. braun, clément & co., dornach (alsace), paris and new york_)] v on his arrival at antwerp in dürer commenced the third and last group of master-portraits; foremost is the superb head and bust at madrid, supposed to represent hans imhof, a patrician of dürer's native town and his banker while at antwerp; of the same date are the triumphant renderings of the grave and youthful bernard van orley (at dresden) and that of a middle-aged man--lost for the national gallery, and now in the possession of mrs. gardner, of boston. all three were probably painted at antwerp. it may be that the portrait of imhof and the report of the honours and commissions showered on their painter while in the netherlands, woke the nuremberg councillors up, for we have portraits of three of them dated --jacob muffel, hieronymus holzschuher, (both in the royal gallery, berlin,) and the eccentric and unpleasing medallion representing johannes kleeberger, at vienna. with the exception of this last, this group is composed of masterpieces absolutely unrivalled for intensity and dignity of power. van eyck painted with inhuman indifference a few ugly grotesque but otherwise uninteresting people. all but a very few of holbein's best portraits pale before these instances of searching insight; and, north of the alps at least, there are no others which can be compared to them. the _hans imhof_ shows a shrewd and forbidding schemer for gain on a large scale--a face which produces the impression of a trap or closed strong box, but, being so alert and intelligent, seems to demand some sort of commiseration for the constraint put upon its humanity in the creation of a master, a tyrant over himself first and afterwards over an ever-widening circle of others. the unknown master who is represented in mrs. gardner's beautiful picture is less forbidding, though not less patently a moulder of destiny. _jacob muffel_ has a more open face, a more serene gaze; but his mouth too has the firmness acquired by those who live always in the presence of enemies, or are at least aware that "a little folding of the hands" may be fatal to all their most cherished purposes. the last of these masters of themselves and of their fortunes in hazardous and change-fraught times is _hieronymus holzschuher_, dürer's friend. only less felicitous because less harmonious in colour than the three former, this vivacious portrait of a ruddy, jovial, and white-haired patrician seen against a bright blue background might produce the effect of a father christmas, were it not for the resolute mouth and the puissant side-glance of the eyes. bernard van orley, the only youthful person immortalised in this group, has a gentle, responsible air which his features are a little too heavy to enhance. i have now mentioned the chief of his portraits, which are the best of his painting, and by which he ranks for the directness and power of his workmanship and of his visual analysis in the company of the very greatest. raphael and holbein have alone produced portraits which, as they can be compared to dürer's, might also be held to rival them; titian, rubens, velasquez, rembrandt, van dyck, reynolds have done as splendidly, but the material they used and the aims they set themselves were too different to make a comparison serviceable. these men are pre-eminent among those who have produced portraits which, while unsurpassed for technical excellences, present to us individuals whose beauty or the character it expresses are equally exceptional. [illustration: "jakob muffel" oil portrait in the berlin gallery] chapter iii dÜrer's drawings i perhaps dürer is more felicitous as a draughtsman than in any other branch of art. the power of nearly all first-rate artists is more wholly live and effective in their drawings than in elaborated works. dürer himself says: an artist of understanding and experience can show more of his great power and art in small things, roughly and rudely done, than many another in his great work. powerful artists alone will understand that in this strange saying i speak truth. for this reason a man may often draw something with his pen on a half sheet of paper in one day, or cut it with his graver on a small block of wood, and it shall be fuller of art and better than another's great work whereon he hath spent a whole year's careful labour. but it is possible to go far beyond this and say not only "another's great work," but his own great work. in the first chapter of this work i said that the standard in works of art is not truth but sincerity; that if the artist tells us what he feels to be beautiful, it does not matter how much or how little comparison it will bear with the actual objects represented. and from this fact, that sincerity not truth is of prime importance in matters of expression, results the strange truth that dürer says will be recognised by powerful artists alone (see page ). any one who recognises how often the sketches and roughs of artists, especially of those who are in a peculiar degree creators, excel their finished works in those points which are the distinctive excellences of such men, will grant this at once. only to turn to the sketch (inscribed _memento mei _) of _death_ on horseback with a scythe, or the pen-portrait of dürer leaning on his hand, will be enough to convince those who alone can be convinced on these points. for any who need to explain to themselves the character of such sketches--as the authoress of a recent little book on dürer does that of the pen drawing "in which the boy's chin rests on his hand" by telling us that "it is unfinished and was evidently discarded as a failure,"--any who must be at such pains in a case of this sort is one of those who can never understand wherein the great power of a work of art resides. such people may get great pleasure from works of art; only i am content to remain convinced that the pleasure they get has no kind of kinship with that which i myself obtain, or that which the greatest artists most constantly seek to give. this marvellous portrait of himself as a lad of from seventeen to nineteen years of age is just one of those things "roughly and rudely done," of which dürer speaks. there is probably no parallel to it for mastery or power among works produced by artists so youthful. [illustration: study of a hound for the copper engraving "st. eustache." b. brush drawing at windsor] there is often some virtue in spontaneity which is difficult to define; perhaps it bears more convincing witness to the artist's integrity than slower and longer labours, from which it is difficult to ward all duplicity of intention. the finishing-touch is too often a judas' kiss. "blessed are the pure in heart" is absolutely true in art. (of course, i do not use purity in the narrow sense which is confined to avoidance of certain sensual subjects and seductive intentions.) it is only poverty of imagination which taboos subject-matter, and lack of charity that believes there are themes which cannot be treated with any but ignoble intentions. but the virtue in a spontaneous drawing is akin to that single devotion to whatever is best, which true purity is; as the refinement of economy which results in the finished work is akin to that delicate repugnance to all waste, which is true chastity. a sketch by rembrandt of a naked servant girl on a bed is as "simple as the infancy of truth"--as single in intention. a greek statue of a raimentless apollo is pre-eminently chaste. but it does not follow that rembrandt was in his life eminently pure, or the greek sculptor signal for chastity. drawings rapidly executed have often a lyrical, rapturous, exultant purity, and are for that reason, to those whose eyes are blinded neither by prejudice nor by misfortune, as captivating as are healthy, gleeful children to those whose hearts are free. and while the joy that a child's glee gives is for a time, that which a drawing gives may well be for ever. we say a "spirited sketch" as we say "a spirited horse"; but works of art are instinct with a vast variety of spirits and exert manifold influences. it is a poverty of language which has confined the use of this word to one of the most obvious and least estimable. it can be never too much insisted on that a work of art is something that exerts an influence, and that its whole merit lies in the quality and degree of the influence exerted; for those who are not moved by it, it is no more than a written sentence to one who cannot read. ii many people in turning over a collection of dürer's drawings would be constantly crying, "how marvellously realistic!" and would glow with enthusiasm and smile with gratitude for the perception which these words expressed. others would say "merely realistic"; and the words would convey, if not disapprobation for something shocking, at least indifference. in both cases the word "realistic" would, i take it, mean that the objects which the pen, brush, or charcoal strokes represented were described with great particularity. and in the first case delight would have been felt at recognising the fulness of detailed information conveyed about the objects drawn--that each drawing represented not a generalisation, but an individual. in the other case the mind would have been repelled by the infatuated insistence on insignificant or negligible details, the absence of their classification and subordination to ideas. the first of these two frames of mind is that of paul pry, who is delighted to see, to touch, or behold, for whom everything is a discovery; and there are members of this class of temperament who in middle life continue to make the same discoveries every day with zest and a wonder equal to that which they felt when children. the second of these frames of mind is that of the man with a system or in search of a system, who desires to control, or, if he cannot do that, at least to be taken into the confidence of the controller, or to gain a position from which he can oversee him, and approve or disapprove. now neither of these judgments is in itself aesthetic, or implies a comprehension of dürer as an artist. [illustration: me-ento mei, . from the drawing in the british museum] the man who cries out: "just look how that is done!" "who could have believed a single line could have expressed so much?" judges as an artist, a craftsman. the man who, like jean francois millet, exclaims: "how fine! how grand! how delicate! how beautiful!" judges as a creator. he sees that "it is good." an artist--a creator--may possess either or even both the two former temperaments; but as an artist he must be governed by the latter two, either singly or combined. dürer, doubtless, had a considerable share in all four of these points of view. he delighted in objects as such, in the new and the strange as new and strange, in the intricate as intricate, in the powerful as powerful. and above all in his drawings does he manifest this direct and childish interest and curiosity. he was also in search of a system, of an intellectual key or plan of things; and in the many drawings he devoted to explaining or developing his ideas of proportion, of perspective, of architecture, he shows this bias strongly. but nearly every drawing by him, or attributed to him, manifests the third of these temperaments. the never-ceasing economy and daring of the invention displayed in his touch, or, as he would have said, "in his hand," is almost as signal as his perfect assurance and composure. and when one reflects that he was not, like rembrandt, an artist who made great or habitual use of the spaces of shade and light, but that his workmanship is almost entirely confined to the expressive power of lines, wonder is only increased. of the fourth character that creates and estimates value, though in certain works dürer rises to supreme heights, though in almost all his important works he appeases expectation, yet often where he could surely have done much better he seems to have been content not to exert his rarest gifts, but rather to play with or parade those that are secondary. not only is this so in drawings like the _dance of monkeys_ at basle, done to content his friend the reformer felix frey (see page ), and in the borders designed to amuse maximilian during the hours that custom ordained he should pretend to give to prayer; but there are drawings which were not apparently thrown as sops to the idleness of others, but done to content some half-vacant mood of his own (see lippmann, , , , . , ). in such drawings the economy and daring of the strokes is always admirable, can only be compared to that in drawings by rembrandt and hokusai; but the occasion is often idle, or treated with a condescension which well-nigh amounts to indifference. there is no impressiveness of allure, no intention in the proportions or disposition on the paper such as erasmus justly praised in the engravings on copper, probably recollecting something which dürer himself had said (see page ). yet in his portrait heads the right proportions are nearly always found; and in many cases i believe it is no one but the artist himself who has cut down such drawings after they were completed, to find a more harmonious or impressive proportion (see illustration opposite). and often these drawings are as perfect in the harmony between the means employed and the aspect chosen, and in the proportion between the head and the framing line and the spaces it encloses, as holbein himself could have made them; while they far surpass his best in brilliancy and intensity. [illustration: drawing in black chalk heightened with white on reddish ground formerly in the collection at warwick castle] [illustration: silver-point drawing on prepared grey ground, in the collection of frederick locker, esq.] iii something must be said of dürer's employment of the water-colours, pen-and-ink, silver-point, charcoal, chalk, &c., with which he made his drawings. he is a complete master of each and all these mediums, in so far as the line or stroke may be regarded as the fundamental unit; he is equally effective with the broad, soft line of chalk (see illustration, page i.), or the broad broken charcoal line (see illustration, page ii.), as with the fine pen stroke (see illustration, page iii.), the delicate silver-point (see illustration, page iv.), or the supple and tapering stroke produced by the camel's hair brush (see illustration, page v.). but when one comes to broad washes, large masses of light and shade, the expression of atmosphere, of bloom, of light, he is wanting in proportion as these effects become vague, cloudy, indefinite, mist-like. his success lies rather in the definite reflections on polished surfaces; he never reproduces for us the bloom on peach or flesh or petal. he does not revel, like rembrandt, in the veils and mysteries of lucent atmosphere or muffling shadow. the emotions for which such things produce the most harmonious surroundings he hardly ever attempts to appeal to; he is mournful and compassionate, or indignant, for the sufferings, of his man of sorrows; not tender, romantic, or awesome. only with the tapering tenuity and delicate spring of the pure line will he sometimes attain to an infantile or virginal freshness that is akin to the tenderness of the bloom on flowers, or the light of dawn on an autumn morning.[ ] in the same way, when he is tragic, it is not with thick clouds rent in the fury of their flight, or with the light from shaken torches cast and scattered like spume-flakes from the angry waves; nor is it with the accumulated night that gives intense significance to a single tranquil ray. only by a rembrandt, to whom these means are daily present, could a subject like the _massacre of the ten thousand_ have been treated with dramatic propriety; unless, indeed, michael angelo, in a grey dawn, should have twisted and wrung with manifold pain a tribe of giants, stark, and herded in some leafless primeval valley. with dürer the occasion was merely one on which to coldly invent variations, as though this human suffering was a motive for _an_ arabesque. yet even from the days when he copied andrea mantegna's struggling sea-monsters, or when he drew the stern matured warrior angels of his apocalypse fighting, with their historied faces like men hardened by deceptions practised upon them, like men who have forbidden salt tears and clenched their teeth and closed their hearts, who see, who hate; even from these early days, the energy of his line was capable of all this, and his spontaneous sense of arabesque could become menacing and explosive. there are two or three drawings of angry, crying cupids (lipp., and , see illustration opposite), prepared for some intended picture of the crucifixion, where he has made the motive of the winged infants head, usually associated with bliss and scattered rose-leaves, become terrible and stormy. and the _agony in the garden_, etched on iron, contains a tree tortured by the wind (see illustration), as marvellous for rhythm, power, and invention as the blast-whipped brambles and naked bushes that crest a scarped brow above the jealous husband who stabs his wife, in titian's fresco at padua. again, the unspeakable tragedy of the stooping figure of jesus, who is being dragged by his hair up the steps to annas' throne, in the _little passion_, is rendered by lines instinct with the highest dramatic power. these are a draughtsman's creations; though they are less abundant in dürer's work than one could wish, still only the greatest produce such effects; only michael angelo, titian, and rembrandt can be said to have equalled or surpassed dürer in this kind, rarely though it be that he competes with them. [illustration: cherub for a crucifixion black chalk drawing heightened with white on a blue-grey paper in the collection of herr doctor blasius, brunswick] it is for the intense energy of his line, combined with its unique assurance, that dürer is most remarkable. the same amount of detail, the same correctness in the articulation and relation between stem and leaf, arm and hand, or what not, might be attained by an insipid workmanship with lifeless lines, in patient drudgery. it is this fact that those who praise art merely as an imitation constantly forget. there is often as much invention in the way details are expressed by the strokes of pen or brush, as there could be in the grouping of a crowd; the deftness, the economy of the touches, counts for more in the inspiriting effect than the truth of the imitation. a photograph from nature never conveys this, the chief and most fundamental merit of art. reynolds says: rembrandt, in older to take advantage of an accident, appears often to have used the pallet-knife to lay his colours on the canvas instead of the pencil. whether it is the knife or any other instrument, _it suffices, if it is something that does not follow exactly the will. accident, in the hands of_ an artist _who knows horn to take the advantage of its hints, will often produce bold and capricious beauties of handling_, and facility such as he would not have thought of or ventured with his pencil, under the regular restraint of his hand.[ ] in such a sketch as the _memento mei_, , (_death_ riding on horseback,) all those who have sense for such things will perceive how the rough paper, combined with the broken charcoal line, lends itself to qualities of a precisely similar nature to those described by reynolds as obtained by rembrandt's use of the pallet-knife. yet, just as, in the use of charcoal, the "something that does not follow exactly the will" is infinitely more subtle than in the use of the palette-knife to represent rocks or stumps of trees, so in the pen or silver-point line this element, though reduced and refined till it is hardly perceptible, still exists, and dürer takes "the advantage of its hints." and not only does he do' this, but he foresees their occurrence, and relies on them to render such things as crumpled skin, as in the sketches for adam's hand holding the apple. (lipp. ). the operation is so rapid, so instantaneous, that it must be called an instinct, or at least a habit become second nature, while in the instance chosen by reynolds, it is obvious and can be imagined step by step; but in every case it is this capacity to take advantage of the accident, and foresee and calculate upon its probable occurrences, that makes the handling of any material inventive, bold, and inimitable. it is in these qualities that an artist is the scholar of the materials he employs, and goes to school to the capacities of his own hand, being taught both by their failure to obey his will here, and by their facility in rendering his subtlest intentions there. and when he has mastered all they have to teach him, he can make their awkwardness and defects expressive; as stammerers sometimes take advantage of their impediment so that in itself it becomes an element of eloquence, of charm, or even of explicitness; while the extra attention rendered enables them to fetch about and dare to express things that the fluent would feel to be impossible and never attempt. [illustration: apollo and diana--pen drawing in the british museum, supposed to show the influence of the belvedere apollo] iv lastly, it is in his drawings, perhaps, even more than in his copper engravings, that dürer proves himself a master of "the art of seeing nature," as reynolds phrased it; and the following sentence makes clear what is meant, for he says of painting "perhaps it ought to be as far removed from the vulgar idea of imitation, as the refined, civilised state in which we live is removed from a gross state of nature";[ ] and again: "if we suppose a view of nature, represented with all the truth of the camera obscura, and the same scene represented by a great artist, how little and how mean will the one appear in comparison of the other, where no superiority is supposed from the choice of the subject."[ ] not only is outward nature infinitely varied, infinitely composite; but human nature--receptive and creative--is so too, and after we have gazed at an object for a few moments, we no longer see it the same as it was revealed to our first glance. not only has its appearance changed for us, but the effect that it produces on our emotions and intelligence is no longer the same. each successful mind, according to its degree of culture, arrives finally at a perception of every class of objects presented to it which is most in agreement with its own nature--that is, calls forth or nourishes its most cherished energies and efforts, while harmonising with its choicest memories. all objects in regard to which it cannot arrive at such a result oppress, depress, or even torment it. at least this is the case with our highest and most creative moods; but every man of parts has a vast range of moods, descending from this to the almost vacant contemplation of a cow--the innocence of whose eye, which perceives what is before it without transmuting it by recollection or creative effort, must appear almost ideal to the up-to-date critic who has recently revealed the innocent confusion of his mind in a ponderous tome on nineteenth-century art. the art of seeing nature, then, consists in being able to recognise how an object appears in harmony with any given mood; and the artist must employ his materials to suggest that appearance with the least expenditure of painful effort. the highest art sees all things in harmony with man's most elevated moods; the lowest sees nature much as dutch painters and cows do. now we can understand what goethe means when he says that "albrecht dürer enjoyed the advantages of a profound realistic perception, and an affectionate human sympathy with all present conditions." the man who continued to feel, after he had become a lutheran, the beauty of the art that honoured the virgin, the man who cannot help laughing at the most "lying, thievish rascals" whenever they talk to him because "they know that their knavery is no secret, but 'they don't mind,'" is affectionate; he is amused by monkeys and the rhinoceros; he can bear with pirkheimer's bad temper; he looks out of kindly eyes that allow their perception of strangeness or oddity to redeem the impression that might otherwise have been produced by vice, or uncouthness, or sullen frowns. i have supposed that a realistic perception was one which saw things with great particularity; and the words "a profound realistic perception" to goethe's mind probably conveyed the idea of such a perception, in profound accord with human nature, that is where the human recognition, delight and acceptance followed the perception even to the smallest details, without growing weary or failing to find at least a hope of significance in them. if this was what the great critic meant, those who turn over a collection of dürer's drawings will feel that they are profoundly realistic (realistic in a profoundly human sense), and that their author enjoyed an affectionate human sympathy with all present conditions; and by these two qualities is infinitely distinguished from all possessors of so-called innocent eyes, whether quadruped or biped. it is well to notice wherein this notion of goethe's differs from the conventional notions which make up everybody's criticism. for instance, "in all his pictures he confined himself to facts," says sir martin conway,[ ] and then immediately qualifies this by adding, "he painted events as truly as his imagination could conceive them." we may safely say that no painter of the first rank has ever confined himself to facts. nor can we take the second sentence as it stands. any one who looks at the _trinity_ in the imperial gallery at vienna will see at once that the artist who painted it did not shut his eyes and try to conjure up a vision of the scene to be represented; the ordering of the picture shows plainly throughout that a foregone conventional arrangement, joined with the convenience of the methods of representation to be employed, dictated nearly the whole composition, and that the details, costumes, &c., were gradually added, being chosen to enhance the congruity or variety of what was already given. perhaps it was never a prime object with dürer to conceive the event, it was rather the picture that he attempted to conceive; it is rembrandt who attempts to conceive events, not dürer. he is very far from being a realist in this sense: though certain of his etchings possess a considerable degree of such realism, it is not what characterises him as a creator or inventor. but a "profound realistic perception" almost unequalled he did possess; what he saw he painted not as he saw it, not where he saw it, but as it appeared to him to really be. so he painted real girls, plain, ugly or pretty as the case might be, for angels, and put them in the sky; but for their wings he would draw on his fancy. often the folds of a piece of drapery so delighted him that they are continued for their own sake and float out where there is no wind to support them, or he would develop their intricacies beyond every possibility of conceivable train or other superfluity of real garments; and it is this necessity to be richer and more magnificent than probability permits which brings us to the creator in dürer; not only had he a profound realistic perception of what the world was like, but he had an imagination that suggested to him that many things could be played with, embroidered upon, made handsomer, richer or more impressive. when goethe adds that "he was retarded by a gloomy fantasy devoid of form or foundation," we perceive that the great critic is speaking petulantly or without sufficient knowledge. dürer's gloomy fantasy, the grotesque element in his pictures and prints, was not his own creation, it is not peculiar to him, he accepted it from tradition and custom (see plate "descent into hell"). what is really characteristic of him is the richness displayed in devils' scales and wings, in curling hair or crumpled drapery, or flame, or smoke, or cloud, or halo; and, still more particularly, his is the energy of line or fertility of invention with which all these are displayed, and the dignity or austerity which results from the general proportion of the masses and main lines of his composition. v for the illustration of this volume i have chosen a larger proportion of drawings than of any other class of work; both because dürer's drawings are less widely known than his engravings on metal, and because, though his fame may perhaps rest almost equally on these latter, and they may rightly be considered more unique in character, yet his drawings show the splendid creativeness of his handling of materials in greater variety. one engraving on copper is like another in the essential problem that it offered to the craftsman to resolve; but every different medium in which dürer made drawings, and every variety of surface on which he drew, offered a different problem, and perhaps no other artist can compare with him in the great variety of such problems which he has solved with felicity. and this power of his to modify his method with changing conditions is, as we have seen, from the technical side the highest and greatest quality that an artist can possess. it only fails him when he has to deal with oil paintings, and even there he shows a corresponding sense of the nature of the problems involved, if he shows less felicity on the whole in solving them; and perhaps could he have stayed at venice and have had the results of giorgione's and titian's experiments to suggest the right road, we should have been scarcely able to perceive that he was less gifted as a painter than as draughtsman. as it is, he has given us water-colour sketches in which the blot is used to render the foliage of trees in a manner till then unprecedented. (lipp. , &c.) he can rival watteau in the use of soft chalk, leonardo in the use of the pen, and van eyck in the use of the brush point; and there are examples of every intermediate treatment to form a chain across the gulf that separates these widely differing modes of graphic expression. there can be no need to point the application of these remarks to the individual drawings here reproduced; those who are capable of recognising it will do so without difficulty. [illustration: an old castle body-dour drawing at bremen] vi in conclusion, dürer appears as a draughtsman of unrivalled powers. and when one looks on his drawings as what they most truly were, his preparation for the tasks set him by the conditions of his life, there is room for nothing but unmixed admiration. it is only when one asks whether those tasks might not have been more worthy of such high gifts that one is conscious of deficiency or misfortune. and can one help asking whether the emperor max might not have given dürer his bible or his virgil to illustrate, instead of demanding to have the borders of his "book of hours" rendered amusing with fantastic and curious arabesques; whether dürer's learned friends, instead of requiring from him recondite or ceremonious allegories, might not have demanded title-pages of classic propriety; or whether the imperial bent of his own imagination might not have rendered their demands malleable, and bid them call for a series of woodcuts, engravings or drawings, which could rival rembrandt's etchings in significance of subject-matter and imaginative treatment, as they rival them in executive power? in his portraits--the large majority of which have come down to us only as drawings, the majority of which were never anything else--the demand made upon him was worthy; but even here holbein, a man of lesser gift and power, has perhaps succeeded in leaving a more dignified, a more satisfying series; one containing, if not so many masterpieces, fewer on which an accidental or trivial subject or mood has left its impress. yet, in spite of this, it is dürer's, not rembrandt's, not holbein's character, that impresses us as most serious, most worthy to be held as a model. it is before his portrait of himself that mr. ricketts "forgets all other portraits whatsoever, in the sense that this perfect realisation of one of the world's greatest men is worthy of the occasion." so that we feel bound to attribute our dissatisfaction to something in his circumstances having hindered and hampered the flow of what was finest in his nature into his work. from venice he wrote: "i am a gentleman here, but only a hanger-on at home." germany was a better home for a great character, a great personality, than for a great artist: dürer the artist was never quite at home there, never a gentleman among his peers. the good and solid burghers rated him as a good and solid burgher, worth so much per annum; never as endowed with the rank of his unique gift. it was only at venice and antwerp that he was welcomed as the albert dürer whom we to-day know, love, and honour. footnotes: [footnote : see the exquisite landscape in the collection of mr. c. s. ricketts and mr. c. h. shannon, reproduced in the sixth folio of the dürer society, . mr. campbell dodgson describes the drawing as in a measure spoilt by retouching, but what convinces him that these retouches are not by dürer? the pen-work seems to be at once too clever and too careless to have been added by another hand to preserve a fading drawing.] [footnote : xii. discourse.] [footnote : xiii, discourse.] [footnote : ibid.] [footnote : literary remains of albrecht dürer, p. i .] chapter iv dÜrer's metal engravings i for the artist or designer the chief difference between the engraving done on a wood block and that done on metal lies in the thickness of the line. the engraved line in a wood block is in relief, that on a metal plate is entrenched; the ink in the one case is applied to the crest of a ridge, in the other it fills a groove into which the surface of the paper is squeezed. though lines almost as fine as those possible on metal have been achieved by wood engravers, in doing this they force the nature of their medium, whereas on a copper plate fine lines come naturally. perhaps no section of dürer's work reveals his unique powers so thoroughly as his engravings on metal. they were entirely his own work both in design and execution; and no expenditure of pains or patience seems to have limited his intentions, or to have hindered his execution or rendered it less vital. and perhaps it is this fact which witnesses with our spirit and bids us recognise the master: rather than the comprehension of natural forms which he evinces, subtle and vigorous though it be; or than the symbols and types which he composed from such forms for the traditional and novel ideas of his day. and this unweariable assiduity of his is continually employed in the discovery of very noble arabesques of line and patterns in black and white, more varied than the grain in satin wood or the clustering and dispersion of the stars. intensity of application, constancy of purpose, when revealed to us by beautifully variegated surfaces, the result of human toil, may well impress us, may rightly impress us, more than quaint and antiquated notions about the four temperaments, or about witches and their sabbaths, or about virtues and vices embodied in misconceptions of the characters of pagan divinities, and in legends about them which scholars had just begun to translate with great difficulty and very ill. it is the astonishing assurance of the central human will for perfection that awes us; this perception that flinches at no difficulty, this perception of how greatly beauty deserves to be embodied in human creations and given permanence to. ii in the encomium which erasmus wrote of albert dürer he dealt, as one sees by the passage quoted (p. ), with dürer's engraved work almost exclusively. perhaps the great humanist had seen no paintings by dürer, and very likely had heard dürer himself disparage them, as melanchthon tells us was his wont (p. ). we know that dürer gave erasmus some of his engravings, and we may feel sure that he was questioned pretty closely as to what were the aims of his art, and wherein he seemed to himself to have best succeeded. the sentence i underlined (on p. ) gives us probably some reflection of dürer's reply. we must remember that erasmus, from his classical knowledge as to how apelles was praised, was full of the idea that art was an imitation, and may probably have refused to understand what dürer may very likely have told him in modification of this view; or he may by citing his greek and latin sources have prevented the reverent dürer from being outspoken on the point. but though most of his praise seems mere literary commonplace, the sentence underlined strikes us as having another source. "he reproduces not merely the natural aspect of a thing, but also observes the laws of perfect symmetry and harmony with regard to the position of it." how one would like to have heard dürer, as erasmus may probably have heard him, explain the principles on which he composed! no doubt there is no very radical difference between his sense of composition and that of other great artists. but to hear one so preoccupied with explaining his processes to himself discourse on this difficult subject would be great gain. for though there are doubtless no absolute rules, and the appeal is always to a refined sense for proportion,--yet to hear a creator speak of such things is to have this sense, as it were, washed and rendered delicate once more. we can but regret that erasmus has not saved us something fuller than this hint. in the same way, how tempting is the criticism that camerarius gives of mantegna,--we feel that dürer's own is behind it; but as it stands it is disjointed and absurd, like some of the incomplete and confused parables which give us a glimpse of how much more was lost than was preserved by the reporters of the sayings of jesus. it is the same thing with the reported sayings of michael angelo, and indeed of all other great men. it is impossible to accept "his hand was not trained to follow the perception and nimbleness of his mind" as dürer's dictum on mantegna; but how suggestive is the allusion to "broken and scattered statues set up as examples of art," for artists to form themselves upon! yet the fact that dürer missed coming into contact not only with mantegna but with titian, leonardo, raphael, michael angelo, is indeed the saddest fact in regard to his life. we can well believe that he felt it in mantegna's case. ah! why could he not bring himself to accept the overtures made to him, and become a citizen of venice? iii the subjects of these engravings are even generally trivial or antiquated, either in themselves or by the way they are approached. perhaps alone among them the figure of jesus, as it is drawn in the various series on copper and wood illustrating the passion, is conceived in a manner which touches us to-day with the directness of a revelation; and even this cannot be compared to the same figure in rembrandt etchings and drawings, either for essential adequacy, or for various and convincing application. no, we must consent to let the expression "great thoughts" drop out of our appreciation of dürer's works, and be replaced by the "great character" latent in them. however, one among dürer's engravings on copper stands out from among the rest, and indeed from all his works. in the _melancholy_ the composition is not more dignified in its spacing and proportion; the arabesque of line is not richer or sweeter, the variations from black to white are not more handsome, than in some half dozen of his other engravings. no, by its conception alone the _melancholy_ attains to its unique impressiveness. and it is the impressiveness of an image, not the impressiveness of an idea or situation, as in the case of the _knight, death, and the devil_, by which almost as much bad literature has been inspired. there is nothing to choose between the workmanship of the two plates; both are absolutely impeccable, and outside the work of dürer himself, unrivalled. the _melancholy_ is the only creation by a german which appears to me to invite and sustain comparison with the works of the greatest italian. in it we have the impressiveness that belongs only to the image, the thing conceived for mental vision, and addressed to the eye exclusively. if there was an allegory, or if the plate formed (as has been imagined) one of a series representative of the four temperaments, the eye and the visual imagination are addressed with such force and felicity that the inquiries which attempt to answer these questions must for ever appear impertinent. they may add some languid interest to the contemplation which is sated with admiring the impeccable mastery of the knight; for that plate always seems to me the mere illustration of a literary idea, a sheer statement of items which require to be connected by some story, and some of which have the crude obviousness of folk-lore symbols, without their racy and genial naïvety. they have not been fused in the rapture of some unique mood, not focussed by the intensity of an emotion. with the _melancholy_ all is different; perhaps among all his works only dürer's most haunting portrait of himself has an equal or even similar power to bind us in its spell. for this reason i attempt the following comparison between the _sibyls_ of the sistine chapel and the _melancholy_ a comparison which i do not suppose to have any other value or force than that of a stimulant to the imagination which the works themselves address. [illustration: melancholia copper engraving, b. ] the impetuosity of his southern blood drives michael angelo to betray his intention of impressing in the pose and build of his sibyls. large and exceptional women, "limbed" and thewed as gods are, with an habitual command of gesture, they lift down or open their books or unwind their scrolls like those accustomed to be the cynosure of many eyes, who have lived before crowds of inferiors, a spectacle of dignity from their childhood upwards. on the other hand, the pose and build of the _melancholy_ must have been those of many a matron in nuremberg. it is not till we come to the face that we find traits that correspond with the obvious symbolism of the wings and wreath, or the serious richness of the black and white effect of the composition; but that face holds our attention as not even the sibylla delphica cannot by beauty, not by conscious inspiration, but by the spell of unanswerable thought, by the power to brood, by the patience that can and dare go unresolved for many years. everything is begun about her; she cannot see unto the end; she is powerful, she is capable in many works, she has borne children, she rests from her labours, and her thought wanders, sleeps or dreams. the spirit of the north, with its industry, its cool-headed calculation, its abundance in contrivance, its elaboration of duty and accumulation of possessions--there she sits, absorbed, unsatisfied. impetuosity and the frank avowal of intention are themselves an expression of the will to create that which is desirable; they can but form the habit of every artist under happy circumstances. they proceed on the expectation of immediate effectiveness, they belong to power in action; while, if beauty be not impetuous, she is frank, and adds to the avowal of her intention the promise of its fulfilment. the work of art and the artist are essentially open; they promise intimacy, and fulfil that promise with entirety when successful. nor is anything so impressive as intimacy which implies a perfect sincerity, a complete revelation, a gift without reserve, increase without let. but the circumstances of the artist never are happy: even michael angelo's were not. an intense brooding melancholy arises from the repressed and baffled desire to create; and in some measure this gloom of failure underlying their success is a necessary character of all lovely and spiritual creations in this world. now michael angelo's works, because of their southern impetuosity and volubility, are not so instinct with this divine sorrow, this immobility of the soul face to face with evil, as is dürer's _melancholy_. he inspires and exhilarates us more, but takes us out of ourselves rather than leads us home. here is dürer's success: let and hindered as it really is, he makes us feel the inalienable constancy of rational desire, watching adverse circumstance as one beast of prey watches another. she keeps hold on the bird she has caught, the ideal that perhaps she will never fully enjoy. michael angelo pictures for us freedom from trammels, the freedom that action, thought and ecstasy give, the freedom that is granted to beauty by all who recognise it; dürer shows us the constancy that bridges the intervals between such free hours, that gives continuity to man's necessarily spasmodic effort. thus he typifies for us the northern genius: as michael angelo's athletes might typify by their naked beauty and the unexplained impressiveness of their gestures, the genius of the sudden south--sudden in action, sudden in thought, suddenly mature, suddenly asleep--as day changes to night and night to day the more rapidly as the tropics are approached. [illustration: detail enlarged from the "agony in the garden." etching on iron, b. _between_ pp. & ] [illustration: angel with the sudarium engraving in iron, . b. _between_ pp. & ] instances of the highest imaginative power are rare in dürer's work. the _melancholy_ has had a world-wide success. the _knight, death and the devil_ has one almost equal, but which is based on the facility with which it is associated with certain ideas dear to christian culture, rather than on the creation of the mood in which these ideas arise. it does not move us until we know that it is an illustration of erasmus's christian knight. then all its dignity and mastery and the supremacy of the gifts employed on it are brought into touch with the idea, and each admirer operates, according to his imaginativeness, something of the transformation which dürer had let slip or cool down before realising it. iv among the prints with lesser reputations are several which attain a far higher success. there is the iron plate of the _agony in the garden,_ b. , already mentioned (p. ), in which the storm-tortured tree and the broken light and shade are full of dramatic power (see illustration), the _angel with the sudarium_, b. , where the arabesque of the folds of drapery and cloud unite with the daring invention of the central figure to create a mood entirely consonant with the subject. there is the woman carried off by a man on an unicorn, in which the turbulence of the subject is expressed with unrivalled force by the rich and beautiful arabesque and black and white pattern. b. nos. , , , , , , , , , , of the _little passion_, on copper, are all of them noteworthy successes of more or less the same kind; and in these, too, we come upon that racy sense for narration which can enhance dramatic import by emphasising some seemingly trivial circumstance, as in the gouty stiffness of one of christ's scourgers in the _flagellation_, or the abnormal ugliness of the man who with such perfect gravity holds the basin while pilate _washes his hands:_ while in the _crown of thorns_ and _descent into hades_ we have peculiarly fine and suitable black and white patterns, and in the _peter and john at the beautiful gate_[ ] and the _ecce homo_ figures of monumental dignity in tiny gems of glowing engraver's work. the repose and serenity of the lovely little _st. antony_;[ ] the subsidence of commotion in the noonday victory of the little _st. george on foot_, b. --perhaps the most perfect diamond in the whole brilliant chain of little plates, or the staid naïvety of the enchanting _apollo and diana_, b. ;[ ] who shall prefer among these things? every time we go through them we choose out another until we return to the most popular and slightly obvious _st. george on horseback_, b. . next come the dainty series of little plates in honour of our lady the mother of god, commencing before dürer made a rule of dating his plates; before and continuing till after , in which the last are the least worthy. among these the virgin embracing her child at the foot of a tree, b. , dated ; the virgin standing on the crescent moon, her baby in one arm, her sceptre in the other hand and the stars of her crown blown sideways as she bows her head, b. , dated , and the stately and monumental virgin seated by a wall, b. , dated , are at present my favourites. and to these succeeded the noble army of apostles and martyrs of which the more part are dated from to , though two, b. and , fall as early as . [illustration: the small horse--copper engraving, b. ] then amongst the most perfect larger plates i cannot refrain from mentioning the _st. jerome_, b. , with its homely seclusion as of dürer's own best parlour in summer time which not even the presence of a lion can disturb; the idyllic and captivating _st. hubert_, b. ; the august and tranquil _cannon_, b. : and lastly, perhaps, in the little _horse_, b. , we come upon a theme and motive of the kind best suited to dürer's peculiar powers, in which he produces an effect really comparable to those of the old greek masters, about whose lost works he was so eager for scraps of information, and whose fame haunted him even into his slumbers, so that he dreamed of them and of those who should "give a future to their past." this delightful work may illustrate an allegory now grown dark or some misconception of a grecian story; but though the relation between the items that compose it should remain for ever unexplained, its beauty, like that of some greek sculpture that has been admired under many names, continues its spell, and speaks of how the simplicity, austerity and noble proportions of classical art were potent with the spirit of the great nuremberg artist, and occasionally had free way with him, in spite of all there was in his circumstances and origins to impede or divert them. (see also the spirited drawing, lipp. .) v it would be idle to attempt to say something about every masterpiece in dürer's splendidly copious work on metal plates. there is perhaps not one of these engravings that is not vital upon one side or another, amazingly few that are not vital upon many. one other work, however, which has been much criticised and generally misunderstood, it may be as well to examine at more length, especially as it illustrates what was often dürer's practice in regard to his theories about proportion, with which my next part will deal. i speak of the _great fortune_ or _nemesis_ (b. ). his practice at other times is illustrated by the splendid _adam and eve_ (b. ), over the production of which the nature of the canon he suggested was perhaps first thoroughly worked out. but before this and afterwards too he no doubt frequently followed the advice he gives in the following passage. to him that setteth himself to draw figures according to this book, not being well taught beforehand, the matter will at first become hard. let him then put a man before him, who agreeth, as nearly as may be, _with the proportions he desireth_; and let him draw him in outline according to his knowledge and power. and a man is held to have done well if he attain accurately to copy a figure according to the life, so that his drawing resembleth the figure and is like unto nature. _and in particular if the thing copied as beautiful; then is the copy held to be artistic_, and, as it deserveth, it is highly praised. dürer himself would seem to have very often followed his own advice in this. the _great fortune_ or nemesis is a case in point. the remarks of critics on this superb engraving are very strange and wide. professor thausing said, "embodied in this powerful female form, the northern worship of nature here makes its first conscious and triumphant appearance in the history of art." with the work of the great jan van eyck in one's mind's eye, of course this will appear one of those little lapses of memory so convenient to german national sentiment. "everything that, according to our aesthetic formalism based on the antique, we should consider beautiful, is sacrificed to truth." (i have already pointed out that this use of the word "truth" in matters of art constitutes a fallacy)[ ] "and yet our taste must bow before the imperishable fidelity to nature displayed in these forms, the fulness of life that animates these limbs." of course, "imperishable fidelity to nature" and "taste that bows before it" are merely the figures of a clumsy rhetoric. but the idea they imply is one of the most common of vulgar errors in regard to works of art. in the first place one must remind our enthusiastic german that it is an engraving and not a woman that we are discussing; and that this engraving is extremely beautiful in arabesque and black and white pattern, rich, rhythmical and harmonious; and that there is no reason why our taste should be violated in having to bow submissively before such beauties as these, which it is a pleasure to worship. now we come to the subject as presented to the intelligence, after the quick receptive eye has been satiated with beauty. our german guide exclaims, "not misled by cold definite rules of proportion, he gave himself up to unrestrained realism in the presentation of the female form." our first remark is, that though the treatment of this female form may perhaps be called realistic, this adjective cannot be made to apply to the figure as a whole. this massively built matron is winged; she stands on a small globe suspended in the heavens, which have opened and are furled up like a garment in a manner entirely conventional. she carries a scarf which behaves as no fabric known to me would behave even under such exceptional and thrilling circumstances. dr. carl giehlow has recently suggested that this splendid engraving illustrates the following latin verses by poliziano: est dea, quse vacuo sublimis in aëre pendens it nimbo succincta latus, sed candida pallam, sed radiata comam, ac stridentibus insonat alis. haec spes immodicas premit, haec infesta superbis imminet, huic celsas hominum contundere mentes incessusque datum et nimios turbare paratus. quam veteres nemesin genitam de nocte silenti oceano discere patri. stant sidera fronti. frena manu pateramque gerit, semperque verendum ridet et insanis obstat contraria coeptis. improba vota domans ac summis ima revolvens miscet et alterna nostros vice temperat actus. atque hue atque illuc ventorum turbine fertur. there is a goddess, who, aloft in the empty air, advances girdled about with a cloud, but with a shining white cloak and a glory in her hair, and makes a rushing with her wings. she it is who crushes extravagant hopes, who threatens the proud, to whom is given to beat down the haughty spirit and the haughty step, and to confound over-great possessions. her the men of old called nemesis, born to ocean from the womb of silent night. stars stand upon her forehead. in her hand she bears bridles and a chalice, and smiles for ever with an awful smile, and stands resisting mad designs. turning to nought the prayers of the wicked and setting the low above the high she puts one in the other's place and rules the scenes of life with alternation. and she is borne hither and thither on the wings of the whirlwind. if this suggestion is a good one it shows us that dürer was no more consistently literal than he was realistic. the most striking features of his illustration are just those to which his text offers no counterpart, i.e., the nudity and physical maturity of his goddess. neither has he girdled her about with cloud nor stood stars upon her forehead. i must confess that i find it hard to believe that there was any close connection present to his mind between his engraving and these verses. in a former chapter i have spoken of the fashion in female dress then prevalent; how it underlined whatever is most essential in the physical attributes of womanhood, and how probably something of good taste is shown in this fashion (see pp. and ). what i there said will explain dürer's choice in this matter; and also that what thausing felt bow in him was not taste, but his prejudices in regard to womanly attractiveness, and his misconception as to where the beauty of an engraving should be looked for and in what it consists. these same prejudices and misconceptions render mrs. heaton (as is only natural in one of the weaker sex) very bold. she says, "a large naked winged woman, whose ugliness is perfectly repulsive." this object, i must confess, appears to me, a coarse male, "welcome to contemplation of the mind and eye." the splendid venus in titian's _sacred and profane love_, or his _ariadne_ at madrid; or raphael's _galatea_; or michael angelo's _eve_ (on the sistine vault) are all of them doubtless far more akin to the _aphrodite_ of praxiteles, or to her who crouches in the louvre, than is this _nemesis_; but we must not forget that they are works on a scale more comparable with a marble statue; and that in works of which the scale is more similar to that of our engraving, greek taste was often far more with dürer than with thausing. this is an important point, though one which is rarely appreciated. however, there is no reason why we should condemn "misled by cold definite rules of taste" even such pictures as rembrandt's _bathing woman_ in the louvre, though here the proportions of the work are heroic. oil painting was an art not practised by the greeks, and this medium lends itself to beauties which their materials put entirely out of reach. besides, rembrandt appealed to an audience who had been educated by christian ideals to appreciate a pathos produced by the juxtaposition of the fact with the ideal, and of the creature with the creator, to appeal to which a greek would have had to be far more circumspect in his address--even if he had, through an exceptional docility and receptiveness of character, come under its influence himself. these considerations when apprehended will, i believe, suffice to dispel both prejudice and misconception in regard to this matter; and we shall find in professor thausing's remarks relative to the treatment of the "female form divine" in this engraving no additional reason for considering it a comparatively early work. and we shall only smile when he tells us "the _nemesis_ to a certain _degree_ (sic) marks the extreme _point_ (sic) reached by dürer in his unbiased study of the nude. his further progress became more and more influenced by his researches into the proportions of the human body." the bias will appear to us of rather more recent date, and we shall be ready to consider with an open mind how far dürer's practice was influenced for good or evil by his researches into the proportions of the human body. footnotes: [footnote : see page .] [footnote : see page .] [footnote : see frontispiece.] [footnote : see page .] chapter v dÜrer's woodcuts it is now generally accepted that dürer did not himself engrave on wood. in his earliest blocks he shows a greater respect for the limitations of this means of expression than later on. the earliest wood blocks, though no doubt they aimed at being facsimiles, were not such in fact; but the engraver took certain liberties for his own convenience, and probably did not attempt to render what dürer calls "the hand" of the designer. "the hand" was equivalent to what modern artists call "the touch," and meant the peculiar character recognisable in the vast majority of the strokes or marks which each artist uses in drawing or painting. dürer affected extremely curved and rapid strokes, mantegna the deliberate straight line, rembrandt the straight stroke used so as to seem a continual improvisation; though indeed he varies the character of his touch more continually and more vastly than any other master, yet in his drawings and etchings the majority of the strokes are straight. already in the woodcuts provided by michael wolgemut, dürer's master, to illustrate books, there is a general attempt to render cross hatching: and the eyes and hair, though still those of an engraver, are frequently modified to some extent in deference to the character given by the draughtsman. still, no one with practical experience would consider these woodcuts as adequate facsimiles: which makes the question of their attribution to wolgemut, or his partner and step-son, pleydenwurff, of still less interest and importance than it is on all other grounds. so conscious an exception as the soul of the accurate albert dürer was, could not be expected to endure a partner in his creations, especially one whose character was revealed chiefly by the clumsy compromises convenient to lack of skill. doubtless the demand for "his hand" was a new factor in the education of the engraver, as constant and as imperturbable as the action of a copious stream, which, having its source in lonely heights, wears a channel through the hardest rock, the most sullen soils. it may have been the pitiless tyranny of the master's will for perfection which drove hieronymus andreae, "the most famous of dürer's wood engravers," into religious and even civil rebellion, joining hands with levelling fanatics and taking active part in the peasant war. dürer probably would have commanded too much reverence and affection for these rebellions to be directed against him; but an insupportably heavy yoke is not rendered lighter because it is imposed by a loved hand,--though every other burden and restraint may in such a case be shaken off and resented before that which is the real cause of oppression. dürer's wood cutters had no doubt to resign any indolence, any impatience, or whatever else it might be that had otherwise stamped a personal character on their work; and all remonstrance must have been shamed by the evident fact that the young master spared himself not a whit more. the perseverance and docility which made such engraving possible was perhaps the greatest aid that dürer drew from german character; it was not only an aid, but an example to and restraint upon that haughty spirit of his that restively ever again vows never to take so much pains over another picture to be so poorly paid (see page ); that complains of failure and discouragement after years of repeatedly more world-wide successes (see page ). these are not german traits, but it may have been the german blood he inherited from his mother and the example of his friends, fellow-workers, and helpers, which enabled him to get the better of such petulant and gloomy outbursts, and return to the day of small things with the will to continue and endure. the difference introduced by the engravers becoming more and more capable of rendering dürer's hand is well illustrated by comparing the frontispiece to the _apocalypse_, added about , with the other cuts which had appeared in . doubtless dürer's hand had changed its character considerably during this period of constant and rapid development, and it requires tact and knowledge to separate the differences due to the creator from those due to the engraver. dürer's drawings differed as widely from the earlier drawings as does the engraving from the earlier blocks. but, as we may see by early drawings done as preliminary studies for engravings, the method of his pen strokes had changed less than the character of the forms they rendered; the conception of the design as a whole had advanced more rapidly than the skill and sleight of hand which expressed it. the engraver has by become capable of expressing a greater variety of speed in the stroke, makes it taper more finely, and can follow the tongue-like lap and flicker as the pen rises and dips again before leaving the surface of the block (as in the outer ends of the strokes that represent the radiance of the virgin's glory). holbein, later on, was to obtain a yet more wonderful fidelity from lutzelburger, the engraver of his _dunce of death_. still it were misleading to suppose that dürer's disregard for the facilities and limitations of wood-cutting went the lengths that the demands made upon modern skill have gone. not only has the line been reproduced, but it has been drawn not with a full pen or brush, but in pencil or with watered ink; and the delicate tones thus produced have been demanded of and rendered by human skill. dürer always uses a clear definite stroke; and in thus limiting himself he shows an appreciation of the medium to be used in reproducing his drawing, and recognises its limits to a large extent, though this is the only limitation he accepts. less and less does he consider the possibilities which engraving offers for the use of a white line on black doing his drawing with a black line, he contents himself with the qualities that the resources and facilities of the full pen line give: and his design is for a drawing which can be cut on wood, not for something that first really exists in the print; the prints are copies of his drawings. his drawings were not prepared to receive additions in the course of cutting, such as could only be rendered by the engraver. faithfulness was the only virtue he required of hieronymus andreae. yet even in such drawings as dürer's no doubt were, there would have been some qualities, some defects perhaps, that the print does not possess. for a print, from the mode of inking, has a breadth and unity which the drawing never can have. even in drawings made with full flowing brush or pen, there will be modulations in the strength of the ink, or occasioned by the surface of the wood or paper, in every stroke, by which the, sensitive artist in the heat of work cannot help being influenced, and which will lead him to give a bloom, a delicacy, to his drawing, such as a print can never possess. and, on the other hand, the unity of the print can never be quite realised in the drawing, however much the artist may strive to attain it, because the conditions must change, however slightly, for strokes produced in succession; while in a print all are produced together, and variations, if variations there are, occur over wide spaces and not between stroke and stroke. it is considerations, of this kind that in the last resort determine the quality of works of art. the artist is taught, though often unconsciously, by the means he employs, but the diligent man who is not by nature an artist never can learn these things: he can imitate the manner and form, never the grace, the bloom, and the life. [illustration: the apocalypse, st. michael fighting the dragon, woodcut, b. from the impression in the british museum face p. ] ii dürer's first important issue of woodcuts was the _apocalypse_. a great deal has been written in praise of this production as a political pamphlet against the corrupt papacy. it was undoubtedly the most important series of woodcuts that had ever appeared, by the size, number and elaboration of the designs. it also undoubtedly attacks ecclesiastical corruption, but not ecclesiastical only. whether to dürer and his friends it appeared even chiefly directed against prelates, or even against those who sat in high places; whether the popes, bishops and figures typical of the church seemed to him to illustrate the moral in any pre-eminent degree, may be doubted. still more doubtful is it whether there was any objection to papacy or priesthood as institutions connected with these figures in his mind. unworthy popes, unworthy bishops, and an unworthy rome were censured: but not popes, bishops, or rome as the capital see of the church. dürer's work as a whole shows no distaste for saints, the virgin, or bishops and popes; he had no objection, no scruple apparently, to introducing the notorious julius ii. into his _feast of the_ rosary, some ten years later. there has perhaps been a tendency to read the intention of these designs too much in the light of after events: and by so doing a great slur is cast on dürer's consistency; for, had these designs the significance read into them, he must be supposed an altogether convinced enemy of the church; and the tremendous salaams which he afterwards made to her in far more important works ought, to logical minds, to appear horribly insincere. viewed as works of art, one reads about the cut of the four riders upon horses, "for simple grandeur this justly famous design has never been surpassed." one's sense of proportion receives such a shock as gives one the sensation of being utterly outcast, in a world where such a precious dictum can pass without remark as a sample of the discrimination of the chief authority on the life and art of albert dürer. neither simple nor grand is an adjective applicable to this print in the sense in which we apply it to the chief masterpieces of antiquity and of the renaissance. to say even that dürer never surpassed this design is to utter what to me at least seems the most palpable absurdity. there is an immense advance in design, in conception and in mastery of every kind shown over the best prints of the _apocalypse_ and _great passion_, in the prints added to the latter series ten years later, and still more in the _life of the virgin_. and still finer results are arrived at in single cuts of later date, and in the _little passion_. if we want to see what dürer's woodcuts at their finest are for breadth and dignity of composition, for richness and fertility of arabesque and black and white pattern, for vigour and subtlety of form, for boldness and vivacity of workmanship, we must turn to the _samson_ ( ?) (b. ), the man's _bath_ ( -?), (b. ), among the earlier blocks published before the _apocalypse_, then to those designed in or about the year . the golden period for dürer's woodcuts, the date of the publication of his most magnificent series, the _life of the virgin_ and several delightful separate prints. among these we find it hard to choose, but if some must be mentioned let it be the _st. joachim's offering rejected by the high priest_ (b. ), the _meeting at the golden gate_ (b. ) (see illustration), the _marriage of the virgin_ (b. ), the _visitation_ (b. ), the _nativity_ (b. ) (see illustration), the _presentation_ (b. _ _), the _flight into egypt_ (b. ). [illustration: detail enlarged from "nativity."--"life of the virgin" woodcut, b. ] [illustration: enlarged detail from "the embrace of st. joachim and st. anne at the golden gate."--"life of the virgin," woodcut, b. ] in the glorious masterpieces of this series dürer has found the true balance of his powers. the dignity and charm of the decorative effect of these cuts has never been surpassed; and to the racy narrative vivacity of such groups and figures as those isolated and enlarged in our illustration there is added an idyllic charm of which perhaps the best examples are the _visitation_ and the _flight into egypt_. this sweetness of allure is still more pervasive in the separate cuts that bear this golden date, , that is in the _st. christopher_ (b. ), and the _st. jerome_ (b. ). and the _adoration of the magi_ (b. ) is much finer than the one included in the _life of the virgin_. this idyllic charm had already been touched _upon before_ in the _assumption of the magdalen_ (b. ) ( ?), and in the _st. antony_ and _st. paul_ and the _baptist_ and _st. onuphrius of_ . it is not felt to lie very deep in the conception of the subject, for all are treated in an obviously conventional manner, the touches of racy realism being confined to subordinate incidents and details. neither the subjects nor the mood of the artist lend themselves to the dramatic impressiveness of such cuts as the _blowing of the sixth trumpet_ or the _st. michael overwhelming the dragon of the apocalypse_ (_see_ page ), where the inspiration appears to be gothic, perhaps developed under the influence of mantegna's _combat between sea monsters_, of which dürer early made an elaborate pen-and-ink copy. we find an aftermath of the same inspiration in the engraving on iron, dated , representing a man riding astride of an unicorn carrying off a shrieking woman. such stormy and strenuous lowerings of the imagination break in upon dürer's habitual mood as st. peter's thunders into milton's "lycidas," of which the general felicitous mingling of a conventional pedantry with idyllic charm and racy touches of realistic effect is very similar to the general effect of the golden group we have been describing. among all the work that finds its climax in the beautiful creations of , only in a few prints of the _little passion_, published in , do we find any dramatic power or creativeness of essential conception. i may mention the _christ scourging the money-changers in the temple_, the _agony in the garden_, and judas' _kiss_, where, though the general effect be rather confused, the central figure is full of appropriate power. _christ haled by the hair before_ _annas_ (the most wonderful of all), christ before _pilate_, christ _mocked_, the _ecce homo_ (a most beautiful composition), the veronica's napkin incident, _christ_ being nailed _to the cross_ (a masterpiece), the _deposition_, the _entombment_:--several others of the series have idyllic charm or touches of narrative force which link them with the general group, but these alone stand out and in some ways surpass it. after this date dürer seems in a great measure to have relinquished wood for metal engraving; however, most of his occasional resumptions of the process were marked by the production of masterpieces, if we put on one side the workshop monsters produced for maximilian--and even in these, in details, dürer's full force is recognisable. i may mention the _madonna_ crowned and _worshipped by a concert of angels_, (b. ), which, though a little cold, like all the work of that period, is still a masterpiece; and then, after the inspiriting visit to antwerp, we have the magnificent portrait of ulrich varnbüler, (b. ), the _last supper_, (b. ) (see illustration here), and the glorious piece of decoration representing dürer's arms, (b. ) (see illustration). i have reproduced less of dürer's wood engravings than would be necessary to represent their importance and beauty, because most, being large and bold, are greatly impoverished by reduction; besides, they are nearly all well known through comparatively cheap reproductions. i have enlarged two details to give an idea of dürer's workmanship when employed upon racy realism (see illustration, page ), and when employed in endowing a single figure with supreme grace and dignity (see illustration, page ). [illustration: christ haled before annas from the "little passion"--_between_ pp. & ] [illustration: dÜrer's armorial bearings woodcut, b. ] chapter vi dÜrer's influences and verses i before closing this part of my book something must be said of dürer's influence on other artists. it is one of the foibles of modern criticism to please itself by tracing influences, a process of the same nature as that of tracing resemblances to ferns and other growths on a frosted pane. no one would deny that resemblances are there; it is to distinguish them and estimate their significance without yielding to fancifulness, which is the well-nigh hopeless task. it is often forgotten that similar circumstances produce similar effects, and that coincidences from this cause are very rife. then, too, it is forgotten that the influence that produces rivalry is stronger, more important, and less easily estimated, than that which is expressed by imitation or plagiarism; besides, it affects more original and fertile natures. the stimulus of a great creative personality often is more potent where discernible resemblances are few and vague, than where they are many and obvious. in dürer's day the study and imitation of antique art which had brought about the renascence in italy was the fashion that in successive waves was passing over europe and moulding the future. he himself felt it, and welcomed it now as an authority not to be gainsaid, and again as an example to be competed against and surpassed. this fashion, this trend of opinion and hope, was the significance behind the effect produced on him by jacopo de' barbari, whose charming but ineffectual originality succeeded merely in creating an eddy in that stream. it was the tide behind him which so powerfully stirred and stimulated dürer. the resemblances traceable between certain still life studies by the two men, or even in figures of their engravings, is insignificant compared with the fact that through jacopo dürer probably first felt the energy and true direction of the great tidal waves which were then rolling forth from italy. even mantegna's influence was probably less the effect of a personal affinity than that through him a power streamed direct from the antique dawn. this great and master influence of those days was more one of hope, indefinite, incomprehensible, visionary, than one of knowledge and assured discovery. raphael may have received it from dürer, as well as dürer from bellini. figures and incidents from dürer's engravings are supposed to have been adapted in certain works, if not of his own hand at least proceeding from his immediate pupils. for raphael, dürer was a proof of the excellence of human nature in respect to the arts, even when it could not form itself on the immediate study and contemplation of antiques, and thus added to the zest and expectation with which he improved himself in that direction. these great men did not distinguish clearly between pregnancy due to their own efforts, that of their contemporaries and immediate predecessors, and that due to their more mystic passion for antiquity. michael angelo, titian, and correggio were destined to be the signets by which this great power was to be most often and clearly stamped on the work of future artists. from the unhappy location of his life dürer was debarred from any such obvious and overwhelming effect on after generations. the influences which helped to shape him were no doubt at work on all the more eminent artists, his fellow-countrymen; on albrecht altdorfer, hans burgkmair, lucas cranach, or baldung grien, to mention only the elect. what the stimulus of his achievements, of his renown, meant for these men we have no means of computing; yet we may feel sure that it was vastly more important and significant than any actual traces of imitation or plagiarism from his works, which can with difficulty and for the more part very doubtfully be brought home to them;--vastly more important and significant too we may be sure than his effect upon his pupils and other more or less obscure painters, engravers, and block designers, in whose work actual imitation or adaption of his creations is more certain and more abundant. his pictures, plates, and woodcuts were copied both in italy and in the north, both as exercises for the self-improvement of artists and to supply a demand for even secondhand reflections of his genius and skill. he was not destined to lend the impress of his splendid personality to the tide of fashion like the great italians; their influence was to supersede his even in the north. this is obvious: but who shall compare or estimate the accession of force which the tide as a whole gained from him, or that more latent power which begins to be disengaged from the reserve and lack of proper issue from which he evidently suffered, now that the great tide of the renaissance has spent its mighty onrush and become merged in the constant movement of life--that power by which he moves us to commiserate his circumstances and to feel after the more and better, which we cannot doubt that he might have given us had he been more happily situated? [illustration: the last supper woodcut, p. ] ii only to compare the value of michael angelo's sonnets with that of the doggerel rhymes which dürer produced, may give us some idea of the portentous inferiority in dürer's surroundings to those of the great italian. both borrow the general idea of the subject, treatment, and form of their poems from the fashion around them. but that fashion in michael angelo's case called for elevated subject, intimate and imaginative treatment, and adequacy of form, whereas none of these were called for from albrecht dürer; and if his friends laughed at the rudeness of his verses, it was not that they themselves conceived of anything more adequate in these respects, only something more scholarly, more pedantic. michael angelo's verse was often crabbed and rude, but the scholarship and pedantry of italy forbore to laugh at that rudeness, because a more adequate standard made them recognise its vital power and noble passion as of higher importance to true success. still, in the following rhymes, dürer shows himself a true child of the renascence, at least in intention; and was proud of a desire for universal excellence. when i received this from lazarus spengler, i made him the following poem in reply (mrs. heaton's translation): in nürnberg it is known full well a man of letters now doth dwell, one of our lord's most useful men, he is so clever with his pen, and others knows so well to hit, and make ridiculous with wit; and he has made a jest of me, because i made some poetry, and of true wisdom something wrote, but as he likes my verses not, he makes a laughing stock of me, and says i'm like the cobbler, he who criticised apelles' art. with this he tries to make me smart, because he thinks it is for me to paint, and not write poetry. but i have undertaken this (and will not stop for him or his), to learn whatever thing i can, for which will blame me no wise man. for he who only learns one thing, and to naught else his mind doth bring, to him, as to the notary, it haps, who lived here as do we, in this our town. to him was known to write one form and one alone. two men came to him with a need that he should draw them up a deed; and he proceeded very well, until their names he came to spell: gotz was the first name that perplexed, and rosenstammen was the next. the notary was much astonished, and thus his clients he admonished, "dear friends," he said, "you must be wrong, these names don't to my form belong; franz and fritz[ ] i know full well, but of no others have heard tell." and so he drove away his clients, and people mocked his little science. to me that it may hap not so, something of all things i will know. not only writing will i do, but learn to practise physic too; till men surprised will say, "beshrew me, what good this painter's medicines do me!" therefore hear and i will tell some wise receipts to keep you well. a little drop of alkali, is good to put into the eye; he who finds it hard to hear, should mandel-oil put in his ear; and he who would from gout be free, not wine but water drink should he; he who would live to be a hundred, will see my counsel has not blundered. therefore i will still make rhymes though my friend may laugh at times. so the painter with hairy beard says to the writer who mocked and jeered. footnotes: [footnote : equivalent to our john doe and richard roe.] part iv dÜrer's ideas [illustration] chapter i the idea of a canon of proportion for the human figure dürer often painted the virgin's head as a mere exercise or example in those proportion studies with which we must presently deal. sir w. m. conway, in "dürer's literary remains," p. . as soon as he comes to speak of the very essence of artistic work, he forgets theories and imitations of the antique; he knows nothing of composition from fragments of nature, of measurements and speculations. no longer trusting to such aids as these, but launching himself boldly on the broad stream of nature, he believes that he shall attain to a higher harmony in his work. thausing's "albert dürer," vol. ii., p. . i the idea of a canon for human proportions has proved a great stumbling-block for so-called classical or academic artists. it is usually taken to mean an absolutely right or harmonious proportion, any deviation from which cannot fail to result in a diminution of beauty. according to their thoroughness, the devotees of this idea seek to arrive at such a scale of proportions for a varying number of different ages in either sex; often even modifying this again for diverse types, as tall or short, fat or lean, dark or blonde, but allowing no excessive variation for these causes; so that abnormally tall people and dwarfs are not considered. this is, i take it, what the great artist albert dürer is generally taken to have been aiming at in his books on proportion. it will not be difficult, i think, to show that dürer had quite a different idea of what a canon of proportion should be, and how it should be applied. and certainly, had it been possible to study greek practice more closely, and in a larger number of examples, when this idea (supposed to be drawn from that source) was chiefly mooted, a very different notion of the canon of proportion would have been forced on the most academical of theorists. dürer's great superiority over such academical masters is, that his idea of a canon of proportion and its use agrees far better with what was apparently greek practice. any one who has followed at all the interesting attempts made by professor furtwängler and others to group together, by attention to the measurements of the different parts of the figure, works belonging to the different masters, schools, and centres, will have perceived that he is led to assume a traditional canon of proportion from which a master deviates slightly in the direction of some bias of his own mind towards closer knit or more slim figures; such variations being in the earlier stages very slight. again, it is supposed that from the canon followed by a master, different pupils may branch off in opposite directions according to the leanings of their personal sentiment for beauty. the conception of these ramifications has at least created the hope that critics may follow them through a great number of complications, since a master may modify his canon--after certain pupils have already struck out for themselves, and new pupils may start from his modified canon; and so on into an infinite criss-cross of branches, as any sculptor may be influenced to modify his canon by his fellows or by the masters of other schools whose work he comes across later. in any case, this main fact arises, that the canon appears as what the artist deviated from, not what he abided by: and any one who has any feeling for the infinite nicety of the results obtained by greek sculptors will easily apprehend that each masterpiece established a new and slightly different canon, and was then in the position to be in its turn again deviated from, as flaubert says: "the conception of every work of art carries within it its own rule and method, which must be found out before it can be achieved." "chayue ceuvre à faire a sa poëtique en soi, qu'il faut trouver." ii the same thing is asserted by literary critics to have been the cause of the repetition of subjects in greek tragedy, and to have resulted in the infinite niceties of their forms, which are never the same and never radically new. the terrible old mythic story on which the drama was founded stood, before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon the spectator's mind; it stood in his memory as a group of statuary, faintly seen, at the end of a long dark vista. then came the poet, embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in. stroke upon stroke, the drama proceeded; the light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed itself to the riveted gaze of the spectator; until at last, when the final words were spoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model of immortal beauty. this passage from matthew arnold's deservedly famous preface well emphasises one advantage that a tradition of subject and treatment gave to the greek poet as to the greek sculptor: the economy of means it made possible, "not a word wasted, not a sentiment capriciously thrown in,"--since every deviation from, every addition to, the traditional story and treatment, was immediately appreciated by an audience thoroughly conversant with that tradition, and often with several previous masterpieces treating it. by merely leaving out an incident, or omitting to appeal to a sentiment, a greek tragedian could flood his whole work with a new significance. so that the temptation to be eccentric, the temptation to hit too hard or at random because he was not sure of exactly where the mind stood that he would impress, did not exist in anything like the same degree for him as it did for shakespeare and michael angelo as it does for romantic and origina natures to-day. the absence of a sufficient body of traditional culture belonging to every educated person tends always to force the artist to commence by teaching the alphabet to his public. as coleridge so justly remarked in the case of wordsworth: "he had, like all great artists, to create the taste by which he was to be relished, to teach the art by which he was to be seen and judged." all great artists no doubt have to do this, but the modern artist is in the position of the israelite who was bidden not only to make bricks, but to find himself in stubble and straw, as compared with a greek who could appeal to traditional conceptions with certainty. dr. verrall is no doubt right when he says: every one knows, even if the full significance of the fact is not always sufficiently estimated, that the tragedians of athens did not tell their story at all as the telling of a story is conceived by a modern dramatist, whose audience, when the curtain goes up, know nothing which is not in the play-bill. this ignorant public, this uncultivated and unmanured field with which every modern artist has to commence, is the greatest let to the creator. what wonder that he should so often prefer to make a gaudy show with yellow weeds, when he perceives that there is hardly time in one man's life to produce a respectable crop of wheat from such a wilderness? "the story of an athenian tragedy is never completely told; it is implied, or, to repeat the expression used above, it is illustrated by a selected scene or scenes. and the further we go back the truer this is," continues dr. verrall; and the same was doubtless true of sculpture and painting. it is impossible to over-estimate the importance or advantage of this fact to the artist. for religious art, for art that appeals to the sum and total of a man's experience of beauty in life, a public cultivated in this sense is a necessity. giotto and fra angelico enjoyed this almost to the same degree as Æschylus or phidias; michael angelo and the great artists of the renascence generally enjoyed it in a very great degree, and reaped an advantage comparable to that which euripides and his contemporaries and immediate successors enjoyed. the tradition enabled such an artist to impress by means of subtleties, niceties, and refinements, instead of forcing him to attempt always to more or less seduce, astonish or overawe; strong measures which grow almost necessarily into bad habits, and end by perverting the taste they created. this, it has often been remarked, was the case even with michael angelo, even with shakespeare. yet nowadays, to enable a man to remark this, exceptional culture is required. iii this idea of the use of a canon may be illustrated in many ways; for, like all notions which resume actual experiences, it will be found applicable in many spheres. thus, on the subject of verse, the eternal quarrel between the poet and the pedant is, that for the first the rules of prosody and rhyme are only useful in so far as they make the licenses he takes appreciable at their just value; while for the pedant such licenses ever anew seem to imply ignorance of the rule or incapacity to follow it,--an absurd mistake, since the power to create and impress has little to do with the means employed; and if a man builds up for himself a barrier of foregone conclusions about the exact manner in which alone he will allow himself to be deeply impressed, it is very certain he will have few save painful impressions. or take another illustration--an artist the other day told me that he had noticed that one could almost always trace a faintly ruled vertical line on the paper which the greatest of all modern draughtsmen used. ingres, then, with all his freedom, vivacity, and accuracy of control over the point he employed to draw with, still found it useful to have a straight line ruled on his paper as a student does, and may often even have resorted to the plumb-line. it enabled his eye to test the subtlest deviations in the other lines with which he was creating the balance, swing or stability of a figure. rules of art are, like this straight line, dead and powerless in themselves: they help both creator and lover to follow and appreciate the infinite freedom and subtlety of the living work. the same thing might be illustrated with regard to manners; a fine standard of social address and receptivity must be established before the varieties and subtleties of those whose genius creates beautiful relations can be appreciated at their full value in their full variety. this dead law must be buried in everybody's mind and heart before they can rise to that conscious freedom which is opposite to the freedom of the wild animals, who never know why they do, nor appreciate how it is done; neither are they able to rejoice in the address of others; much less can they relish the infinite refinements of exhilarating apprehension, which make of laughter, tears, speech, silence, nearness and distance, a music which holds the enraptured soul in ecstasy; which created and constantly renews the hope of heaven. and what blacker minister of a more sterile hell than the social pedant who only knows the rule, and mistakes grace and delicacy, frankness and generosity, for more or less grave infractions of it? but the happy critic, free from any personal knowledge of what creation means, or what aids are likely to forward it, is for ever in such a hurry to correct great creators like leonardo, dürer, or hokusai, that he fails to understand them; and when he has caught them saying, "this is how anger or despair is expressed," calmly smiles in his superiority and says, "he had a scientific law for putting a battle on to canvas, one condition of which was that 'there must not be a level spot which is not trampled with gore.' but leonardo did no harm; his canon was based on literary rather than artistic interests." analogies with scientific laws have served art and art criticism a very bad turn of late years. nothing can be more useful to an artist than knowledge of how the emotions are expressed by the contortion of the features; but nobody in his senses could ever imagine that a rule for the expression of anger was rigid throughout and must never be departed from; every one approaching such a rule with a view to practice instead of criticism must immediately perceive that its only use is to be departed from in various degrees. leonardo's advice for the painting of a battle-piece is excellent if it is understood in the sense in which it was meant,--"everything is what it is and not another thing," as bishop butler put it. be sure and make your battle a battle indeed. it is time we should realise that what the great artists wrote about art is likely to be as sensible as are the works they created. how absurd it is for some one who can neither carve nor paint, much less create, to imagine he easily grasps the rules of art better than a great master! to such people let us repeat again and again hamlet's impatient: "oh, mend it altogether!" iv now it will easily be seen that the causes which shape an art tradition may often be independent of, and foreign to, the will that creates beautiful objects. religious superstition or formalism may often hem the artist in, and hamper his will in every direction; though it is not wholly accidental that the greeks had a religion the spirit of which tended always to defeat the conservatism and bigotry of its priests. so that their formalism, instead of frustrating or warping the growth of their art tradition, merely served as a check that may well seem to have been exactly proportioned to its need; preventing the weakness or rankness of over rapid growth such as detracts from the art of the renascence, and at the same time causing no vital injury. the spirit of the race deserved and created and was again in turn recreated by its religion. since it is generally recognised that too much freedom is not good for growing life, i think that almost everybody must at this stage have become aware of how immensely stupid the academical idea of a canon appears besides this idea. how suitable both to life and the desire for perfection the greek practice was! how theologically dense the unprogressive inflexibility of the academical practitioner! and now let us hear dürer. but first i will quote from sir martin conway the explanation of what dürer means by the phrase, "words of difference." these are what he calls the "words of difference": large, long, small, stout, broad, thick, narrow, thin, young, old, fat, lean, pretty, ugly, hard, soft, and so forth; in fact any word descriptive of a quality "whereby a thing may be differentiated from the thing (normal figure) first made." or, as dürer says in another place, "difference such as maketh a thing fair or foul." but further, it lieth in each man's choice whether or how far he shall make use of all the above written "words of difference." for a man may choose whether he will learn to labour with art, wherein is the truth, or without art in a freedom by which everything he doth is corrupted, and his toil becometh a scorn to look upon to such as understand. wherefore it is needful for every one that he use discreetness in such of his works as shall come to the light whence it ariseth that he who would make anything aright must in no wise abate aught (that is essential) from nature, neither must he lay what is intolerable upon her. howbeit some will (by going to an opposite extreme) make alterations (from nature) so slight that they can scarce be perceived. such are of no account if they cannot be perceived; to alter over much also answereth not. a right mean (in such alterations) is best. but in this book i have departed from this right mean in order that it might be so much the better traced in small things. let not him who wishes to proceed to some great thing imitate this my swiftness, but let him set more slowly (gradually) about his work, that it be not brutish but artistic to look upon. for figures which differ from the mean are not good to look upon _when_ they are wrongly and unmasterly employed. it is not to be wondered at that a skilful master beholdeth manifold differences of figure, all of which he might make if he had time enough, but which, for lack of time, he is forced to pass by. for such chances come very often to artists, and their imaginations also are full of figures which it were possible for them to make. wherefore, if to live many hundred years were granted unto a man who had skill in the use of such art and were thereto accustomed, he would (through the power which god hath granted unto men) have wherewith daily to mould and make many new figures of men and other creatures, which none had before seen nor imagined. god, therefore, in such and other ways granteth great power unto artistic men. although there be such talking of differences, still it is well known that all things that a man doth differ of their own nature one from another. consequently, there liveth no artist so sure of hand as to be able to make two things exactly alike the one to the other, so that they may not be distinguished. for of all our works none is quite and altogether like another, and this we can in no wise avoid. we see that if we take two prints from an engraved copper-plate, or cast two images in a mould, very many points may immediately be found whereby they may be distinguished one from another. if, then, it cometh thus to pass in things made by processes the least liable to error, much more will it happen in other things which are made by the free hand. this, however, is _not the kind of difference_ whereof i here treat; for i am speaking of a difference (from the mean) which a man specially intendeth, and which standeth in his will, of which i have spoken once and again.... this is not the aforesaid difference which we cannot sever from our work, but, such a difference as maketh a thing fair or foul, and which may be set forth by the "word of difference" dealt with above in this book. if a man produce "different" figures of this kind in his work, it will be judged in every man's mind according to his own opinion, and these judgments seldom agree one with another.... yet let every man beware that he make nothing impossible and inadmissible in nature, unless indeed he would make some fantasy, in which it is allowed to mingle creatures of all kinds together.... any one who leads this carefully cannot fail to see that it is not only that dürer is not "desirous of laying down rules applicable to all cases," or even of "proposing a definite canon for the relative proportions of the human body," as thausing indeed points out (p. , v. ): but that he does not conceive the proportions he gives as even approximately capable of these functions; and considers it indeed the very nature and special use of a canon of proportions to be wilfully deviated from, pointing out that, though the deviations of which he is speaking are slight and subtle, they are not to be confused with the accidental ones that can but appear even in work done by mechanical processes. rather they are such variation as a man "specially intendeth, and which standeth in his will;" and again, "such a difference as maketh a thing fair or foul;" for the use of these normal proportions is that they may enable an artist to deviate from the normal without the proportions he chooses having the air of monstrosities or mistakes or negligences. he does not insist that either of the scales he gives is the best that could be, even for this purpose, but that they are sufficiently good to be used; and he would have marvelled at the wonder that has been caused in innocent critical minds that in his own work he adhered to them so little. he never intended them to be adhered to. v it may be objected that dürer certainly sometimes thought of a canon of proportion as a perfect rule, because he wrote on a ms. page as follows:-- vitruvius, the ancient architect, whom the romans employed upon great buildings, says that whosoever desires to build should study the perfection of the human figure, for in it are discovered the most secret mysteries of proportion. so, before i say anything about architecture, i will state how a well-formed man should be made, and then about a woman, a child and a horse. any object may be proportioned out (_literally_, measured) in a similar way. therefore, hear first of all what vitruvius says about the human figure, which he learnt from the greatest masters, painters and founders, who were highly famed. they said that the human figure is as follows. that the face from the chin upward to where the hair begins is the tenth part of a man, and that an out-stretched hand is the same length, &c. [illustration: "this is my appearance in the eighteenth year of my age" charcoal-drawing in the academy, vienna _face p._ ] and again in another place, as sir martin conway points out, he gives a religious basis to this notion,[ ] "the creator fashioned men once for all as they must be, and i hold that the perfection of form and beauty is contained in the sum of all men." in an obvious sense these passages certainly run counter to those which i have quoted (pp. - ): but i would like to point out that these are dogmatic assertions about something that if it were true could never be proved by experience (see also pp. , ), those former are dürer's advice with a view to practice. men frequently carry about a considerable amount of dogmatic opinion, which has so little connection with actual experience that it is never brought to the test without being noticeably incommoded by it. yet it is not absolutely necessary to consider dürer as inconsistent in regard to this matter, even to this degree. the beauty of form which he held had been adam's, and which was now parcelled out among his vast progeny in various amounts as a consequence of his fall--this beauty of form doubtless dürer considered it part of an artist's business to recollect and reveal in his work. this beauty is an ideal, and his canon (or rather canons) were intended as means to help the artist to approach towards the realisation of that ideal. it is obvious also that a man occupied in comparing the proportions of those whom he considers to be exceptionally beautiful will develop and feed his power of imagining beautifully proportioned figures. it would be futile to deny that this is very much what took place in the evolution of greek statues, or that such works are perhaps of all others the most central and satisfying to the human spirit. the sentences that precede that quoted by sir martin are greek in tendency. a good figure cannot be made without industry and care; it should therefore be well considered before it is begun, so that it be correctly made. for the lines of its form cannot be traced by compass or rule, but must be drawn by the hand from point to point, so that it is easy to go wrong in them. and for such figures great attention should be paid to human proportions, and all their kinds should be investigated. _i hold that the more nearly and accurately a figure is made to resemble a man, so much the better the work will be._ if the best parts chosen from many well-formed men are united in one figure, it will be worthy of praise. but some are of another opinion, and discuss how men ought to be made. i will not argue with them about that. i hold nature for master in such matters, and the fancy of men for delusion. and then follows the passage quoted by sir martin conway (see p. ). it is obvious that, joined with the two preceding sentences, this passage can in no way be made to serve the academical practitioner, as it seems to when taken alone. in the same way, the sentence printed in italics in the above quotation, if isolated, would certainly seem to serve the scientific practitioners and their slavish realism, though in connection with those that follow this is no longer possible. dürer regards nature as providing raw material for a creation which may not tally exactly with any individual natural object. this was the greek artists' idea of the serviceableness of nature, as revealed both by their practice and by such traditions as that concerning zeuxis and his five beautiful models for the figure of venus. but dürer does not confine the use of his canons even to this aim, but clearly perceived their utility in regard to quite other aims, as is shown by the passage beginning, "it is not to be wondered at," &c. (see p. ), in which the imagination of figures not merely intended to embody beautiful or newly assorted proportions is clearly considered; and if we review dürer's actual work we shall see how much oftener he created figures for picturesque or dramatic effect than he did to embody beautiful proportions in them, though he evidently also considered the last purpose as of the first importance, as we see when he goes on to say: let any one who thinks i alter the human form too much or too little take care to avoid my error and follow nature. there are many different kinds of men in various lands: whoso travels far will find this to be so, and see it before his eyes. we are considering about the most beautiful human figure conceivable, but (only) the maker of the world knows how that should be. even if we succeed well we do but approach towards it from afar. for we ourselves have differences of perception, and the vulgar who follow only their own taste usually err. therefore i do not advise any one to follow me, for i only do what i can, and that is not enough even to satisfy myself. the extreme complexity of dürer's ideas and their application was a natural result of their having been born of his experience. for excellence is extremely various, and widely scattered through the world. the simplicity of a true work of art results merely from some excellence having been singled out from all foreign circumstances, and presented as vividly as it was intensely apprehended. this excellence may be one of proportion or one of many other kinds. now, a figure conceived by an artist, whether he value it for its choicely assorted proportions or for picturesque or dramatic effect, may need to be developed before it is serviceable in an elaborate work of art. artists who work rapidly, and, whose pictures are dominated by passing moods, have always been in the habit of taking great licences with proportion, and, indeed, with all matters of fact. dürer's aim is to endow the artist who elaborates his work slowly with a similar freedom. this energy and power in rapid work it is the ever-renewed despair of artists to feel themselves losing in the process of elaboration. and one of the reasons for this is that in larger or more elaborate work, the statement, being more ample, is expected to be also more comprehensive and exhaustive; for the time required begets after-thoughts as to the real nature of the object viewed apart from the mood, which is the only excuse for the work; and so some of the artist's attention is drawn away to facts and aspects which it would have been the success of his work to have ignored. dürer's object was to help a man to carry out his essential intention, and that alone, in a carefully elaborated picture; the problems faced were precisely similar to those so successfully coped with in greek statues. in the first place, he would have pointed out that all sketches will not bear elaboration if their merit depends on extreme licence, for instance. next, that a man who had a standard of proportion could see wherein the deviations of his sketched figure were essential to the effect he wished it to produce, and wherein they were unessential. then, if he drew the normal figure large, he would be able to deviate from it in exactly the right places and to the right degree to reproduce the desired effect. but to do this he must also have a general notion of how deviations from a normal proportion could be made consistent throughout all the measurements involved not that he would in every case want to make them consistent. now, there is a class of artists for whom all these suggestions of dürer's must for ever remain useless, for all science of production is impossible for those whose only success lies in improvisation; such improvisations, however dazzling or however delightful they may be, are, nevertheless, the class of art-works furthest removed in spirit and in method from greek statuary. i do not say that they need be inferior; i say that they are opposite in method. and, had circumstances permitted, or dürer's dowry of great gifts been more complete than it was, and enabled him to become as great a creator of pictures as he is a great draughtsman and portrait-painter, no doubt his pictures would have resembled greek statues both in their effect and their method, however different they might have been in subject and in range. to talk about "beauty" being sacrificed to "truth," with prof. thausing; or the ideal of the north being "strength" in works of art as in life, with sir martin conway;--is to confuse the issue and deceive oneself. to have mistaken the proper end of art, beauty, by thinking it was "truth" or "strength," is to have failed to labour in the right direction; that is all-who-ever may condone the failure. vi again, sir martin conway tells us: the laws of perspective can be deduced with certainty from mathematical first principles, the canon of proportions' could only be constructed empirically as the result of repeated observations. nevertheless, once constructed, it can certainly be used as dürer suggested. its use has practically been superseded by the study of anatomy. this last phrase shows us in a flash how far the writer when he wrote it was from apprehending dürer's meaning. how could the study of anatomy ever do for an artist what dürer was trying to do? no doubt sir martin had michael angelo in his mind's eye; and it is true that he studied anatomy, and that his influence has been, on the whole, paramount with artists attempting subjects of this kind ever since. whether michael angelo studied proportion or not, his practice exemplifies dürer's meaning splendidly. no anatomical research could have led him to construct figures nine to twelve, or even fifteen to twenty, heads high--to do which, as his work developed, more and more became his practice, especially in designs and sketches for compositions. to arrive at such proportions he followed his imaginative instinct. he found that these monstrous deviations from the normal (which, of course, in a general sense he recognised, whether he gave any study to rendering it precise or not) produced the effect on his mind that he wished to produce on the minds of others--an effect that was emotional and peculiar to his habitual moods. we know that his constitution gave him the staying-power, while his fiery titanic spirit gave him the energy, to carry out and perfect his mighty frescoes and statues at the same heat that the creative hour yields other men for the production of a sketch alone. this giant son of time was able to live for days and weeks together in a state of mind two or three consecutive hours of which exhaust the average master even. considering the rapidity and intensity of his mental process, it is a miracle that, in so many works and to so great a degree, he respected the too much and too little of human reason, and allowed himself to be governed by what the greeks called a sense of measure, instead of yielding to his native impetuosity and becoming an a-thousand-fold-greater-blake; and illustrating, to the delight of active and short-winded intelligences, and the stupefaction of slow and dull ones, the futility of eccentricity and the frivolity of passion when unseconded by constancy of character and labour. for futile, in the arts, is whatever the sense of beauty must condemn, however well-intentioned; and frivolous is the passion that forgets the end it would attain, and becomes merely a private rhapsody, however astonishing its developments; slowly but surely it will be seen that such fireworks do not vitally concern us. the proportions of many of michael angelo's figures are as far removed from any possible normal standard as what dürer calls "this my swiftness," in the abnormally tall and stout figures among the diagrams illustrating his book. and this is where dürer's idea comes nearer to greek practice. for by letting the striking rather than the subtle govern his departures from the mean, michael angelo found himself always bound to go beyond himself; as the palate which once has entertained strong stimulants demands that the dose be continually strengthened. now this is in entire conformity with the impatience which was perhaps his greatest weakness; just as dürer's too methodical approach is in conformity with that acquiescence in the insufficiency of his conditions which made him in his weak moments swear never again to undertake those better classes of work which were less adequately paid, or made him content to display mere manual dexterity rather than do nothing on his days of darkness, suffering and depression: we may add, which made him choose to live at nuremberg and refuse a better income and more suitable surroundings at venice. it is obviously the more hopeful way to create a beautiful figure first and discover a mathematical way of reproducing its most essential proportions afterwards; and no doubt this is what dürer intended should be done; and in consequence he felt a need, and sought to supply it, for mechanical means to simplify, shorten and render more sure that part of the process which must necessarily partake something of the nature of drudgery, if great finish is to be combined with splendid design. the romantic, impulsive _improvisatore_ does not feel this need, considers it bound to defeat its own aim; and, given his own gifts, he is right. but none the less, there are the greek statues elaborated with a thoroughness which, if it ever dims or veils the creative intention, does so in a degree so slight as to seem amply compensated by the sense of ease maintained in spite of the innumerable difficulties overcome; there are besides a score or more of dürer's copper engravings with their imperturbable adequacy of minute painstaking, never for a moment sleepy or mechanical or lifeless. the one aim need not excommunicate the other even in the same individual; far less need this be so in different artists, with diverse temperaments, diverse aptitudes. vii the application of this idea does not end with the simple proportions of measurement between the limbs and parts of the figure; it is also concerned with what is called the modelling, and the treatment of surfaces such as the draperies, the hair, the fleshy portions and those beneath which the bony structure comes to prominence; in painting it may be applied to the chiaroscuro and colour. reynolds' remarks on the venetians in his eighth discourse well illustrate this fact. he says: it ought, in my opinion, to be indispensably observed that the masses of light in a picture be always of a warm mellow colour, yellow, red, or a yellowish-white; and that the blue, the grey, or the green colours be kept _almost_ entirely out of these masses, and be used only to support and set off these warm colours; and, for this purpose, a small _proportion_ of cold colours will be sufficient. if this conduct be reversed, let the light be cold, and the surrounding colours warm, as we often see in the works of the roman and florentine painters; and it will be out of the power of art, even in the hands of rubens or titian, to make a picture splendid or harmonious.[ ] here we see a great colourist attempting to establish a canon for colour. had he lived at an earlier period, before expression had become generally a subject of criticism, he would have described his discovery in less guarded and elastic language, such as is now applied to scientific laws. and then he might have been as excusably misunderstood as leonardo and dürer have been; as it is, the misunderstanding dealt out to him is quite without excuse. rembrandt, not only exemplifies the impressiveness of great deviations in structural proportions in much the same degree as michael angelo, using what the greeks and dürer would doubtless have considered a dangerous liberty, however much they might have felt bound to admire the results obtained; not only does he do this when, for instance, he represents jesus now as a giant, now as almost a dwarf, according to the imaginative impression which he chooses to create; but he follows a similar process in his black and white pattern. for among his works there are etchings, which, though often supposed to have been left unfinished, are discerned by those with a sense for beauties of this class to be marvellously complete, stimulating, and satisfying, and in the nicest harmony with the other impressions produced by the mental point of view from which the subject is viewed, as also by the main lines and proportions of the composition, and to yield the visual delight most suitable to the occasion. dürer and the greeks are at one with michael angelo and rembrandt in condemning by their practice all purely mechanical application of ideas or methods to the production of works of creative art, such as is exemplified by artists of more limited aims and powers; by academical practitioners, by theoretical scientists calling themselves impressionists, luminarists, naturalists, or any other name. for artists whose temperaments are impeded by some unhappy slowness, or difficulty in concentrating themselves, methods of procedure similar to those elaborated by dürer in his books on proportion, properly understood, must be a real aid and benefit; as those who are essentially improvisors may help themselves and supply their deficiencies by methods similar to those which reynolds describes as practised by gainsborough. "he even framed a kind of model of landscapes on his table, composed of broken stones, dried herbs and pieces of broken glass, which he magnified and improved into rocks, trees and water" (fourteenth discourse). this process resembles that of tracing faces or scenes from the life of gnomes in glowing caverns among coals of fire on a winter's eve; it is resorted to in one form or another by all creative artists, but it is peculiarly useful to men like gainsborough, whose art tends always to become an improvisation, whatever strenuous discipline they may have subjected themselves to in their days of ardent youth. viii perhaps dürer's actual standards for the normal, his actual methods for creating self-consistent variations from it, are not likely to prove of much use, even when artists shall be sufficiently educated to understand them; nevertheless, the principle which informs them has been latent in the work of all great creators; is marvellously fulfilled indeed, in greek statuary. the work of antoine louis barye, that great and little-understood master--as far as i am able to judge, the only modern artist who has made science serve him instead of being seduced by her--exemplifies this central idea of dürer's almost as fully as the greek masterpieces. the future of art appears to me to lie in the hands of those artists who shall be able to grapple with the new means offered them by the advance of science, as he did, and be as little or even less seduced than he was by the foolish idea that art can become science without ceasing to be art, which has handicapped and defeated the efforts of so many industrious and talented men of late years. so truly is this the case that the improvisor appears to many as the only true artist, and his uncontrolled caprices as the farthest reach of human constructive power. in any case, no artist is unhappy if a docile and hopeful disposition enables him to see in the masterpieces of greek sculpture the reward of an easy balance of both temperaments and methods, the improvisor's and the elaborator's, under felicitous circumstances, by men better endowed than himself. and this though never history and archaeology shall be in a position to give him information sufficient to determine that his faith is wholly warranted. a golden age is a golden dream, that sheds a golden light on waking hours, on toil, on leisure, and on finished works. footnotes: [footnote : "literary remains of albrecht dürer," p. .] [footnote : see also iii discourse where he defends dürer against bacon.] chapter ii the importance of docility i i now intend to re-arrange what seem the most interesting of the sentences on the theory of art which are found in dürer's mss. and books on proportion. he did not give them the final form or order which he intended, and it seems to me that to arrange the more important according to the subjects they treat of will be the simplest way of arriving at general conceptions as to their tendency and value. we shall thus bring together repetitions of the same thought and contradictory answers to the same question; and after each series of sentences, i myself shall discuss the points raised, illustrating my remarks from modern writers whose opinion in these matters seems to me deserving of most attention. i have heard it said by the late mr. arthur strong that dürer's art is always didactic; and dürer as a writer on art certainly has ever before his mind this one object, to teach others, or, as i should prefer to phrase it, to help others to learn. for he himself is continually confessing that he cannot yet answer his own questions, and it seems to me that the best teacher is always he who most desires to increase his knowledge, not indeed to hoard it as some do and make of it a personal possession; intellectual misers, for ever gnashing their teeth over the reputations or the pretensions of others. no, but one who desires knowledge for its own sake and welcomes it in others with as much satisfaction as he gains it for himself. docility, i.e., teachableness, let me point out once more, seems to be the necessary midwife of genius, without the aid of which it often labours in vain, or brings forth strange incongruous and misshapen births. sad is the condition of a brilliant and fiery spirit shut up in a man's brain without the humble assistance of this lively, meek and patient virtue! what unrelieved and insupportable throes of agony must be borne by such a spirit, and how often does such labour end in misanthropy or madness! the records of the lives of exceptionally-gifted men tell us only too clearly what pains those are, and how frequently they have been borne. so i fancy i cannot do better than choose out for my first section sentences which praise or advocate the effort to learn, or attempt to enlighten those who make such an effort on the choice of teachers and disciplines. ii i shall not hesitate to transpose sentences even when they appear in connected passages, in order, as i hope, to bring out more clearly their connection. for dürer was not a writer by profession, and his thoughts were often more abundant than he knew how to deal with. before starting, however, i must prefix to my quotations some account of the four ms. books in the british museum from which they are principally taken. rough drafts in pirkheimer's handwriting were found among them, but of dürer's work sir martin conway tells us: the volumes contain upwards of seven hundred leaves and scraps of paper of various kinds, covered at different dates with more or less elaborate outline drawings, and more or less corrected drafts for works published or planned by dürer. interspersed among them are geometrical and other sketches. he was in the habit of correcting and re-copying, again and again, what he had written. sometimes he would jot down a sentence alongside of matter to which it had no relation. this sentence he would afterwards introduce in its right connection. there are in these volumes no less than four drafts of the beginning of a dedication to pirkheimer of the books of human proportions. two other drafts of this same dedication are among the dresden mss. the opening sentences of the introduction to the same work were likewise, as will be seen, the subject of frequent revision. these drafts, notes and sketches date from to . some collector had had them cut out, gummed together, and bound without the slightest regard to order, or even to the sequence of consecutive passages. in january the volumes were taken to pieces and rearranged by miss lina eckenstein, who had previously made the admirable translations of them for sir martin conway's "literary remains of albrecht dürer," from which my quotations are taken. the contents of the volumes as rearranged may be roughly described as follows: volume . drawings of whole figures and portions of the body, illustrating dürer's theories of proportion. drawings of a solid octogon. six coloured drawings of crystals. the description of the ionic order of architecture. drawings of columns with measurements. a scale for human proportions. a table of contents for a work on geometry. notes on perspective, curves, folds, &c. the different kinds of temple after vitruvius. mathematical diagrams, &c. volume ii. draft of a dedicatory letter to king ferdinand (see page ). drafts and drawings for "the art of fortification." drawing of a shield with a rearing horse. mantles of netherlandish women and nuns. a latin inscription for his own portrait. notes on "proportion," and on the feast of the rosenkranz. scale for human proportions. an alphabet. draft of a dedication for the books on proportion. sketch of a skeleton. studies of architecture. venetian houses and roofs. sketches of a church, a house, a tower, a drapery, &c. volume iii. drafts of a projected work on painting and on the study of proportion. drafts for the dedication, the preface, and for a work on esthetics. drawings of a male body, a female body, and a piece of drapery. notes and drawings for the proportions of heads, hands, feet, outline curves, a child, a woman, &c. volume iv. proportions of a man, a fat woman, the head of the average woman, the young woman, &c. short profession of faith (see page ). scale for human proportions, &c. fragments of the preface of essay on aesthetics, &c. grimacing and distorted faces. use of measurements. on the characters of faces, thick, thin, broad, narrow, &c. sketches of a dragon and of an angel for maximilian's triumphal procession. list of luther's works (see page ). drawings of human bodies proportioned to squares. [illustration: "una vilana wendisch" pen drawing with wash background in the collection of mrs. seymour _face_ p. ] see the description in "dürer's schriftlicher nachlass" (lange und fuhse), page , from which the above abstract is made. sir martin conway continues: in these volumes dürer is seen, sometimes writing under the influence of impetuous impulse, sometimes with leisurely care, allowing his pen to embroider the script with graceful marginal flourishes. at what period of his career dürer first conceived the idea of writing a comprehensive work upon the theory and practice of art is unknown. it was certainly before the year . the following list of chapters may perhaps be an early sketch of the plan. ten things are contained in the little book. the first, the proportions of a young child. the second, proportions of a grown man. the third, proportions of a woman. the fourth, proportions of a horse. the fifth, something about architecture. the sixth, about an apparatus through which it can be shown that 'all things may be traced. the seventh, about light and shade. the eighth, about colours, how to paint like nature. the ninth, about the ordering (composition) of the picture. the tenth, about free painting, which alone is made by imagination without any other help. iii glad enough should we be to attain unto great knowledge without toil, for nature has implanted in us the desire of knowing all things, thereby to discern a truth of all things. but our dull wit cannot come unto such perfectness of all art, truth, and wisdom. yet are we not, therefore, shut out altogether from all arts. if we want to sharpen our reason by learning and to practise ourselves therein, having once found the right path we may, step by step, seek, learn, comprehend, and finally reach and attain unto something true. wherefore, he that understandeth how to learn somewhat in his leisure time, whereby he may most certainly be enabled to honour god, and to do what is useful both for himself and others, that man doeth well; and we know that in this wise he will gain much experience in art and will be able to make known its truth for our good. it is right, therefore, for one man to teach another. he that joyfully doeth so, upon him shall much be bestowed by god, from whom we receive all things. he hath highest praise. one finds some who know nothing and learn nothing. they despise learning, and say that much evil cometh of the arts, and that some are wholly vile. i, on the contrary, hold that no art is evil, but that all are good. a sword is a sword which may be used either for murder or for justice. similarly the arts are in themselves good. what god hath formed, that is good, misuse it how ye will. thou findest arts of all kinds; choose then for thyself that which is like to be of greatest service to thee. learn it; let not the difficulty thereof vex thee till thou hast accomplished somewhat wherewith thou mayest be satisfied. it is very necessary for a man to know some one thing by reason of the usefulness which ariseth therefrom. wherefore we should all gladly learn, for the more we know so much the more do we resemble the likeness of god, who verily knoweth all things. the more, therefore, a man learneth, so much the better doth he become, and so much the more love doth he win for the arts and for things exalted. wherefore a man ought not to play the wanton, but should learn in season. is the artistic man pious and by nature good? he escheweth the evil and chooseth the good; and hereunto serve the arts, for they give the discernment of good and evil. some may learn somewhat of all arts, but that is not given to every man. nevertheless, there is no rational man so dull but that he may learn the one thing towards which his fancy draweth him most strongly. hence no man is excused from learning something. let no man put too much confidence in himself, for many (pairs of eyes) see better than one. though it is possible for a man to comprehend more than a thousand (men), still that cometh but rarely to pass. many fall into error because they follow their own taste alone; therefore let each look to it that his inclination blind not his judgment. for every mother is well pleased with her own child, and thus also it ariseth that many painters paint figures resembling themselves. he that worketh in ignorance worketh more painfully than he that worketh with understanding; therefore let all learn to understand aright. now i know that in our german nation, at the present time, are many painters who stand in need of instruction, for they lack all real art, yet they nevertheless have many large works to do. forasmuch then as they are so numerous, it is very needful for them to learn to better their work. willingly will i impart my teaching, hereafter written, to the man who knoweth little and would gladly learn; but i will not be cumbered with the proud, who, according to their own estimate of themselves, know all things, and are best, and despise all else. from true artists, however, such as can show their meaning with the hand, i desire to learn humbly and with much thankfulness. a thing thou beholdest is easier of belief than that thou hearest, but whatever is both heard and seen we grasp more firmly and lay hold on more securely. i will therefore do the work in both ways, that thus i may be better understood. whosoever will, therefore, let him hear and see what i say, do, and teach, for i hope it may be of service and not for a hindrance to the better arts, nor lead thee to neglect better things. i hear moreover of no writer in modern times by whom aught hath been written and made known which i might read for my improvement. for some hide their art in great secrecy, and others write about things whereof they know nothing, so that their words are nowise better than mere noise, as he that knoweth somewhat is swift to discover. i therefore will write down with god's help the little that i know. though many will scorn it i am not troubled, for i well know that it is easier to cast blame on a thing than to make anything better. moreover, i will expound my meaning as clearly and plainly as i can; and, were it possible, i would gladly give everything i know to the light, for the good of cunning students who prize such art more highly than silver or gold. i further admonish all who have any knowledge in these matters that they write it down. do it truly and plainly, not toilsomely and at great length, for the sake of those who seek and are glad to learn, to the great honour of god and your own praise. if i then set something burning and ye all add to it with skilful furthering, a blaze may in time arise therefrom which shall shine throughout the whole world. i shall here apply to what is to be called beautiful the same touchstone as that by which we decide what is right. for as what all the world prizeth as right we hold to be right, so what all the world esteemeth beautiful that will we also hold for beautiful, and ourselves strive to produce the like. no one need blindly follow this theory of mine as though it were quite perfect, for human nature has not yet so far degenerated that another man cannot discover something better. so each may use my teaching as long as it seems good to him, or until he finds something better. where he is not willing to accept it, he may well hold that this doctrine is not written for him, but for others who are willing. that must be a strangely dull head which never trusts itself to find out anything fresh, but only travels along the old path, simply following others and not daring to reflect for itself. for it beseems each understanding, in following another, not to despair of itself discovering something better. if that is done, there remaineth no doubt but that in time this art will again reach the perfection it attained amongst the ancients. much will hereafter be written about subjects and refinements of painting. sure am i that many notable men will arise, all of whom will write both well and better about this art, and will teach it better than i; for i myself hold my art at a very mean value, for i know what my faults are. let every man therefore strive to better these my errors according to his powers. would to god it were possible for me to see the work and art of the mighty masters to come, who are yet unborn, for i know that i might be improved upon. ah! how often in my sleep do i behold great works of art and beautiful things, the like whereof never appear to me awake, but so soon as i awake, even the remembrance of them leaveth me. compare also the passages already quoted,(pp. , , ). iv "what an admirable temper!" is the exclamation which expresses our first feeling on reading the foregoing sentences. it renews the spirit of a man merely to peruse such things. scales fall from our eyes, and we see what we most essentially are, with pleasure, as good children gleefully recognise their goodness: and at the same time we are filled with contrition that we should have ever forgotten it. and this that we most essentially are rational beings, lovers of goodness, children of hope,--how directly dürer appeals to it: "nature has implanted in us the desire of knowing all things." it reminds one of ben jonson's:-- it is a false quarrel against nature, that she helps understanding but in a few, when the most part of mankind are inclined by her thither, if they would take the pains; no less than birds to fly, horses to run, &c., which, if they lose it, is through their own sluggishness, and by that means they become her prodigies, not her children. there is something refreshing and inspiriting in the mere conviction of our teachableness; and when the same author, referring to plato's travels in search of knowledge, says, "he laboured, so must we," we do not find the comparison humiliating either to plato or ourselves. for "without a way there is no going," and every man of superior mould says to us with more or less of benignity, "i am the way: follow me." such means or ways of attainment have been followed by all whose success is known to us, and are followed now by all "finely touched and gifted men." i might quote in illustration of these assertions the whole of reynolds' sixth discourse, so marvellous for its acute and delicate discrimination; but i will content myself with a few leading passages: we cannot suppose that any one can really mean to exclude all imitation of others. it is a common observation that no art was ever invented and carried to perfection at the same time. the greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own will soon be reduced to the poorest of all imitations, he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has often before repeated. the truth is, he whose feebleness is such as to make other men's thoughts an encumbrance to him, can have no very great strength of mind or genius of his own to be destroyed: so that not much harm will be done at the worst. of course, this last phrase will not apply universally; we must remember that the man who sets out to become an artist, or claims to be one by native gift, has made apparent that he is the possessor of no mean ambition. the humblest may see a way of improvement in their betters, and obey the command, "follow me." every man is not called to follow great artists, but only those who are peculiarly fitted to tread the difficult paths that climb olympus-hill. yet to all men alike the great artist in life, he who wedded failure to divinity, says, "learn of me that i am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest to your souls." he who confines himself to the imitation of an individual, as he never proposes to surpass, so he is not likely to equal, the object of his imitation. he professes only to follow; and he that follows must necessarily be behind. it is of course impossible to surpass perfection, but it is possible to be made one with it. to find excellences, however dispersed, to discover beauties, however concealed by the multitude of defects with which they are surrounded, can be the work only of him who, having a mind always alive to his art, has extended his views to all ages and to all schools; and has acquired from that comprehensive mass which he has thus gathered to himself a well-digested and perfect idea of his art, to which everything is referred. like a sovereign judge and arbiter of art, he is possessed of that presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence from every school; selects both from what is great and what is little; brings home knowledge from the east and from the west; making the universe tributary towards furnishing his mind, and enriching his works with originality and variety of inventions. in this tine passage we get back to our central idea in regard to the sense of proportion "making the universe tributary towards furnishing his mind"; while in the "discovery of beauties" the complete artist "selects both from what is great and what is little," from the clouds of heaven and from the dunghills of the farmyard. study, therefore, the great works of the great masters for ever. study, as nearly as you can, in the order, in the manner, and on the principles on which they studied. study nature attentively, but always with those masters in your company; consider them as models which you are to imitate, and at the same time as rivals with whom you are to contend. for "no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms." yes, an artist is a child who chooses his parents, nor is he limited to only two. religion tells all men they have a father, who is god; philosophy and tradition repeat, "man has a mother, who is nature." these sayings are platitudes; their application is so obvious that it is now generally forgotten. if god is a father, it is the soul that chooses him; if nature is a mother, it is the man who chooses to regard her as such, since to the greater number it is well known she seems but a stepmother, and a cruel one at that. elective affinities, chosen kindred!--"tell me what company you keep, and i will tell you who you are" (what you are worth). how many artist waifs one sees nowadays! lost souls, who choose to be nobody's children, and think they can teach themselves all they need to know. i think the very striking agreement between artists so totally different in every respect except eminence, docility and anxiety to further art, as dürer and reynolds, ought to impress our minds very deeply: even though, as is certainly the case, the way they point out has been very greatly abandoned of late years, and public institutions in this and other countries proceed to further art on quite other lines; even though critics are almost unanimous in knowing better both the end and the way than the great masters who had not the advantage of a dash of science in their hydromel to make it sparkle, but instead made it yet richer and thicker by stirring up with it piety and religion. i think this "cock-tail and sherry-cobbler" art criticism of to-day is very deleterious to the digestion, and that the piety and enthusiasm which dürer and reynolds worked into their art were more wholesome, and better supplied the needs and deficiencies of artistic temperaments. chapter iii the lost tradition i many centuries ago the great art of painting was held in high honour by mighty kings, and they made excellent artists rich and held them worthy, accounting such inventiveness a creating power like god's. for the imagination of a good painter is full of figures, and were it possible for him to live for ever, he would always have from his inward ideas, whereof plato speaks, something new to set forth by the work of his hand. many hundred years ago there were still some famous painters, such as those named phidias, praxiteles, apelles, polycleitus, parrhasius, lysippus, protogenes, and the rest, some of whom wrote about their art and very artfully described it and gave it plainly to light: but their praise-worthy books are, so far, unknown to us, and perhaps have been altogether lost by war, driving forth of the peoples, and alterations of laws and beliefs--a loss much to be regretted by every wise man. it often came to pass that noble "ingenia" were destroyed by barbarous oppressors of art; for if they saw figures traced in a few lines they thought it nought but vain, devilish sorcery. and in destroying them they attempted to honour god by something displeasing to him; and to use the language of men, god was angry with all destroyers of the works of great mastership, which is only attained by much toil, labour, and expenditure of time, and is bestowed by god alone. often do i sorrow because i must be robbed of the aforesaid masters' books of art; but the enemies of art despise these things. pliny writeth that the old painters and sculptors--such as apelles, protogenes, and the rest--told very artistically in writing how a well-built man's figure might be measured out. now it may well have come to pass that these noble books were misunderstood and destroyed as idolatrous in the early days of the church. for they would have said jupiter should have such proportions, apollo such others; venus shall be thus, hercules thus; and so with all the rest. had it, however, been my fate to be there at the time, i would have said: "oh dear, holy lords and fathers, do not so lamentably destroy the nobly discovered arts, which have been gotten by great toil and labour, only because of the abuses made of them. for art is very hard, and we might and would use it for the great honour and glory of god. for, even as the ancients used the fairest figure of a man to represent their false god apollo, we will employ the same for christ the lord, who is fairest of all the earth; and as they figured venus as the loveliest of women, so will we in like manner set down the same beauteous form for the most pure virgin mary, the mother of god; and of hercules will we make samson, and thus will we do with all the rest, for such books shall we get never more." wherefore, though that which is lost ariseth not again, yet a man may strive after new lore; and for these reasons i have been moved to make known my ideas here following, in order that others may ponder the matter further, and may thus come to a new and better way and foundation. i certainly do not deny that, if the books of the ancients who wrote about the art of painting still lay before our eyes, my design might be open to the false interpretation that i thought to find out something better than what was known unto them. these books, however, have been totally lost in the lapse of time; so i cannot be justly blamed for publishing my opinions and discoveries in writing, for that is exactly what the ancients did. if other competent men are thereby induced to do the like, our descendants have something which they may add to and improve upon, and thus the art of painting may in time advance and reach its perfection. ii whether we should exercise our intellects or logical sense alone upon the records and remains of past ages, or whether they may not be better employed for the exercise and edification of the imaginative faculties, would seem to be a question which, though they did not perhaps in set terms put to themselves, modern historians have very summarily answered; and i think answered wrongly. the records of the past, the records even of yesterday, are necessarily extremely incomplete; to make them at all significant something must be added by the historian. the 'perception' of probability is never exact; it varies with the mind between man and man; in the same man even before and after different experiences, &c. but even if the perception of the highest probability were practically exact, it would never suffice; for, as aristotle says, "it is probable that many things should happen contrary to probability." from these facts it follows that the man who has the most exhaustive knowledge of what has actually survived, and what has been recorded, will not necessarily form the truest judgment on a question of history; it might always happen that the intuition of some unscholarly person was nearer the truth; still no man could ever decide between the two, nor would any sane man think it worth his while to take sides with either of them; such questions are most useful when they are left open. this is the case because the imagination is thus left freer to use such knowledge as it has for the edification of the character; and that model for our example or warning which the imagination constructs may always possibly be the truth. according to the balance in it of apparent probability, with edifying power it will beget conviction. such a conviction may be doomed to be superseded sooner or later; its value lies in its potency while it lasts. the temper in which we look at our historical heritage is of more importance to us now than the exactitude of our vision; for this latter can never be proved, while the former approves itself by the fruit it bears within us. it is better, more fruitful, to feel with dürer about the art of ancient greece than to know all that can be known of it to-day and feel a great deal less. "character calls forth character," said goethe; we may add, "even from the grave." now that the physical miracle of the resurrection has come to seem so unimportant and uninteresting to educated men, it might be a wise economy to connect its poetry with this experience, that great and creative characters can raise men better worth knowing than lazarus from the dead. nietsche thought that shakespeare had brought brutus back to life, (though he knew very little of roman history), and that brutus was the roman best worth knowing. "of all peoples, the greeks dreamt the dream of life the best," goethe said; and again, "for all other arts we have to make some allowance; to greek art alone we are for ever debtors." to feel the truth of these sayings with a passion similar to that shown in the passages quoted above from dürer, must surely be a great help to an artist. such a passion is an end in itself, or rather is the only means by which we can win spiritual freedom from some of the heavier fetters that modern life lays upon us. it freed goethe even from germany. chapter iv beauty i how is beauty to be judged?--upon that we have to deliberate. a man by skill may bring it into every single thing, for in some things we recognise that as beautiful which elsewhere would lack beauty. good and better in respect of beauty are not easy to discern; for it would be quite possible to make two different figures, one stout, the other thin, which should differ one from the other in every proportion, and yet we scarce might be able to judge which of the two excelled in beauty. what beauty is i know not, though it dependeth upon many things. i shall here apply to what is to be called beautiful the same touchstone as that by which we decide what is right. for as what all the world prizeth as right we hold to be right, so what all the world esteemeth beautiful that we will also hold for beautiful, and ourselves strive to produce the like. there are many causes and varieties of beauty; he that can prove them is so much the more to be trusted. the accord of one thing with another is beautiful, therefore want of harmony is not beautiful. a real harmony linketh together things unlike. use is a part of beauty, whatever therefore is useless unto men is without beauty. the more imperfection is excluded so much the more doth beauty abide in the work. guard thyself from superfluity. but beauty is so put together in men and so uncertain is our judgment about it, that we may perhaps find two men both beautiful and fair to look upon, and yet neither resembleth the other, in measure or kind, in any single point or part; and so blind is our perception that we shall not understand whether of the two is the more beautiful, and if we give an opinion on the matter it shall lack certainty. negro faces are seldom beautiful because of their very flat noses and thick lips; moreover, their shinbone is too prominent, and the knee and foot too long, not so good to look upon as those of the whites; and so also is it with their hand. howbeit, i have seen some amongst them whose whole bodies have been so well-built and handsome that i never beheld finer figures, nor can i conceive how they might be bettered, so excellent were their arms and all their limbs. seeing that man is the worthiest of all creatures, it follows that, in all pictures, the human figure is most frequently employed as a centre of interest. every animal in the world regards nothing but his own kind, and the same nature is also in men, as every man may perceive in himself. [illustration: charcoal-drawing heightened with white on a green prepared ground, in the berlin print room _face p_. ] further, in order that he may arrive at a good canon whereby to bring somewhat of beauty into our work, there-unto it were best for thee, it bethinks me, to form thy canon from many living men. howbeit seek only such men as are held beautiful, and from such draw with all diligence. for one who hath understanding may, from men of many different kinds, gather something good together through all the limbs of the body. but seldom is a man found who hath all his limbs good, for every man lacks something. no single man can be taken as a model of a perfect figure, for no man liveth on earth who uniteth in himself all manner of beauties.... there liveth also no man upon earth who could give a final judgment upon what the perfect figure of a man is; god only knoweth that. and although we cannot speak of the greatest beauty of a living creature, yet we find in the visible creation a beauty so far surpassing our understanding that no one of us can fully bring it into his work. if we were to ask how we are to make a beautiful figure, some would give answer: according to human judgment (i.e., common taste). others would not agree thereto, neither should i without a good reason. who will give us certainty in this matter?[ ] ii i have already given what i believe to be the best answer to these questions as to what beauty is and how it is to be judged. beauty is beauty as good is good (_see_ pp. , ), or yellow, yellow; indeed, to the second question, matthew arnold has given the only possible answer--the relative value of beauties is "as the judicious would determine," and the judicious are, in matters of art "finely touched and gifted men." this criterion obviously cannot be easily or hastily applied, nor could one ever be quite sure that in any given case it had been applied to any given effect. but for practical needs we see that it suffices to cast a slur on facile popularity, and vindicate over and over again those who had been despised and rejected. what the true artist desires to bring into his pictures is the power to move finely-touched and gifted men. not only are such by very much the minority, but the more part of them being, by their capacity to be moved and touched, easily wounded, have developed a natural armour of reserve, of moroseness, of prejudice, of combativeness, of pedantry, which makes them as difficult to address as wombats, or bears, or tortoises, or porcupines, or polecats, or elephants. it is interesting to witness how dürer's self-contradictions show him to be aware of the great complexity of these difficulties, as also to see how very near he comes to the true answer. at one time he tells us: "when men demand a work of a master, he is to be praised in so far as he succeeds in satisfying their likings ..."[ ] at another he tells us: "the art of painting cannot be truly judged save by such as are themselves good painters; from others verily is it hidden even as a strange tongue."[ ] every "finely touched and gifted man" is not an artist; but every true artist must, in some measure, be a finely touched and gifted man. there is no necessity to limit the public addressed to those who themselves produce: yet those who "can prove what they say with their hand" bring credentials superior to those offered by any others,--although even their judgment is not sure, as they may well represent a minority of the true court of appeal which can never be brought together. no doubt there is a judgment and a scale of values accepted as final by each generation that gives any considerable attention to these questions. Æsthetic appear to be exactly similar to religious convictions. those who are subject to them probably pass through many successively, even though they all their lives hold to a certain fashion which enables them to assert some obvious unity, like those who, in religion, belong always to one sect. yet if they were in a position to analyse their emotions and leanings, no doubt very fundamental contradictions would be discovered to disconcert them. conviction and enthusiasm in the arts and religion would seem to be the frame of mind natural to those who assimilate, and are rendered productive by what they study and admire. convictions may never be wholly justifiable in theory, but in practice when results are considered, it would seem that no other frame of mind should escape censure. footnotes: [footnote : "literary remains of albrecht dürer," p. .] [footnote : "literary remains of albrecht dürer," p. .] [footnote : _idem_. p. .] chapter v nature i we regard a form and figure out of nature with more pleasure than another, though the thing in itself is not necessarily altogether better or worse. life in nature showeth forth the truth of these things (the words of difference--i.e., the character of bodily habit to which they refer), wherefore regard it well, order thyself thereby and depart not from nature in thine opinions, neither imagine of thyself to invent aught better, else shalt thou be led astray, for art standeth firmly fixed in nature, and whoso can rend her forth thence he only possesseth her. if thou acquirest her, she will remove many faults for thee from thy work. neither must the figure be made youthful before and old behind, or contrariwise; for that unto which nature is opposed is bad. hence it followeth that each figure should be of one kind alone throughout, either young or old, or middle-aged, or lean or fat, or soft or hard. the more closely thy work abideth by life in its form, so much the better will it appear; and this is true. wherefore never more imagine that thou either canst or shalt make anything better than god hath given power to his creatures to do. for thy power is weakness compared to god's creating hand. (_see_ continuation of passage, p. .) compare also passages quoted (pp. - ). ii in these and other passages dürer speaks about "nature," and enjoins on the artist respect for and conformity to "nature" in a manner which reminds us of that still current in dictums about art. indeed, it seems probable that dürer's use of this term was almost as confused as that of a modern art-critic. there are two senses in which the word nature is employed, the confusion of which is ten times more confounded than any of the others, and deserves, indeed, utter damnation, so prolific of evil is it. we call the objects of sensory perception "nature"--whatever is seen, heard, felt, smelt or tasted is a part of nature. and yet we constantly speak of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting monstrous and unnatural things. and a monstrous and unnatural thing is not merely one which is rare, but even more decidedly one of which we disapprove. so that the second use of the term conveys some sense of exceptionality, but far more of lack of conformity to human desires and expectations. now, many things which do not exist are perfectly natural in this second sense: fairy-lands, heavens, &c. we perfectly understand what is meant by a natural and an unnatural imagination, we perceive readily all kind of degrees between the monstrous and the natural in pure fiction. now, this second use of the term nature is the only one which is of any vital importance to our judgments upon works of art; yet current judgments are more often than not based wholly on the first sense, which means merely all objects perceived by the senses; and this, draped in the authority and phrases belonging to judgments based on the second and really pertinent sense. whole schools of painting and criticism have arisen and flourish whose only reason for existence is the extreme facility with which this confusion is made in european languages. it sounds so plausible that some have censured michael angelo for bad drawing because men are not from to or heads high, and have not muscles so developed as the gods and titans of his creation. and others have objected to the angels, the anatomical ambiguity of their wing articulations. to say that a sketch or picture is out of tone or drawing damns, in many circles to-day; in spite of the fact that the most famous masterpieces, if judged by the same standard, would be equally offensive. this absurdity, even where its grosser developments are avoided, breeds abundant contradictions and confusion in the mouths of those who plume themselves on culture and discernment. i hope not to have been too saucy, therefore, in pointing out this pitfall to my readers in regard to these sentences which i thought it worth while to quote from dürer, merely because if i did not do so i foresaw that they would be quoted against me. chapter vi the choice of an artist i in the great earnestness with which the difficulties that beset art and the artist impressed him, dürer intended to write a _vade mecum_ for those who should come after him. he has left among his ms. papers many plans, rough drafts, and notes for some such work, the form of which no doubt changed from time to time. the one which gives us the most comprehensive idea of his intentions is perhaps the following. ii ihs. maria by the grace and help of god i have here set down all that i have learnt in practice, which is likely to be of use in painting, for the service of all students who would gladly learn. that, perchance, by my help they may advance still further in the higher understanding of such art, as he who seeketh may well do, if he is inclined thereto; for my reason sufficeth not to lay the foundations of this great, far-reaching, infinite art of true painting. item.--in order that thou mayest thoroughly and rightly comprehend what is, or is called, an "artistic painter," i will inform thee and recount to thee. if the world often goeth without an "artistic painter," whilst for two or three hundred years none such appeareth, it is because those who might have become such devote not themselves to art. observe then the three essential qualities following, which belong to the true artist in painting. these are the three main points in the whole book. i. the first division of the book is the prologue, and it compriseth three parts (a, b, and c). a. the first part of the prologue telleth us how the lad should be taught, and how attention should be paid to the tendency of his temperament. it falleth into six parts: . that note should be taken of the birth of the child, in what sign it occurreth; with some explanations. (pray god for a lucky hour!) . that his form and stature should be considered; with some explanations. . how he ought to be nurtured in learning from the first; with some explanations. . that the child should be observed, whether he learneth best when kindly praised or when chidden; with explanations. . that the child be kept eager to learn and be not vexed. . if the child worketh too hard, so that he might fall under the hand of melancholy, that he be enticed therefrom by merry music to the pleasuring of his blood. b. the second part of the preface showeth how the lad should be brought up in the fear of god and in reverence, that so he may attain grace, whereby he may be much strengthened in intelligent art. it falleth into six parts: . that the lad be brought up in the fear of god and be taught to pray to god for the grace of quick perception (_ubtilitet_) and to honour god. . that he be kept moderate in eating and drinking, and also in sleeping. . that he dwell in a pleasant house, so that he be distracted by no manner of hindrance. . that he be kept from women and live not loosely with them; that he not so much as see or touch one; and that he guard himself from all impurity. nothing weakens the understanding more than impurity. . that he know how to read and write well, and be also instructed in latin, so far as to understand certain writings. . that such an one have sufficient means to devote himself without anxiety (to his art), and that his health be attended to with medicines when needful. c. the third part of the prologue teacheth us of the great usefulness, joy, and delight which spring from painting. it falleth into six parts: . it is a useful art when it is of godly sort, and is employed for holy edification. . it is useful, and much evil is thereby avoided, if a man devote himself thereto who else had wasted his time. . it is useful when no one thinks so, for a man will have great joy if he occupy himself with that which is so rich in joys. . it is useful because a man gaineth great and lasting memory thereby if he applieth it aright. . it is useful because god is thereby honoured when it is seen that he hath bestowed such genius upon one of his creatures in whom is such art. all men will be gracious unto thee by reason of thine art. . the sixth use is that if thou art poor thou mayest by such art come unto great wealth and riches. ii. the second division of the book treateth of painting itself; it also is threefold. a. the first part is of the freedom of painting; in six ways. b. the second part is of the proportions of men and buildings, and what is needful for painting; in six ways.[ ] . of the proportions of men. . of the proportions of horses. . of the proportions of buildings. . of perspective. . of light and shade. . of colours, how they are to be made to resemble nature. c. the third part is of all that a man conceives as subject for painting. iii. the third division of the book is the conclusion; it also hath three parts. a. the first part shows in what place such an artist should dwell to practise his art; in six ways. b. the second part shows how such a wonderful artist should charge highly for his art, and that no money is too much for it, seeing that it is divine and true; in six ways. the third part speaks of praise and thanksgiving which he should render unto god for his grace, and which others should render on his behalf; in six ways. iii it is in the variety and completeness of his intentions that we perceive dürer's kinship with the renascence; he comprehends the whole of life in his idea of art training. in his persuasion of the fundamental necessity of morality he is akin to the best of the reformation. it is in the union of these two perceptions that his resemblance to michael angelo lies. there is a rigour, an austerity which emanates from their work, such as is not found in the work of titian or rembrandt or leonardo or rubens or any other mighty artist of ripe epochs. yet we find both of them illustrating the licentious legends of antiquity, turning from the virgin to amymone and leda, from christ to apollo and hercules. by their action and example neither joins either the reformation or the renascence in so far as these movements may be considered antagonistic; nor did they find it inconsistent to acknowledge their debt to greece and rome, even while accepting the gift of jesus' example as freely as it was offered. not only does dürer insist on the necessity of a certain consonancy between the surrounding influences and the artist's capacity, which should be both called forth and relieved by the interchange of rivalry with instruction, of seclusion with music or society, but the process which jesus made the central one of his religion is put forward as essential; he must form himself on a precedent example. i have already quoted from reynolds at length on this point. i will merely add here some notes from another ms. fragment of dürer's bearing on the same points. he that would be a painter must have a natural turn thereto. love and delight therein are better teachers of the art of painting than compulsion is. if a man is to become a really great painter he must be educated thereto from his very earliest years. he must copy much of the work of good artists until he attain a free hand. to paint is to be able to portray upon a flat surface any visible thing whatsoever that may be chosen. it is well for any one first to learn how to divide and reduce, to measure the human figure, before learning anything else. footnotes: [footnote : the following list comes from another sheet of the ms. (in. ), but was dearly intended for this place. it is jotted down on a thick piece of paper, on which there are also geometrical designs.] chapter vii technical precepts i if thou wishest to model well in painting, so as to deceive the eyesight, thou must be right cunning in thy colours, and must know how to keep them distinct, in painting, one from another. for example, thou paintest two coats of mantles, one white the other red; thou must deal differently with them in shading. there is light and shadow on all things, wherever the surface foldeth or bendeth away from the eye. if this were not so, everything would look flat, and then one could distinguish nothing save only a chequerwork of colours. if then thou art shading the white mantle, it must not be shaded with so dark a colour as the red, for it would be impossible for a white thing to yield so dark a shadow as a red. neither could they be compared one with another, save that in total absence of daylight everything is black, seeing that colour cannot be recognised in darkness. though, therefore, in such a case, the theory allows one, without blame, to use pure black for the shadows of a white object, yet this can seldom come to pass. moreover, when thou paintest anything in one colour--be it red, blue, brown, or any mixed colour--beware lest thou make it so bright in the lights that it departs from its own kind. for example, an uneducated man regardeth thy picture wherein is a red coat. "look, good friend," saith he, "in one part the coat is of a fair red and in another it is white or pale in colour." that same is to be blamed, neither hast thou done it aright. in such a case a red object must be painted red all over and yet preserve the appearance of solidity; and so with all colours. the same must be done with the shadows, lest it be said that a fair red is soiled with black wherefore be careful that thou shade each colour with a similar colour. thus i hold that a yellow, to retain its kind, must be shaded with a yellow, darker toned than the principal colour. if thou shade it with green or blue, it remaineth no longer in keeping, and is no longer yellow, but becometh thereby a shot colour, like the colour of silk stuffs woven of threads of two colours, as brown and blue, brown and green, dark yellow and green, chestnut-brown and dark yellow, blue and seal red, seal red and brown, and the many other colours one sees. if a man hath such as these to paint, where the surface breaketh and bendeth away the colours divide themselves so that they can be distinguished one from another, and thus must thou paint them. but where the surface lieth flat one colour alone appeareth. howbeit, if thou art painting such a silk and shadest it with one colour (as a brown with a blue) thou must none the less shade the blue with a deeper blue where it is needful. if often cometh to pass that such silks appear brown in the shadows, as if one colour stood before the other. if thy model beareth such a garment, thou must shade the brown with a deeper brown and not with blue. howbeit, happen what may, every colour must in shading keep to its own class. ii the great genius hokusai, who has obtained for popular art in japan a success comparable to that of the best classic masterpieces of that country and to the drawings and etchings of rembrandt, a master of an altogether kindred nature, wrote a little treatise on the difference of aim noticeable in european and japanese art. from the few dutch pictures which he had been able to examine, he concluded that european art attempted to deceive the eye, whereas japanese art laboured to express life, to suggest movement, and to harmonise colour. what is meant is easily grasped when we set before the mind's eye a picture, by teniers and a page of hokusai's "mangwa." on the other hand, if one chose a sketch by rembrandt to represent dutch art, the difference could no longer be apparent. if the aim of european art had ever in serious examples been to deceive the eye, our painting would rank with legerdemain and maskelyne's famous box trick; for it is to be doubted if it could ever so well have attained its end as even a second-rate conjurer can. i have cited a passage in which reynolds confronts the work of great artists with the illusions of the camera obscura (see p. ). the adept musical performer who reproduces the noises of a farmyard is the true parallel to the lesser dutch artists; he deceives the ear far better than they deceive the eye. for every picture has a surface which, unless very carefully lighted, must immediately destroy the illusion, even if it were otherwise perfect. nevertheless, dürer in the foregoing passage seems to accept hokusai's verdict that the aim of his painting is to deceive the eye; forgetful of all that he has elsewhere written about the necessity of beauty, the necessity of composition, the superiority of rough sketches over finished works. when a painter has conceived in his heart a vision of beauty, whether he suggests it with a few strokes of the pen or elaborates it as thoroughly as jan van eyck did, he wishes it to be taken as a report of something seen. this is as different from wishing to deceive the eye as for some one to say "and then a dog barked," instead of imitating the barking of a dog. a circumstantial description in words and a picture by van eyck or veronese are equally intended to pass as reports of something visually conceived or actually seen. pictures would have to be made peep-shows of before they could veritably deceive; and jan van beers, a modern dutchman, actually turned some of his paintings into peep-shows. dürer in the following passage is speaking of the separate details or objects which go to make up a picture, not of the picture as a whole; he never tried to make peep-shows; his signature or an inscription is often used to give the very surface that must destroy the peep-show illusion a definite decorative value. the rest of his remarks have become commonplaces; nor has he written at such length as to give them their true limitations and intersubordination. they will be easily understood by those who remember that art is concerned with producing the illusion of a true report of something seen, not that of an actual vision. such a report may be slight and brief; it may be stammered by emotion; it may have been confused or tortured to any degree by the mental condition of him who delivers it: if it produces the conviction of his sincerity, it achieves the only illusion with which art is concerned, and its value will depend on its beauty and the beauty of the means employed to deliver it. chapter viii in conclusion after turning over dürer prints and drawings, after meditating on his writings, we feel that we are in the presence of one of those forces which are constant and equal, which continue and remain like the growth of the body, the return of seasons, the succession of moods. this is always among the greatest charms of central characters: they are mild and even, their action is like that of the tides, not that of storms. "if only you had my meekness," dürer wrote to pirkheimer (set: p. ), half in jest doubtless, but with profound truth:--though the word meekness does not indeed cover the whole of what we feel made dürer's most radical advantage over his friend; at other times we might call it naïvety, that sincerity of great and simple natures which can never be outflanked or surprised. sometimes it might be called pride, for it has certainly a great deal of self-assurance behind it, the self-assurance of trees, of flowers, of dumb animals and little children, who never dream that an apology for being where and what they are can be expected of them. such natures when they come home to us come to stop; we may go out, we may pay no heed to them, we may forget them, but they abide in the memory, and some day they take hold of us with all the more force because this new impression will exactly tally with the former one; we shall blush for our inconstancy, our indifference, our imbecility, which have led us to neglect such a pregnant communion. not only persons but works of art produce this effect, and they are those with whom it is the greatest benefit to live. it is true that, compared with giotto, rembrandt, or michael angelo, dürer does not appear comprehensive enough. it is with him as with milton; we wish to add others to his great gifts, above all to take him out from his surroundings, to free him from the accidents of place and time. in one sense he is poorer than milton: we cannot go to him as to a source of emotional exhilaration. if he ever proves himself able so to stir us, it is too occasionally to be a reason why we frequent him as it may be one why we frequent milton. nevertheless, the greater characters of control which are his in an unmatched degree, his constancy, his resource and deliberate effectiveness, joined to that blandness, that sunshine, which seems so often to replace emotion and thought in works of image-shaping art, are of priceless beneficence, and with them we would abide. intellectual passion may seem indeed sometimes to dissipate this sunshine and control without making good their loss. such cases enable us to feel that the latter are more essential: and it is these latter qualities which dürer possessed in such fulness. in return for our contemplation, they build up within us the dignity of man and render it radiant and serene. those who have felt their influence longest and most constantly will believe that they may well warrant the modern prophet who wrote: the idea of beauty and of human nature perfect on all its sides, which is the dominant idea of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, though it has not yet had the success that the idea of conquering the obvious faults of our animality and of a human nature perfect on the moral side--which is the dominant idea of religion--has been enabled to have; and it is destined, adding to itself the religious idea of a devout energy, to transform and govern the other. index aachen adam (melchor) aeschylus albertina altdorfer (albrecht) anabaptists andreae (hieronymus) angelico (fra beato) antwerpo apelles aristotle arnold (matthew) augsburg balccarres (lord) bamberg (library) barbari (jacopo dei) barberini (gallery) barye (antoine louis) basle baudelaire (charles) bavaria beers (jan van) beham (barthel and sebald) behaim bellini (gentile) bellini (giovanni) berlin blake (william) bologna bonnat (léon) borgia (cesare) borgia (alexander), see pope botticelli bremen breslau (bishop of) breughel (peter) british museum. browning (robert) brussels brutus burgkmair (hans) butler (bishop) caietan (cardinal) calvin camerarius (kunz kamerer) carpaccio celtes (conrad) charles v. (emperor) cicero coleridge colet (dean) colmar cologne (köln) conway (sir martin) cook (sir francis) correggio cranach (lucas) dante danube dodgson (campbell) dolce (ludovico) dresden dürer (albert the elder) dürer (agnes, nee frey) dürer, andreas brothers and sisters father-in-law, hans frey forefathers dürer, hans dürer's house, mother (barbara helper) dürer (quotations from), dürer's books: art of fortification, human proportions, measurement with compass. drawings: adam's hand, christ bearing his cross, dance of monkeys, himself, lion, lucas van leyden, memento mei, mein angnes, mount of olives, nepotis (florent), pfaffroth (hans), plankfelt (jobst), sea-monsters, women's bath, walrus. engravings on metal: agony in the garden, great fortune, jerome (st.), knight (the), melancholy, passion. pictures: adam and eve, adoration of magi, avarice, christ among doctors, coronation of virgin, crucifixion, dresden altar piece, feast of bose garlands, hercules, lucretia, madonna with iris, martyrdom of ten thousand, paumgartner, altar piece, preachers (the pour), road to calvary, trinity and all saints. portraits: of himself, leipzig, madrid, munich, holzschuher (hieronymus), imhof, hans (?), kleeberger (johannes) krel (oswolt), maximilian, muffel (jacob), orley (bernard van), unknown (vienna), unknown (hampton court), unknown (boston) unknown woman (berlin), unknown girl (berlin), wolgemut. woodcuts: apocalypse, assumption of magdalen, st. christopher, gate of honour, jerome (st.), life of the virgin, last supper, little passion. ebner eck (dr.) eckenstein (miss) emerson erasmus euclid euripides eusebius eyck (jan van) flaubert (gustave) florentine frankfort frederick the wise (elector of saxony) frey (hans) frey (felix), fronde, fugger, furtwängler, gainsborough, ghent, giehlom (dr. carl), giorgjone, giotto, goes (hugo vander) goethe, gospel of st. luke, st. matthew, st. john, grapheus (cornelius), greece, greeks, greek, grien (baldung), heaton (mrs.), _heller (jacob)_. henry viii, hess (eoban), hess (martin), hippocrates, hokusai, holbein, holzselraher, homer, humanists, hungary, hutten (ulrich von), imhof (hans), innsbruck, jeanne d'arc, jesus, john (st.), jonson (ben), juggernaut, keats (john), kolb (anton), kratzer (nicholas), kress (christopher), lady margaret (governess of the netherlands), landauer (matthew), leipzig, leonardo da vinci, link (wenzel), lippmann, london, longfellow, lotto (lorenzo), louvre, lucas van leyden, luther, lutzelburger, mabuse (jan de), macbeth, machiavelli. madrid, mantegna (andrea), mantua, manuel, marcantonio, mark (st.), marlowe, maximilian i., melanchthon, mexico, michael angelo, miller (a.w., esq.), millet (jean francois), miltitz, milton, montaigne, _monthly review_, montpelier (town council), more, morley (lord and lady), moses, muffel (jacob), munich, nassau, neudörffer, nietzsche, nützel (caspar), orley (bernard van) ostendorfer (michael) pacioli (luca) padua parrhasius paul (st.) paumgartner (stephan) peasants' war penz (georg) peter (st,) phidias pirkheimer (charitas) (philip) (willibald) pitti (gallery) plato pleydenwurf pliny polizemo polycleitus pope adrian iv. (alexander vi.) (julius ii.) (leo x.) porto venere portugal prague praxiteles protogenes psalms rabelais raphael reformation, reformers rembrandt renascence reuohlin (dr.) reynolds ricketts (c. s.) rochefoucauld (la) roger van der weyden rome rossetti (dante gabriel) rubens (peter paul) savonarola scheurl (christopher) schongauer (martin) schönsperger shannon (c. h.) shakespeare sistine (chapel) spalatin (george) spengler (lazarus) stabius (johannes) städel institut stromer (wolf) strong (s. a) swift (dean) teniers (david) thawing (dr. moritz) titian tschertte (johannes) uffizi (gallery) ulm van dyck varnbüler (ulrioh) vasari velasquez venice veronese (paul) verona verrall (dr.) vienna virgil vitruvius warham (archbishop) watteail (antoine) watts (g. f.) weimar (grand ducal museum) whistler (james mcneil) wittenberg wolfenbüttel wolgemut wordsworth würzburg (bishop of) zeeland zeuxis knights of art stories of the italian painters by amy steedman author of 'in god's garden' to francesca about this book what would we do without our picture-books, i wonder? before we knew how to read, before even we could speak, we had learned to love them. we shouted with pleasure when we turned the pages and saw the spotted cow standing in the daisy-sprinkled meadow, the foolish-looking old sheep with her gambolling lambs, the wise dog with his friendly eyes. they were all real friends to us. then a little later on, when we began to ask for stories about the pictures, how we loved them more and more. there was the little girl in the red cloak talking to the great grey wolf with the wicked eyes; the cottage with the bright pink roses climbing round the lattice-window, out of which jumped a little maid with golden hair, followed by the great big bear, the middle-sized bear, and the tiny bear. truly those stories were a great joy to us, but we would never have loved them quite so much if we had not known their pictured faces as well. do you ever wonder how all these pictures came to be made? they had a beginning, just as everything else had, but the beginning goes so far back that we can scarcely trace it. children have not always had picture-books to look at. in the long-ago days such things were not known. thousands of years ago, far away in assyria, the assyrian people learned to make pictures and to carve them out in stone. in egypt, too, the egyptians traced pictures upon the walls of their temples and upon the painted mummy-cases of the dead. then the greeks made still more beautiful statues and pictures in marble, and called them gods and goddesses, for all this was at a time when the true god was forgotten. afterwards, when christ had come and the people had learned that the pictured gods were not real, they began to think it wicked to make beautiful pictures or carve marble statues. the few pictures that were made were stiff and ugly, the figures were not like real men and women, the animals and trees were very strange-looking things. and instead of making the sky blue as it really was, they made it a chequered pattern of gold. after a time it seemed as if the art of making pictures was going to die out altogether. then came the time which is called 'the renaissance,' a word which means being born again, or a new awakening, when men began to draw real pictures of real things and fill the world with images of beauty. now it is the stories of the men of that time, who put new life into art, that i am going to tell you--men who learned, step by step, to paint the most beautiful pictures that the world possesses. in telling these stories i have been helped by an old book called the lives of the painters, by giorgio vasari, who was himself a painter. he took great delight in gathering together all the stories about these artists and writing them down with loving care, so that he shows us real living men, and not merely great names by which the famous pictures are known. it did not make much difference to us when we were little children whether our pictures were good or bad, as long as the colours were bright and we knew what they meant. but as we grow older and wiser our eyes grow wiser too, and we learn to know what is good and what is poor. only, just as our tongues must be trained to speak, our hands to work, and our ears to love good music, so our eyes must be taught to see what is beautiful, or we may perhaps pass it carelessly by, and lose a great joy which might be ours. so now if you learn something about these great artists and their wonderful pictures, it will help your eyes to grow wise. and some day should you visit sunny italy, where these men lived and worked, you will feel that they are quite old friends. their pictures will not only be a delight to your eyes, but will teach your heart something deeper and more wonderful than any words can explain. amy steedman contents giotto, . . . born , died fra angelico, . . " , " masaccio, . . . " , " fra filippo lippi,. . " , " sandro botticelli,. . " , " domenico ghirlandaio, " , " filippino lip . . " , " pietro perugino, . " , " leonardo da vinci,. . " , " raphael, . . . " , " michelangelo, . . " , " andrea del sarto, . " , " giovanni bellini, . " , " vittore carpaccio,. . " ? " giorgione, . . " ? " titian, . . . " , " tintoretto, . . " , " paul veronese, . . " , " list of pictures in colour the release of st. peter. by filippo lippi, 'the tall angel in flowing white robes gently leads st. peter out of prison,' church of the carmine, florence. the visit of the magi. by giotto, 'the little baby jesus sitting on his mother's knee,' academia, florence. the meeting of anna and joachim. by giotto, 'two homely figures outside the narrow gateway,' sta. maria novella, florence. the annunciation. by fra angelico, 'the gentle virgin bending before the angel messenger,' s. marco, florence. the flight into egypt. by fra angelico, 'the madonna in her robe of purest blue holding the baby close in her arms,' academia, florence. the annunciation. by filippo lippi, 'the madonna with the dove fluttering near, and the angel messenger bearing the lily branch,' academia florence. the nativity. by filippo lippi, 'his madonnas grew ever more beautiful,' academia, florence. the angel. by botticelli, tobias and the angel. 'his figures seemed to move as if to the rhythm of music,' academia, florence. st. peter in prison. by filippo lippi, 'the sad face of st. peter looks out through the prison bars,' church of the carmine, florence. two saints. by perugino, the fresco of the crucifixion. 'beyond was the blue thread of river and the single trees pointing upwards,' sta. maddalena de pazzi, florence. two saints. by perugino, the fresco of the crucifixion. 'quiet dignified saints and spacious landscapes,' sta. maddalena de pazzi, florence. st. james. by andrea del sarto. 'the kind strong hand of the saint is placed lovingly beneath the little chin,' uffizi gallery, florence. cherub. by giov. bellini, 'giovanni's angels are little human boys with grave sweet faces,' church of the frari, venice. st. tryphonius and the basilisk. by carpaccio, 'the little boy saint has folded his hands together and looks upward in prayer,' s. giorgio schiavari, venice. the little virgin. by titian, 'the little maid is all alone,' academia, venice. the little st. john. by veronese, the madonna enthroned. 'the little st. john with the skin thrown over his bare shoulder and the cross in his hand,' academia, florence. in monochrome relief in marble by giotto, 'the shepherd sitting under his tent, with the sheep in front,' campanile, florence. drawing by masaccio, 'his models were ordinary florentine youths,' uffizi gallery, florence. drawing by ghirlandaio, 'the men of the market-place,' uffizi gallery, florence. drawing by leonardo da vinci, 'he loved to draw strange monsters,' uffizi gallery, florence. drawing by raphael, 'round-limbed rosy children, half human, half divine,' uffizi gallery, florence. drawing by michelangelo, 'a terrible head of a furious old man,' uffizi gallery, florence. drawing by giorgione, 'a man in venetian dress helping two women to mount one of the niches of a marble palace,' uffizi gallery, florence. drawing by tintoretto, 'the head of a venetian boy, such as tintoretto met daily among the fisher-folk of venice,' uffizi gallery, florence. giotto it was more than six hundred years ago that a little peasant baby was born in the small village of vespignano, not far from the beautiful city of florence, in italy. the baby's father, an honest, hard-working countryman, was called bondone, and the name he gave to his little son was giotto. life was rough and hard in that country home, but the peasant baby grew into a strong, hardy boy, learning early what cold and hunger meant. the hills which surrounded the village were grey and bare, save where the silver of the olive-trees shone in the sunlight, or the tender green of the shooting corn made the valley beautiful in early spring. in summer there was little shade from the blazing sun as it rode high in the blue sky, and the grass which grew among the grey rocks was often burnt and brown. but, nevertheless, it was here that the sheep of the village would be turned out to find what food they could, tended and watched by one of the village boys. so it happened that when giotto was ten years old his father sent him to take care of the sheep upon the hillside. country boys had then no schools to go to or lessons to learn, and giotto spent long happy days, in sunshine and rain, as he followed the sheep from place to place, wherever they could find grass enough to feed on. but giotto did something else besides watching his sheep. indeed, he sometimes forgot all about them, and many a search he had to gather them all together again. for there was one thing he loved doing better than all beside, and that was to try to draw pictures of all the things he saw around him. it was no easy matter for the little shepherd lad. he had no pencils or paper, and he had never, perhaps, seen a picture in all his life. but all this mattered little to him. out there, under the blue sky, his eyes made pictures for him out of the fleecy white clouds as they slowly changed from one form to another. he learned to know exactly the shape of every flower and how it grew; he noticed how the olive-trees laid their silver leaves against the blue background of the sky that peeped in between, and how his sheep looked as they stooped to eat, or lay down in the shadow of a rock. nothing escaped his keen, watchful eyes, and then with eager hands he would sharpen a piece of stone, choose out the smoothest rock, and try to draw on its flat surface all those wonderful shapes which had filled his eyes with their beauty. olive-trees, flowers, birds and beasts were there, but especially his sheep, for they were his friends and companions who were always near him, and he could draw them in a different way each time they moved. now it fell out that one day a great master painter from florence came riding through the valley and over the hills where giotto was feeding his sheep. the name of the great master was cimabue, and he was the most wonderful artist in the world, so men said. he had painted a picture which had made all florence rejoice. the florentines had never seen anything like it before, and yet it was but a strange-looking portrait of the madonna and child, scarcely like a real woman or a real baby at all. still, it seemed to them a perfect wonder, and cimabue was honoured as one of the city's greatest men. the road was lonely as it wound along. there was nothing to be seen but waves of grey hills on every side, so the stranger rode on, scarcely lifting his eyes as he went. then suddenly he came upon a flock of sheep nibbling the scanty sunburnt grass, and a little brown-faced shepherd-boy gave him a cheerful 'good-day, master.' there was something so bright and merry in the boy's smile that the great man stopped and began to talk to him. then his eye fell upon the smooth flat rock over which the boy had been bending, and he started with surprise. 'who did that?' he asked quickly, and he pointed to the outline of a sheep scratched upon the stone. 'it is the picture of one of my sheep there,' answered the boy, hanging his head with a shame-faced look. 'i drew it with this,' and he held out towards the stranger the sharp stone he had been using. 'who taught you to do this?' asked the master as he looked more carefully at the lines drawn on the rock. the boy opened his eyes wide with astonishment 'nobody taught me, master,' he said. 'i only try to draw the things that my eyes see.' 'how would you like to come with me to florence and learn to be a painter?' asked cimabue, for he saw that the boy had a wonderful power in his little rough hands. giotto's cheeks flushed, and his eyes shone with joy. 'indeed, master, i would come most willingly,' he cried, 'if only my father will allow it.' so back they went together to the village, but not before giotto had carefully put his sheep into the fold, for he was never one to leave his work half done. bondone was amazed to see his boy in company with such a grand stranger, but he was still more surprised when he heard of the stranger's offer. it seemed a golden chance, and he gladly gave his consent. why, of course, the boy should go to florence if the gracious master would take him and teach him to become a painter. the home would be lonely without the boy who was so full of fun and as bright as a sunbeam. but such chances were not to be met with every day, and he was more than willing to let him go. so the master set out, and the boy giotto went with him to florence to begin his training. the studio where cimabue worked was not at all like those artists' rooms which we now call studios. it was much more like a workshop, and the boys who went there to learn how to draw and paint were taught first how to grind and prepare the colours and then to mix them. they were not allowed to touch a brush or pencil for a long time, but only to watch their master at work, and learn all that they could from what they saw him do. so there the boy giotto worked and watched, but when his turn came to use the brush, to the amazement of all, his pictures were quite unlike anything which had ever been painted before in the workshop. instead of copying the stiff, unreal figures, he drew real people, real animals, and all the things which he had learned to know so well on the grey hillside, when he watched his father's sheep. other artists had painted the madonna and infant christ, but giotto painted a mother and a baby. and before long this worked such a wonderful change that it seemed indeed as if the art of making pictures had been born again. to us his work still looks stiff and strange, but in it was the beginning of all the beautiful pictures that belong to us now. giotto did not only paint pictures, he worked in marble as well. to-day, if you walk through florence, the city of flowers, you will still see its fairest flower of all, the tall white campanile or bell-tower, 'giotto's tower' as it is called. there it stands in all its grace and loveliness like a tall white lily against the blue sky, pointing ever upward, in the grand old faith of the shepherd-boy. day after day it calls to prayer and to good works, as it has done all these hundreds of years since giotto designed and helped to build it. some people call his pictures stiff and ugly, for not every one has wise eyes to see their beauty, but the loveliness of this tower can easily be seen by all. 'there the white doves circle round and round, and rest in the sheltering niches of the delicately carved arches; there at the call of its bell the black-robed brothers of pity hurry past to their works of mercy. there too the little children play, and sometimes stop to stare at the marble pictures, set in the first story of the tower, low enough to be seen from the street. their special favourite is perhaps the picture of the shepherd sitting under his tent, with the sheep in front, and with the funniest little dog keeping watch at the side. giotto always had a great love for animals, and whenever it was possible he would squeeze one into a corner of his pictures. he was sixty years old when he designed this wonderful tower and cut some of the marble pictures with his own hand, but you can see that the memory of those old days when he ran barefoot about the hills and tended his sheep was with him still. just such another little puppy must have often played with him in those long-ago days before he became a great painter and was still only a merry, brown-faced boy, making pictures with a sharp stone upon the smooth rocks. up and down the narrow streets of florence now, the great painter would walk and watch the faces of the people as they passed. and his eyes would still make pictures of them and their busy life, just as they used to do with the olive-trees, the sheep, and the clouds. in those days nobody cared to have pictures in their houses, and only the walls of the churches were painted. so the pictures, or frescoes, as they were called, were of course all about sacred subjects, either stories out of the bible or of the lives of the saints. and as there were few books, and the poor people did not know how to read, these frescoed walls were the only story-books they had. what a joy those pictures of giotto's must have been, then, to those poor folk! they looked at the little baby jesus sitting on his mother's knee, wrapped in swaddling bands, just like one of their own little ones, and it made him seem a very real baby. the wise men who talked together and pointed to the shining star overhead looked just like any of the great nobles of florence. and there at the back were the two horses looking on with wise interested eyes, just as any of their own horses might have done. it seemed to make the story of christmas a thing which had really happened, instead of a far-away tale which had little meaning for them. heaven and the madonna were not so far off after all. and it comforted them to think that the madonna had been a real woman like themselves, and that the jesu bambino would stoop to bless them still, just as he leaned forward to bless the wise men in the picture. how real too would seem the old story of the meeting of anna and joachim at the golden gate, when they could gaze upon the two homely figures under the narrow gateway. no visionary saints these, but just a simple husband and wife, meeting each other with joy after a sad separation, and yet with the touch of heavenly meaning shown by the angel who hovers above and places a hand upon each head. it was not only in florence that giotto did his work. his fame spread far and wide, and he went from town to town eagerly welcomed by all. we can trace his footsteps as he went, by those wonderful old pictures which he spread with loving care over the bare walls of the churches, lifting, as it were, the curtain that hides heaven from our view and bringing some of its joys to earth. then, at assisi, he covered the walls and ceiling of the church with the wonderful frescoes of the life of st. francis; and the little round commonplace arena chapel of padua is made exquisite inside by his pictures of the life of our lord. in the days when giotto lived the towns of italy were continually quarrelling with one another, and there was always fighting going on somewhere. the cities were built with a wall all round them, and the gates were shut each night to keep out their enemies. but often the fighting was between different families inside the city, and the grim old palaces in the narrow streets were built tall and strong that they might be the more easily defended. in the midst of all this war and quarrelling giotto lived his quiet, peaceful life, the friend of every one and the enemy of none. rival towns sent for him to paint their churches with his heavenly pictures, and the people who hated florence forgot that he was a florentine. he was just giotto, and he belonged to them all. his brush was the white flag of truce which made men forget their strife and angry passions, and turned their thoughts to holier things. even the great poet dante did not scorn to be a friend of the peasant painter, and we still have the portrait which giotto painted of him in an old fresco at florence. later on, when the great poet was a poor unhappy exile, giotto met him again at padua and helped to cheer some of those sad grey days, made so bitter by strife and injustice. now when giotto was beginning to grow famous, it happened that the pope was anxious to have the walls of the great cathedral of st. peter at rome decorated. so he sent messengers all over italy to find out who were the best painters, that he might invite them to come and do the work. the messengers went from town to town and asked every artist for a specimen of his painting. this was gladly given, for it was counted a great honour to help to make st. peter's beautiful. by and by the messengers came to giotto and told him their errand. the pope, they said, wished to see one of his drawings to judge if he was fit for the great work. giotto, who was always most courteous, 'took a sheet of paper and a pencil dipped in a red colour, then, resting his elbow on his side, with one turn of the hand, he drew a circle so perfect and exact that it was a marvel to behold.' 'here is your drawing,' he said to the messenger, with a smile, handing him the drawing. 'am i to have nothing more than this?' asked the man, staring at the red circle in astonishment and disgust. 'that is enough and to spare,' answered giotto. 'send it with the rest.' the messengers thought this must all be a joke. 'how foolish we shall look if we take only a round o to show his holiness,' they said. but they could get nothing else from giotto, so they were obliged to be content and to send it with the other drawings, taking care to explain just how it was done. the pope and his advisers looked carefully over all the drawings, and, when they came to that round o, they knew that only a master-hand could have made such a perfect circle without the help of a compass. without a moment's hesitation they decided that giotto was the man they wanted, and they at once invited him to come to rome to decorate the cathedral walls. so when the story was known the people became prouder than ever of their great painter, and the round o of giotto has become a proverb to this day in tuscany. 'round as the o of giotto, d' ye see; which means as well done as a thing can be.' later on, when giotto was at naples, he was painting in the palace chapel one very hot day, when the king came in to watch him at his work. it really was almost too hot to move, and yet giotto painted away busily. 'giotto,' said the king, 'if i were in thy place i would give up painting for a while and take my rest, now that it is so hot.' 'and, indeed, so i would most certainly do,' answered giotto, 'if i were in your place, your majesty.' it was these quick answers and his merry smile that charmed every one, and made the painter a favourite with rich and poor alike. there are a great many stories told of him, and they all show what a sunny-tempered, kindly man he was. it is said that one day he was standing in one of the narrow streets of florence talking very earnestly to a friend, when a pig came running down the road in a great hurry. it did not stop to look where it was going, but ran right between the painter's legs and knocked him flat on his back, putting an end to his learned talk. giotto scrambled to his feet with a rueful smile, and shook his finger at the pig which was fast disappearing in the distance. 'ah, well!' he said, 'i suppose thou hadst as much right to the road as i had. besides, how many gold pieces i have earned by the help of thy bristles, and never have i given any of thy family even a drop of soup in payment.' another time he went riding with a very learned lawyer into the country to look after his property. for when bondone died, he left all his fields and his farm to his painter son. very soon a storm came on, and the rain poured down as if it never meant to stop. 'let us seek shelter in this farmhouse and borrow a cloak,' suggested giotto. so they went in and borrowed two old cloaks from the farmer, and wrapped themselves up from head to foot. then they mounted their horses and rode back together to florence. presently the lawyer turned to look at giotto, and immediately burst into a loud laugh. the rain was running from the painter's cap, he was splashed with mud, and the old cloak made him look like a very forlorn beggar. 'dost think if any one met thee now, they would believe that thou art the best painter in the world?' laughed the lawyer. giotto's eyes twinkled as he looked at the funny figure riding beside him, for the lawyer was very small, and had a crooked back, and rolled up in the old cloak he looked like a bundle of rags. 'yes!' he answered quickly, 'any one would certainly believe i was a great painter, if he could but first persuade himself that thou dost know thy a b c.' in all these stories we catch glimpses of the good-natured kindly painter, with his love of jokes, and his own ready answers, and all the time we must remember that he was filling the world with beauty, which it still treasures to-day, helping to sow the seeds of that great tree of art which was to blossom so gloriously in later years. and when he had finished his earthly work it was in his own cathedral, 'st. mary of the flowers,' that they laid him to rest, while the people mourned him as a good friend as well as a great painter. there he lies in the shadow of his lily tower, whose slender grace and delicate-tinted marbles keep his memory ever fresh in his beautiful city of florence. fra angelico nearly a hundred years had passed by since giotto lived and worked in florence, and in the same hilly country where he used to tend his sheep another great painter was born. many other artists had come and gone, and had added their golden links of beauty to the chain of art which bound these years together. some day you will learn to know all their names and what they did. but now we will only single out, here and there, a few of those names which are perhaps greater than the rest. just as on a clear night, when we look up into the starlit sky, it would bewilder us to try and remember all the stars, so we learn first to know those that are most easily recognised--the plough, or the great bear, as they shine with a clear steady light against the background of a thousand lesser stars. the name by which this second great painter is known is fra angelico, but that was only the name he earned in later years. his baby name was guido, and his home was in a village close to where giotto was born. he was not a poor boy, and did not need to work in the fields or tend the sheep on the hillside. indeed, he might have soon become rich and famous, for his wonderful talent for painting would have quickly brought him honours and wealth if he had gone out into the world. but instead of this, when he was a young man of twenty he made up his mind to enter the convent at fiesole, and to become a monk of the order of saint dominic. every brother, or frate, as he is called, who leaves the world and enters the life of the convent is given a new name, and his old name is never used again. so young guido was called fra giovanni, or brother john. but it is not by that name that he is known best, but that of fra angelico, or the angelic brother--a name which was given him afterwards because of his pure and beautiful life, and the heavenly pictures which he painted. with all his great gifts in his hands, with all the years of youth and pleasure stretching out green and fair before him, he said good-bye to earthly joys, and chose rather to serve his master christ in the way he thought was right. the monks of st. dominic were the great preachers of those days--men who tried to make the world better by telling people what they ought to do, and teaching them how to live honest and good lives. but there are other ways of teaching people besides preaching, and the young monk who spent his time bending over the illuminated prayer-book, seeing with his dreamy eyes visions of saints and white-robed angels, was preparing to be a greater teacher than them all. the words of the preacher monks have passed away, and the world pays little heed to them now, but the teaching of fra angelico, the silent lessons of his wonderful pictures, are as fresh and clear to-day as they were in those far-off years. great trouble was in store for the monks of the little convent at fiesole, which fra angelico and his brother benedetto had entered. fierce struggles were going on in italy between different religious parties, and at one time the little band of preaching monks were obliged to leave their peaceful home at fiesole to seek shelter in other towns. but, as it turned out, this was good fortune for the young painter-monk, for in those hill towns of umbria where the brothers sought refuge there were pictures to be studied which delighted his eyes with their beauty, and taught him many a lesson which he could never have learned on the quiet slopes of fiesole. the hill towns of italy are very much the same to-day as they were in those days. long winding roads lead upwards from the plain below to the city gates, and there on the summit of the hill the little town is built. the tall white houses cluster close together, and the overhanging eaves seem almost to meet across the narrow paved streets, and always there is the great square, with the church the centre of all. it would be almost a day's journey to follow the white road that leads down from perugia across the plain to the little hill town of assisi, and many a spring morning saw the painter-monk setting out on the convent donkey before sunrise and returning when the sun had set. he would thread his way up between the olive-trees until he reached the city gates, and pass into the little town without hindrance. for the followers of st. francis in their brown robes would be glad to welcome a stranger monk, though his black robe showed that he belonged to a different order. any one who came to see the glory of their city, the church where their saint lay, which giotto had covered with his wonderful pictures, was never refused admittance. how often then must fra angelico have knelt in the dim light of that lower church of assisi, learning his lesson on his knees, as was ever his habit. then home again he would wend his way, his eyes filled with visions of those beautiful pictures, and his hand longing for the pencil and brush, that he might add new beauty to his own work from what he had learned. several years passed by, and at last the brothers were allowed to return to their convent home of san dominico at fiesole, and there they lived peaceably for a long time. we cannot tell exactly what pictures our painter-monk painted during those peaceful years, but we know he must have been looking out with wise, seeing eyes, drinking in all the beauty that was spread around him. at his feet lay florence, with its towers and palaces, the arno running through it like a silver thread, and beyond, the purple of the tuscan hills. all around on the sheltered hillside were green vines and fruit-trees, olives and cypresses, fields flaming in spring with scarlet anemones or golden with great yellow tulips, and hedges of rose-bushes covered with clusters of pink blossoms. no wonder, then, such beauty sunk into his heart, and we see in his pictures the pure fresh colour of the spring flowers, with no shadow of dark or evil things. soon the fame of the painter began to be whispered outside the convent walls, and reached the ears of cosimo da medici, one of the powerful rulers of florence. he offered the monks a new home, and, when they were settled in the convent of san marco in florence, he invited fra angelico to fresco the walls. one by one the heavenly pictures were painted upon the walls of the cells and cloister of the new home. how the brothers must have crowded round to see each new fresco as it was finished, and how anxious they would be to see which picture was to be near their own particular bed. in all the frescoes, whether he painted the gentle virgin bending before the angel messenger, or tried to show the glory of the ascended lord, the artist-monk would always introduce one or more of the convent's special saints, which made the brothers feel that the pictures were their very own. fra angelico had a kind word and smile for all the brothers. he was never impatient, and no one ever saw him angry, for he was as humble and gentle as the saints whose pictures he loved to paint. it is told of him, too, that he never took a brush or pencil in his hand without a prayer that his work might be to the glory of god. often when he painted the sufferings of our lord, the tears would be seen running down his cheeks and almost blinding his eyes. there is an old legend which tells of a certain monk who, when he was busily illuminating a page of his missal, was called away to do some service for the poor. he went unwillingly, the legend says, for he longed to put the last touches to the holy picture he was painting; but when he returned, lo! he found his work finished by angel hands. often when we look at some of fra angelico's pictures we are reminded of this legend, and feel that he too might have been helped by those same angel hands. did they indeed touch his eyes that he might catch glimpses of a heaven where saints were swinging their golden censers, and white-robed angels danced in the flowery meadows of paradise? we cannot tell; but this we know, that no other painter has ever shown us such a glory of heavenly things. best of all, the angel-painter loved to paint pictures of the life of our lord; and in the picture i have shown you, you will see the tender care with which he has drawn the head of the infant jesus with his little golden halo, the madonna in her robe of purest blue, holding the baby close in her arms, st. joseph the guardian walking at the side, and all around the flowers and trees which he loved so well in the quiet home of fiesole. he did not care for fame or power, this dreamy painter of angels, and when the pope invited him to rome to paint the walls of a chapel there, he thought no more of the glory and honour than if he was but called upon to paint another cell at san marco. but when the pope had seen what this quiet monk could do, he called the artist to him. 'a man who can paint such pictures,' he said, 'must be a good man, and one who will do well whatever he undertakes. will you, then, do other work for me, and become my archbishop at florence?' but the painter was startled and dismayed. 'i cannot teach or preach or govern men,' he said, 'i can but use my gift of painting for the glory of god. let me rather be as i am, for it is safer to obey than to rule.' but though he would not take this honour himself, he told the pope of a friend of his, a humble brother, fra antonino, at the convent of san marco, who was well fitted to do the work. so the pope took the painter's advice, and the choice was so wise and good, that to this day the florentine people talk lovingly of their good bishop antonino. it was while he was at work in rome that fra angelico died, so his body does not rest in his own beloved florence. but if his body lies in rome, his gentle spirit still seems to hover around the old convent of san marco, and there we learn to know and love him best. little wonder that in after ages they looked upon him almost as a saint, and gave him the title of 'beato,' or the blessed angel-painter. masaccio it must have been about the same time when fra angelico was covering the walls of san marco with his angel pictures, that a very different kind of painter was working in the carmine church in florence. this was no gentle, refined monk, but just an ordinary man of the world--an awkward, good-natured person, who, as long as he had pictures to paint, cared for little else. why, he would even forget to ask for payment when his work was done; and as to taking care of his clothes, or trying to keep himself tidy, that was a thing he never thought of! what trouble his mother must have had with him when he was a boy! it was no use sending him on an errand, he would forget it before he had gone a hundred yards, and he was so careless and untidy that it was enough to make any one lose patience with him. but only let him have a pencil and a smooth surface on which to draw, and he was a different boy. it is said that even now, in the little town of castello san giovanni, some eighteen miles from florence, where tommaso was born, there are still some wonderfully good figures to be seen, drawn by him when he was quite a little boy. certainly there was no carelessness and nothing untidy about his work. as the boy grew older all his longings would turn towards florence, the beautiful city where there was everything to learn and to see, and so he was sent to become a pupil in the studio of masolino, a great florentine painter. but though his drawings improved, his careless habits continued the same. 'there goes tommaso the painter,' the people would say, watching the big awkward figure passing through the streets on his way to work. 'truly he pays but little heed to his appearance. look but at his untidy hair and the holes in his boots.' 'ay, indeed!' another would answer; 'and yet it is said if only people paid him all they owed he would have gold enough and to spare. but what cares he so long as he has his paints and brushes? "masaccio" would be a fitter name for him than tommaso.' so the name masaccio, or ugly tom, came to be that by which the big awkward painter was known. but no one thinks of the unkind meaning of the nickname now, for masaccio is honoured as one of the great names in the history of art. this painter, careless of many things, cared with all his heart and soul for the work he had chosen to do. it seemed to him that painters had always failed to make their pictures like living things. the pictures they painted were flat, not round as a figure should be, and very often the feet did not look as if they were standing on the ground at all, but pointed downwards as if they were hanging in the air. so he worked with light and shadow and careful drawing until the figures he drew looked rounded instead of flat, and their feet were planted firmly on the ground. his models were taken from the ordinary florentine youths whom he saw daily in the studio, but he drew them as no one had drawn figures before. the buildings, too, he made to look like real houses leading away into the distance, and not just like a flat picture. he painted many frescoes both in florence and rome, this ugly tom, but at the time the people did not pay him much honour, for they thought him just a great awkward fellow with his head always in the clouds. perhaps if he had lived longer fame and wealth would have come to him, but he died when he was still a young man, and only a few realised how great he was. but in after years, one by one, all the great artists would come to that little chapel of the carmine there to learn their first lessons from those life-like figures. especially they would stand before the fresco which shows st. peter baptizing a crowd of people. and in that fresco they would study more than all the figure of a boy who has just come out of the water, shivering with cold, the most natural figure that had ever been painted up to that time. all things must be learnt little by little, and each new thing we know is a step onwards. so this figure of the shivering boy marks a higher step of the golden ladder of art than any that had been touched before. and this alone would have made the name of masaccio worthy to be placed upon the list of world's great painters. fra filippo lippi it was winter time in florence. the tramontana, that keen wind which blows from over the snow mountains, was sweeping down the narrow streets, searching out every nook and corner with its icy breath. men flung their cloaks closer round them, and pulled their hats down over their eyes, so that only the tips of their noses were left uncovered for the wind to freeze. women held their scaldinoes, little pots of hot charcoal, closer under their shawls, and even the dogs had a sad, half-frozen look. one and all longed for the warm winds of spring and the summer heat they loved. it was bad enough for those who had warm clothes and plenty of polenta, but for the poor life was very hard those cold wintry days. in a doorway of a great house, in one of the narrow streets, a little boy of eight was crouching behind one of the stone pillars as he tried to keep out of the grip of the tramontana. his little coat was folded closely round him, but it was full of rents and holes so that the thin body inside was scarcely covered, and the child's blue lips trembled with the cold, and his black eyes filled with tears. it was not often that filippo turned such a sad little face to meet the world. usually those black eyes sparkled with fun and mischief, and the mouth spread itself into a merry grin. but to-day, truly things were worse than he ever remembered them before, and he could remember fairly bad times, too, if he tried. other children had their fathers and mothers who gave them food and clothes, but he seemed to be quite different, and never had had any one to care for him. true, there was his aunt, old mona lapaccia, who said he had once had a father and mother like other boys, but she always added with a mournful shake of her head that she alone had endured all the trouble and worry of bringing him up since he was two years old. 'ah,' she would say, turning her eyes upwards, 'the saints alone know what i have endured with a great hungry boy to feed and clothe.' it seemed to filippo that in that case the saints must also know how very little he had to eat, and how cold he was on these wintry days. but of course they would be too grand to care about a little boy. in summer things were different. one could roll merrily about in the sunshine all day long, and at night sleep in some cool sheltering corner of the street. and then, too, there was always a better chance of picking up something to eat. plenty of fig skins and melon parings were flung carelessly out into the street when fruit was plentiful, and people would often throw away the remains of a bunch of grapes. it was wonderful how quickly filippo learned to know people's faces, and to guess who would finish to the last grape and who would throw the smaller ones away. some would even smile as they caught his anxious, waiting eye fixed on the fruit, and would cry 'catch' as they threw a goodly bunch into those small brown hands that never let anything slip through their fingers. oh, yes, summer was all right, but there was always winter to face. to-day he was so very hungry, and the lupin skins which he had collected for his breakfast were all eaten long ago. he had hung about the little open shops, sniffing up the delicious smell of fried polenta, but no one had given him a morsel. all he had got was a stern 'be off' when he ventured too close to the tempting food. if only this day had been a festa, he might have done well enough. for in the great processions when the priests and people carried their lighted candles round the church, he could always dart in and out with his little iron scraper, lift the melted wax of the marble floor and sell it over again to the candlemakers. but there were no processions to-day, and there remained only one thing to be done. he must go home and see if mona lapaccia had anything to spare. perhaps the saints took notice when he was hungry. down the street he ran, keeping close to the wall, just as the dogs do when it rains. for the great overhanging eaves of the houses act as a sheltering umbrella. then out into the broad street that runs beside the river, where, even in winter, the sun shines warmly if it shines anywhere. filippo paused at the corner of the ponte alla carraja to watch the struggles of a poor mule which was trying to pull a huge cartload of wood up the steep incline of the bridge. it was so exciting that for a moment he forgot how cold and hungry he was, as he shouted and screamed directions with the rest of the crowd, darted in and out in his eagerness to help, and only got into every one's way. that excitement over, filippo felt in better spirits and ran quickly across the bridge. he soon threaded his way to a poor street that led towards one of the city gates, where everything looked dirtier and more cheerless than ever. he had not expected a welcome, and he certainly did not get one, as, after climbing the steep stairs, he cautiously pushed open the door and peeped in. his aunt's thin face looked dark and angry. poor soul, she had had no breakfast either, and there would be no food that day unless her work was finished. and here was this troublesome boy back again, when she thought she had got rid of him for the day. 'away!' she shouted crossly. 'what dost thou mean by coming back so soon? away, and seek thy living in the streets.' 'it is too cold,' said the boy, creeping into the bare room, 'and i am hungry.' 'hungry!' and poor mona lapaccia cast her eyes upwards, as if she would ask the saints if they too were not filled with surprise to hear this word. 'and when art thou anything else? it is ever the same story with thee: eat, eat, eat. now, the saints help me, i have borne this burden long enough. i will see if i cannot shift it on to other shoulders.' she rose as she spoke, tied her yellow handkerchief over her head and smoothed out her apron. then she caught filippo by his shoulder and gave him a good shake, just to teach him how wrong it was to talk of being hungry, and pushing him in front of her they went downstairs together. 'where art thou going?' gasped the boy as she dragged him swiftly along the street. 'wait and thou shalt see,' she answered shortly; 'and do thou mind thy manners, else will i mind them for thee.' filippo ran along a little quicker on hearing this advice. he had but a dim notion of what minding his manners might mean, but he guessed fairly well what would happen if his aunt minded them. ah! here they were at the great square of the carmine. he had often crept into the church to get warm and to see those wonderful pictures on the walls. could they be going there now? but it was towards the convent door that mona lapaccia bent her steps, and, when she had rung the bell, she gave filippo's shoulder a final shake, and pulled his coat straight and smoothed his hair. a fat, good-natured brother let them in, and led them through the many passages into a room where the prior sat finishing his midday meal. filippo's hungry eyes were immediately fixed on a piece of bread which lay upon the table, and the kindly prior smiled as he nodded his head towards it. not another invitation did filippo need; like a bird he darted forward and snatched the piece of good white bread, and holding it in both hands he began to munch to his heart's content. how long it was since he had tasted anything like this! it was so delicious that for a few blissful moments he forgot where he was, forgot his aunt and the great man who was looking at him with such kind eyes. but presently he heard his own name spoken and then he looked up and remembered. 'and so, filippo, thou wouldst become a monk?' the prior was saying. 'let me see--how old art thou?' 'eight years old, your reverence,' said mona lapaccia before filippo could answer. which was just as well, as his mouth was still very full. 'and it is thy desire to leave the world, and enter our convent?' continued the prior. 'art thou willing to give up all, that thou mayest become a servant of god?' the little dirty brown hands clutched the bread in dismay. did the kind man mean that he was to give up his bread when he had scarcely eaten half of it? 'no, no; eat thy bread, child,' said the prior, with an understanding nod. 'thou art but a babe, but we will make a good monk of thee yet.' then, indeed, began happy days for filippo. no more threadbare coats, but a warm little brown serge robe, tied round the waist with a rope whose ends grew daily shorter as the way round his waist grew longer. no more lupin skins and whiffs of fried polenta, but food enough and to spare; such food as he had not dreamt of before, and always as much as he could eat. filippo was as happy as the day was long. he had always been a merry little soul even when life had been hard and food scarce, and now he would not have changed his lot with the saints in paradise. but the good brothers began to think it was time filippo should do something besides play and eat. 'let us see what the child is fit for,' they said. so filippo was called in to sit on the bench with the boys and learn his a b c. that was dreadfully dull work. he could never remember the names of those queer signs. their shapes he knew quite well, and he could draw them carefully in his copy-book, but their names were too much for him. and as to the latin which the good monks tried to teach him, they might as well have tried to teach a monkey. all the brightness faded from filippo's face the moment a book was put before him, and he looked so dull and stupid that the brothers were in despair. then for a little things seemed to improve. filippo suddenly lost his stupid look as he bent over the pages, and his eyes were bright with interest. 'aha!' said one brother nudging the other, 'the boy has found his brains at last.' but great indeed was their wrath and disappointment when they looked over his shoulder. instead of learning his lessons, filippo had been making all sorts of queer drawings round the margin of the page. the a's and b's had noses and eyes, and looked out with little grinning faces. the long music notes had legs and arms and were dancing about like little black imps. everything was scribbled over with the naughty little figures. this was really too much, and filippo must be taken at once before the prior. 'what, in disgrace again?' asked the kindly old man. 'what has the child done now?' 'we can teach him nothing,' said the brother, shaking a severe finger at filippo, who hung his head. 'he cannot even learn his a b c. and besides, he spoils his books, ay, and even the walls and benches, by drawing such things as these upon them.' and the indignant monk held out the book where all those naughty figures were dancing over the page. the prior took the book and looked at it closely. 'what makes thee do these things?' he asked the boy, who stood first on one foot and then on the other, twisting his rope in his fingers. at the sound of the kind voice, the boy looked up, and his face broke into a smile. 'indeed, i cannot help it, father,' he said. 'it is the fault of these,' and he spread out his ten little brown fingers. the prior laughed. 'well,' he said, 'we will not turn thee out, though they do say thou wilt never make a monk. perhaps we may teach these ten little rascals to do good work, even if we cannot put learning into that round head of thine.' so instead of books and latin lessons, the good monks tried a different plan. filippo was given as a pupil to good brother anselmo, whose work it was to draw the delicate pictures and letters for the convent prayer-books. this was a different kind of lesson, indeed. filippo's eyes shone with eagerness as he bent over his work and tried to copy the beautiful lines and curves which the master set for him. there were other boys in the class as well, and filippo looked at their work with great admiration. one boy especially, who was bigger than filippo, and who had a kind merry face, made such beautiful copies that filippo always tried to sit next him if possible. very soon the boys became great friends. diamante, as the elder boy was called, was pleased to be admired so much by the little new pupil; but as time went on, his pride in his own work grew less as he saw with amazement how quickly filippo's little brown fingers learned to draw straighter lines and more beautiful curves than any he could manage. brother anselmo, too, would watch the boy at work, and his saintly old face beamed with pleasure as he looked. 'he will pass us all, and leave us far behind, this child who is too stupid to learn his a b c,' he would say, and his face shone with unselfish joy. then when the boys grew older, they were allowed to go into the church and watch those wonderful frescoes, which grew under the hand of the great awkward painter, 'ugly tom,' as he was called. together filippo and diamante stood and watched with awe, learning lessons there which the good father had not been able to teach. then they would begin to put into practice what they had learned, and try to copy in their own pictures the work of the great master. 'thou hast the knack of it, filippo,' diamante would say as he looked with envy at the figures filippo drew so easily. 'thy pictures are also good,' filippo would answer quickly, 'and thou thyself art better than any one else in the convent.' there was no complaint now of filippo's dullness. he soon learned all that the painter-monks could teach him, and as years passed on the prior would rub his hands in delight to think that here was an artist, one of themselves, who would soon be able to paint the walls of the church and convent, and make them as famous as the convent of san marco had been made famous by its angelical painter. then one day he called filippo to him. 'my son,' he said, 'you have learned well, and it is time now to turn your work to some account. go into the cloister where the walls have been but newly whitewashed, and let us see what kind of pictures thou canst paint.' with burning cheeks and shining eyes, filippo began his work. day after day he stood on the scaffolding, with his brown robe pinned back and his bare arm moving swiftly as he drew figure after figure on the smooth white wall. he did not pause to think what he would draw, the figures seemed to grow like magic under his touch. there were the monks in their brown and white robes, fat and laughing, or lean and anxious-minded. there were the people who came to say their prayers in church, little children clinging to their mothers' skirts, beggars and rich folks, even the stray dog that sometimes wandered in. yes, and the pretty girls who laughed and talked in whispers. he drew them all, just as he had often seen them. then, when the last piece of wall was covered, he stopped his work. the news soon spread through all the convent that brother filippo had finished his picture, and all the monks came hurrying to see. the scaffolding was taken down, and then they all stood round, gazing with round eyes and open mouths. they had never seen anything like it before, and at first there was silence except for one long drawn 'ah-h.' then one by one they began to laugh and talk, and point with eager, excited fingers. 'look,' cried one, 'there is brother giovanni; i would know his smile among a hundred.' 'there is that beggar who comes each day to ask for soup,' cried another. 'and there is his dog,' shouted a third. 'look at the maid who kneels in front,' said fra diamante in a hushed voice, 'is she not as fair as any saint?' then suddenly there was silence, and the brothers looked ashamed of the noise they had been making, as the prior himself looked down on them from the steps above. 'what is all this?' he asked. and his voice sounded grave and displeased as he looked from the wall to the crowd of eager monks. then he turned to filippo. 'are these the pictures i ordered thee to paint?' he asked. 'is this the kind of painting to do honour to god and to our church? will these mere human figures help men to remember the saints, teach them to look up to heaven, or help them with their prayers? quick, rub them out, and paint your pictures for heaven and not for earth.' filippo hung his head, the crowd of admiring monks swiftly disappeared, and he was left to begin his work all over again. it was so difficult for filippo to keep his thoughts fixed on heaven, and not to think of earth. he did so love the merry world, and his fingers, those same ten brown rascals which had got him into trouble when he was a child, always longed to draw just the faces that he saw every day. the pretty face of the little maid kneeling at her prayers was so real and so delightful, and the madonna and angels seemed so solemn and far off. still no one would have pictures which did not tell of saints and angels, so he must paint the best he could. after all, it was easy to put on wings and golden haloes until the earthly things took on a heavenly look. but the convent life grew daily more and more wearisome now to filippo. the world, which he had been so willing to give up for a piece of good white bread when he was eight years old, now seemed full of all the things he loved best. the more he thought of it, the more he longed to see other places outside the convent walls, and other faces besides the monks and the people who came to church. and so one dark night, when all the brothers were asleep and the bells had just rung the midnight hour, fra filippo stole out of his cell, unlocked the convent door, and ran swiftly out into the quiet street. how good it felt to be free! the very street itself seemed like an old friend, welcoming him with open arms. on and on he ran until he came to the city gates of san frediano, there to wait until he could slip through unnoticed when the gates were opened at the dawn of day. then on again until florence and the convent were left behind and the whole world lay before him. there was no difficulty about living, for the people gave him food and money, and good-natured countrymen would stop their carts and offer him a lift along the straight white dusty roads. so by and by he reached ancona and saw for the first time the sea. filippo gazed and gazed, forgetting everything else as he drank in the beauty of that great stretch of quivering blue, while in his ears sounded words which he had almost forgotten--words which had fallen on heedless ears at matins or vespers--and which never had held any meaning for him before: 'and before the throne was a sea of glass, like unto crystal.' he stood still for a few minutes and then the heavenly vision faded, and like any other boy he forgot all about beauty and colour, and only longed to be out in a boat enjoying the strange new delight. very lucky he thought himself when he reached the shore to find a boat just putting of, and to hear himself invited to jump in by the boys who were going for a sail. away they went, further and further from the shore, laughing and talking. the boys were so busy telling wonderful sea-tales to the young stranger that they did not notice how far they had gone. then suddenly they looked ahead and sat speechless with fear. a great moorish galley was bearing down upon them, its rows of oars flashed in the sunlight, and its great painted sails towered above their heads. it was no use trying to escape. those strong rowers easily overtook them, and in a few minutes filippo and his companions were hoisted up on board the galley. it was all so sudden that it seemed like a dream. but the chains were very real that were fastened round their wrists and ankles, and the dark cruel faces of the moors as they looked on smiling at their misery were certainly no dream. then followed long days of misery when the new slaves toiled at the oars under the blazing sun, and nights of cold and weariness. many a time did filippo long for the quiet convent, the kindly brothers, and the long peaceful days. many a time did he long to hear the bells calling him to prayer, which had once only filled him with restless impatience. but at last the galley reached the coast of barbary, and the slaves were unchained from the oars and taken ashore. in all his misery filippo's keen eyes still watched with interest the people around him, and he was never tired of studying the swarthy faces and curious garments of the moorish pirates. then one day when he happened to be near a smooth white wall, he took a charred stick from a fire which was built close by, and began to draw the figure of his master. what a delight it was to draw those rapid strokes and feel the likeness grow beneath his fingers! he was so much interested that he did not notice the crowd that gathered gradually round him, but he worked steadily on until the figure was finished. just as the band of monks had stood silent round his first picture in the cloister of the carmine, so these dark moors stood still in wonder and amazement gazing upon the bold black figure sketched upon the smooth white wall. no one had ever seen such a thing in that land before, and it seemed to them that this man must be a dealer in magic. they whispered together, and one went off hurriedly to fetch the captain. the master, when he came, was as astonished as the men. he could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw a second self drawn upon the wall, more like than his own shadow. this indeed must be no common man; and he ordered that filippo's chains should be immediately struck off, and that he should be treated with respect and honour. nothing now was too good for this man of magic, and before long filippo was put on board a ship and carried safely back to italy. they put him ashore at naples, and for some little time filippo stayed there painting pictures for the king; but his heart was in his own beloved town, and very soon he returned to florence. perhaps he did not deserve a welcome, but every one was only too delighted to think that the runaway had really returned. even the prior, though he shook his head, was glad to welcome back the brother whose painting had already brought fame and honour to the convent. but in spite of all the troubles filippo had gone through, he still dearly loved the merry world and all its pleasures. for a long time he would paint his saints and angels with all due diligence, and then he would dash down brushes and pencils, leave his paints scattered around, and of he would go for a holiday. then the work would come to a stand-still, and people must just wait until filippo should feel inclined to begin again. the great cosimo de medici, who was always the friend of painters, desired above all things that fra filippo should paint a picture for him. and what is more, having heard so many tales about the idle ways of this same brother, he was determined that the picture should be painted without any interruptions. 'fra filippo shall take no holidays while at work for me,' he said, as he talked the matter over with the prior. 'that may not be so easy as thou thinkest,' said the prior, for he knew filippo better than did this great cosimo. but cosimo did not see any difficulty in the matter whatever. high in his palace he prepared a room for the painter, and placed there everything he could need. no comfort was lacking, and when filippo came he was treated as an honoured guest, except for one thing. whenever the heavy door of his room swung to, there was a grating sound heard, and the key in the lock was turned from outside. so filippo was really a captive in his handsome prison. that was all very well for a few days. filippo laughed as he painted away, and laid on the tender blue of the virgin's robe, and painted into her eyes the solemn look which he had so often seen on the face of some poor peasant woman as she knelt at prayer. but after a while he grew restless and weary of his work. 'plague take this great man and his fine manners,' he cried. 'does he think he can catch a lark and train it to sing in a cage at his bidding? i am weary of saints and angels. i must out to breathe the fresh sweet air of heaven.' but the key was always turned in the lock and the door was strong. there was the window, but it was high above the street, and the grey walls, built of huge square stones, might well have been intended to enclose a prison rather than a palace. it was a dark night, and the air felt hot as filippo leaned out of the window. scarce a breath stirred the still air, and every sound could be heard distinctly. far below in the street he could hear the tread of the people's feet, and catch the words of a merry song as a company of boys and girls danced merrily along. 'flower of the rose, if i've been happy, what matter who knows,' they sang. it was all too tempting; out he must get. filippo looked round his room, and his eye rested on the bed. with a shout of triumphant delight he ran towards it. first he seized the quilt and tore it into strips, then the blankets, then the sheets. 'whoever saw a grander rope?' he chuckled to himself as he knotted the ends together. quick as thought he tied it to the iron bar that ran across his window, and, squeezing out, he began to climb down, hand over hand, dangling and swinging to and fro. the rope was stout and good, and now he could steady himself by catching his toes in the great iron rings fastened into the wall, until at last he dropped breathless into the street below. next day, when cosimo came to see how the painting went on, he saw indeed the pictures and the brushes, but no painter was there. quickly he stepped to the open window, and there he saw the dangling rope of sheets, and guessed at once how the bird had flown. through the streets they searched for the missing painter, and before long he was found and brought back. filippo tried to look penitent, but his eyes were dancing with merriment, and cosimo must needs laugh too. 'after all,' said filippo, 'my talent is not like a beast of burden, to be driven and beaten into doing its work. it is rather like one of those heavenly visitors whom we willingly entertain when they deign to visit us, but whom we can never force either to come or go at will.' 'thou art right, friend painter,' answered the great man. 'and when i think how thou and thy talent might have taken wings together, had not the rope held good, i vow i will never seek to keep thee in against thy will again.' 'then will i work all the more willingly,' answered filippo. so with doors open, and freedom to come and go, filippo no longer wished to escape, but worked with all his heart. the beautiful madonna and angel were soon finished, and besides he painted a wonderful picture of seven saints with st. john sitting in their midst. from far and near came requests that fra filippo lippi should paint pictures for different churches and convents. he would much rather have painted the scenes and the people he saw every day, but he remembered the prior's lecture, and still painted only the stories of saints and holy people--the gentle madonna with her scarlet book of prayers, the dove fluttering near, and the angel messenger with shining wings bearing the lily branch. true, the saints would sometimes look out of his pictures with the faces of some of his friends, but no one seemed to notice that. on the whole his was a happy life, and he was always ready to paint for any one that should ask him. many people now were proud to know the famous young painter, but his old companion fra diamante was still the friend he loved best. whenever it was possible they still would work together; so, great was their delight when one day an order came from prato that they should both go there to paint the walls of san stefano. 'good-bye to old florence for a while,' cried filippo as they set out merrily together. he looked back as he spoke at the spires and sunbaked roofs, the white marble facade of san miniato, and the dark cypresses standing clear against the pure warm sky of early spring. 'i am weary of your great men and all your pomp and splendour. something tells me we shall have a golden time among the good folk of prato.' perhaps it was the springtime that made filippo so joyous that morning as he rode along the dusty white road. spring had come with a glad rush, as she ever comes in italy, scattering on every side her flowers and favours. from under the dead brown leaves of autumn, violets pushed their heads and perfumed all the air. under the grey olives the sprouting corn spread its tender green, and the scarlet and purple of the anemones waved spring's banner far and near. it was good to be alive on such a day. arrived at prato, the two painters, with a favourite pupil called botticelli, worked together diligently, and covered wall after wall with their frescoes. it seemed as if they would never be done, for each church and convent had work awaiting them. 'truly,' said filippo one day when he was putting the last touches to a portrait of fra diamante, whom he had painted into his picture of the death of st. stephen, 'i will undertake no more work for a while. it is full time we had a holiday together.' but even as he spoke a message was brought to him from the good abbess of the convent of santa margherita, begging him to come and paint an altarpiece for the sisters' chapel. 'ah, well, what must be, must be,' he said to fra diamante, who stood smiling by. 'i will do what i can to please these holy women, but after that--no more.' the staid and sober abbess met him at the convent door, and silently led him through the sunny garden, bright with flowers, where the lizards darted to right and left as they walked past the fountain and entered the dim, cool chapel. in a low, sweet voice she told him what they would have him paint, and showed him the space above the high altar where the picture was to be placed. 'our great desire is that thou shouldst paint for us the holy virgin with the blessed child on the night of the nativity,' she said. the painter seemed to listen, but his attention wandered, and all the time he wished himself back in the sunny garden, where he had seen a fair young face looking through the pink sprays of almond blossoms, while the music of the vesper hymn sounded sweet and clear in his ears. 'i will begin to-morrow,' he said with a start when the low voice of the abbess stopped. 'i will paint the madonna and babe as thou desirest.' so next day the work began. and each time the abbess noiselessly entered the room where the painter was at work and watched the picture grow beneath his hand, she felt more and more sure that she had done right in asking this painter to decorate their beloved chapel. true, it was said by many that the young artist was but a worldly minded man, not like the blessed fra angelico, the heavenly painter of san marco; but his work was truly wonderful, and his handsome face looked good, even if a somewhat merry smile was ever wont to lurk about his mouth and in his eyes. then came a morning when the abbess found filippo standing idle, with a discontented look upon his face. he was gazing at the unfinished picture, and for a while he did not see that any one had entered the room. 'is aught amiss?' asked the gentle voice at his side, and filippo turned and saw the abbess. 'something indeed seems amiss with my five fingers,' said filippo, with his quick bright smile. 'time after time have i tried to paint the face of the madonna, and each time i must needs paint it out again.' then a happy thought came into his mind. 'i have seen a face sometimes as i passed through the convent garden which is exactly what i want,' he cried. 'if thou wouldst but let the maiden sit where i can see her for a few hours each day, i can promise thee that the madonna will be finished as thou wouldst wish.' the abbess stood in deep thought for a few minutes, for she was puzzled to know what she should do. 'it is the child lucrezia,' she thought to herself. 'she who was sent here by her father, the noble buti of florence. she is but a novice still, and there can be no harm in allowing her to lend her fair face as a model for our lady.' so she told filippo it should be as he wished. it was dull in the convent, and lucrezia was only too pleased to spend some hours every morning, idly sitting in the great chair, while the young painter talked to her and told her stories while he painted. she counted the hours until it was time to go back, and grew happier each day as the madonna's face grew more and more beautiful. surely there was no one so good or so handsome as this wonderful artist. lucrezia could not bear to think how dull her life would be when he was gone. then one day, when it happened that the abbess was called away and they were alone, filippo told lucrezia that he loved her and could not live without her; and although she was frightened at first, she soon grew happy, and told him that she was ready to go with him wherever he wished. but what would the good nuns think of it? would they ever let her go? no; they must think of some other plan. to-morrow was the great festa of prato, when all the nuns walked in procession to see the holy centola, or girdle, which the madonna had given to st. thomas. lucrezia must take care to walk on the outside of the procession, and to watch for a touch upon the arm as she passed. the festa day dawned bright and clear, and all prato was early astir. procession after procession wound its way to the church where the relic was to be shown, and the crowd grew denser every moment. presently came the nuns of santa margherita. a figure in the crowd pressed nearer. lucrezia felt a touch upon her arm, and a strong hand clasped hers. the crowd swayed to and fro, and in an instant the two figures disappeared. no one noticed that the young novice was gone, and before the nuns thought of looking for their charge lucrezia was on her way to florence, her horse led by the painter whom she loved, while his good friend fra diamante rode beside her. then the storm burst. lucrezia's father was furious, the good nuns were dismayed, and every one shook their heads over this last adventure of the florentine painter. but luckily for filippo, the great cosimo still stood his friend and helped him through it all. he it was who begged the pope to allow fra filippo to marry lucrezia (for monks, of course, were never allowed to marry), and the pope, too, was kind and granted the request, so that all went well. now indeed was lucrezia as happy as the day was long, and when the spring returned once more to florence, a baby filippo came with the violets and lilies. 'how wilt thou know us apart if thou callest him filippo?' asked the proud father. 'ah, he is such a little one, dear heart,' lucrezia answered gaily. 'we will call him filippino, and then there can be no mistake.' there was no more need now to seek for pleasures out of doors. filippo painted his pictures and lived his happy home life without seeking any more adventures. his madonnas grew ever more beautiful, for they were all touched with the beauty that shone from lucrezia's fair face, and the infant christ had ever the smile and the curly golden hair of the baby filippino. and by and by a little daughter came to gladden their hearts, and then indeed their cup of joy was full. 'what name shall we give the little maid?' said filippo. 'methought thou wouldst have it lucrezia,' answered the mother. 'there is but one lucrezia in all the world for me,' he said. 'none other but thee shall bear that name.' as they talked a knock sounded at the door, and presently the favourite pupil, sandro, looked in. there was a shout of joy from little filippino, and the young man lifted the child in his arms and smiled with the look of one who loves children. 'come, sandro, and see the little new flower,' said filippo. 'is she not as fair as the roses which thou dost so love to paint?' then, as the young man looked with interest at the tiny face, filippo clapped him on the shoulder. 'i have it!' he cried. 'she shall be called after thee, alessandra. some day she will be proud to think that she bears thy name.' for already filippo knew that this pupil of his would ere long wake the world to new wonder. the only clouds that hid the sunshine of lucrezia's life was when filippo was obliged to leave her for a while and paint his pictures in other towns. she always grew sad when his work in florence drew to a close, for she never knew where his next work might lie. 'well,' said filippo one night as he returned home and caught up little filippino in his arms, 'the picture for the nuns of san ambrogio is finished at last! truly they have saints and angels enough this time--rows upon rows of sweet faces and white lilies. and the sweetest face of all is thine, saint lucy, kneeling in front with thy hand beneath the chin of this young cherub.' 'is it indeed finished so soon?' asked lucrezia, a wistful note creeping into her voice. 'ay, and to-morrow i must away to spoleto to begin my work at the chapel of our lady. but look not so sad, dear heart; before three months are past, by the time the grapes are gathered, i will return.' but it was sad work parting, though it might only be for three months, and even her little son could not make his mother smile, though he drew wonderful pictures for her of birds and beasts, and told her he meant to be a great painter like his father when he grew up. next day filippo started, and with him went his good friend fra diamante. 'fare thee well, filippo. take good care of him, friend diamante,' cried lucrezia; and she stood watching until their figures disappeared at the end of the long white road, and then went inside to wait patiently for their return. the summer days passed slowly by. the cheeks of the peaches grew soft and pink under the kiss of the sun, the figs showed ripe and purple beneath the green leaves, and the grapes hung in great transparent clusters of purple and gold from the vines that swung between the poplar-trees. then came the merry days of vintage, and the juice was pressed out of the ripe grapes. 'now he will come back,' said lucrezia, 'for he said "by the time the grapes are gathered i will return."' the days went slowly by, and every evening she stood in the loggia and gazed across the hills. then she would point out the long white road to little filippino. 'thy father will come along that road ere long,' she said, and joy sang in her voice. then one evening as she watched as usual her heart beat quickly. surely that figure riding so slowly along was fra diamante? but where was filippo, and why did his friend ride so slowly? when he came near and entered the house she looked into his face, and all the joy faded from her eyes. 'you need not tell me,' she cried; 'i know that filippo is dead.' it was but too true. the faithful friend had brought the sad news himself. no one could tell how filippo had died. a few short hours of pain and then all was over. some talked of poison. but who could tell? there had just been time to send his farewell to lucrezia, and to pray his friend to take charge of little filippino. so, as she listened, joy died out of lucrezia's life. spring might come again, and summer sunshine make others glad, but for her it would be ever cold, bleak winter. for never more should her heart grow warm in the sunshine of filippo's smile--that sunshine which had made every one love him, in spite of his faults, ever since he ran about the streets, a little ragged boy, in the old city of florence. sandro botticelli we must now go back to the days when fra filippo lippi painted his pictures and so brought fame to the carmine convent. there was at that time in florence a good citizen called mariano filipepi, an honest, well-to-do man, who had several sons. these sons were all taught carefully and well trained to do each the work he chose. but the fourth son, alessandro, or sandro as he was called, was a great trial to his father. he would settle to no trade or calling. restless and uncertain, he turned from one thing to another. at one time he would work with all his might, and then again become as idle and fitful as the summer breeze. he could learn well and quickly when he chose, but then there were so few things that he did choose to learn. music he loved, and he knew every song of the birds, and anything connected with flowers was a special joy to him. no one knew better than he how the different kinds of roses grew, and how the lilies hung upon their stalks. 'and what, i should like to know, is going to be the use of all this,' the good father would say impatiently, 'as long as thou takest no pains to read and write and do thy sums? what am i to do with such a boy, i wonder?' then in despair the poor man decided to send sandro to a neighbour's workshop, to see if perhaps his hands would work better than his head. the name of this neighbour was botticelli, and he was a goldsmith, and a very excellent master of his art. he agreed to receive sandro as his pupil, so it happened that the boy was called by his master's name, and was known ever after as sandro botticelli. sandro worked for some time with his master, and quickly learned to draw designs for the goldsmith's work. in those days painters and goldsmiths worked a great deal together, and sandro often saw designs for pictures and listened to the talk of the artists who came to his master's shop. gradually, as he looked and listened, his mind was made up. he would become a painter. all his restless longings and day dreams turned to this. all the music that floated in the air as he listened to the birds' song, the gentle dancing motion of the wind among the trees, all the colours of the flowers, and the graceful twinings of the rose-stems--all these he would catch and weave into his pictures. yes, he would learn to paint music and motion, and then he would be happy. 'so now thou wilt become a painter,' said his father, with a hopeless sigh. truly this boy was more trouble than all the rest put together. here he had just settled down to learn how to become a good goldsmith, and now he wished to try his hand at something else. well, it was no use saying 'no.' the boy could never be made to do anything but what he wished. there was the carmelite monk fra filippo lippi, of whom all, men were talking. it was said he was the greatest painter in florence. the boy should have the best teaching it was possible to give him, and perhaps this time he would stick to his work. so sandro was sent as a pupil to fra filippo, and he soon became a great favourite with the happy, sunny-tempered master. the quick eye of the painter soon saw that this was no ordinary pupil. there was something about sandro's drawing that was different to anything that filippo had ever seen before. his figures seemed to move, and one almost heard the wind rustling in their flowing drapery. instead of walking, they seemed to be dancing lightly along with a swaying motion as if to the rhythm of music. the very rose-leaves the boy loved to paint, seemed to flutter down to the sound of a fairy song. filippo was proud of his pupil. 'the world will one day hear more of my sandro botticelli,' he said; and, young though the boy was, he often took him to different places to help him in his work. so it happened that, in that wonderful spring of filippo's life, sandro too was at prato, and worked there with fra diamante. and in after years when the master's little daughter was born, she was named alessandra, after the favourite pupil, to whom was also left the training of little filippino. now, indeed, sandros good old father had no further cause to complain. the boy had found the work he was most fitted for, and his name soon became famous in florence. it was the reign of gaiety and pleasure in the city of florence at that time. lorenzo the magnificent, the son of cosimo de medici, was ruler now, and his court was the centre of all that was most splendid and beautiful. rich dresses, dainty food, music, gay revels, everything that could give pleasure, whether good or bad, was there. lorenzo, like his father, was always glad to discover a new painter, and botticelli soon became a great favourite at court. but pictures of saints and angels were somewhat out of fashion at that time, for people did not care to be reminded of anything but earthly pleasures. so botticelli chose his subjects to please the court, and for a while ceased to paint his sad-eyed madonnas. what mattered to him what his subject was? let him but paint his dancing figures, tripping along in their light flowing garments, keeping time to the music of his thoughts, and the subject might be one of the old greek tales or any other story that served his purpose. all the gay court dresses, the rich quaint robes of the fair ladies, helped to train the young painter's fancy for flowing draperies and wonderful veils of filmy transparent gauze. there was one fair lady especially whom sandro loved to paint--the beautiful simonetta, as she is still called. first he painted her as venus, who was born of the sea foam. in his picture she floats to the shore standing in a shell, her golden hair wrapped round her. the winds behind blow her onward and scatter pink and red roses through the air. on the shore stands spring, who holds out a mantle, flowers nestling in its folds, ready to enwrap the goddess when the winds shall have wafted her to land. then again we see her in his wonderful picture of 'spring,' and in another called 'mars and venus.' she was too great a lady to stoop to the humble painter, and he perhaps only looked up to her as a star shining in heaven, far out of the reach of his love. but he never ceased to worship her from afar. he never married or cared for any other fair face, just as the great poet dante, whom botticelli admired so much, dreamed only of his one love, beatrice. but sandro did not go sadly through life sighing for what could never be his. he was kindly and good-natured, full of jokes, and ready to make merry with his pupils in the workshop. it once happened that one of these pupils, biagio by name, had made a copy of one of sandro's pictures, a beautiful madonna surrounded by eight angels. this he was very anxious to sell, and the master kindly promised to help him, and in the end arranged the matter with a citizen of florence, who offered to buy it for six gold pieces. 'well, biagio,' said sandro, when his pupil came into the studio next morning, 'i have sold thy picture. let us now hang it up in a good light that the man who wishes to buy it may see it at its best. then will he pay thee the money.' biagio was overjoyed. 'oh, master,' he cried, 'how well thou hast done.' then with hands which trembled with excitement the pupil arranged the picture in the best light, and went to fetch the purchaser. now meanwhile botticelli and his other pupils had made eight caps of scarlet pasteboard such as the citizens of florence then wore, and these they fastened with wax on to the heads of the eight angels in the picture. presently biagio came back panting with joyful excitement, and brought with him the citizen, who knew already of the joke. the poor boy looked at his picture and then rubbed his eyes. what had happened? where were his angels? the picture must be bewitched, for instead of his angels he saw only eight citizens in scarlet caps. he looked wildly around, and then at the face of the man who had promised to buy the picture. of course he would refuse to take such a thing. but, to his surprise, the citizen looked well pleased, and even praised the work. 'it is well worth the money,' he said; 'and if thou wilt return with me to my house, i will pay thee the six gold pieces.' biagio scarcely knew what to do. he was so puzzled and bewildered he felt as if this must be a bad dream. as soon as he could, he rushed back to the studio to look again at that picture, and then he found that the red-capped citizens had disappeared, and his eight angels were there instead. this of course was not surprising, as sandro and his pupils had quickly removed the wax and taken off the scarlet caps. 'master, master,' cried the astonished pupil, 'tell me if i am dreaming, or if i have lost my wits? when i came in just now, these angels were florentine citizens with red caps on their heads, and now they are angels once more. what may this mean?' 'i think, biagio, that this money must have turned thy brain round,' said botticelli gravely. 'if the angels had looked as thou sayest, dost thou think the citizen would have bought the picture?' 'that is true,' said biagio, shaking his head solemnly; 'and yet i swear i never saw anything more clearly.' and the poor boy, for many a long day, was afraid to trust his own eyes, since they had so basely deceived him. but the next thing that happened at the studio did not seem like a joke to the master, for a weaver of cloth came to live close by, and his looms made such a noise and such a shaking that sandro was deafened, and the house shook so greatly that it was impossible to paint. but though botticelli went to the weaver and explained all this most courteously, the man answered roughly, 'can i not do what i like with my own house?' so sandro was angry, and went away and immediately ordered a great square of stone to be brought, so big that it filled a waggon. this he had placed on the top of his wall nearest to the weaver's house, in such a way that the least shake would bring it crashing down into the enemy's workshop. when the weaver saw this he was terrified, and came round at once to the studio. 'take down that great stone at once,' he shouted. 'do you not see that it would crush me and my workshop if it fell?' 'not at all,' said botticelli. 'why should i take it down? can i not do as i like with my own house?' and this taught the weaver a lesson, so that he made less noise and shaking, and sandro had the best of the joke after all. there were no idle days of dreaming now for sandro. as soon as one picture was finished another was wanted. money flowed in, and his purse was always full of gold, though he emptied it almost as fast as it was filled. his work for the pope at rome alone was so well paid that the money should have lasted him for many a long day, but in his usual careless way he spent it all before he returned to florence. perhaps it was the gay life at lorenzo's splendid court that had taught him to spend money so carelessly, and to have no thought but to eat, drink, and be merry. but very soon a change began to steal over his life. there was one man in florence who looked with sad condemning eyes on all the pleasure-loving crowd that thronged the court of lorenzo the magnificent. in the peaceful convent of san marco, whose walls the angel-painter had covered with pictures 'like windows into heaven,' the stern monk savonarola was grieving over the sin and vanity that went on around him. he loved florence with all his heart, and he could not bear the thought that she was forgetting, in the whirl of pleasure, all that was good and pure and worth the winning. then, like a battle-cry, his voice sounded through the city, and roused the people from their foolish dreams of ease and pleasure. every one flocked to the great cathedral to hear savonarola preach, and sandro botticelli left for a while his studio and his painting and became a follower of the great preacher. never again did he paint those pictures of earthly subjects which had so delighted lorenzo. when he once more returned to his work, it was to paint his sad-eyed madonnas; and the music which still floated through his visions was now like the song of angels. the boys of florence especially had grown wild and rough during the reign of pleasure, and they were the terror of the city during carnival time. they would carry long poles, or 'stili,' and bar the streets across, demanding money before they would let the people pass. this money they spent on drinking and feasting, and at night they set up great trees in the squares or wider streets and lighted huge bonfires around them. then would begin a terrible fight with stones, and many of the boys were hurt, and some even killed. no one had been able to put a stop to this until savonarola made up his mind that it should cease. then, as if by magic, all was changed. instead of the rough game of 'stili,' there were altars put up at the corners of the streets, and the boys begged money of the passers-by, not for their feasts, but for the poor. 'you shall not miss your bonfire,' said savonarola; 'but instead of a tree you shall burn up vain and useless things, and so purify the city.' so the children went round and collected all the 'vanities,' as they were called--wigs and masks and carnival dresses, foolish songs, bad books, and evil pictures; all were heaped high and then lighted to make one great bonfire. some people think that perhaps sandro threw into the bonfire of vanities some of his own beautiful pictures, but that we cannot tell. then came the sad time when the people, who at one time would have made savonarola their king, turned against him, in the same fickle way that crowds will ever turn. and then the great preacher, who had spent his life trying to help and teach them, and to do them good, was burned in the great square of that city which he had loved so dearly. after this it was long before botticelli cared to paint again. he was old and weary now, poor and sad, sick of that world which had treated with such cruelty the master whom he loved. one last picture he painted to show the triumph of good over evil. not with the sword or the might of great power is the triumph won, says sandro to us by this picture, but by the little hand of the christ child, conquering by love and drawing all men to him. this adoration of the magi is in our own national gallery in london, and is the only painting which botticelli ever signed. 'i, alessandro, painted this picture during the troubles of italy ... when the devil was let loose for the space of three and a half years. afterwards shall he be chained, and we shall see him trodden down as in this picture.' it is evident that botticelli meant by this those sad years of struggle against evil which ended in the martyrdom of the great preacher, and he has placed savonarola among the crowd of worshippers drawn to his feet by the infant christ. it is sad to think of those last days when sandro was too old and too weary to paint. he who had loved to make his figures move with dancing feet, was now obliged to walk with crutches. the roses and lilies of spring were faded now, and instead of the music of his youth he heard only the sound of harsh, ungrateful voices, in the flowerless days of poverty and old age. there is always something sad too about his pictures, but through the sadness, if we listen, we may hear the angel-song, and understand it better if we have in our minds the prayer which botticelli left for us. 'oh, king of wings and lord of lords, who alone rulest always in eternity, and who correctest all our wanderings, giver of melody to the choir of angels, listen thou a little to our bitter grief, and come and rule us, oh thou highest king, with thy love which is so sweet.' domenico ghirlandaio ghirlandaio! what a difficult name that sounds to our english ears. but it has a very simple meaning, and when you understand it the difficulty will vanish. it all happened in this way. domenico's father was a goldsmith, one of the cleverest goldsmiths in florence, and he was specially famous for making garlands or wreaths of gold and silver. it was the fashion then for the young maidens of florence to wear these garlands, or 'ghirlande' as they were called, on their heads, and because this goldsmith made them better than any one else they gave him the name of ghirlandaio, which means 'maker of garlands,' and that became the family name. when the time came for the boy domenico to learn a trade, he was sent, of course, to his father's workshop. he learned so quickly, and worked with such strong, clever fingers, that his father was delighted. 'the boy will make the finest goldsmith of his day,' he said proudly, as he watched him twisting the delicate golden wire and working out his designs in beaten silver. so he was set to make the garlands, and for a while he was contented and happy. it was such exquisite work to twine into shape the graceful golden leaves, with here and there a silver lily or a jewelled rose, and to dream of the fair head on which the garland would rest. but the making of garlands did not satisfy domenico for long, and like botticelli he soon began to dream of becoming a painter. you must remember that in those days goldsmiths and painters had much in common, and often worked together. the goldsmith made his picture with gold and silver and jewels, while the painter drew his with colours, but they were both artists. so as the young ghirlandaio watched these men draw their great designs and listened to their talk, he began to feel that the goldsmith's work was cramped and narrow, and he longed for a larger, grander work. day by day the garlands were more and more neglected, and every spare moment was spent drawing the faces of those who came to the shop, or even those of the passers-by. but although, ere long, ghirlandaio left his father's shop and learned to make pictures with colours, instead of with gold, silver, and jewels, still the training he had received in his goldsmith's work showed to the end in all his pictures. he painted the smallest things with extreme care, and was never tired of spreading them over with delicate ornaments and decorations. it is a great deal the outward show with ghirlandaio, and not so much the inward soul, that we find in his pictures, though he had a wonderful gift of painting portraits. these portraits painted by the young ghirlandaio seemed very wonderful to the admiring florentines. from all his pictures looked out faces which they knew and recognised immediately. there, in a group of saints, or in a crowd of figures around the infant christ, they saw the well-known faces of florentine nobles, the great ladies from the palaces, ay, and even the men of the market-place, and the poor peasant women who sold eggs and vegetables in the streets. once he painted an old bishop with a pair of spectacles resting on his nose. it was the first time that spectacles had ever been put into a picture. then off he must go to rome, like every one else, to add his share to the famous frescoes of the vatican. but it was in florence that most of his work was done. in the church of santa maria novella there was a great chapel which belonged to the ricci family. it had once been covered by beautiful frescoes, but now it was spoilt by damp and the rain that came through the leaking roof. the noble family, to whom the chapel belonged, were poor and could not afford to have the chapel repainted, but neither would they allow any one else to decorate it, lest it should pass out of their hands. now another noble family, called the tournabuoni, when they heard of the fame of the new painter, greatly desired to have a chapel painted by him in order to do honour to their name and family. accordingly they went to the ricci family and offered to have the whole chapel painted and to pay the artist themselves. moreover, they said that the arms or crest of the ricci family should be painted in the most honourable part of the chapel, that all might see that the chapel still belonged to them. to this the ricci family gladly agreed, and ghirlandaio was set to work to cover the walls with his frescoes. 'i will give thee twelve hundred gold pieces when it is done,' said giovanni tournabuoni, 'and if i like it well, then shalt thou have two hundred more.' here was good pay indeed. ghirlandaio set to work with all speed, and day by day the frescoes grew. for four years he worked hard, from morning until night, until at last the walls were covered. one of the subjects which he chose for these frescoes was the story of the life of the virgin, so often painted by florentine artists. this story i will tell you now, that your eyes may take greater pleasure in the pictures when you see them. the bible story of the virgin mary begins when the angel gabriel came to tell her of the birth of the baby jesus, but there are many stories or legends about her before that time, and this is one which the italians specially loved to paint. among the blue hills of galilee, in the little town of nazareth, there lived a man and his wife whose names were joachim and anna. though they were rich and had many flocks of sheep which fed in the rich pastures around, still there was one thing which god had not given them and which they longed for more than all beside. they had no child. they had hoped that god would send one, but now they were both growing old, and hope began to fade. joachim was a very good man, and gave a third of all that he had as an offering to the temple; but one sad day when he took his gift, the high priest at the altar refused to take it. 'god has shown that he will have nought of thee,' said the priest, 'since thou hast no child to come after thee.' filled with shame and grief joachim would not go home to his wife, but instead he wandered out into the far-of fields where his shepherds were feeding the flocks, and there he stayed forty days. with bowed head and sad eyes when he was alone, he knelt and prayed that god would tell him what he had done to deserve this disgrace. and as he prayed god sent an angel to comfort him. the angel placed his hand upon the bowed head of the poor old man, and told him to be of good cheer and to return home at once to his wife. 'for god will even now send thee a child,' said the angel. so with a thankful heart which never doubted the angel's word, joachim turned his face homewards. meanwhile, at home, anna had been sorrowing alone. that same day she had gone into the garden, and, as she wandered among the flowers, she wept bitterly and prayed that god would send her comfort. then there appeared to her also an angel, who told her that god had heard her prayer and would send her the child she longed for. 'go now,' the angel added, 'and meet thy husband joachim, who is even now returning to thee, and thou shall find him at the entrance to the golden gate.' so the husband and wife did as the angel bade them, and met together at the golden gate. and the angel of promise hovered above them, and laid a hand in blessing upon both their heads. there was no need for speech. as joachim and anna looked into each other's eyes and read there the solemn joy of the angel's message, their hearts were filled with peace and comfort. and before long the angel's promise was fulfilled, and a little daughter was born to anna and joachim. in their joy and thankfulness they said she should not be as other children, but should serve in the temple as little samuel had done. the name they gave the child was mary, not knowing even then that she was to be the mother of our lord. the little maid was but three years old when her parents took her to present her in the temple. she was such a little child that they almost feared she might be frightened to go up the steps to the great temple and meet the high priest alone. so they asked if she might go in company with the other children who were also on their way to the temple. but when the little band arrived at the temple steps, mary stepped forward and began to climb up, step by step, alone, while the other children and her parents watched wondering from below. straight up to the temple gates she climbed, and stood with little head bent low to receive the blessing of the great high priest. so the child was left there to be taught to serve god and to learn how to embroider the purple and fine linen for the priests' vestments. never before had such exquisite embroidery been done as that which mary's fingers so delicately stitched, for her work was aided by angel hands. sleeping or waking, the blessed angels never left her. when it was time that the maiden should be married, so many suitors came to seek her that it was difficult to know which to choose. to decide the matter they were all told to bring their staves or wands and leave them in the temple all night, that god might show by a sign who was the most worthy to be the guardian of the pure young maid. now among the suitors was a poor carpenter of nazareth called joseph, who was much older and much poorer than any of the other suitors. they thought it was foolish of him to bring his staff, nevertheless it was placed in the temple with the others. but when the morning came and the priest went into the temple, behold, joseph's staff had budded into leaves and flowers, and from among the blossoms there flew out a dove as white as snow. so it was known that joseph was to take charge of the young maid, and all the rest of the suitors seized their staves and broke them across their knees in rage and disappointment. then the story goes on to the birth of our saviour as it is told to you in the bible. it was this story which ghirlandaio painted on the walls of the chapel, as well as the history of john the baptist. then, as giovanni directed, he painted the arms of the tournabuoni on various shields all over the chapel, and only in the tabernacle of the sacrament on the high altar he painted a tiny coat of arms of the ricci family. the chapel was finished at last and every one flocked to see it, but first of all came the ricci, the owners of the chapel. they looked high and low, but nowhere could they see the arms of their family. instead, on all sides, they saw the arms of the tournabuoni. in a great rage they hurried to the council and demanded that giovanni tournabuoni should be punished. but when the facts were explained, and it was shown that the ricci arms had indeed been placed in the most honourable part, they were obliged to be content, though they vowed vengeance against the tournabuoni. neither did ghirlandaio get his extra two hundred gold pieces, for although giovanni was delighted with the frescoes he never paid the price he had promised. to the end of his days ghirlandaio loved nothing so much as to work from morning till night. nothing was too small or mean for him to do. he would even paint the hoops for women's baskets rather than send any work away from his shop. 'oh,' he cried, one day, 'how i wish i could paint all the walls around florence with my stories.' but there was no time to do all that. he was only forty-four years old when death came and bade him lay down his brushes and pencil, for his work was done. beneath his own frescoes they laid him to rest in the church of santa maria novella. and although we sometimes miss the soul in his pictures and weary of the gay outward decoration of goldsmith's work, yet there is something there which makes us love the grand show of fair ladies and strong men in the carefully finished work of this florentine 'maker of garlands.' filippino lippi the little curly-haired filippino, left in the charge of good fra diamante, soon showed that he meant to be a painter like his father. when, as a little boy, he drew his pictures and showed them proudly to his mother, he told her that he, too, would learn some day to be a great artist. and she, half smiling, would pat his curly head and tell him that he could at least try his best. then, after that sad day when lucrezia heard of filippo's death, and the happy little home was broken up, fra diamante began in earnest to train the boy who had been left under his care. he had plenty of money, for filippo had been well paid for the work at spoleto, and so it was decided that the boy should be placed in some studio where he could be taught all that was necessary. there was no fear of filippino ever wandering about the florentine streets cold and hungry as his father had done. and his training was very different too. instead of the convent and the kind monks, he was placed under the care of a great painter, and worked in the master's studio with other boys as well off as himself. the name of filippino's master was sandro botticelli, a florentine artist, who had been one of filippo's pupils and had worked with him in prato. fra diamante knew that he was the greatest artist now in florence, and that he would be able to teach the child better than any one else. filippino was a good, industrious boy, and had none of the faults which had so often led his father into so much mischief and so many strange adventures. his boyhood passed quietly by and he learned all that his master could teach him, and then began to paint his own pictures. strangely enough, his first work was to paint the walls of the carmille chapel--that same chapel where filippo and diamante had learned their lessons, and had gazed with such awe and reverence on masaccio's work. the great painter, ugly tom, was dead, and there were still parts of the chapel unfinished, so filippino was invited to fill the empty spaces with his work. no need for the new prior to warn this young painter against the sin of painting earthly pictures. the frescoes which daily grew beneath filippino's hands were saintly and beautiful. the tall angel in flowing white robes who so gently leads st. peter out of the prison door, shines with a pure fair light that speaks of heaven. the sleeping soldier looks in contrast all the more dull and heavy, while st. peter turns his eyes towards his gentle guide and folds his hands in reverence, wrapped in the soft reflected light of that fair face. and on the opposite wall, the sad face of st. peter looks out through the prison bars, while a brother saint stands outside, and with uplifted hand speaks comforting words to the poor prisoner. by slow degrees the chapel walls were finished, and after that there was much work ready for the young painter's hand. it is said that he was very fond of studying old roman ornaments and painted them into his pictures whenever it was possible, and became very famous for this kind of work. but it is the beauty of his madonnas and angels that makes us love his pictures, and we like to think that the memory of his gentle mother taught him how to paint those lovely faces. perhaps of all his pictures the most beautiful is one in the church of the badia in florence. it tells the story of the blessed st. bernard, and shows the saint in his desert home, as he sat among the rocks writing the history of the madonna. he had not been able to write that day; perhaps he felt dull, and none of his books, scattered around, were of any help. then, as he sat lost in thought, with his pen in his hand, the virgin herself stood before him, an angel on either side, and little angel faces pressed close behind her. laying a gentle hand upon his book, she seems to tell st. bernard all those golden words which his poor earthly pen had not been able yet to write. it used to be the custom long ago in italy to place in the streets sacred pictures or figures, that passers-by might be reminded of holy things and say a prayer in passing. and still in many towns you will find in some old dusty corner a beautiful picture, painted by a master hand. a gleam of colour will catch your eye, and looking up you see a picture or little shrine of exquisite blue-and-white glazed pottery, where the madonna kneels and worships the infant christ lying amongst the lilies at her feet. the old battered lamp which hangs in front of these shrines is still kept lighted by some faithful hand, and in spring-time the children will often come and lay little bunches of wild-flowers on the ledge below. 'it is for the jesu bambino,' they will say, and their little faces grow solemn and reverent as they kneel and say a prayer. then off again they go to their play. in a little side-street of prato, not far from the convent where filippino's father first saw lucrezia's lovely face in the sunny garden, there is one of these wayside shrines. it is painted by filippino, and is one of his most beautiful pictures. the sweet face of the madonna looks down upon the busy street below, and the holy child lifts his little hand in blessing, amid the saints which stand on either side. the glass that covers the picture is thick with dust, and few who pass ever stop to look up. the world is all too busy nowadays. the hurrying feet pass by, the unseeing eyes grow more and more careless. but filippino's beautiful madonna looks on with calm, sad eyes, and the christ child, surrounded by the cloud of little angel faces, still holds in his uplifted hand a blessing for those who seek it. like all the great florentine artists, filippino, as soon as he grew famous, was invited to rome, and he painted many pictures there. on his way he stopped for a while at spoleto, and there he designed a beautiful marble monument for his father's tomb. unlike that father, filippino was never fond of travel or adventure, and was always glad to return to florence and live his quiet life there. not even an invitation from the king of hungary could tempt him to leave home. it was in the great church of santa maria novella in florence that filippino painted his last frescoes. they are very real and lifelike, as one of the great painter's pupils once learned to his cost. filippino had, of course, many pupils who worked under him. they ground his colours and watched him work, and would sometimes be allowed to prepare the less important parts of the picture. now it happened that one day when the master had finished his work and had left the chapel, that one of the pupils lingered behind. his sharp eye had caught sight of a netted purse which lay in a dark corner, dropped there by some careless visitor, or perhaps by the master himself. the boy darted back and caught up the treasure; but at that moment the master turned back to fetch something he had forgotten. the boy looked quickly round. where could he hide his prize? in a moment his eye fell on a hole in the wall, underneath a step which filippino had been painting in the fresco. that was the very place, and he ran forward to thrust the purse inside. but, alas! the hole was only a painted one, and the boy was fairly caught, and was obliged with shame and confusion to give up his prize. scarcely were these frescoes finished when filippino was seized with a terrible fever, and he died almost as suddenly as his father had done. in those days when there was a funeral of a prince in florence, the florentines used to shut their shops, and this was considered a great mark of respect, and was paid only to those of royal blood. but on the day that filippino's funeral passed along the via dei servi, every shop there was closed and all florence mourned for him. 'some men,' they said, 'are born princes, and some raise themselves by their talents to be kings among men. our filippino was a prince in art, and so do we do honour to his title.' pietro perugino it was early morning, and the rays of the rising sun had scarcely yet caught the roofs of the city of perugia, when along the winding road which led across the plain a man and a boy walked with steady, purposelike steps towards the town which crowned the hill in front. the man was poorly dressed in the common rough clothes of an umbrian peasant. hard work and poverty had bent his shoulders and drawn stern lines upon his face, but there was a dignity about him which marked him as something above the common working man. the little boy who trotted barefoot along by the side of his father had a sweet, serious little face, but he looked tired and hungry, and scarcely fit for such a long rough walk. they had started from their home at castello delle pieve very early that morning, and the piece of black bread which had served them for breakfast had been but small. away in front stretched that long, white, never-ending road; and the little dusty feet that pattered so bravely along had to take hurried runs now and again to keep up with the long strides of the man, while the wistful eyes, which were fixed on that distant town, seemed to wonder if they would really ever reach their journey's end. 'art tired already, pietro?' asked the father at length, hearing a panting little sigh at his side. 'why, we are not yet half-way there! thou must step bravely out and be a man, for to-day thou shalt begin to work for thy living, and no longer live the life of an idle child.' the boy squared his shoulders, and his eyes shone. 'it is not i who am tired, my father,' he said. 'it is only that my legs cannot take such good long steps as thine; and walk as we will the road ever seems to unwind itself further and further in front, like the magic white thread which has no end.' the father laughed, and patted the child's head kindly. 'the end will come ere long,' he said. 'see where the mist lies at the foot of the hill; there we will begin to climb among the olive-trees and leave the dusty road. i know a quicker way by which we may reach the city. we will climb over the great stones that mark the track of the stream, and before the sun grows too hot we will have reached the city gates.' it was a great relief to the little hot, tired feet to feel the cool grass beneath them, and to leave the dusty road. the boy almost forgot his tiredness as he scrambled from stone to stone, and filled his hands with the violets which grew thickly on the banks, scenting the morning air with their sweetness. and when at last they came out once more upon the great white road before the city gates, there was so much to gaze upon and wonder at, that there was no room for thoughts of weariness or hunger. there stood the herds of great white oxen, patiently waiting to pass in. pietro wondered if their huge wide horns would not reach from side to side of the narrow street within the gates. there the shepherd-boys played sweet airs upon their pipes as they walked before their flocks, and led the silly frightened sheep out of the way of passing carts. women with bright-coloured handkerchiefs tied over their heads crowded round, carrying baskets of fruit and vegetables from the country round. carts full of scarlet and yellow pumpkins were driven noisily along. whips cracked, people shouted and talked as much with their hands as with their lips, and all were eager to pass through the great etruscan gateway, which stood grim and tall against the blue of the summer sky. much good service had that gateway seen, and it was as strong as when it had been first built hundreds of years before, and was still able to shut out an army of enemies, if perugia had need to defend herself. pietro and his father quickly threaded their way through the crowd, and passed through the gateway into the steep narrow street beyond. it was cool and quiet here. the sun was shut out by the tall houses, and the shadows lay so deep that one might have thought it was the hour of twilight, but for the peep of bright blue sky which showed between the overhanging eaves above. presently they reached the great square market-place, where all again was sunshine and bustle, with people shouting and selling their wares, which they spread out on the ground up to the very steps of the cathedral and all along in front of the palazzo publico. here the man stopped, and asked one of the passers-by if he could direct him to the shop of niccolo the painter. 'yonder he dwells,' answered the citizen, and pointed to a humble shop at the corner of the market-place. 'hast thou brought the child to be a model?' pietro held his head up proudly, and answered quickly for himself. 'i am no longer a child,' he said; 'and i have come to work and not to sit idle.' the man laughed and went his way, while father and son hurried on towards the little shop and entered the door. the old painter was busy, and they had to wait a while until he could leave his work and come to see what they might want. 'this is the boy of whom i spoke,' said the father as he pushed pietro forward by his shoulder. 'he is not well grown, but he is strong, and has learnt to endure hardness. i promise thee that he will serve thee well if thou wilt take him as thy servant.' the painter smiled down at the little eager face which was waiting so anxiously for his answer. 'what canst thou do?' he asked the boy. 'everything,' answered pietro promptly. 'i can sweep out thy shop and cook thy dinner. i will learn to grind thy colours and wash thy brushes, and do a man's work.' 'in faith,' laughed the painter, 'if thou canst do everything, being yet so young, thou wilt soon be the greatest man in perugia, and bring great fame to this fair city. then will we call thee no longer pietro vanucci, but thou shalt take the city's name, and we will call thee perugino.' the master spoke in jest, but as time went on and he watched the boy at work, he marvelled at the quickness with which the child learned to perform his new duties, and began to think the jest might one day turn to earnest. from early morning until sundown pietro was never idle, and when the rough work was done he would stand and watch the master as he painted, and listen breathless to the tales which niccolo loved to tell. 'there is nothing so great in all the world as the art of painting,' the master would say. 'it is the ladder that leads up to heaven, the window which lets light into the soul. a painter need never be lonely or poor. he can create the faces he loves, while all the riches of light and colour and beauty are always his. if thou hast it in thee to be a painter, my little perugino, i can wish thee no greater fortune.' then when the day's work was done and the short spell of twilight drew near, the boy would leave the shop and run swiftly down the narrow street until he came to the grim old city gates. once outside, under the wide blue sky in the free open air of the country, he drew a long, long breath of pleasure, and quickly found a hidden corner in the cleft of the hoary trunk of an olive-tree, where no passer-by could see him. there he sat, his chin resting on his hands, gazing and gazing out over the plain below, drinking in the beauty with his hungry eyes. how he loved that great open space of sweet fresh air, in the calm pure light of the evening hour. that white light, which seemed to belong more to heaven than to earth, shone on everything around. away in the distance the purple hills faded into the sunset sky. at his feet the plain stretched away, away until it met the mountains, here and there lifting itself in some little hill crowned by a lonely town whose roofs just caught the rays of the setting sun. the evening mist lay like a gossamer veil upon the low-lying lands, and between the little towns the long straight road could be seen, winding like a white ribbon through the grey and silver, and marked here and there by a dark cypress-tree or a tall poplar. and always there would be a glint of blue, where a stream or river caught the reflection of the sky and held it lovingly there, like a mirror among the rocks. but pietro did not have much time for idle dreaming. his was not an easy life, for niccolo made but little money with his painting, and the boy had to do all the work of the house besides attending to the shop. but all the time he was sweeping and dusting he looked forward to the happy days to come when he might paint pictures and become a famous artist. whenever a visitor came to the shop, pietro would listen eagerly to his talk and try to learn something of the great world of art. sometimes he would even venture to ask questions, if the stranger happened to be one who had travelled from afar. 'where are the most beautiful pictures to be found?' he asked one day when a florentine painter had come to the little shop and had been describing the glories he had seen in other cities. 'and where is it that the greatest painters dwell?' 'that is an easy question to answer, my boy,' said the painter. 'all that is fairest is to be found in florence, the most beautiful city in all the world, the city of flowers. there one may find the best of everything, but above all, the most beautiful pictures and the greatest of painters. for no one there can bear to do only the second best, and a man must attain to the very highest before the florentines will call him great. the walls of the churches and monasteries are covered with pictures of saints and angels, and their beauty no words can describe.' 'i too will go to florence, said pietro to himself, and every day he longed more and more to see that wonderful city. it was no use to wait until he should have saved enough money to take him there. he scarcely earned enough to live on from day to day. so at last, poor as he was, he started off early one morning and said good-bye to his old master and the hard work of the little shop in perugia. on he went down the same long white road which had seemed so endless to him that day when, as a little child, he first came to perugia. even now, when he was a strong young man, the way seemed long and weary across that great plain, and he was often foot-sore and discouraged. day after day he travelled on, past the great lake which lay like a sapphire in the bosom of the plain, past many towns and little villages, until at last he came in sight of the city of flowers. it was a wonderful moment to perugino, and he held his breath as he looked. he had passed the brow of the hill, and stood beside a little stream bordered by a row of tall, straight poplars which showed silvery white against the blue sky. beyond, nestling at the foot of the encircling hills, lay the city of his dreams. towers and palaces, a crowding together of pale red sunbaked roofs, with the great dome of the cathedral in the midst, and the silver thread of the arno winding its way between--all this he saw, but he saw more than this. for it seemed to him that the spirit of beauty hovered above the fair city, and he almost heard the rustle of her wings and caught a glimpse of her rainbow-tinted robe in the light of the evening sky. poor pietro! here was the world he longed to conquer, but he was only a poor country boy, and how was he to begin to climb that golden ladder of art which led men to fame and glory? well, he could work, and that was always a beginning. the struggle was hard, and for many a month he often went hungry and had not even a bed to lie on at night, but curled himself up on a hard wooden chest. then good fortune began to smile upon him. the florentine artists to whose studios he went began to notice the hardworking boy, and when they looked at his work, with all its faults and want of finish, they saw in it that divine something called genius which no one can mistake. then the doors of another world seemed to open to pietro. all day long he could now work at his beloved painting and learn fresh wonders as he watched the great men use the brush and pencil. in the studio of the painter verocchio he met the men of whose fame he had so often heard, and whose work he looked upon with awe and reverence. there was the good-tempered monk of the carmine, fra filipo lippi, the young botticelli, and a youth just his own age whom they called leonardo da vinci, of whom it was whispered already that he would some day be the greatest master of the age. these were golden days for perugino, as he was called, for the name of the city where he had come from was always now given to him. the pictures he had longed to paint grew beneath his hand, and upon his canvas began to dawn the solemn dignity and open-air spaciousness of those evening visions he had seen when he gazed across the umbrian plain. there was no noise of battle, no human passion in his pictures. his saints stood quiet and solemn, single figures with just a thread of interest binding them together, and always beyond was the great wide open world, with the white light shining in the sky, the blue thread of the river, and the single trees pointing upwards--dark, solemn cypress, or feathery larch or poplar. there was much for the young painter still to learn, and perhaps he learned most from the silent teaching of that little dark chapel of the carmine, where masaccio taught more wonderful lessons by his frescoes than any living artist could teach. then came the crowning honour when perugino received an invitation from the pope to go to rome and paint the walls of the sistine chapel. hence forth it was a different kind of life for the young painter. no need to wonder where he would get his next meal, no hard rough wooden chest on which to rest his weary limbs when the day's work was done. now he was royally entertained and softly lodged, and men counted it an honour to be in his company. but though he loved florence and was proud to do his painting in rome, his heart ever drew him back to the city on the hill whose name he bore. again he travelled along the winding road, and his heart beat fast as he drew nearer and saw the familiar towers and roofs of perugia. how well he remembered that long-ago day when the cool touch of the grass was so grateful to his little tired dusty feet! he stooped again to fill his hands with the sweet violets, and thought them sweeter than all the fame and fair show of the gay cities. and as he passed through the ancient gateway and threaded his way up the narrow street towards the little shop, he seemed to see once more the kindly smile of his old master and to hear him say, 'thou wilt soon be the greatest man in perugia, and we will call thee no longer pietro vanucci, but perugino.' so it had come to pass. here he was. no longer a little ragged, hungry boy, but a man whom all delighted to honour. truly this was a world of changes! a bigger studio was needed than the little old shop, for now he had more pictures to paint than he well knew how to finish. then, too, he had many pupils, for all were eager to enter the studio of the great master. there it was that one morning a new pupil was brought to him, a boy of twelve, whose guardians begged that perugino would teach and train him. perugino looked with interest at the child. seldom had he seen such a beautiful oval face, framed by such soft brown curls--a face so pure and lovable that even at first sight it drew out love from the hearts of those who looked at him. 'his father was also a painter,' said the guardian, 'and raphael, here, has caught the trick of using his pencil and brush, so we would have him learn of the greatest master in the land.' after some talk, the boy was left in the studio at perugia, and day by day perugino grew to love him more. it was not only that little raphael was clever and skilful, though that alone often made the master marvel. 'he is my pupil now, but some day he will be my master, and i shall learn of him,' perugino would often say as he watched the boy at work. but more than all, the pure sweet nature and the polished gentleness of his manners charmed the heart of the master, and he loved to have the boy always near him, and to teach him was his greatest pleasure. those quiet days in the perugia studio never lasted very long. from all quarters came calls to perugino, and, much as he loved work, he could not finish all that was wanted. it happened once when he was in florence that a certain prior begged him to come and fresco the walls of his convent. this prior was very famous for making a most beautiful and expensive blue colour which he was anxious should be used in the painting of the convent walls. he was a mean, suspicious man, and would not trust perugino with the precious blue colour, but always held it in his own hands and grudgingly doled it out in small quantities, torn between the desire to have the colour on his walls and his dislike to parting with anything so precious. as perugino noted this, he grew angry and determined to punish the prior's meanness. the next time therefore that there was a blue sky to be painted, he put at his side a large bowl of fresh water, and then called on the prior to put out a small quantity of the blue colour in a little vase. each time he dipped his brush into the vase, perugino washed it out with a swirl in the bowl at his side, so that most of the colour was left in the water, and very little was put on to the picture. 'i pray thee fill the vase again with blue,' he said carelessly when the colour was all gone. the prior groaned aloud, and turned grudgingly to his little bag. 'oh what a quantity of blue is swallowed up by this plaster!' he said, as he gazed at the white wall, which scarcely showed a trace of the precious colour. 'yes,' said perugino cheerfully, 'thou canst see thyself how it goes.' then afterwards, when the prior had sadly gone off with his little empty bag, perugino carefully poured the water from the bowl and gathered together the grains of colour which had sunk to the bottom. 'here is something that belongs to thee,' he said sternly to the astonished prior. 'i would have thee learn to trust honest men and not treat them as thieves. for with all thy suspicious care, it was easy to rob thee if i had had a mind.' during all these years in which perugino had worked so diligently, the art of painting had been growing rapidly. many of the new artists shook off the old rules and ideas, and began to paint in quite a new way. there was one man especially, called michelangelo, whose story you will hear later on, who arose like a giant, and with his new way and greater knowledge swept everything before him. perugino was jealous of all these new ideas, and clung more closely than ever to his old ideals, his quiet, dignified saints, and spacious landscapes. he talked openly of his dislike of the new style, and once he had a serious quarrel with the great michelangelo. there was a gathering of painters in perugino's studio that day. filippino lippi, botticelli, ghirlandaio, and leonardo were there, and in the background the pupil raphael was listening to the talk. 'what dost thou think of this new style of painting?' asked botticelli. 'to me it seems but strange and unpleasing. music and motion are delightful, but this violent twisting of limbs to show the muscles offends my taste.' 'yet it is most marvellously skilful,' said the young leonardo thoughtfully. 'but totally unfit for the proper picturing of saints and the blessed madonna,' said filippino, shaking his curly head. 'i never trouble myself about it,' said ghirlandaio. 'life is too short to attend to other men's work. it takes all my care and attention to look after mine own. but see, here comes the great michelangelo himself to listen to our criticism.' the curious, rugged face of the great artist looked good-naturedly on the company, but his strong knotted hands waved aside their greetings. 'so you were busy as usual finding fault with my work,' he said. 'come, friend perugino, tell me what thou hast found to grumble at.' 'i like not thy methods, and that i tell thee frankly,' answered perugino, an angry light shining in his eyes. 'it is such work as thine that drags the art of painting down from the heights of heavenly things to the low taste of earth. it robs it of all dignity and restfulness, and destroys the precious traditions handed down to us since the days of giotto.' the face of michelangelo grew angry and scornful as he listened to this. 'thou art but a dolt and a blockhead in art,' he said. 'thou wilt soon see that the day of thy saints and madonnas is past, and wilt cease to paint them over and over again in the same manner, as a child doth his lesson in a copy book.' then he turned and went out of the studio before any one had time to answer him. perugino was furiously angry and would not listen to reason, but must needs go before the great council and demand that they should punish michelangelo for his hard words. this of course the council refused to do, and perugino left florence for perugia, angry and sore at heart. it seemed hard, after all his struggles and great successes, that as he grew old people should begin to tire of his work, which they had once thought so perfect. but if the outside world was sometimes disappointing, he had always his home to turn to, and his beautiful wife chiare. he had married her in his beloved perugia, and she meant all the joy of life to him. he was so proud of her beauty that he would buy her the richest dresses and most costly jewels, and with his own hands would deck her with them. her brown eyes were like the depths of some quiet pool, her fair face and the wonderful soul that shone there were to him the most perfect picture in the world. 'i will paint thee once, that the world may be the richer,' said perugino, 'but only once, for thy beauty is too rare for common use. and i will paint thee not as an earthly beauty, but thou shalt be the angel in the story of tobias which thou knowest.' so he painted her as he said. and in our own national gallery we still have the picture, and we may see her there as the beautiful angel who leads the little boy tobias by the hand. up to the very last years of his life, perugino painted as diligently as he had ever done, but the peaceful days of perugia had long since given place to war and tumult, both within and without the city. then too a terrible plague swept over the countryside, and people died by thousands. to the hospital of fartignano, close to perugia, they carried perugino when the deadly plague seized him, and there he died. there was no time to think of grand funerals; the people were buried as quickly as possible, in whatever place lay closest at hand. so it came to pass that perugino was laid to rest in an open field under an oak-tree close by. later on his sons wished to have him buried in holy ground, and some say that this was done, but nothing is known for certain. perhaps if he could have chosen, he would have been glad to think that his body should rest under the shelter of the trees he loved to paint, in that waste openness of space which had always been his vision of beauty, since, as a little boy, he gazed across the umbrian plain, and the wonder of it sank into his soul. leonardo da vinci on the sunny slopes of monte albano, between florence and pisa, the little town of vinci lay high among the rocks that crowned the steep hillside. it was but a little town. only a few houses crowded together round an old castle in the midst, and it looked from a distance like a swallow's nest clinging to the bare steep rocks. here in the year leonardo, son of ser piero da vinci, was born. it was in the age when people told fortunes by the stars, and when a baby was born they would eagerly look up and decide whether it was a lucky or unlucky star which shone upon the child. surely if it had been possible in this way to tell what fortune awaited the little leonardo, a strange new star must have shone that night, brighter than the others and unlike the rest in the dazzling light of its strength and beauty. leonardo was always a strange child. even his beauty was not like that of other children. he had the most wonderful waving hair, falling in regular ripples, like the waters of a fountain, the colour of bright gold, and soft as spun silk. his eyes were blue and clear, with a mysterious light in them, not the warm light of a sunny sky, but rather the blue that glints in the iceberg. they were merry eyes too, when he laughed, but underneath was always that strange cold look. there was a charm about his smile which no one could resist, and he was a favourite with all. yet people shook their heads sometimes as they looked at him, and they talked in whispers of the old witch who had lent her goat to nourish the little leonardo when he was a baby. the woman was a dealer in black magic, and who knew but that the child might be a changeling? it was the old grandmother, mona lena, who brought leonardo up and spoilt him not a little. his father, ser piero, was a lawyer, and spent most of his time in florence, but when he returned to the old castle of vinci, he began to give leonardo lessons and tried to find out what the boy was fit for. but leonardo hated those lessons and would not learn, so when he was seven years old he was sent to school. this did not answer any better. the rough play of the boys was not to his liking. when he saw them drag the wings off butterflies, or torture any animal that fell into their hands, his face grew white with pain, and he would take no share in their games. the latin grammar, too, was a terrible task, while the many things he longed to know no one taught him. so it happened that many a time, instead of going to school, he would slip away and escape up into the hills, as happy as a little wild goat. here was all the sweet fresh air of heaven, instead of the stuffy schoolroom. here were no cruel, clumsy boys, but all the wild creatures that he loved. here he could learn the real things his heart was hungry to know, not merely words which meant nothing and led to nowhere. for hours he would lie perfectly still with his heels in the air and his chin resting in his hands, as he watched a spider weaving its web, breathless with interest to see how the delicate threads were turned in and out. the gaily painted butterflies, the fat buzzing bees, the little sharp-tongued green lizards, he loved to watch them all, but above everything he loved the birds. oh, if only he too had wings to dart like the swallows, and swoop and sail and dart again! what was the secret power in their wings? surely by watching he might learn it. sometimes it seemed as if his heart would burst with the longing to learn that secret. it was always the hidden reason of things that he desired to know. much as he loved the flowers he must pull their petals of, one by one, to see how each was joined, to wonder at the dusty pollen, and touch the honey-covered stamens. then when the sun began to sink he would turn sadly homewards, very hungry, with torn clothes and tired feet, but with a store of sunshine in his heart. his grandmother shook her head when leonardo appeared after one of his days of wandering. 'i know thou shouldst be whipped for playing truant,' she said; 'and i should also punish thee for tearing thy clothes.' 'ah! but thou wilt not whip me,' answered leonardo, smiling at her with his curious quiet smile, for he had full confidence in her love. 'well, i love to see thee happy, and i will not punish thee this time,' said his grandmother; 'but if these tales reach thy father's ears, he will not be so tender as i am towards thee.' and, sure enough, the very next time that a complaint was made from the school, his father happened to be at home, and then the storm burst. 'next time i will flog thee,' said ser piero sternly, with rising anger at the careless air of the boy. 'meanwhile we will see what a little imprisonment will do towards making thee a better child.' then he took the boy by the shoulders and led him to a little dark cupboard under the stairs, and there shut him up for three whole days. there was no kicking or beating at the locked door. leonardo sat quietly there in the dark, thinking his own thoughts, and wondering why there seemed so little justice in the world. but soon even that wonder passed away, and as usual when he was alone he began to dream dreams of the time when he should have learned the swallows' secrets and should have wings like theirs. but if there were complaints about leonardo's dislike of the boys and the latin grammar, there would be none about the lessons he chose to learn. indeed, some of the masters began to dread the boy's eager questions, which were sometimes more than they could answer. scarcely had he begun the study of arithmetic than he made such rapid progress, and wanted to puzzle out so many problems, that the masters were amazed. his mind seemed always eagerly asking for more light, and was never satisfied. but it was out on the hillside that he spent his happiest hours. he loved every crawling, creeping, or flying thing, however ugly. curious beasts which might have frightened another child were to him charming and interesting. there as he listened to the carolling of the birds and bent his head to catch the murmured song of the mountain-streams, the love of music began to steal into his heart. he did not rest then until he managed to get a lute and learned how to play upon it. and when he had mastered the notes and learned the rules of music, he began to play airs which no one had ever heard before, and to sing such strange sweet songs that the golden notes flowed out as fresh and clear as the song of a lark in the early morning of spring. 'the child is a changeling,' said some, as they saw leonardo tenderly lift a crushed lizard in his hand, or watched him play with a spotted snake or great hairy spider. 'a changeling perhaps,' said others, 'but one that hath the voice of an angel.' for every one stopped to listen when the boy's voice was heard singing through the streets of the little town. he was a puzzle to every one, and yet a delight to all, even when they understood him least. so time went on, and when leonardo was thirteen his father took him away to florence that he might begin to be trained for some special work. but what work? ah! that was the rub. the boy could do so many things well that it was difficult to fix on one. at that time there was living in florence an old man who knew a great deal about the stars, and who made wonderful calculations about them. he was a famous astronomer, but he cared not at all for honour or fame, but lived a simple quiet life by himself and would not mix with the gay world. few visitors ever came to see him, for it was known that he would receive no one, and so it was a great surprise to old toscanelli when one night a gentle knock sounded at his door, and a boy walked quietly in and stood before him. hastily the old man looked up, and his first thought was to ask the child how he dared enter without leave, and then ask him to be gone, but as he looked at the fair face he felt the charm of the curious smile, and the light in the blue eyes, and instead he laid his hand upon the boy's golden head and said: 'what dost thou seek, my son?' 'i would learn all that thou canst teach me,' said leonardo, for it was he. the old man smiled. 'behold the boundless self-confidence of youth!' he said. but as they talked together, and the boy asked his many eager questions, a great wonder awoke in the astronomer's mind, and his eyes shone with interest. this child-mind held depths of understanding such as he had never met with among his learned friends. day after day the old man and the boy bent eagerly together over their problems, and when night fell toscanelli would take the child up with him to his lonely tower above florence, and teach him to know the stars and to understand many things. 'this is all very well,' said ser piero, 'but the boy must do more than mere star-gazing. he must earn a living for himself, and methinks we might make a painter of him.' that very day, therefore, he gathered together some of leonardo's drawings which lay carelessly scattered about, and took them to the studio of verocchio the painter, who lived close by the ponte vecchio. 'dost thou think thou canst make aught of the boy?' he asked, spreading out the drawings before verocchio. the painter's quick eyes examined the work with deep interest. 'send him to me at once,' he said. 'this is indeed marvellous talent.' so leonardo entered the studio as a pupil, and learned all that could be taught him with the same quickness with which he learned anything that he cared to know. every one who saw his work declared that he would be the wonder of the age, but verocchio shook his head. 'he is too wonderful,' he said. 'he aims at too great perfection. he wants to know everything and do everything, and life is too short for that. he finishes nothing, because he is ever starting to do something else.' verocchio's words were true; the boy seldom worked long at one thing. his hands were never idle, and often, instead of painting, he would carve out tiny windmills and curious toys which worked with pulleys and ropes, or made exquisite little clay models of horses and all the other animals that he loved. but he never forgot the longing that had filled his heart when he was a child--the desire to learn the secret of flying. for days he would sit idle and think of nothing but soaring wings, then he would rouse himself and begin to make some strange machine which he thought might hold the secret that he sought. 'a waste of time,' growled verocchio. 'see here, thou wouldst be better employed if thou shouldst set to work and help me finish this picture of the baptism for the good monks of vallambrosa. let me see how thou canst paint in the kneeling figure of the angel at the side.' for a while the boy stood motionless before the picture as if he was looking at something far away. then he seized the brushes with his left hand and began to paint with quick certain sweep. he never stopped to think, but worked as if the angel were already there, and he were but brushing away the veil that hid it from the light. then, when it was done, the master came and looked silently on. for a moment a quick stab of jealousy ran through his heart. year after year had he worked and striven to reach his ideal. long days of toil and weary nights had he spent, winning each step upwards by sheer hard work. and here was this boy without an effort able to rise far above him. all the knowledge which the master had groped after, had been grasped at once by the wonderful mind of the pupil. but the envious feeling passed quickly away, and verocchio laid his hand upon leonardo's shoulder. 'i have found my master,' he said quietly, 'and i will paint no more.' leonardo scarcely seemed to hear; he was thinking of something else now, and he seldom noticed if people praised or blamed him. his thoughts had fixed themselves upon something he had seen that morning which had troubled him. on the way to the studio he had passed a tiny shop in a narrow street where a seller of birds was busy hanging his cages up on the nails fastened to the outside wall. the thought of those poor little prisoners beating their wings against the cruel bars and breaking their hearts with longing for their wild free life, had haunted him all day, and now he could bear it no longer. he seized his cap and hurried off, all forgetful of his kneeling angel and the master's praise. he reached the little shop and called to the man within. 'how much wilt thou take for thy birds?' he cried, and pointed to the little wooden cages that hung against the wall. 'plague on them,' answered the man, 'they will often die before i can make a sale by them. thou canst have them all for one silver piece.' in a moment leonardo had paid the money and had turned towards the row of little cages. one by one he opened the doors and set the prisoners free, and those that were too frightened or timid to fly away, he gently drew out with his hand, and sent them gaily whirling up above his head into the blue sky. the man looked with blank astonishment at the empty cages, and wondered if the handsome young man was mad. but leonardo paid no heed to him, but stood gazing up until every one of the birds had disappeared. 'happy things,' he said, with a sigh. 'will you ever teach me the secret of your wings, i wonder?' it was with great pleasure that ser piero heard of his son's success at verocchio's studio, and he began to have hopes that the boy would make a name for himself after all. it happened just then that he was on a visit to his castle at vinci, and one morning a peasant who lived on the estate came to ask a great favour of him. he had bought a rough wooden shield which he was very anxious should have a design painted on it in florence, and he begged ser piero to see that it was done. the peasant was a faithful servant, and very useful in supplying the castle with fish and game, so ser piero was pleased to grant him his request. 'leonardo shall try his hand upon it. it is time he became useful to me,' said ser piero to himself. so on his return to florence he took the shield to his son. it was a rough, badly-shaped shield, so leonardo held it to the fire and began to straighten it. for though his hands looked delicate and beautifully formed, they were as strong as steel, and he could bend bars of iron without an effort. then he sent the shield to a turner to be smoothed and rounded, and when it was ready he sat down to think what he should paint upon it, for he loved to draw strange monsters. 'i will make it as terrifying as the head of medusa,' he said at last, highly delighted with the plan that had come into his head. then he went out and collected together all the strangest animals he could find--lizards, hedgehogs, newts, snakes, dragon-flies, locusts, bats, and glow-worms. these he took into his own room, which no one was allowed to enter, and began to paint from them a curious monster, partly a lizard and partly a bat, with something of each of the other animals added to it. when it was ready leonardo hung the shield in a good light against a dark curtain, so that the painted monster stood out in brilliant contrast, and looked as if its twisted curling limbs were full of life. a knock sounded at the door, and ser piero's voice was heard outside asking if the shield was finished. 'come in,' cried leonardo, and ser piero entered. he cast one look at the monster hanging there and then uttered a cry and turned to flee, but leonardo caught hold of his cloak and laughingly told him to look closer. 'if i have really succeeded in frightening thee,' he said, 'i have indeed done all i could desire.' his father could scarcely believe that it was nothing but a painting, and he was so proud of the work that he would not part with it, but gave the peasant of vinci another shield instead. leonardo then began a drawing for a curtain which was to be woven in silk and gold and given as a present from the florentines to the king of portugal, and he also began a large picture of the adoration of the shepherds which was never finished. the young painter grew restless after a while, and felt the life of the studio narrow and cramped. he longed to leave florence and find work in some new place. he was not a favourite at the court of lorenzo the magnificent as filippino lippi and botticelli were. lorenzo liked those who would flatter him and do as they were bid, while leonardo took his own way in everything and never said what he did not mean. but it happened that just then lorenzo wished to send a present to ludovico sforza, the duke of milan, and the gift he chose was a marvellous musical instrument which leonardo had just finished. it was a silver lute, made in the form of a horse's head, the most curious and beautiful thing ever seen. lorenzo was charmed with it. 'thou shalt take it thyself, as my messenger,' he said to leonardo. 'i doubt if another can be found who can play upon it as thou dost.' so leonardo set out for milan, and was glad to shake himself free from the narrow life of the florentine studio. before starting, however, he had written a letter to the duke setting down in simple order all the things he could do, and telling of what use he could be in times of war and in days of peace. there seemed nothing that he could not do. he could make bridges, blow up castles, dig canals, invent a new kind of cannon, build warships, and make underground passages. in days of peace he could design and build houses, make beautiful statues and paint pictures 'as well as any man, be he who he may.' the letter was written in curious writing from right to left like hebrew or arabic. this was how leonardo always wrote, using his left hand, so that it could only be read by holding the writing up to a mirror. the duke was half amazed and half amused when the letter reached him. 'either these are the words of a fool, or of a man of genius,' said the duke. and when he had once seen and spoken to leonardo he saw at once which of the two he deserved to be called. every one at the court was charmed with the artist's beautiful face and graceful manners. his music alone, as he swept the strings of the silver lute and sang to it his own songs, would have brought him fame, but the duke quickly saw that this was no mere minstrel. it was soon arranged therefore that leonardo should take up his abode at the court of milan and receive a yearly pension from the duke. sometimes the pension was paid, and sometimes it was forgotten, but leonardo never troubled about money matters. somehow or other he must have all that he wanted, and everything must be fair and dainty. his clothes were always rich and costly, but never bright-coloured or gaudy. there was no plume or jewelled brooch in his black velvet beretto or cap, and the only touch of colour was his golden hair, and the mantle of dark red cloth which he wore in the fashion of the florentines, thrown across his shoulder. above all, he must always have horses in his stables, for he loved them more than human beings. many were the plans and projects which the duke entrusted to leonardo's care, but of all that he did, two great works stand out as greater than all the rest. one was the painting of the last supper on the walls of the refectory of santa maria delle grazie, and the other the making of a model of a great equestrian statue, a bronze horse with the figure of the duke upon its back. 'year after year leonardo worked at that wonderful fresco of the last supper. sometimes for weeks or months he never touched it, but he always returned to it again. then for days he would work from morning till night, scarcely taking time to eat, and able to think of nothing else, until suddenly he would put down his brushes and stand silently for a long, long time before the picture. it seemed as if he was wasting the precious hours doing nothing, but in truth he worked more diligently with his brain when his hands were idle. often too when he worked at the model for the great bronze horse, he would suddenly stop, and walk quickly through the streets until he came to the refectory, and there, catching up his brushes, he would paint in one or perhaps two strokes, and then return to his modelling. besides all this leonardo was busy with other plans for the duke's amusement, and no court fete was counted successful without his help. nothing seemed too difficult for him to contrive, and what he did was always new and strange and wonderful. once when the king of france came as a guest to milan, leonardo prepared a curious model of a lion, which by some inside machinery was able to walk forward several steps to meet the king, and then open wide its huge jaws and display inside a bed of sweet-scented lilies, the emblem of france, to do honour to her king. but while working at other things leonardo never forgot his longing to learn the secret art of flying. every now and then a new idea would come into his head, and he would lay aside all other work until he had made the new machine which might perhaps act as the wings of a bird. each fresh disappointment only made him more keen to try again. 'i know we shall some day have wings,' he said to his pupils, who sometimes wondered at the strange work of the master's hands. 'it is only a question of knowing how to make them. i remember once when i was a baby lying in my cradle, i fancied a bird flew to me, opened my lips and rubbed its feathers over them. so it seems to be my fate all my life to talk of wings.' very slowly the great fresco of the last supper grew under the master's hand until it was nearly finished. the statue, too, was almost completed, and then evil days fell upon milan. the duke was obliged to flee before the french soldiers, who forced their way into the town and took possession of it. before any one could prevent it, the soldiers began to shoot their arrows at the great statue, which they used as a target, and in a few hours the work of sixteen years was utterly destroyed. it is sadder still to tell the fate of leonardo's fresco, the greatest picture perhaps that ever was painted. dampness lurked in the wall and began to dim and blur the colours. the careless monks cut a door through the very centre of the picture, and, later on, when napoleon's soldiers entered milan, they used the refectory as a stable, and amused themselves by throwing stones at what remained of it. but though little of it is left now to be seen, there is still enough to make us stand in awe and reverence before the genius of the great master. not far from milan there lived a friend of leonardo's, whom the master loved to visit. this girolamo melzi had a son called francesco, a little motherless boy, who adored the great painter with all his heart. together leonardo and the child used to wander out to search for curious animals and rare flowers, and as they watched the spiders weave their webs and pulled the flowers to pieces to find out their secrets, the boy listened with wide wondering eyes to all the tales which the painter told him. and at night leonardo wrapped the little one close inside his warm cloak and carried him out to see the stars--those same stars which old toscanelli had taught him to love long ago in florence. then when the day of parting came the child clung round the master's neck and would not let him go. 'take me with thee,' he cried, 'do not leave me behind all alone.' 'i cannot take thee now, little one,' said leonardo gently. 'thou art still too small, but later on thou shalt come to me and be my pupil. this i promise thee.' it was but a weary wandering life that awaited leonardo after he was forced to leave his home in milan. it seemed as if it was his fate to begin many things but to finish nothing. for a while he lived in rome, but he did little real work there. for several years he lived in florence and began to paint a huge battle-picture. there too he painted the famous portrait of mona lisa, which is now in paris. of all portraits that have ever been painted this is counted the most wonderful and perfect piece of work, although leonardo himself called it unfinished. by this time the master had fallen on evil days. all his pupils were gone, and his friends seemed to have forgotten him. he was sitting before the fire one stormy night, lonely and sad, when the door opened and a tall handsome lad came in. 'master!' he cried, and kneeling down he kissed the old man's hands. 'dost thou not know me? i am thy little francesco, come to claim thy promise that i should one day be thy servant and pupil. leonardo laid his hand upon the boy's fair head and looked into his face. 'i am growing old,' he said, 'and i can no longer do for thee what i might once have done. i am but a poor wanderer now. dost thou indeed wish to cast in thy lot with mine?' 'i care only to be near thee,' said the boy. 'i will go with thee to the ends of the earth.' so when, soon after, leonardo received an invitation from the new king of france, he took the boy with him, and together they made their home in the little chateau of claux near the town of amboise. the master's hair was silvered now, and his long beard was as white as snow. his keen blue eyes looked weary and tired of life, and care had drawn many deep lines on his beautiful face. sad thoughts were always his company. the one word 'failure' seemed to be written across his life. what had he done? he had begun many things and had finished but few. his great fresco was even now fading away and becoming dim and blurred. his model for the marvellous horse was destroyed. a few pictures remained, but these had never quite reached his ideal. the crowd who had once hailed him as the greatest of all artists, could now only talk of michelangelo and the young raphael. michelangelo himself had once scornfully told him he was a failure and could finish nothing. he was glad to leave italy and all its memories behind, and he hoped to begin work again in his quiet little french home. but death was drawing near, and before many years had passed he grew too weak to hold a brush or pencil. it was in the springtime of the year that the end came. francesco had opened the window and gently lifted the master in his strong young arms, that he might look once more on the outside world which he loved so dearly. the trees were putting on their dainty dress of tender green, white clouds swept across the blue sky, and april sunshine flooded the room. as he looked out, the master's tired eyes woke into life. 'look!' he cried, 'the swallows have come back! oh that they would lend me their wings that i might fly away and be at rest!' the swallows darted and circled about in the clear spring air, busy with their building plans, but francesco thought he heard the rustle of other wings, as the master's soul, freed from the tired body, was at last borne upwards higher than any earthly wings could soar. raphael among the marvellous tales of the arabian nights, there is a story told of a band of robbers who, by whispering certain magic words, were able to open the door of a secret cave where treasures of gold and silver and precious jewels lay hid. now, although the day of such delightful marvels is past and gone, yet there still remains a certain magic in some names which is able to open the secret doors of the hidden haunts of beauty and delight. for most people the very name of 'raphael' is like the 'open sesame' of the robber chief in the old story. in a moment a door seems to open out of the commonplace everyday world, and through it they see a stretch of fair sweet country. there their eyes rest upon gentle, dark-eyed madonnas, who smile down lovingly upon the heavenly child, playing at her side or resting in her arms. the little st. john is also there, companion of the infant christ; rosy, round-limbed children both, half human and half divine. and standing in the background are a crowd of grave, quiet figures, each one alive with interest, while over all there is a glow of intense vivid colour. we know but little of the everyday life of this great artist. when we hear his name, it is of his different pictures that we think at once, for they are world-famous. we almost forget the man as we gaze at his work. it was in the little village of urbino, in umbria, that raphael was born. his father was a painter called giovanni santi, and from him raphael inherited his love of art. his mother, magia, was a sweet, gracious woman, and the little raphael was like her in character and beauty. it seemed as if the boy had received every good gift that nature could bestow. he had a lovely oval face, and soft dark eyes that shone with a beauty that was more of heaven than earth, and told of a soul which was as pure and lovely as his face. above all, he had the gift of making every one love him, so that his should have been a happy sunshiny life. but no one can ever escape trouble, and when raphael was only eight years old, the first cloud overspread his sky. his mother died, and soon after his father married again. the new mother was very young, and did not care much for children, but raphael did not mind that as long as he could be with his father. but three years later a blacker cloud arose and blotted out the sunshine from his life, for his father too died, and left him all alone. the boy had loved his father dearly, and it had been his great delight to be with him in the studio, to learn to grind and mix the colours and watch those wonderful pictures grow from day to day. but now all was changed. the quiet studio rang with angry voices, and the peaceful home was the scene of continual quarrelling. who was to have the money, and how were the santi estates to be divided? stepmother and uncle wrangled from morning until night, and no one gave a thought to the child raphael. it was only the money that mattered. then when it seemed that the boy's training was going to be totally neglected, kindly help arrived. simone di ciarla, brother of raphael's own mother, came to look after his little nephew, and ere long carried him off from the noisy, quarrelsome household, and took him to perugia. 'thou shalt have the best teaching in all italy,' said simone as they walked through the streets of the town. 'the great master to whose studio we go, can hold his own even among the artists of florence. see that thou art diligent to learn all that he can teach thee, so that thou mayest become as great a painter as thy father.' 'am i to be the pupil of the great perugino?' asked raphael, his eyes shining with pleasure. 'i have often heard my father speak of his marvellous pictures.' 'we will see if he can take thee,' answered his uncle. the boy's heart sunk. what if the master refused to take him as a pupil? must he return to idleness and the place which was no longer home? but soon his fears were set at rest. perugino, like every one else, felt the charm of that beautiful face and gentle manner, and when he had seen some drawings which the boy had done, he agreed readily that raphael should enter the studio and become his pupil. perugia had been passing through evil times just before this. the two great parties of the oddi and baglioni families were always at war together. whichever of them happened to be the stronger held the city and drove out the other party, so that the fighting never ceased either inside or outside the gates. the peaceful country round about had been laid waste and desolate. the peasants did not dare go out to till their fields or prune their olive-trees. mothers were afraid to let their little ones out of their sight, for hungry wolves and other wild beasts prowled about the deserted countryside. then came a day when the outside party managed to creep silently into the city, and the most terrible fight of all began. so long and fiercely did the battle rage that almost all the oddi were killed. then for a time there was peace in perugia and all the country round. so it happened that as soon as the people of perugia had time to think of other things besides fighting, they began to wish that their town might be put in order, and that the buildings which had been injured during the struggles might be restored. this was a good opportunity for peaceful men like perugino, for there was much work to be done, and both he and his pupils were kept busy from morning till night. of all his pupils, perugino loved the young raphael best. he saw at once that this was no ordinary boy. 'he is my pupil now, but soon he will be my master,' he used to say as he watched the boy at work. so he taught him with all possible carefulness, and was never tired of giving him good advice. 'learn first of all to draw,' he would say, when raphael looked with longing eyes at the colours and brushes of the master. 'draw everything you see, no matter what it is, but always draw and draw again. the rest will follow; but if the knowledge of drawing be lacking, nothing will afterwards succeed. keep always at hand a sketch-book, and draw therein carefully every manner of thing that meets thy eye.' raphael never forgot the good advice of his master. he was never without a sketch-book, and his drawings now are almost as interesting as his great pictures, for they show the first thought that came into his mind, before the picture was composed. so the years passed on, and raphael learned all that the master could teach him. at first his pictures were so like perugino's, that it was difficult to know whether they were the work of the master or the pupil. but the quiet days at perugia soon came to an end, and perugino went back to florence. for some time raphael worked at different places near perugia, and then followed his master to the city of flowers, where every artist longed to go. though he was still but a young man, the world had already begun to notice his work, and florence gladly welcomed a new artist. it was just at that time that leonardo da vinci's fame was at its height, and when raphael was shown some of the great man's work, he was filled with awe and wonder. the genius of leonardo held him spellbound. 'it is what i have dreamed of in my dreams,' he said. 'oh that i might learn his secret!' little by little the new ideas sunk into his heart, and the pictures he began to paint were no longer like those of his old master perugino, but seemed to breathe some new spirit. it was always so with raphael. he seemed to be able to gather the best from every one, just as the bee goes from flower to flower and gathers its sweetness into one golden honeycomb. only the genius of raphael made all that he touched his very own, and the spirit of his pictures is unlike that of any other master. for many years after this he lived in rome, where now his greatest frescoes may be seen--frescoes so varied and wonderful that many books have been written about them. there he first met margarita, the young maiden whom he loved all his life. it is her face which looks down upon us from the picture of the sistine madonna, perhaps the most famous madonna that ever was painted. the little room in the dresden gallery where this picture now hangs seems almost like a holy place, for surely there is something divine in that fair face. there she stands, the queen of heaven, holding in her arms the infant christ, with such a strange look of majesty and sadness in her eyes as makes us realise that she was indeed fit to be the mother of our lord. but the picture which all children love best is one in florence called 'the madonna of the goldfinch.' it is a picture of the holy family, the infant jesus, his mother, and the little st. john. the christ child is a dear little curly-headed baby, and he stands at his mother's knee with one little bare foot resting on hers. his hand is stretched out protectingly over a yellow goldfinch which st. john, a sturdy little figure clad in goatskins, has just brought to him. the baby face is full of tender love and care for the little fluttering prisoner, and his curved hand is held over its head to protect it. 'do not hurt my bird,' he seems to say to the eager st. john, 'for it belongs to me and to my father.' these are only two of the many pictures which raphael painted. it is wonderful to think how much work he did in his short life, for he died when he was only thirty-seven. he had been at work at st. peter's, giving directions about some alterations, and there he was seized by a severe chill, and in a few days the news spread like wildfire through the country that raphael was dead. it seemed almost as if it could not be true. he had been so full of life and health, so eager for work, such a living power among men. but there he lay, beautiful in death as he had been in life, and over his head was hung the picture of the 'transfiguration,' on which he had been at work, its colours yet wet, never to be finished by that still hand. all rome flocked to his funeral, and high and low mourned his loss. but he left behind him a fame which can never die, a name which through all these four hundred years has never lost the magic of its greatness. michelangelo sometimes in a crowd of people one sees a tall man, who stands head and shoulders higher than any one else, and who can look far over the heads of ordinary-sized mortals. 'what a giant!' we exclaim, as we gaze up and see him towering above us. so among the crowd of painters travelling along the road to fame we see above the rest a giant, a greater and more powerful genius than any that came before or after him. when we hear the name of michelangelo we picture to ourselves a great rugged, powerful giant, a veritable son of thunder, who, like the titans of old, bent every force of nature to his will. this michelangelo was born at caprese among the mountains of casentino. his father, lodovico buonarroti, was podesta or mayor of caprese, and came of a very ancient and honourable family, which had often distinguished itself in the service of florence. now the day on which the baby was born happened to be not only a sunday, but also a morning when the stars were especially favourable. so the wise men declared that some heavenly virtue was sure to belong to a child born at that particular time, and without hesitation lodovico determined to call his little son michael angelo, after the archangel michael. surely that was a name splendid enough to adorn any great career. it happened just then that lodovico's year of office ended, and so he returned with his wife and child to florence. he had a property at settignano, a little village just outside the city, and there he settled down. most of the people of the village were stone-cutters, and it was to the wife of one of these labourers that little michelangelo was sent to be nursed. so in after years the great master often said that if his mind was worth anything, he owed it to the clear pure mountain air in which he was born, just as he owed his love of carving stone to the unconscious influence of his nurse, the stone-cutter's wife. as the boy grew up he clearly showed in what direction his interest lay. at school he was something of a dunce at his lessons, but let him but have a pencil and paper and his mind was wide awake at once. every spare moment he spent making sketches on the walls of his father's house. but lodovico would not hear of the boy becoming an artist. there were many children to provide for, and the family was not rich. it would be much more fitting that michelangelo should go into the silk and woollen business and learn to make money. but it was all in vain to try to make the boy see the wisdom of all this. scold as they might, he cared for nothing but his pencil, and even after he was severely beaten he would creep back to his beloved work. how he envied his friend francesco who worked in the shop of master ghirlandaio! it was a joy even to sit and listen to the tales of the studio, and it was a happy day when francesco brought some of the master's drawings to show to his eager friend. little by little lodovico began to see that there was nothing for it but to give way to the boy's wishes, and so at last, when he was fourteen years old, michelangelo was sent to study as a pupil in the studio of master ghirlandaio. it was just at the time when ghirlandaio was painting the frescoes of the chapel in santa maria novella, and michelangelo learned many lessons as he watched the master at work, or even helped with the less important parts. but it was like placing an eagle in a hawk's nest. the young eagle quickly learned to soar far higher than the hawk could do, and ere long began to 'sweep the skies alone.' it was not pleasant for the great florentine master, whose work all men admired, to have his drawings corrected by a young lad, and perhaps michelangelo was not as humble as he should have been. in the strength of his great knowledge he would sometimes say sharp and scornful things, and perhaps he forgot the respect due from pupil to master. be that as it may, he left ghirlandaio's studio when he was sixteen years old, and never had another master. thenceforward he worked out his own ideas in his giant strength, and was the pupil of none. the boy francesco was still his friend, and together they went to study in the gardens of san marco, where lorenzo the magnificent had collected many statues and works of art. here was a new field for michelangelo. without needing a lesson he began to copy the statues in terra-cotta, and so clever was his work that lorenzo was delighted with it. 'see, now, what thou canst do with marble,' he said. 'terra-cotta is but poor stuff to work in.' michelangelo had never handled a chisel before, but he chipped and cut away the marble so marvellously that life seemed to spring out of the stone. there was a marble head of an old faun in the garden, and this michelangelo set himself to copy. such a wonderful copy did he make that lorenzo was amazed. it was even better than the original, for the boy had introduced ideas of his own and had made the laughing mouth a little open to show the teeth and the tongue of the faun. lorenzo noticed this, and turned with a smile to the young artist. 'thou shouldst have remembered that old folks never keep all their teeth, but that some of them are always wanting,' he said. of course lorenzo meant this as a joke, but michelangelo immediately took his hammer and struck out several of the teeth, and this too pleased lorenzo greatly. there was nothing that the magnificent ruler loved so much as genius, so michelangelo was received into the palace and made the companion of lorenzo's sons. not only did good fortune thus smile upon the young artist, but to his great astonishment lodovico too found that benefits were showered upon him, all for the sake of his famous young son. these years of peace, and calm, steady work had the greatest effect on michelangelo's work, and he learned much from the clever, brilliant men who thronged lorenzo's court. then, too, he first listened to that ringing voice which strove to raise florence to a sense of her sins, when savonarola preached his great sermons in the duomo. that teaching sank deep into the heart of michelangelo, and years afterwards he left on the walls of the sistine chapel a living echo of those thundering words. like all the other artists, he would often go to study masaccio's frescoes in the little chapel of the carmine. there was quite a band of young artists working there, and very soon they began to look with envious feelings at michelangelo's drawings, and their jealousy grew as his fame increased. at last, one day, a youth called torriggiano could bear it no longer, and began to make scornful remarks, and worked himself up into such a rage that he aimed a blow at michelangelo with his fist, which not only broke his nose but crushed it in such a way that he was marked for life. he had had a rough, rugged look before this, but now the crooked nose gave him almost a savage expression which he never lost. changes followed fast after this time of quiet. lorenzo the magnificent died, and his son, the weak piero de medici, tried to take his place as ruler of florence. for a time michelangelo continued to live at the court of piero, but it was not encouraging to work for a master whose foolish taste demanded statues to be made out of snow, which, of course, melted at the first breath of spring. michelangelo never forgot all that he owed to lorenzo, and he loved the medici family, but his sense of justice made him unable to take their part when trouble arose between them and the florentine people. so when the struggle began he left florence and went first to venice and then to bologna. from afar he heard how the weak piero had been driven out of the city, but more bitter still was his grief when the news came that the solemn warning voice of the great preacher savonarola was silenced for ever. then a great longing to see his beloved city again filled his heart, and he returned to florence. botticelli was a sad, broken-down old man now, and ghirlandaio was also growing old, but florence was still rich in great artists. leonardo da vinci, perugino, and filippino lippi were all there, and men talked of the coming of an even greater genius, the young raphael of urbino. there happened just then to be at the works of the cathedral of st. mary of the flowers a huge block of marble which no one knew how to use. leonardo da vinci had been invited to carve a statue out of it, but he had refused to try, saying he could do nothing with it. but when the marble was offered to michelangelo his eye kindled and he stood for a long time silent before the great white block. through the outer walls of stone he seemed to see the figure imprisoned in the marble, and his giant strength and giant mind longed to go to work to set that figure free. and when the last covering of marble was chipped and cut away there stood out a magnificent figure of the young david. perhaps he is too strong and powerful for our idea of the gentle shepherd-lad, but he is a wonderful figure, and goliath might well have trembled to meet such a young giant. people flocked to see the great statue, and many were the discussions as to where it should be placed. artists were never tired of giving their opinion, and even of criticising the work. 'it seems to me,' said one, 'that the nose is surely much too large for the face. could you not alter that?' michelangelo said nothing, but he mounted the scaffolding and pretended to chip away at the nose with his chisel. meanwhile he let drop some marble chips and dust upon the head of the critic beneath. then he came down. 'is that better?' he asked gravely. 'admirable!' answered the artist. 'you have given it life.' michelangelo smiled to himself. how wise people thought themselves when they often knew nothing about what they were talking! but the critic was satisfied, and did not notice the smile. it would fill a book to tell of all the work which michelangelo did; but although he began so much, a great deal of it was left unfinished. if he had lived in quieter times, his work would have been more complete; but one after another his patrons died, or changed their minds, and set him to work at something else before he had finished what he was doing. the great tomb which pope julius had ordered him to make was never finished, although michelangelo drew out all the designs for it, and for forty years was constantly trying to complete it. the pope began to think it was an evil omen to build his own tomb, so he made up his mind that michelangelo should instead set to work to fresco the ceiling of the sistine chapel. in vain did the great sculptor repeat that he knew but little of the art of painting. 'didst thou not learn to mix colours in the studio of master ghirlandaio?' said julius. 'thou hast but to remember the lessons he taught thee. and, besides, i have heard of a great drawing of a battle-scene which thou didst make for the florentines, and have seen many drawings of thine, one especially: a terrible head of a furious old man, shrieking in his rage, such as no other hand than thine could have drawn. is there aught that thou canst not do if thou hast but the will?' and the pope was right; for as soon as michelangelo really made up his mind to do the work, all difficulties seemed to vanish. it was no easy task he had undertaken. to stand upright and cover vast walls with painting is difficult enough, but michelangelo was obliged to lie flat upon a scaffolding and paint the ceiling above him. even to look up at that ceiling for ten minutes makes the head and neck ache with pain, and we wonder how such a piece of work could ever have been done. no help would the master accept, and he had no pupils. alone he worked, and he could not bear to have any one near him looking on. in silence and solitude he lay there painting those marvellous frescoes of the story of the creation to the time of noah. only pope julius himself dared to disturb the master, and he alone climbed the scaffolding and watched the work. 'when wilt thou have finished?' was his constant cry. 'i long to show thy work to the world.' 'patience, patience,' said michelangelo. 'nothing is ready yet.' 'but when wilt thou make an end?' asked the impatient old man. 'when i can,' answered the painter. then the pope lost his temper, for he was not accustomed to be answered like this. 'dost thou want to be thrown head first from the scaffold?' he asked angrily. 'i tell thee that will happen if the work is not finished at once.' so, incomplete as they were, michelangelo was obliged to uncover the frescoes that all rome might see them. it was many years before the ceiling was finished or the final fresco of the last judgment painted upon the end wall. michelangelo lived to be a very old man, and his life was lonely and solitary to the end. the one woman he loved, vittoria colonna, had died, and with her death all brightness for him had faded. although he worked so much in rome, it was always florence that he loved. there it was that he began the statues for the chapel of the medici, and there, too, he helped to build the defences of san miniato when the medici family made war upon the city of flowers. so when the great man died in rome it seemed but fit that his body should be carried back to his beloved florence. there it now rests in the church of santa croce, while his giant works, his great and terrible thoughts breathed out into marble or flashed upon the walls of the sistine chapel, live on for ever, filling the minds of men with a great awe and wonder as they gaze upon them. andrea del sarto nowhere in florence could a more honest man or a better worker be found than agnolo the tailor. true, there were once evil tales whispered about him when he first opened his shop in the little street. it was said that he was no italian, but a foreigner who had been obliged to flee from his own land because of a quarrel he had had with one of his customers. people shook their heads and talked mysteriously of how the tailor's scissors had been used as a deadly weapon in the fight. but ere long these stories died away, and the tailor, with his wife constanza, lived a happy, busy life, and brought up their six children carefully and well. now out of those six children five were just the ordinary commonplace little ones such as one would expect to meet in a tailor's household, but the sixth was like the ugly duckling in the fairy tale--a little, strange bird, unlike all the rest, who learned to swim far away and soon left the old commonplace home behind him. the boy's name was andrea. he was such a quick, sharp little boy that he was sent very early to school, and had learned to read and write before he was seven years old. as that was considered quite enough education, his father then took him away from school and put him to work with a goldsmith. it is early days to begin work at seven years old, but andrea thought it was quite as good as play. he was always perfectly happy if he could have a pencil and paper, and his drawings and designs were really so wonderfully good that his master grew to be quite proud of the child and showed the work to all his customers. next door to the goldsmith's shop there lived an old artist called barile, who began to take a great interest in little andrea. barile was not a great painter, but still there was much that he could teach the boy, and he was anxious to have him as a pupil. so it was arranged that andrea should enter the studio and learn to be an artist instead of a goldsmith. for three years the boy worked steadily with his new master, but by that time barile saw that better teaching was needed than he could give. so after much thought the old man went to the great florentine artist piero di cosimo, and asked him if he would agree to receive andrea as his pupil. 'you will find the boy no trouble,' he urged. 'he has wonderful talent, and already he has learnt to mix his colours so marvellously that to my mind there is no artist in florence who knows more about colour than little andrea' cosimo shook his head in unbelief. the boy was but a child, and this praise seemed absurd. however, the drawings were certainly extraordinary, and he was glad to receive so clever a pupil. but little by little, as cosimo watched the boy at work, his unbelief vanished and his wonder grew, until he was as fond and proud of his pupil as the old master had been. 'he handles his colours as if he had had fifty years of experience,' he would say proudly, as he showed off the boy's work to some new patron. and truly the knowledge of drawing and colouring seemed to come to the boy without any effort. not that he was idle or trusted to chance. he was never tired of work, and his greatest joy on holidays was to go of and study the drawings of the great michelangelo and leonardo da vinci. often he would spend the whole day copying these drawings with the greatest care, never tired of learning more and more. as andrea grew older, all florence began to take note of the young painter--'andrea del sarto,' as he was called, or 'the tailor's andrew,' for sarto is the italian word for tailor. what a splendid new star this was rising in the heaven of art! who could tell how bright it would shine ere long? perhaps the tailor's son would yet eclipse the magic name of raphael. his colour was perfect, his drawing absolutely correct. they called him in their admiration 'the faultless painter.' but had he, indeed, the artist soul? that was the question. for, perfect as his pictures were, they still lacked something. perhaps time would teach him to supply that want. meanwhile there was plenty of work for the young artist, and when he set up his own studio with another young painter, he was at once invited to fresco the walls of the cloister of the scalzo, or bare-footed friars. this was the happiest time of all andrea's life. the two friends worked happily together, and spent many a merry day with their companions. every day andrea learned to add more softness and delicacy to his colouring until his pictures seemed verily to glow with life. every day he dreamed fresh dreams of the fame and honour that awaited him. and when work was over, the two young painters would go off to meet their friends and make merry over their supper as they told all the latest jokes and wittiest stories, and forgot for a while the serious art of painting pictures. there were twelve of these young men who met together, and each of them was bound to bring some particular dish for the general supper. every one tried to think of something especially nice and uncommon, but no one managed such surprising delicacies as andrea. there was one special dish which no one ever forgot. it was in the shape of a temple, with its pillars made of sausages. the pavement was formed of little squares of different coloured jelly, the tops of the pillars were cheese, and the roof was of sugar, with a frieze of sweets running round it. inside the temple there was a choir of roast birds with their mouths wide open, and the priests were two fat pigeons. it was the most splendid supper-dish that ever was seen. every one was fond of the clever young painter. he was so kind and courteous to all, and so simple-hearted that it was impossible for the others to feel jealous or to grudge him the fame and praise that was showered upon him more and more as each fresh picture was finished. then just when all gave promise of sunshine and happiness, a little cloud rose in his blue sky, which grew and grew until it dimmed all the glory of his life. in the via di san gallo, not very far from the street where andrea and his friend lodged, there lived a very beautiful woman called lucrezia. she was not a highborn lady, only the daughter of a working man, but she was as proud and haughty as she was beautiful. nought cared she for things high and noble, she was only greedy of praise and filled with a desire to have her own way in everything. yet her lovely face seemed as if it must be the mirror of a lovely soul, and when the young painter andrea first saw her his heart went out towards her. she was his long-dreamed-of ideal of beauty and grace, the vision of loveliness which he had been trying to grasp all his life. 'what hath bewitched thee?' asked his friend as he watched andrea restlessly pacing up and down the studio, his brushes thrown aside and his work left unfinished. 'thou hast done little work for many weeks.' 'i cannot paint,' answered andrea, 'for i see only one face ever before me, and it comes between me and my work.' 'thou art ruining all thy chances,' said the friend sadly, 'and the face thou seest is not worth the sacrifice.' andrea turned on his heel with an angry look and went out. all his friends were against him now. no one had a good word for the beautiful lucrezia. but she was worth all the world to him, and he had made up his mind to marry her. it was winter time, and the christmas bells had but yesterday rung out the tidings of the holy birthday when andrea at last obtained his heart's desire and made lucrezia his wife. the joyful christmastide seemed a fit season in which to set the seal upon his great happiness, and he thought himself the most fortunate of men. he had asked advice of none, and had told no one what he meant to do, but the news of his marriage was soon noised abroad. 'hast thou heard the news of young andrea del sarto?' asked the people of florence of one another. 'i fear he has dealt an evil blow at his own chances of success.' one by one his friends left him, and many of his pupils deserted the studio. lucrezia's sharp tongue was unbearable, and she made mischief among them all. only andrea remained blinded by her beauty, and thought that now, with such a model always near him, he would paint as he had never painted before. but little did lucrezia care to help him with his work. his pictures meant nothing to her except so far as they sold well and brought in money for her to spend. worst of all, she began to grudge the help that he gave to his old father and mother, who now were poor and needed his care. and yet, although andrea saw all this, he still loved his beautiful wife and cared only how he might please her. he scarcely painted a picture that had not her face in it, for she was his ideal madonna, queen of heaven. but it was not so easy now to put his whole heart and soul into his work. true, his hand drew as correctly as ever, and his colours were even more beautiful, but often the soul seemed lacking. 'thou dost work but slowly,' the proud beauty would say, tired of sitting still as his model. 'why canst thou not paint quicker and sell at higher prices? i have need of more gold, and the money seems to grow scarcer week by week.' andrea sighed. truly the money vanished like magic, as lucrezia's jewels and dresses increased. 'dear heart, have a little patience,' he said. 'i can but do my best.' then, as he looked at the angry discontented face of his wife, he laid down his brushes and went to kneel beside her. 'lucrezia,' he said, 'there needs something besides mere drawing and painting to make a picture. they call me "the faultless painter," and it seemed once as if i might have reached as high or even higher than the great raphael. it needed but the soul put into my work, and if thou couldst have helped me to reach my ideal, what would i not have shown the world!' 'i do not understand thee,' said lucrezia petulantly, 'and this is waste of time. haste thee and get back to thy brushes and paints, and see that thou drivest a better bargain with this last picture.' no, it was no use; she could never understand! andrea knew that he must look for no help from her, and that he must paint in spite of the hindrances she placed in his way. well, his work was still considered most beautiful, and he must make the best of it. orders for pictures came now from far and near, and before long some of andrea's work found its way into france; and when king francis saw it he was so anxious to have the painter at his court, that he sent a royal invitation, begging andrea to come at once to france and enter the king's service. the invitation came when andrea was feeling hopeless and dispirited. lucrezia gave him no peace, the money was all spent, and he was weary of work. the thought of starting afresh in another country put new courage into him. he made up his mind to go at once to the french court. he would leave lucrezia in some safe place and send her all the money he could earn. how good it was to leave all his troubles behind, and to set off that glad may day when all the world breathed of new life and new hope. perhaps the winter of his life was passed too, and only sunshine and summer was in store. andrea's welcome at the french court was most flattering. nothing was thought too good for the famous florentine painter, and he was treated like a prince. the king loaded him with gifts, and gave him costly clothes and money for all his needs. a portrait of the infant dauphin was begun at once, for which andrea received three hundred golden pieces. month after month passed happily by. andrea painted many pictures, and each one was more admired than the last. but his dream of happiness did not last long. he was hard at work one day when a letter was brought to him, sent by his wife lucrezia. she could not live without him, so she wrote. he must come home at once. if he delayed much longer he would not find her alive. there could be, of course, but one answer to all this. andrea loved his wife too well to think of refusing her request, and the days of peace and plenty must come to an end. even as he read her letter he began to long to see her again, and the thought of showing her all his gay clothes and costly presents filled him with delight. but the king was very loth to let the painter go, and only at last consented when andrea promised most faithfully to return a few months hence. 'i cannot spare thee for longer,' said francis; 'but i will let thee go on condition that thou wilt buy for me certain works of art in italy, which i have long coveted, and bring them back with thee.' then he entrusted to andrea a large sum of money and bade him buy the best pictures he could find, and afterwards return without fail. so andrea journeyed back to florence, and when he was once again with his wife, his joy and delight in her were so great that he forgot all his promises, forgot even the king's trust, and allowed lucrezia to squander all the money which was to have been spent on art treasures for king francis. then returned the evil days of trouble and quarrelling. added to that the terrible feeling that he had betrayed his trust and broken his word, made andrea more unhappy than ever. he dared not return to france, but took up again his work in florence, always with the hope that he might make enough money to repay the debt. years went by and dark days fell upon the city of flowers. she had made a great struggle for liberty and had driven out the medici, but they were helped by enemies from without, and florence was for many months in a state of siege. there was constant fighting going on and little time for peaceful work. yet through all those troubled days andrea worked steadily at his painting, and paid but little heed to the fate of the city. the stir of battle did not reach his quiet studio. there was enough strife at home; no need to seek it outside. it was about this time that he painted a beautiful picture for the company of san jacopo, which was used as a banner and carried in their processions. bad weather, wind, rain, and sunshine have spoiled some of its beauty, but much of the loveliness still remains. it is specially a children's picture, for andrea painted the great saint bending over a little child in a white robe who kneels at his feet, while another little figure kneels close by. the boy has his hands folded together as if in prayer, and the kind strong hand of the saint is placed lovingly beneath the little chin. the other child is holding a book, and both children press close against the robe of the protecting saint. but although andrea could paint his pictures undisturbed while war was raging around, there was one enemy waiting to enter florence who claimed attention and could not be ignored. when the triumphant troops gained an entrance by treachery, they brought with them that deadly scourge which was worse than any earthly enemy, the dreadful illness called the plague. perhaps andrea had suffered for want of good food during the siege, perhaps he was overworked and tired; but, whatever was the cause, he was one of the first to be seized by that terrible disease. alone he fought the enemy, and alone he died. lucrezia had left him as soon as he fell ill, for she feared the deadly plague, and andrea gladly let her go, for he loved her to the last with the same great unselfish love. so passed away the faultless painter, and his was the last great name engraved upon that golden record of florentine art which had made florence famous in the eyes of the world. other artists came after him, but art was on the wane in the city of flowers, and her glory was slowly departing. we can trace no other great name upon her pages and so we close the book, and our eyes turn towards the shores of the blue adriatic, where venice, queen of the sea, was writing, year by year, another volume filled with the names of her own knights of art. the bellini almost all the stories of the lives of the painters which we have been listening to, until now, have clustered round florence, the city of flowers. she was their great mother, and her sons loved her with a deep, passionate love, thinking nothing too fair with which to deck her beauty. wherever they wandered she drew them back, for their very heartstrings were wound around her, and each and all strove to give her of their best. but now we come to the stories of men whose lives gather round a different centre. instead of the great mother-city beside the arno, with her strong towers and warlike citizens, the noise of battle ever sounding in her streets, and her flowery fields encircling her on every side, we have now venice, queen of the sea. no warlike tread or tramp of angry crowds disturbs her fair streets, for here are no pavements, only the cool green water which laps the walls of her marble palaces, and gives back the sound of the dipping oar and the soft echo of passing voices, as the gondolas glide along her watery ways. here are no grim grey towers of defence, but fairy palaces of white and coloured marbles, which rise from the waters below as if they had been built by the sea nymphs, who had fashioned them of their own sea-shells and mother-of-pearl. there are no flowery meadows here, but instead the vast waters of the lagoons, which reach out until they meet the blue arc of the sky or touch the distant mountains which lie like a purple line upon the horizon. here and there tiny islands lie upon its bosom, so faint and fairylike that they scarcely seem like solid land, reflected as they are in the transparent water. but although venice has no meadows decked with flowers and no wealth of blossoming trees, everywhere on every side she shines with colour, this wonderful sea-girt city. her white marble palaces glow with a soft amber light, the cool green water that reflects her beauty glitters in rings of gold and blue, changing from colour to colour as each ripple changes its form. at sunset, when the sun disappears over the edge of the lagoon and leaves behind its trail of shining clouds, she is like a dream-city rising from a sea of molten gold--a double city, for in the pure gold is reflected each tower and spire, each palace and campanile, in masses of pale yellow and quivering white light, with here and there a burning touch of flame colour. she seems to have no connection with the solid, ordinary cities of the world. there she lies in all her beauty, silent and apart, like a white sea-bird floating upon the bosom of the ocean. venice had always seemed separate and distinct from the rest of the world. her cathedral of san marco was never under the rule of rome, and her rulers, or doges, as they were called, governed the city as kings, and did not trouble themselves with the affairs of other towns. her merchant princes sailed to far countries and brought home precious spoils to add to her beauty. everything was as rich and rare and splendid as it was possible to make it, and she was unlike any other city on earth. so the painters who lived and worked in this city of the sea had their own special way of painting, which was different to that of the florentine school. from their babyhood these men had looked upon all this beauty of colour, and the love of it had grown with their growth. the golden light on the water, the pearly-grey and tinted marbles, the gay sails of the galleys which swept the lagoons like painted butterflies, the wide stretch of water ending in the mystery of the distant skyline--it all sank into their hearts, and it was little wonder that they should strive to paint colour above all things, and at last reach a perfection such as no other school of painters has equalled. as with the florentine artists, so with these venetian painters, we must leave many names unnoticed just now, and learn first to know those which shine out clearest among the many bright stars of fame. in the beginning of the fifteenth century, four hundred years ago, when fra filippo lippi was painting in florence, there lived in venice a certain jacopo bellini, who was a painter, and who had two sons called gentile and giovanni. the father taught his boys with great care, and gave them the best training he could, for he was anxious that his sons should become great painters. he saw that they were both clever and quick to learn, and he hoped great things of them. 'never do less than your very best,' he would say, as he taught the boys how to draw and use their colours. 'see how the tuscan artists strive with one another, each desiring to do most honour to their city of florence. so, gentile, i would have thee also strive to be great; and thou, giovanni, endeavour to be even greater than thy brother.' but though the boys were thus taught to try and outdo each other, still they were always the best of friends, and there was never any unkind rivalry between them. gentile, the eldest, was fond of painting story pictures, which told the history of venice, and showed the magnificent doges, and nobles, and people of the city, dressed in their rich robes. the venetians loved pictures which showed forth the glory of their city, and very soon gentile was invited to paint the walls of the ducal palace with his historical pictures. now venice carried on a great trade with her ships, which sailed to many foreign lands. these ships, loaded with merchandise, touched at different ports, and the merchants sold their goods or took in exchange other things which they brought back to venice. it happened that one of the ships which set sail for turkey had on board among other things several pictures painted by giovanni bellini. these were shown to the sultan of turkey, who had never seen a picture before, and he was amazed and delighted beyond words. his religion forbade the making of pictures, but he paid no attention now to that law, but sent a messenger to venice praying that the painter bellini might come to him at once. the rulers of venice were unwilling to spare giovanni just then, but they allowed gentile to go, as his work at the ducal palace was finished. so gentile took his canvases and paints, and, setting sail in one of the merchant ships, soon arrived at the court of the grand turk. he was received with every honour, and nothing was thought too good for this wonderful painter, who could make pictures which looked like living men. the sultan loaded him with gifts and favours, and he lived there like a royal prince. each picture painted by gentile was thought more wonderful than the last. he painted a portrait of the sultan, and even one of himself, which was considered little short of magic. thus a whole year passed by, and gentile had a most delightful time and was well contented, until one day something happened which disturbed his peace. he had painted a picture of the dancing daughter of herodias, with the head of john the baptist in her hand, and when it was finished he brought it and presented it to the sultan. as usual, the sultan was charmed with the new picture; but he paused in his praises of its beauty, and looked thoughtfully at the head of st. john, and then frowned. 'it seems to me,' he said, 'that there is something not quite right about that head. i do not think a head which had just been cut off would look exactly as that does in your picture.' gentile answered courteously that he did not wish to contradict his royal highness, but it seemed to him that the head was right. 'we shall see,' said the sultan calmly, and he turned carelessly to a guard who stood close by and bade him cut of the head of one of the slaves, that bellini might see if his picture was really correctly painted. this was more than gentile could stand. 'who knows,' he said to himself, 'that the sultan may not wish to see next how my head would look cut off from my body!' so while his precious head was still safe upon his shoulders he thought it wiser to slip quietly away and return to venice by the very first ship he could find. meanwhile giovanni had worked steadily on, and had far surpassed both his father and his brother. indeed, he had become the greatest painter in venice, the first of that wonderful venetian school which learned to paint such marvellous colour. with all the wealth of delicate shading spread out before his eyes, with the ever-changing wonder of the opal-tinted sea meeting him on every side, it was not strange that the love of colour sank into his very heart. in his pictures we can see the golden glow which bathes the marble palaces, the clear green of the water, the pure blues and burning crimsons all as transparent as crystal, not mere paint but living colour. giovanni did not care to paint stories of venice, with great crowds of figures, as gentile did. he loved best the madonna and saints, single figures full of quiet dignity. his saints are more human than those which fra angelico painted, and yet they are not mere men and women, but something higher and nobler. instead of the angels swinging their censers which the painter of san marco so lovingly drew, giovanni's angels are little human boys, with grave sweet faces; happy children with a look of heaven in their eyes, as they play on their little lutes and mandolines. but besides the pictures of saints and angels, giovanni had a wonderful gift for painting portraits, and most of the great people of venice came to be painted by him. in our own national gallery we have the portrait of the doge loredan, which is one of those pictures which can teach you many things when you have learned to look with seeing eyes. so the brothers worked together, but before long death carried off the elder, and giovanni was left alone. though he was now very old, giovanni worked harder than ever, and his hand, instead of losing power, seemed to grow stronger and more and more skilful. he was ninety years old when he died, and he worked almost up to the last. the brothers were both buried in the church of ss. giovanni e paolo, in the heart of venice. there, in the dim quietness of the old church, they lie at rest together, undisturbed by the voices of the passers-by in the square outside, or the lapping of the water against the steps, as the tides ebb and flow around their quiet resting-place. vittore carpaccio like most of the other great painters, giovanni bellini had many pupils working under him--boys who helped their master, and learned their lessons by watching him work. among these pupils was a boy called vittore carpaccio, a sharp, clever lad, with keen bright eyes which noticed everything. no one else learned so quickly or copied the master's work so faithfully, and when in time he became himself a famous painter, his work showed to the end traces of the master's influence. he must have been a curious boy, this vittore carpaccio, for although we know but little of his life, his pictures tell us many a tale about him. in the olden days, when venice was at the height of her glory, splendid fetes were given in the city, and the gorgeous shows were a wonder to behold. early in the morning of these festa days, carpaccio would steal away in the dim light from the studio, before the others were astir. work was left behind, for who could work indoors on days like these? there was a holiday feeling in the very air. songs and laughter and the echo of merry voices were heard on every side, and the city seemed one vast playground, where all the grown-up children as well as the babies were ready to spend a happy holiday. the little side-streets of venice, cut up by canals, seem like a veritable maze to those who do not know the city, but carpaccio could quickly thread his way from bridge to bridge, and by many a short cut arrive at last at the great central water street of venice, the grand canal. here it was easy to find a corner from which he could see the gay pageant, and enjoy as good a view as any of those great people who would presently come out upon the balconies of their marble palaces. the bridge of the rialto, which throws its white span across the centre of the canal, was carpaccio's favourite perch, for from here he could see the markets and the long row of marble palaces on either side. from every window hung gay-coloured tapestry, turkey carpets, silken draperies, and delicate-tinted stuffs covered with eastern embroideries. the market was crowded with a throng of holiday-makers, a garden of bright colours and from the balconies above richly dressed ladies looked down, themselves a pageant of beauty, with their wonderful golden hair and gleaming jewels, while green and crimson parrots, fastened by golden chains to the marble balustrades, screamed and flapped their wings, and delighted carpaccio's keen eyes with their vivid beauty. then the procession of boats swept up the great waterway, and the blaze of colour made the boy hold his breath in sheer delight. the painted galleys, the rowers in their quaint dresses-half one colour and half another--with jaunty feathered caps upon their floating curls, the nobles and rulers in their crimson robes, the silken curtains of every hue trailing their golden fringes in the cool green water, as the boats glided past, all made up a picture which the boy never forgot. then when it was all over, carpaccio would climb down and make his way back to the master's studio, and with the gay scene ever before his eyes would try, day after day, to paint every detail just as he had seen it. there is another thing which we learn about carpaccio from his pictures, and that is, that he must have loved to listen to old legends and stories of the saints, and that he stored them up in his mind, just as he treasured the remembrance of the gay processions and the flapping wings of those crimson and green parrots. so, when he grew to be a man, and his fame began to spread, the first great pictures he painted were of the story of st. ursula, told in loving detail, as only one who loved the story could do it. but though carpaccio might paint pictures of these old stories, it was always through the golden haze of venice that he saw them. his st. ursula is a dainty venetian lady, and the bedroom in which she dreams her wonderful dream is just a room in one of the old marble palaces, with a pot of pinks upon the window-sill, and her little high-heeled venetian shoes by the bedside. whenever it was possible, carpaccio would paint in those scenes on which his eyes had rested since his childhood--the painted galleys with their sails reflected in the clear water, the dainty dresses of the venetian ladies, their gay-coloured parrots, pet dogs, and grinning monkeys. in an old church of venice there are some pictures said to have been painted by carpaccio when he was a little boy only eight years old. they are scenes taken from the bible stories, and very funny scenes they are too. but they show already what clever little hands and what a thinking head the boy had, and how venice was the background in his mind for every story. for here is the meeting of the queen of sheba and king solomon, and instead of jerusalem with all its glory, we see a little wooden bridge, with king solomon on one side and the queen of sheba on the other, walking towards each other, as if they were both in venice crossing one of the little canals. there were many foreign sailors in venice in those old days, who came in the trading-ships from distant lands. many of them were poor and unable to earn money to buy food, and when they were ill there was no one to look after them or help them. so some of the richer foreigners founded a brotherhood, where the poor sailors might be helped in time of need. this brotherhood chose st. george as their patron saint, and when they had built a little chapel they invited carpaccio to come and paint the walls with pictures from the life of st. george and other saints. nothing could have suited carpaccio better, and he began his work with great delight, for he had still his child's love of stories, and he would make them as gay and wonderful as possible. there we see st. george thundering along on his war-horse, with flying hair, clad in beautiful armour, the most perfect picture of a chivalrous knight. then comes the dragon breathing out flames and smoke, the most awesome dragon that ever was seen; and there too is the picture of st. tryphonius taming the terrible basilisk. the little boy-saint has folded his hands together, and looks upward in prayer, paying little heed to the evil glare of the basilisk, who prances at his feet. a crowd of gaily dressed courtiers stand whispering and watching behind the marble steps, and here again in the background we have the canals and bridges of venice, the marble palaces and gay carpets hung from out the windows. everything is of the very best of its kind, and painted with the greatest care, even to the design of the inlaid work on the marble steps. as we pass from picture to picture, we wish we had known this carpaccio, for he must have been a splendid teller of stories; and how he would have made us shiver with his dragons and his basilisks, and laugh over the antics of his little boys and girls, his scarlet parrots and green lizards. but although we cannot hear him tell his stories, he still speaks through those wonderful old pictures which you will some day see when you visit the fairyland of italy, and pay your court to venice, queen of the sea. giorgione as we look back upon the lives of the great painters we can see how each one added some new knowledge to the history of art, and unfolded fresh beauties to the eyes of the world. very gradually all this was done, as a bud slowly unfolds its petals until the full-blown flower shows forth its perfect beauty. but here and there among the painters we find a man who stands apart from the rest, one who takes a new and almost startling way of his own. he does not gradually add new truths to the old ones, but makes an entirely new scheme of his own. such a man was giorgione, whose story we tell to-day. it was at the same time as leonardo da vinci was the talk of the florentine world, that another great genius was at work in venice, setting his mark high above all who had gone before. giorgio barbarelli was born at castel franco, a small town not far from venice, and it was to the great city of the sea that he was sent as soon as he was old enough, there to be trained under the famous bellini. he was a handsome boy, tall and well-built, and with such a royal bearing that his companions at once gave him the name of giorgione, or george the great. and, as so often happened in those days, the nickname clung to him, so that while his family name is almost forgotten he is still known as giorgione. there was much of the poet nature about giorgione, and his love of music was intense. he composed his own songs and sang them to his own music upon the lute, and indeed it seemed as if there were few things which this great george could not do. but it was his painting that was most wonderful, for his painted men and women seemed alive and real, and he caught the very spirit of music in his pictures and there held it fast. giorgione early became known as a great artist, and when he was quite a young man he was employed by the city of venice to fresco the outside walls of the new german exchange. wind and rain and the salt sea air have entirely ruined these frescoes now, and there are but few of giorgione's pictures left to us, but that perhaps makes them all the more precious in our eyes. even his drawings are rare, and the one you see here is taken from a bigger sketch in the uffizi gallery of florence. it shows a man in venetian dress helping two women to mount one of the niches of a marble palace in order to see some passing show, and to be out of the way of the crowd. there is a picture now in the venice academy said to have been painted by giorgione, which would interest every boy and girl who loves old stories. it tells the tale of an old venetian legend, almost forgotten now, but which used to be told with bated breath, and was believed to be a matter of history. the story is this: on the th of february a terrible storm began to rage around venice, more terrible than any that had ever been felt before. for three days the wild winds swept her waters and shrieked around her palaces, churning up the sea into great waves and shaking the city to her very foundations. lightning and thunder never ceased, and the rain poured down in a great sheet of grey water, until it seemed as if a second flood had come to visit the world. slowly but surely the waters rose higher and higher, and venice sunk lower and lower, and men said that unless the storm soon ceased the city would be overwhelmed. no one ventured out on the canals, and only an old fisherman who happened to be in his boat was swept along by the canal of san marco, and managed with great difficulty to reach the steps. very thankful to be safe on land he tied his boat securely, and sat down to wait until the storm should cease. as he sat there watching the lightning and hearing nothing but the shriek of the tempest, some one touched his shoulder and a stranger's voice sounded in his ear. 'good fisherman,' it said, 'wilt thou row me over to san giorgio maggiore? i will pay thee well if thou wilt go.' the fisherman looked across the swirling waters to where the tall bell-tower upon the distant island could just be seen through the driving mist and rain. 'how is it possible to row across to san giorgio?' he asked. 'my little boat could not live for five minutes in those raging waters.' but the stranger only insisted the more, and besought him to do his best. so, as the fisherman was a hardy old man and had a bold, brave soul, he loosed the boat and set off in all the storm. but, strangely enough, it was not half so bad as he had feared, and before long the little boat was moored safely by the steps of san giorgio maggiore. here the stranger left the boat, but bade the fisherman wait his return. presently he came back, and with him came a young man, tall and strong, bearing himself with a knightly grace. 'row now to san niccolo da lido,' commanded the stranger. 'how can i do that?' asked the fisherman in great fear. for san niccolo was far distant, and he was rowing with but one oar, which is the custom in venice. 'row boldly, for it shall be possible for thee, and thou shalt be well paid,' replied the stranger calmly. so, seeing it was the will of god, the fisherman set out once more, and, as they went, the waters spread themselves out smoothly before them, until they reached the distant san niccolo da lido. here an old man with a white beard was awaiting them, and when he too had entered the boat, the fisherman was commanded to row out towards the open sea. now the tempest was raging more fiercely than ever, and lo! across the wild waste of foaming waters an enormous black galley came bearing down upon them. so fast did it approach that it seemed almost to fly upon the wings of the wind, and as it came near the fisherman saw that it was manned by fearful-looking black demons, and knew that they were on their way to overwhelm the fair city of venice. but as the galley came near the little boat, the three men stood upright, and with outstretched arms made high above them the sign of the cross, and commanded the demons to depart to the place from whence they had come. in an instant the sea became calm, and with a horrible shriek the demons in their black galley disappeared from view. then the three men ordered the fisherman to return as he had come. so the old man was landed at san niccolo da lido, the young knight at san giorgio maggiore, and, last of all, the stranger landed at san marco. now when the fisherman found that his work was done, he thought it was time that he should receive his payment. for, although he had seen the great miracle, he had no mind to forgo his proper fare. 'thou art right,' said the stranger, when the fisherman made his demand, 'and thou shalt indeed be well paid. go now to the doge and tell him all thou hast seen; how venice would have been destroyed by the demons of the tempest, had it not been for me and my two companions. i am st. mark, the protector of your city; the brave young knight is st. george, and the old man whom we took in last is st. nicholas. tell the doge that i bade him pay thee well for thy brave service.' 'but, and if i tell them this story, how will they believe that i speak the truth?' asked the fisherman. then st. mark took a ring off his finger, and placed it in the fisherman's rough palm. 'thou shalt show them this ring as a proof,' he said; 'and when they look in the treasury of san marco, they will find that it is missing from there.' and when he had finished saying this, st. mark disappeared. then the next day, as early as possible, the fisherman went to the doge and told his marvellous tale and showed the saint's ring. at first no one could believe the wild story, but when they sent and searched in st. mark's treasury, lo! the ring was missing. then they knew that it must indeed have been st. mark who had appeared to the old fisherman, and had saved their beloved city from destruction. so a solemn thanksgiving service was sung in the great church of san marco, and the fisherman received his due reward. he was no longer obliged to work for his living, but received a pension from the rulers of the city, so that he lived in comfort all the rest of his days. in the picture we see the great black galley manned by the demons, sweeping down upon the little boat, in which the three saints stand upright. and not only are the demons on board their ship, but some are riding on dolphins and curious-looking fish, and the little boat is entirely surrounded by the terrible crew. we do not know much about giorgione's life, but we do know that it was a short and sad one, clouded over at the end by bitter sorrow. he had loved a beautiful venetian girl, and was just about to marry her when a friend, whom he also loved, carried her off and left him robbed of love and friendship. nothing could comfort him for his loss, the light seemed to have faded from his life, and soon life itself began to wane. a very little while after and he closed his eyes upon all the beauty and promise which had once filled his world. but though we have so few of his pictures, those few alone are enough to show that it was more than an idle jest which made his companions give him the nickname of george the great. titian we have seen how most of the great painters loved to paint into their pictures those scenes which they had known when they were boys, and which to the end of their lives they remembered clearly and vividly. a giotto never forgets the look of his sheep on the bare hillside of vespignano, fra angelico paints his heavenly pictures with the colours of spring flowers found on the slopes of fiesole, perugino delights in the wide spaciousness of the umbrian plains with the winding river and solitary cypresses. so when we come to the great venetian painter titian we look first with interest to see in what manner of a country he was born, and what were the pictures which nature mirrored in his mind when he was still a boy.' at the foot of the alps, three days' journey from venice, lies the little town of cadore on the pieve, and here it was that titian was born. on every side rise great masses of rugged mountains towering up to the sky, with jagged peaks and curious fantastic shapes. clouds float around their summits, and the mist will often wrap them in gloom and give them a strange and awesome look. at the foot of the craggy pass the mountain-torrent of the pieve roars and tumbles on its way. far-reaching forests of trees, with weather-beaten gnarled old trunks, stand firm against the mountain storms. beneath their wide-spreading boughs there is a gloom almost of twilight, showing peeps here and there of deep purple distances beyond. small wonder it was that titian should love to paint mountains, and that he should be the first to paint a purely landscape picture. he lived those strange solemn mountains and the wild country round, the deep gloom of the woods and the purple of the distance beyond. the boy's father, gregorio vecelli, was one of the nobles of cadore, but the family was not rich, and when titian was ten years old he was sent to an uncle in venice to be taught some trade. he had always been fond of painting, and it is said that when he was a very little boy he was found trying to paint a picture with the juices of flowers. his uncle, seeing that the boy had some talent, placed him in the studio of giovanni bellini. but though titian learned much from bellini, it was not until he first saw giorgione's work that he dreamed of what it was possible to do with colour. thenceforward he began to paint with that marvellous richness of colouring which has made his name famous all over the world. at first young titian worked with giorgione, and together they began to fresco the walls of the exchange above the rialto bridge. but by and by giorgione grew jealous. titian's work was praised too highly; it was even thought to be the better of the two. so they parted company, for giorgione would work with him no more. venice soon began to awake to the fact that in titian she had another great painter who was likely to bring fame and honour to the fair city. he was invited to finish the frescoes in the grand council-chamber which bellini had begun, and to paint the portraits of the doges, her rulers. these portraits which titian painted were so much admired that all the great princes and nobles desired to have themselves painted by the venetian artist. the emperor charles v. himself when he stopped at bologna sent to venice to fetch titian, and so delighted was he with his work that he made the painter a knight with a pension of two hundred crowns. fame and wealth awaited titian wherever he went, and before long he was invited to rome that he might paint the portrait of the pope. there it was that he met michelangelo, and that great master looked with much interest at the work of the venetian artist and praised it highly, for the colouring was such as he had never seen equalled before. 'it is most beautiful,' he said afterwards to a friend; 'but it is a pity that in venice they do not teach men how to draw as well as how to colour. if this titian drew as well as he painted, it would be impossible to surpass him.' but ordinary eyes can find little fault with titian's drawing, and his portraits are thought to be the most wonderful that ever were painted. the golden glow of venice is cast like a magic spell over his pictures, and in him the great venetian school of colouring reaches its height. besides painting portraits, titian painted many other pictures which are among the world's masterpieces. he must have had a special love for children, this famous old venetian painter. we can tell by his pictures how well he understood them and how he loved to paint them. he would learn much by watching his own little daughter lavinia as she played about the old house in venice. his wife had died, and his eldest son was only a grief and disappointment to his father, but the little daughter was the light of his eyes. we seem to catch a glimpse of her face in his famous picture of the little virgin going up the steps to the temple. the little maid is all alone, for she has left her companions behind, and the crowd stands watching her from below, while the high priest waits for her above. one hand is stretched out, and with the other she lifts her dress as she climbs up the marble steps. she looks a very real child with her long plait of golden hair and serious little face, and we cannot help thinking that the painter's own little daughter must have been in his mind when he painted the little virgin. titian lived to be a very old man, almost a hundred years old, and up to the last he was always seen with the brush in his hand, painting some new picture. so, when he passed away, he left behind a rich store of beauty, which not only decked the walls of his beloved venice, but made the whole world richer and more beautiful. tintoretto it was between four and five hundred years ago that venice sat most proudly on her throne as queen of the sea. she had the greatest fleet in all the mediterranean. she bought and sold more than any other nation. she had withstood the shock of battle and conquered all her foes, and now she had time to deck herself with all the beauty which art and wealth could produce. the merchants of venice sailed to every port and carried with them wonderful shiploads of goods, for which their city was famous--silks, velvets, lace, and rich brocades. the secret of the marvellous tyrian dyes had been discovered by her people, and there were many dyers in venice who were specially famous for the purple dye of tyre, which was thought to be the most beautiful in all the world. then too they had learned the art of blowing glass into fairy-like forms, as delicate and light as a bubble, catching in it every shade of colour, and twisting it into a hundred exquisite shapes. truly there had never been a richer or more beautiful city than this queen of the sea. it was just when the glory of venice was at its highest that art too reached its height, and giorgione and titian began to paint the walls of her palaces and the altarpieces of her churches. in the very centre of the city where the poorer venetians had their houses, there lived about this time a man called battista robusti who was a dyer, or 'tintore,' as he is called in italy. it was his little son jacopo who afterwards became such a famous artist. his grand-sounding name 'tintoretto' means nothing but 'the little dyer,' and it was given to him because of his father's trade. tintoretto must have been brought up in the midst of gorgeous colours. not only did he see the wonderful changing tints of the outside world, but in his father's workshop he must often have watched the rich venetian stuffs lifted from the dye vats, heavy with the crimson and purple shades for which venice was famous. perhaps all this glowing colour wearied his young eyes, for when he grew to be a man his pictures show that he loved solemn and dark tones, though he could also paint the most brilliant colours when he chose. of course, the boy tintoretto began by painting the walls of his father's house, as soon as he was old enough to learn the use of dyes and paints. even if he had not had in him the artist soul, he could scarcely have resisted the temptation to spread those lovely colours on the smooth white walls. any child would have done the same, but tintoretto's mischievous fingers already showed signs of talent, and his father, instead of scolding him for wasting colours and spoiling the walls, encouraged him to go on with his pictures. as the boy grew older, his great delight was to wander about the city and watch the men at work building new palaces. but especially did he linger near those walls which titian and giorgione were covering with their wonderful frescoes. high on the scaffolding he would see the painters at work, and as he watched the boy would build castles in the air, and dream dreams of a time when he too would be a master-painter, and be bidden by venice to decorate her walls. to tintoretto's mind titian was the greatest man in all the world, and to be taught by him the greatest honour that heart could wish. so it was perhaps the happiest day in all his life when his father decided to take him to titian's studio and ask the master to receive him as a pupil. but the happiness lasted but a very short time. titian did not approve of the boy's work, and refused to keep him in the studio; so poor, disappointed tintoretto went home again, and felt as if all sunshine and hope had gone for ever from his life. it was a bitter disappointment to his father and mother too, for they had set their hearts on the boy becoming an artist. but in spite of all this, tintoretto did not lose heart or give up his dreams. he worked on by himself in his own way, and titian's paintings taught him many things even though the master himself refused to help him. then too he saw some work of the great michelangelo, and learned many a lesson from that. thenceforward his highest ideal was always 'the drawing of michelangelo and the colour of titian. the young artist lived in a poor, bare room, and most of his money went in the buying of little pieces of old sculpture or casts. he had a very curious way of working the designs for his pictures. instead of drawing many sketches, he made little wax models of figures and arranged them inside a cardboard or wooden box in which there was a hole to admit a lighted candle. so, besides the grouping of the figures, he could also arrange the light and shade. but, though he worked hard, fame was long in coming to tintoretto. people did not understand his way of painting. it was not after the manner of any of the great artists, and they were rather afraid of his bold, furious-looking work. nevertheless tintoretto worked steadily on, always hoping, and whenever there was a chance of doing any work, even without receiving payment for it, he seized it eagerly. it happened just then that the young venetian artists had agreed to have a show of their paintings, and had hired a room for the exhibition in the merceria, the busiest part of venice. tintoretto was very glad of the chance of showing his work, so he sent in a portrait of himself and also one of his brother. as soon as these pictures were seen people began to take more notice of the clever young painter, and even titian allowed that his work was good. his portraits were always fresh and life-like, and he drew with a bold strong touch, as you will see if you look at the drawing i have shown you--the head of a venetian boy, such as tintoretto met daily among the fisher-folk of venice. from that time fortune began to smile on tintoretto. little by little work began to come in. he was asked to paint altarpieces for the churches, and even at last, when his name became famous, he was invited to work upon the walls of the ducal palace, the highest honour which a venetian painter could hope to win. the days of the poor, bare studio, and lonely, sad life were ended now. tintoretto had no longer to struggle with poverty and neglect. his house was a beautiful palace looking over the lagoon towards murano, and he had married the daughter of a venetian noble, and lived a happy, contented life. children's voices made gay music in his home, and the pattering of little feet broke the silence of his studio. fame had come to him too. his work might be strange but it was very wonderful, and venice was proud of her new painter. his great stormy pictures had earned for him the name off 'the furious painter,' and the world began to acknowledge his greatness. but the real sunshine of his life was his little daughter marietta. as soon as she learned to walk she found her way to her father's studio, and until she was fifteen years old she was always with him and helped him as if she had been one of his pupils. she was dressed too as a boy, and visitors to the studio never guessed that the clever, handsome boy was really the painter's daughter. there were many great schools in venice at that time, and there was much work to be done in decorating their walls with paintings. a school was not really a place of education, but a society of people who joined themselves together in charity to nurse the sick, bury the dead, and release any prisoners who had been taken captive. one of the greatest of the schools was the 'scuola de san rocco,' and this was given into the hands of tintoretto, who covered the walls with his paintings, leaving but little room for other artists. but it is in the ducal palace that the master's most famous work is seen. there, covering the entire side of the great hall, hangs his 'paradiso,' the largest oil painting in the world. at first it seems but a gloomy picture of paradise. it is so vast, and such hundreds of figures are crowded together, and the colour is dark and sombre. there is none of that swinging of golden censers by white-robed angels, none of the pure glad colouring of spring flowers which makes us love the paradise of fra angelico. but if we stand long enough before it a great awe steals over us, and we forget to look for bright colours and gentle angel faces, for the figures surging upwards are very real and human, and the paradise into which we gaze seems to reveal to our eyes the very place where we ourselves shall stand one day. at the time when tintoretto was painting his 'paradiso,' his little daughter marietta had grown to be a woman, and her painting too had become famous. she was invited to the courts of germany and spain to paint the portraits of the king and emperor, but she refused to leave venice and her beloved father. even when she married mario, the jeweller, she did not go far from home, and tintoretto grew every year fonder and prouder of his clever and beautiful daughter. not only could she paint, but she played and sang most wonderfully, and became a great favourite among the music-loving venetians. but this happiness soon came to an end, for marietta died suddenly in the midst of her happy life. nothing could comfort tintoretto for the loss of his daughter. she was buried in the church of santa maria dell' orto, and there he ordered another place to be prepared that he might be buried at her side. it seemed, indeed, as if he could not live without her, for it was not long before he passed away. the last great stormy picture of 'the furious painter' was finished, and all venice mourned as they laid him to rest beside the daughter he had loved so well. paul veronese it was in the city of verona that paul cagliari, the last of the great painters of the venetian school, was born. the name of that old city of the veneto makes us think at once of moonlight nights and fair juliet gazing from her balcony as she bids farewell to her dear romeo. for it was here that the two lovers lived their short lives which ended so sadly. but verona has other titles to fame besides being the scene of shakespeare's story, and one of her proudest boasts is that she gave her name to the great venetian artist paolo veronese, or paul of verona, as we would say in english. there were many artists in verona when paolo was a boy. his own father was a sculptor and his uncle a famous painter, so the child was encouraged to begin work early. as soon as he showed that he had a talent for painting, he was sent to his uncle's studio to be taught his first lessons in drawing. verona was not very far off from venice, and paolo was never tired of listening to the tales told of that beautiful queen of the sea. he loved to try and picture her magnificence, her marble palaces overlaid with gold, her richly-dressed nobles, and, above all, the wonder of those pictures which decked her walls. the very names of giorgione and titian sounded like magic in his ears. they seemed to open out before him a wonderful new paradise, where stately men and women clad in the richest robes moved about in a world of glowing colour. at last the day came when he was to see the city of his dreams, and enter into that magic world of art. what delight it was to study those pictures hour by hour, and learn the secrets of the great masters. it was the best teaching that heart could desire. no one in venice took much notice of the quiet, hard-working young painter, and he worked on steadily by himself for some years. but at last his chance came, and he was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the church of st. sebastian; and when this was finished venice recognised his genius, and saw that here was another of her sons whom she must delight to honour. these great pictures of veronese were just the kind of work to charm the rich venetians, those merchant princes who delighted in costly magnificence. never before had any painter pictured such royal scenes of grandeur. there were banqueting halls with marble balustrades just like their own venetian palaces. the guests that thronged these halls were courtly gentlemen and high-born ladies arrayed in rich brocades and dazzling jewels. men-servants and maidservants, costly ornaments and golden dishes were there, everything that heart could desire. true, there was not much room for religious feeling amid all this grandeur, although the painter would call the pictures by some bible name and would paint in the figure of our lord, or the blessed virgin, among the gay crowd. but no one stopped to think about religion, and what cared they if the guests at the 'marriage feast of cana' were dressed in the rich robes of venetian nobles, and all was as different as possible from the simple wedding-feast where christ worked his first miracle. so the fame of paolo veronese grew greater and greater, and he painted more and more gorgeous pictures. but here and there we find a simpler and more charming piece of his work, as when he painted the little st. john with the skin thrown over his bare shoulder and the cross in his hand. he is such a really childlike figure as he stands looking upward and rests his little hand confidingly on the worn and wounded palm of st. francis, who stands beside him. although the venetian nobles found nothing wanting in the splendid pictures which veronese painted, the church at last began to have doubts as to whether they were fit as religious subjects to adorn her walls. the holy office considered the question, and veronese was ordered to appear before the council. was it, indeed, fit that court jesters, little negro boys, and even cats and pet dogs should appear in pictures which were to decorate the walls of a church? veronese answered gravely that it was the effect of the picture that mattered, and that the details need not be thought of. so the complaint was dismissed. these pictures of paolo veronese were really great pieces of decoration, very wonderful in their way, but showing already that art was sinking lower instead of rising higher. if the spirits of the old masters could have returned to gaze upon this new work, what would their feelings have been? how the simple giotto would have shaken his head over this wealth of ornament which meant so little, even while he marvelled at the clever work. how sorrowfully would fra angelico have turned away from this perfection of worldly vanity, and sighed to think that the art of painting was no longer a golden chain to link men's souls to heaven. even the merry-hearted monk fra filippo lippi would scarce have approved of all this gorgeous company. art had indeed shaken off the binding rules of old tradition, and veronese was free to follow his own magnificent fancy. but who can say if that freedom was indeed a gain? and it is with a sigh that we close the record of italian art and turn our eyes, wearied with all its splendour and the glare of the noonday sun, back to the early dawn, when the soul of the painter looked through his pictures, and taught us the simple lesson that work done for the glory of god was greater than that done for the praise of men. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/ / / / / / -h.zip) the earlier work of titian by claude phillips keeper of the wallace collection [illustration: _flora_] [illustration: the portfolio artistic monographs with many illustrations] list of illustrations plates page flora. uffizi gallery, florence ....................... frontispiece sacred and profane love. borghese gallery, rome..................... virgin and child, with saints. louvre............................... le jeune homme au gant. louvre...................................... illustrations printed in colour design for a holy family. chatsworth................................ sketch for the madonna di casa pesaro. albertina.................... illustrations in the text the man of sorrows. in the scuola di s. rocco, venice............... virgin and child, known as "la zingarella." imperial gallery, vienna the baptism of christ. gallery of the capitol, rome................. the three ages. bridgewater gallery ................................ herodias with the head of john the baptist. doria gallery, rome..... vanitas. alte pinakothek, munich.................................... st. anthony of padua causing a new-born infant to speak. fresco in the scuola del santo, padua............................................. "noli me tangere." national gallery................................. st. mark enthroned, with four saints. s. maria della salute, venice. the madonna with the cherries. imperial gallery, vienna............. page madonna and child, with st. john and st. anthony abbot. uffizi gallery, florence......................................................... st. eustace (or st. hubert) with the miracle of the stag. british museum ............................................................ the "cristo della moneta." dresden gallery......................... madonna and child, with four saints. dresden gallery............... a concert. probably by titian. pitti palace, florence.............. portrait of a man. alte pinakothek, munich......................... alessandro de' medici (so called). hampton court................... the worship of venus. prado gallery, madrid........................ the assunta. accademia delle belle arti, venice.................... the annunciation. cathedral at treviso............................. bacchus and ariadne. national gallery.............................. st. sebastian. wing of altar-piece in the church of ss. nazzaro e celso, brescia............................................................. la vierge au lapin. louvre......................................... st. christopher with the infant christ. fresco in the doge's palace, venice ............................................................ the madonna di casa pesaro. church of s. maria dei frari, venice... martyrdom of st. peter the dominican............................... tobias and the angel. s. marciliano, venice........................ the earlier work of titian introduction there is no greater name in italian art--therefore no greater in art--than that of titian. if the venetian master does not soar as high as leonardo da vinci or michelangelo, those figures so vast, so mysterious, that clouds even now gather round their heads and half-veil them from our view; if he has not the divine suavity, the perfect balance, not less of spirit than of answering hand, that makes raphael an appearance unique in art, since the palmiest days of greece; he is wider in scope, more glowing with the life-blood of humanity, more the poet-painter of the world and the world's fairest creatures, than any one of these. titian is neither the loftiest, the most penetrating, nor the most profoundly moved among the great exponents of sacred art, even of his time and country. yet is it possible, remembering the _entombment_ of the louvre, the _assunta_, the _madonna di casa pesaro_, the _st. peter martyr_, to say that he has, take him all in all, been surpassed in this the highest branch of his art? certainly nowhere else have the pomp and splendour of the painter's achievement at its apogee been so consistently allied to a dignity and simplicity hardly ever overstepping the bounds of nature. the sacred art of no other painter of the full sixteenth century--not even that of raphael himself--has to an equal degree influenced other painters, and moulded the style of the world, in those great ceremonial altar-pieces in which sacred passion must perforce express itself with an exaggeration that is not necessarily a distortion of truth. and then as a portraitist--we are dealing, be it remembered, with italian art only--there must be conceded to him the first place, as a limner both of men and women, though each of us may reserve a corner in his secret heart for some other master. one will remember the disquieting power, the fascination in the true sense of the word, of leonardo; the majesty, the penetration, the uncompromising realism on occasion, of raphael; the happy mixture of the giorgionesque, the raphaelesque, and later on the michelangelesque, in sebastiano del piombo. another will yearn for the poetic glamour, gilding realistic truth, of giorgione; for the intensely pathetic interpretation of lorenzo lotto, with its unique combination of the strongest subjective and objective elements, the one serving to poetise and accentuate the other. yet another will cite the lofty melancholy, the aristocratic charm of the brescian moretto, or the marvellous power of the bergamasque moroni to present in their natural union, with no indiscretion of over-emphasis, the spiritual and physical elements which go to make up that mystery of mysteries, the human individuality. there is, however, no advocate of any of these great masters who, having vaunted the peculiar perfections in portraiture of his own favourite, will not end--with a sigh perhaps--by according the palm to titian. in landscape his pre-eminence is even more absolute and unquestioned. he had great precursors here, but no equal; and until claude lorrain long afterwards arose, there appeared no successor capable, like himself, of expressing the quintessence of nature's most significant beauties without a too slavish adherence to any special set of natural facts. giovanni bellini from his earliest mantegnesque or paduan days had, unlike his great brother-in-law, unlike the true squarcionesques, and the ferrarese who more or less remotely came within the squarcionesque influence, the true gift of the landscape-painter. atmospheric conditions formed invariably an important element of his conceptions; and to see that this is so we need only remember the chilly solemnity of the landscape in the great _pietà_ of the brera, the ominous sunset in our own _agony in the garden_ of the national gallery, the cheerful all-pervading glow of the beautiful little _sacred conversation_ at the uffizi, the mysterious illumination of the late _baptism of christ_ in the church of s. corona at vicenza. to attempt a discussion of the landscape of giorgione would be to enter upon the most perilous, as well as the most fascinating of subjects--so various is it even in the few well-established examples of his art, so exquisite an instrument of expression always, so complete an exterioration of the complex moods of his personages. yet even the landscape of giorgione--judging it from such unassailable works of his riper time as the great altar-piece of castelfranco, the so-called _stormy landscape with the gipsy and the soldier_[ ] in the giovanelli palace at venice, and the so-called _three philosophers_ in the imperial gallery at vienna--has in it still a slight flavour of the ripe archaic just merging into full perfection. it was reserved for titian to give in his early time the fullest development to the giorgionesque landscape, as in the _three ages_ and the _sacred and profane love_. then all himself, and with hardly a rival in art, he went on to unfold those radiantly beautiful prospects of earth and sky which enframe the figures in the _worship of venus_, the _bacchanal_, and, above all, the _bacchus and ariadne_; to give back his impressions of nature in those rich backgrounds of reposeful beauty which so enhance the finest of the holy families and sacred conversations. it was the ominous grandeur of the landscape in the _st. peter martyr_, even more than the dramatic intensity, the academic amplitude of the figures, that won for the picture its universal fame. the same intimate relation between the landscape and the figures may be said to exist in the late _jupiter and antiope (venere del pardo)_ of the louvre, with its marked return to giorgionesque repose and giorgionesque communion with nature; in the late _rape of europa_, the bold sweep and the rainbow hues of the landscape in which recall the much earlier _bacchus and ariadne_. in the exquisite _shepherd and nymph_ of the imperial gallery at vienna--a masterpiece in monotone of quite the last period--the sensuousness of the early giorgionesque time reappears, even more strongly emphasised; yet it is kept in balance, as in the early days, by the imaginative temperament of the poet, by that solemn atmosphere of mystery, above all, which belongs to the final years of titian's old age. thus, though there cannot be claimed for titian that universality in art and science which the lovers of leonardo's painting must ever deplore, since it lured him into a thousand side-paths; for the vastness of scope of michelangelo, or even the all-embracing curiosity of albrecht dürer; it must be seen that as a _painter_ he covered more ground than any first-rate master of the sixteenth century. while in more than one branch of the painter's art he stood forth supreme and without a rival, in most others he remained second to none, alone in great pictorial decorations of the monumental order yielding the palm to his younger rivals tintoretto and paolo veronese, who showed themselves more practised and more successfully daring in this particular branch. to find another instance of such supreme mastery of the brush, such parallel activity in all the chief branches of oil-painting, one must go to antwerp, the great merchant city of the north as venice was, or had been, the great merchant city of the south. rubens, who might fairly be styled the flemish titian, and who indeed owed much to his venetian predecessor, though far less than did his own pupil van dyck, was during the first forty years of the seventeenth century on the same pinnacle of supremacy that the cadorine master had occupied for a much longer period during the renaissance. he, too, was without a rival in the creation of those vast altar-pieces which made the fame of the churches that owned them; he, too, was the finest painter of landscape of his time, as an accessory to the human figure. moreover, he was a portrait-painter who, in his greatest efforts--those sumptuous and almost truculent _portraits d'apparat_ of princes, nobles, and splendid dames--knew no superior, though his contemporaries were van dyck, frans hals, rembrandt, and velazquez. rubens folded his mother earth and his fellow-man in a more demonstrative, a seemingly closer embrace, drawing from the contact a more exuberant vigour, but taking with him from its very closeness some of the stain of earth. titian, though he was at least as genuine a realist as his successor, and one less content, indeed, with the mere outsides of things, was penetrated with the spirit of beauty which was everywhere--in the mountain home of his birth as in the radiant home of his adoption, in himself as in his everyday surroundings. his art had ever, even in its most human and least aspiring phases, the divine harmony, the suavity tempering natural truth and passion, that distinguishes italian art of the great periods from the finest art that is not italian. the relation of the two masters--both of them in the first line of the world's painters--was much that of venice to antwerp. the apogee of each city in its different way represented the highest point that modern europe had reached of physical well-being and splendour, of material as distinguished from mental culture. but then venice was wrapped in the transfiguring atmosphere of the lagunes, and could see, towering above the rich venetian plains and the lower slopes of the friulan mountains, the higher, the more aspiring peaks of the purer region. reality, with all its warmth and all its truth, in venetian art was still reality. but it was reality made at once truer, wider, and more suave by the method of presentment. idealisation, in the narrower sense of the word, could add nothing to the loveliness of such a land, to the stateliness, the splendid sensuousness devoid of the grosser elements of offence, to the genuine naturalness of such a mode of life. art itself could only add to it the right accent, the right emphasis, the larger scope in truth, the colouring and illumination best suited to give the fullest expression to the beauties of the land, to the force, character, and warm human charm of the people. this is what titian, supreme among his contemporaries of the greatest venetian time, did with an incomparable mastery to which, in the vast field which his productions cover, it would be vain to seek for a parallel. other venetians may, in one or the other way, more irresistibly enlist our sympathies, or may shine out for the moment more brilliantly in some special branch of their art; yet, after all, we find ourselves invariably comparing them to titian, not titian to them--taking _him_ as the standard for the measurement of even his greatest contemporaries and successors. giorgione was of a finer fibre, and more happily, it may be, combined all the subtlest qualities of the painter and the poet, in his creation of a phase of art the penetrating exquisiteness of which has never in the succeeding centuries lost its hold on the world. but then titian, saturated with the giorgionesque, and only less truly the poet-painter than his master and companion, carried the style to a higher pitch of material perfection than its inventor himself had been able to achieve. the gifted but unequal pordenone, who showed himself so incapable of sustained rivalry with our master in venice, had moments of a higher sublimity than titian reached until he came to the extreme limits of old age. that this assertion is not a mere paradox, the great _madonna del carmelo_ at the venice academy and the magnificent _trinity_ in the sacristy of the cathedral of san daniele near udine may be taken to prove. yet who would venture to compare him on equal terms to the painter of the _assunta_, the _entombment_ and the _christ at emmaus_? tintoretto, at his best, has lightning flashes of illumination, a titanic vastness, an inexplicable power of perturbing the spirit and placing it in his own atmosphere, which may cause the imaginative not altogether unreasonably to put him forward as the greater figure in art. all the same, if it were necessary to make a definite choice between the two, who would not uphold the saner and greater art of titian, even though it might leave us nearer to reality, though it might conceive the supreme tragedies, not less than the happy interludes, of the sacred drama, in the purely human spirit and with the pathos of earth? a not dissimilar comparison might be instituted between the portraits of lorenzo lotto and those of our master. no venetian painter of the golden prime had that peculiar imaginativeness of lotto, which caused him, while seeking to penetrate into the depths of the human individuality submitted to him, to infuse into it unconsciously much of his own tremulous sensitiveness and charm. in this way no portraits of the sixteenth century provide so fascinating a series of riddles. yet in deciphering them it is very necessary to take into account the peculiar temperament of the painter himself, as well as the physical and mental characteristics of the sitter and the atmosphere of the time.[ ] yet where is the critic bold enough to place even the finest of these exquisite productions on the same level as _le jeune homme au gant_ and _l'homme en noir_ of the louvre, the _ippolito de' medici_, the _bella di tiziano_, the _aretino_ of the pitti, the _charles v. at the battle of mühlberg_ and the full-length _philip ii._ of the prado museum at madrid? finally, in the domain of pure colour some will deem that titian has serious rivals in those veronese developed into venetians, the two elder bonifazi and paolo veronese; that is, there will be found lovers of painting who prefer a brilliant mastery over contrasting colours in frank juxtaposition to a palette relatively restricted, used with an art more subtle, if less dazzling than theirs, and resulting in a deeper, graver richness, a more significant beauty, if in a less stimulating gaiety and variety of aspect. no less a critic than morelli himself pronounced the elder bonifazio veronese to be the most brilliant colourist of the venetian school; and the _dives and lazarus_ of the venice academy, the _finding of moses_ at the brera are at hand to give solid support to such an assertion. in some ways paolo veronese may, without exaggeration, be held to be the greatest virtuoso among colourists, the most marvellous executant to be found in the whole range of italian art. starting from the cardinal principles in colour of the true veronese, his precursors--painters such as domenico and francesco morone, liberale, girolamo dai libri, cavazzola, antonio badile, and the rather later brusasorci--caliari dared combinations of colour the most trenchant in their brilliancy as well as the subtlest and most unfamiliar. unlike his predecessors, however, he preserved the stimulating charm while abolishing the abruptness of sheer contrast. this he did mainly by balancing and tempering his dazzling hues with huge architectural masses of a vibrant grey and large depths of cool dark shadow--brown shot through with silver. no other venetian master could have painted the _mystic marriage of st. catherine_ in the church of that name at venice, the _allegory on the victory of lepanto_ in the palazzo ducale, or the vast _nozze di cana_ of the louvre. all the same, this virtuosity, while it is in one sense a step in advance even of giorgione, titian, palma, and paris bordone--constituting as it does more particularly a further development of painting from the purely decorative standpoint--must appear just a little superficial, a little self-conscious, by the side of the nobler, graver, and more profound, if in some ways more limited methods of titian. with him, as with giorgione, and, indeed, with tintoretto, colour was above all an instrument of expression. the main effort was to give a realisation, at once splendid and penetrating in its truth, of the subject presented; and colour in accordance with the true venetian principle was used not only as the decorative vesture, but as the very body and soul of painting--as what it is, indeed, in nature. to put forward paolo veronese as merely the dazzling virtuoso would all the same be to show a singular ignorance of the true scope of his art. he can rise as high in dramatic passion and pathos as the greatest of them all, when he is in the vein; but these are precisely the occasions on which he most resolutely subordinates his colour to his subject and makes the most poetic use of chiaroscuro; as in the great altar-piece _the martyrdom of st. sebastian_ in the church of that name, the too little known _st. francis receiving the stigmata_ on a ceiling compartment of the academy of arts at vienna, and the wonderful _crucifixion_ which not many years ago was brought down from the sky-line of the long gallery in the louvre, and placed, where it deserves to be, among the masterpieces. and yet in this last piece the colour is not only in a singular degree interpretative of the subject, but at the same time technically astonishing--with certain subtleties of unusual juxtaposition and modulation, delightful to the craftsman, which are hardly seen again until we come to the latter half of the present century. so that here we have the great veneto-veronese master escaping altogether from our theory, and showing himself at one and the same time profoundly moving, intensely significant, and admirably decorative in colour. still what was with him the splendid exception was with titian, and those who have been grouped with titian, the guiding rule of art. though our master remains, take him all in all, the greatest of venetian colourists, he never condescends to vaunt all that he knows, or to select his subjects as a groundwork for bravura, even the most legitimate. he is the greatest painter of the sixteenth century, just because, being the greatest colourist of the higher order, and in legitimate mastery of the brush second to none, he makes the worthiest use of his unrivalled accomplishment, not merely to call down the applause due to supreme pictorial skill and the victory over self-set difficulties, but, above all, to give the fullest and most legitimate expression to the subjects which he presents, and through them to himself. chapter i cadore and venice--early giorgionesque works up to the date of the residence in padua--new interpretations of giorgione's and titian's pictures. tiziano vecelli was born in or about the year at pieve di cadore, a district of the southern tyrol then belonging to the republic of venice, and still within the italian frontier. he was the son of gregorio di conte vecelli by his wife lucia, his father being descended from an ancient family of the name of guecello (or vecellio), established in the valley of cadore. an ancestor, ser guecello di tommasro da pozzale, had been elected podesta of cadore as far back as .[ ] the name tiziano would appear to have been a traditional one in the family. among others we find a contemporary tiziano vecelli, who is a lawyer of note concerned in the administration of cadore, keeping up a kind of obsequious friendship with his famous cousin at venice. the tizianello who, in , dedicated to the countess of arundel an anonymous life of titian known as tizianello's _anonimo_, and died at venice in , was titian's cousin thrice removed. gregorio vecelli was a valiant soldier, distinguished for his bravery in the field and his wisdom in the council of cadore, but not, it may be assumed, possessed of wealth or, in a poor mountain district like cadore, endowed with the means of obtaining it. the other offspring of the marriage with lucia were francesco,--supposed, though without substantial proof, to have been older than his brother,--caterina, and orsa. at the age of nine, according to dolce in the _dialogo della pittura_, or of ten, according to tizianello's _anonimo_, titian was taken from cadore to venice, there to enter upon the serious study of painting. whether he had previously received some slight tuition in the rudiments of the art, or had only shown a natural inclination to become a painter, cannot be ascertained with any precision; nor is the point, indeed, one of any real importance. what is much more vital in our study of the master's life-work is to ascertain how far the scenery of his native cadore left a permanent impress on his landscape art, and in what way his descent from a family of mountaineers and soldiers, hardy, yet of a certain birth and breeding, contributed to shape his individuality in its development to maturity. it has been almost universally assumed that titian throughout his career made use of the mountain scenery of cadore in the backgrounds to his pictures; and yet, if we except the great _battle of cadore_ itself (now known only in fontana's print, in a reduced version of part of the composition to be found at the uffizi, and in a drawing of rubens at the albertina), this is only true in a modified sense. undoubtedly, both in the backgrounds to altar-pieces, holy families, and sacred conversations, and in the landscape drawings of the type so freely copied and adapted by domenico campagnola, we find the jagged, naked peaks of the dolomites aspiring to the heavens. in the majority of instances, however, the middle distance and foreground to these is not the scenery of the higher alps, with its abrupt contrasts, its monotonous vesture of fir or pine forests clothing the mountain sides, and its relatively harsh and cold colouring, but the richer vegetation of the friulan mountains in their lower slopes, or of the beautiful hills bordering upon the overflowing richness of the venetian plain. here the painter found greater variety, greater softness in the play of light, and a richness more suitable to the character of venetian art. all these tracts of country, as well as the more grandiose scenery of his native cadore itself, he had the amplest opportunities for studying in the course of his many journeyings from venice to pieve and back, as well as in his shorter expeditions on the venetian mainland. how far titian's alpine origin, and his early bringing-up among needy mountaineers, may be taken to account for his excessive eagerness to reap all the material advantages of his artistic pre-eminence, for his unresting energy when any post was to be obtained or any payment to be got in, must be a matter for individual appreciation. josiah gilbert--quoted by crowe and cavalcaselle[ ]--pertinently asks, "might this mountain man have been something of a 'canny scot' or a shrewd swiss?" in the getting, titian was certainly all this, but in the spending he was large and liberal, inclined to splendour and voluptuousness, even more in the second than in the first half of his career. vasari relates that titian was lodged at venice with his uncle, an "honourable citizen," who, seeing his great inclination for painting, placed him under giovanni bellini, in whose style he soon became a proficient. dolce, apparently better instructed, gives, in his _dialogo della pittura_, zuccato, best known as a mosaic worker, as his first master; next makes him pass into the studio of gentile bellini, and thence into that of the _caposcuola_ giovanni bellini; to take, however, the last and by far the most important step of his early career when he becomes the pupil and partner, or assistant, of giorgione. morelli[ ] would prefer to leave giovanni bellini altogether out of titian's artistic descent. however this may be, certain traces of gentile's influence may be observed in the art of the cadorine painter, especially in the earlier portraiture, but indeed in the methods of technical execution generally. on the other hand, no extant work of his beginnings suggests the view that he was one of the inner circle of gian bellino's pupils--one of the _discipuli_, as some of these were fond of describing themselves. no young artist painting in venice in the last years of the fifteenth century could, however, entirely withdraw himself from the influence of the veteran master, whether he actually belonged to his following or not. gian bellino exercised upon the contemporary art of venice and the _veneto_ an influence not less strong of its kind than that which radiated from leonardo over milan and the adjacent regions during his milanese period. the latter not only stamped his art on the works of his own special school, but fascinated in the long run the painters of the specifically milanese group which sprang from foppa and borgognone--such men as ambrogio de' predis, bernardino de' conti, and, indeed, the somewhat later bernardino luini himself. to the fashion for the bellinesque conceptions of a certain class, even alvise vivarini, the vigorous head of the opposite school in its latest quattrocento development, bowed when he painted the madonnas of the redentore and s. giovanni in bragora at venice, and that similar one now in the vienna gallery. lorenzo lotto, whose artistic connection with alvise mr. bernard berenson was the first to trace, is to a marked extent under the paramount influence of giovanni bellini in such works as the altar-piece of s. cristina near treviso, the _madonna and child with saints_ in the ellesmere collection, and the _madonna and child with st. peter martyr_ in the naples gallery, while in the _marriage of st. catherine_ at munich, though it belongs to the early time, he is, both as regards exaggerations of movement and delightful peculiarities of colour, essentially himself. marco basaiti, who, up to the date of alvise's death, was intimately connected with him, and, so far as he could, faithfully reproduced the characteristics of his incisive style, in his later years was transformed into something very like a satellite of giovanni bellini. cima, who in his technical processes belongs rather to the vivarini than to the bellini group, is to a great extent overshadowed, though never, as some would have it, absorbed to the point of absolute imitation, by his greater contemporary. what may legitimately excite surprise in the beginnings both of giorgione and titian, so far as they are at present ascertained, is not so much that in their earliest productions they to a certain extent lean on giovanni bellini, as that they are so soon themselves. neither of them is in any extant work seen to stand in the same absolutely dependent relation to the veteran quattrocentist which raphael for a time held towards perugino, which sebastiano luciani in his earliest manhood held towards giorgione. this holds good to a certain extent also of lorenzo lotto, who, in the earliest known examples--the so-called _danaë_ of sir martin conway's collection, and the _st. jerome_ of the louvre--is already emphatically lotto, though, as his art passes through successive developments, he will still show himself open to more or less enduring influences from the one side and the other. sebastiano del piombo, on the other hand, great master as he must undoubtedly be accounted in every successive phase, is never throughout his career out of leading-strings. first, as a boy, he paints the puzzling _pietà_ in the layard collection at venice, which, notwithstanding the authentic inscription, "bastian luciani fuit descipulus johannes bellinus (sic)," is so astonishingly like a cima that, without this piece of documentary evidence, it would even now pass as such. next, he becomes the most accomplished exponent of the giorgionesque manner, save perhaps titian himself. then, migrating to rome, he produces, in a quasi-raphaelesque style still strongly tinged with the giorgionesque, that series of superb portraits which, under the name of sanzio, have acquired a world-wide fame. finally, surrendering himself body and soul to michelangelo, and only unconsciously, from the force of early training and association, allowing his venetian origin to reveal itself, he remains enslaved by the tremendous genius of the florentine to the very end of his career. giorgione and titian were as nearly as possible of the same age, being both of them born in or about . lorenzo lotto's birth is to be placed about the year --or, as others would have it, . palma saw the light about , pordenone in , sebastiano luciani in . so that most of the great protagonists of venetian art during the earlier half of the cinquecento were born within the short period of eight years--between and . in crowe and cavalcaselle's _life and times of titian_ a revolutionary theory, foreshadowed in their _painting in north italy_, was for the first time deliberately put forward and elaborately sustained. they sought to convince the student, as they had convinced themselves, that palma, issuing from gian bellino and giorgione, strongly influenced and shaped the art of his contemporary titian, instead of having been influenced by him, as the relative position and age of the two artists would have induced the student to believe. crowe and cavalcaselle's theory rested in the main, though not so entirely as giovanni morelli appears to have held, on the signature and the early date ( ) to be found on a _santa conversazione_, once in the collection of m. reiset, and now at chantilly in that of the late due d'aumale. this date now proves with the artist's signature to be a forgery, and the picture in question, which, with strong traces still of the bellinesque mode of conception and the bellinesque style, shows a larger and more modern technique, can no longer be cited as proving the priority of palma in the development of the full renaissance types and the full renaissance methods of execution. there can be small doubt that this particular theory of the indefatigable critics, to whom the history of italian art owes so much, will little by little be allowed to die a natural death, if it be not, indeed, already defunct. more and more will the view so forcibly stated by giovanni morelli recommend itself, that palma in many of those elements of his art most distinctively palmesque leans upon the master of cadore. the bergamasque painter was not indeed a personality in art sufficiently strong and individual to dominate a titian, or to leave upon his style and methods profound and enduring traces. as such, crowe and cavalcaselle themselves hesitate to put him forward, though they cling with great persistency to their pet theory of his influence. this exquisite artist, though by no means inventive genius, did, on the other hand, permanently shape the style of cariani and the two elder bonifazi; imparting, it may be, also some of his voluptuous charm in the rendering of female loveliness to paris bordone, though the latter must, in the main, be looked upon as the artistic offspring of titian. it is by no means certain, all the same, that this question of influence imparted and submitted to can with advantage be argued with such absoluteness of statement as has been the rule up to the present time, both on the one side and the other. it should be remembered that we are dealing with three young painters of about the same age, working in the same art-centre, perhaps, even, for a time in the same studio--issuing, at any rate, all three from the flank of giovanni bellini. in a situation like this, it is not only the preponderance of age--two or three years at the most, one way or the other--that is to be taken into account, but the preponderance of genius and the magic gift of influence. it is easy to understand how the complete renewal, brought about by giorgione on the basis of bellini's teaching and example, operated to revolutionise the art of his own generation. he threw open to art the gates of life in its mysterious complexity, in its fulness of sensuous yearning commingled with spiritual aspiration. irresistible was the fascination exercised both by his art and his personality over his youthful contemporaries; more and more did the circle of his influence widen, until it might almost be said that the veteran gian bellino himself was brought within it. with barbarelli, at any rate, there could be no question of light received back from painters of his own generation in exchange for that diffused around him; but with titian and palma the case was different. the germs of the giorgionesque fell here in each case upon a fruitful soil, and in each case produced a vigorous plant of the same family, yet with all its giorgionesque colour of a quite distinctive loveliness. titian, we shall see, carried the style to its highest point of material development, and made of it in many ways a new thing. palma, with all his love of beauty in colour and form, in nature as in man, had a less finely attuned artistic temperament than giorgione, titian, or lotto. morelli has called attention to that element of downright energy in his mountain nature which in a way counteracts the marked sensuousness of his art, save when he interprets the charms of the full-blown venetian woman. the great milanese critic attributes this to the bergamasque origin of the artist, showing itself beneath venetian training. is it not possible that a little of this frank unquestioning sensuousness on the one hand, of this _terre à terre_ energy on the other, may have been reflected in the early work of titian, though it be conceded that he influenced far more than he was influenced?[ ] there is undoubtedly in his personal development of the giorgionesque a superadded element of something much nearer to the everyday world than is to be found in the work of his prototype, and this not easily definable element is peculiar also to palma's art, in which, indeed, it endures to the end. thus there is a singular resemblance between the type of his fairly fashioned eve in the important _adam and eve_ of his earlier time in the brunswick gallery--once, like so many other things, attributed to giorgione--and the preferred type of youthful female loveliness as it is to be found in titian's _three ages_ at bridgewater house, in his so-called _sacred and profane love (medea and venus)_ of the borghese gallery, in such sacred pieces as the _madonna and child with ss. ulfo and brigida_ at the prado gallery of madrid, and the large _madonna and child with four saints_ at dresden. in both instances we have the giorgionesque conception stripped of a little of its poetic glamour, but retaining unabashed its splendid sensuousness, which is thus made the more markedly to stand out. we notice, too, in titian's works belonging to this particular group another characteristic which may be styled palmesque, if only because palma indulged in it in a great number of his sacred conversations and similar pieces. this is the contrasting of the rich brown skin, the muscular form, of some male saint, or it may be some shepherd of the uplands, with the dazzling fairness, set off with hair of pale or ruddy gold, of a female saint, or a fair venetian doing duty as a shepherdess or a heroine of antiquity. are we to look upon such distinguishing characteristics as these--and others that could easily be singled out--as wholly and solely titianesque of the early time? if so, we ought to assume that what is most distinctively palmesque in the art of palma came from the painter of cadore, who in this case should be taken to have transmitted to his brother in art the giorgionesque in the less subtle shape into which he had already transmuted it. but should not such an assumption as this, well founded as it may appear in the main, be made with all the allowances which the situation demands? that, when a group of young and enthusiastic artists, eager to overturn barriers, are found painting more or less together, it is not so easy to unravel the tangle of influences and draw hard-and-fast lines everywhere, one or two modern examples much nearer to our own time may roughly serve to illustrate. take, for instance, the friendship that developed itself between the youthful bonington and the youthful delacroix while they copied together in the galleries of the louvre: the one communicating to the other something of the stimulating quality, the frankness, and variety of colour which at that moment distinguished the english from the french school; the other contributing to shape, with the fire of his romantic temperament, the art of the young englishman who was some three years his junior. and with the famous trio of the p.r.b.--millais, rossetti, and mr. holman hunt--who is to state _ex cathedra_ where influence was received, where transmitted; or whether the first may fairly be held to have been, during the short time of their complete union, the master-hand, the second the poet-soul, the third the conscience of the group? a similar puzzle would await him who should strive to unravel the delicate thread which winds itself round the artistic relation between frederick walker and the noted landscapist mr. j.w. north. though we at once recognise walker as the dominant spirit, and see his influence even to-day, more than twenty years after his death, affirmed rather than weakened, there are certain characteristics of the style recognised and imitated as his, of which it would be unsafe to declare that he and not his companion originated them. in days of artistic upheaval and growth like the last years of the fifteenth century and the first years of the sixteenth, the _milieu_ must count for a great deal. it must be remembered that the men who most influence a time, whether in art or letters, are just those who, deeply rooted in it, come forth as its most natural development. let it not be doubted that when in giorgione's breast had been lighted the first sparks of the promethean fire, which, with the soft intensity of its glow, warmed into full-blown perfection the art of venice, that fire ran like lightning through the veins of all the artistic youth, his contemporaries and juniors, just because their blood was of the stuff to ignite and flame like his own. the great giorgionesque movement in venetian art was not a question merely of school, of standpoint, of methods adopted and developed by a brilliant galaxy of young painters. it was not alone that "they who were excellent confessed, that he (giorgione) was born to put the breath of life into painted figures, and to imitate the elasticity and colour of flesh, etc."[ ] it was also that the giorgionesque in conception and style was the outcome of the moment in art and life, just as the pheidian mode had been the necessary climax of attic art and attic life aspiring to reach complete perfection in the fifth century b.c.; just as the raphaelesque appeared the inevitable outcome of those elements of lofty generalisation, divine harmony, grace clothing strength, which, in florence and rome, as elsewhere in italy, were culminating in the first years of the cinquecento. this was the moment, too, when--to take one instance only among many--the ex-queen of cyprus, the noble venetian caterina cornaro, held her little court at asolo, where, in accordance with the spirit of the moment, the chief discourse was ever of love. in that reposeful kingdom, which could in miniature offer to caterina's courtiers all the pomp and charm without the drawbacks of sovereignty, pietro bembo wrote for "madonna lucretia estense borgia duchessa illustrissima di ferrara," and caused to be printed by aldus manutius, the leaflets which, under the title _gli asolani, ne' quali si ragiona d' amore_,[ ] soon became a famous book in italy. [illustration: _the man of sorrows. in the scuola di s. rocco, venice. from a photograph by naya_.] the most bellinesque work of titian's youth with which we are acquainted is the curious _man of sorrows_ of the scuola di s. rocco at venice, a work so faded, so injured by restoration that to dogmatise as to its technique would be in the highest degree unsafe. the type approaches, among the numerous versions of the _pietà_ by and ascribed to giovanni bellini, most nearly to that in the palazzo del commune at rimini. seeing that titian was in twenty-three years old, and a student of painting of some thirteen years' standing, there may well exist, or at any rate there may well have existed, from his hand things in a yet earlier and more distinctively quattrocento-style than anything with which we are at present acquainted. this _man of sorrows_ itself may well be a little earlier than , but on this point it is not easy to form a definite conclusion. perhaps it is reserved in the future to some student uniting the qualities of patience and keen insight to do for the youthful titian what morelli and his school have done for correggio--that is, to restore to him a series of paintings earlier in date than those which criticism has, up to the present time, been content to accept as showing his first independent steps in art. everything else that we can at present safely attribute to the youthful vecelli is deeply coloured with the style and feeling of giorgione, though never, as is the case with the inferior giorgionesques, so entirely as to obliterate the strongly marked individuality of the painter himself. the _virgin and child_ in the imperial gallery of vienna, popularly known as _la zingarella_, which, by general consent, is accepted as the first in order of date among the works of this class, is still to a certain extent bellinesque in the mode of conception and arrangement. yet, in the depth, strength, and richness of the colour-chord, in the atmospheric spaciousness and charm of the landscape background, in the breadth of the draperies, it is already giorgionesque. nay, even here titian, above all, asserts _himself_, and lays the foundation of his own manner. the type of the divine bambino differs widely from that adopted by giorgione in the altar-pieces of castelfranco and the prado museum at madrid. the virgin is a woman beautified only by youth and intensity of maternal love. both giorgione and titian in their loveliest types of womanhood are sensuous as compared with the tuscans and umbrians, or with such painters as cavazzola of verona and the suave milanese, bernardino luini. but giorgione's sensuousness is that which may fitly characterise the goddess, while titian's is that of the woman, much nearer to the everyday world in which both artists lived. in the imperial gallery of the hermitage at st. petersburg is a beautiful _madonna and child_ in a niche of coloured marble mosaic, which is catalogued as an early titian under the influence of giovanni bellini. judging only from the reproduction on a large scale done by messrs. braun and co., the writer has ventured to suggest elsewhere[ ]--prefacing his suggestions with the avowal that he is not acquainted with the picture itself--that we may have here, not an early titian, but that rarer thing an early giorgione. from the list of the former master's works it must at any rate be struck out, as even the most superficial comparison with, for instance, _la zingarella_ suffices to prove. in the notable display of venetian art made at the new gallery in the winter of were included two pictures (nos. and in the catalogue) ascribed to the early time of titian and evidently from the same hand. these were a _virgin and child_ from the collection, so rich in venetian works, of mr. r.h. benson (formerly among the burghley house pictures), and a less well-preserved _virgin and child with saints_ from the collection of captain holford at dorchester house. the former is ascribed by crowe and cavalcaselle to the early time of the master himself.[ ] both are, in their rich harmony of colour and their general conception, entirely giorgionesque. they reveal the hand of some at present anonymous venetian of the second order, standing midway between the young giorgione and the young titian--one who, while imitating the types and the landscape of these greater contemporaries of his, replaced their depth and glow by a weaker, a more superficial prettiness, which yet has its own suave charm. [illustration: _virgin and child, known as "la zingarella." imperial gallery, vienna. from a photograph by löwy_.] the famous _christ bearing the cross_ in the chiesa di s. rocco at venice is first, in his life of the castelfranco painter, ascribed by vasari to giorgione, and then in the subsequent life of titian given to that master, but to a period very much too late in his career. the biographer quaintly adds: "this figure, which many have believed to be from the hand of giorgione, is to-day the most revered object in venice, and has received more charitable offerings in money than titian and giorgione together ever gained in the whole course of their life." this too great popularity of the work as a wonder-working picture is perhaps the cause that it is to-day in a state as unsatisfactory as is the _man of sorrows_ in the adjacent scuola. the picture which presents "christ dragged along by the executioner, with two spectators in the background," resembles most among giorgione's authentic creations the _christ bearing the cross_ in the casa loschi at vicenza. the resemblance is not, however, one of colour and technique, since this last--one of the earliest of giorgiones--still recalls giovanni bellini, and perhaps even more strongly cima; it is one of type and conception. in both renderings of the divine countenance there is--or it may be the writer fancies that there is--underlying that expression of serenity and humiliation accepted which is proper to the subject, a sinister, disquieting look, almost a threat. crowe and cavalcaselle have called attention to a certain disproportion in the size of the head, as compared with that of the surrounding actors in the scene. a similar disproportion is to be observed in another early titian, the _christ between st. andrew and st. catherine_ in the church of ss. ermagora and fortunato (commonly called s. marcuola) at venice. here the head of the infant christ, who stands on a pedestal holding the orb, between the two saints above mentioned, is strangely out of proportion to the rest. crowe and cavalcaselle had refused to accept this picture as a genuine titian (vol. ii. p. ), but morelli restored it to its rightful place among the early works. next to these paintings, and certainly several years before the _three ages_ and the _sacred and profane love_, the writer is inclined to place the _bishop of paphos (baffo) recommended by alexander vi. to st. peter_, once in the collection of charles i.[ ] and now in the antwerp gallery. the main elements of titian's art may be seen here, in imperfect fusion, as in very few even of his early productions. the not very dignified st. peter, enthroned on a kind of pedestal adorned with a high relief of classic design, of the type which we shall find again in the _sacred and profane love_, recalls giovanni bellini, or rather his immediate followers; the magnificently robed alexander vi. (rodrigo borgia), wearing the triple tiara, gives back the style in portraiture of gentile bellini and carpaccio; while the kneeling jacopo pesaro--an ecclesiastic in tonsure and vesture, but none the less a commander of fleets, as the background suggests--is one of the most characteristic portraits of the giorgionesque school. its pathos, its intensity, contrast curiously with the less passionate absorption of the same _baffo_ in the renowned _madonna di casa pesaro_, painted twenty-three years later for the family chapel in the great church of the frari. it is the first in order of a great series, including the _ariosto_ of cobham, the _jeune homme au gant_, the _portrait of a man_ in the alte pinakothek of munich, and perhaps the famous _concert_ of the pitti, ascribed to giorgione. both crowe and cavalcaselle and m. georges lafenestre[ ] have called attention to the fact that the detested borgia pope died on the th of august , and that the work cannot well have been executed after that time. he would have been a bold man who should have attempted to introduce the portrait of alexander vi. into a votive picture painted immediately after his death! how is it possible to assume, as the eminent critics do nevertheless assume, that the _sacred and profane love_, one of the masterpieces of venetian art, was painted one or two years earlier still, that is, in or, at the latest, in ? let it be remembered that at that moment giorgione himself had not fully developed the giorgionesque. he had not painted his castelfranco altar-piece, his _venus_, or his _three philosophers (aeneas, evander, and pallas)_. old gian bellino himself had not entered upon that ultimate phase of his art which dates from the great s. zaccaria altar-piece finished in .[ ] it is impossible on the present occasion to give any detailed account of the fresco decorations painted by giorgione and titian on the facades of the new fondaco de' tedeschi, erected to replace that burnt down on the th of january . full particulars will be found in crowe and cavalcaselle's often-quoted work. vasari's many manifest errors and disconcerting transpositions in the biography of titian do not predispose us to give unlimited credence to his account of the strained relations between giorgione and our painter, to which this particular business is supposed to have given rise. that they together decorated with a series of frescoes which acquired considerable celebrity the exterior of the fondaco is all that is known for certain, titian being apparently employed as the subordinate of his friend and master. of these frescoes only one figure, doubtfully assigned to titian, and facing the grand canal, has been preserved, in a much-damaged condition--the few fragments that remained of those facing the side canal having been destroyed in .[ ] vasari shows us a giorgione angry because he has been complimented by friends on the superior beauty of some work on the "_facciata di verso la merceria,_" which in reality belongs to titian, and thereupon implacably cutting short their connection and friendship. this version is confirmed by dolce, but refuted by the less contemporary authority of tizianello's _anonimo_. of what great painters, standing in the relation of master and pupil, have not such stories been told, and--the worst of it is--told with a certain foundation of truth? apocryphal is, no doubt, that which has evolved itself from the internal evidence supplied by the _baptism of christ_ of verrocchio and leonardo da vinci; but a stronger substructure of fact supports the unpleasing anecdotes as to titian and tintoretto, as to watteau and pater, as to our own hudson and reynolds, and, alas! as to very many others. how touching, on the other hand, is that simple entry in francesco francia's day-book, made when his chief journeyman, timoteo viti, leaves him: " a di aprile è partito il mio caro timoteo; chi dio li dia ogni bene et fortuna!" ("on the th day of april my dear timoteo left me. may god grant him all happiness and good fortune!") [illustration: _the baptism of christ. gallery of the capitol, rome. from a photograph by anderson._] there is one reason that makes it doubly difficult, relying on developments of style only, to make, even tentatively, a chronological arrangement of titian's early works. this is that in those painted _poesie_ of the earlier venetian art of which the germs are to be found in giovanni bellini and cima, but the flower is identified with giorgione, titian surrendered himself to the overmastering influence of the latter with less reservation of his own individuality than in his sacred works. in the earlier imaginative subjects the vivifying glow of giorgionesque poetry moulds, colours, and expands the genius of titian, but so naturally as neither to obliterate nor to constrain it. indeed, even in the late time of our master--checking an unveiled sensuousness which sometimes approaches dangerously near to a downright sensuality--the influence of the master and companion who vanished half a century before victoriously reasserts itself. it is this _renouveau_ of the giorgionesque in the genius of the aged titian that gives so exquisite a charm to the _venere del pardo_, so strange a pathos to that still later _nymph and shepherd,_ which was a few years ago brought out of its obscurity and added to the treasures of the imperial gallery at vienna. the sacred works of the early time are giorgionesque, too, but with a difference. here from the very beginning there are to be noted a majestic placidity, a fulness of life, a splendour of representation, very different from the tremulous sweetness, the spirit of aloofness and reserve which informs such creations as the _madonna of castelfranco_ and the _madonna with st. francis and st. roch_ of the prado museum. later on, we have, leaving farther and farther behind the giorgionesque ideal, the overpowering force and majesty of the _assunta_, the true passion going hand-in-hand with beauty of the louvre _entombment_, the rhetorical passion and scenic magnificence of the _st. peter martyr_. the _baptism of christ_, with zuanne ram as donor, now in the gallery of the capitol at rome, had been by crowe and cavalcaselle taken away from titian and given to paris bordone, but the keen insight of morelli led him to restore it authoritatively, and once for all, to titian. internal evidence is indeed conclusive in this case that the picture must be assigned to a date when bordone was but a child of tender years.[ ] here titian is found treating this great scene in the life of christ more in the style of a giorgionesque pastoral than in the solemn hieratic fashion adopted by his great predecessors and contemporaries. the luxuriant landscape is in the main giorgionesque, save that here and there a naked branch among the leafage--and on one of them the woodpecker--strongly recalls giovanni bellini. the same robust, round-limbed young venetian, with the inexpressive face, does duty here as st. john the baptist, who in the _three ages_, presently to be discussed, appears much more appropriately as the amorous shepherd. the christ, here shown in the flower of youthful manhood, with luxuriant hair and softly curling beard, will mature later on into the divine _cristo della moneta_. the question at once arises here, did titian in the type of this figure derive inspiration from giovanni bellini's splendid _baptism of christ_, finished in for the church of s. corona at vicenza, but which the younger artist might well have seen a year or two previously, while it was in the course of execution in the workshop of the venerable master? apart from its fresh naïveté, and its rare pictorial charm, how trivial and merely anecdotic does the conception of titian appear by the side of that of bellini, so lofty, so consoling in its serene beauty, in the solemnity of its sunset colour![ ] alone in the profile portrait of the donor, zuanne ram, placed in the picture with an awkwardness attractive in its naïvete, but superbly painted, is titian already a full-grown master standing alone. the beautiful _virgin and child with ss. ulfo and brigida,_ placed in the sala de la reina isabel of the prado, is now at last officially restored to titian, after having been for years innumerable ascribed to giorgione, whose style it not more than generally recalls. here at any rate all the rival wise men are agreed, and it only remains for the student of the old masters, working to-day on the solid substructure provided for him by his predecessors, to wonder how any other attribution could have been accepted. but then the critic of the present day is a little too prone to be wise and scornful _à ban marché_, forgetting that he has been spared three parts of the road, and that he starts for conquest at the high point, to reach which the pioneers of scientific criticism in art have devoted a lifetime of noble toil. it is in this piece especially that we meet with that element in the early art of the cadorine which crowe and cavalcaselle have defined as "palmesque." the _st. bridget_ and the _st. ulphus_ are both types frequently to be met with in the works of the bergamasque painter, and it has been more than once remarked that the same beautiful model with hair of wavy gold must have sat to giorgione, titian, and palma. this can only be true, however, in a modified sense, seeing that giorgione did not, so much as his contemporaries and followers, affect the type of the beautiful venetian blond, "large, languishing, and lazy." the hair of his women--both the sacred personages and the divinities nominally classic or wholly venetian--is, as a rule, of a rich chestnut, or at the most dusky fair, and in them the giorgionesque oval of the face tempers with its spirituality the strength of physical passion that the general physique denotes. the polished surface of this panel at madrid, the execution, sound and finished without being finicking, the high yellowish lights on the crimson draperies, are all very characteristic of this, the first manner of vecelli. the green hangings at the back of the picture are such as are very generally associated with the colour-schemes of palma. an old repetition, with a slight variation in the bambino, is in the royal collection at hampton court, where it long bore--indeed it does so still on the frame--the name of palma vecchio. it will be remembered that vasari assigns to the _tobias and the angel_ in the church of s. marciliano at venice the exact date , describing it, moreover, with greater accuracy than he does any other work by titian. he mentions even "the thicket, in which is a st. john the baptist kneeling as he prays to heaven, whence comes a splendour of light." the aretine biographer is followed in this particular by morelli, usually so eagle-eyed, so little bound by tradition in tracing the beginnings of a great painter. the gifted modern critic places the picture among the quite early works of our master. notwithstanding this weight of authority, the writer feels bound to dissent from the view just now indicated, and in this instance to follow crowe and cavalcaselle, who assign to the _tobias and the angel_ a place much later on in titian's long career. the picture, though it hangs high in the little church for which it was painted, will speak for itself to those who interrogate it without _parti pris_. neither in the figures--the magnificently classic yet living archangel raphael and the more naïve and realistic tobias--nor in the rich landscape with st. john the baptist praying is there anything left of the early giorgionesque manner. in the sweeping breadth of the execution, the summarising power of the brush, the glow from within of the colour, we have so many evidences of a style in its fullest maturity. it will be safe, therefore, to place the picture well on in titian's middle period.[ ] the _three ages_ in the bridgewater gallery and the so-called _sacred and profane love_ in the borghese gallery represent the apogee of titian's giorgionesque style. glowing through and through with the spirit of the master-poet among venetian painters, yet falling short a little, it may be, of that subtle charm of his, compounded indefinably of sensuous delight and spiritual yearning, these two masterpieces carry the giorgionesque technically a pretty wide step farther than the inventor of the style took it. barbarelli never absolutely threw off the trammels of the quattrocento, except in his portraits, but retained to the last--not as a drawback, but rather as an added charm--the naïveté, the hardly perceptible hesitation proper to art not absolutely full-fledged. the _three ages_, from its analogies of type and manner with the _baptism_ of the capitol, would appear to be the earlier of the two imaginative works here grouped together, but to date later than that picture.[ ] the tonality of the picture is of an exquisite silveriness--that of clear, moderate daylight, though this relative paleness may have been somewhat increased by time. it may a little disconcert at first sight those who have known the lovely pastoral only from hot, brown copies, such as the one which, under the name of giorgione, was formerly in the dudley house collection, and now belongs to sir william farrer. it is still so difficult to battle with the deeply-rooted notion that there can be no giorgione, no painting of his school, without the accompaniment of a rich brown sauce! the shepherdess has a robe of fairest crimson, and her flower-crowned locks in tint more nearly approach to the _blond cendré_ which distinguishes so many of palma's _donne_ than to the ruddier gold that titian himself generally affects. the more passionate of the two, she gazes straight into the eyes of her strong-limbed rustic lover, who half-reclining rests his hand upon her shoulder. on the twin reed-pipes, which she still holds in her hands, she has just breathed forth a strain of music, and to it, as it still lingers in their ears, they yield themselves entranced. here the youth is naked, the maid clothed and adorned--a reversal, this, of giorgione's _fête champêtre_ in the salon carré of the louvre, where the women are undraped, and the amorous young cavaliers appear in complete and rich attire. to the right are a group of thoroughly titianesque amorini--the winged one, dominating the others, being perhaps amor himself; while in the distance an old man contemplates skulls ranged round him on the ground--obvious reminders of the last stage of all, at which he has so nearly arrived. there is here a wonderful unity between the even, unaccented harmony of the delicate tonality and the mood of the personages--the one aiding the other to express the moment of pause in nature and in love, which in itself is a delight more deep than all that the very whirlwind of passion can give. near at hand may be pitfalls, the smiling love-god may prove less innocent than he looks, and in the distance fate may be foreshadowed by the figure of weary age awaiting death. yet this one moment is all the lovers' own, and they profane it not by speech, but stir their happy languor only with faint notes of music borne on the still, warm air. [illustration: _the three ages. bridgewater gallery. from the plate in lafenestre's "vie et oeuvre du titien" (may, paris.)_] the _sacred and profane love_ of the borghese gallery is one of the world's pictures, and beyond doubt the masterpiece of the early or giorgionesque period. to-day surely no one will be found to gainsay morelli when he places it at the end of that period, which it so incomparably sums up--not at the beginning, when its perfection would be as incomprehensible as the less absolute achievement displayed in other early pieces which such a classification as this would place after the borghese picture. the accompanying reproduction obviates all necessity for a detailed description. titian painted afterwards perhaps more wonderfully still--with a more sweeping vigour of brush, with a higher authority, and a play of light as brilliant and diversified. he never attained to a higher finish and perfection of its kind, or more admirably suited the technical means to the thing to be achieved. he never so completely gave back, coloured with the splendour of his own genius, the rays received from giorgione. the delicious sunset landscape has all the giorgionesque elements, with more spaciousness, and lines of a still more suave harmony. the grand venetian _donna_ who sits sumptuously robed, flower-crowned, and even gloved, at the sculptured classic fount is the noblest in her pride of loveliness, as she is one of the first, of the long line of voluptuous beauties who will occupy the greatest brushes of the cinquecento. the little love-god who, insidiously intervening, paddles in the water of the fountain and troubles its surface, is titian's very own, owing nothing to any forerunner. the divinely beautiful _profane love_--or, as we shall presently see, _venus_--is the most flawless presentment of female loveliness unveiled that modern art has known up to this date, save only the _venus_ of giorgione himself (in the dresden gallery), to which it can be but little posterior. the radiant freshness of the face, with its glory of half-unbound hair, does not, indeed, equal the sovereign loveliness of the dresden _venus_ or the disquieting charm of the giovanelli _zingarella_ (properly hypsipyle). its beauty is all on the surface, while theirs stimulates the imagination of the beholder. the body with its strong, supple beauty, its unforced harmony of line and movement, with its golden glow of flesh, set off in the true giorgionesque fashion by the warm white of the slender, diaphanous drapery, by the splendid crimson mantle with the changing hues and high lights, is, however, the most perfect poem of the human body that titian ever achieved. only in the late _venere del pardo_, which so closely follows the chief motive of giorgione's _venus_, does he approach it in frankness and purity. far more genuinely classic is it in spirit, because more living and more solidly founded on natural truth, than anything that the florentine or roman schools, so much more assiduous in their study of classical antiquity, have brought forth.[ ] [illustration: _sacred and profane love._] it is impossible to discuss here in detail all the conjectural explanations which have been hazarded with regard to this most popular of all venetian pictures--least of all that strange one brought forward by crowe and cavalcaselle, the _artless and sated love_, for which they have found so little acceptance. but we may no longer wrap ourselves in an atmosphere of dreamy conjecture and show but a languid desire to solve the fascinating problem. taking as his starting-point the pictures described by marcantonio michiel (the _anonimo_ of jacopo morelli), in the house of messer taddeo contarini of venice, as the _inferno with aeneas and anchises_ and _landscape with the birth of paris_, herr franz wickhoff[ ] has proceeded, we have seen, to rename, with a daring crowned by a success nothing short of surprising, several of barbarelli's best known works. the _three philosophers_ he calls _aeneas, evander, and pallas_, the giovanelli _tempest with the gipsy and the soldier_ he explains anew as _admetus and hypsipyle_.[ ] the subject known to us in an early plate of marcantonio raimondi, and popularly called, or rather miscalled, the _dream of raphael_, is recognised by herr wickhoff as having its root in the art of giorgione. he identifies the mysterious subject with one cited by servius, the commentator of virgil, who relates how, when two maidens were sleeping side by side in the temple of the penates at lavinium (as he puts it), the unchaste one was killed by lightning, while the other remained in peaceful sleep. passing over to the giorgionesque period of titian, he boldly sets to work on the world-famous _sacred and profane love_, and shows us the cadorine painter interpreting, at the suggestion of some learned humanist at his elbow, an incident in the seventh book of the _argonautica_ of valerius flaccus--that wearisome imitation of the similarly named epic of apollonius rhodius. medea--the sumptuously attired dame who does duty as sacred love(!)--sits at the fountain in unrestful self-communing, leaning one arm on a mysterious casket, and holding in her right hand a bunch of wonder-working herbs. she will not yield to her new-born love for the greek enemy jason, because this love is the most shameful treason to father and people. but to her comes venus in the form of the sorceress circe, the sister of medea's father, irresistibly pleading that she shall go to the alien lover, who waits in the wood. it is the vain resistance of medea, hopelessly caught in the toils of love, powerless for all her enchantments to resist, it is the subtle persuasion of venus, seemingly invisible--in titian's realisation of the legend--to the woman she tempts, that constitute the main theme upon which titian has built his masterpiece. moritz thausing[ ] had already got half-way towards the unravelling of the true subject when he described the borghese picture as _the maiden with venus and amor at the well_. the _vraisemblance_ of herr wickhoff's brilliant interpretation becomes the greater when we reflect that titian at least twice afterwards borrowed subjects from classical antiquity, taking his _worship of venus_, now at madrid, from the _erotes_ of philostratus, and our own wonderful _bacchus and ariadne_ at the national gallery from the _epithalamium pelei et thetidos_ of catullus. in the future it is quite possible that the austrian savant may propose new and precise interpretations for the _three ages_ and for giorgione's _concert champêtre_ at the louvre. [illustration: _herodias with the head of john the baptist. doria gallery, rome. from the replica in the collection of r.h. benson, esq._] it is no use disguising the fact that, grateful as the true student of italian art must be for such guidance as is here given, it comes to him at first as a shock that these mysterious creations of the ardent young poet-painters, in the presence of which we have most of us so willingly allowed reason and argument to stand in abeyance, should thus have hard, clear lines drawn, as it were, round their deliciously vague contours. it is their very vagueness and strangeness, the atmosphere of pause and quiet that they bring with them, the way in which they indefinably take possession of the beholder, body and soul, that above and beyond their radiant beauty have made them dear to successive generations. and yet we need not mourn overmuch, or too painfully set to work to revise our whole conception of venetian idyllic art as matured in the first years of the cinquecento. true, some humanist of the type of pietro bembo, not less amorous than learned and fastidious, must have found for titian and giorgione all these fine stories from virgil, catullus, statius, and the lesser luminaries of antique poetry, which luckily for the world they have interpreted in their own fashion. the humanists themselves would no doubt have preferred the more laborious and at the same time more fantastic florentine fashion of giving plastic form in every particular to their elaborate symbolisms, their artificial conceits, their classic legends. but we may unfeignedly rejoice that the venetian painters of the golden prime disdained to represent--or it may be unconsciously shrank from representing--the mere dramatic moment, the mere dramatic and historical character of a subject thus furnished to them. giorgione embodies in such a picture as the _adrastus and hypsipyle_, or the _aeneas and evander_, not so much what has been related to him of those ancient legends as his own mood when he is brought into contact with them; he transposes his motive from a dramatic into a lyrical atmosphere, and gives it forth anew, transformed into something "rich and strange," coloured for ever with his own inspired yet so warmly human fantasy. titian, in the _sacred and profane love_, as for identification we must still continue to call it, strives to keep close to the main lines of his story, in this differing from giorgione. but for all that, his love for the rich beauty of the venetian country, for the splendour of female loveliness unveiled, for the piquant contrast of female loveliness clothed and sumptuously adorned, has conquered. he has presented the romanised legend of the fair colchian sorceress in such a delightfully misleading fashion that it has taken all these centuries to decipher its true import. what giorgione and titian in these exquisite idylls--for so we may still dare to call them--have consciously or unconsciously achieved, is the indissoluble union of humanity outwardly quiescent, yet pulsating with an inner life and passion, to the environing nature. it is nature herself that in these true painted poems mysteriously responds, that interprets to the beholder the moods of man, much as a mighty orchestra--nature ordered and controlled--may by its undercurrent explain to him who knows how to listen what the very personages of the drama may not proclaim aloud for themselves. and so we may be deeply grateful to herr wickhoff for his new interpretations, not less sound and thoroughly worked out than they are on a first acquaintance startling. and yet we need not for all that shatter our old ideals, or force ourselves too persistently to look at venetian art from another and a more prosaic, because a more precise and literal, standpoint. [illustration: _vanitas. alte pinakothek, munich. from a photograph by hanfstängl_.] chapter ii frescoes of the scuola del santo--the "herodias" type of picture--holy families and sacred conversations--date of the "cristo della moneta" is the "concert" of the pitti by titian?--the "bacchanal" of alnwick castle. it has been pointed out by titian's biographers that the wars which followed upon the league of cambrai had the effect of dispersing all over north italy the chief venetian artists of the younger generation. it was not long after this--on the death of his master giorgione--that sebastiano luciani migrated to rome and, so far as he could, shook off his allegiance to the new venetian art; it was then that titian temporarily left the city of his adoption to do work in fresco at padua and vicenza. if the date , given by vasari for the great frieze-like wood-engraving, _the triumph of faith_, be accepted, it must be held that it was executed before the journey to padua. ridolfi[ ] cites painted compositions of the _triumph_ as either the originals or the repetitions of the wood-engravings, for which titian himself drew the blocks. the frescoes themselves, if indeed titian carried them out on the walls of his house at padua, as has been suggested, have perished; but that they ever came into existence there would not appear to be any direct evidence. the types, though broadened and coarsened in the process of translation into wood-engraving, are not materially at variance with those in the frescoes of the scuola del santo. but the movement, the spirit of the whole is essentially different. this mighty, onward-sweeping procession, with adam and eve, the patriarchs, the prophets and sibyls, the martyred innocents, the great chariot with christ enthroned, drawn by the four doctors of the church and impelled forward by the emblems of the four evangelists, with a great company of apostles and martyrs following, has all the vigour and elasticity, all the decorative amplitude that is wanting in the frescoes of the santo. it is obvious that inspiration was derived from the _triumphs_ of mantegna, then already so widely popularised by numerous engravings. titian and those under whose inspiration he worked here obviously intended an antithesis to the great series of canvases presenting the apotheosis of julius caesar, which were then to be seen in the not far distant mantua. have we here another pictorial commentary, like the famous _cristo detta moneta,_ with which we shall have to deal presently, on the "quod est caesaris caesari, quod est dei deo," which was the favourite device of alfonso of ferrara and the legend round his gold coins? the whole question is interesting, and deserves more careful consideration than can be accorded to it on the present occasion. hardly again, until he reached extreme old age, did such an impulse of sacred passion colour the art of the painter of cadore as here. in the earlier section of his life-work the _triumph of faith_ constitutes a striking exception. [illustration: _st. anthony of padua causing a new-born infant to speak. fresco in the scuola del santo, padua. from a photograph by alinari_.] passing over, as relatively unimportant, titian's share in the much-defaced fresco decorations of the scuola del carmine, we come now to those more celebrated ones in the scuola del santo. out of the sixteen frescoes executed in - by titian, in concert with domenico campagnola and other assistants of less fame, the following three are from the brush of the master himself:--_st. anthony causes a new-born infant to speak, testifying to the innocence of its mother; st. anthony heals the leg of a youth; a jealous husband puts to death his wife, whom the saint afterwards restores to life._ here the figures, the composition, the beautiful landscape backgrounds bear unmistakably the trace of giorgione's influence. the composition has just the timidity, the lack of rhythm and variety, that to the last marks that of barbarelli. the figures have his naïve truth, his warmth and splendour of life, but not his gilding touch of spirituality to lift the uninspiring subjects a little above the actual. the _nobleman putting to death his wife_ is dramatic, almost terrible in its fierce, awkward realism, yet it does not rise much higher in interpretation than what our neighbours would to-day call the _drame passionel._ the interest is much the same that is aroused in a student of elizabethan literature by that study of murder, _arden of feversham_, not that higher attraction that he feels--horrors notwithstanding--for _the maid's tragedy_ of beaumont and fletcher, or _the duchess of malfi_ of webster.[ ] [illustration: _"noli me tangere." national gallery. from a photograph published by the autotype company._] a convenient date for the magnificent _st. mark enthroned, with ss. sebastian, roch, cosmas, and damianus_, is , when titian, having completed his share of the work at the scuola del santo, returned to venice. true, it is still thoroughly giorgionesque, except in the truculent _st. mark_; but, then, as essentially so were the frescoes just terminated. the noble altar-piece[ ] symbolises, or rather commemorates, the steadfastness of the state face to face with the terrors of the league of cambrai:--on the one side st. sebastian, standing, perhaps, for martyrdom by superior force of arms, st. roch for plague (the plague of venice in ); on the other, ss. cosmas and damianus, suggesting the healing of these evils. the colour is giorgionesque in that truer sense in which barbarelli's own is so to be described. especially does it show points of contact with that of the so-called _three philosophers_, which, on the authority of marcantonio michiel (the _anonimo_), is rightly or wrongly held to be one of the last works of the castelfranco master. that is to say, it is both sumptuous and boldly contrasted in the local hues, the sovereign unity of general tone not being attained by any sacrifice or attenuation, by any undue fusion of these, as in some of the second-rate giorgionesques. common to both is the use of a brilliant scarlet, which giorgione successfully employs in the robe of the trojan aeneas, and titian on a more extensive scale in that of one of the healing saints. these last are among the most admirable portrait-figures in the life-work of titian. in them a simplicity, a concentration akin to that of giovanni bellini and bartolommeo montagna is combined with the suavity and flexibility of barbarelli. the st. sebastian is the most beautiful among the youthful male figures, as the _venus_ of giorgione and the venus of the _sacred and profane love_ are the most beautiful among the female figures to be found in the venetian art of a century in which such presentments of youth in its flower abounded. there is something androgynous, in the true sense of the word, in the union of the strength and pride of lusty youth with a grace which is almost feminine in its suavity, yet not offensively effeminate. it should be noted that a delight in portraying the fresh comeliness, the elastic beauty of form proper to the youth just passing into the man was common to many venetian painters at this stage, and coloured their art as it had coloured the whole art of greece. hereabouts the writer would like to place the singularly attractive, yet a little puzzling, _madonna and child with st. joseph and a shepherd_, which is no. in the national gallery. the type of the landscape is early, and even for that time the execution in this particular is, for titian, curiously small and wanting in breadth. especially the projecting rock, with its fringe of half-bare shrubs profiled against the sky, recalls the backgrounds of the scuola del santo frescoes. the noble type and the stilted attitude of the _st. joseph_ suggest the _st. mark_ of the salute. the frank note of bright scarlet in the jacket of the thick-set young shepherd, who calls up rather the downrightness of palma than the idyllic charm of giorgione, is to be found again in the salute picture. the unusually pensive madonna reminds the spectator, by a certain fleshiness and matronly amplitude of proportion, though by no means in sentiment, of the sumptuous dames who look on so unconcernedly in the _st. anthony causing a new-born infant to speak_, of the scuola. her draperies show, too, the jagged breaks and close parallel folds of the early time before complete freedom of design was attained. [illustration: _st. mark enthroned, with four saints. s. maria della salute, venice. from a photograph by anderson_.] [illustration: _the madonna with the cherries. imperial gallery, vienna. from a photograph by löwy_.] the splendidly beautiful _herodias with the head of st. john the baptist_, in the doria gallery, formerly attributed to pordenone, but by morelli definitively placed among the giorgionesque works of titian, belongs to about the same time as the _sacred and profane love_, and would therefore come in rather before than after the sojourn at padua and vicenza. the intention has been not so much to emphasise the tragic character of the motive as to exhibit to the highest advantage the voluptuous charm, the languid indifference of a venetian beauty posing for herod's baleful consort. repetitions of this _herodias_ exist in the northbrook collection and in that of mr. r.h. benson. the latter, which is presumably from the workshop of the master, and shows variations in one or two unimportant particulars from the doria picture, is here, failing the original, reproduced with the kind permission of the owner. a conception traceable back to giorgione would appear to underlie, not only this doria picture, but that _herodias_ which at dorchester house is, for not obvious reasons, attributed to pordenone, and another similar one by palma vecchio, of which a late copy exists in the collection of the earl of chichester. especially is this community of origin noticeable in the head of st. john on the charger, as it appears in each of these works. all of them again show a family resemblance in this particular respect to the interesting full-length _judith_ at the hermitage, now ascribed to giorgione, to the over-painted half-length _judith_ in the querini-stampalia collection at venice, and to hollar's print after a picture supposed by the engraver to give the portrait of giorgione himself in the character of david, the slayer of goliath.[ ] the sumptuous but much-injured _vanitas_, which is no. in the alte pinakothek of munich--a beautiful woman of the same opulent type as the _herodias_, holding a mirror which reflects jewels and other symbols of earthly vanity--may be classed with the last-named work. again we owe it to morelli[ ] that this painting, ascribed by crowe and cavalcaselle--as the _herodias_ was ascribed--to pordenone, has been with general acceptance classed among the early works of titian. the popular _flora_ of the uffizi, a beautiful thing still, though all the bloom of its beauty has been effaced, must be placed rather later in this section of titian's life-work, displaying as it does a technique more facile and accomplished, and a conception of a somewhat higher individuality. the model is surely the same as that which has served for the venus of the _sacred and profane love_, though the picture comes some years after that piece. later still comes the so-called _alfonso d'este and laura dianti_, as to which something will be said farther on. another puzzle is provided by the beautiful "_noli me tangere_" of the national gallery, which must necessarily have its place somewhere here among the early works. giorgionesque the picture still is, and most markedly so in the character of the beautiful landscape; yet the execution shows an altogether unusual freedom and mastery for that period. the _magdalen_ is, appropriately enough, of the same type as the exquisite, golden blond courtezans--or, if you will, models--who constantly appear and reappear in this period of venetian art. hardly anywhere has the painter exhibited a more wonderful freedom and subtlety of brush than in the figure of the christ, in which glowing flesh is so finely set off by the white of fluttering, half-transparent draperies. the canvas has exquisite colour, almost without colours; the only local tint of any very defined character being the dark red of the magdalen's robe. yet a certain affectation, a certain exaggeration of fluttering movement and strained attitude repel the beholder a little at first, and neutralise for him the rare beauties of the canvas. it is as if a wave of some strange transient influence had passed over titian at this moment, then again to be dissipated. [illustration: _madonna and child, with st. john and st. anthony abbot. uffizi gallery, florence. from a photograph by brogi._] but to turn now once more to the series of our master's holy families and sacred conversations which began with _la zingarella_, and was continued with the _virgin and child with ss. ulfo and brigida_ of madrid. the most popular of all those belonging to this still early time is the _virgin with the cherries_ in the vienna gallery. here the painter is already completely himself. he will go much farther in breadth if not in polish, in transparency, in forcefulness, if not in attractiveness of colour; but he is now, in sacred art at any rate, practically free from outside influences. for the pensive girl-madonna of giorgione we now have the radiant young matron of titian, joyous yet calm in her play with the infant christ, while the madonna of his master and friend was unrestful and full of tender foreboding even in seeming repose. pretty close on this must have followed the _madonna and child with st. stephen, st. ambrose and st. maurice_, no in the louvre, in which the rich colour-harmonies strike a somewhat deeper note. an atelier repetition of this fine original is no. in the vienna gallery; the only material variation traceable in this last-named example being that in lieu of st. ambrose, wearing a kind of biretta, we have st. jerome bareheaded. very near in time and style to this particular series, with which it may safely be grouped, is the beautiful and finely preserved _holy family_ in the bridgewater gallery, where it is still erroneously attributed to palma vecchio. it is to be found in the same private apartment on the groundfloor of bridgewater house, that contains the _three ages_. deep glowing richness of colour and smooth perfection without smallness of finish make this picture remarkable, notwithstanding its lack of any deeper significance. nor must there be forgotten in an enumeration of the early holy families, one of the loveliest of all, the _madonna and child with the infant st. john and st. anthony abbot_, which adorns the venetian section of the uffizi gallery. here the relationship to giorgione is more clearly shown than in any of these holy families of the first period, and in so far the painting, which cannot be placed very early among them, constitutes a partial exception in the series. the virgin is of a more refined and pensive type than in the _madonna with the cherries_ of vienna, or the _madonna with saints_, no. in the louvre, and the divine bambino less robust in build and aspect. the magnificent st. anthony is quite giorgionesque in the serenity tinged with sadness of his contemplative mood. [illustration: from a photograph by braün-clement & cie. virgin and child with saints.] last of all in this particular group--another work in respect of which morelli has played the rescuer--is the _madonna and child with four saints_, no. in the dresden gallery, a much-injured but eminently titianesque work, which may be said to bring this particular series to within a couple of years or so of the _assunta_--that great landmark of the first period of maturity. the type of the madonna here is still very similar to that in the _madonna with the cherries_. [illustration: _st. eustace (or st. hubert) with the miracle of the stag. from a drawing by titian in the british museum._] apart from all these sacred works, and in every respect an exceptional production, is the world-famous _cristo della moneta_ of the dresden gallery. as to the exact date to be assigned to this panel among the early works of titian considerable difficulty exists. for once agreeing with crowe and cavalcaselle, morelli is inclined to disregard the testimony of vasari, from whose text it would result that it was painted in or after the year , and to place it as far back as . notwithstanding this weight of authority the writer is strongly inclined, following vasari in this instance, and trusting to certain indications furnished by the picture itself, to return to the date or thereabouts. there is no valid reason to doubt that the _christ of the tribute-money_ was painted for alfonso i. of ferrara, and the less so, seeing that it so aptly illustrates the already quoted legend on his coins: "quod est caesaris caesari, quod est dei deo." according to vasari, it was painted _nella porta d'un armario_--that is to say, in the door of a press or wardrobe. but this statement need not be taken in its most literal sense. if it were to be assumed from this passage that the picture was painted on the spot, its date must be advanced to , since titian did not pay his first visit to ferrara before that year. there is no sufficient ground, however, for assuming that he did not execute his wonderful panel in the usual fashion--that is to say, at home in venice. the last finishing touches might, perhaps, have been given to it _in situ_, as they were to bellini's _bacchanal_, done also for the duke of ferrara. the extraordinary finish of the painting, which is hardly to be paralleled in this respect in the life-work of the artist, may have been due to his desire to "show his hand" to his new patron in a subject which touched him so nearly. and then the finish is not of the quattrocento type, not such as we find, for instance, in the _leonardo loredano_ of giovanni bellini, the finest panels of cima, or the early _christ bearing the cross_ of giorgione. in it exquisite polish of surface and consummate rendering of detail are combined with the utmost breadth and majesty of composition, with a now perfect freedom in the casting of the draperies. it is difficult, indeed, to imagine that this masterpiece--so eminently a work of the cinquecento, and one, too, in which the master of cadore rose superior to all influences, even to that of giorgione--could have been painted in , that is some two years before bellini's _baptism of christ_ in s. corona, and in all probability before the _three philosophers_ of giorgione himself. the one of titian's own early pictures with which it appears to the writer to have most in common--not so much in technique, indeed, as in general style--is the _st. mark_ of the salute, and than this it is very much less giorgionesque. to praise the _cristo della moneta_ anew after it has been so incomparably well praised seems almost an impertinence. the soft radiance of the colour so well matches the tempered majesty, the infinite mansuetude of the conception; the spirituality, which is of the essence of the august subject, is so happily expressed, without any sensible diminution of the splendour of renaissance art approaching its highest. and yet nothing could well be simpler than the scheme of colour as compared with the complex harmonies which venetian art in a somewhat later phase affected. frank contrasts are established between the tender, glowing flesh of the christ, seen in all the glory of achieved manhood, and the coarse, brown skin of the son of the people who appears as the pharisee; between the bright yet tempered red of his robe and the deep blue of his mantle. but the golden glow, which is titian's own, envelops the contrasting figures and the contrasting hues in its harmonising atmosphere, and gives unity to the whole.[ ] [illustration: _the "cristo della moneta." dresden gallery. from a photograph by hanfstängl._] a small group of early portraits--all of them somewhat difficult to place--call for attention before we proceed. probably the earliest portrait among those as yet recognised as from the hand of our painter--leaving out of the question the _baffo_ and the portrait-figures in the great _st. mark_ of the salute--is the magnificent _ariosto_ in the earl of darnley's collection at cobham hall.[ ] there is very considerable doubt, to say the least, as to whether this half-length really represents the court poet of ferrara, but the point requires more elaborate discussion than can be here conceded to it. thoroughly giorgionesque is the soberly tinted yet sumptuous picture in its general arrangement, as in its general tone, and in this respect it is the fitting companion and the descendant of giorgione's _antonio broccardo_ at buda-pesth, of his _knight of malta_ at the uffizi. its resemblance, moreover, is, as regards the general lines of the composition, a very striking one to the celebrated sciarra _violin-player_ by sebastiano del piombo, now in the gallery of baron alphonse rothschild at paris, where it is as heretofore given to raphael.[ ] the handsome, manly head has lost both subtlety and character through some too severe process of cleaning, but venetian art has hardly anything more magnificent to show than the costume, with the quilted sleeve of steely, blue-grey satin which occupies so prominent a place in the picture. [illustration: _madonna and child, with four saints. dresden gallery. from a photograph by hanfstängl_.] the so-called _concert_ of the pitti palace, which depicts a young augustinian monk as he plays on a keyed instrument, having on one side of him a youthful cavalier in a plumed hat, on the other a bareheaded clerk holding a bass-viol, was, until morelli arose, almost universally looked upon as one of the most typical giorgiones.[ ] the most gifted of the purely aesthetic critics who have approached the italian renaissance, walter pater, actually built round this _concert_ his exquisite study on the school of giorgione. there can be little doubt, notwithstanding, that morelli was right in denying the authorship of barbarelli, and tentatively, for he does no more, assigning the so subtly attractive and pathetic _concert_ to the early time of titian. to express a definitive opinion on the latter point in the present state of the picture would be somewhat hazardous. the portrait of the modish young cavalier and that of the staid elderly clerk, whose baldness renders tonsure impossible--that is just those portions of the canvas which are least well preserved--are also those that least conclusively suggest our master. the passion-worn, ultra-sensitive physiognomy of the young augustinian is, undoubtedly, in its very essence a giorgionesque creation, for the fellows of which we must turn to the castelfranco master's just now cited _antonio broccardo_, to his male portraits in berlin and at the uffizi, to his figure of the youthful pallas, son of evander, in the _three philosophers_. closer to it, all the same, are the _raffo_ and the two portraits in the _st. mark_ of the salute, and closer still is the supremely fine _jeune homme au gant_ of the salon carré, that later production of vecelli's early time. the _concert_ of the pitti, so far as it can be judged through the retouches that cover it, displays an art certainly not finer or more delicate, but yet in its technical processes broader, swifter, and more synthetic than anything that we can with certainty point to in the life-work of barbarelli. the large but handsome and flexible hands of the player are much nearer in type and treatment to titian than they are to his master. the beautiful motive--music for one happy moment uniting by invisible bonds of sympathy three human beings--is akin to that in the _three ages_, though there love steps in as the beautifier of rustic harmony. it is to be found also in giorgione's _concert champêtre_, in the louvre, in which the thrumming of the lute is, however, one among many delights appealing to the senses. this smouldering heat, this tragic passion in which youth revels, looking back already with discontent, yet forward also with unquenchable yearning, is the keynote of the giorgionesque and the early titianesque male portraiture. it is summed up by the _antonio broccardo_ of the first, by the _jeune homme au gant_ of the second. altogether other, and less due to a reaction from physical ardour, is the exquisite sensitiveness of lorenzo lotto, who sees most willingly in his sitters those qualities that are in the closest sympathy with his own highly-strung nature, and loves to present them as some secret, indefinable woe tears at their heart-strings. a strong element of the giorgionesque pathos informs still and gives charm to the sciarra _violin-player_ of sebastiano del piombo; only that there it is already tempered by the haughty self-restraint more proper to florentine and roman portraiture. there is little or nothing to add after this as to the _jeune homme au gant_, except that as a representation of aristocratic youth it has hardly a parallel among the master's works except, perhaps, a later and equally admirable, though less distinguished, portrait in the pitti. [illustration: from a photograph by braün clement & cie. walter l. colls. ph. sc. jeune homme au gant] [illustration: _a concert. probably by titian. pitti palace, florence. from a photograph by alinari_.] not until van dyck, refining upon rubens under the example of the venetians, painted in the _pensieroso_ mood his portraits of high-bred english cavaliers in all the pride of adolescence or earliest manhood, was this particular aspect of youth in its flower again depicted with the same felicity.[ ] to crowe and cavalcaselle's pages the reader must be referred for a detailed and interesting account of titian's intrigues against the venerable giovanni bellini in connection with the senseria, or office of broker, to the merchants of the fondaco de' tedeschi. we see there how, on the death of the martial pontiff, julius the second, pietro bembo proposed to titian to take service with the new medici pope, leo the tenth (giovanni de' medici), and how navagero dissuaded him from such a step. titian, making the most of his own magnanimity, proceeds to petition the doge and signori for the first vacant broker's patent for life, on the same conditions and with the same charges and exemptions as are conceded to giovanni bellini. the petition is presented on the st of may , and the council of ten on that day moves and carries a resolution accepting titian's offer with all the conditions attached. though he has arrived at the extreme limit of his splendid career, old gian bellino, who has just given new proof of his still transcendent power in the great altar-piece of s. giovanni crisostomo ( ), which is in some respects the finest of all his works, declines to sit still under the encroachments of his dangerous competitor, younger than himself by half a century. on the th of march the council of ten revokes its decree of the previous may, and formally declares that titian is not to receive his broker's patent on the first vacancy, but must wait his turn. seemingly nothing daunted, titian petitions again, asking for the reversion of the particular broker's patent which will become vacant on the death of giovanni bellini; and this new offer, which stipulates for certain special payments and provisions, is accepted by the council. titian, like most other holders of the much-coveted office, shows himself subsequently much more eager to receive its not inconsiderable emoluments than to finish the pictures, the painting of which is the one essential duty attached to the office. some further bargaining takes place with the council on the th of january , but, a few days after the death of giovanni bellini at the end of november in the same year, fresh resolutions are passed postponing the grant to titian of bellini's patent; notwithstanding which, there is conclusive evidence of a later date to show that he is allowed the full enjoyment of his "senseria in fontego di tedeschi" (_sic_), with all its privileges and immunities, before the close of this same year, . [illustration: _portrait of a man. alte pinakothek, munich. from a photograph by hanfstängl_.] it is in this year that titian paid his first visit to ferrara, and entered into relations with alfonso i., which were to become more intimate as the position of the master became greater and more universally recognised in italy. it was here, as we may safely assume, that he completed, or, it may be, repaired, giovanni bellini's last picture, the great _bacchanal_ or _feast of the gods on earth_, now at alnwick castle. it is there that he obtained the commission for two famous works, the _worship of venus_ and the _bacchanal_, designed, in continuation of the series commenced with bellini's _feast of the gods_, to adorn a favourite apartment in alfonso's castle of ferrara; the series being completed a little later on by that crown and climax of the whole set, the _bacchus and ariadne_ of the national gallery. bellini appears in an unfamiliar phase in this final production of his magnificent old age, on which the signature, together with the date, , so carefully noted by vasari, is still most distinctly to be read. much less giorgionesque--if the term be in this case permissible--and more quattrocentist in style than in the immediately preceding altar-piece of s. giovanni crisostomo, he is here hardly less interesting. all admirers of his art are familiar with the four beautiful _allegories_ of the accademia delle belle arti at venice, which constitute, besides the present picture, almost his sole excursion into the regions of pagan mythology and symbolism. these belong, however, to a considerably earlier period of his maturity, and show a fire which in the _bacchanal_ has died out.[ ] vasari describes this _bacchanal_ as "one of the most beautiful works ever executed by gian bellino," and goes on to remark that it has in the draperies "a certain angular (or cutting) quality in accordance with the german style." he strangely attributes this to an imitation of dürer's _rosenkranzfest_, painted some eight years previously for the church of san bartolommeo, adjacent to the fondaco de' tedeschi. this particularity, noted by the author of the _vite_, and, in some passages, a certain hardness and opacity of colour, give rise to the surmise that, even in the parts of the picture which belong to bellini, the co-operation of basaiti may be traced. it was he who most probably painted the background and the figure of st. jerome in the master's altar-piece finished in the preceding year for s. giovanni crisostomo; it was he, too, who to a great extent executed, though he cannot have wholly devised, the bellinesque _madonna in glory with eight saints_ in the church of san pietro martire at murano, which belongs to this exact period. even in the _madonna_ of the brera gallery ( ), which shows gian bellino's finest landscape of the late time, certain hardnesses of colour in the main group suggest the possibility of a minor co-operation by basaiti. some passages of the _bacchanal_, however--especially the figures of the two blond, fair-breasted goddesses or nymphs who, in a break in the trees, stand relieved against the yellow bands of a sunset sky--are as beautiful as anything that venetian art in its bellinesque phase has produced up to the date of the picture's appearance. very suggestive of bellini is the way in which the hair of some of the personages is dressed in heavy formal locks, such as can only be produced by artificial means. these are to be found, no doubt, chiefly in his earliest or paduan period, when they are much more defined and rigid. still this coiffure--for as such it must be designated--is to be found more or less throughout the master's career. it is very noticeable in the _allegories_ just mentioned. [illustration: _alessandro de' medici (so called). hampton court. from a photograph by spooner & co._] infinitely pathetic is the old master's vain attempt to infuse into the chosen subject the measure of dionysiac vehemence that it requires. an atmosphere of unruffled peace, a grand serenity, unconsciously betraying life-weariness, replaces the amorous unrest that courses like fire through the veins of his artistic offspring, giorgione and titian. the audacious gestures and movements naturally belonging to this rustic festival, in which the gods unbend and, after the homelier fashion of mortals, rejoice, are indicated; but they are here gone through, it would seem, only _pour la forme_. a careful examination of the picture substantially confirms vasari's story that the _feast of the gods_ was painted upon by titian, or to put it otherwise, suggests in many passages a titianesque hand. it may well be, at the same time, that crowe and cavalcaselle are right in their conjecture that what the younger master did was rather to repair injury to the last work of the elder and supplement it by his own than to complete a picture left unfinished by him. the whole conception, the _charpente_, the contours of even the landscape are attributable to bellini. his are the carefully-defined, naked tree-trunks to the right, with above in the branches a pheasant, and on a twig, in the immediate foreground of the picture, a woodpecker; his is the rocky formation of the foreground with its small pebbles.[ ] even the tall, beetling crag, crowned with a castle sunset-lit--so confidently identified with the rock of cadore and its castle--is bellinesque in conception, though not in execution. by titian, and brushed in with a loose breadth that might be taken to betray a certain impatience and lack of interest, are the rocks, the cloud-flecked blue sky, the uplands and forest-growth to the left, the upper part of the foliage that caps the hard, round tree-trunks to the right. if it is titian that we have here, as certainly appears most probable, he cannot be deemed to have exerted his full powers in completing or developing the bellinesque landscape. the task may well, indeed, have presented itself to him as an uninviting one. there is nothing to remind the beholder, in conception or execution, of the exquisite giorgionesque landscapes in the _three ages_ and the _sacred and profane love_, while the broader handling suggests rather the technical style, but in no way the beauty of the sublime prospect which opens out in the _bacchus and ariadne_. chapter iii the "worship of venus" and "bacchanal" place in art of the "assunta"--the "bacchus and ariadne"--so-called portraits of alfonso of ferrara and laura dianti--the "st. sebastian" of brescia--altar-pieces at ancona and in the vatican--the "entombment" of the louvre--the "madonna di casa pesaro"--place among titian's works of "st. peter martyr." in the year in which titian paid his first visit to ferrara, ariosto brought out there his first edition of the _orlando farioso_.[ ] a greater degree of intimacy between poet and painter has in some quarters been presupposed than probably existed at this stage of titian's career, when his relation to alfonso and the ferrarese court was far from being as close as it afterwards became. it has accordingly been surmised that in the _worship of venus_ and the _bacchanal_, painted for alfonso, we have proof that he yielded to the influence of the romantic poet who infused new life-blood into the imaginative literature of the italian renaissance. in their frank sensuousness, in their fulness of life, in their unforced marriage of humanity to its environment, these very pictures are, however, essentially pagan and greek, not by any process of cold and deliberate imitation, but by a similar natural growth from a broad groundwork provided by nature herself. it was the passionate and unbridled dosso dossi who among painters stood in the closest relation to ariosto, both in his true vein of romanticism and his humorous eccentricity. [illustration: _the worship of venus. prado gallery, madrid. from a photograph by braun, clément, & cie_.] in the _worship of venus_ and the _bacchanal_ we have left behind already the fresh morning of titian's genius, represented by the giorgionesque works already enumerated, and are rapidly approaching its bright noon. another forward step has been taken, but not without some evaporation of the subtle giorgionesque perfume exhaled by the more delicate flowers of genius of the first period. the _worship of venus_ might be more appropriately named _games of the loves in honour of venus_. the subject is taken from the _imagines_[ ] of philostratus, a renowned greek sophist, who, belonging to a late period of the roman empire, yet preserved intact the self-conscious grace and charm of the hellenistic mode of conception. the theme is supplied by a series of paintings, supposed to have been seen by him in a villa near naples, but by one important group of modern scholars held to be creations of the author's fertile brain. before a statue of venus more or less of the praxitelean type--a more earthly sister of those which have been named the "townley venus" and the "vénus d'arles"--myriads of loves sport, kissing, fondling, leaping, flying, playing rhythmic games, some of them shooting arrows at the opposing faction, to which challenge merry answer is made with the flinging of apples. incomparable is the vigour, the life, the joyousness of the whole, and incomparable must have been the splendour of the colour before the outrages of time (and the cleaner) dimmed it. these delicious pagan _amorini_ are the successors of the angelic _putti_ of an earlier time, whom the tuscan sculptors of the quattrocento had already converted into more joyous and more earthly beings than their predecessors had imagined. such painters of the north, in touch with the south, as albrecht dürer, mabuse, and jacob cornelissen van oostsanen, delighted in scattering through their sacred works these lusty, thick-limbed little urchins, and made them merrier and more mischievous still, with their quaint northern physiognomy. to say nothing on this occasion of albani, poussin, and the flemish sculptors of the seventeenth century, with du quesnoy and van opstal at their head, rubens and van dyck derived their chief inspiration in similar subjects from these loves of titian.[ ] the sumptuous _bacchanal_, for which, we are told, alfonso gave the commission and supplied the subject in , is a performance of a less delicate charm but a more realistic vigour than its companion. from certain points of analogy with an _ariadne_ described by philostratus, it has been very generally assumed that we have here a representation of the daughter of minos consoled already for the departure of theseus, whose sail gleams white on the blue sea in the distance. no dionysus is, however, seen here among the revellers, who, in their orgies, do honour to the god, ariadne's new lover. the revel in a certain audacious abandon denotes rather the festival from which the protagonists have retired, leaving the scene to the meaner performers. even a certain agreement in pose between the realistic but lovely figure of the bacchante, overcome with the fumes of wine, and the late classic statues then, and until lately, entitled _the sleeping ariadne_, does not lead the writer to believe that we have here the new spouse of dionysus so lately won back from despair. the undraped figure,[ ] both in its attitude and its position in the picture, recalls the half-draped bacchante, or goddess, in bellini's _bacchanal_ at alnwick. titian's lovely mortal here may rank as a piece of flesh with correggio's dazzling _antiope_ in the louvre, but not with giorgione's _venus_ or titian's own _antiope_, in which a certain feminine dignity spiritualises and shields from scorn beauty unveiled and otherwise defenceless. the climax of the splendid and distinctively titianesque colour-harmony is the agitated crimson garment of the brown-limbed dancer who, facing his white-robed partner, turns his back to the spectator. this has the strongly marked yellowish lights that we find again in the streaming robe of bacchus in the national gallery picture, and yet again in the garment of nicodemus in the _entombment_. the charming little _tambourine player_, which is no. in the vienna gallery, may be placed somewhere near the time of the great works just now described, but rather before than after them. what that is new remains to be said about the _assunta_, or _assumption of the virgin_, which was ordered of titian as early as , but not shown to the public on the high altar of santa maria de' frari until the th of march ? to appreciate the greatest of extant venetian altar-pieces at its true worth it is necessary to recall what had and what had not appeared at the time when it shone undimmed upon the world. thus raphael had produced the _stanze_, the _cartoons_, the _madonnas of foligno_ and _san sisto_, but not yet the _transfiguration;_ michelangelo had six years before uncovered his _magnum opus_, the ceiling of the sixtine chapel; andrea del sarto had some four years earlier completed his beautiful series of frescoes at the annunziata in florence. among painters whom, origin notwithstanding, we must group as venetians, palma had in painted for the altar of the bombardieri at s. maria formosa his famous _santa barbara_; lorenzo lotto in the following year had produced his characteristic and, in its charm of fluttering movement, strangely unconventional altar-piece for s. bartolommeo at bergamo, the _madonna with ten saints_. in none of these masterpieces of the full renaissance, even if they had all been seen by titian, which was far from being the case, was there any help to be derived in the elaboration of a work which cannot be said to have had any precursor in the art of venice. there was in existence one altar-piece dealing with the same subject from which titian might possibly have obtained a hint. this was the _assumption of the virgin_ painted by dürer in for jacob heller, and now only known by paul juvenel's copy in the municipal gallery at frankfort. the group of the apostles gazing up at the virgin, as she is crowned by the father and the son, was at the time of its appearance, in its variety as in its fine balance of line, a magnificent novelty in art. without exercising a too fanciful ingenuity, it would be possible to find points of contact between this group and the corresponding one in the _assunta_. but titian could not at that time have seen the original of the heller altar-piece, which was in the dominican church at frankfort, where it remained for a century.[ ] he no doubt did see the _assumption_ in the _marienleben_ completed in ; but then this, though it stands in a definite relation to the heller altar-piece, is much stiffer and more formal--much less likely to have inspired the master of cadore. the _assunta_ was already in vasari's time much dimmed, and thus difficult to see in its position on the high altar. joshua reynolds, when he visited the frari in , says that "he saw it near; it was most terribly dark but nobly painted." now, in the accademia delle belle arti, it shines forth again, not indeed uninjured, but sufficiently restored to its pristine beauty to vindicate its place as one of the greatest productions of italian art at its highest. the sombre, passionate splendours of the colouring in the lower half, so well adapted to express the supreme agitation of the moment, so grandly contrast with the golden glory of the skies through which the virgin is triumphantly borne, surrounded by myriads of angels and cherubim, and awaited by the eternal. this last is a figure the divine serenity of which is the strongest contrast to those terrible representations of the deity, so relentless in their superhuman majesty, which, in the ceiling of the sixtine, move through the infinite and fill the beholder with awe. the over-substantial, the merely mortal figure of the virgin, in her voluminous red and blue draperies, has often been criticised, and not without some reason. yet how in this tremendous ensemble, of which her form is, in the more exact sense, the centre of attraction and the climax, to substitute for titian's conception anything more diaphanous, more ethereal? it is only when we strive to replace the colossal figure in the mind's eye, by a design of another and a more spiritual character, that the difficulty in all its extent is realised. [illustration: _the assunta. accademia delle belle arti, venice_.] placed as the _assunta_ now is in the immediate neighbourhood of one of tintoretto's best-preserved masterpieces, the _miracolo del schiavo_, it undergoes an ordeal from which, in the opinion of many a modern connoisseur and lover of venetian art, it does not issue absolutely triumphant. titian's turbulent rival is more dazzling, more unusual, more overpowering in the lurid splendour of his colour; and he has that unique power of bringing the spectator to a state of mind, akin in its agitation to his own, in which he gladly renounces his power and right to exercise a sane judgment. when he is thoroughly penetrated with his subject, tintoretto soars perhaps on a stronger pinion and higher above the earth than the elder master. yet in fulness and variety of life, in unexaggerated dignity, in coherence, in richness and beauty, if not in poetic significance of colour, in grasp of humanity and nature, titian stands infinitely above his younger competitor. if, unhappily, it were necessary to make a choice between the life-work of the one and the life-work of the other--making the world the poorer by the loss of titian or tintoretto--can it be doubted for a moment what the choice would be, even of those who abdicate when they are brought face to face with the mighty genius of the latter? but to return for a moment to the _assunta_. the enlargement of dimensions, the excessive vehemence of movement in the magnificent group of the apostles is an exaggeration, not a perversion, of truth. it carries the subject into the domain of the heroic, the immeasurable, without depriving it of the great pulsation of life. if in sublime beauty and intellectuality the figures, taken one by one, cannot rank with the finest of those in raphael's _cartoons_, yet they preserve in a higher degree, with dramatic unity and truth, this precious quality of vitality. the expressiveness, the interpretative force of the gesture is the first thought, its rhythmic beauty only the second. this is not always the case with the _cartoons_, and the reverse process, everywhere adhered to in the _transfiguration_, is what gives to that overrated last work of sanzio its painfully artificial character. titian himself in the _st. sebastian_ of brescia, and above all in the much-vaunted masterpiece, _the martyrdom of st. peter the dominican_, sins in the same direction, but exceptionally only, and, as it were, against his better self. little wonder that the franciscan fathers were at first uncertain, and only half inclined to be enthusiastic, when they entered into possession of a work hitherto without parallel in italian or any other art.[ ] what is great, and at the same time new, must inevitably suffer opposition at the outset. in this case the public, admitted on the high festival of st. bernardino's day in the year to see the vast panel, showed themselves less timorous, more enthusiastically favourable than the friars had been. fra germano, the guardian of santa maria de' frari, and the chief mover in the matter, appears to have offered an apology to the ruffled painter, and the fathers retained the treasure as against the imperial envoy, adorno, who had seen and admired titian's wonderful achievement on the day of its ceremonial introduction to the venetians. to the year belongs the _annunciation_ in the cathedral of treviso, the merit of which, in the opinion of the writer, has been greatly overstated. true, the virgin, kneeling in the foreground as she awaits the divine message, is of unsurpassable suavity and beauty; but the foolish little archangel tumbling into the picture and the grotesquely ill-placed donor go far to mar it. putting aside for the moment the beautiful and profoundly moving representations of the subject due to the florentines and the sienese--both sculptors and painters--south of the alps, and to the netherlanders north of them, during the whole of the fifteenth century, the essential triviality of the conception in the treviso picture makes such a work as lorenzo lotto's pathetic _annunciation_ at recanati, for all its excess of agitation, appear dignified by comparison. titian's own _annunciation_, bequeathed to the scuola di s. rocco by amelio cortona, and still to be seen hung high up on the staircase there, has a design of far greater gravity and appropriateness, and is in many respects the superior of the better known picture. [illustration: _the annunciation. cathedral at treviso. from a photograph by alinari_.] now again, a few months after the death of alfonso's duchess,--the passive, and in later life estimable lucrezia borgia, whose character has been wilfully misconceived by the later historians and poets,--our master proceeds by the route of the po to ferrara, taking with him, we are told, the finished _bacchanal_, already described above. he appears to have again visited the court in , and yet again in the early part of . on which of these visits he took with him and completed at ferrara (?) the last of the bacchanalian series, our _bacchus and ariadne_, is not quite clear. it will not be safe to put the picture too late in the earlier section of vecelli's work, though, with all its freshness of inspiration and still youthful passion, it shows a further advance on the _worship of venus_ and the _bacchanal_, and must be deemed to close the great series inaugurated by the _feast of the gods_ of gian bellino. to the two superb fantasies of titian already described our national gallery picture is infinitely superior, and though time has not spared it, any more than it has other great venetian pictures of the golden time, it is in far better condition than they are. in the _worship of venus_ and the _bacchanal_ the allegiance to giorgiono has been partly, if not wholly, shaken off; the naïveté remains, but not the infinite charm of the earlier giorgionesque pieces. in the _bacchus and ariadne_ titian's genius flames up with an intensity of passion such as will hardly again be seen to illuminate it in an imaginative subject of this class. certainly, with all the beauties of the _venuses_, of the _diana and actaeon_, the _diana and calisto_, the _rape of europa_, we descend lower and lower in the quality of the conception as we advance, though the brush more and more reveals its supreme accomplishment, its power to summarise and subordinate. only in those later pieces, the _venere del pardo_ of the louvre and the _nymph and shepherd_ of vienna, is there a moment of pause, a return to the painted poem of the earlier times, with its exquisite naïveté and mitigated sensuousness. [illustration: _bacchus and ariadne. national gallery. from a photograph published by the autotype company._] the _bacchus and ariadne_ is a titian which even the louvre, the museum of the prado, and the vienna gallery, rich as they are in our master's works, may envy us. the picture is, as it were, under the eye of most readers, and in some shape or form is familiar to all who are interested in italian art. this time titian had no second-rate valerius flaccus or subtilising philostratus to guide him, but catullus himself, whose _epithalamium pelei et thetidos_ he followed with a closeness which did not prevent the pictorial interpretation from being a new creation of the subject, thrilling through with the same noble frenzy that had animated the original. how is it possible to better express the _at parte ex aliâ florens volitabat iacchus.... te quaerens, ariadna, tuoque incensus amore_ of the veronese poet than by the youthful, eager movement of the all-conquering god in the canvas of the venetian? or to paraphrase with a more penetrating truth those other lines: _horum pars tecta quatiebant cuspide thyrsos; pars e divolso iactabant membra iuvenco; pars sese tortis serpentibus incingebant_? ariadne's crown of stars--the _ex ariadneis aurea temporibus fixa corona_ of the poem--shines in titian's sky with a sublime radiance which corresponds perfectly to the description, so august in its very conciseness, of catullus. the splendour of the colour in this piece--hardly equalled in its happy audacity, save by the _madonna del coniglio_ or _vierge au lapin_ of the louvre,[ ] would be a theme delightful to dwell upon, did the prescribed limits of space admit of such an indulgence. even here, however, where in sympathy with his subject, all aglow with the delights of sense, he has allowed no conventional limitation to restrain his imagination from expressing itself in appropriately daring chromatic harmonies, he cannot be said to have evoked difficulties merely for the sake of conquering them. this is not the sparkling brilliancy of those veronese transformed into venetians--bonifazio primo and paolo caliari; or the gay, stimulating colour-harmony of the brescian romanino; or the more violent and self-assertive splendour of gaudenzio ferrari; or the mysterious glamour of the poet-painter dosso dossi. with titian the highest degree of poetic fancy, the highest technical accomplishment, are not allowed to obscure the true venetian dignity and moderation in the use of colour, of which our master may in the full renaissance be considered the supreme exponent. the ever-popular picture in the salon carré of the louvre now known as _alfonso i. of ferrara and laura dianti_, but in the collection of charles i. called, with no nearer approach to the truth, _titian's mistress after the life_, comes in very well at this stage. the exuberant beauty, with the skin of dazzling fairness and the unbound hair of rippling gold, is the last in order of the earthly divinities inspired by giorgione--the loveliest of all in some respects, the most consummately rendered, but the least significant, the one nearest still to the realities of life. the chief harmony is here one of dark blue, myrtle green, and white, setting off flesh delicately rosy, the whole enframed in the luminous half-gloom of a background shot through here and there with gleams of light. vasari described how titian painted, _ottimamente con un braccio sopra un gran pezzo d' artiglieria_, the duke alfonso, and how he portrayed, too, the signora laura, who afterwards became the wife of the duke, _che è opera stupenda_. it is upon this foundation, and a certain real or fancied resemblance between the cavalier who in the background holds the mirror to his splendid _donna_ and the _alfonso of ferrara_ of the museo del prado, that the popular designation of this lovely picture is founded, which probably, like so many of its class, represents a fair venetian courtesan with a lover proud of her fresh, yet full-blown beauty. now, however, the accomplished biographer of velazquez, herr carl justi,[ ] comes forward with convincing arguments to show that the handsome _insouciant_ personage, with the crisply curling dark hair and beard, in titian's picture at madrid cannot possibly be, as has hitherto been almost universally assumed, alfonso i. of ferrara, but may very probably be his son, ercole ii. this alone invalidates the favourite designation of the louvre picture, and renders it highly unlikely that we have here the "stupendous" portrait of the signora laura mentioned by vasari. a comparison of the madrid portrait with the so-called _giorgio cornaro_ of castle howard--a famous portrait by titian of a gentleman holding a hawk, and having a sporting dog as his companion, which was seen at the recent venetian exhibition of the new gallery--results in something like certainty that in both is the same personage portrayed. it is not only that the quality and cast of the close curling hair and beard are the same in both portraits, and that the handsome features agree exceedingly well; the sympathetic personage gives in either case the same impression of splendid manhood fully and worthily enjoyed, yet not abused. this means that if the madrid portrait be taken to present the gracious ercole ii. of ferrara, then must it be held that also in the castle howard picture is alfonso's son and successor portrayed. in the latter canvas, which bears, according to crowe and cavalcaselle, the later signature "titianus f.," the personage is, it may be, a year or two older. let it be borne in mind that only on the _back_ of the canvas is, or rather was, to be found the inscription: "georgius cornelius, frater catterinae cipri et hierusalem reginae (_sic_)," upon the authority of which it bears its present designation. the altar-piece, _the virgin and child with angels, adored by st. francis, st. blaise, and a donor_, now in san domenico, but formerly in san francesco at ancona, bears the date and the signature "titianus cadorinus pinsit," this being about the first instance in which the later spelling "titianus" appears. if as a pictorial achievement it cannot rank with the san niccolò and the pesaro altar-pieces, it presents some special points of interest which make it easily distinguishable from these. the conception is marked by a peculiar intensity but rarely to be met with in our master at this stage, and hardly in any other altar-piece of this particular type. it reveals a passionate unrest, an element of the uncurbed, the excessive, which one expects to find rather in lorenzo lotto than in titian, whose dramatic force is generally, even in its most vigorous manifestations, well under control. the design suggests that in some shape or other the painter was acquainted with raphael's _madonna di foligno_; but it is dramatic and real where the urbinate's masterpiece was lofty and symbolical. still titian's st. francis, rapt in contemplation, is sublime in steadfastness and intensity of faith; the kneeling donor is as pathetic in the humility of his adoration as any similar figure in a quattrocento altar-piece, yet his expressive head is touched with the hand of a master of the full renaissance. an improved version of the upper portion of the ancona picture, showing the madonna and child with angels in the clouds, appears a little later on in the s. niccolò altar-piece. [illustration: _st. sebastian. wing of altar-piece in the church of ss. nazzaro e celso, brescia. from a photograph by alinari_.] coming to the important altar-piece completed in for the papal legate, averoldo, and originally placed on the high altar in the church of ss. nazzaro e celso at brescia, we find a marked change of style and sentiment. the _st. sebastian_ presently to be referred to, constituting the right wing of the altar-piece, was completed before the rest,[ ] and excited so great an interest in venice that tebaldi, the agent of duke alfonso, made an attempt to defeat the legate and secure the much-talked-of piece for his master. titian succumbed to an offer of sixty ducats in ready money, thus revealing neither for the first nor the last time the least attractive yet not the least significant side of his character. but at the last moment alfonso, fearing to make an enemy of the legate, drew back and left to titian the discredit without the profit of the transaction. the central compartment of the brescia altar-piece presents _the resurrection_, the upper panels on the left and right show together the _annunciation_, the lower left panel depicts the patron saints, nazarus and celsus, with the kneeling donor, averoldo; the lower right panel has the famous _st. sebastian_[ ] in the foreground, and in the landscape the angel ministering to st. roch. the _st. sebastian_ is neither more nor less than the magnificent academic study of a nude athlete bound to a tree in such fashion as to bring into violent play at one and the same moment every muscle in his splendidly developed body. there is neither in the figure nor in the beautiful face framed in long falling hair any pretence at suggesting the agony or the ecstasy of martyrdom. a wide gulf indeed separates the mood and the method of this superb bravura piece from the reposeful charm of the giorgionesque saint in the _st. mark_ of the salute, or the healthy realism of the unconcerned _st. sebastian_ in the s. niccolò altar-piece. here, as later on with the _st. peter martyr_, those who admire in venetian art in general, and in that of titian in particular, its freedom from mere rhetoric and the deep root that it has in nature, must protest that in this case moderation and truth are offended by a conception in its very essence artificial. yet, brought face to face with the work itself, they will put aside the role of critic, and against their better judgment pay homage unreservedly to depth and richness of colour, to irresistible beauty of modelling and painting.[ ] analogies have been drawn between the _medicean faun_ and the _st. sebastian_, chiefly on account of the strained position of the arms, and the peculiar one of the right leg, both in the statue and the painting; but surely the most obvious and natural resemblance, notwithstanding certain marked variations, is to the figure of laocoon in the world-famous group of the vatican. of this a model had been made by sansovino for cardinal domenico grimani, and of that model a cast was kept in titian's workshop, from which he is said to have studied. [illustration: design for a holy family. chatsworth. _from a photograph by braun, clément & cie_.] [illustration: _la vierge au lapin. louvre. from a photograph by neurdein._] in the _madonna di s. niccolò_, which was painted or rather finished in the succeeding year, , for the little church of s. niccolò de' frari, and is now in the pinacoteca of the vatican, the keynote is suavity, unbroken richness and harmony, virtuosity, but not extravagance of technique. the composition must have had much greater unity before the barbarous shaving off, when the picture went to rome, of the circular top which it had in common with the _assunta_, the ancona, and the pesaro altar-pieces. technically superior to the second of these great works, it is marked by no such unity of dramatic action and sentiment, by no such passionate identification of the artist with his subject. it is only in passing from one of its beauties to another that its artistic worth can be fully appreciated. then we admire the rapt expression, not less than the wonderfully painted vestments of the _st. nicholas_,[ ] the mansuetude of the _st. francis_, the venetian loveliness of the _st. catherine_, the palpitating life of the _st. sebastian_. the latter is not much more than a handsome, over-plump young gondolier stripped and painted as he was--contemplating, if anything, himself. the figure is just as vasari describes it, _ritratto dal' vivo e senza artificio niuno_. the royal saint of alexandria is a sister in refined elegance of beauty and costume, as in cunning elaboration of coiffure, to the _st. catherine_ of the _madonna del coniglio_, and the not dissimilar figure in our own _holy family with st. catherine_ at the national gallery. the fresco showing st. christopher wading through the lagunes with the infant christ on his shoulder, painted at the foot of a staircase in the palazzo ducale leading from the doge's private apartments to the senate hall, belongs either to this year, , or to . it is, so far as we know, titian's first performance as a _frescante_ since the completion, twelve years previously, of the series at the scuola del santo of padua. as it at present appears, it is broad and solid in execution, rich and brilliant in colour for a fresco, very fairly preserved--deserving, in fact, of a much better reputation as regards technique than crowe and cavalcaselle have made for it. the movement is broad and true, the rugged realism of the conception not without its pathos; yet the subject is not lifted high above the commonplace by that penetrating spirit of personal interpretation which can transfigure truth without unduly transforming it. in grandeur of design and decorative character, it is greatly exceeded by the magnificent drawing in black chalk, heightened with white, of the same subject, by pordenone, in the british museum. even the colossal, half-effaced _st. christopher with the infant christ_, painted by the same master on the wall of a house near the town hall at udine, has a finer swing, a more resistless energy. [illustration: _st. christopher with the infant christ. fresco in the doge's palace, venice. from a photograph by alinari_.] where exactly in the life-work of titian are we to place the _entombment_ of the louvre, to which among his sacred works, other than altar-pieces of vast dimensions, the same supreme rank may be accorded which belongs to the _bacchus and ariadne_ among purely secular subjects? it was in that titian acquired a new and illustrious patron in the person of federigo gonzaga ii., marquess of mantua, son of that most indefatigable of collectors, the marchioness isabella d'este gonzaga, and nephew of alfonso of ferrara. the _entombment_ being a "mantua piece,"[ ] crowe and cavalcaselle have not unnaturally assumed that it was done expressly for the mantuan ruler, in which case, as some correspondence published by them goes to show, it must have been painted at, or subsequently to, the latter end of . judging entirely by the style and technical execution of the canvas itself, the writer feels strongly inclined to place it earlier by some two years or thereabouts--that is to say, to put it back to a period pretty closely following upon that in which the _worship of venus_ and the _bacchanal_ were painted. mature as titian's art here is, it reveals, not for the last time, the influence of giorgione with which its beginnings were saturated. the beautiful head of st. john shows the giorgionesque type and the giorgionesque feeling at its highest. the joseph of arimathea has the robustness and the passion of the apostles in the _assunta_, the crimson coat of nicodemus, with its high yellowish lights, is such as we meet with in the _bacchanal_. the magdalen, with her features distorted by grief, resembles--allowing for the necessary differences imposed by the situation--the women making offering to the love-goddess in the _worship of venus_. the figure of the virgin, on the other hand, enveloped from head to foot in her mantle of cold blue, creates a type which would appear to have much influenced paolo veronese and his school. to define the beauty, the supreme concentration of the _entombment_, without by dissection killing it, is a task of difficulty. what gives to it that singular power of enchanting the eye and enthralling the spirit, the one in perfect agreement with the other, is perhaps above all its unity, not only of design, but of tone, of informing sentiment. perfectly satisfying balance and interconnection of the two main groups just stops short of too obvious academic grace--the well-ordered movement, the sweeping rhythm so well serving to accentuate the mournful harmony which envelops the sacred personages, bound together by the bond of the same great sorrow, and from them communicates itself, as it were, to the beholder. in the colouring, while nothing jars or impairs the concert of the tints taken as a whole, each one stands out, affirming, but not noisily asserting, its own splendour and its own special significance. and yet the yellow of the magdalen's dress, the deep green of the coat making ruddier the embrowned flesh of sturdy joseph of arimathea, the rich shot crimson of nicodemus's garment, relieved with green and brown, the chilling white of the cloth which supports the wan limbs of christ, the blue of the virgin's robe, combine less to produce the impression of great pictorial magnificence than to heighten that of solemn pathos, of portentous tragedy. of the frescoes executed by titian for doge andrea gritti in the doge's chapel in no trace now remains. they consisted of a lunette about the altar,[ ] with the virgin and child between st. nicholas and the kneeling doge, figures of the four evangelists on either side of the altar, and in the lunette above the entrance st. mark seated on a lion. [illustration: _the madonna di casa pesaro. church of s. maria de' frari, venice. from a photograph by naya_.] the _madonna di casa pesaro_, which titian finished in , after having worked upon it for no less than seven years, is perhaps the masterpiece of the painter of cadore among the extant altar-pieces of exceptional dimensions, if there be excepted its former companion at the frari, the _assunta_. for ceremonial dignity, for well-ordered pomp and splendour, for the dexterous combination, in a composition of quite sufficient _vraisemblance_, of divine and sacred with real personages, it has hardly a rival among the extant pictures of its class. and yet, apart from amazement at the pictorial skill shown, at the difficulties overcome, at the magnificence tempered by due solemnity of the whole, many of us are more languidly interested by this famous canvas than we should care to confess. it would hardly be possible to achieve a more splendid success with the prescribed subject and the material at hand. it is the subject itself that must be deemed to be of the lower and less interesting order. it necessitates the pompous exhibition of the virgin and child, of st. peter and other attendant saints, united by an invisible bond of sympathy and protection, not to a perpetually renewed crowd of unseen worshippers outside the picture, as in giorgione's _castelfranco madonna_, but merely to the pesaro family, so proud in their humility as they kneel in adoration, with jacopo pesaro, bishop of paphos (baffo), at their head. the natural tie that should unite the sacred personages to the whole outer world, and with it their power to impress, is thus greatly diminished, and we are dangerously near to a condition in which they become merely grand conventional figures in a decorative ensemble of the higher order. to analyse the general scheme or the details of the glorious colour-harmony, which has survived so many drastic renovations and cleanings, is not possible on this occasion, or indeed necessary. the magic of bold and subtle chiaroscuro is obtained by the cloud gently descending along the two gigantic pillars which fill all the upper part of the arched canvas, dark in the main, but illuminated above and below by the light emanating from the divine putti; the boldest feature in the scheme is the striking cinnamon-yellow mantle of st. peter, worn over a deep blue tunic, the two boldly contrasting with the magnificent dark-red and gold banner of the borgias crowned with the olive branch peace.[ ] this is an unexpected note of the most stimulating effect, which braces the spectator and saves him from a surfeit of richness. thus, too, titian went to work in the _bacchus and ariadne_--giving forth a single clarion note in the scarlet scarf of the fugitive daughter of minos. the writer is unable to accept as from the master's own hand the unfinished _virgin and child_ which, at the uffizi, generally passes for the preliminary sketch of the central group in the pesaro altar-piece. the original sketch in red chalk for the greater part of the composition is in the albertina at vienna. the collection of drawings in the uffizi holds a like original study for the kneeling baffo. [illustration: sketch for the madonna di casa pesaro. albertina, vienna. _from a photograph by braun, clément & cie_.] [illustration: martyrdom of st. peter the dominican. from the engraving by henri laurent.] by common consent through the centuries which have succeeded the placing of titian's world-renowned _martyrdom of st. peter the dominican_ on the altar of the brotherhood of st. peter martyr, in the vast church of ss. giovanni e paolo, it has been put down as his masterpiece, and as one of the most triumphant achievements of the renaissance at its maturity. on the th of august --one of the blackest of days in the calendar for the lover of venetian art--the _st. peter martyr_ was burnt in the cappella del rosario of ss. giovanni e paolo, together with one of giovanni bellini's finest altar-pieces, the _virgin and child with saints and angels_, painted in . some malign influence had caused the temporary removal to the chapel of these two priceless works during the repair of the first and second altars to the right of the nave. now the many who never knew the original are compelled to form their estimate of the _st. peter martyr_ from the numerous existing copies and prints of all kinds that remain to give some sort of hint of what the picture was. any appreciation of the work based on a personal impression may, under the circumstances, appear over-bold. nothing could well be more hazardous, indeed, than to judge the world's greatest colourist by a translation into black-and-white, or blackened paint, of what he has conceived in the myriad hues of nature. the writer, not having had the good fortune to see the original, has not fallen under the spell of the marvellously suggestive colour-scheme. this crowe and cavalcaselle minutely describe, with its prevailing blacks and whites furnished by the robes of the dominicans, with its sombre, awe-inspiring landscape, in which lurid storm-light is held in check by the divine radiance falling almost perpendicularly from the angels above--with its single startling note of red in the hose of the executioner. it is, therefore, with a certain amount of reluctance that he ventures to own that the composition, notwithstanding its largeness and its tremendous swing, notwithstanding the singular felicity with which it is framed in the overpoweringly grand landscape, has always seemed to him strained and unnatural in its most essential elements. what has been called its michelangelism has very ingeniously been attributed to the passing influence of buonarroti, who, fleeing from florence, passed some months at venice in , and to that of his adherent sebastiano luciani, who, returning to his native city some time after the sack of rome, had remained there until march in the same year. all the same, is not the exaggeration in the direction of academic loftiness and the rhetoric of passion based rather on the raphaelism of the later time as it culminated in the _transfiguration_? all through the wonderful career of the urbinate, beginning with the borghese _entombment_, and going on through the _spasimo di sicilia_ to the end, there is this tendency to consider the nobility, the academic perfection of a group, a figure, a pose, a gesture in priority to its natural dramatic significance. much less evident is this tendency in raphael's greatest works, the _stanze_ and the _cartoons_, in which true dramatic significance and the sovereign beauties of exalted style generally go hand in hand. the _transfiguration_ itself is, however, the most crying example of the reversal of the natural order in the inception of a great work. in it are many sublime beauties, many figures of unsurpassable majesty if we take them separately. yet the whole is a failure, or rather two failures, since there are two pictures instead of one in the same frame. nature, instead of being broadened and developed by art, is here stifled. in the _st. peter martyr_ the tremendous figure of the attendant friar fleeing in frenzied terror, with vast draperies all fluttering in the storm-wind, is in attitude and gesture based on nothing in nature. it is a stage-dramatic effect, a carefully studied attitude that we have here, though of the most imposing kind. in the same way the relation of the executioner to the martyred saint, who in the moment of supreme agony appeals to heaven, is an academic and conventional rather than a true one based on natural truth. allowing for the point of view exceptionally adopted here by titian, there is, all the same, extraordinary intensity of a kind in the _dramatis personae_ of the gruesome scene--extraordinary facial expressiveness. an immense effect is undoubtedly made, but not one of the highest sublimity that can come only from truth, which, raising its crest to the heavens, must ever have its feet firmly planted on earth. still, could one come face to face with this academic marvel as one can still with the _st. sebastian_ of brescia, criticism would no doubt be silent, and the magic of the painter _par excellence_ would assert itself. very curiously it is not any more less contemporary copy--least of all that by ludovico cardi da cigoli now, as a miserable substitute for the original, at ss. giovanni e paolo--that gives this impression that titian in the original would have prevailed over the recalcitrant critic of his great work. the best notion of the _st. peter martyr_ is, so far as the writer is aware, to be derived from an apparently faithful modern copy by appert, which hangs in the great hall of the École des beaux-arts in paris. even through this recent repetition the beholder divines beauties, especially in the landscape, which bring him to silence, and lead him, without further carping, to accept titian as he is. a little more and, criticism notwithstanding, one would find oneself agreeing with vasari, who, perceiving in the great work a more strict adherence to those narrower rules of art which he had learnt to reverence, than can, as a rule, be discovered in venetian painting, described it as _la più compiuta, la più celebrata, e la maggiore e meglio intesa e condotta che altra, la quale in tutta la sua vita tiziano abbia fatto_ (sic) _ancor mai_. [illustration: _tobias and the angel. s. marciliano, venice. from a photograph by anderson_.] it was after a public competition between titian, palma, and pordenone, instituted by the brotherhood of st. peter martyr, that the great commission was given to the first-named master. palma had arrived at the end of his too short career, since he died in this same year, . of pordenone's design we get a very good notion from the highly-finished drawing of the _martyrdom of st. peter_ in the uffizi, which is either by or, as the writer believes, after the friulan painter, but is at any rate in conception wholly his. awkward and abrupt as this may seem in some respects, as compared with titian's astonishing performance, it represents the subject with a truer, a more tragic pathos. sublime in its gravity is the group of pitying angels aloft, and infinitely touching the dominican saint who, in the moment of violent death, still asserts his faith. among the drawings which have been deemed to be preliminary sketches for the _st. peter martyr_ are: a pen-and-ink sketch in the louvre showing the assassin chasing the companion of the victim; another, also in the louvre, in which the murderer gazes at the saint lying dead; yet another at lille, containing on one sheet thumb-nail sketches of (or from) the attendant friar, the actual massacre, and the angels in mid-air. at the british museum is the drawing of a soldier attacking the prostrate dominican, which gives the impression of being an adaptation or variation of that drawing by titian for the fresco of the scuola del santo, _a nobleman murdering his wife_, which is now, as has been pointed out above, at the École des beaux-arts of paris. as to none of the above-mentioned drawings does the writer feel any confidence that they can be ascribed to the hand of titian himself.[ ] footnotes: [ ] herr franz wickhoff in his now famous article "giorgione's bilder zu römischen heldengedichten" (_jahrbuch der königlich preussischen kunstsammlungen_: sechzehnter band, i. heft) has most ingeniously, and upon what may be deemed solid grounds, renamed this most giorgionesque of all giorgiones after an incident in the _thebaid_ of statius, _adrastus and hypsipyle_. he gives reasons which may be accepted as convincing for entitling the _three philosophers_, after a familiar incident in book viii. of the _aeneid_, "aeneas, evander, and pallas contemplating the rock of the capitol." his not less ingenious explanation of titian's _sacred and profane love_ will be dealt with a little later on. these identifications are all-important, not only in connection with the works themselves thus renamed, and for the first time satisfactorily explained, but as compelling the students of giorgione partly to reconsider their view of his art, and, indeed, of the venetian idyll generally. [ ] for many highly ingenious interpretations of lotto's portraits and a sustained analysis of his art generally, mr. bernard berenson's _lorenzo lotto_ should be consulted. see also m. emile michel's article, "les portraits de lorenzo lotto," in the _gazette des beaux arts_, , vol. i. [ ] for these and other particulars of the childhood of titian, see crowe and cavalcaselle's elaborate _life and times of titian_ (second edition, ), in which are carefully summarised all the general and local authorities on the subject. [ ] _life and times of titian_, vol. i. p. . [ ] _die galerien zu münchen und dresden_, p. . [ ] carlo ridolfi (better known as a historian of the venetian school of art than as a venetian painter of the late time) expressly states that palma came young to venice and learnt much from titan: "_c' egli apprese certa dolcezza di colorire che si avvicina alle opere prime dello stesso tiziano_" (lermolieff: _die galerien zu münchen und dresden_). [ ] vasari, _le vite: giorgione da castelfranco_. [ ] one of these is a description of wedding festivities presided over by the queen at asolo, to which came, among many other guests from the capital by the lagunes, three venetian gentlemen and three ladies. this gentle company, in a series of conversations, dwell upon, and embroider in many variations, that inexhaustible theme, the love of man for woman. a subject this which, transposed into an atmosphere at once more frankly sensuous and of a higher spirituality, might well have served as the basis for such a picture as giorgione's _fête champêtre_ in the salon carré of the louvre! [ ] _magazine of art_, july . [ ] _life and times of titian_, vol. i. p. . [ ] mentioned in one of the inventories of the king's effects, taken after his execution, as _pope alexander and seignior burgeo (borgia) his son_. [ ] _la vie et l'oeuvre du titien_, . [ ] the inscription on a cartellino at the base of the picture, "ritratto di uno di casa pesaro in venetia che fu fatto generale di sta chiesa. titiano fecit," is unquestionably of much later date than the work itself. the cartellino is entirely out of perspective with the marble floor to which it is supposed to adhere. the part of the background showing the galleys of pesaro's fleet is so coarsely repainted that the original touch cannot be distinguished. the form "titiano" is not to be found in any authentic picture by vecelli. "ticianus," and much more rarely "tician," are the forms for the earlier time; "titianus" is, as a rule, that of the later time. the two forms overlap in certain instances to be presently mentioned. [ ] kugler's _italian schools of painting_, re-edited by sir henry layard. [ ] marcantonio michiel, who saw this _baptism_ in the year in the house of m. zuanne ram at s. stefano in venice, thus describes it: "la tavola del s. zuane che battezza cristo nel giordano, che è nel fiume insino alle ginocchia, con el bel paese, ed esso m. zuanne ram ritratto sino al cinto, e con la schena contro li spettatori, fu de man de tiziano" (_notizia d' opere di disegno_, pubblicata da j. jacopo morelli, ed. frizzoni, ). [ ] this picture having been brought to completion in , and cima's great altar-piece with the same subject, behind the high-altar in the church of s. giovanni in bragora at venice, being dated , the inference is irresistible that in this case the head of the school borrowed much and without disguise from the painter who has always been looked upon as one of his close followers. in size, in distribution, in the arrangement and characterisation of the chief groups, the two altar-pieces are so nearly related that the idea of a merely accidental and family resemblance must be dismissed. this type of christ, then, of a perfect, manly beauty, of a divine meekness tempering majesty, dates back, not to gian bellino, but to cima. the preferred type of the elder master is more passionate, more human. our own _incredulity of st. thomas_, by cima, in the national gallery, shows, in a much more perfunctory fashion, a christ similarly conceived; and the beautiful _man of sorrows_ in the same collection, still nominally ascribed to giovanni bellini, if not from cima's own hand, is at any rate from that of an artist dominated by his influence. when the life-work of the conegliano master has been more closely studied in connection with that of his contemporaries, it will probably appear that he owes very much less to bellini than it has been the fashion to assume. the idea of an actual subordinate co-operation with the _caposcuola_, like that of bissolo, rondinelli, basaiti, and so many others, must be excluded. the earlier and more masculine work of cima bears a definite relation to that of bartolommeo montagna. [ ] the _tobias and the angel_ shows some curious points of contact with the large _madonna and child with st. agnes and st. john_ by titian, in the louvre--a work which is far from equalling the s. marciliano picture throughout in quality. the beautiful head of the st. agnes is but that of the majestic archangel in reverse; the st. john, though much younger than the tobias, has very much the same type and movement of the head. there is in the church of s. caterina at venice a kind of paraphrase with many variations of the s. marciliano titian, assigned by ridolfi to the great master himself, but by boschini to santo zago (crowe and cavalcaselle, vol. ii. p. ). here the adapter has ruined titian's great conception by substituting his own trivial archangel for the superb figure of the original (see also a modern copy of this last piece in the schack gallery at munich). a reproduction of the titian has for purposes of comparison been placed at the end of the present monograph (p. ). [ ] vasari places the _three ages_ after the first visit to ferrara, that is almost as much too late as he places the _tobias_ of s. marciliano too early. he describes its subject as "un pastore ignudo ed una forese chi li porge certi flauti per che suoni." [ ] from an often-cited passage in the _anonimo_, describing giorgione's great _venus_ now in the dresden gallery, in the year , when it was in the house of jeronimo marcello at venice, we learn that it was finished by titian. the text says: "la tela della venere nuda, che dorme ni uno paese con cupidine, fu de mano de zorzo da castelfranco; ma lo paese e cupidine furono finiti da tiziano." the cupid, irretrievably damaged, has been altogether removed, but the landscape remains, and it certainly shows a strong family resemblance to those which enframe the figures in the _three ages, sacred and profane love_, and the "_noli me tangere_" of the national gallery. the same _anonimo_ in saw in the house of gabriel vendramin at venice a _dead christ supported by an angel_, from the hand of giorgone, which, according to him, had been retouched by titian. it need hardly be pointed out, at this stage, that the work thus indicated has nothing in common with the coarse and thoroughly second-rate _dead christ supported by child-angels,_ still to be seen at the monte di pietà of treviso. the engraving of a _dead christ supported by an angel_, reproduced in m. lafenestre's _vie et oeuvre du titien_ as having possibly been derived from giorgione's original, is about as unlike his work or that of titian as anything in sixteenth-century italian art could possibly be. in the extravagance of its mannerism it comes much nearer to the late style of pordenone or to that of his imitators. [ ] _jahrbuch der preussischen kunstsammlungen_, heft i. . [ ] see also as to these paintings by giorgione, the _notizia d' opere di disegno_, pubblicata da d. jacopo morelli, edizione frizzoni, . [ ] m. thausing, _wiener kunstbriefe_, . [ ] _le meraviglie dell' arte_. [ ] the original drawing by titian for the subject of this fresco is to be found among those publicly exhibited at the École des beaux arts of paris. it is in error given by morelli as in the malcolm collection, and curiously enough m. georges lafenestre repeats this error in his _vie et oeuvre du titien._ the drawing differs so essentially from the fresco that it can only be considered as a discarded design for it. it is in the style which domenico campagnola, in his giorgionesque-titianesque phase, so assiduously imitates. [ ] one of the many inaccuracies of vasari in his biography of titian is to speak of the _st. mark_ as "una piccola tavoletta, un s. marco a sedere in mezzo a certi santi." [ ] in connection with this group of works, all of them belonging to the quite early years of the sixteenth century, there should also be mentioned an extraordinarily interesting and as yet little known _herodias with the head of st. john the baptist_ by sebastiano luciani, bearing the date . this has recently passed into the rich collection of mr. george salting. it shows the painter admirably in his purely giorgionesque phase, the authentic date bearing witness that it was painted during the lifetime of the castelfranco master. it groups therefore with the great altar-piece by sebastiano at s. giovanni crisostomo in venice, with sir francis cook's injured but still lovely _venetian lady as the magdalen_ (the same ruddy blond model), and with the four giorgionesque _saints_ in the church of s. bartolommeo al rialto. [ ] _die galerien zu münchen und dresden_, p. . [ ] the _christ_ of the pitti gallery--a bust-figure of the saviour, relieved against a level far-stretching landscape of the most solemn beauty--must date a good many years after the _cristo della moneta_. in both works the beauty of the hand is especially remarkable. the head of the pitti _christ_ in its present state might not conclusively proclaim its origin; but the pathetic and intensely significant landscape is one of titian's loveliest. [ ] last seen in public at the old masters' exhibition of the royal academy in . [ ] an ingenious suggestion was made, when the _ariosto_ was last publicly exhibited, that it might be that _portrait of a gentleman of the house of barbarigo_ which, according to vasari, titian painted with wonderful skill at the age of eighteen. the broad, masterly technique of the cobham hall picture in no way accords, however, with vasari's description, and marks a degree of accomplishment such as no boy of eighteen, not even titian, could have attained. and then vasari's "giubbone di raso inargentato" is not the superbly luminous steel-grey sleeve of this _ariosto_, but surely a vest of satin embroidered with silver. the late form of signature, "titianus f.," on the stone balustrade, which is one of the most giorgionesque elements of the portrait, is disquieting, and most probably a later addition. it seems likely that the balustrade bore originally only the "v" repeated, which curiously enough occurs also on the similar balustrade of the beautiful _portrait of a young venetian_, by giorgione, first cited as such by morelli, and now in the berlin gallery, into which it passed from the collection of its discoverer, dr. j.p. richter. the signature "ticianus" occurs, as a rule, on pictures belonging to the latter half of the first period. the works in the earlier half of this first period do not appear to have been signed, the "titiano f." of the _baffo_ inscription being admittedly of later date. thus that the _cristo della moneta_ bears the "ticianus f." on the collar of the pharisee's shirt is an additional argument in favour of maintaining its date as originally given by vasari ( ), instead of putting it back to or thereabouts. among a good many other paintings with this last signature may be mentioned the _jeune homme au gant_ and _vierge au lapin_ of the louvre; the _madonna with st. anthony abbot_ of the uffizi; the _bacchus and ariadne_, the _assunta_, the _st. sebastian_ of brescia (dated ). the _virgin and child with st. catherine_ of the national gallery, and the _christ with the pilgrims at emmaus_ of the louvre--neither of them early works--are signed "tician." the usual signature of the later time is "titianus f.," among the first works to show it being the ancona altar-piece and the great _madonna di san niccolò_ now in the pinacoteca of the vatican. it has been incorrectly stated that the late _st. jerome_ of the brera bears the earlier signature, "ticianus f." this is not the case. the signature is most distinctly "titianus," though in a somewhat unusual character. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle describe it as a "picture which has not its equal in any period of giorgione's practice" (_history of painting in north italy_, vol. ii.). [ ] among other notable portraits belonging to this early period, but to which within it the writer hesitates to assign an exact place, are the so-called _titian's physician parma_, no. in the vienna gallery; the first-rate _portrait of a young man_ (once falsely named _pietro aretino_), no. in the alte pinakothek of munich; the so-called _alessandro de' medici_ in the hampton court gallery. the last-named portrait is a work injured, no doubt, but of extraordinary force and conciseness in the painting, and of no less singular power in the characterisation of a sinister personage whose true name has not yet been discovered. [ ] the fifth _allegory_, representing a sphinx or chimaera--now framed with the rest as the centre of an ensemble--is from another and far inferior hand, and, moreover, of different dimensions. the so-called _venus_ of the imperial gallery at vienna is, notwithstanding the signature of bellini and the date (mdxv.), by bissolo. [ ] in bellini's share in the landscape there is not a little to remind the beholder of the _death of st. peter martyr_ to be found in the venetian room of the national gallery, where it is still assigned to the great master himself, though it is beyond reasonable doubt by one of his late pupils or followers. [ ] the enlarged second edition, with the profile portrait of ariosto by titian, did not appear until . among the additions then made were the often-quoted lines in which the poet, enumerating the greatest painters of the time, couples titian with leonardo, andrea mantegna, gian bellino, the two dossi, michelangelo, sebastiano, and raffael ( rd canto, nd ed.). [ ] [greek: philostratou eikonon erotes.] [ ] let the reader, among other things of the kind, refer to rubens's _jardin à amour_, made familiar by so many repetitions and reproductions, and to van dyck's _madone aux perdrix_ at the hermitage (see portfolio: _the collections of charles i._). rubens copied, indeed, both the _worship of venus_ and the _bacchanal_, some time between and , when the pictures were at rome. these copies are now in the museum at stockholm. the realistic vigour of the _bacchanal_ proved particularly attractive to the antwerp master, and he in more than one instance derived inspiration from it. the ultra-realistic _bacchus seated on a barrel_, in the gallery of the hermitage at st. petersburg, contains in the chief figure a pronounced reminiscence of titian's picture; while the unconventional attitude of the amorino, or bacchic figure, in attendance on the god, is imitated without alteration from that of the little toper whose action vasari so explicitly describes. [ ] vasari's simple description is best: "una donna nuda che dorme, tanto bella che pare viva, insieme con altre figure." [ ] moritz thausing's _albrecht dürer_, zweiter band, p. . [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, _life and times of titian_, vol. i. p. . [ ] it appears to the writer that this masterpiece of colour and reposeful charm, with its wonderful gleams of orange, pale turquoise, red, blue, and golden white, with its early signature, "ticianus f.," should be placed not later than this period. crowe and cavalcaselle assign it to the year , and hold it to be the _madonna with st. catherine_, mentioned in a letter of that year written by giacomo malatesta to federigo gonzaga at mantua. should not this last picture be more properly identified with our own superb _madonna and child with st. john and st. catherine_, no. in the national gallery, the style of which, notwithstanding the rather giorgionesque type of the girlish virgin, shows further advance in a more sweeping breadth and a larger generalisation? the latter, as has already been noted, is signed "tician." [ ] "tizian und alfons von este," _jahrbuch der königlich preussischen kunstsammlungen_, fünfzehnter band, ii. heft, . [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, _life and times of titian_, vol. i. pp. - . [ ] on the circular base of the column upon which the warrior-saint rests his foot is the signature "ticianus faciebat mdxxii." this, taken in conjunction with the signature "titianus" on the ancona altar-piece painted in , tends to show that the line of demarcation between the two signatures cannot be absolutely fixed. [ ] lord wemyss possesses a repetition, probably from titian's workshop, of the _st. sebastian_, slightly smaller than the brescia original. this cannot have been the picture catalogued by vanderdoort as among charles i.'s treasures, since the latter, like the earliest version of the _st. sebastian_, preceding the definitive work, showed the saint tied not to a tree, but to a column, and in it the group of st. roch and the angel was replaced by the figures of two archers shooting. [ ] ridolfi, followed in this particular by crowe and cavalcaselle, sees in the upturned face of the _st. nicholas_ a reflection of that of laocoon in the vatican group. [ ] it passed with the rest of the mantua pictures into the collection of charles i., and was after his execution sold by the commonwealth to the banker and dealer jabach for £ . by the latter it was made over to louis xiv., together with many other masterpieces acquired in the same way. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, _life and times of titian_, vol. i. pp. , . [ ] the victory over the turks here commemorated was won by baffo in the service of the borgia pope, alexander vi., some twenty-three years before. this gives a special significance to the position in the picture of st. peter, who, with the keys at his feet, stands midway between the bishop and the virgin. we have seen baffo in one of titian's earliest works (_circa_ ) recommended to st. peter by alexander vi. just before his departure for this same expedition. [ ] it has been impossible in the first section of these remarks upon the work of the master of cadore to go into the very important question of the drawings rightly and wrongly ascribed to him. some attempt will be made in the second section, to be entitled _the later work of titian_, to deal summarily with this branch of the subject, which has been placed on a more solid basis since giovanni morelli disentangled the genuine landscape drawings of the master from those of domenico campagnola, and furnished a firm basis for further study. index "alfonso d'este and laura dianti" (louvre) altar-piece at brescia "annunciation, the" (treviso) "annunciation, the" (venice) "aretino, portrait of" (florence) "ariosto, portrait of" (cobham hall) "assumption of the virgin, the," "bacchanal, a," "bacchus and ariadne" (national gallery), "baptism of christ, the" (rome), "battle of cadore, the" "bella, la" (florence) "bishop of paphos recommended by alexander vi. to st. peter, the" (antwerp) "christ at emmaus" "christ bearing the cross" (venice) "christ between st. andrew and st. catherine" (venice) "charles v. at mühlberg" (madrid) "concert, a" (florence) "cornaro, portrait of" (castle howard) "cristo della moneta, il" (dresden) "death of st. peter martyr, the" "diana and actaeon" "diana and calisto" "entombment, the" (louvre) "feast of the gods, the" (alnwick castle) "flora" (florence) fresco of st. christopher in the doge's palace frescoes in the scuola del santo, padua frescoes on the fondaco de' tedeschi, venice "herodias" "holy family" (bridgewater gallery) "holy family with st. catherine" (national gallery) "jupiter and antiope" (louvre) "madonna di casa pesaro, the" (venice) "madonna di san niccolò, the" (rome) "man, portrait of a" (munich) "man in black, the" (louvre) "man of sorrows, the" (venice) "man with the glove, the" (louvre) "medici, portrait of ippolito de'" "noli me tangere" (national gallery) "nymph and shepherd" (vienna) "philip ii., portrait of" "pietà" (milan) "rape of europa, the" "sacred and profane love" (rome) "sacred conversation, a" (chantilly) "sacred conversation, a" (florence) "st. mark enthroned, with four other saints" (venice) "st. sebastian": see _altar-piece at brescia_ "tambourine-player, the" (vienna) "three ages, the" (bridgewater gallery) "tobias and the angel" (venice) "tribute-money, the": see _cristo della moneta_ "triumph of faith, the" "vanitas" (munich) "venere del pardo": see _jupiter and antiope_ "virgin and child" (mr. r.h. benson) "virgin and child" (florence) "virgin and child" (st. petersburg) "virgin and child" (vienna): see _zingarella, la_ "virgin and child with saints" (captain holford) "virgin and child with four saints" (dresden) "virgin and child with the infant st. john and st. anthony abbot" (florence) "virgin and child with st. joseph and a shepherd" (national gallery) "virgin and child with saints, angels, and a donor" (ancona) "virgin and child with ss. stephen, ambrose, and maurice" (louvre) "virgin and child with ss. ulphus and bridget" (madrid) "virgin with the cherries, the" (vienna) "virgin with the rabbit, the" (louvre) "worship of venus, the" (madrid) "zingarella, la" (vienna) proofreading team. [illustration: art repro co. madonna & child with two saints. from the painting by giorgione at castelfranco.] giorgione by herbert cook, m.a., f.s.a. barrister-at-law "born half-way between the mountains and the sea--that young george of castelfranco--of the brave castle: stout george they called him, george of georges, so goodly a boy he was--giorgione." (ruskin: _modern painters_, vol. v. pt. ix. ch. ix.) _first published, november second edition, revised, with new appendix, february ._ preface unlike most famous artists of the past, giorgione has not yet found a modern biographer. the whole trend of recent criticism has, in his case, been to destroy not to fulfil. yet signs are not wanting that the disintegrating process is at an end, and that we have reached the point where reconstruction may be attempted. the discovery of documents and the recovery of lost pictures in the last few years have increased the available material for a more comprehensive study of the artist, and the time has come when the divergent results arrived at by independent modern inquirers may be systematically arranged, and a reconciliation of apparently conflicting views attempted on a psychological basis. crowe and cavalcaselle were the first to examine the subject critically. they separated--so far as was then possible ( )--the real from the traditional giorgione, and their account of his life and works must still rank as the nearest equivalent to a modern biography. morelli, who followed in , was in singular sympathy with his task, and has written of his favourite master enthusiastically, yet with consummate judgment. among living authorities, dr. gronau, herr wickhoff, signor venturi, and mr. bernhard berenson have contributed effectively to the elucidation of obscure or disputed points, and the latter writer has probably come nearer than anyone to recognise the scope of giorgione's art, and grasp the man behind his work. the monograph by signor conti and the chapter in pater's _renaissance_ may be read for their delicate appreciations of the "giorgionesque"; other contributions on the subject will be found in the bibliography. it is absolutely necessary for those whose judgment depends upon a study of the actual pictures to be constantly registering and adjusting their impressions. i have personally seen and studied all the pictures i believe to be by giorgione, with the exception of those at st. petersburg; and many galleries and churches where they hang have been visited repeatedly, and at considerable intervals of time. if in the course of years my individual impressions (where they deviate from hitherto recognised views) fail to stand the test of time, i shall be the first to admit their inadequacy. if, on the other hand, they prove sound, some of the mists which at present envelop the figure of giorgione will have been dispersed. h.c. _november _ note to the second edition to this edition an appendix has been added, containing--( ) an article by the author on the age of titian, which was published in the _nineteenth century_ of january ; ( ) the translation of a reply by dr. georg gronau, published in the _repertorium für kunstwissenschaft_; ( ) a further reply by the author, published in the same german periodical. the writer wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to the editors of the _nineteenth century_ and of the _repertorium_ for permission to reprint these articles. a better photograph of the "portrait of an unknown man" at temple newsam has now been taken (p. ), and sundry footnotes have been added to bring the text up to date. h. c. esher, _january _. contents list of illustrations bibliography chapter i. giorgione's life ii. giorgione's generally accepted works iii. intermediate summary iv. additional pictures--portraits v. additional pictures--other subjects vi. giorgione's art, and place in history appendix i--documents appendix ii--the age of titian catalogue of works list of illustrations madonna, with ss. francis and liberale. _castelfranco_. adrastus and hypsipyle. _palazzo giovanelli, venice_ aeneas, evander, and pallas. _vienna gallery_ the judgment of solomon. _uffizi gallery_ the trial of moses. _uffizi gallery_ christ bearing the cross. _collection of mrs. gardner, boston, u.s.a._ knight of malta. _uffizi gallery_ the adoration of the shepherds. _vienna gallery_ the judgment of solomon. _collection of mrs. ralph bankes, kingston lacy_ portrait of a young man. _berlin gallery_ portrait of a man. _buda-pesth gallery_ portrait of a lady. _borghese gallery, rome_ apollo and daphne. _seminario, venice_ venus. _dresden gallery_ judith. _hermitage gallery, st. petersburg_ pastoral symphony. _louvre, paris_ the three ages. _pitti gallery_ nymph and satyr. _pitti gallery_ madonna, with ss. roch and francis. _prado, madrid_ the birth of paris--copy of a portion. _buda-pesth gallery_ shepherd boy. _hampton court_ portrait of a man. (by torbido) _padua gallery_ the concert. _pitti gallery_ the adoration of the magi (or epiphany). _national gallery_ christ bearing the cross. _collection of duke of devonshire, chatsworth._ (sketch by vandyck, after the original by giorgione in s. rocco, venice) mythological scenes. two _cassone_ pieces _padua gallery_ portrait of "ariosto". _collection of the earl of darnley, cobham hall_ portrait of caterina cornaro. _collection of signor crespi, milan_ bust of caterina cornaro. _pourtalès collection, berlin_ portrait of "a poet". _national gallery_ portrait of a man. _querini-stampalia gallery, venice_ portrait of a man. _collection of the hon. mrs. meynell-ingram, temple newsam_. portrait of "parma, the physician". _vienna gallery_ orpheus and eurydice. _bergamo gallery_ the golden age (?). _national gallery_ venus and adonis. _national gallery_ holy family. _collection of mr. robert benson, london_ the "gipsy" madonna. _vienna gallery_ madonna. _collection of mr. robert benson, london_ the adulteress before christ. _glasgow gallery_ madonna and saints. _louvre, paris_ bibliography anonimo. "notizia d'opere di disegno." ed. frizzoni. bologna, . _passim._ _archivio storico dell' arte_ (now _l'arte_), , p. . (see also _sub_ venturi.) _art journal_. . p. . (dr. richter.) berenson, b. "venetian painting at the new gallery." . (privately printed.) "venetian painters of the renaissance." third edition, . putnam, london. _gazette des beaux arts_, , p. . burckhardt. "cicerone." sixth edition, . (dr. bode.) conti, a. "giorgione, studio." florence, . crowe and cavalcaselle. "history of painting in north italy," vol. ii. london, . "life of titian." two vols. fry, roger. "giovanni bellini." london, . gronau, dr. g. _gazette des beaux arts_, , p. . _repertorium für kunstwissenschaft_, xviii. , p. . "zorzon da castelfranco. la sua origine, la sua morte, e tomba." venice, . "tizian." berlin, . lafenestre, g. "la vie et l'oeuvre de titien." paris, . logan, mary. "guide to the italian pictures at hampton court." london, . _magazine of art_, , pp. and . (sir w. armstrong.) . april. (mr. w.f. dickes.) morelli, giovanni. "italian painters." translated by c.j. ffoulkes. london, . vols. i. and ii. _passim_. mÜntz, e. "la fin de la renaissance." paris. new gallery catalogue of exhibition of venetian art, . pater, w. "the renaissance." chapter on the school of giorgione. london, . phillips, claude. _gazette des beaux arts_, , p. . _magazine of art_, july . "the picture gallery of charles i." (_portfolio_, january ). "the earlier work of titian" (_portfolio_, october ). _north american review_, october . _repertorium für kunstwissenschaft_. bd. xiv. p. . (herr von seidlitz.) bd. xix. hft. . (dr. harck.) ridolfi, c. "le maraviglie dell' arte della pittura." venice, . royal academy. catalogues of the exhibitions of old masters. vasari. "le vite." ed. sansoni. florence, . translation edited by blashfield and hopkins, with notes. london, . venturi, adolfo. _archivio storico dell' arte_, vi. , . _l'arte_, , p. , etc. "la galleria crespi in milano," . wickhoff, f. _gazette des beaux arts_, , p. . _jahrbuch der preussischen kunstsammlungen_, . heft i. zanetti, a. "varie pitture," etc., with engravings of some fragments from the fondaco de' tedeschi frescoes, . giorgione chapter i giorgione's life apart from tradition, very few ascertained facts are known to us as to giorgione's life. the date of his birth is conjectural, there being but vasari's unsupported testimony that he died in his thirty-fourth year. now we know from unimpeachable sources that his death happened in october-november ,[ ] so that, assuming vasari's statement to be correct, giorgione will have been born in .[ ] the question of his birthplace and origin has been in great dispute. without going into the evidence at length, we may accept with some degree of certainty the results at which recent german research has arrived.[ ] dr. gronau's conclusion is that giorgione was the son (or grandson) of a certain giovanni, called giorgione of castelfranco, who came originally from the village of vedelago in the march of treviso. this giovanni was living at castelfranco, of which he was a citizen, in , and there, probably, giorgione his son (or grandson) was born some seventeen years later. the tradition that the artist was a natural son of one of the great barbarella family, and that in consequence he was called barbarelli, is now shown to be false. this cognomen is first found in , in ridolfi's book, to which, in , the picturesque addition was made that his mother was a peasant girl of vedelago.[ ] none of the earlier writers or contemporary documents ever allude to such an origin, or speak of "barbarelli," but always of "zorzon de castelfrancho," "zorzi da castelfranco," and the like,[ ] we may take it as certain that giorgione spent the whole of his short life in venice and the neighbourhood. unlike titian, whose busy career was marked by constant journeyings and ever fresh incidents, the young castelfrancan passed a singularly calm and uneventful life. untroubled, apparently, by the storm and stress of the political world about him, he devoted himself with a whole-hearted simplicity to the advancement of his art. like leonardo, he early won fame for his skill in music, and vasari tells us the gifted young lute-player was a welcome guest in distinguished circles. although of humble origin, he must have possessed a singular charm of manner, and a comeliness of person calculated to find favour, particularly with the fair sex. he early found a quasi-royal friend and patroness in caterina cornaro, ex-queen of cyprus, whose portrait he painted, and whose recommendation, as i believe, secured for him important commissions in the like field. but we may leave giorgione's art for fuller discussion in the following chapters, and only note here two outside events which were not without importance in the young artist's career. the one was the visit paid by leonardo to venice in the year . vasari tells us "giorgione had seen certain works from the hand of leonardo, which were painted with extraordinary softness, and thrown into powerful relief, as is said, by extreme darkness of the shadows, a manner which pleased him so much that he ever after continued to imitate it, and in oil painting approached very closely to the excellence of his model."[ ] this statement has been combated by morelli, but although historical evidence is wanting that the two men ever actually met, there is nothing improbable in vasari's account. leonardo certainly came to venice for a short time in , and it would be perfectly natural to find the young venetian, then in his twenty-fourth year, visiting the great florentine, long a master of repute, and from him, or from "certain works of his," taking hints for his own practice.[ ] the second event of moment to which allusion may here be made was the great conflagration in the year , when the exchange of the german merchants was burnt. this building, known as the fondaco de' tedeschi, occupying one of the finest sites on the grand canal, was rebuilt by order of the signoria, and giorgione received the commission to decorate the façade with frescoes. the work was completed by , and became the most celebrated of all the artist's creations. the fondaco still stands to-day, but, alas! a crimson stain high up on the wall is all that remains to us of these great frescoes, which were already in decay when vasari visited venice in . other work of the kind--all long since perished--giorgione undertook with success. the soranzo palace, the palace of andrea loredano, the casa flangini, and elsewhere, were frescoed with various devices, or ornamented with monochrome friezes. we know nothing of giorgione's home life; he does not appear to have married, or to have left descendants. vasari speaks of "his many friends whom he delighted by his admirable performance in music," and his death caused "extreme grief to his many friends to whom he was endeared by his excellent qualities." he enjoyed prosperity and good health, and was called giorgione "as well from the character of his person as for the exaltation of his mind."[ ] he died of plague in the early winter of , and was probably buried with other victims on the island of poveglia, off venice, where the lazar-house was situated.[ ] the tradition that his bones were removed in and buried at castelfranco in the family vault of the barbarelli is devoid of foundation, and was invented to round off the story of his supposed connection with the family.[ ] notes: [ ] see appendix, where the documents are quoted in full. [ ] vasari gives ( in his first edition) and as the years of his birth and death. crowe and cavalcaselle, and dr. bode prefer to say "before ," a supposition which would make his precocity less phenomenal, and help to explain some chronological difficulties (see p. ). [ ] _zorzon da castelfranco. la sua origine, la sua morte e tomba_, by dr. georg gronau. venice, . [ ] vide _repertorium für kunstwissenschaft_, xix. , p. . [dr. gronau.] [ ] it would seem, therefore, desirable to efface the name of barbarelli from the catalogues. the national gallery, for example, registers giorgione's work under this name. [ ] the translation given is that of blashfield and hopkins's edition. bell, . [ ] m. müntz adduces strong arguments in favour of this view (_la fin de la renaissance_, p. ). [ ] the name "giorgione" signifies "big george." but it seems to have been also his father's name. [ ] this visitation claimed no less than , victims. [ ] see gronau, _op. cit_. tradition has been exceptionally busy over giorgione's affairs. the story goes that he died of grief at being betrayed by his friend and pupil, morto da feltre, who had robbed him of his mistress. this is now proved false by the document quoted in the appendix. chapter ii generally accepted works such, then, very briefly, are the facts of giorgione's life recorded by the older biographers, or known by contemporary documents. now let us turn to his artistic remains, the _disjecta membra_, out of which we may reconstruct something of the man himself; for, to those who can interpret it aright, a man's work is his best autobiography. this is especially true in the case of an artist of giorgione's temperament, for his expression is so peculiarly personal, so highly charged with individuality, that every product of mental activity becomes a revelation of the man himself. people like giorgione must express themselves in certain ways, and these ways are therefore characteristic. some people regard a work of art as something external; a great artist, they say, can vary his productions at will, he can paint in any style he chooses. but the exact contrary is the truth. the greater the artist, the less he can divest himself of his own personality; his work may vary in degree of excellence, but not in kind. the real reason, therefore, why it is impossible for certain pictures to be by giorgione is, not that they are not _good_ enough for him, but that they are not _characteristic_. i insist on this point, because in the matter of genuineness the touchstone of authenticity is so often to be looked for in an answer to the question: is this or that characteristic? the personal equation is the all-important factor to be recognised; it is the connecting link which often unites apparently diverse phenomena, and explains what would otherwise appear to be irreconcilable. there is an intimate relation then between the artist and his work, and, rightly interpreted, the latter can tell us much about the former. let us turn to giorgione's work. here we are brought face to face with an initial difficulty, the great difficulty, in fact, which has stood so much in the way of a more comprehensive understanding of the master, i mean, that scarcely anything of his work is authenticated. three pictures alone have never been called in question by contending critics; outside this inner ring is more or less debatable ground, and on this wider arena the battle has raged until scarcely a shred of the painter's work has emerged unscathed. the result has been to reduce the figure of giorgione to a shadowy myth, whose very existence, at the present rate at which negative criticism progresses, will assuredly be called in question. if bacon wrote shakespeare, then giorgione can be divided up between a dozen venetian artists, who "painted giorgione." fortunately three pictures survive which refuse to be fitted in anywhere else except under "giorgione." this is the irreducible minimum, [greek: _o anankaiotatos_] giorgione, with which we must start. * * * * * of the three universally accepted pictures, first and foremost comes the castelfranco altar-piece, according to mr. ruskin "one of the two most perfect pictures in existence; alone in the world as an imaginative representation of christianity, with a monk and a soldier on either side ... "[ ] this great picture was painted before , when the artist was only twenty-seven years of age,[ ] a fact which clearly proves that his genius must have developed early. for not even a giorgione can produce such a masterpiece without a long antecedent course of training and accomplishment. this is not the place to inquire into the nature and character of the works which lead up to this altar-piece, for a chronological survey ought to follow, not precede, an examination of all available material; it is important, nevertheless, to bear in mind that quite ten years had been passed in active work ere giorgione produced this masterpiece. if no other evidence were forthcoming as to the sort of man the painter was, this one production of his would for ever stamp him as a person of exquisite feeling. there is a reserve, almost a reticence, in the way the subject is presented, which indicates a refined mind. an atmosphere of serenity pervades the scene, which conveys a sense of personal tranquillity and calm. the figures are absorbed in their own thoughts; they stand isolated apart, as though the painter wishes to intensify the mood of dreamy abstraction. nothing disquieting disturbs the scene, which is one of profound reverie. all this points to giorgione being a man of moods, as we say; a lyric poet, whose expression is highly charged with personal feeling, who appeals to the imagination rather than to the intellect. and so, as we might expect, landscape plays an important part in the composition; it heightens the pictorial effect, not merely by providing a picturesque background, but by enhancing the mood of serenity and solemn calm. giorgione uses it as an instrument of expression, blending nature and human nature into happy unison. the effect of the early morning sun rising over the distant sea is of indescribable charm, and invests the scene with a poetic glamour which, as morelli truly remarks, awakens devotional feelings. what must have been the effect when it was first painted! for even five modern restorations, under which the original work has been buried, have not succeeded in destroying the hallowing charm. to enjoy similar effects we must turn to the central italian painters, to perugino and raphael; certainly in venetian art of pre-giorgionesque times the like cannot be found, and herein giorgione is an innovator. bellini, indeed, before him had studied nature and introduced landscape backgrounds into his pictures, but more for picturesqueness of setting than as an integral part of the whole; they are far less suggestive of the mood appropriate to the moment, less calculated to stir the imagination than to please the eye. nowhere, in short, in venetian art up to this date is a lyrical treatment of the conventional altar-piece so fully realised as in the castelfranco madonna. technically, giorgione proclaims himself no less an innovator. the composition is on the lines of a perfect equilateral triangle, a scheme which bellini and the older venetian artists never adopted.[ ] so simple a scheme required naturally large and spacious treatment; flat surfaces would be in place, and the draperies cast in ample folds. dignity of bearing, and majestic sweep of dress are appropriately introduced; the colour is rich and harmonious, the preponderance of various shades of green having a soothing effect on the eye. the golden glow which doubtless once suffused the whole, has, alas! disappeared under cruel restorations, and flatness of tone has inevitably resulted, but we may still admire the play of light on horizontal surfaces, and the chiaroscuro giving solidity and relief to the figures. an interesting link with bellini is seen in the s. francis, for the figure is borrowed from that master's altar-piece of s. giobbe (now in the venice academy). bellini's s. francis had been painted seventeen or eighteen years before, and now we find giorgione having recourse to the older master for a pictorial motive. but, as though to assert his independence, he has created in the s. liberale a type of youthful beauty and manliness which in turn became the prototype of subsequent knightly figures. palma vecchio, mareschalco, and pennacchi all borrowed it for their own use, a proof that giorgione's altar-piece acquired an early celebrity.[ ] [illustration: _anderson photo. giovanelli palace, venice_ adrastus and hypsipyle] exquisite feeling is equally conspicuous in the other two works universally ascribed to giorgione. these are the "adrastus and hypsipyle," in the collection of prince giovanelli, in venice, and the "aeneas, evander, and pallas," in the gallery at vienna.[ ] "the giovanelli figures," or "the stormy landscape, with the soldier and the gipsy," as the picture has been commonly called since the days of the anonimo, who so described it in , is totally unlike anything that venetian art of the pre-giorgionesque era has to show. the painted myth is a new departure, the creation of giorgione's own brain, and as such, is treated in a wholly unconventional manner. his peculiarly poetical nature here finds full scope for display, his delicacy, his refinement, his sensitiveness to the beauties of the outside world, find fitting channels through which to express themselves. with what a spirit of romance giorgione has invested his picture! so exquisitely personal is the mood, that the subject itself has taken his biographers nearly four centuries to decipher! for the artist, it must be noted, does not attempt to illustrate a passage of an ancient writer; very probably, nay, almost certainly, he had never read the _thebaid_ of statius, whence comes the story of adrastus and hypsipyle; the subject would have been suggested to him by some friend, a student of the classics, and giorgione thereupon dressed the old greek myth in venetian garb, just as statius had done in the latin.[ ] the story is known to us only at second hand, and we are at liberty to choose giorgione's version in preference to that of the roman poet; each is an independent translation of a common original, and certainly giorgione's is not the less poetical. he has created a painted lyric which is not an illustration of, but a parallel presentation to the written poem of statius. technically, the workmanship points to an earlier period than the castelfranco madonna, and there is an exuberance of fancy which points to a youthful origin. the figures are of slight and graceful build, the composition easy and unstudied, with a tendency to adopt a triangular arrangement in the grouping, the apex being formed by the storm scene, to which the eye thus naturally reverts. the figures and the landscape are brought into close relation by this subtle scheme, and the picture becomes, not figures with landscape background, but landscape with figures. the reproduction unduly exaggerates the contrasts of light and shade, and conveys little of the mellowness and richness of atmospheric effect which characterise the original. unlike the brilliance of colouring in the castelfranco picture, dark reds, browns, and greens here give a sombre tone which is accentuated by the dullness of surface due to old varnishes. [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. vienna gallery_ aeneas, evander, and pallas] "the three philosophers," or "the chaldean sages," as the picture at vienna has long been strangely named, shows the artist again treating a classical story in his own fantastic way. virgil has enshrined in verse the legend of the arrival of the trojan aeneas in italy,[ ] and giorgione depicts the moment when evander, the aged seer-king, and his son pallas point out to the wanderer the site of the future capitol. again we find the same poetical presentation, not representation, of a legendary subject, again the same feeling for the beauties of nature. how giorgione has revelled in the glories of the setting sun, the long shadows of the evening twilight, the tall-stemmed trees, the moss-grown rock! the figures are but a pretext, we feel, for an idyllic scene, where the story is subordinated to the expression of sensuous charm. this work was seen by the anonimo in , in the house of taddeo contarini at venice. it was then believed to have been completed by sebastiano del piombo, giorgione's pupil. if so,--and there is no valid reason to doubt the statement,--giorgione left unfinished a picture on which he was at work some years before his death, for the style clearly indicates that the artist had not yet reached the maturity of his later period. the figures still recall those of bellini, the modelling is close and careful, the forms compact, and reminiscent of the quattrocento. it is noticeable that the type of the pallas is identical with that of s. john baptist in sebastiano's early altar-piece in s. giovanni crisostomo at venice, but it would be unwise to dramatise on the share (if any) which the pupil had in completing the work of his master. the credit of invention must indubitably rest with giorgione, but the damage which the picture has sustained through neglect and repainting in years gone by, renders certainty of discrimination between the two hands a matter of impossibility. the colouring is rich and varied; the orange horizon, the distant blue hill, and the pale, clear evening light, with violet-tinted clouds, give a wonderful depth behind the dark tree-trunks. the effect of the delicate leaves and feathery trees at the edge of the rock, relieved against the pale sky, is superb. a spirit of solemnity broods over the scene, fit feeling at so eventful a moment in the history of the past. the composition, which looks so unstudied, is really arranged on the usual triangular basis. the group of figures on the right is balanced on the left by the great rock--the future capitol--(which is thus brought prominently into notice), and the landscape background again forms the apex. the added depth and feeling for space shows how giorgione had learnt to compose in three dimensions, the technical advance over the "adrastus and hypsipyle" indicating a period subsequent to that picture, though probably anterior to the castelfranco altar-piece. * * * * * we have now taken the three universally accepted giorgiones; how are we to proceed in our investigations? the simplest course will be to take the pictures acknowledged by those modern writers who have devoted most study to the question, and examine them in the light of the results to which we have attained. those writers are crowe and cavalcaselle, who published their account of giorgione in , and morelli, who wrote in . now it is notorious that the results at which these critics arrived are often widely divergent, but a great deal too much has been made of the differences and not enough of the points of agreement. as a matter of fact, morelli only questions three of the thirteen giorgiones accepted definitely by crowe and cavalcaselle. leaving these three aside for the moment, we may take the remaining ten (three of which we have already examined), and after deducting three others in english collections to which morelli does not specifically refer, we are left with four more pictures on which these rival authorities are agreed. [illustration: _alinari photo. uffizi gallery, florence_ the judgment of solomon] these are the two small works in the uffizi, representing the "judgment of solomon" and the "trial of moses," the "knight of malta," also in the uffizi, and the "christ bearing the cross," till lately in the casa loschi at vicenza, and now belonging to mrs. gardner of boston, u.s.a. the two small companion pictures in the uffizi, the "judgment of solomon" and the "trial of moses," or "ordeal by fire," as it is also called, connect in style closely with the "adrastus and hypsipyle." they are conceived in the same romantic strain, and carried out with scarcely less brilliance and charm. the story, as in the previous pictures, is not insisted upon; the biblical episode and the rabbinical legend are treated in the same fantastic way as the classic myth. giovanni bellini had first introduced this lyric conception in his treatment of the mediaeval allegory, as we see it in his picture, also in the uffizi, hanging near the giorgiones; all three works were originally together in the medici residence of poggio imperiale, and there can be little doubt are intimately related in origin to one another. bellini's latest biographer, mr. roger fry, places this allegory about the years - , a date which points to a very early origin for the other two.[ ] for it is extremely likely that the young giorgione was inspired by his master's example, and that he may have produced his companion pieces as early as . with this deduction morelli is in accord: "in character they belong to the fifteenth century, and may have been painted by giorgione in his sixteenth or eighteenth year."[ ] here, then, is a clue to the young artist's earliest predilections. he fastens eagerly upon that phase of bellini's art to which his own poetic temperament most readily responds. but he goes a step further than his master. he takes his subjects not from mediaeval romances, but from the bible or rabbinical writings, and actually interprets them also in this new and unorthodox way. so bold a departure from traditional usage proves the independence and originality of the young painter. these two little pictures thus become historically the first-fruits of the neo-pagan spirit which was gradually supplanting the older ecclesiastical thought, and giorgione, once having cast conventionalism aside, readily turns to classical mythology to find subjects for the free play of fancy. the "adrastus and hypsipyle" thus follows naturally upon "the judgment of solomon" and "trial of moses," and the pages of virgil, ovid, statius, and valerius flaccus--all treasure-houses of golden legend--yield subjects suggestive of romance. the titles of some of these _poesie_, as they were called, are preserved in the pages of ridolfi.[ ] [illustration: _alinari photo. uffizi gallery, florence_ the trial of moses] the tall and slender figures, the attitudes, and the general _mise-en-scène_ vividly recall the earlier style of carpaccio, who was at this very time composing his delightful fairy tales of the "legend of s. ursula."[ ] common to both painters is a gaiety and love of beauty and colour. there is also in both a freedom and ease, even a homeliness of conception, which distinguishes their work from the pageant pictures of gentile bellini, whose "corpus christi procession" was produced two or three years later, in .[ ] but giorgione's art is instinct with a lyrical fancy all his own, the story is subordinated to the mood of the moment, and he is much more concerned with the beauty of the scene than with its dramatic import. the repainted condition of "the judgment of solomon" has led some good judges to pronounce it a copy. it certainly lacks the delicacy that distinguishes its companion piece, but may we not--with crowe and cavalcaselle and morelli--register it rather as a much defaced original? so far as we have at present examined giorgione's pictures, the trend of thought they display has been mostly in the direction of secular subjects. the two early examples just described show that even where the subject is quasi-religious, the revolutionary spirit made itself felt; but it would be perfectly natural to find the young artist also following his master giambellini in the painting of strictly sacred subjects. no better example could be found than the "christ bearing the cross," the small work which has recently left italy for america. we are told by the anonimo that there was in his day ( ) a picture by bellini of this subject, and it is remarkable that four separate versions exist to-day which, without being copies of one another, are so closely related that the existence of a common original is a legitimate inference. that this was by bellini is more than probable, for the different versions are clearly by different painters of his school. by far the finest is the example which crowe and cavalcaselle and morelli unhesitatingly ascribe to the young giorgione; this version is, however, considered by signor venturi inferior to the one now belonging to count lanskeronski in vienna.[ ] others who, like the writer, have seen both works, agree with the older view, and regard the latter version, like the others at berlin and rovigo, as a contemporary repetition of bellini's lost original.[ ] [illustration: _anderson photo. collection of mrs. gardner, boston, u.s.a._ christ bearing the cross] characteristic of giorgione is the abstract thought, the dreaminess of look, the almost furtive glance. the minuteness of finish reminds us of antonello, and the turn of the head suggests several of the latter's portraits. the delicacy with which the features are modelled, the high forehead, and the lighting of the face are points to be noted, as we shall find the same characteristics elsewhere. [illustration: _alinari photo_] _[uffizi gallery, florence_ the knight of malta] the "knight of malta," in the uffizi, is a more mature work, and reveals giorgione to us as a portrait painter of remarkable power. the conception is dignified, the expression resolute, yet tempered by that look of abstract thought which the painter reads into the faces of his sitters. the hair parted in the middle, and brought down low at the sides of the forehead, was peculiarly affected by the venetian gentlemen of the day, and this style seems to have particularly pleased giorgione, who introduces it in many other pictures besides portraits. the oval of the face, which is strongly lighted, is also characteristic. this work shows no direct connection with bellini's portraiture, but far more with that which we are accustomed to associate with the names of titian and palma. it dates probably from the early part of the sixteenth century, at a time when giorgione was breaking with the older tradition which had strictly limited portraiture to the representation of the head only, or at most to the bust. the hand is here introduced, though giorgione feels still compelled to account for its presence by introducing a rosary of large beads. in later years, as we shall see, the expressiveness of the human hand _per se_ will be recognised; but giorgione already feels its significance in portraiture, and there is not one of his portraits which does not show this.[ ] the list of giorgione's works now numbers seven; the next three to be discussed are those that crowe and cavalcaselle added on their own account, but about which morelli expressed no opinion. two are in english private collections, the third in the national gallery. this is the small "knight in armour," said to be a study for the figure of s. liberale in the castelfranco altar-piece. the main difference is that in the latter the warrior wears his helmet, whilst in the national gallery example he is bareheaded. by some this little figure is believed to be a copy, or repetition with variations, of giorgione's original, but it must honestly be confessed that absolutely no proof is forthcoming in support of this view. the quality of this fragment is unquestionable, and its very divergence from the castelfranco figure is in its favour. it would perhaps be unsafe to dogmatise in a case where the material is so slight, but until its genuineness can be disproved by indisputable evidence, the claim to authenticity put forward in the national gallery catalogue, following crowe and cavalcaselle's view, must be allowed. [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. vienna gallery_ the adoration of the shepherds] the two remaining pictures definitely placed by crowe and cavalcaselle among the authentic productions of giorgione are the "adoration of the shepherds," belonging to mr. wentworth beaumont, and the "judgment of solomon," in the possession of mr. ralph bankes at kingston lacy, dorsetshire. the former (of which an inferior replica with differences of landscape exists in the vienna gallery) is one of the most poetically conceived representations of this familiar subject which exists. the actual group of figures forms but an episode in a landscape of the most entrancing beauty, lighted by the rising sun, and wrapped in a soft atmospheric haze. the landscapes in the two little uffizi pictures are immediately suggested, yet the quality of painting is here far superior, and is much closer in its rendering of atmospheric effects to the "adrastus and hypsipyle." the figures, on the other hand, are weak, very unequal in size, and feebly expressed, except the madonna, who has charm. the lights and shadows are treated in a masterly way, and contrasts of gloom and sunlight enhance the solemnity of the scene. the general tone is rich and full of subdued colour. now if the name of giorgione be denied this "nativity," to which of the followers of bellini are we to assign it?--for the work is clearly of bellinesque stamp. the name of catena has been proposed, but is now no longer seriously supported.[ ] if for no other reason, the colour scheme is sufficient to exclude this able artist, and, versatile as he undoubtedly was, it may be questioned whether he ever could have attained to the mellowness and glow which suffuse this picture. the latest view enunciated[ ] is that "we are in the presence of a painter as yet anonymous, whom in german fashion we might provisionally name 'the master of the beaumont "adoration."'" now this system of labelling certain groups of paintings showing common characteristics is all very well in cases where the art history of a particular school or period is wrapt in obscurity, and where few, if any, names have come down to us, but in the present instance it is singularly inappropriate. to begin with, this anonymous painter is the author, so it is believed, of only three works, this "adoration," the "epiphany," in the national gallery, no. , and a small "holy family," belonging to mr. robert benson in london, for all three works are universally admitted to be by the same hand. next, this anonymous painter must have been a singularly refined and poetical artist, a master of brilliant colour, and an accomplished chiaroscurist. truly a _deus ex machina_! next you have to find a vacancy for such a phenomenon in the already crowded lists of bellini's pupils and followers, as if there were not more names than enough already to fully account for every bellinesque production.[ ] no, this is no question of compromise, of the dragging to light some hitherto unknown genius whose identity has long been merged in that of bigger men, but it is the recognition of the fact that the greater comprises the less. admitting, as we may, that these three pictures are inferior in "depth, significance, cohesion, and poetry" (!) to the castelfranco "madonna," there is nothing to show that they are not characteristic of giorgione, that they do not form part of a consistent whole. as a matter of fact, this "adoration of the shepherds" connects very well with the early _poésie_ already discussed. there is some opposition between the sacred theme and giorgione's natural dislike to tell a mere story; but he has had to conform to traditional methods of representation, and the feeling of restraint is felt in the awkward drawing of the figures, and their uneven execution. that he felt dissatisfied with this portion of the work, the drawing at windsor plainly shows, for the figures appear here in a different position, as if he had tried to recast his scheme. some may object that the drawing of the shepherd is atrocious, and that the figures are of disproportionate sizes. such failings, they say, cannot be laid to a great master's charge. this is an appeal to the old argument that it is not _good_ enough, whereas the true test lies in the question, is it _characteristic_? of giorgione it certainly is a characteristic to treat each figure in a composition more or less by itself; he isolates them, and this conception is often emphasised by an outward disparity of size. the relative disproportion of the figures in the castelfranco altar-piece, and of those of aeneas and evander in the vienna picture can hardly be denied, yet no one has ever pleaded this as a bar to their authenticity. instances of this want of cohesion, both in conception and execution, between the various figures in a scene could be multiplied in giorgione's work, no more striking instance being found than in the great undertaking he left unfinished--the large "judgment of solomon," next to be discussed. moreover, eccentricities of drawing are not uncommon in his work, as a reference to the "adrastus and hypsipyle," and later works, like the "fête champêtre" (of the louvre), will show. i have no hesitation, therefore, in recognising this "adoration of the shepherds" as a genuine work of giorgione, and, moreover, it appears to be the masterpiece of that early period when bellini's influence was still strong upon him. the vienna replica, i believe, was also executed by giorgione himself. until recent times, when an all too rigorous criticism condemned it to be merely a piece of the "venezianische schule um " (which is correct as far as it goes),[ ] it bore giorgione's name, and is so recorded in an inventory of the year . it differs from the beaumont version chiefly in its colouring, which is silvery and of delicate tones. it lacks the rich glow, and has little of that mysterious glamour which is so subtly attractive in the former. the landscape is also different. we must be on our guard, therefore, against the view that it is merely a copy; differences of detail, especially in the landscape, show that it is a parallel work, or a replica. now i believe that these two versions of the "nativity" are the two pictures of "la notte," by giorgione, to which we have allusion in a contemporary document.[ ] the description, "una notte," obviously means what we term "a nativity" (correggio's "heilige nacht" at dresden is a familiar instance of the same usage), and the difference in quality between the two versions is significantly mentioned. it seems that isabella d'este, the celebrated marchioness of mantua, had commissioned one of her agents in venice to procure for her gallery a picture by giorgione. the agent writes to his royal mistress and tells her (october ) that the artist is just dead, and that no such picture as she describes--viz. "una nocte"[a]--is to be found among his effects. however, he goes on, giorgione did paint two such pictures, but these were not for sale, as they belonged to two private owners who would not part with them. one of these pictures was of better design and more highly finished than the other, the latter being, in his opinion, not perfect enough for the royal collection. he regrets accordingly that he is unable to obtain the picture which the marchioness requires. if my conjecture be right, we have in the beaumont and vienna "nativities" the only two pictures of giorgione to which allusion is made in an absolutely contemporary document, and they thus become authenticated material with which to start a study of the master. the next picture, which crowe and cavalcaselle accept without question, is the large "judgment of solomon," belonging to mr. bankes at kingston lacy. the scene is a remarkable one, conceived in an absolutely unique way; solomon is here posed as a roman praetor giving judgment in the atrium, supported on each side by onlookers attired in fanciful costume of the venetian period, or suggestive of classical models. it is the strangest possible medley of the bellinesque and the antique, knit together by harmonious colouring and a clever grouping of figures in a triangular design. as an interpretation of a dramatic scene it is singularly ineffective, partly because it is unfinished, some of the elements of the tragedy being entirely wanting, partly because of an obvious stageyness in the action of the figures taking part in the scene. there is a want of dramatic unity in the whole; the figures are introduced in an accidental way, and their relative proportion is not accurately preserved; the executioner, for example, is head and shoulders larger than anyone else, whilst the two figures standing on the steps of solomon's throne are in marked contrast. the one with the shield, on the left, is as monumental as one of bramante's creations, the old gentleman with the beard, on the right, is mincing and has no shoulders. solomon himself appears as a young man of dark complexion, in an attitude of self-contained determination; the way his hands rest on the sides of the throne is very expressive. his drapery is cast in curious folds of a zig-zag character, following the lines of the composition, whilst the dresses of the other personages fall in broad masses to the ground. the light and shade are cleverly handled, and the spaciousness of the scene is enhanced by the rows of columns and the apse of mosaics behind solomon's head. the painter was clearly versed in the laws of perspective, and indicates depth inwards by placing the figures behind one another on a tesselated pavement or on the receding steps of the throne, giving at the same time a sense of atmospheric space between one figure and another. the colour scheme is delightful, full-toned orange and red alternating with pale blues, olive green, and delicate pink, the contrasts so subdued by a clever balance of light and shade as to harmonise the whole in a delicate silvery key. [illustration: _dixon photo. collection of mr. ralph bankes, kingston-lacey, england_ the judgment of solomon (unfinished)] the unfinished figure of the executioner evidently caused the artist much trouble, for _pentimenti_ are frequent, and other outlines can be distinctly traced through the nude body. the effect of this clumsy figure is far from satisfactory; the limbs are not articulated distinctly; moreover, the balance of the whole composition is seriously threatened by the tragedy being enacted at the side instead of in the middle. the artist appears to have felt this difficulty so much that he stopped short at this point; at any rate, the living child remains unrepresented, nor is there any second child such as is required to illustrate the story. it looks as though the scheme was not carefully worked out before commencing, and that the artist found himself in difficulties at the last, when he had to introduce the dramatic motive, which apparently was not to his taste. now, all this fits in exactly with what we know of giorgione's temperament; lyrical by nature, he would shrink from handling a great dramatic scene, and if such a task were imposed upon him he would naturally treat three-fourths of the subject in his own fantastic way, and do his best to illustrate the action required in the remaining part. the result would be (what might be expected) forced or stagey, and the action rhetorical, and that is exactly what has happened in this "judgment of solomon." it is a natural inference that, supposing giorgione to be the painter, he would never have selected such a subject of his own free will to be treated, as this is, on so large a scale. there may be, therefore, something in the suggestion which crowe and cavalcaselle make that this may be the large canvas ordered of giorgione for the audience chamber of the council, "for which purpose," they add, "the advances made to him in the summer of and in january show that the work he had undertaken was of the highest consequence."[ ] be this as it may, the picture was in venice, in the casa grimani di santo ermagora,[ ] in ridolfi's day ( ), and that writer specially mentions the unfinished executioner. it passed later into the marescalchi gallery at bologna, where it was seen by lord byron ( ), and purchased at his suggestion by his friend mr. bankes, in whose family it still remains.[ ] it will be gathered from what i have written that giorgione and no other is, in my opinion, the author of this remarkable work. certain of the figures are reminiscent of those by him elsewhere--e.g. the old man with the beard is like the evander in the vienna picture, the young man next the executioner resembles the adrastus in the giovanelli figures, and the young man stooping forward next to solomon recurs in the "three ages," in the pitti, which morelli considered to be by giorgione. the most obvious resemblances, however, are to be found in the glasgow "adulteress before christ," a work which several modern critics assign to cariani, although dr. bode, sir walter armstrong, and others, maintain it to be a real giorgione. consistently enough, those who believe in cariani's authorship in the one case, assert it in the other,[ ] and as consistently i hold that both are by giorgione. it is conceivable that cariani may have copied giorgione's types and attitudes, but it is inconceivable to me that he can have so entirely assimilated giorgione's temperament to which this "judgment of solomon" so eloquently witnesses. moreover, let no one say that cariani executed what giorgione designed, for, in spite of its imperfect condition, the technique reveals a painter groping his way as he works, altering contours, and making corrections with his brush; in fact, it has all the spontaneity which characterises an original creation. the date of its execution may well have been - , perhaps even earlier; at any rate, we must not argue from its unfinished state that the painter's death prevented completion, for the style is not that of giorgione's last works. rather must we conclude that, like the "aeneas and evander," and several other pictures yet to be mentioned, giorgione stopped short at his work, unwilling to labour at an uncongenial task (as, perhaps, in the present case), or from some feeling of dissatisfaction at the result, nay, even despair of ever realising his poetical conceptions. to this important trait in giorgione's character further reference will be made when all the available material has been examined; suffice it for the moment that this "judgment of solomon" is to me a most _typical_ example of the great artist's work, a revelation alike of his weaknesses as of his powers. following our method of investigation we will next consider the pictures which morelli accredits to giorgione over and above the seven already discussed, wherein he concurs with crowe and cavalcaselle. these are twelve in number, and include some of the master's finest works, some of them unknown to the older authorities, or, at any rate, unrecorded by them. here, therefore, the opinions of crowe and cavalcaselle are not of so much weight, so it will be necessary to see how far morelli's views have been confirmed by later writers during the last twenty years. three portraits figure in morelli's list--one at berlin, one at buda-pesth, and one in the borghese gallery at rome. [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. berlin gallery_ portrait of a young man] first, as to the berlin "portrait of a young man," which, when morelli wrote, belonged to dr. richter, and was afterwards acquired for the berlin gallery. "in it we have one of those rare portraits such as only giorgione, and occasionally titian, were capable of producing, highly suggestive, and exercising over the spectator an irresistible fascination."[ ] such are the great critic's enthusiastic words, and no one surely to-day would be found to gainsay them. we may note the characteristic treatment of the hair, the thoughtful look in the eyes, and the strong light on the face in contrast to the dark frame of hair, points which this portrait shares in common with the "knight of malta" in the uffizi. particularly to be noticed, however, is the parapet on which the fingers of one hand are visible, and the mysterious letters vv.[ ] allusion has already been made to the growing practice in venetian art of introducing the hand as a significant feature in portrait painting, and here we get the earliest indications of this tendency in giorgione; for this portrait certainly ante-dates the "knight of malta." it would seem to have been painted quite early in the last decade of the fifteenth century, when bellini's art would still be the predominant influence over the young artist. it is but a step onward to the next portrait, that of a young man, in the gallery at buda-pesth, but the supreme distinction which marks this wonderful head stamps it as a masterpiece of portraiture. venetian art has nothing finer to show, whether for its interpretative qualities, or for the subtlety of its execution. truly giorgione has here foreshadowed velasquez, whose silveriness of tone is curiously anticipated; yet the true giorgionesque quality of magic is felt in a way that the impersonal spaniard never realised. only those who have seen the original can know of the wonderful atmospheric background, with sky, clouds, and hill-tops just visible. the reproduction, alas! gives no hint of all this. nor can one appreciate the superb painting of the black quilted dress, with its gold braid, or of the shining black hair, confined in a brown net. the artist must have been in keen sympathy with this melancholy figure, for the expression is so intense that, as morelli says, "he seems about to confide to us the secret of his life."[ ] several points claim our attention. first, the parapet has an almost illegible inscription, antonivs. brokardvs. m[=ari]i.f, presumably the young man's name. further, we may notice the recurrence of the letter v on a black device, and there is a second curious black tablet, which, however, has nothing on it. between the two is a circle with a device of three heads in one surrounded by a garland of flowers. no satisfactory explanation of these symbols can be offered, but if the second black tablet had originally another v, we might conclude that these letters were in some mysterious way connected with giorgione, as they appear also on the berlin portrait. i shall be able to show that another instance of this double v exists on yet another portrait by giorgione.[ ] finally, the expressiveness of the human hand is here fully realised. this feature alone points to a later date than the "knight of malta," and considerably after the still earlier berlin portrait. the consummate mastery of technique, moreover, indicates that giorgione has here reached full maturity, so that it would be safe to place this portrait about the year . [illustration: _buda-pesth gallery_ portrait of a man] signor venturi ("la galleria crespi") ascribes this portrait to licinio. this is one of those inexplicable perversions of judgment to which even the best critics are at times liable. in _l'arte_, , p. , the same writer mentions that a certain antonio broccardo, son of marino, made his will in , and that the same name occurs among those who frequented the university of bologna in . there is nothing to prevent giorgione having painted this man's portrait when younger. [illustration: _anderson photo. borghese gallery, rome_ portrait of a lady] the third portrait in morelli's list has not had the same friendly reception at the hands of later critics as the preceding two have had. this is the "portrait of a lady" in the borghese gallery at rome, whose discovery by morelli is so graphically described in a well-known passage.[ ] and in truth it must be confessed that the authorship of this portrait is not at first sight quite so evident as in the other cases; nevertheless i am firmly convinced that morelli saw further than his critics, and that his intuitive judgment was in this instance perfectly correct.[ ] the simplicity of conception, the intensity of expression, the pose of the figure alike proclaim the master, whose characteristic touch is to be seen in the stone ledge, the fancy head-dress, the arrangement of hair, and the modelling of the features. the presence of the hands is characteristically explained by the handkerchief stretched tight between them, the action being expressive of suppressed excitement: "she stands at a window ... gazing out with a dreamy, yearning expression, as if seeking to descry one whom she awaits." licinio, whose name has been proposed as the painter, did indeed follow out this particular vein of giorgione's portraiture, so that "style of licinio" is not an altogether inapt attribution; but there is just that difference of quality between the one man's work and the other, which distinguishes any great man from his followers, whether in literature or in art. how near (and yet how far!) licinio came to his great prototype is best seen in lady ashburton's "portrait of a young man,"[ ] but that he could have produced the borghese "lady" presupposes qualities he never possessed. "to giorgione alone was it given to produce portraits of such astonishing simplicity, yet so deeply significant, and capable, by their mystic charm, of appealing to our imagination in the highest degree."[ ] the actual condition of this portrait is highly unsatisfactory, and is adduced by some as a reason for condemning it. yet the spirit of the master seems still to breathe through the ruin, and to justify morelli's ascription, if not the enthusiastic language in which he writes. [illustration: _anderson photo. seminario, venice_ apollo and daphne] with the fourth addition on morelli's list we pass into a totally different sphere of art--the decoration of _cassoni_, and other pieces of furniture. we have seen giorgione at work on legendary stories or classic myths, creating out of these materials pages of beauty and romance in the form of easel paintings, and now we have the same thing as applied art--that is, art used for purely decorative purposes. the "apollo and daphne" in the seminario at venice was probably a panel of a _cassone_; but although intended for so humble a place, it is instinct with rare poetic feeling and beauty. unfortunately it is in such a bad state that little remains of the original work, and giorgione's touch is scarcely to be recognised in the damaged parts. nevertheless, his spirit breathes amidst the ruin, and modern critics have recognised the justice of morelli's view, rather than that of crowe and cavalcaselle, who suggested schiavone as the "author."[ ] and, indeed, a comparison with the "adrastus and hypsipyle" is enough to show a common origin, although, as we might expect, the same consummate skill is scarcely to be found in the _cassone_ panel as in the easel picture. there is a rare daintiness, however, in these graceful figures, so essentially giorgionesque in their fanciful presentation, the young apollo, a lovely, fair-haired boy, pursuing a maiden with flowing tresses, whose identity with daphne is only to be recognised by the laurel springing from her fingers. the story is but an episode in a sylvan scene, where other figures, in quaint costumes, seem to be leading an idyllic existence, untroubled by the cares of life, and utterly unconcerned at the strange event passing before their eyes. from the "apollo and daphne" it is an easy transition to the "venus," that great discovery which we owe to morelli, and now universally recognised by modern critics. the one point on which morelli did not, perhaps, lay sufficient stress, is the co-operation in this work of titian with giorgione, for here we have an additional proof that the latter left some of his work unfinished. it is a fair inference that titian completed the cupid (now removed), and that he had a hand in finishing the landscape; the anonimo, indeed, states as much, and ridolfi confirms it, and this view is officially adopted in the latest edition of the dresden catalogue. the style points to giorgione's maturity, though scarcely to the last years of his life; for, in spite of the freedom and breadth of treatment in the landscape, there is a restraint in the figure, and a delicacy of form which points to a period preceding, rather than contemporary with, the louvre "concert" and kindred works, where the forms become fuller and rounder, and the feeling more exuberant. it would be mere repetition, after all that has been written on the dresden "venus," to enlarge on the qualities of refinement and grace which characterise the fair form of the sleeping goddess. one need but compare it with titian's representations of the same subject, and still more with palma's versions at dresden and cambridge, or with cariani's "venus" at hampton court, to see the classic purity of form, the ideal loveliness of giorgione's goddess.[ ] it is no mere accident that she alone is sleeping, whilst they solicit attention. giorgione's conception is characteristic in that he endeavours to avoid any touch of realism abhorrent to his nature, which was far more sensitive than that of palma, cariani, or even titian. [illustration: _hanfstängl photo_. dresden gallery venus] the extraordinary beauty and subtlety of the master's "line" is admirably shown. he has deliberately forgone anatomical precision in order to accentuate artistic effect. the splendour of curve, the beauty of unbroken contour, the rhythm and balance of composition is attained at a cost of academic correctness; but the long-drawn horizontal lines heighten the sense of repose, and the eye is soothed by the sinuous undulations of landscape and figure. the artistic effect is further enhanced by the relief of exquisite flesh tones against the rich crimson drapery, and although the atmospheric glow has been sadly destroyed by abrasion and repainting, we may still feel something of the magic charm which giorgione knew so well how to impart. this "venus" is the prototype of all other venetian versions; it is in painting what the "aphrodite" of praxiteles was in sculpture, a perfect creation of a master mind. scarcely less wonderful than the "venus," and even surpassing it in solemn grandeur of conception, is the "judith" at st. petersburg. morelli himself had never seen the original, and includes it in his list with the reservation that it might be an old copy after giorgione, and not the original. it would be presumptuous for anyone not familiar with the picture to decide the point, but i have no hesitation in following the judgment of two competent modern critics, both of whom have recently visited st. petersburg, and both of whom have decided unhesitatingly in favour of its being an original by giorgione. dr. harck has written enthusiastically of its beauty. "once seen," he says, "it can never be forgotten; the same mystic charm, so characteristic of the other great works of giorgione, pervades it; ... it bears on the face of it the stamp of a great master."[ ] even more decisive is the verdict of mr. claude phillips.[ ] "all doubts," he says, "vanish like sun-drawn mist in the presence of the work itself; the first glance carries with it conviction, swift and permanent. in no extant giorgione is the golden glow so well preserved, in none does the mysterious glamour from which the world has never shaken itself free, assert itself in more irresistible fashion.... the colouring is not so much giorgionesque as giorgione's own--a widely different thing.... wonderful touches which the imitative giorgionesque painter would not have thought of are the girdle, a mauve-purple now, with a sharply emphasised golden fringe, and the sapphire-blue jewel in the brooch. triumphs of execution, too, but not in the broad style of venetian art in its fullest expansion, are the gleaming sword held in so dainty and feminine a fashion, and the flowers which enamel the ground at the feet of the jewish heroine." this "judith," after passing for many years under the names of raphael and moretto,[ ] is now officially recognised as giorgione's work, an identification first made by the late herr penther, the keeper of the vienna academy, whom morelli quotes. the conception is wholly giorgionesque, the mood one of calm contemplation, as this lovely figure stands lost in reverie, with eyes cast down, gazing on the head on which her foot is lightly laid. the head and sword proclaim her story, they are symbols of her mission, else she had been taken for an embodiment of feminine modesty and gentle submissiveness.[ ] [illustration: _braun photo. hermitage gallery, st. petersburg_ judith] characteristic of the master is the introduction of the great tree-trunk, conveying a sense of grandeur and solemn mystery to the scene; characteristic, too, is the distant landscape, the splendid glow of which evokes special praise from the writers just mentioned. again we find the parapet, or ledge, with its flat surface on which the play of light can be caught, and again the same curious folds, broken and crumpled, such as are seen on solomon's robe in the kingston lacy picture, and somewhat less emphatically in the castelfranco "madonna." consistent, moreover, with that weakness we have already noticed elsewhere, is the design of the leg and foot, the drawing of which is far from impeccable. that the execution in this respect is not equal to the supreme conception of the whole, is no valid reason for the belief that this "judith" is only a copy of a lost original, a belief that could apparently only be held by those who have never stood before the picture itself.[ ] but even in the reproduction this "judith" stands confessed as the most impressive of all giorgione's single figures, and it may well rank as the masterpiece of the earlier period immediately preceding the castelfranco picture of about , to which in style it closely approximates. the next picture on morelli's list is the "fête champêtre" of the louvre, or, as it is often called, the "concert." this lovely "pastoral symphony" (which appears to me a more suitable english title) is by no means universally regarded as a creation of giorgione's hand and brain, and several modern critics have been at pains to show that campagnola, or some other venetian imitator of the great master, really produced it.[ ] in this endeavour crowe and cavalcaselle led the way by suggesting the author was probably an imitator of sebastiano del piombo. but all this must surely seem to be heresy when we stand before the picture itself, thrilled by the gorgeousness of its colour, by the richness of the paradise" in which the air is balmy, and the landscape ever green; where life is a pastime, and music the only labour; where groves are interspersed with meadows and fountains; where nymphs sit playfully on the grass, or drink at cool springs."[ ] was ever such a gorgeous idyll? in the whole range of painted poetry can the like be found? [illustration: _braun photo. louvre, paris_ a pastoral symphony] yet let us be more precise in our analysis. granted that the scene is one eminently adapted to giorgione's poetic temperament, is the execution analogous to that which we have found in the preceding examples? no one will deny, i suppose, that there is a difference between the intensely refined forms of the venus, or the earlier hypsipyle, or the daphne, and the coarser nudes in the louvre picture. no one will deny a certain carelessness marks the delineation of form, no one will gainsay a frankly sensuous charm pervades the scene, a feeling which seems at first sight inconsistent with that reticence and modesty so conspicuous elsewhere. yet i think all this is perfectly explicable on the basis of natural evolution. exuberance of feeling is the logical outcome of a lifetime spent in an atmosphere of lyrical thought, and certainly giorgione was not the sort of man to control those natural impulses, which grew stronger with advancing years. both traditions of his death point in this direction; and, unless i am mistaken, the quality of his art, as well as its character, reflects this tendency. in his later years, - , he attains indeed a magnificence and splendour which dazzles the eye, but it is at the cost of that feeling of restraint which gives the earlier work such exquisite charm. in such a work as the louvre "concert," giorgio has become giorgione; he is riper in experience and richer in feeling, and his art assumes a corresponding exuberance of style, his forms become larger, his execution grows freer. nay, more, that strain of carelessness is not wanting which so commonly accompanies such evolutions of character. and so this "pastoral symphony" becomes a characteristic production--that is, one which a man of giorgione's temperament would naturally produce in the course of his developing. peculiar, however, to an artist of genius is the subtlety of composition, which is held together by invisible threads, for nowhere else, perhaps, has giorgione shown a greater mastery of line. the diagonal line running from behind the nude figure on the left down to the foot so cunningly extended of the seated youth, is beautifully balanced by the line which is formed by the seated figure of the woman. the artist has deliberately emphasised this line by the curious posture of the legs. the figure, indeed, does not sit at all, but the balance of the composition is the better assured. what exquisite curves the standing woman presents! how cleverly the drapery continues the beautiful line, which giorgione takes care not to break by placing the left leg and foot out of sight. how marvellously expressive, nay, how _inevitable_ is the hand of the youth who is playing. surely neither campagnola nor any other second-rate artist was capable of such things! [illustration: _alinari photo. pitti gallery, florence_ the three ages of man] the eighth picture cited by morelli as, in his opinion, a genuine giorgione, is the so-called "three ages of man," in the pitti at florence--a damaged picture, but parts of which, as he says, "are still so splendid and so thoroughly giorgionesque that i venture to ascribe it without hesitation to giorgione."[ ] the three figures are grouped naturally, and are probably portraits from life. the youth in the centre we have already met in the kingston lacy "judgment of solomon"; the man on the right recurs in the "family concert" at hampton court, and is strangely like the s. maurice in the signed altar-piece at berlin by luzzi da feltre.[ ] but like though they be in type, in quality the heads in the "three ages" are immensely superior to those in the berlin picture. the same models may well have served giorgione and his friend and pupil luzzi, or, as he is generally called, morto da feltre. a recent study of the few authenticated works by this feeble artist still at feltre, his native place, forces me to dissent from the opinion that the pitti "three ages" is the work of his hand.[ ] still less do i hold with the view that lotto is the author.[ ] here, again, i believe morelli saw further than other critics, and that his attribution is the right one. the simplicity, the apparently unstudied grouping, the refinement of type, the powerful expression, are worthy of the master; the play of light on the faces, especially on that of the youth, is most characteristic, and the peculiar chord of colour reveals a sense of originality such as no imitator would command. unless i am mistaken, the man on the right is none other than the aeneas in the vienna picture, and his hand with the pointing forefinger is such as we see two or three times over in the "judgment of solomon" and elsewhere. certainly here it is awkwardly introduced, obviously to bring the figure into direct relation with the others; but giorgione is by no means always supreme master of natural expression, as the hands in the "adrastus and hypsipyle" and vienna pictures clearly show. here, for the first time, we meet giorgione in those studies of human nature which are commonly called "conversation pieces," or "concerts"--natural groups of generally three people knit together by some common bond, which is usually music in one form or another. it is not the idyll of the "pastoral symphony," but akin to it as an expression of some exquisite moment of thought or feeling, an ideal instant "in which, arrested thus, we seem to be spectators of all the fulness of existence, and which is like some consummate extract or quintessence of life."[ ] no one before giorgione's time had painted such ideas, such poems without articulated story; and to have reached this stage of development presupposes a familiarity with set subjects such as a classic myth or mediaeval romance would offer for treatment. and so this "three ages" dates from his later years. [illustration: _anderson photo. pitti gallery, florence_ nymph and satyr] another picture in the pitti was also recognised by morelli as giorgione's work--"the nymph pursued by a satyr." modern criticism seems undecided on the justice of this view, some writers inclining to the belief that this is a giorgionesque production of dosso dossi, others preserving a discreet silence, or making frank avowal of their inability to decide. nevertheless, i venture to agree with morelli that "we have all the characteristics of an early (?) work of giorgione--the type of the nymph with the low forehead, the charming arrangement of the hair upon the temples, the eyes placed near together, and the hand with tapering fingers."[ ] the oval of the face recalls the "knight of malta," the high cranium and treatment of the hair such as we find in the dresden "venus" and elsewhere. the delicacy of modelling, the beauty of the features are far beyond dosso's powers, who, brilliant artist as he sometimes was, was of much coarser fibre than the painter of these figures. the difference of calibre between the two is well illustrated by comparing giorgione's "satyr" with dosso's frankly vulgar "buffone" in the modena gallery, or with those uncouth productions, also in the pitti, the "s. john baptist" and the "bambocciate."[ ] were the repaints removed, i think all doubts as to the authorship would be set at rest, and the "nymph and satyr" would take its place among the slighter and more summary productions of giorgione's brush. [illustration: _laurent_ photo. prado gallery, madrid madonna and saints] only one sacred subject figures in the additions made by morelli to the list of genuine giorgiones. this is the small altar-piece at madrid, with madonna seated between s. francis and s. roch. traditionally accredited to pordenone, it has now received official recognition as a masterpiece of giorgione, an attribution that, so far as i am aware, no one has seriously contested.[ ] and, indeed, it is hard to conceive wherein any objection could possibly lie, for it is a typical creation of the master, _usque ad unguem_. not only in types, colour, light and shade, and particularly in feeling, is the picture characteristic, but it again shows the artist leaving work unfinished, and again reveals the fact that the work grew in conception as it was actually being painted. i mean that the whole figure of s. roch has been painted in over the rest, and that the s. francis has also probably been introduced afterwards. i have little doubt that originally giorgione intended to paint a simple madonna and child, and afterwards extended the scheme. the composition of three figures, practically in a row, is moreover most unusual, and contrary to that triangular scheme particularly favoured by the master, whereas the lovely sweep of madonna's dress by itself creates a perfect design on a triangular basis. a great artist is here revealed, one whose feeling for line is so intense that he wilfully casts the drapery in unnatural folds in order to secure an artistic triumph. the working out of the dress within this line has yet to be done, the folds being merely suggested, and this task has been left whilst forwarding other parts. the freedom of touch and thinness of paint indicates how rapidly the artist worked. there is little deliberation apparent: indeed, the effect is that of hasty improvisation. velasquez could not have painted the stone on which s. roch rests his foot with greater precision or more consummate mastery; the delicacy of flesh tints is amazing. the bit of landscape behind s. roch (invisible in the reproduction), with its stately tree trunk rising solitary beside the hanging curtain, strikes a note of romance, fit accompaniment to the bizarre figure of the saint in his orange jerkin and blue leggings. how mysterious, too, is s. francis!--rapt in his own thoughts, yet strangely human. [illustration: _buda-pesth gallery_ copy of a portion of giorgione's "birth of paris"] we have now examined ten of the twelve pictures added, on morelli's initiative, to the list of genuine works, and we have found very little, if any, serious opposition on the part of later writers to his views. not so, however, with regard to the remaining two pictures. the first of these is a fragment in the gallery of buda-pesth, representing two figures in a landscape. all modern critics are agreed that morelli has here mistaken an old copy after giorgione for an original, a mistake we may readily pardon in consideration of the successful identification he has made of these figures with the shepherds, in the composition seen and described by the anonimo in as the "birth of paris," by giorgione. this identification is fully confirmed by the engraving made by th. von kessel for the _theatrum pictorium_, which shows how these two figures are placed in the composition. where, as in the present case, the original is missing, even a partial copy is of great value, for in it we can see the mind, if not the hand, of the great master. the anonimo tells us this "birth of paris" was one of giorgione's early works, a statement worthy of credence from the still bellinesque stamp and general likeness of one of the shepherds to the "adrastus" in the giovanelli picture. in pose, type, arrangement of hair, and in landscape this fragment is thoroughly giorgionesque, and we have, moreover, those most characteristic traits, the pointing forefinger, and the unbroken curve of outline. the execution is, however, raw and crude, and entirely wanting in the magic quality of the master's own touch.[ ] [illustration: _dixon photo. hampton court palace gallery_ the shepherd boy.] finally, on morelli's list figures the "shepherd" at hampton court, for the genuineness of which the critic would not absolutely vouch, as he had only seen it in a bad light. perhaps no picture has been so strongly championed by an enthusiastic writer as has been this "shepherd" by mr. berenson, who strenuously advocates its title to genuineness.[ ] nevertheless, several modern authorities remain unconvinced in presence of the work itself. the conception is unquestionably giorgione's own, as we may see from a picture now in the vienna gallery, where this head is repeated in a representation of the young david holding the head of goliath. the vienna picture is, however, but a copy of a lost original by giorgione, the existence of which is independently attested by vasari.[ ] now, the question naturally arises, what relation does the hampton court "shepherd" bear to this "david," giorgione's lost original? it is possible, of course, that the master repeated himself, merely transforming the david into a shepherd, or _vice versâ_, and it is equally possible that some other and later artist adapted giorgione's "david" to his own end, utilising the conception that is, and carrying it out in his own way. arguing purely _a priori_, the latter possibility is the more likely, inasmuch as we know giorgione hardly ever repeats a figure or a composition, whereas titian, cariani, and other later venetian artists freely adopted giorgione's ideas, his types, and his compositions for their own purposes. internal evidence appears to me, moreover, to confirm this view, for the general style of painting seems to indicate a later period than , the year of giorgione's death. the flimsy folds, in particular, are not readily recognisable as the master's own. a comparison with a portrait in the gallery of padua reveals, particularly in this respect, striking resemblances. this fine portrait was identified by both crowe and cavalcaselle and by morelli as the work of torbido, and i venture to place the reproduction of it beside that of the "shepherd" for comparison. it is not easy to pronounce on the technical qualities of either work, for both have suffered from re-touching and discolouring varnish, and the hand of the "shepherd" is certainly damaged. yet, whilst admitting that the evidence is inconclusive, i cannot refrain from suggesting torbido's name as possible author of the "shepherd," the more so as we know he carefully studied and formed his style upon giorgione's work.[ ] it is at least conceivable that he took giorgione's "david with the head of goliath," and by a simple, and in this case peculiarly appropriate, transformation, changed him into a shepherd boy holding a flute. we have now taken all the pictures which either crowe and cavalcaselle or morelli, or both, assign to giorgione himself. there still remain, however, three or four works to be mentioned where these authorities hold opposite views which require some examination. first and foremost comes the "concert" in the pitti gallery, a work which was regarded by crowe and cavalcaselle not only as a genuine example of giorgione's art, but as "not having its equal in any period of giorgione's practice. it gives," they go on, "a just measure of his skill, and explains his celebrity."[ ] morelli, on the contrary, holds: "it has unfortunately been so much damaged by a restorer that little enough remains of the original, yet from the form of the hands and of the ear, and from the gestures of the figures, we are led to infer that it is not a work of giorgione, but belongs to a somewhat later period. if the repaint covering the surface were removed we should, i think, find that it is an early work by titian."[ ] where morelli hesitated his followers have decided, and accordingly, in mr. berenson's list, in mr. claude phillips' "life of titian," and in the latest biography on that master, published by dr. gronau, we find the "concert" put down to titian. on the other hand, dr. bode, signor conti in his monograph on giorgione, m. müntz, and the authorities in florence support the traditional view that the "concert" is a masterpiece of giorgione. [illustration: _alinari photo. pitti gallery, florence_ the concert] which view is the right one? to many this may appear an academic discussion of little value, for, _ipso facto_, the quality of the work is admitted by all. the picture is a fine thing, in spite of its imperfect condition, and what matter whether titian or giorgione be the author? but to this sort of argument it may be said that until we do know what is giorgione's work and what is not, it is impossible to gauge accurately the nature and scope of his art, or to reach through that channel the character of the artist behind his work. in the case of giorgione and titian, the task of drawing the dividing line is one of unusual difficulty, and a long and careful study of the question has convinced me that this will have to be done in a way that modern criticism has not yet attempted. from the very earliest days the two have been so inextricably confused that it will require a very exhaustive re-examination of all the evidence in the light of modern discoveries, documentary and pictorial, coupled, i am afraid, with the recognition of the fact that much modern criticism on this point has been curiously at fault. this is neither the time nor the place to discuss the question of titian's early work, but i feel sure that this chapter of art history has yet to be correctly written.[ ] one of the determining factors in the discussion will be the authorship of the pitti "concert," for our estimate of giorgione or titian must be coloured appreciably by the recognition of such an epoch-making picture as the work of one or the other. it is, therefore, peculiarly unfortunate that the two side figures in this wonderful group are so rubbed and repainted as almost to defy certainty of judgment. in conception and spirit they are typically giorgionesque, and morelli, i imagine, would scarcely have made the bold suggestion of titian's authorship but for the central figure of the young monk playing the harpsichord. this head stands out in grand relief, being in a far purer state of preservation than the rest, and we are able to appreciate to some extent the extraordinarily subtle modelling of the features, the clear-cut contours, the intensity of expression. the fine portrait in the louvre, known as "l'homme au gant," an undoubted early work of titian, is singularly close in character and style, as was first pointed out by mr. claude phillips,[ ] and it was this general reminiscence, more than points of detail in an admittedly imperfect work that seemingly induced morelli to suggest titian's name as possible author of the "concert." nevertheless, i cannot allow this plausible comparison to outweigh other and more vital considerations. the subtlety of the composition, the bold sweep of diagonal lines, the way the figure of the young monk is "built up" on a triangular design, the contrasts of black and white, are essentially giorgione's own. so, too, is the spirit of the scene, so telling in its movement, gesture, and expression. surely it is needless to translate all that is most characteristic of giorgione in his most personal expression into a "giorgionesque" mood of titian. no, let us admit that titian owed much to his friend and master (more perhaps than we yet know), but let us not needlessly deprive giorgione of what is, in my opinion at least, the great creation of his maturer years, the pitti "concert." i am inclined to place it about - , and to regard it as the earliest and finest expression in venetian art of that kind of genre painting of which we have already studied another, though later example, "the three ages" (in the pitti). the second work where crowe and cavalcaselle hold a different view from morelli is a "portrait of a man" in the gallery of rovigo (no. ). the former writers declare that it, "perhaps more than any other, approximates to the true style of giorgione."[ ] with such praise sounding in one's ears it is somewhat of a shock to discover that this "grave and powerfully wrought creation" is a miniature by inches in size. such an insignificant fragment requires no serious consideration; at most it would seem only to be a reduced copy after some lost original. morelli alludes to it as a copy after palma, but one may well doubt whether he is not referring to another portrait in the same gallery (no. ). be that as it may, this "giorgione" miniature is sadly out of place among genuine pieces of the master.[ ] [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. national gallery, london_ the adoration of the magi] one other picture, of special interest to english people, is in dispute. by crowe and cavalcaselle "the adoration of the magi," now in the national gallery (no. ), is attributed to the master himself; by morelli it was assigned to catena.[ ] this brilliant little panel is admittedly by the same hand that painted the beaumont "adoration of the shepherds," and yet another picture presently to be mentioned. we have already agreed to the propriety of attribution in the former case; it follows, therefore, that here also giorgione's name is the correct one, and his name, we are glad to see, has recently been placed on the label by the director of the gallery. this beautiful little panel, which came from the leigh court collection, under bellini's name, has much of the depth, richness, and glow which characterises the beaumont picture, although the latter is naturally more attractive, owing to the wonderful landscape and the more elaborate chiaroscuro. the figures are bellinesque, yet with that added touch of delicacy and refinement which giorgione always knows how to impart. the richness of colouring, the depth of tone, the glamour of the whole is far superior to anything that we can point to with certainty as catena's work; and no finer example of his "giorgionesque" phase is to be found than the sumptuous "warrior adoring the infant christ," which hangs close by, whilst his delicate little "s. jerome in his study," also in the same room, challenges comparison. catena's work seems cold and studied beside the warmth and spontaneity of giorgione's little panel, which is, indeed, as crowe and cavalcaselle assert, "of the most picturesque beauty in distribution, colour, and costume."[ ] it must date from before , probably just before the beaumont "nativity," and proves how, even at that early time, giorgione's art was rapidly maturing into full splendour. the total list of genuine works so far amounts to but twenty-three. let us see if we can accept a few others which later writers incline to attribute to the master. i propose to limit the survey strictly to those pictures which have found recognised champions among modern critics of repute, for to challenge every "giorgione" in public and private collections would be a herculean task, well calculated to provoke an incredulous smile! [illustration: _dixon photo. duke of devonshire's collection, chatsworth_ page of vandyck's sketch-book, with giorgione's "christ bearing the cross," in the church of s. rocco, venice] mr. berenson, in his _venetian painters_, includes two other pictures in an extremely exclusive list of seventeen genuine giorgiones. these are both in venice, "the christ bearing the cross" (in s. rocco), and "the storm calmed by s. mark" (in the academy). the question whether or no we are to accept the former of these pictures has its origin in a curious contradiction of vasari, who, in the first edition of his lives ( ), names giorgione as the painter, whilst in the second ( ), he assigns the authorship to titian. later writers follow the latter statement, and to this day the local guides adhere to this tradition. that the attribution to giorgione, however, was still alive in - , is proved by the sketch of the picture made by the young van dyck during his visit to italy, for he has affixed giorgione's name to it, and not that of titian.[ ] i am satisfied that this tradition is correct. giorgione, and not titian, painted the still lovely head of christ, and giorgione, not titian, drew the arm and hand of the jew who is dragging at the rope. characteristic touches are to be seen in the turn of the head, the sloping axis of the eyes, and especially the fine oval of the face, and bushy hair. this is the type of giorgione's christ; "the tribute money" (at dresden) shows titian's. unfortunately the panel has lost all its tone, all its glow, and most of its original colour, and we can scarcely any longer admire the picture which, in vasari's graphic language, "is held in the highest veneration by many of the faithful, and even performs miracles, as is frequently seen"; and again (in his _life of titian_), "it has received more crowns as offerings than have been earned by titian and giorgione both, through the whole course of their lives." the other picture included by mr. berenson in his list is the large canvas in the venice academy, with "the storm calmed by s. mark." according to this critic it is a late work, finished, in small part, by paris bordone. in my opinion, it would be far wiser to withhold definite judgment in a case where a picture has been so entirely repainted. certainly, in its present state, it is impossible to recognise giorgione's touch, whilst the glaring red tones of the flesh and the general smeariness of the whole render all enjoyment out of question. i am willing to admit that the conception may have been giorgione's, although even then it would stand alone as evidence of an imagination almost michelangelesque in its _terribilità._ zanetti ( ) was the first to connect giorgione's name with this canvas, vasari bestowing inordinate praise upon it as the work of palma vecchio! it only remains to add that this is the companion piece to the well-known "fisherman presenting the ring to the doge," by paris bordone, which also hangs in the venice academy. both illustrate the same legend, and both originally hung in the scuola di s. marco. [illustration: _anderson photo. padua gallery_ fronts of two cassones, with mythological scenes] finally, two _cassone_ panels in the gallery at padua have been acclaimed by signor venturi as the master's own,[ ] and with that view i am entirely agreed. the stories represented are not easily determinable (as is so often the case with giorgione), but probably refer to the legends of adonis.[ ] the splendour of colour, the lurid light, the richness of effect, are in the highest degree impressive. what artist but giorgione would have so revelled in the glories of the evening sunset, the orange horizon, the distant blue hills? the same gallery affords several instances of similar decorative pieces by other venetian artists which serve admirably to show the great gulf fixed in quality between giorgione's work and that of the schiavones, the capriolis, and others who imitated him.[ ] notes: [ ] oxford lecture, reported in the _pall mall gazette_, nov. , . [ ] see _postea_, p. . [ ] bellini adopted it later in his s. giov. crisostomo altar-piece of . [ ] all the more surprising is it that it receives no mention from vasari, who merely states that the master worked at castelfranco. [ ] i unhesitatingly adopt the titles recently given to these pictures by herr franz wickhoff (_jahrbuch der preussischen kunstsammlungen_, heft. i. ), who has at last succeeded in satisfactorily explaining what has puzzled all the writers since the days of the anonimo. [ ] statius: _theb_. iv. _ff_. see p. . [ ] _aen._ viii. - . [ ] fry: _giovanni bellini_, p. . [ ] ii. . [ ] ridolfi mentions the following as having been painted by giorgione:--"the age of gold," "deucalion and pyrrha," "jove hurling thunderbolts at the giants," "the python," "apollo and daphne," "io changed into a cow," "phaeton, diana, and calisto," "mercury stealing apollo's arms," "jupiter and pasiphae," "cadmus sowing the dragon's teeth," "dejanira raped by nessus," and various episodes in the life of adonis. [ ] in the venice academy. [ ] _archivio, anno vi_., where reproductions of the two are given side by side, _fasc_. vi. p. . [ ] the berlin example (by the pseudo-basaiti) is reproduced in the illustrated catalogue of the recent exhibition of renaissance art at berlin; the rovigo version (under leonardo's name!) is possibly by bissolo. two other repetitions exist, one at stuttgart, the other in the collection of sir william farrer. (venetian exhibition, new gallery, , no. .) [ ] gentile bellini's three portraits in the national gallery (nos. , , ) illustrate this growing tendency in venetian art; all three probably date from the first years of the sixteenth century. gentile died in . [ ] berenson: _venetian painters_, rd edition. [ ] _daily telegraph_, december th, . [ ] even the so-called pseudo-basaiti has been separated and successfully diagnosed. [ ] catalogue. [ ] see appendix, where the letters are printed in full. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, ii. , and note. [ ] giorgione painted in fresco in the portico of this palace. zanetti has preserved the record of a figure said to be "diligence," in his print published in . [ ] see byron's _life and letters_, by thomas moore, p. . [ ] see berenson's _venetian painters_, illustrated edition. [ ] morelli, ii. . [ ] see p. for a possible explanation of these letters. [ ] ii. [ ] it has been suggested to me by dr. williamson that the letters may possibly be intended for zz (=zorzon). in old mss. the capital z is sometimes made thus _[closed v]_ or _v._ [ ] i. . [ ] the methods by which he arrived at his conclusion are strangely at variance with those he so strenuously advocates, and to which the name of morellian has come to be attached. [ ] reproduced in _venetian art at the new gallery_, under giorgione's name, but unanimously recognised as a work of licinio. [ ] i. . [ ] dr. bode and signor venturi both recognise it as giorgione's work. [ ] to what depths of vulgarity the venetian school could sink in later times, palma giovane's "venus" at cassel testifies. [ ] _repertorium für kunstwissenschaft_. . xix. band. heft. [ ] _north american review_, october . [ ] it was photographed by braun with this attribution. [ ] catena has adopted this giorgionesque conception in his "judith" in the querini-stampalia gallery in venice. [ ] see _gazette des beaux arts_, , tom, xviii. p. . [ ] see _gazette des beaux arts_, , tom. ix. p. (prof. wickhoff); , tom. xii. p. (dr. gronau); and _repertorium für kunstwissenschaft_, tom. xiv. p. (herr von seidlitz). [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, ii. . [ ] ii. . [ ] dr. gronau points this out in _rep_. xviii. , p. . [ ] see _guide to the italian pictures_ at hampton court, by mary logan, . [ ] official catalogue, and crowe and cavalcaselle, ii. . [ ] pater: _the renaissance_, p. . [ ] ii. . [ ] the execution of this grotesque picture is probably due to girolamo da carpi, or some other assistant of dosso. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, ii. , unaccountably suggested francesco vecellio (!) as the author. [ ] the subject is derived from a passage in the _de divinitate_ of cicero, as herr wickhoff has pointed out. [ ] see _venetian painting at the new gallery_. . [ ] unless we are to suppose that vasari mistook a copy for an original. [ ] francesco torbido, called "il moro," born about , and still living in . vasari states that he actually worked under giorgione. signed portraits by him are in the brera, at munich, and naples. palma vecchio also deserves serious consideration as possible author of the "shepherd boy." [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, ii. . [ ] morelli, ii. . [ ] see appendix, p. . [ ] quoted by morelli, ii. , note. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, ii. . [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle also cite a portrait in the casa ajata at crespano; as i have never seen this piece i cannot discuss it. it was apparently unknown to morelli, nor is it mentioned by other critics. [ ] morelli, ii. . [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, ii. . mr. claude phillips, in the _gazette des beaux arts_, , p. , rightly admits giorgione's authorship. [ ] this sketch is to be found in van dyck's note-book, now in possession of the duke of devonshire at chatsworth. it is here reproduced, failing an illustration of the original picture, which the authorities in venice decline to have made. (a good reproduction has now ( ) been made by anderson of rome.) [ ] _archivio storico_, vi. . [ ] ridolfi tells us giorgione painted, among a long list of decorative pieces, "the birth of adonis," "venus and adonis embracing," and "adonis killed by the boar." it is possible he was alluding to these very _cassone_ panels. [ ] the other important additions made by signor venturi in his recent volume, _la galleria crespi_, are alluded to _in loco_, further on. i am delighted to find some of my own views anticipated in a wholly independent fashion. chapter iii intermediate summary it is necessary for anyone who seeks to recover the missing or unidentified works of an artist like giorgione, first to define his conception of the artist based upon a study of acknowledged materials. the preceding chapter has been devoted to a survey of the best authenticated pictures, the evidence for the genuineness of which is, as we have seen, largely a matter of personal opinion. nevertheless there is, on the whole, a unanimity of judgment sufficient to warrant our drawing several inferences as to the general character of giorgione's work, and to attempt a chronological arrangement of the twenty-six pictures here accepted as genuine. the first and most obvious fact then to be noted is the amazing variety of subjects handled by the master. religious paintings, whether altar-pieces or easel pictures of a devotional character, are interspersed with mediaeval allegories, genre subjects, decorative _cassone_ panels, portraiture, and purely lyrical "fantasiestücke," corresponding somewhat with the modern "landscape with figures." truly an astonishing range! giorgione, as we have seen, could not have been more than eighteen years in active practice, yet in that short time he gained successes in all these various fields. his many-sidedness shows him to have been a man of wide sympathies, whilst the astonishing rapidity of his development testifies to the precocity of his talent. his versatility and his precocity are, in fact, the two most prominent characteristics to be borne in mind in judging his art, for much that appears at first sight incongruous, if not utterly irreconcilable, can be explained on this basis. for versatility and precocity in an artist are qualities invariably attended by unevenness of workmanship, as we see in the cases of keats and schubert, who were gifted with the lyrical temperament and powers of expression in poetry and music in corresponding measure to giorgione in painting. it would show want of critical acumen to expect from keats the consistency of milton, or that schubert should keep the unvarying high level of beethoven, and it is equally unreasonable to exact from giorgione the uniform excellence which characterises titian. i do not propose at this point to work out the comparison between the painter, the musician, and the poet; this must be reserved until the final summing-up of giorgione as artist, when we have examined all his work. but this point i do insist on, that from the very nature of things giorgione's art is, and must be, uneven, that whilst at times it reaches sublime heights, at other times it attains to a level of only average excellence. and so the criticism which condemns a picture claiming to be giorgione's because "it is not _good_ enough for him," does not recognise the truth that for all that it may be _characteristic_, and, consequently, perfectly authentic. modern criticism has been apt to condemn because it has expected too much; let us not blind our eyes to the weaknesses, even to the failures of great men, who, if they lose somewhat of the hero in our eyes, win our sympathy and our love the more for being human. i have spoken of giorgione's versatility, his precocity, and the natural inequality of his work. there is another characteristic which commonly exists when these qualities are found united, and that is productiveness. giorgione, according to all analogy, must have produced a mass of work. it is idle to assert, as some modern writers have done, that at the utmost his easel pictures could have been but few, because most of his short life was devoted to painting frescoes, which have perished. it is true that giorgione spent time and energy over fresco painting, and from the very publicity of such work as the frescoes on the fondaco de' tedeschi, he came to be widely known in this direction, but it is infinitely probable that his output in other branches was enormous. the twenty-six pictures we have already accepted, plus the lost frescoes, cannot possibly represent the sum-total of his artistic activities, and to say that everything else has disappeared is, as i shall try to show, not correct. we know, moreover, from the anonimo (who was almost giorgione's contemporary) that many pictures existed in his day which cannot now be traced,[ ] and if we add these and some of the others cited by vasari and ridolfi (without assuming that every one was a genuine example), it goes to prove that giorgione did paint a good number of easel pictures. but the evidence of the twenty-six themselves is conclusive. they illustrate so many different phases, they stand sometimes so widely apart, that intermediate links are necessarily implied. moreover, as giorgione's influence on succeeding artists is allowed by all writers, a considerable number of his easel pictures must have been in circulation, from which these imitators drew inspiration, for he certainly never kept, as bellini did, a body of assistants and pupils to hand on his teaching, and disseminate his style. productiveness must then have been a feature of his art, and as so few pictures have as yet come to be accepted as genuine, the majority must have perished or been lost to sight for the time. that much yet remains hidden away in private possession i am fully persuaded, especially in england and in italy, and one day we may yet find the originals of the several old copies after giorgione which i enumerate elsewhere.[ ] in some cases i believe i have been fortunate enough to detect actually missing originals, and occasionally restore to giorgione pieces that parade under titian's name. much, however, yet remains to be done, and the research work now being systematically conducted in the venetian archives by dr. gustav ludwig and signor pietro paoletti may yield rich results in the discovery of documents relating to the master himself, which may help us to identify his productions, and possibly confirm some of the conjectures i venture to make in the following chapters.[ ] but before proceeding to examine other pictures which i am persuaded really emanate from giorgione himself, let us attempt to place in approximate chronological order the twenty-six works already accepted as genuine, for, once their sequence is established, we shall the more readily detect the lacunae in the artist's evolution, and so the more easily recognise any missing transitional pieces which may yet exist. the earliest stage in giorgione's career is naturally marked by adherence to the teaching and example of his immediate predecessors. however precocious he may have been, however free from academic training, however independent of the tradition of the schools, he nevertheless clearly betrays an artistic dependence, above all, on giovanni bellini. the "christ bearing the cross" and the two little pictures in the uffizi are direct evidence of this, and these, therefore, must be placed quite early in his career. we should not be far wrong in dating them - . carpaccio's influence is also apparent, as we have already noticed, and through this channel giorgione's art connects with the more archaic style of gentile bellini, giovanni's elder brother. thus in him are united the quattrocentist tradition and the fresher ideals of the cinquecento, which found earliest expression in giambellini's allegories of about - . the poetic element in these works strongly appealed to giorgione's sensitive nature, and we find him developing this side of his art in the beaumont "adoration," and the national gallery "epiphany," both of which are clearly early productions. but there is a gap of a few years between the uffizi pictures and the london ones, for the latter are maturer in every way, and it is clear that the interval must have been spent in constant practice. yet we cannot point with certainty to any of the other pictures in our list as standing midway in development, and here it is that a lacuna exists in the artist's career. two or three years, possibly more, remain unaccounted for, just at a period, too, when the young artist would be most impressionable. i am inclined to think that he may have painted the "birth of paris" during these years, but we have only the copy of a part of the composition to go by, and the statement of the anonimo that the picture was one of giorgione's early works. the "adrastus and hypsipyle" must also be a youthful production prior to , and in the direction of portraiture we have the berlin "young man," which, for reasons already given, must be placed quite early. it is not possible to assign exact dates to any of these works, all that can be said with any certainty is that they fall within the last decade of the fifteenth century, and illustrate the rapid development of giorgione's art up to his twenty-fourth year. a further stage in his evolution is reached in the castelfranco "madonna," the first important undertaking of which we have some record. tradition connects the painting of this altar-piece with an event of the year , the death of the young matteo costanzo, whose family, so it is said, commissioned giorgione to paint a memorial altar-piece, and decorate the family chapel at castelfranco with frescoes. certain it is that the arms of the costanzi appear in the picture, but the evidence which connects the commission with the death of matteo seems to rest mainly on his alleged likeness to the s. liberale in the picture, a theory, we may remark, which is quite consistent with matteo being still alive. considering the extraordinary rapidity of the artist's development, it would be more natural to place the execution of this work a year or two earlier than , but, in any case, we may accept it as typical of giorgione's style in the first years of the century. the "judith" (at st. petersburg), as we have already seen, probably immediately precedes it, so that we get two masterpieces approximately dated. in the field of portraiture giorgione must have made rapid strides from the very first. vasari states that he painted the portraits of the great consalvo ferrante, and of one of his captains, on the occasion of their visit to the doge agostino barberigo. now this event presumably took place in ,[ ] so that, at that early date, he seems already to have been a portrait painter of repute. confirmatory evidence of this is furnished by the statement of ridolfi, that giorgione took the portrait of agostino barberigo himself.[ ] now the doge died in , so that if giorgione really painted him, he could not have been more than twenty-three years of age at the time, an extraordinarily early age to have been honoured with so important a commission; this fact certainly presupposes successes with other patrons, whose portraits giorgione must have taken during the years - . i hope to be able to identify two or three of these, but for the moment we may note that by giorgione was a recognised master of portraiture. the only picture on our list likely to date from the period - is the "knight of malta," the "young man" (at buda-pesth) being later in execution.[ ] from on, the rapid rate of progress is more than fully maintained. only six years remain of the artist's short life, yet in that time he rose to full power, and anticipated the splendid achievements of titian's maturity some forty years later. first in order, probably, come the "venus" (dresden) and the "concert" (pitti), both showing originality of conception and mastery of handling. the date of the frescoes on the fondaco de' tedeschi is known to be - ,[ ] but, as nothing remains but a few patches of colour in one spot high up over the grand canal, we have no visible clue to guide us in our estimate of their artistic worth. vasari's description, and zanetti's engraving of a few fragments (done in , when the frescoes were already in decay), go to prove that giorgione at this period studied the antique, "commingling statuesque classicism and the flesh and blood of real life."[ ] at this period it is most probable we must place the "judgment of solomon" (at kingston lacy), possibly, as i have already pointed out, the very work commissioned by the state for the audience chamber of the council, on which, as we know from documents, giorgione was engaged in and . it was never finished, and the altogether exceptional character of the work places it outside the regular course of the artist's development. it was an ambitious venture in an unwonted direction, and is naturally marked and marred by unsatisfactory features. giorgione's real powers are shown by the "pastoral symphony" (in the louvre), and the "portrait of the young man" (at buda-pesth), productions dating from the later years - . the "three ages" (in the pitti) may also be included, and if giorgione conceived and even partly executed the "storm calmed by s. mark" (venice academy), this also must be numbered among his last works. morelli states: "it was only in the last six years of his short life (from about - ) that giorgione's power and greatness became fully developed."[ ] i think this is true in the sense that giorgione was ever steadily advancing towards a fuller and riper understanding of the world, that his art was expanding into a magnificence which found expression in larger forms and richer colour, that he was acquiring greater freedom of touch, and more perfect command of the technical resources of his art. but sufficient stress is not laid, i think, upon the masterly achievement of the earlier times; the tendency is to refer too much to later years, and not recognise sufficiently the prodigious precocity before . one is tempted at times to question the accuracy of vasari's statement that giorgione died in his thirty-fourth year, which throws his birth back only to . some modern writers disregard this statement altogether, and place his birth "before ."[ ] be this as it may, it does not alter the fact that by giorgione had already attained in portraiture to the highest honours, and in this sphere, i believe, he won his earliest successes. my object in the following chapter will be to endeavour to point out some of the very portraits, as yet unidentified, which i am persuaded were produced by giorgione chiefly in these earlier years, and thus partly to fill some of the lacunae we have found in tracing his artistic evolution. notes: [ ] a list of these is given at p. . [ ] _vide_ list of works, pp. - . [ ] the results of these archivistic researches are being published in the _repertorium für kunstwissenschaft_. [ ] for the evidence, see _magazine of art_, april . [ ] meravig, i. . [ ] vasari saw giorgione's portrait of the succeeding doge leonardo loredano ( - ). [ ] see crowe and cavalcaselle, ii. . [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, _ibid_. [ ] ii. . we now know that he died in . [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle, ii. . bode: _cicerone_. chapter iv additional pictures--portraits vasari, in his _life of titian_, in the course of a somewhat confused account of the artist's earliest years, tells us how titian, "having seen the manner of giorgione, early resolved to abandon that of gian bellino, although well grounded therein. he now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a short time so closely imitated giorgione that his pictures were sometimes taken for those of that master, as will be related below." and he goes on: "at the time when titian began to adopt the manner of giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the portrait of a gentleman of the barberigo family who was his friend, and this was considered very beautiful, the colouring being true and natural, and the hair so distinctly painted that each one could be counted, as might also the stitches[ ] in a satin doublet, painted in the same work; in a word, it was so well and carefully done, that it would have been taken for a picture by giorgione, if titian had not written his name on the dark ground." now the statement that titian began to imitate giorgione at the age of eighteen is inconsistent with vasari's own words of a few paragraphs previously: "about the year , giorgione da castel franco, not being satisfied with that mode of proceeding (i.e. 'the dry, hard, laboured manner of gian bellino, which titian also acquired'), began to give to his works an unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner.... having seen the manner of giorgione, titian now devoted himself to this purpose," etc. in titian was thirty years old,[ ] not eighteen, so that both statements cannot be correct. now it is highly improbable that titian had already discarded the manner of bellini as early as , at the age of eighteen, and had so identified himself with giorgione that their work was indistinguishable. everything, on the contrary, points to titian's evolution being anything but rapid; in fact, so far as records go, there is no mention of his name until he painted the façade of the fondaco de' tedeschi in company with giorgione in . it is infinitely more probable that vasari's first statement is the more reliable--viz. that titian began to adopt giorgione's manner about the year , and it follows, therefore, that the portrait of the gentleman of the barberigo family, if by titian, dates from this time, and not . [illustration: _dixon photo. collection of the earl of darnley, cobham hall_ portrait of a gentleman] now there is a picture in the earl of darnley's collection at cobham hall which answers pretty closely to vasari's description. it is a supposed portrait of ariosto by titian, but it is as much unlike the court poet of ferrara as the portrait in the national gallery (no. ) which, with equal absurdity, long passed for that of ariosto, a name now wisely removed from the label. this magnificent portrait at cobham was last exhibited at the old masters in , and the suggestion was then made that it might be the very picture mentioned by vasari in the passage quoted above.[ ] i believe this ingenious suggestion is correct, and that we have in the cobham "ariosto" the portrait of one of the barberigo family said to have been painted by titian in the manner of giorgione. "thoroughly giorgionesque," says mr. claude phillips, in his _life of titian_, "is the soberly tinted yet sumptuous picture in its general arrangement, as in its general tone, and in this respect it is the fitting companion and the descendant of giorgione's 'antonio broccardo' at buda-pesth, of his 'knight of malta' at the uffizi. its resemblance, moreover, is, as regards the general lines of the composition, a very striking one to the celebrated sciarra 'violin-player,' by sebastiano del piombo.... the handsome, manly head has lost both subtlety and character through some too severe process of cleaning, but venetian art has hardly anything more magnificent to show than the costume, with the quilted sleeve of steely, blue-grey satin, which occupies so prominent a place in the picture." its giorgionesque character is therefore recognised by this writer, as also by dr. georg gronau, in his recent _life of titian_ (p. ), who significantly remarks, "its relation to the 'portrait of a young man' by giorgione, at berlin, is obvious." it is a pity that both these discerning writers of the modern school have not gone a little further and seen that the picture before them is not only giorgionesque, but by giorgione himself. the mistake of confusing titian and giorgione is as old as vasari, who, _misled by the signature_, naïvely remarks, "it would have been taken for a picture by giorgione if titian had not written his name on the dark ground (in ombra)." _hinc illae lacrimae!_ let us look into this question of signatures, the ultimate and irrevocable proof in the minds of the innocent that a picture must be genuine. titian's methods of signing his well-authenticated works varied at different stages of his career. the earliest signature is always "ticianus," and this is found on works dating down to (the "s. sebastian" at brescia). the usual signature of the later time is "titianus," probably the earliest picture with it being the ancona altar-piece of . "tician" is found only twice. now, without necessarily condemning every signature which does not accord with this practice, we must explain any apparent irregularity, such, for instance, as the "titianus f." on the cobham hall picture. this form of signature points to the period after , a date manifestly inconsistent with the style of painting. but there is more than this to arouse suspicion. the signature has been painted over another, or rather, the f. (= fecit)[ ] is placed over an older v, which can still be traced. a second v appears further to the right. it looks as if originally the balustrade only bore the double v, and that "titianus f." were added later. but it was there in vasari's day ( ), so that we arrive at the interesting conclusion that titian's signature must have been added between and --that is, in his own lifetime. this singular fact opens up a new chapter in the history of titian's relationship to giorgione, and points to practices well calculated to confuse historians of a later time, and enhance the pupil's reputation at the expense of the deceased master. not that titian necessarily appropriated giorgione's work, and passed it off as his own, but we know that on the latter's death titian completed several of his unfinished pictures, and in one instance, we are told, added a cupid to giorgione's "venus." it may be that this was the case with the "ariosto," and that titian felt justified in adding his signature on the plea of something he did to it in after years; but, explain this as we may, the important point to recognise is that in all essential particulars the "ariosto" is the creation not of titian, but of giorgione. how is this to be proved? it will be remembered that when discussing whether giorgione or titian painted the pitti "concert," the "giorgionesque" qualities of the work were so obvious that it seemed going out of the way to introduce titian's name, as morelli did, and ascribe the picture to him in a giorgionesque phase. it is just the same here. the conception is typically giorgione's own, the thoughtful, dreamy look, the turn of the head, the refinement and distinction of this wonderful figure alike proclaim him; whilst in the workmanship the quilted satin is exactly paralleled by the painting of the dress in the berlin and buda-pesth portraits. characteristic of giorgione but not of titian, is the oval of the face, the construction of the head, the arrangement of the hair. titian, so far as i am aware, never introduces a parapet or ledge into his portraits, giorgione nearly always does so; and finally we have the mysterious vv which is found on the berlin portrait, and (half-obliterated) on the buda-pesth "young man." in short, no one would naturally think of titian were it not for the misleading signature, and i venture to hope competent judges will agree with me that the proofs positive of giorgione's authorship are of greater weight than a signature which--for reasons given--is not above suspicion.[ ] before i leave this wonderful portrait of a gentleman of the barberigo family (so says vasari), a word as to its date is necessary. the historian tells us it was painted by titian at the age of eighteen. clearly some tradition existed which told of the youthfulness of the painter, but may we assume that giorgione was only eighteen at the time? that would throw the date back to . is it possible he can have painted this splendid head so early in his career? the freedom of handling, and the mastery of technique certainly suggests a rather later stage, but i am inclined to believe giorgione was capable of this accomplishment before . the portrait follows the berlin "young man," and may well take its place among the portraits which, as we have seen, giorgione must have painted during the last decade of the century prior to receiving his commission to paint the doge. and in this connection it is of special interest to find the doge was himself a barberigo. may we not conclude that the success of this very portrait was one of the immediate causes which led to giorgione obtaining so flattering a commission from the head of the state? i mentioned incidentally that four repetitions of the "ariosto" exist, all derived presumably from the cobham original. we have a further striking proof of the popularity of this style of portraiture in a picture belonging to mr. benson, exhibited at the venetian exhibition, new gallery, - , where the painter, whoever he may be, has apparently been inspired by giorgione's original. the conception is wholly giorgionesque, but the hardness of contour and the comparative lack of quality in the touch betrays another and an inferior hand. nevertheless the portrait is of great interest, for could we but imagine it as fine in execution as in conception we should have an original giorgione portrait before us. the features are curiously like those of the barberigo gentleman. * * * * * in his recently published _life of titian_, dr. gronau passes from the consideration of the cobham hall picture immediately to that of the "portrait of a lady," known as "la schiavona," in the collection of signor crespi in milan. in his opinion these two works are intimately related to one another, and of them he significantly writes thus: "the influence of giorgione upon titian" (to whom he ascribes both portraits) "is evident. the connection can be traced even in the details of the treatment and technique. the separate touches of light on the gold-striped head-dress which fastens back the lady's beautiful dark hair, the variegated scarf thrown lightly round her waist, the folds of the sleeves, the hand with the finger-tips laid on the parapet: all these details might indicate the one master as well as the other."[ ] the transition from the cobham hall portrait to the "lady" in the crespi collection is, to my mind, also a natural and proper one. the painter of the one is the painter of the other. tradition is herein also perfectly consistent, and tradition has in each case a plausible signature to support it. the titianvs f. of the former portrait is paralleled by the t.v.--i.e. titianus vecellio, or titianus veneziano of the latter.[ ] i have already dealt at some length with the question of the former signature, which appears to have been added actually during titian's lifetime; in the present instance the letters appear almost, if not quite, coeval with the rest of the painting, and were undoubtedly intended for titian's signature. the cases, therefore, are so far parallel, and the question naturally arises, did titian really have any hand in the painting of this portrait? signor venturi[ ] strongly denies it; to him the t.v. matters nothing, and he boldly proclaims licinio the author. i confess the matter is not thus lightly to be disposed of; there is no valid reason to doubt the antiquity of the inscription, which, on the analogy of the cobham hall picture, may well have been added in titian's own lifetime, and for the same reason that i there suggested--viz. that titian had in some way or other a hand in the completion, or may be the alteration, of his deceased master's work.[ ] for it is my certain conviction that the painter of the crespi "lady" is none other than giorgione himself. before, however, discussing the question of authorship, it is a matter of some moment to be able to identify the lady represented. an old tradition has it that this is caterina cornaro, and, in my judgment, this is perfectly correct.[ ] fortunately, we possess several well-authenticated likenesses of this celebrated daughter of the republic. she had been married to the king of cyprus, and after his death had relinquished her quasi-sovereign rights in favour of venice. she then returned home (in ) and retired to asolo, near castelfranco, where she passed a quiet country life, enjoying the society of the poets and artists of the day, and reputed for her kindliness and geniality. her likeness is to be seen in three contemporary paintings:-- . at buda-pesth, by gentile bellini, with inscription. . in the venice academy, also by gentile bellini, who introduces her and her attendant ladies kneeling in the foreground, to the left, in his well-known "miracle of the true cross," dated . . in the berlin gallery, by jacopo de' barbari, where she appears kneeling in a composition of the "madonna and child and saints." [illustration: _from a print. pourtalès collection, berlin_ marble bust of caterina cornaro] finally we see caterina cornaro in a bust in the pourtalès collection at berlin, here reproduced,[ ] seen full face, as in the crespi portrait. i know not on what outside authority the identification rests in the case of the bust, but it certainly appears to represent the same lady as in the above-mentioned pictures, and is rightly accepted as such by modern german critics.[ ] [illustration: _anderson photo. crespi collection, milan_ portrait of caterina cornaro] to my eyes, we have the same lady in the crespi portrait. mr. berenson, unaware of the identity, thus describes her:[ ] "une grande dame italienne est devant nous, éclatante de santé et de magnificence, énergique, débordante, pleine d'une chaude sympathie, source de vie et de joie pour tous ceux qui l'entourent, et cependant réfléchie, pénétrante, un peu ironique bien qu'indulgente." could a better description be given to fit the character of caterina cornaro, as she is known to us in history? how little likely, moreover, that tradition should have dubbed this homely person the ex-queen of cyprus had it not been the truth! now, if my contention is correct, chronology determines a further point. caterina died in , so that this likeness of her (which is clearly taken from life) must have been done in or before the first decade of the sixteenth century.[ ] this excludes licinio and schiavone (both of whom have been suggested as the artist), for the latter was not even born, and the former--whose earliest known picture is dated --must have been far too young in to have already achieved so splendid a result. palma is likewise excluded, so that we are driven to choose between titian and giorgione, the only two venetian artists capable of such a masterpiece before . as to which of these two artists it is, opinions--so far as any have been published--are divided. yet dr. gronau, who claims it for titian, admits in the same breath that the hand is the same as that which painted the cobham hall picture and the pitti "concert," a judgment in which i fully concur. dr. bode[ ] labels it "art des giorgione." finally, mr. berenson, with rare insight proclaimed the conception and the spirit of the picture to be giorgione's.[ ] but he asserts that the execution is not fine enough to be the master's own, and would rank it--with the "judith" at st. petersburg--in the category of contemporary copies after lost originals. this view is apparently based on the dangerous maxim that where the execution of a picture is inferior to the conception, the work is presumably a copy. but two points must be borne in mind, the actual condition of the picture, and the character of the artist who painted it. mr. berenson has himself pointed out elsewhere[ ] that giorgione, "while always supreme in his conceptions, did not live long enough to acquire a perfection of draughtsmanship and chiaroscuro equally supreme, and that, consequently, there is not a single universally accepted work of his which is absolutely free from the reproaches of the academic pedant." secondly, the surface of this portrait has lost its original glow through cleaning, and has suffered other damage, which actually debarred crowe and cavalcaselle (who saw the picture in ) from pronouncing definitely upon the authorship. the eyes and flesh, they say,[ ] were daubed over, the hair was new, the colour modern. a good deal of this "restoration" has since been removed, but the present appearance of the panel bears witness to the harsh treatment suffered years ago. nevertheless, the original work is before us, and not a copy of a lost original, and mr. berenson's enthusiastic praise ought to be lavished on the actual picture as it must have appeared in all its freshness and purity. "je n'hésiterais pas," he declares,[ ] "à le proclamer le plus important des portraits du maître, un chef-d'oeuvre ne le cédant à aucun portrait d'aucun pays ou d'aucun temps." and certainly giorgione has created a masterpiece. the opulence of rubens and the dignity of titian are most happily combined with a delicacy and refinement such as giorgione alone can impart. the intense grasp of character here displayed, the exquisite _intimité_, places this wonderful creation of his on the highest level of portraiture. there is far less of that moody abstraction which awakens our interest in most of his portraits, but much greater objective truth, arising from that perfect sympathy between artist and sitter, which is of the first importance in portrait-painting. history tells us of the friendly encouragement the young castelfrancan received at the hands of this gracious lady, and he doubtless painted this likeness of her in her country home at asolo, near to castelfranco, and we may well imagine with what eagerness he acquitted himself of so flattering a commission. vasari tells us that he saw a portrait of caterina, queen of cyprus, painted by giorgione from the life, in the possession of messer giovanni cornaro. i believe that picture to be the very one we are now discussing.[ ] the documents quoted by signor venturi[ ] do not go back beyond , so that it is, of course, impossible to prove the identity, but the expression "from the life" (as opposed to titian's posthumous portrait of her) applies admirably to our likeness. what a contrast to the formal presentation of the queenly lady, crown and jewels and all, that gentile bellini has left us in his portrait of her now at buda-pesth!--and in that other picture of his where she is seen kneeling in royal robes, with her train of court ladies, as though attending a state function! how giorgione has penetrated through all outward show, and revealed the charm of manner, the delightful _bonhomie_ of his royal patroness! we are enabled, by a simple calculation of dates, to fix approximately the period when this portrait was painted. gentile bellini's picture of "the miracle of the true cross" is dated --that is, when caterina cornaro was forty-six years old (she was born in ). in signor crespi's picture she appears, if anything, younger in appearance, so that, at latest, giorgione painted her portrait in . thus, again, we arrive at the same conclusion, that the master distinguished himself very early in his career in the field of portraiture, and the similarity in style between this portrait and the cobham hall one is accounted for on chronological grounds. all things considered, it is very probable that this portrait was his earliest real success, and proved a passport to the favourable notice of the fashionable society of venice, leading to the commission to paint the doge, and the gran signori, who visited the capital in the year . that giorgione was capable of such an achievement before his twenty-fourth year constitutes, we may surely admit, his strongest right to the title of genius.[ ] the barberigo gentleman and the caterina cornaro are comparatively unfamiliar, owing to their seclusion in private galleries. not so the third portrait, which hangs in the national gallery, and which, in my opinion, should be included among giorgione's authentic productions. this is no. , "portrait of a poet," attributed to palma vecchio; and the catalogue continues: "this portrait of an unknown personage was formerly ascribed to titian, and supposed to represent ariosto; it has long since been recognised as a fine work by palma." i certainly do not know by whom this portrait was first recognised as such, but as the transformation was suddenly effected one day under the late sir frederic burton's _regime_, it is natural to suppose he initiated it. no one to-day would be found, i suppose, to support the older view, and the rechristening certainly received the approval of morelli;[ ] modern critics apparently acquiesce without demur, so that it requires no little courage to dissent from so unanimous an opinion. i confess, therefore, it was no small satisfaction to me to find the question had been raised by an independent inquirer, mr. dickes, who published in the _magazine of art_, , the results of his investigations, the conclusion at which he arrived being that this is the portrait of prospero colonna, liberator of italy, painted by giorgione in the year . briefly stated, the argument is as follows:-- i. ( ) the person represented closely resembles prospero colonna ( - ), whose authentic likeness is to be seen-- (_a_) in an engraving in pompilio totti's "ritratti et elogie di capitani illustri. rome, ." (_b_) in a bust in the colonna gallery, rome. (_c_) in an engraving in the "columnensium procerum" of the abbas domenicus de santis. rome, . (all three are reproduced in the article in question.) [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. national gallery, london_. portrait of a man] ( ) the description of prospero colonna, given by pompilio totti (in the above book) tallies with our portrait. ( ) the accessories in the picture confirm the identity--e.g. the st andrew's cross, or saltire, is on the colonna family banner; the bay, emblem of victory, is naturally associated with a great captain; the rosary may refer to the fact of prospero's residence as lay brother in the monastery of the olivetani, near fondi, which was rebuilt by him in . ii. admitting the identity of person, chronology determines the probable date of the execution of this portrait, for prospero visited venice presumably in the train of consalvo ferrante in . he was then thirty-six years of age. iii. assuming this date to be correct, no other venetian artist but giorgione was capable of producing so fine and admittedly "giorgionesque" a portrait at so early a date. iv. internal evidence points to giorgione's authorship. it will be seen that the logic employed is identical with that by which i have tried to establish the identity of signor crespi's picture. in the present case, i should like to insist on the fourth consideration rather than on the other points, iconographical or chronological, and see how far our portrait bears on its face the impress of giorgione's own spirit. the conception, to begin with, is characteristic of him--the pensive charm, the feeling of reserve, the touch of fanciful imagination in the decorative accessories, but, above all, the extreme refinement. all this very naturally fits the portrait of a poet, and at a time when it was customary to label every portrait with a celebrated name, what more appropriate than ariosto, the court poet of ferrara? but this dreamy reserve, this intensity of suppressed feeling is characteristic of all giorgione's male portraits, and is nowhere more splendidly expressed than in this lovely figure. where can the like be found in palma, or even titian? titian is more virile in his conception, less lyrical, less fanciful, palma infinitely less subtle in characterisation. both are below the level of giorgione in refinement; neither ever made of a portrait such a thing of sheer beauty as this. if this be palma's work, it stands alone, not only far surpassing his usual productions in quality, but revealing him in a wholly new phase; it is a difference not of degree, but of kind. [illustration: _anderson photo. querini-stampalia collection, venice_ portrait of a man (unfinished)] positive proofs of giorgione's hand are found in the way the hair is rendered--that lovely dark auburn hair so often seen in his work,--in the radiant oval of the face, contrasting so finely with the shadows, which are treated exactly as in the cobham picture, only that here the chiaroscuro is more masterly, in the delicate modelling of the features, the pose of the head, and in the superb colour of the whole. in short, there is not a stroke that does not reveal the great master, and no other, and it is incredible that modern criticism has not long ago united in recognising giorgione's handiwork.[ ] the date suggested-- --is also consistent with our own deductions as to giorgione's rapid development, and the distinguished character of his sitter--if it be prospero colonna--is quite in keeping with the vogue the artist was then enjoying, for it was in this very year, it will be remembered, that he painted the doge agostino barberigo. i therefore consider that mr. dickes' brilliant conjectures have much to support them, and, so far as the authorship is concerned, i unhesitatingly accept the view, which he was the first to express, that giorgione, and no other, is the painter. our national collection therefore boasts, in my opinion, a masterpiece of his portraiture. if it were not that morelli, mr. berenson and others have recognised in the "portrait of a gentleman," in the querini-stampalia gallery in venice, the same hand as in the national gallery picture, one might well hesitate to claim it for giorgione, so repainted is its present condition. i make bold, however, to include it in my list, and the more readily as signor venturi definitely assigns it to giorgione himself, whose name, moreover, it has always borne. this unfinished portrait is, despite its repaint, extraordinarily attractive, the rich browns and reds forming a colour-scheme of great beauty. it cannot compare, however, in quality with our national gallery highly-finished example, to which it is also inferior in beauty of conception. these two portraits illustrate the variableness of the painter; both were probably done about the same time--the one seemingly _con amore_, the other left unfinished, as though the artist or his sitter were dissatisfied. certainly the cause could not have been giorgione's death, for the style is obviously early, probably prior to . the view expressed by morelli[ ] that this may be a portrait of one of the querini family, who were palma's patrons, has nothing tangible to support it, once palma's authorship is contested. but the unimaginative palma was surely incapable of such things as this and the national gallery portrait! [illustration: collection of the honourable mrs. meynell-ingram, temple newsam, leeds portrait of a man] england boasts, i believe, yet another magnificent original giorgione portrait, and one that is probably totally unfamiliar to connoisseurs. this is the "portrait of an unknown man," in the possession of the hon. mrs meynell-ingram at temple newsam in yorkshire. a small and ill-executed print of it was published in the _magazine of art_, april , where it was attributed to titian. its giorgionesque character is apparent at first glance, and i venture to hope that all those who may be fortunate enough to study the original, as i have done, will recognise the touch of the great master himself. its intense expression, its pathos, the distant look tinged with melancholy, remind us at once of the buda-pesth, the borghese, and the (late) casa loschi pictures; its modelling vividly recalls the central figure of the pitti "concert," the painting of sleeve and gloves is like that in the national gallery and querini-stampalia portraits just discussed. the general pose is most like that of the borghese "lady." the parapet, the wavy hair, the high cranium are all so many outward and visible signs of giorgione's spirit, whilst none but he could have created such magnificent contrasts of colour, such effects of light and shade. this is indeed giorgione, the great master, the magician who holds us all fascinated by his wondrous spell. [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. vienna gallery_ portrait of a man] last on the list of portraits which i am claiming as giorgione's, and probably latest in date of execution, comes the splendid so-called "physician parma," in the vienna gallery. crowe and cavalcaselle thus describe it: "this masterly portrait is one of the noblest creations of its kind, finished with a delicacy quite surprising, and modelled with the finest insight into the modulations of the human flesh.... notwithstanding, the touch and the treatment are utterly unlike titian's, having none of his well-known freedom and none of his technical peculiarities. yet if asked to name the artist capable of painting such a likeness, one is still at a loss. it is considered to be identical with the portrait mentioned by ridolfi as that of 'parma' in the collection of b. della nave (merav., i. ); but this is not proved, nor is there any direct testimony to show that it is by titian at all."[ ] herr wickhoff[ ] goes a step further. he says: "un autre portrait qui porte le nom de titien est également l'une des oeuvres les plus remarquables du musée. on prétend qu'il représente le 'médecin du titien, parma'; mais c'est là une pure invention, imaginée par un ancien directeur du musée, m. rosa, et admise de confiance par ses successeurs. m. rosa avait été amené à la concevoir par la lecture d'un passage de ridolfi. le costume suffirait à lui seul, pourtant, pour la démentir: c'est le costume officiel d'un sénateur vénitien, et qui par suite ne saurait avoir été porté par un médecin. le tableau est incontestablement de la même main que les deux 'concerts' du palais pitti et du louvre, qui portent tous deux le nom de giorgione. si l'on attribue ces deux tableaux au giorgione, c'est à lui aussi qu'il faut attribuer le portrait de vienne; si, comme feu morelli, on attribue le tableau du palais pitti au titien, il faut approuver l'attribution actuelle de notre portrait au même maître." i am glad that herr wickhoff recognises the same hand in all three works. i am sorry that in his opinion this should be domenico campagnola's. i have already referred to this opinion when discussing the louvre "concert," and must again emphatically dissent from this view. campagnola, as i know him in his pictures and frescoes at padua,--the only authenticated examples by which to judge him,[ ]--was utterly inadequate to such tasks. the grandeur and dignity of the vienna portrait is worthy of titian, whose virility giorgione more nearly approaches here than anywhere else. but i agree with the verdict of crowe and cavalcaselle that his is not the hand that painted it, and believe that the author of the temple newsam "man" also produced this portrait, probably a few years later, at the close of his career. notes: [ ] or "points" (_punte_). the translation is that used by blashfield and hopkins, vol. iv. . [ ] assuming he was born in , which is by no means certain. [ ] dr. richter in the _art journal_, , p. . mr. claude phillips, in his _earlier work of titian_, p. , note, objects that vasari's "giubone di raso inargentato" is not the superbly luminous steel-grey sleeve of this "ariosto," but surely a vest of satin embroidered with silver. i think we need not examine vasari's casual descriptions quite so closely; "a doublet of silvered satin wherein the stitches could be counted" is fairly accurate. "quilted sleeves" would no doubt be the tailor's term. [ ] it is not quite clear whether the single letter is f or t. [ ] a curious fact, which corroborates my view, is that the four old copies which exist are all ascribed to giorgione (at vicenza, brescia, and two lately in english collections). see crowe and cavalcaselle, p. . [ ] gronau: _tizian_, p. . [ ] see, however, note on p. . [ ] _la galleria crespi_. [ ] the documents quoted by signor venturi show the signature was there in . [ ] when in the martinengo gallery at brescia ( ) it bore this name. see venturi, _op. cit_., and crowe and cavalcaselle, _titian_, ii. . [ ] from _das museum_, no. . "_unbekannter meister um_ . _bildnis der caterina cornaro_." i am informed the original is now in the possession of the german ambassador at the hague, and that a plaster cast is at berlin. [ ] dr. bode _(jahrbuch_, , p. ) says that count pourtalès acquired this bust at asolo. [ ] _gazette des beaux arts_, , pp. - . since ( ) republished in his _study and criticism of italian art_, vol. i. p. . [ ] titian's posthumous portrait of caterina is lost. the best known copy is in the uffizi. crowe and cavalcaselle long ago pointed out the absurdity of regarding this fancy portrait as a true likeness of the long deceased queen. it bears no resemblance whatever to the buda-pesth portrait, which is the latest of the group. [ ] _cicerone_, sixth edition. [ ] _gazette des beaux arts_, , pp. - . [ ] _venetian painting at the new gallery_, , p. . [ ] _titian_, ii. . [ ] _gazette des beaux arts, loc cit_. [ ] _life of giorgione_. the letters t.v. either were added after , or vasari did not interpret them as titian's signature. [ ] _la galleria crespi, op. cit_. [ ] the importance of this portrait in the history of the renaissance is discussed, _postea_, p. . [ ] ii. . [ ] this picture was transferred in from panel to canvas, but is otherwise in fine condition. [ ] morelli, ii. , note. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle: _titian_, p. . [ ] _gazette des beaux arts_, , p. . [ ] it is customary to cite the prague picture of as his work. the clumsy signature cam was probably intended for campi, the real author, and its genuineness is not above suspicion. it is a curious _quid pro quo_. chapter v additional pictures other than portraits i have now pointed out six portraits which, in my opinion, should be included in the roll of genuine giorgiones. no doubt others will, in time, be identified, but i leave this fascinating quest to pass to the consideration of other paintings illustrating a different phase of the master's art.[ ] we know that the romantic vein in giorgione was particularly strong, that he naturally delighted in producing fanciful pictures where his poetic imagination could find full play; we have seen how the classic myth and the mediaeval romance afforded opportunities for him to indulge his fancy, and we have found him adapting themes derived from these sources to the decoration of _cassoni_, or marriage chests. another typical example of this practice is afforded by his "orpheus and eurydice," in the gallery at bergamo, a splendid little panel, probably, like the "apollo and daphne" in the seminario at venice, intended as a decorative piece of applied art. although bearing giorgione's name by tradition, modern critics have passed it by presumably on the ground that "it is not good enough,"--that fatal argument which has thrown dust in the eyes of the learned. as if the artist would naturally expend as much care on a trifle of this kind as on the castelfranco altar-piece, or the dresden "venus"! yet what greater beauty of conception, what more poetic fancy is there in the "apollo and daphne" (which is generally accepted as genuine) than in this little "orpheus and eurydice"? nay, the execution, which is the point contested, appears to me every whit as brilliant, and in preservation the latter piece has the advantage. not a touch but what can be paralleled in a dozen other works--the feathery trees against the luminous sky, the glow of the horizon, the splendid effects of light and shadow, the impressive grandeur of the wild scenery, the small figures in mid-distance, even the cast of drapery and shape of limbs are repeated elsewhere. let anyone contrast the delicacy and the glow of this little panel with several similar productions of the venetian school hanging in the same gallery, and the gulf that separates giorgione from his imitators will, i think, be apparent. [illustration: _taramelli photo. bergamo gallery_ orpheus and eurydice] in the same category must be ranked two very small panels in the gallery at padua (nos. and ), attributed with a query to giorgione. these are apparently fragments of some decorative series, of which the other parts are missing. the one represents "leda and the swan," the other a mythological subject, where a woman is seated holding a child, and a man, also seated, holds flowers. the latter recalls one of the figures in the national gallery "epiphany." the charm of these fragments lies in the exquisite landscapes, which, in minuteness of finish and loving care, giorgione has nowhere surpassed. the gallery at padua is thus, in my opinion, the possessor of four genuine examples of giorgione's skill as a decorator, for we have already mentioned the larger _cassone_ pieces[ ] (nos. and ). of greater importance is the "unknown subject," in the national gallery (no. ), a picture which, like so many others, has recently been taken from giorgione, its author, and vaguely put down to his "school." but it is time to protest against such needless depreciation! in spite of abrasion, in spite of the loss of glow, in spite of much that disfigures, nay disguises, the master's own touch, i feel confident that giorgione and no other produced this beautiful picture.[ ] surely if this be only school work, we are vainly seeking a mythical master, an ideal who never could have existed. what more dainty figures, what more delicate hues, what more exquisite feeling could one look for than is here to be found? true, the landscape has been renovated, true, the giorgionesque depth and richness is gone, the mellow glow of the "epiphany," which hangs just below, is sadly wanting, but who can deny the charm of the picturesque scenery, which vividly recalls the landscape backgrounds elsewhere in the master's own work, who can fail to admire the natural and unstudied grouping of the figures, the artlessness of the whole, the loving simplicity with which the painter has done his work? all is spontaneous; the spirit is not that of a laborious imitator, painfully seeking "effects" from another's inspiration; sincerity and naïveté are too apparent for this to be the work of any but a quite young artist, and one whose style is so thoroughly "giorgionesque" as to be none other than the young giorgione himself. in my opinion this is one of his earliest essays into the region of romance, painted probably before his twenty-first year, betraying, like the little legendary pictures in the uffizi, a strong affinity with carpaccio.[ ] [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. na. nal gallery, london_ ? the golden age] as to the subject many conjectures have been made: aristotle surrounded by emblems illustrating the objects with which his philosophy was concerned, an initiation into some mystic rite, the poet musing in sadness on the mysteries of life, the philosopher imparting wisdom to the young, etc. etc. i believe giorgione is simply giving us a poetical rendering of "the golden age," where, like plato's philosopher-king, the seer all-wise and all-powerful holds sway, before whom the arts and sciences do homage; in this earthly paradise even strange animals live in happy harmony, and all is peace. such a theme would well have suited giorgione's temperament, and ridolfi actually tells us that this very subject was taken by giorgione from the pages of ovid, and adapted by him to his own ends.[ ] but whether this represents "the golden age," or some other allegory or classic story, the picture is completely characteristic of all that is most individual in giorgione, and i earnestly hope the slur now cast upon its character by the misleading label will be speedily removed.[ ] for the public believes more in the labels it reads, than the pictures it sees. finally, in the "venus disarming cupid," of the wallace collection, we have, in my opinion, the wreck of a once splendid giorgione. in the recent re-arrangement of the gallery, this picture, which used to hang in an upstairs room, and was practically unknown, has been hung prominently on the line, so that its beauties, and, alas! its defects, can be plainly seen. the outlines are often distorted and blurred, the cupid has become monstrous, the delicacy of the whole effaced by ill-usage and neglect. yet the splendour of colour, the cast of drapery, the flow of line, proclaims the great master himself. there is no room, moreover, for such a mythical compromise as that which is proposed by the catalogue, "it stands midway in style between giorgione and titian in his giorgionesque phase." no better instance could be adduced of the fallacy of perfection implied in the minds of most critics at the mention of giorgione's name; yet if we accept the louvre "concert," if we accept the hermitage "judith," why dispute giorgione's claim on the ground of "weakness of construction"? this "venus and cupid" is vastly inferior in quality to the dresden "venus,"--let us frankly admit it,--but it is none the less characteristic of the artist, who must not be judged by the standard of his exceptional creations, but by that of his normal productions.[ ] [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. national gallery, london_ venus and adonis] just such another instance of average merit is afforded by the "venus and adonis" of the national gallery (no. ), from which, had not an artificial standard of excellence been falsely raised, giorgione's name would never have been removed. i am happily not the first to call attention to the propriety of the old attribution, for sir edward poynter claims that the same hand that produced the louvre "concert" is also responsible for the "venus and adonis."[ ] i fully share this opinion. the figures, with their compactly built and rounded limbs, are such as giorgione loved to model, the sweep of draperies and the splendid line indicate a consummate master, the idyllic landscape framing episodes from the life of adonis is just such as we see in the louvre picture and elsewhere, the glow and splendour of the whole reveal a master of tone and colouring. some good judges would give the work to the young titian, but it appears too intimately "giorgionesque" to be his, although i admit the extreme difficulty in drawing the line of division. passages in the "sacred and profane love" of the borghese gallery are curiously recalled, but the national gallery picture is clearly the work of a mature and experienced hand, and not of any young artist. in my opinion it dates from about , and illustrates the later phase of giorgione's art as admirably as do the "epiphany" (no. ) and the "golden age" (no. ) his earliest style. between these extremes fall the "portrait" (no. ), and the "s. liberale" (no. ), the national gallery thus affording unrivalled opportunity for studying the varying phases of the great venetian master at different stages of his career. * * * * * we may now pass from the realm of "fancy" subjects to that of sacred art--that is, to the consideration of the "madonnas," "holy families," and "santa conversazione" pictures, other than those already described. the beaumont "adoration of the shepherds," with its variant at vienna, the national gallery "epiphany," the madrid "madonna with s. anthony and s. roch," and the castelfranco altar-piece are the only instances so far of giorgione's sacred art, yet vasari tells us that the master "in his youth painted very many beautiful pictures of the virgin." this statement is on the face of it likely enough, for although the young castelfrancan early showed his independence of tradition and his preference for the more modern phases of bellini's art, it is extremely probable he was also called upon to paint some smaller devotional pieces, such, for instance, as "the christ bearing the cross," lately in the casa loschi at vicenza.[ ] it is noteworthy, all the same, that scarcely any "madonna" picture exists to which his name still attaches, and only one "holy family," so far as i am aware, is credibly reputed to be his work. this is mr. benson's little picture, in all respects a worthy companion to the beaumont and national gallery examples. there is even a purer ring about this lovely little "holy family," a child-like sincerity and a simplicity which is very touching, while for sheer beauty of colour it is more enjoyable than either of the others. it may not have the depth of tone and mastery of chiaroscuro which make the beaumont "adoration" so subtly attractive, but in tenderness of feeling and daintiness of treatment it is not surpassed by any other of giorgione's works. in its obvious defects, too, it is as thoroughly characteristic; it is needless to repeat here what i said when discussing the beaumont and vienna "adoration"; the reader who compares the reproductions will readily see the same features in both works. mr. benson's little picture has this additional interest, that more than either of its companion pieces it points forward to the castelfranco "madonna" in the bold sweep of the draperies, the play of light on horizontal surfaces, and the exquisite gaiety of its colour. [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. vienna gallery_ the "gipsy" madonna] in claiming this picture for giorgione i am claiming nothing new, for his name, in spite of modern critics, has here persistently survived. not so with a group of three madonnas, one of which has for at least two centuries borne titian's name, another which passes also for a work of the same painter, whilst the third was claimed by crowe and cavalcaselle again for titian, partly on the analogy of the first-mentioned one.[ ] the first is the so-called "gipsy madonna" in the vienna gallery, the second is a "madonna" in the bergamo gallery, and the third is a "madonna" again in mr. benson's collection. i am happily not the first to identify the "gipsy madonna" as giorgione's work, for it requires no little courage to tilt at what has been unquestioningly accepted as "the earliest known madonna of titian." i am indebted, therefore, to signor venturi for the lead,[ ] although i have the satisfaction of feeling that independent study of my own had already brought me to the same conclusion. of course, all modern writers have recognised the "giorgionesque" elements in this supposed titian. "in the depth, strength, and richness of the colour-chord, in the atmospheric spaciousness and charm of the landscape background, in the breadth of the draperies, it is already," says mr. claude phillips,[ ] "giorgionesque." yet, he goes on, the child is unlike giorgione's type in the castelfranco and madrid pictures, and the virgin has a less spiritualised nature than giorgione's madonnas in the same two pictures. on the other hand, dr. gronau, titian's latest biographer, declares[ ] that the thoughtful expression ("der tief empfundene ausdruck") of the madonna is essentially giorgionesque. morelli, with peculiar insight, protested against its being considered a very _early_ work of titian, basing his protest on the advanced nature of the landscape, which, he says,[ ] "must have been painted six or eight years later than the end of the fifteenth century." but even he fell into line with crowe and cavalcaselle in ascribing the picture to titian, failing to see that all difficulties of chronology and discrepancies of judgment between himself and the older historians could be reconciled on the hypothesis of giorgione's authorship. for giorgione, as morelli rightly saw, developed far more rapidly than titian, so that a titian landscape of, say, - (if any such exist!) would correspond with one by giorgione of, say, . i agree with crowe and cavalcaselle and those writers who date back the "gipsy madonna" to the end of the fifteenth century, but i must emphatically support signor venturi in his claim that giorgione is the author. before, however, looking at internal evidence to prove this contention, we may note that another example of the same composition exists in the gallery of rovigo, identical save for a cartellino on which is inscribed titianvs. to crowe and cavalcaselle this was evidence to confirm titian's claim to be the painter of what they considered the original work--viz. the vienna picture, of which the rovigo example was, in their opinion, a later copy. a careful examination, however, of the latter picture has convinced me that they were curiously right and curiously wrong. that the rovigo work is posterior to the vienna one is, i think, patent to anyone conversant with venetian painting, but why should the one bear titian's name on an apparently authentic cartellino, and not the other? the simple and straightforward explanation appears the best--viz. that the rovigo picture is actually by titian, who has taken the vienna picture (which i attribute to giorgione) as his model and directly repeated it. the qualities of the work are admirable, and worthy of titian, and i venture to think this "madonna" would long ago have taken its rightful place among the pictures of the master had it not hung in a remote provincial gallery little visited by travellers, and in such a dark corner as to escape detection. the form titianvs points to a period after ,[ ] when giorgione had been some years dead, so that it was not unnatural that in after times the credit of invention rested with the author of the signed picture, and that his name came gradually to be attached also to the earlier example. the engraving of meyssen (_circa_ ) thus bears titian's name, and both engraving and the repetition at rovigo are now adduced as evidence of titian's authorship of the vienna "gipsy madonna." but is there any proof that titian ever copied or repeated any other work of giorgione? there is, fortunately, one great and acknowledged precedent, the "venus" in the tribune of the uffizi, which is _directly_ taken from giorgione's dresden "venus," the accessories, it is true, are different, but the nude figures are line for line identical.[ ] other painters, palma, cariarli, and titian, elsewhere, derived inspiration from giorgione's prototype, but titian actually repeats the very figure in this "venus"; so that there is nothing improbable in my contention that titian also repeated giorgione's "gipsy madonna," adding his signature thereto, to the confusion and confounding of later generations. [illustration: _dixon photo. collection of mr. r.h. benson, london_ madonna and child] it is worthy of note that not a single "madonna and child" by titian exists, except the little picture in mr. mond's collection, painted quite in the artist's old age. titian invariably paints "madonna and saints," or a "holy family," so that the three madonna pictures i am claiming for giorgione are marked off by this peculiarity from the bulk of titian's work. this in itself is not enough to disqualify titian, but it is a factor in that cumulative proof by which i hope giorgione's claim may be sustained. the marble parapet again is a feature in giorgione's work, but not in titian's. but the most convincing evidence to those who know the master lies in the composition, which forms an almost equilateral triangle, revealing giorgione's supreme sense of beauty in line. the splendid curves made by the drapery, the pose of the child, so as to obtain the same unbroken sweep of line, reveals the painter of the dresden "venus." the painting of the child's hand over the madonna's is precisely as in the madrid picture, where, moreover, the pose of the child is singularly alike. the folds of drapery on the sleeve recur in the same picture, the landscape with the small figure seated beneath the tree is such as can be found in any giorgione background. the oval of the face and the delicacy of the features are thoroughly characteristic, as is the spirit of calm reverie and tender simplicity which giorgione has breathed into his figures. the second and third madonna pictures--viz. the one at bergamo, and its counterpart in mr. benson's collection--appear to be somewhat later in date of execution, but reveal many points in common with the "gipsy madonna." the beauty of line is here equally conspicuous; the way the drapery is carried out beyond the elbow so as to form one long unbroken curve, the triangular composition, the marble parapet, are so many proofs of giorgione's hand. moreover, we find in mr. benson's picture the characteristic tree-trunks, so suggestive of solemn grandeur,[ ] and the striped scarf,[ ] so cunningly disposed to give more flowing line and break the stiffness of contour. the bergamo picture closely resembles mr. benson's "madonna," from which, indeed, it varies chiefly in the pose of the child (whose left leg here sticks straight out), whilst the landscape is seen on the left side, and there are no tree-trunks. i cannot find that any writer has made allusion to this little gem, which hangs high up on the end wall of the lochis section of the gallery (no. ); i hope others will examine this new-found work at a less inconvenient height, as i have done, and that their opinion will coincide with mine that the same hand painted the benson "madonna," and that that hand is giorgione's. before quitting the subject of the "madonna and child," another example may be alluded to, about which it would be unwise to express any decided opinion founded only on a study of the photograph. this is a picture at st. petersburg, to which mr. claude phillips first directed attention,[ ] stating his then belief that it might be a genuine giorgione. after a recent visit to st. petersburg, however, he has seen fit to register it as a probable copy after a lost original by the master, on the ground that "it is not fine enough in execution."[ ] this, as i have often pointed out, is a dangerous test to apply in giorgione's case, and so the authenticity of this "madonna" may still be left an open question. finally, in the category of sacred art come two well-known pictures, both in public galleries, and both accredited to giorgione. the first is the "christ and the adulteress" of the glasgow gallery, the second the "madonna and saints" of the louvre. many diverse opinions are held about the glasgow picture; some ascribe it to cariani, others to campagnola. it is asserted by some that the same hand painted the kingston lacy "judgment of solomon," but that it is not the hand of giorgione, and finally--to come to the view which i believe is the correct one--dr. bode and sir walter armstrong[ ] both believe that giorgione is the painter. [illustration: _hanfstängl photo. glasgow gallery_ the adulteress before christ] the whole difficulty, as it seems to me, arises from the deep-rooted misapprehension in the minds of most critics of the character of giorgione's art. in their eyes, he is something so perfect as to be incapable of producing anything short of the ideal. he could never have drawn so badly, he never could have composed so awkwardly, he never could have been so inexpressive!--such is the usual criticism. i have elsewhere insisted upon the unevenness which invariably characterises the productions of men who are gifted with a strong artistic temperament, and in giorgione's case, as i believe, this is particularly true. the glasgow picture is but one instance of many where, if correctness of drawing, perfection of composition, and inevitableness of expression are taken as final tests, the verdict must go against the painter. he either failed in these cases to come up to the standard reached elsewhere, or he is not the painter. modern negative criticism generally adopts the latter solution, with the result that not a score of pictures pass muster, and the virtues of these chosen few are so extolled as to make it all but impossible to see the reverse of the medal. but those who accept the "judith" at st. petersburg, the louvre "concert," the beaumont "adoration of the shepherds" (to name only three examples where the drawing is strange), cannot consistently object to admit the glasgow "christ and the adulteress" into the fold. nay, if gorgeousness of colour, splendour of glow, mastery of chiaroscuro, and brilliancy of technique are qualities which go to make up great painting, then the glasgow picture must take high rank, even in a school where such qualities found their grandest expression. [illustration: _the louvre, paris_ madonna and saints] comparisons of detail may be noted, such as the resemblance in posture and type of the accuser with the s. roch of the madrid picture, the figure of the adulteress with that of the false mother in the kingston lacy picture, the pointing forefingers, the typical landscape, the cast of the draperies, details which the reader can find often repeated elsewhere. but it is in the treatment of the subject that the most characteristic features are revealed. the artist was required--we know not why--to paint this dramatic scene; he had to produce a "set piece," where action and graphic representation was urgently needed. how little to his taste! how uncongenial the task! the case is exactly paralleled by the "judgment of solomon," the only other dramatic episode giorgione appears to have attempted, and the result in each case is the same--no real dramatic unity, but an accidental arrangement of the figures, with rhetorical action. the want of repose in the christ offends, the stageyness of the whole repels. how different when giorgione worked _con amore_! for it seems this composition gave him much trouble. of this we have a most interesting proof in an almost contemporary venetian version of the same subject, where the scheme has been recast. this picture belongs to sir charles turner, in london, and, so far as intelligibleness of composition goes, may be said to be an improvement on the glasgow version. it is highly probable that this painting derives from some alternative drawing for the original picture. that the glasgow version acquired some celebrity we have further proof in an almost exact copy (with one more figure added on the right), which hangs in the bergamo gallery under cariani's name, a painting which, in all respects, is utterly inferior to the original.[ ] the "christ and the adulteress," then, becomes for us a revelation of the painter's nature, of his methods and aims; but, with all its technical excellences, shall we not also frankly recognise the limitations of his art?[ ] the "madonna and saints" of the louvre, which persistently bears giorgione's name, in spite of modern negative criticism, is marked by a lurid splendour of colour and a certain rough grandeur of expression, well calculated to jar with any preconceived notion of giorgionesque sobriety or reserve. yet here, if anywhere, we get that _fuoco giorgionesco_ of which vasari speaks, that intensity of feeling, rendered with a vivacity and power to which the artist could only have attained in his latest days. in this splendid group there is a masculine energy, a fulness of life, and a grandeur of representation which carries _le grand style_ to its furthest limits, and if giorgione actually completed the picture before his death, he anticipated the full splendour of the riper renaissance. to him is certainly due the general composition, with its superb lines, its beautiful curves, its majestic and dignified postures, its charming sunset background, to him is certainly due the splendid chiaroscuro and magic colour-chord; but it becomes a question whether some of the detail was not actually finished by giorgione's pupil, sebastiano del piombo.[ ] the drawing, for instance, of the hands vividly suggests his help, the type of s. joseph in the background reminds us of the figure of s. chrysostom in sebastiano's venice altar-piece, while the s. catherine recalls the angel in sebastiano's "holy family" at naples. if this be the case, we here have another instance of the pupil finishing his master's work, and this time probably after his death, for, as already pointed out, the "evander and aeneas" (at vienna) must have been left by giorgione well-nigh complete at an earlier stage than the year of his death. that sebastiano stood in close relation to his master, giorgione, is evidenced not only by vasari's statement, but by the obvious dependence of the s. giovanni crisostomo altar-piece at venice on giorgionesque models. moreover, the "violin player," formerly in the sciarra palace, at once reminds us of the "barberigo" portrait at cobham, while the "herodias with the head of john baptist," dated , now in the collection of mr. george salting, shows conclusively how closely related were the two painters in the last year of giorgione's life. sebastiano was twenty-five years of age in , and appears to have worked under giorgione for some time before removing to rome, which he did on, or shortly before, his master's death. his departure left titian, his associate under giorgione, master of the field; he, too, had a hand in finishing some of the work left incomplete in the atelier, and his privilege it became to continue the giorgionesque tradition, and to realise in utmost perfection in after years the aspirations and ideals so brilliantly anticipated by the young genius of castelfranco.[ ] notes: [ ] the doges agostino barberigo, and leonardo loredano, consalvo of cordova, giovanni borgherini and his tutor, luigi crasso, and others, are mentioned as having sat to giorgione for their portraits. modern criticism has recently distributed several "giorgionesque" portraits in english collections among licinio, lotto, and even polidoro! but this disintegrating process may be, and has been, carried too far. [ ] two more small works may be mentioned which may tentatively be ascribed to giorgione. "the two musicians," in the glasgow gallery (recently transferred to campagnola), and a "sta. justina" (known to me only from a photograph), which has passed lately into the collection of herr von kauffmann at berlin. signor venturi (_l'arte_, ) has just acquired for the national gallery in rome a "st. george slaying the dragon." judging only from the photograph, i should say he is correct in his identification of this as giorgione's work. it seems to be akin to the "apollo and daphne," and "orpheus and eurydice." [ ] i am pleased to find signor venturi has anticipated my own conclusion in his recently published _la galleria crespi_. [ ] mr. cosmo monkhouse (_in the national gallery_, p. ) has already rightly recognised the same hand in this picture and in the "epiphany" hanging just below. [ ] meravig, i. . [ ] by a happy accident the new "giorgione" label, intended for the "epiphany," no. , was for some time affixed to no. . [ ] when in the orleans gallery the picture was engraved under giorgione's name by de longueil and halbon. [ ] new illustrated edition of the national gallery catalogue, . [ ] now in america, in mrs. gardner's collection. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle: _titian_, i. p. iii. this picture was then at burleigh house. [ ] see _la galleria crespi_, . [ ] _the earlier work of titian_ p. . _portfolio_, october . [ ] _tizian_, p. . [ ] morelli, ii. , note. [ ] see _antea_, p. . [ ] with the exception of the right arm, which titian has let fall, instead placing it behind the head of the sleeping goddess. the effect of the beautiful curve is thereby lost, and titian shows himself giorgione's inferior in quality of line. [ ] as in the "aeneas and evander" (vienna), the "judith" (st. petersburg), the madrid "madonna and saints," etc. [ ] as in the "caterina cornare" of the crespi collection at milan. [ ] _magazine of art_. july . [ ] _north american review_. october . [ ] _magazine of art_, , pp. and . [ ] the small divergencies of detail in the dress of the "adulteress," etc., are just such as an imitator might have ventured to make. the hand and arm of the christ have, however, been altered for the better. [ ] this is the first time in venetian art that the subject appears. it is frequently found later. [ ] cariani is by some made responsible for the whole picture. a comparison with an authentic example hanging (in the new arrangement of the long gallery), close by, ought surely to convince the advocates of cariani of their mistake. [ ] morto da feltre is mentioned by vasari as having assisted giorgione in the decoration of the fondaco de' tedeschi. this was in . otherwise, we know of no pupils or assistants employed by the master, a fact which goes to show that his influence was felt, not so much through any personal teaching, as through his work. chapter vi giorgione's art, and place in history the examination in detail of all those pictures best entitled, on internal evidence, to rank as genuine productions of giorgione has incidentally revealed to us much that is characteristic of the man himself. we started with the axiom that a man's work is his best autobiography, and where, as in giorgione's case, so little historical or documentary record exists, such indications of character as may be gleaned from a study of his life's work become of the utmost value. _le style c'est l'homme_ is a saying eminently applicable in cases where, as with giorgione, the personal element is strongly marked. the subject, as we have seen over and over again, is so highly charged with the artist's mood, with his individual feelings and emotions, that it becomes unrecognisable as mere illustration, and the work passes by virtue of sheer inspiration into the higher realms of creative art. such fusion of personality and subject is the characteristic of lyrical art, and in this domain giorgione is a supreme master. his genius, as morelli rightly pointed out, is essentially lyrical in contradistinction to titian's, which is essentially dramatic. take the epithets that we have constantly applied to his pictures in the course of our survey, and see how they bear out this statement--epithets such as romantic, fantastic, picturesque, gay, or again, delicate, refined, sensitive, serene, and the like; these bear witness to qualities of mind where the keynote is invariably exquisite feeling. giorgione was, in fact, what is commonly called a poet-painter, gifted with the artistic temperament to an extraordinary degree, essentially impulsive, a man of moods. it is inevitable that such a man produces work of varying merit; inequality must be a characteristic feature of his art. in less fortunate circumstances than those in which giorgione was placed, such temperaments as his become peevish, morose, morbid; but his lines were cast in pleasant places, and his moods were healthy, joyous, and serene. he does not concern himself with the tragedy of life, with its pathos or its disappointments. in his two renderings of "christ bearing the cross"[ ]--the only instances we have of his portrayal of the man of sorrows--he appeals more to our sense of the dignity of humanity, and to the nobility of the christ, than to our tenderer sympathies. how different from the pathetic pietàs of his master, giambellini! this shrinking from pain and sorrow, this dislike to the representation of suffering is, however, as much due to the natural gaiety and elasticity of youth as to the happy accident of his surroundings. we must never forget that giorgione's whole achievement was over at an age when some men's life-work has hardly begun. the eighteen years of his activity were what we sometimes call the years of promise, and he must not be judged as we judge a titian or a michel angelo. he is the wonderful youth, full of joyous aspirations, gilding all he touches with the radiance of his spirit. his pictures, suffused with a golden glow, are the reflection of his sunny life; the vividness and intensity of his passion are expressed in the gorgeousness of his colours. i have elsewhere dwelt upon the precocity of giorgione's talent, with its accompanying qualities of versatility, inequality, and productiveness, and i have pointed out the analogous phenomena in music and poetry. giorgione, schubert, and keats are alike in temperament and quality of expression. they are curiously alike in the shortness of their lives,[ ] and the fever-heat of their production. but they are strangely distinct in the manner of their lives. the disparity of outward circumstances accounts for the healthy tone of giorgione's art, when contrasted with the morbid utterances of keats. schubert suffered privations and poverty, and his song was wrung from him alike at moments of inspiration and of necessity. but giorgione is all aglow with natural energy; he suffered no restraints, nor is his art forced or morbid. confine his spirit, check the play of his fancy, set him a task prescribed by convention or hampered by conditions, and you get proof of the fretfulness, the impatience of restraint which the artist felt. the "judgment of solomon" and "the adulteress before christ," the only two "set" pieces he ever attempted, eloquently show how he fell short when struggling athwart his genius. for to register a fact was utterly foreign to his nature; he records an impression, frankly surrendering his spirit to the sense of joy and beauty. he is not seldom incoherent, and may even grow careless, but in power of imagination and exuberance of fancy he is always supreme. in one respect, however, giorgione shows himself a greater than schubert or keats. he has a profounder insight into human nature in its varying aspects than either the musician or the poet. he is less a visionary, because his experience of men and things is greater than theirs; his outlook is wider, he is less self-centred. this power of grasping objective truth naturally shows itself most readily in the portraits he painted, and it was due to the force of circumstances, as i believe, that this faculty was trained and developed. had giorgione lived aloof from the world, had not his natural reticence and sensitiveness been dominated by outside influences, he might have remained all his life dreaming dreams, and seeing visions, a lyric poet indeed, but not a great and living, influence in his generation. yet such undoubtedly he was, for he effected nothing short of a revolution in the contemporary art of venice. can the same be said of schubert or keats? the truth is that giorgione had opportunities of studying human nature such as the others never enjoyed; fortune smiled upon him in his earliest years, and he found himself thrust into the society of the great, who were eager to sit to him for their portraits. how the young castelfrancan first achieved such distinction is not told us by the historians, but i have ventured to connect his start in life with the presence of the ex-queen of cyprus, caterina cornaro, at asolo, near castelfranco; i think it more than probable that her patronage and recommendation launched the young painter on his successful career in venice. certain it is that he painted her portrait in his earlier days, and if, as i have sought to prove, signor crespi's picture is the long-lost portrait of the great lady, we may well understand the instant success such an achievement won. here, if anywhere, we get giorgione's great interpretative qualities, his penetration into human nature, his reading of character. it is an astonishing thing for one so young to have done, explicable psychologically on the existence of a lively sympathy between the great lady and the poet-painter. had we other portraits of the fair sex by giorgione, i venture to think we should find in them his reading of the human soul even more plainly evidenced than in the male portraits we actually possess.[ ] for it is clear that the artist was "impressionable," and he would have given us more sympathetic interpretations of the fair sex than those which titian has left us. the so-called "portrait of the physician parma" (at vienna) is another instance of giorgione's grasp of character, the virility and suppressed energy being admirably seized, the conception approaching more nearly to titian's in its essential dignity than is usually the case with giorgione's portraits. it is a matter of more regret, therefore, that the likenesses of the doges agostino barberigo and leonardo loredano are missing, for in them we might have had specimens of work comparable to the caterina cornaro, which, in my opinion at all events, is giorgione's masterpiece of portraiture. i have given reasons elsewhere for dating this portrait at latest . it is probably anterior by a few years to the close of the century. this deduction, if correct, has far-reaching consequences: it becomes actually the first _modern_ portrait ever painted, for it is the earliest instance of a portrait instinct with the newer life of the renaissance. and this brings us to the question: what was giorgione's relation to that great awakening of the human spirit which we call the renaissance? mr. berenson answers the question thus: "his pictures are the perfect reflex of the renaissance at its height."[ ] if this be taken to mean that giorgione _anticipated_ the aspirations and ideals of the riper renaissance, i think we may acquiesce in the phrase; but that the onward movement of this great revival coincided only with the artist's years, and culminated at his death, is not historically correct. the wave had not reached its highest point by the year , and titian was yet to rise to a fuller and grander expression of the human soul. but giorgione may rightly be called the herald of the renaissance, not only by virtue of the position he holds in venetian painting, but by priority of appearance on the wider horizon of italian art. let us take the four great representative exponents of italian art at its best, raphael, correggio, leonardo, and michel angelo. chronologically, giorgione precedes raphael and correggio, though leonardo and michel angelo were born before him.[ ] but had either of the latter proclaimed a new order of things as early as ? michel angelo was just twenty years old, and he had not yet carved his "pietà" for s. peter's. leonardo, a man of forty-three, had not completed his "cenacolo," and the "mona lisa" would not be created for another five or six years. giorgione's "caterina cornaro," therefore, becomes the first masterpiece of the earlier renaissance, and proclaims a revolution in the history of portraiture. in venice itself we have only to look at the contemporary portraits by alvise vivarini and gentile bellini, and at the slightly earlier busts by antonello da messina, to see what a world of difference in feeling and interpretation there is between them and giorgione's portraits. what a splendid array of artistic triumphs must have sprung up around this masterpiece! the cobham portrait and the national gallery "poet" are alone left us in much of their pristine splendour, but what of the lost portraits of the great consalvo and of the doge agostino barberigo, both of which must date from the year ? giorgione is then the herald of the renaissance, and never did genius arise in more fitting season. it was the right psychological moment for such a man, and giorgione "painted pictures so perfectly in touch with the ripened spirit of the renaissance that they met with the success which those things only find that at the same moment wake us to the full sense of a need and satisfy it."[ ] this is the secret of his overwhelming influence on succeeding painters in venice,--not, indeed, on his direct pupil sebastiano del piombo, and on his friend and associate titian (who may fairly be called his pupil), but on such different natures as lotto, palma, bonifazio, bordone, pordenone, cariani, romanino, dosso dossi, and a host of smaller men. the school of giorgione numbers far more adherents than even the school of leonardo, or the school of raphael, not because of any direct teaching of the master, but because the "giorgionesque" spirit was abroad, and the taste of the day required paintings like giorgione's to satisfy it. but as no revolution can be effected without a struggle, and as there are invariably people opposed to any reform, whether in art or in anything else, we need not be surprised to find the academic faction, represented by the aged giambellini and his pupils, resisting the progress of the newer art. in giorgione's own lifetime, the exact measure of the opposition is not easy to gauge, but it bore fruit a few years later in the machinations of the official bellinesque party to keep titian out of the ducal palace when he was seeking state recognition,[ ] nevertheless, giambellini, even at his age, found it advisable to modulate into the newer key, as may be seen in his "s. giovanni crisostomo enthroned," where not only is the conception lyrical and the treatment romantic, but the actual composition is on the lines of the essentially giorgionesque equilateral triangle. this great altar-piece was painted three years after giorgione's death, and no more splendid testimonial to the young painter's genius could be found than in the forced homage thus paid to his memory by the octogenarian giambellini.[ ] we have already, in the course of our survey of giorgione's pictures, noted the points wherein he was an initiator. "genre subjects," and "landscape with figures," as we should say nowadays, found in him their earliest exponent. before him artists had, indeed, painted figures with a landscape background, but the perfect blend of nature and human nature was his achievement. this was accomplished by artistic means of the simplest, yet irresistibly subtle in their appeal. the quality of line and the sensuousness of colour nowhere cast their spells over us more strangely than in giorgione's pictures, and by these means he wrought "effects" such as no artist has surpassed. in these purely pictorial qualities he is supreme, and claims place with the few quintessential artists of the world; to him may be applied by analogy the phrase that liszt applied to schubert, "le musicien le plus poète que jamais." as an instrument of expression, then, colour is used by giorgione more naturally and effectively than it is by any of the venetian painters. it appeals directly to our senses, like rare old stained glass, and seems to be of the very essence of the object itself. an engraving or photograph after such a picture as the louvre "pastoral symphony" fails utterly to convey the sense of exhilaration one feels in presence of the actual painting, simply because the tonic effect of the colour is wholly wanting. the golden shimmer of light, the vibration of the air, the saturation of atmosphere with pure colour are not only ingredients in, but are of the very essence of the creation. it has been well said that almost literally the chief colour on giorgione's palette was sunlight.[ ] his masterly treatment of light and shadow, in which he was scarcely leonardo's inferior, enabled him to make use of rich and full-bodied colours, which are never gaudy, as sometimes with bonifazio, or pretty, as with catena and lesser artists. nor is he decorative in the way that veronese excels, or lurid like tintoretto. compared with titian it is as though his colour-chord sounded in seven sharps, whilst the former strikes the key of c natural. a full rich green frequently occurs, as in the castelfranco "madonna" and the louvre picture, and a deep crimson, contrasting with pure white drapery, or with golden flesh-tints, is also characteristic. in the painting of the nude he gives us real flesh and blood; his "venus" has not the supernatural radiance that correggio can give his ethereal beings (giorgione, by the way, never painted an angel, so far as we know), but she glows with actual life, the blood is pulsing through the veins, she is very real. and in this connection we may notice the extraordinary skill with which giorgione conveys a sense of texture; his painting of rich brocades, and more especially quilted stuffs and satiny folds, cannot be surpassed even by a terburg. the quality of line in his work makes itself felt in many ways. beauty of contour and unbroken continuity of curve is obtained sometimes by sacrificing literal accuracy; a structurally impossible position--as the seated nude figure in the louvre picture--is deliberately adopted to heighten the effect of line or the balance of composition. the dresden "venus," if she arose, would appear of strange proportions; but expressiveness is enhanced by the long flowing contours of the body, so suggestive of repose. we may notice also the emphasis obtained by parallelism; for example, the line of the left arm of the "venus" follows the curve of the body, a trick which may be often seen in folds of drapery. this picture also illustrates a device to retain continuity of line; the right foot is hidden away so as not to interfere with the contour. exactly the same thing may be seen in the standing figure in the louvre "pastoral symphony." the trick of making a grand sweep from the top of the head downwards is usually found in the madonna pictures, where a cunningly placed veil carries the line usually to the sloping shoulders, or else outwards to the point of the elbow, thus introducing the triangular scheme to which giorgione was particularly partial. but the question remains, what is giorgione's position among the world's great men? is he intellectually to be ranked with the great thinkers of all time? can he aspire to the position which titian occupies? i fear not beethoven is infinitely greater than schubert, shakespeare than keats, and so, though in lesser degree, is titian than giorgione. i say in lesser degree, because the young poet-painter had something of that profound insight into human nature, something of that wide outlook on life, something of that universal sympathy, and something of that vast influence which distinguishes the greatest intellects of all, and this it is which lessens the distance between him and titian. yet titian is the greater man, for he is "the highest and completest expression of his own age."[ ] nevertheless, in that narrower sphere of the great painters, who proclaimed the glad tidings of liberty when the spirit of man awoke from mediaevalism, may we not add yet a fifth voice to the four-part harmony of raphael, correggio, leonardo, and michel angelo, the voice of giorgione, the wondrous youth, "the george of georges," who heralded the renaissance of which we are the heirs? notes: [ ] in the church of san rocco, venice, and in mrs. gardner's collection in america. [ ] keats died at the age of twenty-five; schubert was thirty-one; giorgione thirty-three. [ ] the ruined condition of the borghese "lady" prevents any just appreciation of the interpretative qualities. [ ] _venetian painters_, p. . [ ] leonardo, - ; michel angelo, - ; giorgione, - ; raphael, - ; correggio, - . correggio, raphael, and giorgione died at the ages of forty, thirty-seven, and thirty-three years respectively. those whom the gods love die young! [ ] berenson: _venetian painters_, p. . i should prefer to substitute "ripening" for "ripened." [ ] fry: _giovanni bellini_, p. . [ ] in s. giovanni crisostomo, venice. it dates from . [ ] mary logan: _guide to the italian pictures at hampton court_, p. . [ ] berenson: _venetian painters_, p. . appendix i documents the following correspondence between isabella d'este, marchioness of mantua, and her agent albano in venice, is reprinted from the _archivio storico dell' arte_, , p. (article by sig. alessandro luzio):-- "sp. amice noster charissime; intendemo che in le cose et heredità de zorzo da castelfrancho pictore se ritrova una pictura de una nocte, molto bella et singulare; quando cossì fusse, desideraressimo haverla, però vi pregamo che voliati essere cum lorenzo da pavia et qualche altro che habbi judicio et designo, et vedere se l'è cosa excellente, et trovando de sì operiati il megio del m'co m. carlo valerio, nostro compatre charissimo, et de chi altro vi parerà per apostar questa pictura per noi, intendendo il precio et dandone aviso. et quando vi paresse de concludere il mercato, essendo cosa bona, per dubio non fusse levata da altri, fati quel che ve parerà: chè ne rendemo certe fareti cum ogni avantagio e fede et cum bona consulta. ofteremone a vostri piaceri ecc. "mantua xxv. oct mdx." the agent replies a few days later-- "ill'ma et exc'ma m'a mia obser'ma "ho inteso quanto mi scrive la ex. v. per una sua de xxv. del passatto, facendome intender haver inteso ritrovarsi in le cosse et eredità del q. zorzo de castelfrancho una pictura de una notte, molto bella et singulare; che essendo cossì si deba veder de haverla. "a che rispondo a v. ex. che ditto zorzo morì più dì fanno da peste, et per voler servir quella ho parlato cum alcuni mei amizi, che havevano grandissime praticha cum lui, quali me affirmano non esser in ditta heredità tal pictura. ben è vero che ditto zorzo ne feze una a m. thadeo contarini, qual per la informatione ho autta non è molto perfecta sichondo vorebe quela. un'altra pictura de la nocte feze ditto zorzo a uno victorio becharo, qual per quanto intendo è de meglior desegnio et meglio finitta che non è quella del contarini. ma esso becharo, al presente non si atrova in questa terra, et sichondo m'è stato afirmatto nè l'una nè l'altra non sono da vendere per pretio nesuno; però che li hanno fatte fare per volerle godere per loro; sichè mi doglio non poter satisfar al dexiderio de quella ecc. "venetijs viii novembris . "servitor "thadeus albanus." from this letter we learn definitely ( ) that giorgione died in october-november ; ( ) that he died of the plague. i have pointed out in the text that the above description of the two pictures "de una notte" corresponds with the actual beaumont and vienna "nativities," or "adoration of the shepherds," in which i recognise the hand of giorgione. * * * * * the following is the only existing document in giorgione's own handwriting. it was published by molmenti in the _bollettino delle arti_, anno ii. no. , and reprinted by conti, p. :-- "el se dichiara per el presente come el clarissimo messer aluixe di sesti die a fare a mi zorzon de castelfrancho quatro quadri in quadrato con le geste di daniele in bona pictura su telle, et li telleri sarano soministrati per dito m. aluixe, il quale doveva stabilir la spexa di detti quadri quando serano compidi et di sua satisfatione entro il presente anno . "io zorzon de castelfrancho di mia man scrissi la presente in venetia li febrar ." whether or no giorgione ever completed these four square canvases with the story of daniel is unknown. there is no trace of any such pictures in modern times. appendix ii did titian live to be ninety-nine years old? _reprinted from the "nineteenth century" jan_. there is something fascinating in the popular belief that titian, the greatest of all venetian painters, reached the patriarchal age of ninety-nine years, and was actively at work up to the day of his death. the text-books love to tell us the story of the great unfinished "pietà" with its pathetic inscription: quod titianus inchoatum reliquit palma reverenter absolvit deoq. dicavit opus; and traveller, guide-book in hand, and moralist, philosophy in head, alike muse upon a phenomenon so startlingly at variance with common experience.[ ] but, sentiment aside, is there any historical evidence that titian ever worked at his art in his hundredth year? that he even attained such a venerable age? the answer is of wider consequence than the mere question implies, for on the correct determination of titian's own chronology depends the history of the development of the entire venetian school of painting in the early years of the sixteenth century. i say _early_, because it is the date of titian's birth, and not that of his death, which i shall endeavour to fix; the latter event is known beyond possibility of doubt to have occurred in august . the question, therefore, to consider is, what justification, if any, is there for the universal belief that titian was born in - , just a hundred years previously? anyone, i think, who has ever looked into the history of titian's career must have been struck by the fact that for the first thirty-five years of his life (according to the usual chronology) there is absolutely no documentary record relating to him, whether in the venetian archives or elsewhere. not a single letter, not a single contract, not a single mention of his name occurs from which we can so much as affirm his existence before the year . on the nd of december in that year "io tician di cador dpñtore" gives a receipt for money paid him on completion of some frescoes at padua, and from this date on there are frequent letters and documents in existence right down to , the year of his death. is it not somewhat strange that the first thirty-five years of his life (as is commonly believed) should be a total blank so far as records go? the fact becomes the more inexplicable when we find that during these early years some of his finest work is alleged to have been executed, and he must--if we accept the chronology of his biographers--have been well known to and highly esteemed by his contemporaries.[ ] moreover, it is not for want of diligent search amongst the archives that nothing has been found, for italian and german students have alike sought, but in vain, to discover any documentary evidence relating to his career before . the absence of any such trustworthy record has had its natural result. conjecture has run riot, and no two writers are agreed on the subject of the nature and development of titian's earlier art. this is the second disquieting fact which any careful student has to face. messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle, titian's most exhaustive biographers,[ ] have filled up the first thirty-five years of his career in their own way, but their chronology has found no favour with later writers, such as mr. claude phillips in england[ ] or dr. georg gronau in germany,[ ] both of whom have arrived at independent conclusions. morelli again had his theories on the subject, and m. lafenestre[ ] has his, and the ordinary gallery catalogue is usually content to state inaccurate facts without further ado. now, if all these conscientious writers arrive at results so widely divergent, either their logic or their data must be wrong! one and all assume that titian lived into his hundredth year, and, therefore, was born in - ; and starting with this theory as a fact, they have tried to fit in vasari's account as best they can, and each has found a different solution of the problem. there is only one way out of this chaos of conjectures--we must see what is the evidence for the "centenarian" tradition, and if it can be shown that titian was really born later than - , then the silence of all records about him during an alleged period of thirty-five years will become at once more intelligible, and we may be able to explain some of the other anomalies which at present confront titian's biographers. i propose to take the evidence in strictly chronological order. the oldest contemporary account of titian's career is furnished by lodovico dolce in his _l'aretino, o dialogo della pittura_, which was published at venice in . dolce knew titian personally, and wrote his treatise just at the time when the painter was at the zenith of his fame. he is our sole authority for certain incidents of titian's early career: it will be well, therefore, to quote in full the opening paragraphs of his narrative: "being born at cadore of honourable parents, he was sent when a child of nine years old by his father to venice to the house of his father's brother ... in order that he might be put under some proper master to study painting; his father having perceived in him even at that tender age strong marks of genius towards the art.... his uncle directly carried the child to the house of sebastiano, father of the _gentilissìmo_ valerio and of francesco zuccati (distinguished masters of the art of mosaic, by them brought to that perfection in which we now see the best pictures) to learn the principles of the art. from them he was removed to gentile bellini, brother of giovanni, but much inferior to him, who at that time was at work with his brother in the grand council-chamber. but titian, impelled by nature to greater excellence and perfection in his art, could not endure following the dry and laboured manner of gentile, but designed with boldness and expedition. whereupon gentile told him he would make no progress in painting, because he diverged so much from the old style. thereupon titian left the stupid _(goffo)_ gentile, and found means to attach himself to giovanni bellini; but not perfectly pleased with his manner, he chose giorgio da castel franco. titian then drawing and painting with giorgione, as he was called, became in a short time so accomplished in art, that when giorgione was painting the façade of the fondaco de' tedeschi, or exchange of the german merchants, which looks towards the grand canal, titian was allotted the other side which faces the market-place, being at the time scarcely twenty years old. here he represented a judith of wonderful design and colour, so remarkable, indeed, that when the work came to be uncovered, it was commonly thought to be the work of giorgione, and all the latter's friends congratulated him as being by far the best thing he had produced. whereupon giorgione, in great displeasure, replied that the work was from the hand of his pupil, who showed already how he could surpass his master, and, what was more, giorgione shut himself up for some days at home, as if in despair, seeing that a young man knew more that he did." fortunately, the exact date can be fixed when the frescoes on the fondaco de' tedeschi were painted, for we have original records preserved from which we learn the work was begun in and completed towards the close of .[ ] if titian, then, was "scarcely twenty years old" in - , he must have been born in - . dolce particularly emphasises his youthfulness at the time, calling him _un giovanetto_, a phrase he twice applies to him in the next paragraph, when he is describing the famous altar-piece of the 'assunta,' the commission for which, as we know from other sources, was given in . "not long afterwards he was commissioned to paint a large picture for the high altar of the church of the frati minori, where titian, quite a young man _(pur giovanetto)_, painted in oil the virgin ascending to heaven.... this was the first public work which he painted in oil, and he did it in a very short time, and while still a young man _(e giovanetto)_." this phrase could hardly be applied to a man over thirty, so that titian's birth cannot reasonably be dated before or so, and is much more likely to fall later. the previous deduction that it was - is thus further strengthened. the evidence, then, of dolce, writing in , is clear and consistent: titian was born in - . now let us see what is stated by vasari, who is the next oldest authority. the first edition of the _lives_ appeared in --that is, just prior to dolce's _dialogue_--but a revised and enlarged edition appeared in , in which important evidence occurs as to titian's age. after enumerating certain pictures by the great venetian, vasari adds: "(_a_) all these works, with many others which i omit, to avoid prolixity, have been executed up to the present age of our artist, which is above seventy-six years.... in the year , when vasari, the writer of the present history, was at venice, he went to visit titian, as one who was his friend, and found him, although then very old, still with the pencil in his hand, and painting busily."[ ] according to vasari, then, titian was "above seventy-six years" when the second edition of the _lives_ was written, and as from the explicit nature of the evidence this must have been between , when he visited venice, and january , when his book was published, it follows that titian was "above seventy-six years" in - --in other words, that he was born - . still confining ourselves to vasari, we find two other passages bearing on the question: "(_b_) titian was born in the year at cadore.[ ] "(_c_) about the year giorgione da castel franco began to give to his works unwonted softness and relief, painting them in a very beautiful manner.... having seen the manner of giorgione, titian early resolved to abandon that of gian bellino, although well grounded therein. he now, therefore, devoted himself to this purpose, and in a short time so closely imitated giorgione that his pictures were sometimes taken for those of that master.... at the time when titian began to adopt the manner of giorgione, being then not more than eighteen, he took the portrait," etc.[ ] this passage (_c_) makes titian "not more than eighteen about the year ," and fixes the date of his birth as - , therein agreeing with the previous deduction at which we arrived when examining the passage in vasari's second edition. thus in two places out of three vasari is consistent in fixing - as the date. how, then, explain (_b_), which explicitly gives ? anyone conversant with vasari's inaccuracies will hardly be surprised to find that this statement is dismissed by all titian's biographers as manifestly a mistake. moreover, it is inconsistent with the two passages just quoted, and either they are wrong or is a misprint for . now, from the nature of the evidence recorded by vasari, it cannot be a matter for any doubt which is the more trustworthy statement. on the one hand, he speaks as an eye-witness of titian's old age, and is careful to record the exact year he visited venice and the age of the painter; on the other hand, he makes a bald statement which he certainly cannot have verified, and which is inconsistent with his own experience! in any case, in vasari's text the evidence is two to one in favour of - as the right date, and thus we come to the agreeable conclusion that our two oldest authorities, dolce and vasari, are at one in fixing titian's birth between and --in other words, about . so far, then, all is clear, and as we know from later and indisputable evidence that titian died in , it follows that he only attained the age of eighty-seven and not ninety-nine. whence, then, comes the story of the ninety-nine years? from none other than titian himself, and to this piece of evidence we must next turn, following out a strict chronological order. in --that is, three years after vasari's second edition was published--titian addresses a letter to philip the second of spain in these terms:[ ] "most potent and invincible king,--i think your majesty will have received by this the picture of 'lucretia and tarquin' which was to have been presented by the venetian ambassador. i now come with these lines to ask your majesty to deign to command that i should be informed as to what pleasure it has given. the calamities of the present times, in which every one is suffering from the continuance of war, force me to this step, and oblige me at the same time to ask to be favoured with some kind proof of your majesty's grace, as well as with some assistance from spain or elsewhere, since i have not been able for years past to obtain any payment either from the naples grant, or from my ordinary pension. the state of my affairs is indeed such that i do not know how to live in this my old age, devoted as it entirely is to the service of your catholic majesty, and to no other. not having for eighteen years past received a _quattrino_ for the paintings which i delivered from time to time, and of which i forward a list by this opportunity to the secretary perez, i feel assured that your majesty's infinite clemency will cause a careful consideration to be made of the services of an old servant of the age of ninety-five, by extending to him some evidence of munificence and liberality. sending two prints of the design of the beato lorenzo, and most humbly recommending myself, "i am your catholic majesty's "most devoted, humble servant, "titiano vecellio. "from venice, the st of august, ." here, then, is titian himself, in the year , declaring that he is ninety-five years of age--in other words, dating his birth back to --that is, some thirteen years earlier than dolce and vasari imply was the case. a flagrant discrepancy of evidence! in similar strain he thus addresses the king again five years later:[ ] "your catholic and royal majesty,--the infinite benignity with which your catholic majesty--by natural habit--is accustomed to gratify all such as have served and still serve your majesty faithfully, enboldens me to appear with the present (letter) to recall myself to your royal memory, in which i believe that my old and devoted service will have kept me unaltered. my prayer is this: twenty years have elapsed and i have never had any recompense for the many pictures sent on divers occasions to your majesty; but having received intelligence from the secretary antonio perez of your majesty's wish to gratify me, and having reached a great old age not without privations, i now humbly beg that your majesty will deign, with accustomed benevolence, to give such directions to ministers as will relieve my want. the glorious memory of charles the fifth, your majesty's father, having numbered me amongst his familiar, nay, most faithful servants, by honouring me beyond my deserts with the title of _cavaliere_, i wish to be able, with the favour and protection of your majesty--true portrait of that immortal emperor--to support as it deserves the name of a cavaliere, which is so honoured and esteemed in the world; and that it may be known that the services done by me during many years to the most serene house of austria have met with grateful return, to spend what remains of my days in the service of your majesty. for this i should feel the more obliged, as i should thus be consoled in my old age, whilst praying to god to concede to your majesty a long and happy life with increase of his divine grace and exaltation of your majesty's kingdom. in the meanwhile i expect from the royal benevolence of your majesty the fruits of the favour i desire, with due reverence and humility, and kissing your sacred hands, "i am your catholic majesty's "most humble and devoted servant, "titiano vecellio. "from venice, the th of february, ." this is the last letter we have of titian, who died in august of this year, according to his own showing, in his hundredth year. now what reliance can be placed on this statement? on the one hand, we have the evidence of two independent writers, dolce and vasari, both personally acquainted with titian, and both agreeing by inference that the date of his birth was about . both had ample opportunity to get at the truth, and vasari is particularly explicit in recording the exact date when he visited titian in venice and the age the painter had then reached. yet five years later titian is found stating that he is ninety-five, and not eighty-two as we should expect! perhaps the best comment is made by crowe and cavalcaselle, who significantly remark immediately after the last letter: "titian's appeal to the benevolence of the king of spain looks like that of a garrulous old gentleman proud of his longevity, but hoping still to live for many years."[ ] exactly! the occasion could well be improved by a little timely exaggeration well calculated to appeal to the sympathies and "infinite benignity" of the monarch, and if, when the writer had actually reached the respectable age of eighty-two, he wrote himself down as ninety-five, who would gainsay him? it added point to his appeal--that was the chief thing--and as to accuracy, well, titian was not the man to be over-scrupulous when his own interests were involved. but even though the statement were not deliberately made to heighten the effect of an appeal, we must in any case make allowances for the natural proneness to exaggerate their age which usually characterises men of advanced years, so that any _ex parte_ statement of this kind must be received with due caution. where, moreover, as in the present case, we have evidence of a directly contradictory kind furnished by independent witnesses, whose declarations in this respect are presumably disinterested, such _ex parte_ statements are on the face of them unreliable. the balance of evidence in this case appears to rest on the side of the older historians, dolce and vasari, whose statements, as i hold, are in the circumstances more reliable than the picturesque exaggeration of a man of advanced years. i claim, therefore, that any account of titian's life based solely on such flimsy evidence as to his age as is found in this letter to philip the second is, to say the least, open to grave doubt. the whole superstructure raised by modern writers on this uncertain foundation is full of flaws and incongruities, and i am fully persuaded the future historian will have to begin _de novo_ in any attempt at a chronological reconstruction of titian's career. the gap of thirty-five years down to may prove after all less by twelve or thirteen years than people think, so that the young titian naturally enough first emerges into view at the age of twenty-two and not thirty-five. but we must not anticipate results, for there is still the evidence of the later writers of the seventeenth century to consider. two of these declare that titian was born in . the first of these, tizianello, a collateral descendant of the great painter, published his little _compendio_ in , wherein he gives a sketchy and imperfect biography; the other, ridolfi, repeats the date in his _meraviglie dell' arte_, published in . the latter writer is notoriously unreliable in other respects, and it is quite likely this is merely an instance of copying from tizianello, whose unsupported statement is chiefly of value as showing that the "centenarian" theory had started within fifty years of titian's death. but again we ask: why should the evidence of a seventeenth-century writer be preferred to the personal testimony of those who actually knew titian himself, especially when vasari gives us precise information with which dolce's independent account is in perfect agreement? no doubt the great age to which titian certainly attained was exaggerated in the next generation after his death, but it is a remarkable fact that the contemporary eulogies, mostly in poetic form, which appeared on the occasion of his decease, do not allude to any such phenomenal longevity.[ ] nevertheless, ridolfi's statement that titian was born in is commonly quoted as if there were no better and earlier evidence in existence, and, indeed, it is a matter of surprise that conscientious modern biographers have not looked more carefully at the original authorities instead of being content to follow tradition, and i must earnestly plead for a reconsideration of the question of titian's age by the future historians of venetian painting.[ ] if, as i believe, titian was born in or about instead of - , it follows that he must have been giorgione's junior by at least twelve years--a most important deduction--and it also follows that he cannot have produced any work of consequence before, say, , at the age of sixteen, and he will have died at eighty-seven and not in his hundredth year. the alteration in date would help to explain the silence of all records about him before , when he would have been only twenty-two and not thirty-five years old; it would fully account for his name not being mentioned by dürer in his famous letter of , wherein he refers to the painters of venice, and it would equally account for the absence of his name from the commission to paint the fondaco frescoes in - , for he would have been employed simply as giorgione's young assistant. the fact that in he signs himself simply "io tician di cador dpñtore" and not _maestro_ would be more intelligible in a young man of twenty-two than in an accomplished master of thirty-five, and the character of his letter addressed to the senate in would be more natural to an ambitious aspirant of twenty-four than to a man in his maturity of thirty-seven.[ ] such are some of the obvious results of a change of date, but the larger question as to the development of titian's art must be left to the future historian, for the importance of fixing a date lies in the application thereof.[ ] herbert cook. the date of titian's birth _reply by dr. georg gronau. translated from the "repertorium für kunstwissenschaft," vol. xxiv., th part_ in the january number of the _nineteenth century_ appears an article by herbert cook under the title, "did titian live to be ninety-nine years old?" the interrogation already suggests that the author comes to a negative conclusion. it is, perhaps, not without interest to set forth the reasons advanced by the english connoisseur and to submit them to adverse criticism. (here follows an abstract of the article.) the reasoning, as will have been seen, is not altogether free from doubt. it has been usual hitherto in historical investigations to call in question the assertions of a man about his own life only when thoroughly weighty reasons justified such a course. is the evidence of a dolce and of a vasari so free from all objection that it outweighs titian's personal statement? before answering this question it should be pointed out that we possess two further statements of contemporary writers on the subject of titian's age, statements which have escaped the notice of mr. cook. one is to be found in a letter from the spanish consul in venice, thomas de cornoga, to philip ii., dated th december (published in the very important work by zarco del valle[ ]). after informing the king of titian's usual requests on the subject of his pension, and so on, he continues: "y con los annos de su edad servira à v.m. hasta la muerte." somewhere, then, in the very year in which titian, according to vasari, was "above seventy-six years of age," he seems to have been eighty-five, according to the report of another and quite independent witness, and if so, he would have been born about . we have then three definite statements: vasari ( or ) says "over " the consul ( ) " " " titian himself ( ) " " " this new information, instead of helping us, only serves to make still greater confusion. the other piece of evidence not mentioned by mr. cook was written only a few years after titian's death. borghini says in his _riposo_, : "mori ultimamente di vecchiezza (!not, then, of the plague?), essendo d'età d'anni o , l'anno ." ... this is the first time that the traditional statement as to the master's age appears in literature. in this state of things it is worth while to look closer into the evidence of dolce and vasari to see if they are not after all the most trustworthy witnesses. it is always held to be a mistake to take rather vague statements quite literally, as mr. cook has done, and to build thereon further conclusions. when dolce says that titian painted with giorgione at the fondaco, "non avendo egli allora appena venti anni," he is only trying to make out that his hero, here as everywhere, was a most unusual person (the whole dialogue is a glorification of the master). for the same reason he makes the following remark, which we can absolutely prove to be false:--the assumption (he says) "fu la prima opera pubblica, che a olio facesse." now at least one work of titian's was, then, already to be seen in a public place--viz. the "st. mark enthroned, with four saints," in santo spirito, afterwards removed to the sacristy of the salute. in other points, too, dolce can be convicted of small errors and misrepresentations, partly on literary grounds, partly due to his desire to enhance the praise of titian. vasari, again, should only be cited as witness when he speaks of works of art which he has actually seen. in such a case, apart from slips, he is always a trustworthy guide. directly, however, he goes into biographical details or questions of chronology accuracy becomes nearly always a secondary matter. titian's biography offers an excellent and most instructive example of this. vasari mentions first the birth and upbringing of the boy, then he speaks of giorgione and the fondaco frescoes, and goes on: "dopo la quale opera fece un quadro grande che oggi è nella salla di messer andrea loredano.... dopo in casa di messer giovanni d'anna ... fece il suo ritratto ...; ed un quadro di ecce homo, ..." and he goes on, "l'anno poi ...." if it had not been that one of these pictures, once in the possession of giovanni d'anna, had been preserved (now in the vienna gallery), and that it bears in a conspicuous place the date , it would be recorded in all biographies of titian that he painted in an "ecce homo" for this giovanni d'anna. if one goes further into vasari's account we read that titian published his "triumph of faith" in . "dopo condottosi tiziano a vicenza, dipinse a fresco sotto la loggetta ... il giudizio di salamone. appresso tomato a venezia, dipinse la facciata de' grimani; e in padoa nella chiesa di sant' antonio alcune storie ... de fatti di quel santo: e in quella di santo spirito fece ... un san marco a sedere in mezzo a certi santi." we now know on documentary evidence that the vicenza fresco (which was destroyed later) dated from , and similarly that the frescoes at padua were painted in , whilst the date of the s. mark picture may be fixed with probability at . these examples prove how inexact vasari is here once more. but it may be objected, supposing that he is inaccurate in statements which refer back, can he not be in the right in a case where he comes back, so to speak, straight from visiting titian and writes down his observation about the master's actual age? to be sure; but when we find that so many other similar notices of vasari are wrong, even those that refer to people whom he personally knew, we lose faith altogether. in turning over the leaves of the sixth volume of the sansoni edition of vasari, in which only his contemporaries, some of them closely connected, too, with him, are spoken of, we find the following incorrect statements:-- p. . tribolo was years old (in reality only ). p. . bugiardini died at (really ). p. . pontormo at (he died actually in his rd year). p. . giovanni da udine at (really ). a still more glaring instance is to be found when vasari not only makes misstatements about his own life but is actually out by several years in giving his own age. one and the same event--viz. his journey with cardinal passerini to florence--is given in his own autobiography to the year , in the "life of salviati," to the year , and in the "life of michael angelo" to . when he speaks of himself in the same passage in the "life of salviati" as the "putto, che allora non aveva più di nove anni," he is making a mistake of at least three years in his own age. and not less delightful is it to read in the "life of giovanni da udine": "giorgio vasari, giovinetto di diciotto anni, quando serviva il duca alessandro de' medici suo primo signore l'anno ." we are obviously not dealing with messer giorgio's strongest point, for, as a matter of fact, he was at that time twenty-four years of age! the same false statement of age is found again in his own biography (vii. p. , with the variation, "poco piú di diciotto anni"). but i think these instances suffice to prove how little one dare build on such assertions of vasari. who dare say if titian was really only seventy-six in when the aretine visited him? and now a few remarks on the other points raised by mr. cook. as a fact, it is an astonishing thing that we have no documentary evidence about titian before ; but does he not share this fate with very many of his great countrymen, with bellini, giorgione, sebastiano, and others? an unfriendly chance has left us entirely in the dark as to the early years of nearly all the great venetian painters. that dürer makes no mention of titian's name in his letters gives no cause for surprise, for even the most celebrated of the younger artists, giorgione, is not alluded to, and of all those with bellini, whose fame outshone even then that of all others, only barbari is mentioned. that titian's name does not occur in the documents about the fondaco frescoes may be due to the fact that giorgione alone was commissioned to undertake the frescoes for the magistrates, and that the latter painter in his turn brought his associate titian into the work. mr. cook says that titian still signed himself in "dipintore" instead of "maestro." i am not aware whether in this respect definite regulations or customs were usual in venice.[ ] at any rate, the painter is still described in official documents as late as as "ser tizian depentor" (lorenzi, "monumenti," no. ), when, even according to mr. cook's theory, he must have been thirty years old; and he is actually so called in (_ibid_. no. ), after appearing in several intermediate documents as "maestro" (nos. , ). if this argument, however, proves unsound, the last point--viz. that the well-known petition to the senate in reads more like that of a man of twenty-four than one of thirty-seven--must be left to the hypothesis of individual conjecture. must we really close these very long inquiries by confessing they are beyond our ken? it almost seems so. for, with regard to the testimony afforded by family documents, dr. jacobi (whose labours were utilised by crowe and cavalcaselle) so conscientiously examined all that is left, that a discovery in this direction is not to be looked for. is the statement of tizianello that titian's year of birth was to be rejected without further question when we remember that, as a relative of the painter, he could have had in access to documents possibly since lost? under these circumstances the only thing left to do is to question the works of titian. of these, two can be dated, not indeed with certainty, but with some degree of probability: the dedicatory painting of the bishop of pesaro with the portrait of alexander vi. of - , and the picture of st. mark, already mentioned, of the year . both are, to judge by the style, clearly early works, and both can be connected with definite historical events of the years just mentioned. that these paintings, however, could be the work of a fourteen- to fifteen-year-old artist mr. cook will also admit to be impossible. much, far too much, in the story of venetian painting must, for want of definite information, be left to conjecture; and however unsatisfactory it is, we must make the confession that we know as little about the date of the birth of the greatest of the venetians as we know of giorgione's, sebastiano's, palma's, and the rest. but supposing all of a sudden information turned up giving us the exact date of titian's birth, would the picture of the development of venetian painting be any the different for it? in no wise. the relation to one another of the individual artists of the younger generation is so clearly to be read in each man's work, that no external particulars, however interesting they might be on other grounds, could make the smallest difference. titian's relations with giorgione especially could not be otherwise represented than has been long determined, and that whether titian was born in , , , or even two or three years later.[ ] georg gronau. when was titian born? _reply to dr. gronau. reprinted from "repertorium für kunstwissenschaft," vol. xxv., parts and _ i must thank dr. georg gronau for his very fair reply, published in these pages[ ] (to my article in the _nineteenth century_ on the subject of titian's age[ ]). he has also most kindly pointed out two pieces of contemporary evidence which had escaped my notice, and although neither of these passages is conclusive proof one way or the other, they deserve to be reckoned with in arriving at a decision. dr. gronau formulates the evidence shortly thus: vasari in or says titian is over the spanish consul in " " titian himself in " he is " and he adds that this new piece of evidence--viz. the letter of the spanish consul to king philip--instead of helping us, only makes the confusion worse. what then are we to think when yet another--a fourth--contemporary statement turns up, differing from any of the three just quoted? yet such a letter exists, and i am happy in my turn to point out this fresh piece of evidence, in the hope that instead of making the confusion worse, it will help us to arrive at some decision. on october the th, , garcia hernandez, envoy in venice from king philip ii., writes to the king his master that titian begged that his majesty would condescend to order that he should be paid what was due to him from the court and from milan.... for the rest the painter was in fine condition, and quite capable of work, and this was the time, if ever, to get "other things" from him, as according to some people who knew him, titian was about ninety years old, though he did not show it, and for money everything was to be had of him.[ ] in then the spanish envoy writes that titian was said to be about ninety. let us then enlarge dr. gronau's table by this additional statement, and further complete it by including the earliest piece of evidence, the statement of dolce in that titian was scarcely twenty when he worked at the fondaco de' tedeschi frescoes ( - ). the year of titian's birth thus works out: writing in , dolce makes out titian was born about " " - , vasari " " " " " , spanish envoy " " " " , spanish consul " " " " , titian himself " " now it is curious to notice that the last three statements are all made in letters to king philip, either by titian himself, or at his request by the spanish agents. it is curious to notice these statements as to titian's great age occur in begging letters.[ ] it is curious to notice they are mutually contradictory. what are we to conclude? surely that the spanish envoy, the spanish consul, and titian himself, out of their own mouths stand convicted of inconsistency of statement, and further that they betray an identical motive underlying each representation--viz. an appeal _ad misericordiam._ before, however, contrasting the value of the evidence as found in these spanish letters with the evidence as found in dolce and vasari, let us note two points in these letters. garcia hernandez, the spanish envoy, writes: "according to some people who knew him, titian was about ninety years old, though he did not show it." now, if titian was really about ninety in the year , he will have lived to the age of one hundred and two, a feat of longevity of which no one has ever accused him! apart, therefore, from the healthy scepticism which hernandez betrays in this letter, we may certainly conclude that "some people who knew him" were exaggerating titian's age. secondly, titian's letter of says he is ninety-five years old. titian's similar letter of , the year of his death, omits to say he is one hundred. surely a strange omission, considering that he refers to his old age three times in this one letter.[ ] does not the second letter correct the inexactness of the first? and so titian's statement goes for nothing? the collective evidence, then, of these spanish letters amounts to this, that, in the words of the envoy, "for money everything was to be had of titian," and accordingly any statement as to his great age when thus made for effect must be treated with the greatest suspicion. but is the evidence of dolce and vasari any more trustworthy? dr. gronau is at pains to show that both these writers often made mistakes in their dates, a fact which no one can dispute. their very incorrectness is the more reason however for trusting them in this instance, for they happen to agree about the date of titian's birth; and, although neither of them expressly gives the year , they indicate separate and independent events in his life, the one, dolce, at the beginning, the other, vasari, at the end, which when looked into give the same result. moreover, be dolce ever so anxious to cry up his hero titian, and make him out to have been precocious, and be vasari ever so inexact in his chronology, we must remember that, when both of them wrote, the presumption of unusual longevity had not arisen, and that their evidence therefore is less likely to be prejudiced in this respect than the evidence given in obituary notices, such as occurs in borghini's _riposo_ of , and in the later writers like tizianello and ridolfi. that borghini therefore says titian was ninety-eight or ninety-nine when he died, and that tizianello and ridolfi, thirty-eight and sixty-four years later respectively, put him down at ninety-nine, is by no means proof that such was the case. it would seem that there had been some speculation before and after titian's death as to his exact age; that no one quite knew for certain; and that titian with the credulousness of old age had come to regard himself as well-nigh a centenarian. be this as it may, i still hold that the evidence of dolce and vasari that titian's birth occurred in is more trustworthy than either the evidence found in the three spanish letters, or the evidence as given in the obituary notices of borghini and others. one word more. if titian was born in , instead of - , it does make a great difference in the story of his own career; and, what is more, the history of venetian art in the early sixteenth century, as it centres round giorgione, palma, and titian, will have to be carefully reconsidered. herbert cook. notes: [ ] the picture now hangs in the academia at venice. [ ] e.g. the "sacred and profane love" (so-called) in the borghese gallery; the "s. mark" of the salute; the "concert" in the pitti; the "tribute money" at dresden; the "madonna of the cherries" at vienna, etc., which one or other of his biographers assign to the years - . [ ] _the life and times of titian_, vols., . [ ] _the earlier and later work of titian. portfolio_, october and july . [ ] _tizian_. berlin, . [ ] _la vie et l'oeuvre de titien_: paris, . [ ] see crowe and cavalcaselle: _titian_, i. . the fact that titian's name does not occur in these records is curious and suggestive. [ ] ed. _sansoni_, p. . the translation is that of blashfield and hopkins. bell, . [ ] _ibid_. p. . [ ] _ibid_. p. . [ ] the translation is that of crowe and cavalcaselle. _titian_, ii. . the original is given by them at p. . [ ] quoted from crowe and cavalcaselle. [ ] crowe and cavalcaselle. _titian_, ii. . [ ] there is a collection of these in a volume in the british museum. [ ] before the discovery of the letter to philip, messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle were quite prepared to admit that titian was born "after " (vide _n. italian painting_, ii. , ). unfortunately, they took the evidence of the letter as final, but finding themselves chronologically in difficulties, they shrewdly remark in their _titian_, i. , note: "the writers of these lines thought, and _still think_, titian younger than either giorgione or palma. they were, however, inclined to transpose titian's birthday to a later date than , rather than put back those of palma and giorgione to an earlier period, and in this they made a mistake." perhaps they were not so far wrong after all! [ ] for this most amusing letter see crowe and cavalcaselle. _titian_, i. p. . [ ] the evidence afforded by titian's own portraits of himself (at berlin and in the uffizi) is inconclusive, as we do not know the exact years they were painted. the portrait at madrid, painted , might represent a man of seventy-three or eighty-six, it is hard to say which. but there is a woodcut of (_vide_ gronau, p. ) which surely shows titian at the age of sixty-one rather than seventy-four; and, finally, paul veronese's great "marriage at cana" (in the louvre), which was painted between june and september , distinctly points to titian being then a man of seventy-four and not eighty-seven. he is represented, as is well known, seated in the group of musicians in the centre, and playing the contrabasso. [ ] _jahrbuch der sammlungen des a.h. kaiserhauses_, vii. p. _ff_ . [ ] dr. ludwig had the kindness to write to me on this subject: "among the thousands of signatures of painters which i have seen i have never come across the signature _maestro_. of course, someone else can describe a painter as master; he himself always subscribes himself _pittor, pictor_, or _depentor_." [ ] dr. gronau further points out (in a letter recently sent to the writer) that titian, writing to the emperor in , says: "i should have liked to take them (i.e. the paintings) to your majesty in person, but that my age and the length of the journey forbade such a course" (c. and c. ii. ). writing also in to granvella he refers to his "vechia vita." would not such expressions (asks dr. gronau) be more applicable to a man of sixty-eight and seventy-one respectively than to one of only fifty-six and fifty-nine? [ ] xxiv. band. heft, p. . [ ] january , pp. - . [ ] quoted from crowe and cavalcaselle. ii. . the spanish original is given at p. . [ ] i have quoted titian's letter in full in the _nineteenth century_. that of the spanish consul is given in the _jahrbuch der sammlungen des a.h. kaiserhauses_, vii. p. , from which i extract the passage: "el dicho ticiano besa pies y manos de v.m., y suplica umilmente a v.m. mande le sea pagado lo que le ha corrido de las pensiones de que v.m. le tiene echo merced en milan y en esa corte, y la trata de napoles, y con los años de su edad servira a v.m. hasta la muerte." [ ] i have quoted this letter also in full in the _nineteenth century._ i am indebted to m. salomon reinach for making this point (_chronique des arts_, feb. , , p. , where he expresses himself a convert to my views). catalogue of the works of giorgione arranged according to the galleries in which they are contained austria-hungary buda-pesth gallery. portrait of a young man. [no. .] _esterhazy collection_. (see p. .) two figures standing. [no. .] copy of a portion of giorgione's lost picture of the "birth of paris." these are the two shepherds. (see p. .) the whole composition was engraved by th. von kessel for the _theatrum pictorium_ under giorgione's name. the original picture was seen and described by the anonimo in . vienna gallery. evander and his son pallas showing to aeneas the future site of rome. canvas, ft. x ft. in. [no. .] seen by the anonimo in , in venice, and said by him to have been finished by sebastiano del piombo. (see p. .) _collection of the archduke leopold william, and registered in the inventory of_ . adoration of the shepherds, or nativity. wood, ft. x ft. in. [no. .] inferior replica by giorgione of the beaumont picture in london. i have sought to identify this piece with the picture "da una nocte," painted by giorgione for taddeo contarini. (see p. and appendix, where the original document is quoted.) _from the collection of the archduke leopold william, and registered in the inventory of as a giorgione._ virgin and child. wood, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] known as the "gipsy madonna," and ascribed to titian. _collection of the archduke leopold william._ (see p. .) portrait of a man. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] commonly, though erroneously, called "the physician parma," and ascribed to titian. _collection of the archduke leopold william._ (see p. .) david with the head of goliath. wood, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] copy after a lost original, which is thus described by vasari: "a david (which, according to common report, is a portrait of the master himself) with long locks, reaching to the shoulders, as was the custom of that time, and the colouring is so fresh and animating that the face appears to be rather real than painted; the breast is covered with armour, as is the arm with which he holds the head of goliath." _this picture was at that day in the house of the patriarch of aquileia; the copy can be traced back to the collection of the archduke leopold william at brussels._ (see p. .) herr wickhoff, however, seems to think that, were the repaints removed, the vienna picture might prove to be giorgione's original painting. see berenson's _study and criticism of italian art_, vol. i. p. , note. british isles london, national gallery. adoration of the magi, or the epiphany. panel. in. x ft. in. [no. .] _from the leigh court sale, ._ (see p. .) unknown subject, possibly the golden age. panel. ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] now catalogued as "school of barbarelli." (see p. .) _purchased in at the sale of the bohn collection as a giorgione. formerly in the aldobrandini palace, rome, where it was bought by mr. day for the marquis of bristol, but afterwards sold at christie's to mr. white, and by him for £ . s. to bohn._ portrait of a man, possibly prospero colonna. transposed in from wood to canvas, ft. in. x ft. [no. .] catalogued as "portrait of a poet," by palma vecchio. _formerly in possession of mr. tomline, and purchased in from m. edmond beaucousin at paris._ it was then called the portrait of ariosto by titian. (see p. .) a knight in armour, probably s. liberale. wood, ft. in. x in. [no. .] _formerly in the collection of benjamin west, p.r.a., and bequeathed to the national gallery by mr. samuel rogers in ._ (see p. .) venus and adonis. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] catalogued as "venetian school," and more recently as "school of giorgione." _purchased in as a giorgione at the hamilton palace sale._ (see p. .) glasgow gallery. the adulteress before christ. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] _ex m'lellan collection._ (see p. .) two musicians. panel. ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] recently attributed to campagnola. said to be titian and giorgione, playing violin and violoncello. the former attribution to giorgione is probably correct. _graham-gilbert collection._ new gallery, venetian exhibition, . [no. .] hampton court. shepherd boy. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] _from charles i. collection_, where it was called a giorgione. (see p. for a suggestion as to its possible authorship.) buckingham palace. three figures. half-length; two men, and a woman fainting. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. ascribed to titian, but probably derived from a giorgione original. other versions are said (c. and c. ii. ) to have been at the hague and in the buonarroti collection at florence. the london picture is so damaged and repainted, although still of splendid colouring, as to preclude all certainty of judgment. _formerly in charles i. collection._ mr. wentworth beaumont's collection. adoration of the shepherds, or nativity. wood, ft. in. x ft. (about). _from the gallery of cardinal fesch_, and presumably the same as the picture in the collection of james ii. i have sought to identify this piece with the picture "da una nocte," painted by giorgione for vittorio beccare (see p. , and appendix quoting the original document.) mr. r.h. benson's collection. holy family. wood, in. x in. new gallery, . [no. .] (see p. .) madonna and child. wood, ft. in. x ft. in. new gallery, . [no. , under titian's name.] (see p. .) _from the burghley house collection._ portrait of a man. canvas, in. x in. copy of a lost original. three-quarter length; life-size; standing towards right; head facing; hands resting on a column, glove in left; black dress, cut square at throat. new gallery, . [no. , as "unknown."] (see p. .) cobham hall, the earl of darnley's collection. portrait of a man. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. erroneously called ariosto, and ascribed to titian. i have sought to identify this with the "portrait of a gentleman" of the barberigo family, said by vasari to have been painted by titian at the age of eighteen. (see p. .) heron court, the earl of malmesbury. the judgment of paris. canvas, in. x in. copy of an unidentified original, of which other versions are to be found at dresden, venice (pal. albuzio), and christiania. this one is probably a bolognese repetition of the seventeenth century. ridolfi mentions this subject in his list of giorgione's works. new gallery, . [no. .] hertford house, wallace collection. venus disarming cupid. ft. in. x ft. [no. .] the picture was engraved as a giorgione when in the orleans gallery. (see p. .) kent house, the late louisa lady ashburton. two figures in a landscape. panel. in. x in. the damaged state precludes any certainty of judgment. the composition is that of the adrastus and hypsipyle picture; the colouring recalls the national gallery "golden age(?)." if an original, it is quite an early work. new gallery, . [no. .] two figures (half-lengths), a woman and a man. copy after a missing original, and in the style of the figures at oldenburg. (see venturi, _la gall. crespi_.) this or the original was engraved as a giorgione in by dom. cunego ex tabula romae in aedibus burghesianis asservata. kingston lacy, collection of mr. ralph bankes. the judgment of solomon. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. mentioned by dr. waagen, suppl. ridolfi ( ) mentions: "in casa grimani da santo ermagora la sentenza di salomone, di bella macchia, colla figura del ministro non finita." afterwards in the marescalchi gallery at bologna, where ( ) it was seen by lord byron, who especially praised it (vide _life and letters_, ed. by moore, p. ), and at whose suggestion it was purchased by his friend mr. bankes. (see p. .) exhibited royal academy, . a painted ceiling. with four putti climbing over a circular balcony, seen in steep perspective, and covered with beautiful vine leaves and flowers. this is said to have been painted by giorgione in the last year of his life ( ) for the palace of grimani, patriarch of aquileia. admirably preserved, and most likely a genuine work. temple newsam, collection of the hon. mrs meynell-ingram. portrait of a man. traditionally ascribed to titian. just under life-size; he holds a black hat. blue-black silk dress with sleeve of pinky red and golden brown gloves. dark auburn hair. dark grey marble wall behind. in excellent preservation. (see p. .) collection of sir charles turner. the adulteress before christ. a free venetian repetition, perhaps based on an alternative design for the glasgow picture. (see p. .) france. louvre. fÊte champÊtre, or pastoral symphony. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. _said to have been in charles i. collection, and sold to louis xiv. by jabuch._ (see p. .) holy family and saints catherine and sebastian, with donor. wood, ft. in. x ft. in. perhaps left incomplete by giorgione at his death, and finished by sebastiano del piombo. (see p. .) _from charles i. collection._ germany. berlin gallery. portrait of a young man. _acquired from dr. richten_ (see p. .) berlin, collection of herr von kauffmann. sta. giustina. a small seated figure with the unicorn. recently acquired at cologne, and known to the writer only by photograph and description, but tentatively accepted as genuine. dresden gallery. venus. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] formerly catalogued as a copy by sassoferrato after titian. restored by morelli to giorgione, and universally accepted as such. mentioned by the anonimo and ridolfi, and said to have been completed by titian. (see p. .) the horoscope. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. copy after a lost original. c. and c. suggest girolamo pennacchi as possible author. it bears the este arms. _from the manfrini and barker collections._ (see _gazette des beaux arts_, , tom. xxx. p. .) judgment of paris. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. one of several copies of a lost original. [see under british isles--heron court.] italy bergamo, gallery. orpheus and eurydice. wood, ft. in, x ft. in. [no. , lochis section.] (see p. .) madonna and child. wood, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. , lochis section, as "titian."] the composition is very similar to mr. benson's "madonna and child" (_q.v._). (see p. .) the adulteress before christ. ft. in. x ft. in. [no. , carrara section.] later copy, with slight variations, of the glasgow picture, ascribed to cariani, and in a dirty state. (see p. .) castelfranco, duomo. madonna and child enthroned, ss. liberale and francis below. wood, ft. in. x ft. in. (see p. .) florence, pitti gallery. the concert. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] described by ridolfi and boschini. an old copy is at hyde park house, another in the palazzo doria, rome. (see p. .) the three ages. wood, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] by c. and c. ascribed to lotto, by morelli to giorgione. (see p. .) nymph and satyr. canvas. [no. .] (see p. .) florence, uffizi gallery. trial of moses, or ordeal by fire. canvas. figures one-eighth life-size. [no. .] _from poggio imperiale._(see p. .) judgment of solomon. companion piece to last. wood. [no. .] (see p. .) knight of malta. canvas. bust, life-size. [no. .] the letters xxxv probably refer to the man's age. mr. dickes (_magazine of art_, april ) thinks he is stefano colonna, who died . (see p. .) milan, crespi collection. portrait of caterina cornaro. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. _from the alessandro martinengo gallery, brescia ( ), thence to collection francesco riccardi, bergamo, where c. and c. saw it in ._ they state it was engraved in the line series of sala. it has been known traditionally both as caterina cornaro and "la schiavona." (see p. .) in the signature t.v. it is clear that the v represents the last letter but one in titianvs. the first three letters can just be made out. there are many _pentimenti_ on the marble parapet, which seems to have been painted over the dress. padua, gallery. two _cassone_ panels with mythological scenes. wood, about ft. x ft. each. [nos. , .] (see p. .) two very small panels with mythological scenes, one representing leda and the swan. wood, about in. x in. each. [nos. , .] (see p. .) rome, borghese gallery. portrait of a lady. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. (see p. .) national gallery, pal. corsini. s. george and the dragon. _recently acquired._ (tentatively accepted from the photograph. see p. .) rovigo, gallery. madonna and child. [no. .] repetition by titian of giorgione's original at vienna (see p. .) a small seated figure. danae? [no. .] copy of a missing original. venice, academy. storm at sea calmed by s. mark. wood, ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] _from the scuola di s. marco_, where it was companion piece to paris bordone's "fisherman and doge." ascribed by vasari to palma vecchio, by zanetti to giorgione. too damaged to admit of definite judgment. (see p. .) three figures. half-lengths; a woman fainting, supported by a man; another behind. modern copy by fabris of apparently a missing original. can this be the picture mentioned by c. and c. as in the possession of the king of holland? (c. and c. ii. , note.) _cf_. also, notes to sansoni's _vasari_, iv. p. . another version is at buckingham palace (_q.v_.), but it differs in detail from this copy. seminario. apollo and daphne. _cassone_ panel. wood. small figures, much defaced. (see p. .) church of san rocco. christ bearing the cross. panel. busts large as life. about ft. x ft. christ clad in pale grey, head turned three-quarters looking out of the picture, auburn hair and beard, bears cross. he is dragged forward by an elderly man nude to waist. another man in profile to left. an old man with white beard just visible behind christ. (see p. .) pal. albuzio. judgment of paris. another version of this subject, of which copies exist at christiania, lord malmesbury's, and dresden. pal. giovanelli. adrastus and hypsipyle. canvas, ft. in. x ft. in. described by the anonimo in the house of gabriel vendramin ( ). (see p. .) statius (lib. iv. _ff_.) describes how king adrastus, wandering through the woods in search of a spring to quench the thirst of his troops, encounters by chance queen hypsipyle, who had been driven out of lemnos by the wicked women, who had resolved to slay their husbands, and she had taken refuge in the service of the king of nemea, in capacity of nurse. ex _manfrini palace._ pal. querini-stampalia. portrait of a man. unfinished. wood, ft. in. square. (see p. .) norway. christiania. judgment of paris. another version of this subject, of which copies exist at lord malmesbury's, dresden, and venice. russia. st. petersburg, hermitage gallery. judith. ft. in. x ft. in. [no. .] once ascribed to raphael, and engraved as such (in ), by h.h. quitter, and afterwards by several other artists. dr. waagen pronounced it to be moretto's work, and accordingly the name was changed; as such braun has photographed it. it is now officially recognised rightly as a giorgione (_vide_ catalogue of ). _brought from italy to france, and eventually in crozat's possession_. (see p. .) virgin and child. ft. in. x ft. . [no. .] _acquired at paris in by prince troubetzkoy as a titian_, under which name it is still registered. (see p. , where mr. claude phillips's suggestion that it may be a giorgione is discussed.) spain. madrid, prado gallery. madonna and child and saints francis and roch. canvas, ft. x ft. in. [no. .] _from the escurial_; restored to giorgione by morelli, and now officially recognised as his work. (see p. .) united states. boston, collection of mrs. gardner. christ bearing the cross. wood, ft. in. x ft. in. several variations and repetitions exist. (see p. .) _till lately in the casa loschi at vicenza._ * * * * * a few drawings by giorgione meet with general recognition, but, like his paintings, they appear to have been unnecessarily restricted by an over-anxiety on the part of critics to leave him only the best. e.g. the drawing at windsor for a part of an "adoration of the shepherds," is, no doubt, a preliminary design for the beaumont or vienna pictures. the limits of the present book will not allow a discussion on the subject, but we may remark that, like all venetian artists, giorgione made few preliminary sketches, concerning himself less with design and composition than with harmony of colour, light and shade, and "effect." the engraving by marcantonio commonly called "the dream of raphael," is now known to be derived from giorgione, to whom the subject was suggested by a passage in servius' _commentary on virgil_ (lib. iii. v. ). (see wickhoff, loc. cit.) list of giorgione's pictures cited by "the anonimo," as being in his day ( - ) in private possession at venice.[ ] casa taddeo contarini ( ). (i) the three philosophers (since identified as aeneas, evander, and pallas, in the vienna gallery), (ii) aeneas and anchises in hades. (in) the birth of paris. (since identified by the engraving of th. von kessel. a copy of the part representing the two shepherds is at buda-pesth.) casa jeronimo marcello ( ). (i) portrait of m. jeronimo armed, showing his back and turning his head. (ii) a nude venus in a landscape with cupid. finished by titian. (since identified as the dresden venus.) (in) s. jerome reading. casa m. anton. venier ( ). a soldier armed to the waist. casa g. vendramin ( ). (i) landscape with soldier and gipsy. (since identified as the adrastus and hypsipyle of the pal. giovanelli, venice.) (ii) the dead christ on the tomb, supported by one angel. retouched by titian. (this can hardly be the celebrated pietà in the monte di pietà at treviso, as there are here three angels. m. lafenestre, in his _life of titian_, reproduces an engraving answering to the above description, but it is hard to believe this mannered composition is to be traced back to giorgione.) casa zuane ram ( ). (i) a youth, half-length, holding an arrow. (ii) head of a shepherd boy, who holds a fruit. casa a. pasqualino. (i) copy of no. (i) just mentioned. (ii) head of s. james, with pilgrim staff (or, may be, a copy). casa andrea odoni ( ). s. jerome, nude, seated in a desert by moonlight. copy after giorgione. casa michiel contarini ( ). a pen drawing of a nude figure in a landscape. the painting of the same subject belonged to the anonimo. casa piero servio ( ). portrait of his father. it is noteworthy that two of the above pieces are cited as copies, from which we may infer that giorgione's productions were already, at this early date, enjoying such a vogue as to call for their multiplication at the hands of others, and we can readily understand how, in course of time, the fabrication of "giorgiones" became a profitable business. notes: [ ] _notizie d'opere di disegno_. ed. frizzoni. bologna, . [illustration: plate --mona lisa. frontispiece in the louvre. no. . ft ½ ins. by ft. ins. ( . x . )] leonardo da vinci by maurice w. brockwell illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] "leonardo," wrote an english critic as far back as , "was a man so happy in his genius, so consummate in his profession, so accomplished in the arts, so knowing in the sciences, and withal, so much esteemed by the age wherein he lived, his works so highly applauded by the ages which have succeeded, and his name and memory still preserved with so much veneration by the present age--that, if anything could equal the merit of the man, it must be the success he met with. moreover, 'tis not in painting alone, but in philosophy, too, that leonardo surpassed all his brethren of the 'pencil.'" this admirable summary of the great florentine painter's life's work still holds good to-day. contents his birth his early training his early works first visit to milan in the east back in milan the virgin of the rocks the last supper the court of milan leonardo leaves milan mona lisa battle of anghiari again in milan in rome in france his death his art his mind his maxims his spell his descendants list of illustrations plate i. mona lisa in the louvre ii. annunciation in the uffizi gallery, florence iii. virgin of the rocks in the national gallery, london iv. the last supper in the refectory of santa maria delle grazie, milan v. copy of the last supper in the diploma gallery, burlington house vi. head of christ in the brera gallery, milan vii. portrait (presumed) of lucrezia crivelli in the louvre viii. madonna, infant christ, and st anne. in the louvre his birth leonardo da vinci, the many-sided genius of the italian renaissance, was born, as his name implies, at the little town of vinci, which is about six miles from empoli and twenty miles west of florence. vinci is still very inaccessible, and the only means of conveyance is the cart of a general carrier and postman, who sets out on his journey from empoli at sunrise and sunset. outside a house in the middle of the main street of vinci to-day a modern and white-washed bust of the great artist is pointed to with much pride by the inhabitants. leonardo's traditional birthplace on the outskirts of the town still exists, and serves now as the headquarters of a farmer and small wine exporter. leonardo di ser piero d'antonio di ser piero di ser guido da vinci--for that was his full legal name--was the natural and first-born son of ser piero, a country notary, who, like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, followed that honourable vocation with distinction and success, and who subsequently--when leonardo was a youth--was appointed notary to the signoria of florence. leonardo's mother was one caterina, who afterwards married accabriga di piero del vaccha of vinci. [illustration: plate ii.--annunciation in the uffizi gallery, florence. no. . ft ins. by ft ins. ( . x . ) although this panel is included in the uffizi catalogue as being by leonardo, it is in all probability by his master, verrocchio.] the date of leonardo's birth is not known with any certainty. his age is given as five in a taxation return made in by his grandfather antonio, in whose house he was educated; it is therefore concluded that he was born in . leonardo's father ser piero, who afterwards married four times, had eleven children by his third and fourth wives. is it unreasonable to suggest that leonardo may have had these numbers in mind in - when he was painting in his famous "last supper" the figures of eleven apostles and one outcast? however, ser piero seems to have legitimised his "love child" who very early showed promise of extraordinary talent and untiring energy. his early training practically nothing is known about leonardo's boyhood, but vasari informs us that ser piero, impressed with the remarkable character of his son's genius, took some of his drawings to andrea del verrocchio, an intimate friend, and begged him earnestly to express an opinion on them. verrocchio was so astonished at the power they revealed that he advised ser piero to send leonardo to study under him. leonardo thus entered the studio of andrea del verrocchio about - . in the workshop of that great florentine sculptor, goldsmith, and artist he met other craftsmen, metal workers, and youthful painters, among whom was botticelli, at that moment of his development a jovial _habitué_ of the poetical supper club, who had not yet given any premonitions of becoming the poet, mystic, and visionary of later times. there also leonardo came into contact with that unoriginal painter lorenzo di credi, his junior by seven years. he also, no doubt, met perugino, whom michelangelo called "that blockhead in art." the genius and versatility of the vincian painter was, however, in no way dulled by intercourse with lesser artists than himself; on the contrary he vied with each in turn, and readily outstripped his fellow pupils. in , at the age of twenty, he was admitted into the guild of florentine painters. unfortunately very few of leonardo's paintings have come down to us. indeed there do not exist a sufficient number of finished and absolutely authentic oil pictures from his own hand to afford illustrations for this short chronological sketch of his life's work. the few that do remain, however, are of so exquisite a quality--or were until they were "comforted" by the uninspired restorer--that we can unreservedly accept the enthusiastic records of tradition in respect of all his works. to rightly understand the essential characteristics of leonardo's achievements it is necessary to regard him as a scientist quite as much as an artist, as a philosopher no less than a painter, and as a draughtsman rather than a colourist. there is hardly a branch of human learning to which he did not at one time or another give his eager attention, and he was engrossed in turn by the study of architecture--the foundation-stone of all true art--sculpture, mathematics, engineering and music. his versatility was unbounded, and we are apt to regret that this many-sided genius did not realise that it is by developing his power within certain limits that the great master is revealed. leonardo may be described as the most universal genius of christian times-perhaps of all time. [illustration: plate iii.-the virgin of the rocks in the national gallery. no. . ft. ½ in. h. by ft ½ in. w. ( . x . ) this picture was painted in milan about by ambrogio da predis under the supervision and guidance of leonardo da vinci, the essential features of the composition being borrowed from the earlier "vierge aux rochers," now in the louvre.] his early works to about the year belongs the small picture of the "annunciation," now in the louvre, which after being the subject of much contention among european critics has gradually won its way to general recognition as an early work by leonardo himself. that it was painted in the studio of verrocchio was always admitted, but it was long catalogued by the louvre authorities under the name of lorenzo di credi. it is now, however, attributed to leonardo (no. a). such uncertainties as to attribution were common half a century ago when scientific art criticism was in its infancy. another painting of the "annunciation," which is now in the uffizi gallery (no. ) is still officially attributed to leonardo. this small picture, which has been considerably repainted, and is perhaps by andrea del verrocchio, leonardo's master, is the subject of plate ii. to january belongs leonardo's earliest dated work, a pen-and-ink drawing--"a wide view over a plain," now in the uffizi. the inscription together with the date in the top left-hand corner is reversed, and proves a remarkable characteristic of leonardo's handwriting--viz., that he wrote from right to left; indeed, it has been suggested that he did this in order to make it difficult for any one else to read the words, which were frequently committed to paper by the aid of peculiar abbreviations. leonardo continued to work in his master's studio till about . on january st of the following year, , he was commissioned to paint an altar-piece for the chapel of st. bernardo in the palazzo vecchio, and he was paid twenty-five florins on account. he, however, never carried out the work, and after waiting five years the signoria transferred the commission to domenico ghirlandajo, who also failed to accomplish the task, which was ultimately, some seven years later, completed by filippino lippi. this panel of the "madonna enthroned, st. victor, st. john baptist, st. bernard, and st. zenobius," which is dated february , , is now in the uffizi. that leonardo was by this time a facile draughtsman is evidenced by his vigorous pen-and-ink sketch--now in a private collection in paris--of bernardo bandini, who in the pazzi conspiracy of april stabbed giuliano de' medici to death in the cathedral at florence during high mass. the drawing is dated december , , the date of bandini's public execution in florence. in that year also, no doubt, was painted the early and, as might be expected, unfinished "st. jerome in the desert," now in the vatican, the under-painting being in umber and _terraverte_. its authenticity is vouched for not only by the internal evidence of the picture itself, but also by the similarity of treatment seen in a drawing in the royal library at windsor. cardinal fesch, a princely collector in rome in the early part of the nineteenth century, found part of the picture--the torso--being used as a box-cover in a shop in rome. he long afterwards discovered in a shoemaker's shop a panel of the head which belonged to the torso. the jointed panel was eventually purchased by pope pius ix., and added to the vatican collection. in march leonardo was commissioned to paint an altar-piece for the monks of st. donato at scopeto, for which payment in advance was made to him. that he intended to carry out this contract seems most probable. he, however, never completed the picture, although it gave rise to the supremely beautiful cartoon of the "adoration of the magi," now in the uffizi (no. ). as a matter of course it is unfinished, only the under-painting and the colouring of the figures in green on a brown ground having been executed. the rhythm of line, the variety of attitude, the profound feeling for landscape and an early application of chiaroscuro effect combine to render this one of his most characteristic productions. vasari tells us that while verrocchio was painting the "baptism of christ" he allowed leonardo to paint in one of the attendant angels holding some vestments. this the pupil did so admirably that his remarkable genius clearly revealed itself, the angel which leonardo painted being much better than the portion executed by his master. this "baptism of christ," which is now in the accademia in florence and is in a bad state of preservation, appears to have been a comparatively early work by verrocchio, and to have been painted in - , when leonardo would be about thirty years of age. to about this period belongs the superb drawing of the "warrior," now in the malcolm collection in the british museum. this drawing may have been made while leonardo still frequented the studio of andrea del verrocchio, who in was commissioned to execute the equestrian statue of bartolommeo colleoni, which was completed twenty years later and still adorns the campo di san giovanni e paolo in venice. first visit to milan about leonardo entered the service of ludovico sforza, having first written to his future patron a full statement of his various abilities in the following terms:-- "having, most illustrious lord, seen and pondered over the experiments made by those who pass as masters in the art of inventing instruments of war, and having satisfied myself that they in no way differ from those in general use, i make so bold as to solicit, without prejudice to any one, an opportunity of informing your excellency of some of my own secrets." [illustration: plate iv.-the last supper refectory of st. maria delle grazie, milan. about feet ins. h. by ft. ins. w. ( . x . )] he goes on to say that he can construct light bridges which can be transported, that he can make pontoons and scaling ladders, that he can construct cannon and mortars unlike those commonly used, as well as catapults and other engines of war; or if the fight should take place at sea that he can build engines which shall be suitable alike for defence as for attack, while in time of peace he can erect public and private buildings. moreover, he urges that he can also execute sculpture in marble, bronze, or clay, and, with regard to painting, "can do as well as any one else, no matter who he may be." in conclusion, he offers to execute the proposed bronze equestrian statue of francesco sforza "which shall bring glory and never-ending honour to that illustrious house." it was about , the probable date of leonardo's migration from florence to milan, that he painted the "vierge aux rochers," now in the louvre (no. ). it is an essentially florentine picture, and although it has no pedigree earlier than , when it was in the royal collection at fontainebleau, it is undoubtedly much earlier and considerably more authentic than the "virgin of the rocks," now in the national gallery (plate iii.). he certainly set to work about this time on the projected statue of francesco sforza, but probably then made very little progress with it. he may also in that year or the next have painted the lost portrait of cecilia gallerani, one of the mistresses of ludovico sforza. it has, however, been surmised that that lady's features are preserved to us in the "lady with a weasel," by leonardo's pupil boltraffio, which is now in the czartoryski collection at cracow. in the east the absence of any record of leonardo in milan, or elsewhere in italy, between and has led critics to the conclusion, based on documentary evidence of a somewhat complicated nature, that he spent those years in the service of the sultan of egypt, travelling in armenia and the east as his engineer. back in milan in he was again resident in milan as general artificer--using that term in its widest sense--to ludovico. among his various activities at this period must be mentioned the designs he made for the cupola of the cathedral at milan, and the scenery he constructed for "il paradiso," which was written by bernardo bellincioni on the occasion of the marriage of gian galeazzo with isabella of aragon. about - he began his celebrated "treatise on painting" and recommenced work on the colossal equestrian statue of francesco sforza, which was doubtless the greatest of all his achievements as a sculptor. it was, however, never cast in bronze, and was ruthlessly destroyed by the french bowmen in april , on their occupation of milan after the defeat of ludovico at the battle of novara. this is all the more regrettable as no single authentic piece of sculpture has come down to us from leonardo's hand, and we can only judge of his power in this direction from his drawings, and the enthusiastic praise of his contemporaries. [illustration: plate v.--copy of the last supper in the diploma gallery, burlington house this copy is usually ascribed to marco d'oggiono, but some critics claim that it is by gianpetrino. it is the same size as the original.] the virgin of the rocks the "virgin of the rocks" (plate iii.), now in the national gallery, corresponds exactly with a painting by leonardo which was described by lomazzo about as being in the chapel of the conception in the church of st. francesco at milan. this picture, the only _oeuvre_ in this gallery with which leonardo's name can be connected, was brought to england in by gavin hamilton, and sold by him to the marquess of lansdowne, who subsequently exchanged it for another picture in the collection of the earl of suffolk at charlton park, wiltshire, from whom it was eventually purchased by the national gallery for £ . signor emilio motta, some fifteen years ago, unearthed in the state archives of milan a letter or memorial from giovanni ambrogio da predis and leonardo da vinci to the duke of milan, praying him to intervene in a dispute, which had arisen between the petitioners and the brotherhood of the conception, with regard to the valuation of certain works of art furnished for the chapel of the brotherhood in the church of st. francesco. the only logical deduction which can be drawn from documentary evidence is that the "vierge aux rochers" in the louvre is the picture, painted about , which between and gave rise to the dispute, and that, when it was ultimately sold by the artists for the full price asked to some unknown buyer, the national gallery version was executed for a smaller price mainly by ambrogio da predisunder the supervision, and with the help, of leonardo to be placed in the chapel of the conception. the differences between the earlier, the more authentic, and the more characteristically florentine "vierge aux rochers," in the louvre, and the "virgin of the rocks," in the national gallery, are that in the latter picture the hand of the angel, seated by the side of the infant christ, is raised and pointed in the direction of the little st. john the baptist; that the st john has a reed cross and the three principal figures have gilt nimbi, which were, however, evidently added much later. in the national gallery version the left hand of the madonna, the christ's right hand and arm, and the forehead of st. john the baptist are freely restored, while a strip of the foreground right across the whole picture is ill painted and lacks accent. the head of the angel is, however, magnificently painted, and by leonardo; the panel, taken as a whole, is exceedingly beautiful and full of charm and tenderness. the last supper between and leonardo painted his _chef d'oeuvre_, the "last supper," (plate iv.) for the end wall of the refectory of the dominican convent of s. maria delle grazie at milan. it was originally executed in tempera on a badly prepared stucco ground and began to deteriorate a very few years after its completion. as early as it was half ruined. in the monks cut away a part of the fresco including the feet of the christ to make a doorway. in one michelangelo belotti, an obscure milanese painter, received £ for the worthless labour he bestowed on restoring it. he seems to have employed some astringent restorative which revived the colours temporarily, and then left them in deeper eclipse than before. in the fresco was again restored by mazza. in napoleon's cavalry, contrary to his express orders, turned the refectory into a stable, and pelted the heads of the figures with dirt. subsequently the refectory was used to store hay, and at one time or another it has been flooded. in the fresco was again restored, and in this restoration was effaced. in october professor cavenaghi completed the delicate task of again restoring it, and has, in the opinion of experts, now preserved it from further injury. in addition, the devices of ludovico and his duchess and a considerable amount of floral decoration by leonardo himself have been brought to light. leonardo has succeeded in producing the effect of the _coup de théâtre_ at the moment when jesus said "one of you shall betray me." instantly the various apostles realise that there is a traitor among their number, and show by their different gestures their different passions, and reveal their different temperaments. on the left of christ is st. john who is overcome with grief and is interrogated by the impetuous peter, near whom is seated judas iscariot who, while affecting the calm of innocence, is quite unable to conceal his inner feelings; he instinctively clasps the money-bag and in so doing upsets the salt-cellar. it will be remembered that the prior of the convent complained to ludovico sforza, duke of milan, that leonardo was taking too long to paint the fresco and was causing the convent considerable inconvenience. leonardo had his revenge by threatening to paint the features of the impatient prior into the face of judas iscariot. the incident has been quaintly told in the following lines:-- "padre bandelli, then, complains of me because, forsooth, i have not drawn a line upon the saviour's head; perhaps, then, he could without trouble paint that head divine. but think, oh signor duca, what should be the pure perfection of our saviour's face-- what sorrowing majesty, what noble grace, at that dread moment when he brake the bread, and those submissive words of pathos said: "'by one among you i shall be betrayed,'-- and say if 'tis an easy task to find even among the best that walk this earth, the fitting type of that divinest worth, that has its image solely in the mind. vainly my pencil struggles to express the sorrowing grandeur of such holiness. in patient thought, in ever-seeking prayer, i strive to shape that glorious face within, but the soul's mirror, dulled and dimmed by sin, reflects not yet the perfect image there. can the hand do before the soul has wrought; is not our art the servant of our thought? "and judas too, the basest face i see, will not contain his utter infamy; among the dregs and offal of mankind vainly i seek an utter wretch to find. he who for thirty silver coins could sell his lord, must be the devil's miracle. padre bandelli thinks it easy is to find the type of him who with a kiss betrayed his lord. well, what i can i'll do; and if it please his reverence and you, for judas' face i'm willing to paint his." * * * * * "... i dare not paint till all is ordered and matured within, hand-work and head-work have an earthly taint, but when the soul commands i shall begin; on themes like these i should not dare to dwell with our good prior--they to him would be mere nonsense; he must touch and taste and see, and facts, he says, are never mystical." [illustration: plate vi.--the head of christ in the brera gallery, milan. no. . ft. - / ins. by ft. ins. ( . x . )] the copy of the "last supper" (plate v.) by marco d'oggiono, now in the diploma gallery at burlington house, was made shortly after the original painting was completed. it gives but a faint echo of that sublime work "in which the ideal and the real were blended in perfect unity." this copy was long in the possession of the carthusians in their convent at pavia, and, on the suppression of that order and the sale of their effects in , passed into the possession of a grocer at milan. it was subsequently purchased for £ by the royal academy on the advice of sir thomas lawrence, who left no stone unturned to acquire also the original studies for the heads of the apostles. some of these in red and black chalk are now preserved in the royal library at windsor, where there are in all drawings by leonardo. several other old copies of the fresco exist, notably the one in the louvre. francis i. wished to remove the whole wall of the refectory to paris, but he was persuaded that that would be impossible; the constable de montmorency then had a copy made for the chapel of the château d'ecouen, whence it ultimately passed to the louvre. the singularly beautiful "head of christ" (plate vi.), now in the brera gallery at milan, is the original study for the head of the principal figure in the fresco painting of the "last supper." in spite of decay and restoration it expresses "the most elevated seriousness together with divine gentleness, pain on account of the faithlessness of his disciples, a full presentiment of his own death, and resignation to the will of his father." the court of milan ludovico, to whom leonardo was now court-painter, had married beatrice d'este, in , when she was only fifteen years of age. the young duchess, who at one time owned as many as eighty-four splendid gowns, refused to wear a certain dress of woven gold, which her husband had given her, if cecilia gallerani, the sappho of her day, continued to wear a very similar one, which presumably had been given to her by ludovico. having discarded cecilia, who, as her tastes did not lie in the direction of the convent, was married in to count ludovico bergamini, the duke in became enamoured of lucrezia crivelli, a lady-in-waiting to the duchess beatrice. leonardo, as court painter, perhaps painted a portrait, now lost, of lucrezia, whose features are more likely to be preserved to us in the portrait by ambrogio da predis, now in the collection of the earl of roden, than in the quite unauthenticated portrait (plate vii.), now in the louvre (no. ). on january , , beatrice spent three hours in prayer in the church of st. maria delle grazie, and the same night gave birth to a stillborn child. in a few hours she passed away, and from that moment ludovico was a changed man. he went daily to see her tomb, and was quite overcome with grief. in april , isabella d'este, beatrice's elder, more beautiful, and more graceful sister, "at the sound of whose name all the muses rise and do reverence" wrote to cecilia gallerani, or bergamini, asking her to lend her the portrait which leonardo had painted of her some fifteen years earlier, as she wished to compare it with a picture by giovanni bellini. cecilia graciously lent the picture--now presumably lost--adding her regret that it no longer resembled her. leonardo leaves milan among the last of leonardo da vinci's works in milan towards the end of was, probably, the superb cartoon of "the virgin and child with st. anne and st. john," now at burlington house. though little known to the general public, this large drawing on _carton_, or stiff paper, is one of the greatest of london's treasures, as it reveals the sweeping line of leonardo's powerful draughtsmanship. it was in the pompeo leoni, arconati, casnedi, and udney collections before passing to the royal academy. in the stormy times in milan foreboded the end of ludovico's reign. in april of that year we read of his giving a vineyard to leonardo; in september ludovico had to leave milan for the tyrol to raise an army, and on the th of the same month the city was sold by bernardino di corte to the french, who occupied it from to . ludovico may well have had in mind the figure of the traitor in the "last supper" when he declared that "since the days of judas iscariot there has never been so black a traitor as bernardino di corte." on october th louis xii. entered the city. before the end of the year leonardo, realising the necessity for his speedy departure, sent six hundred gold florins by letter of exchange to florence to be placed to his credit with the hospital of s. maria nuova. in the following year, ludovico having been defeated at novara, leonardo was a homeless wanderer. he left milan for mantua, where he drew a portrait in chalk of isabella d'este, which is now in the louvre. leonardo eventually arrived in florence about easter . after apparently working there in on a second cartoon, similar in most respects to the one he had executed in milan two years earlier, he travelled in umbria, visiting orvieto, pesaro, rimini, and other towns, acting as engineer and architect to cesare borgia, for whom he planned a navigable canal between cesena and porto cese-natico. [illustration: plate vii.-portrait (presumed) of lucrezia crivelli in the louvre. no. [ ]. ft by i ft ins. ( . x . ) this picture, although officially attributed to leonardo, is probably not by him, and almost certainly does not represent lucrezia crivelli. it was once known as a "portrait of a lady" and is still occasionally miscalled "la belle féronnière."] mona lisa early in he was back again in florence, and set to work in earnest on the "portrait of mona lisa" (plate i.), now in the louvre (no. ). lisa di anton maria di noldo gherardini was the daughter of antonio gherardini. in she married francesco di bartolommeo de zenobi del giocondo. it is from the surname of her husband that she derives the name of "la joconde," by which her portrait is officially known in the louvre. vasari is probably inaccurate in saying that leonardo "loitered over it for four years, and finally left it unfinished." he may have begun it in the spring of and, probably owing to having taken service under cesare borgia in the following year, put it on one side, ultimately completing it after working on the "battle of anghiari" in . vasari's eulogy of this portrait may with advantage be quoted: "whoever shall desire to see how far art can imitate nature may do so to perfection in this head, wherein every peculiarity that could be depicted by the utmost subtlety of the pencil has been faithfully reproduced. the eyes have the lustrous brightness and moisture which is seen in life, and around them are those pale, red, and slightly livid circles, also proper to nature. the nose, with its beautiful and delicately roseate nostrils, might be easily believed to be alive; the mouth, admirable in its outline, has the lips uniting the rose-tints of their colour with those of the face, in the utmost perfection, and the carnation of the cheek does not appear to be painted, but truly flesh and blood. he who looks earnestly at the pit of the throat cannot but believe that he sees the beating of the pulses. mona lisa was exceedingly beautiful, and while leonardo was painting her portrait, he took the precaution of keeping some one constantly near her to sing or play on instruments, or to jest and otherwise amuse her." leonardo painted this picture in the full maturity of his talent, and, although it is now little more than a monochrome owing to the free and merciless restoration to which it has been at times subjected, it must have created a wonderful impression on those who saw it in the early years of the sixteenth century. it is difficult for the unpractised eye to-day to form any idea of its original beauty. leonardo has here painted this worldly-minded woman--her portrait is much more famous than she herself ever was--with a marvellous charm and suavity, a finesse of expression never reached before and hardly ever equalled since. contrast the head of the christ at milan, leonardo's conception of divinity expressed in perfect humanity, with the subtle and sphinx-like smile of this languorous creature. the landscape background, against which mona lisa is posed, recalls the severe, rather than exuberant, landscape and the dim vistas of mountain ranges seen in the neighbourhood of his own birthplace. the portrait was bought during the reign of francis i. for a sum which is to-day equal to about £ . leonardo, by the way, does not seem to have been really affected by any individual affection for any woman, and, like michelangelo and raphael, never married. in january , , leonardo was one of the members of the committee of artists summoned to advise the signoria as to the most suitable site for the erection of michelangelo's statue of "david," which had recently been completed. battle of anghiari in the following may he was commissioned by the signoria to decorate one of the walls of the council hall of the palazzo vecchio. the subject he selected was the "battle of anghiari." although he completed the cartoon, the only part of the composition which he eventually executed in colour was an incident in the foreground which dealt with the "battle of the standard." one of the many supposed copies of a study of this mural painting now hangs on the south-east staircase in the victoria and albert museum. it depicts the florentines under cardinal ludovico mezzarota scarampo fighting against the milanese under niccolò piccinino, the general of filippo maria visconti, on june , . again in milan leonardo was back in milan in may in the service of the french king, for whom he executed, apparently with the help of assistants, "the madonna, the infant christ, and saint anne" (plate viii.). the composition of this oil-painting seems to have been built up on the second cartoon, which he had made some eight years earlier, and which was apparently taken to france in and ultimately lost. in rome from - he was in rome, where giovanni de' medici had been elected pope under the title of leo x. he did not, however, work for the pope, although he resided in the vatican, his time being occupied in studying acoustics, anatomy, optics, geology, minerals, engineering, and geometry! in france at last in , three years before his death, leonardo left his native land for france, where he received from francis i. a princely income. his powers, however, had already begun to fail, and he produced very little in the country of his adoption. it is, nevertheless, only in the louvre that his achievements as a painter can to-day be adequately studied. [illustration: plate viii.-madonna, infant christ, and st. anne in the louvre. no. . ft. in. h. by ft. in. w. ( . x . ) painted between and with the help of assistants.] on october , , when he was resident at the manor house of cloux near amboise in touraine with francesco melzi, his friend and assistant, he showed three of his pictures to the cardinal of aragon, but his right hand was now paralysed, and he could "no longer colour with that sweetness with which he was wont, although still able to make drawings and to teach others." it was no doubt in these closing years of his life that he drew the "portrait of himself" in red chalk, now at turin, which is probably the only authentic portrait of him in existence. his death on april , --easter eve--exactly forty-five years before the birth of shakespeare, leonardo da vinci made his will, and on may of the same year he passed away. vasari informs us that leonardo, "having become old, lay sick for many months, and finding himself near death and being sustained in the arms of his servants and friends, devoutly received the holy sacrament. he was then seized with a paroxysm, the forerunner of death, when king francis i., who was accustomed frequently and affectionately to visit him, rose and supported his head to give him such assistance and to do him such favour as he could in the hope of alleviating his sufferings. the spirit of leonardo, which was most divine, conscious that he could attain to no greater honour, departed in the arms of the monarch, being at that time in the seventy-fifth year of his age." the not over-veracious chronicler, however, is here drawing largely upon his imagination. leonardo was only sixty-seven years of age, and the king was in all probability on that date at st. germain-en laye! thus died "mr. lionard de vincy, the noble milanese, painter, engineer, and architect to the king, state mechanician" and "former professor of painting to the duke of milan." "may god almighty grant him his eternal peace," wrote his friend and assistant francesco melzi. "every one laments the loss of a man whose like nature cannot produce a second time." his art leonardo, whose birth antedates that of michelangelo and raphael by twenty three and thirty-one years respectively, was thus in the forefront of the florentine renaissance, his life coinciding almost exactly with the best period of tuscan painting. leonardo was the first to investigate scientifically and to apply to art the laws of light and shade, though the preliminary investigations of piero della francesca deserve to be recorded. he observed with strict accuracy the subtleties of chiaroscuro--light and shade apart from colour; but, as one critic has pointed out, his gift of chiaroscuro cost the colour-life of many a noble picture. leonardo was "a tonist, not a colourist," before whom the whole book of nature lay open. it was not instability of character but versatility of mind which caused him to undertake many things that having commenced he afterwards abandoned, and the probability is that as soon as he saw exactly how he could solve any difficulty which presented itself, he put on one side the merely perfunctory execution of such a task. in the forster collection in the victoria and albert museum three of leonardo's note-books with sketches are preserved, and it is stated that it was his practice to carry about with him, attached to his girdle, a little book for making sketches. they prove that he was left-handed and wrote from right to left. his mind we can readily believe the statements of benvenuto cellini, the sixteenth-century goldsmith, that francis i. "did not believe that any other man had come into the world who had attained so great a knowledge as leonardo, and that not only as sculptor, painter, and architect, for beyond that he was a profound philosopher." it was cellini also who contended that "leonardo da vinci, michelangelo, and raphael are the book of the world." leonardo anticipated many eminent scientists and inventors in the methods of investigation which they adopted to solve the many problems with which their names are coupled. among these may be cited copernicus' theory of the earth's movement, lamarck's classification of vertebrate and invertebrate animals, the laws of friction, the laws of combustion and respiration, the elevation of the continents, the laws of gravitation, the undulatory theory of light and heat, steam as a motive power in navigation, flying machines, the invention of the camera obscura, magnetic attraction, the use of the stone saw, the system of canalisation, breech loading cannon, the construction of fortifications, the circulation of the blood, the swimming belt, the wheelbarrow, the composition of explosives, the invention of paddle wheels, the smoke stack, the mincing machine! it is, therefore, easy to see why he called "mechanics the paradise of the sciences." leonardo was a superman. his maxims the eye is the window of the soul. tears come from the heart and not from the brain. the natural desire of good men is knowledge. a beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not. every difficulty can be overcome by effort. time abides long enough for those who make use of it. miserable men, how often do you enslave yourselves to gain money! his spell the influence of leonardo was strongly felt in milan, where he spent so many of the best years of his life and founded a school of painting. he was a close observer of the gradation and reflex of light, and was capable of giving to his discoveries a practical and aesthetic form. his strong personal character and the fascination of his genius enthralled his followers, who were satisfied to repeat his types, to perpetuate the "grey-hound eye," and to make use of his little devices. among this group of painters may be mentioned boltraffio, who perhaps painted the "presumed portrait of lucrezia crivelli" (plate vii.), which is officially attributed in the louvre to the great master himself. his descendants signor uzielli has shown that one tommaso da vinci, a descendant of domenico (one of leonardo's brothers), was a few years ago a peasant at bottinacio near montespertoli, and had then in his possession the family papers, which now form part of the archives of the accademia dei lincei at rome. it was proved also that tommaso had given his eldest son "the glorious name of leonardo." none fra bartolommeo and andrea d'agnolo by leader scott author of "a nook in the apennines" re-edited by horace shipp and flora kendrick, a.r.b.s. _the reproductions in this series are from official photographs of the national collections, or from photographs by messrs. andersen, alinari or braun._ foreword michelangelo, leonardo, raphael: the three great names of the noblest period of the renaissance take our minds from the host of fine artists who worked alongside them. nevertheless beside these giants a whole host of exquisite artists have place, and not least among them the three painters with whom mr. leader scott has dealt in these pages. fra bartolommeo linking up with the religious art of the preceding period, with that of masaccio, of piero de cosimo, his senior student in the studio of cosimo roselli, and at last with that of the definitely "modern" painters of the renaissance, raphael, leonardo and michelangelo himself, is a transition painter in this supreme period. technique and the work of hand and brain are rapidly taking the place of inspiration and the desire to convey a message. the aesthetic sensation is becoming an end in itself. the scientific painters, perfecting their studies of anatomy and of perspective, having a conscious mastery over their tools and their mediums, are taking the place of such men as fra angelico. as a painter at this end of a period of transition--a painter whose spiritual leanings would undoubtedly have been with the earlier men, but whose period was too strong for him--fra bartolommeo is of particular interest; and albertinelli, for all the fiery surface difference of his outlook is too closely bound by the ties of his friendship for the frate to have any other viewpoint. andrea del sarto presents yet another phenomenon: that of the artist endowed with all the powers of craftsmanship yet serving an end neither basically spiritual nor basically aesthetic, but definitely professional. we have george vasari's word for it; and vasari's blame upon the extravagant and too-well-beloved lucrezia. to-day we are so accustomed to the idea of the professional attitude to art that we can accept it in andrea without concern. not that other and earlier artists were unconcerned with the aspect of payments. the history of italian art is full of quarrels and bickerings about prices, the calling in of referees to decide between patron and painter, demands and refusals of payment. even the unworldly fra bartolommeo was the centre of such quarrels, and although his vow of poverty forbade him to receive money for his work, the order to which he belonged stood out firmly for the _scudi_ which the frate's pictures brought them. in justice to andrea it must be added that this was not the only motive for his activities; it was not without cause that the men of his time called him "_senza errori_," the faultless painter; and the production of a vast quantity of his work rather than good prices for individual pictures made his art pay to the extent it did. a pot-boiler in masterpieces, his works have place in every gallery of importance, and he himself stands very close to the three greatest; men of the renaissance. both fra bartolommeo and albertinelli are little known in this country. practically nothing has been written about them and very few of their works are in either public galleries or private collections. it is in italy, of course, that one must study their originals, although the great collections usually include one or two. most interesting from the viewpoint of the study of art is the evolution of the work of the artist-monk as he came under the influence of the more dramatic modern and frankly sensational work of raphael, of the venetians and of michelangelo. in this case (many will say in that of the art of the world) this tendency detracted rather than helped the work. the draperies, the dramatic poses, the artistic sensation arrests the mind at the surface of the picture. it is indeed strange that this devout churchman should have succumbed to the temptation, and there are moments when one suspects that his somewhat spectacular pietism disguised the spirit of one whose mind had little to do with the mysticism of the mediaeval church. or perhaps it was that the strange friendship between him and albertinelli, the man of the cloister and the man of the world, effected some alchemy in the mind of each. the story of that lifelong friendship, strong enough to overcome the difficulties of a definite partnership between the strict life of the monastery and the busy life of the _bottega_, is one of the most fascinating in art history. mr. leader scott has in all three lives the opportunity for fascinating studies, and his book presents them to us with much of the flavour of the period in which they lived. perhaps to-day we should incline to modify his acceptance of the vasari attitude to lucrezia, especially since he himself tends to withdraw the charges against her, but leaves her as the villainess of the piece upon very little evidence. the inclusion of a chapter upon ghirlandajo, treated merely as a follower of fra bartolommeo, scarcely does justice in modern eyes to this fine artist, whose own day and generation did him such honour and paid him so well. but the author's general conclusions as to the place in art and the significance of the lives of the three painters with whom he is chiefly concerned remains unchallenged, and we have in the volume a necessary study to place alongside those of leonardo, of michelangelo and of raphael for an understanding of the culmination of the renaissance in italy. horace shipp. contents. fra bartolommeo. chapter i. thoughts on the renaissance ii. the "bottega" of cosimo roselli. a.d. - iii. the garden and the cloister. a.d. - iv. san marco. a.d. - v. fra bartolommeo in the convent. a.d. - vi. albertinelli in the world. a.d. - vii. convent partnership. a.d. - viii. close of life. a.d. - ix. part i.--scholars of fra bartolommeo part ii.--scholars of mariotto albertinelli x. ridolfo ghirlandajo andrea del sarto. chapter i. youth and early works. a.d. - ii. the servite cloister. a.d. - iii. social life and marriage. a.d. - iv. works in florence. a.d. - v. going to france. a.d. - vi. andrea and ottaviano de' medici. a.d. - vii. the plague and the siege. a.d. - viii. scholars of andrea del sarto bibliography index list of illustrations adoration. by bartolommeo procession to calvary. by ghirlandaio a sculptor. by andrea del sarto madonna and child with ss. john and elizabeth. by andrea del sarto the holy family. by bartolommeo the saviour. by albertinelli virgin and child. by andrea del sarto ecce homo. by bartolommeo fra bartolommeo. chapter i. thoughts on the renaissance. it seems to be a law of nature that progress, as well as time, should be marked by periods of alternate light and darkness--day and night. this law is nowhere more apparent than in the history of art. three times has the world been illuminated by the full brilliance of art, and three times has a corresponding period of darkness ensued. the first day dawned in egypt and assyria, and its works lie buried in the tombs of prehistoric pharaohs and ninevite kings. the second day the sun rose on the shores of many-isled greece, and shed its rays over etruria and rome, and ere it set, temples and palaces were flooded with beauty. the gods had taken human form, and were come to dwell with men. the third day arising in italy, lit up the whole western world with the glow of colour and fervour, and its fading rays light us yet. the first period was that of mythic art; the world like a child wondering at all around tried to express in myths the truths it could not comprehend. the second was pagan art which satisfies itself that in expressing the perfection of humanity, it unfolds divinity. the third era of christian art, conscious that the divine lies beyond the human, fails in aspiring to express infinitude. tracing one of these periods from its rise, how truly this similitude of the dawn of day is carried out. see at the first streak of light how dim, stiff, and soulless all things appear! trees and objects bear precisely the relation to their own appearance in broad daylight as the wooden madonnas of the byzantine school do to those of raphael. next, when the sun--the true light--first appears, how it bathes the sea and the hills in an ethereal glory not their own! what fair liquid tints of blue, and rose, and glorious gold! this period which, in art, began with giotto and ended with botticelli, culminated in fra angelico, who flooded the world of painting with a heavenly spiritualism not material, and gave his dreams of heaven the colours of the first pure rays of sunshine. but as the sun rises, nature takes her real tints gradually. we see every thing in its own colour; the gold and the rose has faded away with the truer light, and a stern realism takes its place. the human form must be expressed, in all its solidity and truth, not only in its outward semblance, but the hidden soul must be seen through the veil of flesh. and in this lies the reason of the decline; only to a few great masters it was given to reveal spirituality in humanity--the others could only emulate form and colour, and failed. it is impossible to contemplate art apart from religion; as truly as the celestial sun is the revealer of form, so surely is the heavenly light of religion the first inspirer of art. where would the egyptian, assyrian, and etruscan paintings and sculptures have been but for the veneration of the mystic gods of the dead, which both prompted and preserved them? what would greek sculpture have been without the deified personifications of the mysterious powers of nature which inspired it? and it is the fact of the pagan religion being both sensuous and realistic which explains the perfection of greek art. the highest ideal being so low as not to soar beyond the greatest perfection of humanity, was thus within the grasp of the artist to express. given a manly figure with the fullest development of strength; a female one showing the greatest perfection of form; and a noble man whose features express dignity and mental power;--the ideal of a hercules, a venus, and a jupiter is fully expressed, and the pagan mind satisfied. the spirit of admirers was moved more by beauty of form than by its hidden significance. in the great venus, one recognises the woman before feeling the goddess. as with their sculpture, without doubt it was also with painting. mr. symonds, in his _renaissance of the fine arts_, speaks of the greek revival as entirely an age of sculpture; but the solitary glance into the more perishable art of painting among the greeks, to be seen at cortona, reveals the exquisite perfection to which this branch was also brought. it is a painting in encaustic, and has been used as a door for his oven by the contadino who dug it up--yet it remains a marvel of genius. the subject is a female head--a muse, or perhaps only a portrait; the delicacy and mellowness of the flesh tints equal those of raphael or leonardo, and a lock of hair lying across her breast is so exquisitely painted that it seems to move with her breath. the features are of the large-eyed regular greek type, womanly dignity is in every line, but it is an essentially pagan face--the christian soul has never dawned in those eyes! with this before us, we cannot doubt that greek art found its expression as much in colour as in form and that the same religion inspired both. in an equal degree renaissance art has its roots in christianity; but the religion is deeper and greater, and has left art behind. the early christians must have felt this when they expressed everything in symbols, for these are merely suggestive, and allow the imagination full play around and beyond them; they are mere stepping-stones to the ideal which exists but is as yet inexpressible. "myths and symbols always mark the dawn of a religion, incarnation and realism its full growth." so after a time when the first vague wonder and ecstasy are over, symbols no longer content people; they want to bring religion home to them in a more tangible form, to humanize it, in fact. from this want it arises that nature next to religion inspires art, and finally takes its place. for it follows as a matter of course that as art is a realistic interpreter of the spiritual, so it is more easy to follow nature than spirituality, nature being the outward or realistic expression of the mind of god. it was a saying of buffalmacco, who was _not_ one of the most devout painters of the fourteenth century, "do not let us think of anything but to cover our walls with saints, and out of disrespect to the demons to make men more devout." and savonarola, though he has been accused of being one of the causes of the decline, thus upheld the sacred influences of art; when he exclaimed in one of his fervent bursts of eloquence, "you see that saint there in the church and say, 'i will live a good life and be like him.'" if these were the feelings of the least devout and the religious fanatic, how hallowed must the influences of christian painting have been to the intermediate ranks. mr. symonds beautifully expresses the tendency of that time: "the eyes of the worshipper should no longer have a mere stock or stone to contemplate; his imagination should be helped by the dogmatic presentation of the scenes of sacred history, and his devotion quickened by lively images of the passion of our lord.... the body and soul moreover should be reconciled, and god's likeness should be once more acknowledged in the features and limbs of men." [footnote: symonds' _renaissance of the fine arts_, chap. i. p. .] the school of giotto was the first to feel this need of the soul. he, taking his ideas from nature, clothed the soul in a thin veil; the italians call his school that of poetic art; it reached sentiment and poetry, but did not pass them. yet the thirteenth century was sublime for the expression of the idea; one only has to study the intense meaning in the works of giotto, and orcagna, duccio, and the lorenzetti of siena to perceive this. the fourteenth century, on the contrary, rendered itself glorious for manifestation of form. "artists thought the veil of ideality a poor thing, and wished to give the solidity of the body to the soul; they stole every secret from nature; the senses were content, but not sentiment." [footnote: _purismo nell' arte_, da cesare guasti.] the artists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, of whom we have to speak, blended the two schools, and became perfection as far as they went. michelangelo drew more from the vigorous thirteenth-century masters, and raphael from the more sensuous followers of masaccio and lippi. the former tried to put the christian soul into his works, but its infinite depth was unattainable. as his many unfinished works prove, he always felt some great overwhelming meaning in his inmost soul, which all his passionate artistic yearnings were inadequate to express. raphael tried to bring realism into religion through painting, and to give us the scenes of our lord's and the apostles' lives in such a humanized aspect, that we should feel ourselves of his nature. but the incarnation of religion in art defeated its own ends; sensuousness was introduced in place of the calm, unearthly spirituality of the earlier masters. compare the cartoon of s. paul preaching at athens, in which he has all the majesty of a cæsar in the forum, with the lowly spirit of the apostle's life! in truth, raphael failed to approach nearer to sublimity than fra angelico, with all his faulty drawing but pure spirit. after him, artists loved form and colour for themselves rather than for the spiritual meaning. miss owen [footnote: _art schools of medieval christendom_, edited by ruskin.] accuses raphael of having rendered art pagan, but this seems blaming him for the weakness of his followers, who took for their type his works rather than his ideal. the causes of the decline were many, and are not centred in one man. as long as religion slumbered in monasticism and dogma, art seizing on the human parts, such as the maternity of the madonna, the personifications of saints who had lived in the world, was its adequate exponent. the religion awakened by the aesthetic s. francis, who loved all kinds of beauty, was of the kind to be fed by pictures. but when savonarola had aroused the fervour of the nation to its highest point, when beauty was nothing, the world nothing, in comparison to the infinity of god;--then art, finding itself powerless to express this overwhelming infinity, fell back on more earthly founts of inspiration, the classics and the poets. lorenzo de' medici and pope nicholas v. had fully as much to do with the decline as savonarola. the pope in rome, and lorenzo in florence, led art to the verge of paganism; savonarola would have kept it on the confines of purism; it was divided and fell, passing through the various steps of decadence, the mannerists and the eclectics, to rise again in this nineteenth century with what is after all its true aim, the interpretation of nature, and the illustration of the poetry of a nation. but with the decadence we have happily nothing to do; the artists of whom we speak first, fra bartolommeo and albertinelli, belong to the culmination of art on its rising side, while andrea del sarto stands as near to the greatest artists on the other side, and is the last of the group before the decline. on fra bartolommeo the spirituality of fra angelico still lingered, while the perfection of raphael illumined him. andrea del sarto, on the other side, had gathered into his hands the gleams of genius from all the great artists who were his elder contemporaries, and so blending them as to form seemingly a style of his own, distinct from any, has left on our walls and in our galleries hundreds of masterpieces of colour, as gay and varied as the tints the orientals weave into their wondrous fabrics. it might be said with truth that fra bartolommeo painted for the soul, and andrea del sarto for the eye. chapter ii. the "bottega" of cosimo roselli. a.d. - . amongst the thousand arteries in which the life blood of the renaissance coursed in all its fulness, none were so busy or so important as the "botteghe" of the artists. in these the genius of the great masters, the pleiades of stars at the culmination of art in florence, was either tenderly nursed, or sharply pruned into vigour by struggling against discouragement and envy. in these the spirit of awakened devotion found an outlet, in altarpieces and designs for church frescoes which were to influence thousands. here the spirit of poetry, brooding in the mysterious lines of dante, or echoing from past ages in the myths of the greeks, took form and glowed on the walls in mighty cartoons to be made imperishable in fresco. here the spirit of luxury was satisfied by beautiful designs for ornaments, dress stuffs, tapestries, vases and "cassoni," &c., which brought beauty into every life, and made each house a poem. the soul, the mind, and the body, could alike be supplied at those fountains of the beautiful, the artshops or schools. whilst michelangelo as a youth was drawing from the cartoons of the sassetti chapel in the school of domenico ghirlandajo, cosimo roselli was just receiving as a pupil a boy only a little behind him in genius. a small, delicate-faced, spiritual-eyed boy of nine years, known as baccio della porta, who came with a roll of drawings under his arm and high hopes in his soul, no doubt trotting along manfully beside cosimo's old friend, benedetto da majano, the sculptor, who had recommended his being placed in the studio. by the table given in the note [footnote: pietro, a genoese, came in to the parish of s. michele, at montecuccioli in mugello; he was a peasant, and had a son jacopo, who was father of paolo, the muleteer; and three other sons, bartolo, giusto, and jacopo, who had a _podere_ at soffignano, near prato. paolo married first bartolommea, daughter of zanobi di gallone, by whom he had a son, bartolommeo, known as baccio della porta, born . the first wife dying, paolo married andrea di michaele di cenni, who had four sons, piero, domenico, michele, and francesco; only piero lived to grow up, and he became a priest. [_favoured by sig. milanesi._]] it will be seen that baccio was the son of paolo, a muleteer, which no doubt was a profitable trade in those days when the country roads were mere mule-tracks, and the traffic between different towns was carried on almost entirely by horses and mulepacks. there is some doubt as to the place of baccio's birth, which occurred in . vasari gives it as savignano near prato; crowe and cavalcaselle [footnote: vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. .] assert it was suffignano, near florence, where they say paolo's brothers, jacopo and giusto, were contadini or peasants. but on consulting the post-office authorities we find no place called suffignano near florence; it must therefore have been a village near prato called soffignano, which from similarity of sound vasari confused with the larger place, savignano. this is the more probable, for rosini asserts that "benedetto da majano, _who had bought a podere near prato_, knew him and took him into his affections, and by his means placed him with cosimo." [footnote: rosini, _storia della pittura_, chap. xvii. p. .] it is certainly probable that paolo's wife lived with his family during his wanderings, because it is the true italian custom, and baccio was in that case born in his uncle's house; for it is not till that we find paolo retired from trade and set up in a house of his own in florence at the gate of s. pier gattolini, now the porta romana. the friendship begun at prato must have been continued in florence, for in paolo not only owned that house at the gate of s. pier gattolini, but was the proud possessor of a podere at brozzi, which yielded six barrels of wine. he is a merciful man too, for among his possessions are two mules _disutili e vecchi_ (old and useless). at this time baccio was six years old, and his three stepbrothers quite babies. [footnote: archives of florence, portate al castato, - .] paolo, as well as his mules, had earned his repose, being certainly old, if not useless, and was anxious for his little sons to be placed out in the world as early as possible. thus it came that in baccio was taken away from his brothers, who played under the shadow of the old gateway, and was put to do the drudgery of the apprenticeship to art. he had to grind colours for cosimo--who, as we know, used a great deal of colour, having dazzled the eyes of the pope with the brilliancy of his blue and gold in the sistine chapel some years before--he had to sweep out the studio, no doubt assisted by mariotto albertinelli, a boy of his own age, and to run errands, carrying designs for inspection to expectant brides who wanted the chests painted to hold their wedding clothes, or doing the messenger between his master and the nuns of s. ambrogio, who paid cosimo their gold florins by the hand of the boy in and . [footnote: note to crowe and cavalcaselle, vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. .] whether his age made him a more acceptable means of communication with the nuns, or whether pier di cosimo, the elder pupil, already displayed his hatred of womankind, i know not; perhaps the boy already showed that innate devotion and especial fitness for sanctity which marks his entire art career. truly everything in his youthful life combined to lead his thoughts to higher things. the first fresco at which he assisted was in this solemn cloister of st. ambrogio, and the subject the _miracle of the sacrament_; the saintly air of the place, the calm faces of the white-hooded nuns, must all have had an influence in inspiring his youthful mind with the spirit of devotion. baccio's fellow-students were not many, but they formed an interesting group. pier di cosimo was the head man, and eldest of all; with such ties was he bound to his master and godfather, that he was known better as cosimo's peter than by his own patronymic of chimenti. he was at this time twenty-two years of age, his registry in the florentine guild proves his birth in , as the son of lorenzo, son of piero, son of antonio, chimenti. being the eldest of five brothers, it is difficult to conceive how a member of a large family grew up developing such eccentricities as are usually the fruit of isolation. in the studio piero was industrious and steady, working earnestly, whether he was assisting his master's designs or carrying out his own fancies of monsters, old myths, and classic fairy stories. no doubt the two boys, mariotto and baccio, found little companionship in this abstracted young man always dreaming over his own ideas. if they told him an anecdote, he would look up vacantly at the end not having heard a word; at other times every little noise or burst of laughter would annoy him, and he would be immoderately angry with the flies and mosquitos. piero had already been to rome, and had assisted cosimo in his fresco of _christ preaching on lake tiberias_; indeed most judges thought his landscape the best part of that work, and the talent he showed obtained him several commissions. he took the portraits of virginio orsini, ruberto sanseverino and duke valentino, son of pope alessandro vi. he was much esteemed as a portrait painter also in florence, and from his love of classical subjects, and extreme finish of execution, he ranked as one of the best painters of "cassoni," or bridal-linen chests. this fashion excited the indignation of savonarola, who in one of his sermons exclaimed, "do not let your daughters prepare their 'corredo' (trousseau) in a chest with pagan paintings; is it right for a christian spouse to be familiar with venus before the virgin, or mars before the saints?" thus piero being a finished painter, was often cosimo roselli's substitute in the instruction of the two boys, for cosimo having come home from rome with some money, lived at his ease; but still continued to paint frescoes in company with piero. another pupil was andrea di cosimo, whose peculiar branch of art was that of the grotesque. he no doubt drew designs for friezes and fountains, for architraves and door mouldings, in which distorted faces look out from all kinds of writhing scrolls; and lizards, dragons, snakes, and creeping plants, mingle according to the artist's fancy. andrea was however often employed in more serious work, as the records of the servite convent prove, for they contain the note of payment to him, in , for the curtains of the altarpiece which filippino lippi had painted. these curtains were till lately attributed to andrea del sarto, or francia bigio. this is the andrea feltrini mentioned by crowe and cavalcaselle as working in the cloister of the servi with andrea del sarto and francia bigio between and .[footnote: _history of painting_, vol. iii. chap. xvii. p. .] but baccio's dearest friend in the studio was a boy nearly his own age, mariotto albertinelli, son of biagio di bindo, born october , . he had experienced the common lot of young artists in those days, and had been apprenticed to a gold-beater, but preferred the profession of painter. from the first these two lads, being thrown almost entirely together in the work of the studio, formed one of those pure, lasting friendships, of which so many exist in the annals of art, and so few in the material world. they helped each other in the drudgery, and enjoyed their higher studies together; but they did not draw all their inspirations from the over-coloured works of cosimo--although mariotto once reproduced his red-winged cherubim in after life [footnote: in the 'trinity' in the belle arti, florence.]--nor from the hard and laboured myths of piero. they went to higher founts, for scarcely a trace of these early influences are to be found in their paintings. vasari says they studied the _cose di leonardo_. the great artist had at this time left the studio of verocchio, and was fast rising into fame in florence, so it is most probable that two youths with strong artistic tendencies would study, not only the sketches, but also the precepts, of the great man. besides this there were two national art-schools open to students in florence: these were the frescoes of masaccio and lippi in the carmine, and the medicean garden in the via cavour, then called via larga. chapter iii. the garden and the cloister. a.d. - . the two boys left the studio of cosimo roselli at an early age. there had been trouble in the house of paolo the ex-muleteer, and baccio's already serious mind had been awed by the sight of death. his little brother, domenico, died in at seven years of age. his father, paolo, died in ; thus baccio, at the age of twelve or thirteen, was left the head of the family, and the supporter of his stepmother and her babes. this may account for his leaving cosimo so young, and setting up his studio with mariotto as his companion, in his own house at the gate of s. pier gattolini; this partnership began presumably about the year . conscious that they were not perfected by cosimo's teaching, they both set themselves to undergo a strict discipline in art, and, friends as they were, their paths began to diverge from this point. their natural tastes led them to opposite schools--baccio to the sacred shrine of art in the shadowed church, mariotto to the greenery and sunshine of the medici garden, where beauty of nature and classic treasures were heaped in profusion; whose loggie [footnote: arched colonnades.] glowed with the finest forms of greek sculpture, resuscitated from the tombs of ages to inspire newer artists to perfection, but alas! also to debase the aim of purely christian art. baccio's calm devotional mind no doubt disliked the turmoil of this garden, crowded with spirited youths; the tone of pagan art was not in accordance with his ideal, and so he learned from masaccio and lippi that love of true form and harmonious composition, which he perfected afterwards by a close study of leonardo da vinci, whose principles of _chiaroscuro_ he seems to have completely carried out. with this training he rose to such great celebrity even in his early manhood, that rosini [footnote: rosini, _storia della pittura_, chap. xvii. p. .] calls him "the star of the florentine school in leonardo and michelangelo's absence," and he attained a grandeur almost equal to the latter, in the s. mark and ss. peter and paul of his later years. meanwhile mariotto was revelling in the eden of art, drawing daily beneath the loggie--where the orange-trees grew close to the pillars--from the exquisite statues and "torsi," peopling the shades with white forms, or copying cartoons by the older masters, which hung against the walls. the _custode_ of all these treasures was bertoldo, an old sculptor, who boasted of having been the scholar of donatello, and also heir to his art possessions. he could also point to the bronze pulpits of san lorenzo, which he finished, as proof of his having inherited a portion of his master's spirit. bertoldo, having doubtless rendered to duke cosimo's keeping his designs by donatello, which were preserved in the garden, obtained the post of instructor there; but his age may have prevented his keeping perfect order, and the younger spirits overpowered him. there were michelangelo, with all the youthful power of passion and force which he afterwards imparted to his works, and the audacious torrigiano, with his fierce voice, huge bulk, and knitted brows, who was himself a discord like the serpent in eden. easily offended, he was prompt in offering outrage. did any other young man show talent or surpass him, revenge deep and mean as that of bandinelli to michelangelo was sure to follow, the envied work being spoiled in his rage. then there were the fun-loving francesco granacci, and the witty rustici, as full of boyish pranks as they were of genius--what could one old man do among so many?--and now comes the impetuous mariotto to add one more unruly member to his class. how well one can imagine the young men--in loose blouses confined at the waist, or in buff jerkins and close-fitting hose, with jaunty cloaks or doublets, and little red or black caps, set on flowing locks cut square in front--passing beneath the shadows of the arches among the dim statues, or crossing the garden in the sunshine amid the orange-trees, under the splendid blue italian skies. we can see them painting, modelling, or drawing large cartoons in charcoal, while old bertoldo passes from easel to easel, criticising and fault-finding, detailing for the hundredth time donatello's maxims, and moving on, heedless or deaf to the irreverent jokes of his ungrateful pupils. then, like a vision of power and grandeur, lorenzo il magnifico enters with a group of his classic friends. politian and the brothers pulci admire again the ancient sculptures which are to them as illustrations of their readings, and lorenzo notes the works of all the students who were destined to contribute to the glory of the many medicean palaces. how the burly torrigiano's heart burns within him when the duke praises his compeer's works! sometimes madonna alfonsina, the mother of lorenzo, and widow of piero, walked here, and she also took an interest in the studies of the youths. mariotto especially attracted her by his talent and zeal. she commissioned him to paint some pictures for her to send as a present to her own family, the orsini of rome. these works, of which the subjects are not known, passed afterwards into the possession of cæsar borgia. she also sat to mariotto for her own portrait. it is easily imagined how elated the excitable youth became at this notice from the mother of the magnificent lorenzo. he had dreams of making a greater name than even his master, cosimo, whose handiwork was in the sistine; of excelling michelangelo, of whose genius the world was beginning to talk; and, as adhering to a party was the only way to success in those days, he became a strong pallesco, [footnote: the palleschi were the partizans of the medici, so called because they took as their standard the palle, or balls, the arms of that family.] trusting wholly in the favour of madonna alfonsina. he even absented himself almost constantly from the studio, which baccio shared with him, and worked at the medici palace, [footnote: this break is signified by baldinucci, _opere_, vol. iv. p. , and by vasari, who says that after the exile of piero he returned to baccio.] but, alas! in this brilliant aspect of his fortunes changed. lorenzo being dead, piero de' medici was banished, the great palace fell into the hands of the republican signoria, and all the painters were left without patronage. mariotto, very much cast down, bethought himself of a friend who never failed him, and whose love was not affected by party; and, returning to the house of baccio, he set to work, most likely in a renewed spirit of confidence in the comrade who stood by him when the princes in whom he trusted failed him. whatever his frame of mind, he began now to study earnestly the works of baccio, who, while he was seeking patronage in the palace, had been purifying his genius in the church. mariotto imbibed more and more of baccio's style, till their works so much resembled one another that indifferent judges could scarcely distinguish them apart. it would be interesting if we could see those early pictures done for madonna alfonsina, and compare them with the style formed after this second adherence to fra bartolommeo. what his manner afterwards became we have a proof in the _salutation_ ( ), in which there is grand simplicity of motive combined with the most extreme richness of execution and fullest harmony of colour. this second union between the friends could not have been so satisfactory to either as the first pure boyish love, when they had been full of youthful hopes, and felt their hearts expand with the dreams and visions of genius. now instead of the mere differences between two styles of art, there were differences which much more seriously affected their characters; they were daily sundering, one going slowly towards the cloister, the other to the world. albertinelli had gained a greater love of worldly success and luxury. baccio's mind, always attuned to devotion, was now intensified by family sorrows, which no doubt brought him nearer to heaven. thus softened, he had the more readily received the seeds of faith which savonarola scattered broadcast. yet though every word of the one was a wound to the other, this strangely assorted pair of friends did not part. rosini well defined their union as "a knot which binds more strongly by pulling contrary ways." [footnote: _storia della pittura,_ chap. xvii. p. ] so when albertinelli, while colouring with zeal a design of baccio's, would inveigh against all monks, the dominicans in particular, and savonarola especially, his friend would argue that the inspired prophet was not an enemy, but a purifier and reformer of art. probably baccio was at the duomo on that sunday in lent, , and reported to mariotto those wondrous words of savonarola, that "beauty ought never to be taken apart from the true and good," and how, after quoting the same sentiments from socrates and plato, the preacher went on to say, "true beauty is neither in form nor colour, but in light. god is light, and his creatures are the more lovely as they approach the nearer to him in beauty. and the body is the more beautiful according to the purity of the soul within it." certain it is that this divine light lived ever after in the paintings of fra bartolommeo. he frequented the cloisters of san marco, where even lorenzo de' medici used to go and hear the prior expound christianity near the rose tree. there were lorenzo di credi and sandro botticelli, both middle-aged men, of a high standing as artists; there were the delia robbias, father and son, and several others. sandro, while listening, must have taken in the inspired words with the scent and beauty of the roses, whose spirit he gives in so many of his paintings. young baccio, on the contrary, feasted his eyes on the speaker's face, till the very soul within it was imprinted on his mind, from whence he reproduced it in that marvellous likeness, the year after the martyrdom of savonarola. this is the earliest known work of fra bartolommeo, and is a faithful portrait; the deep-sunk eye-socket, and eye like an internal fire, showing the preacher's powerful mind; the prominent aquiline nose and dilating vehement nostril bespeaking his earnestness and decision; the large full mouth alone shows the timorousness which none but himself knew of, so overpowered was it by his excitable spirit. the handling is baccio's own able style, but sig. cavalcaselle thinks the influences of cosimo roselli are apparent in the low tone and clouded translucent colour; he signed it "hieronymi ferrariensis, a deo missi prophetæ effigies," a legend which expresses the more than reverence which baccio cherished for the preacher. this portrait has only lately been identified by its present possessor, sig. ermolao rubieri, who discovered the legend under a coat of paint. its vicissitudes are traceable from the time when sig. averardo (or, as vasari calls him, alamanno) salviati brought it back from ferrara, where no doubt it had been in the possession of savonarola's family. salviati gave it to the convent of san vincenzo at prato, from which place sig. rubieri purchased it in . the likeness of the reformer in the belle arti of florence has been supposed to be this one, but it is more likely to be the one done by fra bartolommeo at pian di mugnone in after years, when he drew the friar as s. peter martyr, with the wound on his head. chapter iv. san marco. a.d. - . padre marchese, himself a dominican, speaks thus of his convent:--"san marco has within its walls the renaissance, a compendium in two artists. fra angelico, the painter of the ideal, fra bartolommeo, of form. the first closes the antique tuscan school. he who has seen fra angelico, has seen also giotto, cimabue, &c. the second represents the modern school. in him are almost comprised masaccio, lorenzo di credi, leonardo, buonarroti, and andrea del sarto." the first, fra angelico, "sets himself to contemplate in god the fount and architype of the beautiful, and, as much as is possible to mortal hands, reproduces and stamps it in those works which a sensual mind cannot understand, but which to the heavenly soul speak an eloquent language. fra bartolommeo, with more analysis, works thoughtfully ... he ascends from the effect to the cause, and in created things contemplates a reflection of spiritual beauty." it is true the dominican order has been as great a patron of arts as the franciscan of literature. it united with niccolo pisano to give form to national architecture. it had sculptors, miniaturists, and glass painters. as a building san marco has been a shrine of art; since the time that michelozzi, with the assistance of the medici, built the convent for sant' antonino, and fra angelico left the impress of his soul on the walls, a long line of artist monks has lived within its cloisters. with san marco our story has now to deal, for it is impossible to write fra bartolommeo's life without touching on the well-known history of savonarola. the great preacher's influence in these years, from to , entered into almost every individual in florence, either to draw them to devotion, or to stir them up to the greatest opposition. the artists, whose minds were probably the most impressional, were his fervent adherents. he has been accused of being the ruin of art, but "this cry has only arisen in our time; the silence of contemporaries, although not friendly to him, proves that he was not in that century so accused." [footnote: gino capponi, _storia delta republica di firenze_, lib. vi. chap. ii.] the only mention of anything of artistic value is a "tavoliere" [footnote: a chess or draught board.] of rich work, spoken of by burlamacchi and benivieni, in a "canzone di un piagnone sul bruciamento delle vanità." savonarola himself was an artist and musician in early life, the love of the beautiful was strong within him, only he would have it go hand in hand with the good and true. his dominant spirit was that of reform; as he tried to regenerate mind, morals, literature, and state government, so he would reform art, and fling over it the spiritual light which illumed his own soul. it was natural that such a mind should act on the devotional character of baccio. what could he do but join when every church was full of worshippers, each shrine at the street corners had a crowd of devout women on their knees before it--when thousands of faces were uplifted in the vast expanse of the duomo, and every face burned with fervour as the divine flame from the preacher lit the lamp of each soul--when in the streets he met long processions of men, women, and children, the echoes of whose hymns (laudi) filled the narrow streets, and went up to the clear air above them? then came that strange carnival when there were no maskers in the city, but white-robed boys went from house to house to collect the vanities for the burning--when the flames of the fires, hitherto saturnalian, were the flames of a holocaust, wherein each one cast the sins and temptations, even the pretty things which, though dear to himself, withdrew him from god. and when the white-robed boys came to the studio of the friends at the gate of s. pier gattolini, with what sighs and self-immolation baccio looked for the last time at some of his studies which he judged to come under the head of _anathemata_, and handed them over to the acolytes. how mariotto's soul, warm to pagan art, burned within him at this sacrifice! and how he would talk more than ever against the monks, and hang up his own cartoons and studies of the greek venus in the studio for baccio's behoof! in these years we have no notice of authentic works done by the youthful partners, though biographers talk of their having commissions for madonnas, and other works of art. in francesco valori, the grand-featured, earnest admirer of savonarola, became gonfaloniere in the time of piero de' medici's exile, [footnote: gino capponi, _storia delta republica di firenze_, lib. vi. chap. xi. p. .] and the friar's party was in the ascendent. rosini [footnote: _storia delta pittura_, chap. xvii. p. .] says that belonging to a faction was a means of fame, and that the savonarola party was powerful, giving this as a reason for baccio's partisanship; but this we can hardly believe, his whole life proved his earnestness. he was much beloved in florence for his calm upright nature and good qualities. he delighted in the society of pious and learned men, spent much time in the convent, where he had many friends among the monks; yet with all he kept still faithful to his early friend mariotto, whose life was cast so differently. savonarola's faction was powerful, but the medici had still adherents who stirred up a strong party against him. his spirit of reform at length aroused the ire of the pope, who forbade him to preach. he disobeyed, and the sermons on ezekiel were scenes of tumult; no longer a group of rapt faces dwelling on his words, but frowns, murmurs, and anathemas from a crowd only kept off him by a circle of armed adherents round his pulpit. at length, on june nd, the excommunication by pope alessandro vi. (borgia) fell like a thunderclap, and the medicean youths marched in triumphant procession with torches and secular music to burlesque the laudi; no doubt albertinelli was one of these, while baccio grieved among the awestruck friars in the convent. in savonarola again lifted up his voice; the church was not large enough, so he preached beneath the blue sky on the piazza san marco; and fra domenico buonvicini da pescia, in the eagerness of partisanship, said that his master's words would stand the ordeal of fire. then came that tumultuous day of april th, the "sunday of the olives," when the franciscans and dominicans argued while the fire burnt out before them, when savonarola's great spirit quailed within him, and the ordeal failed; a merciful rain quenching the flames which none dared to brave save the undaunted fra domenico himself. there was no painting done in the studio on that day we may be sure. baccio was one of the surging, conflicting crowd gathered beneath the mingling shadows of orcagna's arches and arnolfo's great palace, and at eventide he was one of the armed partisans who protected the friar back to his convent, menaced not only by rains from heaven, but by the stormy wrath of an angry populace, defrauded of the sight they came to see. the next day was the one which determined the painter's future life. there was in the city a curious process of crystallisation of all the particles held in solution round the fire the previous day. the palazzo vecchio attracted about its doors the "arrabiati." the "compagnacci" assembled, armed, by the duomo. the streets were full of detached parties of piagnoni, treading ways of peril to their centre, san marco. passions raged and seethed all day, till at the hour of vespers a cry arose, "_à san marco_," and thither the multitude-- compagnacci, and palleschi--rushed, armed with picks and arquebusses, &c. they killed some stray piagnoni whom they found praying by a shrine, and placed guards at the streets which led to the convent; then the assault began. the church was dimly lighted. savonarola and fra domenico kneeled on the steps of the altar, with many worshippers around them, singing tremulous hymns; amongst these were francesco valori, ridolfi, and baccio della porta, but all armed, as cronaca tells us. they still sang hymns when the doors were attacked with stones; then leaving the priests and women to pray for them the men rushed to the defence. old valori, with a few brave friends, guarded the door; others made loop-holes of the windows and fired out; some went up the campanile, and some on the roof. baccio fought bravely among the rest. the palleschi were almost repulsed, but at length succeeded in setting fire to the doors. the church was filled with smoke; a turbulent crowd rushed wildly in. savonarola saw his people fall dead beside him on the altar steps, and, taking up the sacrament, he fled to the greek library, where the messengers of the signoria came and arrested both himself and fra domenico. it was in the fierce fight that ensued when the enemies poured in, laying hands sacrilegiously on every thing sacred, that baccio made the vow that if he were saved this peril, he would take the habit--a vow which certainly was not made in a cowardly spirit, he fighting to the death, and then espousing the losing cause. [footnote: gino capponi, lib. vi. chaps. i. and ii., and padre marchese, _san marco_, p. _et seq._] then came that sad rd of may, the eve of the ascension, when three martyrs went calmly to their death beneath the shadow of the old palace, amidst the insults of an infuriated crowd, and arno's yellow waters received their ashes. [footnote: capponi, chap. ii. p. .] [illustration: savonarolo as peter martyr. by fra bartolommeo. _in the accademia delle belle arti, florence_.] after the death of savonarola the party had many defaulters; but baccio, the delia robbias, credi, cronaca, and many other artists, were faithful, and even showed their grief by abandoning for a time the arts they loved. "it almost seemed as if with him they had lost the sacred flame from which their fervid imagination drew life and aliment." [footnote: marchese, _san marco_, lib. iii. p. .] while all these events had been taking place, baccio had worked as often as his perturbed spirit would allow, at a great fresco of the _last judgment_, in a chapel of the cemetery of s. maria nuova. a certain gerozzi, di monna venna dini, gave him the commission, and as far as he had gone, the painter had given entire satisfaction. this fresco, his first as far as is known, shows baccio's style as fully as his later ones. we have here his great harmony of form, and intense suggestiveness in composition. the infinity of heaven is emblematised in circles of saints and cherubim around the enthroned christ. the cross, a link between heaven and earth, is borne by a trinity of angels; s. michael, as the avenging spirit, stands a powerful figure in the foreground dividing the saved from the lost; the whole composition forming a heavenward cross on an earthly foundation. there are no caves and holes of torture with muscular bodies writhing within them; but in the despairing figures passing away on the right, some with heads bowed on clasped hands, others lifting up faces and arms in a vain cry for mercy, what suggestions there are of infinite remorse!--more dignified far than the distorted sufferers in the torture pits of previous masters. these are just indicated by two demons, and a subterranean fire behind the unblest souls. miss owen, [footnote: _art schools of christendom_, edited by prof. ruskin.] speaking mr. ruskin's sentiments, calls this a great falling off from giotto and orcagna's conceptions; but though theirs may be more powerful and terrible, a greater suggestion of christian religion is here. they, and later, michelangelo, flung dante's great struggling soul in tangible forms upon the walls, and embodied his poem, awful, grand, and earnest, with all the human passion intensified into human suffering. fra bartolommeo shows the christian spirit; his faces look beyond the present judgment, and, instead of wrath, mercy is the predominating idea. it is like the difference in spirit between the old testament and the new. the painter's reverence of fra angelico, and estimation of the divinity of art, is shown by fra angelico being placed among the saints of heaven on the right of the saviour. leonardo's instructions for shading off a light sky will occur to any one who studies the finely gradated tints mingling with the clouds around the celestial group. but grand as the fresco is, and interesting as it must have been to the artist at this time, when thoughts of savonarola mingled with every stroke, he felt he was not fulfilling his true mission in the world. drawn more and more to the convent, hallowed to him by the memory of the martyr-friar, he was also more attuned to thoughts of retirement by family bereavements--one young brother, piero, only being left to him out of the whole circle. the reluctance to leave this youth alone may have deferred for a time his taking the monastic vows; but having placed him under the guardianship of santi pagnini, a dominican, he consigned the _last judgment_ to mariotto to finish, and leaving his worldly goods to his brother, took the habit in the convent of s. domenico, at prato, on july th, , two years after first making the resolution. his year of probation over, he took the final vows and became fra bartolommeo. a document in s. marco proves that he was possessed of worldly goods when he entered, [footnote: rosini, _storia della pittura_, chap xxvii.] among which were the house of his father in s. pier gattolini, and the podere at brozzi. having once given himself up to monasticism, fra bartolommeo would offer no half-service, his brushes were left behind with all other worldly things, and here closes baccio della porta's first artistic career. his sun was set only to rise again to greater brilliance in the future as fra bartolommeo, a name famous for ever in the annals of art. chapter v. fra bartolommeo in the convent. a.d. - . four years had passed, and the monk had never touched a pencil, but his mission in art was not fulfilled, and events were working towards that end, for the spirit of art once awakened could not die either in that convent or in that age. his friend, mariotto, kept him _au courant_ in all the gossip of art, and told him of the great cartoons of leonardo and michelangelo, which he too went to see. they might have inspired him afresh, or perhaps in advising albertinelli he himself felt impelled to paint, or possibly the visits of raphael in influenced him. padre marchese takes the conventional view, and says that santi pagnini, the oriental scholar and lover of art, came back to s. marco in as prior, and used not only his entreaties, but his authority, to induce fra bartolommeo to recommence painting. however this may be, it is certain that when bernardo del bianco, who had built a beautiful chapel in the badia from rovezzano's designs, wished for an altar-piece worthy of its beauty, which he felt no hand could execute so well as that of the frate--he yielded to persuasion, and the _vision of s. bernard_ was begun. the contract is dated th november, ; a part payment of sixty florins in gold was made th of june, . [footnote: padre marchese, _memorie_, iii. vol. ii. p. .] this picture, now in the belle arti of florence, is so much injured by re-painting that some parts seem even crude. the saint is on his knees writing, while the vision of the virgin and child stands poised in air before him; she inspires his pen, and the infant christ gives his blessing on the work. there is great spirituality and ecstasy in st. bernard's face, his white robe contrasts well with two saints behind him, which carry out fra bartolommeo's favourite triangular grouping, and with a rich harmony of colour balance his white robe. the virgin is drawn with great nobility and grace, her drapery admirably majestic, yet airy, and a sweet, infantile playfulness renders the child charming. the angels beneath the virgin's feet are lovely, but the group of seraphs behind are the least pleasing of all. they are of the earth, earthy, and seem reminiscences of the florentine maidens the artist met in the streets. possibly this is the part most injured by the restorer's hand. the colouring of the two saints behind s. bernard-one in a green robe with bronze-gold shades, and the other blue and orange-is very suggestive of andrea del sarto, and seems to render probable rosini's assertion that the frate "taught the first steps of this difficult career to that artist who alone was called 'senz' errori.'" having once retaken the brush, fra bartolommeo recovered his former skill and fame; a beautiful specimen of this period is the _meeting of christ with the disciples of emmaus_ ( ), a fresco in a lunette over the door of the refectory at s. marco; in which he combines a richness of colouring rarely obtained in fresco, with a drawing which is almost perfect. fra niccolò della magna, who was prior in that year, and left in to become archbishop of capua, sat for one of the saints. contemporory with this may be dated also the figure of the _virgin_, painted for agnolo doni, now in the corsini gallery in rome. giovanni de' medici also gave him a commission. meanwhile the _s. bernard_ was not paid for. fra bartolommeo priced it at ducats, and the convent being the gainer by his works, took his own valuation. bernardo offered only eighty ducats; the frati were indignant, and called in the abbot of the badia as umpire; he being unable to move bernardo, retired from office; then a council of friends was resolved on, in which mariotto was for the painter, and lorenzo de credi for the purchaser; but this also failed. it was next proposed to submit the question to the guild of druggists (_arte degli speziali_), which included at that time also doctors and painters; but the convent, refusing lay judgment, took the offer of francesco magalotti, a relative of bernardo, who priced it at ducats, and the monks had to be satisfied. the dispute ended july th, . [footnote: rosini, _storia della pittura_, chap, xxvii. p. , and padre marchese, _memorie_, &c., vol. ii. pp. to .] all writers agree as to the fact of fra bartolommeo's friendship with raphael, but very few are decided as to its date. raphael was in florence in , but then fra bartolommeo had not re-commenced painting, and would have no works in the convent to excite his admiration of the colouring. padre marchese, following rosini and padre luigi pungeleoni, asserts that this intimacy was during raphael's second visit in , when he might have seen the newly-finished fresco of _the disciples at emmaus_. it is undoubted that their intercourse was beneficial to both. raphael studied anew leonardo's principles of colour under fra bartolommeo's interpretation of them, and the frate improved his knowledge of perspective and harmony of composition. it is said they worked together at some pictures, of which one is in france, and another at milan; but there is not sufficient evidence to prove this. it is also thought that fra bartolommeo helped in the composition of raphael's famous _madonna del baldacchino_, which is truly very much in his style. the year marks the frate's first acquaintance with the venetian school, which was not without its influence upon him. frequent interchange of visits took place between the dominicans in the different parts of italy; and fra bartolommeo took the opportunity then offered him of going to visit his brethren at venice. his namesake, baccio di monte lupo, a sculptor who had fled from florence after the death of savonarola, and who had fought side by side with baccio in the siege of s. mark's church, was in venice at that time, working on the tomb of benedetto da pesaro in the church of the frati, and he was only too delighted to show the beauties of the queen of the adriatic to an artistic mind. tintoretto was not yet born; titian was only just rising into fame, though his style had not yet become what it was after giorgione's influence; but fra bartolommeo must have found much that was sympathetic in the exquisite works of giovanni bellini and his school, and much to admire in the glorious colouring of giorgione. father dalzano, the vicar of the monastery of s. peter martyr at murano, gave the florentine monk a commission for a picture of the value of seventy or ducats. not having time to paint this during his stay, he promised to execute it on his return to florence, and the vicar paid him in advance twenty-eight ducats in money and colours; the rest was to be raised by the sale of some ms. letters from s. catherine of siena, which a friend of father dalzano near florence held in possession. fra bartolommeo, having brought home from the venetian school a new impulse for painting, and wishing to diffuse the religious influence of art more widely, desired to enlarge his atelier and school at san marco. his only assistants in the convent were fra paolino of pistoja, and one or two miniaturists, who were only good at missals. fra paolino (born ) took the vows at a very early age, and was removed to florence from prato with fra bartolommeo. he was the son of a painter, bernardino di antonio, but though he learned the first principles from him, his real art was imbibed from the frate, under whom, together with mariotto, he worked for years. but this youthful scholar was not enough for fra bartolommeo's new energies. he pined for his old friend, mariotto, who could follow out his designs in his own style so closely, that an unpractised eye could not see the difference of hand; and such was his influence on the rulers of the order, that they allowed a most unique partnership to be entered into. the parties were, albertinelli on one side, and the convent and fra bartolommeo on the other. the partners to provide the expenses, and the profits to be divided between the convent and mariotto; the vow of poverty not allowing fra bartolommeo as an individual any personal share. this began in and lasted till . the inventory of the profits and the division made when the partnership was dissolved, given entire by padre marchese, [footnote: padre marchese, _memorie_, &c., vol. ii.] are very interesting. the two artists had separate monograms to distinguish the pictures which were specially their own, besides which the monk signed his with the touching petition, "_orate pro pictore,_" his friend merely latinising his name; the works painted together were signed by the combined monograms. before setting a hand to anything else, the frate fulfilled his engagement to the venetian prior, for whom he painted the _eternal in heaven_, surrounded by saints and angels; but of this we will speak later. chapter vi. albertinelli in the world. a.d. - . during the interval between the second and third partnership of this incongruous pair of friends, the life of albertinelli had been very different from that of the frate. so distressed was he at losing baccio that he was quite wild for a time. his passions being unruled, that of grief took entire possession of him. in his despair he vowed to give up painting; he declared that he would also become a monk, if it were not that he now hated them more than ever; besides, he was a pallesco, and could not desert his party. after a time, however, he calmed down, and, looking on his friend's unfinished fresco of the _last judgment_ as a legacy from him, began to work at it as a kind of obligation till the occupation wove its own charm, and he steadily devoted himself to art again, much to the satisfaction of good gerozzi dini, who was in great perturbation, and declared there was not another hand but his in florence which could finish it; and also to the relief of fra bartolommeo himself, who, having received money on account, was troubled in conscience lest it should remain unfinished. there remained only some figures to put in the terrestrial group, all the celestial portions having been finished by the frate; but they are very well drawn figures, with a good deal of expression in them. several are likenesses, amongst whom are dini and his wife, bugiardini, the painter's pupil, and himself. most of these are now destroyed by the effects of damp. mariotto left fra bartolommeo's house in s. pier gattolini, and took a room in gualfonda--now via val fonda--a street leading towards the fortress, built by the grand duke cosimo on the north of the city; and here in time quite a school grew up under his tuition. giuliano bugiardini was his head assistant rather than pupil; francia bigio, then a boy, visino, who afterwards went to hungary, and innocenzio da nicola, besides piero, baccio's brother, were all scholars. albertinelli's bottega in val fonda gave some noble paintings to the world, works independently his own, though fra bartolommeo's influence is traceable in most of them. the finest of these is the _salutation_, dated --ordered for the church of s. martino, and now the gem of the hall of the old masters in the uffizi gallery--a work which alone has been able to mark him for all time as a great master. so simple is the subject, and yet so grand the proportions, and in the figures there is such majesty of maternity and dignity of womanhood! a decorated portico, with the heavens behind it, forms the background to the two noble women, in one of whom is expressed the gracious sympathy of an elder matron with the awful, mysterious joy of the younger. the colouring, perfectly harmonised, is the most masterly blending of a subdued tone with soft yet brilliant and shows a deep study of the method of leonardo. the predella has an _annunciation_, _nativity_, and _circumcision_; all showing the same able style, but more injured by time than the picture. another charming painting of this period is the _nativity_ at the pitti, a round, on panel. the _madonna_ is not quite so noble as that of the _salutation_, but the limbs of the child are beautifully rounded. there is a pretty group of three angels singing in the sky; the landscape is as minute in detail as those his old fellow-pupil piero used to paint in cosimo's studio. in - fra bartolommeo called upon him for a deed of friendship, which proves that, whatever biographers (building up theories on a word or two in vasari) may say of his want of steadiness, the friend who knew him best had supreme trust in him. santi pagnini, having been removed to siena as prior, fra bartolommeo made mariotto guardian and instructor of his young brother piero, signing a contract that mariotto was to have the use and management of all estates and possessions of piero, which included several _poderi_ in the country, as well as the house at the porta romana (s. pier gattolini). in return albertinelli was to keep piero in his house, teach, clothe, and provide for him, not, however, being obliged to give him more than "sette (seven) soldi" a month. albertinelli was also to have a mass said yearly in the church of s. pier gattolini for the soul of paolo the muleteer, and to use two pounds of wax candles thereat. [footnote: padre marchese, _memorie_, vol. ii. pp. , .] the contract was signed from st january, , and was to last till st january, . it appears that this brother piero was a great trouble to the frate, being of a bizarre disposition, and addicted to squandering money; he sold some possessions for much less than their worth, [footnote: private communication from sig. g. milanesi.] which probably accounts for the singular contract of guardianship. he did not show enough talent to become a painter, and took priests' orders later. about this time fra bartolommeo recommenced work, and while he was painting the triptych for donatello's _madonna_ (the miniature _nativity_ and _circumcision_ in the uffizi), albertinelli was at work in the convent of the certosa, at a _crucifixion_ in fresco. the painting is extant in the chapterhouse, and is a very fair and unrestored specimen of his best style. the virgin and magdalen are very purely conceived figures; the idea of the angels gathering the blood falling from the wounded hands of the crucified saviour is very tender; there is a great brightness of colouring, and a greenish landscape almost peruginesque in feeling. some of his pupils worked with him at the certosa, and nearly brought their master into trouble. they were not more content with convent fare than was davide ghirlandajo, when the only delicacy supplied him at vallombrosa was cheese; and to revenge themselves, they stole round the cloister after the circular sliding panels by which the rations were sent into the monks' cells were filled, and feasted on the meals made ready for the good brothers. great confusion ensued in the convent, the monks accusing each other of the theft; but when they found out the real culprits, they made a compromise, promising double rations if the artists would hasten their work and leave them their daily dole in peace. the fresco is dated . the same year produced the fine picture now in the louvre, which was painted for the church of s. trinità on the commission of zanobio del maestro. the _madonna_, stands on a pedestal, with s. jerome and s. zenobio in front, while episodes from their lives are brought in like distant echoes in the background. [footnote: s. zenobio was the first bishop of florence, and is the patron saint of that city.] the nuns of s. giuliano employed him to paint two pictures, both of which are now in the belle arti. one is an altarpiece; the _madonna enthroned_, with the divine child in her arms. era bartolommeo's idea of an angel-sustained canopy is here, but the angels hold it up from the outside instead of the inside. before her are s. john the baptist, s. julian, s. nicholas, and s. dominic. the s. julian has a great similarity to the s. michael of perugino, and the s. john, by its good modelling, shows the result of his studies from the antique in the medici garden. for the same church he did the curious conventional painting of the _trinity_ on a gold ground. the subject is inartistic, because unapproachable; the attempt to paint that which is a deep spiritual mystery degrades both the art and the subject; the latter because it lowers it to human grasp, the former because it shows its powerlessness to shadow forth the infinite. there is beautiful painting in the heads of the angels, at the foot of the cross, but the brilliancy of the gold ground is overpowering to the colours, albeit he has balanced it by reproducing cosimo roselli's red-winged cherubs. nothing but fra angelico's delicate tints can bear such a background. no doubt piero, baccio's brother, helped to lay on this gold, for one of the stipulations in the contract with mariotto was that he was to "metter d' oro ed altre cose di mazoneria" (to put on gold and other articles of emblazonment). it has been a great subject of conjecture at what part of his life albertinelli took the rash step of throwing up his art and opening a tavern at porta s. gallo. some say it was in his despair at fra bartolommeo having taken the vows, but this is disproved by his having at that time finished the _last judgment_, and taken pupils in val fonda. others assert that it was at the breaking up of the last partnership in , but there is no hiatus in his work at that time, existing paintings being dated in and the following years till his death, three years after. vasari, though not to be depended on in regard to dates--chronology not being his forte--is generally right in the gossip and stories of the lives near his own time, and it is by collateral evidence from his pages that we are able to fix with more certainty or as the time of this episode in albertinelli's life. in we find him as an artist helping to value his friend's picture, and mediating between the convent and bernardo del bianco. [footnote: crowe and cavalcaselle, vol. iii. chap. xvii. p. .] now, in the 'life of andrea del sarto,' we read that francia bigio, albertinelli's pupil, made the acquaintance of andrea while studying the cartoons in the hall of the council (this was from to ), and as their friendship increased, andrea confided to francia bigio that he could no longer endure the eccentricities of piero di cosimo, and determined to seek a home for himself, and that francia bigio being also alone--his master mariotto albertinelli _having abandoned the art of painting_--they determined to share a studio and rooms. [footnote: vasari, vol. iii. p. .] the first works the partners undertook were the frescoes of the scalzo and the servi, which were begun in . thus the date is tolerably certain, especially as a gap occurs in albertinelli's works at this time. sig. gaetano milanesi's researches in the archives have thrown a new light on mariotto's motives, which were not entirely connected with art; it was not that he was discouraged by adverse criticism, nor wholly that, as time divided him from his friend, he felt he could produce no great work away from his influence, but it was partly that he had married a wife named antonia, whose father kept an inn at s. gallo. it is possible the tavern came to him by way of _dot_, and the above reasons making him discontented with art for a time, might have induced him to carry on the business himself. sig. milanesi says a document exists of a contract in which mariotto's name is connected with a tavern, but that he has never been able to retrace it since the first time he found it. it is his opinion that the whole story arose from the fact of the wife's family possessing this wine shop, and his connection with it in that way. but though albertinelli passed off his pseudo-hostdom with bravado, talking very wittily about it, the artistic vein was too strong within him to be subdued; he soon gave up the flask and returned to the brush, for in , when his quondam pupil, francia bigio, was busy at the servi, we again find mariotto's hand in a painting of the _madonna_. the virgin, holding a pomegranate in her hand, supports with the other the child, who stands on a parapet, and clings to the bosom of his mother's dress for support, in a truly natural way; the infant baptist stands by. the painting, signed, and dated , is in the fitzwilliam museum, cambridge, but has been injured by repainting. in spite of this, messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle believe they perceive bugiardini's hand in it. in albertinelli began one of his masterpieces, the _annunciation_ for the company of s. zenobio, now in the belle arti. all his zeal for art was reawakened, he flung himself _con amore_ into this work, which, though in oil on panel, was painted on the spot where it was intended to be placed, that the lights might be managed with the best effect. he was imbued with leonardo da vinci's principle, that the greatest relief and force are to be combined with softness, and wishing to bring this combination to a perfection which never before had been reached, he depended greatly on the natural light to further his design. [footnote: vasari, vol. ii. p. .] the picture, although a great work of art, and the most laboured of all his paintings, failed to satisfy the artist. he tried various experiments, painting in and painting out, but never reaching his own ideal. according to leonardo, he was proving himself a good artist, one of his principles being, "when his (an artist's) knowledge and light surpass his work so that he is not satisfied with himself or his endeavours, it is a happy omen." [footnote: leonardo da vinci, treatise on painting.] the work as it stands is a noble one, though darkened by time having brought out the black pigments used in the shades. the background is an intricate piece of architecture with vaulted roof, showing that he too had profited by raphael's instructions in perspective to fra bartolommeo. the virgin is a tender sweet figure; indeed no artist has given more gracious dignity to womanhood than albertinelli, although his detractors say his life showed no great respect for it. above, the almighty is seen in a yellow light with a circle of angels and seraphs around. it is strange how the realistic painters stopped at nothing, not even the representation of the eternal in a human form. is not this the reason why art ceased about this time to be the interpreter of religion, and found its true mission in being the interpreter of nature? who can draw one soul? how much more impossible then to depict the incomprehensible soul in which all others have their being? the utmost we can do is to give the indication of the spirit in the expression of a face, and that so imperfectly that not two beholders read it alike. study perugino and raphael, see how they raise human nature and etherealize it till we see the divinity of soul in the faces of their saints and martyrs. but the moment they try to depict the almighty, or even his angels, they fall at once below humanity. but to return to the _annunciation_ of albertinelli. his impetuous temper betrayed him even here; he fell into a dispute with his patrons, who refused to pay the price he asked. the usual "trial by his peers" was resorted to, perugino, granacci, and ridolfo ghirlandajo were called into council to value it according to its merits. on completing this picture the events we have related in the last chapter took place, fra bartolommeo returned from venice with his enterprise renewed, and the convent partnership was commenced. chapter vii. convent partnership. a.d. -- . we now come to the studio of s. marco, where the two friends, who had dreamed together as boys, and worked together as youths, now laboured jointly as men, bringing to light some of the finest works of art that remain to us. during these three years albertinelli's star seems merged in that of his senior, his hand is to be recognised in the lower parts of a few altarpieces; but it is always difficult to distinguish the two styles. it was a very busy atelier, for they had many patrons. bugiardini was still mariotto's head assistant, and fra paolino, and one or two other monks, worked under fra bartolommeo, besides pupils of both, among whom were gabriele rustici and benedetto cianfanini. the studio was on the part of the convent between the cloister and via del maglio, [footnote: padre marchese, _memorie_, vol. ii. p. .] and we can quite picture its interior. there stands the lay figure on which fra bartolommeo draped the garments that take such majestic folds in his works; [footnote: fra bartolommeo was the inventor of the jointed lay figure.] there are several casts and models in different parts of the room; grand cartoons in charcoal hang on the walls, like those we see to this day in the uffizi and belle arti. so many of these masterly sketches are the frate's and so few are mariotto's that we may presume the former was in most instances the designer. and to what perfection he carried design! not a figure was drawn except its lines harmonised with the geometric rhythm in the artist's mind. his groups fall by nature into kaleidoscopic figures of circles, triangles, ellipses, crosses, &c. not a cartoon was sketched in which the lights and shadows were not as gradated and finished as a painting, although they were merely drawn with charcoal. the following was the method of work in the "bottega." the panels were prepared with a coating of plaster of paris, over which, when dry, a coat of under colour, ground in oil, was passed. the preparing of the panels fell to the work of one of the monk scholars, fra andrea.[footnote: the books of the convent have a note of payment to fra bartolommeo for th march, , "per parte di lavoro di fra andrea converse per mettere d'oro, et ingessare alle tavole nella bottega in diversi lavori" (padre marchese, _memorie_, lib. ii. chap. in. p. ).] then the master made his sketch in white, or "sgraffito" (i.e. graven on the plaster), as in the architectural lines of the pictures of patron saints in the uffizi, and the _marriage of s. catherine_ in the pitti palace; he also put in the shadows in monochrome. but the assistants, who were skilled artists, were called to put broad level tints of local colour on the buildings, &c., the master himself finishing the faces. no doubt albertinelli was often deputed to the study of the lay figure and its drapery. where he assisted, the monogram, a cross with two rings and the joint names, marked the work, as en a panel of in vienna, and another at geneva. fra bartolommeo only imitated leonardo in his intense force and soft gradations; the general thinness of colour is opposed to his system. he followed him, however, in his method of painting his shadows with the brush, instead of "hatching" them; he used the same yellowish ground, and "sfumato," [footnote: eastlake's _materials for a history of oil painting_, vol. ii. chap. iv.] _i.e._ the imperceptible softening of the transition in half-lights and shadows; it was effected by glazes, and is not adapted to a thin substance. the great mistake in fra bartolommeo's system was the preparing his paintings like cartoons, and using asphaltum or lamp-black for outlines and shadows; this in process of time destroys the super-colour, and gives a general blackness to the painting. the same kind of talk went on here as in modern studios. when the frame-maker came, fra bartolommeo would be vexed to see how much of his work was hidden beneath the massive cornice, and would vow to dispense with frames altogether, which he did in his _s. sebastian_ and _s. mark_, by painting an architectural niche round the subject like a carving in relief. the first work begun at the convent studio was the picture for father dalgano of venice, the subject of which is the _eternal father in heaven_, surrounded by seraphs and angels. perhaps in this we have the source of the motive of albertinelli's _annunciation_. the colouring is more brilliant than any of the frate's works before his visit to venice. vasari says that in this picture giorgione himself could not have surpassed him in brilliancy. the saints, although nearly level with the ground, are given celestial rank by the cherubs and clouds below them. fra bartolommeo was dissatisfied with his angels, which seemed merely lovely children, and seeking other forms, he thought to picture them better under shapes which at a distance seem only clouds, but nearer are full of angels' faces, as in the _s. bernard_. but this idea, not having aesthetic beauty, was also abandoned. [footnote: padre marchese, _i puristi ed accademici_.] the monks of s. pietro at murano did not hasten to claim their picture, but sent two friars to negotiate about the price; they failed to agree, and the work is now in the church of s. romano in lucca. lucca has another exquisite picture of the same year in the cathedral of s. martino, a _madonna and child_--a lovely ideal of joyful infancy--beneath a veil suspended above her head by two angels. s. john baptist and s. stephen support this airy composition like pillars, their figures showing in strong relief against the dark shades; the whole picture is intensely soft, and yet the outlines are perfectly clear. this is valued at sixty ducats in the libri di san marco. next followed the _virgin and child with four saints_, in s. marco, which is so fine that it has been taken for a raphael, although, owing to the use of lamp-black, it has now become very much darkened. the _holy family_ which he painted for filippo di averardo salviati, and which is now in earl cowper's collection at panshanger, is an almost raphaelesque work, and attains the greatest excellence in art. the composition is his favourite triangle, touched in with the flowing lines of the mother seated on the ground with the two children before her. s. joseph is in the background. the greatest softness of flesh tints must have been perceptible when new, for, "in spite of the abrasions produced by time, the delicate tones brought out by transparent glazes fused one over another are apparent." the landscape with an echo subject of the flight into egypt is thought by crowe and cavalcaselle to be by albertinelli. in the partners had a large order from giuliano da gagliano, who, on the nd november, , and th january, , paid, in two rates, the sum of ducats. the picture, which is fra bartolommeo's own painting, unfortunately cannot be traced. in a long list of works are enumerated--a _nativity_, valued two ducats, a _christ bearing the cross_, and an _annunciation_, sold to the gonfaloniere for six ducats--pictures which are dispersed in england, pavia, &c.; but the masterpiece of the time is the _marriage of s. catherine_, now in the louvre. the florentine government bought it for ducats in , to present to jacques hurault, bishop of autun, who came to florence as envoy of louis xii. he left it to his cathedral at autun, from whence, at the revolution, it passed to the louvre. [footnote: padre marchese, _memorie_, lib. iii. ch. iv. p. . crowe and cavalcaselle, _history of painting_, vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. .] before it was sent away, fra bartolommeo made a replica of it, which is now in the pitti palace. there is his favourite canopy supported by angels; in this case they are beautifully foreshortened. the virgin is seated on a pedestal, holding by one arm an exquisitely moulded child jesus of about four years old, who is espousing s. catherine of siena, kneeling at his feet on the left. a semicircle of saints group on each side of the virgin, and two angels, with musical instruments, are at her feet; the upturned face of one is exquisitely foreshortened. the s. george in armour is a powerful figure; and in s. bartholomew, on the left, is the same grand feeling which he afterwards brought to perfection in s. mark. the grace of the virgin's figure is not to be surpassed; if raphael's madonnas have more sentiment, this has more dignified grace. he has remembered leonardo's precept, "that the two figures of a group should not look the same way"; the contrast of the flowing lines in these two forms is very lovely. the same contrast of lines, and yet balance of form, is carried out in the two s. catherines who form the pyramid on each side of her, and in the varied characters of the encircling group of saints. the deleterious use of lampblack has spoiled the colouring; it, moreover, hangs in a bad light at the pitti palace. the original subject at the louvre differs only in a few particulars from this--the virgin's hand is on the child's head instead of his arm, and there are trifling differences in the grouping of the saints, the semicircle being more rigidly kept. in this the flesh is thin and uncracked, seeming imbedded in the surrounding colours; the lake draperies are laid so thinly on the light ground, that the sketch can be seen through the colour. [footnote: eastlake, _materials for a history of oil painting_, vol. ii. chap. iv. crowe and cavalcaselle speak of the two paintings as unconnected with each other, and mention the pitti one as having unaccountably returned there after having been given to some bishop. is it not possible that the gift to a bishop refers to the painting in the louvre, and that the other is the replica spoken of by vasari, vol. ii. p. ?] there is a fine painting in the church of s. caterina of pisa, in the chapel of the mastiani family, michele mastiani having given the commission, and paid thirty ducats, in october, . it represents the _madonna and child_ seated on a base; the action is quiet and yet vivacious; she is supported on each side by s. peter and s. paul, figures as large as life, and even more noble than the ones in rome. the colouring has been much injured by a fire in the seventeenth century, but is robust and harmonious. it is dated . on the th of november, , fra bartolommeo had a commission from pier soderini, then gonfaloniere, to paint a picture for the council hall. this was an unfortunate order; for michelangelo and leonardo da vinci had both been commissioned, neither of them finishing the works. fra bartolommeo's forms the third uncompleted painting; it exists still in the form of a half prepared picture, the design being only shadowed in monochrome, and this in spite of the payment on account of gold ducats in october, . [footnote: see padre marchese, _memorie_, documenti and , vol ii. p. .] the reason of this is difficult to assign, but it might lie in the fact that in pier soderini was deposed and exiled by giuliano de' medici, who assumed the government. another reason may have been the failure of fra bartolommeo's health after his journey to rome. in santi pagnini came back from siena as prior of s. marco, and he having no love for albertinelli, and perhaps a too jealous affection for the artist monk, caused the partnership to be dissolved, much to mariotto's sorrow. the stock, of which a full list is given by padre marchese, was divided, each taking the pictures in which they had most to do. the properties--amongst which were the lay figures, easels, casts, sketches, blocks of porphyry to grind colours on, &c. [footnote: padre marchese, vol. ii. pp. , .]--were to be left for fra bartolommeo's use till his death, when they were to be divided between his heirs and albertinelli. mariotto returned disheartened to paint in his solitary studio. a specimen of this period is the _adam and eve_, now at castle howard, which is said to have been sketched in by fra bartolommeo. eve stands beneath the serpent-entwined tree, hesitating between the demon's temptations and adam's persuasions; the feeling and action are perfectly expressed, the landscape is minute, but has plenty of atmosphere and good colouring. in the same collection is a _sacrifice of abraham_, in his best style. the drawing of the father, reluctantly holding his knife to the throat of the boy, is extremely true. munich possesses a fine _annunciation_. characteristic saints support the composition on each side, the nude s. sebastian being a markworthy study; an angel at his side presents the palm of martyrdom. the picture has suffered much from bad cleaning. in march, , albertinelli was commissioned by the medici to paint their arms, in honour of leo x.'s elevation to the papacy. he made a fine allegorical circular picture, in which the arms were supported by the figures of faith, hope, and charity. chapter viii. close of life. a.d. -- . it is probable that the dissolution of partnership marked the time of fra bartolommeo's visit to rome. fra mariano fetti, once a lay brother of s. marco, who had gone over to the medici after savonarola's death, and had kept so much in favour with pope leo x. as to obtain the office of the seals (del piombo), [footnote: an office for appending seals to papal documents. fra mariano fetti was elected to it in , after bramante, the architect; sebastiano del piombo succeeded him.] was pleased to be considered a patron of art; and welcoming fra bartolommeo to rome, he gave him a commission for two large figures of s. peter and s. paul for his church of s. silvestro. the cartoons of these pictures are now in the belle arti of florence; they are grand and majestic figures, admirably draped. s. peter holds his keys and a book; s. paul rests on his sword. in executing them in colour, he made some improvements, especially in the head and hand of s. peter, but he did not remain long enough in rome to finish them. "the colour of the first (s. peter) is reddish and rather opaque, the shadows of the head being taken up afresh, and the extremities being by another painter. the head of the second (s. paul) is corrected ... but the tone is transparent, and the execution exclusively that of fra bartolommeo. whoever may have been employed on the s. peter, we do not fancy raphael to have been that person." this is the opinion of crowe and cavalcaselle, [footnote: _history of painting_, vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. .] who, however, seem to have little faith in any works of the frate at rome. against this we have the chronicles of quaint old vasari and rosini; besides baldinucci (ch. iv. p. ), who says, "raphael gave great testimony of his esteem when, in after years, he employed his own brush in rome to finish a work begun by fra bartolommeo in that city and left imperfect." his reason for leaving it imperfect was that of ill-health, the air of rome not agreeing with him. it seems he brought home _malaria_, which never entirely left his system, the low fever returning every year, and being only mitigated by a change to mountain air. he was well enough at times to resume painting, but never in full health again. that very summer he was sent to the hospice of sta. maria maddalena in pian di mugnone, "dove pure non stette in ozio," [footnote: rosini, _storia della pittura_, chap, xxvii. p. .] where he did not remain idle. the hospice stands on a high hill, just the place for roman fever to disappear as if by magic for a time, and the patient, relieved of his lassitude, set to work with energy, aided by fra paolino and fra agostino. many of his frescoes still remain, one of which is a beautiful _madonna_, on the wall of the infirmary, which has since been sawn away from the wall and placed in the students' chapel in san marco, florence. [footnote: a document of the hospice records these paintings, and dates them th of july, . padre marchese, _memorie_, &c., vol. ii. p. .] he returned to florence for the winter, and with renewed vigour produced his _san sebastian_, a splendid study from the nude, which shows the influence upon him of michelangelo's paintings in rome. the picture was hung in san marco, but its influence not proving elevating to the sensuous minds of the florentines, it was removed to the chapter-house, and gio battista della palla, the dealer who bought so many of the best pictures of the time, purchased it to send to the king of france. its subsequent fate is not known, although monsieur alaffre, of toulouse, boasts of its possession. he says his father bought three paintings which, in the time of the revolution, had been taken from the chapel of a royal villa near paris [footnote: padre marchese, _memorie_, &c., vol. ii. note p. .], one of which is the _s. sebastian_. in design and attitude it corresponds to the one described by vasari, the saint being in a niche, surrounded by a double cornice. the left arm is bound; the right, with its cord hanging, is upraised in attitude of the faith, so fully expressed in the beautiful face. three arrows are fixed in the body, which is nude except a slight veil across the loins; an angel, also nude, holds the palm to him. connoisseurs do not think this painting equal in merit to the other works of fra bartolommeo. it is true it may have been overrated at the time, for the frate's chief excellence lay in the grandeur of his drapery; the test of authenticity for a nude study from him would lie more in the colouring and handling than in form. in the early part of fra bartolommeo went to pay his old friend santi pagnini, the oriental scholar, a visit at the convent of san romano, in lucca, of which he was now prior, passing by pistoja on february th to sign a contract for an altar-piece to be placed in the church of san domenico--a commission from messer jacopo panciatichi. the price was fixed at gold ducats, and the subject to be the madonna and child, with ss. paul, john baptist, and sebastian. on his arrival at lucca he was soon busy with his great work, the _madonna della misericordia_, for the church of san romano. the composition of this is full and harmonious. a populace of all ages and conditions, grouped around the throne of the madonna, beg her prayers; she, standing up, seems to gather all their supplications in her hands and offer them up to heaven, from which, as a vision, christ appears from a mass of clouds in act of benediction. amongst the crowd of supplicants are some exquisite groups. sublime inspiration and powerful expression are shown in the whole work. on his return he stayed again at pistoja, where he painted a fresco of a _madonna_ on a wall of the convent of san domenico; this, which has since been sawn from the wall, is at present in the church of the same convent, and though much injured, is a very light and tender bit of colouring and expression. it would seem that the altar-piece for the same church, spoken of above, was never finished, as no traces of it are to be found. in october, , we again find him at pian di mugnone; no doubt the summer heats had induced a return of his fever. here, again improving in health, he painted a charming _annunciation_ in fresco, full of life and eagerness on the part of the angel, and joy on the virgin. he did not remain long, for before the end of the autumn he returned to visit the home of his youth and see his paternal uncle, giusto, at lastruccio, near prato. we can imagine the meeting between him and his relatives, and how the little paolo, son of vito, being told to guess who he was, said, "bis zio bartolommeo," [footnote: padre marchese, _memorie_, &c., vol. ii. chap. vii. pp. , .] for which he was much applauded. and when all the country relatives hoped to see him again soon, how the frate said that would be uncertain, because the king of france had sent for him, and with what awe and family pride they would have looked at him! but instead of going to france for the glory of art, he was returning to florence to sorrow. his life-long friend, mariotto albertinelli, had been brought home on a litter from la quercia, near viterbo, and now lay on his death-bed; and what his life had lacked in religion, the prayers of his friend would go far to atone for at his death. while fra bartolommeo had been ailing, albertinelli had also paid his visit to the great city, and seen the two great rivals there. he went from viterbo, where he had been to finish colouring a work of the frate's left unfinished, and also to paint some frescoes in the convent of la quercia, near that town. being so near borne, he was seized with a great desire to see it, and left his picture for that purpose. probably fra bartolommeo had given him an introduction to his friend and patron, for fra mariano fetti gave albertinelli a commission to paint a _marriage of s. catherine_ for his church, which he completed, and then left rome at once. nothing is known of the impressions made on him by the works of the two great masters, and unfortunately his death occurred too soon after for his own style to have given any evidence of their influence. a giostra, at viterbo, proved a very strong attraction to his pleasure-loving mind. this "giostra," which the translators of vasari seem to find so "obscure," [footnote: vasari's _lives_, vol. ii. p. .] was no doubt one of those festivals revived by the medici, in which mounted cavaliers ride with a lance at a suspended saracen's head, striking it at full gallop. desirous of appearing to advantage before the eyes of her whom he had elected his queen, he forgot his mature age, and rushed into the jousts with all the energies of a youth, but alas! fell ill from over-exertion. fearing the malarious air was not good for him, he had a litter made, and was taken to florence, where fra bartolommeo placed himself at his bedside, soothing his last moments, and leading him as far heavenward as he could. when albertinelli died, on the th of november, , his friend followed him to an honourable interment in s. piero maggiore. after albertinelli's death, the frate soared to greater heights of genius than before. the year marks the birth of his grandest masterpieces, first the picture in the pitti palace called by cavalcaselle a _resurrection_, but which is more truly an allegorical impersonation of the saviour. it was ordered by a rich merchant, salvadore billi, to place in a chapel which pietro roselli had adorned with marbles in the church of the "annunciata." he paid ducats in gold for it. in its original state the picture was a complete allegory of _christ as the centre of religion_, between two prophets in heaven, and four apostles, two at each side--beneath him two angels support the world. the prophets have been removed, and are placed in the tribune of the uffizi; thus the picture as it stands loses half its meaning. the christ is a fine nude figure standing in a niche, and in it fra bartolommeo has solved the problem of obtaining complete relief almost in monochrome, so little do the lights of the flesh tints, and the warm yellowish tinge of the background differ from each other. all the positive colour is in the drapery of the saints, one in red and green, and another in red and blue. the two angels are exquisitely drawn, and contrast well in their natural innocence with the sentimental pair in raphael's _madonna of the baldacchino_ on the same wall of the pitti palace. san marco was rich in frescoes of the _madonna and child_, two of which are still in the chapel of the convent, and two in the belle arti. some of these are charming in expression, the children clinging round the mother's neck in a true childish _abandon_ of affection. what a tender feeling these monk artists had for the spirit of maternity! perhaps by being debarred from the contemplation of maternal love in its humanity, they more clearly comprehended its divinity. look at the little round-backed nestling child in fra angelico's _madonna della stella_, imperfect as it is in form, the whole spirit of love is in it. he does not give only the mother-love for the child, but the child-love for the mother, which is more divine, and the same feeling is seen in the _madonna_ of fra bartolommeo. this year, , also marks a journey to a hermitage of his order at lecceto, between florence and pisa. here he painted a _deposition from the cross_ on the wall of the hospice, and two heads of christ on two tiles above the doors. a great many of his works are in private collections in florence; one of the most lovely is the _pietà_, painted for agnolo doni, and now in the corsini gallery at rome. all this time the great painting of the _enthronement of the virgin_, ordered by pier soderini, before his exile, was still unfinished. he seems to have taken it in hand again about this time, but being attacked with another access of fever, again left it, and the painting, shadowed in with black, remains in the uffizi. lanzi writes of it that, imperfect as it is, it may be regarded as a true lesson in art, and bears the same relation to painting as the clay model to the finished statue, the genius of the inventor being impressed upon it. messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle [footnote: _history of painting_, vol. iii. chap. xiii. p. .] call this a _conception_, but vasari's old name of the _patron saints of florence_ seems to fit it best. s. john the baptist, s. reparata, s. zenobio, &c., stand in an adoring group around the heavenly powers, s. anna above the virgin and infant christ forming a charming pyramidal group in the midst. the whole thing is one of fra bartolommeo's richest compositions. the centre of the three monks on the left is said to be a portrait of fra bartolommeo himself, and to be the original from which the only known portrait of him is taken (_see frontispiece_). fra bartolommeo left another work also unfinished, an apotheosis of a saint, which is now at panshanger. this is supposed to have been a small ideal prepared for a picture to celebrate the canonisation of s. antonino, which leo x. had almost promised the brethren of s. marco on his triumphant entry in . the work, if it had been painted in the larger form, would have been a perfect masterpiece of composition, "a very beethoven symphony in colour," if we may judge from the sketch at panshanger, where a living crowd groups round the bier of the archbishop, and life, earnestness, harmony, and richness, are all intense. so ill was fra bartolommeo in that he was ordered to take the baths at san filippo, thence he went for the last time to pian di mugnone, where he painted a _vision of the saviour to mary magdalen_, above the door of the chapel. the two figures, nearly life-size, are at the door of the cave sepulchre. mary has just recognised her lord, and in her ecstasy flings herself forward on her knees before him. the saviour is a dignified figure semi-nude, with a white veil wrapped around him. in the pitti palace, a charming _pietà_ of fra bartolommeo's occupies a place near the _pietà_ of andrea del sarto, the two pictures forming a most interesting contrast of style. the kneeling virgin and s. john support the head of the prostrate saviour, s. catherine and mary magdalen weep at his feet, the latter in an agony of grief crouches prone on the ground hiding her face. the colouring is extremely rich, broad masses of full-tone melting softly into deep shadows. the handling in the flesh-tones of the dead saviour, as well as the modelling of form, are most masterly. it is generally supposed that this was the picture which bugiardini is said to have coloured after the master's death; but there is much divergence among italian authors both as to whether this was the painting spoken of, and also as to the meaning of vasari's words, he using the phrase "finished" in one place, and "coloured" in another. for charm of colouring and depth of expression, the _pietà_ is the most lovely of all the frate's works; therefore bugiardini who was _mediocre_, could not have outdone his great master. it was not _coloured_ by him. bocchi [footnote: bocchi, _bellezze di firenze_, p. .] says there were two other figures, s. peter and s. paul, in the picture, where a meaningless black shadow stretches across the background; but they were erased by the antique restorer because they were "troppo deboli." is it not likely that if bugiardini had any hand in the work, it was to finish these figures? returning in the autumn to florence, fra bartolommeo caught a severe cold, the effects of which were heightened by eating fruit, and after four days' extreme illness he died on october th, , aged . the monks felt his death intensely, and buried him with great honour in san marco. he left to art the most valuable legacy possible--a long list of masterpieces in which religious feeling is expressed in the very highest language. in all his works there is not a line or tint which transgresses against either the sentiment of devotion, or the rules of art. he stands for ever, almost on a level with the great trio of the culmination, "possessing leonardo's grace of colour and more than his industry, michelangelo's force with more softness, and raphael's sentiment with more devotion;" yet with just the inexpressible want of that supernatural genius which would have placed him above them all. his legacy to the world is a series of lessons from the very first setting of his ideal on paper to its finished development. the germ exists in the charcoal sketches at the belle arti and uffizi; the under-shadowing of the subject is seen in the _patron saints_ at the uffizi. many of his drawings are not to be traced. some were used by fra paolino, his pupil, who at his death passed them to suor plautilla nelli, a nun in sta. caterina, florence (born , died ). when baldinucci wrote his work, he said of these were in the possession of cavaliere gaburri. chapter ix. part i. scholars of fra bartolommeo. of these, little more than the names have come down to us. vasari speaks of benedetto cianfanini, gabbriele rustici, and fra paolo pistojese; padre marchese mentions two monks, fra andrea and fra agostino. of these, the two first never became proficient, and have left no works behind them. fra andrea seems to have been more a journeyman than scholar, being employed to prepare the panels and lay on the gilding. fra agostino assisted his master, and fra paolo in the subordinate parts of a few frescoes, especially at luco in the mugnone. fra paolo is the most known, but chiefly as a far-off imitator of fra bartolommeo, without his mellowness of execution. his pictures are mostly from his master's designs, which were left him as a legacy, and this ensures a good composition. he was born at pistoja in ; his father, bernardino d' antonio del signoraccio, a second-rate artist, taught him the first principles of art. his knowledge of drawing caused him to be noticed by fra bartolommeo, when at a very early age he entered the order. he was removed from prato to san marco, florence, in ; and here he found another friend who assisted his artistic tendencies. this was fra ambrogio della robbia, [footnote: padre marchese, memorie, &c., lib. in. chap. ii. p. .] who taught him to model in clay; a specimen of his work exists in the church of sta. maddalena in pian di mugnone, where are two statues of s. domenico and mary magdalen by his hand. his best work is a _crucifixion_ at siena, dated , which has been thought to be fra bartolommeo's; but though that master was asked to go and paint it as a memorial of a certain messer cherubino ridolfo, his many occupations prevented his accepting the commission, and his disciples, fra paolo and fra agostino, went in his place. [footnote: padre marchese, memorie, &c., lib. in. chap. ii. p. .] possibly the master supplied the design, which is very harmonious. the virgin and s. john stand on each side of the cross, and saint catherine of siena and mary magdalen are prostrate before it. one or two of the female saints are pleasing, but the nude figure of christ is hard, exaggerated, and faulty in drawing. the artists got thirty-five lire for the work, though the record in the archives allows that it was worth more. there is an _assumption_ in the belle arti of florence, of which the design is fra bartolommeo's, but the colouring fra paolo's. it was painted for the dominican monks at santa maria del sasso, near bibbiena. the colouring is hard and weak, the shadows heavy, and not fused well in the half tints. two monks on the left are tolerably life-like, probably they were drawn from living models; the s. catherine on the right is very inferior. the belle arti also possesses a _deposition from the cross_, which fra bartolommeo had sketched out and left uncoloured at pian di mugnone. in fra paolo finished it, and it presents the usual disparity between the composition and colouring, the former being good, the latter weak and crude. his best known works are a nativity in the palazzo borghese, a _madonna and child with s. john baptist_ in the sciarra colonna, also in rome; a _madonna and child with s. john_ in the corsini gallery, florence, and another of the same subject in the antinori palace. he painted also at san gimignano, pian di mugnone, and pistoja, and died of sunstroke in . he had as a follower a suor plautilla nelli, born , daughter of a noble florentine, piero di luca nelli. she took the vows at the age of fourteen, in the convent of s. caterina di siena, in via larga (now cavour), florence. her sister, suor petronilla, in the same convent, was a writer, and her life of savonarola is still extant. suor plautilla taught herself to paint. legend says, that in order to study the nude for a christ, she drew from the corpse of a nun--which might account for the weak stiffness of her design. fra paolo, though there is no record of his having taught her, left her as a legacy the designs and cartoons of fra bartolommeo, one of which, the _pietà_, she has evidently made use of in the painting in the belle arti. the grouping is that of the _pietà_ of fra bartolommeo, now in the pitti, of which she must have had the original sketch, for she has put in the two saints in the background, which have been painted out in that of the frate, but we will give her the entire credit of the colouring, which is extremely crude; the contrasting blues and yellows are in inharmonious tones, the shading harsh, and the whole picture wanting in chiaroscuro. the corsini gallery, florence, has a _virgin and child_ by her. part ii. the scholars of mariotto albertinelli were much more important in the annals of art, the principal ones being bugiardini, francia bigio, visino, and innocenza d' imola. giuliano bugiardini should be called the assistant rather than the scholar of albertinelli, being older than his master. he was born in in a suburb outside the via faenza, florence, and was placed in the shop of domenico ghirlandajo, where his acquaintance with michelangelo--begun in the medici gardens--ripened into intimacy, and he was employed by him in the sistine chapel. giuliano had that happily constructed mind which, with an ineffable content in its own works, will pass through life perfectly happy in the feeling that in reaching mediocrity it has achieved success. not only wanting talent to produce better works, he lacked also the faculty of perceiving where his own were faulty, and having a great aptitude for copying the works of others, he felt himself as great as the original artists. michelangelo was always amused with his naïve self-conceit, and kept up a friendship with him for many years. he even went so far as to sit to bugiardini for his likeness, at the request of ottaviano de' medici. giuliano, having painted and talked nonsense for two hours, at last exclaimed, to his sitter's great relief, "now, michelangelo, come and look at yourself; i have caught your very expression." but what was michelangelo's horror to see himself depicted with eyes which were neither straight nor a pair! the worthy artist looked from his work to the original, and declared he could see no difference between them, on which michelangelo, shrugging his shoulders, said, "it must be a defect of nature," and bade his friend go on with it. this charming portrait was presented to ottaviano de' medici, with that of _pope clement vii._, copied from sebastian del piombo, and is now in the louvre. bugiardini's works always take the style of other masters. there is a _madonna_ in the uffizi, and one in the leipsic museum, both in leonardo's style, with his defects exaggerated. the former is a sickly woman in a sentimental attitude, the child rather heavy, the colouring is bright and well fused; he has evidently adopted the method which he had seen albertinelli use in his studio. during a stay in bologna he painted a _madonna and saints_ as an altar-piece for the church of s. francesco, besides a _marriage of s. catherine_, now in the bologna pinacoteca. the composition of this is not without merit; the child jesus seated on his mother's knees, gives the ring to s. catherine, little s. john stands at the virgin's feet, s. anthony on her left. the colouring is less pleasing, the flesh tints too red and raw. a round picture in the zambeccari gallery, bologna, shows him in michelangelo's style. the virgin is reading on a wooded bank, but looks up to see the infant christ greet the approaching s. john baptist; this is carefully, if rather hardly, painted. the lights in the saviour's hair have been touched in with gold. the time of his stay in bologna is uncertain, but in he was in florence, and drawing designs for the ringhiera with andrea del sarto. there is a document in the archives, proving that on october th, bugiardini was paid twenty florins in gold for his share of the work. he obtained some rank as a portrait painter, in spite of his failure in that of michelangelo; and had commissions from many of the celebrities of florence. it was in original composition that his powers failed him. messer palla rucellai ordered a picture from him of the _martyrdom of s. catherine_, which he began with the intention of making it a very fine work indeed. he spent several years in representing the wheels, the lightnings and fires in a sufficiently terrible aspect, but had to beg michelangelo's assistance in drawing the men who were to be killed by those heavenly flames; his design was to have a row of soldiers in the foreground, all knocked down in different attitudes. his friend took up the charcoal and sketched in a splendid group of agonised nude figures; but these were beyond his power to shade and colour, and tribolo made him a set of models in clay, in the attitudes given by michelangelo, and from these he finished the work; but the great master's hand was never apparent in it. bugiardini died at the age of seventy-five. of francesco bigi, commonly called francia bigio or franciabigio, so much is said in the following life of andrea del sarto, that a slight sketch will suffice here. he was the son of cristofano, and was born in . his early studies were made in the brancacci chapel, and the papal hall--where he drew from the cartoons in - , and the studio of mariotto albertinelli, from which he passed to his partnership with andrea del sarto in . thus it is that his first style was marked by the influence of mariotto and fra bartolommeo, while in his later works he approximated more to andrea del sarto. two of his early paintings were placed in the church of s. piero maggiore, one a _virgin and child_ of great beauty. the infant clasps its arms round its mother's neck--a charming attitude--which suggests a playful effort to hide from the young s. john, who is running towards him, by nestling closer to the dearer resting place. the picture is now in the uffizi and has been long known as _raphael's madonna del pozzo_. [footnote: crowe and cavalcaselle, _history of painting_, vol. iii. chap. xv. p. .] no greater testimony to francia bigio's excellence can be given than the frequency of his works being mistaken for those of raphael, but the influence of his contemporaries was always strong upon him. the _annunciation_, painted for the same church, is also described by vasari as a carefully designed work, though somewhat feeble in manner. the angel is lightly poised in air, the virgin kneeling before a foreshortened building. the picture was lost sight of in the demolition of the church, but crowe and cavalcaselle [footnote: crowe and cavalcaselle, _history of painting_, vol. iii. p. .] believe they have discovered it in a picture at turin, the authorship of which is avowedly doubtful. they mention, however, a celestial group of the eternal father in a cherub-peopled cloud, sending his blessing in the form of a dove, with a ray of glory. surely if this be the one described by vasari [footnote: vasari, vol. iii. p. ] so minutely, he would not have omitted a part of the subject so important to the picture. in we may presumably date the partnership with andrea del sarto, that being about the time when they began to work together in the scalzo. francia bigio painted some frescoes in the church of s. giobbe, behind the servite monastery. a _visitation_ was in a tabernacle at the corner of the church, and subjects from job's life on a pilaster within it: these have long ago disappeared. the altar-piece of the _madonna and job_, which he painted in oil for the same church, has been more fortunate, as it still exists in the tuscan school in the uffizi. though much injured, it shows his earlier style. the _calumny of apelles_ in the same gallery is a curious picture. it is hard and dull in colouring, the prevailing tone being a heavy drab; there are several nude figures, of doubtful forms as to beauty of drawing, the flesh is painted in a smooth glazed style, without relief or tenderness. francia bigio shines more in fresco than in oil; his hardness is less apparent, and he gains in freedom and brilliance of colouring in the more congenial medium. the finest of his frescoes is, unfortunately, spoiled by his own hand, and remains as a memorial of his genius and hasty temper. i allude to the _sposalizio_ (a.d. ) in the courtyard of the servite church, where andrea did his series of frescoes from the life of filippo benizzi. the composition is grand and carefully thought out, the colouring bright and pleasing; perhaps in emulating andrea's luxurious style of drapery he has gone a little too far, and crowded the folds. the bridegroom is a noble figure, and shows in his face his gladness in the blossoming rod. a man in the foreground breaks a stick across his knees. the commentators of vasari have taken this to emblematize the roman catholic legend of the virgin having given rods to each of her suitors, and chosen him whose rod blossomed. graceful women surround the virgin, but there is perhaps a too marked sentimentality about these which suggests a striving after raphael's style. there is, however, a great touch of nature in a mother with a naughty child, who sits crying on the ground, much to the mother's distress. francia bigio commenced this in andrea's absence in france, which so excited his former comrade's emulation that he did his _visitation_ in great haste, to get it uncovered as soon as francia bigio's. in fact, andrea's works were ready by the date of the annual festa of the servites, and the monks, being anxious to uncover all the new frescoes for that day, took upon them to remove the mattings from that of francia bigio as well, without his permission, for he wished to give a few more finishing touches. so angry was he, on arriving in the cloister, to see a crowd of people admiring his work in what he felt to be an imperfect condition, that in an excess of rage he mounted on the scaffolding which still remained, and, seizing a hammer, beat the head of the madonna to pieces, and ruined the nude figure breaking the rod. the monks hastened to the scene in an uproar of remonstrance, the frantic artist's destructive hand was stayed by the bystanders, but so deep was his displeasure that he refused to restore the picture, and no other hand having touched it, the fresco remains to this day a fine work mutilated. it shows him artistically in his very best, and morally, at his worst, phase. in , while andrea was in france, the monks of the scalzo employed francia bigio to fill two compartments in their pretty little cloister, where andrea had commenced his _life of s. john baptist_. these are spoken of more at length in the life of that master, who on his return took the work again in his own hands. in bigio competed with andrea and pontormo, in the medici villa at poggio a cajano; andrea's _cæsar receiving tribute_ occupies one wall of the hall, and francia bigio's _triumph of cicero_ another. the subjects were selected by the historian, messer paolo giovio, bishop of nocera; it only remained for the artists to make the most of the chosen themes. francia bigio filled his background with a careful architectural perspective, and a crowd of muscular romans are grouped before it. this also was left unfinished at the pope's death, and allori completed it in . francia bigio, however, did many of the gilded decorations of the hall. in the dresden gallery is a work, scenes from the life of david, signed a. s., mdxxiii., and his monogram, a painting very much in the style of andrea del sarto's _life of joseph_. reumont [footnote: life of andrea del sarto, p. et seq.] claims it as the joint work of andrea and francia bigio, founding his opinion on the letters a. s. before the date; but the letters mean only _anno salutis_, and are used in very many of francia bigio's signed paintings. he had the commission from gio maria benintendi in . it is one of those curious pictures which have many scenes in one--a style which militates greatly against artistic unity. on the right is david's palace, on the left uriah's; david is at his door watching bathsheba and her maidens bathing. in the centre is the siege of rabbah; another well-draped group represents david receiving uriah's homage. in the foreground david gives wine to uriah at a banquet. there is careful painting and ingenious composition, but a less finished manner of colouring than in andrea's joseph, which was painted about the same time for pier borgherini. like ridolfo ghirlandajo, francia bigio fell off in his later style, partly because his ambition failed him, and also because he began to look on art as a means of livelihood--a motive which is certain death to high art. he was especially celebrated as a portrait painter, several of his works having been attributed to raphael. among these are one at the louvre and one at the pitti palace, both portraits of a youth in tunic and black cap, with long hair flowing over his shoulders; one in the national gallery, formerly in mr. fuller maitland's collection; the portrait of a jeweller, dated a. s., mdxvi. in lord yarborough's gallery; that in the berlin museum, of a man sitting at a desk, dated ; and the likeness of pier francesco de medici at windsor--all of which bear francia bigio's monogram, often with the letters a. s. (_anno salutis_) before the date. he died on january th, . chapter x. ridolfo ghirlandajo. a.d. -- . ridolfo (di domenico) bigordi, called ghirlandajo, &c., was born on the th of january, . although not strictly a scholar, he is one of fra bartolommeo's principal followers. when quite a child he lost his father, the famous domenico, who died of fever, on january th, ; his mother and uncle benedetto only lived a few years after; and ridolfo, with his three sisters and two brothers, was left to the guardianship of his uncle davide. ridolfo was the only one who chose the family profession, and he became the fourth painter of the name of ghirlandajo. davide was not a perfect artist, although a good mosaicist, as his works in the cathedrals of orvieto, siena, and florence show, but he was for many years ridolfo's only instructor. as the boy grew up ridolfo frequented those public schools of art before spoken of, the brancacci chapel, and the study of the cartoons in the papal hall. here he secured the friendship not only of granacci and pier di cosimo, but of raphael himself, with whom he visited fra bartolommeo in his convent. raphael permitted ridolfo to assist him in a madonna for siena, and tried to persuade him to accompany him to rome; but ridolfo, like a true florentine, declined to go "beyond sight of the duomo." his first great picture was done in for the church of san gallo. the subject was _christ searing his cross_. his uncle benedetto had laboured on a similar picture, now in the louvre, but ridolfo's is a great improvement on this; the composition is well balanced, full of force and animation, the weeping figures of the maries and the solicitude of s. veronica are very lifelike, although he has not entirely abolished his uncle's coarseness in the scowling, low-typed men. the christ and the virgin are, on the contrary, so refined as to induce the supposition that this force of contrast was intentional; the landscape is rather hard and crude in tone, the flesh tints smooth, and the handling similar to that of credi. the original is now in palazzo antinori, florence, but a replica, in which he was assisted by michele, his favourite pupil and adopted son, is in santo spirito. vasari speaks of a _nativity_, painted for the cistercian monks of cestello; a beautiful composition, in which the madonna adores the holy child, s. joseph standing near her; s. francis and s. jerome kneel in adoration; the landscape was sketched from the hills near "la vernia," where s. francis received the stigmata. maselli says the picture was lost when the monastery changed hands, but messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle [footnote: history of fainting, vol. in. chap. xvi. pp. , .] believe they have found it in the hermitage at s. petersburg, under granacci's name. it is possible that the favourite pupil of his father and ridolfo's own friend may have assisted him. the landscape is raphaelesque, and might mark the time when that master and fra bartolommeo influenced his style. his best manner approached so nearly to that of the frate, that had he continued he would have very nearly rivalled his excellence. his two masterpieces are now in the uffizi; they were painted for the brotherhood of s. zenobio, , to stand one on each side of albertinelli's _annunciation_. one is _s. zenobio_ (the first bishop and patron saint of florence) _restoring a dead child to life_; the other the _funeral procession of the saint passing the baptistery_, where an elm tree, which had been withered, put forth fresh leaves as the coffin of the bishop touched it. a marble column, with a bronze tree in relief on it, stands on the spot as a memorial of this miracle. in these two works ridolfo ghirlandajo proved the power which was in him, but they are the culmination of his art; he never surpassed, or indeed equalled them again. his richness of colouring and deep relief equalled that of the frate, the animation and expression rivalled andrea del sarto. in the first picture, the eagerness of the crowd, the intense feeling of the mother, in whom grief for the dead child seems almost greater than the hope of his resuscitation, the sturdy, solid character of the florentines of the republic, are all given with a masterly hand, while a rich blending of colour fuses the animated crowd in a harmonious unison. in the latter, grandeur and dignity mark the group of ecclesiastics which surrounds the archbishop's bier, the full solid falls of their drapery show that he had well studied his father's works. ridolfo's brothers became monks, don bartolommeo lived in the camaldoline monastery of the angeli, which ridolfo beautified with many works. paolo uccelli had adorned the loggia with frescoed stories from the life of s. benedict. ridolfo added two to the series. in one the saint is at table with two angels, waiting for s. romano to send his bread from the grotto, but the devil has cut the cord and taken it. another is _s, benedict investing a youth with the habit of the order_. in the church of the same monastery he painted a beautiful _madonna and child, with angels_, above the holy water vase, and _s. romualdo with the camaldolese hermitage in his hand_, in a lunette in the cloister. all these were done as a brotherly gift, and after they were finished, the abbot, don andrea dossi, gave him a commission to paint a _last supper_ in the refectory, which he did, placing the portrait of the abbot in the corner. ridolfo, like his father, regarded art rather as a means of livelihood than with any aesthetic feelings, and this is probably the reason of his never attaining true excellence. his "bottega" was really a shop where any one might order a work of art, or of artisanship, and he gave as much attention to painting a banner for a procession as to composing an altar-piece. he had a great many assistants, whom he called on for help in various undertakings. they assisted him to prepare the medici halls for the reception of pope leo x., and later for the marriages of giuliano and lorenzo, not disdaining to paint scenes for the dramas which were then given. he painted banners, and designed costumes for the processions of the "potenze," a festive company, the origin of which is uncertain, but dating certainly from the middle ages. each quarter of the city had an emperor, lords, and dignitaries, each of whom carried his banner or emblazonment. grand processions, tournaments, and feasts were held once a year, on s. john's day, by the potenze. having assisted at the triumphs and marriages of the medici princes, he also furnished the funeral pomp and magnificence on the deaths of the brothers, that of giuliano occurring in , of lorenzo . lucratively it answered his purpose; the medici gave him great honour; he was well paid by them, and got the commission to decorate the chapel of the palazzo vecchio--a very good specimen of his fresco painting, in which he never reached his father's excellence, although in oil he far surpassed him. the chapel is small; the groined roof is covered with emblematical designs on a blue ground, a trinity in the midst with angels bearing symbols of the passions around. the apostles and evangelists surround this, and the principal wall has a larger fresco of the _annunciation_--a rather conventional rendering. commissions flowed in on him to such a degree, that although he had fifteen children, he lived to amass money and lands, to see his daughters well married, and his sons prosperous merchants trading to distant lands. he died on the th of june, , and lies with his forefathers in the church of s. maria novella. andrea d'agnolo, called andrea del sarto. chapter i. youth and early works. a.d. - . andrea del sarto is a curious instance of the vital power of art, which, like a flower forcing its way to the light through walls or rocks, will find expression in spite of obstacles. andrea the painter, "senza errori," was an artist in spite of lowering home influences, of want of encouragement in his patrons--for his greatest works only brought the smallest remuneration--and even in spite of his own nature, which was material, wanting in high aims, and deficient in ideality; yet his name lives for ever as a great master, and his works rank close to those of the leaders of the renaissance. in looking at them one sighs even in the midst of admiration, thinking that if the hand which produced them had been guided by a spark of divine genius instead of the finest talent, what glorious works they would have been! the truth is that andrea's was a receptive, rather than an original and productive mind. his art was more imitative than spontaneous, and this forms perhaps the difference between talent and genius. the art of his time sunk into his mind, and was reproduced. he lived precisely at the time of the culmination of art, when all the highest masters were bringing forth their grandest works; therefore he could not do otherwise than to follow the best examples. he gathered the experience of all--the force of michelangelo, the handling of leonardo, the sentiment of raphael, so blending them as to form a style seemingly his own, and in execution following closely on their excellence. in giotto's or masaccio's case the master created the art; in andrea's it was the art of the age which made the artist. the question of andrea del sarto's birth is a mooted one. biadi dates it , but the register he quotes is both vague and doubtful. he also tells a curious story of his flemish origin. signor milanesi has deduced, from the archives of florence, an authentic pedigree from which we learn that his remote ancestors were peasants, first at buiano, near fiesole, and later at s. ilario, near montereggi. his grandfather, francesco, being a linen weaver, came to live nearer florence; his father, agnolo, son of francesco, followed the trade of a tailor--hence andrea's sobriquet, "del sarto"--he took a house in via gualfonda, in florence, about , with his wife constanza, and here andrea was born, he being the eldest of a family of five--three girls and two boys. from the tax papers of a few years later it is proved that andrea was born in . his full name is andrea d'agnolo di francesco. it is by mistake that he has been called vannucchi. his parents were young, his father being only twenty-seven years of age at andrea's birth. they lived at that time in val fonda, where albertinelli had his shop, but in they removed to the popolo, or parish, of s. paolo. boys were not allowed to be idle in those days, but were apprenticed at an early age; thus andrea, like most artists of his time, was bound to a goldsmith. it would be interesting to investigate the great influence of the guild of goldsmiths on the art of the renaissance. the reason why youths who showed a talent for design were entered in that guild is easy to assign--it was one of the "greater" guilds, that of the painters being a lesser one, and merged in the "arte degli speziali." at seven years old he left the school where he had learned to read and write, and entered his very youthful apprenticeship; but he showed so much more aptitude for the designing than for the executive part of his profession that _giovanni barile_, who frequented the bottega, was induced to counsel his being trained especially as a painter, offering himself as instructor. if andrea, a contadino by birth, an artisan by education, was not originally of the most refined nature, his artistic training did not go far towards refining him. giovanni barile was a coarse painter and a rough man; he had, however, generosity enough to see that the boy was worthy of better teaching, and got him entered in the bottega of piero di cosimo, who had attained a good rank as a colourist, his eccentricities possibly adding to his reputation. accordingly in , andrea being then eleven years of age, a life of earnest study began. piero di cosimo, odd and misanthropic as he was, had yet a true appreciation of talent, and showed an earnest interest in his pupil, giving him--with plenty of queer treatment--a thorough training. "he was not allowed to make a line which was not perfect" [footnote: rosini, _storia della pittura_, chap. xvii. p. .] while in piero's school. but excellent as his art teaching may have been, the boy's morale could not have been raised more here than under the rough but good-natured barile. we have seen piero di cosimo in his youth, the serious, absent young man, who never joked with his juniors in cosimo roselli's shop; we see him now, with his youthful oddities hardened into eccentricities, and his reserve deepened to misanthropy. no woman's hand softened and refined his house, no cleansing broom was allowed within his door, and no gardener's hand cleared the weeds or pruned the vines in his garden. he so believed in nature unassisted that he took his meals without the intervention of a cook. when the fire was lighted to boil his size or glue he would cook fifty or sixty eggs and set them apart in a basket, to which he had recourse when the pangs of hunger compelled him. all this was morally very bad for a boy so young. and then woe betide the poor little fellow if he whistled, sneezed, or made any other noise! his nervous master would be out of temper for a day afterwards. on wet days piero was merrier, for he would watch the drops splashing into the pools, and laugh as if they were fairies. sometimes he would take andrea for a walk, and all at once stop and gaze at a heap of rubbish, or mark of damp on a lichened wall, picturing all kinds of monsters and weird scenes in its discolourations. no doubt he was literally carrying out leonardo da vinci's advice, headed, in his treatise, "a new art of invention." "look at some old wall covered with dirt, or the odd appearance of some old streaked stones; you may discover several things like landscapes, battles, clouds, humorous faces, &c., to furnish the mind with new designs." [footnote: leonardo da vinci, _treatise on painting_.] cosimo's mind being fantastic, the pictures he saw were incomparably grotesque. he delighted in drawing sea monsters, dragons, wonderful adventures, and heathen scenes; in fact the boy could have learned neither christian art nor manners from him. he learned how to use his brush, however, and, leaving piero to his minotaurs and dragons, went off at every spare hour to study at more congenial shrines. he copied masaccio at the brancacci chapel, and drew so earnestly from the cartoons in the hall of the pope that his achievements reached the ears of piero himself, who was not sorry that his pupil surpassed the rest, and gave him more time for study away from the bottega. rosini tells us that "fra bartolommeo taught him the first steps." [footnote: _storia della pittura_, chap, xxvii. p. .] the influence of the frate may have reached him in two ways. it is not unlikely that piero di cosimo kept up an interest in his old fellow-pupil; and then again, as andrea lived in val fonda, it is probable he often visited albertinelli's studio in that street, and the friendship with francia bigio began before the cartoons of michelangelo ripened there. the evidence of style goes to show that the works of albertinelli and fra bartolommeo influenced him more than those of piero. yet though his sphere was devotional, it was "impelled more by a material sense of beauty than by the deep religious feeling which inspired the frate." as time went on the youth in strange old piero's studio became more famous than his master, and felt that he could do greater things away from the stiff method which cramped him, and the whimsicalities which annoyed him. his friend, francia bigio, mariotto's pupil, having just then lost his master, who was giving more attention to his father-in-law's business of innkeeper than his own, was willing to enter into partnership, and the two youths began life together in or , in a room near the piazza del grano, in the first house in via del moro, which still remains in its old state. the first bit of patronage recorded is the commission for the frescoes in the scalzo; that they had work before is proved by the words in the contract of the barefoot friars, "dettero ad andrea pittore _celeberrimo_ il dipingere nel chiosto." the "celebrated" presupposes works already done. the scalzo was a name given to the "compagnia dei disciplinati di s. giovanni battista," because they went barefoot when they carried the cross in their processions. they lived in a convent in via larga (now cavour), opposite san marco. a new cloister had been erected there--an elegant little cortile, thirty-eight feet by thirty-two, adorned with lovely corinthian pillars--and the brethren were anxious to fill the lunettes of the arches with frescoes at the least possible expense, wisely judging that a young artist on his way to fame would be the best to employ. the frescoes, of which there would be twelve large, and four small ones in the upright spaces by the doors, were to be done in "terretta," or brown earth, and to be paid fifty-six lire (eight scudi) for the large, and twenty-one lire (three scudi) each for the lesser frescoes. the small ones were four figures of the virtues, _faith_, _hope_, _justice_, and _charity_. _hope_ is exquisitely expressed, and _charity_ a charming group, the children most tenderly drawn. the subjects, though not all finished till many years later, stand now in the following order; the second row of figures, with the dates, show the order in which they were painted:-- . gabriel appearing to zacharias andrea del sarto . . visitation andrea del sarto . . birth of s. john andrea del sarto . . zacharias blessing john before going francia bigio. to the desert . s. john meets the virgin and infant francia bigio. christ . baptism of christ andrea del sarto . . preaching of s. john andrea del sarto . . baptism of the gentiles andrea del sarto . . s. john bound in the presence of herod andrea del sarto . . dance of herodias andrea del sarto . . beheading of s. john andrea del sarto . . herodias receives the head of s. john andrea del sarto . of these, no. was the first executed, and it is probable that francia bigio assisted him, for it has not the finished drawing nor careful handling of any of andrea's other frescoes. possibly this is the cause of the partners never working together afterwards, each taking his own subjects and signing his own name. the composition, in the _baptism of christ_, is not original, being very similar to that of verocchio's, especially in the two angels kneeling on the left bank; the landscape and figures, however, are far in advance of that master. it will be well to speak of the whole set of frescoes in this place, for although they belong to different times and styles, they are a complete work, and might be taken almost as an epitome of andrea's career; from the one above mentioned in which piero de cosimo's influence is apparent, to the nos. and , which very nearly approach michelangelo's power and freedom. in no. the expression of muteness about the mouth of zacharias, as he stands by the altar, is wonderfully given; you feel sure he could not speak if he would. the other figures are superfluous to the motive, though adding grandeur to the work as a whole. in composition andrea differs widely from fra bartolommeo. the latter delighted in building up a single form, every figure in the whole picture adding its hue and weight to perfect this pyramid or circle. andrea spreads his figures more widely; he likes a double composition, dividing his pictures into two separate groups, connected by one central figure, or divided entirely. this is seen in nos. , and , which are all double groupings, the last completely divided in the centre by a table and an archway behind it. nos. and are pyramidal compositions. the _preaching of s. john_ is one of the best works, and shows his most forcible style. s. john on a rock stands like a pillar in the centre, the hearers are dressed in the "lucco" (a florentine cloak of the th century), the grouping following the lines of the landscape. at the back jesus kneels on a rising ground. vasari says the figures are from albrecht dürer, whose works had made a great impression on the southern world of art; but it is more probable that they only show his influence, for the dress and style are florentine. no. , the _baptism of the gentiles_, is another of his best style, and is, in the drawing of the nude figures, almost michelangelesque in power. this is one of his favourite "echo" subjects, a group in the background of _john answering the pharisees _forming an echo to the principal subject. the muscular life of the spirited crowd of nude figures is beautifully contrasted by the graceful draped forms in the background. one of the baptized is the same child whom he had modelled in the _madonna_ of s. francisco. nos. and are by francia bigio, and were done during andrea's absence in france, showing that he had so far learned from his friend as almost to rival him in power. the subjects, although not scriptural, are conjecturally true. in the _zacharias blessing john before he goes to the desert_, the sitting figure of s. elizabeth and the kneeling one of the child are very lovely; the action of zacharias is not so well defined, the great force in the uplifted arm betokens anger more than blessing. the grouping follows the lines of a flight of steps in the background, and is triangular. the same form of composition is apparent in the next group (no. ), only the lines form an angle receding from the one just mentioned. the virgin is charmingly posed and draped, the children less pleasing. this elegant little cloister is a true shrine of art, although the frescoes are all in monochrome. so much were they admired at the time, that an order was issued prohibiting artists to copy them without the permission of duke cosimo. cardinal carlo de' medici had them covered with curtains, [footnote: richa, _delle chiese_] but, in spite of care, they are very much injured, the under parts almost lost. the precaution of covering the cloister with a glass roof has only been taken in modern times, and too late. andrea's next patrons were the eremite monks of s. agostino, at san gallo, who ordered of him two pictures for their church. in he painted _christ appearing to mary magdalen_, and an _annunciation_ in . the former is said to have had much softness and delicacy, the latter is to be seen in the hall of mars at the pitti, and is a very pleasing picture. the virgin kneels at her prayer desk, s. joseph behind her--a rather unusual rendering of the subject--her attitude is graceful and decorous, the angel calm and gentle, floats in mid air, two other angels stand on the left. the colouring is varied in the extreme, and the lights well defined. these two pictures, and the _disputa_, painted later, were removed to the church of s. jacopo tra fossi, when the convent was demolished in . they were still there in , when bocchi wrote his _bellezze di firenze_, but the _christ appearing to mary magdalen_ is said to be now in the church of the covoni in the casentino. chapter ii. the servite cloister. a.d. - . the next great works were the frescoes in the court of s. annunziata, if indeed they were not carried on simultaneously with those in the scalzo. this famous series of andrea's works was obtained by cunning, and painted in emulation. while the two partners, who had differed from the beginning, and had since become rivals, were engaged in the scalzo, a certain astute fra mariano, the keeper of the wax candle stores at the servite convent--to which the church of the s. annunziata belonged--had watched well those two young painters. fra mariano understood human nature, as priests often do; he had seen the envious rivalship growing between them, as the friends, who should have worked together, took separate compartments, and cast jealous criticising glances on each other's designs and method of work. having ambition of his own, he knew how to work on that of others to further his own aspirations, which were, to be considered a patron of art and a benefactor to his convent. reading andrea's heart, he played on all his strongest feelings, placed before him the glory he would win by covering the lunettes of the arches in the court of the fine church with frescoes which would carry his name down to posterity; he said that any other artist would pay much to obtain leave to paint upon historical walls like those, and how they would all envy the man who should obtain the coveted honour! then, with a half-whispered hint that for one, francia bigio was dying to get the commission for nothing, the wily frate went his way victorious. andrea, scorning to make any pecuniary bargain, only stipulated that no one else should paint in that courtyard, and forthwith began the _stories from the life of s. filippo benizzi_, having only old alesso baldovinetti's _nativity_, and cosimo roselli's _miracle of s. filippo_, as foils to his own. these two works were on the walls on each side of the church door; there were therefore three entire sides of the cloister to cover, excepting only the entrance into the courtyard from the piazza, and no doubt he felt like ghirlandajo, when "he wished he had the entire circuit of the city walls to paint." on the th of june, , he began to paint with such vigour that in a few months the first three were uncovered. . _s. philip at viterbo with the court, dressing a naked leper in his own cloak_. . _s. philip going from bologna to modena_. he rebukes some gamblers, telling them the vengeance of god is near. a sudden thunderstorm and lightning destroy them, thus fulfilling the prediction. there is a great deal of fine action in this composition; the horror and disbelief struggling in the faces of the men, and the stormy landscape are all well rendered. a horse leaps away with strong, terrified action, there is a masterly grasp of his vivid subject, and a rugged strength in the execution which gives great life to it. . _s. philip exorcises a girl possessed of a demon_. here the composition is very tender, the mother and father support the sick girl, and form a very pleasing group; the figures of the spectators are full of life without exaggeration. these works have suffered much from exposure, but the colouring is still good. the praise that andrea obtained for them was so great that he followed them up by the two in the next series. . _a child brought to life by touching the bier of s. philip_. this is a kind of double composition, the child being represented in a twofold condition in the foreground, first as dead, and then revived at the touch of the bier. the grouping around the dead saint is very suggestive of ghirlandajo, and shews a deep study of his frescoes in the sassetti chapel. the colouring is peculiarly his own; there is the mingling of a great variety of bright tints of equal intensity, which by some necromancy are made to relieve each other, instead of being relieved by the art of chiaroscuro as in the handling of other masters. . _children healed by the garments of s. philip_, which are held by a priest, standing before an altar, the women and their children kneeling in front of him. the grouping is symmetrical, the figures lifelike, but not refined, round-cheeked buxom women, and rough, human men's faces, bespeak andrea as the painter of reality rather than ideality; there is vivid life in every attitude, but the life is not high caste. a fine old man, leaning on his staff, is a portrait of andrea della robbia, whose son luca stands near. for all these fra mariano paid only ten scudi each, and andrea, feeling the remuneration not equal to the merit of the work, would have left off here, but the frate held him to his bond. two more lunettes yet remained to finish, but as these were of a later date, we will reserve them for a future chapter. he also painted in the _orto_, or garden, of the convent, the now perished fresco of the _parable of the vineyard_. meanwhile, the rival friends had changed lodgings; they left the piazza del grano, and took rooms in the sapienza, a street between the piazza san marco and the s. annunziata. andrea chose this because it was near his work, and also because his great friends, sansovino and rustici, already lived there. commissions began to pour in on him, which he fulfilled, while still at work at the servi. judging from the style of his early manner, we may date at this time a _virgin and child, with s. john and s. joseph_, now in the pitti. it is painted "alla prima," _i.e._ a quick method of giving the effect in the first painting,--and is probably the one spoken of by vasari as painted for andrea santini; it formerly belonged to francesco troschi. [footnote: _life of andrea del sarto_, vol iii, p. .] a _s. agnes_, in the palace of the prince palatine, at düsseldorf, is in this early style. he also painted some frescoes at san salvi, _ss. giovanni gualberto and benedict resting on clouds_; they ornamented the recess where the _last supper_ was placed at a later period. in a narrow alley, behind the church of or san michele, is a tabernacle on the wall beneath an ancient balcony. here the architect, baccio d'agnolo, commissioned andrea del sarto to paint an _annunciation_. it is so much injured as to be almost indistinguishable now, but was much admired at the time, though some say it was too laboured, and so wanting in ease and grace. [footnote: biadi, ; vasari, vol. iii, p .] it is more likely that it was one of his early works, and should be classed before the frescoes of the scalzo, for it is said that he was living at the time with his father, whose shop was over the archway, and that he had adorned the inner walls of the house with two frescoed angels. [footnote: _firenze antica e moderna_ ed. flor. , vol. vi, p. .] these have perished completely. chapter iii. social life and marriage. a.d. - . this chapter will speak of the _man_, and not of the _artist_. as it is now understood that history is not a dry record of battles and laws, but the story of the inner life of a people, so the biography of a painter ought not to consist wholly in a list and description of his works, but a picture of his life and inner mind, that we may know the character which prompted the works. first, as to personal appearance. there are two portraits of andrea del sarto in his youth; one in the duke of northumberland's collection represents him as a young man with long hair, and a black cap, writing at a table. it is painted in a soft, harmonious style, but not masterly as regards chiaroscuro. it might be by francia bigio, as it has something of the manner of his master, albertinelli. another now in the uffizi is a most life-like portrait of sombre colouring, but not highly finished. here we have the same black cap and long hair; the dress is a painter's blouse of a blue-grey, which well brings out the flesh tints. the face is intelligent, but not refined; the clear dark eyes bespeak the artist spirit, but the full mobile mouth tells the material nature of the man. in looking at this one can solve the riddle of the dissonance between his art and his life. as a young man andrea was full of spirit; he loved lively society, and knew almost all the young artists who lived very much as students now. they met each other in the art schools, and dined and feasted together in the wine shops. sometimes they formed private clubs, meeting in certain rooms for purposes of youthful merriment. of this kind was the "society of the cauldron" ("società del paiuolo"), held at the apartment of the eccentric sculptor, rustici, which was in the same street as that of andrea himself. sansovino, who also lived near, was not a member of this rollicking club; he was one of andrea's more serious friends, and served as companion when his most exalted moods were upon him. perhaps rustici's rooms did not please sansovino, for strange inmates were there--a hedgehog, an eagle, a talking raven, snakes and reptiles, in a kind of aquarium; besides all these gruesome familiar spirits, rustici was addicted to necromancy. the society of the cauldron seems only a natural outgrowth from such a character. it consisted of twelve members, all artists, goldsmiths, or musicians, each of whom was allowed to bring four friends to the supper, and bound to provide a dish. any two members bringing similar dishes were fined, but the droll part of it was that the suppers were eaten in a huge cauldron large enough to put table and chairs into; the handle served as an arched chandelier, the table was on a lift, and when one course was finished it disappeared from their midst, and descended to be replenished. as for the viands, the sculptors displayed their talents in moulding classical subjects in pastry, and turning boiled fowls into figures of ulysses and laertes. the architects built up temples and palaces of jellies, cakes, and sausages; the goldsmith, robetta, produced an anvil and accoutrements made of a calf's head, the painters treated roast pig to represent a scullery-maid spinning. andrea del sarto built up the model of the baptistery with all kinds of eatables, with a reading desk of veal, and book with letters inlaid with truffles, at which the choristers were roast thrushes with open beaks, while the canons were pigeons in red mantles of beetroot--an idea more droll than reverential. after this, in , another club, called that of the "trowel," was instituted, of which andrea was not a member, but was chosen as an associate. the first supper was arranged by giuliano bugiardini, and was held on the _aja_ or threshing floor of s. maria nuova, where the bronze gates of the baptistery had been cast. in this no two members were allowed to wear the same style of dress under penalty of a fine. the members were in two ranks, the "lesser" and the "greater," a parody on the guilds of the city. they were shown the plan of a building, and the "greater" members, furnished with trowels, were obliged to build it in edibles, the "lesser" acting as hodmen, and bringing materials. pails of ricotta or goat's milk cheese served for mortar, grated cheese for sand, sugar plums for gravel, cakes and pastry for bricks, the basement was of meats, the pillars fowls or sausages. some suppers were classical scenes, others allegorical representations, always in the same edible form. we can imagine the wit which sparkled round these strange tables, the jokes of the artists, the songs of the musicians. andrea del sarto is said to have recited an heroi-comic poem in six cantos called the "battle of the frogs and mice." biadi gives it entire; it seems a kind of satire on rustici's tastes, with perhaps a hit at the government, and shows no lack of wit of rather unrefined style; but the authorship is not proved. some say ottaviano de medici assisted andrea in it. it would have been well for andrea if this innocent jollity had sufficed for him, but unfortunately he admired a woman whose beauty was greater than her merits. probably he began by mere artistic appreciation of her personal charms, for she sat to him for the _madonna of the visitation_, which was painted in , two years before their marriage. this lucrezia della fede was the wife of a hatter who lived in via san gallo. her husband dying after a short illness, andrea del sarto married her, and whatever were her faults, she retained his life-long love. biadi and reumont give the date th of december, , as that of the death of her husband, but signor milanesi, from more authentic sources, proves it to have been in . a great deal has been said and written of the evil influence this woman had on him, and his very house bears an inscription recording his fame together with "affanni domestici," but it would seem that posterity has taken for truth more than the facts of the time imply. that she was proud, haughty, exacting, and not of a high moral nature, that she was selfish, and begrudged his helping his own family, her every action proves. that her manners were not conciliating to the pupils is possible, perhaps their manners savoured too much of familiarity for a woman who believed in her own charms; but that she was faithless, which her biographers assert on the strength of vasari's phrase, "that andrea was tormented by jealousy," there is literally nothing to show. in the first place vasari--who was one of the scholars she offended and put down--gives vent to his private pique in his first edition, and in the second, which only contains a slight mention of her, omits almost all he had previously said. now, if the first assertions were true why should he retract them? secondly, the sixteenth century was an age of license in writing and speaking, and had any immoralities been laid to her charge, not a biographer would have scrupled to particularize them; but no! her name is never mentioned, except with her husband's, even by her greatest enemies, who say she was as haughty as she was beautiful. thirdly, a faithless woman could never have kept her husband's devoted love, and had she been so, would that affectionate though exaggerated letter of hers, recalling him from france, have been written? that a man who thinks his wife the most lovely creature living may be tormented with jealousy without wrong doing on her part is more than possible. let us then place lucrezia's character where it ought to stand in andrea del sarto's life--as a powerful influence, lowering his moral nature, weaning him from his duties as a son and brother, by fixing all his care and affection on herself; she, however, not allowing her own family to be losers by her marriage, although causing him to slight his own. even this much-spoken-of neglect of his own family seems disproved by his will, which, after a very little more than her own dot left to his wife, makes his brother and niece heirs of all his estate. except that she cared more for her own pleasure than his true advancement, she was not any great hindrance to his artistic career; he painted an incredible number of pictures, and she was willing to sit for him over and over again. indeed if she were his model for all the madonnas in which her features are recognisable, she must have had either inexhaustible patience or great love for the artist. in fact she was thoroughly selfish; as long as she reaped the benefit of his work she furthered his art; where she was left out of his consideration he must be brought back to her side at any sacrifice to him. this is not the stuff of which an artist's wife ought to be made; the influence of a strong-willed selfish nature on his weak and material one was not good, and his _morale_ became lowered. he felt this deterioration less than his friends felt it for him; even vasari says that "though he lived in torment, he yet accounted it a high pleasure." it was one of those unions in which the man gives everything, and the woman receives and allows every sacrifice. her family were kept at his expense, her daughter loved as his own, and if she were haughty or exacting, he suffered with a socratic patience, thinking life with her a privilege. it is to be supposed that a member of the societies of the cauldron and the trowel would appreciate good living. he was so devoted to the pleasures of the table that he went to market himself early every morning and came home laden with delicacies. [footnote: biadi, _notixie inedite_, &c., chap. xix. p. .] a curious confirmation of this is to be found in his house, the dining-room of which is beautifully frescoed, the arched roof in raphaelesque scrolls and grotesques; while the lunettes of one wall have two large pictures, one of a woman roasting birds over a fire, the other of a servant preparing the table for dinner. this love of good living, however, in the end shortened his life, according to biadi. after his marketing was over he turned his attention to art, going to his fresco painting followed by his scholars, or superintending their work in the "bottega." he was always a kind and thorough master, his manner just and fatherly. sometimes he and sansovino or other friends lounged away an hour in the neighbouring shop of nanni unghero, where their mutual friend, niccolò tribolo, did all the hard work, fetching and carrying blocks and saws grumblingly. tribolo often begged sansovino to take him as his pupil, which he did afterwards, and he became a famous sculptor. one of andrea's acquaintances was baccio bandinelli, who, as he thought he could equal michelangelo in sculpture, imagined that only a knowledge of andrea del sarto's method of colouring was necessary to enable him to surpass him in painting. to gain this knowledge he proposed to sit to andrea for his portrait. his friend, discovering his motive, succeeded in frustrating it by mixing a quantity of colours in seeming confusion on his palette, and yet getting from this chaos exactly the tints he required. so baccio never rivalled his friend in colouring after all, not being able to understand his method. chapter iv. works in florence. a.d. - . from to andrea was employed on the two last frescoes in the courtyard of the ss. annunziata the _epiphany_ and the _nativity of the virgin_. the sum fixed for these was ninety-eight lire, but the servite brothers augmented it by forty-two lire more, seeing the work was "veramente maravigliosa"; thus these two were paid at the same rate as the other five of s. filippo--seventy lire or ten scudi each. in the _nativity_, one of the finest of his frescoes, we see his favourite double grouping, the interest in the mother being kept to one side, that of the child and its attendants to the other-a balance of form united by joachim, a stern, finely moulded figure in the centre. the attitudes are natural, the draperies free and graceful. old vasari justly remarks "pajono di carne le figure." the woman standing in the centre of the room is lucrezia della fede; this is the first known likeness of her. there is a richness of colour without impasto, a modulation of shade giving full relief without startling contrast, a clear air below and celestial haze in the angel-peopled clouds above. this might well be classed as on the highest level ever reached in fresco. nearly fifty years after it was painted, while jacopo d'empoli was copying this fresco, an old woman came through the courtyard to mass, and, stopping to watch the young artist at his work, began to talk of the days of her youth and beauty when she sat for the likeness of that natural figure in the midst, no doubt sighing as she looked at the freshness of the fresco, and thought of her many wrinkles and aged limbs, she being nearly fourscore at the time. the _epiphany_ is also a remarkable work, more lively than the last; it is also less carefully painted, the graceful feminine element is wanting; there is plenty of activity, a crowded composition, and richness of colour. three figures are especially interesting as likenesses; that of the musician francesco ajolle--a great composer of madrigals, who went to france in , and spent the remainder of his life there; sansovino, on the right of ajolle; and near him andrea himself--the same face as the portrait in the uffizi already spoken of. the _madonna del sacco_, over the door of the entrance to the church from the cloister, would seem to have been painted in the same year, , judging from biadi's extract from the ms. account books of the servite fathers existing in the archives, where is an entry "giugno, , ad andrea del sarto, per resto della madonna del sacco, lire ." this term _resto_ (remainder) would imply a previous payment. the money was a thank-offering from a woman for having been absolved from a vow by one of the servite priests. like all his other frescoes of this church, andrea only gained ten scudi for this masterpiece. the date of mdxxv. and the words "quem genuit adoravit" on the pilasters of this work have led most writers to suppose it painted in that year; but it is probable they were added by a later hand. biadi [footnote: biadi, _notizie_, &c., p. note.] says the letters are of the style of nearly two centuries later, that andrea would have signed it, like all his other and works, with his monogram of the crossed a's (i.e. andrea d' agnolo). for charming soft harmonies of colour, simplicity, and grace of design, this surpasses all his other frescoes. the madonna has an imposing grandeur of form, there is a boyish strength and moulding in the limbs of the child which is very expressive, the dignity of joseph and majesty of the virgin are not to be surpassed; and yet the whole is given in a space so cramped that all the figures have to be reclining or sitting. [illustration of monogram] after this andrea returned to the scalzo, the barefoot brothers offering better pay than the servites. here he did the allegory of _justice_ and the _sermon of s. john_ in monochrome. in these he took a fancy to retrograde his style, for they have the rugged force and angular form that recalls the more stern old italian masters, or that titan of northern art, albrecht dürer. of his works in oil at this era we may class-- . the _story of joseph_, painted for zanobi girolami bracci, which borghini judges a beautiful picture. the figures were small, but the painting highly finished. it came afterwards into the possession of the medici family. . a _madonna_, with decorations and models surrounding it like a frame, was painted for sansovino's patron, giovanni gaddi, afterwards clerk of the chamber to ferdinand i. it was existing in the collection of the gaddi pozzi family in borghini's time. . _annunciation_, for giovanni di paolo merciajo, now in the hall of saturn in the pitti palace. it is a pretty composition, the virgin sitting, yet half kneeling, the angel on his knees before her. there is a yellowish light in the sky between two looped dark green curtains; the angel's yellow robe takes the light beautifully. . _madonna and child_, in the "hall of the education of jupiter" in the pitti palace, one of his most pleasing groups. this is supposed by the commentators of vasari to be the altarpiece painted for giovanni di paolo merciajo, but biadi traces it through the possession of antonio, son of zanobi bracci, to its present possessors. the mistake arises from vasari often confusing the names annunciations and assumptions with madonnas. . a _holy family_, for andrea santini, which awakened great admiration in florence. it was in the possession of signer alessandro curti lepri, by whose permission morghen's print was taken. . the _head of our saviour_, over the altar of the ss. annunziata, ordered by the sacristan of the order. a magnificent head, full of grandeur and expression, and very clear in the flesh tints. empoli made several copies of it. . the _madonna di san francesco_, andrea's masterpiece among easel pictures. it was a commission from a monk of the order of "minorites of santa croce," who was intendant of the nuns of s. francesco, and advised them to employ andrea. in grandiose simplicity this surpasses albertinelli's _visitation_, in soft gradations and rich mellowness of colour it equals fra bartolommeo at his best, for tenderness in the attitude of the child it is quite raphaelesque. the madonna is standing on a pedestal adorned with sculptured harpies. she holds the divine child in one arm; its little hands are twined tenderly round her neck, and it seems to be climbing closer to her. the two children at her feet give a suggestive triangular grouping, while the dignified figures of s. francis and s. john the evangelist form supports on each side, and rear up a pyramid of beauty. rosini's term "soave" just expresses this picture, so fused and soft, rich yet transparent in the colouring. the olive-brown robe of one saint is balanced by the rich red of the other. in the virgin, a deep blue and mellow orange are combined by a crimson bodice. the price paid to the painter for this was low because he asked little; but a century or two later, ferdinando de' medici, son of cosmo iii., spent , scudi to restore the church, and had a copy of the picture made in return for a gift of the original, which is now the gem of the tribune in the uffizi. . the _disputa, di s. agostino_ is another masterpiece, showing as much power as the last-named work displays of softness. it was painted at the order of the eremite monks of san gallo for their church of san jacopo tra fossi, where it was injured by a flood in , and removed later to the hall of saturn in the pitti palace. the composition is level, the four disputing saints standing in a row, the two listeners, s. sebastian and mary magdalen, kneeling in front. s agostino, with fierce vehemence, expounds the mystery of the trinity; s. stephen turns to s. francesco interrogatively, s. domenico (whom vasari, by the way, calls s. peter martyr) has a face full of silent eloquence--he seems only waiting his turn to speak. in s. sebastian we have a good study from the nude, and in mary magdalen's kneeling figure--a charming portrait of lucrezia--is concentrated the principal focus of colour. . _four saints_, ss. gio. battista, gio. gualberto, s. michele, and bernardo cardinale, a beautifully-painted picture, once in the hermitage of vallombrosa. there were originally two little angels in the midst dividing the saints, as in our illustration. when the picture was transferred to the gallery of the belle arti, where it now is, the angels were taken out and the divided saints brought into a more compact group. the angels are in a frame between two frescoed madonnas of fra bartolommeo. by this time the fame of andrea del sarto, both as a fresco and oil painter, had risen to the highest point. michelangelo only echoed the opinion of others when he said to raphael, "there is a little fellow in florence who will bring the sweat to your brow if ever he is engaged in great works." his style of composition was important, his figures varied and life-like, his draperies dignified. "the main excellence, however, in which andrea stands unique among his contemporaries rests in the incomparable blending of colour, in the soft flesh tints, in the exquisite chiaroscuro, in the transparent clearness even of his deepest shadows, and in his entirely new manner of perfect modelling." [footnote: _lübke history of art_, vol. ii. p. .] his method, as shown in an unfinished picture of the _adoration of the magi_ in the guadagni palace, was to paint on a light ground; the sketch was a black outline, the features and details not defined, but often roughly indicated. he finished first the sky and background. the flesh tints, draperies, &c., were all true in tone from the first laying in. [footnote: eastlake's _materials for history of oil fainting_.] he did not place shades one over the other, and fuse them together glaze by glaze as leonardo did, but used an opaque dead colouring which allowed of correction; the system was rapid, but deficient in depth and mellowness; "the lights are fused and bright," but "the shadows, owing to their viscous consistency, imperfectly fill the outlines." [footnote: crowe and cavalcaselle, vol. in. chap. xvii. p. .] in a _holy family_ in the louvre, s. elizabeth's hand is painted across s. john, and shows the shadow underneath it, being grey at that part. though more solid, he could not paint light over dark without injuring his brilliance of colour. albertinelli, on the contrary, when he painted and repainted his _annunciation_, washed out the under layer with essential oil before making his "pentimenti" or corrections, and in this way the thinness was kept. in andrea's early style this thinness is apparent, especially in the joseph series, painted for pier francesco borgherini. biadi classes andrea's works in three styles. the first showing the influence of piero di cosimo, the second--to which the best works in the servi cloisters belong--is a larger and more natural style, after the study of michelangelo and leonardo. the third is the natural development in his own practice of a perfect knowledge of art, and a just appreciation of nature. the _birth of the baptist_ and the _cenacolo_, of san salvi, belong to his last and greatest manner. in the florentine artists were employed on more perishable works than frescoes. leo x., the medici pope who had been elected in , made his triumphal entry into florence on the rd of september, , on his way to meet francis i. of france at bologna. all the guilds and ranks of florence vied with each other to make his reception as artistic as possible. he and his suite were obliged to stay three days in the villa gianfigliazzi at marignolle while the triumphal preparations were being completed. the churches had temporary _façades_ of splendid architecture in fresco; arches were erected at the porta romana and piazza san felice, covered with historical paintings; giuliano del tasso adorned the ponte santa trinità with statues; antonio san gallo made a temple on the piazza della signoria, and baccio bandinelli prepared a colossus in the loggia dei lanzi. various decorations adorned other streets, and andrea del sarto surpassed them all with a _façade_ to the duomo, painted in monochrome on wood. his friend sansovino designed the architecture, and he painted the sculpture and adornments with such effect that the pope declared no work in marble could have been finer. andrea lent his talent to another kind of decorative art. the guild of merchants were desirous of inaugurating a festa for the day of s. giovanni, and had ten chariots made from the model of the ancient roman ones, to institute chariot races in the piazza. andrea painted several of these with historical subjects, but they have long been lost. the chariot races were revived under the grand dukes, but not with any success. chapter v. going to france. a.d. - . meanwhile fate was working andrea del sarto on to what might have been the culminating point of his fame, had not his weakness rendered it a blot on his honour; i.e. his journey to france. his fame was rising high; a picture of the _dead christ surrounded by angels_, weeping over the body they support, having been sent to france, [footnote: it was engraved by the venetian, agostino, before it went to france; the engraving is signed . it did not please andrea, who never allowed any others to be engraved.] the king was so pleased with it that he wished another work by the same artist. andrea painted a very beautiful _madonna_, for which, however, he only obtained a quarter of the price which the king paid to the merchants. the king was so delighted with it that he sent the artist an invitation to come to paris in his employ, promising to pay all his expenses. in the pitti palace there is a portrait of andrea and his wife, in which he has commemorated the reception of this letter. he is looking very interested over it, while his wife has the blankest expression possible. in the summer of he started with his pupil, andrea sguazzella, called nanoccio. such a journey was in those days considered as little less than a parting for life. it is plain that lucrezia's family looked on her as almost a widow, for they made him sign a deed of acknowledgement for the florins of her _dote_. some authors have taken this document as a proof of their marriage in that year, but it was merely a precaution against loss by her family; the italian law being that the husband is obliged to render the portion obtained with his wife to her family if she dies without issue, and in case of his own death, the widow is entitled to it. he was well received in paris, and employed immediately on a likeness of the infant dauphin henri ii., then only a few months old. for this he obtained scudi: and a monthly salary was allowed him. what a mine of gold the french court must have seemed to him after working for years at large frescoes for ten scudi each! he did no less than fifty works of art while there, most of which have been engraved by the best french artists.[footnote: see _catalogue of royal pictures in france_, by m. lepiscié.] the _carità_ is signed , and is in andrea's best style--perhaps with a leaning towards michelangelo. the _s. jerome in penitence_, which he painted for the king's mother, and obtained a large price for, cannot be traced. his life in paris was a new revelation, and not without its effect on his character, always alive to substantial pleasure. the king and his courtiers frequented his atelier, and delighted to watch him paint, vieing with each other in the richness of their gifts, among which were splendid brocade dresses and beautiful ornaments and jewels, in which he longed to adorn his wife. while he was engaged in painting the _s. jerome_ for the queen-mother, a letter from lucrezia aroused his longings for home to the uttermost; she--the wife who has been branded by the name of faithless--wrote that she was disconsolate in his absence, and that if he did not soon return he would find her dead with grief. vasari, quoting this exaggerated letter, says in his first edition that she only wanted money to give her friends, but this also he retracts in the second. whether it expressed her feelings truly or not, the letter had such an effect on andrea's mind that he decided to return home at any cost. during andrea's absence the house in via s. sebastiano, behind the annunziata, was being prepared under her superintendence and with his sanction. his scholars had decorated the walls and ceilings with frescoes, and no doubt lucrezia was as anxious for him to see the new house as he was to adorn her with parisian brocades and jewellery. being able to satisfy her ambitious soul, andrea too readily flung away all his brilliant prospects to return, and willingly take again the yoke of the burden of his wife and her family. he made promises that he would bring her back to paris with him, and the king in all faith allowed him to depart, confiding to him large sums of money for the purchase of works of art to be sent to france. sguazzella, wiser than his master, preferred to stay in paris under the patronage of cardinal de tournon. he painted a great many works, much in the style of andrea, but with less excellence. it is possible that some of m. lepiscié's long list are, in fact, the work of the pupil rather than the master. when benvenuto cellini went to france in he lodged in sguazzella's house, with his three servants and three horses, at a weekly rate of payment (_a tanto la settimana_). but to return to andrea: this is an episode in his life which we would gladly pass over if it were possible, for it forms the moral blot on a great artistic career. returning home he fell once more under the strong will of his wife, but with his principles weakened by the effect of a luxury and prosperity which has always a greater deteriorating effect on a nature such as his than on a finer mind. bringing grand ideas from the palaces of the french nobles, he not only fell in with lucrezia's plans for beautifying the new house, but even surpassed her wildest schemes. the staircase was embellished with rich oaken balustrades, the rooms were all frescoed. cupids hide in the raphaelesque scrolls on the arches, classic divinities rest on the ceilings, but in the dining room the homely nature of the man who did his own marketing, creeps out. it is a charming room, the windows opening on a garden courtyard, where a vine trellis leads round to what used to be the side door of his studio which has its entrance in another street. the roof is vaulted and covered with exquisite decorative frescoes, but in the lunettes of the two largest arches are the domestic scenes of cooking and laying the cloth, spoken of at page . two or three of the up stairs rooms are very fine, especially the one in which andrea is said to have died. [footnote: this description is due to the kindness of the present resident in the house, who kindly showed it to the writer, pointing out all the unrestored portions.] it is probable the furniture matched the style of the rooms, and that much money was spent on carved chairs and _cassoni_. certain it is that the king of france's commissions were unfulfilled, and his money misappropriated. andrea would have returned to france, but his wife, who had an italian woman's dread of leaving her own country, put every obstacle in his way, adding entreaties to tears which the uxorious andrea could not resist. as usual he tried to please her, and she only cared to please herself. he fell greatly in the estimation of the king, who was justly angry; albeit the artist salved his own too easy conscience by sending a few of his own paintings to francis i., one of which, the _sacrifice of abraham_, still remains in france, and another a half length figure of _s. john the baptist_. the place of this picture is much disputed; it is said to be at present in the pitti palace. argenville speaks of it among the french pictures as if it had returned subsequently to florence, while vasari asserts that it never went there, but was sold to ottaviano de' medici. [footnote: _life of andrea, del sarto_, vol. in. p. .] as andrea painted no less than five pictures of this subject, of which argenville mentions that there were two in france, one of which was sold to the grand duke of tuscany, it is probable that the pitti one is not that painted for francis i. chapter vi. andrea and ottaviano de' medici. a.d. - . the medici, always patrons of art, did not neglect to enrich their palaces with the works of andrea del sarto. ottaviano de' medici, a cousin of the reigning branch, was an especial friend of his, from the time that andrea began the fresco of _caesar receiving tribute of animals_ in the hall of poggio a cajano. the commission came really from pope leo x., who deputed cardinal giulio, his cousin, to have the hall of the favourite family villa adorned with frescoes. he in turn handed over the direction to ottaviano, who was a great amateur of art. it was designed that andrea del sarto should cover a third of the hall, the other two-thirds being given to pontormo and francia bigio. the payment of thirty scudi a month was arranged. in this andrea has shown his genius in a style entirely new, the composition being crowded, the perspective intricate, the background a building adorned with statues. the subject being allegorical, he has given the reins to his fancy and produced a wonderful assemblage of strange beasts and stranger human beings, moors, indians, and dwarfs. there are giraffes, lions, and all kinds of animals, which he had an opportunity of studying in the serraglio of florence. the drawing is true and free, the figures and animals full of life, the colouring as usual well harmonised and bright. the pope died about this time in , and the picture was left to be finished by allori in . ottaviano de' medici, being a great lover of art, was often a patron on his own account; for him andrea painted the _holy family_ now in the pitti palace. it is a most charmingly natural group: the virgin seated on the ground dances the divine child astride on her knee, he is turning his head to the infant s. john who struggles to escape from his mother's arms to get to him. the fresh youth of the virgin and the saintly age of s. elizabeth are well contrasted. by the time this picture was finished the siege of florence had begun, and when the painter took it to ottaviano, he, having other claims on his means, excused himself from buying it, and recommended andrea to offer it elsewhere. but the artist replied, "i have laboured for you, and the work shall be always yours." "sell it and get what you can for it," again replied ottaviano. andrea carried the painting home again and would never sell it to any one. a few years after, the siege being over, and the medici re-instated, he again took the _holy family_ to ottaviano, who was so delighted that he paid him double the price for it. ottaviano also bought from carlo ginori a _madonna_ and _s. job_, a nude half figure, which were by andrea's hand. he it was who commissioned him to paint the portrait of cardinal giulio, afterwards pope clement vii., and it was also at his instance that the imitation raphael was painted for the duke of mantua. the duke had set his heart on obtaining the picture painted by raphael representing _leo x. between the cardinals giulio and rossi_, and got a promise of it as a gift from pope clement. his holiness wrote to ottaviano desiring him to have it sent to mantua. but ottaviano, appreciating the treasure as much as the duke of mantua, determined to secure it to the house of medici. under the pretence of having a new frame made he gained time, and meanwhile employing andrea del sarto secretly to make an exact copy of it, he sent that to the duke instead of the original. so well had andrea imitated the great master's style that every one in mantua, even giulio romano, raphael's own scholar, was deceived, and it was only some years later that george vasari divulged the secret and showed andrea's monogram on the side of the panel beneath the frame. this copy is now at naples. the fresco at poggio a cajano abandoned, andrea returned to the scalzo, where he painted the _dance of herodias, martyrdom of s. john baptist, presentation of the head, allegory of hope_, and the _apparition of the angel to zacharias_. the last was paid for august nd, . about this time there was a great wedding in florence. pier francesco borgherini espoused margherita accajuoli, and salvi, the bridegroom's father, determined to prepare for his son's bride a wedding chamber which should be famous in all ages. baccio d' agnolo had carved wonderful coffers, chairs, and bedsteads in walnut wood. pontormo painted beautiful cabinets and _cassoni_, and granacci, francesco d' ubertini verdi, called bacchiacca, and andrea were all employed on the walls. andrea furnished two pictures; the one tells the story of joseph in canaan, the other gives his life in egypt. the style is that of piero di cosimo, but with greater excellence and more dignified figures. the landscape is highly finished and minute, and has a part of the story in every nook of it. the centre group, where joseph leaves his father and mother to go to his brethren, is very dignified, although fine enough to be a miniature. in the second pharaoh's palace is [footnote: reumont (_life of andrea del sarto_, p. ) dates these works ; the style, which is very much that of piero di cosimo, would seem to place them earlier.] represented as a medieval italian castle, the dresses are all italian, and as an instance of andrea's versatility of talent they are very interesting paintings. during the siege of florence, borgherini was absent, and the picture dealer, giovanni battista della palla, who prowled like a harpy to carry off treasures for the king of france, made an effort to obtain these paintings by inducing the government to confiscate them and sell them to him. but margherita was equal to the occasion, and meeting the despoiler at her door, she poured out such a torrent of indignation, exhortation, and defiance as drove the broker away crestfallen. on the medici's return della palla was imprisoned as a traitor, and beheaded at pisa. the paintings passed into the possession of the medici, by purchase, during andrea's life. [footnote: biadi, _notizie_, &c., p. , note .] chapter vii. the plague and the siege. a.d. - . from to the plague desolated italy, never entirely leaving it. during this time andrea obtained a commission through antonio brancacci, to paint some pictures in the convent of s. piero at luco in mugello, where he retired with his wife and her relations, and his pupil raffaelo. they spent a very pleasant summer: the nuns made much of his wife and her sisters, and he passed his time in earnest painting. the fruits of his labour are a _pietà_, a _visitation_, and a _head of christ_--almost a replica of the one in the ss. annunziata. the _pietà_ is full of expression and feeling, but more realistic and less dignified than that of fra bartolommeo, which now hangs on the same wall of the hall of apollo at the pitti. in colouring also there is a great contrast between the two, that of fra bartolommeo being deep, rich, and mellow, while andrea's is more profuse, diffused, and wanting in depth of shadow. s. john and the virgin raise the dead saviour, the magdalen and s. catherine weep at his feet; s. peter and s. paul at the back express their grief in the manner natural to their characters. s. peter, in his vehemence, flings up his arms in a madness of sorrow. s. paul, with more dignity, is half stupefied with the intensity of woe. if those saints had been left in fra bartolommeo's _pietà_, the two pictures would have had the very same figures, in each: but how different the composition, feeling, and expression! the frate's group is a compact triangle; that of andrea a scattered arrangement. the magdalen of the frate is overwhelmed with the very excess of love and grief, all of which is expressed intensely, yet her face is hidden; that of andrea is a mere woman dressed in flying scarf and flowing garments, but with very little soul in her face. the characteristics of the two painters can be well studied in these works, so near together, so similar, and yet so different. for the three works painted at luco andrea was paid ninety florins in gold. the _pietà_, was bought in later years by the grand duke leopold, and now adorns the pitti palace. the _visitation_ was placed in the church of the convent over a presepio. [footnote: in it was restored by luigi scotti and sold.] biadi gives the following document:--"io andrea d'angiolo del sarto, à di ottobre ho ricevuto fiorini d' oro di quei larghi [_i.e._ of two scudi each] della tavola dell' altar grande e di una mezza tavola della visitazione, da donna caterina della casa fiorentina, badessa di luco." [footnote: vol. in. p, , note.] andrea was paid ten florins for the _head of the saviour_, through his assistant, raffaello. this receipt would prove either that he went to luco later than , or that he returned there to finish the works in the year . on their return to florence in the autumn andrea painted a fine work for his friend, beccuccio da gambassi, a glass-worker. it is an apotheosis of the _madonna_, with four figures beneath--s. john baptist, mary magdalen, s. sebastian, and s. rocco; not s. _onofrio_, as bottari has named it. the predella, now lost, had portraits of the patron and his wife. crowe and cavalcaselle speak of six saints in this picture, four standing and two kneeling. this description seems to point more certainly to the sarzana _madonna_, which is now in the hall of apollo, in the pitti palace. that for beccuccio is described, with the four above-mentioned saints only, by all the italian authors. the tabernacle, at the corner of the convent, outside the porta pinti, florence, was painted about this time. it is now quite destroyed by age and weather; a good copy by empoli, exists, however, in the western corridor of the uffizi. it is a charming _holy family, with the infant s. john_,--a sweet laughing face. the madonna is a portrait of lucrezia. in the siege when the convent of the ingesuate--at the corner of which it stood--was razed to the ground, this fresco, although loosened from the wall, was spared by the soldiers, who had not courage to injure it. the grand duke cosimo was anxious to have it brought to florence, and often came with engineers and architects, but they never hazarded its removal. [footnote: bocchi, _bellezze di firenze_, p. .] the duomo of pisa has five saints painted by andrea; they originally formed one large picture in five compartments, and were painted for the church of the now suppressed convent of s. agnes; but in they were divided into five pictures, and removed to the duomo, where _s. catherine martyr_, _s. margaret_, _s. peter_, and _s. john the baptist_ hang on each side of the altar. _s. agnes_, with her lamb by her side, is placed on a pilaster towards the southern door. this and _s. margaret_ are especially graceful and expressive. there is much of the feeling of correggio, but with more natural grace and less voluptuousness. the cutting and retouching had injured them greatly, but in antonio garazalli took off the repainting and restored them more delicately. in andrea had a commission to draw cartoons for painting the balustrade of the ringhiera--a kind of wide terrace in front of the palazzo della signoria, from which speeches were made to the populace. his designs were very beautiful and appropriate, the compartments being emblematical of the different quarters of the city; besides which were allegories of mountains, rivers, and virtues. the designs were left unfinished at his death, and the ringhiera was never painted. in - he worked at the fresco of the _last supper_, at s. salvi, which was intended to have been done when he began the four saints there, in , had not some misunderstanding between the rulers of the order prevented their continuation. [footnote: vasari's _lives_, vol. iii. p. .] even now he worked in a desultory manner, doing it bit by bit, but in the end producing a marvellous work. the refectory is a long vaulted hall, and the frescoed table, with its life-size figures, fills the whole arch of the wall opposite the door. one's natural impulse on entering it is to exclaim, "how life-like!" there is a great and living animation in the figures; the characters of the apostles are written on their expressive faces. judas is not placed away alone, as in many renderings of the subject, but is next to christ, the contrast of the two faces being thus emphasized by proximity. s. peter, though old, has all the vehemence and intensity of his character. add to the feeling a brilliancy of colour of which andrea alone had the secret, for without deep shadows, and keeping up the same intensity of tone throughout, he yet obtained great harmony and full relief where others would have produced a clash and flatness. messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle say with justice, "from the contemplation of the _cena_, at milan, we should say that the painter is high bred; looking at that of s. salvi, that he is accustomed to lowly company." [footnote: _hist. of painting_, vol. iii. chap. xvii. p. .] but in some subjects a rugged strength is more important than a high refinement, and in the group of humble fishermen who formed the first church this is not out of place. if he could only have spiritualised christ, nothing would be left to be desired. andrea del sarto was a member of a sacred company called the "fraternità del nicchio," for which he painted a standard to be carried in their processions. it is now in the hall of the old masters in the uffizi, and is a charming group of _s. james, with two children dressed in white surplices_--the habit of the company. the saint is caressing one, who kneels at his feet; the other has an open book in his hand. the draperies are especially graceful, and the expressions soft and pleasing. after finishing a portrait of the intendant of the monks at vallombrosa, which the said monk afterwards placed in an arbour covered with vines, regardless of the injuries of wind and rain--andrea, having some colours still left on his palette, took up a tile and called his wife to sit for her portrait, that all might see how well she had kept her good looks from her youth; but lucrezia not being inclined to sit, he got a mirror and painted _his own portrait_ on the tile instead. it was one of his later works, and lucrezia kept it till her death. it is now in the room of portraits in the uffizi, but much blackened by time; probably also from the tile not having been properly prepared. [footnote: this portrait is given as a frontispiece.] the next year or two were taken up in producing a number of large altar-pieces, and in painting pictures for the dealer, giovanni battista della palla, who was still intent on supplying the king of france with italian works of art. for him he painted a _sacrifice of abraham_, which vasari thinks one of his most excellent works. the face of the patriarch is full of faith, and yet self-sacrifice; the nude figure of isaac, bronzed in the parts which have been exposed to the sun, most tenderly expresses a trembling dread, mingled with trust in his father; the landscape is also very airy and beautiful, and a characteristic group of a servant and the browsing ass is very effective in the background. he also painted a lovely picture of _charity with three children_ for della palla. both these works were done with great care, for he hoped by their means to regain the lost favour of the king of france. it was too late for this, however; and, as it happened, neither of these works reached its destination. the siege of florence took place about this time ( ); the dealer, battista della palla, had his head cut off in his dungeon at pisa, and all hope of his mediation with francis i. was at an end. the _charity_ was sold to domenico conti, the painter, after andrea's death, and thence passed into the hands of the antinori family. the _sacrifice of abraham_ has had more vicissitudes. filippo strozzi purchased and gave it to the marchese del vasto, who had it in his castle at ischia many years. later it was sent from florence to modena in exchange for a correggio, and augustus ii. of saxony becoming its purchaser, placed it in the dresden gallery. this seems to have been a favourite subject with andrea del sarto, who repeated it five times. . the one done by himself for the king of france. . also in france, having been purchased from the grand duke of tuscany. (see argenville.) . the one mentioned above, done for g. b. della palla. . a smaller one, painted for paolo da terra rossa; a fine painting, for which the artist asked so small a price that the purchaser was ashamed to pay it. paolo sent it to naples. . an unfinished painting of _abraham holding isaac by the hand_, now in the possession of the zonadari family, who obtained it from the peruzzi. during the siege, work was found for artists, but of an unpleasant nature. andrea was commissioned, in , to paint the effigies of some traitors on the palace of the signoria. he dared not refuse, but remembering that his namesake, andrea del castagno, who had been similarly employed, gained the name of "andrea degli impiccati," he was anxious that the same name should not attach to himself. accordingly he had an enclosed platform made, and giving out that his pupil, bernardino del buda, was going to paint the effigies, he worked at them himself secretly, till, on being uncovered, they seemed to be real persons writhing on the gibbet. no trace of them remains now, but the studies are in the collection of drawings in the uffizi. a fine half-length figure of _s. sebastian_, for the brotherhood of that name, which had its head-quarters in the street in which andrea lived, was almost his last work in florence. the siege was now over, but the influx of soldiers from the camp brought a return of the plague, which awakened great terror in the city. andrea's mode of life and love of good living did not conduce to his safety; he was taken ill suddenly, and gave himself up for lost. neither vasari nor biadi says he was entirely deserted by his wife; they only hint that she came to his room as little as she could, having a great fear of the plague. it is more than probable that andrea himself kept her away from him, for his love was always unselfish, and he thought only of her good. however this be, he died, aged forty-two, on the nd of january, , and was buried very quietly by the "brethren of the scalzo" in the church of the s. annunziata. his tomb is beneath the pavement of the presbytery, on the left hand. his older biographers seem to think this unostentatious funeral a great slight to his merits, but if there were any doubts as to his illness being the plague, it would only have been a natural precaution to avoid spreading contagion by making his interment quite private. that andrea had not wholly neglected his own family is proved by his will, which left his property (after paying back lucrezia's _dot_ of scudi, and the money for the improvement of the new house in via crocetta for her and her daughter) to his brother domenico, with the proviso that after his death half the bequest should be given to domenico's daughter as _dot_, the rest to accrue to the hospital of the innocenti (foundlings). [footnote: ricordanze nel archivio del e. spedate degli innocenti di firenze. biadi, _notizie_, p. .] lucrezia lived to a good old age, being nearly ninety when she died; she seems to have lived a very quiet life, and to have kept andrea's paintings with great care, except a few only which she sold. the house in via crocetta passed many years afterwards into the possession of another painter, zuccheri, who embellished the studio front with reliefs in stone, representing the paraphernalia of an atelier; but it is andrea's name which lives in the house, as his memory does in the hearts of the florentine people, and his works in the cloisters of the florentine churches. the people of the city always seem to claim del sarto as especially their own. he is always _nostro pittore_, or _nostro maestro_-and indeed as a master of fresco he never was surpassed. in colouring he was in his way unique; in modelling, original and graceful; while the transparent clearness of his shadows and brilliant blending of tints in the lights render his handling incomparable. a little more refinement and aesthetic feeling would have placed him on a level with the great leaders of the renaissance. chapter viii. scholars of andrea del sarto. andrea's scholars were numerous, though only a few rose to any great eminence. of these, jacopo carrucci, "da pontormo" (born , died ), was by far the most talented. left an orphan at an early age, the charge of his sister devolved on him, and he placed her with a relation while he was pursuing his art training. he studied under a diversity of masters, including leonardo da vinci, albertinelli, piero di cosimo; and finally, in , he entered andrea del sarto's school, but did not stay long there either. some say andrea was jealous of his success; he, however, had generosity enough to praise and acknowledge his talent, and to show his appreciation by giving him important work to do in his own studio. pontormo did the predella to andrea's altar-piece of the _annunciation_ for the convent of s. gallo. his hand is to be seen also in several of his master's works. he drew public attention first by painting two figures of _faith_ and _charity_ on the escutcheon of the medici for andrea di cosimo, who had obtained the commission, but did not feel equal to executing it. michelangelo, on seeing these figures, prophesied great things for the youth, who was at that time only nineteen years of age. the people of pontormo, his native town, were so proud of him, that they sent for him to emblazon the arms of pope leo over the gate of their city. he was next employed by one of the festal companies of the age, called the company of the diamond, to design cars, banners, and costumes for a triumphal procession in honour of leo x.'s elevation to the papal chair; and he organised a very suggestive array of the ages of man, illustrated historically. he decorated the papal hall for leo x.'s entrance, and later began to be employed on more serious and lasting works. some good frescoes of his existed in the convent of santa caterina, but were destroyed when the building was reconstructed in . a very charming fresco of the _visitation_ still exists in the court of the ss. annunziata. it shows him as a good pure colourist, the flesh tints being especially tender; the composition is lively, full, and effective. in he painted a fine altar-piece for the church of s. michele visdomini, florence, by commission of francesco pucci. the _madonna_, seated, is showing the child jesus to s. joseph, whose face is most expressive and full of smiling admiration. s. john baptist stands near, at the sides are s. john evangelist, s. james, and s. francis, the latter kneeling in ecstatic admiration. in some cases he was placed in direct competition with his master, andrea del sarto, being employed by borgherini to paint the coffers and cabinets in the same room for which andrea did the _history of joseph_; and again later at poggio a cajano, where the ends of the great hall were assigned to him to paint, andrea and francia bigio taking the larger walls at the sides. on one end he designed an allegory of _vertumnus_, with his husbandmen around him busy with their labours, and on the other _pomona, diana, &c_. perhaps in these last he has carried his imitation of andrea del sarto rather too far in the matter of draperies, which are too profuse and studied. indeed the whole works are overdone; he was so anxious to rival his master that he forced his invention, altering and labouring till all spontaneity was taken out of his work. some of his frescoes were in the cloister of the certosa, but they are not fair specimens of his best style, as they were done when the florentine artists were smitten with the mania of imitating albrecht dürer, and in these he has entirely followed the harder manner of that artist without obtaining his strength. the frescoes are all scenes from the _life of christ_, and he spent several years over them; after which he painted an altar-piece. giovanni battista della palla commissioned him to paint a picture to be sent to the king of france, and pontormo returning wisely to his natural style, painted one of his masterpieces, the _resurrection of lazarus_. the pitti palace possesses a curious specimen of his work, the , martyrs crucified in a wood in the persecution under the emperor diocletian. he rose to renown as a portrait painter, but lost patronage in later year by his capricious behaviour, refusing to work except for whom and when he pleased. in company with his favourite pupil, bronzino, he did the frescoes in the loggie of the medici villa at careggi; one loggia was soon completed, to the great delight of the duke, but jacopo shut himself up in the second and allowed no one to see what he was doing for five years; when at length he uncovered the frescoes general disappointment was the result. he pursued much the same line of conduct in the frescoes of the roof of the medici chapel in san lorenzo. he kept the chapel closed with walls and planks for eleven years, no one seeing his progress except some young men who removed one of the rosettes from the ceiling to peep in on him, but he discovered their plan, and closed the holes more assiduously than ever. the composition is as confused as it is diffusive; he tried to embody the whole teaching of the bible, but becoming overwhelmed with the vastness of his subject, fell short even of the excellence of his own previous works. he died before this work was completed, of hydropsy, and was buried in the servite church. giorgio vasari, better known as the chronicler of the works of other artists than for the excellence of his own, was born at arezzo, --died at florence, . his father was a painter, and the family was connected by ties of relationship with luca signorelli of cortona. among the many masters under whom he studied was andrea del sarto. he did not remain long under his tuition, having contrived to offend lucrezia in some way. he painted a great many frescoes at arezzo, where he lived in his youth with his paternal uncle don antonio. don miniato pitti, prior of the convent of monte oliveti, near siena, next employed him to adorn the portico of his church. he had the good fortune to attract the notice of cardinal ippolito de' medici, who took him to rome in his suite, where he gained much advantage by the study of the works of the great masters there. the medici family, especially andrea del sarto's patron, ottaviano, were his constant friends: and their palaces are profusely decorated by him. the riccardi palace has a room with fresco scenes from the life of cæsar. while painting these duke alessandro gave him a salary of six crowns a month with a place at his table, and board for his servant, &c. the palace has several oil paintings by vasari, amongst which are portraits of the duke and his sister. after the death of duke alessandro and ottaviano he wandered from city to city, painting so energetically that there are few of the principal towns which do not possess some of his works, especially naples, pisa, bologna, and arezzo. the palazzo san giorgio of the farnese family, in rome, has a large hall richly frescoed by vasari, but the best of his works are to be seen on the walls of the great hall of the palazzo vecchio in florence, where he has illustrated the battles of the florentines, and in several other rooms of the same palace; he having continued all the later years of his life in the service of duke cosimo, by whom the palace was restored and decorated. his works are too numerous and not sufficiently important to catalogue or describe, his composition is overcrowded and wanting in perspective. there is generally a superabundance of flesh; muscular limbs in all attitudes form a great part of his pictures, but as the flesh tints he used were wanting in mellowness and shadow, and have turned pink with age, they compare disadvantageously with those of the more solid masters who preceded him. after all, vasari's name and fame rest principally on the labours of his pen, not those of his brush. his "_lives of the painters,_" although not a model of precision in facts or chronology, is nevertheless the mine from which all subsequent art historians quarry to obtain their information. one of the most valuable books of the day is probably the new edition of vasari with corrections and notes taken from the archives by signer gaetano milanesi. francesco rossi, de' salviati (born at florence, --died at borne, ) was a great friend of vasari; his real name was rossi, his father being a weaver of velvets, but he obtained the name of salviati from being the protégé of the cardinal of that name. his first master was raffaello del brescia, but in he, with his friend nannoccio, entered the school of andrea del sarto, with whom they stayed during the siege. becoming known by some paintings done for the friars of the badia, cardinal salviati took him into his house, gave him a stipend of four crowns a month, and an apartment at the borgo vecchio, he painting any works the cardinal wished. francesco was not idle, a great number of frescoes, altar-pieces, and portraits, &c., &c., testifying to his industry. in his later years he was employed with his friend vasari in the palazzo vecchio, where he painted the frescoes in the smaller hall of audience. these are principally scenes from the _life of camillus_. the story of the schoolmaster of falerii is very spirited, and the _triumph of camillus_ varied and pleasing in colouring. although melancholy and suspicious, often making enemies and losing patronage by misunderstandings, rossi and vasari were always faithful to their first boyish friendship, often working together, but never with any spirit of rivalry. salviati's style was bold and spirited; he was rich in invention, but perhaps a little wild in the matter of draperies and bizarre costumes. his colouring is more pleasing than that of vasari, but is diffusive and wanting in depth. domenico conti never became famous, but in spite of want of genius, he was andrea's favourite pupil. all his master's designs and cartoons came into his possession at andrea's death, but he was unfortunately robbed of them soon afterwards. the inscription to andrea del sarto which once existed in the church of ss. annunziata was put up by conti. jacopo del conte ( - ), who in vasari's time lived in rome, is chiefly noted for his likenesses of several pontiffs and personages of the papal court. there are a few altar-pieces by him in rome, and a _deposition_ in the church of the misericordia in florence, but he was almost exclusively a portrait painter. andrea sguazzella, called nannoccio, remained in france after having accompanied andrea del sarto thither. cardinal tournon took him under his patronage, and he painted a large number of works in the style of andrea. jacopo, called jacone, was another of andrea's favourite disciples. his frescoes, of which some existed till of late years on the façade of the palazzo buondelmonte, in florence, were much in del sarto's manner. he assisted his master in a great many of his works, while of his independent paintings many were sent to france; no doubt some of these, as well as sguazzella's, figure under the master's name in that list of fifty works given by argenville. he was too idle and fond of pleasure to rise to eminence, though he did some good frescoes in the palazzo capponi at florence, and in the capponi villa at montici, and assisted jacopo da pontormo in the hall of the medici villa at careggi. he died in , in great poverty. pier francesco di jacopo di sandro was said to have had some talent. he and domenico conti were employed among others in decorating the court of the palazzo vecchio on the occasion of cosimo de' medici's marriage with leonora di toledo. there are some altar-pieces of his in the church of santo spirito, florence. solosmeo, raffaello, and bernardino del buda were three _garzoni_ in andrea's studio. they were employed in the subordinate work and manual labour, but were not trained as artists. bibliography . g. gruyer. fra bartolommeo della porta and m. albertinelli. . f. knapp. fra bartolommeo della porta. . h. gablentz. fra bartolommeo. . m. e. james. fra bartolommeo. . h. guinness. andrea del sarto. (the great masters series.) . masterpieces of andrea del sarto. (gowan's art books.) . f. knapp. andrea del sarto. - . crowe and cavalcaselle. a new history of painting in italy from the nd to the th century. three volumes. modern painting by george moore to sir william eden, bart. of all my books, this is the one you like best; its subject has been the subject of nearly all our conversations in the past, and i suppose will be the subject of many conversations in the future; so, looking back and forward, i dedicate this book to you. g. m. _the editor of "the speaker" allowed me to publish from time to time chapters of a book on art. these chapters have been gathered from the mass of art journalism which had grown about them, and i reprint them in the sequence originally intended_. _g. m._ contents. whistler chavannes, millet, and manet the failure of the nineteenth century artistic education in france and england ingres and corot monet, sisley, pissaro, and the decadence our academicians the organisation of art art and science royalty in art art patrons picture dealers mr. burne-jones and the academy the alderman in art religiosity in art the camera in art the new english art club a great artist nationality in art sex in art mr. steer's exhibition claude monet notes-- mr. mark fisher a portrait by mr. sargent an orchid by mr. james the whistler album ingres some japanese prints new art criticism long ago in italy whistler. i have studied mr. whistler and thought about him this many a year. his character was for a long time incomprehensible to me; it contained elements apparently so antagonistic, so mutually destructive, that i had to confess my inability to bring him within any imaginable psychological laws, and classed him as one of the enigmas of life. but nature is never illogical; she only seems so, because our sight is not sufficient to see into her intentions; and with study my psychological difficulties dwindled, and now the man stands before me exquisitely understood, a perfect piece of logic. all that seemed discordant and discrepant in his nature has now become harmonious and inevitable; the strangest and most erratic actions of his life now seem natural and consequential (i use the word in its grammatical sense) contradictions are reconciled, and looking at the man i see the pictures, and looking at the pictures i see the man. but at the outset the difficulties were enormous. it was like a newly-discovered greek text, without punctuation or capital letters. here was a man capable of painting portraits, perhaps not quite so full of grip as the best work done by velasquez and hals, only just falling short of these masters at the point where they were strongest, but plainly exceeding them in graciousness of intention, and subtle happiness of design, who would lay down his palette and run to a newspaper office to polish the tail of an epigram which he was launching against an unfortunate critic who had failed to distinguish between an etching and a pen-and-ink drawing! here was a man who, though he had spent the afternoon painting like the greatest, would spend his evenings in frantic disputes over dinner-tables about the ultimate ownership of a mild joke, possibly good enough for _punch_, something that any one might have said, and that most of us having said it would have forgotten! it will be conceded that such divagations are difficult to reconcile with the possession of artistic faculties of the highest order. the "ten o'clock" contained a good deal of brilliant writing, sparkling and audacious epigram, but amid all its glitter and "go" there are statements which, coming from mr. whistler, are as astonishing as a denial of the rotundity of the earth would be in a pamphlet bearing the name of professor huxley. mr. whistler is only serious in his art--a grave fault according to academicians, who are serious in everything except their "art". a very boyish utterance is the statement that such a thing as an artistic period has never been known. one rubbed one's eyes; one said, is this a joke, and, if so, where is the point of it? and then, as if not content with so much mystification, mr. whistler assured his ten o'clock audience that there was no such thing as nationality in art, and that you might as well speak of english mathematics as of english art. we do not stop to inquire if such answers contain one grain of truth; we know they do not--we stop to consider them because we know that the criticism of a creative artist never amounts to more than an ingenious defence of his own work--an ingenious exaltation of a weakness (a weakness which perhaps none suspects but himself) into a conspicuous merit. mr. whistler has shared his life equally between america, france, and england. he is the one solitary example of cosmopolitanism in art, for there is nothing in his pictures to show that they come from the north, the south, the east, or the west. they are compounds of all that is great in eastern and western culture. conscious of this, and fearing that it might be used as an argument against his art, mr. whistler threw over the entire history, not only of art, but of the world; and declared boldly that art was, like science, not national, but essentially cosmopolitan; and then, becoming aware of the anomaly of his genius in his generation, mr. whistler undertook to explain away the anomaly by ignoring the fifth century b.c. in athens, the fifteenth century in italy, and the seventeenth in holland, and humbly submitting that artists never appeared in numbers like swallows, but singly like aerolites. now our task is not to disprove these statements, but to work out the relationship between the author of the "butterfly letters" and the painter of the portrait of "the mother", "lady archibald campbell", "miss alexander", and the other forty-one masterpieces that were on exhibition in the goupil galleries. there is, however, an intermediate step, which is to point out the intimate relationship between the letter-writer and the physical man. although there is no internal evidence to show that the pictures were not painted by a frenchman, an italian, an englishman, or a westernised japanese, it would be impossible to read any one of the butterfly-signed letters without feeling that the author was a man of nerves rather than a man of muscle, and, while reading, we should involuntarily picture him short and thin rather than tall and stalwart. but what has physical condition got to do with painting? a great deal. the greatest painters, i mean the very greatest--michael angelo, velasquez, and rubens--were gifted by nature with as full a measure of health as of genius. their physical constitutions resembled more those of bulls than of men. michael angelo lay on his back for three years painting the sistine chapel. rubens painted a life-size figure in a morning of pleasant work, and went out to ride in the afternoon. but nature has dowered mr. whistler with only genius. his artistic perceptions are moreexquisite than velasquez's. he knows as much, possibly even a little more, and yet the result is never quite equal. why? a question of health. _c'est un tempérament de chatte_. he cannot pass from masterpiece to masterpiece like velasquez. the expenditure of nerve-force necessary to produce such a work as the portrait of lady archibald campbell or miss alexander exhausts him, and he is obliged to wait till nature recoups herself; and these necessary intervals he has employed in writing letters signed "butterfly" to the papers, quarrelling with oscar over a few mild jokes, explaining his artistic existence, at the expense of the entire artistic history of the world, collecting and classifying the stupidities of the daily and weekly press. but the lesser side of a man of genius is instructive to study--indeed, it is necessary that we should study it if we would thoroughly understand his genius. "no man," it has been very falsely said, "is a hero to his _valet de chambre_." the very opposite is the truth. man will bow the knee only to his own image and likeness. the deeper the humanity, the deeper the adoration; and from this law not even divinity is excepted. all we adore is human, and through knowledge of the flesh that grovels we may catch sight of the soul ascending towards the divine stars. and so the contemplation of mr. whistler, the author of the "butterfly letters", the defender of his little jokes against the plagiarising tongue, should stimulate rather than interrupt our prostrations. i said that nature had dowered mr. whistler with every gift except that of physical strength. if mr. whistler had the bull-like health of michael angelo, rubens, and hals, the letters would never have been written. they were the safety-valve by which his strained nerves found relief from the intolerable tension of the masterpiece. he has not the bodily strength to pass from masterpiece to masterpiece, as did the great ones of old time. in the completed picture slight traces of his agony remain. but painting is the most indiscreet of all the arts, and here and there an omission or a feeble indication reveal the painter to us in moments of exasperated impotence. to understand mr. whistler's art you must understand his body. i do not mean that mr. whistler has suffered from bad health--his health has always been excellent; all great artists have excellent health, but his constitution is more nervous than robust. he is even a strong man, but he is lacking in weight. were he six inches taller, and his bulk proportionately increased, his art would be different. instead of having painted a dozen portraits, every one--even the mother and miss alexander, which i personally take to be the two best--a little febrile in its extreme beauty, whilst some, masterpieces though they be, are clearly touched with weakness, and marked with hysteria--mr. whistler would have painted a hundred portraits, as strong, as vigorous, as decisive, and as easily accomplished as any by velasquez or hals. but if nature had willed him so, i do not think we should have had the nocturnes, which are clearly the outcome of a highly-strung, bloodless nature whetted on the whetstone of its own weakness to an exasperated sense of volatile colour and evanescent light. it is hardly possible to doubt that this is so when we look on these canvases, where, in all the stages of her repose, the night dozes and dreams upon our river--a creole in nocturne , upon whose trembling eyelids the lustral moon is shining; a quadroon in nocturne , who turns herself out of the light anhungered and set upon some feast of dark slumber. and for the sake of these gem-like pictures, whose blue serenities are comparable to the white perfections of athenian marbles, we should have done well to yield a littlestrength in portraiture, if the distribution of mr. whistler's genius had been left in our hands. so nature has done her work well, and we have no cause to regret the few pounds of flesh that she withheld. a few pounds more of flesh and muscle, and we should have had another velasquez; but nature shrinks from repetition, and at the last moment she said, "the world has had velasquez, another would be superfluous: let there be jimmy whistler." in the nocturnes mr. whistler stands alone, withouta rival. in portraits he is at his best when they are near to his nocturnes in intention, when the theme lends itself to an imaginative and decorative treatment; for instance, as in the mother or miss alexander. mr. whistler is at his worst when he is frankly realistic. i have seen pictures by mr. henry moore that i like better than "the blue wave". nor does mr. whistler seem to me to reach his highest level in any one of the three portraits--lady archibald campbell, miss rose corder, and "the lady in the fur jacket". i know that mr. walter sickert considers the portrait of lady archibald campbell to be mr. whistler's finest portrait. i submit, however, that the attitude is theatrical and not very explicit. it is a movement that has not been frankly observed, nor is it a movement that has been frankly imagined. it has none of the artless elegance of nature; it is full of studio combinations; and yet it is not a frankly decorative arrangement, as the portrait of the mother or miss alexander. when hals painted his burgomasters, he was careful to place them in definite and comprehensible surroundings. he never left us in doubt either as to the time or the place; and the same obligations of time and place, which hals never shirked, seem to me to rest on the painter, if he elects to paint his sitter in any attitude except one of conventional repose. lady archibald campbell is represented in violent movement, looking backwards over her shoulder as she walks up the picture; yet there is nothing to show that she is not standing on the low table on which the model poses, and the few necessary indications are left out because they would interfere with the general harmony of his picture; because, if the table on which she is standing were indicated, the movement of outstretched arm would be incomprehensible. the hand, too, is somewhat uncertain, undetermined, and a gesture is meaningless that the hand does not determine and complete. i do not speak of the fingers of the right hand, which are non-existent; after a dozen attempts to paint the gloved hand, only an approximate result was obtained. look at the ear, and say that the painter's nerves did not give wayonce or twice. and the likeness is vague and shadowy; she is only fairly representative of her class. we see fairly well that she is a lady _du grand monde_, who is, however, not without knowledge of _les environs du monde_. but she is hardly english--she might be a french woman or an american. she is a sort of hybrid. miss rose corder and "the lady in the fur jacket" are equally cosmopolitan; so, too, is miss alexander. only once has mr. whistler expressed race, and that was in his portrait of his mother. then these three ladies--miss corder, lady archibald campbell, and "the lady in the fur jacket"--wear the same complexion: a pale yellow complexion, burnt and dried. with this conventional tint he obtains unison and a totality of effect; but he obtains this result at the expense of truth. hals and velasquez obtained the same result, without, however, resorting to such meretricious methods. the portrait of the mother is, as every one knows, in the luxemburg; but the engraving reminds us of the honour which france has done, but which we failed to do, to the great painter of the nineteenth century; and after much hesitation and arguing with myself i feel sure that on the whole this picture is the painter's greatest work in portraiture. we forget relations, friends, perhaps even our parents; but that picture we never forget; it is for ever with us, in sickness and in health; and in moments of extreme despair, when life seems hopeless, the strange magic of that picture springs into consciousness, and we wonder by what strange wizard craft was accomplished the marvellous pattern on the black curtain that drops past the engraving on the wall. we muse on the extraordinary beauty of that grey wall, on the black silhouette sitting so tranquilly, on the large feet on a foot-stool, on the hands crossed, on the long black dress that fills the picture with such solemn harmony. then mark the transition from grey to white, and how _le ton local_ is carried through the entire picture, from the highest light to the deepest shadow. note the tenderness of that white cap, the white lace cuffs, the certainty, the choice, and think of anything if you can, even in the best japanese work, more beautiful, more delicate, subtle, illusive, certain in its handicraft; and if the lace cuffs are marvellous, the delicate hands of a beautiful old age lying in a small lace handkerchief are little short of miraculous. they are not drawn out in anatomical diagram, but appear and disappear, seen here on the black dress, lost there in the small white handkerchief. and when we study the faint, subtle outline of the mother's face, we seem to feel that there the painter has told the story of his soul more fully than elsewhere. that soul, strangely alive to all that is delicate and illusive in nature, found perhaps its fullest expression in that grave old puritan lady looking through the quiet refinement of her grey room, sitting in solemn profile in all the quiet habit of her long life. compared with later work, the execution is "tighter", if i may be permitted an expression which will be understood in studios; we are very far indeed from the admirable looseness of handling which is the charm of the portrait of miss rose corder. there every object is born unconsciously beneath the passing of the brush. if not less certain, the touch in the portrait of the mother is less prompt; but the painter's vision is more sincere and more intense. and to those who object to the artificiality of the arrangement, i reply that if the old lady is sitting in a room artificially arranged, lady archibald campbell may be said to be walking through incomprehensible space. but what really decides me to place this portrait above the others is the fact that while painting his mother's portrait he was unquestionably absorbed in his model; and absorption in the model is perhaps the first quality in portrait-painting. still, for my own personal pleasure, to satisfy the innermost cravings of my own soul, i would choose to live with the portrait of miss alexander. truly, this picture seems to me the most beautiful in the world. i know very well that it has not the profound beauty of the infantes by velasquez in the louvre; but for pure magic of inspiration, is it not more delightful? just as shelley's "sensitive plant" thrills the innermost sense like no other poem in the language, the portrait of miss alexander enchants with the harmony of colour, with the melody of composition. strangely original, a rare and unique thing, is this picture, yet we know whence it came, and may easily appreciate the influences that brought it into being. exquisite and happy combination of the art of an entire nation and the genius of one man-the soul of japan incarnate in the body of the immortal spaniard. it was japan that counselled the strange grace of the silhouette, and it was that country, too, that inspired in a dim, far-off way those subtly sweet and magical passages from grey to green, from green again to changing evanescent grey. but a higher intelligence massed and impelled those chords of green and grey than ever manifested itself in japanese fan or screen; the means are simpler, the effect is greater, and by the side of this picture the best japanese work seems only facile superficial improvisation. in the picture itself there is really little of japan. the painter merely understood all that japan might teach. he went to the very root, appropriating only the innermost essence of its art. we westerns had thought it sufficient to copy nature, but the japanese knew it was better to observe nature. the whole art of japan is selection, and japan taught mr. whistler, or impressed upon mr. whistler, the imperative necessity of selection. no western artist of the present or of past time--no, not velasquez himself--ever selected from the model so tenderly as mr. whistler; japan taught him to consider nature as a storehouse whence the artist may pick and choose, combining the fragments of his choice into an exquisite whole. sir john millais' art is the opposite; there we find no selection; the model is copied--and sometimes only with sufficient technical skill. but this picture is throughout a selection from the model; nowhere has anything been copied brutally, yet the reality of the girl is not sacrificed. the picture represents a girl of ten or eleven. she is dressed according to the fashion of twenty years ago--a starched muslin frock, a small overskirt pale brown, white stockings, square-toed black shoes. she stands, her left foot advanced, holding in her left hand a grey felt hat adorned with a long plume reaching nearly to the ground. the wall behind her is grey with a black wainscot. on the left, far back in the picture, on a low stool, some grey-green drapery strikes the highest note of colour in the picture. on the right, in the foreground, some tall daisies come into the picture, and two butterflies flutter over the girl's blonde head. this picture seems to exist principally in the seeing! i mean that the execution is so strangely simple that the thought, "if i could only see the model like that, i think icould do it myself", comes spontaneously into the mind. and this spontaneous thought is excellent criticism, for three-parts of mr. whistler's art lies in the seeing; no one ever saw nature so artistically. notice on the left the sharp line of the white frock cutting against the black wainscoting. were that line taken away, how much would the picture lose! look at the leg that is advanced, and tell me if you can detect the modelling. there is modelling, i know, but there are no vulgar roundnesses. apparently, only a flat tint; but there is on the bone a light, hardly discernible; and this light is sufficient. and the leg that is turned away, the thick, chubby ankle of the child, how admirable in drawing; and that touch of darker colour, how it tells the exact form of the bone! to indicate is the final accomplishment of the painter's art, and i know no indication like that ankle bone. and now passing from the feet to the face, notice, i beg of you to notice--it is one of the points in the picture--that jaw bone. the face is seen in three-quarter, and to focus the interest in the face the painter has slightly insisted on the line of the jaw bone, which, taken in conjunction with the line of the hair, brings into prominence the oval of the face. in nature that charming oval only appeared at moments. the painter seized one of those moments, and called it into our consciousness as a musician with certain finger will choose to give prominence to a certain note in a chord. there must have been a day in mr. whistler's life when the artists of japan convinced him once and for ever of the primary importance of selection. in velasquez, too, there is selection, and very often it is in the same direction as mr. whistler's, but the selection is never, i think, so much insisted upon; and sometimes in velasquez there is, as in the portrait of the admiral in the national gallery, hardly any selection--i mean, of course, conscious selection. velasquez sometimes brutally accepted nature for what she was worth; this mr. whistler never does. but it was velasquez that gave consistency and strength to what in mr. whistler might have run into an art of trivial but exquisite decoration. velasquez, too, had a voice in the composition of the palette generally, so sober, so grave. the palette of velasquez is the opposite of the palette of rubens; the fantasy of rubens' palette created the art of watteau, turner, gainsborough; it obtained throughout the eighteenth century in england and in france. chardin was the one exception. alone amid the eighteenth century painters he chose the palette of velasquez in preference to that of rubens, and in the nineteenth century whistler too has chosen it. it was velasquez who taught mr. whistler that flowing, limpid execution. in the painting of that blonde hair there is something more than a souvenir of the blonde hair of the infante in the _salle carrée_ in the louvre. there is also something of velasquez in the black notes of the shoes. those blacks--are they not perfectly observed? how light and dry the colour is! how heavy and shiny it would have become in other hands! notice, too, that in the frock nowhere is there a single touch of pure white, and yet it is all white--a rich, luminous white that makes every other white in the gallery seem either chalky or dirty. what an enchantment and a delight the handling is! how flowing, how supple, infinitely and beautifully sure, the music of perfect accomplishment! in the portrait of the mother the execution seems slower, hardly so spontaneous. for this, no doubt, the subject is accountable. but this little girl is the very finest flower, and the culminating point of mr. whistler's art. the eye travels over the canvas seeking a fault. in vain; nothing has been omitted that might have been included, nothing has been included that might have been omitted. there is much in velasquez that is stronger, but nothing in this world ever seemed to me so perfect as this picture. the portrait of carlyle has been painted about an arabesque similar, i might almost say identical, to that of the portrait of the mother. but as is usually the case, the attempt to repeat a success has resulted a failure. mr. whistler has sought to vary the arabesque in the direction of greater naturalness. he has broken the severity of the line, which the lace handkerchief and the hands scarcely stayed in the first picture, by placing the philosopher's hat upon his knees, he has attenuated the symmetry of the picture-frames on the walls, and has omitted the black curtain which drops through the earlier picture. and all these alterations seemed to me like so many leaks through which the eternal something of the first design has run out. a pattern like that of the egg and dart cannot be disturbed, and columbus himself cannot rediscover america. and, turning from the arabesque to the painting, we notice at once that the balance of colour, held with such exquisite grace by the curtain on one side and the dress on the other, is absent in the later work; and if we examine the colours separately we cannot fail to apprehend the fact that the blacks in the later are not nearly so beautiful as those in the earlier picture. the blacks of the philosopher's coat and rug are neither as rich, not as rare, nor as deep as the blacks of the mother's gown. never have the vital differences and the beauty of this colour been brought out as in that gown and that curtain, never even in hals, who excels all other painters in this use of black. mr. whistler's failure with the first colour, when we compare the two pictures, is exceeded by his failure with the second colour. we miss the beauty of those extraordinary and exquisite high notes--the cap and cuffs; and the place of the rich, palpitating greys, so tremulous in the background of the earlier picture, is taken by an insignificant grey that hardly seems necessary or helpful to the coat and rug, and is only just raised out of the commonplace by the dim yellow of two picture-frames. it must be admitted, however, that the yellow is perfectly successful; it may be almost said to be what is most attractive in the picture. the greys in chin, beard, and hair must, however, be admitted to be beautiful, although they are not so full of charm as the greys in the portrait of miss alexander. but if mr. whistler had only failed in these matters, he might have still produced a masterpiece. but there is a graver criticism to be urged against the picture. a portrait is an exact reflection of the painter's state of soul at the moment of sitting down to paint. we read in the picture what he really desired; for what he really desired is in the picture, and his hesitations tell us what he only desired feebly. every passing distraction, every weariness, every loss of interest in the model, all is written upon the canvas. above all, he tells us most plainly what he thought about his model--whether he was moved by love or contempt; whether his moods were critical or reverential. and what the canvas under consideration tells most plainly is that mr. whistler never forgot his own personality in that of the ancient philosopher. he came into the room as chirpy and anecdotal as usual, in no way discountenanced or put about by the presence of his venerable and illustrious sitter. he had heard that the chelsea sage wrote histories which were no doubt very learned, but he felt no particular interest in the matter. of reverence, respect, or intimate knowledge of carlyle there is no trace on the canvas; and looked at from this side the picture may be said to be the most american of all mr. whistler's works. "i am quite as big a man as you", to put it bluntly, was mr. whistler's attitude of mind while painting carlyle. i do not contest the truth of the opinion. i merely submit that that is not the frame of mind in which great portraiture is done. the drawing is large, ample, and vigorous, beautifully understood, but not very profound or intimate: the picture seems to have been accomplished easily, and in excellent health and spirits. the painting is in mr. whistler's later and most characteristic manner. for many years--for certainly twenty years--his manner has hardly varied at all. he uses his colour very thin, so thinly that it often hardly amounts to more than a glaze, and painting is laid over painting, like skin upon skin. regarded merely as brushwork, the face of the sage could hardly be surpassed; the modelling is that beautiful flat modelling, of which none except mr. whistler possesses the secrets. what the painter saw he rendered with incomparable skill. the vision of the rugged pensiveness of the old philosophers is as beautiful and as shallow as a page of de quincey. we are carried away in a flow of exquisite eloquence, but the painter has not told us one significant fact about his model, his nationality, his temperament, his rank, his manner of life. we learn in a general way that he was a thinker; but it would have been impossible to draw the head at all and conceal so salient a characteristic. mr. whistler's portrait reveals certain general observations of life; but has he given one single touch intimately characteristic of his model? but if the portrait of carlyle, when looked at from a certain side, must be admitted to be not wholly satisfactory, what shall be said of the portrait of lady meux? the dress is a luminous and harmonious piece of colouring, the material has its weight and its texture and its character of fold; but of the face it is difficult to say more than that it keeps its place in the picture. very often the faces in mr. whistler's portraits are the least interesting part of the picture; his sitter's face does not seem to interest him more than the cuffs, the carpet, the butterfly, which hovers about the screen. after this admission, it will seem to many that it is waste of time to consider further mr. whistler's claim to portraiture. this is not so. mr. whistler is a great portrait painter, though he cannot take measurements or follow an outline like holbein. like most great painters, he has known how to introduce harmonious variation into his style by taking from others just as much of their sense of beauty as his own nature might successfully assimilate. i have spoken of his assimilation and combination of the art of velasquez, and the entire art of japan, but a still more striking instance of the power of assimilation, which, strange as it may seem, only the most original natures possess, is to hand in the early but extremely beautiful picture, _la femme en blanc_. in the chelsea period of his life mr. whistler saw a great deal of that singular man, dante gabriel rossetti. intensely italian, though he had never seen italy; and though writing no language but ours, still writing it with a strange hybrid grace, bringing into it the rich and voluptuous colour and fragrance of the south, expressing in picture and poem nothing but an uneasy haunting sense of italy--opulence of women, not of the south, nor yet of the north, italian celebration, mystic altar linen, and pomp of gold vestment and legendary pane. of such hauntings rossetti's life and art were made. his hold on poetic form was surer than his hold on pictorial form, wherein his art is hardly more than poetic reminiscence of italian missal and window pane. yet even as a painter his attractiveness cannot be denied, nor yet the influence he has exercised on english art. though he took nothing from his contemporaries, all took from him, poets and painters alike. not even mr. whistler could refrain, and in _la femme en blanc_ he took from rossetti his manner of feeling and seeing. the type of woman is the same--beauty of dreaming eyes and abundant hair. and in this picture we find a poetic interest, a moral sense, if i may so phrase it, nowhere else to be detected, though you search mr. whistler's work from end to end. the woman stands idly dreaming by her mirror. she is what is her image in the glass, an appearance that has come, and that will go leaving no more trace than her reflection on the glass when she herself has moved away. she sees in her dream the world like passing shadows thrown on an illuminated cloth. she thinks of her soft, white, and opulent beauty which fills her white dress; her chin is lifted, and above her face shines the golden tumult of her hair. the picture is one of the most perfect that mr. whistler has painted; it is as perfect as the mother or miss alexander, and though it has not the beautiful, flowing, supple execution of the "symphony in white", i prefer it for sake of its sheer perfection. it is more perfect than the symphony in white, though there is nothing in it quite so extraordinary as the loving gaiety of the young girl's face. the execution of that face is as flowing, as spontaneous, and as bright as the most beautiful day of may. the white drapery clings like haze about the edge of the woods, and the flesh tints are pearly and evanescent as dew, and soft as the colour of a flowering mead. but the kneeling figure is not so perfect, and that is why i reluctantly give my preference to the woman by the mirror. turning again to this picture, i would fain call attention to the azalias, which, in irresponsible decorative fashion, come into the right-hand corner. the delicate flowers show bright and clear on the black-leaded fire-grate; and it is in the painting of such detail that mr. whistler exceeds all painters. for purity of colour and the beauty of pattern, these flowers are surely as beautiful as anything that man's hand has ever accomplished. mr. whistler has never tried to be original. he has never attempted to reproduce on canvas the discordant and discrepant extravagancies of nature as m. besnard and mr. john sargent have done. his style has always been marked by such extreme reserve that the critical must have sometimes inclined to reproach him with want of daring, and ask themselves where was the innovator in this calculated reduction of tones, in these formal harmonies, in this constant synthesis, sought with far more disregard for superfluous detail than hals, for instance, had ever dared to show. the still more critical, while admitting the beauty and the grace of this art, must have often asked themselves what, after all, has this painter invented, what new subject-matter has he introduced into art? it was with the night that mr. whistler set his seal and sign-manual upon art; above all others he is surely the interpreter of the night. until he came the night of the painter was as ugly and insignificant as any pitch barrel; it was he who first transferred to canvas the blue transparent darkness which folds the world from sunset to sunrise. the purple hollow, and all the illusive distances of the gas-lit river, are mr. whistler's own. it was not the unhabited night of lonely plain and desolate tarn that he chose to interpret, but the difficult populous city night--the night of tall bridges and vast water rained through with lights red and grey, the shores lined with the lamps of the watching city. mr. whistler's night is the vast blue and golden caravanry, where the jaded and the hungry and the heavy-hearted lay down their burdens, and the contemplative freed from the deceptive reality of the day understand humbly and pathetically the casualness of our habitation, and the limitlessreality of a plan, the intention of which we shall never know. mr. whistler's nights are the blue transparent darknesses which are half of the world's life. sometimes he foregoes even the aid of earthly light, and his picture is but luminous blue shadow, delicately graduated, as in the nocturne in m. duret's collection--purple above and below, a shadow in the middle of the picture--a little less and there would be nothing. there is the celebrated nocturne in the shape of a t--one pier of the bridge and part of the arch, the mystery of the barge, and the figure guiding the barge in the current, the strange luminosity of the fleeting river! lines of lights, vague purple and illusive distance, and all is so obviously beautiful that one pauses to consider how there could have been stupidity enough to deny it. of less dramatic significance, but of equal esthetic value, is the nocturne known as "the cremorne lights". here the night is strangely pale; one of those summer nights when a slight veil of darkness is drawn for an hour or more across the heavens. another of quite extraordinary beauty, even in a series of extraordinarily beautiful things, is "night on the sea". the waves curl white in the darkness, and figures are seen as in dreams; lights burn low, ships rock in the offing, and beyond them, lost in the night, a vague sense of illimitable sea. out of the night mr. whistler has gathered beauty as august as phidias took from greek youths. nocturne ii is the picture which professor ruskin declared to be equivalent to flinging a pot of paint in the face of the public. but that black night, filling the garden even to the sky's obliteration, is not black paint but darkness. the whirl of the st. catherine wheel in the midst of this darkness amounts to a miracle, and the exquisite drawing of the shower of falling fire would arouse envy in rembrandt, and prompt imitation. the line of the watching crowd is only just indicated, and yet the garden is crowded. there is another nocturne in which rockets are rising and falling, and the drawing of these two showers of fire is so perfect, that when you turn quickly towards the picture, the sparks really do ascend and descend. more than any other painter, mr. whistler's influence has made itself felt on english art. more than any other man, mr. whistler has helped to purge art of the vice of subject and belief that the mission of the artist is to copy nature. mr. whistler's method is more learned, more co-ordinate than that of any other painter of our time; all is preconceived from the first touch to the last, nor has there ever been much change in the method, the painting has grown looser, but the method was always the same; to have seen him paint at once is to have seen him paint at every moment of his life. never did a man seem more admirably destined to found a school which should worthily carry on the tradition inherited from the old masters and represented only by him. all the younger generation has accepted him as master, and that my generation has not profited more than it has, leads me to think, however elegant, refined, emotional, educated it may be, and anxious to achieve, that it is lacking in creative force, that it is, in a word, slightly too slight. chavannes, millet, and manet. of the great painters born before only two now are living, puvis de chavannes and degas. it is true to say of chavannes that he is the only man alive to whom a beautiful building might be given for decoration without fear that its beauty would be disgraced. he is the one man alive who can cover twenty feet of wall or vaulted roof with decoration that will neither deform the grandeur nor jar the greyness of the masonry. mural decoration in his eyes is not merely a picture let into a wall, nor is it necessarily mural decoration even if it be painted on the wall itself: it is mural decoration if it form part of the wall, if it be, if i may so express myself, a variant of the stonework. no other painter ever kept this end so strictly before his eyes. for this end chavannes reduced his palette almost to a monochrome, for this end he models in two flat tints, for this end he draws in huge undisciplined masses. let us examine his palette: many various greys, some warmed with vermilion, some with umber, and many more that are mere mixtures of black and white, large quantities of white, for chavannes paints in a high key, wishing to disturb the colour of the surrounding stone as little as may be. grey and blue are the natural colours of building stone; when the subject will not admit of subterfuge, he will introduce a shade of pale green, as in his great decoration entitled "summer"; but grey is always the foundation of his palette, and it fills the middle of the picture. the blues are placed at the top and bottom, and he works between them in successive greys. the sky in the left-hand top corner is an ultramarine slightly broken with white; the blue gown at the bottom of the picture, not quite in the middle of the picture, a little on the right, is also ultramarine, and here the colour is used nearly in its first intensity. and the colossal woman who wears the blue gown leans against some grey forest tree trunk, and a great white primeval animal is what her forms and attitude suggest. there are some women about her, and they lie and sit in disconnected groups like fragments fallen from a pediment. nor is any attempt made to relate, by the aid of vague look or gesture, this group in the foreground to the human hordes engaged in building enclosures in the middle distance. in chavannes the composition is always as disparate as an early tapestry, and the drawing of the figures is almost as rude. if i may be permitted a french phrase, i will say _un peu sommaire_ quite unlike the beautiful simplifications of raphael or ingres, or indeed any of the great masters. they could simplify without becoming rudimentary; chavannes cannot. and now a passing word about the handicraft, the manner of using the brush. chavannes shares the modern belief-and only in this is he modern--that for the service of thought one instrument is as apt as another, and that, so long as that man's back--he who is pulling at the rope fastened at the tree's top branches--is filled in with two grey tints, it matters not at all how the task is accomplished. truly the brush has plastered that back as a trowel might, and the result reminds one of stone and mortar, as millet's execution reminds one of mud-pie making. the handicraft is as barbarous in chavannes as it is in millet, and we think of them more as great poets working in a not wholly sympathetic and, in their hands, somewhat rebellious material. chavannes is as an epic poet whose theme is the rude grandeur of the primeval world, and who sang his rough narrative to a few chords struck on a sparely-stringed harp that his own hands have fashioned. and is not millet a sort of french wordsworth who in a barbarous breton dialect has told us in infinitely touching strains of the noble submission of the peasant's lot, his unending labours and the melancholy solitude of the country. as poet-painters, none admires these great artists more than i, but the moment we consider them as painters we have to compare the handicraft of the decoration entitled "summer" with that of francis the first meeting marie de medicis; we have to compare the handicraft of the sower and the angelus with that of "le bon bock" and "l'enfant à pépée"; and the moment we institute such comparison does not the inferiority of chavannes' and millet's handicraft become visible even to the least initiated in the art of painting, and is not the conclusion forced upon us that however manet may be judged inferior to millet as a poet, as a painter he is easily his superior? and as millet's and chavannes' brush-work is deficient in beauty so is their drawing. preferring decorative unity to completeness of drawing, chavannes does not attempt more than some rudimentary indications. millet seems even to have desired to omit technical beauty, so that he might concentrate all thought on the poetic synthesis he was gathering from the earth. degas, on the contrary, draws for the sake of the drawing-the ballet girl, the washerwoman, the fat housewife bathing herself, is only a pretext for drawing; and degas chose these extraordinary themes because the drawing of the ballet girl and the fat housewife is less known than that of the nymph and the spartan youth. painters will understand what i mean by the drawing being "less known",--that knowledge of form which sustains the artist like a crutch in his examination of the model, and which as it were dictates to the eye what it must see. so the ballet girl was degas' escapement from the thraldom of common knowledge. the ballet girl was virgin soil. in her meagre thwarted forms application could freely be made of the supple incisive drawing which bends to and flows with the character--that drawing of which ingres was the supreme patron, and of which degas is the sole inheritor. until a few years ago chavannes never sold a picture. millet lived his life in penury and obscurity, but thirty years of persistent ridicule having failed to destroy degas' genius, some recognition has been extended to it. the fate of all great artists in the nineteenth century is a score years of neglect and obloquy. they may hardly hope for recognition before they are fifty; some few cases point the other way, but very few--the rule is thirty years of neglect and obloquy. then a flag of truce will be held out to the recalcitrant artist who cannot be prevented from painting beautiful pictures. "come, let us be friends; let's kiss and make it up; send a picture to the academy; we'll hang it on the line, and make you an academician the first vacancy that occurs." to-day the academy would like to get mr. whistler, but mr. whistler replies to the academy as degas replied to the government official who wanted a picture for the luxembourg. _non, je ne veux pas être conduit au poste par les sargents de ville d'aris_. to understand manet's genius, the nineteenth century would have required ten years more than usual, for in manet there is nothing but good painting, and there is nothing that the nineteenth century dislikes as much as good painting. in whistler there is an exquisite and inveigling sense of beauty; in degas there is an extraordinary acute criticism of life, and so the least brutal section of the public ended by pardoning whistler his brush-work, and degas his beautiful drawing. but in manet there is nothing but good painting, and it is therefore possible that he might have lived till he was eighty without obtaining recognition. death alone could accomplish the miracle of opening the public's eyes to his merits. during his life the excuse given for the constant persecution waged against him by the "authorities" was his excessive originality. but this was mere subterfuge; what was really hated-what made him so unpopular-was the extraordinary beauty of his handling. whatever he painted became beautiful--his hand was dowered with the gift of quality, and there his art began and ended. his painting of still life never has been exceeded, and never will be. i remember a pear that used to hang in his studio. hals would have taken his hat off to it. twenty years ago manet's name was a folly and a byword in the parisian studios. the students of the beaux arts used to stand before his salon pictures and sincerely wonder how any one could paint like that; the students were quite sure that it was done for a joke, to attract attention; and then, not quite sincerely, one would say, "but i'll undertake to paint you three pictures a week like that." i say that the remark was never quite sincere, for i never heard it made without some one answering, "i don't think you could; just come and look at it again--there's more in it than you think." no doubt we thought manet very absurd, but there was always something forced and artificial in our laughter and the ridicule we heaped upon him. but about that time my opinions were changing; and it was a great event in my life when manet spoke to me in the cafe of the nouvelle athene. i knew it was manet, he had been pointed out to me, and i had admired the finely-cut face from whose prominent chin a closely-cut blonde beard came forward; and the aquiline nose, the clear grey eyes, the decisive voice, the remarkable comeliness of the well-knit figure, scrupulously but simply dressed, represented a personality curiously sympathetic. on several occasions shyness had compelled me to abandon my determination to speak to him. but once he had spoken i entered eagerly into conversation, and next day i went to his studio. it was quite a simple place. manet expended his aestheticism on his canvases, and not upon tapestries and inlaid cabinets. there was very little in his studio except his pictures: a sofa, a rocking-chair, a table for his paints, and a marble table on iron supports, such as one sees in cafés. being a fresh-complexioned, fair-haired young man, the type most suitable to manet's palette, he at once asked me to sit. his first intention was to paint me in a café; he had met me in a café, and he thought he could realise his impression of me in the first surrounding he had seen me in. the portrait did not come right; ultimately it was destroyed; but it gave me every opportunity of studying manet's method of painting. strictly speaking, he had no method; painting with him was a pure instinct. painting was one of the ways his nature manifested itself. that frank, fearless, prompt nature manifested itself in everything that concerned him--in his large plain studio, full of light as a conservatory; in his simple, scrupulous clothes, and yet with a touch of the dandy about them; in decisive speech, quick, hearty, and informed with a manly and sincere understanding of life. never was an artist's inner nature in more direct conformity with his work. there were no circumlocutions in manet's nature, there were none in his art. the colour of my hair never gave me a thought until manet began to paint it. then the blonde gold that came up under his brush filled me with admiration, and i was astonished when, a few days after, i saw him scrape off the rough paint and prepare to start afresh. "are you going to get a new canvas?" "no; this will do very well." "but you can't paint yellow ochre on yellow ochre without getting it dirty?" "yes, i think i can. you go and sit down." half-an-hour after he had entirely repainted the hair, and without losing anything of its brightness. he painted it again and again; every time it came out brighter and fresher, and the painting never seemed to lose anything in quality. that this portrait cost him infinite labour and was eventually destroyed matters nothing; my point is merely that he could paint yellow over yellow without getting the colour muddy. one day, seeing that i was in difficulties with a black, he took a brush from my hand, and it seemed to have hardly touched the canvas when the ugly heaviness of my tiresome black began to disappear. there came into it grey and shimmering lights, the shadows filled up with air, and silk seemed to float and rustle. there was no method-there was no trick; he merely painted. my palette was the same to him as his own; he did not prepare his palette; his colour did not exist on his palette before he put it on the canvas; but working under the immediate dictation of his eye, he snatched the tints instinctively, without premeditation. ah! that marvellous hand, those thick fingers holding the brush so firmly-somewhat heavily; how malleable, how obedient, that most rebellious material, oil-colour, was to his touch. he did with it what he liked. i believe he could rub a picture over with prussian blue without experiencing any inconvenience; half-an-hour after the colour would be fine and beautiful. and never did this mysterious power which produces what artists know as "quality" exist in greater abundance in any fingers than it did in the slow, thick fingers of edouard manet: never since the world began; not in velasquez, not in hals, not in rubens, not in titian. as an artist manet could not compare with the least among these illustrious painters; but as a manipulator of oil-colour he never was and never will be excelled. manet was born a painter as absolutely as any man that ever lived, so absolutely that a very high and lucid intelligence never for a moment came between him and the desire to put anything into his picture except good painting. i remember his saying to me, "i also tried to write, but i did not succeed; i never could do anything but paint." and what a splendid thing for an artist to be able to say. the real meaning of his words did not reach me till years after; perhaps i even thought at the time that he was disappointed that he could not write. i know now what was passing in his mind: _je ne me suis pas trompé de métier_. how many of us can say as much? go round a picture gallery, and of how many pictures, ancient or modern, can you stand before and say, _voila un homme qui ne s'est pas trompé de métier?_ perhaps above all men of our generation manet made the least mistake in his choice of a trade. let those who doubt go and look at the beautiful picture of boulogne pier, now on view in mr. van wesselingh's gallery, old bond street. the wooden pier goes right across the canvas; all the wood piers are drawn, there is no attempt to hide or attenuate their regularity. why should manet attenuate when he could fill the interspaces with the soft lapping of such exquisite blue sea-water. above the piers there is the ugly yellow-painted rail. but why alter the colour when he could keep it in such exquisite value? on the canvas it is beautiful. in the middle of the pier there is a mast and a sail which does duty for an awning; perhaps it is only a marine decoration. a few loungers are on the pier--men and women in grey clothes. why introduce reds and blues when he was sure of being able to set the little figures in their places, to draw them so firmly, and relieve the grey monotony with such beauty of execution? it would be vain to invent when so exquisite an execution is always at hand to relieve and to transform. mr. whistler would have chosen to look at the pier from a more fanciful point of view. degas would have taken an odd corner; he would have cut the composition strangely, and commented on the humanity of the pier. but manet just painted it without circumlocutions of any kind. the subject was void of pictorial relief. there was not even a blue space in the sky, nor yet a dark cloud. he took it as it was--a white sky, full of an inner radiance, two sailing-boats floating in mist of heat, one in shadow, the other in light. vandervelde would seem trivial and precious beside painting so firm, so manly, so free from trick, so beautifully logical, and so unerring. manet did not often paint sea-pieces. he is best known and is most admired as a portrait-painter, but from time to time he ventured to trust his painting to every kind of subject-i know even a cattle-piece by manet--and his christ watched over by angels in the tomb is one of his finest works. his christ is merely a rather fat model sitting with his back against a wall, and two women with wings on either side of him. there is no attempt to suggest a divine death or to express the kingdom of heaven on the angels' faces. but the legs of the man are as fine a piece of painting as has ever been accomplished. in an exhibition of portraits now open in paris, entitled _cent chefs-d'oeuvre_, manet has been paid the highest honour; he himself would not demand a greater honour--his "bon bock" has been hung next to a celebrated portrait by hals.... without seeing it, i know that the hals is nobler, grander; i know, supposing the hals to be a good one, that its flight is that of an eagle as compared with the flight of a hawk. the comparison is exaggerated; but, then, so are all comparisons. i also know that hals does not tell us more about his old woman than manet tells us about the man who sits so gravely by his glass of foaming ale, so clearly absorbed by it, so oblivious to all other joys but those that it brings him. hals never placed any one more clearly in his favourite hour of the day, the well-desired hour, looked forward to perhaps since the beginning of the afternoon. in this marvellous portrait we read the age, the rank, the habits, the limitations, physical and mental, of the broad-faced man who sits so stolidly, his fat hand clasping his glass of foaming ale. nothing has been omitted. we look at the picture, and the man and his environment become part of our perception of life. that stout, middle-aged man of fifty, who works all day in some small business, and goes every evening to his café to drink beer, will abide with us for ever. his appearance, and his mode of life, which his appearance so admirably expresses, can never become completely dissociated from our understanding of life. for manet's "bon bock" is one of the eternal types, a permanent national conception, as inherent in french life as polichinelle, pierrot, monsieur prud'homme, or the baron hulot. i have not seen the portrait for fifteen or eighteen years, and yet i see it as well as if it were hung on the wall opposite the table on which i am writing this page. i can see that round, flat face, a little swollen with beer, the small eyes, the spare beard and moustaches. his feet are not in the picture, but i know how much he pays for his boots, and how they fit him. nor did hals ever paint better; i mean that nowhere in hals will you find finer handling, or a more direct luminous or simple expression of what the eye saw. it has all the qualities i have enumerated, and yet it falls short of hals. it has not the breadth and scope of the great dutchman. there is a sense of effort, _on sent le souffle_, and in hals one never does. it is more bound together, it does not flow with the mighty and luminous ease of the _chefs d'oeuvre_ at haarlem. but is this manet's final achievement, the last word he has to say? i think not. it was painted early in the sixties, probably about the same period as the luxembourg picture, when the effects of his spanish travel were wearing off, and paris was beginning to command his art. manet used to say, "when degas was painting semiramis i was painting modern paris." it would have been more true to have said modern spain. for it was in spain that manet found his inspiration. he had not been to holland when he painted his spanish pictures. velasquez clearly inspired them; but there never was in his work any of the noble delicacies of the spaniard; it was always nearer to the plainer and more--forgive the phrase--yokel-like eloquence of hals. the art of hals he seemed to have divined; it seems to have come instinctively to him. manet went to spain after a few months spent in couture's studio. like all the great artists of our time, he was self-educated--whistler, degas, courbet, corot, and manet wasted little time in other men's studios. soon after his return from spain, by some piece of good luck, manet was awarded _une mention honorable_ at the salon for his portrait of a toreador. why this honour was conferred upon him it is difficult to guess. it must have been the result of some special influence exerted at a special moment, for ever after--down to the year of his death--his pictures were considered as an excrescence on the annual exhibitions at the _salon_. every year--down to the year of his death--the jury, m. bouguereau et cie., lamented that they were powerless to reject these ridiculous pictures. manet had been placed _hors concours_, and they could do nothing. they could do nothing except stand before his pictures and laugh. oh, i remember it all very well. we were taught at the beaux-arts to consider manet an absurd person or else an _épateur_, who, not being able to paint like m. gérôme, determined to astonish. i remember perfectly well the derision with which those _chefs d'oeuvre_, "yachting at argenteuil" and "le linge", were received. they were in his last style--that bright, clear painting in which violet shadows were beginning to take the place of the conventional brown shadows, and the brush-work, too, was looser and more broken up; in a word, these pictures were the germ from which has sprung a dozen different schools, all the impressionism and other isms of modern french art. before these works, in which the real manet appeared for the first time, no one had a good word to say. to kill them more effectually, certain merits were even conceded to the "bon bock" and the luxembourg picture. the "bon bock", as we have seen, at once challenges comparison with hals. but in "le linge" no challenge is sent forth to any one; it is manet, all manet, and nothing but manet. in this picture he expresses his love of the gaiety and pleasure of parisian life. and this bright-faced, simple-minded woman, who stands in a garden crowded with the tallest sunflowers, the great flower-crowns drooping above her, her blue cotton dress rolled up to the elbows, her hands plunged in a small wash-tub in which she is washing some small linen, habit-shirts, pocket-handkerchiefs, collars, expresses the joy of homely life in the french suburb. her home is one of good wine, excellent omelettes, soft beds; and the sheets, if they are a little coarse, are spotless, and retain an odour of lavender-sweetened cupboards. her little child, about four years old, is with his mother in the garden; he has strayed into the foreground of the picture, just in front of the wash-tub, and he holds a great sunflower in his tiny hand. beside this picture of such bright and happy aspect, the most perfect example of that _genre_ known as _la peinture claire_, invented by manet, and so infamously and absurdly practised by subsequent imitators--beside this picture so limpid, so fresh, so unaffected in its handling, a courbet would seem heavy and dull, a sort of mock old master; a corot would seem ephemeral and cursive; a whistler would seem thin; beside this picture of such elegant and noble vision a stevens would certainly seem odiously common. why does not liverpool or manchester buy one of these masterpieces? if the blueness of the blouse frightens the administrators of these galleries, i will ask them--and perhaps this would be the more practical project--to consider the purchase of manet's first and last historical picture, the death of the unfortunate maximilian in mexico. under a high wall, over which some mexicans are looking, maximilian and two friends stand in front of the rifles. the men have just fired, and death clouds the unfortunate face. on the right a man stands cocking his rifle. look at the movement of the hand, how well it draws back the hammer. the face is nearly in profile--how intent it is on the mechanism. and is not the drawing of the legs, the boots, the gaiters, the arms lifting the heavy rifle with slow deliberation, more massive, firm, and concise than any modern drawing? how ample and how exempt from all trick, and how well it says just what the painter wanted to say! this picture, too, used to hang in his studio. but the greater attractiveness of "le linge" prevented me from discerning its more solemn beauty. but last may i came across it unexpectedly, and after looking at it for some time the thought that came was--no one painted better, no one will ever paint better. the luxembourg picture, although one of the most showy and the completest amongst manet's masterpieces, is not, in my opinion, either the most charming or the most interesting; and yet it would be difficult to say that this of the many life-sized nudes that france has produced during the century is not the one we could least easily spare. ingres' source compares not with things of this century, but with the marbles of the fourth century b.c. cabanel's venus is a beautiful design, but its destruction would create no appreciable gap in the history of nineteenth century art. the destruction of "olympe" would. the picture is remarkable not only for the excellence of the execution, but for a symbolic intention nowhere else to be found in manet's works. the angels on either side of his dead christ necessitated merely the addition of two pairs of wings--a convention which troubled him no more than the convention of taking off his hat on entering a church. but in "olympe" we find manet departing from the individual to the universal. the red-headed woman who used to dine at the _ratmort_ does not lie on a modern bed but on the couch of all time; and she raises herself from amongst her cushions, setting forth her somewhat meagre nudity as arrogantly and with the same calm certitude of her sovereignty as the eternal venus for whose prey is the flesh of all men born. the introduction of a bouquet bound up in large white paper does not prejudice the symbolic intention, and the picture would do well for an illustration to some poem to be found in _"les fleurs du mal"_. it may be worth while to note here that baudelaire printed in his volume a quatrain inspired by one of manet's spanish pictures. but after this slight adventure into symbolism, manet's eyes were closed to all but the visible world. the visible world of paris he saw henceforth--truly, frankly, and fearlessly, and more beautifully than any of his contemporaries. never before was a great man's mind so strictly limited to the range of what his eyes saw. nature wished it so, and, having discovered nature's wish, manet joined his desire with nature's. i remember his saying as he showed me some illustrations he had done for mallarme's translation of edgar poe's poem, "you'll admit that it doesn't give you much idea 'of a kingdom by the sea.'" the drawing represented the usual sea-side watering place--the beach with a nursemaid at full length; children building sand castles, and some small sails in the offing. so manet was content to live by the sight, and by the sight alone; he was a painter, and had neither time nor taste for such ideals as poe's magical annabel lee. marvellous indeed must have been the eyes that could have persuaded such relinquishment. how marvellous they were we understand easily when we look at "olympe". eyes that saw truly, that saw beautifully and yet somewhat grossly. there is much vigour in the seeing, there is the exquisite handling of hals, and there is the placing, the setting forth of figures on the canvas, which was as instinctively his as it was titian's. hals and velasquez possessed all those qualities, and something more. they would not have been satisfied with that angular, presumptuous, and obvious drawing, harsh in its exterior limits and hollow within--the head a sort of convulsive abridgment, the hand void, and the fingers too, if we seek their articulations. an omission must not be mistaken for a simplification, and for all his omissions manet strives to make amend by the tone. it would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful syntheses than that pale yellow, a beautiful golden sensation, and the black woman, the attendant of this light of love, who comes to the couch with a large bouquet fresh from the boulevard, is certainly a piece of painting that rubens and titian would stop to admire. but when all has been said, i prefer manet in the quieter and i think the more original mood in the portrait of his sister-in-law, madame morisot. the portrait is in m. duret's collection; it hangs in a not too well lighted passage, and if i did not spend six or ten minutes in admiration before this picture, i should feel that some familiar pleasure had drifted out of my yearly visit to paris. never did a white dress play so important or indeed so charming a part in a picture. the dress is the picture--this common white dress, with black spots, _une robe a poix, une petite confection de soixante cinq francs_, as the french would say; and very far it is from all remembrance of the diaphanous, fairy-like skirts of our eighteenth century english school, but i swear to you no less charming. it is a very simple and yet a very beautiful reality. a lady, in white dress with black spots, sitting on a red sofa, a dark chocolate red, in the subdued light of her own quiet, prosaic french _appartment, le deuxième au dessus l'entre-sol_. the drawing is less angular, less constipated than that of "olympe". how well the woman's body is in the dress! there is the bosom, the waist, the hips, the knees, and the white stockinged foot in the low shoe, coming from out the dress. the drawing about the hips and bosom undulates and floats, vague and yet precise, in a manner that recalls harlem, and it is not until we turn to the face that we come upon ominous spaces unaccounted for, forms unexplained. the head is so charming that it seems a pity to press our examination further. but to understand manet's deficiency is to understand the abyss that separates modern from ancient art, and the portrait of madame morisot explains them as well as another, for the deficiency i wish to point out exists in manet's best portraits as well as in his worst. the face in this picture is like the face in every picture by manet. three or four points are seized, and the spaces between are left unaccounted for. whistler has not the strength of velasquez; manet is not as complete as hals. the failure of the nineteenth century. in the seventeenth century were poussin and claude; in the eighteenth watteau, boucher, chardin, and many lesser lights--fragonard, pater, and lancret. but notwithstanding the austere grandeur of poussin and the beautiful, if somewhat too reasonable poetry of claude, the infinite perfection of watteau, the charm of that small french velasquez chardin, and the fascinations and essentially french genius of all this group (poussin and claude were entirely roman), i think we must place france's artistic period in the nineteenth century. nineteenth century art began in france in the last years of the eighteenth century. it began well, for it began with its greatest painters--ingres, corot, and delacroix. ingres was born in , gericault in , corot in , delacroix in , diaz in , dupré in , rousseau in , jacques in , meissonier in , millet in , troyon in , daubigny in , courbet in , fromentin in , monticelli in , puvis de chavannes in , cabanel in , hervier in , vollon in , manet in , degas in . with a little indulgence the list might be considerably enlarged. the circumstances in which this artistic manifestation took place were identical with the circumstances which brought about every one of the great artistic epochs. it came upon france as a consequence of huge national aspiration, when nationhood was desired and disaster had joined men together in struggle, and sent them forth on reckless adventure. it has been said that art is decay, the pearl in the oyster; but such belief seems at variance with any reading of history. the greek sculptors came after salamis and marathon; the italian renaissance came when italy was distracted with revolution and was divided into opposing states. great empires have not produced great men. art came upon holland after heroic wars in which the dutchmen vehemently asserted their nationhood, defending their country against the spaniard, even to the point of letting in the sea upon the invaders. art came upon england when england was most adventurous, after the victories of marlborough. art came upon france after the great revolution, after the victories of marengo and austerlitz, after the burning of moscow. a unique moment of nationhood gave birth to a long list of great artists, just as similar national enthusiasm gave birth to groups of great artists in england, in holland, in florence, in venice, in athens. having determined the century of france's artistic period we will ask where we shall place it amongst the artist period of the past. comparison with greece, italy, or venice is manifestly impossible; the names of rembrandt, hals, ruysdael, peter de hoogh, terburg, and cuyp give us pause. we remember the names of ingres, delacroix, corot, millet, and degas. even the divine name of ingres cannot save the balance from sinking on the side of holland. then we think of reynolds, gainsborough, romney, wilson, and morland, and wonder how they compare with the frenchmen. the best brains were on the french side, they had more pictorial talent, and yet the school when taken as a whole is not so convincing as the english. why, with better brains, and certainly more passion and desire of achievement, does the french school fall behind the english? why, notwithstanding its extraordinary genius, does it come last in merit as it comes last in time amongst the world's artistic epochs? has the nineteenth century brought any new intention into art which did not exist before in england, holland, or italy? yes, the nineteenth century has brought a new intention into art, and i think that it is this very new intention that has caused the failure of the nineteenth century. to explain myself, i will have to go back to first principles. in the beginning the beauty of man was the artist's single theme. science had not then relegated man to his exact place in creation: he reigned triumphant, nature appearing, if at all, only as a kind of aureole. the egyptian, the greek, and the roman artists saw nothing, and cared for nothing, except man; the representation of his beauty, his power, and his grandeur was their whole desire, whether they carved or painted their intention, and i may say the result was the same. the painting of apelles could not have differed from the sculpture of phidias; painting was not then separated from her elder sister. in the early ages there was but one art; even in michael angelo's time the difference between painting and sculpture was so slight as to be hardly worth considering. is it possible to regard the "last judgment" as anything else but a coloured bas-relief, more complete and less perfect than the greeks? michael angelo's artistic outlook was the same as phidias'. one chose the "last judgment" and the other "olympus", but both subjects were looked at from the same point of view. in each instance the question asked was--what opportunity do they afford for the display of marvellous human form? and when michael angelo carved the "moses" and painted the "st. jerome" he was as deaf and blind as any greek to all other consideration save the opulence and the magic of drapery, the vehemence and the splendour of muscle. nearly two thousand years had gone by and the artistic outlook had not changed at all; three hundred years have passed since michael angelo, and inthose three hundred years what revolution has not been effected? how different our estheticism, our aims, our objects, our desires, our aspiration, and how different our art! after michael angelo painting and sculpture became separate arts: sculpture declined, and colour filled the whole artistic horizon. but this change was the only change; the necessities of the new medium had to be considered; but the italian and venetian painters continued to view life and art from the same side. michael angelo chose his subjects merely because of the opportunities they offered for the delineation of form, titian, tintoretto, and veronese chose theirs merely for the opportunities they offered for the display of colour. a new medium of expression had been discovered, that was all. the themes of their pictures were taken from the bible, if you will, but the scenes they represented with so much pomp of colour were seen by them through the mystery of legend, and the vision was again sublimated by naive belief and primitive aspiration. the stories of the old and new testaments were not anecdotes; faith and ignorance had raised them above the anecdote, and they had become epics, whether by intensity of religious belief--as in the case of the monk of fiesole--or by being given sublime artistic form--for paganism was not yet dead in the world to witness leonardo, raphael, and andrea del sarto. to these painters biblical subjects were a mere pretext for representing man in all his attributes; and when the same subjects were treated by the venetians, they were transformed in a pomp of colour, and by an absence of all _true_ colour and by contempt for history and chronology became epical and fantastical. it is only necessary to examine any one of the works of the great venetians to see that they bestowed hardly a thought on the subject of their pictures. when titian painted the "entombment of christ", what did he see? a contrast--a white body, livid and dead, carried by full-blooded, red-haired italians, who wept, and whose sorrow only served to make them more beautiful. that is how he understood a subject. the desire to be truthful was not very great, nor was the desire to be new much more marked; to be beautiful was the first and last letter of a creed of which we know very little to-day. art died in italy, and the subject had not yet appeared; and at the end of the sixteenth century the first painters of the great dutch school were born, and before a new school, entirely original, having nothing in common with anything that had gone before, had formulated its aestheticism and produced masterpieces. in these masterpieces we find no suspicion of anything that might be called a subject; the absence of subject is even more conspicuous in the dutchmen than in the italians. in the italian painters the subject passed unperceived in a pomp of colour or a pagan apotheosis of humanity; in the dutchmen it is dispensed with altogether. no longer do we read of miracles or martyrdoms, but of the most ordinary incidents of everyday life. turning over the first catalogue to hand of dutch pictures, i read: "view of a plain, with shepherd, cows, and sheep in the foreground"; "the white horse in the riding school"; "a lady playing the virginal"; "peasants drinking outside a tavern"; "peasants drinking in a tavern"; "peasants gambling outside a tavern"; "brick-making in a landscape"; "the wind-mill"; "the water-mill"; "peasants bringing home the hay". and so on, and so on. if we meet with a military skirmish, we are not told where the skirmish took place, nor what troops took part in the skirmish. "a skirmish in a rocky pass" is all the information that is vouchsafed to us. italian art is invention from end to end, in dutch art no slightest trace of invention is to be found; one art is purely imaginative, the other is plainly realistic; and yet, at an essential point, the two arts coincide; in neither does the subject prevail; and if dutch art is more truthful than italian art, it is because they were unimaginative, stay-at-home folk, whose feet did not burn for foreign travel, and whose only resource was, therefore, to reproduce the life around them, and into that no element of curiosity could come. for their whole country was known to them; even when they left their native town they still continued to paint what they had seen since they were little children. and, like italian, dutch art died before the subject had appeared. it was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the subject really began to make itself felt, and, like the potato blight or phylloxera, it soon became clear that it had come to stay. i think greuze was the first to conceive a picture after the fashion of a scene in a play--i mean those domestic dramas which he invented, and in which the interest of the subject so clearly predominates--"the prodigal son", for instance. in this picture we have the domestic drama exactly as a stage manager would set it forth. the indignant father, rising from table, prepares to anathematise the repentant son, who stands on the threshold, the weeping mother begs forgiveness for her son, the elder girl advances shyly, the younger children play with their toys, and the serving-girl drops the plate of meat which she is bringing in. and ever since the subject has taken first place in the art of france, england, and germany, and in like measure as the subject made itself felt, so did art decline. for the last hundred years painters seem to have lived in libraries rather than in studios. all literatures and all the sciences have been pressed into the service of painting, and an academy catalogue is in itself a liberal education. in it you can read choice extracts from the bible, from shakespeare, from goethe, from dante. you can dip into greek and latin literature, history--ancient and modern--you can learn something of all mythologies-pagan, christian, and hindoo; if your taste lies in the direction of icelandic legends, you will not be disappointed in your sixpennyworth. for the last hundred years the painter seems to have neglected nothing except to learn how to paint. for more than a hundred years painting has been in service. she has acted as a sort of handmaiden to literature, her mission being to make clear to the casual and the unlettered what the lettered had already understood and enjoyed in a more subtle and more erudite form. but to pass from the abstract to the concrete, and, so far as regards subject, to make my meaning quite clear to every one, i cannot do better than to ask my readers to recall mr. luke fildes' picture of "the doctor". no better example could be selected of a picture in which the subject is the supreme interest. true that mr. fildes has not taken his subject from novel or poem; in this picture he may have been said to have been his own librettist, and perhaps for that very reason the subject is the one preponderating interest in the picture. he who doubts if this be so has only to ask himself if any critic thought of pointing to any special passage of colour in this picture, of calling attention to the quality of the modelling or the ability of the drawing. no; what attracted attention was the story. would the child live or die? did that dear, good doctor entertain any hopes of the poor little thing's recovery? and the poor parents, how grieved they seemed! perhaps it is their only child. the picture is typical of contemporary art, which is nearly all conceived in the same spirit, and can therefore have no enduring value. and if by chance the english artist does occasionally escape from the vice of subject for subject's sake, he almost invariably slips into what i may called the derivative vices--exactness of costume, truth of effect and local colour. to explain myself on this point, i will ask the reader to recall any one of mr. alma tadema's pictures; it matters not a jot which is chosen. that one, for instance, where, in a circular recess of white marble, sappho reads to a greek poet, or is it the young man who is reading to sappho and her maidens? the interest of the picture is purely archaeological. according to the very latest researches, the ornament which greek women wore in their hair was of such a shape, and mr. tadema has reproduced the shape in his picture. further researches are made, and it is discovered that that ornament was not worn until a hundred years later. the picture is therefore deprived of some of its interest, and the researches of the next ten years may make it appear as old-fashioned as the greek pictures of the last two generations appear in our eyes to-day. until then it is as interesting as a page of smith's _classical dictionary_. we look at it and we say, "how curious! and that was how the greeks washed and dressed themselves!" when mr. holman hunt conceived the idea of a picture of christ earning his livelihood by the sweat of his brow, it seemed to him to be quite necessary to go to jerusalem. there he copied a carpenter's shop from nature, and he filled it with arab tools and implements, feeling sure that, the manners and customs having changed but little in the east, it was to be surmised that such tools and implements must be nearly identical with those used eighteen centuries ago. to dress the virgin in sumptuous flowing robes, as raphael did, was clearly incorrect; the virgin was a poor woman, and could not have worn more than a single garment, and the garment she wore probably resembled the dress of the arab women of the present day, and so on and so on. through the window we see the very landscape that christ looked upon. from the point of view of the art critic of the _daily telegraph_ nothing could be better; the various sites and prospects are explained and commented upon, and the heart of middle-class england beats in sympathetic response. but the real picture-lover sees nothing save two geometrically drawn figures placed in the canvas like diagrams in a book of euclid. and the picture being barren of artistic interest, his attention is caught by the virgin's costume, and the catalogue informs him that mr. hunt's model was an arab woman in jerusalem, whose dress in all probability resembled the dress the virgin wore two thousand years ago. the carpenter's shop he is assured is most probably an exact counterpart of the carpenter's shop in which christ worked. how very curious! how very curious! curiosity in art has always been a corruptive influence, and the art of our century is literally putrid with curiosity. perhaps the desire of home was never so fixed and so real in any race as some would have us believe. at all times there have been men whose feet itched for travel; even in holland, the country above all others which gave currency to the belief in the stay-at-home instinct, there were always adventurous spirits who yearned for strange skies and lands. it was this desire of travel that destroyed the art of holland in the seventeenth century. i can hardly imagine an article that would be more instructive and valuable than one dealing precisely with those dutchmen who went to italy in quest of romance, poetry, and general artistic culture, for travel has often had an injurious effect on art. i do not say foreign travel, i say any travel. the length of the journey counts for nothing, once the painter's inspiration springs from the novelty of the colour, or the character of the landscape, or the interest that a strange costume suggests. there are painters who have never been further than maidenhead, and who bring back what i should call _notes de voyage_; there are others who have travelled round the world and have produced general aspects bearing neither stamp nor certificate of mileage--in other words, pictures. there are, therefore, two men who must not be confused one with the other, the traveller that paints and the painter that travels. every day we hear of a painter who has been to norway, or to brittany, or to wales, or to algeria, and has come back with sixty-five sketches, which are now on view, let us say, at messrs. dowdeswell's galleries, in new bond street, the home of all such exhibitions. the painter has been impressed by the savagery of fiords, by the prettiness of blouses and sabots, by the blue mountain in the distance and the purple mountain in the foreground, by the narrow shade of the street, and the solemnity of a _burnous_ or the grace of a _haik_ floating in the wind. the painter brings back these sights and scenes as a child brings back shells from the shore--they seemed very strange and curious, and, therefore, like the child, he brought back, not the things themselves, but the next best things, the most faithful sketches he could make of them. to understand how impossible it is to paint _pictures_ in a foreign country, we have only to imagine a young english painter setting up his easel in, let us say, algeria. there he finds himself confrontedwith a new world; everything is different: the costumes are strange, the rhythm of the lines is different, the effects are harsh and unknown to him; at home the earth is dark and the sky is light, in algeria the everlasting blue must be darker than the white earth, and the key of colour widely different from anything he has seen before. selection is impossible, he cannot distinguish between the important and the unimportant; everything strikes him with equal vividness. to change anything of this country, so clear, so precise, so characteristic, is to soften; to alleviate what is too rude, is to weaken; to generalise, is to disfigure. so the artist is obliged to take algiers in the lump; in spite of himself he will find himself forced into a scrupulous exactitude, nothing must be passed over, and so his pictures are at best only the truth, photographic truth and the naturalness of a fac-simile. the sixty-five drawings which the painter will bring back and will exhibit in messrs. dowdeswell's will be documentary evidence of the existence of algeria--of all that makes a country itself, of exactly the things by which those who have been there know it, of the things which will make it known to those who have not been there, the exact type of the inhabitants, their costume, their attitudes, their ways, and manner of living. once the painter accepts truth for aim and end, it becomes impossible to set a limit upon his investigations. we shall learn how this people dress, ride, and hunt; we shall learn what arms they use--the painter will describe them as well as a pencil may describe--the harness of the horses he must know and understand; through dealing with so much novelty it becomes obligatory for the travelling painter to become explanatory and categorical. and as the attraction of the unknown corresponds in most people to the immoral instinct of curiosity, the painter will find himself forced to attempt to do with paint and canvas what he could do much better in a written account. his public will demand pictures composed after the manner of an inventory, and the taste for ethnography will end by being confused with the sentiment of beauty. amongst this collection of _documents_ which causes the gallery to resound with foolish and vapid chatter there are two small pictures. every one has passed by them, but now an artist is examining them, and they are evidently the only two things in the exhibition that interest him. one is entitled "sunset on the nile", an impression of the melancholy of evening; the other is entitled "pilgrims", a band of travellers passing up a sandy tract, an impression of hot desert solitudes. and now i will conclude with an anecdote taken from one to whom i owe much. two painters were painting on the banks of the seine. suddenly a shepherd passed driving before him a long flock of sheep, silhouetting with supple movement upon the water whitening under a grey sky at the end of april. the shepherd had his scrip on his back, he wore the great felt hat and the gaiters of the herdsman, two black dogs, picturesque in form, trotted at his heels, for the flock was going in excellent order. "do you know," cried one painter to the other, "that nothing is more interesting to paint than a shepherd on the banks of _a river_?" he did not say the seine--he said a river. artistic education in france and england. is the introduction of the subject into art the one and only cause for the defeat of the brilliant genius which the revolution and the victories of napoleoncalled into existence? are there not other modern and special signs which distinguish the nineteenth century french schools from all the schools that preceded it? i think there are. throwing ourselves back in our chairs, let us think of this french school in its _ensemble_. what extraordinary variety! what an absence of fixed principle! curiosity, fever, impatience, hurry, anxiety, desire touching on hysteria. an enormous expenditure of force, but spent in so many different and contrary directions, that the sum-total of the result seems a little less than we had expected. throwing ourselves back in our chairs, and closing our eyes a second time, let us think of our eighteenth century english school. is it not like passing from the glare and vicarious holloaing of the street into a quiet, grave assembly of well-bred men, who are not afraid to let each other speak, and know how to make themselves heard without shouting; men who choose their words so well that they afford to speak without emphasis, and in whose speech you find neither neologisms, nor inversions, nor grammatical extravagances, nor calculated brutalities, nor affected ignorance, nor any faintest trace of pedantry? what these men have to say is more or less interesting, but they address us in the same language, and however arbitrarily we may place them, though we hang a pig-stye by morland next to a duchess by gainsborough, we are surprised by a pleasant air of family likeness in the execution. we feel, however differently these men see and think, that they are content to express themselves in the same language. their work may be compared to various pieces of music played on an instrument which was common property; they were satisfied with the instrument, and preferred to compose new music for it than to experiment with the instrument itself. it may be argued that in the lapse of a hundred years the numerous differences of method which characterise modern painting will disappear, and that it will seem as uniform to the eyes of the twenty-first century as the painting of the eighteenth century seems in our eyes to-day. i do not think this will be so. and in proof of this opinion i will refer again to the differences of opinion regarding the first principles of painting and drawing which divided ingres and géricault. differences regarding first principles never existed between the leaders of any other artistic movement. not between michael angelo and raphael, not between veronese, tintoretto, titian, and rubens; not between hals or any other dutchman, except rembrandt, born between and ; or between van dyck and reynolds and gainsborough. nor must the difference between the methods of giotto and titian cause any one to misunderstand my meaning. the change that two centuries brought into art was a gradual change, corresponding exactly to the ideas which the painter wished to express; each method was sufficient to explain the ideas current at the time it was invented for that purpose; it served that purpose and no more. facilities for foreign travel, international exhibitions, and cosmopolitanism have helped to keep artists of all countries in a ferment of uncertainty regarding even the first principles of their art. but this is not all; education has proved a vigorous and rapid solvent, and has completed the disintegration of art. a young man goes to the beaux arts; he is taught how to measure the model with his pencil, and how to determine the movement of the model with his plumb-line. he is taught how to draw by the masses rather than by the character, and the advantages of this teaching permit him, if he is an intelligent fellow, to produce at the end of two years' hard labour a measured, angular, constipated drawing, a sort of inferior photograph. he is then set to painting, and the instruction he receives amounts to this--that he must not rub the paint about with his brush as he rubbed the chalk with his paper stump. after a long methodical study of the model, an attempt is made to prepare a corresponding tone; no medium must be used; and when the, large square brush is filled full of sticky, clogging pigment it is drawn half an inch down and then half an inch across the canvas, and the painter must calculate how much he can finish at a sitting, for this system does not admit of retouchings. it is practised in all the french studios, where it is known as _la peinture au premier coup_. a clever young man, a man of talent, labours at art in the manner i have described from eight to ten hours a day, and at the end of six or seven years his education is completed. during the long while of his pupilage he has heard, "first learn your trade, and then do what you like". the time has arrived for him to do what he likes. he already suspects that the mere imitation of mm. bouguereau and lefebvre will bring him neither fame nor money; he soon finds that is so, and it becomes clear to him he must do something different. enticing vistas of possibilities open out before him, but he is like a man whose limbs have been kept too long in splints--they are frozen; and he at length understands the old and terrible truth: as the twig is bent so will it grow. the skin he would slough will not be sloughed; he tries all the methods--robust executions, lymphatic executions, sentimental and insipid executions, painstaking executions, cursive and impertinent executions. through all these the beaux arts student, if he is intelligent enough to perceive the falseness and worthlessness of his primary education, slowly works his way. he is like a vessel without ballast; he is like a blindfolded man who has missed his pavement; he is blown from wave to wave; he is confused with contradictory cries. last year he was robust, this year he is lymphatic; he affects learning which he does not possess, and then he assumes airs of ignorance, equally unreal--a mild, sophisticated ignorance, which he calls _naïveté_. and these various execution she is never more than superficially acquainted with; he does not practise any one long enough to extract what good there may be in it. to set before the reader the full story of the french decadence, i should have to relate the story of the great schism of some few years ago, when the pedants remained at the _salon_ under the headship of mr. bouguereau, and the experimentalists followed meissonier to the champs de mars.[footnote: see "impressions and opinions."]the authoritative name of meissonier, the genius of puvis de chavannes, and the interest of the exhibition of stevens' early work, sufficed for some years to disguise the progress and the tendency of the declension of french art; and it was not until last year ( ) that it was impossible to doubt any longer that the great french renaissance of the beginning of the century had worn itself out, that the last leaves were falling, and that probably a long period of winter rest was preparing. french art has resolved itself into pedants and experimentalists! the _salon_ is now like to a library of latin verses composed by the eton and harrow masters and their pupils; the champs de mars like a costume ball at elyseé montmartre. in england it is customary for art to enter by a side door, and the enormous subvention to the kensington schools would never have been voted by parliament if the bill had not been gilt with the usual utility gilding. it was represented that the schools were intended for something much more serious than the mere painting of pictures, which only rich people could buy: the schools were primarily intended as schools of design, wherein the sons and daughters of the people would be taught how to design wall-papers, patterns for lace, curtains, damask table-cloths, etc. the intention, like many another, was excellent; but the fact remains that, except for examination purposes, the work done by kensington students is useless. a design for a piece of wall-paper, for which a kensington student is awarded a medal, is almost sure to prove abortive when put to a practical test. the isolated pattern looks pretty enough on the two feet of white paper on which it is drawn; but when the pattern is manifolded, it is usually found that the designer has not taken into account the effect of the repetition. that is the pitfall into which the kensington student usually falls; he cannot make practical application of his knowledge, and at minton's factory all the designs drawn by kensington students have to be redrawn by those who understand the practical working out of the processes of reproduction and the quality of the material employed. so complete is the failure of the kensington student, that to plead a kensington education is considered to be an almost fatal objection against any one applying for work in any of our industrial centres. five-and-twenty years ago the schools of art at south kensington were the most comical in the world; they were the most complete parody on the continental school of art possible to imagine. they are no doubt the same to-day as they were five-and-twenty years ago--any way, the educational result is the same. the schools as i remember them were faultless in everything except the instruction dispensed there. there were noble staircases, the floors were covered with cocoa-nut matting, the rooms admirably heated with hot-water pipes, there were plaster casts and officials. in the first room the students practised drawing from the flat. engraved outlines of elaborate ornamentation were given them, and these they drew with lead pencil, measuring the spaces carefully with compasses. in about six months or a year the student had learned to use his compass correctly, and to produce a fine hard black-lead outline; the harder and finer the outline, the more the drawing looked like a problem in a book of euclid, the better the examiner was pleased, and the more willing was he to send the student to the room upstairs, where drawing was practised from the antique. this was the room in which the wisdom of south kensington attained a complete efflorescence. i shall never forget the scenes i witnessed there. having made choice of a cast, the student proceeded to measure the number of heads; he then measured the cast in every direction, and ascertained by means of a plumb-line exactly where the lines fell. it wasmore like land-surveying than drawing, and to accomplish this portion of his task took generally a fortnight, working six hours a week. he then placed a sheet of tissue paper upon his drawing, leaving only one small part uncovered, and, having reduced his chalk pencil to the finest possible point, he proceeded to lay in a set of extremely fine lines. these were crossed by a second set of lines, and the two sets of lines were elaborately stippled, every black spot being carefully picked out with bread. with a patience truly sublime in its folly, he continued the process all the way down the figure, accomplishing, if he were truly industrious, about an inch square in the course of an evening. our admiration was generally directed to those who had spent the longest time on their drawings. after three months' work a student began to be noticed; at the end of four he became an important personage. i remember one who had contrived to spend six months on his drawing. he was a sort of demigod, and we used to watch him anxious and alarmed lest he might not have the genius to devote still another month to it, and our enthusiasm knew no bounds when we learned that, a week before the drawings had to be sent in, he had taken his drawing home and spent three whole days stippling it and picking out the black spots with bread. the poor drawing had neither character nor consistency; it looked like nothing under the sun, except a drawing done at kensington--a flat, foolish thing, but very soft and smooth. but this was enough; it was passed by the examiners, and the student went into the life room to copy an italian model as he had copied the apollo belvedere. once or twice a week a gentleman who painted tenth-rate pictures, which were not always hung in the academy, came round and passed casual remarks on the quality of the stippling. there was a head-master who painted tenth-rate historical pictures, after the manner of a tenth-rate german painter in a provincial town, in a vast studio upstairs, which the state was good enough to provide him with, and he occasionally walked through the studios; on an average, i should say, once a month. the desire to organise art proceeded in france from a love of system, and in england from a love of respectability. to the ordinary mind there is something especially reassuring in medals, crowns, examinations, professors, and titles; and since the founding of the kensington schools we unfortunately hear no more of parents opposing their children's wishes to become artists. the result of all these facilities for art study has been to swamp natural genius and to produce enormous quantities of vacuous little water colours and slimy little oil colours. young men have been prevented from going to australia and canada and becoming rough farmers, and young ladies from following them and becoming rough wives and themothers of healthy children. instead of such natural emigration and extension of the race, febrile little pilgrimages have been organised to paris and grey, whence astonishing methods and theories regarding the conditions, under which painting alone can be accomplished, have been brought back. original kensington stipple has been crossed with square brush-work, and the mule has been bred in and in with open brush-work, and fresh strains have been sought in the execution at the angle of forty-five; art has become infinitely hybrid and definitely sterile. must we then conclude that all education is an evil? why exaggerate; why outstrip the plain telling of the facts? for those who are thinking of adopting art as a profession it is sufficient to know that the one irreparable evil is a bad primary education. be sure that after five years of the beaux arts you cannot become a great painter. be sure that after five years of kensington you can never become a painter at all. "if not at kensington nor at the beaux arts, where am i to obtain the education i stand in need of?" cries the embarrassed student. i do not propose to answer that question directly. how the masters of holland and flanders obtained their marvellous education is not known. we neither know how they learned nor how they painted. did the early masters paint first in monochrome, adding the colouring matter afterwards? much vain conjecturing has been expended in attempting to solve this question. did ruysdale paint direct from nature or from drawings? unfortunately on this question history has no single word to say. we know that potter learned his trade in the fields in lonely communication with nature. we know too that crome was a house-painter, and practised painting from nature when his daily work was done. nevertheless he attained as perfect a technique as any painter that ever lived. morland, too, was self-taught: he practised painting in the fields and farmyards and the country inns where he lived, oftentimes paying for board and lodging with a picture. did his art suffer from want of education? is there any one who believes that morland would have done better work if he had spent three or four years stippling drawings from the antique at south kensington? i will conclude these remarks, far too cursive and incomplete, with an anecdote which, i think, will cause the thoughtful to ponder. some seven or eight years ago, renoir, a painter of rare talent and originality, after twenty years of struggle with himself and poverty, succeeded in attaining a very distinct and personal expression of his individuality. out of a hundred influences he had succeeded in extracting an art as beautiful as it was new. his work was beginning to attract buyers. for the first time in his life he had a little money in hand, and he thought he would like a holiday. long reading of novels leads the reader to suppose that he found his ruin in a period of riotous living, the reaction induced by anxiety and over-work. not at all. he did what every wise friend would have advised him to do under the circumstances: he went to venice to study tintoretto. the magnificences of this master struck him through with the sense of his own insignificance; he became aware of the fact that he could not draw like tintoretto; and when he returned to paris he resolved to subject himself to two years of hard study in an art school. for two years he laboured in the life class, working on an average from seven to ten hours a day, and in two years he had utterly destroyed every trace of the charming and delightful art which had taken him twenty years to build up. i know of no more tragic story--do you? ingres and corot. of the thirty or more great artists who made the artistic movement at the beginning of the century in france, five will, i think, exercise a prolonged influence on the art of the future--ingres, corot, millet, manet, and degas. the omission of the name of delacroix will surprise many; but though delacroix will engage the attention of artists as they walk through the louvre, i do not think that they will turn to him for counsel in their difficulty, or that they will learn from him any secrets of their craft. in the great masters of pictorial composition--michael angelo, veronese, tintoretto, and rubens--the passion and tumult of the work resides solely in the conception; the execution is always calculated, and the result is perfectly predetermined and accurately foreseen. to explain myself i will tell an anecdote which is always told whenever delacroix's name is mentioned, without, however, the true significance of the anecdote being perceived. after seeing constable's pictures, delacroix repainted one of his most important works from end to end. of degas [footnote: see essay on degas in "impressions and opinions".] and manet i have spoken elsewhere. millet seems to me to be a sort of nineteenth century greuze. the subject-matter is different, but at bottom the art of these two painters is more alike than is generally supposed. neither was a painter in any true sense of the word, and if the future learns anything from millet, it will be how to separate the scene from the environment which absorbs it, how to sacrifice the background, how to suggest rather than to point out, and how by a series of ellipses to lead the spectator to imagine what is not there. the student may learn from millet that it was by sometimes servilely copying nature, sometimes by neglecting nature, that the old masters succeeded in conveying not an illusion but an impression of life. but of all nineteenth century painters ingres and corot seem most sure of future life; their claim upon the attention and the admiration of future artists seems the most securely founded. looked at from a certain side ingres seems for sheer perfection to challenge antiquity. of michael angelo there can never be any question; he stands alone in a solitude of greatness. phidias himself is not so much alone. for the art of apelles could not have differed from that of phidias; and the intention of many a drawing by apelles must have been identical with that of "la source". it is difficult to imagine what further beauty he may have introduced into a face, or what further word he might have had to say on the beauty of a virgin body. the legs alone suggest the possibility of censure. ingres repainted the legs when the picture was finished and the model was not before him, so the idea obtains among artists that the legs are what are least perfect in the picture. in repainting the legs his object was omission of detail with a view to concentration of attention on the upper part of the figure. it must not however be supposed that the legs are what is known among painters as empty; they have been simplified; their synthetic expression has been found; and if the teaching at the beaux arts forbids the present generation to understand such drawing, the fault lies with the state that permits the beaux arts, and not with ingres, whose genius was not crushed by it. the suggestion that ingres spoilt the legs of "la source" by repainting them when the model was not before him could come from nowhere but the beaux arts. that ingres was not so great an artist as raphael i am aware. that ingres' drawings show none of the dramatic inventiveness of raphael's drawings is so obvious that i must apologise for such a commonplace. raphael's drawings were done with a different intention from ingres'; raphael's drawings were no more than rough memoranda, and in no instance did he attempt to carry a drawing to the extreme limit that ingres did. ingres' drawing is one thing, raphael's is another; still i would ask if any one thinks that raphael could have carried a drawing as far as ingres? i would ask if any of raphael's drawings are as beautiful, as perfect, or as instructive as ingres'. take, for example, the pencil drawing in the louvre, the study for the odalisque: who except a greek could have produced so perfect a drawing? i can imagine apelles doing something like it, but no one else. when you go to the louvre examine that line of back, return the next day and the next, and consider its infinite perfection before you conclude that my appreciation is exaggerated. think of the learning and the love that were necessary for the accomplishment of such exquisite simplifications. never did pencil follow an outline with such penetrating and unwearying passion, or clasp and enfold it with such simple and sufficient modelling. nowhere can you detect a starting-point or a measurement taken; it seems to have grown as a beautiful tendril grows, and every curve sways as mysteriously, and the perfection seems as divine. beside it dürer would seem crabbed and puzzle-headed; holbein would seem angular and geometrical; da vinci would seem vague: and i hope that no critic by partial quotation will endeavour to prove me guilty of having said that ingres was a greater artist than da vinci. i have not said any such thing; i have merely striven by aid of comparison to bring before the reader some sense of the miraculous beauty of one of ingres' finest pencil drawings. or let us choose the well-known drawing of the italian lady sitting in the louis xv. arm-chair, her long curved and jewelled hand lying in her lap and a coiffure of laces pinned down with a long jewelled hair-pin. how her head-dress of large laces decorates the paper, and the elaborate working out of the pattern, is it not a miracle of handicraft? how exquisite the black curls on the forehead, and how they balance the dark eyes which are the depth and centre of the composition! the necklace, how well the stones are heaped, how well they lie together! how well their weight and beauty are expressed! and the earrings, how enticing in their intricate workmanship. then the movement of the face, how full it is of the indolent south, and the oval of the face is composed to harmonise and enhance the lace head-dress; and its outline, though full of classical simplifications, tells the character with holbein-like fidelity; it falls away into a soft, weak chin in which resides a soft sensual lassitude. the black eyes are set like languid stars in the face, and the flesh rounds off softly, like a sky, modelled with a little shadow, part of the outline, and expressing its beauty. and then there are the marvels of the dress to consider: the perfect and spontaneous creation of the glitter of the long silk arms, and the muslin of the wrists, soft as foliage, and then the hardness of the bodice stitched with jewellery and set so romantically on the almost epicene bosom. it is the essentially greek quality of perfection that brings corot and ingres together. they are perfect, as none other since the greek sculptors has been perfect. other painters have desired beauty at intervals as passionately as they, none save the greeks so continuously; and the desire to be merely beautiful seemed, if possible, to absorb the art of corot even more completely than it did that of ingres. among the numerous pictures, sketches, and drawings which he left you will find weakness, repetitions, even commonplace, but ugliness never. an ugly set of lines is not to be found in corot; the rhythm may sometimes be weak, but his lines never run out of metre. for the rhythm of line as well as of sound the artist must seek in his own soul; he will never find it in the inchoate and discordant jumble which we call nature. and, after all, what is art but rhythm? corot knew that art is nature made rhythmical, and so he was never known to take out a six-foot canvas to copy nature on. being an artist, he preferred to observe nature, and he lay down and dreamed his fields and trees, and he walked about in his landscape, selecting his point of view, determining the rhythm of his lines. that sense of rhythm which i have defined as art was remarkable in him even from his first pictures. in the "castle of st. angelo, rome", for instance, the placing of the buildings, one low down, the other high up in the picture, the bridge between, and behind the bridge the dome of st. peter's, is as faultless a composition as his maturest work. as faultless, and yet not so exquisite. for it took many long and pensive years to attain the more subtle and delicate rhythms of "the lake" in the collection of j. s. forbes, esq., or the landscape in the collection of g. n. stevens, esq., or the "ravine" in the collection of sir john day. corot's style changed; but it changed gradually, as nature changes, waxing like the moon from a thin, pure crescent to a full circle of light. guided by a perfect instinct, he progressed, fulfilling the course of his artistic destiny. we notice change, but each change brings fuller beauty. and through the long and beautiful year of corot's genius--full as the year itself of months and seasons--we notice that the change that comes over his art is always in the direction of purer and more spiritual beauty. we find him more and more absorbed in the emotion that the landscape conveys, more willing to sacrifice the superfluous and circumstantial for the sake of the immortal beauty of things. look at the "lac de garde" and say if you can that the old greek melody is not audible in the line which bends and floats to the lake's edge, in the massing and the placing of those trees, in the fragile grace of the broken birch which sweeps the "pale complexioned sky". are we not looking into the heart of nature, and do we not hear the silence that is the soul of evening? in this, his perfect period, he is content to leave his foreground rubbed over with some expressive grey, knowing well that the eye rests not there, and upon his middle distance he will lavish his entire art, concentrating his picture on some one thing in which for him resides the true reality of the place; be this the evening ripples on the lake or the shimmering of the willow leaves as the last light dies out of the sky. i only saw corot once. it was in some woods near paris, where i had gone to paint, and i came across the old gentleman unexpectedly, seated in front of his easel in a pleasant glade. after admiring his work i ventured to say: "master, what you are doing is lovely, but i cannot find your composition in the landscape before us." he said: "my foreground is a long way ahead," and sure enough, nearly two hundred yards away, his picture rose out of the dimness of the dell, stretching a little beyond the vista into the meadow. the anecdote seems to me to be a real lesson in the art of painting, for it shows us the painter in his very employment of nature, and we divine easily the transposition in the tones and in the aspect of things that he was engaged in bringing into that picture. and to speak of transpositions leads us inevitably into consideration of the great secret of corot's art, his employment of what is known in studios as values. by values is meant the amount of light and shadow contained in a tone. the relation of a half-tint to the highest light, which is represented by the white paper, the relation of a shadow to the deepest black, which is represented by the chalk pencil, is easy enough to perceive in a drawing; but when the work is in colour the values, although not less real, are more difficult to estimate. for a colour can be considered from two points of view: either as so much colouring matter, or as so much light and shade. violet, for instance, contains not only red and blue in proportions which may be indefinitely varied, but also certain proportions of light and shade; the former tending towards the highest light, represented on the palette by flake white; the latter tending towards the deepest dark, represented on the palette by ivory black. similar to a note in music, no colour can be said to be in itself either false or true, ugly or beautiful. a note and a colour acquire beauty and ugliness according to their associations; therefore to colour well depends, in the first instance, on the painter's knowledge and intimate sense of the laws of contrast and similitude. but there is still another factor in the art of colouring well; for, just as the musician obtains richness and novelty of expression by means of a distribution of sound through the instruments of the orchestra, so does the painter obtain depth and richness through a judicious distribution of values. if we were to disturb the distribution of values in the pictures of titian, rubens, veronese, their colour would at once seem crude, superficial, without cohesion or rarity. but some will aver that if the colour is right the values must be right too. however plausible this theory may seem, the practice of those who hold it amply demonstrates its untruth. it is interesting and instructive to notice how those who seek the colour without regard for the values inherent in the colouring matter never succeed in producing more than a certain shallow superficial brilliancy; the colour of such painters is never rich or profound, and although it may be beautiful, it is always wanting in the element of romantic charm and mystery. the colour is the melody, the values are the orchestration of the melody; and as the orchestration serves to enrich the melody, so do the values enrich the colour. and as melody may--nay, must--exist, if the orchestration be really beautiful, so colour must inhere wherever the values have been finely observed. in rembrandt, the colour is brown and a white faintly tinted with bitumen; in claude, the colour is blue, faintly flushed with yellow in the middle sky, and yet none has denied the right of these painters to be considered colourists. they painted with the values--that is to say, with what remains on the palette when abstraction has been made of the colouring matter--a delicate neutral tint of infinite subtlety and charm; and it is with this, the evanescent and impalpable soul of the vanished colours, that the most beautiful pictures are painted. corot, too, is a conspicuous example of this mode of painting. his right to stand among the world's colourists has never, so far as i know, been seriously contested, his pictures are almost void of colouring matter--a blending of grey and green, and yet the result is of a richly coloured evening. corot and rembrandt, as dutilleux pointed out, arrived at the same goal by absolutely different ends. he saw clearly, although he could not express himself quite clearly, that, above all painters, rembrandt and corot excelled in that mode of pictorial expression known as values, or shall i say chiaroscuro, for in truth he who has said values has hinted chiaroscuro. rembrandt told all that a golden ray falling through a darkened room awakens in a visionary brain; corot told all that the grey light of morning and evening whispers in the pensive mind of the elegiac poet. the story told was widely different, but the manner of telling was the same: one attenuated in the light, the other attenuated in the shadow: both sacrificed the corners with a view to fixing the attention on the one spot in which the soul of the picture lives. all schools have not set great store on values, although all schools have set great store on drawing and colour. values seem to have come and gone in and out of painting like a fashion. one generation hardly gives the matter a thought, the succeeding generation finds the whole charm of its art in values. it would be difficult to imagine a more interesting and instructive history than the history of values in painting. it is far from my scheme to write such a history, but i wish that such a history were written, for then we should see clearly how unwise were they who neglected the principle, and how much they lost. i would only call attention to how the principle came to be reintroduced into french art in the beginning of this century. it came from holland _viâ_, england through the pictures of turner and constable. it was an anglo-dutch influence that roused french art, then slumbering in the pseudo-classicisms of the first empire; and, half-awakened, french art turned its eyes to holland for inspiration; and values, the foundation and corner-stone of dutch art, became almost at a bound a first article of faith in the artistic creed. in values came upon france like a religion. rembrandt was the new messiah, holland was the holy land, and disciples were busy dispensing the propaganda in every studio. since the bad example of greuze, literature had wound round every branch of painting until painting seemed to disappear in the parasite like an oak under a cloud of ivy. the excess had been great--a reaction was inevitable--and rembrandt, with his biblical legends, furnished the necessary transition. but when a taste for painting had been reacquired, one after the other the dutch painters became the fashion. it is almost unnecessary to point out the influence of hobbema on the art of rousseau. corot was less affected by the dutchmen, or, to speak more exactly, he assimilated more completely what he had learnt from them than his rival was able to do. moreover, what he took from holland came to him through ruysdael rather than through hobbema. the great morose dreamer, contemplative and grave as wordsworth, must have made more direct and intimate appeal to corot's soul than the charm and the gaiety of hobbema's water-mills. be this as it may, it was holland that revived the long-forgotten science of values in the barbizon painters. they sought their art in the direction of values, and very easily corot took the lead as chief exponent of the new principle; and he succeeded in applying the principle of values to landscape painting as fully as rembrandt had to figure painting. but at the moment when the new means of expression seemed most distinctly established and understood, it was put aside and lost sight of by a new generation of painters, and, curiously enough, by the men who had most vigorously proclaimed the beauty and perfection of the art which was to be henceforth, at least in practice, their mission to repudiate. for i take it that the art of the impressionists has nothing whatever in common with the art of corot. true, that corot's aim was to render his impression of his subject, no matter whether it was a landscape or a figure; in this aim he differed in no wise from giotto and van eyck; but we are not considering corot's aims but his means of expression, and his means of expression were the very opposite to those employed by monet and the school of monet. not with half-tints in which colour disappears are monet and his school concerned, but with the brilliant vibration of colour in the full light, with open spaces where the light is reflected back and forward, and nature is but a prism filled with dazzling and iridescent tints. i remember once writing about one of monet's innumerable snow effects: "this picture is in his most radiant manner. a line of snow-enchanted architecture passes through the picture--only poor houses with a single square church tower, but they are beautiful as greek temples in the supernatural whiteness of the great immaculate snow. below the village, but not quite in the foreground, a few yellow bushes, bare and crippled by the frost, and around and above a marvellous glitter in pale blue and pale rose tints." i asked if the touch was not more precious than intimate; and i spoke, too, of a shallow and brilliant appearance. but if i had asked why the picture, notwithstanding its incontestable merits, was so much on the surface, why it so irresistibly suggested _un décor de théâtre_, why one did not enter into it as one does into a picture by wilson or corot, my criticism would have gone to the root of the evil. and the reason of this is because monet has never known how to organise and control his values. the relation of a wall to the sky which he observes so finely seem as if deliberately contrived for the suppression of all atmosphere; and we miss in monet the delicacy and the mystery which are the charm of corot. the bath of air being withdrawn, a landscape becomes a mosaic, flat surface takes the place of round: the next step is some form or other of pre-raphaelitism. monet, sisley, pissaro, and the decadence. nature demands that children should devour their parents, and corot was hardly cold in his grave when his teaching came to be neglected and even denied. values were abandoned and colour became the unique thought of the new school. my first acquaintance with monet's painting was made in ' or ' --the year he exhibited his first steam-engine and his celebrated troop of life-size turkeys gobbling the tall grass in a meadow, at the end of which stood, high up in the picture, a french château. impressionism is a word that has lent itself to every kind of misinterpretation, for in its exact sense all true painting is penetrated with impressionism, but, to use the word in its most modern sense--that is to say, to signify the rapid noting of illusive appearance--monet is the only painter to whom it may be reasonably applied. i remember very well that sunlit meadow and the long coloured necks of the turkeys. truly it may be said that, for the space of one rapid glance, the canvas radiates; it throws its light in the face of the spectator as, perhaps, no canvas did before. but if the eyes are not immediately averted the illusion passes, and its place is taken by a somewhat incoherent and crude coloration. then the merits of the picture strike you as having been obtained by excessive accomplishment in one-third of the handicraft and something like a formal protestation of the non-existence of the other two-thirds. since that year i have seen monets by the score, and have hardly observed any change or alteration in his manner of seeing or executing, or any development soever in his art. at the end of the season he comes up from the country with thirty or forty landscapes, all equally perfect, all painted in precisely the same way, and no one shows the slightest sign of hesitation, and no one suggests the unattainable, the beyond; one and all reveal to us a man who is always sure of his effect, and who is always in a hurry. any corner of nature will do equally well for his purpose, nor is he disposed to change the disposition of any line of tree or river or hill; so long as a certain reverberation of colour is obtained all is well. an unceasing production, and an almost unvarying degree of excellence, has placed monet at the head of the school; his pictures command high prices, and nothing goes now with the erudite american but monet's landscapes. but does monet merit this excessive patronage, and if so, what are the qualities in his work that make it superior to sisley's and pissaro's? sisley is less decorative, less on the surface, and though he follows monet in his pursuit of colour, nature is, perhaps, on account of his english origin, something more to him than a brilliant appearance. it has of course happened to monet to set his easel before the suburban aspect that sisley loves, but he has always treated it rather in the decorative than in the meditative spirit. he has never been touched by the humility of a lane's end, and the sentiment of the humble life that collects there has never appeared on his canvas. yet sisley, being more in sympathy with such nature, has often been able to produce a superior though much less pretentious picture than the ordinary stereotyped monet. but if sisley is more meditative than monet, pissaro is more meditative than either. monet had arrived at his style before i saw anything of his work; of his earlier canvases i know nothing. possibly he once painted in the corot manner; it is hardly possible that he should not have done so. however this may be, pissaro did not rid himself for many years of the influence of corot. his earliest pictures were all composed in pensive greys and violets, and exhaled the weary sadnessof tilth and grange and scant orchard trees. the pale road winds through meagre uplands, and through the blown and gnarled and shiftless fruit-trees the saddening silhouette of the town drifts across the land. the violet spaces between the houses are the very saddest, and the spare furrows are patiently drawn, and so the execution is in harmony with and accentuates the unutterable monotony of the peasant's lot. the sky, too, is vague and empty, and out of its deathlike, creamy hollow the first shadows are blown into the pallid face of a void evening. the picture tells of the melancholy of ordinary life, of our poor transitory tenements, our miserable scrapings among the little mildew that has gathered on the surface of an insignificant planet. i will not attempt to explain why the grey-toned and meditative pissaro should have consented to countenance--i cannot say to lead (for, unlike every other _chef d'école_, pissaro imitated the disciples instead of the disciples imitating pissaro)--the many fantastic revolutions in pictorial art which have agitated montmartre during the last dozen years. the pissaro psychology i must leave to take care of itself, confining myself strictly to the narrative of these revolutions. authority for the broken brushwork of monet is to be found in manet's last pictures, and i remember manet's reply when i questioned him about the pure violet shadows which, just before his death, he was beginning to introduce into his pictures. "one year one paints violet and people scream, and the following year every one paints a great deal more violet." if manet's answer throws no light whatever on the new principle, it shows very clearly the direction, if not the goal, towards which his last style was moving. but perhaps i am speaking too cautiously, for surely broken brushwork and violet shadows lead only to one possible goal--the prismatic colours. manet died, and this side--and this side only--of his art was taken up by monet, sisley, and renoir. or was it that manet had begun to yield to an influence--that of monet, sisley, and renoir--which was just beginning to make itself felt? be this as it may, browns and blacks disappeared from the palettes of those who did not wish to be considered _l'école des beaux-arts, et en plein_. venetian reds, siennas, and ochres were in process of abandonment, and the palette came to be composed very much in the following fashion: violet, white, blue, white, green, white, red, white, yellow, white, orange, white--the three primary and the three secondary colours, with white placed between each, so as to keep everything as distinct as possible, and avoid in the mixing all soiling of the tones. monet, sisley, and renoir contented themselves with the abolition of all blacks and browns, for they were but half-hearted reformers, and it was clearly the duty of those who came after to rid the palette of all ochres, siennas, venetian, indian, and light reds. the only red and yellow that any one who was not, according to the expression of the new generation, _presque du louvre_, could think of permitting on his palette were vermilion and cadmium. the first of this new generation was seurat, seurat begot signac, signac begot anquetin, and anquetin has begotten quite a galaxy of lesser lights, of whom i shall not speak in this article--of whom it is not probable that i shall ever speak. it was in an exhibition held in rue lafitte in ' or ' that the new method, which comprised two most radical reforms--an execution achieved entirely with the point of the brush and the division of the tones--was proclaimed. or should i say reformation, for the execution by a series of dots is implicit in the theory of the division of the tones? how well i remember being attracted towards an end of the room, which was filled with a series of most singular pictures. there must have been at least ten pictures of yachts in full sail. they were all drawn in profile, they were all painted in the very clearest tints, white skies and white sails hardly relieved or explained with shadow, and executed in a series of minute touches, like mosaic. ten pictures of yachts all in profile, all in full sail, all unrelieved by any attempt at atmospheric effect, all painted in a series of little dots! great as was my wonderment, it was tenfold increased on discovering that only five of these pictures were painted by the new man, seurat, whose name was unknown to me; the other five were painted by my old friend pissaro. my first thought went for the printer; my second for some _fumisterie_ on the part of the hanging committee, the intention of which escaped me. the pictures were hung low, so i went down on my knees and examined the dotting in the pictures signed seurat, and the dotting in those that were signed pissaro. after a strict examination i was able to detect some differences, and i began to recognise the well-known touch even through this most wild and most wonderful transformation. yes, owing to a long and intimate acquaintance with pissaro and his work, i could distinguish between him and seurat, but to the ordinary visitor their pictures were identical. many claims are put forward, but the best founded is that of seurat; and, so far as my testimony may serve his greater honour and glory, i do solemnly declare that i believe him to have been the original discoverer of the division of the tones. a tone is a combination of colours. in nature colours are separate; they act and react one on the other, and so create in the eye the illusion of a mixture of various colours-in other words, of a tone. but if the human eye can perform this prodigy when looking on colour as evolved through the spectacle of the world, why should not the eye be able to perform the same prodigy when looking on colour as displayed over the surface of a canvas? nature does not mix her colours to produce a tone; and the reason of the marked discrepancy existing between nature and the louvre is owing to the fact that painters have hitherto deemed it a necessity to prepare a tone on the palette before placing it on the canvas; whereas it is quite clear that the only logical and reasonable method is to first complete the analysis of the tone, and then to place the colours which compose the tone in dots over the canvas, varying the size of the dots and the distance between the dots according to the depth of colour desired by the painter. if this be done truly--that is to say, if the first analysis of the tones be a correct analysis--and if the spectator places himself at the right distance from the picture, there will happen in his eyes exactly the same blending of colour as happens in them when they are looking upon nature. an example will, i think, make my meaning clear. we are in a club smoking-room. the walls are a rich ochre. three or four men sit between us and the wall, and the blue smoke of their cigars fills the middle air. in painting this scene it would be usual to prepare the tone on the palette, and the preparation would be somewhat after this fashion: ochre warmed with a little red--a pale violet tinted with lake for the smoke of the cigars. but such a method of painting would seem to seurat and signac to be artless, primitive, unscientific, childish, _presque du louvre_--above all, unscientific. they would say, "decompose the tone. that tone is composed of yellow, white, and violet turning towards lake"; and, having satisfied themselves in what proportions, they would dot their canvases over with pure yellow and pure white, the interspaces being filled in with touches of lake and violet, numerous where the smoke is thickest, diminishing in number where the wreaths vanish into air. or let us suppose that it is a blue slated roof that the dottist wishes to paint. he first looks behind him, to see what is the colour of the sky. it is an orange sky. he therefore represents the slates by means of blue dots intermixed with orange and white dots, and--ah! i am forgetting an important principle in the new method--the complementary colour which the eye imagines, but does not see. what is the complementary colour of blue, grey, and orange? green. therefore green must be introduced into the roof; otherwise the harmony would be incomplete, and therefore in a measure discordant. needless to say that a sky painted in this way does not bear looking into. close to the spectator it presents the appearance of a pard; but when he reaches the proper distance there is no denying that the colours do in a measure unite and assume a tone more or less equivalent to the tone that would have been obtained by blending the colours on the palette. "but," cry seurat and signac, "an infinitely purer and more beautiful tone than could have been obtained by any artificial blending of the colours on the palette--a tone that is the exact equivalent of one of nature's tones, for it has been obtained in exactly the same way." truly a subject difficult to write about in english. perhaps it is one that should not be attempted anywhere except in a studio with closed doors. but if i did not make some attempt to explain this matter, i should leave my tale of the decline and fall of french art in the nineteenth century incomplete. roughly speaking, these new schools--the symbolists, the decadents, the dividers of tones, the professors of the rhythm of gesture--date back about ten years. for ten years the division of the tones has been the subject of discussion in the aesthetic circles of montmartre. and when we penetrate further into the matter--or, to be more exact, as we ascend into the higher regions of _la butte_--we find the elect, who form so stout a phalanx against the philistinism of the louvre, themselves subdivided into numerous sections, and distraught with internecine feuds concerning the principle of the art which they pursue with all the vehemence that veronese green and cadmium yellow are capable of. from ten at night till two in the morning the _brasseries_ of the butte are in session. ah! the interminable bocks and the reek of the cigars, until at last a hesitating exodus begins. an exhausted proprietor at the head of his waiters, crazed with sleepiness, eventually succeeds in driving these noctambulist apostles into the streets. then the nervous lingering at the corner! the disputants, anxious and yet loth to part, say goodbye, each regretting that he had not urged some fresh argument--an argument which had just occurred to him, and which, he feels sure, would have reduced his opponent to impotent silence. sometimes the partings are stormy. the question of the introduction of the complementary colours into the frames of the pictures is always a matter of strife, and results in much nonconformity. several are strongly in favour of carrying the complementary colours into the picture-frames. "if you admit," says one, "that to paint a blue roof with an orange sky shining on it you must introduce the complementary colour green--which the spectator does not see, but imagines--there is excellent reason why you should dot the frame all over with green, for the picture and its frame are not two things, but one thing." "but," cries his opponent, "there is a finality in all things; if you carry your principle out to the bitter end, the walls as well as the frame should be dotted with the complementary colours, the staircases too, the streets likewise; and if we pursue the complementaries into the street, who shall say where we are to stop? why stop at all, unless the neighbours protest that we are interfering with their complementaries?" the schools headed by signac and anquetin comprise numerous disciples and adherents. they do not exhibit in the salon or in the champ de mars; but that is because they disdain to do so. they hold exhibitions of their own, and their picture-dealers trade only in their works and in those belonging to or legitimately connected with the new schools. if i have succeeded in explaining the principle of coloration employed by these painters, i must have excited some curiosity in the reader to see these scientifically-painted pictures. to say that they are strange, absurd, ridiculous, conveys no sensation of their extravagances; and i think that even an elaborate description would miss its mark. for, in truth, the pictures merit no such attention. it is only needful to tell the reader that they fail most conspicuously at the very point where it was their mission to succeed. instead of excelling in brilliancy of colour the pictures painted in the ordinary way, they present the most complete spectacle of discoloration possible to imagine. yet signac is a man of talent, and in an exhibition of pictures which i visited last may i saw a wide bay, two rocky headlands extending far into the sea, and this offing was filled with a multitude of gull-like sails. there was in it a vibration of light, such an effect as a mosaic composed of dim-coloured but highly polished stones might produce. i can say no good word, however, for his portrait of a gentleman holding his hat in one hand and a flower in the other. this picture formulated a still newer aestheticism--the rhythm of gesture. for, according to signac, the raising of the face and hands expresses joy, the depression of the face and hands denotes sadness. therefore, to denote the melancholy temperament of his sitter, signac represented him as being hardly able to lift his hat to his head or the flower to his button-hole. the figure was painted, as usual, in dots of pure colour lifted from the palette with the point of the brush; the complementary colours in duplicate bands curled up the background. this was considered by the disciples to be an important innovation; and the effect, it is needless to say, was gaudy, if not neat. a theory of anquetin's is that wherever the painter is painting, his retina must still hold some sensation of the place he has left; therefore there is in every scene not only the scene itself, but remembrance of the scene that preceded it. this is not quite clear, is it? no. but i think i can make it clear. he who walks out of a brilliantly lighted saloon--that is to say, he who walks out of yellow--sees the other two primary colours, red and blue; in other words, he sees violet. therefore anquetin paints the street, and everything in it, violet--boots, trousers, hats, coats, lamp-posts, paving-stones, and the tail of the cat disappearing under the _porte cochère_. but if in my description of these schools i have conveyed the idea of stupidity or ignorance i have failed egregiously. these young men are all highly intelligent and keenly alive to art, and their doings are not more vain than the hundred and one artistic notions which have been undermining the art-sense of the french and english nations for the last twenty years. what i have described is not more foolish than the stippling at south kensington or the drawing by the masses at julien's. the theory of the division of the tones is no more foolish than the theory of _plein air_ or the theory of the square brushwork; it is as foolish, but not a jot more foolish. great art dreams, imagines, sees, feels, expresses--reasons never. it is only in times of woful decadence, like the present, that the bleating of the schools begins to be heard; and although, to the ignorant, one method may seem less ridiculous than another, all methods--i mean, all methods that are not part and parcel of the pictorial intuition--are equally puerile and ridiculous. the separation of the method of expression from the idea to be expressed is the sure sign of decadence. france is now all decadence. in the champ de mars, as in the salon, the man of the hour is he who has invented the last trick in subject or treatment. france has produced great artists in quick succession. think of all the great names, beginning with ingres and ending with degas, and wonder if you can that france has at last entered on a period of artistic decadence. for the last sixty years the work done in literary and pictorial art has been immense; the soil has been worked along and across, in every direction; and for many a year nothing will come to us from france but the bleat of the scholiast. our academicians. that nearly all artists dislike and despise the royal academy is a matter of common knowledge. whether with reason or without is a matter of opinion, but the existence of an immense fund of hate and contempt of the academy is not denied. from glasgow to cornwall, wherever a group of artists collects, there hangs a gathering and a darkening sky of hate. true, the position of the academy seems to be impregnable; and even if these clouds should break into storm the academy would be as little affected as the rock of gibraltar by squall or tempest. the academy has successfully resisted a royal commission, and a crusade led by mr. holman hunt in the columns of the _times_ did not succeed in obtaining the slightest measure of reform.... here i might consult blue-books and official documents, and tell the history of the academy; but for the purpose of this article the elementary facts in every one's possession are all that are necessary. we know that we owe the academy to the artistic instincts of george iii. it was he who sheltered it in somerset house, and when somerset house was turned into public offices, the academy was bidden to trafalgar square; and when circumstances again compelled the authorities to ask the academy to move on, the academy, posing as a public body, demanded a site, and the academy was given one worth three hundred thousand pounds. thereon the academy erected its present buildings, and when they were completed the academy declared itself on the first opportunity to be no public body at all, but a private enterprise. then why the site, and why the royal charter? mr. colman, mr. pears, mr. reckitt are not given sites worth three hundred thousand pounds. these questions have often been asked, and to them the academy has always an excellent answer. "the site has been granted, and we have erected buildings upon it worth a hundred thousand pounds; get rid of us you cannot." the position of the academy is as impregnable as the rock of gibraltar; it is as well advertised as the throne itself, and the income derived from the sale of the catalogues alone is enormous. then the academy has the handling of the chantrey bequest funds, which it does not fail to turn to its own advantage by buying pictures of academicians, which do not sell in the open market, at extravagant prices, or purchasing pictures by future academicians, and so fostering, strengthening, and imposing on the public the standard of art which obtains in academic circles. such, in a few brief words, is the institution which controls and in a large measure directs the art of this country. but though i come with no project to obtain its dissolution, it seems to me interesting to consider the causes of the hatred of the academy with which artistic england is saturated, oftentimes convulsed; and it may be well to ask if any institution, however impregnable, can continue to defy public opinion, if any sovereignty, however fortified by wealth and buttressed by prescription, can continue to ignore and outrage the opinions of its subjects? the hatred of artistic england for the academy proceeds from the knowledge that the academy is no true centre of art, but a mere commercial enterprise protected and subventioned by government. in recent years every shred of disguise has been cast off, and it has become patent to every one that the academy is conducted on as purely commercial principles as any shop in the tottenham court road. for it is impossible to suppose that mr. orchardson and mr. watts do not know that mr. leader's landscapes are like tea-trays, that mr. dicksee's figures are like bon-bon boxes, and that mr. herkomer's portraits are like german cigars. but apparently the r.a.'s are merely concerned to follow the market, and they elect the men whose pictures sell best in the city. city men buy the productions of mr. herkomer, mr. dicksee, mr. leader, and mr. goodall. little harm would be done to art if the money thus expended meant no more than filling stockbrokers' drawing-rooms with bad pictures, but the uncontrolled exercise of the stockbroker's taste in art means the election of a vast number of painters to the academy, and election to the academy means certain affixes, r.a. and a., and these signs are meant to direct opinion. for when the ordinary visitor thinks a picture very bad, and finds r.a. or a. after the painter's name, he concludes that he must be mistaken, and so a false standard of art is created in the public mind. but though mr. orchardson, sir john millais, sir frederick leighton, and mr. watts have voted for the city merchants' nominees, it would be a mistake to suppose that they did not know for whom they should have voted. it is to be questioned if there be an r. a. now alive who would dare to deny that mr. whistler is a very great painter. it was easy to say he was not in the old days when, under the protection of mr. ruskin, the r.a.s went in a body and gave evidence against him. but now even mr. jones, r.a., would not venture to repeat the opinion he expressed about one of the most beautiful of the nocturnes. time, it is true, has silenced the foolish mouth of the r.a., but time has not otherwise altered him; and there is as little chance to-day as there was twenty years ago of mr. whistler being elected an academician. no difference exists even in academic circles as to the merits of mr. albert moore's work. many academicians will freely acknowledge that his non-election is a very grave scandal; they will tell you that they have done everything to get him elected, and have given up the task in despair. mr. whistler and mr. albert moore, the two greatest artists living in england, will never be elected academicians; and artistic england is asked to acquiesce in this grave scandal, and also in many minor scandals: the election of mr. dicksee in place of mr. henry moore, and mr. stanhope forbes in place of mr. swan or mr. john sargent! no one thinks mr. dicksee as capable an artist as mr. henry moore, and no one thinks mr. stanhope forbes as great an artist as mr. swan or mr. sargent. then why were they elected? because the men who represent most emphatically the taste of the city have become so numerous of late years in the academy that they are able to keep out any one whose genius would throw a doubt on the commonplace ideal which they are interested in upholding. mr. alma tadema would not care to confer such a mark of esteem as the affix r.a. on any painter practising an art which, when understood, would involve hatred of the copyplate antiquity which he supplies to the public. this explanation seems incredible, i admit, but no other explanation is possible, for i repeat that the academicians do not themselves deny the genius of the men they have chosen to ignore. so we find the academy as a body working on exactly the same lines as the individual r.a., whose one ambition is to extend his connection, please his customers, and frustrate competition; and just as the capacity of the individual r.a. declines when the incentive is money, so does the corporate body lose its strength, and its hold on the art instincts of the nation relaxes when its aim becomes merely mercenary enterprise. if sir john millais, sir frederick leighton, mr. orchardson, mr. hook, and mr. watts were to die tomorrow, their places could be filled by men who are not and never will be in the academy; but among the associates there is no name that does not suggest a long decline: mr. macbeth, mr. leader, mr. david murray, mr. stanhope forbes, mr. j. macwhirter. and are the coming associates mr. hacker, mr. shannon, mr. solomon, mr. alfred east, mr. bramley? mr. swan has been passed over so many times that his election is beginning to seem doubtful. for very shame's sake the elder academicians may bring their influence and insist on his election; but the city merchants' nominees are very strong, and will not have him if they can help it. they may yield to mr. swan, but no single inch further will it be possible to get them to go. mr. mouat loudan, mr. lavery, mr. mark fisher, and mr. peppercorn have no chance soever. mr. mouat loudan, was rejected this year. mr. lavery's charming portrait of lord mclaren's daughters was still more shamefully treated; it was "skied". mr. mark fisher, most certainly our greatest living landscape-painter, had his picture refused; and mr. reid, a man who has received medals in every capital in europe, has had his principal picture hung just under the ceiling. on varnishing-day mr. reid challenged mr. dicksee to give a reason for this disgraceful hanging; he defied him to say that he thought the pictures underneath were better pictures; and it is as impossible for me as it was for mr. dicksee to deny that mr. reid's picture is the best picture in room . mr. peppercorn, another well-known artist, had his picture rejected. it is now hanging in the goupil galleries. i do not put it forward as a masterpiece, but i do say that it deserved a place in any exhibition, and if i had a friend on the hanging committee i would ask him to point to the landscapes on the academy walls which he considers better than mr. peppercorn's. often a reactionary says, "name the good pictures that have been rejected; where can i see them? i want to see these masterpieces," etc. the reactionary has generally the best of the argument. it is difficult to name the pictures that have been refused; they are the unknown quantity. moreover, the pictures that are usually refused are tentative efforts, and not mature work. but this year the opponents of the academy are able to cite some very substantial facts in support of their position, a portrait by our most promising portrait-painter and a landscape by the best landscape-painter alive in england having been rejected. the picture of the farm-yard which mr. fisher exhibited at the new english art club last autumn would not be out of place in the national gallery. i do not say that the rejected picture is as good--i have not seen the rejected picture--but i do say that mr. fisher could not paint as badly as nine-tenths of the landscapes hanging in the academy if he tried. the academy is sinking steadily; never was it lower than this year; next year a few fine works may crop up, but they will be accidents, and will not affect the general tendency of the exhibitions nor the direction in which the academy is striving to lead english art. under the guidanceship of the academy english art has lost all that charming naïveté and simplicity which was so long its distinguishing mark. at an academy banquet, anything but the most genial optimism would be out of place, and yet sir frederick leighton could not but allude to the disintegrating influence of french art. true, in the second part of the sentence he assured his listeners that the danger was more imaginary than real, and he hoped that with wider knowledge, etc. but if no danger need be apprehended, why did sir frederick trouble to raise the question? and if he apprehended danger and would save us from it, why did he choose to ask his friend m. bouguereau to exhibit at the academy? the allusion in sir frederick's speech to french methods, and the exhibition of a picture by m. bouguereau in the academy, is strangely significant. for is not m. bouguereau the chief exponent of the art which sir frederick ventures to suggest may prove a disintegrating influence in our art?--has proven would be a more correct phrase. let him who doubts compare the work of almost any of the elder academicians with the work of those who practise the square brushwork of the french school. compare, for instance, sir frederick's "garden of the hesperides" with mr. solomon's "orpheus", and then you will appreciate the gulf that separates the elder academicians from the men already chosen and marked out for future academicians. and him whom this illustration does not convince i will ask to compare mr. hacker's "annunciation" with any picture by mr. frith, or mr. faed, i will even go so far as to say with any work by mr. sidney cooper, an octogenarian, now nearer his ninetieth than his eightieth year. it would have been better if sir frederick had told the truth boldly at the academy banquet. he knows that a hundred years will hardly suffice to repair the mischief done by this detestable french painting, this mechanical drawing and modelling, built up systematically, and into which nothing of the artist's sensibility may enter. sir frederick hinted the truth, and i do not think it will displease him that i should say boldly what he was minded but did not dare to say. the high position he occupies did not allow him to go further than he did; the society of which he is president is now irreparably committed to anglo-french art, and has, by every recent election, bound itself to uphold and impose this false and foreign art upon the nation. out of the vast array of portraits and subject-pictures painted in various styles and illustrating every degree of ignorance, stupidity, and false education, one thing really comes home to the careful observer, and that is, the steady obliteration of all english feeling and mode of thought. the younger men practise an art purged of all nationality. england lingers in the elder painters, and though the representation is often inadequate, the english pictures are pleasanter than the mechanical art which has spread from paris all over europe, blotting out in its progress all artistic expression of racial instincts and mental characteristics. nothing, for instance, can be more primitive, more infantile in execution, than mr. leslie's "rose queen". but it seems to me superficial criticism to pull it to pieces, for after all it suggests a pleasant scene, a stairway full of girls in white muslin; and who does not like pretty girls dressed in white muslin? and mr. leslie spares us the boredom of odious and sterile french pedantry. mr. waterhouse's picture of "circe poisoning the sea" is an excellent example of professional french painting. the drawing is planned out geometrically, the modelling is built up mechanically. the brush, filled with thick paint, works like a trowel. in the hands of the dutch and flemish artists the brush was in direct communication with the brain, and moved slowly or rapidly, changing from the broadest and most emphatic stroke to the most delicate and fluent touch according to the nature of the work. but here all is square and heavy. the colour scheme, the blue dress and the green water--how theatrical, how its richness reeks of the french studio! how cosmopolitan and pedantic is this would-be romantic work! but can we credit mr. dicksee with any artistic intention in the picture he calls "leila", hanging in the next room? i think not. mr. dicksee probably thought that having painted what the critics would call "somewhat sad subjects" last year, it would be well if he painted something distinctly gay this year. a girl in a harem struck him as a subject that would please every one, especially if he gave her a pretty face, a pretty dress, and posed her in a graceful attitude. a nice bright crimson was just the colour for the dress, the feet he might leave bare, and it would be well to draw them from the plaster cast--a pair of pretty feet would be sure to find favour with the populace. it is impossible to believe that mr. dicksee was moved by any deeper thought or impression when he painted this picture. the execution is not quite so childlike and bland as mr. leslie's; it is heavier and more stodgy. one is a cane chair from the tottenham court road, the other is a dining-room chair from the tottenham court road. in neither does any trace of french influence appear, and both painters are city-elected academicians. a sudden thought.... leader, fildes, david murray, peter graham, herkomer.... then it is not the city that favours the french school, but the academy itself! and this shows how widely tastes may differ, yet remain equally sundered from good taste. i believe the north and the south poles are equidistant from the equator. looking at sir frederick leighton's picture, entitled "at the fountain", i am forced to admit that, regarded as mere execution, it is quite as intolerably bad as mr. dicksee's "leila". and yet it is not so bad a picture, because sir frederick's mind is a higher and better-educated mind than mr. dicksee's; and therefore, however his hand may fail him, there remains a certain habit of thought which always, even when worn and frayed, preserves something of its original aristocracy. "the sea giving up its dead" is an unpleasant memory of michael angelo. but in "the garden of the hesperides" sir frederick is himself, and nothing but himself. and the picture is so incontestably the work of an artist that i cannot bring myself to inquire too closely into its shortcomings. the merit of the picture is in the arabesque, which is charming and original. the maidens are not dancing, but sitting round their tree. on the right there is an olive, in the middle the usual strawberry-cream, and on the left a purple drapery. the brown water in the foreground balances the white sky most happily, and the faces of the women recall our best recollections of sir frederick's work. in the next room--room --mr. watts exhibits a very incoherent work entitled "she shall be called woman". the subject on which all of us are most nearly agreed--painters' critics and the general public--is the very great talent of mr. g. f. watts. even the chelsea studios unite in praising him. but were we ever sincere in our praise of him as we are sincere in our praise of degas, whistler, and manet? and lately have we not begun to suspect our praise to-day is a mere clinging to youthful admirations which have no root in our present knowledge and aestheticisms? perhaps the time has come to say what we do really think of mr. watts. we think that his very earliest pictures show, occasionally, the hand of a painter; but for the last thirty years mr. watts seems to have been undergoing transformation, and we see him now as a sort of cross between an alchemist of old time and a book collector--his left hand fumbling among the reds and blues of the old masters, his right turning the pages of a dusty folio in search of texts for illustration; a sort of a modern veronese in treacle and gingerbread. to judge him by what he exhibits this year would not be just. we will select for criticism the celebrated portrait of mrs. percy wyndham--in which he has obviously tried to realise all his artistic ideals. the first thing that strikes me on looking on this picture is the too obvious intention of the painter to invent something that could not go out of fashion. on sitting down to paint this picture the painter's mind seems to have been disturbed with all sorts of undetermined notions concerning the eternal beautiful, and the formula discovered by the venetian for its complete presentation. "the venetians gave us the eternal beautiful as civilisation presents it. why not select in modern life all that corresponds to the venetian formulae; why not profit by their experience in the selection i am called upon to make?" so do i imagine the painter's desire, and certainly the picture is from end to end its manifestation. laurel leaves form a background for the head, and a large flower-vase is in the right-hand corner, and a balustrade is on the right; and this anglo-venetian lady is attired in a rich robe, brown, with green shades, and heavily embroidered; her elbow is leaned on a pedestal in a manner that shows off the plenitudes of the forearm, and for pensive dignity the hand is raised to the face. it is a noble portrait, and tells the story of a lifelong devotion to art, and yet it is difficult to escape from the suspicion that we are not very much interested, and that we find its compound beauty a little insipid. in avoiding the fashion of his day mr. watts seems to me to have slipped into an abstraction. the mere leaving out every accent that marks a dress as belonging to a particular epoch does not save it from going out of fashion. it is in the execution that the great artists annihilated the whim of temporary taste, and made the hoops of old time beautiful, however slim the season's fashions. to be of all time the artist must begin by being of his own time; and if he would find the eternal type he must seek it in his own parish. the painters of old venice were entirely concerned with _l'idee plastique_, but on this point the art of mr. watts is a repudiation of the art of his masters. abstract conceptions have been this long while a constant source of pollution in his work. here, even in his treatment of the complexion, he seems to have been impelled by some abstract conception rather than by a pictorial sense of harmony and contrast, and partly for this reason his synthesis is not beautiful, like the conventional silver-grey which velasquez used so often, or the gold-brown skins of titian's women. the hand tells what was passing in the mind, and seeing that ugly shadow which marks the nose i know that the painter was not then engaged with the joy of purely material creation; had he been he could not have rested satisfied with so ugly a statement of a beautiful fact. and the forehead, too, where it comes into light, where it turns into shadow; the cheek, too, with its jawbone, and the evasive modelling under and below the eyes, are summarily rendered, and we think perforce of the supple, flowing modelling, so illusive, apparent only in the result, with which titian would have achieved that face. manet, an incomplete hals, might have failed to join the planes, and in his frankness left out what he had not sufficiently observed; but he would have compensated us with a beautiful tone. for an illustration of mr. watts' drawing we will take the picture of "love and death", perhaps the most pictorially significant of all mr. watts' designs. the enormous figure of death advances impressively with right arm raised to force the door which a terrified love would keep closed against him. the figure of death is draped in grey, the colour that mr. watts is most in sympathy with and manages best. but the upper portion of the figure is vast, and the construction beneath the robe too little understood for it not to lack interest; and in the raised arm and hand laid against the door, where power and delicacy of line were indispensable for the pictorial beauty of the picture, we are vouchsafed no more than a rough statement of rudimentary fact. love is thrown back against the door, his right arm raised, his right leg advanced in action of resistance to the intruder. the movement is well conceived, and we regret that so summary a line should have been thought sufficient expression. any one who has ever held a pencil in a school of art knows how a young body, from armpit to ankle-bone, flows with lovely line. any one who has been to the louvre knows the passion with which ingres would follow this line, simplifying it and drawing it closer until it surpassed all melody. but in mr. watts' picture the boy's natural beauty is lost in a coarse and rough planing out that tells of an eye that saw vaguely and that wearied, and in an execution full of uncertain touch and painful effort. unless the painter is especially endowed with the instinct of anatomies, the sentiment of proportion, and a passion for form, the nude is a will-o'-the-wisp, whose way leads where he may not follow. no one suspects mr. watts of one of these qualifications; he appears even to think them of but slight value, and his quest of the allegorical seems to be merely motived by an unfortunate desire to philosophise. as a colourist mr. watts is held in high esteem, and it is as a colourist that his admirers consider his claim to the future to be best founded. beautiful passages of colour are frequently to be met with in his work, and yet it would be difficult to say what colour except grey he has shown any mastery over. a painter may paint with an exceedingly reduced palette, like chardin, and yet be an exquisite colourist. to colour well does not consist in the employment of bright colours, but in the power of carrying the dominant note of colour through the entire picture, through the shadows as well as the half-tints, and chardin's grey we find everywhere, in the bloom of a peach as well as in a decanter of rich wine; and how tender and persuasive it is! mr. watts' grey would seem coarse, common, uninteresting beside it. reds and blues and yellows do not disappear from mr. watts' palette as they do from rembrandt's; they are there, but they are usually so dirtied that they appear like a monochrome. can we point to any such fresh, beautiful red as the scarf that the "princesse des pays de la porcelaine" wears about that grey which would have broken chardin's heart with envy? can we point to any blue in mr. watts' as fresh and as beautiful as the blue carpet under the princess's feet? with what mr. watts paints it is impossible to say. on one side an unpleasant reddish brown, scrubbed till it looks like a mud-washed rock; on the other a crumbling grey, like the rind of a stilton cheese. the nude figure in the reeds--the picture purchased for the chantrey fund collection--will serve for illustration. it is clearly the work of a man with something incontestably great in his soul, but why should so beautiful a material as oil paint be transformed into a crumbly substance like--i can think of nothing else but the rind of a stilton cheese. mr. watts and mr. burne-jones seem to have convinced themselves that imaginative work can only be expressed in wool-work and gum. a strange theory, for which i find no authority, even if i extend my inquiry as far back as mantegna and botticelli. true, that the method of these painters is archaic, the lights are narrowed, and the shadows broadened; nevertheless, their handling of oil colour is nearer to titian's than either mr. watts' or mr. burne-jones'. it is one of the platitudes of art criticism to call attention to the length of the necks of rossetti's women, and thereby to infer that the painter could not draw. true, rossetti was not a skilful draughtsman, but not because the necks of his women are too long. the relation between good drawing and measurement is slight. the first quality in drawing, without which drawing does not exist, is an individual seeing of the object. this rossetti most certainly had; there his draughtsmanship began and ended. but the question lies rather with handling than with drawing, and rossetti sometimes handled paint very skilfully. the face and hair of the half-length venus surrounded with roses is excellent in quality; the roses and the honeysuckle are quite beautiful in quality; they are fresh and bright, pure in colour, as if they had just come from the garden. the "annunciation" in the national gallery is a little sandy, but it cannot be said to be bad in quality, as mr. watts' and mr. jones' pictures are bad. every rossetti is at least clearly recognisable as an oil painting. in the same room there is mr. orchardson's picture of "napoleon dictating the account of his campaigns". i gather from my notes the trace of the disappointment that this picture caused me. "two small figures in a large canvas. the secretary sits on the right at a small table. he looks up, his face turned towards napoleon, who stands on the left in the middle of the picture, looking down, studying the maps with which the floor is strewn. a great simplicity in the surroundings, and all the points of character insisted on, with the view of awakening the spectator's curiosity. from first to last a vicious desire to narrate an anecdote. it is strange that a man of mr. orchardson's talent should participate so fully in the supreme vice of modern art which believes a picture to be the same thing as a scene in a play. the whole picture conceived and executed in that pale yellow tint which seems to be the habitual colour of mr. orchardson's mind." a pity, indeed it is that mr. orchardson should waste very real talent in narratives, for he is a great portrait painter. i remember very well that beautiful portrait of his wife and child, and will take this opportunity to recall it. it is the finest thing he has done; finer than the portrait of mr. gilbey. here, in a few words, is the subject of the picture. an old-fashioned cane sofa stretches right across the canvas. a lady in black is seated on the right; she bends forward, her left arm leaning over the back of the sofa; she holds in her hand a japanese hand-screen. the fine and graceful english profile is modelled without vulgar roundness, _un beau modèle à plat_; and the black hair is heavy and loose, one lock slipping over the forehead. the painter has told the exact character of the hair as he has told the character of the hand, and the age of the hand and hair is evident. she is a woman of five-and-thirty, she is interested in her baby, her first baby, as a woman of that age would be. the baby lies on a woollen rug and cushion, just beneath the mother's eyes; the colour of both is a reddish yellow. he holds up his hands for the hand-screen that the mother waves about him. the strip of background about the yellow cane-work is grey-green; there is a vase of dried ferns and grasses on the left, and the whole picture is filled and penetrated with the affection and charm of english home-life, and without being disfigured with any touch of vulgar or commonplace sentimentality. the baby's face is somewhat hard; it is, perhaps, the least satisfactory thing in the picture. the picture is wanting in that totality which we find in the greatest masters--for instance, in that exquisite portrait of a mother and child by sir joshua reynolds, exhibited this year in the guildhall--that beautiful portrait of the mother holding out her babe at arms'-length above her knee. room is remarkable for stanhope forbes' picture of "forging the anchor". mr. stanhope forbes is the last-elected academician, and the most prominent exponent of the art of bastien-lepage. perhaps the most instructive article that could be written on the academy would be one in which the writer would confine his examination to this and mr. clausen's picture of "mowers", comparing and contrasting the two pictures at every point, showing where they diverge, and tracing their artistic history back to its ultimate source. but to do this thoroughly would be to write the history of the artistic movement in france and england for the last thirty years; and i must limit myself to pointing out that mr. clausen has gone back to first principles, whereas mr. stanhope forbes still continues at the point where bastien-lepage began to curtail, deform, and degrade the original inspiration. mr. clausen, i said, overcame the difficulty of the trousers by generalisation. mr. stanhope forbes copied the trousers seam by seam, patch by patch; and the ugliness of the garment bores you in the picture, exactly as it would in nature. and the same criticism applies equally well to the faces, the hands, the leather aprons, the loose iron, the hammers, the pincers, the smoked walls. i should not be surprised to learn that mr. stanhope forbes had had a forge built up in his studio, and had copied it all as it stood. a handful of dry facts instead of a passionate impression of life in its envelope of mystery and suggestion. realism, that is to say the desire to compete with nature, to be nature, is the disease from which art has suffered most in the last twenty years. the disease is now at wane, and when we happen upon a canvas of the period like "labourers after dinner", we cry out, "what madness! were we ever as mad as that?" the impressionists have been often accused of a desire to dispense with the element of beauty, but the accusation has always seemed to me to be quite groundless, and even memory of a certain portrait by mr. walter sickert does not cause me to falter in this opinion. until i saw mr. clausen's "labourers" i did not fully realise how terrible a thing art becomes when divorced from beauty, grace, mystery, and suggestion. it would be difficult to say where and how this picture differs from a photograph; it seems to me to be little more than the vices of photography magnified. having spoken so plainly, it is necessary that i should explain myself. the subject of this picture is a group of field labourers finishing their mid-day dinner in the shade of some trees. they are portrayed in a still even light, exactly as they were; the picture is one long explanation; it is as clear as a newspaper, and it reads like one. we can tell how many months that man in the foreground has worn those dreadful hobnailed boots; we can count the nails, and we notice that two or three are missing. those disgusting corduroy trousers have hung about his legs for so many months; all the ugliness of these labourers' faces and the solid earthiness of their lives are there; nothing has been omitted, curtailed, or exaggerated. there is some psychology. we see that the years have brought the old man cunning rather than wisdom. the middle-aged man and the middle-aged woman live in mute stupidity--they have known nothing but the daily hardship of living, and the vacuous face of their son tells how completely the life of his forefathers has descended upon him. here there is neither the foolish gaiety of teniers' peasants nor the vicious animality of brouwers'; and it is hardly necessary to say that the painter has seen nothing of the legendary patriarchal beauty and solemnity which lends so holy a charm to millet's breton folk. mr. clausen has seen nothing but the sordid and the mean, and his execution in this picture is as sordid and as mean as his vision. there is not a noble gesture expressive of weariness nor an attitude expressive of resignation. mr. clausen seems to have said, "i will go lower than the others; i will seek my art in the mean and the meaningless." but notwithstanding his very real talent, mr. clausen has not found art where art is not, where art never has been found, where art never will be found. looking at this picture, the ordinary man will say, "if such ugliness as that exists, i don't want to see it. why paint such subjects?" and at least the first part of this criticism seems to me to be quite incontrovertible. i can imagine no valid reason for the portrayal of so much ugliness; and, what is more important, i can find among the unquestioned masters no slightest precedent for the blank realism of this picture. the ordinary man's aversion to such ugliness seems to me to be entirely right, and i only join issue with him when he says, "why paint such subjects?" why not? for all subjects contain elements of beauty; ugliness does not exist for the eye that sees beautifully, and meanness vanishes if the sensation is a noble one. have not the very subjects which mr. clausen sees so meanly, and which he degrades below the level even of the photograph, been seen nobly, and have they not been rendered incomparably touching, even august, by----well, the whole world knows by whom. but it will be said that mr, clausen painted these people as he saw them. i dare say he did; but if he could not see these field-folk differently, he should have abstained from painting them. the mission of art is not truth, but beauty; and i know of no great work--i will go even further, i know no even tolerable work--in literature or in painting in which the element of beauty does not inform the intention. art is surely but a series of conventions which enable us to express our special sense of beauty--for beauty is everywhere, and abounds in subtle manifestations. things ugly in themselves become beautiful by association; or perhaps i should say that they become picturesque. the slightest insistance in a line will redeem and make artistically interesting the ugliest face. look at degas' ballet-girls, and say if, artistically, they are not beautiful. i defy you to say that they are mean. again, an alteration in the light and shade will create beautiful pictures among the meanest brick buildings that ever were run up by the jerry-builder. see the violet suburb stretching into the golden sunset. how exquisite it has become! how full of suggestion and fairy tale! a picturesque shadow will redeem the squalor of the meanest garret, and the subdued light of the little kitchen where the red-petticoated housewife is sweeping must contrast so delicately with the white glare of the brick yard where the neighbour stands in parley, leaning against the doorpost, that the humble life of the place is transformed and poetised. this was the abc of dutch art; it was the dutchmen who first found out that with the poetising aid of light and shade the meanest and most commonplace incidents of every-day life could be made the subjects of pictures. there are no merits in painting except technical merits; and though my criticism of mr. clausen's picture may at first sight seem to be a literary criticism, it is in truth a strictly technical criticism. for mr. clausen has neglected the admirable lessons which our dutch cousins taught us two hundred years ago; he has neglected to avail himself of those principles of chiaroscuro which they perfected, and which would have enabled him to redeem the grossness, the ugliness, the meanness inherent in his subject. i said that he had gone further, in abject realism, than a photograph. i do not think i have exaggerated. it is not probable that those peasants would look so ugly in a photograph as they do in his picture. for had they been photographed, the chances are that some shadow would have clothed, would have hid, something, and a chance gleam might have concentrated the attention on some particular spot. nine times out of ten the exposure of the plate would not have taken place in a moment of flat grey light. but it is the theory of mr. clausen and his school that it is right and proper to take a six-foot canvas into the open, and paint the entire picture from nature. but when the sun is shining, it is not possible to paint for more than an hour--an hour and a half at most. at the end of that time the shadows have moved so much that the effect is wholly different. but on a grey day it is possible to paint on the same picture for four or five hours. hence the preference shown by this school for grey days. then the whole subject is seen clearly, like a newspaper; and the artist, if he is a realist, copies every patch on the trousers, and does not omit to tell us how many nails have fallen from the great clay-stained boots. pre-raphaelitism is only possible among august and beautiful things, when the subjects of the pictures are virgins and angels, and the accessories are marbles, agate columns, persian carpets, gold enwoven robes and vestments, ivories, engraven metals, pearls, velvets and silks, and when the object of the painter is to convey a sensation of the beauty of these materials by the luxury and beauty of the workmanship. the common workaday world, with accessories of tin pots and pans, corduroy breeches and clay-pipes, can be only depicted by a series of ellipses through a mystery of light and shade. beauty of some sort there must be in a work of art, and the very conditions under which mr. clausen painted precluded any beauty from entering into his picture. but this year mr. clausen seems to have shaken himself free from his early education, and he exhibits a picture, conceived in an entirely different spirit, in this academy. turning to my notes i find it thus described: "a small canvas containing three mowers in a flowering meadow. two are mowing; the third, a little to the left, sharpens his scythe. the sky is deep and lowering--a sultry summer day, a little unpleasant in colour, but true. at the end of the meadow the trees gleam. the earth is wrapped in a hot mist, the result of the heat, and through it the sun sheds a somewhat diffused and oven-like heat. there are heavy clouds overhead, for the gleam that passes over the three white shirts is transitory and uncertain. the handling is woolly and unpleasant, but handling can be overlooked when a canvas exhales a deep sensation of life. the movement of mowing--i should have said movements, for the men mow differently; one is older than the other--is admirably expressed. and the principal figure, though placed in the immediate foreground, is in and not out of the atmosphere. the difficulty of the trousers has been overcome by generalisation; the garment has not been copied patch by patch. the distribution of light is admirable; nowhere does it escape from the frame. j. f. millet has painted many a worse picture." mr. solomon and mr. hacker have both turned to mythology for the subjects of their pictures. and the beautiful and touching legends of orpheus, and the annunciation, have been treated by them with the indifference of "our special artist", who places the firemen on the right, the pump on the left, and the blazing house in the middle of the picture. these pictures are therefore typical of a great deal of historical painting of our time; and i speak of them because they give me an opportunity of pointing out that before deciding to treat a page of history or legend, the painter should come to conclusions with himself regarding the goal which he desires to obtain. there are but two. either the legend passes unperceived in pomp of colour and wealth of design, or the picture is a visible interpretation of the legend. the venetians were able to disregard the legend, but in centuries less richly endowed with pictorial genius painters are inclined to support their failing art with the psychological interest their imaginations draw from it. but imaginative interpretation should not be confused with bald illustration. the academicians cannot understand why, if we praise "dante seeing beatrice in a dream", we should vilify mr. fildes' "doctor". in both cases a story is told, in neither case is the execution excellent. why then should one be a picture and the other no more than a bald illustration? the question is a vexed one, and the only conclusion that we can draw seems to be that sentimentality pollutes, the anecdote degrades, wit altogether ruins; only great thought may enter into art. rossetti is a painter we admire, and we place him above mr. fildes, because his interpretations are more imaginative. we condone his lack of pictorial power, because he could think, and we appreciate his annunciation--the "ecce ancilla domini!" in the national gallery, principally because he has looked deep into the legend, and revealed its true and human significance. it is a small picture, about three feet by two, and is destitute of all technical accomplishment, or even habit. it is painted in white and blue, and the streak of red in the foreground, the red of a screen on which is embroidered the lily--emblem of purity--adds to the chill and coldness. drawn up upon her white bed the virgin crouches, silent with expectation, listening to the mystic dream that has come upon her in the dim hush of dawn. the large blue eyes gleam with some strange joy that is quickening in her. the mouth and chin tell no tale, but the eyes are deep pools of light, and mirror the soul that is on fire within. the red hair falls about her, a symbol of the soul. in the drawn-up knees, faintly outlined beneath the white sheet, the painter hints at her body's beauty. one arm is cast forward, the hand not clenched but stricken. behind her a blue curtain hangs straight from iron rods set on either side of the bed. above the curtain a lamp is burning dimly, blighted by the pallor of the dawn. a dead, faint sky--the faint ashen sky which precedes the first rose tint; the circular window is filled with it, and the paling blue of the sky's colour contrasts with the deep blue of the bed's curtain, on which the virgin's red hair is painted. the angel stands by the side of the white bed--i should say floats, his fair feet hanging out of a few pale flames. white raiment clothes him, falling in long folds, leaving the arms and feet bare; in the right hand he holds a lily all in blossom; the left hand is extended in rigid gesture of warning. brown-gold hair grows thick about the angel's neck; the shadowed profile is outlined against the hard, sad sky; the expression of the face is deep and sphinx-like; he has come, it is clear, from vast realms of light, where uncertainty and doubt are unknown. the dove passes by him towards the virgin. look upon her again, crouching in her white bed, her knees drawn to her bosom, her deep blue eyes--her dawn-tinted eyes--filled with ache, dream, and expectation. the shadows of dawn are on wall and floor--strange, blue shadows!--the virgin's shadow lies on the wall, the angel's shadow falls across the coverlet. here, at least, there is drama, and the highest form of drama--spiritual drama; here, at least, there is story, and the highest form of story--symbol and suggestion. rossetti has revealed the essence of this intensely human story--a story that, whenever we look below the surface, which is mediaeval and religious, we recognise as a story of to-day, of yesterday, of all time. a girl thralled by the mystery of conception awakes at morn in palpitations, seeing visions. mr. hacker's telling of the legend is to rossetti's what a story in the _london journal_ is to a story by balzac. the virgin has apparently wandered outside the town. she is dressed in a long white garment neither beautiful nor explicit: is it a nightdress, or a piece of conventional drapery? on the right there is a long, silly tree, which looks as if it had been evolved out of a ball of green wool with knitting-needles, and above her floats an angel attired in a wisp of blue gauze. rossetti, we know, was, in the strict sense of the word, hardly a painter at all, but he had something to say; and we can bear in painting, as we can in literature, with faulty expression, if there is something behind it. what is most intolerable in art is scholastic rodomontade. and what else is mr. hacker's execution? in every transmission the method seems to degenerate, and in this picture it seems to have touched bottom. it has become loose, all its original crispness is lost, and, complicated with _la peinture claire_, it seems incapable of expressing anything whatsoever. there is no variety of tone in that white sheet, there is nobody inside it, and the angel is as insincere and frivolous as any sketch in a young lady's album. the building at the back seems to have been painted with the scrapings of a dirty palette, and the sky in the left-hand corner comes out of the picture. i have only to add that the picture has been purchased out of the chantry bequest fund, and the purchase is considered to be equivalent to a formal declaration that mr. hacker will be elected an associate of the royal academy at the next election. mr. hacker's election to the academy--i speak of this election as a foregone conclusion--following as it does the election of mr. stanhope forbes, makes it plain that the intention of the academy is to support to the full extent of its great power a method of painting which is foreign and unnatural to english art, which, in the opinion of a large body of artists--and it is valuable to know that their opinion is shared by the best and most original of the french artists--is disintegrating and destroying our english artistic tradition. mr. hacker's election, and the three elections that will follow it, those of mr. shannon, mr. alfred east, and mr. bromley, will be equivalent to an official declaration that those who desire to be english academicians must adopt the french methods. independent of the national disaster that these elections will inflict on art, they will be moreover flagrant acts of injustice. for i repeat, among the forty academicians there is not one who considers these future academicians to be comparable to mr. whistler, mr. albert moore, mr. swan, or mr. sargent. no one holds such an opinion, and yet there is no doubt which way the elections in the academy will go. the explanation of this incredible anomaly i have given, the explanation is not a noble one, but that is not a matter for which i can be held responsible; suffice it to say, that my explanation is the only possible explanation. the academy is a private commercial enterprise, and conducts its business on the lines which it considers the most advantageous; its commercialism has become flagrant and undeniable. if this is so--how the facts can otherwise be explained i cannot see--it is to be regretted that the academy got its beautiful site for nothing. but regrets are vain. the only thing to do now is to see that the academy is no longer allowed to sail under false colours. this article may awaken in the academy a sense that it is not well to persist in open and flagrant defiance of public opinion, or it may serve to render the academicians even more stiff-necked than before. in either case it will have accomplished its purpose. the organisation of art. no fact is more painful to the modern mind than that men are not born with equal brains; and every day we grow more and more determined to thwart nature's desire of inequality by public education. whether everybody should be taught to read and write i leave to politicians--the matter is not important; but that the nation should not be instructed in drawing, music, painting, and english literature i will never cease to maintain. everything that has happened in england for the last thirty years goes to prove that systematised education in art means artistic decadence. to the ordinary mind there is something very reassuring in the words institutions, professors, examinations, medals, and titles of all kinds. all these things have been given of late years to art, and parents and guardians need no longer have any fear for those confided to their charge: the art of painting has been recognised as a profession! the principal institution where this profession is practised is called the royal academy. it owes its existence to the taste of a gentleman known as george the third, and it has been dowered by the state to the extent of at least three hundred thousand pounds. professors from oxford, even bishops, dine there. the members of this institution put r.a. after their names; the president has been made a baronet; there was even a rumour that he was going to be made a lord, and that he was not we must consider as another blow dealt against the dignity of art. literature does not offer so much scope for organisation as painting; but strenuous efforts are being made to organise it, and, by the aid of academies, examinations, and crowns, hopes are entertained that, before long, it will be brought into line with the other professions. and the journalists too are anxious to "erect their craft to the dignity of a profession which shall confer upon its members _certain social status_ like that of the barrister and lawyer". entrance is to be strictly conditional; no one is to have a right to practice without a diploma, and members are to be entitled to certain letters after their names. a movement is on foot to churton-collinise english literature at the universities, and every month mr. walter besant raises a wail in the _author_ that the peerage is not as open to three-volume novelists as it is to brewers. he bewails the fact that no eminent man of letters, with the exception of lord tennyson, has been made the enforced associate of brewers and politicians. mr. besant does not think that titles in these democratic days are foolish and absurd, pitiful in the personality of those who own them by inheritance, grotesque in the personality of those on whom they have been conferred. mr. besant does not see that the desire of the baker, the brewer, the butcher, and i may add the three-volume novelist, to be addressed by small tradesmen and lackeys as "yer lordship", raises a smile on the lips even of the most _blasé_. i am advocating an unpopular _régime_ i know, for the majority believe that art is in queer street if new buildings are not being raised, if official recognition of merits is not proclaimed, and if the newspapers do not teem with paragraphs concerning the homes of the academicians. the wailing and gnashing of teeth that were heard when an intelligent portion of the press induced mr. tate to withdraw his offer to build a gallery and furnish it with pictures by messrs. herkomer, fildes, leader, long, are not forgotten. it was not urged that the pictures were valuable pictures; the merit or demerit of the pictures was not what interested, but the fact that a great deal of money was going to be spent, and that titles, badges, medals, crowns, would be given to those whose pictures were enshrined in the new temple of art. the tate gallery touched these folk as would an imposing review of troops, a procession of judges, or a coronation in westminster abbey. their senses were tickled by the prospect of a show, their minds were stirred by some idea of organisation--something was about to be organised, and nothing appeals so much to the vulgar mind as organisation. an epoch is represented by a word, and to organise represents the dominant idea of our civilisation. to organise is to be respectable, and as every one wants to be respectable, every one dreams of new schemes of organisation. soldiers, sailors, policemen, members of parliament, independent voters, clerks in the post office, bus drivers, dockers, every imaginable variety of worker, domestic servants--it is difficult to think of any class that has not been organised of late years. there is a gentleman in parliament who is anxious to do something in the way of social organisation for the gipsies. the gipsies have not appealed to him; they have professed no desire to have their social status raised; they have, i believe, disclaimed through their king, whoever he may be, all participation in the scheme of this benevolent gentleman. nor does any sense of the absurdity of his endeavour blight the worthy gentleman's ardour. how should it? he, like the other organisers, is an unreasoning instrument in a great tendency of things. to organise something--or, put it differently, to educate some one--is to day every man's ambition. so long as it is not himself, it matters no jot to him whom he educates. the gipsy under the hedge, the artist painting under a hill, it matters not. a technical school of instruction would enable the gipsy to harness his horse better than he does at present; and the artist would paint much better if he were taught to stipple, and examined by salaried professors in stipple, and given prizes for stippling. the general mind of our century is with education and organisation of every kind, and from this terrible general mind art seems unable to escape. art, that poor little gipsy whose very condition of existence is freedom, who owns no code of laws, who evades all regulations, who groups himself under no standard, who can live only in disastrous times, when the world's attention is drawn to other things, and allows him life in shelter of the hedges, and dreams in sight of the stars, finds himself forced into a uniform--poor little fellow, how melancholy he looks on his high stool in the south kensington museum, and notwithstanding the professors his hand drops from the drawing-board, unable to accomplish the admired stipple. but solemn members of parliament are certain that official recognition must be extended to art. art is an educational influence, and the kensington galleries are something more than agreeable places, where sweethearts can murmur soft nothings under divine masterpieces. the utilitarian m.p. must find some justification for art; he is not sensible enough to understand that art justifies its own existence, that it is its own honour and glory; and he nourishes a flimsy lie, and votes that large sums of money shall be spent in endowing schools of art and founding picture galleries. then there is another class--those who have fish to fry, and to whom art seems a convenient frying-pan. mr. tate craves for a museum to be called tate's; or, if his princely gift gained him a title, which it may, the museum would be called--what would be an appropriate name? there are men too who have trifles to sell, and they talk loudly of the glories of modern art, and the necessity of a british luxembourg. that france should have a luxembourg is natural enough; that we should have one would be anomalous. we are a free-trading country. i pass over the failure of the luxembourg to recognise genius, to save the artist of genius a struggle with insolent ignorance. what did the luxembourg do for corot, millet, manet, degas, monet, renoir, sisley, pissaro? the luxembourg chose rather to honour such pretentious mediocrities as bouguereau, jules lefebvre, jules breton, and their like. what has our academy done to rescue struggling genius from poverty and obscurity? did it save alfred stevens, the great sculptor of his generation, from the task of designing fire-irons? how often did the academy refuse cecil lawson's pictures? when they did accept him, was it not because he had become popular in spite of the academy? did not the academy refuse mr. whistler's portrait of his mother, and was it not hung at the last moment owing to a threat of one of the academicians to resign if a place was not found for it? place was found for it seven feet above the line. has not the academy for the last five-and-twenty years lent the whole stress and authority of its name to crush mr. whistler? happily his genius was sufficient for the fight, and it was not until he had conquered past all question that he left this country. the record of the academy is a significant one. but if it has exercised a vicious influence in art, its history is no worse than that of other academies. here, as elsewhere, the academy has tolerated genius when it was popular, and when it was not popular it has trampled upon it. we have free trade in literature, why should we not have free trade in art? why should not every artist go into the market without title or masquerade that blinds the public to the value of what he has to sell? i would turn art adrift, titleless, r.a.-less, out into the street and field, where, under the light of his original stars, the impassioned vagrant might dream once more, and for the mere sake of his dreams. art and science. "mr. goschen," said a writer in a number of the _speaker_, "deserves credit for having successfully resisted the attempt to induce him to sacrifice the interests of science at south kensington to those of art." an excellent theme it seemed to me for an article; but the object of the writer being praise of mr. tate for his good intention, the opportunity was missed of distinguishing between the false claims of art and the real claims of science to public patronage and protection. true it is that to differentiate between art and science is like drawing distinctions between black and white; and in excuse i must plead the ordinary vagueness and weakness of the public mind, its inability very often to differentiate between things the most opposed, and a very general tendency to attempt to justify the existence of art on the grounds of utility--that is to say, educational influences and the counter attraction that a picture gallery offers to the public-house on bank holidays. such reasoning is well enough at political meetings, but it does not find acceptance among thinkers. it is merely the flower of foolish belief that nineteenth century wisdom is greater than the collective instinct of the ages; that we are far in advance of our forefathers in religion, in morals, and in art. we are only in advance of our forefathers in science. in art we have done little more than to spoil good canvas and marble, and not content with such misdeeds, we must needs insult art by attributing to her utilitarian ends and moral purposes. modern puritanism dares not say abolish art; so in thinly disguised speech it is pleaded that art is not nearly so useless as might easily be supposed; and it is often seriously urged that art may be reconciled after all with the most approved principles of humanitarianism, progress, and religious belief. such is still the attitude of many englishmen towards art. but art needs none of these apologists, even if we have to admit that the domestic utility of a terburg is not so easily defined as that of mixed pickles or umbrellas. another serious indictment is that art appeals rather to the few than to the many. true, indeed; and yet art is the very spirit and sense of the many. yes; and all that is most national in us, all that is most sublime, and all that is most imperishable. the art of a nation is an epitome of the nation's intelligence and prosperity. there is no such thing as cosmopolitanism in art? alas! there is, and what a pitiful thing that thing is. unhappy is he who forgets the morals, the manners, the customs, the material and spiritual life of his country! england can do without any one of us, but not one of us can do without england. study the question in the present, study it in the past, and you will find but one answer to your question--art is nationhood. all the great artistic epochs have followed on times of national enthusiasm, power, energy, spiritual and corporal adventure. when greece was divided into half-a-dozen states she produced her greatest art. the same with italy; and holland, after having rivalled greece in heroic effort, gave birth in the space of a single generation to between twenty and thirty great painters. and did not our elizabethan drama follow close upon the defeat of the armada, the discovery of america, and the reformation? and did not reynolds, gainsborough, and romney begin to paint almost immediately after the victories of marlborough? to-day our empire is vast, and as our empire grows so does our art lessen. literature still survives, though even there symptoms of decadence are visible. the roman, the chinese, and the mahometan empires are not distinguished for their art. but outside of the great chinese empire there lies a little state called japan, which, without knowledge of egypt or greece, purely out of its own consciousness, evolved an art strangely beautiful and wholly original. and as we continue to examine the question we become aware that no further progress in art is possible; that art reached its apogee two thousand five hundred years ago. true that michael angelo in the figures of "day" and "night", in the "slave", in the "moses", and in the "last judgment"--which last should be classed as sculpture--stands very, very close indeed to phidias; his art is more complete and less perfect. but three hundred years have gone since the death of michael angelo, and to get another like him the world would have to be steeped in the darkness of another middle age. and, passing on in our inquiry, we notice that painting reached its height immediately after michael angelo's death. who shall rival the splendours, the profusion of veronese, the opulence of tintoretto, the richness of titian, the pomp of rubens? or who shall challenge the technical beauty of velasquez or of hals, or the technical dexterity of terburg, or metzu, or dow, or adrian van ostade? passing on once again, we notice that art appears and disappears mysteriously like a ghost. it comes unexpectedly upon a people, and it goes in spite of artistic education, state help, picture dealers, and annual exhibitions. we notice, too, that art is wholly untransmissible; nay, more, the fact that art is with us to-day is proof that art will not be with us to-morrow. art cannot be acquired, nor can those who have art in their souls tell how it came there, or how they practise it. art cannot be repressed, encouraged, or explained; it is something that transcends our knowledge, even as the principle of life. now i take it that science differs from art on all these points. science is not national, it is essentially cosmopolitan. the science of one country is the same as that of another country. it is impossible to tell by looking at it whether the phonograph was invented in england or america. unlike art, again, science is essentially transmissible; every discovery leads of necessity to another discovery, and the fact that science is with us to-day proves that science will be still more with us to-morrow. nothing can extinguish science except an invasion of barbarians, and the barbarians that science has left alive would hardly suffice. art has its limitations, science has none. it would, however, be vain to pursue our differentiation any further. it must be clear that what are most opposed in this world are art and science; therefore--i think i can say therefore--all the arguments i used to show that a british luxembourg would be prejudicial to the true interests of art may be used in favour of the endowment of a college of science at south kensington. why should not the humanitarianism of mr. tate induce him to give his money to science instead of to art? as well build a hothouse for swallows to winter in as a british luxembourg; but science is a good old barn-door fowl; build her a hen-roost, and she will lay you eggs, and golden eggs. give your money to science, for there is an evil side to every other kind of almsgiving. it is well to save life, but the world is already overstocked with life; and in saving life one may be making the struggle for existence still more unendurable for those who come after. but in giving your money to science you are accomplishing a definite good; the results of science have always been beneficent. science will alleviate the wants of the world more wisely than the kindest heart that ever beat under the robe of a sister of mercy; the hands of science are the mercifulest in the end, and it is science that will redeem man's hope of paradise. royalty in art. the subject is full of suggestion, and though any adequate examination of it would lead me beyond the limits of this paper, i think i may venture to lift its fringe. to do so, we must glance at its historic side. we know the interest that julius the second took in the art of michael angelo and raphael: had it not been for the popes, st. peter's would not have been built, nor would "the last judgment" have been painted. we know, too, of philip the fourth's great love of the art of velasquez. the court of frederick the great was a republic of art and letters; and is it not indirectly to a bavarian monarch that we owe wagner's immortal _chefs-d'oeuvre_, and hence the musical evolution of the century? with these facts before us it would be puerile to deny that in the past royalty has lent invaluable assistance in the protection and development of art. even if we turn to our own country we find at least one monarch who could distinguish a painter when he met one. charles the second did not hesitate in the patronage he extended to vandyke, and it is--as i have frequently pointed out--to the influence of vandyke that we owe all that is worthiest and valuable in english art. bearing these facts in mind--and it is impossible not to bear them in mind--it is difficult to go to the victorian exhibition and not ask: does the present royal family exercise any influence on english art? this is the question that the victorian exhibition puts to us. after fifty years of reign, the queen throws down the gauntlet; and speaking through the medium of the victorian exhibition, she says: "this is how i have understood art; this is what i have done for art; i countenance, i court, i challenge inquiry." yes, truly the victorian exhibition is an object-lesson in royalty. if all other records were destroyed, the historian, five hundred years hence, could reconstitute the psychological characteristics, the mentality, of the present reigning family from the pictures on exhibition there. for in the art that it has chosen to patronise (a more united family on the subject of art it would be hard to imagine--nowhere can we detect the slightest difference of opinion), the queen, her spouse, and her children appear to be singularly _bourgeois_: a staid german family congenially and stupidly commonplace, accepting a little too seriously its mission of crowns and sceptres, and accomplishing its duties, grown out of date, somewhat witlessly, but with heavy dignity and forbearance. waiving all racial characteristics, the german _bourgeois_ family mind appears plainly enough in all these family groups; no other mind could have permitted the perpetration of so much stolid family placidity, of so much "_frauism_". "exhibit us in our family circle, in our coronation robes, in our wedding dresses, let the likeness be correct and the colours bright--we leave the rest to you." such seems to have been the royal artistic edict issued in the beginning of the present reign. in no instance has the choice fallen on a painter of talent; but the middling from every country in europe seems to have found a ready welcome at the court of queen victoria. we find there middling germans, middling italians, middling frenchmen--and all receiving money and honour from our queen. the queen and the prince consort do not seem to have been indifferent to art, but to have deliberately, and with rare instinct, always picked out what was most worthless; and regarded in the light of documents, these pictures are valuable; for they tell plainly the real mind of the royal family. we see at once that the family mind is wholly devoid of humour; the very faintest sense of humour would have saved them from exhibiting themselves in so ridiculous a light. the large picture of the queen and the prince consort surrounded with their children, the prince consort in knee-breeches, showing a finely-turned calf, is sufficient to occasion the overthrow of a dynasty if humour were the prerogative of the many instead of being that of the few. this masterpiece is signed, "by g. belli, after f. winterhalter"; and in this picture we get the mediocrity of italy and germany in quintessential strength. these pictures also help us to realise the private life of our royal family. it must have spent a great deal of time in being painted. the family pictures are numberless, and the family taste is visible upon them all. and there must be some strange magnetism in the family to be able to transfuse so much of itself into the minds of so many painters. so like is one picture to another, that the exhibition seems to reveal the secret that for the last fifty years the family has done nothing but paint itself. and in these days, when every one does a little painting, it is easy to imagine the family at work from morn to eve. immediately after breakfast the easels are set up, the queen paints the princess louise, the duke of edinburgh paints princess beatrice, the princess alice paints the prince of wales, etc. the easels are removed for lunch, and the moment the meal is over work is resumed. after having seen the victorian exhibition, i cannot imagine the royal family in any other way; i am convinced that is how they must have passed their lives for the last quarter of a century. the names of g. belli and f. winterhalter are no more than flimsy make-believes. and are there not excellent reasons for holding to this opinion? has not the queen published, or rather surreptitiously issued, certain little collections of drawings? has not the princess louise, the artist of the family, publicly exhibited sculpture? the princess beatrice, has she not done something in the way of designing? the duke of edinburgh, he is a musician. and it is in these little excursions into art that the family most truly manifests its _bourgeois_ nature. the sincerest _bourgeois_ are those who scribble little poems and smudge little canvases in the intervals between an afternoon reception and a dinner-party. the amateur artist is always the most inaccessible to ideas; he is always the most fervid admirer of the commonplace. a staid german family dabbling in art in its leisure hours--the most inartistic, the most philistine of all royal families--this is the lesson that the victorian exhibition impresses upon us. but why should not the royal family decorate its palaces with bad art? why should it not choose the most worthless portrait-painters of all countries? dynasties have never been overthrown for failure in artistic taste. i am aware how insignificant the matter must seem to the majority of readers, and should not have raised the question, but since the question has been raised, and by her majesty, i am well within my right in attempting a reply. the victorian exhibition is a flagrant representation of a _bourgeois_, though a royal, family. from the beginning to the end the exhibition is this and nothing but this. in the entrance hall, at the doorway, we are confronted with the queen's chief artistic sin--sir edgar boehm. thirty years ago this mediocre german sculptor came to england. the queen discovered him at once, as if by instinct, and she employed him on work that an artist would have shrunk from--namely, statuettes in highland costume. the german sculptor turned out this odious and ridiculous costume as fast as any scotch tailor. he was then employed on busts, and he did the entire royal family in marble. again, it would be hard to give a reason why royalty should not be allowed to possess bad sculpture. the pity is that the private taste of royalty creates the public taste of the nation, and the public result of the gracious interest that the queen was pleased to take in mr. edgar boehm, is the disfigurement of london by several of the worst statues it is possible to conceive. it is bad enough that we should have german princes foisted upon us, but german statues are worse. the ancient site of temple bar has been disfigured by boehm with statues of the queen and the prince of wales, so stupidly conceived and so stupidly modelled that they look like figures out of a noah's ark. the finest site in london, hyde park corner, has been disfigured by boehm with a statue of the duke of wellington so bad, so paltry, so characteristically the work of a german mechanic, that it is impossible to drive down the beautiful road without experiencing a sensation of discomfort and annoyance. the original statue that was pulled down in the interests of boehm was, it is true, bad english, but bad english suits the landscape better than cheap german. and this disgraceful thing will remain, disfiguring the finest site in london, until, perhaps, some dynamiter blows the thing up, ostensibly to serve the cause of ireland, but really in the interests of art. at the other end of the park we have the albert memorial. we sympathise with the queen in her grief for the prince consort, but we cannot help wishing that her grief were expressed more artistically. a city so naturally beautiful as london can do without statues; the question is not so much how to get good statues, but how to protect london against bad statues. if for the next twenty-five years we might celebrate the memory of each great man by the destruction of a statue we might undo a great part of the mischief for which royalty is mainly responsible. i do not speak of boehm's jubilee coinage--the melting-pot will put that right one of these days--but his statues, beyond some slight hope from the dynamiters, will be always with us. had he lived, london would have disappeared under his statues; at the time of his death they were popping up by twos and threes all over the town. our lovely city is our inheritance; london should be to the londoner what athens is to the athenian. what would the athenians have thought of pericles if he had proposed the ornamentation of the city with persian sculpture? boehm is dead, but another german will be with us before long, and, under royal patronage, will continue the odious disfigurement of our city. if our royal family possessed any slight aesthetic sense its influence might be turned to the service of art; but as it has none, it would be well for royalty to refrain. art can take care of itself if left to the genius of the nation, and freed from foreign control. the prince of wales has never affected any artistic sympathies. for this we are thankful: we have nothing to reproach him with except the unfortunate "roll-call" incident. royalty is to-day but a social figment--it has long ago ceased to control our politics. would that royalty would take another step and abandon its influence in art. art patrons. the general art patron in england is a brewer or distiller. five-and-forty is the age at which he begins to make his taste felt in the art world, and the cause of his collection is the following, or an analogous reason. after a heavy dinner, when the smoke-cloud is blowing lustily, brown says to smith: "i know you don't care for pictures, so you wouldn't think that leader was worth fifteen hundred pounds; well, i paid all that, and something more too, at the last academy for it." smith, who has never heard of leader, turns slowly round on his chair, and his brain, stupefied with strong wine and tobacco, gradually becomes aware of a village by a river bank seen in black silhouette upon a sunset sky. wine and food have made him happily sentimental, and he remembers having seen a village looking very like that village when he was paying his attentions to the eldest miss jones. yes, it was looking like that, all quite sharp and clear on a yellow sky, and the trees were black and still just like those trees. smith determines that he too shall possess a leader. he may not be quite as big a man as brown, but he has been doing pretty well lately.... there's no reason why he shouldn't have a leader. so irredeemable mischief has been done at brown's dinner-party: another five or six thousand a year will henceforth exert its mighty influence in the service of bad art. poor smith, who never looked attentively at a picture before, does not see that what inspires such unutterable memories of ethel jones is but a magnified christmas card; the dark trees do not suggest treacle to him, nor the sunset sky the rich cream which he is beginning to feel he partook of too freely; he does not see the thin drawing, looking as if it had been laboriously scratched out with a nail, nor yet the feeble handling which suggests a child and a pot of gum. but of technical achievement how should mr. smith know anything?--that mysterious something, different in every artist, taking a thousand forms, and yet always recognisable to the educated eye. how should poor smith see anything in the picture except what mr. whistler wittily calls "rather a foolish sunset"? to perceive mr. leader's deficiency in technical accomplishment may seem easy to the young girl who has studied drawing for six months at south kensington; but smith is a stupid man who has money-grubbed for five-and-twenty years in the city; and through the fumes of wine and tobacco he resolves to have a leader. he does not hesitate, he consults no one--and why should he? mr. leader put r.a. after his name--he charges fifteen hundred. besides, the village on the river bank with a sunset behind is obviously a beautiful thing.... the mischief has been done, the irredeemable mischief has been achieved. smith buys a leader, and the leader begets a long, the long begets a fildes, the fildes begets a dicksee, the dicksee begets a herkomer. such is the genesis of mr. smith's collection, and it is typical of a hundred now being formed in london. in ten years mr. smith has laid out forty or fifty thousand pounds. he asks his friends if they don't like his collection quite as well as brown's: he urges that he can't see much difference himself. nor is there much difference. the same articles--that is to say, identically similar articles--vulgarly painted sunsets, vulgarly painted doctors, vulgarly painted babies, vulgarly painted manor-houses with saddle-horses and a young lady hesitating on the steps, have been acquired at or about the same prices. the popular r.a.s have appealed to popular sentiment, and popular sentiment has responded; and the city has paid the price. but time is not at all a sentimental person: he is quite unaffected by the adelphi reality of the doctor's face or the mawkish treacle of the village church; and when the collection is sold at auction twenty years hence, it will fetch about a fourth of the price that was paid. mr. smith's artistic taste knows no change; it was formed on mr. brown's leader, and developing logically from it, passing through long, fildes, and dicksee, it touches high-water mark at hook. the pretty blue sea and the brown fisher-folk call for popular admiration almost as imperatively as the sunset in the village churchyard; and when an artist--for in his adventures among dealers mr. smith met one or two--points out how much less like treacle mr. hook is than mr. leader, and how much more flowing and supple the drawing of the sea-shore is than the village seen against the sunset, mr. smith thinks he understands what is meant. but remembering the fifteen hundred pounds he paid for the cream sky and the treacle trees, he is quite sure that nothing could be better. the ordinary perception of the artistic value of a picture does not arise above mr. smith's. i have studied the artistic capacity of the ordinary mind long and diligently, and i know my analysis of it is exact; and if i do not exaggerate the artistic incapabilities of mr. smith, it must be admitted that the influence which his money permits him to exercise in the art world is an evil influence, and is exercised persistently to the very great detriment of the real artist. but it will be said that the moneyed man cannot be forbidden to buy the pictures that please him. no, but men should not be elected academicians merely because their pictures are bought by city men, and this is just what is done. do not think that sir john millais is unaware that mr. long's pictures, artistically considered, are quite worthless. do not think that mr. orchardson does not turn in contempt from mr. leader's tea-trays. do not think that every artist, however humble, however ignorant, does not know that mr. goodall's portrait of mrs. kettlewell stands quite beyond the range of criticism. mr. long, mr. leader, and mr. goodall were not elected academicians because the academicians who voted for them approved of their pictures, but because mr. smith and his like purchased their pictures; and by electing these painters to academic honours the taste of mr. smith receives official confirmation. the public can distinguish very readily--far better than it gets credit for--between bad literature and good; nor is the public deaf to good music, but the public seems quite powerless to distinguish between good painting and bad. no, i am wrong; it distinguishes very well between bad painting and good, only it invariably prefers the bad. the language of speech we are always in progress of learning; and the language of music being similar to that of speech, it becomes easier to hear that wagner is superior to rossini than to see that whistler is better than leader. of all languages none is so difficult, so varying, so complex, so evanescent, as that of paint; and yet it is precisely the works written in this language that every one believes himself able to understand, and ready to purchase at the expense of a large part of his fortune. if i could make such folk understand how illusory is their belief, what a service i should render to art--if i could only make them understand that the original taste of man is always for the obvious and the commonplace, and that it is only by great labour and care that man learns to understand as beautiful that which the uneducated eye considers ugly. why will the art patron never take advice? i should seek it if i bought pictures. if degas were to tell me that a picture i had intended to buy was not a good one i should not buy it, and if degas were to praise a picture in which i could see no merit i should buy it and look at it until i did. such confession will make me appear weak-minded to many; but this is so, because much instruction is necessary even to understand how infinitely more degas knows than any one else can possibly know. the art patron never can understand as much about art as the artist, but he can learn a good deal. it is fifteen years since i went to degas's studio for the first time. i looked at his portraits, at his marvellous ballet-girls, at the washerwomen, and understood nothing of what i saw. my blindness to degas's merit alarmed me not a little, and i said to manet--to whom i paid a visit in the course of the afternoon--"it is very odd, manet, i understand your work, but for the life of me i cannot see the great merit you attribute to degas." to hear that some one has not understood your rival's work as well as he understands your own is sweet flattery, and manet only murmured under his breath that it was very odd, since there were astonishing things in degas. since those days i have learnt to understand degas; but unfortunately i have not been able to transmit my knowledge to any one. when important pictures by degas could be bought for a hundred and a hundred and fifty pounds apiece, i tried hard to persuade some city merchants to buy them. they only laughed and told me they liked long better. degas has gone up fifty per cent, long has declined fifty per cent. whistler's can be bought to-day for comparatively small prices; [footnote: this was written before the whistler boom.] in twenty years they will cost three times as much; in twenty years mr. leader's pictures will probably not be worth half as much as they are to-day. what i am saying is the merest commonplace, what every artist knows; but go to an art patron--a city merchant--and ask him to pay five hundred for a degas, and he will laugh at you; he will say, "why, i could get a dicksee or a leader for a thousand or two." picture dealers. in the eighteenth century, and the centuries that preceded it, artists were visited by their patrons, who bought what the artist had to sell, and commissioned him to paint what he was pleased to paint. but in our time the artist is visited by a showily-dressed man, who comes into the studio whistling, his hat on the back of his head. this is the west-end dealer: he throws himself into an arm-chair, and if there is nothing on the easels that appeals to the uneducated eye, the dealer lectures the artist on his folly in not considering the exigencies of public taste. on public taste--that is to say, on the uneducated eye--the dealer is a very fine authority. his father was a dealer before him, and the son was brought up on prices, he lisped in prices, and was taught to reverence prices. he cannot see the pictures for prices, and he lies back, looking round distractedly, not listening to the timid, struggling artist who is foolishly venturing an explanation. perhaps the public might come to his style of painting if he were to persevere. the dealer stares at the ceiling, and his lips recall his last evening at the music-hall. if the public don't like it--why, they don't like it, and the sooner the artist comes round the better. that is what he has to say on the subject, and, if sneers and sarcasm succeed in bringing the artist round to popular painting, the dealer buys; and when he begins to feel sure that the uneducated eye really hungers for the new man, he speaks about getting up a boom in the newspapers. the press is in truth the great dupe; the unpaid jackal that goes into the highways and byways for the dealer! the stockbroker gets the bouguereau, the herkomer, the alfred east, and the dagnan-bouveret that his soul sighs for; but the press gets nothing except unreadable copy, and yet season after season the press falls into the snare. it seems only necessary for a dealer to order an artist to frame the contents of his sketch-book, and to design an invitation card--"scenes on the coast of denmark", sketches made by mr. so-and-so during the months of june, july, and august--to secure half a column of a goodly number of london and provincial papers--to put it plainly, an advertisement that reckitts or pears or beecham could not get for hundreds of pounds. one side of the invitation card is filled up with a specimen design, usually such a futile little thing as we might expect to find in a young lady's sketch-book: "copenhagen at low tide", "copenhagen at high tide", "view of the cathedral from the mouth of the river", "the hills of----as seen from off the coast". and this topography every art critic will chronicle, and his chronicling will be printed free of charge amongst the leading columns of the paper. nor is this the worst case. the request to notice a collection of paintings and drawings made by the late mr. so-and-so seems even more flagrant, for then there is no question of benefiting a young artist who stands in need of encouragement or recognition; the show is simply a dealer's exhibition of his ware. true, that the ware may be so rare and excellent that it becomes a matter of public interest; if so, the critic is bound to notice the show. but the ordinary show--a collection of works by a tenth-rate french artist--why should the press advertise such wares gratis? the public goes to theatres and to flower-shows and to race-courses, but it does not go to these dealers' shows--the dealer's friends and acquaintances go on private view day, and for the rest of the season the shop is quieter than the tobacconist's next door. for the last month every paper i took up contained glowing accounts of messrs. tooth & maclean's galleries (picture dealers do not keep shops--they keep galleries), glowing accounts of a large and extensive assortment of dagnan-bouveret, bouguereau, rosa bonheur: very nice things in their way, just such things as i would take alderman samuelson to see. these notices, taken out in the form of legitimate advertisement, would run into hundreds of pounds; and i am quite at a loss to understand why the press abandons so large a part of its revenue. for if the press did not notice these exhibitions, the dealers would be forced into the advertising columns, and when a little notice was published of the ware, it would be done as a little return--as a little encouragement for advertising, on the same principle as ladies' papers publish visits to dressmakers. the present system of noticing messrs tooth's and not noticing messrs. pears' is to me wholly illogical; and, to use the word which makes every british heart beat quicker--unbusinesslike. but with business i have nothing to do--my concern is with art; and if the noticing of dealers' shows were not inimical to art, i should not have a word to say against the practice. messrs. tooth & maclean trade in salon and academy pictures, so the notices the press prints are the equivalent of a subvention granted by the press for the protection of this form of art. if i were a statistician, it would interest me to turn over the files of the newspapers for the last fifty years and calculate how much messrs. agnew have had out of the press in the shape of free advertisement. and when we think what sort of art this vast sum of money went to support, we cease to wonder at the decline of public taste. my quarrel is no more with messrs. agnew than it is with messrs. tooth & maclean; my quarrel--i should say, my reprimand--is addressed to the press--to the press that foolishly, unwittingly, not knowing what it was doing, threw such power into the hands of the dealers that our exhibitions are now little more than the tributaries of the bond street shop? this statement will shock many; but let them think, and they will see it could not be otherwise. messrs. agnew have thousands and thousands of pounds invested in the academy--that is to say, in the works of academicians. when they buy the work of any one outside of the academy, they talk very naturally of their new man to their friends the academicians, and the academicians are anxious to please their best customer. it was in some such way that mr. burne-jones's election was decided. for mr. burne-jones was held in no academic esteem. his early pictures had been refused at burlington house, and he resolved never to send there again. for many years he remained firm in his determination. in the meantime the public showed unmistakable signs of accepting mr. jones, whereupon messrs. agnew also accepted mr. jones. mr. jones was popular; he was better than popular, he stood on the verge of popularity; but there was nothing like making things safe--jones's election to the academy would do that. jones's scruples would have to be overcome; he must exhibit once in the academy. the academicians would be satisfied with that. mr. jones did exhibit in the academy; he was elected on the strength of this one exhibit. he has never exhibited since. these are the facts: confute them who may, explain them who can. it is true that the dealer cannot be got rid of--he is a vice inherent in our civilisation; but if the press withdrew its subvention, his monopoly would be curtailed, and art would be recruited by new talent, at present submerged. art would gradually withdraw from the bluster and boom of an arrogant commercialism, and would attain her olden dignity--that of a quiet handicraft. and in this great reformation only two classes would suffer--the art critics and the dealers. the newspaper proprietors would profit largely, and the readers of newspapers would profit still more largely, for they would no longer be bored by the publication of dealers' catalogues expanded with insignificant comment. mr. burne-jones and the academy. _to the editor of "the speaker"._ sir,--your art critic "g. m." is in error on a matter of fact, and as everybody knows the relationship between fact and theory, i am afraid his little error vitiates the argument he propounds with so much vigour. it was _after_, and not before, his election as an associate that mr. burne-jones made his solitary appearance as an exhibitor at the royal academy.--yours truly, etc., r. i. sir,-it has always been my rule not to enter into argument with my critics, but in the instance of "r. i." i find myself obliged to break my rule. "r. i." thinks that the mistake i slipped into regarding mr. burne-jones's election as an associate vitiates the argument which he says i propound with vigour. i, on the contrary, think that the fact that mr. burne-jones was elected as an associate before he had exhibited in the royal academy advances my argument. being in doubt as to the particular fact, i unconsciously imagined the general fact, and when man's imagination intervenes it is always to soften, to attenuate crudities which only nature is capable of. for twenty years, possibly for more, mr. burne-jones was a resolute opponent of the royal academy, as resolute, though not so truculent, an opponent as mr. whistler. when he became a popular painter mr. agnew gave him a commission of fifteen thousand pounds--the largest, i believe, ever given--to paint four pictures, the "briar rose" series. some time after--before he has exhibited in the academy--mr. jones is elected as an associate. the academicians cannot plead that their eyes were suddenly opened to his genius. if this miracle had happened they would not have left him an associate, but would have on the first vacancy elected him a full academician. how often have they passed him over? is mr. jones the only instance of a man being elected to the academy who had never exhibited there? perhaps "r. i." will tell us. i do not know, and have not time to hunt up records. g. m. the alderman in art. manchester and liverpool are rival cities. they have matched themselves one against the other, and the prize they are striving for is--which shall be the great art-centre of the north of england. the artistic rivalry of the two cities has become obvious of late years. manchester bids against liverpool, liverpool bids against manchester; the results of the bidding are discussed, and so an interest in art is created. it was manchester that first threw her strength into this artistic rivalry. it began with the decorations which manchester commissioned mr. madox brown to paint for the town hall. manchester's choice of an artist was an excellent and an original one. mr. madox brown was not an academician; he was not known to the general public; he merely commanded the respect of his brother-artists. the painting of these pictures was the work of years; the placing of every one was duly chronicled in the press, and it was understood in london that manchester was entirely satisfied. but lo! on the placing in position of the last picture but one of the series an unseemly dispute was raised by some members of the corporation, and it was seriously debated in committee whether the best course to pursue would not be to pass a coat of whitewash over the offending picture. it is impossible to comment adequately on such barbarous conduct; perhaps at no distant date it will be proposed to burn some part of mrs. ryland's perfect gift--the althorp library. there may be some books in that library which do not meet with some councillor's entire approval. barbarism on one side, and princely generosity on the other, combined to fix attention upon manchester, and, in common with a hundred others, i found myself thinking on the relation of manchester and liverpool to art, and speculating on the direction that these new influences were taking. there are two exhibitions now open in manchester and liverpool--the permanent and the annual. the permanent collections must first occupy our attention, for it is through them that we shall learn what sort and kind of artistic taste obtains in the north. at first sight these collections present no trace of any distinct influence. they seem to be simply miscellaneous purchases, made from every artist whose name happens to be the fashion; and considered as permanent illustrations of the various fashions that have prevailed in bond street during the last ten years, these collections are curious and perhaps valuable documents in the history of art. but is there any real analogy between a dressmaker's shop and a picture gallery? plumes are bought because they are "very much worn just now", but then plumes are not so expensive as pictures, and it seems to be hardly worth while to buy pictures for the sake of the momentary fashion in painting which they represent. manchester and liverpool have not, however, grasped the essential fact that it is impossible to form an art gallery by sending to london for the latest fashions. now and then the advice of some gentleman knowing more about art than his colleagues has found expression in the purchase of a work of art; but the picture that hangs next to the fortuitous purchase tells how the taste of the cultured individual was overruled by the taste of the uncultured mass at the next meeting. i could give many, but two instances must suffice to explain and to prove my point. two years ago mr. albert moore exhibited a very beautiful picture in the academy--three women, one sleeping and two sitting on a yellow couch, in front of a starlit and moonlit sea. in the same academy there was exhibited a picture by mr. bartlett--a picture of some gondoliers rowing or punting or sculling (i am ignorant of the aquatic habits of the venetians) for a prize. the liverpool gallery has bought and hung these pictures side by side. such divagations of taste make the visitor smile, and he thinks perforce of the accounts of the stormy meetings of councillors that find their way into the papers. artistic appreciation of these two pictures in the same individual is not possible. what should we think of a man who said that he did not know which he preferred-a poem by tennyson, or a story out of the _london journal_? catholicity of taste does not mean an absolute abandonment of all discrimination; and some thread of intellectual kinship must run through the many various manifestations of artistic temperament which go to form a collection of pictures. things may be various without being discrepant. the manchester gallery has purchased lawson's beautiful picture, "the deserted garden"; likewise mr. fildes' picture of a group of venetian girls sitting on steps, the principal figure in a blue dress with an orange handkerchief round her neck, the simple--i may say child-like--scheme of colour beyond which mr. fildes never seems to stray. the lawson and the fildes agree no better than do the moore and the bartlett; and the only thing that occurs to me is that the cities should toss up which should go for fildes and bartlett, and which for lawson and moore. by such division harmony would be attained, and one city would be going the wrong road, the other the right road; at present both are going zigzag. but notwithstanding the multifarious tastes displayed in these collections, and the artistic chaos they represent, we can, when we examine them closely, detect an influence which abides though it fluctuates, and this influence is that of our discredited academy. the manchester and liverpool collection are merely weak reflections of the chantrey fund collection. now, if the object of these cities be to adopt the standard of taste that obtains in burlington house, to abdicate their own taste--if they have any--and to fortify themselves against all chance of acquiring a taste in art, it would clearly be better for the two corporations to hand over the task of acquiring pictures to the academicians. the responsibility will be gladly accepted, and the trust will be administered with the same honesty and straightforwardness as has been displayed in the administration of the moneys which the unfortunate chantrey entrusted to the care of the academicians. the sowing of evil seed is an irreparable evil; none can tell where the wind will carry it, and unexpected crops are found far and wide. i had thought that the harm occasioned to art by the academy and its corollary, the chantrey fund, began and ended in london. but in manchester and liverpool i was speedily convinced of my mistake. art in the provinces is little more than a reflection of the academy. the majority of the pictures represent the taste of men who have no knowledge of art, and who, to disguise their ignorance, follow the advice which the academy gives to provincial england in the pictures it purchases under the terms--or, rather, under its own reading of the terms--of the chantrey bequest fund. one of the first things i heard in manchester was that the committee had been fortunate enough to secure the nude figure which mr. hacker exhibited this year in the academy. and on my failing to express unbounded admiration for the purchase, i was asked if i was aware that the academy had purchased "the annunciation" for the chantrey bequest fund. "surely," said a member of the committee, "you agree that our picture is the better of the two." i answered: "poor mr. chantrey's money always goes to buy the worst, or as nearly as possible the worst, picture the artist ever painted--the picture for which the artist would never be likely to find a purchaser." last month the liverpool county council assembled to discuss the purchase of two pictures recommended by the art committee--"summer", by mr. hornel; and "the higher alps", by mr. stott, of oldham. the discussion that ensued is described by the _liverpool daily post_ as "amusing". it was ludicrous, and those who do not care a snap of the fingers about art might think it amusing. the joke was started by mr. lynskey, who declared that the two pictures in question were mere daubs. mr. lynskey did not think that the glasgow school of painting had yet been recognised by the public, and until it had he did not see why the corporation should pay £ for these two productions, merely for the sake of experimenting. thereby we are to understand that in forming a collection of pictures it is the taste of the public that must be considered. "of course," cry the aldermen; "we are here to supply the public with what it wants." i repeat, the corporations of manchester and liverpool do not seem to have yet grasped the fact that there is no real analogy between a picture gallery and a dressmaker's shop. the next speaker was mr. burgess. he could not imagine how any one could recommend the purchase of such pictures. the mr. burgesses of twenty-five years ago could not understand how any one could buy corots. mr. smith asked if it were really a fact that the committee had bought the pictures. he was assured that they would be bought only if the council approved of them; whereupon alderman samuelson declared that if that were so they would not be bought. dr. cummins compared the pictures to cattle in the parish pound, and it is reported that the remark caused much laughter. then some one said--i think it was mr. smith--that the pictures had horrified him; whereupon there was more laughter. then a member proposed that they should have the pictures brought in, to which proposition a member objected, amid much laughter. then mr. daughan suggested that the chairman and vice-chairman should explain the meaning of the pictures to the council. more laughter and more county council humour. the meeting was a typical meeting, and it furnishes us with the typical councillor. in the report of the meeting before me a certain alderman seems to have been as garrulous as he was irrepressible. he not only spoke at greater length than the rest of the councillors put together, but did not hesitate to frequently interrupt the members of the committee with remarks. speaking of pictures by millais, holman hunt, and rossetti, he said:--"we have had exhibitions, and the works of these great artists were at various times closely scrutinised, and they had borne the most careful scrutiny that could be directed to them. now i defy you to take a number of pictures such as those in dispute, and do the same with them." no one could have spoken the words i have quoted who was not absolutely ignorant of the art of painting. imagine the poor alderman going round, magnifying-glass in hand, subjecting millais and holman hunt to the closest scrutiny. and how easy it is to determine what was passing in his mind during the examination of the glasgow school! "i can't see where this foot finishes; the painter was not able to draw it, so he covered it up with a shadow. in the pictures of that fellow guthrie the grass is merely a tint of green, whereas in the 'shadow of the cross' i can count all the shavings." but we will not seek to penetrate further into this very alderman-like mind. he declared that the glasgow school of painting was "no more in comparison to what they recognised as a school of painting than a charity school was to the university of oxford." i am sorry our alderman did not say what was the school of painting that he and his fellow-aldermen admired. in the absence of any precise information on the point i will venture to suggest that the school they recognise is the school of bartlett and solomon. the gallery possesses two large works by these masters--the gondoliers, and the great picture of samson, which fills an entire end of one room. but what would be of still greater interest would be to hear our alderman explain what he meant by this astonishing sentence:--"the only motive of mr. hornel's picture is a mode of art or rather artifice, in introducing a number of colours with the idea of making them harmonise; and this could be done, and had been done, by means of the palette-knife." i have not the least idea what this means, but i am none the less interested. for, although void of sense, the alderman's words allow me to look down a long line of illustrious ancestry--prud'homme, chadband, stiggins, phillion, the apothecary homais in "madame bovary". after passing through numerous transformations, an eternal idea at last incarnates itself in a final form. how splendid our alderman is! never did a corporation produce so fine a flower. he is sententious, he is artistic. and how he lets fall from his thick lips those scraps of art-jargon which he picked up in the studio where he sat for his portrait! he is moral; he thinks that nude figures should not be sanctioned by the corporation; he believes in the bank, and proposes the queen's health as if he were fulfilling an important duty; he goes to the academy, and dictates the aestheticism of his native town. there he is, his hand in his white waistcoat, in the pose chosen for the presentation portrait, at the moment when he delivered himself of his famous apophthegm, "when the nude comes into art, art flies out of the window." the alderman is the reef which for the last five-and-twenty years has done so much to ruin and to wreck every artistic movement which the enthusiasm and intelligence of individuals have set on foot. the mere checking of the obstruction of the individual will not suffice; other aldermen will arise--equally ignorant, equally talkative, equally obstructive. and until the race is relegated to its proper function, bimetallism and sewage, the incidents i have described will happen again and again. * * * * * a marvellous accident that it should have come to be believed that a corporation could edit a picture gallery! whence did the belief originate? whence did it spring? and in what fancied substance of fact did it catch root? a tapeworm-like notion--come we know not whence, nor how. and it has thriven unobserved, though signs of its presence stare plainly enough in the pallid face of the wretched gallery. curious it is that it should have remained undetected so long; curious, indeed, it is that straying thought should have led no one to remember that every great art collection of the world has grown out of an individual intelligence. collections have been worthily continued, but each successive growth has risen in obedience to the will of one supreme authority; and that it should have ever come to be believed that twenty aldermen, whose lives are mainly spent in considering bank-rates, bimetallism, and sewage, could collect pictures of permanent value is on the face of it as wild a folly as ever tried the strength of the strait waistcoats of hanwell or bedlam. but as manchester and liverpool enjoy as fair a measure of sanity as the rest of the kingdom, we perforce must admit the theory of unconscious acceptation of a chance idea. but i take it that what is essential in my argument is not to prove that aldermen know little about art, but that twenty men, wise or foolish, ignorant or learned, cannot edit a picture gallery. proving the obvious is not an amusing task, but it is sometimes a necessary task. it may be thought, too, that i might be more brief; the elderly maxim about brevity being the soul of wit may be flung in my teeth. but lengthy discourse gives time for reflection, and i am seriously anxious that my readers should consider the question which these articles introduce. i believe it to be one of vital interest, reaching down a long range of consequences; and should these articles induce manchester and liverpool to place their galleries in the care of competent art-directors, i shall have rendered an incalculable service to english art. i say "competent art-directors", and i mean by "competent art-directors" men who will deem their mission to be a repudiation of the anglo-french art fostered by the academy--a return to a truer english tradition, and the giving to manchester and liverpool individual artistic aspiration and tendency. is the ambition of manchester and liverpool limited to paltry imitations of the chantrey fund collection? if they desire no more, it would serve no purpose to disturb the corporations in their management of the galleries. the corporations can do this better than any director. but if manchester and liverpool desire individual artistic life, if they wish to collect art that will attract visitors and contribute to their renown, they can only do this by the appointment of competent directors. for assurance on this point we have only to think what sir frederick burton has done for the national gallery, or what the late mr. doyle did for dublin on the meagre grant of one thousand a year. it is the man and not the amount of money spent that counts. a born collector like the late mr. doyle can do more with a thousand a year than a corporation could do with a hundred thousand a year. nothing is of worth except individual passion; it is the one thing that achieves. and i know of no more intense passion--and, i will add, no more beautiful passion--than the passion for collecting works of art. of all passions it is the purest. it matters little to the man possessed of it whether he collects for the state or for himself. the gallery is his child, and all his time and energy are given to the enrichment and service of _his_ gallery. the gallery is his one thought. he will lie awake at night to better think out his plans for the capture of some treasure on which he has set his heart. he will get up in the middle of the night, and walk about the gallery, considering some project for improved arrangements. to realise the meaning of the passion for collecting, it is necessary to have known a real collector, and intimately, for collectors do not wear their hearts on their sleeve. with the indifferent they are indifferent; but they are quick to detect the one man or woman who sympathises, who understands; and they select with eagerness this one from the crowd. but perhaps the collector never really reveals himself except to a fellow-collector, and to appreciate the strength and humanity of the passion it is necessary to have seen duret and goncourt explaining a new japanesery which one of them has just acquired. the partial love which a corporation may feel for its collection is very different from the undivided strength of the collector's love of his gallery. and even if we were to admit the possibility of an ideal corporation consisting of men perfectly conversant with art, and animated with passion equal to the collector's passion, the history of its labour would still be written in the words "vexatious discussion and lost chances". the rule that no picture is to be purchased until it has been seen and approved of by the corporation forbids all extraordinary chances, and the unique and only moment is lost in foolish formulae. the machinery is too cumbersome; and chances of sale-rooms cannot be seized; it is instinct and not reason that decides the collector, and no dozen or twenty men can ever be got to immediately agree. not long after my article on manet was published in the columns of the _speaker_, a member of the manchester art committee wrote asking where could the pictures be seen, and if the owners would lend them for exhibition in the annual exhibition soon to open. if they did, perhaps the corporation might be induced to buy them for the permanent collection. now i will ask my readers to imagine my bringing the pictures "le linge" and "l'enfant à l'Êpée" over from france, and submitting them to the judgment of the manchester corporation. as well might i submit to them a velasquez or a gainsborough signed smith and jones! it is the authority of the signature that induces acquiescence in the beauty of a portrait by gainsborough or velasquez; without the signature the ordinary or drawing-room lady would prefer a portrait by mr. shannon. mr. shannon is the fashion, and the fashion, being the essence and soul of the crowd, is naturally popular with the crowd. in my article on manet i referred to a beautiful picture of his--"boulogne pier". it was then on exhibition in bond street. i asked a friend to buy it. "you will not like the picture now," i said; "but if you have any latent aesthetic feeling in you it will bring it out, and you will like it in six months' time." my friend would not buy the picture, and the reason he gave was that he did not like it. it did not seem to occur to him that his taste might advance, and that the picture he was ignorant enough to like to-day he might be wise enough to loathe six years hence. an early customer of sir john millais said, "millais, i'll give you five hundred pounds to paint me a picture, and you shall paint me the picture you are minded to paint." sir john painted him one of the most beautiful pictures of modern times, "st. agnes' eve". but the wisdom of the purchaser was only temporary. when the picture came home he did not like it, his wife did not like it; there was no colour in it; it was all blue and green. briefly, it was not a pleasant picture to live with; and after trying the experiment for a few months this excellent gentleman decided to exchange the picture for a picture by--by whom?--by mr. sidney cooper. i wonder what he thinks of himself to-day. and his fate is the fate of the aldermen who buy pictures because they like them. the administration of art, as it was pointed out in the _manchester guardian_, is one of extreme difficulty, and it is not easy to find a competent director; but it seems to me to be easy to name many men who would do better in art-management than a corporation, and embarrassingly difficult to name one who would do worse. any one man can thread a needle better than twenty men. should the needle prove brittle and the thread rotten, the threader must resign. though a task may be accomplished only by one man, and though all differ as to how it should be accomplished, yet, when the task is well accomplished, an appreciative unanimity seems to prevail regarding the result. we all agree in praising sir frederick burton's administration; and yet how easy it would be to cavil! why has he not bought an ingres, a corot, a courbet, a troyon? why has he showed such excessive partiality for squint-eyed italian saints? sir frederick burton would answer: "in collecting, like in everything else, you must choose a line. i chose to consider the national gallery as a museum. the question is whether i have collected well or badly from this point of view." but a corporation cannot choose a line on which to collect; it can do no more than indulge in miscellaneous purchases. religiosity in art. one sunday morning, more than twenty years ago, i breakfasted with a great painter, who was likewise a wit, and the account he gave of a recent visit to the doré gallery amused me very much. on entering, he noticed that next to the door there was a high desk, so cunningly constructed both as regards height and inclination that all the discomforts of writing were removed; and the brightness of the silver inkpot, the arrangement of the numerous pens and the order-book on the desk, all was so perfect that the fingers of the lettered and unlettered itched alike with desire of the caligraphic art. by this desk loitered a large man of bland and commanding presence. he wore a white waistcoat, and a massive gold chain, with which he toyed while watching the guileless spectators or sought with soothing voice to entice one to display his handwriting in the order-book. my friend, who was small and thin, almost succeeded in defeating the vigilance of the white-waistcoated and honey-voiced cerberus; but at the last moment, as he was about to slip out, he was stopped, and the following dialogue ensued:-- "sir, that is a very great picture." "yes, it is indeed, it is an immense picture." "sir, i mean great in every sense of the word." "so do i; it is nearly as broad as it is long." "i was alluding, sir, to the superior excellence of the picture, and not to its dimensions." "oh!" "may i ask, sir, if you know what that picture represents?" "i'm sorry, but i can't tell you." "then, sir, i'll tell you. that picture represents the point of culmination in the life of christ." "really; may i ask who says so?" "the dignitaries of the church say so." pause, during which my friend made an ineffectual attempt to get past. the waistcoat, however, barred the way, and then the bland and dulcet voice spoke again. "do you see that man copying the right-hand corner of the picture? that gentleman says that the man who could paint that corner could paint anything." "oh! and who is that gentleman?" "that gentleman is employed to copy in the national gallery." "oh! by the state?" "no, sir, not by the state, but he has permission to copy in the national gallery." "a special permission granted to him by the state?" "no, sir, but he has permission to copy in the national gallery." "in fact, just as every one else has. i am really very much obliged, but i must be getting along." "sir, won't you put down your name for a ten-guinea proof signed by the artist?" "i'm very sorry, but i really do not see my way to taking a ten-guinea subscription." "then, perhaps, you will take one at five--the same without the signature?" "i really cannot." "you can have a numbered proof for £ , s." "no, thank you; you must excuse me." "you can have an ordinary proof for a guinea." "no, thank you; you must really allow me to pass." then in the last moment the white waistcoat, assuming a tone in which there was both despair and disdain, said--"but you will have a year and a half before you need pay your guinea." who does not know this man? who has not suffered from his importunities? twenty years ago he extolled the beauties of "christ leaving the praetorium"; ten years later he lauded the merits of "christ and diana"; to-day he is busy advising the shilling public thronging the dowdeswell galleries to view mr. herbert schmalz's _impressive_ picture of "the return from calvary". i do not mean that the same gentleman who presided at the desk in the doré gallery now presides at the desk at new bond street. the individual differs, but the type remains unaltered. the waistcoat, the desk, the pens and the silver inkstand, such paraphernalia are as inseparable from him as the hammer is from the auctioneer. all this i have on the authority of messrs. dowdeswell themselves. when engaging their canvasser, they offered him a small table at the end of the room. their ignorance of his art caused him to smile. "a table," he said, "would necessitate sitting down to write, and the great point in this business is to save the customer from all unnecessary trouble. any other place in the room except next the door is out of the question. i must have a nice desk there, at which you can write standing up, a lamp shedding a bright glow upon the paper, a handsome silver inkstand, and a long, evenly-balanced pen. give me these things, and leave the rest to me." messrs. dowdeswell hastened to comply with these requests. i was in the gallery on monday, and can testify to the pleasantness of the little installation, to the dexterity with which customers were led there, and to the grace with which the canvasser dipped the pen in the handsome silver inkstand. the county squire, the owner of racehorses, the undergraduate, and the brixton spinster, are easily led by him to the commodious desk. go and see the man, and you will be led thither likewise. it is a matter for wonder that more artists do not devote themselves to painting religious subjects. there seems to be an almost limitless demand for work of this kind, and almost any amount of praise for it, no matter how badly it is executed. the critic dares not turn the picture into ridicule however bad it may be, for to do so would seem like turning a sacred subject into ridicule--so few distinguish between the subject and the picture. he may hardly venture to depreciate the work, for it would not seem quite right to depreciate the work of a man who had endeavoured to depict, however inadequately, a sacred subject. everything is in favour of the painter of religious subjects, provided certain formalities are observed. the canvasser and the arrangements of the desk are of course the first consideration, but there are a number of minor observances, not one of which may be neglected. the gallery must be thrown into deep twilight with a vivid light from above falling full on the picture. there must be lines of chairs, arranged as if for a devout congregation; and if, in excess of these, the primary conditions of success, one of the dignitaries of the church can be induced to accept a little excursion into the perilous fields of art criticism, all will go well with the show. it would be unseemly for a critic to argue with a bishop concerning the merits of a religious picture--it would be irreverent, anomalous, and in execrable taste. for it must be clear to every one that the best and truest critic of a religious picture is a bishop; and it is still more clear that if the picture contains a view of jerusalem, the one person who can speak authoritatively on the matter is the bishop of jerusalem. and it were indeed impossible to realise the essential nature of these truths better than messrs. dowdeswell have done; they have even ventured to extend the ordinary programme, and have decreed a special _matinée_ in the interests of country parsons--truly an idea of genius. if a fault may be found or forged with the arrangements, it is that they did not enter into some contract with the railway authorities. but this is hypercriticism; they have done their work well, and the _matinée_, as the order-book will testify, was a splendid success. the parsons came up from every part of the country, and as "the return from calvary" is the latest thing in religious art, they think themselves bound to put their names down for proofs. how could they refuse? the canvasser dipped the pen in the ink for them, and he has a knack of making a refusal seem so mean. about mr. schmalz's picture i have really no particular opinion. i do not think it worse than any picture of the same kind by the late mr. long. nor do i think that it can be said to be very much inferior to the religious works with which mr. goodall has achieved so wide a reputation. on the whole i think i prefer mr. goodall, though i am not certain. here is the picture:--at the top of a flight of steps and about two-thirds of the way across the picture, to the left, so as not to interfere with the view of jerusalem, are three figures--as sir augustus harris might have set them were he attempting a theatrical representation of the scene. there is a dark man, this is st. john, and over him a woman draped in white is weeping, and behind her a woman with golden hair--the magdalen--is likewise weeping. two other figures are ascending the steps, but as they are low down in the picture they interfere hardly at all with the splendid view. the dark sky is streaked with naples yellow, and the pale colour serves to render distinct the three crosses planted upon calvary in the extreme distance. in this world all is a question of temperament. to the aesthetic temperament mr. schmalz's picture will seem hardly more beautiful or attractive than a salvationist hymn-book; the unaesthetic temperament will, on the other hand, be profoundly moved, the subject stands out clear and distinct, and that class of mind, overlooking all artistic shortcomings, will lose itself in emotional consideration of the grandest of all the world's tragedies. that mr. schmalz's picture is capable of exercising a profound effect on the uneducated mind there can be no doubt. while i was there a lady walked with stately tread into the next room, and seeing there nothing more exciting than rural scenes drawn in water-colour, exclaimed, "trees, mere trees! what are trees after having had one's soul elevated?" that great artist henri monnier devoted a long life to the study and the collection of the finest examples of human stupidity, and marvellous as are some of the specimens preserved by him in his dialogues, i hardly think that he succeeded in discovering a finer gem than the phrase overheard by me in the dowdeswell galleries. to appreciate the sublime height, must we not know something of the miserable depth? and the study of human stupidity is refreshing and salutary; it helps us to understand ourselves, to estimate ourselves, and to force ourselves to look below the surface, and so raise our ideas out of that mire of casual thought in which we are all too prone to lie. for perfect culture, the lady i met at the dowdeswell galleries is as necessary as shakespeare. is she not equally an exhortation to be wise? the camera in art. it is certain that the introduction of japaneseries into this country has permanently increased our sense of colour; is it therefore improbable that the invention of photography has modified, if it has not occasioned any very definite alteration in our general perception of the external world? it would be interesting to inquire into such recondite and illusive phenomena; and i am surprised that no paper on so interesting a question has appeared in any of our art journals. true, so many papers are printed in our weekly and monthly press that it is impossible for any one to know all that has been written on any one subject; but, so far as i am aware, no such paper has appeared, and the absence of such a paper is, i think, a serious deficiency in our critical literature. it is, however, no part of my present purpose to attempt to supply this want. i pass on to consider rapidly a matter less abstruse and of more practical interest, a growing habit among artists to avail themselves of the assistance of photographs in their work. it will not be questioned that many artists of repute do use photographs to--well, to put it briefly, to save themselves trouble, expense, and, in some cases, to supplant defective education. but the influence of photography on art is so vast a subject, so multiple, so intricate, that i may do no more here than lift the very outer fringe. it is, however, clear to almost everybody who has thought about art at all, that the ever-changing colour and form of clouds, the complex variety (definite in its very indefiniteness) of every populous street, the evanescent delicacy of line and aërial effect that the most common and prosaic suburb presents in certain lights, are the very enchantment and despair of the artist; and likewise every one who has for any short while reflected seriously on the problem of artistic work must know that the success of every evocative rendering of the exquisite externality of crowded or empty street, of tumult or calm in cloud-land, is the fruit of daily and hourly observation--observation filtered through years of thought, and then fortified again in observation of nature. but such observation is the labour of a life; and he who undertakes it must be prepared to see his skin brown and blister in the shine, and feel his flesh pain him with icy chills in the biting north wind. the great landscape painters suffered for the intolerable desire of art; they were content to forego the life of drawing-rooms and clubs, and live solitary lives in unceasing communion with art and nature. but artists in these days are afraid of catching cold, and impatient of long and protracted studentship. everything must be made easy, comfortable, and expeditious; and so it comes to pass that many an artist seeks assistance from the camera. a moment, and it is done: no wet feet; no tiresome sojourn in the country when town is full of merry festivities; and, above all, hardly any failure--that is to say, no failure that the ordinary public can detect, nor, indeed, any failure that the artist's conscience will not get used to in time. mr. gregory is the most celebrated artist who is said to make habitual use of photography. mr. gregory has no warmer admirer than myself. his picture of "dawn" is the most fairly famous picture of our time. but since that picture his art has declined. it has lost all the noble synthetical life which comes of long observation and gradual assimilation of nature. his picture of a yachtsman in this year's academy was as paltry, as "realistic" as may be. professor herkomer is another well-known artist who is said to use photography. it is even said that he has his sitter photographed on to the canvas, and the photographic foundation he then covers up with those dreadful browns and ochres which seem to constitute his palette. report credits him with this method, which it is possible he believes to be an advance on the laborious process of drawing from nature, to which, in the absence of the ingenious instrument, the old masters were perforce obliged to resort. it will be said that what matter how the artists work--that it is with the result, not the method, with which we are concerned. dismissing report from our ears, surely we must recognise all the cheap realism of the camera in professor herkomer's portraits; and this is certainly their characteristic, although photography may have had nothing to do with their manufacture. mr. bartlett is another artist who, it is said, makes habitual use of photographs; and surely in some of his boys bathing the photographic effects are visible enough. but although very far from possessing the accomplishments of mr. gregory, mr. bartlett has acquired some education, and can draw, when occasion requires, very well indeed from life. mr. mortimer menpes is the third artist of any notoriety that rumour has declared to be a disciple of the camera. his case is the most flagrant, for it is said that he rarely, if ever, draws from nature, and that his entire work is done from photographs. be this as it may, his friends have stated a hundred times in the press that he uses photography, and it would seem that his work shows the mechanical aid more and more every day. some years ago he went to japan, and brought home a number of pictures which suited drawing-rooms, and were soon sold. i did not see the exhibition, but i saw some pictures done by him at that time--one, an especially good one, i happened upon in the grosvenor gallery. this picture, although superficial and betraying when you looked into it a radical want of knowledge, was not lacking in charm. in french studios there is a slang phrase which expresses the meretricious charm of this picture--_c'est du chic_; and the meaning of this very expressive term is ignorance affecting airs of capacity. now the whole of mr. menpes' picture was comprised in this term. the manner of the master who, certain of the shape and value of the shadow under an eye, will let his hand run, was reproduced; but the exact shape and value of the shadows were not to be gathered from the photograph, and the result was a charming but a hollow mockery. and then the "colour-notes"; with what assurance they were dashed into the little pictures from japan, and how dexterously the touch of the master who knows exactly what he wants was parodied! at the first glance you were deceived; at the second you saw that it was only such cursive taste and knowledge as a skilful photographer who had been allowed the run of a painter's studio for a few months might display. nowhere was there any definite intention; it was something that had been well committed to memory, that had been well remembered, but only half-understood. everything floated--drawing, values, colours--for there was not sufficient knowledge to hold and determine the place of any one. since those days mr. menpes has continued to draw from photographs, and--the base of his artistic education being deficient from the first--the result of his long abstention from nature is apparent, even to the least critical, in the some hundred and seventy paintings, etchings, and what he calls diamond-points on ivory, on exhibition at messrs. dowdeswell's. diamond-points on ivory may astonish the unthinking public, but artists are interested in the drawing, and not what the drawing is done upon. besides the diamond-points, there is quite sufficient matter in this exhibition to astonish visitors from peckham, pentonville, islington, and perhaps clapham, but not bayswater--no, not bayswater. there are frames in every sort of pattern--some are even adorned with gold tassels--and the walls have been especially prepared to receive them. these pictures and etchings purport to be representations of india, burma, and cashmire. the diamond-points, i believe, purport to be diamond-points. in some of the etchings there is the same ingenious touch of hand, but anything more woful than the oil pictures cannot easily be imagined. in truth, they do not call for any serious criticism; and were it not for the fact that they afforded an opportunity of making some remarks--which seemed to me to be worth making--about the influence of photography in modern art, i should have left the public to find for itself the value of this attempt, in the grandiloquent words of the catalogue, "to bring before my countrymen the aesthetic and artistic capabilities, and the beauty in various forms, that are to be found in our great indian empire." to criticise the pictures in detail is impossible; but i will try to give an impression of the exhibition as a whole. imagine a room hung with ordinary school slates, imagine that all these slates have been gilt, and that some have been adorned with gold tassels instead of the usual sponge, and into each let there be introduced a dome, a camel, a palm-tree, or any other conventional sign of the east. on examining the paintings thus sumptuously encased you will notice that the painter has not been able to affect with the brush any slight air of capacity; the material betrays him at every point the etchings are _du chic_; but the paintings are merely abortive. the handling consists in scrubbing the colour into the canvas, attaining in this manner a texture which sometimes reminds you of wool, sometimes of sand, sometimes of both. the poor little bits of blue sky stick to the houses; there is nowhere a breath of air, a ray of light, not even a conventionally graduated sky or distance; there is not an angle, or a pillar, or a stairway finely observed; there is not even any such eagerness in the delineation of an object as would show that the painter felt interest in his work; every sketch tells the tale of a burden taken up and thankfully relinquished. here we have white wall, but it has neither depth nor consistency; behind it a bit of sandy sky; the ground is yellow, and there is a violet shadow upon it. but the colour of the ground does not show through the shadow. look, for example, at no. . is it possible to believe that that red-brick sky was painted from nature, or that unhappy palm in a picture close by was copied as it raised its head over that wall? the real scene would have stirred an emotion in the heart of the dullest member of the stock exchange, and, however unskilful the brushwork, if the man could hold a brush at all, there would have been something to show that the man had been in the presence of nature. there is no art so indiscreet as painting, and the story of the painter's mind may be read in every picture. but another word regarding these pictures would be waste of space and time. let mr. menpes put away his camera, let him go out into the streets or the fields, and there let him lose himself in the vastness and beauty of nature. let him study humbly the hang of a branch or the surface of a wall, striving to give to each their character. let him try to render the mystery of a perspective in the blue evening or its harshness and violence in the early dawn. there is no need to go to burma, there is mystery and poetry wherever there is atmosphere. in certain moments a backyard, with its pump and a child leaning to drink, will furnish sufficient motive for an exquisite picture; the atmosphere of the evening hour will endow it with melancholy and tenderness. but the insinuating poetry of chiaroscuro the camera is powerless to reproduce, and it cannot be imagined; nature is parsimonious of this her greatest gift, surrendering it slowly, and only to those who love her best, and whose hearts are pure of mercenary thought. the new english art club. this, the ninth season of the new english art club, has been marked by a decisive step. the club has rejected two portraits of mr. shannon. so that the public may understand and appreciate the importance of this step, i will sketch, _à coups de crayon peu fondus_, the portrait of a lady as i imagine mr. shannon might have painted her. a woman of thirty, an oval face, and a long white brow; pale brown hair, tastefully arranged with flowers and a small plume. the eyes large and tender, expressive of a soul that yearns and has been misunderstood. the nose straight, the nostrils well-defined, slightly dilated; the mouth curled, and very red. the shoulders large, white, and over-modelled, with cream tints; the arms soft and rounded; diamond bracelets on the wrists; diamonds on the emotional neck. her dress is of the finest duchesse satin, and it falls in heavy folds. she holds a bouquet in her hands; a pale green garden is behind her; swans are moving gracefully through shadowy water, whereon the moon shines peacefully. add to this conception the marvellous square brushwork of the french studio, and you have the man born to paint english duchesses--to paint them as they see themselves, as they would be seen by posterity; and through mr. shannon our duchesses realise all their aspirations, present and posthumous. the popularity of these pictures is undoubted; wherever they hang, and they hang everywhere, except in the new english art club, couples linger. "how charming, how beautifully dressed, how refined she looks!" and the wife who has not married a man _à la hauteur de ses sentiments_ casts on him a withering glance, which says, "why can't you afford to let me be painted by mr. shannon?" we are here to realise our ideals, and far is it from my desire to thwart any lady in her aspirations, be they in white or violet satin, with or without green gardens. if i were on the hanging committee of the royal academy, all the duchesses in the kingdom should be realised, and then--i would create more duchesses, and they, too, should be realised by messrs. shannon, hacker, and solomon _les chefs de rayon de la peinture_. and when these painters arrived, each with a van filled with new satin duchesses, i would say, "go to mr. agnew, ask him what space he requires, and anything over and above they shall have it." i would convert the chantrey fund into white satin duchesses, and build a museum opposite mr. tate's for the blue. i would do anything for these painters and their duchesses except hang them in the new english art club. for it is entirely necessary that the public should never be left for a moment in doubt as to the intention of this club. it is open to those who paint for the joy of painting; and it is entirely disassociated from all commercialism. muslin ballet-girl or satin duchess it matters no jot, nothing counts with the jury but _l'idée plastique_: comradeship, money gain or loss, are waived. the rejection of mr. shannon's portraits will probably cost the club four guineas a year, the amount of his subscription, and it will certainly lose to the club the visits of his numerous drawing-room following. this is to be regretted--in a way. the club must pay its expenses, but it were better that the club should cease than that its guiding principle should be infringed. either we may or we may not have a gallery from which popular painting is excluded. i think that we should; but i know that academicians and dealers are in favour of enforced prostitution in art. that men should practise painting for the mere love of paint is wholly repugnant to every healthy-minded philistine. the critic of the daily telegraph described the pictures in the present exhibition as things that no one would wish to possess; he then pointed out that a great many were excellently well painted. quite so. i have always maintained that there is nothing that the average englishman--the reader of the _daily telegraph_--dislikes so much as good painting. he regards it in the light of an offence, and what makes it peculiarly irritating in his eyes is the difficulty of declaring it to be an immoral action; he instinctively feels that it is immoral, but somehow the crime seems to elude definition. the independent theatre was another humble endeavour which sorely tried the conscience of the average englishman. that any one should wish to write plays that were not intended to please the public--that did not pay--was an unheard-of desire, morbid and unwholesome as could well be, and meriting the severest rebuke. but the independent theatre has somehow managed to struggle into a third year of life, and the new english art club has opened its ninth exhibition; so i suppose that the _daily telegraph_ will have to make up its mind, sorrowfully, of course, and with regret, that there are folk still in london who are not always ready to sell their talents to the highest bidder. for painters and those who like painting, the exhibitions at the new english art club are the most interesting in london. we find there no anecdotes, sentimental, religious, or historical, nor the conventional measuring and modelling which the academy delights to honour in the name of art. at the new english art club, from the first picture to the last, we find artistic effort; very often the effort is feeble, but nowhere, try as persistently as you please, will you find the loud stupidity of ordinary exhibitions of contemporary painting. this is a plain statement of a plain truth--plain to artists and those few who possess the slightest knowledge of the art of painting, or even any faint love of it. but to the uncultivated, to the ignorant, and to the stupid the new english art club is the very place where all the absurd and abortive attempts done in painting in the course of the year are exposed on view. if i wished to test a man's taste and knowledge in the art of painting i would take him to the english art club and listen for one or two minutes to what he had got to say. immediately on entering the room, before we see the pictures, we know that they are good. for a pleasant soft colour, delicate and insinuating as an odour of flowers, pervades the room. so we are glad to loiter in this vague sensation of delicate colour, and we talk to our friends, avoiding the pictures, until gradually a pale-faced woman with arched eyebrows draws our eyes and fixes our thoughts. it is a portrait by mr. sargent, one of the best he has painted. by the side of a fine hals it might look small and thin, but nothing short of a fine hals would affect its real beauty. my admiration for mr. sargent has often hesitated, but this picture completely wins me. it has all the qualities of mr. sargent's best work; and it has something more: it is painted with that measure of calculation and reserve which is present in all work of the first order of merit. i find the picture described with sufficient succinctness in my notes: "a half-length portrait of a woman, in a dress of shot-silk--a sort of red violet, the colour known as puce. the face is pale, the chin is prominent and pointed. there were some japanese characteristics in the model, and these have been selected. the eyes are long, and their look is aslant; the eyebrows are high and marked; the dark hair grows round the pale forehead with wig-like abruptness, and the painter has attempted no attenuation. the carnations are wanting in depth of colour--they are somewhat chalky; but what i admire so much is the exquisite selection, besides the points mentioned--the shadowed outline, so full of the form of her face, and the markings about the eyes, so like her; and the rendering is full of the beauty of incomparable skill. the neck, how well placed beneath the pointed chin! how exact in width, in length, and how it corresponds with the ear; and the jawbone is under the skin; and the anatomies are all explicit--the collar-bone, the hollow of the arm-pit, and the muscle of the arm, the placing of the bosom, its shape, its size, its weight. mr. sargent's drawing speaks without hesitation, a beautiful, decisive eloquence, the meaning never in excess of the expression, nor is the expression ever redundant." i said that we find in this portrait reserve not frequently to be met with in mr. sargent's work. what i first noticed in the picture was the admirable treatment of the hands. they are upon her hips, the palms turned out, and so reduced is the tone that they are hardly distinguishable from the dress. as the model sat the light must have often fallen on her hands, and five years ago mr. sargent might have painted them in the light. but the portrait tells us that he has learnt the last and most difficult lesson--how to omit. any touch of light on those hands would rupture the totality and jeopardise the colour-harmony, rare without suspicion of exaggeration or affectation. in the background a beautiful chocolate balances and enforces the various shades of the shot-silk, and with severity that is fortunate. by aid of two red poppies, worn in the bodice, a final note in the chord is reached--a resonant and closing consonance; a beautiful work, certainly: i should call it a perfect work were it not that the drawing is a little too obvious: in places we can detect the manner; it does not _coule de source_ like the drawing of the very great masters. except mr. sargent, no one in the new english art club comes forward with a clearly formulated style; everything is more or less tentative, and i cannot entirely exempt from this criticism either mr. steer, mr. clausen, or mr. walter sickert. but this criticism must not be understood as a reproach--surely this green field growing is more pleasing than the academy's barren stubble. i claim no more for the new english art club than that it is the growing field. say that the crop looks thin, and that the yield will prove below the average, but do not deny that what harvest there may be the new english art club will bring home. so let us walk round this may field of the young generation and look into its future, though we know that the summer months will disprove for better or for worse. mr. bernard sickert, the youngest member of this club, a mere beginner, a five- or six-year-old painter, has made, from exhibition to exhibition, constant and consistent progress, and this year he comes forward with two landscapes, both seemingly conclusive of a true originality of vision, and there is a certain ease of accomplishment in his work which tempts me to believe that a future is in store for him. the differences of style in these two pictures do not affect my opinion, for, on looking into the pictures, the differences are more apparent than real--the palette has been composed differently, but neither picture tells of any desire of a new outlook, or even to radically change his mode of expression. the eye which observed and remembered so sympathetically "a spring evening", over which a red moon rose like an apparition, observed also the masts and the prows, and the blue sea gay with the life of passing sail and flag, and the green embaying land overlooking "a regatta". i hardly know which picture i prefer. i saw first "a regatta", and was struck by the beautiful drawing and painting of the line of boats, their noses thrust right up into the fore water of the picture, a little squadron advancing. so well are these boats drawn that the unusual perspective (the picture was probably painted from a window) does not interrupt for a second our enjoyment. a jetty on the right stretches into the blue sea water, intense with signs of life, and the little white sails glint in the blue bay, and behind the high green hill the colours of a faintly-tinted evening fade slowly. the picture is strangely complete, and it would be difficult to divine any reason for disliking it, even amongst the most ignorant. "a spring evening" is neither so striking nor so immediately attractive; its charm is none the less real. an insinuating and gentle picture, whose delicacy and simplicity i like. the painter has caught that passing and pathetic shudder of coming life which takes the end of a march day before the bud swells or a nest appears. the faint chill twilight floats upon the field, and the red moon mounts above the scrub-clad hillside into a rich grey sky, beautifully graduated and full of the glamour of waning and strengthening light. the slope of the field, too--it is there the sheep are folded--is in admirable perspective. on the left, beyond the hurdles, is a strip of green, perhaps a little out of tone, though i know such colour persists even in very receding lights; and high up on the right the blue night is beginning to show. the sheep are folded in a turnip field, and the root-crop is being eaten down. the month is surely march, for the lambs are still long-legged--there one has dropped on its knees and is digging at the udder of the passive ewe with that ferocious little gluttony which we know so well; another lamb relieves its ear's first itching with its hind hoof--you know the grotesque movement--and the field is full of the weird roaming of animal life, the pathos of the unconscious, the pity of transitory light. a little umber and sienna, a rich grey, not a bit of drawing anywhere, and still the wandering forms of sheep and lambs fully expressed, one sheep even in its particular physiognomy. truly a charming picture, spontaneous and simple, and proving a painter possessed of a natural sentiment, of values, and willing to employ that now most neglected method of pictorial expression, chiaroscuro. neglected by mr. steer, who seems prepared to dispense with what is known as _une atmosphère de tableau_. any one of his three pictures will serve as an example. his portrait of a girl in blue i cannot praise, not because i do not admire it, but because mr. maccoll, the art critic of the _spectator_, our ablest art critic, himself a painter and a painter of talent, has declared it to be superior to a romney. i will quote his words: "the word masterpiece is not to be lightly used, but when we stand before this picture it is difficult to think of any collection in which it would look amiss, or fail to hold its own. if we talk of english masters, romney is the name that most naturally suggests itself, because in the bright clear face and brown hair and large simplicity of presentment, there is a good deal to recall that painter. but romney's colour would look cheap beside this, and his drawing conventional in observation, however big in style." to go one better than this, i should have to say the picture was as good as velasquez, and to simply endorse mr. maccoll's words would be a second-hand sort of criticism to which i am not accustomed. besides, to do so would be to express nothing of my own personal sensations in regard to this picture. so i will say at once that i do not understand the introduction of romney's name into the argument. if comparison there must be, surely mr. watts would furnish one more appropriate. both in the seeing and in the execution the portrait seems nearer to mr. watts than to romney. of romney's gaiety there is no trace in mr. steer's picture. the girl sits in a light wooden arm-chair--her arm stretched in front of her, the hands held between her knees--looking out of the picture somewhat stolidly. the lady hamilton mood was an exaggerated mood, but there is something of it in every portrait at all characteristic of our great eighteenth-century artist. the portrait exhibited in this year's show of old masters in the academy will do--the lady who walks forward, her hands held in front of her bosom, the fingers pressed together, the white dress floating from the hips, the white brought down with a yellow glaze. i do not think that we find either that gaiety or those glazes in mr. steer. from many a romney the cleaner has removed an outer skin, but i am not speaking of those pictures. but if i see very little romney in steer's picture, i am thankful that i see at least very rare distinction in the figuration of a beautiful and decorative ideal--a girl in blue sitting with her back to an open window, full of the blue night, and on the other side the grey blind, yellowing slightly under the glare of the lamp. i appreciate the very remarkable and beautiful compromise between portrait-painting and decoration. i see rare distinction (we must not be afraid of the word distinction in speaking of mr. steer) in his choice of what to draw. the colour scheme is well maintained, somewhat in the manner of mr. watts, but neither the blue of the dress nor the blue of the night is intrinsically beautiful, and we have only to think of the blues that whistler or manet would have found to understand how deficient they are. the drawing of the face is neither a synthesis, nor is it intimately characteristic of the model: it is simply rudimentary. a round girlish face with a curled mouth and an ugly shadow which does not express the nose. the shoulders are there, that we are told, but the anatomies are wanting, and the body is without its natural thickness. nor is the drawing more explicit in its exterior lines than it is in its inner. there is hardly an arm in that sleeve; the elbow would be difficult to find, and the construction of the waist and hips is uncertain; the drawing does not speak like mr. sargent's. look across the room at his portrait of a lady in white satin and you will see there a shadow, so exact, so precise, so well understood, that the width of the body is placed beyond doubt. but the most radical fault in the portrait i have yet to point out; it is lacking in atmosphere. there is none between us and the girl, hardly any between the girl's head and the wall. the lamp-light effect is conveyed by what mr. maccoll would perhaps call a symbol, by the shadow of the girl's head. we look in vain for transparent darknesses, lights surrounded by shadows, transposition of tones, and the aspect of things; the girl sits in a full diffused light, and were it not for the shadow on the wall and the shadow cast by the nose, she might be sitting in a conservatory. speaking of another picture by mr. steer, "boulogne sands", mr. maccoll says: "the children playing, the holiday encampment of the bathers' tents, the glint of people flaunting themselves like flags, the dazzle of sand and sea, and over and through it all the chattering lights of noon." i seize upon the phrase, "the people flaunting themselves like flags." the simile is a pretty one, and what suggested it to the writer is the detached colour in the picture; and the colours are detached because there is no atmosphere to bind them together; there are no attenuations, transpositions of tone--in a word, none of those combinations of light and shade which make _une atmosphère de tableau_. and mr. steer's picture is merely an instance of a general tendency which for the last twenty years has widened the gulf between modern and ancient painting. it was manet who first suggested _la peinture claire_, and his suggestion has been developed by roll, monet, and others, until oil-painting has become little more than a sheet of white paper slightly tinted. values have been diverted from their original mission, which was to build up _une atmosphère de tableau_, and now every value and colour finely observed seem to have for mission the abolition of chiaroscuro. without atmosphere painting becomes a mosaic, and mr. maccoll seems prepared to defend this return to archaic formulas. this is what he says: "the sky of the sea-beach, for example, if it be taken as representing form and texture, is ridiculous; it is like something rough and chippy, and if the suggestion gets too much in the way the method has overshot its mark. its mark is to express by a symbol the vivid life in the sky-colour, the sea-colour, and the sand-colour, and it is doubtful if the richness and subtlety of those colours can be conveyed in any other way." here i fail altogether to understand. if the sky's beauty can be expressed by a symbol, why cannot the beauty of men and women be expressed in the same way? how the infinities of aërial perspective can be expressed by a symbol, i have no slightest notion; nor do i think that mr. maccoll has. in striving to excuse deficiencies in a painter whose very real and loyal talent we both admire, he has allowed his pen to run into dangerous sophistries. "the matter of handling," he continues, "is then a moot point--a question of temperament." is this so? that some men are born with a special aptitude for handling colour as other men are born with a special sense of proportions is undeniable; but mr. maccoll's thought goes further than this barren platitude, and if he means, as i think he does, that the faculty of handling is more instinctive than that of drawing, i should like to point out to him that handling did not become a merely personal caprice until the present century. a collection of ancient pictures does not present such endless experimentation with the material as a collection of modern pictures. rubens, hals, velasquez, and gainsborough do not contradict each other so violently regarding their use of the material as do watts, leighton, millais, and orchardson. in the nineteenth century no one has made such beautiful use of the material as manet and whistler, and we find these two painters using it respectively exactly like hals and velasquez. it would therefore seem that those who excel in the use of paint are agreed as to the handling of it, just as all good dancers are agreed as to the step. but, though all good dancers dance the same step, each brings into his practice of it an individuality of movement and sense of rhythm sufficient to prevent it from becoming mechanical. the ancient painters relied on differences of feeling and seeing for originality rather than on eccentric handling of colour; and all these extraordinary executions which we meet in every exhibition of modern pictures are in truth no more than frantic efforts either to escape from the thraldom of a bad primary education, or attempts to disguise ignorance in fantastic formulas. that which cannot be referred back to the classics is not right, and i at least know not where to look among the acknowledged masters for justification for mr. steer's jagged brushwork. mr. walter sickert, whose temperament is more irresponsible, is nevertheless content within the traditions of oil-painting. he exhibits two portraits, both very clever and neither satisfactory, for neither are carried beyond the salient lines of character. nature has gifted mr. sickert with a keen hatred of the commonplace; his vision of life is at once complex and fragmentary, his command on drawing slow and uncertain, his rendering therefore as spasmodic as a poem by browning. he picks up the connecting links with difficulty, and even his most complete work is full of omissions. the defect--for it is a defect--is by no means so fatal in the art-value of a painting as the futile explanations so dearly beloved by the ignorant. manet was to the end the victim of man's natural dislike of ellipses, and mr. walter sickert is suffering the same fate. still, even the most remote intelligence should be able to gather something of the merit of the portrait of miss minnie cunningham. how well she is in that long red frock--a vermilion silhouette on a rich brown background! i should be still more pleased if the vermilion had been slightly broken with yellow ochre; but then, at heart, i am no more than _un vieux classique_. the edges of the vermilion hat are lightened where it receives the glare of the foot-lights; and the face does not suffer from the red. it is as light, as pretty, as suggestive as may be. the thinness of the hand and wrist is well insisted upon, and the trip of the legs, just before she turns, realises, and in a manner i have not seen elsewhere, the enigma of the artificial life of the stage. the aestheticism of the glasgow school, of which we have heard so much lately, is identical with that of the new english art club, and the two societies are in a measure affiliated. nearly all the members of the glasgow school are members of the new english art club, and it is regrettable that they do not unite and give us an exhibition that would fairly stare the academy out of countenance. among the glasgow painters the most prominent and valid talent is mr. guthrie's. his achievements are more considerable and more personal; and he seems to approach very near to a full expression of the pictorial aspirations of his generation. years ago his name was made known to me by a portrait of singular beauty; an oasis it was in a barren and bitter desert of salon pictures. since then he has adopted a different and better method of painting; and an excellent example of his present style is his portrait of miss spencer, a lady in a mauve gown. the slightness of the intention may be urged against the picture; it is no more than a charming decoration faintly flushed with life. but in his management of the mauve mr. guthrie achieved quite a little triumph: and the foreground, which is a very thin grey passed over a dark ground, is delicious, and the placing of the signature is in the right place. most artists sign their pictures in the same place. but the signature should take a different place in every picture, for in every picture there is one and only one right place for the signature; and the true artist never fails to find the place which his work has chosen and consecrated for his name. i confess myself to be a natural and instinctive admirer of mr. guthrie's talent. his picture, "midsummer", exhibited at liverpool, charmed me. turning to my notes i find this description of it: "a garden in the summer's very moment of complete efflorescence; a bower of limpid green, here and there interwoven with red flowers. and three ladies are there with their tiny japanese tea-table. one dress--that on the left--is white, like a lily, drenched with green shadows; the dress on the right is a purple, beautiful as the depth of foxglove bells, a delicate and yet a full sensation of the beauty of modern life, from which all grossness has been omitted--a picture for which i think corot would have had a good word to say." in the same exhibition there was a pastel by mr. guthrie, which quite enchanted me with its natural, almost naïve, grace. turning to my notes i extract the following lines: "a lady seated on a light chair, her body in profile, her face turned towards the spectator; she wears a dress with red stripes. one hand hanging by her side, the other hand holding open a flame-coloured fan; and it is this that makes the picture. the feet laid one over the other. the face, a mere indication; and for the hair, charcoal, rubbed and then heightened by two or three touches of the rich black of pastel-chalk. a delicate, a precious thing, rich in memories of watteau and whistler, of boudoir inspiration, and whose destination is clearly the sitting-room of a dilettante bachelor." mr. henry, another prominent member of the glasgow school, exhibited a portrait of a lady in a straw hat--a rich and beautiful piece of painting, somewhat "made up" and over-modelled, still a piece of painting that one would like to possess. mr. hornell's celebrated "midsummer", the detestation of aldermen, was there too. imagine the picture cards, the ten of diamonds, and the eight of hearts shuffled rapidly upon a table covered with a persian tablecloth. to ignore what are known as values seems to be the first principle of the glasgow school. hence a crude and discordant coloration without depth or richness. hence an absence of light and the mystery of aërial perspective. but i have spoken very fully on this subject elsewhere. fifteen years ago it was customary to speak slightingly of the old masters, and it was thought that their mistakes could be easily rectified. their dark skies and black foregrounds hold their own against all monet's cleverness, and it has begun to be suspected that even if nature be industriously and accurately copied in the fields, the result is not always a picture. the palette gives the value of the grass and of the trees, but, alas, not of the sky-the sky is higher in tone than the palette can go; the painter therefore gets a false value. hence the tendency among the _plein airists_ to leave out the sky or to do with as little sky as possible. a little reef is sufficient to bring about a great shipwreck; a generation has wasted half its life, and the old masters are again becoming the fashion. mr. furse seems to be deeply impressed with the truth of the _new_ aestheticism. and he has succeeded within the limits of a tiny panel, a slight but charming intention. "the great cloud" rolls over a strip of lowland, lowering in a vast imperial whiteness, vague and shadowy as sleep or death. ruysdael would have stopped for a moment to watch it. but its lyrical lilt would trouble a mind that could only think in prose; shelley would like it better, and most certainly it would not fail to recall to his mind his own immortal verses-- "i am the daughter of earth and water, and the nursling of the sky; i pass through the pores of ocean and shores, i change, but i cannot die." what will become of our young artists and their aspirations is a tale that time will unfold gradually, and for the larger part of its surprises we shall have to wait ten years. in ten years many of these aesthetes will have become common academicians, working for the villas and perambulators of numerous families. many will have disappeared for ever, some may be resurrected two generations hence, may be raised from the dead like mr. brabazon, our modern lazarus-- "lazare allait mourir une seconds fois,"-- or perchance to sleep for ever in sir joshua's bosom. that a place will be found there for mr. brabazon is one of the articles of faith of the younger generation. mr. brabazon is described as an amateur, and the epithet is marvellously appropriate; no one--not even the great masters--deserved it better. the love of a long life is in those water-colours--they are all love; out of love they have grown, in its light they have flourished, and they have been made lovely with love. in a time of slushy david coxes, mr. brabazon's eyes were strangely his own. even then he saw nature hardly explained at all--films of flowing colour transparent as rose-leaves, the lake's blue, and the white clouds curling above the line of hills--a sense of colour and a sense of distance, that was all, and he had the genius to remain within the limitations of his nature. and, with the persistency of true genius, mr. brabazon painted, with a flowing brush, rose-leaf water-colours, unmindful of the long indifference of two generations, until it happened that the present generation, with its love of slight things, came upon this undiscovered genius. it has hailed him as master, and has dragged him into the popularity of a special exhibition of his work at the goupil galleries. and it was inevitable that the present young men should discover mr. brabazon: for in discovering him, they were discovering themselves--his art is no more than a curious anticipation of the artistic ideal of to-day. the sketch he exhibits at the new english art club is a singularly beautiful tint of rose, spread with delicate grace over the paper. a little less, and there would be nothing; but a little beauty has always seemed to me preferable to a great deal of ugliness. and what is true about one is true about nearly all his drawings. we find in them always an harmonious colour contrast, and very rarely anything more. sometimes there are those evanescent gradations of colour which are the lordship and signature of the colourist, and when _le ton local_ is carried through the picture, through the deepest shadows as through the highest lights, when we find it persisting everywhere, as we do in no. , "lake maggiore", we feel in our souls the joy that comes of perfect beauty. but too frequently mr. brabazon's colour is restricted to an effective contrast; he often skips a great many notes, touching the extremes of the octave with certainty and with grace. but it is right that we should make a little fuss over mr. brabazon; for though this work is slight, it is an accomplishment--he has indubitably achieved a something, however little that something may be; and when art is disappearing in the destroying waters of civilisation, we may catch at straws. beyond colour--and even in colour his limitations are marked--mr. brabazon cannot go. he entered st. mark's, and of the delicacy of ornamentation, of the balance of the architecture, he saw nothing; neither the tracery of carven column nor the aërial perspective of the groined arches. it was his genius not to see these things--to leave out the drawing is better than to fumble with it, and all his life he has done this; and though we may say that a water-colour with the drawing left out is a very slight thing, we cannot fail to perceive that these sketches, though less than sonnets or ballades, or even rondeaus or rondels--at most they are triolets--are akin to the masters, however distant the relationship. i have not told you about the very serious progress that mr. george thompson has made since the last exhibition; i have not described his two admirable pictures; nor mentioned mr. linder's landscape, nor mr. buxton knight's "haymaking meadows", nor mr. christie's pretty picture "a may's frolic," nor mr. maccoll's "donkey race". i have omitted much that it would have been a pleasure to praise; for my intention was not to write a guide to the exhibition, but to interpret some of the characteristics of the young generation. the new english art club is very typical of this end of the century. it is young, it is interesting, it is intelligent, it is emotional, it is cosmopolitan--not the bouillon duval cosmopolitanism of the newlyn school, but rather an agreeable assimilation of the montmartre café of fifteen years ago. art has fallen in france, and the new english seems to me like a seed blown over-sea from a ruined garden. it has caught english root, and already english colour and fragrance are in the flower. a frail flower; but, frail or strong, it is all we have of art in the present generation. it is slight, and so most typical; for, surely, no age was ever so slight in its art as ours? as the century runs on it becomes more and more slight and more and more intelligent. a sheet of whatman's faintly flushed with a rose-tint, a few stray verses characterised with a few imperfect rhymes and a wrong accent, are sufficient foundation for two considerable reputations. the education of the younger generation is marvellous; its brains are excellent; it seems to be lacking in nothing except guts. as education spreads guts disappear, and that is the most serious word i have to say. without thinking of those great times when men lived in the giddiness and the exultation of a constant creation--when a day was sufficient for rubens to paint the "kermesse" thirteen days to paint the "mages", even or eight to paint the "communion de st. françois d'assise"--and blotting from our mind the fabulous production of tintoretto and veronese, let us merely remember that thirty years ago millais painted a beautiful picture every year until marriage and its consequences brought his art to a sudden close. one year it was "autumn leaves", the following year it was "st. agnes' eve", and behind these pictures there were at least ten masterpieces--"the orchard", "the rainbow", "mariana in the moated grange", "ophelia", etc. millais is far behind veronese and tintoretto in magnificent excellence and extraordinary rapidity of production; but is not the new english art club even as far behind the excellence and fertility of production of thirty years ago? a great artist. we have heard the words "great artist" used so often and so carelessly that their tremendous significance escapes. the present is a time when it is necessary to consider the meaning, latent and manifest, of the words, for we are about to look on the drawings of the late charles keene. in many the words evoke the idea of huge canvases in which historical incidents are depicted, conquerors on black horses covered with gold trappings, or else figures of christ, or else the agonies of martyrs. the portrayal of angels is considered by the populace to be especially imaginative, and all who affect such subjects are at least in their day termed great artists. but the words are capable of a less vulgar interpretation. to the select few the great artist is he who is most racy of his native soil, he who has most persistently cultivated his talent in one direction, and in one direction only, he who has repeated himself most often, he who has lived upon himself the most avidly. in art, eclecticism means loss of character, and character is everything in art. i do not mean by character personal idiosyncrasies; i mean racial and territorial characteristics. of personal idiosyncrasy we have enough and to spare. indeed, it has come to be accepted almost as an axiom that it does not matter much how badly you paint, provided you do not paint badly like anybody else. but instead of noisy idiosyncrasy we want the calm of national character in our art. a national character can only be acquired by remaining at home and saturating ourselves in the spirit of our land until it oozes from our pens and pencils in every slightest word, in every slightest touch. our lives should be one long sacrifice for this one thing--national character. foreign travel should be eschewed, we should turn our eyes from paris and rome and fix them on our own fields; we should strive to remain ignorant, making our lives mole-like, burrowing only in our own parish soil. there are no universities in art, but there are village schools; each of us should choose his master, imitate him humbly, striving to continue the tradition. and while labouring thus humbly, rather as handicraftsmen than as artists, our personality will gradually begin to appear in our work, not the weak febrile idiosyncrasy which lights a few hours of the artist's youth, but a steady flame nourished by the rich oil of excellent lessons. if the work is good, very little personality is required. are the individual temperaments of terburg, metzu, and peter de hoogh very strikingly exhibited in their pictures? the paragraph i have just written will seem like a digression to the careless reader, but he who has read carefully, or will take the trouble to glance back, will not fail to see, that although in appearance digressive, it is a strict and accurate comment on charles keene, and the circumstances in which his art was produced. charles keene never sought after originality; on the contrary, he began by humbly imitating john leech, the inventor of the method. his earliest drawings (few if any of them are exhibited in the present collection) were hardly distinguishable from leech's. he continued the tradition humbly, and originality stole upon him unawares. charles keene was not an erudite, he thought of very little except his own talent and the various aspects of english life which he had the power of depicting; but he knew thoroughly well the capacities of his talent, the direction in which it could be developed, and his whole life was devoted to its cultivation. he affected neither a knowledge of literature nor of continental art; he lived in england and for england, content to tell the story of his own country and the age he lived in; in a word, he worked and lived as did the dutchmen of . he lived pure of all foreign influence; no man's art was ever so purely english as keene's; even the great dutchmen themselves were not more dutch than keene was english, and the result is often hardly less surprising. to look at some of these drawings and not think of the dutchmen is impossible, for when we are most english we are most dutch--our art came from holland. these drawings are dutch in the strange simplicity and directness of intention; they are dutch in their oblivion to all interests except those of good drawing; they are dutch in the beautiful quality of the workmanship. examine the rich, simple drawing of that long coat or the side of that cab, and say if there is not something of the quality of a terburg. terburg is simple as a page of seventeenth-century prose; and in keene there is the same deep, rich, classic simplicity. the material is different, but the feeling is the same. i might, of course, say jan steen; and is it not certain that both terburg and steen, working under the same conditions, would not have produced drawings very like keene's? and now, looking through the material deep into the heart of the thing, is it a paradox to say that no. is in feeling and quality of workmanship a dutch picture of the best time? the scene depicted is the honeymoon. the young wife sits by an open window full of sunlight, and the curtains likewise are drenched in the pure white light. how tranquil she is, how passive in her beautiful animal life! no complex passion stirs in that flesh; instinct drowses in her just as in an animal. with what animal passivity she looks up in her husband's face! look at that peaceful face, that high forehead, how clearly conceived and how complete is the rendering! how slight the means, how extraordinary the result! the sunlight floods the sweet face so exquisitively stupid, and her soul, and the room, and the very conditions of life of these people are revealed to us. and now, in a very rough and fragmentary fashion, hardly attempting more than a hurried transcription of my notes, i will call attention to some three or four drawings which especially arrested my attention. in no. we have a cab seen in wonderful perspective; the hind wheel is the nearest point, and in extraordinarily accurate proportion the vehicle and the animal attached to it go up the paper. the cabman turns half round to address some observation to the "fare", an old gentleman, who is about to step in. the roof of the cab cuts the body of the cabman, composing the picture in a most original and striking manner. the panels of the cab are filled in with simple straight lines, but how beautifully graduated are these lines, how much they are made to say! above all, the hesitating movement of the old gentleman--how the exact moment has been caught! and the treatment of the long coat, how broad, how certain--how well the artist has said exactly what he wanted to say! another very fine drawing is no. . the fat farmer stands so thoroughly well in his daily habit; the great stomach, how well it is drawn, and the short legs are part and parcel of the stomach. the man is redolent of turnip-fields and rick-yards; all the life of the fields is upon him. and the long parson, clearly from the university, how well he clasps his hands and how the very soul of the man is expressed in the gesture! no. is very wonderful. what movement there is in the skirts of the fat woman, and the legs of the vendor of penny toys! are they not the very legs that the gutter breeds? no. : a big, bluff artist, deep-seated amid the ferns and grasses. the big, bearded man, who thinks of nothing but his art, who lives in it, who would not be thin because fat enables him to sit longer out of doors, the man who will not even turn round on his camp-stool to see the woman who is speaking to him; we have all known that man, but to me that man never really existed until i looked on this drawing. and the treatment of the trees that make the background! a few touches of the pencil, and how hot and alive the place is with sunlight! but perhaps the most wonderful drawing in the entire collection is no. . never did keene show greater mastery over his material. in this drawing every line of the black-lead pencil is more eloquent than demosthenes' most eloquent period. the roll and the lurch of the vessel, the tumult of waves and wind, the mental and physical condition of the passengers, all are given as nothing in this world could give them except that magic pencil. the figure, the man that the wind blows out of the picture, his hat about to leave his head, is not he really on board in a gale? did a frock coat flap out in the wind so well before? and do not the attitudes of the two women leaning over the side represent their suffering? the man who is not sea-sick sits, his legs stretched out, his hands thrust into his pockets, his face sunk on his breast, his hat crushed over his eyes. his pea-jacket, how well drawn! and can we not distinguish the difference between its cloth and the cloth of the frock of the city merchant, who watches with such a woful gaze the progress of the gathering wave? the weight of the wave is indicated with a few straight lines, and, strangely enough, only very slightly varied are the lines which give the very sensation of the merchant's thin frock coat made in the shop of a fashionable tailor. it has been said that keene could not draw a lady or a gentleman. why not add that he was neither a tennis player nor a pigeon shot, a waltzer nor an accomplished french scholar? the same terrible indictment has been preferred against dickens, and mr. henry james says that balzac failed to prove he was a gentleman. it might be well to remind mr. james that the artist who would avoid the fashion plate would do well to turn to the coster rather than the duke for inspiration. keene's genius saved him from the drawing-room, never allowing his gaze to wander from where english characteristics may be gathered most plentifully--the middle and lower classes. i find in my notes mention of other drawings quite as wonderful as those i have spoken of, but space only remains to give some hint of keene's place among draughtsmen. as a humorist he was certainly thin compared to leech; as a satirist he was certainly feeble compared to gavarni; in dramatic, not to say imaginative, qualities he cannot be spoken of in the same breath as cruikshank; but as an artist was he not their superior? nationality in art. in looking through a collection of reynolds, gainsboroughs, dobsons, morlands, we are moved by something more than the artistic beauty of the pictures. seeing that peaceful farmyard by morland, a dim remote life, a haunting in the blood, rises to the surface of the brain, like a water-flower or weed brought by a sudden current into sight of the passing sky. seeing that quiet man talking with his swineherd, we are mysteriously attracted, and are perplexed as by a memory; we grow aware of his house and wife, and though these things passed away more than a hundred years ago, we know them all. that other picture, "partridge shooting", by stubbs, how familiar and how intimate it is to us! and those days seem to go back and back into long ago, beyond childhood into infancy. the life of the picture goes back into the life that we heard from our father's, our grandfather's lips, a life of reminiscence and little legend, the end of which passed like a wraith across the dawn of our lives. for we need not be very old to remember the squire ramming the wads home and calling to the setter that is too eagerly pressing forward the pointer in the turnips. a man of fifty can remember seeing the mail coach swing round the curve of the wide, smooth coach roads; and a man of forty, going by road to the derby, and the block which came seven miles from epsom. and so do these pictures take us to the heart of england, to the heart of our life, which is england, to that great circumstance which preceded our birth, and which gave not merely flesh and blood, but the minds that are thinking now. we have only to pass through a doorway to see sublimer works of art. but though troyon and courbet were greater artists than morland, morland whispers something that is beyond art, beyond even our present life; as a shell with the sound of the sea, these canvases are murmurous with the under life. that young lady so charmingly dressed in white, she who holds a rose in her hand, is miss kitty calcraft, by romney. do we not seem to know her? we ask when we met her, and where we spoke to her; and that mystic when and where seem more real than the moment of present life. the present crowd of living folk fades from us, and we half believe, half know, that she spoke to us one evening on that terrace overlooking those wide pasture lands. we see the happy light of her eyes and hear the joy of her voice, and they stir in us all the impulses of race, of kith and kin. romney is often crude, but the worst that can be urged against this portrait is that it is superficial. but what charm and grace there is in its superficiality! romney was aware of the grace and charm of the young girl as she sat before him in her white dress: he saw her as a flower; and in fluent, agreeable, well-bred and cultivated speech he has talked to us about her. the portrait has the charm of rare and exquisite conversation; we float in a tide of sensation. he was only aware of her white dress, her pretty arm and hand laid on her soft lap. but while we merely see kitty, we perceive and think of gainsborough's portrait of miss willoughby. we realise her in other circumstances, away from the beautiful blue trees under which he has so happily placed her; we can see her receiving visitors on the terrace, or leaning over the balustrade looking down the valley, wondering why life has come to her so sadly. we see her in her eighteenth-century drawing-room amid chippendale and adams furniture, reading an old novel. no one ever cared much about miss willoughby. there is little sensuous charm in her long narrow face, in her hair falling in ringlets over her shoulders; and we are sure that she often reflected on the bitterness of life. but kitty never looked into the heart of things: when life coincided with her desires, she laughed and was glad; when things, to use her own words, "went wrong", she wept. and in these two portraits we read the stories of the painters' souls. but the question of nationality, of country, in art detains us. beautiful beyond compare is the art of tourguenieff; but how much more intimate, how much deeper is the delight that a russian finds in his novels than ours! however truly the purely artistic qualities may touch us--great art is universal--we miss our native land and our race in tourguenieff. we find both in dickens, in thackeray. miss austen and fielding have little else; and vague though fielding may be in form, still his pages are england, and they whisper the life we inherited from long ago. the superb rembrandt in the next room, the gentleman with a hawk, lent by the duke of westminster, is a human revelation. we only perceive in it the charm, the adorableness, the eternal adventure of youth; nationality disappears in the universal. this beautiful portrait was painted in , a year after the "night-watch". the date of the portrait of the lady with the fan is not given. they differ widely in style; the portrait of the man is ten years in advance of the portrait of the woman; it seems to approach very closely, to touch on, the great style which he attained in , the year when he painted the syndics. of his early style, thin, crabbed, and yellow, there is hardly a trace in the portrait of the man with the hawk; it is almost a complete emancipation, yet it would be rash to say that the lady with the fan is an early work, painted in the days of the lesson in anatomy. in rembrandt's work we find sudden advancements towards the grand final style, and these are immediately followed by hasty returnings to the hard, dry, and essentially unromantic manner of . the portrait of the young man with the hawk was painted in middle life. but if it contains something more than the suggestion of the qualities which twenty years later he developed and perfected for the admiration of all time, if the immortal flower of rembrandt's genius was still unblown, this is blossom prematurely breaking. the young man is shown upon darkness like a vision: the face is illuminated mysteriously, the brush-work is large and firm, the paint is substantial without being heavy, the canvas is smoky, an unnatural and yet a real atmosphere surrounds the head. the black velvet cap strikes in sharp relief against the background, which lightens to a grey-green about the head. the modelling of the face is extraordinarily large and simple, and yet without omissions; we have in this portrait a perfect example of the art of being precise without being small. the young man is a young nobleman. he stands before us looking at us, and yet his eyes are not fixed; his moustache is golden and frizzled; his cheeks are coloured slightly; but the picture is practically made of a few greys and greens, and white, slightly tinted with bitumen; yet we do not feel, or feel very little, any lack of colouring matter. rembrandt realised in the romantic young man his ideal of young masculine beauty. truly a beautiful work, neither the boyhood nor the manhood, but the adolescence of rembrandt's genius. between the portrait of the lady with a fan and sir joshua's portrait of miss frances crewe it would be permissible to hesitate; but to hesitate even for one instant between miss crewe and the young man with the hawk would be unpardonable. sir joshua painted as he thought; he had an instinctive sense of decoration and a deep and tender feeling for beauty; he was especially sensible to the agreeable and gay aspect of things; his eyes at once seize the pleasing and picturesque contour, and his mind divined a charming and effective scheme of colour. he saw character too; all the surface characteristics of his model were plain to him, and when he was so minded he painted with rare intelligence and insight. he did not see deeply, but he saw clearly. gainsborough did not see so clearly, nor was his hand as prompt to express his vision as sir joshua's; but gainsborough saw further, for he felt more keenly and more profoundly. but light indeed were their minds compared with rembrandt's. rembrandt was a great visionary; to him the outsides of things were symbols of elemental truths, which he expressed in a form mighty as the truths themselves. there is no question of comparison between him on one hand and reynolds and gainsborough on the other. yet we should hesitate to destroy our reynolds and gainsboroughs, to preserve any works of art, however beautiful. were we to keep what our reason told us was the greatest, we should feel as one who surrendered england to save the rest of the world, or as a parent who sacrificed his children to save a million men from the scaffold. sex in art. woman's nature is more facile and fluent than man's. women do things more easily than men, but they do not penetrate below the surface, and if they attempt to do so the attempt is but a clumsy masquerade in unbecoming costume. in their own costume they have succeeded as queens, courtesans, and actresses, but in the higher arts, in painting, in music, and literature, their achievements are slight indeed--best when confined to the arrangements of themes invented by men--amiable transpositions suitable to boudoirs and fans. i have heard that some women hold that the mission of their sex extends beyond the boudoir and the nursery. it is certainly not within my province to discuss so important a question, but i think it is clear that all that is best in woman's art is done within the limits i have mentioned. this conclusion is well-nigh forced upon us when we consider what would mean the withdrawal of all that women have done in art. the world would certainly be the poorer by some half-dozen charming novels, by a few charming poems and sketches in oil and water-colour; but it cannot be maintained, at least not seriously, that if these charming triflings were withdrawn there would remain any gap in the world's art to be filled up. women have created nothing, they have carried the art of men across their fans charmingly, with exquisite taste, delicacy, and subtlety of feeling, and they have hideously and most mournfully parodied the art of men. george eliot is one in whom sex seems to have hesitated, and this unfortunate hesitation was afterwards intensified by unhappy circumstances. she was one of those women who so entirely mistook her vocation as to attempt to think, and really if she had assumed the dress and the duties of a policeman, her failure could hardly have been more complete. jane austen, on the contrary, adventured in no such dismal masquerade; she was a nice maiden lady, gifted with a bright clear intelligence, diversified with the charms of light wit and fancy, and as she was content to be in art what she was in nature, her books live, while those of her ponderous rival are being very rapidly forgotten. "romola" and "daniel deronda" are dead beyond hope of resurrection; "the mill on the floss", being more feminine, still lives, even though its destiny is to be forgotten when "pride and prejudice" is remembered. sex is as important an element in a work of art as it is in life; all art that lives is full of sex. there is sex in "pride and prejudice"; "jane eyre" and "aurora leigh" are full of sex; "romola", "daniel deronda", and "adam bede" are sexless, and therefore lifeless. there is very little sex in george sand's works, and they, too, have gone the way of sexless things. when i say that all art that lives is full of sex, i do not mean that the artist must have led a profligate life; i mean, indeed, the very opposite. george sand's life was notoriously profligate, and her books tell the tale. i mean by sex that concentrated essence of life which the great artist jealously reserves for his art, and through which it pulsates. shelley deserted his wife, but his thoughts never wandered far from mary. dante, according to recent discoveries, led a profligate life, while adoring beatrice through interminable cantos. so profligacy is clearly not the word i want. i think that gallantry expresses my meaning better. the great artist and don juan are irreparably antagonistic; one cannot contain the other. notwithstanding all the novels that have been written to prove the contrary, it is certain that woman occupies but a small place in the life of an artist. she is never more than a charm, a relaxation, in his life; and even when he strains her to his bosom, oceans are between them. profligate, i am afraid, history proves the artist sometimes to have been, but his profligacy is only ephemeral and circumstantial; what is abiding in him is chastity of mind, though not always of body; his whole mind is given to his art, and all vague philanderings and sentimental musings are unknown to him; the women he knows and perceives are only food for it, and have no share in his mental life. and it is just because man can raise himself above the sentimental cravings of natural affection that his art is so infinitely higher than woman's art. "man's love is from man's life a thing apart"--you know the quotation from byron, "tis woman's whole existence." the natural affections fill a woman's whole life, and her art is only so much sighing and gossiping about them. very delightful and charming gossiping it often is--full of a sweetness and tenderness which we could not well spare, but always without force or dignity. in her art woman is always in evening dress: there are flowers in her hair, and her fan waves to and fro, and she wishes to sigh in the ear of him who sits beside her. her mental nudeness is parallel with her low bodice, it is that and nothing more. she will make no sacrifice for her art; she will not tell the truth about herself as frankly as jean-jacques, nor will she observe life from the outside with the grave impersonal vision of flaubert. in music women have done nothing, and in painting their achievement has been almost as slight. it is only in the inferior art--the art of acting--that women approach men. in that art it is not certain that they do not stand even higher. whatever women have done in painting has been done in france. england produces countless thousands of lady artists; twenty englishwomen paint for one frenchwoman, but we have not yet succeeded in producing two that compare with madame lebrun and madame berthe morisot. the only two englishwomen who have in painting come prominently before the public are angelica kauffman and lady butler. the first-named had the good fortune to live in the great age, and though her work is individually feeble, it is stamped with the charm of the tradition out of which it grew and was fashioned. moreover, she was content to remain a woman in her art. she imitated sir joshua reynolds to the best of her ability, and did all in her power to induce him to marry her. how she could have shown more wisdom it is difficult to see. lady butler was not so fortunate, either in the date of her birth, in her selection of a master, or her manner of imitating him. angelica imitated as a woman should. she carried the art of sir joshua across her fan; she arranged and adorned it with ribbons and sighs, and was content with such modest achievement. lady butler, however, thought she could do more than to sentimentalise with de neuville's soldiers. she adopted his method, and from this same standpoint tried to do better; her attitude towards him was the same as rosa bonheur's towards troyon; and the failure of lady butler was even greater than rosa bonheur's. but perhaps the best instance i could select to show how impossible it is for women to do more than to accept the themes invented by men, and to decorate and arrange them according to their pretty feminine fancies, is the collection of lady waterford's drawings now on exhibition at lady brownlow's house in carlton house terrace. lady waterford for many years--for more than a quarter of a century--has been spoken of as the one amateur of genius; and the greatest artists vied with each other as to which should pay the most extravagant homage to her talent. mr. watts seems to have distanced all competitors in praise of her, for in a letter of his quoted in the memoir prefixed to the catalogue, he says that she has exceeded all the great venetian masters. it was nice of mr. watts to write such a letter; it was very foolish of lady brownlow to print it in the catalogue, for it serves no purpose except to draw attention to the obvious deficiencies of originality in lady waterford's drawings. nearly all of them are remarkable for facile grouping; and the colour is rich, somewhat heavy, but generally harmonious; the drawing is painfully conventional; it would be impossible to find a hand, an arm, a face that has been tenderly observed and rendered with any personal feeling or passion. the cartoons are not better than any mediocre student of the beaux-arts could do--insipid parodies of the venetian--whom she excels, according to mr. watts. when lady waterford attempted no more than a decorative ring of children dancing in a richly coloured landscape, or a group of harvesters seen against a rich decorative sky, such a design as might be brought across a fan, her talent is seen to best advantage; it is a fluent and facile talent, strangely unoriginal, but always sustained by taste acquired by long study of the venetians, and by a superficial understanding of their genius. many times superior to lady waterford is miss armstrong--a lady in whose drawings of children we perceive just that light tenderness and fanciful imagination which is not of our sex. perhaps memory betrays me; it is a long while since i have seen miss armstrong's pastels, but my impression is that miss armstrong stands easily at the head of english lady artists--above mrs. swynnerton, whose resolute and distinguished talent was never more abundantly and strikingly manifested than in her picture entitled "midsummer", now hanging in the new gallery. "midsummer" is a fine piece of intellectual painting, but it proceeds merely from the brain; there is hardly anything of the painter's nature in it; there are no surprising admissions in it; the painter never stood back abashed and asked herself if she should have confessed so much, if she should have told the world so much of what was passing in her intimate soul and flesh. impersonality in art really means mediocrity. if you have nothing to tell about yourself, or if courage be lacking in you to tell the truth, you are not an artist. are women without souls, or is it that they dare not reveal their souls unadorned with the laces and ribbons of convention? their memoirs are a tissue of lies, suppressions, and half-truths. george sand must fain suppress all mention of her italian journey with musset, a true account of which would have been an immortal story; but of hypocritical hare-hearted allusions rousseau and casanova were not made; in their memoirs women never get further than some slight fingering of laces; and in their novels they are too subject to their own natures to attain the perfect and complete realisation of self, which the so-called impersonal method alone affords. women astonish us as much by their want of originality as they do by their extraordinary powers of assimilation. i am thinking now of the ladies who marry painters, and who, after a few years of married life, exhibit work identical in execution with that of their illustrious husbands--mrs. e. m. ward, madame fantin-latour, mrs. swan, mrs. alma-tadema. how interesting these households must be! immediately after breakfast husband and wife sit down at their easels. "let me mix a tone for you, dear," "i think i would put that up a little higher," etc. in a word, what manet used to call _la peinture à quatre mains_. nevertheless, among these well-intentioned ladies we find one artist of rare excellence--i mean madame lebrun. we all know her beautiful portrait of a woman walking forward, her hands in a muff. seeing the engraving from a distance we might take it for a romney; but when we approach, the quality of the painting visible through the engraving tells us that it belongs to the french school. in design the portrait is strangely like a romney; it is full of all that brightness and grace, and that feminine refinement, which is a distinguishing characteristic of his genius, and which was especially impressed on my memory by the portrait of the lady in the white dress walking forward, her hands in front of her, the slight fingers pressed one against the other, exhibited this year in the exhibition of old masters in the academy. but if we deny that the portrait of the lady with the muff affords testimony as to the sex of the painter, we must admit that none but a woman could have conceived the portrait which madame lebrun painted of herself and her little daughter. the painting may be somewhat dry and hard, it certainly betrays none of the fluid nervous tendernesses and graces of the female temperament; but surely none but a woman and a mother could have designed that original and expressive composition; it was a mother who found instinctively that touching and expressive movement--the mother's arms circled about her little daughter's waist, the little girl leaning forward, her face resting on her mother's shoulder. never before did artist epitomise in a gesture all the familiar affection and simple persuasive happiness of home; the very atmosphere of an embrace is in this picture. and in this picture the painter reveals herself to us in one of the intimate moments of her daily life, the tender, wistful moment when a mother receives her growing girl in her arms, the adolescent girl having run she knows not why to her mother. these two portraits, both in the louvre, are, i regret to say, the only pictures of madame lebrun that i am acquainted with. but i doubt if my admiration would be increased by a wider knowledge of her work. she seems to have said everything she had to say in these two pictures. madame lebrun painted well, but she invented nothing, she failed to make her own of any special manner of seeing and rendering things; she failed to create a style. only one woman did this, and that woman is madame morisot, and her pictures are the only pictures painted by a woman that could not be destroyed without creating a blank, a hiatus in the history of art. true that the hiatus would be slight-- insignificant if you will--but the insignificant is sometimes dear to us; and though nightingales, thrushes, and skylarks were to sing in king's bench walk, i should miss the individual chirp of the pretty sparrow. madame morisot's note is perhaps as insignificant as a sparrow's, but it is as unique and as individual a note. she has created a style, and has done so by investing her art with all her femininity; her art is no dull parody of ours: it is all womanhood--sweet and gracious, tender and wistful womanhood. her first pictures were painted under the influence of corot, and two of these early works were hung in the exhibition of her works held the other day at goupil's, boulevard montmartre. the more important was, i remember, a view of paris seen from a suburb--a green railing and two loitering nursemaids in the foreground, the middle of the picture filled with the city faintly seen and faintly glittering in the hour of the sun's decline, between four and six. it was no disagreeable or ridiculous parody of corot; it was corot feminised, corot reflected in a woman's soul, a woman's love of man's genius, a lake-reflected moon. but corot's influence did not endure. through her sister's marriage madame morisot came in contact with manet, and she was quick to recognise him as being the greatest artist that france had produced since delacroix. henceforth she never faltered in her allegiance to the genius of her great brother-in-law. true, that she attempted no more than to carry his art across her fan; but how adorably she did this! she got from him that handling out of which the colour flows joyous and bright as well-water, the handling that was necessary for the realisation of that dream of hers, a light world afloat in an irradiation--light trembling upon the shallows of artificial water, where swans and aquatic birds are plunging, and light skiffs are moored; light turning the summer trees to blue; light sleeping a soft and lucid sleep in the underwoods; light illumining the green summer of leaves where the diamond rain is still dripping; light transforming into jewellery the happy flight of bees and butterflies. her swans are not diagrams drawn upon the water, their whiteness appears and disappears in the trembling of the light; and the underwood, how warm and quiet it is, and penetrated with the life of the summer; and the yellow-painted skiff, how happy and how real! colours, tints of faint green and mauve passed lightly, a few branches indicated. truly, the art of manet _transporté en éventail_. a brush that writes rather than paints, that writes exquisite notes in the sweet seduction of a perfect epistolary style, notes written in a boudoir, notes of invitation, sometimes confessions of love, the whole feminine heart trembling as a hurt bird trembles in a man's hand. and here are yachts and blue water, the water full of the blueness of the sky; and the confusion of masts and rigging is perfectly indicated without tiresome explanation! the colour is deep and rich, for the values have been truly observed; and the pink house on the left is an exquisite note. no deep solutions, an art afloat and adrift upon the canvas, as a woman's life floats on the surface of life. "my sister-in-law would not have existed without me," i remember manet saying to me in one of the long days we spent together in the rue d'amsterdam. true, indeed, that she would not have existed without him; and yet she has something that he has not--the charm of an exquisite feminine fancy, the charm of her sex. madame morisot is the eighteenth century quick with the nineteenth; she is the nineteenth turning her eyes regretfully looking back on the eighteenth. chaplin parodied the eighteenth century; in madame morisot something of its gracious spirit naturally resides; she is eighteenth century especially in her drawings; they are fluent and flowing; nowhere do we detect a measurement taken, they are free of tricks--that is to say of ignorance assuming airs of learning. that red chalk drawing of a naked girl, how simple, loose, and unaffected, how purged of the odious erudition of the modern studio. and her precious and natural remembrance of the great century, with all its love of youth and the beauties of youthful lines, is especially noticeable in the red chalk drawing of the girl wearing a bonnet, the veil falling and hiding her beautiful eyes. as i stood lost in admiration of this drawing, i heard a rough voice behind me: "c'est bien beau, n'est pas?" it was claude monet. "yes, isn't it superb?" i answered. "i wonder how much they'll sell it for." "i'll soon find out that," said monet, and turning to the attendant he asked the question. "pour vous, sept cents cinquante francs." "c'est bien; il est à moi." this anecdote will give a better idea of the value of berthe morisot than seventy columns of mine or any other man's criticism. mr. steer's exhibition. . before sitting down to paint a landscape the artist must make up his mind whether he is going to use the trees, meadows, streams, and mountains before him as subject-matter for a decoration in the manner of the japanese, or whether he will take them as subject-matter for the expression of a human emotion in the manner of wilson and millet. i offer no opinion which is the higher and which is the lower road; they may be wide apart, they may draw very close together, they may overlap so that it is difficult to say along which the artist is going; but, speaking roughly, there are but two roads, and it is necessary that the artist should choose between them. but this point has been fully discussed elsewhere, and i only allude to it here because i wish to assure my readers that mr. steer's exhibition is not "folkestone at low tide" and "folkestone at high tide". in all the criticisms i have seen of the present exhibition it has been admitted that mr. steer takes a foremost place in what is known as the modern movement. i also noticed that it was admitted that mr. steer is a born artist. the expression, from constant use, has lost its true significance; yet to find another phrase that would express the idea more explicitly would be difficult; the born artist, meaning the man in whom feeling and expression are one. the growth of a work of art is as inexplicable as that of a flower. we know that there are men who feel deeply and who understand clearly what a work of art should be; but when they attempt to create, their efforts are abortive. their ideas, their desires, their intentions, their plans, are excellent; but the passage between the brain and the canvas, between the brain and the sheet of paper, is full of shipwrecking reefs, and the intentions of these men do not correspond in the least with their execution. noticing our blank faces, they explain their ideas in front of their works. they meant this, they meant that. inwardly we answer, "all you say is most interesting; but why didn't you put all that into your picture, into your novel?" then mr. steer is not an abortive genius, for his ideas do not come to utter shipwreck in the perilous passage; they often lose a spar or two, they sometimes appear in a more or less dismantled condition, but they retain their masts; they come in with some yards of canvas still set, and the severest criticism that can be passed on them is, "with a little better luck that would have been a very fine thing indeed." and not infrequently mr. steer's pictures correspond very closely with the mental conception in which they originated; sometimes little or nothing has been lost as the idea passed from the brain to the canvas, and it is on account of these pictures that we say that mr. steer is a born artist. this once granted, the question arises: is this born artist likewise a great artist--will he formulate his sensation, and give us a new manner of feeling and seeing, or will he merely succeed in painting some beautiful pictures when circumstances and the mood of the moment combine in his favour? this is a question which all who visit the exhibition of this artist's work, now on view in the goupil galleries, will ask themselves. they will ask if this be the furthest limit to which he may go, or if he will discover a style entirely his own which will enable him to convey all his sensation of life upon the canvas. that mr. steer's drawing does not suggest a future draughtsman seems to matter little, for we remember that colour, and not form, is the impulse that urges and inspires him. mr. steer draws well enough to take a high place if he can overcome more serious defects. his greatest peril seems to me to be an uncontrollable desire to paint in the style of the last man whose work has interested him. at one time it was only in his most unguarded moments that he could see a landscape otherwise than as monet saw it; a year or two later it was whistler who dictated certain schemes of colour, certain harmonious arrangements of black; and the most distressing symptom of all is that mr. brabazon could not hold an exhibition of some very nice tints of rose and blue without inspiring mr. steer to go and swish water-colour about in the same manner. mr. steer has the defect of his qualities; his perceptions are naïve: and just as he must have thought seven years ago that all modern landscape-painters must be more or less like monet, he must have thought last summer that all modern water-colour must be more or less like mr. brabazon. this is doubly unfortunate, because mr. steer is only good when he is steer, and nothing but steer. how much we should borrow, and how we should borrow, are questions which will agitate artists for all time. it is certain, however, that one of the most certain signs of genius is the power to take from others and to assimilate. how much did rubens take from titian? how much did mr. whistler take from the japanese? almost everything in mr. whistler already existed in art. in the national gallery the white stocking in the philip reminds us of the white stockings in the portrait of miss alexander. in the british museum we find the shadows that he transferred from rembrandt to his own etchings. degas took his drawing from ingres and his colour--that lovely brown!--from poussin. but, notwithstanding their vast borrowings, rubens is always rubens, whistler is always whistler, and degas is always degas. alexander took a good deal, too, but he too remained always alexander. we must conquer what we take. but what mr. steer takes often conquers him; he is often like one suffering from a weak digestion, he cannot assimilate. i must except, however, that very beautiful picture, "two yachts lying off cowes". under a deepening sky of mauve the yachts lie, their lights and rigging showing through the twilight. we may say that this picture owes something to mr. whistler; but the debt is not distressing; it does not strike the eye; it does not prevent us from seeing the picture--a very beautiful piece of decoration in a high key of colour--a picture which it would be difficult to find fault with. it is without fault; the intention of the artist was a beautiful one, and it has been completely rendered. i like quite as well "the casino, boulogne", the property, i note with some interest, of mr. humphry ward, art critic of the _times_. mr. humphry ward must write conventional commonplace, otherwise he could not remain art critic of the _times_, so it is pleasant to find that he is withal an excellent judge of a picture. the picture, i suppose, in a very remote and distant way, may be said to be in the style of wilson. again a successful assimilation. the buildings stand high up, they are piled high up in the picture, and a beautiful blue envelops sky, sea, and land. nos. and show mr. steer at his best: that beautiful blue, that beautiful mauve, is the optimism of painting. such colour is to the colourist what the drug is to the opium-eater: nothing matters, the world is behind us, and we dream on and on, lost in an infinity of suggestion. this quality, which, for want of a better expression, i call the optimism of painting, is a peculiar characteristic of mr. steer's work. we find it again in "children paddling". around the long breakwater the sea winds, filling the estuary, or perchance recedes, for the incoming tide is noisier; a delicious, happy, opium blue, the blue of oblivion.... paddling in the warm sea-water gives oblivion to those children. they forget their little worries in the sensation of sea and sand, as i forget mine in that dreamy blue which fades and deepens imperceptibly, like a flower from the intense heart to the delicate edge of the petals. the vague sea is drawn up behind the breakwater, and out of it the broad sky ascends solemnly in curves like palms. happy sensation of daylight; a flower-like afternoon; little children paddling; the world is behind them; they are as flowers, and are conscious only of the benedictive influences of sand and sea and sky. the exhibition contains nearly every description of work: full-length portraits in oil, life-size heads, eight-inch panels, and some half-dozen water-colours. a little girl in a starched white frock is a charming picture, and the large picture entitled "the sofa" is a most distinguished piece of work, full of true pictorial feeling. mr. steer is never common or vulgar; he is distinguished even when he fails. "a girl in a large hat" is a picture which became my property some three or four months ago. since then i have seen it every day, and i like it better and better. that hat is so well placed in the canvas; the expression of the face and body, are they not perfect? what an air of resignation, of pensiveness, this picture exhales! the jacket is done with a few touches, but they are sufficient, for they are in their right places. and the colour! hardly do you find any, and yet there is an effect of colour which few painters could attain when they had exhausted all the resources of the palette. claude monet. whether the pictures in the royal academy be bad or good, the journalist must describe them. the public goes to the academy, and the journalist must follow the traffic, like the omnibuses. but the public, the english public, does not go to the salon or to the champ de mars. why, then, should our newspapers waste space on the description of pictures which not one reader in fifty has seen or will see? i suppose the demon of actuality is answerable for the wasted columns, and the demon of habit for my yearly wanderings over deserts of cocoa-nut matting, under tropical skylights, in continual torment from glaring oil-paintings. of the days i have spent in those exhibitions, nothing remains but the memory of discomfort, and the sense of relief experienced on coming to a room in which there were no pictures. ah, the arm-chairs into which i slipped and the tapestries that rested my jaded eyes! ... so this year i resolved to break with habit and to visit neither the salon nor the champ de mars. an art critic i am, but surely independent of pictures--at least, of modern pictures; indeed, they stand between me and the interesting article ninety times in a hundred. only now and then do we meet a modern artist about whom we may rhapsodise, or at whom we may curse: claude monet is surely such an one. so i pricked up my ears when i heard there was an exhibition of his work at durand ruel's. i felt i was on the trail of an interesting article, and away i went. the first time i pondered and argued with myself. then i went with an intelligent lady, and was garrulous, explanatory, and theoretical; she listened, and said she would write out all i had said from her point of view. the third time i went with two artists. we were equally garrulous and argumentative, and with the result that we three left the exhibition more than ever confirmed in the truth of our opinions. i mention these facts, not, as the ill-natured might suppose, because it pleases me to write about my own sayings and doings, but because i believe my conduct to be typical of the conduct of hundreds of others in regard to the present exhibition in the rue laffitte; for, let this be said in monet's honour: every day artists from every country in europe go there by themselves, with their women friends, and with other artists, and every day since the exhibition opened, the galleries have been the scene of passionate discussion. my own position regarding monet is a peculiar one, and i give it for what it is worth. it is about eighteen years since i first made the acquaintance of this remarkable man. though at first shocked, i was soon convinced of his talent, and set myself about praising him as well as i knew how. but my prophesying was answered by scoffs, jeers, supercilious smiles. outside of the café of the nouvelle athènes, monet was a laughing-stock. manet was bad enough; but when it came to monet, words were inadequate to express sufficient contempt. a shrug of the shoulders or a pitying look, which clearly meant, "art thou most of madman or simpleton, or, maybe, impudent charlatan who would attract attention to himself by professing admiration for such eccentricity?" it was thus eighteen years ago; but revolution has changed depth to height, and monet is now looked upon as the creator of the art of landscape painting; before him nothing was, after him nothing can be, for he has said all things and made the advent of another painter impossible, inconceivable. he who could never do a right thing can now do no wrong one. canvases beside which the vaguest of mr. whistler's nocturnes are clear statements of plain fact, lilac-coloured canvases void of design or tone, or quality of paint, are accepted by a complacent public, and bought by american millionaires for vast sums; and the early canvases about which paris would not once tolerate a word of praise, are now considered old-fashioned. my personal concern in all this enthusiasm--the enthusiasm of the fashionable market-place--is that i once more find myself a dissident, and a dissident in a very small minority. i think of monet now as i thought of him eighteen years ago. for no moment did it seem to me possible to think of him as an equal of corot or of millet. he seemed a painter of great talent, of exceptional dexterity of hand, and of clear and rapid vision. his vision seemed then somewhat impersonal; the temper of his mind did not illuminate his pictures; he was a marvellous mirror, reproducing all the passing phenomena of nature; and that was all. and looking at his latest work, his views of rouen cathedral, it seems to me that he has merely continued to develop the qualities for which we first admired him--clearness of vision and a marvellous technical execution. so extraordinary is this later execution that, by comparison, the earlier seems timid and weak. his naturalism has expanded and strengthened: mine has decayed and almost fallen from me. monet's handicraft has grown like a weed; it now overtops and chokes the idea; it seems in these façades to exist by itself, like a monstrous and unnatural ivy, independent of support; and when expression outruns the thought, it ceases to charm. we admire the marvellous mastery with which monet drew tower and portico: see that tower lifted out of blue haze, no delicacy of real perspective has been omitted; see that portico bathed in sunlight and shadow, no form of ornament has been slurred; but we are fain of some personal sense of beauty, we miss that rare delicacy of perception which delights us in mr. whistler's "venice", and in guardi's vision of cupolas, stairways, roofs, gondolas, and waterways. monet sees clearly, and he sees truly, but does he see beautifully? is his an enchanted vision? and is not every picture that fails to move, to transport, to enchant, a mistake? a work of art is complete in itself. but is any one of these pictures complete in itself? is not the effect they produce dependent on the number, and may not this set of pictures be compared to a set of scenes in a theatre, the effect of which is attained by combination? there is no foreground in them; the cathedral is always in the first plane, directly, under the eye of the spectator, the wall running out of the picture. the spectator says, "what extraordinary power was necessary to paint twelve views of that cathedral without once having recourse to the illusion of distance!" a feat no doubt it was; and therein we perceive the artistic weakness of the pictures. for art must not be confounded with the strong man in the fair who straddles, holding a full-grown woman on the palm of his hand. then the question of the quality of paint. manet's paint was beautiful as that of an old master; brilliant as an enamel, smooth as an old ivory. but the quality of paint in monet is that of stone and mortar. it would seem (the thought is too monstrous to be entertained) as if he had striven by thickness of paint and roughness of the handling to reproduce the very material quality of the stonework. this would be realism _à outrance_. i will not think that monet was haunted for a single instant by so shameful a thought. however this may be, the fact remains that a _trompe-l'oeil_ has been achieved, and four inches of any one of these pictures looked at separately would be mistaken by sight and touch for a piece of stonework. in another picture, in a haystack with the sun shining on it, the _trompe-l'oeil_ has again been as cleverly achieved as by the most cunning of scene-painters. so the haystack is a popular delight. notes. mr. mark fisher. mark fisher is a nineteenth-century morland; the disposition of mind and character of vision seem the same in both painters, the outlook almost identical: the same affectionate interest in humble life, the same power of apprehending the pathos of work, the same sympathy for the life that thinks not. but beyond these qualities of mind common to both painters, morland possessed a sense of beauty and grace which is absent in mark fisher. morland's pig-styes are more beautifully seen than mark fisher could see them. but is the sense of beauty, which was most certainly morland's, so inherent and independent a possession that we must regard it as his rather than the common inheritance of those who lived in his time? surely mark fisher would have seen more beautifully if he had lived in the eighteenth century? or, to put the case more clearly, surely morland would have seen very much as mark fisher sees if he had lived in the nineteenth? think of the work done by morland in the field and farmyard--it is in that work that he lives; compare it with mark fisher's, subtracting, of course, all that morland owed to his time, quality of paint, and a certain easy sense of beauty, and say if you can that both men do not stand on the same intellectual plane. to tell the story of the life of the fields, and to tell it sincerely, without false sentiment, was their desire; nor do we detect in either morland or mark fisher any pretence of seeing more in their subjects than is natural for them to see: in jacques, yes. jacques tried to think profoundly, like millet; mark fisher does not; nor was morland influenced by the caustic mind of hogarth to satirise the animalism of the boors he painted. he saw rural life with the same kindly eyes as mark fisher. the difference between the two men is a difference of means, of expression--i mean the exterior envelope in which the work of the mind lives, and which preserves and assures a long life to the painter. on this point no comparison is possible between the eighteenth and nineteenth century painter. we should seek in vain in mark fisher for morland's beautiful smooth painting, for his fluent and easy drawing, the complete and easy vehicle of his vision of things. mark fisher draws well, but he often draws awkwardly; he possesses the sentiment of proportion and the instinct of anatomy; we admire the sincerity and we recognise the truth, but we miss the charm of that easy and perfect expression which was current in morland's time. mark fisher is a man who has something to say and who says it in a somewhat barbarous manner. he dreams hardly at all, his thoughts are ordinary, and are only saved from commonplace by his absence of affectation. he is not without sentiment, but his sentiment is a little plain. his hand is his worst enemy; the touch is seldom interesting or beautiful. i said that morland saw nature with the same kindly eyes as mark fisher. i would have another word on that point. mark fisher's painting is optimistic. his skies are blue, his sunlight dozes in the orchard, his chestnut trees are in bloom. the melodrama of nature never appears in his pictures; his lanes and fields reflect a gentle mind that has found happiness in observing the changes of the seasons. happy mark fisher! an admirable painter, the best, the only landscape-painter of our time; the one who continues the tradition of potter and morland, and lives for his art, uninfluenced by the clamour of cliques. a portrait by mr. sargent. mr. sargent has painted the portrait of a beautiful woman and of a beautiful drawing-room; the picture is full of technical accomplishment. but is it a beautiful picture? she is dressed in cherry-coloured velvet, and she sits on the edge of a louis xv. sofa, one arm by her side, the other thrown a little behind her, the hand leaning against the sofa. behind her are pale yellow draperies, and under her feet is an aubasson carpet. the drawing is swift, certain, and complete. the movement of the arm is so well rendered that we know the exact pressure of the long fingers that melt into a padded silken sofa. but is the drawing distinguished, or subtle, or refined? or is it mere parade of knowledge and practice of hand? the face charms us with its actuality; but is there a touch intimately characteristic of the model? or is it merely a vivacious appearance? but if the drawing when judged by the highest standard fails to satisfy us, what shall be said of the colour? think of a cherry-coloured velvet filling half the picture--the pale cherry pink known as cerise--with mauve lights, and behind it pale yellowish draperies and an aubasson carpet under the lady's feet. of course this is very "daring", but is it anything more? is the colour deep and sonorous, like alfred stevens' red velvets; or is it thin and harsh, like duran? has any attempt been made to compose the colour, to carry it through the picture? there are a few touches of red in the carpet, none in the draperies, so the dress is practically a huge splash transferred from nature to the canvas. and when we ask ourselves if the picture has style, is not the answer: it is merely the apotheosis of fashionable painting? it is what messrs. shannon, hacker, and solomon would like to do, but what they cannot do. mr. sargent has realised their dreams for them; he has told us what the new generation of academicians want, he has revealed their souls' desire, and it is--_l'article de paris._ the portrait is therefore a prodigious success; to use an expression which will be understood in the studios, "it knocks the walls silly"; you see nothing else in the gallery; and it wins the suffrages of the artists and the public alike. duran never drew so fluently as that, nor was he ever capable of so pictorial an intention. chaplin, for it recalls chaplin, was always heavier, more conventional; above all, less real. for it is very real, and just the reality that ladies like, reality without grossness; in other words, without criticism. so mr. sargent gets his public, as the saying goes, "all round". he gets the ladies, because it realises the ideal they have formed of themselves; he gets the artists, because it is the realisation of the pictorial ideals of the present day. the picture has been described as marvellous, brilliant, astonishing, superb, but no one has described it as beautiful. whether because of the commonness of the epithet, or because every one felt that beautiful was not the adjective that expressed the sensation the picture awoke in him, i know not. it is essentially a picture of the hour; it fixes the idea of the moment and reminds one somewhat of a _première_ at the vaudeville with sarah in a new part. every one is on the _qui vive_. the _salle_ is alive with murmurs of approbation. it is the joy of the passing hour, the delirium of the sensual present. the appeal is the same as that of food and drink and air and love. but when painters are pursuing new ideals, when all that constitutes the appearance of our day has changed, i fear that many will turn with a shudder from its cold, material accomplishment. an orchid by mr. james. a kensington museum student would have drawn that flower carefully with a lead pencil; it would be washed with colour and stippled until it reached the quality of wool, which is so much admired in that art training-school; and whenever the young lady was not satisfied with the turn her work was taking, she would wash the displeasing portion out and start afresh. the difference--there are other differences --but the difference we are concerned with between this hypothetical young person of kensington education and mr. james, is that the drawing which mr. james exhibits is not a faithful record of all the difficulties that are met with in painting an orchid. a hundred orchids preceded the orchid on the wall--some were good in colour and failed in drawing, and _vice versâ_. others were excellent in drawing and colour, but the backgrounds did not come out right. all these were destroyed. that mauve and grey orchid was probably not even sketched in with a lead pencil. mr. james desired an uninterrupted expression of its beauty: to first sketch it with a pencil would be to lose something of his first vividness of impression. it must flow straight out of the brush. but to attain such fluency it was necessary to paint that orchid a hundred times before its form and colour were learnt sufficiently to admit of the expression of all the flower's beauty in one painting. it is not that mr. james has laboured less but ten times more than the kensington student. but all the preliminary labour having been discarded, it seems as simple and as slight a thing as may be--a flower in a glass, the flower drawn only in its essentials, the glass faintly indicated, a flowing tint of mauve dissolving to grey, the red heart of the flower for the centre of interest. a decoration for where? i imagine it in a boudoir whose walls are stretched and whose windows are curtained with grey silk. from the ceiling hangs a chandelier, cut glass--pure louis xv. the furniture that i see is modern; but here and there a _tabouret_, a _guéridon_, or a delicate _étagère_, filled with tiny volumes of musset and two or three rare modern writers, recall the eighteenth century. and who sits in this delicate boudoir perfumed with a faint scent, a sachet-scented pocket-handkerchief? surely one of sargent's ladies. perhaps the lady in the shot-silk dress who sat on an eighteenth-century french sofa two years ago in the academy, her tiny, plump, curved white hand, drawn as well in its interior as in exterior limits, hanging over the gilt arm of the sofa. but she sits now, in the boudoir i have imagined, in a low arm-chair covered with grey silk; her feet lie one over the other on the long-haired rug; the fire burns low in the grate, and the soft spring sunlight laps through the lace curtains, filling the room with a bland, moody, retrospective atmosphere. she sits facing mr. james's water-colour. she is looking at it, she does not see it; her thoughts are far away, and their importance is slight. the whistler album. the photograph of the portrait of miss alexander is as suggestive of the colour as a pianoforte arrangement of _tristan_ is of the orchestration. the sounds of the different instruments come through the thin tinkle of the piano just as the colour of the blond hair, the delicate passages of green-grey and green, come through the black and white of the photograph. truly a beautiful thing! but "before the mirror" reflects perhaps a deeper beauty. the influence of that strange man, dante gabriel rossetti, is sufficiently plain in this picture. he who could execute hardly at all in paint, and whose verse is italian, though the author wrote and spoke no language but english, foisted the character of his genius upon all the poetry and painting of his generation. it is as present in this picture as it is in swinburne's first volume of poems and ballads. mr. whistler took the type of woman and the sentiment of the picture from rossetti; he saw that even in painting rossetti had something to say, and, lest an artistic thought should be lost to the world through inadequate expression, he painted this picture. he did not go on painting pictures in the rossetti sentiment, because he thought he had exhausted rossetti in one picture. in this he was possibly mistaken, but the large, white, indolent shoulders, misshapen, almost grotesque in original rossettis, are here in beautiful prime and plenitude; the line of the head and neck, the hair falling over the stooped shoulder --a sensuous dream it is; all her body's beauty, to borrow a phrase from rossetti, is in that white dress; and the beauty of the arm in its full white sleeve lies along the white chimney-piece, the fingers languidly open: two fallen over the edge, two touching the blue vase. note how beautiful is the placing of this figure in the picture; how the golden head shines, high up in the right-hand corner, and the white dress and white-sleeved arms fill the picture with an exquisite music of proportion. the dress cuts against the black grate, and the angle of black is the very happiest; it is brightened with pink sprays of azaleas, and they seem to whisper the very enchanted bloom of their life into the picture. never did dutch or japanese artist paint flowers like these. and the fluent music of the painting seems only to enforce the languor and reverie which this canvas exhales: the languor of white dress and gold hair; languor and golden reverie float in the mirror like a sunset in placid waters. the profile in full light is thrilled with grief of present hours; the full face half lost in shadow, far away--a ghost of a dead self--is dreaming with half-closed eyes, unmindful of what may be. by her mirror, gowned in white as if for dreams, she watches life flowing past her, and she knows of no use to make of it. ingres. raphael was a great designer, but there are a purity and a passion in ingres' line for the like of which we have to go back to the greeks. apelles could not have realised more exquisite simplifications, could not have dreamed into any of his lost works a purer soul of beauty than ingres did into the head, arms, and torso of "la source". the line that floats about the muscles of an arm is illusive, evanescent, as an evening-tinted sky; and none except the greeks and ingres have attained such mystery of line: not raphael, not even michael angelo in the romantic anatomies of his stupendous creations. ingres was a frenchman animated by the soul of an ancient greek, an ancient greek who lost himself in japan. there is as much mystery in ingres' line as in rembrandt's light and shade. the arms and wrists and hands of the lady seated among the blue cushions in the louvre are as illusive as any one of mr. whistler's "nocturnes". the beautiful "andromeda", head and throat leaned back almost out of nature, wild eyes and mass of heavy hair, long white arms uplifted, chained to the basalt,--how rare the simplifications, those arms, that body, the straight flanks and slender leg advancing,--are made of lines simple and beautiful as those which in the venus of milo realise the architectural beauty of woman. we shrink from such comparison, for perforce we see that the grandeur of the venus is not in the andromeda: but in both is the same quality of beauty. in the drawing for the odalisque, in her long back, wonderful as a stem of woodbine, there is the very same love of form which a greek expressed with the benign ease of a god speaking his creation through the harmonious universe. but the pure, unconscious love of form, inherited from the greeks, sometimes turned to passion in ingres: not in "la source", she is wholly greek; but in the beautiful sinuous back of the odalisque we perceive some of the exasperation of nerves which betrays our century. if phidias' sketches had come down to us, the margin filled with his hesitations, we should know more of his intimate personality. you notice, my dear reader, how intolerant i am of criticism of my idol, how i repudiate any slight suggestion of imperfection, how i turn upon myself and defend my god. before going to bed, i often stand, candle in hand, before the roman lady and enumerate the adorable perfections of the drawing. i am aware of my weakness, i have pleaded guilty to an idolatrous worship, but, if i have expressed myself as i intended, my great love will seem neither vain nor unreasonable. for surely for quality of beautiful line this man stands nearer to the greeks than any other. some japanese prints. "ladies under trees". not japanese ladies walking under japanese trees--that is to say, trees peculiar to japan, planted and fashioned according to the mode of japan--but merely ladies walking under trees. true that the costumes are japanese, the writing on the wall is in japanese characters, the umbrellas and the idol on the tray are japanese; universality is not attained by the simple device of dressing the model in a sheet and eliminating all accessories that might betray time and country; the great artist accepts the costume of his time and all the special signs of his time, and merely by the lovely exercise of genius the mere accidents of a generation become the symbolic expression of universal sensation and lasting truths. do not ask me how this transformation is effected; it is the secret of every great artist, a secret which he exercises unconsciously, and which no critic has explained. looking at this yard of coloured print, i ask myself how it is that ever since art began no such admirable result has been obtained with means so slight. a few outlines drawn with pen and ink or pencil, and the interspaces filled in with two flat tints-a dark green, and a grey verging on mauve. the drawing of the figures is marvellously beautiful. but why is it beautiful? is it because of the individual character represented in the faces? the faces are expressed by means of a formula, and are as like one another as a row of eggs. are the proportions of the figure correctly measured, and are the anatomies well understood? the figures are in the usual proportions so far as the number of heads is concerned: they are all from six and a half to seven heads high; but no motion of limbs happens under the draperies, and the hands and feet, like the faces, are expressed by a set of arbitrary conventions. it is not even easy to determine whether the posture of the woman on the right is intended for sitting or kneeling. she holds a tray, on which is an idol, and to provide sufficient balance for the composition the artist has placed a yellow umbrella in the idol's hand. examine this design from end to end, and nowhere will you find any desire to imitate nature. with a line utamaro expresses all that he deems it necessary to express of a face's contour. three or four conventional markings stand for eyes, mouth, and ears; no desire to convey the illusion of a rounded surface disturbed his mind for a moment; the intention of the japanese artists was merely to decorate a surface with line and colour. it was no part of their scheme to compete with nature, so it could not occur to them to cover one side of a face with shadow. the japanese artists never thought to deceive; the art of deception they left to their conjurers. the japanese artist thought of harmony, not of accuracy of line, and of harmony, not of truth of colour; it was therefore impossible for him to entertain the idea of shading his drawings, and had some one whispered the idea to him he would have answered: "the frame will always tell people that they are not looking at nature. you would have it all heavy and black, but i want something light, and bright, and full of beauty. see these lines, are they not in themselves beautiful? are they not sharp, clear, and flowing, according to the necessity of the composition? are not the grey and the dark green sufficiently contrasted? do they not bring to your eyes a sense of repose and unity? look at the embroideries on the dresses, are they not delicate? do not the star-flowers come in the right place? is not the yellow in harmony with the grey and the green? and the blossoms on the trees, are they not touched in with the lightness of hand and delicacy of tone that you desire? step back and see if the spots of colour and the effects of line become confused, or if they still hold their places from a distance as well as close...." ladies under trees, by utamaro! that grey-green design alternated with pale yellow corresponds more nearly to a sonata by mozart than to anything else; both are fine decorations, musical and pictorial decorations, expressing nothing more definite than that sense of beauty which haunts the world. the fields give flowers, and the hands of man works of art. then this art is wholly irresponsible--it grows, obeying no rules, even as the flowers? in obedience to the laws of some irregular metre so delicate and subtle that its structure escapes our analysis, the flowers bloom in faultless, flawless, and ever-varying variety. we can only say these are beautiful because they are beautiful.... that is begging the question. he who attempts to go to the root of things always finds himself begging the question in the end.... but you have to admit that a drawing that does not correspond to the object which the artist has set himself to copy cannot be well drawn. that idea is the blight that has fallen on european art. the goodness or the badness of a drawing exists independently of the thing copied. we say--speaking of a branch, of a cloud, of a rock, of a flower, of a leaf--how beautifully drawn! some clouds and some leaves are better drawn than others, not on account of complexity or simplicity of form, but because they interpret an innate sense of harmony inherent in us. and this natural drawing, which exists sometimes irrespective of anatomies and proportions, is always utamaro's. i do not know how long i stood examining this beautiful drawing, studying the grey and the green tint, admiring the yellow flowers on the dresses, wondering at the genius that placed the yellow umbrella in the idol's hand, the black masses of hair above the faces, so charmingly decorated with great yellow hair-pins. i watched the beauty of the trees, and was moved by the placing of the trees in the composition, and i delighted in the delicate blossoms. i was enchanted by all this bright and gracious paganism which western civilisation has already defaced, and in a few years will have wholly destroyed. i might describe more prints, and the pleasure they have given me; i might pile epithet upon epithet; i might say that the colour was as deep and as delicate as flower-bloom, and every outline spontaneous, and exquisite to the point of reminding me of the hopbine and ferns. it would be well to say these things; the praise would be appropriate to the occasion; but rather am i minded to call the reader's attention to what seems to me to be an essential difference between the east and the west. michael angelo and velasquez, however huge their strength in portraiture and decoration, however sublime veronese and tintoretto in magnificent display of colour, we must perforce admit to oriental art a refinement of thought and a delicacy of handicraft--the outcome of the original thought--which never was attained by italy, and which so transcends our grosser sense that it must for ever remain only half perceived and understood by us. the new art criticism. before commenting on the very thoughtless utterances of two distinguished men, i think i must--even at the risk of appearing to attach over-much importance to my criticisms--reprint what i said about _l'absinthe_; for in truth it was i who first meddled with the moral tap, and am responsible for the overflow:-- "look at the head of the old bohemian--the engraver deboutin--a man whom i have known all my life, and yet he never really existed for me until i saw this picture. there is the hat i have always known, on the back of his head as i have always seen it, and the wooden pipe is held tight in his teeth as i have always seen him hold it. how large, how profound, how simple the drawing! how easily and how naturally he lives in the pose, the body bent forward, the elbows on the table! fine as the orchardson undoubtedly is, it seems fatigued and explanatory by the side of this wonderful rendering of life; thin and restless--like dumas fils' dialogue when we compare it with ibsen's. the woman that sits beside the artist was at the elysée montmartre until two in the morning, then she went to the _ratmort_ and had a soupe _aux choux_; she lives in the rue fontaine, or perhaps the rue breda; she did not get up till half-past eleven; then she tied a few soiled petticoats round her, slipped on that peignoir, thrust her feet into those loose morning shoes, and came down to the café to have an absinthe before breakfast. heavens! what a slut! a life of idleness and low vice is upon her face; we read there her whole life. _the tale is not a pleasant one, but it is a lesson_. hogarth's view was larger, wider, but not so incisive, so deep, or so intense. then how loose and general hogarth's composition would seem compared to this marvellous epitome, this essence of things! that open space in front of the table, into which the skirt and the lean legs of the man come so well--how well the point of view was selected! the beautiful, dissonant rhythm of that composition is like a page of wagner--the figures crushed into the right of the canvas, the left filled up with a fragment of marble table running in sharp perspective into the foreground. the newspaper lies as it would lie across the space between the tables. the colour, almost a monochrome, is very beautiful, a deep, rich harmony. more marvellous work the world never saw, and will never see again: a maze of assimilated influences, strangely assimilated, and eluding definition--remembrances of watteau and the dutch painters, a good deal of ingres' spirit, and, in the vigour of the arabesque, we may perhaps trace the influence of poussin. but these influences float evanescent on the canvas, and the reading is difficult and contradictory." i have written many a negligent phrase, many a stupid phrase, but the italicised phrase is the first hypocritical phrase i ever wrote. i plead guilty to the grave offence of having suggested that a work of art is more than a work of art. the picture is only a work of art, and therefore void of all ethical signification. in writing the abominable phrase "_but it is a lesson_" i admitted as a truth the ridiculous contention that a work of art may influence a man's moral conduct; i admitted as a truth the grotesque contention that to read _mdlle. de maupin_ may cause a man to desert his wife, whereas to read _paradise lost_ may induce him to return to her. in the abominable phrase which i plead guilty to having written, i admitted the monstrous contention that our virtues and our vices originate not in our inherited natures, but are found in the books we read and the pictures we look upon. that art should be pure is quite another matter, and the necessity of purity in art can be maintained for other than ethical reasons. art--i am speaking now of literature--owes a great deal to ethics, but ethics owes nothing to art. without morality the art of the novelist and the dramatist would cease. so we are more deeply interested in the preservation of public morality than any other class--the clergy, of course, excepted. to accuse us of indifference in this matter is absurd. we must do our best to keep up a high standard of public morality; our living depends upon it--and it would be difficult to suggest a more powerful reason for our advocacy. nevertheless, by a curious irony of fate we must preserve--at least, in our books--a distinctly impartial attitude on the very subject which most nearly concerns our pockets. to remove these serious disabilities should be our serious aim. it might be possible to enter into some arrangement with the bishops to allow us access to the pulpits. mr. so-and so's episcopal style--i refer not only to this gentleman's writings, but also to his style of figure, which, on account of the opportunities it offers for a display of calf, could not fail to win their lordships' admiration--marks him as the proper head and spokesman of the deputation; and his well-known sympathies for the pecuniary interests of authors would enable him to explain that not even their lordships' pockets were so gravely concerned in the maintenance of public morality as our own. i have allowed my pen to wander somewhat from the subject in hand; for before permitting myself to apologise for having hypocritically declared a great picture to be what it was not, and could not be--"a lesson"--it was clearly incumbent on me to show that the moral question was the backbone of the art which i practise myself, and that of all classes none are so necessarily moral as novelists. i think i have done this beyond possibility of disproof, or even of argument, and may therefore be allowed to lament my hypocrisy with as many tears and groans as i deem sufficient for the due expiation of my sin. confession eases the heart. listen. my description of degas' picture seemed to me a little unconventional, and to soothe the reader who is shocked by everything that lies outside his habitual thought, and to dodge the reader who is always on the watch to introduce a discussion on that sterile subject, "morality in art", to make things pleasant for everybody, to tickle the philistine in his tenderest spot, i told a little lie: i suggested that some one had preached. i ought to have known human nature better--what one dog does another dog will do, and straight away preaching began--zola and the drink question from mr. richmond, sociology from mr. crane. but the picture is merely a work of art, and has nothing to do with drink or sociology; and its title is not _l' absinthe_, nor even _un homme et une femme assis dans un café_, as mr. walter sickert suggests, but simply _au café_. mr. walter crane writes: "here is a study of human degradation, male and female." perhaps mr. walter crane will feel inclined to apologise for his language when he learns that the man who sits tranquilly smoking his pipe is a portrait of the engraver deboutin, a man of great talent and at least mr. walter crane's equal as a writer and as a designer. true that m. deboutin does not dress as well as mr. walter crane, but there are many young men in pall mall who would consider mr. crane's velvet coat, red necktie, and soft felt hat quite intolerable, yet they would hardly be justified in speaking of a portrait of mr. walter crane as a study of human degradation. let me assure mr. walter crane that when he speaks of m. deboutin's life as being degraded, he is speaking on a subject of which he knows nothing. m. deboutin has lived a very noble life, in no way inferior to mr. crane's; his life has been entirely devoted to art and literature; his etchings have been for many years the admiration of artistic paris, and he has had a play in verse performed at the théâtre français. the picture represents m. deboutin in the café of the _nouvelle athènes_ he has come down from his studio for breakfast, and he will return to his dry-points when he has finished his pipe. i have known m. deboutin a great number of years, and a more sober man does not exist; and mr. crane's accusations of drunkenness might as well be made against mr. bernard shaw. when, hypocritically, i said the picture was a lesson, i referred to the woman, who happens to be sitting next to m. deboutin. mr. crane, mr. richmond, and others have jumped to the conclusion that m. deboutin has come to the café with the woman, and that they are "boozing" together. nothing can be farther from the truth. deboutin always came to the café alone, as did manet, degas, duranty. deboutin is thinking of his dry-points; the woman is incapable of thought. if questioned about her life she would probably answer, _"je suis à la coule"_. but there is no implication of drunkenness in the phrase. in england this class of woman is constantly drunk, in france hardly ever; and the woman degas has painted is typical of her class, and she wears the habitual expression of her class. and the interest of the subject, from degas' point of view, lies in this strange contrast--the man thinking of his dry-points, the woman thinking, as the phrase goes, of nothing at all. _au café_--that is the title of the picture. how simple, how significant! and how the picture gains in meaning when the web of false melodrama that a couple of industrious spiders have woven about it is brushed aside! i now turn to the more interesting, and what i think will prove the more instructive, part of my task--the analysis of the art criticism of mr. richmond and mr. crane. mr. richmond says "it is not painting at all". we must understand therefore that the picture is void of all accomplishment--composition, drawing, and handling. we will take mr. richmond's objections in their order. the subject-matter out of which the artist extracted his composition was a man and woman seated in a café furnished with marble tables. the first difficulty the artist had to overcome was the symmetry of the lines of the tables. not only are they exceedingly ugly from all ordinary points of view, but they cut the figures in two. the simplest way out of the difficulty would be to place one figure on one side of a table, the other on the other side, and this composition might be balanced by a waiter seen in the distance. that would be an ordinary arrangement of the subject. but the ingenuity with which degas selects his point of view is without parallel in the whole history of art. and this picture is an excellent example. one line of tables runs up the picture from left to right, another line of tables, indicated by three parts of one table, strikes right across the foreground. the triangle thus formed is filled by the woman's dress, which is darker than the floor and lighter than the leather bench on which both figures are seated. looking still more closely into the composition, we find that it is made of several perspectives --the dark perspective of the bench, the light perspective of the partition behind, on which the light falls, and the rapid perspective of the marble table in the foreground. the man is high up on the right-hand corner, the woman is in the middle of the picture, and degas has been careful to place her in front of the opening between the tables, for by so doing he was able to carry his half-tint right through the picture. the empty space on the left, so characteristic of degas's compositions, admirably balances the composition, and it is only relieved by the stone matchbox, and the newspaper thrown across the opening between the tables. everywhere a perspective, and these are combined with such strange art that the result is synthetic. a beautiful dissonant rhythm, always symphonic _coulant longours de source_; an exasperated vehemence and a continual desire of novelty penetrated and informed by a severely classical spirit--that is my reading of this composition. "the qualities admired by this new school are certainly the mirrors of that side of the nineteenth-century development most opposed to fine painting, or, say, fine craftsmanship. hurry, rush, fashion, are the enemies of toil, patience, and seclusion, without which no great works are produced. hence the admiration for an art fully answering to a demand. no doubt impressionism is an expression in painting of the deplorable side of modern life." after "forty years of the study of the best art of various schools that the galleries of europe display", mr. richmond mistakes degas for an impressionist (i use the word in its accepted sense); he follows the lead of the ordinary art critic who includes degas among the impressionists because degas paints dancing lessons, and because he has once or twice exhibited with monet and his followers. the best way--possibly the only way--to obtain any notion of the depth of the abyss on which we stand will be by a plain statement of the facts. when ingres fell down in the fit from which he never recovered, it was degas who carried him out of his studio. degas had then been working with ingres only a few months, but that brief while convinced ingres of his pupil's genius, and it is known that he believed that it would be degas who would carry on the classical tradition of which he was a great exponent. degas has done this, not as flandren tried to, by reproducing the externality of the master's work, but as only a man of genius could, by the application of the method to new material. degas's early pictures, "the spartan youths" and "semiramis building the walls of babylon". are pure ingres. to this day degas might be very fairly described as _un petit ingres_. do we not find ingres' penetrating and intense line in the thin straining limbs of degas's ballet-girls, in the heavy shoulders of his laundresses bent over the ironing table, and in the coarse forms of his housewives who sponge themselves in tin baths? the vulgar, who see nothing of a work of art but its external side, will find it difficult to understand that the art of "la source" and of degas's cumbersome housewives is the same. to the vulgar, bouguereau and not degas is the interpreter of the classical tradition. 'hurry, rush, fashion, are the enemies of toil, patience, and seclusion, without which no great works are produced.' for the sake of his beloved drawing degas has for many years locked himself into his studio from early morning till late at night, refusing to open even to his most intimate friends. coming across him one morning in a small café, where he went at midday to eat a cutlet, i said, "my dear friend, i haven't seen you for years; when may i come?" the answer i received was: "you're an old friend, and if you'll make an appointment i'll see you. but i may as well tell you that for the last two years no one has been in my studio." on the whole it is perhaps as well that i declined to make an appointment, for another old friend who went, and who stayed a little longer than he was expected to stay, was thrown down the staircase. and that staircase is spiral, as steep as any ladder. until he succeeded in realising his art degas's tongue was the terror of artistic paris; his solitary days, the strain on the nerves that the invention and composition of his art, so entirely new and original, entailed, wrecked his temper, and there were moments when his friends began to dread the end that his striving might bring about. but with the realisation of his artistic ideal his real nature returned, and he is now full of kind words for the feeble, and full of indulgence for the slightest artistic effort. the story of these terrible years of striving is written plainly enough on every canvas signed by degas; yet mr. richmond imagines him skipping about airily from café to café, dashing off little impressions. in another letter mr. richmond says, 'perfect craftsmanship, such as was van eyck's, holbein's, bellini's, michael angelo's, becomes more valuable as time goes on.' it is interesting to hear that mr. richmond admires holbein's craftsmanship, but it will be still more interesting if he will explain how and why the head of the old bohemian in the picture entitled "l'absinthe" is inferior to holbein. the art of holbein, as i understand it--and if i do not understand it rightly i shall be delighted to have my mistake explained to me--consists of measurements and the power of observing and following an outline with remorseless precision. now degas in his early manner was frequently this. his portrait of his father listening to pagan singing whilst he accompanied himself on the guitar is pure holbein. whether it is worse or better than holbein is a matter of individual opinion; but to affect to admire holbein and to decline to admire the portrait i speak of is--well, incomprehensible. the portrait of deboutin in the picture entitled "l'absinthe" is a later work, and is not quite so nearly in the manner of holbein; but it is quite nearly enough to allow me to ask mr. richmond to explain how, and why it is inferior to holbein. inferior is not the word i want, for mr. richmond holds holbein to be one of the greatest painters the world ever knew, and degas to be hardly a painter at all. for three weeks the pens of art critics, painters, designers, and engravers have been writing about this picture--about this rough bohemian who leans over the café table with his wooden pipe fixed fast between his teeth, with his large soft felt hat on the back of his head, upheld there by a shock of bushy hair, with his large battered face grown around with scanty, unkempt beard, illuminated by a fixed and concentrated eye which tells us that his thoughts are in pursuit of an idea--about one of the finest specimens of the art of this century--and what have they told us? mr. richmond mistakes the work for some hurried sketch--impressionism--and practically declares the painting to be worthless. mr. walter crane says it is only fit for a sociological museum or for an illustrated tract in a temperance propaganda; he adds some remarks about "a new adam and eve and a paradise of unnatural selection" which escape my understanding. an engraver said that the picture was a vulgar subject vulgarly painted. another set of men said the picture was wonderful, extraordinary, perfect, complete, excellent. but on neither side was any attempt made to explain why the picture was bad or why the picture was excellent. the picture is excellent, but why is it excellent? because the scene is like a real scene passing before your eyes? because nothing has been omitted that might have been included, because nothing has been included that might have been omitted? because the painting is clear, smooth, and limpid and pleasant to the eye? because the colour is harmonious, and though low in tone, rich and strong? because each face is drawn in its distinctive lines, and each tells the tale of instincts and of race? because the clothing is in its accustomed folds and is full of the individuality of the wearer? we look on this picture and we ask ourselves how it is that amongst the tens and hundreds of thousands of men who have painted men and women in their daily occupations, habits, and surroundings, no one has said so much in so small a space, no one has expressed himself with that simplicity which draws all veils aside, and allows us to look into the heart of nature. where is the drawing visible except in the result? how beautifully concise it is, and yet it is large, supple, and true without excess of reality. can you detect anywhere a measurement? do you perceive a base, a fixed point from which the artist calculated and compared his drawing? that hat, full of the ill-usage of the studio, hanging on the shock of bushy hair, the perspective of those shoulders, and the round of the back, determining the exact width and thickness of the body, the movement of the arm leaning on the table, and the arm perfectly in the sleeve, and the ear and the shape of the neck hidden in the shadow of the hat and hair, and the battered face, sparely sown with an ill-kempt beard, illuminated by a fixed look which tells us that his thoughts are in pursuit of an idea--this old bohemian smoking his pipe, does he not seem to have grown out of the canvas as naturally and mysteriously as a herb or plant? by the side of this drawing do not all the drawings in the gallery of english, french, belgian, and scandinavian seem either childish, ignorant-timed, or presumptuous? by the side of this picture do not all the other pictures in the gallery seem like little painted images? compared with this drawing, would not holbein seem a little geometrical? again i ask if you can detect in any outline or accent a fixed point from whence the drawing was measured, calculated, and constructed. in the drawing of all the other painters you trace the method and you take note of the knowledge through which the model has been seen and which has, as it were, dictated to the eye what it should see. but in degas the science of the drawing is hidden from us--a beautiful flexible drawing almost impersonal, bending to and following the character, as naturally as the banks follow the course of their river. i stop, although i have not said everything. to complete my study of this picture we should have to examine that smooth, clean, supple painting of such delicate and yet such a compact tissue; we should have to study that simple expressive modelling; we should have to consider the resources of that palette, reduced almost to a monochrome and yet so full of colour. i stop, for i think i have said enough to rouse if not to fully awaken suspicion in mr. richmond and mr. crane of the profound science concealed in a picture about which i am afraid they have written somewhat thoughtlessly. * * * * * in the midst of a somewhat foolish and ignorant argument regarding the morality and the craftsmanship of a masterpiece, the right of the new art criticism to adversely criticise the work of royal academicians has been called into question. i cull the following from the columns of the _westminster gazette_;-- 'their words are practically the same; their praise and blame are similarly inspired; the means they employ to gain their object identical. so much we can see for ourselves. as for their object and their _bona-fides_, they concern me not. it is what they do, not what they are, that is the question here. what they do is to form a caucus in art criticism, and owing to their vehemence and the limitation of their aim, a caucus which is increasing in influence, and, to the best of my belief, doing cruel injustice to many great artists, and much injury to english art. it is for this reason, and this reason only, that i have taken up my parable on the subject. i have in vain endeavoured to induce those whose words would come with far greater authority than mine to do so. i went personally to the presidents of the two greatest artistic bodies in the kingdom to ask them to speak or write on the subject, but i found their view to be that such action would be misconstrued, and would in their position be unbecoming.' the meaning of all this is that the ferret is in the hole and the rats have begun to squeak already. soon they will come hopping out of st. john's wood avenue, so make ready your sticks and stones. in april i wrote: 'the position of the academy is as impregnable as gibraltar. but gibraltar itself was once captured by a small company of resolute men, and if ever there exist in london six resolute art critics, each capable of distinguishing between a bad picture and a good one, each determined at all costs to tell the truth, and if these six critics will keep in line, then, and not till then, some of the reforms so urgently needed, and so often demanded from the academy, will be granted. i do not mean that these six critics will bring the academicians on their knees by writing fulminating articles on the academy. such attacks were as idle as whistling for rain on the house-tops. the academicians laugh at such attacks, relying on the profound indifference of the public to artistic questions. but there is another kind of attack which the academicians may not ignore, and that is true criticism. if six newspapers were to tell the simple truth about the canvases which the academicians will exhibit next month, the academicians would soon cry out for quarter and grant all necessary reforms.' i have only now to withdraw the word "reform". the academy cannot reform, and must be destroyed. the academy has tried to reform, and has failed. thirty years ago the pre-raphaelite movement nearly succeeded in bringing about an effectual shipwreck. but when mr. holman hunt went to italy, special terms were offered and accepted. the election of millais and watts saved the academy, and instead of the academy, it was the genius of one of england's greatest painters that was destroyed. "ophelia", "autumn leaves", and "st. agnes' eve" are pictures that will hold their own in any gallery among pictures of every age and every country. but fathomless is the abyss which separates them from sir john millais' academic work. the academy is a distinctly commercial enterprise. has not sir john millais said, in an interview, that the hanging committee at burlington house selects the pictures that will draw the greatest number of shillings. the academy has been subventioned by the state to the extent of three hundred thousand pounds, and that money has been employed in arrogant commercialism. the academy holds a hundred thousand pounds in trust, left by mr. chantry for the furtherance of art in this country; and this money is spent on the purchase of pictures by impecunious academicians, and the collection formed with this money is one of the seven horrors of civilisation. the academy has tolerated genius when it was popular, it has trampled upon genius when it was unpopular; and the business of the new art criticism is to rid art of the incubus. the academy must be destroyed, and when that is accomplished the other royal institutes will follow as a matter of course. the object of the new art criticism is to give free trade to art. long ago in italy. come to the new gallery. we shall pass out of sight of flat dreary london, drab-coloured streets full of overcoats, silk hats, dripping umbrellas, omnibuses. we shall pass out of sight of long perspectives of square houses lost in fine rain and grey mist. we shall enter an enchanted land, a land of angels and aureoles; of crimson and gold, and purple raiment; of beautiful youths crowned with flowers; of fabulous blue landscape and delicate architecture. know ye the land? botticelli is king there, king of clasped hands and almond-eyed madonnas. it was he who conceived and designed that enigmatic virgin's face; it was he who placed that long-fingered hand on the thigh of the infant god; it was he who coiled that heavy hair about that triangle of neck and interwove it with pearls; it was he who drew the graceful lace over the head-dress, and painted it in such innumerable delicacy of fold that we wonder and are fain to believe that it is but the magic of an instant's hallucination. know ye the land? filippo lippi is prince there, prince of angel youths, fair hair crowned with fair flowers; they stand round a tall throne with strings of coral and precious stones in their hands. it was filippo lippi who composed that palette of grey soft pearly pink; it was he who placed that beautiful red in the right-hand corner, and carried it with such enchanting harmony through the yellow raiment of the angel youth, echoing it in a subdued key in the vesture which the virgin wears under her blue garment, and by means of the red coral which decorates the tall throne he carried it round the picture; it was he, too, who filled those angel eyes with passion such as awakens in heaven at the touch of wings, at the sound of citherns and cintoles. know ye the land where botticelli and filippo lippi dreamed immortal dreams? know ye the land, italy in the fifteenth century? exquisite angel faces were their visions by day and night, and their thoughts were mystic landscapes and fantastic architecture; aureoles, roses, pearls, and rich embroideries were parcel of their habitual sense; and the decoration of a surface with beautiful colour was their souls' desire. of truth of effect and local colour they knew nothing, and cared nothing. beauty for beauty's sake was the first article of their faith. they measured a profile with relentless accuracy, and followed its outline unflinchingly, their intention was no more than to produce a likeness of the lady who sat posing for her portrait, but some miracle saved them from base naturalism. the humblest, equally with the noblest dreamer, was preserved from it; and that their eyes naturally saw more beautifully than ours seems to be the only explanation. ugliness must have always existed; but florentine eyes did not see ugliness. or did their eyes see it, and did they disdain it? do they owe their art to a wise festheticism, or to a fortunate limitation of sight? these are questions that none may answer, but which rise up in our mind and perplex us when we enter the new gallery; for verily it would seem, from the dream pictures there, that a time once existed upon earth when the world was fair as a garden, and life was a happy aspiration. in the fifteenth century the world seems to have been made of gold, jewellery, pictures, embroidered stuffs, statues, and engraved weapons; in the fifteenth century the world seems to have been inhabited only by nobles and prelates; and the only buildings that seem to have existed were palaces and cathedrals. then art seemed for all men, and life only for architecture, painting, carving, and engraving long rapiers; and length of time for monks to illuminate great missals in the happy solitude of their cells, and for nuns to weave embroideries and to stitch jewelled vestments. the florentines loved their children as dearly as we do ours; but in their pictures there is but the divine child. they loved girls and gallantries as well as we do; but in their pictures there are but the virgin and a few saints. history tells us that wars, massacres, and persecutions were frequent in the fifteenth century; but in its art we learn no more of the political than we do of the domestic life of the century. the virgin and child were sufficient inspiration for hundreds of painters. now she is in full-face, now in three-quarter face, now in profile. in this picture she wears a blue cloak, in that picture she is clad in a grey. she is alone with the child in a bower of tall roses, or she is seated on a high throne. perhaps the painter has varied the composition by the introduction of st. john leaning forward with clasped hands; or maybe he has introduced a group of angels, as filippo lippi has done. the throne is sometimes high, sometimes low; but such slight alteration is enough for a new picture. and several generations of painters seem to have lived and died believing that their art was to all practical and artistic purposes limited to the continual variation of this theme. among these painters botticelli was the incontestable master; but about him crowd hundreds of pictures, pictures rather than names. imagine a number of workmen anxious to know how they should learn to paint well, to paint with brilliancy, with consistency, with ease, and with lasting colours. imagine a collection of gold ornaments, jewels, and enamels, in which we can detect the skill of the goldsmith, of the painter of stained-glass, of the engraver, and of the illuminator of missals; the inspiration is grave and monastic, the destination a palace or a cathedral, the effect dazzling; and out of this miraculous handicraft filippo lippi is always distinct, soft as the dawn, mysterious as a flower, less vigorous but more illusive than botticelli, and so strangely personal that while looking at him we are absorbed. to differentiate between the crowd of workmen that surrounded filippo lippi and botticelli were impossible. they painted beautiful things because they lived in an age in which ugliness hardly existed, or was not as visible as it is now; they were content to merge their personalities in an artistic formula; none sought to invent a personality which did not exist in himself. employing without question a method of drawing and of painting that was common to all of them, they worked in perfect sympathy, almost in collaboration. plagiarism was then a virtue; they took from each other freely; and the result is a collective rather than individual inspirations. now and then genius breaks through, as a storm breaks a spell of summer weather. "the virgin and child, with st. clare and st. agatha", lent by mrs. austin and the trustees of the late j. t. austin, is one of the most beautiful pictures i have ever seen. the temperament of the painter, his special manner of feeling and seeing, is strangely, almost audaciously, affirmed in the mysterious sensuality of the angels' faces; the painter lays bare a rare and remote corner of his soul; something has been said that was never said before, and never has been said so well since. but if the expression given to these angels is distinctive, it is extraordinarily enhanced by the beauty of the colour. indeed, the harmony of the colour-scheme is inseparable from the melodious expressiveness of the eyes. look at the gesture of the hand on the right; is not the association of ideas strangely intimate, curious, and profound? but come and let us look at a real botticelli, a work which convinces at the first glance by the extraordinary expressiveness of the drawing, by the originality of the design, by the miraculous handicraft; let us look at the "virgin and child and st. john", lent by messrs. colnaghi. it is a panel some by inches, almost filled by a life-size three-quarter-length figure of the virgin. she is seated on the right, and holds the infant saviour in her arms. in the foreground on the left there is a book and cushion, behind which st. john stands, his hands clasped, bearing a cross. never was a head designed with more genius than that strange virgin, ecstatic, mysterious, sphinx-like; with half-closed eyes, she bends her face to meet her god's kiss. in this picture botticelli sought to realise the awfulness of the christian mystery: the mother leans to the kiss of her son--her son, who is likewise her god, and her brain is dim with its ecstasy. she is perturbed and overcome; the kiss is in her brain, and it trembles on her lips. you who have not seen the picture will think that this description is but the tale of the writer who reads his fancies into the panel before him. but the intention of the painter did not outstrip the power of expression which his fingers held. he expressed what i say he expressed, and more perfectly, more suggestively, than any words. and how? it will be imagined that it was by means of some illusive line that botticelli rendered the very touch and breath of this extraordinary kiss; by that illusive line which degas employs in his expressions of the fugitive and the evanescent. how great, therefore, is our surprise when we look into the picture to find that the mystery and ecstasy of this kiss are expressed by a hard, firm, dark line. and the sensation of this strange ecstatic kiss pervades the entire composition; it is embodied in the hand placed so reverently on the thigh of the infant god and in the eyes of st. john, who watches the divine mystery which is being accomplished. on st. john's face there is earthly reverence and awe; on christ's face, though it is drawn in rigid outline, though it looks as if it were stamped out of iron, there is universal love, cloudlike and ineffable; and christ's knees are drawn close, and the hand of the virgin holds them close; and through the hand come bits of draperies exquisitely designed. indeed, the distribution of line through the picture is as perfect as the distribution of colour; the form of the blue cloak is as perfect as the colour, and the green cape falls from the shoulder, satisfying both senses; the crimson vesture which she wears underneath her cloak is extraordinarily pure, and balances the crimson cloak which st. john wears. but these beauties are subordinate to the beauty of the virgin's head. how grand it is in style! how strange and enigmatic! and in the design of that head botticelli has displayed all his skill. the fair hair is covered with delicate gauze edged with lace, and overcoming the difficulties of that most rebellious of all mediums--tempera!--his brush worked over the surface, fulfilling his slightest thought, realising all the transparency of gauze, the intricacy of lace, the brightness of crimson silk, the very gravity of the embossed binding of the book, the sway and texture of every drapery, the gold of the tall cross, and the darker gold of the aureole high up in the picture, set against a strip of florentine sky. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/ / / / / / -h.zip) jean franÇois millet a collection of fifteen pictures and a portrait of the painter, with introduction and interpretation by estelle m. hurll the riverside art series [illustration: jean franÇois millet] preface in making a selection of millet's pictures, devoted as they are to the single theme of french peasant life, variety of subject can be obtained only by showing as many phases of that life as possible. our illustrations therefore represent both men and women working separately in the tasks peculiar to each, and working together in the labors shared between them. there are in addition a few pictures of child life. the selections include a study of the field, the dooryard, and the home interior, and range from the happiest to the most sombre subjects. they show also considerable variety in artistic motive and composition, and taken together fairly represent the scope of millet's work. estelle m. hurll. new bedford, mass. march, . contents and list of pictures portrait of millet. drawn by himself introduction i. on millet's character as an artist ii. on books of reference iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection iv. outline table of the principal events in millet's life v. some of millet's associates i. going to work ii. the knitting lesson iii. the potato planters iv. the woman sewing by lamplight v. the shepherdess vi. the woman feeding hens vii. the angelus viii. filling the water-bottles ix. feeding her birds x. the church at grÉville xi. the sower xii. the gleaners xiii. the milkmaid xiv. the woman churning xv. the man with the hoe xvi. the portrait of millet pronouncing vocabulary of proper names and foreign words note: all the pictures were made from carbon prints by braun, clément & co. introduction i. on millet's character as an artist the distinctive features of millet's art are so marked that the most inexperienced observer easily identifies his work. as a painter of rustic subjects, he is unlike any other artists who have entered the same field, even those who have taken his own themes. we get at the heart of the matter when we say that millet derived his art directly from nature. "if i could only do what i like," he said, "i would paint nothing that was not the result of an impression directly received from nature, whether in landscape or in figure." his pictures are convincing evidence that he acted upon this theory. they have a peculiar quality of genuineness beside which all other rustic art seems forced and artificial. the human side of life touched him most deeply, and in many of his earlier pictures, landscape was secondary. gradually he grew into the larger conception of a perfect harmony between man and his environment. henceforth landscape ceased to be a mere setting or background in a figure picture, and became an organic part of the composition. as a critic once wrote of the shepherdess, "the earth and sky, the scene and the actors, all answer one another, all hold together, belong together." the description applies equally well to many other pictures and particularly to the angelus, the sower, and the gleaners. in all these, landscape and figure are interdependent, fitting together in a perfect unity. as a painter of landscapes, millet mastered a wide range of the effects of changing light during different hours of the day. the mists of early morning in filling the water-bottles; the glare of noonday in the gleaners; the sunset glow in the angelus and the shepherdess; the sombre twilight of the sower; and the glimmering lamplight of the woman sewing, each found perfect interpretation. though showing himself capable of representing powerfully the more violent aspects of nature, he preferred as a rule the normal and quiet. in figure painting millet sought neither grace nor beauty, but expression. that he regarded neither of these first two qualities as intrinsically unworthy, we may infer from the grace of the sower, and the naïve beauty of the shepherdess and the woman sewing. but that expression was of paramount interest to him we see clearly in the angelus and the man with the hoe. the leading characteristic of his art is strength, and he distrusted the ordinary elements of prettiness as taking something from the total effect he wished to produce. "let no one think that they can force me to prettify my types," he said. "i would rather do nothing than express myself feebly." it was always his first aim to make his people look as if they belonged to their station. the "mute inglorious milton" and maud muller with her "nameless longings" had no place on his canvases. his was the genuine peasant of field and farm, no imaginary denizen of the poets' arcady. "the beautiful is the fitting," was his final summary of æsthetic theory, and the theory was put into practice on every canvas. in point of composition millet's pictures have great excellence. "i try not to have things look as if chance brought them together," he said, "but as if they had a necessary bond between them." so nothing is accidental, but every object, however small, is an indispensable part of the whole scheme. an important characteristic of his work is its power to suggest the third dimension of space. the figures have a solid, tangible appearance, as if actually alive. the gleaners, the woman churning, and the man with the hoe are thoroughly convincing in their reality. the picture of the gleaners especially has that so-called "quality of circumambient light" which circulates about the objects, so to speak, and gives them position in space. millet's landscapes also have a depth of spaciousness which reaches into infinite distance. the principles of composition are applied in perspective as well as laterally. we can look into the picture, through it, and beyond it, as if we were standing in the presence of nature. mr. bernhard berenson goes so far as to say that this art of "space composition," as he terms it, can "directly communicate religious emotion," and explains on this ground the devotional influence of perugino's works, which show so remarkable a feeling for space.[ ] if he is right, it is on this principle, rather than because of its subject, that the angelus is, as it has sometimes been called, "one of the greatest religious paintings of the age." while millet's art is, in its entirety, quite unique, there are certain interesting points of resemblance between his work and that of some older masters. he is akin to rembrandt both in his indifference to beauty and in his intense love of human nature. millet's indifference to beauty is the more remarkable because in this he stood alone in his day and generation, while in the northern art of the seventeenth century, of which rembrandt is an exponent, beauty was never supreme. as a lover of human nature, millet's sympathies, though no less intense than rembrandt's, were less catholic. his range of observation was limited to peasant life, while the dutch master painted all classes and conditions of men. yet both alike were profound students of character and regarded expression as the chief element of beauty. rembrandt, however, sought expression principally in the countenance, and millet had a fuller understanding of the expressiveness of the entire body. the work of each thus complements that of the other. millet's passion for figure expression was first worked out in painting the nude. when he abandoned such subjects for the homelier themes of labor, he gave no less attention to the study of form and attitude. the simple clothing of the peasant is cut so loosely as to give entire freedom of motion to the body, and it is worn so long that it shapes itself perfectly to the figure. the body thus clad is scarcely inferior to the nude in assuming the fine lines of an expressive pose. millet's instinct for pose was that of a sculptor. many of the figures for his pictures were first carefully modelled in wax or clay. transferred to canvas they are drawn in the strong simple outlines of a statue. it is no extravagant flight of fancy which has likened him to michelangelo. in the strength and seriousness of his conceptions, the bold sweep of his lines, and, above all, in the impression of motion which he conveys, he has much in common with the great italian master. like michelangelo, millet gives first preference to the dramatic moment when action is imminent. the sower is in the act of casting the seed into the ground, as david is in the act of stretching his sling. as we look, we seem to see the hand complete its motion. so also the gleaners, the women filling the water-bottles, and the potato planters are all portrayed in attitudes of performance. when millet represents repose it is as an interval of suspended action, not as the end of completed work. the shepherdess pauses but a moment in her walk and will immediately move on again. the man and woman of the angelus rest only for the prayer and then resume their work. the man with the hoe snatches but a brief respite from his labors. the impression of power suggested by his figure, even in immobility, recalls michelangelo's jeremiah. to the qualities which are reminiscent of michelangelo millet adds another in which he is allied to the greeks. this is his tendency towards generalization. it is the typical rather than the individual which he strives to present. "my dream," he once wrote, "is to characterize the type." so his figures, like those of greek sculpture, reproduce no particular model, but are the general type deduced from the study of many individuals. [footnote : in _central italian painters of the renaissance_.] ii. on books of reference since the death of millet, in , much that is interesting and valuable has been written of his life and work. the first biography of the painter was that by his friend sensier, in a large illustrated volume whose contents have been made familiar to english readers by an abridged translation published in this country simultaneously with the issue of the french edition. containing all the essential facts of millet's outward life, besides a great number of the artist's letters, together with his autobiographical reminiscences of childhood, sensier's work is the principal source of information, from which all later writers draw. yet it is not an altogether fair and satisfactory presentation of millet's life. undue emphasis is laid upon his struggles with poverty, and the book leaves much to be desired. julia cartwright's recent work, "jean françois millet: his life and letters," is founded on sensier's life, yet rounds out the study of the master's character and work with the fuller knowledge with which family and friends have described his career. another recent book called "j.f. millet and rustic art" is by henry naegely (published in england), and is critical rather than biographical in purport. it is a sympathetic appreciation of millet's art and character, and grows out of a careful study of the painter's works and an intimate connection with the millet family. besides these books devoted exclusively to the subject, the life work of millet is admirably sketched in brief form in the following more general works:-- richard muther's "history of modern painting," mrs. stranahan's "history of french painting," rose g. kingsley's "history of french art," and d.c. thomson's "barbizon school." of great importance to the student of millet are the various articles contributed to the magazines by those who knew and understood the painter. the following are of special note: by edward w. wheelwright, in "the atlantic monthly," september, ; by wyatt eaton, in the "century," may, ; by t.h. bartlett, in "scribner's," may and june, ; by pierre millet, in "century," january, , and april, ; and by will low, in "mcclure's," may, . julia cartwright, in the preface to the above mentioned biography, mentions other magazine articles not so generally accessible. iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection _portrait frontispiece_, a life-size crayon made by millet in and given to his friend charlier. it afterwards became the property of sensier.. . _going to work_, one of several versions of the subject in different mediums, oil, pastel, drawing, and etching. this picture was painted in , and was at one time ( ) in a private collection in glasgow.[ ] it is to be distinguished from the picture of , where the woman carries a pitcher instead of a rope.[ ] . _the knitting lesson_, a drawing corresponding in general composition, with some changes of detail, to the small painting ( by - / in.) of the subject in the collection of mrs. martin brimmer, in the museum of fine arts, boston. . _the potato planters_, painted in , and exhibited at the great exhibition at paris of that year, also again in at the international exhibition. it changed hands for large sums during the painter's lifetime, and is now in the quincy a. shaw collection, boston, mass. . _the woman sewing by lamplight_, painted in , and sold in for , francs, the highest price at that time ever paid for one of millet's works. . _the shepherdess_, painted in , and exhibited at the salon of , also again at the exposition universelle of . it is now in the collection of m. chauchard. . _the woman feeding hens_, a charcoal sketch, corresponding in general composition to the description of a painting bearing the same name, which was painted in for m. letrône for francs. . _the angelus_, an oil painting measuring by in. the first drawing for the picture was sold february, . the painting was completed for exhibition in the salon of . it was declined by the patron for whom it was intended, and finally sold to a belgian artist in , and soon afterwards to the belgian minister. the original price was francs. the picture passed from one owner to another, and in was bought by j.w. wilson for , francs, later bringing at the wilson sale of the sum of £ . in an auction sale of the secrétan collection, july, , there was an immense excitement over the contest between the french government, represented by m. proust, director of fine arts, and various american dealers, who were determined to win the prize. it was finally knocked down to m. proust for , francs, but the french government refused to ratify the purchase, and the picture was brought to the united states. here the customs duty exacted was so enormous (£ ) that the picture remained only six months (the duty being waived during that period), and after being exhibited throughout the country finally returned to france, where it was purchased for £ , by m. chauchard, who has the finest collection of millets in existence. . _filling the water-bottles,_ a charcoal drawing, which attracted much attention when exhibited in the millet collection of the paris exposition, . . _feeding her birds_, painted in , and exhibited in salon of . presented by a purchaser to the museum of lille in . . _the church at gréville_, sketched during millet's visit at gréville in the summer of ; referred to by him, in a letter of , as still in process of painting; found in his studio at the time of his death, in . the picture was bought by the french government, and is now in the louvre, paris. . _the sower_, the second painting of the subject, painted in , and exhibited in the salon of - . it is now in the vanderbilt collection, new york. a pencil sketch of the sower is in the collection of millet's drawings, at the boston museum of fine arts.[ ] . _the gleaners_, a painting first exhibited at the salon of . it was sold to m. binder of l'isle adam for francs. in it was purchased by madame pommeroy for , francs, and presented to the louvre, paris. a pencil drawing of the three figures is in the collection of the boston museum of fine arts. . _the milkmaid_, painted in from a sketch made in gréville. seen in millet's studio in by will low, the american artist. . _the woman churning_, one of several versions of the subject, the first of which appeared in . . _the man with the hoe_, painted in and exhibited at the salon of . sold to a belgian collector, and long in brussels. it is now owned by mr. w.s. crocker of san francisco, cal. [footnote : see d.c. thomson's _barbizon school_, pp. , .] [footnote : see julia cartwright, _life and letters of jean françois millet_, pp. , .] [footnote : this is one of an interesting collection of drawings in this museum, which also contains several original paintings by millet, a shepherdess, seated, a portrait of the painter, and others. other fine millets are in the private collections of boston, where the painter received early appreciation, owing to the enthusiasm of william morris hunt, the painter, and such connoisseurs as mr. quincy shaw and mr. brimmer.] iv. outline table of the principal events in millet's life . millet born, october , in hamlet of gruchy, commune of gréville, in the old province of normandy, france. . two months' study with mouchel in cherbourg. death of millet's father. study with langlois in cherbourg. . removal to paris, supported by annuity of francs from the municipality of cherbourg.[ ] - (?). studies with delaroche.[ ] . a portrait of m.l.f. exhibited at salon of the louvre. . portrait of mademoiselle antoinette feuardent. marriage with mademoiselle pauline virginie ono in cherbourg. . returned to paris. . millet exhibited at salon: the milkmaid, the riding lesson. death of millet's wife, april , and millet's return home for months. . marriage with catherine lemaire late in summer, in gréville. visit in havre in november. arrival in paris in december, and residence in the rue rochehouart. . oedipus taken from the tree exhibited at the salon. . millet exhibited at the salon the winnower, bought by m. ledru-rollin for francs, and the captivity of the jews in babylon. . removal to barbizon. . the sower painted and exhibited at the salon with the sheaf binders. . death of millet's grandmother, louise jumelin, at gruchy. . death of millet's mother at gruchy. millet exhibited at the salon:-- ruth and boaz, bought by an american. the sheep shearer,} bought by william morris the shepherd, } hunt. . visit four months to the surroundings of the old home in normandy. . the grafter, exhibited at the salon. . le pare aux moutons painted. . the gleaners exhibited at the salon. . the angelus exhibited at the salon. - . the shepherd in the fold by moonlight, and the femme aux seaux. . the potato planters painted. millet exhibited at the salon of the champs elysèes: feeding her birds. waiting. the sheep shearer. . list of pictures painted:-- winter. the crows. sheep feeding. the wool carder. the stag. the birth of the calf. the shepherdess. the man with the hoe. . millet sent to salon: man with the hoe, the wool carder (see list of works in ), and a shepherd bringing home his sheep. . millet exhibited at the salon: the shepherdess, and the birth of the calf (see list of works in ). . completion of decorative pictures for m. thomas: spring and summer, panels by ft., set in the woodwork; autumn for the ceiling; winter for the chimneypiece. . short visit to vichy, auvergne, clermont, issoire. . millet exhibited at the exposition universelle (international exhibition):-- death and the woodcutter (refused by the salon of ). the gleaners. the shepherdess. the sheep shearer. the shepherd. the sheep fold. the potato planters. the potato harvest. the angelus. visit to vichy in june. - . the pig killers. . millet made chevalier of the legion of honor, august . journey with sensier in alsace and switzerland, september. . millet elected, march , juror for coming exposition. the woman churning exhibited at the salon. departure for gréville on account of danger of remaining in barbizon during the war. . return to barbizon november . . order from administration of beaux arts for mural decorations in the panthéon (ste. geneviève), paris. the priory painted. . death of millet, january , at barbizon. [footnote : to this was added later francs from the general council of la manche, but both annuities were soon discontinued.] [footnote : the exact date of millet's severing connection with delaroche is not mentioned by his biographers, though the circumstances are detailed.] v. some of millet's associates companions in the studio of delaroche:-- charles françois hébert ( - ). jalabert ( - ). thomas couture ( - ). edouard frère ( - ). adolphe yvon ( - ). antigna ( - ). prosper louis roux ( - ). marolle. cavalier, sculptor. gendron ( - ). friends and neighbors in paris:-- couture (also fellow student in studio of delaroche). tourneaux ( - ), painter and poet. diaz ( - ), landscape painter. joseph guichard ( - ), marine painter. charles jacque ( - ), etcher. camprédon. séchan, clever scene painter. diéterle, clever scene painter. eugène lacoste. azevédo, musical critic. friends at barbizon:-- charles jacque (who removed thither with him). diaz (also a friend of the paris days). corot ( - ). theodore rousseau ( - ). laure ( - ). william morris hunt, american painter. mr. hearn, american painter. mr. babcock, american painter. edward wheelwright, american painter. wyatt eaton, american painter. will low, american painter. i going to work on the other side of the atlantic ocean, where the sea forms a narrow channel separating the british isles from the european continent, lies that part of france known as the old province of normandy. there is here a very dangerous and precipitous coast lined with granite cliffs. the villages along the sea produce a hardy race of peasants who make bold fishermen on the water and thrifty farmers on the land. to this norman peasant stock belonged jean françois millet, the painter of the pictures reproduced in this little book. he was brought up to hard out-of-door labor on his father's farm in the village of gréville, but when the artistic impulses within him could no longer be repressed, he left his home to study art. though he became a famous painter, he always remained at heart a true peasant. he set up his home and his studio in a village called barbizon, near the forest of fontainebleau, not many miles from paris. here he devoted all his gifts to illustrating the life of the tillers of the soil. his subjects were drawn both from his immediate surroundings and from the recollections of his youth. "since i have never in all my life known anything but the fields," he said, "i try to say, as best i can, what i saw and felt when i worked there." it is now a quarter of a century since the painter's life work ended, and in these years some few changes have been made in the customs and costumes which millet's pictures represented. such changes, however, are only outward; the real life of peasant labor is always the same. seedtime and harvest, toil, weariness and rest, the ties of home and of religion, are subjects which never grow old fashioned. in france the farm labors are shared by men and women alike. the peasant woman is sturdily built, and her healthy out-of-door life makes her very strong. she is fitted by nature and training to work beside the men in the fields. in our first picture we see a young man and woman starting out together for the day's work. it is morning, and the early sun illumines the distant plain, where ploughing has already begun. the light falls on the two figures as they walk down the sloping hillside. they are dressed for their work in clothing which is plain and coarse, but which is perfectly suited for the purpose. the french peasants' working clothes are usually of strong homespun cloth, fashioned in the simplest way, to give the wearers entire ease in motion. they are in the dull blues, browns, and reds which delight the artist's eye. such colors grow softer and more beautiful as they fade, so that garments of this kind are none the less attractive for being old. ragged clothing is seldom seen among peasants. they are too thrifty and self-respecting to make an untidy appearance. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. going to work] the men wear soft felt hats, the brim of which can be pulled forward to shade the eyes. the women cover their heads neatly with caps or kerchiefs, and are nearly always seen with aprons. men and women both wear the heavy wooden shoes called _sabots_, in which the feet suffer no pressure as from leather shoes, and are protected against the moisture of the ground. the peasants of our picture carry all they need for the day's work. a three-pronged fork rests across the man's shoulder, and a wallet of lunch hangs from his left arm. the woman has a basket, a linen sack, and a bit of rope. evidently something is to be brought home. just now she has swung the empty basket up over her shoulders and it covers her head like a huge sunbonnet. the two young people are full of the healthy vigor which makes work a pleasure. they go cheerfully to their day's task as if they really enjoyed it. we cannot help suspecting that they are lovers. the man carries himself erect with a conscious air of manliness, and steps briskly, with his hand thrust into his pocket. the girl hides her shyness in the shadow of the basket as she turns her face towards his. the two swing along buoyantly, keeping step as if accustomed to walking together. at the close of the day's work the basket and sack will be filled, and the laborers will return to their home by the same way. the burden may be heavy, but they will bear it as the reward of their toil. the picture of going to work was painted at about the same time[ ] as the the sower, which forms one of the later illustrations of our collection. a comparison of the pictures will show interesting points of resemblance between the two men striding down hill. though going to work is not as a work of art of equal rank with the sower, we get in both pictures a delightful sense of motion which makes the figures seem actually alive. [footnote : that is, within a year. see dates in the _historical directory_.] ii the knitting lesson in the picture we have been examining we have seen something of the outdoor life of the french peasants, and now we are shown the interior of one of their houses, where a knitting lesson is being given. the girls of the french peasantry are taught only the plainest kinds of needlework. they have to begin to make themselves useful very early in life, and knitting is a matter of special importance. in these large families many pairs of stockings are needed, and all must be homemade. this is work which the little girls can do while the mother is busy with heavier labors. the knitting work becomes a girl's constant companion, and there are few moments when her hands are idle. the little girl in our picture is still a beginner in the art, and the lesson is a very exciting occasion to her. already she feels like a woman. the mother and daughter have their chairs by the window to get a good light on the work. it is a large and beautiful casement window, of the kind almost universal in france, opening lengthwise in the middle in two parts which swing on hinges like doors. the window seat serves as a table, to hold the basket and scissors. the doll is thrust into the corner; our little girl has "put away childish things"--at least for the moment,--and takes her task very seriously. the two chairs are drawn close together, the one a small counterpart of the other. the child braces her feet firmly on one of the rounds and bends her whole mind to her work. both mother and daughter wear close white caps, though the little girl's is of a more childish pattern and does not cover her pretty hair in front. the mother has been sewing on some large garment which lies across her lap. she lets the little girl work by herself for a time, and then stops to set her right. already a considerable length of stocking has been made, but this is a place where close attention is needed. perhaps it is time to begin shaping the heel. the mother's work is left altogether for a moment. putting her arm about the child's shoulder, she takes the two little hands in hers, and guides the fingers holding the needles. we get some idea of the quaint style of the building from this glimpse of the living-room. probably it is a low stone cottage with thatched or tiled roof. the deep window seat shows how thick the walls are. overhead we see the oak rafters. the room looks spotlessly clean, as a good housewife's should. though we see only a corner, that corner holds the most precious household possession, the linen chest. it stands against the wall, and is of generous size. french country people take great pride in storing up a quantity of linen; tablecloths, sheets, shirts, pillowcases, often of their own weaving, are piled in the deep clothes-presses. in well-to-do families there are enough for six months' use, the family washing taking place only twice a year, in spring and fall, like house-cleaning in america. we judge that our housekeeper is well provided, by the pile of neatly folded sheets on the press. the little clock, high on the wall, and the vase of flowers on the chest are the only touches of ornament in the room. on the wall are some small objects which look like shuttles for weaving. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co john andrew & son, sc. the knitting lesson] as we look at the picture we feel sure that millet was a lover of children, and it is pleasant to know that he had many of his own. the artist father was his children's favorite playmate, and at the close of his day's work in his studio, they ran to meet him with shouts of joy. he used to like to walk about the garden with them showing them the flowers. in winter time they sat together by the fire, and the father sang songs and drew pictures for the little ones. sometimes taking a log from the wood basket he would carve a doll out of it, and paint the cheeks with vermilion. this is the sort of doll we see on the window seat in our picture. ruskin tells us that a true artist feels like a caged bird in painting any enclosed space, unless it contains some opening like a door or window. no amount of beauty will content us, he says, if we are shut in to that alone. our picture is a good proof of this principle. we can easily fancy how different the effect would be without the window: the room would appear almost like a prisoner's cell. as it is, the great window suggests the out-of-door world into which it opens, and gives us a sense of larger space. our illustration is taken from a drawing. millet was a painstaking artist who made many drawings and studies for his paintings. this is probably such a study, as there is also a painting by him of the same subject very similar to this. iii the potato planters in the picture called the potato planters we are reminded at once of the peasants we have already seen in going to work. we see here married people a few years older than the young people of the other picture working together in the fields. it may be that this is their own little plot of ground, for they work with a certain air of proprietorship. they look prosperous, too, and are somewhat better dressed than common laborers. it is the highest ambition of the french peasant to own a bit of land. he will make any sacrifice to get it, and possessing it, is well content. he labors with constant industry to make it yield well. the field here is at quite a distance from the village where the workers live. we can see the little group of houses on the horizon. in france the agricultural classes do not build their dwelling-houses on their farms, but live instead in village communities, with the farms in the outlying districts. the custom has many advantages. the families may help one another in various ways both by joining forces and exchanging services. they may also share in common the use of church, school, and post office. this french farming system has been adopted in canada, while in our own country we follow the english custom of building isolated farmhouses. in working season the french farmer must go daily to his labor at a distance. the people in our picture are fortunate enough to own a donkey which is their burden-bearer between house and field. the strong little creature can carry a heavy load properly disposed in pannier baskets. the panniers are made very deep and wide, but rather flat, so as to fit the sides of the donkey. with one of these hanging on each side of the saddle, the weight of the burden is so well distributed that it is easily borne. the donkey of our picture has been relieved of his panniers, and now rests in the shade of some apple-trees. one of the baskets is in the mean time put to a novel use. made soft and warm with a heavy cloak, it forms a nice cradle for the baby. the babies in french peasant families are often left at home with the grandmother, while the mother goes out to field work. the painter millet himself was in childhood the special charge of his grandmother, while his mother labored on the farm. the people of our picture have another and, as it seems, a much pleasanter plan, in going to the field as a family party. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co john andrew & son, sc. the potato planters] the day is well advanced and the work goes steadily on. it is potato planting, and the potato crop is of great importance to country people, second perhaps to the wheat, as it supplies food to both man and beast. the commoner varieties, as the large white, are raised for cattle, and the finer and sweeter kinds, the red and the yellow, are kept for the table. the laborer and his wife move along the field, facing each other on opposite sides of the row they are planting. the man turns the sod with his hoe, a short-handled tool which long practice has taught him to use skilfully. the wife carries the potato seed in her apron, and as her husband lifts each spadeful of earth, she throws the seed into the hole thus made. he holds the hoe suspended a moment while the seed drops in, and then replaces the earth over it. the two work in perfect unison, each following the other's motion with mechanical regularity, as they move down the field together. the two who work so well together in the field are sure to work well together in the home. the man has the serious, capable look of a provident husband. the woman looks like a good housewife. that shapely hand throwing the seed so deftly into the ground is well adapted to domestic tasks. we may easily identify our picture as a familiar scene in millet's barbizon surroundings. we are told that "upon all sides of barbizon, save one, the plain stretches almost literally as far as the eye can reach," and presents "a generally level and open surface." "there are no isolated farmhouses, and no stone walls, fences, or hedges, except immediately around the villages; and were it not all under cultivation, the plain might be taken for a vast common."[ ] it is evident, then, that we here see the plain of barbizon and true barbizon peasants of millet's day. the villagers of the painter's acquaintance were on the whole a prosperous class, nearly all owning their houses and a few acres of ground. the big apple-tree under which the donkey rests is just such an one as grew in millet's own little garden. fruit trees were his peculiar delight. he knew all their ways, and "all their special twists and turnings;" how the leaves of the apple-tree are bunched together on their twigs, and how the roots spread under ground. "any artist," he used to say, "can go to the east and paint a palm-tree, but very few can paint an apple-tree." [footnote : from edward wheelwright's _recollections of jean françois millet,_ in _atlantic monthly_, september, .] iv the woman sewing by lamplight though the peasant women of france have so large a share in the laborious out-of-door work on the farms, they are not unfitted for domestic duties. in the long winter evenings they devote themselves to more distinctly woman's tasks, knitting and sewing, sometimes even spinning and weaving. their housekeeping is very simple, for they live frugally, but they know how to make the home comfortable. many modern inventions are still unknown to them, and we should think their customs very primitive, but on this account they are perhaps even more picturesque. there is contentment in every line of the face of this woman sewing by lamplight. it is the face of a happy young wife and mother. she sits close by her baby's bedside that she may listen to his gentle breathing as he sleeps, and she smiles softly to herself while she sews. it is a sweet face which bends over the work, and it is framed in the daintiest of white caps edged with a wide ruffle which is turned back over the hair above the forehead, that it may not shade her eyes. the garment that lies on her lap is of some coarse heavy material. no dainty bit of fancy work is this, but a plain piece of mending. it may be the long cloak which the shepherd wraps about him in cold and stormy weather. made from the wool grown on his own sheep, spun by his wife's own hand, it is unrivalled among manufactured cloths for warmth and comfort. the needle is threaded with a coarse thread of wool, which the sewer draws deftly through the cloth. on a pole which runs from floor to ceiling is a hook, from which a lamp is suspended by a chain. this lamp appears to be a boat-shaped vessel with the wick coming out at one end. the light gilds the mother's gentle profile with shining radiance; it illumines the fingers of her right hand, and gleams on the coarse garment in her lap, transforming it into a cloth of gold. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. the woman sewing by lamplight john andrew & son, sc.] the baby meanwhile lies on the other side of the lamp in the shadow. his little mouth is open, and he is fast asleep. we can almost fancy that the mother croons a lullaby as she sews. there is a pathetic little french song called la petite hélène, which millet's mother used to sing to him, and which he in turn taught his own children. perhaps we could not understand the words if we could hear it. but when mothers sing to their babies, whatever the tongue in which they speak, they use a common language of motherhood. some such simple little lullaby as this, which mothers of another land sing to their babes, would doubtless interpret this mother's thoughts:-- "sleep, baby, sleep! thy father watches the sheep; thy mother is shaking the dreamland tree, and down comes a little dream on thee. sleep, baby, sleep! "sleep, baby, sleep! the large stars are the sheep; the little ones are the lambs, i guess: the gentle moon is the shepherdess, sleep, baby, sleep! "sleep, baby, sleep! our saviour loves his sheep; he is the lamb of god on high who for our sakes came down to die. sleep, baby, sleep!" when we remember that the ancient romans had lamps constructed somewhat like that in the picture, it seems strange that so rude a contrivance should be in use in the nineteenth century. but this is only the practical and prosaic side of the question. for artistic purposes the lamp is just what is wanted in the composition. you can see how a lamp with a glass chimney and shade would spoil the whole effect. we should lose that strange beautiful halo surrounding the wick, and the light would fall only on the work, instead of glorifying the face of the mother. these wonderful impressions of light add much to the artistic beauty of the picture, and explain why artists have so greatly admired it. the picture naturally recalls that other mother and babe, mary of nazareth and the holy child jesus, who for so many centuries have inspired the imagination of artists. often a painter has drawn his first conception for this sacred subject from some peasant mother and child such as these. in order to give religious significance to their pictures, artists have tried in many ways to suggest the supernatural. they have introduced halos about the heads of mary and jesus, and have made the light seem to shine mysteriously from the child's body. now our painter millet, representing only an ordinary mother and babe, has not used any such methods. nevertheless, without going beyond strict reality, he has produced a mystical effect of light which makes this picture worthy of a place among the madonnas. the glow of the lamp transforms the familiar scene into a shrine of mother's love. v the shepherdess many years ago the early english poet, sir philip sidney, wrote a book about an imaginary country called arcadia, noted for the sweetness of the air and the gentle manners of the people. as he described the beauties of the scenery there, he told of "meadows enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers; each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober security; here a shepherd's boy piping as though he should never be old; there a young shepherdess knitting and withal singing, and it seemed that her voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept time to her voice-music." we could easily fancy that our picture of the shepherdess was meant to illustrate a scene in arcadia. here is the meadow "enamelled with eye-pleasing flowers," the sheep "feeding with sober security," and the young shepherdess herself knitting. though she is not singing with her lips, her heart sings softly as she knits, and her hands keep time to the dream-music. early in the morning she led her flock out to the fallow pastures which make good grazing ground. all day long the sheep have nibbled the green herbage at their own sweet will, always under the watchful eye of their gentle guardian. her hands have been busy all the time. like patient griselda in chaucer's poem, who did her spinning while she watched her sheep, "she would not have been idle till she slept." ever since she learned at her mother's knee those early lessons in knitting, she has kept the needles flying. she can knit perfectly well now while she follows her flock about. the work almost knits itself while her eyes and thoughts are engaged in other occupations. the little shepherdess has an assistant too, who shares the responsibilities of her task. he is a small black dog, "patient and full of importance and grand in the pride of his instinct."[ ] when a sheep is tempted by an enticing bit of green in the distance to stray from its companions, the dog quickly bounds after the runaway and drives it back to the flock. only the voice of the shepherdess is needed to send him hither, thither, and yon on such errands. now nightfall comes, and it is time to lead the flock home to the sheepfold. the sheep are gathered into a compact mass, the ram in their midst. the shepherdess leads the way, and the dog remains at the rear, "walking from side to side with a lordly air," to allow no wanderer to escape. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the shepherdess] their way lies across the plain whose level stretch is unbroken by fences or buildings. in the distance men may be seen loading a wagon with hay. the sheep still keep on nibbling as they go, and their progress is slow. the shepherdess takes time to stop and rest now and then, propping her staff in front of her while she picks up a stitch dropped in her knitting. there is a sense of perfect stillness in the air, that calm silence of the fields, which millet once said was the gayest thing he knew in nature. the chill of nightfall is beginning to be felt, and the shepherdess wears a hood and cape. her face shows her to be a dreamer. these long days in the open air give her many visions to dream of. her companionship with dumb creatures makes her more thoughtful, perhaps, than many girls of her age. as a good shepherdess she knows her sheep well enough to call them all by name. from their soft wool was woven her warm cape and hood, and there is a genuine friendship between flock and mistress. when she goes before them, they follow her, for they know her voice. among the traditions dear to the hearts of the french people is one of a saintly young shepherdess of nanterre, known as ste. geneviève. like the shepherdess of our picture, she was a dreamer, and her strange visions and wonderful sanctity set her apart from childhood for a great destiny. she grew up to be the saviour of paris, and to-day her name is honored in a fine church dedicated to her memory. it was the crowning honor of millet's life that he was commissioned to paint on the walls of this church scenes from the life of ste. geneviève. he did not live to do the work, but one cannot help believing that his ideals of the maiden of nanterre must have taken some such shape as this picture of the shepherdess. in the painting from which our illustration is reproduced, the colors are rich and glowing. the girl's dress is blue and her cap a bright red. the light shining on her cloak turns it a rich golden brown. earth and sky are glorified by the beautiful sunset light. as we look across the plain, the earth seems to stretch away on every side into infinite distance. we are carried out of ourselves into the boundless liberty of god's great world. "the still small voice of the level twilight" speaks to us out of the "calm and luminous distance." ruskin has sought to explain the strange attractive power which luminous space has for us. "there is one thing that it has, or suggests," he says, "which no other object of sight suggests in equal degree, and that is,--infinity. it is of all visible things the least material, the least finite, the farthest withdrawn from the earth prison-house, the most typical of the nature of god, the most suggestive of the glory of his dwelling place."[ ] [footnote : like the watchdog described in longfellow's _evangeline_, part ii.] [footnote : in _modern painters_, in chapter on "infinity," from which also the other quotations are drawn.] vi the woman feeding hens in walking through a french village, we get as little idea of the home life of the people as if we were in a large town or city. the houses usually border directly upon the street, and the spaces between are closed with high walls, shutting in the thoroughfare as completely as in a city "block." behind these barriers each family carries on its domestic affairs in the privacy of its own domain. the _cour_, or dooryard, is the enclosure adjoining the house, and is surrounded on all sides by buildings or walls. beyond this the more prosperous have also a garden or orchard, likewise surrounded by high walls. in the dooryard are performed many of the duties both of the barn and the house. here the cows are milked, the horses groomed, the sheep sheared, and the poultry fed. here, too, is the children's playground, safe from the dangers of the street, and within hearing of the mother's voice. it is into such a dooryard that we seem to be looking in this picture of the woman feeding hens. it is a common enough little house which we see, built of stone, plastered over, in the fashion of the french provinces, and very low. in the long wall from the door to the garden gate is only one small high window. but time and nature have done much to beautify the spot. in the cracks of the roof, thatched or tiled, whichever it may be, many a vagrant seed has found lodgment. the weeds have grown up in profusion to cover the bare little place with leaf and flower. indeed, there is here a genuine roof garden of the prettiest sort, and it extends along the stone wall separating the dooryard from the garden. some one who has seen these vine-fringed walls in barbizon describes them as gay with "purple orris, stonecrop, and pellitory." a young wife presides in the little cottage home and rules her side of the dooryard with gentle sway. she has a curly-haired baby boy who creeps after her as she goes about her work. his inquiring mind is at this age investigating all the corners of the house, and before long he will be the young master of the dooryard. the housewife boasts a small brood of hens. early in the morning the voice of the chanticleer is heard greeting the dawn. presently he leads his family forth to begin their day's scratching in the dooryard. here and there they wander with contented clucks, as they find now and then a worm or grub for a titbit. but it is only a poor living which is to be earned by scratching. the thrifty housewife sees to it that her brood are well fed. at regular times she comes out of the house to feed them with grain, as she is doing now. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the woman feeding hens] the baby hears the mother's voice saying, in what is the french equivalent, "here chick-chick-chick," and creeps swiftly to the door. he, too, tries to call "chick-chick." he watches the odd creatures eagerly as they gobble up the seed. they stand about in a circle, heads all together in the centre, bobbing up and down as long as any food remains. chanticleer holds back with true gallantry, and with an air of masculine superiority. the belated members of the brood come running up as fast as they can. the apron holds a generous supply, so that there is enough for all, but the housewife doles it out prudently by the handful, that none may suffer through the greediness of the others. as we study the lines of the picture a little, they teach us some important lessons in composition. we note first the series of perpendicular lines at regular intervals across the width of the picture. these counterbalance the effect of the long perspective which is so skilfully indicated in the drawing of the house and the garden walk. the perspective is secured chiefly by three converging lines, the roof and ground lines of the house, and the line of the garden walk. these lines if extended would meet at a single point. once more let us recall ruskin's teaching in regard to enclosed spaces.[ ] the artist is unhappy if shut in by impenetrable barriers. there must always be, he says, some way of escape, it matters not by how narrow a path, so that the imagination may have its liberty. this is the principle which our painter has applied in his picture. he wisely gives us a glimpse of the sky above, and shows us the shady vista of the garden walk leading to the great world beyond. our illustration is from a charcoal drawing, which, like the knitting lesson, is matched by a corresponding painting. [footnote : in _modern painters_ in the chapter on "infinity."] vii the angelus the early twilight of autumn has overtaken two peasants at the close of a day's work in the field. they are gathering the potato harvest. the dried plants are first pulled up, and the potatoes carefully dug out of the holes. then the vegetables are taken from the furrows by the basketful, and poured into brown linen sacks to be carried home on the wheelbarrow. one of these sacks is not yet quite full, and the work has been prolonged after sunset. the field is a long way from the village, but in the still air sounds are carried far across the plain. suddenly the bell of the village church peals forth. the man stops digging and plunges his fork into the earth, and the woman hastily rises from her stooping posture. the angelus bell is ringing, and it calls them to prayer. three times each day, at sunrise, midday, and sunset, this bell reminds the world of the birth of jesus christ. the strokes are rung in three groups, corresponding to the three parts of the angelus, which are recited in turn. the first word gives the bell its name,--angelus, the latin for angel. "the angel of the lord announced to mary, and she conceived of the holy spirit. "behold the handmaid of the lord, be it done unto me according to thy word. "and the word was made flesh and dwelt among us." thus run the words of the translation in the three couplets into which they are separated, and then this prayer is added: "we beseech thee, o lord, pour forth thy grace into our hearts; that as we have known the incarnation of thy son jesus christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought into the glory of his resurrection, through the same jesus christ our lord." besides this, after each couplet of the angelus, is recited that short hymn of praise, beginning with the words which the angel of the annunciation addressed to mary,[ ] "ave maria." this is why the hour after sunset is so often called the hour of ave maria. the english poet byron has written of this solemn moment:-- "ave maria! blessed be the hour! the time, the clime, the spot, where i so oft have felt that moment in its fullest power sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, while swung the deep bell in the distant tower, or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, and not a breath crept through the rosy air, and yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer." [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the angelus] the atmosphere of prayer pervades the picture. the woman stands with bowed head and hands clasped over her breast. her whole body sways slightly forward in the intensity of her devotion. her husband has bared his head and holds his hat before him. though he may seem somewhat awkward, he is not less sincerely reverent. the sunset light shines on the woman's blue apron, gilds the potato sacks in the wheelbarrow, and gleams along the furrows. farther away, the withered plants are heaped in rows of little piles. beyond, the level plain stretches to meet the glowing sky, and, outlined on the horizon, is the spire of the church where the bells are ringing. as the meaning of the picture grows upon us, we can almost hear the ringing of the bells. indeed, to those familiar with such scenes in actual life, the impression is very vivid. the friend to whom millet first showed his painting immediately exclaimed, "it is the angelus." "then you can hear the bells," said the artist, and was content. the solemn influence of the picture is deepened by the effects of the twilight on the plains. a wide outlook across a level country, like a view of the sea, is always impressive, but it has peculiar power in the vague light which follows the sunset. many poetic natures have felt this mystic spell of the gloaming as it descends upon the plain. robert louis stevenson was one of these, and upon visiting barbizon he described vividly his feelings at such an hour. we are told also that millet loved to walk abroad at nightfall and note the mysterious effects of the twilight. "it is astonishing," he once said to his brother in such a walk, "how grand everything on the plain appears, towards the approach of night, especially when we see the figures thrown out against the sky. then they look like giants." in nearly all of millet's pictures people are busy doing something. either hands or feet, and sometimes both hands and feet, are in motion. they are pictures of action. in the angelus, however, people are resting from labor; it is a picture of repose. the busy hands cease their work a moment, and the spirit rises in prayer. we have already seen, in other pictures, how labor may be lightened by love. here we see labor glorified by piety. the painting of the angelus has had a remarkable history. the patron for whom it was first intended was disappointed with the picture when finished, and millet had no little difficulty in finding a purchaser. in the course of time it became one of the most popular works of the painter, and is probably better known in our country than any other of his pictures. in it was bought by an american, and was carried on an exhibition tour through most of the large cities of the united states. finally it returned to france, where it is now in the collection of m. chauchard. the angelus is one of the few of millet's works which have changed with time. the color has grown dark and the canvas has cracked somewhat, owing to the use of bitumen in the painting. [footnote : "hail mary"; see st. luke, chapter i., verse .] viii filling the water-bottles the artist millet loved to draw as well as to paint. black and white pictures had their charm for him as truly as those in color. indeed, he once said that "tone," which is the most important part of color, can be perfectly expressed in black and white. it is therefore not strange that he made many drawings. some of these, like the knitting lesson and the woman feeding hens, were, as we have seen, studies for paintings. the picture called filling the water-bottles was, on the other hand, a charcoal drawing, corresponding to no similar painting. it is in itself a finished work of art. it is a typical french river scene which we see here, and it gives us an idea how large a part a river may take in the life of french country people. sometimes it is the sole source of water for a village. then it is not only the common village laundry, in which all clothing is washed, but it is also the great village fountain, from which all drinking-water is drawn. the women in our picture have come to the bank with big earthen jars to fill. it is in the cool of early morning, and the mist still lies thick over the marshes bordering the river. the sun, seen through the mist, looks like a round ball. on the farther bank, where a group of poplars grow, some horsemen ride up to ford the stream. they, too, are setting forth early on their day's work. one is already half across. the women have picked out, along the marshy bank, a point of land jutting into the river like a miniature promontory, and seemingly of firm soil. it is only large enough to hold one at a time, so they take turns. one is now filling a bottle, while the other waits, standing beside two jars. the first woman kneels on the ground, and supporting herself firmly by placing one hand on the edge of the bank, she grasps the jar by the handle, with her free right hand, and swings it well out over the water. experience has taught her the most scientific way of filling the jar with least muscular strain. she does not try to plunge it down into the water, but holding it on its side, slightly tipped, draws it along with the mouth half under the surface, sucking in the water as it moves. we see what hard, firm muscles she has to hold the arm out so tensely. her arm acts like a compass describing the arc of a circle through the water with the jar. as we look, we can almost see her completing the circle, and drawing up the full jar upon the bank. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. filling the water-bottles john andrew & son, sc.] the woman who waits her turn is capable of the same feat. there is power in every line of her figure as she stands in what has been well described by a critic as a "majestic pose." she straightens back to rest, with her arms on her hips, quite unconscious that there is anything fine in her appearance. look a minute and you will see that she is the woman of the angelus. as we saw her in the other picture, with head bowed and hands clasped on her breast, we did not realize how grand and strong she was. but raising her head, throwing back her chest, and putting her arms on her sides, she shows us now her full power. both women are dressed alike in the clothing which is now familiar to us from the other pictures,--coarse gowns made with scanty skirts, long aprons reaching nearly to the bottom of the dress, kerchiefs fastened snugly about their heads, and wooden sabots. we could not imagine anything that would become them better. it is part of the french nature to understand the art of dressing, and this art is found just as truly among the peasants of the provinces as in the fashionable world at paris. the picture is a study in black and white which any one who cares for drawing will wish to examine attentively. he was indeed a master who could, with a single bit of charcoal, make us feel the witchery of this early morning hour by the river-side. we note the many different "tones" of the picture,--the faint soft mist of the distant atmosphere over the marshes, growing darker on the poplars and the hilly bank in the middle distance; the shadow of the bank in the river; the gleam of the sunlight on the calm water mid-stream; the ripples about the jar; the sharply defined figures of the women, dark on the side turned from the sun; and the quivering shadow of the kneeling woman in the ripple-broken water in front. among primitive peoples the hour of sunrise was a sacred time, when hymns were sung and sacrifices were offered to the life-giving sun. the painter millet has expressed something of the mystic solemnity of the hour in this picture. the sun has awakened the world to work, and in its strength men and women go forth to labor.[ ] [footnote : a fine passage on the morning occurs in thoreau's second chapter of _walden_.] ix feeding her birds as we have already seen in the picture of the woman feeding hens, the dooryard in french village homes is so shut in by walls, that it has the privacy of a family living-room. this was the arrangement in millet's own home at barbizon. the painter was among the fortunate ones who had a garden beyond the dooryard. at the other end of this was his studio, where he worked many hours of the day. it is said that he used to leave the door open that he might hear the children's voices at their play. sometimes, indeed, he would call them in to look at his pictures, and was always much pleased when they seemed to understand and like them. we may be sure that he often looked across the garden to the dooryard where the family life was going on, and at such times he must have caught many a pretty picture. perhaps our picture of this mother feeding her children was suggested in this way. three healthy, happy children have been playing about in the yard,--a girl of six, her younger sister, and a brother still younger. they are dressed simply, so as to enjoy themselves thoroughly without fear of injuring any fine clothes. all three wear long aprons and wooden sabots. the little girls have their flying hair confined in close bonnet caps tied under the chin. the boy rejoices in a round cap ornamented on top with a button. the sisters take great care of their little brother. the toys are of a very rude sort and evidently of home manufacture. a cart is constructed of a board set on clumsy wheels. a doll is roughly shaped of wood and wrapped in a hood and blanket. there is a basket besides, in which one can gather bits of treasure picked up here and there in the yard. by and by the play is interrupted by a familiar voice. the children look up and see their mother standing smiling in the doorway. a bowl which she has in her hand is still steaming, and an appetizing odor reminds them that they are hungry. the basket and the cart are hastily dropped, but not the doll, and they all run to the doorstep. the brother is placed in the middle and the sisters seat themselves on either side. the elder girl still holds her doll with maternal solicitude; the other two children clasp hands, and the sister's arm is put around the boy's neck. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. feeding her birds] meanwhile the mother has seated herself directly in front of them, on a low stool such as is used by country people as a milking-stool. she tips it a little as she leans over to feed the children in turn from a long-handled wooden spoon. of course the first taste is for the little brother, and he stretches out his neck eagerly, opening his mouth wide so as not to lose a drop. the sisters look on eagerly, the younger one opening her own mouth a little, quite unconsciously. an inquisitive hen runs up to see what good things there are to eat. in the garden beyond, the father works busily at his spading. the name which millet gave to this picture is the french word _becquée_, which cannot be translated into any corresponding word in english. it means a _beakful_, that is, the food which the mother bird holds in her beak to give to the nestlings. the painter had in mind, you see, a nestful of birds being fed. the similarity between the family and the bird life is closely carried out in the picture. the children sit together as snugly as birds in a nest. the mother bends toward them in a brooding attitude which is like the bird mother's. her extended hand suggests a bird's beak, tapering to a sharp point at the end of the spoon. the young bird's mouth is wide open, and in pops the nice spoonful of broth! the house itself is made to look like a cosy little nest by the vine that embowers it. the sturdy stem runs up close by the doorstep and sends out over door and window its broad branches of beautiful green leaves. and just as the father bird watches the nest from his perch on some branch of the tree, the father at work in the garden can look from time to time at the little family circle in the doorway. as in the picture of the woman feeding hens, the house is built of stone covered with plaster. the door casing is of large ill-matched blocks of stone. the dooryard is made to appear much larger by the glimpse of the orchard we get through the gateway. no out-of-door picture is complete which does not show something of the beauty of nature. the dooryard itself would be a bare place but for the shady garden beyond. x the church at grÉville the village-commune of gréville has nothing to make it famous except that it was the birthplace of the painter millet. it is at the tip of cape la hague, which juts abruptly from the french coast into the english channel. the cape is a steep headland bristling with granite rocks and needles, and very desolate seen from the sea. inland it is pleasant and fruitful, with apple orchards and green meadows. the village life centres about the church, for the inhabitants of grenville are a serious and god-fearing people. the church is the spot around which cluster the most sacred associations of life. here the babies are baptized, and the youths and maidens confirmed; here the young people are married, and from here young and old alike are carried to their last resting-place. the building is hallowed by the memories of many generations of pious ancestors. the millet family lived in an outlying hamlet (gruchy) of grenville, and were somewhat far from the church. yet they had even more associations with it than other village families. here our painter's father had early shown his talent for music at the head of the choir of boys who sang at the sunday service. here at one time his old uncle priest, charles millet, held the office of vicar and went every morning to say mass. among the earliest recollections of jean françois was a visit to the church of gréville at a time when some new bells had just been bought. they were first to be baptized, as was the custom, before being hung in the tower, and it was while they still stood on the ground that the mother brought her little boy to see them. "i well remember how much i was impressed," he afterwards said, "at finding myself in so vast a place as the church, which seemed even more immense than our barn, and how the beauty of the big windows, with their lozenge-shaped panes, struck my imagination." at the age of twelve the boy went to be confirmed at the church of gréville, and thenceforth had another memorable experience to associate with the place. the vicar, who questioned him, found him so intelligent that he offered to teach him latin. the lessons led to the poems of virgil, which opened a new world to him. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the church at grÉville] years passed; the boy became a man and the man became a famous artist. but the path to fame had been a toilsome one, and as millet pressed on his way he was able to return but seldom to the spots he had loved in his youth, and then only on sad errands. at length the time came ( ) when the artist brought his entire family to his native grenville to spend a long summer holiday. millet made many sketches of familiar scenes which gave him material for work for the next three years. one of these pictures was that of the village church, which he began to paint sitting at one of the windows of the inn where the family were staying. if the building had lost the grandeur it possessed for his childish imagination, it was still full of artistic possibilities for a beautiful picture. it is a solid structure, and we fancy that the builders did not have far to bring the stone of which it is composed. the great granite cliffs which rise from the sea must be an inexhaustible quarry. the building is low and broad, to withstand the bleak winds. a less substantial structure, perched on this plateau, would be swept over the cliffs into the sea. there is something about it suggestive of the sturdy character of the norman peasants themselves, strong, patient, and enduring. it is very old; the passing years have covered the walls with moss, and nature seems to have made the place her own. it is as if, instead of being built with hands, it were a portion of the old cliffs themselves. the grassy hillock against which the church nestles is filled with graves, a cross here and there marking the place where some more important personage is buried. here is the sacred spot where millet's saintly old grandmother was laid to rest. a rough stone wall surrounds the churchyard, as old and moss-grown as the building itself. some stone steps leading into the yard are hollowed by the feet of many generations of worshippers. in the rear is a low stone house embowered in trees. the square bell-tower lifts a weather-vane against the sky, and the birds flock about it as about an old home. the rather steep roof is slightly depressed, as if beginning to sink in. with a painter's instinct millet chose the point of view from which all the lines of the church would be most beautiful and whence we may see to the best advantage the quaint outlines of the tower. beside this, he took for his work the day and hour when that great artist, the sun, could lend most effective help. so we see the simple little building at its best. the sky makes a glorious background, with fleecy clouds delicately veiling its brilliancy. the bright light throws a shadow of the tower across the roof, breaking the monotony of its length. the bareness of the big barn-like end is softened by the shadow in which it is seen. the plain side is decorated with the shadows of the buttresses and window embrasures. the sheep are as much at home here as the birds. they nibble contentedly in the road by the wall, and are undisturbed by the approach of a villager. beyond, at the left, is a glimpse of the level stretch of the sea. this is a spot where earth and sky and water meet, where the fishermen from the sea and the ploughmen from the fields come to worship god. xi the sower it is nightfall, and the sky is cloudy save where the last rays of the setting sun illumine a spot on the horizon. while the light lasts, the sower still holds to his task of sowing the seed. a large sack of grain is fastened about his body and hangs at his left side, where one end of it is grasped firmly in the left hand lest any of the precious seed be spilled. into this bag he plunges his right hand from time to time, and draws out a handful of grain which he flings into the furrow as he walks along. the sower's task ended, a series of strange transformations begins in the life of the seed. the winter rain softens and swells it, and when spring comes it pushes its way up in a tiny shoot. soon the slender blades appear in close lines; by and by the stalks grow tall and strong, and the field is full of the beautiful green grain. then the hot summer sun shines with ripening power; the wheat turns a golden yellow; the ears bend under the weight of the grain, and it is time for the harvest. the reapers come with sickle and scythe, and the grain is cut, and bound into great sheaves. the thrashing follows, when the ear is shaken off the stalk, and the grain is winnowed. and now the mills take up the work, the golden wheat grains are crushed, and the fine white flour which they contain is sifted and put into bags. the flour is mixed and kneaded and baked, and at length comes forth from the oven a fragrant loaf of bread. now bread is a necessity of life to the people, and the supply of bread turns on the history of the seed. if the harvest is plenty, the people may eat and be happy. if it is poor, they suffer the miseries of hunger. if it fails altogether, they die of starvation. it is then a solemn moment when the seed is planted. often the sower begins his task by tossing a handful of grain into the air in the sign of a cross, offering a prayer for a blessing on the seed. his is a grave responsibility; every handful of seed means many loaves of bread for hungry mouths. he must choose the right kind of seed for his soil, the right kind of weather for the planting, and use the grain neither too lavishly nor too sparingly.[ ] [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the sower] this is why the sower in our picture takes his task so seriously. he carries in his hand the key to prosperity. he is a true king. peasant though he is, he feels the dignity of his calling, and bears himself royally. he advances with a long swinging stride, measuring his steps rhythmically as if beating time to inaudible music. his right arm moves to and fro, swinging from the shoulder as on a pivot, and describing the arc of a circle. the hilly field in which he works is such as the painter millet was familiar with in his peasant childhood in normandy. a yoke of oxen are drawing the plough in the distance, as is the custom in that province. the sower himself is a true norman peasant. it is interesting to trace the outlines of the composition. there is first the long line on the sower's right side, beginning at the shoulder and following the outer edge of the right leg to the ground. on the other side, curving to meet this, is a line which begins at the top of the head, follows the left arm and the overhanging sack, and is faintly continued by the tiny stream of seed which leaks from the corner of the bag and falls near the sower's foot. crossing these curves in the opposite direction are the lines of the right arm and the left leg. thus the figure is painted in strong simple outlines such as we see in the statues by great sculptors. the line defining the edge of the field against the sky, sloping in the direction in which the sower walks, adds to the impression of motion which is so strongly suggested by the picture. as we look, we almost expect to see the sower reach the foot of the slope, and stride out of sight, still flinging the grain as he goes. there is another thing to note about the composition, and that is the perfect proportion of the single figure to the canvas which it so completely fills. this was the result of the painter's experiments. in the haste of his first inspiration he did not allow space enough to surround the sower.[ ] he then carefully traced the figure on a larger canvas and made a second picture. afterwards the same subject was repeated in a barbizon landscape. our american poet william cullen bryant has written a poem called "the song of the sower," which is very suggestive in connection with millet's painting.[ ] this is the way the song ends:-- "brethren, the sower's task is done, the seed is in its winter bed. now let the dark-brown mould be spread, to hide it from the sun, and leave it to the kindly care of the still earth and brooding air, as when the mother, from her breast, lays the hushed babe apart to rest, and shades its eyes, and waits to see how sweet its waking smile will be. the tempest now may smite, the sleet all night on the drowned furrow beat, and winds that, from the cloudy hold, of winter breathe the bitter cold, stiffen to stone the yellow mould, yet safe shall lie the wheat; till, out of heaven's unmeasured blue shall walk again the genial year, to wake with warmth and nurse with dew the germs we lay to slumber here." [footnote : for farmer's lore as to the diverse soils and diverse planting seasons, see virgil's _eclogues_, books i. and ii.] [footnote : in spite of this imperfection the first sower is a highly prized painting and is in the quincy-shaw collection, boston.] [footnote : compare also victor hugo's poem, often referred to in descriptions of this picture, _saison des semailles: le soir_.] xii the gleaners it is harvest time on a large farm. the broad fields have been shorn of their golden grain, and men and women are still busy gathering it in. the binders have tied the wheat in sheaves with withes, the sheaves are piled upon a wagon and carried to a place near the farm buildings, where they are stacked in great mounds resembling enormous soup tureens. the overseer rides to and fro on his horse giving orders to the laborers. now come the gleaners into the field to claim the time-honored privilege of gathering up the scattered ears still lying on the ground. the custom dates back to very early times.[ ] the ancient hebrews had a strict religious law in regard to it: "when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger."[ ] another law says that the gleanings are "for the fatherless and for the widow; that the lord thy god may bless thee in all the work of thine hands."[ ] this generous practice is still observed in france. the owner of a grain field would be afraid of bad luck to the harvest if he should refuse to let the gleaners in after the reapers. gleaning is, however, allowed only in broad daylight, that no dishonest persons may carry away entire sheaves. it is near noon of a summer day, and the sun is high in the heavens, casting only small shadows about the feet. the gleaners are three women of the poorer peasant class. they are tidily dressed in their coarse working clothes, and wear kerchiefs tied over their heads, with the edge projecting a little over the forehead to shade the eyes. the dresses are cut rather low in the neck, for theirs is warm work. they make their way through the coarse stubble, as sharp as needles, gathering here and there a stray ear of the precious wheat. already they have collected enough to make several little bundles, tied neatly, and piled together on the ground at one side. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the gleaners] as we look at them closely we see that they represent the three ages of womanhood: there is a maiden, a matron, and an old woman. the nearest figure, standing at the right, is the eldest of the three. she cannot bear the strain of stooping long at a time, and bends stiffly and painfully to her task. next her is a solidly built woman, with square figure and a broad back capable of bearing heavy burdens. those strong large hands have done hard work. the third figure is that of a young woman with a lithe, girlish form. with a girl's thought for appearance she has pinned her kerchief so that the ends at the back form a little cape to shield her neck from the burning sun. unlike her companions, she wears no apron. while the others use their aprons doubled up to form sacks for their gleanings, she holds her grain in her hand. if you will try in turn each one of the positions taken by the several figures, you will see how differently the three work. the two who put the grain in the apron, or pass it into the hand which rests on the knee, must every time lift themselves up with an awkward backward motion. the younger gleaner has found a short and direct route from one hand to the other, by resting the left hand, palm up, upon the back, where the right can reach it by a simple upward motion of the arm which requires no exertion of the body. her method saves the strength and is more graceful. moving forward in the stooping posture, with eyes fixed upon the ground, the figures of the gleaners have been compared to great grasshoppers, making their odd, irregular, hopping progress across the field. even as we look they seem to move toward us. the picture is a fine study in lines. the middle figure is constructed in a square outline, and this square effect is emphasized in various ways,--by the right angle formed between the line across the bust and the right arm, by the square corner between chin and neck, and by the square shape of the kerchief at the back of the head. we thus get an idea of the solid, prosaic character of the woman herself. the younger woman is a creature of beautiful curves. the lines of her back and bust flow together in an oval figure which the position of the left arm completes. the outstretched right arm continues the fine line across the back. the lovely curve of the throat, the shapeliness of the hand, even the pretty adjustment of the kerchief, lend added touches to the charm of the youthful figure. the lines of the standing figure curve towards the other two, and carry the composition to sufficient height. the lines enclosing the entire group form a mound-like figure not unlike a wheat stack in shape. a wheat stack faintly seen across the distance in the centre of the field marks the apex of the mound, the sides being formed by the outer lines of the two outer figures. when we compare the picture with the others we have seen in the same general style of composition, showing a level plain with figures in front, we note how much more detail the background of the gleaners contains. this is because the figures do not come above the horizon line, as do those in the angelus and shepherdess. hence the eye must be led upward by minor objects, to take in the entire panorama spread before us. [footnote : see the book of ruth.] [footnote : leviticus, chapter xxiii., verse .] [footnote : deuteronomy, chapter xxiv., verse .] xiii the milkmaid[ ] all through the years of millet's life and work in barbizon, his thoughts used to turn often to the little village in normandy where he spent his youth. his early life in the fields impressed upon his memory all the out-of-door sights peculiar to his native province. the customs of peasants in france differ in the various provinces just as do ours in the various states. some of the household utensils in millet's childhood's home were such as he never saw elsewhere, and always remembered with pleasure. the ways of doing the work in gréville were not altogether like the ways of barbizon, and millet's observant eye and retentive memory noted these differences with interest. when he revisited his home in later life, he made careful sketches of some of the jugs and kitchen utensils used in the family. he even carried off to his barbizon studio one particular brass jar which was used when the girl went to the field to milk cows. he also sketched a girl carrying a jug of milk on her shoulder in the fashion of the place. out of such studies was made our picture of the milkmaid. "women in my country carry jars of milk in that way," said the painter when explaining the picture to a visitor at his studio, and went on to tell of other features of the life in normandy, which he reproduced in his pictures, though some of them he had not seen in all the long time since his boyhood. as a reminiscence of normandy the milkmaid is a companion piece to the sower. there are other points of resemblance between the two pictures, as we shall see. the day draws to its close in splendor, and the western sky is all aflame. against this brilliant background the figure of the milkmaid looms up grandly as she advances along the path through the meadow. she is returning from the field which lies on the other slope of the hill. there the cows are pastured and a rude fence marks the boundary. the girl has been out for the milking, and a cow near the fence turns its head in the direction of her retreating figure. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co, john andrew & son, sc. the milkmaid] the milk is carried in a large jar on the left shoulder. by holding the left arm akimbo, hand resting on the hip, the girl makes her shoulder a little broader, as it were, enlarging the support of the jar. the way in which the burden is kept in place is very interesting. to put up the right arm to steady it would be impossible, for the arm is not long enough to insure a firm grasp upon so heavy a weight. so a cord or strap is passed through the handle of the jar, carried over the head, and held in the right hand. the strong arm is stretched tense to keep the strap tight. the head must of course be protected from the straining of the cord, the shoulder from the pressure of the jar. both are therefore well padded. the head pad resembles a cap hanging in lappets on each side. even with this protection the girl's face shows the strain. a picture like this teaches us that there are other ways of giving a figure beauty than by making the face pretty. just as millet's shepherdess differs altogether from the little bopeep of the nursery tale, so this peasant girl is not at all like the pretty milkmaids who carry milking-stools and shining pails through the pages of the picture books. millet had no patience with such pictures. pretty girls were not fit for hard work, he said, and he always wanted to have the people he painted look as if they belonged to their station. fitness was in his mind one of the chief elements of beauty. so he shows us in this milkmaid a young woman framed in the massive proportions of an amazon, and eminently fitted for her lot in life. her chief beauty lies in the expression of her splendidly developed figure. her choicest gifts are the health and virtue which most abound in the free life of god's country. "god made the country, and man made the town. what wonder, then, that health and virtue, gifts that can alone make sweet the bitter draught that life holds out to all, should most abound and least be threatened in the fields and groves."[ ] a study of the lines of the picture will show the artistic beauty of the composition. you may trace a long beautiful curve beginning at the girl's finger tip and extending along the cord across the top of the milk jar. starting from the same point another good line follows the arm and shoulder across the face and along the edge of the jar. at the base of the composition we find corresponding lines which may be drawn from the toe of the right foot. one follows the diagonal of the path and the other runs along the edge of the lifted skirt. there are other fine lines in the drawing of the bodice and the folds of the skirt. altogether they are as few in number and as strongly emphasized, though not so grand, as those of the sower. [footnote : the title of water-carrier has been incorrectly attached to this picture, though the sketch on which it is based is properly known as the milkmaid.] [footnote : from cowper's _task_.] xiv the woman churning again we are in the picturesque province of normandy, and are shown the interior of a dairy where a woman is busy churning. it is a quaint place, with raftered ceiling and stone-paved floor, and the furnishings are only such as are required by the work in hand. on some wooden shelves against the farther wall are vessels of earthenware and metal, to hold cream, cheese, butter, and the like. the churn is one of the old-fashioned upright sort, not unlike those used in early new england households, and large enough to contain a good many quarts of cream. the woman stands beside it, grasping with both hands the handle of the dasher, or plunger, which is worked up and down to keep the cream in motion and so change it into butter. in the beginning of the churning process the movement of the dasher is slow, so that the cream may be thoroughly mixed. then it goes more rapidly for a time, till, just as the arms grow weary, the butter begins to "come," when the speed slackens to the end, the entire process occupying thirty or forty minutes. the butter collects in yellow lumps, which are at length taken from the churn, washed and kneaded to press out the buttermilk, and then moulded into pats. the pleasure of the finishing touches makes up for the fatiguing monotony of the churning. george eliot, in the novel of "adam bede," gives a charming description of hetty sorrel's butter-making, with all the pretty attitudes and movements of patting and rolling the sweet-scented butter into moulds. we can hardly tell, from the attitude of the woman in our picture, how far her work has progressed, but her expression of satisfaction seems to show that the butter is "coming" well. the work of butter-making varies curiously at different times. sometimes the butter comes quickly and easily, and again, only after long and laborious delays. there seems, indeed, no rule about the process; it appears to be all a matter of "luck." country people have always been very superstitious in regard to it; and not understanding the true reasons for a successful or an unsuccessful churning, they attribute any remarkable effects to supernatural agencies. in the old days of witchcraft superstitions, they used to think that when the cream did not readily turn to butter, the churn had been tampered with by some witch, like mabel martin's mother in whittier's poem. witches were sometimes supposed to work a baleful charm on the milk by putting under the doorsill some magical object, such as a picture of a toad or a lizard. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the woman churning] in scotland, when churning was easy it was because of the secret help of the "brownie." he was a tiny, elf-like creature who lived in the barn and was never seen of men; but his presence was made known by his many deeds of helpfulness in kitchen and dairy, for which he was rewarded by a daily bowl of milk. those who have read george macdonald's story of sir gibbie remember how the little waif from the city was mistaken for a brownie because he secretly helped in the churning. in france a pious class of peasants pray to st. blaise for a blessing on their various farm occupations, including the dairy work. a hymn written to the saint contains this petition:-- "in our dairies, curds and cream and fair cheeses may we see: great st. blaise, oh, grant our plea."[ ] some such prayer as this may be running through the mind of the woman in our picture. she has the earnest and simple character which belongs to the norman peasant. hers is a kindly nature, too, and the cat rubs familiarly against her as if sure of a friend who has often set a saucer of milk in his way. with sleeves rolled up and skirts tucked about her, she attacks her work in a strong, capable way which shows that it is a pleasure. the light comes from some high window at the left, and, gleaming on her arms, shows how firm and hard the flesh is. we know that this is a norman peasant woman from her tall cap. there are many styles of caps peculiar to different parts of france, but those worn in normandy are remarkable for their height. when some of the people of this province emigrated to the western continent and settled in acadia, the land of evangeline, the women brought their caps with them and continued to wear them many years, as we read in longfellow's "evangeline." our previous studies of the other pictures of this collection help us to see at once the good points of composition in the woman churning. the main lines of the group in the foreground form a tall pyramid. the shape of the churn gives us the line at the right side, and the figure of the cat carries the line of the woman's skirt into a corresponding slant on the left. the lines of the tiled floor add to the pyramidal effect by converging in perspective. even the broom leaning against the shelf near the door takes the same diagonal direction as the tiles of the right side. we have here also a new illustration of the art of treating inclosed spaces.[ ] an outlet is given to the room through the door opening into the farmyard. across the yard stands a low cow-shed, in which a woman is seated milking a cow. this building, however, does not altogether block up the view from the dairy door. above the roof is a strip of sky, and through a square window at the back is seen a bit of the meadow. [footnote : from ronsard's "hymn to st. blaise," translated by henry naegely in _j.f. millet and rustic art_.] [footnote : see chapters ii. and vi.] xv the man with the hoe to the peasant farmer every month of the year brings its own labors. from seed time to harvest there is a constant succession of different tasks, and hardly is the harvest gathered in before it is time to prepare again for planting. before ploughing can be begun the fields must first be cleared of stubble and weeds. now in millet's village of barbizon, this clearing of the fields was done, in his day, by means of an implement called in french a _houe_. although we translate the word as hoe, the tool is quite unlike the american article of that name. it looks a little like a carpenter's adze, though much larger and heavier, the blade being as broad as that of a shovel. the handle is short and the implement is very clumsy and fatiguing to use. even the stoutest peasant finds the work wearisome. the man in our picture has paused for a moment's rest in this toilsome labor, and leans panting on his hoe. in the heat of his toil he has thrown off his hat and blouse, which now lie together on the ground behind him. his damp hair is matted together on his forehead, his brawny chest is exposed by the open shirt, his horny hands are clasped over the hoe handle. some distant object catches his eye. it may be a farm wagon moving across the plain, or perhaps a bird flying through the clear air. to follow the course of such an object a moment is a welcome change from the monotonous rise and fall of the hoe. it is a rough and uneven field in which the laborer works, rising here and there in small hillocks, and thickly overgrown with brambles and coarse tufts of herbage. when these weeds are loosened from the soil, they are raked in little heaps and burned. in the field just back of this is a circle of these bonfires, sending up their columns of smoke towards the sky. a young woman is busy raking together the piles. in the distance she looks like a priestess of ancient times presiding at some mystic rites of fire worship. far beyond, a shapely tree is outlined against the horizon. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the man with the hoe] to study this picture profitably, we must consider separately the subject and the artistic qualities. these two elements in a work of art are often confused, but are in reality quite distinct. very unpleasant subjects have sometimes been employed in pictures of great artistic merit, and again beautiful subjects have sometimes been treated very indifferently. when great art is united with a great subject, we have ideal perfection; but poor art and a poor subject together are intolerable. now some people think only of the subject when they look at a picture, and others, more critical, look only at the qualities of art it contains. the best way of all is to try to understand something of both. in the first glance at this picture we do not find the subject very attractive. the laborer is awkward, he is stupid looking, and he is very weary. if we are to look at laborers, we like to see them graceful, intelligent, and active like the sower. as a redeeming quality, the man with the hoe has a certain patient dignity which commands our respect, but with all that, we do not call it a pleasant subject. but look a moment at the strong, noble outlines of the drawing and see how finely modelled is the figure. so carefully did millet study this work that he first modelled the figure in clay that he might give it more vitality in the painting. this man with the hoe seems indeed not a painted figure, but a real living, breathing human being, whom we can touch and find of solid flesh and blood. we must note, too, how grandly the figure is thrown out against the sky and the plain. there is something to observe, also, in the proportions of the man to the background. the broad pyramid made by the bending figure and the hoe needs plenty of space at each side to set it off, hence the oblong shape of the picture. these, and other artistic qualities not so easily observed and understood, all give the picture "a place among the greater artistic conceptions of all time." the man with the hoe has probably caused more discussion than any other of millet's paintings. from the very first those who care only for the subject of a picture have condemned it, while the critics have praised its artistic qualities. many have thought that millet made the subject as unpleasant as possible in order to show the degrading effects of work. the same theory was suggested when the sower and the gleaners appeared. the painter himself was much troubled by these misunderstandings. "i have never dreamed of being a pleader in any cause," he said. he simply painted life as he saw it, and had no thought of teaching strange doctrines against labor. indeed, no man ever felt more deeply than he the dignity of labor. when everything which could be said for or against the picture had been exhausted on the other side of the atlantic, the picture was brought to this country and finally to the state of california. here the discussion began all over again. there were those who were so impressed by the unpleasant character of the subject that they could not find words strong enough to express their horror. the man with the hoe was called "a monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched," a "dread" and "terrible" shape, "a thing that grieves not and that never hopes," a "brother to the ox," and many other things which would have surprised and grieved millet. of course, any one to whom the pathos of the subject itself appeals so strongly can have little thought for the artistic qualities of the picture. so edwin markham, the writer of the poem from which these expressions are quoted, lets the subject lead him on into an impassioned protest against "the degradation of labor,--the oppression of man by man,"--all of which has nothing to do with the picture. millet was not one to care at all for what he called "pretty" subjects, as we have already seen in studying the picture of the milkmaid. "he felt that only by giving to his figures the expression and character which belonged to their condition could he obey the laws of beauty in art, for he knew that a work of art is beautiful only when it is homogeneous."[ ] this was the theory which he put into practice in the man with the hoe, and one who understands well both his theories and his art sums up the great painting in these words: "the noble proportions of the figure alone would give this work a place among the greater artistic conceptions of all time, while the severe and simple pathos of this moment of respite in the interminable earth struggle, invests it with a sublimity which belongs to eternal things alone." [ ] [footnote : pierre millet in the _century_.] [footnote : henry naegely.] xvi the portrait of millet in studying the works of any great painter many questions naturally arise as to the personality of the man himself and the influences which shaped his life. some such questions have already been answered as we have examined these fifteen pictures by millet. jean françois millet, we have learned, was of peasant parentage and spent the greater part of his life in the country. his pious norman ancestors bequeathed him a rich heritage of strong and serious traits. from them, too, he drew that patience and perseverance which helped him to overcome so many obstacles in his career. in the surroundings of his childhood he saw no pictures and heard nothing of art or artists. yet at a very early age he showed a remarkable talent for drawing. his artistic temperament was inherited from his father, who was a great lover of music and of everything beautiful. "look," he sometimes said, plucking a blade of grass and showing it to his little boy, "how beautiful this is." his grandmother, too, had a true poetic vein in her nature. she would come to the child's bedside in the morning, calling, "wake up, my little françois, you don't know how long the birds have been singing the glory of god." in such a family the youth's gifts were readily recognized, and he was sent to cherbourg, the nearest large town, to learn to be a painter. here, and later in paris, he received instruction from various artists, but his greatest teacher was nature. so he turned from the schools of paris, and the artificial standards of his fellow artists there, to study for himself, at first hand, the peasant life he wished to portray. what a delightful place barbizon was for such work we have seen from some of his pictures. it was during the fruitful years of work at barbizon that millet made the crayon portrait of himself which is reproduced as our frontispiece. he was a large, strong, deep-chested man, somewhat above the medium height. an admirer has described him as "one of nature's noblemen," and his younger brother pierre says he was "built like a hercules." he had an inherent distaste for fine clothes which he showed even in boyhood. when he grew to be a painter, and returned to visit his family in gréville, the villagers were scandalized to see the city artist appear in their streets in blouse and sabots. as we see in the portrait, millet had long wavy hair, falling over his shoulders, and a thick black beard. his forehead was high and intelligent, and his nose delicately cut and sensitive. his eyes were gray-blue, of the kind which look a man through and through and which nothing escapes. the artist had so trained these wonderful eyes of his that he had only to turn them on a scene to photograph the impression indelibly on his memory. the face that we see in the portrait is that of a thinker, a poet, and an artist. it is the face of one who held intimate converse with the great poets of the ages, of one whose favorite books were the bible, virgil, theocritus and shakespeare. though millet had many genial traits in his nature, his expression here is profoundly serious. such an expression tells much of the inner life of the man. his pictures were too original to be popular at once, and while he waited for purchasers he found it hard to support his family. his anxieties wore upon his health, and he was subject to frequent headaches of frightful severity. nor was the struggle with poverty his only trial. he had to contend constantly against the misconceptions and misrepresentations of hostile critics. he was of too stern a nature and too loyal to his ideals to vary a hair's breadth from his course, yet criticism embittered him. "give me signboards to paint, if you will," he exclaimed, "but at least let me think out my subjects in my own fashion and finish the work that i have to do, in peace." like all who have great originality, millet lived in a world of his own, and had but a few congenial friends. to such friends, however, and in the inner circle of his home, he opened his great and tender heart, and all who knew him loved him. contributions from the museum of history and technology paper hermann stieffel, soldier-artist of the west _edgar m. howell_ [illustration: figure .--area in which hermann stieffel served with company k, th u.s. infantry, - .] by edgar m. howell hermann stieffel, soldier artist of the west _a number of gifted artists painted the west and the colorful indian-fighting army of the post-civil-war period, but since none of these were military men their work lacked the viewpoint that only a soldier could provide._ _german-born hermann stieffel, for years a private in the u.s. infantry, painted a series of water colors while serving in the indian country in the 's and 's. although stieffel could never be called talented, and certainly was untutored as an artist, his unusually canny eye for the colorful and graphic and his meticulous attention to detail have given us valuable pictorial documentaries on the west during the indian wars._ _the author: edgar m. howell is curator of military history in the united states national museum, smithsonian institution._ the american west has never wanted for artists with a high sense of the documentary. through the talented hands of men like george catlin, carl bodmer and alfred jacob miller, frederick remington, and the cowboy painter charles m. russell the trans-mississippi regions have been pictured as have few other areas on earth.[ ] from historical and ethnological standpoints these men made tremendous and timeless contributions to our american heritage. but the west held an esthetic fascination for the untutored and less talented as well, and not a few soldiers, miners, stage drivers, and just plain adventurers recorded their impressions on paper and canvas. crude though many of these works are, they are nonetheless significant, for they are a graphic record of what these men saw, where they lived, and what they did, in many cases the only record of particular places and events, for the camera of l. a. huffman and his colleagues did not come into its own until the late 's.[ ] without them we would have no description, graphic or otherwise, of much of the west both before and after the civil war--the early trading posts and forts, the oregon, santa fe, and overland trails, the bozeman trail, the stage stations, all of which played a part in the opening and development of the west.[ ] [illustration: figure .--attack on general marcy's train near pawnee fort, kansas, september , . the train was escorted by company k, th u.s. infantry, brevet major d. h. brotherton commanding. (_usnm ; smithsonian photo -a._)] in the heirs of lt. col. david h. brotherton, u.s. army, an indian-fighting officer of many years experience on the frontier, donated to the united states national museum a collection[ ] comprising a number of sioux indian specimens, including a model winchester carbine said to have been surrendered in to colonel brotherton by the sioux chief, sitting bull, and ten water colors by a german-born private soldier, hermann stieffel of company k, th u.s. infantry. nine of these paintings (the tenth being a view of rattenberg in the tyrol alps) are photographically reproduced herein. they constitute an unusually graphic and colorful, if somewhat unartistic, series of documentaries on the west of the post-civil-war indian fighting period. it can be surmised that brotherton obtained the paintings from stieffel, for from to he commanded the infantry company in which the latter spent the entire years of his army career. brotherton's career itself is an interesting sidelight on the west of the period and an excellent if somewhat sad commentary on the promotion system in the army during a period when the development of the west was so heavily dependent on the army's curbing indian depredations. brotherton was graduated from the u.s. military academy with the class of along with several officers who later distinguished themselves in the confederate states army, including george washington custis lee, son of robert e. lee, john pegram, j. e. b. stuart, stephen d. lee, and william dorsey pender.[ ] assigned to the th infantry, brotherton by had risen to the rank of captain and had acquired considerable experience against the comanches and apaches in the southwest, the seminoles in florida, and the mormons in utah. electing to remain with his regiment at the outbreak of the civil war rather than resign and enter a volunteer or militia unit where he easily might have risen to general rank as did so many of his contemporaries, he remained a captain in the army until when a vacancy occurred and he was promoted to major. he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in after years of service, but only at the expense of transferring from his old regiment to the th infantry, where there was a vacancy at that rank. he retired for disability in after years of almost constant service in the field. we know little of stieffel the man. he was born in wiesbaden, germany, in , and became a printer by trade, indicating a fair amount of education. he emigrated to this country at an unknown date and in december at new york city enlisted in the army as a private of infantry. he was years old at the time, and was described as being five feet five and one-half inches tall with blue eyes, sandy hair, and a fair complexion.[ ] he remained a private for the entire time of his military service. after recruit training at a general depot, he was assigned to company k, th infantry, joining that unit late in august at camp floyd (later fort crittenden), utah territory, where the regiment was an element of col. albert sidney johnston's "army of utah" sent westward to police the recalcitrant mormons.[ ] stieffel's record shows nothing of note until december when he was court-martialed and fined.[ ] this court-martial seemed to set the pace for him. although the precise charge on which he was tried is not stated, in view of his later record it can be surmised that it was for drunkenness--a very common offense in the frontier army--for in october stieffel owed a sutler $ . , a heavy debt for a day when a private's net pay was less than $ . a month.[ ] the debt remained unpaid through and even increasing an additional $ . . during this period stieffel also was in confinement on a number of occasions for crimes or misdemeanors unspecified.[ ] in the th infantry was transferred from utah southward to the department of new mexico. it was here in that stieffel saw his first combat in col. e. r. s. canby's[ ] union force, which frustrated the wild confederate attempt under brig. gen. h. h. sibley to invade the present states of new mexico and arizona and conquer california.[ ] captain brotherton, private stieffel, and the remainder of company k fought in the sharp action at valverde, new mexico, on february , , and evidently with some distinction as brotherton was breveted major for gallantry as a result of his unit's performance.[ ] unfortunately for posterity, stieffel did not record his impressions of this little-known sideshow of the civil war. [illustration: figure .--satanta addressing the peace commissioners at council grove, medicine lodge creek, kansas. (_usnm ; smithsonian photo ._)] the battle of valverde was stieffel's only experience in formal combat so far as the record shows. after the final withdrawal of sibley's force into texas whence it had come, the th infantry turned its hand to policing the indians and was almost constantly in the field during the period - .[ ] stieffel, however, was seldom with his unit during this time. when not on one of his frequent stays in the stockade, he was on extra duty at the closest army hospital.[ ] he continued on such duty for most of the remainder of his service,[ ] except for confinements, a period of desertion, and necessary changes of station. stieffel's exact unofficial status in company k over the years is difficult to account for. it is possible, though hardly probable, that captain brotherton had developed a friendship with the german, which might account for both his acquisition of the paintings and stieffel's extra-duty tours. but such is doubtful. brotherton was a hardened professional officer in an era when there was a far wider gap between officer and enlisted man than exists today. there is no evidence that stieffel was a shirker. at the end of each enlistment he reenlisted and always in company k, and such reenlistment was subject to the company commander's veto. it is probable that he was not a particularly good soldier. but after the civil war an army career in the ranks held little glamor for the average young man and recruiting officers were hard put to keep the ranks even partially filled, too often being forced to take what they could get. the most plausible explanation is that since every unit in the army, then as today, was constantly called on for extra-duty men, the company first sergeant just as constantly selected the apparently agreeable stieffel as the person whose absence was least likely to weaken the combat readiness of the company. the arrangement must have suited brotherton, for he allowed it to continue for years. it obviously suited stieffel, for once he was placed more or less permanently on such detail his periods of confinement ceased. hospital duty in that day and age was hardly arduous, and the discipline was light. also, it provided cents a day extra pay. thus, this duty gave stieffel time to paint and, if our surmise is correct, both the time and the money for him to indulge his thirst. in any case, we are indebted to this light duty that gave him the opportunity to paint. in september company k left new mexico for fort harker, kansas, in the department of the missouri, as escort for brig. gen. r. b. marcy, an old member of the th infantry who was acting as inspector general for troop units west of the mississippi. on that march of something more than miles the column was sharply attacked near fort dodge on the arkansas river by a large force of cheyenne believed led by black kettle, and stieffel had his second and last taste of combat. the action must have impressed him, for it furnished the subject of the first of his paintings (fig. ). from fort harker, company k escorted the indian peace commissioners to council grove on big medicine lodge creek for their treaty meeting with the kiowas, apaches, comanches, cheyenne, and arapahoes in october. this historic meeting stieffel witnessed and depicted with considerable color and attention to detail (figs. , ). [illustration: figure .--camp of the peace commissioners at medicine lodge creek, kansas. (_usnm ; smithsonian photo -a._)] after another period of hospital duty at fort harker (figs. , ), stieffel went in the field, for what appears to have been the last time, as a member of a wagon-train escort to medicine bluff, indian territory (present day oklahoma), where general sheridan was establishing fort sill on the southern edge of the wichita mountains.[ ] this picturesque overhang of medicine bluff creek, a small tributary of the red river, was the subject of one of stieffel's landscapes and perhaps his finest single work (fig. ). [illustration: figure .--the wichita mountains from medicine bluffs, indian territory. (_usnm ; smithsonian photo ._)] after this brief interlude in the wilderness, stieffel went back to his hospital work. then in september , following a change of station for company k from harker to fort leavenworth, he went in desertion until the following may, being restored to duty upon his return, rather strangely, without trial but with loss of pay for the period of his absence.[ ] the only possible explanation for this leniency in a period when court-martial sentences tended to severity could be that since extra-duty men had to be furnished, stieffel was worth more to the company out of the stockade than in. with indian unrest increasing every man counted.[ ] [illustration: figure .--fort harker, kansas; east side. (_usnm ; smithsonian photo ._)] following the custer massacre on june , , all posts in the department of the missouri were virtually stripped of troops, among them the th infantry, and dispatched to the department of dakota in an all-out attempt to bring the rampaging sioux under control. but stieffel saw no action in the campaigns that followed. he was sick[ ] and was left behind on july when company k left leavenworth for the northwest for five years of almost continuous campaigning including numerous actions with the sioux and the campaign against the gifted indian tactician, chief joseph, and his nez percé. we could wish that stieffel had been present during the nez percé campaign, for he might have pictured for us nelson miles and the th infantry taking the surrender of joseph in the bear paw mountains at the end of his epochal , -mile running fight.[ ] stieffel remained at fort leavenworth until when he rejoined his regiment at cantonment tongue river, montana territory, renamed fort keogh in . at keogh he was again placed on hospital extra-duty and so remained until he was discharged june , ,[ ] on a surgeon's certificate of disability. after his discharge he retired to the soldier's home in washington where he died on december , , at the age of . he was buried in the national cemetery on the soldiers' home grounds.[ ] stieffel painted three scenes of fort keogh and vicinity--one of the fort itself, one of miles city across the tongue river, and a landscape of the yellowstone river near miles city (figs. - ). the paintings chronologically, the first of the paintings (fig. ) is that of the indian attack on general marcy's train escorted by company k on september , . this attack took place on the arkansas river about nine miles west of cimarron crossing, kansas. it was an insignificant action as such, similar to hundreds of other such fights in the west, but, in the days of wet-plate photography and low-speed camera shutters, the painting is significant as a rare eye-witness drawing and tells us far more than might any written description. general marcy's report is somewhat cursory: yesterday at about o'clock a.m. as we were approaching a bluff near the arkansas river thirty-five miles above here we suddenly discovered a great many indians approaching us from various different directions. i immediately halted our train and after arranging our escort in proper order for action went forward. the indians circled around us at full speed firing as they ran but did not come very near us. i would not allow our men to fire at the long range, believing that the indians would come nearer but they did not. some of the men fired and it is believed that two were wounded as groups collected around them. they wounded lt. williams severely in the leg and one soldier who has since died. near the point where the affair occurred was a large train of wagons en route to new mexico with valuable freight. the train had two hundred mules driven off by the indians about twelve days ago, and it had been guarded by twenty-five men since, and it is probable that the indians were there for the purpose of capturing the train as they had been firing into it previous to our arrival.[ ] stieffel tells us much more in his painting. upon being attacked the train has pulled off the road, visible in the left foreground, and corralled. the horses remain hitched, witness to the suddenness of the attack. that the indians did not venture overly close, as stated by marcy, is indicated by the fact that brotherton's men have not been forced to take cover behind the wagons. that the indians appear closer than marcy indicates is due to the artist's lack of perspective. they are firing muzzle-loading rifles, several men being in the act of ramming home charges. stieffel is doubtless correct in this detail. the chief of ordnance reported in october that nearly all the infantry in the departments of the missouri and the platte had been issued breech-loaders.[ ] it seems more than probable that company k, in transit as it was from the distant department of new mexico, had never seen the new weapons. in the matter of uniform, stieffel may have been indulging his fancy somewhat when he pictured the men as wearing the long frock coat and black campaign hat. a miscellany of dress with the short fatigue jacket and kepi predominating would seem far more reasonable for an outfit which had just finished six rough years in the desert southwest and was even then nearing the end of a -mile march. the artist, as did most observers of the period, has patently overestimated the number of indians who must have carried firearms in the attack. fully percent or more of the indians are pictured as so armed, a point which--understandable as it may be in the case of an observer participating in what may well have been his first indian fight--is not borne out by the record. in the fetterman massacre of the previous december, of the white men killed only six bore gunshot wounds,[ ] and the best evidence indicates that the force which overwhelmed custer on the little big horn river in was at least percent armed with bow and arrow.[ ] then again, general marcy's report would seem to bear this out. had the indians been well armed, the freight wagon train, which stieffel pictures corralled in the right background, could hardly have held out for twelve days against a force estimated at or more warriors defended by only men, at least a part of whom were mexicans described by marcy as badly frightened.[ ] the soldier in the center background making a dash for the corralled wagons is probably a flanker cut off by the sudden attack, possibly the lt. williams who was wounded, since only officers in the infantry were mounted. the group of indians around the fire (in the right centerground) cannot be accounted for. [illustration: figure .--fort harker, kansas; south side. (_usnm ; smithsonian photo ._)] stieffel's two pictures of the meeting of the government's peace commissioners with the indians at the general tribal rendezvous on big medicine lodge creek in october (figs. , ) are his most important from a historical standpoint, especially the one of satanta, the kiowa chief, addressing the meeting.[ ] indian unrest during and immediately after the civil war caused by the ever-increasing white migration to the west had grown to such proportions that in the congress launched an all-out effort to establish a lasting peace on the frontier. the plan was to persuade the warring tribes to sign treaties whereby they would move onto reservations where they would be undisturbed by the whites and, in turn, would cease to molest the frontier settlements.[ ] the indians concerned with the medicine lodge treaty were the kiowa, comanche, apache, cheyenne, and arapahoe. this treaty is unusually important, as it changed the entire status of these tribes from that of independence with free and unrestricted range over the entire plains area to that of dependence on the government with confinement to the limits of a reservation with constant civilian and military supervision. for the indians it was the beginning of the end. [illustration: figure .--fort keogh, montana. (_usnm ; smithsonian photo ._)] upon its arrival at fort harker following the action of september , company k had been assigned as escort for the commissioners, thus stieffel's presence at council grove. it was a colorful gathering, with some , indians on hand. first came a series of speeches. then the treaty was drawn up and explained to the indians. they were to retire to assigned reservations, cease attacking the whites, and permit railroads to be built across the plains. in return the reservations were to be closed to the white buffalo hunters and the tribes were to be issued certain annuities and provided with farming implements, seeds, churches, and schools. in short, the indians were to be forced to "walk the white man's road." when the turn came for the indians to reply, several chiefs responded, the most notable being the kiowa chief, satanta, or "white bear" (fig. ), one of the most remarkable individuals in his tribe's history. speaking for all, satanta made an unusually strong impression on most of those present, stieffel among them, for this is the incident which he chose to depict[ ] (fig. ). satanta is pictured in the act of speaking to the commissioners, three of whom can be identified as the military members, generals terry, augur, and harney from left to right,[ ] plus one of the civilian commissioners, possibly n. g. taylor, commissioner of indian affairs. a daring and successful warrior, satanta's eloquence and vigor of expression had already won for him the title "orator of the plains." every feature on his strong face, every line, showed his character--a forceful, untamable savage of a tribe as well known for its lack of honor, gratitude, and general reliability as for its bravery.[ ] with great dignity and impact he first denounced bitterly and scornfully the killing for mere sport of a number of buffalo near the council site by some troopers of the th cavalry: has the white man become a child, that he should recklessly kill and not eat? when the red men slay game, they do so that they may live and not starve. in direct relation to the treaty, he continued with obvious sincerity: i love the land and the buffalo.... i don't want any of the medicine lodges [schools and churches] within the country. i want the children raised as i was.... i have heard that you intend to settle us on a reservation near the mountains. i don't want to settle. i love to roam over the prairies. there i am free and happy, but when we settle down we grow pale and die.... a long time ago this land belonged to our fathers; but when i go up to the river i see camps of soldiers on its banks. these soldiers cut down my timber; they kill my buffalo; and when i see that my heart feels like busting. little wonder stieffel and all those present were impressed. it is appropriate to add that neither the indians nor the government of the united states observed the provisions of this treaty. [illustration: figure .--miles city, montana. (_usnm ; smithsonian photo -b._)] the remainder of stieffel's paintings have no such impact as the earlier ones, but nonetheless they are important, especially for their almost meticulous detail of camp and post life and terrain in the west. in that of the camp of peace commissioners he accurately depicts the various types of tentage of the army at the time--the small slanting wall tents of the enlisted men, the wall tents of the individual officers, the large wall headquarters and officers' mess tents, and the familiar sibleys, one of which is obviously being used for the guard. the escort wagons and ambulances are regulation transport of the period. the artist has even included a sentry walking post at the ration dump with fixed bayonet, a sound precaution against sticky red fingers. two indian camps are shown in the background, and the indians, as would befit the atmosphere of a treaty council, are moving freely through the military camp to the apparent unconcern of the military. [illustration: figure .--the yellowstone river near fort keogh, montana. (_usnm ; smithsonian photo -a._)] the landscape of the wichita mountains from medicine bluffs (fig. ) on the present-day fort sill reservation is noteworthy as a terrain sketch to anyone who has served at that post. i have ridden over this country many times, and the undulating prairie, the meandering of medicine creek, the bluffs themselves--over the highest of which (left centerground) the apache geronimo did _not_ ride his horse with the th cavalry in full cry behind--mount hinds and lofty mount scott are remarkable in their accuracy when one considers that the painting must have been done from sketches made when stieffel was on escort detail to the indian territory in .[ ] the two views of fort harker, kansas (figs. , ), now ellsworth, must have been painted during and while stieffel was on extra duty as a hospital attendant there. from an artistic standpoint they are the poorest of his work. his detail, however, more than compensates for any deficiencies as a draftsman and gives us an excellent concept of the physical layout and daily routine of a small post in the southern plains. the two views are from the east and south, and complement one another nicely. headquarters, officers' quarters, and barracks, all of typical clapboard construction, are readily discernible, as are the stables, the latter being the long unfenestrated buildings. even the barrack privies, an outdoor bake oven alongside a mess hall, and earth-covered powder magazines can be easily identified. the long rows of cordwood for cooking and heating were to be seen on any post of the period. in the view from the east (fig. ) may be seen a detail of cavalrymen with led horses moving out for animal exercise past the camp of a transient unit with its standard tentage and transport. the high white paling fence is difficult to place, being either an animal corral, in which case it would be much too high, or a forage yard, since no hay piles are visible elsewhere. stieffel seems to have been considerably fascinated by the railroad (fig. ) with its accompanying telegraph line running southwest of the fort, for again he paints in some detail, although this time with an almost childish conception. the "u.p.r.w.e.d." which he so carefully letters in identifies the line as the union pacific railway, eastern division.[ ] the naming of the engine "osage" was as typical of the period as the naming of individual commercial aircraft is today. [illustration: figure .--kiowa chief satanta, or white bear. (_smithsonian photo bae -a._)] the last three paintings (figs. - ) fall in the period of stieffel's service at fort keogh in the department of dakota. the fort, named for captain miles keogh (who died with custer in the little big horn massacre) and originally called cantonment tongue river, was located at the confluence of the tongue and yellowstone rivers near present-day miles city, montana. the pictures of both the fort (fig. ) and miles city (fig. ) are subject to check against extant photographs; they are amazing in their detail and accuracy. the over-all layout of the fort conforms, and such minute details as the gable windows and chimneys of the officers' quarters on the left of the parade ground and the two-story verandas on the enlisted barracks opposite are absolutely correct.[ ] the familiar stables, corral, wood piles, and hay piles--the latter surrounded by a stone wall as protection against grass fire in the dry months--are readily discernible (fig. ). the low stone buildings and corral in the right centerground probably are part of the original structures of cantonment tongue river. the small shacks to the left of them probably are the homes of the civilian hangers-on who founded miles city in after being ejected from the post by col. nelson miles, the commander of the th infantry. the first site of miles city can be seen in the upper right corner on the banks of the tongue. the town was moved across the river in . the mounted drill in the foreground is difficult to explain in a period when and in an area where the troops were almost constantly in the field under combat conditions. perhaps it is mere window dressing by the artist. it is entirely possible, however, that stieffel has pictured elements of his own regiment, which was mounted from until after the surrender of sitting bull in . being basically infantry they would be most in need of training in mounted tactics. then again, these could be legitimate cavalry whose commander thought had wandered too far from regulation movements during the unorthodox winter warfare they had been waging against the indians. the view of miles city (fig. ) has little importance in a military sense, but it is a fine contemporary view of a frontier town of the period. it is probably the product of a spring afternoon stieffel spent along the banks of the tongue. it was painted before --a wooden bridge had replaced the ferry by that year[ ]--and probably as early as , for the town grew rapidly and stieffel pictures only two streets, main and park, running at right angles. the town is correctly placed in a grove of cottonwoods, and low to the river as evidenced by the almost annual flooding of the streets.[ ] structures which can be readily identified, reading from left to right on main street, are the diamond d corral visible near the ferry landing; the town stockade which stieffel has either misplaced or which was later moved; major bochardt's store, the white two-story building; broadwater, hubbel and co., the brown two-story structure next right; the cottage saloon at the corner of main and park streets, just to the right of the flag pole; and morris cahn's drygoods emporium on park street, in the right centerground, that can be identified by cahn's name on the false front.[ ] a note on stieffel's indians in seven of his nine paintings stieffel has executed his indian subjects in colorful detail and with some care. although he apparently did not know his subjects well enough to distinguish them by tribe, he does depict them in typical dress of the period. many of them are wearing german silver ornaments of various designs about their necks, on strips of flannel attached to their hair pigtail-like, or as arm bands. at least four are wearing hair-pipe breast plates, a fact of interest to ethnologists,[ ] and several wear the comical, puritan style, tall black hats issued as annuity goods. the red and blue robes are of trades-good flannel, as probably are the leggings. two wear buffalo robes with the skin side out and the hair side rolled over at the shoulder.[ ] two, in the fort keogh picture (fig. ) and the yellowstone river landscape (fig. ), wear robes of the familiar, colorfully striped hudson bay blanketing material. arms are conventional--bows, quivered arrows, and pipe tomahawks, with a scattering of firearms. in the yellowstone river landscape one discrepancy should be pointed out--the canoe; the northern plains indians seldom used water transport, and then generally only in the form of rafts. footnotes: [footnote : for george catlin, gustavus sohon, and george gibbs, see: john c. ewers, "gustavus sohon's portraits of flathead and pend d'oreille indians, ," _smithsonian miscellaneous collections_, vol. , no. , ; "george catlin, painter of indians and the west," in _annual report of the ... smithsonian institution ... _, , pp. - ; marvin c. ross, _george catlin, episodes from life among the indians and last rambles_, norman, okla., univ. oklahoma press, ; harold mccracken, _george catlin and the old frontier_, new york, dial press, ; david i. bushnell, jr., "drawings by george gibbs in the far northwest, - ," _smithsonian miscellaneous collections_, vol. , no. , . for alfred jacob miller, see: bernard devoto, _across the wide missouri_, boston, little, brown and co., ; marvin c. ross, editor, _the west of alfred jacob miller_, norman, okla., univ. oklahoma press, . for frederick remington and charles russell, see: harold mccracken, _frederick remington, artist of the old west_, philadelphia, lippincott, , and _the charles m. russell book; the life and work of the cowboy artist_, garden city, doubleday, .] [footnote : see: mark h. brown and w. r. felton, _the frontier years. l. a. huffman, photographer of the plains_, new york, henry holt and co., ; martin f. schmitt and dee brown, _fighting indians of the west_, new york, charles scribner's sons, .] [footnote : an excellent group of these crude on-the-spot drawings and paintings is reproduced in grace raymond hebard and e. a. brininstool, _the bozeman trail_, vols., cleveland, the arthur h. clark co., .] [footnote : no. in the u.s. national museum.] [footnote : the information on brotherton's career has been culled from: _register of graduates and former cadets united states military academy, - _, new york, the west point alumni foundation, inc., ; francis b. heitman, _historical register and dictionary of the united states army_, washington, government printing office, , vol. ; george w. cullum, _biographical register of the officers and graduates of the u.s. military academy_, boston, - , vol. .] [footnote : enlistment papers of hermann stieffel dated december , , adjutant general's records, national archives, washington.] [footnote : theo f. rodenbough and william l. haskin, _the army of the united states_, new york, maynard, merrill & co., , pp. - ; remarks on muster roll, company k, th infantry (hereinafter cited as muster roll, co. k), august , , adjutant general's records, national archives, washington.] [footnote : muster roll, co. k, _op. cit._ (footnote ), december , .] [footnote : in a private's pay was $ . per month with $ . withheld until expiration of his enlistment and $. - / withheld for support of the u.s. soldiers' home at washington. (_u.s. army regulations_, .)] [footnote : muster roll, co. k, _op. cit._ (footnote ), october , ; december , ; april , ; june , ; december , ; february , ; april , ; february , ; june , .] [footnote : canby was murdered by the modoc captain jack in while engaged in a peace conference.] [footnote : for details of these operations, see: _the war of the rebellion: official records of the union and confederate armies_, vols., washington, war department, - , ser. , vol. , pp. - .] [footnote : _ibid._, ser. , vol. , pt. , p. .] [footnote : rodenbough and haskin, _op. cit._ (footnote ), p. ; muster roll, co. k, _op. cit._ (footnote ), april , ; june , ; october , .] [footnote : the first note of such duty is in muster roll, co. k, _op. cit._ (footnote ), february , .] [footnote : see muster roll, co. k, _op. cit._ (footnote ), - . the muster rolls were submitted bimonthly.] [footnote : _ibid._, june , ; february , ; april , .] [footnote : _ibid._, december , ; september , ; june , .] [footnote : company k was almost at full strength at the time, mustering enlisted men of the authorized. _ibid._, september , ; _official army register for january _, washington, adjutant general's office, , p. b.] [footnote : muster roll, co. k, _op. cit._ (footnote ), august , .] [footnote : frederick remington has pictured this surrender for us, but he was not an eye witness.] [footnote : muster roll, co. k, _op. cit._ (footnote ), august , , to june , ; certificate of disability for discharge, private hermann stieffel, april , , adjutant general's records, national archives. the date of june , given on the muster roll, was apparently that on which the discharge received final approval in washington.] [footnote : there is no record of stieffel's ever having been a member of the soldiers' home, but the home's records for the 's are very incomplete. however, his discharge gives his forwarding address as that institution, and there is definite record of the date of his death and interment there.] [footnote : report of brig. gen. r. b. marcy, september , , document no. , , ago, department of missouri, vol. , , civil war branch, national archives.] [footnote : _report of chief of ordnance, _, washington, war department, .] [footnote : george bird grinnell, _the fighting cheyenne_, new york, charles scribner's sons, , p. .] [footnote : frazier and robert hunt, _i fought with custer: the story of sergeant windolph_, new york, charles scribner's sons, , p. . for an excellent discussion of indian armament at this period, see john e. parsons and john s. dumont, _firearms in the custer battle_, harrisburg, the stackpole company, .] [footnote : marcy's report, _op. cit._ (footnote ).] [footnote : jack howland, artist for _harper's weekly_, also pictured satanta speaking to the commissioners, and with more accuracy in that all the civilian commissioners are visible, but his pictures lack the color and drama of stieffel's work. see: _harper's weekly_, november , .] [footnote : the records of this treaty meeting are contained in the office of indian affairs, record group , national archives. the final treaties are reproduced in _indian affairs: laws and treaties_, vol. , washington, government printing office, , pp. - .] [footnote : there are several accounts of this. the best, in the opinion of the writer, is in james mooney's "calendar history of the kiowa indians," _ th annual report of the bureau of american ethnology_, washington, government printing office, , pp. - , - .] [footnote : see photo taken at later date by alexander gardner, still picture branch, national archives.] [footnote : an interesting sidelight on satanta: in the spring of he accepted a complete general officer's uniform from general hancock at fort dodge and reciprocated shortly afterwards by attacking the post while decked out in his new dress.] [footnote : detail and orientation check closely with map of fort sill, oklahoma, sheet iii nw, scale : , , army map service.] [footnote : this was identified in engineer files, cartographic branch, national archives.] [footnote : an over-all photographic view of the post is in still picture branch, national archives. for photos of the officers' quarters and barracks, see brown and felton, _op. cit._ (footnote ), pp. , .] [footnote : see photo in brown and felton _op. cit._ (footnote ), p .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , .] [footnote : _ibid._, pp. , , and end paper map.] [footnote : ewers, _op. cit._ (footnote ), pp. - , .] [footnote : lower right in the council grove scene and in the foreground of the fort keogh picture.] "_art manifests whatever is most exalted, and it manifests it to all_"--taine fra angelico a sketch by jennie ellis keysor _author of "sketches of american authors"_ [illustration] educational publishing company boston new york chicago san francisco "the art of angelico, both as a colorist and a draughtsman, is consummate; so perfect and so beautiful that his work may be recognized at a distance by the rainbow-play and brilliancy of it: however closely it may be surrounded by other works of the same school, glowing with enamel and gold, angelico's may be told from them at a glance, like so many huge pieces of opal among common marbles." --john ruskin. "the light of his studio came from paradise." --paul de st. victor. "his world is a strange one--a world not of hills and fields and flowers and men of flesh and blood, but one where the people are embodied ecstasies, the colors tints from evening clouds or apocalyptic jewels, the scenery a flood of light or a background of illuminated gold. his mystic gardens, where the ransomed souls embrace and dance with angels on the lawns outside the city of the lamb, are such as were never trodden by the foot of man in any paradise of earth." "fra angelico's madonnas are beings of unearthly beauty, and words fail to convey any idea of their ineffable loveliness and purity. his angels too are creatures of another sphere, and purer types have never yet been conceived in art. the drawing of the hands of his angels and madonnas is most exquisite--charming in tender yet subtle simplicity of outline." --timothy cole. copyrighted, , by educational publishing co. [illustration: fra angelico] fra angelico. -- . let us for a few moments turn our attention to a monastery a short distance from florence. from its elevated position on the hills which skirt the vale of the arno it commands a panoramic view of the "lily city." it is the time when the renaissance is virgin new to the world. faith was still so real and living a thing that men and women shut themselves up from the world in order to live holy lives and devote themselves entirely to the service of god. it is a body of such men on the heights of fiesole that interests us. they are dominican monks, of the order of great preachers, founded long ago by st. dominic. over long white robes the brothers, or frates, as they are called, wear black capes and back from their tonsured heads fall hoods, which protect them in inclement weather. it is a prosperous monastery surrounded by goodly fields. in some, the olive groves blossom in the spring-like snow, or wear foliage of richest green as the season advances. in others, the yellowing grain waves in the upland summer breeze. the monks are busy people, many without in the fields tilling the fruitful soil or gathering in the abundant harvest. indoors there is the silence which attends toil, intense and absorbing. the cellar and kitchen are in perfect order and in the refectory, or dining room, the table is spread for the next frugal meal. in the scriptorium, or writing room, several monks are busy copying ancient manuscripts on parchment. one does this work, using the most exquisite lettering, while another indites the hymns long loved by the church. this other, bending over his task, from a rich palette makes the vine to run, the dragon to coil, the angel head to shine, the tropic bird to fly from out the lettering of his book or, more ambitious still, he decorates a broad margin with an elaborate design. mayhap he devotes an entire page to the deliniation of some favorite saint.-- "what joy it is to labor so, to see the long-tressed angels grow beneath the cunning of his hand, vignette and tail-piece subtly wrought!" here in the walk of the cloisters, his pallid face lit up by fiery eyes, strolls another, the preacher of the monastery. to-night he will electrify his audience with the eloquence of his sermon that shall tell of the curse of evil, of the saving power of love. yonder, with the face and attitude of one who prays, painting a lovely angel with flame upon her forehead, with stars upon her robe and with a golden trumpet in her hand, is a man whose fancy has outgrown the margin, the full page even, of the beloved parchment book, and so he fills a whole wall with his vision from paradise. little need is there to name this painter-monk. it is fra angelico, the "angelical painter," _il beato_, "the blessed." to this man, who prays as he paints and who paints as he prays, we are to give our attention for a time. it is particularly delightful to find such a character in a time when holy men and women sometimes forgot their religious vows and ordinary citizens, in their scramble for place, lost sight of the laws of honor and manhood. in a time of greed it pleases us to find a man, who, though his art was the fashion of his period, would take no money for his pictures; in a time of ambition for place, to find one who could refuse an elevated position because he did not think himself fitted to fill it; to find a man so simple and yet so wise that he knew the work allotted to him in life and had the devotion to stick to it in spite of inducements to give it up. [illustration: florence.] such a man was fra angelico, the sweet character, the beautiful artist of heavenly visions, the man to whom ruskin goes back as the embodiment of correct principles in art, even beyond raphael, the idol of the ages. fra angelico is the last figure of the old simple time in art when the spirit counted for most. he lingered long on the threshold of that later time, when men forgot the spirit in their enthusiasm for copying the real thing as it presents itself in nature. now that we know what the prosaic artists of that prosaic time taught, namely to draw correctly, we go back to the visions of the angelical painter and hug them to us as a rich bequest, a glimpse, as it were, of that paradise closed to mortal eyes. along other lines too, it is good for us to study the men and women who were great enough to be simple, to be devoted. in art it is quite as good and equally delightful. whoever tells the story of fra angelico's life has few dates and events with which to entangle his reader's treacherous memory. the story is told when the man and his spirit have been portrayed, when his surroundings at various periods have been described. it is forced home to us, therefore, that we ought to know well the history of the company of men to whom he belonged and was devotedly attached for almost fifty years of his life. we have already spoken of these monks at fiesole and of their pursuits. as they gazed out upon florence, the matchless city of the arno, it was with longing hearts as homesick children, for they had been banished from the loved city as a matter of discipline, years before. as they looked out from their commanding windows, they forgot the glorious scenery about them in an intense desire to be at home again. in a small way they shared the agonized grief of dante, an exile in ravenna's drear waters, when he knocked in vain at the closed gates of his loved and native florence. theirs, however, was a kinder fate than that which befell the renowned poet, for they were recalled to florence. the monastery of san marco was emptied of some monks of another order and the place given over to the reformed dominicans. singing hymns of praise, arrayed in their black and white, they filed down from the heights of fiesole to san marco, while the expelled monks departed with downcast mien and sore lamentations. the restored monks found san marco hardly fit for habitation, so ruinous was its condition. cosimo de medici came to their relief and repaired and beautified the building. in addition, he had a sort of chapel or retiring room fitted up in it for himself to which he might come for quiet and for consultation. willingly the monks dwelt in huts while the repairs and decorations were going forward. we shall learn later how angelico embellished the walls of cloister and cell until the thoughts of the angelical brother were laid bare to his companions, so that, to-day, perhaps the chief reason for the throng of visitors to this unattractive building is the fact that here fra angelico lived and painted. the dominicans were restored to florence and their home, san marco, began its career, if, indeed, we may say that a building can have a career, as an essential factor in florentine history. we may love fra angelico but, after all, the most interesting association in many minds for san marco is not his sweet life in its brotherhood or his heavenly faces upon its walls, but rather that here studied, taught, preached and died savonarola, that pure patriot, that noble, although often mistaken man, that most eloquent orator that florence has given to the world. as simple as angelico and as free from place-seeking, he was the soul and voice of the florentine people when faction rent the city and threatened its very existence. that clear voice, prompted by a magnificent love, by a burning zeal, sometimes makes us forget that the zeal was often misguided, and that disobedience to authority is not always the best way of effecting reform. [illustration: duomo, florence (santa maria del fiore)] san marco, standing off there from the duomo, is a plain building, but to the thoughtful visitor to-day there are echoes of footfalls sounding down those tenantless halls, which make the heart quicken its beating, the cheek flush, and the eye dim; for it is savonarola's voice that he hears, angelico's brush that he marks, the wise counsel of antonio that falls on his ear, instead of the sights and sounds of sense. three times, at least, in the history of italian art a pure light, a fresh stream has flowed in from the hills--raphael from urbino among the heights of umbria, titian from the crags of cadore and now angelico from the slopes of the apennines in the fertile district of mugello. each brought with him from his native hills a vigor and devotion new to the dwellers below. at vecchio, a small town crowning one of the spurs of the apennines, fra angelico was born, in . his father was a certain pietro, or peter, and there was an older son who afterwards bore the name benedetto. now, the name _angelico_, by which we love to call our angel painter, was really not his name at all. he was simply guido, the son of pietro, and when he entered the monastery he was given yet another name, giovanni, or john. fate, or fame rather, destined that he should not be known either by his birth name or by his religious name. what his hand could do, what his heart could show were the things which determined his name. because he painted angels so matchlessly they called him brother or fra angelico, because his heart opened so unselfishly to his fellow men they called him _beato_, "the blessed," and by these names we know him to-day. from what vasari tells us, that guido might have lived at ease had he so desired, we know that his father was a man of means. what the boy's education was we are unable to tell definitely. from the surroundings of his home at vecchio we can infer much, especially in the light of angelico's later work. hardly twenty miles from florence, on the road to ravenna, the hill town of vecchio must have taken a keen interest in the stirring events ever going on in the florence of the early renaissance. we can imagine, however, that, though these things impressed the young guido, the beautiful scenery surrounding his home held a deeper meaning for him. here were fine olive groves, there rocks grew bare and jagged, refusing to produce anything except scrubby underbrush. a frowning precipice yonder lost none of its forbidding character because of the crown it wore--a fine castle, which told by its towers and turrets, where watchmen stood or paced throughout the lonely hours, that the age when lusty knights rode forth to harry each other's domain was not wholly past. [illustration: the annunciation] that castle, gleaming white and menacing through the olive trees, is one of the country seats of the powerful medicean family. the boy guido and his brother have often seen the great cosimo walking in his garden or riding on the highway. indeed, the boys have been accosted by him and questioned regarding their sports. it was not, however, the power of man, who plants his dwellings on the heights of the earth or grows fat upon the produce of her soil, that most deeply impressed our young artist. to him the pearly white of the summer cloud, the cerulean blue of the endless depths of air, the amethyst, ruby and topaz of the sky at sunrise or sunset were more. they seemed but reflections of a glory beyond cloud and sky, where the hosts of the blessed forever praise their redeeming lord. those soft and melting colors slid into his soul and years later he poured them forth in the garment of some trumpeting angel, blessed madonna, or rejoicing brother. [illustration] in his tenderness for nature we can imagine that the little creatures of the woods fled not at his approach but rather stayed to receive from his hand food or a loving caress. the flowers that bespangled the soft tuscan turf sprung up after his foot had pressed them, so light was his step, so gentle the thought that in him reigned. the boys were constantly together, sharing in the rambles and sports which their home region encouraged. their love increased until it was sealed by the vow that made them brother monks as well as brothers in flesh and blood. at the age of fourteen guido left home, probably for purposes of study, but we cannot trace his course during the next six years. we know not if, like titian, he crushed flowers to obtain their colors to paint with, in his boyhood days, but somehow, somewhere in those early years he learned the rudiments of the art by which the world knows him to-day. [illustration] with such a boyhood, remote from the marts of trade, surrounded by all that is loveliest in nature, we are not surprised to find him at the age of twenty anxious to follow a religious life. it is possible that, during those six years just previous to his entering the convent, he may have studied miniature painting or illuminating in some monastery, where his purpose to become a monk took definite form. however that may be, in , he sought out the monastery of fiesole and entered as a novice, to begin the study and privations which should prepare him for the life of a dominican friar. to his great joy his elder brother joined him soon after and was given the name benedetto. the novices were sent for a time to the older convent of cortona. here the training in the love of nature, which began in the hills of vecchio, was continued. the convent of cortona stood upon an elevation overlooking the placid waters of lake trasemene, where, in ancient times, hannibal gained a great victory over the romans. all about were the remains of massive masonry, built in the remote past by the etruscans. three islands broke the quiet surface of the little lake and on one of them stood a monastery. i wonder if, on days of relaxation, the holy men, rowing across to visit their brothers of the island, did not catch some of the finny tribe that inhabited the lake, or snare some of the wild fowl that lived along its margin. our angelical painter probably was not attracted by such matters. the prospect of lake and hill and wood, which daily opened before him, deepened all his early impressions and so, almost unconsciously, the training for his future work continued. meanwhile, too, he probably practiced assiduously in the parchment books of the monastery the art of illumination. [illustration] shortly after angelico took upon himself the full vows of a monk, the whole religious body of fiesole was removed to foligno. here they remained for several years, until the plague broke out and they fled to cortona, the same town where angelico had spent several years of his novitiate. by this time he had become a full fledged painter, as is shown by the work he left in two dominican churches of cortona. there is reason to believe that when angelico, an old man, was on his way to rome to paint for the pope, he gave, in exchange for the courtesies of the convent of cortona to a traveller, some pictures of the madonna which are still to be seen in the church of st. dominic in cortona. the brotherhood was later recalled to fiesole. angelico must often have gone down to florence and there have seen the work of his great contemporaries in art. massaccio was the artist, above all others, who was attracting attention at this time. his work was the most accurate representation of real things that had yet been made by any artist in italy. fra angelico must have seen his work and profited by it, too. but he never forgot his early inspiration drawn from the hills and from the morning and evening skies, and so he went back, in spite of any small influence of the new art, to pore over the parchment page and to make the vision of his soul write itself down in fadeless color on golden backgrounds. what he saw of artists' work outside of the convent had one marked influence, however. our devout painter began to feel trammeled by the narrowness of a margin, indeed of an entire page, and he turned to the ample space furnished by the walls of convent and church. [illustration] it was shortly after the return of the brotherhood from cortona that they were given the church and convent of san marco in florence. after long absence they were to return home and their hearts were lifted in song. when the repairs were completed, cosimo bethought him of the painter-monk of the brotherhood, and asked him to make the house beautiful for his brethren. whether cosimo remembered those early days when he had accosted two boys in the vicinity of his castle we do not know, but it seems certain that he knew of the mature artist's work and his reputation throughout tuscany. it must have been a great joy to fra giovanni to be given this congenial task in which he could glorify god and gratify his own passion for art. henceforth he left the parchment books to his brother to embellish while he occupied himself on the larger space his soul had long craved. lest this work, which he loved so dearly, should be done in a spirit of self-indulgence, he laid certain strictures upon himself in carrying it on. he believed that he had a message direct from god to bear to men through his pictures, so he never undertook one of them without prefacing the work with a season of fasting and prayer, and then, when he began his work, he never changed a stroke lest he prove disobedient to the heavenly vision. often and often his lips moved in prayer while his hand laid on the colors of the robes or the gold of the background. while he painted the crucifixion tears streamed down his cheeks in sympathy with the agony there endured. the pictures of a man who painted in such a spirit are not mere works of art. they are more, for they lay bare to us a human soul, making the thoughts he thought our own, the devoutness and sympathy he felt a part of our own lives. [illustration: the crucifixion] savonarola thundered forth his message from the pulpit of san marco; angelico delivered his, more enduring, though hardly less eloquent, on his knees, through the rainbow colors on his palette. in an age when monasteries and convents were an essential part of civilization, it was a mighty contribution that san marco gave to the world in the earnest preacher, in the angelic painter. both were simple men, great in their devotion, leaders of their age in their respective places, but the one was wending along a quiet way that should terminate peacefully in a secluded grave in rome, while the other was moving on like a whirlwind, tearing up many things sacred in its course and ending in a violent death. everyone talks of angelico's work in san marco. let us see what it was, what we should look for were we to go there to-day. in the cloister, where the monks were constantly passing to and fro, are many of his best works. here above a doorway, is "_st. peter, martyr_" standing with his finger on his lips in token of the silence that should reign in a holy house. above another door two of the brotherhood welcome their lord, a weary traveller. [illustration: detail from the crucifixion] in a larger space he has painted the angel gabriel announcing the coming of the christ child to the youthful mary. the sweet submissiveness of mary together with her mild surprise at the angelic appearance, the grace and earnestness of gabriel, with his wings still spread, as if just alighted from heaven, are wholly to our satisfaction for representing this naive scene from sacred history. here, too, we find the solemn last scene in the christ-drama, as "_the annunciation_" was the first. "_the crucifixion_," which we find here, was simply portrayed, but with a pathos that angelico's sympathetic nature would naturally show. it was afterwards reproduced in each of the cells. in the chapter house we find a more elaborate representation of the crucifixion. here it is large enough to fill an entire wall and its excellence hardly in proportion to its size. the attention is drawn from the great central figure to the figures at the foot of the cross, whose awe and adoration are well expressed by the painter. it was in the room adorned-with this great fresco, that george eliot had romola and savonarola meet in their famous interview. that the presence of the solemn picture added force to that powerful scene goes without saying. into the cloisters, the chapter house, the chapel, men of the world might enter and look about. not so the narrow cells, huddled together, where each monk was supposed to commune with his lord in uninterrupted silence. for these narrow cells, forty in number, fra angelico did his best work, believing, doubtless, with the ancient builders that "the gods see everywhere." the subjects selected were the events in christ's life and to each cell was given one chapter, as it were, from the wondrous story. nothing could more forcibly prove the absolute devotion of the painter, his total disregard for the attention of men, than his dedication of his best work to the narrow and dimly lighted cells of san marco. [illustration: madonna della stella] long ago the good brothers of san marco were sent away and the doors thrown wide to the public, who now call it the museum of san marco. easel pictures have been gathered here to swell the number of angelico's works in the place that was so long his home. one of these is a small copy, made by the artist, of what is known to us as the "_tabernacle madonna_" which is in the uffizi gallery in florence. the glory of this work is not in the madonna or the child she holds but, strange to say, in the frame which encloses the picture. a broad band of smooth gold intervenes between the outer and inner molding of the frame and in this space are painted the twelve angels playing various musical instruments, which are so familiar to us to-day. since angelico's time, no matter what artist has essayed the task of angel painting, none has approached so nearly as the angelical painter of san marco to our ideal of these heavenly beings. we all of us have some more or less definite notions of how angels should look. we may be painfully literal on other subjects but, though there is no science on which to base our demand, we want them with white or jeweled wings. sometimes, in our most rapt moods, the air about us seems filled with these ethereal beings, tending on the sick and dying, leading little children, ministering to prisoners as to peter of old, bringing comfort to us in our sorrows. this, of course, is a fancy and yet it is such fancies that have made fra angelico's representations of angels a real joy to man through all the centuries since he painted them with more than mortal power. his angels that we enjoy most are not those entrusted with some special mission, but they are of that great multitude whose joy it is to bring good tidings of great joy to men. here is one glowing in ruby red, the color of passion. she lifts on high her golden trumpet and we know that god is a ready helper, waiting only to be summoned to our rescue. another, arrayed all in green, the color of spring, brings us hope, without which man would be crushed by the iron weight of his sorrows. this one in blue bears her message of heavenly love and fidelity. that one in yellow, the color of the sun itself, brings light to those who sit in darkness. truly they are a ministering band with their halo-encircled heads, their heavenward-lifted eyes, their star-bespangled robes. [illustration: coronation of the virgin.] what matter if critics tell us that angelico's knowledge of anatomy was defective and that it is fortunate for his angels that their creator represented them all closely draped? their talk for centuries has not made the devout painter's fame one whit less, while all the time his angels have been bringing comfort to generations of men and women. another picture in san marco we scan carefully. it is "_the coronation of the virgin_." this was a favorite subject with the painter, perhaps because it represents the final reward of the world's great mother--the crown placed upon her head by her enthroned son. we remember how exquisitely correggio depicted the same event, with what supreme grace his lovely virgin bends her matchless head to receive the diadem. hardly less beautiful are fra angelico's pictures of this subject, even though they were painted half a century before correggio's birth. the best of angelico's pictures of "_the coronation of the virgin_" is now in the louvre, where the beautiful virgin is surrounded by tier upon tier of rejoicing angels. for nearly forty years fra angelica had served his convent faithfully, with devout life and the work of his hand. everything paid for his pictures went to swell the income of the convent. he never took an order without first consulting his prior. his fame had long ago reached rome. the art-loving popes of that time could not remain oblivious to his great ability. in , the quiet life of the monastery was interrupted by pope eugenius, who called angelico to rome to assist in decorating the vatican. we can easily imagine that there was some shrinking on angelico's part at severing the ties that had held him so long among the brothers of his order. this may have been somewhat offset by a vague desire to see rome, the pilgrim city of the christian world. however that may be, he obeyed the call of the pope and journeyed by easy stages, passing from convent to convent, until the holy city was reached. it would have been an interesting journey to have taken with the pious monk. one could have seen how the various monasteries exercised one of the most beneficial purposes of their organization, that of ministering to tired and hungry travellers. at many convents at whose doors he appeared, a stranger, he probably left pictures and certainly the memory of a charming personality. perhaps he relieved for an hour some weary illuminator of the parchment and left a page of his work to encourage the tired monk. the pope who called angelico to rome did not live long after the painter's arrival there, but he did not die before he had shown special favor to the monk of san marco. taking for granted that, because angelico could paint such beautiful pictures he could do everything else equally well, he asked him to become the archbishop of florence, one of the most important church offices within the gift of the pope. how we admire the good brother when he responded, with the simplicity which was so marked a characteristic of him, "i can paint pictures but i cannot rule men." and further, how we delight in him as he recommends another brother of his order, fra antonio. that his judgement in this matter was equal to his generosity is proved by the fact that antonio became the wisest archbishop florence had ever had. the successor of pope eugenius, nicholas v., also extended his friendship and protection to the painter. here in rome he lived for the last ten years of his life. his work here was largely confined to the chapel of nicholas v., in the vatican, which he decorated with scenes from the lives of st. lawrence and st. stephen. for years this chapel was closed to the public and the key lost, so that when it was re-opened it seemed as if a new set of works belonging to fra angelico had been discovered. [illustration: flight into egypt] when the heat of summer came on in rome, the painter from the hills of the arno wilted under the depressing influence and he longed for his native heights. an opportunity for release from the stagnant weather of rome during the months of june, july and august came from an unexpected quarter. it was the time of the building of the great italian cathedrals. every large community seemed bent on excelling its neighbor in the splendor of the church it erected. florence reared her duomo, the santa maria del fiore, siena built her fine cathedral, striped black and yellow like a tiger. orvieto, near by, had witnessed a wonderful miracle, and in remembrance of it her citizens determined to build a cathedral that should be more beautiful than any other in italy. so much in earnest were the people of orvieto in undertaking this work, that they gave their holidays to drawing materials for it from the hills near by. in eight years, an incredibly short time in the building of a mediaeval cathedral, it was sufficiently finished for holding religious services. it was three hundred years, however, before the people had made it the wrought jewel that it stands to-day. in the delicacy and elaborateness of its ornament it is the most splendid church in italy. a hundred and fifty skilled sculptors worked their best on the carving. nearly a hundred workers in mosaic put together cunningly the bits of glass and precious stones which make its rich and vari-colored mosaic. almost as many master painters added their work to the precious structure. the facade is like some grand screen, with its exquisite bas-relief, its glistening and intricate mosaic and its delicate pinnacles, every one crowned with a statue. such a beautiful and substantial structure was a fine crown for this ancient town, rising almost like a rock-cube from the barren ravines below. it was to help adorn this wonderful church that the building council urged fra angelico to quit rome each year through the sickly summer. all arrangements were completed and our artist once more breathed the hill air to which he was born. on one of the walls he planned to represent "_the last judgment_" a subject which he had previously painted. he never proceeded further than to the completion of the figure of the judging christ. this fragment is the strongest piece of work angelico ever did. it is probable that the mighty angelo studied this figure before painting his own "_last judgment_." the critic who compares the two christs must, it seems to me, ever decide in favor of the one made by the angelical painter. the combination of strength and compassion in angelico's is far more to our notions of the gentle christ, sitting as judge of all the world. if angelico had finished the work at orvieto, it would doubtless have been much like the one we may study to-day in the academy in florence. let us consider that for a moment. [illustration: paradise. (detail of last judgment)] it was a strange subject for one with so mild and loving a nature to undertake, but we must remember that it was the favorite theme of the age, so that all sorts of painters tried their hands at it. here christ sits enthroned, encircled by angels, while below him, divided by a long line of unopened graves, are the blessed and the condemned. in depicting the former our angel painter was perfectly at home. what a joyous host they are as they tread the flowery meadows and appear in the searching rays of heaven's own light! one group, a monk embraced by an angel, is reproduced in this sketch. even if for a time angelico was able to summon the power by which he could portray an avenging and yet pitying christ, he lost that power when he tried to image forth the agony of the condemned, the wickedness of satan. so the picture stands, half in the glory of fine and characteristic execution and half in the darkness of inadequate workmanship. just why angelico never went back to orvieto we do not know. it is probable that the infirmities of age were pressing upon him. perhaps, too, he was reserving his surplus strength for a last visit to his beloved florence. hither we know he came, in the last years of his life, and painted for the church of the annunciation a little cupboard to hold the gold and silver vessels used about the altar. it was a delicate task not wholly unlike the miniature work with which, in his early years, he had adorned the parchments of his monastery. [illustration: facade of orvieto cathedral] thirty-five panels were filled with scenes from the life of our lord. the series is done in the spirit of a man who knows the scriptures and medieval legend to a point, and all the time there shines through the painted figures the saintliness, the mystic, far-away thoughts of the artist. it was a beautiful work to give to his home city in the evening of his quiet life. the work completed, he wended his way back to rome where he died, in , or, as a contemporary historian says, "envious death broke his pencil and his beautiful soul winged its way among the angels to make paradise more joyous." he was buried in the church of santa maria sopra minerva where he had lived since his first coming to rome. his tomb is simple enough, enriched merely with the quaint figure of a dominican monk, with his hands crossed, and wearing the dress of his order. at the feet of the stone monk is this epitaph, composed by nicholas v., angelico's friend and patron-- "not that in me a new apelles lived, but that thy poor, o christ, my gains received; this be my praise: deeds done for fame on earth live not in heaven. fair florence gave me birth." what his appearance was we cannot tell with certainty as no authentic portrait of him remains to us. from imaginary and traditional portraits we get our only notions of how the angelical painter looked, and these are likely to fall far short of giving us correct ideas of the face of one whose character was well-nigh faultless. living the secluded life of a monk, we should hardly expect to find many pupils to continue his work after him. one there is, however, who is always spoken of as angelico's pupil, and that is benozzo gozzoli, whose angels at times approach in beauty those of the master-painter of angels. benozzo was the artist who completed the work that angelico began at orvieto. we have found the facts of angelico's life few and not at all startling and yet his character was such that it left an indelible impress on his age. we cannot better close this sketch than by quoting from vasari, who thus sums up the character of his devout countryman:-- "this father, truly angelic, spent all his life in the service of god and for the good of the world and his neighbor. in truth, the great and extraordinary powers possessed by fra giovanni could not have existed except in a man of most holy life. he was a man of simplicity and most holy in his ways.... he withheld himself from all worldly deeds, and living purely and holily, he was such a friend to the poor that i think his soul is now in heaven. "he worked continually at his pictures and would never treat any but religious subjects. he might have been a rich man but he cared not to boast, and used to say that true riches consisted in being content with little. he might have had command over many but would not, saying that there was less trouble and risk in obeying than in commanding.... he was most gentle and sober, and, living chastely, freed himself from the snares of the world; and he was wont to say that whoever followed art had need of peace and to live without distracting thoughts, and that he who does work that concerns christ must live continually with christ. "he was never known to get angry with the monks; if anyone desired work from him he would say that he would obtain consent of the prior to it, and then would not fail to fulfill the request. in fact, this father, who cannot be sufficiently praised, was in all his works and conversation most humble and modest, and in his painting dexterous and conscientious, and the saints of his painting have more the air and resemblance of saints than those of any other painter." subjects for composition and special topics . angels in art. . savonarola, the orator of san marco. . antonio, the good archbishop of florence. . the angel-painter of san marco. . an illuminated manuscript. . with angelico on his way to rome. . in the cells of san marco. . how monasteries have served civilization. . a day with the dominicans at fiesole. . some hill towns of tuscany. . two gothic cathedrals of italy. (siena and orvieto,) references for fra angelico. . life of fra angelico ... _sweetser_. . life of fra angelico ... _phillimor_. . makers of florence ... _oliphant_. . sketches and studios in southern europe. (orvieto) ... _symonds_. . the fine arts ... _symonds_. . old italian masters ... _cole_. . friar jerome's beautiful book ... _aldrich_. . art and artists ... _clement_. . angels in art.... _clement_. . the monk as civilizer. _kingsley_. * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | the errata on page xxiii have been incorporated into | | this e-book. | | | | the illustration list has one image out of sequence. | | | | obvious typographical errors have been corrected. for | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * [illustration] the life, letters and work of frederic baron leighton of stretton vol. i "_if any man should be constantly penetrated with a gift bestowed on him, it is the artist who has realised as his share a genuine love for nature; for his enjoyment, if he puts his gift to usury, increases with the days of his life._" "_every man who has received a gift, ought to feel and act as if he was a field in which a seed was planted that others might gather the harvest._" _frederic leighton._ _august ._ the life, letters and work of frederic leighton by mrs. russell barrington author of "reminiscences of g.f. watts," etc. etc. in two volumes vol. i london george allen, ruskin house [all rights reserved] printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. at the ballantyne press [illustration: early portrait of lord leighton from the painting by g.f. watts (photogravure) by permission of the hon. lady leighton-warren and sir bryan leighton, bart.] to all who hold dear the memory of frederic leighton this book is inscribed with the author's apologies for its very many shortcomings preface ten years and more have passed since leighton died, yet it is still difficult to get sufficiently far away, to take in the whole of his life and being in their just proportion to the world in which he lived. when we are in rome, hemmed in by narrow streets, st. peter's is invisible; once across that wonderful campagna and mounting the slopes of frascati, there, like a huge pearl gleaming in the light, rises the dome of the mother church. as distance gives the true relation between a lofty building and its suburbs, so time alone can decide the height of the pedestal on which to place the great. the day after leighton's death watts wrote to me:-- "...the loss to the world is so great that i almost feel ashamed to let my personal grief have so large a place. "i am glad you knew him so well. i am glad for any one who knew him. no one will ever know such another, alas! alas! alas! "i am glad you have enjoyed the friendship of one of the greatest men of any time." this is the estimate of a great artist who knew leighton for forty years, and for many of those years enjoyed daily intercourse with him. a few like watts required no length of time before forming a right estimate of leighton. they not only knew him to be great, but knew why he was great. undoubtedly as a draughtsman leighton was unrivalled; but bearing in mind his english contemporaries--watts, millais, holman hunt, rossetti, and burne-jones--it is not as a painter that even his truest friends would claim for him his right to the exceptional position he undoubtedly occupied. what was it that gave leighton this position? he himself was the very last to claim it as a right. his creed and his practice were ever to fight against the weaknesses of his nature rather than to rejoice in its strength. for assuredly, however strong the intellect, beautiful the character, brilliant the vitality, and fine the intuitive instincts, a man may yet have within his nature foibles in common with the herd. the difference is, that in the truly great the unworthier side of nature is viewed as unworthy--is fought against and banished like the plague. "a good man is wise, not because all his desires are wise, but because his reasonable soul masters unwise desires and is itself wise. "he is courageous, because he knows when to fight, and does so under control of reason. "he is temperate, because his pluck and his desires unite in giving the first place to the reasonable soul; and finally, he is just, because each principle is in its place and stops there." in a letter to his mother when he was twenty-three leighton wrote: "i feel i have of my nature a very fair share of the hateful worldly weakness of my country people;" adding, "still, i have found no sufficiently great advantage or compensation for the tedium of going out." again, three years later, after describing to his sister the delight he felt in the beauty he found in algiers, he wrote: "and yet what i have said of my feelings, though _literally true_, does not give you an exactly true notion; for, together with, and as it were behind, so much pleasurable emotion, there is always that other strange second man in me, calm, observant, critical, unmoved, blasé--odious! "he is a shadow that walks with me, a sort of nineteenth-century canker of doubt and discretion; it's very, very seldom that i forget his loathsome presence. what cheering things i find to say!" doubtless leighton had within him the possibilities of becoming a worldling, and also of becoming a cynic. he overrode and banished the first as despicable, the second as hideous. but it is not in the wisdom that--socrates-like--steered his life by reason, that we find the adequate answer to the question, "why was leighton the prominent entity he was?" diverse as were his natural gifts and his power of achievement on various lines, he differed radically from that modern development--the all-round man, who has no concentrated fire as a centre to illumine his life, but develops all his capacities so that they shall shine forth equally on certain high levels. from childhood leighton had one overriding passion, and from this sprang the will-force and vitality which throughout his life succeeded in bringing his intentions to fruition. whatsoever his hand found worthy to do at all, he did with the whole might of his great nature. still even that would not adequately answer the question. his greatness truly lay in the fact that the choice he made of what was worth doing was never limited by personal interests. he impelled the force of his powers for the welfare of others, and for the causes beneficial to others, as much or more than to those matters which concerned himself alone. hence his true greatness and his great fame--for Æschylus is right: "the good will prevail." a sense of duty--"the keenest possible sense of it," to use mr. briton rivière's words--which was the keynote of all leighton's actions, was impelled in the first instance by a feeling of gratitude for the joy with which beauty in nature and art had steeped his being from a child; a deep well of happiness, a constant companion, ever springing up in his heart, which he craved that others should share with him. this happiness gave sweetness to his life, lovableness to his character, irresistible power to his control. leighton's was truly a life of praise and gratitude for the joys nature had bestowed on him. he had a pleasant way of making the truth prevail. the description by marcus aurelius of his "third man" applies well to the character of leighton. "one man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it down to his account as a favour conferred. another is not ready to do this, but still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he knows what he has done. a third in a manner does not even know what he has done, but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit. as a horse when he has run, a dog when he has tracked the game, a bee when it has made the honey, so a man, when he has done a good act, does not call out for others to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season." leighton's work in every direction was complete work, because his mind grasped completely the proportion and aspect of everything he undertook. his inborn affection for, and sympathy with, his fellow-creatures impelled him to feel that the area of self-interest, however gifted that self might be, was too restricted for him to find full completeness therein. this could only be attained by working with and for others. such feelings and doctrines are common in religious and philanthropic men; but in the ego of the modern artist there is generally something which seems to demand a concentration of attention on his own ego in order to develop his gifts as an artist. the attitude of leighton towards his own work, and towards that of others, was essentially contrary to this concentration. in his letters to his mother, and to his master, eduard von steinle, are found the bases on which the superstructure of his after career rested, the underpinning of that monumental feature of the victorian era--namely, in unflagging industry, in ever striving to make his life worthy of the beauty and dignity of his vocation as an artist, and in ever endeavouring to make his work an adequate exponent of "the mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart": his passion for beauty. in my attempt to write leighton's life i have purposely devoted more space to the earlier than to the later years of his career as an artist. with an artist more than with others is it specially true that the boy is father to the man; and if leighton's example is in any way to benefit students of art, the early struggles, the failures, more even than the successes, will teach the lesson that there is no short cut on the road which has to be travelled even by the most gifted. from the family letters and those to his master, which are, with a few exceptions, given in full, it will also be seen that, however high was the pedestal on which leighton placed his mistress art, he felt keenly likewise the beauty of his family relationships, and a deep, grateful affection for the master who had given him his start on the road to fame. if this endeavour to present a true picture of leighton the man has any value, it is owing mainly to the fact that mrs. matthews has placed at my disposal the family and other letters in her possession,--an act which demands the thanks of all those who are interested in the fame of her brother. i also wish to acknowledge with gratitude the considerate kindness of several of leighton's friends in contributing "notes" and letters, which are of true value in bringing before the public a right view of the man and of the artist. first and foremost among these contributors must be placed dr. von steinle, son of professor eduard von steinle of frankfort-on-main, the beloved master to whom leighton in referred as "_the indelible seal_," when writing of those who had influenced him most for good. the first letter of the correspondence which was carried on between the master and pupil, and preserved preciously by each, is dated august , , the last . only second in interest to this correspondence, which discloses leighton's intimate feelings and aspirations as an artist, are the notes supplied by mr. briton rivière, r.a.--notes which could only have been written by one whose own nature in many ways was closely attuned to that of leighton's, and which give the intimate aspect of leighton as an official. "it would be difficult for any one," writes mr. briton rivière, "to give in a short space any adequate account of a character so full and complex as leighton's." and indeed it would require a great deal more than two volumes even to touch on all the events of this eventful life, which might further illustrate leighton's character; but mr. briton rivière has noted certain salient characteristics of his friend with a sympathy, and a fine touch, which i think will prove of very rare interest in this record. the tribute to leighton of mr. hamo thornycroft, r.a. (from a sculptor's point of view), carries great weight, and gives also, as does that of another old comrade in the artists' volunteer corps, an appreciative account of leighton as the soldier. to these, to lady loch, the hon. mrs. alfred sartoris, sir william richmond, r.a., mr. walter crane, mr. alfred east, p.r.b.a., i offer my thanks for so kindly contributing notes which help to solve the problems presented by "a character so full and so complex." for courteous permission to publish letters i wish to express my thanks to alice, countess of strafford, the executor of mr. henry greville, who was one of, if not the most intimate of the friends who loved leighton; the hon. mrs. leigh, mrs. fanny kemble's daughter and executor; the right hon. sir charles dilke, executor of mrs. mark pattison (afterwards lady dilke); the right hon. john morley, dr. von steinle, mr. john hanson walker, mr. cartwright, mr. robert barrett browning, professor church, mr. t.c. horsfall, and mrs. street, daughter of the late mr. henry wells, r.a.; the executor of george eliot, mrs. charles lewes; and the executors of john ruskin. there are many other letters and notes of interest which have been preserved by mrs. matthews, but which cannot be inserted for want of space. among these are affectionate notes from joachim, burne-jones, hebert, robert fleury, meissonier, gérome, tullio massarani; also friendly letters from cardinal manning, viscount wolseley, sarah bernhardt, john tyndall, froude, anthony trollope, sir john gilbert, lady waterford, and lord strangford. a number of letters exist from members of the royal family to leighton, all evincing alike admiration for the artist and an affectionate appreciation of the man. in these pages there will be found a repetition of several sentences. this is intentional. watts would often remark, "a really wise and true saying can't be repeated too often"; and in leighton's letters are several tallying with this description, which it would be a pity to detach from their own context, and yet which are also required elsewhere to enforce the argument. as regards the kindness shown in allowing reproductions of pictures, i have to tender my loyal gratitude to the queen for the gracious loan of the picture presented to her majesty by leighton; also to the prince of wales for allowing the "head of a girl," given to his royal highness as a wedding present by the artist, to be reproduced in these pages. other owners of pictures to whom i proffer also my warm thanks are lord armstrong, lord pirrie, the rt. hon. joseph chamberlain, the hon. lady leighton-warren, sir bryan leighton, the hon. mrs. sartoris, sir elliot lees, sir alexander henderson, mr. e. and miss i'anson, mr. s. pepys cockerell, mr. t. blake wirgman, mrs. stewart hodgson, mr. hanson walker, mrs. henry joachim, mrs. stephenson clarke, mrs. c.e. lees, mrs. james watney, mr. hodges, mrs. charles lewes, mr. h.s. mendelssohn, mr. phillipson, and dr. von steinle. also to the fine art society, the berlin photographic co., messrs. agnew & son, messrs. p. & d. colnaghi, messrs. henry graves, messrs. lefevre, messrs. smith, elder, & co., and the directors of the leicester galleries. contents page introduction chapter i antecedents and school days, - chapter ii rome, - chapter iii pencil drawings of plants and flowers, - chapter iv watts--success--failure, - chapter v friends chapter vi steinle and italy again--first impressions of the east, - list of illustrations volume i . design for reverse of the jubilee medallion cover executed for her majesty queen victoria's government, . . crown of bay leaves " from drawing made by lord leighton at the bagni de lucca, . . portrait of lord leighton by g.f. watts, about by kind permission of the hon. lady leighton-warren to face and sir bryan leighton, bart. (_photogravure_) dedication . head of young girl to face page by the gracious permission of her majesty the queen. . portraits of lord leighton's father and mother when young from miniatures. . early painting of boy saving a baby from the clutches of an eagle (_colour_) . portrait of professor eduard von steinle by kind permission of his son, doctor von steinle. . portrait of mrs. sartoris, . crypt under st. paul's cathedral where barry, sir joshua reynolds, turner, and lord leighton were buried . portraits of lord leighton and his younger sister, mrs. matthews drawn by him when a boy. . early comic drawing made in frankfurt by kind permission of mr. john hanson walker. . portrait of mr. i'anson, lord leighton's great-uncle, by kind permission of mr. e. and miss i'anson. . the death of brunelleschi, by kind permission of doctor von steinle. . the plague in florence, . studies of branches of fig and bramble leighton house collection. . study of byzantine well head, venice, by kind permission of mr. s. pepys cockerell. . from pencil drawing of model, rome, . "costume di procida" leighton house collection. . head of model used for figure in cimabue's madonna, erroneously stated to have been the portrait of lord leighton, leighton house collection. . sketch of subiaco, leighton house collection. . head of vincenzo, leighton house collection. . copy in pencil of the portraits of giotto, cimabue, memmi, and taddeo gaddi from the capella spagnola, sta. maria novella, florence, . leighton house collection. . study of woman's head for figure at the window--cimabue's madonna, (_photogravure_) leighton house collection. . original sketch in pencil and chinese white for cimabue's madonna, leighton house collection. . cimabue's madonna, by kind permission of the fine art society. . facsimile of letter from sir charles eastlake, announcing that queen victoria had purchased cimabue's madonna, may , . study of cyclamen, leighton house collection. . wreath of bay leaves, leighton house collection. . study of a lemon tree--capri, by kind permission of mr. s. pepys cockerell. . study of branches of a deciduous tree leighton house collection. . early studies of kalmia latifolia, oleander, and rhododendron flowers leighton house collection. . studies of pumpkin flowers leighton house collection. . study of vine, --bagni di lucca leighton house collection. . studies of vine leaves, "bellosguardo," sept. leighton house collection. . "ariadne abandoned by theseus--death releases her." (_photogravure_) by kind permission of lord pirrie. . "elisha raising the son of the shunammite," (_photogravure_) . "dÆdalus and icarus," (_photogravure_) by kind permission of sir alexander henderson, bart. . "captive andromache," (_photogravure_) by kind permission of the berlin photographic co. . study in oils for "captive andromache" (_colour_) by kind permission of mrs. stewart hodgson . "weaving the wreath," . "winding the skein" by kind permission of the fine art society. . "the music lesson," by kind permission of the fine art society. . studies of sea thistle, malinmore from sketch book, . . studies of sea thistle, malinmore from sketch book, . . "return of persephone" (_photogravure_) corporation of leeds. . study in oils for "return of persephone" (_colour_) by kind permission of mrs. stewart hodgson. . from decorative painting on gold background of cupid with doves . "idyll," (_photogravure_) . portrait of miss mabel mills, . "venus disrobing for the bath," by kind permission of sir a. henderson, bart. . phryne at eleusis, . portrait of mrs. adelaide sartoris, drawn for her friend, lady bloomfield, by kind permission of the hon. mrs. sartoris. . study for portion of frieze, "music" (not carried out in final design). leighton house collection. . from sketch in water colour for tableaux vivants, "the echoes of hellas" (_colour_) leighton house collection. . study from mr. john hanson walker, when a boy, for "lieder ohne worte," leighton house collection. . portrait of mrs. john hanson walker, painted as a wedding present to her husband, (_colour_) by kind permission of mr. walker. . figures for ceiling for music room, previous to the drapery being added, . original sketch in charcoal of dancing figures for the same, leighton house collection. . water colour drawing of the ca' d'oro, venice (_colour_) . view in algiers (_colour_) . view in algiers (_colour_) . sketch for "salome, the daughter of herodias," leighton house collection. . sixteen scenes in florence--illustrations to "romola" beginning by kind permission of mrs. charles lewes. page . blind scholar and daughter. . "suppose you let me look at myself;" nello's shop. . "the first key." . peasants' fair. . the dying message. . florentine joke. . the escaped prisoner. . niccolo at work. . "you didn't think." . "father, i will be guided." . the visible madonna. . dangerous colleagues. . "monna brigida." . "but you will help." . "drifting." . "will his eyes open?" [illustration: head presented to the queen by lord leighton by permission of her majesty the queen] errata motto facing title-page, line , _for_ "from," _read_ "for." page xx, no. , _for_ "figures for ceiling, &c.," _read_ "by kind permission of sir a. henderson, bart." page , line , _for_ "at all," _read_ "to all." page , omit note. page , line , _for_ "unscorched," _read_ "sunscorched." page , line , _for_ "worse that," _read_ "worse than." page , line , _for_ "wasash," _read_ "warsash." page , line , _for_ "pantaleoni," _read_ "pantaleone." page , note, _for_ "vol. i.," _read_ "vol. ii." page , lines , , _for_ "owing ... from," _read_ "owing ... to." page , note. the reference number should be to "edward," instead of to "adelaide." page , line , _for_ "couture," _read_ "conture." the life of lord leighton introduction in , when leighton, at the age of thirty, definitely settled in england, art was alive in two distinctly new directions. ruskin was writing, the pre-raphaelites were painting, and prince albert, besides encouraging individual painters and sculptors, had, through his fine taste and the exercise of his patronage in every branch of art, developed an interest in good design as it can be carried out in manufactures and various crafts. leighton followed the prince consort's initiatory lead; and, by showing the same cultured and catholic zeal in her welfare, was enabled to continue and develop prince albert's important work, thereby widening and elevating the whole outlook of art in england. it has at times been asserted that leighton was greater as a president of the royal academy than he was as a painter. it would be truer, i think, to say that it was because he was so great as an artist in the highest, widest meaning of the word, so sincere a workman, that he stands unrivalled as a president. in a letter to a friend, dated may , ten years after he had been elected president, he wrote, "i am a workman first and an official afterwards," and it was, i believe, because he carried into his official duties the true artist's warmth, sincerity, and zeal for his special vocation, that his influence as an official was never deadened by theoretic red-tapeism, nor by secondary or side issues. leighton ever flew straight to the mark, and the mark he aimed at in his presidential work was ever the highest essential point from the view he also took as an artist. his official duties, carried out with so great an amount of scrupulous conscientiousness, would have gone far to fill the entire life of an ordinary human being; yet these duties were, to the last, subordinated in his personal existence to his self-imposed duties as a painter and a sculptor. the words, "i am a workman first and an official afterwards," epitomise the creed of his life. from earliest childhood art had cast over leighton's nature a glamour which made his heart-service to her the great passion of his life. his "great nature" had in it many sources of stirring interest and of pure delights, which he enjoyed keenly; but nothing came in sight, so to speak, which ever for a moment seriously challenged a rivalry with the salient ruling passion. his character, as it developed, wound itself round it; his strongest sense of duty focalised itself in its service; his ambition ever was more inspired and stimulated by a devotion to the best interests of art than by any purely personal incentive. leighton was an artist of that true type in whom no influence whatsoever can deter or slacken incessant zeal for work. in the deepest recesses of his nature burnt the unquenchable fire, the paramount longing to follow in nature's footsteps, and to create things of beauty. among the many loyal servants who have dutifully worshipped at the shrine of art, never was there one who more completely devoted the best that was in him to her service. "va! your human talk and doings are a tame jest; the only passionate life is in form and colour."[ ] leighton's nature may be viewed from three aspects. though each aspect is apparently detached from the others, it would be impossible to record a true portrait were the three not kept in view while attempting to draw the picture. first, there was leighton, the great man, the public servant, gifted with exceptional powers of intellect and character, who attained the highest social position ever reached by an english artist; the leighton the world knew, whose sway was paramount in the many councils and assemblies to which he belonged no less than when fulfilling his duties as president of the royal academy, and whose helpfulness and zeal in promoting the extension of a knowledge and appreciation of english art in foreign countries and in the colonies became proverbial. lady loch tells of his invaluable help in the efforts she and her husband made to encourage art, while the late lord loch was governor of the isle of man, of victoria, and of cape colony. "i feel it would be impossible," she writes, "to convey in a few words what a wonderful friend frederic leighton was to my husband from the time he first knew him,[ ] forty years before leighton's death, and to myself from the time we married. he was always ready to help us at every turn. any deserving artist whom we sent to him would be certain to find in him a friend. when we arranged the very small art exhibition in the isle of man, you could hardly imagine with what energy and thoughtfulness he entered into the matter, impressing upon us all the steps that we ought to take in order to secure its success, even to the details, such as packing and insuring the pictures. he himself sent us pictures for the exhibition, and guided our judgment in admiring and caring for those which were best and most to be valued, with a paternal care and zeal not describable. again, when we were in australia, and the great international centennial exhibition in melbourne took place in , frederic leighton selected such a good collection of pictures that they simply were the saving of the exhibition financially--they attracted such continuous crowds of visitors. subsequently, when an exhibition of ceramic work was asked for in melbourne, and henry loch wrote to consult his friend, amidst all frederic leighton's important work and duties, he rushed about and secured a most interesting collection of all kinds of china and pottery, which was greatly appreciated by the australians. again, in , he formed a fine art committee, consisting of himself, who was appointed chairman, sir charles mills, sir donald currie, m.p., mr. w.w. ouless, r.a., mr. colin hunter, a.r.a., mr. frank walton, and mr. prange, to select pictures to send for exhibition at kimberley. besides a picture lent by queen victoria, at leighton's request, of the portraits of herself and the royal family by winterhalter, and four by leighton, which he lent, the committee secured pictures, though not without great difficulty, leighton told us, because the artists were afraid their works would be injured by the burning sun, the sandstorms, and the rough journey up from the cape. owing, however, to leighton's untiring exertions, a very interesting and successful exhibition took place in this then little known town of our english colony in africa." on the day leighton died, watts, his near neighbour and fellow-workman, in a letter to a friend, wrote that he had enjoyed "an uninterrupted and affectionate friendship of five-and-forty years" with leighton. he continues: "no one will ever know such another. a magnificent intellectual capacity, an unerring and instantaneous spring upon the point to unravel, a generosity, a sympathy, a tact, a lovable and sweet reasonableness, yet no weakness. for my own part--and i tell you, life can never be the same to me again--my own grief is merged in the sense i have of the appalling loss to the nation; it seems to me to be no less."[ ] later, watts wished it recorded that leighton's character was the most beautiful he had ever known. this tribute from the great veteran artist, thirteen years leighton's senior, but who outlived him more than eight years, was echoed far and wide by many at the time of leighton's death. to his powers and influence, exercised in the royal academy as a body and to the members individually, mr. briton rivière, the painter, and mr. hamo thornycroft, the sculptor, give the following appreciative tributes. mr. briton rivière writes:-- "to begin with, i never really knew him--though we had met several times before--until i began to serve upon the council with him very soon after his election as president. this at once brought us into very intimate relations, and a very few meetings convinced me that his opinions and actions on that body were invariably regulated by a true spirit of absolute justice and fairness to all, and that if he had his own particular art beliefs--which he certainly had, for art was to him almost a religion, and his own particular belief almost a creed--he never allowed it to bias him in the least. indeed, i have never worked with any one who exhibited a broader or more catholic spirit of tolerance, even sympathy with all schools, however diverse from his own, only demanding honesty and sincerity should be the basis of each kind of work. "i have always felt that no one, who had heard only his elaborately prepared speeches, knew his real power as a speaker. "he was a master of time. i do not think he ever failed to keep an appointment almost to the minute. he was seldom much too early, but never too late. "he was an ideal president for any institution, and after serving under him for many years, i cannot think of any one faculty which a president should possess, which leighton wanted." mr. hamo thornycroft writes:-- "my earliest recollection of leighton was in , when, with several other young art students, i went to his studio. he had promised to criticise the designs we had made from morris' 'life and death of jason.' this he did most admirably, it seemed to me, and most sympathetically, devoting considerable time to each; and i came away encouraged and a sworn devotee of the great man. "for the next few years, i had the benefit of his teaching at the academy schools, where he was most energetic as a visitor, and took the greatest pains to help the students. he was, moreover, an _inspiring_ master. besides doing much for the school of sculpture, till then much neglected, he started a custom of giving a certain time to the study of drapery on the living model. his knowledge in this department and his excellent method were a new element in the training in the schools, and soon had a salutary effect upon the work done by the students. his influence, through the academy schools, upon the younger generation of sculptors was very great. there can be no doubt whatever that the rapid advance made in the art of sculpture during the last thirty years was to a considerable extent due to the sympathy and the interest which leighton gave to it. "leighton, as is well known, carefully prepared his important speeches, like many great speakers; but i never saw him fail, or even hesitate, when called upon to speak unexpectedly. at meetings of the academy council or at the general assemblies, his summing up and his weighing of the arguments brought forward by members in course of discussion was always masterly, just and eloquent. he had such a great sense of proportion, and detected what was the essence and the essential part of a speaker's argument." at a meeting held in leighton's studio, after his death in may , for the purpose of furthering the scheme of preserving the house for the nation as a memorial to the great artist, the sculptor, mr. alfred gilbert, r.a., on rising to speak, said he felt too much on the occasion to be able to make a speech, adding, "i can only say that all i know, and all the little i have been able to do as a sculptor, i owe to leighton." in a letter, dated february , , watts again writes: "i delighted in shaping a splendid career of incalculable benefit to his (leighton's) epoch. his abilities, his persuasiveness, the peculiar range of his cultivation, would have fitted him to accompany a delicate embassy, where his efficiency would have been made evident, establishing a right to be entrusted with the like as its head; i believe something of this and more, if there could be more, was for him in the future. you know, i always looked forward to his seat in the house of lords. that came about, and i believe the rest was but a question of time. feeling this, you can understand that my own grief seems to me to be selfish. i am glad you enjoyed the friendship of one of the greatest men of any time." in the speech which the king, then prince of wales, made at the first banquet held after leighton's death, on may , , his majesty referred to the late president in the following words:-- "all of us in the room, and i especially, must miss one whose eloquent voice was so often heard at this banquet--a voice, alas! now hushed for ever. it is unnecessary, as it would be almost impertinent in me, to hold forth in praise of the merits and virtues of lord leighton. they are known to you all. he has left a great name behind him, and he himself will be regretted not only by the great artistic world, but by the whole nation. i myself had the advantage of knowing him for a great number of years--ever since i was a boy--and i need hardly say how deeply i deplore the fact that he can be no more in our midst. but his name will be cherished and honoured throughout the country." it is not necessary to dwell more lengthily on this salient aspect of leighton. during his lifetime it was public property, the great name he has left is evidence sufficient to coming generations. secondly, as portrayed chiefly by his human qualities, there was the aspect of leighton as his family and his friends knew him; the beloved leighton, the delightful companion, the charming personality, the being whose brilliant vitality brought a mental stimulus into all intercourse with him. the leighton _qui savait vivre_ perhaps better than did ever any other conspicuous, overworked servant of the public; an active, positive influence, radiating strength and sunshine by his presence; and playing the game--whatever game it was--better than even the experts in special games. in that which perhaps he played best, lay his remarkable social power. leighton had a deep-rooted and ingenuous sincerity of nature, and never for a moment lost his self-centre; yet he had the rare gift of unlocking the side most worthy to be unlocked in the nature of his companion of the moment. he had the power of evolving out of most people he met something that was real and of interest. never giving himself away, he yet managed to meet other individualities on any ground that existed which could by any possibility be made a mutual ground. though generosity itself in believing the best of every one, and at times entrapped by the wily, anything like flattery was a vice in his eyes. he neither gave himself away, nor induced others to give themselves away while in his company, and would always abstain from obtruding his opinions, modestly withholding judgment where he saw neither a duty nor a distinct reason to pronounce. perhaps the strongest mark of leighton's true distinction lay in the fact that, notwithstanding his reserve on all matters of deep feeling, notwithstanding his love of form in the living of life as in the creating of art, notwithstanding the perpetually shifting and urgent claims which, as a public man and a prominent social entity, were being continually forced upon him, the inner entity, the real leighton, remained to the end a child of nature. no need was there for him to gauge the proportionate merit of the various conflicting influences that played on his complicated life; his own instinctive preferences clenched the matter indubitably, asserting that the noblest grace and the finest taste lay in the spontaneous and the natural. when watts wished it recorded that leighton's nature was the most beautiful he had ever known, he referred, i think, more specially to that lovable, kind-hearted ingenuousness and noble simplicity which were its deepest roots, notwithstanding a life of conflicts, ambitions, and unparalleled success. there are among those who most honour and love leighton's memory, and who felt most keenly his loss, poor and unsuccessful artists and students, of whom the world has never heard, but to whom the great president gave of his very best in advice and sympathy.[ ] he never posed, though he was an adept in catching the atmosphere of a situation, however new and foreign to his usual beat such a situation might be. scrupulous in his attitude of reverence towards his vocation as an artist, _ever_ most scrupulous to render unto cæsar the things that are cæsar's, the inner core of the nature remained simple and unstained by worldliness. then there was the third aspect of leighton, the leighton at times half-hidden from himself; the yearning, unsatisfied spirit, which, though subject at times to great elevations of delight, at others was also the victim of profound depressions and a sense of loneliness--a state of being born out of that strange, only half-explained region whence proceed all intuitive faculties. such states are referred to occasionally in his letters to his mother, and we find their influence recorded at intervals in his art. in , on a sketch of giotto when a boy, are written in the corner the words "sehnsucht"; in , there is the david, "oh, that i had wings like a dove; for then would i fly away and be at rest"; in , the "spirit of the summit"--these are all alike expressions of the home-sickness that yearned for an abiding resting-place not found in the conditions of this world. "oh, what a disappointing world it is!" were words he uttered shortly before his death. in , when at bayreuth, a friend was congratulating him on his ever fortunate star having even there easily overcome the difficulties of the crowd. leighton, passing over the immediate question, answered with a striking serious sadness, "i have not _ever_ got what i most wanted in this world." no mind was ever more explicit to itself in its mental working, than was his with regard to matters which the intellect can investigate and solve. his judgment could never be warped by reason of an insufficient brain apparatus with which to judge himself and others impartially. but leighton was a great man, beyond being the one who owned "a magnificent intellectual capacity." the qualities he possessed, which made him a prominent entity who influenced the interests of the world at large, secured for him a footing on that higher level where human nature breathes a finer, more rarefied atmosphere than that in which the intellect alone disports itself; a level from which can be viewed the just proportion existing between the truly great and the truly little. selfishness disappears in a nature such as leighton possessed, when that level is reached. the necessity for self-sacrifice forces itself so peremptorily, that there is no struggle to be gone through in exercising it. for instance--notwithstanding the absorbing nature of his occupations and the intense devotion he felt towards his vocation as an artist, when it was a question of the country needing a reserve force for her army to draw on in case of war--a need which is at this present moment insisted on by lord roberts with such zealous earnestness--leighton at once seized the importance of the question, and, at whatever sacrifice to his own more personal interests, enlisted as a volunteer, and mastered the art and duties of soldiering so completely that many officers in the regular army envied his knowledge and efficiency. the following is an appreciation by an old comrade in the artists' volunteer corps:-- "the names of those who first enrolled themselves to form the artists' volunteer corps in is a record of considerable interest in itself, and calls back many reminiscences connected with art. leighton joined may , , and was in a few days given his commission as ensign. "probably the very character of the first recruits tended to prevent that expansion and accession of numbers without which no military body can flourish. lord bury, the first commandant, became the colonel of the civil service rifles; and whatever attention may have been given to firing and detailed training, the early appearances of the 'artists' in public at reviews was, as a rule, as a company or two attached to the civil service rifle corps. "events, however, brought a change in the command, and leighton having, not without hesitation, accepted it, set himself at once to introduce reforms. the captains, he announced, were to be responsible each for the command and drill of his company. he, to carry out before promotion as major commanding a duty which the previous laxity had never required of him, learned the company drill by heart and went through the whole complicated system then existing, on a single evening under trying circumstances in very insufficient space. reorganisation did not rapidly fill the ranks, and there was much hard work to be done before the artists' corps appeared as a completed eight-company battalion, and took its place among the best of the volunteer corps of the metropolis. the personality of the commander did very much to achieve this result, and leighton became lieutenant-colonel commandant in . "next to his duty to his art and to the royal academy, as he was ever careful to say, he esteemed his duty in the corps. busy man, with his time mapped out more than most, he was always accessible and ready to give the necessary time to those who had access to him on the corps business. he never appeared on parade without previous study of the drill to be gone through, while his tact, energy, and personal charm were brought out and used at those social meetings with officers and with men which do so much to build up the tone of a volunteer body. "of camps and duties in the tented field he took his part cheerfully. he shared the hardship of the early experience of the detachment at the dartmoor manoeuvres, where, camping on the barren hills above the lower level of the mist, the extemporised commissariat followed with difficulty, and the officers consoled themselves for the roughness of their fare by the consumption of marmalade, which happened to be supplied in bulk, and had to clean their knives in the sand to make some show for the entertainment of the brigadier at such dinner as could be had. "regarding volunteering so earnestly as he did, the reports of the inspecting officers would appear of great importance in leighton's eyes. on one occasion paragraphs had appeared in the papers about the corps which probably gave some umbrage to the authorities. the inspecting officer kept the battalion an unconscionable time at drill, changed the command, fell out the staff sergeants, yet all went well. at length, with leighton again in command, and a word imperfectly heard, the square walked outwards in four directions. the confusion was put to rights, and the well-prepared speech from the inspecting officer as to the importance of battalion drills, &c., followed. it was quite a pleasure to point out to the distressed leighton that the whole was manifestly a 'put up thing.' "the answer he received on another occasion admitted of no misinterpretation. riding with the officer after the inspection, and anxious to know whether in his opinion he was really doing any good work by his volunteering, leighton asked whether the officer would be willing to take the battalion he had just inspected under fire, and received the laconic reply, 'yes, sir, hell fire.' "on leighton's election as president of the academy, his twenty-five years active service in the corps ceased in . all the time that the history of the volunteering of the nineteenth century is known, his name will be associated with the artists' corps to the honour of both." mr. hamo thornycroft, r.a., also adds his tribute in the following lines:-- "i should think that few commanding officers of volunteer regiments could surpass colonel leighton in efficiency. his wonderful knowledge of infantry drill, and the decision with which he gave the word of command, made it very easy for the men in the ranks to obey him; and the quickness of eye with which he detected an error in any movement frequently saved confusion in the ranks on a field day. the artists' corps soon became one of the smartest in london. i well remember how efficiently he commanded the volunteer battalion in the army manoeuvres on dartmoor in , when for a fortnight of almost continuous rain on that wild moorland he kept us all happy and full of respect for him by his fine soldierly example. his thoroughness and kindness were constant. after a soaking wet night he would come down the line of tents in the early morning distributing some unheard-of luxury, such as a couple of new-laid eggs to each man, which he had managed to have sent from some outlying village." besides the obvious results of a complex and astonishingly comprehensive nature, there were also phases in leighton's life which were the outcome on that side of his being half hidden to himself. most of us have dual natures, not only in the sense that good and bad reside within us simultaneously, but we have also a less definable duality of nature; nature's original creature being one thing, and the creature developed by the conditions it meets with in its journey through life, another. each acts and reacts on the other. we meet the conditions forced upon us in life from the point of our own individualities. on the other hand, the original creature gets twisted by circumstances and the influence of other personalities, and becomes partially altered into a different person. this backwards and forwards swaying of the influence of nature and circumstances helps to make life the intricate business it is. in the case of highly gifted human beings there seem to be further complications, arising chiefly, perhaps, from the fact that these form so small a minority. very subtle and undefinable is the effect of such gifts on the character and nature of those possessing them, for nature herself maintains a kind of secrecy and endows her favoured ones with but a half consciousness in respect of them. she gives to the artist and to the poet the something, unshared with the ordinary mortal, which controls the inner core of his being, and which is another quantity to be allowed for in his contact with his fellows. it initiates his most passionate, peremptory conditions of temperament, yet it remains partially veiled to himself, in so far that he cannot explain it, nor give it its right place, any more than the lover can explain the glamour which is spread over life by an overpowering first love. when plato classes the souls of the philosopher, the artist, the musician, and the lover together[ ] as having been born to see most of truth, he recognises the same inspired instinctive quality in the artist as in the lover. in the artist is linked, as part of its separateness from the rest of the community, the inseparable shyness of the lover. anything is better than to expose the sacred, indescribable treasure to the indifferent stare of the uninitiated. we find every sort of ruse adopted by lovers and artists to avoid being forced into explicitness on so tender, so intimate a passion; so convincing to its possessor, so impossible of full explanation to those who possess it not. the necessity to give it a clear outline is only forced when a danger arises of the lover being robbed of his mistress, the artist of his vocation; then the will, propelled by the all-conquering love, asserts itself, and difficulties have to succumb before it. such was the result of opposition in leighton's case. from early childhood he was known to care for nothing so much as for drawing, and his talent attracted notice and pleased his family, every encouragement being given him by his parents in his studies. it was only when, as a boy of twelve, he viewed art as the serious work of his future life, and when this view was met by the authorities as one not to be encouraged, that the strong passion of his nature asserted its rights. clearly in opposition are planted the firmest roots of those inevitable developments which make the great of the world great. in leighton was nurtured that sense of responsibility towards his vocation, so salient a characteristic throughout his career, partly by his father's attitude towards the worship of his nature for beauty and for her exponent art. to prove that his self-chosen labour was no mere play work, no mere avoiding the hard work of life and the duller paths of service generally recognised only as of serious use to mankind, for a game which was a mere pleasure, was a strong additional incentive to leighton's own high aspirations, inspiring him yet more to treat the development of his gifts as a moral responsibility. he considered it almost in the light of a debt owing to those to whom he was attached by strong family affection, that he should prove good his cause. though he fought and overcame, having once won his point, he did his utmost to satisfy his father's ambition for him, and to be "eminent." on august , , he wrote to mrs. mark pattison, who was compiling notes for an article on his life: "my father, of his own impulse, sat down to write a few jottings, which i cannot resist sending you, because i was touched at the thought in this kind old man of eighty. _he_, by the way, _is_ a fine scholar, and was, at his best, a man of exceptional intellectual powers. my desire to be an artist dates as far back as my memory, and was wholly spontaneous, or rather unprompted. my parents surrounded me with every facility to learn drawing, but, as i have told you, _strongly_ discountenanced the idea of my being an artist unless i could be eminent in art." [illustration: lord leighton's father lord leighton's mother from miniatures, by permission of mr. h.s. mendelssohn] still--though to excel was leighton's aim, in order to satisfy his father's and also his own ambition--within the hidden recesses of that aim lay the reverent, more single-hearted worship for his mistress art--seldom unveiled, it would seem, when with his father, to whose purely intellectual and philosophical attitude of mind it would not have appealed. those alone possessed the key to that inner sanctuary who did not need the key; who wanted no introduction, and were not merely sympathisers, but native inhabitants. there is a freemasonry between the inmates of these places remote from the world's usual habitations, and these, naturally, have a horror of vaunting the possession of a sacred ground to the outsider, the uninitiated. many of leighton's most intimate acquaintances gathered no clue, through their knowledge of him, of the existence of the secluded spot. dr. leighton's influence, however, non-artistic as was his nature, stimulated his son's natural mental elasticity, encouraging a comprehensive and unprejudiced view of life and people, a view which marked leighton's undertakings with a stamp of nobility and distinction throughout his career. yet further--the intellectual training he received in youth probably enlarged, in some respects, the areas of the sacred sanctuary itself, enabling leighton, when he was the servant of the public and possessing wide influence and patronage, not only to exercise power with the qualities which spring from a high intellectual development, but to mellow with wisdom the guidance of the yet higher sympathies of the heart, when helping those staggering along the road which he himself had travelled over with such success. to many, however, especially to those possessing the artistic temperament, it must always remain, to say the least, a questionable advantage to a student of art that his intellectual faculties should be forced forward at the expense of the development of his more emotional and ingenuous instincts, at the age when sensitiveness to receive impressions is keenest, and when such impressions have the most lasting power in moulding the future tendencies of his nature. certainly the effects of a development of critical and analytical faculties is apt to prove a damper to those ecstasies of enthusiasm which inspire the most convincing conceptions in art. when first starting and facing seriously his independent career alone, leighton writes to his mother: "i wish that i had a mind, simple and unconscious as a child." again, writing to his elder sister from algiers in , after describing the delightful impression produced by a first visit to an eastern country, he adds: "and yet what i have said of my feelings, though _literally true_, does not give you an exactly true notion, for together with, and as it were behind, so much pleasurable emotion, there is always that other strange second man in me, calm, observant, critical, unmoved, blasé--odious! he is a shadow that walks with me, a sort of nineteenth-century canker of doubt and dissection; it's very, very seldom that i forget his loathsome presence. what cheering things i find to say!" allied to the third, more intimate aspect of his nature were phases in leighton's feelings when heart would seem to conquer head. he would at times indulge in what might almost be designated as a self-imposed blindness, when he would allow of no criticism by himself or others of the cause or person in question. an enthusiastic, unselfish devotion, a sense of chivalry or pity, would override his normally clear-sighted, intellectual acumen. having set his belief and admiration to one tune, faithful loyalty--and maybe a certain amount of obstinacy--would bind him fast in an adherence to the same. [illustration: early picture of boy rescuing sleeping baby from eagle leighton house collection] belonging also to the intuitive, more emotional side of his nature, was the curiously strong influence places exercised over him, certain localities affecting him and exciting his sympathies with a strong power. in he wrote to his elder sister: "if i am as faithful to my wife as i am to the places i love, i shall do very well!" in order to seize fully leighton's complete individuality, an understanding of italy, his "second home," is perhaps necessary--a conception of the nature of the unsophisticated italian life which fascinated him so greatly when as yet no invasion had been made of cosmopolitan, so-called civilisation. as a magnet, italy drew leighton to her.[ ] under the influence of her radiant beauty, breathing such a life of charm and colour beneath sunlit skies, he felt the sources of happiness in his own nature expand and his powers ripen. in the fertility of her soil, the vitality of her people, the superb quality of her art--fine and gracious in its perfection, and distributed generously throughout the length and breadth of her land--he experienced influences which intensified his emotions and vivified his imagination. the child-like charm of her people, so spontaneously happy, enjoying the ease and assurance of nature's own aristocracy, because enjoying nature's generous gifts with unabashed fulness of sensation, in whom are non-existent those sensibilities which create self-consciousness, restraint, and an absence of self-confidence, aroused in leighton an interest deeper than mere pleasure. it was to him like the joy of a yearning satisfied, as of those who, having had their lot cast for years with aliens and foreigners, find themselves again with their own kith and kin, surrounded by the native atmosphere which had lent such enchantment to childhood. again and again he returned to italy to be made happy, to be revived, to be strengthened by her. her influence became kneaded into his very being, not only nourishing his sense of beauty and rendering more complete the artist nature within him, but touching the sources from which his artist temperament sprang, inspiring his very personality and changing it into one which was certainly not typically english. his rapid utterance, his picturesque gesture, his very appearance, were not emphatically english.[ ] certain englishmen who knew leighton but slightly felt out of sympathy with him for this reason, experiencing a difficulty in recognising him as one of themselves. it was, however, only on the surface that a difference existed. once intimate with leighton, he was ever found to be _au fond_ english of the english. after the age of thirty it was in england leighton fought the serious battle of life--italy was but the playground, though a playground of such fascination to him that the glamour of it was spread over the working hours no less than over the holidays. in these days we have to go into the smaller towns and villages to discover the typical italian characteristics; but when leighton, as a child, was taken from the gloom of bloomsbury to this, to him a magic world,--syndicates, building-companies, tramways, and modern things generally, had not as yet invaded either rome or florence. when grown up and master of his own actions, he wandered into unsophisticated haunts--villages and towns off the beaten tracks, where with abnormal facility he learned the distinctive _pâtois_ of every district, listening with delight to local folk-songs, and watching the peasants and the aborigines of the soil. in early sketch-books we find records of visits to albano, tivoli, cervaro, subiaco, san giuminiano, and to even smaller and less known villages in tuscany and veneziano, where he enjoyed the unalloyed flavour of italy and her people. those who pay only flying visits to the country after they are grown up would find a difficulty perhaps in realising what italy was to leighton; but any one visiting for a few weeks even such a well-known place as albano, without other preoccupation than to watch the natives and wander in the beautiful scenery to the sound of the many flowing fountains, could still catch something of the true national spirit which fascinated him so greatly. the typical britisher might regard the ways of these natives of the _provincia di roma_ as irrational, idle, semi-savage. doubtless the streets and piazzas abound in noisy inhabitants, gesticulating with wild dramatic fervour, who appear to have otherwise little to do in life but to loiter and "look on"; sociable groups of women sit round the doorways knitting; but it is the talk, accompanied by excited action, which is engrossing them. charmingly pretty children are playing everywhere--idle, troublesome, but so happy! to the accompanying sound of running waters,--night and day,--cries, yells, and songs ring out through the ancient little town.[ ] high up on the side of the mountains it overlooks the roman campagna, the tragic strangeness of those land-waves rolling away, flattened and stretched out, for miles and miles, under the dome of light and shadowing cloud, a network of bright gleams and violet lakelets, to the far-off brilliant shine on the sea limit.[ ] this noise, dramatic action, gesticulation, all ending apparently in nothing in particular, but filling the little town with such amazing vitality--what is it all about? the typical englishman does not know--does not care to know, despising the whole thing as beneath his notice. but leighton knew well what it meant. from experiences in his own nature he realised that it was but an innocent outlet, through voice and gesture, of an excitement resulting from an imperative dramatic instinct, a vital force in the emotional nature of the italian. he recognised the necessity for such an outlet in such temperaments through his sympathy with the glad exuberance of physical vitality enjoyed in this sunlit land; anti-puritan though it may be, this exuberance is none the less pure and innocent. the holy saint francis in his ecstasies of spiritual illumination would, it is said, break out into song from the natural impulse to find an outlet and to throw off the excess of excitement, that thrilled through his being.[ ] leighton knew that to suppress the vitality which needs such an outlet was to minimise the forces necessary for life's best work. he himself, in the working of his mind, was possessed of a magnificent facility--a facility which left the strength of his emotions fresh and free, to enjoy the ecstasies of admiration and delight which the choice gifts of nature and art had given him; but there are many among modern men and women, taught by much reading, who overweight their physical vitality in the effort to develop intellect and to forward self-interest, till all simple physical enjoyment is lost, and the natural man becomes repressed into a mental machine incapable of any spontaneous emotions of joy, and blunt to the fine aroma of life's keen and pure pleasures-- "my nature is subdued to what it works in." to leighton the simple joyous child of nature, in the form of the unsophisticated italian, was a preferable being. to the end of his life he retained much of the child in his own nature, and had ever an inborn sympathy with the love for children so evident everywhere in unspoilt italy; for the gracious caressing of them by the poorest of the poor--old men in the veriest tatters and rags showing a complete and beautiful submission to the dominating charms of babyhood. the memory of the hideous, gruesome stories of baby-farming in england strikes indeed a contrast with the scenes that abound at every turn in any old, dirty, picturesque italian village, and assuredly settles the question, is our english development of civilisation an unalloyed benefit? as a contrast to the definite, explicit german development of his intellectual machinery, leighton had special sympathy with the emotional spontaneity of the italian race; also as a contrast to the selective and finely poised conclusions to be worked out in theories of composition learnt from his beloved master steinle, arose a special admiration for the casual, unpremeditated, inevitable grace and charm in the manners and gestures of this southern people. what laboured theories so often failed to achieve, nature here was always doing in her most careless moods. in considering the intimate aspect of leighton's nature, and the interweaving of the original fabric with the forces developed by the circumstances he encountered, the influence of italy must assuredly be given a very distinct prominence. from her and her people he acquired courage in the exercise of his intuitive preferences, also a development of that rapid and direct insight so inborn in her children. like the lizards that dart with such lightning speed across her sun-scorched walls and over the gnarled bark of the weird olive tree, the perceptions of the typical italian are swift, and fly straight to the mark. in the italian, however, this vividness of perception is mostly expended in ejaculation and dramatic gesture, which,--subsiding,--leaves a state of indolence and nonchalance, untroubled by any mental exertion. in leighton the rapidity with which his perceptions seized the core of truth was backed by an intellectual activity of extraordinary power, by which he worked his intuitive sensibilities into the interests which guided the solid aims of his life. probably no englishman ever approached the greek of the periclean period so nearly as did leighton, for the reason that he possessed that combination of intellectual and emotional power in a like rare degree. the human beings who achieve most as active workers in the world, are doubtless those in whom can be traced a capacity for making apparently incompatible forces pull together towards a desired end. leighton succeeded in allying two distinct developments in his nature; and by, so to say, putting these into double harness and driving them together, acquired an advantage which few other artists, if any, have possessed since the time of the greeks. but, being essentially english as well as greek-like, leighton pushed this combination of powers to a moral issue. he held as his creed of creeds that the mission of art was to act as a lever in the uplifting of the human race, not by going beyond her own domain, but by directing the sense of beauty with which her true priesthood must ever be endowed, in order to eliminate from man his more brutal tendencies, to refine and perfect his insight into nature, and to develop his delight in her perfection. he held that, the stronger the emotional force in an artist, the stronger the sense of responsibility should be; the more he should seek to express it in a manner which would elevate rather than deprave. in his picture of "cymon and iphigenia," leighton expressed the main dogma of his belief. in sentences towards the end of his second address to the royal academy students in the year , he eloquently describes the complex and deep nature of those æsthetic emotions whence spring the arts:-- "it is not, it cannot be, the foremost duty of art to seek to embody that which it cannot adequately present, and to enter into a competition in which it is doomed to inevitable defeat. "on the other hand, there is a field in which she has no rival. we have within us the faculty for a range of emotions of vast compass, of exquisite subtlety, and of irresistible force, to which art and art alone amongst human forms of expression has a key; these then, and no others, are the chords which it is her appointed duty to strike; and form, colour, and the contrasts of light and shade are the agents through which it is given to her to set them in motion. her duty is, therefore, to awaken those sensations directly emotional and indirectly intellectual, which can be communicated only through the sense of sight, to the delight of which she has primarily to minister. and the dignity of these sensations lies in this, that they are inseparably connected by association of ideas, with a range of perceptions and feelings of infinite variety and scope. they come fraught with dim complex memories of all the ever-shifting spectacle of inanimate creation, and of the more deeply stirring phenomena of life; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the outer world; of the storm and the lull, the splendour and the darkness of the changeful and transitory lives of men. nay, so closely overlaid is the simple æsthetic sensation with elements of ethic or intellectual emotion by these constant and manifold accretions of associated ideas, that it is difficult to conceive of it independently of this precious overgrowth.... the most sensitively religious mind may indeed rest satisfied in the consciousness that it is not on the wings of abstract thought alone that we rise to the highest moods of contemplation, or to the most chastened moral temper; and assuredly arts which have for their chief task to reveal the inmost springs of beauty in the created world, to display all the pomp of the teeming earth, and all the pageant of those heavens of which we are told that they declare the glory of god, are not the least eloquent witnesses to the might and to the majesty of the mysterious and eternal fountain of all good things." not only could no attempt be approximately made at giving a real and vivid picture of leighton's remarkable personality were not the three aspects of his nature taken into account, but also if the influences which affected him strongly during those years when his genius and character were being developed were not also considered. his conscious nature and feelings, during the first thirty years of his life, can be best traced in his letters, notably in those to his mother. it is easy to recognise, in reading his mother's letters to him, from whom he inherits the warm tender generosity which made his nature so lovable. [illustration: portrait of professor edouard steinle drawn by himself] when at frankfort, in , he first became acquainted with the most "indelible" influence of his life in that inner sanctuary in which he had hitherto been a lonely inmate. seven years later, in the diary he calls "pebbles," written for his mother, when, fully fledged, he leaves the nest to battle alone on the field of life, he pays a tribute of unqualified affection and gratitude to his master, steinle, who first unlocked the door to leighton's full consciousness of the depth of his devotion for his calling (see pp. and ). in , the year after leighton was elected president of the royal academy, in the same letter to mrs. mark pattison already quoted from, he writes, respecting the influences which affected his art development: "for _bad_ by florentine academy, for good, far beyond all others, by steinle, a noble-minded, single-hearted artist, _s'il en fut_. technically, i learnt (later) much from robert fleury, but being very receptive and prone to admire, i have learnt, and still do, from innumerable artists, big and small. steinle's is, however, the _indelible seal_. the _thoroughness_ of all the great old masters is so pervading a quality that i look upon them all as forming one aristocracy." during the first year when he settled in rome, in the beginning of , he made the acquaintance of mr. and mrs. sartoris. leighton's friendship with mrs. sartoris (adelaide kemble), many years his senior, and one who had ever viewed her art as a singer from the purest and highest aspect, became a strong and elevating influence in his life. professor giovanni costa (the "nino" of the letters), one of leighton's most intimate friends from the year to the end in , wrote of mrs. sartoris, referring to the early days in rome from to :[ ] "the greatest influence on the life of frederic leighton was exerted by mr. and mrs. sartoris (miss adelaide kemble), who had the mind of a great artist. mr. sartoris was one of the greatest critics of art, and mrs. sartoris had a most elevated and serene nature." this great friendship with mr. and mrs. sartoris brought with it many others, notably those of robert browning and of mr. henry greville. some years later, leighton writes of mr. henry greville, in a letter to his pupil and friend, mr. john walker: "he is indeed one of the kindest and best men possible, i look on him myself as a second father"; and henry greville in a letter to leighton writes: "i wish you were my son, fay"--fay being the name given to leighton by his inner circle of intimates, and certainly a stroke of genius in the one who invented it. writing from frankfort to his mother, where he returned to show his works to steinle after his family had finally migrated to bath and he to rome, he says: "i have had such a letter from henry (henry greville); there never was anything like the tenderness of it. you would have been just enchanted." the friendship with mrs. sartoris only ended with her death in , the year after leighton was elected president of the royal academy. being then close upon fifty, deeply sensible of the grave responsibilities involved by his new position, leighton entered on a fresh phase in his career. as president of the centre of national living art, this phase involved a serious view being taken of the interests of art such as could be encouraged by a public body. also as one who had been helped and encouraged by personal friendship and influence to work out the best in him, with his ever eager and generous nature he felt anxious to hand on the help he had received by devoting a like sympathy to the individual interests of other workers. his field of action had become enlarged, and he rose with consummate ability to the fulfilment of the duties this larger area entailed on him. not only by his biennial addresses to the students of the royal academy, but by the speeches delivered spontaneously at the councils and elsewhere, when no preparation would have been possible, his fame as an orator was established. many there are who have heard the impromptu speeches he made, who can vouch, as do mr. briton rivière and mr. hamo thornycroft, that these were just as fine in language and excellent in the concise form in which the words were made to convey the intended meaning, as those which leighton had carefully prepared beforehand, and possessed, moreover, the charm of an unlaboured effort. [illustration: from drawing of adelaide sartoris paris, ] the seventeen years, during which leighton was president of the royal academy, and prominent in every direction as the leader of the art of his country, were not without saddening influences. his duties necessitated contact with many varieties of human nature, some far from sympathetic to him. the contrast between his own disinterested reverence for beauty, moral and physical, with the indifference displayed by many of his brother artists towards his own high aims and aspirations, forced itself more and more on leighton as the optimistic fervour and enthusiasm of youth waned with years and failing health. he had to face the depressing fact that selfish motives are the ruling factors with most men, even with those who ostensibly follow the calling of beauty. much of the joyousness of his spirit was lessened accordingly, though his "sweet reasonableness," to quote watts' truly suggestive words, never deserted him. this prevented any bitterness or resentment from finding permanent location in his nature. another source of distress arose from the fact that his great position aroused the jealousy of the envious. however exceptional his tact, however truly heartfelt his consideration for others, no virtues could stand against the vice of being so pre-eminently successful in the eyes of the envious, whose vanity alone placed them in their own estimation on a level with the great. nothing perhaps excites so rampant a jealousy in unappreciative and envious natures, as does the unexplainable charm of a delightful personality. it aggravates the dull and envious beyond measure to see a being thus endowed galloping over the ground in all directions with ease, there being in their eyes no sufficient explanation for the pace. such success is viewed by the envious as a kind of trick, some witchery of fascination, which deludes the world into bestowing unmerited advantages on the conjuror. those, on the contrary, who can appreciate a transcendent and delightful personality, recognise it as the convincing grace of the power of uncommon gifts flashing their radiance into the intercourse of every-day life, modestly ignored as conscious possessions but inevitably sparkling out in any human intercourse, and from a social point of view making the greatest among us the servants of all. jealousy fights with hidden weapons. what man or woman ever acknowledged being jealous? the passion is disguised. hence the hideous sins that follow in its wake: ingratitude, treachery, calumnies, are called into the service to blacken the offending object. bacon says of envy: "it is also the vilest affection, and the most depraved; for which cause it is the proper attribute of the devil, who is called _the envious man, that soweth tares amongst the wheat by night_, as it always cometh to pass that envy worketh subtilly, and in the dark; and to the prejudice of good things, such as is the wheat." leighton suffered from the jealousy of the envious, though in most cases the open expression of it was smothered during his life by reason of his power and position. besides being tender-hearted and easily hurt at any feeling of hostility shown against him, he cordially hated any phase of the ugly. in the spring of leighton said to a friend: "my one constant prayer is that i should not live beyond seventy." his great dread was to be a burden to any one--to cease to be useful to all. his wish was more than fulfilled. he passed onward five years before the allotted three score and ten. many there were who felt with watts that life was indeed darkened; "a great light was extinguished," a beloved friend was no longer amongst them to help, encourage, and brighten the days. to a wide social circle, a personality, rare in its charm and endowments, differing from all others, had passed off the stage. it was as if, amid the sober brown and grey plumage of our quiet-coloured english birds, through the mists and fogs of our northern clime, there had sped across the page of our nineteenth century history the flight of some brilliant-hued flamingo, emitting flashes of light and colour on his way. to the wide public a power and a control, noble and distinguished in its quality, had ceased to rule over the art interests of the country. last, but not least, to his "brothers and sisters," as leighton called all earnest students and artists, it was as if a strong support, a centre of impelling force, an inspiration towards the best and highest in art, had been suddenly swept away. on the day of his funeral, a friend, whose husband had known him from the commencement to the end of the brilliant career, wrote the following notes:--[ ] "lord leighton's funeral to-day was as brilliant as his life, and we came home from the majestic ceremony at st. paul's cathedral feeling that his kind and gracious spirit would have rejoiced--for all he loved and honoured in life were there mourning for the loss of their gifted and genial friend. as the procession moved slowly into the cathedral the crimson and golden pall was venetian in its brilliancy, and the long branch of palm spoke touchingly of pain over and the conquest won. music, the sister art he so devoutly worshipped, lifted up her voice in pathetic accents to the dome of the vast cathedral, striving to re-echo the solemnity and grief around. "dear gracious leighton, how vividly my husband recalled his earliest impressions of him, the handsome young artist at rome. visions arise in the mind of joyous days in his second home there, the cultured and hospitable house of adelaide sartoris, which formed the happy background of leighton's life. he remembered the departure of his picture 'the triumph of cimabue,' sent with diffidence, and so, proportionate was the joy when news came of its success, and that the queen had bought it. it was the month of may. rome was at its loveliest, and leighton's friends and brother artists gave him a festal dinner to celebrate his honours. on receiving the news, leighton's first act was to fly to three less successful artists and buy a picture from each of them (george mason, then still unknown, was one), and so leighton reflected his own happiness at once on others. to-day as we viewed the distinguished (in the best sense of the term) mourners, it seemed an epitome of all his social and artistic life. he never forgot an old friend, and not one was absent to-day. the men around his coffin all looked heartily sad. it was only when those peaceful words came, 'we give thee hearty thanks, for that it hath pleased thee to deliver this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world,' that we remembered the agony of his last three days on earth, and we could be glad for our dear friend that it was past. we could give hearty thanks, but it was for him and him alone, for we turn with heavy hearts to our homes, feeling that with frederic leighton ever so much kindness, love, and colour has gone out of the world." [illustration: crypt under st. paul's cathedral, where barry, sir joshua reynolds, turner, and lord leighton were buried from a photo, by permission of messrs. s.b. bolas & co.] attached to the wreath which lay on his coffin were the lines written by our queen:-- "life's race well run, life's work well done, life's crown well won, now comes rest." in leighton's own letters, more than is possible in any other written words, will be traced those qualities of character and feeling which guided the rare gifts nature had bestowed. these, used with unstinting generosity for the benefit of others, established for our national art a position, cosmopolitan in its influence, never previously attained by english painting and sculpture, and of which it may be fairly hoped, future generations, no less than the present, may reap the benefit. footnotes: [ ] george eliot--"romola." [ ] lord loch's cousin, colonel sutherland orr, married leighton's elder sister in the year . [ ] quoted in g.f. watts' "reminiscences." [ ] an incident, one out of many that tell of leighton's hearty, eager helpfulness, happened on one of the evenings at the academy, after the prizes had been given away. a student was passing through the first room, on his way to the entrance. he looked the picture of dejection and disappointed wretchedness, poorly and shabbily dressed, and slinking away as if he wished to pass out of the place unnoticed. millais and leighton, walking arm in arm, came along, pictures of prosperity. leighton caught sight of the poor, downcast student. leaving millais, he darted across the vestibule to him, and, taking the student's arm, drew him back into the first room, and made him sit down on the ottoman beside him. putting his arm on the top of the ottoman, and resting his head on his hand, leighton began to talk as he alone could talk; pouring forth volumes of earnest, rapid utterances, as if everything in the world depended on his words conveying what he wanted them to convey. he went on and on. the shabby figure gradually seemed to pull itself together, and, at last, when they both rose, he seemed to have become another creature. leighton shook hands with him, and the youth went on his way rejoicing. it is certain that if other help than advice were needed, it was given. but it was the extraordinary zest and vitality which leighton put into his help which made it unlike any other. he fought every one's cause even better than others fight their own. [ ] in plato's "phædrus," socrates says: "the soul, which has seen most of trouble, shall come to the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or musician, or lover; that which has seen truth in the second degree, shall be a righteous king, or warrior, or lord; the soul which is of the third class, shall be a politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth, shall be a lover of gymnastic toils, or a physician; the fifth, a prophet, or hierophant; to the sixth, a poet or imitator will be 'appropriate'; to the seventh, the life of an artisan, or husbandman; to the eighth, that of a sophist, or demagogue; to the ninth, that of a tyrant; all these are states of probation, in which he who lives righteously, improves, and he who lives unrighteously, deteriorates his lot." [ ] he wrote to his sister in from algiers: "i shall spend my next winter in my dear, dear old rome, to which i am attached beyond measure; indeed, italy altogether has a hold on my heart that no other country ever can have (except, of course, my own), and although, as i just now said, i was most delighted with africa, and have not a moment to look back to that was not agreeable, yet there is an intimate little corner in my affections into which it could never penetrate." and later he wrote in a letter to his mother: "i have so often been to italy, and so often written to you from thence, that it seems quite a platitude to tell you how much i enjoy it, and what a keen delight i felt again this time when i once more trod the soil of this wonderful country; indeed, by the time you get this you will already yourself be in full enjoyment of its pleasures, and though naturally you cannot feel one tittle of my attachment and yearning affection for it, yet you will have all the physical delights of sun and serene skies and a good share of the wonder and admiration at the inexhaustible natural beauties of this garden of the world. i came through switzerland this time, but as quick as a shot, as i was in a hurry to get _home_ to italy." [ ] du maurier, who took much interest in tracing indications of various racial distinctions in the remarkable people of his time, was troubled on this point. he was convinced that in leighton existed indications of foreign or jewish blood, but was quite unable to discover any facts in support of this theory. [ ] leighton wrote in a letter to his sister from algiers of the strange sounds which the moors emit, adding: "much the same sort of thing is noticeable in the peasants near rome, whose songs consist (within a definite shape) of long-sustained chest notes that are peculiar in the extreme, and though often harsh, seem to be wonderfully in harmony with the long unbroken lines of the campagna." [ ] on december , , leighton writes to steinle: "my italian journey afforded me in every way the greatest pleasure and edification, and i seem now for the first time to have grasped the greatness of the campagna and the giant loftiness of michael angelo." [ ] "après de pareilles émotions, il avait besoin d'être seul, de savourer sa joie, de chanter sa liberté définitivement conquise, sur tous les sentiers le long desquels il avait tant gémi, tant lutté. "il ne voulut donc pas retourner immédiatement à saint-damien. sortant de la cité par la porte la plus voisine, il s'enfonça dans les sentiers déserts qui grimpent sur les flancs du mont subasio. on était aux tout premiers jours du printemps. il y avait encore çà et là de grandes fondrières de neige, mais sous les ardeurs du soleil de mars l'hiver semblait s'avouer vaincu. au sein de cette harmonie, mystérieuse et troublante, le coeur de françois vibrait délicieusement, tout son être se calmait et s'exaltait; l'âme des choses le caressait doucement et lui versait l'apaisement. un bonheur inconnu l'envahissait; pour célébrer sa victoire et sa liberté, il remplit bientôt toute la forêt du bruit de ses chants. "les émotions trop douces ou trop profondes pour pouvoir être exprimées dans la langue ordinaire, l'homme les chante."--_vie de s. françois d'assise, par paul sabatier._ [ ] "notes on lord leighton," _cornhill magazine_, march . [ ] the _morning post_ of february , . chapter i antecedents and school days - some light is thrown on leighton's ancestry by the following letter, written by sir baldwyn leighton to sir albert woods, garter, at the time when a peerage was bestowed on frederic leighton. it deals with the question of associating the name of stretton with the barony. "tabley house, knutsford, _january , ._ "dear sir,--in answer to yours of january , i beg to say that there are two places called stretton in the county of salop; one, now known as church stretton, having become a small town, was formerly in the possession of my family through the marriage of john de leighton, my lineal ancestor, with the daughter and heiress of william cambray of stretton in the fourteenth century, whose arms we still quarter (see herald's visitation for shropshire). this no longer belongs to me, having been mortgaged and sold by sir thomas leighton, kt. banneret, temp. hen. viii. but there is another stretton in the parish of alderbury with cardeston which does still belong to me, and has always belonged to the family from time immemorial. i have been in communication with sir frederic leighton on the subject, and it _is_ my wish that he should adopt the supplemental title of stretton. according to a pedigree made out by a shropshire antiquarian some thirty years ago, sir frederic's branch descends from the younger son of the john de leighton who married the cambray heiress, and who was admitted burgess of shrewsbury in . therefore i am of opinion that it _is_ a very proper supplemental title for sir frederic to assume.--i remain, yours, &c., "baldwyn leighton. "to sir albert woods, garter." in , leighton writes to his mother:-- "you must know that i received some time back a letter from the _rev. wm. leighton_ (address, _luciefelde, shrewsbury_) asking me very politely to give him whatever information i could about our family, as he was making a pedigree of the leighton family, and was anxious to find out something about a branch that had settled and been lost sight of in london. i answered that i regretted i could give him no definite information on the subject, beyond our belief that we were of a younger branch of the shropshire leightons, whose arms and crest we bore, that i knew personally nothing of my family further back than my grandfather, telling him who and what he was. i ended by referring him _to papa_, to whom i immediately wrote, telling him the nature of mr. leighton's request, and begging him to write to him at once in case he could give him any clue that might facilitate his researches. i then received a second, and very interesting, letter from mr. l. telling me that he had found in yorkshire some leightons (i forget the christian names, but not robert) who claimed to descend from the shropshire stock, and whose crest differed from the leighton crest exactly as ours does, _i.e._ in the _forward_ expansion of the right wing of the wyvern; a peculiarity, by the by, which did not appear to be of weight with him. there was more in this letter which i don't clearly remember, but nothing establishing our claim; this letter i immediately forwarded to you, and since then both myself and mr. leighton have been waiting to hear from papa." the conclusion arrived at from these inquiries was--that, three or four hundred years ago, the descendants of john de leighton and the cambray heiress migrated from shropshire to yorkshire, and that leighton's grandfather, sir james leighton, court physician to the emperor nicholas of russia, was a descendant of this branch. dr. leighton, the artist's father, married the daughter of george augustus nash of edmonton. he and his wife, early in their married life, went to st. petersburg, and it was supposed that he would probably succeed his father as court physician to the czar, who favoured sir james leighton with his intimacy; but the climate of st. petersburg not suiting mrs. leighton's health, they remained there but a few years. it was at st. petersburg that the two eldest children were born, fanny, who died young, and alexandra, the god-child of the empress alexandra, who became mrs. sutherland orr. from st. petersburg, the family moved to scarborough, and it was at scarborough, on december , , that the most famous member of the leighton family was born. the question as to which was the actual house in which the event took place was satisfactorily settled at the time when leighton was raised to the peerage, in letters which appeared in the press,--one containing the testimony of mrs. anne thorley, who was in dr. leighton's service for three years with the family at scarborough, and for two years after they moved to london. she affirms that leighton was born in the house in brunswick terrace, now numbered , but which at that time consisted only of three houses. mrs. thorley adds, "fred's mother was a splendid lady--such a good one with her children, and most affectionate." a second son named james, who died in his infancy, was also born at scarborough, and five years after the birth of leighton his younger sister augusta, now mrs. matthews, was born in london. [illustration: lord leighton when a boy from a portrait by himself by permission of mr. h.s. mendelssohn] [illustration: lord leighton's younger sister when a child from a drawing by lord leighton by permission of mr. h.s. mendelssohn] dr. leighton had every prospect of excelling among those most distinguished in his profession. deafness, however, by which he was unfortunately attacked about that time, made it impossible for him to practise any longer as a physician. deprived of his active work, he turned his attention to more abstract lines of study, and to philosophy. in , mrs. leighton, after a severe illness, required a drier climate than that of england, and the family travelled on the continent, visiting germany, switzerland, and italy. family annals record the delight with which leighton, the boy of ten, enjoyed the beauty of nature in switzerland, the flowers and everything he saw in the land of mountains. when he reached rome, the buildings, the fountains, the ruins, the models awaiting hire on the piazza di spagna, fascinated him, and he filled many sketch-books with records of all the picturesque scenes that struck him as so new and wonderful. from earliest days, drawing was leighton's greatest amusement, and he had it always in his own mind that he would be an artist and nothing else. when in rome, he was allowed to study drawing under signor meli, but his father insisted on other lessons being carried on with regularity and industry. we hear of his elder sister and leighton learning latin together from a young priest. dr. leighton had a commanding intelligence, and made his will felt. as with many fond fathers who centre their chief interest on an only son, and foster thoughts of a notable future for him, dr. leighton seems to have felt that the greater his interest and affection, the greater must be the exercise of strict discipline over his boy. leighton received, to say the least, a stern upbringing from his father, mitigated, however, by the greatest tenderness from his mother. the boy's will respecting his future career proved sufficient for the occasion, and he had reason to be thankful that the general knowledge, which dr. leighton insisted on his acquiring, was instilled at so early an age. from the time he was ten years old he was made to study the classics, and at twelve he spoke french and italian as fluently as english. dr. leighton had himself taught the boy anatomy, ever cherishing the hope that he would, when he came to years of discretion, renounce the idea of being an artist, and follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather by becoming a doctor. in either case a knowledge of anatomy was thought necessary, and, in after years, leighton declared he knew much more anatomy when he was fourteen than he did when he was president of the royal academy. "i owe," he said, "my knowledge to my father. he would teach me the names of the bones and the muscles. he would show them to me in action and in repose; then i would have to draw them from memory; until my memory drawing was perfect, he would not let it pass." the family returned to england for the summer of , spending it at the paternal grandfather's country house at greenford; and during the following winter leighton studied at the university college school in london. mrs. leighton's health again declined in england, and the family migrated to germany, the country chosen by dr. leighton as that in which the education of the children could be best carried forward. leighton studied under tutors at berlin, it being only in his spare moments that he found time to sketch, or to visit the galleries. then followed a move to frankfort, and thence to florence. there he was allowed to enter the studio of bezzuoli and servolini, celebrated artists in florence, but of whose real greatness leighton, even at that early age, entertained his doubts. it was in florence that the father's will had finally to submit to the son's passion for his vocation. dr. leighton was too wise to allow prejudice to affect his serious actions. he could no longer blind himself to the fact, that this desire to be an artist was a vital matter with his son. he felt it would be wrong to try and override the boy's desires without seeking the opinion of an expert on art matters as to whether there was any probability of leighton excelling. he therefore took him and his drawings to hiram powers, the sculptor, for the verdict to be given. the well-known conversation took place after powers had examined the work. "shall i make him a painter?" asked dr. leighton. "sir, you cannot help yourself; nature has made him one already," answered the sculptor. "what can he hope for, if i let him prepare for this career?" "let him aim at the highest," answered powers; "he will be certain to get there." leighton had won: he had now to prove good his cause. even though theoretically his father had given in, he yet hoped that, as years went on, a change in his boy's views might come about; but he was allowed to work at the accademia delle belle arti, under bezzuoli and servolini, and besides continuing his study of anatomy with his father, leighton attended classes in the hospital under zanetti. of this time in florence, one of his life-long friends, professor costa, writes: "i knew, both from himself and from his fellow-students, that at the age of fourteen leighton studied at the academy of florence under bezzuoli and servolini, who at this time ( ) had a great reputation. they were celebrated florentines, excellent good men, but they could give but little light to this star, which was to become one of the first magnitude. leighton, from his innate kindness, loved and esteemed his old masters much, though not agreeing in the judgment of his fellow-students that they should be considered on the same level as the ancient florentines. 'and who have you,' said leighton one day to a certain bettino (who is still living), 'who resembles your ancient masters?' and bettino answered, 'we have still to-day our great michael angelos, and raffaels, in bezzuoli, in servolini, in ciseri.' but this boy of twelve years old could not believe this, and one fine day got into the diligence, and left the academy of florence to return to england. although the diligence went at a great pace, his fellow-students followed it on foot, running behind it, crying, 'come back, inglesino! come back, inglesino! come back,' so much was he loved and respected. he did come back, in fact, many times to italy, which he considered as his second fatherland." it was, however, at frankfort, where the family settled in , that leighton fell under the real, living art influence of his life, in the person of steinle. leighton described this artist later as "an intensely fervent catholic, a man of most striking personality, and of most courtly manners." in the temperament of this religious catholic was united a fervour of feeling with a pure severity in the style of his art which belonged to the school of the nazarenes, of which steinle was a follower, overbeck and pfühler having led the way. a spiritual ardour and spontaneity placed steinle on a higher level as an artist than that on which the rest of the brotherhood stood. leighton, boy as he was, at once realised in his master the existence of that "sincerity of emotion,"--to use his own words when preaching, nearly forty years later, to the royal academy students; a quality ever considered by him as an essential attribute of the true artist-nature--of that inner vision of the religious poet, of that finer fibre of temperament which endowed art in leighton's eyes with higher qualities than science or philosophy alone could ever include. steinle viewed art with the reverence and nobility of feeling which accorded with those aspirations that had been hinted to the boy's nature in his best moments, but which had had no sufficiently clear, decisive outline to inspire hitherto his actual performances. in steinle's work he found the positive expression of those aspirations; there, in such art, was an absolute confutation of the creed that art was but a pleasant recreation, having no backbone in it to influence the serious work of the world; the creed which meant that, if taken up as a profession, it led but to the making of money by amusing the æsthetic sense of the public in a superficial manner. the view taken by the magnates--the "barbarians" of the time--was, that unless a painter were a raphael, a titian, or a reynolds, his position was little removed from that of the second-rate actor or the dancer. it was not the profession, but the individual prominence in it which alone saved the situation. in steinle, leighton found an exponent of art, who reverenced the vocation of art itself as one which should be sanctified by the purest aims and the highest aspirations. in the nature of one who exercises a strong influence over another is often found the real clue to the nature influenced. circumstances had led leighton to be reserved with regard to his deepest feelings respecting art, but with steinle that reserve vanished. under the influence of this master he realised an adequate cause for this deep-rooted, peremptory passion. steinle's nature explains that of his pupil; for leighton was, in an intimate sense, introduced to a full knowledge of his own self by steinle. this influence, to use his own words, written more than thirty years later, was the "indelible seal," because it made leighton one with himself. the impress was given which steadied the whole nature. there was no vagueness of aim, no swaying to and fro, after he had once made steinle his master. the religious nature also of the german artist had thrown a certain spell over him. leighton possessed ever the most beautiful of all qualities--the power of feeling enthusiasm, of loving unselfishly, and generously _adoring_ what he admired most. fortunate, it may possibly have been, that his father's strict training developed his splendid intellectual powers at an early age; fortunate it certainly was, that, when emancipated from other trammels, he entered the service of art under an influence so pure, so vital in spiritual passion as was that of steinle. however, it was not till leighton reached the age of seventeen that he was allowed to give his time uninterruptedly to the study of art. at that age he had acquired sufficient knowledge of the classics and of the general lines of knowledge even to satisfy his father. he had also completely mastered the german, french, and italian languages. the vitality of his brain was almost abnormal, otherwise his constitution was not strong. constantly such phrases as "i am not ill, but i am never well" occur in his letters, and he suffered from weakness and heat, also from "blots" in his eyes, perhaps the result of scarlet fever, which he had as a child. his school days seem to have had their _mauvais moments_. when he was fifteen, his parents and elder sister went to england, leaving him and his little sister at school during their holidays. the love for his mother, and his longing to be with her, is told in the following pathetic appeal:-- "frankfort a/m., _friday, june , ._ "[dear mamma],--your letter, which i have just received, caused me the greatest pleasure, for i have been anxiously expecting it for three long days. i am very pleased to hear that lina is getting stronger, though slowly, and hope that hampstead will agree with her and you better than london. i am very sorry to hear that you are not very well. i hope that the country will refresh papa after all his fatigues. i need not tell you that i was very unhappy when i heard what you said about my going to england; ever since i have been here, from the time i wake to the time i go to bed, i think of london; the other night, indeed, i went in my dream to see the new british museum. however, if there is nothing to be done.... from hampstead you can see london, and there is the dear old common where i and the coodes used to play, and the pretty little lake where i went to slide, and it's such a pleasant walk to london and the galleries, and ... is there _no_ little hole left for poor punch?[ ] on the th july all the schoolboys go on a three weeks' journey, whose wing but yours can take care of me for so long a time? i will ask for money to buy a clothes-brush, i have none; fl. i spent on water-colours for the painting lesson, fl. a splendid book, 'percy's relics of old english poetry,' fl. sundries, my last florin i lent to bob, but he was fetched away in a hurry before his money was given to him, however he said he would send it me from mayence, but i have not seen it since. it is a great bore to have no money; that fl. would have lasted the second month very well as i only want it for sundries. i have dismissed mottes, my _new_ boots have already been _re_soled, and he made me wait three weeks for a pair of boots, which of course i did not take. i wish i had had turning clothes, my jacket is very shabby, and i cannot afford to put on my best whilst it goes to the tailor; my black trowsers are ruined, but i must wear them whilst my blue ones go to be lengthened. little gussy looks very well, she is very well, and has sundry 'zufrieden's' and 'très content's.' on the advice of _pappe_, the master of mathematics and nat. phil., i have got a 'meierhirsch's algebraische aufgaben.' i want a euclid, mine is in england, how shall i get at it? i am quite well, but _long_ to see you all, and to have some _wing_; pray write very soon. give my best love to papa and lina, and believe me, dear mamma, your affectionate and _speckfle_ son, f. leighton." [illustration: early comic drawing, about by permission of mr. hanson walker] history does not record whether the "little hole for poor punch" had been found or not. together with other studies, leighton was allowed to attend the model class at the famous staedelsches institut, and, in , when the family went to brussels, he painted his first picture, othello and desdemona, his elder sister sitting as model for the desdemona, and also a portrait of himself. from brussels he went to paris, studying in an _atelier_ in the rue richer, among a set of bohemian students, and then to frankfort, to work seriously under his beloved master steinle. the following letter to his father shows how unsatisfactory he considers his studies had been in both brussels and paris, and that now, as he expressed it, he is girding his "loins for a new race." "cronberg, _friday evening_. "[dear papa],--as i have reason to believe that you are not indifferent to the fate of the studies which met with dielmann's censure, and at the same time opened my eyes to the fact that i have not yet (to use a german phrase) 'die natur mit dem löffel gefressen,'[ ] i now write to tell you that i have retouched better parts of them, and _that_ to burger's satisfaction as well as to mine. of course some are better than others. independently of the intense irritation which bad sitting (as well you know) occasions to my nerves, they give me great trouble, and i take it; but this can hardly astonish me, when i consider that, in point of fact, during the whole time that has elapsed between my leaving the model class in the staedelsches institut up to my return to frankfurt, i have _never_ studied from nature; that i did not in brussels, i need not remind you, and you must also remember that everything i painted in paris, in the way of portraits, was done _before_ nature, i grant, but with a certain _ideal_ colour or tone, the consistency of which might be illustrated by putting rubens, reynolds, titian, tom lawrence, vandyke, velasquez, correggio, carracci, rembrandt, and rafael into a kaleidoscope, and setting them in a rotatory motion, in a word-- when taken well shaken. (what's his name--hem!) i am therefore girding my loins for a new race, far from discouraged, but rather with the persuasion that one with my innate love for colouring, and, i think i may add, sharp perception of the merits and demerits of the colouring of others, has a fair chance of success; nor am i dissatisfied with my beginning." in the year , he went to london to paint the portrait of his great-uncle, mr. i'anson, lady leighton's brother, and wrote to his father and mother the following:-- "fleeced at malines--very fine passage--slept well, why the deuce had not i a carpet bag? horrid inconvenience! my chest of drawers twenty feet below the surface of the deck, obliged to get on friendly terms with a sailor to borrow a comb (which had got blue with usage)--lovely brown tints about my shirt, cuffs more picturesque than tidy; two hours stifling in that confounded hole of a waiting-room in the custom house; arrive at last at mr. i'anson's at about three o'clock; as he was not at home i dressed and ran half round london before dinner; crossed kensington gardens, saw the outside of the exhibition, went down hyde park, along green park, stared at buckingham palace, rushed down st. james' park, flew up waterloo place, made a dive at trafalgar square, and a lunge at pall mall, gasped all along regent street, turned up oxford street, bent round to the edgware road, and from there the whole length of oxford terrace, i brought home a very fine appetite!" "[my dearest mother],--i have resumed my uncle's likeness, and as far as it goes (the head is done) very successfully. will you tell papa from me that it is more 'aufgefasst' (as i expected) than 'durchgeführt,' but that i have seized the _twinkle_ of his mouth to a t. "mr. i'anson treats me with the utmost kindness, it is of course superfluous to tell you that i enjoy myself beyond measure. "i am a very slow writer--i am without readiness either of thought or speech owing to the picturesque confusion which possesses my brain, and not, god knows, from a phlegmatic habit of mind." letter to his mother from norfolk terrace, hyde park:-- "[dearest mother],--i have received your kind letter, and conclude from your silence on that point that lina is now getting on well. in order to avoid losing time on fluency of style, i shall follow, strictly as i find them, the heads of your epistle, and answer them in the same succession. first, i hasten to thank you and papa for your kind permission to prolong my stay, a permission which i value the more that i know that papa was desirous i should return as soon as possible. you tell me, dear mamma, that i am not to lose time in seeing the _lions_ of london, and papa, in his displeasure at my having done so little as yet towards the real object of my visit, seems to imply an idea that i _have_ been so doing; i regret very much that you should entertain that notion, and assure you that i have neither hitherto dreamt, nor have ultimate intention, of seeing that long list of wonders, the colosseum, the polytechnic, the cosmorama, the diorama, the panorama, the polyorama, the overland mail, catlin's exhibition, the chinese exhibition, nor even wild's great globe, for that, i am told, costs five shillings; this is a decided case of 'frappe, mais écoute.' and if papa did not think that i had so wasted my time, is it not very certain that, if i had not thought it a matter of duty, i would not have tired myself making what i most hate, calls, instead of seeing works of art? "lady leighton looked in some respects worse, and in some much better, than i expected; i was surprised to see her walk with her back bent, and leaning on a stick; but i was more surprised still to see a face so free, comparatively, from wrinkles, and bearing such evident traces of former beauty. her reception was of the warmest; in her anxiety lest i should be lonely and uncomfortable in an inn, she insisted on my sleeping in her house. she talked much, long, and _well_, though slowly and in a suppressed tone; she dwelt tenderly on papa's name, and advocated warmly our return to england. i saw two letters which she wrote to her brother, my uncle, and which were both most elegantly written; both contained a paragraph in allusion to me; in the first, written before my visit (in answer to one in which my uncle had prepared her for seeing me), she expresses herself most _eager to receive and to love the grandson, of whom all speak so highly_; in the second, written after my return to london, she says that her _dear and fascinating grandson amply realises all her expectations_, and that seeing him has increased that pain which she feels at being separated from us all. "now, i will give you a _catalogue raisonné_ of whom i have seen: cowpers, this you know; smyths, ditto; laings, very kind, though mr. laing, like the cowpers, did not know me till i mentioned my name; wests, exceedingly kind, invitation to dinner; richardsons, motherly reception, party, given for me; moffatt, very _prévenant_, asked me twice to dinner, both of which invitations i was unfortunately obliged to refuse, but wrote a very civil note, and went next morning in person to apologise; hall, dreadfully busy, but gave me cards to maclise, goodall, frith, ward, frost; maclise was not at home, but i found goodall, ward, and frith, and was pleased with my visits. there is a new school in england, and a very promising one; correctly drawn historical _genre_ seems to me the best definition of it. they tell me there is a fine opening for an historical painter of merit, and that talent never fails to succeed in london. goodall, a young man about thirty, who painted 'the village festival,' in the vernon gallery, and of which you have an engraving in one of your art journal numbers, sells his pictures direct from the easel; and he does not stand alone. sir ch. eastlake received me very politely, but looks a great invalid; lance, very jolly, and fripp, ditto. bovills and e. i'ansons, very kind, invitations, of course; mackens, you know; i have found no time to call on dr. holland, mr. shedden, or tusons. "having told you _whom_, i will now tell you rapidly _what_, i have seen: vernon gallery, very much gratified; dulwich gallery, very much disappointed; british institution, ditto; national gallery, pictures magnificent, locality disgraceful, i must make another visit there; royal academy, on the whole, satisfactory; british museum, very fine; mogford's collection, very indifferent; marquis of westminster (mr. laing), very fine indeed; private collection (through interest of mr. moffatt), delightful; windsor, _vandyke_, superb; _lawrence_, a wretched quack. time presses--_la suite au prochain numéro_." [illustration: mr. i'anson, lord leighton's great-uncle. by permission of mr. e. i'anson] the portrait of his great-uncle, mr. i'anson, here reproduced, proves that the visit to london effected the desired result. on his return to frankfort he painted the portraits of lady cowley and her three children. lady cowley writes: "i am delighted with the pictures of my dear little girls, and again return you my most sincere thanks for having painted them." and in another letter: "i should have called on mrs. leighton all these days, had i not been very unwell with the grippe, as i wished to express to her, as well as to yourself, how very grateful i am for the beautiful portrait you have made of my little frederick. i am quite delighted with it, as well as every one else who has seen it. besides being extremely like, it is such a good painting that it must always be appreciated. ever yours sincerely, olive cecilia cowley." in the spring of , leighton, being then twenty-one, went to bergheim, to paint the portraits of count bentinck's family. he writes from there:-- "[dearest mamma],--having naturally a reflecting turn of mind, i am struck with the truth of the following aphorism: 'it's all very well to say i'll be blowed, but where's the wind?' circumstances induce me to deliver a sentiment of a parallel tendency; it's all very well to say 'mind you write'; but where's the post? a deficiency in that latter commodity is a leading feature in the economy of the principality of waldeck; so much so, that any individual residing in bergheim, and desiring to carry on a correspondence 'ins ausland,' is obliged to take advantage of the privilege freely granted him by the liberal constitution of the country of carrying his own letters to the first frontier town of the next state, and having posted them, waiting for an answer. i, however, _knowing my privileges_, and not being desirous of availing myself of them in _that line_, humbly and modestly send these lines by my hostess's flunkey, who is going to fritzlar to-morrow on an errand of a similar description. _n.b._--if you want a person to receive an epistle within a fortnight (that is allowing you to be a neighbour), you must chalk up _per express_ on the back of it, in consideration of which he or she will receive it through the medium of a hot messenger, much, and naturally, fatigued and excited by a journey performed at the rate of half a mile an hour, not including the pauses in which the _inner man_ is refreshed and invigorated by a cordial gulp of 'branny un worrer.' "fancy a man getting to a place, by appointment, expecting a carriage and trimmings to take him to a lovely retirement in the country, and finding--devil a bit of it! well that's precisely what did not happen to me when i got to waldeck, because although the carriage was not there, there was a letter to say it could not come. the road to bergheim, which crosses a river of no mean pretensions without the assistance of a bridge (other advantageous peculiarity of the state of waldeck), was, it appeared, rendered impracticable by an inundation of the torrent alluded to; it was therefore proposed to me (without an option) to perform the journey on the top of an _oss_ provided for the purpose and accompanied by a groom mounted on another; i willingly accept an offer so much to my taste, and for the first time after a lapse of nearly three years put a leg on each side of a steed. the first part of the road was executed at a round trot on a very nice level _chaussée_, but i cannot say that i felt altogether at home on my saddle. an eye to effect is nevertheless kept open, which is manifested by my catching up two drowsy, drawling, jingling 'po shays' and sweeping past them with supreme contempt, but at a great expense of my lumbar muscles. presently, however, my continuation-clad members began to thaw a little, and to adapt themselves to the saddle, which also lost some of its rigid severity; i began to feel very comfortable, and, by jove! it was a good job i did, for on getting out of fritzlar, we left the high road (for reasons above given) and plunged into a rugged, donkey-shay sort of by-path in which the ruts were without exaggeration a foot deep. nothing daunted, however, i make light of this 'terrain légèrement accidenté,' cross stream and ride along tattered banks with the nonchalance of the chinese mandarin in the exhibition of ' ; in fact, such is my confidence in myself, that i at last begin to feel above my stirrups, i scorn them, fling them over my saddle, and perform without their assistance the rest of the journey to within half a mile of bergheim, and that on a road the profile of which was about this: (here was drawn a line representing a hill-side almost perpendicular.) "on my arrival i am of course kindly received by the countess (her husband is still at oldenburg), got my tea, and go to bed rather stiff after an equestrian performance of about two hours and a half. the house is large and rambling, fifteen windows in a row, and yet i cannot get a satisfactory light, the only available north room looking on a lane, the white-washed houses of which reflect disagreeably on the picture, whenever the sun shines. however i must make up my mind to it and do my best; i am at present painting the countess." "bergheim, _sunday_. "[dear mamma],--in the midst of my anxious expectations of a letter from you, it suddenly occurred to me that i had forgotten to give you my direction; in the full confidence that _late is far preferable to never_, i now hasten to make up for my omission-- mons. f. leighton bei ihrer erlauchten der gräfin von waldeck und pyrmont zu bergheim bei fritzlar fürstenthum waldeck. "_n.b._--you will not forget to write _per express_ on the top of the envelope; for reasons, see my letter of last sunday. "being sorely pressed for time, i now huddle on to the rest of the paper a few loose remarks, for the incoherency of which i crave your indulgence. "the aspect of affairs is much changed since my last epistle; then, i was looking forward with anxious though sanguine expectation to the labour before me; now, i look back on one portrait (that of the countess), achieved to the great satisfaction of those for whom it is intended, and contemplate with satisfaction the progress which the other is making in the same direction. i must, however, add that, owing to the necessary absence of the countess for two days next week, my return home will be delayed in proportion, as i have a few more touches to give to the portrait of my eldest patient, whose husband is desirous of taking it over to england with him. (i shall probably be with you saturday afternoon--at all events i shall let you know beforehand.) "what i said a few lines back will have suggested to you what i am now going to add; colonel b. is now returned from oldenburg, and will probably be in london in the early part or middle of june; he is _much_ pleased with the pictures, and in his kindness has promised me an introduction to his brother in town, and also to another relation, whose name i have forgotten; the result of which is to be: access to the collections of lord ellesmere, duke of sutherland, and sir robert peel. i told colonel b. that if on his road to or from toeplitz in the autumn he should pass through frankfurt, i should be very glad if he could bring the pictures with him, as they would both want a varnish, and the children probably a few glazes and touches; he said that he would make a point of so doing, that indeed after all the trouble and pains i had taken for him, it was the least he _could_ do; for these and other reasons (not unimportant) which i shall communicate when i see you, you need not regret my having made two journeys to paint his wife and children. "that i spend one of the days of the countess' absence in seeing _wilhelmshöhe_, a sight reputed unique of its kind, will, i hope, not seem unreasonable. "i have noted down, as they occurred to me, during the last few days one or two little arrangements, relative to my approaching journey, which i would ask you to make during my absence, trusting at the same time that if in the meanwhile anything else should occur to your provident mind, and be transmitted to your _many-knotted_ pocket-handkerchief, you will kindly carry it into execution, in order to avoid delay when i return from the country, as _my_ time will be almost entirely taken up by lady p.'s [pollington's] sitting and the _business calls_ i have to make. "will papa kindly order a tin case for my compositions; it should be a plain cylinder, about an inch and a half in diameter, with a lid at one end; let its length be that of my 'four seasons.' "to my amazement i have just received a letter from you, dear mamma--_did_ i give you my direction? you forgot the _per express_ on the back of the letter. pray write soon. much love and many kisses to all.--your dutiful and affectionate son, f. leighton." soon after leighton's return to frankfort lord cowley was appointed british ambassador in paris, and writes the following letters. the invitation he gives to leighton to make his home at the embassy while pursuing his studies was not accepted, steinle's teaching being only given up later for the charms of italy. "my dear mr. leighton,--i am more obliged than i can say by the kindness you have shown in painting portraits of my children. i never saw anything so like, or in general so pleasing, as the portrait of frederic, and i only regret that it is not in england to be seen and appreciated. once more accept my thanks, and believe me to be very truly yours, cowley." "_sunday afternoon._ "my dear mr. leighton,--it has been quite out of my power to get to your house, as i had intended, to take leave of you, and to thank you again for the valuable reminiscence which through your talent and kindness i carry away with me. it will give lady cowley and myself great pleasure if you will visit us at paris. you cannot find a better school of study than the louvre, and we shall be most happy to lodge and take care of you. "pray present my best compliments to the members of your family. "i regret very much not being able to do it in person.--very faithfully, cowley." on his return from waldeck, leighton painted the portrait of lady pollington, one of his frankfort acquaintances. during these years, when leighton studied under steinle, his family lived also at frankfort, and therefore few other letters written at that time exist. there was a journey to holland, made during the early summer of , from england, where he and his family had returned for a visit. the journey back to frankfort, _viâ_ holland, is the subject of a long letter to his mother. "there i am at the hague. pretty place, the hague, clean, quaint, cheerful, _and_ ain't the dutch just fond of smoking out of long clay pipes! _and_ the pictures, _oh_ the pictures, _ah_ the pictures! that magnificent rembrandt! glowing, flooded with light, clear as amber, and do you twig the _grey_ canvas? _what_ vandykes! what dignity, calm, gently breathing, and a searching thoughtfulness in the gaze, amounting almost to fascination; and only look at that velasquez, sparkling, clear, dashing; paul potter, too, only twenty-two years old when he painted that bull, and just look at it; jan steen, terburg, teniers, _giov. bellini_ (splendid), &c. &c. there i catch myself bearing something in mind: 'and yet, after all' (with an argumentative hitch of the cravat), 'all that those fellows had in advance of us was a palette and brushes, and _that_ we've got too!' i walk down to scheveningen, and sentimentalise on the seashore; i find the briny deep in a very good humour, and offer _you_ mental congratulations. "about the rembrandt at amsterdam, i say nothing, for it is a picture not to be described. i can only say that, in it, the great master surpasses himself; with the exception, however, of this and the vanderhelst opposite to it, which is full of spirit and individuality, the _ryko museum_ is tolerably flat. after a dull afternoon, i hurry off to arnheim, and to mayence, and to frankfurt, where i arrive on wednesday evening. from cologne to frankfurt, janauschek[ ] was on the same conveyance as myself; i made her acquaintance, which was a great blessing to me on that tedious, cockney-hackneyed journey. she is lady-like, interesting, amiable, and _severely_ proper, almost cold; she observed the strictest incognito. towards evening, however, when she had ascertained that i was a resident at frankfurt, and therefore probably knew her perfectly well, and that i was an artist, which excited her sympathy, and that my name was leighton, a name with which she was acquainted (through schroedter and others) as that of one of the most talented young artists of frankfurt (hem!), she relaxed considerably. she has a melancholy and most interesting look, and talks very despondently of the state of dramatic art nowadays. i made myself useful to her at the station, and she was warmly grateful. about my picture[ ] (which i have entrusted to steinle's care) i have nothing to communicate, except that i am confirmed in thinking that it has been universally well received; even becker seems to like it in many respects--of course you know that the leading fault is that it was painted under his rival; oppenheim said (when i talked of it as a daub) that he wished he could daub so, and that he promised me a great future; prince gortschakoff (who, by the by, preferred the portraits, and judges with all the _aplomb_ of a count briez) introduced himself to me in the gallery, and told me in the course of conversation that he regretted very much having no work of mine, adding that he only bought masters of the first order; _that_ was a compliment, at all events; dr. schlemmer has been very kind to me, and has given me a letter for venice; i dined with him on sunday, and made the acquaintance of felix mendelssohn's widow, a charming woman." [illustration: "the death of brunelleschi." by permission of dr. von steinle] [illustration: "the plague in florence." ] between the years and leighton painted, besides the portraits mentioned, three finished pictures, "cimabue finding giotto in the fields of florence," "the duel between romeo and tybalt," and "the death of brunelleschi"; and also made the notable drawing, now in the victoria and albert museum, of a scene during the plague in florence. his master, steinle, easily discerned that leighton was truly enamoured of italy; the subjects he chose were italian, and his memory was full of the charm and fascination of the country which he ever referred to, to the end of his life, as his second home. it was decided that he should go to rome, his father having determined to leave frankfort and to reside at bath, where his mother, lady leighton, was then living. steinle gave leighton an introduction to his friend and fellow "nazarene," cornelius, and on the eve of his departure his mother wrote a farewell letter of "injunctions," flavoured happily by hints of humour. there is something very quaint to those who knew leighton after he was thirty in the admonitions with regard to manners and politeness, which occur in several of his mother's letters. "my dearest child,--as we are about to part, you may perhaps think you will be rid of my lectures, but no, i leave you some injunctions in writing, so that you will not be able to urge the plea of forgetfulness if you continue your negligent habits, though you certainly may _forget_ to read what i write--but i trust to your love and respect for me, though the latter needs cultivation nearly as much as habits of refinement in you. i have no new advice to give you, i can but repeat what i have urged on you many times from your childhood upwards; i do implore you, let your conscience be your guide amidst all temptations, they will be such as they have never yet been to you, as you will henceforward have no other restraint on your actions than what is self-imposed. i beseech you, do not suffer your disbelief in the dogmas of the protestant church to weaken the belief i hope you entertain of the existence of a supreme being. strive to obey the law he has implanted in us, which approves good and condemns evil, though the struggle for the mastery between these principles is sometimes fearful, as every one knows, especially in youth. my precious child, if one sinful mortal's prayer for another could avail, how carefully would you be preserved from moral evil (the greatest of all evil); but i need not tell you there is no royal road to heaven any more than to excellence in inferior objects, every advantage must be obtained by energy and perseverance. may god help you to keep free of the greatest of all miseries, an upbraiding conscience; for though this can be deadened for a time in the hurry of life while youth lasts, there comes an hour when life loses its attractions, and _then_ issues the troubled consequence of merry deeds. i am aware you have heard all this a hundred times, and better expressed, but it will bear repetition; and now that it is your mother who is counselling you, you will not, i trust, turn a deaf ear. "i can but repeat what i have continually told you--to refine your feelings you must neither utter nor encourage a coarse thought. it would be an inexpressible pleasure to me to leave you confirmed in good habits; but wishes are idle. i trust to your desire to improve in all ways and to please me. the next sheet i wrote some time ago, intending to rewrite it, but the trouble is too great for my shaking hands, and i add what i have written to-day on separate pieces of paper. i have written enough; i have only now to add an entreaty that you will not throw these admonitions away, but sometimes read them, remembering they come warm from your mother's heart. "my child, your manners are very faulty, and i am consequently much disappointed. you take so much after me, and my nearest relations had such refined manners, that i made sure you must resemble my father and brothers. there is, however, nothing on earth to prevent your becoming the gentleman i wish to see you, and remember to write ineffaceably on the tablets of your memory, 'too much familiarity breeds contempt.' you remember how seriously young ----'s forwardness has been commented on. well, it is true, you have never, as far as i know, spoken as he has done; but as i have seldom seen you in company, nor your father either, without observing some want of politeness, is it not probable that other people have their eyes open also?" these admonitions received, leighton started on his journey to rome. at innsbruck, on august , , he began to write a diary, in order that his mother should hear the details of his travels, and to serve "as a clue" by which he might one day recall the "impressions and emotions of the years of his artistic noviciate." leighton's utterances on paper in these early days display the same intense exuberance of vitality which, during the whole of his notable career, served to spur on his mental and emotional powers to perform with great completeness all the various kinds of work which he undertook; a vitality which conquered triumphantly the effects of indifferent health and troubled eyesight. in the diaries and letters is also to be traced the existence of that greek-like combination of qualities so characteristic of leighton--namely, explicit precision in his thought and expression, and a subtle power of analysis, united with great emotional sensitiveness and enthusiastic warmth of temperament. his feeling for beauty was an intoxicating joy to him. heartfelt and genuine joy engendered by beauty in nature and art is not a very common feeling among the moderns, though so much fuss is made by many in our day in their endeavours to become "_artistic_"; but, as a ruling guide, beauty has gone out of fashion. the accounts that leighton gives of his ecstasies in the presence of beautiful scenes, enforce the belief entertained by those who knew him best, that it was the power which beauty exercised over him that developed his exceptional strength in all artistic directions. what force in the over-riding of difficulties does not passion give to the lover! no less a force was engendered in leighton by the inspiration of the beauty of nature. in the letter to his mother, which accompanies the diary, referring to the joy he has been experiencing, leighton adds: "i feel almost a kind of shame that so much should have been poured down on me. i will put my talent to usury, and be no slothful steward of what has been entrusted to me. every man who has received a gift ought to feel and act as if he was a field in which a seed was planted, that others might gather the harvest." the purity of purpose which guided leighton's life to the end, generated first by the precepts of his mother in the fertile soil of his own beautiful nature, subsequently developed by the teaching of the high-minded steinle, and finally established later by other elevating influences, chastened the emotional side of leighton's passion for beauty, and disentangled it even in the earliest days from lower and purely sensuous contamination. the puritanical attitude of mind towards beauty appeared to leighton absolutely impure and desecrating, in that it associated influences and feelings which are of the lowest with the appreciation of god's most beautiful creations, and some of man's highest aspirations with sensations entirely degraded and unworthy. fun and humour abound in the family letters, and in the diary. leighton was never guilty of being sentimental, and when referring to the word _ideal_ in one of his letters, he writes he "hates such stuff." after he died, it was written of him: "he was no idealist; needless to say, he was no materialist, no one less so; nor does the term realist seem to recall his nature. he was--if such a word can be used--an actualist, the actual was to him of primary importance. but the actual meant a great deal more to leighton than it does to most of us. life and its vivid interests was spread over a much wider area; so many more of its various ingredients were such very actual entities to him."[ ] and when leighton started, at the age of twenty-one, to begin his independent life, we feel that it is with the _actual_ that he grappled--the actual in his sensations, his feelings, his impressions, his conditions. an unmistakable note of reality rings through his description of all these. he has no tendency, even unconsciously, when under the glamour of the most entrancing impressions, to colour the picture other than he _actually_ saw it. in the strength of his own real nature he goes forth on the journey of life. diary innsbruck, _august , _. [sidenote: i contemplate the life and adventures of mr. thumb.] "when hop o' my thumb, a nursery hero of european note, first sallied out into the world with an eye to making a fortune, his first step was (justly foreseeing what the world would expect of the hero of a future romance) to lose himself in a large and horrid forest, in which it was pitch dark all day long, and nothing was heard but ... &c. &c. (here see biog. of h.o'm. thumb, esq., vol. i.) "now, in those days mile-posts were not yet come in, and maps were excessively expensive; how, then, was h.o'm.t., after he should have realised a large independence, to find his way back through this intricate waste? here admire the man of parts and sagacity! '_he determined_,' says the historian, '_to drop pebbles in a row all along the path_'! [sidenote: and adopt one of his measures,] "admirable thumb! i, too, purpose, as i stroll along, to drop every now and then mental pebbles, which shall serve as a connecting link between the past and the future, and as a clue by which i may one day recall the emotions and impressions of the years of my artistic noviciate. "be with me, oh thumb! [sidenote: but make a reservation.] "_n.b._--quality of pebbles not warranted. pebbles [sidenote: pebble i.] "kind, affectionate, earnest steinle! [sidenote: a tribute of affection and respect for my dear steinle.] "in a record of whatever concerns me as an artist, _his_ name should be at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. _now_, at the beginning, for our parting is still painfully present to my mind; our parting, and the last few days we spent together: the sad face and moistened eye with which he watched the diligence in which i rolled off from bregenz; his fitful way, when we travelled together--one moment jovial and facetious, another laying his hand affectionately on my shoulder and remaining silent; his saying to me before i started, 'i shall be all alone to-morrow, here, and yet i shall be with you all the day.'... "_in the middle_, all through, and to the end--because if ever, hereafter, my works wear the mark of a pure taste, if ever i succeed in raising some portion of the public to the level of high art, rather than obsequiously acquiesce in the judgments of the tasteless and the ignorant, and if i keep alive, to the end, the active conviction that an artist, who deserves the name, never ceases to learn, the key of such success will be in one name: steinle; in having constantly borne in mind his precept, and his example. [sidenote: i find on reflection that though i started a week ago, i am only just gone!] [sidenote: i look forward,] "although a week has already elapsed since i left frankfurt, so long my home, it is only now that i have parted from steinle that i really feel that i have taken the great step, that i have opened the introductory chapter of the second volume of my life, a volume on the title-page of which is written "artist." it seems to me that my wanderings began at _bregenz_, and that in retracing, as i presently shall, my route until i got there, i am tearing open again leaves that were closed--to remain so. i seize the opportunity offered by this first day of repose to take breath, and, as i stand within the threshold, to look before me and reconnoitre. italy rises before my mind. sunny italy! the land that i have so long yearned after with ardent longing, and that has dwelt in my memory since last i saw it as a never-fading, gentle-beckoning image of loveliness; i am about again to tread the soil of that beloved country, the day-dream of long years is to become a reality. i am enraptured! [sidenote: but don't feel quite _it_.] "and yet--how is it that my pleasure is not unalloyed? that i involuntarily shrink from grasping the height of my wishes? it is because i feel a kind of sacred awe at breaking through the charm that has been so long gathering around the image that i have carried in my inward heart, as one who loves, at touching with cold _reality_ that which has so long been the far removed object of dreamy, sweetly melancholy longings! "i cannot help thinking that an imaginative man must feel something similar when on the point of changing courtship for marriage. [sidenote: get better.] "other thoughts, too, assail me, and sometimes make me uneasy. 'do i fully feel....' no, 'shall i _continue_ fully to feel the immense importance to me of the three or four years now before me? feel that they will be the corner-stone of my career, for good or for evil? shall i have the energy to carry out all my resolutions? shall i fulfil what i have promised?'... then i think of steinle, and i feel reassured. * * * * * [sidenote: pebble ii.] "let me come to the point, to the description of my journey; but before i begin, let me remember that, whilst of all my friends and companions only _three_ were present at my departure,--one of them was there in order to give me a commission, and another to acknowledge a service,--old general bentinck did not think it too great an exertion to see off, at eight in the morning, one, three times younger than himself. [sidenote: middelburgh, august .] "my first day's journey took me to middelburgh, along the bergstrasse, which we all know, and of which i therefore say nothing, and yet i enjoyed it more than i ever had done before; it was one of those cool, clear, _opalescent_ mornings, in which all nature looks as if it was teeming with health and freshness; there was something exhilarating, too, in the atmosphere, which very much increased my enjoyment; i looked upon familiar scenes, but i saw them in a new light; it seemed to me as if i was reading nature in a new book. [sidenote: stift neuburg.] "on arriving at heidelberg, i hurried at once, by appointment with steinle, to a place in the neighbourhood called 'stift neuburg,' the property and residence of frau rath schlosser, the widow of his old and intimate friend, rath schlosser. [sidenote: i enjoy myself.] [sidenote: heilbronn, august .] "picture to yourself, just where the neckar makes a graceful curve, about a mile above heidelberg, half-way up a rich and sunny slope, chequered with clustering vineyards and luxuriant meadows, an old, picturesque convent, with its adjoining chapel and appurtenant dairies and farmhouses, the whole group raised up on a lofty, timeworn, weather-beaten terrace--and you will form some idea of _the stift_. there i spent the afternoon in the most charming possible manner, whether in wandering with steinle along the solitary, shady walks of the convent garden, or in snuffing about in the vaulted, mildew old library (which, by the by, contains six or seven thousand valuable and curious books), or the silent chapel, with its stained-glass windows, or in looking through frau rath's magnificent collection of drawings by german artists, or, finally, in enjoying the conversation of the frau rath herself, who is a most clever and amiable old lady. the next morning (for i spent the night there) after all breakfasting together, we went down by a postern gate to the river-side, and awaited the arrival of the heilbronn steamer; general leave-taking, shaking of hands, gratitude and thanks on the one side, on the other reiterated invitations for the future, which i sincerely hope i may one day be able to meet. the valley of the neckar as far as heilbronn, where we arrived on the evening of the same day, is dull enough in all conscience; indeed, had it not been for the company and always interesting conversation of steinle, i really do not know what i should have done with myself; such a contrast with the preceding day! "between heilbronn and the lake of constance, however, a new scene opens out; i see germany under a totally new aspect, i understand at last what german poets mean when they rave about the lovely 'schwabenland' and call it the 'perle deutscher gauen'; i can now imagine the existence of _landed patriotism_ (if i may be allowed the expression) among the germans coming from that part of the country. it is, indeed, an enchanting panorama; a never-ceasing variety of rich, profusely fertile valleys, studded with cheerful, bright-looking, home-inviting villages, and enclosed by chains of gently undulating hills. the corn was ripe, and waved in golden stripes across the variegated plains; the peasants, a picturesque, good-humoured set, were scattered over the fields, some mowing down the heavy laden wheat, others binding it into graceful sheaves; in one respect the scene reminded me of my own dear country: it looked as if a blessing were on it. [sidenote: ulm: its cathedral] "on our road we passed through ulm,[ ] and visited the cathedral, some parts of which (especially the portico) are very beautiful and elegant; the interior contains a magnificent and highly elaborate tabernacle, and some wood-carving by syrlin of exquisite workmanship; the whole, however, left a melancholy impression on both of us, especially on steinle, who is an ardent catholic. it stands neglected and half-finished, in the midst of a miserable, rambling town-village, a thing of olden times, for whose presence one can hardly account. it was built, or rather, begun, as a monument of catholicism; the country round it has become protestant; itself has been protestantized; it has been disfigured by an incongruous heap of business-like pews; it is no longer accessible at every hour of the day, from sunday to sunday its walls re-echo no sound but the occasional tread of the pew-opener, as he dusts the seats of those who pay him for it; the soul has left the grey old pile; it is a stately corpse. what artist, however uncatholic in his belief, can contemplate those old gothic churches, with their glorious tabernacles and other ornaments equally beautiful and equally disused, without painfully feeling what an almost deadly blow the reformation was to high art, what a powerful incentive it removed, irrecoverably? who, in his heart of hearts, can but dwell with melancholy regret on the times when art was coupled with belief, and so many divine works were virtually expressions of faith? what a purifying and ennobling influence was thus exercised over the taste of the artist! an influence which nothing can replace. this influence was incalculably great; no dwelling was so humble but it owned a crucifix; no artist so poor in capacity but endeavoured to produce something not unworthy of his subject; the general _tone_ of taste thus produced reacted on everything; witness the most insignificant doorlatch or ornament that remains to us from the middle ages. is it not remarkable that the first artists of the modern day, in the higher walk of art, i mean, are _catholics_? cornelius and steinle were born in the church of rome; veit and overbeck went over to it; pugin, too, our great architect, was converted by his art to the catholic faith. [sidenote: august , sunday.] "from friedrichshafen a delightful sail took us across the emerald coloured lake of constance to bregenz, where i parted from steinle. * * * * * [sidenote: pebble iii.] [sidenote: august , saturday.] [sidenote: i make a reflection,] [sidenote: and feel grateful.] "i am sitting at my window in the inn (hôtel, i'll trouble you!) at meran. for the first time since i left innsbruck i have leisure again to take up my pen. as i look back on my journey through the tyrol, so far as it goes, i am forcibly struck with the reflection that my enjoyment of it has been much keener this time than ever it was before; this increased enjoyment has not, i feel, arisen from any external or adventitious circumstances; last time that i was in this lovely country, i contemplated it with ease and comfort from the rumble of our own carriage; this time i have jolted through it under all the disadvantages attendant on an _eilwagen_ and indifferent weather; it has arisen in the greater development of my artistic sensibilities, in my sharpened perception of the charms of nature, which discloses to me now a thousand beauties that found no echo in me when i saw them last. i congratulate myself on this reflection. if any man should be constantly penetrated with gratitude for a gift bestowed on him, it is the artist who has realised as his share a genuine love for nature; for his enjoyment, if he puts his gift to usury, increases with the days of his life. [sidenote: i get drunk with the anticipation of italy,] [sidenote: and spout a parable.] "another circumstance, which has greatly augmented my relish of the tyrol, is that, at every step, it assumes more and more the character of my darling italy; i have watched with fond anxiety every little token that whispered of the south; the gently purpling tints that steal gradually over the distant hills, as one advances towards the land of the amaranthine apennines, the slow but steadily progressive change of vegetation, the gaunt and ragged fir giving way by degrees to the encroachment of a richer and more gently rustling shade, the anxiously watched gradations, the climax at last; the walnut, first, 'few and far between,' but warmly welcome, with its clustering leaves of juicy green; the chestnut, with its long, graceful, dark-hued foliage; the vine, again, no longer, as in the north, tied stiffly to a row of sticks (like a regiment of gooseberry bushes), but luxurious, wildly spreading, gracefully trained along rows of outward-slanting, basket-like trellis-work, and wreathed here and there by a pious hand up a roadside image of the crucifixion in illustration of the words of christ: '_i_ am the true vine.' now, too, the dark striped, portly pumpkins, with their gorgeous flame-like flowers, begin to appear, sometimes drowsily lolling under the tremulous shade of the mantling vines, sometimes basking with half-closed eyes down the sunscorched lizard-haunted walls, sometimes trained across from house to house, hanging like chinese lamps over the heads of the passers by. presently, a _fig-tree_--two--three--more--plenty! a cypress--and, by jove! look at that terrace of stately, heavy-laden citron and orange trees! nothing is wanting now but the olive. how could i pass by such dear old friends without loitering a little among them? a faithful lover, i return, after six years of longing absence, to the home of her of my inward heart; i hurry along, i have already crossed the garden gate. i breathe the air she breathes, i see from afar the bower where she dwells; but as i hasten along the well-known path, a thousand reminiscences of her arise from every object around me, and cling to me, and throw a gentle net across my faltering step, and whisper softly to my dream-wrapt brain--i am spellbound--i linger, even in my impatience. "i must not forget the excessively picturesque appearance of all the towns and villages south of innsbruck; long, narrow, tortuous streets, lined on each side with never-ceasing vistas of arcades, and enclosed by houses of most fancifully artistic irregularity; as one passes along the vaulted galleries the eye is constantly caught by some picturesque object; either the peasants, as they stroll along in their divers costumes, or the many-coloured, richly piled fruit stalls that every now and then fill the arches, or, through an open door, the endless depth of vaulted passages and fantastic staircases and irregular inward courts and yards, offering to the artist's eye a play of lights and shades and mysterious, dreamy half-tints that might shame even a rembrandt or an ostade. as the exterior of all the houses is (with the exception, of course, of the ornaments) scrupulously white, the streets, narrow as they are, reflecting, by the luminous nature of their local tint, the light of day into the remotest corner, have a most cheerful aspect. "of the tyrolese themselves, three qualities seem to me to characterise them, qualities which go well hand in hand with, and, i think it is not fanciful to say, are in great measure a key to, their well-known frankness and open-hearted honesty. i mean piety, which shines out amongst them in many little things, a love for the art, which with them is, in fact, an outward manifestation of piety, and which is sufficiently displayed by the numberless scriptural subjects, painted or in relief, which adorn the cottages of the poorest peasants, and, last not least, a love for flowers (in other words, for nature), which is written in the lovely clusters of flowers which stand in many-hued array on the window-sills of every dwelling. the works of all the really great artists display that love for flowers. raphael did not consider it 'niggling,' as some of our broad-handling moderns would call it, to group humble daisies round the feet of his divine representation of the mother of christ. i notice that _two plants_, especially, produce a beautiful effect, both of form and colour, against the cool grey walls: the spreading, dropping, graceful _carnation_, with its bluish leaves and crimson flowers, and the slender, anthered, thousand-blossomed _oleander_. [illustration: study of a branch of fig tree, leighton house collection] [illustration: study of bramble, leighton house collection] * * * * * [sidenote: pebble iv.] [sidenote: statues in innsbruck.] [sidenote: i take on,] [sidenote: and lay on,] [sidenote: but bottle it up again.] "one of the sights in innsbruck has left on me a deep and, i hope, a lasting impression: the bronze statues in the franciscan church; they are the finest specimens of german mediæval sculpture that i ever saw, and grew on me as i gazed at them in a manner which i hardly ever felt before; their great merit consists in combining in the most astounding manner the most consummate knowledge of the art with all the simplicity of nature and the most striking individuality (that first of artistic qualities), and exhibiting at the same time the most elaborate finish in the details, with greatest possible breadth and grandeur of general masses; this quality is particularly conspicuous amongst the women, three, especially, standing side by side, show, by three perfect examples, the whole secret of ornamental economy; the one, whose dress is ornamented with all the richness of which a luxurious imagination and an unparalleled power of execution were capable, recovers its simplicity of outline and mass by having a tightly fitting body and sleeve and a skirt of moderate amplitude; the second, whose ornaments, though richly, are more broadly disposed, retains its balance by a slightly increased amplitude of drapery; while the third, whose dress is altogether without embroidery, acquires a corresponding effect by large, loose sleeves and richly folded skirt, and two large plaits hanging down her back. what an opportunity this would be, backed by these giants of breathing bronze, to make an indignant descent on some paltry and muddle-headed moderns, who don't know how to discriminate between that kind of finish which proceeds from the love of a smooth surface, and makes the artist equally careful of his pumps and of his pictures, and that other kind of minuteness which is the beautiful fruit of a refined love for nature, and proceeds from a feeling of piety towards the mother of art, and who complacently call 'niggling,' a quality above the appreciation of their _breadth-mad_ brains; who, in their art-made-easy system of 'idealising' (forsooth), look for artistic 'beauty' in a facial angle of so and so much. what with the _greeks_ was an _abstract of_ man, and very appropriately applicable in the cases of demi-gods (that the ancients _could_, and _did_, 'en tems et lieu,' individualise, may be sufficiently seen in their admirable portraits), becomes with _them_ an absurdly misapplied _average of mankind_, not _a_ man, or _men_. _the leading feature in nature is a_ manifold individuality, an endless variety; _she is like a diamond, that glances with a thousand hues_. 'indeed!' i hear them contemptuously sneering, 'you don't seem to be aware, sir, that ideal beauty is the great _centre_ of all these _extreme_ varieties, and the only thing worthy of a great artist's attention.' 'well, gentlemen,' say _i_, 'without inconsistency, you can't get out of the way of the following mouthful: there are (perhaps you will allow) three elementary colours, which in different combinations produce every variety of hue; _but_, the great _centre_ of these three _extremely_ various colours is _grey, non-colour ... the ideal of a bit of colouring, "the only thing worthy of the attention of a great colourist" is a picture with no colour in it at all_.' however, messrs. the generalisists and _apollinisists_ 'have every reason to congratulate themselves on the extensive circulation of their views, for their _ideal_' is visible in every haircutter's window. never mind, i must contain myself--but the rod is in pickle! * * * * * [sidenote: pebble v.] [sidenote: meran.] "a glorious amphitheatre of lofty mountains! on one side rugged, sternly rising, crenelated, grey, snow-strewn; on the other, dreamy, far outspreading, gently vanishing, southward luring, softly glowing, wrapt in tints of loveliest azure, gradually blending with the silver-fretted sky. a spreading, fertile gushing valley. down the sunny, swelling slopes, across the embosomed plain, an endless, curling, wreathing flood of gold-green vines, foaming and eddying with purple grapes. through the verdant waves, like rushes in a stream, the indian corn raises its slender form and feathered head in long array. beneath, outstretched at ease, the pumpkin winks and yawns. at the foot of a steep-fronted, purpling rock, skirting the glowing vineyards, a foaming mountain stream, emerald and silver. along the heights, nestling in verdure, rise thickly scattered, castellated villas, looking, with their bright, white walls, like smiles on the face of the earth. an epitome of what is rich and joyous and unfettered in landscape. the alpha and omega of all that is charming in the tyrol. meran! "i can say no more for it. "to my mind, it is inferior to italy only in one respect: it is wanting in that glowing, strongly marked individuality, that earnest beauty, that 'charm that is in melancholy,' which fascinates so powerfully in the land of wine and oil. [sidenote: pebble vi.] [sidenote: italy!] [sidenote: i "realise," as the americans say,] [sidenote: and find reason to think that i am a queer party.] "to be able to say that, on returning after long years to a country whose image memory has, during the whole of that time, fondled with all the partiality of ardent attachment, one has found one's best expectations realised, is, in this world of disappointments and frustrated expectations, indeed a rare thing; but to find imagination _surpassed_ by reality is rarer still; yet it is my case now that i once more breathe the air and tread the soil of italy. for this, i feel more grateful than i can say; for to have been disappointed in _these_ hopes would have been to me the greatest of miseries; as it is, my enjoyment is a double one: that which is occasioned by the positive, intrinsic beauty of what i see, and that, not less great, of recalling at the same time a happy, long-dwelt-on past. this i have more particularly experienced since my arrival in verona; and here a queer feature in my queer idiosyncrasy obtrudes itself to notice, _i.e._ the extraordinary dominion exercised over me by the senses of smell and hearing! that i do labour under these peculiarities i always knew, but to what a ludicrous extent, i did not find out till, on arriving here (verona), i was suddenly seized by a gust of a thousand smells and a din of a thousand sounds, some always remembered, others long-forgotten, suddenly rising up again to my memory. i was spellbound, the veil of the past was torn up, i was fairly carried back against the stream of time. ridiculous as it may sound, my enjoyment of italy, independently, of course, of the art (which is an extraordinary tissue of reality and illusion), would be very imperfect without this combination of trifles. one thing, i think, must affect every one agreeably; i mean the exquisitely humorous cries of the vendors in the thoroughfares and market-places; who could hear and not remember the loud, expostulatory shriek with which the one dwells on the excellencies of his handkerchiefs, the argumentative and facetious tone in which another infers that comfort is not possible without a supply of his matches, that urgent wail with which a third deplores that man should have so little appreciation of his baked apples, the muddy, half-suffocated tenor with which a fourth proclaims his water-melons, or the rabid, piercing soprano which seems to warn the public that 'if those violets are not bought pretty quick, there will soon be none to buy'?" * * * * * [sidenote: pebble vii.] [sidenote: verona.] "i do not think there exists anywhere a more powerfully and fantastically individual town than verona; it is to italy what nuremburg is to germany; but it is a transfiguration of nuremburg; in point of wildly picturesque variety it defies description and surpasses expectation; it is saturated with art; wherever one turns, the eye is struck by some beautiful remnant of the taste--that was; of that glowing, sterling feeling for art, which spread itself over everything, and ennobled whatever it touched. hardly a house that cannot boast of a sculptured archway, or some such token of ancient splendour; not a church, even the most insignificant, but is crowded with old paintings in oil and fresco, few of which are bad, some very good, a few excellent, but _all_ in a far higher _tone of feeling_ than nine-tenths of the shallow, papery daubs with which the nineteenth century covers its carcase of steam engines. no wonder--they are all scriptural or apocryphal subjects, and were all painted with an ardent belief in the faith to which they all owe their existence; from thence arose, amongst other excellencies, a certain naïf, ingenuously childlike treatment of the miraculous, which, combined with the manly dignity of consummate art, gives them an indescribable charm, which nothing can replace. now--with us, at least, of the cold belief--men throw really eminent talents--_to the dogs_. but, for us protestant artists, things are made much worse than they in any way need be, by the total rejection of pictures and statuary in our churches. now, three centuries back, in the first ebullition of reformatory fanaticism, such a practice was not only comprehensible, but even a natural and necessary consequence and token of their total disavowal of everything approaching to the romish form of worship; but its continuance at present amongst us is, not only contrary to the spirit of the anglican church, which after all, when compared to lutheranism and calvinism, is a _conservative_ one, but is founded on arguments altogether untenable with any degree of consistency; for if, as we are told, pictures and statues distract the attention and produce a worldly frame of mind, if it be true indeed that works of _high art_ (for, of course, no others are here taken into consideration), than which surely nothing is more calculated to raise the tone of the mind and prepare it for the reception of elevated impressions, have indeed so pernicious an effect, then, it is evident, by the same argument, the beauties of architecture, the eldest of the sister arts, must be equally rejected; at the sight of a gothic church, that offspring of christianity, we must shrug our shoulders and say with pious aversion: 'vanitas vanitatum!' but the church of england has not gone as far as that; indeed, great attention is paid to our church's architecture; is there no inconsistency here? or does the church, terrified by the example of romish image-worship, fear a similar evil amongst us, whose belief is so infinitely more circumscribed than that of rome? or is she so tender of admitting symbols into her bosom, she, whose corner-stone is a symbol: the last supper? "to return to verona. * * * * * [sidenote: pebble viii.] [sidenote: the veronese love flowers,] [sidenote: and have good legs.] "as gamba, owing to the time which my letter took in reaching him, was not able to meet me at the time appointed, i remained two days at verona, days to which i shall always look back with unmixed pleasure. i indulged, this time (the more that i knew the town already), in the luxury of _not_ 'sight-seeing,' but strolled about the whole town in every direction, dropping into churches, staring at tombs and palaces and piazzas and pictures, just as if rolled past me in the ever-varying panorama. i was struck, in the tyrol, with the profusion of flowers everywhere displayed; but here i see far more, and those, too, more artistically distributed; they rise in double and treble tiers on, in, and about the gracefully curved balconies, and assert their sway wherever human ingenuity makes it possible to place a flower-pot, and in a great many other places besides; creepers wreathe from window to window, and vines actually springing from holes in the walls, with no visible root or origin at all, spread their graceful mantle over the walls of crumbling palaces. of the veronese themselves, i cannot say that they are a handsome race; the women especially, though they have a great deal of character in their features, are generally far from good-looking. amongst the peasants i saw some very fine men; they have, some of them, very good legs, slender and well shaped as a donatello or a ghiberti. [sidenote: thursday, august .] [sidenote: gamba.] "on thursday gamba came, just as i was giving him up in a high state of despair and mystification. we hurried at once by padua to venice, where i found your letter. [sidenote: i look back and feel ashamed,] [sidenote: and make a clumsy excuse.] "as i look through what i have written, before sending it off to you, i feel, painfully, that my style is clumsy, stuttering, incoherent; that i am wordy, without saying enough; that i am overfree in my use of fanciful epithets, without giving an adequate idea of the suggestive beauty of what i see; that i am sometimes almost mawkish, without saying half i feel; that i am incorrigibly slovenly and forgetful; that i can't write, that i can't spell. in answer to all this, i can only answer by referring to a little premonitory observation at the foot of my first page, _i.e. quality of pebbles not warranted_. * * * * * batch no. . (this blank represents three weeks.) [sidenote: sept. .] "_september ._--many happy returns of the day, dear gussy! the other day i took a pair of scales, and put into the one vessel the price you would have to pay for the postage of a congratulatory letter to be received by you on your birthday, and into the other a pleasure which a surprise might afford you; the postage outweighed its rival; so i wrote no letter. if my directions have been attended to, you will, no doubt, have received a far more satisfactory outward and visible sign of my good wishes. [sidenote: sept. .] "_september ._--the same to you, papa!... _can the river offer its fountain a drink?_ * * * * * [sidenote: pebble i.] [sidenote: sept. .] [sidenote: i lucubrate,] [sidenote: when i consider, &c. &c.,] [sidenote: whereas, &c. &c.,] [sidenote: and even then, &c. &c.,] "three weeks (apparently months) have elapsed since i last soared on the descriptive pinion; now, and only now, on the eve of my departure from venice, i find time and leisure again to pour on the past a libation of pen and ink. i resume the quill with a feeling of disheartenment. with what intentions did i begin to write this (journal)? had i not hoped to note down, at once and in all their freshness, my emotions and impressions just as i should receive them? and to speak also sometimes of the thousand little incidents that fall in one's path, and which form the arabesque round the chapter of life? and how are my hopes fulfilled? behold me, on the morning of the last day, the day of parting, packing, paying, and passports, forced to throw in a hurried and disconnected heap a few general remarks concerning what i have seen and heard and felt and found, and not found, during my stay in the home of titian. and even that, how difficult! for in this short stay, sight has succeeded sight, emotion has followed emotion, in one continued merry-go-round; i have been alternately grave and gay, melancholy and jocose, dejected and enraptured; add to this that in my mind, as in the dissolving views, one picture always effaces its predecessor, and you will at once perceive that i am in the position of a man trying to see the pebbles at the bottom of a muddy brook, or his natural face in a basin of gruel. [sidenote: but you know, &c.] "now, i again repeat what i made a preliminary condition: that i send you the pebbles, loose and disjointed, and that i don't undertake to make a necklace of them. "'but whose fault is all this?' (i hear you ask). [sidenote: besides, it's not my fault] "during my stay here (i continue, without attending to your question) i have been up nearly every day _before the sun_ (about five o'clock), and after working and tearing about the town all day, towards evening i was not sorry to.... "do you guess how it was i wrote so little? [sidenote: a little digression] "here a little observation obtrudes itself to my notice. man (for there is nothing like throwing your own frailties on mankind in general) is born with an irresistible tendency to talk _at something or somebody_; eighteen pages back i was talking to nobody; or, if i did address anything, it was that very vague personage, the future; now i find myself getting more and more personal; _you's_, i expect, will soon get up to fifty per cent. * * * * * [sidenote: pebble ii.] [sidenote: a picture.] [sidenote: (parenthetic pebble about gondolas.)] "venice! mighty word, city of endless associations, image that fills the mind! what impressions has it left on me? i shrink from answering a question so difficult to answer _fairly_, and from dissecting a point of such intricate anatomy. whilst i think it over, i will give you a picture or two to look at; you shall have a peep out of the window where i sit writing. it is early morning, everything is cool and calm, in silent, almost breathless expectation of the not yet risen sun. before your eyes rises one of the most splendid views in europe, that of the grand canal from the steps of the academy; the stately, dark green street of waters reflects on its wide-spreading mirror the grey and crumbling palaces, and the lovely form of sta. maria della salute, with her domes of dazzling white. not a ripple mars its glossy surface, except where, at rare intervals, some silent gondola glides swiftly along, scattering the sparkling drops from its graceful oar, or where, here and there, the playful 'aura mattutina' has left too rough a kiss upon its slumbering cheek. no sound is heard, but the distant, even, measured chimes, that seem to be rocking on the silence of the morning. along its marge, singly, or clustering in close array beneath roofs of vine-covered trellis, lie the far-famed, ebon-coloured, swiftly gliding gondolas of venice. 'gondolas!' whilst the sun is rising, let me say a word or two on gondolas. it has always excited my great surprise that these barks, which are graceful almost beyond imagination, are, in point of fact, in their present shape the offspring of a period, next to our own, the most execrable in point of taste which the world has produced. i mean the end of the seventeenth, or rather the beginning of the eighteenth century. yet, so it is. in the time of carpaccio and the bellinis they were queer, tolerably uncouth contrivances, about two-thirds of their present length, pointed and equally curved at both ends, so as to resemble as nearly as possible a slice of melon, dead of the cholera. in titian's day the shape began to taper out a little, and the iron points or knobs, _at both ends_, rose to a greater height, and were enriched with a serrated ornament; but they did not assume their present slender proportions and graceful ornament, _at the prow only_, till the eighteenth century; as also the mysterious and exquisitely comfortable little cabins or coffins, which now surmount them, and which formerly were open _behind and before_, forcing the passenger to sit upright! they contained then the rudiment of an idea of grace, which took its natural growth and development in spite of man. meanwhile, for i have been watching him, the sun has appeared above the horizon; not that i see his own, real, glorious face, for he is hidden behind an ancient palace, but i see his reflection glowing in the eye of nature. first a gentle, tremulous, golden light began to steal along the dappled morning sky, warning all the little, distant, fleecy clouds to shake their plumes, for that it was going to begin; then, of course, the water took up the tune; and then (it was fit the biggest building should set the example) the 'salute' assumed a saffron hue, and gradually one by one all the palaces on one side of the canal, right up to our windows, and, did not you notice? your own face took quite a shine. for a while you yourself and everything round you seems wrapped in a trance; presently you begin to write. how is this? the whole picture begins to dance and quiver. our lady della salute glows with a deeper blush, and trembles. then, suddenly, her redness vanishes, her glorious countenance sparkles, and she raises her stately form in a garment of burnished silver; the gondolas that nestle round her feet, and hem in the whole length of the canal, seem like a fillet of sparkling gems around a web of emerald and gold; the sky is a sea of light; the sun is in the wide heavens--it's time for breakfast. waiter, coffee and rolls! [sidenote: i am reminded,] "'do you mean,' i hear you urge, 'to come to the point, and tell us how you like venice?' [sidenote: but take no notice.] [sidenote: pebble iv.] "another picture! (pretending not to hear). the same scene, but under a different aspect. how different! just now it was a scene of dawning life, a burst of gladness--now it is a mild, a gentle dream, an italian moonlight night, a _venetian_ moonlight night--calm, clear, soft, fancy stirring. you lean idly out of the window; there are two of you, or ought to be, but you don't say anything to one another; you are rocked in silence; you feel the sweet, warm breath of night pass over your cheek; you think of shakespeare's exquisite verses on what he never saw but with the eye of his boundless fancy; you are sitting with jessica and lorenzo (that is his name, i think) on a bank of violets; you are anxiously waiting for portia and her company; your ear is attentive to every sound; presently a sweet, half-heard strain, like a distant echo, dawns on your ear; then it is lost again; again it swells, and seems to glide gently along the shadowy waters towards you, nearer, still nearer. you see a track of gleaming light along the water, and at intervals a shower of tiny stars; it's no illusion; they glide along towards you, the voices that rose from the distant waters; they are almost beneath your window. quick, quick, a gondola; a dozen or more musicians, with every kind of instrument, sit together in a bark, and alternately play and sing lovely melodies by the musicians of italy. as long as the strain lasts the oar is suspended, and the floating orchestra drifts slowly along with the slowly ebbing tide; round it, a cluster of gondolas, full of breathless listeners whose very soul seems to melt with the delicious sounds, and combine with them--at least, you can answer for yourself, for you are one of them. those are moments which you, i am sure, will never forget. [sidenote: you interrupt me, but i take no notice.] "'you are beating about the bush, we want an ans....' [sidenote: pebble v.] "another picture! (taking no notice of you)--a bit of giorgione, coloured by veronese. you are in an _atelier_; pictures and sketches in different stages of advancement lie about the tables and cover the easels; at one end of the room you see a large cupboard; its open doors betray within layers of rich old silks and damasks, some made up, some in pieces, as they were found at the antiquary's; further, an old mandoline, that perhaps could tell of the days of titian. through the large, gaping window you look upon a group of the most picturesque venetian houses, with their fanciful basket-shaped chimneys and irregular windows and thousand-fold tints; the foreground is gracefully supplied by a screen of slender, net-like trees, amongst which heavy-laden vines wreathe in fanciful festoons. but where is werner? the amiable inmate of this charming snuggery; where his pupils? ah, i hear them! hark! in the garden, a merry laugh, a clattering of cups, a sound of several voices, a suggestion of enjoyment; you rush to the scene of action; on your road you nearly break your neck over a table covered with the remains of a hearty dinner. a few yards further, you see half-a-dozen young men (of course artists) stretched, in every variety of ingeniously comfortable attitude, on a temporary floor of turkey carpets, in a cool, clear, shady spot beneath arches of roof-weaving vines; in the middle, at comfortable arm's length, coffee, and heaps of purple grapes, whilst the intervals of conversation are filled by affectionate and earnest appeals to long turkish pipes. you approach; you are recognised; seized by the hand, thrown down on the carpet; and presently you perceive that an entire afternoon is gone by! but that afternoon becomes a landmark to you. may not such reminiscences well endear a place to one's memory? [illustration: study of byzantine well head. venice, by permission of mr. s. pepys cockerell] "'well, then, i suppose....' (say you). "never mind, let me continue. [sidenote: more where the rest came from.] "another impression. you are sitting, early in the morning, in a spacious, picturesque court; you have got your sketch-book, and you are busily poring over a drawing of a beautiful old saracenic well; you are intent on doing it well, on cutting out that friend you have got with you. presently you are seized with a peculiar sensation; you have heard, all of a sudden, the voice of an old, old friend, who speaks to you of things you don't see round you; a veil falls from your eyes; you feel that you have missed something for some time past; a vision rises before your eyes--a sweet vision of wooded hills and grassy fields, teeming with a thousand wild flowers and sending forth a sweet smell, and of flowing streams, of _fresh_ waters, of birds singing merrily as they fly from tree to tree, and swing on the slender branches; and then you remember that you dwell in a mysterious city, closed in by the salty sea. who was the friend that called up these lively images in your mind? it was a poor, solitary, wandering _bee_. but he suggested something else to you, the roaming honey-gatherer--he reminded you of _freedom_; reminded you that freedom had no home _there_; and he made you _feel_ how much you had felt it, how much you had been unconsciously haunted by the breath of oppression that hovers over poor, browbeaten venice, and whose pestilence clings to its rocky shore, as the rankling seaweed to the skirts of its palaces. poor venice! once resounding with joyous voices, now its walls seem, as you pass them, to mutter mournfully of arrests, condemnations, executions! its narrow streets re-echo with the heavy tread of exulting soldiers, with the watchword of a foreign tongue. palaces and convents are become barracks and infirmaries, and slavonian troopers loll and spit where the proudest lords and loveliest ladies of venice used to assemble to the banquet or the ball. but i turn away from such sad reflections, lest they may seem to outweigh all the delight that i have spoken of before. [sidenote: pebble vi.] [sidenote: what i think about it.] "i have rehearsed to you a few of my impressions for good and for evil, and i think that was the only way of answering your (imaginary) questions. i need make no apologies for not _describing_ venice to you, as you have all seen it, and it is a place the image of which does not easily fade. i might say a word or two about the venetians. whatever some people may say (and, if i am not mistaken, byron amongst them), the female venetian type, such as it is transmitted to us by titian, giorgione, pordenone, &c. (_i.e._ stout, tall, round-faced, small-mouthed, _roxolane-nosed_) has either totally disappeared, or only manifests itself to a chosen few; one feature only i recognise, and that is a profusion of fine hair, which they plait in the most elaborate manner. a thing that rather puzzles those who go to venice with the idea of seeing _titians_ and _veroneses_ at the windows and in the streets, is that the women have altogether left off dyeing their hair auburn as they used in former times. to show you that vanity made the fair sex go through the greatest personal discomfort as far back as the sixteenth century, i will tell you what the process of dyeing was. on the top of nearly every house in venice is a kind of terrace-like scaffold, or scaffold-like terrace ('you pays your money and takes your choice'), which has the noble vocation of drying linen; in former days, however, they were built for a different purpose. in the middle of the day, during the greatest heat of the sun, the party anxious to impart to her hair a tint between sugar-candy and radishes repaired to these _lofty_ spots, and there regularly bleached her hair in the following manner: she put on her head the _brim_ of a large straw hat, so that the top of the head was exposed to all the power of the sun, whilst the face and neck were kept in the shade. through the hole thus left in the middle of this extraordinary headgear the whole of the hair was drawn, and spread out as much as possible; which done, different kinds of waters, made for the express purpose, were passed over it by means of a little sponge fastened to the top of a reed. history does not give the exact number of _coups-de-soleil_ caught in this manner; a few, i should imagine. however, i can warrant the accuracy of my statement, which is borrowed from a contemporary author of the highest standing. the men of venice are neither handsome in the face nor well made in the body. the venetian dialect is amusing; in the mouth of a woman, if well spoken, it is pretty, musical, childlike, lisping; but in the mouth of a man, for the most part, muddy, stammering, unintelligible. * * * * * "there, much as still remains to say, and willingly as i dwell on its memory, i must discard venice, and turn to your kind letter, for it is now, i am afraid, more than a month since i last wrote. this delay has, however, been unavoidable, for when one is travelling, or staying a short time in a place, one is always hurried and flurried in the day-time, and in the evening tired or excited--or both. next time you hear from me (which will be when i reach rome) my communication will openly take the shape that this has imperceptibly been attaining, that of a letter; when i am once settled for the winter i shall, i hope, be better able to write _au jour le jour_. before entering into your letter, which will be a longish job, i must acknowledge the receipt of one from papa, containing part of my remittance; it was written in most kind terms (i tell you this because you can't have seen it, since he wrote in london), and was, i think, the longest i ever got from him, at all events it was the first in which he said anything beyond what was necessary to business. it gave me sincere pleasure. i was touched, it seemed to me that distance had brought me nearer to him; pray thank him both for that and for the consideration with which he has provided for an emergency which will in fact arise--that of my not reaching rome in october; i do not expect to get there until the first week in november. of one thing i must remind papa; he talks of sending to rome the _remaining eighty_ pounds of my second quarter; he has, i am afraid, forgotten that he gave me sixty for my first; my remittance this time is only _forty_ pounds, he therefore has only twenty to send to rome. "i now turn to your letter, dear mamma; i lay it by my side, and as i read it slowly through, answer it systematically, head for head, for in my present hurry i have indeed no time to pick and choose, or to arrange my topics according to their importance and interest, or even to consult as much as i wish the little amusement that my letters give you. however, i console myself a little with the reflection that it certainly is not the composition of my letters which gratifies you much, for i am painfully aware that my ideas are brought to paper with about as much order as the footprints of a cock-sparrow show on a gravel-walk. "you say, dear mamma, that you have a fear of not telling me all that i wish to hear; and there, indeed, you are right, for if you were to tell me _all_ that i wish to know about your doings, you might write for a week; but you are equally right in supposing that _whatever_ you write concerning yourself (and selves) is full of interest to your distant punch. about my health? well, i plead guilty, steaks _do_ still continue to be to me _physical consciences_; this admonitory part they took more especially at venice, where the climate, i must confess, did not agree with me particularly well. this is perhaps attributable to the water, which was particularly bad there, for my diet was of the simplest description. judge for yourself: in the morning early, coffee and dry bread (i have discarded butter to keep company with gamba, who is not in the habit of eating any); at eleven or so, fruit and bread; at four or five, a simple dinner; and in the evening, an ice or a cup of coffee. here i live much in the same way. "i am truly delighted to hear that you are accommodating yourself a little to an english climate; if you once get over that one great obstacle, nothing else need prevent your establishing yourself in the country which, after all, is still the dearest to you; with the prospect of pleasant and desirable society for yourself and the girls, and of other resources for papa, there is every reason to hope that you will find in bath what you have so long wished for, a home in _england_." speaking of his elder sister's suffering, he continues:-- "i feel, almost, a kind of shame that so much should have been poured down on me, who have deserved it less. to become deserving of it, must be my great, never-wavering endeavour; i will put my talent to usury, and be no slothful steward of what has been entrusted to me. every man who has received a gift, ought to feel and act as if he was a field in which a seed was planted that others might gather the harvest. "i am delighted to hear that lady leighton is getting on well, and as much gratified at having made on her a favourable impression; pray tell her that her presence and conversation inspired me with a desire to please her, and that her affectionate reception has still a lively hold on my memory. "you tell me that you were touched at steinle's kindness to me, and indeed it was such as might well touch any one; this time you will be touched at his affliction, poor man, he has just had a heavy misfortune--the most affectionate of fathers has lost another child, the second, in a year and a half; i heard this from andré, who has just arrived from frankfurt, and who called on the unfortunate man before he started and found him much dejected. he said in his melancholy but calm tone of voice: 'ich habe eine tochter begraben.' you think it improbable that i shall find a _second_ steinle; i delight in the belief that there _is none_. "i am not surprised at your finding it impossible to imagine an artist without a genuine love for nature. in any but an age of perverted taste such a thing could not exist; but it is only too true that that most essential of qualities has become obsolete, and is hardly to be found at all. artists now are full of _breadth_ and _depth_; and, between us and the doorpost, _flatness_. on this subject i mean to tell you more in my next letter, when i speak more particularly of my _artistic_ impressions and opinions, which i have not yet done. "i am glad to hear what you tell me about the comfort you enjoy in bath, from the superior cleanliness and decency of behaviour of english servants over foreign ones; it is a thing to which i am particularly alive, and which struck me very much last time i was in england; gussy too, i am sure, appreciated it very much. i am sorry that i cannot participate in your enthusiasm about the beauties of bath (barring, of course, the situation, which is charming), but i will say nothing against it, as i am only too glad that you should be pleased with it. i quite follow you in your admiration of the edifices in westminster; i think that, taking them altogether, they form one of the finest groups of architecture that i ever saw; but what particularly pleases me in the houses of parliament is the example they set of building in that style of architecture which is our own, the growth, as it were, of our soil, and which therefore best befits our country. such feelings, i have reason to believe, are becoming prevalent in england, and they may have great results; but i reserve all this for another letter. i am glad to hear of the institution you tell me of for the cultivation of good principles; i believe that the greatness of england will not be as ephemeral as that of the other nations that have had the lead in succession, because so much is done to consolidate and increase in strength the basis on which it stands, and which is the best prop to the enduring prosperity of a nation, uprightness and morality. "i have now followed and answered your letter, from beginning to end, from point to point, it is time i should close; next time i write, i shall be in rome, settled for the winter.--believe me, dear mamma, with very best love to all, your most affectionate and dutiful son, "fred leighton." _translation._] venice, _ st august_. "honoured and very dear herr steinle,--if i did not, according to our agreement, write to you directly rico[ ] arrived, it was because i could not make up my mind to put you off with two words, whereas i had neither time nor leisure to write you anything detailed. now, however, arrived and established in venice, i take up my pen to repair the neglect. it is a lovely, cool, clear summer morning; i sit at my window on the grand canal, and before my eyes rises in glorious beauty the incomparable outline of sta. maria della salute with the adjoining dogano. the newly risen sun (it is five o'clock in the morning) throws a golden, enchanted light along one side of the canal; the gondolas and barges, which nestle in a numerous array at the steps of the _salute_, glitter in the dusky distance like gleaming jewels on the borders of the silver mirror of the water, whose clear bosom is gently ruffled by the soft breath of dawn. all is still, except the distant church bells. what words can give an idea of such a sight? i gaze about me in a day-dream and think of you, the dear friend, the honoured master; all that i owe you for heartfelt sympathy and wise guidance, and cannot pay, rises before my grateful soul, and reminds me that i have lost one whom i shall miss many a time. i hope with all my heart that your stay in the mountains of appenzell will have given you fresh strength, and that in all respects you are re-established and invigorated according to your expectations. "now, however, as i am to speak of myself, and to give some account of my impressions on my journey, i note that for me the potent picture of italy, of venice, has pushed all that went before into the background, almost blotted it out, so that now it floats before me like a dim remembrance; but with two exceptions: two pictures have impressed themselves deeply on my memory, and will certainly not be easily erased--i mean the _franciscan church at innsbruck_ and lovely _meran_. you were indeed right when you said that the cast giants in that church are the grandest achievement of german sculpture; they are colossal, a truly imposing spectacle, brilliant monuments of an age of noble taste. what eternal truth! what an amazing impress of individuality! of marvellous execution that never borders on the little, full of breadth and strength, and yet nobly slender, they are the most perfect example of _economy of detail_; what a sharp contrast to the superficial stone-hammering (i might say) of to-day; what an everlasting shaming to the nineteenth century! i could name many sculptors who could not look at these things without profit. "meran! what an indelible, fascinating picture floats before one's eyes at the name; this alpha and omega of all that is lovely in tyrol; this lovely amphitheatre of mountains, rugged on one side, and steep and covered with snow on the other, glowing in the purple gleam of the south--widely extended, melting away, alluring; this fertile plain; this gold-green flood of climbing vines, hanging down like waterfalls from the espaliers on the mountain slopes, with the purple foam of the vines; these thousand pleasure-houses and castles; the picturesque costume! "but why so many words? you have seen this beauty yourself, and have no doubt a clearer picture of it than i can paint for you. "in botzen, to my very great regret, i was unable to see herr von hempel, since he was staying, not in his town house, but in a castle at a distance of two hours; but i visited becker's brother. he received me in a most friendly manner, asked much after his brother, of whom he had heard _nothing_ for more than a _year_, and told me that his mother, who had recently visited him in feldkirch, had wept bitterly about it. i must also inform you that he has recently _taken unto himself a wife_--a fact of which our good jacob (that is his name, is it not?) also knew nothing. "i could still, dear herr steinle, write much to you about tyrol and italy (especially about _verona_), for i know no one with whom i so gladly share my artistic sensations as with you, but lack of time obliges me to close quickly for the present; i will only add that after i had been two days in verona the worthy rico arrived, and we are now having a _feast of art_ in venice together. "should you be still at the stift when you receive these lines, i beg you to kiss the frau rath's hand for me, and to tell her that i remember vividly the day i spent in her house. remember me most kindly to your wife--i congratulate her upon her deliverance from the cronberg martyrdom; kiss the little children for me, and remember me to the elder ones; remember me also to frau schöff & co. and to all my other good friends; this is perhaps rather a large request, but whom could i omit? i rely upon your kindness. i close with a plea for forbearance towards my incorrigible writing and my lame, headlong style.--heartfelt greetings from your devoted and grateful pupil, "fred leighton. "_p.s._--should you have anything to say to me, or any commission to give me, the address, poste restante, florence, will find me till the end of september. "gamba wishes to be cordially remembered to you, and promises himself to be under your wing again in eighteen months. "in my next letter i will tell you about italy." footnotes: [ ] in the winter of leighton went to a children's costume ball in florence as punch, and for some time after the name clung to him in his family. [ ] literally, "devoured nature with a spoon." [ ] a distinguished actress. [ ] probably "the death of brunelleschi." [ ] see appendix, in memoriam. [ ] see sketch, "a monk dividing enemies," leighton house collection, "ulm, ." [ ] count gamba. chapter ii rome - the first group of letters from leighton to his family from rome tells of his instalment, his projects, his disappointments, his indifferent health, and his eye-troubles. but more important are the views he expresses on his "_artistic_ impressions," and the ideas which force themselves on his mind, resulting from these impressions; the increased anxiety with which he regards the task he has set before him; the "paralysing diffidence" which he feels with regard to "composing." in the letter he wrote on january , , he enters more intimately into his own feelings in addressing his father than in any previous letter i have seen. this letter is in answer to one from his father, which leighton describes in writing to his mother[ ] as "the longest i ever got from him, at all events it was the first in which he said anything beyond what was necessary to business; it gave me sincere pleasure. i was touched; it seemed to me that distance had brought me nearer to him." leighton was evidently eager to respond to any advance from his father towards possible intimacy on the ground of his art-interests. in "pebbles" he writes that he opens the "introductory chapter of the second volume" of his life, "a volume on the title-page of which is written 'artist'"; in these first letters from rome he begins the second volume itself. the letter to his younger sister, on her "coming out," contains at its close memorable advice on the subject of the development of her musical taste.[ ] "you must descend into yourself, and draw at the fountain of your own natural taste, but mind you go very deep, that you may really get at your _genuine, natural_ taste, and i think you won't go far wrong. he who knows how to hear the voice of nature has found the safest guide, and he only is a good master who opens the mind of his pupil to that voice." at the age of twenty-one, leighton had realised, and was himself pursuing, the only right course in studying any art. by invariably drawing deeply from the fountain in his own nature, he ever remained true and sincere as an artist. it is evident that, if there is no fountain to draw from in a nature, any study of art becomes useless, and leighton, when consulted in later years, never encouraged false hopes in those who possessed no natural endowments. when he wrote,[ ] "being very receptive and prone to admire, i have learnt, and still do, from innumerable artists, big and small; steinle's is, however, the indelible seal," he referred to the fact that in steinle he had fortunately found the master who opened his mind to the voice of his own nature. leighton felt a great necessity to sift the various influences which played upon his receptive nature, on account of his ready sympathy with all that was admirable. he had constantly to seek for that inner light, that "genuine, natural taste," which his revered master had led him to search for and find, and to act from the dictates of that light, and from no other. the commencement of the first letter from rome to his mother is missing; the date of the post-mark is november , , rome. "...unnoticed, and which now requires to be woven in with the rest. i mean, of course, my more directly and practically _artistic_ impressions, and their results. i take them up 'ab ovo.' to an artist an occasional change of scene is of the greatest advantage, if not importance; for, generally speaking, when he has stayed long in one place, surrounded day after day by the same objects, his eye becomes, by the deadening effect of constant habit, indifferent to what he sees around him, and often even inaccessible to the impressions which a newcomer might receive from the same natural beauties; most things that please the eye or the imagination, do so (in my case, at least) by some peculiar association; indeed i should imagine it must be so with all things, for even when one cannot (as one often can) define precisely the association which creates the echo within of the impressions received, it seems to me that one is instinctively aware of a kind of indefinable _innate relationship_ to the beauties manifested in nature, to which, by-the-bye, i think, all other associations might ultimately be traced through different degrees of consanguinity. it is in being unexpectedly reminded (however indirectly or unwittingly) of this affinity, that lies all the pleasure that we experience by the means of sight; indeed, it strikes me, although i am too ignorant to explain why, that the 'feu sacré' of the artist is a kind of inward, spontaneous, ever active, instinctive _impulse_, blind and involuntary, to manifest and put forth this his pedigree--as it were a yearning of son to father, an attraction of a part to the whole, which is, as it were, the living _motive_ and condition of his existence, and which sometimes infuses in his works 'un non so chè' that is felt by others, but for which he would be at a loss to account, and of which he is perhaps barely aware; it is a manifestation of a _truth_ which is felt to be _fit_, and called _beautiful_. these reflections, which have often involuntarily forced themselves on me, suddenly remind me of an expression i once heard papa quote from some german philosopher, i think hegel: 'der mensch ist das werkzeug der natur.' good gracious, where am i running to? and how far out of my depth! and yet one feels the want to empty one's head a little now and then; latterly, especially, these ideas have been stirred up in me by the perusal of fragments on the theory, philosophy, of art, &c., by eastlake, which gave rise in me to some painful feelings. at the first onset i was amazed and bewildered at the quantity and great versatility of eastlake's acquirements, a man who has yet found time to cultivate his art with success. i was filled with regret and mortification when i looked at myself and considered how little i know, and how little, comparatively, my health and eyes will allow me to add to my meagre store. as i got further into the subject, my feelings altered; it seemed to me to grow more and more vast and comprehensive, but not more _intricate_, for it appeared by degrees to embrace and involve in itself (and be involved in) all human knowledge, so that i felt that there must be only one key to all mystery, the _non_-possession of which key is the characteristic, the condition _des menschseins_. then it struck me as utterly absurd for anybody to pretend to know anything about anything; but it also struck me that it is not given to man to be a neutral spectator, that he must advance or recede; and that beautiful saying of lessing's, which papa read to us, occurred to my mind: 'wenn der allmächtige' (i quote from memory, and therefore probably not quite correctly) 'vor mich hin träte in der rechten die vollkommene erkenntnis, in der linken ein ewiges streben nach wahrheit, ich würfe mich flehend in seine linke und sagte: vater, gieb! die reine wahrheit ist doch nur dir allein!'[ ] i hardly meant to say all this, especially as it must seem horridly weak to a philosopher of papa's calibre, but i really could not help it; i wish such thoughts would never come into my head, for i am painfully aware that i have not the grasp of mind to investigate any abstract subject deeply, and i wish that i had a mind, simple and unconscious, even as a child. i hurry back to the point with my tail between my legs; i was saying, was not i? that habit deadens us (read _me_) to the _suggestive_ qualities of nature, and that change of scene is sometimes required to make us again _aware_ of nature; after such change she speaks a more eloquent language than ever; i have heard her voice, ever since i left frankfurt, ring more powerfully than ever before, and it has been the key to all that i have done, and to all that i have omitted. but there are some cases in which this numbing effect of habit has more lasting, almost irrevocable consequences; when one has been for a long space of time _utterly_ familiarised with an object (a work of art in particular) of which one did not, when the acquaintance or _liaison_ was contracted, appreciate all the beauties, though in process of time the _understanding_ may become fully aware of these qualities, the _heart of the mind_--if i may use such an expression--can never feel that ingenuous fulness of admiration which would penetrate a sensitive and cultivated spectator on seeing it _for the first time_. this i have felt more particularly in the case of the 'transfiguration' here in the vatican; i am so utterly familiar with it from a child, when i could in no way understand it, that i find it impossible to judge of it _objectively_; i see colossal merit in it, and yet, when i have looked at it for a few minutes, i turn away and walk on; i am deadened to it. thank god, it is not so with his (raphael's) divine frescoes, which are so maimed and profaned in the engravings that the originals were _new_ to me. but i am at the end of my paper, and as you do not wish me to cross, i must this time close by just telling you what my disappointments have been, that you may not form a false idea of them. first, i expected to find an _atmosphere_ of high art, and every possible 'günstige anregung' for its cultivation; in this i have been completely disappointed; of the numberless artists here, scarcely any can call themselves historical painters, and gamba and i, who hoped for emulation, are thrown completely on ourselves; overbeck is the only remains of that much to be regretted period when he and cornelius and veit and steinle and others were labouring together in friendly strife; he will, however, never be to us what steinle was. the next greatest sore point was the difficulty of getting a studio. when we arrived in rome the first thing we heard was that all the _ateliers_ were taken; and it was only after some days despondent search that i got a little bit of one most skimpingly furnished, that i should have sneered at when i first arrived. i have no _sécrétaire_; i am obliged to lock up my papers with my shirts; i have been obliged to buy a lamp, for the one they gave me tried my eyes; and if i want any article of furniture i must buy it, because i understand that at the end of the year hiring costs as much here as buying. my _atelier_ for next winter i shall take in the spring, as a good many become vacant at that time. rome is twice, nearly three times, dearer than florence in some respects; i am in despair; gamba, who has just half what i have, absolutely starves himself in his food, and can hardly keep himself cleanly dressed; yet he has fewer expenses than i, who have calls to make now and then, and must dress accordingly. oakes, too, who had sent me a charming letter to florence, saying that he delighted in the idea of coming to spend the winter with me in rome, was suddenly prevented; this was a bitter disappointment; i had expected a great deal of improvement from his conversation. i am in the bleak position of one who stands in immediate contact with _no_ cultivated and superior mind. the laings have not come yet; i hope to goodness they won't disappoint me also.--i remain, dearest mamma, your dutiful and affectionate son, "fred leighton." (_la suite à un prochain numéro._) " . "dearest gussy,--as a gallant brother, i can't well do less than answer separately your postscript to mamma's letter. i shall make a point, if i meet with it, of reading andersen's 'dichterleben'; your recommendation is sufficient to predispose me favourably. i perfectly understand what you say about st. paul's, and quite agree with you on that subject. what suits a salmon-coloured ribbon? by george, that's a weighty question, and requires mature reflection; it would look _best_ on a white dress with blue flowers or spots; a sea-green would not look bad, and on black silk it would be _distingué_; a bluish violet would not be bad either. i am sincerely sorry that i am not able to 'assister' at your triumphal entry into your eighteenth year; i am afraid the spell is beginning to fall by degrees from the greatest of days. if my directions have been attended to, i was present by proxy on the memorable occasion. do you fully appreciate the immense importance of the epoch? do you sufficiently feel that you are on the brink of being _out_? you are very much mistaken in supposing that i hear much good music here; there is little or none to hear; the theatres, at least, are all bad. i sincerely hope that you cultivate assiduously the talent with which you are blessed; especially the vocal part i am very anxious about; of course you will take lessons in bath. i sympathise very much with you on the want of rosenhain's guiding influence; i fully appreciate your difficulty; you must descend into yourself, and draw at the fountain of your own natural taste, but mind you go very deep, that you may really get at your _genuine, natural_ taste, and i think you won't go far wrong. he who knows how to hear the voice of nature has found the safest guide, and he only is a good master who opens the mind of his pupil to that voice.--believe me, with many kisses, your very affectionate brother, "fred. "if gussy _did_ want to be a charitable christian, she would copy in her pretty handwriting five lines a day of my horrid scrawl, for i am ashamed that my pebbles should remain in such a state." "bath, _sunday, november , _. "my beloved child,--i need not tell you how close an account i keep of the day of the month, nor how my heart beats as the foreign post hour approaches, because you know how tenderly i love you, and what it cost me to part from you, and consequently how anxiously i look for the consolation for your absence which your letters afford me, and i had hoped you would supply this balm liberally. of course while you were actually travelling i made every allowance for weariness, &c. &c., but if you have carried out your intentions, you must have been in rome quite ten days, and though i said in my last i hoped for the future you would leave only three weeks between each of your letters home, it is now more than a calendar month since i had last the great happiness of seeing your handwriting. i would not, my love, be unreasonable, but you must remember that, in addition to the natural desire to hear how you manage for yourself, my maternal anxieties have been awakened by the indisposition you spoke of as not serious, it is true, but which has started up before me, explaining your delay in writing, and which, in spite of reason's suggestion that a slight illness would not hinder your work, whilst gamba would prevent the addition of suspense to the trouble a serious attack would cause us, has brought the evil of separation very bitterly before me. the goodness of your heart, my child, will teach you how you can soften this to me; it is one of the few occasions remaining to you to exercise self-denial, as you live alone and have no one to please but yourself. i now and then wonder a little anxiously whether you ever think of my exhortations, so much have i wished that you should be in the retirement of your house as gentlemanly as you are in company. but then i recollect sentences in your letter, proving such right views in important matters, such a clear understanding of your responsibilities, that i resolve to believe that you will strive to do right in small matters as well as in great ones; indeed, my child, i have remarked with deep satisfaction your appreciation of the blessings that are allotted to you, and indeed you do right to enjoy them with all humility, for i cannot flatter you in opposition to the dictates of my conscience that you are _so_ well deserving of happiness as your poor sister. she is deserving of the highest respect of all, bearing all her trials with admirable patience. the persevering rain, which has caused a great deal of illness in bath, has had a very bad effect on her, throwing her back just as she was beginning to mend, so that she has a great deal of rough ground to go over again. we revel in literary abundance, even german and french books are in the circulating libraries, and _i_ often wish the days longer to read and to work. gussy says she hopes you will not think her ill-natured if she declines copying your letters, for, indeed, were she willing to undertake this difficult task, i should forbid it, as her eyes, always delicate, are unusually weak; whether this comes from too long confinement to the house, or from crying, i cannot say; the latter is produced by _heimweh_! what do you think of this for an english girl? thank god, she employs the best remedy against regretful feelings, as she is occupied from morning till night. are you equally industrious? i read the other day the following assertion by southey, which i copy for you, in case you should _still_ have the habit, so common amongst young people, of wasting during the day occasional quarter-hours or ten minutes, because, they ask, only such a few minutes, how often have i heard that excuse. this is the portion: 'ten minutes' daily study, for seven years, will give the student sufficient knowledge of seven languages to read them with ease, and even to travel without an interpreter in the respective countries.' is not this an encouragement to industry? we imagine you by this time settled in your lodging and beginning to feel at home. god grant that you may have your health there and meet with kind friends; we are curious to know what your letters will do for you. in the meantime you will, i doubt not, have met some old acquaintances--the henry walpoles, the laings, mr. petre, the isembourgs, and princess hohenlohe; to what amount the latter will condescend, i know not, but remember, i entreat you, my advice. the two former families you will most likely have first met at church; let me hope at least that you will not abandon the habit; it may at last bring a blessing upon you. the intentions of your frankfurt acquaintances we learnt in a letter from mme. beving; she had heard from m. fenzi that he had given you a general invitation to his villa, and that you had dined with him, or been asked to do so; i do not know whether he made any comment on you. did your organ of _veneration_ do its duty? forgive my hints, dear son; all your good qualities are pictured in lively colours before my eye, but i do not even try to forget your faults, lest i should neglect my duty to you; with the best resolutions we all occasionally require a fillip to our conscience. next friday is your birthday. it will be the first on which you have not received your parents' blessing in person. we shall not forget you, my darling. god bless you, my own dear freddy; in this prayer your father joins most fervently; think often of the advice and love of your devoted mother, "a. leighton." [illustration: costumi di procida. rome, ] brock street, bath, _december , _. dear frederic,--i need not say that we had all of us great pleasure in receiving your letter from rome, though not before your dear mother had suffered great anxiety from the delay--the greater, because your former letter did not give a very encouraging account of your health. it gave us also great pain to hear of the vexatious disappointments which have attended your first entrance into the eternal city, but this was, perhaps, to be expected, as the sanguine expectations of youth are seldom realised, and we may hope that by this time you will have found in other advantages and opportunities for improvement a sufficient compensation for the loss of those you had expected. what you say about the weakness of your eyesight is far more serious, and, indeed, would have occasioned us alarm if we did not hope and believe that you meant no more than we already knew at frankfort, that your eyes were weak, and not that they had continued to grow weaker. but when i consider that your only means of acquiring an honourable independence and gratifying your laudable ambition depends upon your eyesight, i surely need no arguments to urge you in the strongest manner to use all those precautions for its preservation which your own good sense must suggest--to throw aside your brush or pencil the first moment that your eyes begin to smart or water, not to draw on white paper or by candlelight (or lamp or any artificial light), nor read except large print, nor small print even by daylight, except for a few minutes occasionally in a book of reference, and to acquire as much knowledge as you can, independently of books, by conversation with well-informed men, if you are so fortunate as to meet with them; when you cannot paint, talk, or observe, exercise your memory, it will store and cultivate your mind more and try your eyes less than reading, which in your case cannot be systematically pursued. you may perhaps meet some well-informed young men amongst the german artists. above all, draw your compositions as large as possible (or rather as necessary for your eyes) and not such as your architectural drawings, "four seasons," &c., which contain so many objects minutely drawn. i suppose, likewise, that chalk and charcoal must be better than pencil, and the paint-brush better than either. you have no reason to complain either of want of ideas or of power of expressing them (at all events with your pen), however deficient you may think yourself in a command of language for conversation; but the fact is that, considering the distance that separates us, it is of much more importance to us to know _how_ you are, what you do, and what you observe, than what you think. your letters remind me of my friend, dr. simpson of york, who, when we sat down for dinner, would enter into some abstract discussion, say, of the nature and varieties of fish, or, _à propos_ of the aitch-bone, on the homologies of the skeleton, while in the meantime fish and beef were growing cold and my appetite impatiently vivacious; so in your letters, while we are burning with impatience to know how you are, what progress you are making, or at all events what are your opportunities of progress in the art, you indulge us with abstract reflections on the theory of art in general. your last letter, it is true, begins and ends with interesting matter, but with an interpolation of some three pages of disquisition on the nature of genius in art, &c., &c., which, however well thought or expressed, would be more in place in an essay than in your letter to us who are so much more interested in what immediately concerns yourself. the consequence is that, although with a praiseworthy wish to please us you have tried your eyes with a long letter, you have omitted much we were anxious to know--whether, for instance, you were conscious of having made any progress, or derived any advantage from the many pictures both in art and nature you have had so many opportunities of seeing; whether you had been making many, and what sketches or copies, for we are quite convinced that you have not been losing your time; whether you have been comparing what you can do with what other artists of about your age and standing in italy can do, and whether the result is satisfactory; whether there are any among them from whom you can take any useful hints; whether overbeck or any other competent artist is willing to assist you; whether, above all, you saw power at florence, and what he thought of your compositions; whether you find in rome the material advantages you expected in the way of models, &c., and whether you will think it advisable to draw from the antique--the apollo, torso, &c.; in short, i cannot too strongly impress upon you that one fact is of more value to us than a volume of reflections. of course, i would not have you infer that the progress of your mind, your thoughts and feelings, are by any means a matter of indifference to us, but after all they can be only imperfectly shown in occasional letters, and must necessarily exclude information of a more positive and, for the present, of a more important nature. let me caution you, too, against reading any of the modern german works on æsthetics; they can be only imperfectly understood without a knowledge of the philosophies, of which they form a part, and any advantage you may derive from them will not be at all commensurate to the time and trouble, especially for you who have so much positive knowledge to acquire. if, however, any of your german friends can convey to you in conversation any clear ideas on the subject (and if they have them themselves there is no reason why they should not), well and good, but do not let them impose upon you, as they so often do upon themselves, with words either without any well-defined meaning, or one different from, or even the direct contrary, of the usual one. according to hegel, for instance, 'das schöne, ist das _scheinen_' (schöne from scheinen) 'der _idee_ durch ein sinnliches medium.' now every artist knows without hegel that his idea, or, if he prefers to think so, nature's idea within and through him, appears or manifests itself in the sensuous material, in colours if he be a painter, or stone if he be a sculptor, but this would be worse than trite, it would be intelligible to a plain understanding. _idee_ has a far deeper meaning. if you hear a german flourishing away with the magic word, ask him what he means. he will tell you, perhaps, that it is das absolute or der objective geist as distinguished from the begriff or subjectiver geist, or rather the indifference of both, and that is neither one nor t'other, but potentially either, or the _an sich_, or _an und für sich_, or rather the _an, für, über sich_; at last after much _hin und herreiten_ you get some faint glimmering of what is meant; perhaps what some people call the soul in nature, or in still plainer english, nature, or the unknown cause of all we see, not an abstraction but a real entity, impersonal, however, and therefore not a god, acting according to certain laws, unconsciously in external nature (in ihrem anders'sein) coming to itself--acting consciously in man, but more reflectively in science, more instructively in art. well, you have caught the _idee_ at last (perhaps!) through its many proteus-like changes and recognise an old friend after all--scratch your head, and ask whether you are any wiser than before. 'das scheinen der idee durch ein sinnliches material'--in the madonna of raphael, for instance--'ist das schöne.' why then, says punch, not equally so in the pork-pie and the mustard-pot, since the _idee_ manifests itself equally in both. the german solves the difficulty by "sie sind ein practischer engländer, und haben keinen speculativen geist." in the meantime, let us hope that nature will use you as her tool to carry out in colours and canvas some of her beautiful ideas, and leave it to the german to find out how the practical englishman who has not read hegel's "Æsthetics" has set about it. that you may accomplish this to the utmost extent of your wishes is the sincere wish of, dear fred, your affectionate father, fredc. leighton. _p.s._--"werkzeug der natur" is an idea by no means peculiar to hegel. "_your_ birthday-- "dearest mamma, may it be a right happy one--one that may serve, and be used, as a pattern to cut out others on. judging by your accounts, there is one among you who will contribute mirth to your enjoyment--one who takes as many shapes as proteus, and is always the most welcome of guests; his name is _bettering_. in this world confident expectation is a greater blessing, almost, than fruition. i too, if my directions have been followed (as i confidingly hope), shall have appeared to you on the great day _as good as gold_. "how grieved i was, dearest mother, to hear that i had given so much pain to the kindest of hearts! my excuse, such as it was, you got in my last letter, which reached probably the day after you posted your epistle to me; i was sincerely sorry; i had not, i must confess, any idea of anxious suspense on your part, as you were not in expectation of any _particular_ news; i shall in future try to be more deserving of your solicitude; this time, you see, i am punctual. "health report. taking all in all, tol. sat., owing, no doubt, to the unusually magnificent weather which we have had since i arrived here; rheumatism, average; colds, not more than usual; eyes?... hum ... might be better; i suppose macaroni 'al burro' are not unwholesome--i and gamba and several others eat it nearly every day. "i now turn to your letter. little gussy an authoress! dear child, it gives one unfeigned pleasure to hear of her successful _début_. i have myself had no opportunity of judging of her talent for writing, but feel convinced that with her warm heart, impressionable soul, sterling understanding, and quick powers of observation, whatever she writes will please a healthy taste. she has my very best wishes. and yet, what slight cloud was that, i felt pass over my pleasure, casting (i could not help it) an undefined shadow on my heart? did not i feel startled at being so palpably reminded that the _child_ gussy no longer exists? did i not seem to feel, disagreeably, that the bridge was cut down behind us, that the last tie was broken that, in gussy's person, still linked us to childhood, the buoyantly confiding age, the irresponsible age? did not i become, through her, painfully aware that when i took leave of you, you all sealed with your kiss the first volume of my life, that i am indeed launched into the second, that the rehearsal is indeed over and the curtain drawn up? "and do i not feel, even now, a _hypocrite_, _to know_ my path, and yet so often to deviate from it? write often, dear mother! "the hint you gave me about husbanding my time, i shall take to heart; it is a thing of which i myself full well feel the necessity and know the unfailing benefit; but i confess that when i read your quotation from 'bob,' i felt irresistibly reminded of the question once put to sage and wise courtiers by the facetious monarch 'who never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one,' viz. why is a tub of water with a goose in it lighter than one without? "'god help thee, southey, and thy readers too!' (byron). "your next question is: am i comfortably _settled_ in rome? well, i am happy to say that since the first week or fortnight my prospects have been slowly but steadily brightening, one cloud after another has passed away, and though i do not expect to see the bright sky of fulfilled expectations quite unveiled, yet i look forward to the enjoyment sooner or later of contentment. i wrote my last letter in a tone of considerable disheartenment, which i was indeed labouring under; perhaps it was the triumph of a selfish feeling that made me communicate my woes to you when it was not in your power to mend them; but yet it is such a relief to feel that there are those who are not indifferent to our grievances, who rejoice when _we_ rejoice, and weep when _we_ weep; and then, too, it seemed to me that perhaps a word from you might throw a new light on my position and give me new reason to be comforted. meanwhile, altered circumstances have reassured me on some points, and my own reason has pacified me on others which i saw to be irremediable; the prospect of emulation of a peculiar kind, such as i found in steinle, and generally speaking in the german school (i do not mean the emulation of industry which i find amply in gamba, or in the science of the art which i have lately discovered amongst certain young frenchmen, but that which affects the animating _spirit_ of the art, the _spiritual_ taste, the tendency of one's thoughts), i have entirely renounced; the visions that i had (god knows why, for i don't think i ever expected to grasp them) of a time like that of steinle's sojourn in rome, when so many master-minds were united together in friendly strife, all inspired by the same spirit, all going hand in hand--have all faded away, and only linger in my mind as a sweet regretted image, like the gentle glow of twilight in the western sky when the cold moon is already in the heavens. but i have, on the other hand, seen reason to believe that this will turn out for my good; that it is proper that i should, once for all, and in all things, accustom myself to the idea that i am, or should be, a _self-dependent_ and _self-actuated_ being, accountable to myself for good and for evil; that i must therefore learn to build and rely on my own resources, and remember the most important of truths, that if the growth of my art is to be healthy, lasting, fruit-bearing, it must, though fostered from without, be rooted deeply in, and receive its vital sap from the soil of my own mind. still, i have thought it good to hang up in my studio a work of cornelius and one or two of steinle, to animate myself by dwelling constantly on _an idea of excellence_ (not _ideal_, i hate such stuff) irrespective of the _specific mode_ in which it is manifested; and in this i think i have chosen the _juste milieu_--so far my reason. yet i do not deny that i every now and then feel longings and regrets that make me feel the truth of those lovely words-- "'we look before and after, and pine for what is not; our sincerest laughter with _some_ pain is fraught.' "among the irremediable disappointments on which i have to put the best face, is that of not seeing oakes here this winter. from a man of warm feelings, of tastes congenial to my own, of a cultivated and liberal mind, i had hoped to derive much pleasure and especially advantage, and thus to have supplied in some measure the void which must arise (and, alas! remain) in my brain from want of time, want of robuster health, want of eyes. a friendship, too, of mutual seeking is so agreeable a thing. matters stand so: when i was in florence i received from him a letter full of a kind and friendly spirit, in which he seized with eagerness at the idea of spending a winter with me in rome; he was already in paris, where he was in treaty with a travelling servant in order to continue his journey; he had written to you (did you get the letter?) to know where he was most likely to catch me up; he was anticipating the enjoyment we should find together in venice, or in florence, or wherever we should meet; this letter has been waiting for me a month at the post. i arrive in rome, and look anxiously about for oakes, who, i suppose, must already have arrived; no oakes--no news--suspense--despair; at last a letter: he has been recalled from paris; he is obliged, willy nilly, to stand for his borough (conservative, ministerial); he is an m.p. "another disappointment, hitherto, is the non-arrival of the laings; i had promised myself great enjoyment in isabel's society; the footing on which we stand is such an agreeable one: enough familiarity (for old friendship's sake) to make our intercourse easy--a relaxation; enough restraint to refine it and make it improving; she plays, too. music! how i yearn for music, which i never hear in the land best adapted to foster it; music, that humanises the soul, that calls forth all that is refined and elevated and glowing and impassioned in one's breast, and without which the very lake of one's heart ('il lago del cuore,' dante) stagnates and is congealed. i express myself extravagantly, but my words flow from my heart. "again, the studio, which i at last found, though snug and cheerful, very (let's give the devil his due), is, in its professional capacity, bad beyond description; the light is execrable; i could not dream of painting a picture in it (thank god, i have only taken it till spring), scarcely even a portrait, 'which is absurd,' euclid, hem. what a list of lucubrations! for goodness' sake, let me look at the gay side of the picture. it has been a great comfort to me all through that all the artists resident here, whom i have spoken to on the subject, felt on first arriving the same kind of disappointment that i did, and that all by degrees have acquired the conviction that, after all, it's the best place in the world for study. i have myself begun to feel what an incalculable advantage it is always to have models at your disposition whenever, and _however_, you want them; i look forward, too, with the greatest delight to the studies that i shall make this summer in the exquisitely beautiful spots to which the artists always take refuge from the heat and malaria of rome. i long to find myself again face to face with nature, to follow it, to watch it, and to copy it, closely, faithfully, ingenuously--as ruskin suggests, 'choosing nothing, and rejecting nothing.' i have come to the conviction that the best way for an historical painter to bring himself home to nature, in his own branch of the art, is strenuously to study _landscape_, in which he has not had the opportunity, as in his own walk, of being crammed with prejudices, conventional, flat--academical. but i am getting to the end of my paper, and i have as yet said but little to the point; i have not yet answered papa's question about my sketching, and therefore that i may not seem to be shirking the point, i shall just tell you that amongst the sketches that i have made (mostly architectural) are some by _far the best i ever did_.[ ] i have also to justify marryat about not writing; i got his letters the other day with a kind note to say that he had been ill; that to the princess doria has availed me nothing, as she is in mourning for her father, lord shrewsbury; that to the prince massimo has opened to me at once two of the first and most exclusive houses in rome, those of his two sisters, the princess lancelotti and the duchess del drago. enough for to-day. good-bye, dearest mother. very best love to all. think often of your dutiful and affectionate son, "fred leighton. "i am ashamed to think of the time i have taken writing this letter; not from want of ideas, not from any great difficulty in expressing them, but from the great difficulty i have in getting at them, controlling them, holding them fast. "'a saucepan without a handle. soup without a spoon.' "via di porta pinciana, n. ." "roma, via di porta pinciana, n.v. (_postmark, jan. , ._) "dear papa,--when i received, the other day, your kind and most interesting letter, and felt the appropriateness of your admonitions--felt, too, how foolish it is for me, who am ignorance personified (in certain matters, at least) to waste _my_ time in speculations on subjects beyond my grasp, and to exhaust _your_ patience by twaddling them out to you, whilst your own penetrating and comprehensive mind takes, in preference, a practical view of the subject--a question suddenly presented itself to me: bless my soul! what will he say to the epistle i have just sent off? for, as you, by this time, know yourself, it is, though perhaps less groggy than the last, still insufficient in point of practical purport; a _messed-up_ dish, not a joint. i hasten, if possible, to make 'amende honorable' by communicating to you in language as concise as possible whatever information you either express or hint a desire to have. "one word only, a farewell one, on the subject of my _ci-devant_ digressions; no, _three_ words; i must say in my own justification. st. that when i sat down to write, it was always with an idea of telling all (or nearly), and all in detail, too, from which i was prevented by invariably getting to the end of my paper, my time, and my eyes (as it would try them to cross) before i had accomplished my object; nd. that i have been discursive with an idea of entertaining for a time the suffering members of the family; rd. that all my abstract drawl, though it in some cases abutted in tenets that i had at different times heard you let fall, was _altogether_ my own; indeed it was, perhaps, the consciousness of the instinctive _self-suggestedness_ of such thoughts that made me turn round on myself and take an objective view of ditto. a philosopher is very like a dog trying to catch his own tail. "now to business. you speak of my eyes; i cannot conceal from you that they are worse than they were at frankfurt, but i do not know whether i can say that they are _getting gradually_ worse; everybody takes some time in getting _acclimatisé_ to rome; my sufferings may perhaps be ascribed to that. i intend for some months to give up the nude in the evening. your advice about gathering information from the conversation of men of cultivated mind i would most gladly follow, but, alas, i only know _two_ really well-informed people here, and one is an old man i hardly ever see. there is no fear of my drawing my compositions too small, for (i shall tell you why presently) i am drawing _none at all_, and probably shall draw none for a considerable time; but close and minute study of nature in its details is, as i now see more plainly than ever, of paramount importance. i come to another point which it is difficult to touch with conciseness: have i made any progress? perhaps i am not entitled to answer positively in the affirmative till i shall have painted some portrait or picture better than anything i have yet produced; this i have not yet had an opportunity of doing; but if, from superlative confidence, having fallen to a more beseeming diffidence, if having improved and chastened my taste, if having become more anxiously aware of the extent of my task and more deeply humbled by those who have fulfilled it, may be called progress, then i can answer: yes, i have made a step. "i was deeply impressed with the glorious works of art i saw in venice and florence, and was particularly struck with the exquisitely _elaborate_ finish of most of the leading works by _whatever_ master; the highest possible finish combined with the greatest possible breadth and grandeur of disposition in the principal masses; art with the old masters was full of love, refined, utterly sterling. i had got during my journey through the tyrol into a frame of mind that rendered me particularly accessible to such impressions; i had been dwelling with unwearied admiration on the exquisite grace and beauty of the details, as it were, of nature; every little flower of the field had become to me a new source of delight; the very blades of grass appeared to me in a new light. you will easily understand that, under the influence of such feelings, i felt the greatest possible reluctance to _sketch_ in the hasty manner in which one does when travelling; i shunned the idea of approaching nature in a manner which seemed to me disrespectful, and the consequence was that until i got to verona i did not touch a pencil. in venice and florence, however, i made several drawings, some of which are most highly finished, and afforded me, whilst i was occupied on them, that most desirable kind of contentment, the consciousness of endeavour. of course i was obliged to conquer to a certain extent my aversion to anything but finished works, and accordingly i made a considerable number of _sketches_ 'proprement dits.' with regard to composing, however, i still feel the same paralysing diffidence, i cannot make up my mind to draw compositions like those i have hitherto produced, but, at the same time, i feel that i am as yet incapable of drawing any in the manner i should wish, and as i see no prospect of such a desirable state of things till i have spent a summer in the mountains and drawn landscape, men and animals for several months, it is very unlikely that i shall put my hand to anything original till next winter; then i shall pour myself out with a vengeance. when i left frankfurt i asked steinle whether i should compose the first winter; he answered: '_oh, wenn sie mögen._' he foresaw how it would be. it gives me great comfort to feel that i am quietly settled to study for some years in one place, and that i am able to make plans for the future without having to reckon on removals and changes. meanwhile, this winter i take models, i have been studying the anatomy of the horse, i shall draw at the vatican from raphael and michael angelo (_perhaps_, too, from the antique), &c. &c. a digression, whilst i think of it: i think that the pains in my eyes are in some measure nervous, for mentioning them invariably brings them on, in broad daylight. about the little emulation i find here i have spoken in my last letter. the general tone here (of course with some exceptions) is one of public toadying mediocrity. there is here one young frenchman, remarkable for correctness but coldly scientific (only in his art), without that warmth and spontaneity which give such a peculiar charm to works of genius. overbeck was endlessly courteous and praised me very highly, talked of the artists in rome acquiring in us 'einen ächten zuwachs' ('a real addition'), but the half century between our respective ages and his pietistical manner make me sure that we shall derive but little advantage from him; i neither expected nor wished to find a second steinle. "as for powers, though he was very polite to me in his own sort of way, i am pretty certain that he had entirely forgotten, nor did he ask me to show him anything. you may console yourself on that score--a sculptor, especially one who can do little but busts (however pre-eminently good they may be, and _his_ are), can very seldom judge well of pictures. gibson, the great sculptor, whom i know very well, and who shows me great kindness by-the-bye, has about as little judgment in painting as a man well can. that i _do_ find models here, and many other material advantages, i told you in the letter that you lately received. "i have now, dear papa, answered all your questions; it only remains for me to thank you for your poignant and admirably practical remarks on the german philosophers--remarks, i assure you, which have quite answered their purpose; both they and the kind wishes you have expressed concerning my future advancement shall not have been thrown away on your grateful and affectionate son, "fred leighton." [illustration: study of head for "cimabue's madonna." erroneously supposed to be the portrait of lord leighton leighton house collection] (_postmark, jan. , ' ._) "dearest mamma,--to your appendix an appendix. paper and time force me to laconism. "my personal discomforts, for which you show such kind sympathy, are, i am happy to say, now only very slight; the only thing i suffer annoyance from is my stove, which makes my head ache; with regard, however, to beating a retreat, i must candidly tell you that i see my only chance of coming to anything is studying here steadily for _some three_ years; the more so that it is by all accounts only at the end of the first year that one feels all the advantages which rome affords. my plans seem to be these: this winter, studies; next summer, ditto, in the mountains, or wherever it is coolest; next winter, pictures, portraits, compositions; summer after, paris, see the large veronese (which was invisible the last time i was there); from paris to bath to see all you darlings again, spend two or three weeks in england studying its character under the ciceroneship of oakes, that thorough briton, and collecting materials for some large (in meaning if not in size) picture to be painted in rome during the third winter, and to be my firstling in an english exhibition; i feel that one day my painting will have a strongly national bias. that autumn i should probably return to rome _viâ_ spain to see the murillos, &c. "when you next write to lady pollington, pray remember me very kindly to her; her merry face and facetious ways are still before me. lord walpole, whom you mention as coming to rome, and whom i shall know if he does, is indeed, i believe, a very agreeable and clever man. the henry walpoles have been very civil to me; mrs. walpole told me that if i wrote to you i was to give her best--i think she said, _love_--for that you were a great favourite of hers. "here i must absolutely close, though i have plenty more to say. my very best thanks to papa and you all for the kind presents, but i don't see why you won't allow me the pleasure of giving you anything. as i have written this letter immediately after the other, i cannot promise to write again soon. to yourselves, very best love from your dutiful and affect. "fred leighton." the following letters from steinle are evidently the first leighton received in rome from his master. no comment on them is necessary. every line is evidence of the affectionate quality and beauty of the nature that so permanently influenced leighton's for good. _translation._] "frankfurt am main, _january , _. "my very dear friend,--although i do not know your address, and am uncertain whether this will reach you, yet i can no longer withstand the urging of my heart; i only know that you and gamba are in rome, that you have visited overbeck, as he himself has written me; assuming, however, that you also visit the café greco, i will risk that address. your spirited lines from venice reached me safely, and i can truly say that since then my thoughts and my good wishes for you and for gamba have daily accompanied you. a report which has been circulated here, that you, gamba, and andré had been attacked by robbers, made me anxious for a time, and i expected from day to day that you would yourself write me something about this adventure--in vain. overbeck writes me now that it would give him particular satisfaction to be able to help or serve you in any way during your stay in rome, and cordially wishes that you and gamba would give him the opportunity to do so, but unfortunately he knew nothing else about you to tell me. what schäffer writes me is also so extremely scanty, that for all that concerns you and rico i am thrown back on my own thoughts and suppositions. that you are both absent from me is unfortunately a painful truth; as to whether the ideal life which from old and dear habit i still live with you, be also true, the future, i hope, may show. i have an idea that you, dear friend, and perhaps also your faithful comrade, already suffer from the artistic fever of rome, which every one feels in the first year. it is that glorious old rome, with her wealth, and the multitude of her impressions, which works so powerfully upon the receptive mind, that it can retain nothing in contradiction, and cannot escape her influence; this period is one of discomfort, because we feel ourselves oppressed; but though it is of the greatest value, and no doubt bears rich fruit, the work of artists of to-day is neither in a position to offer you anything important, nor to deceive you in sight of the old masters; if the multitude of impressions is first gradually assimilated, if everything is assigned its place, if we take a wide survey, and can stride forward freely in pursuit of the goal set before us, then only does that wonderful spirit which hovers over rome rise up in us strong and inspiring, and then we are able to recognise what we have actually won in the fight with discomfort. thus, and in similar circumstances, i fancy that my dear friends are in the same case as the bees, which swarm, and toil with all the load they collect, but cannot make honey by perpetual sucking. that is inconvenient and oppressive, but ah! when this time is past, what wealth will they unfold, with what comfort will they look upon the well-filled satchel, how quickly they will recognise that such wealth pays interest for the whole life! but if it is otherwise, dear friend, then laugh at the all-wise steinle, and resolve finally to free him from such delusions, and to set the matter before his eyes as it really is, and be you assured of one thing, that he always wishes that everything may be good and prosperous for you, that all that you are longing to attain you may attain, and that almighty god may guard you and rico from all ill! you can have had no idea with what feelings your friend would read your vigorous, spirited lines from venice. i received them, on my return, from gamba, a very dear lad, and could not help being sorry that you, who have become so dear to me, should know absolutely nothing of what distressed your friend. we are men; hear, then, the news. returning from switzerland, i heard of the illness of my daughter anna, in metz, and i and my wife hurried to her, and spent six sorrowful days by the death-bed of my little sixteen-year-old daughter. after the funeral, i came back here, and finished 'the raising of jairus' daughter.' the real pleasure of my art i felt shrink from me day by day in metz; and now all my pleasure depends upon the beloved art, for happiness is more and more confined within the four walls of my _atelier_. do not read any complaint in this; i have learnt much sadness, but have also found rich cause to thank god from my heart. what manner of children should we be, if we would not kiss the rod when we are chastised? and now, dear friend, with all my heart a greeting to rome, and to all who remember me kindly. all friends here send greetings to you and gamba, including casella il professore; senator nay is in rome. i hope with all my heart that you have good news of your dear ones, and remain, always and altogether yours, "steinle." [illustration: view of subiaco, near rome. leighton house collection] _translation._] "most esteemed herr steinle,--when you receive these lines i shall have already been long in the lovely land wherein i lack nothing but your presence; i beg you to accept from me the accompanying translation of the first volume of the works of the father of english poetry as a little remembrance; whether it is a good rendering of the great master i cannot judge, as at the moment of writing it has not arrived; but one thing i can answer for: it is the only volume of the only translation of chaucer into the german language in existence; i only regret that there is also no italian version; may it serve you as a souvenir of your devoted and grateful pupil, "fred leighton." "frankfurt a/m." _translation._] "rome, via della purificazione no. , _january _. "my very dear friend,--at last i am able to write you a few words, and (although very late) to send you my very best good wishes and congratulations for the new year. i am sure that you will be kind enough to forgive my long silence, and will believe me when i tell you that i absolutely could not help it. i hope with all my heart that in the meantime you have been well and strong, and that your beautiful works have progressed in accordance with your wishes. how has the experiment with the new ground turned out? have you already started on the other cartoon? i, for my part, have experienced the fact that to make plans and to carry them out are two different things; for nothing has come of the pictures which i set myself to paint. i have already told you in frankfurt, dear master, how painfully my deficiency pressed upon me, and how clearly i felt that my works lacked a highly genuine finish in the form, an intimate knowledge of nature; this consciousness had so increased when i arrived in rome that without more ado i determined to employ myself during the whole winter exclusively upon school tasks, and by all means to endeavour to rid my artistic capacity a little of this defect; so now i continually paint study heads, which i try to finish as much as possible, and in which i especially have good modelling in view; that i have achieved this, unfortunately i cannot yet assert, but i derive great enjoyment from the attempt, and hope that my efforts will not remain unrewarded; i shall then next year, if i come to the painting of pictures again, go to work with greater knowledge and clearness, and shall be able, i hope, to clothe my ideas more suitably. "i have nothing further to report of myself. i hope, my dear friend, to receive a few lines from you, telling me what you are doing, for you know well how deeply interested i am. "will you be so kind as to tell mr. welsch that my trouble to find the palazzo scheiderff was in vain, and i have also unluckily not seen his brother? if i pass through florence again in spring, i will try my luck once more. and now, adieu, dear master. kindest remembrances to your wife and children, and to you the warmest greeting, from your grateful pupil, "leighton." _translation._] "frankfurt am main, _march , _. "my very dear friend,--my desire for news of you and gamba was certainly great, but i possessed my soul in patience, for i was convinced that it would come at last; you and rico have given me so many proofs of your love and friendship, that i was able to face with perfect calm and confidence all the numerous and impatient questions for news of you which came to me. now, however, i see by your welcome lines, to my inward regret, that some restrained anxiety about you is justified, and while on one hand i greatly regret the weakness of your eyes and in a manner suffer with you, yet i have also my consoling argument that the roman climate, at a better time of year, will certainly be good for your ailment, and that my leighton can rise up again, that he will not lose courage. but whatever joy i had when you and your noble friends bore such splendid witness of one another, i cannot express myself as very easily satisfied; that you, in your efforts, would stand alone in rome, i knew well, i am sure you are cut out for it, and it appears to me, even, as if every good heart that rises to a happy independence nowadays, must feel his loneliness, i might even say, that it must in order to give skill and power of conviction. the better you get to know rome, the more you will learn to love her, and much will be freely given, when once the year of struggle is past, that could never be seized by force. how much i have rejoiced over all that you write of your and rico's studies, how i should like to see them! cling now to nature, you are quite right, you will not lose the art of composition, for it is not a thing that can be acquired: it is a gift, and one that you and rico possess. now, indeed, it always seems to me, when i consider the highest aims of art, and indeed the greatest capacities of man, that there should be a certain equalisation of the various powers, and it strikes me as indispensable, if we are not to become one-sided, that we should by such equalisation balance these various powers so as to achieve a _complete harmony_. thus, however great a delicacy goose-liver may be, it always indicates a diseased goose, the monstrous enlargement of an organ, &c.; i do not say this by way of blame, and am thinking perhaps too much only of my own feeble powers, but merely as a little warning that it may be well to keep in view. do not think that it is the professor asserting himself, i say this only as a matter of experience and because you and rico lie very close to my heart, and are associated with my own feeling of the sacredness of art. i have, however, no anxiety; you have good and noble natures, and will not lose the tracks of truth. spare and save your eyes, i hope that you will soon be quite free from this ill, and then--forward! what you write me of the friends is certainly quite correct, and i myself thought no otherwise; overbeck is the purest and noblest man that i have ever met; moreover a genius--therefore i rejoice that you and rico know him; he speaks with feeling and judgment of his art. excuse, dear leighton, my forgetfulness; i have not thought of the dear and lovely present which with your note surprised me so pleasantly on my return--i mean the powerful and rich chaucer; i find the prologue splendid, rather knotty, but the germans of that time are still knottier. i thank you heartily. of myself, i can inform you, that i daily rejoice more over the grey canvas; i have worked two months on my picture of the 'whitsun-sermon,' and now in three weeks have painted half the picture, and am, even though somewhat exhausted, not altogether discontented with the result. this picture, which grows daily more like a fresco, is getting on fast, but much still remains to be done, and i have the progress of the whole picture in hand. of the friends here, i can tell you that all speak of you and gamba with love and sympathy, and that you are kindly remembered by all. thank rico cordially for his welcome note; if you and rico always call me 'master,' a title which abashes me, we shall be friends, and i hope that as i grow old in years, at least i shall remain young in art. tell rico that i had a visit from his grandmother, who loves him dearly; with a few lines he would give her extreme pleasure. now, adio, dear friend; equip yourself with patience and courage, and keep sad thoughts far from you. greet all friends from me most heartily, also i have to send to you and gamba warmest greetings from all here, including my wife, frau ruth schlosser, and casella. let me hear sometimes how you get on. always and altogether yours, "edw. steinle." (_postmark, march , . received april ._) (_on cover_--mrs. leighton, brock street, bath, england.) "rome, via de porta pinciana . "dearest mamma,--if i did not, as was naturally my first impulse, answer your letter directly i received it, it was because isabel's[ ] portrait has of late taken up all the time, or rather eyes, that i can dispose of; this being, however, a _drying_ day, i seize the opportunity of making up for lost time. as i have mentioned the portrait, i may as well say _en passant_ that i expect it to be a very successful likeness, and as decent a painting as a thing done in so desultory a manner can be expected to be; gamba admires it very much, and intends to copy some parts. i was much touched at the affectionate sympathy you show for me in my visitation, and am as glad for you as for myself to say that there is a decided improvement in the state of my eyes, so that, although they are by no means _well_, it would hardly be worth while to go to a doctor for a written account of my symptoms; the more so as dr. small, who is a man very well thought of, thinks it all depends on the weather, and will go away when fine weather sets in, which god give! add to this that several people of my acquaintance, _i.e._ mrs. sartoris and mrs. walpole, who never had anything the matter with their eyes, find them affected now. about two months ago i went to consult dr. small, or rather, on calling on him one day he _had me up_ professionally, for i felt a delicacy about going myself, as he had told me that he would be very happy to be of service to me _without_ any remuneration. finding that dr. small's prescription had done me no perceptible good, i determined at last to go to a homoeopathic physician, of whom i heard great things. he was originally the apothecary of hahneman (do i spell the name rightly?) the father of homoeopathy. under his hands i certainly improved rapidly; but it so happened that, just as i went to him, the rains, which had lasted without interruption for six weeks, ceased, and we had some days of glorious weather--now, who cured me, jove or the apothecary? the weather is now as bad again as ever; but though less well, i have not _relapsed_ with it. most days i can paint three or four hours (i don't think i could draw), and the other evening i even read half an hour with a lamp without feeling pain; what a pass things have come to that that should be a boast! i confess that the little i do, i do without energy or great enjoyment. i have not yet given my eyes the fair trial of complete rest which, when the laings go, i shall be able, through your kind promise of a piano and singing lessons, to do for a fortnight or three weeks. my sincere thanks to papa for his kindness and liberality. i shall begin immediately after the holy week, for until the _forestieri_, of which there are a fabulous number, have gone to their respective summer quarters, neither piano nor masters are in any way come-at-able. "having now spoken of my health, i return to your letter, for i find that the only way of writing at all to the point, is to answer sentence for sentence the questions and remarks you ask and make, and in the same order. "i indeed count myself fortunate in having the acquaintance of mr. and mrs. sartoris; it is a source of the greatest enjoyment to me; they show me the most marked kindness, which i value all the more because it is for my own sake, and not for that of a dinners-demanding letter of introduction. i am never there less than three times a week, and often more; i have dined with them _en famille_ four times, and it is only seven weeks since i made their acquaintance. although i have a good many friends here, it is the only house which it is improving to me to frequent; her conversation is most agreeable to me, not from any knowledge she displays, but from her great refinement of feeling and taste; her husband is an enthusiastic amateur painter. i also meet there a young man of the name of cartwright, a very old friend of theirs, who seems to me to possess an extraordinary amount of information, a mine which i have already begun to 'exploiter' to my own profit. "i have made a considerable number of acquaintances, and have had more than enough parties, for people have a habit here of receiving once a week, so that, especially towards the end of the season, there never was an evening when i could not have gone somewhere, and often i had two or three places for one night; i used often to stay away from them, till i was afraid of offending people, which one does not wish to do when one experiences kindness from them. then came a long series of arrears, which i found most monotonously tiring, for i am more lazy about dressing for a party than ever; more than once, when i have gone to my room to go through that hateful operation, i have slipped into bed instead of into my glazed boots; and yet, if i had taken the steps a great many young men do take, i should have gone to twice the number of places. now all this was very well for this winter, as i could do nothing else on account of my eyes, but next year i shall turn over quite a new leaf; in the first place, give up dancing altogether--it is too fatiguing; and in the next, go nowhere but to my old acquaintances (of this winter, i mean). "i have lionised isabel all over rome, and devoted to her nearly all my afternoons since she came; it is the luckiest thing in the world, her coming here at a time when i am not able to paint; she is going in a few days; you may easily imagine that i have not slept in the afternoons since she has been here. "gamba is, as you rightly suggested, far too straitened to go into society; however, he no way requires it, he has good health and untiring industry, and requires no such relaxation. as my paper is coming to an end, i must pass over the rest of your letter more rapidly. i fully feel with you that it is better in many respects that i should not go to frankfurt, but i confess that when i saw it was out of the question, i felt painfully having to wait another year before seeing you; however, it is for the best. i am interested in hearing that you have bought a house in bath; it looks as if you had at last found an anchor in your own country; is the society of bath really agreeable? i always hear it spoken of in a jocular tone. what becomes of the frankfurt house? you won't sell it, will you? pray remember me most kindly to kate chamberlayne, and thank her for giving such an unworthy a corner in her memory. "and now, dear mamma, i must close. pray write very soon, and give me a quantity of news about all your doings; tell me how dear lina gets on and gussy's pegasus." the preceding letter contains the first mention that i have seen of leighton's friends, mr. and mrs. sartoris, who were to be so much to him during twenty-five years of his life. he had known them seven weeks when he wrote it, and already rome had become a happier place. all that most interested him in social intercourse was satisfied in their companionship, and in that of the intimate circle of friends who frequented their house. it soon became a second home, a home doubly welcome, as leighton felt keenly being separated from his family. mr. sartoris was a fairly good amateur artist, and was considered by his friends to be a first-rate critic of painting. to leighton's reasoning mind, ever prone to analyse and to give expression to the results of his analysis, it must have been inspiringly interesting to discuss art in general and his own in particular with one who had a natural gift for criticism. again, music was ever a joy to leighton, a joy only equalled by that inspired by his own art. mrs. sartoris (adelaide kemble), imbued with the noble dramatic instincts and traditions of the kembles, was not only a great singer, but a great musician, and had in all matters a fine taste, bred of true and deep feeling united with keen natural perceptions. in miss thackeray's "preface to a preface" to mrs. sartoris' delightful story, "a week in a french country house," she quotes the description of one who had known the two sisters, fanny and adelaide kemble, from their youth: "mrs. kemble is essentially poetic and dramatic in her nature; mrs. sartoris, so much of an artist, musical, with a love for exquisite things and all that belongs to form and colour." (some of us remember hearing lord leighton say that, though mrs. sartoris did not paint, she was a true painter in her sense of beauty of composition, in her great feeling for art.) another old friend, referring to mrs. sartoris, with some show of reason deprecated any attempt to record at all that which was unrecordable: "would you give a dried rose-leaf as a sample of a garden of roses to one who had never seen a rose?" she exclaims, recalling, not without emotion, the golden hours she had spent, the talks she had once enjoyed in the warsash pergola. "you have only to speak of things as they are," said a great critic who had known mrs. sartoris in her later years. "use no conventional epithets: those sisters are beyond any banalities of praise." again, take another verdict: "that fine and original being, so independent and full of tolerance for the young; sympathising even with _misplaced_ enthusiasm, entering so vividly into a girl's unformed longings. when i first knew her, she seemed to me to be a sort of revelation; it was some one taking life from an altogether new and different point of view from anything i had ever known before." such are the descriptions given by those who knew her intimately of the lady who held out so kind a welcoming hand to leighton when, as a youth of twenty-two, he started for the first time alone on the journey of life. i saw mrs. sartoris only two or three times at the house of our mutual friends, mrs. nassau senior and mrs. brookfield. it was during the last years of mrs. sartoris' life, when illness and sorrow had marked her noble countenance with suffering. a friend of mine, however, who was greatly attached to mrs. sartoris, would often talk to me of her. my friend had had exceptional opportunities of coming in contact with the most distinguished minds in europe. she told me she had never met with any personality who naturally, and apparently without effort, so completely dominated all others who were present. however distinguished the guests might be at a dinner, mrs. sartoris, she said, was invariably the centre of interest to all present. the sartoris children were another source of delight to leighton in this home. no greater child-lover ever existed. he writes, moreover, that all social pleasures which he enjoyed during the three years he lived in rome he owed to these friends. with life brightened and inspired by their sympathy, and by all the sources of interest and culture which their society included, leighton began brooding over the work which he meant should embody the best of his attainments so far as they were then developed. florence and her art had cast a spell on his spirit very early in his existence. he had become especially enamoured of giotto, the half-catholic, the half-greek giotto. pheidias had not yet touched him intimately; but his loving, spontaneous appreciation of this florentine master, whose work in one sense echoes the secret of the noble, serene sense of beauty to be found in that of the greeks, proves that in very early days leighton's receptive powers were alive to it. the subject which inspired his first great effort appealed especially to leighton from more than one point of view. in the historical incident which he chose was evinced the great reverence and appreciation with which the early florentines regarded art, even when expressed in the archaic form of cimabue's painting. the fact of his picture of the madonna causing so much public enthusiasm was in itself a glorification of art; a witness that in the integral feelings of these italians such enthusiasm for art could be excited in all classes of the people. one of the doctrines leighton most firmly believed, and most often expressed, was that of the necessity of a desire for beauty among the various classes of a nation, poor and rich alike, before art of the best could become current coin.[ ] in painting the scene of cimabue's madonna being carried in triumph through the streets to the church of sta. maria novella, leighton felt he could record not only his own reverence for his vocation, but the fact that all who follow art with love and sincerity find a common ground, whatever the class may be to which they belong. to steinle, religion and art were as one, and his pupil had so far been inoculated with his master's feeling that, as his friend and brother artist, mr. briton rivière, writes: "art was to leighton almost a religion, and his own particular belief almost a creed." as no difference of class should be recognised in church, so neither should any be accentuated between artists, when such are worthy of their calling, a belief which leighton carried into practice all his life in his relations with his brother artists. he makes cimabue, the noble, lead by the hand the shepherd boy giotto, who was destined to outstrip his patron in the race for fame, and to become so great an influence in the history of his country's art. the magnates of the city are represented in leighton's procession as forming part of it, while dante, standing in a shadowed corner, is watching it pass. again, leighton was afforded an opportunity, in the accessories of the design, of painting the things which had entranced him in those days when he first fell in love with italy; the mediæval costumes in the old pictures, the background to the _città dei fiori_ of hills, spiked with cypresses pointing dark, black-green fingers upwards to the sky, and the beautiful san miniato crowning one of their summits, the stone pines, the carnations, the _agaves_--all these things that had appealed to his native sense of beauty as such wonderful revelations, when, at the age of ten, he was transported to the sunlit land of art and beauty, after being accustomed to the sights and surroundings of a dingy region in fog-begrimed london. the subject of leighton's early _opus magnum_ was indeed no bare historical fact to his mind; it was a symbol of everything to which, in his enthusiasm for his calling, he attached the most earnest meaning, and which was also steeped in the radiant glamour cast over his spirit from childhood by the land that inspires all that is most ardent in the æsthetic emotions of an artist. the subject decided on, in the spring-time of he began working, as hard as the trouble in his eyes would permit, at the cartoons for the design. his intention of remaining in italy during the summer was frustrated, partly by the unsatisfactory state of his eyes and health generally, partly by the decision of his family to return to their home in frankfort for the summer, before finally settling in bath. this change of plans is first mentioned in a letter to steinle received february , :-- _translation._] rome, via di porta pinciano . dear master and friend,--how gladly i seize the opportunity to answer your delightful letter, and to connect myself again through the post with a man and a time round whom and which so many dear remembrances cling; that i did not do this immediately on receipt of your lines, i hope you have not set down to a possible negligence or to any sort of cooling of my grateful attachment to you, but that you have thought,--something has happened, leighton has not forgotten me; and so it is; i suffer with my eyes. how sorry i am to begin a letter by giving you such news, for you expected only to hear from me of industrious making of progress; therefore exculpation of my silence is my first duty. the disorder of my eyes is not painful; i do not suffer with it; i am only incapacitated. oh, that i were again in frankfurt, then i should be well! otherwise i am fairly well, and am intensely eager to do a great deal--and dare not; i am not altogether incapacitated, only my wings are clipped; i work for two or three hours every day, but as i cannot accomplish all that i desire, the little i can affords me the less pleasure; what, however, particularly damps my ardour is the lack of intellectual stimulus, because for _nearly six weeks_ i have not _looked at a book_, for in the evening i simply dare not do _anything_. i have driven myself out into society, till i absolutely prefer going to bed. if i could only compose in my head! but first this was always difficult for my unquiet head, and secondly i have, in consequence of this moral _sirocco_, been blown upon by such a _svoglia-tezza_ that it is quite impossible; it only remains for me to think sadly of my, and i may say to you, most sympathetic friend, of our hopeful expectation, and to vex myself with the recollection of the zeal and joy with which i had commenced to put my plans into execution in venice and florence. my optic ailment is partly of the nerves, but principally rheumatic. you can imagine whether it has been improved by four weeks of unbroken wet weather! but enough of these complaints. i will now turn to your letter and answer the points on which you touch. what a refreshment your lines were to me! they are a mirror of your warm, rich soul; i read with unfeigned emotion how sympathetically you still think of your two pupils; you have not been out of our minds for a moment; see how it is in my atelier here: in your portrait you are bodily, in your writings you are spiritually, present with me daily. that i did not write to you immediately on my arrival was certainly wrong of me, for then i had not begun to suffer with my eyes; but my head was in such a maze that i always put off and thought, i will wait till i hear if he has received my first lines, quite forgetting that you did not know my address in rome. i am sure you will forgive me. what you imagined about my impressions, agrees at the first blush with the facts, but as regards the "gathered honey" it has unfortunately turned out quite differently. i feel as if blighted, and until i have the full use of my eyes it will not be otherwise. of rico i will say nothing, for he will write himself either to-day or to-morrow; i can only tell you that so far we have travelled through italy in perfect concord and friendship; but there is one thing that he will not tell you himself, he is indefatigably industrious, and has made marked progress in both drawing and painting. one word about my own development. since i left frankfurt, my observations on nature and art, in all beyond what is technical, have produced in me a curious shyness, a peculiar and uncomfortable distrust of myself. when on my journey i saw nature unfold before my eyes in her teeming summer glory, and saw how each flower is like a miracle on her richly worked garment, when i saw how golden threads wound everywhere through the whole fabric of beauty, then it seemed to me that the artist could not without sacrilege pass over the least thing that is sealed with the love of the creator; when, later on, i noticed in venice and florence with what love and truth the great masters had rendered the smallest, then my feelings arose; i knew only too well that i, until i should have drawn a multitude of studies, could not possibly complete a composition in the sense that i should wish, and otherwise i would not; and the consequence of this knowledge is that i have not attempted a stroke of composition, and i often anxiously ask myself whether i could; thus far it has worked to paralyse me, but on the other hand it has led me to draw some very complete studies which would certainly not displease you, dear master. finally, i touch upon a point which, on account of its painfulness, i would gladly pass over. i heard in florence from andré of your severe loss, and my first impulse was to write to you to express my sympathy; but when i set about it, i found it so infinitely difficult to say anything suitable without irritating your wound, that in the end i forbore. your consolation you draw from a higher source than human friendship. we have visited overbeck several times, and have found him a dear and estimable old man, but naturally the difference of age and of aims is too great between us for him to supply your place with us; besides, i do not wish that he should in any way supplant steinle in my memory or affection. flatz and rhoden have welcomed us both most cordially; your name is a charm with them; as regards their art, both are _thoroughly able_, but unfortunately such _literal copyists_ of overbeck's style that absolutely no difference is perceptible; consequently they are quite insipid to me, for i consider a real independence indispensably necessary in an artist. from all three i send you most cordial greetings. much as i could still tell you, my dear friend, i must hasten to a close on account of my eyes. i beg you not to repay my silence in kind, but when you have a moment, put a few lines on paper for the encouragement of your distant pupil. i long also to know how your works prosper, particularly the large one on the grey canvas with the light from above. accept the assurance of the unalterable, devoted attachment of your grateful pupil, fred leighton. it is not impossible that i might come to frankfurt for a short time this summer. a monsieur frederic leighton, frankfort a/m. poste restante. bath, _may , _. my beloved son,--i have hardly the courage to tell you how intense is our joy at the prospect of meeting you, so much sooner than we had hoped, knowing that our pleasure is obtained, or will be, at the expense of a grievous disappointment to your long cherished and quite reasonable hopes. your father was quite depressed the whole evening after the receipt of your last letter. i am sure i need not tell you how willingly i would relinquish my expected happiness to promote yours. i shall write but a short letter, as we hope to be in frankfort soon after this reaches its destination. surely i told you in my last epistle we mean to spend the summer at home, for the last time to bear that name, alas! i fear i shall never, in england, feel as i do in germany when tolerably well. the climate makes it impossible for me to feel that springiness of spirit so nearly allied to youthful feelings which i have often enjoyed at frankfort and for no particular reason. it was in the air, but never notice these observations in your father's presence. he is sufficiently troubled at the thoughts of depriving me of my beloved house and garden, which, after all, is done by my own desire. i have just been reading an extract from a letter to miss pakenham from mrs. maquay, partly at that lady's request, that we might know the agreeable impression you made on her and your acquaintances at rome. i will not gratify your vanity by repeating words of praise that have sunk deep into my mother's heart; "for the matter of that," i think your father and sisters are equally pleased at the tribute to your attractive qualities. i will no farther fatigue your eyes as we hope so soon to embrace you. we fervently hope your eyes will be obedient to the treatment, which shall enable you to return to rome for the winter. you cannot doubt that your father desires as much as you that you may be in a fit state to return. god bless you, my dearest, all unite in this wish, if possible, more than the others.--your tenderly attached mother, a. leighton. leighton went for medical treatment to bad gleisweiler, bei landau, and writes to steinle from there on july , :-- _translation._] honoured and dear friend,--what can you think of me for leaving you so long without news of me! it certainly did not occur through forgetfulness, but because i always deferred in the hope of being able to announce some marked improvement in my condition, but that is still impossible, although my general health (particularly in respect of the hardening against cold-catching) is much stronger, though unfortunately the improvement in my eyes is not great; this, however, requires time, and especially patience. i shall be here another fortnight, then my medical treatment will proceed in a so-called after-cure (nachkur); i shall be dieted, take many baths, work in moderation--ouf! but i will conform to it all willingly, if only i may very soon return to my adored italy. how i cherish the beloved image in my heart! how it comforts me! how many idle hours it beautifies for me! how mightily it draws me! the remembrance of the beautiful time spent there will be riches to me throughout all my life; whatever may later befall me, however darkly the sky may cloud above me, there will remain on the horizon of the past the beautiful golden stripe, glowing, indelible, it will smile on me like the soft blush of even. in the meantime, i impatiently await the moment when i shall see you again, my dear friend, and when i shall be permitted to set before your eyes the work which we have already discussed together; i shall seek so to deal with my affairs that you shall not be ashamed of your grateful and devoted pupil, fred leighton. _p.s._--i beg to be remembered most kindly to your wife, and to all my friends. (_on envelope_--a. madame leighton, frankfurt a/m.) bad gleisweiler, bei landau. (_postmark, july , ._) i had the first quarter last year; so that i shall still be where i started; however, i can say nothing more myself to papa, since he has given me to understand that his reason is want of confidence in me, for, having rejected the obstacle which i myself suggested--that he could not afford it--he leaves no other reason possible. i confess i do not feel much flattered that this feeling should have so penetrated him as to make him fall back from me on an occasion so momentous as the painting of my first exhibiting picture, a moment critical in my career, and on the immense importance of which nobody can, at other times, dwell with more disheartening eloquence than himself; how, he says, do i know that your picture will succeed? is it this doubt that makes him throw obstacles in my way? nobody is better persuaded than myself of the kindness of papa's heart, and of the sincerity of his desire for my welfare, but he does not seem in any way to realise the importance of the occasion. now, if i, like so many other young men, had gone into the army, he would not--for what father does?--have hesitated for a moment to provide me with my complete outfit as required by the rules of the regiment, for he would have felt that i could not canter about on parade without a coat; but now that i am girding myself for a far greater struggle, now that i am about, single-handed, to face the bitter weapons of public criticism, does he withhold the sword with which he might arm me, for fear i should waste my blows on the butterflies that pass me as i march into the field? at two and twenty i am still in his eyes a schoolboy whose great aim is to squeeze as much "tin out of the governor" as he can by any ingenuity contrive. will you remember me most kindly to my uncle, aunt, and cousins, and take for all yourselves the best love of your dutiful and affectionate son, fred leighton. leighton took the cartoons for his picture of cimabue's madonna to frankfort to discuss the designs with steinle and obtain from him his criticism and advice. in the autumn of , the home in frankfort was finally given up, and the family returned to bath. leighton, on his journey back to rome, stopped some weeks at florence, to steep himself afresh in her mediæval art, and to gather fresh material for the details of his picture. during this visit, he drew the group of figures painted _al fresco_ by taddeo gaddi on the walls of the capella spagnola of sta. maria novella, which included the portraits painted from life of cimabue and giotto. in this portrait leighton found the costume for the hero of his picture. he also repeated the dress in painting the cartoon for cimabue's portrait executed in mosaic in the victoria and albert museum. the pencil sketch (see list of illustrations) is wonderful as a drawing, considering the conditions under which it was made. it was secured for the leighton house collection, and in the preface for the catalogue it is described (see appendix). while at florence he wrote the following letter:-- florence, via del fasso, _november , _. [my very dear mamma],--how could you for one instant suppose that i could suspect you of coldness towards me? i was quite distressed that you should have entertained such an idea, and had i followed my first impulse should have written at once to tell you so; but, as it so easily happens when one is newly arrived in a strange place, first one thing and then another made me defer writing, till at last i made up my mind to stay at home all this morning, and not to get up till the letter should be finished; i am, however, still several days within my month. with regard to my health, i made no especial mention of it, probably because, as i have a treatment before me when i get to rome, i attached little importance to my feelings in this state of interim; however, as you mention it, i am happy to say that my faceache makes its appearance decidedly less often than it did in frankfurt, and that my eyes seem to me, if anything, better since i have got to italy. one thing is certain, and that is that my spirits are very much improved since i have got back to the dear land of my predilection; i felt it as soon as ever i arrived in venice; i felt a heavy cloud roll away from over me, the sun burst forth and shone on my path, and a thousand little springs, stifled and half-forgotten fountains of youth and joyousness, gurgled up in my bosom and buoyed up my heart, and my heart bathed in them and was glad--happy fred! that he has such sources of joy and happiness! unlucky fred! for he will never be able to live but where the heavens always smile--and where he can economise on umbrellas! i have had many happy hours within the last three weeks, but i think that the happiest time of all was the afternoon of our descent on to florence from the mountains of the romagna; even the morning of that day was very enjoyable, for although the sky was murky and cross, and it rained as far as you could see, yet i knew that that very evening, in that very coach, i should be rattling along the streets of dear, dear florence, and that bore me up, and i made light of the rain, and whistled out of tune in order to take off the wind, who, in spite of his fine voice, has certainly no ear for music. then, too, we had a most amusing coachman, who did nothing but tell stories and crack jokes the whole time. one episode is worth transcribing: "seen to-day's paper, sir?" (turning sharply round). "well, no" (says i); "anything in it?" "ah!" (says he), "very interesting correspondence from the moon." the article seems to have been as follows: "our correspondent in the moon tells us of rather a discreditable affair which has just taken place in a high quarter. it seems that the other night st. peter, having spent the evening with a few friends, by whom he was entertained with the distinguished hospitality which his high position entitled him to expect, left them in such a state of excitement and, in short, intoxication, that he lost his way, and was missing at his post till ten o'clock the next morning. unfortunately, too, he had taken the keys with him. about two o'clock in the morning a batch of souls, with passports for heaven, came up to the gates and requested admittance, but finding all knocking in vain, they were obliged to spend the night behind a cloud in a very exposed situation, which was made doubly disagreeable by their having put on in anticipation the very slight costume habitually worn in the abode of eternal happiness; several severe colds were caught." "but all this," he added (mysteriously producing a key from his waistcoat pocket), "does not affect me--letters, you know, despatches." i have myself subsequently consulted the papers in question, and find that st. peter, in the confusion of his ideas, had taken up his seat at the other sublime porte, and had inadvertently let a lot more russians into the danubian principalities. so the papers say. however, i confess that i rather question the whole affair. i close with the old, yet ever new refrain. pray, write very soon! if at once, to florence, poste restante; if not, to rome, poste restante.--with very best love to all, i remain, dearest mamma, your dutiful and affectionate son, fred leighton. [illustration: portraits of cimabue, giotto, simone memmi, and taddeo gaddi, from fresco in capella spagnola, by taddeo gaddi. santa maria novella, florence, .] bath, _august , _. my dearest freddy,--we are delighted to know you are out of rome, for it is possible to have too much of a good thing; and much as you delight in "seeing the streets flooded with light and glittering under a metallic sky" (how beautiful it must be!), the pure air of the country, a less fierce heat, and a total change of scene, will, i trust, make a new man of you. how long a holiday shall you take, and did you mean that you are staying with the sartoris family as a visitor? under all circumstances you will be a great deal with them, and as for the happiness you would so affectionately share with me, i would not, if i could, deprive you of a morsel of it; you are enjoying such unusual social advantages that it is a solace to me to know that you are capable of appreciating them. thank god, you have no taste for what so many men of your age call pleasure, and that in spite of your sociable disposition, you always show good taste in the choice of your companions. i wish we could have a little of your society. the ---- are still familiar and dear friends, but their minds are so different, so conventional, that many sides of your sisters' minds are closed, even to them. the next letter from leighton to his mother was written after he returned to rome:-- (_on cover_--mrs. leighton, rome, via felice , no. circus, bath, england.) _january , _. (_on cover--arrived jan. , ' ._) dearest mamma,--when i received your long expected letter, which, by-the-bye, took sixteen days reaching me, i was just winding myself up to write and tell you that i was sorely afraid some letter of yours must have been lost; i need hardly tell you that i was relieved of a considerable anxiety when i found that all was right, and that your letter, not mine, had been detained in that most slovenly of all institutions, the roman post. and now that i have taken up my pen, what a quantity i have to make up for in the way of congratulations, and greetings, and good wishes relative to days often and felicitously to recur! what jolly birthdays loom in the imagination, what christmas eves and christmas days, and old years going out and new ones coming, with a punctuality never known to fail! alas! that i cannot send you some outward and visible sign of my inward sympathies and hearty yearnings; here would be a fine opportunity of enumerating an extensive catalogue of blessings which i sincerely wish to see showered down upon you, but that they can all be returned in one compendious, all-embracing word--health! i therefore laconically but heartily wish you all _that_, positive or relative; and this leads me to _mine_. well, let me confess it (unromantic as it undoubtedly is); i feel there is no shirking the avowal that, stamping all things down into an average, and squinting at little annoyances, i--must i say it?--_am about as happy as the day is long_: may my happiness reflect a little of its light on your days, dearest and best of mothers! i have begun my report of health by an average of my spirits; i think there is more _à propos_ in this than one might at first sight imagine. i proceed to the other details which differ widely from your probable expectations; you ask me whether i leech myself with conscientious regularity. now i don't leech myself at all! my reason for abstaining when i first came was that i feared so strong a measure till my spectacles should arrive that i might therewithal screen and protect my exhausted blinkers. it is only the other day that the said barnacles arrived, and as i have meanwhile gone on working day after day without great inconvenience to my eyes, i really think i might do myself more harm than good by drawing blood, the more so that i am by no means a person of full habit that i could spare much of that article. on turning to your letter, i find the next point you touch is my music. i did indeed try my voice at the hodnett's as you anticipated, but unfortunately i never by any chance had anything like a decent note in my voice during the whole time that i was in florence; indeed at the very best of times it is the merest "fil de voix" that i have, which, however, would not prevent my cultivating it for my own private enjoyment, but for a circumstance which will astound you perhaps, but is nevertheless a great fact--to wit, that i can't afford it! the expenses of my pictures are far too considerable to allow of it this winter; next winter i hope to make up for lost time and still to be able to chirp some little ditty when i once more skim by the paternal nest. a piano i have, such a hurdy-gurdy! i fear, alas! i am an inveterate blockhead; i daily lament that you did not _drub_ music into me when i was a child; i should then have broken my fingers in time; my youngsters shall most assuredly learn it with a stick in their minds' eye. as we were just talking of the ----s, i must mention that i founded my opinion less on what they say than on what _i_ think and see; they could not either of them be happy if they could not have their bonnets and dresses from the most fashionable _modiste_, turn out drag of their own, and in every way be "the thing"; that they like me, i know, but i believe they would not have me if they liked me twice as much; i am not exactly poor, i admit, but i seem something like it in florence, where it is the custom for young men to drive to the cascine in elegant broughams or phaetons, to find their riding-horses at the round piazza, to prance and amble round the ladies, and then to drive home again in the style they went. but let me speak of more important things; you will be pleased to hear that my compositions have been highly approved of by all those whose opinion has weight with me. cornelius said, the first time he saw them, "ich sehe sie sind weiter als alle engländer ausgenommen _dyce_;" that is a great compliment from such a man. i have made one alteration in my plans, of which papa, i think, will not disapprove; i found, on more accurate calculation, that, in order to paint my cimabue of such a size as to be admissible to the london exhibition, the figures would be far smaller than my eyes would tolerate; i have therefore reversed the order of things, and am painting it on a large scale for the great exhibition in paris (spring, ' ), in which all nations are to be represented, and where size is rather a recommendation than an obstacle. my "romeo" i shall send to london in the same year; it will be a foot each way smaller than lady cowley's portrait; thus i also have the advantage of giving the florentine picture a size more commensurate to the art-historical importance of the event it represents. with regard to the sale of it, i hug myself with no vain delusions. i paint it for a name; i could not have a finer field than is offered by the great international exhibition in question. i must come to a close, for i expect a model immediately, and do not wish to miss to-morrow morning's post. _la suite au prochain numéro._ pray write soon, dearest mother, and tell me all i long to know about yourselves, the house, the furniture, your friends, and your dinner-party; meanwhile, having first largely helped yourself, pass up to all the dear ones very best love and kisses from your dutiful and affectionate boy, fred leighton. (_on cover_--mrs. leighton, rome, via felice , circus, bath, england.) _march , _. (_received march ._) dearest mamma,--as i see no chance of finding time to write to you in the ordinary course of things by merely waiting for it, i lay down my brush for this afternoon, and "set to" regularly pen in hand to answer your last, dated the fifth (let us be business-like), but which did not reach me till a few days ago. according to the egotistical practice which you have wished me to adopt, i begin with an account of myself: i am very much at a loss to tell you anything of my eyes that shall convey to you a correct idea of their state; one thing is certain, which is that their weakness bears no regular proportion to the work done; sometimes when i do little or nothing my eyes feel uncomfortable, and at others, when i do a great deal, i suffer nothing. for instance, yesterday, having a great deal of work cut out for the day, i worked eleven hours, with barely half an hour's respite at twelve, and, _pour comble de méfaits_, i did what i rarely venture on--i read at night; and yet i feel little or no inconvenience. the fact is, my eyes are the humble servants of my head, which is particularly sensitive; at the same time i hesitate to adopt leeches (unless, of course, papa adheres to his opinion), because i don't feel as if i were over-troubled with blood; what do you think? my _otherwise_ health is, thank god, very decent. i am not a robust man, but i jog on very comfortably, and feel very jolly, and i am sure i have a good many reasons to be so. about the hours i spend inactive, i don't feel that so severely as i did last winter, by any means; in the first place, i work till five or so (from seven or eight in the morning), then, you know, i dine at six, which i make rather a long job; then, in the evening, instead of tiring my eyes as i did last winter with dancing, _which_ i have totally forsworn (there are more "whiches" in my letter than in the whole tea-party on the blocksberg in "faust"), i spend nearly all my time at the house of my dear friends, the sartoris, where, i assure you, to pass to another point in your letter, i neglect no opportunity to cultivate my poor unlettered mind. it is indeed my _only_ opportunity, for to study, alas, i have neither time, health, nor eyes, and the hopes to which you allude, and which i myself once entertained, must, i fear, be given up. the worst feature in my mental organisation is my utter want of memory for certain things, a deficiency of which i am daily and painfully reminded by the mention in my presence of books which i have read and enjoyed, and which i have _utterly_ forgotten. my only consolation i find in the hope that i shall be able to devote myself with double energy to the art "proprement dit," and in the reflection that hardly any of the modern artists (alas, what a standard!), that have possessed extensive knowledge and varied accomplishments, have had them as a super-addition to the gift of art, but _at the expense_ of their properly pictorial faculties; to every man is dealt a certain amount of _calibre_--in one man's brain it breaks out in a cauliflower of variegated bumps, in another's it flows into one channel and irrigates one mental tree, and "sends forth fruit in due season"--hem! thus, whilst _i_ paint, _others_ shall know all about it; _i_ shall be an artist, let _them_ be connoisseurs. what did poor haydon (for i _have_ read the book) get by his mordant gift of satire and his devouring thirst for ink? he embittered old enemies, made new ones, estranged his friends, encouraged the fierce irascibility of his own temperament, allowed himself to cuddle the phantoms of undeserved neglect which always haunted him, distorted his own perceptions, and cut his throat! without that pernicious gift, haydon would not have written, the academy would have hung his pictures as they deserved, for his early works were full of promise, they would have stood by him in the hour of need; had everything that he saw and heard not fallen in distorted images on the troubled mirror of his mind, he would, no doubt, have produced better works. haydon might have been a happy man! with regard to the practical lesson to be drawn by myself, this painful book undoubtedly shows in a strong light the absurdity of _always_ painting large pictures--a practice in which, i assure you, i have not the remotest idea of indulging. to one thing, however, which you observe, dear mamma, i must beg to take exception, as involving a very important question: you say haydon persisted in following the historic style, to the exclusion of pictures of a saleable size; now this would only avail as precedent against historical art on the supposition that that walk necessarily implies colossal proportions, than which idea (though haydon seems to have entertained it) nothing can be more false. is it necessary to mention raphael's "vision of ezekiel," "madonna della seggiola," or a thousand other pictures, by him and others, which utterly confute any such notion? but even were it so, we must also not overlook the fact that the unsaleability of haydon's pictures had its cause as much in their quality as in their quantity, and i will hold up to you, in contrast to his sad story, the case of mr. watts, who gives a sketch of the artistical character at the end of the autobiography, and who has as many orders for _fresco_ as he can execute for a considerable number of years. [illustration: study of head of woman at window in "cimabue's madonna" leighton house collection] bath, _april th_. my very dear fred,--i have left a longer interval than usual between this letter and my last, for your convenience and my advantage; that is to say, that by arriving close on the time for your writing to me, the contents of this sheet, or anything in it needing comment, may not have escaped your memory till no longer wanted, for, with the best possible wish to be contented with the epistles for which i look forward so anxiously, i cannot help feeling a little disappointed when you do not answer inquiries. i do not wish to be unreasonable, my darling, in my demands on your time, but i cannot bear that your letters should be mere unavoidable monthly reports, and not what mine are to you, that is, in intention; though i make every allowance for natural infirmity. could we but have foreseen your weakness of sight, i should have felt a great inclination to thrash you into exercising your memory more than you did, though i am not at all sure that the result would have been satisfactory; and with respect to music, i am convinced you would not have made a satisfactory return for any knowledge acquired by dint of birch, but--if it were not useless--i would enlarge upon the imprudence of having neglected your father's admonitions at a more recent period to store your memory; remember it for the sake of your own young people when you are the venerable papa of an obstreperous youth like yourself. i think upon the whole it is satisfactory that the uneasiness in your eyes depends on your general health. papa thinks the sensation you describe when drinking must be nervous, and connected with the narrow swallow you inherit from me, a peculiarity which has shown itself in four generations. we do not feel so certain as it would be comfortable to do that the climate of rome is the one best suited to a nervous person; but of course you will seek a healthy change of place as soon as the heat makes it desirable. i must remind you of the unpleasant fact that your constitution very much resembles mine; remember what i have come to, and do not trifle with yourself; do not say to yourself: what a bore mamma is! i am constantly thinking of my precious absent son, and long, as only a mother can, to see you; when i look at your picture, i feel quite wretched sometimes that i cannot, though you seem alive before me, stroke your cheek and lean my head on your chest. the other day we were startled by the appearance in the drawing-room of andrew, lizzy, and the girls; and the first greeting over, "that's my saucy fred," burst out of your aunt's mouth; "dear fellow, what a likeness;" and lina was equally admired, and we all agreed in deploring gussy's absence from the wall. i wish i could see your studies, for i suppose you have a great many for your great undertaking. models are probably cheaper than in germany--are you conscious of improvement? this seems an odd question, but it is suggested by the fact that while gussy practises most diligently, she seldom seems conscious of the improvement i perceive distinctly. do you see cornelius from time to time, and gain anything from him? you never mention if you have any friends amongst the artists distinguished in any way. rome, _april , _. i have of late, since the underpainting of my large picture (at which i worked like a horse) given myself rest and recreation in the way of several picnics in the _campagna_ under the auspices of mesdames sartoris and kemble. we are a most jovial crew; the following are the _dramatis personæ_: first, the two above-mentioned ladies; then mr. lyons, the english diplomatist here (whom your friend probably meant); he is not ambassador, nor is he in any way supposed to represent the english people here, he is only a sort of negotiator; however, a most charming man he assuredly is, funny, dry, jolly, imperturbably good-tempered; then mr. ampère, a french savant, a genial, witty, amusing old gentleman as ever was; then browning, the poet, a never-failing fountain of quaint stories and funny sayings; next harriet hosmer, a little american sculptress of great talent, the queerest, best-natured little chap possible; another girl, nothing particular, and your humble servant who, except when art is touched, plays the part of humble listener, in which capacity he makes amends for the vehemence with which he starts up when certain subjects are touched which relate to his own trade; in other things, silence, alas! becomes him, ignorant as he is, and having clean forgotten all he ever knew![ ] i shall not be able to leave rome more than a month in the summer, as the work which i have carved out for myself makes it utterly impossible. you must know, however, that the hot months (july and august) are not the dangerous ones, but september, when the rains set in. during that month i shall give myself a complete rest from work, and shall go to the baths of lucca, the healthiest spot in italy, where i shall enjoy cool air, country scenery, and, better than all, the society of the sartoris, who are going to spend the summer there; meanwhile, i shall take what precautions i can; i shall live as the italians do, getting up early, and sleeping in the middle of the day, and shall resume flannel, if you do not advise the contrary, as i see reason to believe that it is a great preservative against fever. as for the general climate of rome, i don't give it much consideration, as there is not the least probability of my ever _residing_ here; i think there is not a worse place for a rising artist to set up his abode in than rome, on account of the want of emulation as compared, for instance, to a place like paris, where there are hundreds of clever men, all hard at work, and where an artist is always exposed to comparisons. it is impossible for me to give you any decisive answer about my progress, for you know i have been busy all the winter drawing studies; i shall see when i come to the picture itself what steps i have made forwards; i reckon on its being the best thing i shall have done, i can say no more. i believe sartoris, whose judgment in all the arts is excellent, considers me the most promising young man in rome; but that does not mean much--we shall see! of my daily life and occupations, i have little or nothing to say, as they are monotonous to a degree; parties, of course, have ceased, and i am just about to leave p.p.c.'s everywhere, as i don't mean to go into the world at all next year. i don't remember whether i told you that some little time back mrs. sartoris gave some tableaux and charades in which your humble servant co-operated; the whole thing was, i believe, very successful. the greatest treat i have had lately has been hearing mrs. kemble read on different occasions julius cæsar, hamlet, and part of midsummer night's dream; i need not tell you how delighted i was. (_cover_--mrs. leighton, rome, _may , _. circus, bath, england.) (_received june ._) very dearest mamma,--your letter (which i received the day before yesterday, and should have answered the next day but for an engagement i had made to go into the country) caused me great pain; if you have known me hitherto for a dutiful and loving son, believe that in this case nothing has been further from me than the least umbrage at the advice and suggestions that you always offer me with kindness and delicacy, and that i am much distressed at the idea of having in any way aggravated the discomforts which an english winter make you suffer; let me rather attribute, and beg yourself to refer, to the depressed state of your spirits any misconstruction you have laid upon a letter in which, if there was any constraint, it arose only from a desire to answer satisfactorily and systematically such questions as you asked me; i will endeavour in future to present my report in a more ornamental form. the delay, too, of my last letter arose from a misconception on my part of your expectations, for i was waiting and eagerly waiting for _your_ answer to intervene, and, considering the irregularity of roman posts, you can hardly have a day on which you particularly expect to receive news of me. let me hope, dear mamma, that on these points, as on the others that i am going to touch, you will be able in future to think more cheerfully, in spite of the distorting medium of british fogs. i fear from the tone of alarm i detect in your letter that i (myself perhaps, at the time, under the influence of the _scirocco_) must have conveyed to you an idea of greater ill-health than i labour under: my eyes, certainly, are not strong, so that i avoid using them at nights, and i am, as i ever was, incorrigibly bed-loving, but this is "the whole front" of my ailments; meanwhile i work all day with little or no annoyance. i am of good cheer and contented, and altogether more free from rheumatism than i have been for a long time; that, thus deprived of the means of reading, such little information as i ever had should have effectually made its escape from a noddle that never had the capacity of fixing itself on any _one_ thing at a time, is deplorable, but not to be wondered at; let us hope for a better day. nor is spending the hot months of the summer here in rome so dreadful a thing as it appears to your tender anxiety; with proper precautions and a regular life i shall no doubt go through it as well as so many of my friends that have tried the experiment; the more so that the worst part of the summer is in september and early october, at which period i shall be enjoying the particularly cool and healthy air of bagni di lucca. how could you be surprised, dear mamma, at my having begun the pictures? did i not tell you the size of them? do you not know the quantity of figures in the composition? do you not know that it will be considered a piece of extraordinary rapidity if i finished them in time for the exhibitions, _i.e._ by the beginning of next february? you perceive the necessity of my staying here, willy nilly. the sartoris seem to you too prominent a motive in my desire to stay; alas! and again alas! they are off to lucca in a few days, and i shall be left alone. judge whether i am eager to get off, and whether anything but necessity of the most urgent kind will keep me here, for i am warmly attached to both, and her i dearly love. be quite at ease about the amount of advice i can get here, i do not lack that if i want it; but as it is, the compositions were so completely sifted by steinle before i left frankfurt, that i have nothing left but the material execution, in which you know every artist must fumble about for himself. cornelius _is_ very kind and amiable to me, has been to see me twice, and speaks well of me behind my back; he told mrs. kemble (fanny) that there was not another man in england that could paint such a picture as my "cimabue" threatens to be, and the same was unhesitatingly asserted by browning, the poet, who is also a connoisseur. such details as these from my mouth savour of intolerable vanity; they are not meant so, and i give you them simply because i think they will fall pleasantly on the ear of the mother of the daubster. to show you the _revers de la médaille_ about advice from influential men, i will just tell you that i received the other day from cornelius some advice which was diametrically opposed to that of steinle, _arrangez vous!_ gamba and i are still capital friends, and he is making great progress, which is the well-earned fruit of his talent and assiduity. now, dear mamma, you see how letters come to be dry; by the time you have shaken off the responsibility of question answering, and begin to breathe a little, you have got to the end of time and paper, and have no margin left for a little dessert; the fact is, _your_ only chance is this: next time you write, ask me no questions, and then i'll devote my epistle to telling you a most thrilling story which, though it far surpasses in strangeness the common run of works of fiction, is _perfectly and literally true_, as i have it almost from headquarters; them's your prospects!--meanwhile, with very best love to all, i remain, your affectionate and dutiful son, fred leighton. [illustration: original sketch of complete design for "cimabue's madonna" drawn in leighton house collection] _translation._] rome, via felice , _may , _. dearest friend,--delightful as it always is to me to receive any news of you, yet your last letter, along with pleasure, caused me some pain, for i could not help fearing that my long silence had annoyed you a little; if this should be indeed the case i must express my extreme regret, and beg you to believe that my gratitude and love can only cease when my memory ceases; how could it possibly be otherwise? you paint me a very melancholy picture of the situation in frankfurt; it is certainly a most unpleasant state of things, all this quarrelling and dissension! when i, at this distance, think of such a regular hermit-like way of going on, i feel quite disgusted; it is fortunate that you, dear friend, have in the ecstasy of creation a resource that can never fail you. but how comes it that hommel and hendschel, formerly your enthusiastic pupils, have now cooled down? that is very incomprehensible; they do not know their own interests. i congratulate you most heartily on the completion of your large picture, which i am very sorry not to have seen finished, and i am especially glad to hear what you tell me about the shield-bearer, for that breathes to me of _industrious study of nature_! believe me, that you, the mature master, who still consents to play the part of a student, will not be without your reward. what you have written me about my work has put me into a most terrible dilemma, a dilemma which i am still very deep in. it is a presumption that i should set up _my_ ideas, and a disobedience that i should take the advice of other friends, against your judgment; but i have gone so carefully into this manner of representation, that i beg you, dear friend, to reconsider the matter, and see whether i am not right. these are my reasons: it seems to me that the action in my pictures, if ostensibly a triumph of the artist, yet, at the same time, as an historical event, is just as much the consecration of a madonna, for which reason i (as you know) have placed the masterpiece which is being carried upon a small decorated altar; that such a solemn event probably took place on a church festival (as was the case with the consecration of the chapel) may very well be assumed; would not such a festival in the _thirteenth century_ be important enough to justify the presence of the bishop? but much more important than this question of historical probability, appears to me the consideration that the conception of a bishop is only made tangible to the general mass of spectators by certain symbolic articles of apparel, which are in some degree inseparable from it; a bishop's presence in the procession is most probable. why should i not put him there? amongst others, this opinion was also held by cornelius, to whom, as an experienced catholic, i naturally applied at the outset, and who told me candidly that he would leave it. i hope you will not accuse me of being too stiffnecked; in other respects i am certainly docile. since i last wrote to you i have been fairly industrious on an average. i have now under-painted "romeo and juliet" in grey (grau untermalt), made both the colour sketches, and have now fairly got into the over-painting, or rather second under-painting, of "cimabue"; but i have not been always within four walls; on the contrary i have profited by the beautiful spring weather, and have often gone out into the divine campagna with a party of dear friends, male and female, and i need not tell you that we have enjoyed it. i wish with all my heart you could be with us, my dear master. rico, the ever-industrious, for he does twice as much as i, sends you warm greetings. i must now close. i wish i could tell rather than write to you how you are loved and esteemed by your devoted pupil, fred leighton. please remember me most kindly to your wife. _translation._] frankfurt am main, _august , _. my very dear friend,--you have heaped coals of fire upon my head, for i have not answered your last dear note, brought me by andré, and now i have received by miss farquhar the lovely study of vincenzo's head, which you so kindly wish to present to me. i am almost dumfounded to find that you could believe i was angry with you because you have not written me for so long, and that you believe that the indignation had been ignored in my last note. that, dear friend, was a complete delusion, for there is nothing to which i am more partial than to artists' letters, and nothing to which i am more insensible than to such flattering praise as you lavish upon me, while i know only too well how unfortunately little i have deserved it. in earnest, dear friend, call me no more master, but rather regard me as your true and sincere friend, who only out of friendship for you and love of art, far removed from despicable dissimulation, faithfully shares with you his opinions and experience, and never regards them as the pronouncements of an oracle. i know very well what a difference there is between the description of a work of art and the sight of it; the first, at best, only gives one side, one part, whilst seeing places before our eyes the whole soul of the artist, from all sides, and then much is made mutually clear which in the former case appeared either not understood or misunderstood. miss farquhar could not tell me enough about you and your work, and greatly kindled my curiosity and desire to be in your _atelier_ for once; i was only sorry that she had nothing to tell me about gamba; indeed, on the whole, she knew nothing about him. if i am to express my thoughts of the very beautiful head of vincenzo, it seems to me that leighton ought to guard against striving for excessive fineness, for works of art can only be produced by quite the contrary method. a certain roughness must bring out fineness, but if everything is fine, nothing remains fine, &c. but believe, though this head half displeases me, especially on account of these theories, i think it beautiful and masterly in drawing, and am consequently proud to possess it, as i am of all that i have from your hand. i thank you a thousand times for this fresh proof of your friendship. about this place, let me be silent; you are right to say that art is my refuge, and that i find in it my compensation for much that goes ill here and everywhere; i must also not allow this asylum to be profaned by the trifles of the very human things that surround us in this world. greet from me rome, gamba, cornelius, and all the friends who remember me; and to yourself, dear friend, heartfelt greetings from your true and unchanging friend, edw. steinle. [illustration: "vincenzo, the prettiest and wickedest boy in rome." leighton house collection] before leaving rome leighton received the following characteristic letter from mr. cartwright, one of his truest life-long friends:-- carlsbad, _july , _. my dear leighton,--you will be astonished to see a letter from me. i can assure you that i have often thought of you, and meant to indite you an epistle in the hope of eliciting a reply full of roman tale from you, and lately, when through papeleu i heard of your great canvass labors, my yearning got a new twinge which at last has been pinched into expression by the start at pollock's resuscitation. i had heard of his death in paris and had mourned his fate most sincerely, when the first man whom i met tramping health out of the hot water of carlsbad was pollock himself. he is himself again every inch of him; indeed a most wonderful recovery; and, after deep and valorous potations of hot water, we take long walks in the hills. he goes from here to marienbad and prague, and means to be back in rome by the end of october. and i also mean to return there. like a true drunkard, i can't forswear my bottle, and i must have another pull at it. we shall be there, i hope, in the beginning of october, and i hope, my dear leighton, that you will not grudge me the pleasure of letting me have a few lines, so that i may know whether you will be there in the winter and what are the changes in rome since my time. are the sartorises to be there next winter, and where are they now? pray answer me this, as i particularly wish to know where they are. i have heard that there were such crowds of strangers at rome last winter that quarters were not to be had; and for this reason i wish to be there early. do you happen to know what is the price of the floors in the house on the pincio which was built by byström the sculptor? next to the trinità, immediately after the sculptor's studio, there is a small house inhabited when i was last in rome by some french officers (at least a sentinel was at the door) and years ago by mrs. sartoris. pollock tells me it is now to be let. would you be kind enough to give me any information you can about it. it is a house i have often coveted on account of the view. i beg your pardon for my coolness; i hope you will bear kindly with it; if i can do anything for you in paris, command me: but anyhow pray write to me, if only a few lines, for in my heart i wish to have some news about you and old rome. the other day i saw at the louvre our old friend the very questionable _vittoria colonna_ which was at minardis. it was for exhibition there in the gallerie d'apollon: what the picture is i cannot pretend to pronounce, but i do not like it: it is a picture in which i have no confidence. i think that if not a made picture, it is at all events a tame one. this year there was no salon as it has been put off till next year's great exhibition. robert fleury has sold a picture to the luxembourg which is not so good as his former ones; but the man who i think is the most _marked_ one of the day is conture. excuse my scrap, and pray take pity on my longing and write me, were it only _a line_. i should be grievously disappointed were you to refuse me the pleasure. i shall be _here till the th august_; until the _ th august_, after that date letters will find me frankfurt poste restante; and after that in paris poste restante. if you write here, put carlsbad--böhmen--and in a corner, _austria_. and now farewell; with a real ... i am longing for a letter. the kindest regards to my caffé greco and other friends.--yours most sincerely, w.c. cartwright.[ ] after his stay at the bagni di lucca, in the summer of , leighton went to frankfort, venice, and to florence, returning to rome in october. in the following letter to steinle are sentences it might be well to print in finest gold, for the benefit of students who try to run before they walk, who aim at the freedom and glorious inevitability of a velasquez touch without taking the pains to equip themselves worthily to enter the lists with the giants; not realising that skipping over the underpinning, necessary in creating any work of art, must result in the shakiest of edifices. the sentence refers to the criticism in steinle's letter of august , , on the drawing of "vincenzo" (called by leighton "the prettiest and wickedest boy in rome") which leighton had sent him. _translation._] rome, via felice , _october , _. as i am making a short pause to-day in my work, i cannot employ it better than in writing a letter to you, my very dear friend. it was a very great comfort to me to see by your last lines that you had not construed my former long silence as a cooling of my friendship and gratitude, and i therefore hope that you will also this time meet me with the same forbearance. you will certainly be interested to hear, my dear friend, that both my pictures are by this time fairly forward, and i expect to finish them within three months. how much i wish that you could see them here, and that i could put in the finishing touches under your supervision! i would give you an account of my work, but, bless me, what is there to _tell_ about my picture, except that it has given me a fearful amount of trouble, and that in the end one perceives how circumstantially one has gone to work on the whole matter; the "cimabue" goes to london and the "romeo" to paris. while i am speaking of my works, i take this opportunity to touch gratefully upon your kind remarks about the study head of vincenzo, and to inform you, however, that my opinion of it takes rather more the form of a question than that of an objection. i have often considered the question of the self-guidance of an artist who is left to his own devices, and it has often struck me how many wander in evil by-paths through an unorganised, may i say _unprogressive_, development of their gifts; and now it seems to me that most of them are wrecked because they maturely study _the object to be attained_, while the _means_ are not considered which should lead to such results. for example, a young man sees a raphael, a titian, a rembrandt, all in their latest manner, and hears people say: see how broad, how full, how round, how masterly! and the student naturally conceives the wish that he also might produce broad and masterly works, and _so far_ he is right; but from that point he goes aside. he goes home and _strives_ and _strains_ after masterly breadth; he succeeds (apparently), and he is lost. the soap-bubble is quickly blown; he rejoices in its gay colours; it flies up and breaks in the air. and the cause is simple; the true, genuine mastership is not an _acquired quality_ but an _organised result_. as with art itself, so is it also with the individual artist. if we cast an eye over the progress of art-history, we see how the full, conscious, free, has developed itself out of the meagre, timorous, scrupulous, dry. similarly if we compare the first efforts of the individual with his last, we perceive the same thing: place m. angelo's "pinta" beside the decorations of the sixtine, one of raphael's works at perugia beside the "stanzen," rembrandt's "leçon d'anatomie" beside the "nightwatch," and it will be evident in the most striking manner that not one of these men had risen by means of his talent to full breadth in his youth, or had been in any way studious to do so, but on the contrary that they have attained mastery by natural growth. in order, therefore, to reach the same altitude, the young artist must proceed in the same manner as his exemplars, and must endeavour so to direct his studies that he, according to his gifts, may achieve a similar result. he who would fill his threshing-floor must not _glean_, but rather he must _sow_ that he may richly harvest; he who would have rare fruits all his life must plant and cherish the tree; even so should the young artist seek to plant a tree the normal fruit of which is called "artistic perfection." you will easily understand how by the application of these maxims my preliminary works go forward rather _timorously_. entire conscientiousness is now the chief thing to me. i _am laying_ the foundation on which i hope to rely firmly later on; i am amassing capital and am not yet in enjoyment of the interest. "how many objections to a couple of words?" you will laughingly remark; dear friend, i must feel myself indeed well equipped before i permit myself to oppose anything against your judgment. of gamba i will say nothing, for he is going to enclose a few lines in this. i have made a trip to florence this summer, and again thoroughly enjoyed the art-treasures. i think i have spoken to you of the wall-paintings by giotto which were discovered two years ago in santa croce; one of them, which represents the death of st. francis, is the literal prototype of the celebrated fresco by ghirlandajo (on the same subject) in the sta. trinita, and i really prefer it. time, eyes, paper fail me, and i must close. i hope that, if you write to me again, you will tell me exactly what you are doing.--meantime, dear master, accept the heartfelt greeting of your grateful pupil, fred leighton. please remember me most kindly to your wife and to all my friends. leighton's eye trouble having become a constant anxiety and hindrance to him, he resolved to consult graefe, the great german oculist. from florence, on his return journey, he writes his impressions of berlin to steinle. in this letter he repeats again the sense of happiness which he always experienced in italy. _translation._] florence, via del posso, _november _. my very dear friend and master,--at last i am able to write to you. in the hurry and bustle of travelling, and even in the short sojourns that i have made here and there, it has been impossible for me to sit quietly down and compose a letter. even to my parents i have written this morning for the first time since i left vienna. but you will readily believe that during this time i have often travelled in thought to frankfurt in loving remembrance of you, my dear friend. strange things have happened to me since i saw you. i had not even reached berlin when i was informed by a "jebildeten" (cultivated) prussian that graefe, on whose account exclusively i was travelling to the "geistreichen" (clever) capital, had gone away for an indefinite period; imagine my dismay! luckily on my arrival i found an old friend who was acquainted with the family of geheimerath von graefe, and who found out through them that graefe must arrive at the golden lamb (leopoldostadt) in vienna on such and such a day. i met him, and had a consultation at which he examined my eyes with the ophthalmoscope, and told me to be of good cheer, my trouble was certainly obstinate but in no way dangerous, and i might hope for a complete cure. he prescribed me a course for rome, which consists principally of local blood-letting and wearing spectacles, and will be very tedious; but i will gladly conform to anything in order to get my eyes back again. one thing is certain, since i have been in italy they have been quite markedly better, which i attribute for the most part to the diminution of my hypochondria. yes, since i have been in italy i have become a new man; i breathe, my breast throbs higher; heavy clouds have rolled away from me; the sun shines again on my path, and my heart is once more full of youth and love of life; if only you were also here, dear friend! but i must tell you something about my german travels, and i will begin with berlin. there is certainly something special about that town. at the first glance it is somewhat imposing, and the prodigious quantity of new buildings, which evidently aim at architecture, gives (one may hold one's own opinion as to the taste of the buildings) the appearance of great artistic activity and of a widespread taste for art; but i have since found reason to regard this apparent love of art as something feigned or forced. one gets quite sick of _education_ in berlin; would you believe that now _every girl_ has to pass an _examination as governess_?[ ] kaulbach understands the berliners well; in raeginski's house a study of a roman piper hangs in great honour, which he has purchased from the _great master_ on account of a doggerel verse which is written on it in large letters, and runs thus:-- "upon my travels in italy, this little boy i found, but he, although my brush may his form repeat, remains to my sorrow incomplete."[ ] --w. kaulbach. divine! eh? i knew a counterpart in the belgian art-world. when i visited gallait in brussels some years ago, before the door stood a ragged, most picturesque hungarian rat-catcher, who asked me if an artist did not live there. recently i saw my slav again, with a violin under his arm, in a window, very finely lithographed, i believe even an "artistes contemporains"; in the corner was "louis gallait pinx"; underneath, "art et liberté"! thus do pictures originate! in berlin everything is valued extrinsically. one sees that most strikingly in the new museum. when it is finished, it will be, in proportion to the means of the town in which it stands, the most splendid that i know; moreover, it cannot be denied (unsuitable as a three-quarters greek building may be on the banks of the spree) that much in the architecture is even very beautiful. but what is the good of it all? with the exception of some egyptian antiquities, in all these lavishly gilded and painted rooms there are only _plaster casts_! yes, and, i must not forget it, the great tea-service of kaulbach. a wretched thing, made, moreover, with superfluous productiveness; simple allegory carried out without any fine sense of form, with utter denial of all individuality, and painted--well, of that one would rather say _nothing_; and yet "kaulbach has the hellenic art," &c. &c., and all the rest that is in the papers. one would like to exclaim with cassius: "has it come to this, ye gods!" unfortunately i cannot praise the cornelian things in the _old_ museum much either. i must confess they displeased me greatly; when i consider them from a distance in their connection with the building, i find them disproportioned; in a long, very simple colonnade, built on a large scale, i require of a fresco painting that it shall show in form and colour large, quiet, plastic masses; instead of that i see here a gay, unquiet, confused _fricassée_ of thought and allegory that makes one dizzy; ideas in such profusion that nothing remains with the spectator; he goes away without having received anything; nor is the mental impression plastic. if, however, one goes nearer to see the execution, again one finds nothing pleasing--a constrained, unlovely drawing--positions that could only be attained by complete breaking on the wheel--a general appearance as if the figures had no bones, but muscles made of brick instead. the colour is not much better than kaulbach's. the end-piece on the right, an allegorical representation of the death of man (or something of the kind), gives the most ordinary and at the same time most awkward sudden impression that i have yet seen. cornelius may look at the vatican in rome and see if he can find anything like it there. altogether the once certainly great artist seems to have somewhat deteriorated; the cartoons at the campo santo are not by a long way so good as the design (which i find charming in parts); they are here and there, which greatly surprised me, disgracefully _out of drawing_; and then the theatrical attitudes, conventional clothes, &c. &c. in the museum itself there are few pictures of the first rank, but so much the more beautiful are those by masters of the second rank. what a lippi! what a basaiti! what a cos rosetti! i was entranced; that is art, character, form, colour, all in beautiful harmony. the "daughter of titian" does not deserve its celebrity; it is weak and dull. but my paper is exhausted, as are also my eyes; i will therefore defer the rest to another letter, and only mention that in vienna kuppelwieser, führich, and roesner received me like a son of the house, and all sent hearty greetings to you. do write to me very soon, dear friend, and keep in kind remembrance your grateful, devoted pupil, fred leighton. my address is, poste restante, rome. please remember me most kindly to your wife, and generally to all friends. when tracing the ever-swaying ebb and flow in the tides of joy and sorrow in a life, we come to times which seem to accumulate in their days the whole strength of feeling and vitality of which a nature is capable; prominent summits that rise triumphant out of the troublous waves, up to which the past existence has seemed to climb, and the memory of which retains a dominating influence in the descent of the future. "i--h'm--must i say it?--am just as happy as the day is long." so wrote leighton to his mother when at the age of twenty-three he was spending his days in and about rome--that wonderful rome with her world of ghosts, her solemn eventful past skimmed over and made faint by her actual sunlit present. to leighton that sunlit present became vividly, excitingly alive. fountains of joy were springing up in the artist-nature, catching as they sprang golden rays from all that is most beautiful in youth's dominions. leighton writes to steinle (july , ): "the remembrance of the beautiful time spent there (rome) will be riches to me throughout my life; whatever may later befall me, however darkly the sky may cloud over me, there will remain on the horizon of the past the beautiful golden stripe, glowing, indelible; it will smile on me like the soft blush of even." when, in the late autumn of , he first arrived in rome, he had just stepped from the position of being one in a family to that of being an independent unit; and, though accompanied by his brother artist, count gamba, he felt greatly the loss of what he had left behind--the inspiring companionship of steinle, compared to which nothing in rome was worthy to count as an art influence. obliged to work in a small, inconvenient studio, the only one obtainable--expected friends, whose society he valued, failing him--he felt the want of so much that he could hardly enjoy what he had. in those first days (as we gather from his letters) the eternal city cast no fresh glamour over his spirit. spring came, and the tune changed with the entrancement of persephone's release in the balmy warmth of the south. the spring air twinkles with sunshine, and the fruit-trees are again alive with gay blossom, of fluttering petal, frail as the soft moth wing; the villa gardens are again bedecked with grand, more solid petalled flowers--brilliant-hued camellias--and later,--the noble magnolia's ivory white goblets; while the ground is carpeted with violets and varied-hued anemones. all over the wild spaces of the campagna spring up grasses and lovely unchequered growth, spreading a green and golden fur, bristling in the bright light for miles and miles under a cloudless sky away to the faint blue line of mountains on the horizon. on one summit--golden in the sunlight--the old town of subiaco is poised; on nearer slopes--summer haunts of the ancient roman world, tivoli, frascati, albano: the wastes of budding herbage between checked only here and there by some spectre of old days, some skeleton of a broken archway, some remnant of a ruined wall. it was on these strange wilds of the roman campagna that the life-long friends, giovanni costa and leighton, first met. here is the description of the delightful scene of their meeting, and of leighton's previous introduction to costa's work at the famous café greco, written by costa after his friend's death:-- "in the year , the café greco at rome was a world-renowned centre of art, a rendezvous for artists of all nationalities, who had flocked to rome to study the history of art as well as the beauties of nature surrounding the sacred walls of the eternal city. "at the café greco[ ] there was a certain waiter, rafaello, a favourite with all, who had collected an album of sketches and water-colours by the most distinguished artists, such as cornelius, overbeck, français, bénonville, brouloff, böcklin, and others, and i felt much flattered when i too was asked to contribute, with the result that i gave him the only water-colour i have ever done in my life. leighton was also begged by rafaello to do something for the album, and having it in his hands, he saw my work, and asked whose it was. on being told, he advised rafaello to keep it safely, saying that one day it would be very valuable. when i came later to the café, rafaello told me how a most accomplished young englishman, who spoke every language, had seen my water-colour, and all he had said about it. i was very proud of his criticism, and it gave me courage for the rest of my life. "that same year, in the month of may, the usual artists' picnic took place at cervara, a farm in the roman campagna. there used to be donkey races, and the winner of these was always the hero of the day. we had halted at tor dé schiavi, three miles out of rome, and half the distance to cervara,[ ] for breakfast. every one had dismounted and tied his beast to a paling, and all were eating merrily. "suddenly one of the donkeys kicked over a beehive, and out flew the bees to revenge themselves on the donkeys. there were about a hundred of the poor beasts, but they all unloosed themselves and took to flight, kicking up their heels in the air--all but one little donkey, who was unable to free himself, and so the whole swarm fell upon him. "the picnic party also broke up and fled, with the exception of one young man, with fair, curly hair, dressed in velvet, who, slipping on gloves and tying a handkerchief over his face, ran to liberate the poor little beast. i had started to do the same, but less resolutely, having no gloves; so i met him as he came back, and congratulated him, asking him his name. and in this way i first made the acquaintance of frederic leighton, who was then about twenty-two years old; but i was not then aware that he was the unknown admirer of my drawing in rafaello's album. i remember that day i had the great honour of winning the donkey race, and leighton won the tilting at the ring with a flexible cane; therefore we met again when sharing the honour of drinking wine from the president's cup, and again we shook hands. when i heard from count gamba, who was a friend and fellow-student of leighton's, what great talent he had, i tried to see his work and to improve our acquaintance; for as i felt i must be somewhat of a donkey myself, because of the franciscan education i had received, and because i was the fourteenth in our family, i thought the companionship of the spirited youth would give me courage." and again it was on the campagna that that choice and delightful company picnicked in the spring-time of the year, of which company leighton wrote on april , (see p. ). who knows but that it was at one of these notable picnics that browning was inspired to write his wonderful little poem on the campagna? "the champaign, with its endless fleece of feathery grasses everywhere, silence and passion, joy and peace, an everlasting wash of air-- rome's ghost since her decease. such life there, through such lengths of hours, such miracles performed in play, such letting nature have her way, while heaven looks from its towers." life was full to overflowing in those inspiring days, and leighton was indeed "as happy as the day was long." friendships grew apace. many were made which were lasting, notably that with mr. henry greville, the most intimate man-friend of leighton's life. his friendships with sir john leslie, mr. cartwright, george mason, mr. aitchison, sir edward poynter, all began in those early happy days in rome. artists living there, who included this gifted brother-painter in their comradeship, showed more and more sympathy towards his work as they became more intimate with the delightful nature. leighton had arrived so far forward on the threshold of his success that anxiety about his pictures was outweighed by hopeful expectancy; but it was while still standing on the threshold--that really most inspiring of all stages in the journey, during the two years from to , before the great triumph of signal success crowned him--that we catch the happiest picture in leighton's life. to use his own words, "in this world confident expectation is a greater blessing, almost, than fruition." in a letter he wrote to fanny kemble on february , , leighton refers to a conversation he had with her at this "outset of his career"--a conversation which recurred to him, he tells her, when he first addressed the royal academy students from the presidential chair in . he offers a copy of his discourse for her acceptance, ending his letter by the words: "if you remember that conversation, you may perhaps feel some interest in reading the lecture, of which i ask you to accept a copy. if you do not remember it, nevertheless accept the little paper for the sake of old days which were not as to-day."[ ] how much can a few words say! if gratified ambition could ever make an artist-nature happy, how transcendently happy leighton ought to have been in ! but the fibre which strung the highest note in his nature never vibrated to worldly success. though his ambition may have sought success, and his passion for fulfilling to the utmost his duty towards his fellow-creatures may have greatly welcomed it, he remained to the end of his life ever on the threshold of that kingdom, the possession of which could alone have satisfied what he "_cared for most_." the following letters mention the progress of the _opus magnum_ to its completion, also of the "romeo" picture, and his visits to florence and the bagni di lucca. the first begins by his expressing his ever-growing dislike of general society. [_commencement missing._] miss ---- is no less than ever, and no less agreeable, as far as i can judge; i have only called once as yet, i have an ungovernable horror of being asked to tea; my aversion to tea-fights, muffin-scrambles, and crumpet-conflicts, which has been gathering and festering for a long time, has now become an open wound. the more i enjoy and appreciate the society and intercourse of the dozen people that i care to know, the more tiresome i find the commerce of the others, _braves et excellentes gens du reste_; the lord be merciful to the overwhelming insipidity of that individual whose name is legion--the _unexceptionable_--the _highly respectable!_ my great resource is, of course, mrs. sartoris, whom i see at some time or other every day, for it would be a blank day to me in which i did not see her; god bless her! for my dearest friend. i warm my very soul in the glow of her sisterly affection and kindness. little baby is the same sunbeam that he always was; did i tell you i painted his likeness in oils as a surprise for his father? as a picture it is not unsuccessful, but any attempt at a portrait of that child is a profanation, and will be till we paint with the down of peaches and the blood of cherries, and mix our tints with golden sunlight; still, it pleased _them_, and that ought to be enough; but i am an artist as well as a friend. a very interesting acquaintance i have here in the shape of rossini, the great rossini! poor rossini, what a sad fate is his, to have lived to see the people on whom the glory of his splendid genius has shone turn away from him in forgetfulness, neglecting his classical beauties to listen to the noisy trivialities of a ----, who has made the italian name in music a by-word of ridicule; with the music of course, the singers have degenerated also; a singer no longer requires to be an _artist_, it is no longer necessary that he or she should study his or her part till every note has a meaning and a character expressive of the words of the libretto, and accompanied by musical and impassioned _mimica_; no, let the _prima donna_ only squall out her never-ending _fioriture_ with sufficient disregard for the safety of her lungs, or the _primo tenore_ shake the stage with a _la di petto_, and all is right. this is a digression, but as an artist i can't help taking it to heart, and wanted to have it out. amongst mrs. sartoris' few "intimes" at this moment is a neapolitan lady, la duchessa ravaschieri, daughter of filangièri the minister, who has given her himself an education almost unique amongst italian noblewomen, who are insipid and ignorant beyond anything. florence, hÔtel du nord, _september , _. dearest mamma,--i was much surprised, as we very naturally measure time past by the number of events that have taken place in it, the interval between this your last letter and the previous one seemed to me doubly long, for i have changed scene so often during these last four or five weeks, and have moved so much from place to place, that it seems to me an age since i last despatched a letter to england; from which you will naturally and correctly infer that it was a very great pleasure to me once more to see your handwriting. your kind anxiety and advice about the cholera i shall remember when i get to rome (which will be in a week or ten days), where that disease prevails, although mildly, for what are thirty cases a day in a town of that size? in the meantime, both at the baths where i have been, and at florence, where i am, the cholera has not dared to show its face; indeed, such a prestige of salubrity attaches to the name of the baths of lucca that eight days' sojourn at that place is considered tantamount to a "_quarantaine_!" it is a very strange thing, this exemption from disease, for in a number of the surrounding villages the number of people carried off has been frightful. as for that after apprehension of yours, dearest mamma, about my being alone and uncared for in case of illness, i am happy to say that nothing can be more unfounded; i have in mrs. sartoris that genuine friend, and, especially, genuine _woman friend_ that in such a case would leave nothing undone that you, the best of mothers, and my own dear sisters, would do for me. it is her habit, when any of her bachelor and homeless friends are poorly, to go and sit with them and nurse them, and do you think that i, who have become one of her most intimate circle, should need to fear neglect? in the friendship of that admirable woman i am rich for life. poor thing, she has lately received a great blow in her own family from the sudden calamity which has befallen her. this shocking news reached me here, at florence, where i had come on from the baths, and ascertaining that her husband was gone off to england to inquire into the matter, and that by a chance her boy's tutor was absent at the same time, i instantaneously went off to lucca, where i stayed a week (till the return of the tutor), taking care of her boy, hearing him his lessons, and especially keeping him out of the way; in the evening i used to walk or drive with her, and to my infinite gratification was able to be some little comfort and distraction to her; my only regret in the whole business was that i was making no material sacrifice of my own time and pleasure, so that i had not the satisfaction of comforting her at my own expense. in adopting the resolution, which i have communicated to you, of retiring from society, i have taken into consideration all that you say, dear mamma, and more too, for i feel i have of my nature a very fair share of the hateful worldly weakness of my country-people; still, i have found no sufficiently great advantage or compensation for the tedium of going out; the roman _grand monde_, a small part of which i know, and which, had i chosen to push a little, i might have known all, is of no _use_ whatever in reference to my future career; added to which i believe i told you that i never by any chance got introduced to anybody, so that whomever i know, i know by chance, or by their own wish. for instance, last winter i met the duke of wellington constantly, both at the sartoris' (he is a very old friend of hers) and at the farquhars', and though he is the most accessible of men, i made no attempt to make his acquaintance, and so it is with everybody. but for the _tableaux charades_ which mrs. s. gave last winter, in which i was joint-manager with herself, and was therefore brought into contact with her numerous co-operating friends, i should probably have known few or none of those who were at her house every week; always excepting our own intimate circle, to wit, browning, ampère, dr. pantaleone, lyons, count gozze, duke sermoneta, &c. you know, when i say i shan't go out, it is in so far a _façon de parler_, that, as i shall be at least every other day at mrs. sartoris', i shall not be at home, trying my eyes. i quite agree with you in thinking this business of ----'s a most awkward thing; i cannot understand a man having once gone into the army and made his profession to be honourably killed for his country, should not jump at the idea of going to the scene of war; i have felt a very strong desire to lend a hand myself, but one cannot drive two trades. my singing (in particular, and music in general) i have avoided mentioning, because, dear mamma, it is a subject on which i have _no_ reason to dwell very complacently; my first disappointment was finding my voice, instead of strengthening in an italian climate, getting if possible weaker than it was. it is the merest "fil de voix." i have therefore as the onset very insufficient "moyens"; this is owing, not only to the insufficiency of my "organe," but also to an unpleasant visitation in the shape of swollen and irritated tonsils, the very ailment, i believe, under which gussy labours. this symptom, which i have carried about some time, is, i fancy, not likely ever to leave me permanently; add to this that as soon as i sit down to thump with elephantine touch a most ordinary accompaniment, the little voice i have vanishes; thus between two stools ... you know the rest. still, i am bound to add that mrs. sartoris (who could not flatter) has great pleasure in hearing me coo a little song or two that i know, and says i have what is better than voice, which is a musical "accent," and that (she is pleased to add) to a rather remarkable degree; my voice is weak and powerless, but true and facile. i will tell you exactly what to expect when you see me again. i shall be able to sit down to the piano and whine some half-dozen pretty little ballads, with a rum-tum-tum accompaniment of affecting simplicity. gussy dreams of me as "very handsome" and "are my whiskers growing?" i am _not_ very handsome, none of my features are really _good_. my whiskers _have_ grown, they are undeniable, there is no shirking them, or getting out of the way of them; _i wear whiskers_ though you were short-sighted; _but_ they are modest ones; as for moustaches, the seven hairs which i have (and wear) are not worth mentioning, but still i have none of that delicacy which you profess on the subject. in my opinion, _if_ gentlemanhood is a thing dependent on the scraping of four square inches of your face, and residing only in the well-shaved purlieus of a (probably) ugly mouth, i feel equal to going without it, in that shape at all events. a moustache, and even a beard, if kept short enough to be in keeping with a not very flowing costume, is both becoming and convenient, and i fear that the whole prestige of respectability hovering around mr. and mrs. ----, or the withering contempt of the irreproachable sir john and lady ----, would not make me shave, unless, indeed, i felt too hot about the chin. i have gone through your letter, and shall wind up with a few words about my doings, which, by-the-bye, might be compendiously characterised by one word: _nothing_. my holidays are drawing to a close, and i shall be in rome, working very hard to get my pictures done for the exhibitions. meanwhile i am enjoying florentine sunsets, the gorgeousness of which defies description. the other day, in particular, i was on the heights near the miniato, i thought i had never seen anything like it. i remembered papa's fondness for that spot, and wished he had been there to share my enjoyment; the lanes were cool and pearly grey; over them hung in every fantastic shape the rich growth of the orchards and gardens that crowned the lengthened walls; the olives, strangely twisted, flaming with a thousand tongues of fire; the wreathing vine flinging its emerald skirts from tree to tree; the purple wine flashing in the fiery grape; the stately _maïs_ flapping its arms in the breath of the evening; the solemn cypress; the poetic laurel; the joyous oleander--all glorified in the ardour of the setting sun, that flung its rays obliquely along the earth; you would have been enchanted. rome, via felice , _february , _. dear papa,--i hasten to answer your kind letter and to thank you for the willingness you express to advance such a sum of money as i shall require to cover the heavy expenses i am incurring. i forgot to mention in my last letter that my picture will be directed straight to the frame-maker's who undertakes the exhibiting of it. in approaching the other points which you touch in your letter, i feel that my letter will unavoidably have a combative colouring, which i sincerely hope you will not misconstrue, and beg that you will consider whether the reasons i advance for not conforming to your suggestions are not sound ones. if i particularly object to accompanying my picture, it is because i think that the small advantages that might accrue from so doing would in no way make up for all i should lose; whatever can be done to my picture on its arrival in england will be kindly done for me by my friend, mr. t. gooderson, who is in the habit of receiving and varnishing buckner's works on similar occasions; with respect to the interest to be made amongst the academicians in behalf of my op. magn., i have neglected _that_ on the _express advice_ of buckner, who has great experience in those matters and is a most kind and honest man; he says, such is the party spirit of r.a.'s, that the best chance of securing impartial treatment (in the case of a work of merit) is to be _completely unknown_ to all of them, a condition which i am admirably calculated to fulfil. you are also perhaps not aware that my picture will reach england _five weeks_ before the opening of the exhibition, so that by accompanying it i should completely lose all the best part of the year here in rome. there are a great number of things which i propose doing now that my pictures are about to be off my hands. there are here several very remarkable heads of which i wish to make finished studies, and especially also i am loth to go without having drawn anything from michael angelo and raphael, which is one of the chief objects for which one comes to this city of the past; but, i do not hesitate to say, the principal task which i propose to myself is a half-length portrait of mrs. sartoris, to which i wish to devote my every energy that it may be worthy of perpetuating the features of the last kemble; irrespective of the enormous artistic advantage to be derived from the study of so exceptional a head, you will easily understand my eagerness to give some tangible form to my gratitude towards those whose fireside has been my fireside for so long a time; nothing would grieve me more than missing so good an opportunity. i confess, too, that i wished to see a little more leisurely the glorious scenery that lies all round rome, and which i have hitherto hardly glanced at, and partly indeed not seen at all. i had indeed contemplated before leaving italy, making a trip to naples, capri, oschia, amalfi, and all the spots about which artists rave. this, however, will i fear be under all circumstances a financial _château en espagne_. _translation._] rome, via felice , _february _. honoured and dear friend,--that you, who know me so well and are so well aware of how i carry your image in my heart, could misinterpret my silence i did not fear for a moment, for rather will you have thought to yourself that the stress of my occupations in the course of the day, and my incapacity to do anything at night, have hitherto prevented me from writing; and so it is; for, be you assured, dear friend, that, as long as i pursue art, you will be ever present with me in the spirit, and that i shall always ascribe every success which i may possibly attain in the future to your wise counsel and your inspiriting example, for "as the twig is bent the tree's inclined." first i will tell you about my health; thank heaven, as regards my general health, i have nothing to complain of; if not exactly strong, still i am lively and in good spirits, and look out upon the world quite contentedly. my eyes--well, yes, they might be better; otherwise i am always in a condition to work my seven or eight hours a day without over-exertion, in return for which i dare not do anything in the evenings. to tell the truth, my position is not an agreeable one; i am not bad enough to follow the course prescribed for me by graefe, but on the other hand not well enough to be able to feel quite tranquil.... time has slipped away in stress of work since i commenced this letter. i throw myself again upon your goodness, dear master, and beg you will not measure my love by my readiness in writing, for then i should certainly come off a loser. i told you that my affairs have pressed upon me; i have finished my "cimabue." i am dreadfully disappointed, dear friend, that i cannot, as i hoped, send you a photograph, but it has been impossible for me to have one taken, since the picture is so large that it could not be transported to a photographic loggia without fearful ado and unnecessary risk to the canvas; i will therefore exert myself to write you what it looks like. first you must know that i changed my intention as to the respective sizes of the two pictures, for i perceived that my eyes could not possibly permit the florentine composition to be carried out on the proposed scale. i therefore took a canvas of -½ feet (english measure), in consequence of which my figures have become half life size (like raphael's "madonna del cardellino"), and do not look at all ill. the other picture (which i shall send to london) will be something over feet long by feet. if i am to get them both finished by next january, i must set to work in earnest. i have made the following alterations: first, those prescribed by you, viz. i have made the picture which is being carried larger, the chapel smaller, and have suppressed the flower-pots on the walls. a further alteration i have made by the advice of cornelius; he said to me that the foremost group (the women strewing flowers with children) seemed to him somewhat to disturb the simplicity of the rest of the composition, and suggested that i should put in a couple of priests, especially as the portrait is of a madonna and is being taken to a church; he further advised me, in order to prevent the picture from being too frieze-like, to allow this foremost group to walk up to the spectator. it now looks something like this: (slight sketch of the design for "cimabue's madonna.") i hope with all my heart that you will approve these alterations. i have drawn a quantity of heads and hands, which are all finished, like the "chiaruccia" which i gave you; drapery is not lacking. how i regret, dear friend, that i cannot show them to you. gamba also is very industrious; he has made endless studies, and has also got his record ready. he sends you most hearty greetings. of his diligence there is always plenty to tell, and you will not be surprised when i tell you that he has made very gratifying progress. i could still tell you a great deal, my dear master, of what i have seen and experienced! but time and, alas! especially eyes compel me to be laconic, or this oft-begun letter will never be finished. therefore i will only briefly narrate what happened to me in the imperial city; my goodness! how long ago that seems. my first impression, as i alighted from the train, was very pleasant. a lovely autumn morning, the prater with its beautiful trees, the jägerheil in the sunshine, all together welcomed me gaily. i alighted in the leopold suburb, and set off on foot the same morning in quest of kuppelwieser, a cordial, charming man. through him i became acquainted with führich and roesner, who both received me no less kindly. they all remembered with warm affection their dear comrade, steinle, and sent most hearty messages to him. of their works (for to you, best of friends, i write frankly) i cannot, candidly, speak very highly, but perhaps i might of the tenacious maintenance of their opinion in spite of the boundless, oppressive indifference of the viennese towards high art. now, the dear friends are somewhat ascetic representatives of their mode of thought--a mode of thought which can be combined, as we have seen in the great days of art, with the greatest charm of representation; but this quality is unfortunately too often absent from our friends. of the two, kuppelwieser is the less offensive; he is perhaps rather antiquated, but not without cleverness; führich is far too ornamental for me, and as a painter, god save the mark! good gracious! what is nature there for? what can the people make of all this! how is it possible that one can get so far in spite of a perverted training! that people do not perceive their fearful arrogance! they plume themselves upon piety and humility, and in god's beautiful creation nothing is right for them; do they then ever admit, these gentlemen, that they do not want nature any more because they are aware that they no longer know how to use her? would they feel happy if they saw a masaccio, a ghirlandajo, a carpaccio? but they in their drawings are pretentious and puffed up, but there is no learnedness in them, and that which god has made so lovely with all the brilliancy of colour, they daub with any dirt, and call it a picture; some even (that was still lacking) shrug their shoulders spitefully and mock--at the unattainable. and whence does all that arise? how is it that even sensible, clever men are so ill equipped? it is due solely and alone to the topsy-turvy, involved principle of education, to the fact that the people, while they are still young, labour and worry day and night at the representation of unrepresentable ideas, instead of drawing from nature and from nothing else for ever and ever amen, till they are in close harmony with her; that would be a soil from which the tree of their art could grow upwards, fresh, powerful, ever-herbescent; that they might not stand there in their old age as high, proud, upward-aspiring trunks without leaves, without sap. naturally all this is not aimed at the good führich, but in general against all those who in their infatuation allow themselves, behind the shield of severe sentiments and high efforts, to throw overboard all the difficulties of art. how gladly my thoughts turn away from such unpleasing reflections to you, dearest friend, who take nature for your model in every part of your pictures, and with your high degree of ability are always the devoted pupil of _nature_! keep, i beg you, _your_ grateful pupil in sympathetic remembrance, and never doubt the devotion of your loving friend, fred leighton. please remember me most kindly to your wife; also to my other friends. if you see schalck, will you kindly say to him that i have received his letter, and will answer it when my eyes permit. i am longing to hear what pictures and drawings you are making! will you forgive my silence, and write to me? my picture is under-painted grey-in-grey (_grau in grau_); i finished it in a week; it was a great effort. rome, via felice, _february , _. dearest mamma,--as the body of the letter i have just received is written by papa, i have thought well to address to _him_ the important part of mine; you will therein see all the business news that i have to give, and will, i know, be much pleased to hear that my picture has had great success here; i hope it may not have less in london. as the picture is of a jovial aspect and contains pretty faces, male and female, i think the public will find _leur affaire_; the "romeo and juliet" (also nearly finished) will, though perhaps a better picture, probably be less popular from its necessarily serious and dingy aspect. dear mamma, i am much tickled at your comparison between the campagna and the environs of bath; it is like saying that strawberries and cream are equal and perhaps superior to a haunch of wild boar! _l'un n'empeche pas l'autre_, but they can never be compared, nor can they answer the same purpose. the sartoris are well; i am there every evening of my life. the next page is papa's. good-bye, dear mamma. best love from your affectionate and dutiful son, fred leighton. _p.s._--my resolution not to dance i have kept (excepting in the case of quadrilles), and have avoided making new acquaintances, as i intend next winter not to go out at all; but if i have no longer agitated the fantastic toe, and have acquired a cordial dislike to balls, i have been all the oftener to my dearest and best friends, the sartoris, to whom i go about four times a week, and of whose sterling worth it is impossible to speak too warmly; at their house also i have made several interesting acquaintances; fanny kemble (as you know), thackeray, lockhart, browning, the authors; marochetti, the sculptor, and so on; as for mrs. sartoris, i look upon her as an angel, _ni plus ni moins_, and i feel terrified at the idea of how much more exacting she has made me for the future choice of a wife, by showing one what opposite excellencies a woman may unite in herself. _to his father--part of letter missing._] . it is with very great pleasure that i announce to you the completion of my large picture, which i have exhibited privately to my english friends and a crowd of artists of all nations. you will, i am sure, be gratified to hear that it had a remarkable "succès"; artists of whatever school seem equally pleased, some admiring the drawing, others the colouring. i hope that what i say does not savour of vanity; i simply tell it you from a conviction that it is agreeable to you to hear what people say of your son, and to anticipate in some measure the verdict of a larger public. as for the positive _value_ of it, we all know what to think about _that_. it amused me to hear that several people compared my picture to the works of maclise, and came to conclusions considerably in my favour. swinton paid me the compliment of requesting to be introduced to me, and seemed very sincerely to admire my picture, as also a portfolio of leads which i have drawn at different times, and which are much admired by everybody. of course you did perfectly right in not dreaming of exhibiting isabel's likeness. pray do not think from what i said about my lengthened stay in rome, that i undervalue the delight of seeing you all again, but still i think that if by a little postponement i can have that pleasure without losing my spring, it would be better. my idea is to remain in italy till the end of may, and then visiting paris (to see the great exhibition) on my road to get home by the middle or end of june, which will still leave me a long summer's holiday. this letter from his mother contains the news of leighton's father's joy at the success of the picture in rome:-- _february , ._ now i think of it, you have probably some signs of spring about you--how enviable! my dear fred, i did not compare the artistic resources of bath with those of rome, well knowing that the transparent atmosphere there imparts beauty to the country which, without it, might not be remarked; equally bright and clear the sky is not in england, but i assure you that many parts of the country near us and in devonshire, and doubtless in many other counties, may for beauty challenge a comparison with many most admired spots in italy and elsewhere, though the character of the landscape is different. nevertheless, i shall be very glad to see again switzerland, southern germany, &c. &c. pray, dear fred, if you do go to sketch in the campagna, take care not to expose yourself to any disagreeable adventures with brigands; i _entreat_ you, be prudent. not to tire you with repetition, i have not alluded to the success of your picture, but i must tell you that your father was radiant with joy as he read your letter and gave it into my hands with the words, "that _is_ a satisfactory letter." i am curious to know _when_ we shall see your paris picture, and whether we shall winter in that delightful town; papa and i have always wished it. i must just mention, what i had nearly forgotten, that a great treat is in store for the inhabitants of bath, as next week mrs. fanny kemble is to read some of shakespeare's plays in public, with appropriate music. a great treat is expected. god bless you, love, i can no more. our united affectionate greetings.--your attached mother, a. leighton. rome, _january , _. (_recd. january ._) dearest mamma,--let me hasten to reassure my poor dear progenitor on the subject of his anxieties; if i spoke doubtfully and despondently of my performances, it was owing to the lively feeling that every artist, whose ideal is beyond the applause of the many, must entertain of his own shortcomings; once and for all let me beg him never to feel any uneasiness on the score of mechanical processes, as in such cases one always has the resource of cutting the gordian knot by painting over again the unsuccessful portions, an expedient indeed to which i have many a time been forced to resort; the result of such failures is called experience; through such failures alone one arrives at success. nor am i wanting in the applause of my friends, who all speak in praise and encouragement of my works, and it is not a little gratifying to me to find that those whose opinions i most value are the first to speak favourably of my endeavours; as agreeable as is to me this testimony on their part, so indifferent am i, and must i beg you to be (for better and for worse) to the scribbling of pamphleteers; the self-complacent oracularity of these _pachidermata_ is rivalled only by their gross ignorance of the subjects they bemaul, and the conventional flatness of all their views; i speak without fear of being considered partial, as the article which you communicate to me contains more of praise than of blame; it is, however, my practice never to accept (inwardly) the praise of those whose blame i don't acknowledge. i happen to have seen other articles from the pen of this same mister ----, and know _à quoi m'en tenir_. the notice on myself i had heard of, but not seen. it may amuse you to hear that my draperies have been considered (alas!) the most successful part of my picture, and i am at present labouring hard to bring the heads, &c., _up to them_! in about a fortnight, the large work ("cimabue," the "canvas of many feet") will be, d.v., finished, with the exception of the ultimate glazes and retouches; by the end of february, both pictures will start for their respective destinations. one thing has caused me some annoyance and anxiety; i wrote a month ago (or more) to one mr. allen, carver and gilder, ebury street, pimlico, sending a design of my frame, and requesting him to let me know at once what would be the cost of such a frame, whether he would undertake it, and asking many questions important to me to know; i have received no answer; i therefore must take for granted that either he has not received my letter, or his answer to me has been lost; now, as there is no longer any time to correspond on the subject, i must, on the supposition that my letter has gone astray, send another design together with an unconditional order to begin at once at whatever cost; now i grudge the time of writing a duplicate of my old letter, and especially that of drawing a new diagram for his guidance. with regard to the price, fripp, who recommended him to me, says allen is a very respectable man, and will no way take advantage of my awkward position; i calculate the frame can hardly exceed five and twenty pounds; then there will be the bill for exhibiting the picture of which he will take charge; i expect that the framing, packing, sending, &c., of the two canvases together will cost about fifty pounds "tant pis pour moi!" (here the letter breaks off.) (_cover_--madame leighton, circus, bath, england.) rome, via felice , _march , _. (_on cover--recd. april ._) dear papa,--i received a day or two ago the kind letter in which you inform me of the disposition you have made to enable me to get the money i want, and for which i sincerely thank you; your letter reached me just as i was driving the last nail into the coffin of my large picture; the small had been disposed of in like manner the day before. delighted as i am to have got them at last off my hands, yet i felt a kind of strange sorrow at seeing them nailed up in their narrow boxes; it was so painfully like shrouding and stowing away a corpse, with the exception, by-the-bye, that my pictures may possibly return to my bosom long before the last judgment. with regard to the success of my picture with its little roman public, nearly all the praise that reached my ears was bestowed _behind my back_, so that whether intelligent or no, i have good reason to believe it was sincere; indeed, i should not else have said anything about it; cornelius, i am sincerely sorry to say, did not see my daubs in their finished state; he was prevented by ill-health; however, all the advice he could give me i got out of him in the beginning, and indeed, as you know, altered about a dozen figures at his request; in points of material execution he is utterly incompetent; i am happy to say that he feels very kindly towards me, as indeed he told me in plain words, and added on one occasion, "sie können für england etwas bedeutendes werden;" i need not tell you that as he is altogether without apprehension of the peculiar and very great merits of some of our artists, he considerably overvalues my (relative) value. you ask for _my_ opinion of my pictures; you couldn't ask a more embarrassing and unsatisfactory question; i think, indeed, that they are very creditable works for my age, but i am anything but satisfied with them, and believe that i could paint both of them better now; i am particularly anxious that persons whom i love or esteem should think neither more nor less of my artistic capacity than i deserve; the plain truth; i am therefore very circumspect in passing a verdict on myself in addressing myself to such persons; i think, however, you may expect me to become eventually the best draughtsman in my country; gibson and miss hosmer are, as you expect, amongst those who praise me, but i warn you that they are both utterly without an opinion in matters pictorial. who is ----? he is, _entre nous_, the worst painter i ever saw, but also the greatest toady, in virtue of which quality he makes £ a year by portraying the nobility of great britain and ireland; however, towards me he has been very pleasant and nice, and so long as there is no lord in the way he is a sufficiently companionable person. i certainly feel very little desire to have my "cimabue" hung in the little room you speak of, but i fear that i must take my chance with the rest; the fact is that although i personally have taken no steps in the matter, still "ces messieurs" will not be unprepared for my picture, because i know that old leitch for one will speak to them about it and will do everything that is friendly; he even offered to varnish it, but _that_ another friend of mine has already undertaken. one thing is certain, they can't hang it out of sight--it's too large for that. i must leave myself room to write afterwards to mamma.... ...i am glad that you have made up your mind to not seeing me as soon as you expected; indeed i felt sure that when i told you all the reasons which concurred to make me prolong my stay, you would feel the force of them; i willingly confess, too, that i was most strongly biassed on the matter by my reluctance to part from my friends, but particularly _her_. i am horrified at the use you make of the words "indefinite time"; i shall certainly never live long anywhere without going to see them, and i trust that our "intimes relations" will not cease as long as i live. how sorry i am that i should not have known in time that mrs. kemble was to read in bath; i should have liked so to introduce you to her; you no doubt found her reading a rare treat. how beautiful is the "midsummer night's dream" with mendelssohn's music! this reminds me of dear gussy and _her_ music; i suppose her new master is a good one, or she would not have taken him; generally speaking i have a sovereign dislike for the _engeance_ of _pianistes_ with their eternal jingle-tingles at the top of the piano, their drops of dew, their sources, their fairies, their bells, and the vapid runs and futile conceits with which they sentimentalise and torture the motive of other men; we have a specimen here in the shape of the all-fashionable ----.... referring to a lady of his acquaintance, he continues:-- she has acquired by her melancholy and sometimes haughty moods a character for misanthropy which she has not cared to refute; but, my good sir, she is divorced! poor cowards! should they not rather gather her to them, and "weep with her that weeps," bible-wise pharisees! your letter is full of thrilling events: children born among the australian flocks of mr. donaldson; little ----, too, taking to herself a husband--alas for the laird of (probably) ballyshallynachurighawalymoroo! i must think of answering dear gussy's note, and close with a hearty kiss, from your dutiful and affectionate son, fred leighton. dearest gussy,--many thanks to you for your kind note and for the sympathy and interest which you both offer and ask. how heartily sorry i am that you should still be persecuted by the soreness in your throat, and should be prevented, poor dear, from singing; you who have the rare gift of that which is unteachable and without which the most brilliant execution is dumb to the heart; i mean musical accent. i had hoped that we should sing together, but i fear that if the air of bath has such a bad effect on the throat, i shall be invalided as well as yourself. what is about the compass of your voice? or (which is more important) in what _tessitura_ do you sing with least discomfort? that i may see whether anything i sing will suit us; unfortunately most part of my limited _répertoire_ consists of the first tenor part in quintettes and quartettes, which are not available for us two. i don't know whether i told you that i take a part in mrs. sartoris' musical evenings, in which i officiate as _primo tenore_; you may imagine how great an enjoyment this is to me. dear gussy, how i wish you could hear _her_ sing! it would enlarge your ideas and open out your heart; i am sadly afraid however, that she won't winter in paris, so that if you go there you must make up your mind to not meeting her; but if you are in england in october she may possibly be there by that time, and you might make her acquaintance; if i sell either of my pictures, and am "sur les lieux" at the time, i will take you and lina to town at my own expense and introduce you to the dearest friend i have in the world; i long for you to know and love one another. you ask me whether she is like her sister; in _expression_, sometimes, strikingly like; in _feature_, not in the least. she is the image of john kemble, with large aquiline nose and the most beautiful mouth in the world, a most harmonious head, and, like fanny, the hair low down on her forehead; artistically speaking, her head and shoulders are the finest i ever saw with the exception only of dante's; in spite of all this, many people think her barely good-looking, because she has no complexion, very little hair, and is excessively stout; _you_ will be more discriminating. i am amused at mamma's asking me in her letter whether i know why ---- did not know the sartoris! pardi! i did not introduce them,--in the first place i have been obliged to make a rule to introduce nobody to that house, as i should otherwise become a nuisance; people have constantly fished for introductions knowing my intimacy; but the chief reason is that mrs. sartoris has the judgment and courage to ask to her house nobody but those she _likes_ for some reason or other, for which reason her house is the most sociable in the world; her "intimes" are a complete medley, from the duke of wellington down to a poor artist with one change of boots, but _all_ agreeable for some reason; i know that she would be kind to _any one i_ brought to her, but i also know that the ----s would have been in the way and a _corvée_ to her, which fully accounts, &c. &c. i am delighted, dear guss, that you have a music master to your heart, and that you have been considered worthy to play bach's fugues, which are indeed monstrous difficult. with regard to the pianistic style and the dewdrop-warbling school, you need not fear that _i_ should throw sour grapes in your teeth about _that_; _franchement_, the ---- after all is commonplace enough, and the ----, though pretty, hardly deserves such an epithet as beautiful; as for the ----, it's just ludicrous. did you ever hear ---- piano-doodle himself? i was rather surprised at the judgment you pass on fanny kemble's reading; if _anything_ seems at all coarse in it, it is occasional bits in the _male_ part, and that only, after all, because it is _too_ good and it seems discrepant to hear male harsh sounds proceeding from the mouth of a woman. with regard to her women, nothing can be more pathetic and touching than her juliet, or indeed all the women i have heard her do; there is altogether in her style a certain amount of mannerism belonging to the kemble school, but in spite of all that, it is quite unapproachable now and is grand in the extreme; the ghost in "hamlet" is quite a creation. you seem, like mamma, to apologise almost for expressing an admiration for my photograph; do you think, dear, that i don't value your sympathy irrespectively of your art judgment? i shall send you soon two photographs of portraits that i am now painting; one of mrs. sartoris, the other of her little daughter may. i must close.--with very best love to all, i remain, your very affectionate brother, fred leighton. the change leighton made in his picture at the request of cornelius, mentioned in his letter to his father, dated march , , can be seen by comparing the pencil sketch of the complete design with the finished painting (see list of illustrations). it consisted in his making the procession turn at the left-hand corner to face spectator, instead of filling in this space and giving the required grouping of lines partly by the foreshortened horse and its rider which we find in the first sketch. in the leighton house collection there is a fine study in pencil of the undraped figure of the man riding which is not included in the final design. there are those who remembered the picture when first painted in rome, also at the exhibitions in trafalgar square and burlington house, who were of opinion that it was never seen so advantageously as on the occasion when the king lent it for exhibition in the artist's own studio in leighton house in the year , and many seeing it there exclaimed, "leighton never did a finer thing;" and, truly, seen, as it was then, placed across the end of the glass studio under perfect conditions of lighting and surroundings, the power and originality both in the colouring and design of the work were very striking and impressive. leighton's friends felt specially grateful to the king, for an opportunity having been afforded for the public to see this early work under such favourable and appropriate circumstances. during those months when the picture was shown at leighton house, it felt as if the very spirit of the young artist, at the time when he was starting on his notable career, had returned and was haunting the home of his later years. from the end of the large studio, looking through the darkened passage connecting the two rooms, the procession verily looked alive, a _tableau vivant_--no mere painting. one of the salient virtues in the composition lies in the happy way in which the two central figures take a separate important position, without the moving on of the procession being interrupted nor their attitudes being in any sense forced. on the contrary, it is by their absorbed, modest demeanour, which contrasts with the rest of the gay crowd, talking, singing, and playing musical instruments as it moves along, that the sense of awe and reverence felt by the two artist spirits becomes accentuated. these recognise in this public ovation bestowed on the picture of their beloved "madonna and child" the union of a service offered both to art and to religion. the happiness leighton enjoyed during the two years when this subject occupied his thoughts seems to have been reflected in the vigour of the actual painting. it was evidently finally executed with an exuberant feeling of satisfaction. careful studies having been previously made for every portion, the under-painting itself was, as he writes to steinle, completed in one week, and the canvas once attacked, there appears to have been no hitch in the process of completion. the happy balancing of masses, the grouping of the figures, the beauty of the lines throughout the crowded procession are admirable. the picture was admitted by competent judges to be a work marked by a distinct individuality, yet possessing "style," a word which in recent years had been associated in england with art that lacked vigour and originality, and which flavoured solely of obsolete grooves and theories. the colour is richer and purer than in leighton's earliest pictures, and arranged cleverly so as to give full importance and value to the beautiful white costume worn by cimabue.[ ] sir william richmond, r.a., writes: "impressions of early years are not easily removed. as a boy at school i went to the r.a. exhibition, and saw for the first time a work of leighton's, the procession in honour of the picture by cimabue in florence, . it stood out among the other pictures to my young eye as a work so complete, so noble in design, so serious in sentiment and of such achievement, that perforce it took me by the throat." leighton sent a photograph of the picture to steinle with a letter dated march . _translation._] rome, via felice , _march , _. my very dear friend,--although since my last letter i have had no news of you, i cannot pass by this moment, so important to me, without giving you intelligence of it. yesterday i at last sent off both my pictures, the large one to london, the small one to paris, with the consignment of the roman committee. thank goodness, at last i have got them off my mind! and how sorry i am, dear friend, that i could not put the finishing touches to them in your presence! of the "cimabue," i send you, in two pieces, a very bad photograph, but it is the best that could be made within four walls; from it you will only be able to judge generally of the grouping, for as regards the colour, which comes out so black in the photograph, in the picture it is altogether clear and light. you will certainly be glad to hear that this work has earned much praise here; i promised that you should not have to be ashamed of your pupil. the small picture is so dark in effect, that it would be impossible to photograph it; but as i suppose you, like all the rest of the world, will visit the great exhibition in paris, you can avail yourself of the same opportunity to see my daub. gamba is, now as ever, industrious, tireless, conscientious; his picture _also_ will be finished in a few weeks, and will be a great credit to him; i only wish he had a prospect of selling it, but at present the sale of pictures is stagnant, especially in piedmont, where the art-loving queen-mother has died. he will have to fight hard against the gigantic pedantry of the turin academy and college of painters (_malfacultät_), for he paints things exactly as he sees them in nature; god be with him! of course, he sends you heartfelt greetings. of other artistic doings in rome i cannot tell you much; i think i have already told you that i look upon rome as the grave of art; for a young artist, i mean, for whom actively suggestive surroundings are necessary. as regards the so-called german historical art, that is not much of a joke to me; when men, out of pure impotence, throw themselves under the shield of noble tendencies, in order to make mistaken efforts to imitate the work of other painters, they are simply ridiculous; but when men are endowed with fine natural gifts, and nevertheless out of sheer queerness and pedantry go altogether astray, then i only feel angry. god forgive me if i am intolerant, but according to my view an artist must produce his art out of his own heart; or he is none. dear master, i may perhaps pass through frankfurt on my way back (in june); i should like beyond all things to see you again, you and your works that are so dear to me. have you painted the "death of christ" which pleased me so much? write to me if you have time, and tell me how things go with you. keep a friendly recollection of your grateful, affectionate pupil, fred. leighton. _translation._] frankfurt am main, _march , _. dear friend,--my best thanks for your dear lines of the st and for the photographs, with which you afforded me the greatest pleasure. i had an idea that i should receive this friendly remembrance, and i hope that you have meanwhile received my letter of the rd march. i know the difference in a photograph of a painting, and the often quite contrary effect of the yellow and red, too well to be deceived by a dark impression; the masses, their distribution, alike in the groups and in the light and shade, the outline of the background, most of the single figures, all please me very well, and you could not believe how much i rejoice in every detail in which i recognise my leighton, and when i see how all these have been achieved so thoroughly by industrious study and artistic culture. you have indeed prepared a real feast for me, my good wishes in my last letter were quite the right ones, and the recognition which you have obtained in rome was certainly well earned. i am convinced that overbeck was heartily pleased with your pictures. it was perhaps my imagination, dear friend, when i thought from your letter that there was a slight cloud between us, but i think it will be torn away when these lines reach you. the fond idea of being again able to share your life and artistic work, i must relinquish, for i am an exile, and besides cannot make myself familiar with your progress as an artist in the fatherland. shall, then, your stay in italy be ended by the journey which you led me to hope would bring you to see me again? but i forget so easily that we live in a world of renunciations, and that often when we believe we are disposing, we are disposed. my spirit and my love will always, wherever you may be, be with you. it occurred to me that probably our excellent gamba would not send his great picture to paris, and yet i seem to have heard that he intended doing so; it appears to me that exhibition in paris would give the picture more importance than in turin; that gamba would triumph over the academic formalities in turin, i do not doubt in the least. his grandmother and all his friends await him here; on a journey to paris?--now, dear friend, one more request. ihlée brought from rome some photographic views, with which i and the friends who know rome are truly delighted; the worthy frau rath schlosser wishes very much to possess a selection of twelve, i myself would like to have at least three, will you be so good as to bring them with you in june, and also yourself take the trouble to make a really beautiful selection? you will oblige me thereby very greatly. i shall rejoice excessively to see you again, and wish much that your stay in frankfurt need not be so short. remember me cordially to gamba, and give my kindest regards to altmeister cornelius. my wife thanks you for your kind remembrance, and sends many greetings. all friends here have bidden me send their best wishes to you and gamba. adieu, dear friend, always and altogether yours, edw. steinle. _translation._] rome, _april , _. my very dear friend,--only a day or two after i sent off my letter with the photograph, i received your dear lines, and now i have also the letter in which you acknowledge receipt of mine, so that i am well off for news of you. all the affection and kind sympathy which you express for me has affected me deeply, and i look forward with sincere pleasure to the moment when i shall be able personally to express my gratitude to you; i am also most eager to see the drawings of the completion of which you tell me; judging by the sketches, i expect great things from this composition, so rich in imagination; i saw the first beginnings of it. that you are pleased with my photograph rejoices me extremely, but i am sorry that you have not mingled some blame with the praise; you say that _most_ of my figures please you well; ergo, some of them do not; which are they? why not tell me all? do you no longer regard me as your pupil? from one part of your letter i understand that you think i have had a great deal of intercourse with good old overbeck; that is not so; he and his followers one does not see at all unless one belongs to their clique; overbeck has never been within my four walls. cornelius i see less seldom, but not very often; he is a very charming old man, so cheerful and friendly, and is of great strength; for the rest, he has some little queernesses; he said to me once, "yes, nature has also her style" (!). does that not bespeak a curious mental development? gamba will not, as it happens, send his picture to paris, it was not ready in time; meantime, it is being exhibited here in the piazza del popolo, and receives the applause it merits; he sends you most cordial greeting. yes, indeed, the years of my "italian journey" are now ended! it seems but yesterday that we first took leave of one another, and you encouraged me upon my setting forth; the remembrance makes me sad at heart; i cannot help asking myself whether my expectations for these three years have been fulfilled: and the question remains unanswered. my stay in italy will always remain a charming memory to me; a beautiful, irrecoverable time; the young, careless, independent time! i have also made some friends here who will always be dear to me, and to whom i particularly attribute my attachment to rome. from an artistic point of view i am quite glad to leave rome, which i, _for a beginner_, regard as the grave of art. a young man needs before all things the emulation of his contemporaries; this i lack here in the highest degree; also here i cannot learn my _trade_, and, notwithstanding cornelius, i am of opinion that the spirit cannot work effectively until the hand has attained complete pliancy, and i cannot see what right a painter has to evade the difficulties of painting; cornelius always says, "take care that the hand does not become master of the spirit," and that sounds well enough; however, i see that, in consequence of his scheme of development, he has not once succeeded in painting a head reasonably, not once in modelling as the _form_ requires; and that, with all his magnificent talent! judge the tree by the fruit. how are the frescoes of raphael painted and modelled? and the sixtine chapel! the lower part of the "day of judgment" is in a high degree _colouristic_ (_koloristisch_). _those_ people took nature straight from god, and were not ashamed; therefore their art was no galvanised mummy. i must close. please remember me most kindly to your wife, and to my other friends. for yourself, keep in remembrance, your grateful and affectionate pupil, fred. leighton. steinle answers:-- _translation._] frankfurt am main, _may , _. my very dear friend,--hearty thanks for your friendly note of april. the photograph of your picture quite pleases me as it is, and if i am particularly pleased with the details, that is to cast no discredit on the whole; for a general criticism the photograph does not give me sufficient certainty, and i must content myself, this time, with expressing the pleasure your always well-composed pictures give me. you know your picture, and can see more in the photograph than i. what you say about overbeck, cornelius, and rome, i understand well, and i am in sympathy with much of it; but i am almost beginning to fear you, especially as i particularly feel how much i myself am wanting in ground-work, how much i myself belong to the same evolution as these two men. custom, circumstances, and the tendencies of the times, are often mitigating facts in our judgment of these painters; they have fought against things of which we no longer know anything, and, as participators in their art, we stand, to a certain extent, shoulder to shoulder with them; their delicacies are proofs of their struggle, and the characteristic of youth becomes in old age principally a sign of weakness. also experience has taught me not to let myself be deceived by what is called "cliquiness," i grant you that this is not an infallible judgment, which is often to be regretted, but people nowadays are weak, and i have found that cliques often have a greater tendency for good than those judgments which make more noise, a greater outcry than the fact warrants. overbeck has always withdrawn himself too much; but now, dear friend, you must attack him on the subject before you leave rome. kindest regards to gamba, to whom i wish a happy completion of his picture. my wife sends best greetings. always and altogether yours, edw. steinle. we have read in leighton's letters the effect the "cimabue's madonna" produced on his friends in rome, and how it was nailed up as "in a coffin" and despatched from the eternal city, where it was destined never to return. [illustration: "cimabue's 'madonna' carried in procession through the streets of florence." by permission of the fine art society, the owners of the copyright] there exists a small long envelope edged with black, stained horny yellow by time, the head of queen victoria on the postage stamp. it was despatched from england to rome over fifty years ago. in the ardent spirit of the young artist who had been eagerly awaiting tidings of his first great venture, what a tumult of excitement must the contents of that small envelope have aroused! they brought with them a conclusive and triumphal end to all arguments with his father concerning the career leighton had chosen; they realised the sanguine hopes of his beloved master, steinle, and of his other friends; last not least, they gave him the means and the great happiness of helping his fellow-artists. to quote again from the record of one who was with him in rome at the time: "my husband[ ] remembers the departure of his picture 'the triumph of cimabue,' sent with diffidence, and so, proportionate was the joy when news came of its success, and that the queen had bought it. it was the month of may. rome was at its loveliest, and leighton's friends and brother-artists gave him a festal dinner to celebrate his honours. on receiving the news, leighton's first act was to fly to three less successful artists and buy a picture from each of them. (george mason, then still unknown, was one.) and so leighton reflected his own happiness at once on others." _translation._] rome, via felice, _may , _. dear and honoured friend,--as with everything that i receive from you, i was delighted to get your dear lines of the th; one thing only in them grieved me a little, _i.e._ that what i said about the german historical painters here seems to have rather jarred upon you. was i then so intolerant in my expressions? i hope not. you say that you are almost afraid of me. when i spoke to you so freely of the others, was that not a plain proof of how completely i except you? you assuredly know, dear master, how and what i think of you, and that i ascribe entirely to you my whole æsthetic culture in art. your commission to good old overbeck i have executed as well as i could. i found him much more cheerful and less ailing than before. he received me with the greatest amiability; we spoke, amongst other things, of you, and i perceived that he had it in his mind to go soon to germany and to spend a couple of weeks in mainz; i should like to be the first to give you this good news. as for myself, dear friend, my plans are once more quite upset. my father has hastily recalled me to england, and i am sorry to say that i must consequently give up going to frankfurt. however, i have not neglected your commission. i have chosen the photographs, and you will receive them in the beginning of next month, and that by a friend of mine who will be passing through frankfurt, and whom i hereby introduce to you. mrs. sartoris is my dearest friend, and the noblest, cleverest woman i have ever met; i need not say more to secure her a cordial welcome from you. she is one of the celebrated theatrical family of kemble. it is now ten or eleven years since she left the stage, but she is still the greatest living cantatrice.[ ] you will certainly be glad to hear that on the first day of the exhibition my picture was bought by the queen. i am at this moment in the thick of packing; you must excuse, dear friend, my ending so abruptly. i will write again from england.--your grateful pupil, fred leighton. [illustration: reproduction of letter written by sir charles eastlake, p.r.a., to lord leighton, announcing the fact that queen victoria had purchased his picture, "cimabue's madonna." .] so ended the first page of leighton's life as an artist in the rome of the fifties--a very different rome to that of the present. the atmosphere was still steeped in those days with a flavour belonging to the papal temporal dominion, and the visible life still picturesque with the costumes and grandeur of mediæval customs. footnotes: [ ] see page . [ ] page . [ ] page , "introduction." [ ] "if the almighty were to come before me, with absolute knowledge in his right hand, and perpetual striving after truth in his left, i would fling myself to his left, praying: father, give! pure truth is thine alone." [ ] "the well-head" (see list of illustrations), drawn during leighton's visit to venice, and described in "pebbles," more than justifies this opinion, for it may be questioned whether any other drawing he ever made of the kind is as perfectly beautiful. [ ] miss laing, afterwards lady nias. [ ] see appendix. presidential address delivered by sir f. leighton, bart., p.r.a., at the art congress, held at liverpool, december , . [ ] this modest attitude leighton took as listener reminds me of the last time he saw browning. one afternoon in the autumn of , we were sitting with leighton and browning in the kensington studio. browning showed us photographs of the palazzo rezzonico which he had lately given to his son. the subject turned to a discussion on byron and shelley. often as i had heard browning talk well, i never heard him converse so well as he did on that afternoon. it was no monologue. it was real conversation, and of the kind that inspires others to do also their best; but leighton never uttered, till--when, after an hour or so, we rose to leave--he exclaimed, "oh, don't! _do_ go on," and we had to sit down again. when at last the good thing came to an end, leighton conducted us downstairs to his door, where we parted. browning waved a farewell from across the road, where he stood for a moment in front of the little cottages, while leighton stood in the porch-way of his house. the next day browning started on his last journey to italy--to die in the palazzo rezzonico. [ ] another old friend of leighton's, mr. hamilton aïdé, writes: "my journal - - contains frequent notices of our excursions and long days spent on the campagna, and on the hill-sides near the bagni di lucca, where we took out food for mind and will as well as for the body, and sketched while one of our party read aloud--and also of many tableaux at rome, devised by him (leighton) to suit the colouring, character, and grace of certain noble ladies." [ ] it appears that leighton had been misinformed as to "every girl" having to pass such an examination. [ ] in italien auf meiner wanderschaft hab' ich dies büblein aufgerafft hab's mit dem pinsel so hingeschrieben ist mir leider unvollendet geblieben. [ ] the café greco still exists, unaltered since the days when leighton and gamba lunched there every day on _macaroni al burro_. i visited it last may ( ), and heard from the present proprietor that it continues to be frequented by artists of all countries. he had heard of the book of sketches, and also that rafaello had sold it before his death, but to whom the _padrone_ could not say. [ ] of cervara there is a pencil drawing by leighton in the leighton house collection, in his earliest style, dated . [ ] fanny kemble's answer to these words of leighton's were:--"thank you, my dear sir frederic, for the address you have been so good as to give me. you honour me by remembering any conversation you ever had with me. i remember one i had with you many years ago, but do not think you refer to that. you say no word, and you do well, upon the subject that must be uppermost in both our minds when we meet or hold any intercourse with each other--our thoughts must be of the same complexion and could hardly find any expression. thank you again for your kindness.--i am affectionately, your obliged, fanny kemble." [ ] ruskin wrote the following criticism of the picture when it was first exhibited: "this is a very important and very beautiful picture. it has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of venetian art--that is to say, on the calm acceptance of the whole of nature, small and great, as, in its place, deserving of faithful rendering. the great secret of the venetians was their simplicity. they were great colourists, not because they had peculiar secrets about oil and colour, but because when they saw a thing red they painted it red, and ... when they saw it distinctly they painted it distinctly. in all paul veronese's pictures the lace borders of the tablecloths or fringes of the dresses are painted with just as much care as the faces of the principal figures; and the reader may rest assured that in all great art it is so. everything in it is done as well as it can be done. thus, in the picture before us, in the background is the church of san miniato, strictly accurate in every detail; on top of the wall are oleanders and pinks, as carefully painted as the church; the architecture of the shrine on the wall is studied from thirteenth-century gothic, and painted with as much care as the pinks; the dresses of the figures, very beautifully designed, are painted with as much care as the faces; that is to say, all things throughout with as much care as the painter could bestow. it necessarily follows that what is most difficult (_i.e._ the faces) should be comparatively the worst done. but if they are done as well as the painter could do them, it is all we have to ask, and modern artists are under a wonderful mistake in thinking that when they have painted faces ill, they make their pictures more valuable by painting the dresses worse. "the painting before us has been objected to because it seems broken up in bits. precisely the same objection would hold, and in very nearly the same degree, against the best works of the venetians. all faithful colourists' work, in figure-painting, has a look of sharp separation between part and part.... although, however, in common with all other work of its class, it is marked by these sharp divisions, there is no confusion in its arrangement. the principal figure is nobly principal, not by extraordinary light, but by its own pure whiteness; and both the master and the young giotto attract full regard by distinction of form and face. the features of the boy are carefully studied, and are indeed what, from the existing portraits of him, we know those of giotto must have been in his youth. the head of the young girl who wears the garland of blue flowers is also very sweetly conceived." d.g. rossetti wrote to his friend, william allingham, may , : "there is a big picture of cimabue, one of his works in procession, by a new man, living abroad, named leighton--a huge thing, which the queen has bought; which every one talks of. the r.a.'s have been gasping for years for some one to back against hunt and millais, and here they have him, a fact that makes some people do the picture injustice in return. it was very interesting to me at first sight; but on looking more at it, i think there is great richness of arrangement, a quality which, when really existing, as it does in the best old masters, and perhaps hitherto in no living man--at any rate english--ranks among the great qualities." [ ] sir john leslie. [ ] mrs. richmond ritchie gives a very charming account of her first introduction in the rome of those days to leighton's friend, the great _cantatrice_, mrs. sartoris, in the preface to the edition of "a week in a french country house," published in . thackeray, mrs. ritchie's father, and charles kemble, mrs. sartoris' father, had been old friends. mrs. ritchie says: "the writer's first definite picture of her old friend (mrs. sartoris) remains as a sort of frontispiece to many aspects and remembrances. we were all standing in a big roman drawing-room with a great window to the west, and the colours of the room were not unlike sunset colours. there was a long piano with a bowl of flowers on it in the centre of the room; there were soft carpets to tread upon; a beautiful little boy in a white dress, with yellow locks all a-shine from the light of the window, was perched upon a low chair looking up at his mother, who with her arm round him stood by the chair, so that their two heads were on a level. she was dressed (i can see her still) in a sort of grey satin robe, and her beautiful proud head was turned towards the child. she seemed pleased to see my father, who had brought us to be introduced to her, and she made us welcome, then, and all that winter, to her home. in that distant, vivid hour (there may be others as vivid now for a new generation) rome was still a mediæval city--monks in every shade of black and grey and brown were in the streets outside with their sandalled feet flapping on the pavement; cardinals passed in their great pantomime coaches, rolling on with accompaniment of shabby cocked-hats and liveries to clear a way; americans were rare and much made of; english were paramount; at night oil-lamps swung in the darkness. many of the ruins of the present were still in their graves peacefully hidden away for another generation to unearth; the new buildings, the streets, the gas lamps, the tramways were not. the sartorises had fireplaces with huge logs burning; mrs. browning sat by her smouldering wood fire; but we in our lodging still had to light brazen pans of charcoal to warm ourselves if we shivered. at my request an old friend, who for our good fortune has kept a diary, opens one of his pretty vellum-bound note-books, and evokes an hour of those old italian times from the summer following that roman winter. he tells of a peaceful sunday at lucca, a place of which i have often heard mrs. sartoris speak with pleasure; leighton and hatty hosmer and hamilton aidé himself are there; they are all sitting peacefully together on some high terrace with a distant view of the spreading plains, while mrs. sartoris reads to them out of one of her favourite dr. channing's sermons. another page tells of a party at ostia. 'very pleasant we made ourselves in a pine wood,' says the diarist; 'i walked by a.s.'s _chaise-à-porteur_ up the hills later in the evening. she talked of her past life and all its trials, and of her early youth.' mrs. ritchie in her preface also tells of this 'past life.' "the rue de clichy of which he (thackeray) speaks was the street in which miss foster lived, under whose care both fanny and adelaide kemble were placed, when they successively went to paris. then each in turn came out and made her mark, and each in turn married and left the stage for that world in which real tragedies and real comedies are still happening, and where men and women play their own parts instinctively and sing their own songs. adelaide's short artistic career lasted from to , long enough to impress all the subsequent years of her life. with all the welcoming success which was hers, there must have been many a moment of disillusion, discouragement, and suffering for a girl so original, so aristocratic in instinct, so quick of perception, so individual, '_de la bohême exquise_,' as some great lady once described her. the following page out of one of her early diaries gives a vivid picture of one side of her artistic life: '...received an intimation that the company who are to act with me had arrived at trieste, and would be here at eleven to rehearse the music. at twelve came signor carcano (the director of the music), and a dirty-looking little object, who turned out to be the prompter. after they had sat some time wondering what detained the rest, a little fusty woman, with a grey-coloured white petticoat dangling three inches below her gown, holding a thin shivering dog by a dirty pocket-handkerchief, and followed by a tall slip of a man, with his hair all down his back, and decorated with whiskers, beard, and mustachios, made her appearance. i advanced to welcome my adalgisa, but without making any attempt at a return of my salutation, she glanced all round the room and merely said, "come fa caldo qui! non c'è nessuno ancora? andiamo a prendere un caffé," and taking the arm of the hairy man retreated forthwith. then came signor gallo, leader of the band, then the tenor, who could have gained the prize for unwashedness against 'em all--and after half-an-hour more waiting, adalgisa and the hairy one returned, and after about half-an-hour more arrived my bass, and, god bless him, he came clean! "'we then went to work. adalgisa could think of nothing but her dog, who kept up a continuous plaintive howl all the time we sang, which she assured me was because it liked the band accompaniment better than the piano, as it never made signs of disapprobation when she took it to rehearsals with the orchestra. she also informed me that it had five puppies, all of which it had nursed itself, as if italian dogs were in the habit of hiring out wet nurses....'" and again-- "i can remember her describing to us one of these performances, and her enjoyment of the long folds of drapery as she flew across the stage as norma and how she added with a sudden flash, half humour, half enthusiasm: 'i have everything a woman could wish for, my friends and my home, my husband and my children, and yet sometimes a wild longing comes over me to be back, if only for one hour, on the stage again, and living once more as i did in those early adventurous times.' she was standing in a beautiful room in park place when she said this. there were high carved cabinets, and worked silken tapestries on the walls, and a great golden carved glass over her head--she herself in some velvet brocaded dress stood looking not unlike a picture by tintoret." chapter iii pencil drawings of plants and flowers - no attempt at an appreciation of leighton's art would be complete were it not to include, and even accentuate, the distinct value of the exquisite drawings of flowers and leaves which he made in pencil and silver point between the years and .[ ] as regards certain all-important qualities these studies are unrivalled. i was well acquainted with the drawings leighton made for his pictures during the last twenty-five years of his life, and i had oftentimes heard watts express an unbounded admiration for these; but when, looking through the portfolios of early drawings after leighton's death, i came upon these exquisite fragments in pencil, it seemed that i had found for the first time the real key to the inner chamber of his genius. as reproductions of the beauty in line, form, and structure--the architecture, so to speak, of vegetation--nothing ever came closer to nature revealed by a human touch through a treatment on a flat surface. on december , , leighton writes to his mother from rome: "i long to find myself again face to face with nature, to follow it, to watch it, and to copy it, closely, faithfully, ingenuously--as ruskin suggests, 'choosing nothing and rejecting nothing,'" and it is in this spirit that he set to work when he filled sketch-books with exquisite studies of the flowers and plants he loved best. these records of the joy with which nature filled his artistic temperament are to some more truly sympathetic than his elaborate work, for the reason that, while enjoying their beauty, we come in contact with the pure spirit of leighton's genius unalloyed by any sense of intellectual effort. in his diary, "pebbles," on august , , leighton writes: "of the tyrolese themselves, three qualities seem to me to characterise them, qualities which go well hand in hand with, and, i think it is not fanciful to say, are in great measure a key to, their well-known frankness and open-hearted honesty. i mean piety, which shines out amongst them in many true things, a love for the art, which with them is, in fact, an outward manifestation of piety, and which is sufficiently displayed by the numberless scriptural subjects, painted or in relief, which adorn the cottages of the poorest peasants ... and last, not least, a love for flowers (in other words, for nature), which is written in the lovely clusters of flowers which stand in many-hued array on the window-sills of every dwelling. the works of all the really great artists display that love for flowers. raphael did not consider it "niggling," as some of our broad-handling moderns would call it, to group humble daisies round the feet of his divine representation of the mother of christ. i notice that _two plants_, especially, produce a beautiful effect, both of form and colour, against the cool grey walls; the spreading, dropping, graceful _carnation_, with its bluish leaves and crimson flowers, and the slender, anthered, thousand-blossomed _oleander_." no exact name has ever been given to the special creed of the artist's religion; to that condition of the soul which socrates in plato's _phædrus_ declares has come to the birth as having seen most of truth together with that of the philosopher, the musician, and the lover. the artist penetrates further than others can, into the mysteries of nature's marvels as revealed through the eye, and he therefore comes in closer union through the sense of sight with the spirit of the artist of the infinite, and can gauge better the immeasurable distance which exists between divine and human creation, and this is felt more distinctly, more reverently, when the artist simply copies nature than when his own dæmon is taking a part in the inspiring of his inventions. leighton writes to his mother when he first reaches rome in : "i wish that i had a mind, simple and unconscious, even as a child"; and we find the evidence in these studies by leighton of plants and flowers that his wish, for the time when he was drawing them, was granted; no intellectual choice nor assumption of scholarly theories have taken part in their achievement; they are spontaneous echoes of divine creations when he was "face to face with nature," and there is no reflection of any teaching but hers. nature and her child have been alone together. the results are unalloyed expressions of the joy he felt in pure impersonal revelations of beauty. they are distinguished because elemental, recording the birth of the ingenuous response of a human spirit to a superhuman perfection of workmanship. when in such union of spirit with nature, the artist-soul enters his most sacred shrine. an ecstatic joy is kindled by wonder, admiration, adoration, from which joy is inspired a peremptory impulse to endeavour to reproduce in his human handicraft the marvels of creation. such experiences result from instinctive inevitable conditions, and, coming from the illumination of genius, belong to a higher level than that on which the intellect works;[ ] no temptations of the personal dæmon simmer behind and distort the pure vision of nature, provoking suggestions which are human of the human--the desire to excel, the ambition to be first, the love to display individuality. that inner life, the very core and most vital meaning of leighton's being, the life that held revelry with all nature's beauty, had been enraptured through the pure innocent loveliness in the flowers. take, for instance, the page where he has _explained_ the cyclamen he found at tivoli in october , and take a cyclamen, the real flower, and dissect it. what precious work we find: the ribbed calyx spreading out from the satin sheen of the stalk to clasp the bulbous swelling at the root of the petals--brilliant like finest blown glass, each calyx fringed round with emerald green flutings--inside straw colour dashed with brown speckles, all this triumph of minute finish just to start the sail-like petals of the flower itself. what reverence and enthusiasm was excited in leighton as he pored over such things is vouched for by this page (and others similar of different flowers), exquisite portraits of every view of the cyclamen; faint notes in writing recording the colours which his pencil failed to do. [illustration: studies of cyclamen. tivoli, october leighton house collection] [illustration: wreath of bay leaves. drawn at the bagni di lucca, . leighton house collection] referring to his journey through the tyrol, in , leighton writes: "i had been dwelling with unwearied admiration on the exquisite grace and beauty of the details, as it were, of nature; every little flower of the field had become to me a new source of delight; the very blades of grass appeared to me in a new light." not only his artistic temperament, but also circumstances, had guided leighton's instincts into the worship of beauty--beauty such as can be conceived alone by the artistic temperament--as the divinest element in creation and one to be reverenced beyond all others; and when "face to face" with nature, having no desire but to record that reverence and worship "ingenuously," he made these incomparable drawings. they were done solely for the sake of the joy he felt in doing them, and leighton certainly never expected any recognition of their beauty by a future generation. stray leaves from a sketch-book have been collected and preserved in the leighton house collection, having been extracted from a mass of old dusty papers. on these pages are exquisite pencilled outlines of cyclamen, of a crocus, of oleander flowers, of a bramble branch, of sprays of bay and of plants of the agaves. they are dated the year after leighton's great success, , the year of his failure. in , when he spent the summer at the bagni di lucca, he drew studies of bay-leaves twined into a wreath and festoons of the vine (see list of illustrations and design on cover). three days after leighton's death, in a letter to _the times_ from one who knew him, a reference was made to this visit to lucca.[ ] this old acquaintance, who was then seeing him daily for three months, writes, "he was the most brilliant man i ever met." it was this brilliant entity, this attractive personality, who spent hours over drawing the flower of a pumpkin and of a "_faded pumpkin_." professor aitchison records how he found leighton at work over this drawing.[ ] the celebrated "lemon tree," to which professor aitchison refers, and of which ruskin also writes,[ ] though the most renowned of leighton's drawings of plants, and doubtless a _tour de force_,--a wonderful achievement,--has not, i think, the same perfection of charm which many of the earlier, less complete studies possess.[ ] the sketch of a portion of a deciduous tree[ ] is perhaps a greater triumph in draughtsmanship than even the "lemon tree," because the foliage has a frailer and less definite aspect, and is yet reproduced with an absolute certainty of outline. the "lemon tree," drawn at capri in , was done for a purpose. leighton had a feeling that the pre-raphaelites ought not to have it all their own way on the score of elaborate finish and perfection in the drawing of detail. my first introduction to the "lemon tree" was on an occasion when leighton and i had had an argument respecting the principles of the pre-raphaelite school. he fetched the drawing from a corner in his studio, and, while showing it to me, said words to the effect that it was not only the pre-raphaelites who reverenced the detail in nature, and who thought it worth the time and labour it took to record the beauty in the wonderful minutiæ of her structure. if sufficient pains were taken, any one, he maintained, who could draw at all ought to be able to draw the complete detail of every object set before him. but, for the very reason that the "lemon tree" was done with a further purpose than the mere joy the beauty of nature excited in leighton's æsthetic senses, there is not, i think, quite the same convincing charm in this drawing as in some other more fragmentary studies. in considering this early work by leighton, it should be borne in mind, that in those years when it was executed, photography had not yet given the standard of a finish and perfection in actual delineation which outrivals every record made by human hand and eye. photography has, in these later years, given the proportion and detail in beautiful architecture, the form of trees, plants, and flowers, their exquisite delicacy of structure, their grace and intricacy of line: all this has been secured and pictured for us by the camera; and, up to a certain point, very precious and truthful are these memoranda of the aspects of nature and art. many of us remember the days when enthusiastic disciples of the wonderful new art of photography prophesied that no other would soon be needed, and that the draughtsman's craft would before long cease to exist. and further, they maintained it only required the discovery of a means to photograph colour for the painter's art also to be demolished. artists, however, knew better. what was valuable in the records of photography, and what was of most intrinsic worth in the records created through means of the human hand and eye, were absolutely incomparable quantities. the treatment of nature in a photographic picture, however admirable and complete, must always be lacking in the evidence of any preference, reverence, or enthusiasm--in the sacred fire, in fact, which inspires the draughtsman's pencil and the painter's brush. photography is indiscriminate; human art is selective, and is precious as it evinces and secures a choiceness in selection. however truthfully a photograph may record beauty of line and form in nature, it inevitably also records in its want of discrimination any facts which may exist in the view photographed; these counter-balance the effect of such beauty, and mar the subtle impression of charm which scenes in nature produce on a mind sensitive to beauty. [illustration: study of lemon tree. capri, by permission of mr. s. pepys cockerell] [illustration: study of deciduous tree. leighton house collection] as the vision of the artist which attracts this feeling for beauty focalises itself in the sight, he naturally perceives but vaguely any other objects before him; therefore, the facts inspired by such preference become accentuated, and all their surroundings subordinated to it. for this reason, also, what is called, somewhat erroneously, the sculptor's sense of line and form--the sense applying equally to the treatment of line and form on a flat surface as in the round--is not so obvious in a photograph as in a good drawing. the eye of one possessing a gift for drawing transmits to the brain the structure of an object, not only as it is outlined against other objects, but also as the different planes of which it is formed recede or advance, slant one way or another, curve or straighten. to a truly gifted draughtsman, such as leighton, there is an absorbing interest in working out the forms of the objects he sees which delight his sense of beauty,--of guiding his pencil so that it echoes on the paper the gratification with which his senses are inspired through his artistic perceptions. the result will be--that the drawing he produces almost unconsciously accentuates what has delighted him most in the objects he is depicting, and, explaining further than does even an actual copy by photography the element of beauty which has inspired him, carries with it also an inspiring effect on the spectator: the drawing will have something in it which affects us as a living influence, an influence which the most perfect of photographs can never possess. the actual perspective may be absolutely correct in the photograph--so may be the placing on the paper of every turn and twist in a bough or a leaf as regards their outlines; but compared to a beautiful drawing we feel the want of mind behind it: no human sense has revelled in the intricacies of growth and foreshortening, no human eye has traced the exquisite grace and sweep of the curve and the happy spring of the shoot alive with uprising sap. just that accentuation which unwittingly creeps into the human touch, denoting that the construction of the form has been perceived and appreciated with delight, is lacking. the line of a pathway rising up on the sweep of an upland, a line which is always so fascinatingly suggestive, does not lead you farther over the hill in a photograph as it does in a little woodcut by william blake. just that push and movement is wanting in the sense of the line which in a really fine drawing gives it a living quality. another shortcoming is caused by the inevitable flattening of tone in a photograph. the brightest light does not detach itself, the darkest spot, to some degree always, even in the best print, is merged in the general shadow. [illustration: early studies of kalmia, oleander, and rhododendron flowers leighton house collection] the idea that photography could supersede the art of the draughtsman soon exploded. artists have used photography--some intelligently, as did watts--many unintelligently. the illegitimate use of photography, the endeavour to make the lens do the work which alone the human eye and hand can effect, was seen in lifeless portraits, painted partly from the sitter, partly from a photograph. it is natural that any genuine artist should rebel against such cheapening of his art; and the deadening effects of relying on photography "to help you out" have brought about the result that the qualities in art which are furthest removed from those which it has in common with photography have been forced to the front, and the grammar of drawing, the groundwork of nature's structures which the human hand and the photographic lens can both record, has ceased to be considered as all-important. in leighton's work this grammar was in itself developed into a fine art. by comparing any sketch he made of a leaf or of a flower with a photograph of the same, this will be evident to any eye that can appreciate grace and quality in drawing. the latest phase of using photography to help out the drawing is found in some modern illustrations where the lens has found the outline, the right placing of the scene on the paper, the right proportion and perspective in buildings, and the general light and shade of the scene for the illustrator--the human hand only coming in to give breadth of effect, to undo the tell-tale finish of the photograph, and to make it into what is called "a picture" on the lines of a turner or a whistler. all these were unknown ways in leighton's youth, and to the end of his life he could make no use whatever of photography in his work. he took a kodak with him once on his travels, but the results were amusingly negative. "from the moment an artist relies on photography he does no good," was a statement i heard him make. leighton believed in no short cuts. enthusiasm, labour, sacrifice, renouncement,--these, and these alone, he maintained, can secure for the artist a worthy success. [illustration: study of a faded flower of pumpkin. rome, leighton house collection] [illustration: study of flower of a pumpkin. meran, leighton house collection] [illustration: studies of branches of vine. bagni di lucca, leighton house collection] [illustration: branch of vine. bellosquardo, florence, leighton house collection] there are those who would define genius by describing it as the faculty for taking infinite pains. but obviously genius is in itself a power, born of inspiration, which so completely overmasters all other conditions in a nature, that no labour nor time is taken into account so long as the impelling force obtains utterance. the inborn conviction in a nature that it has the power to create, demolishes all impediments which come in the way to hinder this power from stamping itself into a form. the necessity of taking infinite pains is but the natural and inevitable consequence of the burning desire born, who knows how? in the spirit of those who are blessed with genius, and the faculty to discern how best to develop it. leighton, by reason, perhaps, of the very spontaneity of his own gifts, and also of his extreme natural modesty, allied to the conscientiousness with which he carried out his feeling of duty towards his vocation, was apt to lay more stress on the necessity for taking pains than on the necessity of possessing the real source of his power of industry. he saw too often the fatal results of artists depending on talent to achieve what only talent allied to industry can perform, for him not to accentuate the all-importance of unceasing labour. he wrote to his elder sister with reference to one of these fatal results: "i have not seen that young man's recent work, neither do i hunger and thirst thereafter; twenty-one years ago, or more, his parents brought me a composition of his--it justified the highest hopes--it was very ambitious in its scope (though the work of a child), and the ambition was justified in the ability it displayed. nothing that i could have done at his age approached it. i told his parents so. he ought now to have been a very considerable artist, to say the least--he no longer even _aims_! he told me a year or two ago that he had _ceased to design_! he paints portraits, and twists a little moustache under an eyeglass. he is _nothing_, as far as the world knows, and i doubt whether he is hiding himself under a bushel. i fear vanity and idleness have rotted out his talents. it is a strange and a sad case. i often quote it (without names) to those who show precocious gifts." his attached friend and fellow-academician, mr. briton rivière, writes of leighton:-- "i have always believed that his ruling passion was duty--the keenest possible sense of it; to do anything he had to do as perfectly as possible, and to be always at his best. he was evidently a believer in goethe's maxim that 'an artist who does anything, does all.' in his own work, in what concerned his colleagues and the outside body of artists, in fact in everything he did. nothing easily or passively done satisfied him; but in every case the decision and action were brought by care and work--if possible, executed by himself; and no pressure of time or labour ever made him escape such personal trouble, or caused him to transfer it to the shoulders of another. this temper of mind was shown even in small matters, which so busy a man might well have left for others to do. i think it sometimes injured his own work as an artist, because, though a great artist can never be evolved except by years of patient work and strenuous effort to do his very best always, yet, on the other hand, it is often the happy, easy work and absolutely spontaneous effort at the moment by such a hand which is his very best. such happy, easy work probably leighton would seldom allow himself to do, and never would leave at the right moment, but would still strive to make better and more complete. he must still elaborate it and try to make it more perfect; and this it was which made his old friend and enthusiastic admirer, watts, sometimes say "how much finer leighton's work would be if he would admit the accidental into it." i remember once casually remarking to leighton how much easier writing was than painting. he answered quickly but seriously--quite impressively: "believe me, nothing is easy if it is done as well as you can possibly do it." this was leighton's creed of creeds. whatever genius or facilities an artist may possess, he must ignore them as factors in the fight. he must possess them unconsciously--the whole conscious effort being concentrated on surmounting difficulties, not on encouraging facilities. to return to the subject of this chapter. it would be obviously unreasonable to attempt to compare slight studies of plants and flowers, however precious, with finished important works of art such as "cimabue's madonna," "a syracusan bride," "daphnephoria," "captive andromache," "the return of persephone," or, in fact, with any of leighton's well-known paintings--or indeed with those masterly studies of the figure and draperies in black and white chalk, drawn for his pictures, or when he was seized with the beauty of an attitude while his model was resting. these, though executed in a few seconds, are true and subtle records of the perfection in the form and structure of the human figure, proving the existence of a knowledge and of a sense of beauty which watts declared were unrivalled since the days of pheidias. the later masterly studies of landscape in oil-colour which formerly lined the walls of his kensington studio, in which can be so truly discerned the distinctive colouring and atmosphere of the various countries where they were painted, also are greater as achievements than the pencil drawings. nevertheless, when studying leighton's genius with a view to gauge rightly its power and also its limitations, it is, i maintain, essential to take into account these direct studies from nature, made with the object solely of following, watching, and copying her faithfully, ingenuously, "choosing nothing and rejecting nothing," but into which crept unconsciously the undeniable evidence of his native gifts. as proofs of spontaneous power in the quality of his genius, they refute much unjust criticism which has been hurled at leighton's art since his death. sir william richmond wrote[ ]:-- "that term of abuse and of contempt, trite now, on account of the mannerism of its constant adoption by ephemeral critics, and sometimes adopted by poorly equipped artists, 'academic,' has been most unjustly, in its derogatory sense, applied to leighton's art. "in point of fact, it is academic, but only in the good sense of being highly educated, very scientific, and restrained. and in that sense it is a pity that there is not more of such academic art. the bad sense, wherein such criticism is applicable, being justly advanced towards work that displays no inspiration, no originality, that is correct and commonplace, balanced without enthusiasm, adequate without reason, and accurate without good taste in the choice of beautiful and expressive gestures, forms, and colours, and is preoccupied and narrow." it is probably the restraint, the science, the high education in leighton's finished pictures which have provoked unsympathetic critics to endeavour to demolish leighton's reputation as a great artist. to these, such qualities would seem to deny the existence of any sensitiveness, any spontaneity in his art. they have asserted that it is cold, dry--academic. for the reason that science, calculated effects, style, and high education--qualities rarely found in modern english art--are evident in leighton's pictures, they conclude that the painter is possessed of no intuitive genius. they take essentially a british, a non-cosmopolitan standpoint from which to preach. they do not take into account the standard towards which leighton was ever aiming. he may not have attained the goal towards which he worked, but the nature of that goal should be understood and recognised before any criticism on his work can pass as intelligent and just; and these exquisite drawings of flowers and plants come to our aid in confuting sterile estimates of leighton's art, which deny any other elements but those which can be acquired by painstaking and teachable qualities. here are records of nature complicated by no intellectual choice, no academic learning, no results of high education; and what is the result? an undeniable evidence of the finest, most tender sensitiveness for beauty, resulting in a complete and perfect rendering of the subtlest forms of growth. when "face to face" with nature, leighton's æsthetic emotions were keen enough and all-sufficient to create these perfect records, as later in his life he created unrivalled drawings of the human figure in even more spontaneous and certainly more rapid strokes of his pencil, and landscape sketches which prove undeniably his gifts as a colourist; but it may be questioned whether his æsthetic emotions had as great a _staying_ power as those qualities of heart and brain which made leighton a great man, independent of the position he held as a great artist. his sensibilities were of the keenest; the agility and vitality of his brain power were quite abnormal. as watts wrote, a "magnificent intellectual capacity, and an unerring and instantaneous spring upon the point to unravel." it seemed, however, that this vitality and agility did at times run away with that more abiding strength of æsthetic emotion which impregnates the very greatest art with a serenity, a sublime atmosphere,--an emotion which denotes a mood in which the artist has been steeped throughout the creation of a work, from the first moment he conceives it to the moment when he puts the last touch to the canvas, and affects the actual manipulation of the pigment. the above criticism applies only justly to certain of leighton's works. in many of his paintings the poetic motive which inspired their invention,--their mental atmosphere,--governs the achievements throughout, though doubtless these works also would have had a more convincing effect as art had the surface possessed a more vibrating quality. among those pictures in which form, colour, tone, and expression are completely dominated by their poetic meaning are "lieder ohne worte," a lovely, though youthful, work; "david;" "ariadne," a picture little known, but in some respects perhaps the most poetic leighton ever painted; "summer moon" (watts' favourite leighton), "elisha raising the son of the shunammite," "winding the skein," "music lesson," "antique juggling girl," "dædalus and icarus," "helios and rhodos," "golden hours," "cymon and iphigenia," "the spirit of the summit," "flaming june," "clytie" (unfinished). [illustration: "ariadne abandoned by theseus; watches for his return. artemis releases her by death." by permission of lord pirrie] [illustration: "elisha raising the son of the shunammite." ] [illustration: "dÆdalus and icarus." by permission of sir alexander henderson] no aspect of his own work was a secret from leighton. no one knew better than he did his own limitations, or why it was necessary to keep himself in hand by methods of procedure in his painting which he could guide by his ever present intellectual acumen. he wrote to his father on march , , having just completed the two pictures, "cimabue's madonna" and "romeo": "you ask for _my_ opinion of my pictures; you couldn't ask a more embarrassing and unsatisfactory question; i think, indeed, that they are very creditable works for my age, but i am anything but satisfied with them, and believe that i could paint both of them better now. i am particularly anxious that persons whom i love or esteem should think neither more nor less of my artistic capacity than i deserve--_the plain truth_; i am therefore very circumspect in passing a verdict on myself in addressing myself to such persons; i think, however, you may expect me to become eventually the best draughtsman in my country." a biographer's obvious moral duty is to aim at presenting impartially "the plain truth," following leighton's lead in not desiring to give either a more or less favourable view of his capacities as an artist than they deserve. on may , , leighton writes in a letter to his father and mother: "i had a kind note this morning from ruskin in which, after criticising two or three things, he speaks very warmly of other points in my work and of the development of what he calls 'enormous power and sense of beauty.' i quote this for what it is worth, because i know it will give you pleasure, but i have _not_ and _never shall have_ 'enormous power,' though i have some 'sense of beauty.'" leighton remained ever far from being contented with his own work. "i alone know how far i have fallen short of my ideal," he says, many years later, to the old acquaintance of the lucca days. he had studied under the shadow of the great masters; and though never an imitator even of the greatest,[ ] he had set himself a standard of supreme excellence, more easily approached under the conditions in which artists worked in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries than it possibly could be in those of the nineteenth. with respect to his power of draughtsmanship and his natural sense of beauty, leighton knew his place was among the greatest. his appreciation and love of colour were also far keener than those possessed by the average artist. he felt nevertheless that he lacked the inevitable and continuous force which alone gives "_enormous power_" and ease to the craftsman, when he deals with work on a large scale, and which carries with it the absolutely convincing effect of the world-renowned art of the past. realising that the "enormous power" was not there because the ever conclusively propelling force was lacking, perhaps owing partly to the want of robust health, and also doubtless from the scattering of his powers in many directions to which he was drawn by a sense of duty, leighton, in working out the designs of his large pictures, clung all the more resolutely to the exercise of that system which he had adopted, and which many of his friends--watts and briton rivière among the number--thought tended to cramp his genius. he was not sufficiently sure of himself to admit the "accidental" into his work. [illustration: "captive andromache." the corporation of manchester] [illustration: study in colour for "captive andromache." by permission of mrs. stewart hodgson] [illustration: "weaving the wreath." ] [illustration: "winding the skein." by permission of the fine art society, the owners of the copyright] [illustration: "music lesson." by permission of the fine art society, the owners of the copyright] some critics have, however, gone beyond the mark in emphasising this characteristic of leighton's methods. one writes: "deliberateness of workmanship and calculation of effect, into which inspiration of the moment is never allowed to enter, are the chief characteristics of the painter's craftsmanship. the inspiration stage was practically passed when he took the crayon in his hand; and to this circumstance probably is to be assigned the absence of realism which arrests the attention." this statement is contrary to many which i have heard fall from leighton's own lips. he constantly drew my attention to the fact--a fact on which he laid great stress, and of which many models were witnesses--that he _invariably_ recurred to nature in the later stages of his pictures, in order to imbibe renewed inspiration from the source of all his æsthetic emotions--nature. any one who carefully studies leighton's pictures will find evidence of this in the works themselves, in the accessories no less than in the principal figures. during the exhibition of some thirty of leighton's finest paintings at leighton house in , i was daily more and more impressed by the fact that the final touches in those pictures had been inspired by the actual subtlety of nature's aspects, and transmitted to the canvas by the artist direct from the objects before him without conscious calculation. very obviously was this the case not only in the principal features of the design--the countenances and the hands and feet of the figures--but in such details as the flowers, fabrics of draperies, carpets, mother-of-pearl inlaying, found (for instance) in "a noble venetian lady," "summer moon," "sister's kiss," "weaving the wreath," "winding the skein," "the music lesson," "atalanta." in all these pictures exists the internal convincing evidence contradicting the statement that "the inspiration stage was practically past when he took the crayon in his hand." this, however, did not obscure in some of leighton's large finished pictures undoubted evidences of arrangements and calculated effects, which are not over-ruled by an art which conceals them, by the art which disguises art,--the clenching force of the inevitable. the beauty of line, the grouping of masses, the "composition" evident in the posing of the figures--admirable and unlaboured as all these arrangements are--not infrequently lack this convincing sign of the inevitable. it is too obvious that they have been chosen by the intellectual taste of their maker. when goethe was expatiating on shakespeare and comparing his genius with his own, he said, as a proof of his own inferiority, that he knew well how every word was made to come in its place, but with shakespeare they came without shakespeare knowing.[ ] leighton, like goethe, was conscious that his genius could not vie with the greatest in the world--the genius he was able to appreciate as goethe did shakespeare's; but he also knew, as did goethe, exactly the place his own art ought to take; he knew that in his sense of style--which, in its true meaning, is the echo of nature in her choicest, noblest moods,--in his sense of the beauty of the human structure, in his power of draughtsmanship, his work was superior to that of any of his contemporaries in england. the fact of the greatness of leighton's powers in some directions challenges a comparison between his work and that of the giants of old who possess enormous power in all directions. no one knew so well as did leighton the place he must take when he entered the lists with the giants: "i have _not_ and _never shall have_ 'enormous power.'" he writes in from paris to his master, steinle:-- _translation._] paris, rue pigalle . my good and dear friend,--accidentally i had an idle morning when i received your dear letter, and therefore answer it immediately. with your usual modesty you put aside all that i say of goodness and love, but i repeat it unweariedly. steinle, my good master, if in this insincere world i have an unfeigned, pure feeling, it is my warm gratitude and love for you; and the time when i bloomed, gay and full of hope, in your garden will light me through life like a sunny spot in the past; and i yield myself to this feeling the more confidently, since i _know_ that i am under no delusion in it. i have fairly strong insight, and know exactly what i owe to you, and for what i have to thank nature; i can already appraise my moderate natural gifts; but i know also that these gifts received _through you alone_ the impression of _taste_ that can alone make them effective, and that in your hands they were refined as in a furnace. an english painter seldom lacks fancy and invention, but _taste_, that which forms and embellishes the raw material, _that_ is almost always wanting with us--and it is you i must thank for the _little_ i possess. to flatter was an impossibility with leighton. he paid every artist the respect of believing he desired the same sincerity shown in the criticism of his work that he,--leighton,--wished when his own was judged, and with which he judged it himself. a remarkable feature in his character was the power he had of retaining so secure a hold on his own standards of excellence without for a moment losing his individual self-centre, yet at the same time possessing that of entering sympathetically into the view of other artists--a view often quite contrary to his own--and generously acknowledging every merit that could by any possibility be extracted from their work. mr. briton rivière writes: "the intensity of his own personal belief was well known to himself. he once said to me, in reference to a clever picture which he greatly admired for some of its qualities, that he could not really enjoy it, owing to its careless drawing. on another occasion, when at mr. russell's sale i had bought a very vigorous study by etty, and leighton was quite enthusiastic about its colour and painting, he said, 'but i could not bear it on my wall, with that drawing,' and he laughed at himself for this strictness, and said, 'i know that i am a prig about drawing.' however, not only did this never blind him to the claims of another kind of art, but i think he was even more keen to recommend for approval the work of any school of painting for which, personally, he had no particular liking or sympathy. 'it is not whether you or i like it, but what it is on its own merits,' was a favourite warning of his to any rapid opinion expressed on a picture. to any one intimately acquainted with his own real views and opinions it was sometimes surprising to find how well he realised the intentions, and put himself in the place, of some artist who had produced something very foreign to his own point of view, and quite repugnant to his beliefs. this is not a common quality among artists, whose critical tolerance is often in an inverse ratio to the firmness of their own particular creed of art faith; and it was one of the many qualities which marked leighton out as so admirably fitted for the presidency." leighton was, undoubtedly, an absolutely competent critic of his own art; and the fact that his principles had been inspired by a spontaneous and sincere reverence and admiration for the creations of artists whom time has crowned as the greatest in the world, and that with his critical faculty he perceived in what measure he had succeeded in following in their steps, enabled him to gauge with absolute justice the merits and shortcomings of his own work, compared with that of his contemporaries. whatever those shortcomings were, certain it is that they did not arise from an absence of those natural gifts which are the outcome of emotional sensitiveness, nor from a want of intense feeling for the beauty of nature, nor from a poverty of invention. the theory that his art was solely the result of his having an abnormal power of industry and of taking pains--a theory which has been advanced many times since leighton's death--cannot hold good for a moment with those who impartially study his work from the beginning of his career. the spontaneity of the impulse to produce in every born artist is described in the following passage from leighton's first discourse, when president, to the students of the royal academy, december , , and the description is obviously drawn from his own personal experience: "the gift of artistic production manifests itself in the young in an impulse so spontaneous and so imperative, and is in its origin so wholly emotional and independent of the action of the intellect, that it at first and for some time entirely absorbs their energies. the student's first steps on the bright paths of his working life are obscured by no shadows save those cast by the difficulties of a technical nature which lie before him, and these difficulties, which indeed he only half discerns, serve rather to whet his appetite than to hamper or discourage him; for his heart whispers that, when he shall have brushed them aside, the road will be clear before him, and the utterance of what he feels stirring within him will be from thenceforward one long unchecked delight. this spirit of spontaneous, unquestioning rejoicing in production, which is still the privilege of youth, and which, even now, the very strong sometimes carry with them through their lives, was indeed, when art herself was in her prime, the normal and constant condition of the artistic temper, and shone out in all artistic work. it is this spirit which gave a perennial freshness to athenian art--the serenest and most spontaneous men have ever seen. and when again, after many centuries, another art was born out of the night of the dark ages, and shed its gentle light over the chaos of society, this spirit once more burst through it into flame. all forms of art are alike fired with it. architecture first, exulting in new flights of vigorous and bold creation; then sculpture; last, painting, virtually a new art, looked out on to the world with the wondering delight of a child, timidly at first, but soon to fill it with the bright expression of its joy. those were halcyon days; the questions, 'why do i paint?' 'why do i model?' 'why should i build beautifully?' 'what--how--shall i build, model, paint?' had no existence in the mind of the artist. 'why,' he might have answered, 'does the lark soar and sing?'" though his direct study from nature mostly took the form, in later years, of sketching in oil colour views in the different countries in which he travelled, leighton showed to the end of his life his great delight in flowers by continuing to make sketches from them. in , at malinmore, he was fascinated by the sea-thistle, and there are four pages in a sketch-book devoted to rapid sketches of the plant, _callantra_, which he made there. notes are written on the first sketch indicating the colours. it is interesting to compare the early pencil work executed between and with that of forty years later. though the handling may be different, there is the same complete sense and enjoyment of the wonderful architecture of plants and flowers obvious in both.[ ] [illustration: study of sea thistle. malinmore, ireland, from sketch-book] [illustration: study of sea thistle. malinmore, ireland, from sketch-book] [illustration: "return of persephone." ] [illustration: study in colour for "return of persephone." by permission of mrs. stewart hodgson] footnotes: [ ] see appendix, vol. ii., description in preface to "catalogue of the leighton house collection." [ ] an artist who was a great flower lover, when relating her experiences, maintained that it was in the revelation, to her perceptions, of the infinite perfection of the structure and form of one flower, that she had realised in her own nature a more intimate recognition and response to that of the creator of the infinite than had ever been elicited by any church services or creeds, or even, in fact, by the most sublime scenery. in one small flower she had found an epitome of the wonders and beauties of all creation, so focussed as to be grasped closely, and responded to, from the innermost intimate recesses of her nature with a joy unspeakable. [ ] see appendix, vol. ii., preface to "catalogue of the leighton house collection." [ ] see appendix, vol. ii., "lord leighton, p.r.a., some reminiscences." [ ] appendix, vol. ii. [ ] ruskin was mistaken in thinking that the "lemon tree" and the "byzantine well" are of the same date. the former drawing was made in , the latter seven years earlier in (reproduced facing page ), and is referred to in his diary, "pebbles." i think this is the most beautiful drawing of the kind i have ever seen. [ ] see list of illustrations. [ ] see appendix, vol. ii. [ ] see letter to steinle, page : "...god forgive me if i am intolerant; but according to my view an artist must produce his art out of his own heart, or he is none." [ ] "i remember hearing him (wordsworth) say that 'goethe's poetry was not inevitable enough.' the remark is striking and true; no line in goethe, as goethe said himself, but its maker knew well how it came there. wordsworth is right; goethe's poetry is not inevitable; not inevitable enough."--preface to "poems of wordsworth," chosen and edited by matthew arnold. [ ] knowing that leighton was a frequenter of the kew gardens, i asked sir w. thiselton dyer to write me his recollections of him, which he most kindly did in the following letter:-- kew, _january , _. dear mrs. barrington,--my acquaintance with lord leighton was only beginning to ripen into intimacy when he unhappily died. his somewhat grand seigneur manner at first a little alarmed me; but when i had broken through his reserve, i became, like every one else, much attached to him. he used often to dine in evening dress at a small table behind a screen at the door of the coffee-room at the athenæum. in the corner adjoining this is a round table known as abraham's bosom, as it was once frequented by abraham hayward. here, on royal society days, we often had a lively scientific party. leighton often found it impossible to keep aloof, and joined in the fun. i found sir frederic, as he was called, was well known to our men as a visitor to kew. he used to drive down in his victoria in the afternoon and take a solitary walk. i only myself came across him once. i had taken some trouble to get a fine show of the old-fashioned dutch tulips known as bizards and byblomen. i found leighton one day absorbed in the enthusiastic contemplation of them. there were certain combinations of colour which completely fascinated him. i remember that he particularly admired a purplish brown with yellow and a reddish purple with cream-colour. both were, i think, in the "key" that particularly appealed to him. he was very anxious to have them in his garden in london, and we gave him a little collection, with directions how to grow them. what was the result i never heard. i then suggested that, as it was a lovely spring day, i should take him a walk. he assented, and we sent his carriage round to the lion gate, nearest to richmond. i took him through the queen's cottage grounds to show him the sheets of wild hyacinth. he admitted their beauty, but remarked that the effect was not pictorial. that, i think, was leighton's point of view. with an intense feeling for beauty, he had little or none for nature pure and simple. his art was essentially selective, and i think he took most pleasure at kew in the more or less artificial products of the gardener's art. what he sought was subtle effects of form and colour. personally, i appreciate both ways of treating plants. i am always at war with artists for their undisciplined and mostly incompetent treatment of vegetation: drawing and anatomy are usually defective to an instructed eye, such faults would be intolerable in the figure. their presence robs me of much pleasure in looking at burne-jones' pictures. i imagine he mostly made his plants up out of his head. ruskin, with all his talk, was both unobservant and careless. millais, on the other hand, though i am not aware that he ever had any botanical training, by sheer force of insight paints plants in a way to which the most fastidious botanist can take no exception. one can actually botanise in his foreground of "over the hills and far away," yet there is no loss of general pictorial effect. the plant drawing of albert dürer, holman hunt, and alma tadema, though more studied, is absolutely satisfying to the botanist. sir joseph hooker has always complained that the royal academy has never given any encouragement to accurate plant drawing. yet i have heard sir william richmond say that, as a student, he made hundreds of careful studies of plant-form, and that he knew no discipline more profitable. i remember remarking to an academician that i thought that in this respect the competition pictures of the students reached a higher standard than that of the average may exhibition, and he admitted that that was a possible criticism. leighton aimed at beauty by selection and discipline. millais in his later work looked only to general effect and balance, but as to detail was content to faithfully reproduce, and did not select at all. this explains the admiration which i believe millais had for miss north's work. both produced admirable results, but they were of an essentially different kind, though equally admirable. but whenever leighton introduced plant-forms, it was penetrated by his characteristic thoroughness and perfect mastery of what he was about. i am myself a passionate admirer of the gloire-de-dijon rose. i remember telling leighton that i did not think that any one had ever painted it with such consummate skill as he had. i am told, and quite believe it, that his pencil studies from plants are as fine as anything that has ever been done. leighton rendered us a very great service on one occasion. miss north's pictures were painted on paper, roughly framed, and simply hung by her on the brick walls of her gallery. they soon began to rapidly deteriorate. i appealed to l. for advice. i was, i confess, astonished to receive from him a full, precise, and business-like report, pointing out exactly what should be done, and who was the proper person to do it. the gallery was to be lined with boarding, the pictures were to be properly framed, cleaned, lightly varnished, and glazed. the report was at once accepted by the office of works, the work was successfully carried out, and no trouble has been experienced since. in his turn, leighton sometimes appealed to me. this was notably the case when he was painting his "persephone," which i frankly told him i thought was the most beautiful picture he had ever painted. he had been in capri, and had seen on the rocks a blue flower which he wished to introduce into the foreground. we made out what it was, and sent him tracings from plates and sketches from herbarium specimens. these did not satisfy him, and he ultimately sent to capri for the living plant. he worked hard at it, and, i do not doubt, produced a very beautiful piece of colour. that year i dined at the academy. "persephone" hung over leighton's chair, and was the subject of one of the few really witty remarks i ever heard in an after-dinner speech. but then the speaker was lord justice bowen. but his beautiful foreground was all gone. leighton, and i think he was right, thought it destroyed the balance of his colour scheme, and painted it out. but i have always felt sad to think of the beautiful work that lay buried there. when he died, we felt very sad at kew. he had always been so lovable and disinterested. we decided to send some tribute to his funeral, but to avoid what was commonplace. so we sent a large wreath of bay, introducing, in the place of the conventional berries, single snowdrop flowers. the result was dignified and, i think, adequate. at any rate, the academicians thought so, if, as i have been told, they placed the wreath by the coffin on the hearse on its way to st. paul's. i walked back with lord redesdale, one of leighton's most intimate friends, who had come up from batsford to attend. there was a great gathering at the athenæum. i sat next millais, already himself stricken with death, and whom i never saw again. i am afraid all this will not be very helpful to you, but my pen ran on to tell you all i could of a good, great, and brave man, whom it was an honour to have known.--yours always sincerely, w.c. thiselton dyer. chapter iv watts--success--failure - it was in the summer of , in consequence of his father having summoned him suddenly back to england, that leighton first became known as a notable person to the london world. his picture of "cimabue's madonna" had preceded him, and gave him an introduction to the art magnates; while the fact that the queen had bought it of the young and, till then, unknown artist, raised the curiosity of those to whom the intrinsic value of the work was insignificant, compared to its having received this mark of royal approval. hanging on the walls of the academy throughout the season and being much talked about, the picture, combined with the painter's charming personality, won for him at once a prominent position. his friends of the happy roman days, however, remained the nucleus of his real intimacies. as can be gathered from his letters, he had already in rome felt general society to be fatiguing and unremunerative, the interest in it never having compensated him for the physical exertion and weariness it entailed. health--and a more or less stolid temperament--are requisite in order to combat, with any satisfaction, the wear and tear of late hours, and contact with mere acquaintances and strangers whose personalities carry with them no special interest. leighton found no pleasure in such intercourse sufficient to overbalance its sterility, for he possessed neither robust health nor much equanimity of temperament. he could enjoy with ecstasy those things which delighted him, but had little of that even current of patient contentment, the normal condition of those who can tolerate cheerfully--and even with pleasure--the herding in crowds with mere acquaintances. circumstances combined in making leighton's disinclination to indiscriminate visiting often misunderstood. his extreme vitality when in company, his notable gifts as a talker and as a linguist, the high social standing of many of his most intimate friends, naturally gave the impression that he was made for the sort of success which is the aim of many living in the london world. that he never availed himself of all the opportunities that offered themselves was considered by many as a sign of conceit and superciliousness. nothing could have been farther from the truth. that he was ambitious for art to take her legitimate position on the platform of the world's highest interests is certain, and that he resented the position which was but too often accorded in england to her earnest votaries, and had a keen discernment in tracing evidences of self-interest and snobbish proclivities in those who would have patronised him, is no less certain; but that leighton himself was ever personally otherwise than the most modest of men, all who really knew him can attest. to whatever class in society a man or woman might belong, whether a royal or a quite humble friend--once a friend, leighton gave of his very best and worthiest. no time or trouble would he spare in such service; though he was too eager a worker, and felt too keenly a responsibility towards his calling for him to allow any moment of his life to be frittered away by claims which were not in his eyes real or of any serious advantage to others. [illustration: "cupid with doves" decorative work with gold background. about ] it was during this summer that he made the personal acquaintance of ruskin, holman hunt, millais, and watts. while in london he found a home with his mother's relations, mr. and mrs. nash, in montagu square, for whose affectionate kindness he was ever grateful. it was while staying there that watts and he first met, or rather on the pavement outside the house. watts recounted how he had ridden one afternoon to montagu square, and having asked for leighton, the artist himself came out to greet him. watts was much impressed at the time, he said, by the extraordinary amount of vitality and nervous energy which leighton seemed to possess. this acquaintance thus begun was continued for forty years.[ ] as regarded art, the supreme interest in the lives of these two famous painters, their relations remained intimate to the end of leighton's life. before leighton definitely settled in london, watts invited him to show his work in the studios of little holland house, which invitation he gratefully accepted. in a letter to his mother leighton writes: "watts has been exceedingly amiable to me; the studio is at my disposal if i want to paint there. i am still of opinion that watts is a most marvellous fellow, and if he had but decent health would whip us all, if he does not already." it is interesting to trace the influences which developed alike in leighton and watts, the feeling for form which in both artists is analogous to that of the greek. before going to italy, watts had studied the perfection in the work of pheidias in the elgin marbles, a perfection rediscovered by haydon; and a visit to greece later only confirmed his conviction that the pheidian school of sculpture made a higher appeal to his artistic sense than did any other. that was "_the indelible seal_" which, in the case of his brother artist, had been stamped on leighton's artistic nature through the guidance of his master, steinle. when watts lived in italy, from the year to , he found that it was the work of orcagna and titian that appealed most to his imagination, and to his sense of form and colour--orcagna's great conceptions, which struck notes stranger and more widely suggestive than those dictated and restricted by special religious creeds; titian, the glorious titian of the renaissance, whose sense and modelling had the breadth and bloom of pheidian art, and whose colour was triumphant in qualities of richness and subtlety combined. the pure beauty in the early religious painters made a much slighter and less personal appeal to watts during those four years he lived in italy. it was in italy, when a child of twelve, that leighton drank a deep draught from the fountain-head of mediæval and modern art; and this established once and for all the high standard towards which he ever aimed. but though his true artistic preferences were aroused at this early age, the full and complete passion for his calling was not developed till he met his master some years later in frankfort. belonging to the brotherhood of nazarenes, the early religious italian art appealed more strongly than any other to steinle; and, doubtless, the earnest study leighton devoted to duccio, cimabue, giotto, buonfigli, perugino, and pinturicchio, and the delight he took in their work, was originally started by steinle. the following list, which exists in steinle's handwriting, of the paintings which he wished leighton specially to study in florence is evidence of this. _translation._] florence _st. croce._--the choir by angiolo gaddi, pupil of giotto. the chapel on the right by his uncle, taddeo gaddi. the altar by giotto himself, in the sacristy the taddeo gaddi, in the refectory the last supper, all by giotto. _st. marco._--outside fiesole, where particularly should be seen in the cloister-cell and choir-stalls a last supper by ghirlandajo. _st. maria novella._--the choir by domenico ghirlandajo, chapel by giovanni and filippo lippi, a madonna in marble by benedetto da majano, the great madonna of cimabue. the hell and paradise of andreas orcagna. opposite the court of this chapel grey in grey by dello and paul ucello; from the court into the capello dei spagnola, to the left the picture by taddeo gaddi; all the rest by simon memmi. _capella di st. francesco_, by dom. ghirlandajo. _st. ambrogio._--fresco by cosimo rosetti. _st. spirito._--built by brunelleschi; altar-pieces by filippo lippi and botticelli. _al carmine_, dei massacio's. _st. miniato._--chapel by aretino spinello. _palazzo riccardi._--the lovely chapel by benozzo gozzoli. _in the chapel of the foundling hospital._--beautiful altar-piece by ghirlandajo. after visiting padua, siena, perugia, assisi, however, the pupil became a keen admirer of this early art, independently of any influence other than the inherent beauty, dignity, and purity of the feeling in the works themselves.[ ] moreover, the natural sympathy which leighton felt for the art of greece, discovered in this early italian work records of her influence, and that, in a very striking manner, it was allied to that of the great ancients. in his academy address of we find this alluded to in the following passage:-- "the production, both in sculpture and painting, of the middle period of the thirteenth century has a character of transition. in painting, the works, for instance, of cimabue and of duccio are still impregnated with the byzantine spirit, and occasionally reveal startling reminiscences of classic dignity and power, to which justice is not, i think, sufficiently rendered. in sculpture, the handiwork of nicolo pisano is full of the amplitude, the rhythm, and virility of classic art. i see in it, indeed, the tokens of a new life in art, but little sign of a new artistic form--it is not a dawn; it is an after-glow, strange, belated, and solemn. in the art of giotto and the giottosques, the transformation is fulfilled. it is an art lit up with the spirit of st. francis, warm with christian love, pure with christian purity, simple with christian humility; it is the fit language of a pious race endowed with an exquisite instinct of the expressiveness of form, as form, but untrained as yet in the knowledge of the concrete facts of the outer world; an art fresh with the dew and tenderness of youth, and yet showing, together with this virginal quality of young life, a simple forcefulness prophetic of the power of its riper day. within the outline of these general characteristics individuality found sufficient scope." even when this transformation is fulfilled in the frescoes of giotto, any intelligent study of his art at padua and assisi, while keeping in mind the manner in which pheidias felt and treated the human form in his sculpture, would prove to the student how distinctly visible is the link between the ancient and this mediæval art; though the fact of the latter being fired with an ecstasy of spiritual emotion of which the greek had no experience, may disguise the link where feeling in art is of more interest than form. there is the same detachment of one form from another, each being given its full expression and intention--which induces a feeling of simplicity and serenity in the greatest work. the form of the head is not smudged into the throat, nor the throat into the chest, nor the chest into the arms. even in the smallest greek coin or _intaglio_ of the best period this separate individuality of form in each part of the human frame is accentuated, and with it a sense of size and breadth. the same fundamental principles also, adhered to by the great greek workmen in their treatment of drapery, is to be traced in the work of giotto. [illustration: "idyll." ] [illustration: portrait of miss mabel mills (the hon. mrs. grenfell). ] but the great greeks did not invent the beauty they immortalised, any more than did leighton and watts; the pheidian school intuitively chose the noblest form it found in nature.[ ] the notable gift with which nature endowed the artists of the periclean epoch consisted of eyes to perceive, and taste to _prefer_, the form which, intrinsically and most convincingly, inspires admiration in those imbued with the finest sense of beauty--not a gift to invent something new and different from nature. in like manner the gift nature bestowed on leighton and watts was the same, a perception and a preference for noble form; and in this choice they had been educated by legacies from pheidias and his school, but only so far as these legacies induced them to seek and perceive in nature herself the elements of such nobility. in painting the magnificent head and shoulders entitled "atalanta,"[ ] or the reclining figures in "idyll,"[ ] leighton copied as directly from nature as when he painted the portrait of "miss mabel mills,"[ ] where a similar beauty of form in the throat existed as in miss jones, who sat for "atalanta" and "idyll." when watts painted his superb "lady with the mirror," one of his really great achievements, it was the model before him whose beauty he was recording, though his own sense in recognising it had been further inspired by his study of pheidias. we need not go out of england to find types which are as completely noble as are those in the most inspiring art ever created, but the sense as a rule is wanting in english artists to select and to prefer such nobility. leighton writes to a friend in :-- "i have just remembered a circumstance which might be worth mentioning: i painted pictures in _an out-of-door top light_ and with realistic aims (of course, subordinate to style) in the old frankfurt days before i came over here, and long before i heard of 'modern' ideas in painting. in this, perhaps, more than in anything, the boy was the father of the man, for it is still the corner-stone of my faith that art is not a corpse, but a living thing, and that the highest respect for the old masters, who are and will remain supreme, does not lie in doing as they did, but as men of their strength would do if they were now (oh, _derisim_!) amongst us." leighton taught watts to appreciate the greek inheritance to be found in early italian art; and i have frequently heard watts comment on the evidence of this legacy in giotto's work. watts, by ventilating the results of his studies of pheidian art with leighton, and analysing the elemental principles on which it was grounded, aided his brother artist in securing a faster hold on the sources of his individual preferences. no two characters could have been more dissimilar than those of watts and leighton, no two men could have led more different external lives; leighton's great and varied gifts requiring for their full exercise the whole area of life's stage, watts' genius demanding seclusion, and days undisturbed by friction with the outer world. watts' first and great object in life was to preserve his work, and to bequeath it to his country, which he, happily for his country, was enabled to do; leighton's object was to complete a work as far as industry and his gifts would enable him to complete it, then--as he would say--"to get rid of it and never see it again; but try to do better next time"! the one was frank, free, courageous; the other almost morbidly self-depreciative, sensitive, and timid. all the same, no two workmen could have had more sympathy with one another in their true aims and aspirations, or more mutual admiration for each other's artistic gifts. [illustration: "venus disrobing for the bath." by permission of sir a. henderson, bart.] [illustration: "phryne at eleusis." ] watts, to his credit, had from his first acquaintance with leighton discerned that "the unusual position" which leighton undoubtedly held from his first appearance in the london world to the day of his death, was due to the possession of unusual gifts, exercised in a very unusually generous and public-spirited manner, and not to reasons invented by those who were envious of this prominent position. watts wrote to leighton after they became neighbours in kensington:-- "i have been worrying myself by fancying you rather misunderstood the drift of my observations respecting the value of social consideration to a professional man, that i meant to imply you sold your pictures in consequence of the unusual position you undoubtedly hold; knowing me and my opinions as you do, you could hardly think so, yet poets and artists are proverbially sensitive beings. i know i am myself to a degree that could hardly be imagined, though not with regard to opinion of my work; i am resigned, if not contented, to preserve what i can do for posterity, conscious that no other judgment can really be worth anything; i am very often unhappy, thinking that after all the best i can do may not be worthy of being brought before the great tribunal at all; but i do not allow myself to brood over the subject more than i can help. however, i do not attempt to deaden the keen dread i have of giving pain or offence, and am really miserable when i think i have done so, or been unjust; i don't think i am often the latter, but i may by clumsiness fall into the former regrettable position. i should grieve indeed if any word or deed of mine should ever be offensive to you, for you know me to be always yours most sincerely, "signor." immediately on his arrival from italy leighton paid a visit to his family at bath, arriving on may . he returned to london shortly after, where his family joined him on june , and the introduction so long desired by leighton took place between his parents and sisters and his great friends, mr. and mrs. sartoris. in december leighton's mother had written: "how delightful to see you again, and perhaps we may spend the next winter together, but of that i am uncertain. in england we shall not be, and both papa and i incline to paris, but gussy has an anxious desire to go to berlin. the sartoris' being in paris would be a strong inducement to us to go there, as we very much wish to make your friends' acquaintance, and we should most likely meet at their house agreeable people. i am exceedingly sorry i overlooked mrs. sartoris' friendly message, which i have since discovered in your former letter. pray offer her my best compliments, and assure her i consider her great kindness to you gives her a claim upon my sympathy, and i shall rejoice to have an opportunity of giving her this assurance in person." in february his mother wrote: "i hope you will not long be separated from your friends the sartoris when you leave rome. we all sincerely desire to become acquainted with the valued friends of whom we hear so much." later his father wrote: "with regard to your reasons for remaining at rome during the spring, you have this time at least the best of the argument. if there were no other than your wish to give more tangible form to your gratitude to your kind friends, the sartoris, it would be sufficient, to say nothing of the drawings from m. angelo and raphael." and in the same cover his mother says: "i feel, with your father, great satisfaction at your undertaking a likeness of mrs. sartoris--i hope it may prove a satisfactory one. give our love to mrs. sartoris." leighton's younger sister kept a diary in those days. written in this are notes which describe the keen appreciation which she and her family felt for her brother's friends. "in fact she is, as fred says, an angel. she seems very fond of him, as she might be of a younger brother.... she is very stout, high coloured, and has little hair. but the shape of her mouth is very fine, the modulations of her voice in speaking are exquisite. she is a creature who can never age, and before whose attractions those of younger and prettier women must always pale." "august .--fred returned to bath to stay with us a little while. beautiful drives together. so generous in giving me several volumes of poetry." "sept.--left us to go to paris." [illustration: portrait of mrs. adelaide sartoris drawn by lord leighton for her friend lady bloomfield, by permission of the hon. mrs. sartoris] while in london leighton wrote the following to his master, steinle:-- _translation._] maddox street, bond street, london, . my very dear friend,--at last i am able to write to you again. when i sent off my last letter to you i was busily packing for my journey; now i have been already six weeks in england, and it seems a year since i left rome. i scarcely need tell you, dearest friend, that at first, in this london hurly-burly, i hardly knew whether i was standing on my head or my heels: i will not say that this condition has not had a certain charm. i have made several acquaintances, have been cordially received, and have had considerably more praise for my picture than it deserves. however, i have already set seriously to work again, and expect shortly to commence upon a new composition. it is a real grief to me, dear master, to have to work without your guidance. my _succès_, here in london, which, for a beginner, has been extraordinarily great, fills me with anxiety and apprehension; i am always thinking, "what can you exhibit next year that will fulfil the expectations of the public?" when i have settled anything definitely, i shall report to my master in frankfurt. now, however, as regards the photographs. owing to unforeseen circumstances, mrs. sartoris (whom i introduced to you in my last letter) was obliged to alter the plans of her journey, and will not leave this for germany until the middle of september. what now? will you wait so long, or shall i seek an opportunity to send you your seven things? and now, my friend, how are you occupied? do you still sparkle with beautiful inventions? tell me all that you are doing. i had a delightful surprise recently when i saw your long expected "court scene" in paris; it is a charming composition. i tell you nothing of the great paris exhibition, for you naturally will not neglect to see a thing so excessively interesting; it throws light upon a great many things. if only you could come in september! then we could meet again and renew old times a little; it would be very delightful. i should like extremely to arrange something of the kind with you; we should certainly agree very well. remember me most kindly to your wife and my old friends in frankfurt, and keep in mind your loving pupil, fred leighton. in a letter to his mother, before she arrived in london, leighton refers to ruskin's criticism when comparing his "cimabue's madonna" to millais' "rescue":-- london. i do wonder at the critics: will they never let "the cat die"? what ruskin means by millais' picture being "greater" than mine, is that the joy of a mother over her rescued children is a higher order of emotion than any expressed in my picture. i wish people would remember st. paul on the subject of hateful comparisons: "there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for one star differeth from another star in glory." i spent last night an evening that gussy would have envied me. we (i and the sartoris and one or two others) were at hallé's, who is the most charming fellow in the world. [illustration: study for portion of frieze, "music" (not carried out in final design). leighton house collection] having sent his "romeo" picture to paris, leighton was not quite unknown to the art world when he arrived there in september . the "cimabue's madonna," hanging on the walls of the royal academy in london, and this picture being shown at the great international exhibition in france, he can fairly be said to have entered at the age of twenty-four the arena where he competed with the first artists in europe. by a mistake the "romeo" picture was hung in the roman instead of the english section in the international exhibition. the following extract appeared in a publication at the time, and gives the unbiassed criticism of one who was unknown to leighton:-- "strange it may seem, but such is the fact, that of the thirteen canvasses she (rome) has sent on this occasion to sustain her credit, that which for intrinsic merit takes the lead--in which soul for expression and true artistic feeling are conspicuous, is due to the pencil of an englishman--frederic leighton, _né à scarborough, élève de mons. edouard steinle de frankfort_. the subject of this picture--and it is a fine one--is the reconciliation of the houses of montagu and capulet over the bodies of romeo and juliet. let us hope that his native country may hear and see more of so promising an artist as mr. leighton." and again:-- "when these lines were written on the other side of the channel, mr. leighton had already sent his 'pencil's' first representation to the royal academy, causing therein not a little surprise, fluttering the dovecots in corioli. we beg he will construe our sincere anticipations into a hearty welcome." in the early days of september , leighton was in paris preparing to settle in for a winter's hard work. the following letters to his mother and father and to steinle were written soon after his arrival. in that to steinle, leighton alludes to the serious work he has before him, in painting "the triumph of music":-- hÔtel canterbury, rue de la paix, _sunday, _. dearest mamma,--though i have, of course, nothing to tell you yet, still, as it is sunday morning, i send you a few lines as a token of continued vegetation. paris is bright and warm and sunny, and contrasts incredibly with the murkiness of london. i have already set to work to look for a studio, but shall have great difficulty in finding one, and shall have to pay about francs per annum _unfurnished_; my furniture i shall of course hire, not buy--_ci vuol pazienza_. hÔtel canterbury, _saturday, _. dear papa,--when one has bad news to swallow, there is nothing like taking the bull by the horns and engulphing the dose at once: this is the bull to be swallowed, horns and all. i have, after great trouble and manifold inquiries, taken _the only_ studio that at all suited me, and for that i give _unfurnished_ francs a month. it is enormous, but unavoidable; nor have i been at a disadvantage from being an englishman, for two artists of my acquaintance, one a _parisian_ just returning from rome, the other a frankfurter, have seen precisely the _same_, and only the same, studios as i did. it is the dearth of studios and the great demand for them that makes the price so high. those who have had studios some time of course pay very much less, others put up with little holes far too small to paint a picture of any size. carlo perugini is painting in the studio of a friend, and that is a strip not large enough for one person. there was only _one_ studio which i could for a moment think of besides this one i have taken, and that costs infinitely less; but not only was it too small--it had been built _this_ summer, and is not yet finished painting, feels cold and damp, and would no doubt have laid me up with the rheumatism. i have been advised and actually assisted in everything by hébert, who is a friend as well as an old acquaintance, and than whom nobody knows the resources of paris better. he took me about to get my furniture, &c., and i am happy to say that i have bought everything, including ample bedroom and table linen, crockery, and knives, spoons, &c., all under £ . i have quite a little _fond de ménage_; this is the only cheap thing i have done in paris, everything is exactly as dear as london. it certainly _is_ lucky i sold my picture. my frame cost, with time and trouble of exhibition, francs. [portion of letter to his father.] rue pigalle, _tuesday_. i have nothing whatever to tell you, except that i have just finished a head of carlo perugini (for myself), which is the best thing of the kind i ever did. it has not interfered with my picture, but has stopped up unavoidable gaps. i have got h. wilson[ ] to teach me the conture method--_à fin d'avoir taté à tout_. conture paints well in spite of his method, which might easily lead to superficial mannerism. the best _dodge_ is to be a devil of a clever fellow. will you do me a _great_ favour--for my friend hébert, to whom i am under great obligations? if you can get me for him _any_ greek classic (if homer, all the better) in the _same edition_ as my _brumek's anacreon_ with _latin notes_, i shall be much obliged. hébert wants very much to have any such work. _translation._] rue pigalle, paris, _saturday, september , _. my very dear friend,--at last i find the long-desired opportunity to send you the photographs; our old gamba has undertaken to convey them to you. how i envy him the pleasure of seeing you again, dear master! you, on your side, will certainly have great pleasure in seeing your old pupil again. he is just the same as ever; rather more of a beard, and broader shouldered, but still quite the old gamba. he will be able to tell you that we have cherished your memory with love and reverence, and are always proud to call ourselves your pupils. i should like to describe to you what i am painting now, but the subject i have chosen is such an absolute matter of sentiment, that your imagination might well paint something quite different, in comparison with which my picture might subsequently suffer; i would rather wait until i can send you a photograph. it is a picture with only four figures, but life-size. i stand in alarm before the blank canvas. one learns gradually to understand that one really can do nothing. the photographs in the portofolio with my writing on them are yours; i hope they will please you. you must accept them as a little memento of my italian hobbledehoy-hood. remember me respectfully to madame steinle, to my other friends "tante cose." keep me in remembrance.--your grateful pupil, fred leighton. again to steinle he writes:-- paris, rue pigalle . no one could sympathise better than i with your melancholy loneliness in the hermitage of frankfurt; in that air an artist breathes with difficulty; i confess i should be entirely paralysed by the lack of models and other resources in frankfurt; one all too easily loses sight of the infinite importance of a complete material representation, which is always the special mark of the _artist_; i often see with amazement how even quite clever people behave in this respect. it has quite a plausible sound if one says (such a fellow as strauch, for example), "away with materialism! pfui! the great artist is he who has the most ideas!" stop, my little man! do you not feel what a store of artistic cowardice lies behind your words? ah, behind so broad a shield you can elude all the difficulties of your work! he who has the most _ideas_ is first only as the greatest _poet_ or even _philosopher_! he only is an _artist_ who can _set_ his ideas _forth_. _art_ means the power to do; undoubtedly the idea is the source, the achieved is art; but an _idea_ completely _embodied_ can no more exist without the _artist_ power than a thousand ideas that are only muddled away by agitated incapacity! i gladly let myself go on such matters to you, for i know that we are of one mind regarding them, and it does one good to pour out one's heart a little for once. i hear, with particular interest, that you are painting the little picture of the madonna that you composed twenty-three years ago in the diligence when you were travelling to italy; it is a very good thing. i imagine a lovely landscape in the background; an oleander, rich in starry bloom; grey olives and stately cypresses wave in the distance; soft violets nestle on the bank of the cool water, and gaze with earnest eyes out of the whispering grass. on the still bosom of the stream sleep white blossoms, which have flown down when the winds breathed on the limes, and see, in a secret nook in the shade of the lovely _himmelsglocken_, the strawberry bed from which the black-eyed john will peep at the treasures. above, in the branches, many-coloured birds frolic, and chase one another, and flit through the grove, in harmonious, song-rich flight. and the madonna! how tenderly and lovingly she looks down upon the two playing children! have i described your picture? in order to send it to england (and how delighted i should be to see it) you should, so much i know from personal experience, cause your picture to reach the royal academy (without fail) on the first of april; i believe that influence is no use at all, for the academicians are very autocratic; i will, however, obtain all the information in good time. i, who was even more totally unknown in england than you, have refrained, by the advice of my friends, from applying to _any_ person, and have left my pictures entirely to themselves. now i must close this immoderately long letter. it seems not impossible to me that i may pass through frankfurt next spring, then we will have a good long gossip together, won't we? till then, keep in warm remembrance your english pupil, fred leighton. it is clear that paris lacked the charm which italy had for leighton. parisians have been compared to the greeks with respect to the peculiarly _fin_ and agile manner in which they can exercise their intellects; and so far leighton might have been expected to fit in happily and with enjoyment to himself into their life. but though he felt a great respect and admiration for the genuine artistic sense which the french undoubtedly possess as a nation, leighton, no less as a man than as an artist, was more greek than is any typical parisian. he viewed the beauty of nature from a less circumscribed standpoint, his emotions were excited with a more ingenuous spontaneity and less from a _parti-pris_ attitude than, as a rule, are those of the french artist. paris was too artificial to appeal strongly to leighton's taste. as with the greeks, grace and charm in the form of living as in art was a necessity to his well-being; but he found more natural expression of such grace and charm in the unsophisticated italian than among the artificial and more highly finished manners of the parisians. we never read of the eager longing to be in france that leighton's letters show when it was a question of a return to italy. also paris does not appear to have suited his health. he writes to his mother after living there some weeks:-- rue pigalle, _sunday, _. dearest mamma,--i observe in a general way that the climate of paris is very exciting to my nerves--infinitely more than rome. the life i lead is one of unprecedented regularity and absence of any kind of excess, yet sometimes in the evening, when i have lit my lamp and my fire and sit down to work, i can neither play, nor read, nor draw, nor do anything for five minutes together for sheer restlessness and fidgets. that sleep, too, that used to be the corner-stone of my accomplishments and the pillar of my strength, is not by any means what it was--_non sum qualis eram!_ the sartoris have not changed their plans more than five or six dozen times since you saw them. they are now staying in the country with the marquise de l'aigle, edward's sister. they will be here at the beginning of november and stay _three_ months--ooray! lady cowley is, i believe, not yet come back. i see a great deal of herbert wilson here. he has with him, too, an arch-brick of a friend, a naval captain whom i like most particularly. i am painting his head for practice and for him--he is a fine specimen of an english sailor. about learning by heart, don't you think it will be a great waste of my very little eyesight to read the same thing over and over again until i know it? rue pigalle, _october _. my health, to return to the eternal refrain, is just what it was. i shall find very little difficulty in giving up coffee or tea after dinner, as i never take either; indeed, of late i have given up wine, beer, gin, and other spirituous liquors as utterly exciting and damnable. nothing makes me sleep as i used except going to bed late, and as i am always either sleepy, tired, or fidgety in the evening, i very seldom get beyond ten o'clock. carlo perugini, whom i saw to-day, sends "tante cose" to his cousin. he is a charming boy, most gentlemanlike, and has that peculiar childlike simplicity which belongs to none but italians. [illustration: sketch in water colour for tableaux vivants, "the echoes of hellas." leighton house collection] leighton's friendship with brock and the french sculptor dalou began in these autumn days of . he also made the acquaintance of whistler, whose etchings he admired greatly. the work of jean françois millet also delighted him no less than that of corot. his sister's diary contains the following notes: "november .--we arrived at paris. our dear, handsome fred was here to meet us. december .--fred comes to see us daily, though sometimes only for five minutes. he is pale and coughs a good deal; it makes us uneasy. he often comes to dinner. presents to us on new year's day. took me to the conservatoire. always generous. we went often to mrs. sartoris in the evening." it was in paris that leighton probably first enjoyed to the full the culture of his instincts for the drama. mr. and mrs. sartoris remained in paris during the winter and spring, and mr. henry greville arrived there on february th, . extracts from his published diaries give a picture of the _milieu_ in which leighton's hours of relaxation from work were spent:-- rue du faubourg st. honorÉ, _saturday, march , _. i left london on thursday with flahault and charles, and after a smooth passage slept at boulogne and came on here yesterday. after dining _tête-à-tête_ with the excellent doctor (the hollands dined out), i went to adelaide sartoris', where i found herbert wilson, leighton, and other young and good-looking artists, and some ladies whom i did not know, and amongst them madame kalergi, a niece of nesselrode, a tall, large, white-looking woman, who has a reputation for cleverness and a great talent on the pianoforte. this morning i went to leighton's studio, and saw his drawings, which are full of genius. _thursday, march ._ heard in the morning that covent garden theatre was burnt at seven yesterday morning, and went to announce the event to mario. in the evening, with adelaide sartoris and leighton, to ristori's rentrée in "mirrha." she acted more finely than ever, and i was enchanted with her wonderful beauty and classic grace: her tenderness, in this part especially, is indescribable. adelaide sartoris had never seen her before, and was as much delighted as astonished at the performance. the audience was in a frenzy of enthusiasm, and yet i do not believe half the people present understood italian. _friday, march ._ i went last night with adelaide sartoris and leighton to see ristori in alfieri's play of "rosmunda." in reading it i was convinced i should be bored by so inflated a rhodomontade, and that the part of rosmunda, being one of unmitigated fury and violence, was unsuited to an actress whose chief merit seemed to consist in her power of delineating the gentler passions. i was therefore but little prepared for the wonderful effect she produced upon me and on the audience. the play is horrible and offensive, but her manner of rendering this odious part is nothing short of sublime. her beauty in the costume of the sixth century is beyond all description, and the manner in which she varies the phases of the same passions of hatred and vengeance, and the prodigious power of the whole impersonation, are marvellous. her acting of the scene in the third act, when she tells ildevaldo that amalchilde loves romalda, is about the best thing i have seen her do; and the last act, in which she murders her rival, and the way in which she seizes her and drags her up the steps, is like a whirlwind sweeping everything before it; too terrible almost to witness, and prevented my sleeping all night. _monday, march ._ in the evening i went (as i generally do) to adelaide sartoris', where i found bickerton lyons, french, and leighton. this latter is a singularly gifted youth. besides his talent for painting and drawing, which is already at twenty-five very remarkable, and likely, if he lives, to place him in the highest rank of modern artists, he appears endowed with an extraordinary facility for anything he attempts to do. he speaks many foreign languages with remarkable fluency, and almost without accent; he is possessed of much musical intelligence, and on matters connected with the art which he has made his particular study and profession his information is very extensive--and, i am told by others, better able to judge than myself, that this is the case. with all these qualities, natural and acquired, i never saw a more amiable or single-hearted youth. _wednesday, march ._ went with the sartoris's, montfort, and leighton to the palais bourbon to see morny's pictures--a charming collection. the emperor had just sent him two beautiful pieces of beauvais tapestry--marvellous specimens of that manufacture; in return, i suppose, for his speech of the other day, with which his majesty was highly pleased. _wednesday, april , ._ in the morning, with adelaide sartoris, browning the poet, cartwright, and leighton, to the pourtalès gallery--a charming collection. the pictures that most pleased me were a paul veronese, a rembrandt, and a greuze. there is also a fine collection of raphael ware--glass and bronzes. pourtalès has ordered by will that this collection should remain intact for ten years, and then to be sold to the highest bidder. _wednesday, april , ._ last night, after a dinner given by a lady monson to adelaide sartoris, leighton, and myself, at philippe's, we adjourned to the first representation of the italian translation of legouvé's play of "medea"--that in which rachel refused, after attending rehearsals, to act the principal part, and about which there was a trial. great curiosity was shown about this performance, and there was a great scramble for places; and, although inserts for nearly three weeks, we were fobbed off with very bad seats in the orchestra. the play had great success, and that of ristori was prodigious, but not greater than she deserved. the part is most arduous, full of transitions, and almost always on the full stretch. her costume was most picturesque, having been designed by schæffer, and she looked like a figure on an etruscan vase; and in no play that i have yet seen her in does she produce more effect than in certain passages of "medea." the audience was wound up to a pitch of frantic enthusiasm. i am always astonished at the effect she produces on the mass of the audience, when i know how few there are who really can follow the play. but, whether by means of her countenance, voice, or gestures, she contrives to make all the nuances of her acting felt by the public. i expect when she comes to london she will find a vast difference between this excitable and sympathetic audience and that stupid, flat collection of would-be fashionables who will _promener leurs ennuis_ at her performances. before his family had arrived in paris the subject of the orpheus entitled "the triumph of music," to which leighton was devoting himself, was criticised by his father, which criticism leighton answered in the following letter:-- i do not think honestly that the choice of a mythological subject like orpheus shows the least poverty of invention, a quality, i take it, much more manifested in the manner of treatment than in the choice of a moment. about fiddles, i _know_ that the ancients had _none_; it is an anachronism which i commit with my eyes open, because i believe that the picture will go home to the spectator much more forcibly in that shape. to his mother he writes:-- rue pigalle. i have seen scheffer,[ ] who is cordiality itself to me; robert fleury, ditto, and i have further made the acquaintance of ingres, who, though sometimes bearish beyond measure, was by a piece of luck exceedingly courteous the day i was presented to him. he has just finished a beautiful figure of nymph, which i was able to admire loudly and sincerely. i have also been to troyon, who was polite. i am fiddling away at the preliminaries of my pictures, a disjointed and desultory period through which one has to wade to get at one's large canvas. the sartoris are of course, as ever, my stronghold and comfort. your loving boy, fred. i have sent the sketch of my "orpheus" to ruskin, and don't yet know his opinion of that particular thing, but i feel about that, that as a _now_ responsible artist, it is my _duty_ to do things exactly as i feel them and to abide by them, risking criticisms and cavillings of every kind. i must be _myself_ for better and for worse; this truth, which i feel strongly myself, has been corroborated by the opinions of fanny kemble, mr. sartoris and mrs. sartoris, all at different times, and quite spontaneously expressed. in haste.--your dutiful and affectionate son, fred leighton. the question naturally arises, considering the sequence of the history of the orpheus picture, _was_ leighton _himself_ when he painted "the triumph of music"? i have studied his work from the commencement to the close of his artistic career, and this picture remains the unique example, in my opinion, when he was _not_ himself; the only picture which does not carry out the principle he thought of all importance. it does not evince "sincerity of emotion." the feeling and intention of the work when first conceived had been absolutely sincere; but, when it came to the performance, spontaneity had failed. it seems to have been painted when he was overshadowed by an influence which was alien to his real artistic sense, and is a further proof that paris was an entirely unsympathetic atmosphere to him. the picture appears to me to be in feeling unreal, stagey--not to say, ridiculous. that leighton, after the first bitterness of his failure was over, shared somewhat the same view of it is certain; for shortly after the academy exhibition of was over he took it off the stretcher, rolled it up, and consigned it to oblivion during his lifetime in the dark recess of a cellar. notes in mr. henry greville's diary, dated april th and tuesday, may th, run as follows:-- london, _april _. went yesterday to colnaghi's to see leighton's picture of "romeo and juliet," with which i was much pleased. colnaghi tells me it is much admired, and said, "young leighton will, one day, be a very great man." _tuesday, may ._ a letter from leighton, in answer to mine preparing him for the failure of his picture in the exhibition, says: "whatever i may have felt about my little bankruptcy, there is no fear of its disabling me for work, for if i am impressionable i am also obstinate; and, with god's will, i will one day stride over the necks of the penny-a-liners, that they may not have the triumph of having bawled me down before i have had time to be heard." in april leighton's family left paris to travel in switzerland. the following letters to his mother show the spirit in which leighton met his artistic disaster. _may ._ dearest mamma,--i received your two kind letters in due time, and answer them on the second day you fixed, having in the interval had time to hear about the fate of my picture; but first let me say, dear mamma, that you need never fear my misinterpreting or taking awry any kind advice that your love and solicitude may dictate to you. i am reading as much as ever my eyes will allow--indeed, you are strangely mistaken in thinking i don't see the necessity of reading. i assure you that it is a perpetual mortification to me to feel how little i know, but i stand unfortunately at such a disadvantage owing to the weakness of my eyes and my unprecedented absence of mind; however, i shall do what i can, and hope for the best. dearest mamma, i did not expect to write a _consolatory_ note to you to inaugurate your journey, but i am sorry to say that i am in that painful position. my picture, which has been exceedingly badly hung, so that one can scarcely see half of it (indeed i believe only the figure of orpheus), is an _entire failure_; the papers have abused, the public does not care for it, in fact it is a "fiasco." ruskin (who likes the "romeo" very much) is disappointed with "orpheus," tho' he says of course a man like me can't do anything that has not great merits, and that i am to attach no importance to the malicious articles written by venal critics. now, dearest mother, look upon this--you and papa, who takes so affectionate an interest in my welfare--look upon this, as i do, as a fortunate occurrence; consider what an edge and a zest i get for my future efforts, and what an incentive i have to exert myself to put down the venomous jargon of envious people--next year, tho' the academicians may think that they have cowed me, i shall very probably not exhibit; but the year after, god willing, they shall feel the weight of my hand in a way that will surprise them. the more they abuse, the better i'll paint--industry against spite--i will have a pull for it. dear henry greville behaves to me like an angel; he writes _every day_, and sends me the _times_ regularly. mrs. sartoris, too, writes very often. you will be glad to hear that my prospects about models are rather brighter than they were; i have found two or three that will be useful. paris, _sunday_. although my letter (and i am afraid a very unpleasant one) must have reached you as soon as the other was fairly out of the house, yet i write a line in answer to all the kind and considerate things you wrote in the idea i might be ill or irritable. i value your kind solicitude, dear mamma, as much as you can wish, i assure you, and should indeed be heartily sorry in any way to give you pain or make you in any way unhappy--and talking of that, dear mamma, i sincerely hope you have completely got over your first annoyance about my fiasco, which, except of course in a pecuniary point of view, is in point of fact a fortunate event for my future progress, in the _élan_ it gives to my application and particularly to my obstinacy. i am very busy now at "pan" and "venus," but have not decided what i shall do next year. i think it is very characteristic of the critics that they _none_ of them mention "romeo and juliet," which is, i know, universally liked. dear mamma, never fear, your boy will walk over all that--depend upon it. how does papa take it? how the girls?--give to all my best love, and believe me, your very devoted son, fred. _tuesday, ._ dear papa,--in the hope that i should receive to-day ruskin's pamphlet on the institution, i delayed until now answering your kind letter. it has, however, not arrived, and as there is great uncertainty whether it really is already published or no, i think it better not to keep you longer without news from me. the criticisms in the papers are, as far as i can judge, partly from the little i have read and partly from what my friends tell me, singularly injudicious, leaving almost entirely untouched the really vulnerable parts of the picture, and attacking almost exclusively that which is least objectionable--the execution. ruskin does not much like the picture, and prefers the "romeo" considerably, but he will write of course in a serious spirit and like an intelligent man. i have just made the acquaintance of robert fleury--the best french colourist, in my opinion--and he received me with the greatest kindness and simplicity, showing all that he had, and explaining anything that i wished to know; this is a valuable acquaintance which i owe to montfort. i have made the acquaintance of a highly talented young german genre painter of whom i had heard in frankfurt; he is my age, and paints with greater facility, but my talent is of a higher order i think. ary scheffer has been very amiable and pleasant to me about my fiasco, telling me what he went through himself, and telling me to think nothing of it. i sent to wild shortly after you left, and was able to render him a little service in the way of some venetian costumes, still i hesitate to ask him to introduce me to paul delaroche. we shall see about all that next autumn when i come back from italy, when the viardots will also introduce me to delacroix. pan and venus are progressing _tout doucement_. i have written to watts to ask his leave to put my pictures in his studio (pan and venus) in little holland house. i read carefully all you said, dear mamma, about the critics, &c. &c. i honestly think that my ill-luck is in no way attributable to over-hurrying. those things in my picture which were really most open to discussion, i did all with my eyes open and deliberately, and they were the only ones that the discerning scribblers seem not to have noticed. again, with regard to the said critics, i think, dear mamma, you see things "en noir." _who reports_ me to have sneered at ----? i did internally, as i do at all snobs. however, i have long since banished the whole subject. if ever i attain real excellence, the public will in the long run find it out; and if they don't pay me they will at least acknowledge me, especially when the pre-raphaelite "engouement" has calmed a little. in a fortnight i shall go to england; by that time pan and venus will be done, and i think they promise well. i am very anxious to get to london. i mean to enjoy it very much--take my fill, and then go for a short time to italy to renew my profession of faith before raphael and michael angelo. i am very glad to hear that you are enjoying yourselves, and that you remember me in the midst of your jonquils and anemones. footnotes: [ ] watts wrote at the time leighton died that he had enjoyed an uninterrupted friendship with him of forty-five years. this was evidently a slight miscalculation. we read in one of leighton's letters to his mother from rome that watts had called on him, but that he had missed seeing him, and watts certainly spoke to me of this interview on the pavement of montagu square in as the first he had had with leighton. [ ] in a letter from his mother, december , , she quotes an extract from the _morning post_, written by a critic who had been visiting the studios in rome, and who alludes to leighton's sympathy with giotto. it reads to-day as quaint and curiously antiquated as do knight's scornful criticisms on the elgin marbles. mrs. leighton writes: "one sentence in your letter has set your dear father on the horns of anxiety. you tell us we are not to expect too much from your pictures, and remind us 'that the path which leads to success, &c. &c.' now, papa fancies that you had underpainted your canvas and were not satisfied with the result, and that was the cause of your writing less hopefully than usual. we have been wishing much to hear what your progress was; knowing the subject of each picture, we should have understood if you had reported progress. in case you are in want of a little encouragement, i must tell you the other day papa enters the drawing-room with a radiant face. he held in his hand a piece of paper, and requesting my attention, he read me its contents, which i copy for you, and which i found were taken from a column in the _morning post_ devoted to criticisms on artists and their works chiefly, i believe, on the continent, but of that i am not quite sure. 'i next called on mr. leighton, who is employed on a canvas of many feet. his subject is'--then follows the description, after which he adds: 'mr. leighton will become a great artist if he advances as he has begun. his drawing is admirable, much better than that of english artists generally. some of the figures are giottoish in the treatment of the drapery, which is scarcely pardonable, because drapery fell flowingly about the human body in giotto's time as well as now. why imitate the uncomfortable line of that conventional rag? it is, however, unfair to judge of anything beyond drawing and composition in the present state of this picture, which is an extraordinary work for so young a man.' remarks more or less favourable were made on several other artists, but nothing like what you have just read. do you know this critic? i need not tell you how highly we appreciate this gentleman's sagacity; but jokes apart, papa was rather puzzled at such a criticism about the drapery of some of the figures, because you excel in such folds, so it seems to us odd that you should skimp any of your figures. the same column contains observations on the subject of 'high art' and large historical pictures, or rather comments on those made by young students, such indeed as i have heard you make, that i could almost have fancied the author was answering your remarks. we were rather startled to read in your letter that you find you had better not use the interests of a professional man to facilitate the admission of your picture into the exhibition of the royal academy, but trust to its merits for that result, as we are told the exhibition in question is, strictly speaking, a private affair for the works of the members only and such as they choose to admit, which explains perhaps the complaints of rejection one has read of from time to time. i hope your picture may be kindly judged and well hung." [ ] on a first visit to athens i was struck by the extraordinary insignificance and want of beauty in the levantines of mixed race who crowded the streets; nowhere seemed there a trace left among the inhabitants of the town of the type of greek beauty. when travelling a few days later to colonna, while the train stopped at a station on the lower slopes of hymettus, i saw two men hurrying through the adjacent olive groves to catch it. they were dressed in the greek costume of the provinces--an embroidered waistcoat cut low leaving the throat bare, the short white plaited skirt, and the heavy cloak falling from one shoulder. either of these men might have sat to pheidias for the theseus. both were more magnificent in form than any statue ever made. doubtless, in the days of her ancient glory, greece contained a far larger proportion of inhabitants who were beautiful than are to be found now; nevertheless pheidias without a doubt had to exercise his gift of selecting the best, no less than did leighton and watts. [ ] see list of illustrations. [ ] ibid. [ ] ibid. [ ] mr. herbert wilson. [ ] the story is that on leighton's expressing his gratitude at receiving a visit from him (ary scheffer), he replied, "if i did not attach considerable importance to your talent, i should not have mounted three flights of stairs to see you." chapter v friends leighton's friendships were very salient, vivid interests to him among the varied occupations of his life. in any complete picture of his personality these must take a prominence only secondary to his passion for art and beauty,--and for "his second home,"--the land that had cast such a strange spell and charm over him from the early days of childhood,--to his love for his family, and his reverent devotion to his master, steinle, and to mrs. sartoris. to these two inspiring friends and teachers he declared he owed what he prized most in life, namely, a development of those gifts and qualities which enabled him to be of service to his generation. "i have always believed that his ruling passion was _duty_--the keenest possible sense of it," mr. briton rivière writes. the influences which were the most precious to leighton were assuredly those which enabled him to extend his own influence in the highest and widest direction, and fulfil exhaustively his duty to his fellow-creatures. every moment of his life was real and earnest to him. every moment had a purpose--ever before him was the urgent imperative necessity he felt of being _faithful_: faithful in every detail as in decisive final aims. if an epithet had to be attached to his name, epitomising leighton's salient characteristics, the most appropriate would surely be "leighton the faithful." many among those who are dead,--also among the now living, found in him their best friend. the letters written to him by mr. henry greville, and those that leighton wrote to mr. hanson walker are good examples, among the many that have been preserved, showing the very prominent place his friends took in leighton's life. in the first we trace the tender affection he inspired in the hearts of his intimates,[ ] and in the second the ardent manner in which leighton would help artists younger than himself, and how with a parental solicitude he would do his best to forward their true interests.[ ] [illustration: study of head for "lieder ohne worte." leighton house collection] the following letters from mr. henry greville were written on leighton's return to paris, after he had run over to london to place the "romeo" picture which had been in the paris international exhibition with colnaghi, and after "the triumph of music" had been sent in to the academy. london, _april _. dear fay,--you are rather a bad boy not to have given either ad. or me a _signe de vie_, but as i have not seen her to-day, she may have heard from you. we both want to do so _very_ much, so pray write me a line directly. i only do so to-day to say that at my suggestion ad. and i rushed off yesterday again to colnaghi to find out if the queen or albert knew of your picture being at his shop; and if not, to ask him to let them know it, if he could do so with propriety. he said he would at once send the picture to b. palace, as he was in the habit of doing other works; though he did not think that it was likely they would buy another picture of yours, he admitted that it might be advantageous to you that they should see it. he again praised the picture greatly, and told us that it was universally admired. my sister prefers it infinitely to "cimabue" in all respects, but the fact is, the subject is more attractive to english people than the other. i have nothing else to tell you. i am _very_ seedy with an affection of the bronchial tubes, and very low, and would give anything to see you, my dear boy, but must have patience till the pleasant moment of having you under my roof arrives. you will be glad to hear that my mother is better. i have not seen ellesmere, as he was at the review, but you may depend on my not forgetting your interests. the said review was a most glorious spectacle, and they had a splendid day for it. i am starved to death here, and ad. and i do nothing but grumble. she and i dined _tête-à-tête_ last night, and slept and coughed through the evening with the occasional intermission of talking of you--you old fay! to-night i am going with her to eli, though i ought to be in my bed. theo is ill and can't come, and fanny reads. oh! that you were to be with us! tell me if you would object to a very slight gold frame to the drawings--merely a _line_, because, as my rooms are all white, and that everything in them has gilt, the drawings want a sort of background--which this slight frame would give them. tell me what you think. i don't mean to hang up my vintage, but keep it near me on an _easle_ (how do you spell it?). charley, being highly coloured, looks lovely, and don't want any frame--nasty charley! now pray write and tell me all about yourself--and the _moddles_--and how you _are_--and how you get on--and what you do. don't drag off to dull parties, but go to bed early. god bless you. amami, ne ho gran bisogno. colnaghi said he had heard from one cooper a very good report of "orpheus." h. how have the photographs turned out? i like your portrait less now that you are away--but it can't be helped, it is better than none, but it looks so sad. i have hung you and ad. up side by side in sweet companionship in my dressing-room, so that i may see you both the first thing on waking. london, _april th_. dearest bimbo,--you have made us pass some very anxious hours, as the telegraph which i sent off at seven this morning will have testified, though it will also have surprised and perhaps alarmed you until you read its contents. the fact is, _i_ thought it odd that we did not hear from you, yesterday at all events, as i felt sure you would have written immediately on getting our joint note from boulogne, wednesday, and certainly on the following day. however, i felt sanguine that on going to dine at , i should find that ad. had heard from you, but, on the contrary, i found her full of anxiety at no letter, imagining every species of cause for your silence, which she said was so very unlike you, that i directly caught the same state of worry, and we determined that i should telegraph the first thing this morning to know if you were ill, or if anything had happened. i never slept all night, and of course had worked myself, with her assistance, into a wretched state of anxiety about you--when at nine your letter arrived, and a blessed relief it was. i should not probably have been in such a state, had adelaide not been convinced that illness or some catastrophe had prevented your writing, because, she said, your _wont_ was to do so immediately on parting with her, and she could account for it in no other way. in short, dear fay, we were very foolish; but i assure you our folly met its own punishment by the anxiety, and which spoilt our "eli" entirely. poor fay! i daresay you little thought that we were tormenting ourselves about you, and i, for one, shall try and not do so any more. your letter is like yourself--dear and kind. with regard to the enclosure, my opinion is that you would not do wisely or handsomely by colnaghi to withdraw your picture from his keeping, unless he _wished_ to get rid of it to make room for the supposed exhibition of drawings; moreover, my own opinion is that you would not do well to exhibit at the crystal palace. i have no faith in that institution, and i think it will be a pity to rob your studio of the "pan" and "venus" for that purpose; but as i do not consider myself a good judge of these matters or competent to advise you, i think i should be very much guided by what other artists of the same standing as yourself think and do in the matter, and before deciding or answering mr. magwood, i should write to buckner or any one else competent to advise you and ask their opinion. i don't know what sister adelaide will say, but i have sent her your letter and the enclosure, and she will probably write to you on the subject. you are _too_ dear and nice about my mother. i fear that before you come she will have left london, and i don't think you would like to paint her, because her sweet face is entirely hidden by the shade she is obliged to wear over her poor eyes; but _you_ know whether i should like her portrait painted by you! but, dear fay, you are too lavish of your time on others, and do not think enough of yourself. here i was interrupted by a visit from adelaide, overjoyed at hearing all is well with you, and agreeing entirely with me _in re_ c. palace, colnaghi, &c. she says if c. wishes the picture to be removed, it is for him to express that wish and not you, that a better order of people go to him than those who frequent the c.p., that he is well-disposed towards you, and that it is advisable you should keep him as your friend. we think mogford's reference useless, being a foreigner, and we are certain that unless _millais_ and others of the same class exhibit at the c.p., you had best have nothing to do with it. i took ad. up to your room, and she says you will be _comfy_ in it; and she saw your nice face, patted it, and said, "dear fay, but it looks so sad!" she thinks both drawings will be better for a slight gilt _rim_, but i won't put it on without your leave. i am so glad you are leading a wholesome life, and getting the b. who planted you, rather than dawdle proudly, and be without a good _moddle_. i have nothing to say, dear bimbo, and you will have had enough of me. i am very bad with an ulcerated throat, cough, and inflamed bronchia, and altogether below par. i have seen hardly anybody since i came. adelaide would have been pleased with "eli," had she been in a vein where pleasure was possible. pauline sang to perfection the lovely music allotted to her. and now, dearest bimbo, god bless you. write very often, if only a _line_, as it is comfortable to hear that all is well with you--that is always the news i most wish to get; and tell me how the pictures progress, and your real state of mind about them.--your old and loving babbo, h. i send back mogford. penelope b. (bentinck) tells me that the great judge, george, condescends to approve "romeo" mightily!! london, _monday, april th_. dear good fay,--cartwright was wrong about the telegraph, but as our anxiety was removed by your letter, i did not expect you to send me one. knowing how likely you were to write, supposing you to be well, you may imagine that we were not a little anxious at getting no sign of life from you, in return for our daily letters, and i never could have guessed that the boulogne letter would only have reached you on saturday! however, all is well that ends well, but we passed a very disagreeable day and night, and it was _because_ we did _not_ think you capable of putting off writing that we fussed and worried ourselves about you--foolishly, dear fay, no doubt. i am very seedy and confined to the house by throat, bronchia, unceasing cough, swelled glands, bad eyes--and should not inflict myself and ailments upon you, but that it is a solace and a comfort to _causer avec "mon petit dernier"_--a cognomen which smiles upon me--and made _me_ smile. sister adelaide tea'd with me last night _en tête à tête_. fanny was grand, and would not come in, though she dropped her sister at my door, because (she said) i had not said _to_ her that i wished _for_ her! i was so little _en train_ that i was not sorry to have only adelaide, and we _did_ more than once say how we wished fay was eating the muffin destined for the proud fanny. adelaide has just been here, and brought me your dear letter. i don't see any _present_ prospect of the fire of my affliction being extinguished or allowed to grow dim, so you may make your mind easy on that score, excellent fay. i feel for your loneliness, and know what a contrast it must present with the sweet fellowship we have held together so unceasingly for those last two months. the only thing you gain by the loss of your people is more time, and a later repast. i don't doubt poor mamma being unhappy at leaving you, her true and only benjamin, and for an indefinite time. i can judge by what i felt at parting with _mon petit dernier_, and _with_ the hope of so soon greeting him again. no, fay, i won't have the charley drawing, and i won't have you do anything more for any one but yourself, knowing as i do all the things you have on hand--and _à propos_ of _that_, i must tell you that i have endeavoured to put another iron in the fire _in re_ fresco. i asked lady abercorn, who is my dearest friend, to speak to lord aberdeen (her father-in-law) who is on the committee of taste, or whatever it is called, first about your picture at colnaghi's and then of you generally as desirous of painting in fresco, and as of one whose studies have been that way directed, in whom i take a great interest; but i made her understand that it was no _job_ i wanted done, or that i asked any favour, but merely i wished it to be known that leighton, a very rising artist, would like to be employed in that line, if an occasion presented itself. lady a. understood me exactly and being very sympathetic immediately conceived an interest for my _petit dernier_ (i wish you were my son, fay!) and said if she did not see lord aberdeen very soon she would write to him. neither i nor adelaide know where windsor and newton live, so you had best write straight to him to send the colours you want. i think i _must_ put just a _baguette d'or_ on the drawings, and when you see them on my walls i don't think you will disapprove. with regard to cartwright, adelaide says jules sartoris has got a place called tusmore. i should advise him to lose no time in advertising it both in the newspaper and by different agents in town and country. i should think it was a place _sure_ to be let, from its convenient distance from london and other advantages. there is no news here. london, _may th_. dearest fay,--your letter is a relief and a comfort. it is both to me to see you take this disagreeable business so manfully, so wisely, and to think that instead of being cast down, your energies will only be aroused by this stupid and unjust criticism. in this case it may, then, well be said, "sweet are the uses of adversity." as to all the other papers, i can't pretend to say what they may have written, but the _leader_ is one of no repute, and, as ruskin said to adelaide this morning, it don't really signify _what_ they write; in the long run talent and genius must prevail, as yours will, dear fay, if it please god to grant you, as i fervently pray, health and strength. she is going to write to you, and will tell you all ruskin said, and also what she thinks of the exhibition in general and your picture in particular, which, i hear, is infamously placed--that is, in so bad a light that only _orpheus_ is visible. passing, i must tell you that edward (sartoris) came to see me yesterday, and the _first_ thing he said on entering the room was, "well, i don't think leighton's picture looks bad. orpheus's drapery is too yellow, but it don't look amiss at all." this was rather much for him, eh? he likes "autumn leaves," and he praised the "leslie" (which adelaide says is all very well, but "slaty"). landseer is beautiful--but e. (edward sartoris) was _sous le charme_, having sat next him at dinner at marochetti's, when he told me l. was as much _aux petits soins_ for him as if he had been the loveliest of females. i am so glad about the models, and if i don't hear from you as often shall know why. i am also glad you dine with cartwright and co., but _how_ you _can_ dandle a nasty, doughy, puffy, bread-and-butter smelling thing called a baby! pah! a baby is my horror and aversion. never do it again--not even by your own. i could not have dandled even my bimbo without a grimace. well done! old hideous ----; if she promise not to act herself, i'll take a box for her next benefit. she is the _âme damnée_ of macready, so that her verdict surprises me. i expect she will begin imitating her, and have medea translated--horrible idea! read ellesmere's speech; it is very pretty, and the whole debate is interesting, but derby and co. don't cut a good figure at all. i am getting better now, and dined with my parent yesterday, but can't go out in daytime for fear of eyes and throat, the wind is so cold. of course i read your letter to ad. (adelaide sartoris). (i think you had best now write straight to her, because as i am soon hoping to be out, and have no one to send so far, your letters will get to her quicker and more surely by post.) you must be very careful, and take time to weigh well and consider the subjects of your future pictures. i think the mermaid might be both interesting and effective well carried out, and you might also perhaps paint some subject from some one of the italian poets--tasso, ariosto, boccaccio--for your own satisfaction. god bless you! my dear boy. i am longing to see you again already. tell me how the models answer and how you get on. _don't_ call brackley _de_. they are removed to the meurice. if you don't find them, write to her and offer to go with her (saying at my suggestion) to the louvre.--love your old babbo, h. later in the summer mr. greville wrote:-- , hatchford, _thursday_. my dear boy,--i do sympathise with your disgust at the same time that i think you have acted very _légèrement_ about your pictures, and, in fact, taken no trouble or heed about them. _you should have seen to it all yourself before you left london_, or have given directions to watts, to which he would have attended, instead of leaving him in total ignorance as to what you meant or wished, and which picture or if both were to go. i kept perpetually telling you to see after this business and to be more _exact_ in it, but you see now the consequence of not attending to things more carefully. you had better write a curt letter to greene, reminding him that you _had_ given written directions (as you say) that it was your "_pan_" that was to be removed, and that you made no mention of the "venus" (what has he done with her?), and again asking him (since he had not replied to the query) whether he had got the "romeo." i shan't be in london until to-morrow night late, and as you are to be there on monday there will be no use in my going to greene, but i can do so on saturday if you wish it. i have had an answer from ellesmere's secretary, to whom i wrote to go and see if your pictures were well hung, to say that the exhibition only opens in first week of september,[ ] but that he has a friend who is an influential member of the hanging committee, and that he will speak to him in favour of yours being put into a good light. i heard from adelaide yesterday that she will be in town on monday and will dine us. i hoped you would have stayed (and she too) all tuesday and gone away on wednesday morning, so that we might have spent two evenings together, and i am disappointed. i shall go to scotland on wednesday, and am sorry to have settled to do so. i suppose you know alfred sartoris marries miss barrington--an alliance which will enchant aunt ----, as the young lady is "the honourable," and allied to several marquesses and earls.--addio, caro, your ever affectionate h. _p.s._--write again by all means to greene asking _what has become of the "venus,"_ and also whether the "romeo" has or _not_ been sent to manchester--whether you employ him or not, you have a right to know what he has done with your property. write a line to queen street to-morrow to say at what time you will be there on monday that i may not be out of the way. rain has come, but it is still deliciously warm and fine in the intervals. later in the same year mr. greville wrote:-- london, _august , _. my dearest fay,--i have just got your letter of saturday rd from frankfort, and as you state therein that you were to leave that place on monday, and that the letters which i sent to malet for you could only reach him on that morning, it is next to certain that they will not have reached you. i requested him, in the event of your having left frankfort, or in his failing to find you out, to send them on to the _p. restante_ at venice, and you will probably find them there together with this letter, but i think it best also to send you the originals for fear of accident, as it is desirable that you should write to mr. harrison yourself.[ ] in the meanwhile, i have told him that when i knew your address i would apprize him of it, and in a few days i shall write and say that you are at venice; but i don't think he will write to you any more, but that he will expect to know _when you are likely to return_. having got so far, it of course is out of the question that you should think of, or for a moment be expected to return on purpose, and i think it most likely you will be able to get watts to go and look at the picture, in case the matter should be pressing; but i think it will be best that you offer to return to england before you settle at paris, and whenever your present tour (which i told mr. harrison was one for artistic purposes) shall be ended. it will be a great bore having to come back even then, on purpose. i am sorry you did not get the letters at frankfort; on the whole though, perhaps they would only have worried you and have made you _hesitate_ as to _returning_, and which perhaps you might have thought _shorter_ and less troublesome than having to come back by-and-bye. however, it is very probable you may get watts to do what is necessary, and that you may be saved the expense and bore of another journey here in the autumn. adelaide and i contemplated the possibility of your coming over at once from frankfort, and we both deprecated the idea, though we privately said how intensely glad we should be to see you--selfish as it might be; and it was arranged that i was to telegraph to her to tunbridge where she is gone to-day. thanks, you dear boy, for your letter just received. i can understand your pleasure at finding yourself in your old haunts again, with your old friend and master to whom you owe so much. it is a great comfort to me to find that he likes your drawings, though i never doubted his doing so. i was amused by your account of the pimp and ballerina, whose modesty seems to have attracted you more than that of the russian princess. since writing to you last i have done but little. i am come into town this morning expecting to find ffrench, but he has not turned up. i saw sister a.[ ] yesterday on her way through, but my visit was spoilt by the ---- girls and cigala, who (as he never made love to me) appears to me merely a _bon sabreur_ and horse fancier. you know my opinion of the young ladies, who, _par parenthèse_, adore you. i am still at h. (holland) house, and shall remain there until friday, when i come to dine with adelaide, and shall then go to hatchford until i repair to worsley--my sister will be established there before long. yesterday, ellesmere's secretary sent me a letter to say that the gent. of the hanging committee "would take care that mr. leighton's pictures were placed in the most favourable position."[ ] so let us hope for the best. i must tell you that vic. is come home, and is now opposite to me, and that she looks admirably well. we have had heaps of people at h. house at dinner almost every day. marochetti came yesterday. he is full of the subject of colouring statues, and has just taken to osborne two busts which the queen was to present to-day to p. albert for his birthday. marochetti _traite d'imbéciles_ all the english sculptors who cannot yet take in this "undoubted fact." he says gibson is the only one who admits it, but even he will not go marochetti's lengths. watts is (you know) at malvern, and the doctor thought him decidedly better before he went, and that he may get into tolerable health. i think he is to be at malvern three weeks. john leslie's wedding is at this moment proceeding; he has almost settled to buy lady c. lascelles' house at campden hill, which will be a capital position for his studio, and another sunday lounge for you next year. next year! (_eheu fugaces!_) a long time to wait to see you again under my roof, you very dear boy. i always think this dispersing time so melancholy. i wonder if i shall hear from you before venice. oh yes, of course, you will write wherever you stop. mind and tell me about your studies, and what you see and do--above all things take care of your health, and don't catch fever by working in the sun, &c. charles says he can't think where your hat box can be--he is in ecstasies with your old trousers, which have come out brand new and a capital fit! you would be quite envious if you could see them. good-bye, best of fays. i shall send this letter off and write another in a few days. i will mark _outside_ the dates of my letters (and pray, mind and always date yours--you never do) so that you will know which to open first. god bless you, you dear _good_ fellow.--love your fond old, babbo. london, _thursday, august _. dearest fay,--one line to say that this afternoon your letter of sunday with the enclosed for harrison reached me. it is a relief to me that you _got_ the letters, and i think your answer does very well, but as it had no cover, and that i was obliged to send it in my own name to harrison, i added, what _you_ had better have done, that if necessary you could easily come over the beginning of november, and i rather hope they will accept that offer, as by that time the court will have returned from scotland (perhaps to windsor though), and you might have a chance of being brought into contact with albert, and you would jabber good german to him and win his heart, which _may_ be valuable to you. with regard to watts, he said he should be too happy to do _anything_ for you, but he wished you to be thrown with albert. he (watts) is better and has left malvern. i got yesterday the _manchester guardian_, with a sort of preliminary list of the pictures which are to be opened to the private view to-morrow. they were not then all hung, but they mention the "romeo" as in a conspicuous place--a sombre picture, but the romeo and juliet finely conceived--or something to that effect. you shall hear all about it. i have got little ffrench till saturday, when i go to hatchford and he home. i expect adelaide to-morrow--we dine with her, and i _fear_ shall have ----, which will be a potent bore. there is of course no other news. penelope bentinck has produced a huge boy, and is quite well. john leslie's marriage went off without any tears, and he made a very good "neat and appropriate." god bless you, my very dear boy--you are not so fond of me as i am of you--be sure of it. take care of yourself, and write to and love your old babbino. tell me all about your studies, as they interest me, and don't forget to put me up to some pretty cheap gilt-moulding for my frame. adelaide was pleased and touched at your seeing about her pictures. fay, she is devotedly attached to you--you may be sure of it. hatchford, _september _. my dearest fay,--i am going to begin a letter to you which i can only send when i know where to direct to you, for after venice (from whence i have not heard from you yet) you have given me no address. i hope to hear that you got all mine sent to that place, and particularly the one enclosing a copy of phipps' letter to me in which he tells me it is the queen's wish that you come over here on your return to paris. i got your letter from meran on thursday last, and i sent it off to adelaide by that post, enjoining her to let me have it back by the next, since which i have never had a line from her, and at last grew so alarmed that i wrote to anne to ask what had happened, and that i could not but fear ad. had been sent for to edward[ ] in ireland. to this letter i got _no_ reply, and i have been in great suspense and anxiety till this morning, when sure enough my surmise proved correct, and i got a few lines from adelaide herself from muckross, whither she arrived on saturday, having left warnford the day before, they having sent for her. she has, i do not doubt, written to you and told you that she found him neither dead or dying, but in a low, bilious fever, having been in bed a week, and the doctor not giving much hope of a speedy recovery. she, however, intends to move him as soon as it is possible, but it may be some time first, and of course their plans are more or less uncertain, and mine of meeting them in london at an end, as i shall be gone to worsley before they can be in town. it is, however, a mercy that this illness is not even more serious than it is. when i heard his account of himself as i passed through london, i wondered that she was not more alarmed, but i did not tell her how serious the case appeared to me, and as it has proved; and when i did not hear from her, i immediately guessed what had occurred. she found fordwich there, and says the place appeared a paradise, and now that she is easy about edward, perhaps she won't mind spending the time there instead of warnford. only, the boy was to go to eton on the th, and i don't know how they will manage that. i have written to ad. to-day, and have sent her a volume i received this morning from fanny kemble. the letter would interest you, but is too bulky to send. she speaks of you in a way that pleases me and would gratify your vanity in every respect, and describes you as one of the most interesting people she ever met, and hopes that your art may be an unceasing source of fame, profit, and delight to you. i will keep the letter and show it to you when i have the happiness of seeing you, my dear fay. when sarah leaves her she is to begin reading in the west, and i suspect that will answer better to her than the girl's society! dear fay, my sister writes to me that she and brackley went into manchester to see your pictures. i will transcribe what she says: "they are pretty well placed, but the 'romeo' is so dark a picture it is difficult to see, and the lighting of the gallery has something of the defect of that at b. house. the 'pan' and 'venus' seem to me to be very good pictures. _b. considers them improper._ i like the 'pan' the best. there are not many good pictures in the exhibition." to this i replied that i was much diverted by brackley's prudishness, but that if such personages were to be painted, it was not possible to clothe them in crinoline or in green gauze drawers such as bomba imposed upon his ballerina. it makes me so sick, all that cant about impropriety, but there is so much of it as to make the sale of "nude figures" very improbable, and therefore i hope you will turn your thoughts entirely to well-covered limbs, and paint no more _venuses_ for some time to come. i trust you will devote all your energies to the romeo, dalilah and syren, and if you have any spare time, that you will do our friar lawrence. i forget if i told you that miss kaye saw your portrait of yourself, and says it is quite a _libel_ on your physiognomy. why _did_ you make yourself so pinched and sad-looking, fay? _september ._--your letter from venice of th reached me this morning. i feel sure you will not have got my long letter directed there on the th and enclosing phipps' answer, so i had better transcribe it: "it would be very desirable that mr. l. should run over from paris when there to see exactly what is the damage done to his picture, and i will have nothing done to it in the meantime, but care shall be taken that the injury shall not be increased. mr. l. does not state in his letter where an answer would reach him, and if you are in communication with him perhaps you would have the kindness to mention to him what her majesty's wishes on this subject are." so, you see, my dear boy, you _must_ come, and perhaps it may not be time so wasted, as i shall try and find out when the queen comes back from scotland, so that if possible you may time your arrival accordingly. the p. of wales is going to see the manufactories at manchester, and they are going to ask him to worsley, i believe. only fancy those brutes at warnford never sending me adelaide's letter written to me the morning of her hastening off to ireland a week ago until to-day! too bad. she wrote in great distress of mind and evidently hardly expected to find edward[ ] alive, as she did not believe the telegraph which said he was better, thinking that if it were so they would not have sent for her. you dear boy, i am so glad you enjoy your venice--which is all very pretty no doubt, but i hate stinks and fleas--and they abound there. i hate wobbling in a boat and walking in dirty alleys, so i don't envy you at all. have you fallen in with either of the new married couples, wilson or leslie? fay, it is well you should come and see me, for i don't think there is much chance of my going to paris. the hollands are going to naples, as the wall of their house at paris has been damaged by the pulling down of the next house and has to be rebuilt, and i shall have no money to pay for lodging and food. there are long lists of the pictures the queen and others are to send to the great manchester exhibition next year--i think twenty at least from the royal galleries, and ellesmere sends eight or ten. i see that eastlake is at rome, so you may fall in with him there. i conclude my next letter must be directed there. you should recollect to give your address _d'avance_. the second post has just brought me the enclosed, which, as she says she don't write to you, i send (though it will cost a fortune), knowing that it will gladden your eyes to see her hand. she loves you dearly as i do, fay! your meran letters are very pretty, and i wish i could see that place. good-bye, and god bless you. we have lovely weather--not one bad day since i have been here. go and see the villa salviate. what have you done with steinle--what heard of gamba? love.--your old loving father, h. enclosed is one from mrs. sartoris to mr. greville, which he sends on to leighton. muckross, killarney. many thanks. i got a letter too this morning, which i send you with your own--let me have mine back. e. (edward sartoris) is certainly a little better, thank god--still in bed though. he hopes perhaps to get off next saturday--this appears to me nothing short of impossible--monday i should think the very soonest for such a move. this place is divinely beautiful, i see, but i go out very little, and what with the shock i received before starting, and the fatigue of my rapid journey, and the anxiety about him, i feel incapable of receiving any _impression_ from the place. i seem to acknowledge its beauty, but i cannot get even a momentary enjoyment out of it at present. the _hosts_ are very kind. herbert always was an excellent fellow. i cannot write to fay, for with all the delay caused by his letter having had to follow me here, my answer would no longer catch him at venice, and i do not know where he next pitches his tent. dear boy! he seems very happy--god bless him and keep him so! muckross, _tuesday, th_. hatchford, _september _. dearest fay,--the enclosed reached me to-day having first been sent to ebury street.[ ] i think it best to send it to you that you may reflect on what you will do, though it seems to me that with the exception of the "cimabue" you have _no_ picture you could send to this exhibition. if you wish to be represented by that work, i conclude you would have to ask permission of the queen to send it there, and this should be done through "the honourable colonel phipps," or mr. harrison, his secretary. this permission would of course be granted at once. when charles told me in my bed this morning that a letter had come for you from manchester, i fondly hoped it was to announce sale of one or other of your pictures! i wrote yesterday, and have nothing more to say to-day but that i am better, though still seedy. we have got the equinoctial gales with rain. i fancy we, france and england, are going to recall our missions from naples, if bomba don't give in, and send squadrons of ships. but what then? i don't suppose we mean to bombard the town. but he will do _just enough_ to give us a pretence for holding our hand, and matters will then resume their ordinary course, and the k. of the two sicilies be governed just as it was before. our position is a very ticklish one in this affair. i long to hear whether you saw pasta--and anything more than the waddle, the red face and beard. mind and answer my questions. i should tell you that amongst your papers that came from manchester they sent p. albert's letter to ellesmere, and the long prospectus too, but there is no use in forwarding it to you--this will already cost a fortune, but i think it best to send it. when is it you expect to be here? how long do you stay at home?--addio, carissimo, h.g. london, _september _. my dearest fay,--here i am, sleeping in london on my way to worsley to-morrow morning, and i have got my mère augusta occupying your room; the first _female_ i have ever housed or fed, and it will be a rehearsal for sister ad. i have just missed her, as she went to the station as i left it, but i found a letter from her just returned from putting the boy to school; it is a bore that i missed her, as i shall not see her for an age. edward has been committing all sorts of follies and is again confined to his room, but is better. he ought to come to london and consult a clever man, or he will be very ill, as he was once before. what a fellow you are never to say a word about pasta to me! of course mrs. siddons had a magnificent eye and brow--who said she had not?--and was a glorious actress, but i should always have preferred reston. what did pasta say of _her_? you are wrong about p. not being _powerful_--she was _tremendous_; her voice was one of immense power--almost coarse at times, but prodigious, and her _gestes_ sublime from grace and strength. dear fay, i have measured the frame; it is twelve inches wide and fourteen long. now do find me a pretty cheap croûte. i have seen no one in london but lady shelburne, who said there was no news. she disapproves, like me, of the policy with regard to naples, and i think we shall find by-and-by a great reaction _là dessus_. by-the-bye, when at rome go and hear the opera verdi has been composing for that place on the story of adrienne, and tell me all about it. he wrote formerly such pretty melodies, and is a clever fellow. i don't know what adelaide will do about going to germany, but i hope give it up, as for many reasons it appears to me at this moment to be a foolish scheme. good-night, you dear boy. i can't frank this, as it is late, and i don't know how, so you must pay this time. write soon, and _answer_ my letters. i don't quite understand what it is you are doing in italy except amuse yourself. is there any other ----? how long will it be before i see you?--addio, caro caro, tanto tanto, h. on the death of lady ellesmere, his sister, in answer to leighton's letter of sympathy mr. greville writes-- hatchford, _wednesday_. my dearest fay,--in my affliction, i have one consolation--and it is such events as these that prove it--i am rich in friends, more so, much more than i deserve--and amongst them there is no one whose unselfish love i prize more than yours. dear fay, i _know_ you feel for me, and i am grateful. god bless you for it.--your affectionate h. a short note to his father from leighton announces the death of this dear friend in december . athenÆum club, pall mall, s.w., _friday_. my dear papa,--i lost last night one of my oldest and dearest friends--henry greville; he died without much suffering, and looks this morning calm and beautiful in his rest. you know what i lose in him.--your affectionate son, fred. among many letters of the kind, preciously preserved by those who owe much to leighton, the following notes, addressed to his young friend "johnny" (mr. john hanson walker), may be found interesting as exemplifying the trouble which leighton would take in helping young artists, and with what kindness, sincerity, and delicacy he tendered his advice and assistance. none of these letters are dated. the athenÆum. my dear johnny,--i write one line in haste to say how sorry i am to hear that your health has been unsatisfactory of late. i earnestly trust you won't disregard your doctor's advice, and that you will, _at any sacrifice_, do something to recover strength, even though a long sea voyage were necessary. health is the _first_ thing. talk it over with miss nan; if her love is as sincere as you believe, and i don't for a moment doubt it, she will give you the same advice. for myself, i begin to think my studio will never be ready. i have not done a stroke of work. i _hope_ at the end of next week i shall be at it again. in october i am off to rome.--yours sincerely, fred leighton. holland park road, addison road, kensington. * * * * * athenÆum club, pall mall, s.w. supposing a proper price were given, should you care to copy (for a man of position) a portrait by sir william beechey and one or two by sir thomas lawrence? i am not asking you to do it for a moment, i merely want to know whether you would _care_ to do the work; _if_ so, please let me know what you would ask. i have seen mr. greville to-day, and he begs me to tell you that the countess grey will be glad if you can undertake for her, for the sum of _£ _, a copy of a portrait of lady charlotte greville. the picture is now with the countess of ellesmere, mr. greville's sister, and shall be sent to you wherever you wish, if you will let me know at once. is it to go to great castle street? lady ellesmere will be extremely obliged if you will not keep the picture a moment longer than you absolutely require it to make a good copy; the portrait is that of her mother, and she is extremely loth to part with it, even for a time. please send me a line in answer to this, and believe me always. _thursday._ * * * * * the picture will be duly sent to you. i have another matter for your consideration: mr. greville wants to know if you can think of any good picture (sir joshua or gainsborough would be best) that would make a good companion to the one he has already bought of you; if you could suggest anything suitable, he would give you the commission. i am very glad you should have encouragement, but i trust you will not flag in your zeal about more important studies. * * * * * i send you the money from mr. greville for the portrait of his mother. i am very glad you should have this new commission, but you must thank _him, not me_, for it was entirely his idea and desire. he is indeed one of the kindest and best men possible. i look on him myself as a second father. to save time, i shall make arrangements for you to work in my studio on the _ first_ days of january, if you can manage it. i shall be out of town, and you will have the place all to yourself. i wish you a happy xmas and new year, and remain. * * * * * warnford court, bishops waltham. you will forgive me, i am sure, for not writing to you to thank you for your letter, received some weeks back; but the fact is i have been so very busy as to make writing a matter of very great difficulty. i heard from your father not long ago that you have been very fortunate in getting capital commissions for portraits where you have been staying. i am very glad indeed to hear it, and trust sincerely that you feel you are progressing as steadily in proficiency as in prosperity. to the commissions you have had in the country, i have one to add here. mr. henry greville wishes you to paint for him a copy of a head of a relation of his--i believe, of poor lady ellesmere, his sister, whose recent death has been such a terrible grief to him. you will, i am sure, be glad to undertake this painting, even though it may not in itself be very interesting. the size is a sort of oval kit-cat, not large. he proposes to offer you ten pounds for it. how is miss nan? i hope you have good accounts of her, and that all goes smoothly between you. i send this to bath to be forwarded, as i don't know your present whereabouts. * * * * * dear johnny,--i am just off to paris, and write one line in hot haste to thank you for yours, and to say that i am delighted to hear you are conscious of progress. come back as soon as you can _conveniently_, please, because mr. greville has _borrowed_ lady ellesmere's portrait for you to copy, and wants to return it as soon as possible to the duke of devonshire. come and see me when you return, and believe me, with kind regards to miss nan,--yours always, f.l. * * * * * holland park road, kensington, w. i want very much, before they have quite disappeared, to get for myself and for a friend a couple of old-fashioned country bumpkins' smocks; you know the sort of thing. do you chance to know any one in any of the villages about bath who could pick up a couple? i should like a brown one (_not a white sunday one_) and a green one, and that they should _not_ be washed--well worn, untidy things. if you saw your way to getting me such garments, i should be very grateful, but don't _trouble_ about it. * * * * * if you have leisure to think of anything but miss nan just at present, will you do me a favour? will you get for me a peasant's _wide-awake_, in shape like the one i painted in your portrait, only really _old_ and _soiled_ and _stained_; bought, in fact, if possible, off a bumpkin's head? can you do this for me, and either send it or bring it if you are about to return shortly? i will pay you when we meet. when is the wedding to be? or is it already over? i wish you all happiness and prosperity, and remain with kind remembrances to miss (or mrs.) nan,--yours truly, fred leighton. i hope you can read this; my hands are so cold i can scarcely hold the pen. * * * * * mr. greville has very kindly desired me to give you another commission, this time a larger one. he wants you to copy from my large picture the group of women carrying flowers, the size of the original.[ ] he offers you £ for it. if you are disposed, as i have no doubt you will be, i would, if i were you, write him a line of thanks for the kind interest he shows in you. in great haste. * * * * * one line in a great hurry to say that i am delighted to hear that you have got in to the life school at the royal academy, and to thank you for the photo., which is capital. i have not touched my venus since you went away. i have been a good deal out of town myself, and have spent most of my time in finishing the two large decorative figures, which have now gone home. i am sorry you did not see them. come as soon as you can to begin mr. greville's picture. * * * * * i leave town saturday next, and shall not see you till saturday the th july, so i write a line to say that you will set to work by yourself; the maid will light you a fire and give you the key of the studio. i have written direct to gatwell to order the canvas, or it would not have been ready in time. you are to paint the group full size. _trace it_ to get it quite accurate. put the head of the centre figure, the woman in _yellow_, about four inches or four and a half inches from the top of the canvas; that will give you all the rest. _leave out_ the little _child sitting_. go slap at the colour, vigorously but _not quick_. the slower you work, if you work with energy, the sooner you get through, and the better the result. i hope you are enjoying yourself. * * * * * [illustration: portrait of mrs. hanson walker by permission of mr. hanson walker] although i certainly think it is a pity to exhibit too soon, nevertheless i think that your particular situation just now does justify you in doing so, as long as you confine yourself to the suffolk street gallery. i sincerely hope you may sell your pictures. with kind regards to mrs. nan and love to my god-child, i am, in haste, yours always, f.l. * * * * * i can't quite make out the price as written in your note, so to avoid mistakes i send blank cheque, which pray fill in yourself. just off--good-bye. * * * * * _ th december._ i have got your note and enclose little cheque. this is as it should be. it is absurd that because i am an old friend, you should be a loser by me in time and pocket. with a merry xmas and new year to you and nan, i remain, in haste, yours sincerely, fred leighton. * * * * * holland park road, _monday_. many thanks for your letter. i have had absolutely no time to answer sooner, and now can only do so most briefly. i am extremely glad to hear of the success of your labours at dorchester, and think you are very right to take for yourself and "mrs. nan" a refreshing little holiday on the hills. i will begin the portrait next week,[ ] when you return, at which time also i hope to show you some under-painted work which i think may interest you. i shall certainly call and see your screen. it will no doubt be a very useful bit of "property" to you. remember me very kindly to your wife. * * * * * my dear johnny,--i am much obliged to you for your letter, telling me of your doings in the country. i think you will do wisely in going to the isle of wight to paint landscape; the danger of copying the old masters too exclusively, as you have been forced to do lately, is that one is apt to fall into mannerism by trying to see nature with the eyes of others; painting landscape direct from nature is the best possible corrective against this tendency. i shall be glad to see you and what you have done on your return, if you are here before the th or nd august; if not, we shall meet in october, when i return from the east. i am working away at my picture, which will be under-painted before i leave england. i wish you joy of your summer trip, and remain, yours very truly, fred leighton. * * * * * _ th september._ i have just got your letter, and scribble a line in haste (for i am very busy) to say that you are wholly at liberty to do whatever you choose with nan's picture, and that i am glad for your sake that people like it. i am also much pleased to hear that you have an interesting portrait on the easel, in which you see progress and improvement in the matter of breadth and light and subordination of half tints; nothing is more important in painting; i think that after accuracy and refinement of form, it is the quality you should most strive for. i am myself tolerably well, but not by any means brilliantly. i have got to work at a few small heads, which you will see before long. in haste, with love to nan and the children. * * * * * lynton, _saturday_. i have just received your note, and hear with sincere regret that you have not been prospering lately in your affairs. i am in great difficulty as to what i can do for you in the matter of the curatorship. if it were only a question of testifying to your character, zeal, industry, &c. &c., i should have real pleasure in giving you that testimony in the highest and fullest degree. but, my dear johnny, if i am not very much mistaken, the curator is expected to be able when required to _advise and direct the pupils_, and i cannot in candour conceal from you that your age and experience do not appear to me yet to qualify you for that part of the duties. if it were not so, why does the candidate send in some of his works for inspection? you must not be angry with me, johnny; you know i have always spoken the plain truth to you, and am always ready and desirous to help you when it is in my power. i should be only too glad to think of your obtaining some post that should relieve you from all immediate pecuniary care. give my love to your wife and children, and believe me always, yours most sincerely, fred leighton. _p.s._--i shall be back on wednesday or thursday. * * * * * _sunday._ in case any alteration should have been made in the arrangements of the schools during my absence, and that _teaching_ is not expected as part of the duties of a curator, i send you a letter to the council, as i should be sorry you lost any fair chance by my absence. you heard from me no doubt yesterday. * * * * * _care of_ mrs. walker, nealinmore, glen columbkille, co. donegal. _ th._ i have got your note, in regard to which i feel some little embarrassment. i am, as you know, always pleased when it is in my power to be of any use to you, and i should therefore wish to help you in this matter concerning which you write. i own, however, to having some hesitation in asking this favour of mr. hodgson, because i fear that the granting of it would be a source of a good deal of inconvenience to him, and he might, out of his old friendship, be put in an awkward position; he would be equally loth to say "yes" or "no." the picture hangs in his dining-room, _and cannot possibly be moved_. the copy would be a lengthy affair, for there is an enormous amount of work in the group you speak of, and you would have, therefore, to be established for a long time in a room which is in daily use by the family. i do not at all say that he might not grant the favour you ask, but i own i feel that _i_ cannot, discreetly, ask it of him. i am sure you will not misinterpret my declining, and i shall be very sincerely glad if you yourself succeed in your direct appeal. i trust you and yours are thriving, and that you have not suffered lately from your leg. this is a wild, wind-swept corner of ireland in which i am staying, and abounding in matter for studying, especially rock forms, but the inconstancy of the weather puts sketching almost out of the question. this is a matter of comparative indifference to me, as i came here purposely for rest, and not for work. give my love to nan and the chicks.--sincerely yours, fred leighton. * * * * * do you know of any one who would do a life-size _copy_ of a portrait of the queen in robes for the sum of _£ _? i have been asked to inquire. it is, i believe, for chelsea hospital. in former days it might have been worth _your_ while; now it no longer is, it would not pay you; but you perhaps know of some less prosperous artist who would undertake it, and who would do it _well_--for of course that is expected. * * * * * holland park road, kensington, w. (_postmark, mar. . ._) i am absolutely _ashamed_ to rob you, but you offer me the drawing so kindly that i can't possibly refuse it; i am delighted with it, only you must let me give you a little drawing some day in return. with very best thanks. [illustration: study of group for ceiling in music room executed for mr. marquand, new york, leighton house collection] [illustration: first sketch of group for mr. marquand's ceiling in music room, new york leighton house collection] the following letter was written when mr. hanson walker was in america. in it leighton refers to the ceiling he painted for mr. marquand (see list of illustrations):-- holland park road, kensington, w., _ th february _. dear johnnie,--i was very glad to get your letter giving so very satisfactory an account of yourself and your doings. i had already heard of your prosperity in a general way from nan, who came to see me before starting, but who told me also how lonely you felt. it must have been a great joy to you to see her again, and it will be a still greater when you see the (_fourteen?_) youngsters about you once more; you will, like everybody who crosses the water, bring back a very pleasant recollection of american kindness and hospitality, and, i am glad to think, also a good pocketful of money. i hope it will bring you luck here. i am glad that mr. marquand has made you welcome to his house, which i understand is very beautiful. i know his vandyke well; it belonged to an acquaintance of mine, lord methuen, who has a number of beautiful things at corsham. it is one of the finest i know, and stands quite in the front rank of vandykes. the turner also i know, a rare favourite of mine. but of the rembrandt i know nothing. i am glad, too, you thought my "ceiling" looked well. i hope he has introduced _a little gold in the rafters_ to _bind_ the paintings to the ceiling itself. give my love to nan, and believe me, with all good wishes, sincerely yours, fred leighton. please remember me to the marquands and to your friends the osbornes. footnotes: [ ] owing to the kindness of mr. greville's niece and executor, alice, countess of strafford, i am able to quote extracts from his letters to leighton in this "life." unfortunately the letters from leighton to mr. greville cannot be found, though, as we know, many were written. during his first visit to algiers in , leighton wrote to his mother: "the fact is that as besides corresponding with you i write often to mrs. sartoris, and still oftener to henry greville, and having continually much the same to tell all of you, i often cannot remember to whom i have written what." [ ] it was when visiting his family at bath that he first saw hanson walker, the "johnny" of the letters and of the pictures. leighton was much taken with the picturesque beauty of the boy's head, and made various studies from it. a pencil study he made from his head (see list of illustrations) he used as a study for his picture "lieder ohne worte." having discovered that his sitter had a natural taste for drawing, leighton advised "johnny's" father to let him become an artist. this led to the boy being sent to learn drawing at the school of art in bath. when leighton returned to london after it had been decided that "johnny" was to study drawing, the young student received one day to his surprise a large case. on opening it he found to his delight a cast from the antique, a drawing-board, paper, charcoal, chalks, in fact, all the utensils wanted by a beginner wishing to work seriously at art. never to the end of his life did leighton's interest in his pupil flag. never was he too busy to do a kindness to him or his. perhaps the early and somewhat romantic marriage which "johnny" made with a lady for whom leighton felt from the earliest days of the wedded life a very sincere regard, and the charming children who soon made a pretty cluster round their parents, and were always a delight to leighton, cemented the friendly interest. the head of "nan" (mrs. hanson walker--see list of illustrations), painted as a wedding present to "johnny," is one among the happiest of leighton's portraits. it is broad in treatment, and fair and very pure in colour, and as a likeness was considered perfect. [ ] yearly exhibition at manchester. [ ] this correspondence refers to the "cimabue's madonna" at buckingham palace. small holes in the canvas having appeared, the authorities were anxious that leighton should inspect the picture, and take steps to prevent further mischief. [ ] mrs. sartoris. [ ] in the yearly exhibition at manchester, where leighton sent the "romeo," "pan," and the "venus." [ ] mr. edward sartoris. [ ] mr. edward sartoris. [ ] papers relating to the great manchester exhibition held in . [ ] "a syracusan bride." [ ] the portrait of mrs. hanson walker, which leighton painted as a wedding present for his young friend. chapter vi steinle and italy again--first impressions of the east, - in mr. henry greville's diary we find the following entry:-- _thursday, july th, ._ went on monday to hatchford with leighton, and passed all tuesday with him and mrs. sartoris on st. george's hills. the day was enchanting, and the hills in their greatest beauty. before leaving london in leighton wrote to his mother:-- london, _wednesday, _. as my stay in london is drawing to a close, and nobody writes to me, i must write to somebody. i am happy to say (for i know it will interest you) that my "pan" and "venus" are admired as much as i could wish, so that i am not without hopes of selling one of them at manchester. gibson was quite delighted with them; i am, however, bound to say he knows nothing about it. the sketches of my "orpheus" i have sold to white for £ , which comes "unkimmon" handy, as this place is ruinous. i have made the acquaintance of rossetti, one of the originators of the pre-raphaelite movement. he is apparently a remarkably agreeable and interesting man. hunt also i like much. my plans are these: on monday next i leave london, and shall spend a small week between the cartwrights and (perhaps) the grotes, after which on or before the th i shall be with you in bath, where i shall remain until the th, on which day i shall come up by the early train to town, where i shall meet h. greville, stay long enough to get my passport in order, and then be off double quick to italy. i am longing to get to work again; i am doing nothing whatever except henry's dog, which takes up what little time i have. will you tell papa that i went to the shop he recommended, and got a splendid shakespeare ready bound in eight volumes for three guineas! from bath he wrote to steinle:-- _translation._] circus, bath, _august , _. my very dear friend,--in about ten days i expect, on my way to italy, whither i go on a short student journey, to pass through frankfurt or cologne, according as you are in one or the other, exclusively in order to take my dear master once more by the hand; and if you are at the moment in frankfurt, i might even spend two or three days in the old bokaga, and even draw a composition as in the old times. do, dear friend, send me a line by return of post in order that i may make arrangements. the rest verbally--i have sadly forgotten my german. hoping to meet very soon, dear master.--think of your pupil, fred leighton. _translation._] bath. circus (_later_). my very dear master,--i have just received your dear lines, and hasten to say that nothing could be more delightful to me than to travel with you again, if only for a few days. i had intended to go _viâ_ milan for the sake of quickness, but i will go direct through the tyrol to venice. if all goes well, i will arrive in frankfurt on the rd of this month; does that fit in with your plans? how delighted i am to see you again, my good master! to our speedy meeting!--your grateful pupil, fred leighton. leighton had felt his failure keenly, though, with his usual consideration, he had tried to lessen the disadvantages of it in writing to his mother. the friend who enjoyed constant intercourse with him at the bagni de lucca in wrote at the time of his death: "leighton longed for and desired success; but only in so far as he deserved it. when he was sharply checked in his upward career, he accepted the rebuke with humility, for he was a modest man." mrs. browning writes to mrs. jameson, may , , from paris: "leighton has been cut up unmercifully by the critics, but bears on, robert says, not without courage. that you should say his picture looked well, was comfort in the general gloom." though those critics who were spokesmen for the envious among the artists seemed to revel in leighton's disaster, he had many friends who took perhaps a too favourable view of the unfortunate picture. but neither excess of abusive ridicule, nor a too favourable view taken by intimate friends, could unduly influence leighton himself--leighton the actualist. he had a firm faith that in the _actual_ it is man's lot to find the true and the really helpful. these words of his master, steinle's, written to him in , doubtless recurred to him, and he felt he must return to the eternal city to be reinspired after his fall:-- i would rather remember that you will receive these lines in the eternal city, that you are with our friend rico, and that you are settling to work with renewed vitality and a pocketful of studies. in cornelius, besides much that is stubborn, you will find so much that is admirable, and so much truly artistic greatness, that you will soon love him, for he is also of a truly childlike disposition, and much too good for berlin, for which reason he has left the place. you lucky men who have crossed the tiber--the vatican of st. peter, the courts of st. onofrio, the villa pamfili--where in the world is there anything like them? where is there a town in which every stone has greater, more splendid things to tell us of every period? where is there a place where the artist could soar higher than in rome? forget that you are practically in an island, and study your rome; it is invaluable for one's whole life, which is otherwise so commonplace and so small. your youth and courage--"the sparrow among the beans" ("triton among the minnows")--need not be injured thereby; but, dear friend, you must become a man, and there is nothing great in the world that has been achieved except by taking pains. addio, carissimo; greet rico and the friends most heartily. my wife reciprocates your friendly greetings, and i remain, your devoted friend, steinle. he travelled there _viâ_ frankfort to see steinle, with whom he went to meran, thence to venice and florence, then on to rome. frankfurt, brauseler hof, _august _. dearest mamma,--being at last in frankfurt, and having seen steinle and his works, and, _en revanche_, shown him mine, i sit down to write to you. you will, i am sure, be glad to hear that he was much pleased with my drawings, that he liked the compositions, and what is more, gave me good advice about them. he also suggested to me to paint the little "venus" rising out of the sea (from anacreon), of which i have already made a sketch. my studies he seemed to think excellent; i gave him three of them; i was so charmed to see his dear face again, looking just the same as he always did, and when he showed me what he had been doing, i fairly set up the pipes. he took me in the afternoon to the guaitas, who have a series of drawings by him from clemens brentano's poems; they are perfectly exquisite; the richness and variety of his imagination is something marvellous. mr. guaita, who is about to have them photographed for his friends, has kindly promised me a copy. to-morrow morning i am off for the lake of constance, whence through the finstermünz to meran, where i and steinle part, though not till i have stayed there two or three days. to-day i shall go to mr. bolton and to madame beving to deliver your letter. altogether frankfurt has improved in appearance; it looks much more like a capital than it did formerly; new shops have sprung up, old ones are improved, and the whole town looks gay and busy; all this does not prevent it from being highly antipathetic to me, which is, i daresay, in some measure attributable to the hideous jargon that one hears wherever one turns. i have seen gogel and koch, who were both very civil, the former asking me to dine with him, which, however, i could not do, being already engaged to steinle. and you, dearest mamma, how are you? and papa and the girls? tell me all about them--write venice p. restante. god bless you, dear mamma. remember the boy. i have had such a letter from henry (mr. henry greville); there never was anything like the tenderness of it--you would have been just enchanted. venice, _september _. i believe i told you in my last letter that i was going to spend a few days at meran with steinle. now when i got there i found the place so beautiful and so healthy, and so rich in subjects for "my pencil," that i stayed _a week_, and this accounts for my being rather behindhand with this letter. steinle and i had rooms at a sort of hydropathic boarding-house, with splendid accommodation for bathing in the coldest possible mountain water, a convenience of which i availed myself daily to my great enjoyment. i lived _comme les poules_. i was up at daybreak and a good bit before the sun (who takes a long time before he gets his nose into a valley) and went to bed very shortly after sunset; i worked and walked and ate and slept, that was my simple bill of fare. my good steinle and myself got on, as of course, capitally. he is most affectionate and kind, and i have derived a good deal of artistic advantage from his intercourse even in that short time. by-the-bye, before i left frankfurt i received through h. greville a letter from mr. harrison, secretary to col. phipps, asking me to go to the palace to look at the canvas of the "cimabue," which appeared to be defective in some parts; though what on earth can be the matter with it i don't know; at the same time i got another saying, that as i was not in england, there would be no necessity for me to make a special journey to england on that account, and merely wishing to know when i expected to return. i sent an appropriate answer, which i submitted to henry greville, and now am waiting for further instructions from harrison here in venice. writing of his delight in being again in italy he adds:-- how i revelled in the first really italian bit, the lake of lugano! what an exquisite little picture it is with its villas and terraces, its cypresses and its oleanders, and the little town itself too! stretching its cool arcades along the blue margin of the water; a lovely drive along the lake took me to that of como, and from thence i went by rail to milan; stayed a day, went to the scala, performance so bad i was obliged to leave the house, and now i am for a week in venice gliding along in lazy gondolas, winking up at grey palaces and glittering domes. i suppose you won't leave italy this time without seeing venice once more, and feeding your eyes again on titian and bonifazio, veronese and tintoretto. by-the-bye, i am doing a sketch from a superb bonifazio in the academy here; yesterday i painted hard for six hours, so you see it is not _all_ boats, and now i must close. i will write to you again from florence, and i hope with a better pen. god bless you, mammy, give my love to all from your loving boy. to his father leighton writes:-- florence, hÔtel du nord, _ th september _. about my pictures[ ] i have heard (for henry makes the ellesmeres keep him _au courant_, which of course is very convenient for me) that they are pretty well hung, but that the "romeo" is not seen very well owing to a defect in the lighting of the room. lady e. said the "pan" and "venus" seemed to be very well painted, or something, but lord brackley thought them improper! henry, of course, was furious at their prudishness. i don't for the life of me know where to have them sent to, nor can i know for the next three weeks about, as i must write to consult henry and get his answer and then write to you, but surely there is time. you have, of course, received the letter in which i tell you that i _must_ go to england at the beginning of november to see about my picture, but you need not be afraid about my having to do it over again; that would be a good joke; no artist ever yet was responsible _pro_spectively for what might happen to his picture; but it will be a frightful bore in the expense line coming back from italy fairly swept out as i shall be. were you so kind as to pay the rent for me as i asked you? _translation._] florence, _ th september_. my very dear friend,--well may you say that the meran post is tardy, for i only received your dear letter of the th three days ago. meanwhile you have probably long since received mine, in which i thanked you heartily for the beautiful coat received in venice. i have already stayed here in florence eight days, and though i have not worked very arduously, i have yet thoroughly enjoyed myself, and also, i hope, learned something from the lovely things that i am seeing again here; meanwhile there remains much for me to see in the two days that i have still to stay, amongst others the capella of benozzo gozzoli in the palazzo riccardi, a work which i love excessively. to see the old florentine school again is a thing which always enchants me anew, for one can never be sated with seeing the noble sweetness, the childlike simplicity, allied with high manly feeling, which breathes in it. but i speak to you of plain things which you know far better than i. i am quite eager to see the new drawings at fabiola, and i am much excited about those at cologne; but the gods alone know when i shall see them. on wednesday i go to rome, where i hope to see rico; if only i could take _you_ with me, dear master! meanwhile i beg you to remember me most kindly to madame steinle, and yourself believe in the love of your grateful pupil, fred leighton. _p.s._--my stay in rome will (alas!) only be very short, for i am unexpectedly obliged to go soon to london, confound it!--instead of a month, _ten_ days! _povero me!_ [illustration: ca' d'oro, venice. water colour. ] florence, _ th october _. dearest mammy,--i wonder whether you are coming to florence, and, if so, how long you are going to stay. i suppose you will go to the hôtel du nord as in old times--i go there invariably, and write now from my own particular room. i wrote to you last from venice, where i spent ten days in a very satisfactory manner between work and _flânerie_ of an artistic description--indeed i _flâned_ this time with more advantage than hitherto, for i went more closely than i had yet done into the _architecture_ of venice, studying the different masters, their different styles and relative merit; i need not say that i found this extremely interesting. fred cockerell, a young architect friend of mine, was there with villers lister, another very nice boy, a london acquaintance of mine. we were a great deal together, and they accompanied me to padua, where i left them doing _giotto_, which i would most willingly have done myself if i had not been hard pressed for time. in the painting line i only made one sketch, a bonifazio of the first water, which will figure very satisfactorily on my studio wall; it took me a good deal of time, and is on the whole, i think, very fair. in florence i have had one or two great disappointments which have rather diminished my enjoyment of this loveliest place. i expected confidently to find both browning and his wife and lyons. neither of them are here, the former not having yet returned from the north, and the latter having been called home to see his father, who is very ailing. i have seen the fenzis, who received me with their wonted cordiality, and am going to-day to call on the maquays. i am here too short a time to work, beyond a pencil sketch or two, and am off for dear old rome on friday morning as ever is. i shall stay there till i find a studio, which i hope won't be long, and shall then rush off to cervara in the mountains to paint. good-bye, mammikins. give my best love to all, and believe me your loving boy, fred. in rome leighton received the following from his friend mr. cartwright:-- aynhoe, _september , _. my dear leighton,--truly was i delighted with your letter, so that in spite of my "nature to" i gulped my huff, though i was like to choke; but self-interest is a wonderful smoothener, and as i want you to do something for me i mean to behave myself. leighton, by the squints which you shot over my park from your outspread umbrella, by those you are hereafter to shoot, by tokay cup and venison hash--by anything you like, i want you to belumber yourself with some ripe _stone pinecones_, and a hundred cork acorns. i have found a _true_ legitimate stone pine about forty to fifty feet high on my property, and as for the cork trees you have seen the one in my garden, and therefore, i do not see why i should not have a lot in the park. they can only be raised from acorns. now, _if_ you could take steps to get me _these_ things--god! i don't know what i would not do for you, and how would we enjoy it in years to come to watch the growth of our trees. it is a _national_ object. you may have some difficulty in getting the acorns and cones; pantaleone or erhardt might perhaps mention to you some gardener who would procure them. _you_ know probably the trees would get to be called l. pines and leighton oaks, which is one way to immortality if orpheus and eurydices won't help you. i wrote to mason about the pines; by all means _make_ him answer, the exertion will do him good, he _wants_ exercise, and therefore don't get on with his work. my god! when i came in at twelve to-day he was not up! how i envy you at rome when i think of it; how would i _enjoy_ being there, and yet i can't help thinking of ----'s death at the same time. remember me to little cornhill and every roman who remembers me. write poste restante, paris. i go there, i believe, next week, but _where_ i shall be the winter ----? forster is in the westminster--be d----d to it for stale wine that it is. as for mason, make him write, and believe me, yours affectionately, w.c.c. rome, _october , _. dearest mamma,--i have delayed writing to you for a few days in the hope of finding a letter from you in answer to my last; however, as the posts here are frightfully irregular, and i think it very possible your answer may have been lost, i wait no longer. i enclose two little criticisms on my "romeo" and "venus," which will i think please papa and you, and which were sent me through mrs. sartoris by henry greville.[ ] there is, however, not the remotest chance of my selling them at manchester, and i am considering where to show them next. i am trying here in rome (where i shall stay till the end of october) to make up by rigid economy for the expense inevitably incurred by living at inns all the way here. i can't tell you what a delight it was to me to see this dear old place again. everything is so unaltered since i left it, that i felt on returning exactly as if i was coming home from a drive instead of a lengthened absence. the frescoes which i knew so well were as new to me again from their colossal grandeur, and i wished i could spend a month or so exclusively copying in the sixtina. my picture, though not well _seen_, is not particularly badly _hung_, but it can only be seen from a distance, so that the expressions are almost entirely lost; it does not look so well as in my studio. the pre-raphaelites are very striking, full of talent and industry, but unpleasant to the eye. meanwhile they have the day. colnaghi told me that he _thought_ he could sell "romeo" if i made the price _four hundred_, and said i could do it without derogating, as it went through his, a dealer's, hands. i consulted henry and mrs. s., who strongly advised me to follow his advice. i have done so. may it bring me luck. if the remarks you quote, dear mamma, are meant to apply to my relation with mrs. sartoris, i can only say, that as i have derived from her more moral improvement and refinement (you know it), and from her circle more intellectual advantage than from _all my other acquaintances_ put together twice over, i can't join with mrs. whatshername in apprehending "a great number of inconveniences." in a later letter leighton announces the sale of the "romeo" picture:-- the "romeo," which had the best place in the exhibition, has been sold for £ , which to me represents _£ _ after deduction of percentage. they have in a most slovenly way sold my picture for pounds though marked _guineas_, they want to know if i claimed the difference; as they have behaved without sufficient _égard_ about other things also, i have directed the secretary in england to say that i should like the error to be rectified, though i do _not_ wish the sale to be cancelled on that account if it be too late. i don't want to miss the money of course, but i have no idea of such negligence on their part. you see, dear mamma, that my little pension to lud has become, for this year at least, so easy that i have scarcely any merit left. queen street, mayfair. dearest mamma,--having arrived in london, and been to the palace to see my picture, i hasten both to tell you the result of my inspection and to answer your very kind letter to paris which, like an ass that i am, i have neglected to bring with me. the damage to my picture is trifling and easily remediable, having arisen in no way from the precarious nature of paint or varnish, but from a faulty canvas, and probable rough usage in moving. i shall set all right in a few days; the holes or raw places are in the sky, and luckily not near the faces. i have not yet seen colonel phipps, and am waiting for further instructions; the court i shall of course not see, as it is at windsor. i don't remember whether i told you that i got an invitation from manchester to exhibit next spring, and having nothing to send but "cimabue," have respectfully applied to the queen through colonel phipps to obtain it of her for that occasion. i am truly sorry not to see you all but as you say, i can't afford it; indeed, i write now partly to ask papa to send me some money, the £ he gave me in the middle of august when i started are not only gone, but scarcely took me back to paris, and but for petre, whom i met coming back from naples, and who lent me a trifle with most friendly alacrity, i should have been frightfully pinched; the first part of my journey being all travelling, and hotel life was very dear. in rome, however, i lived for nothing, and sailed from civita vecchia to marseilles "before the mast," a thing i will never do again if i can help it, but which enabled me just to get home to paris within a few francs of the £ . meanwhile i have no hesitation in saying that i never spent three months more profitably or more agreeably. i suppose papa kindly paid my last quarter as i asked him, but not having received your letter i don't in reality know. p. delaroche is dead, i am sorry to say. going through paris i went to see rob. fleury, who with characteristic kindness put me up to several dodges in picture-restoring with a reference to "cimabue"--invaluable information. after doing what was required to the buckingham palace picture, leighton returned to paris, where he wrote the following to steinle:-- _translation._] rue pigalle, _ st december_. dear friend and master,--i read with real distress the sad news of your severe loss, but sincere and deep as is my sympathy, i pass on in silence, for in such an hour of trial there is but one comfort for you, and that not from man. i should no doubt have come back to you from rome in the beginning of october, but i had to go to england, where i spent three weeks, and am consequently now just established again in paris. my italian journey afforded me in every way the greatest pleasure and edification, and i seem now for the first to have grasped the greatness of the campagna and the giant loftiness of michael angelo; still the dear old town, now as ever, is quite unchanged. the good cornelius is so cheerful and friendly that it is a real pleasure; he has finished some works which have much beauty in the design, but, quite in confidence, they are nevertheless a trifle "solite cose," and much too weakly drawn: from a man who makes claims to style, one expects something more of solidity. cornelius is a richly and powerfully endowed man, but he does the young generation no good; if young people would only look at work of michael angelo's! i except the sculptor willig, he is a famous fellow, and also an agreeable man. i was glad to meet gamba again, but unfortunately i did not see any work of his. dear friend, in spite of all my efforts i could nowhere find the right garment for your composition, and learnt only after a long search what is properly the official dress; i learnt at last from the custodian of the sixtina, who inquired from the head "ceremoniere," that the cardinal in these days wears the cappa magna _pavonazza_, not the _red_.[ ] the costume therefore is: purple undergarment, _lace shirt_ (rochetto), cappa magna of violet _cloth_ (those in the _charwache_ will wear no _silk_), black shoes, four-cornered hood, and gloves with the ring; i enclose a drawing of the real confessional in st. peter's church; i hope it may be of use to you. dear master, how can you possibly _excuse_ yourself for closing your letter with a word of true and wise advice! you know that i owe to you, and to no one else, the whole of my serious education, and am proud of it. if you do not get the work at cologne, it will be a downright infamy and a dirtiness without parallel; but i hope for the best. how i should like to see your "marriage at cana." keep in remembrance your loving pupil, fred leighton. _translation._] _saturday, th may ._ my dear friend and master,--your letter, just received, has given me intense pleasure. your constant and affectionate remembrance of a pupil who is under so many obligations to you, rejoices my heart. on this occasion, however, your letter was particularly welcome, because i had already begun to worry myself a little about your long silence, and was almost afraid you might imagine that i had not exerted myself sufficiently in the matter of your cardinal. but first of all i offer my best congratulations on the completion of the cologne affair, and on the splendid field which is offered to you also in münster. at last you have work which is worthy of your abilities and your efforts, and will give them scope. with such employment i must not regret that i shall not have the pleasure of seeing you again in paris. that i have not seen the "marriage of cana" is, i candidly confess, a source of regret to me; i know the design of the composition, and should have liked extremely to have seen how it has turned out. when shall i see one of your works again? what shall i tell you about myself, my dear friend? i am getting on with my pictures, and have now got them all three into a fairly forward state of _under_-painting; completion, however, will only be reached in the course of next winter, for i intend to execute them with minute care. i have simplified my method of painting, and foresworn all _tricks_. i endeavour to advance from the beginning as much as possible, and equally try to mix the right tint, and slowly and carefully to put it on the right spot, and _always_ with the model before me; what does not exactly suit has to be adapted; one can derive benefit from every head. schwind says that he cannot work from models, they _worry_ him! a splendid teacher for his pupils! nature worries every one at first, but one must so discipline oneself that, instead of checking and hindering, she shall illuminate and help, and solve all doubts. has schwind, with his splendid and varied gifts, ever been able to model a head with a brush? those who place the brush behind the pencil, under the pretence that _form_ is before all things, make a very great mistake. form _is certainly all important_; one cannot study it enough; _but_ the greater part of _form_ falls within the province of the tabooed _brush_. the everlasting hobby of _contour_ (which belongs to the drawing material) is first the _place_ where the _form_ comes in; what, however, reveals true knowledge of form, is a powerful, organic, refined finish of modelling, full of feeling and knowledge--and that is the affair of the brush (_pinsel_). you see i have again begun discoursing, my dear master; you must excuse all this silly talk, and ascribe it to the pleasure i feel whenever i enjoy intercourse with you, even if only by letter. how much we have already talked over together! and now adieu, dear friend. rest assured that you have not wasted your affection on an ungrateful man, and keep always in remembrance--your faithful pupil, leighton. please remember me most kindly to your wife. i do not know of any work of mine that has appeared in an illustrated paper--louie has been dreaming. three interesting letters to steinle belong to the following year. in the second leighton states that he is about to start for algiers. after his arrival there he writes to his mother describing the place. notwithstanding the difficulty he found in drawing the natives of algiers, owing to their shyness and to their prejudices, leighton succeeded while there in making drawings which rank among his very best; in fact, in certain qualities no others he ever drew can be said to equal them. to quote mr. pepys cockerell (_nineteenth century_, november ):-- "i do not believe that more perfect drawings, better defined or more entirely realised, than these studies of heads of moors, camels, &c., were ever executed by the hand of man." unfortunately the paper leighton used was of the kind which becomes injured by time. the brown stains which now disfigure the sheets and the faint tone of the pencilling make it impossible to reproduce these drawings with any worthy result, but some of the original sketches can be seen in the leighton house collection. _translation._] rome, via della purificazione, _march , _. my very dear master,--heartiest thanks for your kind lines of the rd of last month. i hear with the greatest interest that your cartoon is now finished, and that you expect to get to the wall next year. how i envy you this great work! i cannot deny that i rejoice a little, secretly, that you are tied down to _buon_ fresco, for i have a passion (unfortunately an altogether unsatisfied one) for this material. you may be quite sure that if it is in any way possible for me, i shall make a little excursion to cologne in order to offer my humble assistance; nothing could be more delightful to me. some works of yours have just come to rome; illustrations to a prayer-book, engraved (i believe) by keller. when did you make these charming drawings? the one with the blossoming staff and the little madonna is quite specially sympathetic to me. the things are, however, engraved without feeling or delicacy. with what you say about the advantage of growing older i quite agree, and i am in a certain respect anxious for the time when i shall find my _niveau_, and shall be able to work with more peace and equanimity. i have been for some time in a very painful position--i feel so humbly my incapacity even from afar off to approach the entrancing beauty of nature, that i have not the courage to embark upon any large work. for some time i have scarcely composed at all; partly, it is true, because i have no time, but partly also because i do not feel myself in a position to embody an idea properly. i know that such a condition is morbid, and hope to extricate myself from it in time. it arises also partly from the fact that my _individuality_ is not yet sufficiently developed; i see it coming, but it takes a very long time. i know already, on the smallest computation, _what_ i want, but i do not know _how_ i am to accomplish it. i went recently to see cornelius, who is always genial and charming. he is drawing on one of the redelli for the campo santo. rich and spirited in invention and arrangement, the form in _details_, however, is very badly drawn--heads that are unpermissible; he treats god's nature quite cavalierly. i saw at his house a composition by a certain wöredle (or some such name) of vienna, a pupil of führich, the subject taken from the apocalypse: "there shall be wonders." above, the saviour, in the usual attitude, with the usual flowing garment; to the right and left, mary and john, in their respective usual attitudes; at their feet four angels blowing trumpets, by cornelius; in the background a number of comets; lying about in the middle and foreground, a quantity of figures, which have been collected from different works of cornelius', strike convulsive attitudes on the floor; for the rest, the whole is constructed with appalling academic execution and lifelessness. cornelius seemed to think it quite right; i consider it difficult, with reverence and love, to complete the head of one girl; for that reason i am not fond of going to him, for although personally he is extremely sympathetic to me, i cannot help feeling that i do not fit in with him, and am obliged to dissemble. but you must be quite weary of this chattering letter, dear master; i will close. remember me most kindly to your wife and children, and rely always upon the friendship of your grateful pupil, leighton. _translation._] _thursday, september , ._ dear friend and master,--i was, as usual, most delighted to receive your cordial letter of st august; i am touched by your constant friendship, but also somewhat ashamed that you should treat your much indebted pupil almost as an equal and counsellor. i have the greatest desire to see your second cartoon, but i am very much afraid that this year it will be quite impossible, for i am going on a journey in quite the opposite direction; i am shortly going to africa, partly to make some landscape studies, but also to make acquaintance with that very interesting race, but _not_ in order to become a painter of bedouins. it was my intention, as i am starting immediately, not to write till i came back, in order that i might have something to tell you; however, the following has suddenly made me change my mind; the fat, affected, tailor-like, civil-spoken little jew visited me recently and told me you want to make inquiries about wall painting, and that i might tell you, if i was writing, that conture has just gone away. this impelled me to write immediately. will you forgive me, for old friendship's sake, if i put in a word here, to which you need not give the smallest attention? i want to protest vehemently, dear master, against all _oil_-painting on _walls_; and that, not because fresco painting has sufficed for the greatest works of the greatest masters, but on account of the _positive disadvantages_ of oils. how, in effect, do the two materials stand to one another? fresco is certainly the one material for monuments. first, because it is the most suitable for a broad, massy, imposing _form_, for in no material can one pursue form so completely _without losing colour_; secondly, because by no other method can one attain such masterly, earnest, quiet, virile effect in colour; thirdly, however, and principally, because fresco _is visible from all points alike_, this advantage is immeasurable for architectural art. what, on the other hand, are the advantages of oil? only one occurs to me and that is quite illusory, _i.e._ you have a wider range of colour; but all the colours that an oil palette has in advance of fresco are, for fresco, superfluous if not pernicious. superfluous, because the broken, fine grey tones which have such an infinite charm in easel pictures, and which counteract the otherwise too great brilliance of the material, are quite superfluous in a painting where _all tones_ are dull and solid. pernicious, where they would be applicable, because they might mar the majestic peace of the work. and then it should be remembered that the limited scale of the fresco palette, so _far as it extends_, is unsurpassable for glow and atmosphere and strength. titian's frescoes at padua in the tenola st. antonio rival his oil-paintings in colour. m. angelo's "madonna in the last judgment" might (for colour) be by tintoretto, and many figures on this glorious wall are as glowing as titian's! as regards the disadvantages of oil-painting, i can only say that they often blister in the shadows, and that one can _only see them from one point of view_. i know very well that fresco is exposed to damp, but one can, indeed one must, have one's wall examined before one begins to work, and if it is well dried and "drained" there is no danger; at the worst, one can cover one's wall with sheets of lead; it has been discovered that this was often done in pompeii. or one can also (there are instances) paint upon a specially prepared canvas away from the wall. but you know all this better than i. have you forgiven me, dear friend? i could not forbear from saying this, and rely upon your indulgence. do not allow schlösser to mislead you about my work. i daub on steadily, but am by a very long way not contented. i send these lines to frankfurt in the hope that they will be forwarded to you. i shall stay some weeks in algiers--can i do anything for you? in that case send me a line. till the _ st october_ a letter will find me; address, poste restante, algiers. all good luck be with you on your holidays, and may you gain the desired strength. keep in remembrance your loving pupil, fred leighton. rue pigalle. algiers, _friday, th_. dearest mamma,--i arrived here only last monday, as the little delay about the money made me lose the boat by which i intended to sail; having, however, nothing in my studio that was dry enough or otherwise fit to work on, i left paris all the same and visited avignon, nîmes, and arles, most interesting towns which i had long desired to see. avignon reminded me so vividly of certain parts of rome that it was all i could do not to take a place for civita vecchia and succumb to my longing desire to see italy once more. i have not the least idea (especially in this hot weather) how to describe to you this strange and picturesque town in which i have taken up my temporary quarters; everything where the african element has been preserved is so entirely new, so unlike anything that you have seen, that i see no chance of putting before your mind any living image of the thing. before going further i may as well tell you, dearest mammy, that although it is very hot i am perfectly well and have an enormous appetite. i walk from six to eight hours every day, and bathe regularly in the sea. algiers occupies one horn of a most beautiful bay, thickly studded with villas and farms, and reminding one greatly of italy. the aspect of the town, however, shows you at once, and from a great distance, that you are in no european land. you must know that oriental houses have no roofs, but are surmounted by terraces, that they have no windows, the rooms being lit from the inner court, and that they are painted three times a year of the purest white, so that on approaching algiers, rising as it does steeply up the hillside, it looks from the sea and under an african sun like a pyramid of alabaster or marble, or, as some poet or other has said of it, like a swan about to spread her wings. the effect of this whiteness glittering out from the green and purple hills and hanging over a dark-blue sea is really most beautiful; unfortunately, however, the whole of the lower part of the town that runs along the port has been so completely europeanized that, but for a rather pretty mosque on the waterside, you might fancy you were at havre or any other french seaport town. as soon, however, as you get up into the arab town, your illusions are not only restored but enhanced, for assuredly nothing could be more perfectly picturesque and striking than the steep, tortuous streets that climb up to the casbah, or fortress, at the top of the town. the upper storeys of the houses jut out into the street in such a manner that they constantly meet, forming an archway underneath, and yet the streets are never dark, from the dazzling whiteness of all the walls, which reflect the light in every direction and gild and brighten the darkest corners. fancy, in the midst of all this gleaming white, the gorgeous effect produced by the varied colours of oriental costumes and complexion: the copper-coloured arabs, the sallow jews, the ebony negroes; and then the frequent display of every kind of fruit--crimson tomatoes and purple aubergines, emerald and golden melons, glowing oranges, luminous green grapes, and to relieve the blaze of ardent colour, the tender ivory tones of the tuberose, and the soft milk-white jessamine. i don't think a colourist could have a more precious lesson than seeing this place; you see in half-an-hour a sufficient number of fine harmonies to set you up for a year. not less striking than the display of colour is the variety of types and costumes. arabs of the desert, with their lofty bearing and ample drapery, the tattered, brawny kabyles, the richly dressed jewesses, the negresses, dressed in long indigo-coloured draperies, and with bracelets of horn round their ankles; in fact, you cannot imagine a greater medley than is presented by a street in the arab quarter of the town. it has this drawback, that in the midst of such an _embarras de richesses_, i don't know how i shall ever be able to work; as yet i have not seen a pencil even, indeed i have not been off my feet since i arrived, and my head is in a perfect muddle. i spend next week in the interior of the country, and when i come back i shall have a fortnight in which i hope to do something. getting anybody to sit here is exceedingly difficult, and costs mints. the price of living here is the same as paris, but anything at all extra is very dear; a horse or a cab to get to some place beyond a walk is very expensive, and my consumption of drink (lemonade, coffee, &c., for pure water is not wholesome here) from six in the morning till bedtime is something incredible. good-bye, dearest mother, i will write a longer letter next time. i have no news from india. best love to all, from your most affectionate boy. if you hear from lina, _mind_ you let me know, as i am most anxious for news. i am so sorry the ink is so pale. i have written over half the letter, but it is not much use; next time i will have darker ink. [illustration: sketch in oils. algiers. ] algiers, _monday , _. dearest mamma,--poor lina,[ ] what a state of wretched suspense and terror she must live in! what a frightful crisis it is! god grant all may end well. have you heard lately? pray let me know whatever you can; at this distance i can get only the most salient facts, and am most eager to hear some more circumstantial account of the progress of affairs. poor sutherland, i often think of his kind grey eyes and manly carriage; what a harassing, anxious life he must lead! before i go any further i must ensure saying a thing that i have been intending to tell for some time past, and which has always been driven out of my head by the more immediate subject of my letter. i am by no means certain that i have not already mentioned it; i wish to be quite certain. the fact is that as besides corresponding with you i write often to mrs. sartoris, and still oftener to henry greville, and have continually much the same to tell all of you, i often cannot remember to whom i have written what, and i am therefore uncertain whether i told you that romeo and juliet and pan and venus are by this time exciting (let us hope) the admiration of the citizens of america at the town of philadelphia. it costs me nothing at all either to send or to fetch, and the percentage is ten per cent. i sent them off the end of last month, just before leaving paris for africa. tom taylor is on the committee, and i think the speculation may turn out good, particularly if mrs. kemble, who is in america now, takes an interest in them. putting aside all question of anxiety and sorrow, i am delighted with my visit to algiers. i feel that, though i have as yet been unable to touch a pencil, i have already taken a great deal of new stuff, and if i were to leave africa with an empty sketch-book, i should still return to my easel improved in knowledge of form and combination of colours. still it is a great mortification to me to see such fine types around me without any means of getting them to sit, an operation to which they have an insuperable objection; if it were not vexatious, it would be quite amusing to see how they slink away when they perceive you are trying to sketch them. of course, one of my great desires was to see if possible a moorish _intérieur_; and in this, though it is difficult to achieve, i have been very fortunate, through the instrumentality of a young native, with whom i became accidentally acquainted. i have made the acquaintance of one achmet, son of ali pasha, a decayed native gentleman, now holding office in the french customs, but once very well to do in the world. i have been twice to his house, which i may as well describe to you, as it is a type of all moorish houses in this part of the world. the whole of the centre of the building is taken up by a little _cortile_, open to the sky and surrounded by two storeys of arcades of a graceful shape, on to which the rooms open as in greek houses. these arcades are painted pure white, and are relieved by fillets of coloured porcelain tiles that have a most original and charming effect; the first-floor gallery is closed in by a breast-high balustrade, elegantly carved and painted blue or green; the top of the house is invariably an open terrace, adorned with flowers and shrubs. the rooms, i said, open on the corridors and have no windows (except little peeping holes) on to the street; they are consequently always wrapped in a sort of clear, cool, reflected twilight that is inexpressibly delightful and soothing in hot, glaring weather. each room takes up one side of the house, and is therefore a long narrow strip; immediately opposite the door is an alcove, containing a raised, handsomely cushioned and carpeted divan, and ornamented invariably with three florid gilt looking-glasses. at the foot of the raised divan is another lower one for those who like low seats; other such divans run along the wall, and a few highly wrought, embossed chests and other oriental articles of furniture complete the decoration of the room. in such a room achmet oulid received us, putting before us delicious hot coffee in tiny cups with filagree stands, a delightful kind of peach jam, and the pipe of peace. you would have laughed to see your son lolling on a turkey carpet and puffing away at a long pipe. our host has the dearest little daughter, ten years old, whom by a great stretch of courtesy we were allowed to see. by-the-bye, nearly all arab children are lovely, and look great darlings in their turkish dress. my paper is coming to an end and the boat does not wait, so i close. i shall write you another letter before i leave this and tell you more of what i have done and seen. good-bye, dearest mammy. [illustration: sketch in oils. algiers. ] leighton refers to this visit in a letter to mrs. mark pattison ( ), who was about to write an account of his art. "this visit made a deep impression on me; i have loved 'the east,' as it is called, ever since. by-the-bye, i drew here my (almost) only large water-colour drawing 'a negro festival' (the picture leighton always referred to as 'the niggers'), which was thought very well of by my friends." to his sister in india he wrote:-- since i last wrote i have spent a month or six weeks in algeria, and have opened an acquaintance with the east which i hope to keep up, not only from the pleasure but from the instruction i have derived from even a short visit. my next journey, however, will be to the old, original cradle of western art--to egypt, which country, as i shall visit it under widely different circumstances from what you did, poor dear, and i trust in much better health, will of course strike me in a very different manner. there are many things in the arab quarter in algiers which will probably stand comparison with cairo, but besides that, egypt has far more physiognomy as a country than the coast of algeria. i am anxious to study the egyptian type, which is truly grand and wonderful. however, these are plans for a tolerably remote day, as i shall spend my next winter in my dear, dear old rome, to which i am attached beyond measure; indeed, italy altogether has a hold on my heart that no other country ever can have (except, of course, my own); and although, as i just now said, i was most delighted with africa, and have not a moment to look back to that was not agreeable, yet there is an intimate little corner in my affections into which it could never penetrate. if i am as faithful to my wife as i am to the places i love, i shall do very well. what the first impression of an eastern country is, you already know by experience as far as the mere aspect goes, but to understand my sensations you must translate your own into a far brighter key. in my case everything was for me: a decent passage, a glorious day, a light heart, and a firm determination to enjoy myself; to this add that more rapid apprehension of what is beautiful which belongs to an artist's eye, and is the natural consequence of the constant exercise and cultivation of that faculty. i saw in algiers many things that interested me, very much _du point de vue moeurs fêtes_, with strange music on queer instruments, odd dances, odder singing. the music of the moors is altogether very strange; it is monotonous in the extreme, fitful, and sometimes apparently without any kind of shape, and yet there is something very characteristic and almost attaching about it. this applies only to instrumental music, for as for the voice, they seem to consider it only as a shriller instrument, using always at full pitch, with neck outstretched and eyes half shut, always from the throat and always higher than they can go. it is very strange that a nation which attained once so high a pitch of civilisation, should either never have known or have entirely forgotten that the human voice is capable of inflection, and what an all-powerful vehicle it may be made of every passionate sentiment or soothing influence. however, much the same thing is noticeable in the peasants near rome, whose songs consist (within a definite shape) of long-sustained chest notes that are peculiar in the extreme, and though often harsh seem to be wonderfully in harmony with the long unbroken lines of the campagna. _À propos_ of chanting, i saw a very striking thing one day in algiers, in the shape of a rhapsodist, who recited, with an uncouth instrumental accompaniment, a long string of strophes describing (i am told) the life and deeds of some hero; it was exactly what a recital of the homeric poems must have been amongst the early greeks. the homer stood up in the midst of a motley and most picturesque group of breathless listeners, and chanted, with a sort of animated monotony, verses of about two lines each, heightening the colour of his tale by gesticulations. after each strophe the music struck in, consisting of two queerly shaped tambours and a shrill flute. after the performance, or rather, during the pauses, money was collected in the tambourines. homer (if he ever lived) no doubt did the same. on his return to paris leighton wrote to steinle:-- _translation._] paris, _october , _. my very dear friend,--since i know your industry better than any one else, and also know that at this moment you are quite particularly busy, i cannot be surprised that you have not answered my letter of last month; however, some warm expressions slipped from me in that letter which you may perhaps have taken amiss; lest this should be indeed the case, i hasten, my dear master, to make you an ample apology and to beg you not to take amiss what i may have said too hastily; but if it is not so, do send me a short note that my doubt may be solved; for it is an excessively painful idea to me that a single word from my mouth should have displeased you. i have just come back from africa, where i have spent some weeks with extreme pleasure, and, i believe, not without great benefit; indeed, i might say that an artist cannot perfect his sense of form so well anywhere as in the east; the types of characteristic stamp which meet one's eye at every step are a wonder to see, and of the simple grandeur of the costumes one can form no previous conception--one sees real michael angelos running about the streets. i have done little or almost nothing, for one cannot possibly induce the arabs to sit; however, i believe i have learnt a great deal by my observations; i have already made a resolution to become acquainted with the egyptian race in the near future. but now i must see to it that i produce something this winter, for time goes bye with giant strides, and will not be called back again. and you, my dear friend? what are you working at now? how i should like to see your second cartoon! but unfortunately that is one of the impossibilities. what has happened about the church you were to paint? has anything been settled? once more i beg you to write me a few lines to assure me that you are not angry at my indiscretion. please remember me most kindly to your wife. and keep in kindly remembrance, your grateful pupil, leighton. and again:-- _translation._] paris, rue pigalle, _november , _. dear friend and master,--all my best thanks for your kind letter, and for the enclosed photograph of your splendid cartoon; there is no need for me to tell you how greatly this has rejoiced and delighted me; by now you know that beforehand regarding every work of steinle's (steinleischen arbeit), and in no work more than in this do i recognise the fulness and the brilliance of your fancy; meanwhile (as is only human) my joy is a trifle damped by the overwhelming desire to know the complete composition, and then to see the original itself. how glad i am that at last you have a worthy task! it was a great relief to me to find that you did not take amiss what i wrote about wall painting, and that you quite understood that i could only become so wrathful regarding a matter which interests me in the highest degree. i wish with all my heart that you may discover something which will fill all requirements, while at the same time, as a bigoted frescoist, i shake my head a little at your heresy. you will certainly find me dreadfully stiff-necked, dear friend! that is because lately i have seen fresco painting much nearer, and have compared it with oil painting directly beside it; i cannot deny that in colour i find it immeasurably more frank and stronger than its oil-neighbour, which appears muddy and dull next it. true, cennini mentions wall painting, but only supplementarily, and after he has written at length of _buon peseo_. i certainly fall into his views again! now, adieu, my dear friend; once more all my best thanks; you may rely upon it, that the very first thing of mine that is photographed shall immediately find its way to you at frankfurt; meantime, i candidly confess to you that i am quite terribly dissatisfied with my performances, and could only submit a hasty work to you. think often of your most devoted pupil, fred leighton. (written below by steinle) answered, th june . the following letters, dated th november , paris, refer to mrs. orr's narrow escape from aurungabad, owing to the fidelity of sheik boran bukh, in the time of the mutiny. it is a good example of the ease with which leighton threw himself into the atmosphere of a situation. it reads like the writing of an oriental! most valued friend,--the report of your gallant and generous conduct towards my sister and the companions of her flight has reached my ears, not only by private letters but also through several of the first english newspapers. from one end of this country to another, englishmen have read the account of your loyal bearing, and from one end of the country to the other there has been but one voice to praise and to admire it; for uprightness and fidelity are precious in the eyes of all englishmen, and honour and courage are to them as the breath of life; but _my_ feelings towards you are naturally doubly warm and grateful, for to your care and vigilance i owe the safety of a most precious and valued life, that of a beloved sister. it is to express to you this gratitude that i now write, and also to beg you to accept as a small token of my regard a shawl which i send together with this letter, and which will be as a sign to cement our new friendship. wear it in remembrance of that perilous night at aurungabad, and in wearing it remember that on that night your fidelity won for you many new friends, and amongst the truest and most sincere count the brother of mrs. orr, fred leighton. _to_ frederick leighton, esq., &c. &c. aurungabad, _ th july _. most respected sir,--i beg to return you my humble and hearty thanks for your kindness in having sent me a revolving pistol, which was highly admired by all who saw it. i cannot be sufficiently thankful to your invaluable kindness. i shall not part with it till death, but keep it as a remembrance of your high estimation of me your unworthy servant, and ever pray for your and family's welfare and happiness. i feel very uneasy in not hearing from captain orr since he left us; i beg you will kindly let me know how he is getting on, as i hear that he is not altogether very well. i was very anxious to accompany him, and he agreed to take me, but on second consideration he changed his mind. i hope some day or other to be able to see you and family by god's grace. i conclude, sir, with my humble respects and good wishes to self and family. hoping all's well.--i am, sir, your most obedient and grateful servant, sheik boran bukh, _silladar_. _thursday._ dear papa,--in accordance with your request, yesterday received, i enclose an envelope for b.b., on which perhaps you will be so good as to add his rank, whatever that may be--i believe subahdar. i am glad the letter is right, and knowing your great epistolary facilities, i don't feel as sorry as i ought to have interfered with your design. i don't think it will fall heavily on you. i have a great favour to ask of you; and i feel sure you won't grudge it me, as it concerns a man whose house is a second home to me: cartwright--indefatigable as he is, he keeps constantly on the alert for any vacancy in parliament, and is in frequent communication with hayter on the subject. now the representation of _scarborough_ has just become vacant, and i should take it as the greatest kindness if you would write to that great friend of yours in that town (a banker--whose name i, if i were to sit on my head, i could not remember; but you know), mentioning cartwright as a great friend and most appropriate man. he (your friend) is sure to be very influential amongst the townsfolk. i should wish you to say this: state who cartwright is, his family, place (aynhoe park, brackley), his relations _with hayter the whipper-in_ (that he may not appear _tombé des nues_), and the following creed: pledge himself to reform bill with extension of franchise; considers the educational question amongst the most important of the day; wants a thorough inquiry into india and indian affairs (government), and is prepared to support lord palmerston's administration. all this is very important to mention, because _all his relations_ are hot tories. also, in case your friend should accept the suggestion and want to communicate _at once_ cartwright, give his (c.'s) direction in paris, _no. rue roquépine_. will you do this for me? please give dear mamma a wigging for expressing no pleasure at the prospect i hinted at of running over to bath for a day or two in the winter; tell her if she does not behave better i won't come. i would write at greater length, but my model is waiting, and i have no time.--with anticipated thanks, your affectionate son, fred. it was in the year that leighton painted the beautiful figure of "salome, the daughter of herodias," which apparently was never exhibited in any exhibition of his works till that of . a sketch (see list of illustrations) made for the picture is in the leighton house collection, also other drawings of dancing figures sketched in algiers. [illustration: study for "salome, the daughter of herodias." leighton house collection] to his mother he wrote in the beginning of :-- monday, _jan. _. dearest mamma,--many thanks for your nice long letter, which i had been anxiously expecting not only for news of yourself but to hear what tidings had reached you from india. i am so glad dear lina continues tolerably well considering her position. i can fully understand how dreadfully anxious poor sutherland must have been the whole time about her. i mean to write to her myself without delay. will you please let me have her present direction, as i don't know it? how kind sutherland is to have remembered at such a moment about my tigerskin! what an excellent and thoughtful creature he must be! the extract from brig. stuart's despatch is most gratifying and satisfactory, but i want to see it in print; where is it published? can't you somehow get it and let me have it? i have the greatest desire to possess it in that shape. what a nice letter booran buckh's is. i am afraid that about the regiment returning to aurungabad is a hope not very likely to be realised. there is still a frightful deal to do in oude. sir colin wants men sadly, and cavalry is particularly precious. mario's _étrenne_ cost me a pound, it was the least i could do. let me reassure you, dear mamma, about my behaviour to that amiable creature. i have been at his house often since, and am sure he is not in the least hurt; as for his thinking i was proud about his being an actor, that is so out of the question that i could not help laughing when i read the passage in your letter. in the first place, he would never dream of suspecting me of such a piece of vulgarity, and in the next, actor or no, he still is count candia, and therefore more than my equal in rank. i hope i may be with you somewhere about the th or th february, and should stay till the th or th. it would be humbug to say that i should not rather find you alone than in a whirlpool of funereal gaieties; but, however, i am at your disposal; do with me as you wish. i have been suffering very much of late from tooth and face ache. i am rather better now, thanks to, or in spite of, homoeopathy. lady cowley i have never found in yet. the embassy parties have not begun yet. i go out almost every evening, but only in a circle of four or five houses. i can't stay at home, my eyes are too weak to do anything, i am sorry to say; i have not opened a book this winter. the hollands are going to naples, to my great regret; they were very kind; poor lady holland has only just recovered from a very serious illness. you tell me to bring over my algerine sketches, but i have very little to show, a few scratches only of types; my two principal studies are _in oils_; i can't well take those over. i am working away at my pictures as well as the pitch-dark weather allows (which is very badly); however, i hope they may turn out well. the silent sartoris said to-day he thought my juliet picture "safe to succeed." good-bye, dear mamma; best love to all from your most affect. boy, fred. end of vol. i printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. edinburgh & london [illustration: "blind scholar and daughter" no. . "romola"] [illustration: nello's shop: "suppose you let me look at myself" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "the first key" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "the peasants' fair" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "the dying message" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "florentine joke" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "the escaped prisoner" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "niccolo at work" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "you didn't think" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "father, i will be guided" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "the visible madonna" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "dangerous colleagues" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "monna brigida" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "but you will help" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "drifting" no. . "romola"] [illustration: "will his eyes open?" no. . "romola"] footnotes: [ ] "romeo," "pan," and "venus," being then exhibited at the yearly autumn exhibition at manchester. [ ] " . _from keats' ode to pan, in the 'endymion'_: f. leighton.--flesh painting is the grand test. with the majority of artists the attempt results in a something very much resembling tinted marble. not so mr. leighton. this enchanting creation of his mind glows with the rich warm hues of life; and the sweeping outline which gives such beauty to the female form is preserved with subdued definiteness. the background is a fine piece of mellow autumnal tinting. "_the royal institution._--in the second room will be found one of the very best, if not the best picture in the exhibition, no. , 'reconciliation of the montagues and capulets,' by f. leighton. whatever its other merits or faults may be, it tells the sad story clearly and forcibly. the scene is 'the tomb of all the capulets,' and the moment chosen by the artist is when the heads of the rival houses, standing by the dead bodies of those in whom all their hopes had been centred, agree to lay by their ancient feuds, and clasp their hands in sign of future friendship. "'_capulet_--o brother montague, give me thy hand: this is my daughter's jointure, for no more can i demand. _montague_--but i can give thee more: for i will raise her statue in pure gold: that while verona by that name is known there shall no figure at such rate be set, as that of true and faithful juliet.' in the foreground are the bodies of the lovers, placed on a bier. juliet has thrown herself upon the body of romeo, her hands clasped around his neck, and her cheek touching his. in that position, typical of her undying love, the fatal potion has done its work. lady capulet, in a paroxysm of maternal grief, has thrown herself on her knees at the foot of the bier; behind her is the friar. opposite the spectator are old capulet and montague, their aged forms bowed with grief, in the act of reconciliation. these are the principal figures. the prince, attendants, &c., fill up, without crowding, the picture. the gloom of the ancient monument is capitally rendered, the colouring is harmonious, and the disposition of the figures careful and dramatic. the artist has admirably discriminated the characters of the two aged noblemen. readers of shakespeare will not need to be reminded of the distinction which the dramatist has made between the two. montague appears only in the first and last acts, but displays great resolution, accompanied by a noble moderation, in the brawl commenced by the retainers of each of the houses. the language put into his mouth is noble and poetical, especially in concluding his account of the black and portentous humour which had overtaken his son. "'but he, his own affection's counsellor, is to himself,--i will not say--how true,-- but to himself so secret and so close, so far from sounding and discovery as is the bud, bit with an envious worm, ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, or dedicate his beauty to the sun.' no such language as this is ever given to old capulet. on the contrary, he is fussy, shallow, and pretentious. even the nurse snubs him. in the first act he rushes out frantically calling for his sword, to which lady capulet replies-- "'a crutch, a crutch!--why call you for a sword?' and the nurse on another occasion says-- "'go, go, you cot quean, go, get you to bed; faith you will be sick to-morrow for this night's watching.' the artist has finely distinguished the two men; there is no mistaking them. on the other hand, if we may 'hint a fall' or two, we should say, that the faces of the lovers are too livid and corpse-like. they are but newly dead, and the artist would have been truer to nature and increased the beauty of his picture if he had allowed some of the beauty of life to linger around them. the attitude of the friar, too, with elevated arms and appalled look, is not in harmony with the grand composure of his demeanour at all other times, the noble motives from which he had acted, and that sanctity of character which induces the prince to say to him, after his explanatory speech-- "'we still have known thee for a holy man.' with all drawbacks, however, this is a noble picture; and if our readers will turn to the scene in the play and refresh their memories before going to the institution, they will, we think, agree with us in ranking it as a successful shakesperian illustration--high praise, but deserved." [ ] among the drawings sold by the fine art society in was a very striking and interesting sketch in water-colour by steinle. the subject was a peasant confessing to a cardinal. may be it was the sketch for this picture for which steinle asked leighton to help him respecting the cardinal's costume. [ ] mrs. s. orr was in india, the mutiny taking place at that time. * * * * * +----------------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page xviii: spagniola replaced with spagnola | | page : middelburg replaced with middelburgh | | page : antlered replaced with anthered | | page : spagniola replaced with spagnola | | page : volorous replaced with valorous | | page : kuppelwiesser replaced with kuppelwieser | | page : sclosser replaced with schlosser | | page : "magnificent intellectual capacity, and unerring and | | instantaneous spring upon the point to unravel." | | replaced with "magnificent intellectual capacity, | | and an unerring and instantaneous spring upon the | | point to unravel." (see "reminiscences of g.f. watts"| | by mrs. russell barringtong, page .) | | page : antlered replaced with anthered | | page : spagnolli replaced with spagnola | | page : "bran new" replaced with "brand new" | | page : "he offers you £ for if" replaced with | | "he offers you £ for it" | | page : "your sincerely" replaced with "yours sincerely" | | page : pigale replaced with pigalle | | | | footnote : sain-damien replaced with saint-damien; | | l'envalussait replaced with l'envahissait; and, | | remplet replaced with remplit | | footnote : caranco replaced with carcano | | (see adelaide sartoris' book "a week in a french | | country-house" page xxx.) | | | | note that the names i'anson and ffrench are legitimate | | surnames. | | | | frankfort a/m. is the abbreviation for frankfurt am main, | | (in english 'frankfort on the main') a city on the main | | river, germany. | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * british artists birket foster, r.w.s. in the same series george morland john pettie, r.a., h.r.s.a. kate greenaway a. and c. black . soho square . london, w. agents =america= the macmillan company & fifth avenue, new york =australasia= oxford university press flinders lane, melbourne =canada= the macmillan company of canada, ltd. st. martin's house, bond street, toronto =india= macmillan & company, ltd. macmillan building, bombay bow bazaar street, calcutta [illustration: gleaners] birket foster r.w.s. sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work with an introduction by h. m. cundall, i.s.o., f.s.a. [illustration] published by a. & c. black , & soho square, london mcmx list of plates owner of original . gleaners _barnet lewis, esq._ . going home " . loch leven castle " . shrine at the entrance of the courtyard of the ducal palace, venice _sir charles seeley_ . entrance to the grand canal, venice _barnet lewis, esq._ . birthplace of burns, near ayr " . sunset with cattle _bethnal green museum_ . in full cry _barnet lewis, esq._ . children by the sea _jesse haworth, esq._ . by the thames _barnet lewis, esq._ . a surrey cottage " . the donkey that would not go _sharpley bainbridge, esq._ . passing the flock _barnet lewis, esq._ . near godalming " . the blackberry gatherers " . the happy time of life " birket foster the dainty water-colour paintings executed by birket foster probably appeal to the majority of the british public more than the work of any other artist. for many years during the early part of his career he was engaged in drawing on wood-blocks for the engraver, from which he acquired a minuteness in detail that continued to pervade his paintings in later life. the result was that he produced scenes from nature with an exactness that the most uninitiated in art are able to understand and appreciate. the chief features, however, in birket foster's paintings are the poetic feeling with which he indued them, and the care and felicity with which his compositions were selected. these qualities lend a great charm to his drawings, and especially to those representing the homely scenes, so frequently selected from that picturesque part of surrey, where he lived for many years. he revelled in sunny landscapes, with sheep roaming in the distance and with rustic children playing in the foreground; he was also attracted by peaceful red-brick cottages covered with thatch, and enlivened by domestic scenes. it is perhaps by these rural paintings that the artist is best known. he, however, wandered far afield in search of the picturesque; he was an indefatigable painter, and produced works selected from all parts of england, wales, and scotland. birket foster was especially partial to the northern counties and the district surrounding his native town in northumberland. his rambles were not confined solely to his own country; he travelled frequently on the continent; venice, as well as the rhine, had its charms for him. the picturesque scenery of brittany has also been portrayed by his brush, and on one occasion he went as far as spain and morocco in pursuit of his art. birket foster, as he is generally known, or myles birket foster, to give him his full name, was born at north shields on february , . his ancestors held good social positions for many generations in the north country, and were staunch members of the society of friends. one, sarah forster, as the family name was originally spelt, married a descendant of margaret fell of swathmoor hall, who, after the death of her first husband, judge fell, was united to george fox, the founder of the quakers. in the artist's father migrated with his family to london, voyaging all the way by sea. he took up his residence at charlotte street, portland place, and founded the well-known firm of m. b. foster and sons. quitting school at an early age, young birket foster was at first placed in his father's business; but, owing to an accident, he did not remain long in that position. as the youth showed a decided tendency towards art, his father consulted a mr. stone, a die-engraver, with whom he had a slight acquaintance, and it was arranged that the son should be apprenticed to him. before, however, the articles of apprenticeship could be signed, mr. stone unfortunately committed suicide. in his dilemma the father next sought the assistance of a fellow-townsman, ebenezer landells, who at that time had established his reputation as a wood-engraver. he offered to take the boy into his business to see whether the work would suit him. the offer was accepted, and the day on which birket foster entered landells' office may be said to be the commencement of his artistic career. in landells, in conjunction with henry mayhew, mark lemon, and others, started _punch_. most of the early woodcuts for this publication were produced in landells' office; birket foster was employed to draw and cut numerous initial letters, and on one occasion he was entrusted to make a full-page political cartoon representing lord john russell as jack sheppard. when _the illustrated london news_ was commenced by herbert ingram in , landells was engaged to produce many of the illustrations, and birket foster was employed by him in making drawings for them. this he continued to do for many years after he left landells' establishment. the most characteristic works of birket foster for this periodical were the charming engravings which appeared in the musical supplements and the christmas numbers. he also made many drawings for _the illustrated london almanack_ for and subsequent years. at this period our artist was greatly sought after by publishers to execute pencil drawings for wood-engravings for books, and from the year to more than eighty different volumes, produced by various firms, were illustrated by dainty engravings after his drawings. after the year birket foster practically abandoned the drawing on wood-blocks, and devoted himself almost entirely to water-colour painting. he received little or no instruction in the art, and in later years, when he was frequently pestered by persons asking him to give them lessons in painting, he used to say that he never received any lessons, so he never gave them, believing the best instruction to be obtained from studying the great masters. he was a profound admirer of turner and clarkson stanfield, and it is probable that he was more influenced by the latter's works than by those of any other artist, especially with regard to composition. he delighted to surround himself with paintings by these and other artists. with regard to his method of working, birket foster's early training for drawing on wood-blocks considerably influenced his water-colour work, which was very dissimilar to the "wash" methods of the early school of water-colour painters. he, indeed, worked with his brush as dry as it well could be, and probably no artist in using the medium of water-colours ever used so little water. of course, all painting may be said to be drawing with a brush, but birket foster's was practically drawing to a peculiar degree, not washing with a brush. he used a very fine brush with very little paint in it, and owing to his habit of frequently putting it between his lips to make the point of it as fine as possible, it used to be said that the paint came out of the artist's head. birket foster worked very rapidly in his own way of obtaining the effects he desired, and his remarkable gift for composition enabled him to people his scenes with wonderful facility and felicity. he never engaged a professional model; his children were all sketched from the rustic boys and girls, whom he found in the course of his wanderings. in birket foster was unanimously elected an associate of the old water-colour society, and became a full member two years afterwards. he greatly appreciated the honour conferred upon him, and thoroughly gave his best interests to the society. he was a most prolific worker, and beside the large number of water-colour paintings exhibited at the old society, to which he contributed more than four hundred and fifty, many of his drawings were bought by the picture-dealers straight from his studio, and in some cases he received direct commissions for paintings from collectors. birket foster, like many other water-colour artists, turned his attention to painting in oils, and for the nine years, to , he regularly contributed oil paintings, thirteen in all, to the exhibitions at the royal academy, but after that period he abandoned this medium, as he found that his little water-colour gems were far more appreciated by the public. in foster was elected a member of the royal academy of berlin. although the rural scenery of his native country had its peculiar charms for his pencil, still birket foster was greatly attracted by the grander views to be obtained on the continent. his early visits were made to the rhine, but subsequently the italian lakes and venice were his favourite hunting grounds in search for "bits" to sketch. the word "bits" is particularly applicable in the case of birket foster, for he almost invariably preferred to make a drawing of some detail rather than a broad landscape. he used to say that the mountain scenery of switzerland was too panoramic and had no attractions for him. it is somewhat remarkable that whilst he relied to a great extent on lanes and fields, and hedgerows and rustic children, for his english drawings, the views for his continental paintings were largely selected from towns with architectural details introduced into them. the first visit made to the continent by birket foster was in , when he was commissioned by a publisher, who was bringing out an illustrated edition of "hyperion," by longfellow, to follow in the footsteps of paul flemming, and to depict on the spot the varied scenes amid which the poet had laid the incidents of his story. paul flemming, as is well known, was longfellow himself, and the romance was a passage in the author's own life. from that date foster made almost annual tours along the rhine and through switzerland, but it was not until the year that he was first able to feast his eyes upon the beauties of venice, and afterwards he made numerous subsequent trips to italy. our artist for many years resided at st. john's wood, and when he took seriously to water-colour painting he at first selected his subjects from the fields about hampstead and highgate. he soon, however, wandered farther afield, and was attracted by the picturesque scenery of surrey. during his wanderings in this delightful county he found himself at witley, near godalming, and he resolved to have a residence there. it cannot be said that witley was "discovered" by birket foster, for other artists were there before him. j. c. hook, r.a., had already built himself a residence and studio upon an eminence with a beautiful view overlooking the weald of surrey. there can, however, be no doubt that the genial disposition and the liberal hospitality of the owner of "the hill" afterwards attracted many of his fellow-artists to the neighbourhood. witley station stands at a spot where the railway emerges from a deep cutting with pine woods on either side, and at this period there were but few houses or even cottages in the vicinity, for the village itself lies a mile and a quarter to the northward; but birket foster managed to secure the possession of a picturesque cottage called "tigbourne," situated by the corner of the road leading to hambledon at the foot of wormley hill, and resided there during the summer months. birket foster eventually became so pleased with the neighbourhood that he determined to take up his permanent abode at witley. after lengthy negotiations, he secured a beautiful site, between wormley hill and the railway station, on which he erected a house which was called "the hill," and finally quitted st. john's wood. he was practically his own architect, and residing near by at his cottage, he was enabled personally to superintend the erection of the entire building. in order that its newness should not offend the artistic eye, he purchased as many weather-worn tiles off the old cottages in the neighbourhood as possible, and placed them on the roof of his house. a great amount of care was bestowed on the internal decorations. william morris was consulted, and burne-jones painted seven canvases illustrating the legend of st. george and the dragon, which formed a frieze round three sides of the dining-room. burne-jones was also commissioned to make many other designs for the adornment of "the hill"; the decorated tiles round the fire-places and stained glass in the windows were all designed by him. he also painted a large screen of eight folds, upon which were sixteen events of the life of st. frideswide. these scenes were afterwards reproduced in the windows of christ church cathedral at oxford. "the hill" was an open house to all birket foster's friends, and particularly to his brother-artists. he was never more pleased than when he was entertaining his guests, and being specially fond of music, many of the social gatherings were enhanced by musical performances. one of the most frequent visitors was frederick walker, a.r.a.: he was a special favourite, at all times welcome, and was one of the few who had an influence on birket foster's painting, especially his figures. he was in the habit of going to witley whenever he felt inclined, without waiting for an invitation, a bedroom known as "freddy's room" being reserved for him. walker had an immense love for the place, which he called "paradise," and greatly regretted that he had not sufficient money to purchase a cottage which j. c. hook, r.a., had built near his house, the situation of which walker considered "romantic--such a sweep of glorious country." another constant visitor was charles keene, the celebrated black and white artist of _punch_. after birket foster had removed from "tigbourne cottage" he still rented it that he might make sure of the presence of an agreeable and congenial occupant, and persuaded keene to become a tenant. keene was greatly delighted with this retreat, of which he wrote:-- "the stillness here after london is delicious. the only sound is the ring of the village blacksmith's hammer in the distance or the occasional cluck of a hen, and the wind roars through the trees of a night, which lulls me pleasantly to sleep." as may be seen by glancing through the titles of his exhibited paintings, the neighbourhood around witley had a great charm for birket foster, and drawings made on hambledon common and in the village of chiddingfold--with their picturesque cottages roofed with thatch or red tiles, now fast disappearing, and their leafy lanes with happy children gathering wild-flowers, or the beautiful view from his own residence overlooking the surrey weald, with hindhead and blackdown in the distance and glimpses of the brighton downs beyond--are most appreciated by the public, and it is by these paintings he is best known. birket foster, as already stated, made very many tours through different parts of england and scotland, and although he was not what may be termed a seascape artist, he was fond of making drawings of children playing on the seashore. later in life he revisited many of the watering-places which he depicted for _the illustrated london news_ in his early days, and instead of sketches for wood-blocks, he painted many charming little scenes. another phase of birket foster's art was his love for painting fruit and flowers. he was greatly attracted by william hunt's work. as may be expected, the same stippling in paintings by hunt appears in works of foster; but whilst the former nearly always painted his fruit pieces the same size as in nature, the latter produced almost miniature representations of them. in birket foster was attacked by a serious illness, and yielding to the pressure of medical advice, he was obliged to abandon much of his work and reluctantly to give up "the hill." he removed to "braeside," weybridge, and here he resided quietly, devoting himself to his painting as much as possible, until his death, which occurred six years later. he was buried in witley churchyard; a celtic cross, with the simple inscription, "in memory of birket foster. born feb. th, . died march th, ," marks the spot where lie the remains of this great water-colour artist, who painted english landscape with such a pure feeling and high perception of the beauty of nature. birket foster was twice married--firstly, in , to his cousin, ann spence, by whom he had five children, three sons and two daughters; and secondly, in , to frances watson, a sister to john dawson watson, the well-known painter and member of the old water-colour society. [illustration: going home] [illustration: loch leven castle] [illustration: shrine at the entrance of the courtyard of the ducal palace, venice] [illustration: entrance to the grand canal, venice] [illustration: birthplace of burns, near ayr] [illustration: sunset with cattle] [illustration: in full cry] [illustration: children by the sea] [illustration: by the thames] [illustration: a surrey cottage] [illustration: the donkey that would not go] [illustration: passing the flock] [illustration: near godalming] [illustration: the blackberry gatherers] [illustration: the happy time of life] * * * * * transcriber's notes captions were added to the plates for convenience. italics styled text is shown within _underscores_. bold styled text is shown within =equal signs=. * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original | | document has been preserved. | | | | the errata at the end of the book have been incorporated | | into this e-book. | | | | index entries referring to footnotes have been renamed | | to match footnote numbers in this document. | | | | obvious typographical errors have been corrected. for | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * [illustration] the life, letters and work of frederic baron leighton of stretton vol. ii "_i am a workman first, and an official after._" --fred. leighton, . "_es bildet ein talent sich in der stille, doch ein character in dem strom der welt._" --goethe. the life, letters and work of frederic leighton by mrs. russell barrington author of "reminiscences of g.f. watts," etc. etc. in two volumes vol. ii london george allen, ruskin house [all rights reserved] printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. at the ballantyne press [illustration: lord leighton from the portrait by g.f. watts] contents page introduction chapter i first studio in london, - chapter ii illustrations for _cornhill magazine_--fresco for lyndhurst church--associate of the royal academy--mrs. leighton's death, - chapter iii journeys to the east--constantinople--smyrna--athens--diary "up the nile to phylÆ," - chapter iv royal academician--music--arab hall, - chapter v leighton as president of the royal academy, - chapter vi life waning--death, - list of illustrations volume ii . portrait of lord leighton (_photogravure_) to face dedication by g.f. watts. . head of young girl (_colour_) to face page a wedding gift to h.r.h. the prince of wales, who graciously gave permission for the painting to be reproduced in this book. . "eucharis," (_colour_) by kind permission of mrs. stephenson clarke. . "a noble lady of venice," (_photogravure_) by kind permission of lord armstrong. . "greek girls picking up shells by the seashore," (_photogravure_) by kind permission of the rt. hon. joseph chamberlain. . portrait of mrs. sutherland orr, . pencil sketch for "michael angelo nursing his dying servant," leighton house collection. . original sketch for "samson wrestling with the lion" designed as an illustration for dalziel's bible. leighton house collection. . original drawing for the great god pan, illustrating mrs. browning's poem, "musical instrument" in "_cornhill magazine_," july . leighton house collection. . "an evening in a french country house," illustrating mrs. adelaide sartoris' story, "a week in a french country house," published in the _cornhill magazine_, by kind permission of messrs. smith, elder, & co. . "drifting." second illustration for same . lord leighton photograph taken at lyndhurst, . . fresco for lyndhurst church--"the wise and foolish virgins," . "greek girl dancing," by kind permission of mr. phillipson. . sketch for a "pastoral," leighton house collection. . sketch in oils--"egypt" (_colour_) . "s. jerome." diploma work, gallery in burlington house. . "electra at the tomb of agamemnon" . "heracles wrestling with death for the body of alcestis," by kind permission of the fine art society. . "summer moon," by kind permission of messrs. p. & d. colnaghi. . "a condottiere," the walker fine art gallery, birmingham. . study for figure in frieze, "music," leighton house collection. . study of man's figure for the "arts of war," leighton house collection. . study of man's figure for the "arts of war" leighton house collection. . study of man's figure for the "arts of war," leighton house collection. . "antique juggling girl," (_photogravure_) by kind permission of mr. hodges. . "clytemnestra from the battlement of argos watches for the beacon fires which are to announce the return of agamemnon," (_photogravure_) leighton house collection. . study for "clytemnestra" leighton house collection. . study for "summer moon" (_colour_) executed by moonlight in rome. given by the late a. waterhouse, r.a., to the leighton house collection. . "the daphnephoria," by kind permission of the fine art society. . "at a reading-desk," by kind permission of messrs. l.h. lefevre & son. . original study for "an athlete struggling with a python," given by the late g.f. watts to the leighton house collection. . "nausicaa," . study for group in the "arts of peace," leighton house collection. . study for the figure of cimabue, carried out in mosaic in the south court of the victoria and albert museum, leighton house collection. . study for the figure of niccola pisano, carried out in mosaic in the south court of the victoria and albert museum, leighton house collection. . sketch of the prince and princess of wales, attended by lord leighton, when present at a monday popular concert in st. james's hall drawn at the time by mr. theodore blake wirgman. . portrait of sir richard francis burton, k.c.m.g., . view of arab hall, leighton house collection. . portrait of professor giovanni costa executed at lerici in . . "elijah in the wilderness," . study for the figure of "elijah" leighton house collection. . "neruccia," (_photogravure_) by kind permission of mrs. c.e. lees. . "the bath of psyche," (_photogravure_) the tate gallery. . "the light of the harem," by kind permission of the leicester gallery. . drawing of complete design for "and the sea gave up the dead that were in it," . study for "music." a frieze, leighton house collection. . study for "andromeda," leighton house collection. . study from clay model for "perseus," leighton house collection. . study for "phoenicians bartering with britons" leighton house collection. . "cymon and iphigenia," (_photogravure_) the corporation of leeds. . sketch in oils for "cymon and iphigenia" (_colour_) by kind permission of mrs. stewart hodgson. . study for sleeping group in "cymon and iphigenia" presented to the leighton house collection by g.f. watts. . from bronze from small model in clay by lord leighton of "a sluggard," leighton house collection. . "needless alarms," from bronze statuette, leighton house collection. . "the last watch of hero," corporation of manchester. . sketch in oils for "tragic poetess," (_colour_) by kind permission of mrs. stewart hodgson. . "atalanta," by kind permission of the berlin photographic co. . "flaming june," by kind permission of mrs. watney. . study for "flaming june" leighton house collection. . "fatidica," by kind permission of messrs. t. agnew & sons. . studies for "fatidica" leighton house collection. . "memories," by kind permission of messrs. p. & d. colnaghi. . "the jealousy of simoetha the sorceress," . "letty," (_colour_) by kind permission of mrs. henry joachim. . studies from dorothy dene for "clytie," leighton house collection. . sketch in oils for "greek girls playing at ball," (_in colour_) by kind permission of mrs. stewart hodgson. . "bacchante," (_photogravure_) by kind permission of messrs. henry graves & co. . sketch in oils for "bacchante" (_colour_) by kind permission of mrs. stewart hodgson. . "_der winter_" drawing by eduard von steinle. . sketch in oils for "solitude" (_colour_) by kind permission of mrs. stewart hodgson. . "summer slumber," (_photogravure_) by kind permission of mr. phillipson. . sketch for "summer slumber" presented to the leighton house collection by h.m. the king. . "the fair persian," by kind permission of sir elliott lees. . "the spirit of the summit," . study for "lachrymÆ," leighton house collection. . "clytie," by kind permission of the fine art society. . memorial monument in st. paul's cathedral to frederic baron leighton of stretton . view of hall and staircase of leighton house, given by lord leighton's sisters to the public as a memorial to their brother by kind permission of mr. j. harris stone. [illustration: head of young girl wedding present from lord leighton to h.r.h. the prince of wales, who has graciously allowed the painting to be reproduced in this book] the life of lord leighton introduction sir william richmond, r.a., and mr. walter crane have kindly contributed the following notes:-- it was in that i first knew leighton. we met over affairs connected with the artist rifle corps at burlington house, and afterwards at the studios of various artists, where discussions took place regarding the formation and means of conduct of the corps. on several occasions i walked home with leighton to his house in orme square. i don't think i have ever known a man who grew more steadily than leighton did. the effort of his artistic life was to remove the effects of a certain mannerism and over-education in his early artistic life. his knowledge was wonderful, his powers of design without immediate consultation with nature were phenomenal; he feared the facility in himself and went always to nature, that out of her manifold gifts he should be inspired directly by them. and this constant study had its drawbacks as well as its merits, because in one sense it stood in the way of the development of an abstract power of invention. if ever an artist made the most of his conscious abilities, leighton did. his character was so curiously simple on the one hand, and so complicated on the other, that a balance between a very emotional and extremely accurate temperament had to be found, and it was found. how far a certain charm of spontaneity was obscured a little, perhaps by erudition and a sort of aristotelian preciseness, it is not for me to say. there is in all things a balance which, when once obtained, reduces the weight in both scales. but we must take a life as it has been made by circumstances, by early training and after influences; and probably most men who are in earnest,--and leighton was pre-eminently in earnest,--find their proper issue finally. that the best of leighton's work will live, i am convinced; that it will hold its own when a great deal of other work praised, admired, even worshipped during the life of his contemporaries shall be dead, i feel quite assured; and one may very justly be asked--why? the simple answer is that it was thorough, definite, sincere, accomplished. leighton never put out his hand towards the limbo of vulgarity or fashion. like virgil, like mendelssohn, leighton was a stylist, and his life's work showed a perfection of attainment upon the lines which he drew out for his progress almost to my thinking unrivalled in the work of any of his contemporaries. here and there he struck a deep note of poetry, here and there he was like a greek for his simplicity, here and there his work shows the luxury of the venetians, the restraint of the florentines, but never perhaps the majesty of m. angelo or the strong charm of raphael. his art was eclectic; still it was leighton, and could have been done only as the result of great natural gifts, assiduous study, force of character, and, withal, independence of vision. his love of beauty was his own personal love, not learnt, hardly perhaps inherited, but spontaneous and lasting. this devotion to beauty may have sometimes led his emotions away from character, which sometimes is very nearly ugly as well as very nearly allied to the highest beauty, which bacon says has always something of strangeness in it. the pursuit of beauty, _per se_, may be purchased at the expense of character. but leighton was always pulling himself up; and when he found himself too facile, too ornate, he resolutely set his mind to correct any tendency in that direction by fidelity to nature, sometimes even to her ugly movements. excess was not in his nature, which was curiously logical; his mind was swift, far-seeing; in debate he was admirable, always seeing the weak point of an argument at once, and "partie pris" was his abomination. a man so gifted in the essence and laws of form, so learned in the construction of the human frame, so deeply sensitive to line and movement as well as to structure, surely would have given to the world great works of sculpture. indeed he did, but not enough! one regrets that--still one must accept the fact that form is but little cared for in this country, and leighton sinned by reason of his love of form; by many he was called not a painter because he did not smear, did not trust to accidents, did not leave works half done--because he was sincere to his conviction that a work of art must be, to last, complete "ad unguem." the present craze for incompleteness, for sketches instead of pictures, for unripe instead of ripe fruit, must die as all false notions die; the best, the rightest will live; and when the present ephemeral fashion has worked itself out, the nobility of leighton's works, his best, are certain to take their place in the estimation of those that know as surely as that they are good. how many out of the multitude really, if we could test them, care one jot for the elgin marbles, for the demeter of knidos, for the vault of the sistine chapel?--very few. really great things never can be accepted by the commonplace. how should they be? for to understand the highest in music, in architecture, sculpture, or painting, the observer or listener must have a spark in his constitution which is a portion of the flame that burned white heat in the soul of the conceiver. how can such an attitude of intimate sympathy belong to the many? it never has, and probably never will. great men are rare, and those who are mentally or organically made to comprehend them are rare also. the great can afford to wait because they are immortal. in all one's dealings with leighton what did one find? a noble nature, restrained, charitable, in earnest; and if in many discussions as to the desirability of certain events, certain compromises, certain acts of conformity, one did not agree with leighton, one knew "au fond" that the attitude was quite logical, not hastily arrived at, and the position taken up was to be strenuously held: and it was that power of consistency which made leighton so trustworthy. he was fearless when his principles were touched, he was loyal to his associates in the academy even if he did not see eye to eye with them, and he was loyal to his art and to his friends. if leighton had chosen politics for his career he would probably have been prime minister, just as burne-jones might have been archbishop of canterbury had he continued his early and very remarkable theological studies. all really great men have endless possibilities. it is more or less chance which decides the direction of ability, which, once discovered, forcibly, dominantly present, must find opportunities for its highest development and achievement in the tenure of the goal. it was ability and natural gifts that made leighton great, industry that nourished his greatness, and stability to principle which made it lasting in his lifetime, and must for all time stamp his work. the thing that really engages one's interest about a great man is not so much his "technique" as his general disposition and character, which forms for itself a suitable "technique" by which his achievements have been manifested. should any one by-and-by describe the "technique" of joachim, the supreme violinist, he would probably interest a few, but in reality he would say nothing really valuable, excepting inasmuch as he touched upon first principles. the "modus operandi" of an artist's life is moulded by his personal aims, the means are those by which he found his own way of stating them; and one doubts very much if, after all, the points which differentiate one man's work from another's are not those which have obliterated the conscious efforts, preserving just the touches which genius gives beyond and above all laws that may be learnt. verse no doubt is much dependent for its beauty on the system of the arrangement of syllables, and the music they make when harmoniously handled upon the final perfection which they reach, and so become rule-making instead of being the result of rule-following. hence lies that unaccountable beauty which is the inexplicable result of the ego--that taste, that selection, that special word which creates an impression immediately, and which seems inimitable even, and obviously the only one which could have been used; that is style--the very essence of the ego which cannot be copied, or indeed again brought into relation with the idea. and isn't that the reason why the copy of a picture can never be really like an original? even if the "technique" is identical, it lacks that last touch, that last word which transcends tradition, almost transcends thought, for it is just the thought which has been summed up in a moment of inspiration, uncalculated, spontaneous. leighton was far too wise a man to believe in the constant recurrence of inspirations: he knew that the moment when the whole spirit is ready to act is involuntary; he knew that to reach the supremacy of that moment, labour was necessary; that in labour is the foundation of the building for that moment of inspiration. one may question if the first vision in leighton was very strong--strong as blake's, strong as many artists whose powers of attainment were much less than leighton's, but whose vision was clearer at the outset. rougher minds than leighton's have produced more epic effects, and a ruder, less accomplished "technique" has borne with it more original, more trenchant ideas. leighton was not a mystic; he dealt with thoughts which he embodied in forms that he saw, but which he also made his own in their application; that was his genius of originality. the rugged verse of Æschylus had no place in his temperament, much as he admired it; the polished diction of virgil bore more similitude to leighton's inspiration. sometimes one missed in his work just the touch of the rugged which would have given more grace by comparison, by contrast. his grace of diction, his oratory, his writing, was sometimes over-refined, and missed its mark by over-elaboration. the very speciality of leighton was completeness. one has seen pictures in his study only half finished, which had a charm of freshness that vanished as each portion became worked into equal value. but that fastidiousness was his characteristic, it was part of him; and therefore we must not deplore it. his originality was exemplified by his power of taking pains, his power of will to do his very best according to his guiding spirit of thoroughness. temperaments are so different. whistler could not be leighton. because we admire the one, it is not necessary to decry the other; that is weak criticism, or rather none at all. the spirit which inspires the impressionist is not the spirit of design, but a limited observation in a very restricted area. we can have the academic as well as the impressionist: both are useful as foils to each other, and it is just as narrow of the impressionists to want all men to see nature and art as they see them, as it has been for the academics to see "nothing" in the newer if more limited system. i believe that leighton's real love was early italian art; all that came to him after was the result of growth. his enthusiasm for mino da fiesole, for the earlier raphaels, for duccio of siena, for lorenzetti, was evident and absorbing; other enthusiasms were more branches from the stem than its roots. he loved line; he found it there: he loved restraint of action, pure sensuous beauty; he found it in early italian art. the reserve of emotions touched him in greek art--its suavity, its almost geometrical precision, the tunefulness and melody of its rhythmical concords. his love of music was on the same lines: wagner never appealed to him as mozart did; it was too strenuous, too busy in changes of key, too incomplete in the finish and development of phrases. it was not that he liked dulness--not a bit; he was emotional, often gay, often depressed--excitable even; but to him art was an intellectual more than a purely emotional system, and he liked it to be finished, consistent, perfect--and those qualities he strove for, without a doubt he obtained in a high measure. it will be long before we see again the like of frederic leighton, a man complete in himself. w.b. richmond. _june ._ * * * * * i first met leighton about or ' , i think. i went to one of his receptions at the studio in holland park road, at the time he was showing his pictures for the academy. i think his principal work of that year was "alcestis," or "heracles wrestling with death." about the same time browning's poem of "balaustion's adventure" appeared, in which he alludes to leighton and this very picture in the lines beginning: "i know a great kaunian painter" (if i remember rightly). i availed myself of a friend's introduction, and presented myself. one recalls the courteous and princely way in which he received his guests on these occasions, and the crushes he had at his studio--holland park road blocked with carriages, and all the great ones of the london world flocking to see the artist's work. about this time, or shortly before, he had done me the honour to purchase two landscape studies i had made in wales from among a number in a book, which was shown him by my early friend george howard (now earl of carlisle), and i remember his kind words in sending me what he deemed "the very modest price" i had asked for them. his kindness to students and young artists was well known. he would take trouble to go and see their work, and he was always an admirable and helpful critic. i remember, on my first visit to rome in the autumn of (on our marriage tour), going into piali's library one evening to look at the english papers. no one was there, but presently leighton came in. he did not remember me at first, but i recalled myself to him. he was very kind, in his princely way, and gave me introductions to w.w. storey, the sculptor, and his great friend, giov. costa, and he called at our rooms to see my work, in which he showed much interest. in a letter i had, dated march st, , written from the athenæum club, he speaks of some drawings i had sent to the dudley gallery, one he had seen on my easel in rome, and he says: "i have seen your drawings, all three--one was an old friend; of the other two, the 'grotto of egeria,' with its 'sacrum numes,' most attracted me through its refined and sober harmony. _the quality of your light_ is always particularly agreeable to me, and not less than usual in these drawings"; he goes on to say he is glad to hear i have "made friends with my excellent costa, who as an artist is one in hundreds, and as a man one in thousands"; he adds, "have you sketched in the 'valley of poussin'? it strikes me that old castle would take you by storm." i saw leighton again in rome in , meeting him on the palatine, among the ruins of the palace of the cæsars. he was with a lady who, i believe, was the author of the story published in _the cornhill_, "a week in a french country house," for which leighton made an illustration. (his black and white work was always very fine, and i recall seeing some of his drawings on the wood for dalziel's bible and "romola.") later, he came to see us when we settled in london, in wood lane. i had further relations with him about the time he was building the arab hall, when (through george aitcheson, his architect) i designed the mosaic frieze. on some sketches i made for this he writes: "cleave to the sphinx and eagle, they are _delightful_--i don't like the duck-women." with regard to these arab hall mosaics, he said that he hoped to have more, and eventually "to let us loose (burne-jones and myself) on the dome." after this, i saw something of leighton on the committee of the south london fine art gallery, peckham, in its earlier days, when he was chairman, and helped to pilot the institution from the somewhat exacting proprietorship of its founder towards its ultimate position as a public institution. from the aristocratic point of view, he certainly had a keen sense of public duty, and probably laid the motto "noblesse oblige" to heart. i met him again at the art conference at liverpool, when a trainful of artists of all ranks went down together, and some notable attacks were made on the royal academy. leighton was tremendously loyal to that institution, which i notice is always stoutly defended by its members, whatever opinions they may have expressed while outsiders. i suppose we differed profoundly on most questions, but he was always most courteous, and, whatever our public opinions, we always maintained friendly personal relations; and i may say i always entertained the highest admiration for leighton's qualities, both as an artist and as a man. at the time when the election for the presidency of the academy was in view (after the death of sir francis grant), it was said that leighton was the _only_ man, and that if they did not elect him the institution would go to pieces; but probably as president he had less power of initiative than before. i remember, after one of our committees at his studio, he drove me home to holland street in his victoria; and as he set me down at my door, he pointed to a little copper lantern i had put up over the steps, and said, "is that arts and crafts?" his fondness for italy was well known, and i think he went every autumn. i recall meeting him at florence in , while staying at the delightful villa of mrs. ross (poggio gherardo), when he came to luncheon. in death he was as princely as in life; and on the day of his burial at st. paul's i was moved to write the following as a tribute to his memory, which will always be vivid in the hearts of those who had the privilege of his friendship:-- beneath great london's dome to his last rest the princely painter have ye borne away, who still in death upholds his sumptuous sway; who strove in life with learned skill to wrest art's priceless secret hid in beauty's breast with alchemy of colour and of clay, to recreate a fairer human day, touched by no shadow of our time distrest. what rank or privilege needs art supreme-- immortal child of buried states and powers-- who can for us the golden age renew? let worth and work bear witness when life's hours are numbered: honour due, when, as we deem, to his ideal was the artist true. walter crane. [illustration: "eucharis." by permission of mrs. stephenson clarke] * * * * * having settled in england in , leighton found that there, contrary to his expectations, his sense of colour became developed; and with this his individuality as a _painter_ asserted itself. between the years and he painted pictures which proved that, as a distinct artificer in painting, he had found himself, and was no longer under the controlling influences of german or italian art, though, unfortunately, hints of german methods in the actual manipulation of his brush clung more or less to his painting to the end. from boyhood leighton's power of designing, his sense of beauty in line and form and of dramatic feeling, his extraordinary facility in drawing with the point, proved his genius as an artist; but it was not till the early sixties that his pictures proved him to be possessed of individual distinction as a painter, probably because the method of handling the brush associated with the teaching which, in other respects, commanded his reverence and admiration, were alien to his finest artistic sense. no later works are to be found more notable in luminous quality of painting than "eucharis," , and "golden hours," ; none in strength and solidity of texture, or in beauty of distinguished handling, than "a noble lady of venice," about ; none in richness of arrangement combined with the fair aerial atmosphere appropriate to a grecian scene, for which leighton had so native a sympathy, than "a syracusan bride leading wild beasts in procession to the altar of diana," .[ ] later works may claim a greater public prominence among his achievements, but for actual individuality and feeling for the beauty which appealed most strongly to leighton in colour as in form, none he painted after evinced any fresh departure. [illustration: "a noble lady of venice." by permission of lord armstrong] as early as , at the age of twenty-one, leighton wrote to steinle from venice: "i must candidly confess that great as my admiration for titian (& co.) was, yet the well-known art treasures here have seized me and entranced me anew. you, dear master, are so familiar with all these things that there is nothing i can write you about them; but on one point i am fairly clear, namely, that the admirers and imitators of titian (particularly the latest) seek his charms quite in the wrong place, and i am convinced that the impressiveness of his painting lies far less in the ardour of his colouring than in the stupendous accuracy and execution of the modelling." in another letter to steinle he refers to the necessity of mastering the capacities of the brush in order to render form in a complete manner independently of the function of the brush to render colour. "those who place the brush behind the pencil, under the pretence that _form_ is before all things, make a very great mistake. form _is certainly all important_; one cannot study it enough; _but_ the greater part of _form_ falls within the province of the tabooed _brush_. the everlasting hobby of _contour_ (which belongs to the drawing material) is first the _place_ where the _form_ comes in; what, however, reveals true knowledge of form, is a powerful, organic, refined finish of modelling, full of feeling and knowledge--and that is the affair of the brush (_pinsel_)." in january leighton wrote to steinle: "you will perhaps be surprised, but, in spite of my fanatic preference for colour i promised myself to be a draughtsman before i became a colourist," and in fact leighton was fighting, throughout his whole career, against allowing the sensuous qualities in his art to override those which the teaching of steinle had proved to his nature to be the most truly elevating and ennobling. up to the age of thirty he had been overshadowed by the influence of others in the matter of actual technique in painting. from the time he settled in london he freed himself from the tutelage of all masters. as we have read in his letters, his intention was to do so in when he painted "the triumph of music;" but at that time he failed in finding his real self in his painting of that picture, and fully realised that he must _reculer pour mieux sauter_, returning in the autumn of that year to rome to be fed by the greatest art of the past, and to study again, "face to face with nature--to follow it, to watch it, and to copy, closely, faithfully, ingenuously--as ruskin suggests, choosing nothing and rejecting nothing." the studies of a pumpkin flower (meran), branch of vine (bellosquardo), cyclamen (tivoli), reproduced in chapter iii., and others, were made during this autumn of . in a letter written to mr. m. spielmann, a few years before his death, leighton describes the procedure he pursued in accomplishing a serious work. "in my pictures,--which are above all decorations in the real sense of the word,--the design is a pattern in which every line has its place and its proper relation to other lines, so that the disturbing of one of them, outside certain limits, would throw the whole out of gear. having thus determined my picture in my mind's eye, in the majority of cases i make a sketch in black and white chalk upon brown paper to fix it. in the first sketch the care with which the folds have been broadly arranged will be evident, and if it be compared with the finished picture, the very slight degree in which the general scheme has been departed from will convince the spectator of the almost scientific precision of my line of action. but there is a good reason for this determining of the draperies before the model is called in; and it is this. the nude model, no matter how practised he or she may be never moves or stands or sits, in these degenerate days, with exactly the same freedom as when draped; action or pose is always different--not so much from a sense of mental constraint as from the unusual liberty experienced by the limbs to which the muscular action invariably responds when the body is released from the discipline and confinement of clothing. "the picture having been thus determined, the model is called in, and is posed as nearly as possible in the attitude desired. as nearly as possible, i say; for, as no two faces are exactly alike, so no two models ever entirely resemble one another in body or muscular action, and cannot, therefore, pose in such a manner as exactly to correspond with either another model or another figure--no matter how correctly the latter may be drawn. from the model make the careful outline on brown paper, a true transcript from life, which may entail some slight corrections of the original design in the direction of modifying the attitude and general appearance of the figure. this would be rendered necessary probably by the bulk and material of the drapery. so far, of course, my attention is engaged exclusively by 'form,' colour being always treated more or less ideally. the figure is now placed in its surroundings, and established in exact relation to the canvas. the result is the first true sketch of the entire design, figure, and background, and is built up of the two previous ones. it must be absolutely accurate in the distribution of spaces, for it has subsequently to be 'squared off' on to the canvas, which is ordered to the exact scale of the sketch. at this moment, the design being finally determined, the sketch in oil colours is made. it has been deferred till now, because the placing of the colours is, of course, of as much importance as the harmony. this done, the canvas is for the first time produced, and thereon i enlarge the design, re-draw the outline--and never departing a hair's-breadth from the outlines and forms already obtained--and then highly finishing the whole figure in warm monochrome from the life. every muscle, every joint, every crease is there, although all this careful painting is shortly to be hidden with the draperies; such, however, is the only method of insuring absolute correctness of drawing. the fourth stage completed, i return once more to my brown paper, re-copy the outline accurately from the picture, on a larger scale than before, and resume my studies of draperies in greater detail and with still greater precision, dealing with them in sections, as parts of a homogeneous whole. the draperies are now laid with infinite care on to the living model, and are made to approximate as closely as possible to the arrangement given in the first sketch, which, as it was not haphazard, but most carefully worked out, must of necessity be adhered to. they have often to be drawn piecemeal, as a model cannot by any means always retain the attitude sufficiently long for the design to be wholly carried out at one cast.[ ] this arrangement, is effected with special reference to painting--that is to say, giving not only form and light and shade, but also the relation and 'values' of tones. the draperies are drawn over, and made to conform exactly to the forms copied from the nudes of the underpainted picture. this is a cardinal point, because in carrying out the picture the folds are found fitting mathematically on to the nude, or nudes, first established on the canvas. the next step then is to transfer the draperies to the canvas on which the design has been squared off, and this is done with flowing colour in the same monochrome as before over the nudes, to which they are intelligently applied, and which nudes must never--mentally at least--be lost sight of. the canvas has been prepared with a grey tone, lighter or darker, according to the subject in hand, and the effect to be produced. the background and accessories being now added, the whole picture presents a more or less completed aspect--resembling that, say, of a print of any warm tone. in the case of draperies of very vigorous tone, a rich flat local colour is probably rubbed over them, the modelling underneath being, though thin, so sharp and definite as to assert itself through this wash. certain portions of the picture might probably be prepared with a wash of flat tinting of a colour the opposite of that which it is eventually to receive. a blue sky, for instance, would possibly have a soft, ruddy tone spread over the canvas--the sky, which is a very definite and important part of my compositions, being as completely drawn in monochrome as any other of the design; or, for rich blue mountains a strong orange wash or tint might be used as a bed. the structure of the picture being thus absolutely complete, and the effect distinctly determined by a sketch which it is my aim to equal in the big work, i have nothing to think of but colour, and with that i now proceed deliberately, but rapidly." so far leighton explained the conscious processes he went through in creating his pictures; but does this explanation record truly the real agencies which brought about the result we see in his finest achievements? i should say no,--most emphatically no. where we can trace the sign of these processes, there the picture fails in the power of convincing. no such process produced "eucharis" nor the "syracusan bride." the process may have been gone through in painting the procession, but it is obliterated by touches instinct with a true painter's inspiration. all _teachable_ qualities leighton could _teach_ on the lines of soundest principles. his extreme modesty left others to find out that where his preaching left off the real work began in his own pictures. no one knew better than leighton that no theoretic knowledge ever made an artist; no teachable processes ever made a beautiful picture; no one knew better that head without heart never produced any work that was truly cared for. "god forgive me if i am intolerant," he wrote to steinle, "but according to my view an artist must produce his art out of his own heart; or he is none." "the chord that wakes in kindred hearts a tone, must first be tuned and vibrate in your own" were the words with which he ended his first address to the students of the royal academy. in the world's estimate of things and people, classification plays at times a pernicious part. classification in art matters may be tolerated as useful only in the education of the non-artistic. invariably the most convincing touches escape the possibility of being reduced to so dull a process of reckoning. art marked by individual spontaneity, emanating from the ego of the artificer, refuses to be levelled down into a class. critics seem at times to be strongly tempted to fit an artist's achievements into certain classes, because they have previously made up their minds as to the class the work belongs to. hence the perversion often of even an intelligent critic's estimate: certain squarenesses exist which will not fit into round holes, so, for the sake of classification, the corners must be shaved off. surely no artist ever existed who evaded being comfortably fitted into either a square or a round hole more completely than did leighton. every serious work he undertook was an entirely separate performance from any previous invention--a new venture throughout--and, once decided on, carried through with absolute conformity to the original conception. therefore any classification, beyond his mere method of working, is more sterile in producing a just estimate of leighton's art than of those workers who are in the habit of painting pictures in which the same motive recurs. essentially original in his conceptions as in his aims, and vibrating with receptiveness, he sounded nevertheless every impression he received by unchanging principles adhered to as implicit guides. he had within him at once the steadiest rock as a foundation, and the most fertile of serial growths on the surface. abiding rock and surface flora alike had had their earliest nurture, it must be remembered, in foreign parts, under other skies than that of our veiled english light--under other influences of nature and of art than that of our english climate and schooling--and it is partly owing to this fact that it is not realised by those who have never seen nature under the aspects which most delighted him, that leighton's conceptions were directly and invariably inspired by nature. those who are conversant with italy and other southern countries will possess the key to much that is misjudged by others in leighton's work. scenes which entranced his sensibilities as a boy, and, lingering ever in his fancy, gave subjects for his paintings when his art was mature, may appear to one without special knowledge of the south as mere echoes of classic art. when he was thirty-one leighton exhibited the picture "lieder ohne worte."[ ] it is no record, probably, of any particular place, nor of any particular fountain; but when strolling on a road in or near a southern town or village in italy, a view which might originally have inspired the motive may be seen at any moment. encased in a wall near albano is a fountain which certainly recalled to me the picture as, in the bright light of a may morning, the song of nightingales in the grand foliage of overhanging magnolia trees echoed the sound of the water springing from the glistening lip, and flowing over the clean curve of the marble basin into the trough below. there was the same lion's head which served as spout, the same arrangement of ornament encircling it; also a finely shaped pitcher placed below to catch the water, and--more recalling than any detail--was the echo of the real motive of the picture--the dream-like poetry of the sunlit scene, with the musical accompaniment of trickling water. had leighton painted a discobolus, it would probably never have occurred to most english critics that nature and living action had inspired the work. above the lake of albano is a road--"the upper gallery"--where every day are to be met men playing the game. any one watching it may see repeated over and over again the action in the well-known statue. nature inspired the creations of the great ancients, and it was also invariably first-hand impressions from nature that inspired leighton's creations, whatever superstructure of learning he added in the course of their development. living in italy when his feelings were most sensitive to impressions, the origin of the suggestions he imbibed is to be found in her atmosphere, colouring, and the scenes which surrounded him when his imagination was most free and fertile. later, when he lived in england, his travels in italy and greece supplied him with the subjects for the most beautiful sketches he made direct from nature. no one, i believe, has ever painted the luminous quality of white, as it is seen under heated sunlight in the south, with the same charm as leighton. the sketches he made of buildings in capri[ ] are quite marvellously true in their rendering of such effects. he made equally beautiful studies of mountains and sea, under the rarefied atmosphere of greece. he seemed always happiest, i think, when the key of his pictures and sketches was light and sunlit; in such pictures, for instance, as "winding the skein," "greek girls picking up shells by the seashore," "bath of psyche," "invocation," and others remarkable for their fairness and their light, pure tone. leighton's sympathies were adverse to the more sensuous qualities in painting. often, in discussing the works by watts, he would strongly discourage those who were, he considered, unduly influenced by the charm of the great painter's quality and texture, from endeavouring to aim at it in their own work. such a treatment, leighton maintained, might be legitimate as the natural expression of the intuitive genius of one gifted individual, but was not the treatment to copy by the student on account of any intrinsic merit. he had almost an aversion to any process which obtained effects through roughness and inequality of surface. his genuine youthful predilection, which he retained consistently throughout his life, was for the early italian art and italian method of painting _al fresco_. "to see the old florentine school again is a thing which always enchants me anew, for one can never be sated with seeing the noble sweetness, the child-like simplicity, allied with high manly feeling, which breathes in it. but i speak to you of plain things which you know far better than i."--(letter to steinle from florence, .) [illustration: greek girls picking up shells by the seashore. by permission of the right hon. joseph chamberlain] after leighton became president of the royal academy he made perugia his halting-place for some weeks during his autumn travels, while he wrote his biennial discourses for the students. he invariably stayed at the well-known brufani hotel,--mrs. brufani, with whom he made great friends, always reserving the same two rooms for him, from the windows of which he could watch the sun set behind the glorious piles of umbrian mountains to the west of perugia. from these windows he also made sketches in silver point of the distant ranges, each form modelled with exquisite delicacy and perfection, though in faintest tones. other inmates of the brufani supposed he lived in his two rooms, as he was seldom seen elsewhere in the hotel; but leighton had found a restaurant which, like his old quarters in rome--the _café greco_--was the resort of the artists living in perugia. there he would lunch, and then repair to the sala del cambio. sitting on the raised seat near the window, he would, day after day, spend an hour or more revelling in the beauty of the frescoes by perugino. then he would mount to the pinacoteca and take a deep draught of enjoyment from the tempera paintings of perugino's master, benedetto bonfiglio, leighton's favourite of favourites ("they are all my _bonfigli_!" he would exclaim), whose angels' aureoles rest on wreaths of roses, and whose lovely work perugia seems to have monopolised. the old paintings of martino, gentile da fabiano, pietro da foligno, and their followers leighton also loved, likewise the later work of bernardino pinturicchio and lo spagna, pupils with raphael of perugino. among his greatest favourites were the painted banners--the _gonfalone_--which are peculiar to the umbrian cities. he loved the freshness of their quality--the result of a first painting never retouched--the masterly ease of the workmanship, full of tender, gracious beauty. these days were leighton's real holidays, where, in rapturous admiration of the art he loved so profoundly, he put behind him for the time the weight of official responsibility, and the no less exhausting social duties of his life. had leighton been able to devote himself to the method of painting in fresco, and to work in a warm, dry climate, which admits of painting into the wet surface of plaster without danger of the wall retaining the moisture, he would, undoubtedly, have felt a freer impulse to work rapidly and more spontaneously than when his touch was controlled by the complicated procedures in oil painting. in the process of painting _al fresco_, colour, in a sense, models itself--its absorption into the wet plaster softening the edges of one touch into another; hence, over a first painting no half obliteration is necessary, and any elaborate finish is avoided. being obliged to complete before the plaster was dry, leighton could not have yielded to the temptation to over-refine his surface; and his splendid power as a draughtsman, allied to his sense of beauty, would have found a perfectly spontaneous, happy utterance. as a boy he had imbibed one great principle, and from this principle he never deviated. he wrote, "the thoroughness of all the great masters is so pervading a quality that i look upon them all as forming one aristocracy." in his sketches alone did leighton relax from the strain which absolute thoroughness involves; and then, in all the fervour of æsthetic inspiration, colour would fly on canvas, chalk or paper, with a charm of quality and exquisite grace of line and form which, as mr. briton rivière remarks, is the very best that can be obtained from a great artist thoroughly trained, but which condition leighton would never admit into what he considered his serious work. he writes to his father from rome, january : "i was deeply impressed with the glorious works of art i saw in venice and florence, and was particularly struck with the exquisitely _elaborate_ finish of most of the leading works by _whatever_ master; the highest possible finish combined with the greatest possible breadth and grandeur of disposition in the principal masses. art with the old masters was full of love, refined,--sterling." leighton formed his standard from these old masters, and never for a moment allowed his standard to be replaced by another. in certain types of englishmen chivalric loyalty develops at times into obstinacy. leighton, with all his passion for italy, his artistic sensitiveness, his excitability, his finely wrought nervous temperament, and his intense power of sympathy, had also in his blood something of the old english tory, which made him adhere and remain loyal to the strongest impressions of his youth. catholic and generous as he always proved himself to be when it was a question of considering the work of others, when he was considering his own he ever maintained absolute consistency with the tenets of his early illuminations. speaking of his extraordinary sense of duty and the consequent tension involved, mr. briton rivière writes:-- "no doubt the constant wear and tear occasioned by the perpetual strain of mental and physical watchfulness did much to shorten his life; i think it sometimes injured his own work as an artist, because, though a great artist can never be evolved except by years of patient work and strenuous effort to do his very best always, yet, on the other hand, it is often the happy, easy work and absolutely spontaneous effort of the moment by such a hand which is his very best. such happy, easy work probably leighton would seldom allow himself to do, and never would leave at the right moment, but would still strive to make better and more complete. he must still elaborate it and try to make it more perfect; and this it was that made his enthusiastic admirer watts sometimes say, 'how much finer leighton's work would be if he would admit the accidental into it.'" a fact, little suspected by the public, certainly affected the element of strength in some of leighton's works. besides often suffering from a positive want of health, his normal physical condition was far from robust; and, as appears in his letters, he suffered much through weakness and irritation in the eyes from the time he was a boy. he did not wear his physical (or any other) distress on his sleeve, and experienced many hindrances in his work never dreamt of, even by his intimate acquaintances. these might not have been so serious had he been willing to sacrifice all other duties in life to his own special vocation; but though he realised that art, the language of beauty, was his main passion, his conscience would not allow him to make this passion an excuse for avoiding help to his generation on other lines, if he distinctly felt he could do so. in the happiest of surroundings, with his life unburdened by public responsibilities, he painted "cimabue's madonna"; and, for pure vigour in the manipulation, this painting has a robust quality which is scarcely to be found in any other of the larger works which followed, though these may possess many other virtues, and evince a more definite individuality, than does the early work. leighton's art appeals to the artists (comparatively few in england) possessed of cosmopolitan culture--also to many who love beauty, a sense of refined distinction in feeling and in form and in the arrangement of line. beyond these it appeals also to the great public outside the radius of specialists, a public which is impressed by a sense of beauty and achievement without possessing the knowledge of experts. it is not much cared for by the disciples of either of the latest schools in england, and in france, which have governed fashion in the matter of taste for the last twenty years. in the first place, it appeals but little to those to whom the highest province of art appears to consist in conveying didactic sentiments and poetic ideas through a language of form and colour--to suggest thought to the brain rather than beauty to the eye. respecting this theory of the province of art, leighton expresses himself clearly in his second address to the royal academy students in december :-- "now the language of art is not the appointed vehicle of ethic truths; of these, as of all knowledge as distinct from emotion, though not necessarily separated from it, the obvious and only fitted vehicle is speech, written or spoken--words, the symbols of ideas. the simplest spoken homily, if sincere in spirit and lofty in tone, will have more direct didactic efficacy than all the works of all the most pious painters and sculptors from giotto to michael angelo; more than the passion music of bach, more than a requiem by cherubini, more than an oratorio of handel. "it is not, then, it cannot be the foremost duty of art to seek to embody that which it cannot adequately present, and to enter into a competition in which it is doomed to inevitable defeat." that so great a painter as watts should have taken a contrary view, and preached this contrary view as that which inspired his own _conscious_ aims, was quite sufficient to secure to it many adherents. he preached his doctrine, moreover, with a most convincing argument, but one which cannot logically be used in favour of it, namely, his own great genius as a _painter_. watts was essentially a _painter_--one who at his best ranks with the best painters of all times. mr. arthur symons, writing on "the psychology of watts,"[ ] quotes a popular preacher who affirmed that "critics who approach his (watts') work from the side of technical excellence do not interest him at all. his endeavour has been to make his pictures as good as works of art as was possible to him, for fear that they should fail altogether in their appeal; but, beyond that, their excellence as mere pictures is nothing to him." "now," writes mr. symons, "it is quite possible that watts may have really said or written something of the kind; he may even, when he set himself down to think, have thought it. the conscious mental processes of an artist have often little enough relation with his work as art; by no means is every artist a critic as well as an artist. but to take a great painter at his word, if he assures you that the excellence of his pictures 'as mere pictures' is nothing to him; to suppose seriously that at the root of his painting was not the desire to paint; to believe for a moment that great pictorial work has ever been done except by those who were painters first, and everything else afterwards, is to confuse the elementary notions of things, hopelessly and finally. and so, when we are told that the technical excellence of watts' pictures is of little consequence, we can but answer that to the 'painter of earnest truths,' as to all painters, nothing can be of more consequence; for it is only through this technical excellence that 'hope,' or 'the happy warrior,' or 'love and life,' is to be preferred to the picture leaflet which the district missionary distributes on his way through the streets." all who knew watts intimately and watched him working day by day can testify that he spared no labour, time, or patience, in working over and over on a picture in order to attain the finest quality in the actual surface which his material--paint--could possibly produce. neither the disciples of the original brotherhood of the pre-raphaelites nor those of burne-jones care, as a rule, for leighton's art. though starting as one with the pre-raphaelites, burne-jones, possessing a remarkably fine intellect, a subtle fancy, a rich inventiveness in the detail of design, an exquisite sense of grace, and great genius as a colourist, developed so distinct an individuality that his followers cannot be precisely identified with those of the pre-raphaelites. leighton fully appreciated the genius of burne-jones, and did all in his power to secure his adherence to the academy; but he had no sympathy for that feeling in art evinced by burne-jones' followers, which is so essentially rooted in purely personal moods that even distortion of the human frame is condoned, so long as prominence is given to the suggestion of such moods. imbued with a rare, peculiar refinement all its own, a kind of æsthetic creed sprang up in the later days of the nineteenth century apart from the arid soil of commonplace respectability and tasteless materialism. burne-jones painted it, kate vaughan danced it, maeterlinck wrote it, the "souls" (rather unsuccessfully) attempted to live it, the humourists caricatured it, the philistines denounced it as morbid and unwholesome. leighton was tolerant and amused, but could not be very solemn over it. and, assuredly, already this creed has been whisked away into the past by fashions diametrically opposed to it in character. its text may be found in melisande's reiterated refrain, "i am not happy"--though the unhappiness does not seem ever to have been of the nature of the iron which entered into the soul, but rather the shadow of sadness, adopted with the idea that such a condition betokens a more rare and tender grace than the radiance of joy can give. every mood of the subjective has been lately in fashion in æsthetic circles, and is still rampant in much of the up-to-date (or down-to-date, as it may be) conditions of the present taste. this is probably consequent on the leadership of those artists who possessed not only genius and sense of beauty, but a peculiar charm of texture in their work which seems a native adjunct to certain temperaments. it is a purely personal manner, and crops up without reference apparently to any special school of art. in sodoma we find it allied to a development of the splendid completeness of italian art; again in the celt, watts, to a lofty imagination and to a pheidian sensibility for noble form; it appears in the work of the jew, simeon solomon; and is an element in burne-jones' lovely quality of painting especially noticeable in his water-colour drawings--and, on a smaller scale of workmanship, in the pictures by pinwell. it is more a matter of quality than of colour, and yet it is only colourists who have possessed it--most obviously, however, where the key of colour is restrained almost to monochrome. a hint of it can be found in tintoretto's paintings, where few positive tints are prominent, as in some of the ceiling paintings in the ducal palace at venice. there is a something which this special handling suggests which possesses a very subtle charm, the charm of dreamland,--less tangible, less real than direct appeals from nature. a slight mystery seems to veil the vision like a reflection swayed by the surface of the water. it is less explicit than any real object, and only suggests completion without quite achieving it; there is something left out from the aspect of nature, something added from the ego of the artist. there are those to whom such a treatment suggests a deeper truth than can any wholly explicit expression, because they feel forcibly that mystery is the soul of all earthly conditions--"we see through a glass darkly." there are others--and leighton was among these--who are so strongly imbued with a sense of the wonderful and marvellous in actual creation that they need no art, no veiled suggestion of the hidden, in order to realise that our lives are wrapped in mystery from the cradle to the grave. this quality in painting alluded to, fits in with that taste in literature which prefers hints to assertions--that insistency on the value of what is, after all, but a _fugitive_ phase in special temperaments--that setting most value on the principle of suggestion rather than of definition, of which we hear so much. the devotees of maeterlinck delight in the shadow of a thought rather than the thought _arrêté_; they feel that a further stage of refined culture is reached in worshipping a style you have to get somehow behind, rather than one in which thoughts are fully and frankly expressed. doubtless it requires a more subtile weapon to catch the fleeting aroma, the hint of a thought trembling in the brain and giving it permanent existence in art, than to carve the expression of a complete idea explicitly with cameo-like precision, be it in the form of words or a visual impression--the wise sayings of a solomon or a bacon, the sculpture of a pheidias or the painting of a leonardo da vinci. the actual visible facts in the aspects of nature, which were of such entrancing interest to leighton, become of less and less interest to the wide public as the human intelligence is trained more and more through books, less and less through the eye; our modern conditions making the world we live in, more and more ugly and uninspiring to the echoing tune of nature within us. even if we recede into the depths of the country, we find the signs all round us of the sense of beauty being deadened, the revulsion against ugliness having ceased--corrugated iron supplanting thatched roofing, and the loveliest, most rural spots in england year after year newly deprived of some special charm they have possessed for centuries. those who seek for beauty have been led to find it in the unreal--the things which might be, but are not. we cannot help it, but we certainly become more artificial as our civilisation becomes more complicated, and everything we see around us grows uglier. it is because the general public has so little genuine interest in art or love of beauty, however great may be its professions, that the tendency has developed to care for the art which appeals rather to the mind and the æsthetic sensibilities generally, than to the actual vision. this reign of the subjective has brought in its train the undue monopolising of the world's most ardent interest in one passion. french novels of great literary power secured to it the monopoly in france, and magnates in æsthetic culture have grafted it on to our english taste. this strongest and most beautiful feeling in human nature has been so monotonously forced upon us in literature _à tort et à travers_--the assumption that this is the only feeling worth serious consideration has been dwelt on with such a tiresome pertinacity--it has been so often caricatured, so often debased in books and pictures, that even the real thing itself runs a danger of palling. this human passion may be the greatest, but it is not the only great feeling with which the lives of men and women are enriched; and surely the absorbing prominence which has been given to it latterly in literature is out of proportion with its real position in healthy lives. little sympathy seems left for other deep and stirring emotions. in leighton's art we find no monopoly of this kind either recorded or suggested. he painted the passion of lovers in the "paolo and francesca," but with no more sincere interest than he did other feelings; than, for instance, his fervent and reverent worship of art in "cimabue's madonna," or in the ecstasy of joy in the child flying into the embrace of her mother in "the return of persephone," or in the exquisite tender feeling of elisha breathing renewed life into the shunammite's son, or in that sense of rest and peace after struggle in the lovely figure of "ariadne" when death releases her from her pain; or in the yearning for that peace in the "king david": "oh that i had wings like a dove! for then would i fly away and be at rest." as the climax of nature's loveliest creations leighton treated the human form with a courageous purity. in his undraped figures there is the same total absence of the mark of the degenerate as there is in everything he did and was; no remote hint of any _double-entendre_ veiled by æsthetic refinement, any more than there is in the bible, the _iliad_, or in the sculpture of pheidias. to quote lines that were written about leighton very shortly before his death:-- "there is truly to be traced in the feeling of his art that 'seal on a man's work of what is most inward and peculiar in his moods'; the sign of individual intimate preferences and of the moving power which certain aspects of beauty have had upon the artist's innermost susceptibilities, though these may be somewhat veiled and distanced by being translated through the reserved form of a classic garb. perhaps it is this reserve which invests sir frederic leighton's art with the special aroma of poetry which robert browning found in it to a greater extent than in any other work of his time.[ ] whether in his larger compositions, in the complicated grouping of many figures, such as the cimabue picture being led in procession through the streets of florence, the 'daphnephoria,' 'heracles struggling with death,' the 'andromache,' the 'cymon and iphigenia,' and others; or those simpler compositions, such as the 'summer moon,' 'wedded,' 'the mountain summit,' 'the music lesson,' 'sister's kiss,' in all can be traced the sentiment of a poet inspiring the touch; not overriding by any assertiveness of sentiment the complete scheme of the picture, but lingering here and there with a wistful loveliness which has to be sought for within the barriers of the formal classic design. and it is this reticence in the expression of individual sentiment, this subduing it to the larger conditions of a more abstract style of art which, though it will never make sir frederic leighton's work directly popular, gives to it a quality of distinction. in such reticence is an element of greatness which probably will only be duly appreciated when the more transient moods of thought in the present generation have passed. his work lacks altogether the sentimental, brooding-over-self quality, which, when allied to genius, is contagious, and gives an interest of a subtle, but perhaps not altogether wholesome kind to some of the best work of this era." and again after his death:-- "beauty of every kind played on a very sensitive instrument, when it made an appeal to his nature, giving him very positive joy: no complication of subtle interest beyond the actual influence being required before a responding echo was sounded, because so pure and innocent was this joy he had in the charm of beauty;--so also attendant on his personal influence, there was no power of mesmerism, nor of the black arts. in every direction it was healthy and bracing. even a nordau could have discovered no remotest taint of the degenerate!" it is the emotions which art suggests outside itself which have been viewed by one school as more interesting than art itself, and it is the sensuous qualities in painting--colour and texture--which are the visible agents, and convey more readily these suggestions of emotions in our northern temperaments than do beautiful lines and forms. our northern temperaments also love symbolism and mysticism, therefore are apt to favour the art that meets a veiled condition of things; and the perfection of complete finish in nature's form is no longer held up as a standard for the student to aim at. leighton had no sympathy with the artificial, neither had he any with the shadow put in the place of the substance. the actual was ever sufficient for him, for in nature herself he never failed to find sufficient inspiration. the mind of the creator in matter is what the ingenuous artist temperament searches for and is inspired to record; whereas it is, on the one hand, phases of human moods, selections from human passions, good, bad, and indifferent, which are made to saturate the feeling in much of our modern art, or, on the other hand, aspects of nature's moods given without the framework of her structure, and without the detail of her perfection. it may be argued, however, that there are among the most beautiful effects in nature those which are not fully distinct to the sight--the shimmering iridescence on a shell, where one colour is seen sparkling against another through a film, or the waving branches of a willow, the liquid shifting of a flowing stream, or the endless effects of cloud and mist in a northern sky. to express this in paint requires an appropriate treatment in the manipulation of the pigment itself. watts' theory was that you have to unfinish the record of certain facts in order to render the truth of the whole fact (see also steinle's criticism on leighton's head of "vincenzo," ). he would, therefore, film his painting over with a scumble of white, and only partially repaint the surface, in order to get at that whole truth which includes the bloom of atmosphere and the veil of northern mists. leighton is thought at times to have erred on the side of explicitness, and the texture of his surface is apt undoubtedly to lack the vibrating quality which carries with it a beauty of its own. this is partly accounted for by the fact that he had imbibed the rudiments of his teaching in a school whose followers were not sensitive to the finest qualities in oil painting, but also probably from his extreme desire to give expression to his sense of the intense finish in nature. doctrinaires of the very latest fashion in art insist that nothing comes legitimately within the province of the pictorial, except the impression of nature transmitted to the physical organ detached from memory, experience, and mind. by this faction the eye is treated solely as a machine. sound as may be the doctrine that art has nothing to do with what the eye cannot see, or with those facts which experience alone teaches us are there, it is also no less true that the human eye sees, according to its intuitive power of transmitting to the brain, the different component parts of the actual object of its vision. it was no knowledge of anatomy which enabled pheidias to see every subtilty of form in the human figure with consummate insight--any more than it was a knowledge of the laws of the flow and ebb of the tides, which enabled whistler to give an actual sense of the swaying surface of the waves in "valparaiso bay"; again, it was no knowledge of botany which enabled leighton and millais to reproduce the structure of plants so perfectly, that they evoked unmitigated admiration as botanical studies from so high an authority on botany as sir w.c. thistleton dyer. we may be told that what we really see is only the relation of tone, of light and shadow; but the fact that the architecture of the whole visible world, the meaning-full construction of all things that nature builds, is being constantly realised by our sight, makes the truth of this theory at least doubtful. that our eye cannot discern these natural objects without light goes without saying; further, that light and shadow shape the forms to be rendered by the brush is also true: but the assertion that what we see is only light and shade playing upon form, is shutting the door on another equally obvious truth. the eye, gifted with a natural sense of form, records ingenuously to the brain the sense of projecting and receding planes, the foreshortening of masses, the straightness, slant, or curve in a surface or in a line. a complete and exhaustive result may be achieved in a painting through this sense of form, as in the work of van eycke and of leonardo da vinci; or a shorthand record may be made, as in that of phil may's sketches. but we feel that in both the sense of the whole form has been felt. however, volumes would not exhaust the arguments for and against the so-called impressionist's view of art; so-called--but surely a term unfortunate and misleading, and in nowise explanatory. every touch a true artist ever puts upon canvas is a record of an impression--whether that impression comprises the structure, light and shade, true colour and tone, all combined,--or only certain surface qualities extracted from its entirety and enforced so that the most obvious appearances start into relief, giving doubtless a sense of vitality to a work, but remaining nevertheless only a partial record of the object. needless to say, leighton sought to record his impressions of nature in their entirety, and this necessitated a balancing of their component attributes. the startling element is never found in his art. he viewed the influence of art as one which should perfect the life of every class; should purify in all directions the debasing elements of materialism and self-interest; should put zest and gratitude into the hearts of all men and women who can see and feel, by awakening a sense of the perfection and beauty of nature, art forming an explanatory and illuminating link between her and mankind--a translation of her perfection transmitted with all reverence by the artificer;--a perfecting beautiful pinnacle in the erection and development of a noble human being. no words could better describe leighton's high endeavour in training his own mind and those whom he tried to influence, than the following, written by lord acton and quoted by his friend, sir m. grant duff.[ ] "if i had the power," writes sir m. grant duff, "i would place upon his monument the words which he wrote as a preface to a list of ninety-eight books he drew up, and about which he still hoped to read a paper at cambridge when he wrote to me on the subject last autumn. 'this list is submitted with a view to assisting an english youth, whose education is finished, who knows common things, and is not training for a profession, to perfect his mind and open windows in every direction; to raise him to the level of his age, so that he may know the forces that have made the world what it is, and still reign over it; to guard against surprises and against the constant sources of errors within; to supply him both with the strongest stimulants and the surest guides; to give force and fulness, and clearness and sincerity, independence and elevation, generosity and serenity to his mind, that he may know the method and lay of the process by which error is conquered and truth is won, discerning knowledge from probability and prejudice from belief; that he may learn to master what he rejects as fully as what he adopts; that he may understand the origin as well as the strength and vitality of systems, and the better motives of men who are wrong; to steel him against the charm of literary beauty and talent, so that each book, thoroughly taken in, shall be the beginning of a new life, and shall make a new man of him.'" in a like spirit leighton sought to arrive at viewing art; and what lord acton sought to effect by the general culture of men's minds and natures through reading, leighton sought to effect in his special vocation by inducing other artists to study all that was greatest in art from a wide and unprejudiced point of view--making it their own, so to speak, by thoroughly realising and appreciating the qualities in it which make it great. each true masterpiece in art, he urged, should be thoroughly taken in, and should be the beginning of a new effort. on the other hand, he sought to make the student "learn to master what he rejects as fully as what he adopts, that he may understand the origin as well as the strength and vitality of systems, and the better motives of men who are wrong." his desire was to guide art into the current of the world's best interests--the current in which good literature is so forcible an agent--on the highest, broadest, most catholic lines. he endeavoured to do so by his example as a working artist, by his discourses, by his labours for the public in every direction where the art of his country was concerned, and more directly by his influence on those with whom he personally came in contact. footnotes: [ ] this picture has, i believe, unfortunately left the country. it was suggested by a passage in the second idyll of theocritus: "and for her, then many other wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a lioness." sketches for portions of the picture and the squared tracing for the complete design can be seen in the leighton house collection. the full-length portrait of mrs. james guthrie was exhibited the same year as this second processional picture, which appeared on the walls of the academy eleven years after the "cimabue's madonna." the head of the central figure, the bride, leighton painted from mrs. guthrie. the following charming letter from mrs. norton, the most notable of sheridan's three beautiful daughters, refers to this picture:-- chesterfield street, _april _. dear mr. leighton,--i was so amused by the little grandson's observation on the picture that i cannot help writing about him. i asked him "what he thought of it"? he said, "oh! it was _beautiful_! but you told me it would be beautiful--_mr. leighton_ was like a _man in a story_! you did not look so much at him as carlotta and i did, but i suppose you have seen him before, and you did not seem to _pity the little panther_! there was, in the picture, a little young _puppy_ panther, and one of the young brides was coaxing it so tenderly, and looking down at its head; and she was one of the prettiest and kindest looking of all the brides (it was the side of the picture furthest from the screen); and i could not help thinking, 'ah, my poor little panther! you little know when the brides get into that temple, and she gets married, how she'll forget all about you, and get coaxing other things, her husband and her children'; and i felt quite sorry for the panther." so spoke my grandson (just as i felt sorry for the cripple beggar). now, as i am quite sure no one else will take this view of what is the principal interest in your glorious procession of youth and hope, i thought it as well to let you know, that you might give that little panther his due importance (a little leopard, i think he is), and not suppose him a subordinate accessory! that whole procession was tinged with mournfulness in richard norton's eyes for that little leopard's sake. i shall see that "dream of fair women" again in the exhibition, and admire it, as i did to-day, in a crowd of other admirers, i know. i do not mind the crowd. i see over them and under them, and through them, when there is anything so worth being eager about.--believe me meanwhile, yours very truly, caroline norton. [ ] in a letter from leighton to his mother, the following sentence occurs:--"will you please explain to him" (his father) "that i am not going to model the _drapery_ of my figures, but the _figures themselves_ to lay the drapery on, as my models could not fly sufficiently long for me to draw them in the act; it is of course a very great delay, but the result will amply make up for the extra trouble, i hope." [ ] the picture has left the country, but sketches of the complete design are among those in the leighton house collection. [ ] lent by lady wantage to the exhibition, in leighton house, of the smaller works and sketches in . [ ] _outlook_, july th, . [ ] when standing with me before leighton's picture "wedded" in the studio robert browning exclaimed, "i find a poetry in that man's work i can find in no other." [ ] "the late lord acton." _the spectator_, july , . chapter i first studio in london - in leighton was represented on the royal academy walls by two pictures, "the fisherman and the syren"--a subject from goethe's ballad, "half drew she him, half sunk he in, and never more was seen"-- and by a scene from "romeo and juliet," both small canvases painted in rome and in paris.[ ] leighton at this time received an encouraging letter from robert fleury, from whom he had learned much:-- que parlez vous de reconnaissance, mon cher monsieur leighton? de l'amitié je le veux bien, et je reçois, à ce titre seulement, le dessin que vous m'avez envoyé. ne me suis je pas fait plaisir en vous reconnaissant du talent et en vous rendant la justice qui vous est due? si vous m'avez donné l'occasion de vous faire part de ma vieille espérance n'est ce pas une preuve de l'estime que vous faites de mes conseils? puisque vous m'offrez généreusement votre amitié, je l'accepte de bien bon coeur, et votre petit dessin me restera comme un gracieux souvenir de vous. robert fleury. paris, _le mars _. in the autumn of leighton was back in rome, and it was at that time the king, then prince of wales, first visited his studio. "i myself had the advantage of knowing him (leighton) for a great number of years--ever since i was a boy--and i need hardly say how deeply i deplore the fact that he can be no more in our midst," were the words spoken by the king--thirty-nine years after this first meeting--at the royal academy banquet, which took place after leighton's death, st may . he worked in rome till his pictures were finished for exhibition in the spring, . he wrote to his mother:-- it is my particular object and study to go to no parties, in the which i have succeeded admirably. i go often to cartwright's in the evening, that don't count; now and then to browning, now and then to the play, see a good deal of lady hoare; and that reminds me that hoare sent you some game the other day, which, however, was returned, as you were not forthcoming. by-the-bye, when i say i have made no acquaintances of interest, that is not true; odo russell, son and brother of my friends, lady william and arthur russell, and our diplomatic agent here, is a great friend of mine, and particularly sympathetic. i see him often at cartwright's, who is his _alter ego_; also i know and like miss ogle, who wrote that (i hear) exceedingly remarkable novel, "a lost love." she is a country clergyman's daughter in a remote corner of yorkshire, and wrote this book when she had, i believe, never lived out of a circle of "kettles." she is not young, but agreeable and quaint. i am just finishing the largish studies of a very handsome model here, and am about to send them off for exhibition. they seem very popular with all who see them, and are, i think, my best things. . dearest mammy,--i find to my annoyance that i have mislaid your kind letter, so that i must answer as best i can from memory. that the french and austrians have been formally requested by the pope to withdraw their troops from the states of the church is, i have ascertained from good authority, true, though how on earth you can have known in florence so long ago a thing which has only just happened, and which is still in great measure a secret here, is what i can't make out; but, dear mamma, i trust this won't prevent your coming to rome in april, as there is no chance of the evacuation being carried into effect by that time. there will be particularly (indeed exclusively) on the side of austria a great demur and _pourparler_, inasmuch as the consequences of this step will probably be most serious to her; so that for the next few months we need fear nothing. i trust you will come; however, of course i dread the responsibility of insisting too much. you will see how matters look in a few weeks. i am just about to despatch to the royal academy some studies from a very handsome model, "la nanna." i have shown them to a good many people, artists and "philistines," and they seem to be universally admired. let us hope they will be well hung in the exhibition. talking of exhibitions, you will be rather amused to hear that my "samson" has been _refused_ at the british institution, which this year is particularly weak and insignificant. it is gone in to the suffolk street now, unless too late. neither i nor anybody else has the least idea what is the cause of this strongish measure. i have sent my "negroes" to paris, and if it is not too late the "juliet" and "paris" will go there also. i think they will be well hung, as they are godfathered by mr. montfort, my kind and valuable friend. this afternoon the prince of wales came to my studio, with colonel and mrs. bruce, gibson, &c. &c. gibson spoke in the very highest terms of my pictures, so of course all the others were delighted! _tuesday morning._ i have not been able to answer your letter till now, and indeed even now i am interrupting my work to do it; i will answer all your questions categorically. first, about the brigands--i have made inquiries, and have heard of nothing new since these two cases about five weeks back, and am told that now the roads may be considered safe; indeed, no time is generally so good for travelling as just after an accident of that kind, as the authorities are on the look out: if you go by _vetturino_, there will in all probability be other _vetturini_ on the road, and you will start together and arrive together from and to the different stations on the road. you quite misunderstood the sense of my letter, dear mamma, if you imagined that i knew nothing of rumours of war, &c. &c.--so far from not knowing what is going on, i live in a hot-bed of politics, what with cartwright and what with odo russell. i expressed my surprise that you should speak with confidence of the withdrawal of the french troops when the official news of the pope's _formal request_ to that effect could not yet have reached florence, for the reason that it had not taken place; with the florentine politicians the wish must have been father to the thought. what really will happen is impossible to say; they won't withdraw till the austrians do--that is pretty certain; the french, i think, like to mislead people about it. a french general told a friend of mine that in _six weeks_ they would all be gone, but _antonelli_, who ought to be the best authority, told odo russell they would not go for six _months_, though the occupation has already ceased (as the _moniteur_ expresses it) "en principe." you see, dear mamma, that it is entirely impossible for me to give you any _definite_ information at a moment when nobody seems to know what is coming next. i should be very much disappointed if you could not come; if you settle to come, let me know in time to look for rooms at an hôtel, and tell me what you expect to give. my work would not allow me to go to florence. my pictures for the r.a. this year are three portraits in different sizes and attitudes from the same model, all _dressed_--one a small half-length, the other a kit-cat, the third a small head the size of my hand--this i have sold to lady hoare for forty guineas. it has been much coveted--lady stratford de redcliffe wanted a repetition (i never do repetitions), and mrs. phipps seemed quite distressed it was sold. the prince and his party told o. russell they liked my studio better than any they had seen in rome. my "pan" and "venus" are stowed away in london. besides the three portraits of a model mentioned in his letter, exhibited at the royal academy, , leighton sent "samson and delilah" to suffolk street. for studies of this picture, see leighton house collection. later, from naples, he wrote:-- _wednesday morning, ._ i scribble two lines in haste before starting to capri to announce my safe arrival here in the middle of the day on monday. i found here several letters from england; but, as i had presumed, that report about the sale of all my pictures was a _canard_. lord lansdowne wishes very much for a repetition of my small profile of nanna, but as i refused to make one for lady stratford, i of course can't for him. george de monbrison has very kindly consented to give up his nanna to the prince,[ ] but is evidently sadly disappointed--so much so, that i have written to offer to do what i could not under any other circumstances, _i.e._ copy it for him. this place is in great beauty. i have been received with the greatest hospitality by the hollands, with whom i have dined and supped both days. yesterday i breakfasted with augustus craven,[ ] who photographed me. he is a great adept at this art, and devotes much time to it. he has a most lovely house here, looking out on to the sea. i have nothing to add for the present, and i will write again from capri. this visit to capri produced the famous drawing of the lemon tree.[ ] mr. ruskin wrote: "two perfect early drawings are of 'a lemon tree' and of a 'byzantine well'" (see list of illustrations), "which determine for you without appeal the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. of all our present masters, sir frederic leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of correggio than any since correggio's time. but you see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained and exalted his gift of beautiful _vaghezza_." in letters to leighton, ruskin refers to these drawings:-- . dear leighton,--unless i write again i shall hope to breakfast with you on friday, and see and know evermore how a lemon differs from an orange leaf. in cases of doubtful temper, might the former more gracefully and appropriately be used for bridal chaplet?--most truly yours, j. ruskin. _ th december ._ dear leighton,--of course i want the lemon-tree! but surely you didn't offer it me before? may i come on tuesday afternoon for both? and i hope to bring "golden water," but i hear there's some confusion between the academy and the burlington club. "golden water" is perhaps too small a drawing for the academy--but you'll see. i wish the lecture on sculpture you gave that jury the other day had been to a larger audience, and i one of them.--ever affectionately yours, j. ruskin. _ th november._ dear leighton,--i brought up the "byzantine well,"[ ] but was forced to trust my friend, john simon, to bring it across the park to you, and then forbid him till i wrote you this note, asking you to spare a moment to show him the "damascus glass and arab fountain." he is, as you know, a man of great eminence, with a weakness for _painting_, which greatly hinders him in his science.--ever your loving, j.r. i can't get lectures printed yet. with reference to differences of opinion which had arisen between them on certain art questions, ruskin wrote in : "i expected so much help from you after those orange (lemon) trees of yours!" later ( ) he wrote: "the pre-raphaelite schism, and most of all, turner's death, broke my relations with the royal academy. i hope they may in future be kinder; its president (leighton) has just sent me two lovely drawings (the 'lemon tree' and the 'byzantine well') for the oxford schools, and, i think, feels with me as to all the main principles of art education." after his visit to capri leighton returned to london. he stayed with mr. henry greville, and while there wrote to his mother the following letters:-- queen street, _wednesday morning, _. i have so far altered my plans that i stay on until saturday morning instead of going to-morrow with mrs. sartoris as i had intended. i have still a call or two to make, and, besides, am going to dine to-morrow with mario and spend the evening of friday at lord lansdowne's, whose invitation i got though i had not called on him. i suppose that a card was sent me because my name was on the old list. i have since met him (at henry's party), and he made himself very amiable, renewing the invitation by word of mouth. i have just been spending two or three days at old windsor with miss thackeray, who has been kindness itself as usual; the weather was divine, and we took exquisite drives. chorley[ ] also has been a kind friend to me; he took me twice to the handel festival, seating me, conveying me, breakfasting me, and, but that i was engaged, would have dined me. the festival was, as you have no doubt read in the papers, most successful, the choruses, considering the enormous difficulty of training such masses of people ( !) were excellent; the quantity of sound produced was, of course, enormous, still there was no _din_, nothing stunning, only an exceedingly dense and close-textured quality of sound. the solo singers varied in excellence. clara novello shone by the quality of her voice, which carries any distance, and by the correctness of her singing, but to me she is entirely without charm, and left me as cold after the great song of the nativity in the "messiah" as if she had not sung at all. miss dolby sang well throughout; she was remarkable for the excessive decorum and simplicity of her singing. she finishes a phrase with great breadth; her voice, to some people disagreeable, is to me very _simpatica_, and she gave me altogether the greatest pleasure. sims reeves, whom but a few days back i heard sing so badly at liverpool, astounded me here by the remarkable care and study he brought to bear on his solos. he sang in the "messiah," beginning with "behold and see if there be any sorrow," &c. he sang exquisitely; and in the "israel" he sang "the enemy said" (a very ungrateful song) as well as possible. he was vociferously encored, and well deserved it. ---- was simply abominable, without a redeeming point. ----, though less aggressively bad, was too insignificant to say much about at all. of course, altogether, the solos, especially the more vigorous ones, were too weak for the choruses; that could not be otherwise short of having four pair of lablache lungs. costa led to perfection; it was a sight to see him. _friday_, paris. dearest mamma,--i write you a few lines just to announce my safe return to paris. you have no doubt by this time got the box back again. henry was, as always, very kind to me, and i spent three days very simply at his house. i had intended, when i left this, to stay only two days in london, but those days being saturday and sunday, i remembered that all the galleries were shut, and therefore, being most anxious to see the new veronese, i stayed over monday. i was delighted with the pictures in the national gallery and also at marlborough house, but the annual exhibition at the british institution is _deplorable_. i have decided, on the advice of buckner, colnaghi, and others, to send my "niggers" ("a negro dance"--water-colour--from sketch made in algiers) to the suffolk street exhibition (where i shall be well hung through buckner's intervention) _if_ i get done in time: it will be a hard race, as the exhibition opens a month sooner than the r.a. i reached home tuesday evening at - / o'clock, after a good passage; i was, however, suffering from a shocking indigestion, and, to crown all, was kept awake till four in the morning by a ball immediately under my bed. next morning i had to paint away at gallatti (my model) willy nilly (particularly nilly), feeling seedy and frightfully cross. however, my "gehazi" is now as near as possible finished, and to-morrow i go in for the "niggers." i hope, dear mamma, you will let me hear at once what lina or suth. write; i am most anxious to hear more. good-bye, dear mamma. best love to all from your most affectionate fred. _friday, th._ i am happy to say i have just done my "niggers," and though too late for the ordinary mode of conveyance on account of an accident in the papers, i am saved by the exceeding kindness of a secretary of the sardinian embassy, a great friend of mine; it will be taken over on monday night by a messenger under the seals of the embassy, and will just arrive in time. on sunday i hope to show it to monfort, fleury, and scheffer. i will let you know their verdict. from america i have good and bad news. the bad is that my "pan" and "venus" are _not being exhibited at all_ on account of their nudity, and are stowed away in a cupboard where f. kemble with the most friendly and untiring perseverance contrived to discover them. this is a great nuisance. i have sent for them back at once; they know best whether or no it is advisable to exhibit such pictures in america, but they certainly should have let me know. i have written to rossetti about it to-day, expressing my regret and desires, and have added "my pictures have been exposed to the wear and tear of several long journeys _not only_ entirely for no purpose, but, being shut out from the light, they are even suffering an injury; meanwhile i am neglecting the opportunity of showing and disposing of them in england, a possibility which i might willingly forego for the sake of supporting an enterprise in which i am interested, but not to adorn a hidden closet in the united states." fanny kemble was charmed with the pictures, went often and pluckily to the forbidden cupboard, and said she only wished she could afford to buy them. _friday._ since i last wrote i have had a note from rossetti, the secretary of the american exhibition, giving me a piece of information about my "romeo" which can't fail to gratify you. he said that, had my picture not been bought by mr. harrison, a public subscription would have been opened to procure it for the academy of arts at philadelphia. rossetti answers me (as indeed i did not doubt) that he had not the remotest notion of the fate of "pan" and "venus." he has written on my request to beg they may be sent back at once to europe. by henry greville's urgent advice i have given notice that i shall send the "orpheus," as they have applied for more pictures; things were selling so satisfactorily that there was scarcely anything left to exhibit in boston. i am glad to be able to reassure you about the "niggers." sartoris _did_ like them exceedingly even before they were anything like as good as they are now. cartwright, who is not _géné_ to dislike, is enchanted with them, and says if they are not sold at once people are fools, for he has not for some time seen anything he likes so much. puliza ricardo and other "publics" like it extremely. robert fleury considered it highly original, and said that if he only saw one little head in it he would say, "c'est d'un coloriste." r. fleury, you know, blames very roundly what he does not like. montfort, my most candid adviser, was delighted, and said of a particular bit "je vous assure c'est tout à fait comme decamps." this is unconditional praise. again i consulted him about its chances of success in the gallery of water-colours. he said, "_comme aquarelle_ je vous promets qu'il n'y en a pas beaucoup qui font comme cela;"--about water colour being _infra. dig._, showing myself competent in _two_ materials can only raise me. poor scheffer was unwell and could not come. you see, dear mammy, you need not be so uneasy. i fully appreciate your and papa's anxiety about my pictures; but it has too great a hold on you when it makes you think that i am entirely reckless and foolish, and that rather than give in i should tell a lie and say it was too late to withdraw a picture when it might still be done. many thanks for the extract about sutherland which, however, i had already seen, henry grev. having sent it me a week ago. my "niggers" arrived in time by great luck. buckner godfathers them. in haste with very best love, your affectionate boy, fred. queen street, . i have got, through the kindness of elmore (r.a.), a sort of studio at the other end of the world; i believe i told you this in my last note; i suppose my things will come over in a week or less. i am in great doubt about being able to paint in that studio, and about its having been any use to come over to london without the possibility of a really good _locale_: however, here i am. i shall brush up my acquaintances and see a good deal of my friends. don't reckon on my _selling_ anything--_i_ don't at all. my picture is hung so that it is virtually _impossible_ to see it. i went to look at my "niggers" in suffolk street, and am confirmed in the idea (that also of my friends) that it is my best work. i have as yet nothing worth writing about, so good-bye, dearest mamma, best love to all. orme square, _sunday, _. having got on monday last into my studio and been very busy ever since, this is absolutely the first moment i have found to sit down and write to you. you will wish to know some particulars about my studio. of course after paris and rome it is a sad falling off--narrow and dark, though i believe, for london, very fair; when i _live_ here i must have a much larger light or i shall go blind--however, i must not look a gift horse in the mouth. i have had to furnish--this costs me about nine or ten shillings a week; i keep a servant (a stupid, pompous, verbose, dirty, willing, honest scrub) to run my errands and clean my brushes, &c. &c., at half-a-crown a day; models are five shillings a sitting here--ruination!--men with good heads there are none--women, tol-lol!--a lay figure, twenty-five shillings a month; in short, historical painting here is not for nothing; i am working at my "samson" picture; god knows how i shall finish it in so short a time! dearest mammy, i shall have but a very short peep at you this year, i am very sorry to say--i lost a full month waiting for this wretched studio. i don't see my way through my work before the middle or even end of the second week in august, and i cannot well give up going to scotland though only for a very few days, as i have accepted so long ago. i am to go there on the th; after that i must rush back post-haste to stourhead to finish lady hoare; all this will make me very late for italy, as i am anxious to revisit the north of that country and study the correggios a little at parma before going south. i shall be obliged to scamper across the country. i _must_ be in rome or the neighbourhood in october; i am going to finish my cervara landscape on the spot. i am in very fair health, london decidedly agrees with me, and i don't suffer as much as i expected from the obligato spleen of blue devildom. i need not say this is a source of immense congratulation to me. when the picture "nanna" returned from the royal academy, where it was exhibited in , leighton sent it to bath, writing to his mother to announce its arrival. london, . dearest mammy,--i scribble a word in haste to announce to you that i have sent "nanna" off to bath for you to see, she wants varnish very badly as you see, but is not dry enough for that yet. you must mind and put her in the right light, the window must be on the left of the spectator--the more to the _left_ of the picture you stand yourself the less you will see the want of varnish. if you stand to the _right_ of the painting you won't see it at all. please send "nanna" back when you have shown to whom you wish, as she is overdue at paris. _saturday morning, ._ i returned yesterday from the highlands, and have at last time to write you a little word. my stay in the north has been most satisfactory, i have enjoyed myself thoroughly, and have felt particularly well in the keen bracing air of the mountains. my time has been spent exclusively in walks, rides, and drives, for the weather was great part of the time too uncertain to allow of sitting out to paint (even had there been time), whereas no amount of showers prevented our going out, and indeed to those showers i owe seeing some of the most superb effects of colour, light and shade, that i ever beheld. we used sometimes to have three or four duckings in one ride, drying again in the sun, or not as the case might be, and never catching even the phantom of a cold, so healthy and invigorating is the breath of those healthy hills. i said i painted nothing and bring home an empty portfolio (all but a flower i drew one _very_ wet morning), but i have studied a great deal with my eyes and memory, and come back a better landscape painter than i went. on my road home, at dunkeld, where i lingered a day (exquisite spot), i jotted down in oils two reminiscences of effects observed at kinrara with which i am rather well pleased--one is a stormy scandinavian bit of cloud and hill, the other a hot sunny expanse of golden corn and purple heather, which looks for all the world like a bit of italy. mind, they are the merest little sketches, but accurate in the _impression of the effect_. i go on monday morning to stourhead, where i stay till saturday, and start monday week for the continent. please send me a line to stourhead. how are you, darling? and lina and gus? and papa? have you had any more drives?--your loving boy, fred. on returning to england leighton took up his abode in his first studio in england. hitherto he had paid visits to london,--rome, and subsequently paris, being his real home, for an artist's true home is in his studio. in the autumn of he settled in orme square, and from that time to his death london became his headquarters. after having settled into his studio in orme square in the winter of , he wrote to steinle and to robert browning the following letters:-- _translation._] orme square, bayswater, london, _december , _. my dear friend and master,--what a long time it is since i heard from you! my last letter, despatched from rome, has had no answer. i enclose a photograph of a memorial tablet which i executed in rome last winter for my poor widowed sister. the monument is of white marble with black mosaic decoration; the four dark circles are bronze nails, which secure the marble tablet to the wall. when i had finished work in rome, i went south and spent five weeks in capri. you would hardly believe, dear friend, how this wonderful island delighted me. i made vigorous use of my visit and executed a fairly large number of conscientious studies. i also took the opportunity to visit paestum for the first time. i may say that the _temple of neptune_ gave me the most exalted architectonic impression that i have ever received; i shall never forget that morning. the two neighbouring temples, however, are not worth looking at, except from a painter's point of view. meanwhile, the season being advanced, i was obliged, with real regret, to give up my plan of going to frankfurt, and to hurry back to england. here i am now permanently established. i confess that i did not pitch my tent here without some anxiety; i had not spent _a single winter_ in england since my earliest childhood, and i had good reason to fear that to me, with my love of sunshine, it would prove a little harsh. i also feared the climate for my bodily health. however, "native air" appears to be not altogether an empty phrase, but i find myself, notwithstanding the fog, well and in good spirits. man must indeed carry the sun in his heart--if he is to have it. of work in particular, i have nothing much to say. later, in the course of the winter, i will report more at length. meanwhile, dear master, write to me very soon. tell me whether you still think of your pupil, and especially tell me about your certainly numerous works.--your grateful pupil, leighton. _translation._] orme square, bayswater, london, _january , _. i spoke little in my last letter of my present work, partly perhaps because of the feeling i have already described, but partly also because i intend to send you a photograph directly the picture is finished, which will not be till spring. it is a commission, and the subject is religious. there is only a single figure, and i would describe it to you now, but that i fear you would imagine the picture much more beautiful than i can paint it, and you would consequently suffer a disappointment later on in my work which would be painful to me. for the rest, i am striving as hard as i can to make it fine and simple. you will perhaps be surprised, but, in spite of my fanatic preference for colour, i promised myself to be a draughtsman before i became a colourist. and now adieu, my dear friend. directly i can show you anything in "black and white" you shall hear from me again, and i shall expect from you, as my old master, the most unsparing criticism; that is the greatest proof of love you can give me. fred leighton. orme square, bayswater, _january , ' _. dear browning,--it is not till the other day that i at last received from cartwright your rome address, or i should have written to you some time ago; before it was too late to wish you a merry xmas and health, happiness, and all prosperity for yourself and mrs. browning in the present year. i don't know that i have anything worth telling you to write about, for all the little incidents which have their importance for the space of a day, all appear too trivial to write about after a lapse of a week or two. still i write to assure you i keep up my most affectionate remembrance of you, and to beg that you won't entirely forget me. i received your kind letter at the beginning of the winter, and was truly concerned to hear that mrs. browning had been so alarmingly unwell; i trust that the air of rome, which once before was so beneficial to her, will have strengthened and recruited her again this time. dear old rome! how i wish i could fly over and spend a week or so with you all in my old haunts. i suppose i shall never be entirely weaned of that yearning affection i entertain for italy, and particularly for rome and the "comarea." you must have it all to yourselves this year. what a delight it must be to see neither brown, jones, nor robinson. i suppose cartwright, pantaleone, and odo russell are the staple of your convivial circle; and, by-the-bye, how much more freely mrs. browning must breathe this winter without certain daily visitations which i remember last year. i wonder whether you will write to me and tell me what you are doing, socially and artistically; everything about you will interest me. as for myself, you would not believe it, in spite of my old habits of continental life and sunshine, i take very kindly to england; _it agrees_ with me capitally, really better than rome. i am fattening _vue d'oeil_. the light is certainly not irreproachable, still i can work, and don't find that my ideas get particularly rusty. on the contrary, for colour, certainly my sense seems to be sharpened in this atmosphere. i am soldiering too. i drill three times a week, and make as bad a soldier as anybody else. the sartoris, you know, are no longer in london--a great loss to all their friends--but i go pretty often to see them in the country, and have spent many a happy day there in the course of the winter. by-the-bye, do you hear or know anything of those two drawings i did of you and mrs. browning? if so, will you give the one of you to hookes that he may send with some other things he has? and now, dear browning, "_vi leverò l'incomodo_," and will bring this very tedious epistle to a close. remember me most kindly to mrs. browning, to cartwright and his wife, to odo russell, b----, pantaleone with better half, storeys, and last, but not least, dear little hatty! love to cerinni; tell me about him. good-bye.--believe me, very affectionately yours, fred leighton. i am hand-and-glove with all my enemies the pre-raphaelites. woolner sends his affectionate remembrances. leighton writes to his sister in italy:-- orme square, bayswater, _march _. my dear gussykins,--you may have heard from mamma that i went to paris to hear madame viardot in "orphée." what wonderful singing! what style! what breadth! what pathos! you would have been enchanted, i am sure. do you know the music? it is wonderfully fine and pathetic, the first chorus particularly is quite harrowing for the accent of grief about it. madame viardot's _acting_, too, is superb--so perfectly simple and grand, it is really antique. and when you consider all she has to overcome--a bad, harsh voice, an ugly face, an ungainly person; and yet she contrives to look almost handsome. she enters heart and soul into her work; she said it was the only thing she ever did that (after fifty performances) had not given her a moment's _ennui_. i am afraid there is no chance of her singing it in england this year, if at all; i don't believe the covent garden audience would sit through it.[ ] i also saw gounod's new opera, "philémon et baucis," and was disappointed. nothing but the care and distinction of the workmanship redeems it from being a bore; the subject is ill adapted for the stage, and is dragged through three acts with portentous efforts. striking melodies there are few, charming accompaniments many; all the pretty music (or nearly) is in the orchestra--_c'est la sauce qui fait avaler le poisson_. the introductions to the first and second acts, but particularly the latter (a little _motif_ on the oboë), are charming; there is also a capital chorus. all this, however, is an impression after one hearing; i might alter my mind on hearing it oftener, but i think not. in the royal academy exhibition of leighton sent one picture only, "sunrise--capri." _translation._] orme square, _september , _. my very dear friend,--i was almost afraid that you would think that i had entirely forgotten you, but this would be a very undeserved interpretation of my long silence. no, my dear master, you still live in my constant memory, in my most grateful recollection. when i last wrote, i promised to send you a photograph of my large picture. this work has taken up my time far beyond my expectations, and i always put off writing in order not to send you an empty letter. at last it is thus far, and i enclose both the large photograph and some little ones, in the hope that you, dear master, will be interested also in the unimportant works of your old pupil. have i already told you the subject of my religious picture? i think not. at the turning-point of a very critical illness, the lady who commissioned my picture dreamt that she, as a disembodied spirit, soared up heavenwards in the night.[ ] suddenly she was aware of a point of light in the far vault of heaven. this light grew, developed, and soon she saw coming forth from the night the shining form of the saviour. full of confidence she approached the holy apparition. jesus, however, raised his hands and, gently repulsing her, enjoined her to return to earth, and during her life to make herself worthier to enter the company of the blessed. she awoke, recovered, and ordered the picture. you will be able to imagine, my dear friend, how little contented i am with my work; however, i am accustomed to show you my weaknesses, and i therefore send you also this unsatisfactory work. as regards the photograph, it is in certain respects successful, although it makes the whole picture _four times too dark_. i send also a portrait of my sister; a head of an english soldier, who lost an arm at balaclava, and recently died of consumption; and finally a photograph after a drawing on wood, which i drew for a book, but which has been _incredibly_ disfigured by the engraver. fortunately i had the drawing (although bad) photographed before i sent it to be engraved. but enough of me and my affairs. and you, dear master, what are you working at? are your cartoons all finished? shall you soon begin your frescoes? what other beautiful things have you composed? do not punish my long silence, but send me a couple of lines to tell me what interests me so deeply. so soon as i have finished anything new (and i have many pictures in prospect) i will send you another specimen of my handiwork. meantime i beg you will remember me most cordially to your wife and daughters, and to my other friends in frankfurt. and yourself do not altogether forget, your loving pupil, fred leighton. it was in leighton joined the artist rifle corps. it was also then he first made the acquaintance of sir william b. richmond (now chairman of the leighton house committee). _december , ._ dearest mammy,--i have deferred until now answering your kind letter that i might be able to announce to you a little circumstance which took place yesterday, and which, though not of any real importance, may give you and papa pleasure. i was yesterday raised to the rank of captain; i command the rd company--lewis was at the same time made captain of the nd--his election of course came before mine; he has done three times more for the corps than i have or could have done--he lives very near and goes _every day_--as a man of business, and a very clever one, he has entirely organised the bookkeeping department, and in fact has been altogether the vital principle of the corps. i was chosen next for having shown some zeal in this service and some little capability for teaching. the vacant lieutenancies go to nicholson (the musician) and talfourd. one of the ensigncies has been given to perugini, contingent on its being lawful for him to hold such commission; another to old palmer. so much for our volunteering. i wish we had a commander. the next question in your letter i thought i had answered in my last--however, though ruskin stayed about three hours and was altogether very pleasant, he did not say anything that i could quote about my paintings. he was _immensely_ struck by my drawing of a lemon-tree, and was generally complimentary, or rather, _respectful_, that is more his _genre_. i don't think, however, that he cared for sandbach's picture--which leads me to the third point in your letter. neither of the s.'s have seen their picture; last time they were in london, having made no definite appointment, i missed them. he wrote to say that when he came up to town again, he would fix a day to call on me. gibson, the old traitor, never turned up at all. by-the-bye, i see you ask whether i shoot much--no, not often; i am an ordinary, average shot--my unsteady hand prevents my shooting well. my general health is pretty fair. many thanks, dearest mammy, for your kind wishes and congratulations on that melancholy occasion, my birthday--it is a day i always hate--fancy my being _thirty_!!! about marrying, dear mamma, you must not forget it requires two to play at that game. i would not insult a girl i did not love by asking her to tie her existence to mine, and i have not yet found one that i felt the slightest wish to marry; it is no doubt ludicrous to place this ideal so high, but it is not my fault--theoretically i should like to be married very well. in another letter to his mother leighton writes on the subject of marriage: "if i don't marry, the reason has been that i have never seen a girl to whom i felt the least desire to be united for life. i should certainly never marry for the sake of doing so." the same subject is again alluded to in a letter written in , from leighton's mother to her younger daughter who was in italy. the letter begins by referring to a servant who was dismissed by leighton. "he has such an effect on him by his profound stupidity and intense conceit he can't keep him, for if he did, the irritation would render him wicked if he indulged it, and ill if he repressed the same--at least that's fred's feeling just now. he means to take an italian servant if he can find one. "fred has received an invitation to sandringham (the prince of wales). if he has not found a suitable servant we are to lend him ours--ellen's husband, a very superior person. i must not forget to tell you that we saw ----'s new baby, a very dear little thing. freddy was enchanted with it. he noticed him more than ----, who is a delightful little chap, and after caressing it several times with exceeding tenderness, he suddenly grew red in the face, and said, 'i must nurse him,' which he did for a long time, to the wonder and admiration of miss ---- and the nurse. for my part, it gave me actual pain to see that proof of his strong love for children, believing that he will never have any of his own. he declares he has never seen a girl he could marry. of course this shows he is unreasonably fastidious; more's the pity!" [illustration: portrait of mrs. sutherland orr. ] orme square, _april , _. dearest mammy,--i have deferred writing until now that i might be able to tell you the result of my little "private view," now over. i am happy to say i have a great success. the "vision" pleased many people much, but was altogether, as i expected, the least popular; the subject, though very interesting, was less attractive to the many, and besides i have progressed in painting since the date of that picture. my little girl at the fountain, christened for me by one of my visitors, "lieder ohne worte," has perhaps had the greatest number of votes.[ ] the "francesca,"[ ] on the other hand, has had, i think, the advantage in the _quality_ of its admirers. watts, for instance, and mrs. sartoris think it by far my best daub. by-the-bye, you will be particularly pleased to hear that lina's portrait has had an immense success, and indeed, on second thoughts, perhaps it was more admired than anything else. the "capri" and the "aslett" were also much liked. mind, dear mamma, this letter is "strictly confidential," because although, of course, you want to know what people say of my pictures, anybody else seeing this letter would (or might) suppose i was devoured with vanity. i have just made an unexpected acquaintance in the gladstones, who sent me, i don't know why, a card for two parties. it was very polite of them, and of course i went. this is a very egotistical letter, dear mamma, but i know that is what you want. i am very sufficiently well, not strong, but never ill. i marched to wimbledon with the volunteers last monday, and got wet several times but did not catch cold.[ ] london. . dear papa,--if the _public_ receives my pictures as favourably as the _private_ has done, i shall have no cause to complain; as far, at least, as the maintenance and increase of my reputation is concerned. i should, however, have liked the "market" to be a little more "brisk." tom taylor and rossetti (wm.), the only critics that came (as far as i know) besides stephens, were, as far as i can judge, both of them much pleased with what they saw. i know at least that both spoke well of my pictures behind my back. as for ruskin, he was in one of his queer moods when he came to breakfast with me--he spent his time looking at my portfolio and praised my drawings most lavishly--_he did not even look at the pictures_. however, nothing could be more cordial than he is to me. i bolted out into the passage after you when you left the other day to tell you that one of the gentlemen you saw come in was sir edwin landseer, but you had disappeared. paris. _monday_. dearest mother,--i must wind up with bad news, which i hope you will bear well: my pictures are badly hung, ill lighted, and almost entirely ignored by the press.[ ] of course this is _au fond_, a bitter disappointment to a man of my temperament, especially after all the praise my work got before the exhibition. however, i shall wear a brave face, and who knows but that some good may arise to me out of this? my little energies will be sharpened up and my tenacity roused. i trust in some future day, as long as hope lives. god bless you, mammy; best love to dear gussy. from your affectionate son, fred. _may , ._ dearest mammy,--life being a pump handle, first up then down, you won't be too much surprised to hear that after the real success my pictures had on "private view" they are with one exception (the landscape) badly hung, "the vision" over a door, the others above the line, which will make it impossible to see the finish or delicacy of execution which is an important feature in them. i have not seen them myself, but am told this by those who have. don't take on, dear mammy, nor let papa worry himself about it. things come right in the end, and i know that many people will be much annoyed at this treatment of me. _millais_, like a good fellow that he is, spoke up for me like a man, though he himself feels so differently on art from what i do. my good friend aïdé is furious. after all perhaps, though badly hung, the pictures may still be seen well enough to be judged, that is all i really want, then perhaps some of the papers will speak up for me. i am glad i let so many people see them at the studio, those at least know what the pictures are like. of one thing be sure: if my works have real value, public opinion will in the _long run_ force the academy to hang me--but enough of this subject. the prince of wales saw a photo-portrait of me in valletort's book the other day and begged him to ask me for one. i have had some new ones done, and mean at the same time to send h.r.h. a photograph of each of my larger pictures, "the vision," the "francesca," and "the listener," which, by-the-bye, i have christened on the suggestion of a lady friend of mine (a sister of cockerell's) "lieder ohne worte." landseer said nothing that was worth repeating, though he gave me one or two useful practical hints. he is eminently a practical man, and i suspect in his heart sneers at style. he was, however, i believe, pleased with my things. park place, st. james's, _sunday, may , _. dear mrs. leighton,--i know that the news of the bad hanging of your son's pictures has reached you (unpleasant tidings generally travel fast) and i hasten to tell you, what i hope may a little mitigate the annoyance you must have felt about it, that they are spoken of in terms of great eulogium by both the _times_ and _athenæum_. i was afraid that their unfortunate placing might have prevented the possibility of any justice being done them by the public critics, but after all the _times_ and _athenæum_ are the most influential and leading of all our public journals. mrs. orr's portrait is consistently praised by all the papers, even by those which review the others less favourably. fortunately, the pictures were well seen in the studio by numbers of people of all classes before they went to the academy, and excited very general admiration in those who felt no particular interest either in art or in your son; while his friends, and those who _know_, were delighted not only with the works themselves, but at the visible indications in them of increased power in all ways. they have been thought by all whose opinion is of value a great advance upon what he has hitherto done. all this will, i hope, be pleasant to you; what will be so most of all will be to know that he took the exceeding trial and vexation of the abominable hanging of his pictures with the most perfect temper, and an admirable desire to be just about those who were doing him this ill turn. you will care for this, as i do, more than for any worldly success his talent could have brought him. i think he is looking well, although he complains a little of feeling tired. i daresay it is nothing but the weariness that must make itself a little felt after a great and all-engrossing exertion. his volunteering occupation is quite invaluable to him, giving him the exercise he never would otherwise get. i think he seems to like his life in london, where he has many friends, so many that if you were here you would no longer feel as jealous about me as you once owned to feeling--do you remember? i do not apologise for writing all this to you, for although excess of zeal may be a sin in the eyes of others, and even indeed of those whom one would die to serve, a mother will hardly count it as such when her child is in question. with best remembrances to mr. leighton and your daughters, i am, ever faithfully yours, adelaide sartoris. to his father leighton wrote:-- . as to the article in _macmillan_, i don't in the least deny its value as far as it goes and _quo ad_ the public; it is in that sense very gratifying to be spoken of in such flattering terms in a periodical of some standing, but i can't individually feel much elated at the praise of a critic who in other parts of his article shows he is not _au fond_ a judge; as for what he says in _interpretation_ (i am not now alluding to the _praise_), it is so verbatim what i said myself to those who visited my studio, that i suspect he must have been of that number. i remember, it is true, telling you _before_ i began to paint "lieder ohne worte" that i intended to make it _realistic_, but from the first moment i began i felt the mistake, and made it professedly and pointedly the reverse. i don't think, however, that we understand the word realistic alike; the fisherman and syren which you quote was as little naturalistic as anything could be, and, while you urge me to take up some subject possessing that quality, i would point out that the michael angelo and the peacock girl both fulfil that condition--to _my_ mind _to a fault_. i have sent in (or am about to) a formula which i received to fill up, stating what i would contribute to the great exhibition of (international). i have offered the cimabue, four "nannas," the "lieder ohne worte," "francesca," and the "syren." i have obtained permission for all. _translation._] orme square, bayswater, _ th april _. my dear friend and master,--when i last wrote you i promised in the spring to send you photographs of my pictures for the exhibition. i have just received some prints and hasten to enclose them. one of them (the girl by the fountain) gives, as is so often the case, an entirely false impression of the picture, in that the drapery of the principal figure should be much darker, and that of the retreating figure much lighter. i have called this picture "lieder ohne worte." it represents a girl, who is resting by a fountain, and listening to the ripple of the water and the song of a bird. this subject is, of course, quite incomplete without colour, as i have endeavoured, both by colour and by flowing delicate forms, to translate to the eye of the spectator something of the pleasure which the child receives through her ears. this idea lies at the base of the whole thing, and is conveyed to the best of my ability in every detail, so that in the dead photograph one loses exactly half, also the dulling of the eyes, which are dark blue in the picture, gives a look of weakness in the photograph that is not quite pleasant. the second subject is, as you will know well, the old, ever-new motive of paolo and francesca. i endeavoured to put in as much glow and passion as possible without causing the least offence; this picture also would, perhaps, have pleased you in colour. how i should like to show it to you, my dear master! however, you will no doubt send me your candid opinion of the photographs in a few lines, and not spare criticism. i am exceedingly curious to know how _your_ work is getting on. what are you working at just now? when is the fresco to be begun? what easel pictures have you undertaken? i want to know all that. i also hope with all my heart, my dear master, that your health keeps good, that your wife and children are all well. please remember me most kindly to your family and all in frankfurt who remember me. and yourself, my dear friend, keep in remembrance.--your grateful pupil, fred leighton. _translation._] orme square, bayswater, london, _june , _. my dear friend,--forgive my not having thanked you sooner for your kind note. the same thing has happened to me as to you: work has left me but little leisure for writing. now, however, my hearty thanks for the open sincerity with which you have spoken of my latest work, i am only sorry that you have not gone into it even more closely. i shall endeavour in my present works to diminish the excessive mannerism of the lines, which will be all the easier for me as i am now painting principally from nature; in my last picture the subject permitted that but little. in any case i hope, dear master, that you will always speak to me with the same candour; it is the best proof to me that i still possess your friendship. i am extremely eager to see how far your works have got on. amongst them, however, my dear friend, keep in remembrance your grateful pupil, fred leighton. _p.s._--i notice with regret that already i do not write a german letter with my former fluency. in a letter to his sister, mrs. matthews, january , , leighton wrote: "i am horrified to hear the account you give of mrs. browning. i knew she was a confirmed invalid, but had no idea that one of her lungs was already gone! what will poor browning do if she dies? he adores her, you know." london, _july _. dearest mammy,--thanks for your kind letter, which i have been unable to answer till now. i had heard of poor browning's bereavement; we were all very much shocked at it, knowing, as we do, how entirely irreparable his loss is. i wrote a few lines to him that he might know how sincerely i grieved with him; i don't at all know what were the circumstances of her death, we have no particulars. leighton undertook to design the monument over mrs. browning's grave in the english cemetery at florence. the work appealed to him in every sense, and remains as a permanent memorial of those friendships which made the years spent in italy so full, so rich, so entrancing. with reference to the monument browning writes:-- chez m. laraison, ste. marie, prÈs pornic, loire infÉrieure, _august , _. my dear leighton,--don't fret; you will do everything like yourself in the end, i know; wait till the end of october, as you propose. i cannot return before the beginning of it, though i would do so were it necessary, but it is not, for i have only this morning received the notification of which i told you, that "the marble is in the sculptor's studio." we shall therefore be in full time. the portrait you saw was the autotype which i lent to mr. richmond, and concerning which i wrote to him before leaving london, directing that it should be sent to you. he engaged to let you have it whenever you desired. i therefore enclose (oh, fresh attack on your envelopes and postage stamps!) a note which i presume he will attend to, and which you will of course burn should he have sent the portraits meanwhile. i have also two others nearly like that portrait, taken the same day with it, which i was unable to find, but which shall be found on my return. dear leighton, i can only repeat, with entire truth, that you will satisfy me wholly. i don't think, however, you can make me more than i am now--yours gratefully and lovingly, robert browning. continuation of letter to his mother:-- i am glad to hear papa reported favourably of my work, and that you like the photographs of my pictures now in the exhibition. i am very glad also that gussy liked the _receding figure_ in the "lieder ohne worte," as it was a favourite also with me, the _tallness_ of said figure was inseparable from the sentiment of it in my mind. i have a photograph of that picture still remaining; i will give it to gus when she comes through, i can get myself another some future day. i am getting on tol-lol with my pictures, but am rather anxious just now about the extreme difficulty of getting a peacock. i want to _buy_ one to have the skin prepared, and if i don't get one soon they will all lose their tails; and there i shall be--in a fix! a friend of mine has written to norfolk, and hopes to get me one. the season, even in the extremely moderate form in which i take it, is a fatiguing affair. i get up late and never feel fresh and vigorous. i have serious thoughts of entirely giving it up next year. i will go now and then to stay at people's houses, but not to their parties--_le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle_. _a propos_ of country houses, i am going to spend a few days with lady cowper at wrest park towards the end of this month; there are to be theatricals and great hilarity. and now about bath, i hope, dearest mammy, you won't be hurt if i propose to come at the end of the _first_ week in september instead of the _last_ week in august. the fact is i have a great "giro" i want to make, and if i could take bath in the regular progress it would be both a great convenience and a saving of expense. i mean to stay three weeks in bath and have thoughts of painting a _pot-boiler_ of little walker if he is still handsome. i wish papa would look after him, and let me know what he is doing and how he is looking. these are my plans: i want, whilst the summer is still hot and green, to visit south hampshire, new forest, isle of wight, south devon, north devon, and so work my way round to bath, whence to stourhead for a few days; then to mason in staffordshire, and then back to london. my pictures will be done long before the exhibition next opening, so i can manage all this. i shall visit the following people: sartoris, aïdés, perhaps morants, i hope _tennyson_, lady e. bulteel, and look in at mount edgcombe--the rest of the journey will be purely artistic. clovelly, _sunday_. dearest mammy,--i could not find time to answer your note (for which best thanks) before i left ventnor. i am now in one of the most picturesque spots on the north coast of devon--the _rendezvous_ of painters and tourists, the _pays de cocagne_ of hook and one of the chief lions of my trip. the places i have visited so far are salisbury, exeter, and bideford; with the latter i was much disappointed, and think it far below its reputation; not so salisbury, which is a most interesting town, full of quaintness and character beyond my expectations; it has, however, a look of decay and depopulation about it which makes me feel awfully low-spirited. the cathedral, perhaps, _altogether_ rather disappointed me--though of course much about it is very beautiful; then, too, its general (internal) aspect is entirely marred by a brutal coat of whitewash laid on in the last century, covering up the marble columns and killing out all life and colour. unfortunately, it would cost very many thousands to restore the church and its ancient glories. to-morrow i start for ilfracombe--the next day for lynton. again, later:-- many thanks for your letter just received and for all the kind wishes therein contained, which i most warmly return for you all--a double portion to dear taily in honour of her birthday. i will come on the th if i possibly can, and bring some little sketches to show you. i shall exhibit this year if i get done in time, but i can't hurry--it is entirely immaterial whether i exhibit or not--i would rather, of course. we have begun drilling, but it will be many weeks before we get to rifle-shooting--this is the sort of thing we are doing now. our uniform is plainness itself, all grey, and the cheapest in london. i weather the cold so-so--i have a gas-stove beside my fireplace, but am still tolerably cold when it comes very sharp. my dinner with millais was put off till monday next--i think millais _charming_ and _so_ handsome. i am exceedingly sorry, dear mamma, you have reckoned on me for cotillon figures--with the exception of the one i led at bath once, _i have not seen one for years_, and have not the faintest notion what is done--i will, however, _back_ anybody else with great zeal. i was indeed truly sorry to hear of lord holland's death--i had expected it for some time; nothing could exceed their kindness to me, and the house is an irreparable loss to me. i hope to have a very merry christmas day. i am running down to westbury (the sartoris); there is to be a tree; i come up again of course monday morning. i am never _ill_. i take my human frailty out in never being very well--never equal to much fatigue. london, . my dinner at millais' yesterday was very pleasant. i like him extremely, and his wife appears an agreeable person. i met there john leech, the man who does all those admirable caricatures in _punch_--he is a very pleasant and gentleman-like person. i don't feel sure whether i told you that i am about shortly to send my "paris and juliet" with the "samson" to america on spec. mrs. kemble will do all she can to godmother them; i got a very kind letter from her from boston the other day--she has asked me to send her a little sketch of westbury with the pictures--of course i shall. the following letters from mrs. fanny kemble reveal the interest which this friend took in leighton and his pictures, also the genius of the writer in penning delightful epistles:-- revere house, boston, _friday, december , _. dear mr. leighton,--it was very kind and amiable of you to write to me of westbury and my sister; you cannot imagine the forlornness one feels when, to the loss of the sight of those one loves, is added that bitter silence which leaves one almost ignorant, as death does, of all the conditions in which our friends remain. god knows, written words are a poor substitute for the sound of a voice and the look of living eyes; still, when they are all that can reach us of those towards whom our hearts yearn, it is miserable not to be able to obtain them. the friends with whom i constantly correspond see and know little or nothing of her, and so no one of them can in any degree supply me with the news that i most desire from across the sea--how it is faring with my sister; so i am very grateful to you for your intelligence, which was just what i would give anything for (though not in itself, perhaps, very satisfactory) out here, where i think you have none of you an idea how _banished_ i feel. now, my dear mr. leighton, to your business, about which i began my inquiries almost immediately after my return to this country, but only received the last of these communications last night, and you perceive the other was incomplete without it. you must command me entirely in any and every thing that i can do to forward your aims, and i will promise to be _severe_ in my obedience to any instructions you may like to give me. new york is undoubtedly a better market for pictures, and therefore a better place to exhibit them than this, but i do not know anybody whom i trust there. mr. ordway, however, seems inclined to take charge of your pictures if they are exhibited there. good-bye. do not fail to employ me in this matter to the fullest extent that i can be of the least use to you; it will be a great pleasure to me to help you in any way that i possibly can.--yours very truly, fanny kemble. i wish you would send me out some sketch of westbury with your pictures, if they come. i wish for one very much. i wish you could see the world here just now--a sky as pure and brilliant as it is possible to conceive, and every bough, branch, blade of grass and withered leaf coated with clear crystal and _blazing_ with prismatic colours. there are, every now and then, _sentiments_ in this sky that i have seen in none other. there are certain points of view in which boston, rising beyond broad sheets of water that repeat them still more tenderly, seems to me worthy of a great painter. but do not come out and try unless you are quite sure of going back, or you will break your heart. revere house, boston, _friday, february _. i feel terrified, when you speak of my determining what is to be done with your pictures when they arrive in boston, for assuredly i am utterly incompetent to any such decision, and can only refer myself to the judgment of my friend mr. cabot, who will certainly advise for the best in the matter, but who, nevertheless, is not infallible. i should think it rather late in the season for exhibiting them here, but again would not take upon myself to say. i do not know what the percentage on sale here is, but presume it is not higher than in london. but here people exhibit their pictures at a shilling a head, _i.e._ put them in a room hung round with black calico, light up a flare of gas above them, and take a quarter of a dollar from every sinner who sees them. two of churche's pictures (he is a great american artist, though you may never have heard of him) have been, or rather are, at this moment so exhibiting--his "falls of niagara," and a very beautiful landscape called the "heart of the andes." both these pictures were exhibited in london, i know not with what success; they have both considerable merit, but the latter i admire extremely. page had a "venus" here the other day, exhibited by gas-light in a black room; but indeed, dear mr. leighton, it sometimes seems to me as if you never could imagine or would consent to the gross charlatanry which is practised--how necessarily i do not know--here about all such matters. certainly your gold medal should be trumpeted--and your profession of art and your confession of faith, and anything most private and particular that you would not wish known, had better be published in several versions in all the newspapers of the united states. your pictures must be placarded over all the walls in all the sizes of type conceivable, and all the colours of the rainbow. if you will write me your personal history, and rampant puffs of your own performances, i will copy them and send them to those sources of public instruction, the enlightened public press. moreover, i will go and sit before them daily and utter exclamations of admiration on every note in my voice, and if anything else remains to be done i will do it; but you must not make me in any way responsible for the result, because it is not in the least likely that you will write yourself up to the mark of puffing as practised here. basta--i will take the very best advice and do the very best i can about the pictures, and rejoice in my heart to see them myself, that i can assuredly promise you. by-the-bye, i gave your address only a few days ago, to be sent to a person now in europe negotiating with french and english artists for pictures to exhibit. i wonder if he will find you and enlighten your mind about art in america. thank you for the account of westbury and its christmas festivities, and thank you, thank you for the sketch of the home you are so very kind as to promise me; it will be a blessed treasure to see, for you cannot conceive the dreary heart-sickness that utterly overcomes me here sometimes. to-day i was singing the quartette in "faust" that we used to sing, and was obliged to stop for crying. i wished extremely to have a photograph of the house, and, if i could only have afforded it, should have asked you to sell me every sketch you took about the place. the skies here are beautiful, wonderful in their transparent purity. they seem to me of a different _texture_ from any other i ever saw, more diaphanous, and there is a colour in them when they are quite free from clouds that surpasses in delicacy all other skies i have seen. it is like the complexion of the young girls here, a miracle of evanescent brilliant softness. my winter is wearing along pretty tolerably. my christmas was passed entirely alone, but i am quite used to that. i am beginning to be much occupied about the plans and drawings for a house, which i am thinking of building on some land i own in massachusetts. it is a great undertaking, and really at fifty years old seems hardly worth while, and yet, till i am ready for my coffin, i must have some place in which to rest my head. perhaps some fine day--who knows?--you will come to see me there. that would be a very pretty plot, and i think i need not say how welcome you would be, dear mr. leighton, to yours very truly, fanny kemble. lenox, _tuesday_. a thousand thanks, my dear mr. leighton, for the minute account of westbury--as i cannot know anything about my sister, it is something to know how her house is settled and decorated, and how the place where she lives looks. the red velvet drawing-room sounds gorgeous, and it must be very becoming to the pictures. of your pictures that have "wandered west" you may be sure i should have written you, if i had had the good news to give you that either of them was sold, but i am sorry to say this is not the case. the new york exhibition is now closed, and the pictures have been sent back to boston, where they are at present hanging in the athenæum under the care of mr. ordway, who wishes, but does not much hope, to be able to sell them. it seems that one or two people asked the price of the pictures in new york, but considered it, when they received the information, "rather a tall price." i am a little consoled at the ill success of this venture of yours, by henry greville's writing me that your hands are full of orders, for which you are to be well paid. your small acquaintance, fanny, who left me this morning after a visit of a month, propounded to me the expediency of desiring the purchaser of the reconciliation of old capulet and montague to buy as its pendant the "paris and juliet"; and though she has no personal acquaintance with the lover of art in question, she said, when she got to philadelphia she should set about intriguing to that effect; and she had my full permission to try and to succeed. i wish i could tell you anything pleasant in return for your description of the rooms at westbury, but i have nothing very cheerful to impart. i have been quite unwell, and am still very far from flourishing; my spirits are much depressed, and the life i lead, of incessant worry and discomfort with servants and all one's domestic arrangements, is something quite too tedious to relate--and that indeed it would be impossible to _realise_, as the yankees say, unless you witnessed it. i saw hetty hosmer three days after her arrival in boston. her father is a hopeless invalid, and she will certainly not leave him while he lives; but i suspect that he is likely to die before this year ends, and then she will return to live in italy. the state of missouri has voted two thousand pounds for a statue of colonel benton, one of its "great men," to be erected by her, which, of course, is a whole plume of feathers in her cap. good-bye, dear mr. leighton; believe me always yours most truly, fanny kemble. you must not fail to write to me any directions that you wish observed about your pictures, while they remain here. i am only too glad to try to serve you. lenox, berkshire, massachusetts, _monday, march _. pictures of very high pretensions are exhibited, like the scenes in a theatre, by gas-light, and advertised in coloured _posters_ all over the streets like theatrical exhibitions. however, it is no use vexing your soul with what neither of us can help. i cannot and will not accept the responsibility of disposing of your pictures; but i will get the best advice i can about them and follow it, and spare no personal pains to have them advantageously dealt with; only, i hope it will not be very long before they arrive, because my own stay in boston is now drawing to a close, and after the end of the present month i shall be at lenox, a remote village in a lonely hill district one hundred miles from boston, or rather i should say seven hours distant from the nearest railroad station, which is six miles away again from lenox. when once i come here--for i write at this moment from this snowy wilderness--it will be to remain for the next nine or ten months, so you see i must make all arrangements about your pictures before taking my leave of civilised communities. i came up to this place from boston yesterday to look at a house that i think of hiring for a year, and shall return to the city next week. i have left your pictures (should they arrive during my absence) to the charge of a friend of mine who is one of the directors of the athenæum, and will see that they are properly received. thank you a thousand times for the promised likeness of westbury, which will be a treasure to me. what a contrast is my recollection of that charming place, to the abomination of desolation of the dreary savage winter landscape of low black hills, bristling with wintry woods and wide, bare, snow-covered valleys, that stretch before me here at this moment. i am well, but much worn out with my last course of public readings, which i had just ended in boston. my daughters are well, and write to me tolerably frequently; the eldest seems happy and contented in her marriage; your small acquaintance, fanny, writes to me from savannah of sitting with the doors and windows wide open, and wiping the perspiration from her face in the meantime; and here everything is buried in snow. i shall wait till i return to boston to finish this, as i shall hope to send you then news of the arrival of your pictures. _wednesday, march ._ your pictures are arrived, my dear mr. leighton; they reached boston last week while i was absent at lenox. i only returned yesterday evening, and found a letter from mr. cabot announcing that they were at the athenæum; thither i went this morning, and spent a most delightful half-hour in looking at them. i like the "samson" very much indeed; i think it is beautiful, and am charmed with the treatment of the subject, though you have chosen a different moment for illustration from the one i had imagined. this evening i have been having a long conversation with mr. ordway about the future destinations of the pictures. i am little sanguine, i regret to say, about their being bought here, for the only rich picture purchaser that i know here has a predilection for french works of art, small _tableaux de genre_, and troyon's landscapes. however, it must be tried. mr. ordway says he will exhibit your pictures in the athenæum, which (should they be sold while there) will save you your commission, because, being an artist himself, he will not charge you any. if after due experiment they do not seem likely to sell here, we will send them to new york, and then to philadelphia; in short, the best that can be done for them shall, as far as my agency is concerned, you may be sure. boston, _thursday, march _. i have this moment received your letter of the th february, for which i thank you very much. it does not require any further answer with regard to your pictures, of the safe arrival of which i wrote you word last night. i did not tell you, by-the-bye, that they are both slightly _streaked_ across from side to side with what mr. ordway thinks must have been small infiltrations of sea-water; he says the pictures are not injured by them, nor do they indeed appear to be so in the least, and that he can wipe off the stains with no damage whatever to them. thank you for all you tell me of my sister; it is not much, indeed, nor very cheerful, but it is more than reaches me through any other channel, and far better than the miserable conjectures of absolute ignorance. dear mr. leighton, thank you a thousand times for the _portrait_ of westbury--it is exactly what i wished for--but, oh, why could there not be the lovely upland beyond, and the sheep slowly rolling up and down the slopes, and the tinkle of the bell, and you and she and they and all of us. oh dear, if you could conceive what it is to me to be _here_, you would know a thousand times better than i can tell you how precious such a memento of _there_ is to me. thank you, too, for the good inspiration of telling me about the change of place of the pictures at westbury; it is wonderful how much one small particular has power to bring the whole of what surrounds it, back to the mind, and what vividness it gives to the picture that, in spite of the distinctness with which it was stamped upon the memory, becomes so soon, and yet so unconsciously, obliterated in the minor parts that give it charm and vitality. i spent a long hour to-day again looking at your pictures and wishing most heartily that i could afford to buy them both. good-bye, dear mr. leighton; i shall leave this open till to-morrow, in case i should hear anything more about them before i go. i enclose the receipts for what i have paid. i suppose it is all right, but it seems a most monstrous price for mere conveyance, and indeed reminds us that our humorous forefathers called _stealing_ _conveying_. lenox, berkshire, massachusetts, _friday, april _. your pictures are at present in the new york exhibition. mr. ordway tells me that it is extremely rare for pictures to sell without the intervention of dealers. in this country they cry down and undervalue all pictures that are not expressly committed to them, and the ignorance of the rich shopkeepers who purchase works of art, is so excessive that they do not feel safe in making any acquisition without the advice and permission of some charlatan of a dealer, to whom these wiseacres come saying (verbatim, so mr. ordway informed me), "i want some pictures; can't you recommend any to me?" and then, of course, the picture-dealer recommends what brings him the highest percentage; and the man who buys pictures exactly like looking-glasses, window-curtains, or any other _furniture_ for a new house, departs satisfied that he possesses a work of art. the things that are bought and sold here in the shape of pictures, and the things that are said about them, _vous feraient pouffer de rire_, if you did not live in this country. if you did, they would be like many other proofs of the semi-civilisation of the people, that would be rather doleful than otherwise to you. thank you for all you tell about my sister and her children. i feel very much both for my sister and anne in their separation. i have just parted with my maid marie, who has lived with me fifteen years, and who leaves me now because her health is so much broken down that her physician tells her, she must go to some other climate or she will die. so she is gone, and here i remain absolutely alone, looking, not for the "wrath to come," but what may be supposed no bad instalment of it--the advent of four new servants with whom i am to begin housekeeping in my small cottage next week. just before leaving boston i saw hetty hosmer. she has come home to her poor old paralytic father, who, i suppose, is not likely to live very long. whenever the event of his death happens, hetty will gather up her substance, and depart hence for the rest of her natural or artistic life. she is very little changed in appearance, and only a little in manner. she seemed very glad to see me, and so was i to see her, for she represented to my memory a whole world of things and places and people that i am fond of. i have not seen lord lyon, and do not expect to do so, as i understand he does not mean to stir from washington all the summer, and thither i shall assuredly not go, though i would go a good way to see him. i'm told he lives in dread of being married by some fair american, and it is not always a thing that a man can escape; but he is too good for that, and i trust will not succumb to these intrepid little flirts. good-bye, dear mr. leighton; i have a settled nostalgia, which is the saddest thing in the world. your sketch of westbury is always before me, and your letters are the most kindly return you could possibly make, for any service that you could require of me. i wish with all my heart i might have the great pleasure of writing you, now that one of your pictures was sold. addio. lenox, _friday, june _. thank you, dear frederic leighton, for your letter and the photographs, by means of which, and your description, i have a sort of vision (not quite what the yankees call a "realising sense") of your pictures. the girl at the fountain is charming,[ ] the other beautiful and terrible, as it should be.[ ] i can well imagine the beautiful effect the sentiment of the picture must receive from that regretful return, as it were, of the daylight that has set upon the poor people for ever. in the english newspapers that are sent to me i looked eagerly among the notices of the exhibition for your name, and read the meagre little bit allotted to each picture. i was especially delighted with the critic who thinks your "paolo and francesca" too _earthly_ in the intensity of their passions. the gentleman apparently forgets that it was not in heaven that dante met these poor things. with regard to your other pictures, dear mr. leighton, i think you are right to withdraw them from america. i wish with all my heart that i could have presented myself with one of those pictures; however, that is one of the vainest of all human desires. my income is already docked of two hundred pounds this year by the disastrous state of public affairs; but, of course, if one is in the midst of a falling house, one can hardly hope to avoid bruises and broken bones. the attitude of england is highly unsatisfactory to the north, who now choose to consider the whole action of the government a crusade against slavery--which it is not, and was not, and will not be except in the new england state where the abolitionist party has always been strongest, and where the character of the people is more of the nature to make fighters for abstract principles. the southerners hate the yankees, and _vice versâ_, for this very reason; and if the crisis comes really to anything like fighting, the new england, especially the massachusetts men, will probably fight very maliciously as against slaveholders, and the slaveholders against them as abolitionists, which _they_ now are, pretty much to a man. a huge volunteer force is levying and being prepared for action; but in spite of the very unanimous feeling of the north and north-west, and the warlike attitude of the south, i shall not believe in anything deserving the name of war till i see it. the south is without resources that can avail for a six months' struggle. the north has a huge, unarmed, undisciplined force of men at its command; but the southerners do not want to fight, and neither do the northerners; _but_ if any combination of circumstances (and of course matters cannot stand still, especially with the border states all _au pied en l'air_) should occasion any collision accompanied with considerable effusions of blood, i believe the north would pour itself upon the southern states and annihilate the secessionist party. it is extremely difficult to foresee the probable course of events, but i believe eventually the southern states will be obliged to return to their allegiance, and _then_ i believe the north will, once for all, legislate for the future limiting of the curse of slavery to those states where it _now_ exists, and where, of course, under such circumstances, it would very soon cease to exist, as if it cannot extend itself it must die. in one sense slavery is undoubtedly the cause of the present disastrous crisis--and in the profoundest sense, for the character of the southerners is the immediate result of these infernal "institutions"; and but for southern slavery southern "chivalry," that arrogant, insolent, ignorant, ferocious and lawless race of men, would never have existed. oh, how thankful i shall be to be at home once more! farewell, dear mr. leighton; pray, if there is anything special to be done about your pictures, write to me and let me have the pleasure of doing something for you. oh, i am so enraged that i could not get them sold; and yet though you may not think it, i should have thought it a pity for them to have to live the rest of their lives here. thank you again for the photographs; i look at them constantly. all _such things_ are like being lifted into another atmosphere from that which surrounds and stifles one here. believe me always your obliged and sincere friend, fanny kemble. emil devrient's was the best hamlet i ever saw. it would not have been if my father's had not been too smooth and harmonious. i hope i shall see fechter's. lenox, _thursday, october _. how good an inspiration it was that made you send that beautiful photograph to me! it came to me really like a special providence, on the day when i had parted from my children for an indefinite time, and with more than usual sadness and anxiety; for my eldest child's health has failed completely since her confinement, and she came to me for a visit of ten days only, looking like the doomed, wan image of some woman whose enemies were wasting her by witchcraft. my small comfortless home was intolerably lonely to me, and towards sunset i went out to find some fortitude under the open sky. i wandered into a copse of beech trees that clothe the steep sides of a miniature ravine with a brook at the bottom, and here gathered a handful of the beautiful blue fringed gentian (do you know that exquisite flower that grows wild in the woods here?). the little glen with its clusters of mysterious blue blossoms was all but dark, but, emerging from it, i stood where i saw a wide valley flooded with the evening light, and hills beyond rising in waves of amber and smoke colour and dark purple; it was so beautiful that it cannot be imagined. the autumn has turned all the trees into gold and jewels, like the enchanted growth of fairy-land, and the whole world, as i saw it from the entrance of that shadowy dell, looked as if it was made of precious metals and precious stones. i was very sad, and stood thinking of our saviour and the widow of nain, and how pitiful he was to sorrowful human creatures, and with some sparks of comfort in my heart i returned home, where i found your letter waiting for me. i have told you all this of my previous state of mind and feeling, because--without knowing that--you could not conceive how like an express message of consolation your work appeared to me. may it be blessed to many hearts for admonition and for consolation as it was to mine, dear mr. leighton. it is no wonder that it seemed to me beautiful, and i do not think i shall ever sufficiently disconnect it with this first impression, to be able to judge of its merit as a work of art; it was, as i said before, a special providence to me. i long to have it framed and hung where i can see it constantly. i have within the last few days moved into a house which i have hired for the next two years. it is all but in the village of lenox, and yet so situated that it commands from the windows of every room a most beautiful prospect. the whole landscape is a harmonious confusion of small valleys and hills, rolling and falling within and around and beyond each other, like folds of rich and majestic drapery. oh, what lights and shadows roam and rest over these hill-sides and in the hollows between them! the country is very thickly wooded, and the woods are literally of every colour in the rainbow, all mixed together under a sky, the peculiar characteristic of which is not so much softness or brightness, as a transparent purity that seems as if there was _no_ atmosphere betwixt oneself and the various objects one sees. i expect this would make it difficult to paint these beautiful aspects of nature here; but, oh, how i _do_ wish you could see it, for, in the matter of american autumnal colouring, seeing alone is believing. the house itself is very tolerably comfortable, but hideous to behold both within and without; and i have begun my residence in it under rather depressing circumstances, _i.e._ without _being able_ to obtain the necessary servants for the decent comfort of my daily existence. ever since the beginning of may i have been endeavouring, in vain, to procure and keep together a decent household. not for one _single week_ have i had my proper complement of people in the house, and i have done every species of house-work myself, from cleaning the cellar and kitchen to washing the tea-cups; it is a state of things as incredible as the colour of the autumn woods, and as peculiar, thank god, to america. i am now making my last experiment by trying coloured servants. their manners and deportment are generally much better than those of either the irish or american, and they seem capable of personal attachment to their employers, which neither of the other races are. the incessant worry, discomfort, and positive fatigue that i have undergone during the whole summer has completely shaken my nerves, so that i have been in a sort of hysterical condition of constant weeping for some time past. i trust, however, it will not be so wretched now, for i am at any rate close to the village inn, and if i am left without servants, can go there and get some food; it is a state of existence _qu'on ne s'imagine pas_. you will not wonder, after all this, to hear that i declined a ticket to the prince's ball at new york, to which the whole population of the united states are struggling to get admittance; but at the best of times "i am not gamesome," and feel as if i had swept my own rooms quite too recently to be fit company for my queen's son. thank you, dear mr. leighton, for all you tell me about my sister and the children; she never writes, you know, and so i am thirsty all the time for some tidings of her. it is very sad to be so far away and hear so seldom from those one loves. good-bye, god bless you; and thank you once more for the "vision." i am sorry i cannot tell you of the sale of either of your pictures; they are in the boston athenæum, very safe, and highly ornamental to it, but not, i regret to say, sold. if you wish me to do anything more about them, you must write me your directions, which i will fulfil with every attention and accuracy of which i am capable. lenox, _sunday, november _. i trust before long you will receive your children safe and sound. i wish the two hundred pounds i have lost this year had been invested in one of those pictures instead of in st. louis. thank you for your account of adelaide and her children; it is not much, but it is all that much better than nothing. the state of the country is very sad, and any probable termination of the war quite out of calculable distance. england, no doubt, will maintain her absolute neutrality in spite of secession, cotton, and anti-slavery sympathies; it is her only part. good-bye, dear mr. leighton. i beg you will not scruple to write me now if there is anything more that i can do, either in the matter of the pictures or any other by which i can be of use to you here. new york, _sunday, march _. i am sure you have not forgotten the charming farmhouse at west mion, to which you and your sketch-book were the means of introducing us, ---- farm: well, his brother is one of the richest shopkeepers in new york--and, upon the strength of my visit to the paternal acres in hampshire, his wife, a funny little specimen of vivacious vulgarity, called upon me, and i, of course, upon her. i was shown into a drawing-room at least thirty feet long, with two massive white marble chimney-pieces, green silk brocade curtains and furniture to match, magnificent carpets, mirrors, gildings, hideous _works_ in marble on scagliola pillars--in short, the most marvellous palace of shopkeepers' _beaux ideaux_ that you can conceive; through this to a beautifully fitted-up library; through this to a picture gallery, noble _seigneur_, _pensez y bien_! oh, my dear frederic leighton, it was enough to make one fall down and foam at the mouth, to see such a hideous collection of daubs and to think of the money hanging on those walls; and then i thought of your pictures, and why the wretched man couldn't have procured them for some of his foolish money; and then i begged your pardon internally for the desecration of imagining your pictures in such company; and then i gazed amusedly about me, and at length gave tongue: "mr. ----," said i, "this is a vastly different residence from the old homestead in hampshire." the worthy man could not see in my heart which way the balance of preference inclined, and answered with benignant self-satisfaction: "ah, well, you see, ma'am, they've been going on there for the last i don't know how many hundred years, just about in the same social position; they haven't a notion of the rapidity of our progress here." i hate to advise you to have your pictures back, for there really does seem to me to be a _greedy desire for pictures_ (i cannot qualify in any other way the taste which covets and buys such things) here; but i suppose pictures, at any rate, must be what these people want, and will not buy dear and good ones, when cheap and nasty do as well. i think, while i am here in new york, i shall take the liberty of making some further inquiry as to whether the great print and picture seller here does not think they could be seen to selling advantage in his shop; in short, it throws me into a melancholy rage to think what pictures are bought while yours are not. the state of this country is curious--strange and deplorable beyond precedent in history, it seems to me; and it is absolutely _impossible_ to foresee to what issue things are tending. the opinions one hears are all coloured by the particular bias of the speaker, and the confusion is so great in the general excitement of sectional partisanship that even one of the members--and a very influential one--of the peace convention sent to washington for the purpose of proposing terms of conciliation--which should not, however, compromise the northern principles--said that nothing had been done, that all was "sound and fury, and signifying nothing"--or if anything at present, the confirmed secession of the southern, the disruption from the north of the northern slave states, and, not impossibly, civil war. of course, the more time elapses in palavering before the first fatal blow is struck, the less probability there is of its being struck at all; but, on the other hand, the longer the present state of things continues, the more accustomed people become to the idea of the dismemberment of the union, and therefore, though the clangour of an appeal to arms diminishes, so i think does the prospect of anything like "making up" the family quarrel--indeed, if it were patched, and soldered to the very best, i do not believe that it will ever "hold water again"; but it is impossible to foresee from day to day what may be the turn of events. if i live till a year from this summer i will be in england in july, and if i live till the november after that i will be in rome, and you and edward and adelaide have my full permission to come too. good-bye, dear mr. leighton. your letters are a great comfort as well as pleasure to me; i am extremely obliged to you for them. i showed my daughter the photograph of your "vision," and she was enchanted with it. she has not a cultivated or educated taste in matters of art--this country affords no means for such a thing--but she is a person of very fine natural perceptions and great imagination and sensibility, and she was so charmed with it that i hope you will not think it foolish or impertinent in me to tell you of it. the last political news i have is that the border or northern slave states will probably not join the cotton states, in which case the latter will, of hard necessity, very soon be compelled to abandon their absurd and infinitely perilous position; but one does not see the end of it all, for if they _do_ come back into the union, it will be under a burning sense of humiliation which will hardly facilitate their future intercourse with the north, for humiliation and humility are difficult things, and the cotton lucifer under coercion will not be a pleasant devil to deal with. lenox, _saturday, september _. you owe me nothing, and you will owe me nothing, dear mr. leighton, for expediting your pictures to england. when i wrote to mr. ordway about them desiring him to send them back to you, and to let me know the amount of any expenses he incurred in doing so, his reply was that the mere cost of packing and putting them on board ship would not be worth charging you with, and that the possession of your pictures in his gallery was well worth the small outlay of merely despatching them to you. i hope they will reach you safely. i am sorry, _sorry_ they have not remained here; but latterly, as you will easily believe, people's minds have been little inclined to the peaceful arts or any influences of beauty and grace; moreover, the pockets of the wealthiest amateurs are affected, as those of their poorer neighbours are, by the public disasters. my own loss this year is two hundred pounds of my income. what it may be next year, or how far my capital itself is safe, is more than anybody can tell. we are to be taxed moreover beyond all precedent in this country hitherto, and as it is already nearly the dearest place in the world to live in, what with onerous imports and the failure of interest from one's investments it will be simply ruinous. thank you for all you tell me of my sister and her children. i am beginning to _see them again_, as the time when i may really hope to do so draws nearer. i am sorry for what you and all my friends tell me about harry's strong dramatic propensities. of course, if he is fit for nothing else, or fitter for that than anything else, he had better become an actor, and his being so in england need not prevent his being a worthy fellow and respectable and respected member of society. i am, however, much reconciled to what at first disappointed me extremely--my not being able to bring him out to this country; for if he should eventually take to the stage, here that is simply in most instances equivalent to taking to the gutter. my daughters are both with me just now, and fanny desires me to remember her very kindly to you. the incidents of the war which reach the other side of the water no doubt strike you as amazing enough; but anything more grotesque than the daily details in the midst of which we live, you cannot conceive. a young gentleman, a friend of ours who has just returned from his share in the campaign in a three months' volunteer regiment (he has entered the regular army, as a very large proportion of the volunteers did as soon as their three months' amateur service expired), described to us a volunteer corps which happened to be encamped in the neighbourhood of his company. he said they were one of the finest bodies of men he ever saw. lumberers, that is, wood-fellers from the forests of maine and new hampshire, perfectly brave and reckless and daring--perfectly undisciplined too, to the tune of replying to their officers when ordered to turn out on guard, "no, i'll be damned if i do," with the most cheerful good humour. thereupon the discomfited "superior" simply turns to some one else and says, "oh, well--you're so and so--go." good-bye; i shall rejoice to see you again, and be once more at home among people who know how to behave themselves.--believe me, always yours most sincerely, fanny kemble. after the prince consort's death in leighton wrote the following letter to his younger sister, who was in italy: i have just returned from a fortnight in bath, where i have at last finished the johnnies,[ ] i believe, and hope you will like them; they are at all events much improved. i am glad for the poor lad that the _corvée_ of settling is over; he was dying to get back to his work. if zeal and enthusiasm can make an artist, he ought to become one. i don't attempt to give you home news, as you are amply supplied with that article by mamma. everybody here is in great sorrow for the poor queen. she bears up under her overwhelming grief with admirable fortitude, and expresses her anxious desire to do _her duty as he_ would have wished it, but she speaks of all earthly happiness as at an end. the tender sympathy manifested by the whole nation is touching, but deserved. whether there will be war or not, the beginning of the year will show; it is, i think, more than probable; there is no probability of the americans giving up mason and slidell. if we do fight, it will be agreeable to feel that we are supported by the sympathy and approval of _all europe_; that we are entirely in the right is _universally_ recognised, even by those who have no love for us. sooner or later, a war with america was, i fear, unavoidable. there is a limit to what even we can overlook. all this need not prevent your coming to england that i can see; it won't stop the exhibition, nor make any perceptible difference in anybody's doings, except perhaps the picture buyers.--your very affect. brother, fred. _sunday, ._ arrived here safe and sound on thursday night, and began my work on friday. i am making studies[ ] for the "eastern king" which i shall begin to paint shortly after new year. i found the frame for the large "johnny" on my return. it improves the picture very much, and looks very handsome. i also found a letter from henry greville waiting for me. he says the queen bears up admirably, because, she says, _he_ would have wished it, but that she always talks of her earthly career as at an end. the equerries, &c., will remain attached to the court. in leighton sent eight pictures to the royal academy, and six were accepted. before the sending in he writes to his father:-- . dear papa,--i am afraid i don't take exercise _very_ regularly, still, i walk a _little_ nearly every day. with regard to the volunteering, the zeal for the matter is necessarily not what it was when every third man really expected to be called to defend the country. nevertheless, the movement is not dead, but has found a level on which i fancy it will remain; the _shooting_ will keep it together a good deal. we (the artists) shall join the great business at brighton on easter monday. had i thought you would have taken my remark about the m. angelo and the johnnies so much to heart, i should have thought twice before i made it. against what i said you must set the paragraph in the _athenæum_ two or three weeks back--my doubt is not whether they will be admired--i think they will be _that_--my only question is whether they will be _cared_ for. mrs. austin admires and likes the m.a. beyond anything, and if she could afford it would, i believe, buy it at once. you will perhaps be surprised to hear that the pictures from which i expect most are the three which you have not seen--the "eastern king" and the two others i mentioned in my last. one of them is pocock's smaller order, a girl with a _swan_ (not with _peacocks_ as the _athen._ says)--the other is a kitcat of a girl listening to a shell. both these are very luminous, and are in that respect the best things i have done. and later:-- london, . dear papa,--i think i may confirm the report made to you of the success of my pictures, particularly the "odalisque" and "echoes" (by-the-bye, i have just received a letter from somebody who wants to know if they are sold). what the papers say, you have seen. you will be glad to hear that i have received congratulations on all sides, which gives me the idea of being tolerably secure; at all events, i got no such last year, nor indeed at all since the "cimabue." that two of my pictures should not have been accepted does not indeed surprise me, and least of all would it do so if they were rejected on the score of _number_, but i have reason to suspect that they were _not_ liked; in fact i _know_ it. i have put my name down as a candidate for associateship. i don't think i have anything of interest to communicate; nobody has as yet asked the price of the "eastern king" or the "michael angelo." there is no mistake now about what people in this country like to buying point; whether i shall conform to their taste is another question. pocock liked the "michael ang." much, but did not seem to wish to have it. the same remark applies to the johnnies. millais has been, and liked the yellow woman[ ] extremely. i think he liked them all _of their kind_, but the yellow woman was his favourite by far. stephens has also seen my pictures. he seemed altogether much pleased, but most especially with the design for the "eastern king," which is also fred cockerell's favourite. to his mother he wrote:-- . i have deferred answering your letter till now, that i might be able to inform you definitely of my fate as regards the royal academy. i have just been there; i must tell you at once the least pleasant part of my news--they have rejected the large "johnny" and "lord cowper." on the other hand, the other pictures are well hung; two (the "odalisque" and the yellow woman), _very_ well, being on _the line_ in the _east room_. the "michael angelo," the "e. king," and the shell girl are just above the line and well seen--the small "johnny" just below the line. i think the pictures all look well, though not so luminous as in the studio. i am confirmed in my opinion that the academy exhibition is a false test of colour; what looks sufficiently _silvery there_ is _chalky_ out of it. the "odalisque" looks best from general aspects. lady cowper wrote me a very nice note about the rejection of her son's portrait, and said she was delighted to get it so soon. i am sorry about the large "johnny," because my chance of selling it is much diminished. that leighton received great encouragement from personal friends there can be no doubt. the following is one of very many letters he received which expressed warm appreciation. rutland gate. my dear mr. leighton,--i do not know how to express my thanks to you. i have this moment come home and found your beautiful drawing, and can hardly hold my pen, i am in such a state of delight at possessing such a reminiscence of my favourite picture. you really _do_ not know what pleasure you have given me, and i think it _too kind_ of you to have parted with this to give to me. one thing you may be quite sure of, that the "eastern king" will receive the greatest homage to the end of days from his devoted admirer and your sincere friend, mary sartoris.[ ] _past midnight, tuesday._ among leighton's friends was charles dickens. the following notes, written in , have turned up in a packet of miscellaneous correspondence:-- office of "all the year round," no. wellington street, strand, london, w.c., _thursday, april , _. my dear leighton,--i owe you many thanks for your kind reminder. it would have given me real pleasure to have profited by it had such profit been possible, but a hasty summons to attend upon a sick friend at a distance so threw me out on friday and saturday in obliging me to prepare for a rush across the channel, that i saw no pictures and had no holiday. i was blown back here only last night, and believe that i shall deliver your message to mrs. collins to-day; that is to say, i am going home this afternoon and expect to find her there. when the summer weather comes on, i shall try to persuade you to come and see us on the top of falstaff's hill. a hop country is not to be despised by an artist's eyes.--faithfully yours always, charles dickens. gad's hill place, higham by rochester, kent, _saturday, july , _. my dear leighton,--shall i confess it? i never went out to breakfast in my life, except once to rogers'. but what i might have done under this temptation is a question forestalled by my having engaged to go down to bulwer lytton's in hertfordshire on monday, to stay a few days.--cordially yours, charles dickens. it was in that leighton paid the notable visit to his friend of the roman days, george mason, to whom the world's art owes so much. assuredly, without leighton's encouragement and help, those lovely idylls which stand with the most precious treasures of the english school of painting would never have been created. mason had returned to england in ; he married and settled in his own manor-house, wetley abbey. children were born and expenses increased, and little or nothing was there with which to meet them. after rome england seemed a hopeless place to work in, and mason's surroundings were quite dumb to his artistic sense. leighton, when he heard of his depression and poverty, sought him out in his rural retreat, beamed mental sunshine on his spirits, made him walk with him, pointing out the pictorial beauties of mason's own native country, and ended by taking him a tour through the black country. mason's poetic sense was again awakened; an artistic purpose was again inspired; and, feeling the despair of hopeless poverty removed (leighton was ever ready with substantial aid), he painted the pictures for which the world has so much reason to be grateful. when in --nine years after this visit--george mason died, leighton arranged for a sale of his pictures and property, from the proceeds of which his wife and children obtained an income of £ a year. leighton wrote to mrs. matthews at the time of mason's death: "poor mason's death has been a great shock to me, though indeed i should have been prepared for it at any time. his loss is quite irreparable for english art, for he stood entirely alone in his especial charm, and he was one of the most lovable of men besides." footnotes: [ ] the critics, judging from the following extracts, were amiably inclined towards him that year:--"among the pictures familiar to london loungers of , is mr. f. leighton's scene from 'romeo and juliet,' a work lost and, it may be submitted, undervalued, owing to the disadvantageous place given it in trafalgar square. the depth and richness of its colour, the picturesque manner in which the story is told, the contrast in some of the heads, that, for instance, of friar lawrence, hopeful in the consciousness of knowledge of juliet's secret, with that of the entrancing maiden of verona, or again with that of the weeping nurse, whose grief is a trifle too _accentué_. the truthful conception and careful labour of this picture have now a chance of being appreciated, and but that pre-raphaelitism is resolute not to give in, might fairly have entitled it to the prize bestowed elsewhere."--_athenæum_, . "we will take the second-named gentleman first, and come at once to his 'fisherman and syren.' the picture is not of any commanding size, nor does it relate any very exciting legend. the story is of the mystic undine tinge, and with a shadowy semblance in it to that strange legend, current among the peasants of southern russia, of the 'white lady' with the long hair, who, with loving and languishing gestures, decoys the unwary into her fantastic skiff, then, pressing her baleful lips to theirs, folds them to her fell embrace, and drags them shrieking beneath the engulfing waves. the 'fisherman and syren' of mr. leighton has something of this unreal, legendary fatality pervading it throughout. there is irresistible seductiveness on the one side, pusillanimous fondness on the other. that it is all over with the fisherman, and that the syren will have her wicked will of him to his destruction, is palpable. but it is not alone for the admirable manner in which the story is told that we commend this picture; the drawing is eruditely correct, most graceful, and most symmetrical. the syren is a model of form in its most charming undulations. the fisherman is a type of manly elegance. that mr. leighton understands, to its remotest substructure, the vital principle of the line of beauty, is pleasurably manifest. but there is evidence here even more pleasing that the painter, in the gift of a glowing imagination, and a refined ideality, in his mastery of the nobler parts of pictorial manipulation, is worthy to be reckoned among the glorious brotherhood of disciples of the italian masters--of the grand old men whose pictures, faded and time-worn as they are, in the national gallery hard by, laugh to scorn the futile fripperies that depend for half their sheen on gilt frames and copal varnish. this young artist is one of langis' and nasasi's men. he has plainly drunk long and eagerly at the painter's castaly. the fount of beauty and of grace that assuaged the thirst of those who painted the 'monna lisa' and the 'belle jardinière'; who modelled the 'horned moses' and the 'slave'; who designed peter's great basilica, and the ghiberti gates at florence."--_daily telegraph_, rd may . [ ] the prince of wales, who lent the picture to the exhibition of leighton's works at burlington house, . [ ] mr. augustus craven's wife, _née_ pauline la ferronnay, was the authoress of the famous book, _le récit d'une soeur_, in which several of the most charming scenes took place at naples. [ ] mr. george aitchison wrote: "in , while at capri, he drew the celebrated lemon tree, working from daylight to dusk for a week or two, and giving large details in the margin of the snails on the tree." [ ] the drawing had been lent to ruskin at the time he was lecturing at oxford. [ ] leighton knew mr. chorley through mrs. sartoris. he accompanied the great _cantatrice_ when she made a tour abroad. "mrs. kemble's children and their nurse are with them, and mary anne thackeray, a life-long friend, and mr. chorley, and the great liszt, who subsequently joined them in germany."--preface by mrs. r. ritchie to "a week in a french country house," by mrs. adelaide sartoris. [ ] leighton was perfectly right. "orphée" was produced at covent garden, and the great artist, madame viardot, sang in it superbly. the opera was given after one or two acts of a well-known work, and i can vouch for the fact, having been one of the audience, that the house was very nearly empty at the close of "orphée," lord dudley and a very few true lovers of music only remaining in the stalls to the end. [ ] the lady was mrs. sandbach, a _hollandaise_, who was maid of honour to the queen of holland. in after years, on an occasion when she and i paid a visit together to leighton's studio in holland park road, she recounted the incident above related by leighton, which happened in the palace at the hague when she was in waiting. she also added that from her description leighton painted what she had seen in her dream to perfection; but that he subsequently added two _amorini_, which in her opinion did much to mar the otherwise true feeling of the picture. [ ] see sketches in the leighton house collection. the picture itself is, i believe, in america. [ ] _ibid._ [ ] a visitor to leighton's "private view" wrote him the following suggestions:-- chester terrace, n.w., _easter monday_. dear mr. leighton,--pardon intrusion. i thought much of your beautiful pictures after my yesterday's visit, and i anticipated a struggle with the difficulty you mentioned of worthily naming them. don't think me impertinent for volunteering the result. it seemed impossible without verbal description to explain the sacred subject to the profane imagination, while a prose translation of its sentiment must be heavy and subversive of romance. i think, were i fortunate enough to own the picture, i would call it "not yet," and i would put some little lines in the catalogue, which, for aught any one knows, might have come from some volume of rhyme, and which should explain that it is a story of a dream, and that the rejection is not final: something in this spirit, only better:-- "not yet--not yet-- still there is trial for thee, still the lot to bear (the father wills it) strife and care, with this sweet consciousness in balance set against the world, to soothe thy suffering there. thy lord rejects thee not." such tender words awoke me, hopeful, shriven, to life on earth again from dream of heaven. for the beauty at the fountain i once thought the best title might be some couplet like the following:-- "so tranced and still half-dreamed she, and half-heard the splash of fountain and the song of bird." but my wife, from my description of the picture, suggested a name better suited to the "suggestiveness" of the work:-- "lieder ohne worte": don't you think it rather pretty? in the multitude of counsellors some one says there's wisdom, and this liberty we take with you may beget some thought that had not struck you. i have mr. cockerell's commands to express to you the gratification his visit afforded him and his sense of your kindness and attentions.--i am, faithfully yours, ralph a. benson. another friend wrote of "lieder ohne worte," adding a poem suggested by the "francesca":-- trinity house, e.c., _ th april _. my dear leighton,--if you did not paint better than i write you would not be the man of abounding promise that you are. what i meant to say was that law and restraint are healthy life and the infraction of them ghostly death and dissolution, and that meaning is in your picture, whether you know it or not. your "dæmon" may have put it there, but then you can trust _your_ dæmon. still, best love to the little girl at the fountain, who knows that though speech may be silver, silence is golden.--ever yours, with many thanks, robin allen. fred. leighton, esq. leighton's "francesca di rimini." "that day they read no more." virtue grows faint, one hand lies powerless, the wife's sweet face is half-convulsed by loss of self-restraint. outstretched to resist, remaining to embrace, the extended arm will clasp her guilty lover, and all the bright, pure world beyond for her be over. their very forms grow blurred and change their colour into dim snaky wreaths of purple pallor, fading away with honour's fading law into the pale sad ghosts that dante saw; which we too see, crowned with departing glory, when leighton's genius deepens dante's story. r.a. _ th april ._ [ ] d.g. rossetti, in a letter to william allingham, may , , writes: "leighton might, as you say, have made a burst had not his pictures been ill-placed mostly--indeed one of them (the only very good one, _lieder ohne worte_) is the only instance of very striking unfairness in the place." [ ] "_lieder ohne worte._" [ ] "paolo and francesca." [ ] these two pictures were painted from john hanson walker. leighton sent both to the royal academy exhibition of with the titles "duet" and "rustic music." the first only was accepted. [ ] see water-colour and chalk drawings: leighton house collection. [ ] "sea echoes." [ ] the hon. mrs. alfred sartoris, sister-in-law of leighton's friend, mr. edward sartoris. chapter ii illustrations for _cornhill magazine_--fresco for lyndhurst church--associate of the royal academy--mrs. leighton's death - in leighton drew his first illustration for the _cornhill magazine_:-- _translation._] _friday, th november ._ my dear friend and master,--best thanks for your dear letter of the th, thanks also especially, because in your kind praise you do not spare criticism also; you could give me no better proof that you still esteem and love your old pupil. i feel the justice of your remarks about the drapery of the saviour very much, and can only say in my excuse that i have treated this kind of subject very little, for i am only really a profane fellow; but should i at some future time again treat such a theme, i should endeavour to avoid similar faults. i send you this time, for fun, a proof impression of a woodcut after a drawing i made for one of our good monthly periodicals (_the cornhill magazine_). it seems to me to be not bad for wood. it illustrates a poem, and represents ariadne kneeling on an eminence, looking out for theseus. this as a preliminary; i hope to send you something in april. dearest mammy,--my wretched picture is causing more delays! i am very sorry to say i shan't be able to get to bath before wednesday evening. i am due at stourhead the th; this i cannot defer any more, as i must be on duty with the rifle corps at the beginning of september, and can't do all i have to do in less than a week--this will, however, still leave me three weeks, all but two days, at bath. i enjoyed myself at panshanger very much--did i write to tell you who our party was? in case i did not, it was as follows: henry greville, lord and lady katherine valletort, lord and lady spencer, mrs. leslie, lord listowel, mr. clare vyner, and mr. e. lascelles--all young people; so that it was very pleasant. there are, as you know, most beautiful pictures at panshanger--a magnificent vandyke, a splendid rembrandt, correggio, andrea del sarto, and two beautiful raphaels. g. smith sent me a kind note and a cheque to fill up for drawing in the _cornhill_ ("ariadne"). i put ten guineas, telling him that i could not, as a general rule, interrupt my work for that sum, but that i would not take more because the cut had turned out so extremely bad. i am going to expend the money, adding a few pounds, on a cup, to be shot for in the spring by our rifle corps. arthur lewis has already given one, and another of our men has promised a second prize to go with my cup. my picture will be _finished_ by the time i go to bath. my eye is too accustomed to it to know whether it is successful; i shall know better when i return from the country. i have no news, so good-bye, dear mammy. best love to all.--from your very affectionate boy, fred. i go to windsor (to miss thackeray) for two days next week; that also is an old invitation; i have no time for it, but must go. i keep my parties going tolerably, but shall give that up with a few exceptions when i settle here; it makes work impossible from unavoidably late hours, and produces a general deterioration of mind and body, mostly the former; the hollands i shall always keep up--they are most kind; i dine there frequently and meet interesting and remarkable people. very remarkable drawings in pencil on other lines followed the celebrated "lemon tree"--surpassing in dramatic truth of expression any leighton had executed since the early design he drew of the "plague in florence in ."[ ] [illustration: sketch for "michael angelo nursing his dying servant." leighton house collection] the group of drawings for "michael angelo nursing his dying servant" are among those preserved in the leighton house collection, but were not seen by the public before leighton's death. though slight, they are among the most admirable he ever achieved in subtle tenderness of feeling and expressive truth of drawing. the feeble twitching clutch of the hands of the old man--announcing the speedy approach of death--is a convincing proof of imaginative realism of a high order. this group of sketches, however, exemplify the curious artistic discrepancy which at times existed, especially before and about the time when the michael angelo was painted, between leighton's pictures and the studies he made for them--a discrepancy which had no reference to his feeling for colour, but simply arose from an absence of sensitiveness for texture. in turning from the drawings to the painting, we find the noble feeling and conception, the lines and forms of the design much the same in all; but the heavy and yet insufficient texture of the actual surface mars the full conveying, even in the completed painting, of the feeling of the motive--so imperative is a simultaneous union of the idea with a happy echo of it in the touch of the human hand, if a work of art is fully to convey its message. leighton's genius for using the point is referred to in a letter from mrs. browning, on the subject of a drawing he had made of her husband:-- _copy._] dear mr. leighton,--the portrait is beautiful, and would satisfy me entirely except for a want of strength about the brow, which i must write of, because i can't trust robert himself with the message. i think the brow is feeble, less massive than his, with less fulness about the temples. in fact, your temple is _hollow_, instead of full. will you look at it by the original? the eyes and mouth are exquisite. _your pencil has the expressiveness of another's brush._ how much i thank you for having put so much of my husband on paper is proved by the very insolence of my criticisms.--most truly yours, elizabeth barrett browning. _april ._ in the same category as the michael angelo studies may be placed the first sketch of "samson wrestling with the lion," designed as an illustration for dalziel's bible. this drawing is also in the leighton house collection, also the original drawings for "the spies' escape" and "samson at the mill." the following was written with regard to it: "an animal model never 'sits.' the artist must catch the action he wants from fleeting suggestions. his imagination alone can guide his pencil when he depicts such action with realistic power. it is in a pencil drawing of a lion that we find the work that evinces, more distinctly perhaps than does any other of leighton's utterances in art, the highest kind of imagination in the drawing of form in action, namely in the sketch of 'samson wrestling with the lion' for the illustrations in dalziel's bible. where, indeed, for vigour of invention, can we find a drawing to surpass these few pencil lines? the sinews in the legs and claws of the animal are drawn up, clenching the vacant air with a quivering grip; the tail straightened stiffly through the strain of the wrestling; the whole animal convulsed with the force of the struggle. this is treatment of form no model could suggest, no knowledge evolve, no labour or industry produce. a true imagination alone can inspire such vivid realism." the other subjects leighton illustrated were "death of abel," "moses viewing the promised land," "samson carrying the gates," "abraham and the angel," "eliezer and rebecca at the well," "the slaying of the first-born." [illustration: original drawing for "samson and the lion" in dalziel's bible leighton house collection] * * * * * in leighton illustrated george eliot's great novel "romola." he writes to his father:-- _tuesday._ dear papa,--though i am not able, i am sorry to say, to report the sale of any more of my pictures, you will be glad to hear of a commission just given me by g. smith of the _cornhill_ which is very acceptable to me. i am to illustrate (by-the-bye this is "_strictly confidential_") a novel about to appear in the _cornhill_ from the hand of _adam bede_. it is an italian story, the scene and period are florence and the fifteenth century, nothing could "_ganter_" me better. it is to continue through _twelve_ numbers, in each of which are to be _two_ illustrations. i am to have for each _number_ £ ; for the whole novel, therefore, £ . i have conferred with the authoress to-day, and am to get the first-proof sheets this week. the first number will be published in july. miss evans (or mrs. lewes) has a very striking countenance. her face is large, her eyes deep set, her nose aquiline, her mouth large, the under jaw projecting, rather like charles quint; her voice and manner are grave, simple, and gentle. there is a curious mixture in her look; she either is or seems very short-sighted. lewes is clever. both were extremely polite to me; her i shall like much. i have no other news; no one asks about my pictures, though their success is decidedly great; hard times! are you writing to gussy? if so will you tell her that i mean to give her some lessons with hallé when she comes to london? she shall have _three_ a week for a month. tell lina with my love not to be jealous, it will be her turn next. how is she? and how is mamma? give them my best love, and believe me, your affectionate boy, fred. that george eliot should write a florentine story at a time when leighton was available to illustrate it, was certainly a most fortunate coincidence. each scene which he represents is impregnated with a feeling which records the strong hold italy had on his artistic resources. with a few exceptions, these illustrations for "romola" are the last examples of his art, when a dramatic or a humorous treatment was a prominent feature of the designs. the last picture exhibited at the royal academy in --the passionate, despairing figure of "clytie"--was notably one of these exceptions. unfortunately leighton's letters to george eliot respecting the "romola" drawings cannot be found, and were probably destroyed before the author's death. the following were preserved by leighton:-- blandford square, n.w., _friday_. dear mr. leighton,--thanks for the sight of the vignettes. they are satisfactory. your delicious drawing was with me all day yesterday and made the opera more delightful to me in the evening. i never saw anything comparable to the scene in nello's shop as an illustration. there could not be a better beginning. i should very much like to have a little conversation with you, and will arrange to see you at any hour that will best suit you, in the evening if you like, any time after the morning working hours, which last till two o'clock. i know your time is very precious to you just now, but i think we shall both benefit by a little talk together after you have read the second proof.--yours very truly, m.e. lewes. f. leighton, esq. blandford square, n.w., _wednesday_. dear mr. leighton,--i feel for you as well as myself in this inevitable difficulty--nay, impossibility of producing perfect correspondence between my intention and the illustrations. i think your sketch is charming, considered in itself, and i feel now with regret that if we had seen each other and talked a little together after you had read the proof, the only important discrepancy might have been prevented. it is too late for alterations now. if it had not been, i should have wished bardo's head to be raised with the chin thrust forward a little--the usual attitude of the blind head, i think--and turned a little towards romola, "as if he were looking at her." romola's attitude is perfect, and the composition is altogether such as gives me a very cheering prospect for the future, when we have more time for preparation. her face and hair, though deliciously beautiful, are not just the thing--how could they be? do not make yourself uneasy if alteration is impossible, but i meant the hair to fall forward from behind the ears over the neck, and the dress to be without ornament. i shall inevitably be detestable to you, but believe that i am (unfinished) blandford square, n.w., _thursday_. dear mr. leighton,--unmitigated delight! nello is better than my nello. i see the love and care with which the drawings are done. after i had sent away my yesterday's note, written in such haste that i was afterwards uncomfortable lest i had misrepresented my feelings, the very considerations you suggest had occurred to me and i had talked them over with mr. lewes--namely, that the exigencies of your art must forbid perfect correspondence between the text and the illustration; and i came to the conclusion that it was these exigencies which had determined you as to the position of bardo's head and the fall of romola's hair. you have given her attitude transcendently well, and the attitude is more important than the mere head-dress. i am glad you chose nello's shop; it makes so good a variety with bardo and romola. in a day or two you will have the second part, and i think you will find there a scene for tessa "under the plane tree." but perhaps we shall see each other before you begin the next drawings.--ever yours truly, m.e. lewes. blandford square, n.w., _monday_. dear mr. leighton,--your letter comforts me particularly. i am so glad to think you find subjects to your mind. i have no especial desire for the view from s. miniato, and indeed a plan we started in conversation with mr. smith this morning, namely, to have moderately sized initial letters--the opening one being an old florentine in his _lucco_ and generally the subjects being bits of landscape or florentine building--seems to do away with any reason for having the landscape to begin with. the idea of having tessa and the mules, or nello's sanctum, smiles upon me, so pray feel free to choose the impression that urges itself most strongly. your observation about the "che, che" is just the aid i besought from you. with that exception, i have confined myself, i believe, to such interjections as i find in the writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in them, curiously enough, this exclamation now said to be so constant and "to mean everything" (according to our authority) does not seem to occur. thank you. pray let me have as many criticisms of that kind as you can. i am more gratified, i think, by your liking these opening chapters than i have yet been by anything in these nervous anxious weeks of decision about publication.--very truly yours, m.e. lewes. f. leighton, esq. blandford square, n.w., _tuesday evening_. dear mr. leighton,--i am enchanted! purely delighted! which shall i begin with, to tell you that i delight in baby's toes or that exquisite poetry in the scene where romola is standing? is it not a pleasant change to have that opening made through the walls of the city, so as to see the sky and the mountains? in the scene with baldassarre and tessa, also, the distant view is charming. tessa and her babkin are perfect--baldassarre's is, as you say, an impossible face to draw, but you have seized the framework of the face well, both in this illustration and the previous one. i want to tell you that a man of some eminence in art was speaking of your drawings to a third person the other day as "remarkable" in a tone of genuine admiration. i don't know whether you care about that, but it is good to know that there is any genuine admiration in one's neighbours. i am glad to have the drawings left. i shall go now and have a long look at them. the february number will soon be out of my hands, but you will have it when it pleases the pigs--or printers.--ever yours truly, m.e. lewes. park hotel, little hampton, sussex, _september , ' _. dear mr. leighton,--thanks for your letter, which i have received this morning. my copy of vasari has a profile of piero di cosimo, but it is of no value, a man with a short beard and eyes nearly closed. the old felt hat on his head has more character in it than the features, but the hat you can't use. of niccolo caparra it is not likely that any portrait exists, so that you may feel easy in letting your imagination interpret my suggestions in the first and the fifth parts of romola. there is probably a portrait of piero di cosimo in the portrait room of uffizi, but in the absence of any decent catalogue of that collection it was a bewildering and headachy business to assure oneself of the presence or absence of any particular personage. if you feel any doubt about the _new_ romola, i think it will be better for you to keep to the original representation, the type given in the first illustration, which some accomplished people told me they thought very charming. it will be much better to continue what is intrinsically pretty than to fail in an effort after something indistinctly seen. if you prefer the action of _taking out_ the crucifix, instead of the merely contemplative attitude, you can choose that with safety. in the scene with piero di cosimo, i thought you might make the figures subordinate to those other details which you render so charmingly, and i chose it for that reason. but i am quite convinced that illustrations can only form a sort of overture to the text. the artist who uses the pencil must otherwise be tormented to misery by the deficiencies or requirements of the one who uses the pen, and the writer, on the other hand, must die of impossible expectations. _apropos_ of all that, i want to assure you again of what i had said in that letter, which your naughty servant sent down the wind, that i appreciate very highly the advantage of having your hand and mind to work with me rather than those of any other artist of whom i know. please do not take that as an impertinent expression of opinion, but rather as an honest expression of feeling by which you must interpret any apparent criticism. the initial letter of the december part will be w. i forgot to tell you how pleased i was with the initial letter of part v. i am very much obliged to you for your critical doubts. i will put out the questionable "ecco!" in deference to your knowledge. i have a tremulous sense of my liability to error in such things. i don't wonder at your difficulty about the modification of _com_ into _ciom_. the writers of the fifteenth century, speaking of the insurrection of the _ciompi_ which occurred in the previous century, say that the word was a corruption of the french _compère_, the same word of course as _compare_, constantly on the lips of the numerous french who were present in florence during the dictatorship of the duke of athens. the likelihood of the derivation lies in the analysis of transition in the meaning of words _compère_ and _compare_, like the english "gossip," beginning with the meaning of godfather and ending with, or rather proceeding to that of companion. our "gossip" has at least parted with its secondary meaning as well as its primary one. the unlikelihood of the derivation lies in the modification of the sounds, and i felt that unlikelihood as you have done. but in the absence of a max müller to assure me of a law to the contrary, i thought the statement of tuscan writers a better authority than inferences. i ought to have written "is stated by the old historians." i am really comforted by the thought that you will mention doubts to me when they occur to you. my misery is the certainty that i must be often in error. mr. lewes shares my admiration of the two last illustrations.--ever yours truly, marian e. lewes. f. leighton, esq. blandford square, n.w., _tuesday_. dear mr. leighton,--since i saw you i have confirmed by renewed reference my conclusion that _gamurra_ was the equivalent of our _gown_, _i.e._ the constant outer garb of femininity, varying in length and cut according to rank and age. the poets and novelists give it alike to the peasant and the "city woman," and speak of the _girdle_ around it. perhaps it would have been better to call tessa's gown a _gamurrina_, the word sometimes used and indicating, i imagine, just that abbreviation of petticoat that active work demands. if you are going to see ghirlandajo's frescoes--the engravings of them i mean--in the choir of santa maria novella, i wish you would especially notice if the women in his groups have not that plain piece of opaque drapery over the head which haunts my memory. we were only allowed to see those frescoes once, because of repairs going on; but i am strongly impressed with a belief--which, _au reste_, may be quite false--in the presence of my "white hood" there. as to the garb of the luxurious classes at that time, a point which may turn up in our progress, i think the painters can hardly be believed to have represented it fully, since we know, on strong evidence, that it ran into extravagances, which are even in contrast with the general impression conveyed not only by the large fresco compositions but by the portraits. you must have had sufficient experience of the _eclecticism_ in costume which the artist's feeling forces upon him in the presence of hideous or extreme fashion. we have in varchi a sufficiently fit and clear description of the ordinary male costume of dignified florentines in my time; but for the corresponding feminine costume the best authority i have seen is the very incomplete one of a certain ginevra's _trousseau_ in the ricordi of the rinuccini family of rather an earlier period, but marking even there the rage for embroidery and pearls which grew instead of diminishing. i imagine that the woman's _berretta_, frequently of velvet embroidered with pearls, and apparently almost as prevalent as our bonnet, must have been that close-fitting cap, square at the ears, of which we spoke yesterday. i trouble you with this note--which pray do not think it necessary to answer--in order to indicate to you the very slight satisfaction my anxiety on this subject can meet with, and the obligation i shall be under to you if you will ever give me a positive or negative hint or correction. approximative truth is the only truth attainable, but at least one must strive for that, and not wade off into arbitrary falsehood.--ever, dear mr. leighton, yours very truly, marian e. lewes. leighton preserved the records of a friendship with mr. robin allen,[ ] established and for most part continued through a correspondence which lasted for many years from the early 'sixties. the letter sent with the following poem refers to leighton's illustration to mrs. browning's poem, "musical instrument," of which the original drawing is reproduced. (see list of illustrations.) trinity house, e.c. my dear sir,--if i send this to the author of a lovely illustration to a lovely poem, it is not for its worth, but to give me an excuse for saying that i go out of town for a month next wednesday, and hope that i may call on you on my return, perhaps get leave to show you over loughton woods in the autumn.--believe me, my dear sir, yours truly, robin allen. f. leighton, esq. sequitur to mrs. browning's "musical instrument" in the "cornhill magazine" of july . a greater god than the great god pan planted the reed in the river, and he is the only god who can break through its heart without killing the reed, and make of its very life indeed an organ, to utter his psalm as the giver. this greater god than the beast-god pan, as he watches the reeds in time's river, counts for best poet that perfect man who holds lightly his song, at its loftiest strain, so he live a man's life!--and at all cost and pain _is_ a reed among reeds in the river. r.a. [illustration: "the great god pan" original sketch for illustration to mrs. browning's poem in the _cornhill magazine_, ] [illustration: "an evening in a french country house" illustration for mrs. adelaide sartoris's story, "a week in a french country house," published in the _cornhill magazine_, by permission of messrs. smith, elder, & co.] in a letter to his mother leighton expresses a warm admiration for these lines by mr. robin allen. in the autumn of the following letter to his mother mentions a notable visit to compiègne. the charming story mrs. edward sartoris wrote, which appeared some years later in the _cornhill magazine_, "a week in a french country house," owes its local colour to this home at compiègne to which leighton refers. it belonged to mr. edward sartoris' brother-in-law, the marquis de l'aigle. for this story leighton made two admirable illustrations--"an evening in a french country house" and "drifting." leighton is supposed to have suggested the character of monsieur kiowski, the polish artist in the story; and the figure in the boat holding the rudder in "drifting" he certainly meant to represent himself, while the figure singing is adelaide sartoris--drawn, as shown by the head-dress, from the sketch leighton made in . (see list of illustrations.) _commencement of letter missing._] . i have a fit of the blues instead. i hope for the sake of my pictures that i shall soon get over them (the blues, not the pictures). i believe if i could find models i should recover at once; but i foresee that i shall have no such luck. i had a delightful time at compiègne--the place is charming, the house comfortable in the extreme, and the life the perfection of unconstraint (if that is english); i have told you already how hospitable and kind my host and hostess were. i have, of course, no news to give you yet, except, by-the-bye, that the bailiffs were in the house the other day because mr. and mrs. gedy had not paid £ , s. d. taxes; they stayed two days in the house, and if the money had not come, would have walked off with some of _my_ furniture. i wish i had a house; they are beginning a house on campden hill, and would build it for an artist after his own designs. mr. and mrs. alfred sartoris, the admirer of "eastern king," were also among the visitors during this week in a french country house, and write the following anecdote:-- "those who knew lord leighton require no record of his kindness and unselfishness. for those who had not that privilege the following little anecdote may be interesting. in the late autumn of we were all staying with my sister-in-law, the marquise de l'aigle, at francport, near compiègne. mrs. sartoris was also there and mr. leighton. there was to be a service on the sunday in a little neighbouring village church for some children who had made their first communion, and it occurred to mme. de l'aigle to have some special music on the occasion, and profit by the glorious voice of mrs. sartoris, who kindly offered to sing. mr. leighton also volunteered to take the tenor part in various sacred pieces. we were all to help in the concerted music, and the old curé was in the seventh heaven of delight at the prospect of such a grand service. our dismay can be imagined when three days before the service mr. leighton announced that he must leave us as business required his presence in london. 'oh!' we all exclaimed, 'what shall we do? the tenor pieces must be given up; the curé will die of grief,' &c. ... 'no, no,' said mr. l., in his cheery way, 'don't change anything; i shall be back all right on sunday morning in time to sing;' and so, sure enough, he did return, having travelled two nights to london and back. he never would tell us why he had gone; and it was not till long afterwards that it transpired that he had made the hurried double journey to help a struggling artist, whose work he wished to bring forward and introduce to some influential person. he attained his object, and thought nothing of the time and trouble involved, only glad to have been a help to one who needed assistance, and also to keep his promise by singing in the little village church." [illustration: "drifting" illustration for mrs. adelaide sartoris's story, "a week in a french country house," published in the _cornhill magazine_, by permission of messrs. smith, elder, & co.] in leighton began painting the fresco of "the wise and foolish virgins," which he presented to the church at lyndhurst. it was painted on the plaster wall above the altar at the east end. while at work on it, he stayed with his old friend mr. hamilton aïdé, who formed one of the happy company of _intimes_ of the roman and lucca days. several visits to this charming home in the new forest were made before the work was finished. in the following letter to steinle he mentions his first experiment in mr. gambier parry's medium for painting in fresco. _translation._] orme square, bayswater. my very dear friend,--when i last wrote i asked you when the german exhibition of which you spoke was to take place, and whether it was to be held in cologne itself; but as i received no answer i supposed that this exhibition either had not come to anything (as i have seen nothing about it in the newspapers), or that it did not seem sufficiently important to you for me to go specially to germany for it. nevertheless, i would have gone to cologne, if it had been in any way feasible, exclusively on account of you and your works, which i am very anxious to see; unfortunately, however, i could not arrange it, and must content myself with learning from a letter (if you will write me one) how your work succeeds, and how far you have got with it. two walls are already finished, are they not? as for myself, i am fairly industrious. amongst other things, i am painting at present the composition which you have already seen, of michael angelo and his old servant urbino. i have endeavoured to keep the action of the figures simpler and smoother than in the first sketch; and, in fact, i think the picture will please you better than the drawing. for the rest, i am sick of painting small pictures, and would like to undertake something large; but it is not very agreeable to paint pictures which will probably remain always hanging round one's neck. i think i shall very soon test the public again in this respect--but _what_ i shall paint i do not know. a friend of mine (mr. gambier parry), a great art devotee and first-rate amateur, has discovered a medium to replace fresco painting in our damp climate. i have seen his experiments, and have myself painted a head under his rules,[ ] and to my complete satisfaction. the result is scarcely to be distinguished from fresco, and is quite as easy, indeed even easier to achieve. at the same time this method has advantages which _buon_ fresco does not possess; it dries exactly as one lays it on (and is then flat), it has no deposit (_ansätze_), and one can go over it as often as one likes. the wall (a granular lime wall) is saturated with the same preparation as you paint with. this preparation, which is _stone hard_ against water, can always dissolve _itself_ with moisture, so that one can retouch it perpetually, at the same time the _whole_ of one's palette is available. my friend is going to publish his system; i will then, if you like, tell you exactly about it. and now, farewell, dear master. remember me most kindly to your wife and children, and keep in remembrance your friend and pupil, fred leighton. he wrote to steinle in that he was making studies for the lyndhurst fresco, and expected to finish it that summer; but it was apparently only begun in august . _translation._] orme square, bayswater, _april , _. my very dear friend,--when i last wrote to you, i promised and hoped that this time i should be able to send you some photographs of my latest works, but unfortunately at the last moment time ran short. my pictures are only just ready for exhibition, and i must send them off unphotographed. in order that you may not think i have been idle, i write these lines; also because i am unwilling, my dear master, to fade entirely from your memory. i am exhibiting _eight_ pictures this year, an unusually large number. but the case is not so bad as it looks at the first glance. two only of these pictures are important in size and subject. one of them you already know from a former composition. it represents michael angelo with his dying servant urbino. in the principal idea i have not deviated much from the first sketch, but have endeavoured to treat the whole with more unity and the details with more simplicity than in the drawing which you saw, and the faults of which you pointed out to me. this picture is life-size, and extends down to the knees. the other is of a somewhat fanciful description. i have imagined one of the three holy kings, when he sees the star in the east from the battlements of his palace. the picture is curious and open to much fault-finding, but i think it will please you by a certain poetry in the conception. the shape is long and narrow. the king, half life-size, almost turns his back upon the spectator, and is, in the midst of the dark night, only lit by the mystic rays of the star. in contrast to this pure light one sees, quite at the bottom, through an arch, into the hot lamp-light, which illuminates a gay orgy. i have allowed myself a certain amount of pictorial licence, which may well surprise the general spectator at first glance, but which to me heightens the poetical impression of the whole. five other pictures are smaller, and three of the subjects are idyllic or fanciful (_e.g._ a shepherd playing on a flute, an oriental girl with a swan, &c. &c.), all carried out with great love, and certainly my best works. at present i am busy making studies for a large wall painting (the "wise and foolish virgins"), which i am giving to a church. i shall execute it this summer, and tell you more about it. now, my dear friend, i have given you a long and full report of myself; i hope you also will tell me what you are doing. i am very anxious to know how the cologne frescoes get on. how i should like to see them! perhaps i may manage it this autumn. in the meantime, however, write to me, and believe me to be, your devoted pupil, fred leighton. [illustration: portrait from a photograph of lord leighton taken in ] _april , saturday._ dearest mamma,--you have seen in the papers that the review at brighton went off capitally. i enjoyed my day very much, and though i was a _little_ tired and _very_ sleepy for two days after, was altogether the better for it. it was a stiff day's work too--nine or ten hours without sitting down, and with the additional responsibility of having the command of the artists' company. i was sure you would be pleased at the reception of my "fruit girl"[ ] by my brother artists--you must understand, though, that this applies chiefly to the younger men (and not to _all_ of _them_), for there are several of the older painters who strongly object to my style of painting and are bent on suppressing it. will you thank papa for his hint about the _athenæum_--i am pretty sure he is mistaken about it, but i shall take measures about it--indeed i _have_. i spoke to _charles_ greville (henry's brother) and told him i thought i should be coming on before very long; he very kindly overhauled the lists and said he thought i might be up by the end of the summer, and, what was still more kind, seeing me unseconded, he put his name down as seconder. forest bank, lyndhurst, _thursday, august , _. if i was not more explicit about being with aïdé, it was because i made sure you knew it. you will be pleased to hear that when after many _péripéties_ i did begin my fresco i got on capitally; i have now finished the task for this year, having painted _three_ life-size figures, with a good bit of background, in _four_ days. i worked hard for it, and am rather tired--head and eyes; otherwise flourishing. i am delighted with my new fresco material (parry's)--the effect is excellent--nearly as fine as real fresco. everybody seems much pleased with what i have done, particularly the parson. i like it myself; i enjoy working at it immensely; it is my real element. i find it (for mere _manipulation bien entendu_) absurdly easy. the following letter from mr. gambier parry explains the "fresco material" leighton used. highnam, gloucester, _august , _. my dear leighton,--in reply to your last note about the use of the wall itself rather than of canvas, there can be no doubt on the subject, if only the plaster is _good_ and _well put on_. you speak of two or three months to get it dry. i assure you that that is _not near enough_. when the surface feels dry to your hand you must not suppose that it is all dry inside, and if the _wall_ is new, i doubt a year being enough to dry it. the water must evaporate somewhere--it is drawn _to the_ surface of _interiors_ because they are the warmest. you ask whether the rough cast on the wall must be scraped off before you wash the wall for painting. if by the _rough cast_ you mean rough plaster, which is a totally different thing to rough cast, certainly use it as it is. the coarser the plaster the better, because it is all the more porous, so long only that it is of the best materials (viz. perfectly _washed_ sand, and good lime), and well put on a good wall. _nothing in the world could equal it for painting upon_, except a surface of _coarse clean_ bath stone, with _all its pores open_. if you have such plaster as i have just described, and both it and the wall thoroughly dry, nothing could be better. the smooth surface, with what granulated texture you please, can be got according to the directions in my paper--viz. after two or three washes of pure diluted medium, give another or two more of the same, with dry whiting and a little white-lead, then go ahead _while it is all fresh_, viz. _two or three days_ after the process of preparation has been completed. take care in painting not to rub it up too much, for fear of _drawing up the glossy resins to the surface_ away from the wax. paint right _into_ your prepared surface _solidly_ and with _decision_ in the way of fresco painting, not as oil. keep the brush clean, and the volatile oil in the dipper clean, and then, oh! how shall i envy you your power to use them all![ ] at the _ely ceiling_, which is of hard wood _not_ porous, but prepared with three coats of oil white-lead, i am painting with liquid measure. pale drying oil japan gold size turpentine artist copal well shaken up every time it is used. the colours are all ground up in it, and then painting is done as in water-colour, using _pure spirits of turpentine_ as a vehicle. colours dry extremely rapidly and with a dead surface. the stuff looks horribly black, but the colours are not materially affected by it. of course it is not to be compared with my former medium, because there is that bane of the palette oil in it, but i used it because of its great facility (used transparent like _water-colour on a white ground_), and because the surface was hard, so that wax might (in great heat) shrink or play tricks on it, as it has done in murillo's pictures and many others.--ever most sincerely yours, t. gambier parry. if i can do anything for you, command me; we go to scotland on the th. london, _april , _. dearest mamma,--you were no doubt surprised to see a sock arrive in bath in solitary grandeur, unaccompanied by any sort of note. the fact is, for some days past i have been working at a rate which made me altogether unfit for correspondence. i have just returned from lyndhurst, where i have been doing a bit more fresco--and very stiff work it was--up and at work at seven, and at it best part of the day, perched generally on an uncomfortably narrow ladder, and with my head almost blown off by the agreeable but overpowering smell of the vehicle with which i painted. the result is as far as it goes tolerably satisfactory--everybody there is delighted, and though that, of course, does not prove much, it is at all events agreeable to me that they derive so much pleasure from my work. the stained-glass window, too, which has been executed at my desire from jones' designs, gives great satisfaction--is a lovely piece of colour, and (which was, to me, of paramount importance) does not hurt my fresco, though, of course, in the nature of things, it outshines tenfold in point of brilliancy; hence the folly, to my mind, of ever putting glass and wall painting in immediate juxtaposition. i shall go and paint another slice in june, after which aïdé leaves, so i may not be able to finish my work till he returns in autumn. on my road to lyndhurst, i paid a visit to lady dorothy neville (lady pollington's sister) at dangstein--a very beautiful place near petersfield. on monday week the royal academy opens--i shall be curious to see what pictures they have taken; my work at present will be a woodcut for dalziel--then that for the _cornhill_--then a drawing for cundall's bible--mrs. magniac's portrait--the cartoon for the remainder of the lyndhurst fresco--then perhaps a new picture. i wish some one would buy the old ones! have you read "sylvia's lovers"? don't read "salammbo"--it is hideous. dearest mamma,--my chair has arrived safe and sound; once more, my very best thanks for it. aïdé _is_ one of the most _excellent_ men that ever lived--i like him extremely. by-the-bye, i am made one of the ensigns in our rifle corps, so that when you come to town you have a chance of seeing me strutting about with a sword. i write in haste. good-bye, best love to all.--from your very affectionate boy, fred. [illustration: the fresco presented by lord leighton to lyndhurst church--"the wise and foolish virgins." completed ] in a letter to his father dated leighton announced the completion of the fresco, "the wise and foolish virgins." the design of the whole and the lines of the draperies in each figure are all admirable, and the work is one which proves leighton's powers of achieving rapidly, and under great difficulties, a complete work and one in which his great sense of beauty is very salient. there is also sufficient dramatic feeling in the gestures and expressions of the faces. perhaps the most interesting (because the most spontaneous) attitude in the figures of the wise virgins is that which is kneeling, profile-wise, under the figure of the angel, who is indicating to her the presence of her saviour. she seems dazed with awe and rapture. her arm is caught up with a sudden unstudied angularity of movement which, though not so beautiful intrinsically as are most of those in leighton's work, is very expressive, and produces a happy effect amid the more obviously arranged lines in the rest of the design. among the many drawings preserved in the leighton house collection made for this fresco there is a slight but very sensitive sketch for this figure, also a finished pencil drawing for the head of christ. the model who sat for this head was the italian whom leighton painted in "golden hours," and whom watts used for the picture he (many years after its execution) entitled "a prodigal." the type of this model may be felt by some to have been an unfortunate one to choose for the central imposing figure in the design of the fresco. it is, perhaps, weak--too good-looking in a commonplace style for such a subject. ruskin, on seeing the photograph of this work, wrote to leighton (a postscript to a letter): "i was much struck--seriously--by the photograph from your fresco; it is wonderfully fine in action." leighton wrote to steinle on receipt of his criticisms on the lyndhurst fresco:-- _translation._] _ rd december._ my dear friend,--just now returned from a long journey (to constantinople and athens), i find two very welcome letters from you, by which i see with great pleasure that your old pupil may still reckon upon your invaluable friendship and sympathy, and i see it all the more certainly because you enclose a kind but pertinent criticism of the photographs i sent you.[ ] i agree entirely, and can only pretend in my defence that it was difficult, with the long space (all having to be filled) and the altar standing in the middle of it, not to fall into rather a panic. that, after all, is but a lame excuse, and i hope that you will always rap me over the knuckles with the same friendly sincerity. my dear friend, the idea of appearing as a collaborator beside you, my master, would be in the very highest degree delightful and flattering to me. it is therefore only after mature deliberation, and in the firm confidence that you will at least appreciate the sincerity of your leighton, that i have to decline with real regret herr bruckmann's flattering invitation. _you_, more than any one else, will agree with me that an artist can execute no first-rate work, indeed dare undertake no work, that is not a genuine expression alike of his feelings and his convictions. i must candidly confess i cannot agree about a complete illustration of the shakespearian plays, those masterpieces already in existence as _exhaustively finished_ works of art; it seems to me that in literature only those subjects lend themselves to pictorial representation which stand in the written word more as _suggestion_. subjects perhaps which are provided in the bible or in mythology and tradition in great variety, or are not already generally in possession of the minds of the spectators of living plays (_e.g._ the greek tragedies). it is for the most part a struggle with the incomparable, already existing _complete_--which is quite intimidating to my capabilities. do not take this ill, my dear friend, and do not consider it too great a presumption that i, your pupil, declare so plainly against you where you think so differently. to go back over one detail, i must also confess that _to me_ a _coloured cartoon_ is not a natural mode of expression; a _drawn_, or a _grey in grey_ (grau in grau) painted cartoon--well enough. a size five feet high is to me, for a _suggestion_ of colour, at least five times too large; just as little could i give a suggestion of form in this size. colour is not necessary; but if one should use it in half life-size, it is too noble and poetic, i think, for one to venture, so to speak, to clarify it. will you forgive me for all this, dear master? however, i shall see with deep interest the progress of the beautiful work which you will certainly execute. i have heard with some sorrow of the burning of the venerable dome, and am just writing to otto cornhill in respect to a lottery which is to be arranged for the re-erection of the tower. i have read what you tell me of your dear family with great pleasure; please remember me most kindly to your wife and children; also to my old comrades v. müller, wecker, and the rest. i am very glad to hear that g. wecker, the apostate, has returned to art. he was, undoubtedly still is, a very gifted man, but had to guard somewhat, had he not? against the _ornamental_. but my letter is becoming too long. farewell, my dear master; take nothing amiss from your grateful, devoted pupil, fred leighton. _friday , ._ dear papa,--you will be disappointed, after waiting so long, to receive no paper after all, and a skimpy note instead. i am amused at the studied ill-nature of the _spectator_; i wonder who _v._ is. the author of an article on sensation pictures in the _realm_, in which i am flatteringly quoted, is by mrs. norton. _en somme_ i think my "_golden hours_" is the most successful of my pictures (perhaps more than anything since "cimabue") and the "orpheus" (deservedly) the least. i am about to begin two new pictures. mrs. guthrie's portrait--a full length--is postponed for her health till the winter. . i should not leave the place i am in except to build; a mended house would be most unsatisfactory and _temporary_. i feel sure i shall nowhere get standing room for a house for less than £ , still less room for a house and _large garden_. if i find the terms exactly as i expect and my lawyer (nettleship) satisfied with the title i shall, i think, close the bargain, the more so that another painter (i don't know who) is after it.[ ] i am staying for a day or two at dangstein (lady dorothy neville's). i met here last night mr. henry woolfe, who very kindly offered me introductions to one or two charming venetian families (mocenigo) which will be very pleasant for me, as i want to see a venetian interior. gambart has paid the £ for "dante." the "honeymoon" was bought by a cornhill dealer yclept moreby. i will let you know how all goes off on saturday at the council, meanwhile best love to mamma.--from your affectionate son, fred. _august , ._ i found your letter on returning from lyndhurst this morning. i may as well tell you at once that i have finished my fresco, retouching a great deal of what was already painted, and i think i may add, greatly improving it--so much for that. with regard to the draft, my assent was only general and preliminary (besides being subject to the approval in the details of my solicitor) and bound me to nothing. my surveyor and solicitor have conferred together and with lady h.'s agent, and though the agreement is not yet signed, the matter is virtually settled. i have several minor clauses altered which had been inserted originally in the general draft to meet cases different from my own. with regard to the title, i was surprised and vexed to hear that it was stipulated that _no title should_ be called for. my lawyer told me that this was frequently the case--that he would go to doctors' commons to see the will to ascertain the truth of the statement that the property was lady h.'s in fee simple (as it is). even this he said did not _legally_ exhaust the matter, as there might be encumbrances not alluded to in the will. he said, however, that many other leases had been granted on that property on precisely the same terms, that the matter turned on the character of the landlord, and that, _en somme_, i ran but little risk. _since then_ i have seen him, and he tells me that he has fortunately been able to ascertain through a very respectable firm of solicitors, who _have_ seen the titles, that _it is all right_; he has therefore not thought it desirable to put me to the expense of investigating the will--so far so good. as to the possible expense of the house, my dear papa, you have taken, i assure you, false alarm. i shall indeed devote more to the architectural part of the building than _you_ would care to do; but in the first place architecture and much _ornament_ are not inseparable, and besides, whatever i do i shall undertake _nothing without an estimate_. you need never fear that i shall take otherwise than it is meant the advice that your experience and interest in me suggest to you. you will also, i am sure, allow for the difference of feeling between yourself and an artist who lives by his eyes. a line will find me at venice, _poste restante_, all september. i am just off. best love to mammy.--from your affectionate son, fred. i knew neither _poole_ nor _jones_. grant said he thought it probable i should be an r.a. before long. venice, _september , ' _. my dear papa,--many thanks for your letter, which reached me safely a few days ago. i do indeed contemplate building my house so as to be enlarged at a future day. i find, however, that i shall probably be obliged to build at once rather more than i absolutely require for practical building reasons, but i need not therefore furnish more than i require. about the well i am now entirely in the dark. it would never have occurred to me to ask myself the question, are there not _pipes_ or something? with regard to the will, if the perusal of it only cost a guinea, it might have been worth while to look at it, though palmer and nettleship thought it superfluous; but then p. and n. tell me it would cost £ ! to have it gone over, and as my expenses with browne (lady h.'s agent) are already very great--he makes a preposterous charge, _which i can't dispute_, for the agreement--i don't think i shall care to add to them. my architect is aitchison, an old friend. i wrote to the academicians (poole, grant, and jones) almost immediately on hearing from them, and expressed a hope, vague but polite, that we might meet on my return. _poole_ i should like to know; he is a man of poetic mind. i need scarcely tell you that the idea of my being elected president (!!!) for many years to come is simply _ludicrous_, even if there is a chance of my ever having the offer of that dignity. i am quite aware that people do talk of it _laughingly_, but i don't think it goes beyond "chaff" yet. no doubt many other young artists are chaffed in the same way with imaginary dignities. i am delighted that mamma is better; i should have said this before but that i have answered your letter systematically. i trust the improvement will be lasting. i congratulate you on colenso's visit, and shall be very anxious to hear from you how it went off. as for myself, i am very snugly ensconced in a little mezzanino on the grand canal, with a sort of passage which i use as a studio and a bath-room, inasmuch as it opens straight on the water, and enables me to take a very jolly swim every day. i am not attempting a picture, but am making a sketch for one which i shall probably paint on the spot next autumn, staying here a couple of months or so. meanwhile i have got several heads in hand--_studies_, _not_ for _sale_, for use--and a few sketches in saint mark's, which i think promise well. _et voilà._ i stay here a fortnight longer, so that a letter written on receipt of this would still catch me; after that _rome_ is the safest address. i shall be there from the th to the th of october. best love to mamma, and believe me, your affectionate son, fred. in the preceding letters mention is made of the final arrangements for the building of leighton's house in holland park road. mr. george aitchison, r.a., his old friend, undertook to be the architect. it was begun in , and first occupied by leighton in . referring to opinions expressed regarding florentine art, past and present, leighton wrote to his younger sister: "----'s remark about ----, if i remember it, was utter bosh and pedantry. the florentines of the end of the fifteenth century were _emphatically_ realists, though their realism was animated by a higher genius and a deeper humanity than the modern italians exhibit, though _they_, by-the-bye, are mostly not _realists_ but mannerists. the chief characteristic of english art is (i speak of course of the better men) originality and humanity on the one hand, and on the other, absence of acquired knowledge and guiding taste. some day i will write you a lot more about it." fully launched into the english art world, deeply interested in every phase of sincere work produced by contemporary brother artists, leighton nevertheless adhered in his own practice to the views and principles which he held from the time he became steinle's devoted pupil. to a question which referred to his art development, asked by mrs. mark pattison when she was about to write an account of his life in , leighton answered, "i can only speak of what is not a _change_ but virtually a growth, the passage from gothicism to classicism (for want of better words) _i.e._ a growth from multiplicity to simplicity. artists' manners are not changed by books!" "as regards english artists," he writes in the same letter, "i can only of course speak with great reserve. elmore treated me with marked kindness, lending me a studio. millais, rossetti, hunt were most cordial and friendly, though i openly told them i was wholly opposed to their views; but, indeed, few men have more cause to speak well of their brethren." the artistic events of the years , , and culminated in leighton being elected an associate of the royal academy. his old friend, mr. george aitchison, wrote at the time of leighton's death: "in he took a studio at orme square, bayswater. it was during this time that his conversation was so brilliant and so free from restraint. i remember a summer afternoon i spent with him, mason, and murch on the terrace at the crystal palace, when he gave vent to the freest criticism on books, artists, philosophy, science, and the methods of teaching, and deplored the waste of time to students of making large chalk studies, when everything that was wanted could be shown on a sheet of smooth paper, seven inches high, with a hard pencil. he was a great admirer of boxall and his delicate painting, of mr. watts' and sir e. burne-jones' work, and persuaded the last two to join the royal academy. in he was made an a.r.a., and after this he became very cautious of expressing any but the most general opinions on contemporary english art, as his remarks generally got into the papers." "eucharis," ; "dante at verona," and "golden hours," , are three works which might be placed in the first rank of leighton's achievements. in the following letters references are made to the pictures:-- _april , ._ dear mammy,--i have just been to the r.a., having been invited to the "varnishing day." _four_ pictures are hung--"elijah," _high_, of course, but in a centre place; it looks well, but _much_ darker than in the studio. "peacock girl,"[ ] very well hung, exactly where "the vision" was a few years ago; it looks well. "the crossbowman" and "the girl with the fruit"[ ] are fairly hung, but look, to me, less well than in the studio. the "salome"[ ] is the one not taken. altogether i am well treated. in the following letters from ruskin his interest is expressed in the pictures exhibited in the academy of , and for the "romola" illustrations:-- my dear leighton,--i've only just had time to look in, yesterday, at r. ac., and your pictures are the only ones that interest me in it; and the two pretty ones, peacocks and basket, interest me much. ahab i don't much like. you know you, like all people good for anything in this age and country (as far as palmerston), are still a boy--and a boy can't paint elijah. but the pretty girls are very nice--very _nearly_ beautiful. i can't say more, can i? if once they _were_ beautiful, they would be immortal too. but if i don't pitch into you when i get hold of you again for not drawing your canephora's basket as well as her head and hair! you got out of the scrape about the circle of it by saying you wanted it hung out of sight (which _i_ don't). but the meshes are all wrong--_inelegantly_ wrong--which is unpardonable. i believe a japanese would have done it better. thanks for nice book on japan with my name japanned. _it_ is very nice too. i wish the woodcuts were bigger. i should like it so much better in a little octavo with big woodcuts on every other page. but i never do anything but grumble.--faithfully yours, j. ruskin. my dear leighton,--the public voice respecting the lecture you are calumniously charged with, is as wise as usual. the lecture is an excellent and most interesting one, and i am very sorry it is not yours. i am also very sorry the basket _is_ yours, in spite of the very pretty theory of accessories. it is proper that an accessory be slightly--sometimes even, in a measure, badly--painted, but not that it should be out of perspective; and in the greatest men, their enjoyment and power animated the very dust under the feet of their figures--much more the baskets on their heads: above all things, what comes near a head should be studied in every line. there is nothing more notable to my mind in the minor tricks of the great venetians than the exquisite perspective of bandeaux, braids, garlands, jewels, flowers, or anything else which aids the _roundings_ of their heads. it is my turn to claim browning for you, though i know what your morning time is to you. i must have you over here one of these summer mornings, if it be but to look at some dashes in sepia by reynolds, and a couple of mackerel by turner--which, being principals instead of accessories, i hope you will permit to be well done, though they're not as pretty as peacocks. i have been watching the "romola" plates with interest. the one of the mad old man with dagger seemed to me a marvellous study (of its kind), and i feel the advancing power in all. will you tell me any day you could come--any hour--and i'll try for browning.--ever faithfully yours, j. ruskin. i'm always wickeder in the morning than at night, because i'm fresh; so i'll try, this morning, to relieve your mind about the peacocks. to my sorrow, i know more of peacocks than girls, as you know more of girls than peacocks--and i assure you solemnly the fowls are quite as unsatisfactory to me as the girl can possibly be to you; so unsatisfactory, that if i could have painted them as well as you could, and _had_ painted them as ill, i should have painted them out.[ ] _monday._ dear leighton,--i saw browning last night; and he said he couldn't come till thursday week: but do you think it would put you quite off your work if you came out here early on friday and i drove you into kensington as soon as you liked? we have enough to say and look at, surely, for two mornings--one by ourselves? i want, seriously, for one thing to quit you of one impression respecting me. you are quite right--"ten times right"--in saying i never focus criticism. was there ever criticism worth adjustment? the light is so ugly, it deserves no lens, and i never use one. but you never, on the other hand, have observed sufficiently that in such rough focussing as i give it, i measure faults not by their greatness, but their avoidableness. a man's great faults are natural to him--inevitable; if _very_ great--undemonstrable, deep in the innermost of things. i never or rarely speak of them. they must be forgiven, or the picture left. but a common fault in perspective is not to be so passed by. you may not tell your friend, but with deepest reserve, your thoughts of the conduct of his life, but you tell him, if he has an ugly coat, to change his tailor, without fear of his answering that you don't focus your criticism. now it so happens that i am in deep puzzlement and thought about some conditions of your work and its way, which, owing to my ignorance of many things in figure painting, are not likely to come to any good or speakable conclusion. but it would be partly presumptuous and partly vain to talk of these; hence that silence you spoke of when i saw you last. i wish i had kept it all my life, and learned, in place, to do the little i could have done, and enjoy the much i might have enjoyed.--ever faithfully yours, j. ruskin. send me a line saying if you will give me the friday morning, and fix your own hour for breakfast to be ready; and never mind if you are late, for i can't give you pretty things that spoil for waiting, anyhow. leighton writes to his mother:-- i had a kind note this morning from ruskin, in which, after criticising two or three things, he speaks very warmly of other points in my work and of the development of what he calls "enormous power and sense of beauty." i quote this for what it is worth, because i know it will give you pleasure, but i have not and _never shall have_ "enormous power," though i have some "sense of beauty." the "orpheus" and "golden hours" are not in the _great_ room but in the next to it. i have not seen gambart lately, and do not, therefore, know whether he has got rid of any more of my pictures (by-the-bye, i have sent the "duet"--"johnny"--to america to an exhibition for the sanitary commission, on the request of mrs. kemble's daughter). he will, _i think_, engrave the "honeymoon," but probably only photograph the others; by-the-bye (again), mammy, tell gussy with my love that i shall present her with a copy of each and shall not "_think her greedy_," having no thoughts for her but affectionate ones. with regard to the money paid me by gambart, i invested as soon as i got it £ in eastern counties railway _debentures_, at par, - / per cent., this on the advance of coutts' stock clerk. lord ashburton's portrait was scarcely begun.[ ] i have offered to try to finish _tant bien que mal_ from photographs, and to _give_ it to lady a. she is very grateful. the child's picture also goes to the wall, as she won't be able to sit for some time, and would then be _changed_. lady a. wanted to pay the price of the sketch as it stood; this i of course refused. she has commissioned me to paint her a fancy picture for £ . leighton was for five years an associate before being elected a full member of the royal academy in . during these years the number of important pictures he exhibited each season notably increased. in at least twelve of these works the many-sided leighton is worthily represented--"dante at verona,"[ ] "golden hours," "david," "syracusan bride" (exhibited at the royal academy in and in the paris international exhibition in ), "helen of troy,"[ ] "greek girl dancing," "venus disrobing from the bath," "ariadne abandoned by theseus, ariadne watches for his return, artemis releases her by death," "actæa, the nymph of the shore," "dædalus and icarus," "electra at the tomb of agamemnon," "helios and rhodos." the extreme variety from every point of view which exists in this group of twelve pictures, chosen from the twenty-six paintings and the numerous sketches executed in these five years, would be a proof in itself, if one were needed, of leighton's extraordinary versatility as regards the _motives_ of his pictures. [illustration: "greek girl dancing." by permission of mr. phillipson] [illustration: drawing for the painting "a pastoral." leighton house collection] in the spring of , after years of delicate health, mrs. leighton at the last died suddenly, at her home in bath. at the time leighton was staying at sandringham where he received a telegram announcing her death, and on the same day he joined his family at bath. it has been said that, as long as a man is blessed by possessing a mother, he still retains the blessing of being--in the eyes of one person at least--a child. to leighton's tender-hearted nature this blessing was a very real one, as is testified by his correspondence with his mother.[ ] the first chapter of leighton's life seems, in a sense, only to end with this great sorrow. _translation._] frankfurt am main, _april , _. dearest friend,--as your last friendly lines of th march did not bring your address, i grasp the opportunity offered me by mr. tobie andré to express to you my heartfelt sympathy on the loss of your dear mother. i remember that you often spoke to me of this mother with true filial affection, and i have secretly blessed you for it; i know now also that you will treasure her memory!--always, your truly devoted, steinle. footnotes: [ ] see appendix, "lord leighton's sketches." [ ] see page , vol. ii., poem, leighton's "francesca di rimini," by r.a. [ ] head painted on the wall of the vestry of highnam church--since destroyed. [ ] "eucharis." [ ] sir hubert parry writes: "i remember leighton made a practical test of my father's medium by painting a fine dashing sketch of a head on the wall of the vestry at highnam church. i used to admire it greatly. unfortunately that vestry was pulled down; and though efforts were made to preserve the sketch by cutting a great piece of plaster out of the wall, i understand that during the many years when i was hardly ever at highnam, the plaster crumbled and collapsed." see letter to steinle. [ ] photographs of the lyndhurst fresco. [ ] the ground on which leighton built his house, holland park road, now preserved for the public. [ ] "girl feeding peacocks" (see sketches in leighton house collection). leighton painted a small and exquisite water-colour on ivory of the picture, which was sold at christie's after his death. [ ] "eucharis." [ ] see list of illustrations: reproduction from sketch in leighton house. mr. frith, r.a., wrote the following respecting the rejection of "salome":-- pembridge villas, bayswater, w., _april , _. my dear leighton,--we have been unable to hang one of your best pictures--not because it was an excellent work, as the profane world would say--but because we had already placed so many of your pictures that the space due to leighton was more than exhausted. m.c. mortlake called us over the coals dreadfully on your behalf, but i, for one, resisted his arguments, and i believe you have to blame me for your picture being returned to you. i should have said nothing about the matter, but for the fear that i might be thought so stupid as not to see the merit of your work. pray believe that my motive was a good one, and that i have tried to do what is right to you and to the rest.--ever, dear leighton, faithfully yours, w.p. frith. [ ] ruskin would not, i believe, have spoken thus of the peacocks in the exquisite water-colour on ivory--presumably a sketch in colour for the picture. [ ] refers to lord ashburton's death. [ ] this picture illustrates the verses in the _paradiso_:-- "thou shalt prove how salt the savour is of others' bread; how hard the passage, to descend and climb by others' stairs. but that shall gall thee most will be the worthless and vile company with whom thou must be thrown into the straits, for all ungrateful, impious all and mad shall turn against thee." "dante, in fulfilment of this prophecy, is seen descending the palace stairs of the can grande, at verona, during his exile. he is dressed in sober grey and drab clothes, and contrasts strongly in his ascetic and suffering aspect with the gay revellers about him. the people are preparing for a festival, and splendidly and fantastically robed, some bringing wreaths of flowers. bowing with mock reverence, a jester gibes at dante. an indolent sentinel is seated at the porch, and looks on unconcernedly, his spear lying across his breast. a young man, probably acquainted with the writings of dante, sympathises with him. in the centre and just before the feet of dante, is a beautiful child, brilliantly dressed and crowned with flowers, and dragging along the floor a garland of bay leaves and flowers, while looking earnestly and innocently in the poet's face. next come a pair of lovers, the lady looking at dante with attention, the man heedless. the last wears a vest embroidered with eyes like those in a peacock's tail. a priest and a noble descend the stairs behind, jeering at dante."--_athenæum_, april . the following expresses the admiration of a brother artist, richard doyle, for the exiled "dante":-- clifton gardens, maida hill, _april , _. my dear leighton,--i feel so awkward whenever i attempt to praise a man's works to his face, and i felt that you, yesterday, were so likely to be bored with the repetition of similar speeches from your large influx of visitors, that at the moment of my going i could not bring myself to say what i wished to say--how much i liked your pictures. to-day, however, when "dante" and "orpheus," and the music and drawing parties are before my mind as vividly as they were yesterday before my eyes in your studio, i cannot resist sending you a few lines to say what pleasure my visit gave me, although i was "without words." the "dante" seemed to me a very impressive picture, and i think one of the most important as well as most successful of your works, historical in a higher sense than the mere representation of an event--an illustration of the man and the time. i could mention many of the figures that especially pleased me, but, for beauty, can only single out that most delightful little child in the foreground, toddling at the feet of dante, laden with flowers, the childhood and innocence of whose whole figure and face, although we do not see the face, contrasts so beautifully with the worn, ascetic, melancholy poet. i think these two are a poem in themselves. the lady in the "drawing lesson" struck me as a charming figure, so graceful, and the painting of her dress as a perfect piece of work. the lady leaning over the instrument in the "music" ("golden hours") subject is also a great favourite of mine. the "orpheus," although there is a great deal to admire in it, i don't think i liked so well as the others. perhaps it is that the classic subject does not come home to me, but i say this doubtingly, feeling that it is a picture that would very likely grow upon me. anyhow, i end by offering you my most hearty congratulations.--most sincerely yours, richard doyle. [ ] referring to leighton's painting of "helen of troy," exhibited in , mr. martin tupper wrote:-- albury house, nr. guilford, _may , _. dear sir,--it is just possible that the following few words of comment upon your wonderfully spiritualised "helen of troy" may be acceptable to you from the undersigned. the "helen" of euripides is very little read amongst us, and yet it is as strangely sensational as "the woman in white": there being two helens in the play, the real substantial wife remaining faithful to menelaus in the island of pharos, while juno gives to paris--out of jealous rage at him for his "judgment" in favour of venus--"an image composed of ether" in the likeness of helen. this ethereal presence you have so exquisitely portrayed that it is probable you know the play! only that i think you would then have quoted from it in the r.a. catalogue, in explanation of what confuses some of your ignorant reviewers as to this embodied spirit. the counterfeit helen was of "unsubstantial air," a figure marvellously rendered in your picture, and which i can fully appreciate: and you quote a very apposite passage from lord derby's "homer," as that which you illustrate; but if there are reprints of the catalogue, i would suggest the addition of a line from euripides, as thus:-- "juno to paris gave me--yet not me, but in my semblance formed a living image composed of ether." wodhall's _eur. hel._ if haply you do not know the book, inquire at longman's for the fifth volume of the greek tragic theatre (in english); or, should you prefer it, of course it is extant in the greek. if not easily attainable in london, i shall be happy to lend you the volume by post. congratulating you on your difficult and exquisite achievement--i am, dear sir, truly yours, martin f. tupper. f. leighton, esq. [ ] warnford cottage, bishop's waltham. my dear mr. leighton,--i was very sorry indeed when i returned to park place on sunday evening and found that you had been so kind as to call upon me. i have not ventured to intrude upon you in your late affliction with the expression of a sympathy which cannot have much value for you, but had i seen you when you called i should hardly have refrained from telling you how sincerely i feel for your sorrow.--pray believe me, yours always most truly, fanny kemble. warnford, _thursday, nd_. forest bank, lyndhurst. my dear leighton,--i cannot let the post go out without offering you my sincere sympathy on your loss. i know how deeply attached you were to your mother, and am very sure the bereavement is a heavy grief to you. you are right in saying that to me your sorrow comes especially home. my mother sends you her affectionate love, and we both beg you to remember that, whenever you have a few spare days and want quiet, you must consider this home as a temporary home.--believe me always, in all affection, yours, hamilton aÏdÉ. my dear leighton,--i must write to you to express the grief both myself and my wife felt on hearing of the loss which has befallen you. i am well aware that no words can afford consolation against such afflictions, but i should be sorry if you had construed silence into want of sympathy. if you have time i should be glad to hear from you, and to know how may be your father, from whom i have received on every occasion so much kindness. you have much distress to go through, for death has recently touched you in many ways by striking your own family, your friends, and imperilling others to a degree that must have inspired every pain it can produce. good-bye, my dear leighton; remember me to your father, and express to him my deep sympathy with him in his misfortune.--yours ever affectionately, w.c. cartwright. palazzi giorgi, rome, _january _. eaton place (west), _tuesday, january , _. my dear leighton,--i heard at the marqs', on sunday, of your late bereavement; and, as perhaps the one of all your many friends whose mind the most habitually dwells among thoughts of loss and deprivation, i can assure you of thought of it with sincere concern and sympathy, and just write a line to say so. there is nothing to be said, i well know, which is of any immediate good or alleviation, and time only strengthens affectionate recollection: but after a time, among gentler thoughts which will come, i hope you will, as you may justly, find comfort in thinking that your mother's life was spared so as to permit her to be cheered by the certainty of your success. this is much--especially to a woman's heart.--faithfully and sincerely yours, henry j. chorley. chapter iii journeys to the east--constantinople--smyrna--athens--diary "up the nile to phylÆ" - leighton visited spain in . there exists apparently no letters or written record of this journey, but he made many sketches remarkable for strong and characteristic colouring. the letter written to mrs. mark pattison in , already quoted, contains an amusing endeavour on leighton's part to date the various journeys he had made in answer to questions she had asked. "i am sorely perplexed to answer this; i can only approach an answer by a sort of _memoria technica_. i made studies in algiers for 'samson agonistes'; that will give you roughly the period. this visit made a deep impression on me; i have loved 'the east,' as it is called, ever since. by-the-bye, i drew here my (almost) only large water-colour drawing, 'a negro festival' [the picture leighton alluded to as 'the niggers'], which was thought very well of by my friends. to spain (into which i had made a raid of a few days on a previous occasion when visiting the south of france for architecture, to which i am much devoted) i went the year of the cholera. i remember this because i was going to constantinople, but was dissuaded by a friend there because of the ravages of that epidemic. the following year i _did_ go: vienna, danube, varna, constantinople, broussa, smyrna, rhodes, athens (the greatest architectural emotion of my life, by far), &c. this was the year _before_ those poor young englishmen were murdered on pentelicus, up which i had been with _the same_ guide. my visit to egypt, and up the nile on a steamer, given me by the khedive, was a year before the opening of the suez canal; i rode over the salt lakes with mons. de lesseps and a party of his friends. damascus a year before i exhibited the 'jew's house,' i _think_. spain, revisited, and morocco, the year before last. this is a roundabout way of getting about dates, but, contrary to my expectation, i think i have contrived to fix all the chief journeys approximately." in leighton wrote to his father:-- lloyd steamer "adriatic," _november , _. my dear papa,--as i am likely to be busy during my very short stay in venice, where i hope to find a letter from you, i take advantage of the leisure which i find in excess on board this steamer to begin an epistle which, however, i shall not close till i have seen yours, in case anything in the latter should require an answer. of course my getting to the end of even this first page depends upon the state of my feelings--physical, not moral, for i am a poor sailor at best. i told you, i believe, in my last how much i had enjoyed and, as i hope, profited by my stay in rhodes and lindos. i am uncertain whether i added that i had received great kindness and attention from our consul and his brothers, and also from one or two other gentlemen with whom i became acquainted. through the assistance of mr. biliotti (our consul) i had an opportunity, which could never present itself again, of buying a number of beautiful specimens of old persian _faience_ (lindos ware), chiefly plates, which will make a delightful addition to my collection of eastern china and pottery. i know that you, personally, care little for such things, and have small sympathy with purchases of that nature; you will, therefore, be glad to hear that though i spent a considerable sum, knowing that such a chance would never again be given me, i could, _any day_, part with the whole lot for at least double--probably treble--what i gave. the weather, which was very beautiful at the beginning--indeed during the greater part of my stay in the island--was not faithful to me to the end; it broke up a few days before my departure, and, to my very great regret, prevented my painting certain studies which i was very anxious to take home: on the other hand, i had opportunities of studying effects of a different nature, so that i can hardly call myself much the loser as far as my work in rhodes was concerned. in athens, however, the effect of the absolute instability of the weather (an instability of which i have never seen the like anywhere) was that i left that place almost empty-handed, although i stayed there a week longer than i had originally intended. if, however, i got through little or no work, i had infinite enjoyment in the frequent and unvaried study and contemplation of the ruins on the acropolis. familiar as i was, from casts and photographs, with the sculptures and some part of the architecture which i found there, my expectations were very highly wrought, but it is impossible to anticipate, nor shall i attempt to describe, the impression which these magnificent works produce when seen together and under their own sky. indeed, it is quite strange how one seems to read with new eyes things which one conceived oneself to have understood thoroughly before. the scenery about athens, depending a good deal on effects of light, only rarely displayed its full beauty during my stay; sufficiently often, however, for me to see that it is of exquisite beauty, and that that part of it described by byron in certain favourite lines of yours does not receive full justice at his hands. i had letters, as you probably knew, to mr. erskine, our minister, and to mr. finlay, the historian; both of them received me with the greatest cordiality and kindness, as did also two or three other persons with whom i became acquainted, so that my stay was socially agreeable as well as artistically delightful; but herewith ends my journey, for heavy weather, rain, sleet, fog and the rest prevented my seeing any of the scenery of the gulf of lepanto, which i might as well not have visited, and although i passed zante, cephalonia, and corfu under rather more favourable skies, i did not see them to advantage--_ce sera pour une autrefois_. your letter, which i have found on my arrival, and for which thanks, does not call for any particular reply beyond that i have painted _no_ figures, though i might have been tempted by several fine heads i saw, but time only sufficed for my landscape studies, which in this journey were my chief care. the extract from the _saturday review_, which is highly flattering, was shown me by mr. finlay in athens. of venice i have nothing to say, except that my first impression of the gallery, coming as i did straight from the parthenon, was that everything but the very _finest_ pictures was wanting in dignity and beauty, and was _artificial_. i was much surprised myself, as the venetian school always exercises a great fascination over me. you may infer from that what an impression of beauty athenian art has left on me. i was incessantly reminded, in looking both at the sculpture and architecture of the acropolis, of the admirable words which thucydides puts into the mouth of pericles: those are the beginning and the end of the greek artistic nature. i shall be in london by the th, and right glad to get home again--meanwhile, with best love to taily.--i remain, your affectionate son, fred. venice, hotel de l'europe. [illustration: sketch with donkey. egypt. ] respecting the knowledge leighton possessed of the greek language, he wrote in a letter to a friend, "in greek i never got beyond homer and anacreon. i have just retained this, that, having read a passage in a translation (i generally read homer in _german_ or _latin_), i am able to feel, on referring to the original, its superiority to the foreign rendering." in the great desire which leighton for many years had felt to see egypt was gratified. in october of that year he wrote to his father from cairo:-- _beginning of letter missing._] i find that the prince (the prince of wales) asked him in the said letter to introduce me as a personal friend of his to the viceroy, adding that he would be obliged by anything he (col. stanton) could do for me. this was more than i had expected from what col. tait also had written me. well, to make a long story short, i communicated to col. s. the ambitious desires that smart had stirred up in me, assuring him, however, that i should never have dreamt of entertaining them of my own accord. he took my case in hand at once, by asking for an audience, which the viceroy granted as soon as he should have returned to cairo; he was too busy to see me at alexandria. meanwhile col. stanton hinted to the secretary of h.h. what my wish was, but nothing was said to the viceroy himself. wednesday being fixed for my reception, i went to his palace of abbassia with col. s., and was there received in a pavilion in the open air, which overlooked a tract of country covered with tents in which some men were quartered. round his highness' pavilion were the tents of his chief ministers in attendance. it was rather a picturesque sight. the viceroy was alone, and, having received us very courteously, and asked after the health of the p. and pcess. of wales, made us sit down. he then clapped his hands, and on a word from him long _tchibouques_ were brought, of which the amber mouthpieces were enriched with enormous diamonds and emeralds. a little conversation on general matters then followed between him and col. s., after which he questioned me about my projects; and after asking whether he could assist me, and col. s. throwing out a little hint about a steam tug to get me on quicker, he said, "would you not rather have a steamer to go in? it is the same to me, and you will be more comfortable." here col. stanton, very judiciously and promptly, said he was sure the p. of wales would be much gratified by this mark of favour to me; so that i have only to name the day, and the vessel will be at my orders, and i shall do all i wish in _half the time_, or less, it would otherwise have taken me. i bowed myself out with my best thanks, and went home much pleased at my good fortune and at everybody's kindness. i should not forget to say also that mr. ross (lady duff gordon's son-in-law, you know) was full of _empressement_ and kindness to me, and lady d.g. lent me a gun for the nile. i start in ten days or thereabouts, and hope before that to hear from you, for no letters will follow me and i shall lose sight of everybody for nearly two months. i will write again before i start; meanwhile, when you write which it will be no use your doing till _november_, address, please new hotel, cairo, egypt. and believe me, meanwhile, with best love to taily, your affte. son, fred. happily, while leighton lost sight "of everybody for nearly two months," he kept the following diary:-- _wednesday, october , ._--went on board, dined and slept. _thursday, th._--started at about a.m. there had been a storm in the night, and the east was still heavy with clouds; but the western sky was pure and soft. at about ten caught up the sterlings, becalmed in their dahabyeh; their crew was making a futile attempt to tow them against the current. i let out a rope and tugged them as far as benisoëf, which, owing to the additional weight, i did not reach till friday morning ( th). the first day's journey up the nile is enchanting, and i enjoyed it thoroughly. the sky was bright, but tempered by a glimmering haze which produced the loveliest effects; those of the early morning were the most striking. the course of the river being nearly due north, the western bank was glowing in varied sunny lights; the other seemed made up of shadowy veils of gauze fainting gradually towards the horizon. the boats that passed on the left, dark in the blaze of light, looked, with their outspread wings, like large moths of dusky brown; those on the right shone against the violet sky like gilded ivory. the keynote of this landscape is a soft, variant, fawn-coloured brown, than which nothing could take more gratefully the warm glow of sunlight or the cool purple mystery of shadow; the latter perhaps especially, deep and powerful near the eye (the local brown slightly overruling the violet), but fading as it receded into tints exquisitely vague, and so faint that they seem rather to belong to the sky than to the earth. at this time of year the broad coffee-coloured sweep of the river is bordered on either side by a fillet of green of the most extraordinary vivacity, but redeemed from any hint of crudity by the golden light which inundates it. the brightest green is that of the indian corn--the softest and most luminous that of an exquisite grass, tall as pampas (perhaps it _is_ a kind of pampas, i have not seen it close yet), and like it crowned with a beautiful plume-like blossom of the most delicate hue; seen against a dark shady bank, and with the sun shining through it, it shimmers with the sheen of gossamer. frequent villages animate the river's edge; they are built of unbaked bricks coated with mud, and have a most striking effect. the simplicity and variety of the shapes of the houses, with their slightly sloping sides and flat roofs, give them a certain dignity in their picturesqueness which delights me; the colour, too, is particularly agreeable, and is the most beautiful foil to the bronze-brown of the naked, or nearly naked, fellaheen and the indigo of the robes of their wives; to the sparkling white of the doves that swarm in the gardens, and to the cinder-colour of the buffaloes that wink and snooze along the bank. every village nestles in a dense grove of date-palms, and one cannot conceive a lovelier harmony than that which is made by the combination of the browns below with the sea-green of the sweeping branches and the flame-like orange of the fruit. the acacia (here a large, massive tree, with a vigorous dark green foliage) is frequent in the villages. the shape of the hills and mountains is very peculiar and striking. it gives the idea of a choppy sea of sand thrown up into abrupt peaks and then uniformly truncated by a sweep of a vast scythe, sweeping everything from horizon to horizon. here and there a little peak, too low to be embraced in the general decapitation, raises its head amongst innumerable table-lands and gives great value and relief to the general outline. meanwhile an occasional train and not infrequent lines of telegraph poles don't add to the poetry of the scene. nor the flies to one's comfort! what a curse they are! they _infest_ one's face. i wonder what the epiderm of egyptian children is made of; you see babies with a dozen flies settled, no, stuck, embedded in and round each of their eyes, and as many in and about their noses and mouths; and they make no attempt to remove them--seem absolutely unconscious of them. scenery this afternoon less interesting--river wider--banks more monotonous. opposite a place called magaga, some fine mountains on the east bank, scored with innumerable horizontal lines marking the monotonous parallel strata of which they are composed; a characteristic peculiarity in all the egyptian hills i have seen as yet. (the finest in outline are the quarries opposite sakkara, on the right bank, and like those behind the citadel at cairo.) spent the night at a village called kolosana, not having made minyeh owing to delay at benisoëf, where we coaled, and took leave of the sterlings, with whom i breakfasted. the sunset before reaching kolosana was magnificent, like a sunset at sea; almost as grand in its simplicity. between the broad flaming sky and the broad flaming river there was only a long narrow strip of dark bronze-green bank, that seemed to burst into flame where the almost white hot sun sank scowling behind it. the after-glow was also very fine, though less grand than i should have expected. the sky was of a deep violet, and the distant rolling sand-tracks wore the most mysterious tints, faint, glimmering, uncanny, vague fawn colours, pale dun browns, and ghostly pinks. _saturday, th._--started at dawn, and arrived at minyeh about eight o'clock. stayed two hours and coaled. obeying the custom of the country, i have presented the crew with a sheep--great satisfaction. took a stroll in the bazaars, which are rather picturesque. minyeh is a largish place (chef lieu), and, like every second village on the nile, disfigured by the tall chimneys of sugar factories. there is a striking line of hills opposite minyeh, quaintly jagged in outline and curiously regular in the marking of its strata. passed beni hassan, where i shall stop on my return. it is curious to see the incessant toiling of the natives at irrigation. the poor people literally _make_ their country every year, and it is marvellous to see how a narrow fillet of water will, as by enchantment, conjure up in a few weeks an oasis out of an arid desert. the land of egypt is born afresh out of the nile every returning year. i observe, with pleasure, in this part of the country those little white-domed tombs of sheykhs which make such a pretty feature in the landscape of algeria. at minyeh there is one, close to the riverside, in which rests the "sheykh of the crocodiles" whose holy dust prevents those man-eating ornaments of the upper nile from going any further towards cairo--below this tomb they never venture. not having reached manfalût by sunset, we have drawn up for the night by the bank of the river, nowhere in particular. this entire freedom in our movements (i should say _mine_, for the steamer stops exactly where, when, and as often as i choose) is very agreeable. less pleasant is the storm of flies and insects of every kind, that rush in literally by myriads as soon as candles are lighted within reach of shore; my tablecloth is darkened with thousands of little flies no larger, wings and all, than a moderate flea; the nuisance is intolerable. a wonderful sunset again this evening. the western bank like yesterday was low and brown and green, but, unlike yesterday, it was alive with the sweet clamour of many birds. on the eastern side the long wall of rock which seems to enclose the whole length of the valley of the nile came flush, or almost flush, to the water's edge; and with what an intense glory it glowed! the great hills seemed clad in burnished armour of gold fringed and girt below with green and dark purple; but the smooth face of the water was like copper, burnished and inlaid with sapphire. i sat in the long gloaming enjoying the soft, warm, supple air, and watching the tints gradually change and die round the sweep of the horizon, and across the immense mirror of the nile as broad as a lake. it was enchanting to watch the subtle gradations by which the tawny orange trees that glowed like embers in the west, passed through strange golden browns to uncertain gloomy violet, and finally to the hot indigo of the eastern sky where some lingering after-glow still flushed the dusky hills; and still more enchanting to watch the same tones on the unruffled expanse of the water, slightly tempered by its colour and subdued to greater mystery. a solemn peace was over everything. occasionally a boat drifted slowly past with outspread wings, in colour like an opal or lapis lazuli, and then vanished. it was a thing to remember. i hear an altercation between ottilio (my italian waiter) and a stoker who has put down his grease can on one of the pasha's smartest plates. "o--(adjective)--madonna! se si può vedere una carogua simile! e se me la rompi pas? costa più di te--sa!" my young dragoman having fastened a hook to a bit of string, and the bit of string to the stern of the steamer, has been waiting some hours for a fish. after the first hour he reasoned with himself, and said: "brabs (perhaps?) he know!"--then, dolefully, "he come touch the 'ook, and then he go run away!"--_cela c'est vu._ to-morrow to asyoot. - / p.m. just been on deck again. dragoman still fishing! he says, "i tink he _won't_." i incline to agree with him. _sunday, th._--started about six. reached syoot, or rather el hamza for syoot, which is a mile inland, at eleven. between manfalût and syoot the nile takes an immense sweep west, and assumes altogether a tortuous course; the plain opens out, the eastern mountains recede, and for the first time an important chain closes in on the west. game is already beginning to be abundant. i saw a sandbank full of pelicans and geese just below this place. i wish i could get at the names of the small birds i see here, which are mostly new to me; an arab invariably answers your questions on this subject by the word "asfoor," _i.e._ a bird--thankee! the peasants here all wear a loose dark brown robe like that of a franciscan monk; and as they squat fishing on the brown bank of the river with their skull-caps and black beards, i fancy i see the monks of the thebaïd coming, as in old days, to get their daily meat out of the nile. irrigation seems to go on more actively even than lower down; i saw to-day no less than twenty-four shadoofs all in a row, and in full play. the men that worked them, mostly naked, were of every colour between a new halfpenny and an old shoe, and the effect of them all toiling away and surrounded by groups of squatting onlookers was very striking. hosseyn, my servant, the angler, is having his head shaved on deck; when he has done i shall visit the town. meanwhile i have had a visit from the government doctor, a rather intelligent man who made his studies in pisa. pipes and coffee as usual. here comes hosseyn clean-shaven. he is a nice boy, eager and willing--but wants varnish; he can never address me without scratching his spine at its lowest extremity; audrey herself could not have done it in a manner more naïvely unconventional. though only twenty, he has had two wives; not liking the first, who snubbed his relations, he gave her three months' wages and dismissed her. to avoid further unpleasantness he then married his cousin: "she good woman--very quiet--good tongue." the village at which we have landed is very picturesque. the mud and brick architecture is here carried out with some care and is entirely delightful. the walls are mostly crowned with an openwork finish made by a simple arrangement of the bricks which is most effective. sometimes, as, for instance, in the cemetery, they are surmounted by crenulations like those we see in the old assyrian monuments; the heads of the doorways are decorated with a charming sort of diapered ornament, capable of great variety and produced entirely by the arrangement in patterns of the bricks; the patterns being painted black and the ground filled in with white. the woodwork in the windows is also very pretty, and altogether the general aspect of the houses most novel and striking. beyond the village i wandered into a delightful garden; a half cultivated wilderness of palm and gum trees in which one came on unexpected pergolas, and lovely garden trees all pouring out their most intoxicating scents under the fiercest sun i ever walked beneath. i saw oleanders, the flowers of which were as thick as roses and smelt like a quintessence of nectarines; there were also some beautiful olive trees with weeping branches--a thing i had never seen before--and with berries as large as plums. overhead, amongst the yellow dates, sat doves the colour of pale violets. syoot itself is beautifully situated amongst groves and gardens; except in that it is brown and not white, it reminded me much of an algerine town; it is very unlike cairo. the rock-cut tombs in the mountain above the town are so mutilated and disfigured that little can be made of them; but they have that stamp of vastness which is so characteristic of all the ancient monuments of this country. the view from the height is very fine. the river has barely begun to fall yet, so that everything is reflected in the great sheets of water that cover the land. at evening i saw the sunset through the tall palm trees, with the domes of syoot dark against its flaming light. for a fine showy assertion that looks very original and striking, but is not calculated for pedantic verification, commend me to a frenchman. the other day, at boulay, mariette bey, the creator and the curator of the museum of that ilk, and a man of high standing as an egyptologist, told me that the nile was turned into its actual course by a great chain of hills at syoot which, serving as a rampart, alone prevented it from following its obvious tendency to flow into the red sea. "il allait _évidemment_ se jeter dans la mer rouge;" in fact, but for this hill, there would have been no lower egypt, that country being literally the child of the nile which alone prevents the sands of the central deserts from ruling over the whole breadth of the land. here was a dramatic revelation of coincidences! here was a startling suggestion of contingencies! it fairly took your breath away! without that hill no nile north of syoot! half egypt would not have been! no memphis! memphis with its wisdom! no alexandria with its schools! no cairo with its four thousand mosques! no pharaohs! no moses! (the poor devil of a sculptor who drowned himself in his own fountain because he found he had made _his_ moses too short might have died in his bed.) no cleopatra! (turn in your grave, noble dust of antony!)--"forty centuries" would have had no pyramids from which to look down on the conquering arms of buonaparte. mr. albert smith's popular entertainment would have been shorn of half its glories! let me breathe! to what fantastic proportions did that hill grow as one thought of it! alas! then, for prosaic fact; and oh! for unimaginative maps! on consulting the latter i observed that, by the time it reached syoot, the nile had been flowing for nearly two hundred miles in a _north-westerly_ direction, away from the red sea rather than towards it; and on visiting the spot i saw, oh confusion! that the hills which bore the responsibility (according to mariette) of making the history of the world what it is, were on the _western_ bank of the river!--there, at least, or nowhere, for a vast plain closes in on the east. this evening more visitors on board--lemonade and cigars--_pour changer_; consuls, &c. &c.--tedious. _monday, th._--left syoot at six, and arrived at sohag before three. suffered a good deal in the morning from spasms of some sort, and was not in a frame of mind to appreciate the scenery. was, moreover, driven near the verge of exasperation by the steersman (reis ali), who droned select passages from the koran, _sotto voce_, within two yards of my ears from a.m. till p. ditto; the same four bars over and over, for ever and for ever in one unceasing guttural strain. i trust the pious exercise did more for his soul than for my temper. hosseyn informs me that he is about to buy a lamb, and "make him big sheep." it appears that, during a serious illness three years ago, he vowed a votive sheep to sitteh zehneb--the granddaughter of the prophet--on condition that he should recover. since then he has put her off (oh, humanity!) with candles and occasional prayer; now, at last, he is going to fulfil his vow. admire thrift combined with piety, and observe the economy on the _lamb_. habit is a strange thing! hosseyn, whose manners have been corrupted by evil communication with europeans, occasionally attempts to use a _fork_ in the bosom of his family--particularly when salad is put before him. on these occasions his elder brother invariably asks him with grim sarcasm whether he has no fingers. hosseyn desists at once--"brabs he beat me!--he big!" this evening i went out shooting amongst the palms and gum trees. it was very delightful, though ferociously hot. the village is charmingly situated; the ground prettily tumbled about, and trees and houses group themselves in the most picturesque manner. (i noticed some new mouldings over the doorways that had a very artistic effect.) i can't shoot at all; but the birds are so plentiful that something is sure to cross your gun if you only fire. i got a hawk, some doves, a dozen little birds nameless for me, and two little green birds of a kind that i have not seen before; they are quite lovely; must ascertain what they are called. the sun had set when i reached the boat, and all the dark plumes of the palm trees stood clear over the black outlines of the village; above, the new moon, a keen, golden sickle. hosseyn has given up fishing. "oh, oh! nasty fish! he to laugh me!" was much amused this morning by the device and trade-mark on a tin of jam. (jam, if you please, of messrs. barnes & co. of little bush lane _and_ tooley street.) the device was "non sine labore"--and the trade-mark?--a beehive?--no!--the pyramid of cheops! _excusez._ some twenty miles above syoot, or, say, fifteen, the eastern chain of mountains makes a bend towards the river, and for some distance ranges near it; the stream, in its usual tortuous course, sometimes flowing for a few hundred yards towards them and then for a few hundred yards in the opposite direction. i wonder whether one of these bends served as a foundation, or rather as a blind, for mariette's astounding assertion that the nile "allait évidemment se jeter dans la mer rouge." did he "to laugh me," as the fish did by hosseyn? or did he merely mean to say that, if the valley of the nile had not turned north-west between keneh and manfaloot, it might have turned north-east? if so, joke for joke, i prefer the great pyramid on the jam-pot of mr. barnes of little bush lane and tooley street. _tuesday, th._--started at about half-past five, and reached disneh in the evening. there was a dead calm in the morning, and i congratulated myself, not for the first time, on my steamer; in a dahabieh i might have taken a week, and more, over the stretch of river i have just covered in a day; and the scenery just here, though fine, is monotonous. i am sorry for the sterlings, who will, i fear, be unusually long getting up. this afternoon i saw sheykh selim, a sort of st. simeon stylites without the column. this holy man's peculiar form of piety consists in sitting stark naked on the bank of the river and exacting presents in money and kind from all passers-by. hosseyn had spoken to me at great length of his wisdom and piety, and assured me that when the crocodiles, which are numerous about here, presented themselves before the eyes of the sheykh, he merely waved his hand and said "biz, biz!" whereat they fled, rebuked. he informed me also that no boat refusing him tribute could expect to get on--it would infallibly be becalmed until his holiness was propitiated. to my surprise i found that my captain, a sensible old gentleman in other respects, believed this just as firmly, though he expressed his faith more vaguely. when i asked him whether the sheykh's power extended also to steamers, which did not wait on the wind, he said: "well, allah was great, and though, certainly, a _steamer_ might, no doubt--so well appointed a steamer particularly--might, no doubt, get past--yet who should say? allah was great!" in fact he believed with the best; so, of course, i said, by all means let the sheykh be propitiated. accordingly when we hove in sight of the little mound where he sits, and has sat for god knows how many years, we turned the steamer (a vessel of seventy-five horse-power) and ran straight in for the bank at considerable risk, it struck me, of not getting off again. the whole crew then went ashore in great excitement, headed by the captain, and surrounded the saint, kissing his hand and salaaming. as i did not wish to hurt the old gentleman's feelings by not kissing his hand, i stayed on board and looked on. sheykh selim is a very vigorous-looking old fellow of the colour of a very dusky mahogany table; his hair and beard are woolly and of a dirty white; his countenance, as far as i could judge from a little distance, good-humoured and sagacious. he squats on the ground with his knees up and his arms folded across them. he inspects his presents, and asks for more. after the levée was over, and when our crew were about to come on board, he called after them and asked for roast meat, and then again a second time for oil wherewith to anoint himself. "there," said hosseyn triumphantly, "he know everything! he know we have roast meat--how he know that?" i was amused at the intellectual superiority of ottilio, the italian waiter. "quanto sono stupidi questi arabi!" for my part i don't see much more difficulty in swallowing sheykh selim than a stigmatised nun or a winking picture--i told him so. we should have reached keneh to-day, but the coals were bad, and we had to stop at dishulh, three hours this side of that place. where was thy favouring grace, o sheykh? it appears that, like the gods of ancient greece, the sheykhs of egypt have their little misunderstandings; i am told that on one occasion selim, having a few words with another holy man thirty-five miles up the river, by name sheykh fadl, and waxing wroth, threw a stone at him (what are thirty or forty miles to a saint?) and blinded him of one eye; whereon sheykh fadl returned the amenity by throwing "some fire" at sheykh selim, thereby sorely burning him. "i have seen the scar," my coxswain informs me. killed another fatted sheep for the crew. _wednesday, st._--arrived at lougsor (el uker) about three. it was too hot for sightseeing, so i waited till evening and went out shooting in a boat; at least i went out with the idea of shooting--if possible a pelican or a crane--but the birds were too shy--i could not get within fair shooting distance; wounded a pelican, but could not get after him in the deep mud. got belated on the river, and the crew had to pull hard for an hour and a half to reach the steamer; fortunately there was a moon. anything more good-humoured or more ineffective than the way in which the sailors pulled and shoved, i never saw; they hopped in and out of the boat in the shallows, up to their hips in the water--pushed, tugged, rowed and sang _die era im piacus_; they can do nothing without the accompaniment of some rhythmic, droning refrain, which they can keep up for an indefinite time. anything will do; my fellows pulled on this occasion to the following words-- "min min_yeh_ fi beniso_ef_," which is as who should say-- "from hen_lee_ to cookham _reach_," giving the stroke and the emphasis on the last syllable. in the evening was visited by mustafa aga, h.b.m. consular agent, one of his sons, the turkish governor (hassan effendi), and the local doctor. mustafa is a very courteous old gentleman, with half a nose, and much respected by all who know him; i observed that saïd, his son, would not smoke in his father's presence, in accordance with an arab custom, which did not much remind me of the manner in which "the gov'nor" is treated in england. on thursday morning, nd, i started to see the tombs of the kings, leaving the eastern bank and karnak for my return. it was a lovely morning, and i crossed the nile before the air had had time to get thoroughly heated. on the other side i found horses, kindly lent me by mustafa (whose son accompanied me), and donkeys for the rest of the party. there were a good many of us, and we made a very absurd-looking procession--_en tête_, a couple of fine brawny arabs, one of whom has been the guide to these ruins since champollion; then saïd and i on our horses--mine a good-looking chestnut, caparisoned with scarlet finery; behind us, on their respective donkeys, the captain in full uniform holding a large umbrella over his head, hosseyn in his arab dress, the french cook in his official white jacket and cap, the italian waiter with a large handkerchief over his head, and the engineer; further behind, lesser menials and the hamper. i forgot the turkish cawass in uniform and armed to the teeth. hovering round, brandishing water-bottles, was a swarm of arab boys and girls, in sizes, and of various qualities of chocolate; they were dressed in the most fantastically tattered remnants of dark brown shirts that i ever saw; there was one little monkey of a dull ebony colour turned up with pale blue, whose form was revealed rather than covered by a few incoherent brown shreds of garment, and who was inexpressibly droll from the way in which he cocked his little head demurely on one side with a half-consciousness of insufficient drapery. the ride to the tombs, which takes about an hour, and the latter half of which lies through an arid valley, is very striking from the form and colour of the mountains. nothing announces that one is approaching the city of the dead, and it is not till you stand before them that you become aware of the plain square openings which lead down to these magnificent last resting-places of the kings. it was a right royal idea this, of the old rulers of egypt, to plunge these shafts into the bowels of the rock, and give themselves a mountain for a tombstone over the palace which was their grave. the design of these houses of the dead is simple and apparently always much the same: a long corridor, sometimes with lateral galleries, sometimes with recesses or small chambers on each side, leads downwards by a not very rapid incline to a great hall, in the centre of which is the sarcophagus which contained the mummy of the king in its magnificent case; these cases have of course been all removed. all these lateral chambers were also originally filled with mummies--those, i believe, of the relations of the sovereign. the walls of these subterranean palaces and the ceilings are adorned throughout with coloured hieroglyphs and flat sculptured "graven images" representing mostly sacred and mystical scenes, but often, also, illustrating the different trades and crafts practised by the egyptians. these paintings are of high interest from an ethnographic point of view--poynter would have a fit over them. in the innermost places scores of bats dart about in intense alarm. the effect of the scanty light from the candles on these painted walls and on the dark bony forms of the arabs is extremely fine--what your literary tourist would call "worthy of the pencil of rembrandt." after lunching in a shady spot we took an anything but shady ride to the temple-palace of koorneh, and from thence to the memnonium. both are very interesting, but the latter by far the finest; there is about it a breadth and a vastness, together with much elegance and variety, that are very impressive. nothing that i have seen is comparable to the monuments of egypt, for the expression of gigantic thoughts and limitless command of material and labour; withal there is about them something stolid and oppressive that is unsatisfactory; and as i looked at these vast ruins, vivid memories of athens and its acropolis invaded me, and the parthenon in all its serene splendour rose before my mind; mighty, too, in its measured sobriety, stately in the noble rhythm of its forms; infinitely precious in the added glory of its sculptures; lovable as a living thing; and then more, perhaps, than ever before, i felt what a divine breath informed that marvellous attic people, and what an ineffaceable debt of gratitude is due to them from us, blind fumblers in their footsteps. i was less struck than i had expected to be by the two colossal statues, of one of which it was poetically fabled by the ancients that a mysterious clang rose from it as the first rays of the rising sun smote its forehead. the myth is more striking than the statues, though their size and isolation give them something impressive. i had expected them, too, i don't know why, to be in a desert, and they are in a field. how infinitely grander is the great sphinx, with its strange, far-gazing, haunting eyes, fixed, for ever, on the east, as if expecting the dawn of a day that never comes; immovable, unchanging, without shadow of sorrow, or light of gladness, whilst the gladness of men has turned to sorrow and their thoughts to ashes before them, through three times a thousand years! century by century the desert has been gathering and growing round it--the feet are buried, the body, the breast are hidden. how soon will the sealing sands give rest at last to those steadfast, expectant eyes? in the evening hosseyn had a great "fantasia" and fulfilled his vow--and spent all his money. he killed his sheep and roasted it, bought some rice and boiled it, some flour and had it made into bread; then mixing the whole, he distributed it in six very large trays; three were put before the crew, one he had placed on the wayside for all comers (and they all came); the other two were sent to the nearest mosque for the same purpose, and with similar results; then, being unable to read himself, he paid five men to recite from the koran at night, in the mosque, and invited thereto the captain, mustafa aga, and his son and several others; he, the while, sitting outside and offering coffee to whoever passed by. when it was all over he came to me radiant: "el hamdul illah," he said, throwing up his hands, "this is good! i am happy, everybody to be satisfied! this is rich day! el hamdul illah! my money is all gone! why shall i mind? i spend it for god! brabs something good happen for me, el hamdul illah!" his delight at the performance of his vow and his absolute faith were the prettiest thing one could see. talking of faith, i am much struck by the dignified simplicity with which mahometans practise the observances of their religion; praying at the appointed times without concealment, wherever they happen to be, and as a matter of course. _friday, rd._--started early and coaled, first at erment and then again at esne, after which, being stopped by the night and shallow water, we anchored off a bank nowhere in particular. heavens, what a hot day! this is indeed "the fire that quickens nilus' slime," but has a vastly different effect on me. sketching will be quite out of the question unless it gets rapidly cooler. at esne i was visited by the chief magistrate, and by the governor of the province; the former a jolly old _bonhomme_ who offered me snuff, the other a very refined old gentleman with most charming manners. both were turks; and as they spoke no christian tongue our conversation was carried on entirely through a dragoman; i was, however, pleased to find that i recognised several words that i learnt last year at constantinople; i was glad, too, to hear again that fine vigorous language, the sound of which is extremely agreeable to me. eastern manners are certainly very pleasing, and the frequent salutations, which consist in laying the hand first on the breast and then on the forehead, making at the same time a slight inclination, are graceful without servility. when an egyptian wishes to express great respect he first lowers his hands to the level of his knees, exactly as in the days of herodotus. talking of herodotus, here is a first-rate subject for gérôme suggested by that author; it is ethnographical and ghastly. the scene is laid in the establishment of an ancient egyptian embalmer and undertaker, fitted up with all the implements and appliances of the trade; in the background, but not so far as to exclude detail, groups of assistants should be shown busied over a number of corpses and illustrating all the different stages of preparation, embalsamation, swathing, &c. &c. in the centre a bereaved family have brought their lamented relative, and are selecting, from specimens submitted to them by the master undertaker, a style of treatment suited to their taste and means, and expressive of their particular shade of grief. a large assortment of mummy-cases would form appropriate accessories and give great scope for the display of knowledge and the use of a fine brush. it seems to me that so pleasing a mixture of corpses and archæology, impartially treated by that polite and accomplished hand, could not fail to create considerable sensation. took a stroll through esne whilst the ship was coaling. the darker tints of skin are beginning to preponderate more and more; mummy colour is in the ascendant here, together with a fine brunswick black. the _men_, i observe, spin in this country. the children are quite fascinating; they have nothing on but a little tuft of hair on the top of their shaven heads; those dazzling little teeth of theirs are wonderful to see, and funny--like a handful of rice in a coal-scuttle. fine sunset again; the hills, ranged in an amphitheatre from east to west, showed a most wonderful gradation from extreme dark on one side to glowing light on the other. i make the profound reflection that no two sunsets are alike; this remark, however, does not extend to _descriptions_ of sunsets--_verb. sap._ when i saw holman hunt's "isabel," his pot of basil puzzled me sorely; i had seen a great deal of basil, and have an especial love for it; but i had never seen it except with a very small leaf. i was sure, however, knowing his great accuracy, that hunt had sufficient foundation for the large leaf he gave the plant in his picture; the very fellow of it is now before me in a nosegay of flowers, very kindly sent me by the old governor of esne. as i smell it i am assailed by pleasant memories of lindos--"lindos the beautiful"--and rhodes, and that marvellous blue coast across the seas, that looks as if it could enclose nothing behind its crested rocks but the gardens of the hesperides; and i remember those gentle, courteous greeks of the island (so unlike their swaggering kinsfolk--if they are their kinsfolk--of the mainland), and the little nosegay, a red carnation and a fragrant sprig of basil, with which they always dismiss a guest. as we lay anchored by the shore in the evening, the dahabiehs came sweeping past in the moonlight; and the faint glimmering of the shell-like sails, and the flutter of the water against the swift, cutting keels, and the silence of the huddled groups, and the dark watchful figure of the helmsman at the helm, were strangely fantastic and beautiful. _saturday, th._--started at half-past five--passed edfou (which i leave for my return) at half-past seven. shall we reach assouan to-day? hosseyn's pious orgies have, i fear, turned his head, for i observed yesterday that he has taken to fishing again. "brabs!--insha allah!" his interpretation of dreams is worthy of the ancient oracle-mongers; on the night before his sacrifice he dreamt that he had bought a slave, and then released it: "wull! the slave is my sheep--is it not my slave? wull, have i not buy it? wull, i give it to the beebles--go!--i release it!" whether the sheep, personally, considered itself released is problematic. _saturday evening._--reached assouan this afternoon at four, and, after the usual visit from the governor, took a stroll. i don't yet know whether i am disappointed in the place or not. at all events it is quite unlike my expectations of it. i had imagined, i suppose from descriptions, a narrower gorge and higher rocks; in point of fact there is no gorge at all, but the river is narrowed, or, rather, split by several islands and some fine granite boulders cropping up here and there to fret the river, and announcing the rapids; otherwise the country is open enough, and original and striking in aspect; i shall know better to-morrow what i think of it all. i saw during my evening stroll, and for the first time in my life, a group of slaves, mostly girls. if i had seen them subjected to any ill-treatment i should have felt very indignant; but i am bound to own that, seeing them squatting round a fire like any other children, showing no mark of slavery, and occupied in cooking their food, scratching themselves (as well, no doubt, they might!) and looking otherwise very like monkeys, i found it difficult to realise to myself the hardship of their position, however much it may revolt one in the abstract. they were black, and uglier than young negroes generally are; their hair was arranged in an infinity of minute, highly-greased plaits all round their heads; the elder ones were draped; the youngest wore a fringe _pour tout potage_. this is a noisy night; there is a "moolid" going on on the high bank to which we have made fast, and which borders the public square. a double row of howling dervishes are squatting and rocking and howling after their kind, almost over my head. in the brief lulls during which they take breath for further efforts, i hear from the other side of the river the mournful, weary, incessant creak of the water-wheel (with its blindfold cow or camel plodding round and round and round, apparently for ever), which in this region almost entirely supersedes the hand-worked bucket. the contrast is very curious. i have just returned the governor's visit. i found him sitting on a sofa in the piazza opposite the government house, with half-a-dozen hand lanterns brought by the guests in front of him, and on each side a long row of benches (forming an avenue up to his seat) on which squatted and smoked numbers of picturesque folk, who looked to great advantage by the flickering glimmer of the lamps and under the soft warm light of an african moon. i sat in the place of honour, smoked my conventional _tchibouque_, drank my inevitable cup of coffee, conveyed through my dragoman the usual traveller's remarks and questions (cardboard questions, so to speak, of which i knew the answers) to my host, who, like all the turkish officials that i have seen, has the manners of a perfect gentleman and much natural dignity. _sunday, th._--started for phylæ at half-past seven; arrived there at nine o'clock. the road leads through a broad tract of yellow sand (where, i believe, an arm of the nile is supposed to have flowed in remote antiquity) along which on either side crop up, in wild, irregular fashion, bumps and hillocks and hills of dark red granite, covered over with innumerable fragments of the same stone, scattered in the most incredible confusion, and having rather a ludicrous appearance of having been _left about_ and forgotten. you could get an excellent notion of the thing in miniature, by hastily spilling a coal-scuttle on a gravel walk and running away. above assouan we are fairly in nubia, and of course none but the darkest complexions are to be seen; but so large a number of negroes make their way here from the soudan (the nubians are not _black_, but of a beautiful dark cairngorm brown), that the whole place has an air of negro-land which is disagreeable to me. the young men, indeed, both black and brown, are sometimes extremely fine fellows (bar the legs, which are never good), but the girls, as far as one can see them, are tolerably ill-favoured, and the old women, of an ugliness which passes all belief. they are _far_ worse than apes. the ladies in this part of the country gladden the hearts of their admirers by anointing their bodies with castor oil, so that the atmosphere of their villages, however full of sweet suggestion to a native, is much the reverse to a traveller with a nose not attuned to these perfumes; the smell that greets you through an open door is a mixture of the bouquet just named, and a penetrating flavour of accumulated stuffed beasts, and naturally interferes much with my enjoyment. at mahatter we left our donkeys and took a boat to phylæ, a quarter of a mile, which takes half an hour owing to the rapidity of the current just above the cataract. the scenery about phylæ has been spoken of as paradise; i never saw anything less like my notion of paradise, and so far, therefore, i am disappointed. original and strange it is, in a high degree. it is in fact exactly like the valley of which i spoke a little further back, only that the hills are four times as high, and water takes the place of the sand; the same breaking up of the rocks into a myriad of fragments, putting all grandeur and massiveness of form out of the question--and, with the exception of a few palm trees and a sycamore or two, the same barrenness. looking up in the direction of wâdy halfâ, the mountains appear to grow finer in outline, and a tract of very yellow sand amongst their highest crests is striking and original--gold dust in a cup of lapis lazuli. with the island itself and its beautiful group of temples it is impossible not to be delighted. nothing could be more fantastic or more stately than the manner in which it rises out of the bosom of the river like a vast ship, surrounded as it is on all sides by a high wall sheer from the water to the level on which the temples stand. one hall in the main temple, and one only, shows still a sufficient amount of colour to give a very good idea of what the effect must have been originally; the green and blue capitals must have been very lovely. it is needless to say that here, as elsewhere, travellers have left by hundreds lasting memorials of their brutality, in the shape of names and dates drawn, painted, scratched, and cut on every wall and column, so that the eye finds no rest from them. this strange and ineffably vulgar mania is as old as the world, and the tombs of the kings at thebes are scrawled over with inscriptions left there by ancient greek and roman visitors. i shall return to phylæ shortly to make a sketch or two--_insha allah._ here, at last, i have found that absolutely clear crystalline atmosphere of which i had so often heard; i own it is not pleasing to me; a sky of burnished steel over a land of burning granite would no doubt be grand if the outlines of the granite were fine--but they are not. meanwhile, perspective is abolished--everything is equally and obtrusively near, and i sadly miss the soft mysterious veils and pleasant doubts of distance that enchant one in other lands. i think it very likely that in winter one has great compensation from the exhilarating purity of the air; but just now the heat, which is simply infernal, is too trying for me to do justice to these advantages; no doubt the air is light and dry, but i feel unfortunately so very heavy and wet, that i am not in a position fully to appreciate it. returning to assouan in the evening, saw a dahabieh that had just got through the jaws of the cataracts, always rather a nervous matter; at least so they say; "to be very dyinger" (dangerous?), according to hosseyn; the men were chanting a monotonous strain that had little of triumph in it, but rather conveyed a feeling of an always impending calamity escaped _this_ time; it was melancholy and very striking, i thought, in the silence of the gloaming; very likely pure fancy on my part, for i doubt whether more than a couple of boats are lost in a season, and the sailors of the nile must be well accustomed to the dangers of these rapids; but the impression on me at the time was very strong. _monday, th._--the dragoman of the ship having a swelling of some sort on his arm, an arab doctor was sent for, and forthwith informed him that his arm was possessed of the devil!! went to see the island of elephantina opposite assouan, but saw nothing to suggest its ancient magnificence. gave a silver farthing to a funny little child, which (the farthing) being perforated, his mother immediately tied into one of his little oily locks--an ingenious substitute for a pocket. i observed several little boys simply attired in a piece of string tied round their loins--there, diogenes! _tuesday, th._--began sketching, but am out of form from the heat. i am working chiefly because i am weary of idleness. i don't much care for the two sketches i have begun; they will therefore probably turn out badly. going to try another presently. tuesday evening._--have begun a sketch which interests me more than the others; it is taken amongst the tombs and shrines on the hills south of the town towards phylæ. as my evening's work was drawing to a close, i heard a shuffling of feet a little behind me, and, turning round, saw, in the full fire of sunset, what appeared to me at first to be a procession of golden apes with dark blue robes, light blue lips, and nose-rings; on closer inspection they turned out to be nubian women going home to their village. hosseyn, _qui a le mot pour rire_, apparently, engaged in conversation with them, and convulsed them with laughter; the flashes of teeth were very funny to see. at last he gave them a few halfpence, and desired them to sing; whereon they set up a series of the most uncouth howls i ever heard; one baboon in particular got up and, using a flat date basket as a tambourine, accompanied her vocal performance with hops and jumps that would have done honour to any inmate of the monkey-house in the zoological gardens. the twilight, walking home, was lovely. the earth was in colour like a lion's skin; the sky of a tremulous violet, fading in the zenith to a mysterious sapphire tint. "dolce color d'oriental zaffiro." slew another sheep--"allah hou akbar!" (without which formula in the killing a good muslim must not touch the meat): this sheep is no empty formality, for the unfortunate sailors would never see meat without it; they live on bread and occasional beans. this is the fourth night of the moolid, which is to last the whole week! at this very moment the tambourines of the dervishes are driving me nearly wild with their diabolic din. _wednesday, th._--got on indifferently with my sketches; only one of them interests me much. the morning was almost cool and really delightful, but the heat was as great as ever in the daytime. i have always been unable to see the extraordinary difference which is said to exist between the length of the twilight in the north, and in southern countries; i could have read large print to-night three-quarters of an hour after sunset. habit is everything, no doubt, as we are reminded by herodotus, _à propos_ of a certain people who ate their dead relatives instead of burning them; but i wonder whether i should ever get accustomed to the aching, straining, creaking complaint of the water-wheel far and near, morning, noon and night, morning, noon and night; i can _just_ fancy its becoming attaching as the clacking of a mill. i have often wondered why, contrary to all analogy, the spaniards call oil _azedo_, which at first sight appears to be the same word as the italian _aceto_. i find that the word is arabic: _zeyd_. mem.: look up the etymology of the english word _cough_, to which no european word that i remember has any affinity, and which rather appears to be onomatopoeic. the arabs say _kokh_ (guttural ending); is this a mere coincidence, and does the word date beyond the crusades? i find a good many words that have a curious likeness to english. my endeavours to pick up a little arabic are almost entirely frustrated by hosseyn's utter inability to pull a sentence to pieces for me. in an arabic sentence of two words (_e.g._ _azekan tareed_--if you please) he could not tell me which word was the verb! literally; i had to find out as best i could. i never saw anything to approach his obtuseness in the matter, except perhaps that of georgi, my dragoman in turkey. as i was sketching this evening a nubian passed me, very grandly draped and erect, and followed by two green monkeys that were fastened by leading-strings to his belt. they toddled very snugly after their stately master and made a queer group. _sunday, november ._--i am in a state of appreciative enjoyment of the comforts and civilised cleanliness of my steamer, having just returned from three or four days' roughing in the ruins of phylæ. "roughing" is a relative term, and my trials were of a very mild description, for though i slept _à la belle étoile_ (or rather tried to sleep), at all events i had a bed to rest in, and the air at night was delightful; moreover, the commissariat was very satisfactorily managed, so that food and drink were abundant; nevertheless, i must maintain that living in an open ruin is not comfortable. i made two or three sketches, and should probably have enjoyed myself, but that on the second day i was entirely thrown off the rails by the heat whilst sketching; i thought i should get a _coup de soleil_; i was very indisposed in the evening, and utterly unable to work the next morning, so that i took the place _en grippe_, and could see nothing but the ugliness of the rocks and the wearing monotony of the hieroglyphs. picked up in the evening, and liked the place better; made some original and striking reflections about the desirability of health. having heard much of the beauty of the full moon at phylæ, timed my visit to see it, and was entirely delighted. the light was so brilliant that one could read with ease, but at the same time so soft, so rich, and so mellow that one seemed not to see the night, but to be dreaming of the day. the arabs say of a fine night, "it is a night like milk," but there is more of amber than of milk in the nights of phylæ. the rising of the moon last night was the first thing of the sort i ever saw; the disc was perfectly golden, not as in a mist, but set sharp and clear in the sky, and exactly like the sun, except that you could look at it without pain to the eyes. the effect of this effulgent light on the shoulder of the hill was magical. the last hour of the afternoon i spent in strolling about the villages, which are picturesque. the cottages are four brown, roofless walls, built of the usual unburnt brick, and coated with mud; but the doorways are always highly decorated with painted geometrical devices which, in the mass of plain, sober brown, have a very cheerful and artistic effect. the people, too, amuse me; a pleasant, gentle, grinning folk these nubians seem; i like their jargon--after the guttural arabic it sounds so soft and round, and the women have funny, cooing inflections of voice (pretty voices, often) that are pleasing. some of the girls are good-looking; chiefly through the brightness of their eyes and the milky whiteness of their teeth. the coiffure of the children is too funny; it consists in tufts of hair of various shapes and patterns left on an otherwise shaven head; often a crest all down the middle and a tuft on each side, exactly like the clown's wig in a pantomime; it is irresistibly droll. a grand sight is to see the villagers keeping the birds from their crops; they all serve in their turn, men, women, and children; they stand each on a rude sort of scaffold which rises about two feet clear of the corn; they are armed with slings from which they hurl lumps of clay at the birds, uttering loud cries at the same time. their movements are full of grandeur and character. i wonder gérôme has never treated a subject so well suited to him. why, too, has he never painted mine enemy the sakkea, which is even more emphatically in his way, for, besides the scope for fine and quaint forms both in the men and the animals that work it, the accessories are abundant and interesting, and there are ropes in great abundance. _is_ the sakkea my friend or my enemy? its chant is so incessant that i should have to make up my mind if i stayed longer in the country; it would either fascinate me or drive me mad. as i listen in the silence of the evening, the rise and fall, the shifting and swaying of the wind bring its complaint from across the gurgling river in such a fitful way that it has the strangest and most unexpected effects: sometimes i fancy i hear deep, drowsy tones of a distant organ, sometimes the shrill quavering of a bagpipe; sometimes it is like a snatch of a song, sometimes like a whole chorus of voices singing a solemn strain in the sad, empty night; sometimes, alas! too often, like a snarling, creaking door-post. phylæ being above the cataracts, my steamer stopped at assouan, and i went there by donkey as before; returning, i chartered a dahabieh to see the said cataracts, of which for some days i had heard so much; amongst other things, that a ship was wrecked there three weeks ago (i saw it stuck on its rock to-day). the cowardice of the people here, at least in this particular matter, is very funny; too naïf to inspire disgust: my captain, an old sailor, and the nicest old gentleman possible, told hosseyn that nothing would induce him to go down them; i thought i observed a shade of respectful interest in his reception of me on my return from an exploit which most english _women_ would consider good fun. i make no doubt that when the water is much lower, and your dahabieh shoots a good six or eight feet drop, and goes half into the water besides, considerable excitement may be got out of it; but now that the drop is not or does not look more than about a yard, and that the whole affair consists in a few plunges and shipping a little water, the emotion is very mild, and i own to considerable disappointment, though as far as it went it was pleasant. nevertheless i did not for a moment regret coming if only on account of the amusement i got out of the sailors and pilots; the latter were men of years; the former, fine, jolly-looking lads as one could wish to see; but their demeanour throughout was infinitely droll; they rested their feet (according to custom here) on inclined planks, up which they ran three steps with their arms well forward to fetch the stroke, getting back into the sitting position as they pulled through the water (and wonderfully fine the action looks in a large crew all pulling well together); but the contortions in which they indulged, the gnashing and grinding of teeth, the throwing back of agonised heads, the frowns, the setting of jaws, the straining of veins, the rolling of eyes, the groans, and, absurdest of all, the coming down on one another's laps and the cutting of crabs, were ineffably grotesque, and would have convulsed me with laughter if i had not controlled myself manfully. meanwhile the pilots were howling at one another and them with all the vehemence of a violent altercation, and for no discernible reason. when they were not shrieking at one another, the crew took up the usual arab boatmen's chant (i know no better word); one man gives out a short sentence, or name, or form of prayer (not exceeding four syllables) in a quavering treble, and the rest then repeat it in chorus in a graver key--the effect is very original. as we got within sight of the big cataract and the stranded ship, hosseyn loudly exhorted the crew to pray to the prophet, and all the saints who have their shrines on the heights of assouan, to see them safely through the danger; the invitation was loudly responded to, and everybody who had not an oar to pull held up his hands and prayed with great fervour--which was very pretty, and done with the dignified simplicity which always accompanies an arab's devotions; but it was certainly disproportionate to the emergency. when we had danced up and down (or rather down and up) three or four times, i had the curiosity to look about for the _sailor_ and waiter i had brought with me from the steamer; they were respectively green and yellow in their unfeigned terror. then there was a nominal _small_ cataract (the first one is called the _great_ cataract), and indeed i believe there was a _third_ little commotion; then hosseyn, throwing up his arms, exclaimed, "el hamdul illah!! finish!!" and it was, as he said, "finish." i am utterly ignorant of the mysteries of navigation, but one figure we executed between the cataracts and assouan struck me as novel: it consisted in turning entirely round in a wide circle to take (as it were) a fresh start; this manoeuvre we performed with much gravity and success two successive times. an elaborate salute from the guns of the dragoman and engineer, responded to with appropriate solemnity by hosseyn, announced my return to my steamer--and, oh joy! my tub. in the evening governor of course. _monday, nd._--resumed work; painted for a couple of hours--badly--in a high wind at an ugly study of a view i don't like. i consider it a sort of discipline. the wind to-day is tremendously high; the dahabiehs will come flying up now. i saw my friend the captain just now sitting on the bank in the midst of an interested circle having his fortune told. there is a blessing for them that wait. hosseyn has caught a fish! two fishes, to-day! his glee is unlimited, he is radiant; when that boy is at the near end of his fishing rope, he is so absorbed i can't get him to attend to me or to answer a question. his brilliant piscatorial success is an opportune set-off against a chagrin the poor boy had this morning; he was taking a dip somewhere under the paddle-box, and lost, in putting away his clothes (_he_ thinks by a black but improbable theft), a koran with which he travels and to which he attributes much luck; he was greatly cut up, and after telling me how much he valued the book, proceeded to inform me that it contained a little piece of wood from abyssinia with something written on it, "some, what you call, scription," which, when worn round the neck, infallibly cured the bite of the scorpion; seeing that this announcement did not impress me as much as he had expected, he asked me with some warmth how i supposed, pray, that the snake-charmers prevented the snakes from biting them if it was not by saying something out of the bible. another sheep to-day; there was some hitch about the manner of the killing which caused a little excitement; his throat was not turned to the sun (or the east?) whilst he was being slaughtered; an important matter. i observe that turkish officials are not expected to be able to write; my captain can, but i remarked that when his secretary, a poor, wizened little thing, whose nose and trousers are far too short, but whose mouth and ears offer ample compensation through their length, brought him to-day the ship's accounts, he stamped his signature at the foot of the page instead of writing it, although he happened to have a pen in his hand; i was giving him his english lesson. talking of accounts, the arabs have a curious way of singing or rather intoning their sums, rocking all the while backwards and forwards like so many dervishes. i have seen a large house of business (at sohag) where _all_ the clerks were doing it at once; it was like a madhouse. oh, lombard street, and oh, mark lane! what would you have felt at the sight? _tuesday, rd._--my last day at assouan. finished my sketches, took leave of the governor, and had a final stroll about the streets of the town, which seemed to me unusually picturesque. i remark that i invariably like a place best the day i leave it; if i am sorry to go, my regret casts a halo over it; if i am glad, my gladness makes everything brighter. how picturesque the people are! their flowing, flying draperies are wonderfully grand. i hope i may carry away with me some general impressions, but the immense multitude and rapid succession of striking things drive individual memories fatally out of the field. sketching figures is out of the question--the effects are all too fugitive. this was also the last day of the moolid, and high time too; i met in the morning, in a narrow street, a procession of sailors carrying a boat, which they were about to deposit in the tomb of the sheykh in whose honour the moolid is held, and whose name they were loudly invoking. in front, drums and flags, and cawasses firing guns; behind, in front, everywhere, a host of most paintable ragamuffins enjoying the fun; above, over the brown house-tops, dark blue figures of women huddled peering at the procession; over them a blue sky with a minaret standing against it, a palm tree; some doves--there was the picture, it was charming. the children as usual called out, "baksheesh howaga;" the so-called begging of the people has been ludicrously exaggerated; in the first place, only the children ask for baksheesh (i mean, of course, without the pretext of a service rendered), and in the next, they treat the whole thing as an excellent joke, and evidently have seldom the slightest expectation that they are to get anything. when you approach a village, every child, from as far as it sees you, whether from a window, or a doorway, or half-way up a palm tree, or the middle of the road, holloas out lustily, "baksheesh, baksheesh," generally with much laughter, and frequently with a universal scamper in every direction except towards you. what i call begging is that importunate whining that clings to you, and harasses you wherever you turn in the south of italy or spain, and with which this clamorous performance has nothing in common. i have remarked, with regard to grown-up arabs, that though they wrangle vehemently with the dragoman on the subject of payment, they invariably show the master a pleasant and satisfied face. i speak, of course, only of my own experience. as strange a thing as a satisfied man is a _barking_ fish; the fish that hosseyn has caught of late--for fortune is his handmaid now--all utter a sound which i can only describe as a faint bark; perhaps everybody knows that some fishes do this, but i did not, and my surprise was extreme. they are nasty-looking objects, all fins and teeth (a thick row of little bristle-like teeth). they are fat and shiny and most insipid eating. _wednesday, th._--started at six down stream; my face is turned towards bonny old england again, and i feel as if i had wings. at kom ombo (the first halt to-day) there are some ruins on a rock which crops up abruptly by the riverside in the midst of a flat country. the morning was divine, and the view from the temple, looking north, surpassingly lovely in colour. the form was nothing much; a vast sandy plain (tigered here and there with stripes of green), and in the distance a long low nest of mountain peaks; but the colour!--the gradation from the fawn-coloured glimmering sands in the foreground to the faint horizon with its hem of amethyst and sapphire was as enchanting a thing, in the sweet morning light, as i have ever seen. the temple is fine though heavy, and less delicate in detail than phylæ. on the under surface of the architrave, between the columns, are some most curious and interesting unfinished decorations, on squares marked out in red, and showing (slight sketch) such as for instance a figure tried two ways on the same spot. the outlines are drawn out, in red also, with extraordinary firmness and freedom. speaking of the squares, gardiner wilkinson--in his, i am told, most erudite, and, i am certain, most dry and heavy, guide-book--says that they were used (in the manner in which "squaring off" is practised in the present day) for the purpose of transferring a design. in this, however, he is obviously mistaken, because the squares are adapted not to the pictures but to the space to be decorated; the hieroglyphs and the figures being adapted to the squares, not the squares to them: that these squares, once made the _basis_ of the decoration and fixing its proportions and distribution, may then have been used also for enlarging a small design, or even, instead of tracing, for transferring one of the same size, is probable enough; but that was not their original function. in corroboration of this view, compare the frets and ornaments painted on the _back_ of the architrave of the parthenon, which i have examined closely; they are painted in squares marked out with a sharp instrument, and determining the space to be decorated exactly as at kom ombo. the case is so entirely parallel as to suggest the idea that the greeks learnt the practice in egypt. the great temple of edfou, where we stopped next, far surpasses anything i have yet seen in egypt; not so much, perhaps, for any especial beauty of detail--although the sculptures are extremely fine--as for its general aspect, which is superb, and its wonderful state of preservation; many parts of it look as if they had been finished yesterday. the gigantic propylæa, and the no less gigantic wall which encloses the whole of this fortress-temple, are almost entirely intact, and make it unlike any other ruin i know. the great court, a giant cloister into which one first enters, discloses the temple itself, blocked out in vast masses of light and gulfs of shade, and tunnelled through by a corridor which reaches to its extremest end; the absence of some portions of the roof, by letting the light play fantastically into the inner spaces, only adds to the mysterious grandeur of the effect. a broad, open peribolus runs round the temple, dividing it from the towering _mur d'enceinte_ which encloses the whole building. the western part of the temple is as full of staircases, secret passages, and dark chambers as any gothic castle. every square inch of the whole immense fabric is covered with sculptures and hieroglyphs. i forgot to say that i stopped between kom ombo and edfou at the ancient quarries of gebel silsily, from which the material of the sandstone temples was mostly quarried. they are extremely striking, and have a grandeur of their own. it was curious to compare them mentally with the marble quarries of pentelicus from which ictinus carved the parthenon and pheidias the fates. in a tomb at el kab are some most amusing and interesting sculptures (with the colour almost intact on them) representing the various occupations of egyptian life, agricultural, &c. the reaping of the corn and durrah is pretty--a vintage and wine-treading pleased me vastly. had they wine in this district? coming upon a magnificent view, stopped the steamer for the night; want to see it by sunrise. the absurd spurious importance my steamer confers on me in the eyes of the natives is too funny. at edfou i found the whole place _en émoi_; horses handsomely caparisoned, a most polite governor, sheykhs, and a general profusion of salaams. it appears that the viceroy had the authorities in the different places telegraphed to be civil to me; and god knows they are. i was struck with the magnificence of the population here, the men at least; they are most stately fellows. i should like immensely to paint some of them, but for that there is no time; i can only hope that something will stick to me from this dazzling multitude of fine things. we are now again in the region of doves, whose presence in large numbers affects the architecture of the villages in a most curious manner. every house has, or rather, _is_, a dovecot, the chief _corps de bâtiment_ being a tower, or several towers, of which the whole upper part is exclusively affected to the doves. their sides are inclined like the sides of the propylæa of the temples, with which they harmonise amazingly well; they are divided horizontally by bands of colour which have an excellent effect, recalling strongly the marked parallel strata of the mountains. (there is no more curious study than the concord which constantly manifests itself between national (and notably domestic) architecture, and the nature in the midst of which it grows up.) the construction of these towers is both peculiar and ingenious; they are built up entirely with earthen jars, sometimes placed topsy-turvy, but most often on their sides, and tier above tier like bottles in a cellar. the exterior is then filled in with mud, and the interior presents the appearance of a honeycomb, the cells being formed by the hollow jars; in these jars the doves have their abode. it is easy to see that by turning a few of the jars _outwards_ a very simple but pretty decoration may be obtained; a crest is added at the top by placing jars upside down at certain intervals; the bands of colour are generally divided by a string-course of bricks something after this fashion, but with much variety; and each of these string-courses is garnished with a perfect hedge of branches and twigs projecting horizontally a yard or more, and forming resting places for thousands of doves. many houses have two towers, and the wealthier people have towers of great size subdivided again into small turrets; but in all cases the height of these edifices is the same, or nearly so, so that the villages received from them a very monumental look. the large towers are divided after the manner shown in the sketch. the natives also make to themselves curious pillar cupboards of mud (about man high), which from a distance have the oddest appearance; they look like raised pies on pedestals. _thursday, th._--made a little sketch from the paddle-box before starting. then to esne to return the visit of my amiable friend, the governor; him of the flowers. there is a temple here; a heavy-looking portico of the roman period, coarsely executed, but with a grand, cavernous look, buried as it is in the ground which rises all round it to half the height of the columns, so that you have to descend a considerable flight of steps to get at it. at arnout, or at least within three miles of it, are a few fragments of the cæsarium. the portraits of cleopatra and cæsarion (he is always seated on her lap), which occur here several times, would be of the greatest interest if they were not utterly conventional, and exactly like everybody else in every temple of the date. got to lougsor at sunset, and found no letters, no sterlings, no lady duff gordon. i trust the letters may still turn up before i go, for, if not, i shall probably lose them entirely, through my desire to get them a little earlier. in the evening dined with mustafa aga, and met there the american consul-general, mr. hale, who had run up from alexandria to show the nile to a friend of his; both are agreeable men (mr. hale earned my warmest blessings by lending me a pile of english newspapers); there was also the consul from syoot with a friend of his. after dinner the dancing girls were asked in, and, presently, a buffoon who stripped to his waist and performed various antics; he was clever and a good mimic, but became terribly tedious after a short time. his performance was of the most aristophanic coarseness. with the girls, of whom i had heard so much, i was decidedly disappointed; in the first place they were mostly ugly, one or two only were tolerably good-looking--_et encore!_ then they were clumsily built, and their dress was quite ludicrous: it consisted in a body fitting tight to the figure and four inches too long in the waist, tight sleeves, a petticoat, in shape exactly like a pen-wiper, and very full, loose trowsers (bags) down to the feet; the whole of printed calico. in front of their waists hung a sort of _breloque_, or chain, looped up at intervals in festoons, the object of which was to jingle as they moved, and to add to the effect of certain little brass _castagnette_ cymbals which they held on the middle finger and thumb of either hand. a profusion of ornaments hung round their necks. their dancing is very inferior to that of the andalusian dancers of the same class, whose performance is full of a quaint grace and even dignity--inferior, too, to the algerine dancing, to which that of the south of spain more nearly approaches in character; it is monotonous in the extreme--very ugly for the most part, and remarkable only as a gymnastic feat; sleight of loins, so to speak. these are, however, no doubt, unfavourable specimens; i shall see the best of the kind in keneh at the house of the consul, who has come all the way here from that place to invite me thereto. _friday, th._--went to the palace and temples of medinet haboo, with which i was delighted beyond my expectation. what pleased me most, and was an entire surprise to me, was a bit of purely secular architecture--the remains of a royal residence, with its towers flanking the great entrance, its windows of various shapes, balconies, semicircular crenelations, outer wall; in fact, identically such a building as one sees occasionally in egyptian sculptures, and, curiously enough, as if it were a portrait of it, on the walls of the very temple to which this palace leads. the temple, too (the large one), interested me extremely from the wonderful preservation of the coloured decoration in parts of it; one really gathers an excellent idea of the original effect, and a most brilliant and magnificent (though barbarous) effect it must have been. the columns in the great hall here are of what, for want of a better word, i shall call the "ninepin" pattern; and i think on the whole i prefer it to the bell-capped pattern; because, besides its character and massive strength, there is no suggestion in it (as in the other) of the doric order, with which comparison is obviously dangerous. as far as i can observe, there is no trace of colour on any of the propylæa, but the pylon is always richly decorated and highly coloured. this decorative importance given to the door must have had a very striking effect, and reminds me of the same peculiarity in the dwellings of upper egypt. visited a private tomb near medinet haboo, which is full of the most curious paintings, many of them in excellent preservation, and representing every sort of domestic and professional occupation. they are very superior in execution and character to those of el kab. in the evening had a dinner on board: mr. hale and friend, mustafa aga and the syoot consuls (one of whom does not speak a word of anything but arabic). i had also invited mustafa's younger son, but find that he may not sit down with his father. (he accompanied me this morning, and insisted on lunching with the servants; on the other hand, my servant is addressed as hosseyn _effendi_, if you please! and conversed with as a gentleman. service appears to be looked upon in an entirely patriarchal light.) the entertainment went off successfully, and ottilio, the italian waiter, covered himself with glory by his excellent waiting. after dinner mr. hale received a telegram to the effect that general grant had been elected president of the united states, with mr. colfax as vice. he was in great excitement and delight; we had a recrudescence of champagne, and gave the new president three cheers in british fashion. the news had come in _three days_ from washington to thebes! it is marvellous. _saturday, th._--went to karnak. wilkinson advises the traveller to see this group of temples last; and wisely, for it is indeed the crowning glory of all, and must satisfy, if it does not surpass, the most sanguine expectations. the vast unfinished propylæa of the large temple prepare one by their colossal dimensions for the gigantic grandeur of the great central hall, in which one is at a loss what most to admire--the originality of the general design, combining, as it does in a surprising degree, freedom and variety with the gravest simplicity--the massive and reposeful breadth of the forms or the exquisite subtlety of the colour. the latter has of course gained very much from the blending hand of time, and is now of a most delightful mellowness, but, judging from the better preserved portions, it must have been at all times of singular beauty. it seems strange at first that a decoration consisting entirely of small blots of vivid colour on a white ground, like butterflies on a wall, can have a _large_ architectural effect; but, in fact, the _repetition_ over large surfaces of wall and column restores, through its monotony, the balance of breadth. the design of this hall is very curious: the great central nave, flanked on each side by two aisles of the same height as itself, but of less breadth (diminishing, roughly, in a proportion of , , ), runs, as in a gothic cathedral, perpendicular to the main entrance; beyond the second aisle, however, on either side, the lintels or architraves which connect the columns run at _right angles_ to the nave; the effect of this arrangement must have been peculiar and striking. (too little remains now, except the columns, to enable one to form a distinct idea.) the central nave, with the aisles immediately adjoining, rises in a clerestory thirty or forty feet above the rest of the building, and was lighted by massive square windows filled with slabs of stone (sketch), perforated vertically, and of a severe and very fine (sketch) effect. these windows fill the space between the entablature of the lateral columns and of the roof of the clerestory, and must be some twenty to twenty-five feet high. i find it difficult to reconcile my eye to the far-fetched "asymetria" in the arrangement of the columns, the lesser ones standing in no definite relationship, on the plan, to the two central rows, neither immediately behind them nor half-way between them. how differently the greeks managed these things! the inner row of columns at the east and west ends of the parthenon differs also in size, height, and level from the outer row, and also stands back; but it is only _one row_ at each end; so that variety and play of form are obtained without a repeated jar on the eye; and an otherwise uniform rectangular plan is not gratuitously distorted. in a very ancient temple beyond and behind that of the great hall are some curious polygonal columns that have a very doric look about them, though they are very rude and undeveloped. the walls of karnak are of course defaced and disfigured by the usual amount of inscriptions; one commemorative tablet, however, like a similar one at phylæ, inspires a different feeling. both are memorials of the french campaign in egypt; the one at phylæ, dated "an viii. de la république française," alludes with simple dignity to the victorious march of the french army to the first cataract, giving the names of the generals who were fighting "sous les ordres de bonaparte"; the other, under the same date, is a simple scientific memorandum giving the latitude and longitude of the chief towns on the nile. it is impossible to read the first of these inscriptions without emotion: how remote from us, already, seems that stern, invincible french republic, tracing its proud name with an undoubting finger here in the grave-dust of an empire that stood more centuries than this young giant completed years! how thickly, already, does the dust lie now on the grave of this thing of yesterday! in writing about phylæ, i forgot to notice the henna tree, which grows in great quantities round the skirts of the temple, and has a delicious scent. in this wilderness of granite and most unsavoury haunt of bats, its perfume wafted unexpectedly on the air is infinitely delightful. _sunday, th._--sketched. _monday, th._--ditto. in the evening went out to shoot, but could not get near the pelicans and crows--they see you half a mile off. returning, against stream, hosseyn, anxious to be useful, took a _punting pole_ and _rowed_ away with an air of conviction which was worthy of the fly on the coach-wheel in the fable. the heat, though still considerable (greater than with us at midsummer), has diminished within the last few days, and does not inconvenience me as much as it did in sketching. towards evening, soft autumnal veils of mist rise from the smooth, swift river, and shroud everything in their mysterious folds; to-night the effect was especially striking; a pale golden sun hung in a pale golden mist, tempered so that one could look at it undazzled, and so shorn of its fires that the eastern bank, instead of burning orange, showed only a faint violet flush over its dark-brown ridges. on a dahabieh alongside me an arab is singing endless strophes of some poem of love and war, accompanied by the thud and jingle of a tambourine; the melody, a wandering, nasal strain, full of turns and runs and triplets, appears to be entirely improvised, and is full of character and melancholy. at the end of each strophe i hear a prolonged, deep groan of approval uttered in a chorus by the audience, rising in pitch after a particularly happy effort of the rhapsodist, whose song begins again and again in mournful gusts like the song of the wind. it is dark; i only hear--don't see--the singer and his listeners. _tuesday, th._--sketched. a frequent companion in my work is my friend, little fatma, a sweet, small child of about five, with a bright face and two rows of the whitest teeth ever seen. she squats down snugly by my side, sometimes looking at the picture, sometimes at the painter, most often at the paint-box, at which she twiddles silently; sometimes she pensively draws a pattern with a little brown finger on my dusty boots. i remember at rhodes, last year, a knot of little girls used to watch me sketching in the street of the knights; but the little turks were not so nice as fatma, the little arab; some used to giggle, and some used to frown at the djiaour; but one very chatty young lady of about six with the manners and graces of sixteen would exclaim in a little fluty voice, "mash allah! mash allah! beautiful indeed! nobody here can write like you!" (turk., if my memory helps me: _guzel! guzel! bir khimse burda senci zhibi yazamas!_) i had a visit on board the other day from mustafa aga's youngest son, bonny and rosy as an apple. he wore a flowing robe of linen, _à ramages_, buttoned summarily and once for all at the neck, but entirely open from the neck downwards; over this an enormous embroidered jacket with anticipatory sleeves turned up at the wrists, and on, or rather about, his feet, a pair of his papa's shoes; he was irresistibly funny and pretty; an _amorino_, dressed up as the dog toby. he was very chatty; not so his playfellow, "genani," the son of abdallah, the servant of mustafa, a putto by raphael modelled in chocolate; a wild, black-eyed, trembling, romping, dusty, stark-naked little imp (i used to call him afreet), and the finest child i ever saw. the nearest approach to social intercourse i could get out of him was a sudden plunge at a proffered cake; after which he would dart off with affected dismay, and frown at me through an ill-suppressed grin from behind the nearest place of safety. _wednesday, th._--got on with my sketches. have begun two or three rough small studies of heads. hate sketching heads rapidly; it is unavoidably and odiously free and easy, and nearly all that is worth escapes. but i have no time for more, and, i suppose, the sketches will be useful. one man, with a face like a camel, whom i drew in profile, was annoyed (though in a general way complimentary) at seeing only one eye in the picture. this struck me as quaint; for he was _blind_ of the other; he had not been defrauded of much. my delight, in the evening, is to watch the processions of women and girls coming down to the nile to fetch water. the brown figures, clad in brown, coming, in long rows, along the brown bank in all the glow and glory of sunset, look very grand; very grand, too, returning up the steep bank, along the violet sky, with their long, flowing folds and the full pitchers now erect on their heads (when empty they carry them horizontally). they are neither handsome individually nor particularly well made, but their movements are good, and the repetition of the same "motive" many times in succession makes the whole scene impressive and stately. there is no more fruitful source of effect in nature or art than iteration. the suppleness of the limbs of the children here is extraordinary. i have seen little girls squatting like grasshoppers in the nile drinking, _à même_, the water in which they were standing little more than ankle deep. an hour after nightfall the dahabieh, my neighbour, slipped her cables and began to drift down the river; but not till the rhapsodist had chanted his ditty to the approving murmurs of his little circle as on the preceding night. his singing has a great charm for me; i shall miss it. it reminds me much of andalusian singing and moonlight nights in the bay of cadiz--there is about it a strangeness and a wayward melancholy that attach and charm me. it was a love song (i am told, for i could not hear the words, and should have understood very few if i had). "ya leyl! ya leyl! ya leyl!"--the eternal refrain of arab songs. "oh night! oh night! oh night! you have left a fire in my heart, oh my beloved! oh my beloved, do not forget me!" &c. &c. &c. a day or two ago i heard a youth calling the faithful to noonday prayer, from the gallery of a minaret, with one of the finest voices i have ever heard; he was tearing his notes from the inmost depths of his chest with that eagerness of yet unconscious passion that i have often noticed in southern children, and which to me is singularly pathetic; he retained his last notes as long as his breath allowed it, and they vibrated in distinct waves like a sonorous metal set in motion: from a little distance the effect was _saisissant_. i could not see him, and the air seemed to throb with sound as well as with heat in the sultry noon. the departure of the dahabieh was celebrated with the usual arab waste of powder, and all the echoes of the valley of the tombs across the river were aroused by the popping of many guns. all the consuls fired officially, everybody else fired unofficially. hosseyn fired officiously--chuckling and nearly tumbling over; and the dahabieh itself, having opened the ball, fired again at intervals from a long distance as if it had forgotten somebody--they are too funny. _thursday, th._--more sketching. the weather, which is a little too canicular at noon, is deliciously fresh and cool for an hour after sunrise; the arabs, however, look much aggrieved at the severity of the cold; they sit huddled in muffled groups with a pinched look that would become a british december day. i observe that half the men in middle life have no forefinger to their right hand. they all of them mutilated themselves to avoid conscription under said pasha, who, however, having found them out, enlisted them all the same. a curious equality prevails here: whilst sketching two of mustafa aga's servants this morning, i learnt from his son that they were both his relations. one of them appears to be a particularly nice fellow, and is a perfect gentleman in his manners. _friday, th._--my last day in thebes. when i arrived here and found neither friends nor letters, i thought, caring little for the place apart from the ruins, that i should stay four or five days; to-morrow when i leave i shall have been here _nine_, and shall go with regret. work has exercised its usual attaching influence. i have drawn in pencil a few heads that will be of use and interest to me. the subject of one of my studies (mustafa's gardener) on receiving from hosseyn two shillings for one hour's sitting, accused him, to his infinite disgust and anger, of having suppressed the _remaining_ eighteen shillings out of a putative pound which he conceived to be destined for him. _excusez!_ _saturday, th._--got up early to finish a couple of sketches, and started at half-past eleven amidst salutes and salaams. to my great relief, the letters which i very rashly sent for from cairo three weeks ago have just turned up at the last moment--fewer than i had expected, but a great delight: the first and only news i have received since leaving home--such are egyptian posts! weather divine: the nile like an opal mirror, reflecting without a break the faint, sleeping, sultry hills on the horizon: a lovely, drowsy scene. arrived shortly after three at the village at which one lands for keneh; a very cheery town about a mile inland. it is generally separated from the landing place on the river during the floods by a vast sheet of water; this year, however, owing to the calamitous lowness of the nile, a narrow, shallow strip of water, only, intercepts the road, and a large tract of country remains untilled and unfruitful from the want of the quickening flood. keneh is a very pretty sample of an egyptian town; it is animated and full of colour, has some pretty minarets, some charming gardens, and more than the usual allowance of ornamental doorways: the effect of the mosaic of black and white bricks is most satisfactory, and has the charm which always accompanies a considerable result produced by very sober and simple means. great relief is frequently obtained by a band or frieze of carved wood, running across the decorated surface at the springing of the arch; this band is generally carved in circles enclosing patterns and picked out with green and red. in the jambs of the door of one of the mosques, a very beautiful effect was produced by alternate bands of brickwork and minutely carved wood, _not_ coloured (three courses of brick to one band of wood). visited a pottery, and for the first time in my life saw a pattern-wheel and the artist at work--a most fascinating sight: the bottles and jugs flow into the most graceful forms as if by magic, and look incomparably prettier than when they are baked. i could hardly get away. a little boy scratches a pattern on them as they leave the wheel. the consul's white donkey, on which i ride about here, is as fleet as the wind and as oily in his movements as a two-oared gondola. _À propos_ of consuls, mustafa at thebes showed me his travellers' book--in it i saw an entry of the names of speke and grant, with the numbers of their regiments, and the dates of their departure from zanzibar and their arrival at khartoum and thebes. a simple conventional travellers' entry, as if they had returned from an ordinary journey--nothing to hint at the great achievement which brought them such honour and lasting fame. _sunday, th._--made a sketch, a little after sunrise, of the chain of hills on the west bank of the nile, then crossed the river to see the ruins of denderah. horses were waiting on the other side, and would have been most enjoyable if the weather had been cool; but, under a fierce sun, absolutely incessant prancing and waltzing ("he make 'fantasia,'" quoth hosseyn) was fatiguing after a bit. was so much struck with the beauties of the mountains, as seen from the left bank, that i resolved to stay a couple of days to paint them. the temple is extremely fine, and in parts unusually well preserved--_the sculpture_, that is, for the colour is almost entirely lost. these sculptures, being of a late period (roman), are clumsy enough; on the other hand the general scheme of decoration is more artistic, more varied in distribution and rhythm than in most of the temples. on the external wall i remarked here, as at edfou and at medinet haboo, massive and very handsome gargoyles--half a lion, couchant, on a large bracket, the water flowing from a spout between the paws--a more important feature in the architectural aspect of the wall than in northern countries, and calculated for five months' rain rather than for five minutes', which is the average annual fall here, i believe. this temple boasts a portrait of cleopatra on a large scale, but, like those of armout and karnak, it is absolutely conventional, and any pretence of detecting an individuality is mere humbug. one fancies at first one has discovered some peculiarity in the features, but on a candid examination one must own that the same peculiarities occur in other faces on the same wall, or that they are owing to the mutilation to which two-thirds of the figures in all egyptian temples has been assiduously subjected. in a lateral chamber of the temple, on the ceiling, is a most striking mystical design, representing the firmament and the sun fecundating the land of egypt. it is fantastic and poetic in the extreme; it would delight rossetti. in the evening made another sketch, and then rode to keneh to dine with the consul--a most interesting glimpse into a real old-fashioned muslim interior. si syed achmet (forty-five years british agent in this town and at khossayr) is a very wealthy old gentleman with large property in this part of the world. he is of the blood of the prophet, a good and pious muslim, tolerant and full of kindliness. a son, three nephews and a daughter form his immediate family circle, living with him in the house to which i was bidden--a bald, uninteresting place enough. it is entered from a narrow, irregular triangular court, ornamented on one side with some good brick and wood work, but ugly and plain on the others, and disfigured by something between a ladder and a staircase which leads to the clean but singularly naked room in which we were to spend the evening. this room was whitewashed, but so roughly bedaubed that the plain deal cupboards, the doors of which formed the only embellishment (?) of the walls, were all besmeared with ragged edges of white. three windows, innocent of glass, and protected by a close, plain trellis-work of ordinary white wood, lighted the room, which boasted in the way of furniture the usual ugly divans, three red muslin curtains, a small deal table, two lanterns and two candles in candlesticks. shortly after my arrival and most kindly reception by the old gentleman, who had come up from the country expressly _ad hoc_, dinner was served. the son, as the eldest, sat at table; the nephews waited on us; we squatted, i on a cushion, they on the floor, round a very low table on which was a large, round, brass tray, containing four plates, some wooden spoons, and a great many small loaves of bread arranged round it in a circle; a soup tureen, into which, after washing of hands, everybody plunged his spoon, was the central feature. after the soup, came in rapid succession several dishes containing savoury messes which were really very good, though perhaps too rich, but which i was entirely unable to enjoy in the sight of a number of hands, shining with gravy, mopping in succession at the dishes with crusts of bread, or fetching out a coveted morsel with fingers too recently licked. it is a delicate and hospitable attention to put a bit with your own hand on to your guest's plate--an attention of which i was the frequent but unworthy recipient. after the made dishes had been done justice to, half a sheep--head and all--was put on the table and _clawed_ asunder by hosseyn. the roast being disposed of, the sweets appeared, and were eaten out of the common dish with spoons, like the soup: i was not sorry when it was over, for i had gone through all the sensations of a sea voyage. i observe that arabs make a point of eating with as much noise and smacking of lips as possible; it is as if they were endeavouring to convey a sort of oblique expression of thanks to providence by manifesting their relish of the blessings vouchsafed. when dinner was over, and a by no means superfluous washing of hands had been gone through, we had pipes and coffee. hosseyn having gone to dine, i was now thrown on my own extremely limited stock of arabic for conversation; and as i had about exhausted that during my ride to keneh with one of the nephews, i was hard put to it. however, i just managed to get through a few broken sentences, to the great satisfaction of achmet, who informed me that he had been for forty years the servant of the english, of whom he thought very highly, chiefly because, as he expressed it, they have "one word"--a satisfactory character to leave behind. in the evening the governor (mudir) came to see me with a tail of employés and, if you please, a pocket-handkerchief, of which he was not a little conscious, holding it in his hand rolled into a neat tube, which he occasionally drew with dignity across the basis of the official nose. the consul for france and prussia also came and made his salaam. my borrowed and temporary plumes have been of real use to somebody here, for the mudir, hearing that an englishman (whom he erroneously supposed to be somebody) was on board a viceroy's steamer, immediately gave the crew two months' pay--an alacrity not sufficiently often displayed in this country, if i am not much misinformed. the dancing-girls who came to entertain us in the evening were no doubt better than those of lougsor, though, with one exception, at least as ugly; but some of them were gorgeously attired (from the dancing-dog point of view), and all were a mass of gold necklaces and coins and glittering headgear, which produced at a certain distance and in the doubtful light a prodigiously fine effect of colour. the dancing was a little more varied than that of the lougsor women, chiefly, no doubt, because they got more to drink; but, _en somme_, i am confirmed in my first impression that it is an eminently ugly performance, though a very remarkable gymnastic feat. of course a graceful and good-looking girl may do a good deal to redeem it by personal charm, and this was in some degree the case with zehneb, who is a noted dancer and the _fine fleur_ of the profession. she is pretty though coarse in feature, and not without grace; but has a semi-european smack about her dress and ways that spoils her in my eyes--hers, by-the-bye, are splendid. just as the "fantasia" was at its height, a ragged, dust-soiled, old beggar came, chattering and grinning, into the room, and at once installed himself, uninvited but unhindered, on the divan, from which comfortable post he proceeded to witness the performance and apparently thoroughly to enjoy his evening. the contrast between his beggar's garb and the scrupulously cleanly attire of his neighbours was very curious. he is a fakeer, as i am told; everybody feeds him, no doors are closed to him; he is not, i believe, exactly an idiot, but is certainly in his second childhood--"rimbambito," as the italians say. on one side of him squatted a sweet little brown girl, achmet's daughter, of about five or six, in a pink cotton shift and with anklets hanging about her little naked feet. on the other side, a little further off, was an umber-coloured dancing-girl, with bright bold eyes painted round with black, covered with a mass of gold coins on her head, in her hair, on her ears, and round her neck, and wearing a blue silk dress all bespangled with gold. he looked like a dust-heap between them. it was a queer picture, taken out of the "thousand and one nights"; from which work also, i presume, the numerous one-eyed people that i see everywhere in egypt, are copied. (i prefer this view to that of unimaginative pedants who, attaching undue importance to facts, inform me that this blindness is self-inflicted, to avoid conscription.) my ride home was a fitting close to such an evening; a fantastic procession we made, headed by a handful of torch and lantern bearers, brandishing enormous staves; after which "meine wenigkeit" on a sumptuously caparisoned steed, the consul's nephew, the captain, hosseyn, a cawass, all of them on horses, others on donkeys, and odd men bustling about amongst us and dispersing the few stragglers that were to be found at that late hour in the streets. the fitful flare of the torches, dressing in fugitive, fantastic lights the gateways and dim walls of the slumbering town, had a very fine effect. more curious still was our ride _through_ a quarter of a mile of _dourah_ that stood at least ten or twelve feet high all round us; the train of light and shower of sparks in the tall graceful corn was of a surprising aspect. except that nothing took fire, it was as if samson's foxes had been let loose in front of us. _monday, th._--sketched. in the evening, yielding, i own, with some reluctance, to a pressing invitation, returned to keneh to dine with si achmet. had, except the roast, exactly the same dinner as on the previous day, which leads me to conjecture that the _répertoire_ of arab cookery is limited. after dinner we rode out to see the moolid, which is just beginning here. it is _the_ great moolid of central egypt, and to it, but only towards the end, flock people from all parts of the country till the concourse is enormous. it must be an interesting sight when in full swing, but as yet there is little or nothing worth seeing except the tomb of the sheykh in whose honour the moolid is held (sheykh abd-er-rahim, the "genani") to which i was taken by my host. the building was like most others of the same class in egypt: a square chamber with a dome, and windows through which the coffin, placed conspicuously in the centre, can be seen by the pious crowds outside. on entering, i was conducted, after taking off my boots, to a post of honour, on the ground of course, in the midst of a grave circle of worthies who were squatting in the _ruelle_ between one side of the coffin and the wall. on my right was one of the civic functionaries, on my left the priest attached to the tomb. the spectacle before me was wonderful both in colour and form, though composed in great part of the simplest elements. it was like the finest delacroix in aspect and tone, but with a gravity and stateliness of form very foreign to that brilliant but epileptic genius. to the left of me, covered with a showy embroidered cloth, stood behind a railing the sarcophagus of the saint, illuminated from above by various lanterns hung from the ceiling (the central one, and the handsomest, the gift of lady duff gordon) and from the corners by gigantic candles, standing in candlesticks of proportionate dimensions; at the same corners stood great banners of sober but rich tone, which added much to the general colour. on each side of the carpet at the head of which i squatted, squatted, in far more picturesque attire, some of the notables of keneh, half hidden in the shadow, their large turbans cast on the rich carpet they sat on. at the further end stood and stared, with the solemnity of a chorus in an opera, a motley, dazzling group of lesser folk; magnificent, too, in the flow of their draperies, the grace of the half untwisted turbans wreathed round their necks or hanging from their shoulders, the stateliness of their forms, and the fiery glow of colour in which they burnt under the clustered lanterns. unfortunately, i could not gaze with attention as undivided as i could have wished, because the gentleman on my right insisted on making conversation, the very meagrest form of which exercise absorbed for the time my powers of attention. hosseyn, who is very pious, bled me of an enormous baksheesh for the shrine of the saint. _tuesday, th._--completed my sketches in the morning. in the evening, si achmet, his son, and three nephews, one of whom i neither knew nor had invited (this is entirely arabic--i might, also, have taken any one with me to dine with them) came to dine on board. it was a very droll ceremony--the arabs had, with one exception, probably never sat at a table on a chair before, but they were so entirely simple as not to be (also, by-the-bye, with one exception) at all ridiculous. ottilio had, perhaps with a little malice, arranged the napkins in a most artistic and intricate fashion; these edifices so impressed my friends that they did not sit down opposite to their plates but on one side of them. i set them at once comparatively at their ease by requesting them, through hosseyn, to consider themselves at home and eat with their fingers, forgiving me if i followed the custom of my country; the proposal was received with great satisfaction by the old gentleman and his son, who fell to in their own way, the father muttering his appreciation of the dishes in low, sonorous ejaculations: "allah!"--"mash allah!"--"ou allah!"--"ameer! ameer!" &c. &c. &c. the son, a man of about forty, with a broken nose and a very strong squint, and whose movements carried a general impression of contemplative dreaminess, always verging on surprise, ate with his usual deliberation and spent his odd moments in contemplating a shining bunch of fingers, which he periodically and slowly licked with the utmost impartiality; he did not mix in the conversation. of the three cousins on my left, two made a very fair attempt at using the knife and fork, though it must have been a virgin effort; the third, who had been a great deal with english people when he was consul at khossayr, ate his dinner and put down his wine like the best european; i suspect, in fact, that he was brought as a show man. achmet, in a climax of gratification, exclaimed towards the end of dinner, "by allah! if the ameer comes to my house another year, he shall be served after the frankish custom." arabs appear to be much devoted to _limonade gazeuse_--without being the forbidden fruit of wine itself, it dwells in bottles, and has a sort of air of crime about it which no doubt pleases them; my left-hand neighbour took off at least two bottles during dinner. hosseyn, whose father was a great friend of si achmet, proved invaluable; he hopped about like a delighted child, filling the glasses, cutting the meat of the two digitarians, and generally making conversation--a great relief to me. in the evening one of the nephews asked for some tea to take home, which i gave him; another pocketed all the tobacco that was brought them to make cigarettes. arabs are hospitable and generous, and i like them much, but they are indiscreet in the extreme. "arabs," says hosseyn, "have no face; they never take shame." i have seen instances of this which i won't put down; one only, for it is very droll: my squinting friend with the pensive look asked lady ely last year if she would just procure for him from the queen a title, or an order, as a mark of her regard. i am the bearer of a letter to her from him now, which i have no doubt is a reminder. slew a sheep again. _wednesday, th._--left keneh early, and with regret; the place, the people and the scenery have left many pleasing pictures in my memory. i little expected at starting the annoyance that awaited me! as we approached the spot where sheykh selim receives his devout visitors, i sent word to the captain that i did not wish to lose any time in landing, but that the bag of money which had been collected for the saint was to be delivered, and we were to go on. i had scarcely uttered this almost sacrilegious order, when the steamer, which had been judiciously steered within ten yards of a flat, shelving bank, ran hard and fast into the mud, with the apparent intention of sticking there permanently, the engine being utterly powerless to get her out. nobody on board doubted for an instant but that sheykh selim had stopped us in his resentment; the captain instantly dispatched sailors with money to propitiate him, and after a few futile attempts on the part of five or six of the crew (to loud cries of "help us, o prophet! help us, o sheykh selim!") to heave out a vessel that was four or five feet in the mud, jumped himself into a boat, and hurried, of course accompanied by hosseyn, and leaving his vessel to take care of herself, to beseech the sheykh to get us off. their conversation was afterwards reported to me by one who was present. "what is this, o sheykh, that thou hast done to us? in what have we been wanting towards thee? did i not give thee a shirt when we last came by? and the tobacco, was it not good? was the roast meat not sufficient? why are we thus punished?"--to whom the sheykh: "don't be a fool! why do you come to me about your boat? am i a sailor? how do you expect me to get her off--or on? allah got her on the sand, not i, who am a man like yourselves." the captain: "allah is indeed great, but if he ran us aground it was on thy instigation--thou knowest it, o sheykh!" &c. &c. in this strain the conversation lasted at least twenty minutes, during which time and for the rest of the day i was literally sick with disgust and anger at the lot of them. everything that ought not to be done under the circumstances, including losing the anchor (which is still at the bottom of the river), was done before evening; everything that should have been done was left undone. next morning (thursday, th) we obtained (by force, after the fashion of this country) through the governor of the neighbouring town a gang of two hundred arabs, magnificent fellows some of them, who, at last, by heaving and tugging, contrived to get her off--not without the most unearthly _charivari_ i ever heard. in the morning i made a sketch; reached bellianeh in the evening, appeased, at last, and rather amused at the abject condition of the captain, to whom i had conveyed my mind (he had never seen me angry before), and who swore that in future one hundred sheykhs should not take him out of his course. my misadventure will benefit my successors in the good ship _sheberkheyt_--_à quelque chose malheur est bon._ _friday, th._--started at seven on horseback to see abydos, and had a delightful morning. the weather was fresh and clear, and the canter of six or seven miles across a fine open plain to the foot of the mountains where the ruins lie was most enjoyable. the temples, very strikingly situated on a slope which sweeps down from a grand amphitheatre of bastion-like rocks, have a great advantage over all those that i have yet seen, viz. that their sculptures have almost entirely escaped mutilation, and are in admirable preservation. this is the more fortunate, that they are of a very fine period, and most delicate in workmanship; the type of the faces has considerable beauty and refinement. the colours, notably in the more recently excavated temple of osiris, are often extremely well preserved, and i am confirmed in my conjecture, that they must have been much less beautiful in their freshness than now that time has toned and tuned them. in the larger temple are some very beautiful wagon-head vaults _cut in the thickness of two layers of stone_, the upper ones laid on end to get more thickness of material. they are charmingly decorated with cartouches and stars on a blue ground, and divided by a band of hieroglyphs running like a ridge-rib along the head of the vault. the stars on egyptian ceilings are always pentagonal, and placed very near together. at the temple i was joined by the obligato governor, a puffy turk with a tight, shiny face that had a look of having been stung all over by a wasp; he was heavy and stupid, and i left him in the hands of hosseyn, galloping ahead myself with the mounted cawass, a very picturesque arnout on a very good horse. _n.b._--never come to the east again without an english saddle; the back-board of a turkish saddle is in the long run an intolerable nuisance, as are also, though in a less degree, the shovel-stirrups in which one's feet are imprisoned. in the afternoon reached sohag, a sail, or rather a steam, of three or four hours, in time for a most pleasant evening's walk. _saturday, st._--got to syoot in the afternoon, and was very glad to catch lady duff gordon on her way up the river. was received with great hospitality by the american and spanish consuls, wealthy copts of this town who kindly put their carriages at my disposal and, better still, their donkeys--splendid arabian donkeys, looking, in their trappings, like cardinals' mules. nothing is more pleasant than the swift amble of a good donkey from the hejaz. dined in the evening with mr. wonista, the consul for spain, quite "à la franca" with knives and forks and the whole thing. a curious house, and the rooms small but of enormous height, so that they looked as if they had been set _on end_ by mistake. the walls were bare whitewash, but the furniture was of the most gorgeous brocade, as were also the curtains; there was a european carpet all over the floor and as many candles on the walls (in glass bells) as in a _café chantant_. i met there a scotch clergyman belonging to the american mission (episcopalian) which is very active in egypt. after dinner the singer from lady duff gordon's boat was sent for, and in a short time arrived with some of the crew who acted as chorus; it is this chorus, i find, that gives the approving murmur after each strophe. he sang well, but his performance of course lost three-fourths of its charm by not being heard in its proper place and surroundings. i remember once in the sabine hills hearing unexpectedly at a distance, in the silent dimness of night, the droning song of a _piffera_; nothing could be more strangely pathetic than this voice rising in the utter silence from out of the heart of the valley below--yet those same sounds heard close in the broad daylight would have seemed uncouth and strident. arab singing has a similar quality, and is equally dependent on time and place for its full effect. whilst the performance was at its height, and the minstrel was tuning his note to the most ambitious _fioriture_, i heard in the room overhead some european part-singing of a melancholy order, and was informed that the scotch minister had been invited by a few proselytes to retire upstairs "to worship and explain an obscure passage in the gospel." on the invitation of the master of the house, i went up and joined the congregation, who thought it right to favour me with another psalm. the clergyman then read in arabic, and expounded in the same language a chapter from the bible, and i must say did it (i speak of his manner only, for koran and bible arabic is so different from the current idiom, here at all events, that i did not understand four words in the whole sermon) in a very simple and impressive way. he had, too, an admirable accent. he tells me that in spite of vehement opposition from the coptic prelates he finds a good deal of sympathy amongst the people. _sunday, nd._--lovely day. strolled about with a gun. this place is full of "sparrows of paradise," a little bird of an exquisite golden green. since i was here last, the aspect of the country has changed very much and for the better. where i saw, a few weeks back, nothing but pools and mud, is now a vast expanse of clover and grass of an intense green, sunny and brilliant to a wonderful degree. the plain looks like one immense jewel, and contrasts deliciously with the tawny sand-rock which walls it in on the west, behind the gleaming white domes of the cemetery. dined with the other consul in the evening. same sort of house, but much larger. no scotch clergyman this time, but an anglo-arab who teaches in the coptic school, and, embracing coptic views, inveighs bitterly against the converts to protestantism. at sunset, to my agreeable surprise, the sterlings turned up, _musique en tête_, the singer in the bows quavering a jubilant strain, and the vessel magnificent with fresh paint. _monday, rd._--killed a sheep. sketched. had the consuls and the scotch missionary to dine with me. the latter brought me some newspapers, which i read greedily. _tuesday, th._--sketched. at last an evening to myself!--these festive gatherings are an ineffable bore, if the truth were told. _wednesday, th._--completed my sketches with one exception--a study of my beautiful grey (_hechtgrau_) donkey. unless i make a study at sakkara, which is just possible, this will be the end of my work on the nile. in twenty-two skies which i have painted there is not a vestige of a cloud, such has been the divinely serene weather i have had all along. this evening, indeed, faint, shining flakes of vapour were drawn across the sky, breaking and tempering the last rays of the sun; but by a curious piece of luck they did not appear till i was just giving the last touches to my day's work. saw a beautiful and original effect at sunset. just as the sun was about to sink behind the hills, a dahabieh drifted past with its sails spread, and reaching up into the region where the light was still golden, whilst the face of the water was darkened, and the long, low banks were already shadowy and grey, the burning sail was reflected in the night of the river, and looked astonishingly beautiful. it was like the mellow splendour of the rising moon. i delight in seeing the sailors climbing the tall, oblique yards of the nile boats. sometimes five or six of them perch on one yard at the same time, looking at a distance like great birds. _thursday, th._--finished my donkey and started; as i get further north, the weather is much cooler--the mornings and evenings are quite fresh, though not so cold but that i can sketch in the shade an hour after sunrise in summer clothes. the natives, however, seem to take a severe view of the temperature, and leave nothing unmuffled but their mouths, with which they occasionally blow their fingers in the most approved winter fashion. was more struck than before with gebel aboofada--the infinite and strongly marked strata of which it is made up writhe and heave in a very grand and fantastic manner. some of the egyptian mountains are ruled like a copy book from head to foot, and are very monotonous. at the foot of aboofada, i saw, for an instant, my first and last crocodile; a small one. they are very seldom seen from a steamer below the cataracts, as the noise frightens away the few there are. i had looked forward to getting a shot at one, and was a good deal disappointed at finding none up the river. it is curious how rapidly time lends its perspective to the past. every now and then a boat from the cataracts laden with dates comes floating down the river, and the melancholy chant of the nubian sailors, as they strain at the oars, already falls on my ear as a sudden memory of an almost distant past--not a month old. arrived at roda this evening. i have been reading, amongst other things, a book everybody else read thirty years ago, "les natchez," and am greatly disappointed with it. i am especially struck with the extraordinary contrast between the masterful sobriety and simplicity of the style, and the far-fetched affectation of the ideas which are, more often than not, distorted, tawdry and inflated, sometimes disgusting and not seldom maudlin in the extreme. this singular discrepancy between form and matter is especially french, and may frequently be traced in the works of their painters and sculptors. no living people has so sensitive a perception of form or so artistic an epiderm, but an ineradicable self-consciousness develops in them a theatrical attitude of mind which too often betrays itself in their artistic and literary conceptions. it is the absolute consent between conception and execution which constitutes one of the chief sources of delight in the art of the greeks, to whom they are fond, too rashly, of comparing themselves.[ ] i notice in the natchez a peculiar use of comparisons. that mode of adding light and colour to an idea which consists in suggesting analogies, has always been the delight of poets; but chateaubriand (whose analogies, by the way, are often singularly far fetched and unfortunate) occasionally, in a morbid endeavour to be original, seeks his effects in a suggestion of dissimilarities; i remember an instance: he has been describing with minute and gratuitously sickening detail a mangled heap of dead and dying warriors after a ferocious encounter. "how different," he exclaims, but in more flowery terms, "is a haycock in a field with girls rolling down it!" few will be disposed to contradict him. his exorbitant personal vanity which continues to peep through everywhere, and makes even his unbounded praise of his country seem an oblique tribute to himself, is droll and nauseating at the same time. took a stroll in the evening, and met an english baby! pink and delicate like a flower; with cape and cockade complete--a pretty sight. thick folds of rose and violet-coloured cloud hung along the horizon at sunset, and looked autumnal. i have left eternal summer behind me. _friday, th._--such a morning as the evening of yesterday foreboded; rather chilly and misty, and as near an approach to winter as upper egypt may be expected to afford. the sky was veiled on all sides with soft grey clouds, wrinkled and fretted like the grey sands when the sea has left them. it was a fitting background to the desolate tombs of beni hassan, which i visited an hour or two after sunrise. the range of hills on the face of which these tombs are excavated is not unlike gebel aboofada in its configuration, except that the strata with which it is scored are more level and regular. this monotony is, however, relieved by the sky-line, which is extremely fine. along the foot of these hills runs a level strip of barren land, broken abruptly in its whole length by a steep bank which rises like a ruined wall from the plain below, and which is, when the nile is exceptionally high, the bank of the river itself. standing, as it now does, nearly a mile inland, and crested with two deserted villages, it has a grand but uncanny aspect. i had long been eager to see the tombs, which show what is considered by many to be the first rudiment of the doric order. the similarity, more striking even than i expected, is so great that, taken with our knowledge of the early and frequent intercourse of the greeks with egypt and of the assimilating power of their genius, it certainly offers a strong _prima facie_ presumption in favour of this view. it may be objected that the echinus, the conical form of the shaft and its entasis, all three inseparable features and especial beauties of the greek order, are wanting here, though they are present in the earliest specimen of the style preserved in greece, the temple of corinth. this argument would deserve more consideration if it could be conceived that the order as seen at corinth was a spontaneous conception, and not a development of some more elementary form which, whether native or imported at a remote period, has not been handed down to us. in point of fact, the chamfering of a simple stone pier into an octagon and then further to a polygon of sixteen, or more, sides (specimens of the two forms are seen side by side in two of the tombs of beni hassan) is so elementary an effort of architecture and one so obvious, that its independent and spontaneous adoption by two different nations would be matter for no surprise. on the other hand, it is to be remarked that these tombs and the early temple at karnak already mentioned are the only instances of this style known in africa--that not only are they isolated in themselves, but they form a step to no further developments--a link in no chain; that in character and conception they have nothing in common with any of the great monuments of egypt, to which indeed they are antagonistic in feeling; that they stand side by side with other monuments of the _same_ date (about b.c.?) of a developed and absolutely different type--a type certainly indigenous and based on the imitation of natural forms which is especially characteristic of egyptian architecture; and lastly, that the tombs of beni hassan show certain dissonances, such as one might expect to find in the case of an unintelligent and unperceptive manipulation of a foreign style. in the face of these considerations, i find it difficult to resist a suspicion that the view generally received exactly reverses the truth of the case, and that these tombs are not indeed the prototypes of the doric temple, but rather the results, themselves, of contact at some remote period between the egyptians and that branch of the great aryan family which, at long intervals, and in successive waves, covered the shores of the egean sea, and one of the latest offshoots of which poured down into greece from the heights of thessaly under the name of dorians. i believe the earliest egyptian _record_ of the pressure of greeks in this country goes no further back than b.c.; but a peaceful intercourse between the two races may have existed over a long period, without necessarily finding a place in public records. the (quasi) doric tombs are divided into a nave and aisles by two rows of piers, carrying an architrave and disposed at right angles to the portico, agreeably carrying out the likeness of a greek temple. the circles which intersect the extremity of the other group of tombs are _parallel_ to the portico, and have a deplorable effect, much heightened by the shape of the ceiling, which is that of a very flat pediment. the architrave follows the line of the roof, but at a still more open angle. it would be difficult to conceive anything more hideous. nearly all the tombs are decorated with frescoes of a rude kind, but displaying frequently an amount of freedom unusual in egyptian art. our guide was a splendid fellow, looking, in his flowing robes, like a figure from the "school of athens" on the "disputa." the longer i live, the more i am struck by the identity of raphael's frescoes with the noblest aspects of nature. to benisoëf in the evening. passed some travellers; nothing looks so gay and pretty as a dahabieh with its colours flying and its sails spread. _saturday, th._--lovely morning once again. reached sakkara early, but found that the road to the pyramids was obstructed by water, so moved on at once to ghizeh, opposite to old cairo, where i shall remain till to-morrow morning; meanwhile i have sent on hosseyn to secure a room at the inn, and to fetch the means of leaving a pleasant memory of me on board the _sheberkheyt_. i have stripped the walls of my cabin of the paintings i had hung round them, and they look desolate and like the coffin of my now past journey. a most enjoyable journey it has been, full of pleasant things to remember; full, too, i hope, of artistic profit and teaching. i have been indeed fortunate, for, as i now see more clearly than ever, in a dahabieh i could not have achieved a third of the journey, and in a passenger steamer i could not have done a stroke of work. every study i take home i owe entirely to the viceroy's munificent kindness. _sunday, th._--left for boulay, my destination--gave a parting sheep to the crew, distributed _largesse_, shook hands all round, and drove off to the hotel. footnotes: [ ] see chap. iv. p. . chapter iv royal academician--music--arab hall - in , the year after his journeyings in egypt, leighton was elected a royal academician. the picture which he chose as his diploma work to be deposited in the academy on his election was the "s. jerome," one of those few works which reflected the side of his nature about which he was profoundly reserved. another work of which the same might be said is "elijah in the wilderness," painted in . leighton told a friend he had put more of himself into that picture than into any other he had ever invented. three paintings which are among leighton's very best appeared on the walls of the academy in --"dædalus and icarus," "electra at the tomb of agamemnon," and "helios and rhodos." in no work did leighton indulge his passion for colour so successfully as in the last-named picture. he wrote to his master, steinle, in : "you will perhaps be surprised, but, in spite of my fanatic preference for colour, i promised myself to be a draughtsman before i became a colourist." again, in a letter to a friend in he wrote: "colour was supposed to be my _forte_ (_par parenthèse_, though i am not a colourist, albeit passionately fond of colour, i have always been, and am, a great _cuisinier_; i have tried quite innumerable methods and vehicles)." some of leighton's appreciators cannot help feeling jealous of this obstinate determination to struggle with those gifts for which nature had not given him the preference, many considering his artistic error to have been that of putting the screw too tightly on his preconceived determinations. had he _sometimes_, at all events, allowed his "fanatic preference" to have free play, more of his works might have glowed with the revelry in rich colour we find on the canvas of "helios and rhodos." [illustration: st. jerome. . diploma work deposited in the academy on lord leighton's election as an academician] [illustration: "electra at the tomb of agamemnon"] no complete work evinces more conclusively the force of leighton's dramatic gift than "electra"; and--further--masterly and beautiful as are all leighton's arrangements of drapery, those in this design strike me as specially expressive. they are truly superb. the balance of the masses, and the sweeping lines from the feet up to the shoulder and over the chest, are grandly conceived--the arrangement of the folds notably adding to the suggestion of tragic feeling in the attitude of the figure. "icarus," in the picture of the inventive father and the aspiring son, is a beautiful figure of a youth. the conception, design, and colouring of the picture are worthy of leighton at his best. though egypt had made a deep impression on leighton's æsthetic emotions, as is obvious from his diary, his visit there apparently did not actually suggest any pictures except "a nile woman"--the only work exhibited at the academy in --and "egyptian slinger scaring birds in harvest-time: moonrise," exhibited in . a subject suggested by an event, which had occurred some years previously, appears to have been engrossing his mind, before he found expression for it, in the painting "heracles wrestling with death for the body of alcestis," exhibited . many persons admired this work more than any that had previously appeared.[ ] it evoked the lines from browning:-- "i know, too, a great kaunian painter, strong as hercules, though rosy with a robe of grace that softens down the sinewy strength: and he has made a picture of it all. there lies alcestis dead, beneath the sun she longed to look her last upon, beside the sea, which somehow tempts the life in us to come trip over its white waste of waves, and try escape from earth, and fleet as free. behind the body i suppose there bends old pheres in his hoary impotence; and women-wailers, in a corner crouch --four, beautiful as you four,--yes, indeed! close, each to other, agonising all, as fastened, in fear's rhythmic sympathy, to two contending opposite. there strains the might o' the hero 'gainst his more than match, --death, dreadful not in thew and bone, but like the envenomed substance that exudes some dew, whereby the merely honest flesh and blood will fester up and run to ruin straight, ere they can close with, clasp and overcome, the poisonous impalpability that simulates a form beneath the flow of those grey garments; i pronounce that piece worthy to set up in our poikilé!" leighton had taken the lines from euripides as his text:-- "there slept a silent palace in the sun, with plains adjacent and thessalian peace." "....yea, i will go and lie in wait for death, the king of souls departed, with the dusky robes, and methinks i shall find him hard by the grave drinking the sacrificial wine. and if i can seize him by this ambush, springing from my lair, and throw my arms in circle round him, none shall snatch his panting body from my grasp till he give back the woman to me." [illustration: "heracles struggling with death for the body of alcestis." by permission of the fine art society, the owners of the copyright] this work made a landmark in leighton's career. "dante at verona" had combined a complicated design of many figures with a dramatic feeling; "cimabue's madonna" and the "syracusan bride" had proved leighton's "great power of rich arrangement," to quote d.g. rossetti's words respecting "cimabue's madonna"; but in the "heracles wrestling with death" there was felt to be a more profound tragedy; indeed, the objective treatment had in this instance ceded to one more subjective, in so far that the subject had appealed to him through a personal experience, though the feeling was, as in nearly all leighton's greatest works, veiled in a classic garb. in a letter to his mother, dated november , , he wrote:-- _november , ._ i returned so suddenly on account of a grave and terrible anxiety, _now quite removed_, about my dear friend mrs. sartoris. i must tell you that for some time past she has been looking dreadfully ill, getting daily worse, haggard and thin. i, in common with all her friends, had been growing very anxious, and conjectured that some day or other a crisis must come in which only the surgeon could avail her. i little thought how near at hand the moment was! she on her part had borne up with an amount of moral and physical courage which everybody says was quite incredible. her nearest relations have not known from her that she was in so dangerous a state. a week ago i arrived at francport, the château of the marquis de l'aigle, where i expected to find mr. and mrs. sartoris and their children. i found instead mme. de l'aigle in the deepest anxiety and commotion, having received a letter saying that on that very day poor mrs. s. was undergoing an operation of which the event was very doubtful! i need hardly say that i instantly hurried off to england in the greatest alarm, and in fear and trembling lest she should have succumbed. you may judge of my relief, next morning, on hearing from the servant in park place that she was doing well. i hurried off to the doctor, a friend of mine, and heard that for six hours her life had been in jeopardy, but that, thank god, she was doing amazingly well, that for a week there could be no _certainty_ of her recovery, but that the possible chances doubled every day. since then, thank god, she has progressed so _astoundingly_ owing to her immense roots of vitality and health, that one may be almost _certain_ (_unberufen_) of her complete recovery, in which event she will enjoy life more than she has done for several years. her family and friends have escaped an entirely irreparable loss. the very beautiful picture, "greek girls picking up pebbles by the shore of the sea," was also exhibited in the academy in , likewise a smaller work, "cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline." this is one of several which proves leighton's gift for catching the grace and singular refinement of childhood. "lord leighton's drawings and paintings of children show the protecting, caressing tenderness he felt towards them. he loved little things, little children, kittens--'caressing littleness, that littleness in which there is much of the whole woeful heart of things'--everything lovely that had in it the unconscious grace of helplessness seemed especially to touch him." in "summer moon" was exhibited--the picture watts told me he thought he preferred to all of leighton's paintings. i believe the cause of this preference arose from the fact that the quality and texture in "summer moon" is looser and more vibrating, and gives a greater sense of atmosphere than is suggested by leighton's works as a rule. moonlight mystifies the tints of purple and blue, and creeps over and into every fold of the beautiful drapery--glistening on the white garment of the recumbent figure. in every line and touch in the exquisite design of the figures and drapery lurks the poetry of moonlight; the song of a nightingale perched on the branch of a pomegranate tree enhancing the sense of deep restfulness in the scene.[ ] [illustration: "summer moon." by permission of messrs. p. & d. colnaghi, the owners of the copyright] [illustration: "a condottiere." ] [illustration: study for figure in frieze. "music." leighton house collection] [illustration: study for figure in "the arts of war," victoria and albert museum. leighton house collection] [illustration: study for figure in "the arts of war," victoria and albert museum. leighton house collection] [illustration: study for figure in "the arts of war," victoria and albert museum. leighton house collection] it is thought by some that the design would have carried out the feeling of absolute repose better had the lower curves of the round aperture behind the figures been absent--these lines rather suggesting horns springing up on either side of the group. the end of the foot of the sitting figure being cut off by the bottom line of the picture has also a somewhat uncomfortable effect. the same thing occurs in the picture "greek girl dancing," producing the feeling that the canvas has run short. these criticisms, however, only refer to minor matters. "summer moon" is an exquisitely beautiful picture, one which will ever sustain the great reputation of its creator. "a condottiere" and the monochrome version of "the industrial arts of war" ( × in.), exhibited at the south kensington international exhibition the same year, strikingly contrast in character with "summer moon." if the one is notable for gentle, womanly grace and a sense of relaxation induced by slumber, "a condottiere" is full of verve and virile power,[ ] and in the design for "the industrial arts of war" all is action and movement. leighton made many studies for all his principal pictures, but the finest group of sketches are certainly those made for mural decorations. being executed under more difficult conditions than the easel pictures, doubtless he felt more preparation for frescoes was required. the studies in leighton house for the "arts of war," "arts of peace," two friezes, "music," "the dance," "and the sea gave up the dead that were in it," the painted decoration for the ceiling of a music room, "phoenicians bartering with britons," are the most completely worked out and powerful studies in the collection. in the following year, , the companion lunette in monochrome, "the industrial arts of peace," was exhibited at the royal academy. this design is more comfortably fitted into its space than that of the "arts of war," as the whole is lifted up from the bottom line of the lunette, and no part of the figures is cut off (as in the case of the men's feet and the drapery of the otherwise most beautiful group of women on the left hand in the "arts of war"). "weaving the wreath," a small picture of lovely colour and subtle technique, appeared in , and in three of the most remarkable of leighton's pictures of single figures. "in a moorish garden: a dream of granada" the charming child "cleobouline" reappears in an eastern turban and drapery, holding a copper vessel and followed by two peacocks, walking across a square canvas filled in by a background of the delightful garden at generalife at granada. "the antique juggling girl" is one of the best examples in leighton's work of his "ardent passion for colour," and his perfect mastery in painting the beauty of an undraped figure. the form of the torso recalls the exquisite fragment from the naples museum.[ ] the actual painting, however, exemplifies the truth of leighton's very notable words written to steinle, "what reveals true knowledge of form is a powerful, organic, refined finish of modelling full of feeling and knowledge--and that is the affair of the brush." the principal scheme of colour is effectively carried throughout the picture--in the golden flesh tint against the ivory-white of the parchment banner hung as a screen background, the crown of dark ivy leaves and the golden balls telling out as notes of a deeper tone; the crinkled folds of white drapery resting on the darker mass, the full tawny browns and yellows of the leopard skins on which the figure stands making a dark, luminous basis, the metal jar and the dense foliage of deep verdant green enriched by the orange of the fruit springing up and continuing the dark framework of the central design. this picture is a very original work, and should, i think, be placed very high in the rank of leighton's achievements. "clytemnestra from the battlements of argos watches for the beacon fires which are to announce the return of agamemnon" is, in every sense, a contrast to the "antique juggling girl." the figure is powerful and heavily draped, the drapery being superb, and the limbs those which might truly overpower even agamemnon.[ ] [illustration: "antique juggling girl." by permission of mr. george hodges] [illustration: "clytemnestra watches from the battlements of argos for the beacon fires which are to announce the return of agamemnon." leighton house collection] [illustration: study for "clytemnestra." leighton house collection] [illustration: study for "summer moon" from oil sketch painted by moonlight in rome given by the late a. waterhouse, r.a., to the leighton house collection] the bar of red, which strikes a warm note among the cool lights and shadows of moonlight, adding immensely to the value of these tones, was suggested by the coral necklace, worn by the model from whom leighton painted the study by moonlight for "summer moon" in rome. "egyptian slinger" was leighton's principal work exhibited in , "the daphnephoria" already engrossing most of his time and thought. this picture ( × inches), "a triumphal procession held every ninth year at thebes in honour of apollo and to commemorate a victory of the thebans over the aeolians of arne" (see proclus, "chrestomath," p. ), and the very fine portrait of sir richard burton were exhibited in . from some points of view "the daphnephoria" is leighton's greatest achievement. the difficulties he surmounted successfully in the work were of a character with which few english artists could cope at all. the size of the canvas alone would certainly have insisted on ten years' devotion to it from most modern artist-workmen. the extreme breadth of the arrangement of the masses, united with great beauty of line and form in the detail; the sense of the moving of a procession swinging along to the rhythmic phrases of chanted music; the brilliant light of greece, striking on the fine surface of the marble platform along which the procession is moving and on the town below, which it has left behind, contrasting with the deep shadowed cypress grove rising as background to the figures;--all this is more than masterly: it is convincing. it is probably quite unlike what took place at thebes every ninth year;--but art is not archæology. the written account of what took place fired leighton's imagination to create a scene in which he treated the greek function as the text; the wonderful light and the fineness of greek atmosphere as the tone; the processional majesty and grace of movement as the action. the element of beauty which the record suggested to him was the truth of the scene to leighton, and he has recorded the essence of it in an extraordinarily original work. it was after leighton's death that the picture first "struck home" to me. the last day of the exhibition of a wonderful man's life-work had come to an end one saturday afternoon in the spring of . it had been a record day at burlington house; crowds had filled the galleries from morning till the light had begun to wane. only a very few stragglers remained, but the keeper, mr. calderon, r.a., was there. one of the porters in his red gown came up to him, and petitioned for a half-hour more before the final closing of the doors on the message which leighton had left to the world. both men, the keeper and the porter, looked grave and sad. the great president had been beloved by all. the porter's request was granted, and it was during that short half-hour that i seemed for the first time fully to realise the great qualities of "the daphnephoria"; the room being empty, it could be seen from the right distance, and the conception of the work and its completion spoke out very plainly and convincingly. [illustration: "the daphnephoria"--a triumphal procession held at thebes in honour of apollo. by permission of the fine art society, the owners of the copyright] [illustration: "at a reading-desk." by permission of messrs. l.h. lefevre & son, the owners of the copyright] different as a picture could be was the exquisite "music lesson" of . again we have the lovely little cleobouline, her delicate fingers learning to make music on a mandoline. the grouping and grace in the attitude of the teacher and the pupil, the ease and pleasant arrangement of the draperies, the texture and fine distinction in the feeling and technique of the work, can only be suggested by a reproduction; whereas to appreciate in any way the delicate brightness and charm of the colour is impossible without seeing the original. this is the one of all leighton's paintings which--perhaps more than any other--conclusively contradicts the statement made, that "the inspiration stage was practically passed when he took the crayon in his hand." another cleobouline also appeared in the same academy exhibition--as fascinating as the little lady learning music; "study" it was called--a child in a delightfully painted glistening pink silk dressing-gown, sitting cross-kneed on an eastern carpet before an inlaid prayer-desk. very characteristic of leighton's bewitching painting of children's feet are the little toes of the child peeping out between the folds of pink drapery. the finest woman's portrait leighton ever painted appeared the same year as a "music lesson." this was miss mabel mills.[ ] the breadth and delicacy in the modelling of the cheek and throat rivals the work of greek sculpture. the most serious work exhibited in was the bronze version of leighton's "athlete strangling a python,"[ ] the small sketch of which was made in . this statue showed to the world his power as a sculptor. every work he modelled evinced in an equal degree his consummate ability as such, though the more flexible treatment--in the modelled sketches for the "python," the sleeping group in "cymon and iphigenia,"[ ] and the "perseus and andromeda"--may carry with it a greater charm than is found in the completed statues. the following letters from the french sculptor dalou, the painter george boughton, and sir edgar boehm are testimonies to the effect which the "python" in bronze, and the sketch, produced on artists at the time they were executed:-- a glebe place, chelsea, s.w., _ mai _. mon cher leighton,--si mes humbles félicitations peuvent vous toucher j'en serais trés heureux. j'espérais vous voir lundi dernier à l'academy et vous complimenter comme vous le meritez pour votre belle statue. À quoi sert de gratter toute sa vie un morceau de terre, quand près de soi on voit tout à coup surgir un chef d'oeuvre d'une main à qui la sculpture était jusque là restée étrangère? si j'étais envieux ce serait une belle occasion pour moi, mais loin de là j'ai été trés heureux d'admirer votre oeuvre, et trés flatté de l'honneur qu'on a fait à ma pauvre terre cuite, en la plaçant en pendant avec votre bronze; c'est encore un bon souvenir de plus qui me viens de l'academy et de vous, mon cher leighton, car je sais toute la part que vous avez prise au déplacement dont ma figure a été l'objet. aussi croyez que je suis heureux de pouvoir me dire votre sincère admirateur et trés reconnaissant ami, j. dalou. [illustration: "an athlete strangling a python" from small sketch, ] grove lodge, palace gardens terrace, kensington, w., _december , _. dear mr. leighton,--i fear that the note which i sent with the bronze did not explain itself sufficiently. i _meant_ to ask you to _accept_ it--"to have and to hold for yourself your heirs and assigns for ever," to speak legally. i can in no way express the pleasure i felt when i saw your small study for the man battling with the serpent. i hope the report in the _academy_ that it is to be done life-size in bronze is true. it will be worthy to go with the best of the antiques. the other study for the singing maidens was delightful[ ] as the other was grand. to put it in the picturesque parlance of the far west, "i was knocked over and sat on." it will be a slight relief to give my words a little form and weight; as i am unfortunately not a roman emperor and have not a golden crown of laurel about me, pray do me the favour to accept the only thing i have worth sending.--believe me, yours very sincerely, geo. h. boughton. grove lodge, palace gardens terrace, kensington, _december , _. dear mr. leighton,--i don't know which to admire most--the "sketch," as _you_ call it (it seems "heroic" in size even now), or your great kindness in sending it to me. now that i may enjoy it at my leisure--and i take my leisure very often--it seems finer even than i thought it was. not merely the _spirit_ of the antique, but the antique _itself_, and the "antique" i mean is the everlasting, the best mortal may ever hope to make. this is, as far as my capacity for judging is worth, _sincere_. i know how perilous it is to say warmly what one feels, how it is put down as "gush" and "bad form"; but when in this very london fog of art one sees a spark of pure light, there is some excuse for shouting with joy. i should reproach myself with taking up overmuch of your time in this matter, but i know that you are very good-natured; besides you might have taken my poor little bronze tribute in as few words as i sent it, and there it might have ended--though for myself i am glad you did not, and shall be ever selfishly thankful that you acted as kindly as you did. pray don't bother to reply to this, i am too much your debtor already.--yours very sincerely, geo. h. boughton. cornwall gardens, queen's gate, _may , _. dear leighton,--i follow my instinct and sincere desire in congratulating you on your magnificent statue in the academy, which i have just seen. it is superb. i think it the best statue of modern days. i was riveted with admiration and astonishment; and whatever you may think of my judgment, pray take this as my humble and heartfelt tribute to a work of genius, which to my mind ranks nearer "zur antiken" than anything i have seen, during my career, produced in any school or country. believe me, with sincere admiration, yours, j.e. boehm. in leighton made a replica of the statue in marble for the glyptothek in copenhagen. it was exhibited in the royal academy exhibition in . many were the voices heard exclaiming that leighton ought to give himself entirely to sculpture. his masterly power in understanding form, and giving expression to it in art, was readily understood and appreciated when he worked in the round, whereas it had been but scantily appreciated in his painting; the fact being, that the public is unaccustomed to find that power developed in modern pictures, whereas in sculpture it is the principal and obvious aim in any statue. however, whatever the public thought or expressed, leighton went on painting. in "nausicaa" and "winding the skein" were exhibited, both among leighton's happiest works. a reticent grace in the attitude of the figure, and a tender yearning sadness in the face, makes this rendering of "nausicaa" very attractive. "winding the skein" is the best example of those fair pictures which leighton painted, and evidently delighted in painting, as records of southern--and more particularly--greek light and atmosphere. for the special charm in the tone and colouring to be understood, the picture itself must be seen; but the design and delightful feeling in the movement of the figures can be rendered in the reproduction. again in this work the fascinating little figure of cleobouline appears and also the teacher in the "music lesson." in all, leighton painted thirty-six important pictures, twenty-six slighter works,[ ] and executed his first statue, "athlete strangling a python," in the ten years between and . [illustration: "nausicaa." ] during these years the royal academy exhibition took place in burlington house, it having previously been held in a suite of rooms at the national gallery in trafalgar square. leighton sent photographs of the cartoons for the "industrial arts of war" and of "peace"[ ] to steinle, who wrote his criticisms on the designs. the following is leighton's answer:-- _translation._] _february , ._ my very dear friend,--your very welcome lines arrived auspiciously a few days ago. i need not say how delighted i am that you are not displeased with the two compositions of your old pupil, and that you recognise in them a not unworthy effort. i am especially grateful to you that while giving your approbation you have enclosed a criticism, and only regret that you have blamed but one thing, where there are unfortunately so many faults. i shall endeavour, if these cartoons ever come to be carried out, as far as possible to repress the faults which you remark in "peace"; for, as i am by all means passionate for the true _hellenic_ art, and am touched beyond everything by its noble simplicity and its unaffected directness, so the _roman_ or napoleonic at its highest is antipathetic to me--i had almost said disgusting. the two compositions are intended for a large court (where there are objects from all parts of the world and of all epochs); they will not, however, stand _near_, but opposite to one another. the figures will be life-size, the foremost ones almost colossal. the "arts of peace" i transported to greece, partly out of sympathy, and partly on account of the special beauty of the greek ceramic and jewel work; the conduct of arms seemed to me to find its highest expression in mediæval italy, and i gladly seized this opportunity to tread the old path again in which my feet now so seldom wander. if you really believe that my old friends in frankfurt will be interested in these works, i shall be extremely pleased if you will put them in the gallery; i wish only one thing, namely, that it may be made quite clear to the spectator that they are merely _cartoons_; their entire lack of effect would otherwise be surprising. but the pinta, of which you write, haunts my mind! if i had only time to run over myself!--but it is impossible. once more heartiest greetings, from your devoted pupil, fred leighton. the prince consort, i believe, first conceived the idea of decorating spaces on the walls of the victoria and albert museum with frescoes, as a memorial of the nation's gratitude on the close of the crimean war, and mentioned the subject to leighton. it was not, however, till that sir henry cole approached him officially on the subject in the following letter:-- _july , ._ sir,--the lords of the committee of council on education having had under their consideration the subject of the permanent decoration of the lunettes at the ends of the south court of the south kensington museum, have directed me to inquire if it would be agreeable to you to undertake to execute a picture for one of these lunettes, for which lunette their lordships would be prepared to authorise a payment of £ , it being understood that all rights of copying the work belong to the department. when the court is completed, there will be four lunettes of a similar size. at the present time, however, there are only two spaces actually ready; and should you be willing to accept the commission now offered to you, your picture would be placed in one of these two finished lunettes. mr. watts, r.a., has been asked to execute a similar commission for the second lunette; and, in order that the works may have a certain symmetry in respect of the scale of the figures, &c., it would be desirable that you should place yourself into communication with him.--i am, sir, your obedient servant, henry cole. [illustration: study for group in "the arts of peace," victoria and albert museum. leighton house collection] [illustration: first sketch for figure of cimabue carried out in mosaic in the victoria and albert museum, ] [illustration: original sketch for the figure of niccola pisano carried out in mosaic in the victoria and albert museum, ] watts was not prepared to accept the commission to execute one of the frescoes, being already immersed in work which absorbed his whole time and attention. he did, however, accept the commission to make a cartoon for the figure of titian to be worked in mosaic in one of the spaces which form a kind of frieze along the side of the southern court. leighton, besides agreeing finally to paint frescoes on the lunettes at each end of the court, made cartoons in for two of these side spaces, one of the figure of cimabue, the other of niccolo pisano. sketches for these are in the leighton house collection. (see list of illustrations.) a controversy took place between leighton and sir henry cole respecting the question whether these figures were to be treated pictorially or decoratively, whether the background was to be of plain gold mosaic or whether there were to be objects depicted in perspective behind the figures. the following part of a letter from leighton concluded the agreement. i submit that i have given reasons _why_ the figures under discussion should not be pictures, and that you, on the other hand, have not put forward a single reason why, a single principle on which they _should_ be pictures. you have contented yourself with adducing some precedents; as the question, however, is entirely one of principles, precedent alone means nothing, one way or another; if it were not so, i should have opposed to you cases in which the, to my mind, sounder principle is observed. raphael's ceiling in the vatican, for instance--an example you will scarcely cavil at. there is not in the whole range of art a single aberration that cannot be endorsed with some good name. to glance once more at the principle: whether the gold behind the figures be in effect the background of flat, or whether it be, as you hold, "essentially something round"; whether or not it be this, as i certainly assert, the wall throughout the decoration, it is unanswerably a conventional _abstraction_, it represents no concrete object, and as an _abstraction_ is incompatible with any perspective representations of solid objects, which presuppose space and distance--everything that is on the _same_ plane as the figure is submitted to the same conditions, hence any accessory on the pedestal is admissible; everything _beyond_ the pedestal is part of the background, which may be abstract or concrete, as you please, but _cannot_ logically be _both_. i am the first to admit and admire the intimate connection which existed formerly between architecture and painting: to say "architecture and pictures," is to beg the whole question. in condemning the loose practice of modern times, you cannot propose upholding for admiration the mere fact that in old times picture and wall were sometimes one, but no doubt allude with just admiration to the harmony existing between them, in the best examples, and to the wise adaptation of the one to the other. you, i submit, are attacking and attempting to subvert the very principles on which this harmony rests; my sole desire is to assert and defend them, and i earnestly desire that, actuated, as i am entirely convinced you are, more by the desire to forward the truth than to triumph in argument, the views i have put before you may eventually commend themselves to you, and deter you from further encouraging a practice which may be supported by precedent, but cannot be made tenable in theory. in the autumn of leighton visited damascus, where he made studies for the picture exhibited in the academy, "old damascus--jews' quarter,"[ ] and a fine sketch of the interior of the grand mosque which he enlarged into a picture × inches, and exhibited in . he also made a remarkable moonlight study preserved in the leighton house collection. "one afternoon, late in the autumn of ," wrote dr. william wright, "i was on the roof of my house trying to cool after a long ride in the sun, when there came a loud knock at my door; the latch was lifted, and presently a resplendent kavass mounted to my platform. he explained to me that a noble englishman was coming up to see me, and with that frederic leighton skipped gaily up the steps. after a courteous greeting and apology, he sat down and became silent, absolutely wrapped up in the pageantry of the sky. when i excused myself for the lapse of the time, he looked at me, and said quietly, 'no artist ever wasted time in accurately observing natural phenomena,' and added, 'that sunset will mix with my paint, and will tint your ink as long as either of us lives. it will never be over, it has dyed our spirits in colours which can never be washed out.'" to his father he wrote:-- damascus, _october , _. dear papa,--i find that i am not as completely cut off from the western world here as i have been led to believe i was, and that boats leave damascus for alexandria weekly, and not fortnightly, as i told you in my hasty line of the other day; although, therefore, you are no longer uneasy about my health, i will not defer till the later boat thanking you for your welcome letter which reached me two or three days ago. i am much shocked and concerned to hear of the death of my poor friend benson, for which i was in no way prepared, the last accounts i had received before leaving england being of a decidedly hopeful nature. a kinder heart never beat than his, and i felt really attached to him; he is a great loss to me. and now to tell you about myself. three tedious days on board a russian boat which tossed and rolled like a cork over a sea on which a p. and o. would have been motionless, brought me to beyrout, a cheery, picturesque, sunny port at the foot of lebanon; gay and glad i was to land, and andrea's cool, clean inn overlooking the sea was a delightful haven of rest, and my first meal at a steady table (or a real chair) was ambrosial. being in a hurry to get to the end of my journey, i did not stay more than half a day, but started by diligence for damascus, a journey of some thirteen hours, first over lebanon itself (which is fine, but by no means grand as i had hoped), then across the valley of coelesyria, and lastly over antilebanon, at the foot of which the town lies. at the last relay i found waiting for me a horse and dragoman, for which and whom i had telegraphed in order that i might get the famous view of damascus about which travellers have told wonders from time immemorial, and which is only to be seen from a bridle path over the hill above the suburb of sala'aijeh; unfortunately the days are getting short, and i did not reach the proper spot till just after sunset; not too late, however, to enjoy the marvellous prospect before me, and to feel that it is worthy of all that has been said in its praise. it is impossible to conceive anything more startling than the suddenness with which, emerging from a narrow and absolutely barren cleft in the rock, you see spread before your eyes and at your feet a dense mass of exuberant trees spreading for miles on to the plain which looks towards palmyra, and, rising white in the midst of it, the damascus of the thousand and one nights. it is a great and a rare thing for an old traveller not to be disappointed, and i am grateful that it has been so with me this time. about the town _itself_--as seen, i mean, _from within_--i have a mixed feeling. in some respects it equals all my hopes, or at least in one respect; in others it falls short of them. i have remarked that to be prepared for disappointment never in the slightest degree deadens the blow, and, accordingly, although i have both read and been told to my heart's content that i should find the streets unpicturesque and without character, relatively of course (relatively say, to cairo, not to baker street), i was, nevertheless, depressed and in a way surprised to find them so. of course, there are, as in every eastern town, numberless delightful bits, and those ennobled as regularly as the day comes by a right royal sun and canopy of blue, yet in the main, cairo and, in a very different way, algiers, are far more brilliant, and by-the-bye although you see here an extraordinary variety of costumes from the remotest corners of the east (i have met indians in the streets), a group of algerine bedouins in their stately white robes is worth a whole bazaar full of the peasants and pilgrims that throng damascus. then in architecture, damascus falls far behind cairo, both for abundance and beauty of its specimens. its background, too, antilebanon, is unsatisfactory, humpy and without power of character or beauty of line, such as makes the red mountains on the skirt of the cairene desert so delightful. here then are the shortcomings; but i have my compensation in the houses, the old houses of which some few are standing, though grey and perishing, and which are still lovely to enchantment. i can't hope to convey to you in writing any idea of this loveliness, and it is not within the scope of sketching (though i am doing one or two little corners), but i am having three or four photographs made (for there are none!) from which you will be able to gather something of their charm. they cannot, however, give you the splendour of the light, and the fanciful delicacy of the colour in the open courts, or the intense and fantastic gorgeousness of the interior. indeed i shall probably not attempt the latter, and though you will see lemon and myrtle trees rising tall and slim out of the marble floors and bending over tanks of running water, you will miss the vivid sparkling of the leaves, and you will not hear the unceasing song of the bubbling fountains. i wish i could report that i am doing much work. i am doing some, and think i see my way to one or two pot-boilers (the fatal, inevitable pot-boilers!); but distances here are great, and so is the heat, and there is not much that is within the compass of _sketching_, though there is endless paintable material. i am doing a bit in the great mosque, which is very delightful to me, in colour, and, if i can render it, may strike others in the same way. i am having the spot photographed in case i try to make a picture of it. the second p.-b. would probably be some unambitious corner of a court with a figure or two, _et voilà_. it is late and i am sleepy, so good-night and good-bye. i wish you gave me a brighter account of lina; give her too my best love. it was hardly worth while, by-the-bye, to have my letters forwarded. i shall only get them, if at all, just before leaving damascus next week! i fear i can't get back to england till end of third week in november.--your affectionate son, fred. in the autumn of leighton revisited spain. a letter dated september , , madrid, in which leighton answers certain questions asked by mrs. mark pattison concerning art galleries and dealers, ends with the following sentence:-- thank you for what you tell me about puvis de chavannes' work. i admire the designs for ste. geneviève hugely, and am altogether an _aficionado_ of that odd, incomplete, but refined and poetic painter; but for emptiness of modelling he seeks his peer in vain. i am seeing velasquez again for the third time; this is the place in which to see him in all his splendour, and in all his nakedness--but that would be a chapter, and not a hasty note.--very truly yours, fred leighton. from spain leighton crossed to tangiers, whence he wrote:-- tangiers, _october , _. my dear papa,--you are probably not a little surprised at the superscription of this letter; so am i. it was a sudden and a happy thought that brought me here. i reflected that, whilst i had long wished to see tangiers, i should not very probably come to spain again, and should therefore not have another chance of visiting morocco without a journey made on purpose. the run from gibraltar is only four hours, and i wonder the trip did not form part of my original scheme. it will have one drawback for me, that i shall get to granada a few days later, and be by so much the longer in getting news from england; but my journey will not be prolonged on the whole, as i shall endeavour to cut off at the end what i put on now. i the more owe myself what enjoyment i can get here, that as i told you--did i not?--in my last, my journey has been hitherto rather a dismal failure. i told you how vile the weather was in madrid, so that all technical study of the pictures was out of the question. well this is, since then, the first perfectly fine afternoon we have had. observe, i only say afternoon, for it poured in the morning, and the phenomenon of a wholly bright day has still to come. i am also still further in arrears of enjoyment from the fact that i got rather out of order, god knows why, the day i went to toledo, to the utter spoiling of what should have been one of my most delightful trips, and am only now pulling round again, having called in Æsculapius (at dollars a consultation), whilst at gibraltar. an attack of this nature is simply fatal to any real pleasure on one's journey, and, coming on the top of dark weather and the contretemps just as the closing of the alcazar in seville (one of the things i especially wanted to see) made rather an absurd failure of the whole thing. at seville i was fool enough to go again to a bull-fight, and was so disgusted that i got up and went away when the performance was only half over. meanwhile the aspect of the arena itself, with the cathedral and its marvellous tower rising just above into the sky, is a very striking sight, and one i should regret to have missed. the processional entry, too, of the whole of the performers--picadors, capeodors, espadas, &c. &c.--is very picturesque and stately. it is when the goring and torturing begins that the sight is revolting; and the enormous popularity of this form of sport with a nation, not, that i am aware of, exceptionally cruel, only shows how easily our worst instincts stifle our better nature, such as it is. this is a prodigiously picturesque place, and i enjoy more than i can say watching the arabs swarming up the streets and markets, stately and grand in their picturesqueness beyond any population that i know, and particularly instructive and valuable to an artist from the sculpturesque _definiteness_ of their forms. the jewish women here are said (by ford) to be prodigiously handsome. i have seen no rebeccas amongst them yet. i have not yet opened my box, and shall at best do little or nothing; i have no time. next week i shall be in granada, from where i hope to have to acknowledge a letter dated in kensington park gardens. meanwhile i am, with best love to lina and yourself,--yours affectionately, fred. granada, _october , _. my dear papa,--to-morrow is my last day in granada. on sunday i turn my face londonward, and my holiday will be pretty nearly at an end, as i have, from want of time, given up my original intention of seeing valencia, alicante, tarragona, &c. &c. travelling in spain is so infinitely slower than i had remembered it, and so ideally inconvenient in regard to hours of starting and arriving, that my programme has altogether undergone considerable modifications. i reached this place a good week later than i expected, and i did not get your letter till some days later yet, owing, i suppose, to the difficulty experienced by the postal authorities in the art of reading. this will account to you for the time that will have elapsed between your receipt of my two epistles. i am truly sorry to hear that poor lina is below par; tell her so, with my love. as you do not speak of yourself, i presume that you are in good form, and am glad to hear it. there is one passage in your letter which suggests to me a strong protest. i think it preposterous that the ambulant spinsters, or otherwise, with whom you foregather on your journeys, should expect _you_ to furnish them with photos of your "celebrated son." i like enthusiasm; but _genuine_ enthusiasm does not halt at a shilling, which is the sum for which my effigy is obtainable in the public market; _verb. sap._ i will not describe to you toledo, cordova, seville, granada, &c. (under which heads see murray's guide-book). i have done so before (probably), and they have altered less than i, with the exception, perhaps, of granada, or rather the alhambra, which, alas! is changed indeed, thanks to the restoring mania, and is now all but brand new. i ought, perhaps, to remark that the changes in _me_ are not precisely in that direction. taking a bird's-eye view of my holiday, i don't think i should call it altogether a success, though i have had many very delightful moments, and have seen many very beautiful things; but, in the first place, i have failed to fulfil one of the special objects of my trip, that, namely, of making a few sketches of sky effects, particularly seaside skies, which i sorely want for my picture of the girls and the skein of worsted. i have not done so, because i have not _once_ seen anything even resembling the skies i mean, and which are generally forthcoming at this season. the weather has indeed of late been fine, often if not always, and here even, at times, superb; but it is the before the rains, and not, as it should be, the clear, keen, autumn weather, after the air has been well swept and purged by the equinoctial broom and pail, which i had a right to demand of a mediterranean october. this is a great disappointment. i did not want to _work_, and god knows i have not (five little sketches in all!); but just this document i did peremptorily require. in the second place, i have been rather seedy (am all right now), not very, but enough to poison my pleasure; and just so much that, after two or three little amateur attempts (local apothecary, fellow-travellers, &c. &c.), i thought it right (at gibraltar) to see a doctor, not _because_ i was ill, but _lest_ i should get worse and develop more serious symptoms, as internal disturbance occasionally does in hot countries. in a few days (and two large bottles of physic) i was much better, and am now, i repeat, quite "myself" again. but i perceive that this uninteresting twaddle has filled my paper, and barely left me space to tell that i have been to africa, and shall be home on the th (evening). yes, to africa; tangiers in four hours' steam from gibraltar, and a most picturesque spot, of which more when we meet. on my way home i shall spend part of a day in madrid, in the hopes of seeing the pictures this time. on my road through france i shall make a short break at poitiers. _À bientôt._--affectionate son, fred. during the nine years that leighton was a royal academician he worked most energetically in many directions towards establishing the principles which he considered sound and essential to the growth of the best art instincts in england. he was one of the professional examiners in art from to at the victoria and albert museum. in he became one of the art referees for the museum, and was consulted by sir henry cole to a considerable extent. he aided, as far as lay in his power, all art societies to expand and to grow on the lines of catholicity. he was a member of the committee of the society of dilettanti, for the purpose of obtaining information as to the probable success of renewed search for monuments of greek art. the following extract from a report proves what an active part he took in the business of the society:-- "in the autumn of the same year two hundred cases of inscriptions and sculptures from priene were transported from priene to smyrna, and thence conveyed to england in h.m.s. _antelope_. in march the society presented these marbles to the trustees of the british museum. in may the committee, then consisting of earl somers, lord houghton, mr. watkiss lloyd, mr. penrose, mr. cartwright, mr. leighton, and mr. newton, held several meetings. the committee at their meetings went carefully over all the drawings and details obtained by the society of the temple of bacchus at teos, apollo smintheus, and minerva polias at priene; they were of opinion that they would form an interesting and valuable publication, and should be proceeded with as soon as possible, and executed in a style worthy of the former productions of the society. mr. leighton offered to redraw the sculpture on some of the friezes, and lord somers to prepare the landscape illustrations." in the president of the artist benevolent fund, mr. j.k. kempton hope, wrote to leighton: "i am peculiarly proud that the first act which i have to perform in my new character is to say how honoured and grateful we all should be if you would kindly consent to accept the position of vice-president." the following letter to his father announces that leighton had been elected president of the international jury of painting, paris exhibition, :-- hÔtel westminster, , _friday_. dear papa,--i have been waiting to write till i should have something to say beyond the fact that the weather is odious, and shows no signs of relenting. on saturday afternoon we had our meeting of the royal commissioners, which had for its object the hearing of an address from the prince of wales. on monday morning the _whole_ international jury (some six hundred or seven hundred members) met at the ministère de commerce, and was little more than formal. _to-day_ the group of sections which are concerned with art held its first meeting under the presidency of signor tullio massarani, an italian, with meissonier as vice-president, the chief object of the meeting being to inform the various sections of the groups whom the minister had appointed as their respective presidents. my section, composed of forty members, is _paintings and drawings_; there are twenty frenchmen--nearly all the first artists of the country, in fact--and you will be surprised and very much gratified to learn that i was named president of this section--a very high honour, of course, and one of which i am extremely sensible, but which we must not misinterpret; it is, of course, only by an act of international courtesy that the french placed a foreigner at the head of their section, and amongst the other foreign artists there were few names of much weight or standing; still, it is a courtesy which will, i am sure, give you pleasure. our section being thus constituted, we then appointed our own _vice_-president, reporter, and secretary; they were unanimously elected; the first was my old friend, robert fleury; the second was emile de savelege, the belgian writer whom you know of; and the third an old and kind friend of mine, maurice cottier, a man much mixed up in the official artistic world and possessing a magnificent picture gallery. to-morrow we begin our labours at the exhibition, and in the afternoon i shall go to the _séance_ of the _institut_, which always takes place on saturdays. this is my budget. perhaps the most important work inside the academy which leighton effected during this time was that of establishing the winter exhibitions of old masters at burlington house. no one exemplified practically better than did leighton the value of the motto, "what is worth having is worth sharing." he had been fed from early youth from the fountain-heads of art, and one of his first objects after being elected a member of the royal academy was to endeavour to secure the same inspiring stimulus for students which he had himself imbibed from the work of the greatest men. he told me also that his chief object in making conscientious studies in colour when he travelled, was to endeavour to convey to students who were not able to go abroad some idea of the varieties in the aspects of nature found in different countries. leighton was much appreciated in london society, but the _intimes_ of the old roman days remained still the nucleus of his friendships; also every year he tried to find himself in his beloved italy, and he generally succeeded. from his old friend lady william russell, mother of odo russell (afterwards lord ampthill and leighton's ally in rome), and arthur russell--the notable lady whose charm attracted to her _salon_ all that was most interesting among the magnates of europe--two notes record her affection for leighton and the death of henry greville in , the severest blow which leighton had sustained since the death of his mother. i was in hopes of seeing you, to thank you _vivâ voce_ for the _ambrosia_ you sent me from italy. i did _not_ write during your pictorial tour, not exactly knowing _where_ you might be. it was, _and is_, for i have some still, _excellent_; paolo veronese did not eat any better, nor titian, nor any of your _brethren in apollo_. _guido_ you _are_--the english guido--but _not_ "da polenta"; i will _not_ accept that "terre à terre" denomination. i now thank you most gratefully--it was one of the seven works of mercy, for i really could not eat and was _starving_. the indian cornflour was a _renovation_. if ever you can make up your mind to pay a visit to una povera vealisa--zoppa--sorda--brutta and seccante, and forget "_aurora_," i shall be charmed. but i know that your time is better employed; so a million of thanks, and as many regrets not to be able to see your _marvels_ of which i hear.--believe me, most sincerely your obliged serva and amica, e.a.r. audley square mayfair, w. _sunday, th november _. dear guido (but _not_ of polenta),--i have been quite _mortified_ at your neglect of me, and invoked the muses in vain! and call'd on the ghosts of titian and raffael, but they did not heed my sighs! i am always glad to see you, and wish i could _see your works_! all my cotemporaries and comrades are dying off, and i _cannot_ last long--so come to my "evenings at home" when you dine in my "quartier" and are going to your club. alas! for dear henry greville! i knew him from his most early youth. _both_ his parents were my _early_ friends from _my_ youth, and his elder brother my cotemporary. come! benvenuto cellini--venite! _monday, february ._ leighton's passion for music led him to encourage all that was best in instrumental as well as in vocal performance. the monday popular concerts were started by messrs. chappell in , the first being given on the rd january. from their commencement leighton was a subscriber, and very rarely missed being present. it was in the 'seventies that leighton instituted those yearly feasts of music, which were among the real treats of the year.[ ] his dear friend joachim was to the end the _pièce de résistance_ of these gatherings. never did the great master seem so inspired as when he played in that studio. leighton wrote to his sister, mrs. matthews, april :-- dearest gussy,--you heard, no doubt, that i gave a party the other day, and that it went off well. to me perhaps the most striking thing of the evening was joachim's playing of bach's "chacone" up in my gallery. i was at the other end of the room, and the effect from the distance of the dark figure in the uncertain light up there, and barely relieved from the gold background and dark recess, struck me as one of the most poetic and fascinating things that i remember. at the opposite end of the room in the apse was a blazing crimson rhododendron tree, which looked glorious where it reached up into the golden semi-dome. madame viardot sang the "divinités du styx," from the "alcestis," quite magnificently, and then, later in the evening, a composition of her own in which i delight--a spanish-arab ditty, with a sort of intermittent mandoline scraping accompaniment. it is the complaint of some forsaken woman, and wanders and quavers in a doleful sort of way that calls up to me in a startling manner visions and memories of cadiz and cordova, and sunny distant lands that smell of jasmine. a little miss brandes, a pupil of madame schumann, played too. she is full of talent and promise, and has had an immense success. mme. joachim sang "mignon" (beethoven) excellently. [illustration: sketch executed on the spot by mr. theodore blake wirgman of their majesties the king and queen attending a popular concert in st. james's hall, lord leighton being one of the royal party. about .] mrs. watts hughes writes the following notes relating to those years of the 'seventies:-- i remember the incident you refer to at eton college. the _orfeo_ performance was given by the eton boys, who had formed a society among themselves with the view of making acquaintance with the music of the great masters. i took the part of _orfeo_, and a niece of darwin's, miss wedgwood, who is now lady farrer, sang euridice's part. i believe lord leighton sang in some of the quartettes and choruses. i often met lord leighton at mrs. sartoris' musical gatherings at her house in park place, st. james', when he would sing very heartily the tenor parts of the old madrigals, in which also mrs. douglas freshfield, miss ritchie, and others took part with mrs. sartoris, who on some occasions would sing one of her great operatic _arias_ which brought her so much fame in her former years. in leighton began to build the famous arab hall.[ ] the following letters from sir richard burton refer to the collecting and sending of one instalment of the precious tiles:-- damascus, _march , _. dear mr. leighton,--i have just returned from a pilgrimage to jerusalem, or yours of april th, , would not have remained so long unanswered. and now to business. i am quite as willing to have a house pulled down for you now as when at vichy,[ ] but the difficulty is to find a house with tiles. the _bric-à-brac_ sellers have quite learned their value, and demand extravagant sums for poor articles. of course you want good old specimens, and these are waxing very rare. my friends, drake and palmer, were lucky enough, when at jerusalem, to nobble a score or so from the so-called mosque of omar. large stores are there found, but unhappily under charge of the wakf, and i fancy that long payments would be required. however, i shall send your letter to my colleague, moore, who will do what he can for you. the fact is, it is a work of patience. my wife and i will keep a sharp look-out for you, and buy up as many as we can find which seem to answer your description. if native inscriptions--white or blue, for instance--are to be had, i shall secure them, but not if imperfect. some clearing away of rubbish is expected at damascus; the englishman who superintends is a friend of mine, and i shall not neglect to get from him as much as possible. we met holman hunt at jerusalem; he was looking a little worn, like a veritable denizen of the holy city. i hope that you have quite recovered health. swinburne, the papers say, has been sick; his "songs before sunrise" show even more genius than "poems and ballads." what has become of mrs. sartoris? i saw her son's appointment in the papers. poor vichy must be quite ruined--veritably it was a cockney hole. syria is a poor chili; the libanus is a mole-hill compared with the andes--do you remember? i am planning a realistic book which has no holy land on the brain, and the public will curse her like our army in flanders. pilgrims see everything through a peculiar medium, and tourists shake hands (like madmen) when they sight the plain of esdraelon or sharon, as the case may be. _n.b._--both plains are like the poorer parts of our midland counties. my wife joins in kind remembrances.--ever yours sincerely, richard f. burton. [illustration: portrait of sir richard burton, k.c.m.g. ] trieste, _july , _. my dear leighton,--one word to say that the tiles are packed, and will be sent by the first london steamer--opportunities are rare here. some are perfect, many are broken; but they will make a bit of mosaic after a little trimming, and illustrate the difference between syriac and sindi. they are taken from the tomb (moslem) of sakhar, on the indus. i can give you analysis of glaze if you want it; but i fancy you don't care for analyses. the yellow colour is by far the rarest and least durable apparently. the blues are the favourites and the best. here we are living in a typhoon of lies. i am losing patience, and shall probably bolt to belgrade in search of truth. austria is behaving in her usual currish manner, allowing her policy to be managed by a minority of light-headed, paddy-whack magyars and pudding-headed, beer-brained austro-germans. how all europe funks the slavs, and how well the latter are beginning to know it. very grand of _la grande bretagne_ to propose occupying egypt without any army to speak of. sorry that you don't understand the force of the expression, the "world generally," but will try some time or other to make it clear. united best regards and wishes. why don't you take a holiday to turkey?--ever yours, r.f. burton. _p.s._--i hear that w. wright has subsided into an irish conventicle, and that green doesn't like prospect of returning to dan! the construction of this thing of beauty, the arab hall, is a visible and permanent proof of the side in leighton's artistic endowments which are so rarely found in northern, or indeed any modern nations, and the want of which are gradually leading our world into being very ugly--namely, the sense of the appropriate, of balance, of proportion, and of harmony in the construction and decoration of buildings. as an adherent of the pre-raphaelites, william morris had been battling with this tasteless condition of things for some years--strenuously working to counteract the unmeaning adaptations of foreign designs of all times and of all countries into english work, and the general muddledom into which the decoration in the surroundings of domestic life had fallen, by starting afresh on the lines of simple good designs of english pre-puritan days. leighton's taste had been inspired, in the first instance, by the crafts as well as by the art of italy. subsequently, the east had fascinated him. he admired greatly the frank, courageous beauty in the colouring of the decorations of her buildings; but, having an acute sense of the appropriate, he felt that they would not harmonise successfully with the necessary surroundings of english domestic life. he was therefore inspired to erect a special shrine for his collection of enamels. it has been truly said that the arab hall is as notable a creation in art as any of leighton's pictures or statues. the beauty of its effect is greatly enhanced by the arrangement of light and shade which leads on to the wonderfully beautiful casket of treasures. monsieur choisy, the distinguished french architect, wrote as follows in the _times_ of april , , when advocating the preservation of this house for the public: "nowhere have i found in an architectural monument a happier gradation of effects, nor a more complete knowledge of the play of light. the entrance to the house is by a plain hall that leads to a '_patio_' lit from the sky, where enamels shine brilliantly in the full light; from this 'patio' one passes into a twilight corridor, where enamel and gold detach themselves from an architectural ground of richness somewhat severe; it is a transition which prepares the eye for a jewel of oriental art, where the most brilliant productions of the persian potter are set in architectural frame inspired by arab art, but treated freely; the harmony is so perfect that one asks oneself if the architecture has been conceived for the enamels, or the enamels for the hall. this gradation, perhaps unique in contemporary architecture, was leighton's idea; and the illustrious painter found in his old friend mr. g. aitchison, who built his house, a worthy interpreter of his fine conception. this hall, where colour is triumphant, was dear to leighton, and even forms the background to some of his pictures. towards the end of his life he still meant to embellish it by substituting marble for that small part that was only painted. the generous employment of his fortune alone prevented him from realising his intention. "england has at all times given the example of honouring great men; she will, i am sure, find the means of preserving for art a monument of which she has such reason to be proud."[ ] [illustration: view of arab hall. ] footnotes: [ ] in the leighton house collection is a splendid study for the wrestling figure of heracles, also for the recumbent alcestis, and the drapery for the phantom figure of death. the figure of heracles, fine as it is in the picture, lacks somewhat of the ardent quality in the action of the sketch. owing to the public-spirited generosity of its owner, the late right hon. sir bernhard samuelson, this picture has travelled all over the world for exhibition. it was also lent to leighton house for more than a year in . [ ] in the leighton house collection is a head in oils (presented by the late alfred waterhouse, r.a.) which leighton painted actually by moonlight in rome, as a study for one of the figures in "summer moon." see list of illustrations. [ ] see study for picture in leighton house collection. [ ] leighton had a cast made of this, and his copy is still in the collection in his house. another copy he gave to watts, who admired it beyond measure. watts recounted to me that so preciously did he value it, that, not daring to expose it to the danger of housemaids' dusting, he carefully wrapped it up in handkerchiefs and put it in a drawer. one day, alas! forgetting it was there, in a hurry, he pulled the bundle of handkerchiefs out; it fell to the floor and was smashed. [ ] _the athenæum_ described the work when it appeared. "there is the grandeur of greek tragedy in mr. leighton's 'clytemnestra watching for the signal of her husband's return from troy.' the time is deep in the fateful night, while the city sleeps; moonlight floods the walls, the roofs, the gates, and the towers with a ghastly glare, which seems presageful, and casts shadows as dark as they are mysterious and terrible. the dense blue of the sky is dim, sad, and ominous. but the most ominous and impressive element of the picture is a grim figure--the tall woman on the palace roof before us, who looks titanic in her stateliness, and huge beyond humanity in the voluminous white drapery that wraps her limbs and bosom. her hands are clenched and her arms thrust down straight and rigidly, each finger locked as in a struggle to strangle its fellow; the muscles swell on the bulky limbs. drawn erect and with set features, which are so pale that the moonlight could not make them paler, the queen stares fixedly and yet eagerly into the distance, as if she had the will to look over the very edge of the world for the light to come." [ ] the hon. mrs. grenfell. [ ] purchased by the trustees of the chantrey bequest and placed in the tate gallery. [ ] leighton gave this group to watts, who expressed to me an unbounded admiration for it. "nothing more beautiful has ever been done! pheidias never did anything better. i believe it was better even than pheidias!" were the words watts used when deploring the fact that he had lent it to a sculptor to be cast--something had gone wrong in the process of casting, and it had been destroyed. when giving me the modelled sketch for the "python," watts said, "i am giving you the most beautiful thing i have in my place." [ ] the group of singing girls modelled as a study for "the daphnephoria." [ ] see complete list in appendix. [ ] the "arts of war" lunette was commenced in and finished in . the "arts of peace," begun in , was completed in . an account of these two frescoes appeared in the _magazine of art_ written by mr. j. ward, the master of the macclesfield school of art, who assisted leighton in the work. [ ] in a letter from mr. j.g. hodgson, a.r.a., praises are bestowed on this picture and the "moorish garden" at the expense of "clytemnestra" and the "antique juggling girl." the letter is a good example of the criticisms which leighton's serious work often received--that work in which, nevertheless, he was most true to himself. the ordinary english eye neither longed for nor appreciated leighton's native hellenic strain. hill road, _friday, april , _. my dear leighton,--i was immensely delighted with your two pictures of the jew's house and the alhambra ("moorish garden: a dream of granada"). i was at the opera last night, but thought much less of crispin and his comara than of them; they are quite charming, and excite me with the desire of emulation, at that safe distance which is inherent in the nature of things. for your "clytemnestra" and the other ("antique juggling girl"), i, being a philister, care nothing at all. from those to turn to these, seems like leaving a garden fragrant with roses and citron blossoms, where i hear the murmur of cooling streams, abanah and pharpar, rivers of damascus, to enter a museum filled with dusty plaster casts. after all, the woes of the house of atreus are now of very little importance to mankind, or interest either. the most of the latter they possess, is that they serve as themes for some good greek play, which had better have been burnt, as they have hampered the genius of modern europe and taught us nothing. had only homer and the lyrics survived, we should have done better. at all events, if a man must illustrate, why does he not illustrate shakespeare, a bigger man head and shoulders than any of the greek tragedists? but it appears to me you are made for a much better and more intellectual purpose than illustrating anybody. you have the eye to see and power to represent what you see. you have special gifts and faculties highly trained. the aspect of nature, as it appears to such a mind, would be of the highest intellectual value to us, and would lead to progress. i don't think modern art differs from that of any other day. it has always been the effort to represent what is seen every day, bringing to bear upon the representation the greatest possible amount of culture, _i.e._ of reflection and selection. the women and that dear little girl in the courtyard of your jew's house will outlive all the "clytemnestras," &c.; they live with blood in their veins, the others are but galvanised corpses. there i have had it out; you must not complain, because you have had to apologise for slashing into me, and now it is my turn. in the prologue to goethe's "faust," if you remember, the poet, a stubborn fellow, has his notions of the high aim of his art. he will do nothing but what is extremely sublime, &c. the clown quite agrees that such things may possibly do for the future, but who, says he, is to amuse the present? i am that sort of clown, i suppose. don't be riled, and believe me,--very much your admiring friend, j.g. hodgson. [ ] mr. william spottiswoode wrote of one of these:-- "dear leighton,--best of thanks from mrs. spottiswoode and myself for another of the happiest day-dreams of the year, viz. your afternoons at home." [ ] mr. aitchison, r.a., wrote: "during his visits to rhodes, to cairo, and damascus, he made a large collection of lovely saracenic tiles, and had besides bought two inscriptions, one of the most delicate colour and beautiful design, and the other sixteen feet long and strikingly magnificent, besides getting some panels, stained glass, and lattice-work from damascus afterwards; these were fitted into an arab hall, something like la zira at palermo, in ." the arab hall was begun november , virtually completed by the end of , but some small matters not till . materials--bastard statuary, _i.e._ the marble columns in the angle recesses. these caps are of alabaster, designed by george aitchison, r.a., and modelled by sir e. boehm. the large columns are of caserta marble, caps of stone, birds modelled by caldecott; column niches lined with devonshire spar; dado, irish black; string, irish green, and bases of small columns. those of the large columns are of genoa green and belgian blue; the marble lining behind big columns is of pyrennean green, and the panel overhead; the lintel of irish red. the marble work was done by white & son, vauxhall bridge road. mosaic floor, designed by george aitchison, r.a.; executed by messrs. burke & co., who replaced fountain of white marble with the single slab of belgian black. chandelier, designed by g.a. aitchison, r.a., executed by forrest & son, now extinct. the lattices to the lower part of the gallery designed by george aitchison, r.a. sir caspar p. clarke wrote: "i was commissioned in , by the authorities at south kensington, to proceed to the east to buy artistic objects for the museum. before i started leighton asked me, if i went to damascus, to go to certain houses and try to effect the purchase of certain tiles. i had no difficulty in finding my market, for leighton, with his customary precision, had accurately indicated every point about the dwellings concerned, and their treasures. i returned with a precious load, and in it some large family tiles, the two finest of which are built into the sides of the alcove of the arab hall. leighton made no difficulty about the price, and insisted upon paying double what i had given. he never spoke of picking things up cheap, and scouted the idea of 'bargains in art objects.'" [ ] leighton, sir richard burton, algernon swinburne, and adelaide sartoris passed some weeks together at vichy in september . swinburne wrote in : "we all owe so much to leighton for the selection and intention of his subjects--always noble, always beautiful--and these are always worthy of a great and grave art."--"essays and studies," a.c. swinburne. [ ] letters from lord and lady strangford to leighton exist on matters concerning the east, on which both were great authorities. "will you accept," lady strangford wrote, "as a token of my admiration of your house, a piece of ancient persian needlework? it is really old, and it is said that they no longer do anything of the kind in persia, and that these pieces are valuable. i do not know if this is true or not, but _if_ you _like_ the thing, please use it among the many treasures you have already accumulated. it is to my eyes a nice bit of harmonious colouring. let it say to you how much, how very much, i enjoyed your sketches.--yours very truly, e.a. strangford. "_p.s._--i bought the work from a persian at antioch." to professor church mr. aitchison wrote after leighton's death: "i cannot urge the preservation of his home and surroundings, as i built the house, for there are always too many to attribute low motives to everybody, and it would be called personal advertisement; though when one's work is done it becomes almost impersonal, and if it did not, the fact remains the same, that here he (leighton) lived and drew part of his culture and inspiration from his surroundings. as a mere matter of reverence, how many would come from all parts of the civilised world to see his abode!" [illustration: professor giovanni costa painted at lerici, october ] chapter v leighton as president of the royal academy - leighton was at lerici in the autumn of , visiting his dear old friend giovanni costa ("an artist in a hundred--a man in ten thousand," were leighton's words describing him), when he received a telegram stating that sir francis grant was dead. "the president is dead! long live the president!" exclaimed costa. leighton remained in italy, sketching landscapes and painting heads--one, the portrait of costa--till his holiday was over, the end of october. on the th of november he was elected president of the royal academy. thirty-five academicians voted for leighton, five for mr. horsley. leighton wrote to his younger sister:-- . dearest gussy,--you perhaps have heard from lina that i had an overwhelming majority, and that the outer world beyond artistic has warmly received my election, which is of course infinitely gratifying, but fills me with a dread of disappointing everybody. monday i go to windsor to be knighted. yes, i got a first-class gold medal for my statue[ ]--at least, it was awarded, and i shall get it some time. i also don't mind telling you in _strict confidence_--because it is not yet a _fait accompli_--that i am, i believe, to have the "ruban" of an officier de la légion d'honneur. i am so glad, dear, your wrists are better--may they keep so. love to old joseph (joseph joachim) when you see him. most treasured of all congratulations were doubtless these lines from his beloved master, steinle:-- _translation._] frankfurt am main, _december , _. dear and honoured friend,--to-day i have read in the paper that the choice of president of the royal academy has fallen upon you, and since i am convinced that this distinguished position is both appropriate to your services to art, and also certainly well merited, you must permit an old friend, who remains bound to you in love only, to offer you his dearest and warmest good wishes upon this honour. i pray god, that your position may provide you with great power in your country for good so as to enable you to encourage the noblest things in art. i am convinced that you, dear friend, will make a right and fruitful use of it. i often set my pupils to make enlarged drawings of single groups from your medieval equipment for the defence of the town,[ ] and rejoice in the admirable studies which you made for that cartoon. i, dear friend, am in my old age still active and industrious, and would gladly go on learning. should god grant life, i shall next year complete my work on the strassburg master, which will demand all my love and strength. here we have now built a new gallery, on the other side of the river main, and a new studio. the collections are good, and more suitably accommodated than heretofore, and there is no want of space for future additions. perhaps one of your journeys will bring you again to the old main town, and so to the arms of your old friend. my dear president, i repeat my good wishes, and remain with all my heart, your truly devoted, edw. steinle. from his birthplace leighton received the following announcement:-- borough of scarborough. at a meeting of the council of the borough of scarborough, in the county of york, held in the town hall in the said borough, on monday the ninth day of december, ,-- present,-- the mayor (w.c. land, esq.) in the chair,-- it was moved by the mayor, seconded by alderman woodall, and resolved unanimously: "that this council learns with peculiar satisfaction and pleasure of the election of a native of scarborough, in the person of sir frederic leighton, to the presidency of the royal academy, and respectfully offers to sir frederic its warm congratulations, and records its conviction that his great talents as an artist, his attainments as a scholar, and his many striking qualifications, eminently fit him to adorn the high position to which he has been called." w.c. land, mayor. robert browning wrote:-- warwick crescent, w., _november , _. dear leighton,--i wish you joy with all my heart, and congratulate us all on your election. there ought to have been no sort of doubt as to the result, but the best of us are misconceived sometimes, though in your case never was a right more incontestable. all i hope is that your new duties will in no way interfere with the practice of your art. i only venture to write, now, as one who, so many a year ago, saw your beginning with "cimabue," and from that time to this remained confident what your career would be. but you know all this, and it requires no answer, being rather a spurt of satisfaction at my own original discernment than any assurance which i can fancy you need from,--yours very truly, robert browning. pen's letter to me, two days since, contained his earnest wishes for what has just happened, and he will be delighted accordingly. from matthew arnold:-- athenÆum club, pall mall, s.w., _november _. my dear leighton,--one line (which you need not answer) to say how delighted i am to see what an excellent choice the royal academy has made. i only hope poor o'conor may not take advantage of the occasion to plant an ode and a letter.--ever sincerely yours, matthew arnold. from hubert herkomer:-- _november , ._ my dear sir frederic leighton,--i am just recovering from an attack of brain fever, and although i am not allowed yet to write, i can no longer wait without dictating a letter to express my own individual pleasure at your being the new president. three years ago you wrote me a letter after seeing my "chelsea pensioners." perhaps you little dreamt of the tears of joy that that letter caused in a young painter, who will always feel that he owes you a debt of gratitude; and now he glories in your being the chief of that body which attracts to it all the principal art of the country. all england feels that you, from your new position, will give new life to it. perhaps you will allow me, when i am sufficiently recovered, to come and see you. in the meantime believe me to be, with most heartfelt congratulations,--sincerely yours, a.h., _pro_ hubert herkomer. sir frederic leighton, p.r.a. a friend writes:-- _november ._ dear mr. leighton,--i have tried to keep silence, telling myself that it cannot matter what i think or feel on the subject (and that it may seem to you a very unnecessary proceeding!); but i _cannot_ resist the temptation to tell you how warmly i rejoice, and how earnestly i congratulate _myself_ and all other hungerers after wholesome beauty of colour and form, and high ideals of greatness and purity, on your acceptance of a position that one may hope will, nay must, influence the art of this time for good in every sense. one takes a great breath of relief as one thinks of it! were i to describe to you the effect your works produce on me, and the feeling of real reverence i have for them, i should appear to exaggerate, and should certainly bore you, so i will say no more! and i am not given to that sort of thing. my beloved lady waterford was much disappointed that you could not come and meet her; i need not say, so were we: it was a great enjoyment to have her, she is like no one else; and i yet hope you may come and meet here some day. pray do not answer this; of course you are overwhelmed with business, and it would hurt me to have it considered and acknowledged as a complimentary civility! whereas it is nothing but an involuntary overflowing to relieve my mind. from lord coleridge:-- sussex square, w., _november , _. my dear leighton,--let me add one voice more, small but true, to the great chorus of applause with which your election has been greeted. it might seem left-handed praise to say that your election was the only possible one; but it is very true praise to say it was the only possible one if the highest interests of english art, and of the academy itself, were the sole object of the electors. it would have pleased and touched you to hear old boxall speak of it. i dined with him alone on friday, and he was just and generous, as he always is, in his appreciation of you, and looked forward to your reign as likely to be one of high aims and noble motives. it is a small thing to say, but i venture to agree with him.--ever sincerely yours, coleridge. these are a few among many hundred congratulatory letters leighton received on his election. one from mrs. fanny kemble he answered in the following march, when already he was beset by requests to use his influence to get friends' friends' work hung on the walls of the academy:-- _march , ._ dear mrs. kemble,--many thanks for your very amiable words of congratulations on the honour done me by the royal academy. the kind sympathy shown towards me by my friends had added very greatly indeed to the pleasure my election gave me. the belief entertained by miss ---- that the admission of works to an exhibition is a simple matter of personal favour, is shared by all foreigners--and i fear by many english people--and places me at this time of year in much and often painful embarrassment. so robust is this belief, that those who, having applied to me, fail to find their works on our walls ascribe their absence to personal unfriendliness or discourtesy on my part, or, to say the least, to lukewarmness. as a matter of fact each work of art is admitted or rejected by a separate vote of the council, and that in complete ignorance (except where authorship _saute aux yeux_) of the artist's name. this applies equally to english painters and foreign artists who reside here. in regard, however, to foreigners sending _from abroad_, whilst the vote is taken in the same way, admission is much more difficult. we have so many anglo-foreign painters who live amongst us that, our exhibition not being international, we can only admit a very limited number of really prize works. these works are therefore brought before us separately, and a small number of them selected, according to the space we have to deal with; i myself as a rule dissuade my foreign friends from sending except in cases where their merit is really very great; this may be miss ---- case; you will best know. i am quite sure, my dear mrs. kemble, that you do not doubt the pleasure it would give me to serve you in the person of your friend, and will not misinterpret these lengthy explanations. and now i have a favour to ask of you. on wednesday the th, at o'clock in the afternoon, joe will, i hope, play at my studio, and with him miss janotha and piatti; henschel will, i hope, sing. will you give me the great pleasure of seeing you amongst my friends on that occasion?--believe me always, yours very truly, fred leighton. on december , , leighton delivered his first address to the students of the royal academy--one of the finest of the many fine achievements of leighton's life. "purely practical and technical matters" he put aside to look into a wider and deeper question, that of the position of art in its relation to the world at large in the present and in the past time, in order to gather something of its prospects in the future. if the question why leighton held indisputably the great position he did were asked me by one who for a first time had heard his name, i should be inclined to answer, "because he contained within him the combined powers to execute completely the art which he created, and to think out and feel such profound, sympathetic, and wise truths as those to be found in this address."[ ] among the large number of appreciative letters leighton received were the following. millais wrote:-- palace gate, kensington, _december , _. dear leighton,--i was suffering all yesterday with tooth-ache, otherwise i would have attended the distribution last night. the ceremony is always most interesting to me, awakening as it does many anxious and happy recollections. my object in writing to you is to say i have read your address, which i think so beautiful, true, and _useful_ that i cannot but obey an impulse of congratulating you upon it. for some time past i have been putting down notes on art which some day may be put into form, and i find we are thinking precisely in the same way. i have used identical words in what i have written to those you delivered yesterday. the exponents of art surround it in such a cloud of mystery that it is a real gain when a practical authority is able to say something definite and clear the way.--yours sincerely, j.e. millais. his poet-friend wrote:-- woodberrie, loughton, essex, _december , _. my dear sir frederic,--have any of the multitude of men who love you ever called you chrysostom? it seems so natural after reading yesterday's address. will it be published by itself and obtainable in some handier form than the broadsheet of the _times_? i want it as part of the education of my daughter, who now, at sixteen, is beginning to take a new interest in whatsoever things are lovely and of good report, and i want it for myself, for in its lovely suggestiveness and exquisite english i could often find refreshment when i wanted (and needed) to "travel in the realms of gold," and forget my own invalided personality under the magic of such guidance. my wife desires me to say a word of gracious remembrance to you, and i am ever, faithfully yours, robin allen. mr. briton rivière: flaxley, finchley road, n.w., _december , _. dear sir frederic,--after hearing your admirable address last night, i came home in despair, for what little basis of thought is contained in my lectures (more especially in the second one) is built chiefly upon two or three of the lines of argument that you have already expressed so beautifully: sincerity in the student--the effect of his own time upon him--that time in its relation to the time of the old masters, and the temper of mind in which the old masters should be studied; on these points my lectures are but a feeble echo of what i heard last night. my first thought was to change my whole line of battle, and re-write them, but the extreme limitation of my powers of work would make this too great a sacrifice. to throw them up altogether, which i should much like, is impossible, for i am pledged to the academy to do my best. clearly, i must go on, but i shall do so more easily now that i have explained my position, so that if any one who hears me should tell you that my lectures were only a parody of what you had already said so well, you will believe that it has been the misfortune and not the fault of yours very truly, briton riviÈre. don't trouble to answer this. matthew arnold:-- athenÆum club, pall mall, _april , _. my dear leighton,--you have been _better_ than your word, for i see you have made me the actual possessor of your "address." from the glance i have already taken at it, i see that i shall both like it and you with it; but of this i might have been sure beforehand. a thousand thanks, and believe me, always sincerely yours, matthew arnold. the scheme leighton formed, when first considering the duty among all others he undertook,[ ] of addressing the students at the biennial meetings, was begun and continued in the nine addresses he gave, but unfortunately it could not be completed, a fact he sorely regretted when discussing the question with me three months before his death. on december , , "the position of art in the world" was the subject. in , "relation of art to time, place, and racial conditions; underlying mystery of its growth and decay." in , "summary of foregoing lecture." in , "art in mediæval and modern italy." in , "relation of artistic production to surrounding conditions considered in reference to spain." in , "the art of france: its uninterrupted development; its wide field; eminent achievement in architecture; the gothic style." in , "the art of germany: its high qualities; deficient Æsthetic inspiration." the tenth was to have consisted, leighton told me, in a summing up of the nine former addresses, in order to prove how they had affected the past and present condition of art in england. to any thoughtful artist these utterances, delivered by so great and accomplished an authority, cannot fail to prove profoundly interesting and invaluable as references, on account of the sound knowledge and the absolutely reliable quality of the facts given; but it may be doubted whether the more informative matter, contained in the six later lectures, suited leighton's style of oratory so happily as did the more abstract quality of the three first. there appeared to be too many names crowded into the comparatively short time which leighton allotted to himself for the delivery of these discourses, for the normal taking-in power of an audience; the very finished rhetoric, moreover, in which the enormous amount of information contained in each was disclosed, did not seem quite appropriate to their condensed form. in conversation i have heard leighton far more convincing, on the same subjects as those he treated in the last six discourses. the same intense sense of the duty he felt to do the thing as completely as it was possible, which he evinced in painting, cropped up again in his oratory, no less than the intense modesty--which would not recognise how great he could be if he relaxed all effort, and was simply himself. mr. briton rivière, in the notes he furnishes for this book, writes:-- "those perhaps sometimes too perfectly built-up sentences, of which his admirable addresses and speeches were formed, were the outcome of this same quality of mind. one of his most intimate friends, when we were talking about the mental strain occasioned by these, once said to me: 'leighton would never get over a slight lapse of grammar,' and i can believe it. the accidental was hateful to him when considered in reference to his own work of any kind, though probably no one knew better than he did its value in a work of art; but, as watts deplored, he never would use it or admit it into his own pictures. this quality and its strain upon him was illustrated by an accident which occurred at his last r.a. banquet speech, the last he ever made, and which gained immensely from the fact that in one place he forgot for a moment the next sentence, and came to a pause (as he told me afterwards), in fear that he had broken down altogether; but his suspense, painful as it must have been to him, looked perfectly natural and spontaneous, and gave to his speech that touch of something which his better remembered periods did not express so well. this system of speaking entirely from memory added much to the constant strain of his academy work. he had what he called a 'topical memory,' viz. he remembered the place of each word in his written speech and used to read it off in the air with never-failing accuracy, but did so always with the belief that a forgotten sentence would shipwreck the whole. if he would have been content now and then to lapse from this high pitch of the accuracy he aimed at in all his work, few could have reached a safer or higher standard spontaneously, as he proved in the royal academy, general assembly, and council meetings, when he never failed to speak admirably on the spur of the moment; and his summing up of a debate there on any subject was invariably marked by the same elegance and cleverness as his prepared speeches, but with more vitality and flexibility, which, however, never led him into anything that was not almost fastidiously exact and precise. i have always felt that no one who had heard only his elaborately prepared speeches knew his real power as a speaker." there rang out perhaps, at times, just a note reminding one of the german pedant in these discourses--a note singularly discordant when sounding together with an ornate diction; but this was only heard when leighton was not deeply moved by his subject; when, on the other hand, the not over-tutored, bigger instinctive self had full sway, as, in the subjects he chose for the first three discourses, the glowing style harmonised most rightly as the appropriate language for the earnest and lofty feeling in the thought. if, as suggested above, it is only facts and information of an historical character which words have to convey, much eloquence and an ornate style seems inappropriate. each mood is obviously best expressed when the style is adjusted to it by an intuitive instinct. leighton, though possessing abnormally flexible and subtle æsthetic instincts when he allowed himself to be his natural self, seemed at times to force himself into a theoretic rigidity when he was at his lessons. and all his official duties he viewed as lessons, which, after he left his easel, it was his first duty in life to learn to perform as correctly as he could. but whatever criticisms may be made on the style of the later discourses, students desiring to possess something more than a merely provincial knowledge of the special power of the magnates in whose work culminates the great art of the world, should surely not neglect to possess themselves of the wisdom to be acquired from these discourses. throughout their pages are to be found most suggestive passages, inspiring new thoughts and, to any but experts, new facts on vitally interesting art matters. for instance, take the description of velasquez:-- "for a long period italian painting did not cease to enjoy the favour of the court; it ceased, however, towards the beginning of the seventeenth century to exercise that paralysing influence which had marked its first advent, and the ground was cleared for a new impulse from within. at this conjuncture a man of commanding genius and fearless initiative was given to spain in the person of diego velasquez. it may perhaps have surprised you that with such a name before my mind i should have spoken of zurbaran, a man so vastly his inferior in the painter's gift, as perhaps the most representative of spanish artists. i have done so because beyond any other artist he sums up in himself, as i have pointed out to you, all the complex elements of the spanish genius. in velasquez, spanish as he is to the finger-tips, this comprehensiveness is not found. of velasquez all was spanish, but zurbaran was all spain. "viewed simply as a painter, the great sevillian was, as i have just said, vastly the superior of the estremeño. he was in more intimate touch with nature, and none, perhaps, have equalled the swift magic of his brush. on the other hand, depth of feeling, poetry, imagination were refused to him. the painter of the 'lanzas,' the 'hilanderas,' the 'meninas'--works in their kind unapproached in art by any other man--painted also, be it remembered, the 'coronation of the virgin' and the 'mars' of the madrid gallery--types of prosaic treatment. in one work, indeed, religion seems for a moment to have winged his pencil; but striking and pathetic as is his famous 'crucifixion,' it does not equal in poignancy and imaginative grasp the presentment of the same subject by zurbaran in seville. but if we miss in velasquez the higher gifts of the imagination, we find him also free from all those blemishes of extravagance which we have so often noted in this land of powerful impulses unrestrained by tact. whatever gifts may have been refused to velasquez, in his grave simplicity he is unsurpassed. if fancy seldom lifts him above the level of intimate daily things, neither does she obstruct for him with purple wings the white light of sober truth. in days in which the young herrera could find favour; in a country in which churriguera was possible, and euphuism was applauded, he never overstepped the modesty of nature, nor forgot in art the value of reticent control. i have not here to follow his career, nor the evolution of his unique and dazzling genius. still less need i, before young artists of the present day, dwell on the wizardry and the luscious fascination of the brush of this most modern of the old masters. i will only, in conclusion, touch briefly on one or two points that are of interest, and one that is, perhaps, of warning. "first, i would notice the purity and decorum of his art; a decorum not, i think, due to the characteristically spanish laws under which the inquisition visited with heavy penalties every semblance even of impurity in a work of art, but to a spirit dwelling in the people itself, of which those laws were but the somewhat exaggerated expression. it may be worth while also to note that yet another virtue of the spaniards is, in one of his works, reflected in an unexpected manner, namely, their sobriety. it is a curious thing that in a certain class of spanish literature a peculiar relish is shown for the portraying of moral squalor and the grovelling criminality of social outcasts. in spanish art, on the other hand, the picturesqueness alone of low life seems to have sought expression. you know what gentle murillo made of his melon-eating beggar boys. again, you saw not long ago upon these walls, in the 'water-carrier of seville,' how at the outset of his career velasquez turned his thoughts to subjects drawn from humble life, and you know how to the end he dwelt with peculiar gusto on the fantastic physiognomy of the privileged buffoons, dwarfs, and _hombres de placer_ who haunted the palace in his day. you know further that one of the most powerful works painted by him before reality of atmospheric effect had become his chief preoccupation, and when he sought exclusively after truth of character, a picture known as 'los borrachos,' represents a group of drunkards doing homage to bacchus. it is a work of the most naked realism. bacchus (dionysos!), showing his repulsive vulgarity (what a blank to velasquez was the poetic side of classic myths), is surrounded by a circle of kneeling rascals, rude and ragged enough, and supposed, no doubt, to be carousing; but here is the strange peculiarity of this work--in spite of all the accessories of a revel, and the flash of grinning teeth, we are unable to persuade ourselves that any one of the disreputable crew could ever be _drunk_. imagine the subject treated by a fleming. "and now, though i am loth to touch one leaf of the laurels of so dazzling and so great an artist, i cannot pass in silence a circumstance which must be weighed in estimating velasquez as a man, and which is not without bearing on his art. the virtues of his race, as we have seen, purified his work and gave it dignity; a spanish foible, though it could not dim his genius, cramped, no doubt, and curtailed its production--namely, a tendency to subordinate everything to the pursuit of royal favour. i said a spanish foible; for a superstitious rendering up of will and conscience to the sovereign, such as is, i believe, without example, had long been a growing characteristic of the spaniard. on a memorable occasion gonzalo de cordoba himself, one of the noblest figures recorded in spanish history--a man of a mind so fearless that he was bold to rebuke pope borgia himself face to face in the vatican for the scandals of his life--did not scruple to break, in deference to what he considered this higher duty of obedience to his king, his solemn pledge and oath to the unfortunate young duke of calabria. so all but divine did majesty appear to the spaniards, that divinity and majesty became almost as one in their eyes, and they spoke, in all solemnity, as 'su majestad,' not only of the divine persons of the trinity, but also of the sacrificial wafer. the prevalence of this feeling must plead to some extent in mitigation of the tenacity with which velasquez canvassed--with success, alas!--to obtain at court a post of an onerous and wholly prosaic character--the office of 'aposentador mayor,' a sort of purveyor and quartermaster, who, when his majesty moved from one place to another, had to convey, to house, to feed, not the sovereign only, but all his suite. a post demanding all his attention, says polomino, who goes on to deplore that this exalted office (which he has just told us any one could fill) should have deprived the world of so many samples of the painter's genius. we shall agree with our sententious friend, not, perhaps, in the satisfaction he derived from the honour conferred, as he imagines, on his calling, but in his sorrow over the loss we have sustained! and in the sight of canvases in which the execution of a sketch is carried out on the full scale of life we shall at once bow before the product of a splendid genius, and regret the signs of haste, the evidence of too scanty leisure, by which its expression has been marred. truly it has been said, 'art requires the whole man.'"[ ] again, the seventh discourse is replete with inspiring suggestions about french architecture,[ ] and in the last discourse the description of albert dürer is one which, in a few lines, gives a complete and vividly interesting setting to the great name. "albert dürer may be regarded as _par excellence_ the typical german artist--far more so than his great contemporary holbein. he was a man of a strong and upright nature, bent on pure and high ideals; a man ever seeking, if i may use his own characteristic expression, to make known through his work the mysterious treasure that was laid up in his heart; he was a thinker, a theorist, and, as you know, a writer; like many of the great artists of the renaissance, he was steeped also in the love of science. his work was in his own image; it was, like nearly all german art, primarily ethic in its complexion; like all german art it bore traces of foreign influence--drawn, in his case, first from flanders and later from italy. in his work, as in all german art, the national character asserted itself above every trammel of external influence. superbly inexhaustible as a designer, as a draughtsman he was powerful, thorough, and minute to a marvel, but never without a certain almost caligraphic mannerism of hand, wanting in spontaneous simplicity--never broadly serene. in his colour he was rich and vivid, not always unerring as to his harmonies, not alluring in his execution--withal a giant." when the last addresses were given leighton was getting very tired. the wheels were running down--vitality was waning. the great mental machine had begun to work more mechanically. we trace this in the manner in which he tackled his last discourse. while writing it at perugia he wrote to his elder sister:-- perugia, _thursday, october , _. you have misconstrued my knee; i have no _pain_ in it, at most occasionally a dull ache in the muscles and a slight soreness in the joint; but it is an incapacitating and depressing nuisance, and it won't move on. (i am writing near a window opening on to a clear, star-bright sky; far below, in the _paese_, i hear the tinkle of a wandering, nocturnal mandoline--how i like it!) you do me the honour to appreciate my having, during my recent precipitate odyssey, visited thirty towns in thirty days, noting things of which i had already accurate knowledge _d'avance_; but i can "go one better" than that: _ten_ of the towns were _absolutely new_ to me, and of the whole subject on which i am preaching, i knew as good as nothing when you last saw me. i suspect that, in spite of a lack of memory which _baffles belief_, i have a certain "uptaking" knack. my preachment will bore you, but you will (if you read it) detect an _ensemble_; but, for goodness' sake, _zitti!_ they'll think, when they hear the p.r.a., that, lor' bless him! he'd known it all his life. nevertheless, enough for the day, &c. best love to gussy.--affect. bro., fred. i remember--when my husband and i were sitting with him one afternoon after his return home that autumn--his saying, "i feel distinctly i have dropped one step down off of the ladder," and it was truly about that time that his doctor, doctor roberts, discerned the beginning of the disease which proved fatal. already in he wrote:-- "the reasons which have now for a good many years impelled me to decline any 'public utterances' outside burlington house have increased in weight and force as life and strength wanes, and as demands on me grow in every direction. i am sometimes asked to speak in public, not only in london, but all over the country, and in all cases the demand is grounded on strong claims in so far as i am an 'official' artist. assent once is assent always--assent in half the cases would mean the _gravest_ injury to my _work_, and i am a workman first and an official afterwards. things have their humorous side, for those who press me most are sometimes those who on other occasions most earnestly assure me that i '_do too much_.' how tired i am of hearing it." the speeches at the yearly banquets of the royal academy were extraordinary _tours de force_. wherever leighton took the lead--and he was seldom anywhere when he did not take the lead,[ ]--he raised the tone of the proceedings, and convinced the outside world, no less than those taking a part in them, that the matter in hand was important and essentially worth doing. personally i have always felt that the finished form of leighton's diction tended rather to hide than to explain the real nature of the power which had this vitalising, elevating influence. this influence emanated, i believe, from the greatness of his "magnificent intellect" (to use watts' words) being united with extraordinary will-force invariably employed in the service of the principles in which he had a profound faith. it was his persistent loyalty to these principles--backed by this abnormal will-force, giving it extra weight--which lifted leighton's work in all directions on to so distinguished a level--and not--in the case of his speeches--his rounded periods, or his power over words, or his gift of facility in grasping a subject, though the banquet speeches are also remarkable on account of the versatility he displayed in grasping many subjects from the point of view of the expert. whether it was the army, the navy, politics, music--whatever, in fact, was the affair of the moment, he proposed the toast from what might be called the inside of the question, not merely treating his text as a matter of form.[ ] on asking gladstone to the banquet of , leighton received the following characteristic answer:-- my dear president,--i have received your letter with mixed feelings. you do me great honour, and i must obey you. but i long for the return of the good old times, lying within the long range of my memory, when the dinners of the academy did not suffer the contamination of political toasts, and kept us all for three precious hours in purer air. can you tell me when the practice was changed? i am not, i think, under the dominion of a pleasant delusion.--yours most faithfully, w.e. gladstone. in leighton found it impossible to continue his duties as lieutenant-colonel of the th middlesex (artists) volunteers, which post he had held since , and he therefore resigned. he was then made hon. colonel and holder of the volunteer decoration.[ ] a few years later he made the following speech at a dinner given by his corps, in response to a toast proposed to himself:-- we live in times so hustling and breathless, times in which so much happens in so short a space, that a few years seem to divide men and habits like a deep gulf, and i feel that in the eyes of many of you the toast that your c.o. has invited you in such friendly terms to drink is one possessing an almost antiquarian flavour interest; the more grateful therefore am i for the cordial response with which, not, i hope, solely in a spirit of discipline, but from a more human point of view, you have given to the call of colonel edis. the sight of the old uniform recalls to me, in a vivid manner, a period when not only my years, but my circumferencial inches, were fewer, during which it was my pride, first in one grade, then successively in others, from the ranks to the command, to take my share in the doings of and the life of what i hope i may call, without egotism, one of the finest corps in the volunteer service. i have now for some years laid by the coat, to be furbished up only for these annual gatherings, not without misgivings as to my power of getting into it; but i have not laid by, nor shall i lay by while i have life, my deep interest and my high respect for that great defensive force of which it is the sign, and which, having sprung into existence in a moment of emergency and national excitement, has shown through over more than a quarter of a century that it requires no excitement to sustain it, and is fed by no transitory fires. but whilst i watch this great sign of national vitality with unchanging interest, there is of course an inmost corner of my heart in which that national movement appears to me clad in grey and silver, and the old corps still sits in the warmest place; praise of its performance is always to me the most grateful praise; strictures on its shortcomings, if like other human things it has any, will always find me sensitive, and the account which your excellent colonel furnishes on these occasions of your year's growth, comes home to me more than other like utterances. gentlemen, i have named your energetic and efficient commanding officer; there is this year a special reason why his name should be on my lips; he is about shortly to acquire by length of service the full colonelcy of which his long devotion to the cause makes him so worthy a recipient; and i should wish before sitting down to offer him an old comrade's hearty congratulation, and the expression of my confident hope that his advanced rank will only confirm him in his loyal and faithful efforts to promote the honour of the corps to which he, more fortunate than i, is still privileged to belong as an active member. in , on the occasion of fêting his friend joseph joachim and presenting the gift to the great master of a stradivarius violin and bow from his friends, in recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of his first performance in london, leighton made the following speech:-- . ladies and gentlemen,--it was necessary that the motives and feelings which have drawn us together to-night should find brief expression on somebody's lips; and, in obedience to a command which has been laid on me by this committee, i have to ask you to accept me, for a few moments, as your mouthpiece. of the varied duties which life lays on us, there are some which we perform in simple discharge of conscience and with little joy; some, if few, into the discharge of which we can pour all our hearts; and such a duty is this which i have risen to perform. i have said that i shall only ask your attention for a few moments, and you will feel with me the fitness of brevity; for besides that, in every case, taste imposes restraint in praise of those who are present before us, long drawn and redundant eulogy would clash strangely with that rare simplicity which is one of the qualities by which joachim, the man, compels the esteem of all whose fortune it is to know him. but there would be in it, i think, also a further deeper-lying incongruity, for we know that joachim, the artist, has risen to the heights he occupies, perhaps alone, by fixing his constant gaze on high ideals, and lifting and sustaining his mind in a region above the shifting fickle atmosphere of praise or blame. well, it is now fifty years since he took his first step along the upward path, which he has trodden in wholeness of heart and singleness of purpose from earliest boyhood to mellow middle age. during these fifty years he has not only ripened to the full his splendid gifts as an interpreter, ever interpreting the noblest works in the noblest manner, leading his hearers to their better comprehension; not only marked his place in the front ranks of living composers by works instinct with fire and imagination; but shown us also, as a man, how much high gifts are enhanced by modesty, and how good a thing to see is the life of an artist who has never paltered with the dignity of his art. deep appreciation of these titles to respect and admiration has, as you know, led in germany, the country of his adoption and his home, to an enthusiastic celebration of this, the fiftieth year of his artistic career; and we, his english friends, living in a country which we hope, nay, believe, is, after his own, not the least dear to him, have felt strongly impelled to express to him also in some form our gratitude, our sympathy, and our esteem. it has seemed to your committee that these sentiments could not take a more fitting outward shape than that of the instrument over which he is lord: such an instrument, signed with the famous name of stradivarius, and, as i am told, not unworthy of his fame, flanked with a bow the work of tourte, and once the property of kiesenwetter--such a fiddle and such a bow i now offer to him in your name. its sensitive and well-seasoned shell will acknowledge and respond to the hand of the master, and the souls of many great musicians will, we hope, often speak through it to spellbound hearers. but we nourish another hope--the hope that, through the great waves of melody that shall roll forth from it under his compelling bow, a still small voice may now and again be interfused which, reaching his heart through his ears, shall speak to it of the many friends who, in spirit or in the body, are gathered round him affectionately to-night. in leighton delivered the superb address at the art congress held at liverpool on december (see appendix). no life of this great man would be complete were his utterances on this occasion not given in full, for therein is found his creed on art, and the records of those principles on which it was founded, expounded with clear force, fine analysis, and, above all, with supreme courage. the subject, moreover, as touching england's condition respecting art, is one directly affecting english readers. a matter of interest to the general art world came under discussion at the council meetings of the academy in the winter of and , namely, whether women were to be admitted as members of their body. a correspondence took place between leighton and the late mr. henry wells, r.a., on the subject. leighton's personal inclination was certainly for admitting women into the body of the elect, as i know from conversations he had with me on the subject. he invariably sought to extend all art privileges to those who were, as artists, worthy to receive them. he told me, however, that the majority of votes against the inroad of women would be given as having regard to a question of convenience rather than to one of principle, namely, the difficulty the academicians foresaw in admitting only one or two lady artist academicians to the yearly banquets, and the greater difficulty of extending invitations to lady guests.[ ] the following letters from leighton to mr. wells give an insight into the kind of work which his office of president entailed, and of the characteristically thorough manner in which leighton fulfilled them. _thursday evening, or ._ dear wells,--i have noticed during my last two sittings at your studio, that, whenever the deeply interesting subject of our academy appeared on the tapis, it stood in the way of your work, and i have therefore purposely abstained, as you no doubt remarked, from going beyond the merest surface in the discussion of any of the points on which we have touched. i felt that the sittings i gave you being so few and so scantily measured out, the least i could do was not, wittingly, to make you lose your time. that is to say, i did not _tell_ you to-day orally what i now _write_, namely, my impression on your proposed question concerning the chantrey purchases. the characteristic straightforwardness and loyalty with which you wished me to be informed on the point beforehand will not permit me to be silent in regard to your view. i have looked with the greatest care into the extract from the will which we all have, and have given the matter that thought which is due to your earnest conscientiousness, and i have satisfied myself that the general assembly is wholly without a _locus standi_ in claiming to control the expenditure of the chantrey trust moneys in any way whatever; those moneys never pass into its hands or come under its cognisance; they are paid into the hands of the president and treasurer, against their receipt, and are dealt with solely by the president and council for the time being. an attempt, therefore, on the part of the general assembly to assume control in this matter is in my view _out of order_, and it would therefore be out of order to ask or answer a question based, as yours is, on that assumption. i think you will find this view in harmony with the opinion of the body; if it is largely challenged, i shall postpone the answer till i have taken a legal opinion, as the point is very important. here are my cards on the table.--in haste, yours sincerely, fred leighton. _private._] _monday._ dear wells,--the usual stress of business has prevented me till now from thanking you for your note and valuable information; i shall, with great interest, turn to the passages you allude to as soon as i get a good opportunity, and what i read will have the greatest weight with me when i vote again on a purchase. it would not, however, touch my point in regard to the _general assembly_, which can only interfere with a past purchase if it can be shown to be illegal; this can, of course, only be established by legal authority, and i am, myself, sorry that your first resolution does not run thus: that the president be requested to consult high legal authority as to whether such and such purchases are barred by the will of sir f. ch. if your misgivings on that head are shared by a majority the thing would pass immediately and undiscussed, almost. as concerns your motion on the pension resolution, i own to much misgiving; _i should not dream of alluding to this had you not yourself taken me aside about it the other day._ i am so far at one with you in principle that i feel, i can't say how deeply, that it is our paramount duty to interpret in the largest and most elevated sense our duty to the art of the country that we may be worthy in the eyes of the enlightened portion of the community of our high place, and that it is equally incumbent on us to keep our personal interests vigilantly in sub-ordination. i think that one of the present resolutions militates against this last view, and i need not conceal from you that it has not my sympathy. i am, however, very strongly of opinion that the form of your opposition to it will not be supported, and that in your desire for a logical comprehensiveness, you will fail of your end, which by simple direct opposition to the particular measure on the principle you have already enunciated and explained, you might _very probably_, i believe, achieve. i need not, i think, assure you, my dear wells, that nothing is further from my thoughts than any _interference_ with a member's freedom; indeed, on that head my views are known to you; but i can't refrain from saying thus much to give you an opportunity of quietly thinking matters over (_don't answer this_) before wednesday. after all, you want primarily to get rid of paragraph , not to ensure a dialectical triumph. if the alternative is between your committee and the resolution as it stands, i feel absolutely convinced that you will be left in a very cold minority; but if you point out that paragraph takes our bounties off the ground of necessity, our only tenable ground, in fact commutes a _bounty_ into an unconditional _claim_ (of a formidable pecuniary nature, too), you will march in, i can't help thinking, with flying colours. don't, i repeat, be at the trouble to answer this expression of the opinion of,--yours sincerely, fred leighton. _monday, february , (?) ._ dear wells,--since receiving your letter i have been so absolutely engrossed with business and work that i have not had time till now to answer it. i am sincerely glad you have asked for a little modification in the terms of the lucy petition; meanwhile i have written to gladstone, and my letter has been acknowledged with a promise to note its contents. in regard to your chantrey resolution, i feel that, after the manner of very busy men, i have written in haste and not made myself quite clear. i should like, first, to remove one apprehension which you seem to have entertained; however strongly i may be convinced of the correctness of my own view on the matter under discussion, i cannot too emphatically say that as long as the points at issue were still _sub judice_ i should not countenance a purchase which should assume my view to be the right one; but no such postponement as would lead to this dilemma is to be feared; what i propose is this: as soon as ever we have closed the discussion on the schools, and whilst they are being printed in their amended form for final consideration, therefore, on friday next, if we get through on wednesday, or failing that on the nd or rd of february, the resolutions of council will be put on the table in their rotation; as, however, the next step in the chantrey affair is to merely _hear_ my answer to your memorandum, and as i understand that discussion on it will not be expected till members shall have had it to consider at their leisure, i will read it and lay it on the table _before_ i take up the resolutions of council which stand on the paper before it, so that when it comes up for final discussion, presumably in the first days of march, it can be discussed and voted on with full mastery of the subject. it is on the agenda paper of that _meeting_ that your affirmative motion will stand; it does not come into force till then, since it is contingent on the effect produced on your mind by my answer of friday (or of the next meeting after). with respect to redgrave's motion, it may lead to a technical "censure" of the council; but there are censures and censures, and nobody will suppose, certainly i never dreamt, that you meant to imply moral obliquity to us in regard to what we have done. i have not a word to object to what you advance about the right of complaint, but it does not exactly cover the case: if you caught us, say, taking our friends to the exhibition (or ourselves) on sunday, a matter on which no two opinions are admissible, then "a complaint" would be in its place; but in the matter of payment to treasurer, two opinions may and do exist, and they can only be measured against one another by a vote, and a vote can only be taken on a motion. lastly, as to the new codification committee, i think with you, _in strictest confidence_, that ---- was not a good choice; but he was chosen in the usual manner by a majority of votes: that your labours were not remunerated in the usual manner is an oversight, which, of course, must and shall be set right. there seems altogether, and your letter corroborates that impression, to have been much vagueness about the doings of the committee _as a committee_, though, as usual, much zealous work on your part. i do not gather that attendances were entered in a book, which is the machinery by which payment is generally regulated, and the committee having lapsed without reporting to the council on its labours (being a _sub-committee_ of the council of , it lapsed by a natural death with that council), the whole thing had fallen out of notice. i hope that the old sub-committee will put in their claims, which will very certainly be satisfied. the codification has frequently been in my mind, for i consider it of very great importance, but as it is my impression that i am considered to drive the work of the academy full hard as it is, i have hesitated to impose more labours on my colleagues, even though i am always ready to share them.--sincerely yours, fred leighton. [illustration: "elijah in the wilderness." ] [illustration: sketch for "elijah in the wilderness." leighton house collection] [illustration: "neruccia." by permission of mrs. lees] [illustration: "the bath of psyche." national gallery of british art (tate gallery)] _tuesday morning_, holland park road, kensington, w., _march , _. dear wells,--thank you for your letter received yesterday, which only lack of time prevented me from answering at once. i am happy to say that richmond cheerfully acceded to my wish in regard to clauses and . i do not think with calderon, who has written to me, that the words of a man so high-minded as richmond will indispose members in this matter, and, though i feel the importance of raising no prejudice against the proposal as keenly as ever, still wish him to initiate it. it is, i agree with you, a pity that the question of the retiring pensions must come off first; but that is, i fear, quite unavoidable, and it connects itself with the very first resolution. i assure you, my dear wells, that i _see_ the bearing of all you say on this head as plainly as possible, and have done so all along; but it does not prevail with me, because it does not cover the whole ground, and because i do not anticipate the dangers for which you think it might be used as a precedent. in view of my own personal painful position in this matter, i shall _ask_ the assembly _not_ to ratify the clause which affects _me_.--in great haste, yours sincerely, fred leighton. leighton's official life, as understood and carried out by him, entailed infinitely more strain and occupation than can be described in these pages, but, notwithstanding, unless the call away from his easel was imperative, he kept certain hours in the day sacred to his art. these were from a.m. till noon, and from p.m. till . it was only in the off hours that he got through his other labours, which he performed, nevertheless, with most assiduous conscientiousness. among his duties outside the academy were those at the british museum. mr. h.a. grueber, keeper of the coins and medals, writes: "sir frederic leighton was elected a trustee of the british museum on may , . he was an active member of the standing committee, who practically manage the affairs of the museum, and he took great interest in the place. he was also a member of the sub-committees on buildings, on antiquities, prints and drawings, also of those on coins and medals." in the first r.a. exhibition after his election, three pictures of the eight leighton sent have, i think, a special interest--"elijah in the wilderness" (the picture into which he said he put more of himself than into any other he had painted up to that time); the portrait of his very dear friend professor costa, painted in the previous autumn at lerici, and the head "neruccia." leighton with costa studied the methods used in painting by the venetians and correggio, and costa wrote the following with reference to them:-- the result of these studies and of the experience of years was that leighton and i definitely adopted the following method. take a canvas or panel with the whitest possible preparation and non-absorbent--the drawing of the subject to be done with precision and indelible. on this seek to model in monochrome so strongly that it will bear the local colours painted with exaggeration, and then the grey, which is to be the ground of all the future half-tones; on this paint the lights, for which use only white, red, and black, avoiding yellow, and, stabbing (botteggiando) with the brush while the colour is wet, make the half-tints tell out from the grey beneath, which should be thoroughly dry. when all is dry, finish the picture with scumbles (spegazzi), adding yellow to complete the colour. leighton formed his method of painting from these general maxims, and he painted my portrait at lerici on these principles as an experiment, and then in we adopted the system definitely. for this portrait he had four sittings--one for the drawing and the monochrome chiaroscuro, one for the local colours; then, having covered all with grey, he painted the lights with red, white, and black, making use of the thoroughly dried grey beneath for his half-tints. with scumbles he completed the colour and the modelling. [illustration: "the light of the harem." by kind permission of the directors of the leicester gallery] [illustration: "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it" sketch for complete design, ] [illustration: study for figure in frieze, "music." leighton house collection] [illustration: study for "andromeda." leighton house collection] [illustration: from sketch in clay for perseus, in the picture "perseus and andromeda." ] [illustration: study for figure in panel in royal exchange--"phoenicians bartering with britons" leighton house collection] [illustration: "cymon and iphigenia." the corporation of leeds] [illustration: study in colour for "cymon and iphigenia." by permission of mrs. stewart hodgson] [illustration: study for sleeping group for "cymon and iphigenia" given by lord leighton to g.f. watts, o.m., and given by the latter to the collection in leighton house, ] as the exquisite fragments in pencil of cyclamen, bramble and vine branch,[ ] explain most intimately leighton's genius as a draughtsman, so this head of neruccia appears to me, together with one other work, to explain most explicitly his genius as a painter--a modeller with the brush. in leighton painted "the bath of psyche."[ ] the modelling in the torso of this figure, and in the head of neruccia, reach the zenith as exemplifying leighton's individuality as a painter. they might truly earn for him the title--praxiteles of the brush. it would be tedious for writer and reader alike to describe too minutely the special characteristics of even the most notable pictures painted during the seventeen years when leighton occupied the position of president of the royal academy. words are but poor interpreters of painting such as his. eighty canvases, two statues, and two designs--the reverse of the jubilee medallion, "and the sea gave up its dead which were in it"--were exhibited at the royal academy; eighteen slighter works at the suffolk street, and twenty-three at the grosvenor galleries. on referring to the list in the appendix it will be realised how great was the amount of labour involved in the achievement of many of these works, considering their size, the complication of their designs, and also the completeness of their finish. it must also be remembered that leighton made many hundreds of studies for his pictures. more especially numerous were these for the designs "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it," "the dance, decorative frieze"; "cymon and iphigenia"; "music, a frieze"; "design for the reverse of the jubilee medallion," "captive andromache," "perseus and andromeda," "return of persephone," "the garden of the hesperides," "rizpah," "summer slumbers," "the spirit of the summit," "flaming june," "phoenicians bartering with britons," and "clytie." when all these achievements are taken into account it will be realised that leighton, to the end, however important his duties outside his studios, was true to his vocation, and proved himself the "workman first and the official after." as a work combining poetic feeling, power of design, and great beauty in the arrangement of line, while at the same time expressing most explicitly leighton's creed of creeds--namely, the ennobling and elevating influence of beauty in the lives of men and women--"cymon and iphigenia" is perhaps the picture he himself would have chosen as the most representative among these later works. he chose it as the one he wished sent to the berlin exhibition in . when beginning it he described to me the moment of the day he wished to catch for the scene--"the most mysteriously beautiful in the whole twenty-four hours, when the _merest lip_ of the moon has risen from behind the sea horizon, and the air is haunted still with the flush of the after-glow from the sun already hidden in the west."[ ] the study for the group of sleeping figures reproduced here is almost identical in design with the sketch in plaster from the clay, so lamentably destroyed when watts lent it to be cast in bronze after leighton's death. leighton also gave the drawing of this group to his fellow artist, so enthusiastically did watts admire it. he, in his turn, gave it to the leighton house collection in the year , together with the fine painting which leighton exchanged for his own portrait, painted about , and which greeted friends as they mounted the staircase in leighton house during all the years he lived in holland park road (see frontispiece to vol. i.). the study for "cymon and iphigenia" is particularly valuable now as an example of leighton's rapid sketches where every touch reflects a mine of knowledge, because it was put under glass before any of the crispness of the touch was blurred by rubbing.[ ] [illustration: "the sluggard" from the bronze statuette--a direct reproduction from lord leighton's small sketch, . leighton house collection] [illustration: "needless alarms" from bronze statuette, . leighton house collection] [illustration: "the last watch of hero." ] [illustration: study in colour for "tragic poetess." by permission of mrs. stewart hodgson] in a letter dated watts wrote: "leighton will carry off all the honours this year with his ceiling[ ] and his two statues." "an athlete awakening from sleep" (given to the tate gallery by sir henry tate) is generally known as "the sluggard," a name bestowed on it by leighton himself. the victor's garland lies at the feet of the athlete, a garland which does not preserve the owner from a sad weariness. mr. brock, r.a., in whose studio "an athlete" was modelled, executed the fine bust of leighton which was deposited in the academy as mr. brock's diploma work.[ ] sir john millais admired greatly the other work alluded to in watts' letter, "needless alarms." leighton gave him this statuette, and millais, desiring to show his gratitude in a tangible form, painted the picture "shelling peas" for leighton. in at least fourteen of the eighty pictures shown at the academy during the last seventeen years of leighton's life, there can be traced an earnest sentiment beyond the "sincerity of emotion" for beauty which all evince. this feeling is, however, always guarded by a marked reticence from sentimentalism. "elijah in the wilderness," "elisha raising the son of the shunammite," "the jealousy of simoetha, the sorceress," "the last watch of hero," "captive andromache," "return of persephone," "rizpah," "tragic poetess," "sibyl," "farewell," "the spirit of the summit," "fatidica," "lachrymæ," and the last passionate figure of "clytie." the most popular pictures leighton painted during these years appear to be "sister's kiss," "the light of the harem" (developed into a picture from the design of a group in the fresco, "the industrial arts of peace"), "idyll," "whispers," "wedded" (now in australia), "memories," "letty," "invocation," "solitude," "the bath of psyche," "bacchante," "corinna of tanagra," "the bracelet," "summer slumber," "atalanta," "flaming june," and "the fair persian" (unfinished). two sketches in the leighton house collection record effects which greatly fascinated leighton in scotland--"a pool, findhorn river," deep tortoiseshell brown; and "rocks in the findhorn," pink and grey enriched by lichen, and it was in scotland that the lynn of dee inspired the subject of "solitude." leighton described to me the deep impression this lynn of dee had made on him. "it is the veriest note of solitude! a wonderful spot, full of poetic inspiration." in order to transmit a vivid record of this sentiment to his canvas, he took a second journey to the place.[ ] [illustration: "atalanta." by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright] [illustration: "flaming june." by permission of mrs. watney] [illustration: study for "flaming june." ] [illustration: "fatidica." by permission of messrs. t. agnew & son, the owners of the copyright] [illustration: studies for "fatidica." leighton house collection] leighton wrote the following letter to his father when first visiting forres, in which he described the "craze" he had for these "dark brown scotch rivers":-- royal station hotel, forres, n.b. i drove over to dunkeld (twelve and a half miles) to lunch at the millais'; i think the drive one of the most enchanting things i know, and i was favoured, moreover, by a few of those divine glimpses of blue and silver sky of which scotland has the monopoly (a monopoly which she uses, perhaps, just a trifle too modestly). this is forres, as the paper shows you; if macbeth's witches really did live in this neighbourhood, it is just as well they had their hands pretty full, for they would have found the place uncommonly dull otherwise, especially on the "sawbath." on the other hand, the drive to and the walk along the banks of the findhorn--the excursion for which one comes here--is quite delightful, and indeed surpassed my expectations. i must tell you that i have nothing short of a craze for your dark brown scotch (and irish) rivers, as dark as treacle, and as clear as a cairngorm. this particular stream contrives to rush part of the way through fantastic rocks of pink granite--you may imagine the effect. here again from the heights over the river i _ought_ to have seen the sea and the coast of sutherlandshire; but the weather was sulky and i had to draw on my imagination for the view. in the forenoon i went over by train to elgin, to see the ruined cathedral, which is fine, but, like all scotch architecture that i have seen, crude and barbaric. as i stood on the platform before starting, i heard a gruff, good-humoured voice hailing me from a train on the other side; it was the voice which goes so well with the rubicund face of the duke of cambridge. i was going by the same train, so he made me get into his compartment; he was going to balmoral or aberfeldie. he was very comic about b---- and his article in the _nineteenth century_--"a fellow who fouls his own nest is always a d----d bad lot--a d----d bad lot," with which sentiment i close a d----d long letter.--from your affectionate son, fred. "atalanta" may be noted, perhaps, as the strongest work achieved by leighton. here _is_ "enormous power," though shown on a comparatively small canvas. for noble beauty of the pheidian type in the grand and simple pose and modelling of the throat and shoulder, it would be difficult to find its peer in modern art, and yet it was only the worthy record of the beauty of an english girl. "flaming june" (a design first made to decorate as a bas-relief the marble bath on which the figure in "summer slumber" reposes), is equally perfect in the fine fulness of the modelling, but it lacks the direct simplicity which gives such a distinguished strength to the "atalanta." in the sketch for "flaming june" reproduced in these pages the pose is better explained than in the completed picture, the foreshortened line of the back and shoulder being confused somewhat by the drapery in the painting. at the age of twenty-five, in the wing-like petals of a cyclamen, leighton had succeeded in securing with the pencil the quality towards which he aimed from the beginning to the end of his studies--and these only ended with his life--namely, absolute completeness as far as human eye and hand can reach completeness in rendering the perfection of nature's forms. notably in "neruccia" and in "psyche" he reached that aim with the brush, but in "atalanta," and in such studies as those for "flaming june," "fatidica," and--imbued with a yet further interest of dramatic feeling--for "clytie," his aim was reached with more freedom and power of touch. the quality of beauty in these works was no invention of his--only, as has been noted before, a discernment and echo in the artist's apprehension of nobler truths in nature than are discovered by the many. they are nobler, because possessing the germ of life and movement. in all nature's forms, beauty and style result from the spring and moving on--the development of growth, whether it requires æons to develop the form as in mountains, years as in trees, or only days as in flowers. in the human limbs there is the further power of varied movement, and in the countenance of varied expressions. the greatest art stamps a suggestion of this power of growth and movement into the form and line expressing the facts it records; and, making it harmonise graciously with perfect structure in nature, the great artist evolves a thing of beauty. in our northern climes, and in our modern civilisation, beauty of form and line excite little genuine emotion. that is reserved for colour, tone, texture, and, in these very latter days, for the cleverness of the executant. the greatest opposer leighton's teaching has had is laziness. students will not take the trouble to go through irksome labour to secure knowledge, therefore they only aim at those qualities which are made comparatively easy by an emotional preference; and such emotional preference is rarely excited by form. there are exceptions, such as watts, whose greatest artistic emotion was excited when he seized the beauty and style in pheidias. he felt also the same enthusiastic excitement over leighton's studies, stamped with a like pheidian quality of style. because the modern eye is so often blind to these qualities, therefore leighton's work has been disposed of by many as merely academical and the result solely of taking inordinate pains! surely those desirous of any true culture might learn one lesson at all events of leighton: the value of catholicity through learning "to master what they reject as fully as what they adopt ... the better motives of men" with whom they are not in sympathy. catholicity is the outcome of the best natures, the best understandings, the best educations. it overrides those subtle egoisms and commercial interests which so often guide while distorting a true judgment in art matters, keeping the preferences of the public wriggling about without any definite instinct or principal on a never truly-convincing dead level. the mainspring of catholicity in art is a fervent reverence for nature. all works in which such fervent reverence is found, in whatever direction it is displayed, are worthy to be admitted into the fold, whether it be form, colour, or tone in nature's aspect--whether it be the stirring whirls of northern tempests, the rural peace of english glades, or the fineness of rarefied atmosphere in the south, as in greek isles and sea. whichever mood of nature appeals to a true artist and inspires in him the sacred fire, and consequently the expression in his touch, should find a place in the heart of the true lover of art. because the æsthetic pores of a music-lover are open to the rapturous tumult of the wildly whirling schumann symphony in a minor, is he, therefore, incapable of being entranced by the rare refinement of palestrina's cameo-like phrases? because he feels a rapturous excitement as the curtain falls at the end of the first act of "lohengrin," can he not also feel a soul-satisfaction in the elevated serenity of bach's "christmas oratorio"? does it not rather denote a want of elasticity in the æsthetic perceptions, a want of flexibility in the sensibilities flavouring somewhat of the philistine, to be touched by a limited range of emotions? because leighton is not whistler, or watts is not sargent, why must the one be admired at the expense of the other? with leighton's rare intellectual acumen he knew well that these limitations in viewing various outlooks on art arose chiefly from a want of wide culture and experience. in the great galleries of europe, among the treasures in the churches of italy, his own vision had been enlarged, and he had felt how nourishing to his own best instincts such enlargement had proved. hence his earnest endeavours when first entering the academy to establish the winter exhibitions of old masters, and later, when president, to give as many facilities as possible for students to travel abroad. probably, it never will be fully realised how greatly leighton's initiations in starting new ventures for young students and artists have helped the real progress of english art. his great modesty and rare tact prevented this initiation from being fully appreciated even at the time. when such an one as leighton is working on great lines, the last thing he thinks of is, who is really achieving the work? the aim has to be accomplished; it matters little who is used as the tool to achieve the work. the real satisfaction to such a nature is the fact that the work _has_ been achieved. perhaps of all the ways in which leighton helped to forward the condition of art in england, the most valuable was his industry in searching out unknown work, discovering what merit existed in it, hunting up the artist, and, by becoming personally acquainted with him, encouraging in every manner his onward progress. what he effected in mason's case with such a rich harvest to the world as the result, he did in many other cases when the artist was a perfect stranger to him. mr. alfred east, the president of the royal society of british artists, writes: "lord leighton was a man of broad sympathies in his appreciation of art, an earnest worker with a lofty purpose and a high ideal. he liked to see these qualities in others, and spoke of the dignity and privilege of being an artist, and lived up to it in his own house. to those who knew him well he was singularly modest about his work, soliciting criticism with a frankness which was as unaffected as it was sincere. he never posed, but was a fellow-worker and a comrade. such were the characteristics of the artist at home. i owe more to his encouragement than to any other influence of my life. our acquaintanceship grew into friendship; he helped me to speak to him as i could speak to no other, of my own aims and ideals. this is the great artist as i knew him." singularly chary of accepting favours or putting himself under any obligation where he did not feel certain he could requite it by any feeling or action of his own, the response leighton's nature made when any person, thing, or place gave him delight was that of a spontaneous, unstinting gratitude. never did any one enjoy more fully the best of blessings--a grateful heart. moreover, once the tender spot of pity touched, a self-ignoring energy of helpfulness and desire to benefit arose, which was at once the most beautiful and the least fully understood trait in his character. it is difficult for many to understand a _passion_ for unselfishness. "we bear with resignation the sorrows of others," is one of the good sayings of walter bagehot. no rule without an exception--leighton did not bear with resignation the sorrows of his friends, nor of those he pitied as overweighted and in any need of help which he could give. no better proof exists of the fineness, the distinction of a nature, or the reverse, than the effect which misfortune or suffering produces on it. pity with leighton was ever allied with profound respect. he gave help as one indulging himself in a privilege rather than as one conferring a benefit. a beautiful story, for which i happen to be the best authority, is interwoven with the last years of his life. [illustration: "memories." by permission of messrs. p. & d. colnaghi, the owners of the copyright] [illustration: "the jealousy of simoetha, the sorceress." ] [illustration: "letty." by permission of mrs. henry joachim] one day, somewhere in the winter of , on opening a gate which leads from our garden to the holland park studios, i saw standing at one of the studio doors a figure which i described to leighton as a "vision of beauty"--a young girl with a lovely white face, dressed in deepest black, evidently a model. needless to say, leighton, ever eager to procure good models, obtained her name from the artist to whom she was sitting when i first saw her, and engaged her as a model for the head. shortly after she began to sit to leighton, he wrote to me saying the young girl was in sad circumstances, and he would be very glad if i could help her by making some studies from her. i agreed, and he arranged with her to give me sittings. she told me that she had recently lost her mother, her father had deserted his family of five girls and two boys, and she with her elder brother were left to support them. she was endeavouring to act the part of mother to her younger sisters and brother. as leighton and i grew to know her better we found her very intelligent and conscientious in acting this part, and she enlisted our sympathies entirely. she confided to me, while sitting one day, that she longed greatly to find something to do more interesting and remunerative than spending her days as a model. she thought she could act. i consulted leighton. his first exclamation was, "_impossible!_ with _that_ voice! how _could_ she go on the stage?" i thought the voice, which had a singularly unpleasant cockney twang in it, might be trained, as i had observed how very eager she was to learn to speak in a more educated manner, quite realising her own shortcomings. leighton came round to my opinion; and, once having made up his mind that she was bent on educating herself for the stage, showed himself as ever the most unselfish and untiring befriender. meanwhile four of these beautiful children became useful to him as models. from the second daughter, who afterwards married an artist, leighton painted "memories," reproduced here; from the third, hetty, he painted "simoetha the sorceress" and "farewell"; but it was the youngest, lina, quite a small child, who delighted him most, and who had a rare, refined charm which must have captivated any child-lover. she took the place of little connie gilchrist of the "cleobouline," the "music lesson," and other of the earlier paintings, in the later pictures. she sat for "sister's kiss," "the light of the harem," "letty," the sleeping group in "cymon and iphigenia," "kittens," in the friezes "the dance" and "music," and "a little girl with golden hair and pale blue eyes"-- "yellow and pale as ripened corn which autumn's kiss frees--grain from sheath such was her hair, while her eyes beneath, showed spring's faint violets freshly born." robert browning. --also the child in "captive andromache." of the sister-mother of this little family, beautiful as she was, leighton declared he never could paint a successful likeness, notwithstanding his attempts in "viola,"[ ] "bianca," "serenely wandering in a trance of sober thought," and "miss dene." her very beautiful throat, however, was reproduced worthily in many of his subject-pictures, and the true dramatic instinct she undoubtedly possessed enabled her to be of help in such pictures as "antigone," "return of persephone," and the last picture, the passionate "clytie." but however useful she proved as a model, leighton never for a moment thought of his own interests before the serious welfare of the young girl's life. he realised that if she was to make a successful actress, it involved serious and concentrated study. one morning i received the following note:-- dear mrs. barrington,--miss pullen will be very happy to sit to you on monday, and will talk over the rest when you meet. you are very kind about it all, as is, indeed, your wont. _p.s._--you see my harassed old head does sometimes remember what i promise. [illustration: studies from dorothy dene for "clytie." leighton house collection] and later:-- holland park road, kensington, w. dear mrs. barrington,--i want you to help me in a little conspiracy against (?) our young tragic friend. mrs. glyn frequently urges that she ought, at all events for a time, to give her _whole_ mind and being to the study of her art. i need not say i share that opinion, and i have at last, after infinite trouble and persistence (my _nose_, you know)[ ] induced her to leave off sitting for a _month_, in the hope, if you will all help, of making it a _quarter_. this would, i am confident, be of the greatest value to her, giving her time also to read a little and concentrate her thoughts. i am quite prepared to give up painting from her for three months; but she is in mortal dread lest her other friends should think her unkind and ungrateful for their sympathy. i have told her i believe no such thing, and that i feel sure that schmaltz and you (who work most from her) will, as willingly as i, postpone your studies in order to aid her in so important a matter. she is going to call on you to-day; if you agree with me, _be very firm_--have a _nose_! _refuse_ to paint from her for three months. we succeeded in making the little girl work exclusively at her acting, and leighton, watts, and i frequently visited the school where she was being trained under mrs. glyn, to hear her and her fellow-students perform the pieces they had studied. eventually she appeared in london and in the provinces, and quickly communicated all her successes and failures to leighton and to me. constant notes passed between us as we each received news from our young _protégée_, or when we thought some fresh step might be taken for her advantage. for instance, one of these notes runs as follows:-- dear mrs. barrington,--it has occurred to me that i perhaps seemed this morning what i certainly did not mean to seem, churlish in regard to that letter from irving.[ ] _if miss pullen is now ripe for him to hear her_--this is the most important point (for to go to him _too soon_ would be the most unwise thing possible in view of her getting a good engagement)--and if, having declined a letter on a previous occasion, she has any unnecessary scruple about now asking for one, it will be quite enough for you to tell me from her that she wishes for one, and i will at once write it. _kemp will always be able to tell you where to get at me._ i can write as easily from vienna or constantinople as from here. from exeter dorothy dene wrote to leighton after recounting an unwonted success:-- "don't be frightened that i shall let all this praise turn my head. i know how much better it could be done, and after every scene a great weight falls on my heart that i have done no better. but i like you to warn me; it is good for me, so don't leave off, please. i am sorry that your friend, lord mount-edgcumbe, will not see me, and that you had the bother of writing for nothing. please do not fash yourself about finding out any one else. i must leave off now, as it is time to go to the theatre, and you will not get this any sooner if it were posted to-night than to-morrow. _sunday, th._ "to continue, our lodgings are very comfortable, and nearly opposite the theatre; the food is good, and very fairly cooked, but i am very pleased with the tuck parcel; we had one of the birds when we arrived, the other things we have hardly touched. i thought it better to save them for places where the food may be bad. please send me mr. b. tree's letter. i thought as you think about its advice. thank you so much for _your_ kind advice and gentle reminders, i shall try so hard to remember all you have said to me at different times; and if i do become anything in the future, i shall owe all the best part of it to you." an engagement for two matinées was made for her début in london. "dear mrs. barrington, 'dorothy' acts at the _globe_ on monday and tuesday afternoons," wrote leighton; "i mean to go on monday." i took a party of eight to see her, including the late lord lytton, who took much interest in the stage. after the performance leighton wrote to me, "poor dorothy was paralysed with terror yesterday--but i hope intelligent people will have seen _through_ that." again, later, "she is adding, as she deserves, to the number of her friends, several of whom treat her with really maternal kindness." i can indeed very truly endorse leighton's good opinion. dorothy and three of her sisters were worthy of all the interest shown in them. they were entirely self-respecting, conscientious children, most affectionately devoted to one another, and striving their utmost to improve in every sense, and make themselves worthy of the help they received. naturally they adored their chief benefactor, leighton. unfortunately, dorothy, notwithstanding dramatic gifts, great perseverance and intelligence, lacked charm on the stage. her very beautiful face and throat were not seen to advantage, as they were hardly in proportion with her figure, which was short and too stiffly set to move gracefully on the stage. leighton in fun always called her "the little tee-to-tum," or when she wore a large hat, "the mushroom." as he felt vitality waning and mental effort a greater strain, the little family of pullens had to leighton somewhat the same resting charm that italy had in early days, when he turned from the german austerity in study to the relaxation of the _dolce far niente_ of italian national life. "i go to see them," he used to say, "when i want to let my back hair down and get off the stilts." when leighton was dying, his sister, mrs. sutherland orr, took dorothy into his room. he was too ill to speak, but only smiled to her in answer to her saying, "if i have or ever will do anything worth doing, i owe it all to you--everything i owe to you." it is almost unnecessary, as it is distasteful, to mention that this beautiful paternal attitude leighton displayed towards these orphans was made the subject of ugly gossip--for are there not always the _misérables_ of the world who seek the ugly rather than the beautiful? misinterpreting the beautiful so that it should come within the range of their scandalous arrows, more especially when the darts attack a man in the high position leighton held. some of these offshoots of envy and jealousy came within earshot of leighton's sisters, who thought it well to warn him in a letter that such malice was in the air. he wrote a lengthy answer, ending with the following sentence: "but let me turn away from the whole thing, it has pained me more than enough. i implore you not to reopen it. on the only thing that matters, you are _absolutely assured, if you believe in my honour_. if you hear these rumours again, meet them with a flat, ungarnished denial. let that suffice--it does for me." to a lady friend he wrote still more explicitly, in order, as he said, that there should exist in his own handwriting an implicit and unmitigated denial of the malicious falsehood. leighton never knew under whose auspices this scandal was conducted. as is the case invariably, it was impossible to put the finger exactly on the culprit--for these fulsome things have to be propagated under the rose, in order that they should get a firm root before an authoritative denial can be given. however, after leighton's death, the lie was stated more boldly--even directly to his two sisters. it is necessary, therefore, to include in the account of his life the full and truthful version of the kind and fatherly protection leighton gave to this family. the interests of the kyrle society were another cause which i had in common with leighton. he spoke at the first public meeting that was held in the kensington town hall on january , , and i possess an interesting correspondence with him on the subject, which space will not allow me to quote. the important matter contained in it appears in the following correspondence between mr. t.c. horsfall, the chief mover in establishing the art museum and galleries in manchester, and leighton, together with a discussion on other vital points connected with art:-- _april , about ._ dear sir,--i am probably too late to be of any use, but have nevertheless much pleasure in assuring you once again of the sympathy with which i view your endeavours to bring the refining influences of art in all its forms, and, so to speak, in co-operation on the masses in the vast industrial centre from which you write. i believe that in seeking to elicit and to cultivate their sense of what is beautiful you are opening up to them a deep source of enjoyment, and by opposing good to bad influences, rendering them great and lasting service.--yours very faithfully, fred leighton. * * * * * _february , ._ i have carefully read over the programme of your enterprise, and there is much in it with which i can warmly sympathise. i desire nothing more deeply than to see the love and knowledge of art penetrate into the masses of the people in this country--there is no end which i would more willingly serve; but there is in your programme a paragraph which i cannot too emphatically repudiate--that, namely, which excludes from art, as far as the public is concerned, that which is the root of the finest art as art, the human form, the noblest of visible things. that you should sternly and stringently exclude all work which reveals an offensive aim or prurient mind is what i should be the first to claim, but that you should lay down as a corner-stone of your scheme an enactment which would exclude by implication more than half the loftiest work we owe to art--_nearly all michael angelo_, much of raphael's best, sebastiano del piomba's "raising of lazarus," titian's "bacchus and ariadne," botticelli's "birth of venus"--this is indeed a measure from which i must most distinctly dissociate myself, and which makes it impossible for me to connect my name with an enterprise which would else command my sympathy. [illustration: study in colour for "greek girls playing at ball." by permission of mrs. stewart hodgson] _from the "manchester courier," august , ._ sir frederic leighton on the management of art galleries. to the editor of the _manchester courier_. sir,--on the th and th inst. i published two long letters on the management of art galleries, of some part of which this is a summary:--no one can intelligently and fully enjoy any picture or statue unless he has some measure of three kinds of knowledge. ( ) he must know something about the subject represented, or he cannot enjoy the expression by the work of the artist's feeling and thought; ( ) he must know something of the processes of the art in which the artist has worked, or he cannot know what effects the artist sought or might have sought; ( ) he must know something of the history of the art, or he cannot understand what elements in the work are due to the artist himself and what to his time and place; or enjoy at all some of the finest works ever produced. for the giving of the second and third of these three kinds of knowledge there ought to be subsidiary collections in our manchester galleries, kept distinct from the principal collection, and for the giving of the first kind there ought to be several distinct subsidiary collections, of which some should be for the purpose of giving knowledge of flowers, birds, trees, and the other beautiful objects which are "elements of landscape." as a very large proportion of the people of all large towns are ignorant of all that is interesting in nature, and of all that is noblest and most interesting in history and in contemporary life, and as pictures can very effectively give some knowledge both of nature and of the deeds of men while fulfilling their special function, which is to give certain kinds of æsthetic pleasure, the principal collections in our galleries ought to be used for the purpose of giving knowledge of nature and of noble human nature. a gallery of good pictures of the kind would, by reason of the interest of the subjects represented, attract so much attention that the public would to a far larger extent than now feel the influence of the artistic qualities of pictures. in order to obtain pictures of suitable subjects, the directors of art galleries, instead of only buying pictures in exhibitions and studios as they now do, should, as a rule, revert to the custom which prevailed in the ages when art influenced life deeply, and should ask artists to paint pictures of prescribed subjects. i believe that they would get thus better pictures and at lower prices. many artists certainly would be at their best when they knew they were working to enlighten a great community, and would gladly accept a moderate price for a picture ordered for a public gallery. i sent a copy of my letters to sir frederic leighton, and asked him if he would let me have his opinion respecting the principal suggestions contained in them. with the great kindness which distinguishes him, sir frederic leighton has written me the following letter, which contains advice so valuable that i am sure every person in manchester who cares for art will be glad to have an opportunity of reading it:-- "dear mr. horsfall,--i must apologise for my very long delay in answering your letter--a delay due in great part to lack of time, but in part also to the fact that your questions could not be answered hastily, or without due consideration. i may say at the outset that i very warmly appreciate the depth of your interest in the subject of art, and the constancy of your efforts to spread its influence in manchester; and i am glad to be able to add that on not a few points, i find myself in harmony with your views. "it is evidently not possible for me to touch, within the compass of a letter, upon more than one or two of the matters with which you deal in your two long communications to the manchester press; and, indeed, the question on which you mainly dilate, and in regard to which i am not wholly at one with you, would require to be dealt with at far greater length than is possible to me here. i must content myself with saying what little seems to me sufficient to indicate the grounds of my dissent from you. but first i should like to say a word in passing on the vexed subject of _copies_. "there can be no doubt that it would be an immense advantage to those who cannot travel--that is to say, to the enormous majority of men--to bring before their eyes, through reproductions--if these reproductions were absolutely faithful--the masterpieces to which distance deprives them of access. this is, in the case of sculpture and architectural detail, in a large measure achieved by the means of plaster casts, though it is needless to point out that the capacity of the material robs the reproduction of much of the life and light of the original. with pictures the case is different. the subtle and infinite charm which resides in the _handiwork_ of a master, and in the absence of which half the personality of his work is lost, can hardly ever be rendered by a copyist. for this reason the overwhelming majority of even reasonable copies is to my mind worse than useless. such copies can kindle no enthusiasm, and they virtually misinform the student. it has always seemed to me that the best way to acquaint young people with pictures which they are not able to see is to put before them photographs of the originals, which, besides giving design, form, and light and shade, with absolute fidelity, render, in a wonderful way, the executive physiognomy of the work; and by the side of these photographs free, but faithful, coloured sketches of the pictures should hang, giving the scheme, harmony, and tone of the colour, but not, like finished copies, professing an identity with the original, which is never achieved. "turning now to what you say on the subject of the acquisition of works for a public gallery, i should at once dissuade you from any idea of giving definite commissions--i mean commission to paint specially selected subjects. i have always felt very strongly that artistic work, to be of real value, must be the outcome of entirely spontaneous impulse in an artist. i believe that in the immense majority of cases work done under any other conditions lacks vitality and sincerity, and will not show the worker at his best. a subject which does not impose itself unbidden on the artist will never elicit his full powers. i have myself on that ground for many years past invariably declined to paint under any kind of restriction. "neither does your idea of--practically--refusing encouragement to any work which does not commemorate a noble deed, and, if possible, the noble deed of a well-known personage, commend itself to me. it seems to me, on the contrary, to be a harmful one, inasmuch as it misdirects the mind of a people, already little open to pure artistic emotion, as to the special function of art. this can, of course, only be the doing of something which it _alone_ can achieve. now, direct ethical teaching is specially the province of the written and the spoken word. a page or two from the pen of a great and nobly-inspired moralist--a newman, say, or a liddon, or a martineau--can fire us more potently and definitely for good than a whole gallery of paintings. this does not, of course, mean that a moral lesson may not indirectly be conveyed by a work of art, and thereby enhance its purely moral value. _but it cannot be the highest function of any form of expression to convey that which can be more forcibly, more clearly, and more certainly brought home through another channel._ you may no more make this direct _explicit_ ethical teaching a test of worth in a painted work than you may do so in the case of instrumental music; indeed by doing so you will turn the attention of those before whom you place it from the true character of its excellence--you will, so to speak, mis-focus their emotional sensibility. it is only by concentrating his attention on essentially artistic attributes that you can hope to intensify in the spectator that perception of what is beautiful in the highest, widest, and fullest sense of the word, through which he may enrich his life by the multiplication of precious moments akin to those which the noblest and most entrancing music may bestow on him through different forms of æsthetic emotion. it is in the power to lift us out of ourselves into regions of such pure and penetrating enjoyment that the privilege and greatness of art reside. if, in a fine painting, a further wholly human source of emotion is present, and if that emotion is more vividly kindled in the spectator by the fact that he is attuned to receive it by the excitement of æsthetic perception through the beauty of the work of art as such, that work will gain no doubt in interest and in width of appeal. but it will not therefore be of a loftier order than a great work in architecture or music--than the parthenon, for instance, or a symphony of beethoven, neither of which preaches a direct moral lesson. "but i am being led away into undue length without the possibility, after all, of doing more than roughly indicate the grounds of my dissent from a rather vital article of your creed--a dissent which will, i am afraid, jar on you in proportion to the great sincerity with which you hold your faith. i may say, by the way, that i dwelt at rather greater length on this very subject in my first presidential address to the royal academy, delivered on th december .--and, herewith, i remain, dear mr. horsfall, yours very truly, fred leighton. " holland park road, kensington, "_august , _." examples of the kind of copies which sir f. leighton recommends can be seen in the art museum in no. room. we have there a photograph of the "adoration of the magi" of paul veronese, with a series of studies by mr. f. shields of the composition, the light and shade, and the arrangement of colour in the picture. these copies suffice to prove that such a collection as sir f. leighton recommends would be of the greatest value and interest. may i say with regard to two points in the letter, that my proposal to use some parts of the collections in our galleries for the purpose of revealing the beauty of nature and the greatness of human nature, does not involve any belief that the giving of ethical teaching ought to be one of the functions of pictures, and that the proposal is made partly for the purpose of increasing the width of appeal of works of art. while trying to make that appeal reach a large part of the community, we may usefully teach, by means of other parts of the collections, that the excellence of paintings has no relation to ethical teaching. with regard to the influence on the artist of the choice by others of his subjects, i think that sir f. leighton is misled by his own great gifts. a man of remarkably wide culture, and of great poetical power, he has been enabled, by the great range and strength of his imagination, to choose subjects giving ample scope for the exercise of the qualities peculiar to the painter, and yet appealing strongly to the powers of thought and feeling of all fairly educated people. to such a man, and to such a man only, spontaneous impulse can now be a sufficient guide in the choice of his subject; and to such a man, and only to such a man, the choice of his subject by other persons of intelligence would be a harmful restriction. in every picture gallery it is but too obvious that the majority of even able painters, though unrestricted by the will of any committee, are impeded by more hampering restrictions than any intelligent committee would impose, and are unable to find subjects interesting both to themselves and to others. for many able painters the intelligent choice by others of subjects for their work would remove, and not impose, restrictions. it must be remembered that the subjects of the works of pheidias, of cimabue, of giotto, and indeed those of most of the works which have been much cared for, were chosen for, and not by, the artists.--yours, &c., t.c. horsfall. the following letter is mr. horsfall's answer to the one published in the _manchester courier_, august , :-- swanscoe park, near macclesfield, _august , _. dear sir frederic leighton,--it is most kind of you to answer my letter so fully. i shall show my gratitude by doing my best to make your counsel as useful as possible to manchester. the system which you suggest for giving some idea of masterpieces which are too distant to be visited seems to me to be admirable, and i cannot but believe that it will be adopted in one of our manchester galleries. with regard to the advisableness of choosing for public galleries chiefly pictures of noble subjects respecting which most people have, when they see the pictures, or can be expected to gain, some knowledge, though i feel the great weight of your argument, i am still of the same opinion. i may say this without presumption, because the great question which we are discussing: "how can art be made most useful to england?" involves the two other questions: "what are the best conditions under which artists can work?" and "how can the best work of artists be made to influence the rest of the community?" in considering the second of these questions an artist is, i think, impeded by his special gifts, while i, not an artist, aided by the _qualités de mes défauts_, and by the results of several years of experiment in the use of pictures, believe myself to have gained much trustworthy knowledge! speaking from the standpoint which i have thus reached, i should say that whilst the artist is most conscious of the analogy which exists between painting and instrumental music, there is really a much closer analogy between painting and poetry, or between painting and song, and that it is this closer analogy which should guide the action of the directors of public galleries. painting deals, while instrumental music does not, with subjects respecting which we think and feel, and it must accept the results for good and evil of this; its products cannot be, as instrumental music is, without definite relation to our feeling and thought, and a simply neutral relation being impossible, the relation must be ennobling or debasing in some degree. i think that my analysis of the conditions which must be fulfilled if the relations is to be an ennobling one was sound. in asking that painters shall choose subjects pure and lovely "and of good report," i am not asking that painting shall leave its special function--shall cease to do that which it can do better than any other art; but only that it shall recognise that its function differs from that of instrumental music, and is the creation in us of a symphony of feeling or emotional thought and enjoyment of form and colour, and human skill, and love of beauty.--with very many thanks, i am, dear sir frederic leighton, yours sincerely, t.c. horsfall. holland park road, kensington, w., _august , _. dear mr. horsfall,--i have to thank you for your kind and interesting letter of the th. knowing of old the views you entertain, and the radical divergence which exists between them and my own, i had fully anticipated the spirit of your answer; in fact, it almost seemed to me when i wrote at some length the other day that i ought to explain that it was out of deference to your wish and in high appreciation of the long and earnest thought which you have given to a grave subject that i did so, rather than in the hope that my views would carry conviction or commend themselves to you. the divergence between us is, as i said, at the root of things, and is one on which i do not think experience either qualifies or disqualifies us to judge. the question is not what effect pictures may have had on certain people, but what the _proper_ function of art is. the question is theoretic rather than practical. _if_ the primary function of art is definitely didactic, _if_ its first duty is to inculcate a specific moral truth, then, indeed, there is, as you very rightly say, no neutral ground. either the teaching is wholesome or it is mischievous. meanwhile, our brief correspondence only throws into stronger light the impossibility to which i believe i alluded in my first letter, of dealing with such a subject within the compass of a letter, and in broad and sweeping outlines. so, for instance, when i used instrumental music as a parallel, i did not for a moment mean to describe its province as being identical with that of painting. neither, on the other hand, would you, i presume, in instancing song on your side wish to be taken too literally; for you would have, according to your theory, to excommunicate, let us say, for instance, schubert, the king of song-writers, who has played on more varied chords of feeling and imagination than any other musician of his kind, and of whom i am not aware that he ever inculcated (i feel pretty certain that he never meant to inculcate) a definite moral lesson. but i am beginning again. let me at once draw rein, and abandoning a barren, however interesting controversy, remain, dear mr. horsfall, yours sincerely, fred leighton. holland park road, kensington, w., _august , _. dear mr. horsfall,--before starting for my holiday, of which i stand in much need, i write one line to acknowledge and thank you for your amiable and interesting letter, which shows me, i am very glad to see, that we are much less divided in opinion than i should have gathered from what you had previously written, and indeed printed. judgments given as absolute in your letters to the manchester press are shown by the commentary which your last letter furnishes to be in a manner conditional, and without that commentary your words were rather misleading. i was not unnaturally a little startled--i, who do not think a "subject" in the ordinary sense of the word imperative at all--to find you condemn the purchase of yeames's "arthur and hubert" (which, for the element of human emotion, certainly satisfies the aristotelian demand in reference to tragedy), because the emotion does not turn on an heroic act; and i may say, in passing, that i am unable to see how a scene in which deep pity for the helpless is aroused, can be justly described as a "horror which it is foolish to try to realise." meanwhile, i fully feel the practical difficulty which your last letter describes. it is a difficulty of the most perplexing kind. for it must be evident that whilst with a people of strong moral fibre and an almost entire absence of æsthetic sensibility--at all events, on the side of form--you may indirectly insinuate some perception of the beautiful--of that essence which lifts us out of ourselves--under the cover and pretext of a _moral_ emotion--we cannot ignore the danger of producing the exactly opposite effect of confirming the dully-strung spectator in the belief that the stirring of that moral emotion is in fact the _raison d'être_ of the work. one is, of course, glad, as the world goes, that the doors of righteousness should be opened, even by the wrong key; but one would still more desire that the door which yields only to that key should not itself remain closed. pray do not take the trouble to acknowledge these parting words: but believe me, very truly yours, fred leighton. with regard to leighton's acute artistic sense of fitness when it was a matter of chosing a site for buildings or monuments, so that such placing should give them their full value of effect, i remember, after a site had been decided on for cleopatra's needle in london, leighton vehemently denouncing the idea of placing it where it now stands. the conversation we had respecting it was recalled by finding the following letter:-- dear sir,--it is a source of regret to me that i am unable to be present as a listener at the discussion to-morrow. meanwhile the question of the base, though a very important one, is in my mind very secondary to that of the site, and the (in my poor opinion) radical wrongness of the present selection much mars my interest in the whole affair. a monument which, intended to be conspicuous, is not the _focus_ of the avenues that lead to it, i think against the most primary perceptions of effect. two magnificent avenues give access to cleopatra's needle, the finest river and the finest embankment in europe; _both of these run past it_ as if they had forgotten it. i may add that what would only have been feeble is rendered worse than feeble by the (of course accidental) semblance of matching with the short tower over the way. pray excuse the great haste in which i write and the consequent abruptness of my expressions, and believe me, yours very truly, fred leighton. mr. j. goodall, in his reminiscences, says: "many years before it was removed from egypt i used to see it lying on the seashore near alexandria. i agree with lord leighton's opinion that it was not erected on a suitable site. it is a pity it was not put up in front of the british museum." leighton, needless to say, took infinite interest in sir henry tate's splendid scheme for memorialising the success of a commercial life, by presenting to his nation a gallery in which the best british works of art might find a home, and, moreover, by the gift to the public of the nucleus of such a collection. it was truly amazing to see the amount of time and trouble which leighton devoted to this scheme, considering how full to overflowing his life already appeared to be. but, whether it was a question of a splendid enterprise, or a struggling artist of whom the world had never heard, or even an earnest amateur, once his sense aroused that he could be of help, leighton manufactured time somehow to give that help.[ ] but the high-minded, public-spirited view sir henry tate took of the responsibilities of wealth specially enlisted leighton's sympathies, and he evinced an intense interest in helping to work out the great idea. another matter which concerned him very seriously was the fact that a work by the greatest sculptor england can claim--alfred stevens--purporting to memorialise our great warrior, the duke of wellington, was allowed to remain unfinished and shunted away in a side chapel of st. paul's cathedral, instead of being completed and placed in the position for which it was designed. the following letters to mr. henry wells show that in leighton had induced others to view the matter in the same light:-- holland park road, _august , _. dear wells,--the list for the memorial committee is practically complete, and though it is not in every particular the list which you or i might have drawn up, it is a good one, and as i told you i think in a previous note, i have not liked to interfere too much, as agnew has so zealously taken the work on himself. i meant to send you the list, but have cleverly come away from home (i am writing at the senior united service club) without it. i have of course asked agnew to add his own name; for the academy i have proposed to him the four trustees--not as trustees, but because they offer a ready-made group in a body where none is afore or after--sir j. gilbert, linton, and coutts lindsay will complete the artistic section for the present. the next step, as i have suggested to agnew, is to get at the dean of st. paul's--this i have offered to do. a chairman will have to be appointed; i should suggest, or rather have suggested, the d. of cleveland--if he joins; i believe his answer has not yet come in. and there must be a banker: then a letter from the committee should appear in the _times_ inviting adhesions and subscriptions, to be published from time to time: is all this in harmony with your own view? are you not afraid that the moment when "everybody" (for _our_ purposes it _is_ everybody) is leaving town or has left it--i go myself in a few days--is a very bad one? many people lose sight of their _times_, or would not write from the country or foreign parts. how would it strike you to wait a month or two, having now laid the foundation? it is a nice point. there are pros, but there are also cons. with all good wishes, yours sincerely, fred leighton. you have seen no doubt in your _times_ that we mean to exhibit our lamented friend's work in a worthy manner. _p.p.s._--by-the-bye, _s. kensington_ ought to be represented. i will ask agnew to write to t. armstrong. [illustration: "bacchante." by permission of messrs. henry graves & co., the owners of the copyright] [illustration: study in oils for "bacchante." by permission of mrs. stewart hodgson] holland park road, kensington, w., _november , _. dear wells,--best thanks for your cheque and kind note. you will be glad to hear that the removal is going on capitally. i did not wait for the full money-promise; i had _determined_ to do the thing, and i set it going on my personal guarantee when we were £ short of the full sum. _now_ we have the money, young lehmann munificently sending a cheque _for that amount_. the great monument having been moved to its right position, the next question was to raise funds for the completion of the work. this was perplexing leighton during the last weeks of his life. having written a letter to the _times_ in , and the donations having come in but scantily, he was puzzled to know what further steps to take. leighton himself, so distinguished a sculptor, took a special interest in all efforts to promote the knowledge and love of plastic art. when, therefore, his old friend mr. walter copland perry called a meeting at grosvenor house--at which the late duke of westminster presided--to lay before it his scheme for the formation of a gallery of casts from all the best greek and roman statues, leighton was one of the most zealous and active promoters of the scheme.[ ] leighton was commissioned by the government to execute the medallion for queen victoria's jubilee in . m. edouard lantéri, now professor of modelling at the south kensington schools, assisted him in carrying out the design, and became an ardent admirer of the president. m. lantéri described to me how certain difficulties occurred in the casting. leighton said they must work on till these were set right--and they _did_ work eighteen hours on end. all to whom the work of watts, burne-jones, and rossetti has appealed, owe leighton a debt of gratitude. before the grosvenor gallery exhibition of his work took place in , watts, in talking to me of the unpopularity of the pictures he felt most inspired to paint, would often give as a proof of this that, with one exception, no one had ever cared to engrave his pictures; and truly, without mr. fred hollyer's photographs the general public would have known little of the special value of this work, nor of the art of rossetti and burne-jones. mr. hollyer's photographs are not merely copies--they have as art an atmosphere of charm in themselves; they render what may be called the _soul_ of a picture. he writes:-- "about i received a letter from baroness ----, requesting me to call upon her in order to arrange to photograph the collection of works of art in her country house. she had employed other photographers, but the results had not been satisfactory. i carried the matter through, and not only received a considerable amount in remuneration, but was given great encouragement to persevere with my work at a time when i had nearly decided on going to america. the baroness never mentioned who it was that had recommended me, and though i had been constantly working for him during many years, it was not till six months after his death that i discovered it was lord leighton who had been my good friend. i should be glad to bear testimony to his great heart and loving kindness, and do regret not having been able to thank him myself." leighton was made a baronet in . the following letter from gladstone, written in , refers to leighton having submitted to him the names of millais and watts as artists worthy to receive the honour, at the same time begging him earnestly not to include his own:-- _private._] downing street, whitehall, _june , _. my dear sir f. leighton,--your letter has given me much pleasure. i can assure you that i in return highly appreciate the generous spirit you have shown, and i value the advice you kindly tendered in this matter of art honours. i am reporting rather fully to her majesty on our conversation of monday, and on the personal abnegation on your own part, which commands my cordial respect.--i remain always, very faithfully yours, w.e. gladstone. on watts declining the honour, leighton was at first much vexed; but watts, having explained to him the reason which made it inadvisable for him to accept a baronetcy, leighton fully, as he told my husband and myself, saw the necessity of his declining. since the first years when leighton settled in london he had been favoured by the personal friendship of many members of the royal family, who very greatly esteemed him. he not only attended the state banquets and entertainments to which he was summoned, but was frequently the guest at receptions of a private and a more intimate character at marlborough house and elsewhere. in these pages there is only space to note a few, among the very many directions in which he served the art interests of his country. in foreign lands, and in the colonies no less than in england, he extended the knowledge and appreciation of the best english art by his unwearying exertions; and yet it must always be remembered he ever remained "a workman first, an official after." professor church, appointed in to the professorship of chemistry in the royal academy of arts in london, has preserved letters and notes from leighton on the subject of pigments.[ ] it is almost incredible that his mind could have penetrated with such accuracy into all the details of his craft as fresh questions arose as to the value of new vehicles and colours, considering his endless labours connected with the wider interests of art, and the absorbing nature of his own work. but there exist over sixty letters, and more than twenty cards, dating from to november , two months before his death, in which he proves his insistency to master thoroughly every detail of his craft. he wrote: "it is, i feel, rather a duty in me to ascertain about these various new vehicles." the following extracts may prove of interest and value to painters.[ ] _ th._ dear prof. church,--i write to acknowledge your letter of the th, the information in which (jaune de naples) is to me of very great importance indeed. i believe hills to be really anxious to help us in the matter of medium. i should be peculiarly glad if we could send forth a thoroughly trustworthy, hard-drying, supple, and not yellowing vehicle. let us consider it. i find myself using a mixture, roughly, of equal parts of amber varnish (roberson's) and oil of spike; and, say, a sixth of the whole of poppy oil (roberson's): that is, / amber, / spike, / poppy; but i vary according to the work; and again i don't know what roberson's amber varnish is, it does not seem _very_ drying. of course one would want a good middle drying power, to which, _mixing the ingredients_, one might add any one at will. i think that "siccatif de haarlem" has about that middle quality, if i remember it rightly. it is, i think, copal, poppy oil, and turps.; but it seemed to me to yellow a little, why, i don't know; poppy should not darken. chromophile is delightful up to a certain point, and then the work sinks extraordinarily blind and tallowy; and as you want something in the way of varnish at the end, it seems desirable to carry that or _some_ varnish in a moderate degree right through. chromoph. becomes a little _milky_ in a bottle with spir. of turp., and turns bright green when left in a dipper. your proposal to _report_ to us annually is very valuable, and could be worked to the _general_ advantage. * * * * * i am delighted to find that you are in co-operation with my friend mr. hills, who has a warm and genuine desire to serve art and his friends the artists. i find his poppy oil _clarified with charcoal_ very delightful stuff. am i wrong in thinking the action of the charcoal on it has been to render it more _drying_? i think that a vehicle made with that oil, amber varnish, and oil of spike will be a very satisfactory vehicle indeed; particularly if you can, between you, _bleach_ the oil yet more. chromophile is quite colourless. the mastic varnish _that won't bloom_ will be a great triumph. _pace_ our detractors, it shall, i hope, be seen in time that the r.a. is not unmindful of the needs of artists even in the matter of material appliances. * * * * * i observe that you speak in your valuable manual of aureolin as a _very slow-drying_ colour when ground with oil; finding, in use, that _roberson's_ aureolin dries, on the contrary, extremely quick--it is always absolutely dry the next day, and i use no vehicle but bell's medium, _i.e._ linseed and oil of spike and turps.--i wrote to ask him what he grinds the colour in. he answers "_pure linseed oil without the addition of any drier._" this puzzles me. where is the solution? are there different kinds of aureolin? when you have a leisure moment send me a post-card. * * * * * among the madders in your handbook _scarlet_ madder does not appear; i hope it is not a treacherous colour; i use it freely, but only mixture with other _dark_ colours, to give them richness. i also use cadmium _red_; is that wrong? a line on a post-card will greatly oblige. _p.s._--of course i only use cadmium red when i want a _very_ deep orange in drapery or sky--nothing could replace it. * * * * * _feb. , ._ here is a little problem: i thought all _burnt_ colours were _ipso facto_ sound. roberson tells me that burnt white (chremnitz do.), a lovely colour _like ivory_, plays most amazing tricks, darkens and lightens again in rapid succession. why? when you are in long acre make him show you his samples. * * * * * thanks for your letter. i don't use any particular colours other than those you mentioned in your lectures, although i thought of trying deep yellow madder again; i used to like it very much. i suppose you have the list--it is a very long one--of edouard's colours. smith is his agent here ( charles street, middlesex hospital). i use one or two colours (tadema i think _all_) from mommen's in brussels; his burnt sienna is _superb_. asphaltum would reward study; it was _universally_ used by the venetians, and seems never to have cracked with them. i am very glad that you are steadily pursuing your collection of specimens and experiments, which i hope will by degrees become an exhaustive one, and of infinite value to the profession. _grounds_, too, will deserve much attention. * * * * * kindly tell me whether there is any harm in putting a _thin_ coat of mastic, softened perhaps with a drop or two of oil, over works _finished quite recently_ but _begun_ a year or more ago? if i understand rightly, cracking is caused by atmospheric action through the _back_ of the canvas, by _distension_ of underlying partially soft paint and, consequent disruption of the upper, harder layer of varnish. if the first painting is a year old, is it not tough enough to resist the atmosphere, and is it not _anyhow_ pretty safe when the canvas is _backed_? i suppose "mutrie yellow" is quite safe alone and mixed with other pigments? * * * * * thanks for your note. yes, i do like the white oil, but i add copal to it if i want it to be very drying, or mix copal on the palette with a slow-drying colour, say a lake. this, i suppose, is all right; if so, don't trouble to acknowledge this. the oil of orange is delightful on account of its smell, but dries less quickly than turpentine (rectfd. spirit). is it not _always_ better to have _some_ resin in a picture _throughout_ since it has to be varnished at the end? * * * * * _april , ._ i am so much enamoured with the method, so far as vehicle is concerned, which i have used during the last year, that i should like to feel quite certain that it is _absolutely safe_. i use a "single-primed" canvas, and underpaint with "bell's medium" and rect. spir. turps., which, under your advice, i have in _small_ bottles, so that using it freely a bottle lasts a very short time, and the stuff is therefore always fresh. the mixture i _use up to the end_ (except when i now and then use the pigment _alone_), and letting the turps. rather _preponderate_ as i advance. i have found to my amazement that this mixture dries even in winter weather excellently, and that i can use with it even scarlet madder and aureolin, which, at least the former, hitherto i never attempted to use except stiffened with amber or copal; and i further find that this mixture, though of course it "sinks" to some extent (and especially with the blues), in the main bears up very fairly, incomparably better than i should have expected, and in fact quite enough. before beginning to paint i rub over the part each time with bell's medium and saliva nearly equal parts, or say five oil to four saliva beaten up with the knife on the palette to a white mucilage. this, if left alone, makes a good varnish, and is delightful to paint into. so far, so good; at least i suppose so. (do you see any elements of danger? cracking? darkening?) but at the end something must go over it all, if only to lock it up (i suppose), certainly to get uniform gloss and strength. i propose in the academy to put roberson's medium over the whole of my large one and to retouch with the same. a portrait on to which i _don't_ intend to work i should cover with mastic and _a little poppy oil_; there is no harm in this, i suppose, and the small quantity of mastic is not likely to yellow, is it? i know this mixture _won't come off_, but why should it? * * * * * _may , ._ messrs. reeves send me a colour in which i delight, but which i have hitherto always avoided as being unsafe, to wit, indigo. i suppose one ought not to use it, ought one? although my old friend, and in some ways my master, robert fleury, employed it extensively in _underpainting_ blue draperies. * * * * * _december , ._ i have got a recipe--a very simple one--from a friend of mine in italy, who paints a good deal in distemper, and who in technical matters is quite the most leery person i ever came across. in this recipe he mentions what he calls "gum damar," which he, in his characteristic ignorance of spelling (for italians are not very strong in orthography), writes with an apostrophe, d'amar. now i presume he means "gum dammar" (i believe there is such a thing, is there not?), but i should like to feel sure. perhaps you will kindly enlighten me on a post-card. the distemper itself is the simplest thing in the world. it is only a proportion of water and yolk of egg (he deprecates the use of vinegar), to which he adds a certain number of drops (i have not the recipe by me) of this gum. of course it would be important not to use the wrong gum. hence the trouble i am giving you. * * * * * _january , ._ i have just received from perugia the enclosed sample of gum dammar, which you were kind enough to say that you would report upon to me. a few drops of this (by-the-bye, i do not know how it is to be dissolved) and the yolk of an egg stirred in water, form the distemper used by my friend mariani. i don't know whether i told you that he is rather an interesting fellow. he is one of those extremely dexterous italian workmen-artists who know and can work in every material, and whose forgeries of sixteenth century bric-à-brac, cassoni, reliefs in pastiglia, &c. &c., have, i am afraid, not infrequently been purchased as original by very crafty persons. several friends of mine who use distemper, and he amongst the number, tell me that by putting a preparatory coating of distemper over thoroughly dry oil, you can with perfect safety interpose a layer of _painting_ in distemper between two paintings in oil--an extremely valuable thing for us _for recovering quality_. * * * * * _january , ._ many thanks for your valuable letter. i have had the information entered in a little book, where i keep the outpourings of your wisdom on matters chemical. thanks also for the card, in which you give me a somewhat long name for my gomme dammar. i suppose in an appeal to a chemist the _first_ portion would suffice. * * * * * _february , ._ many thanks for your valuable note. i may say in passing that the specimen of "ruby madder" sent by mr. laurie appears to me to be inferior in brilliancy to both the rose madder and the madder carmine furnished by messrs. roberson; and i have no reason to doubt that the latter colours are perfectly trustworthy. it will give me great pleasure to receive the dedication of your book, which i look forward to seeing with pleasure, and using with profit. * * * * * _may , ._ many thanks for your note, which seems to open up an interesting point. i gather from what you say that the mode of _manufacture_ of a colour may affect its drying properties over a range extending from drying very slowly to drying very rapidly; and i shall be much interested in hearing what your experiments lead to under this head. * * * * * _january , ._ many thanks for your letter. i see that i had better wait for a final opinion until the few months have expired which you still require as tests of permanence. meanwhile, i am a little unhappy to see in the case of colour after colour the expression "semi-permanent." i do not quite know what that means. let me know _at your leisure_ whether it means permanent under certain conditions, and, if so, what; or merely in a general way that the pigment stands, but only pretty well. the rosso saturno i quite understand is to be set aside. another perplexity is in regard to the burnt madder. if the madders are in themselves sound colours, as i have always understood them to be, how do they lose their permanence by burning? i should like to use the gialetto, and i rather gather from what you say that i may do so. i hear with interest what you tell me of your new varnish. as for myself, i have got to dislike the use of any resins in my work to such an extent that i have completely set them aside. of course when a picture is finished it requires some gum, not only to protect it, but to bring up the colour to its full value. will you let me know--but this will do at your leisure, for the time has not come yet--whether a picture being painted as i paint mine, exclusively with bell's medium and turpentine from first to last, and, i may add, worked on up to the last moment of sending in, _i.e._ a fortnight later, may on the walls of the academy be safely varnished with this new material of yours, either alone or diluted with a little poppy oil? i look forward with interest to heyl's madder green. * * * * * _december , ._ i shall certainly try the heyl's madder green, which i hear of through you for the first time. laurie's daffodil cadmium is very pretty. i have got some; but my new delight now is yellow cobalt, which you have found to be absolutely safe, and which is absolutely delightful as a colour. * * * * * my tempera is come from italy, and i am told that it is made of the tails (feelers?) of the cuttle-fish (sepia). would you like to look at it again from curiosity? i understand that with the reservation that it darkens, i may use it with impunity in, under, and with the oil--that is enough for _my_ purpose. * * * * * _october , ._ will you kindly advise me on the tempera, of which i send a tube? it is used by my friend, prof. costa, who gave it me; he likes it vastly. it coalesces _with oil_; he uses it also by itself _between_ two paintings in oil. i have often longed for something to keep down the _greasiness_ and _slipperiness_ of oil paint when correcting or going over a surface often, oil and water _do_ coalesce sufficiently. the most luminous thing i ever painted (and it has stood like a rock) was painted (or certainly _thickly under_painted) with a vehicle made of _starch and oil_. what _this_ medium is, i don't know. please advise. * * * * * _march , ._ forgive secretary again. i am much obliged by your note, and read with great satisfaction what you say about newman's golden ochre. i shall now, until i hear from you further, adopt the motto "ex uno disce omnes," and assume that the _yellow_ ochre is equally sound and serviceable; although the colour is so much finer than any yellow ochre of my acquaintance that i cannot quite close my mind to a lurking suspicion that it is stimulated or refreshed by some foreign ingredient. * * * * * _march , ._ many thanks. you send me good tidings. the yellow ochre is by far the finest i have ever seen. * * * * * i enclose, because we think (watts and i) that it will interest you, a specimen of purple _lake_ (_not madder_), such as watts has used _all his life_, which has been baking in the sun for _two_ years; it is slightly browner, but more beautiful than ever, and has, you see, retained its full _body_; this is remarkable. * * * * * _june , ._ very many thanks for your interesting and exhaustive investigations on the french lakes. i observe that in several cases you mention lakes having _cracked_. i presume, however, there is no reason to suppose they would do this when embodied with other colours, and that _if_ otherwise safe they might therefore be used. the purple lake used by our friend watts is furnished to him, i have always understood, by messrs. newton of rathbone place. i am glad to hear so good an account of the pale boiled linseed oil from may & baker, ltd., of battersea. i do not, however, gather from what you say that there can be any reason for substituting it for bell's medium, to which i am much attached, and which, as you know, is, with the admixture of one-third rectified essence of turpentine, the only vehicle i use. this note, of course, requires no acknowledgment--anything you may have to say on these various points will abundantly keep until i get a further account of your investigations on the purple lake. * * * * * many thanks for your valuable caution. amongst the lakes you tried, did you include the garance _nuance brun_ and do. _brun foncé_? both are superb colours, and it would be nice to think one might use them. it is very comfortable to feel that one has a _conscience_ one can tune at shelsley. * * * * * _april , ._ i am about now to take up a large decorative painting for the exchange, a work which cannot be done on the spot on account, _inter alia_, of the darkness of the place, and will, therefore, be carried out here at the studio on _canvas_, and then "marouflé" on the wall. macbeth (a.r.a.), who is also doing one, is using _parris's_ "marble medium," in which, a thousand years ago, i painted two figures for mosaic at south kensington; great brilliancy is obtainable, but i rather fear a certain tendency to look waxy and almost shiny. i myself incline to use gambier _parry's_ material, which i have used on the _wall_ at south kensington and greatly like. but now the question arises, ought the canvas to be _prepared_? and on this i shall be grateful for your opinion, as the matter is very important. g. parry told me that canvas either _could_ or _should_ be prepared for his medium, i don't remember which. roberson's man tells me that madox brown and fredk. shields (i think) both had canvases prepared for a similar purpose. i shall postpone ordering mine till i have your instructions; till when, and always, i am, in much haste. * * * * * _april , ._ many thanks for your letter. i shall, of course, obey your instructions punctually, and substitute paraffin wax for the ordinary brecknell and turner beeswax, as prescribed by parry himself. i will see roberson immediately, for i should not think it right, as he ground the colours and prepared the medium throughout for my two large frescoes at south kensington, to abandon him in favour of laurie, or anybody else. you suggest that i should make a little experiment on a small canvas. do you think that would be necessary? i presume that the material will work exactly as it did before, and that the surface will be--bar the granulation--very much the same as on a wall. i ask this question, because i ought to get to work immediately, and i gather from a reference to your work that it will take several weeks before the process of preparation is complete. i wish i could throw light for you on the verb "maroufler," and should like to know what subterranean connection there is, or can be, between it and the word "maroufle" which is, as you say, being interpreted, a "rascal." at all events, when the moment comes for the operation, i must endeavour to obtain information from france, where the process is in very frequent use. * * * * * _february , ._ a contretemps has occurred of which i think i ought to inform you, as it relates to the very interesting subject of grounds and pigments. robersons, when they came to roll up my fresco to transport it to the exchange, found that either the ground or the pigment--probably both, as they are of the same substance--was extremely brittle and cracked right across, cracking at a rather abrupt tangent from the circumference of the circle; so that they immediately struck work, and declined to go any further. as far as the painting itself is concerned, i do not believe that any serious damage is done, because on re-straining it flat, the cracks are barely perceptible, and probably would not be at all perceptible in _situ_. meanwhile, if any question arises as to the ground, it has occurred to me, and it is on this point i wish to consult you, that the cause may be the substitution of paraffin wax for the ordinary wax hitherto used in gambier parry's material, which, though perhaps not absolutely so durable as paraffin, is sufficiently so, and very malleable. one does not see what else could have cracked in that abrupt and sharp manner--certainly not the copal, which has oil in it and is further made supple by the oil of spike. if it turned out that the paraffin was the peccant element, i should be, _entre nous_, rather glad, because it diminished the facility of the work. * * * * * with reference to the cracking of this work professor church writes:-- this unrolling was begun in very cold weather; if the temperature had been a little higher, nothing of this kind would have taken place. the picture now shows no sign of defect or injury, and is in perfect condition. by substituting _ceresin_, a paraffin obtained from ozokerite or earthwax, for crystalline paraffin, the chance of cracking is obviated. the ceresin, which should have a melting-point of ° or ° fahrenheit, constitutes a safe substitute for the beeswax commonly employed in gambier parry's spirit fresco medium. foggia, _october , _. you will be surprised to get a letter from me with an italian superscription; i am writing thus early before my return to save time. when i was in venice the other day, van haanen spoke to me, _with approval_, of a certain vehicle, of which i had already heard before vaguely, the invention of the french painter, vibert. you probably know of it, as the subject of media has occupied you. there are, it appears, three forms of this medium: the vehicle for painting, the medium for painting _into_ in retouching, and the final _varnish_. as far as i understood van haanen in a hurried conversation--he was a little vague--the painting medium contains no gum, only, he seemed to think, petroleum and oil; i assume that in the final "vernis" there _is_ gum of some kind. i am perfectly satisfied with bell's medium and fresh turpentine for the very little use i make of vehicle in painting; but there is always the difficulty of the _final_ varnish in the academy. i don't like risking mastic or copal _so soon_ on work which contains _nothing_ but oil (and if i ever do use a little, i put poppy oil with it), and the result is that i generally varnish with roberson's medium, which is safe, but i fear a little inclined to _yellow_ in time. now what i want you kindly to tell me, my dear church, is the exact composition of the _three_ vibert media, and your opinion about the safety of using _all three_ in the prescribed order; and this i should like to know on my return at the _beginning_ of november (hence my haste in writing), and also whether i can safely use these vehicles on work _begun in my usual medium_. it is just possible you may not have heard of the vibert vehicles; if so, i would ask you to be so kind as to obtain (of course at _my_ expense) a bottle of each of the mixtures and to test them carefully. a line to say this has reached you would find me at the hôtel royal mazzeri, via settembre, _rome_. with kind regards and anticipated thanks. * * * * * hÔtel royal mazzeri, rome, _october , _. many thanks for your prompt and amiable answer. i shall be interested to hear on my return the upshot of your analysis; but i _hate vernis_ in painting, as bocchini tells us the venetians did, _comme la peste_. i am very glad you are getting on so satisfactorily with your work on the frescoes. in haste (for i have many letters before me). _p.s._--no; i am sorry to say i am no better of my special ailment though my _general_ condition is good. * * * * * holland park road, kensington, w., _november , _. excuse the hand of my secretary. many thanks for your note about vibert's varnishes, which i shall accordingly dismiss from my mind--the varnishes, i mean, not your note. one chapter in which is revealed leighton's serious inner life closed during the years he was president. the last letter which has been preserved from his beloved master, steinle, is dated nd november , frankfurt:-- dear friend,--yesterday evening i received your letter from florence, and answer at once, partly to tell you how delighted i am at the result of the consultation with quarfe, as also at your comfort and well-being, and partly because this part of your letter has greatly roused my curiosity for a second, which shall also tell me something about vienna, verona, and florence. at the same time, however, i want to make use of a pause in my work to tell you that the first three coloured contours are completed. to the painting i dedicated all my small skill, and would have died in order to secure that the drawing and composition should produce a life-like effect; i believe also that these pictures will look like frescoes in their surroundings. some time after this leighton wrote to mrs. pattison the following letter, which proves that to the end he retained his great affection for eduard von steinle. this friend and master died in , but whether leighton made this inquiry before or after that date i do not know, as his letter is not dated:-- dear mrs. pattison,--i saw a paragraph not long ago in the _academy_ which concerned me deeply; it did not _say_, but it implied that my dear old friend and master, ed. steinle (professor at frankfurt a/m) is dead. did you by chance write the note? and do you know when or how he died, if he be indeed dead? his wife has not written to me. i am anxious to have some certainty in the matter. (influenced) "--for good far beyond all others by steinle, a noble-minded, single-hearted artist, _s'il en fut_ ... steinle's is the indelible seal." in making any estimate of leighton's character these words should ever be remembered. they prove how deeply rooted were those feelings on which his principles were grafted. these words were no mere outlet for youthful enthusiasm and affection, but were noted with reference to an account of his life about to be written for publication; therefore we may consider them to be a deliberate statement made for a purpose, when he had reached the zenith of his fame and was already president of the academy. the design by steinle here produced, called _der winter_, in which the artist has drawn his own portrait when old, throws a light on the mind and nature of leighton's master, whose influence on him for good was greater "far beyond all others." written on the drawing are these lines, penned by steinle:-- giunto è gia 'l corso della vita mia, che tempestoso mar per fragil barca al comun porto ov 'a render si varca giunto ragion d'ogni opera trista e pia. indi l'affettuosa fantasia che l'arte si fece idola e monarca conosco ben quant 'era d'error carca ch' errore è ciò che l'uom quaggiù desia. . . . . . . i pensier miei già de' miei danni lieti che fian se s'a due morti m'avvicino l'una m' è certa, l'altra mi minaccia? . . . . . . ne pinger ne scolpir fin più che queti l'anima volta a quell' amor divino ch'aperse a prender noi in croce le braccia. [illustration: "der winter" drawing by eduard von steinle] no other member of leighton's family was ever known to have been an artist, and neither his parents nor his sisters pretended to any knowledge of painting; but respecting literature he had an interest in common with both his sisters, also a very strong sympathy existed between mrs. matthews and leighton in their love for music. in answer to a letter from mrs. orr relating to mr. augustine birrell's well-known book, leighton wrote, "i have read 'obiter dicta,' and am much charmed with its delicate humour and ease of its style. i thought 'truth seekers' charmingly written." with reference, however, to the browning chapter he continues:-- browning's obscurity hides a shorthand of which he keeps the key in _his_ pocket. a matter of form, _not_ of matter, as "o.d." hath it. browning is not abstruse; he is a _deep_ thinker, who _therefore_ (_vide_ "o.d.") requires obscure language; he is a most ingenious dialectician and a subtle analyst; but he is not a great poet on _that_ account--he is a great poet because of his magnificent central heat, and the surface of interests over which he sheds it. all this is rather late in the day to remark, and one would not be exasperated by his friends if one had not a sort of feeling that they _have_ done something to mar him. you say he would not be obscure if he _knew_ it?--_distinguons_. his obscurity is not intentional--of course--it is inherent in a style which is strongly personal, and therefore sincere--but is it in no degree _wilful_?--does he _not_ accept, virtually, some such (absolutely false) view of his obscurity as "o.d.'s"? a pity it certainly is; browning is the last man who in his heart _wishes_ to touch only the few--nobody knows better than he does that that is not the characteristic of the greatest poets, and that not for that is a poet's soul kindled to a white heat. meanwhile, here _is_ the fact that men of average culture and average brains (i claim both, for an example), and _desirous_ of _understanding_, as well as full of admiration for his powers, often get at his meaning only by considerable effort, and sometimes not at all, and that not because the thought is obscure, but because it is wilfully written in cypher. the following letter to a friend of his sister's contains a criticism of leighton's on goethe's _sprüche_ under the head of "kunst":-- _private._] holland park road, kensington, w., / / . dear mr. bailey saunders,--complying with your wish, expressed through my sister, mrs. orr, i have gone carefully through the _sprüche_ under the head "kunst," and have marked certain passages. i have, however, deferred writing till the last moment (i am starting presently for the continent), partly because i have been overwhelmingly busy, and partly because i am a good deal "exercised" on the whole matter. to speak with entire frankness, i cannot feel sympathy with the idea of the publication, and feel that the connection of my name with it would imply an adhesion which does not exist. on re-reading more than once the maxims and sayings in question, which i had not seen for many years, i find myself confirmed in my earlier impression of them, that their value is in no way commensurate to the authority of goethe's great name. some of them are, in my opinion, wholly misleading and some obscure; some commonplace, some irrelevant to the subject. again, my markings do not by any means always mean assent; and, on the other hand, the discrimination between the value of a marked paragraph is often a nice one, and is not represented by the difference between selection and omission, which, _on the face of it_, seems assent and dissent. in sum, i ask myself what the outcome is--what _is_ the selection? it does not give to the world an important or instructive intellectual possession; it _seems_ to express the selection of the best by a particular individual (who does not spontaneously desire to make such selections), and in _reality_ does _not_ represent anything that he assents to throughout. but why a selection at all? i cannot refrain from asking myself. the interest of these particular _sprüche_ lies in the fact that _they are utterances of goethe's_ (and he gave them with a context)--but then what is the meaning of a selection? you see i speak very bluntly in the matter, but also sincerely; and i have at all events shown my good will.--in much haste, yours faithfully, fred leighton. i am, as i said, just off, but if you wished especially to communicate with me, a line sent _here_ would reach me after some delay. though leighton persisted in affirming that he hardly ever read, the number of letters, and answers to letters from scholars, referring to poems and general literature, which exist in the correspondence he preserved, prove that if he did not read he nevertheless somehow got a knowledge of the inside of books. to a question having reference to the nine muses (he was then painting his frieze "music") which he asked swinburne, he received the answer:-- the pines, putney hill, s.w., _august , _. dear leighton,--i doubt very much whether shelley himself could have answered your question to your satisfaction. his scholarship was that of a clever but idle boy in the upper forms of a public school. his translation from plato, as mr. jowett tells me, and his translation from euripides, as i know by personal experiment, having carefully collated it with the original text, absolutely swarm with blunders, sometimes, certainly, resulting in sheer nonsense. i fancy he may have been thinking of aphrodite urania, and perhaps confounding (as indeed it seems to me that a greek poet might possibly and pardonably have done) the goddess of divine love with the muse who was _not_ the muse of astronomy when she first made her appearance in the theogony of hesiod, but simply the "heavenly one" in a general way, as i gather from a reference to the lexicon. i should have thought calliope or euterpe a fitter head mourner for keats: but probably shelley wished to introduce the most distinguished in the rank of the muses in that capacity, on such an occasion. and if urania was in a certain sense the chief of the nine, she would naturally be most musical of mourners.--ever yours sincerely, a.c. swinburne. as years went on, leighton became more and more enamoured of the beauty to be found in our own islands, and longed, as can be traced in his letters, that his sisters should share with him his intense love of nature. to his elder sister, who was in yorkshire, he wrote in :-- "a broad shoulder of moor, lifted against a great field of sky, is one of the grandest and most pathetic things in nature (see leopardi). the beauty of moorland is that it has a particular poetry and impressiveness for _every_ condition of atmosphere and weather." again:-- "i am very glad you like ilkley so much--moors have an immense fascination for me, but all english scenery of whatever kind has charm for me. it has two immense virtues: first, being entirely of its own _kind_, it never suggests a, to itself, disparaging comparison with the scenery of any other country, and secondly, it is steeped, every fold and nook of it, in english poetry, and is haunted with the murmur of the prettiest of peace-suggesting words: _home_. i wonder whether you both feel as i do the endearing quality in our old green-brown country." it became his habit, in these later years, to visit scotland in september before flying off to his second home. more and more did he realise the marvellous beauty of the scenery there. he told me, shortly before he died, that the most beautiful vision he had ever beheld on earth was the one he saw when approaching skye by sea from the south, when the sun was setting and illuminating the range of the cuillin hills with magic light and colour. he wrote to his father from:-- the highland railway company's station hotel, inverness. accurately the _charmingness_ of scotland, it is the starting-point for everything. but i observe that at the rate of writing i should fill a volume before i had given you the hastiest account of my journey, so i will e'en cut it short and simply say that, taking it altogether, my too brief stay in the highlands has been a source of very great enjoyment to me, if not of any particular benefit to my health, for which indeed it has been too short. i have had more than the usual proportion of fine weather, and am corroborated in my old opinion that for beauty of colouring nothing north of the alps will compare with this most lovely country, and that the wealth and variety of effects of light and shade is altogether unrivalled. unfortunately, working here is very difficult, all the effects are so bafflingly fugitive; nevertheless, i have made three little sketches which, though hasty, will be of value if only to revive my recollections of the effects they very feebly render; they were all done in one day; and no one day since i did them has been such as to make sketching possible--except this the last and one of the most enchanting, which i have spent delightfully but fruitlessly on the top of a coach. from gressoney, st. jean, september , , he wrote to mrs. matthews:-- many thanks for your letter received last night; as it crossed one from me to the dad, which i hope he could read (it was writ large), i should not write again at once (having, of course, nothing to say--except that it is, _pour changer_, a splendid afternoon, and i ought to be out of doors) but that i want you at once to tell the poor old dad how concerned and sorry i am to hear that he has been so ailing, and ailing so long, and how i wonder at his superb power of recuperation. i don't ask in _this_ letter how the dad is, because i am sure he will send me a line in answer to my note to him. but i have another reason for writing at once; i want you, please, to thank lina with best love, for her nice long letter (_she does not want a letter written from here_), and tell her, before it is too late, that i hope she won't give up her ballater without _a very full trial_, because i know that it takes many people a considerable time to get acclimatised to that bracing air. tell her also that i was myself going to suggest an _ausflug_ to braemar; if she goes to the invercauld arms let her use my name, and she will be well treated. i should _peculiarly_ like her to see the lynn of dee--she will only have to scramble five or six yards off the main road to look down into the stream from under some of the grandest old scotch firs in scotland; and i verily believe that the watching for a silent bit of those dark, dark, seemingly bottomless, noiselessly swirling pools, _tiny_ as they are under the hollow grey craig, will, somehow, whisper a big peace and a strange wondering fascination into her being; the whole thing is not bigger than an expensive toy, but it lays a never-failing grip on _me_.[ ]--affectionate brother, fred. to mrs. orr when in scotland:-- _august , ._ if you can manage it go to a favourite haunt of mine, the lynn of dee, quite a tiny tumble of green waters in fantastically scooped grey rocks, no higher than a cottage, under astounding old scotch firs (by-the-bye the grandest tree in the world to my thinking), where i have sat interminably long looking down into the dark deep pools, from which now and then a salmon leaps. to me no spot about there is so fascinating. grand hotel, brufani, perugia, _october , _. dear lina,--well, i am glad you got to the lynn of dee, though sorry that you could not be there in solitude and see it without sitting in a pool of water. i am glad, too, that you saw the salmon leap; i did not mention that most exciting spectacle because it is not by any means _always_ on view--you were in luck; but what you must make for another time is the bit three or four yards _below_ the fall where the vehemence of the winter torrent has scooped and worn pools so deep that as your eye is drawn down past half-hidden submerged rocky shapes you come at last to absolute dark brown night, and whilst you are conscious of a rapid, swirling current, no _sound_, no faintest gurgle even, reaches your ear; the silent mystery of it all absolutely invades and possesses you; that is what i faintly tried to put into my "solitude," of which a photogravure embellishes your staircase. i am vexed that you had so much rain; however, you had a few fine glimpses, and if a rainy day in scotland is like the scotch sawbath, a fine one throws you the gates of heaven. it is curious how much clearer the air is (_when clear_) than we get it south of the tweed. i am glad that the dad has rallied so satisfactorily; tell him, with my love, that i have heard from the gentleman in copenhagen for whom i carved the marble "athlete." he is benighted enough to say that in his opinion it is one of the most important statues of modern times; and he wants my bust, if there is one, for his collection of portraits. [illustration: study in colour for "solitude." by permission of mrs. stewart hodgson] leighton also particularly desired that his sister should see malinmore, county donegal, when visiting ireland. he wrote from kensington, "i am bent on your seeing malinmore." and again, from scotland:-- inverness, _september _. dear lina,--i can't help feeling a good deal of responsibility about the melancholy, treeless wilds to which i have sent you, because i happen to like them vastly; and i particularly feel that _everything_ will turn on your seeing, not indeed all or nearly all _i_ saw--that is impossible--but as much as your strength will allow; take your courage, therefore, in one hand, your goloshes in another, and your umbrella in a third, and _from_ the car--_abseits_--see the _whole coast-line close_ to the rocks overlooking the sea; there is not an inch that won't reward you. there is a bit not more than half a mile from malinmore (_to'ards_ malinhead), that is, though _small_, quite dantesque in its grim blackness (a few wet feet _im nothfall_ won't hurt you). of course, to do this well you must be in cars _every_ day to take you in all directions to the point _from_ which to make your _abstecher_--sometimes towards glencolumskill and the hog's back beyond (magnificent), sometimes towards malinhead, where you must see every little bay, including the silver strand. at first sight the breaking up of the weather is a bore, _mit seitenblick auf ihnen_--but is not as bad as it seems; bad (dirty) weather suits these parts, and the day will not dawn in which i shall have forgotten certain dramatic sunsets and the swooping of certain storm-clouds like the flight of huge fiery birds of prey, more than once witnessed and deposed to on canvas by me, over this treeless tract of moor. footnotes: [ ] "athlete strangling a python," exhibited in the international exhibition, paris, . [ ] "the arts of war." [ ] "addresses delivered to the students of the royal academy by the late lord leighton." publishers: kegan paul, trench, trübner & co. . [ ] "not everybody," wrote the late mr. underhill, who for some time, as private secretary to sir frederic leighton, had special opportunities of knowing, "is aware of the tax upon a man's time and energy that is involved in the acceptance of the office in question. the post is a peculiar one, and requires a combination of talents not frequently to be found, inasmuch as it demands an established standing as a painter, together with great urbanity and considerable social position. the inroads which the occupancy of the office makes upon an artist's time are very considerable. there is, on the average, at least one council meeting for every three weeks throughout the whole year. there are, from time to time, general assemblies for the election of new members and for other purposes, over which the president is bound, of course, to preside. for ten days or a fortnight in every april he has to be in attendance with the council daily at burlington house, for the purpose of selecting the pictures which are to be hung in the spring exhibition. he has to preside over the banquet which yearly precedes the opening of the academy, and he has to act as host at the annual conversazione. finally, it is his duty every other year to deliver a long, elaborate, and carefully prepared 'discourse' upon matters connected with art, to the students who are for that purpose assembled. it is a post of much honour and small profit." "to administer the affairs of the academy, to fulfil a round of social semi-public and public engagements, and to paint pictures which invariably reach a high level of excellence, would, of course, be impossible--even to sir frederic leighton--were it not for the fact that he makes the very most of the time at his disposal. 'that's the secret,' remarked a distinguished member of the academy to the present writer some little time before the president's death; 'sir frederic knows exactly how long it will take to do a certain thing, and he apportions his time accordingly.'"--"frederic, lord leighton, p.r.a.: his life and works." by ernest rhys. [ ] while writing this discourse leighton wrote to his father:-- perugia, _october , _. dear dad,--you will be surprised to hear that your letter (for which best thanks) only came to my hands _yesterday_ on my arrival here; it had apparently, after enjoying a junket through spain, returned to england before its final despatch here. the envelope, which i enclose, will amuse you; ulysses himself did not visit more cities of men! i am glad my spanish tour is at an end; the insufferable heat, the long journeys, the frequent _night_ travelling, have conspired to make it rather trying to me physically. i have never been thoroughly well the whole time. here it is absolutely cold, and i shall probably soon begin firing; it rains also, and i fear the weather is altogether unpromising; but the air is magnificent, and i am very fond of the place, and i shall enjoy my stay as much as the necessity of writing my (adjective) address will allow. my journey through spain, though fatiguing, was extremely interesting and very profitable to me for the matter in hand. my stay in madrid was made more enjoyable by the extreme amiability of my very old friend our ambassador, who brought me into contact with two or three interesting people, from whom i gathered valuable information in regard to things spanish; to say nothing of getting compartments reserved for me in trains, &c. &c. it is rather fortunate that our diplomatic representatives abroad are mostly personal friends of mine. post is just going, so good-bye for the present.--your affectionate son, fred. leighton mastered the spanish language completely in the course of the few weeks he spent in spain in . a friend who was present gives an amusing account of an incident which occurred when leighton dined with mrs. adelaide sartoris after his return. he was sitting next señor garcia (only now just dead at the age of ); the conversation was being carried on in spanish. mrs. sartoris, in astonishment and admiration at the fluent manner in which leighton was talking the language of which he did not know a word a few weeks before, exclaimed, "but, señor garcia, _do_ say he makes some little mistakes!" "but he _doesn't_," replied garcia; "he hasn't made one!" [ ] mr. norman shaw wrote the following letter the day after he heard this address in :-- ellerdale road, hampstead, n.w., _december , _. dear sir frederic,--i was so sorry i missed you last night. after the election i went into the galleries to find my people, and when i came out you had gone--and quite right too, for you must have been very tired. i thank you very sincerely for your most admirable address. i had heard that it was to be on the subject of french art, but i had not realised that it was to be entirely about architecture! and as an architect i naturally feel very deeply its great and permanent value. it is altogether a new sensation to have a presidential address devoted to the mother of the arts! and i am sure its influence will be wide, deep, and lasting. amongst the many regrettable phases of modern art, there is none that i feel more than the isolation that the three great branches of art exist under in this country (for in france i am sure it is quite different), and i cannot help feeling that your address is a tremendous step in the right direction; but, alas! i don't believe one in twenty of our colleagues understood what you were so clearly explaining, and i fear not one in fifty cared! but it is absurd to suppose that with the advancement of knowledge this state of things can last, so it is intensely satisfactory to have it on record that not merely have we had a president that knew all that is to be known about the art, but who also cared and loved it! i thought your remarks on the french apse quite delightful. i have always felt this strongly, and though as an englishman (scotchman!) i like our square east ends, still i am bound to admit that there is a logical completeness about a chevet that the square end cannot claim. but i shall only weary you if i go on in this prosy way! so thanking you again most heartily for your grand contribution, believe me to remain,--yours very sincerely, r. norman shaw. sir frederic leighton, bart. [ ] from a boy, without any effort or thought on his part, he exercised an unquestioned domination over others. speaking of the days when he, as a boy of seventeen, first made friends with leighton in rome, sir e. poynter said, "he knew he was clever, but he hadn't a particle of conceit. i never saw him cast down, he was always jolly and noble; none ever thought of refusing him obedience." again, sir e. poynter refers to these early days in his dedication to leighton of "ten lectures on art": "i came to-day from the 'varnishing day' at the royal academy exhibition with a pleasant conviction that there is, on all sides, a more decided tendency towards a higher standard in art, both as regards treatment of subject and execution, than i have before noticed; and i have no hesitation in attributing this sudden improvement, in the main, to the stimulus given us all by the election of our new president, and to the influence of the energy, thoroughness, and nobility of aim which he displays in everything he undertakes. i was probably the first, when we were both young, and in rome together, to whom he had the opportunity of showing the disinterested kindness which he has invariably extended to beginners; and to him, as the friend and master who first directed my ambition, and whose precepts i never fail to recall when at work (as many another will recall them), i venture to dedicate this book with affection and respect." signor giovanni costa wrote: "i remember once in siena there was an unemployed half-hour in our programme. leighton happening to go to the window of the hotel, exclaimed, 'the cupola of the duomo is on fire!' and as he said it he rushed downstairs to go there. i, being lame, could not keep pace with him, but followed, and on arriving in the piazza attempted to enter the duomo past a line of soldiers who were keeping the ground; but they would not allow me to. seeing them carrying wooden hoardings into the cathedral, i shouted. 'you are taking fuel to the fire! let me in--i am an artist and a custodian of artistic treasures.' the word 'custodian' moved them, and they let me pass. when i got inside the duomo i found leighton commanding in the midst. he was saying, 'you are bringing fuel to the fire.' there was a major of infantry with his company, who cried out, 'open the windows!' leighton exclaimed, 'my dear sir, you are fanning the flames; you must shut the windows.' he had placed himself at the head of everybody, and the windows were shut. from the cupola into the church fell melting flakes of fire ('cadean di fuoco dilatate falde'--_dante_) from the burning and liquefied lead, which would certainly have ignited the boards with which they had intended to cover the _graffitte_ by beccafumi on the marble pavement. our half-hour was over. leighton looked at his watch and said, 'in any case the cupola is burnt; let us be off to the opera del duomo; duccio buoninsegna is waiting for us!'" [ ] sir george grove wrote after the banquet in : "dear leighton,--let me say a word of most hearty congratulations on the brilliant way in which you got through your _herculean_ task on saturday. you are really a prodigy! your last speech reads just as fresh and gay and unembarrassed as the first, and every one of the nine is as neat, as pointed, as perfectly _à propos_ as if there were nothing else to be said! thank you especially for the reference to the music business." [ ] the following is one of many letters of regret expressed when leighton resigned:-- queen street, mayfair, w., _june _. dear sir frederic,--i trust you will allow me to express to you the sincere regret i feel at your being compelled to give up your command of the "artists." to myself volunteering has always been so inseparably connected with your command, that i cannot at present realise the extent of the blank which your resignation will create. i shall ever remember with pride that it was under your auspices that i rose through the ranks and obtained my commission.--believe me, dear sir frederic, very truly yours, w. pasteur. sir frederic leighton, p.r.a. [ ] the following correspondence took place between leighton and mr. henry wells, r.a. to sir frederic leighton, p.r.a. _january , (?) ._ i will avail myself of this opportunity to remark upon the statement you made in your summing up, viz. that if women were made members under the existing law they would not have the right to sit on council. if you can establish this, if you can show us that any one elected a "member" under our law can be debarred on the score of sex from taking a seat on the council, then i will instantly allow that our laws do provide for the election of women, and that the very ground of our argument is proved to be a quicksand. when you endorsed the statement that came so naturally from millais, calderon, and leslie, i felt the matter was serious, for i saw at once that you could not do justice to our argument in the summing up because its very foundation was misapprehended by you. although the question is now disposed of, i beg of you to look closely into the matter and assure yourself of it. i only wish i had known beforehand where your doubts were centered, for i would have done my best to remove them. i know you will find, beyond all doubt and controversy, that any one made a "member" by election can make good a claim to a seat on the council, just as mr. tresham made good his claim; and it is because our laws provide for only one kind of members--a council-sitting kind--that we felt the necessity of providing for the election of a non-council-sitting kind. in making this distinction we follow the example of george the third and the founders of the academy (who presumably knew something of the understanding upon which the two ladies became connected with the society), for their decision, when they _administered_ the law in the tresham case, excluded women from a privilege which could not be denied to a "member" elected under the law. of course their and our interpretation is open to dispute; but this much is beyond dispute, that if the law is interpreted as providing for women being "members," then it also places them (against the intention, as we see, of the founders) upon the council; and as the great majority of the present academicians have made up their minds that women shall not sit on council, legislation would be necessary on either reading of the law. the schedule of privileges to be given on the one hypothesis, would on the other give place to a subtraction of privileges, and either schedule would be determined according to the varying shades of opinions of the members. there would remain only this difference in the result; one schedule would be based upon a law that is open to varying interpretations, whereas according to our method the schedule was based upon a positive resolution providing for the election of women, thus removing the question from all future discussion and doubt. h.t.w. from sir frederic leighton, p.r.a. _january , ._ "in regard to the women question, i perfectly _saw_ your contention and the logical cohesion of your view, and i was familiar with the tresham episode, only i dissent from your view; i maintain that there were from the first non-council-sitting members--for 'members' the women certainly were. 'it is the king's pleasure that the following forty persons be the original _members_ of the society,' and they did not serve on council, as the roster shows, _though all members_ were supposed to have sat; of course the laws were for the original as well as the elected members, and if the privilege could be refused to an original member whose name stands on the paper that says that all members shall serve in council, it can and must on the same grounds be refused to elected female members after the custom is consecrated by royal sanction." _january , ._ "dear wells,--i should much like to hear what you wish to say about the office of treasurer--there are several points connected directly or indirectly with the office which it will be well to consider before i ask the queen to appoint, and i have called a council for _thursday_ (the funeral is not till tuesday), at which these matters may be considered. it would seem advisable and convenient that the treasurer's work be done at the academy, and not away from it. i think also that the wording of the clause appointing a surveyor might be made clearer; it ought not to be _possible_ for any one to misunderstand or misinterpret its bearing. unfortunately i have an appointment to-morrow afternoon at . , and my work in the day is so urgent, having to be handed over on a fixed day, that i cannot leave it--would _tuesday_ at _five_ do? say at the athenæum, or here a little later? we should still be forty-eight hours in advance of the council. in regard to the women question, i perfectly _saw_ your contention and the logical cohesion of your view, and i was familiar with the tresham episode, only i dissent from your view; i maintain that there were from the first 'non-council-sitting' members--for 'members' the women certainly were: 'it is her majesty's pleasure that the following forty persons be the original _members_ of the society,' and they did not serve on council as the roster shows, though _all members_ were supposed to have sat. of course the laws were for the 'original' as well as for the 'elected' members, and if the privilege could be refused to an original member whose name stands on the paper, that says that all members shall serve on council, it can and must on the same grounds be refused to 'elected' female members after the custom is consecrated by royal sanction.--in haste, yours very truly, fred leighton. "i have said nothing in this letter about poor barry, but you may imagine whether the tragic event has moved and haunts me." to sir frederic leighton, p.r.a. _february , ._ i am very glad indeed to have the statement of your views which you have given me on the women question. everything is now clear, side matters are disposed of, and only a single point remains on which we have to join issue. on my part i hold that our laws are in a definite and unequivocal form. that their foundation is in the "instrument" and that every addition to, or modification, or annulment of the provisions in that document has been made in the manner prescribed, viz. by "resolutions" passed by the general assembly and afterwards sanctioned by the sovereign. these acts of legislation are all drawn up in a special way (as to size and pattern), to receive the sign manual of the sovereign; and the tablets arranged in the order of their dates constitute our statute-book. i hold that no law can be changed or privilege taken away except by a subsequent act of legislation done in the prescribed manner. on your part you hold that laws can be changed and privileges taken away by a "custom consecrated by royal sanction." thus the issue raised is very clear and distinct indeed. i will point out that the question as to women sitting on council was only on one occasion, and then only incidentally, before the academy. until the tresham case arose the ballot had been used in forming the council, and consequently no question of rights could appear while that process remained unchallenged. but whether we are discussing a single act of adjudication, or such a succession of acts as may be called a "custom," is really immaterial, because the sole question before us is this--can any act or acts other than those of legislation override and supplant the enactments of our law? if it could be established that our laws must give way to the class of acts you point to, it would then be the first duty of the academy to have our records minutely searched to ascertain what other laws have been supplanted by administrative actions sanctioned by the sovereign; and the historical method so much discountenanced at our last assembly would in truth rise into paramount importance. many cases would most probably be found. we have one in suspense before us at this moment--the case of the engravers. the laws of the academy distinctly provide (but not more distinctly than that without discrimination "members" shall sit on council) that a vacancy in the case of r.a. engravers shall not be filled up until the assent of the general assembly has been taken by vote. since the making of that law only two vacancies have occurred. they were both filled up without a preliminary permission, and the sovereign sanctioned the election. on your contention, therefore, the custom consecrated by these sanctions must override the law itself, and nothing at this time stands between barlow and the queen's signature to his diploma. the constitutional question you have raised is certainly one of the highest importance, and i shall watch its development with great interest. it is a matter of little moment what the view of an ordinary member like myself may be, but not so with the president, and i offer no apology for endeavouring to throw light upon the subject. h.t.w. [ ] see chapter iii. [ ] now in the tate gallery, purchased under the terms of the chantrey bequest. [ ] the owners of leighton's pictures must feel satisfaction, not only in the fact that in all cases the beauty of the forms and arrangements of line grow on the eye more and more the longer they are studied, but also that the work itself improves by keeping. i noticed this to be the case very decidedly in "cymon and iphigenia." i had seen it when completed, the day before it left the studio in ; and when it returned there in (the owner, sir cuthbert quilter, having kindly lent it for exhibition), and was placed in precisely the same light, i was surprised to see how much it had improved in tone during those seventeen years; it had gained so very greatly in those qualities which suggest the feeling leighton wished it to inspire. [ ] leighton kept these precious studies he made for his pictures in a drawer where i was often invited, rather apologetically, to turn them over as if they were absolutely of no importance. i protested against the cursory treatment they received at the hand of their creator; and on seeing one superlatively beautiful study of drapery pinned on his easel one day, i implored him to have it glazed and framed before it ran any danger of being rubbed. he did so, and always alluded to it after as "that sketch you lost for me," because, being framed, he lent it to some one--he did not remember to whom--and it never came back. periodically i asked if it had returned; "no--some one, i suppose, has taken a fancy to it," leighton would reply. the pace at which he had to live in order to fulfil the work he had set himself, enforced great carelessness about his own interests in such matters. unfortunately, after leighton's death, the sketches were exposed to much defacement, a natural consequence of their being moved before being secured under glass. [ ] ceiling for a music room, painted for mr. marquand, new york. [ ] mr. brock gave a replica of this bust to the leighton house collection in . it is from some points of view the most characteristic portrait of leighton in existence. [ ] miss emily hickey, the poetess, was inspired by leighton's picture to write the following lines:-- solitude o'er the grey rocks, like monarchs robed and crowned, high tower the firs in swart magnificence, where, winter after winter, vehemence of the wild torrent's rush, unstayed, unbound, hath scooped and worn the rocks till so profound the deep pool's depth that all the gazer's sense fills with the absolute, dark-brown night intense. the rapid current swirls, but never a sound. by the high grandeur of the silence wooed into its bond of comradeship, the maid sits with the quiet on her bosom laid; not on the great unknowable to brood; only to wait a while till, unafraid, she see the spirit of the solitude. e.h. hickey. _oct. , ' ._ [ ] as portraits, the two heads watts painted from "dorothy dene" were superior to those leighton painted. [ ] this referred to a joke we had had with reference to a photograph mrs. cameron had taken of my brother-in-law, mr. w.r. greg. mrs. cameron had insisted that all character, will-force, and superiority in general, evinced themselves through the size of the nose and the height of the bridge. the result was, in trying to accentuate this feature in my brother-in-law's photograph, she had made it almost _all_ nose! [ ] among leighton's correspondence is the following interesting letter from irving, who was an ardent admirer of leighton's, and was among the first to join the committee formed to preserve his house for the public. a grafton street, bond street, w., _january , _. dear sir frederic,--i am glad that you are coming to "macbeth," and i wish you had been with us on saturday. the seats you wish for i enclose, though i should ever look upon it as a great privilege to welcome you myself. ellen terry's performance is remarkable, and perfectly delightful after the soulless and insipid imitations of sarah siddons to which we have been accustomed. you will find the cobwebs of half a century brushed away. there is an amusing article in to-day's _standard_, which overshoots the mark, and clearly shows how offensive it is to some minds to be earnest and conscientious in one's work. but i need not point this out to you.--remaining, my dear sir frederic, yours sincerely, h. irving. [ ] needless to say that time was invariably forthcoming to welcome and entertain the friends he loved. the following letter from costa gives a picture of his delight in so doing:-- "london, _dec. , _, " holland park road. "dearest tonina,--a thousand thanks for the twelve letters which i have found awaiting me here. "i have just arrived from the station, where i found the president, who was shedding light all round him, all radiant with his white beard. note that the train arrived at a quarter past five, and there was an hour's drive from the station to his house, and then he had to dine, and at half-past seven he was due at the academy for a distribution of prizes to the students, where i, too, was to have accompanied him. however, in london there was one of those fogs which put a stop to all traffic, and it took us an hour and three-quarters to reach home. "the cabman had to get down and lead the horse; with one hand he guided the animal, which was slipping on the ice, and with the other he held a lantern. what darkness,--the gloom of hell itself! boys holding torches and shouting, showed us the way; foot passengers called out, 'hi there! look where you're going to!' but, in spite of everything, the cabman with his lantern banged into a railing. "at last we arrived at our destination, having discussed all the way along the speech which leighton made at liverpool. the dinner was ready, and eaten hurriedly, with the obligatory champagne. i had eaten nothing since the morning. whilst dining, i got off accompanying him to the academy, pleading my rheumatic pains, and i ate like a famished and attentive dog. but the president, spite of the hurry he was in, never once ceased from tracing the iron line along which i am to run as long as i am with him, and so he has set me down for a trip on saturday. "good-night; i am going to bed, as i am deadly sleepy. did you receive a letter of mine from castle howard? "thank for me the kind writers of the twelve little letters; in the midst of these fogs they have been twelve stars to me. a kiss to dear tonachino. frederic was much amused by georgia's letter, and embraces you all. "love to all, from ninaccio, who has the greatest possible desire to repass the channel."--(see "giovanni costa: his life, work, and times," by olivia rossetti agresti.) [ ] it may interest his friends to know that the valuable collection of casts which mr. copland perry spent four years in forming, after visits to all the collections of ancient sculptures in europe, has been ceded to the british museum, and will be transferred from the south kensington museum, where it has long been hidden away in a dark corridor, to suitable courts in the new buildings of the british museum. [ ] professor church's lectures were given to the outer world beyond the academy in the form of a book, published in , and dedicated by permission to leighton. [ ] the questions raised in these letters have been very fully answered in the third edition of professor church's "chemistry of paints and painting" (see index), published in . [ ] this spot inspired the picture "solitude." chapter vi life waning--death - already in his friends noticed that leighton showed at times that he was overtaxing his strength. on retiring from the academy as an active member, mr. george richmond wrote:-- york street, portman square, w., _january , _. my dear sir frederic,--i have just received your most kind and generous note, and thank you and the council for so promptly complying with my request to retire from the r. academy as an active member. to do it was much worse than making a will; but, having done it, i am greatly relieved. had it been earlier it would have been wiser; but as delay has not forfeited the esteem of my dear president and others, i am thankful and content. but one word of parting advice i crave to offer, which my admiration of your rule and guidance in your high office constrains me to make. many of us have remarked that you draw upon your strength too severely; my parting words then are, and please accept, follow, and forgive them:-- spare yourself when you can, that you may long be spared to give yourself, when you ought. and now farewell, from your loyal and affectionate old friend, geo. richmond. from san martino, th september , leighton wrote to his father:-- san martino, _september ( )_. dear dad,--i received your letter two or three days ago, but have deferred answering till i could say something one way or another about my health, for of course i have nothing else to tell of in these high latitudes. well, i am in fairly good trim, and as well as i am likely to be till i leave, for san martino will be shorn of my presence on friday next as ever is (my address for the first fortnight in october will be hotel brufani, _perugia_). on the other hand, if you were to ask me whether i am "as fit as a fiddle" or a "flea," or "as a strong man requiring to run a race," or "a giant refreshed," or "a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber," or whatever simile you like, i am obliged to own that i am not. i am aware that the air is superb, and when i get on to an exposed slope and open my mouth like a carp i am further aware at (and for) the time--so to speak, "for this once only"--of very gratifying symptoms; then they are fugitive, and my _average_ condition is perhaps a little less satisfactory than on hampstead heath. on the other hand, of course, such air _must_ in some occult way be benefiting my tissues, and i shall no doubt, as the stock phrase is, "feel _so_ much better _afterwards_." meanwhile, i undergo much humiliation; whilst _ladies_ make with comfort and ease delightful ascents to neighbouring peaks, i humbly pant up an anthill or two, resting at every third yard--puffy, helpless, effete. and lest i should console myself with inexpensive commonplace about my years, &c. &c., i have before me two acquaintances, _not_ climbers by trade, one and the other (most charming of men, sir james paget) , who put in their twelve, sixteen, or even at a pinch eighteen or twenty miles to my one, and back again without turning a hair or having a vestige of fatigue! ugh!! i am most truly sorry that your strength did not enable you to see manchester; but it is _wonderful_ that you do what you do on the doorstep of !--your affectionate son, fred. from tours, october , he wrote to mrs. matthews:-- tours, _october , _. i hope, when i get back next week, that i shall find the old dad fairly well. more can't be expected; and especially i hope to find lina drawing within sight of the end of her anxious toil.[ ] i am delighted to hear that she means to leave town again for a bit--a _good_ bit, i hope. tell her with my love that she is to make herself _very_ comfortable, and _not to look at the money_, but _send for a cheque whenever convenient_. she _must_, in justice to herself, do her work under the most favourable circumstances she can command. i have, of course, no particular news; i have been visiting _till now_. (i am going to-morrow to blois and chambord.) nothing but old familiar scenes with the old familiar enjoyment, in the more serious sense of the word, but not of course with the old buoyancy of spirit--_that_ must necessarily fade with every year now, and i must be content with an occasional little flicker of the waning candle. i have, however, been better in health during the second than during the first half of my holiday. in rome i was the whole time with old nino,[ ] whom i further took on a _giro_ to siena and florence. i also gave him a commission: very few things could give him so much pleasure (_inside_--he is not demonstrative!), and _nothing_ is now so needful to him. his lameness is not as bad as i had feared; but he had a bad attack of his enemy, rheumatism, at florence, and had to bolt back to his people. of course, too, his anxiety about georgina, my god-daughter, who has only just pulled through a terrible illness, has put a heavy strain on him in every way. weather has broken up; of late _bitter_ cold, to-day cold _plus_ rain, worthy of london. on january , , doctor leighton died at the age of ninety-two, at kensington park gardens, where for many years, every sunday when in london, leighton invariably went to see his father and his two sisters at five o'clock, remaining to the last minute before dinner. this regular habit he continued after doctor leighton's death; mrs. sutherland orr living on in the same house and mrs. matthews in the close vicinity. in the autumn of leighton was advised to go to the hotel riffel alp, zermatt. "what a stupendous view this is from my window," he wrote. "weather in the main superb; it is finest for this scenery when it is not fine. knee still rather troublesome--nuisance! am seeing a doctor." in the october of the same year he wrote to mrs. matthews:-- verona (italy again!), _october , _. dear gussy,--i hope you are not very savage with me for not writing sooner. i've had a tremendous "hetztour" through germany--_thirty_ towns in thirty days; a yankee might be proud of it; and over an area contained between _lübeck_ (n.), if you please, and berne (s.), vienna (e.), and colmar (w.), and i have made notes everywhere, _and_ i have a game knee, with the result (not so much of the game knee as of the hurried travelling) that i have had little time for writing anything beyond notes of immediate necessity. but you _will_ be savage at hearing that i never received your munich letter (alluded to in lina's last), either at the hotel or "postlagernd"--can you remember at what _date_ you wrote it? i would _try_ to recover it--i hate losing letters, don't you? thank lina for her letter, and say that i am concerned at the very poor and shabby account given of her. she was going to send for the doctor; i hope he was able to help her (though i don't know on what plea one expects that of a doctor). by this time you may have recovered from your cure. what a rickety lot we are! at perugia, where i shall be on wednesday, i am going under physic for my knee, which, though hardly more than an inconvenience, is a very depressing prospect. i have written to roberts, who has sent me prescriptions which i shall have made up (to-morrow) by his namesake in florence. my journey has been, i am bound to say, in a high degree interesting and sometimes delightful. (i wonder whether you were ever at hildesheim--its amazing picturesqueness, renaissance houses, carved and painted, are enough to make your hair curl for the rest of your natural life.) but i have not bought a single german novel, after all the trouble you took twice over, except _soll und haben_, which i have just begun; how amazingly _altmodisch_ and stodgy it is, but evidently very clever. i have grown very indolent about reading in trains. wednesday i reach perugia--thursday i shall take a holiday--friday i shall--but enough! in berlin i saw dear old joe (dr. joachim)--(the only person i did see, except malet, the ambassador, a very old friend of mine--very snug and _good_ little bachelor dinner there--"just as you are"). he (joe) seemed very fit after "les eaux" somewhere, and sent you kind messages. he was pleased at my calling, and came next day to see me off at the station. in august he took his sister, mrs. matthews, to bayreuth. on his rapidly returning to london he completed the panel he presented to the royal exchange. he worked hard at this for three weeks. he then went to scotland, and finished his holiday, as usual, in italy. on his return, after attending the first monday popular concert at st. james' hall, when walking to the athenæum he was seized by his first attack of angina pectoris. dr. roberts, to whom leighton was attached, and in whose judgment and skill he had had great confidence for years, writes, "i attended lord leighton for over twenty years. i was constantly seeing and watching him. he never was a robust man; but all his organs kept in health till two years before his death, when i discovered the commencement of the trouble that ultimately proved fatal. i never told him of this condition, as i felt its progress would be slow.... he once told me he considered my fees to him were too small, and asked me to increase them." some years previous to this first attack leighton would say, "i always see dr. roberts every sunday for him to tell me i am not ill." in november sir lauder brunton was called in for consultation, and he and dr. roberts prescribed a course of swedish massage; and to this leighton devoted the later hours of his afternoons for several months that winter. work continued as vigorously as ever. the pictures--"lachrymæ," "'twixt hope and fear," "flaming june," "listener," "clytie," "candida," "the vestal," "a bacchante," "the fair persian," were the fruit of the last year's labours, besides the sketches which he painted on his last journeys to algiers, ireland, and italy. [illustration: "summer slumber." by permission of mr. phillipson] [illustration: sketch for "summer slumber." presented by h.m. the king to the leighton house collection] very characteristic was the manner in which leighton faced his condition. absolutely natural as he invariably was, without nervousness, and considerate to the last degree in not making his state a burden on others, he never, even at this juncture, concentrated his thoughts on himself. once when a friend implored him to draw in and not expend his strength unnecessarily, he answered, with almost impatience, "but that would not be life to me! i must go on, thinking about it as little as possible." there was something of the boy about leighton up to the very end, and in those last months much of the pathos of the boy who is known to be doomed, but who plays his game with just as much eager verve up to the end. mr. briton rivière, the comrade whose nature was so worthily tuned to leighton, writes:-- one of the last times that i met him actively employed was at a committee meeting of the athenæum. he had some pain and difficulty in climbing the stairs to the committee-room, and evident pain in speaking; but because he felt that the candidate he proposed ought to be elected, and that no one else would propose him with more earnest conviction than he could (and he was the best proposer of a candidate i have ever heard), he came there at all risks to himself and _would_ have done so against all opposition and all disadvantages, simply because he thought it his particular duty to do so. this is only a type of the manner in which he treated all his official work during those last years of physical suffering which he fought so bravely. watching him, it was then i recognised that he was on the same plane as the seaman who never strikes his flag, and at the last goes down practically unvanquished. every day that grey pallor increased, and that sunken, indescribable look of waning life in the face. nevertheless leighton lived much as before, never making illness an excuse for avoiding any duty. as matters grew more serious his doctors enforced a rest--a voyage--an absence from the may academy banquet. at this juncture leighton tendered his resignation as president of the academy. it was not accepted. to mr. briton rivière he wrote:-- dear riviÈre,--many thanks for your most kind words. i have been deeply touched by the generous, and, i must almost say, affectionate attitude of my brother members in this painful conjuncture. how much i value _your_ friendship, you, i am sure, know.--sincerely yours always, fred leighton. he decided on leaving england for two months, and fixed on algiers as a dry climate likely to suit his health. it had lived in his memory also ever since the first visit in , as a country singularly fascinating to him. before leaving he fulfilled his duties as president in choosing the pictures for that year's exhibition. these duties he had often described as the most wearing of the whole year. his intense sense of duty, and desire to judge in every case the interests of the individual artist together with those of art, fairly and adequately, inflicted a strain and entailed an indescribable fatigue, he said, even when he was well. during those days in he suffered acutely. from hotel continental, tangiers, th april , leighton wrote:-- dear wells,--although letters do not leave these wilds daily and take an unconscionable time, as i now find, on the way, i trust this will reach you in time for the first varnishing day, on which i believe you hold the general meeting; it carries with it warm and grateful--and _envious_ greetings to you all. these you will, i know, deliver to my brother members at lunch, for then only is the _whole_ body gathered together. they, knowing me, will understand my humiliation at not being under arms and at my post at this season. i wish i could ask you to tell them that i see much sign of betterment in my condition: the slowness of my cure--if cure it be--is, of course, depressing; but i shall comfort myself on thursday with the thought that perhaps, at some time between one and two, you are wishing well to one who claims to be a faithful friend to you all. i look forward keenly to what will, i feel sure, be the admirable performance of our dear old millais. unfortunately, i have not the remotest notion of where i shall be when the news might reach me--in africa or in europe--but reach me it will in time. you perhaps think of me as basking in the sun between blue skies and blue seas. how different are the facts! blustering winds, occasionally rain, chilly atmosphere, everything murky and without colour! a change _should_ not be far off, for this sort of thing has prevailed for a month and more. i did not bargain for it. i hope, my dear wells--and indeed i do not doubt--that you are getting on well and comfortably with your vice-regency, and am always yours sincerely, fred leighton. tangiers, _april , _. dear lina,--the day before yesterday i received your nice long letter--you had not yet got mine from gib.--and yesterday one came from poor gussy, and i am going, as you will both believe when this reaches you, to kill two birds with one epistolary stone. first, let me say that i am grieved--i dare hardly say, _surprised_, for it is, alas! a wicked way you both have--to hear that neither of you has derived any benefit, to speak of, by your outing, and you indeed, poor dear, appear to be a little worse. the fact is that at our ages, _con rispetto_, when one happens to have pretty homes, one _does_ miss them under the discomforts and shortcomings of lodgings or inns. as for me, though i am fairly comfortable here, i have whiffs of a certain "house beautiful" in kensington which are very tantalising. how am i? well, i think i may at last claim a _little_ improvement, of course i give myself every chance, and am superlatively, disgracefully lazy, _and put myself to no tests_; but i notice this, that though i have my regulation three attacks (when not more) a day, they are milder, i think, and i _know_ that i can get rid of them almost immediately by certain respiratory exercises my swede taught me. this i assume is again _no more capsules_, we shall see. yes, i do perfectly remember the old home in st. katherine's at bath, and should hugely like to see it. i hope when the old inhabitant goes off, it will fall into reverent hands. no, i have not yet tackled nordau. i am looking forward to him much, but have so far, except some pater (greek studies), mostly fribbled; two or three spanish novels; a few short tales by hardy, clever, but his figures are talking dolls, taught out of a book; _l'innocente_, dull, but not so _coarse_ as i had understood. "tales of mean streets"--now there, if you like, is powerful stuff. for pithy terseness and absolute sobriety of means, for subtle and humorous observation and scathing directness, they are unrivalled; but oh! what a picture! what a state of things, and who shall ever let the light into the tenebrous and foul depths? but how funny too, and grim; the old woman who pockets the ten shillings given for port, in order that she may have mutes at the funeral! have also read "keynotes." clever, one or two even powerful, but other than i expected. who is the woman? half norse? half irish? the writing is bad; intentionally, apparently; a cross between an interviewer and ibsen for scrappy abruptness. _her_ keynote is belief in the _immeasurable_ (but not explained) superiority of women, whom no man can _understand_; well, certainly, _i_ don't know _wo sie hinaus will_. i have had more kind notes, this is a kind world _tout de même_. when stodgy, elderly englishmen talk to me of the number of people who _love_ me, i feel quite a lump in my throat. of another kind, but pretty, is the enclosed from w. watson, the poet, whom i admire, you know; nice also the telegram. i wrote a _menschlich_ letter when her husband died (_i_ have known them nearly forty years), and again a pretty letter t'other day about the wedding. but i _must_ finish this scribble. i shall be gone when you get this, write _algiers_ (poste restante), i shall get it _some_ time or other, but am still vague. love to poor gussy.--afft. bro., fred. leighton enclosed the following from william watson, and the telegram from the comtesse de paris:-- cheriton road, folkestone, _april , _. dear sir frederic leighton,--may i venture to say, somewhat superfluously, what a delight it was to be made free of your palace of art on a recent sunday, and how highly i valued the privilege. mr. wilfrid meynell had already made me happy by reporting the generous things you had said about my verses. i wish the great pleasure thus given me were not alloyed by the news of your temporarily impaired health. but in common with the rest of the world i hope those sunnier regions to which you perhaps feel more spiritually akin than to our own may quickly renew your full energies. pray forgive anything which may be intrusive or otherwise unwarrantable in this letter, and believe me, dear sir frederick, with very grateful sense of your kindness, and pride in your good opinion, yours sincerely, william watson. sir frederic leighton, bart., p.r.a. _telegram._] _april , ._ to sir frederic leighton, holland park road, kensington, london. profondement touchée de votre si bonne lettre et aimables voeux pour ma fille, je vous en remercie de tout mon coeur, y voyant une nouvelle preuve de votre amitié. je regrette vivement pas avoir le plaisir de vous revoir avant longtemps, mais suis sure penserez à moi. comtesse paris. buckingham. on arriving at alger, leighton wrote:-- hotel d'europe, alger, _may , _. dear wells,--i got your first kind letter three days ago at tlencen, and this morning, on passing through this place, your very interesting account of the banquet. i know you will not resent a _very_ brief acknowledgment; i have _one_ day here only, and a large pile of letters, with a good many of which i must deal, however laconically, at once. i need not assure you that your most kind words, like so many manifestations of friendship that i have received, touch me to the quick and will not be forgotten. that my dear old friend millais could carry away his audience by his earnest and intense personality, i was quite certain. i rejoice in my heart at his success, apart from what i feel about his affectionate and warm expressions. it is worth while to break down, to be treated with such infinite kindness as i have met with everywhere amongst my colleagues and friends. i know you will like to hear that i am at last very decidedly better; in another month--for i don't mean to come home sooner--i really expect to be externally quite patched up--of course, the warning and the constant threat will remain by me, but i shall try to be careful, and hope yet for long to be the devoted servant of my brother members in the academy. meanwhile, believe me, always sincerely yours, fred leighton. _p.s._--i trust you have not suffered in your throat, which is a frequent anxiety to you from the necessity of much speaking. _i_ know how trying that is. hotel d'europe, alger, _may , _. dear lina,--in an hour or two i leave for europe, and in three weeks i shall be home again in comfortable kensington. i am grieved that you should have been worried--as well you might--by that idiotic report that i should not return to society or my profession (i wonder who invented it!), but you were fortunately soon relieved; i think i told you about the trouble reuter and hardy took in the matter. by-the-bye, you were right in supposing that the "long walk" was also a figment of the correspondents. i am very glad to hear that you and gussy are both at all events a little better at last. my bulletin is chequered, but certain things are satisfactory; in the first place, i see that fine weather and sun and pure air and the rest of it have nothing whatever to do with my condition; this, as i can't choose my climate, is distinctly reassuring; also, the fact of my having been much better shows that i may hope distinctly for much improvement: in the other, a certain relapse which is now upon me shows how needful caution is, only it is disappointing to have had to go back to capsules. i have had in the main a most enjoyable time; have been very fortunate in the weather, inasmuch as the heat has not yet been intolerable, and i have done some work which will be useful perhaps and certainly delightful as a reminiscence and suggestion. a variety of untoward things, one on the top of the other, no doubt quite account for my, i hope not durable, relapse, and i have no doubt when i write again i shall be able to report fresh improvement. the odd thing is, the bad effects _last_ so curiously. i understand hot railway journeys, bad food, &c. &c., telling on me, but i have been now two whole days and a bit in algiers in _utter_ idleness, and a great deal on my back, and yet this morning i got an attack _lying in bed_! but don't let this disturb you--for several weeks i was much better and required _no_ capsules at all. this short little note will reach you, i suppose, on friday morning; a line on that day or on saturday or sunday, just to say that it has reached you would catch me at the hotel continental, rue castiglione, _paris_. please tell me, on the altogether improbable chance of my "looking in" on the channel islands, what the _best_ hotels are--i _must_ be comfortable. best love to gussy.--from your affectionate old brother, fred. _p.s._--i wrote to the p. of w.'s secretary, asking him to say how much h.r.h.'s kind words had gratified me--i enclose the answer, which is nice, i think. on leighton's return to london he resumed his duties as president. he tried to believe what sir lauder brunton hoped, but found it somewhat difficult to do so in the face of _facts_, he used to say. he, however, assumed that he was mending. on th july he wrote:-- dear briton riviÈre,--very many thanks for your kind and thoughtful note. do not think of postponing your motion; i have already been the innocent cause of the postponement of two very contentious motions in council; i could not think of standing further in the way--pray, therefore, proceed with it. i had a nasty attack at that meeting but have felt no after effects, and am no doubt slowly mending. in haste, yours ever sincerely, fred leighton. [illustration: "the fair persian" (unfinished at the time of lord leighton's death.) by permission of sir elliott lees] from his account to his friends after his return, his health had varied while abroad in an unaccountable manner, except in one instance where, as my husband and i knew from personal experience, the conditions were normally unhealthy. this evidently was the cause for his having had specially violent attacks at morlaix in brittany, which he visited on his journey home--and where, some years previously, our whole party had become more or less ill, owing, it was thought, to the unhealthiness of the place. his condition was much the same as when he left england. he worked steadily in his studio, and received the guests at the annual soirée of the royal academy. at the conclusion of the function a friend asked him how it had really fared with him--for apparently his vitality had appeared, as usual, inexhaustible. "i think the attacks must be greatly a matter of nerves," he answered. "i have stood here three hours and a quarter and have not had one,--while i was dressing and fearing how i should get through it, i had _three_." leighton did not go to scotland that autumn but to the wild west coast of ireland, again to that malinmore that had so greatly fascinated him, and whose wild beauty he had longed for his sister to enjoy, "taking her courage in one hand, her goloshes in a second, and umbrella in the third."[ ] on his way there he wrote to mrs. orr:-- imperial hotel, pembroke street, cork, _thursday, september , _. dear lina,--i was glad to glean from your letter of last thursday that, taking it all round, you are having a fairly good time, and gussy ditto. (i can't stand _wind_ either, it aggravates my system.) i've never seen mull--should like to--but _not_ being a sociable bird (like you) should wish to have no acquaintances. is it napier of _magdala_? if so, i knew the old lord of that ilk; indeed, to be accurate, i knew him even if it was not so; or lord napier of _ettrick_? if so ditto, ditto. it is always the previous lot _i_ knew. by this time you will have been to lindisfarne[ ] (lovely name!)--if you did not enjoy the sands and the abbey you need not call on me again. i suppose you are at home now. in a week or two i shall no doubt know how i am. just off to killarney, then galway, then _malinmore_, county donegal, where i shall be from (say) the th to (say) the th, your affectionate old brother. in another letter he wrote to mrs. orr: "i am too glad that you have made acquaintances--been a gregarious person. if i make an acquaintance anywhere, i have simply lost the game." from malinmore on september th he wrote to me: "i'm sorry that you saw scotland in a mist; its beauty is _succulent colour_--you want rain first and then a burst of sun--i am enjoying unsociable solitude keenly, like the bear i am; health so so; i'm sowing patience, but so far reaping nothing in particular. in a fortnight, off to italy." on this visit to his "second home" leighton began with venice, from whence he wrote to me oct. th: "the wind is howling and the rain pouring down in torrents--not a correct attitude in venice--i'm no better." leighton next went to naples, where he wrote the following letter to mrs. orr:-- hotel bristol, naples, _october , _. dear lina,--i am sorry that you and gussy don't see your way to going to bayreuth, since it is your health that seems to stand in the way; other reasons are all my eye. i know from gussy's own mouth that she would particularly like to hear the siegfried tetralogy at bayreuth (and this _may_ be the last time of giving it _there_), i _know_ also that, given, of course, the fürsten loge with its facilities, you would like to go, because you have said so. well it will remain open in case you change what you, fondly and perhaps sincerely, regard as your minds. i am very glad you take such a very sensible view of my ailment, because it makes it more easy to speak of it; i also live in the hope and, almost, expectation, that it will fizzle out some day of its own accord, and this enables me to bear up against the entire absence _at present_ of any improvement. i have at last finished my "nordau," which i have read through from cover to cover; it is a very vigorous and remarkable book and of riveting interest to any one who likes polemics (from _outside_) as i do. the author is at his best when he is dissecting a particular victim--say nietzsche--on the other hand one is not a little repelled by his astoundingly unparliamentary insolence, his not infrequent disingenuousness and _spitzfindelei_ and his curious narrownesses and lacunæ. the _böcke die er schneidet_ when he gets on the subject of graphic art are quite comic. the fact is he is in some respects absolutely devoid of perception, like an otherwise most intelligent and cultured man who should have no ear for music. what, for instance, can we say of a man who asserts, as a truism, that æsthetic and _sexual_(!) feelings (not sensual but "_geschlechtlich_") are not merely akin but actually cover one another to a very large extent! i doubt whether there is anything chaster than the sense of beauty in abstract form; he has no inkling of this. when all is said and done he is himself in some measure a _crypto_degenerate, if i may so call him; degeneracy is a _zwangsvorstellung_ with him, he sees it everywhere; a curious instance is his seeing it in the fondness of english writers for alliteration; of course he knows, with his wide culture, better than i do that this assonance of the beginning of words dates from the dawn of our literature; _he might_, no doubt, say, "yes! it is a _rückschlag_," but he would therein give another proof of his ineptitude in æsthetic matters. in _every_ art, _iteration_, of which alliteration is a form, has ever been a powerful source of expression and charm. meanwhile his last, remarkable, chapter "therapie" takes a good deal of the sting out of the book; he owns that certain peculiarities--excess of sensibility and the like--are present in _nearly all art_, that it is, in fact, only a question of a degree and, he adds, in a passage which gussy has marked, "who shall say _where_, exactly, madness begins?" amen! and that little (or large) spice of something which _might_ be madness if there was much more of it, has given to us poor mortals some of our keenest delights--"more grease to its elbow," say i, in my vulgar way. but, i say! nietzsche!! eh?--i've also read j. kowaleski, with great interest--but, crikey! _what_ a creature to live with!! tell gussy, with my love, that i have got the usual two seats (queen's hall) for the november _wagner_. tell her to keep the day open.--afftly. yrs. fred. from naples he travelled to rome to find his dear friend giovanni costa, with whom he spent the last weeks of his holiday. of this visit costa wrote the following in his "notes":-- "his last study from nature was painted in rome in october , for the unfinished picture of 'clytie,' exhibited in the royal academy, . it was a study of fruit, and he enjoyed working on it for several hours, though he was then ill; and i believe that the hours he passed in the courtyard of the palazzo odeschalchi painting these fruits, which he had arranged on a marble sarcophagus, afforded him, perhaps, the last artistic pleasures he ever enjoyed. it is true that after this he went to the vatican, to siena, and to florence, where he saw for the last time the masterpieces with which these towns abound. but, standing before the great works of the masters of the past, he could only sigh. "he worshipped children, and his pictures of children with fruit and flowers are among the most delicious and spontaneous work ever done by him in painting. and i can see him again, during the last visit he paid to rome in , on his knees before my little girl, to accede to her request that she should have a lock of his hair as a remembrance." nothing could give a better record of two sides of leighton's nature, often believed to be incompatible, than the contents of the letter from naples to his sister, with its remarks on nordau, nietzsche, and the like, and this beautiful picture recalled by his old friend costa--leighton on his knees before a little child. the intellect which could crack the hardest of intellectual nuts was surmounted by lowly reverence for all beauty, most ardently adored when that beauty came to him in its most innocent childlike garb. writing to me on his return on november the th leighton says: "i shall try to look in to-morrow at five. i want very much to hear fuller-maitland's preachment" (lectures on purcell were being given at our house previous to the purcell festival). "i am sorry to say i am no better, rather worse." on being asked the next day, as he came into our house, "how is it?" the answer leighton gave was, "oh, worse! sometimes fifteen attacks a day." on his birthday, the rd of december, he wrote to his sister:-- holland park road, kensington, w., _december , _. dear lina,--the grand leaves in a mossy pot, and the sweet flowers, and the poems, and your letter, came all together. i know you will let me answer you both on one piece of paper. i know, dears, how true is your love, and though i am not a demonstrative person, it is very precious to me. i know you will both like to hear that after an _hour's_ innings between l. brunton, dr. tunnicliffe his partner, roberts, and three most ingenious scientific instruments, and after tapping and auscultating of my wretched ear cap fore and aft, it was pronounced that (in some mysterious way) i am _not_ worse, but _better_; well, i am glad to hear it; meanwhile my medicine is being strengthened, and will be again in the (pretty certain) event of its requiring more strength. l.b. quite _hopes_ to rig me out for the may banquet. much love to both from affectionate old brother. on the th he wrote to his friend mr. henry wells:-- holland park road, kensington, w., _december , _. dear wells,--many thanks for your kind letter, relying on which i hasten to "nail" you for the _ th_; i shall be very much disappointed if you say me "nay." i never give a _long_ notice, in part so as to bring about a little shuffling of cards, and relieving my guests of a certain monotony of routine which might in the end irk them. i need not assure you that i am most warmly sensible to the vigilant and truly friendly interest which you manifest concerning my health; believe me, if i differ from you in not believing in the efficacy or feasibility of a suspension of activity for a year or two, it is in no unreasoning or perverse spirit (and let me, by-the-bye, say in passing that i have, for a few days past, certainly been a little better). putting aside for a moment the fact that i have for the next year, and more, definite professional _obligations_ in the way of commissioned work (which is, unfortunately, not incompatible with having a certain number of unsold works!), to withdraw from academic duties would mean _leaving england_ for the period in question; it would be morally impossible to remain here, apparently in robust health, congratulated constantly, as i am, on my healthy appearance, going about unrebuked by a _very_ cautious doctor (lauder brunton), taking the pleasures of life _apparently_ without any stint (as a matter of _fact_ i am very quiet and regular, and under _continuous_ medical treatment), and then shirking all its _duties_; but experience has shown that i gain nothing by absence--by change of climate and the rest; and, on the other hand, my temperament being what you know, the withdrawal from my active life would infallibly prey on me and have a marked effect on my health through my spirits; this is also the opinion of lauder brunton. my care must be to live quietly but not idly, and thus try to mend gradually, as i doubtless shall, in the hands of my doctor _and my masseur_. _if_, which god forbid, i am pronounced still unfit in may, i will bow, with whatever bitterness, to the judgment, but till then i must not forego hope. meanwhile, you have all done me infinite service in prohibiting the "discourse" for this year--i can't say how grateful i was for that! i shall also avoid, as far as may be, all _controversy_ at our table; that is the worst thing of all by far, for yours sincerely always, fred leighton.[ ] with the new year honours and among those bestowed was a peerage on leighton, who was created lord leighton, baron of stretton (see chap. i. vol. i., antecedents). needless to say, congratulations poured in from all sorts and conditions. one of these in writing was preserved because enclosed in a note to his sister. _january , ._ my dear leighton,--i have just come back from italy, and hope that it is not too late to tell you with how much satisfaction i read of the mark of honour that has been accepted by you. i am not a passionate admirer of the legislative feats of the house of lords, but so long as it stands, it is well that such a man as you should sit there. i hope that the thing has given you pleasure, and for my poor part i rejoice both as a friend and as a humble admirer of art and genius that this honourable recognition has fallen to you.--yours sincerely, john morley. not a word of reply, i pray. from his native place leighton received the following:-- when it was announced on wednesday that the queen had been pleased to confer the dignity of a peerage of the united kingdom upon sir frederic leighton, bart., president of the royal academy, who is a native of scarborough, having been born here sixty-five years ago, the mayor (alderman cross, j.p.) sent the following telegram:--"sir frederic leighton, holland park road, london, the mayor, corporation, and inhabitants of scarborough present their hearty congratulations on the honour conferred upon you.--the mayor, scarborough." the next morning the following reply was received:--"the mayor of scarborough,--sincere thanks for congratulations from my birthplace. leighton." leighton had been loath to acquaint his sisters with the real nature of his complaint, as he was aware how much their anxiety for him would be increased if they knew. however, he at last felt it was necessary to tell them. very characteristically, he chose the moment when they were at the theatre, thinking it might produce a less painful shock when mentioned casually, and when their attention might be distracted more easily. it was difficult, however, under any circumstances to temper the blow. leighton wrote the next sunday--"i do hope i shall find you better this afternoon.... i ought not to have spoken to you about my ailment." i received the following in somerset, dated january , dictated, ... "as i am (not to put too fine a point on it) in bed with a very bad cough at this moment, you will, i know, forgive my using the hand of a secretary in writing to you. i see that you want a contribution for mrs. watts hughes' home for boys; i therefore enclose a cheque." ... on the day following, tuesday, his doctors decreed that he should remain in his room, but on wednesday, the day after, leighton insisted on getting into his studio, where he worked all the morning from models. in the afternoon he drove in his open carriage--certainly without the permission of his doctors!--to westminster, getting out and standing in the raw damp of a cold january afternoon to watch the pulling down of some old houses which had interested him. in the evening he wrote to me a letter, which happened to be the last he penned. a lecture was to be given for the benefit of mrs. watts hughes' home for boys; and in return for leighton's contribution i had sent him four five shilling tickets to give away, offering to change them for half guinea tickets, but suggesting it would be most rash of him to go himself. however, he intended to go, and wrote that wednesday evening:-- dear mrs. barrington,--... since you are good enough to offer to change the tickets for tenners, i will ask you to do so, and thank you in advance. yes, mackail's book, which oddly enough i _have_ read--for, alas! i never read now--is an exquisite bit of work. when the lecture was given on the evening of january , leighton had left us already four days! at five o'clock on thursday morning, january , he woke, feeling terrible pain and great distress in breathing, but would not ring for his servant because he believed him to be delicate, and thought it might hurt him to be disturbed so early. at seven he rang, and dr. roberts, who was telegraphed for, at once saw that the situation was of the gravest. sir lauder brunton also was summoned. leighton's servant had promised his sisters that they should be sent for at once if the symptoms at any time became more acute; but on his mentioning this, leighton said he must not send for mrs. orr and mrs. matthews, as they were both more ill than he was. however, as the morning went on and there were no signs of any change for the better, the sisters were told of his condition, and at once came--not leaving him till the end. on thursday afternoon, when he was supposed to be sinking, and they were with him alone, he expressed his wishes as to his property--the sums of money he wished given to various friends--adding that he should like ten thousand pounds to be given to the royal academy. these were wishes expressed--not legacies, as he left his whole property unconditionally to his sisters, and believed that they, as next-of-kin, would, as a matter of course, be his heirs. contrary to the doctor's expectations, leighton rallied on the friday, and hopes were expressed that he might recover from the acute attack from which he was suffering. on his hearing this, he exclaimed to his sisters, "would it not have been a pity if i had had to die just when i was going to paint better!" on the saturday morning the gravest symptoms returned, and every hope vanished. it was then suggested to leighton that it would be better for him to make a will, and his lawyer was sent for; but it was some time before he could arrive. though the agony was great, leighton refused all alleviations till his will was written out. it was as follows:-- this is the last will and testament of frederic leighton. i will and bequeath to my sisters, alexandra orr and augusta newnburg matthews, the whole estate unconditionally. fred leighton. mrs. orr wrote: "when the official will had been drawn up and signed, he said, 'does this give my sisters absolute control over all i have?' on the lawyer answering in the affirmative, leighton asked, 'then no one can interfere with them?' 'no one,' answered the lawyer; 'they are paramount.' he was afraid that the brief paragraph was not sufficiently strong." after signing it, he said, "my love to the academy"; but his last words were spoken in german, and meant for his sisters' ears alone. then came the end. * * * * * "we went together," writes lady loch, "to see fred leighton the sunday before he died, and he said, 'mind you come to "my concert." i have just settled it all with villiers stanford, and it will be beautiful.'" in about ten days after, with aching hearts at the loss of so true, so warm, so great a friend, we attended his burial service at st. paul's cathedral, seeing such proofs of real mourning all along the embankment and streets, for indeed every man, woman, and child had lost a real, true friend. [illustration: "the spirit of the summit." ] [illustration: study for "lachrymÆ." ] all who were present must ever remember the last "music" in the march before, when (contrasting so strongly in colour and sentiment) "lachrymæ" and "flaming june" stood on the easels, and for the first time the silk room was open, hung with the work of leighton's friends; how, through all the beautiful strains from joachim and the rest, a tragic note rang out to tell, as it seemed, of the waning life of the centre of it all. no one said it, but all felt that the last chapter was ending of those many, many perfect pages in life known as "leighton's music." a voice sang with emotion charles kingsley's soul-stirring verse-- "when all the world is old, lad, and all the trees are brown; and all the sport is stale, lad, and all the wheels run down, creep home, and take your place there, the spent and maim'd among; god grant you find one face there you loved when all was young." cruelly pathetic did it seem that one who had ever had the vitality of a boy, who had ever been the inspirer and support of those weary overwrought ones whose wheels had run down before their time, should himself be stricken, creeping home "the spent and maimed among." the studios emptied, and he came down the stairs with the last of us. dainty figures of girls were dancing round the fountain in the empty arab hall; and as he went to the outer door they flew to him, throwing their arms round his neck. "they are all my god-children," he said, as each, fleet-footed, fled out of the gate. a clasp, a wring of a friend's hand; then, ashen pale, tired and haggard, he turned back lonely into the house beautiful--and that book was closed. instead of strains of perfect song and music hailing their completion, the six pictures of the next year looked down on the coffin, and over a rich carpeting of beautiful flowers. in the centre, above the head, the sun-loving "clytie" stretched out her arms, bidding a passionate farewell to her god. the coffin was borne away to the academy on saturday, february , previous to the funeral on the monday. [illustration: "clytie." by permission of the fine art society, the owners of the copyright] the following is a correct account of the public funeral, written on the day it took place, and forwarded to leighton's birthplace. at half-past ten this morning, by which time a dense crowd had collected in the neighbourhood of the royal academy, the workmen commenced to remove the numerous wreaths from the central hall, where the body of lord leighton has rested since saturday night, and to load the huge floral car. prominent among these wreaths was one from the princess christian; but that from the prince and princess of wales was conveyed in a separate carriage by representatives of the prince and princess, general ellis and lord colville of culross. the wreath consisted of choice white flowers rising from a bank of delicate green foliage, and attached was a card written by the princess of wales, and inscribed as follows:-- "life's race well run, life's work well done, life's crown well won, now comes rest." then follow the words, "a mark of sincere and affectionate regard, esteem, and admiration for a great artist and much beloved friend, from alexandra and albert edward." at the head of the card were the words, "to sir frederic leighton." there was also a wreath from the empress frederick, bearing the words: "from victoria, empress frederick," in the empress's own writing. the queen's wreath for the funeral of lord leighton was sent from buckingham palace this morning to colonel the honourable w. carington, by whom it was conveyed to st. paul's cathedral. the wreath is composed of laurel, entwined with which are immortelles, and it is tied with broad satin ribbon. attached to the wreath is an autograph card from her majesty, with the following inscription: "a mark of respect from victoria, r.i." about five minutes to eleven the coffin was removed from the central hall, and carried through the vestibule into the quadrangle. a detachment of the artists' volunteers was drawn up here, and saluted the coffin as soon as it emerged into the open by presenting arms. the remains were placed in a glass hearse, and the volunteers took up their position at the front and sides. the pall-bearers, relatives, and others meanwhile formed in procession, and punctually at eleven the cortège left the academy, the crowd reverentially uncovering as the hearse passed into the street. the whole length of the route, from piccadilly to st. paul's, was lined with people; but the crowds were quiet and orderly, and maintained a clear space for the funeral cortège without the assistance of the police. the volunteers marched with arms reversed, and the remains of the deceased artist were carried to their last resting-place with every manifestation of mournful regret. flags were at half-mast on many public buildings, and as the solemn procession passed slowly along, the remains were reverently saluted by the crowd. passing into pall mall by charing cross, the procession wended its way through northumberland street, proceeding thence along the thames embankment, new bridge street, and ludgate hill, st. paul's being reached shortly before noon. the service in the cathedral, which occupied an hour, was at once picturesque as a spectacle and impressive in its solemnity as a religious function. more than an hour before the time appointed for the arrival of the funeral cortège, the space available to the public in st. paul's was occupied, and a few minutes after eleven o'clock, visitors of distinction, who had been provided with special invitations, began to fill up the reserved seats in the transept. among those present were representatives of the royal family, the german emperor, and the king of belgium, members of both houses of parliament, including the speaker; delegates from learned bodies and artistic associations, as well as from the art committees of various provincial municipalities. the first lesson was read by the dean, and the succeeding passages were given by the bishop of stepney; but the greater part of the service was undertaken by the archbishop of york, chaplain of the royal academy. the musical portions of the service were exceptionally fine, and included, as a somewhat unusual feature, a trombone quartette. lord salisbury had promised to be one of the pall-bearers, but found himself unable to attend. the pall-bearers were major-general ellis, representing the prince and princess of wales; the duke of abercorn, sir joseph lister, sir j. millais, sir e. thompson, sir a. mackenzie, and professor lecky. after the coffin was lowered into the crypt by a central opening directly beneath the dome, the two sisters of the late lord leighton came to the front, and took a last look at it. when the coffin was lowered many beautiful flowers were placed upon it, and again, after the opening was covered up, the space was more than covered by further wreaths sent by various academicians, the royal academy, students, and personal friends, many of whom lingered some time after the conclusion of the solemn ceremony. _scarborough evening news, february , ._ * * * * * leighton's death touched, as did his life, all sorts and conditions of men; for he had been the true friend alike of the greatest and of the least. the soil in which true distinction is rooted is of a quality too rich, too fertile to be affected by class prejudice. leighton's own life was made beautiful by the gratitude he felt for the joy nature's loveliness inspired in his soul, and by the passion to make known through his work the mysterious treasure, the never-failing fountain of delight, ever springing up in his heart. lovingly human, he ardently desired not only to pass on his own joy in beauty to every fellow-creature who crossed his path, but, where he saw in any possible way help could be given, to give it. of the eager, great-hearted leighton, not a few can echo romola's tribute to savonarola--the last words of the great book whose pages he vivified with his art: "perhaps i should never have learned to love him if he had not helped me when i was in great need." a light has passed that never shall pass away, a sun has set whose rays are unequalled of might; the loyal grace, the courtesy bright as day, the strong, sweet, radiant spirit of life and light, that shone and smiled and lightened in all men's sight, the kindly life whose tune was the tune of may, for us now dark, for love and for fame is bright. algernon charles swinburne.[ ] [illustration: monument in st. paul's cathedral, erected as a memorial to lord leighton by his friends and admirers sculptured by thomas brock, r.a.] [illustration: view of inner hall and staircase of leighton house, with reproduction of mr. thomas brock's r.a. diploma work, bust of lord leighton, presented by mr. brock to the leighton house collection in . by permission of mr. j. harris stone.] footnotes: [ ] "life and letters of robert browning." [ ] professor giovanni costa. [ ] it was during this last visit to malinmore leighton made those sketches of the sea thistle (see chapter iii. vol. i.), and also some last sketches in oil. [ ] leighton had visited mr. pepys cockerell and his family at lindisfarne (holy island) more than once when going or returning from scotland. [ ] mr. percy fitzgerald wrote the following:-- "being in the same club with lord leighton, i could note many instances of his good humour and sweetness of temper. i am happy to think, for it was a high compliment from him, that he made my acquaintance, not i his. he had always a pleasant word; as when, entering the writing-room with his hasty tramp, he looked over at me, seated at the window pencil in hand, and rushed over in his impetuous way: "ah, one of _our_ trade, i see!" he was particularly interested in a museum or institute at camberwell, and one day thanked me most warmly for having gone down to lecture there, and that it was appreciated by the people, &c. this was good-natured. "the day he received his title, an old gentleman of the club, who did not know him, congratulated him as he passed by in high-sounding italian. he was delighted, and poured out a reply in the same tongue, adding some pleasant remark. this little incident quite illustrates his _bonhomie_. it is just what dickens would do. i gave him a copy of sir joshua's discourses, a presentation one to burke. it was fitting that the modern president should have it. "how tragic were his last appearances at the academy _soirée_! how jaded, shrunk and haggard looked the once handsome painter! he must have suffered cruelly, and at the end seemed worn out. there was something of a likeness to the lamented irving, the same sweetness of manner, the same grace and romantic view of things. his dress was characteristic, somewhat showy, yet not scrupulously neat like a dandy. his clothes, like irving's, seemed old friends, and lay about him in roomy fashion. his somewhat unkempt beard left some traces on the lapels of his favourite snuff-coloured coat with the flowing tails. the blue or red silk, its ends flying free, was a note of colour. three men of mark, and on some points resembling each other, had each this fancy for a somewhat theatrical attire. "i noticed that a nervous guest innocently presented to the porter a ticket for some artistic _soirée_, which was declined, to the embarrassment of the visitor. but leighton promptly stepped forward, and kindly came to his rescue. it was curious that those three eminent artistic beings, dickens, leighton, and irving, should have perished from outwearing their nervous systems, leighton and irving from heart-failure, dickens from an overtaxed brain." [ ] "a reminiscence," leighton, . appendix presidential address _delivered by_ sir f. leighton, bart., p.r.a., _at the art congress, held at liverpool, december rd, _. i cannot but feel that to some of my hearers, and to not a few of those who do not hear me, but whom the words spoken in this place may chance to reach through the press, some brief explanation is, at the outset, due as to my occupancy of this chair. to them it is known that weighty reasons have for many years compelled me to decline all requests--and those requests have been frequent, urgent, and most gratifying to me in form and spirit--that i should publicly address audiences, beyond the walls of burlington house, on the subject which is to occupy this congress, the subject of art. it is not without some compunction that i have followed this course, but the exigencies, on the one hand, of the duties of my office, and, on the other, a firm purpose, which you will not, i hope, rebuke, to remain always and before all things a working artist, have left to my too limited strength and powers no alternative but that which i have adopted. nevertheless, i have felt justified in obeying the summons of the founders of this congress--and for this reason that, while the far-reaching character of the effort here initiated, and my earnest desire to contribute, in however small a measure, to whatever of good may flow from it have seemed to make it incumbent on me to accept the duty of saying a few words on this occasion, its comprehensive and national character lifts it into a category wholly apart from and outside the sphere of purely local interests such as those which i had hitherto been invited to support. i trust i shall be pardoned this short obtrusion of private considerations, and that you will see in it not a movement of egotism but the discharge of a simple debt of courtesy; which said, let me address myself to the task imposed upon me--the task of showing cause and need for the existence of the association which inaugurates to-day its public work, and of arousing, if it is in my power, your efficient sympathy in that work, that it may not remain barren and without fruit. but here i am at once conscious of a perplexity lurking in your minds. "why," i hear you ask, "should an organisation have been called into life for the sole purpose of considering in public matters relating to the development and spread of art in this country? what hitherto unfulfilled ends do you seek to achieve? do you aim at the wider extension of artistic education in this country? but vast sums from the public purse are annually devoted to its promotion; schools of art multiply, one might almost say swarm, over the face of the land. or do you tax the great municipal bodies of england with remissness on this score? but day by day efforts in this direction among the great provincial centres of trade and industry become more marked and effectual. no announcement more frequently meets our eyes than that of the opening, with due ceremony and circumstance, and seemingly with full recognition that the event is an important one, of spacious public galleries for the annual exhibition, or for the permanent housing, of works of contemporary art. or does art find private individuals lacking in that noble spirit which so often prompts englishmen to devote to the enjoyment and profit of their fellow-citizens a large share of the wealth gained by them in the pursuit of their avocations? but a great gallery of art which rises hard by across the road would shame and silence any such assertion. or, again, can it be denied that what encouragement to artists is afforded by the purchase of innumerable pictures, at all events, was never more liberally meted out to them than within our generation, and does not the crowding of exhibitions, of which the name is legion, evince abundantly the responsive attitude of the country, as far at least as one of the arts is concerned? are not statues multiplying in our streets? is not architecture, as an art, finding at this time increasing, if tardy, acceptance at the hands of private individuals? is not a wholesome sense dawning among us that even a private dwelling should not offend, nay, should conciliate, the eye of the passer-by in our public thoroughfares? and lastly, has not a more than marked improvement taken place within our day in the character of all those intimate domestic surroundings which are the daily diet of our eyes, and should be daily their delight? are these not facts patent to all, and do they not seem to cut from under your feet the ground on which you seek to stand?" yes, all this and more may be said; and i should be blind as an observer--i should be ungrateful as one speaking in the name of artists--did i not recognise the force of these words which i have put into the mouth of an imaginary querist. i acknowledge with joy that there is in all these facts, and still more in their significance, much on which we may justly congratulate ourselves, much that points to a quickening consciousness, a stirring of slumbering æsthetic impulse, a receptive readiness, a growing malleability in the general temper, which promise well; and it is precisely such a condition of things which justifies our hope of good results from this congress, and in it we find our best encouragement. well, what then is our charge in respect to the present relation of the country to art? what are the shortcomings for which we are here to seek a remedy? our charge is that with the great majority of englishmen the appreciation of art, as art, is blunt, is superficial, is desultory, is spasmodic; that our countrymen have no adequate perception of the place of art as an element of national greatness; that they do not count its achievements among the sources of their national pride; that they do not appreciate its vital importance in the present day to certain branches of national prosperity; that while what is excellent receives from them honour and recognition, what is ignoble and hideous is not detested by them, is, indeed, accepted and borne with a dull, indifferent acquiescence; that the æsthetic consciousness is not with them a living force, impelling them towards the beautiful, and rebelling against the unsightly. we charge that while a desire to possess works of art, but especially pictures, is very widespread, it is in a large number, perhaps in a majority of cases, not the essential quality of art that has attracted the purchaser to his acquisition; not the emanation of beauty in any one of its innumerable forms, but something outside and wholly independent of art. in a word, there is, we charge, among the many in our country, little consciousness that every product of men's hands claiming to rank as a work of art, be it lofty in its uses and monumental, or lowly and dedicated to humble ends, be it a temple or a palace, the sacred home of prayer or a sovereign's boasted seat, be it a statue or a picture, or any implement or utensil bearing the traces of an artist's thought and the imprint of an artist's finger--there is, i say, little adequate consciousness that each of these works is a work of art only on condition that, is a work of art exactly in proportion as, it contains within itself the precious spark from the promethean rod, the divine fire-germ of living beauty; and that the presence of this divine germ ennobles and lifts into one and the same family every creation which reveals it; for even as the life-sustaining fire which streams out in splendour from the sun's molten heart is one with the fire which lurks for our uses in the grey and homely flint, so the vital flame of beauty is one and the same, though kindled now to higher and now to humbler purpose, whether it be manifest in the creations of a phidias or of a michael angelo, of an ictinus or of some nameless builder of a sublime cathedral; in a jewel designed by holbein or a lamp from pompeii, a sword-hilt from toledo, a caprice in ivory from japan or the enamelled frontlet of an egyptian queen. we say, further, that the absence of this perception is fraught with infinite mischief, direct and indirect, to the development of art among us, tending, as it does, to divorce from it whole classes of industrial production, and incalculably narrowing the field of the influence of beauty in our lives. and with the absence of this true æsthetic instinct, we find not unnaturally the absence of any national consciousness that the sense of what is beautiful, and the manifestation of that sense through the language of art, adorn and exalt a people in the face of the world and before the tribunal of history; a national consciousness which should become a national conscience--a sense, that is, of public duty and of a collective responsibility in regard to this loveliest flower of civilisation. well, it is in the belief that the consciousness of which i have spoken is rather dormant with us than absent, waiting to be aroused rather than wholly wanting, that the founders of this association have initiated the movement which has brought you together, and laid upon me the ungracious task to which i am now addressing myself--a task i have accepted in the hope that, at least, some good to others may come out of the wreck and ruin of any character for courtesy which may hitherto have been conceded to me. but let us now look closer into my indictment; and let us, first, for a moment, and by way of getting at a standard, turn our thoughts to one or two of those races among which art has reached its highest level and round whose memory art has shed an inextinguishable splendour. let us first consider the greek race in the day of its greatest achievements and the most perfect balance of its transcendent gifts. what is it that impresses us most in the contemplation of the artistic activity of this race? it is, first, that the stirring æsthetic instinct, the impulse towards and absolute need of beauty, was universal with it, and lay, a living force, at the root of its emotional being; and, secondly, that the greeks were conscious of this impulse as of a just source of pride and a sign of their supremacy among the nations. so saturated were they with it that whatever left their hands bore its stamp. whatever of greek work has been preserved to us, temple or statue, vessel or implement, is marked with the same attributes of stately and rhythmic beauty; in all their creations, from the highest to the lowest, one spirit lives, and whatever be the rank of each of these creations in the hierarchy of works of art, in one thing they are even-born and kin--in the spirit of loveliness. and of the dignity of this artistic instinct, which they regarded as their birthright, they were, as i have said, proudly conscious. would you have an instance of this high consciousness? here is one. at the end of the first year of the peloponnesian war the athenians having, according to ancestral custom, decreed a public funeral to those who had fallen in battle, pericles, the son of xanthippus, was chosen by them to speak the praises of the dead. it is a famous speech, that in which he obeyed their injunction, and it opens with a lofty eulogy of the republic for which the heroes whom they mourned had fallen. in this magnificent song of praise he enumerates the virtues of the athenians; he shows them heroic, wise, just, tolerant, _lovers of beauty_, philosophers--in all things foremost amongst men. mark this! at a celebration of the most moving solemnity--in a breathing space between two acts of a gigantic international struggle for hegemony--you have here a great statesman enumerating the titles of his fellow-citizens to headship among the nations, and placing not at the end of his panegyric and as an oratorical embellishment, but in its very heart and centre, these words: "we love the beautiful." but we may gain, perhaps, a yet more vivid sense of the extent to which the artistic impulse possessed and filled this people in the fascinating epitome of grecian handicraft which is presented to us in pompeii, or rather in the museo nazionale at naples. here you have the work, not of athenian greeks, of the periclean or of the alexandrian age, but the work of provincial greeks inhabiting a watering-place of no very great importance, in the first century of our era; a period as far removed from the days of the parthenon sculptures as we are from the days of the canterbury tales. and what a display it is! how full of interest! here we are admitted into the most intimate privacy of a multitude of pompeian houses--the kitchens, the pantries, the cellars of the contemporaries of the plinies have here no secret for us; indeed, for aught we know, more than one of those dinners of which that delicate _bon vivant_, the nephew of the naturalist, was so appreciative a judge may have been cooked in one of these very ranges, one of these ladles may have skimmed his soup, his quails may have been roasted on yonder spit. nothing is wanting that goes to make the complete armament of a kitchen--stoves, cauldrons, vessels of every kind, lamps of every shape, forks, spoons, ladles of every dimension. and in all this mass of manifold material perhaps the most marked characteristic is not the high level of executive merit it reveals, high as that level is, but the amazing wealth of _idea_, the marvellous intellectual activity brought to bear on what we now call objects of industrial art--whatever that may mean--in this outpost of greek civilisation. these accumulated appliances of the kitchen and the pantry form a museum of art--a museum of art of inexhaustible fascination; and not only does this vast collection of necessary things contain nothing ugly, but it displays, as i have just said, an amazing wealth of ideas; each bowl, each lamp, each spoon almost, is an individual work of art, a separate and distinct conception, a special birth of the joy of creation in a genuine artist. but, above all, let us bear this fact in mind--_the absence there of any ugly thing_; for the instinct of what is beautiful not only delights and seeks to express itself in lovely work, but forbids and banishes whatever is graceless and unsightly. as next to the greeks, and as almost their equals in this craving for the beautiful, the italians will occur to you. and here it may be well to note, in a parenthesis, that a vivid sense of abstract beauty in line and form does not necessarily carry with it a keen perception of shapliness in the human frame. this curious fact we see strikingly illustrated in a race which possesses the artistic instinct in certain of its developments in a greater degree than any other in our time--i mean the japanese. with them the sense of decorative distribution and of subtle loveliness of form and colour is absolutely universal, and expresses itself in every most ordinary appliance of daily life, overflowing, indeed, into every toy or trifle that may amuse an idle moment; and yet majesty and beauty in the human form are as absent from their works as from their persons. be this said without prejudice to the fact that in the movement imparted by them to the figures in their designs there is often much of daintiness and dignity, the outcome of that keen perception of beauty of line in the abstract which we have seen to be dominant in them. i need not follow further this, i think, interesting train of thought, but the digression seemed to me useful, not as illustrating the fact that beauty is not to be regarded only in connection with the human form, which is a mere truism, but as showing that the abstract sense of it, in certain aspects, may possess and penetrate a race in which the perception of comeliness in the human body is almost entirely absent; and i meet by it also, in anticipation, certain objections that may suggest themselves to you in connection with the italians, as far, at least, as the tuscans are concerned; for in them, too, we find occasionally, side by side with an unsurpassed sense of the expressiveness of line and form, a defective perception of beauty in the human frame--witness the ungainly angularities, for instance, of a verrocchio, a gozzoli, a signorelli. the thirst for the artistically delightful was the mark in italy of no particular class; it was common to all, high and low, to the pontiff on his throne, to the trader behind his counter, to the people in the market-place. and here, again, observe that this desire was not alone for the adornment of walls and public places with painting and statuary--though every wall in every church or public building was, in fact, enriched by the hand of painters and of sculptors--but it embraced every humbler form of artistic expression, and was, indeed, especially directed to one which has in our time touched, here and there, a melancholy depth--the craft of the goldsmith. i said "humbler form" of art for lack of a better word; for a craft cannot fitly be called humble which has occupied and delighted men of the very highest gifts. did not the mind that conceived the "perseus" of the loggia dei lanzi pour out some of its richest fancies in a jewelled salt-cellar for the table of a pope? did not the sublimest genius that ever shone upon the world of art receive its first guidance in the workshop of a jeweller--a jeweller who was himself a painter also of high renown? for was it not that painter-goldsmith whose hands adorned with noble frescoes the famous choir of sta. maria novella? now, to a cultured audience such as that which i am here addressing, these facts are familiar and trite, so trite and so familiar that it may, perhaps, be doubted whether their true significance has ever stood quite clearly before your minds, and whether you have fully grasped the solidarity of the arts--if i may use an outlandish expression--which at one time prevailed. let us in imagination transfer the last quoted fact into contemporary life. let us suppose that the municipality of a great english city, proud of its annals and of its culture, determined to decorate with paintings in some comprehensive manner the walls of a great public building; and suppose, further, that an artist, admittedly of the first rank, were to answer to its call from the workshop--and i say advisedly from the workshop, for it is there, and not on an armchair in the office, that the head of the house would have been found in the old day--suppose, i say, that such an artist came forth from some great firm of jewellers, in bond street for instance, we should have, on the artistic side, the exact parallel of the case of the dominicans of sta. maria nuova and domenico, the son of thomas the garland-maker of florence. meanwhile, striking as is this instance of the unity of art in long past days, it is but just to add, and i rejoice to be able here to do so, that signs are not wanting on the side of our own artists of a strong tendency towards a return to closer bonds between its various branches, in which direction, indeed, a movement has been for some years increasingly marked and practical; and it is with a glad outlook into the future, and with a sense of breathing a wider air, that i place by the side of the cases which i have just mentioned--cases which were, in their time, of natural and frequent occurrence--one which is of yesterday. the chief magistrate of an important provincial centre of english industry, the mayor of preston, wears at this time a chain of office which is a beautiful work of art, and this chain was not only designed but wrought throughout by the sculptor who modelled the stately commemorative statue of the queen that adorns the county square of winchester, the artist who presides over the section of sculpture in this congress, my young friend and colleague, mr. alfred gilbert. i have pointed to the italians and the greeks as culminating instances of people filled with a love of beauty and achieving the highest excellence in its embodiment, and i have named the japanese as manifesting the æsthetic temper in a high degree of sensitiveness, but within certain limitations. it is not necessary to remind you that i might extend this list, if with some qualification, and that the same lesson--the lesson that the nations which love beauty seek it in the humblest as well as the highest things--is taught us by others than those i have mentioned. whosoever, for instance, has wondered at the work of persian looms, or felt the fascination of the manuscripts illuminated by the artists of iran, or noted the unfailing grace of subtle line revealed in their metal-work, will feel that for this race also the merit of a work of art did not reside in its category, but in the degree to which it manifested the spirit which alone could ennoble it, the spirit of beauty. and if, further, this dominant instinct of the beautiful is not in our own time found in any western race in its fullest force, and among one eastern people, with, as we saw, important limitations, there is yet one modern nation in our own hemisphere in which the thirst for artistic excellence is widespread to a degree unknown elsewhere in europe; a people with whom the sense of the dignity of artistic achievement, as an element of national greatness, an element which it is the duty of its government to foster and to further, and to proclaim before the world, is keen and constant; i mean, of course, your brilliant neighbours, the people of france. here, then, are standards to which we may appeal to see how far, all allowance being made for many signs of improvement in things concerning art, we yet fall short, as a nation, of the ideal which we should have before us. let me now revert to my indictment. i said that the sense of abstract beauty with the mass of our countrymen--and once again i must be understood not to ignore, but only to leave out of view for the moment, the considerable and growing number of those in whom this sense is astir and active--with the mass, i repeat, of our countrymen, the perception of beauty is blunt, and the desire for it sluggish and superficial; with them the beautiful is, indeed, sometimes a source of vague, half-conscious satisfaction, especially when it appeals to them conjointly with other incitements to emotion, but their perception of it is passive, and does not pass into active desire; it accepts, it does not demand; it is uncertain of itself, for it lacks definiteness of intuition, and having no definite intuition, it is necessarily uncritical. this weakness, among the many, of the critical faculty in æsthetic matters, and the curious bluntness of their perceptions, is seen not in connection with the plastic arts only, but over the whole artistic field, in the domains of music and the drama, as in that of painting and sculpture. who, for instance, where a body of english men and women has been gathered together in a concert room, has not, at one moment, heard a storm of applause go up to meet some matchless executant of noble music, and then, five minutes later, watched in wonder and dismay the same crepitation of eager hands proclaiming an equal satisfaction with the efforts of some feeblest servant of apollo? or have you not often, in your theatres, blushed to see the lowest buffoonery received with exuberant delight by an audience--and a cultivated audience--which had just before not seemed insensible to some fine piece of histrionic art? and what could proclaim the lack of true, spontaneous instinct in more startling fashion than the notorious fact that the most thrilling touch of pathos in the performance of an actor reputed to be comic will be infallibly received with a titter by a british audience, which has paid to laugh and come to the play focussed for the funny? now this little glimpse into the attitude of the public in regard to other arts than ours has its bearing upon our present subject. this same feebleness of the critical sense which arises out of the indefiniteness--to say the best of it--of the inner standard of artistic excellence, is not unnaturally accompanied by and fosters an apathy in regard to that excellence, and an attitude of callous acquiescence in the unsightly, which are inexpressibly mischievous; for you cannot too strongly print this on your minds, that what you demand that will you get, and according to what you accept will be that which is provided for you. let an atmosphere be generated among you in which the appetite for what is beautiful and noble is whetted and becomes imperative, in which whatever is ugly and vulgar shall be repugnant and hateful to the beholder, and assuredly what is beautiful and noble will, in due time, be furnished to you, and in steadily increasing excellence, satisfying your taste, and at the same time further purifying it and heightening its sensitiveness. the enemy, then, is this indifference in the presence of the ugly; it is only by the victory over this apathy that you can rise to better things, it is only by the rooting out and extermination of what is ugly that you can bring about conditions in which beauty shall be a power among you. now, this callous tolerance of the unsightly, although it is, i am grateful to think, yielding by degrees to a healthier feeling, is still strangely prevalent and widespread among us, and its deadening influence is seen in the too frequent absence of any articulate protest of public opinion against the disfigurement of our towns. let me give you an instance of this indifference. our country is happy in possessing a collection of paintings by the old masters of exceptional interest and splendour, a collection which, thanks to the taste and highly trained discernment of its present accomplished head, sir frederick burton, is, with what speed the short-sighted policy of successive governments permits, rising steadily to a foremost place among the famous galleries in the world. some years ago, the building destined to receive it being found no longer adequate, it became necessary to provide, by some means, ampler space for the display of the national treasure. it was resolved that another edifice should take the place of that designed by wilkins, an edifice which, be it said in passing, has been made the butt of curiously unmerited ridicule in the world of connoisseurship, and which, apart from certain very obvious blemishes, it has always seemed to me to be much easier to deride than to better. a competition was opened, and designs were demanded for a spacious building, equal to present and future needs, and worthy of the magnificence of the collection it was to house. it is hardly necessary to say that we have here no concern whatever with the controversy which arose over these designs. my concern is with its final outcome, which is this: the original building has remained unaltered as to its exterior; but on the rear of one of its flanks loom now into view, first, an appendage in an entirely different style of architecture, and further on, an excrescence of no style of architecture at all; the one an italian tower, the other a flat cone of glass, surmounted by a ventilator--a structure of the warehouse type--the whole resulting in a jarring jumble and an aspect of chaotic incongruity which would be ludicrous if it were not distressing; and we enjoy, further, this instructive phenomenon that a public opinion which sensitively shrank from the blemishes of the original edifice has accepted its retention, with all those blemishes unmodified, _plus_ an appendage which adds to the whole the worst almost of all sins architectural--a lack of unity of conception. now, i have never to my knowledge heard one single word of articulate public reprobation levelled at this now irremediable blot on what we complacently call the finest site in the world; and yet i cannot find it in me to believe that many have not, like myself, groaned in spirit before a spectacle so deplorable--a spectacle which, indeed, is only conceivable within these islands. i think that a good deal is summed up in this episode, and i need not, for my present purpose, seek another in the domain of architecture. in regard to sculpture, the public apathy and blindness are yet more depressing and complete, and illustrate the deadness of the many to the perception of the essential qualities of art. to the overwhelming majority of englishmen sculpture means simply the perpetuation of the form of mr. so-and-so in marble, bronze, or terra-cotta--this, and no more. that marble, bronze, or terra-cotta may, under cunning hands, become vehicles, for those who have eyes to see, of emotions, æsthetic and poetic, not less lofty than those which are stirred in us by the verse of a dante or a milton, or by strains of noblest music, of this the consciousness is for practical purposes non-existent. for sculpture, for an art through which alone the name of greece would have been famous for all time, there is, outside portraiture, even now, under conditions admittedly improved, little or no field in this country. portrait-statues galore bristle, indeed, within our streets; but the notion of setting up in public places pieces of monumental sculpture solely for adornment and dignity, or of monuments that shall remind us of deeds in which our country or our town has earned fame and deserved gratitude, and incite the young to emulation of those deeds, or that shall be the allegorised expression of any great idea--and yet our race has had great ideas, and clothed them in deeds as great--hardly ever, it would seem, enters the heads of a people whose aspirations are surely not less noble or less high than those of other nations. nay, even a monument commemorative of the great public services of some individual man which shall be a monument _to_ him rather than exclusively an image _of_ him, a monument of which his effigy shall form a part, but of which the main feature shall be the embodiment or illustration, in forms of art, of the virtues that have earned for him the homage of his countrymen--even this is suggested in vain. and if we are tolerant of treason against fitness in architecture, what shall we say of our tolerance in regard to its sculptural adornments? what shall we say of the complacent acceptance, above and about windows and doorways in clubs, offices, barracks, and the like buildings, of carven wonders such as no other civilised community would accept in silence? though i fear i must here, with all deference, add that my brethren, the architects, who suffer their work to be so defaced, are themselves not wholly blameless; and indeed, it is a truth in the assertion of which the most enlightened workmen in every branch of art will stand by me, that among ourselves also the sense of the kinship of the arts is too often a mere theory, received, no doubt, with respect as an abstract proposition, but not perceptibly colouring our practical activity. in sculpture the inertness of demand and tolerance of inferior supply is due mainly to the want, to which i have alluded, of a sense of and a joy in the purely æsthetic quality in artistic production, an insensibility to the power inherent in form, by its own virtue, of producing the emotion and exciting the imagination, a power on which the dignity of this pure and severe art does or should mainly rest. in the appreciation of painting, which on various grounds appeals as an art to a far wider public than either architecture or sculpture, the same shortcomings are evident, though in a less degree, and with less mischievous results; for the witchery of colour, at least, is felt and appreciated, more or less consciously, by a very large number of people. the inadequacy of the general standard of artistic insight is here seen in the fact that to a great multitude of persons the attractiveness of a painted canvas is in proportion to the amount of literary element which it carries, not in proportion to the degree of æsthetic emotion stirred by it, or of appeal to the imagination contained in it--persons, those, who regard a picture as a compound of anecdote and mechanism, and with whom looking at it would seem to mean only another form of reading. time after time, in listening to the description--the enthusiastic description--of a picture, we become aware that the points emphasised by the speaker are such as did not specially call for treatment in art at all, were often not fitted for expression through form or colour, their natural vehicle being not paint but ink, which is the proper and appointed conveyor of abstract thoughts and concrete narrative. i have heard pictures extolled as works of genius simply because they expressed, not because they nobly clothed in forms of art, ideas not beyond the reach of the average penny-a-liner. now i know that in what i am here saying i skirt the burning ground of controversy long and hotly waged--skirt it only, for that controversy touches but the borders of my subject, and i shall of course not pursue it here. i will, nevertheless, to avoid misrepresentation in either sense, state, as briefly as i can, one or two definite principles on which it appears to me safe to stand. it is given to form and to colour to elicit in men powerful and exquisite emotions, emotions covering a very wide range of sensibility, and to which they alone have the key. the chords within us which vibrate to these emotions are the instrument on which art plays, and a work of art deserves that name, as i have said, in proportion as, and in the extent to which, it sets those chords in motion. the power and solemnity of a simple appeal of form as such is seen in a noble building of imposing mass and stately outlines. when, however, form in arts is connected with the human frame, and when combinations of human forms are among the materials with which a beautiful design is built up, then another element is added to the sum of our sensations--an element due to the absorbing interest of man in all that belongs to his kind; and the emotion primarily produced by the force of a purely æsthetic appeal is enhanced and heightened by elements of a more intimate and universal order, one more nearly touching our affections, but not, therefore, necessarily of a higher order. thus the episode, for instance, of paolo and francesca, clothed in the rare, grave melody of dante's verse, entrances us with its pathos; but our emotion, intensely human as it is, is not therefore of a higher kind than that which holds us as we listen to sounds sublimely woven by some great musician; nor are the impressions received in watching from the floor of some great christian church the gathering of the gloom within a dome's receding curves of less noble order than those aroused by a supreme work of sculpture or a painting--by, say, the "notte" of michael angelo or the "monna lisa" of lionardo; and yet in both of these last the chord of human sympathy is strongly swept, though in different ways--in the "notte" by the poetic and pathetic suggestiveness of certain forms and movements of the human body; in the "monna lisa" by a more definitely personal charm and feminine sorcery which haunts about her shadowy eyes, and the subtle curling of her mysterious lips. i say, then, that in a work of art the elements of emotion based on human sympathies are not of a loftier order than those arising out of abstract sublimity or loveliness of form, but that the presence of these elements in such a work, while not raising it as an artistic creation, does impart to it an added power of appeal, and that, therefore, a work in which these elements are combined will be with the great majority of mankind a more potent engine of delight than one which should rest exclusively on abstract qualities. and it follows, therefore, that while a work of art earns its title to that name on condition only, once again i say, of the purely æsthetic element being present in it, and will rank as such in exact proportion to the degree in which this element prevails in it; and while, further, this element, carrying with it, as it does, imaginative suggestiveness of the highest order and of the widest scope, is all-sufficient in those branches of art in which the human form plays no part, the element which is inseparable in a work of art from the introduction of human beings is one which it is not possible for us to ignore in our appreciation of that work as a source and vehicle of emotion. every attempt at succinct exposition of a complex question risks being unsatisfactory and obscure, and i am painfully alive to the inadequacy of what i have just said. i trust, however, that i have conveyed my meaning, if roughly, yet sufficiently to shield me from misconception in regard to the special emphasis i am laying on the importance of a proper estimation of the essentially æsthetic quality in a work of art, an importance which i urge upon you, not so much here on account of the effect its absence may have exercised on the development of painting, as on account of the significant fact that its want--the lack of a perception that certain qualities are the very essence of art, and link into one great family every work of the hands of men in which they are found--has led with us to a disastrous divorce between what is considered as art proper and the arts which are called industrial. i say advisedly "disastrous," for the lowering among us in the present day of the status of forms of art, in the service of which such men as albert dürer, for example, and holbein (men, by-the-by, of kindred blood with ourselves), cellini and lionardo, were glad to labour and create--and that not as a concession, but in the joyful exercise of their fullest powers--is one of its results, and carrying with it, as is natural, a lowering of standard in these arts, has generated the marvellous notion, not expressed in words, but too largely acted on, that art in any serious sense is not to be looked for at all in certain places--where, in truth, alas! neither is it often found--and led to the holding aloof to a great extent, until comparatively recent years, of much of the best talent from very delightful forms of artistic creation; and this notion has led further to the virtual banishment from certain provinces of designing of the human figure, or where it is not banished, to its defacement, too often, in the hands of the untrained or the inept. we are to a wonderful degree creatures of habit, our thoughts are prone to run--or shall i say rather to stagnate?--within grooves; and if we are a people of many and great endowments, a swift and free play of thought is, as we have been forcibly told by a voice that we shall hear no more, and can ill miss, not a distinguishing feature among us. is it not an amazing thing, for example, that human shapes, which in clay or plaster would be ignominiously excluded from a second-rate exhibition, are not only accepted, but displayed with a chuckle of elated pride, when cast in the precious metals, flanked, say by a palm-tree, borne aloft on a rock, and presented in the guise of a piece of ornamental plate? but is this even rare? is it not of constant occurrence? do you demur? well, let me ask you a plain question: of all the nymphs and goddesses, the satyrs, and the tritons, that disport themselves on the ceremonial goldsmithery of the united kingdom, how many if cast in vulgar plaster, and not in glittering gold, would pass muster before the jury of an average exhibition? and if few, i ask why is this so? in the name of cellini--nay, in the name of common sense, why? and is it on account of the low ebb of figure modelling for decorative purposes that on our carved furniture--what we mysteriously describe as "art furniture"--the human form is hardly ever seen? then why is the best talent not enlisted in this work? certain it is that the absence of living forms imparts to much of the furniture now made in england, unsurpassed as it is in regard to delicacy and finish of handiwork, and frequently elegant in design, a certain look of slightness and flimsy, faddy dilettantism which prevent it from taking that rank in the province of applied art in which it might and should aspire. but i have, i fear, already unduly drawn upon your patience, and i must bring to a close these too disjointed prefatory words, leaving it to the accomplished gentlemen who head the various sections of this congress to amplify and enrich as they will out of the wide fund of their knowledge and experience the bald outline i have sketched before you. they, in their turn, taking up, no doubt, our common parable, will emphasise and press on you the fact that by cultivating its æsthetic sense in a more comprehensive and harmoniously consistent spirit than hitherto, and with a clearer vision of the nature of all art and a more catholic receptiveness as to its charms, and by stimulating in a right direction the abundant productive energy which lies to its hand, this nation will not only be adding infinitely to the adornment and dignity of its public and private life, not only providing for itself an increasing and manifold source of delight and renovating repose, mental and spiritual, in a day in which such resting and regenerating elements are more and more called for by our jaded nervous systems, and more and more needed for our intellectual equilibrium, but will be dealing with a subject which is every day becoming more and more important in relation to certain sides of the waning material prosperity of the country. for, as they will no doubt remind you, the industrial competition between this and other countries--a competition, keen and eager, which means to certain industries almost a race for life--runs, in many cases, no longer exclusively or mainly on the lines of excellence of material and solidity of workmanship, but greatly nowadays on the lines of artistic charm and beauty of design. this, to you, vital fact is one which they will, i am convinced, not suffer to fall into the background. one last word in anticipation of certain objections not unlikely to be raised against an assumption which may seem to be implied in the existence of our association--the assumption that the evils and shortcomings of which i have spoken with such unsparing frankness can be removed or remedied by the gathering together of a number of persons to listen to a series of addresses. the causes of these evils, we may be told, and their antidote, are not on the surface of things, but rest on conditions of a complex character, and are fundamental. "who," i hear some one say, "is this dreamer of dreams, who hopes to cure by talking such deep-seated evils? who is this shallow and unphilosophical thinker who does not see that the same primary conditions are operative in making the purchaser indifferent what he gets and the supplier indifferent to what he produces, and who attributes the circumstance that good work is not generally produced in certain forms of industry to the lack of demand, rather than to the deeper-lying fact that suppliers and demanders are of the same stock, having the same congenital failings; and satisfied with the same standards?" my answer to this imaginary, or i ought, perhaps, to say this foreseen objector would be, first, this--that i am not the visionary for whom he takes me, and that i do not believe in the efficacy of words either directly to remedy the state of things i have been deploring, or to create a love of art and a delicate sensitiveness to its charms in those to whom the responsive chords have been refused; neither is the eloquence, trumpet-toned and triumphant, conceivable by me before which the walls of the jericho of the philistine shall crumble in abrupt ruin to the ground; least of all do i believe in sudden developments of the human intellect. but it has nevertheless seemed to me, as it has seemed to the framers of this association, that words, if they be judicious and sincere, may rally and strengthen and prompt to action instincts and impulses which only await a signal to assert themselves--instincts, sometimes, perhaps, not fully conscious of themselves--and that a favouring temperature may be thus created within which, by the operation of natural laws, in due time, but by no stroke of the wand, a new and better order may arise. neither, indeed, do i ignore the force of my critic's contention that the causes of mischief lie deep, and are not to be touched by surface-tinkering, if they are to be removed at all; although i demur to his pessimistic estimate of them as a final bar to our hopes. it is true that certain specific attributes are, or seem to be, feeble in our race; it is true, too true--i have it on the repeated assurance of apologetic vendors--that with us the ugliest objects--often, oh! how ugly--have the largest market; nevertheless, the amount of good artistic production in connection with industry--i purposely speak of this first--has grown within the last score or so of years, and through the initiative, mind, of a mere handful of enthusiastic and highly gifted men in an extraordinary degree; and in a proportionate degree has the number increased, also, of those who accept and desire it; and this growth has been steady and organic, and is of the best augury. now, the increase in the number of those who desire good work, and the concurrent development of their critical sensitiveness in matters of taste, stimulate, in their turn, the energies, and sustain the upward efforts, of the producers, and thus, through action and reaction, a condition of things should be slowly but surely evolved which shall more nearly approach that general level of artistic culture and artistic production so anxiously looked for by us all. it is in the hastening of this desired result that we invoke, not your sympathy alone, but your patient, strenuous aid. and if i am further asked how, in my view, this association can best contribute to the furtherance of our common end, i would say, not merely by seeking to fan and kindle a more general interest in the things of art, but mainly by seeking to awaken a clearer perception of the true _essence_ of a work of art, by insisting on the fundamental identity of all manifestations of the artistic creative impulse through whatever channels it may express itself, and by setting forth and establishing this pregnant truth--that whatever degrees of dignity and rank may exist in the scale of artistic productions, according to the order of emotion to which they minister in us, they are in one kind; for the various and many channels through which beauty is made manifest to us in art are but the numerous several stops of one and the same divine instrument. and if in what i have said i have laid especial stress on that branch of art which is called industrial, it is not solely to develop this cardinal doctrine, neither only because of the pressing, practical, paramount national importance of this part of our subject, but also because i, in truth, believe that it is in a great measure through these very forms of art that the improvement, to which i look with a steadfast faith, will be mainly operated. the almost unlimited area which they cover in itself constitutes them an engine of immense power, and i believe that through them, if at all, the sense of beauty and the love for it will be stimulated in, and communicated to, constantly increasing numbers. i believe that the day may come when public opinion, thus slowly but definitely moulded, will make itself loudly heard; when men will insist that what they do for the gracing and adornment of their homes shall be done also for the public buildings and thoroughfares of their cities; when they will remind their municipal representatives and the controllers of their guilds of what similar bodies of men did for the cities of italy in the days of their proud prosperity in trade, and will ask why the walls of our public edifices are blank and silent, instead of being adorned and made delightful with things beautiful to see, or eloquent of whatever great deeds or good work enrich and honour the annals of the places of our birth. and lastly, i believe that an art desired by the whole people and fostered by the whole people's desire would reflect--for such art must be sincere--some of the best qualities of our race; its love of nature, its imaginative force, its healthfulness, its strong simplicity. and now, ladies and gentlemen, my task is ended. my duties to-night were purely prefatory; my words are but the prologue of the proceedings which begin to-morrow--a prologue which i undertook to speak less from any faith in its possible efficacy than in the belief that the first word spoken at such a time should be heard from the lips of one to whom, from the nature of the office he is privileged to fill, as well as from the whole bent of his mind, everything that concerns art, from end to end of its enchanting field, must be, and is, a source of deep, of constant, and engrossing interest. the curtain is now raised, the stage is spread before you, and i step aside to make room for others, leaving with you the expression of my fervent wish that the hopes which have brought us together in this place may not have been entertained in vain. lord leighton's house and what it contains[ ] preface to catalogue two miles and a quarter from hyde park corner, removed but a few steps from the main thoroughfare between london and hammersmith, and running parallel to it, is holland park road, facing which stands lord leighton's house. "i live in a mews," he used to say. this meant more than a figure of speech merely, though the "mews" in question is very different from a london street mews. low, odd-shaped, irregular buildings, formerly stables (a few are still used as such), were in lord leighton's life converted into studios by artists who wished to cluster around the president of the royal academy. these stand in old gardens and are studded at intervals along the road, bordered by trees branching across it, and taking away all idea of its being a london street. screened by a hedge of closely-cut lime-trees, the leighton house stands back but a few yards from the pavement. through a porch and a small outer hall the house is entered. monsieur choisy, the distinguished french architect, in his letter to the _times_ of april the th, , written with the view of trying to induce the english nation to rise to the value of preserving this house as a national treasure, writes as follows:-- "allow me also to point out the original beauty of the house where so many masterpieces are grouped. the french public have been enabled to admire this house through the excellent article of my friend and fellow-member of the r.i.b.a., mr. charles lucas. "nowhere have i found in an architectural monument a happier gradation of effects nor a more complete knowledge of the play of light. "the entrance to the house is by a plain hall that leads to a 'patio,' lit from the sky, where enamels shine brilliantly in the full light; from this 'patio' one passes into a twilight corridor, where enamel and gold detach themselves from an architectural ground of a richness somewhat severe; it is a transition which prepares the eye for a jewel of oriental art, where the most brilliant productions of the persian potter are set in an architectural frame inspired by arab art, but treated freely; the harmony is so perfect that one asks oneself if the architecture has been conceived for the enamels or the enamels for the hall. this gradation, perhaps unique in contemporary architecture, was leighton's idea; and the illustrious painter found in his old friend mr. g. aitchison, who built his house, a worthy interpreter of his fine conception. this hall where colour is triumphant, was dear to leighton, and even forms the background to some of his pictures. towards the end of his life he still meant to embellish it by substituting marble for that small part that was only painted. the generous employment of his fortune alone prevented him from realising his intention. "england has at all times given the example of honouring great men; she will, i am sure, find the means of preserving for art a monument of which she had such reason to be proud." as is now well known, lord leighton's executrixes, his two sisters, have assigned the lease of the property, which has sixty-six years yet to run, to three gentlemen who are members of the committee formed to preserve it for the use and education of the public, in memory of lord leighton, and the committee are now tenants at will of the proprietors. works by lord leighton have been collected and placed in the studios and other rooms of the house. a large collection of his drawings and sketches and a few finished paintings have been secured through the generosity of his sisters, mrs. sutherland orr, mrs. matthews, and his personal friends, the list of these being headed by the prince of wales. this collection of original works numbers , being now framed and hung on the walls. the collection also contains proof engravings from lord leighton's principal pictures, presented by those who own the copyrights, _i.e._ mrs. james watney (who has also given an original drawing), the fine arts society, the berlin photographic company, messrs. agnew, graves, colnaghi, and tooth. there are also photographic reproductions by mr. f. hollyer and messrs. dixon, these, with a few exceptions, having been taken for lord leighton in his studio. the greater number of these photographs were given to the house by mr. wilfred meynell, mr. f. hollyer, and messrs. dixon; the remainder by lord davey, sir henry acland, mr. a. henderson, mr. philipson, mr. a.g. temple, and mr. george smith. the reproductions of completed pictures have been hung on the walls together with the sketches executed for them, in order that the student may realise how leighton developed the designs he made into finished pictures. when funds permit, the remaining drawings and sketches will be framed, and it is the desire of the committee that, though the leighton house should always remain the chief centre of the collections, groups of sketches should be lent to exhibitors in the provinces and in the poorer parts of london. in the middle of the centre hall is now placed a reproduction presented by mr. brock, r.a., of the bust of lord leighton, executed by his sculptor friend--that perfect likeness in bronze of the president placed among the diploma works in burlington house. surrounding this reproduction and lining the walls and staircase are plaques of oriental designs, pictures in enamel, framed in by a background of mr. william de morgan's beautiful blue tiles.[ ] the same treatment is continued through the "twilight corridor" leading to the great casket of treasures known as the arab hall. in the summer of the society of the library association was received at the leighton house, and at the meeting which preceded the conversazione, lord crawford, president of the association, ended the speech he made on the merits and rare gifts of his friend, lord leighton, by a reference to the unique value of this casket of treasures. "we often," he said, "see persian tiles in england. they are chiefly made in england, but they are bought in persia! a genuine persian tile is a very rare thing. when you meet it, cherish it!" in this arab hall hundreds of these "rare" things are collected, each individually of a quality of uncommon beauty and almost priceless, owing to the fact that large spaces on the walls are filled with these gorgeous tiles, fitted together as originally designed and intended by the persian artists who invented them. travellers who went to the east when there was still a chance of buying genuine persian tiles know how it came about that these could sometimes be procured. the owners of the houses on the walls of which they were placed would become impoverished and were easily induced to sell a single tile to a traveller as a specimen. when the money paid for it was spent and more was wanted, if a second traveller came by another single tile was sold. the first purchaser might have been an englishman, the second a frenchman, the third a german, and so on. in this way the several tiles making one design got hopelessly dispersed. lord leighton, aided by his friend, sir c. purdon clarke, the director of the art museum, south kensington, was extraordinarily lucky in obtaining large plaques of tiles intact. "during his visits to rhodes, to cairo, and to damascus," writes mr. george aitchison, r.a., "he made a lovely collection of saracenic tiles, and had, besides, bought two inscriptions, one of the most delicate colour and beautiful design, and the other about sixteen feet long and strikingly magnificent; besides getting some panels, stained glass, and lattice-work from damascus afterwards; these were fitted into an arab hall in ." the enamelled tiles made the keynote of this beautiful creation, the arab hall, which, to repeat mr. choisy's words, forms a harmony "so perfect that one asks oneself if the architecture has been conceived for the enamels or the enamels for the hall." round three sides (the fourth being filled by the large inscription) runs a frieze in mosaics, the designs of which are among the most beautiful of those invented by our great english decorator, walter crane. sir c. purdon clarke has designated this creation of lord leighton's, in which he was so ably assisted by his friend, mr. george aitchison, r.a., president of the royal society of british architects, and in which is to be traced that generous delight which leighton took in all that was good in the art of his contemporaries, as "the most beautiful structure which has been raised since the sixteenth century." it would, alone, make the preservation of the house as an effective medium for education in the beautiful a necessity to any truly art-loving people. to turn to the collection of leighton's own paintings, the most complete work secured is the "clytemnestra from the battlements of argos watches for the beacon fires that are to announce the return of agamemnon" (no. ). mr. g.f. watts, r.a., writes: "i am more pleased than i can say that the picture is possible. it is very fine, a grand pictorial realisation of greek sculpture and greek poetry, very noble in form and expression, and singularly fine in the arrangement of drapery. certainly a better example of leighton at his happiest could not, i think, be found. it is also _especially_ leighton." mr. watts has himself presented a finished painting by leighton--a half-length figure of a man, which is an exquisite piece of work and given to mr. watts many years ago by the artist. when presenting it to the house mr. watts wrote that it was one of his possessions which he prized the most. though the collection in lord leighton's house is mainly formed of his drawings, the few finished paintings and the several oil sketches of landscape belonging to it are sufficient to show how exquisite was his native sense of colour. the colour in "clytemnestra" (no. ) is both true to nature as a presentiment of the moonlight effect and to the dramatic feeling of the subject. the study (no. ), for one of the heads in "summer moon" (no. ), presented by mr. alfred waterhouse, r.a., and executed actually by the light of the moon in rome, is notably fine in texture and gives us the origin of that curiously happy note of colour in "clytemnestra"--the bar of dull red cooled by moonlight. the model wore a scarlet ribbon, or might be, a row of coral beads round her neck while sitting to leighton for the study, and this evidently gave him what he wanted, and suggested, when he was painting the "clytemnestra" two years later, the contrast to the greys and blues in the red bar in this picture. mr. a.g. temple in his valuable work, "the art of painting in the queen's reign," alludes to this effect: "a picture _low in key_, but curiously strengthened by the massive bar of dark red that runs from the bottom to the top of the picture." very fine colour and texture is seen in the sketch for a design of "st. george and the dragon" made for some arched space (no. ), and also in the small oil sketch for "golden hours" (no. -a), the study for the background of the picture "david" (no. ), "a pool, findhorn river" (no. ), "rocks in the findhorn" (no. a), "kynance cove" (no. ), "a view in spain" (no. ), "simætha, the sorceress" (no. ), "bay of naples by moonlight" (no. ), are rapid though eminently careful sketches which prove, perhaps even more convincingly than highly-finished works, that in the very grain of his native art instinct was leighton's delight in beauty of colour. in the sketch (no. ), "the entrance of a house," is one of many examples among his paintings which show what a master he was in the art of painting white; really true white, such as we see in marble and whitewashed walls in greece, sicily, and italy. surely no artist has ever painted more truly or poetically the quality of southern light as it falls on white walls and columns. "lieder ohne worte" is one of several examples of a successful treatment of white marble as a background painted as leighton could paint it. it is indeed to be hoped that leighton's friends who possess any of those oil paintings of landscape, sea, and architecture which lined the walls of the great studio during his life may help in aiding to make his gifts as a colourist more adequately represented in this permanent collection. the above-named works are, one and all, good specimens for the purpose. whatever key of colour was struck, each of these studies from nature is a faithful and beautiful record of a scene in some lovely part of the world; whether the scene was fair and bathed in southern sunlight, or glowing in rich depths of shadow as in the paintings of the golden-lined interior of st. mark's, venice, further enriched by the scintillating texture of mosaic surface. leighton's early education, however, especially when he was in germany, tended more to the development of his gifts as a draughtsman than to his gifts as a colourist; still it is evident that as soon as he began working independently of any master, his love of colour at once asserted itself. at the age of twenty-five his first picture, "the cimabue procession" (no. ), was exhibited at the royal academy and purchased by the queen. mr. ruskin criticised it at the time as the work of a _colourist_. "this is a very important and very beautiful picture," he writes. "it has both sincerity and grace, and is painted on the purest principles of venetian art.... the great secret of the venetians was their simplicity. they were great colourists." (see catalogue for full quotation.) a lengthy description of leighton's complete pictures would not find an appropriate place in this preface. those who had the good fortune to see the wonderful collection of his works in will hardly need to be reminded of the rich and glowing feast of colour enjoyed before such pictures as "helios and rhodos," painted (studies in collections no. ), nor the depth and beauty in "weaving the wreath"(no. ), "antique juggling girl" (no. ), "moorish garden: a dream of granada" (no. ), not to mention the splendour and harmony in many of the larger and more intricate compositions. no less beautiful, it will be remembered, was the colouring of pictures in which the scheme was light and fair rather than rich and glowing. in "winding the skein" (no. ), for instance, there is a feeling of morning freshness in its lovely sea and mountain background and white-marble terrace foreground. though cool and pale the picture is full of colour. again, in the slightly-turning figure of psyche, now in the tate gallery (no. ), the exquisite, pearly fairness of flesh tint must ever make this picture a standard of colour as well as of modelling. in its own line it is an achievement in painting that has surely never been surpassed. almost equally beautiful is the passage in "venus disrobing for the bath" (no. ), where the line of the figure comes against the sea background. leighton's native genius might perhaps be most truly described as one allied closely to, and echoing, that of the greeks in art, though trained, during a few important years of study, in germany. the work of his great contemporaries, rossetti, millais, and burne-jones, might be described as revealing italian, english, and celtic sentiment, influenced by the fervour of pre-raphaelite feeling. leighton's genius as a colourist will probably be ever more and more appreciated as a partial allegiance to those three great colourists subsides as a fashion merely. it is quite clear, from the evidence of the earliest studies, that the extraordinary facility evinced in lord leighton's drawings was the outcome of natural gifts. no one can study his art without realising very conclusively that he spared neither time nor trouble in order to make it as perfect as it was in his power to make it; but equally evident is it to those who examine his work with artistic and intelligent insight that the great power that he possessed for taking pains was inspired by a joyous, sensitive delight in beauty. the untiring industry which alone could have produced the unparalleled amount of work which he has left was clearly never weighted by any feeling that the toil of study was irksome. on the contrary there is, in every stroke, evidence that a fine delicate sense of beauty, a fervent, spontaneous "sincerity of emotion" (to use leighton's own expression) was ever present, instigating and propelling the conscientious persistency of his efforts. whether it be a flower, a face, a figure, a landscape, or but a piece of drapery--there is in every sketch in this collection that convincing stamp on the work which proves that the doing of it interested and delighted the artist; the test, in other words, that the work has in it the true fibre of the most genuine art. it is well to draw attention to this fact, because his abnormal industry has apparently been considered by some to be a sign of his having been deficient in rare and native art instincts. some there are who hold that the most notable characteristic in leighton's nature was an extraordinary power of will. that he exercised such a power is undoubtedly true. in no other manner could he have achieved the main purposes of his life, but surely those who knew him best, and who were in the position best to appreciate his art, would say rather that such an exercise of will was used in the service of a still more powerful ingredient, in the truly leading passion of his life, the moving motive of all his labours, _i.e._ a reverent worship of beauty. much has been said and written,--even, strange to say, with respect to the great exhibition of his works exhibited at burlington house in the winter of ,--which implies that the scholarly element outweighed the qualities resulting from natural gifts. happily, the unprejudiced mind of the widest public was not deluded into sparing its praise by unappreciative or unintelligent criticism. those who had not the opportunity at the burlington house exhibition of judging for themselves of the very great qualities lord leighton's art possesses, have but to study the collection of drawings in his house in order to realise that his gifts as an artist were as rare and native as was the intellect and splendour of nature which made his personality one of the most striking of his era. a strong dramatic power is shown in many of leighton's early designs, and the best examples of these have been secured for this national collection. of the "plague in florence" (project for a picture), a notable example, there is a photograph by mr. fred hollyer (no. ), taken for lord leighton, the original sketch being in south kensington museum. the evidence of this power recurs at intervals in the later work in such pictures as "heracles struggling with death for the body of alcestis" (no. ), "electra at the tomb of agamemnon" (no. ), (in this picture the colour carries out the imaginative and truly-felt dramatic instinct with singular power and beauty), "orpheus and eurydice" (no. ), "st. jerome," "the last watch of hero" (no. ), "rizpah" (no. ), and in the last work exhibited in the royal academy after lord leighton's death, "clytie" (no. ), the sun-loving soul bidding farewell to this world. but in many of the later works, as the artist grew older, as the drama of real life became more absorbing and intricate, as the struggle to sustain the interests of the art of his country fell more and more directly on him individually, he seemed to turn with a sense of relief to the more serene, passive sentiment of such pictures as "idyll," "winding the skein" (no. ), "summer slumber" (no. ), "the bath of psyche," as a contrast to the pressure and restless fever of his active life. the tenderness of feeling, such as is invariably united with the highest manly qualities, finds expression throughout every stage of leighton's art development, most notably in the drawing and painting of children. (children had the greatest fascination for him.) in "elisha and the shunammite's son" (no. ), the tenderness is as touching as it is unobtrusive. "sister's kiss" (no. ), and "return of persephone" (no. ), are both examples in which wholesome, loving, human feeling is depicted with exquisite tenderness. in "captive andromache" (no. ), such feeling in the group of the caressing parents and child is used as a contrast to enforce the loneliness of the captive widow. in "ariadne abandoned by theseus: artemis releases her by death" (many studies for which are in the collection still unframed), the whole picture breathes a feeling of tenderness which is in a high sense pathetic. in the sketches for "michael angelo nursing his dying servant" (no. ), even more than in the completed picture, is seen evidence of the manly tender-heartedness which was a notable characteristic in leighton's nature. the hundreds of sketches and drawings now hung on the walls of the leighton house form a diary of the artist's working life. here are records of the earliest student days in florence in . when twelve years old he studied at the academy there under bezzuoli and servolini. professor costa writes of these two masters: "they were celebrated florentines, excellent good men, but they could give but little light to this star, which was to become one of the first magnitude. leighton, from his innate kindness, loved and esteemed his old masters much, though not agreeing in the judgment of his fellow-students, that they should be considered on the same level as the ancient florentines. 'and who have you,' said leighton one day to a certain bettino (who is still living), 'who resembles your ancient masters?' and bettino answered, 'we have still to-day our great michael angelos, and raffaels, in bezzuoli, in servolini, in ciseri.' but this boy of twelve years old could not believe this, and one fine day got into the diligence and left the academy of florence to return to england. although the diligence went at a great pace, his fellow-students followed it on foot, running behind it, crying, 'come back, inglesino! come back, inglesino! come back!' so much was he loved and respected. he did come back, in fact, many times to italy, which he considered as his second fatherland." there are also many records of the studies in germany when leighton was working under steinle, of all his masters the one for whom he felt the greatest enthusiasm. the drawing in the collection which shows most clearly the influence of steinle's teaching, was made on the journey from frankfort to rome in . the subject is a monk leading a man away from his enemy and teaching him a lesson in forgiveness. it is signed, "_ulm, f.l., / _" (no. ). there is the sketch for the picture which leighton and one of his fellow-students, signor gamba, on that same journey, took it into their heads to paint on the walls of an old ruined castle near darmstadt. "the schloss," writes mrs. andrew lang, "where this piece was painted is still in ruins, but the grand duke has lately erected a wooden roof over the painting to preserve it from destruction." while still at frankfort, leighton had begun the design for the "cimabue's procession" (no. ). in the collection we find the drawing of the first design. for extraordinary precision of outline and graceful arrangement of moving figures, this is one of the most remarkable on the walls. we have also the study of the head in pencil for the figure of dante in the right-hand corner of the picture (no. -b), (given by canon rawnsley), and a large study in water-colour and pencil of the woman seated at the window (given by mr. j.a. fuller maitland) (no. -c). hanging near these is a very finely pencilled head of that boy whom leighton called "the prettiest and the wickedest boy in rome." on it is written "_vincenzo--roma, , f.l._" another, on which is written "_venezia, , f.l._," is, for strength of character and beauty combined, one of the most powerful in the collection (purchased by a donation given by lord rosebery). these are a few out of fifty drawings of heads in the house, executed for the main part, between the years and . there are many records in landscape and street scenes of leighton's journeying to capri, athens, rhodes, damascus, and algeria. of the drawings made during his stay in algeria (presented to the house by mr. walter derham) (nos. and ), mr. pepys cockerell wrote in his interesting article which appeared in the _nineteenth century_, "the finest of all, except the famous 'lemon tree,' which is in silver point, and was done in , are the products of a visit to algeria in . i do not believe that more perfect drawings, better defined or more entirely realised, than these studies of moors, of camels, &c., were ever executed by the hand of man.... they are not particularly summary, nor do they look as if they had been done in a moment, or without trouble. the drawings in question are as complete as if they came from the hand of lionardo or holbein." among the most perfect drawings lord leighton has left, are also the studies from flowers and foliage. professor aitchison writes: "one day i found him (leighton) drawing the flower of the pumpkin, and he said flowers were quite as hard to draw as human heads, if you drew them conscientiously, but doing that rested with yourself, for there could be no critics. he said of drawing that the great thing was to thoroughly understand the structure, and that then, by patience and labour, you could express the outline and the modelling. in , while at capri, he drew the celebrated 'lemon tree,' working from daylight to dusk for a week or two, and giving large details in the margin of the snails on the tree." mr. ruskin writes: "two perfect early drawings are of 'a lemon tree,' and another of the same date, of 'a byzantine well,' which determine for you without appeal the question respecting necessity of delineation as the first skill of a painter. of all our present masters, sir frederic leighton delights most in softly-blended colours, and his ideal of beauty is more nearly that of correggio than any since correggio's time. but you see by what precision of terminal outline he at first restrained and exalted his gift of beautiful _vaghezza_." of this drawing of "a lemon tree," now in the oxford museum, lent by mr. ruskin, sir henry acland has given a singularly fine photograph, very nearly the size of the original. lord leighton gave mr. ruskin for his life this wonderful drawing of "a lemon tree" to hang in his oxford museum, that it might serve to impede, if possible, the increasing wrong-headedness in study--the careless conceit, the irreverent dash, the incompetent confidence of many modern students. how leighton's theories as to the manner in which flowers should be drawn were carried out, is exemplified by two wonderful studies of the said pumpkin flower (nos. and ), and fifty other studies from flowers and plants in this collection. this artist in his early twenties, brilliant in society, full of intellectual and every other kind of vitality, could nevertheless sit for hours perfecting the study of a flower or a plant. one who knew him well in and , wrote in the _times_ of th january , three days after leighton's death: "i remember hearing a relative of his, a clergyman, deplore in , the persistency with which leighton was throwing away his chances in life to become a mere artist." five years previously, leighton had embodied in a design, now in his house, the longing, the home sickness, the _sehnsucht_ he felt for his own true much-loved vocation. it is in the drawing of giotto as a boy lying among his sheep upon a bank (no. ). below the sketch, in leighton's handwriting, are the words "_giotto, sehnsucht_." the same writer continues: "i enjoyed constant intercourse with him during the whole of and to the middle of . the summer of the former year we passed at the baths of lucca, dining together every day for three months. finding the solitary splendour of the hotel at 'villa' irksome, he suggested that we should mess together in my lodgings, which happened to be close to a little restaurant. in after years, meeting in london houses, we always referred with pleasure to the modest, but always wholesome and cleanly feasts that lucrezia, landlady, chef, and waitress, supplied us with at an almost nominal cost. to me, at least, that period was one of great value and interest, for it gave me the opportunity of studying the character of one whose personality was attractive in no small degree. he was the most brilliant man i ever met.... he longed for and desired success: but only in so far as he deserved it. when he was sharply checked in his upward career, he accepted the rebuke with humility, for he was a modest man.[ ] i had not met him for years when, coming into contact with him, i told him how keen the interest had been with which i had watched his progress. 'i am not satisfied,' he answered; 'i alone know how far i have fallen short of my ideal.'" in his house are two records of this visit to the bagni di lucca. one has been presented by mr. j. macwhirter, r.a. (no. ). it is a highly finished drawing of a wreath of leaves exquisitely executed. on the same sheet is a drawing of a vine in fruit, and in leighton's own writing "_pomegranate lucca bagni villa_." * * * * * no work in the collection evinces the precision and exact truthfulness of leighton's drawing better than the outline copies from pictures and frescoes by v. carpaccio, giorgione, simone memmi and signorelli made in - . in the copy from the fresco in the capella spagnuola, sta. maria novella, florence (no. ), we have the portraits of cimabue, giotto, taddeo gaddi and simone memmi whose work it is.[ ] the accuracy of the copy and the difficulty of making a copy at all, can hardly fully be realised, save by one who has attempted also to repeat the fading outlines of these dim frescoes in the only half-lighted chapel. slight and ineffective as leighton's drawing may appear at a first glance, it is, on further acquaintance, found to be an exquisite piece of work. the absolute truth and precision with which in pencil lines, on a small scale, he has unravelled the outlines of the dim forms, and has depicted the quaint seriousness of these old-world italian countenances, makes this copy an extraordinary feat of eye and hand. from this drawing he designed the dress of cimabue for the figure in his large picture, and also for the cimabue in the south kensington mosaic. written by leighton above the pencil drawing are the words: "_simone memmi capella spagnoli (st. maria novella, florence), taddeo gaddi white and gold cap, giotto gold and sea green, cimabue gold flowers on white ground, sim. memmi with grey beard, head dress, yellow hood with black lining, florence, , f.l._" a study in brown (water-colour) (no. ) signed "_florence, , f.l._," was used by leighton forty years after it was made in his background for "lachrymæ" (no. ), an engraving of which was given to the collection by messrs. a. tooth. the same study was also used for a charming design, highly finished in pencil and chinese white, apparently executed for a book illustration, which is now in the house. one of the most beautiful of the foliage studies tells of a happy day "_near bellosguardo, sept./ ._" (no. ). it is a perfect and highly-finished study of a vine. what joy leighton must have had while looking at this exquisite thing in the september sunshine on that delicious bellosguardo height! a butterfly and a bee were minutely pencilled on the paper as they flew round the vine-leaves as he drew them. "_cyclamen tivoli, oct./ ._" is written on another of these tiny treasures. "_aloes pampl. doria,_" "_pyrte roma_," "_thistle rhodes_," "_lindos/ asphodel_," "_thistle banks of tiber, stalk light warm brown, leaf dark cld. brown, flow. dsk. warm brown, roma/ _," are notes on some of these pages of studies, which can only be said to compare with the work of a leonardo or an albert dürer. there is absolutely no mannerism traceable; there is nature's own quality of style. there is nothing slovenly in nature, there is as surely nothing slovenly in lord leighton's art. the gift which in these modern days is perhaps most rare is a sense of style. leighton's feeling for style was as much a part of his individual and native taste as was his delight in any other quality of beauty in nature. indeed what we call style in art is but the reflection of the same quality in nature herself, the love which adds to the more oblivious facts of nature a further quality of truth, a completer insight into her. leighton possessed a sculptor's feeling for form. it was his subtle grasp of truth in structure which gives a special value to his outline drawings. the keen sensitiveness to the right character of the form, to which his pencil outline was the limit, influenced the quality of his touch as he portrayed that limit. he felt things "in the round" as solid projections in various planes, advancing or receding from the eye. as in the best sculpture, to every aspect of the solid form you get a fine, subtle, absolutely clear outline; so in leighton's drawing of a contour, never is there any vague or undecided passage. this insures to his work the quality of distinction. these studies have, one and all, that quality. they are _distinguished_, as are fragments of the best greek sculpture. every born artist falls in love specially with one class of sentiment in nature. whether his special gifts guide his passion, or his passion his gifts, who can say? probably each urges the other. the special note of beauty in nature which excited leighton's deepest enthusiasm was the quality which is most like that in a shell. in the pumpkin flowers in the study given by mr. hamo thornycroft of "_kalmia califolia_," and in many others, is recalled notably the fine, pure, carved distinctness of the forms in a shell--the shell that contains the form and colour that at once delights the sense both of the painter and the sculptor. in the oil sketches by leighton, those poems of southern sunlight and colour, records of voyages in the Ægean seas, and off the coasts and islands of greece and asia minor, we again recall the special beauty in the quality and colour of a shell, the rainbow tints in mother-of-pearl, the faint translucence trembling in a sheen of light. in gauging the exceptional quality of the gifts which all these studies evince it will be well to remember that leighton, at the time they were made, was under no influence but that of his own high standard, and led by no lights save those of his own exquisitely delicate perceptions. for the last twenty or thirty years detail in nature--vegetation and nature which is called "still life"--has been truthfully popularised by photography, so that now all students have it in their power to study from such detail treated on a flat surface. beauty of natural structure and grace of line rendered with right perspective on a sheet of paper can be enjoyed and made use of by every artist. many do avail themselves of photographs to carry out and complete the details of their pictures. but when leighton made these wonderful drawings no such standards of elaborate finish of detail had been diffused. nor had he joined, nor in any way come under the influence of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood, nor received any inspiration from the teaching of mr. ruskin. though we may truly liken these studies from "still life" to those by leonardo as regards the truthful perfection of copies from nature, there is no evidence in leighton's drawings that the work, even of the great, much-revered-by-him italian masters had influenced him when drawing from nature. on the contrary, there is the strong stamp of his own peculiar genius on all of them, the stamp that proves rather that he saw and loved nature as a greek would have seen and loved her. essentially greek-like was the attitude in which leighton approached nature, _i.e._ with an emotion ever ardent in its intensity; but as ever restrained by the rare gift--the sense of _style_ and of the right balance and proportion necessary in treating worthily the beauties of nature in the language of art. indeed, it may truly be affirmed that leighton was made more like a greek than like an englishman as regarded his artistic powers, english though he was to the backbone in feeling and sentiment. the effect produced by that collected exhibition of his works in was, beyond all other effects, that of _achievement_; and achievement which was the result of a perfect mastery and grasp of aims meant to be achieved from the first to the last touch on the canvas. leighton was far too great an artist ever to be satisfied with the results of his labour. those who knew him best can testify to his terrible depressions and disappointments. still, there was no "_muddling through_," to use lord rosebery's expression, such as so many english artists confess to in reaching the final result. greek-like, leighton saw everything in a definite, clearly outlined view, and, from the beginning to the end, his work was one direct forwarding of his purpose. in , leighton migrated to his studio in orme square, bayswater. the collection possesses several drawings made about that time, notably the studies for "lieder ohne worte" (no. ). his young friend, now the well-known portrait-painter, mr. hanson walker, sat for the head in the picture: "a crowded scene in florence" (no. ), a design full of interest and movement, was the gift to the house of this friend of leighton's, who, at his instigation, took up art as a profession. in leighton moved from orme square to the house he had built in holland park road, and there we can now follow his yearly labours by studying the sketches and drawings made for all the well-known famous pictures of the last thirty years, till we come to the last--to that passionate appealing figure of clytie (no. ), drawn after the fatal warning had been given. the motive is the same as that of the first design--the early design of the "giotto" (no. ), (made very nearly fifty years before), _i.e._ "sehnsucht"--not the dreamy half-conscious sehnsucht of the awakening artist-nature as is seen in the boy giotto--but the passionate longing to remain in the rich existence that rare gifts and noble affections had secured for that artist-nature. after the studies for "clytie" there but remain those made for pictures never to be painted, till we reach at last the drawings made on the nd of january (no. ), the last day on which leighton worked. three days after, on the following saturday, he died. the object of the committee is to make this house and its treasures a centre for art in the parish of kensington, where lord leighton lived for thirty years. during seventeen of these years he was the president of the royal academy, and, by common consent, the greatest president that institution has ever had. the south kensington museum is not in the parish, and, though this is one of the richest in london, kensington proper has no centre of art, and is sufficiently far removed from the centre of the metropolis to make it important that it should possess such a centre. since october , the committee has arranged for concerts, lectures, and readings to take place in the studios, and the public is now enlightened as to the exceptional acoustic qualities the studios possess, a fact for long recognised by leighton's personal friends at the yearly concerts he gave to them when his pictures were ready for the royal academy. it is proposed to add to the contents of the house an art library, and for this many valuable volumes are waiting to be presented for the book-shelves to contain them. the present proprietors are prepared to hand over the house and all it contains to any public body who will engage to maintain it and to meet the views of the committee as to the use of the house. as a memorial to lord leighton, the most suitable use will be, they feel, to devote it to the furtherance of the interests of art of the best in all lines and among all classes; in fact to continue in his own home the culture of that "sweetness and light" which emanated so notably from his own nature. to conclude with words written by his old and very intimate friend, professor costa, with whom he spent his last holiday in the autumn before he died: "leighton solved certain problems which appeared insoluble. for instance, he combined a life at high pressure with the most exquisite politeness--truth with poetry, an iron will with the tenderness of a mother's heart, high aims with a practical life and with the worship of beauty, the ardour of which was only equalled by its purity." e.i.b. footnotes: [ ] the greater portion of this preface appeared as an article in the _magazine of art_, october . it is with the kind permission of the proprietors that it is reprinted. [ ] mr. de morgan is at present engaged in making two jars in pottery, which he intends to present to the house, to fill the niches in the arab hall. [ ] "leighton has been cut up unmercifully by the critics, but bears on, robert says, not without courage. that you should say his picture looked well, was comfort in the general gloom."--_letter from mrs. browning to mrs. jameson, may th, , paris._ [ ] nineteen years later, i happened to copy the same group in water-colour; but it was only after leighton's death that i saw this extraordinarily beautiful drawing. list of dignities and honours conferred on frederic leighton knighted, ; created a baronet, ; created baron leighton of stretton, ; elected associate of the royal academy, ; royal academician, ; president of the royal academy, ; hon. member, royal scottish academy, and royal hibernian academy, associate of the institute of france, president of the international jury of painting, paris exhibition, ; hon. member, berlin academy, ; also member of the royal academy of vienna, ; belgium, ; of the academy of st. luke, rome, and the academies of florence ( ), turin, genoa, perugia, and antwerp ( ); hon. d.c.l., oxford, ; hon. ll.d., cambridge, ; hon. ll.d., edinburgh, ; hon. d. lit., dublin, ; hon. d.c.l., durham, ; hon. fellow of trinity college, london, ; lieut.-colonel of the th middlesex (artist's) rifle volunteers, to (resigned); then hon. colonel and holder of the volunteer decoration; commander of the legion of honour, ; commander of the order of leopold; knight of the prussian order "pour le mérite," and of the coburg order dem verdienste. list of principal works _with date and place of exhibition.[ ] corrected and amplified from "frederic, lord leighton, his life and work," by ernest rhys._ (_circa_). *cimabue finding giotto in the fields of florence. ( - / × inches.) steinle institute (frankfort). . the duel between romeo and tybalt. ( × inches.) (_circa_). the death of brunelleschi. steinle institute. . [early portrait of leighton by himself.] . *a persian pedlar. . [buffalmacco, the painter. a humorous subject, from vasari, was undertaken about this date.] see sketch in water-colour, leighton house collection. . portrait of miss laing (lady nias). . cimabue's celebrated madonna is carried in procession through the streets of florence. in front of the madonna, and crowned with laurels, walks cimabue himself, with his pupil giotto; behind it, arnolfo di lappo, taddeo gaddi, andrea tafi, niccola pisano, buffalmacco, and simone memmi; in the corner, dante. ( - / × inches.) r.a.[ ] purchased by h.m. queen victoria, buckingham palace. see sketches, leighton house collection. . the reconciliation of the montagues and capulets over the dead bodies of romeo and juliet. paris international exhibition.[ ] . the triumph of music. ( × inches.) r.a. painted in paris. "orpheus, by the power of his art, redeems his wife from hades." . pan. [a subject from keats' _hymn to pan_, in the first book of "endymion."] painted in paris. a figure of pan under a fig-tree, with this inscription:-- "o thou, to whom broad-leaved fig-trees even now foredoom their ripen'd fruitage." . venus. [a pendant to the pan.] the figure of a nude nymph about to bathe, with a little cupid loosening her sandal. exhibited at the manchester exhibition and sent to america after. painted in paris. . *salome, the daughter of herodias. ( - / × inches.) see sketch, leighton house collection. . *the mermaid (the fisherman and the syren). (from a ballad by goethe.) ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. "half drew she him, half sunk he in, and never more was seen." . "count paris, accompanied by friar lawrence and a band of musicians, comes to the house of the capulets to claim his bride: he finds juliet stretched apparently lifeless on the bed."--_romeo and juliet_, act iv. sc. . ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . reminiscence of algiers: a negro dance. (water-colour.) suffolk street gallery. . sunny hours. r.a. . *roman lady (la nanna). r.a. . *nanna (pavonia). r.a. . samson and delilah. s.s. see sketches, leighton house collection. . capri--sunrise. r.a. . *portrait of mrs. sutherland orr [mrs. s.o., a portrait]. ( × inches.) r.a. . *portrait of john hanson walker, esq. ( × inches.) owner, h.m. the king. r.a. . paolo e francesca. see sketch, leighton house collection. "ma solo un punto fu quel che ci vinse quando legemmo il disiato riso esser baciato da cotanto amante, questi, che mai da me non fia diviso, la bocca mi baciò tutto tremante: galeotto fu 'l libro e chi lo scrisse: quel giorno più non vi legemmo avante." . a dream. "...not yet--not yet-- still there is trial for thee, still the lot to bear (the father wills it) strife and care; with this sweet consciousness in balance set against the world, to soothe thy suffering there the lord rejects thee not. such tender words awoke me hopeful, shriven to life on earth again from dream of heaven." . lieder ohne worte. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . j.a. a study. r.a. . capri--paganos. r.a. . odalisque. r.a. . *the star of bethlehem. ( × - / inches.) one of the magi, from the terrace of his house, stands looking at the star in the east; the lower part of the picture indicates a road, which he may be supposed just to have left. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . sisters. r.a. . *michael angelo nursing his dying servant. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . duett. r.a. . sea echoes. r.a. . rustic music. r.a. . jezebel and ahab, having caused naboth to be put to death, go down to take possession of his vineyard; they are met at the entrance by elijah the tishbite. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. "hast thou killed, and also taken possession?" . *eucharis. (a girl with a basket of fruit.) ( - / × inches.) r.a. . a girl feeding peacocks. r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . an italian crossbowman. ( × - / inches.) r.a. . dante at verona. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *orpheus and eurydice. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. "but give them--the mouth, the eyes,--the brow-- let them once more absorb me! one look now will lap me round for ever, not to pass out of its light, though darkness lie beyond! hold me but safe again within the bond of one immortal look! all woe that was, forgotten, and all terror that may be, defied--no past is mine, no future! look at me!" --robert browning: _a fragment._ . *golden hours. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches in oil and chalk, leighton house collection. . *portrait of the late miss lavinia i'anson. (circular, - / inches.) . *david. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. "oh that i had wings like a dove! for then would i fly away, and be at rest."--_psalm_ lv. . mother and child. r.a. . widow's prayer. r.a. . helen of troy. r.a. "thus as she spoke, in helen's breast arose fond recollections of her former lord, her home, and parents; o'er her head she threw a snowy veil; and shedding tender tears she issued forth not unaccompanied; for with her went fair Æthra, pittheus' child, and stag-eyed clymene, her maidens twain. they quickly at the scæan gate arrived." . in st. mark's. r.a. . painter's honeymoon. r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . portrait of mrs. james guthrie. r.a. . syracusan bride leading wild beasts in procession to the temple of diana. (suggested by a passage in the second idyll of theocritus.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. "and for her, then, many other wild beasts were going in procession round about, and among them a lioness." . a noble lady of venice. (not exhibited till .) . the wise and foolish virgins. (fresco in lyndhurst church, finished .) see sketches, leighton house collection. . *pastoral. ( - / × inches.) r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . *greek girl dancing. (spanish dancing girl; cadiz in the old times.) ( × inches.) r.a. . knuckle-bone player. r.a. . *roman mother. ( × inches.) r.a. . *venus disrobing for the bath. ( × - / inches.) r.a. . *portrait of mrs. john hanson walker. ( × inches.) . jonathan's token to david. r.a. "and it came to pass in the morning, that jonathan went out into the field at the time appointed by david, and a little lad with him." . *portrait of mrs. frederick p. cockerell. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . *portrait of john martineau, esq. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . *ariadne abandoned by theseus; ariadne watches for his return; artemis releases her by death. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *acme and septimius. (circular, - / inches.) r.a. "then bending gently back her head with that sweet mouth, so rosy red, upon his eyes she dropped a kiss, intoxicating him with bliss." --catullus (theodore martin's translation). . *actæa, the nymph of the shore. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *s. jerome. (diploma work, deposited in the academy on his election as an academician.) ( × inches.) r.a. . *dædalus and icarus. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *electra at the tomb of agamemnon. ( - / × inches.) r.a. . *helios and rhodos. ( - / × inches) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . a nile woman. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . study. s.s. . *hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis. ( × - / inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . greek girls picking up pebbles by the shore of the sea. r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . *cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline. ( × - / inches.) r.a. . view of assiout (?). (a sketch.) s.s. . sunrise at lougsor. (a sketch.) s.s. . view of the red mountains near cairo. (a sketch) s.s. . *after vespers. ( × - / inches.) r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . *summer moon. (guildhall, .) ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . portrait of the right hon. edward ryan, secretary of the dilettante society, for which the picture was painted. (s.p.p., .) r.a. . a condottiere. r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . *the industrial arts of war, at the international exhibition at south kensington. (monochrome, × inches.) carried out in fresco on the wall of the victoria and albert museum. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . the captive. s.s. . an arab café, algiers. s.s. . *weaving the wreath. (guildhall, .) r.a. . moretta. (guildhall, .) ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . the industrial arts of peace. (monochrome, × inches.) carried out in fresco on the wall of the victoria and albert museum. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . a roman. s.s. . vittoria. s.s. . *moorish garden: a dream of granada. (guildhall .) ( × inches.) r.a. . old damascus: jews' quarter. r.a. . *antique juggling girl. (guildhall, .) ( - / × inches.) r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . clytemnestra from the battlements of argos watches for the beacon fires which are to announce the return of agamemnon. r.a. leighton house collection. see also sketches, leighton house collection. . annarella, ana capri. d.g. . rubinella, capri. d.g. . lemon tree, capri. d.g. . west court of palazzo, venice. d.g. . *portion of the interior of the grand mosque of damascus. ( × inches.) r.a. . *portrait of mrs. h.e. gordon. ( - / × inches.) r.a. . *little fatima. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . venetian girl. r.a. . *egyptian slinger. (eastern slinger scaring birds in harvest time: moonrise.) (guildhall, .) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . florentine youth. s.s. . ruined mosque in damascus. s.s. . *portrait of sir richard francis burton, k.c.m.g. (portrait of captain richard burton, h.m. consul at trieste.) ( - / × - / inches.) (paris, ; melbourne, ; s.p.p., .) r.a. national portrait gallery. . *the daphnephoria. ( × inches.) a triumphal procession held every ninth year at thebes, in honour of apollo and to commemorate a victory of the thebans over the aeolians of arne. (see proclus, "chrestomath," p. .) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . teresina. r.a. . paolo. r.a. . *music lesson. ( - / × - / inches.) (paris, .) r.a. . *portrait of miss mabel mills (the hon. mrs. grenfell). ( × inches.) r.a. . *an athlete strangling a python.[ ] bronze. (paris, .) r.a. see sketch in plaster, leighton house collection, presented by g.f. watts, o.m. . *portrait of h.e. gordon. ( - / × inches.) g.g. . an italian girl. g.g. . *study. (a little girl with fair hair, in a pink robe.) ( × inches.) r.a. . a study. g.g. . *nausicaa. ( - / × - / inches.) (guildhall, .) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . serafina. r.a. . *winding the skein. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . a study. r.a. . *portrait of miss ruth stewart hodgson. ( - / × - / inches.) g.g. . study of a girl's head. g.g. . sierra: elviza in the distance, granada. s.s. . the sierra alhama, granada. s.s. . biondina. r.a. . catarina. r.a. . *elijah in the wilderness. ( × - / inches.) r.a. (paris, .) corporation of liverpool. see sketches, leighton house collection. . portrait of signor g. costa. r.a. . amarilla. r.a. . a study. r.a. . portrait of the countess brownlow. r.a. . *neruccia. ( × inches.) r.a. . a study. s.s. . the carrara hills. s.s. . a street in lerici. s.s. . via bianca, capri. g.g. . archway in algiers. g.g. . ruins of a mosque, damascus. g.g. . study of a donkey. g.g. . on the terrace, capri. g.g. . sketch near damascus. g.g. . view in granada. g.g. . study of a donkey, egypt. g.g. . study of a head. g.g. . nicandra. g.g. . *sister's kiss. ( × - / inches.) r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . *iostephane. ( × inches.) r.a. . the light of the harem. ( × inches.) r.a. . psamathe. ( × inches.) r.a. . *the nymph of the dargle (crenaia). ( - / × inches.) r.a. . rubinella. g.g. . the pozzo corner, venice. winter exhibition. g.g. . jack and his cider can. winter exhibition. g.g. . the painter's honeymoon. winter exhibition. g.g. . winding of the skein (with sketch). winter exhibition. g.g. . head of urbino. winter exhibition. g.g. . steps of the bargello, florence. winter exhibition. g.g. . a contrast. winter exhibition. g.g. . garden at capri. winter exhibition. g.g. . twenty-nine studies of heads, flowers, and draperies. winter exhibition. g.g. . elisha raising the son of the shunammite. ( × inches.) (guildhall, .) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . portrait of the painter.[ ] r.a. . *idyll. ( - / × inches.) r.a. see sketches in oil and chalk, leighton house collection. . *portrait of mrs. stephen ralli. ( × inches.) r.a. . *whispers. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . viola. r.a. . *bianca. ( × - / inches.) r.a. . portrait of mrs. algernon sartoris. g.g. . *day-dreams. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . wedded. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . phryne at eleusis. ( × inches.) (melbourne, .) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . antigone. r.a. . "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it"--rev. xx. . (design for a portion of a decoration in st. paul's.) r.a. the tate gallery. see sketches, leighton house collection. . melittion. r.a. . *portrait of mrs. mocatta. ( - / × - / inches.) . zeyra. g.g. . the dance: decorative frieze for a drawing-room in a private house. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *vestal. ( - / × inches.) r.a. . *kittens. ( × - / inches.) r.a. . memories. r.a. . portrait of miss nina joachim. ( × inches.) . *letty. ( × - / inches.) r.a. . *cymon and iphigenia. ( × inches.) (berlin, .) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . a nap. r.a. . sun gleams. r.a. . ..."serenely wandering in a trance of sober thought." ... ( × inches.) r.a. . portrait of the lady sybil primrose. r.a. . *portrait of mrs. a. hichens. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . music: a frieze. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . phoebe. (manchester, .) r.a. . a study. g.g. . tombs of muslim saints. s.s. . mountains near ronda puerta de los vientos. s.s. . painted decoration for the ceiling of a music-room.[ ] ( × feet.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . gulnihal. r.a. . *the sluggard. statue, bronze. r.a. presented to the tate gallery by sir henry tate. see statuette, leighton house collection. . *needless alarms. statuette. r.a. see bronze, leighton house collection. . *the jealousy of simoetha, the sorceress. ( × - / inches.) r.a. see sketch, leighton house collection. . *the last watch of hero. ( - / × - / inches, with predella - / × - / inches.) r.a. corporation of manchester. see sketch, leighton house collection. "with aching heart she scanned the sea-face dim. . . . . . . . . . lo! at the turret's foot his body lay, rolled on the stones, and washed with breaking spray." --_hero and leander: musæus_ (translated by edwin arnold). . [picture of a little girl with golden hair, and pale blue eyes.] "yellow and pale as ripened corn which autumn's kiss frees--grain from sheath-- such was her hair, while her eyes beneath, showed spring's faint violets freshly born." --robert browning. . *design for the reverse of the jubilee medallion. (executed for her majesty queen victoria's government.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. empire, enthroned in the centre, rests her right hand on the sword of justice, and holds in her left the symbol of victorious rule. at her feet, on one side, commerce proffers wealth; on the other, a winged figure holds emblems of electricity and steam-power. flanking the throne to the right of the spectator are agriculture and industry; on the opposite side, science, literature, and the arts. above, interlocking wreaths, held by winged genii representing respectively the years and , inclose the initials v.r.i. . *captive andromache. ( × inches.) r.a. corporation of manchester. see sketches, leighton house collection. ..."some standing by, marking thy tears fall, shall say, 'this is she, the wife of that same hector that fought best of all the trojans, when all fought for troy.'" --_iliad_, vi. (e.b. browning's translation). . *portrait of amy, lady coleridge. ( × - / inches.) (s.p.p., .) r.a. . *portraits of the misses stewart hodgson. ( × - / inches.) . four studies. r.w.s. . five studies. s.s. . *sibyl. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *invocation. ( × - / inches.) r.a. . elegy. r.a. . greek girls playing at ball. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *portrait of mrs. francis a. lucas. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . solitude. r.a. . *the bath of psyche.[ ] ( × - / inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *tragic poetess. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *the arab hall. ( × inches.) (guildhall, .) r.a. . *perseus and andromeda. ( - / × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *portrait of a.b. freeman-mitford, esq., c.b. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . *return of persephone. ( × - / inches.) r.a. corporation of leeds. see sketches, leighton house collection. . athlete struggling with a python. group, marble. r.a. . *"and the sea gave up the dead which were in it." (circular, inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . at the fountain. ( × inches.) r.a. . *the garden of the hesperides. (circular, inches.) (chicago, ; guildhall, .) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . bacchante. r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *clytie. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . phryne at the bath. ( × inches.) s.s. see sketches, leighton house collection. . malin head, donegal. s.s. . st. mark's, venice. s.s. . interior of st. mark's, venice. s.s. . the doorway, north aisle, venice. s.s. . rizpah (the small study in oils). ( × inches.) s.s. . *farewell! ( × - / inches.) r.a. . *hit! ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . atalanta. ( - / × inches.) r.a. . rizpah. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . corinna of tanagra. ( - / × inches.) r.a. . *the spirit of the summit. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *the bracelet. ( - / × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *fatidica. ( - / × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . *summer slumber. ( - / × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection, one presented by h.m. the king. . at the window. r.a. . wide, wondering eyes. ( × - / inches.) manchester. . the roman campagna, monte soracte in the distance. s.s. . the acropolis of lindos. s.s. . fiume morto, gombo, pisa. s.s. . gibraltar from san rocque. s.s. . lachrymæ. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . the maid with the yellow hair. r.a. . *'twixt hope and fear. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. . *flaming june. ( × inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . listener. r.a. . a study. r.a. . phoenicians bartering with britons. presented to the royal exchange by lord leighton. see sketches, leighton house collection. . boy with pomegranate. grafton gallery. . miss dene. . aqua certosa, rome. s.s. . chain of hills seen from ronda. s.s. . rocks, malin head, donegal. s.s. . tlemcen, algeria. s.s. . *clytie. ( - / × - / inches.) r.a. see sketches, leighton house collection. . candida. ( × - / inches.) antwerp, . . *the vestal. ( × - / inches.) unfinished. . *a bacchante. ( - / × inches.) . *the fair persian. ( - / × - / inches.) unfinished. footnotes: [ ] the asterisk denotes works exhibited at the winter exhibition of the royal academy of arts, . [ ] r.a., royal academy; g.g., grosvenor gallery; r.w.s., royal society of painters in water-colours; s.s., royal society of british artists, suffolk street; d.g., dudley gallery; s.p.p., society of portrait painters. [ ] exhibited in the roman section by some blunder of the committee, the picture having been painted in rome. [ ] purchased for £ by the president and council of the royal academy, under the terms of the chantrey bequest. [ ] painted by invitation for the collection of portraits of artists painted by themselves, in the uffizi gallery, florence. [ ] painted for the house of mr. marquand, new york. [ ] purchased for guineas by the president and council of the royal academy, under the terms of the chantrey bequest. index abercorn, lady, i. ; ii. aberdeen, lord, i. abydos, ii. academy, _see_ royal academy acland, sir henry, ii. , acton, lord, quoted, ii. - Æsthetics, i. - afreet, ii. agnew, ii. aïdé, hamilton, i. ; ii. , , , ; letter from, ii. _note_ [ ]; quoted, i. _note_ [ ] aitchison, george, i. ; ii. , , , , ; letter from, to prof. church, ii. _note_ [ ]; quoted, ii. - , _note_ [ ], , albert, prince consort, i. , , ; ii. ; death of, ii. alexandra, queen (princess of wales), lines by, on leighton, i. ; ii. algiers ( ), i. , - , - ; ( ), ii. ; drawings of moorish subjects, ii. allen, robin, letters from, ii. _note_ [ ], , ; poem by, america-- hospitality in, i. slave crisis ( ), ii. - , - ampère, mr., i. arab hall, ii. - , - _and notes_ [ - ], arabic, ii. architecture-- athenian, ii. , - , , ecclesiastical, i. egyptian, ii. - , - leighton's presidential address on, ii. _and note_ [ ] scottish, ii. westminster, in, i. armstrong, t., ii. arnold, matthew, letters from, ii. , art-- academic, i. ; ii. "barbarians'" view as to, i. breadth-of-treatment school, i. - catholicity in, ii. - classification in, ii. detail, scrupulous care in, i. florentine, ii. - form, importance of, i. ; ii. , foundation-laying in, i. - function of, i. - ; ii. , , , greek, i. impressionist, ii. industry, need for, i. - influence of, leighton's views as to, ii. - inspiration, moments of, ii. inward source of, i. , , _note_ [ ]; ii. italian, leighton's love for, ii. nature-study in, i. - , , , ; ii. - practical nature of, i. protestant inconsistency as to, i. roman catholic influence on, i. , roman influence on, i. , , spontaneity of, in the young, i. - suggestion _v._ definition, ii. - white, painting of, ii. _art of painting in the queen's reign, the_, cited, ii. artist benevolent fund, ii. artist volunteer corps, leighton's membership of, i. - ; ii. , ; resignation of commission ( ), ii. - ; at leighton's funeral, ii. ashburton, lord, portrait of, ii. _and note_ [ ] assouan, ii. - , athens, ii. , - , _note_ [ ] austin, mrs., ii. avignon, i. ballater, ii. barrington, mrs. russell, letters to, ii. , , bayreuth, ii. , beards, i. beauty-- leighton's passion for, i. ; ii. , , , puritanical attitude towards, i. becker, i. , beechey, sir william, i. benedetto bonfiglio, ii. beni hassan, ii. - benson, ralph a., ii. - ; letter from, _note_ [ ] bentinck, count, i. , bentinck, gen., i. bentinck, penelope, i. , bergheim, i. - berlin, i. - bettino, i. bezzuoli, i. , bideford, ii. - bileith, mr., ii. birrell, augustine, ii. - boehm, sir edgar, letter from, ii. boughton, george h., letters from, ii. boxall, ii. , brackley, lord, i. , brandes, miss, ii. british institution, ii. , british museum, leighton a trustee of, ii. brock, mr., ii. , - _and note_ [ ] brown, madox, ii. browning, mrs., ii. - , , _note_ [ ]; letter from, browning, robert, estimate of leighton by, ii. _note_ [ ]; conversational powers of, i. _and note_ [ ], ; lines by, on the heracles picture, ii. ; leighton's estimate of, ii. - ; letter to, ii. ; letters from, ii. , ; quoted, i. ; otherwise mentioned, i. , , , , ; ii. bruce, col. and mrs., ii. bruckmann, herr, ii. brunton, sir lauder, ii. , , - buckner, i. bull-fights, ii. bulteel, lady e., ii. burne-jones, sir e., ii. , , , , ; inaccuracies of, i. _note_- [ ]; estimate of, ii. burton, sir richard, portrait of, ii. - ; letters from, - calderon, ii. - , cambridge, h.r.h. duke of, ii. cameron, mrs., cited, ii. _note_ [ ] campagna, roman, i. _and notes_ [ and ], , capri, ii. , carlisle, earl of, ii. cartwright, w.c., politics of, i. - ; letters from, ii. _note_ [ ], , ; otherwise mentioned, i. , , - , ; ii. , , casts, gallery of, ii. - _and note_ [ ] chamberlayne, kate, i. change of scene, importance of, i. - chantrey bequest, terms of, ii. - _chemistry of paints and painting_ (church), cited, ii. _notes_ [ ] choisy, m., quoted, ii. , - chorley, henry j., ii. _and note_ [ ]; letter from, _note_ [ ] church, prof., cited, ii. _notes_ [ and ]; letters to, - churche, ii. cimabue, i. clarke, sir c.p., ii. ; quoted, _note_ [ ] cleopatra, ii. , cleopatra's needle, ii. cleveland, duke of, ii. cliquiness, i. cockerell, f. pepys, i. ; ii. _note_ [ ], , _note_ [ ]; quoted, i. ; ii. cole, sir henry, ii. ; letter from, ; letter to, coleridge, lord, letter from, ii. colfax, mr., ii. colnaghi, i. , ; ii. ; cited colonna, i. _note_ [ ] colour, leighton's feeling for, ii. , , , colours, &c., letters to prof. church regarding, ii. - commissioned subjects, leighton's views on, ii. - conture, i. , copies, leighton's views on, ii. cornelius, i. , , , , , ; leighton's estimate of, , - , , ; steinle's estimate of, i. _cornhill magazine_, leighton's illustrations for, ii. , , , corot, i. correggio, ii. , costa, prof. giovanni, leighton's first meeting with, i. - ; portrait of, ii. ; estimate of leighton by, ii. ; letter from, on leighton, ii. _note_ [ ]; quoted-- on leighton in florence, i. ; ii. ; on leighton in siena, ii. _note_ [ ]; on leighton's methods, ii. ; on leighton's last visit, ii. - ; otherwise mentioned, ii. , , , cowley, lady, i. , ; ii. ; letter from, i. cowley, lord, letters from, i. - ; portrait of, ii. cowper, lady, ii. cowper, lord, portrait of, ii. crane, walter, ii. ; estimate of leighton by, - craven, augustus, ii. crawford, lord, quoted, ii. criticism-- leighton's appraisement of, i. ruskin on, ii. currie, sir donald, i. dalou, i. ; letter from, ii. dalziel's bible, leighton's illustrations for, ii. - damascus, ii. - davey, lord, ii. de l'aigle, madame, ii. de l'aigle, marquis, ii. de morgan, wm., ii. _and note_ [ ] de savelege, emile, ii. delaroche, paul, i. , denderah, ii. dene, dorothy (miss pullen), ii. - detail, perfection of, i. dickens, charles, letters from, ii. ; leighton compared with, - _note_ [ ] dilettanti, society of, ii. - disneh, ii. dixon, messrs., ii. dolby, miss, ii. - domestic decoration, ii. doyle, richard, letter from, ii. _note_ [ ] drawings by leighton-- "cervara," i. _note_ [ ] comparison of, with finished paintings, ii. "drifting," ii. estimate of, i. , ; ii. , "evening in a french country house, an," ii. florentine fresco, copy of, ii. - "lemon tree," i. _and note_ [ ]- ; ii. _and note_ [ ] "monk dividing enemies, a," i. _note_ [ ]; ii. moorish subjects, of, ii. "plague in florence in ," ii. "samson wrestling with the lion," ii. "vincenzo's head," i. - , - "well-head, the," i. _note_ [ ] du maurier, i. _note_ [ ] duccio, i. dudley, lord, ii. _note_ [ ] duff, sir m. grant, quoted, ii. dürer, albert, i. ; ii. - dyer, sir w. thistelton, estimate of leighton by, i. - _note_ [ ] east, alfred, estimate of leighton by, ii. eastlake, sir ch., i. , , edfou, ii. edis, col., ii. - edward vii., king (prince of wales), "cimabue's madonna" lent by, for exhibition, i. ; leighton's studio visited by, ii. , , ; tribute to leighton by, i. ; ii. ; otherwise mentioned, i. ; ii. _and note_ [ ], , , , , , egypt, leighton's visit to, ii. - egyptian tombs, ii. - elephantina, ii. elgin cathedral, ii. eliot, george, _see_ lewes ellesmere, earl of, i. , , ellesmere, lady, i. ellis, maj.-gen., ii. elmore, ii. ely, lady, ii. erskine, mr., ii. esne, ii. - etty, i. farquhar, miss, i. farrer, lady (miss wedgwood), ii. fatma, ii. fenzi, m., i. , ferronay, pauline la (mrs. a. craven), ii. _note_ [ ] ffrench, i. , findhorn river, ii. - finlay, mr., ii. , fitzgerald, percy, quoted, ii. _note_ [ ] flatz, i. fleury, robert, i. , , , , , ; ii. , ; letter from, ii. ; cited, ii. florence-- leighton's early studies in, i. - ; his stay at ( ), ; ( ), list by steinle of works to be studied in, i. - florentine art, ii. - flowers, leighton's feeling for, i. , , ; studies, i. , - ; ii. , _note_ [ ], - , - form and matter, divergence between, ii. forres, ii. - frankfort, leighton at school at, i. frederick, empress, ii. french, i. fresco, gambier parry's medium for, ii. - , - , fresco _v._ oils, i. - , ; ii. freshfield, mrs. douglas, ii. frith, w.p., letter from, ii. _note_ [ ] führich, i. fuller-maitland, j.a., ii. , gamba, count, i. , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ; ii. gambart, ii. , garcia, señor, ii. _note_ [ ] gebel silsily, ii. genius, i. german æsthetics, i. - germany, leighton's journey through ( ), i. - gérôme, ii. , gibson, i. , ; ii. , ; leighton's estimate of, i. gilbert, alfred, quoted, i. gilbert, sir j., ii. gilchrist, connie, ii. giotto, i. , _note_ [ ], ; ii. gladstone, w.e., ii. ; letters from, , glyn, mrs., ii. , goethe's _sprüche_, leighton's criticism of, ii. - gondolas, i. goodall, j., i. ; quoted, ii. gooderson, t., i. gordon, lady duff, ii. , , gortschakoff, prince, i. gozze, count, i. graefe, i. granada, ii. grant, gen., ii. greek language, ii. - greene, i. , greg, w.r., ii. _note_ [ ] grenfell, hon. mrs. (miss mabel mills), portrait of, ii. greville, charles, ii. greville, henry, leighton's friendship with, i. , , _and note_ [ ], ; extracts from diaries of, i. - , , ; death of, i. - ; letters from, i. - ; otherwise mentioned, i. , ; ii. , , , , , grey, countess, i. grove, sir george, letter from, ii. _note_ [ ] grueber, h.a., quoted, ii. - guaita, mr., i. guthrie, mrs. james, portrait of, ii. _note_ [ ], habit, deadening effect of, i. , hague, the, i. - hale, mr., ii. , hallé, i. handel festival ( ), ii. - hardy, thomas, ii. harrison, mr., i. , , ; ii. hassan effendi, ii. haydon, i. - hébert, i. , heidelberg, i. - heilbronn, i. henderson, a., ii. hendschel, i. herkomer, hubert, letter from, ii. hickey, miss emily, sonnet by, ii. _note_ [ ] hildesheim, ii. hills, mr., ii. hoare, lady, ii. , , hodgson, j.g., i. ; letter from, ii. _note_ [ ] holland, leighton's visit to ( ), i. - holland, lord and lady, i. ; ii. , , hollyer, fred, ii. , ; quoted, - hommel, i. hooker, sir joseph, cited, i. hope, j.k. kempton, letter from, ii. horsfall, t.c., correspondence with, ii. , - horsley, mr., ii. hosmer, miss harriet, i. , , ; ii. , hosseyn, ii. - , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , - , hughes, mrs. watts, ii. ; letter from, human form, leighton's treatment of, ii. hunt, holman, i. _note_ [ ], , ; ii. , , hunter, colin, i. i'anson, mr. (great-uncle), i. - impressionists, ii. ingres, i. innsbruck statues, i. - , - irish scenery, ii. irving, sir h., ii. _note_ [ ]; leighton compared with, - _note_ [ ] italian art, ii. , , italy (_for districts, towns, &c., see their names_)-- leighton's affection for, i. - , , , - , , , , , - ; ii. music of, i. street cries in, i. - jameson, mrs., i. janauschek, i. janotha, miss, ii. joachim, dr. joseph, ii. , , , ; leighton's speech at jubilee presentation to, ii. - kalergi, madame, i. karnak, ii. - kaye, miss, i. kemble, adelaide, _see_ sartoris kemble, mrs. (fanny), on "pan" and "venus," ii. ; reading of, i. ; estimate of leighton by, i. ; letter to, i. ; letters from, i. _note_ [ ]; ii. - , _note_ [ ]; otherwise mentioned, i. , , , , , , , kew gardens, i. - _note_ [ ] kimberley, s.a., art exhibition at, i. kom ombo, ii. , koorveh, ii. kuppelwieser, i. kyrle society, ii. - laing, isabel (lady nias), i. , _note_ [ ], ; portrait of, - , land, w.c., ii. landseer, sir edwin, ii. , lang, mrs. andrew, quoted, ii. lansdowne, lord, ii. , lantéri, edouard, ii. lascelles, e., ii. lawrence, sir thos., i. lecky, prof., ii. leech, john, ii. lehmann, ii. leighton, dr. (father), career of, i. - ; attitude towards art as a profession, - ; severity towards his son, ; anatomy studies, ; move to bath, ; illness, ii. - ; death, ; letters to, i. , , , , , , , , , , , , ; ii. , , , , - , , , , , , , _note_ [ ], , ; letter from, i. ; letter regarding, i. - ; otherwise mentioned, i. , leighton, lady (grandmother), i. , , leighton, mrs. (mother), delicate health of, i. - ; tenderness of, ; death of, ii. ; letters to, i. , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ; ii. _note_ [ ], , - , , , , - , , , , , , , , , ; letters from, i. , , , , , , _note_ [ ], ; letter from, to younger daughter, ii. leighton, alexandra (sister), _see_ orr leighton, augusta (sister), _see_ matthews leighton, sir baldwyn, letter from, i. leighton, frederic, lord-- ancestry of, i. - career, chronological sequence of-- birth, i. ; early travels, , ; education, - , - ; under steinle's influence, - ; first picture, ; studies in brussels, paris and frankfort, ; visit to london, - ; portrait painting, , , - ; back to frankfort, ; at bergheim, ; in holland, - ; italy, - ; rome, - , _et seq._, ; at bad gleisweiler, ; at frankfort and florence, ; return to rome, ; at lucca, _note_ [ ]; frankfort, venice, florence and rome, ; consultation with graefe, ; success of "cimabue's madonna," ; in london, , ; in paris, - , _et seq._; to frankfort and italy, - ; back to rome, ; in algiers, , - , - ; in rome ( ), ii. ; in london, ; at orme square, , ; volunteering activities, i. - ; ii. , , ; in devonshire, ; visit to mason, - ; at compiègne, - ; the lyndhurst fresco, - , - ; building of leighton house, - ; a.r.a., ; visit to spain ( ), ; examiner at victoria and albert museum ( - ), ; at vichy ( ), _note_ [ ]; up the nile, - ; r.a. ( ), , ; visit to damascus ( ), - ; to spain ( ), ; p.r.a. ( ), ; trustee of british museum ( ), ; resigns volunteer commission ( ), - ; made a baronet ( ), ; waning health, , , , , , ; visit to spain ( ), ii. _note_ [ ]; foreign travel, - ; algiers, ; made a peer, ; fatal illness, - ; death, characteristics of-- actuality, sense of, i. ; ii. , - , art, passionate attachment to, i. , , ; ii. - beauty, love of, i. ; ii. , , , _bonhomie_, ii. boyishness, ii. children, love of, ii. , , consistency, ii. , courage, ii. critical faculty, i. criticism, attitude towards, i. depression, liability to, i. duty, sense of, i. ; ii. enthusiasm, i. , fastidiousness, ii. gratitude, ii. greek-like combination of qualities, i. - , ; ii. , - impartiality, i. industry and strenuousness, ii. , - , , insight, rapidity of, i. intellectual brilliancy, i. , , , ; ii. , kindness, i. ; ii. , , , _note_ [ ] loyalty, i. ; ii. , mastery of others, ii. - _and note_ [ ] modesty, i. , , ; ii. , , , music, love of, i. , oratorical powers, i. , , ; ii. - originality, ii. , selective faculty, predominant, i. _note_ [ ]; ii. sensitiveness, i. simplicity, i. sincerity, i. , , , smell and hearing, keen senses of, i. social charm, i. , society, general, distaste for, i. , , - spontaneity, lack of, i. ; ii. , , - sympathy, i. - , _and note_ [ ], thoroughness, ii. , , , unselfishness, ii. vitality, exuberance of, i. , will power, ii. diary ("pebbles"), extracts from, i. - , diary of egyptian visit, ii. - dignities and honours conferred on, ii. drawings by, _see that title_ estimates of, by-- anonymous, i. ; ii. - , browning, robert, ii. _note_ [ ] costa, prof. g., ii. crane, w., ii. - dyer, sir w.t., i. - _note_ [ ] east, a., ii. greville, h., i. kemble, mrs., i. powers, hiram, i. poynter, sir e., ii. _note_ [ ] richmond, sir w., i. ; ii. - rivière, briton, i. , , , ; ii. - ruskin, j., i. thornycroft, h., i. - , - watts, g.f., i. , , ; ii. frescoes by, ii. - , - , - funeral of, i. - ; ii. - health difficulties, i. , , , , , ; ii. , ; eyesight trouble, i. , , , - , , , , , , ; ii. ; waning health, , , , , ; fatal disease, ii. , , , - limitations in his art, i. - methods of, ii. - , , pictures by, _see that title_ portrait of, ii. ; bust by brock, _and note_ [ ], portraits by, _see that title_ presidential addresses by, ii. - , - sketches by, ii. - _and note_ [ ], - , - speeches by, ii. - statuary by, ii. - , - leighton, sir james (grandfather), i. leighton, rev. wm., i. leighton house-- aims of committee of, ii. - arab hall, ii. - , contents of, ii. - preface to catalogue of, ii. - preliminaries to building of, ii. - site of, ii. _and note_ [ ] style of, ii. - leitch, i. "les natchez," ii. leslie, lady constance, ii. ; quoted, i. leslie, sir john, i. , , lewes, mr., ii. , lewes, marian e. (george eliot), ii. ; letters from, - lewis, arthur, ii. , lindos, ii. , lindsay, sir coutts, ii. linton, ii. lister, sir joseph, ii. lister, villers, i. listowel, lord, ii. liszt, ii. _note_ [ ] liverpool, leighton's speech at art congress at ( ), ii. , - loch, lady, quoted, i. - ; ii. lockhart, i. lougsor, ii. , , lucas, charles, cited, ii. lugano, lake of, i. lynn of dee, ii. _and note_ [ ], lyon, lord, ii. lyons, bickerton, i. , mackail, ii. mackenzie, sir a., ii. macwhirter, j., ii. maeterlinck, ii. , _magazine of art_, reprint from, ii. _and note_ [ ], mahometans, ii. , - malet, sir e., ii. malinmore (co. donegal), ii. , - _and note_ [ ] man, isle of, art exhibition in, i. manchester art museum and galleries, ii. - _manchester courier_, extract from, ii. - maquay, mrs., i. , mariani, ii. - mario, i. ; ii. marochetti, i. , marquand, mr., i. ; ii. _note_ [ ] marriage, leighton's views on, ii. massarani, sig. tullio, ii. mason, george, i. , , ; ii. , ; leighton's relations with, i. ; ii. - , matthews, mrs. (augusta n. leighton), birth of, i. ; leighton's advice to, on musical studies, - , - ; extracts from diary of, , ; in leighton's last illness, ii. - ; at the funeral, ii. ; letters to, i. , ; ii. , , , , , , , , , ; letter from mrs. leighton to, ii. ; otherwise mentioned, i. , , , , , , ; ii. , , , , , may, phil, ii. medinet haboo, ii. meissonier, ii. melbourne, art exhibition in, i. - meli, signor, i. mendelssohn, frau, i. meran, i. , , meynell, wilfrid, ii. , middleburgh, i. millais, sir j., leighton's estimate of, ii. , ; flower painting by, i. ; "needless alarms" given to, ii. ; letter from, ; otherwise mentioned, i. _note_ [ ], , , ; ii. , , , , , , millet, jean françois, i. mills, sir charles, i. mills, miss mabel (hon. mrs. grenfell), portrait of, ii. minyeh, ii. - monbrison, george de, ii. monson, lady, i. montfort, i. , ; ii. ; cited, moor scenery, ii. - , moorish interior, i. ; music, morants, ii. morlaix, ii. morley, rt. hon. john, letter from, ii. morny, i. morris, william, ii. mortlake, m.c., ii. _note_ [ ] music-- italian, i. leighton's feeling for, i. , ; ii. ; his singing, i. - , - ; his yearly gatherings, ii. - ; his speech at the joachim celebration, ii. - monday popular concerts, ii. moorish, i. mustafa aga, ii. - , , napier, lord, ii. naples, leighton's visit to ( ), ii. nash, mr. and mrs., i. neville, lady dorothy, ii. , nettleship, ii. nias, lady, _see_ laing, isabel nicholson, ii. nordau, leighton's estimate of, ii. - north, miss, i. norton, hon. mrs., letter from, ii. _note_ [ ] novello, clara, ii. nubians, ii. oakes, i. , _obiter dicta_ (birrell), ii. - o'conor, ii. ogle, miss, ii. old masters-- leighton's attitude towards, i. winter exhibitions of, ii. oppenheim, i. orcagna, i. ordway, mr., ii. , , , , orr, col. sutherland, i. _note_ [ ], , orr, mrs. sutherland (alexandra leighton), birth of, i. ; marriage of, _note_ [ ]; in india, _and note_ [ ], , ; widowed, ii. ; portrait of, , , ; in leighton's last illness, - ; at the funeral, ; work on browning by, _and note_ [ ]; letters to, i. , , _note_ [ ], ; ii. , , , , , , , , ; otherwise mentioned, i. , , , , , ; ii. , , , , "orphée," ii. - _and note_ [ ] ouless, w.w., i. overbeck, i. , , - , , , ; leighton's estimate of, - ; steinle's, paestum, ii. paget, sir james, ii. palmer, ii. panshanger, ii. pantaleone, dr., i. ; ii. paris, comtesse de, telegram from, ii. parry, gambier, ii. , - ; letter from, pasta, i. - pasteur, w., letter from, ii. _note_ [ ] pattison, mrs. mark, letters to, i. , , ; ii. , , , "pebbles," _see under_ leighton--diary perry, walter copland, ii. - _and note_ [ ] persian tiles, ii. - perugia, ii. perugini, carlo, i. , , ; ii. petre, i. pheidias, i. philipson, mr., ii. phipps, hon. col., i. , , , phipps, hon. mrs., ii. photography, i. - ; of masterpieces, ii. phylæ, ii. - , - , piatti, ii. pictures by leighton-- "and the sea gave up ...," ii. "antique juggling girl, the," ii. - , _note_ [ ] "ariadne abandoned by theseus," ii. "atalanta," ii. - "bath of psyche, the," ii. "byzantine well," ii. _and note_ [ ] "captive andromache," ii. "cimabue finding giotto in the fields of florence," i. "cimabue's madonna"-- description of, i. estimate of, i. - ; by richmond, ; by ruskin, _note_ [ ]; ii. ; by rossetti, i. _note_ [ ] exhibition of, in rome, i. , ; at leighton house ( ), i. holes in, i. _and note_ [ ], - , success of, i. , ; ii. work on, i. - , - , , , - , , , , - "cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline," ii. "clytemnestra watching from the battlements of argos," ii. _and note_ , _note_ [ ], "clytie," ii. , , "condottiere, a," ii. "crossbowman, the," ii. "cymon and iphegenia," i. ; ii. _and note_ [ ], "dædalus and icarus," ii. , "dante at verona," ii. , _and note_ [ ] "daphnephoria, the," ii. - "death of brunelleschi, the," i. - "duel between romeo and tybalt, the," i. "duet" (small "johnnie"), ii. _note_, , "eastern king, the," ii. - , "egyptian slinger," ii. "electra at the tomb of agamemnon," ii. , , "elijah in the wilderness," ii. , "eucharis," ii. , , _and note_ [ ] "fisherman and the syren, the," ii. _and note_ [ ], "flaming june," ii. - "francesca," ii. , _note_ [ ] "girl feeding peacocks," ii. _and note_ [ ] "golden hours," ii. , "greek girl dancing," ii. "greek girls picking up pebbles," ii. "helen of troy," ii. _and note_ [ ] "helios and rhodos," ii. "heracles wrestling with death for the body of alcestis," ii. - , "honeymoon, the," ii. , improvement in, by keeping, ii. _note_ [ ] "in a moorish garden," ii. , _note_ [ ] "industrial arts of peace, the," ii. - , "industrial arts of war, the," ii. - , landscapes in oil, i. "lieder ohne worte," ii. _and note_ [ ], , _note_ [ ], _note_ [ ], - , , list of, ii. - "michael angelo nursing his dying servant," ii. - , , - , "music lesson," ii. "nanna, la," ii. - , "nausicaa," ii. - "negro festival, a," i. ; ii. - "neruccia," ii. , "nile woman, a," ii. "noble lady of venice, a," ii. "plague in florence," ii. "psyche," ii. number of, during presidency, ii. "odalisque," ii. , "old damascus," ii. _and note_ [ ] "orpheus," _see subheading_ "triumph of music" "othello and desdemona," i. "pan," i. , , ; in america, i. ; ii. - "paolo and francesca," ii. , - "persephone," i. "perseus and andromeda," ii. perugini, carlo, head of, i. poetry in, i. ; ii. _and note_ [ ] "reconciliation of the montagues and capulets"-- america, in, i. ; ii. criticism of, i. _note_ [ ] france, in, i. sale of, i. mentioned, i. , "romeo," _see subheading_ "reconciliation" "romeo and juliet," ii. _and note_ [ ] "rustic music" (large "johnnie"), ii. _note_ [ ], , "s. jerome," ii. "salome, the daughter of herodias," i. ; ii. _and note_ [ ] "samson and delilah," ii. , , "sea echoes," ii. _and note_ [ ], "solitude," ii. - _and note_ [ ] "spirit of the summit, the," i. "study," ii. "summer moon," ii. - , "sunrise--capri," ii. "syracusan bride ..., a," ii. _and note_ [ ], texture of, ii. "triumph of music, the"-- failure of, i. - "sketches of orpheus," i. subject of, i. - mentioned, i. , , ; ii. , "venus," i. , - , , _note_ [ ]; in america, i. ; ii. - "venus disrobing for the bath," ii. vision of mrs. sandbach, ii. _and note_ [ ], , , _note_ "weaving the wreath," ii. "wedded," ii. _note_ [ ] "winding the skein," ii. , pisano, nicolo, i. pocock, ii. pollington, lady, i. ; portrait of, portraits by leighton-- ashburton, lord, ii. _and note_ [ ] bentinck, count, family of, i. , burton, sir r., ii. , costa, giovanni, ii. cowley, lady, and family, i. - , cowper, lord, ii. guthrie, mrs. james, ii. _note_ [ ], i'anson, mr., i. mills, miss mabel, ii. pollington, lady, i. walker, mrs. hanson, i. _note_ [ ] powers, hiram, i. ; estimate of leighton by, i. poynter, sir e., i. ; estimate of leighton by, ii. _note_ [ ] prange, mr., i. pre-raphaelites-- burne-jones distinguished from, ii. ; leighton's estimate of, i. ; his relations with, ii. pullen, miss (dorothy dene), ii. - pullen, lina, ii. quilter, sir cuthbert, ii. _note_ [ ] rafaello, i. _and note_ [ ], ravaschieri, duchessa, i. rawnsley, canon, ii. redesdale, lord, i. reeves, sims, ii. reston, i. rhapsodist performance, i. - rhoden, i. rhodes island, ii. - , rhys, ernest, cited, ii. _note_ [ ] ricardo, puliza, ii. richmond, george, ii. ; letter from, richmond, sir wm. b., i. , ; ii. ; estimate of leighton by, i. ; ii. - ristori, i. - ritchie, miss, ii. ritchie, mrs. richard, quoted, i. _note_ [ ]; ii. _note_ [ ] rivière, briton, estimate of leighton by, i. , , , ; ii. - ; quoted, i. ; ii. - , ; letter from, ii. ; letters to, ii. , roberts, dr., ii. , , , roman catholic faith, i. rome-- art, influence on, i. , , café greco, i. _note_ [ ] leighton's early studies in, i. steinle's estimate of, i. - _romola_, leighton's illustrations for, ii. - , rosebery, lord, ii. ross, mr., ii. ross, mrs., ii. rossetti, d.g., i. ; ii. , ; quoted, i. _note_ [ ]; ii. _note_ [ ], , rossetti, wm., ii. - , rossini, i. - royal academy-- attacks on, ii. chantry bequest, terms of, ii. - codification committee, ii. - constitution of, ii. - _note_ [ ] exhibitions of-- burlington house, at, ii. colour, as test of, ii. winter, of old masters, ii. leighton an associate of, ii. ; member, , ; president, ii. ; his speeches at banquets of, ii. - _and notes_ [ and ]; his bequest to, ii. pension question, ii. - , presidency of, ii. _note_ [ ] treasurership of, ii. _note_ [ ] tresham case, ii. - _note_ [ ] women, question of admission of, to membership, ii. - _and note_ [ ] ruskin, john, estimate by, of "cimabue's madonna," i. _note_ [ ]; ii. ; of leighton, i. ; ii. ; on "a lemon tree," ii. ; on the lyndhurst fresco, ii. ; letters from, ii. , - ; otherwise mentioned, i. _note_ [ ], , , , , ; ii. , russell, odo (lord ampthill), ii. , , russell, lady william, letters from, ii. , s. francis of assisi, quoted, i. _note_ [ ] salisbury, ii. salisbury, lord, ii. samuelson, right hon. sir bernard, ii. _note_ [ ] sandbach, mrs., ii. _and note_ [ ], sartoris, hon. mrs. alfred, letter from, ii. _and note_ [ ]; quoted, sartoris, edward, leighton's friendship with, i. , ; illness of, i. , , ; otherwise mentioned, i. , , , , , , ; ii. , , , sartoris, mrs. (adelaide kemble), leighton's friendship with, i. - , , - , , , , , , , , , ; estimates of, i. - ; portrait of, i. , , ; intimates of, i. ; personal appearance of, i. ; mrs. ritchie's account of, i. _note_ [ ]; extract from early diary of, - _note_ [ ]; leighton's family's appreciation of, i. - ; "a week in a french country house" by, ii. ; illness of, ii. - ; letter from, to greville, i. ; to mrs. leighton, ii. ; otherwise mentioned, i. , , , , - , , _note_ [ ], , - , ; ii. _and note_ [ ], , , , , , , , _note_ [ ] saunders, mr. bailey, letter to, ii. scarborough borough council, messages from, ii. , schäffer, i. scheffer, ary, i. _and note_ [ ], ; ii. schlemmer, dr., i. schlosser, frau rath, i. , schwind, i. scottish rivers and scenery, ii. - , - sculpture, leighton's view on, i. , , - ; his work in, ii. - , - selim, sheykh, ii. - , sermoneta, duke, i. servolini, i. , seville, ii. shakespear, illustration of, ii. shaw, norman, letter from, ii. sheik boran bukh, letter to, i. ; letter from, shelley, ii. shields, frederick, ii. si achmet, syed, ii. , , , siddons, mrs., i. siena, leighton at the duomo fire in, ii. _note_ [ ] simon, john, ii. smith, george, ii. society, i. , - sohag, ii. , somers, lord, ii. "souls," the, ii. south london fine art gallery, ii. spain, leighton's visit to ( ), ii. ; ( ), ii. ; ( ), _note_ [ ] spanish language, leighton's mastery of, ii. _note_ [ ] speke, ii. spencer, lord and lady, ii. sphinx, ii. spielmann, m., letter to, ii. spottiswoode, wm., letter from, ii. _note_ [ ] stanton, col., ii. - statuary, _see_ sculpture steinle, eduard von, influence of, on leighton, i. , , , ; ii. ; leighton's tribute to, i. ; list of florentine paintings recommended by, for study, i. - ; with leighton ( ), i. - ; water-colour by, i. _note_ [ ]; portrait of (_der winter_), ii. - ; estimate of, i. - ; death of, ii. ; letters to, i. _note_ [ ], , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , - , , ; ii. , , , , , , , , , , , ; letters from, i. , , , , ; ii. , , ; otherwise mentioned, i. , , - , , , , stephens, ii. , sterlings, ii. , , stevens, alfred, wellington monument by, ii. - storey, w.w., ii. strafford, alice, countess of, i. _note_ [ ] strangford, lady, ii. _note_ [ ] stratford de redcliffe, lady, ii. strauch, i. stretton, i. style, ii. , sunrise, i. sunset, i. swinburne, a.c., letter from, ii. ; tribute of, ii. ; quoted, ii. _note_ [ ] symons, arthur, quoted, ii. - syoot, ii. - tadema, alma, i. talfourd, ii. tangiers, ii. - tate, sir henry, ii. tate gallery, founding of, ii. - taylor, tom, i. ; ii. temple, a.g., ii. ; quoted, tennyson, ii. terry, ellen, ii. _note_ [ ] thackeray, miss, ii. , thackeray, w.m., i. thompson, sir e., ii. thorley, mrs. anne, quoted, i. thornycroft, hamo, ii. ; estimate of leighton by, i. - , - titian, i. ; ii. tintoretto, ii. tree, beerbohm, ii. troyon, i. turkish children, ii. tunnicliffe, dr., ii. tupper, martin f., letters from, ii. _note_ [ ] turner, ii. tyrolese scenery and peasantry, i. - , , ulm, i. underhill, mr., quoted, ii. _note_ [ ] valletort, lady katharine, ii. valletort, lord, ii. van eycke, ii. van haanen, cited, ii. vandyke, i. vaughan, kate, ii. velasquez, ii. - venetians, i. - venice ( ), i. - , ; ( ), , ; after athens, ii. verdi, i. verona, i. , , viardot, madame, ii. - _and note_ [ ], vibert, ii. , vichy, ii. _note_ [ ] victoria, queen, "cimabue's madonna" bought by, i. _note_ [ ], , , ; on prince consort's death, ii. , ; medallion for jubilee of, ii. ; otherwise mentioned, i. , , , victoria and albert museum-- decoration of, ii. - ; leighton examiner at, ii. volunteering, leighton's activities in, i. - ; ii. , , ; his retirement ( ), ii. - vyner, mr. clare, ii. walker, john hanson ("johnny"), leighton's friendship with, i. _and note_ [ ]; paintings from, ii. _and note_ [ ]; letters to, i. - walker, mrs. j.h., portrait of, i. _note_ [ ], _and note_ [ ] wall-painting, i. - , walpole, mr. and mrs. henry, i. walton, frank, i. wantage, lady, ii. _note_ [ ] ward, j., cited, ii. _note_ [ ] waterhouse, a., ii. watney, mrs. james, ii. watson, wm., letters from, ii. watts, g.f., estimate of leighton by, i. , , ; ii. ; leighton's estimate of, ii. ; views on the province of art, - ; theory on rendering of truth, ; leighton's friendship with, i. _and note_ [ ]; compared with leighton, - ; portraits of "dorothy dene," ii. _note_ [ ]; hollyer's photographs from, ; baronetcy declined by, ; picture presented by, to leighton house, ; letter from, i. ; quoted, ; ii. _note_ [ ], , ; cited, ii. , _note_ [ ]; otherwise mentioned, i. , , - ; ii. , , - , , wellington, duke of, i. - ; stevens' monument of, ii. - wells, henry, letters from, ii. _note_ [ ], _note_ [ ]; letters to, - _and note_ [ ], , , , , westbury, ii. westminster, architecture in, i. whistler, i. ; ii. wilkinson, gardiner, cited, ii. willig, i. wilson, herbert, i. , wonista, mrs., ii. woolfe, henry, ii. wöredle, i. wright, dr. william, quoted, ii. yeames' "arthur and hubert," ii. zanetti, i. zermatt, ii. the end printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. edinburgh & london errata page , note , _for_ "soeür," _read_ "soeur." page , line , _for_ "lindas," _read_ "lindos." page , line , _for_ "rispah," _read_ "rizpah." page , line , _for_ "altmodish," _read_ "altmodisch." page , line , _for_ "men-schlich," _read_ "mensch-lich." page , line , _for_ "gambia parry," _read_ "gambier parry." * * * * * +------------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page : "this arrangement, if effected" replaced with | | "this arrangement, is effected" | | page : "à quarelle" replaced with "aquarelle" | | page : rivere house replaced with revere house | | page : mr. caleot replaced with mr. cabot | | page : mr. bileith replaced with mr. biliotti | | page : replaced with . (grant and colfax, | | mentioned later in the diary, were elected in | | , not .) | | page : replaced with . (see above) | | page : koorveh replaced with koorneh | | page : fastastic replaced with fantastic | | page : "cleaboulos instructing his daughter cleabouline"| | replaced with | | "cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline"| | page : cleabouline replaced with cleobouline | | page : cleabouline replaced with cleobouline | | page : cleabouline replaced with cleobouline | | page : delighful replaced with delightful | | page : aficimado replaced with aficionado | | page : spontanteous replaced with spontaneous | | page : sociel replaced with social | | page : gussey replaced with gussy | | page : 'are there differents kinds' replaced with | | 'are there different kinds' | | page : mensch-lich replaced with menschlich (the errata | | includes the hyphen because it spans two lines) | | page : heirarchy replaced with hierarchy | | page : "a vivid scene of abstract beauty" replaced with | | "a vivid sense of abstract beauty" | | page : keat's replaced with keats' | | page : oethra replaced with Æthra | | page : longsor replaced with lougsor | | page : . *the daphnephoria. replaced with | | . *the daphnephoria. | | page : oeolians replaced with aeolians | | page : . catarina. replaced with . catarina. | | page : hichins replaced with hichens | | page : mont replaced with moute | | page : 'garcia, senor' replaced with 'garcia, señor' | | page : phylae replaced with phylæ | | | | note that the date "friday, th" on page is out of | | order. by checking the dates it clearly should be the rd,| | which is confirmed with the date wednesday, th on page | | . this has been corrected to "friday, rd" in the text.| | "friday evening" on page has been corrected to | | "tuesday evening" by the same logic. | | | | words that are not errors: | | | | page : distrest. | | page : subtile. | | page : scumble. | | page : subtilty. | | page : the phrase 'tol-lol!' is th century slang for | | pretty good. | | page : trés. | | page : euphuism. | | page : fribbled. | | page : shapliness. | | | +------------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * masterpieces in colour edited by m. henry roujon bastien-lepage ( - ) in the same series reynolds chardin velasquez millet greuze raeburn turner sargent botticelli constable romney memling rembrandt fragonard bellini dÜrer fra angelico lawrence rossetti hogarth raphael watteau leighton murillo holman hunt watts titian ingres millais corot luini delacroix franz hals fra lippo lippi carlo dolci puvis de chavannes gainsborough meissonier tintoretto gÉrÔme van dyck veronese da vinci van eyck whistler fromentin rubens mantegna boucher perugino holbein rosa bonheur burne-jones bastien-lepage le brun goya [illustration: plate i.--the song of springtime (museum at verdun) this is one of the artist's earliest works. a certain embarrassment may be noted in the manner in which the cupids are treated; even at this period, it is easy to see that allegory is not suited to the precise and realistic talent of this painter; yet the young girl is designed with a vigour which already foreshadows the masterly art of _hay-making_.] bastien lepage by fr. crastre translated from the french by frederic taber cooper illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] frederick a. stokes company new york--publishers copyright, , by frederick a. stokes company [illustration: march, ] the·plimpton·press norwood·mass·u·s·a contents page his youth his best years his premature end list of illustrations plate i. the song of springtime frontispiece museum at verdun ii. portrait of m. wallon museum of the louvre iii. the artist's mother collection of É. bastien-lepage iv. the hay-making museum of the luxembourg v. portrait of m. hayem museum of the luxembourg vi. portrait of m. x---- museum at verdun vii. the little boatman collection of É. bastien-lepage viii. the artist's uncle museum at verdun [illustration] there are certain beings who bear the stamp of the divine seal and are preordained to receive the highest favours within the gift of glory; they are fated to pass through life like those brilliant meteors which are seen to flash across the heavens and disappear in the same instant. bastien-lepage was one of these meteors. but while the others leave behind them only a luminous trail that swiftly vanishes, this rare artist, snatched so prematurely from the field of art, traced his passage in a furrow of dazzling splendour, the radiance of which has not even yet begun to fade. bastien-lepage was a painter in the noblest acceptation of the term; it may even be asserted that he would have exercised considerable influence upon the art of his epoch if destiny had not stupidly mown down the sturdy flower of his genius in the very hour of its brightest blossoming. born into this world with a solid tenacity of purpose which seems to be a special gift of the soil of lorraine to her sons and daughters, he had a clear-cut and unalterable conception of what painting should be. his mind was receptive only of simple ideas, his eye perceived only visions that were tangible, such as were unobscured by any shadow or any artifice. he was the apostle of clearness, both in conception and in execution. every time that he tried experimentally to turn aside from his chosen path, he ceased to be himself, he fell below his own standards. what interested him most of all, in the life of this world which he observed so eagerly, as though he had a presentiment of his early end, was nature's most precise and most uncompromising manifestation, both in line and in relief; namely, the peasant and the environment which frames him. having deliberately chosen such models, bastien-lepage could not pretend to be the painter of the beautiful, nor did he ever become so. he did not even adorn his subjects with that special sort of idealism with which millet embellished even his most uncouth rustic types, a slightly melancholy idealism obtained by a sombre toning down of colour, which bastien-lepage held in horror. his peasants stand out boldly, in the crude glare of flamboyant noontide, under a summer sun that refuses to leave hidden any part of their ugliness or their defects. he painted them as he saw them, with the searching rays striking them full in the face; and his brush was a stranger to any compromise, intolerant of even the slightest betterment, in the course of the literal transference of his model to his canvas. it made no difference how handsome or how homely a given subject might be, bastien-lepage would always render him precisely as nature, in a grudging or indulgent mood, had made him,--that is to say, truly and sincerely, with a precision that would be almost photographic, if the minuteness of his technique were not ennobled by the high quality of his art. with such gifts, bastien-lepage was foreordained to be a marvellous interpreter of rural life, and such he was in the highest degree; in like manner, he could not fail to become a portrait painter of the first order, and it was in this capacity also that he enrolled himself among the most interesting and vigorous artists of our epoch. [illustration: plate ii.--portrait of m. wallon (museum of the louvre) few artists have been able to endow their models with such an animated expression of life. all the keenness, intelligence and austerity of this prominent personage, known by the name of father of the constitution, are eloquently transferred to this page, with a sobriety of means that still further emphasizes its vigour.] his youth jules bastien-lepage was born at damvillers, in the department of the meuse, on the first of november, . his parents were of the well-to-do farming class, occupied from one year's end to the other with the work of the fields. consequently, all the early boyhood of the artist was passed in daily contact with the soil of lorraine and with the sons of that soil. he knew them, one and all, in his native village; he grew up among them; he went to school side by side with the other little rustics of his own age: he understood the peasant class, with all their faults, their virtues, their habits of life; he learned to read in their faces, which were a sealed book to the outsider, the opinions and emotions which they had in common with him. these childhood impressions were destined to abide with him throughout his life; he cherished to the end a fervent love for his native land, and he felt that he had an infinitely noble task in painting that life of the fields which the second empire affected to despise. but though he came of peasant stock, it was bastien-lepage's good fortune that these same peasants were in prosperous circumstances and could afford to give him an education. they were ambitious for him; and it hurt them to see their little jules, who was so wide-awake, so intelligent, and at the same time so frail, leading the hard and monotonous life of the fields, following the plough, tilling the soil. it needed only a few household economies to enable him to continue his studies; so, when the time came, young bastien-lepage wended his way towards verdun, where he entered upon his college course. there is nothing that marks in any particular way these years of study, nothing to indicate that the boy was a youthful prodigy, nor that he showed any special aptitude for drawing. but he was studious, diligent, and anxious to avoid repremands and to fulfil the expectations of his parents. in due time he obtained his bachelor's degree, which at that period was highly prized. his father, filled with pride, already began to form brilliant projects for his future, already foresaw him a distinguished official, supervising some great branch of the public service. as a matter of fact, a position was found for the young baccalaureate in a government department which was neither the most desirable nor the one of least importance; namely, the post office department. bastien-lepage was not vastly delighted with the choice, but, dutiful son that he was, he accepted the modest clerkship offered him. one circumstance contributed, in a large degree, towards overcoming his reluctance: the post assigned to him from the start was in paris, of which he had often heard marvellous things, and in which he hoped that he would be able to follow his secret inclination. for, in the interval his vocation had revealed itself; he had conceived a passion for drawing, for colouring, for painting; and, like correggio, he was eager to say in his turn, "i too am a painter!" accordingly he set forth, leaving behind him no suspicion of his purpose. upon arriving at the capital, he acquitted himself scrupulously of his official duties, but every leisure moment was consecrated to visiting the museums and exhibitions. he saturated himself with the wealth of beauty strewn broadcast through the louvre, and was thrilled with admiration at contact with the masters of every school and country. he did not care equally for them all, in spite of their genius; his intimate preferences leaned to the side of flemish rather than italian art; but he was not insensible to the lofty inspiration, the severe harmony, the faultless composition, which have made the great masters of the renaissance the most astonishing prodigies in the history of painting. but while the older schools of art delighted him, he followed with no less attention the movement of contemporary painting. at the hour when his critical spirit awoke, certain new elements and new formulas had come to light and had been put into practice by two audacious and gifted artists by the names of courbet and manet. although the prolonged struggle between the classicists and romanticists had not yet come to an end, these two rival schools were entrenched in their positions and refused to stir forth from them. supporters of delacroix and of ingres confined themselves strictly to their respective hostile formulas, doing nothing either to expand or to rejuvenate them. whoever dared to venture outside of one of these two beaten tracks was regarded as a madman, and his attempts were greeted with derisive clamours by both parties, who declared a momentary truce, for the purpose of annihilating him by a joint attack. courbet, who was scorned by ingres, met with equally harsh criticism from delacroix; and as for manet, he had managed to call down universal wrath upon his head, and at the salon of it became necessary to place his _olympia_ in the very topmost line upon the wall, in order to protect it from the fury of the public, hounded on by the hue and cry of the critics. bastien-lepage made mental notes of all the episodes of this struggle; he listened to the criticisms and passed them through the crucible of his unspoiled mind, in the presence of the very works under indictment. his good sense showed him how large an element of injustice entered into these hostilities. moreover, his peasant blood inclined him to sympathize with those artists who refused to bind themselves to seek for beauty only within the limits of academic form, and who had the ability to make it flash forth from the humblest and even the most vulgar type of subject. furthermore, this constant study of matters pertaining to art, day by day added fuel to the hidden fire smouldering within him; he was conscious of its mounting flame. back of the rude sketches, drawn and coloured in the tiny chamber befitting an humble postal clerk, he perceived vaguely that he also possessed the temperament of a painter, and little by little he witnessed the unfolding of his artist's soul. [illustration: plate iii.--the artist's mother (collection of É. bastien-lepage) what a kindly and gentle face this is, the face of the woman to whom the artist applied the tender endearment of "good little mother!" in this work, it is evident that the heart guided the hand of the painter. none but a son could have rendered with such emotion the humid tenderness of those eyes and the maternal caress of those lips. it is a powerful work, which enrolls bastien-lepage in the foremost rank of portrait painters.] at last, unable to bear it longer, he resigned from the postal service and enrolled his name at the beaux-arts. at this time, when he entered the studio of cabanel, he was but little more than nineteen years of age. cabanel, to be sure, was not the painter of his choice, but bastien-lepage was not for that reason any the less appreciative of a system of instruction which was dominated by a worship of line-work. his training under cabanel was not without value to the young artist, who throughout his life, even in his most realistic paintings, proved himself to be an impeccable master of design. at the outset, however, he was beset with difficulties. now that his salary as a postal clerk had ceased and remittances from the family were necessarily restricted, bastien-lepage exerted himself to gain a living by his own efforts. he had no lack of courage, and he had in addition that lorraine tenacity which enabled him to confront all difficulties with tranquil assurance. he worked with desperate energy, and in the intervals of respite from his labours he overran all paris in search of orders from business houses. it was an inglorious task, but at least it enabled him to live; thus it happened that about he produced a widely circulated advertisement for a perfumery house. up to this time he had remained wholly unknown; and although he had already exhibited one painting, at the salon of , it was passed by unheeded both by the critics and the general public. this lack of success in no wise discouraged him, for he had faith. it was in the year that he exhibited _the song of springtime_. it was a veritable revelation. there was no neglect this time. the public gathered in throngs before his canvas, and the critics, notwithstanding a few objections to details, were lavish in their praise and hailed him as having the qualities of a true artist. naturally, the picture was not perfect, but it well merited the flattering reception which it received. in a springtime landscape a young peasant girl is seated beneath a tree, looking before her over a sunlit plain. around her skirts a whole bevy of cupids are gathering blossoms and offering them to the girl. here, at the first stroke, is an assertion of the young painter's independence, his formal determination to emancipate himself from the accepted formulas in his treatment of the eternal theme of a young girl's soul, opening to the first appeal of love. as a matter of fact, the allegory is somewhat clumsy; you realize that the author's talent does not run to sentimental compositions. yet the young girl is brushed in with an energetic hand, and all that rather coarse robustness that distinguishes the women of peasant stock is blended in a masterly manner with the naïve innocence of simple souls. _the song of springtime_ was bastien-lepage's first attempt in that vein of realistic painting in which he was soon destined to excel. that same year he produced _grandfather's portrait_, which also attracted much attention. the artist had placed his model in the little garden adjoining the home of his birth. this portrait, which belongs to-day to the painter's brother, is remarkable for its naturalness, its touch of intimate understanding, and its vigour of execution. bastien-lepage had now acquired a name. his _song of springtime_ won him a third class medal, and the state purchased the painting for the museum at verdun, where it at present hangs. in the following year he exhibited _her first communion_, picturing a young and pretty country girl, stiff and self-conscious under her white veil. this work was the product of keen observation, and is deliberately stilted and traditional in its style of execution, recalling in some measure the french primitive school. bastien-lepage evidently had in mind the portraits by françois cluet: his little communicant is infinitely artificial in her spotless finery, yet infinitely alive under the thin surface wash of colour which recalls the _elizabeth of austria_, wife of charles ix, as painted by the greatest of the french primitives. simultaneously with this picture he exhibited the _portrait of m. hayem_, in which the vigorous treatment of the face, with its clear, firm colour tones and sober workmanship, proclaimed him already a portrait painter of the first order. his success this time was more marked: he received a medal of the second class. a less modest artist would have allowed himself to be borne tranquilly along by the mounting tide of glory; but bastien-lepage did not yet feel that he was sufficiently sure of himself. he wished to continue for a while longer, working, learning, perfecting himself; he even conceived the idea, in spite of his renown, of competing for the _prix de rome_. accordingly, the painter of _the song of springtime_ and _her first communion_ might shortly after have been seen entering the lists like any ordinary nobody. he obtained only the second prize. he presented himself again the following year, but with no better success. the subject assigned for the competition was _priam at the feet of achilles_. it is easy to understand that such a theme was little calculated to inspire an artist of bastien-lepage's temperament; he found it impossible to attain full development unless in the presence of nature herself. no amount of manual dexterity can take the place of inborn faith, and the young artist had no faith in antiquity; he never could muster any enthusiasm for the greek or roman gods, nor for historic scenes in which the very attitudes are dictated by the rules and regulations of time-honoured tradition. nevertheless, the work is not without merit; it is forceful, its colouring is good, and it falls short of perfection only in failing to conform sufficiently with what we know of ancient life. this painting is at present to be found in the museum at lille. this rebuff did not discourage bastien-lepage unreasonably; but he decided to confine himself in the future to painting portraits and picturing the life of the fields. his best years the same year that he failed for the second time in the competition for the _prix de rome_, bastien-lepage painted _the portrait of m. wallon_, which is one of his most important works as a portrait painter. in spite of its tendency towards naturalism, this canvas was nevertheless still conceived in accordance with the established technique, and the keen and serious visage of the father of the constitution standing out against its sombre background is a fine study in chiaroscuro. but the following year he struck the naturalistic note more strongly in his _portrait of lady l._, the only full-length, life-sized portrait that he ever painted; and he declared himself plainly and definitely a realist in his picture entitled _my parents_. it would be impossible to find two figures more life-like, more literal, or painted with greater sincerity. this canvas amounted to a declaration of principles; for an artist whom filial piety cannot turn aside from the truth will never make sacrifices to convention: he will never consent to embellish or idealize his models through tricks of his craft; he will paint them as he sees them, without correcting any of the imperfections and ugliness with which nature has afflicted them. how clearly we recognize that these likenesses of bastien-lepage's parents are absolutely true to life, and how much better we like them as they are, in the simple intimacy of daily life, than if they had been decked out, all spick and span, as a less scrupulous artist would inevitably have shown them to us! bastien-lepage's brother, himself a painter of some talent, has preserved in his studio at neuilly a certain number of the artist's works, which he surrounds with pious care and feelingly exhibits to occasional visitors. the family portraits are there, pulsating with life and radiating that generous peasant kindliness which finds expression in a broad and tender smile. the father, seated in a chair in his garden, an old man with shrewd yet friendly eyes, seems so real, so actual, that we almost expect him to step down from his frame to bid us welcome. and what a marvel the _portrait of my mother_ is, which forms a companion piece on the same wall! a somewhat wistful charm pervades this face, with its deeply graven lines, and an infinite tenderness, a true mother's tenderness, hovers over the thin, pale lips. [illustration: plate iv--hay-making (museum of the luxembourg) a masterpiece of contemporary painting, because of the truth of its attitudes and the vigour of its execution. it would be impossible to render more forcibly the blissfulness of rest when the body has been racked by the exhausting labour of the soil. in this picture, bastien-lepage revealed himself as an incomparable painter of rural life.] perhaps this is the moment, in the presence of these pictures, to emphasize bastien-lepage's great value as a colourist. few contemporary painters have used colour with so much tact, such veritable mastery as he. others have employed more dazzling tonal schemes and have achieved more gorgeous effects, but no one has rendered with such exact truth the tints of the flesh, the grayish folds of wrinkles, the profound light of the eye. and his colour is always clear, always unmistakably employed to produce a sought-after effect. there is no artifice, no trick-work, it is all straightforward, honest, precise; the opposition of light and shade never result in opacity, bitumen plays no part in his canvases, the astonishing relief of which is obtained by means of such perfect simplicity that it recalls the inimitable technique of correggio. in he exhibited _hay-making_, that magisterial page from the life of the fields which to-day is the pride of the luxembourg museum, and which the art of the engraver has scattered broadcast to the extent of millions of copies. this picture represents a vast sun-bathed meadow, overstrewn with new-mown hay and punctuated, here and there, by the rounded cones of the stacks. against the blue background of the sky, green hill-tops trace an undulant line. in the foreground a robust, bony-armed country-woman is seated on the grass, her legs stretched out before her in an attitude expressive of the utter weariness resulting from the work performed. her head, solidly planted on her massive neck, is a marvel of realism; in her vulgar peasant face we may read health, strength, and a sort of dulled mentality born of physical fatigue. in every fibre of her exhausted body the woman is veritably resting, and through her half-parted lips it seems as though we could detect the passage of her hurried breathing. the man beside her, no less worn out than she, is stretched at full length on the thick couch of grass, and with his hat over his face, to shelter it from the sun, he is sleeping as though dead to the world. every detail of this canvas is perfect, because every detail is true, drawn straight from life, the fruit of minute observation. in it bastien-lepage once more affirms his predilection for the open country; and nothing could be more impressive than these two uncouth, vulgar, homely human beings, set amid the splendour of a meadow turned golden by the sun. it is an every-day spectacle; it would not seem at first sight to contain material for a picture. but bastien-lepage has succeeded in proving indisputably that beauty does not consist solely in the harmony of the body, but in the impression which emanates from scenes that are most humble in outward appearance. in these few square feet of canvas the artist has summed up, perhaps without intending it, all the majesty of nature and all the grandeur of the life of the fields. it is scarcely necessary to add that this work is a transcript of the soil of lorraine, that good natal soil which he loved so profoundly and to which he returned eagerly, year after year. bastien-lepage was exclusively the painter of the rural aspects of lorraine; he loved its horizons, its fertile and undulating plains. and when, occasionally, he ventured into allegory, the background was still lorraine, and the characters were developed in the familiar setting of his native village, damvillers. and how he loved it! how he enjoyed the warm atmosphere of affection which always awaited him when his father, grandfather, and valiant and devoted "little mother" gathered at night around the family table! he made his home in paris, because residence there was indispensable, both for business and artistic reasons; but the moment that he could escape from the capital and its constraints, he would go to rest and gather new energy in the midst of the family circle. he had a spacious studio installed in the second story of the ancestral home; and there he worked, absolutely happy so long as he could see the old grandfather at his side, pipe in mouth, examining the work with a knowing air, and the father and mother in a sort of ecstasy, as they watched him fill in his canvas. [illustration: plate v.--portrait of m. hayem (museum of the luxembourg) a marvel of discernment and of rendering. the face, to be sure, has a strong originality; but there is no slight merit in having expressed with such striking truth the piercing intelligence of the eyes that twinkle behind the lenses of the spectacles, and the energy, tempered with satiric humour, of his whole odd physiognomy.] nevertheless, bastien-lepage was no studio painter; it was not from the height of a window that he chose to contemplate nature, but in the open fields, in the very heart of the furrows; and it was there also, in the midst of the wheat and the rye, that he set up his easel and painted his peasants in action, in the daily fulfilment of their thankless task. and by picturing them thus, without artifice, in all their simplicity of gesture and coarseness of feature, he imbued his canvases with a profound spirit of poetry, through which the often brutal realism of his subjects was redeemed and ennobled. in the presence of these peasants he experienced a joy more genuine than he had ever felt before the rarest canvases in any museum. not that he denied or disdained the genius of the great ancestors of painting; he had too much reverence for his art ever to dream of doing so. but when it came to a question of training, he could learn more from nature than from them. listen to his own exposition of his ideas: "what a pity," he wrote, "that we are initiated, whether we will or not, into traditions and routines, under the pretext that this is the way to train us to be artists! it would be so simple to teach the use of brush and palette, without ever once mentioning the name of michelangelo or raphael or murillo or domenichino! we could then go home, back to brittany or gascony, lorraine or normandy, and peacefully paint the portrait of our own province; and if some morning the book we had chanced to read aroused the wish to paint a prodigal son, or priam at the feet of achilles, we could reconstruct the scene to suit ourselves, without needing to resort to the museums, taking the setting from our own surroundings and making use of the models close at hand, as though the old drama dated only from yesterday. that is the way for an artist to succeed in breathing the breath of life into his art and in making it beautiful and appealing to the eyes of the whole world. and that is the goal towards which i am striving with all my strength." as painter of the open air, he became in a certain sense the founder of a school, without meaning to be; for his conception of the painter's art won over a whole group of young artists who united in hailing him as their master. each year his offerings to the salon were impatiently awaited, and his followers gathered in full force before them, discussing, comparing, acclaiming; each salon became the occasion for a new success, the critics were unanimous in praising him, the public adopted his pictures for their own, because they could understand his clear and rigorous manner. whatever hostility he met with was among his own colleagues, at least among such of them as were discouraged and humiliated by his vigorous originality. nevertheless, the exposition of , at which he had gathered together all his works, was an especially triumphant occasion for him; yet when the awards were distributed, he discovered that he had received nothing but a medal of the third class. at the salon of , bastien-lepage exhibited his _women gathering potatoes_, which formed a companion piece to his _hay-making_. here again we have the landscape of lorraine and the eternal and infinitely varied theme of rural labour. in a sun-parched field two women are toiling to reap the harvest of potatoes. while the one in the middle distance is stooping to turn up the ripe bulbs from the soil, the other, placed in the foreground, is striving to empty the contents of her basket into a sack which she holds open by a wonderfully natural movement of her knee. nothing could be simpler or more humble than this subject, and yet one feels drawn towards it, conquered by the truth of these two figures, both in their attitude and their expression. involuntarily memory conjures up another canvas, _the gleaners_, and we realize that it is impossible to resist that higher appeal which the great artists succeed in giving to the most commonplace episode of farming life. but, unlike millet, bastien-lepage does not awaken in us any compassion for these beings who toil, stooping above the earth; no touch of bitterness saddens his pictures, and the types which he shows to us have the healthy vigour of peasants who live their lives in the open air and love the soil which nourishes them. this picture, when it appeared, produced a sensation. coming directly after the _hay-making_, it definitely established bastien-lepage's talent and placed him in the foremost rank of painters of rural life. the critics hailed this powerful canvas with enthusiasm. théodore de banville, writing of the salon of , said: "m. bastien-lepage is the king of this exposition. young as he is, he has started in to produce masterpieces: he is very wise! for in later years an artist continues to copy himself, with more or less cleverness and success; but the creative genius has taken wing, like a bird on whose tail we have failed to drop the indispensable grain of salt. the _october season_ pictures the harvesting of potatoes. the earth, the encompassing air as far as we can see, the sky, the solitude laden with silence, are all evoked for us in this picture by the sincerity of its powerful painter; the peasant women are done in a masterly manner, and precisely for the reason that he has seen them apart from all convention and has not tried to idealize them by any hackneyed device." albert wolff was no less enthusiastic: "the colouring in _women harvesting potatoes_ is ingratiating and discreet; not a discordant touch disturbs the beautiful harmony of this canvas, over which the silence of the open country has descended, enveloping the obscure toil. it is only artists of superior powers who can embody so much charm in a single conception." another feature of the same salon was his magnificent portrait of _madame sarah bernhardt_, a marvel of expression and of delicate art, embodied in a pale symphony of tenderest whites, blending harmoniously with the warmest tones of gold. the great tragic actress is portrayed draped, almost swathed, in a gown of white china silk, verging on the faintest yellowish caste; she is posed in profile, that cameo-like profile that has so often been portrayed. she is seated, with a sort of intentional rigidity, on a white fur robe, and is examining a statuette of orpheus, in old ivory, which she holds in her hands. her expressive and intellectual features are treated with a vigour which does full justice to the classic beauty and virile energy of the sitter. "the work as a whole," wrote the critic of the _revue des beaux-arts_, "possesses supreme distinction and an admirable delicacy of colouring. the silvery tones of the whites, the warm grays of the draped gown lead up to the freshness of the delicate, rose-like flesh tints, beneath the crown of close curled locks that seem at once massive and weightless. the artist's hand was sure of itself; it neither groped nor hesitated. the execution is such that the drawing of the gown and the lines of the face seem to have been traced by an engraver's tool. in this case, however, definiteness has not resulted in stiffness. the sharp design has not imprisoned unwilling forms; it leaves them free to move as they please within the limits of their contours which are its domain. it is worth while to examine with a lens the marvellous process which, by the aid of imperceptible half-tones, has softened the modelling of the face and hands." [illustration: plate vi.--portrait of m. x---- (museum at verdun) bastien-lepage possessed the rare quality of being able to bestow the same superior skill upon every part of a portrait. being sincere before all else, he never tried to shirk any difficulty; this is seen in the care he took in painting the hands of all his various sitters, showing something akin to vanity in the marvellous talent he displayed in rendering them. in this portrait--just as in all the others--the hands are quite as truly a miracle of execution as the face itself.] these two pictures earned bastien-lepage the cross of the legion of honour and a definite recognition of his talent. the artist could not keep his delight to himself and, good son that he was, wished to share it with his beloved family; so he sent for them, to pay him a visit in paris. the grandfather and the "good little mother" arrived, full of pride in this famous son, of whom the whole world was talking. he showed them the sights of the city and was only too happy to have a chance to introduce them to his friends; he took his mother to the big shops and insisted on choosing silk cloaks and silk dresses for her. the poor woman protested, saying that they were far too fine, that she would never dare to wear anything like that. "show us some more," ordered the devoted artist, "i want mamma to have her choice of the best there is!" after the old people had returned home to lorraine, bastien-lepage set out for england, where he was to paint the portrait of the prince of wales, who afterwards became king edward vii. in this portrait of tiny dimensions the prince is represented in fancy costume, after the manner of holbein. his garments recall in a measure those worn by king henry viii, in the celebrated portrait done by the great painter from basle. the collar of the golden fleece is displayed upon his breast. in the background of the picture may be seen dimly, through a veil of mist, the panorama of london and the gray ribbon of the thames. the portrait is a little gem, which bastien-lepage wrought with the minuteness and affectedly hieratic mannerism of holbein and the french primitive school. although at present in possession of m. Émile bastien-lepage, it will eventually find its place, together with a goodly number of other canvases, in the museum of the louvre, to which the brother of the great artist intends to bequeath them. it should be mentioned here, in connection with this work, that bastien-lepage continued to make more and more of a specialty of portraits of reduced dimensions, and that he acquired in this respect a reputation of the first order. he loved these little canvases, scarcely larger than miniatures, and he expended on their scanty surfaces an inimitable skill; he embellished them with a wealth of accessory detail which brings to mind, as we look at them to-day, the formidable labours of the illuminators of the middle ages. but this goldsmith's work, far from impairing the effect of the whole, adds a certain fascination to it. and he expended upon the study of the face the same degree of devotion that he gave to the rendering of a garment. his models relive with an intensity of life such as could be expressed only by an artist who has made a life-long study of nature in her minutest manifestations. to name over his portraits would be to mention an equal number of masterpieces. the catalogue would be too long, for bastien-lepage was an indefatigable workman. we may content ourselves with citing those that are most widely known: that of _m. andrieux_, one-time prefect of police, whose refined features are rendered with striking truth; that of _j. bastien-lepage_, the artist's uncle, which is here reproduced and which shows him violin in hand, a clear and vigorous piece of brush-work, transcribing life in telling strokes, with an astonishing simplicity of means. this fine example is to be seen to-day in the museum at verdun. and in the same museum there is still another that deserves mention; namely, the excellent _portrait of m. x._ and we must not forget the _portrait of andré theuriet_, born, like bastien-lepage, on the banks of the meuse and attached to the painter by ties of almost fraternal affection. one feels that, in this picture, the heart must have guided the hand, for it would be difficult to find another work more magisterial in execution and more delicate in finish. and lastly, there is _mme. bastien-lepage_, the "good little mother," as the great artist and loving son used to call her. he posed her in the garden of the home at damvillers. she is seated on a stone bench; on her knees rests a large garden hat; her two hands are crossed, one over the other, and in the left she holds a little bunch of field flowers. she is clad in a loose dress of sombre colour, cut with a pelerine; and nothing but the one bright spot formed by the white collar reveals the severity of the costume. the whole attitude of the body in repose is perfect in its truth and naturalness; but our admiration changes and quickens to emotion when we raise our eyes to the level of the face of this "good little mother," a bony, irregular face, almost ugly, but so gentle, so kind, so touchingly illumined by the tender caress in the eyes as they rest upon the adored son in the course of painting her. those emaciated features, which not even the crown of blonde hair is able to rejuvenate, are unmistakably those of a mother; if we had not known, we should inevitably have divined it; no one but a son, and a great artist as well, could have crowned the brow of a woman with such an aureole of gentleness and love. bastien-lepage, whom those who envied him affected to regard as dedicated wholly to the reproduction of rustic uncouthness, had no equal in catching the radiance of feminine charms, even in their subtlest manifestations. no one was more skilled than he in seizing and recording the one particular trait, often elusive and intangible, which characterizes a woman and makes her beautiful. what delicious portraits of women we owe to him! where could we meet with a more smiling image than that of _mme. godillot_, radiant and seductive, a rosy vision in the black velvet of her gown, relieved by the brilliant sheen of her white satin corsage! and what studied and elaborate art was expended on the _portrait of mme. klotz_, whose magnificent brunette beauty emerges like a gorgeous lily from the surrounding whiteness of her scarf, that is all the more dazzlingly white by contrast with her sombre robe! and still again, there is the _portrait of mme. juliette drouet_, another beautiful and noble specimen of portraiture. and how marvellously bastien-lepage could detect the hidden soul lurking in the inmost recesses of his models and reveal it behind the transparent screen of their eyes! if bastien-lepage had not achieved eternal glory as an interpreter of rural life, he would still have remained celebrated as a portrait painter. but to bastien-lepage portrait painting was only a side issue, a form of relaxation between two landscapes; his predilection, his one object in life, so to speak, was to return constantly to his peasants, his scenes of toil, his fields of lorraine. after his return from england he passed some months at damvillers, when an impulse seized him to visit italy, to which the verdict of a prejudiced committee had once upon a time barred his way. he proceeded straight to venice, and it may as well be acknowledged at once, venetian art left him cold, if not indifferent. he had never in the least understood any of the big "set pieces," and in spite of all the art of veronese and titian, in spite of their dazzling flare of colour, he never succeeded in understanding their sumptuous allegories or in accepting the fantastic interpretation of nature which the venetians allowed themselves. he returned to damvillers, profoundly disillusioned and more than ever convinced that nature alone, such as he saw it, was deserving of the attention of the true artist. there would be no object in discussing here how rightly or how ill founded such an opinion was; we note it only to indicate once more the absolute independence of the painter, his fixed determination never to imitate anyone. and, beyond question, there is no resemblance to any other painter in that curious and remarkable picture known as _jeanne d'arc listening to the voices_. lorraine in heart and soul, bastien-lepage desired to pay his tribute, as so many had done before him, to the glorious heroine who, like him, had come from the banks of the meuse. and he wished also to restore her to her natural setting, with the greatest degree of historic accuracy. consequently it is in a lorraine garden surrounding a lorraine cottage that he shows us jeanne, the shepherdess; around her are the familiar garden utensils such as peasants use to-day just as they did in the fifteenth century. she is standing in an inspired and attentive attitude, which gives to her whole countenance that forceful character which bastien-lepage imprints upon all his compatriots. for he wished to make her, in a certain sense, a composite type of the women of the lorraine race, such as theuriet has described: "the forehead low but intelligent, the eyes with drooping lids that half conceal the somewhat sullen glance; the bones prominent in cheek and jaw, the chin square, indicative of an opinionated race; the mouth large, with half parted lips, through which one perceives the passage of the deep-drawn breath." this head is always the same; under all the variations in physiognomy we always meet with the same local type: it is the head of the woman in _hay-making_ and of the _women gathering potatoes_, and it is also that of the "good little mother," so fundamentally and emphatically representative of lorraine. [illustration: plate vii.--the little chimney-sweep (collection of É. bastien-lepage) this attractive picture, full of charm and vigour, belongs to the closing years of the artist's life, at the time when he was enjoying the flood tide of his talent. how much force and truth there is in this picture of the little chimney-sweep, and what graceful nimbleness in the movements of the cats that he is watching at play.] nevertheless _jeanne d'arc listening to the voices_ was rather badly received by the critics. without disputing the originality and vigour of the inspired shepherdess, they reproached the artist for the presence of the traditional saints. bastien-lepage had indicated these under the form of luminous vapour, radiating through the branches overhanging the garden: st. michael in the golden armour of a knight of the fifteenth century, st. margaret and st. catherine as phantoms so diaphanous as to be hardly perceptible. the idealists complained that the picture was lacking in idealism; the realists were somewhat disconcerted to find the apparitions there at all. it must be acknowledged that bastien-lepage ceases to be himself the moment that he ventures to attempt the supernatural or even allegory pure and simple. he feels that he is no longer on familiar ground, he hesitates, he fumbles, and the harmony of the work suffers in consequence. nevertheless, in spite of this undeniable defect, the face of jeanne d'arc will be remembered as a piece of powerful painting and genuine inspiration. at all events, bastien-lepage was keenly aware of the half-way nature of his success, and from that day renounced forever the element of the marvellous and confined himself to that concrete and tangible poetry which emanates from the earth. some little time after his _jeanne d'arc_, he produced _the mendicant_, veteran knight of the road, whose lazy life is passed in going from door to door, asking charity and compelling it if need be; suspicious looking old tramp, perhaps a thief as well, who inspires fear and whose sack is often filled through unwillingness to provoke him. the artist has pictured him with a stout stick in his hand, stowing away the slice of bread which a pretty slip of a girl in a blue apron has just given him. this fine and vigorous canvas scored almost as much of a success, at the salon of , as the admirable _portrait of albert wolff_, a critic on the _figaro_ and close personal friend of the artist. in he won a further success with his superb _father jacques_, a masterly study of the lorraine peasant, and with his charming _portrait of mme. w._ in came _love in a village_, one of his most popular canvases, in which he depicted with charming naturalness the uncomplicated and naïve courtship of rustic lovers. here are a pair who are untroubled by curious glances; the nearer houses of the village are quite close by. bending slightly towards his sweetheart, the man is murmuring his avowals in her ear, in a voice that, we suspect, is by no means steady. strapping fellow that he is, he evidently lacks the habit of making pretty speeches; we can see that from the embarrassed air with which he twists his fingers. his words, however, are plainly not lacking in eloquence, for the girl, type of buxom young womanhood that we have already learned to know, has bent her head and, although her back is turned, we are sure that she is blushing as she listens to his declaration. a special atmosphere emanates from this picture, as well as that profound spirit of poetry which is inseparable from the eternal song of love. his premature end at this period bastien-lepage had already begun to incur the first attacks of the disease which was destined so soon to end his days. he suffered violent pains in the kidneys. he became melancholy, nervous, irritable; he shut himself up in his studio in the rue legendre, and even his best friends could not gain admittance. the doctors who were called in recognized the gravity of his illness and ordered energetic treatment and a change of air. the poor artist reconciled himself to go for a time to brittany, and his choice fell on concarneau. the keen sea air produced a temporary betterment, and he took advantage of it to work, for he could not resign himself to lay aside his palette and brushes. he spent entire days in a boat and, in spite of his sufferings, executed several landscapes of rare beauty. but his condition, instead of improving, took a turn for the worse. "the digestive tube," he wrote to theuriet, "is always kicking up a row!" the pain in the kidneys and bowels became at this time so violent that he was forced to decide to return to paris, in order to consult the men of science once again. this time, when dr. potain examined him, he could no longer deceive himself as to the artist's fate; he saw that his patient was irremediably condemned. however, a sojourn in a milder climate might prolong his life for a few months; so he advised algeria. the prospect of the journey, the desire to make the acquaintance of this land of sunshine which delacroix, decamps, and fromentin had taught him to love, for a few days gave a false strength to the poor sufferer, which produced a deceptive appearance of renewed health and even deceived the artist himself. besides, mme. bastien-lepage, the "good little mother," was to accompany him, and this unselfish and tender devotion warmed his heart. the poor woman forced back her tears in order to smile upon the unfortunate son whom she knew to be doomed. and so the pitiful pair set forth for the land of sunshine, she consumed with grief, and he almost joyous in the hope of a speedy cure. his first letters to his friends bore the imprint of good spirits; algeria aroused his enthusiasm by its clear and vibrant colours; his disease declared a brief truce and he began to form projects. the thought of dying had not yet even vaguely occurred to him, though, for that matter, he had no fear of death. the previous year he had painted _gambetta on his death-bed_; and his frequent visits to ville-d'avray led him to discuss the inevitable end of life. "i am not afraid of death," he said, "dying is nothing,--the important thing is to survive oneself, and who can be sure of establishing a claim upon posterity? but there! i am talking nonsense! so long as our work is true, nothing else matters." but before long the ravages of the disease began to make headway; the kidneys no longer performed their function, and he suffered atrocious agonies which stretched him for days at a time on his back. even the burning heat of the african sun no longer had strength enough to animate his shattered physique; the brush, which the artist from time to time still attempted to take up, fell from between his fingers. he, bastien-lepage, painter of the soil, found himself unable to transfer to canvas the enchantment of that land of fairy tale! and he poured forth his distress in long and poignant letters, in which could be read in every line the loss of hope and the sure prevision of the now inevitable end. [illustration: plate viii.--the artist's uncle (museum at verdun) here is still another kindly and vigorous face from lorraine, forcefully modelled, with salient jaw bones, betraying the obstinacy of the race. an air of good nature softens the energy of this face, and the eyes sparkle with intelligence. this portrait is treated in a free-handed manner, with unfaltering strokes, and its colouring is especially excellent.] as no amelioration took place, bastien-lepage made the return journey to paris towards the end of may, . he went back to his studio in the rue legendre, where he had formerly passed such happy hours in the full enjoyment of a talent at its zenith and a constitution apparently able to defy all tests. now, however, he dragged around a dying body, with disease gnawing at his vitals. he could no longer sleep without the aid of powerful doses of morphine. the winter-time increased his suffering; his strength rapidly failed him; and, on the tenth of december, at six o'clock in the evening, he drew his last breath, at the age of thirty-six years. as long as he could hold a brush, bastien-lepage continued to work, in spite of the sufferings which racked him. during the year preceding his death, while he was already experiencing frightful tortures, he painted _the woman making lye_ and _the little chimney-sweep_, the latter of which is here reproduced. this admirable canvas is to be seen now at the studio of the painter's brother at neuilly, and forms part of the legacy which m. Émile bastien-lepage intends to bequeath to the louvre. it has never been shown at any salon, and for that matter there are a good many other paintings and portraits which have never been exhibited in public and which are not for that reason any the less remarkable. we may cite at random: _the portrait of m. É. bastien-lepage_, _the prince of wales_, _mme. juliette drouet_, _a little girl going to school_, _the little pedler asleep_, _the vintage_, _no help! the thames at london, etc._ the very year of his death, shortly before his departure for algeria, bastien-lepage executed a delicious little canvas entitled _the forge_, in which the artist expended a surprising amount of talent and skill, and which enables us to realize what extraordinary heights his ever progressive genius might have attained, but for the blind and brutal cruelty of destiny. his death was a time of mourning for the arts; the regrets which he left behind him were unanimous. even those who had been opposed to his aesthetic creed paid homage to his great conscientiousness as an artist and his noble character as a man. during march and april, , only a few months after his death, all literary and artistic paris flocked to the hotel de chimay, an adjunct to the École des beaux-arts, where a posthumous exhibition of his works had been organized. at this exhibition the entire body of his works had been brought together. the museums had loaned the canvases which they possessed and the private collectors had done their share towards the glorification of the artist by entrusting to the organizers a goodly number of paintings and portraits which had never figured in any of the salons. thus it was made possible to comprehend at a single glance the life-work of this remarkable artist and to appreciate the distance he had traversed, the progress he had made during his brief existence, and the brilliant prospects that were destroyed by his untimely death. from all these numerous works, exhibited side by side, what stood out most clearly was the unity of thought which had conceived them and the dogged fidelity to principles which had controlled their execution. at the same time they revealed the amazing adaptability of his talent, which essayed the most diverse and conflicting subjects with the same realistic vigour, bestowing even upon his vaporous and delicate portraits of women a touch which, while light, is unmistakably his own, and in which we recognize that noble, conscientious workmanship, free from all artifice, which was the distinctive hall-mark both of his painting and of his character. but the quality which dominates all the rest in the work of bastien-lepage, and which emanates from it like the fragrance which is exhaled by certain precious essences, is his ardent and deep-rooted love for his native soil. this form of local patriotism, determined by the boundaries of lorraine, underwent a noble expansion to the point of encircling the entire earth; for while the painter chose his models out of the familiar landscape of his childhood's home, his observation and his art broke out of the bounds of this special setting and embraced rustic humanity throughout france and even beyond. his peasants are unmistakably from the banks of the meuse in type and in customs, but they are from the world at large in gesture and in philosophy of life. whether he comes from the north or from the south, the tiller of the soil wages the same conflict with ungrateful furrows, the spade and the plough imprint the same calluses on his bony hands, the sun browns his energetic and stubborn features to the same deep tan. it is in this respect that the art of bastien-lepage assumes a higher significance; like millet, it is not a peasant whom he paints, but the peasant, forever unchanging in spite of latitude. but if his work has attained this higher eminence of generalization, it is precisely for the reason that the artist's watchful eye has succeeded in discovering, in the life of the peasantry, that state of mind which is common to them all, that immutable gesture which they have always made and always will make. he has understood and translated with inspired eloquence their rugged strength, their naïve awkwardness, their simple intelligence. another glorious distinction of bastien-lepage was that he loved the fields as well as he loved the peasants. not fields drowned beneath melancholy shadow and pallid shifting light, but fields bathed in sunshine, until the golden tassels of the grain crackle like sparks under the fire of the midday sun. always and everywhere he sought for light, and in the midst of it his modest protagonists of rustic life stand out in all their vigour. it would be easy to cite, among our best contemporary painters, a considerable number of artists who are brilliantly continuing the tradition left by bastien-lepage and emulating his predilection for the luminous brilliance of the open air. how often, in the presence of a canvas by lhermitte, our thoughts go back to the painter of lorraine, whose vigorous execution and joyous colouring seem to have been reincarnated! art is indebted to bastien-lepage for having reinstated nature in all her literal truth by proving that, in order to be beautiful, she has no need of artificial and superfluous adornment. lorraine, out of gratitude, wished to perpetuate the memory of this glorious son of the meuse, who had so eloquently celebrated the vitality and poetry of his natal earth. it was at damvillers itself that it was decided to raise a monument to the great painter; and around its pedestal there were gathered the "good little mother," all in tears, the assembled population of the village and the whole region round about, and even the government took part in the pious ceremony by sending as its representative m. gustave larroumet, director of the beaux-arts. this eloquent art critic brought as a tribute to the departed painter the official seal of immortality, and he pronounced it in terms vibrant with emotion. "at the moment," he said, "when ordinarily the best of artists have done no more than to give indications of their originality and when ripening years alone begin to keep the promises of youth, jules bastien-lepage died, leaving masterpieces behind him, besides having liberated an artistic formula from the tendencies and exaggerations which hampered it, and indicated to the art of painting a new pathway along which his young heirs are advancing with an assured step. he loved nature and truth; he loved his own people, and no one ever lived who was surrounded with a greater degree of affection; he inspired faithful friendships which he himself enjoyed to the full; and those whom he left behind soothe their heart-ache with the balm of tender memories; he practised his art without ever making sacrifice to passing fashion or sordid profit; there was no place in his mind or in his heart for any other than noble and generous thoughts. let us comfort ourselves, therefore, for what his death has taken from us by the thought of what his life has left to us, and let us assign him his place in the ranks of the younger master painters who have been mown down in full flower, close beside that of géricault and of henri regnault." in his admirable biographic and critical study of bastien-lepage, whose personal friend he had been, m. l. de fourcaud, by way of conclusion, bids him this touching farewell: "poor bastien-lepage, snatched away one winter's night, at thirty-six years of age, in the fairest flowering of his bright promise, in the richest expansion of his personality; may each returning month of may bring at least an abundance of blossoms to the apple tree beside his grave! for the blossoms of the apple were always, in his eyes, so fair a sight!" to-day he sleeps forever in a corner of that lorraine land which he loved so dearly, and perhaps in the cemetery of his native village his shade can still hear the familiar accents of his native dialect. the great painter of lorraine could never have slept his eternal sleep in any other soil than that. painter of flowers, painter of nature, painter of the earth which is forever deathless and forever renewed, bastien-lepage has chosen that better part; his work will live as long as these, his models, and will go down through the centuries in all the splendour of increasing beauty and eternal youth. transcriber's note: typographical errors have been corrected as follows: page : "bastine" replaced with "bastien" british artists george morland [illustration: the dipping-well (cover page)] in the same series birket foster, r.w.s. john pettie, r.a., h.r.s.a. kate greenaway a. and c. black . soho square . london, w. agents america the macmillan company & fifth avenue, new york australasia oxford university press flinders lane, melbourne canada the macmillan company of canada, ltd. st. martin's house, bond street, toronto india macmillan & company, ltd. macmillan building, bombay bow bazaar street, calcutta [illustration: confidences] george morland sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work with an introduction by e. d. cuming [illustration] published by a. & c. black , & soho square, london mcmx list of plates owner of original . confidences _mrs. carl meyer_ . idleness _sir edward tennant, bart._ . diligence " . belinda, billet-doux _t. j. barratt, esq._ . the effects of youthful extravagance and idleness _sir walter gilbey, bart._ [a] . the dipping-well " . the deserter's farewell " . the deserter pardoned _barnet lewis, esq._ . the fox inn _sir walter gilbey, bart._ . gathering sticks " . morning; or, the benevolent sportsman _j. beecham, esq._ . farmyard _t. j. barratt, esq._ . gipsies in a wood _sir walter gilbey, bart._ . evening; or, the post-boy's return _lord swaythling_ . winter: skating _sir walter gilbey, bart._ . justice; or, the merciless bailiff " [a] on the cover george morland (born june , ; died october , ) the son of henry robert, who combined with the exercise of the painter's art the work of cleaning and restoring old pictures, it may fairly be said of george morland that he was reared in the studio. his genius betrayed itself at a very early age, some chalk drawings tinged with crayon which he produced when ten years old being exhibited in the royal academy. such education as he received was given him at home; but it would seem that his father kept him too closely at work with pencil and brush to leave the boy opportunity of gleaning knowledge from books. when fourteen years old, his father bound him apprentice to himself, having ere then fully recognized the artistic genius which promised him material advantages. others than his father recognized george morland's genius: sir joshua reynolds, who gave the boy the run of his studio, urged that he be brought up in "the grand line" of art; and when his indentures expired, romney offered to take him as pupil at a salary of £ a year. sir joshua's recommendation was declined by the father; to romney's offer george would have nothing to say. george was slow to discover a spirit of independence, even when he came of age, remaining at home for at least six months after he had reached man's estate. his independent career began in , when he was twenty-two years old. having escaped from the hands of an irish picture-dealer who worked him for his own advantage, he spent a few months at margate, devoting himself with success to the painting of portraits he had been invited to do by a mrs. hill. he seems to have been tolerably industrious, for he was able to live in comfort and to share the amusements offered by a then fashionable watering-place. on his own showing he began to acquire at this period a taste for drink; but he was young, of robust constitution and fond of exercise, and his indulgence was not excessive. after his return to london in , he lived sometimes with his parents, and sometimes elsewhere. among his acquaintances he numbered william ward, the famous engraver, who had, ere this time, reproduced at least one of morland's pictures. he became a frequent visitor at ward's house at kensal green, and before long took up his quarters with the family, consisting of the engraver, his mother, and two sisters. anne ward, a very beautiful girl, soon captivated morland, and they were married at st. paul's, hammersmith, on september , . he appears to have been steady and industrious during his residence at kensal green, and he continued to work hard for the first few months after his marriage, which was followed a month later by the wedding of william ward to maria morland. a joint establishment set up by the two young couples in high street, marylebone, endured for about three months; a quarrel ended in separation, and the morlands found new quarters in great portland street. it was during his early married life that the artist painted, among others, the six famous pictures known as the "lætitia series," for which his wife sat as model. the move to great portland street was the first of the numerous changes of residence made by morland during his married life. during the first two years these changes were dictated by the success which enabled him to house himself more comfortably; but the period of steadiness and hard work was so brief that it may be dismissed in a few lines. the advent of a still-born child, and the knowledge that he might not hope to be a father, appear to have been the means of unsettling him in his domestic capacity; and the indifference of his wife to the music he loved may have contributed to the same end; but the fact remains that within a year of marriage morland began to neglect her. he acquired the habit of making trips into the country during the day and resorting to musical gatherings at night, leaving mrs. morland much to her own devices. he was not idle in the ordinary sense of the word. gifted with extraordinary facility, he painted numerous pictures which, if sold in business-like fashion, would have produced enough to raise him to affluence; but he had inherited from his father, in intensified form, a singular lack of common sense. he sold his pictures for any sum that might be offered, regardless of the fact that the purchasers took them direct to dealers in the certainty of disposing of them for double the money. even while working on these lines his prolific brush and steadily increasing reputation enabled him to make a good income; but success, if the expression may be used, "went to his head." he launched out into the wildest extravagance, regulating his expenditure by the ease with which he could borrow rather than by the ease with which he could earn, and while he had cash in his pocket he would not work. as his reputation grew, largely through the medium of the engravings made from his pictures, the anxiety of dealers and others to secure works from his easel grew in ratio with it; his natural readiness to borrow was encouraged on every side by those who intended, or hoped, to obtain in pictures more than the equivalent of the money they advanced, and morland gave promissory notes with joyful recklessness, absolutely indifferent to the load of debt he was rolling up. the inevitable crash came in , when for the first time he found it expedient to fly from his creditors. there is evidence in the shape of pictures to show that he sought refuge in the isle of wight; but he did not long remain there. his legal adviser, mr. wedd, took his affairs in hand, and he returned to london to go into temporary hiding while matters were adjusted by means of a "letter of licence," a document which secured him from arrest by making terms with his creditors. under this bond he pledged himself to pay off his liabilities at the rate of £ a month. how his credit declined in subsequent years is proved by the series of "letters of licence" procured for him. these respectively pledged him to pay £ , £ , and the last only £ , per month. perhaps the most pathetic feature of morland's career is the circumstance that the period which saw his greatest exertions to escape from creditors coincided with that during which he produced his finest work. "inside of a stable" (now in the national gallery, and known as "the farmer's stable") attracted universal attention when exhibited at the royal academy of , and raised the painter's fame to its zenith. commissions for pictures, with advances of money, were pressed upon him on all sides; morland accepted the cash, promised the pictures, and launched out into wilder extravagance. he kept eight horses, or more, for the country excursions on which his friends joined him; he entertained lavishly; he drew round him a disreputable crew of prize-fighters and similar characters, who lived upon him; and he scattered money with a reckless hand. he could always find those who were eager to lend, and, revelling in the ease with which he could raise money, would not paint until he felt the pinch of need. when out of funds he would work, and did so with the amazing speed and deftness that stamp him a genius. there is no doubt that he drank at this time, but his love of riding and outdoor life enabled him to throw off the effects of over-indulgence. his career from to was one long series of flights from one place to another to avoid the creditors who pressed for money. from time to time mr. wedd arranged his affairs in such wise that he could show his face in london; and at other times men who wanted pictures relieved him from his difficulties to the same end; but viewing these nine years as a whole, the general impression left on the mind is one of a hunted animal--now in hiding in the isle of wight, now in leicestershire, now in mean lodgings in a poor part of london, now out of sight. it is only occasionally that we can trace his place of abode. he would go into hiding, with friend or servant sworn to secrecy, and while in hiding would work, and his companion would bring his paintings up to london and dispose of them. in he spent six months at hackney, comparatively free from the attentions of creditors, and during this brief period he executed some pictures which compare favourably with those painted in his best years ( - ). the improvement was not maintained. morland, whose nerves were now suffering from the periodical debauches in which he indulged, and also, no doubt, from the ceaseless pressure of creditors, left hackney and found refuge first in london and then in the isle of wight; and from the island he came, in december, , to seek escape by procuring his own arrest at the hands of friends. nominally a prisoner in king's bench, he was "granted the rules," and took a house in st. george's fields, where he lived for a couple of years with his wife and his brother henry. when granted his release under geo. iii., he remained in st. george's fields for a few months, and then, for the sake of change, went to highgate. from this time, during the few remaining years of his life, morland was an irreclaimable drunkard. his constitution was undermined, he could no longer take horse exercise, and his excesses told upon him rapidly. to the fact that he was now unable to work until he had taken stimulant is due the common report that he "painted best when drunk." nevertheless, his reputation remained, and he was overwhelmed by attentions from those who wanted pictures. the great aim of these patrons now was to induce him to live with them that they might exercise some control over his propensity for liquor, and keep him at work. his brother henry was most successful in this regard; for some considerable time george lived with him, and, during his frequently broken stay, painted a very large number of pictures, henry paying him a specified sum per day. this has been stated as £ s. and £ s., but in either case henry's profits must have been great. collins, one of morland's biographers, has given us a melancholy word-picture of the artist in these, his later days--besodden with drink, his face showing every sign of excess; nerves gone, sight failing, one hand palsied; yet able to produce works for which everyone clamoured. leaving his brother's house, he went from one friend to another. for many months he occupied lodgings in a sponging-house in rolls buildings, kept by a sheriff's officer named donatty; here he was free to come and go as he pleased, yet was secure from arrest, and donatty became the owner of a number of fine pictures. it was soon after he left rolls buildings to reside with some other friend that he was arrested for the last time. the sum due was trifling, but morland had no means of discharging it, and was conveyed to a sponging-house in eyre place, eyre street hill, hatton garden. refusing the offers of friends to pay the debt, he insisted on remaining in custody. he had frequently shown bitter resentment at the way his quondam friends worked him for their own advantage, and preferred to stay where he was. he strove to work; but the overtaxed brain and body refused, and while at his easel he fell from his chair in a fit. for eight days he lay almost insensible with brain fever, and then, without recovering consciousness, he died. george morland's was a singular character. his love of flattery and dread of affront may account for his choice of companions; he shrank from association with his social superiors, finding congenial friends among pugilists, grooms, sweeps, and persons whom he suffered to profit by his recklessness in money matters. endowed with a keen sense of humour, whose artistic expression found vent in caricature, he found his principal amusement in playing schoolboy practical jokes. george dawe hits off his character in a sentence when he says that morland "never became a man"; throughout his life his faults were the faults of a boy and his virtues the virtues of a boy. he and his wife were unhappy together and miserable apart. when he had a home she shared it, and if he had not, he sent her money--when he could. that he inspired her to the utmost with the affection he was able to engage from all who came in contact with him, is proved by the fact that news of his death killed her. morland's art embraced great variety of subjects. his earlier popular successes were achieved by his figure paintings, and of these it is worth noticing that among the best were pictures which pointed morals he studiously ignored in his own career. the great popularity of w. r. bigg's pictures of child-life led the dealers to persuade morland to take up the same line of work, and in his pictures of child-life the artist shows himself what we know him to have been--a lover of children and one who had perfect understanding of them. the insight with which he portrayed children is only equalled by that which distinguishes his animal paintings. morland's horses, ponies, asses, calves, and pigs, are entirely his own; they possess a character which stamps them as the work of one who had almost uncanny knowledge. he rarely painted a well-bred horse; the animal that appealed to him was the farmer's work-horse or the slave of the carter, and on these he expended his greatest skill. only an artist who was also a horseman could paint the horse as he painted it. he has been described as a "pig painter," but this refers rather to the success with which he proved the artistic possibilities of subjects so unpromising than to the number of works in which pigs occur, though it is admitted that he was fond of painting such pictures. his asses and calves, in their kind, are equal to his horses; cows he seldom painted, and when he essayed to do sheep he was not conspicuously successful. the composition of his works is rarely otherwise than pleasing, a point the more worthy of notice when we remember that he never made studies, but developed the picture under his hand as he worked upon it. the straightforward simplicity, the absence of subtlety of his art, may perhaps be in some measure an outcome of his method. his schemes of colouring were subdued rather than brilliant; one of his few principles of painting was that a touch of pure red should appear in every picture, and we very generally find it. once morland left his father's roof, his artistic education in one sense ceased. he took not the slightest interest in the works of other painters of whatever period; on the contrary, he avoided study of art lest he should become an imitator; and went direct to nature for all he required. to this practice we may attribute his originality. since i had the pleasure of collaborating with sir walter gilbey in writing the biography of the painter, it has been pointed out that the artist with whom george morland has more in common than any is jean baptiste siméon chardin ( - ). the resemblance between the figure subjects in which each excelled is certainly striking; and this resemblance, regarded in conjunction with the french nationality of morland's mother, has evoked the suggestion that the english painter may have derived hereditary talent from the maternal side. search through the registers of the churches of the parish in which henry robert morland lived fails to reveal entry relating to his marriage. it may be recalled, however, that chardin's two daughters died in infancy. e. d. cuming. [illustration: idleness] [illustration: diligence] [illustration: belinda, billet-doux] [illustration: the effects of youthful extravagance and idleness] [illustration: the deserter's farewell] [illustration: the deserter pardoned] [illustration: the fox inn] [illustration: gathering sticks] [illustration: morning; or, the benevolent sportsman] [illustration: farmyard] [illustration: gipsies in a wood] [illustration: evening; or, the post-boy's return] [illustration: winter: skating] [illustration: justice; or, the merciless bailiff] generously made available by the internet archive/canadian libraries.) william blake [illustration: from blair's "grave": the last judgment engraved by l. schiavonetti after blake's design. ] william blake a study of his life and art work by irene langridge london george bell and sons chiswick press: charles whittingham and co. tooks court, chancery lane, london. preface some years ago, i became deeply interested in william blake, and made myself familiar with all that our public collections in london contain of his art-work. it seemed to me that this work was still so little known and appreciated by the public, that a short book might well be written to serve as a pointer to our national blake treasures. the standard works on blake--gilchrist's life, mr. a. c. swinburne's critical essay, messrs. ellis and yeats' exhaustive volumes, and mr. w. m. rossetti's aldine essay--are of great literary excellence and high critical quality, and must ever remain the great authorities on the subject; but, owing to these works being either out of print, very lengthy, very expensive, or unillustrated, a want may be supplied by, and an opportunity of usefulness open to, such a book as the present one. different in scope as it is from any other book on blake, and modest in aim, it deals with the poet-artist as he is manifested in those works of his which are accessible to the public. in seeking to sketch again his artistic personality, i have been guided by the conclusions of his eminent biographers and critics wherever they coincided with my own intuitive convictions. but in the study of a character and work so out of the usual, so exotic and strange as those of blake, unanimity of opinion and judgement is hardly to be hoped for, and the variety of points of view from which each new student sees him, may assist to the rounding and filling out of the portrait drawn in so masterly a manner in the first instance by alexander gilchrist. my best thanks are due to mr. a. b. langridge for reading my proofs and for the photographs which he took expressly to illustrate this volume. also to mr. frederic shields for numerous acts of kindness and the loan of original blake drawings, to sir charles dilke, to messrs. chatto and windus, to mr. laurence binyon, mr. g. k. fortescue, and to dr. g. c. williamson for help given to me in various ways. contents chapter page i. early years ii. life at felpham iii. the procession of the pilgrims iv. declining years v. his religious views vi. his mystical nature vii. his art work songs of innocence. book of thel. gates of paradise. songs of experience. tales for children. viii. the prophetic books vision of the daughters of albion. america. europe. ix. the prophetic books, continued book of urizen. the small book of designs. the large book of designs. song of los. book of los. jerusalem. milton. x. work in illustration young's "night thoughts." blair's "grave." thornton's "pastorals." the book of job. xi. work in the exhibition of xii. engravings and drawings in the print room the canterbury pilgrimage. dante. pencil sketches. works in the national gallery. index illustrations to face page the last judgment (from blair's "grave") _frontispiece_ portrait of blake the little girl lost (from "songs of experience") the divine image (from "songs of innocence") "america," a page from the lazar house "europe," a page from los, enitharmon, and orc (from "urizen") the re-union of the soul and the body (from "the grave") the pilgrimage to canterbury (stothard) chaucer's "canterbury pilgrims" (blake) satan tormenting job blake's room in fountain court (f. j. shields) death's door (from "the grave") the shepherd (from "songs of innocence") frontispiece from "songs of innocence" the lamb (from "songs of innocence") the marriage of heaven and hell, a page from "i want, i want" (from "gates of paradise") the deluge (after a plate in "gates of paradise") the tyger (from "songs of experience") infant joy (from "songs of innocence") "visions of the daughters of albion," a page from "america," the frontispiece to "america," a page from "europe," the frontispiece to ("the ancient of days") "europe," the first page from "urizen," the title-page from "urizen," plate vi from "the small book of designs," plate ix from the accusers (from "the large book of designs") "jerusalem," page from robert (from "milton") time speeding away (page from "night thoughts") death of the strong wicked man (from "the grave") the soul reluctantly parting from the body (from "the grave") thornton's "virgil's pastorals," woodcuts from "the book of job," plate ii "the book of job," plate v "the book of job," plate xiv the nativity the flight into egypt oberon, titania, and puck vision of queen katherine the circle of the lustful (from "dante") pencil sketch for "death's door" head of an old man the whore of babylon david delivered out of deep waters the spiritual form of pitt guiding behemoth books on blake binyon, robert laurence. "william blake: being all his woodcuts photographically reproduced in facsimile." london, . o. [the unicorn press: little engravings, no. .] cunningham, allan. "the lives of the most eminent british painters, sculptors and architects." london, - . o. [part of "the family library," vols.] note: a second edition of this work was published in - , in o, vols. ellis, e. j., and yeats, w. b. "the works of william blake, poetic, symbolic, and critical." edited with lithographs of the illustrated "prophetic books," and a memoir and interpretation. london, b. quaritch, . o. vols. garnett (sir) richard. "william blake, painter and poet." london, . pp. folio. ["the portfolio monographs," no. .] gilchrist, alexander. "the life of w. blake, 'pictor ignotus.'" with selections from his poems and other writings. edited by anne gilchrist, with the assistance of d. g. and w. m. rossetti. london, . o. vols. note: a second enlarged edition was published in . london, macmillan & co. o. vols. malkin, thomas w. "a father's memoirs of his child." london, . o. rossetti, w. m. "the poetical works of william blake." edited with a prefatory memoir. london, . o. ["the aldine poets." george bell & sons.] scott, william bell. "exhibition of the works of william blake." with introductory memoir. london, the burlington fine arts club, . o. scott, william bell. "william blake." etchings from his works (with descriptive text). london, chatto and windus, . folio. smetham, james. "essay on blake." (reprinted in gilchrist's work, q.v., from the "london quarterly review"). swinburne, a. c. "william blake." a critical essay, with illustrations from blake's designs in facsimile, coloured and plain. second edition. london, . o. [illustration: william blake] william blake chapter i early years the work of one of the greatest spirits that ever made art his medium has yet its way to make among the general public. the world entertained the angel unawares, for three-quarters of a century have passed since the death of william blake, and still his name and his work are but indifferently known. yet to those that know them, the designs from his pencil, and the poems from his pen, are among the most precious things that art has bequeathed to us. it is my purpose in the following pages to tell over again the main outlines of his life, quite shortly and simply, for the great biography on blake (that of alexander gilchrist) can be consulted by all, and contains almost every detail known about him. to this monumental work, and to messrs. ellis and yeats's more recently issued and exhaustive commentary on blake, i owe all my facts. a brief memoir is a necessary preface to the review i propose making of those engraved and painted books, pictures, drawings and engravings of blake's which our national collections possess. william blake was one of those unique beings who live above this actual world, in the high places of imagination. at four years old he saw his first vision, as his wife reminded him in old age, in the presence of mr. crabb robinson: "you know, dear, the first time you saw god was when you were four years old, and he put his head to the window and set you screaming." quaintly, crudely, as the story is told by mrs. blake, it bears testimony to the fact that the visionary faculty was developed in blake from the beginning. imagination claimed him definitely as her child from that early day when, having rambled far afield into the country (as it was his pastime to do throughout life), he saw, in a meadow near dulwich, a tree amongst whose branches glistening angels clustered and sang. it may be, as one of blake's critics suggests, that nature was herself the basis of the supernatural beauty he saw, though he was all unwitting of it. standing beneath a tree laden with delicate pink blossom, and gazing up into the rosy gloom, blake may well have translated this pulsating beauty into a miracle. above among the greenery he may have seemed to catch glimpses of aspiring hands and faces among the crowding wings of flame and rose and sun-kissed gold. a little breeze would set angelic wings and garments all a-moving and a-fluttering, and a thrush's voice suddenly cleaving the silence seem an angel's song indeed, too exquisite to be endured without tears, to the quivering, spell-bound wanderer. such _may_ have been the explanation of this early vision, but blake himself never attributed any natural cause to such spiritual manifestations. everything was alive to him with a strange inner life: the "vegetable world," as he called it, was but the shadow of the real world of imagination, whose spiritual population was more clearly discernible to his highly-wrought consciousness, than natural phenomena themselves. narrowly did he escape a whipping from his father, the worthy hosier, for what that matter-of-fact man could not but consider a most impudent invention on the child's part. the incident was a foreshadowing of the poet-painter's life. the mysterious regions in which his spirit wandered so fearlessly, and which his poems and his drawings represented to the world, had but scanty attraction for his time. it would be truer perhaps to say that they were more often regarded with fear and repulsion. the mortal who dares to raise even the corner of the veil that so discreetly hides from our material world the many other existent conditions of consciousness, the great beyond of spirit life, does so at his own risk, and with the certainty of earning his fellow men's distrust and disapproval. the outlook on that immensity has a tendency, it is true, to endanger the perfect mental equilibrium; but though the age--professing faith in a set of decent religious formulae, but in reality sceptical of all spiritual life and destiny--called blake mad, he was recognized by a few chosen spirits as a great master and seer. the story of his life contains but few incidents, but through these incidents we see a soul travelling. william blake was born in at , broad street, carnaby market, soho. the old house still stands, but looks very dirty and depressing, like the street, which, since blake played in it, has suffered a dingy declension. messrs. ellis and yeats, who have added some biographical details to gilchrist's life, state that william's father, the hosier, james blake, was the son of an irishman, one john o'neil. john o'neil married a girl from rathmines, dublin, called ellen blake, and as he soon afterwards got into debt and trouble of one sort and another, he dropped his name of o'neil and adopted his wife's maiden name. this fact, if established beyond doubt, would seem to be of singular importance, as the presence of irish blood in william blake would account for several strange characteristics which are not otherwise understandable. the kelts are always particularly sensitive and open to spiritual experience. imagination, second sight, and acute psychic consciousness, seem to be the peculiar attributes of the race; and these gifts are seldom to be found in a pure anglo-saxon. there were four other children, james, of whom we shall hear again, robert, our artist's beloved younger brother, john, a ne'er-do-weel, and a girl of whom not much is known. very early william developed a taste for art, and his father, with more sense than usually characterizes the parents of great men, allowed him to follow his bent, and sent him, from the age of ten to fourteen, to the drawing class of one pars, in the strand. we read of his attending picture sales and occasionally buying drawings and prints after raphael, michael angelo, albert dürer, and other old masters at prices which would make the modern collector green with envy. but we do not hear of blake's attending any other school either before or after leaving pars for the purpose of furthering his general education. all the knowledge that he acquired outside art was self-chosen and self-taught. a sound general education is the firmest basis on which to build a tower of observation from which the world and life may be surveyed with judgement. blake's beautiful and fantastic house of thought, however, was erected on no such foundation. perhaps instinct guided his choice of mental food: certain it is that the peculiar education he gave himself enabled him to preserve his own personality in all its vital energy. pars appears to have been the squarcione of that generation. he had been sent to greece by the dilettante society to study ruined temples and broken statues. on his return to england he set up a school in the strand to teach drawing from plaster casts after the antique. when he was fourteen, with a view to getting a trade by which he could earn his daily bread, blake's father determined to apprentice him to an engraver. he took him first to rylands, an eminent engraver with a court appointment, but the boy said after the interview, "father, i do not like that man's face. he looks as if he would live to be hanged." strange forecast this proved to be, for in rylands was indeed hanged for forgery. blake was finally apprenticed to basire, a sound craftsman, but of a somewhat hard and dry manner. basire's style as an engraver set its stamp on blake, there is no doubt. it would have hampered most men severely, rendering their work formal and immobile, but blake turned it to a strange account, and it became expressive in his hands. when in his later years he found that he had outgrown it, he modified it to suit his new requirements, but it had been a laborious and useful servant, if not a gracious one. during his apprenticeship basire set him to draw all the mediaeval tombs and monuments in westminster abbey and other churches for a certain publication to be brought out by the firm. in doing this blake imbibed large draughts of the intense and fervent gothic spirit. its deep innerness, its passionate aspiration, its whimsicality, and its quaint decorative exuberance, expressed alike in angels and gargoyles, found and touched a vibrating chord in his heart. gothic art entered into him and became part of him. its influence was strong, though it took a characteristically blakeian expression always, and those long mornings spent among the slanting sunbeams and the whispering silence of the chapels around the king confessor's tomb, were among the truly eventful incidents of his life. in many of his designs a gothic church with spires and buttresses like westminster,--often a mere symbol sufficient to recall it, occasionally carefully and elaborately drawn in--stands as an embodiment of blake's idea of worship. strange thoughts must have come to him among those forests of slender pillars and arches! some hint of them is conveyed by an engraving he did during the period of drawing in the abbey. it is after a drawing (probably one bought by him cheap at a sale room) by michael angelo, and has the imaginative inscription written on it by blake, "joseph of arimathea among the rocks of albion. this is one of the gothic artists who built the cathedrals in what we call the dark ages, wandering about in sheepskin and goatskin, of whom the world was not worthy." joseph of arimathea, it will be remembered, is supposed to have come to glastonbury in a.d. and built the first christian church. he did not always work in the abbey in quiet. there is a story told by messrs. ellis and yeats, of how he was plagued by the westminster boys till he laid his grievance before the dean, who thereupon deprived the boys of the right to wander about the abbey at their pleasure, a right denied to them to this day. at twenty, blake's apprenticeship to basire being ended, he attended the academy schools and drew from the antique under keeper moser, picking out for his chief delight and most ardent study the drawings of michael angelo and raphael--a very barbaric choice it was considered, according to the decadent taste of the period. moser recommended him to give up poring over "those old hard, stiff, dry, unfinished works of art," and to turn his attention to le brun and rubens, some of whose drawings he fetched out for blake's inspection. blake, however, who was never able to conceal his thoughts, nor to express them in anything but forcible terms, burst out, "these things that you call finished, are not even begun; how then can they be finished?" and comments on the incident, which he relates in his ms. notes on "reynolds' discourses," made in his old age, "that the man who does not know the beginning, cannot know the end of art." by this he meant, that to be preoccupied as were rubens and le brun, with the merely faithful representation of the beauty of the body, to dwell as an end in itself on the wonder of white shoulders, tapering fingers, and too luscious flesh, to linger in the folds and intricacies of silk and velvet robes, and to spend strength and power on these things, was mere foolishness and blundering. physical beauty, splendour of colour, only thrilled and arrested him when he recognized in them the symbols of an idea, when they seemed to hint of things rarer and more excellent than any purely natural or intrinsic attribute. if he could discriminate its eternal inner message, and could make it visible to the world, then was physical beauty worthy of reproduction. but he seldom dwelt on beauty for its own sake, but only when it was spiritually significant; so it is easy to see why he was inaccessible to the influence of such artists as rubens and le brun. at the academy schools he had the opportunity of drawing from the living model, and profited by it to a certain limited extent. but he always had an aversion to it, declaring that to his whimsical nature it "smelt of mortality." however he might and did justify his negligence of this important branch of technique, his art was necessarily weakened by it. technique is the language of art, and is only to be obtained by frequent and laboriously faithful reference to nature. it is true that blake's strong power of generalizing, along with his marvellous gift of recalling at desire things discriminated by him, made the achievement of technique through methods of life study a less urgent necessity to him than to other men who had no such retentive artistic memories. essential lines blake never failed to give, but by intention rather than from any inability he seldom gives more than these essential lines in the figures he drew and painted. after all it is possible that his power of delineating swift movement, and the great range of emotions that correspond to that, might have been injured or lost by too close an application to the artificially posed human figure. we have seen much life lost in the too close study of life, as in the otherwise exquisite work of lord leighton. blake believed that to draw from the typical forms seen by him in vision was his true purpose and aim, and the study of individual human forms filled his eye with confusion, for, as he was for ever asserting, nature seemed to him but a faint and garbled version of the grand originals seen in imagination, that is, in truth. while blake was educating himself in art, he had to earn his livelihood by engraver's work, and between and one or two booksellers employed him to engrave designs after various artists. among these artists was stothard, to whom, in , blake was introduced. stothard brought flaxman and blake together, and the three became warm friends. it was only after many years, and then through the machinations of an evil man (the publisher cromek), that blake became estranged from stothard, and partially also from flaxman. in blake exhibited his first picture in the academy, "the death of earl godwin." it was only the twelfth exhibition of the institution, and the first to be held at somerset house. how curiously do its four hundred and eighty-seven exhibits (including wax work and a design for a fan) contrast with our mammoth academies of to-day! sir joshua reynolds, mary moser, gainsborough, angelica kauffman, cosway and fuseli, were all contributors in the year of grace . blake was in sympathy with none of them save fuseli, who, although a man greatly overrated in his day, had a real sense of the potency of the invisible world, mainly, however, of that portion of it concerned with arch-fiends, witches, demons, and baleful omens. in blake married catherine bouchier, and set up housekeeping in green street. it appears that he had been much in love with a girl called pollie wood, who had jilted him. going to stay at richmond in a state of deep depression, he made the acquaintance of catherine bouchier. messrs. ellis and yeats have added this detail to the first biographer's story. when she first entered the room where he sat, she was overcome by such intense emotion that she had to withdraw for awhile. she afterwards admitted that at that moment she became suddenly aware that she was in the presence of her future husband. small wonder that blake felt an irresistible affinity for this charming dark-eyed girl whose fervent susceptible spirit responded so mysteriously to his own. no marriage was ever more happy. catherine was of humble origin, and practically no education, for at the time of her marriage she was unable to read or write, but nevertheless she possessed the rare and delicate qualities necessary for the mate of a man like blake. she early realized that the man she had married was no ordinary one, and to be of service to her dear "mr. blake" (as she always called him with quaint reverence), to enter into his thoughts, to smooth the path of his material life, and to conform her young and unlessoned girlhood to his difficult standard of plain living and high thinking, became her one absorbing object. there were a few rough passages in the early days of married life, which gilchrist indicates, but they soon disappeared. it was merely the friction and heat given off, before the two strong natures were fused into a perfect union. catherine's nature appears to have been a compound of ardent worship and pregnant sympathy. never did a woman so forget herself in reverencing, nigh worshipping, the man she had chosen to marry. during an unusually long, and in many respects a peculiarly isolated life, these two lived together, the one master mind and purpose informing both. no words could do full justice to the beautiful life of catherine blake. it is true that no ordinary man could have drawn such harmony from the vivacious, impulsive, passionate nature of the girl. all the generous love that her nature possessed she lavished on blake, and her complete absorption in him seems to have satisfied the maternal cravings which were to have no other satisfaction, for william and catherine had no children. the work of caring for the few rooms which were all that blake's means allowed, and his ambition desired, for the housing of their bodies, this catherine did with the thoroughness of the true aesthete. she cooked, sewed, swept, dusted, and washed, and yet found time to learn from her husband how to read and write, the use of the graver, and even to colour with neat and precise hand some of the prints he made. added to this she was soon able to read with intelligence the books he praised, and listened wondering to the songs he made, finding them of a heavenly significance and beauty; and when his tense nerves and superabundant physical energy drove blake forth to stretch his limbs and cool his brain in long country walks of thirty, and occasionally forty miles at a stretch, catherine went with him, and cheerfully tramped along beside him, silent or responsive as he set the mood. again, when in the night time visions appeared to his teeming ever-inventive brain, and he must needs get up and write or draw while the divine "mania" was upon him, then catherine arose softly and sat beside that wondrous husband in her white nightgown, her whole consciousness hanging upon his least movement or utterance, and her whole being thrilling sympathetically to those invisible presences which moved his spirit. like mary, "she kept all these things in her heart and pondered them." speaking of his wife, one cannot but recall that in blake's mysterious and unorthodox creed the doctrine of free love was a very favourite one, on which in his poetry he was never tired of insisting. yet he seems to have desired freedom, only, as mr. swinburne finely shows, "for the soul's sake." if love is bound, he argued, what merit is there in faithfulness? love, to be what love in perfect development should be,--to be what love in its very essence predicates,--must be free. such a creed, proclaimed by the lips of the most austere of men in matters sensual, seems to shadow forth one dimly apprehended aspect of a truth, which may be realized perhaps, in a future and more perfect state of society. "in a myrtle shade," and "william bond," are two among the poems in blake's ms. book, which have their origin in thoughts about free love. the year after his marriage, - , blake had to turn to engraving in real earnest to pay for the necessities of the modest _ménage_ in green street. we find him engaged mainly in engraving plates after stothard's refined and graceful designs. in after years, when he was estranged from stothard, blake used to say that many of these same designs contained ideas stolen from himself. there can be small doubt that stothard did owe something to blake's influence. fuseli frankly declared that "blake is damned good to steal from," and accordingly adopted his ideas, and in one instance, at least, a complete design. a kind and appreciative couple, the rev. henry and mrs. mathew, received blake in their drawing-room about this time, and gave him an honoured place among their guests. it was they who paid in part for the production of his "poetical sketches," and flaxman, who had always a strong admiration of blake's poetical genius, helped,--an act of beautiful generosity in a young artist with his own way to make. the "poetical sketches" are among the tenderest lyric notes uttered by blake, and their bird-like spontaneity and lilt recall, says dante gabriel rossetti, "the best period of english song-writing, whose rarest treasures lie scattered among the plays of our elizabethan dramatists." these wild wood-notes gushing unselfconscious from a heart glad with youth and fair visions are in strange contrast to the artificial, trifling, and unsatisfying poetry of the age. blake himself writes in the "poem to the muses": how have you left the ancient love that bards of old enjoy'd in you! the languid strings do scarcely move, the sound is forced, the notes are few. what can be said of that perfect lyric, written when blake was but fourteen, "my silks and fine array," and that other which i shall surely be forgiven for quoting as it stands: how sweet i roamed from field to field and tasted all the summer's pride, till i the prince of love beheld who in the sunny beams did glide. he show'd me lilies for my hair, and blushing roses for my brow; he led me through his gardens fair where all his golden pleasures grow. with sweet maydews my wings are wet, and phoebus fired my vocal rage; he caught me in his silken net, and shut me in his golden cage. he loves to sit and hear me sing, then, laughing, sports and plays with me; then stretches out my golden wing, and mocks my loss of liberty. [illustration: printed and coloured plate from "songs of experience," ] to a poetically sensitive mind, verses like these remain like a beautiful echo in the memory, having a musical charm apart from the sense of the words. although in this little book it is my purpose to dwell mainly on blake's manifestation of himself as a designer and painter, i cannot avoid lingering sometimes on his poetical expression. for the creative impulse that clothed its thought in a garment of words is the same as that which is embodied in plastic forms and symbolic colouring. blake's invention had two outlets, but was itself one stream of energy only. the lines to the evening star are incomparably sweet and haunting: thou fair-hair'd angel of the evening, now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light thy brilliant torch of love; thy radiant crown put on, and smile upon our evening bed! smile on our loves, and whilst thou drawest round the curtains of the sky, scatter thy dew on every flower that closes its sweet eyes in timely sleep. let thy west wind sleep on the lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes, and wash the dusk with silver. soon, full soon, dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide, and then the lion glares through the dim forest, the fleeces of our flocks are covered with thy sacred dew; protect them with thine influence. the lingering subtle and most musical sweetness of such lines as those quoted above, "let thy west wind sleep on the lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes, and wash the dusk with silver," can be surpassed by none of the great masters of melody. so unaccustomed were the ears of the time to such perfectly natural bursts of song, that the rev. henry mathew considered it necessary to apologize to the refined and fastidious for calling attention to them, "hoping their poetic originality merits some respite from oblivion." blake might well seem strange to these _borné_ people, for he was no other than the herald and forerunner of the poetic renaissance of the beginning of the nineteenth century. in the mathew's drawing-room, surrounded by a wondering group of dilettanti, above whom he towered head and shoulders intellectually, he was encouraged to sing his "songs of innocence," which he had already written, though not produced, to his own music. blake had then a mode of musical expression as well as an artistic and a literary one, though no record of it has been preserved. with these three keys he unlocked the doors of materialism outwards, on to the vistas of god-thrilled eternity. in blake exhibited two drawings in the royal academy, "war, unchained by an angel--fire, pestilence and famine following," and "a breach in the city--the morning after a battle." it is obvious from these that his style was already formed in all its strength and almost terrifying individuality. during this year blake's father died, and william and catherine returned to broad street and took up their abode next to the paternal dwelling now occupied by the elder brother james. james, though a swedenborgian and accounting himself a godly person, was also a busy seeker after this world's good things, and seems to have had little in common with william, though for some years friendly relations were maintained between them. blake set up a shop as printseller and engraver in broad street in company with a man named parker, whose acquaintance he had made in the old basire days, but it was a short-lived affair, and soon came to an end. it was in this year that william's younger brother robert became his pupil. nothing much can be discovered about the personality of robert, but from blake's own writings and designs we are able to see how close a tie of affection existed between these two brothers. robert only lived three years after becoming william's house-mate and pupil. in his final illness it was not catherine but william who nursed him day and night untiringly, with passionate love and care; and when at last the end came, blake saw his brother's soul fare forth, clapping its hands for joy, from the mortal tenement--a vision to bear fruit afterwards in his designs for blair's "grave." then he was beset with sheer physical exhaustion, and going to bed, slept for three days and three nights. many years after we find him going back into this period of personal sorrow, to extract therefrom comfort for hayley, who had lost his son. "i know," he writes to him, "that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. thirteen years ago i lost a brother, and with his spirit i converse daily and hourly in the spirit, and see him in remembrance in the regions of my imagination. i hear his advice and even now write from his dictate. forgive me for expressing to you my enthusiasm, which i wish all to partake of, since it is to me a source of immortal joy, even in this world. may you continue to be so more and more, and to be more and more persuaded that every mortal loss is an immortal gain. the ruins of time build mansions in eternity":--from all of which it is easy to see that robert's influence on the soul of william augmented after his death. in blake removed from broad street to no. , poland street, which lies in its immediate neighbourhood. a coolness may have sprung up between james and william, for the brothers saw little of each other now. the following characteristic story, taken from mr. tatham's ms., and retold by messrs. ellis and yeats, helps to draw in blake's psychological portrait. in poland street blake's windows looked over astley's yard,--astley of circus fame. one day on looking out he saw a boy limping up and down, dragging a heavy block chained to his foot. it was a hobble used for horses, and blake, with his brain on fire and pity and rage tearing at his heart, was soon down in the yard among the circus company. he gave them a passionate speech on liberty, appealed to them as true men and britons not to punish a fellow-countryman in a manner that would degrade a slave, and finally saw the crowd yield to his eloquence, and his point was gained. the boy was loosed, and blake returned to his own world of work and vision. some hours after, mr. astley, who had been out during the incident related, called on blake, and stormed and raved at what he called his interference. at first blake was as angry as astley, his blood was up, and there seemed every prospect of a very violent quarrel. but suddenly, in the midst of his anger, blake remembered that the amelioration of the boy's condition was his first object, and, quickly changing his tactics, he so worked on the higher moral nature which astley evidently possessed, that he completely won him over to his views, and the two men parted--friends. ever after, however, as messrs. ellis and yeats point out, the chain remained with blake as the symbol of cruel oppression and slavery, and we shall see him using it in his designs again and again as such. [illustration: printed and coloured plate from "songs of innocence," ] in he produced the "songs of innocence," printed and published, as well as designed, engraved, and composed by himself. in the long and romantic history of art, nothing is more strange than the story of how this little book came into being. blake was unknown to the world and had no credit with publishers, nor had he the wherewithal to publish at his own expense the poems which he had written and called "songs of innocence." yet he greatly desired to see them set forth in a book with appropriate and significant designs. but how was this to be accomplished? he pondered the matter long, till at last light and leading came. in the silence of one midnight his dead brother robert appeared to him and instructed him as to the method--an entirely original one--which he should use. the very next day, blake being urgent to begin his work, his wife went out early with half-a-crown (all the money they had in the world), and laid out one and tenpence on the necessary material. and in faith and gladness, relying on that mystical power in himself which took and used his hand and eye and brain almost without his will, he began to make the first of his lovely engraved and painted books. this is the alpha of a long series of engraved books which issued from his hand at intervals for some years. while in poland street he wrote, but did not publish till long after, the "ghost of abel," in the "book of thel," in the "marriage of heaven and hell," and in a poem, the first of a projected series of seven books, called "the french revolution." this so-called poem owed its birth to the fact that about this period blake became one of a literary, artistic, and political set who met at the house of johnson the publisher. at these gatherings mary wollstonecraft arrayed her charms to storm the citadel of fuseli's cynical heart, unavailingly. among other guests were tom paine, author of "the rights of man," whom eventually blake was the means of saving, by a timely word of warning, from arrest in england. he judiciously advised his flight to france, at the right moment for his safety. godwin and holcroft and several revolutionary dreamers were members of this _coterie_. blake's enthusiasm was set all aglow by a philosophy which saw in the french revolution a great renovating process,--the fire to burn up the ignorance and superstition and class boundaries of the ancient order, the introduction of a new reign of righteousness and peace. in effect, this new philosophy which fired the imagination of blake had a basis of materialism and violence which would have found no answering response in his soul, had he sought to investigate it. his sympathy with the group was intellectual, and with the higher manifestations of its creed alone. it led to no political action. he had far other work to do than that of a political agitator, but all expansive doctrines which made for liberty and individuality fired the imagination and fed the intellect of blake. democracy was his ideal, and democratic virtues won his admiration; indeed, he dared to flaunt the "_bonnet rouge_" of liberty in london streets in this agitated period, but after the days of terror in ' he tore off the white cockade and never again donned the cap of liberty. but if his work was not to be in the political arena, he was in his own way hastening the coming of that better and more immaterial kingdom which these young liberators only half conceived. in died the great leader of english art, sir joshua reynolds. his work, concerned as it was with the exquisite graces of this passing world, had nothing to say to blake, who regarded it in the light of his own artistic standpoint, with positive aversion. it often happens that a man who feels it his burning mission to work out and reveal some hitherto neglected or unseen aspect of truth, does so at the cost of a one-sidedness which is a necessary defect of his quality. blake could no more appreciate sir joshua--at least at this stage of his being--than sir joshua could appreciate blake. the veteran reynolds once told him, when a young man, "to work with less extravagance and more simplicity, and to correct his drawing." blake never got over that. we can imagine the suppressed heat with which he listened choking to the advice of the popular artist who was so utterly ignorant of his aims and ideals. to us, who may enter into the soul of each, it is given to realize that they, and all the company of the world's great artists, have furthered the true work of art; have all helped, and are helping, according to their gifts and in their degree, to rear the walls and set with windows and crown with battlements and towers, the palace of beauty for the soul of man to dwell in with delight and worship. that the workers have not always recognized each other is matter for regret, though it is scarcely perhaps to be wondered at, seeing that each is set on emphasizing and relieving against its background the one point which seems to him necessary and valuable. the characteristic notes which blake appended to reynolds' "discourses" many years later, express much of his dislike. truly, it is easy to conceive of a mind offering nothing but delight and admiration to reynolds' practice, yet excited to a grave disapproval by much of his theory, or what he states as his theory. for reynolds actually taught that genius--such as his own, for instance--was a state to be inducted into by precept, and evolved through study, instead of being a thing of fire, a tongue of flame from on high, set on a man as a seal, from which he cannot escape. i am reminded of rossetti here, who quite sincerely told mr. hall caine, "i paint by a set of unwritten but clearly-defined rules, which i could teach to any man as systematically as you could teach arithmetic." ah! that such genius _might_ thus be taught! however, reynolds, his practice and theory alike, were by blake swept into a limbo of unconditional condemnation, though occasionally, in spite of the prejudice he nursed against sir joshua, he flashed out notes of emphatic approval, on certain utterances in the great man's "discourses." [illustration: page from "america, a prophecy," printed in blue, from the print room copy] chapter ii life at felpham in blake removed across the river to hercules buildings, lambeth, where he lived for seven years of great mental and spiritual vitality, seeing visions and dreaming dreams and embodying them in beautiful designs. he was a tireless worker, never resting, and sleeping much less than other men. these lambeth days were days of comparative prosperity with the blakes, whose wants were so simple and few. the little house in which they lived possessed rustic charms--a garden with a summer-house, and a vine climbing over the back of the house, whose leaves made a pleasant rustling in summer. a view of the river, too, could not have failed to add a significant charm to the place. on its shining surface might be descried ships like souls faring to the world's great market-place, to barter and to receive merchandise; while others, with white sails set, slipped quietly down the river and out to the wide mysterious sea. blake had a few pupils, too, and at this period he made the acquaintance of mr. butts, who was a staunch friend and true appreciator for thirty years. during all that time he was a constant buyer of our artist's work, and bought sometimes at the rate of one drawing a week. in time mr. butts' spacious house in fitzroy square became a regular blake gallery. the average price he paid was £ to _s._ a design or picture. to mr. butts' great honour be it said that he never assumed the airs of a patron, never tried to bind or hamper blake's genius, or to dictate or direct his choice of subjects or treatment of them. he seems to have realized that this man was "a prince in israel," and the lordship of his ideas not to be questioned, but accepted humbly and with gratitude. in a future chapter i hope to deal with the blake drawings and easel pictures done for mr. butts, which were available to the public in the exhibition at messrs. carfax's rooms in ryder street, held in . blake seems to have enjoyed a little wave of recognition at lambeth--popularity it can hardly be called--but it was not long-lived. at one time he was even suggested as drawing-master to the royal family, but declined the position, not from modesty, but from devotion to his true _métier_--the preservation and expression of spiritual ideas--with which such a post would probably have interfered. two acts of secret and most munificent generosity are recorded by tatham, and quoted by messrs. ellis and yeats, concerning blake while at lambeth. he gave £ (he seldom after had half as much money beside him) to a friend in distress, and his deep sympathetic heart being moved by the sight of a sick young man, an artist, who daily passed their door, he and his kate made the young man's acquaintance, and for the love of christ and in memory of brother robert, finally took him into their house and tended him till his death some months later. while at lambeth he made three large and important drawings--"nebuchadnezzar," an enlarged edition of the bearded figure on hands and knees which occurs in "the marriage of heaven and hell"; "the lazar house" and "the elohim creating adam." he also made designs for young's "night thoughts." there were designs made, and blake only took a year to do them. a selected few were engraved. while at lambeth he printed also his "visions of the daughters of albion," "america," "europe," "urizen," "the gates of paradise," "the book of los," "the song of los," and "ahania." the list implies steady application, and untiring intellectual and spiritual energy. [illustration: the lazar house, from milton water-colour, ] the introduction of our painter, in , by his old friend flaxman, to hayley, poetaster and dilettante, marks the beginning of a new epoch in his life. hayley, the friend of gibbon and, later, of cowper (whose biography he wrote), was a characteristic product of the last quarter of the eighteenth century,--that age of complaisant preoccupation with trifles. this poetically barren interval before the birth of the wonderful new school of poetry had, since the best days of cowper, but one star above its horizon--or was it a will-o'-the-wisp?--the _soi-disant_ poet hayley. complaisantly he twinkled on his admiring world, and, striking the lyre with gracious hand, sang with modest satisfaction "the triumphs of temper." this now forgotten work earned him the position of "greatest of living poets," and he assumed his high seat in the literary world with bustling alacrity. above all things he aspired to culture, not at the expense of a very continuous effort or strain, it is true, but he loved to collect around him artists and men of letters to whom he could play the part of a somewhat undersized lorenzo de' medici. that they would respond gracefully, and take their parts becomingly in this garden-comedy, was all that he required of his court. it will be remembered that romney was one of his artist friends, and that the connection proved in a way economically disastrous to the painter, for hayley was an extravagant man, though he professed simple tastes, and encouraged poor romney in his mania for building and other lavish expenditure. his influence, such as it was, was stimulating to none of his friends, though he meant well and kindly enough. he affected the part of the country gentleman, as well as that of the high priest of culture, and delighted in patronage. soon after his acquaintance with blake began, his old friend cowper died under tragic conditions, and a week later hayley's only child (an illegitimate son) died also. the boy was a youth of promise, and had been a pupil of flaxman. so he had gratified as well as filled the poor father's heart. hayley's trouble called forth a letter from blake, which i quoted when writing on the death of robert, and it seems to have touched, perhaps comforted, hayley, who even in his deep affliction assumed a pose not natural or spontaneous. blake was recommended by flaxman as an engraver and designer (if the latter should be required), and hayley proposed that the blakes should come and live at felpham, near his own place of eartham in sussex, in order that his new _protégé_ might engrave the illustrations to the life of cowper which he was now about to write, under hayley's own eye. the idea pleased blake, while mrs. blake, he wrote, "is like a flame of many colours of precious jewels, whenever she hears it named." as a matter of fact, hayley did not live at eartham now, as the place was an expensive one to keep up, but had built himself a wonderful turretted marine "cottage," with a library and covered court for equestrian exercise at felpham. [illustration: plate from "europe," printed coloured by hand] in the september of , blake being then forty-three years old, the husband and wife took up their abode in a pretty little cottage by the sea at felpham, and began a new manner of life. if hercules buildings, lambeth, had afforded blake hints and types of spiritual life and light, how much larger a vista must have opened to him at felpham. he used to wander musing along the seashore, and more than once saw the yellow sands peopled by a host of souls long since departed from this earth--moses and the prophets, homer, dante, milton: "all," blake said, "majestic shadows, gray but luminous, and superior to the common height of men." many visions came to him at first. it is not wonderful that this should have been so, for there was nothing that did not teem with suggestions to his subjective mind, and when he received a new influx of spiritual light, as he seemed to have had at felpham, then, indeed, were blossoms, stars and stones, nay, the very air he breathed, alive with a strange, sentient, crowding population, to whose spiritual utterances he listened, whose forms he strained his mental sight to realize. in a letter to flaxman, beginning, "dear sculptor of eternity," blake writes in the first effervescence of delight: "felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than london. heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen." for a while all went very well indeed, and the first part of his sojourn at felpham was a sort of charmed circle in his life. "mr. hayley acts like a prince," "felpham is the sweetest spot on earth," "work will go on here with god-speed," "find that i can work with greater pleasure than ever," are phrases which occur in the enthusiastic letters of the period. but gradually hayley's constant companionship, his amiable but fatuous and gushing friendship, acted like the hated chain of slavery on blake's electric and expansive temperament. hayley's mind was set on little things, trivial business and futile undertakings, and his vanity and self-satisfaction about all his doings came at last to be exasperating to blake. in spite of his generosity, his lavish but undiscerning praise, and the commissions for engraving and designs with which he supplied our artist, blake little by little found himself goaded to madness by the ever-flowing stream of hayley's conventionality and watery enthusiasms. hayley attempted to enlarge blake's education by reading to him klopstock and translating as he went along--a proceeding that must have bored our fiery genius to tears. he also, with the kindest intentions in the world, obtained commissions for blake to paint miniatures--hardly, one would think, a congenial form of art to him, but one which at the beginning appears to have interested him nevertheless. a couplet he wrote in the note-book at the time evidences the irritated nerves that hayley's unspiritual contact set on edge: thy friendship oft has made my heart to ache. do be my enemy for friendship's sake. the letters, too, to mr. butts give direct insight into his state of mind, and the points of sharp disagreement and intellectual misunderstanding between the two men are easily traced. it appears that "hayley was as much averse to a page of blake's poetry as to a chapter in the bible." blake the creator and artist was unintelligible and foreign to hayley, who, always satisfied with his own judgement, sought to turn blake from designing and to chain him to the hack work of engraving. [illustration: los, enitharmon and orc colour-print from "urizen," ] by degrees the visions that had so often and radiantly appeared to blake on his first coming to felpham seemed to forsake him. as he became involved in hayley's pursuits, and sought to work out hayley's plans for him, the visions even appeared to be angry with him. then, indeed, it seemed that he was in danger of "bartering his birthright for a mess of pottage." he writes to mr. butts: "my unhappiness has arisen from a source which, if explored too narrowly, might hurt my pecuniary circumstances, as my dependence is on engraving at present, and particularly the engravings i have in hand for mr. h., and i find on all hands great objections to my doing anything but the mere drudgery of business, and intimations that if i do not confine myself to this, i shall not live. this has always pursued me.... this from johnson and fuseli brought me down here, and this from mr. h. will bring me back again. for that i cannot live without doing my duty to lay up treasures in heaven, is certain and determined, and to this i have long made up my mind.... but," he goes on to say, "if we fear to do the dictates of our angels, and tremble at the tasks set before us; if we refuse to do spiritual acts because of natural fears and natural desires, who can describe the dismal torments of such a state? i too well remember the threats i heard" (_i.e._, in vision). "if you, who are organized by divine providence for spiritual commission, refuse and bury your talents in the earth, even though you should want natural bread--sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after death shame and confusion of face to eternity. everyone in eternity will leave you, aghast at the man who was crowned with glory and honour by his brethren and betrayed their cause to their enemies. you will be called the base judas who betrayed his friend." blake was the apostle and martyr of this devotion to the high spiritual mission of art. he would make no compromise with the world. in a letter to mr. butts dated april th, , he writes: "i can alone carry on my visionary studies in london unannoyed, and that i may converse with my friends in eternity, see visions, dream dreams, and prophesy and speak parables, unobserved, and at liberty from the doubts of other mortals, perhaps doubts proceeding from kindness, but doubts are always pernicious, especially when we doubt our friends. christ is very decided on this point: 'he who is not with me is against me;' there is no medium or middle state; and if a man is the enemy of my spiritual life, while he pretends to be the friend of my corporeal, he is a real enemy; but the man may be the friend of my spiritual life while he seems the enemy of my corporeal, though not _vice versâ_." this enemy to blake's spiritual life is certainly hayley. he writes with unmistakable frankness of the hermit of eartham in a later letter: "mr. h. approves of my designs as little as he does of my poems, and i have been forced to insist on his leaving me, in both, to my own self-will; i am determined to be no longer pestered with his genteel ignorance and polite disapprobation. i know myself both poet and painter, and it is not his affected contempt that can move to anything but a more assiduous pursuit of both arts. indeed, by my late firmness i have brought down his affected loftiness, and he begins to think i have some genius, as if genius and assurance were the same thing! but his imbecile attempts to depress me only deserve laughter." he goes on to say that he will relinquish all engagements to design for hayley, "unless altogether left to my own judgement, as you, my dear friend, have always left me; for which i shall never cease to honour and respect you." and for which, we may add, posterity also has good reason to laud and acclaim mr. butts. blake was not the man to be the creature of any patron, spending his time and all his magnificent powers as the servant of another man's brain--especially when that brain was hayley's. if the engravings and designs done for his patron had earned him thousands instead of a mere competence, such work could not have tempted him from his chosen path of spiritual art. finally, in , he threw off the yoke decisively, turned his back on patronage, and returned with his faithful kate to the liberty and poverty of rooms in south molton street, london, after a three years' rural seclusion. just before leaving felpham blake became involved in a very disagreeable affair with a drunken soldier named schofield, which resulted in a trial for sedition. the soldier, who was forcibly removed by blake from his cottage garden, where he was trespassing, trumped up in revenge a set of ridiculous charges against him, saying he had used seditious language against the king and government. in the practical difficulties that all this gave rise to, hayley came forward to blake's assistance, and putting all the weight of his local position and popularity on the artist's side, materially helped him before and at the time of the trial. although he had been thrown from his horse and hurt a few days previously, he insisted on being present to give evidence in his _protégé's_ favour, who was of course acquitted. warm-hearted blake felt a generous inrush of the old affection for his friend, and a deep sense of gratitude helped to re-establish the old cordial relations between the two men. it must not be inferred from this, however, that blake had altered his opinion that hayley was his spiritual enemy. that, he held, hayley had proved himself to be. but he now recognized that it was not malignity, but deficiency of spiritual knowledge and insight that had made him act as he did. it was the law of his being, and blake, having learned this through experience of his three years' stay at felpham, expected no more from him than his capacity warranted, and gave him his dues, dwelling with gratitude on the fact that hayley was at least a true "corporeal friend." the stress and strain connected with the trial had a bad effect on blake's highly-sensitive nerves, and is painfully apparent in the writing of the time. the time at felpham, and the period that succeeded on his return to london, have much light shed on them by the note-book. the ms. book to which reference has been made was a sort of safety valve, which blake kept ever at his elbow, and in which he wrote long dissertations on art and religion--the "public address," the "vision of the last judgment," and many of the poems published under the title (which heads the note-book itself) of "ideas of good and evil." along with, and interspersed with these connected and finished utterances, are splenetic epigrams, rude rather than humorous caricature couplets, little scraps of unconsidered verse written to illustrate some incident of the day, and drawings here, there, and everywhere. the ms. note-book is a very intimate part of blake. on its first page messrs. ellis and yeats quote the inscription written by dante gabriel rossetti, who possessed it till his death: "i purchased this original ms. of palmer, an attendant at the antique gallery of the british museum, on the th april, . palmer knew blake personally, and it was from the artist's wife that he had the present ms., which he sold me for _s._ among the sketches are one or two profiles of blake himself." unfortunately it has now passed by purchase into the possession of a collector at boston, u.s.a. i say unfortunately, because our own national museum should have secured such a treasure, but its present owner courteously lent it for a prolonged period to messrs. ellis and yeats, who have embodied the main part of it in their exhaustive and most interesting work. the note-book was deeply studied by gilchrist, and was one of rossetti's dearest treasures, leaving its impress on his mind and work. the work blake did during the felpham period included the designs and engraving of animals to hayley's "ballads," some of the engravings for "the life of cowper," and, above all, the writing of two long prophetic books, the "milton" and the "jerusalem," which, however, he did not finish till he had returned to london. chapter iii the procession of the pilgrims blake's course was now definitely chosen. he had turned his back on patronage and voluntarily married poverty, like st. francis, in order that he might be free to work out his own poetic and artistic ideas without reference to popularity, patronage, or pecuniary advantage. his wants and catherine's were simple indeed, and to pay for them, from week to week, was all he desired. south molton street, in which they now took up their abode, was closely shut in by streets and houses. there was no garden, no summer-house or vine with pattering green leaves against the window as at lambeth,--no trees even to recall the natural beauties of felpham. but blake seems to have been almost glad to be delivered from the agitating beauty of the natural or "vegetative world," as he called it, which was to him error and not truth--the visible shadow that darkened and hid invisible and eternal ideas. now indeed, with nothing to distract him, he could open his eyes inward into the "world of thought," into "eternity," which is imagination. gilchrist's life enables us to realize how he could live in this imaginative world, and yet, at the same time, fulfil with great practical ability such a work, for instance, as collecting material for hayley for the "life of romney," which the latter was now beginning. the letters he wrote to hayley at the time, which are all given in the life, are the letters of a kindly business-like man, intent on giving only such information as will be useful. the good sense, the sanity, the mediocrity (i had almost said) of these letters are a pledge of blake's ability to act and express himself as other men when he wished so to do. [illustration: from blair's "grave": the re-union of the soul and the body engraving by l. schiavonetti after blake's design. published ] hayley was his good "corporeal friend," to whom he was grateful for "corporeal acts" of kindness, and as such he treated him. in one of the letters alone there bursts forth a great full-throated shout of joy, as it were, because he has suddenly achieved a great advance in his art. as the passage gives valuable insight into his mind at the time, i shall take liberty to quote it: "o glory! o delight! i have entirely reduced that spectrous fiend to his station, whose annoyance has been the ruin of my labours for the last passed twenty years of my life. he is the enemy of conjugal love, and is the jupiter of the greeks, an iron-hearted tyrant, the ruiner of ancient greece. i speak with perfect confidence and certainty of the fact which has passed upon me. nebuchadnezzar had seven times passed over him, i have had twenty; thank god, i was not altogether a beast as he was; but i was a slave bound in a mill among beasts and devils; these beasts and these devils are now, together with myself, become children of light and liberty, and my feet and my wife's feet are free from fetters.... "suddenly on the day after visiting the truchsessian gallery of pictures, i was again enlightened with the light i enjoyed in my youth, and which has for exactly twenty years been closed from me as by a door and by window shutters. consequently i can, with confidence, promise you ocular demonstration of my altered state on the plates i am engraving after romney, whose spiritual aid has not a little conduced to my restoration to the light of art. o, the distress i have undergone, and my poor wife with me; incessantly labouring and incessantly spoiling what i had done well. every one of my friends was astonished at my faults, and could not assign a reason; they knew my industry and abstinence from every pleasure for the sake of study, and yet--and yet--and yet there wanted proofs of industry in my works. i thank god with entire confidence that it shall be so no longer: he is become my servant who domineered over me, he is even as a brother who was my enemy. dear sir, excuse my enthusiasm, or rather madness, for i am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever i take a pencil or graver into my hand, even as i used to be in my youth, and as i have not been for twenty dark but very profitable years. i thank god that i courageously pursued my course through darkness." all of which tense and highly-figurative language means that blake had suddenly received enlightenment on various technical methods from the silent witness of raphael's and michael angelo's and other masters' achievement. he could never learn by verbal advice, precept or criticism, but when shown great work, the artist in him dwelt on every line, absorbing and assimilating its principles. the spectrous fiend to whom he refers is, according to messrs. ellis and yeats, his own "selfhood." he held that every man contained in himself a devil and an angel, the devil being the natural man, the angel the god in man. of this idea of his more hereafter. blake's work, when done in the heat of his spirit, is always noble, characteristic, and _largely, often wholly, right_ (i am speaking of the execution, not the ideas expressed), but when "incessant labour" was expended without the incessant reference to nature which an elaborate technique demands, it is not wonderful that "incessant spoiling" should have been the result. now, indeed, he seems to have seen how it was with himself, and to have gained a new mastery of material through studying the manner of other men's work. in blake brought out his "jerusalem; the emanation of the giant albion," a poem which he told mr. butts was descriptive of the "spiritual acts of his three years' slumber on the banks of ocean." "milton" was also produced in the same year. in robert hartley cromek, whilom engraver, but now publisher and printseller, "discovered" blake in his self-chosen retirement, and proposed giving him employment. the story of his treacherous dealings is an evil one. cromek, who had learnt engraving in the studio of bartolozzi, found it laborious and slow work, so exchanged its drudgery for the calling of a publisher, but, having good taste but no capital, he was hard pressed indeed to make both ends meet. one day a piece of luck came in his way. he paid a visit to blake's working and living room in south molton street. many beautiful things were to come into being in that room, but none more so than the drawings for blair's "grave" which blake had designed, intending to print and publish them in the usual way. cromek found them, and seized upon them, gloating. he persuaded blake to relinquish the idea of publishing them himself, and to surrender the undertaking to cromek as one more fitted to push them and bring them before the notice of the public. blake was very poor at the time. in an insulting letter written by cromek to blake some two years later, he refers with contemptible want of feeling and taste to this fact. "your best work, the illustrations to the 'grave,'" he says, "was produced when you and mrs. blake were reduced so low as to be obliged to live on half a guinea a week!" blake sold the twelve drawings to him for £ _s._ each, with the assured verbal agreement that he was himself to engrave them for the projected edition--a promise which of course entailed considerable further payment for the work of engraving later on. cromek in possession of the copyright conveniently forgot his promise. impregnated as he was with the fluent and graceful style of bartolozzi's school, blake's manner of engraving seemed to him grim, austere and archaic. he thought that the noble drawings translated by the hand of the popular and graceful engraver, lewis schiavonetti, would insure the success of the designs with the public as blake could never have done were he to have engraved them himself. it may be that there was truth in it. some critics hold that the illustrations to blair's "grave" have a suavity, a felicity superimposed by the engraver on the stern and original work of blake which was just what was needed to render his work attractive to the public. to blake's true lovers, however, his own graver is the rightful interpreter of his own drawings, and, whether cromek were right or not in this critical matter of taste, he was dishonest and mean to break the engagement on the basis of which alone he had obtained the drawings. while blake was looking forward with "anxious delight" to the engraving of his designs, cromek had other schemes afoot. he called often at south molton street, hoping to pounce on some other work of genius which he could turn into money for himself. he was arrested one day before a pencil sketch of a new and hitherto untreated subject--the procession of chaucer's canterbury pilgrims. he tried to get blake to make a finished drawing of it, with a view of course to getting it out of the artist's hands, and then having it engraved by someone else. negotiations on this basis failing, he gave blake a commission (verbal again) to execute the design in a finished picture and an engraving from it. on the strength of this, blake's friends circulated a subscription paper for the engraving, and he himself set to work on the picture. cromek, however, had not done. he was in love with the subject. sure of blake's conception being thoughtful and strong, but probably wishful that it might be invested with a more earthly grace and interest than he would put upon it, he went to stothard and suggested the subject to him, suppressing all mention of blake. probably he assisted the suggestion by hints as to its treatment derived from what he had actually appreciated in blake's conception. he commissioned him to paint the picture for sixty guineas, an engraving from which was to be done by bromley, though schiavonetti was eventually substituted for him. [illustration: pilgrimage to canterbury engraving after stothard's canterbury pilgrimage. published october, ] [illustration: chaucer's canterbury pilgrims engraved by blake in after his own "fresco" of the canterbury pilgrimage] when blake learned that cromek denied having given him a commission, and came to know that stothard, his old friend, was to paint a picture on his stolen idea, to supersede his own, his rage and indignation knew no bounds, and he became bitterly estranged from stothard, believing in his haste "that all men are liars," and that this man had been a party to the whole mean transaction. gilchrist is almost sure that stothard knew nothing of cromek's previous deal with blake on the subject of the canterbury pilgrimage. during blake was moved to make some designs to shakespeare which were neither commissioned nor engraved. judging from the one reproduced in the life,--"hamlet and the ghost of his father,"--they must have been wild and powerful indeed. he had always a profound reverence for, and joy in, shakespeare, whose works were among his favourite books. a strange and characteristic collection were those books which fed his fiery imagination. could we have glanced along the row, we should have seen shakespeare cheek by jowl with lavater and jacob boehmen, while macpherson's "ossian," chatterton's "rowley," and the "visions" of emmanuel swedenborg helped to fill in the ranks. milton held perhaps the most honoured place of all, while ovid, st. theresa's works, and de la motte fouqué's "sintram" were among the heterogeneous collection. chaucer was also cheerfully conspicuous, and, towards the close of blake's life, dante's "divine comedy" came to join the silent company in the bookshelves. in blake became acquainted with a good and kindly man, dr. malkin, head master of bury grammar school. he gave him a commission for the frontispiece of malkin's "memorials of his child," and in the preface wrote an account of the childhood and youth of the designer. ozias humphrey, the miniature painter, and a staunch friend of blake, bought many of his engraved books, and it was he who obtained a commission for him from the countess of egremont to paint a picture elaborated from the blair drawing of the "last judgment." the paper called by the same name in the ms. book is descriptive of this picture, and in its _intimité_ and demonstration of blake's bed-rock foundations of thought and artistic principles, gives profound insight into his mind. these things occupied him during . during that year stothard's cabinet picture was publicly exhibited, and drew thousands of gazers. blake doggedly continued to work at his own "canterbury pilgrimage," which he wrought in a water-colour medium which he arbitrarily termed "fresco." it was finished about the end of . in the autumn of that year the twelve beautiful engravings after his designs for blair's "grave" were produced by cromek, with a flowery introduction by fuseli. the list of subscribers for the book at two-and-a-half guineas a copy was so large--thanks to cromek's skilful manipulation--that the amount realized by its sale came to £ , . of this blake received twenty guineas and schiavonetti about £ . i cannot omit to mention that leave to dedicate to queen charlotte having previously been obtained, blake made a vignette drawing with some grave and beautiful verses to accompany it, and sent it to cromek as an additional plate, asking the modest price of four guineas for it. the design and verses were returned with a long letter from cromek, closely packed with insults and slanders, and exhibiting a meanness too contemptible for expression. at the end of the letter he thus refers to the subject of the pilgrimage, of which one would suppose he would be too ashamed to speak: "why did you so _furiously rage_ at the success of the little picture of the pilgrimage? three thousand people have now _seen it and have approved of it_. believe me, yours is 'the voice of one crying in the wilderness.' "you say the subject is _low_ and _contemptibly treated_. for his excellent mode of treating the subject the poet has been admired for the last four hundred years; the poor painter has not yet the advantage of antiquity on his side, therefore with some people an apology may be necessary for him. the conclusion of one of squire simpkins' letters to his mother in the 'bath guide' will afford one. he speaks greatly to the purpose: i very well know both my subject and verse is exceedingly low, but if any _great critic_ finds fault with my letter, _he has nothing to do but to send you a better_. "with much respect for your talents, "i remain, sir, "your real friend and well-wisher, "r. h. cromek." perhaps it was that last jeering taunt which determined blake to show _his_ "canterbury pilgrimage" to the public, and make it the occasion of a little exhibition of his own. it was opened in may, . poor unworldly blake, enraged and baffled, was the last man to organize an undertaking of this sort. cromek could afford to laugh at the modest show on the first floor of james blake's shop at the corner of broad street, all unadvertised and unpatronized as it was. the exhibition comprised, besides the "pilgrimage," sixteen "poetical and historical inventions," ten "frescoes," and seven drawings--"a collection," as gilchrist remarks, "singularly remote from ordinary sympathies or even ordinary apprehension." few of the general public penetrated here, but blake's friends, his few buyers, and many contemporary artists probably went through the rooms with no little curiosity. seymour kirkup--the discoverer of giotto's portrait of dante in the bargello,--and henry crabb robinson were among the number of those who went and purchased catalogues. with the catalogue were issued subscription papers for the engraving of the "canterbury pilgrimage," which, in spite of cromek and stothard, blake intended to execute. blake drew up a descriptive catalogue to interpret his pictures, and in it gave free rein, unfortunately, to his personal antipathy to stothard, but he also expressed at some length, and with characteristic fire and intemperance, his views on art. dante gabriel rossetti, who was intensely sympathetic with his artistic forerunner, says that the descriptive catalogue, and the "address to the public," "abound in critical passages, on painting and poetry, which must be ranked without reserve among the very best things ever said on either subject." it may be remarked, however, with all respect and honour, that neither blake nor rossetti were critics in any exact sense of the word. the unprejudiced and scientific character of mind which analyses, classifies, and lays bare with sharp dissecting knife the structure, bones, muscles, heart, of an artistic creation, belonged to neither of them. the analytic and synthetic qualities are seldom united in one mind. (goethe recognized this when he wrote, "i, being an artist, prefer that the principles through which i work should be hidden from me.") both blake and rossetti leaped with unerring instinct and the artistic intuition at all noble and right work, and loved it with passion, rather than appreciated it with cold reason. blake's affinities in art, for instance, especially as he grew older, were much more catholic than it would be supposed. although the descriptive catalogue would induce us to believe that works of art which he did not worship were loathed by him, this was only the case when he was doing battle for certain cherished principles, and then he would hit blindly to right and left in the heat of his partisanship. mr. samuel palmer spoke of evenings spent with him in his old age looking over reproductions of the pictures of various masters, which blake enjoyed greatly, dwelling on whatever was beautiful and true in each. the catalogue and address were written by him with a pen steeped in wormwood. his attacks were mainly directed against the "venetian and flemish demons," with their "infernal machine chiaro oscuro," and the "hellish brownness" with which he says they and their school and modern followers load their paintings. it is true that the english school of the day feared colour, and gave a brown tone to nearly all its pictures, but probably blake had never seen good examples of the venetians, whose chief glory is that they "conceived colour heroically." he enunciated his own principle in these words: "the great and golden rule of art, as well as of life, is this: that the more distinct, sharp and wiry the bounding line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and bungling." his mood was exasperated, truculent, passionately prejudiced, though there is much here of artistic insight and originality. it must be admitted that a great deal is painful reading, but through all the unmeasured language one feels the labouring, overstrained, noble, human heart, tormented beyond endurance. he had been galled to this state of titanic fury by a policy of calumny, plagiarism, and neglect, used against him by the little souls, of what was in many respects a little age, with no mercy and little intermission for many years. since the production of blair's "grave," he had been held up to public ridicule as an artist, in a paper called the "examiner," edited by leigh hunt, and the occasion of this exhibition called forth another article in its columns full of crass misunderstanding of his aims and the superior sneers of a self-satisfied and material-minded writer. in it he was termed "an unfortunate lunatic whose personal unoffensiveness secures him from confinement." but the "most unkindest cut of all" had been cromek's, in making his own friend of thirty years' standing the supplanter of his work, the thief of his idea. all these things had inflamed his tremulous and excitable nerves to a point beyond self-control. material disagreements of the kind i have related had a sad effect on him, and drove him to an expression of bitterness very difficult to reconcile with the benign, gentle and courteous nature to which all his friends and acquaintances have affectionately testified. there is no doubt that during the period of middle life he developed a hard and violent strain which did not mix with, diminish, or distemper the fine and beautiful qualities of his heart and spirit, but shot through them like a barbed wire among a tangle of honeysuckle. in great part, it was the irritation of capricious and highly-strung nerves, the tension of an overheated and excitable brain, and not a quality of the mind or character at all. the expression of this condition of blake's must, therefore, be taken as an undisciplined and wilfully exaggerated statement of his intellectual convictions, with a deep note of truth at the bottom. it seems strange that in the matter of the "pilgrimage" he did not go straight to stothard and invite him to clear himself of the suspicions with which he regarded him. but like all guileless people, and perhaps especially those of the artistic temperament, when once they have been deceived they find it easy to believe that all the world is in league against them. before people who were not intimate, who were, in fact, antipathetic to him, blake would abuse stothard roundly and criticise him wantonly. but to the immediate circle of his personal friends or sympathisers--those who, knowing how he had suffered, and how black the case looked for stothard, would have understood anything he might have said,--he maintained complete silence on the subject of the "pilgrimage," and the name of the popular artist was mentioned without comment and listened to in grave silence by him. once, many years after, he met stothard at a dinner, and went up to him impulsively with outstretched hand. it was refused with coldness. another time, hearing that stothard was ill, blake's heart softened and warmed to the old friend, and he rushed off impetuously to call and make up the quarrel in which he ever believed stothard to have been the aggressor. but stothard would not receive him, desired no reconciliation. in the year blake exhibited, for the fifth and last time, at the royal academy, two pictures in "fresco," "christ in the sepulchre guarded by angels," and "jacob's dream." the engraving of blake's "canterbury pilgrimage" was issued in october, . it was altogether unadvertised and unheralded, and the public held itself coldly aloof, neither admiring nor buying. the original picture was taken by the ever-faithful mr. butts. stothard's picture was not finished engraving till a year or two later, for adverse fortunes overtook it. lewis schiavonetti died in the middle of the work, and another hand had to finish it. notwithstanding all of which misadventures, it was one of the most popular engravings ever issued. we shall compare the two compositions in a succeeding chapter. [illustration: satan pouring the plague of boils on job water-colour drawing. reproduced by kind permission of sir charles dilke] chapter iv declining years seventeen years of quiet productiveness and unceasing work, marked by the increasing neglect of the world, were passed by blake at , south molton street. when finally abandoned by the public to the deep solitude which he created for himself in the midst of the roar of the city, the years are a record of much peaceful labour, of beautiful and strange work, produced as the result of his spiritual meditations and visions. "that he should do great things for small wages," writes mr. swinburne, "was a condition of his life," and the poverty which had knocked at his door for almost half a century, now raised the latch and came in, to live with the blakes as accustomed house-mate to the end. mrs. blake had often to remind him of the bare larder and purse by setting an empty plate before him, when he turned to his task-work of engraving to earn the needful money whereby they might live. in the last years of his life blake said significantly to crabb robinson, "i should be sorry if i had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has, is so much taken from his spiritual glory. i wish to do nothing for profit. i wish to live for art. i want nothing whatever. i am quite happy." and so indeed he was. but he wrote in the note-book these lines also, indicative of the loneliness and misunderstanding of his whole life: the angel who presided at my birth, said, "little creature formed for joy and mirth, go, love, without the help of anything on earth." the struggle between himself and the world being over, and his intractable genius relegated by the influential and great persons of his age to a limbo of neglect and contempt, then did he reach out his hands as to a friend, and pulled poverty across the threshold; and stretching his limbs and shaking back his gray old head in relief and content, he settled in to the unhindered and undistracted contemplation of "those things which really are"--the eternal inner world of the imagination. "they pity me," blake said of sir thomas lawrence and other popular artists of the day, "but 'tis they are the just objects of pity. i possess my visions and peace. they have bartered their birthright for a mess of pottage." gradually the ranks of blake's old friends were thinned till but two remained, fuseli and flaxman, both of whom, however, died before him. johnson the bookseller died in , in ozias humphrey; mr. butts, always a staunch friend, had no room in his house for more pictures, and fell off as a buyer; hayley and blake had long ceased to have a thought in common. flaxman still continued to find engraving to be done by blake, being determined that he should at least have money enough to live. designing, which he would so far rather have done, was out of flaxman's power to give, for the public had now sedulously turned its back on blake. much of this part of his life seems to have been lived in drudgery, but always cheerfully and happily. he was too poor to afford the outlay necessary for printing and producing his books in the old wonderful way, and often made unsuccessful applications to regular publishers. "well, it is published elsewhere," he would say quietly, "and beautifully bound." our artist had never been sympathetic to the decadent age of crumbling institutions and fallow literary and intellectual life that the last part of the eighteenth century presented; and now in the first years of a new century, a generation of new-born song, of enthusiastic lovers of liberty, of strong original and romantic minds, was to supplant the old artificial, social and literary ideals. blake felt the pristine thrills of the great new birth in the poetry of wordsworth, introduced to him by mr. crabb robinson, and also in personal acquaintance with coleridge, a genius somewhat akin to himself. mr. george cumberland introduced blake in to john linnell, afterwards held high in honour and renown as one of england's greatest landscape painters. at that time he painted portraits for a living, and engraved them afterwards. in this work he got blake to help him, and it was through him that the latter became acquainted with a younger generation of artists, among whom he soon made many congenial friends. of john linnell it must be recorded, that from this time forth till blake's death, he occupied a quite unique relation to him, constituting himself the old man's chief stay and solace, and according him the attentions and the admiring love given by a son to a beloved father. a new circle of friends and enthusiastic admirers, very young men for the most part, rose up around blake, whose hearts, expanding in unison with the awakening life of the age, recognized in him a brother, a teacher, and inspired prophet. to them he showed his benign and childlike side, to them he talked, not in the old dogmatic sledge-hammer fashion, but in a spirit of rhapsodic revelation, of peaceful and joyous wisdom. as the years went by, a new fellowship with mankind, a large toleration and deep tenderness, bore golden fruit in his intercourse with this favoured band of young friends and disciples. as walter pater wrote of michael angelo, so might it be said of blake, "this man, because the gods loved him, lingered on to be of immense patriarchal age, till the sweetness it had taken so long to secrete in him was found at last. out of the strong came forth sweetness, _ex forti dulcedo_." among the new friends were john varley, the father of english water-colours, as he has been affectionately termed, richter and holmes, both leaders of the new school. these men were the forerunners of turner, copley-fielding, de wint, cotman, prout, david cox and william hunt, and though in these days they are little remembered, and the glory of them has been eclipsed by their great successors, their somewhat timid and delicate work in south kensington museum will repay a visit and establish their pioneer claims to our regard. it was for john varley that blake drew the celebrated visionary heads, the only work of his with which he is associated by many people. varley was by way of being an astrologer, and took the deepest interest in the occult and the spiritualistic. blake's talk of visions, of the actual appearances vouchsafed him from the other world, had a significance to varley's matter-of-fact mind much more vulgar and material than he intended. our artist had cultivated imagination till it became vision, and what he thought, that he saw, for, as mr. smetham wrote, "thought crystallized itself sharply into vision with him." so that when his friend asked him to draw the portraits of men long dead and gone, such as edward iii, william wallace, richard i, wat tyler, or unknown personages, such as "the man who built the pyramids," or "the man who taught mr. b. painting in his dreams," and (most remarkable of all!) "the ghost of a flea," blake had but to command his visionary faculty and summon before his gaze the desired sitters. the one which has been the most talked about is the ghost of a flea, and varley gives the following description of the manner in which it sat for its portrait: "this spirit visited his (blake's) imagination in such a figure as he never anticipated in an insect. as i was anxious to make the most correct investigation in my power of the truth of these visions, on hearing of this spiritual apparition of a flea, i asked him if he could draw for me the resemblance of what he saw. he instantly said, 'i see him now before me.' i therefore gave him paper and a pencil with which he drew the portrait.... i felt convinced by his mode of proceeding that he had a real image before him; for he left off and began on another part of the paper to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the flea, which, the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch till he had closed it." various explanations of these portraits of "spectres" (as varley has it) have been put forward. messrs. ellis and yeats write of them, "all are pictorial expressions of personality, pictorial opinions, drawn, as blake believed, from influences set going by the character of the men, and permanently affecting the atmosphere, finer than air or ether, into which his imagination looked for their lineaments." a large and curious collection of these heads, executed by blake at nocturnal sittings at varley's house, is still in existence, but not in the british museum, unfortunately. they mostly bear the date, august, . in blake illustrated thornton's "virgil's pastorals." these, along with his other art-work, will be considered in a later portion of this book. they are the only woodcuts blake ever made, and are unique, strong and suggestive as anything he ever did. in the same year he made a drawing of laocoon, to illustrate an article in rees' "cyclopaedia" (to such hack-work as this he was frequently reduced to replenish the household purse). he went to the academy schools, and took his place humbly among the young men to draw from the cast of laocoon there. "what! you heer, meesther blake," said his old friend fuseli; "we ought to come and learn of you, not you of us." in blake moved to no. , fountain court, in the temple, his last dwelling-place on earth. it was at that time an old-fashioned respectable court, very quiet, though removed but a few paces from the bustling strand. the two rooms on the first floor which the blakes inhabited have been more graphically described than any other of blake's homes. the front room had its walls covered with his pictures and served as a reception room for his friends, while the back room was living room, kitchen, sleeping apartment and studio all in one. one of his friends wrote, "there was a strange expansion and sensation of freedom in those two rooms, _very_ seldom felt elsewhere"; while another, speaking of them to blake's biographer gilchrist, exclaimed, "ah! that divine window!" it was there that blake's working table was set, with a print of albrecht dürer's "melancholia" beside it; and between a gap in the houses could be seen the river, with its endless suggestions, memories and "spiritual correspondences." it is to the credit of the royal academy that in the year after blake's last move, , a grant of £ was given to this least popular but greatest of her children. allan cunningham and the fastidious crabb robinson give the impression that blake lived in squalor at the end, but the insinuation is refuted by all those who knew him well. says one, "i never look upon him as an unfortunate man of genius. he knew every great man of his day, and had enough"; while one of the most attached of his friends and disciples (a young artist of the band i have mentioned, who attained success as a painter of "poetic landscape," mr. samuel palmer) wrote to gilchrist, "no, certainly,--whatever was in blake's house, there was no squalor. himself, his wife and his rooms, were clean and orderly; everything was in its place. his delightful working corner had its implements ready, tempting to the hand. the millionaire's upholsterer can furnish no enrichments like those of blake's enchanted rooms." it would seem that blake, having won "those just rights as an artist and a man" for which he had striven with hayley and cromek in the old days, and having now established his claim to live as he pleased in honourable poverty for the sake of the imaginative life, gained a tardy recognition and respect among the intellectual spirits of the time during his last years. one of the friendly acquaintances of this period was thomas griffiths wainwright, a strange character of great artistic capacity and sensibilities, and yet destined to be a secret poisoner and murderer. i wonder if blake was thinking of him when he said in one of his conversations with crabb robinson, "i have never known a very bad man who had not something very good in him." palmer samuel has given a never-to-be-forgotten picture of blake at the academy looking at a picture of wainwright's. "while so many moments better worthy to remain are fled," wrote palmer, "the caprice of memory presents me with the image of blake looking up at wainwright's picture; blake in his plain black suit and _rather_ broad-brimmed but not quakerish hat, standing so quietly among all the dressed-up, rustling, swelling people, and myself thinking, 'how little you know _who_ is among you!'" these few graphic and reverential words touch the heart by their simple directness and love, for to samuel palmer, blake was "the master." the names of frederick tatham the elder, and his son the sculptor must be appended to the tale of blake's friends; edward calvert, who used to go long walks with blake, made memorable by high conversation; f. o. finch, a member of the old water colour society; and the distinguished painter richmond, who was a mere boy when he fell under the spell of the inspired old man. blake showed this group of young men the most fatherly kindness, encouraged them to appeal to him for advice and counsel, and gathered them around him and talked to them simply, directly and earnestly, of his high and spiritual views on life and art. he poured his noble enthusiasm and other-worldliness into receptive hearts, and his words bore fruit in their works in after life. for this group learned from blake that art must express the spirit, and must interpret natural phenomena esoterically. richmond tells the following characteristic story of how once, "finding his invention flag during a whole fortnight, he went to blake, as was his wont, for some advice and comfort. he found him sitting at tea with his wife. he related his distress: how he felt deserted by the power of invention. to his astonishment, blake turned to his wife suddenly and said, 'it is just so with us, is it not, for weeks together when the visions forsake us? what do we do then, kate?' 'we kneel down and pray, mr. blake.'" to these earnest young men blake was as the prophet ezekiel, and the home in fountain court got to be called by them significantly enough, "the house of the interpreter." [illustration: blake's living-room and death-room in fountain court reproduced from the sketch by mr. frederic j. shields, kindly lent by the artist] mr. frederick shields (who, like blake and many other great artists, will doubtless be honoured as he deserves to be when nothing further can touch him, and this world may not lay at his living feet its due meed of recognition and gratitude,) made a sketch of the sombre little living room in fountain court. his friend dante gabriel rossetti was so profoundly touched on seeing it that he eased his heart in a sonnet: this is the place. even here the dauntless soul, the unflinching hand, wrought on; till in that nook, as on that very bed, his life partook new birth and passed. yon river's dusky shoal, whereto the close-built coiling lanes unroll, faced his work window, whence his eyes would stare, thought wandering, unto nought that met them there, but to the unfettered irreversible goal. this cupboard, holy of holies, held the cloud of his soul writ and limned; this other one, his true wife's charge, full oft to their abode yielded for daily bread, the martyr's stone, ere yet their food might be that bread alone, the words now home-speech of the mouth of god. the house in fountain court has been pulled down lately. the footprints of the great and gentle soul in his passage through this world to the "unfettered irreversible goal" have almost all disappeared in the dust and scurry of the last century. we can still think of him, and of those long rapt mornings he spent in our glorious abbey. full as it is--pent up and overflowing--with the associations of centuries, it will henceforth hold this one more--blake worked there, blake dreamed there, blake caught inspiration from the enchanted forests of its aisles. we may think of him, too, as standing in the diploma gallery of burlington house, gazing with all his flaming spirit in his eyes at marco d'oggione's beautiful copy of da vinci's "last supper." of the apostles he said, "every one of them save judas looks as if he had conquered the natural man." mr. linnell, always during this period blake's truest, closest friend, introduced him to a rich and cultivated gentleman, a collector of pictures of the german school, a mr. aders, at whose table blake met crabb robinson and coleridge. crabb robinson thus describes our artist's appearance: "he has a most interesting appearance. he is now old--sixty-eight--pale, with a socratic countenance, and an expression of great sweetness, though with something of languor about it, except when animated, and then he has about him an air of inspiration." lamb was an habitué at the house also. gotzenburger, the german painter, met blake at mr. aders, and he declared on his return to germany that he saw but three men of genius in england--coleridge, flaxman and blake, and the greatest of these was blake. much happy time was spent by the old man among the linnell family at the painter's house, collins farm, at north end, hampstead. here he often went of a saturday, and was always welcomed with keen delight by the children and glad affection by their parents. mrs. linnell sang his favourite scotch songs to him, john linnell talked to him of art and listened appreciatively to his wild poetic conversation. the latter made happy the last few years of his life by a commission to engrave a set of plates after water-colour drawings, already executed, illustrating the book of job. the congeniality of this task, which was to result in the crowning achievement of his life, fired blake to put his whole soul into the monumental inventions. linnell also commissioned him to make a series of drawings from the "divine comedy." it is interesting to note that at sixty-seven blake set to work and learned italian, in order to read his author in the original. his health had long been failing, and before the drawings were finished death came to him like a friend who loved him, and took him from this cold and unsympathetic world (where, however, he had been strangely happy) to that other one, with which he had always had so close and mystical a communion. the review of his life, from a worldly point of view, is of one whose means were painfully straitened, whose genius was baffled and powers crippled, by poverty and want of encouragement; to whom the world's acknowledgement was lacking, and the fame of the painter and poet denied. his own assessment of life, however, was very different. gilchrist relates that a rich and influential lady (mrs. aders?) brought her little golden-haired daughter to see him. when this child was old she recalled the strangeness of the words said to her, a radiant spoilt child of fortune, by the poor shabby old man: "may god make this world as beautiful to you, my child, as it has been to me!" he said, stroking her golden curls. i cannot forbear to quote from gilchrist the passage which describes his death. "the final leave-taking came which he had so often seen in vision; so often and with such child-like simple faith sung and designed. with the same intense high feeling he had depicted the 'death of the righteous man,' he enacted it, serenely, joyously; for life and design and song were with him all pitched in one key, different expressions of one reality. no dissonances there! it happened on a sunday, the th of august, , nearly three months before completion of his seventieth year. on the day of his death ... he composed and uttered songs to his maker so sweetly to the ear of his catherine, that, when she stood to hear him, he, looking upon her most affectionately, said, 'my beloved! they are not _mine_! no! they are _not_ mine.'" the last things blake did were to execute and colour the design of the "ancient of days" from the europe for the young mr. tatham. when that was done, "his glance fell on his loving kate.... as his eyes rested on the once-graceful form, thought of all she had been to him in these years filled the poet-artist's mind. "stay," he cried, "keep as you are! _you_ have been ever an angel to me; i will draw you." and he made what mr. tatham describes as "a phrenzied sketch of some power, highly interesting, but not like." in that plain back room where he had worked so contentedly he closed his eyes on this world, about six of a summer evening, to open them on the glorious visions of the next. those beloved nervous hands which mrs. blake said she had never once seen idle, were laid to rest at last in the cold sleep of death. the year of blake's death, , was that of beethoven's. of both of them it may be said that they were but strangers and sojourners here, and the language they spoke was the language of a far country. catherine, the devoted wife, only survived her husband four years, during the whole of which time she felt his spiritual presence close to her. blake, though so poor, left no single debt, and his mss., pictures, and printed books realized sufficient to keep mrs. blake in comfort for those few years. john linnell and tatham piously cared for and tended their lost leader's widow. she died as blake died, joyfully, and her body was laid to rest beside his in bunhill fields. there is no sign to-day to show where those graves lie, but it is as well. "the vegetative earth" has absorbed the two dear bodies that the spirits of william blake and his wife may shine the clearer; their bright radiance glimmers through the century like a guiding star, to lead men's thoughts out into the endless vistas of the infinite life which transcends our present limited consciousness. chapter v his religious views it seems to me that it would be quite vain and useless to go on to a review of blake's art, and, incidentally, his poetry, without a preliminary examination--as concise as may be--of the fundamental religious and intellectual conceptions which made him the man he was, and gave him so strange and subjective a point of view. blake is no ordinary painter, whose art-work is the only key to his inner life or to his perceptions of beauty in the natural world. he is an artist and a poet of the highest spiritual order, but he is also a mystic. messrs. ellis and yeats tell us that his rank as a mystic entitles him to far more admiration and patient study than any claims he may have as a mere painter and poet! be that as it may (and some of us cannot but hold the artist as the most glorious manifestation of the divine on this earth!), it is certainly necessary to apprehend blake the mystic before we can enter into the spirit of blake the artist. his was a strange religious creed. it is evident that in early life he obtained somehow or other many of the works of the great mystics and studied them with passionate attention. among them swedenborg (whom, however, he frequently criticised harshly) and jacob boehmen, the wonderful shoemaker of the sixteenth century, seem to have exerted the most lasting influence on his mind. swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences--the theory that natural phenomena actually represent, or rather shadow, unseen spiritual conditions and existence--attracted blake at first reading, and became so much a part of his mental fibre that one feels certain he would have eventually fought his intellectual way out into this channel of thought had swedenborg never written. nature seemed to blake but the confused and vague copy of something definite and perfect in "imagination" or "spirit." "all things exist in the human imagination," and "in every bosom a universe expands," he wrote, and in the human imagination and its reverend preservation and cultivation lay man's only source of divine illumination, he believed. "if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. for man has closed himself up till he sees all things through narrow chinks in his cavern," are illuminating words of his. blake's whole effort in life seemed to be the cleansing and spiritualizing of the portals of the senses that he might see and hear and receive as much of the infinite spirit as his humanity could hold. the mission which he put clearly before him always, he expressed in these words in his prophetic poem of "jerusalem": i rest not from my great task to open the eternal worlds, to open the immortal eyes of man inwards; into the worlds of thought, into eternity ever expanding in the bosom of god, the human imagination. no man ever sought more gallantly to batter down the walls of materialism which were closing round the souls of men, to let in the sweet breath of spirit, and to unveil the vision of the universal life. the immemorial struggle between the body and the soul of man was never lost sight of by him, though he sometimes seems to deny it, and his letters to butts from felpham show something of his acute consciousness of the difficulty of subduing his spectre or "selfhood." "nature and religion," he announces passionately, "are the fetters of life." the orthodox narrow unspiritual religion of his time and all times was repugnant to blake, and aroused all his fiery combative qualities. it seemed to him to be as actually a fetter to the spirit as the carnal nature of man. religion was to him a matter of intuition, and not a question of creed or dogma at all. he gives a picture of ordinary religious conceptions in the poem called the "everlasting gospel": the vision of christ that thou dost see is my vision's greatest enemy. thine is the friend of all mankind; mine speaks in parables to the blind. thine loves the same world that mine hates, thy heaven-doors are my hell-gates. socrates taught what miletus loathed as a nation's bitterest curse; and caiaphas was, in his own mind, a benefactor to mankind. both read the bible day and night; but thou read'st black where i read white. the last line is very significant of blake. the world which made so decent and respectable a thing out of christianity, which called success and opportunism the favour of god, and hailed the prince of this world by the name of christ, excited blake's utmost antagonism. he announced definite counter doctrines on his part, and advocated in his vehemence, almost as partial a view of things, as in their own way, did the materialists of his time. "la vérité est dans une nuance," renan has declared, but the swing of the pendulum of opinion must alternate from one extreme to the other before the precise "nuance" can be determined. blake's noble but often impractical views have yet a practical utility, for only through a knowledge of the extreme, can the mean be discriminated. of his own personal religion it might be said that certain fantastic and strange tenets he _chose_ to believe because they pleased him, as we may choose to believe in this or that section of the catholic church; but the most quintessential, intimate, and spiritual of his views were not beliefs at all, but simply and purely knowledge. he _knew_, by an intuition beyond reason, things outside the ken of ordinary men. the deep melodies of the super-sensible universe reverberated through his soul, and he could never therefore think much of the hum and clamour of this material world. from this intuitive and rapt knowledge of the mystic there is no appeal, for it transcends human experience, and when blake had it, he was prophet (teller of hidden things) indeed. but when he chose to believe and assert complex and sometimes contradictory doctrines, the affair is different, and we may give or withhold our intellectual sympathy as we will. in any case the spiritual and unorthodox creed which was the lamp of truth to this beautiful soul is worthy of deep reverence, but i cannot altogether agree with messrs. ellis and yeats that a _consistent_ basis of mysticism underlies blake's writings. even a system of mystic philosophy requires to be stated comprehensibly and in a recognizable literary form, and the prophetic books (in which the greater part of blake's views are expressed) have no form nor sequence, and are as chaotic and dim as dreams. messrs. ellis and yeats, it is true, have constructed an elaborate, imaginative and very coherent thought-structure out of blake's prophetic writings, but owing to the looseness, confusion and unintelligible character of the greater part of the symbolic books themselves, the deftly woven web of mysticism which they present to us as blake's does not carry conviction with it. it is suggestive, deeply sympathetic with blake--sometimes radiantly illuminating--but seems an independent treatise rather than an exposition. deeply as all students of blake must feel themselves indebted to messrs. ellis and yeats for their learned work, and the real help it has afforded to a clearer view of his unique personality, i cannot but think that every man will--nay _must_--interpret blake for himself. he was too erratic, too emotional, too much the artist, the apostle of discernment and the enemy of reason and science, to have constructed the closely-reasoned, carefully-articulated system of thought which they describe so graphically. blake was an intuitive mystic, not a systematic or learned one. however, if messrs. ellis and yeats have appreciated blake's mysticism, in all its strange convolutions and cloudy gyrations, they have done so not by following his expressed thoughts but by stating from a sympathetic insight denied to others, what he himself left unexpressed. this does not materially concern the student of blake's art and poetry, but it _does_ deeply concern them that they should ascertain the _main_ opinions which we know he held and the nature of the spiritual insight that obviously moulded his intellect, and hence his art. he had a startlingly naïve and original mental perspective, and he focussed profound and virgin thought on life, spirit and art. virgin thought it was indeed, for tradition had little hold on him, and the social, political and intellectual movements of his time passed by him, washing round the rock on which he sat isolated, but leaving him almost untouched by their influence and atmosphere. he was never swept into the current of contemporary life, but was as removed from the london of his time as if his rooms had been an alpine tower of silence, instead of being in the very heart and turmoil of the city. he belonged to no particular age. we could never think of him, for instance, like rossetti or william morris, as an exile from the middle ages who had fallen upon an uncongenial nineteenth century. he lived apart in a world of spirit, and concerned himself with the great elementary problems of all ages, bringing none of the bias or characteristic mental hamper of his generation to bear upon these considerations. his art necessarily ranges in the same primeval world, not yet thoroughly removed from chaos. mr. swinburne, in his eloquent critical essay on blake, finds him largely pantheistic in his views. there is something in blake of the rapt indifference to externals, found in the buddhist. here is a characteristic assertion of his: "god is in the lowest effects as well as in the highest causes. he is become a worm that he may nourish the weak. for let it be remembered that creation is god descending according to the weakness of man: our lord is the word of god, and everything on earth is the word of god, and in its essence is _god_." here certainly speaks the pantheist. from the study of blake's writings the following points--and they are important to our future understanding of his art-work--stand out clearly defined. he believed in a great permeating unconditioned spirit--god--of whose nature men also partake, but subjected to the conditions and moral nature which result from sexual and generative humanity. and beside the unnameable supreme god there is another god, the creator urizen, who is a sort of divine demon. he it is who has divided humanity into sexes, and inclosed the universal soul in separate bodies, and set up a code of morals which bears no relation to the supreme god, who being altogether removed from, and above, the generative nature of man, does not himself conform to "laws of restriction and forbidding." urizen, who imprisons and torments conditioned humanity, is somehow subduable by this same humanity of his own invention, and christ, the perfect man filled as full as may be with the divine spirit (for "a cup may not contain more than its capaciousness"), rises in the hearts of humanity, and effects its freedom, by aspiring past the creator, to the altogether divine, and uniting with it. jehovah addressing christ, as the highest type and flower of humanity, says to him, in the poem called the "everlasting gospel": if thou humblest thyself thou humblest me. thou art a man: god is no more: thine own humanity learn to adore, for that is my spirit of life. this makes us think of blake's follower, walt whitman, who in the same sort of turgid and chaotic poetry in which blake wrote the prophetic books, but with no mystic clouds to shroud the meaning, has consistently developed this thought: "one's self i sing, a simple separate person," and "none has begun to think how divine he himself is," etc. in blake's conversations with crabb robinson, this mystic view of christ is very apparent. "on my asking," writes mr. robinson, "in what light he viewed the great questions of the duty of jesus," he said, "he is the only god. but then," he added, "and so am i, and so are you." keeping this point in view,--blake's belief in the identity of the spirit of god behind all phenomena, the homogeneous character of the great creative energy or imagination expressing itself through various forms and organisms,--another extract from crabb robinson's diary will help us still nearer home to blake's point of view. he writes: "in the same tone, he said repeatedly, 'the spirit told me.' i took occasion to say, 'you express yourself as socrates used to do. what resemblance do you suppose there is between your spirit and his?' 'the same as between our countenances.' he paused and added, 'i was socrates,' and then, as if correcting himself, 'a sort of brother. i must have had conversations with him. so i had with jesus christ. i have an obscure recollection of having been with both of them.' i suggested on philosophic grounds the impossibility of supposing an immortal being created an _a parte post_ without an _a parte ante_. his eye brightened at this, and he fully concurred with me. 'to be sure, it is impossible. we are all co-existent with god, members of the divine body. we are all partakers of the divine nature.'" the latter words seem as ordinary and orthodox as on first reading his assertion that he was socrates seems wild and mad. but all blake really meant (and i think crabb robinson only half took his meaning) was, that the vegetative universe being a mere shadow, so are the accidents of personality, the age one is born into, the organic form which incloses the spirit. so his personality and that of socrates, their imprisonment in the "vegetative" life were differences of no account, being transitory. but he and socrates were one (or at least related) at the point where their spirits (the eternal verity) touched, and melted each into the other. he understood the bible in its spiritual sense. as to the natural sense, "voltaire was commissioned by god to expose that. i have had much intercourse with voltaire, and he said to me, 'i blasphemed the son of man, and it shall be forgiven me, but they (the enemies of voltaire) blasphemed the holy ghost in me, and it shall not be forgiven them.'" this affords an instance of the manner in which blake intuitively probed beneath the appearance, and divined the spirit beneath, discarding the fact or body with which it clothed itself. another characteristic opinion of blake's, and one that moulded much of his work, is the following: "without contraries is no progression. attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. from these contraries spring what the religious call good and evil. good is the passive that obeys reason. evil is the active, springing from energy. good is heaven, evil is hell." "all bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors: " . that man has two existing principles, viz., a body and a soul. " . that energy, called evil, is alone from the body, and that heaven, called good, is alone from the soul. " . that god will torment man in eternity for following his energies. but the following contraries are true: " . man has no body distinct from soul, for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age. " . energy is the only life, and is from the body, and reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy. " . energy is eternal delight." these postulates form links in a chain of thought, another progression of which is developed in "jerusalem." blake writes: "there is a limit of opaqueness and a limit of contraction in every individual man, and the limit of opaqueness is called satan, and the limit of contraction is called adam. but there is no limit of expansion, there is no limit of translucence in the bosom of man for ever from eternity to eternity." certainly there was no limit in his own bosom, and in vision he expanded away from his own "ego" and merged in the universal life, the all-pervading spirit. opaqueness and contraction were the only forms of evil he recognized, and these are negative rather than active qualities. indeed, blake often seems to deny the existence of sin at all. again referring to the invaluable record that crabb robinson has left of blake--i quote always from messrs. ellis and yeats' complete reprint of the part of the diary referring to him--"he allowed, indeed, that there are errors, mistakes, etc., and if these be evil, then there is evil. but these are only negations. he denied that the natural world is anything. it is all nothing, and satan's empire is the empire of nothing." in another place he writes: "negations are not contraries. contraries exist. but negations exist not; nor shall they ever be organized for ever and ever." contraries, 'the marriage of heaven and hell,' seemed necessary and right to him, and the urge and recoil natural correlatives. the great strife with blake was always that between reason and imagination, experience and spiritual discernment. the greater part of humanity seemed to him to see _with_ the natural eye natural phenomena only. this was accordingly opaque to them, and did not let through the light of the universal spirit or imagination, seen with which alone it was beautiful, as being then the symbol of something immeasureably greater than itself. locke and newton, the men of "single vision" as he called them, were the types of this part of humanity. he would fain have had men look _through_ the eye at the infinite imagination which is the cause of phenomena. [illustration: death's door: from blair's "grave" engraved by l. schiavonetti after blake's drawing. published ] as he states in a glorious passage in his prose essay of the last judgement: "mental things are alone real: what is called corporeal nobody knows of; its dwelling-place is a fallacy, and its existence an imposture. where is the existence out of mind, or thought? where is it but in the mind of a fool? some people flatter themselves that there will be no last judgement, and that bad art will be adopted, and mixed with good art--that error or experiment will make a part of truth--and they boast that it is its foundation. these people flatter themselves; i will not flatter them. error is created, truth is eternal. error or creation will be burnt up, and then, and not till then, truth or eternity will appear. it is burned up the moment men cease to behold it." (this is a mystical utterance, a spiritual discernment which will repay thoughtful consideration. it gives the last judgement--hitherto conceived of by the orthodox as a terribly material and mundane affair--an imaginative and esoteric significance very grateful and welcome to the spiritually sensitive.) "i assert for myself, that i do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. 'what!' it will be questioned, 'when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire, somewhat like a guinea?' oh! no! no! i see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying: 'holy, holy, holy is the lord god almighty.' i question not my corporeal eye, any more than i would question a window concerning a sight. i look through it, and not with it." one of blake's most beautiful conceptions of god is as the universal "poetic genius," and he was very fond of asserting that art is religion, which indeed it is when, like his own, it represents the forms of this world as the transparent media through which pulses the light of the universal poetic genius. another belief of blake's must be quoted before i leave this part of our subject: "men are admitted into heaven, not because they have curbed and governed their passions, or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. the treasures of heaven are not negations of passion, but realities of intellect, from which all the passions emanate, uncurbed in their eternal glory. "the fool shall not enter into heaven, let him be ever so holy; holiness is not the price of entrance into heaven. those who are cast out are all those who, having no passions of their own, because no intellect, have spent their lives in curbing and governing other people's by the various arts of poverty, and cruelty of all kinds. the modern church crucifies christ with the head downwards." and again, "many persons, such as paine and voltaire, with some of the ancient greeks, say: "we will not converse concerning good and evil, we will live in paradise and liberty! you may do so in spirit, but not in the mortal body, as you pretend, till after the last judgment. for in paradise they have no corporeal and mortal body: _that_ originated with the fall and was called death, and cannot be removed but by a last judgment. while we are in the world of mortality, we must suffer--the whole creation groans to be delivered.... "forgiveness of sin is only at the judgment-seat of jesus the saviour, where the accuser is cast out, not because he sins, but because he torments the just, and makes them do what he condemns as sin, and what he knows is opposite to their own identity." and now i must gather together all the frayed ends of this diffuse but necessary chapter, and put the vital points, around which the seeming incongruities and strangenesses of blake's assertions arrange themselves, into a symmetrical if not an organic whole. the oneness of the eternal imagination, "universal poetic genius," or god the spirit, was the golden background to blake's vision of life. and on this unity he saw contrasted the endless diversity of the spirit's expression in phenomena. all error (not sin, which he did not believe to exist) came from the fall of the spirit (through urizen the creator) into division and the sexual and generative life of man. this tended to a closing up of man into separate selfhoods, and each selfhood, in its effort to preserve its corporeal existence and separate character, was guilty of error, and gradually the inlets through which communication with the universal spirit was maintained became closed up, and were senses only available, in most men, for the uses of the natural world. this condition leads to spiritual negation, but is merely temporary, for when the body is destroyed at death, which is the last judgement, urizen's power is broken, and the soul, however attenuated (as long as not altogether atrophied), returns to its pristine union with the universal spirit, and, though completely merged in it, yet in some wonderful way it preserves its own identity, or essential quality, while the body, which is error, is "burnt up." but even in the prison of the bodily life humanity may be delivered from the cramping and negative effect of the selfhood, through jesus christ, who exists as the human divine in every heart, and who at the voice of the universal spirit rises from the grave of selfhood, and draws the christian up into the life of that spirit where is no error nor negation. it naturally follows that to blake the one important point was to keep the senses, "the chief inlet of soul," perpetually cleansed and open, that he might descry the great reality of which nature and all her phenomena are but a symbol or shadow. in fact, blake's hope for man lay in the contrary of herbert spencer's philosophy. the continuous evolution into new divisions and organisms, separate selfhoods and particles, was to him the falling of urizen, head downwards, and bound with the snake of materiality, deeper and deeper into the abyss. by union, not division, by aspiring into the universal life, by conquering the selfhood and cleaving to the divine element (jesus christ) which exists in every human heart, blake conceived that man might, if he would, find salvation, true vision, and everlasting life. his own vision was always double or symbolic, and he prayed to be delivered from "single vision" and "newton's sleep." for the preoccupation with nature as an end in itself and an object worthy of study was to him the great error, a sign of the horror of great darkness that clouded the human intelligence. in moments of a special inrush of spiritual apprehension his vision was "threefold," and sometimes "fourfold," which suggests that vista behind vista unrolled itself, revealing untellable truth and beauty to his keen etherealized sight. these things, not being matters of common experience, must be received and understood intuitively, and not blake himself can always make them comprehensible to us. his language and visions recall the language and visions of the prophet ezekiel, whose writings were read and re-read by him till they created a frenzy of excitement in his sensitive brain. his opinion of women, far from being in accordance with our modern emancipated views, was somewhat oriental, though among his poems we may find many instances of sweet and spiritual femininity. when urizen created man and walled him up in his separate organism with five senses, like five small chinks in a cavern to let in the outside light, he gave him a dual nature, male and female, so that he was at first a hermaphrodite. "the female portion of man trying to get the ascendency of the male portion caused inward strife," so a further subdivision occurred, and man cast out his female portion, which became woman, and was a mere "emanation" of man. "there is no such thing in eternity as a female will," writes blake oracularly, his happy experience being based doubtless on the beautiful subjection of catherine blake to his own overmastering personality. yet he is bound to exclaim in "jerusalem," "what may man be? who can tell? but what may woman be, to have power over man from cradle to corruptible grave." we may fairly say that the inferior shadowy nature which he imputes to woman was one of those opinions which he chose to adopt, though his real and unconscious belief regarding her was possibly very different. be that as it may, he often makes her serve as a symbol for material existence, obviously an infelicitous parallel. having very briefly indicated the nature of blake's religious and mystical opinions, it remains for us to say a word about his mythology. in a letter written to mr. butts while blake was at felpham, these lines occur among some verses, and will i think help us: for a double vision is always with me. with my inward eye, 'tis an old man gray; with my outward, a thistle across the way. the personification and nomenclature of these double visions of his seem to suggest the genesis of this mythology. he has peopled a twilight mental world with a dim shadowy population of personified states and conditions. they bear strange mouth-filling names, such as orc, fuzon, rintrah, palamabron, enitharmon, oothoon and ololon. what each symbolizes must be determined by the reader for himself. no explanation of their separate functions will be attempted in this book. messrs. ellis and yeats have carried explanation and analytic criticism as far as it can be carried, and the reader who is interested in the literary matter of the prophetic books should consult their learned work as well as mr. swinburne's highly-suggestive critical essay. chapter vi his mystical nature to the world of his own time blake appeared a mad visionary, whose sweet impulsive early poems attracted a few of the rarer souls of the age, but whose pictures and designs were practically unknown. his genius, atmosphere, and modes of thought were antipathetic to his age, and his aims and achievement proved so difficult to understand from the point of view of that day, that he was summarily and uncomprehendingly set down as mad. this was an offhand and unintelligent method of accounting for so rare a spirit. the spectacle of a man who might, had he chosen, have enjoyed riches, honour, admiration and glory, but who instead, like his great master, cared not at all for lordship in this world, but much for the preservation of the kingdom of the spirit that is not of this world, did a great deal to earn for blake the name of madman. the world has always regarded the voluntarily poor with suspicion and misapprehension. then, again, blake was one of those who lived very near the veil which shrouds the great unexplored spiritual forces. death, as we know, seemed to him but the "passing from one room to another." to raise the veil, to look forth on the cause of phenomena, on the visions of eternal imagination, to strain to the uttermost that he might hear the reverberations of the unmeasured mighty stream of divine power, to bathe within that stream, and let it bear him onward as it would--these were to him the real purposes of life, and being so, formed other reasons why the world, all engrossed as it is with wealth and position, and "here" and "now," looked at him askance. to-day, however, there is an undercurrent of popular opinion--a small stream, but strong--that recognizes him for what he is, and his name is sacred as that of the great high priest of spiritual art, to those who compose it. it is noticeable that none of those who were personally acquainted with him, save perhaps crabb robinson, ever gave credence to the prevailing notion that he was mad: strongly do they condemn such a verdict. he was eccentric, abnormally developed on the spiritual side, and undisciplined in thought and speech. the mystic in him finally all but destroyed the poet, though it never arrested the magnificent development of his artistic genius. again, much that is strange and difficult of apprehension in blake may be traced to the fact that his mind lacked the firm basis, the just and right power of thinking, that comes from a sound education. as a matter of fact, capriciously self-educated as he was, his ignorance of ordinary rudimentary knowledge was as extraordinary as his acquaintance with much that is caviar to the ordinary intellect. "celui qui a l'imagination sans érudition a des ailes et n'a pas de pieds." and so it was with blake. but it does not detract one iota from the illuminating quality of the thoughts which flash as it were from a heaven in his brain in times of creative inspiration. blake on the wing has a strange beauty, a swift, direct and strenuous flight that thrills and awes the imaginative spectator. it is only when this wild wonderful creature is caught and entangled in theories and systems and human reasoning, that we may not give him our intellectual adherence. other causes which appear to give colour to the theory that he was mad are the following: blake had no curious regard or nice care for words, but used them at random in speech, just as they came to hand, and as he cherished numerous violent prejudices it naturally followed that he often expressed them in very emphatic and often unreasonable language. passionate partisan as he was of the world of imagination as against the world of fact, he assumed an attitude of defiance to natural science and its oldest established facts which seemed to those who had not the key to blake's mind simply insane or at the best puerile. so accustomed was he to misunderstanding, that when strangers tried to draw him out he seems purposely to have indulged in exaggeration and symbolic language to baffle and mystify them. in ordinary intercourse, as in his art and poetry, he seems to have had no care to put his mind and his listeners or spectators _en rapport_ with his own. that magical sympathy which some men know so well how to establish like a living current between their own and other minds before "speaking the truth that is in them," was not one of blake's gifts. the sympathetic standpoint for observance or understanding he expected from those who would be at the pains to find out his meaning. "let them that have ears, hear--if they can, and if they be not too tightly shut into their selfhoods, and their senses not clogged beyond cleansing with the dust and litter of materialism," he would seem to say. examining into the vexed question of blake's visions, whether they were the apparitions of an unsound mind, the automatic picture-making of a vivid imagination, or the visual apprehension of supernatural appearances, we shall see that madness is not the key to them, though we shall have to admit a certain want of balance and proportion in his intellectual life. sometimes one is tempted to think that he had eyes that saw the visible loveliness and manifest images in which plato supposes that ideas exist in the spiritual universe. which being so, it is not wonderful that he was called mad, for the greek philosopher himself said that "this is the most excellent of all forms of enthusiasm (or possession), and that the lover who has a share of this madness is called a lover of the beautiful." our artist was a seer such as plato meant, but his is a figurative rather than an actual description of the mental operations which suspend such visions before the prophet's eye. all the writers on blake--allan cunningham, alexander gilchrist, james smetham, mr. swinburne, mr. w. m. rossetti, messrs. ellis and yeats, sir richard garnett--have discussed the subject, but i find the most illuminating passage in an article by james smetham included in the second volume of gilchrist's "life," which i shall take leave to quote, for its matter could never be better stated: "thought with blake leaned largely to the side of imagery rather than to the side of organized philosophy, and we shall have to be on our guard, while reading the record of his views and opinions, against the dogmatism which was more frequently based on exalted fancies than on the rock of abiding reason and truth. the conceptive faculty working with a perception of facts singularly narrow and imperfect, projected every idea boldly into the sphere of the actual. what he _thought_, he _saw_, to all intents and purposes, and it was this sudden and sharp crystallization of inward notions into outward and visible signs which produced the impression on many beholders that reason was unseated.... we cannot but on the whole lean to the opinion that somewhere in the wonderful compound of flesh and spirit, somewhere in those recesses where the one runs into the other, he was 'slightly touched,' and by so doing we shall save ourselves the necessity of attempting to defend certain phases of his work" (such as much of the literary part of the prophetic books) "while maintaining an unqualified admiration for the mass and manner of his thoughts." this seems a just opinion. the colloquialism "slightly touched" (just that and nothing but that) is the very phrase to express this elusive, almost indefinable condition of mind. in all mankind living in conditions of time and space, a certain adjustment of themselves to these conditions, and to each other, is a necessary function of existence. the failure to comply with such an adjustment was blake's strength and weakness--the defect of his quality. as i have said before, he firmly believed in his own inspiration, and with reason. for a mood of trance-like absorption would come upon him, his soul would be rapt in an ecstasy, he was disturbed by no impressions of earthly persons or surroundings, but was for the time being alone with his quickening vision. at such moments his mind's eye was but the retina on which god himself projected the image. and he would permit no criticism, no questioning of work which seemed to him not his own, but produced through divine agency. all creative genius must work in much the same way. the vision is granted, who shall say just how and whence, and its translation into any form of art must be accomplished by a power as it were outside, above, the artist. vogl said of schubert, that he composed in a state of clairvoyance. (that is the reason why the unfinished symphony was, and always will be, unfinished. schubert transcribed the tormenting melody, the awful picture of fate suddenly reaching a long arm from out the smiling heaven to arrest the blithe jigging mortal so gaily tripping along a flowery path. the overwhelming terror and pity of it all shake the soul. but the vision was withdrawn, the clairvoyant condition left schubert, and so he wrote no more.) blake's conceptions were projected in form instantaneously and with extraordinary vividness, and the vision seen with his mind's eye seldom varied or faded till he had transferred its likeness to paper. in this he was indeed unlike those artists who, having but a vague mental conception, build up their designs from without, laboriously selecting and copying, not that which will merely help to perfect the realization of the inward conception, but those things which they conjecture will arrange themselves most successfully in the making of an eye-pleasing picture. such artists are but little concerned with the innate and obligatory form with which an idea must necessarily clothe itself. blake writes in the descriptive catalogue, "a spirit and a vision are not, as the modern philosophy supposes, a cloudy vapour or a nothing: they are organized and minutely articulated beyond all that the mortal and perishing nature can produce. he who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all." at the same time in justice we must admit that blake sometimes failed to make his vivid and living conceptions as clear to the world as he might have done, for the reason that he neglected to refer to nature for the technique which after all is the language of art. his art in this respect is somewhat like that of the italian trecenti, who uttered burning messages in a tongue which sometimes stammered. his impetuous soul never wholly achieved the mastery of material which only a prolonged and patient drudgery can give, but the images which hurtled from his imagination were so forceful and superabundant that mere fiery creation, the unburdening of the overloaded heart and brain, was the crying obligation which forced him ever onward, seeking relief often in the mere act of projection. it is always a wonder that he makes so few mistakes, his technique being manifestly deficient. when his drawing is right it is heroically, magnificently so, and even when incorrect, it is always of amazing power and almost convincing strength. "execution," says blake, in his notes on reynolds' "discourses," "is the chariot of genius," and when he mounts into the chariot and takes the reins into his strong nervous hands, then, indeed, nothing can withstand the flashing glory of his course. at such times the affinity between our artist and michael angelo is very apparent. both had the grand simple manner in their treatment of the human form, both worked as it would seem "in a state of clairvoyance" and according to the direction of a divine daemon, both felt the body to be at best but the prison of the straining fluttering soul; but blake's conceptions glow with a whiter flame of spiritual intensity than do those of the florentine, greater as the latter was at all other points. i think it is the presence of this mystic fire which forms one of the great difficulties in the way of a facile understanding of his art-work. we feel ourselves in the presence of an incommunicable overburdening spiritual intensity. it has seldom happened that a mystic should be also an artist translating those things which transcend human experience into the terms of an art which by its very nature is only concerned with the sensible creation. it is this incongruity between the thought and the language in which it is conveyed--blake's thoughts often lying beyond the proper range of a graphic embodiment--which creates one of the great difficulties in the way of our right apprehension of him. a few of his works, as we shall presently see, are perfect and flawless as art can make them, such as the "songs of innocence" and the majestic series of designs to job. in both of these, the thoughts, and their incarnation in form, are harmoniously complementary each to the other. but often the thought will not, cannot be inclosed: it outstrips the reach of his art. hence many designs are tumultuous with leaping ideas, dimly apprehended suggestions, not one of which is caught and contained in its essence, but seems rather, as it were, to flutter, tantalizingly enough, just beyond the grasp. blake "hitched his waggon to the stars," to use emerson's expressive phrase, and to the spiritually "elect" in art--those to whom ideas are the really precious things--he speaks winged words and with authority. the pity is that his art speaks thus clearly to the "initiated" only. the sense of freedom of the spirit, of the absence of all contractile elements in blake's work must however be obvious to all. it is his special charm, to be expansive, sublime, large. the great ethereal spaces of the sky have breathed their inspiration upon him, and he has reflected the colour and the mystery and the depth of the sea. to those who are spiritually homesick he comes as an emissary from beyond the great darkness, from where life is found at its source. chapter vii his art work and now we must turn our attention to blake's art-work--the fruit of his life "of beautiful purpose and warped power," as ruskin calls it--and the expression of those strange thoughts, beliefs and visions, which were his real world. my purpose is, to turn over, as it were, the leaves of his books in the print room of the british museum (the only copies available to the general public, though several finer are contained in private collections), and thus help to recall to the crowded mind of to-day's art the living burning spirit of blake which is inclosed in those covers. after which we will pass on to a general description and review of his drawings, engravings and water-colours in the british museum, and then consider his pictures in the national gallery. a chapter will also be devoted to the exhibition of works of blake which were on view for six weeks (january and february, ) at messrs. carfax's rooms in ryder street, for this exhibition contained many of his finest works, and several which will not again be seen by the public for many a long day. [illustration: printed and coloured plate from "songs of innocence," ] in blake's time there was little hope of success for an artist who did not put himself under distinguished patronage and paint at the direction of some dilettante nobleman. according to the autobiography of b. r. haydon the artist (a strange character if ever there were one!), who was in his heyday when blake was a very old man, nobody could expect to get on without a large dependence on patrons, who would often dictate subjects and treatment, and advance large sums to the painter, to meet his necessarily large expenses (for great canvases cost great sums); and on the strength of this, bind his creative imagination to the yoke of their own petty slavery. blake, however, being conscious of his own high mission in art, and deeply sensible of the divine obligation he was under to paint what he _must_, had to forego the idea of working out his designs in large, for he was too poor to pay for the necessary materials. hence most of his work is executed in very small space--in the leaves of the books we are about to examine, and in water-colours and "frescoes" of very limited dimensions. as we proceed it will be noted over and over again that designs some six or seven inches square, and often less, are grand enough to be expanded into large compositions and gallery pictures--indeed they would gain considerably by so doing--for so much vitality and splendid strength seems cramped in a confined area. but that _size_ in pictures is no test of conceptive artistic genius needs no demonstration, though it may be conceded to be a gauge of executive ability. and it is in conception that blake is pre-eminent. going quietly on in his chosen path, he has his little laugh at the crowd of artists scrambling like chickens around the patrons, who mete out the maize to this favourite cochin or that admired bantam. we find this doggerel in his note-book: o dear mother outline, of wisdom most sage, what's the first part of painting? she said, patronage. and what is the second, to please and engage, she frowned like a fury and said, "patronage." of patronage during his life blake had but little, save from mr. butts, who, however, had nothing of the conventional patron about him. he merely bought with reverent appreciation whatever blake pleased to paint, never suggesting alterations or improvements, never blaming or criticising, but merely receiving in faith and love. for which blake, as we know, "never ceased to honour him." but let no man think that poverty did not hamper blake, though he chose it rather than the slavery that would have been the price he would have had to pay for even a moderate income. he himself writes in the descriptive catalogue: "some people and not a few artists have asserted that the painter of this picture would not have done so well if he had been properly encouraged. let those who think so reflect on the state of nations under poverty, and their incapability of art. though art is above either, the argument is better for affluence than poverty _and though he would not have been a greater artist, yet he would have produced greater works of art in proportion to his means_." well, then: it was blake's poverty and independence that caused him to work mainly on a small scale, and it was the fact that he was poet as well as artist--his poetry springing from the same creative impulse as his plastic art--that led him to merge the two gifts into a perfect union in the creation of his beautiful and unique books. the process by which they were executed is thus described by gilchrist: "the verse was written and the designs and marginal embellishments outlined on the copper with an impervious liquid, probably the ordinary stopping-out varnish of engravers. then all the white parts or lights, the remainder of the plate that is, were eaten away with aquafortis or other acid, so that the outline of letter and design was left prominent, as in stereotype. from these plates he printed off in any tint, yellow, brown, blue, required to be the prevailing or ground colour in his fac-similes; red he used for the letterpress. the page was then coloured up by hand in imitation of the original drawing, with more or less variety of detail in the local hues." to read this account when one has seen the product is like pondering the receipt for a miracle. gilchrist goes on to say, "he taught mrs. blake to take off the impressions with care and delicacy." after, they were done up in boards by her neat hands, "so that the poet and his wife did everything in making the book--writing, designing, printing, engraving--everything except manufacturing the paper: the very ink, or colour rather, they did make. never before, surely, was a man so literally the author of his own book." for the convenience of classifying in some sort of rough way, this chapter will deal with the "songs of innocence," the "book of thel," the "gates of paradise," the "songs of experience," also touching lightly on a very different book, mary wollstonecraft's "tales for children," illustrated by blake. the small octavo volume entitled the "songs of innocence"--with which the "songs of experience," produced some years later, are also bound--will be a revelation of beauty to all who have not seen it before, for there was nothing like it before, and there has been nothing like it since. the leaves of the print room copy, in all probability not a very early one, have become slightly yellowed with age, but the colours remain rare and delicate and iridescent as they were when they were first laid on, a happy accident, for this has not been the fate of all blake's coloured prints. "every page has the smell of april," says mr. swinburne happily. linger where you will, a gay and tender harmony pervades every leaf, the smile of an inspired child looks up at you and flashes something intuitive and precious into your soul. the colours are the colours of morning. the limpidness of the verses, the felicity of the designs, recall special morning moods in the morning of life. hope, innocence, joy, and an all-pervading sense of divine nearness, are the characteristic notes sounded. both the draught and the song weave themselves into a spell, each one distinct, each having its own charm, its own perfume. the words without the embracing design, beautiful as they are, seem to lose some of that delicate and aromatic fragrance diffused from them. and the design without the words is an effect without a cause, and thus loses its expressiveness. it is the union of the two that makes the celestial singing, and, like antiphonal music, one part catches up, transforms and augments the melody of the other, which, ringing silver clear, yet half-hid and half-announced its entire significance. our illustrations, in which perforce the colour is left out, are the palest, most spectral of shadows beside the glory of the original plates. they can but be reminders or suggestions, and must be accepted as such. plate , represents a shepherd, pipe in hand, following a cherubic vision, his sheep in turn following him. the shepherd, be it remarked, has on a vestment peculiar to blake. it is indicated only by a line round the ankles, wrists and neck, and a few rather realistic buttons, but it does not hide the muscles and the modeling of the body at all. it is a kind of glorified combination garment, but it is a matter of taste whether the shepherd would not look as well unclothed entirely. the garment, too much recalls the historic drawers which the outraged decency of the vatican obliged pontormo to paint on the figures of michael angelo's "last judgement" in the sistine. whatever reason blake may have had for investing his shepherd in this apparel, we are sure at least that it was not because he worried himself about propriety! such a concern was far indeed from him. [illustration: printed and coloured plate from "songs of innocence," ] after all, this matter of the combination garment is the merest quibble. the design has all the enchantment of the spring in its pale delicious tints, and the browsing sheep with the glint of gold on their fleeces bring something of argonautic romance into this vision of april. the flamboyant title-page of the "songs of innocence," is a fine piece of decorative design and colour. the keynote of the whole scheme is set in the perfectly simple song, and the page in which it is embodied, called "the introduction." the poem is written in brown, on a ground bright with tremulous colours which wane and wax in prismatic variation. rose shoots, bent in and out, make a trellis up each side of the verses, and the result of the whole! well! you may call it a slight thing if you like, but it is as joyous as childhood, and strangely delightful! no songs ever written for children were as these songs; in especial, perhaps, "the lamb," of which the simplicity and tenderness are of so delicate a quality that the poem cannot be handled critically at all. it can only be felt. the slightly richer and deeper tones of colour, and the premonitory note of mysticism in the "little black boy," afford a subtle charm: and we are put on earth a little space that we may learn to bear the beams of love, and these black bodies and this sun-burnt face is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. who could have written this but blake? it is of lyrics such as this that pater writes: "and the very perfection of such poetry often appears to depend, in part, on a certain suppression or vagueness of mere subject, so that the meaning reaches us through ways not distinctly traceable by the understanding, as in some of the most imaginative compositions of william blake." "the divine image" is another equally lovely poem, with its sinuous growth of ribbon-like leaves, climbing among the verses. the unmistakeable figure of christ at the root, raises a prostrate figure. the verses, writ in golden brown, lie on a ground of palest blue, thrilling to tyrian purple. "holy thursday," after the rainbow tints of many of the pages and the luxuriance of their designs, is a quaker-like and unpretending affair altogether. it would seem to be the untouched impression as it was first stereotyped off the plate; and is interesting for that reason. there is hardly anything in the book more delicious than plate , "infant joy." a typical (rather than botanically correct) flower with a flame-shaped bud, and a wind-tossed bloom, springs across a page dyed like a butterfly's wing. in the cloven blossom a mother and her small baby sit enthroned while an angel with wings like a "white admiral" stands entranced before the happy child. "i have no name; i am but two days old." what shall i call thee? "i happy am, joy is my name." sweet joy befall thee. pretty joy! sweet joy but two days old. sweet joy i call thee: thou dost smile, i sing the while; sweet joy befall thee. these are the spontaneous, gushing notes of the bird in springtime, careless, unstudied but felicitously right, not to be corrected or even touched, for each word must lie where it fell, just so and no other way. [illustration: printed and coloured plate from "songs of innocence," ] plate , "night," with its graceful lady tree growing up beside the verses, is a beautiful shadowy design on a background in which blue and green merge and deepen in a veil of evening mist and the poem is another of those minute pieces of perfection, which, like delicate sea-shells, were cast up out of the stormy ocean of blake's mind. in their own way, and with due regard to their special range and quality, the "songs of innocence" are the most perfect things blake ever did, for he attempted no effect in song or design that his art was not adequate to express, and his imagination lies over all like the haze of spring sunshine. at that time the lyric poet in blake was dominant, compelling him to sing, while the mystic was hardly yet consciously awake in him. but in the next book, "the book of thel," the mystic has stirred and breathes through the poem. the story is veiled in a shining mystery, but is still quite intelligible and pellucid in style, till just at the end, when the sphinx riddle of this life, the paradox of the senses, the wonder and terror of death, close round the consciousness of thel, and dark sayings are uttered darkly. thel is the youngest of the daughters of the seraphim, but is herself a mortal. all her joy in her own beauty and that of the natural world is destroyed by the thought that she must die, the flowers must fade, the cloud will melt away, everything must change and decay. the lily of the valley answers her gentle lamentation, telling her that in this very change, the feeding of the lives of others with our own life, lies the secret of an endless and blessed immortality. she herself will hereafter "flourish in eternal vales." thel assents to this-- thy breath doth nourish the innocent lamb: he smells thy milky garments, he crops thy flowers, while thou sittest smiling in his face, wiping his mild and meekin mouth from all contagious taints. that is all very well, she seems to say, _you_ help to revive and nourish many creatures, but what do i do? i shall fade away like a little shining cloud. the lily then calls down a cloud, which appears in the bright likeness of a radiant youth in mid-air. the cloud tells her that when he passes away in an hour's time, "it is to manifold life, to love, and peace and raptures holy." he will wed the dew, and linked together in a golden band they will "bear food to all our tender flowers." but thel complains that she does nothing for any living thing, without a use this shining woman lived, or did she only live to be at death the food of worms. then the "cloud reclined upon his airy throne" tells her that even that would prove her of great use and blessing, for everything that lives lives not alone nor for itself, and in token of the truth of what he says he calls the helpless worm, which appears to thel as "an infant wrapped in the lily's leaf." this lowest form of created life is cradled in a mother's love to thel's surprise. the clod of clay appears to comfort its weeping babe and tells the wondering "beauty of the vales of har," that being herself the meanest of all things, yet nevertheless she is the bride of him "who loves the lowly," and is the mother of all his children. whereat thel weeps to find life and love everywhere, even where she expected nothing but coldness and horror. then "matron clay," invites thel to enter her house, saying that it is given her to enter and to return. so thel entered into the secret regions of the grave, and passed on "till to her grave-plot she came and there she sat down, and heard a voice of sorrow" speak from out it. it is a wild blood-stilling cry that rises to her terrified ears, shrieking of the senses, their limits, their precious and their poisoning gifts--these only avenues through which life may be enjoyed, and by which eternity must be coloured. nothing answers! there _is_ no answer? it is the old faust riddle that has occupied the minds of thinkers since the beginning of time. it fretted blake into a state of painful excitement. "the virgin started from her seat, and with a shriek fled back unhindered till she came into the vales of har." the designs, of which there are but five, have still the serene and delicate air which belongs to blake's youthful work. the colour is pure and thin, the outlines printed in faint italian pink, and the effect of all is of things seen through a haze, which the sunshine is beginning to penetrate. a delightful impression of rain-washed, wind-swept morning is given by the frontispiece, in which thel--a motive of perfect poetic grace--contemplates the wooing of the fairy dew, whose home is in the calyx of the flowers, by the cloud. above their heads is a patch of blue sky, across which the title is written, while birds and angels wing their happy flight in the ethereal expanse. exquisite also is the pale vision of the lily of the valley bowing before thel. and the cloud, and the clod of the earth bending over baby worm, are alive with blake's peculiar quality of imagination. the tail-piece represents a serpent of pale green hue coiling and rearing across the page. one naked infant drives him with reins, while two more ride joyously upon his back. about the same time blake wrote a poem called "tiriel," which will be found in the aldine edition of his poetical works. it was never engraved in a book by him, and has little poetic beauty, being for the most part full of clamorous rage, dire slaughterings and cruel revenge, but he made some water-colour drawings illustrating the text. the print room does not possess a copy of the "marriage of heaven and hell," which appeared in , but the reading room has one which can be viewed in the large room set apart for rare books. none of blake's prose writings, in sustained thought and power, are equal to it. it is an armoury containing flashing rapiers, whose thrusts reach home as suddenly as they are withdrawn again. the glitter of steel in sunlight is suggested by many of its aphorisms. i cannot forbear quoting one or two, in reading which one would seem to hear the very voice of blake: "he whose face gives no light shall never become a star." "the roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man." "prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by incapacity." "he who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence." "how do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way, is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five." "damn braces; bless relaxes." "sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." "all deities reside in the human breast." "joys impregnate, sorrows bring forth." "everything possible to be believed is an image of truth." "to create a little flower is the labour of ages." "improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius." [illustration: printed and coloured plate from the british museum copy of the "marriage of heaven and hell," produced ] the aphorisms are followed by five "memorable fancies," wild dreams full of paradoxes, and allegories both spiritual and grotesque. the designs to this book are very fine, but i cannot help thinking that this particular copy was not coloured by blake's hand. in comparison with the one formerly belonging to lord crewe, which in all respects is magnificent, the library copy is coloured too crudely, to be in the least characteristic of blake. particularly unlike him are the heavy gray shadows disfiguring the nude figures. there is no impasto work here as in the crewe copy, but the colour is put on with no uncertain or unpractised hand, though in a manner unlike blake. far more delightful are the renderings of several of these plates as seen in the small "book of designs." they are worked up with the utmost care and finish, and the distinctive qualities of blake's colour, the unmistakable impress of his hand, are there exhibited in their highest manifestations. the sense of mystery, innate to their conception, is preserved, nay, accentuated! whereas the library copy, through its unpleasant, and i cannot but think un-blakean passages of colour, has lost in some places this romantic and inimitable quality. the title-page alive with leaping flames, a nude woman bathing, salamander-like, in fire, the heaving body of a patterned water-snake writhing in foamy water, and a male figure seated on a mound prophetic of the design presently to be consummated in "death's door," are among the most notable of the pictures in the "marriage of heaven and hell." many of the pages are faintly tinted, while delicate suggestive ornaments cling about the writing. in blake designed and engraved for johnson six plates to "tales for children," by mary wollstonecraft. the book is in the print room, somewhat yellow and musty. in no sense is it attractive, and it would find small favour with the modern child. the fact is that blake worked in dire constraint when illustrating homely scenes of actual life. he had no pleasure in the invention of accessories. in his art all is left out that may be, and the bare, the sparse, the elemental, and the austerely beautiful alone receive his attention, but always adjusted to meet the requirements of his own rigid sense of harmony in composition. then again single vision, "the vision of bacon and newton," concerned only with actual appearances, did not seem to him worth the transcribing. he could only work with freedom when the fact could be treated as merely the symbol of an idea. so that in these plates the homely domestic scenes he tries to represent have a cold and ghastly appearance. they are like nothing we have ever seen, because blake was so curiously unobservant of details not interesting to him that he simply did not _know_ about them when he came to draw them. his work is only of a high order when his imagination is excited. his spiritual insight not being called into play renders many of these engravings weak, dull and archaic-looking. there are among them suggestions of the terrible, and of significances beyond this world however. they form grim and foreign accompaniments enough to the milk-and-water stories, and are about as suitable as the orcagna frescoes in the pisan campo santo would be to adorn the walls of a child's nursery. we willingly shut up the book and turn to one produced two years later called the "gates of paradise." the title-page says it was designed, engraved and published by blake, but adds johnson's name too. but we know that the book is all blake, and it is probable that johnson gave his name to the venture through a kindly, perhaps pitying, desire to help blake with the public. "the gates of paradise" it is called, though no glory of colour, no beautiful angels, no city of gold, such as the title might lead us to expect, are displayed in its pages. indeed, to some the first glance may bring disappointment. these elemental and direct designs, sixteen in number, are very rough, even rudimentary, as engravings. but they are true art-work, for they concentrate and express conceptions and ideas of a rare order, and with a piercing directness that drives them home to our most intimate, most central consciousness. either you will feel their power and charm, and come under the subtle spell at once, or else you will glance through them unmoved, and perhaps contemptuously, and wonder what people can profess to see in this rude and gothic draughtsmanship. if this latter is the case, then blake has nothing to say to such an one, for it is no use to expect a literal and exact interpretation tacked on to all his designs. blake must and will be discerned intuitively by his true lovers, and few words will suffice to indicate the track of his thoughts to such; to others, all the explanation in the world would never reveal him, for, to use his own phrase, "the doors of their perception" are not sufficiently cleansed to admit his conceptions. the frontispiece gives us a reminiscence of thel. a chrysalis, like a swaddled baby, lies on a leaf, while on the spray above a caterpillar--the emblem of motherhood--watches over it. underneath is inscribed, significantly enough, the words, "what is man?" blake's thoughts were never long away from this subject. to find an answer to the question was his deepest preoccupation and concern, and the following designs are all variations on this one dominant theme. plate no. represents a woman gathering babies like flowers from among the clustering ivy at the foot of a tree. in glad haste she plucks up one more to put with the others already lying, like st. elizabeth's roses, in the folds of her apron. the child is found symbolically at the root of what mr. swinburne thinks is the tree of physical life, embedded in the earth from which all things issue, and to which all things return. the next four plates are embodiments of the four elements, which in blake's thoughts always teemed with "spiritual correspondences"--according to the swedenborgian phrase. "water" seems to be an emblem of folly and instability, and is embodied in the form of a man seated on the very roots of the tree of physical life, his feet set upon no firm earth, but upon the sand at the verge of the water. the foolish, helpless face, and hands spread out on knees, and the driving rain that descends with pitiless energy on all, go far to convey the idea of the perpetual flux and flow, the "unshapeableness" of the element "water." a gnome-like man in a crevice represents "earth." he is inclosed, bound down, weighted with clay. sitting on a high white cloud amid the starry spaces of the sky, "air" sits in form like a naked man, pressing his hands to his forehead in fear and giddiness at the vast immensity unrolled before his eyes. "blind in fire with shield and spear," a man strides in plate . is this fire an emblem of the fierce elemental fires of desire and hatred--both of which are blind? plate is entitled "at length for hatching ripe he breaks the shell," and a delicious cherub having broken the egg proceeds to climb out of it into the sunlit air. symbol of the material life which forms a concrete circumference around the soul of eternal man, the eggshell is broken, when "at length for hatching ripe," the veil of death is rent by the liberated spirit. [illustration: "i want! i want!" engraving from the "gates of paradise," ] in plate and its successors blake takes us back again to incidents characteristic of the life of man on earth.--"alas!" exhibits a boy wantonly catching and killing bright little loves, which flutter across his path like butterflies. plate is a youth throwing barbed darts at an old man who sits on ruins sword in hand. "my son, my son, thou treatest me but as i have instructed thee," writes blake, suggesting the numerous cases of friction and cruel offence which must result from the education of the human soul in selfishness and vainglory. there is nothing in the series to equal the colossal daring of "i want, i want." just a little cross-hatching, a little rough spluttering work with the burin, and we have this bit of marvellous irony. a group of tiny pigmies on a spit of land have reared an enormous ladder against the moon, and are about to start on their journey through star-bespread darkness to the pale crescent so far above them. mr. swinburne says that this was originally an ironical sketch satirizing the methods of art study pursued by "amateurs and connoisseurs"--"scaling with ladders of logic the heaven of invention," and presuming to measure, reach and gauge the intangible ideal. but in this series blake has expanded the meaning of the design into the passionate yearning and aching desire of man after things spiritual. plate is a study of the sea. a water-colour in washes of indian ink of very similar composition is in existence, and was on exhibition at ryder street in . the water-colour evidently suggested by this plate is the finer work, but it is a marvellous evidence of blake's power, that the tiny plate of the "gates of paradise" ( - / in. by in. only in size) should be capable of representing so infinite a waste of stormy waters. one frantic arm reaches up to heaven from out the foamy crest of the waves, a minute later to be submerged,--"in time's ocean falling, drowned." that is its significance! no cries of "help!" will be heard; man _must_ be overwhelmed by time. in the eleventh plate an old man in spectacles ruthlessly clips the wings of a bright boy who wrestles and struggles under the cruel hands. thus does age, full of worldly experience and material philosophy, clip the wings of the aspiring soul of youth. walled in by the divisions and materialisms into which man has fallen through the creation of the generative nature, we see human souls despairing, and full of lassitude, enclosed in depths of icy dungeons, in the twelfth plate. this plate was afterwards taken as the basis of the design blake made of count ugolino and his sons in the tower at pisa in his dante series. in plate comes the promise of life. a man stretched on his bed with his family watching beside him, suddenly has a vision of "the immortal man that cannot die." after that all is different, and in plate "the traveller hasteth in the evening" of life to his journey's end, serenely cheerful, even anxious to shake off mortality, that he may realize his glorious vision the sooner. but the way to immortality is through the gate of the grave. so in plate we have the picture of death's door, to which our traveller has arrived at last. this early design embodying blake's favourite conception was destined to be enlarged and sublimed into one of the most magnificent inventions of christian art. this is the first hint of the perfect final work, and on that account, as well as for its own intrinsic significance here, of the greatest interest. death's door being opened, the worm is seen at work in plate . who shall say how blake has contrived to make the pale, hooded woman under the tree-roots so symbolic an image of the worm? there is that about her at which the recoiling flesh shudders and sickens. [illustration: the deluge from w. b. scott's etching of blake's undated indian ink drawing, by kind permission of messrs. chatto and windus] yet here, below the dim, twisted roots of the tree of physical being, whence the embryo man was plucked like a mandrake, is the house of the worm. "i have said to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister," quotes blake enigmatically, beneath this leprous dream of mortality. but the enigma has a solution, for the worm at least destroys that body of generative and divided nature to which it is itself so nearly akin, and which has cramped and imprisoned eternal man while on earth. so that we may be grateful to the worm in the end, for weaving to dreams the sexual strife, and weeping over the web of life. i have quoted an illuminating phrase here and there from the lines which blake wrote and called the keys of the gates of paradise. these, however, are but fugitive hints and thoughts suggested by the plates, and not in any real sense "keys" at all. blake leaves each man to unlock the innermost mystery of those designs for himself. they are steeped all through in his own peculiar hues of thought, subjective to the very verge of the subjectivity allowable to art, but each of them exhibits that pictorial sense without which, however poetical and rare the meaning expressed, they could have no _raison d'être_--no artistic right to exist. they induce the mood which assists us to their sympathetic comprehension. after the "gates of paradise," blake began the production of the london "prophetic books," but we will consider these in the next chapter, and will conclude this early phase of blake's work in book making by the consideration of the "songs of experience," which appeared in --five years later than the "songs of innocence." again we take up the little book which was the first we handled in the print room, for the "songs of experience" are bound with the "songs of innocence." the museum copy bears the double title on the first page as well as the two separate ones, which occur appropriately before each book. into this first plate, with its kindling title flashing across the page--"songs of innocence and experience showing two contrary states of the human soul"--blake has wrought some of that intense and passionate feeling which makes the work so valuable as much psychologically as artistically. two energetic and expressive figures, a male and a female, symbolize innocence and experience, while flames of desire and aspiration burn fiercely around them, leaping up to lick the letters of the title, which lie on a ground of flickering and fainting colour. in the "songs of innocence," the marriage of the poems and designs was complete, and matter and form (poetic and artistic) attained an almost complete identity. here, however, the case is somewhat different, the task to be accomplished not being so easily achievable, for the mood is less lyrical and more mystic. experience is a hard teacher concerned only with this material life and its limited conditions, and sets itself against the innocence which retains, in plato's phrase, "recollections of things seen" by eternal man before generation here. experience has nothing to do with vision, but only with facts, and it deals with the results of concrete experiment; never with the flashing spark of heaven-sent inspiration. thus the "songs of experience" are of far less simple mood and single utterance than their bright forerunners. something of the remorselessness of experience has passed into these lyrics--for lyrics they still are, though blake has lost the spontaneity and felicitous gush of melody which came from him so naturally, so rightly, six years previously. [illustration: printed and coloured plate from "songs of experience," ] of one--not spontaneous certainly, but created little bit by little bit with unerring judgement and rich fancy, struck out like the embossed design on a shield, each blow, each delicately graduated tap and touch, bringing out in clearer relief the magnificence of the heraldic images--of this poem, "the tyger," it is impossible to speak too enthusiastically. it is a grand piece of chased metal work, and blake has done nothing better. the fierce swift rhythm, imitative of the padding footfalls, tyger, tyger, burning bright in the forests of the night, called out lamb's critical admiration, and no one was ever better qualified than lamb to appreciate our painter and poet. it is matter for regret that he came across so little of blake's work in either kind, though we shall find him presently with something to say anent the engraving of the "canterbury pilgrimage." one wishes (profanely no doubt) that our artist had seen fit to make the tiger that illustrates the british museum copy, yellow and black, rather than blue and bistre and red, which colours seem to have no natural relation to the animal. is it possible that this page was coloured by mrs. blake's hand in these weird parti-hues? the "songs of experience" are pitted like a dark contrast against the sun-kissed radiance of the "songs of innocence." one state of mind opposes itself aggressively against the contrary state of mind. one set of impressions is recorded in opposition to the impressions of sometimes the same things, sometimes their correlatives taken from a widely divergent stand-point. thus the lamb in the "songs of innocence" finds its contrast in the tiger of the "songs of experience." infant joy is set against infant sorrow, the ordered beauty and sweetness of one holy thursday is the reverse of the despairing cry of pain uttered in the other holy thursday. the divine image emits its celestial radiance against the cynical brilliance of the human abstract, and that other distorted divine image. it is interesting to know that blake issued the "songs of innocence and experience" at the modest price of from thirty shillings to two guineas at first. later in life he received four guineas for each copy, and during his last years sir thomas lawrence insisted on paying twelve guineas and sir francis chantrey twenty for copies. at messrs. sotheby's sale of the crewe collection of blake's works on march st of last year ( ) the price reached for a very perfect copy containing the four title-pages, was £ . the sum would have been wealth to blake, but it is the world's way, consecrated now by immemorial tradition, to lay its laurels of reward and appreciation only at the _dead_ feet of its great men. [illustration: printed and coloured plate from "songs of innocence," ] chapter viii the prophetic books "the prophets isaiah and ezekiel dined with me, and i asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that god spoke to them, and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition? "isaiah answer'd. i saw no god nor heard any, in a finite organical perception; but my senses discover'd the infinite in everything, and as i was then persuaded and remain confirm'd; that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of god, i cared not for consequences but wrote." these words are quoted from one of blake's "memorable fancies" in the "marriage of heaven and hell," and in some such vein as that which blake makes isaiah describe, did he himself commence the writing of the "prophetic books." the sense of his great, though somewhat indefinite mission, came upon blake gradually. much of his time, even when engaged in designing, engraving and painting, was spent in thinking immense and original thoughts. they tyrannized over him, these thoughts, and instead of his guiding their sun-ward and most daring flight, they drew him along on their reckless course, sometimes bringing him to complete overthrow, as did the horses of apollo when driven by phaethon. in the same "memorable fancy" from which i have already quoted, blake continues, "does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so? he (isaiah) replied, all poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion moved mountains: but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything." blake, however, _was_. he had a fine contempt for argument and proof. nothing mattered to him but the inner witness, the lively intuition of internal evidence. convinced as he was of the cruelty of the fate that had chained eternal man into the bondage of the life of the senses and the division of the sexes; safe-guarding each self-hood from merging in the universal, by laws of restraint and prohibition, blake took upon himself to proclaim a gospel of deliverance, to awaken man to the perception of the infinite which lay without the clogged-up chinks of his senses. he passionately advocated--blake, the peaceful citizen, the faithful husband--the freedom of the senses, that all natural impulses should be enjoyed to the utmost limit and with the frankest delight. the body is but the accident of this life, and its free natural impulses may be trusted, for everything that tends to freedom belongs to eternal life, he thought. christ was the supreme saviour, but to his eyes the christ of orthodox religion was the god of this world, and therefore christ needed to be held up again before men and exhibited as he really is, before he could be worshipped in truth. and jehovah was no other than urizen, the cruel creator. in storm and excitement, in wrapt ecstasy and complete carelessness of consequence, blake plunged into the sea of subjective mysticism, holding up from time to time out of the swaying waters lipped with raging foam, some treasure of thought, some broken image of speculative opinion for the world to gaze at. the pity is, that blake who, in the "songs of innocence and experience" and in his early poems, had so just, though instinctive and irrational, a sense of the relation of poetic form to matter, as to weave his lyrics into "a unity of effect, like that of a single strain of music," should, in the "prophetic books" have suddenly lost, as it would seem, all perception of the claims of his subject-matter to any body of poetic form at all. the absence of almost all orderly sequence of thought, and this total disregard of the paramount artistic obligations of form, are the distinguishing characteristics of the mystic writings. it must, however, be recorded in extenuation, that they were composed for the intrinsic benefit which blake himself derived from their creation. hints, symbols, rags of ideas set fluttering on the wind of his ever-inventive imagination, suggested so complete a sequence of thought and action to him, that he failed, in his passionate excitement and hot pursuit of them, to reflect that he had forgotten to state for our enlightenment that sequence which seemed to him so obvious. he was not concerned to make his ideas or visions intelligible to the world (the world must learn to decipher them for itself), for were they not fearfully intelligible to himself, absorbing all his life and consciousness? like a man intent and fixed before a vast and ever-moving pageant, he throws out a quick word of explanation, an occasional exclamation of enthusiasm, to the blindfolded world at his side. so present is the reality to his senses, that he feels only impatient with the dull creature which requires so much explanation and description. "i have told you, and you did not listen," he seems to say. but listen as we may, to the point of an anguished intensity, the marvellous vision, representation, mystic something, which is being enacted before blake, can, with the help of his jerky and disjointed speech, be but vaguely and painfully guessed at by us. whatever virtue may reside in these dream-like books for the mystic and the occultist, their poetry is not a winged and triumphant spirit any more, but a poor, wan, and halting creature, creeping painfully upon the earth on all fours. swinburne writes on the subject with poetic eloquence: "to pluck out the heart of blake's mystery is a task which every man must be left to attempt for himself, for this prophet is certainly not 'easier to be played on than a pipe.'... the land lying before us bright with fiery blossom and fruit, musical with blowing branches and falling waters, is not to be seen or travelled in, save by help of such light as lies upon dissolving dreams, and dividing clouds. by moonrise, to the sound of wind at sunset, one may tread upon the limit of this land, and gather as with muffled apprehension, some soft remote sense of the singing of its birds, and flowering of its fields." let these gentle and appropriate words smooth the literary path of the "prophetic books" for all who intend to read them. it will be a difficult one for those who would study them seriously, even with the light shed by mr. swinburne's and messrs. ellis and yeats' pioneer lanterns, for the road is rough and rock-bound, and shrouded, for the most part, in mist. if we are forced to admit that in the prophecies blake's power in the art of poetry was declining, we shall have, on the other hand, the satisfaction of seeing his art as draughtsman and colourist waxing in grandeur, freedom and nobility. more than ever in blake's strangely sensitive pictorial temperament we find--to quote pater's subtle phrase--that "all things whatever, all poetry, all ideas, however abstract or obscure, float up as visible scene or image." to many of his lovers, the "prophetic books" are among his most precious gifts to us, not for their intrinsic poetic value (which will be estimated in divers manners by divers persons), but as being the vehicle of his finest art. the first one we take up is the "vision of the daughters of albion." (the daughters of albion, by the way, have little enough to do with the poem, their office being merely like that of a greek chorus, to hear the woes of the heroine oothoon and echo back her cries.) i am here referring to the one in the print room, though the library possesses an almost equally beautiful copy. the book consists of eleven quarto pages, and appeared in , just five years later than "thel," to whose mysterious and delicate beauty it has a shadowy relationship. the thread of poetic suggestion running through it like a streak of sunlight is not so easy of following as the broad golden ray of "thel." we are met at the very entrance by dim, unreal forms, with strange names--oothoon, the shadowy female around whom the story centres, theotormon, her jealous lover, and bromion, a looming phantasmal personage, not definite enough to be terrible, though he is the evil genius of the piece. so now we are at last introduced to some of the personages of blake's curious mythology. the argument--a page of the most delicate and energetic design, representing a radiant young woman "plucking leutha's flower," which, in the form of a man, leaps from the blossom to her lips--contains in its two initial verses the clue to all the ensuing legend. oothoon is, according to mr. swinburne, the spirit of the great western world, "born for freedom and rebellion, but half a slave and half a harlot." leutha is the spirit of sensual impulse and indulgence. theotormon, to whom oothoon wings her way across the seas, is the strong, enslaved, convention-bound spirit of europe. on her way, oothoon is ravished by bromion, who appears to be merely brute strength personified, and the jealous and revengeful theotormon binds them back to back in a cave by the sea, and sits down in utter wretchedness near by. all the rest of the piece is occupied by the mournful wailing of oothoon, who desires to justify herself, and the sad answers of theotormon, which make a disquieting music like the wind among pine-trees. those who desire to know exactly what every vague phrase and unconnected thought may be ingeniously supposed to symbolize, must be referred to messrs. ellis and yeats, who have possibly alighted on the real meaning and intention of these wild fancies. no system, not even that of the zoas, ingenious as it is, seems quite to convince one that it is the ground plan of blake's work. for my own part i shall not attempt systematic explanations of the "prophetic books," for which task, indeed, i am entirely unfitted, but shall merely reserve to myself the right of making suggestions as to possible meanings when they occur to me. the beauty of the designs is the real glory of this and the following books. the argument and a very notable bit of decorative design and colour, representing the eagle of theotormon in the act of descending and tearing the beautiful, abandoned, white body of oothoon, lying on a billowy cloud, should be specially noticed. there is one extraordinarily fine plate worked in flat, even tints, representing oothoon and bromion bound back to back on the sea-shore, while theotormon, with head buried in arms, sits on a rock above in the very abandon of stony grief. we have seen nothing of blake's yet, so bold, decisive, nervous. the massive modelling of the bromion torso is happily contrasted with the shrinking white slenderness of oothoon. beyond this passion-torn group, a calm sea, under a mild afternoon sun, shines deeply blue. we shall come across this plate again in the large book of designs in the print room. there, it is heavy and opaque in colouring, and totally different in mood, being gloomy and sinister in the highest degree. the blood-red sun hangs like a lamp in stormy purple clouds. the sea is deeply green. all is ominous. much more like this latter plate, in colour, than the one issued in the complete work in the print room, is another, printed off the same plate, of course, but laid on with an impasto. it was sold at messrs. hodgson's on january th, , for £ . neither it nor that in the "book of designs" is so beautiful as the one from which our illustration is taken. the plate in the library copy is another variation, being soft, mysterious and pale in colour. the clarity and brilliance of the colour, however, must be seen to be appreciated, and this of course, our plate lacks. the writing and printed outlines of this book are in dead beech brown. [illustration: bromion and oothoon bound back to back in the cave of theotormon from "visions of the daughters of albion," . a printed and coloured plate from the print room copy] the next book appearing in this year, , is entitled "america," a prophecy. it consists of eighteen plates. for richness of invention and design none of the books we have yet seen are equal to "america." the print room copy is printed in a dull blue, with a very happy effect, while the duplicate in the library is in deep sombre green. gilchrist says that no one who has not seen a coloured copy can judge of the beauty and splendour that adorn its pages. it is a difficult matter to see a coloured copy, as the only one definitely known to exist for many years was lord crewe's copy, which was sold last year at sotheby's for £ . however, another coloured copy has appeared from the hitherto unknown collection of a lady in scotland, and this i had the rare good luck to see before it was sold at messrs. hodgson's in january, , for £ . indeed it is beautiful, but with a quite other sort of beauty to that of the austere blue-printed copy in the museum. the two are so different in mood and key as to seem like quite separate and distinct creations. gilchrist says of the coloured copy which he saw--lord crewe's--that so fair and open were its pages, as to simulate an increase of light on the retina. that which i examined had the brightness and delicacy of blake's colour in the earlier books, combined with the richness and grandeur of the later ones, but happily without the opacity and heaviness that sometimes accompany these later qualities. dürer's etching of "melancholia" is the only thing in art to which the design on the first page of "america" may be likened, but, in beethoven's words: "es ist mehr ausdruck der empfindung als malerei." a great winged giant or titan, with his despondent head bowed on his knees, and his face utterly shrouded by falling hair, sits chained on the ramparts of the city of night. seated on a stone below is a beautiful undraped woman with a little naked child in her arms, and another leaning against her thigh. heavy clouds roll up behind the genii and the ramparts. the mood of the picture is unutterable. the winged figure is red orc, who will presently release himself and shatter the religions of urizen, bringing fire and pestilence and famine in his train. he is orc, the deliverer, but, like his great prototype, he comes not "to bring peace, but a sword." in the wild clamorous poem orc is described as the "serpent form'd who stands at the gate of enitharmon to devour her children." now enitharmon is a vast mythic being without any defined personality; she symbolizes sometimes space and sometimes nature, while another facet of her various character, as we shall presently discover, is pity. she is the mother of orc, of whom, however, she is terrified, and the woman with the children in the frontispiece represents, i think, the same enitharmon. [illustration: frontispiece to "america: a prophecy," printed in blue, from the print room copy] i cannot attempt to decipher the poem here. before its roaring frenzy of excitement one is rendered dumb. there is no story properly so called. one merely gathers, that orc releases himself in order to marry the shadowy daughter of urthona,--ah! shadowy indeed! after this, terrible things occur; in especial, that which may be supposed to symbolize the war of independence between england and america. whatever the prophecy contained in the poem, this much is clear, that blake saw in the new world the home and harbinger of freedom, the foe of spirit-crushing conventions, of shackling traditions and customs. strangely do the names of washington, paine, and the king of england read in connection with "red orc," "enitharmon," and the mighty shadows of the blakean mythology. with all his enthusiasm and patient sympathetic study even mr. swinburne has to admit of "america" that "it has more of thunder and less of lightning than former prophecies--more of sonorous cloud, and less of explicit fire." but a far other verdict must be passed on the designs, of which our illustrations afford a very good idea, at least of the british museum copy. from the first mysterious print to the last, every page is instinct with vigour and invention, and the disposition of the writing and the design on each page is in accordance with the most exacting and sensitive feeling for composition and decorative effect. blake had the gift of decoration as mozart had that of melody. he simply could not help being decorative, though preoccupation with decoration as an end in itself was a thing utterly foreign to his earnest and high artistic aims. in "america" blake's outlines are put in with a thick strong line, a singularly happy method of expressing the bold designs. plate , is specially interesting as being evidently his first feeling out after the top part of the design called death's door, which afterwards appeared in its perfected embodiment in blair's "grave." the lower part of the same design which we saw first in the "gates of paradise," is again repeated with differences in plate of the "america." the idea was a favourite one with blake, and in its various representations is always vigorously and poetically treated. plate , coming after so much that is alarming, exciting, or of sustained grandeur, comforts the eye and heart with its delicate pastoral tenderness. a tree, with willowy bending sprays such as only blake could draw, arches over a green sward, whereon a ram with woolly fleece and heraldically curly horns, lies sleeping. beside him, on the grass, a naked child lies, relaxed in slumber, while another, cushioned on the ram's soft back, sleeps too, in joyous ease. in the coloured copy this page appeared particularly rich and satisfying. it has a brilliant iridescent background after the style of the first few pages of the "songs of innocence," but less vernal, more autumnal, in its richness of colour. in what strange dreams did blake see the pale woman of plate lying on the bed of ocean. quick moving fishes flash around her body in the dim blue twilight, and a sea snake is coiled about her legs. on the top of the same page the body floating on waves is being torn by a vulture. many of the plates are quivering with flames which shoot up in spiral tongues to play about the letters of the writing. incidentally, the writing used in "america" is more fluent--running into dainty pennons and fluttering streamers of decoration--than any used before. at the sale of messrs. hodgson's before mentioned, a single loose coloured plate of the frontispiece to "america" (orc chained by the wrists) sold for £ _s._ we close "america" regretfully, for a wild enchantment emanates from its pages, and entering into the spectator's mind makes him realize that indeed "everything possible to be believed is an image of truth." [illustration: page from "america: a prophecy," printed in blue, from the print room copy] in appeared "europe, a prophecy." it has fifteen large plates, but before dwelling on them a word must be said about the prophecy itself. the prelude is the lament of a nameless shadowy female, who rises from out the breast of orc. she is also daughter to enitharmon. her complaint is often musical enough if we could but know what it was all about: i wrap my turban of thick clouds around my lab'ring head, and fold the sheety waters as a mantle round my limbs, yet the red sun and moon, and all the overflowing stars, rain down prolific pains. blake would seem to have got fairly drunk with the excitement of wild words and musical phrases. there is little or no sequence of ideas, and the prophecy which follows the prelude comes storming forth, full of sonorous sound, but "without form and void." all that can be made out from the din of frenetic words is that enitharmon calls upon her son orc, "the horrent demon," to arise and bring with him his brothers and sisters. but in the middle of her speech she falls into a primaeval doze of some eighteen hundred years. patient and painstaking as the reader may be, an incident of this kind taxes his temper somewhat too severely, more especially as it seems a gratuitously irritating freak on blake's part, without any apparent sense or reason to justify it. persevering, we find that while she is asleep all kinds of dire affliction come upon the race of man, and the wild pelter of words and ideas hither and thither continues to increase in fury. it is like the dancing of the dervishes--faster and faster, furious and more furious, higher and higher, so quick at last that the eye cannot follow the movements,--and then comes the breaking out of the wild demoniac cries, and the convulsive excitement, which is finally satisfied with nothing but the letting of blood. after all this incoherent clash of words, full of "flames of orc, howlings and hissings, shrieks and groans, and voices of despair," enitharmon calmly awakes, "nor knew that she had slept, and eighteen hundred years had fled," and proceeds with the roll call of her sons and daughters as if nothing had happened. rintrah, palamabron, elynittria albion's angel, ethinthus, manatha-varcyon, leutha, antamon, sotha, thiralatha and urizen are the names of some of the spectral shadows which pass before the spectator. it is a dream of walpurgis nacht, obscure and vague; its warrings being no more than the dissolving shadows of fighting men partially discerned on a dark wall. but if blake can no longer take us with him into the infinite on the wings of his poetry, he can with his pencil create on a sheet of paper a world of imagination, which in relation to this actual world is evanescent and to some impalpable. but blake's magic has caught and held it, as peleus caught and held the silver-footed thetis, though she changed from one form to another hoping to frighten him into letting her go, till tired of his persistence she revealed herself to him in her own wondrous form. even so, blake caught and held that which his imagination discriminated, undismayed by conditions which cause some men's heads to reel, until he succeeded in committing it to outline and colour. the first plate represents "the ancient of days setting a compass upon the face of the earth." (see proverbs, viii. .) the museum copy has a passage from "paradise lost" written, or rather scrawled, in black ink underneath the picture. one wonders whose could have been the irreverent pen to deface in this way a page of the master's work. the design itself is one of the finest that ever came from blake's hand. the thing is tremendous! involuntarily the mind seeks for its like only on the roof of the sistine. blake's art owns no master, links itself to no predecessor, save michael angelo. [illustration: the ancient of days setting a compass upon the face of the earth. (_see_ proverbs, viii. ) frontispiece to "europe: a prophecy," printed print coloured by hand] this was the last design to be repeated by his hand. on his deathbed he executed it for his young friend mr. tatham. the latter refers to the incident in a letter published in , in the "rossetti papers": "the ancient of days with the compasses was the subject that blake finished for me on his deathbed. he threw it down and said, 'there, i hope mr. tatham will like it,' and then said, 'kate, i will draw your portrait; you have been a good wife to me.' and he made a frenzied sketch of her, which, when done, he sang himself joyously and most happily--literally with songs--into the arms of the grim enemy, and yielded up his sweet spirit." the conception is of sublimity and boldness, and in the execution of this particular plate the colour is laid on with great care, being shaded and stippled to a high degree of finish. the attitude of the architect of the universe is heroic, and is characteristic of blake in his best manner. leaning far out from the centre of the sun itself, a grand male figure, with hair and beard streaming in the wind of cosmic motion, measures the space below him with a compass, indicating the orbit on which the world is to travel. the museum possesses another edition, as a separate drawing, in one of the portfolios, which we shall examine later. mr. sydney morse possesses yet another, which was on view at messrs. carfax's gallery; and a fourth, probably the finest of all these different renderings, was sold with the title-page and three plates of "europe," at messrs. hodgson's sale for £ . the frontispiece to "europe" has a magnificent evil-looking snake on the centre of the page, blue hills and distance seen through its mottled coils. "the pilgrim," some verses by ann radcliffe, are scrawled on the blank reverse of the leaf. the first and last time it may be supposed that ann radcliffe found herself in such august company! all of the plates in this book are defaced by the same handwriting. blake's writing and the engraved outlines are of a bluish green colour. "red orc" is seen in the second plate climbing up the sky and about to take his station on a bank of cloud outlined boldly against the blue. below him, in a limbo of darkness, three naked passions in the form of demons are struggling together and falling down into the nether heavens. on the page entitled "a prophecy" a lovely angel takes her despairing flight through the sky. her wings merge from white and mauve to a deep blue like that of a pigeon's neck, her beautiful feet gleam white against the rosy cloud behind, and her hair falls over her face in abandon of grief or fear or despair--we know not which. all the different and delicate shades in an hydrangea are to be found in this plate, and would seem to have suggested its subtle colour harmonies. for pure melody of line the next plate surpasses it, however. enitharmon, fierce, beautiful, nude, descends in a cloud to awaken orc, who lies face downward on the earth, the outline of his figure suggesting a young love-god rather than the fierce personality of the terrible orc. even the flames about his head might be those of love. the colour is very delicate and transparent. then follow two full-page interiors, which, in spite of the fine drawing and colour, oppress, with the uncomfortable sensation of confinement, airlessness! the fact is, that we are so accustomed to blake's open air windy wilds, and broad spaces of sky and cloud, that we do not feel at home with him when he takes us within doors. [illustration: plate from "europe, a prophecy," printed and coloured by hand] another plate from the "europe," the lines of which we reproduce, represents two lithe nude women springing upwards with incomparable grace and the true blake vigour, among arching wheat stems. they blow horns through which descends a fall of blight upon the corn. the decorative rightness, the exquisite appreciation of the melodies of form, the vitality of action, cannot be too much admired. and the colour! the tender flesh-painting contrasted with the young green of the corn!--yet mr. swinburne, usually so intensely alive to the beautiful, and especially blake's beautiful, describes the plate in these terms: "mildews are seen incarnate as foul, flushed women with strenuous limbs contorted, blighting ears of corn with the violent breath of their inflated mouths." there is some delicate tracery of cobwebs, among leaves and greenery, on another page, exhibiting blake in a marvellously naturalistic mood for once, and a final plate of a man rescuing a woman and child from fierce, rolling flames. no one ever painted fire as blake did, and over and over again in his treatment of this favourite motive we shall have to own that he is, as mr. william michael rossetti says, in this respect at least, "supreme painter." as i do not know where to place the tiny book or pamphlet entitled, "there is no natural religion,"--it having no date affixed to it,--i shall refer to it here. it consists of eleven illustrated leaves, each containing in the engraved text a didactic statement or thesis by blake on this favourite subject. below the words, which give much illumination to his peculiar opinions, are small, rough drawings made with a brush full of heavy black, relieved in parts by outlines in sepia. chapter ix the prophetic books continued in studying the next book which blake produced in --the "book of urizen"--it is necessary to disabuse our minds of the idea that blake's thoughts were not clear to himself. however confused and troubled they appear to us, they were certainly clear as sunlight to him, but he failed in the labour of reducing them to terms of intellectual definiteness, much less to terms of poetic art. the excitement which these visions brought upon his tremulous and sensitive brain seems to have induced a kind of "possession," similar to that of the maenads at the festival of dionysus of old, so that no very consecutive utterance may be expected from him. yet there _is_ a kind of sequence in "urizen," and the marvellous illustrations to the book cannot be properly appreciated without holding the thread of the so-called poem. setting aside the ancient biblical tradition, our prophet undertakes no less a task than the writing of a new genesis, which in its naked horror and despair causes the very gods themselves to hide their faces out of pity to the sons of men. urizen the creator, the god of restraints and prohibitions, becomes self-inclosed and divides himself from eternity and the eternals. [illustration: title-page of "urizen." published ] in fire and strife and anguish he creates the world, "like a black globe, viewed by the sons of eternity, standing on the shore of the infinite ocean, like a human heart struggling and beating, the vast world of urizen appears." but after this effort he is laid in "stony sleep unorganized rent from eternity." los, who is time, was then wrenched out of urizen, and suffers fierce pain in the act of separation and division. then, while time works with hammers at his forge, fires belching around, he sees, nay! appears to assist at, the further changes of urizen. for the "formless god" is gradually taking form, and inclosing himself in a human body. he assumes bones, heart, brain, eyes, ears, nostrils, stomach, throat, tongue, arms, legs, and feet. and now "his eternal life like a dream was obliterated." an age of intense agony and stress was allotted to the evolution and development of each created portion of the body. meanwhile los "forged chains new and new, numbering with links, hours, days and years." when los had finished his unwilling task, and saw urizen all bound with the chains of time, the senses, and the enclosing boundaries of his own selfhood, "pity began." this is another painful division and shrinkage,-- in tears and cries imbodied a female form trembling and pale, waves before his deathy face. her name is pity or enitharmon. she is also space, and her union with los or time naturally follows. the eternals are so terrified at what urizen has done, that they enclose the new creation in a tent to hide it from their sight, and call the tent science. from the union of space and time springs a child, orc, hereafter the deliverer, whom the father and mother chain with the chain of jealousy below the deathful shadow of urizen. urizen then explores his new kingdom, and, looking on his teeming world, he sickened, for he saw "that no flesh nor spirit could keep his iron laws (of prohibition and restraint) one moment." so he made a great web or net, and flung it over all, and this was called the net of religion. and of his now finished creation it is written, six days they shrunk up from existence and on the seventh day they rested. and they blessed the seventh day in sick hope, and forgot their eternal life. the evolution or changes of urizen form the subjects of a great number of the plates. blake has wrought here through the pictorial medium as dante wrought the "inferno" in his own art. the same high imagination, the same passionate and unshrinking realization of it, the same terrible force are integral parts of the minds of both artists, and inspire both works, different in kind as they are and separated by centuries of thought and feeling. no wonder that linnell desired blake in his old age to make drawings from the "inferno," "thinking him the very man and only to illustrate dante." the prelude to the book is set in a tender and lovely key, very difficult, however, to harmonize with what follows. it is not obvious why it occurs here or what connection it has with the dark story of urizen. the same little picture will be found in the smaller book of designs, but there it is quite differently rendered as to colour, and i think more beautifully. our reproduction is from the latter plate. the cloud-like form of a beautiful woman, drifts across the sky, drawing by the hand a little baby, with the ideal face of sweet infancy. there is a delicious curve in the woman's body, a swirl of the garments, and a quick, fish-like, darting movement about the action of the child which contribute to the impression of flight through a buoyant atmosphere. turning over the pages of "urizen" one terror after another takes the breath and quickens the pulse. urizen--or is it orc?--his terrible face averted, strides through a world of fire dividing the flames with his arms. [illustration: los howling colour-printed plate from "urizen." ] a human figure, snake-encircled, falls headlong into raging flames, recalling a somewhat similar idea in "america." los is next seen, howling in fire, because of his painful separation from urizen. poor solitary thinker! what shuddering emotions must have rent blake as his relentless hand drew and coloured the visionary appearances of these monsters of imagination! to the hot and lurid impression of plate succeeds one, in which a pallid skeleton, bowed head between knees, sits grisly on the ground. urizen assumes bones. in much the same attitude, but now turned to the spectator, the next plate shows us an arresting figure. an old man, nude, with white hair, and patriarchal beard sweeping the ground, shows an upturned despairing blind face. suggestions of indescribable suffering are incarnate in this design. i shall take the liberty of calling the type the "blake old man." we come across it again and again, and it instances his tendency to concentrate all varieties into a type, to make his artistic language as bare and simple and elemental as possible. the story can be traced through all the plates. urizen visiting his new world forms a series of six wonderful plates, of which one is very gothic, representing as it does an amphibious-looking old man very like a gargoyle sinking slowly through a world of water. it is a true grotesque. the most poetic of all the pictures is, i think, the one which represents the birth of enitharmon or pity. rising from a cloudy abyss with that bubble-like buoyancy which blake knew so well how to breathe into his figures, a nude woman with body bowed in anguish floats upward. the face, with its strange dim, tortured eyes, speaks of the suffering which only the complex and self-conscious soul born of the mingled forces that produced the french revolution and the new age is capable of experiencing. the body is of wonderful beauty and purity. on the brink of the abyss from which she rises like the smoke of a hidden fire, los kneels with head bowed in arms. his deep musings have brought forth this strange sorrow-laden beauty. another picture, humanity chained by the wrists and ankles in slavery, its blind eyes raining tears, but with the light of eternity like an aureole behind its head, is seen waiting, waiting, with an endless and most painful patience, for some final deliverance. like michael angelo's "il penseroso," "it fascinates and is intolerable." no more piteous or significant symbol of humanity has ever been conceived, in the full compass of its sorrow, its slavery, and its hope. blake utters a promethean cry in "urizen." he calls out on the creator for having imprisoned and tormented us. a wild ineffectual cry enough, and one not consistent with brighter and saner views, which he held as passionately, but then,--it is blake! and blake was never able "to build a house large enough for his ideas." the print room does not contain a copy of the "book of ahania" which is a continuation of the theme of "urizen," but short and unillustrated. the small book of designs should be looked at in conjunction with "thel," "urizen," the "daughters of albion" and the "marriage of heaven and hell," for the plates are repetitions from these books often far more rich in colour and delicate in execution than those in the complete works. the large book of designs contains, among many plates familiar in design to us, though varied always in colouring, four, which we have not seen before, and can see nowhere else. the first is a colour-print of morning or glad day. it is a radiant design, but like many of these colour-prints of blake, somewhat the worse for time, having the paint rubbed off and blackened in parts. blake's colour-printing process was as follows, according to the only extant account: [illustration: colour-printed design from "urizen." reproduced from the "small book of designs"] he drew the outline heavily in chalk on a mill-board and put on the colour diluted with oil or glue in thick patches, and printed the wet impression off on to paper. he then worked upon this rough ground, when dry, in water colour. but only in a few instances did he show complete mastery of the ingenious method. the second plate i would call attention to is a nightmare horror entitled the "accusers of theft, adultery and murder." there are a trio of furies, only male instead of female; the watermark of the paper is . a similar design, not so finely coloured, was sold at messrs. hodgson's for £ _s._ the third is a lovely little gem representing john the baptist preaching to a beautifully grouped crowd. its fellow sold at the same sale for £ _s._ the fourth represents a semi-nude figure, with head downcast, sitting beneath the bent and blasted stump of a tree, while to the left a woman nude and of remarkable beauty tosses a child high in arm. it is thought that this plate may have been intended for a cancel in "america"; for another one, more beautiful in colouring than this, which was also sold at messrs. hodgson's, and for £ , was found to bear some text from "america," faintly discernible under the colouring on the upper half of the plate, which could be read only from the back. in blake produced the "song of los." the print room copy is heavy and opaque in colour, though very splendid and rich, and the library copy is similar in most respects. it was evidently colour-printed after the method described above, for the peculiar mottled backgrounds are an effect that could not very well have been realized by any other method, nor even then are they understandable, unless indeed blake had a wooden stamp which he impressed on the blobs of colour first laid on the paper itself. the "song of los" is the song of time, and includes the "songs of africa, and asia." so now blake has written a song of prophecy for each of the four great parts of the earth. "africa" deals in a wild incoherent way with the rise of the various religions. urizen delivers his laws of brass and iron and gold to all the nations. these were "the nets and gins and traps to clutch the joys of eternity," and har and heva--representatives of natural humanity--find "all the vast of nature shrunk before their shrunken eyes," for the senses are the limits put upon perception. thus the terrible race of los and enitharmon gave laws and religions to the sons of har, binding them more and more to earth: closing and restraining: till a philosophy of the five senses was complete. urizen wept and gave it into the hands of newton and locke! in "asia" urizen hears the despairing cry of his creation, and himself shudders and weeps, but unavailingly. orc is heard raging on mount atlas, where he is chained down with the chain of jealousy. orc is the flame of genius, the true deliverer of the race. he was chained by his father and mother in fear of urizen's jealousy, but we know that he will break free at last, and bring his living fire into the hearts of the chosen of the peoples. the book contains but five pages, of which the most beautiful is a design of a boy and girl with arms wound around each other, running over a hill-top, with a passionate sunset sky behind them. the "book of los," which must not be confounded with the song, appeared in the same year. the print room has no copy, so we must descend to the library, which happily possesses one. it consists of four chapters on the old themes, written in a sort of metrical prose. the frontispiece, representing a woman in the characteristic attitude so often adopted by blake--the figure being seated on the ground, with head supported on knees in a mysterious lone place among rocks--is an arresting and powerful design. the writing in this book is particularly fine and clear. it is the last of blake's "london books of prophecy." [illustration: the accusers: or, satan's trinity colour-print from the large book of designs in the print room] what shall i say of "jerusalem, the emanation of the giant albion"--this longest and perhaps most mystical of all blake's dithyrambic books? it was written, as well as the "milton," during the felpham period, though probably added to, and finally finished after his return to london. those who have heard the extraordinary tone-poem called "also sprach zarathustra," by richard strauss, may not think it far-fetched to suggest a parallel between revolutionary, chaotic, yet somehow great music, such as it is, and the so-called poem of "jerusalem." to the authors of both, the classical, the established forms of expression belonging to their respective arts, seem outworn, inadequate, cramped. they feared to trust the new wine of their fermenting ideas to the old bottles of recognized form, and each has invented for himself a way of escape--somewhat dangerous, nay, almost suicidal--from the pressure of precedent, law, and order. strange harmonies, horrid discords, sweetness as of honey, to be succeeded by a sharp acridity like that of unripe lemons, great marshalled orchestral forms, and wild abortive sounds, tormenting alike to ear and heart, are to be discerned in "zarathustra," not without irrational excitement, anger, dismay, and occasional delight on the part of the hearer. and in "jerusalem" is it not much the same? with an olympian audacity blake writes, "when this verse was first dictated to me, i considered a monotonous cadence like that used by milton and shakespeare, and all writers of english blank verse, derived from the modern bondage of rhyming, to be a necessary and indispensable part of verse. but i soon found that in the mouth of a true orator, such monotony was not only awkward, but as much a bondage as rhyme itself. i therefore have produced a variety in every line, both of cadences and number of syllables. every word and every letter is studied and put into its place; the terrific numbers are reserved for the terrific parts, the mild and gentle for the mild and gentle parts, and the prosaic for the inferior parts; all are necessary to each other; poetry fettered, fetters the human race." self-assertion such as this is the apology for arts like those of strauss and walt whitman, and our very admiration for blake's youthful lyrical gift compels us to lament that his muse was brought at last, after those early days of soaring flight, to wading through such quagmires of so-called poetry as this and the ensuing book. mysticism had engulfed the poet in its dim cloud, though poetic phrases and passages like crystal dew glitter amid the gloom. the "jerusalem" may be regarded as an attempted poetic statement of blake's mystic philosophy regarding the development of humanity and its various states. i give you the end of a golden string only wind it into a ball, it will lead you in at heaven's gate built in jerusalem's wall, writes blake in the course of the book. messrs. ellis and yeats have wound it into a very tangible ball, taking the symbolizism of the four zoas as the clue to the whole mystery. blake mentions the zoas here frequently: "four universes round the mundane egg remain chaotic" (nothing could be more true!) "one to the north urthona; one to the south urizen; one to the east luvah; one to the west tharmas. they are the four zoas that stood around the throne divine." but if the symbolism of the zoas is in reality woven into the very tissue of the story, and forms its vital and coherent argument, it must be discovered on some mathematical principle very foreign, and, indeed, repugnant to the lover of true poetry. it is in no sense obvious or sequential. the value of the book lies, not in its poetical merit, nor even primarily in its mystic significance, but in the insight which it affords into the byways of blake's mind. the knowledge of his opinions gained here (they have been shortly commented on in a former chapter) enable us to form correct estimates of the scope of his plastic art, and his outlook on the world. messrs. maclaggan and russell have edited a plain-typed and unillustrated edition of "jerusalem," and promise an expository essay on it to follow in due course, so that to earnest readers its study will be greatly facilitated. the book is concerned with one albion, the father as it would seem of all created men, and los (time) who is his friend. jerusalem and vala are his emanations--jerusalem being his wife. the city of golgonooza--that is, i believe, spiritual art--is also described, and bears its part in the story. on page , line , we read, "around golgonooza lies the land of death eternal; a land of pain and misery and despair and ever-brooding misery"--the repetition of the word "misery," does not sound as if every word had been studied and put in its place! but the idea that the beautiful city of spiritual art should be built in the midst of pain and despair reminds one of a similar idea of goethe's, "art enshrines the great sadness of the world, but is itself not sad." and the following lines develop the suggestion, page , line : "all things acted on earth are seen in the bright sculptures of los's halls, and every age renews its powers from these works. with every pathetic story possible to happen from hate or wayward love and every sorrow and distress is carved here." the introduction of localities, streets and districts, has an almost ludicrous effect, as for instance in the following lines: "what are those golden builders doing near mournful ever-weeping paddington?" is it, one wonders, a prophetic announcement of the erection of the great western terminus? had blake possessed the saving grace of humour, he would never have committed such laughter-provoking solecisms as this and other passages of the same kind. humour is a means of restoring and keeping the balances true. it assists the sense of proportion, and like a fresh wind blows the cobwebs away; but, alas! blake had no faintest trace of it. in a kind of dionysiac rage he has flung his noble ideas, original conceptions, pell-mell into the cauldron along with mere windy, mouth-filling rodomontade. there is a great deal of confused noise, but by snatches we distinguish the half-drowned but heavenly music. the fact is that his material (god-dictated, as he thought) so excited him that he was unable to deal with it, unable to direct the heat of his genius into fusing the heterogeneous mass into the perfect artistic unity. the vision unnerved him, and he all but lost his balance. well might he too have cried: a veil 'twixt us and thee, dread lord, a veil 'twixt us and thee, lest we should hear too clear, too clear and unto madness see. the illustrations to the book have all the concentration, power and grasp which the literary matter lacks. the pages seem to throb beneath the teeming forms of life with which his hand has adorned them. each in the disposition of the beautiful writing is a picture. wild passionate little figures, drawn with exquisite feeling, leap, climb, and fly about some of the borders while on others the writing is interrupted and entwined with creeping tendrils, or adorned with flames, stars, serpents, and processions of insects--a riot of decoration. "jerusalem" is a folio of pages, one side of each leaf only being printed. from the first page to the twenty-fifth of the museum copy the writing is in black, while the designs are left white outlined in black, on a dense sable ground. pages to are in deep green, the printed designs being sometimes finished by hand, the deepest tones being laid on with a brush full of heavy colour. pages to are again black and white--the black being always of great intensity. in the first plate a man is seen entering through a door into darkness, with a lamp in his hand. this is our old friend los entering into the dark places of albion's mind--albion having turned his back on "the divine vision." curiously poetical suggestions are to be found in the title-page, whereon a cherubim with covering wings weeps over a beautiful prostrate female. this lovely body forms the central vein of a rose leaf, and is incorporated in its vegetable life. but above the woman's head are the wings that have become atrophied, and the moon and stars, like the eyes of a peacock's feathers, are seen on them, suggesting reminiscences and possibilities of spiritual development in "vegetative humanity" beyond verbal expression. glanced at as a whole without discriminating the parts, this fanciful and gothic conception bears a strange resemblance to a butterfly. did not the greeks find in the butterfly a symbol of the immortality of the soul and its renewal in youth, and blake, who was so profoundly sensitive to analogies of this kind, was not likely to have created this obvious resemblance accidentally. everything is with him significant. is it a dryad who lies outstretched on page with the rising sap of her vegetable life stirring within her fibrous extremities, and awakening her to some dim half-painful consciousness. and below her, what hints of strange buried gnomic life, of titans convulsively heaving like volcanoes in the dark earth, of creatures begotten of rocks and tree-roots, living like the suckers of plants in the fissures and crannies of deep strata! again, on page appears the beautiful weird fantasy that i have named a dryad. the sun and the moon shine on her simultaneously, and her rudimentary limbs appear now to be branches and again to be embryonic wings. a sort of vampire bat is poised above her. at the top of the same page a man with the world under his foot like a stool would seem to have been saved fainting in the arms of an effulgent divine being from some threatening danger. i pondered long over this design before finding the clue, which i now believe is to be found in these words, on the previous page, in "jerusalem": "the reasoning spectre stands between man and his immortal imagination." on plate is represented a woman sitting enthroned on a sunflower, her double wings form a sort of baldachino above her head. she has a triple tiara from which flames arise in a pyramidal shape, and the sun, the moon, and the stars are contained in her vast wings. the vegetative human has blossomed in the sunflower of spiritual life. no longer "the starry heavens are fled from the mighty limbs of albion," but instead of separation there is a large union. "in every bosom a universe expands," and "everything exists in the human imagination," are words which help to explain this curious design. [illustration: printed plate (uncoloured), from "jerusalem, the emanation of the giant albion." ] a coloured print of the same plate, very sumptuous and rich, was exhibited in the carfax galleries in january, . a beautiful drawing on page gives the meeting of vala with jerusalem and her children, but as an artist's forms often contain more in them than the obvious expression of a fact, so here one may permit oneself to see another meaning underlying this, as the ancient text underlies the palimpsest. vala may also have an analogy with death, who like a veiled woman meets a mother with her children. as she lifts her veil, and looks upon one among the group, the child takes flight and attempts to draw his sister after him. blake, who seldom made his faces characteristic, but was satisfied with making them merely typical, has given this woman's face a piteous expression of fear and entreaty. a notable plate is that representing the crucifixion, the motive of which, when disengaged from the confused material of the book, is discovered to be the bed-rock or foundation, the radical thought, at the base of "jerusalem" and the next work "milton." jesus the saviour is eternal imagination slain by men, who nail it to the "stems of generation," that is, kill it through the opacity of the senses and the limitations of sexual life. just in the same way orc, the deliverer, who is a type or other aspect of jesus, is genius, and by man is nailed on to the rocks of mount atlas. looking through the pages of "jerusalem," vague memories of norse sagas, of dim carved stalls in old gothic cathedrals, of the cold cellar-like air that sighs through their aisles and chapels, come to one and cause a delightful and yet fearful shudder. but the designs savour only in a fleeting irrational way of these things, having a wholly unique character of their own. the "prophetic books" reproduced by messrs. ellis and yeats are not taken from the british museum copies it may be as well to remark here, and the variation in the disposition of the light and shade is great in the various copies, though the outlines are always the same, being printed off the same plate, of course. the finest known copy of "jerusalem" was sold at messrs. sotheby's among other blake treasures belonging to lord crewe for the sum of £ . "milton," the last of the published "books of prophecy," produced in , is a small quarto of forty-five printed pages, coloured by hand in the old radiant manner. the preface, beautiful but sibylline, is an appeal to all men to worship and exalt imagination, which in ancient times in the christ-form, says blake, "walked upon england's mountains green." "would to god that all the lord's people were prophets"--that is "seers"--he quotes with profound earnestness at the end. the "poem" itself opens more intelligibly than most of the later books with a mythic story concerning one palamabron and the horses of the plough; of satan, who persuaded him to be allowed to drive the horses for one day, and of the dire confusion, strife, and tragedy resulting from palamabron's consent. the story bears a distant analogy to the phaethon myth, for palamabron represents, according to messrs. ellis and yeats, the "imaginative impulse," while satan is the dark angel who erects the barriers of reason limited by moral laws and senses around humanity. it was impossible for one to do the work of the other. the definite incidents with which "milton" so hopefully opens are soon lost sight of, and the loosely-fitted framework, ill-adjusted and weak, contains a tangled woof of mysticism, from which the end of the thread is so difficult of extraction, that i for one must plead that the trouble of "winding a golden ball" seems hardly worth while, though it is no doubt possible and profitable to the student of mysticism. milton's part in the book is perhaps the hardest to decipher. but we find him undertaking a journey from heaven, through earth and hell. "milton" seems specially dear to blake because he made satan the supreme study of his greatest poem. blake, as we know, had very original thoughts concerning satan, and regarded him as the world's angel of light, a most respectable person indeed, for he is the enforcer of the moral law as evolved by divided generative humanity. milton like blake recognized this highly respectable aspect of satan, whereas the world, says our poet in "the everlasting gospel," frequently mistakes satan for christ: the vision of christ that thou dost see, is my vision's greatest enemy, and it creates an abortive kind of hell-bat to take the _rôle_ of satan,--a very confused state of affairs, which leads to no little deception and opacity in men's minds. the old themes of free-love for the sake of the spirit, and the denunciation of "nature's cruel holiness," occupy much of the book, in which the mythic personages, leutha, rintrah, ololon, and enitharmon move up and down in dream-like procession. the ease with which these shadowy beings enter each other's personalities, divide, and separate again into manifold emanations and spectres, suggest the multitudinous globes into which a drop of quicksilver may be divided, uniting again on contact into several large ones, and finally forming the unit from which they were first divided. fascinating as is the experiment with mercury, it becomes confusing and even tiresome when the appearing and vanishing parties are persons with names and presumably characters. one passage full of the old poetical loveliness of which blake had been past master must be quoted. it shows that the beauty of nature at felpham, with its distracting fascination, entered the soul of the poet, despite all theories and philosophizings. thou hearest the nightingale begin the song of spring: the lark sitting upon his earthy bed: just as the morn appears; listens silent: then springing from the waving cornfield, loud he leads the choir of day! trill, trill, trill, trill, mounting upon the wings of light into the great expanse: re-echoing against the lovely blue and shining shell. his little throat labours with inspiration, every feather, on throat and breast and wings vibrates with the effluence divine, all nature listens silent to him, and the awful sun stands still upon the mountains looking on this little bird, with eyes of soft humility, and wonder, love and awe. then loud from their green covert all the birds begin their song. the thrush, the linnet and the goldfinch, robin and the wren, awake the sun from his sweet reverie upon the mountains. the nightingale again assays his song and through the day and through the night warbles luxuriant: every bird of song attending his loud harmony with admiration and love. to this passage succeeds another of like beauty, a flora's feast of colour and scent. thou perceivest the flowers put forth their precious odours: and none can tell how from so small a centre comes such sweet, forgetting that within that centre eternity expands its ever-during doors, that og and anak fiercely guard. first ere the morning breaks, joy opens in the flowery bosoms, joy even to tears, which the sun rising dries: first the wild thyme and meadowsweet downy and soft, waving among the reeds, light springing in the air, lead the sweet dance: they wake the honeysuckle sleeping on the oak: the flaunting beauty revels along the wind: the white-thorn, lovely may opens her many lovely eyes: listening, the rose still sleeps, none dare to wake her: soon she bursts her crimson-curtained bed and comes forth in the majesty of beauty; every flower, the pink, the jessamine, the wall-flower, the carnation, the jonquil, the mild lily opes her heavens: every tree and herb and flower soon fill the ear with an innumerable dance, yet all in order sweet and lovely. men are sick with love. oh! how gladly the ear and heart rest on passages such as these, after toiling through the arid wilds of non-poetical occultism! as usual the illustrations are turned to with keen delight. the iridescent pages recall the charms of the "songs of innocence and experience." take it all in all the colour in this last prophetic book combines a clarity and brilliance of tone inferior to no other of blake's. all is careful, clear and precise, and there are no passages of heavy colouring or impasto work. forms, elemental, electric, indicative of unknown forces and conditions of consciousness start from the pages. as in "jerusalem," every page of writing is adorned, but the colour adds the necessary charm to the forceful designs. plate represents a muscular male--michael angelesque in its modelling--leaping upon a rock and seizing by the shoulders a languid old man. the young man is milton, starting on his journey "to annihilate the selfhood of deceit and false forgiveness." the old man is albion seated on the rock of ages, his legs immersed in the sea of time and space, his nerveless arms supported on the tables of the law. above them both, on a semi-circular plane of light, the eternals are seen, passing in procession in a kind of ecstatic choric dance. three play on instruments of music, while two others toss balls of light in joyous abandon. the rhythmic character of these dancers, their robes fetched out like clouds upon the wind, and the colour translucent and vivid as that of a border of april flowers, makes one think of the fair works with which luca della robbia has set the dark old streets of florence, of which, as some one has poetically said, they would seem to be the "wall-flowers." the two other specially noteworthy plates are full-page designs, entitled respectively william and robert. it is evident that they are the spiritual likenesses of blake and that younger brother with whom he always maintained such close communion. a burning star emitting fountains of light falls beside each brother, while their bodies thrown backwards, and their faces skywards, seem to indicate the abandon of themselves to spiritual influences. the senses are not the limits put upon their perceptions. the infinite spirit, the "poetic genius," thrills through their entire beings as the sunshine through a dewdrop. let not the profane smile when they learn that the star is in reality milton! for it is written, "so milton's shadow fell precipitant loud thundering into the sea of time and space." then first i saw him in the zenith as a falling star, descending perpendicular, swift as the swallow or swift, and on my left foot falling on the tarsus, enter'd there. so there can be no doubt as to what the star symbolizes in the design. the articulation, the tense nervous drawing of these two figures is remarkable, even for blake, and the light throbbing with rainbow hues, and the intense darkness, against which it is contrasted, are boldly handled, while the weird colouring of the dead robert, whose skin has the tone and lustre of gun metal, conduce to make these two designs of great imaginative appeal. space has only allowed me to call attention to the most remarkable of the plates in this and the other "prophetic books," but enough has been said to indicate the extraordinary range of their expression. [illustration: colour-printed plate from "milton: a poem in two books." ] to see blake's work of this kind is to enjoy a new experience. many of the pictorial representations we have reviewed seem to be disregardful of nature, if one dare say it, _above_ nature altogether! yet so clearly are they discriminated, so minutely are the parts made out, that we are compelled to realize that they are copied from visions definitely seen by blake's inner eye, and energetically seized upon by him. and it is this quality in them which so powerfully acts on the spectator, assuring him that indeed "more things exist in heaven and earth than our philosophy dreams of." but besides these tremendous imaginative creations, there occur touching and beautiful transcripts from nature, low-lying hills, under a great sky, waving field grasses and delicate spiders' webs accurately observed and represented, as far as they go, proving that dame nature was not so utterly repudiated by blake but that at times he saw and loved her for her own sake, in spite of all his theories. still, the great word for him--the only word fit to bear the burden of his tremendous thoughts--was always, as with michael angelo, the human form, which, in its varieties of type and action, seemed to him alone suited to express his deep meanings and spiritual ideas. as for the prophecies themselves, they can never be largely read, nor in any sense popular, though, to use mr. w. m. rossetti's words, "a reader susceptible to poetic influence cannot make light of them; nor can one who has perused mr. swinburne's essay" (or, we may add, messrs. ellis and yeats' work) "affect to consider that they lack meaning--positive and important, though not definite and developed meaning." so now we take leave of these mystic books of revelation, which, whatever our personal estimate of them may be, stand alone in literature for intrinsic and unique qualities. chapter x work in illustration blake's work in illustration is considered by many persons to be finer than the embodiment of his original conceptions in art. there is perhaps something to be said for this point of view. in the designs to the "prophetic books" his over-heated brain attempted the production in visible images of conceptions not matured--hints, scraps, vague but immense suggestions. his unfettered imagination set sail on a shoreless ocean of speculative thinking, and kept to no recognized course, made for no definite port. roaming hither and thither on the wide dim sea of his ever-shifting thoughts, we sometimes long to see his imagination at work in a more limited, a more definite area. and so when other minds circumscribed this area, giving him a central pole around which to group his ideas, we find no loss of individuality, no pale reflection of another's conceptions, but a passionate concentration of original thinking on the subject prescribed, resulting in the development of an unsuspected point of view, a new aspect. i am not speaking of illustrations such as those he executed as mere task-work to gain a living, like the engravings to mary wollstonecraft's stories, or those for hayley's ballads. for these subjects had not enough matter, depth or scope to attract his thoughts or engage his sympathies. as illustrator to dante, milton, shakespeare, virgil and the book of job, blake worked with all his best and most characteristic powers under his command, and the more effective, vital and original for being concentrated. in the same year in which he produced the last of the "london books of prophecy," , we find him illustrating a so-called translation of bürger's "lenore." in spite of the weakness and wilful inaccuracy of the english version, blake seized with power on the spirit of the teutonic legend, and gave the edition, a copy of which is in the print room (a quarto), three fine designs, of which the first is the most forceful. we cannot linger over the designs which hayley commissioned blake to execute for his "ballads on animals." from the engraver's point of view they are specially fine, as the execution is very delicate, and reaches a state of high finish seldom attempted by blake. perhaps he wished to atone for paucity of inspiration by elaborate labour. certain it is that he worked in bonds and trammels. the subjects were not interesting to him. hayley might well say, in his lumberingly playful way, that "our good blake was in labour with a young lion," when he was engaged on the plate representing that animal. the labour was immense, for the conception had no vitality. blake scourged his imagination into a degree of liveliness sufficient to make "the horse" and "the eagle" arresting and uncommon work, but the shackles were on his hands, because on his spirit, and he knew it. young's "night thoughts," which we take up next, bears the date . blake made no less than five hundred and thirty-seven water-colour drawings for this poem, but only forty-three designs were eventually selected for publication, and these were reproduced as uncoloured engravings. till a short while ago, mr. bain of the haymarket possessed the whole series of water-colour drawings, but they have now passed by purchase into the hands of an american collector. through the kindness of mr. frederic shields, who many years ago made tracings and copies from the unpublished designs, i am enabled to give reproductions of some of the most striking, though of course not in colour. (it will be remembered that mr. shields wrote the very powerful chapter on young's "night thoughts" which is included in the second volume of gilchrist's life.) the designs published with the poem are larger than those we are accustomed to see in blake's books, and the disposition of them on the pages, of which the middle is occupied by the printed type enclosed in rectangular spaces, is not effective. we miss our artist's beautiful fluent writing, and the type produces a bald staring impression on the beholder. when, too, the head and shoulders of a figure appear above the placard and the feet and legs below, as in one or two plates, we are irresistibly reminded of sandwich men. the want of colour also is a crying need in these large, pale, somewhat flat plates. the engravings are executed with great lightness, though with a certain monotony of line. they are slightly shaded, and have a distinguishing quality of purity and breadth. what luminous conceptions and stimulating fancies they contain! though it must also be admitted that there are a few plates which seem unworthy of blake, being diffuse, tame, uninspired. plate represents the "aspiration of the soul for immortality" in a beautiful symbolic female figure holding a lyre and fluttering upward, but confined to the earth by chains around the ankles. plates and are, perhaps, the most tremendous in the book. in one time creeps towards the spectator, while in the other he half-leaps, half-flies in his headlong course away. [illustration: time speeding away engraved plate from young's "night thoughts," published in ] as one turns the pages one is fain to exclaim of the artist that he breathed the fine thin air of the mountain tops, that indeed he lived "in the high places of thought." i have an impression that blake drew much of his inspiration from watching the ever-changing cloud forms of the sky. we know that his designs gained actually very little from the beautiful natural scenery of felpham, that indeed nature seemed to close round him like a wall. "natural objects always did and do weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagination in me," he wrote in his ms. notes to wordsworth. strange words to come from a painter-poet. a top room in london with a good view of the sky were all the conditions which he found necessary for the expression of his genius. in the vastness of the heavens, clear and deeply blue, or peopled with glistening clouds, or set with large peaceful stars, which spread themselves before his upward gaze, blake found that impetus to creation which most genius finds in nature or humanity. he had set himself the task of probing the world of appearances, and revealing the world of spiritual causes. to say that he succeeded in representing this pictorially would be to assert that an impossibility had been achieved, but he got nearer to the goal than any other artist before or since, not even excepting d. g. rossetti and g. f. watts, whose affinity with blake's genius is as close as their manifestation of it is different. the better to realize his aim blake stripped his drawing of everything that was not essential to the idea he wished to represent. there is never a single redundant accessory. he never stayed his upward or outward flight to represent a lovely landscape, woman's dainty dress, flashing jewels, bloomy fruit. typical or merely suggested natural scenes under a great sky are the usual settings of the human forms who were to him, as to his master michael angelo, the only language coherent enough to express the innerness and the infinity of spirit. he seldom chose to inclose his figures in interiors, and such drawings as he has left of places from which the sky cannot be seen are so rare as to startle when we come across them. it may be that from blake walt whitman learned to say, "i swear i will never mention love or death inside a house." the sea fascinated his imagination, and he has left characteristic records of it. but for the most part that which he saw with his "corporeal eye" appeared to him as merely the type of what was unseen. he climbed along the jutting peninsula of sense to its farthest point, where, giddy with the immensity of the unsuspected forces revealed to him, he clung, neither angel nor mortal, but partaking to a certain degree of the conditions of both. when in this mystic condition of consciousness he focussed his mind on the "night thoughts," the pencilled ideas resulting are liberal, spacious, empyrean. but blake's most forcible and poetical thinking on the subject of death is crystallized in the delicately gleaming drawings for blair's "grave." true, the drawings are not reproduced in cromek's edition of the poem as they left blake's hand. the story of cromek's mean transaction has already been retold in these pages. schiavonetti's plates, beautiful and fluent in execution as they are, have lost that peculiar rugged character, that almost galvanic energy which stamp the original drawings with blake's hallmark. it must be borne in mind that engraving may alter original drawings much in the same way as does the transposition of a musical phrase from the original into a foreign key. the melody is the same, but the mood of it is different. it becomes dull instead of bright, or plaintive instead of triumphant. schiavonetti's transposing of blake has made the designs more sweet and less strong, or perhaps less vehement. it is blake in a new aspect, one so obviously beautiful that all the world admits its loveliness. it is blake arranged for the many, not blake for the intimate few! [illustration: death of the strong, wicked man, from blair's "grave" engraving by l. schiavonetti after design by blake. published ] the stanzas he wrote in dedication to queen charlotte form such a fitting introduction to the plates that we quote them: the door of death is made of gold that mortal eyes cannot behold, but when the mortal eyes are closed and cold and pale the limbs reposed, the soul awakes and wond'ring sees in her mild hands the golden keys. the grave is heaven's golden gate, and rich and poor around it wait. o shepherdess of england's fold, behold this gate of pearl and gold. to dedicate to england's queen the visions that my soul has seen, and, by her kind permission bring, what i have borne on solemn wing, from the vast regions of the grave; before her throne my wings i wave, bowing before my sov'reign's feet. the grave produced these blossoms sweet, in mild repose from earthly strife; the blossoms of eternal life. and now blake comes to close quarters with the subject that had haunted him all his life, the dark web on which he had woven so many bright, half-defined fancies. again we discern a _point d'appui_ between him and michael angelo. the thoughts of neither of them were long away from death. michael angelo wrestled with the dark angel and brought away from the encounter the profound and intimate thoughts that he has enshrined in the medici tombs of san lorenzo. never has the human soul--save perhaps beethoven's--apprehended more closely the mystery, the terror, the mingled shrinking and awe of the grave, yet at the same time its hope, than he did in the sacristy of the medici chapel. and in all plastic art, the only things to which these fateful sculptures may be likened in their qualities of rapt and sincere thinking, united to imagination and insight, are the designs, which blake made to illustrate blair's "grave." the great florentine, it is true, wrought colossally in enduring marble before all the world, while the obscure blake, two centuries later, traced out his thoughts on paper, his designs being known to comparatively few persons; but the conceptions of the two brains are allied, and the works of the two hands are own brothers. blair's conventional and smooth verses in blake's case have nothing to do with the matter. they merely form the pegs on which he cast the great garment of his thoughts. death--the grave!--his intense and fervent spirit so brooded on the subject that the result is no mere illustration of blair's text, but invention. the poem in his handling has enlarged itself out of all knowledge, and turned to us an unfamiliar face, new and enriching conceptions. blair merely indicated the track on which his pioneer spirit journeyed heedfully and musingly, through the dim country of death. piercing all conventions, all accepted theology, he would fain seize the very heart of the elusive mystery. "what _is_ death?" he asks; "let me peer into the grave unshrinkingly and see for myself." and from the grave he brings this triumphant answer, "death is life, this life only is death; you have but to die to conquer death"; or in walt whitman's prosaic but arresting phrase, "to die is different from what anyone supposes, and luckier." we reproduce the most significant of the plates. in "the soul exploring the recesses of the grave," we see a shuddering yet resolved man determinately bringing himself to the close contemplation of death. he remains above the vault on the hillside trying to pierce the moonlit earth with his limited human vision; but his imagination, his soul, penetrates where he cannot enter--yet! in the likeness of a fair woman with a lamp, like the greek psyche, she tiptoes delicately into the arched hollow beneath the hill, and gazes alarmed but steadfast on a dead body wrapped in flickering flames. it is to be noted that the man whose soul regards death so closely is already on the mountain tops, he has "lifted up his eyes unto the hills," and his figure set against the sky has an indefinable air of separateness from ordinary humanity. the plate entitled "the soul hovering over the body reluctantly parting with life" satisfies with a strange and unearthly delight. no diana ever hung more yearningly above her endymion than this beautiful and tender soul lingers, in loving reluctance to part, above the stiff human tenement she has just quitted. presently she will take her darting flight through the window and over the mountains and up into the illimitable glory of the distant sunrise. there is the hush and the blessedness of a great silence on this dim silver dawn, suggesting the spiritual correspondence between it and the dawning life of the newly-released soul. was it a recollection of that younger brother, robert, so dearly loved, that taught blake the pathetic dignity of the composed limbs, the sculptured calm of the dead face? the "death of the strong wicked man" is a savage contrast to the peace, the musical pause, of the last-mentioned design. in "milton," blake writes: judge then of thyself; thy eternal lineaments explore, what is eternal and what changeable, and what annihilable. and he answers the question in the forms given to these passing souls, some being closely analogous to their mortal appearances, others changing even to sex, while others again have passed from age into a state of perpetual youth. this latter is the case in the plate called "death's door." "age on crutches is hurried by a tempest into the open door of the grave, while above sits a young man--'the renovated man in light and glory'--his beautiful young head thrown up to the sky, his mouth full of inspired song, his whole virile body expressing ideal beauty, rapture, glad new life." no one but michael angelo could have drawn with strong felicitous hand the glorious youth atop of the grave as blake has done. the whole allegory is so intellectually definite, so succinctly expressed that thought and its body form are here identical. but the strangest flower of his thoughts on the grave, blossoms in the picture called "the re-union of the soul and the body." descending like a bolt from the blue, cleaving the smoke ascending from the fires of consuming materialism, the soul embraces with passionate joy the strong male body, which struggles from the grave to enfold her. cleansing and fusing fires flame around them. the beauty of the drawing--the melodious curves of the downward plunging "soul," the delicious foreshortening of the leg, the swirl of the white drapery--has stricken into poetic lines the forcefulness of flight, the passion of re-union. this emotional conception moves the heart strangely. it is the promise of st. paul here visibly consummated, that a spiritual body shall at last clothe the shivering unhoused soul. [illustration: the soul reluctantly parting from the body, from blair's "grave" engraving by l. schiavonetti after design made by blake. published ] "states change," blake wrote, "but individual identities never change nor cease." and now take last of all, but not least, the plate called the "day of judgment." nothing daunted by the long array of "last judgments" that have been executed from orcagna to michael angelo, blake must needs give _his_ rendering of the subject; and an original one it is, though he can hardly avoid--even _he_!--the traditional disposition of the main parts of the picture. but what freshness, what new life and new motives he has introduced into this subject, hoary with extreme age. the spirits ascending into paradise are as lovely as heart and eye of man could wish. orcagna's conception of the beatified souls in santa maria, whose profiles ruskin likened to "lilies laid together in a garden border," is not more delightful in its artless way than is blake's. the children of wrath, snake-encircled, howling, and falling head foremost into the abyss, recall the terrors, the uncouth and wild imagination of "urizen" and one of the plates in "america." but here schiavonetti's graceful and civilizing hand has passed over each figure, and he has contrived in some indefinable way to smooth away the too austere and savage strength of this latest born of the "_dies illa_" of art. i have not mentioned the first plate, which represents christ with the keys of the grave in his hand, because my function is chiefly that of praise. but i ought perhaps to point out, what is however painfully obvious, that blake always failed in any attempt to represent jesus. whether he was hampered to a degree beyond his strength of liberation by the traditional likeness, the type ascribed to the saviour, and so could not work in freedom, it is impossible to say authoritatively. but this traditional face of christ, ploughed as it is into the heart and memory of humanity, probably arose and disturbed his own soul's independent vision whenever he tried to fix his imagination on the ideal lineaments. if this were the case, then indeed it is proved beyond question that blake's work is almost valueless when it is not dependent on his own naked perceptions, his inward recognition of facts, disregardful of all outward corroboration. blake's next work in illustration was done for dr. thornton, who projected an english edition of virgil's "pastorals" for the use of schools, with ambrose philips' imitation of virgil's first eclogue. they were the first and the only woodcuts blake ever did, and though they bear traces of an unpractised hand, "he put to proof art alien to the artists," and showed his essential mastery of this means of expression in a manner which more than reconciles one to his slight defects of method. gilchrist is of opinion that the original designs were a little marred--lost somewhat in expression and drawing in transference to the wood; but mr. laurence binyon, who has lately studied them closely, and has reproduced them with admirable truth, holds a different opinion. he writes, "blake's conceptions in these illustrations did not take their final form in the drawings; they were only fully realized on the block itself. hence they have the character of visions called up as if by moonlight out of the darkened surface of the wood, and seem to have no existence apart from it." they instance the power blake had in a remarkable degree of concentrating in a few types the essence of his subject. in these blocks it is pastoral life--flocks feeding in lonely stretches of country, the still peace of hills, the might of tempest--that he concentrates and expresses by the roughly executed but exquisitely felt little scenes which are the consummation of his insight into the large natural life of the earth. [illustration: blake's woodcuts, from his own designs, to phillip's "virgil's pastorals." ] blake did in these woodcuts, what he could never have achieved, had he sought to do so, in any other of the branches of art practised by him,--namely, he gave truthful because extremely simple impressions of nature as she appears in her rarer moods. master as he was of linear design, he was too neglectful of tonic values to interpret with any delicacy the effects of landscape in water-colour or engraving. but here, the very nature and limitations of woodcutting, its necessary economy of means, enabled him for once to express effectively and adequately his great simple generalized impressions. these pregnant suggestions of his induce a mood sympathetic with the deeper and subtler chords of pantheism. in one of the most beautiful, but at the same time one of the simplest of the blocks, all the witchery and solemn charm of a remote pastoral neighbourhood is represented in a few typical rural images. a solitary traveller journeys along a road winding deep between hills, in the last beams of the setting sun. blake has endowed this darkened landscape with i know not what suggestions of watchful intentness. the wayfarer in some mysterious manner is in its power! hands unseen are hanging the night around him fast. and again: the place is silent and aware, it has had its scenes, its joy and crimes, but that is its own affair. these words of browning's are singularly apt to express the delicate and profound hints in this little woodcut. the wonderful thing is that blake _could_ convey so much on a slip of paper about three inches by one and a half in size. in all the plates we find this strange accent laid on nature, her awareness, her sombre fateful moods, her listening, and the long patience of her endless waiting. the oft-repeated motive of the shepherding of flocks is treated in no glib or merely idyllic manner, but has the sort of holy peace that befits that most ancient and most gentle of all the occupations of men. an appreciative critic has said anent these woodcuts, that they prove conclusively that "amid all drawbacks there exists a power in the work of the man of genius which no one but himself can utter fully." the truth of this remark must be felt by all blake's admirers with double force and poignancy when they think regretfully of blair's "grave," wherein the designs, being engraved by another hand than the father of them, have lost some indefinable note of character belonging to blake's personality. and now we come to the greatest series of engravings on a religious subject that have appeared since albrecht dürer. the inventions to "job" are the crown of glorious achievement on the strenuous and austere life of the artist-poet, and of all his work there is nothing so perfect in the dramatic development of the subject, the broad, forceful yet delicate execution, and the poetic sensibility which animates the entire series. it appears that blake's lifelong friend, mr. butts, bought from him a series of twenty-one water-colour drawings or "inventions" from the book of job. (this set of drawings, be it remarked, together with twenty-two brilliant proof impressions on india paper of the engravings afterwards made from them, were sold to mr. quaritch on march st, , at the sale of the crewe collection of blake's works, for the sum of £ , .) i have seen one water-colour (presumably not one of the original set done for thomas butts, though probably a repliqua) of satan pouring a vial containing the plague of boils on the prostrate body of job. it is interesting to compare it with the final form the design assumed in the engraving (plate in the book of job) done for john linnell. owing to the courtesy of sir charles dilke, to whom the picture now belongs, we have been enabled to reproduce it. it will at once be seen that, in the engraving the management of the light is more satisfactory, because it is comprehensible, than in the water-colour; while the cloud-forms are less conventional and rounder. the bat-like wings with which satan is furnished in the painting have been sacrificed in the engraving. job's wife has been put into tone, whereas in the water-colour, the visible side of her, which ought to have been in dense shadow, was in full light. the whole design has been pulled together, gaining an impressiveness and unity altogether wanting in the earlier work. blake's passion for "determinate outline" (irrespective of its appearance in nature), and contempt for truth of tone in colour, gives the water-colour a mapped-out definitive appearance in its background of scenery,--despite the magnificent qualities of imagination and draughtsmanship displayed in the treatment of the figures,--which somehow recalls the work of such masters as paolo uccello. mr. linnell, deeply impressed with the lofty and imaginative character of the water-colours done for mr. butts, commissioned a complete set of engravings to be executed from them by blake's hand, for which he paid £ in instalments of £ to £ weekly--the largest sum blake had ever received for any one series. on glancing through them it will at once be noticed that his style of engraving had undergone a change during the last period of his life. "the canterbury pilgrimage," which he had executed fifteen years previously, exhibited the old hard and dry manner of engraving which he had adopted from basire in its most accentuated form. (for the convenience of classification i have included that picture among the loose drawings, engravings, and water-colours for consideration in a later chapter, but it would be well for the student to look at it now, the better to appreciate the freedom, grace and power of the engravings in the "job" series.) on one of the many pleasant days blake spent with linnell at north end, hampstead, the latter showed him some choice engravings of marc antonio and his pupil bononsoni, and from this latter's work blake suddenly apprehended the possibilities, the scope, that lay for him in the engraver's art. in the school of basire much of the work was accomplished by a laborious and indiscriminate process of cross-hatching. it is true that blake by the sheer force of his genius had made this style answer in a manner to his needs of expression, but it was work performed in an unnecessarily confined technique. when he came to study the italian school of engraving he found to his delight that every stroke was made to tell. nothing blotchy or muddled, no careless cross-hatching, no "lozenges or dots" were admitted, and blake quickly appreciated the wider range of effects obtainable by this italian manner, and engrafted its main principles on to his own characteristic style. of that characteristic style, as we know, the beauty of outline, the care for its preservation whenever possible, was the main principle. and here in the school of marc antonio and bononsoni he found that principle adopted as the basis of beauty in engraving, every other consideration being made subservient to it. the conflict and want of unity of effect, resultant on making compromises with other principles of art,--such as subtlety of modelling, delicate distinctions in values, imitation of textures, intricacy of detail,--had not disturbed the dignity of the italian school, which consciously sacrificed variety and a wide range of effects in order to keep the work of the burin as broad and simple as possible, the outline always being insisted on as the chief subject of alterations, while the shading and modelling were comprehensively indicated by long curved lines, close together, only crossing and intersecting in the darkest parts. the beauty and freedom of the "job" engravings are a revelation of the final grace and power achieved by blake through his appreciation of the legitimate functions of an art pre-eminently concerned with line. [illustration: plate ii from "the book of job" engraving, published march, ] the book of job is one of the world's great epics. it voices man's need of belief in god; it is the cry of one pierced to death with the arrows of misfortune, yet asserting with passionate faith, "though he slay me, yet will i trust in him." earthquake, famine, bereavements, pestilence cannot eradicate from man the deep-rooted assurance that god not only exists, but is just and loving, and the book of job is the supreme poetical expression of this fundamental belief. as such, it welded itself into blake's imagination, and the designs he made to illustrate it are worthy in all respects to be set alongside the ancient tragic text. plate represents job, his wife, and their sons and daughter kneeling around them, praising god at the rising of the sun. their flocks and herds surround them, and a noble tree--on which their musical instruments are hung--overshadows them; in the background, at the base of rocky hills, a gothic cathedral is daringly set, to typify the soul of worship made visible. "thus did job continually." the border that surrounds the finely-wrought plate is very slight but decorative and thoughtful. an altar with a flaming sacrifice upon it is indicated, with these words inscribed upon its front: the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life, it is spiritually discerned. while, above, the words, our father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, set the keynote to the whole work. plate contains no less than twenty-three figures, and two scenes are being enacted simultaneously. job and his wife still sit beneath the tree with their children, but above them we see the heavens open and god giving power to satan, who strides like urizen through flame, to test the uprightness of his servant job. "this was the day when the sons of god came to present themselves before the lord, and satan came also among them to present himself before god." the border is exquisite, light as gossamer, and containing in its fine web-like lines beautiful suggestions. angels with heads bent beneath gothic tracery receive the flame and smoke that are the thought-sacrifices of two shepherds, who mind the sleeping flocks in their fold. the next two plates are ( ) the destruction of the children of job, and ( ) the reception of the news by job and his wife. plate is one of the finest of the series. job and his wife, sitting on the ruins of their home, give of their straitened means to the blind and halt, while "the angels of their love and resignation," as gilchrist sympathetically terms them, hallow and beautify the scene. but above, the almighty sits enthroned, with an expression almost remorseful, and the angels shrink away in horror, for he has given satan leave to try job to the uttermost, only reserving his life. "behold he is in thy hand, but save his life." satan, with face averted from the sublime spectacle of job in his affliction, has concentrated the fires of god into a phial which he is about to pour on his head. [illustration: plate v from "the book of job," engraving] the border is symbolically woven with writhing snakes and thorn-set brambles, among which quick darting flames find their way upwards. and then follow plates , , , the workings of the evil one, the coming of the three friends to job, and job raising himself in agony and uttering the frantic words, "lo, let the night be solitary and let no joyful voice come therein, let the day perish wherein i was born." this suggests "thoughts beyond the reaches of the soul." then follows the vision of eliphaz--very terrible and grand--and plate , "the just upright man is laughed to scorn," in which job's attitude, the dignity of his grief and faith, are magnificent. "though he slay me, yet will i trust in him," is expressed in every line of the noble, piteous figure. plate --"with dreams upon my bed thou scarest me and affrightest me with visions"--has something mediaeval in the grotesqueness and ingeniousness of the horrors depicted. orcagna's devils, dürer's "death and satan" are not more terrible than job's tormentors. the words engraved in the border contain all the condensed pain of the race of man, as well as the faith which alone makes it possible to be endured. and then to all this "storm and stress" succeeds plate , with its suggestions of returning peace and the everlasting calm of the stars. "lo, all these things worketh god oftentimes with man to bring back his soul from the pit to be enlightened with the light of the living!" says the inspired young man to job, who with the seal of a great suffering set on his face--but a suffering of which the bitterness is past--sits listening intently as one who suddenly receives light in his soul. the sonorous penetrating words fall on the senses like the music of rain-drops on a thirsty land, and the design grows out of them like a true organic form of which the shape is innate. oh! the peace of that night sky, and the gentle radiance of the stars set in its depth! the border is here specially beautiful. "look upon the heavens, and behold the clouds which are higher than thou"--words that found a responsive echo in the heart of blake--is the verse inscribed on the robe of a sleeping old man. the border is quick with winged thoughts, floating upwards from his head, in the shape of small men and women, linked in a sinuous succession, which finally reaches a sky, also set with stars, whose clouds have verses written upon them that contribute to a full understanding of job. plate , "then the lord answered job out of the whirlwind," continues the gracious and softening influences of the last design. job and his wife, with tremulous eager hope, look up into the mild face of god, who, clothed and enwreathed by a whirlwind of which blake only could have suggested the marvellous vortex, stretches his arms in blessing above them. the three friends are prostrated and overwhelmed beneath the force of the blast that encloses god. and now we come to plate , than which nothing can be imagined more beautiful. "when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of god shouted for joy," are the words beneath and around the border; the six days of creation are indicated in six delicate medallions, which _may_ in their turn have suggested the noble series of paintings, of ample scope and poetic imagining, which sir edward burne-jones executed. [illustration: plate xiv from "the book of job," engraving] but the main design--god, the centre of the universe, from whom issues day and night, the listening rapt group of job, his wife, and the comforters, and, above all, the glorious rejoicing ranks of angels--is beautiful almost beyond expression. it is noticeable that on either side appears the arm alone of an angel outside the picture, thus cleverly suggesting the idea of an infinity of this heavenly host. mrs. jamieson, in her "christian art," says, "the most original and, in truth, the only new and original version of the scripture idea of angels which i have met with is that of william blake, a poet-painter, somewhat mad as we are told, if indeed his madness were not rather 'the telescope of truth,' a sort of poetical clairvoyance, bringing the unearthly nearer to him than others. "his adoring angels float rather than fly, and with their half-liquid draperies seem about to dissolve into light and love; and his rejoicing angels--behold them!--sending up their voices with the morning stars, that 'singing in their glory move!'" the picture has the thrill, the immensity of music in it, and i never look at it without recalling the motive of the last movement of the choral symphony. [music] it resolves all the human suffering, all the incoherent and striving emotions, all the diverse and multiform forces of the book of job, into a final harmony and triumph of beauty. in much the same way the last motive of beethoven's "ninth symphony" rings forth after the tentative, subtle and passionate music of the preceding movements like a shout of joy, the cry of a faith which says--not, "i have heard, i have learnt, i believe," but, "i _know_! absolutely and for ever!" plate shows god pointing out the works that his hand has fashioned. "behemoth" and leviathan, in a circular design very gothic in character, appear below. and to this succeeds plate , "satan falling." plate , in which god appears blessing job and his wife, while the false comforters hide their diminished heads with an almost comic fright, is distinguished by another of those fine effects of light for which blake had so great an aptitude. the sun, which forms the nimbus of god's head, emits strange prismatic rays, very beautiful and weird. "also the lord accepted job" shows us job with his wife and friends offering a fire on an altar before a great sun, which, like god's halo in the previous picture, flashes the same strange light. the design is calm and solemn, and has an exquisite decorative feeling. immediately below the altar, on some steps which form part of the border, blake has touchingly and humbly laid his own palette and brushes, as if to indicate that, like job, his work had been offered and accepted by the lord. in plate job and his wife are seated beneath a fig-tree in a field of standing corn, gratefully receiving offerings from a father and mother and their two beautiful daughters. "everyone also gave him a piece of money." the border contains, as usual, amid its palm leaves and angelic figures, verses relating to and assisting the chief motive of the picture. for pure melodious beauty perhaps there is no plate like . "there were not found women fair as the daughters of job in all the land, and their father gave them inheritance among their brethren." job is seated in a dim rich chamber, on whose walls are wrought paintings illustrating the trials he has experienced. around him are grouped three beautiful daughters, who listen rapt while he relates to them god's dealings with him. this is a rare example of blake's choosing an interior with no opening out into the beyond. it is quaint and beautiful, but we are so accustomed to seeing blake's figures set in the open air with the sky above them, that this closed-in chamber, exquisitely wrought and fantastic as it is, seems a thing foreign to his usual methods, his elective affinity for the great expansive types of god's universe. i think the reason he chose an interior in this instance was that we might be shut in and enclosed within the mind of job as it revealed itself to his daughters. instinctively we know that blake's true lover rossetti must have cared for this plate with quite special fervour, so close is the analogy between its hidden mysterious richness and the wonderful painted interiors in which he set his women, and from which he developed such a high degree of romantic suggestion and atmosphere. a lute and harp amid trailing vines, grape-laden, form a border to blake's design, as delicate as the illuminated tracery in a mediaeval hour-book. in the final plate--"so the lord blessed the latter end of job more than the beginning"--the hole of the great tree that has figured in so many of the designs is surrounded by a crowd of persons, with job, his wife and beautiful daughters in the midst. all play on instruments of music, while sheep and lambs and (it must be admitted) a most gothic-looking sheep-dog repose in the immediate foreground. the ancient and fantastic instruments, the rapt upraised faces, the beautiful girls, recall the old florentine singing galleries--cantorias as they are called--the one by donatello and the other by luca della robbia, now in the museo del duomo at florence. in neither has the joy of praise, the delight in making music, found more complete expression. blake's "book of job" is a holy thing. the full compass of his orchestral nature exerted itself for this final effort. all his long sacrifices, deprivations, passionate sorrows and sacred joys, his burning aspirations and his steadfast faith, found their true meaning, their perfect consecration in the blossoming of this supreme flower on his tree of life. it was blake's offering to god, like the sacred host, reserved and offered up in his own hands on the altar of his storm-weary heart. chapter xi work in the exhibition of in the january of messrs. carfax's tiny galleries at , ryder street, st. james's, became a shrine to which all pious lovers of william blake hastened to make their pilgrimage. none of the usual crowd that visit picture shows were to be descried here. blake's appreciators are not those who are most learned in schools of painting, in tricks of style and niceties of technique. they are mainly composed of those who, having a strong pictorial sense, are yet only effectively moved by _ideas_ in art. and what a harvest of ideas was garnered here!--ideas which sprung like athene fully developed and armed from the head of blake--of which head a cast taken by deville the phrenologist was conspicuously placed in the centre of the lower room of the exhibition. the closely-set mouth and jaw, arched and inflated nostrils, massy brow, and intense and rapt expression, tell one something of the nature of this rare and spiritual intellect. out of forty-one exhibits, twenty-five were subjects from the bible, three were single plates repeated from blake's "prophetic books," one was an indian ink drawing illustrating a scene in his poem "tiriel," three were purely imaginative compositions, the keys to which were to be sought in themselves, and seven were illustrations to the poets (three of milton's "paradise lost," one of a scene in shakespeare's "midsummer night's dream," and three sketches to illustrate gray, young, and blair). mainly, then, the exhibition might be said to have dealt with biblical subjects, though good specimens of all kinds of blake's work rendered it representative of his genius in its various phases. from the old byzantine mosaicists through art's early springtime to her full summer in the renaissance, and even since then, no class of subjects has so deeply occupied the mind of painters as sacred history. there are no incidents left untreated in the new testament, and the old has had a large meed of attention, yet we find a painter of such unique and peculiar genius as william blake expending his strength and invention on this well-worn field of motives. but with results so new, so different from anything ever achieved before, that our interest and delight were stimulated in proportion to our susceptibility to blake's influence. i am not saying that this new treatment of biblical subjects, of the gospel story, is finer than the work of the old masters of the golden age of italy. nor do i rank it lower. "the ages are all equal," blake says himself, "but genius is always above its age." the great point is that it is entirely _different_, and that it exhibits a total disregard for traditional treatment. blake only found it _possible_ to see these subjects from his own point of view--one never before attained by any artist. and as objects seen from different outlooks vary in colour, profile, and proportion, so as to be sometimes quite unrecognizable, so do these religious pictures of blake's appear startlingly alien to any we have ever seen before. or as he puts it himself, "if perceptive organs vary, objects of perception seem to vary too." looking round the characteristic and representative collection, the ingenuous student realized that the predominant effect of this art on his mind was one of _strangeness_. it seemed to him unconnected with the past, unrelated to the present, an art set apart, unique, somewhat disquieting, which took him into blake's visionary world, opposed in every sense to the natural world of daily experience. this visionary world of blake's, was minutely discriminated by him, however, and was no formless region of emasculating dreams. the amazing vigour of his conceptions, and the flat contradiction which they impose on the orthodox and traditional images which most people's minds unconsciously harbour, added a sense of shock to that of strangeness. inquiring yet further into the causes of this impression one discovered the truth of w. b. scott's assertion, that blake's genius was unaided by its usual correlative, talent--that facility which enthrones the idea in its appropriately wrought shrine, dowers it with its organically perfect form. greatly as blake disliked it to be said, the truth was apparent among these collected works of his, that his execution was seldom equal to his invention. as proof of the strangeness, the independence of his work, we may quote the water-colour drawing of the "three maries with the angel at the sepulchre" (date ), in which the holy women shrink terrified from the angel, with all the shuddering horror that humanity feels at the manifestations of the spiritual world. a small colour-print from "urizen"--called here "the flames of furious desire"--with which we are already very familiar, must have augmented the impression of unique imagination and strangeness to those who had no previous acquaintance with blake's work. the furious raging, the vital majesty of the water-colour called "fire," the delicate and curious imagination in "satan watching the endearments of adam and eve," with many others must have contributed to this effect; but the final strangeness and most curious beauty were to be found in "the nativity," "the river of life," and "the bard." in these, blake's highest and most mystic qualities are manifest, and his divergence from all preconceived ideas startlingly apparent. "the nativity" is a small tempera picture painted on copper without the usual foundation of gesso that blake first laid on the plate. small patches of tempera have been dislodged, showing little gleaming bits of copper, but happily this has occurred mainly at the top part of the picture in the gloom of the roof of the stable. all the long succession of nativities from giotto to correggio ("the soft and effeminate and consequently most cruel demon," as blake termed him) seem not to have touched his imagination. most artists carry an "infused remembrance" of great pictures in their mind, and can seldom divest themselves of the subtle influence emanating therefrom. but blake's picture is not in any sense a composition which even unconsciously has been built up with the aid of memory. imagination has here become vision, the uncovering of the veritable image; and blake has faithfully copied what his entranced consciousness beheld. mary, white as the lilies of her annunciation, has fallen back fainting into the arms of joseph, while above her prostrate body, "a mist of the colour of fire" would seem to have gradually taken form and become incarnate in the exquisite beauty of the infant jesus. light as thistledown and shining like a star, so that the whole chamber--with the terrified joseph, the white mother, the oxen feeding--are all illuminated by its intense radiance--this apotheosis of divinity in childhood takes flight to the outstretched arms of st. elizabeth, who sits on the floor with a quaint little st. john praying in her lap. the open window through which is discerned the star in the east, takes the imagination out into the night of limitless mystery. [illustration: the nativity tempera painting on copper. this reproduction is taken from w. b. scott's etching from the original picture. it is undated] the technique is superior to most of blake's work in tempera, and is adequate, the rendering of light in the picture containing qualities nothing short of marvellous. it was impossible to look at this "nativity" without being moved. the event appeared to blake entirely supernatural in effect as in cause. he seems to have attached no historical value to it, nor indeed to any of his biblical subjects. they were to him merely symbols of eternal ideas, projected by the holy ghost into the world for its enlightenment, and of these ideas christ was the chiefest; but every idea he thought capable of manifesting itself equally in diverse symbols. his mind had some of the contemplative and impersonal characteristics of the oriental, and by its original processes he was enabled to appreciate the true inwardness of christianity as the western mind cannot do. christianity was born in the east like the star of its epiphany, and has come to maturity in the west, but its most mystical secrets will be hid from us until it has returned again and bathed in the immemorial symbolism and true occultism of the east. being so unfortunate as not to obtain leave from the "nativity's" present owner to reproduce it in these pages, i have been obliged to take our illustration from the etching which william bell scott made after the original, and for which permission was courteously granted me by messrs. chatto and windus. it is but the shadow of a shadow, for bell scott's etching is only that, but it will serve to give some idea of the solemn beauty of the tempera painting. now let me recall another purely imaginative composition. "the river of life," a water-colour picture, reminded me in its transparence and delicate brilliance of blake's earlier printed books. it is a rhapsody of heaven. the river of life which flows through the city of god, and in which all new-born souls are dipped, is a mighty stream flowing between green banks, on which are situated the gleaming houses of the city. groups of happy souls wander beside the clear pale waters, and with his back towards us the saviour with two children (new-born souls) in either hand swims towards the river's source, which is the throne of god, typified by the sun. in its rays may be descried adoring angels, reminding us of blake's ardent words, which i have already quoted, "what! it will be questioned, when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire, somewhat like a guinea?" "oh, no, no! i see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying, 'holy, holy, holy is the lord god almighty!'" two angels--angels of the presence--remain suspended in flight above the stream on either side, playing on pipes, while a beautiful strong woman, clad in lemon-yellow robe, swoops down like a bird just above the surface of the stream with lithe strenuous body bent to meet the wind. she is a delicious creation, satisfying the aesthetic sense with completeness. the disposition of the figures in this picture, the decorative arrangement of the overhanging fruit-laden branches of the tree of life, the clear treble notes of colour, made one think of the rare and iridescent art of japan. blake's mood when he painted "the river of life" must have attained to a high and heavenly unity and joy. "the bard" is a picture of quite another order, and pitched in a very different key. here is a twilight world of intellectual notions and poetic motives wafted hither and thither on the blast of the bard's frenzy. the bard himself, a commanding figure, stands on a shelf of rock surveying the vortex, while he smites music from his harp. below, a king and queen and their horses are overwhelmed in a stygian stream. all is dark, with a strange gleam and shimmer here and there, like jewels and burnished silver seen through a purple veil. this was one of the pictures that appeared in blake's own exhibition in his brother's shop, and his description in the celebrated catalogue is well worth quotation: on a rock whose haughty brow frown'd o'er old conway's foaming flood, robed in sable garb of evil with haggard eyes the poet stood: loose his beard and hoary hair streamed like a meteor of the troubled air. weave the warp and weave the woof, the winding-sheet of edward's race. thus the poet gray; and blake commented, "weaving the winding-sheet of edward's race by means of sounds of spiritual music, and its accompanying expressions of spiritual speech, is a bold and daring and most masterly conception that the public have embraced and approved with avidity. "poetry consists in these conceptions, and shall painting be confined to the sordid drudgery of facsimile representations of merely mortal and perishing substances, and not be as poetry and music are, elevated to its own proper sphere of invention and visionary conception? no, it shall not be so! painting as well as poetry and music exists and exults in immortal thoughts. "the connoisseurs and artists who have made objections to mr. blake's mode of representing spirits with real bodies would do well to consider that the venus, the minerva, the jupiter, the apollo, which they admire in greek statues are all of them representations of spiritual existences--of gods immortal--to the ordinary perishing organ of sight; and yet they are embodied and organized in solid marble. mr. blake requires the same latitude and all is well. king edward and queen eleanor are prostrated with their horses at the foot of the rock on which the bard stands--prostrated by the terrors of his harp, on the margin of the river conway, whose waves bear up a corpse of a slaughtered bard at the foot of the rock. the armies of edward are seen winding among the mountains. he wound with toilsome march his long array! "mortimer and gloucester lie spellbound behind the king. the execution of this picture is also in water-colours or fresco," he added finally. it was probably painted in water-colours with white of egg or glue on a medium of gesso. the gloomy glory of its colour was a thing to ponder on. like the dim silvery splendour of a pearl seen in the twilight of deep-sea waters, so does it glint and gleam. in no picture has blake brought home to us more directly the visible population of the world of his mind--its power and grandeur and mystery--than in the complex imagery of this great work. the picture was probably painted in , and was exhibited at the royal academy. it afterwards appeared again at blake's own exhibition in . it is a sad thing that he so seldom dated the pictures which he executed for his staunch friend and supporter mr. butts. the pictures in the exhibition, with a very few exceptions, were originally done for him, but few of them could have an authentic date affixed to them. all blake's original methods of working were here represented by splendid examples. first there are the tempera pictures, or "frescoes," as he termed them. he would never paint in oil-colour, because he thought and wrote that "oil, being a body itself, will drink, or absorb very little colour, and changing yellow, and at length brown, destroys every colour it is mixed with, especially every delicate colour. it turns every permanent white to a yellow or brown putty, and has compelled the use of that destroyer of colour, white lead, which when its protecting oil is evaporated will become lead again," and he hotly affirmed the opinion that "oil became a fetter to genius and a dungeon to art." this being so, he evolved a method of painting in water-colours, stiffened with white of egg or dilute glue, on a ground prepared with whiting or plaster and laid on copper or board. when the "fresco" was finished he varnished it with a preparation of glue. in his old age linnell lent him a copy of cennino cennini's "trattato della pittura," and he was delighted to find that the method he had always employed in his tempera pictures was very like that of the old sixteenth-century painter. occasionally his pictures acquired the mellow harmony, the indescribable deep, yet faded tenderness of the old masters' tempera pictures, as for instance that entitled "bathsheba at the bath seen by david." there is nothing supernatural or weird here, save the flowers which grow around the pool, and they are like the strange mysterious blooms that appear to one in dreams. bathsheba, nude and beautiful, with her two childish attendants, one on either side, somehow recalls the work of masaccio and filippino lippi in the chapel of the carmine at florence, perhaps because it is so nobly naturalistic in treatment. another beautiful tempera is "the flight into egypt." it was painted in --the year of the "marriage of heaven and hell." holman hunt developed in his magnificent picture of the same subject a poetic motive first used by blake. the great may take from the great without shame. the angelic spirits of the martyred innocents flutter around the mother and child, while the ass on which they ride is followed by angels with great gloomy wings, like night made visible and beneficent. the virgin's little delicate face looks wistfully from the dim picture like one of gentile da fabbriano's small jewel-clear miniatures, and a crescent moon shines vaguely silver through the darkness. this is a picture of high and tender imaginative quality, more in the spirit of old masters like fra angelico, it must be admitted, than characteristically blakean in expression. there are three other methods used by blake, of which one--the printed or engraved outline, filled in with hand-wrought water-colour--is so familiar to us from the examples studied at the british museum, that we need not linger to describe it again. at the british museum we have also seen many of blake's "colour-printed" designs, but not any nearly as fine as the two pictures entitled "hecate" and "lamech and his two wives" of the exhibition. the process, according to the younger tatham's account, was as follows: "blake when he wanted to make his prints in oil, took a common thick millboard and drew, in some strong ink or colour, his designs upon it strong and thick. he then painted upon that in such oil colours and on such a state of fusion that they would blur well. he painted roughly and quickly, so that no colour would have time to dry. he then took a print of that on paper, and this impression he coloured up in water-colours, repainting his outline on the millboard when he wanted to take another impression; and each having a sort of accidental look, he could branch out so as to make each one different. the accidental look they had was very enticing." the depth and grandeur of tone obtained in "hecate" are unique, and, united to the sombre majesty of the composition, form a most satisfying work to eye and intellect. looking closely at the technique, the colour is seen to be collected in little pin-head dots all over the ground, in a manner that clearly points to its having been impressed while yet wet, with some carefully roughened surface, but just what means were used to obtain this effect must always remain a mystery. [illustration: the flight into egypt tempera painting. reproduced by kind permission of mr. w. graham robertson] the finest example of the process is, however, "lamech and his two wives," in which the tragic nature of the subject is deepened by the colour-printing, here most successfully handled. pure water-colour, sometimes delicately outlined with the pen, was blake's fourth mode of working, and the exhibition had a goodly array of this class of work. we have mentioned "the river of life," perhaps the most beautiful example extant, but several others, noticeably "oberon, titania, and puck with fairies dancing" and "the wise and foolish virgins," were very lovely. the first represents blake in a rare mood, his mysticism in abeyance, and his temper one of aesthetic abandon. we are so little accustomed to think of him as an artist of varied and wide appeal, that this rhythmic dance, which acted on the spectator like music, surprised. it has in it the delirious joy of elemental things. the fairies' delicate muslins are fetched out like mist in the greenwood; butterflies' wings and petals of flower adorn their dainty heads. puck has wings on the back of his hands (a new and delightful idea this!), and the rapid graceful movements of the dance do not seem to be arrested by their embodiment in a painting. though this phase of blake is distinctly novel, even strange to us, it is entirely delightful. there is no stress, no repelling yet attractive mystery as in the "hecate" here. it is just pure "joie de vivre." "the wise and foolish virgins" is much more characteristic of him. the wise virgins in the foreground are ranged in a row, their lamps by their sides. their bodies and faces are smitten with a cold unearthly white light, presumably, but not obviously, thrown by the lamps. the modelling of their forms is most careful. behind them, issuing from a small hut, the foolish virgins, in wild confusion, implore oil for their lamps. the landscape in which the scene is laid is anything but eastern. dark, intensely green downs undulate and swell to meet the sky. a lurid light defines the horizon, and in the swathed masses of gray cloud above, an angel blowing a trump (suggesting a last judgement) wings his fateful way. it may easily be urged (and the prosaic mind which only rejoices in the precise and neat imitation of what it can _see_ is sure to exclaim) that here is a defiance of all artistic rules, a pitiable inability to copy the most ordinary natural phenomena, proclaiming blake a wilful "poseur" or an unobservant madman. "here," they exclaim, "is little atmosphere, no distance, no attempt at truth of tone, and no comprehensible rendering of the light." blake rendered it as he did because he _chose_; because his masterly sense of style (that is, the treatment best suited to the representation of the idea, his subjective vision) required it to be so painted and thus only, because he considered himself free to take from nature just what he needed for his purpose, and never felt himself obliged to make an entire and wholly truthful representation of her. to emphasize the light on the figures of the foreground, he overcharged the colour in the sky and the downs behind, and by this treatment obtained an effect productive of strange and solemn emotion in the beholder. nature was to him shadow or reminiscence only, and here he has defiantly subordinated the truth of the landscape to the spiritual truth of his subject. [illustration: oberon, titania and puck with fairies dancing water-colour. undated. reproduced by kind permission of mr. a. a. de pass] the most significant types were revealed in his soul, and owned a relationship to the visible creation only in so far as this relationship was necessary to render his art-work intelligible to the world. his decorative sense approved of the white virgins set so statue-pale against the dark green of the downs. the suddenness of the contrast, the livid and supernatural effect, were part of his deliberate intention. so does the white fire of an intense spiritual alertness contrast with the opaque darkness of natural physical life. for this scene, taken from the parable of jesus, is only another of those types which blake regarded in so wide and catholic a sense, and which by his treatment he has lifted above all merely historical association into a realm of pure spiritual symbolism. the pleasure derived from the examination of his collected pictures is rather that of a profound intellectual excitement than a purely aesthetic satisfaction. the climax of this excitement is reached before the two pictures called, respectively, "elohim creating adam" and "satan triumphing over eve." how different is blake's conception of the former subject to michael angelo's, and yet, widely different as they are, somehow we know them to be related. elohim, in the vortex of the winds, lifts a face pale with awe and power, as he calls into being from the clay below him a figure scarcely human yet, and stamped with the stamp of terrestrial creeping mortality. a snake binds one leg, and there is no other suggestion of life about this half-developed repelling organism. but presently elohim will breathe into the clay, and then this thing (which somehow recalls mrs. shelley's "frankenstein" to my shuddering fancy!) will arise and live. michael angelo chose the right moment, the body made beautiful but languid, and god's finger applied like a magnet to the limp hand through which the fiery currents of life are just beginning to flow in thrilling gushes into the perfect body. but blake, with a more curious care for the earlier part of the process of creation, a more meditative and less dramatic sense, invites us to dwell on, not the final perfect beauty of created man, but his partial evolution from the dark earth to which he will one day return. the accidental character of the body of man, the universal nature of the spirit of god, without whose inspiration there is no beauty nor comeliness--these are thoughts on which he mused while painting this great and terrible picture. the death-weary figure of eve in the companion picture was a haunting thing. overcome by the serpent's wiles, eve lies prostrate in the tightening coils, and the cruel flat head is pressed upon the white breast, whose power to resist is quite gone. the struggle is over, the delicate body is relaxed, the little head has fallen back piteously, and the eyes are closed, for no blue heavens smile comfort down on her who lies so low in the dust. satan in clouds of terror triumphs above her, and her overthrow is complete. a little sketch in pencil, ink and wash, called "satan, sin and death," has a human figure (strangely enough that of satan), finely posed, and drawn with infinite power. the vigorous torso, slender hips, fine and muscular legs, are classic in their heroic proportions, but it must be admitted that the inspiration of the sketch as a whole is below blake's level. i must notice a very fine and highly-finished water-colour, called "the judgment of paris." the subject was a congenial one to blake, who entertained the most original notions about classic legend and literature. he wrote in the descriptive catalogue: "the artist (blake) having been taken in vision into the ancient republics, monarchies, and patriachates of asia, has seen those wonderful originals called in the sacred scriptures the cherubim, which were sculptured and painted on walls of temples, towers, cities, palaces, and erected in the highly-cultivated states of egypt, moab, eden, arum among the rivers of paradise--being the originals from which the greeks and hetruvians copied hercules farnese, venus of medicis, apollo belvedere, and all the grand works of ancient art.... "no man can believe that either homer's mythology or ovid's was the production of greece or latium; neither will anyone believe that the greek statues, as they are called, were the invention of greek artists; perhaps the torso is the only original work remaining, all the rest being evidently copies, though fine ones, from the greater works of the asiatic patriarchs. the greek muses are daughters of mnemosyne or memory, and not of inspiration or imagination, therefore not authors of such sublime conceptions." in this ingenious way did blake seek to justify his admiration for the old pagan art, the old pagan mythology. they were recollections of symbols and ideas given by god to the ancient patriarchs of the old testament, and from them had filtered through to the civilization of greece and rome. to blake it all amounted to this, "god hath not left himself without witnesses," and he vehemently protested against any race, age, or religion arrogating to itself the authorship of ideas which should only be ascribed to god. so that the "judgment of paris" is treated like the biblical subjects, as a spiritual parable. when the apple of desire is given to mere sensual beauty instead of to moral or intellectual beauty, love, the winged spirit, flies away, and discord, the malformed demon, arrives. the three goddesses' forms, delicate as reeds, pure as blake's austere imagination, and modelled with tender care for their lovely limbs, hands and faces, awaken in us a great wonder at the technique he could command when he chose. one of the tenderest and most beautiful of blake's slightly tinted drawings, "the vision of queen katherine"--we are enabled to reproduce through the kindness of its present owner, sir charles dilke. the composition is of exceeding harmony, the delicate outlines being suave, fluent, gracious, to a singular degree. sweetness and tenderness are its predominant characteristics, and it is without a rival among blake's works in this respect, saving perhaps for the picture, "and when they had sung an hymn they ascended unto the mount of olives." katherine, sick unto death, has been soothed to sleep by music: cause the musicians play me that sad note i named my knell, whilst i sit meditating on that celestial harmony i go to, she had asked. griffith and patience sit beside her, unconscious of the vision that is blessing her sleep. katherine, beautiful and crowned, "makes in her sleep signs of rejoicing, and holdeth up her hands to heaven." angels of diminutive but exquisite forms float in circles above her, and two are holding a crown of laurels over her head. many pictures--the indian ink drawing called "the deluge," an infinite waste of stormy sea; "the entombment," a picture of solemn intensity and originality; and others deserve description and comment, but space does not allow. the exhibition was an occasion of much illumination to blake's admirers, and the thoughts on his art which it gave rise to may be happily summarized in a passage from heine's "salon": "art attains its highest value when the symbol, apart from its inner meaning, delights our senses externally, like the flowers of a _selam_, which without regard to their secret signification are blooming and lovely, bound in a bouquet." [illustration: the vision of queen katherine, from shakspere's "henry viii." slightly tinted pencil drawing, executed in for mr. butts. reproduced by kind permission of sir charles dilke] "but is such concord always possible? is the artist so completely free in choosing and binding his mysterious flowers? or does he only choose and bind together what he must? i affirm this question of mystical un-freedom or want of will. the artist is like that somnambula princess who plucked by night in the garden of bagdad, inspired by the deep wisdom of love, the strangest flowers, and bound them into a _selam_, of whose meaning she remembered nothing when she awoke. there she sat in the morning in her harem, and looked at the _bouquet de nuit_, musing on it as over a forgotten dream, and finally sent it to the beloved caliph. the fat eunuch who brought it greatly enjoyed the beautiful flowers without suspecting their meaning. but haroun al raschid, the commander of the faithful, the follower of the prophet, the possessor of the ring of solomon, he recognized the deep meaning of the beautiful bouquet; his heart bounded with delight; he kissed every blossom, and laughed till tears ran down his long beard." we may not be followers of the prophet, nor rejoice in long beards or magic rings, yet i dare assert that in entering into the meaning, the deep "_innigkeit_" of the _selam_ which blake presented to us, we have entered on a new phase of spiritual and artistic life not less intensely delightful than the joy experienced by the prophet. chapter xii engravings and drawings in the print room i am afraid that the first view of blake's engraving of "the canterbury pilgrimage" will prejudice the spectator unfavourably towards our artist, even if the work by him already seen has made its fascination felt. especially will this prejudice be heightened if the engraving from stothard's picture of the same subject be set against blake's and compared with it, for blake's astonishes and repels on first sight, while stothard's pleases at once. in stothard's composition the variety of the company, and especially of the horses they ride, is charming. very different are the grim ranks of blake's procession, the ten horses therein exhibiting only three positions among them, and those positions being all traditionally faithful to the hobby-horse type. stothard's motley throng are gracefully habited, and appear dainty and spruce in spite of the dust of the highway as they amble along. his lighting of the picture, the firm and effective modelling of the horses and their riders, the wide range of tones amounting almost to colour itself, give a satisfying richness which we fail to find in blake's picture. the whole composition is harmonious, and for those who desire nothing further of art than that it shall cater for the eye without much or intimate reference to the mind, then stothard's graceful performance is indeed pre-eminent. turning to blake's picture, we find he has catered for the mind, but, having done that, he has denied us the one thing of which stothard is so prodigal--beauty. in his restless search beneath the surface with which beauty obviously is concerned, for the things of the spirit and the intelligence underlying the appearance, blake has here lost sight of art's first principle, beauty in the whole, as the result of the parts. the composition in its entirety is not beautiful. it has no harmony. it is an accretion of separate parts, made out without reference to the picture's final unity. these parts, although some are beautiful in themselves, are not intimately related to each other, and contribute so little towards a general predominant scheme that the effect of discord is produced, and the multitudinous meanings and intentions with which each figure is fraught over-weight the composition and confuse the beholder; the simple reason of all this being, that the first obligation of the painter, his sense of harmony and balance, has been ruthlessly violated. perhaps blake's sense of style--about which i imagine he never reasoned, it being innate and intuitive--deserted him on this one occasion, because anger was making havoc in his heart and blinding his eyes. the conditions under which he worked, it will be remembered, must have been destructive to all concentration and artistic isolation of mood. still, as i have said, though sadly wanting as a whole, there is beauty of an intricate and curious sort in the details. look on the wide expanse of swelling downs over-arched by the tragic splendour of an evening sky. here the thought, as ever with blake, is lifted up above the accidents, into the eternal and the infinite. but stothard's gentle hills and bowery trees shut out such vistas, and he concerns himself scarcely at all about the sky, which is merely the background on which to throw up the graceful heads of his graceful unintelligent folk. the characteristic group of children with their mother and grandfather, which blake has set beside the gateway of the tabard inn, has great beauty as a single motive. no labour has been spared to make all faithful to the chaucerian conception: the curious semi-gothic gateway, the crowding pigeons, the barbaric splendours of the wife of bath, the mediaeval figure of the knight, whose face reminds one somewhat of the supposed portrait of cimabue in the chapel of the spaniards in santa maria novella; all have been wrought with painful care. the work is an illustration of blake's principle enunciated in his notes on reynolds' "discourses" and elsewhere that "real effect is making out of parts, and it is nothing else but that." perhaps the strangest trait the engraving exhibits in comparison with stothard's is that it looks so antique. it might have been executed a hundred years earlier than the other picture, so wilfully grotesque and archaic is it. yes, _wilfully_ is the word, for blake _wished_ to make his procession as stiff and quaint and rich as the stately chaucerian language that first painted the scene, forgetting perhaps that the two arts of poetry and painting achieve the same end through widely different conditions, and according to processes contiguous, but non-interchangeable. the want of ease, of careless and familiar naturalism in the engraving, may recall to those who look for it the splendid and ceremonious language of the old story-teller. the description written by blake of his own design (it will be found in gilchrist) shows how he loved and understood chaucer, and, we may add, how very loosely the poem was grasped, and with what want of truth to the original it was represented by his rival. lamb said of the engraving itself that it was "a work of wonderful power and spirit, hard and dry, yet with grace," and the descriptive catalogue--a copy of which was given him by crabb robinson--pleased him greatly; the part devoted to an analysis of the characters in the "canterbury pilgrimage" he found to be "the finest criticism of chaucer's poem he had ever read." savagely powerful as it is, the engraving is merely an interesting and not a vital utterance of blake. the tempera picture from which it was engraved was bought by mr. butts, but has been lost sight of now for many years. stothard's oil painting of the same subject is in the national gallery. turning to the other original single engravings of blake in the print room, we find several of interest. there is that early one, designed and engraved in , which has been called "glad day," and is the expression of a mood oftener felt in blake's early manhood than in the ensuing years of chafing complexity and multitudinous emotions. i have wondered whether it be not the pictorial embodiment of the vision which he saw of the "spiritual sun on primrose hill," described by him to crabb robinson. among the original engravings here may be seen the broadsheet of "little tom the sailor," executed by blake for hayley while at felpham in , for a charitable purpose. hayley's verses and blake's designs were bitten in with stopping-out varnish on the pewter plate of the original from which the prints are taken. in the designs setting out the misfortunes of a poor widow and the heroism of her little son he has given us one theme of natural scenery--a winding path, a little wood surmounted by bare folded downs--testifying to the invasion which the obvious beauty of felpham had made on his artistic consciousness; while the other illustration represents the tragic moment when little tom on the wreck is about to be drowned; over the trough of deep sea the spiritual form of his father appears ready to receive and embrace his soul. mrs. blake's hand unfortunately has coloured the print room copy. and now let us turn to the pen-and-ink etchings to dante, designed and executed for mr. linnell between the years and , the year of blake's death. there are seven of them, wrought by the pen, which had become so deliberate, careful and delicate in execution during these last years of his life. let us linger over two of them for a moment. among the many pictures of paolo and francesca that exist, was there ever seen anything like this of blake's imagining? you may prefer others--ary scheffer's, dante rossetti's, or mr. g. f. watts'--you may object that this one has not grappled with the passionate love-motive of the story, that it has omitted the note of yearning, of beloved pain, with which dante's conception is fraught. the austerity of a mind which theorized much on the subject of love--the love of man and woman--but knew actually very little of its vehemence, its trouble, and its languorous sweetness, forbade blake to focus in the figures of paolo and francesca the ideal tragedy of those "whom love bereav'd of life." the scene as a whole--that second circle of the inferno, in which the stormy blast of hell with restless fury drives the spirits on, whirl'd round and dashed amain with sore annoy-- was what arrested his imagination. here, in his rendering of the subject, the blast has torn upward in a visible ribbon-like vortex from the surface of the waters, bearing within it, as images in a crystal, the innumerable figures of the world's great lovers. from a spit of land, paolo and francesca, fluttering "light before the wind," appear in a single tongue of flame, and dante lies stretched upon the ground--"through compassion fainting." virgil is seen irradiated by the effulgent light which trembles around the disc wherein the immortal kiss--that which rostand calls "_l'instant d'infini_"--is poetically represented. [illustration: the circle of the lustful fine indian ink pen drawing, in the print room, - . francesca da rimini, canto v. of the "inferno"] as usual, the force, the unusualness of the conception, rather than its ideal beauty are the points we notice first. but closer study attests to its beauty too. mere literary interest would give the picture no real claim to artistic regard. but blake felt the drawing of each bounding line as a thing of beauty in itself, having an aesthetic element of its own, apart from its representative or symbolic use. in that coil of entangled fates, what manifold themes of pure sensuous beauty are to be found! for instance--just at the leap and bend of the circle--appears a woman with arms extended in the fluent wind, like a bird in flight, and a man's embrace encircles her neck--a man whose face she kisses rapturously. leaping, floating, falling, the multitudinous figures are borne onward by the resistless force of that terrible blast; and, however foreign or antipathetic this embodiment of dante's vision may seem to us, we are bound to admit that its imaginative scope is of a temper characteristic not only of blake, but of the florentine himself. an aspect of dante's conception is developed and emphasized here in a manner which has not been attempted in any other picture of the subject. the other pen-and-ink drawing from the "inferno" represents dante and virgil in the circle of the traitors, with the head of bocca degli abati breaking through the lake of ice at the foot of dante. blake has given strangely passionless faces to his dante and virgil, but the pure simple lines of their figures are severely congruous with the scene, and the iceberg, formed of shadowy frozen figures to the right, is powerfully suggested by a few lines of sufficient economy. the picture is another of those unique embodiments from which, once seen and dwelt on, the modern imagination can never release itself. gustave doré's sensational rendering of the same scene seems to me to acknowledge an inspiration at this source. the other five designs to dante merit a description and attention which space does not allow us to give them here. they are of great power, but whether the unflinching realization of the terrible imaginings of dante is permissible in pictorial art--where the visual representation attacks the emotions and intellect with a poignancy that words, however forcible, can never attain--is a question the discussion of which may provide food for argument to critics of the school of lessing. for my own part, i incline to the opinion that they overstep the bounds of terror authorized in art, and approach the confines of the horrible in the treatment of the main motive of each design--"admirably horrid," mr. w. m. rossetti pronounces them. the unwavering truth to dante's detailed descriptions is beyond question, however. the inmost sanctuary of an artist's mind is far more accessible through his pencil sketches than through his final consummated pictures and designs. there is something so intimate, so personal in these manifestations of himself, that in regarding them i have something of the feeling of one who listens unseen to a man thinking aloud. nothing convinces one of the labour, the thought, the balancing, the rejections, the careful choice, that go to make up a picture like the study of the sketches made for it. the peculiarity of blake's pencil sketches is their vehemence, and the absence in them of all hesitation. he seems from the first moment of conception to know exactly what he means to do, and rough, almost hieroglyphic, as the first shadow of his idea may appear at first sight, we have only to compare it with the design or picture which eventually resulted from it, to see that all the rapid "short-hand" lines of the sketch, block out accurately the disposition of the main parts of the design, the final attitude of the figures therein, without as a rule any real variation from the first idea having taken place in the working out. this testifies more than anything else to the distinctness of the vision seen by blake, and his eager passionate discernment of it. among such sketches of clearly apprehended vision is that for "the soul exploring the recesses of the grave," the final design of which we are already very familiar with. it is executed with a broad-ended chalk pencil, in quick unhesitating lines. there is not a single touch that cannot be traced, that is not an essential development, in the finished picture, so that we know blake saw it all from the first, complete then in his mind's eye as on the day when he finished the detailed drawing for the engraver. another sketch of the same order is one which, although it does not belong to any public collection, is so important as to excuse a reference to it here. through the great kindness of mr. frederick shields, to whom it belongs, i am enabled to reproduce it. the two motives of the picture in blair's "grave," called "death's door," had been favourite ones with blake, and used by him separately in "the gates of paradise," "the marriage of heaven and hell," and "america," before he combined them so felicitously in the noble design which ranks among his best works. the sketch by blake belonging to mr. shields would seem to represent the moment when he first realized the power and significance and beauty to be obtained by their incorporation in one design. of this conception it must be admitted that it grew in blake's mind after the first flashing vision of it, and was not from the beginning discernible in all the splendour to which it was eventually developed. here is another beautiful and careful sketch of a female figure diving through the air. the force of her perpendicular flight, the attitude of one leg (the left, not the right, however) recall the "reunion of the soul and the body," but this figure is undraped, and the arms are extended downwards, and indeed the differences are so numerous that it cannot be regarded as a sketch for that picture. in all probability it is a preliminary study for one of the numerous figures in the "last judgment" which he executed for the countess of egremont in . looking at the terse expressive little drawing, we are reminded of blake's "golden rule of art"--"that the more distinct, sharp, and wiry the boundary line, the more perfect the work of art." ah! but how he played with his line! "wiry" at least it never was, say what blake would! he never "painted" it, but felt his way along with sympathetic accuracy. and with what infinite inflexions of tenderness and strength did his pencil impress itself on the paper, indicating by that rare quality of touch more than form and modelling--almost, one had said--the very nature of the flesh of the figures he drew. speaking of blake's drawings, the manner in which he drew the muscular form of the male leg is very noticeable and strangely characteristic of him. another line he felt very tenderly was the curved sweep of a woman's back from shoulder to indented waist, and downwards to delicate ankles and heels. [illustration: undated pencil sketch for "death's door" reproduced by kind permission of mr. frederic j. shields] let us linger a minute over another of what i may call blake's shorthand sketches in the print room collection. it is undoubtedly the first idea for the picture entitled "the spiritual form of nelson guiding leviathan, in whose wreathings are enfolded the nations of the earth." the finished picture appeared in blake's own exhibition in ; it is now in the possession of t. w. jackson, esq., of worcester college, oxford. in the sketch, "nelson" is drawn symbolically as a young sea-god, nude and commanding. he stands firmly on a coil of leviathan's body, which rearing and circling surrounds him like a frame. we can just distinguish the human forms caught in the serpent's toils, and its great mouth is in the act of devouring a man. the mouth is bridled, and the reins held by nelson's hand. the symbolism is easy enough to understand and requires no explanation. a carefully shaded and conscientious drawing of a naked man with arms upraised testifies to the fact that blake _did_ work from the model sometimes. but how cold such work appears--valuable and necessary as it is--compared with the passionate half-defined sketches, the mood of which transfers to us something of the high pleasure that blake himself felt in making these burning transcripts from his imagination or visions. i had much ado to make out the subject of the pen-and-wash sketch of a woman and man with a group of people on their knees in a cornfield. in the distance a thunder-cloud emits a lightning flash. mr. shields tells me that he and dante gabriel rossetti spent an evening trying to decipher a larger and more definite sketch of the same idea, and finally decided that it was an illustration of the following verses ( sam. xii. - ): "now therefore stand and see this great thing which the lord will do before your eyes. is it not wheat harvest to-day? i will call unto the lord and he shall send thunder and rain; that ye may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the lord, in asking you a king. so samuel called unto the lord, and the lord sent thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the lord and samuel." among the many other sketches which space does not permit me to comment on, are two very beautiful studies in red chalk, showing blake to be a master of line indeed. of his engravings after designs by stothard, romney, flaxman, hogarth, examples of which the print room possesses, it is not necessary to speak, for this book is not concerned with engraving or any other technical branch of art. its purpose is merely to examine into, and if possible lay bare, the nature of the artistic impulse that makes the work of blake--as we may all know it in our public collections--so rare and so precious a thing. but though we shall not concern ourselves with these engravings, as they contribute nothing to our purpose, it is interesting to look at the numerous copies which our artist made from prints of michael angelo's frescoes on the roof of the sistine, from drawings after the antique, and from cumberland's "designs for engravings." these latter are pen drawings of greek figures--similar to those represented on old black and yellow vases--and display the greek ideal of form, so beautiful yet so passionless and un-individual, when compared with the figures of the great florentine, in which the soul with all its struggles is apparent. copying such diverse work faithfully--"for," wrote blake, "servile copying is the great merit of copying"--must have made him think, compare, choose. goethe says that his study of the ancient classic literature convinced him "that a vast abundance of objects must lie before us ere we can think upon them,--that we must accomplish something, nay, fail in something, before we can learn our own capacities and those of others." and this was much more the case with blake and his art than might be supposed. it was not ignorance of other ideals, of other methods of thought and work, that caused him to take the artistic path he did; it was definite choice, the ratification of his innate, strongly individualistic tendencies, resulting from comparing them with the characteristic principles of art exhibited in other ages, other masters. blake in fact copied a good deal; he himself writes in his notes on reynolds, "the difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal, the good one really does copy a great deal." [illustration: head of an old man pencil, pen, and wash drawing. undated] turning to his water-colour sketches in the print room, i consider the finest to be a very portrait-like head of an old man. it was evidently put in in pencil and pale washes of colour, and afterwards strengthened, rather daringly, with pen-and-ink outlines. the face with its deep eyes and noble contours is that of a seer, awestruck before his vision. it is in such work as this--swift, strong and delicate--that we see blake at his best. in finished work--such little as he has left us--some heat, some fire seems to have escaped, but in sketches such as this the inspiration is contained in all its strongly-spiced vitality; that which is left undone, assisting that which is done, in producing an impression of energy and imaginative development. a pale-tinted, very careful and elaborate drawing of the whore of babylon, as blake imagined her, next claims our attention. it was etched and reproduced by william bell scott. never did blake represent so voluptuous, so sensual a face, as this of the whore of babylon, which in spite of its beauty is of the same type as that of the wife of bath in his "canterbury pilgrimage." in its expression it has no fellow, save perhaps the face of leda in michael angelo's small statuette in the bargello. the woman is seated on a seven-headed semi-human monster, and she holds in her hand a cup out of which smoke issues and condenses in the forms of floating men and women of incomparable grace. these swim around her head in a long ribbon-like streamer, and as the little figures reach the ground they are devoured by the seven heads. they symbolize the pleasures, ambitions, lusts of this world. another beautiful water-colour, in faint and tender colour, is perhaps the very vignette for blair's "grave," which blake sent to cromek with his verses of dedication to the queen, and which was returned on his hands with such a cruel and insulting letter. part of this design has been etched and reproduced by william bell scott. a mother and her young family, from whose ankles the chains of mortality have just been severed, ascend upward with looks of solemn exaltation on their rapt faces. they form a noble group. above, on the left, is an angel with a sword and key who has presumably just set them free; he is death, i suppose--a young and beautiful death; while to the right is another apollo-like being, who holds a pair of scales and represents st. michael. in the most ancient italian pictures the archangel is often pictured as weighing the souls of the newly dead. a large and very important water-colour drawing is called the "lazar house," from milton. it is one of blake's terrible works, and has a tendency to haunt the memory unpleasantly. it is very powerful. [illustration: the whore of babylon water colour drawing, ] a great blind, bearded figure, with outstretched arms--death in another aspect--is suspended in air over a scene of painfulness and intense horror, such as few artists would dare to represent. the victims of plague are writhing in death-agonies on the floor, while a figure to the right, with sinister face and nervous hand clutching a bolt (or is it a knife?), fills the spectator with insane shudderings and alarm. he eyes the sufferers with gloating satisfaction, and the fact that he is coloured green as verdigris from head to foot does not detract from his horrible fascinations. i can never get over the feeling that pictures such as these caused blake profound pain, that indeed he sought relief from their dominion over his mental life by turning the vision that haunted him into a definite artistic image, thus by the act of projection getting rid of the disquieting, the torturing inward tyrant. for with him, as i have striven to show, all thought came with the definiteness of vision; so that he could not read milton's or dante's descriptions without seeing the thing described, immediately start into visible being before him. a finished and elaborate water-colour of a female recumbent figure on a tomb, with a foreground starred with brilliant flowers, is called "letho similis," but in no respect is it like blake's work, and there seems no reason whatever to consider it as having been done by his hand, except that it has passed as his for a long time. so acute a critic as mr. w. m. rossetti casts doubt on the authorship of the work in his descriptive catalogue. on the whole i think the review of blake's pencil sketches and drawings impress one as powerfully as any of the work of his which we have previously seen, and mainly for the reason that it is in these that we can most clearly trace his thoughts in process of evolution. and now all that remains for us to do is to visit the national gallery, and there in the little octagonal room behind the turner gallery seek out those few precious works which are the representatives of his genius to the public at large. whether that public often penetrates here, or, being here, lingers even momently before the few strange little pictures by blake which it contains, may be questioned. that they are not popular, and that the little room is never crowded, needs no demonstration. blake's greatness is not of the kind that can ever compete successfully with the claims of such masters as his contemporaries--stothard, romney, gainsborough and reynolds--whose brilliant and alluring work adorns the galleries through which one must pass to reach the little octagonal room where his few pictures, modestly retired behind the door, await such as will patiently seek them out. first let us look at the water-colour numbered , entitled "david delivered out of deep waters." it has qualities of handling akin to the "river of life," belonging to captain butts, and the conception is specially blakean. david, with his arms bound round with cords, floats symbolically on dark waters. above, seven cherubim, with wings interlacing like the shields of a phalanx, swoop down in rhythmic ranks, with christ in their centre. the remarkable thing about these cherubim is that two have the faces of children, two those of old white-bearded men, two those of mature manhood, while the centre one alone, immediately below christ, has the face of a beautiful youth. the figure and attitude of the saviour have a noble grace, but the face is weak and ineffectual, as is usual with blake when treating the divine lineaments. the effect of the picture--with those strong, ordered wings in ranks, recalling the banners borne in some rich church procession--is one of curious symmetry, of almost heraldic composition. a delicate and remote strangeness of imagination makes itself felt in every line, every tint; and the range of tone is noticeably peculiar, the deepest and highest parts of the scale being used with great effect, while no recourse has been had to the intermediate gamut, so that there is no full body of colour present at all. the nearest approach to it is the quivering pale golden light that is diffused around the figure of christ. [illustration: david, delivered out of many waters water-colour. in national gallery, undated] no. , "the procession from calvary," is a tempera picture reminiscent in quality of colour of the _quattrocento_ italian masters. stiff, composed and straight is the body of jesus laid on the bier. three pairs of bearers support the holy burden on their shoulders. the virgin alone, and two other women side by side, follow the _cortége_, while in the distance calvary, with its three crosses, may be seen; and jerusalem is represented by a group of buildings defiantly gothic in character. the bearers and the women moving across the foreground so majestically, so quietly, might be the somewhat stiff rendering of an idea, inspired by the procession in a basrelief on some old greek or roman sarcophagus, such as mantegna or andrea del castagno worked out on canvas. then there is a highly-finished water-colour of an allegory--numbered --to be studied. it is soon evident to the spectator that the elaborate composition owns as central motive the atonement, with all the symbolic correspondences which in the scriptures predicted it. at the highest point of the picture is a medallion wherein the almighty is represented. dull flames flicker and smoke around, while on them is inscribed in very small writing the significant words "god out of christ is a consuming fire." this, as we know, was a much-insisted-on doctrine of blake's, for he seems to have denied at times the responsible fatherhood of god; and never did he share the respectable conception of him, prevalent at that day even more than in this, which tennyson so aptly defined as "an immeasurable clergyman." below the medallion are little scenes displaying the death of abel, the flood, the sacrifice of isaac, the transfiguration, and, finally, the symbolic vision of the holy grail. all these separate but related motives are woven together, with subsidiary scenes to right and left, into one intricate and most beautiful scheme. the low tones of the composition, the dim, delicate tinting, bring the varied and multitudinous parts into a harmony of effect that is very delightful, while the spiritual and intellectual material with which it is characteristically builded up, send our thoughts voyaging out like birds over the sea of religious mysticism. i have left the most important picture to be dealt with last. the tempera picture, numbered , was painted as the companion to "nelson and leviathan"--a sketch for which is in the british museum, it will be remembered--and was shown for the first time at blake's own exhibition in . in his descriptive catalogue the title ran as follows: "the spiritual form of pitt guiding behemoth; he is that angel, who, pleased to perform the almighty's orders, rides on the whirlwind directing the storms of war; he is ordering the reaper to reap the vine of the earth, and the ploughman to plough up the cities and towers." at first sight the figure of a beautiful young man is the one thing that stands out clearly from the dim splendour and bewildering detail of the picture. this noble form, instinct with power and authority, represents the spiritual body of pitt. a gleaming halo surrounds his head, and the background is massed with seething indistinct figures. here and there strange glancing lights and phosphorescent stars emit a milky radiance, but it is some few minutes before the eye can distinguish the head and back of leviathan. on either side of the great halo appears a man's form; one holds the crescent moon by way of sickle, the other presses heavily upon a harrow. they are the reaper, death, and the ploughman equality. all is steeped in gloomy twilight touched here and there with subdued yet brilliant light, as of moonlight on water. strange little figures seem to gather form out of the brownish mist before one's very eyes, and there is something of a miraculous charm on this cosmos--the fruit of the travail of blake's intellect. [illustration: the spiritual form of pitt guiding behemoth tempera. or earlier. in the national gallery] of serenity, of clarity, there is none; but blake's virtue, his quality with its necessary attendant defects, dominates this work and makes it precious in the sense of a unique record of a unique conception. therefore it is fittingly placed as a representative of blake's genius in our national palace of art. what the place assigned to blake by future generations will be is not for me to predict. that he has been gravely misapprehended and foolishly neglected until the last few years is common knowledge, but even to-day the ranks of his true lovers are scattered and few, though there are some people who affirm that an exaggerated distinction, an inflated value, attaches to his name at present, as a result of the swing of time's pendulum. such people, however, are not among those who under any circumstances would be likely to admire blake or appreciate his unique point of view. this little book has had for its object, not the imparting of any new facts about him, nor the technical discussion of his works, but the reverent and sympathetic meditation on our own national blake treasures, with a view to understanding the great spirit who projected them. i have attempted to point out their essential beauties and value, not from the vantage-ground of the connoisseur, but from the point of view of the sympathetic observer. i have sought to explain, to justify, the affinity felt for them by those to whom the doctrine of "art for art's sake" is not an all-satisfying thesis, who would fain find in plastic art a language expressive of spiritual intuitions and revelation. blake's mission undoubtedly was to discover in his representations of visible phenomena the spiritual cause, or correspondence, of which it appeared to him to be merely a type. how far his ideas are consistent with the conditions and scope of an art which must necessarily concern itself with surfaces and appearances, it is hard to say. his view of art's function was largely, but not wholly true, yet in its special application was profoundly noble and salutary. exaggerated, perhaps, in his recoil from the materialism and preoccupation with physical and natural beauties as ends in themselves which characterized the art of his day, he set to work to liberate one hitherto unsuspected aspect of art's functions, at the expense of belittling the recognized and practised articles of belief recited in her honour by the masters of his time. the innerness of art; that is what he was concerned about. impetuously, passionately he stormed along the rugged track he had set himself to explore, ignoring much of beauty and truth to either side of him, because his eyes were so steadfastly fixed on his goal. to-day we acclaim him as the heroic and devoted priest of a new and yet old altar to art, the flame of which has been kept burning since his time by dante gabriel rossetti and the pre-raphaelites, and mr. g. f. watts. index academy, royal, blake attends the schools of, , . academy, royal, exhibits at, , , . academy, royal, a grant from, . _accusers, the three_, . _ahania, the book of_, , . _america_, ; described, ; a cancel-sheet for, . _ancient of days, the_, , . apprenticeship to basire, , . _atonement, the_, . _ballads on animals_, illustrations to hayley's, , . _bard, the_, . basire, blake apprenticed to, ; his influence, . _bathsheba at the bath_, . blake, robert, , , ; his death, . blake, william, birth, ; family history, ; birthplace, ; his brothers and sister, ; marriage, ; suggested as tutor to the royal family, ; his last sketch, ; death, ; lived at green street, ; broad street, ; poland street, ; lambeth, ; felpham, ; south molton street, ; temple, ; his hatred of oppression, ; visions of his brother, ; his kind-heartedness, ; trial for sedition, ; influence over younger men, , ; his circle of friends, , , ; his surroundings in later years, ; his appearance, , ; german eulogy, ; learns italian, ; his poverty, ; his exhibition, ; criticisms on painting and poetry, ; his artistic affinities, ; his aim in art, ; his literary affinities, ; views on contemporary artists, , ; justifies his mode of representation, ; his inability to depict christ, , ; his intuitive system of belief, ; his detachment from his age, ; his view of humanity, , . bouchier, catherine, married to blake, ; her character, ; her death, ; her assistance in printing, . calvert, edward, friendship with blake, . _canterbury pilgrims, the_ (blake's), designed, ; completed, ; exhibited, . _see_ stothard, thomas. _canterbury pilgrims, the_ (engraving), issued, ; discussed, . coleridge, s. t., meeting with blake, . cowper, engravings for hayley's life of, . cromek, r. h., his relations with blake, - , . dante, illustrations to the _divina commedia_ of, ; discussed, . _david delivered out of deep waters_, . _death of earl godwin_, . _death's door_, development of the design of, , . _descriptive catalogue_ of blake's exhibition, , , , , , , . _designs, the large book of_, . _designs, the small book of_, . education, blake's early, . ellis and yeats, commentary on blake, , , , , , , , , . _elohim creating adam, the_, . _europe_, ; described, . exhibitions of blake's works, ( ), ; ( ), . felpham, residence at, , ; early enjoyment of, ; subsequent unhappiness at, . flaxman, j., introduction to, ; aid from, , ; correspondence with, . _flight into egypt, the_, . _french revolution, the_, . fresco, blake's use of the term, . fuseli, blake's friendship with, , , ; his appreciation of blake, , , . _gates of paradise, the_, ; described, . _ghost of abel, the_, . _ghost of a flea_, . gilchrist's _life of blake_, , , , , , . _glad day_, . gothic influences, , . _grave, the_, blake's illustrations to blair's: sold to cromek, ; published, ; discussed, ; described, ; blake's introductory verses, . hayley, blake's introduction to, ; life at felpham, - ; illustrations to his _ballads_, ; to his life of cowper, ; letters to, . _hecate_, . humphrey, ozias, blake's relations with, . hunt, leigh, inept criticisms by, . _ideas of good and evil_, . irish ancestry suggested for blake, . _jerusalem_, , ; discussed, ; described, . _job, the book of_, drawings for, ; discussed, ; described, ; sold, . _joseph of arimathea_, . _judgment of paris, the_, . lamb, charles, appreciative criticisms by, , . _lamech and his two wives_, , . _laocoon_, . _last judgment, the_, . _lazar house, the_, . le brun, blake's early aversion to her work, . _lenore_, illustrations to bürger's, . linnell, john, blake's friendship with, , , ; and the book of job, . _little tom the sailor_, . _los, the book of_, ; described, . _los, the song of_, ; described, . madness, his alleged, . malkin's _memorials_ of his child, illustrated by blake, . _marriage of heaven and hell, the_, ; discussed, ; quoted, . mathew, the rev. henry, an early friend, - . michael angelo, his influence on blake, , , , , , . _milton_, ; discussed, ; described, . ms. notebook, blake's, references to, , , , , , , , , . mystical views, blake's, are misunderstood, - ; explained by smetham, . mythological characters, blake's, , , , . national gallery, works by blake in the, . _nativity, the_, , . _nebuchadnezzar_, . _nelson, the spiritual form of, etc._, . _night thoughts_, designs for young's, ; described, . _oberon, titania, and puck_, . paine, tom, blake's acquaintance with, . pars' drawing-classes, blake attends, . _pitt guiding behemoth, the spiritual form of_, . poetic genius, his theory of the, , . _poetical sketches_, . prices now brought by blake's work, , , , , , , . prices received by blake, , , , , . processes employed by blake, , , , , , , , , . _procession from calvary_, . raphael, early love for, . religious views, - , . religious views, swedenborg, , ; pantheism, ; blake's beliefs, ; the necessity of contraries, ; "art in religion," . reynolds, sir joshua, his advice to blake, . reynolds, sir joshua, blake's ms. notes on reynolds' discourses, , , . _river of life, the_, , . robinson, henry crabb, his relations with blake, , , , , , , , . rossetti, d. g., appreciations of blake, , , . rossetti, d. g., owns blake's ms. notebook, . rubens, early comments on, . rylands, proposal to apprentice blake to, . _satan watching adam and eve_, . _satan, sin, and death_, . _satan triumphing over eve_, . _satan's three accusers_, . schiavonetti, lewis, engraves the drawings for the _grave_, , , . shakespeare, designs to illustrate, . shields, mr. frederick j., , , , . "single vision" of bacon and newton, . _songs of experience_, ; described, . _songs of innocence_, ; described, . stothard, thomas blake's introduction to, ; quarrel with, , , , . stothard, his _canterbury pilgrims_, ; exhibited, ; described, . swedenborg, his influence, , . swinburne, mr. a. c., criticisms by, , , , , , , . _tales for children_, . tathams, blake's friendship with the, , , . technique, his deficiency in, . _thel, the book of_, ; described, . _there is no natural religion_, . _three maries with the angel at the sepulchre_, . _tiriel_, . _urizen, the book of_, ; described, . _vegetative life_, what blake meant by the, , , . _virgil's pastorals_, woodcuts for, ; described, . _vision of queen katherine_, . _visionary heads_, drawn by blake, . _visions of the daughters of albion_, ; described, . visions of blake; in childhood, ; in later years, . water-colour sketches, , . westminster abbey, drawings in, . _whore of babylon, the_, . _wise and foolish virgins, the_, . wollstonecraft, mary, acquaintance with, ; designs for her tales, . women, his views on the position of, . chiswick press: printed by charles whittingham and co. tooks court, chancery lane, london. the history of painting in italy. vol. iv. the history of painting in italy, from the period of the revival of the fine arts to the end of the eighteenth century: translated from the original italian of the abate luigi lanzi. by thomas roscoe. _in six volumes._ vol. iv. containing the schools of lombardy, mantua, modena, parma, cremona, and milan. london: printed for w. simpkin and r. marshall, stationers'-hall court, ludgate street. . j. m'creery, tooks court, chancery lane, london. contents of the fourth volume. history of painting in upper italy. book the second. schools of lombardy. chap. i. mantuan school. page epoch i. _of mantegna and his successors_ epoch ii. _giulio romano and his school_ epoch iii. _decline of the school, and foundation of an academy in order to restore it_ chap. ii. modenese school. epoch i. _the old masters_ epoch ii. _imitation of raffaello and coreggio in the sixteenth century_ epoch iii. _the modenese artists of the seventeenth century chiefly follow the example of the bolognese_ chap. iii. school of parma. epoch i. _the ancients_ epoch ii. _coreggio, and those who succeeded him in his school_ epoch iii. _parmese school of the caracci, and of other foreigners until the period of the foundation of the academy_ chap. iv. school of cremona. epoch i. _the ancients_ epoch ii. _camillo boccaccino, il soiaro, the campi_ epoch iii. _decline of the school of the campi. trotti and other artists support it_ epoch iv. _foreign manners introduced into cremona_ chap. v. school of milan. epoch i. _account of the ancient masters until the time of vinci_ epoch ii. _vinci establishes an academy of design at milan. his pupils and the best native artists down to the time of gaudenzio_ epoch iii. _the procaccini and other foreign and native artists form a new academy, with new styles, in the city and state of milan_ epoch iv. _after the time of daniele crespi the art declines. a third academy is founded for its improvement_ history of painting in upper italy. book ii. the schools of lombardy. after a consideration of the principles and progress of painting in lombardy, i came to the conclusion that its history ought to be treated and arranged in a manner altogether different from the rest of the schools. indeed those of florence, of rome, of venice, and of bologna, may be almost considered in the light of so many dramas, in which there occurs an interchange of acts and scenes, for such are the epochs of each school; and there is also a change of actors, for such are the masters of each new period; but the unity of place, which is no other than the capital city, is invariably preserved; while the principal actors, and as it were protagonists of the story, always continue in action, at least in the way of example. every capital, it is true, is in possession of its own state, and in that ought to be comprehended the various other cities, and the revolutions in each; but these are in general so nearly connected with those of the metropolis as to be easily reducible to the same leading law, either because the state artists have acquired the art in the principal city, or because they have taught it there, as may easily be gathered from the history of the venetian school; while the few who wander out of the usual routine, cannot be said to infringe greatly upon the unity of the school and the succession of its histories. but it happens differently in the history of lombardy, which, in the happier periods of the art, being divided into many more districts than it now is, possessed in each state a school distinct from all the others; enumerated also distinct eras; and when the style of one influenced that of another, such a circumstance occurred neither so universally, nor so near in regard to time, as to admit of the same epoch being applied to many of them. hence it is, that even from the outset of this book, i renounce the received manner of speaking which would mention the lombard school, as if in itself constituting one school, in such a way as to be compared for instance with the venetian, which in every place acknowledged the sway of its sovereign masters; of the bellini first, next of titian and his noblest contemporaries, and then of palma; and moreover established several characteristics of design, of colouring, of composition, of the use of the pencil, so as easily to distinguish it from every other school. but in that which is called the lombard the case is otherwise. for its founders, such as lionardo, giulio, the campi, and coreggio, are too widely opposed to each other to admit of being brought under one standard of taste, and referred to the same epoch. i am aware that coreggio, being by birth a lombard, and the originator of a new style that afforded an example to many artists in that part of italy, has conferred the name of lombard school upon the followers of his maxims; and according to these characteristics the contours were to be drawn round and full, the countenance warm and smiling, the union of the colours strong and clear, the foreshortenings frequent, with a particular regard to the chiaroscuro. but the school thus circumscribed, where shall we find a place for the mantuans, the milanese, the cremonese, and the many others who, having been born, and having flourished in lombardy, and moreover being the tutors of a long extended line, justly deserve a rank among the lombards. from such considerations i have judged it most advisable to treat severally of each school, enlarging upon them more or less, according as the number of the professors and the information respecting them may seem to render it requisite. for the accounts of some of these schools have been already separately compiled; zaist having treated of the cremonese painters, and tiraboschi of the modenese; thus conferring upon artists the same obligations which he so richly conferred upon the literati in a still greater work; a rare writer, for whose loss we yet indulge a mournful recollection. in the rest of the schools i shall be supplied with ample materials from vasari, from lomazzo, and the guides of the cities, besides some authors to be cited when requisite, together with my own observations and sources of information borrowed from different places; whence it is hoped that the pictoric history of lombardy, the least known amongst all the schools of italy, may by my means have at least some additional light thrown upon it. chapter i. mantuan school. epoch i. _of mantegna and his successors._ i shall first commence with mantua, from which there emanated two sister schools, those of modena and of parma. were any one desirous of investigating the most ancient remains that the art of colouring in that state can boast, he might record the celebrated anthem book, still preserved at s. benedetto at mantua, a gift of the countess matilda to that monastery, which being founded by her long preserved her remains, transferred during the late century into the vatican. in this book, shewn me by the learned and courteous abbate mari, are exhibited several little histories of the life and death of the virgin, which, notwithstanding the barbarous period in which they were produced, display some taste, insomuch that i do not remember having seen any work of the same age at all equal to it. upon this subject it may not be useless to observe, that in ages less uncivilized, and nearer our own, the art of miniature was practised in mantua by a great number of professors, among whom is gio. de russi, who, about the year , illustrated for the duke borso of modena, the bible of este, in large folio, one of the rarest specimens of that distinguished collection. but in regard to pictures, i have been able to discover no artist who flourished in that place previous to mantegna; and it is only some anonymous productions belonging to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that can be mentioned as remaining to this day. of the former age, i saw in the cloister of s. francesco, a sepulchre, erected in , with a madonna among various angels, all rude and disproportioned figures, though coloured with such strong and animated tints as to appear truly surprising. i doubt not but that the revival of painting in lombardy, through the genius of its natives, might be fairly proved from the existence of this monument, as its age is anterior to that of the followers of giotto, scattered throughout italy; besides the style is different. of the fifteenth, i have seen another madonna upon an altar likewise of s. francesco; and whoever may have been the author, he has shewn that the art, even in those days, had already emerged from its infancy, without arriving at that rank to which the great andrea mantegna conducted it, of whom we have twice already had occasion to speak shortly in the course of this work; a subject which we now resume, and shall enlarge upon more fully. although the honour of having given birth to mantegna can no longer, as formerly, be denied to padua, his school was, nevertheless, established in mantua, where, under the auspices of marchese lodovico gonzaga, he settled with his family, without, however, ceasing to exert his talents elsewhere, and more particularly in rome. the chapel which he painted at the desire of innocent viii. in the vatican still exists, though injured by time; and it is clear that in the imitation of the antique constantly pursued by him he greatly improved, through the number of examples to be found throughout the city. he never varied his manner, which i described when i treated of him as a pupil of squarcione in padua; but he still continued to perfect it. several works produced during his latter years are yet extant at mantua; and far surpassing the rest is his picture of victory, painted upon canvass. another is the virgin, amidst various saints, among whom s. michele the archangel, and s. maurizio, are seen holding her mantle, which is stretched over francesco gonzaga; he is in a kneeling posture, while the virgin extends her hand over him in sign of protection: more in the background appear the two patrons of the city, s. andrea and s. longino, and the infant st. john before the throne, with s. anna, as is supposed at least by vasari and ridolfi, little exact in their description of this picture, inasmuch as the rosary held in her hand distinguishes her for the princess, consort of the marchese, kneeling at her husband's side. mantua, perhaps, boasts no other specimen equally sought after and admired by strangers; and though produced in , it is still free, in a conspicuous degree, from the effects of three ages, which it has already survived. it is truly wonderful to behold carnations so delicate, coats of armour so glittering, draperies so finely varied, with ornamental fruits still so fresh and dewy to the eye. each separate head might serve as a school, from its fine character and vivacity, and not a few from imitation of the antique; while the design, as well in its naked as in its clothed parts, expresses a softness which sufficiently repels the too general opinion, that the stiff style and that of mantegna are much the same thing. there is also an union of colours, a delicacy of hand, and a peculiar grace, that to me appears almost the last stage of the art towards that perfection which it acquired from lionardo. his works upon canvass remind us of that exquisite taste to which he had been habituated by squarcione, who supplied him with pictures of the same kind from various places, and indeed the whole of the above specimen discovers him to have been an artist who spared neither his colours nor his time, to produce works that might satisfy his own ideas, as well as the eye of the spectator. his great masterpiece, nevertheless, according to the judgment of vasari, is the triumph of cæsar, represented in different pictures, which, becoming the prey of the germans in the sackage of the city, were finally sent into england. they belonged to a great hall in the palace of s. sebastiano, "which was completed," says equicola, an historian of his native place, "by lorenzo costa, an excellent artist, who added to it all that pomp which used to attend upon a triumph, besides the spectators before wanting." but these pictures having perished, there yet remain other considerable relics from the works of andrea, in a saloon of the castle, entitled by ridolfi the _camera degli sposi_. we there behold copious productions executed in fresco, and among them several portraits of the gonzaga family, still in good preservation; and some genii drawn over a door-way, so joyous, animated, and airy, that nothing can be supposed to surpass them. among collections of art we more rarely meet with specimens of him than is really believed, his genuine hand being recognized, not only by its lightness, by its rectilinear folds, or by its yellowish landscape, spread with certain minute and broken little stones; but by the skill of its design and the delicacy of its pencil. it does not appear that he produced many pictures for private exhibition, engaged as he was in works of greater magnitude, and upon many engravings. more than fifty of these last have been enumerated, for the chief part abounding with figures; labours which must have occupied a large portion of his best time. but there are some persons, as i have observed, (vol. i. p. ,) who would considerably reduce this number, whether correctly or not posterity will, perhaps, ascertain. the style of andrea greatly influenced that of his age, and imitations of it are to be seen even beyond his school, which was extremely flourishing in mantua. we enumerate among his most distinguished disciples francesco, and one of his other sons. there is a paper yet extant, in which they undertake to complete the chamber of the castle just alluded to, of which their father andrea had only painted the walls. to these they added the beautiful vaulted recess. whoever examines it must confess that the science of foreshortening, originally attributed to melozio, was here improved and nearly brought to perfection by mantegna and his sons. in the same work appear several exquisitely drawn infantine figures, under different points of view, and admirably shortened, so as to lose nothing in comparison with those of melozio, though his painting of paradise, drawn for the church of ss. apostoli, was afterwards cut down and placed in the grand palazzo quirinale. the same sons of mantegna likewise added lateral pictures to an altar-piece of their father, in a family chapel they had, attached to the church of s. andrea; and in the same place they raised a beautiful monument to his memory in , which has been falsely supposed by some to be the year of his death, whereas it appears, from many authentic works, that he closed his days in . after the death of mantegna, lorenzo costa held the first rank, an artist of whom we shall treat more at length in the bolognese school. he adorned the palace with various histories, and the churches with many of his pictures, continuing under francesco to reside in the same place, and afterwards under federigo, until beyond the year , in which time he produced also his picture for his family chapel. there too, like mantegna, he wished to have his remains deposited. following his example, he established his family in mantua, where some of his descendants will again appear at a more modern epoch. but the young mantegni must be referred to this more ancient period, and along with them ought to be mentioned carlo del mantegna, who having studied some length of time under andrea, and cultivated a complete acquaintance with his style, afterwards introduced it, as we shall shew, into genoa. carlo is supposed to have assisted in the labours of the palace and the chapel above mentioned, as well as in many others ascribed to the disciples of mantegna, among which are two histories of the ark preserved in the monastery of s. benedetto at mantua, where andrea's manner appears somewhat more amplified, though boasting less beautiful forms. but few certain productions of his followers can be fixed upon, their labours being confounded by connoisseurs, from their resemblance of their style and name to those of their master. and it has thus happened in an extremely interesting historical point; for coreggio having studied, it appears, under francesco mantegna, was believed a scholar of andrea, already deceased before allegri had attained his twelfth year. still more celebrated than the preceding were the names of gianfrancesco carotto and francesco monsignori, of verona. such was the progress made by the former, that andrea was in the habit of sending forth his labours as the work of his own hand. he was celebrated for his portraits; and for his composition, equally excellent in large as in small pieces; and he was employed by the visconti, at milan, as well as in the court of monferrato, and to a still greater extent in his native place. although an artist who flourished at so early a period, in a few of his pictures he might be pronounced more great and harmonious than andrea himself; as we may gather from his fine altar-piece of s. fermo, at verona, and from that of his _angioli_, at santa eufemia, whose side pictures represent two virgins, very manifestly imitated from raffaello. he is not to be confounded with giovanni carotto, his brother and his pupil, and very greatly inferior to him. francesco monsignori ought not to be referred to verona, but to mantua, where he established himself, honoured by the marchese francesco with his confidence, and remunerated in the most liberal manner. if this artist, also, does not exhibit the beautiful forms, and the purity of design so remarkable in the works of his master, he approaches nearer to the modern taste; his contours more full, his drapery less trite, and his softness more finely studied. in his drawings of animals, he was also considered the zeuxis of his age; insomuch that he succeeded in imposing upon a real dog with a copy of the animal. in perspective he was a master; and in the refectory of the franciscans, there is a picture of our lord amidst the apostles, exhibiting an architecture, which, however much retouched, does not fail to produce great effect. in the pulpit of the same church is also a s. bernardino, with a s. lodovico, one of his most beautiful pieces; and elsewhere altar-grades, with figures which appear like miniature. he had a brother of the name of girolamo, of the order of s. domenico, also an excellent artist. the last supper, to be seen in the grand library of s. benedetto, copied from that of leonardo, in milan, is from his hand. by many it is esteemed the best copy of that miracle of art, which now remains to us. i have before treated of several of andrea's scholars, natives of vicenza; and another of cremona, i shall have to mention in due time. yet the entire series of this school will not be completed with these names, as there are specimens of many unknown artists executed in fresco, interspersed throughout different places in mantua. they are for the most part to be met with on the façades of buildings, and in the churches; while in several of the galleries we may observe pictures in oil, which appear to exhibit more of the defects than of the excellences of a mantegna. mantuan school. epoch ii. _giulio romano and his school._ the school of the mantegni becoming extinct in mantua, another of a more beautiful and distinguished character arose, sufficient to excite the envy even of rome. duke federigo had succeeded to francesco, a prince of much enlargement of mind, and so much devoted to the fine arts, that no artist of common genius would have been equal to execute his ideas. through the interest of baldassar castiglione, then extremely intimate with raffaello, giulio romano was prevailed upon to visit mantua, where he became at once engineer and painter to duke frederic. the duties, however, of the first, occupied him more than those of the second. for the city having been damaged by the waters of the mincio, the buildings being insecure or badly planned, and the architecture inferior to the dignity of a capital, he was thus furnished with sufficient materials on which to employ his talents, and to render him as it were a new founder of mantua; insomuch, that its ruler, in a transport of gratitude, was heard to exclaim, that giulio was in truth more the master of the city than he himself. the whole of these works are extensively recorded in different books of architecture. the duty here required of me is to point out to the reader the originality of this artist's character; a solitary instance perhaps in history, of one who, having erected the most noble and beautiful palaces, villas, and temples, painted and ornamented a considerable portion of them with his own hand; while at the same time a regular school of his pupils and assistants was formed in mantua, which continued for a length of years to do equal honour to the country and to the city of lombardy. we have already considered giulio, in treating of the roman school, in the character of scholar, as well as heir and continuator of the works of raffaello; but here he is to appear in that of a master, pursuing the method of the head of this school, both in teaching and composition. when he came to mantua he found abundance of ancient marbles, to which he continued to add specimens, out of which the statues, the busts, and the bassi-relievi, still preserved in the academy, are mere relics. to such materials, collected by the gonzaghi, he united some of his own. he was abundantly furnished with designs, as well copied from the antique in rome, as executed by the hand of raffaello. nor were his own immediate studies less valuable, no designer having better succeeded in uniting freedom of invention with selection, rapidity with correctness, a knowledge of fable and of history with a certain popular manner, and facility in treating them. upon the death of his master he began to give a freer scope to his natural genius, which inclined rather to the bold than to the beautiful, and induced him more to adopt the experience acquired by many years of application, than his own knowledge of nature and of truth. he considered it, therefore, mere amusement to adorn the palace of mantua, and the great suburban of the tè, (to say nothing of his numerous other works,) in the style that vasari relates, and which is, in part, to be seen at the present day. so many chambers with gilded entablatures; such a variety of beautiful stucco work, the figures of which have been removed for the instruction of youth; so many stories and _capricci_ finely conceived and connected with one another, besides such a diversity of labours adapted to different places and subjects, altogether form a collection of wonders, the honour of which giulio divided with no other artist. for he himself conceived, composed, and completed these vast undertakings. he was accustomed himself to prepare the cartoons, and afterwards having exacted from his pupils their completion, he went over the entire work with his pencil, removed its defects, impressing at the same time upon the whole the stamp of his own superior character. this method he acquired from raffaello; and he is commended by vasari as the best artist known for his production of distinguished pupils. it was the misfortune of giulio to have the touches of his own hand in his labours at the tè, modernized by other pencils, owing to which the beautiful fable of psyche, the moral representations of human life, and his terrible war of the giants with jove, where he appeared to compete with michelangiolo himself in the hardihood of his design, still retain, indeed, the design and composition, but no longer the colours of giulio. in these last his hand will more truly appear in his war of troy, preserved at the royal court; in his history of lucretia; and in those little cabinets ornamented by him with grotesques and other ingenious fancies. there we might sometimes pronounce him a homer, treating of arms, or sometimes an anacreon, celebrating the delights of wine and love. nor did he employ his powers less nobly in sacred subjects, more particularly for the dome, which, by commission of the cardinal gonzaga, brother to federigo, and guardian of his young nephew, he not only built, but in part ornamented, though his death occurred before he was enabled to complete his celebrated work. the paintings produced for other churches by his own hand are not very numerous; such, consisting more particularly of his three histories of the passion, coloured in fresco, at s. marco; of his santo cristoforo, in the large altar of that church, in which he is represented with an uncommon degree of strength, yet groaning under the burden of the lord of the universe, who in the figure of an infant is borne upon his shoulders; an incident originating in the name itself of _cristoforo_. but let us come to the school of giulio, in mantua. it will not occupy many pages; since it did not mix the style of this artist, as in other places has happened, with foreign styles, being peculiarly true to its prototype, so that in each countenance we may trace, as it were, his own exact features, although copied unequally. in his mantuan school there appeared several foreigners, among whom primaticcio proved the most celebrated; an artist whom giulio employed to work in stucco, and whom, on being invited into the service of the king of france, he sent to that country in his stead. but we shall take no further notice of him here, having to treat of him more fully in our account of the bolognese. the veronese, who are in possession of a beautiful fresco, in the piazza delle erbe, with the name of _alberto cavalli savonese_, have supposed this painter a scholar of giulio, but without any other foundation beyond a strong resemblance to the style of pippi, in the naked parts. it is strange that no other specimen of such a distinguished hand should be known in italy, nor any memorial of him, notwithstanding the great researches that have been made; nor is it very improbable that he also may have changed his country, and died in foreign parts. benedetto pagni from pescia had already tried his abilities in rome, together with bartolommeo da castiglioni, with paparello da cortona, and with gio. da leone; artists of whom i know not if there exist any thing beyond the name; while pagni, who accompanied giulio into mantua, has been as highly esteemed by vasari as any other name. from his hand, besides what remains in his native place, we possess a s. lorenzo, painted in s. andrea, at mantua, which does credit to such a school. companion to him in the numerous works of the tè, we find rinaldo mantovano, considered by vasari the most celebrated painter of the city, while he laments the untimely termination of his days. his altar-piece of s. agostino, at the trinità, proves him to have been great even in his youth, so much is the design beyond the expectation of such an age; and it has by some been pronounced the work of his master. fermo guisoni had a longer career; he painted in the cathedral the vocation of s. pietro and s. andrea, copied from one of the most beautiful and studied cartoons of giulio. other pieces of his are extant, in part designed by bertani, and in part from his own hand. such is a picture of the crucifixion at s. andrea, which both in point of design and force of colouring is indeed admirable. in this series vasari has omitted to mention several others whom the mantuans have enumerated as belonging to the school of giulio, and as natives of their country. among these is a teodoro ghigi, a mantuan, as he subscribes himself, an excellent designer, and so familiar with the manner of the leader of his school, that on the decease of the latter, he was employed in the service of the prince, to complete his labours in the city, and in the country. ippolito andreasi also painted a good deal upon the cartoons of giulio, and produced pictures of merit in s. barbara as well as elsewhere. there are moreover two frescos in the dome, at the chapel of s. lorenzo, attributed to one francesco perla; an altar-piece at s. cristoforo by gio. batista giacarolo, neither of them greatly celebrated in this class. raffaello pippi was a son of the head of the school; and there only remains of him the honourable recollection of the very promising efforts of his youthful genius, cut off in its happiest spring. following giulio, his pupil, the cavalier gio. batista bertani continued to labour, and to instruct the school. he had accompanied his master to rome; he was a great architect, and an excellent writer on the subject, as well as a painter of no ordinary talent. assisted by his brother of the name of domenico, he ornamented several chambers in the castle of the court; and he committed various altar-pieces to different painters, in the dome erected by giulio, in sta. barbara, which is the work of bertani himself, and in other churches of the place. to some of these artists he gave his designs. he was esteemed almost as another giulio by duke vincenzio, though very inferior to his predecessor. for what vasari observes of him, that his knowledge did not equal that of his master, is no less true, than that the chief part of his own assistants surpassed him. his assistants were gio. batista del moro, geronimo mazzuola, paol farinato, domenico brusasorci, giulio campi, paol veronese; whose works, displayed in that cathedral, do no less honour to the sanctuary than to the city. yet let this be said without the least reflection upon his merit, which, particularly in design, was undoubtedly very great. this, indeed, we gather from his picture of the martyrdom of sta. agata, which, executed from the design of bertani by ippolito casta, approaches much nearer to the composition of giulio than other works of ippolito, drawn from his own invention. there is reason to believe that ippolito was of the family of lorenzo costa, together with luigi, and another lorenzo, both named costa, and both mantuans. orlandi states ippolito to have been a pupil of carpi. baldinucci includes him in the school of giulio, either from his having frequented his academy, or in other ways having availed himself of his instructions and his models; and, indeed, his style betrays no slight traces of them. lamo, who wrote an account of the artists of cremona, describes him to us as a master, who about instructed bernardino campi; and moreover gives us reason to suppose that his brother luigi was likewise initiated by him in the art. but he proved an inferior artist, and drew his chief celebrity from his surname. among the assistants of taddeo zuccari, about , vasari mentions lorenzo costa, a mantuan; and it seems likely that he sprung either from luigi or from ippolito; and had such name conferred upon him, as was usual, in memory of lorenzo costa, his grandfather, or from some other relationship to him. we frequently read in the guide of mantua, written by cadioli, that such a painting is from the hand of costa, without giving his proper name; and it appears probable, that pursuing their labours in the same studio, they may have contracted a sort of family style, not indeed very correct or learned, but of a practical kind. there is a pleasing air about the heads, and some care in the colours; for the rest it is minute; not exact, nor sufficiently shaded; and in fine, modelled upon the composition of one who aimed at imitating the grace, not of rivalling the power of giulio. the costa are esteemed in mantua among the last disciples of the great school; nor do i know of their having produced any pupil besides facchetti, who devoted himself altogether to portraits. it will here be proper to state that giulio in imitation of raffaello gave rise, by the influence of his taste, to a great number of artificers, who ornamented other professions. he was possessed of those general ideas of beauty and proportion, from which he drew his rules for the particular direction of every work; an enviable distinction of that age, in which the leading men were at once painters, modellers, and architects, extending their influence even from the noblest works of art down to vases and plates of earthenware, and cornices of wood. i am not certain whether giulio, like raffaello, formed the taste of another gio. da udine, in drawing fruits and trees, &c.: but i know that camillo, a mantuan, declared by vasari to be most excellent in point of landscape,[ ] flourished about this period. some specimens in fresco still continue to adorn his native place; but he chiefly produced his works in venice, in urbino, and at the ducal palace in pesaro, where, in a chamber, since changed into an armour-room, he painted a grove, executed with so much taste and truth, that it would not be difficult to number every separate leaf upon the trees. it is certain that giulio educated a pupil as his perino, for his stuccos; and this was, besides primaticcio, a gio. batista briziano, commonly called mantovano, who likewise became his marc antonio, engraving on copper many of the pictures of his master, as well as of other distinguished artists of his day. to him ought to be added giorgio ghisi, or ghigi, who flourished at the same period; and to these succeeded diana, daughter of gio. batista,[ ] celebrated for her fine engravings; and this branch of art, introduced into mantua by that eminent artist, continued to prosper there for a long course of years. footnote : in the _life of genga_. footnote : she is also called _civis volaterrana_, from her connexion with that city; an instance that ought to be present to our recollection, when we find that different writers ascribe different countries to the same painter. another branch of the fine arts, that of miniature, seemed to attain its perfection under one of giulio's scholars. his name was d. giulio clovio, of croazia, a regular scopetine canon, afterwards becoming a layman by a dispensation from the pope. he had first turned his attention to the higher branches of the art, but giulio, who saw he possessed a peculiar talent for diminutive figures, prevailed upon him to apply himself to these; and taught him the first of any in rome, the method of applying tints and colours in gum and water colours, while in miniature he obtained instructions from girolamo da' libri of verona. he is esteemed at the head of his profession in this line. in his design he displays a good deal of study of michelangiolo, and of the roman school, though approaching nearer to the practice of a good naturalist, exquisitely graceful in his colours, and admirable in his exactness of drawing the minutest objects. great part of his labours were undertaken for sovereigns and princes, in whose libraries may be found books ornamented by him in miniature with such a degree of truth and spirit, that we appear to view these diminutive objects rather through some camera-optica, than in a picture. it is related by vasari, that in an office of the virgin, made for the cardinal farnese, there were figures which did not exceed the size of a small ant; and that each part was nevertheless distinctly drawn. it is worth while, indeed, to read the whole description given by that historian of the miniatures there inserted, in which he likewise selected subjects adapted for a multitude of figures, such as the procession of the _corpus domini_ at rome, and the feast of the monte testaceo: a labour of nine years, which was distributed into twenty-six little histories. he produced numerous small portraits painted for private people; (an art in which he is said by vasari to have equalled titian) besides a few little pictures. these are rarely to be met with in collections. there is one of the _deposizione_, in the library of the padri cisterciensi, at milan, a piece quite original in its composition, but which breathes altogether the taste of the golden period. indeed, i am inclined to be of opinion that giulio promoted this very study in mantua; having myself seen there some exquisite miniatures, though by unknown hands. it is also worthy of notice, as vasari remarks, that by means of giulio, the art advanced towards perfection, not only in mantua, but throughout all lombardy, (a state which, in the native acceptation of the term, includes also a portion of the modern venetian territories). this we have already in part seen; and in part shall continue to see more clearly in the course of this history. mantuan school epoch iii. _decline of the school, and foundation of an academy in order to restore it._ subsequent to the period in which giulio flourished, the school of mantua produced no new names which at all approached the reputation of the first. the disposition of its sovereigns was always inclined rather to invite painters of celebrity from elsewhere, with a sure prospect of being speedily and well served, than to promote the education of their young subjects in the study of an art, slow in producing fruits, and subject to rapid decay. we have already recounted a tolerable number assembled by duke vincenzio for the object of ornamenting his churches; of several of whom he also availed himself for the decoration of the palaces. antonmaria viani, called _il vianino_, a native of cremona and a scholar of the campi, thus filled the double capacity of an artist and an architect. the frieze surrounding the gallery of the court presents a specimen of their style, where, in a ground of gold, are seen a group of most beautiful boys, painted in chiaroscuro, and playing amidst luxuriant festoons of flowers. in the same taste of the campi he produced several sacred pieces; such as the picture of s. michele at sta. agnese; the paradiso at the orsoline; and subsequent to duke vincenzio, he was employed by his three successors, and died in mantua, after having established his family in that city. not very long afterwards, domenico feti from rome was declared painter of the same court, an artist of whose education, received under cigoli, i have treated elsewhere. cardinal ferdinando, succeeding to the dukedom of mantua, had brought him from rome to his own court, where he had opportunities of improving himself, by studying the finest lombard models, along with several of the venetians. he produced many pictures in oil, for various temples and galleries; one of which, representing the multiplication of loaves, exists in the mantuan academy, abounding with figures rather truly noble than large; but varied, shortened, and coloured in a very masterly style. a still more copious work was that in the choir of the cathedral, though his pieces in fresco, like those of cigoli, have less merit than those painted in oil. with all the excellence of his compositions, he has certainly the fault of being too symmetrical in his groups, which consequently seem to correspond in an exact order, calculated in architecture to please both the eye and the mind, but by no means so in painting. his own youthful excesses deprived venice of this fine genius, and distinguished ornament of his art, in the very flower of his age. the names of other artists likewise engaged in the service of the same court, where a relish for the fine arts seems to have been almost indigenous, were titian, coreggio, genga, tintoretto, albani, rubens, gessi, gerola, vermiglio, castiglione, lodovico bertucci, with others of eminent abilities; some of whom were invited for particular commissions, and others permanently engaged for a length of time. thus the city of mantua became one of the most richly ornamented in all italy; insomuch that after suffering the sackage of , in which the ducal palace was despoiled of the noble collection, now dispersed abroad, it still can boast, both in private and public exhibitions, sufficient to engage the curiosity of cultivated strangers for a period of many days. the city in the meanwhile was not deficient in native artists of superior genius, such as venusti, manfredi, and facchetti; all of whom, on account of their residence in rome, we have treated of in that school; while in that of parma we shall have occasion to insert the name of giorgio del grano, supposed to be of mantua, and of andrea scutellari in that of cremona, in which he became fixed. francesco borgani is one of those who resided in his native place, and who adopted a good style from the paintings of parmigianino, in which he composed several pictures in s. pietro, in s. simone, in s. croce, as well as in other places, by which he deserves to be better known than he now is. this artist flourished until the latter half of the past century. towards the same period giovanni canti, while yet young, came from parma and settled in mantua, an artist whose merits, consisting in his landscapes and battle-scenes, are to be sought for in galleries of art, not in the specimens of his altar-pieces in churches, which are very inferior. he was one of those who lay too much stress on their rapidity of hand. schivenoglia, whose proper name was francesco ranieri, was one of his scholars, equally distinguished for his battles as for his landscape; superior to his master in design, but inferior in point of colouring. next to him giovanni cadioli was considered a good landscape painter, and better in fresco than in oils. he wrote an account of the pictures of mantua, and at the same period was one of the earliest founders and the first director of the academy for design at that place. giovanni bazzani, a pupil of canti, was endowed with a higher genius for the art than his master, and laid a better foundation for excellence by the cultivation of his mind, by careful study, and by copying from the most esteemed models. he more particularly directed his attention towards rubens, whose footsteps he diligently pursued to the end of his career. he was long employed in mantua and in its adjacent monastery, principally in works of fresco, displaying an easy, spirited, and imaginative character, in a manner that does credit to his genius. he was universally allowed to possess uncommon powers, but being crippled and infirm, he was unable to exhibit them as he wished; and besides, the rapid manner acquired from canti, diminished, for the most part, the value of his works. giuseppe bottani of cremona, educated at rome under masucci, afterwards established himself in mantua, where he acquired the reputation of a good landscape painter in the manner of poussin, and of a good figurist in that of maratta. his best pictures are found beyond the confines of the city; in a church at milan, dedicated to saints cosma and damiano, is to be seen a santa paola by his hand, taking farewell of the domestics, a piece by no means inferior to that of batoni, which is placed at its side. it had been well for his reputation as an artist had he always exerted himself with equal care, for in every composition he might have approved himself an excellent disciple of the school of rome. his extreme haste, however, rendered him inconsistent with himself, so that in the city where he taught, there can hardly be enumerated one or two specimens among the great number he produced in public, which can at all vie with the milanese. the reader may have already learned, in the course of this work, that of all faults celerity is one of the most fatal to the reputation of artists; the rock upon which many of the finest geniuses have struck. to few, indeed, has it been given to produce with rapidity and to produce well. the academy of mantua not only still exists, but has been furnished by the princes of the house of austria with splendid rooms, with select casts, and other advantages for the improvement of youth, so as to render it one of the finest academies in italy.[ ] there have appeared, under the auspices of signor volta, one of its members, compendious notices of the artists of mantua, down from the year ; an earnest of a more extended work that we are in hopes of receiving from his able and accomplished pen. with these notices, as well as others afforded us in conversation with the same enlightened scholar, we have been glad to enrich the present chapter. nor have we failed to keep in view the two discourses upon the letters and the arts of mantua, recited in the academy, and afterwards made public by the sig. abate bettinelli, in which his character, as a fluent orator, and a diligent historian, in the various notes he has added, appears to equal advantage. footnote : upon the establishment of the italian republic, according to what i have recently heard from the learned p. pompilio pozzetti scolopio, public librarian at modena, the academies were reduced to two; the one in bologna, the other in milan; and in the rest of the cities they continue to exist as schools of the fine arts. to both of these the government is extremely favourable, as well as to letters, both very interesting objects of public education. and now, by the union of the venetian states, the academy of venice is greatly strengthened and increased, established by decree of the government in the year . chapter ii. the modenese school. epoch i. _the ancients._ the state of modena, such as it is now reunited under the happy government of the house of este, will form the subject of the following chapter; and no other portion of my work can be pronounced superior in point of interest to this. since the feeble attempts of vedriani, and of other writers, more eager than sagacious, the pictoric history of the entire dominion has been recently illustrated, as i observed at the commencement, by a distinguished historian. i have no further object in view than to adapt it to my usual method, omitting at the same time a few names, which, either from their mediocrity, from the loss of their works, or other reasons, cannot be presumed to be greatly interesting to my readers. the antiquity of this school may be sought for as far back as , at least if it may be supposed that berlingeri of lucca, certainly the author of a s. francesco remaining in the castle of guiglia, painted in the above year, likewise produced pupils to the state of modena, a matter which is still involved in doubt. there is another sacred figure, also the production of a modenese, consisting of the blessed virgin, between two military saints, a picture brought from prague into the imperial gallery at vienna. we read inscribed upon it in ancient character the two following lines:-- quis opus hoc finxit? thomas de mutina pinxit; quale vides lector _rarisini_ filius auctor; in which we ought to read _barisini_, both on account of sig. garampi, who is profoundly skilled in the ancient characters, having thus understood it, and because this name approaches nearer to those which, though certainly different, are known to apply to the father of tommaso, as well in modena as in trevigi. in the former i know not that there now remains any thing of him but the name; but in the latter is to be seen a very extensive work in the chapter of the padri predicatori. here are represented the saints and scholars of the order, and the artist's name also appears with the date of .[ ] the design of this piece is tolerably good for those times, as appears from the engravings taken of it by the domenican, father federici, the same who presented us with a learned work upon the antiquities of trevigi. he discovered that the father of tommaso, by name _borasino_ or _bizzarrino_, an abbreviation he says of _buzzaccarino_, became nominated to the citizenship, and to the public notaryship of trevigi, in ; in all which his family was called di modena, as that of girolamo ferrarese was called di carpi. on the strength of these documents trevigi may, perhaps, dispute with modena the honour of producing such an artist; but i shall take no share in the question. i would here merely observe that the superscription does not say _thomas de mutina_, from which we might gather that modena was the cognomen of the family; but that _thomas pictor de mutina pinxit istud_; whence to conclude that he there gave the name of his real country, either because he was born in modena, or because, descended from a modenese family, he retained his citizenship, and rather wished to appear a native of modena than of trevigi. however this may be, it is a signal honour for italy to have given such an artist to germany, a name of which the historians of that great nation have mistakenly availed themselves, in the outset of the historic series of their painters, tracing his origin to muttersdorff, and making him the master of theodoric of prague, followed in succession by wumser, schoen, wolgemut, and albert durer. footnote : it was believed some time ago that this painting was produced in , this date being found on the picture, and sig. mechel having thus published it in his catalogue of the royal gallery at vienna. whether it still remains thus inserted i know not; but undoubtedly it ought not to be there. next to the pictures of tommaso, ought to be enumerated an altar-piece by barnaba da modena, preserved together with the author's name in alba, and dated , a piece by one writer supposed anterior to giotto; and in addition to this an _ancona_, from the hand of serafino de' serafini da modena, containing various busts and entire figures, with the name also of the painter, and the year . it is placed in the cathedral, and its principal subject is the incoronation of the virgin. in its composition it very nearly resembles that of giotto and his school, of which, indeed, more than of any other, the whole character of the piece partakes, only the figures are, perhaps, a little more full, and as it were better fed than those of the florentine school. if the origin of such resemblance should be sought for, let us consider that giotto not only employed himself in the adjacent city of bologna, but likewise in ferrara, which, together with modena, was then subject to the house of este, so that one city might easily afford precepts and examples to another. vasari remarked at modena some ancient paintings at s. dominico, and he might have seen more in possession of the padri benedettini, and elsewhere; from which he judged, that "in every age there had been excellent artists in that place." their names, which were unknown to vasari, have in part been collected from mss., consisting of a tommaso bassini,[ ] whose age and productions are uncertain, and some others of the fourteenth century, approaching nearer to a more improved era. one of these was andrea campana, to whom a work, bearing the initials of his name, in the colorno villa of the duke of parma, has been attributed, representing the acts of s. piero martire, a piece extremely pleasing and well coloured. another is bartolommeo bonasia, excellent both in painting and inlaid work, a specimen of which he left in a picture placed in the convent of s. vincenzo. there are, moreover, in sassuolo, some notices of raffaello calori of modena, beginning in and terminating in ; besides a picture of the virgin in the best manner of those times, during which he was in the service of duke borso. later than him flourished francesco magagnolo, an artist who terminated his career early in the sixteenth century, and one of the first who drew countenances in such a manner as to appear looking at the spectator, in whatever point of view he might observe them. his contemporaries, it appears, were cecchino setti, whose labours have wholly perished, with the exception of a few altar-ornaments, in the most finished taste; nicoletto da modena, at once a painter, and one of the very earliest engravers, whose prints are much sought after for cabinets, and are placed at the head of collections; giovanni munari, commended by historians, and distinguished for the great name of his son and pupil pellegrino; and finally francesco bianchi ferrari, who died in . to this last has been ascribed the honour of instructing coreggio, which, however, can by no means be asserted beyond dispute. one of his altar-pieces was formerly to be seen in s. francesco, executed with some degree of modern softness, though still partaking of the ancient stiffness, and the eyes designed without a due regard to rotundity. footnote : this information, taken from tiraboschi, does not seem to favour the system of father federici, who says, that in the fourteenth century names were frequently shortened, adducing, at the same time, several examples, (vol. i. p. ). he thus explains how _buzzaccarino_ became _bizzarrino_, _barisino_, _borasino_, with many more strange terms in trevigi. now why might not this artist's name become _bassino_, in modena? and if in reading _tommaso di bassino da modena_ in the authorities of tiraboschi, every one perceives the name of the painter, that of the father, and of the country to which he belonged; then why, on reading upon pictures _tommaso di barisino_, or _borisino, da modena_, are we bound to believe this last the name of a family; and so much more, as there were then few families distinguished by their surnames? tommaso, therefore, wished it to be understood that he came from modena; and if this became a surname which distinguished his family in trevigi, it must have been at a later period, when he knew nothing of it. in the smaller capitals, also, about this period, flourished artists of considerable merit. reggio still boasts a madonna of loreto, painted in the dome by the hand of bernardino orsi, with the date of ; while in s. tommaso, and elsewhere, we meet with some paintings of simone fornari, also called moresini, and of francesco caprioli. i mention them here, not so much on account of the period which they adorned, as for the resemblance of their manner to the two francia, more especially fornari; many of his pictures having been attributed to those distinguished ornaments of bologna. carpi, likewise, preserves several relics of the ancient arts: besides a frieze in the rudest style of sculpture, in the facade of the old cathedral, a work of the twelfth century. to the same church is attached two chapels, exhibiting the commencement and the progress of painting in those parts. in one is seen the spousals of santa caterina, a piece so extremely infantile, that it would be difficult to find a similar example in italy. the painting upon the walls is, however, superior; displaying an original style, no less in the drapery than in the ideas, and forcible in its action. the other chapel is divided into various niches, with the effigy of a saint in each; and in this work, which is the latest of the two, appear some traces of the style of giotto. there is no nomenclature giving us any account of artists so very ancient. the list of the school commences with bernardino loschi, who, sprung from a family in parma, signs his own name, _carpense_, in some of his pictures. without such elucidation, these might have been pronounced the works of one or other of the francia. loschi was employed in the service of alberto pio; and there exist memorials of him from the year until . there remains on record the name of one of his contemporaries, marco meloni, one of the most accurate of artists, of whom every thing may be included in the observation, that his pictures at s. bernardino, and elsewhere, partake in the same degree of the bolognese manner. probably he was a pupil of that school, as well as alessandro da carpi, enumerated by malvasia among the disciples of costa. finally, coreggio likewise cultivated the fine arts before antonio allegri came into the world. for not many years ago a fresco of tolerable execution was discovered in that cathedral, ascribed by tradition, to lorenzo allegri, who, in a letter of donation, subscribed by him in , is called _magister laurentius filius magistri antonii de allegris pictor_. this artist is believed to have been the first instructor of antonio allegri, his brother's son; and it is, at least, certain that he had a school in which he taught the rules of art to another of his nephews, as i have heard from the learned dottore antonioli, who is busied in preparing a life of his very distinguished fellow citizen. at present there are few paintings in coreggio displaying the taste of the artists of the fourteenth century, from which we might judge of that school. a madonna, painted in , when antonio allegri had attained his seventeenth year, is, however, to be met with in the catalogue of the este gallery, whither it had been transferred. it is attributed to antonio allegri, but there is no sufficient evidence of the fact; and we should have about equal authority for giving it to lorenzo. the style is but middling, and in point of forms, the ancient character is not wholly laid aside in the folds of the drapery: it may, however, be pronounced of a softer tone than that of the chief part of its contemporaries, and nearer to the modern manner. before proceeding further, it will be right to inform the reader of a certain advantage that this tract of country, and modena in particular, enjoyed from the commencement of the fifteenth century, consisting in the abundance of its excellent modellers in clay. of this art, the parent of sculpture, and the nurse of painting, that city has since produced the most exquisite specimens in the world; and this, if i mistake not, is the most characteristic, rare, and admirable advantage of the school. guido mazzoni, otherwise paganini, a name highly celebrated by vasari, had the reputation of an excellent artist from the time he produced his holy family, at st. margherita, in , presenting statues of a vivacity and expression truly surprising. this great artificer was employed by charles viii., both in naples and france, where he remained upwards of twenty years, retiring at length into his native country, full of honours, to terminate his days. no slight commendation has likewise been bestowed by the historian lancillotto, upon gio. abati, father of niccolo, and his contemporary, whose sacred images in chalk were held in the highest esteem; more particularly the crucifixions, executed with a knowledge of anatomy, most exact in every separate vein and nerve. he was nevertheless far surpassed by antonio begarelli, probably his pupil, who by his works in clay, with figures even larger than life, has succeeded in bearing away the palm from all his competitors. in the church and monastery of the padri benedettini, there is preserved a noble collection of them. as he flourished during a long period, he filled those churches with monuments, groups, and statues, to say nothing of others which he produced in parma, mantua, and other places. vasari praises him for "the fine air of his heads, beautiful drapery, exquisite proportions, and colour of marble;" and the same author continues to relate, that they appeared so excellent to bonarruoti that he said, "if this clay were only to become marble, woe betide the ancient statues." i am at a loss to imagine what species of eulogy could be more desirable to an artist; in particular when we reflect upon the profound science of bonarruoti, and how tardy he was to praise. we ought not to omit to mention, that begarelli was likewise excellent in design, and acted as a master, both of that and modelling, in the instruction of youth. hence he greatly influenced the art of painting, and to him we are in a great measure to trace that correctness, that relief, that art of foreshortening, and that degree of grace approaching nearly to raffaello's, in all of which this part of lombardy boasted such a conspicuous share. modenesse school. epoch ii. _imitation of raffaello and coreggio, in the sixteenth century._ such were the preparatory efforts throughout all these districts, as far as we have hitherto considered them: but the best preparation lay in the natural talent of the young artists. of these we are told, upon the authority of tiraboschi, that the card. alessandro d'este observed, that "they appeared to have been born with a natural genius for the fine arts:" an opinion fully borne out during the lapse of the sixteenth century, when if every province of italy produced some great name in painting, this little district of itself abounded with a sufficient number to reflect honour upon a whole kingdom. i commence my account from the city of modena; no other city of lombardy earlier appreciated the style of raffaello, nor did any city of all italy become more deeply attached to, and produce more enthusiastic imitators of it. i have already treated of pellegrino da modena, (vol. ii. p. ) called in the chronicle of lancillotti _degli aretusi, alias de' munari_. he received his education in his native place, and produced a picture there as early as , still preserved at s. giovanni, in excellent condition, and creditable to the talent of its author, even before he entered the school of raffaello. but such was here his improvement, that his master availed himself of his assistance in adorning the open galleries of the vatican, as well as in other works executed in rome, sometimes along with perino del vaga, and sometimes by himself. several of his pieces at s. giacomo degli spagnuoli boasted figures of such a truly graceful and raffaellesque air, according to the account of titi, that the modern retouches they received was a circumstance truly to be deplored. he is better known in his own country than at rome, in particular at s. paolo, where there remains a nativity of our lord which seems to breathe, in every part, the graces of d'urbino. this unhappy artist had a son who, having committed homicide, was threatened with the vengeance of the parents of the deceased; and meeting with the father, they directed their fury against him, and slew him upon the spot, a truly tragic event, which occurred in . another of his sons, tiraboschi conjectures to have been cesare di pellegrino aretusi, the same, who by many writers is called _modenese_, having been born in modena; _bolognese_ by others, because he lived in bologna, and there took up his citizenship. this artist, to whom we shall again refer, formed his taste in bologna by copying bagnacavallo, being unable to obtain the instructions of pellegrino. a giulio taraschi, however, was more fortunate, and benefitted much by his instructions, as appears from many of his paintings at s. pietro, in modena, in the roman taste; a taste which he is said to have cultivated in two of his brothers, and transmitted to others whose names will appear as we proceed. somewhat later, also, coreggio began to afford a new model for the school of modena; he who is now held their master, and whose skull is preserved, upon the example set by rome, (vol. ii. p. ), in the academy recently opened with so much splendour. he employed himself a good deal in parma, in which school we shall more decidedly treat of him, though he also, in some measure, adorned modena, reggio, carpi, and coreggio; drawing scholars from all these places, who will appear in a catalogue with the rest in their appropriate chapter. in this way he early began to exercise an influence over the school of modena, and to be esteemed in it a sort of master, whose manner might be pursued with advantage, either in emulating it altogether, or uniting it with that of raffaello. this became more particularly the case when his fame increased, after his decease; and when the best specimens he left behind him were collected by degrees, both from the capital and from the adjacent cities, by different dukes of este, to adorn their gallery, where they were to be seen until nearly the middle of the present century.[ ] at that period modena was thronged with artists of every country, coming to take copies of those great productions, and to study the rules of their composition; an object in which the natives themselves were not remiss; insomuch that we trace vestiges of their imitation in every separate hand. in regard, however, to the earliest and more ancient, it would appear that their predilection and their genius were more decidedly directed towards raffaello, and the roman manner; whether it be that exotic commodities are more highly valued than those of native growth, or whether it were that the successors of pellegrino alone continued for a length of time to instruct youth, and to maintain a reputation in those parts. footnote : francesco iii. disposed of one hundred pictures to the court of dresden; among which were five from the hand of coreggio, for , zechins, which were coined in venice. it would be desirable in the history of so excellent a school, that writers should inform us by whom many of those masters were educated who flourished towards the middle, or latter half of the century. observation, however, may in some degree serve to supply the omission of historians, as the style in many approaches so nearly that of raffaello, as to lead us to conclude, that they must have imbibed it from munari himself, or from the taraschi, who succeeded him in his school. among the works of gaspare pagani, who was also a portrait-painter, the picture of s. chiara is the only remaining specimen. of girolamo da vignola, a few frescos remain at s. piero. both were professed imitators of raffaello; but the last one of the most happy whom that age produced. alberto fontana displayed equal excellence in his frescos, and ornamented both within and without the public market-place; pictures, says scanelli, which _appear like raffaello_'s, while he erroneously ascribes them to the hand of niccolò dell' abate. and in truth, from the observation of vedriani, the style of one very much resembles that of the other; whether they may have both equally imbibed it from begarelli, which the same historian seems to insinuate, or whether they derived it through some other channel, in the academy of munari. still the similitude of their manner is not such as to merge their more peculiar distinctions; so that if the heads of alberto's figures are remarkable for a fine air, and for tints that rival those of niccolò, we can easily point out less perfect design, and occasionally a certain rudeness and heaviness. but let us turn to his competitor, and dwell upon the subject more at length, as becomes the character of a painter, enumerated by algarotti "among the first who have adorned the world." he is supposed by some to have been instructed by coreggio, an assertion which cannot wholly be discredited, when we cast our eye upon some instances of his foreshortening, and of his fine relievo. but vasari no where mentions such a circumstance; and it is only on adverting to the martyrdom of the chiefs of the apostles, painted by him at the monaci neri, that he remarks, that the figure of an executioner is taken from a picture by coreggio at s. giovanni of parma. whoever may have been the tutor of niccolino, he very evidently betrays his enthusiasm for the roman school, in his frescos at modena, supposed to be one of his earliest works. the same might be averred of his twelve fresco pictures upon the twelve books of the Æneid, removed from the fortress of candiano, and now adorning the ducal palace; sufficient of themselves to exhibit him as an excellent hand in figures, in landscape, in architecture, and in animals; in every merit requisite to a distinguished disciple of raffaello. proceeding at a maturer age to bologna, he painted under the portico of the lions, a nativity of our lord, in such a manner that neither in those of raffaellino del borgo, nor of any other artist educated in rome, do i recollect meeting with so decided a resemblance to the head of the school. i know that a distinguished professor was in the habit of pronouncing it the most perfect painting in fresco that the city of bologna possessed. it formed likewise the admiration and model of the caracci, no less than other works of niccolino, remaining in the city. among these, the most admired by strangers, is that fine _conversazione_ of ladies and youths, which serves for a frieze in the hall of the institute. next to raffaello this artist did not refuse to imitate some others. there is recorded, and indeed impressed upon the memory of most painters, a sonnet of agostino caracci, from which we learn, that in niccolino alone was assembled the symmetry of raffaello, the terror of michelangiolo, the truth of titian, the dignity of coreggio, the composition of tibaldi, the grace of parmigianino; in a word, the best of every best professor, and of every school. such an opinion, though to be taken with some grains of allowance, from a poet passionately attached to the honour of his native school, might perhaps obtain more supporters, did the pieces of abati appear somewhat more frequently in different collections. but they are extremely rare; no less because of the superior number of his frescos, than from the circumstance of his having passed into france at the age of forty. he was invited thither by the abate primaticcio to assist him in some of his greatest works, intended for charles ix., nor did he ever return into italy. hence arose the story of his having been a pupil of primaticcio, and taking from him his cognomen of abate; when in fact he drew that title from his own family. about there were remaining at fontainebleau the histories of ulysses, to the number of thirty-eight, painted by niccolò from designs of primaticcio; the most extensive of any of his works executed in france. according to algarotti, it was afterwards destroyed, though engravings of it, from the hand of van-thulden, a pupil of rubens, still remain. niccolò's family, also, for a long period, continued to maintain a reputation in many branches of the art. one of his brothers, pietro paolo, distinguished himself by his happy manner of representing warlike skirmishes, in particular the terrific charges of horse: several small pictures in the ducal gallery, from their peculiar character, are thus ascribed to his hand; and they are to be seen placed immediately below those of the Æneid. in the chronicle of lancillotto we meet with giulio camillo, son of niccolò, who accompanied his father into france; his name thus remaining nearly unknown in italy. the most distinguished name in the family after niccolo, is that of ercole, son of giulio, though its lustre was impaired by an abandoned course of life, productive of great unhappiness. he painted a good deal; but, as is too frequently the case with persons of his character, he diminished the value of his productions by the haste and inaccuracy of his hand. of his superior merit, however, we are assured by the number of commissions bestowed upon him by the modenese court, to which we are inclined to give more credit than to the venal strains of marino, who extols him to the skies. his picture of the marriage of cana, remaining in the ducal gallery, would be sufficient to establish his fame; it is in his finest manner, and, in many points, displays much of the taste of the venetian school. his most extensive work was produced for the hall of council, where he had a companion and rival in schedone, assisting him in those pictures which they undertook in conjunction, and vieing with him in his separate works. nor ought it to be esteemed any diminution of his merit to have been surpassed by so great a competitor. the last of these family artists is pietro paolo, son of ercole, who died in his eight and thirtieth year, . i include his name here, in order not to separate him from his ancestors, of none of whom he was unworthy. though hardly with equal genius, he pursued the manner of his father; there is a tame expression in several of his best authenticated pieces: i say best authenticated, because it is doubtful whether we should consider some pictures, attributed to him, as the inferior specimens of his father, or the best of his own. besides the disciples and imitators of raffaello, i find other artists of modena, who, during the sixteenth century, became attached to a different style; and no one among these is to be preferred to ercole de' setti, an excellent engraver, as well as a painter of considerable merit. a few of his altar-pieces remain at modena; and i have seen, though very rarely, some little pieces painted for galleries, dignified rather than beautiful in point of design. he is cautious and studied in the naked parts, nearly equal to the style of the florentines, spirited in his attitudes, and strong in his colouring. we find his name subscribed _ercole de' setti_, and also in latin, _hercules septimius_. along with his name vedriani enumerates that of a francesco madonnina, entitling him one of the most celebrated artists in the city; but there is too little of his remaining in modena to form a judgment of his style. as little also remains of giovanni battista ingoni, a rival of niccolo, as he is termed by vasari; and what yet exists is by no means to be held in high estimation. i have discovered nothing from the hand of gio. batista codibue, though i have read of his _nunziata_ at the carmine being highly esteemed, besides other productions both in painting and sculpture. high commendations have likewise been bestowed upon domenico carnevale for his frescos, that have now perished, though a few oil paintings still exist, held in much esteem; one of the epiphany, belonging to one of the prince's collections, and another of the circumcision, in the palace of the conti cesi. he also distinguished himself at rome; and it will be sufficient to add, that he was the artist selected to restore the pictures of michelangiolo, as we find recorded in the notes to vasari. reggio boasts the honour of having derived its first school from raffaello; and bernardino zacchetti is supposed to have been one of his disciples, though the authorities cited to this effect by most historians, are not entirely conclusive. perhaps his picture at s. prospero, designed and coloured in the taste of garofolo, and others which partake of that of raffaello, may have given rise to this opinion. but italy then abounded with the disciples of that great master, no longer instructed, indeed, by his voice, but by his paintings and engravings. the works, said to have been produced by him in rome, and the assistance afforded to bonarruoti, in his labours at the sistine chapel, are assertions of azzari, contained in his _compendio_, which remain unquestioned by any ancient writer. we might more easily, however, grant him the proposition of giarola having been a pupil of coreggio, and as such i have reserved him for the school of parma. not long after these flourished lelio orsi, of reggio. banished from his native place, he took up his residence at novellara, a city then in the possession of the gonzaghi, where he established himself, and derived his name of lelio da novellara. this distinguished character, of whom no account had been given, beyond a slight notice in the abbecedario, has recently been honoured with an excellent life, from the pen of the cavalier tiraboschi, compiled from a variety of sources. whether he was really a disciple of coreggio still remains a disputed point with historians, though it is certain he flourished sufficiently near, both in regard to time and place, to have become acquainted with him. he, at least, studied and copied his works, of which there is an instance in a copy of the celebrated _notte_, in possession of the noble house of gazzola, at verona. nor are there wanting writers who maintain that parma, likewise, was embellished by his hand, a city in which the chief ornaments of that school employed themselves. and there are false accounts, still in some measure credited, of his having been a pupil of michelangiolo; of coreggio having corresponded with him, and even consulted him in his designs. it is true, indeed, he is an ingenious, accurate, and powerful designer. whether he imbibed his taste at rome, as tiraboschi, upon the authority of a ms., seems to believe; or from giulio in the city of mantua; or, again, from studying the designs and models of michelangiolo; a knowledge of the path being itself sufficient to enable enlightened spirits to run the same career with success. decidedly his design is not of the lombard school; and hence arises the difficulty of supposing him one of the scholars of coreggio, in which case his earlier pieces, at least, would have partaken of a less robust character. he has admirably succeeded, however, in attaining the same grace in his chiaroscuro, in the spreading of his colours, and in the beauty and delicacy of his youthful heads. both reggio and novellara possess many of his pictures in fresco, now, for the most part, perished; and we are indebted to the glorious memory of francesco iii. for such as are now to be seen at modena, in the palace of his highness, transferred thither from the fortress of novellara. few of his altar-pieces remain in public in either of the cities, the rest being removed; one of which last, representing the saints rocco and sebastiano, along with s. giobbe, i happened to meet with in the studio of signor armanno, at bologna. a few others attributed to him at parma,[ ] at ancona, and at mantua, are by no means of so authentic a character; and there is every reason to believe that lelio, dividing his time between reggio and novellara, never absented himself from those places long together; and has thus remained less known than many other painters of inferior rank. the silence of vasari, of lomazzo, of baldinucci, as well as the chief part of foreigners, is thus likewise accounted for. footnote : see father affò, pp. - . from the school of lelio, in all probability, sprung jacopo borbone, of novellara, who, in the year , painted a portion of the cloister at the church of the osservanti, in mantua; also, orazio perucci, of whom there remain various pictures in private houses, and an altar-piece at s. giovanni. raffaello motta was undoubtedly a pupil of orsi, better known under the name of raffaellino da reggio, who left in his native place a few of his productions in fresco; an astonishing genius, deserving of rome for his theatre of action, as indeed i before observed, and of being lamented like a new raffaello, prematurely passing away. at this period carpi had to boast the name of orazio grillenzone, who resided mostly in ferrara, where enjoying the acquaintance of tasso, he was honoured and immortalized by his pen, being rendered the subject of that dialogue, bearing for its title, _il grillenzone_, or the _epitaph_. but none of his paintings are now to be found in that city; and even what remains of his in carpi is of a very disputable character. i do not here speak of the celebrated girolamo of carpi; because he was in fact a native of ferrara, as i elsewhere observed. there is little to be said of ugo da carpi, as a painter: he was of an inferior genius when he applied himself to his pencil; and fell still further below mediocrity when he became whimsical enough to paint with his fingers, recording the exploit upon the canvass, as he did in the figure of the volto santo, the holy face, at s. pietro, in rome. still we ought to bear honourable testimony to his merit, as the inventor of wood engraving in two, and next in three blocks, or pieces, by which he expressed the three different tints, the shade, the middle tints, and the light.[ ] in this way he produced many designs and inventions of raffaello, with greater clearness than even marc antonio had before done; besides opening to posterity a new path, as it were, of painting in chiaroscuro, very easily imitated and multiplied. vasari particularly treats upon it at the close of his introduction; and there, no less than in other places, commends the genius of ugo as one of the most acute that was ever directed towards the fine arts. footnote : the germans claim the invention of the art of engraving in wood, in _chiaroscuro_, before ugo announced it to the italians. for this, they produce the cards of gio. ulderico pilgrim, which, although _gothic_, observes huber, (p. ) _produce an admirable effect in regard to chiaroscuro_. they make out the inventor to be very ancient, enumerating mair and others, equally celebrated at the same period. we are told nothing, however, in regard to their mechanism, which was probably not the same as that of ugo. it will not here be thought irrelevant to record the new method of engraving in the dutch manner, in imitation of coloured designs, though not executed by process of wood, but of copper. it has been introduced into tuscany, through the efforts of the distinguished cosimo rossi, a gentleman of pistoia, and vice-president of the academy. after various experiments, and making the first trials upon some representations of tombs, in the solid egyptian style of his own invention, it soon became also imitated in other modes of engraving, and more especially in the _viaggio pittorico_ of traballesi. it were desirable that the before-mentioned gentleman should continue to apply the same in works of architecture and perspective; in which he succeeds admirably also with his pencil, very happily emulating the style of canaletto. the method ought to be explained very minutely; but it is both too complicate and too extensive to be adapted to the degree of brevity we have bound ourselves to observe upon similar subjects. modenese school. epoch iii. _the modenese artists of the seventeenth century chiefly follow the example of the bolognese._ the taste introduced by munari into modena and the state, together with the example of coreggio and lelio, did not become wholly extinct in the seventeenth century. it was in some measure continued by several of their pupils and imitators, but in proportion as those of the caracci grew into greater credit, gradually extending their influence over the other schools of italy, it began to decline apace. it is well known that some of the modenese frequented their academy, and bartolommeo schedone is included by malvasia among the scholars of the caracci. if such be the fact, we must conclude, either that his first productions are not known, or that he merely saluted that school, as it were, from the threshold; inasmuch as the larger works which are pointed out as his, betray few traces of the style of the caracci. it seems more probable that he employed himself in following the successors of raffaello in his native place, and in particular coreggio, of whom there remained so many original pieces. his pieces in fresco, executed in competition with ercole abati, about , still exist in the public palace; and among these is the beautiful history of coriolanus, and the seven sisters, who are meant to represent harmony: whoever observes these will find they possess a mixture of the two characters before alluded to. there is, moreover, in the cathedral, a half figure of s. geminiano, with an infant boy restored by him to life, supporting himself by the saint's staff, and apparently returning his thanks. it may be enumerated among the best of his works, and bears a striking resemblance to those of coreggio. the same resemblance was affirmed from that period in other of his pictures transferred elsewhere; and marini mentions them in one of his letters as a kind of phenomenon. scanelli, who wrote about forty years after the death of schedone, also confirms such an opinion; though to make the imitation complete, he would have wished a little more practice and solidity, in which i rather think he alludes to his perspective and design, not always quite correct. for the rest his figures, both in their character and their action, are very pleasing, while his colouring in fresco is very vivid and lively; in oils he is more serious, but more harmonious, though not always free from the ill effect produced by the bad grounds usual in the age of the caracci. his pictures on a larger scale, such as his pietà, now in the academy of parma, are extremely rare, and also his history-pieces, as the nativity of our lord and that of the virgin, placed for lateral ornaments to an altar-piece by filippo bellini. of his holy families, and little sacred pieces, there are some remaining; such as are found in galleries being highly valuable, so much so, that tiraboschi records the sum of , crowns having been required for one of them. the court of naples is extremely rich in them, having, together with the other farnesian pictures, obtained also those painted by schedone, while in the service of duke ranuccio, his most liberal patron. this artist produced but little, being seduced by the love of gambling; nor did he survive very long after losing a large sum of money, about the end of the year . the three following names belong to the school of the caracci, also in regard to style. giacomo cavedone, born in sassuolo, but absent from the state after the period of youth, was esteemed one of the best disciples of lodovico. giulio secchiari, of modena, resided also at rome, and in mantua, where he produced several excellent pictures for the court, which perished in the sack of . what remains of him in his native place, and in particular the death of the virgin, in the subterranean part of the cathedral, with four crowns around, is calculated to give rise to lively regret, that giulio should not be equally well known in different collections, with the other disciples of the caracci. camillo gavassetti, likewise of modena, may boast also of a greater degree of merit than of fame; no less because he died young, than because of his attaching himself to works in fresco, which, confined to the place in which they are produced, confine also the reputation of the artist. he is better known in piacenza than in modena, parma, or, indeed, any other city. one of his paintings adorns the presbytery of the church of s. antonino, accompanied with figures taken from the apocalypse, so finely executed as to induce guercino, when coming to piacenza to complete his finest work, to bestow the highest commendation upon it; and it is still enumerated among the chief ornaments of that rich and ornate city. there is something so grand, spirited, and choice, in its whole expression, combined with so much grace and harmony of tints, that it equally surprises us when viewed together, and satisfies us when examined part by part. the action only is sometimes too extravagant, and some of the figures are hardly sufficiently studied. in fact, this artist preferred expedition to high finish; and held a dispute, reported by baldinucci, with tiarini, who practised and maintained the contrary, a plan by which, in all works of importance, he was preferred to him in parma. in santa maria di campagna, at piacenza, however, where they both painted scriptural histories in opposition, gavassetti maintains his ground against tiarini, and other competitors, very numerous and distinguished for that period. when the pupils of the caracci succeeded their masters in bologna, the young artists of the neighbouring state of modena continued to receive instructions from them, being highly esteemed in the court of este. at that period flourished francesco i., and alfonso iv., both of whom, according to the history of malvasia, were greatly attached to the followers of the caracci; some of these they invited into their service, others they employed in their palaces, and at their public festivals; and from all they were anxious to obtain designs and pictures which they might exhibit in their churches, or in their grand collection of paintings, rendered by their means one of the richest in europe. hence the artists who next follow, with the exception of a very few, among whom is romani of reggio, will be included in one school. it seems certain that romani studied in venice, and there became attached to paolo, whose style he adopted in the mysteries of the rosario; and even more so to tintoretto, whose rules he usually practised, and very successfully. guido reni was either the master or the prototype of gio. batista pesari; if this artist, who resembles guido in his madonna at s. paolo, imitated him as closely in his other works. but of this we cannot judge, as he flourished only during a short period, and part of that time in venice, where he died before enjoying any degree of fame. guido himself undoubtedly bestowed his instructions on luca da reggio, and on bernardo cervi da modena. luca i have mentioned in the preceding book. the second according to the judgment of guido, was possessed of distinguished talents for design; and though meeting with a premature fate in the pestilence of , he left behind him works in the cathedral, and other churches, not inferior, perhaps, to those of luca. from the same school sprung giovanni boulanger, of troyes, painter to the court of modena, and master in that city. we find, in the ducal palace, various specimens of his pencil truly delicate, though his want of good grounds in many pictures, occasionally casts some reflection upon his merit. he is happy in his inventions, warm and harmonious in his colours, spirited in his attitudes, but not without some touch of excessive enthusiasm. the sacrifice of iphigenia, if a genuine production, is sufficient to establish his character; although the figure of agamemnon may appear veiled in a capricious style, scarcely adapted to an heroic subject. two of his best imitators and disciples are tommaso costa, of sassuolo, and sigismondo caula, of modena; the first of whom succeeded as a powerful colourist, of very general talent, and was eagerly employed by the neighbouring courts and cities in perspective, in landscape, and in figures. reggio, where he usually resided, retains many of his productions: modena has several, and in particular the cupola of s. vincenzo bears proud testimony to his merit. caula left his native place, only in order to improve his knowledge in venice. thence he returned with the acquisition of a copious and richly coloured style, as orlandi very justly remarks, in regard to his great picture of the plague, at s. carlo. he subsequently changed his tints, which became more languid, and in such taste are most of the pictures he produced for the ornament of altars and cabinets. many artists of reggio were initiated in the art by lionello spada, and by desani, his pupil, and assistant in the numerous labours he executed at that place. among these are sebastiano vercellesi, pietro martire armani, and in particular orazio talami, who, not content, like the rest, to remain in his native place, traversed italy, studied with unwearied care the models of the caracci, and succeeded so well in his figures, that he might be mistaken for one of their scholars. while at rome, which he twice visited, he devoted himself much to perspective, and very scrupulously observes its rules in the noble and extensive representations of architectural objects, which he introduced into his compositions. in all respects his style is inclined rather to solidity than to amenity. his native place boasts many of his labours, and more especially two large pictures abounding in figures, preserved in the presbytery of the cathedral. jacopo baccarini was an imitator of his style, two of whose pictures have been engraved by buonvicini; a _riposo di egitto_, and a _s. alessio morto_, both of which are to be seen at s. filippo. this artist's manner displays much judgment, accompanied with a good deal of grace. mattia benedetti, a priest of reggio, commended in the abbecedario, was instructed in the art of perspective by talami himself, and, together with his brother lodovico, occupies an honourable place in this class. paolo emilio besenzi, a particular imitator of albano, either from natural taste or education, differs a good deal in the former from lionello. reggio retains many pieces, especially at s. pietro, highly creditable to this artist's talents; besides statues and buildings in very good taste; as he succeeded in uniting, like some of the best among the ancients, the various qualities of the three sister arts. guercino, likewise, presented the state with an excellent scholar in antonio triva di reggio. he distinguished himself in various cities of italy, and even in venice, whither he conducted his sister flamminia, who possessed a genius for the art. here they both employed themselves in several public works, which acquired for them the commendation of boschini. occasionally he adheres so faithfully to his master, as in the orto at piacenza, as not even to yield to cesare gennari. in other pieces he is more free; though still his manner retains strong traces of his school, really beautiful, as it is pronounced by zanetti, and, if i mistake not, full of truth. he finally visited the court of bavaria, where he was employed until the period of his death. to guercino, also, we must refer another imitator of his style, in lodovico lana. he was instructed, however, by scarsellini, and from that circumstance, has been enumerated by some among the artists of ferrara. but lana, most likely, was born in the state of modena, in whose city he resided and held his school. his reputation there is great, as well on account of many very beautiful pieces, as more particularly for that in the chiesa del voto, in which he represented modena freed from the scourge of the plague. it is generally agreed that he never produced a finer specimen of his art, and there are few, at this time, in those churches, that can be said to rival it in point of composition, in force of colouring, harmony, and a certain novelty and abundance of images, that produce surprise in the spectator. lana is one of the freest among the imitators of guercino; his touch is the same, though less strong, and in taste they exactly coincide. in his motions he has something of tintoretto, or more properly of scarsellini; but in his colours, and the expressions of his countenances, he preserves an originality of character. pesari and he were rivals, as were the masters whom they respectively followed, on account of their contrast of style. pesari, however, seemed to yield, as he transferred his talents to venice, while his competitor became the director of an academy in modena, which supported by his credit, then became celebrated throughout italy. the name of lana continues to maintain its ground in bologna, and other adjacent places, while it is not unknown in lower italy. the chief part of his specimens to be met with in collections, consist of heads of aged men, full of dignity, and touched with a certain boldness of hand, which declares the master. those who flourished after him, belonging to the city of modena and the state, were for the most part educated elsewhere. bonaventura lamberti, of carpi, as i have observed in the roman school, was instructed by cignani; and there he had a noble theatre for the display of his powers. at the same period flourished francesco stringa, in modena, where he painted a good deal in a style, if i mistake not, that approached, or seemed rather ambitious of approaching, that of lana, and guercino himself. by some, he is supposed to have been a pupil of the first; by others, of the second of these artists; but it is known only with certainty, that he formed himself upon their model, and that of other excellent masters, whose works, during his superintendance of the great este gallery, he might consult at his pleasure. endowed with a rich imagination, spirited and rapid in execution, he produced much, which was greatly commended, both in the cathedral and in the churches. his distinguishing characteristic is the depth of his shades, the somewhat disproportioned length of his figures, and an inclination to the capricious in his actions and composition. when in advanced years he began to deteriorate in style, a case common to most artists. he was the first master of jacopo zoboli, who, proceeding from modena into bologna, and thence to rome, settled there, and died in , with the reputation of a good artist. this he in a high degree acquired by his labours in the church of s. eustachio, where he is distinguished amongst the more modern productions by his s. girolamo, displaying singular diligence, polish, and harmony of colours, by no means general in those times. the primaziale of pisa also boasted a grand picture by his hand, representing s. matteo, in the act of dedicating a young princess to a holy life, by the imposition of the sacred veil. two other artists of modena, francesco vellani and antonio consetti, who died near the same time, not very long ago, were instructed in the art by stringa and his school. both are in a taste much resembling that of the bolognese of their own age. the former however, is not so accurate in point of design as the latter, a strict and commendable master in that art. it is true, he has a crudeness of colours, not very pleasing to the eye; no new circumstance in an artist educated in the school of creti. both modena and the state are in possession of many of their pieces. still more modern artists have supported with honour the reputation of such predecessors; but i could not here, without deviating from my original system, venture to mention them. the place will invariably serve to forward instruction; a collection of designs and paintings being now exhibited in the ducal gallery, which does honour to italy, no less than to the noble taste of the family of este that established it. nor has it omitted, from time to time, to provide for young artists the assistance of the academy, which continued to flourish there, from the times of lana, often closed, and afterwards re-opened, until beyond the age of consetti. but it proved too difficult an attempt, to support another academy so near that of bologna, so widely distinguished and attended.[ ] footnote : the latest attempt to restore it was made in , when it continued to flourish with some credit, during ten years. in the close of the year it assumed the name of school, as i before remarked, directed by a master in the art of designing figures, together with an assistant. the same celebrated state, so fruitful in every kind of merit, produced also able professors in other branches of the art. lodovico bertucci, of modena, was a painter of _capricci_, which were at that period much admired and admitted even into palaces; and perhaps there are many of his specimens still preserved there, but known under other names. a pellegrino ascani, of carpi, was an admirable flower-painter, and was succeeded, after a long interval, by felice rubbiani. this last was a scholar of bettini, the companion of his travels, and the imitator of his taste. he was a favourite at court, in the cities, and the vicinity; and had commissions bestowed upon him to the number of thirty-six pictures, by the marchesi riva, of mantua, all of which he varied in the most astonishing manner. there was, moreover, a matteo coloretti, from reggio, excellent in portraits, and a lady of the name of margherita gabassi, who succeeded admirably in humourous pieces. nor ought we to omit the name of paolo gibertoni, of modena, who settled at lucca, and for this reason less known in his native place. his grotesques in fresco boast no ordinary merit; and these he varied with every species of strange animals, executed with great spirit. he was likewise very pleasing in his landscapes, which rose in value after his death, and are still much esteemed. most part of the artists of the modenese state distinguished themselves in ornamental work and in architecture; such as girolamo comi, whose fine perspectives deserved to have been accompanied with superior figures; and gio. batista modonino, called by mistake madonnino in the dictionary of artists, who acquired a high reputation in rome, and probably left several frescos in the palazzo spada. he died of the plague, in naples, . antonio ioli met with a better fate there, about the same period; having acquired the theory of architecture, he passed into rome, and, entering the school of pannini, he became one of the most celebrated painters in architecture and ornamental work, known to the present century. applauded in the theatres of spain, england, and germany, all of which he adorned, he afterwards went to naples, and became painter to carlo iii., and to his successor. giuseppe dallamano, a weak man, and, as it is said, unacquainted with his alphabet, was ignorant even of the common principles of the art; though by an extraordinary sort of talent, and especially in colouring, he attained a degree of excellence truly surprising, even to the learned; by which he continued to live, employing himself in the service of the royal family at turin. his pupil fassetti was, likewise, an extraordinary character; applying himself, at the age of twenty-eight, to the grinding of colours, he soon began to imitate his master; and ultimately, with the assistance of francesco bibiena, he became one of the most skilful among the theatrical painters of lombardy. he came from reggio, as well as his contemporary zinani, and the younger spaggiasi, both educated in the school of bibiena; although of the father of spaggiasi, who died in the service of the king of poland, the master's name remains unknown. to these we might add the name of bartoli, zannichelli, bazzani, and of others, either yet flourishing or deceased; names by which the cavalier tiraboschi is justified in observing, that "reggio had the honour of having at all times produced excellent theatrical painters." carpi enjoys a different kind of honour, though as great in its way. for there were first commenced the works termed _a scagliola_, or _a mischia_, of mixed workmanship, the first inventor of which was guido fassi, or del conte.[ ] the stone, called selenite, forms the first ingredient in it. it is pounded and mixed with colours, and by the application of a certain glue, the composition becomes as hard as stone, forming a kind of marble, capable, with further care, of taking a gradual polish. the first trial was made upon cornices, which thus assume the appearance of fine marbles; and there remain also in carpi, of the same composition, two altars by the hand of guido himself. his fellow citizens began to avail themselves of this discovery; some adding one thing to it, and some another. annibal griffoni, a pupil of guido, applied it to monuments, and even ventured upon the composition of pictures, intended to represent engravings upon copper, as well as pictures in oil; an attempt not very successful, insomuch that the specimens by his son gaspero are not valued beyond a few tabernacles, and things in a similar taste. giovanni gavignani afforded assistance first to guido, and next to griffoni, surpassing both in a skilful application of the art. thus, the altar of s. antonio, in the church of s. niccolo, at carpi, is still pointed out as something extraordinary, consisting of two columns of porphyry, and adorned with a pallium embroidered with lace; an exact imitation of the covers of the altar, while it is ornamented in the margin with medals, bearing beautiful figures. nor is the monument from the hand of one ferrari in the cathedral, less perfect in its kind; where the marbles are so admirably counterfeited, that several tourists of the best taste have been induced to break a small portion, to convince themselves of the fact. there are, also, pictures preserved in private houses thus drawn by gavignani; one of which consists of the rape of proserpine, executed with much elegance, in possession of signor cabassi. footnote : in the _novelle letterarie of florence_, , it is asserted that this art was introduced about two ages back into tuscany, giving rise to imitations of marbles, besides some fancy pieces. i have diligently sought after specimens thus antique, both at florence and at vallombrosa, where this art was in great vogue; but what i have seen are very trivial in their character, nor do they appear of so ancient a date. leoni, who resided in cremona, was a disciple of the griffoni, and the artificer of two very beautiful desks, preserved in the ducal museum at modena, as well as paltronieri and mazzelli, who introduced the art into romagna, where it still continues to flourish. we there meet with altars, that equally deceive the eye by their colour, and the touch by the freshness of the marble. but the most celebrated pupil of the griffoni was a priest called gio. massa, who, together with gio. pozzuoli, produced wonderful specimens of the art in his native place, in the adjacent cities, in guastalla, novellara, and elsewhere. the priest proved equally successful in drawing distant views, gardens, and in particular architecture, besides adorning with it tablets, and coverings of altars, in such a manner as to reach the very perfection of the art. the most dignified objects possessed by rome were those which he most delighted in for his views; such as the façade of the temple of the vatican, its colonnade, and its piazza. it appears the duke of guastalla took singular pleasure in similar works; and at his desire were prepared those two little tables, in the possession of signor alberto pio, cited by tiraboschi, and which were, perhaps, the masterpieces of massa. no objects appeared to me more remarkable than such works abounding almost in every church throughout those parts; and it would be very desirable that the plan of representing architectural views, by this process, should become more frequent. massa also included figures, the honour of perfecting which has fallen upon florence; a subject i have treated in my first volume, (p. ). i shall merely notice here, that after the practice of modelling had been brought to vie with sculpture; and after engraving upon wood had so well counterfeited works of design, we have to record this third invention, belonging to a state of no great dimensions. such a fact is calculated to bring into still higher estimation the geniuses who adorned it. there is nothing of which man is more ambitious, than of being called the inventor of new arts: nothing is more flattering to his intellect, or draws a broader line between him and the animals that are incapable of such inventions, or of carrying them beyond the limits prescribed by instinct. in short, nothing was held in higher reverence among the ancients; and hence it is, that virgil, in his elysian fields, represented the band of inventors with their brows crowned with white chaplets, equally distinct in merit as in rank, from the more vulgar shades around them. the school of parma. epoch i. _the ancients._ next in order to the school of modena, i rank that of parma and its state; and i should very gladly have united them together, as other writers have done, if in addition to the distinction of dominions there did not also exist an evident distinction in point of taste. for it appears to me, as i have before had occasion to observe, that in the former of these cities the imitation of raffaello prevailed; in the second that of coreggio. this last indeed is the founder of the school of parma, which preserved a series of disciples for several generations, so strongly attached to his examples as to bestow no attention upon any other model. the situation in which he found the city on his first arrival, is apparent from the ancient figures scattered throughout, which by no means discover a progress in the art of painting equal to that of many other cities in italy. not that this arose from any want of acquaintance with the arts of design; for there flourished there as early as the th century an artist named benedetto antelani, of whom a basso-relievo, representing the crucifixion of our lord, is in the cathedral, which, though the production of a rude age, had nothing in sculpture equal to it that i have been able to meet with, until the period of giovanni pisano. respecting the art of painting, the celebrated father affò has extracted very interesting notices from published documents and mss., in order to shew, that before , both figures and historical pieces had been painted in parma.[ ] upon the completion of the baptismal font, about , that assemblage of paintings was there executed, which may now be regarded as one of the finest remaining monuments of the ancient manner that upper italy has to boast. the subjects are in the usual taste of those times; the style is less angular and rectilinear than that of the greek mosaicists; and displays some originality in the draperies, in the ornamental parts, and in the composition. above all, it shews very skilful mechanism in regard to gilding and colouring, which, notwithstanding the distance of five centuries, retain much of their original strength. footnote : the notices of the artists of parma communicated by him to the public, are in part contained in the life of parmigianino, and partly in a humorous little work, entitled _il parmigiano servitor di piazza_; and some further information on this subject i have myself received from the lips of this learned ecclesiastic. down from that period there appear in several places, both at piacenza and parma, further specimens of the _trecentisti_, sometimes with annexed dates, and sometimes without any. such as belong to piacenza, are in the church and cloister of the predicatori; but the best preserved of all is an altar-piece at san antonio martire, with histories of the titular saint in small figures, tolerably well drawn, and in costume which seems to have been borrowed, as it were, from some municipal usages peculiar to the place. parma, likewise, possesses some of the same date, besides a few others remaining at san francesco, in a somewhat more polished style, attributed to bartolommeo grossi, or to jacopo loschi, his son-in-law, both of whom were employed there in . subsequent to these flourished lodovico da parma, a pupil of francia, whose madonnas, executed in his master's manner, are easily recognized in parma; and a cristoforo caselli (not castelli, as he is termed by vasari,) or cristoforo parmense, enumerated by ridolfi among the pupils of gian bellino. he produced a very beautiful painting for the hall of the consorziali, bearing the date of ; and he is much commended by grappaldo in his work _de partibus Ædium_, who next to him ranks marmitta, of whom there is no authentic specimen remaining. still his name ought to be recorded, were it for no other reason than his being the supposed master of parmigianino. along with these we may mention alessandro araldi, one of the scholars of bellini, of whom there remains a nunziata, at the padri del carmine, with his name, besides altar-pieces in different churches. he was indisputably a good artist in the mixed manner, that is now called antico moderno. the family of the mazzuoli was much employed about the same period in parma, consisting of three brother artists, michele and pierilario, falsely supposed to have been the first masters of coreggio, and filippo, called _dalle erbette_, from succeeding better in fruits and flowers than in figure pieces. there remains an altar-piece of pierilario in the sacristy of santa lucia, executed in a method very superior to that of the "baptism of christ," painted for the baptismal font by his brother filippo. but, however inferior to his other brothers in this line himself, filippo may be pronounced at least more fortunate in his posterity, being the father of parmigianino, whom we have so lately had occasion to commend. yet the two most excellent of the mazzuoli could not, any more than their contemporaries, have been considered artists upon a great scale, when the padri cassinensi, instead of availing themselves of their services to decorate the tribune and cupola of their magnificent temple, dedicated to st. john, preferred inviting antonio allegri da coreggio, a foreigner and a youth, to undertake the immense task; a choice which may be said to have conferred a lasting obligation upon posterity. for coreggio, like raffaello, stood in need of some extensive undertaking in order to bring his powers into full play, and to open a new path for labours upon a grand scale, as he had before done in those of a smaller class. but of an artist who forms an era in italian painting itself, not in this particular school only, it becomes us to treat, as well as of his imitators, in a separate chapter. school of parma. epoch ii. _coreggio, and those who succeeded him in his school._ we are at length arrived at one of those distinguished characters, whom, from his high reputation, and the influence he exercised over the style of painting in italy, we can by no means dismiss with our accustomed brevity. his name, however, must still be confined within compendious limits, adding whatever new information and reflections we may think best adapted for the illustration of such a subject; the life of coreggio being involved in so much obscurity, as to admit, beyond that of any other artist, of fresh discussion. the more curious may consult the notices of him by the cavalier mengs, contained in his second volume, a little work by cavalier ratti, upon the life and works of allegri, published in finale in , and tiraboschi in his notices of the professors of modena, besides padre affò, in his works already cited, the most accurate, perhaps, of any in point of chronology. the whole of these writers, following the example of scannelli and orlandi, have complained of vasari for having falsely asserted the abject condition of antonio,[ ] sprung, in fact, from a tolerably good family in an illustrious city, and not destitute of those conveniences of fortune that might enable him from the first to obtain an education adapted to the success of his future efforts. they have also in particular reproached him with his excessive credulity, in representing him to us as a suffering and unhappy object, burdened with a numerous family, little appreciated and badly rewarded for his labours. on the contrary they observe, we know that he was respected by the great, richly recompensed, and enabled to leave a fair heritage for his family. now i admit that vasari is guilty of much exaggeration, though not without some shew of truth; for we only need to compare the commissions and gains of coreggio with those of raffaello, of michelangiolo, of titian, and even of vasari himself, to divest us of all surprise at the honest commiseration of the historian. annibal caracci did not only compassionate his condition, but is said to have bewailed it with his tears.[ ] besides, if we reflect that the terms made use of by vasari, of coreggio having become _si misero_, so wretched, that nothing could be worse, do not exactly signify _miserabile_, miserable, as interpreted by some of his critics, but rather mean, _miserly_, and _sparing_, renouncing certain conveniences of life, in order to spend as little as possible, it will alter the complexion of the case. in the same manner he states, or rather as some think, imagines that antonio, though enabled to travel like others, by water, mounted horse during the summer solstice, and shortly after died. and, indeed, if we consider the singular deprivations to which very wealthy people, for the same reason, will submit, we do not see how a reference to the possessions of the allegri family, not without some degree of exaggeration, as has more than once been done, can disprove this charge of meanness and extreme parsimony. we trust that the signor dottor antonioli will inform us more distinctly respecting the amount of antonio's property, though we are inclined to believe it could not have exceeded the limits of mediocrity. the highest salaries received by him have been ascertained. for the cupola and larger nave of the church of san giovanni, he was paid four hundred and seventy-two gold ducats, or venetian zecchins, and for the cupola of the cathedral, three hundred and fifty; doubtless considerable sums, though we should consider he was occupied from the year until , in the designs and labours requisite for works of such magnitude, and which prevented him from accepting other offers of any account during the interval. he earned forty gold ducats by his celebrated picture of night; his san girolamo brought him forty-seven ducats, or zecchins, besides his subsistence during six months he was employed on it; and thus, in equal proportion, we may suppose him to have been recompensed for the time bestowed upon his lesser pieces. the two which he painted for the duke of mantua we may reckon at something more; but these were the only ones he produced at the request of sovereigns. thus much being certain, it is hardly credible, that after deducting the expense of colours, of models, and of assistants, including the maintenance of his family, there should still have remained enough to leave that family in a state of affluence. footnote : in the opening of the life we find--"he was of a very timid disposition, and with extreme inconvenience devoted himself to incessant labour in order to provide for a numerous family." towards the conclusion he adds--"like those who have a numerous family, antonio was desirous," (he had four sons,) "of hoarding his money, and thus soon became one of the most miserable of men." elsewhere it is observed--"he held himself in slight esteem, and was satisfied with little." footnote : "it almost drives me mad with grief to think of the wretchedness of poor antonio; to think that so great a man, if he were not an angel in human shape, should be thus lost in a country which could not appreciate him, and though with a reputation reaching to the skies, destined to die in such a place so unhappily." in a letter to lodovico, written from parma, , (malvas. vol. i. p. ). annibal likewise exaggerated, because the padri benedettini, as well as others, were aware of the value of antonio. but although we admit the reality of his supposed indigence, it can form no reproach, no drawback upon the excellences of so great a man, crowning him rather with additional honour, in particular when we reflect, that with such limited means he was invariably lavish of his colours, to a degree beyond example. there is not a single specimen, whether executed on copper, on panels, or on canvass, always sufficiently choice, that does not display a profusion of materials, of ultramarine, the finest lake and green, with a strong body, and repeated retouches; yet for the most part laid on without ever removing his hand from the easel before the work was completed. in short he spared neither time nor expense, contrary to the custom of all other painters, with very few exceptions. such liberality, calculated to do honour to a rich amateur, painting for amusement, is infinitely more commendable in an artist of such circumscribed resources. it displays, in my opinion, all the grandeur of character that was supposed to animate the breast of a spartan. and this we would advance, no less in reply to vasari, who cast undue reflections upon coreggio's economy, than as an example for such young artists as may be desirous of nourishing sentiments worthy of the noble profession they embrace. it is still current in coreggio that antonio commenced his first studies under his uncle lorenzo. subsequent to which, according to vedriani, he entered into the school of francesco bianchi, called il frari, who died in , a school established in modena. there also it appears he acquired the art of modelling, at that time in great repute; and he thus prepared in clay, along with begarelli, the group of that pietà, in santa margherita, where the three most beautiful figures are attributed to coreggio. in the same highly distinguished city it is most probable that he also laid the foundation of that learned and cultivated taste so conspicuous in his works; the geometrical skill exhibited in his perspective, the architectural rules of his buildings, and the poetry of his warm and lively conceptions. thus his historians, judging from the specimens of his early style, assert that he must have sought it in the academy of andrea mantegna at mantua; but the recently discovered fact of andrea's having died in , does away with such a supposition. it is, nevertheless, extremely probable that he acquired it by studying the works left by andrea at mantua, for which i can adduce various arguments. i have described pretty fully the character of mantegna's picture of victory, the most extraordinary of all he produced; imitations of this are to be met with in many of the works of coreggio, but most evidently so in the picture of his st. george at dresden. the manner in which coreggio could have imbibed so exquisite a taste, was always considered surprising and unaccountable, prevailing every where, as we find it in his canvass, in his laying on his colours, in the last touches of his pictures; but let us for a moment suppose him a student of andrea's models, surpassing all others in the same taste as we before observed, and the wonder will be accounted for. let us moreover consider the grace and vivacity so predominant in the compositions of coreggio; that rainbow as it were of colours, that accurate care in his foreshortenings, and of those upon ceilings; his abundance of laughing boys and cherubs, of flowers, fruits, and all delightful objects; and let us then ask ourselves whether his new style does not appear an exquisite completion of that of mantegna, as the pictures of raffaello and titian display the progress and perfection of those of perugino and giovanni bellini. in regard to his education in the studio of mantegna, the generally received opinion in lombardy is, that vedriani must have been mistaken in a name; and that in place of andrea, he ought to have pronounced his son francesco, the master with whom it is maintained coreggio resided, either in quality of pupil or assistant. mantegna's school, indeed, had risen into great reputation, having given striking proof of its excellence even in foreshortening from above; besides surpassing melozio, as i elsewhere observed, so as only to leave another step before reaching the modern manner. this was reserved for the genius of coreggio, in common with the master spirits of every other school, who flourished during the same period. in truth from his very first attempts, he appears to have aimed at a softer and fuller style than mantegna's; and several, among whom is the abate bettinelli, have pointed out some such specimens in mantua. signor volta, member of the royal academy there, assured me that coreggio is named in the books of the opera di s. andrea, for which reason, several of the figures on the outside of the church, and in particular a madonna, better preserved than the rest, a youthful essay, but from the hand of one freed from the stiffness of the quattrocentisti, have been attributed to him.[ ] in mantua likewise i saw a little picture in possession of the abate bettinelli, about to be engraved, representing a holy family, in which, if we except a degree of stiffness in the folds, the modern manner is complete. a few other of coreggio's madonnas, to be referred to this period, are to be seen in the ducal gallery at modena, with other works mentioned in various places. among these is a picture of our lord, taking farewell of the virgin mother, previous to his passion, a piece recognized as a genuine coreggio by the abate carlo bianconi at milan.[ ] doubtless many of his other early productions were of an inferior description, and are dispersed abroad, either unknown, or disputed, vasari having recorded of him that _he completed many pictures and works_. footnote : there is a document existing in the same archives, where francesco mantegna binds himself to ornament the outside of the church. it may thus be conjectured, that the picture of the ascension, placed over the gateway, is from his hand, while the madonna, evidently from another, is the work of coreggio. the master, in executing his commissions, often employed his pupil or his assistant. footnote : this excellent judge of art, more particularly in point of engravings, and also extremely skilful in portraits drawn with the pen, departed this life at the beginning of . wherefore is it then that in the published catalogues we meet with so very scanty a list of his pictures, nearly all esteemed excellent? it is because whatever does not appear superlatively beautiful has been doubted, denied, and cast aside as unworthy of him, or attributed to some of his school. mengs himself, who investigated the relics of this great artist, and was very cautious of admitting any disputed productions, declares that he had only seen one specimen of his early style, that of his s. antony, in the gallery of dresden. this, as well as a s. francis and the virgin, he painted in , in carpi, when he was eighteen years of age.[ ] from the stiffness apparent in this last, and the contrasted softness of the others, he was led to conjecture that coreggio must have suddenly altered his manner, and attempted to penetrate into the unknown cause of it. he suspected, therefore, that what de piles, followed by resta, and some other writers, first advanced in his dissertations, against the authority of vasari, must be correct,[ ] namely, that coreggio visited rome, and having observed the ancient style, and that of raffaello and michelangiolo, along with melozio's pictures in the _sotto in su_, or foreshortening, he returned into lombardy with a different taste acquired during his stay in the capital. footnote : thus conjectures tiraboschi, with arguments that prove the fact rather than shew its probability. footnote : ortensio landi, in his observations, had put on record that coreggio died young, without seeing rome. tiraboschi. yet this able scholar proposes such a view of the case, with singular deference to the contrary opinion of others, and even presents his reader with arguments against that view, to the following effect:--"if he did not behold the antique," (and the same may be averred of the two distinguished moderns,) "such as it exists in rome, he may still have seen it as it appears at modena and parma; and the mere sight of an object is enough to awaken in fine spirits the idea of what it ought to be." and my readers, indeed, will be at no loss to find examples to confirm such an opinion; titian and tintoretto, by the mere use of modelling, having far surpassed those who designed statues; and baroccio happening to cast his eye upon a head of coreggio, soon distinguished himself in the same style. and if we may farther adduce an example of the power of sovereign genius, from the sciences, let us look at galileo watching the oscillations of a bell in a church at pisa, from which he drew the doctrine of motion and the principles of the new philosophy. so likewise might this great pictorial genius conceive the idea of a new style, from a few faint attempts of art, and thus won the applauses of the world of art, bestowed upon him from the time of vasari, as something due less to a _mortal than to a god_. doubtless in the first instance he received no slight impulse from the finer works of andrea, from the collection of ancient relics in mantua and parma, from the studio of the mantegni, and that of begarelli, equally rich in models and designs. to these we may add an acquaintance with artists, familiar with rome, with munari, with giulio romano himself; and finally the general influence of the age, every where dissatisfied with the meanness of the late style, and aiming at a more soft, full, and clear development of the contours. all these united in facilitating the progressive step which coreggio had to take, though his own genius was destined to achieve the task. this it was that first led him to study nature, with the eye of the ancient greeks, and that of his great italian predecessors. the leading geniuses of their age have often pursued the same career, unknown to each other, as tully has expressed himself, "et quâdam ingenii divinitate, in eadem vestigia incurrerunt." but we must here check ourselves, in regard to this portion of the subject, having to treat of it anew at the distance of not many pages. at present we have only to inquire whether coreggio really adopted the modern style at once, as has been asserted, or by gradual study. upon this point it is much to be regretted, that the cavalier mengs did not obtain a sight of some paintings in fresco, executed by coreggio, as it is said, in his early youth, during the period he was employed by the marchesa gambara; but which have now perished. for, doubtless, he would thus have been enabled to throw much light upon the subject; and at least i could have wished that he had met with two pictures produced by antonio in his native place, though but recently discovered, as in these, perhaps, he might have detected that sort of middle style, which is seen to exist between his st. antony and his st. george at dresden. the first of these has been called in question by tiraboschi, on the ground of there being no authentic document assigning it to coreggio; though i think it ought to be admitted as his, until stronger arguments, or the authority of experienced professors of the art, compel us to deny it. this picture was formerly placed in the chapel of _la misericordia_, and very old copies of it are still preserved in many private houses at coreggio. it represents a beautiful landscape, together with four figures of saints, st. peter, st. margherita, the magdalen, and another, most likely st. raimond, yet unborn.[ ] the figure of st. peter bears some resemblance to one of mantegna, in his ascension of st. andrew, just alluded to; while the wood and the ground are extremely like that master's composition. this fine piece was much damaged by the lights, or, as some suspect, by the varnish, purposely laid on, in order, by decreasing its value, to prevent its being carried away; but, on the contrary, it appears for this very reason to have been removed from the altar, and a copy substituted, in which the last of the above figures was exchanged for one of st. ursula. the original afterwards came into the possession of signor antonio armanno, one of the best connoisseurs at this time known, in respect to the value of engravings, as well as of other productions of our best artists, which he has likewise, in a singular degree, the art of restoring even when much defaced. so in this instance, by the most persevering care, during a whole year, he at length succeeded in removing this ugly veil, which concealed the beauty of the work, now renewed in all its pristine excellence, and attracting crowds of accomplished strangers to gaze upon its merits. it is generally allowed to exhibit a softer expression, in the modern style, than the st. antony, of dresden; though yet far distant from the perfection of the st. george and others, produced about the same time. footnote : tiraboschi, p. , gives a different account of it, and appears to confound the original with the copy, which for a long time has been placed on the altar, also considerably defaced and discoloured. respecting this picture, likewise, we hope we shall be better informed by the dottor antonioli, to whom we here confess our obligations for much information inserted in this chapter, obtained from his own mouth upon the spot. about this period, allegri painted in the church of the conventuals, at coreggio, what is termed an ancona, a small altar-piece in wood, consisting of three pictures. it appears certain, that the two altar-pieces already mentioned, opened the way also to this fresh commission; for from the written agreement, he seems to have been in his twentieth year, and the price fixed upon was one hundred gold ducats, or one hundred zecchins, which proves the esteem in which his talents were held. he here represented st. bartholomew and st. john, each occupying one side;[ ] while in the middle department, he drew a repose of the holy family flying into egypt, to which last was added a figure of st. francis. so greatly was francesco i. duke of modena, delighted with this picture, that he sent the artist boulanger with orders to copy it for him; and thus obtaining possession of the original, he dexterously contrived to substitute his own copy in its place, a deception which he afterwards repaired by presenting the convent with some fresh lands. it is believed that it was afterwards presented to the medicean family, and by them was given in exchange, to the house of este, for the sacrifice of abraham, from the hand of andrea del sarto. it is certain that it was to be seen in the royal gallery at florence, from the end of the last century, and was there commended by barri, in his _viaggio pittoresco_, as original. in progress of time, it began to be less esteemed, because less perfect, perhaps, than some of the masterpieces of coreggio, and not long after, assuming another name, it began to be pointed out by some as a baroccio, and by others as a vanni. the same signor armanno, before mentioned, who was the first to recall to mind the copy remaining at coreggio, presented us, also, with this hidden treasure. its originality, however, was disputed from the first, it being objected, in particular, that allegri had depicted the subject upon board, whereas this medicean painting was found to be upon canvass. but this doubt was removed on comparing the work with the copy of boulanger, made upon canvass; for certainly if the genuine production were really painted upon board, the imitator could hardly have succeeded in palming upon the holy brethren one of his copies upon canvass. the probability of its genuineness is still greater when we reflect, that no gallery was ever in possession of a repose similar to it, so as to have contested with the city of florence the possession of the original; so frequent an occurrence, both now and in other times, with works of art repeated in different places. besides, the hand of the master is, in itself, nearly enough to pronounce it genuine; we see the remains of a varnish peculiar to the author; a tone of colouring perfectly agreeing with his pictures at parma; insomuch, that many very experienced judges of art, and among others gavin hamilton, whose opinion carries great weight, have united in giving it to coreggio. at the same time, they admit, that it is a piece partaking of an union of his styles, during the progress of the second; and if we are careful in comparing it with his other representation of the repose, at s. sepolcro, in parma, commonly entitled the madonna della scodella, we shall discover much the same difference as between raffaello's paintings in città di castello and those at rome. such a distinction was noticed by some very respectable professors, even during the heat of the controversy, who agreed in declaring, that the medicean picture in part resembled coreggio in his best manner, and in part differed from it. footnote : these two saints had already been withdrawn from the altar, (tiraboschi, p. ,) nor does a copy of them remain at san francesco. that made by boulanger is in the convent, and was evidently produced in haste, and upon a bad ground; hence it is neither very exact, nor in good preservation. it is, nevertheless, valuable as throwing light upon coreggio's history, and his different styles; while it also tends to prove, that if the ancona was made of wood, the picture was made portable, and painted on canvass. there are two other pictures of his, mentioned by the cavalier mengs, which may be referred to the same class. one of them is the "_noli me tangere_," in the casa ercolani, but which subsequently passed into the escurial; the other a picture of the virgin in the act of adoring the divine infant, which adorns the royal gallery in florence; both of which he declares are in a taste which he failed to discover in the most sublime and celebrated pictures of coreggio. to these we may add the marsyas of the marchesi litta, at milan, with a few other works of coreggio's, inserted in the catalogue of tiraboschi, which is the most copious extant. from such evidence it must, in short, be admitted, that this artist was possessed of a sort of middle style, between that which he formed as a scholar and that which he completed as a master. and we have equal reason for believing what has been stated respecting coreggio's having attempted a variety of styles, before he made choice of the one by which he so greatly distinguished himself, and thus laid the foundation for his pieces being attributed, as they have been, to different masters. in fact, his conceptions of the beautiful and the perfect were deduced in part from other artists, and in part created by himself; conceptions that could not be matured without much time and labour; on which account he was compelled, as it were, to imitate those natural philosophers who try an infinite number of different experiments to discover some single truth which they have in view. during a progress thus gradually pursued, and by an artist who in every new production succeeded in surpassing himself, it is difficult to fix the precise epoch of his new style. i once saw in rome a very beautiful little picture, representing, in the background, the taking of christ in the garden; and in the fore part, the youth joseph, who, in the act of flying, leaves his mantle behind him; the original of which is in england, and a duplicate at milan, in possession of count de keweniller; the picture at rome bore in ancient character the date of , indisputably false. a more correct one, however, is to be found upon that of the marriage of st. catherine, in possession of count brull, late prime minister to the king of poland, which is every way corresponding to the other, remaining at capo di monte; it bears the date of . it is probable, that in this year, when the artist was just twenty-three, he had already sufficiently mastered his new style, from the fact of his having about , or , produced in parma the picture which is still in existence at the monastery of st. paul. this, after various disputes, has recently been acknowledged to be "one of the most grand, spirited, and laboured productions that ever proceeded from that divine hand;" and it has been illustrated with its real epoch, from an excellent little work of the celebrated padre affò. such a work, indeed, confers a benefit upon history. he there explains the manner in which coreggio might have imitated the ancients with such advantages only as he found in parma; and endeavours to account for the difficulty presented to us in the silence of mengs, who, having beheld this very picture, omitted to mention it among antonio's other works. we are relieved, also, from another difficulty in respect to the manner in which a piece representing the chase of diana, abounding with such a variety of loves and cupids, could have been painted for a holy monastery, accompanied by those profane representations distributed throughout the same chamber, in various circular pieces, such as the graces, the fates, the vestals; a naked juno, suspended from the heavens, in the method described by homer, in his fifteenth book of the iliad; with other similar objects, still less becoming the sphere of a cloister. but our wonder will cease when we reflect, that the same place was once the residence of a lady abbess, at a time in which the nuns of s. paolo lived unguarded by grates; in which every abbess sought to enjoy herself; held jurisdiction over lands and castles, and, independent of the bishop, lived altogether as a secular personage, a license in those days extremely general, as is justly observed by muratori, in his "italian antiquities," tom. iii. p. . the above work was a commission given by a donna giovanna di piacenza, who was then the superior of the monastery; and whatever degree of learning we meet with in the painting, and in the devices or conceits, was, most probably, communicated to the artist by giorgio anselmi, a celebrated scholar, whose own daughter belonged to the same establishment. but we must not allow ourselves to proceed further in our notice of a dissertation, assuredly one of the most profound and ingenious that we ever recollect to have read. the pictures are about to be engraved by the hand of signor rosaspina, after those of s. giovanni, in which the learned abate mazza is at present so laudably engaged, no less to the advantage of the arts than of his own reputation. the vast undertaking, so finely executed by coreggio, at s. paolo, obtained for him so high a name, that the padri cassinensi invited him to engage in the equally extensive one of san giovanni, entered upon in ,[ ] and completed in , as we find mentioned in the books. there, also, in addition to several minor works, he decorated the tribune, which being afterwards removed, in order to extend the choir, and rebuilt, was repainted, as we shall notice elsewhere, by aretusi. on the demolition of the tribune, the picture of the incoronation of the virgin, the leading subject in the fresco, was saved, and is now exhibited in the royal library; and various heads of angels, which in like manner escaped the same destruction, are preserved in the palazzo rondanini at rome. there are, now, in the church of san giovanni, two pictures in oil, placed opposite to one another, in one of the chapels; one, a christ taken from the cross; the other, the martyrdom of st. placidus, both painted on canvass made for the purpose, like some of the pictures of mantegna. on the exterior of one of the other chapels is a figure of st. john the evangelist, executed in the noblest manner. and, finally, there is the grand cupola, where the artist represented the ascension of jesus to his father; the apostles looking on in mingled veneration and surprise; a production in which, whether we regard the proportion, and the shortening of the figures, the naked parts, or the draperies, or gaze upon it as a whole, we must alike confess that it was an unexampled specimen of the art, in its kind; the terrific judgment of michelangiolo,[ ] not having then assumed its place in the vatican. footnote : tiraboschi was unable to discover any certain work from the hand of antonio, between the years and , of the same age. this gave rise to the assertion of vasari's annotator, that he remained in rome in quality of raffaello's pupil during this interval, and on his master's death, in , returned to lombardy. such a supposition becomes utterly void, after the above epochs adduced by us. footnote : it is worth notice, that ratti, persuaded of coreggio's residence at rome, has availed himself of the argument of certain figures being borrowed by him from the judgment, _before michel angiolo had painted it_. equally valid is his conjecture, founded upon several figures of raffaello's, which he detected in coreggio, as if these two artists had never studied from the same book of nature. such an opinion is asserted also by padre della valle, cited in our second volume, p. . but writers will always be liable to these mistakes, as long as they pretend to make discoveries and throw light upon ancient facts, without adhering to historical dates, and in their conjectures rather consult novelty and their own vanity than truth. but this fault, brought into vogue about the middle of the eighteenth century, has produced no little evil, both in letters and religion, and surely cannot continue to receive encouragement at this enlightened period. let us rather trust, that the love of truth, never altogether extinguished, will resume its former influence in the investigation of historical points, and that one of its leading objects will be to free both sacred and profane history from those foolish sophisms that so much obscure it. astonishing, however, as such a production must be allowed to be, it will still be found to yield the palm to another, which the hand of coreggio alone could have rendered superior. this is the celebrated assumption of the virgin, in the cathedral of parma, completed in the year . it is indisputably more ample; and in the background the figures of the same apostles are reproduced, as was customary, expressing feelings of surprise and piety, though in a manner altogether different from the former. in the upper part is represented an immense crowd of happy spirits, yet distributed in the finest order, with a number of angels of all dimensions, all full of action; some employed in assisting the flight of the virgin, others singing and dancing, and the rest engaged in celebrating the triumph with applause, songs, torches, and the burning of celestial perfumes. in all, the countenances beam with mingled beauty, hilarity, and triumph; a halo of light seems to envelope the whole, so that notwithstanding the piece is much defaced, it is still calculated to awaken such an enchantment of the soul, that the spectator almost dreams he is in elysium. these magnificent works, as it has been observed of the chambers of raffaello, were calculated to promote the dignity of his manner, and led the way to that height of perfection he attained in the difficult art of working in fresco. to estimate it aright, we ought to approach near, to mark the decision and audacity as it were of every stroke; the parts, that at a distance appear so beautiful, yet effected by few lines; and that colouring, and that harmony which unites so many objects in one, produced, as it were, in sportful play. the renowned artist survived only four years, subsequent to the completion of the cupola; without commencing, during the interval, the painting of the tribune, for which he had pledged himself, and received part of the remuneration, which was afterwards restored to the revenues of the cathedral by his heirs. it has been conjectured, that the conductors of the works must, in some way, have given him offence; since the artist soiaro, on being invited to paint at the _steccata_, objects to it in the following terms: "not wishing to remain at the discretion of so many different heads; for you know," he continues to his friend, "what was said to coreggio in the dome." now this, it would appear, must have consisted of some expressions derogatory to his talents; probably some words which one of the artificers is said to have applied to the diminutiveness of his figures: "ci avete fatto un guazzetto di rane." "you have presented us with a hash of frogs." words from a workman, for which coreggio might easily have consoled himself, as they did not express the opinion of the city of parma. he died, however, about four years afterwards, at his native place, before he had completed his undertaking; and without leaving any portrait of himself which can be considered genuine. vasari's editor, at rome, produces one of a bald old man, little agreeable to our ideas of coreggio, who died at the age of forty. it is taken from a collection of designs by the padre resta, which he entitled, the "portable gallery," and which both the cavalier tiraboschi and the padre della valle mentioned as having been lost. nevertheless it exists in the ambrosian collection, and contains, among other designs, one which resta, in the notes added thereto, declares to be the family of coreggio, consisting of the portrait of himself, his wife, and his sons; altogether forming one female and three male heads, poor, and wretchedly attired. but it betrays evident marks of its want of genuineness, and not the least in the description of the family; inasmuch as antonio is known to have had one son and three daughters, two of whom appear to have died at an early age. the portrait remaining at turin, in the vigna della regina, engraved by the very able valperga, bears an inscription, in part obliterated by the cornice. still i contrived to decypher the words, _antonius corrigius, f_--(that is, _fecit_), one of the first arguments for not admitting it, as some have done, to be a head of coreggio. a further one may be derived from the inscription itself being written in large letters, and in a space occupying the whole length of the canvass, a method occasionally adopted to explain the subject of the piece, but never the name of the artist. there was another portrait sent from genoa into england, with an inscription upon the back, indicating it to be that of antonio da coreggio, drawn by dosso dossi, which is to be found in the memoirs of ratti. i have no sort of ground for asserting such a signature to have been introduced several years subsequent; a plan which was, and still is frequently adopted, by an accurate imitation of the ancient characters; i would merely observe, that there was also a distinguished painter in miniature, of the name of m. antonio da coreggio, who traversed italy about the time of dosso, and whose merits i shall treat of hereafter. of the portrait taken of coreggio, by gambara, in the cathedral of parma, it would here be improper to speak, otherwise than as an idle popular rumour. in conclusion, therefore, i am inclined to admit the seeming truth of what is advanced by vasari, that this noble artist entertained no idea of transmitting his likeness to posterity, not justly estimating his own excellence, but adding to his numerous other accomplishments that of a remarkable modesty, conferring real honour upon our history. the latest and most perfect style of coreggio has been minutely analysed by the cavalier mengs, in the same manner as he examined that of raffaello and of titian. and in this famous triumvirate he accorded to him the second rank, after raffaello, observing, that this last depicted more exquisitely the affections of the soul, though inferior to him in the expression of external forms. in this, indeed, coreggio was a true master, having succeeded by his colouring, and yet more by his chiaroscuro, in introducing into his pictures an ideal beauty, surpassing that of nature, and at the same time attracting the admiration of the most learned, by an union of art and nature in its rarest forms, such as they never before beheld. and such admiration, and such applauses, were in particular bestowed upon his st. jerome, preserved in the academy at parma. algarotti declares, that he was inclined to prefer it to any other of his productions; and to exclaim in his heart: "tu solo mi piaci!" "thou alone pleasest me!" annibal caracci himself, upon first beholding this picture, as well as a few others from the same hand, declares, in the letter already cited to his brother lodovico, that he would not even exchange them with the st. cecilia of raffaello, which is still to be seen in the city of bologna. and it may be truly said, that the same art that had been carried to such a pitch of sublimity by michelangiolo; to such an exquisite degree of natural grace and expression by raffaello; and from titian received such inimitable perfection in its tones of colouring; displayed in coreggio such an union of excellences, as in the opinion of mengs, carried the whole of these to their highest point of perfection, adding to all their dignity and truth his own peculiar elegance, and a taste as captivating to the eye as to the heart of the spectator. in design he exhausted not all that depth of knowledge, so conspicuous in bonarruoti; but it was at once so great and so select, that the caracci themselves adopted it for their model. i am aware, that algarotti considered him to be somewhat incorrect in the expression of his contours; while mengs, on the other hand, defends him very warmly from such a charge. truly, there does not appear the same variety in his lines as is to be found in raffaello and the ancients, inasmuch as he purposely avoided angles and rectilinear lines, preserving, as much as lay in his power, an undulating sweep of outline, sometimes convex and sometimes concave; while it is maintained, that his grace results, in a great measure, from this practice: so that mengs in uncertainty appears at one time to commend, and at another to excuse him for it. he is lavish of his praises on the design of his draperies, on whose masses coreggio bestowed more attention than on the particular folds; he being the first who succeeded in making drapery a part of the composition, as well by force of contrast as by its direction; thus opening a new path which might render it conspicuous in large works. in particular, his youthful and infantile heads are greatly celebrated; the faces beaming with so much nature and simplicity, as to enchant, and to compel us, as it were, to smile as they smile.[ ] each separate figure may be pronounced original, from the infinite variety of foreshortenings he has introduced; there is scarcely a single head that is not seen from a point of view either above or below; not a hand, not a whole figure, whose attitude is not full of an ease and grace of motion, beyond example. by his practice of foreshortening figures upon ceilings, which was avoided by raffaello, he overcame many difficulties still remaining to be vanquished after the time of mantegna, and in this branch of perspective is justly entitled to the merit of having rendered it complete. footnote : this is an expression of annibal caracci. elsewhere he observes: "this kind of delicacy and purity, which is rather truth itself than verisimilitude, pleases me greatly. it is neither artificial nor forced, but quite natural." his colouring is allowed to correspond beautifully with the grace and selection of his design, giulio romano having been heard to assert that it was altogether the best he had ever seen; nor was he averse to the duke of mantua giving the preference to coreggio above himself, when about to make a presentation of pictures to the emperor charles v. equal commendation is bestowed upon him by lomazzo, when he pronounces that, among the colourists, he is to be considered rather as unique than as rare in point of merit. no artist before him ever bestowed so much attention upon his canvass, which, after a slight covering of chalk, received his colours, both in point of quantity and quality, as we have before stated, from a lavish hand.[ ] in the _impasto_, or laying on his colours, he approaches the manner of giorgione, in their tone he resembles titian, though in their various gradations, in the opinion of mengs, he is even more expert. there prevails likewise in his colouring a clearness of light, a brilliancy rarely to be met with in the works of others; the objects appear as if viewed through a glass, and towards evening, when the clearness of other paintings begins to fade with the decay of light, his are to be seen as it were in greater vividness, and like phosphoric beams shining through the darkness of the air. of the kind of varnish for which apelles has been so commended by pliny, we appear to have no idea since the revival of the art, or if, indeed, we at all possess it, we must confess our obligations to coreggio. some there have been who could have liked more delicacy in his flesh tints; but every one must allow, that according to the age and the subjects he had to deal with, he has succeeded in varying them admirably, impressing them at the same time with something so soft, so juicy, and so full of life, as to appear like the truth itself. footnote : one of the professors being employed in restoring a piece of coreggio, analyzed the mode of colouring. upon the chalk, he said, the artist appeared to have laid a surface of prepared oil, which then received a thick mixture of colours, in which the ingredients were two thirds of oil and one of varnish; that the colours seemed to have been very choice, and particularly purified from all kind of salts, which in progress of time eat and destroy the picture; and that the before-mentioned use of prepared oil must have greatly contributed to this purification by absorbing the saline particles. it was, moreover, his opinion, that coreggio adopted the method of heating his pictures, either in the sun, or at the fire, in order that the colours might become as it were interfused, and equalized in such a way as to produce the effect of having been poured, rather than laid on. of that lucid appearance which, though so beautiful, does not reflect objects, and of the solidity of the surface, equal to the greek pictures, he remarks, that it must have been obtained by some strong varnish unknown to the flemish painters themselves, who prepared it of equal clearness and liveliness but not of equal strength. see vol. i. p. . but his grand and mastering quality, his crowning triumph and distinction above all other artists known to us, is his thorough knowledge of lights and shades. like nature herself he does not present objects to us with the same force of light, but varied according to the surfaces, oppositions, and distances; it flows in a gradation insensibly increasing and diminishing, a distinction essential in aërial perspective, in which he is so great, and contributing finely to the general harmony. he observed the same principle in his shades, representing the reflection of colour upon each, in so delicate a degree, that though using them so abundantly, his shadows are always varied like nature's, never monotonous. this quality is eminently conspicuous in his night-piece in the dresden gallery;[ ] and in his magdalen, there seen reposing in a cave; a small picture it is true, but estimated in the purchase at twenty-seven thousand crowns. by the use of his chiaroscuro he not only gave superior softness and rotundity to his forms, but displayed a taste in the whole composition, such as had never been witnessed before. he disposed the masses of his lights and shades with an art, purely natural in its foundation, but in the selection and effect altogether ideal. and he arrived at this degree of perfection by the very same path pursued by michelangiolo, availing himself of models in clay and wax, the remains of some of which are said to have been found in the cupola at parma not many years ago. it is also currently reported, that while employed in that city, he engaged the assistance of the famous modeller begarelli, whom he conducted thither at his own expense. footnote : it is more accurately entitled by others the opening of day. though excellent in all, in other portions of his art he cannot be pronounced equally excellent. his conceptions were good, but occasionally they betrayed a want of unity, representing as he did one and the same story in different parts. thus in the fable of marsyas, in the palazzo litta at milan, his contest with apollo, minerva consigning him over to punishment, and the punishment itself, are distributed into separate groups. the same kind of repetition will, i think, be found in the story of leda, executed for charles v. in which the swan is twice brought into view, proceeding by degrees to familiarize himself with her charms, until in the third group he wholly possesses her. in fact his inventions, for the most part, are like the strains of anacreon, in which the young loves, and in sacred themes the angels, are introduced under the most agreeable forms and actions. thus in the picture of s. george, they are seen sporting about the sword and helmet of the saint; and in s. jerome an angel is engaged in shewing our lord the book of that great doctor of our holy church, while another is holding under his nose the uncovered vase of ointment belonging to the magdalen. of his powers of composition we have a proof in the execution of the cupola, already so highly commended, in which it appears as if the architecture had been formed for the effect of the painting, so admirably is this last adapted, and not the production for the place. he was fond of contrasts, no less in whole figures than their parts; but he never arbitrarily affected them, or carried them to the extravagant degree we have since beheld, in violation of all decorum and truth. in force of expression, more particularly upon tenderer subjects, he stands, perhaps, without a rival or an example; such is his magdalen just alluded to, as she is seen bending to kiss the feet of the holy child, with a countenance and action expressive of all the different beauties, scattered over the works of many other artists, a sentiment more fully expressed by mengs: of this picture we may truly say with catullus, "omnibus una omnes surripuit veneres." grief was a passion likewise depicted by him with singular power; admirably varied according to circumstances in his dead christ at parma, most heartfelt in that of the magdalen, profound in the virgin, and in a middling degree in the other female face. and though we do not meet with many examples of a loftier cast, still he could depict the fiercer passions with sufficient power, as witness the martyrdom of s. placidus, in which piece an executioner is so nobly drawn, that domenichino avowedly imitated it in his celebrated picture of s. agnes. finally the costume of his sacred history-pieces is deficient in nothing we could desire; though in his fables, indeed, he might have improved it, by adhering, like raffaello and the moderns, more closely to the ancients. thus in his leda he has represented juno in the guise of an elderly lady, full of spite and jealousy, secretly beholding the stolen embraces of her lord. she approaches in nothing to the antique, either in her countenance or in her symbols, and hence in the usual interpretations she is considered as a mere cypher. in the fable of marsyas, he bears no resemblance to the faun; minerva has no Ægis, nor any other of her usual attributes; while apollo is endued neither with the limbs nor aspect which are awarded him at this day; and so far from boasting of his lyre, he plays upon a violin. here again we might adduce a fresh argument for coreggio having never visited rome, where even artists of mediocrity, instructed in a knowledge of the antique, knew how to avoid similar errors. in him, however, they are scarcely blemishes, and rather flattering to the name of coreggio, inasmuch as they serve more fully to convince us that he partakes not the glory of his sovereign style with many masters or many assistants, standing great and alone. regarded in this view he appears indeed something more than mortal; and in his presence, as annibal caracci truly wrote, parmigianino and others of his rank seem to shrink into nothing.[ ] but the productions of this great master are daily becoming more rare in italy, such are the prices offered, such is the eagerness of strangers to obtain them, and the esteem in which he is held. we are still consoled for their loss by several ancient copies, more especially of his smaller pictures, such as the marriage of s. catherine, the reposing magdalen, the young man's escape, pieces already mentioned; but to which we may add his christ praying in the garden, placed in the escurial, and his zingherina, the gipsey girl, in the gallery at dresden. the most estimable among the old copies are by schidone, lelio da novellara, girolamo da carpi, and by the caracci, who, by dint of copying coreggio's pieces, approached very nearly the style of the originals; though more in point of design than in skill and delicacy of colouring. footnote : his words are, "it is my unalterable opinion that parmigianino in no way approaches coreggio, whose thoughts and fine inventions are all clearly drawn from himself, always original. all other artists look out for some support, some foundations for their efforts taken from other sources; one to models, one to statues, another to cartoons: all their productions are represented such as they might have been, coreggio's such as they really are." (_see second letter to lodovico, malvasia_, vol. i. p. .) hitherto i have treated of the manner of antonio, and in so doing have described the manner of his school; not, indeed, that any single artist at all equalled or approached him, but that all held very nearly the same maxims, mixed, in some instances, with different styles. the prevailing character of the school of parma, by way of distinction likewise called the lombard school, is the excellence of its shortenings, like the delineation of the nerves and muscles in that of florence. nor is it any reproach that its artists, in some instances, have become extravagant and affected in their foreshortening, as the florentines in their representations of the naked limbs: to imitate well is in all places a difficult art. its character may further be said to consist in a fine study of the chiaroscuro and of draperies, rather than of the human figure, in which few artists of the school can boast much excellence. their contours are broad, their countenances selected rather from among the people, than of an ideal cast, being well rounded, high coloured, and exhibiting those features and that joyousness esteemed so original in coreggio, as it has been well remarked by a professor long resident in parma. there we have reason to believe that our artist instructed more pupils than have been recorded by vasari, to whose observations and opinions much additional matter has been supplied by writers of the present age, though doubts continue to prevail respecting some of his reputed scholars. i shall treat this great master as others have done in regard to raffaello, comprehending, within the limits of his school, all those assistants and others who, educated in different academies, subsequently attached themselves to his, availing themselves of his instructions and examples. first upon the list, therefore, i place his own son, pomponio allegri. he had hardly time to benefit by his father's instructions, or to receive his earliest rudiments, having lost him at the age of twelve. his grandfather then took him under his care, until the period of his death, occurring five years after, when he left a pretty handsome provision for the orphan, who boasted likewise no common degree of talent. with whom he pursued his education, however, is not known, whether with rondani, a faithful disciple of his father, or with some other of the same school. it is certain he was a youth of fair abilities, and that with the aid of his father's studies he acquired some reputation, and established himself at parma. in the cathedral there appears, wrought upon a large earthen bason, the story of the israelites awaiting the arrival of moses, to whom the lord has just consigned the tablets of the law. though not very successful as a whole, the work displays great merit in particular parts; many of the heads are beautiful, many of the motions spirited, and there are tones of colouring extremely clear and natural. it was believed that pomponio had early abandoned the use of his pencil, disposing of his property in coreggio, and afterwards dying in great poverty at an early age. these false or uncertain reports, however, have been rendered nugatory by authentic documents brought forward by father affò, stating him to have enjoyed, in parma, high reputation and honourable public commissions, and confirmed by a public decree recording him, while the best disciples of the school of parma were yet alive, as being _ottimo pittore_. we now proceed to other artists belonging to the city and state of modena. among these we find the name of francesco cappelli, a native of sassuolo, who established himself in bologna, without, however, leaving there any public specimen of his labours. most probably he was employed by private persons, or, as vedriani is led to conjecture, also by princes; though in respect to their names he is certainly mistaken. there is an altar-piece in s. sebastiano at sassuolo, commonly attributed to his hand, representing a figure of the virgin, with some saints, among which last appears the titular, the most noble and conspicuous of the whole, in such fine impasto and relief, as to be attributed to the pencil of his master. another of the school is giovanni giarola da reggio, whose productions there in fresco are to be seen in the palazzo donelli and other places, though they have perished in parma. he cannot, however, be pronounced exempt from the usual negligence of fresco painters in their contours; still he was much esteemed, while he flourished, for the spirit and delicacy of his manner. although epitaphs are by no means the most desirable sort of testimony to the worth of the deceased, it will be, nevertheless, worth while to recall that of giarola, from which, if we deduct even nine parts of the commendation, the tenth will confer upon him no slight honour;--"io. gerolli, qui adeo excellentem pingendi artem edoctus fuerat, ut alter apelles vocaretur;" who had arrived at such a masterly degree of excellence in this noble art that he was entitled to the name of another apelles. to him we have to add a fellow citizen and namesake of coreggio, called antonio bernieri, sprung from a noble stock, and who having lost his master at the age of eighteen years, inherited, in a manner, the appellation of antonio da coreggio, thus giving rise to several historical doubts and inaccuracies. he is enumerated by landi, and by pietro aretino, among the most distinguished of the miniature painters; and also mentioned by d. veronica gambara, marchioness of coreggio. there is no genuine painting by him, however, in oil, though i have no reason for refusing him the degree of reputation so general among the miniaturists; and the portrait at turin, described in the present volume (p. ), ought certainly i think to be attributed to him rather than to antonio allegri. he long flourished in venice, visited rome, and died at his native place. the next i have to add to this list is a name unknown, as far as i can learn, to history, and one which i only discovered from a beautiful design i happened to meet with in a collection by father fontana barnabita, a collection mentioned by me with commendation in my first volume (p. ). his name is antonio bruno, a native of modena, and an artist who ably emulated the genius of coreggio in his grace, his nature, his foreshortenings, and his broad lights, though with far less correct a pencil. further, among the scholars of parma, there remain several who acquired less fame. a daniello de por is mentioned by vasari in his life of taddeo zuccaro, who, according to his account, received some assistance from daniello, more in the way of instructions than example. yet he records no other of his productions besides a piece in fresco, to be seen at vito, near sora, where he invited zuccaro to join him as an assistant; nor does it appear that he commends him for any thing beyond having acquired from coreggio and parmigianino a tolerable degree of softness of manner. in fact he must have rather occupied the place of a journeyman than of an assistant of coreggio, and i suspect he is the same from whom vasari obtained some information respecting this artist, in particular, such as related to his avarice, which the historian had assuredly no reason either for disbelieving or inventing. but a superior pupil of the same school will be found in m. torelli, called a native of milan in the ms. of resta, where he is mentioned as the companion of rondani, in executing the frieze at san giovanni in parma, painted in chiaroscuro. it was taken from the design of coreggio, who received likewise the proceeds from the work. it is added by ratti, that the first cloister of the same monastery was also adorned with singular felicity by the same hand. the names of the following artists all enjoy more or less celebrity in italy at the present day; but it is not therefore certain that they were all the pupils of coreggio, nor that they all observed the same manner. like young swimmers, some of them seem cautious of leaving the side of their master, while others appear fearful only of being seen to approach him too nearly, as if proud of the skill they had already acquired. to the first class belongs rondani, who was employed along with coreggio at the church of s. giovanni, and to him is chiefly attributed a grotesque contained in the monastery, assigned to the school of antonio, though we may detect some figures of cherubs which appear from the master's hand. yet rondani was accustomed to imitate his master pretty accurately in his individual figures; and on the exterior of the church of s. maria maddalena, he drew a madonna, that in want of historical evidence, might have been attributed to coreggio. there is also an altar-piece at the eremitani, representing saints agostino and geronimo, so much in the coreggio manner as to be esteemed one of the best pictures in parma. but rondani was unable to reach the grandeur of the head of the school; he is accused on the other hand of having been too careful and minute in the accessaries of his art, which we gather, indeed, from one of his frescos in a chapel of the cathedral, and in general from his other works. they are rarely to be met with in collections, though i have seen one of his madonnas, with a child, in possession of the marchesi scarani at bologna, the figure bearing a swallow in her hand, in allusion to the painter's name; besides the portrait of a man, draped and designed in the giorgione taste, at the house of the sig. bettinelli in mantua. i have already alluded to michelangiolo anselmi, in the school of siena, and i again prepare to treat of him more fully, from documents since published, or which i have since read. upon the authority of these it is very certain that he traced his family several generations back to the city of parma; though he is denominated _da lucca_, from the circumstance of his having been born at that place, according to ratti, in ; and he has been also called _da siena_, because, as i am inclined to conjecture, he may have resided and pursued his studies there while young. resta, in the ms. i have so frequently cited, contends that he acquired his art from sodoma; azzolini, from riccio, son-in-law to sodoma, both of whom are known to have remained a considerable time at lucca. there he may have been instructed in the first rudiments, and afterwards have completed his studies at siena, where he produced the altar-piece of fontegiusta, which bears no traces of the lombard style. when practised in the art he returned to parma, he was older than coreggio, and then only capable of improving his style by availing himself of his advice and example, in the same way as garofolo and many others, by the example of raffaello. when in the year coreggio was engaged to paint the cupola of the cathedral and the great tribune, anselmi, together with rondani, and parmigianino, were fixed upon to adorn the contiguous chapels. the undertaking was never executed; but such a selection shews that he was esteemed capable of accompanying the style of coreggio, and his works sufficiently attest that he became a devoted follower of it. he is full in his outlines, extremely studied in the heads, glowing in his tints, and very partial to the use of red, which he contrives to vary and to break as it were into different colours in the same picture. perhaps his least merit consists in his composition, which he sometimes overloads with figures. he painted in various churches at parma; and one of the most pleasing of his productions, approaching nearest to his great model, is at s. stefano, in which s. john the baptist, along with the titular saint, is seen kneeling at the feet of the virgin. his largest work, however, is to be met with at the steccata, where, upon the testimony of vasari, he executed the cartoons of giulio romano. but this is disproved by the contract, which assigns to anselmi himself a chamber in which to compose his cartoons; nor did giulio do more than send a rough sketch of the work to parma. in collections his specimens are rare and valuable, although he flourished, to say the least, as late as the year , in which he added a codicil to his will. bernardino gatti, named from his father's profession soiaro, of whom i shall again make mention in the cremonese school, is an artist, who, in different countries, left various specimens of his art. parma, piacenza, and cremona abound with them. he ranks among the least doubtful disciples of coreggio, and was strongly attached to his maxims, more especially in regard to the subjects treated by the hand of his master. his picture of a pietà, at the magdalen, in parma, that of his repose in egypt, at s. sigismond, in cremona, with his christ in the manger, at s. peter's, in the same city, afford ample evidence of his power of imitating coreggio without becoming a servile copyist. no one has emulated him better in the delicacy of his countenances. his young girls and his boys appear animated with the spirit of innocence, grace, and beauty. he is fond of whitish and clear grounds, and infuses a sweetness into his whole colouring which forms one of his characteristics. nor does he want relief in his figures, from which, like the head of the school, he seems never to have removed his hand until he had rendered them in every way perfect and complete. he possessed singular talent for copying, as well as for imitating those masters whom he had engaged to assist. he succeeded to the place of pordenone, in piacenza, where he painted the remainder of the tribune at s. m. di campagna, of which vasari observes, that the whole appeared the work of the same hand. his picture of s. george, at the same church, is deserving of mention, placed opposite that of s. augustine by pordenone, a figure displaying powerful relief and action, which he executed from the design of giulio romano, at the request, it is supposed, of the person who gave the commission. we may form an estimate of his unassisted powers by what he has left in the churches of parma, and more particularly in the cupola of the steccata. it is an excellent production in every part, and in its principal figure of the virgin truly surprising. another of his pieces representing the multiplication of loaves, is highly deserving of mention. it was executed for the refectory of the padri lateranensi at cremona, and to this his name, with the date of , is affixed. it may be accounted one of the most copious paintings to be met with in any religious refectory, full of figures larger than the life, and varied equal to any in point of features, drapery, and attitudes, besides a rich display of novelty and fancy; the whole conducted upon a grand scale, with a happy union and taste of colouring, which serves to excuse a degree of incorrectness in regard to his aërial perspective. there remain few of his pieces in private collections, a great number having been transferred into foreign countries, particularly into spain. giorgio gandini, likewise surnamed del grano, from the maternal branch of his family, was an artist formerly referred to mantua, but who has since been claimed by padre affò, who traced his genealogy for the city of parma. according to the account of orlandi he was not only a pupil of coreggio, but one whose pieces were frequently retouched by the hand of his master. p. zapata, who illustrated in a latin work the churches of parma, ascribes to him the principal painting in s. michele, the same which, in the guide of ruta, was attributed by mistake to lelio di novellara. it is one calculated to reflect honour upon that school, from its power of colouring, its relief, and its ease and sweetness of hand, though it occasionally displays a somewhat too capricious fancy. how highly he was esteemed by his fellow citizens may be inferred from the commission which they allotted him to paint the tribune of the cathedral, as a substitute for coreggio, who died before he commenced the task which he had accepted. the same happened to gandini, and the commission was bestowed upon a third artist, girolamo mazzuola, whose genius was not then sufficiently matured to cope with such vast undertakings. the names of lelio orsi and girolamo da carpi, i assign to another place, both of whom are enumerated by other writers in the school of parma. for this alteration i shall give a sufficient reason when i mention them. the last belonging to the present class, are the two mazzuoli; and i commence with francesco, called parmigianino, whose life, by father affò, has been already written. this writer does not rank him in the list of coreggio's scholars, but in that of his two uncles, in whose studio he is supposed to have painted his baptism of christ, which is now in possession of the conti sanvitali, and as the production of a boy of fourteen years of age, it is indeed a wonderful effort of genius. it is remarked by the same historian of his life, that having seen the works of coreggio, francesco began to imitate him; and there are some pictures ascribed to him at that period, which are evidently formed upon that great model. of such kind, is a holy family, belonging to the president bertioli, and a s. bernardino, at the padri osservanti, in parma. independently of these, the fact of francesco's having been chosen, together with rondani and anselmi, to decorate a chapel near the cupola of coreggio, shews, that he must have acquired great similarity of style, and possessed docility, equal to the other two, in following the directions of such a master. he had too much confidence, however, in his own powers, to be second in the manner of another artist, when he was capable of forming one of his own. and this he subsequently achieved; for owing to the delays experienced in the above undertaking, he had time to make the tour of italy, and meeting with giulio, in mantua, and raffaello, at rome, he proceeded to form a style that has been pronounced original. it is at once great, noble, and dignified; not abounding in figures, but rendering a few capable of filling a large canvass, as we may observe in his s. rocco, at san petronio, in bologna; or in his moses, at the steccata of parma, so celebrated a specimen of chiaroscuro. the prevailing character, however, in which this artist so greatly shone, was grace of manner; a grace which won for him at rome that most flattering of all eulogies, that the spirit of raffaello had passed into parmigianino. among his designs are to be seen repeated specimens of the same figure, drawn for the purpose of reaching the highest degree of grace, in the person, in the attitudes, and in the lightness of his drapery, in which he is admirable. it is the opinion of algarotti, that he sometimes carried his heads to an extreme, so as to border upon effeminacy; a judgment analogous to the previous observation of agostino caracci, that he could wish a painter to have a little of parmigianino's grace; not all, because he conceived that he had too much. in the opinion of others, his excessive study of what was graceful led him sometimes to select proportions somewhat too long, no less in respect to stature than in the fingers and the neck, as we may observe in his celebrated madonna, at the pitti palace, which, from this defect, obtained the appellation of _collo lungo_, or long neck;[ ] but it boasted likewise of its advocates. his colouring, also, evidently aims at grace, and for the most part is preserved moderate, discreet, and well tempered, as if the artist feared, by too much brilliancy, to offend the eye; which, both in drawings and paintings, is apt to diminish grace. if we admit albano as a good judge, parmigianino was not very studious of expression, in which he has left few examples; if, indeed, we are not to consider the grace that animates his cherubs and other delicate figures, as meriting the name of expression, or if that term apply only to the passions, as very abundantly supplying its place. it is, in truth, on account of this rare exhibition of grace, that every thing is pardoned, and that in him defects themselves appear meritorious. footnote : he might have pleaded the example of the ancients, who in their draped statues, observed similar proportions, in order to avoid falling into vulgarity. the length of the fingers was rather subject of praise, as is noticed by the commentators on catullus. (see his th ode.) a long neck in virgins is inculcated by malvasia, as a precept of the art, (tom. i. p. ); and the can. lazzarini drew his madonnas according to this rule. these observations are all intended to be applied with that judgment, which, in every art, is not presumed to be taught, but understood. he would seem to have been slow in his conceptions, being accustomed to form the whole piece in idea, before he once handled his pencil; but was then rapid in his execution. strokes of his pencil may sometimes be traced so very daring and decided, that albano pronounces them divine, and declares, that to his experience in design, he was indebted for that unequalled skill, which he always united to great diligence and high finish. his works, indeed, are not all equally well and powerfully coloured, nor produce the same degree of effect; though there are several which are conducted with so much feeling and enthusiasm as to have been ascribed to coreggio himself. such is the picture of love, engaged in fabricating his bow, while at his feet appear two cherubs, one laughing and the other weeping; a piece, of which a number of duplicates, besides that contained in the imperial gallery, are enumerated, so great a favourite was it either with the artist or some other person. in regard to this production, i agree with vasari, whose authority is further confirmed by father affò and other judges, whom i have consulted upon the subject; although it is true that this cupid, together with the ganymede, and the leda, which are mentioned in the same context, (p. ), have been positively assigned by boschini to coreggio, an opinion that continues to be countenanced by many other persons. his minor paintings, his portraits, his youthful heads, and holy figures, are not very rare, and some are found multiplied in different places. one that has been the most frequently repeated in collections, is a picture of the virgin and infant with s. giovanni; while the figures of st. catherine and zaccarias, or some similar aged head, are to be seen very near them. it was formerly met with in the farnese gallery, at parma, and is still to be seen, sometimes the same, and sometimes varied, in the royal gallery, at florence; in the capitoline; in those of the princes corsini, borghesi, and albani, at rome. in parma, also, it is in possession of the abate mazza,[ ] and is found in other places; insomuch, that it is difficult to suppose that they could all have been repeated by parmigianino, however old in appearance. he produced few copious compositions, such as the preaching of christ to the crowd, which is contained in a chamber of the royal palace, at colorno, forming a real jewel of that beautiful and pleasant villa. his altar-pieces are not numerous, of which, however, none is more highly estimated than his st. margarita, at bologna. it is rich in figures, which the caracci were never weary of studying; while guido, in a sort of transport of admiration, preferred it even to the st. cecilia of raffaello. his fresco, which he began at the steccata, is a singular production; besides the figure of moses, exhibited in chiaroscuro, he painted adam and eve, with several virtues, without, however, completing the undertaking for which he had been remunerated. the history of the affair is rather long, and is to be found in father affò, where it is divested of many idle tales, with which it had been confounded. i shall merely state, that the artist was thrown into prison for having abandoned his task, and afterwards led a fugitive life in casale, where he shortly died, in his thirty-seventh year, exactly at the same age as his predecessor raffaello. he was lamented as one of the first luminaries, not only of the art of painting, but of engraving; though of this last i must say nothing, in order not to deviate from the plan i have laid down. footnote : it is mentioned and compared with that of the borghesi, (in both the virgin is seen on one side) by p. affò, in a letter edited by the advocate bramieri, in the notes to the _elogio d'ireneo affò_, composed by p. d. pompilio pozzetti; a very excellent scholar, (no less than his annotator,) and deserving to stand high in the estimation of all learned italians. parma was in some degree consoled for the loss of francesco, by girolamo di michele mazzuola, his pupil and his cousin. they had been intimate from the year , and apparently had contracted their friendship some years before francesco set out for rome, which was continued unabated after his return. most probably, however, it at length experienced an interruption, owing to which francesco named two strangers his heirs, omitting his cousin. this last is not known beyond parma and its confines, though he was deserving of more extensive fame, in particular for his strong impasto, and his knowledge of colouring, in which he has few equals. there is reason to suppose, that some of the works ascribed to francesco, more especially such as displayed warmer and stronger tints, were either executed or repeated by this artist. not having been in rome, girolamo was more attached to the school of coreggio, than francesco, and in his style composed his picture of the marriage of st. catherine, for the church of the carmine; a piece that proves how well he could exhibit that great master's character. he was excellent in perspective, and in the supper of our lord, painted for the refectory of s. giovanni, he represented a colonnade so beautiful, and well adapted to produce illusion, as to compete with the best specimens from the hand of pozzo. he could, moreover, boast ease and harmony, with a fine chiaroscuro; while in his larger compositions in fresco, he was inventive, varied, and animated. no single artist, among his fellow citizens, had the merit of decorating the churches of parma with an equal number of oil paintings; no one produced more in fresco for the cathedral and for the steccata; to say nothing of his labours at s. benedetto, in mantua, and elsewhere. it is from this rage for accomplishing too much, that we find so many of his pieces that are calculated to surprise us at first sight, diminish in merit upon an examination of their particular parts. not a few defects are observable amidst all his beauties; the design in his naked figures is extremely careless; his grace is carried to a degree of affectation, and his more spirited attitudes are violent. but these faults are not wholly attributable to him, inasmuch as he occasionally painted the same work in conjunction with other artists. this occurred in his large picture of the multiplication of loaves placed at s. benedetto, in mantua, in which, from documents discovered by the ab. mari, girolamo would appear to have been assisted in his labours; there are in it groups of figures, whose beauty would confer credit upon any artist; while, on the other hand, there are faults and imbecilities that must have proceeded from some other pencil. it is true that he has admitted the same in other of his works, and there they are wholly to be ascribed to his haste. we likewise find mention of an alessandro mazzuola, son of girolamo, who painted in the cathedral, in ; but he is a weak imitator of the family style; the usual fate of pictoric families, when arrived at the third generation. such was the state of the art in parma about the middle of the sixteenth century, at which period the farnese family acquired dominion there, and greatly contributed to promote the interest of that school. coreggio's disciples had already produced pupils in their turn; and though it be difficult to ascertain from what school each artist proceeded, it is easy to conjecture, from their respective tastes, that they were all inclined to pursue the career of the two most illustrious masters of the school of parma; yet mazzuola was, perhaps, more followed than coreggio. it is too favourite an opinion, both with dilettanti and artists, that the new style must invariably be the most beautiful; permitting fashion even to corrupt the arts. parmigianino, perhaps, educated no other pupil besides his cousin; daniel da parma had studied also under coreggio; and batista fornari, after acquiring little more than a knowledge of design from francesco, turned his attention to sculpture, producing, among other fine statues, for the duke ottavio farnese, the neptune, which is now placed in the royal gardens. the name of jacopo bertoia, (often written by mistake giacinto) has been added by some to this list. he was a good deal employed by the court at parma and caprarola; and not very long ago, some of his small paintings were transferred from the palace of the royal garden into the academy. the subjects are fabulous, and both in the figures of his nymphs, and in every thing else, the grace of francesco is very perceptible. yet the memorials discovered by p. affò, do not permit us to name parmigianino as his master. he was still young in , and lomazzo, in his "tempio," calls him the pupil of ercole procaccini. he produced many small pictures for private ornament, which were at one time in great repute; nor does parma possess any large painting by his hand, excepting two banners for companies or associations. it is rather, likewise, from a resemblance of style, than upon historical authority, that one pomponio amidano has been enumerated among the pupils of parmigianino. he may be mentioned, however, as one of his most strenuous followers; insomuch as to have had one of his altar-pieces, which adorns the church of madonna del quartiere, attributed even by no common artists to the hand of francesco. it is the most beautiful work of its author that the city of parma has to boast. the style of this artist is full and noble, were it not, adds the cav. ratti, that it is sometimes apt to appear somewhat flat. pier antonio bernabei, called della casa, does not belong to the school of parmigianino, but is to be referred to some other assistant or pupil of coreggio. i cannot account for the slight praise bestowed upon him by orlandi, when his painting of the cupola at the madonna del quartiere is calculated to impress us with the opinion that his powers were equal to those of any artist who then flourished in lombardy, or even in italy, as a painter of frescos. he there represented, as was very common upon the cupolas, a paradise, very full, but without any confusion; with figures in the coreggio his tints are powerful, and relieved with a force which might be pronounced superfluous in the more distant figures, from a deficiency of the due gradations. this cupola still remains perfectly entire after the lapse of more than two centuries, and is his great masterpiece, though some of his other paintings likewise produce a great effect. aurelio barili, and innocenzio martini, of parma, must have enjoyed very considerable reputation in their day, having been employed at s. giovanni and the steccata: some specimens of their fresco work are still pointed out, but are cast into the shade by the vicinity of more attractive beauties. about the same period another subject of the same state painted, in his native place of piacenza. his name was giulio mazzoni, at one time pupil to daniel da volterra, in the life of whom he is much commended by vasari. some figures of the evangelists still remain in the cathedral by his hand, though the ceiling of s. m. di campagna, which he adorned with histories, has been renewed by another pencil. he did not acquire a knowledge of foreshortening in the school of daniello, and here he failed, however respectable in other points. school of parma. epoch iii. _parmese pupils of the caracci, and of other foreigners, until the period of the foundation of the academy._ in the year , when the most celebrated imitators of the coreggio manner were either greatly advanced in years, or already deceased, the parmese school began to give place to that of bologna; and i proceed to explain the mode, and the causes which, partly by design and partly by chance, led to that event. it was intended to ornament a chapel in the cathedral, a commission bestowed upon rondani and parmigianino, but which, through a variety of interruptions, had been so long deferred, that both artists died before undertaking it. orazio sammachini was then invited from bologna; he gave satisfaction, and if i mistake not, derived great improvement from his study of coreggio, whom he more nearly resembled than any other bolognese artist of that age. ercole procaccini, likewise, painted in the dome itself; nor was it long before cesare aretusi was invited from bologna, to become court painter to duke ranuccio. this artist, as we before observed, was employed in restoring the painting of the tribune at s. giovanni. in order to lengthen the choir, it was resolved to destroy the old tribune; but such parts as coreggio had there painted, were to be correctly repeated to adorn the new; an example that deserves to be adopted as a law, wherever the fine arts are held in esteem. we are informed by malvasia, that aretusi undertook this task, though he refused to take a copy of it upon the spot; observing, that such an employment was more adapted for a pupil than for a master. annibal caracci was in consequence of this called in, and assisted by his brother agostino, he took a copy of that vast work in various portions, which are now at capo di monte. guided by these, aretusi was afterwards enabled to repaint the new edifice in the year . to this account affò opposes the contract of aretusi, drawn out in , where he binds himself "_to make an excellent copy of the madonna coronata_;" and provision is promised him for a boy who is to prepare the cartoons: a circumstance that cannot be made applicable to annibal, who appeared in the character of a master as early as . what conclusion we are to draw from such a fact, no less than from the cartoons so generally attributed to annibal, and which are pronounced worthy of his hand, _quærere distuli; nec scire fas est omnia_. hor. i shall merely observe, that annibal, after spending several months in studying and copying coreggio during , frequently returned again to admire him, and that such devoted enthusiasm was of wonderful advantage to him in acquiring the character of his model. it was at this time that he painted the picture of a pietà for the capuchin friars, at parma, approaching the nearest that ever was seen to that at s. giovanni, and from that period the duke ranuccio gave him several commissions for pictures, which are now to be met with at naples. the duke was a great lover of the arts, as we gather from a selection of artists employed by him, among whom were lionello spada, schedoni, trotti, and gio. sons, an able figure and a better landscape painter, whom orlandi believes to have been instructed in parma, and perfected in the art at antwerp. it appears, that he also had much esteem for ribera, who painted a chapel, which is now destroyed, at santa maria bianca, in so fine a style, that according to scaramuccia, it might have been mistaken for coreggio's, and it awakened emulation even in the breast of lodovico caracci.[ ] the chief merit, however, of the duke, and of his brother, the cardinal, consisted in estimating and employing the genius of the caracci. in that court they were both fairly remunerated, and held in esteem; though, owing to the arts of some courtiers, history has preserved circumstances regarding these great men, calculated to move compassion.[ ] to this early patronage we may trace the events which we find in the history of the caracci, at different periods: annibal engaged to paint the farnese gallery at rome; agostino called to parma, in quality of its court-painter, an office in which he died; and lodovico sent to piacenza, along with camillo procaccini, in order to decorate the cathedral of that city. hence also arose the principles of a new style at parma, or rather of several new styles, which during the seventeenth century continued to spread both there and throughout the state, and which were first introduced by the artists of bologna. footnote : see lettere pittoriche, tom. i. p. . footnote : bellori, in his life of annibal, pp. , . see also malvasia, tom. i. pp. , , , . and orlandi under the head _gio. batt. trotti_. their scholars, besides bertoia, were giambatista tinti, pupil to sammachini, giovanni lanfranco, and sisto badalocchi, who, having been acquainted with the younger caracci, at parma, became first attached to the school of lodovico, in bologna, and afterwards followed annibal to rome, where they continued to reside with him. these, although they were educated by the bolognese, resemble certain characters who, though they may abandon their native soil, are never able to divest themselves of its memory or its language. in respect to lanfranco, it is agreed by all, that no artist better imitated the grandeur of coreggio in works upon a large scale; although he is neither equal to him in colouring, nor at all approaches him in high finish, nor is destitute of an air of originality peculiar to the head of a school. at parma, he produced a picture representing all the saints in the church that bears their name; and in piacenza, besides his saints alessio and corrado at the cathedral, works highly commended by bellori, he painted an altar-piece of st. luke, at the madonna di piazza, as well as a cupola, so avowedly imitated from that of s. giovanni at parma, that it can scarcely escape the charge of servility. sisto badalocchi,[ ] no way inferior to lanfranco in point of facility, and other endowments of the art, approached very nearly to his style. it was even doubted in parma, whether the picture of s. quintino, in the church of that name, was the production of lanfranco or his. of the rest who flourished for the most part among the disciples of the caracci, beyond the limits of their own state, we shall treat more opportunely under the bolognese school. footnote : by malvasia, tom. i. p. , he is called _sisto rosa_. giambatista tinti acquired the art of design and of colouring from sammachini at bologna; he studied tibaldi with great assiduity, and painted upon his model at s. maria della scala, not without marks of plagiarism.[ ] having subsequently established himself at parma, he selected for his chief model the works of coreggio, and next proceeded to the study of parmigianino. the city retains many of his productions, both in private and in public, among which that of the assumption in the cathedral, abounding with figures, and the catino, at the old capuchin nuns, are accounted some of the last grand works belonging to the old school of parma. footnote : malvasia, tom. i. p. . from the time these artists ceased to flourish, the art invariably declined. towards the middle of the seventeenth century we find mention, in the guide of parma, of fortunato gatti and gio. maria conti, both parmese, who were shortly followed, if i mistake not, by giulio orlandini. they are better qualified to shew the succession of parmese artists than of great painters. the name of one girolamo da' leoni, of piacenza, is also recorded, who was employed along with cunio, a milanese, about the time of the campi. at piacenza likewise, after the middle of the century, appeared one bartolommeo baderna, pupil to the cavalier ferrante, whose works display more diligence than genius; whence franceschini took occasion to say, that he had knocked loudly at the door of the great painters without being able to gain admission. in the mean while the court continued to promote the study of the fine arts throughout the state. it even sent a young man of talent, named mauro oddi, under the direction of berettini, with a salary to rome. he fulfilled the expectations of his patrons by his productions at the villa of colorno, and he adorned some churches with specimens of his altar-pieces; but still he aimed more at the fame of an architect than of a painter. at the same time there was employed at court an artist named francesco monti, who painted likewise for churches and private collections. he was mentioned in the venetian school, and exercised a more marked influence over the art at parma. presenting it in ilario spolverini with a disciple of merit. ilario, no less than his master, acquired reputation from his battle-pieces; and whether owing to exaggeration or to truth, it was commonly said that the soldiers of monti threatened, and that those of spolverini seemed to kill. he threw no less fierceness and terror into some of his assassin scenes, which are esteemed equal to his battles. he painted chiefly for the duke francesco, though there are some of his works on a larger scale, in oil and in fresco, placed in the cathedral, at the certosa, and other places throughout the city and the state. spolverini instructed in the art francesco simonini, a distinguished battle-painter of that period. orlandi says he was a scholar of monti, and educated at florence upon the model of borgognone. he long resided at venice, where, in the sala cappello, and in different collections, he left pictures which abound in figures, ornamented with fine architecture, and varied with every kind of skirmish and military exploits. ilario instructed several young parmese in the art, among whom, perhaps, were antonio fratacci, clemente ruta, and more indisputably the ab. giuseppe peroni. the first under cignani became a better copyist of his master than a painter, being called _pittor pratico_, a mechanical hand, by bianconi in his guide to milan, where, as well as in bologna, a few of his pictures are to be seen. at parma he was not employed in public, as far as i can learn, but for collections, in which he holds a pretty high rank. ruta was likewise educated in the academy of cignani at bologna. returning to his native state, whose paintings he has described, he there entered into the service of the infant charles of bourbon, as long as he remained at parma, after which he accompanied his patron to naples. subsequently returning to parma; he continued to employ himself with credit, until, near the period of his decease, he lost the use of his eyes. the ab. peroni, in the first instance, repaired to bologna, where he received the instructions of torelli, of creti and of ercole lelli. he next visited rome, where he became pupil to masucci; though it is probable that he was struck with the colouring of conca and giacquinto, who were then much in vogue, as his tints partake more or less of their verds, and other false use of colouring. for the rest he could design well, and in elegant subjects partakes much of maratta, as we perceive from his s. philip in s. satiro at milan, and from the conception, in possession of the padri dell' oratorio, at turin. in parma his productions are to be seen at s. antonio abbate, where his frescos appear to advantage, and there is an altar-piece of christ crucified, placed in competition with battoni and cignaroli, and here more than elsewhere he is entitled to rank among the good painters of this last age. he adorned his native place and its academy with his pictures, and died there at an advanced age. the career of pietro ferrari was much shorter, although he had time to produce several fine pictures for the public, besides that of his b. da corleone in the church of the capuchins, as well as more for private collections. he imitated the ancient manner of his school, no less than more recent styles.[ ] footnote : i wish here to offer a brief tribute to the merit of his deceased master, (he died two years since) who, though a native of pavia, resided a long period at parma. he studied in florence under meucci, next at paris, where one of his pictures was greatly applauded, and the artist elected to a place in that distinguished academy of art. on his return he became first painter to the court at parma, and produced works no less than pupils calculated to reflect credit on his country. his prometheus freed by hercules, placed at the academy, his large portrait-piece of the family of philip, duke of parma, which is pointed out in the guardarobas as his best specimen, fully justify the reputation he enjoyed while living, and which continues beyond the tomb. the name of this artist was giuseppe baldrighi, and he died at parma, aged eighty years. in piacenza there flourished pier antonio avanzini, educated by franceschini at bologna. he is said to have been wanting in imagination, which led him, for the most part, to copy from his master's designs. gio. batista tagliasacchi, from borgo s. donnino, sprung from the school of giuseppe del sole, and displayed a fine genius for elegant subjects, which induced him to study coreggio, parmigianino, and guido. he was particularly ambitious of adding raffaello to the list, but his parents would not permit him to visit rome. he resided and employed himself chiefly at piacenza, where there is a holy family much admired in the cathedral, which, in its ideal cast of features, partakes of the roman style, and is not inferior to the lombards in point of colouring. he was an artist, if i mistake not, of far greater merit than fortune. finally, the state was never in want of excellent masters in minor branches of the art. fabrizio parmigiano is commended by baglioni amongst the landscape painters of his age. he was assisted by his wife ippolita in drawing for italian collections, and he visited a variety of places previous to his arrival at rome, where he also adorned a few of the churches with his wood-scenes, and views, with hermits, &c. and died there at an early age. his style was, perhaps, more ideal than true, as it prevailed before the time of the caracci; but it was spirited and diligent. there is known also one gialdisi, of parma, whom, from his residence in cremona, zaist enumerates among the professors of that school as a celebrated painter of flowers. he frequently represented them upon small tables covered with tapestry, and he added also musical instruments, books, and playing-cards, the whole depicted with an air of truth and a fine colouring, that obtained for him from such inconsiderable objects a large portion of fame. i must also record felice boselli of piacenza, who became, under the direction of the nuvoloni, a tolerable artist in figures, though he succeeded best in copying ancient pictures, even so as to deceive the eye of experienced judges by the exactness of his imitations. following the bent of his genius, he began to draw animals, sometimes with their skins, and at others, as they are exposed to view in the shambles; besides collections of birds and fishes, arranging them in order, and all coloured from the life. the palaces in piacenza abound with them, boselli, having survived beyond his eightieth year, and despatching them with facility and mechanically, whence all his productions are not equally entitled to esteem. gianpaolo pannini belonged to the roman school, in which he both learned and taught, and in treating of which i rendered him that justice which the public admiration of his perspective views, and of his peculiar grace in small figures, seemed to require. many fine specimens were sent from rome to his native country, and among these the signori della missione possess a very rare picture, inasmuch as the figures are on a larger scale than those which he in general drew. it represents the money changers driven out of the temple by our lord; the architecture is truly magnificent, and the figures full of spirit and variety. the governor, count carasi, the able illustrator of the public paintings in piacenza, declared that he was the only artist then deceased, of whom the city could justly boast. such deficiency ought not to be ascribed to its climate, abounding as it does with genius, but to the want of a local school, a want, however, which was converted into a source of great utility to the city. if we examine the catalogue of painters who flourished there, with which the count carasi closes his work, we shall find that, with the exception of the capitals, no other city of italy was so rich in excellent painters belonging to every school. had it possessed masters, they would have produced for every excellent disciple, at least twenty of only middling talent, whose works would have filled its palaces and churches, as it has happened to so many other secondary cities. like one university for letters, one academy for the fine arts is usually found sufficient for a single state; and in particular, where it is established, supported, and encouraged in the manner of that at parma. it owed its origin to don philip of bourbon, in , the tenth year of his government; and his son, who at this time bears sway, continues to promote the interests of the institution.[ ] nothing can be better calculated to revive among us the noble genius of the art of painting, than the method there adopted in the distribution of premiums. the subject of the painting being proposed, the young artists invited to the competition are not confined to those of the state; and consequently the industry of the most able and best matured students is laid under contribution, in every place, for the service of parma. the method of holding the assembly, the skill and integrity of the umpires, and the whole form of the decision, excludes every doubt or suspicion respecting the superiority of the piece adjudged. the artist is largely remunerated; but his highest ambition is gratified in having been pronounced the first among so many competitors, and before such an assemblage. this is of itself always sufficient to raise the successful candidate above the common standard, and often leads to fortune. the prize painting assumes its perpetual station in one of the academic halls, along with the favourite pieces of previous years, forming a series which already excites a warm interest among the lovers of the fine arts. since the period when the cortona manner began to lose ground in italy, a manner that, under such a variety of names and sects, had usurped so wide a sway, the art in our own times has approached a sort of crisis, which as yet forms an essay of new styles, rather than any prevailing one characteristic of this new era. it is in such a collection, better than in any book, that we may study the state of our existing schools; what maxims are now enforced; what kind of imitation, and with how much freedom, is allowed; from what source we are to look for a chance of recovering the ancient art of colouring; what profit painting has derived from the copies of the best pictures published in engravings, and from the precepts of the masters communicated through the medium of prints. i am aware that a variety of opinion is entertained on this head, nor would my own, were i to interpose it, give weight to any of the conflicting arguments in this matter. but i am happy to say, that finding at length appeals made to reason, which were formerly referred to practice, i feel inclined rather to indulge hopes than doubt or diffidence in regard to the future. footnote : the professors who reflect credit upon it are enumerated by p. affò in the works cited in this chapter. chapter iv. school of cremona. epoch i. _the ancients._ i have never perused the history of bernardino, and the rest of the pictoric family of the campi, written some time since by baldinucci, and more recently by giambatista zaist, without thinking that i see in the school which these artists established at cremona, a sketch of that which was subsequently formed by the caracci in bologna. in both these cities a single family projected the formation of a new style of painting, which should partake of all the italian schools, without committing plagiarism against any; and from each family in its respective city sprung a numerous series of excellent masters, who partly by themselves and partly by means of their disciples, adorned their country with their works, the art by their example, and history itself with their names. why the cremonese school did not keep pace with that of bologna in reputation, nor continue so long as the caracci's, and why the latter completed in a manner what the other only essayed, was occasioned by a variety of causes which i shall gradually explain in the course of the present chapter. in the outset, agreeably to my usual plan, i mean to investigate the origin and principles of this school, nor shall we need to go farther back than the foundation of the magnificent cathedral in , which as speedily as possible was decorated with all that sculpture and painting could afford. its specimens of both are such as to gratify the eye of the antiquary, who may wish to trace through what channels, and by what degrees, the arts first began to revive in italy. the sculpture there does not indeed present us with any works that may not likewise be found in verona, in crema, and other places; whereas the paintings remaining in the ceiling of the two lateral naves, may be considered uniques, and deserve the trouble of examining them more nearly, on account of the smallness of the figures and the want of light. they consist of sacred histories; the design is extremely dry, the colours are strong, and their drapery wholly novel, except that some of them still continue to be seen in the modern masks and theatres of italy. some specimens of architecture are introduced, presenting only right lines, like what we see in our oldest wood engravings, and explanations are also inserted, indicating the principal figures, in the manner of the more ancient mosaic-workers, when the eye, yet unaccustomed to behold pictoric histories, required some such illustration of the subject. yet we can gather no traces of the greek mosaics; the whole is italian, national, and new. the characters leave us in doubt whether we ought to ascribe them to the age of giotto, or to that preceding him, but the figures attest that their author was indebted neither to giotto nor his master for what he knew. i can learn nothing of his name from the ancient historians of the school, neither from antonio campi, pietro lamo, nor gio. batista zaist, whom i have already cited, and who compiled two volumes of memoirs of the old artists of cremona, edited by panni in the year . i may, however, safely assert that there were painters who flourished in the cremonese as early as ; for on occasion of the city obtaining a victory over the people of milan, the event was commemorated in a picture, in the palace of lanfranco oldovino, one of the leaders of the cremonese army, and for this we have the testimony of flameno in his history of castelleone.[ ] there is also recorded by the ab. sarnelli, in his "foreigner's guide to naples," as well as by the can. celano, in the "notices of the beauties of naples," a m. simone of cremona, who, about , painted in s. chiara, and is the same mentioned by surgente, author of the "naples illustrated," as simon da siena, and by dominici as simone napolitano. in a former volume i adhered to the opinion of dominici, inasmuch as he cites criscuolo and his archives; but let the authority rest with them. other names might be added, which zaist has in part collected from mss., and in part from published documents, such as polidoro casella, who flourished about , angelo bellavita in , jacopino marasca, mentioned in , luca sclavo, named by flameno, subsequent to , among excellent painters, and among the friends of francesco sforza, besides gaspare bonino, who became celebrated about the year . hence it may be perceived that this school was not destitute of a series of artists, during a long period, although no specimens of their art survive to confirm it. footnote : see zaist, p. . the earliest that is to be met with bearing a name and certain date, is a picture which belonged to zaist, representing julian (afterwards the saint) killing his father and mother, whom he mistakes for his wife and her paramour. below the couch on which they are found, are inscribed the two following verses:-- hoc quod manteneæ didicit sub dogmate clari, antonii cornæ dextera pinxit opus.--mcccclxxviii. the name of antonio della corna is handed down to us by history, and from this monument he is discovered to have been a pupil of mantegna, and a follower of the first rather than the second style of his master. but he does not appear to have flourished a sufficient time, or he was not in repute enough to have a place among the painters of the cathedral, in the fourteenth century, who left there a monument of the art that may vie with the sistine chapel; and if i mistake not the figures of those ancient florentines are more correct, those of the cathedral more animated. there is a frieze surrounding the arches of the church, divided into several squares, each of which contains a scriptural history painted in fresco. upon this work a number of cremonese artists, all of high repute, were successively employed. the first in this list, subscribed in one of these compartments, _bembus incipiens_, and in the other compartment -- ... under his paintings of the epiphany and the purification. the remaining figures after the above, have long been concealed by a side wing of the organ. but the sense is very clear, the name and the date of the centuries appearing together; nor are we at a loss to perceive that the artist, in an undertaking to be conducted by many, and during many years, was desirous of commemorating his name, as the first who commenced it, and in what year. some, nevertheless, have wished to infer, by detaching the words _bembus incipiens_ from the rest, that the artist meant to inform us he was then first entering upon his profession; as if the people of cremona, in the decoration of their finest temple, which was long conducted by the most celebrated painters, would have selected a novice to begin. it is, however, a question whether the inscription refers to bonifazio bembo, or to gianfrancesco his younger brother; but apparently we ought to give it, with vasari, to the former, a distinguished artist who was employed by the court of milan as early as , while gio. francesco flourished later, as we shall shortly have occasion to shew. in the two histories with which bembo commenced his labours, as well as in those that follow, he shews himself an able artist, spirited in his attitudes, glowing in his colours, magnificent in his draperies, although still confined within the sphere of the naturalists, and copying from the truth without displaying much selection, if he does not occasionally transgress it by want of correctness. both our dictionaries of artists and bottari have confounded this bonifazio with a venetian of the same name, whom we have mentioned in his place. opposite to those of bembo is a painting, a history of the passion, representing our redeemer before his judges, painted by cristoforo moretti,[ ] the same, according to lomazzo, who was employed with bembo in the court of milan, and also painted at the church of s. aquilino. one of his madonnas is still to be seen there, seated amid different saints, and upon her mantle i was enabled to decipher, _christophorus de moretis de cremona_, in characters interweaved in the manner of gold lace. cremonese writers call him the son of galeazzo rivello, and father and grandfather to several other rivelli, all artists, moretti being only an assumed appellation. from the inscription i have adduced, there appears some difficulty in the way of such a tradition, since _de moretis_ is an expression importing a family name, not an acquired one. whatever may be thought on this head, it is certain that he was one of the reformers of the art in lombardy, and particularly in the branches of perspective and design; and in this history of the passion, in which he excluded all kind of gilding, he is seen to approach the moderns. footnote : see lomazzo, treatise on painting, p. . somewhat later, and not before , altobello melone and boccaccio boccaccino, two cremonese artists, were employed in completing the frieze of the cathedral. the former, according to vasari, painted several histories of the passion, truly beautiful and deserving of commendation. but he was the least consistent in point of style, introducing, as it has been observed, figures of small and large proportions in the same piece, and also least excellent in his frescos, colouring them in a manner that now gives them the look of tapestry. but he excelled in his oil paintings, as we gather from his altar-piece of christ descending into limbo, which is preserved in the sacristy of the sacramento, a piece for which the canons refused to receive a large sum that was offered for it. the figures are very numerous, of somewhat long proportions, but coloured with equal softness and strength. his knowledge of the naked figure is beyond that of his age, combined with a grace of features and of attitudes that conveys the idea of a great master. in the notizia of morelli, his picture of lucretia, painted for private ornament, is mentioned. it is executed in the flemish style, and he is said to have been the pupil of armanino, perhaps an artist of that nation. boccaccio boccaccino bears the same character among the cremonese as grillandaio, mantegna, vannucci, and francia, in their respective schools, the best modern among the ancients, and the best of the ancients in the list of the moderns. he had the honour of instructing garofolo during two years previous to his visiting rome in . in the frieze of the cathedral, boccaccino painted the birth of the virgin, along with other histories, relating to her and the divine infant. the style is in part original, and in part approaches that of pietro perugino, whose pupil pascoli says he was. but he is less regular in his composition, less beautiful in the air of his heads, and less powerful in his chiaroscuro, though richer in his drapery, with more variety of colours, more spirit in his attitudes, and scarcely less harmonious or less pleasing in his architecture and landscape. he is, perhaps, least attractive in some of his figures, which are somewhat coarse, owing to their having a fulness of drapery, and not being sufficiently slender, a defect carefully avoided by the ancient statuaries, as i have formerly observed.[ ] it is remarked by vasari that he visited rome, in which i agree with him, both because it is in some degree alluded to by antonio campi, and because there are evident traces of his imitation of pietro, as in his marriage of the virgin mary, and in a very magnificent temple, that appears erected upon lofty steps, a subject repeated by pietro several times. it has been also noticed that his madonna at s. vincenzo, with the titular saint and s. antonio, seems like the work of vannucci, and he certainly approaches very near him in other figures. i can easily believe, therefore, that boccaccino was at rome; but i also believe that what is written of him by vasari and by baldinucci, if not fictitious, is at least wide of the mark. footnote : chapter iii. let us briefly examine this matter. it is said that he there attempted to depreciate the works of michelangiolo, and that after exhibiting his own productions at the traspontina, which met with ridicule from the roman professors, in order to escape from the hisses they excited on all sides, he was compelled to return to his native place. this story, added to others of a like nature, irritated the lombard artists. hence scanelli in his microcosm, lamo in his discourse on painting, and campi in his history, renewed the complaints of the other schools against vasari. these are recorded by zaist (p. ) with the addition of his own refutation of this account. the refutation rests upon the epochs which vasari himself points out, and which of themselves, say his opponents, afford a decided negative to the story of boccaccino's journey to rome in time to have cast reflections upon the paintings of michelangiolo. it is the custom of less accurate historians, when they give the substance of a fact, to add to it circumstances of time, of place, or of manner, that had really no existence. ancient history is full of such examples, and the severest criticism does not presume to discredit facts on the strength of some interpolated circumstance, provided there be others sufficiently strong to sanction them. in this instance, the historian, and a great friend of michelangiolo, narrates an affair relating to that friend, and which is supposed to have taken place at rome, only a short period before the author wrote. we can hardly then believe it to have been a mere idle report without any foundation in truth. i would reject indeed some of its accessaries, and in particular condemn those unwarranted reflections in which vasari indulges at the expense of one of the most distinguished artists who at that time flourished in lombardy. next to the four historical paintings just mentioned, follow those conducted by romanino di brescia and by pordenone, two master spirits of their age, who left examples of the venetian taste at the cathedral, which were not neglected by the cremonese, as will be seen. we ought in justice to add, that their city has always shewn a laudable wish to preserve these ancient productions from the effects of age, as far as in her power. when towards the close of the sixteenth century they began to exhibit marks of decay, they were instantly ordered to be examined and restored by a painter and architect of some reputation, called il sabbioneta, his real name being martire pesenti. the same degree of care and attention has been shewn them in the present day by the cav. borroni. two other citizens exhibited specimens in the same place, of the style which is now called _antico moderno_. alessandro pampurini, as it is said, drew some figures of cherubs, round a _cartellone_, or scroll for inscriptions, together with a kind of arabesques, bearing the date of ; and in the subsequent year bernardino ricca, or ricco, produced a similar work opposite to it, which owing to its having been executed with too much dryness, perished in a few years, and was renewed by a different hand. but there still exists his picture of a pietà at s. pietro del po, with some specimens likewise by his companion, sufficient to prove that both are worthy of commemoration for their time. having thus described the series of artists who decorated the cathedral, there remain a few other names unconnected with that great undertaking, but which, nevertheless, enjoyed considerable celebrity in their day. such are galeazzo campi, the father of the three distinguished brothers, and tommaso aleni. this last so nearly resembled campi in his manner, that their pictures can with difficulty be distinguished, as may be seen at s. domenico, where they painted in competition with each other. it is loosely conjectured by many that they were the pupils of boccaccino, an opinion which i cannot entertain. the disciples of the best masters in the fourteenth century continued to free themselves, the longer they flourished, from the dry manner of their early education. galeazzo, on the other hand, the only one we need here mention, approaches less closely to the modern style than his supposed master, as we perceive in the suburban church of s. sebastiano, where he painted the tutelar saint and s. rocco standing near the throne of the virgin with the infant christ. the picture bears the date of , when he was already a finished master, and nevertheless he there appears only a weak follower of the perugino manner. his colours are good and natural, but he is feeble in chiaroscuro, dry in design, cold in his expression; his countenances have not a beam of meaning, while that of the holy infant seems as if copied from a child suffering under an obliquity of the eyes, those of the figure are so badly drawn. the observation, therefore, of baldinucci, or of his continuator, that he "had rendered himself celebrated even beyond italy," would seem in want of confirmation; nor do i know whence such confirmation can be derived. certainly not from the ancients, for even his own son antonio campi only remarks of galeazzo, that he was "a tolerable painter for his age." nor did some others of galeazzo's contemporaries rise much above mediocrity. to this class belonged antonio cigognini and francesco casella, a few of whose productions remain in their native place; galeazzo pesenti, called il sabbioneta, a painter and sculptor; lattanzio of cremona, who having painted at the school of the milanese in venice, has been recorded by boschini in his _miniere della pittura_, besides niccolo da cremona, who was employed, according to orlandi, in at bologna. there are two, however, who merit a larger share of consideration, having produced works of a superior character which still exist, and belong in some degree to the golden period of the art. the name of the first is gio. batista zupelli, of whom the eremitani possess a fine landscape with a holy family. his taste, although dry, is apt to surprise the eye by its originality, and attracts us by a natural and peculiar grace, with which all his figures are designed and animated, as well as by a certain softness and fulness of colouring. if soiaro had not acquired the principles of his art from coreggio, we might suppose that this zupelli had instructed him in regard to the strong body of his colouring, which is remarkable both in him and in his school. the second is gianfrancesco bembo, the brother and disciple of bonifazio, highly commended by vasari, if, indeed, he be, as is supposed, the same gianfrancesco, called il vetraro, who is recorded by the historian in his life of polidoro da caravaggio. it appears certain that he must have visited lower italy, from the style which he displays in one of his altar-pieces, representing saints cosma and damiano, at the osservanti, to which his name with the date of is affixed. i have not observed any thing in a similar taste, either in cremona or in its vicinity. it retains very slight traces of the antique, much as may be observed in those of f. bartolommeo della porta, whom he greatly resembled in point of colouring, however inferior in the dignity of his figures and his draperies. a few more of his specimens are met with in public places and the houses of noblemen, which exhibit him as one of those painters who added dignity to the style of painting in lombardy, and improved upon the ancient manner. school of cremona. epoch ii. _camillo boccaccino, il soiaro, the campi._ after the time of vetraro, nothing occurs worthy of putting on record until we reach the moderns; and here we ought to commence with the three distinguished artists, who, according to lamo, were employed in cremona in the year . these were camillo boccaccino, son of boccaccio, soiaro, recorded in the preceding chapter, and giulio campi, who subsequently became the head of a numerous school. other cremonese artists, it is true, flourished about the same period, such as the two scutellari, francesco and andrea, who have been referred by some writers to the state of mantua; but as few of their works remain, and those of no great merit, we shall proceed at once to the great masters of the school whom we have mentioned above. the grand undertaking of the cathedral proved useful likewise in the advancement of these artists, and in particular the church of s. sigismondo, already erected by francesco sforza at a little distance from the city, where these artists and their descendants, painting as it were in competition, rendered it a noble school for the fine arts. we may there study a sort of series of these artists, their various merit, their prevailing tastes in the coreggio manner, their different style of adapting it, and their peculiar skill in fresco compositions. with these they not only decorated temples, but by applying them to the façades of palaces and private houses they gave an appearance of splendour to the state, which excited the admiration of strangers. they were surprised, on first entering cremona, to behold a city arrayed as if for a jubilee, full of life, and rich in all the pride of art. strange then that franzese, who wrote the lives of the best painters (in four volumes) should have compiled nothing relating to the cremonese, far more deserving of commemoration than many others in his collection whom he has greatly praised. camillo boccaccino was the leading genius of the school. grounded in the ancient maxims of his father, though his career was short, he succeeded in forming a style at once strong and beautiful, insomuch that we are at a loss to say which is the prevailing feature of his character. lomazzo pronounces him, "very able in design, and a noble colourist," placing him, as a model for the graceful power of his lights, for the sweetness of his manner, and for his art of drapery, on a level with da vinci, coreggio, gaudenzio, and the first painters in the world. according to the opinion of vasari, against whom the cremonese have so bitterly inveighed, camillo was "a good mechanical hand, and if he had flourished for a longer period would have had extraordinary success, but he produced few works except such as are small, and of little importance." in respect to his paintings at s. sigismondo, he adds, not that they are, but are only "believed by the cremonese to be, the best specimens of the art they have to boast." they are still to be seen in the cupola, in the grand recess, and on the sides of the great altar. the most distinguished pieces are the four evangelists in a sitting posture, excepting the figure of s. john, who, standing up in a bending attitude, with an expression of surprise, forms a curved outline opposed to the arch of the ceiling, a figure greatly celebrated, no less on account of the perspective than the design. it is truly surprising how a young artist who had never frequented the school of coreggio, could so well emulate his taste, and carry it even farther within so short a period; this work, displaying such a knowledge of perspective and foreshortening, having been executed as early as the year . the two side pictures are also highly celebrated, both in cremona and abroad. one of these represents the raising of lazarus, the other the woman taken in adultery, both surrounded with very elegant ornaments, representing groups of cherubs, which are seen in the act of playing with the mitre, the censer, and other holy vessels in their hands. in these histories, as well as in their decorations, the whole of the figures are arranged and turned in such a way, as scarcely to leave a single eye in the figures visible, a novelty in respect to drawing by no means to be recommended. but camillo was desirous of thus proving to his rivals that his figures were not, as they asserted, indebted for their merit to the animated expression of the eyes, but to the whole composition. and truly in whatever way disposed, they do not fail to please from the excellence of the design, their fine and varied attitudes, the foreshortening, the natural colouring, and a strength of chiaroscuro which must have been drawn from pordenone, and which makes the surrounding paintings of the campi appear deficient in relief. had he exhibited a little more choice in his heads of adults, with a little more regularity in his composition, there would, perhaps, have been nothing farther to desire. we may, moreover, mention his painting on a façade in one of the squares of cremona, where, not long ago, were to be seen the remains of figures which camillo executed so as to excite the admiration of charles v. and obtain the highest commendations. there remain likewise two of his altar-pieces, one at cistello and the other at s. bartolommeo, both extremely beautiful. the name of bernardino, or bernardo gatti, for he subscribed both to his pictures, was mentioned at length among the pupils of parma; and i have now to record it among the best masters of cremona. both campi and lapi refer him without scruple to cremona, though he is given by others to vercelli, and supposed to be the same bernardo di vercelli who succeeded pordenone in painting s. maria di campagna at piacenza, as we find related in vasari. by others he is supposed again to have come from pavia, where he was employed in the cupola of the cathedral, and according to the testimony of count carasi, mentioned before with commendation, he there subscribed his name _bernardinus gatti papiensis_, . i leave the question to others, though it seems hardly credible that two contemporary historians, who wrote shortly after the death of bernardino, while the public recollection of his native place must have been yet fresh, and ready to refute them, should have each fallen into error. we might add that cremona is in possession of many of soiaro's paintings from his earliest age until he became an octogenarian, and owing to a paralytic affection was in the habit of painting with his left hand. at that advanced period he produced for the cathedral his picture of the assumption, fifty hands in height, and which, although he never lived to complete it, is a work, as is justly observed by lamo, that excites our wonder. moreover he left his possessions and a family at cremona, from which sprung two artists deserving of record, one of whom is celebrated in history, the other never before noticed. as there still remains some degree of foundation for attributing him to pavia, upon the authority also of spelta, who wrote the lives of the pavese bishops, and was almost contemporary with bernardino, and what is more, he himself thinks that the difference might be thus reconciled, we may agree with him in stating that our artist was either derived from, or a citizen of pavia, and at the same time a citizen and a resident at cremona. gervasio gatti, il soiaro, nephew to bernardino, was initiated by him in the same maxims and principles which he had himself imbibed, by studying and copying the models left by coreggio at parma. the advantage he derived from them may be known from his s. sebastiano, which was painted for s. agatha, at cremona, in , a piece that appears designed from the antique, and coloured by one of the first figurists and landscape painters in lombardy. in the same city is his martyrdom of s. cecilia, at s. pietro, surrounded with angels, in the coreggio manner, a picture nobly coloured, and finished with exquisite care. in composition it resembles those of his uncle, for one of which it might be mistaken, did we not find the name of gervasio and the date of . but he was not always equally diligent, and sometimes betrays a mechanical hand, while there is often a monotony in his countenances, and a want of selection in his heads, no unusual fault in portrait-painters, among whom he held a high rank. it is most probable that he saw the works of the caracci, traces of which i have discovered in some of his productions, and particularly in those at s. s. pietro and marcellino. perhaps it was a brother of this artist who left a picture of a crucifixion, surrounded by different saints, at s. sepolcro in piacenza, bearing an inscription of _uriel de gattis dictus sojarius_, . it boasts great strength of colouring, combined with no little elegance, but the manner is insignificant and it is feeble in chiaroscuro. this, if i mistake not, is the same _uriele_ who, on the testimony of the cav. ridolfi, had been selected for some undertaking at crema in preference to urbini, as i formerly observed. bernardino likewise instructed spranger, a favourite artist of the emperor rodolph ii. as well as the anguissole, of both of whom we shall give some account shortly. what more peculiarly distinguishes him is his title to be considered the great master of the cremonese school, which, benefitted by his presence and guided by his precepts and examples, produced during so long a period such a variety of admirable works. to speak frankly what i think, cremona would never have seen her campi, nor her boccaccino rise so high, if soiaro had not exhibited his talents in that city. the remaining portion of our chapter will be devoted almost wholly to the campi, a family that filled cremona, milan, and other cities of the state, both in private and public, with their paintings. they consisted of four individuals, all of whom devoted themselves indefatigably to the art until they reached an extreme old age. they were by some denominated the vasari and the zuccari of lombardy, a comparison founded on some degree of truth in regard to the extent and the vast mechanism of their compositions; but not just, as far as intended to be applied to any desire of achieving much, rather than what was excellent in its kind. giulio and bernardino, the most accomplished of their family, were accused of too great rapidity and want of accuracy; but they are not very often liable to the charge, and many of their faults must be ascribed to their assistants. they generally produced good designs, which were invariably well coloured, and these still remain entire, while those of vasari and zuccari stand in need of continual restoration and retouching from the fading of their colours. of both these masters, however, as well as the rest of the campi, we must now proceed to treat in their individual character. giulio may be pronounced the lodovico caracci of his school. the eldest brother of antonio and vincenzo, and the relation, or the instructor at least, of bernardino, he formed the project of uniting the best qualities of a number of styles in one. his father, who was his first preceptor,[ ] not conceiving himself equal to perfecting him in the art, sent him to the school of giulio romano, established at that period in mantua, and which had begun, according to vasari, to propagate the taste imbibed by its master from the most distinguished ornament of the art. romano, too, instructed his pupils in the principles of architecture, painting, and modelling, and rendered them capable of directing and conducting all the branches of a vast and multiplied undertaking with their own hands. such an education was enjoyed by the eldest campi, and by his brothers, owing to his care. the church of s. margherita was wholly decorated by him; and the chapels at s. sigismondo were all completed by him and his family. they contain almost every variety of the art, large pictures, small histories, cameos, stuccos, chiaroscuros, grotesques, festoons of flowers, pilasters, with gold recesses, from which the most graceful forms of cherubs seem to rise with symbols adapted to the saint of the altar; in a word, the whole of the paintings and their decorations are the work of the same genius, and sometimes of the same hand. this adds greatly to their harmony and in consequence to their beauty, nothing in fact being truly beautiful that has not perfect unity. it is a real loss to the arts that these various talents should be divided, so as to compel us to seek a different artist for works of different sorts; whence it arises that in a number of halls and churches we meet with collections, histories, and ornaments of every kind, so extremely opposite, that not only one part fails to remind us of the other, but sometimes repels it, and seems to complain of its forced and inharmonious union. but we must again turn our attention to giulio campi. footnote : we may here correct the mistake of orlandi, who assigns the death of galeazzo to the year , and giulio's birth to , when it is known that he began his labours as early as . it appears then that he laid the foundation of his taste and principles under giulio romano. from him he derived the dignity of his design, his knowledge of anatomy, variety and fertility of ideas, magnificence in his architecture, and a general mastery over every subject. to this he added strength when he visited rome, where he studied raffaello and the antique, designing with a wonderful degree of accuracy the column of trajan, universally regarded as a school of the ancients always open to the present day. either at mantua or elsewhere he likewise studied titian, and imitated him in an equal degree with any other foreign artist. in his native state he met with two more models in pordenone and soiaro, in whose style, according to vasari, he exercised himself, before he became acquainted with the works of giulio. from such preparatory studies, combined with imitating whatever he met with in raffaello and coreggio, he acquired that style which is found to partake of the manner of so many different artists. on visiting the church of s. margherita just alluded to, in company with an able professor of the art, we there noticed several of his heads, each drawn after a different model, insomuch that on viewing the works of this artist we feel inclined to pronounce the same opinion on him, as algarotti did on the caracci, that in one of their pictures one kind of taste prevails, and in another an opposite manner. thus in his s. girolamo, in the cathedral at mantua, and in his pentecost at s. gismondo in cremona, we meet with all the strength of giulio, though his most successful imitation is to be found in the castle of soragno in the territory of parma, where he represented the labours of hercules in a grand hall, which might be pronounced an excellent school for the study of the naked figure. in the larger picture at the church of s. gismondo, where the duke of milan is seen with his duchess in the act of being presented by the patron saints to the holy virgin, and also in that of saints pietro and marcellino at the church bearing their name, campi displays so much of the titian manner as to have been mistaken for that artist. one of his histories of the passion, in the cathedral, representing christ before pilate, was also supposed to be from the hand of pordenone, though ascertained to be his. finally in a holy family, painted at s. paolo in milan, particularly in the figure of the child seen caressing a holy prelate, who stands lost in admiration, we are presented with all the natural grace, united to all the skill that can be required in an imitator of coreggio. the picture is exquisitely beautiful, and an engraving of it in large folio was taken by giorgio ghigi, a celebrated artist of mantua. nor did giulio's admiration of great painters lead him to neglect the study of nature. it was nature he consulted, and selected from; a study which he inculcated likewise upon the rest of the campi. a choice is thus perceptible in their heads, more especially in those of their women, evidently drawn from nature, and i may add from national truth, inasmuch as they express ideas and attitudes that are not usually met with in other artists; the hair and temples often appearing bound with a ribbon, as was then customary in the city, and is still in use in some of the villages. the colouring of the heads approaches near that of paul veronese, and in the whole of their paintings the campi were accustomed to make use of the distribution of colours that had prevailed before the time of the caracci, though in their manner of disposing and animating them they acquired a peculiar beauty which scaramuccio pronounces wholly original. judging, therefore, from their colours, and the air of their heads, it is difficult to discern the individual hands of the campi; but if we examine the design we shall more easily distinguish them. giulio surpasses the rest in point of dignity; and he likewise aims at displaying more knowledge, both of the human frame and of the effects of lights and shadows. in correctness too he is superior to his two brothers, though he is not equal to bernardino. the cav. antonio campi was instructed by his brother in architecture and painting, in the former of which he employed himself more than giulio. this was useful to him in the distribution of his large works, where he often introduced perspective views of great beauty, and displayed great skill in foreshortening. a fine specimen of his powers is to be seen in the sacristy of s. pietro, with that beautiful colonnade, above which appears the chariot of elias in the distance. antonio was also a modeller, an engraver, and the historian of his native state, whose annals, enriched with many of his copper-plates, he published in . in the campi family, therefore, he will be found to occupy the same place as agostino among the caracci, an artist of great versatility, conversant with polite letters. he was well known and appreciated by agostino, who engraved one of his most beautiful productions, the apostle of the gentiles in the act of raising a person from the dead. it is placed at s. paolo in milan, a noble church, where all the campi, in the same manner as at s. sigismondo, are seen in competition with each other. antonio there appears to great advantage, no less in the forementioned picture than in that of the nativity, though the frescos adorning the chapels, ascribed to him, are deficient in accuracy. thus he also produced works of unequal merit at s. sigismondo, as if he wished to shew that he knew more than he was ambitious of expressing. his most familiar model, as is remarked also by lomazzo, was coreggio, and the feature that he most aimed at expressing was that of grace. to this he often attained in point of colouring, but was less happy in design, where, owing to his study of elegance, he at times becomes disproportionately thin, and at others, in order to display his power, he exhibits a foreshortening somewhat out of place. he is still more mannered in his more robust subjects, and occasionally borders upon heaviness and vulgarity, into which his imitation of coreggio's grandeur, more difficult, perhaps, than his grace, doubtless betrayed him. there are many of these exceptions, however, along with his incorrectness of design, so often discernible, which are to be attributed to his numerous assistants, employed in these vast undertakings. but this will not apply to his over-grouping, which is so remarkable in some of his compositions, nor to the introduction of caricatures into his holy histories, which is a sort of jesting out of season. in a word his genius was vast, spirited, resolute, but often in want of the rein; and in this respect, and generally in what relates to pictorial learning, we should do wrong to put him in competition with lodovico caracci. in the church of s. paolo, at milan, there is an inscription by vincenzio campi, in which he mentions giulio and antonio as his younger brothers. most probably, however, it has been inserted there by some other hand, being quite contradictory to what is established by history. for he is represented by antonio as the youngest of the brothers, and by others as an indefatigable assistant in their labours, and little more worthy of being compared with them than francesco caracci with his brother annibal or agostino. his portraits, however, are held in esteem, as well as his fruit pieces, which he painted on a small scale for private rooms in a very natural manner, and they are by no means rare at cremona. in the colouring of his figures he was equal to his brothers, but in point of invention and design greatly inferior to them. he appears to have imitated antonio rather than giulio, as far as we can judge from the few works he has left, which are now known to be his. he painted a few altar-pieces for his native place, four of which consist of descents from the cross. that in the cathedral extorted the praise of baldinucci; and truly in the figure of christ his foreshortening deceives the eye like that of pordenone in his dead christ, while his heads and his colouring have likewise been commended. i cannot, however, think that the attitude of the virgin mother, who is seen grasping his face with both her hands, is very becoming; nor do i approve of the saints antonio and raimondo, who lived at a period so remote from that of christ, being here introduced, the one supporting his arm, the other kissing his hand. it moreover betrays several errors, of a kind which baldinucci, so familiar with a more learned and severe school, would not so easily have forgiven had he happened to have beheld this picture. vincenzio seems to have possessed greater skill in small than in large figures, in common indeed with a great number of artists. mention is made in his life of six little pictures which he executed on slate, and which were sold after his death for three hundred ducats. zaist, whom i follow in my index, has presented us with the epochs applying to these three artists in such a manner as to leave them in considerable doubt. the inscription at s. paolo in milan, recorded in the guide (p. ) is as follows:--_vincentius una cum julio et antonio fratribus pinxerunt an._ mdlxxxviii. now bianconi does not seem inclined to credit the authenticity of this; nor is it improbable but it may have been written some years subsequent to the painting, and by another hand. bernardino campi, perhaps some way related to the other three campi, occupied the same place in his family as annibal caracci amongst his brothers. receiving his first instructions from the eldest campi, he entered into similar views of forming a style which should include that of many other artists, and in a short time he rivalled, and in the opinion of many surpassed his master. he had at first attached himself to the goldsmith's art by the advice of his father; but happening to behold two tapestries, copied by giulio campi from raffaello, he resolved to change his profession, and devoting himself to the school of campi at cremona, and next to that of ippolito costa at mantua, he began to profess the art at the age of nineteen, and acquired a great proficiency in it at that early age. at mantua he cultivated an acquaintance with giulio romano and his school, and we may infer, that from the study of his works he was enabled to enlarge his views and his capacity for great undertakings. but the love of raffaello was fixed in his heart, and he took delight in nothing so much as his pictures, his designs, and his engravings; while in giulio and the rest he was only anxious to emulate those portraits which appeared to him to bear some resemblance to his raffaello. there too he applied himself to the study of titian's series of the cæsars, eleven in number; and after having copied them he added a twelfth in a style so perfectly consistent, as to exhibit no traces of imitation. by the liberality of one of his patrons he was enabled also to visit parma, modena, and reggio, in order to become acquainted with the manner of coreggio; and the advantage he thence derived, his pictures at s. gismondo sufficiently display. from these first principles, with such as he studied in his native place, he derived one of the most original styles that is to be met with in the list of imitators. his imitation is never, like that of so many others, apparent to the eye, but rather resembles our poet sannazzaro's, of the best roman writers, who colours with them every line, but that line is still his own. in so great a variety of models, the most beloved and the most honoured, as virgil was by sannazzaro, was raffaello by bernardino; but it was unfortunate for him that he did not see rome, and the originals which that great pictoric genius there produced. the want of this he supplied with ability, and formed for himself several maxims drawn from nature and simplicity, which serve to distinguish him from the rest of his school. by the side of the other campi he perhaps appears the most timid artist, but the most correct; he has not the magnificence of giulio, but he has more ideal beauty, and much more captivates the heart. he resembles antonio rather than giulio in the length of his proportions; but not so in other points, for he occasionally borders upon dryness, as in his assumption at the cathedral, in order to avoid falling into mannerism. but it is the church of s. sigismondo which inspires us with the loftiest ideas of this artist, in every view. we can imagine nothing more simply beautiful, and more consistent with the genius of the best age, than his picture of st. cecilia, in the act of playing on the organ, while st. catherine is seen standing near her, and above them a group of angels, apparently engaged with their musical instruments and with their voices, in pouring forth in concert with the two innocent virgins, strains worthy of paradise. this painting, with its surrounding decoration of cherub figures, displays his mastery in grace. still he appears to no less advantage in point of strength in his figures of the prophets, grandly designed, for the same place; although he seems more anxious to invest them with dignity of feature and of action, than to give strength and muscle to their proportions. above all, he shone with most advantage in the grand cupola, with which few in italy will bear a comparison, and still fewer can be preferred for the abundance, variety, distribution, grandeur, and gradation of the figures, and for the harmony and grand effect of the whole. in this empyrean, this vast concourse of the blessed, belonging to the old and new testament, there is no figure that may not be recognised by its symbols, and that is not seen in perfection from its own point of view, whence all appear of the natural proportion, although they are on a scale of seven braccia in height. such a work is one of those rare monuments which serve to prove, that it is possible for a great genius to execute rapidly and well; it was wholly conducted by him in seven months; and to satisfy the workmen, who were more sensible of the brevity of the time than the merit of the work, he obtained a written acknowledgment from soiaro and giulio campi, that he had achieved a laudable task. bernardino was younger than either of them, or than boccaccino, and the citizens took pleasure in placing him in competition with one or the other of them in their public works, in order that a noble emulation might call forth all their powers, nor suffer them to slumber. nevertheless, the nativity of our lord, at s. domenico, has been pronounced his masterpiece; a kind of abstract, in which he aimed at comprehending the various excellences of the art. this, at least, is the opinion of lamo, who composed a diffuse life of this artist; such as to render his information far the most copious we possess upon the subject. he also compiled a correct catalogue of his works, executed both in his native place and at milan, where he passed a great part of his time, and of those he painted in foreign parts. we find a great number of portraits of princes, as well as of private persons, enumerated; his skill in this branch of the art, in which very few equalled him, greatly adding to his fame and fortune. the precise period of his decease is not known, though it must have been somewhere towards , at which time the art assumed quite a new aspect at cremona. school of cremona. epoch iii. _decline of the school of the campi. trotti and other artists support it._ from the brief description already given, it will easily be perceived how far the campi school was a sort of sketch of that of the caracci; and what were the causes which contributed to the superiority of the latter, although they had both the same original outline. the caracci were all excellent designers, and invariably aimed at appearing such; they were likewise united by affection, no less than by their place of residence, and were continually engaged in assisting each other. finally, they supported an academy, much frequented, the object of which was, not so much to study the various manners of different artists, as to examine the different effects produced by nature, so as to render their works her real offspring, as it were, and not her more distant relations. the campi, on the other hand, did not so uniformly aspire to the same excellence, nor did they reside, and unite together in forming so methodical and well-established an academy; each maintaining a separate school and residence, and teaching, if i mistake not, rather how their pupils should imitate them, than how they should paint. hence it arose, that while domenichino, guido, guercino, and others of the caracci school, distinguished themselves by their novelty and originality of manner, the scholars of the campi were confined to the sphere of imitating, as nearly as lay in their power, the painters of their own city, either severally or in a select number. and thus, as man is every where the same, it here ensued, as in the rest of the italian schools, that having acquired a tolerable degree of skill in imitating their predecessors, artists began to slacken their industry. the first had accustomed themselves to copy only from the life; they drew cartoons, they modelled in wax, and carefully arranged all the divisions of their folds, with every accessary; but the second contented themselves with making a few sketches, and some heads taken from nature, executing the rest of their work in a mere mechanical manner, and as they judged to be most convenient. thus by degrees this great school degenerated, and it happened also about the same period, when the disciples of procaccini observed the same method at milan. from this cause, during the seventeenth century, lombardy was filled with the sectarists of the art, among whom the followers of zuccheri themselves would have appeared in the rank of masters. a few there were who struggled to free themselves from the herd of imitators; and caravaggio afforded them an opportunity. born in the vicinity of cremona, he was partly considered their compatriot, and the more willingly followed by the cremonese; more particularly as it became popular to cry down the style of the last masters as feeble, and to demand one of a more vigorous character. the attempt succeeded admirably in a few; while others, on the contrary, as it occurred in venice, at cremona also became only coarse and sombre. i have not been very anxious to cultivate an acquaintance with the artists of this period; though i shall take care to make mention of such as succeeded in raising themselves above the crowd. each of the campi, therefore, claims his own disciples, though they have not always been distinguished in history, being described under the general designation of pupils of the campi; as the two mainardi, andrea and marc antonio, by orlandi. the two pupils of giulio, best entitled to commendation, namely, gambara of brescia, and viani of cremona, having flourished in other schools, have been recorded by us, the first among the venetians; and the second among the mantuan artists. antonio campi has left us an account of three of his own disciples: ippolito storto, gio. batista belliboni, and gio. paolo fondulo, who passed into sicily. all of them remained in obscurity, however, in lombardy, and are omitted in the painters' dictionaries. towards the close of his life, he instructed one galeazzo ghidone, an artist of weak health, who employed himself only at intervals, but with success; as we may judge from his picture of the preaching of st. john the baptist, at s. mattia, in cremona, which has been highly commended by good connoisseurs. another, is antonio beduschi, who, in his twenty-sixth year, produced a pietà for s. sepolcro, in piacenza, and a still superior painting of the martyrdom of s. stefano; he is referred to the school of the campi, and strongly partakes of the style of antonio; i esteem him one of his imitators, if not in the list of his pupils. he was unknown to the historian zaist, and is indebted for commemoration to the sig. proposto carasi. luca cattapane was initiated in the art by vincenzio, and devoted much time to copying the works of the campi family. he succeeded in this by exhibiting a rare boldness of hand, so as to give his pieces the air of originals, and they continue to impose upon the most experienced, even to the present day. he likewise counterfeited the style of gambara in a pietà of his, at the church of s. pietro, in cremona; and in order to enlarge the picture, he added three figures in a taste agreeable to the former. for the rest, being misled by his ambition to form a new style, or to approach nearer caravaggio, he became even more sombre than the campi, with still less taste. many of his altar-pieces yet remain. in s. donato, at cremona, he represented the beheading of st. john; one of his most successful works, in which the effect is superior either to the design or to the expression. to these we may add a number of his fresco paintings, though inferior to those he executed in oil. bernardino, however, was the favourite master, and the most frequented of any belonging to the school. his successors have continued to flourish longer, and even reached the confines of the present age. i first propose to enumerate a few of his most distinguished scholars, who either did not teach, or taught the art only to a few; and i shall afterwards treat of malosso and his school, which, about the year , held the chief sway in cremona, and became one of the most celebrated throughout lombardy. coriolano malagavazzo, who is erroneously called girolamo malaguazzo, in the "painters' dictionary," assisted in the labours of his master, insomuch as to render it uncertain whether cremona possesses any painting designed and executed by himself; for it is supposed that he drew his fine altar-piece, in s. silvestro, representing the virgin with s.s. francesco and ignazio, the martyr, from one of bernardino's designs. nothing, likewise, that has not been questioned, remains of cristoforo magnani da pizzichettone, a young artist of great promise, as we are informed by antonio campi, who laments the shortness of his career. lamo, too, complains of his loss, when he mentions him and trotti as the two greatest geniuses of the school. his chief talent lay in portraits; though he was also well skilled in compositions. i have seen one of his productions, consisting of saints giacomo and giovanni, at s. francesco, in piacenza, an early effort, but very well conceived and executed. andrea mainardi, called chiaveghino, employed himself both singly and with marcantonio, his nephew, in painting for the city, and more especially for its environs. by baldinucci, he is pronounced a weak painter; and such indeed he appears wherever he worked in haste, and for a small sum. but several of his altar-pieces, laboured with more care, tend to redeem his character; there he shews himself a successful disciple of bernardino, both in his minute style, as in his marriage of s. anne, at the eremites, and in his loftier manner, as in his large picture of the divin sangue, or divine blood. he exhibits that prophetic idea, _torcular calcavi solus_, and the redeemer is seen standing upright under a wine-press, and, crushed by the divine justice, emitting from his holy body, through the open wounds, whole streams of blood, which are received into sacred vessels by s. agostino, and three other doctors of the church; and are afterwards shed for the benefit of an immense crowd of the faithful, who are seen gathered round. the same subject i saw in one of the churches of recanati, and in some others, but no where so appropriately expressed. it is a picture that would reflect credit on any school; exhibiting fine forms, rich draperies, warm and lively colouring. in the distribution of his small and frequent lights he might, indeed, have been more happy, as well as in the grouping of his figures; a fault, however, common to many of his school. the best, however, of these disciples of bernardino, with a number of others whom i omit, were all surpassed by a fair votary of the art named sofonisba angussola, sprung from a noble family at cremona. along with her younger sister, elena, who afterwards took the veil, she received his instructions at her father's request, in his own house. upon his going to milan, soiaro was selected to supply the place of bernardino, and sofonisba soon attained to such a degree of excellence, more particularly in portraits, as to be esteemed one of the most finished painters of her age. she at first superintended the pictorial education of her four younger sisters, whose names were lucia and minerva, who died young; europa and anna maria, of whom the former married, and died in the flower of her age; and of the second, likewise married, there remains no further account. vasari bestows the highest commendations upon sofonisba, and upon the other sisters, with whom he was acquainted at cremona, when they were young. at that period sofonisba had already been invited as court painter, by philip ii. into spain, where, besides the portraits she took of the royal family and of pope pius iv., she painted several other princes and lords of rank, all ambitious of the same honour, insomuch that we might apply to her the words of pliny: "illos nobilitans quos esset dignata posteris tradere." entering afterwards into matrimony with one moncada, she resided with him some years at palermo, and after his death again married a gentleman of the name of lomellino. she died at genoa, at a very advanced age, infirm and blind; though she continued to converse and give her advice upon the art until her last moments; insomuch that vandyck was heard to say, that he had acquired more knowledge from her, than from any one else he knew. her portraits are greatly esteemed in italy; and in particular, two which she took of herself; one of which is in the ducal gallery at florence, and the other in possession of the lomellini family at genoa. i next approach that celebrated pupil of bernardino, whom i promised to mention at the close of the chapter; and this is the cavalier gio. batista trotti, who published his master's life, during his lifetime, written by lamo. none of campi's pupils was so much attached to him as this artist, who married his niece, and was left heir to his valuable studio. on his competing at parma with agostino caracci, and being more applauded at court, it was said by agostino, with pleasantry, that they had given him a hard bone to gnaw. hence he acquired the surname of malosso, which he adopted, and sometimes made use of in signing his name, besides transmitting it, as an hereditary appellation, to his nephew. thus he converted into a source of applause, the satiric trait launched against him by caracci, meant to convey, that the people of parma had preferred to him an artist of inferior worth. nor indeed was malosso his equal either in design or in solid judgment; though he could boast pictoric attractions which made him appear to advantage when opposed to other artists. he displayed little of bernardino's taste, except in a few of his first efforts; he afterwards studied coreggio, and, most of all, aimed at resembling soiaro, whose gay, open, and brilliant style, varied shortenings, and spirited attitudes, he exhibited in the chief part of his works. but he carried it too far, making an extravagant display of his white and other clear colours, without sufficiently tempering them with shade, insomuch that i have heard his paintings compared to those on porcelain; while he has been accused of want of relief, or according to baldinucci, of some degree of harshness. his heads are, however, extremely beautiful, smiling with loveliness, and of a graceful roundness, not unlike soiaro's; though he is too apt to repeat them on the same canvass, nearly alike in features, colours, and attitude. here his rapidity of hand alone was in fault, as he was in no want of fertility of ideas. when he pleased he could give variety to his lineaments, as we gather from his beheading of st. john, at s. domenico, in cremona, as well as to his compositions; having represented at s. francesco and at s. agostino, in piacenza, and if i mistake not, elsewhere, a picture of the conception of the virgin, in every instance abounding with fresh ideas. nor do we often meet with any of his paintings throughout the numerous cities in which he was employed, that have much resemblance in point of invention. he was equally varied in his imitations when he pleased, as appears from his crucifixion, surrounded by saints, in the cathedral of cremona, executed in the best venetian taste; while his s. maria egiziaca driven from the temple, to be seen at s. pietro in the same town, partakes as much of the roman. there is also a pietà of his at s. abbondio, which shews that he was occasionally happy in catching the caracci manner. his most esteemed works in fresco, for which he was honoured with the title of cavaliere, were exhibited in the palace called del giardino, at parma. his labours in the cupola of s. abbondio, before-mentioned, were on a magnificent scale, though designed from giulio campi. but they display a mastery of hand, and strength of colouring, fully equal, if not superior, to the invention of the work. for giulio, indeed, did not possess the same skill in varying his groups of angels as the caracci; inasmuch as both he and his family were accustomed to arrange them like the horses we see in the ancient chariots, all drawn up in a line, or in some other manner unusual in the best schools. the cremonese historian endeavours, in some degree, to defend trotti from the charge of harshness, casting it upon his assistants and disciples, whose altar-pieces have been attributed to malosso, by baldinucci. this may be the case with some, but there are others inscribed with the name of trotti, especially at piacenza, which more or less exhibit the same fault. nor ought we to cast reflections upon an artist of a secondary character, on account of some errors, as these are precisely the cause of his exclusion from the rank of the very first masters. trotti educated a number of artists who flourished about the year , devoted to his manner, although in course of time the method of preparing grounds becoming corrupted throughout italy, and the age attached to a more sombre style of colouring, they were induced to abandon much of that clearness which forms a chief characteristic of his colouring. baldinucci gives some account of ermenegildo lodi, as well as orlandi, who could not discern which of two paintings belonged to the master, and which to the scholar. this, i conjecture, arose from painting under the eye of his preceptor, whom he assisted in many of his labours, together with his brother manfredo lodi. when we consult the few which he executed alone, particularly at s. pietro, they discover nothing to have excited the jealousy of agostino caracci, nor to have gained for the artist the appellation of malosso. the productions likewise of giulio calvi, called il coronaro, might be mistaken for the least perfect of those of trotti, says zaist, where they are not inscribed with his name. the same may be averred of two other artists, stefano lambri and cristoforo augusta, a youth of great promise, cut off in the flower of his age; and both excellent disciples of the school. these, no less than coronaro, may be seen and compared with each other in the church and convent of the padri predicatori, which possess specimens of each. of euclide trotti, before-mentioned, there remains in his native place no work clearly ascertained to be his, except two history-pieces of st. james the apostle, at s. gismondo. these too were sketched by calvi, and completed by euclide, with a very able imitation of his uncle gio. batista's style. the altar-piece of the ascension, however, at s. antonio, in milan, is wholly ascribed to him; and displays much beauty, and a more serious manner than is generally to be met with in the works of the elder malosso. no other painting is attributed to him, nor was he capable of executing many. for while yet young, he was tried and found guilty of felony against the prince. being thrown into prison, he is there supposed to have died by poison, which was administered by his friends, in order to avoid the disgrace of a public execution. in conclusion, we must not omit the name of panfilo nuvolone. he was attached to malosso, whom he imitated from the outset; but he afterwards followed a more solid and less attractive style. one of his works, which is omitted in the account of his life, is his s. ubaldo giving his benediction to the sick, at s. agostino, in piacenza. mention will be made of this painter also in the milanese school, where he flourished, together with his two sons, giuseppe and carlo, who obtained the appellation of the guido of lombardy. school of cremona. epoch iv. _foreign manners introduced into cremona._ among the descendants of malosso the cremonese school continued to decline; and here, as in the instance of so many others, it was compelled to resort to foreign sources, in order to restore its somewhat aged and exhausted powers. carlo picenardi, of a patrician family, was the first to lead the way, an artist who had ranked among the favourite pupils of lodovico caracci. he was very successful in burlesque histories, and likewise exhibited to the public some of his paintings, executed for churches, which were imitated by another carlo picenardi, called the younger, who had formed his style in venice and at rome. other artists of the city attached themselves to other schools, insomuch, that before the middle of the seventeenth century many new manners had arisen which assumed the place of more native styles. in the train of malosso zaist enumerates pier martire neri, or negri, a good portrait-painter and composer, though, adds the historian, he procured from a foreign source a character of more boldness and strength of shadow, at the same time adducing as an instance, his great picture of the man born blind receiving his sight from our saviour, which is preserved at the hospital of cremona. he painted likewise a s. giuseppe at the certosa, in pavia, a work which, if i mistake not, is superior in point of taste to the former, and there are others to be met with in rome, where the artist's name is found among the academicians of s. luke. andrea mainardi opened school simultaneously with malosso; and two of his pupils, gio. batista tortiroli and carlo natali, became particularly distinguished. both abandoned their native place, gio. batista going first to rome and thence to venice, where he formed a style which partakes most of the younger palma, united to an evident imitation of raffaello. such it appears in his picture of the slaughter of the innocents, at s. domenico, commendable in point of composition, and extremely well coloured. this, and a few other productions, are regarded however only as specimens of his powers, the artist dying in his thirtieth year, leaving behind him a pupil of the name of gio. batista lazzaroni. this last flourished at piacenza and in milan, was an excellent portrait-painter, and much employed by the princes of parma and other personages of high rank. carlo natali, surnamed il guardolino, attended the school of mainardi, and afterwards that of guido reni, to which he added a long residence at rome and genoa, observing all that was most valuable, and exerting his own talents in the art. it was while engaged in executing a frieze in the doria palace at genoa, that he instructed giulio cesare procaccini in the principles of painting, who had previously devoted himself to sculpture, and in him he presented us with one of the most successful imitators of coreggio. carlo's attachment to architecture, however, permitted him to produce few specimens, which are highly esteemed in his native state, in particular his santa francesca romana, painted for s. gismondo, a piece, which if not perfect, is certainly above mediocrity. he had a son named giambatista, whom he instructed in both these arts; though he was desirous that he should acquire a more perfect knowledge of them under pietro da cortona at rome. there he pursued his studies and left some specimens of altar-pieces, producing works upon a still more extensive scale upon his return to cremona, where he opened school and introduced the cortona manner, although with little success. there is a large picture of his at the p. predicatori, displaying some skilful architecture, and in which the holy patriarch is seen in the act of burning some heretical books; nor is it at all unworthy of a disciple of pietro. in the archives of the royal gallery at florence i discovered, at the period i was drawing up my index, some letters addressed by gio. batista to the card. leopoldo de' medici, one of which was written from rome, dated , wherein he states that he was then engaged in collecting notices respecting the artists of his native place. hence we may gather the real origin of their lives, as contained in the work of baldinucci, for whom the cardinal, who patronized him, likewise procured other materials for his history from different places. had zaist been informed of this he would rather have directed both his eulogies and his complaints to natali, than to baldinucci or his continuator. the pupils of natali were carlo tassone, who became, on the model of lovino, a painter of portraits, much admired at turin and other courts; francescantonio caneti, afterwards a capuchin friar, and a pretty good miniature-painter in his day, and who left a fine painting in the church of his own order at como; with francesco boccaccino, the last of that pictoric family, who died about the year . having familiarized himself at rome, first with the school of brandi, and next with that of maratta, he acquired a manner that came into some repute in private collections, for which he employed himself more than for churches. he resembles albano, and was fond of portraying mythological subjects. a few of his altar-pieces still adorn cremona, which may be esteemed good for the period at which they were produced. while the cremonese artists left their native state in search, as we have observed, of more novel methods, a foreigner took up his residence, and not only studied, but taught at cremona. this was luigi miradoro, commonly called il genovesino, from his native city of genoa, whence, after being initiated in the principles of his art, he appears to have gone, while young, to cremona, towards the beginning of the seventeenth century. there he began to study the works of panfilo nuvolone, and afterwards formed a manner partaking of the caracci, though neither so select nor studied, but bold, large, correct in colouring, harmonious, and productive of fine effect. this artist, equally unknown in his native place and in foreign cities, as well as passed over by orlandi and his continuator, is nevertheless held in high repute in lombardy, and particularly in cremona, where his pictures adorn several churches, among which that of his s. gio. damasceno, at s. clemente, has been most highly commended. the merchants' college likewise at piacenza possesses a very beautiful painting of a pietà from his hand. in all subjects he was successful, and remarkably so in those of a terrific cast. in the casa borri at milan there is a piece representing a variety of punishments inflicted upon some accomplices in a conspiracy, a magnificent production of its kind. others are to be met with, though not very frequently, in collections belonging to the above mentioned cities, on one of which i read the date of . agostino bonisoli was pupil to tortiroli, and subsequently, for the space of a year, to miradoro, though he was more indebted to his own genius than to any master, with the aid of studying excellent models, more especially that of paul veronese. from him he borrowed his grace and spirit, his design from other artists. he painted little for churches, and cremona possesses scarcely any other specimen than the dialogue of s. antonio with the tyrant ezzelino, which is preserved at the church of the conventuali. his portraits and history-pieces are to be met with in private houses, for the most part taken from sacred records, and intended for the decoration of rooms. many of these passed into germany and other foreign parts; for, having been in the service of gio. francesco gonzaga, prince of bozolo, in which he remained twenty-eight years, his paintings were frequently presented as gifts, or requested by foreigners of rank. as long as he continued in his native state he maintained an academy for the study of naked figures, in which he gave instructions to youth. two other artists flourished after him in cremona, of whom their biographer observes that they must have drunk at the same fountain, from the great resemblance of their paintings, at least during a certain period, though they differed greatly in point of colouring. one is angelo massarotti, a native of cremona, the other roberto la longe, born at brussels, ranked among those artists who have been denominated fiamminghi, or flemish, in italy, an appellation which has given rise to frequent mistakes in history. angelo was undoubtedly pupil to bonisoli, and though he studied many years with cesi at rome, where he painted at s. salvatore in lauro, he exhibits very little of the roman, except a more regular kind of composition than belongs to the cremonese style. for the rest he was fonder of introducing portraits than ideal forms into his canvass, nor was he sufficiently careful to shun the faults of the naturalists; owing to which, more particularly in his draperies, he sometimes became heavy. he boasts moreover a more rich and oily colouring than was then prevalent at rome, which gives his pictures an appearance of fulness and roundness, while it adds to their preservation. perhaps his masterpiece is to be seen at s. agostino, a vast production, in which the saint is represented giving rules to various religious orders, which form a body militant under his banners, and in such a crowd of figures, the ideas, the attitudes, and the draperies are all well varied. most probably roberto la longe frequented the academy of bonisoli, and occasionally, as we have observed, conformed to the manner of massarotti. but both there and at piacenza, where he long resided and closed his days, he painted in a variety of styles, yet always soft, clear, and harmonious; much as if he had never ventured beyond the confines of flanders. at times he emulates guido, as in some histories of s. teresa, painted for s. sigismondo at cremona; and in some histories of s. antonio martire, at piacenza, he approaches guercino, while at others he displays a mixture of strength, delicacy, and beauty, as in his picture of s. saverio, in the cathedral at piacenza, seen in the act of dying, and supported by angels. his landscapes give singular attraction to his figures, though the latter might be better designed, and more gradation may be desired in his landscape, as well as in other parts of his works. both these last masters had for their pupil gian angiolo borroni, who, being taken under the patronage of the noble house of crivelli, was retained many years at bologna, during the period the creti rose into repute. monti and giangioseffo del sole, to whose style he most attached himself, were then likewise flourishing at the same place. he was particularly employed in ornamenting the palaces of his patrons, who were desirous of having him with them, both at cremona and at milan, and in this last city he spent the best part of his life, dying very infirm in the year . there too he left the chief portion of his works, some of which are upon a very large scale, distributed throughout its temples and palaces, besides others in different cities of the milanese, more especially in his native place. in the cathedral remains his picture of s. benedetto, in the act of offering up prayers for the city, of which he is the patron, to paint which the cav. borroni exerted his utmost degree of industry and art. its success was sufficient indeed to have placed it upon an equality with the best of its age, had the draperies been folded with a degree of skill at all corresponding to the rest of the work; but in this he certainly was not happy. a little subsequent to him began to flourish bottani, an artist who has been mentioned also in the mantuan school; for, though a native of cremona, he resided elsewhere. good artists continue to flourish at cremona to this day, whose merits, however, according to my plan, i leave untouched to the judgment of posterity. professors of minor branches of painting were not wanting in this school, one of whom, named francesco bassi, who had fixed his residence at venice, was there called il cremonese da' paesi. his powers were extremely varied and pleasing, united to great polish, powerful in his shadows, warm in his airs, while he often added to his pieces figures of men and animals in a pretty correct taste. they enrich many collections both in italy and elsewhere, and some, as we find from the catalogue published in venice, were included in algarotti's. we must be cautious to avoid mistaking this painter for another francesco bassi, also a cremonese, who is in that city called the younger. he was a pupil of the former in the art of landscape, and although much inferior to him, is not unknown in different collections. but a still higher rank in the same class is occupied by sigismondo benini, a scholar of massarotti, the inventor of beautiful methods in his landscapes, with well retiring grounds, and with all the accidents of light well portrayed. his composition is polished, distinct, and coloured with equal harmony and vigour, though to continue agreeable he ought not to have transgressed the limits of landscape; for, by the addition of his figures, he diminished the value of his works. about the same period a family, sprung from casalmaggiore in the cremonese, distinguished itself in the line of architectural and ornamental painting. giuseppe natali, the elder, impelled by his natural inclination for this art, entered upon it notwithstanding the opposition of his father, which, being at length overcome, he was permitted to visit rome, and to remain some time at bologna in order to qualify himself. he flourished precisely at the period which the architectural painters are fond of considering as the happiest for their art. it had very recently been improved by dentone, by colonna, by mitelli, and boasted, from its attractive novelty, a number of young geniuses, whom it inspired with the dignity of masters, and with the prospect of rewards, a subject on which i shall treat more particularly in the bolognese school. he formed a style at once praiseworthy for the architectural, and judiciously pleasing for the ornamental parts. he gratifies the eye by presenting it with those views which are the most charming, and gives it repose by distributing them at just distances. in his grotesques he retains much of the antique, shunning all useless exhibition of modern foliages, and varying the painting from time to time, with small landscapes, which he also executed well in little oil pictures, which were in the highest request. the softness and harmony of his tints extorted great commendation. he did not permit his talents to remain idle, ornamenting a number of halls, chambers, chapels, and churches throughout lombardy, often with a rapidity that appears almost incredible. he more particularly distinguished himself at san sigismondo, and in the palace of the marchesi vidoni. he had three brothers who followed in his footsteps, and all of whom he had himself instructed. francesco, the second, approached nearest to giuseppe in point of merit, and even surpassed him in dignity. he was employed in works on a large scale for the churches of lombardy and tuscany, as well as for the courts of the dukes of massa, of modena, and of parma, in which city he closed his days. lorenzo, the third, chiefly assisted his brothers, or if he had the misfortune to execute any works alone, he was rather pitied than applauded. pietro, the fourth brother, died young and uncommemorated. there were two sons, the one of giuseppe, the other of francesco, who were initiated by their parents in the same art. the first, named giambatista, became court-painter to the elector of cologne; and the second, who bore the same name, honourably occupied a similar rank at the court of charles, king of the two sicilies, and in that of his son, a station in which he died. giuseppe educated a pupil of merit in gio. batista zaist, a name to which we have frequently referred. memoirs of him were collected by sig. panni, both his pupil and relation. to him also we are indebted for the publication of the work of zaist, by which we have been guided in this account. it is a guide, however, not to be followed by a reader who is in haste, inasmuch as he is found to proceed very leisurely, and is very apt to go over the same ground again. chapter v. school of milan. epoch i. _account of the ancients until the time of vinci._ if in each of our pictoric schools we have adhered to the plan of tracing back the memorials of more barbarous ages, and thence proceeding to more cultivated periods, milan more especially as the capital of lombardy, and the court of the lombard kings, will afford us an epoch remarkable no less for its lofty character than for the grandeur of its monuments. when italy passed from the dominion of the goths to that of the longobards, the arts, which invariably follow in the train of fortune, transferred their primary seat from ravenna to milan, to monza, and to pavia. each of these places still retains traces of the sort of design now entitled, both on account of the place and the time, longobardic, much in the same manner as in the diplomatic science we distinguish by the same name certain characters peculiar to that age, or rather to those ages, for after the longobards were driven from italy, the same taste in writing and sculpture continued to flourish during a great part of them. this style, as exhibited in works, both of metal and of marble, is coarse and hard beyond the example of any preceding age, and is seen most frequently and to most advantage in the representation of monsters, birds, and quadrupeds rather than of human figures. at the cathedral, at s. michele, and at s. giovanni in pavia, appear some friezes over the gates, consisting of animals chained in a variety of ways to one another, sometimes in natural positions, and sometimes with the head turned behind. in the interior of the same churches, as well as in some others, we meet also with capitals, presenting similar figures, not unfrequently united to historical representations of men, differing so much from the human figure as to appear belonging to another species. the same kind of abuse of the art was practised in places under the sway of the longobard dukes, one of which was the friuli, which still preserves a number of these barbarous efforts. in cividale there is a marble altar, first begun by duke pemmone, and completed by his son ratchi, who lived during the eighth century. the bassi-relievi consist of christ seated between different angels, his epiphany, and the visitation of the blessed virgin.[ ] art would appear scarcely capable of producing any thing more rude than these figures, yet whoever will be at the pains of examining the frieze on a gate at the same place, or the capitals of the pillars of s. celso at milan,[ ] works of the tenth century, will admit that it was susceptible of still greater corruption when it added absurdity to its coarseness, and produced distorted and dwarfish figures, all hands and all heads, with legs and feet incapable of supporting them. there are an infinite number of similar marbles, and of like design, at verona and other places. to these, nevertheless, are opposed other monuments which will not permit us to admit, as a general rule, that every trace of good taste was then extinct in italy. i might easily adduce instances, drawn from different arts, and in particular from that of working in gold, which, during the tenth century, boasted its volvino, who produced the very celebrated altar-piece at s. ambrogio in milan, a work which may be pronounced equal in point of style to the finest specimens of the dittici, or small ivory altar-pieces, that the museums of sacred art can boast. footnote : the inscription is annexed to it, and may be found in bertoli, _antichità di aquileia_, num. . footnote : see the dottore gaetano bugati, in his historical and critical account of the relics and the worship of san celso the martyr, p. ; and the p. m. allegranza, explanations and reflections relating to some sacred monuments at milan, p. . confining myself, however, to the subject before me, we know that tiraboschi remarked in the palace of monza, some of the most ancient pictures belonging to those ages, while other similar reliques are pointed out at s. michele in pavia, although placed in too elevated a situation to permit us to form an exact judgment of them. others yet more extensive exist in galliano, of which a description is given in the _opuscoli_ of p. allegranza, (p. ). upon this point i may observe, that the treatise upon painting already mentioned, was discovered in a manuscript in the university of cambridge to have had this title:--_theophilus monachus_ (elsewhere _qui et rugerius_), _de omni scientiâ artis pingendi. incipit tractatus lumbardicus qualiter temperantur colores, &c._ this is a convincing proof, that if painting could then boast an asylum in italy, it must have been more particularly in lombardy. and in the church of s. ambrogio, just mentioned, proofs of this are not wanting. over the confessional is seen a ceiling in _terra cotta_, with figures in basso-relievo, tolerably designed and coloured, resembling the composition of the best mosaic-workers in ravenna and in rome, supposed to be the work of the tenth century, or thereabouts. the figures of the sleeping saints are also seen near the gate, which must have been painted about the same time, and were at one time covered with lime, though they have since been brought to light and very carefully preserved by the learned ecclesiastics who are entrusted with the care of the temple. the portico has also a figure of the redeemer, with a holy man worshipping at his feet, wholly in the greek manner; besides a crucifixion, which, to judge from the characters, might more suitably be ascribed to the thirteenth century than to the next. i omit the mention of several figures of the crucified saviour and of the virgin, interspersed through the city and the state; contenting myself with referring to those of our lady placed at s. satiro and at gravedona, which are of very ancient date. from the period of these first efforts, i am of opinion that the art of painting continued to flourish throughout the state and city of milan, though we are not fortunate enough to retain sufficient memorials of it to compile a full historical account. for little mention has been made by our oldest writers concerning the artists, except incidentally, as by vasari in his lives of bramante, of vinci, and of carpi, and by lomazzo, in his treatise, and in his temple, or theatre[ ] of painting. as little likewise has been said by several of the more modern writers, nor that always with good authority, such as torre, latuada, santagostini, whose narratives were collected by orlandi, and inserted in his dictionary. some supplementary information has been supplied by _notices of the paintings of italy_ as to a variety of artists, and their exact age; and by the new guide to milan, truly new and unique until this period in italy, and reflecting the highest credit upon the ab. bianconi, who not only points out every thing most rare in the city, but teaches us, by sound rules, how best to distinguish excellence from mediocrity and inferiority in the art. to this we may add the name of the consiglier de' pagave, who published very interesting notices relating to this school, in the third, fifth, and eighth volumes of the new sienese edition of vasari. i am also enabled to furnish considerable information in addition, politely transmitted to me in manuscript by the last writer, for the present work. from these i am happy to announce we may become acquainted with the names of new masters, along with much chronological information of a sounder kind, relating to those already known, frequently derived from the _necrologio_ of milan, which had been carefully preserved by one of the public functionaries of that city. footnote : he borrowed the idea of this work from the theatre of giulio camillo, with whom he compares his own treatise in chap. ix. hence, as in the case of some books which have two titles, i judge it best to call it by this name (theatre) also, as others have done. by aid of these, and other materials i have to bring forward, i prepare to treat of the milanese school from as early a date as , when giotto was employed in ornamenting various places in the city, which, down to the time of vasari, continued to be esteemed as most beautiful specimens of the art. not long subsequent to giotto, an artist named stefano fiorentino was invited thither by matteo visconti, and is celebrated as one of the most accomplished pupils of the former. but he was compelled by indisposition to abandon the work he had undertaken in that city; nor do we know that at that period he had any successor in the giotto manner. about the year , gio. da milano, pupil to taddeo gaddi, arrived there, so able an artist that his master, at his death, entrusted to him the care of his son angiolo, and another son, whom he was to instruct in a knowledge of the art. it is therefore evident that the florentine early exercised an influence over the milanese school. we are informed at the same time of two native artists, who, according to lomazzo, flourished at the period of petrarch and of giotto. these are laodicia di pavia, called by guarienti, _pittrice_, and andrino di edesia, also said to belong to pavia, although both his name and that of laodicia lead us to conjecture that they must have been of greek origin. to edesia and his school have been attributed some frescos which yet remain at s. martino and other places in pavia.[ ] i cannot speak positively of the authors; their taste is tolerably good, and the colouring partakes of that of the florentines of the age. michel de roncho, a milanese, is another artist discovered by count tassi, at the same time that he gives some account of the two nova who flourished at bergamo. michele is said to have assisted in their labours in the cathedral of that city, from the year to , and remnants of these paintings survive, which shew that they approached nearer the composition of giotto than the artists of pavia. there are some pictures in domodossola that also bring us acquainted with an able artist of nova. they are preserved in castello sylva and elsewhere, and bear the following memorandum--_ego petrus filius petri pictoris de novariâ hoc opus pinxi_, . without, however, going farther than milan, we there find in the sacristy of the conventuali, as well as in different cloisters, paintings produced in the fourteenth century, without any indication of their authors, and most frequently resembling the florentine manner, though occasionally displaying a new and original style, not common to any other school of italy. footnote : see notizie delle pitture, sculture, ed architetture d'italia, by sig. bertoli, p. , &c. among these anonymous productions in the ancient style, the most remarkable is what remains in the sacristy of le grazie, where every panel presents us with some act from the old or the new testament. the author would appear to have lived during the latter part of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth centuries; nor is it easy to meet with any other italian production, conducted during that age by a single artist, so abundantly supplied with figures. the style is dry, but the colouring, where it has escaped the power of the sun, is so warm, so well laid on, so boldly relieved from its grounds, that it yields in nothing to the best venetian or florentine pieces of the time, insomuch that whoever be the artist he is fully entitled to all the praise of originality. another lombard artist, formerly believed to be a venetian, is better known. his name has been incorrectly given by vasari, in his life of carpaccio, and in that of gian bellini, as well as by orlandi and by guarienti, in three articles inserted in the dictionary of art. in one article, following vasari, he is called by orlandi, girolamo mazzoni, or morzoni, and in the two others he is named giacomo marzone, and girolamo morzone, by guarienti, a writer happier perhaps in adding to the errors and prejudices entertained about the old painters, than in correcting them. his real name is to be found upon an altar-piece which is still preserved at venice, or in its island of s. elena, a piece representing the assumption of the virgin, with the titular saint, s. gio. batista, s. benedetto, and a holy martyr, along with the following inscription--_giacomo morazone à laurà questo lauorier. an. dni._ mccccxxxxi. the excellent critic zanetti is persuaded, from its lombard dialect, as well as from the fact of the artist having painted a good deal in different cities of lombardy, as related by vasari, that he does not belong to the venetian, but to the lombard school, and the more so as he took his name from morazzone, a place in lombardy. it is true, that granting this, there is no great sacrifice made, inasmuch as this giacomo, who, when in venice, was the competitor of jacobello del fiore, displayed little merit, at least in this picture, which cannot boast even a foot placed upon the ground according to the rules of perspective, nor any other merit that raises it much above the character of the thirteenth century. michelino was an artist who also retained the ancient style, and continued to the last the practice of making his figures large and his buildings small, a practice blamed by lomazzo even in the oldest painters. he assigns to him a rank, however, among the best of his age on account of his designs of animals of every kind, which he painted, says lomazzo, wonderfully well, and of the human figure, which he executed with effect, rather in burlesque than in serious subjects; and in this style was esteemed the model of his school. he would appear likewise to have been esteemed by foreigners, as we find in the notizia morelli, that in the house of the vendramini at venice there was preserved "a small book in to. bound in kid-skin, with figures of animals coloured" by this artist. at a little interval, according to pagave, we are to place the period of agostino di bramantino, an artist unknown to bottari, as well as to more recent investigators of pictorial history. i apprehend that an error committed by vasari gave rise to an additional one in the mind of pagave, a very accurate writer. vasari, remarking that in a chamber of the vatican, which was subsequently painted by raffaello, the previous labours of pier della francesca, of bramantino, of signorelli, and of the ab. di s. clemente, were destroyed to accommodate the former, supposes that the two first of the artists, thus sacrificed, conducted them contemporaneously under nicholas v. about . induced by the esteem he had for the same bramantino, he collected notices also of his other works, and discovered him to be the author of the dead christ foreshortened, of the family which deceived the horse at milan, and of several perspectives; the whole of which account is founded in error, when attributed to a bramantino, who flourished about , yet the whole is true when we suppose them to have been the work of one bramantino, pupil to bramante, who lived in the year . i cannot perceive, however, in what way the consiglier pagave could have detected vasari's mistake in the milanese works; whilst in those of the vatican, which, according to vasari himself, all belong to the same individual, he has taken occasion to repeat it. he had better have asserted that the historian had erred in point of chronology, in supposing that bramantino painted under the pontificate of nicholas v. than have ventured on the hypothesis of the existence of an ancient bramantino, called agostino, by whom a very beautiful work was to be seen in the papal palace, and no other specimen at rome, at milan, or elsewhere. i disclaim all belief then in this old artist until more authentic proofs are brought forward of his existence, and i shall be enabled to throw new light upon the subject before i conclude the present epoch. in the time of the celebrated francesco sforza, and of the cardinal ascanio his brother, both desirous no less of enriching the city with fine buildings than these last with the most beautiful decorations; there sprung up a number of architects and statuaries, and, what is more to our purpose, of very able painters for the age. their reputation spread through italy, and induced bramante to visit milan, a young artist who possessed the noblest genius, both for architecture and painting, and who, after acquiring a name in milan, taught the arts to italy and to the world. the former had made little progress in point of colouring, which, though strong, was somewhat heavy and sombre, nor in regard to their drapery, which is disposed in straight, hard folds, until the time of bramante, while they are also cold in their features and attitudes. they had improved the art, however, in regard to perspective, no less in execution than in writing on the subject; a circumstance that led lomazzo to observe, that as design was the peculiar excellence of the romans, and colouring of the venetians, so perspective seemed to be the chief boast of the lombards. it will be useful to report his own words, from his treatise upon painting, p. . "in this art of correctly viewing objects, the great inventors were gio. da valle, costantino vaprio, foppa, civerchio, ambrogio and filippo bevilacqui, and carlo, all of them belonging to milan. add to these fazio bembo da valdarno, and cristoforo moretto of cremona, pietro francesco of pavia, and albertino da lodi;[ ] who, besides the works they produced at other places, painted for the corte maggiore at milan, those figures of the armed barons, in the time of francesco sforza, first duke of milan:" that is to say, between the period of and . footnote : note that lomazzo would not have passed over the name of agostino di bramantino, were it true that he had flourished as early as , and employed himself at rome, an honour to which the rest of these milanese did not attain. in treating of these artists, i shall observe nothing further in reference to the last four, having described those of cremona in their own place, and not being aware that any thing more than the name of the other two survives at milan; i say at milan, because pier francesco of pavia, whose surname was sacchi, left, as we shall find, some fine specimens at genoa, where he resided during some time. it is doubtful whether any altar-piece remains by the first of these, (gio. della valle,) it being impossible to ascertain the fact. nor do i know of any genuine work belonging to costantino vaprio, though there is a madonna painted by another vaprio, surrounded by saints in different compartments, at the serviti, in pavia, with this inscription:--_augustinus de vaprio pinxit _: a production of some merit. vincenzio foppa, said by ridolfi to have flourished about the year , is esteemed almost the founder of the milanese school, in which he distinguished himself during the sovereignty of filippo visconti, and that of francesco sforza. i alluded to his name in the venetian school, to which he is referable from his being of brescia, whatever lomazzo may on the other hand contend. it is my wish to avoid all questions of nationality, and the compendious method of my work will be a sufficient apology in this respect, more particularly as far as relates to the names of less celebrated artists. but with the head of a school, such as foppa, i cannot consider it a loss of time to investigate his real country, in particular as the elucidation of many confused and doubtful points in the history of the art is found to depend upon this. in vasari's life of scarpaccia we find it mentioned, that about the middle of the century "vincenzio, a brescian painter, was held in high repute, as it is recounted by filarete." and in the life of this excellent architect, as well as in that of michelozzo, he says, that in some of their buildings, erected under duke francesco, vincenzo di zoppa (read foppa), a lombard artist, painted the interior, "as no better master was to be met with in the surrounding states." now that there was a vincenzo, a brescian artist, who then and subsequently flourished, and who ranked among the best artists, is proved by ambrogio calepino, in his ancient edition of , at the word _pingo_. there, after having applauded mantegna beyond all other artists of his age, he adds:--_huic accedunt jo. bellinus venetus, leonardus florentinus, et vincentius brixianus, excellentissimo ingenio homines, ut qui cum omni antiquitate de picturâ possint contendere._ after so high a testimony to his merits, written, if i mistake not, while foppa was still living, though edited after his decease, (as we noticed from the eulogy written by boschini on ridolfi, in its proper place); let us next attend to that found on his monument in the first cloister of s. barnaba at brescia, which runs as follows:--_excellentiss. ac. eximii. pictoris. vincentii. de. foppis. ci. br. ._ (zamb. p. .) to these testimonials i may add that from the hand of the author, which i discovered in the carrara gallery at bergamo, where, on a small ancient picture, conducted with much care, and a singular study of foreshortening, extremely rare for the period, representing christ crucified between the two thieves, is written:--_vincentius brixiensis fecit, ._--what proof more manifest can be required for the identity of one and the same painter, recorded by various authors with so much contradiction with regard to name, country, and age? it must therefore be admitted, after a comparison of the passages adduced, that there is only a single brescian artist in question, that he is not to be referred to so remote a period as reported, and that he could not have painted in the year of the vulgar era, inasmuch as he very nearly reaches the beginning of the sixteenth century. we may for the same reasons dismiss from history those specious accounts interspersed by lomazzo, asserting that foppa drew the proportions of his figures from lysippus; that bramante acquired the art of perspective from his writings, out of which he composed a treatise of essential utility to raffaello, to polidoro, and to gaudenzio; and that albert durer and daniel barbaro availed themselves, by plagiarism, of foppa's inventions. such assertions, already in a great measure refuted by the learned consiglier pagave in his notes to vasari,[ ] first took their rise in supposing that the age of foppa was anterior to piero della francesca, from whom perspective in italy may truly be said to have dated its improvement. next to him foppa was one of the first who cultivated the same art, as clearly appears from the little picture already mentioned at bergamo. in milan there are some of his works remaining at the hospital, executed upon canvass, and a martyrdom of s. sebastiano, at brera, in fresco, which, for design of the naked figure, for the natural air of the heads, for its draperies and for its tints, is very commendable, though greatly inferior in point of attitude and expression. i have frequently doubted whether there were two vincenzi of brescia, since lomazzo, besides vincenzo foppa, whom, against the received opinion, he makes a native of milan, marks down in his index a vincenzio bresciano, of whom i am not aware that he makes the slightest mention throughout the whole of his work. i am led to suspect, that meeting with some works bearing the signature of _vincenzio bresciano_, without the surname of foppa, beyond the limits of milan, the historian, fixed in his persuasion that foppa must be a native of milan, set down two artists of the name instead of a single one, and that this, moreover, was perhaps an old prejudice, prevailing in the milanese school, and which lomazzo was unable to dismiss. national errors and prejudices are always the last to be renounced. in the notizia morelli, a vincenzo bressano the elder is twice mentioned, an adjunct, which, if not a surname, as it was in the instance of minzocchi, may have arisen from some false report connected with the two vincenzi bresciani. indeed we have repeatedly observed that the names of artists have been very frequently drawn, not from authentic writings, but from common report, which generally presents us with a worse account of what has been ill heard or understood. footnote : vasari, vol. iii. p. . vincenzo civerchio, denominated by vasari verchio, to which lomazzo, who asserts him to have been a milanese, added the surname of il vecchio, is an artist whom we have recorded in the venetian school, to which he is referred as a native of crema, though he resided at milan and educated several excellent pupils for that school, and with the exception of vinci is the best entitled of any master to its gratitude. vasari, when he praises his works in fresco, considers him in no way inferior to foppa. in his figures he was extremely studied, and admirable in his method of grouping them in the distance, so as to throw the low grounds back, and bring down the higher parts with a gentle gradation. of this he affords a model at s. eustorgio in some histories of s. peter martyr, painted for a chapel of that name, which are highly commended by lomazzo, though they have since been covered with plaister, there remaining only from the hand of civerchio the summits of the cupola, which we trust will enjoy a longer date.[ ] ambrogio bevilacqua is an artist known by a production at s. stefano, representing s. ambrogio with saints gervasio and protasio standing at his side. other paintings procured for him the reputation of a fine drawer of perspective, though in the specimen here mentioned he has undoubtedly not adhered to its rules. the design, however, is such as approaches, with some slight traces of dryness, to a good style. memorials of this artist are found as early as ; but of his brother filippo, his assistant, and of carlo, a native of milan, mentioned by lomazzo in the same work, i am able to find no account. there are two, however, who are referred by our already highly commended correspondent to this more remote epoch. these are gio. de' ponzoni, who left a picture of s. cristoforo in a church near the city, called samaritana, and a francesco crivelli, who is reported to have been the first who painted portraits in the city of milan. footnote : the epochs relating to this artist appear difficult, and almost irreconcileable. from lomazzo's account he was a painter as early as , and according to ronna, in his _zibaldone cremasco_, for the year , p. , there are existing documents which prove that he was still living in . if we give credit to these, civerchio must have flourished to an extreme age, so as to be ranked in this point with titian, with calvi, and the other hoary-headed octogenarians of the art. of those who here follow, a part formed the body of painters under the government of lodovico the moor, during whose time vinci resided at milan, and others were gradually making progress during the following years, though not any wholly succeeded in freeing themselves from the old style. the first on the list are the two bernardi, as frequently also called bernardini, natives of trevilio in the milanese, the one of the family butinoni, the other of that of zenale, both pupils of civerchio, and his rivals both in painting and in writing. trevilio is a territory in the milanese, at that period included in that of bergamo, and for this reason comprehended by count tassi in its school. it is also a considerable distance from trevigi, where he took advantage of the resemblance of the name to announce one bernardino da trevigi, a painter and architect, who never existed. vasari mentions a bernardino da trevio (he meant to say trevilio) who, in the time of bramante, was an engineer at milan, "a very able designer, and esteemed an excellent master by vinci, though his manner was somewhat harsh and dry in his pictures;" and he then cites among his other works a picture of the resurrection at the cloister of the grazie, which presents some beautiful foreshortenings. it is surprising how bottari should have changed trevio into trevigi, and how orlandi should have understood vasari as writing of butinone, when, guided by lomazzo, at page , and in other parts of the treatise, it was easy to conjecture that he was there speaking of zenale of trevilio. he was a distinguished character, in the confidence of vinci,[ ] and in the treatise upon painting compared with mantegna, besides being continually referred to as an example in the art of perspective, on which, when old, in , he composed a work, and put down a variety of observations. there, too, among others, he treated the question so long contested in those days, whether the objects represented small and in the distance ought to be less distinct in order to imitate nature, than those that are larger and more near, a question which he explained in the negative, contending rather that distant objects should be as highly finished and well proportioned as those more fully before the eye. this, then, is the bernardino, so much commended by vasari, whose opinion of this artist may be verified by viewing the resurrection at le grazie, and a nunziata at san sempliciano, presenting a very fine piece of architecture, calculated to deceive the eye. this, however, is the best portion of the painting, as the figures are insignificant, both in themselves and in their drapery. in respect to butenone, his contemporary, and companion also when he painted at san pietro in gessato, we may conclude that he displayed an excellent knowledge of perspective, since it is affirmed by lomazzo. for the rest, his works, with the exception of a few pictures for rooms, better designed than coloured, have all perished. there is a madonna represented between some saints, which i saw in possession of the consiglier pagave, at whose suggestion i add to the pupils of civerchio, a bartolommeo di cassino of milan, and luigi de' donati of como, of whom authentic altar-pieces remain. footnote : lomazzo, in his treatise, (book i. chap, ix.), relates that vinci in his supper had endued the countenance of both the saints giacomo with so much beauty, that despairing to make that of the saviour more imposing, he went to advise with bernardo zenale, who to console him said, "leave the face of christ unfinished as it is, as you will never be able to make it worthy of christ among those apostles," and this leonardo did. at the period when these artists were in repute, bramante came to milan. his real name, as reported to us by cesariani his disciple and the commentator on vitruvius, was donato, and he was, as is supposed, of the family of lazzari, though this has been strongly contested in the antichità picene, vol. x. there it is shewn, at some length, that his real country was not castel durante, now urbania, as so many writers assert, but a town of castel fermignano. both places are in the state of urbino, whence he used formerly to be called bramante di urbino. there he studied the works of fra carnevale, though vasari gives no further information respecting his education. he continues to relate that on leaving his native place he wandered through several cities in lombardy, executing, to the best of his ability, small works, until his arrival at milan, where, becoming acquainted with the conductors of the cathedral, and among these with bernardo, he resolved to devote himself wholly to architecture, which he did. before the year he went to rome, where he entered the service of alexander vi. and julius ii., and died there in his seventieth year, in . we may here conjecture that the historian gave himself very little anxiety about investigating the memoirs of this great man. sig. pagave has proved to be a far more accurate inquirer into the truth. animated by his love of this quality, the soul of all history, he at once renounced the honour his country would have derived from having instructed a bramante; nor yet has he referred to him as a pupil to carnevale, or to piero della francesca, or to mantegna, like some writers cited by signor colucci. he has properly noticed his arrival at milan, already as a master, in , after having erected both palaces and temples in the state of romagna. from this period, until the fall of lodovico, that is until , he remained at milan, where he executed commissions, with large salaries for the court, and was employed as well by private persons in works of architecture, and sometimes of painting. cellini in his second treatise denies bramante the fame of an excellent painter, placing him in the middling class, and at this period he is known by few in lower italy, where he is never named in collections, though he is very generally met with in the milanese. cesariano and lomazzo had already asserted the same thing, the latter having frequently praised him in his work when giving an account of his pictures both sacred and profane, in distemper and in fresco, as well as of his portraits. his general manner, he observes, much resembles that of andrea mantegna. like him he had employed himself in copying from casts, which led him to throw his lights with too much force on his fleshes. in the same manner also as mantegna he covered his models with glued canvass, or with pasteboard, in order that in the curves and folds he might correct the ancients. and like him he employed for painting in distemper, a kind of viscous water, an instance of which is adduced by lomazzo, who repaired one of the specimens. most of bramante's pictures in fresco, mentioned by lomazzo and by scaramuccia as adorning the public places in milan, are now destroyed or defaced, if we except those that are preserved in the chambers of the palazzi borri and castiglioni, which are pretty numerous. there is also a chapel in the certosa at pavia, said to have been painted by him. his proportions are square, and sometimes have an air of coarseness, his countenances are full, the heads of his old men grand, his colouring is very lively and well relieved from the ground, though not free from some degree of crudity. this character i have remarked in one of his altar-pieces, with various saints, and with fine perspective, in possession of the cav. melzi, and the same in a picture at the incoronata in lodi, a very beautiful temple erected by gio. bataggio, a native of the place, from the design of bramante. his masterpiece, which is to be seen at milan, is a s. sebastiano, in that saint's church, where scarcely a trace of the style of the fourteenth century is perceptible. the notizia morelli points out his picture of a pietà, at s. pancrazio, in bergamo, which pasta had mistaken for one of lotto, and mentions also his picture of the philosophers, painted by bramante in , belonging to the same city. he educated two pupils in milan, whose names have survived. one of these is nolfo da monza, who is said to have painted from the designs furnished by bramante, at s. satiro and other places; an artist who, if not equal to the first painters, was nevertheless, it is remarked by scanelli, of a superior character. in the sacristy also of s. satiro, placed near the beautiful little temple of bramante, are a number of old pictures, most probably from the hand of nolfo. the other artist is bramantino, supposed by orlandi to have been the preceptor of bramante, by others confounded with him, and finally discovered to have been his favourite disciple, from which circumstance he obtained his surname. his real name was bartolommeo suardi, an architect, and, what is more to my purpose, a painter of singular merit. in deceiving the eye of animals, he equalled the ancients, as we are acquainted by lomazzo in the opening of his third book. during a period he followed his master; but on occasion of visiting rome he improved his style, though not so much in regard to his figures and proportions, as in his colouring and his folds, which he made more wide and spacious. he was doubtless invited or conducted to rome by bramante, and there, under pope julius ii., painted those portraits so highly praised by vasari, and which, when about to be removed, to give place to raffaello's, were first copied at the request of jovius, who wished to insert them in his museum. it is certain that the vatican paintings by bramantino do not belong to the time of nicholas v. as we have shewn. he returned from rome to milan, as we are informed by lomazzo; and to this more favourable period we may refer his production of s. ambrogio, and that of s. michele, with a figure of the virgin, coloured in the venetian style, and recorded in the select melzi gallery, and to be mentioned hereafter. there are also some altar-pieces both designed and coloured by him, in the church of s. francesco, which display more elevation and dignity than belonged to his age. but his chief excellence was in perspective, and his rules have been inserted by lomazzo in his work, out of respect to this distinguished artist. he likewise holds him up as a model, in his picture of the dead christ between the maries, painted for the gate of s. sepolcro, a work which produces a fine illusion; the legs of the redeemer, in whatever point they are viewed, appearing with equal advantage to the eye. other artists i am aware have produced the same effect: but it is a just, though a trite saying, that an inventor is worth more than all his imitators. the cistercian fathers have a grand perspective in their monastery, representing the descent of christ into purgatory, from his hand. it consists of few figures, little choice in the countenances, but their colouring is both powerful and natural; they are well placed, and well preserved in their distance, disposed in beautiful groups, with a pleasing retrocession of the pilasters, which serve to mark the place, united to a harmony that attracts the eye. he had a pupil named agostin da milano, well skilled in foreshortening, and who painted at the carmine a piece that lomazzo proposes, along with the cupola of coreggio at the cathedral of parma, as a model of excellence in its kind. his name is made very clear in the index of lomazzo, as follows:--_agostino di bramantino of milan, a painter and disciple of the same bramantino._ i cannot imagine how such a circumstance escaped the notice of sig. pagave, and how he was led to present us with that more ancient agostino bramantino, (so called from his family name, not from that of his master) whose existence we have shewn to have been ideal, wholly arising out of a mistake of vasari. the one here mentioned was real, though his name is so little known at milan, as to lead us to suppose he must have passed much of his time in foreign parts. and we are even authorized to conjecture that he may be the same _agostino delle prospettive_ whom we meet with in bologna, in . all the circumstances are so strong, that in a matter of justice, they would have proved sufficient to establish his identity; his name of agostino, his age, suitable to the preceptorship of suardi, his excellence in the art, which procured for him his surname, and the silence of malvasia, who could not be ignorant of him, but who, because he was drawing up a history of the bolognese school only, omitted to mention him. there were other artists about , who, as it is said, following foppa, painted in the style which we now call antico moderno. ambrogio borgognone represented at s. simpliciano the histories of s. sisinio and some accompanying martyrs, which adorn one of the cloisters. the thinness of the legs, and some other remains of his early education, are not so displeasing in this work, as we find its accurate study, and the natural manner in which it is conducted, calculated to please. the beauty of his youthful heads, variety of countenance, simplicity of drapery, and the customs of those times, faithfully portrayed in the ecclesiastical paraphernalia, and mode of living, together with a certain uncommon grace of expression, not met with in this or any other school, are sufficient to attract attention. gio. donato montorfano painted a crucifixion, abounding with figures for the refectory of le grazie, where it is unfortunately thrown into the shade by the grand supper of vinci. he cannot compete with a rival to whom many of the greatest masters are compelled to yield the palm. he excels only in his colouring, which has preserved his work fresh and entire, while that of vinci shewed signs of decay in a few years. what is original in montorfano is a peculiar clearness in his features, as well as in his attitudes, and which, if united to a little more elegance, would have left him but few equals in his line. he represents a group of soldiers seen playing, and in every countenance is depicted attention, and the desire of conquest. he has also some heads of a delicate air, extremely beautiful, though the distance in regard to their position is not well preserved. the architecture introduced, of the gates and edifices of jerusalem, is both correct and magnificent, presenting those gradual retrocessions in perspective upon which this school at the time so much prided itself. he retained the habit which continued till the time of gaudenzio at milan, though long before reformed in other places, of mixing with his pictures some plastic work in composition, and thus giving in relief glories of saints, and ornaments of men and horses. ambrogio da fossano, a place in the piedmontese,[ ] was an artist, who, at the grand certosa in pavia, designed the superb façade of the church, being an architect as well as a painter. in the temple before mentioned there is an altar-piece, which is ascribed either to him or his brother, not very highly finished, but in a taste not very dissimilar from that of mantegna. andrea milanese, who has been confounded by one of vasari's annotators with andrea salai, extorted the admiration of zanetti, by an altar-piece he produced at murano, executed in , and it would appear that he studied in venice. i cannot agree with bottari that he is the same as andrea del gobbo, mentioned by vasari in his life of coreggio, since this last was a disciple of gaudenzio.[ ] about the same time flourished stefano scotto, the master of gaudenzio ferrari, much commended by lomazzo for his art in arabesques, and of his family is perhaps a felice scotto, who painted a good deal at como for private individuals, and left a number of pictures in fresco at s. croce, relating to the life of s. bernardino. his genius is varied and expressive, he displays judgment in composition, and is one of the best artists of the fourteenth century known in these parts. he was probably a pupil of some other school, his design being more elegant, and his colouring more clear and open than those of the milanese. we might easily amplify the present list with other names, furnished by morigia in his work on the milanese nobility, where we find mentioned with praise nicolao piccinino, girolamo chiocca, carlo valli, or di valle, brother to giovanni, all of them milanese, besides vincenzo moietta, a native of caravaggio, who flourished in milan about , or something earlier, along with the foregoing. about the same period the study of miniature was greatly promoted by the two ferranti, agosto the son, and decio the father, three works by whom are to be seen in the cathedral at vigevano, consisting of a missal, a book of the evangelists, and one of the epistles illuminated with miniatures in the most exact taste. footnote : a number of places which are now included in the piedmontese, formerly belonged to the state of milan, as we have already observed. the city of vercelli was united to the house of savoy in , and was subsequently subject to a variety of changes. many of its more ancient painters are referred to the milanese as their scholars; but they may be enumerated among the piedmontese as citizens. this remark will apply to many different passages, both in this and in the fifth volume. footnote : lomazzo, trattato, c. . other professors then flourished throughout the state, of whom either some account remains in books, or some works with the signature of their names. at that period the milanese was much more extensive than it has been since the cession of so large a portion to the house of savoy. the artists belonging to the ceded portion will be considered by me in this school, to which they appertain, being educated in it, and instructing other pupils in it, in their turn. hence besides those of pavia, of como, and others of the modern state, we shall in this chapter give some account of the novarese and vercellese artists (of whom i shall also give the information found in the prefaces to the tenth and eleventh volumes of vasari, edited at siena by p. della valle), with others who flourished in the old state. pavia boasted a bartolommeo bononi, by whom there is an altar-piece bearing the date of , at san francesco, and also one bernardin colombano who produced another specimen at the carmine in . in other churches i likewise met with some specimens by an unknown hand, (but perhaps by gio. di pavia, inserted by malvasia in his catalogue of the pupils of lorenzo costa,) partaking a good deal of the bolognese style of that age. at the same period flourished andrea passeri of como, for whose cathedral he painted the virgin among different apostles, in which the heads and the whole composition have some resemblance to the modern. but there is a dryness in the hands, with use of gilding unworthy of the age, ( ) in which his picture was painted. a marco marconi of como, who flourished about , displayed much of the giorgione manner, and was probably a pupil of the venetians. troso da monza was employed a good deal at milan, and painted some pieces at s. giovanni in his native place. several histories of the queen teodelina, adorning the same church, executed in various compartments in , are now also ascribed to him. it is not very easy to follow his inventions, somewhat confused and new in regard to the drapery and the longobardish customs which he has there exhibited. there are some good heads, and colouring by no means despicable; for the rest, it is a mediocre production, and perhaps executed early in life. he is an artist much praised by lomazzo for his other works which he left at the palazzo landi. they consist of roman histories, a production, says lomazzo, (p. ) _quite surprising for the figures as well as the architecture and the perspective, which is stupendous_. father resta, cited by morelli, who saw it in , says that it almost astounded him by its surpassing excellence, beauty, and sweetness. (lett. pittor. tom. iii. p. .) in the new state of piedmont is situated novara, where, in the archives of the cathedral, gio. antonio merli painted in green earth pietro lombardo, with three other distinguished natives of novara; an excellent portrait-painter for his age. in vercelli, adjoining it, there flourished about boniforte, ercole oldoni, and f. pietro di vercelli, of which last there is an ancient altar-piece preserved at s. marco. giovenone afterwards appeared, who is esteemed in that city as the first instructor of gaudenzio, although lomazzo is silent upon it. if he was not, he was worthy of the charge. the augustin fathers possess a christ risen from the dead, between saints margaret and cecilia, with two angels, a picture of a noble character, in the taste of bramantino and the best milanese artists, and conducted with great knowledge of the naked figure and of perspective. school of milan. epoch ii. _leonardo da vinci establishes an academy of design at milan. his pupils and the best native artists down to the time of gaudenzio._ in treating of the florentine school we took occasion to enter into a brief examination of the pictoric education of vinci, of his peculiar style, and of his residence in different cities, among which was mentioned milan, and the academy which he there instituted. he arrived in that city, according to the testimony of vasari, in the year , the first of the reign of prince lodovico il moro; or rather he resided there, if not altogether, at least for the execution of commissions, from , as it has been recently supposed,[ ] and left it after its capture by the french in . the years spent by lionardo at milan were, perhaps, the happiest of his life, and certainly productive of the most utility to the art of any in the whole period of his career. the duke had deputed him to superintend an academy of design, which, if i mistake not, was the first in italy, which gave the law to the leading ones in other parts. it continued to flourish after the departure of vinci, was much frequented, and formed excellent pupils, maintaining in the place of its first director, his precepts, his writings, and his models. no very distinct accounts indeed of his method have survived; but we are certain that he formed it on scientific principles, deduced from philosophical reasoning, with which vinci was familiar in every branch. his treatise upon painting is esteemed, however imperfect, as a kind of second canon of polycletes, and explains the manner in which lionardo taught.[ ] we may also gather some knowledge of it from his other numerous and various writings, which, having been left to the care of melzi, and in the course of time distributed, now form the ornament of different cabinets. fourteen volumes of these presented to the public, are in the ambrosian collection, and many of them are calculated to smooth the difficulties of the art to young beginners. it is further known that the author, having entered into a familiar friendship with marcantonio della torre, lecturer of pavia, united with him in illustrating the science of anatomy, then little known in italy, and that he represented with the utmost exactness, in addition to the human figure, that of the horse, in a knowledge of which he was esteemed quite unrivalled. the benefit he conferred upon the art by the study of optics is also well known, and no one was better acquainted with the nature of aërial perspective,[ ] which became a distinctive and hereditary characteristic of his school. he was extremely well versed in the science of music, and in playing upon the lyre, and equally so in poetry and history. here his example was followed by luini and others; and to him likewise it was owing that the milanese school became one of the most accurate and observing in regard to antiquity and to costume. mengs has noticed before me that no artist could surpass vinci in the grand effect of his chiaroscuro. he instructed his pupils to make as cautious an use of light as of a gem, not lavishing it too freely, but reserving it always for the best place. and hence we find in his, and in the best of his disciples' paintings, that fine relief, owing to which the pictures, and in particular the countenances, seem as if starting from the canvass. footnote : amoretti, memorie storiche di leonardo da vinci, p. . footnote : this work was reprinted at florence, together with the figures, , an edition taken from a copy in the hand of stefano della bella, belonging to the riccardi library. it was published by the learned librarian, the ab. fontani, with the eulogy of vinci, abounding with information on his life and paintings, as well as on his designs attached to it. to this is added the eulogy of stefano, and a dissertation of lami upon the italian painters and sculptors who flourished between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries. footnote : cellini declares that he borrowed a great number of excellent observations upon perspective from one of vinci's discourses. (tratt. ii. p. .) for a long period past, the art had become gradually more refined, and considered its subjects more minutely; in which botticelli, mantegna, and others had acquired great reputation. as minuteness, however, is opposed to sublimity, it ill accorded with that elevation in which the supreme merit of the art would seem to consist. in my opinion lionardo succeeded in uniting these two opposite qualities, before any other artist. in subjects which he undertook fully to complete, he was not satisfied with only perfecting the heads, counterfeiting the shining of the eyes, the pores of the skin, the roots of the hair, and even the beating of the arteries; he likewise portrayed each separate garment and every accessary with minuteness. thus, in his landscapes also, there was not a single herb or leaf of a tree, which he had not taken like a portrait, from the select face of nature; and to his very leaves he gave a peculiar air, and fold, and position, best adapted to represent them rustling in the wind. while he bestowed his attention in this manner upon the minutiæ, he at the same time, as is observed by mengs, led the way to a more enlarged and dignified style; entered into the most abstruse inquiries as to the source and nature of expression, the most philosophical and elevated branch of the art; and smoothed the way, if i may be permitted to say so, for the appearance of raffaello. no one could be more curious in his researches, more intent upon observing, or more prompt in catching the motions of the passions, as exhibited either in the features or the actions. he frequented places of public assembly, and all spectacles in which man gave free play to his active powers; and there, in a small book always ready at hand, he drew the attitudes which he selected; and these designs he preserved in order to apply them, with expressions more or less powerful, according to the occasion, and the degree of expression he wished to introduce. for it was his custom, in the same manner as he gradually strengthened his shadows until he reached the highest degree; so also in the composition of his figures, to proceed in heightening them until he attained the perfection of passion and of motion. the same kind of gradation he observed in regard to elegance, of which he was perhaps the earliest admirer; since previous artists appeared unable to distinguish grace from beauty, and still more so to adapt it to pleasing subjects in such a way as to rise from the less to the more attractive points, as was practised by lionardo da vinci. he even adhered to the same rule in his burlesques; always throwing an air of greater ridicule over one than another, insomuch that he was heard to say, that they ought to be carried to such a height, if possible, as even to make a dead man laugh. the characteristic, therefore, of this incomparable artist, consists in a refinement of taste, of which no equal example, either preceding or following him, is to be found; if, indeed, we may not admit that of the old protogenes, in whom apelles was unable to find any reason why he himself should be preferred to him, except it were the superabundant industry of his competitor.[ ] and, in truth, it would appear, that vinci likewise, did not always call to mind the maxim of "ne quid nimis," in the observance of which, the perfection of human pursuits is to be found. phidias himself, said tully, bore in his mind a more beautiful minerva and a grander jove, than he was capable of exhibiting with his chisel; and it is prudent counsel, that teaches us to aspire to the best, but to rest satisfied with attaining what is good. vinci was never pleased with his labours if he did not execute them as perfectly as he had conceived them; and being unable to reach the high point proposed with a mortal hand, he sometimes only designed his work, or conducted it only to a certain degree of completion. sometimes he devoted to it so long a period as almost to renew the example of the ancient who employed seven years over his picture. but as there was no limit to the discovery of fresh beauties in that work, so, in the opinion of lomazzo, it happens with the perfections of vinci's paintings, including even those which vasari and others allude to as left imperfect. footnote : plin. lib. xxxv. c. . uno se præstare, quod manum ille de tabulâ nesciret tollere. this he said in reference to that jalysus, on which protogenes had bestowed no less than seven years. before proceeding further, it becomes our historical duty, having here mentioned his imperfect works, to inform the reader of the real sense in which the words are to be taken when applied to vinci. it is certain he left a number of works only half finished, such as his epiphany, in the ducal gallery at florence, or his holy family, in the archbishop's palace at milan. most frequently, however, the report is grounded upon his having left some portion of his pieces less perfectly finished than the rest; a deficiency, nevertheless, that cannot always be detected even by the best judges. the portrait, for instance, of m. lisa gioconda, painted at florence in the period of four years, and then, according to vasari, left imperfect, was minutely examined by mariette, in the collection of the king of france, and was declared to be carried to so high a degree of finish, that it was impossible to surpass it. the defect will be more easily recognized in other portraits, several of which are yet to be seen at milan; for instance, that of a lady belonging to the sig. principe albani; and one of a man, in the palazzo scotti gallerati. indeed lomazzo has remarked, that, excepting three or four, he left all the rest of his heads imperfect. but imperfections and faults like his would have been accounted distinguishing qualities in almost any other artist. even his grand supper has been stated in history as an imperfect production, though at the same time all history is agreed in celebrating it as one of the most beautiful paintings that ever proceeded from the hand of man. it was painted for the refectory of the dominican fathers, at milan, and may be pronounced a compendium not only of all that lionardo taught in his books, but also of what he embraced in his studies. he here gave expression to the exact point of time best adapted to animate his history, which is the moment when the redeemer addresses his disciples, saying, "one of you will betray me." then each of his innocent followers is seen to start as if struck with a thunderbolt; those at a distance seem to interrogate their companions, as if they think they must have mistaken what he had said; others, according to their natural disposition, appear variously affected; one of them swoons away, one stands lost in astonishment, a third rises in indignation, while the very simplicity and candour depicted upon the countenance of a fourth, seem to place him beyond the reach of suspicion. but judas instantly draws in his countenance, and while he appears as it were attempting to give it an air of innocence, the eye rests upon him in a moment as the undoubted traitor. vinci himself used to observe, that for the space of a whole year, he employed his time in meditating how he could best give expression to the features of so bad a heart; and that being accustomed to frequent a place where the worst characters were known to assemble, he there met with a physiognomy to his purpose; to which he also added the features of many others. in his figures of the two saints jacopo, presenting fine forms, most appropriate to the characters, he availed himself of the same plan; and being unable with his utmost diligence to invest that of christ with a superior air to the rest, he left the head in an unfinished state, as we learn from vasari, though armenini pronounced it exquisitely complete. the rest of the picture, the tablecloth with its folds, the whole of the utensils, the table, the architecture, the distribution of the lights, the perspective of the ceiling, (which in the tapestry of san pietro, at rome, is changed almost into a hanging garden) all was conducted with the most exquisite care; all was worthy of the finest pencil in the world. had lionardo desired to follow the practice of his age in painting in distemper, the art at this time would have been in possession of this treasure. but being always fond of attempting new methods, he painted this masterpiece upon a peculiar ground, formed of distilled oils, which was the reason that it gradually detached itself from the wall, a misfortune which had also nearly befallen one of his madonnas, at s. onofrio, at rome, though it was preserved under glass. about half a century subsequent to the production of his great supper, when armenini then saw it, it was already _half decayed_; and scanelli, who examined it in , declares that it "_was with difficulty he could discern the history as it had been_." in the present century a hope had been indulged of this magnificent painting being restored by aid of some varnish, or other secret, as may be seen by consulting bottari. in regard to this, however, and the other vicissitudes of this great picture, we ought also to consider what is stated in a tone of ridicule and reproach by bianconi, in his _new guide_.[ ] it will be sufficient for my purpose to add, that nothing remains in the modern picture from the hand of vinci, if we except three heads of apostles, which may be said to be rather sketched than painted. milan boasts few of his works, as those which are ascribed to him are for the most part the productions of his school, occasionally retouched by himself, as in the altar-piece of s. ambrogio _ad nemus_, which has great merit. a madonna, however, and infant, in the belgioioso d'este palace, as well as one or two other pictures in private possession, are undoubtedly from his hand. we are assured, indeed, that he left few pieces at milan, as well from his known fastidiousness in painting, as from his having been diverted from it, both by inclination and by the commissions received from the prince, to conduct works connected with engineering, hydraulics, and machinery for a variety of purposes, besides those of architecture;[ ] and especially in regard to that celebrated model of a horse, of which, owing to its size, as we are told by vasari, no cast could be taken in bronze. and this writer is the more entitled to credit, as well because he flourished near the period of which he treats, as because he could hardly be ignorant of a work, which would almost have placed the fame of our italian on an equality with that of lysippus.[ ] footnote : (page .) the sig. baldassare orsini has likewise inveighed against the inconsiderate retouchings of old paintings, in his _risposta_, p. ; where he also alludes to a letter of hakert's, in defence of varnishes, and to another in reply, in which the use of them is disapproved by force of examples. he moreover cites a supplementary letter drawn from the roman journal of fine arts, for december, . footnote : a number of designs are to be seen in his ms. volumes belonging to the ambrosian collection. see mariette's letter, in vol. ii. of lett. pittoriche, p. ; and, also, "observations upon the designs of lionardo," by the ab. amoretti, ed. of milan, . footnote : it was intended for the equestrian statue of francesco sforza, father of lodovico. the cav. fr. sabba da castiglione has mentioned in his ricordi, no. , that this very ingenious model, so greatly celebrated in the annals of the arts, which cost vinci sixteen years to complete, was seen by the writer in , converted into a target for the gascon bowmen in the service of louis xii. when he became master of milan. of all his labours in milan, therefore, nothing is better deserving of our notice than the academy which he founded, whose pupils constitute the proudest and most flourishing epoch of this school. they are not all equally well known; and we often find, both in collections and in churches, that pictures are pointed out as being of the school of vinci, without specifying the particular artists. their altar-pieces seldom display composition, varying much from that common to other schools of the age; namely, figures of the virgin with the infant, upon a throne, surrounded by saints, chiefly in an erect posture, and a few cherubs on the steps. vinci's disciples, however, if i mistake not, were the first who conferred on their figures some degree of unity in action, so as to give them the appearance of conversing with each other. in the remaining parts, also, they exhibit a pretty uniform taste; they represent the same faces, all somewhat oval, smiling lips, the same manner in their precise and somewhat dry outlines, the same choice of temperate colours, well harmonized, together with the same study of the chiaroscuro, which the less skilful artists overcharge with darkness, while the better ones apply it in moderation. one who approached nearest to his style, at a certain period, was cesar da sesto, likewise called cesare milanese, though not recorded by vasari, or lomazzo, in the list of his disciples. still he is generally admitted by more modern writers. in the ambrosian collection is the head of an old man, so extremely clear and studied, in the vinci manner, by this artist, as to surprise the beholder. in some of his other works he followed raffaello, whom he knew in rome; and it is reported, that this prince of painting one day said to him, "it seems to me strange that being bound in such strict ties of friendship as we two are, we do not in the least respect each other with our pencils," as if they had been rivals on a sort of equality. he was intimate too with baldassar peruzzi, and was employed with him in the castle of ostia. in this work, which was one of the earliest efforts of baldassare, vasari seems inclined to yield the palm of excellence to the milanese artist. he was esteemed vinci's best pupil; and he is more than once held up by lomazzo, as a model in design, in attitude, and more particularly in the art of using his lights. he cites an herodias by him, of which i have seen a copy in possession of the consiglier pagave, and the countenance bore an extreme resemblance to the fornarina of raffaello. the cav. d. girolamo melzi has likewise one of his holy families, in the raffaello manner, which he obtained a few years ago at an immense sum, as well as that celebrated altar-piece painted for s. rocco. it is divided into compartments; in the midst is seen the titular saint and the holy virgin, with the infant, imitated from a figure by raffaello, which is at foligno. from his dispute of the sacrament he likewise borrowed the s. gio. batista seated on a cloud, which is accompanied with the figure of st. john the evangelist, placed in the same position. these decorate the upper part of the picture; the lower being occupied by the figures of the two half-naked saints, cristoforo and sebastiano, both appropriately executed, and the last exhibiting a new and beautiful foreshortening. they are on a larger scale than the figures of poussin, and with such resemblance to coreggio's, that, in the opinion of the ab. bianconi, they might have been easily ascribed to him, in default of the artist's name; such is the softness, union, and brightness of the fleshes, such their beauty of colouring, and the harmony investing the whole painting. it used to be closed with two panels, where, with a certain correspondence of subjects, were drawn the two princes of the apostles, with saints martino and giorgio on horseback; all of which display the same maxims, though not equal diligence in the art. hence we may infer that this artist did not, like vinci, aspire at producing masterpieces as an invariable rule, but was content, like luini, with occasional efforts of the kind. at the church of sarono, situated between pavia and milan, are seen the figures of four saints, drawn on four narrow pilasters; the two equestrian saints, already mentioned, and saints sebastiano and rocco, to whom especially invocations are made against the plague. they are inscribed with the name _cæsar magnus_, f. : the foreshortening is well adapted to the place; and the figure of s. rocco more especially displays a composition such as we have mentioned. the features are not very pleasing, with the exception of those of st. george, as they are somewhat too round and full. these pieces are in general assigned to the artist of whom we here treat, and many are inclined to infer, from the inscription, that he belonged to the family of the magni. but it is doubted by others; the frescos not appearing to justify his high reputation, however excellent in their way. besides, i find the death of cesare da sesto recorded, in a ms. communicated to me by sig. bianconi, as occurring in the year , though not in such a manner as to remove all kind of doubt. i find some reason for inclining to an opposite opinion in the great diversity of style, remarkable in this artist, the conformity of various ideas in the frescos and in his altar-piece, together with the silence of lomazzo, generally so exact in his mention of the best lombards, and who records no other cesare but da sesto. i ought not to separate the name of this noble figurist from that of bernazzano the landscape painter, as they were united no less in interest than in friendship. it is uncertain whether he was instructed by vinci; he doubtless availed himself of his models, and in drawing rural landscape, fruits, flowers, and birds, he succeeded so admirably as to produce the same wonderful effects as are told of zeuxes and apelles, in greece. this indeed italian artists have frequently renewed, though with a less degree of applause. having represented a strawberry-bed in a court-yard, the peafowl were so deceived by its resemblance, that they pecked at the wall until the painting was destroyed. he painted the landscape part for a picture of the baptism of christ, and on the ground drew some birds in the act of feeding. on its being placed in the open air, the birds were seen to fly towards the picture, as if to join their companions. as this artist had the sense to perceive his own deficiency in figures, he cultivated an intimacy with cesare, who added to his landscapes fables and histories, sometimes with a degree of license that is reprobated by lomazzo. these paintings are held in high esteem, where the figure-painter has made a point of displaying his powers. gio. antonio beltraffio, as his name is written on his monument, was a gentleman of milan, who employed only his leisure hours in painting, and produced some works at milan, and other places; but the best is at bologna. it is placed at the misericordia, and bore his signature, with that of his master vinci, and the date , though these have been since erased. in it is represented the virgin between saints john the baptist and bastiano, while the figure of girolamo da cesio, who gave the commission for the picture, is seen kneeling at the foot of the throne. it forms the only production of beltraffio placed in public, and is on that account esteemed the more valuable. the whole of it exhibits the exact study of his school in the air of the heads, judicious in composition, and softened in its outlines. his design, however, is rather more dry than that of his fellow pupils; the effect, perhaps, of his early education, under the milanese artists of the fourteenth century, not sufficiently corrected. francesco melzi was another milanese of noble birth, enumerated among lionardo's disciples, though he had only the benefit of his instructions in design during his more tender years. he approached nearest of any to vinci's manner, conducting pieces that are frequently mistaken for those of his master; but he employed himself seldom, because he was rich.[ ] he was greatly esteemed by vinci, inasmuch as he united a very fine countenance to the most amiable disposition, his gratitude inducing him to accompany his master on his last visit into france. he was as generously rewarded for it, becoming heir to the whole of vinci's designs, instruments, books, and manuscripts. he promoted as far as possible the reputation of his master, by furnishing both vasari and lomazzo with notices for his life; and by preserving for the eye of posterity the valuable collection of his writings. for as long as the numerous volumes deposited at the ambrosian library continue to exist, the world must admit that he was one of the chief revivers, not only of painting but of statics, of hydrostatics, of optics, and of anatomy. footnote : amoretti, mem. stor. del vinci, p. . andrea salai, or salaino, was, from similar qualities, a great favourite with vinci, who chose him according to the language of the times, as his _creato_, using him as a model for beautiful figures, both of a human and angelic cast. he instructed him, as we are told by vasari, in matters pertaining to the art, and retouched his labours, which i think must gradually have changed their name; as a salai is not now esteemed like a vinci. there is a st. john the baptist pointed out as his, elegant, but rather dry, in the archbishop's palace; a very animated portrait of a man, in the aresi palace; with a few other pieces. his picture in the sacristy of s. celso, is more particularly celebrated. it was drawn from the cartoon of lionardo, executed at florence, and so greatly applauded, that the citizens ran to behold it, as they would have done some great solemnity. vasari calls it the cartoon of st. anna, who, with the virgin, is seen fondling the holy child, while the infant john the baptist is playing with him. subsequently, this cartoon rose into such repute, that when francis i. invited vinci to his court, he entreated that he would undertake the colouring; but the latter, says vasari, according to his custom, amused him a long while with words. it appears, moreover, from a letter of p. resta, inserted in the third volume of the lettere pittoriche, that vinci formed three cartoons of his st. anna, one of which was coloured by salai. this artist admirably fulfilled the design of the inventor, in the taste of his well harmonised and low colours, in the agreeable character of his landscape, and in grand effect. in the same sacristy, opposite to it, was placed, for some time, a holy family by raffaello, now removed to vienna; nor did it shrink from such competition. a similar copy of the same cartoon was obtained from vienna for our reigning sovereign, ferdinand iii. and now adorns the ducal gallery at florence, likewise, perhaps, from the hand of salai. marco uglone, or uggione, or da oggione, ought to be included among the best milanese painters. he did not employ himself exclusively on favourite pictures, like most of the scholars of vinci, who preferred to paint little and well; but was celebrated for his frescos; and his works at the pace still maintain their outline entire, and their colours bright. some of these are in the church, and a very magnificent picture of the crucifixion is to be seen in the refectory; surprising for the variety, beauty, and spirit of its figures. few lombard artists attained the degree of expression that is here manifested; and few to such mastery of composition and novelty of costume. in his human figures, he aimed at elegance of proportion; and in those of horses he is seen to be the disciple of vinci. for another refectory, that of the certosa, in pavia, he copied the supper of lionardo, and it is such as to supply, in some measure, the loss of the original. milan boasts two of his altar-pieces, one at s. paolo in compito, and another at s. eufemia, in the style of the school we have described, and both excellent productions; though the manner which he observed in his frescos, is more soft and analogous to modern composition. in the historical memoirs of vinci, written by amoretti, one galeazzo is mentioned as one of his pupils, though it is difficult to decide who he was, along with other artists recorded in the vinci mss. these are one jacomo, one fanfoia, and a lorenzo, which might perhaps be interpreted to be lotto, did not the epochs pointed out by count tassi and p. federici, relating to this artist, appear inapplicable to the lorenzo of vinci, who was born in , and came to lionardo in april, , and probably while vinci was at fiesole, since he was there in the month of march in that year; that is, a month before,[ ] and continued to reside with him at least while he remained in italy. i am inclined to believe he filled the place of his domestic. footnote : see amoretti, p. . father resta, in his "portable gallery," cited by me in the third chapter, inserts also, among vinci's milanese disciples, one gio. pedrini, and lomazzo, a pietro ricci, of whom i can learn nothing farther. some, indeed, include in the same list cesare cesariano, an architect and painter in miniature, whose life has been written by poleni. lattuada, too, mentions niccola appiano, and makes him the author of a fresco painting over the gate of the pace, which is certainly in the vinci manner. cesare arbasia, of whom we shall further treat in the sixth book of the fifth volume, under the head of piedmont, was erroneously referred, at cordova, to the school of vinci, and is mentioned as his pupil by palomino. this was impossible, if we consider the epochs of his life, together with the character of his paintings. were a resemblance of style enough to decide the question of preceptorship, i might here add to leonardo's school a number of other milanese, both of the city and the state. i cannot, however, dispense with a maxim, which, under a variety of forms, i have recommended to my readers; that history alone can ascertain for us the real pupils, as style does such as are imitators. being unable, therefore, to pronounce them disciples, i shall give to vinci only as his imitators the names of count francesco d'adda, who was accustomed to paint on panels and on slate for private cabinets; ambrogio egogui, of whom there remains at nerviano a fine altar-piece, executed in ; gaudenzio vinci, of nova, who is distinguished also for another altar-piece at arona, with a date anterior to the preceding. i never saw any of these; but it is agreed by all, that they are in the vinci manner; and that the last especially is an astonishing production. another work, which made its appearance only a few years ago at rome, representing the figure of the virgin, and quite in leonardo's composition, as i have heard, bears the following inscription: _bernardinus faxolus de papia fecit_, . it was purchased by the sig. principe braschi, for his very choice gallery; and it appeared truly surprising at rome, that such a painter should be presented to our age, as it were alone, and without a word of recommendation from any historian. yet similar occurrences are not unknown in italy, and it forms a portion of her fame to enumerate her celebrated artists by ranks and not by numbers. it remains for us to do justice to vinci's most distinguished imitator, bernardin lovino, as he writes it, or luini, as it is generally expressed; a native of luino, in the lago maggiore. resta asserts, that he did not arrive at milan until after the departure of vinci, and that he was instructed by scotto. the author of the guide, (at page ) includes him in the list of lionardo's pupils, and this, from the period when he flourished, might, i think, have been the case. because if gaudenzio, born in , _was at once the disciple of scotto and of lovino_, as we are informed in the treatise of lomazzo, (p. ) it follows, that bernardino must already have been a master about , the time when vinci left milan. to much the same period vasari refers bernardino da lupino, (he should have said da luino,) an artist who painted the marriage and other histories of the virgin in so highly finished a taste at sarono. one of vasari's annotators erroneously again changes the name of lupino into _lanino_, a pupil of gaudenzio. my supposition respecting the age of bernardino, is further confirmed by a portrait which he drew of himself at sarono, in his dispute of the child jesus with the doctors, where he appears then old, and this picture was executed in the year , as appears from the date. luini, therefore, may have been one of vinci's disciples; and he certainly frequented his academy. others indeed of the school surpassed him in delicacy of hand, and in the pleasing effect of the chiaroscuro, a quality for which lomazzo commends cesare da sesto, declaring that luini drew his shadows in too coarse a style. notwithstanding this, no artist approached nearer vinci, both in point of design and colouring than bernardino, who very frequently composed in a taste so like that of his master, that out of milan many of his pieces pass for those of vinci. such is the opinion of true connoisseurs, as reported and approved by the author of the new guide, who is assuredly one belonging to this class. he adduces two examples in the pictures at the ambrosiana; namely, the magdalen, and the st. john, who is seen caressing his lamb, a piece which foreigners can hardly be persuaded is not from vinci's own hand. i have seen other pictures of equal, or nearly equal, merit, in different milanese collections which i have frequently mentioned. we must, however, add what i observed in reference to cesare da sesto just before, that in some of his works there is great resemblance to the manner of raffaello, such as in a madonna, belonging to the prince of keweniller, and one or two others which i know were purchased under the impression of their being raffaello's. hence, i imagine, must have arisen the opinion, that he had visited rome, which is very properly questioned by the ab. bianconi, (p. ), who rather inclines to the negative. nor can i myself admit it without some further proofs, a similarity of manner to me appearing far too weak an argument to decide the fact. the same point was discussed in the third chapter on the subject of coreggio; and if we found reason to conclude, that coreggio succeeded in enlarging and refining his divine genius to such a degree, without seeing either raffaello or michelangiolo at rome, we may admit the same to have been the case in the instance of luini. the book of nature is equally open to all artists; taste is a sure guide to selection; and, by degrees, practice leads to the complete execution of what is thus selected. vinci's taste so nearly resembled that of raffaello in point of delicacy, grace, and expression of the passions, that had he not been diverted by other pursuits, and had he sacrificed some degree of his high finish, for the sake of adding to his facility, amenity, and fulness of outline, his style would naturally have run into competition with that of raffaello, with whom, as it is, in some of his heads especially, he has many points in common. it was the same with bernardino, who had embued himself with the taste of vinci, and nourished during a period that bordered on an improved degree of freedom and softness of manner. at first, indeed, he adopted a less full and somewhat dry style, such as we easily recognise in his pietà, at the passione; subsequently he proceeded gradually to modernize it. even that fine little picture of the ebriety of noah, which is shewn at s. barnaba, as one of his most exquisite pieces, retains a certain precision in its design, a hardness of drapery and a direction of folds, which remind us of the fourteenth century. he becomes more modern in his histories of s. croce, executed about , several of which he repeated at sarono five years after, where he appears to surpass his own productions. these last are the works which most resemble raffaello's composition; though they retain that minuteness in decoration, the gilding of glories, and the abundance of little ornament in the temples, such as we see in mantegna and his contemporaries; all of which were abandoned by raffaello, when he arrived at his best manner. it is my opinion, in fact, that this artist was not so much indebted to rome, from whose masters he probably only imitated some prints or copies, as to vinci's academy, with whose maxims he became completely familiar; and more especially to his own genius, vast in its kind, and equalled by very few. i say in its kind; for i allude to all that is sweet, beautiful, pious, and sensitive in the art. in those histories of our lady, at sarono, her features present us with a lovely union of beauty, dignity, and modesty, such as approach to raffaello, although they are not his. they are, moreover, always consistent with the history the artist represents, whether we behold the virgin at the marriage, or listening with wonder to the prophecies of simeon; when, penetrated with the grand mystery, she receives the wise men of the east; or when, with a countenance of mingled joy and sorrow, she inquires of her divine son, teaching in the temple, why he had thus left her. the other figures possess a corresponding beauty; the heads appear to live, the looks and motions seem to be expecting a reply; combined with variety of design, of drapery, and of passions, all borrowed from nature; a style in which every thing appears natural and unstudied, which gains at a first view, which compels the eye to study part by part, and from which it cannot withdraw itself without an effort: such is the character of luini's style in that temple. we observe little variation in his other pictures, which he executed with more care, and at a more mature age, at milan; nor can i imagine what could lead vasari to assert _that the whole of his works are tolerable_; when we meet with so many calculated to excite our wonder. let us consult his picture of christ scourged, at s. giorgio, and inquire by what hand the countenance of our redeemer has been drawn more full of kindness, humility, and piety; or turn to his smaller cabinet paintings in the possession of the signori litta, and other noble houses, so beautifully finished, and inquire again how many artists in his own times could have equalled him in these? the genius of luini does not, moreover, appear to have been at all fastidious or slow; at least in his fresco paintings. thus his crown of thorns, placed at the college of s. sepolcro, a picture abounding with figures, for which he received one hundred and fifteen lire, occupied him thirty-eight days, besides eleven more, during which one of his pupils was engaged on the work. he availed himself of similar aid, likewise, in painting the choir of sarono, in the monastero maggiore, at milan, in several churches of lago maggiore, and in other places; and to these assistants we ought apparently to ascribe whatever parts we find less perfect. two only of his disciples, his own sons, as far as i can learn, are known. at the period when lomazzo published his treatise, in , they were both living, and both mentioned by him with commendation. of evangelista, the second brother, he remarks, that in the art of ornamenting and festooning, he was equally ingenious and fanciful, at the same time giving him a high rank in other branches of painting; though it is to be regretted that he did not point out any of his productions. aurelio luini is frequently praised in the same work, as well as in the teatro, for his knowledge of anatomy, and for his skill in landscape and perspective. he is subsequently introduced in the treatise upon painting, among the most celebrated artists of milan who then flourished, as a successful rival of polidoro's style, of which a specimen is praised, consisting of a large fresco, on the façade of the misericordia. after the lapse of two centuries, bianconi has written of him with more freedom, declaring, that though the son, he was not the follower of bernardino, the purity of whose style he was far from attaining. and, in truth, if we except his composition, there is not much calculated to please in this artist. we may, indeed, often trace the paternal manner, much deteriorated however, and tainted with mannerism; his ideas are common, his attitudes less natural, the folds of his drapery are minute, and drawn in a mechanical manner. this character prevails in some genuine pieces of his that i have seen; among which is one in the melzi collection, with his name and the date of . others, however, which i have examined at milan, are in a better taste, especially at s. lorenzo, where an altar-piece with the baptism of christ, is ascribed to him, that would have done credit to bernardino. aurelio instructed in the art pietro gnocchi; and, if i mistake not, he was surpassed by his pupil, both in selection and in good taste. a pietro luini, having the reputation of a soft and accurate hand, and esteemed the last of the luini, being admitted in history, i doubt whether he be not the pietro of whom we here treat, occasionally surnamed from the house of his master, as we find in the case of porta, and others of the sixteenth century. to him was ascribed the s. pietro, painted for s. vittore, seen in the act of receiving the keys; but in the _new guide_ it is correctly given to the hand of gnocchi. having thus shewn, as in a family tree, the regular successors of leonardo at milan, we must prepare to examine the other school, that traces its origin to foppa, and other artists of the fourteenth century, who are mentioned in their place. it is not to be confounded with that of vinci, and is separately considered by writers on the subject, though it is known to have derived great advantage from his models, and, i believe, from his discourse, inasmuch as he is allowed, like raffaello, to have been extremely courteous and agreeable in his reception of every one, and in communicating his knowledge to all who desired it without any feeling of jealousy. if we take the pains to examine bramantino and the rest of the milanese artists, subsequent to the middle of the sixteenth century, we shall find them all more or less imitators of vinci, aiming at his mode of chiaroscuro and his expression, rather dark in their complexions, and addicted to colour rather with force than with amenity. they are, however, less studious of ideal beauty, less noble in their conceptions, less exquisite in their taste, with the exception of gaudenzio, who in every thing rivals the first artists of his age; and he is the only one of the ancient school who inculcated its maxims by teaching as well as by example. gaudenzio ferrari da valdugia is called by vasari gaudenzio milanese. we mentioned him among raffaello's assistants, referring to the account of orlandi, who gives him as a pupil to pietro perugino, and noticing certain pictures that are attributed to him in lower italy. but in those parts, where he only tarried a short time, or attempted some new method, he can scarcely be recognized, the information regarding it being very doubtful, which will be further shewn under the ferrarese school. in lombardy we may now treat of him with more certainty, many of his works being met with, and many particulars of him from the pen of lomazzo, his successor in the art, as we shall shortly shew. he mentions scotto as his master, and next to him luini; and that previous to either of these he studied with giovanone, is a current tradition at vercelli. novara is thought to be in possession of one of his first paintings, an altar-piece with various divisions at the cathedral, in the taste of the fourteenth century, and with the gilt decorations then so much in request. vercelli possesses at s. marco his copy of the cartoon of s. anna, to which are added the figures of s. joseph and some other saints. it is a youthful production, but which shews gaudenzio to have been an early imitator of vinci, from whom, says vasari, he derived great assistance. he went young to rome, where he is said to have been employed by raffaello, and acquired a more enlarged manner of design, and greater beauty of colouring than had been practised by the milanese artists. lomazzo, against the opinion of scannelli, ranks him among the seven greatest painters in the world, among whom he erred in not including coreggio. for whoever will compare the cupola of s. giovanni at parma with that of s. maria near sarono, painted by gaudenzio about the same period, must admit that there are a variety of beauties in the former, we may in vain seek for in the latter. although we must admit that it abounds with fine, varied, and well expressed figures, yet gaudenzio will be found in this, as in some other of his works, to retain traces of the old style; such as a degree of harshness; too uniform a disposition of his figures; his draperies, particularly of his angels, some of them drawn in lines like mantegna's; with figures occasionally relieved in stucco, and then coloured, a practice he observed also in his trappings of horses, as well as in other accessaries in the manner of montorfano. with the exception of these defects, which he wholly avoided in his more finished pieces, gaudenzio must be pronounced a very great painter, and one who approached nearest of any among raffaello's assistants to perino and to giulio romano. he displays also a vast fund of ideas, though of an opposite cast, giulio having frequently directed his genius to profane and licentious subjects, while the former confined himself to sacred compositions. he appears truly unequalled in his expression of the divine majesty, the mysteries of religion, and all the feelings of piety, of which he himself offered a laudable example, receiving the title of _eximie pius_ in one of the novarese assemblies. he was excellent in strong expression; not that he aimed at exhibiting highly wrought muscular powers, but his attitudes were, as vasari entitles them, wild, that is, equally bold and terrible where his subjects admitted of them. such is the character of his christ's passion, at the grazie in milan, where titian was his competitor; and his fall of s. paul, at the conventual friars in vercelli, a picture approaching the nearest of any to that of michelangiolo in the pauline chapel. in the rest of his pictures he shews great partiality for the most difficult foreshortenings, which he introduces very frequently. if he fails in reaching the peculiar grace and beauty of raffaello, he at least greatly partakes of that character, as we observe in his s. cristoforo, at vercelli, where, in addition to the picture of the titular saint, he painted upon the walls various histories of jesus christ, and others of mary magdalen. in this great work he appears more perhaps than in any other, in the character of a beautiful painter, presenting us with the most lovely heads, and with angels as lively in their forms as spirited in their attitudes. i have heard it praised as his masterpiece, though lomazzo and the author of the guide both agree in asserting that the manner he adopted in the sepolcro of varallo surpassed all he had elsewhere produced. if we examine into further particulars of his style, we shall find ferrari's warm and lively colouring so superior to that of the milanese artists of his day, that there is no difficulty in recognizing it in the churches where he painted; the eye of the spectator is directly attracted towards it; his carnations are natural, and varied according to the subjects; his draperies display much fancy and originality, as varied as the art varies its draperies; with middle tints, blended so skilfully as to equal the most beautiful produced by any other artist. and if we may so say, he represented the minds even better than the forms of his subjects. he particularly studied this branch of the art, and we seldom observe more marked attitudes or more expressive countenances. where he adds landscape or architecture to his figures, the former chiefly consists of very fanciful views of cliffs and rocks, which are calculated to charm by their novelty; while his edifices are conducted on the principles of the best perspective. as lomazzo, however, has dwelt so much at length on his admirable skill both in painting and modelling, it would be idle to insist upon it further. but i ought to add, that it is a great reflection upon vasari that he did not better know, or better estimate such an artist; so that foreigners, who form their opinions only from history, are left unacquainted with his merit, and have uniformly neglected to do him justice in their writings. ferrari's disciples for a long period maintained the manner of their master, the first in succession with more fidelity than the second class, and the second than the third. the chief part were more eager to imitate his expression and his facility than the elegance of his design and colouring, even so far as to fall into the bordering errors of negligence and of caricature. the less celebrated scholars of gaudenzio were antonio lanetti da bugnato, of whom i know of no remaining genuine production; fermo stella da caravaggio, and giulio cesare luini valsesiano, who are still to be met with in some of the chapels at varallo. lomazzo, in the thirty-seventh chapter of his treatise, besides lanino, to come shortly under consideration, mentions, as imitators of gaudenzio, bernardo ferrari of vigevano, where two sides of the cathedral organ are painted by his hand; and andrea solari, or del gobbo, or milanese, as he is called by vasari at the close of his life of coreggio, in whose age he flourished. he says he was "a very excellent and beautiful painter, and attached to the labours of the art," adducing some of his pictures in private, and an assumption at the certosa in pavia, in which torre (p. ) gives him salaino as a companion. his two most distinguished pupils were gio. batista della cerva and bernardino lanino, from whom sprung two branches of the same school, the milanese and that of vercelli. cerva took up his abode at milan, and if he painted every picture like that which adorns san lorenzo, representing the apparition of jesus christ to s. thomas and the other apostles, he is entitled to rank with the first of his school, such is the choice and spirited character of the heads, such the warmth and distribution of his colouring, and so truly noble and harmonious is its effect as a whole. he must have been deeply versed in the art, though we possess no more of his public works, as he became the master of gio. paolo lomazzo of milan, who acquired from him the maxims he afterwards published in his treatise upon painting in , and which he condensed in his idea of the temple of painting, printed in , to say nothing of his verses, for the most part connected with the same profession. in his account of this writer orlandi inserted several erroneous epochs of his life, subsequently cleared up by bianconi, who fixes that of his loss of sight about , in the thirty-third year of his age. until this misfortune he had continued to cultivate all the knowledge he could derive from those times, which indeed in certain branches are in some measure undervalued. he took a tour through italy, attaching himself to polite letters and to the sciences, for which he indulged such an enthusiasm, in his ill placed ambition to appear a philosopher, astrologer, and mathematician, that he treated matters even the most obvious in an abstruse and often false manner, as mistaken as the principles of the current astrology itself. this defect is very perceptible in his larger work, though being dispersed scantily here and there, it is the more easily excused. but it is more serious in his compendium, or idea of the temple of painting, where it is presented to us in a point of view truly repugnant to common sense. whilst engaged in teaching an art which consists in designing and colouring well, he flies from planet to planet; to each of the seven painters, whom he calls principals, he assigns one of these celestial bodies, and afterwards one of the metals to correspond. extravagant as this idea is, he gave scope to still more strange fancies; so that with this method, combined with a most fatiguing prolixity, and the want of an exact index, his treatises have been little read. it would be well worth while to re-model this work, and to separate the fruit from the husk, as it abounds not only with much pleasing historical information, but with the best theories of art heard from the lips of those who knew both leonardo and gaudenzio, as well as with excellent observations upon the practice of the best masters, and much critical knowledge relating to the mythology, history, and customs of the ancients. his rules of perspective are particularly valuable. they were compiled from the mss. of foppa, of zenale, of mantegna, and of vinci, (tratt. p. ); in addition to which he has preserved some fragments of bramantino, who was extremely ingenious in this art, (p. ). by these qualities, united to a certain ease of style, not so agreeable perhaps as that of vasari, yet not so mysterious and obscure as that of zuccaro, nor so mean as that of boschini, the treatise of lomazzo is deserving of attention, even from confessed masters, and of their selection of some of the best chapters for the benefit of their oldest pupils. i know of no other better adapted to furnish youthful genius with fine pictoric ideas on every theme, none more likely to attach him, and to instruct him how to treat questions upon ancient art, none that displays a more extensive acquaintance with the human heart--what are its passions, and by what signs they are manifested, and how they assume a different dress in different countries, with their appropriate limits; and no writer, finally, includes, in a single volume, more useful precepts for the formation of a reflecting artist, a fine reasoner, in a spirit congenial to vinci, at once the father of the milanese school, and i may add of pictoric philosophy, which consists in sound reflection upon each branch of the profession. none of lomazzo's paintings are doubtful, as the author has celebrated his own life and works in certain verses, composed, as i have reason to think, to beguile the tedium of hours wholly passed in darkness, and which he entitled _grotteschi_.[ ] his first efforts, as in all instances, are feeble, of which kind is his copy of vinci's supper, which may be seen at the pace. in his others we trace the hand of a master eager to put his maxims into execution, and who succeeds more or less happily. one of the most fundamental of these was to consider as dangerous the imitation of other artists, whether taken from paintings or engravings. it is contended that an artist should aim at becoming original, forming the whole of his composition in his own mind, and copying the individual portions from nature and from truth. this precept, first derived from gaudenzio, was put in force both by lomazzo and others of his own time. in his pictures we may always discover some original traits, as in that at s. marco's, where, instead of putting the keys in the hands of s. peter, according to the usual custom, he represents the holy child offering them to him in a playful attitude. his novelty appears still more conspicuous in his large histories, such as his sacrifice of melchisedech, in the library of the passione, a picture abounding with figures, in which the knowledge of anatomy is equal to the novelty of the drapery, and the animation of the colours to that of the attitudes. he has added to it a combat in the distance, well conceived, and in good perspective. i have seen no other painting of his that displays more knowledge. in other instances he is confused and overloaded, sometimes also extravagant, as in that grand fresco painted for the refectory of s. agostino at piacenza, or as it is called of the rocchettini, which represents the subject of the forty days' fast. this is an ideal feast of meagre meats, where the sovereigns are seen in different seats (some of them portraits of the age), with lords of rank feasting at a splendid banquet of fish, while the poor are devouring such food as they have, and a greedy man is struggling with a huge mouthful sticking in his throat. the lord blesses the table, and above is seen the sheet which was shewn in a vision to s. peter. it is a grand picture, calculated to surprise the eye by the exactness with which the particular parts are copied from nature, and with a delicacy that girupeno asserts was unequalled even by lomazzo in the works he executed at milan. but it is not happy as a whole; the canvass is too full, and there is a mixture of sacred and burlesque subjects, from scripture and from the tavern, that cannot be reconciled or approved. footnote : can there be any doubt whether he was blind or not, when he wrote the following verses:-- quindi andai a piacenza, et ivi fei nel refetorio di sant'agostino la facciata con tal historia pinta. da lontan evvi piero in orazione che vede giù dal ciel un gran lenzuolo scender pien d'animai piccioli e grandi onde la quadragesma fu introdotta, &c. lomazzo gives the names of two milanese as his pupils, cristoforo ciocca and ambrogio figino. he could not long have afforded them his instructions, as at the period when he wrote his treatise, being then blind, they were both still in early youth. he commends them for their portraits, and the first would appear never to have been an able composer, having left, perhaps, no other pieces in public, except his histories of s. cristoforo, at s. vittore al corpo, by no means excellent. figino succeeded no less admirably in portraits, which he painted also for princes, with high commendation from the cav. marino, than in large compositions almost always executed in oil, and more distinguished by the excellence than by the number of the figures. some of his pictures, as his s. ambrogio, at s. austorgio, or his s. matteo, at s. raffaello, though presenting few figures, fail not to please by the grandeur of character expressed in the faces of those saints; nor has any other artist of milan approached in this art nearer to gaudenzio who left such noble examples in his s. girolamo and s. paolo. in works of a larger scale, such as his assumption at s. fedele, and the very elegant concezione at s. antonio, he also excels. his method is described by his preceptor, in his treatise, (p. ). he proposed for his imitation the lights and the accuracy of leonardo, the dignity of raffaello, coreggio's colouring, and the outlines of michelangiolo. of the last in particular he was one of the most successful imitators in his designs, which are consequently in the highest repute; but independent of which he is little known, either in collections or in history, further than milan. this artist must not be mistaken for girolamo figino, his contemporary, a very able painter, and an exact miniaturist, if we are to credit morigia. there is also ranked, among lomazzo's disciples, a pietro martire stresi, who acquired some reputation by his copies from raffaello. the other branch of gaudenzio's school, before mentioned, sprung from bernardino lanini of vercelli, who there produced some excellent early imitations of the style of gaudenzio, his master. at s. giuliano there is a pietà, with the date of , which might be ascribed to gaudenzio, had not the name of bernardino been affixed. it is the same with his other pictures, executed at his native place, when still young, and perhaps the chief distinction consists in his inferior accuracy of design, and less force of chiaroscuro. at a riper age he painted with more freedom, and a good deal in the manner of the naturalists, ranking among the first in milan. he had a very lively genius both for conceiving and executing, and adapted like that of ferrari for noble histories. the one of s. catherine, in the church of that name, near s. celso, is greatly celebrated, and the more so, from what lomazzo has said of it, being full of pictoric spirit in the features and the attitudes, with colouring like titian's, and embued with grace, no less in the face of the saint, which partakes of guido, than in the choir of angels, which rivals those of gaudenzio. if there be any portion deficient, it is in the want of more care in arranging his drapery. he was much employed, both for the city and the state, particularly at the cathedral of novara, where he painted his sibyllo, and his padre eterno, so greatly admired by lomazzo; besides several histories of the virgin, which though now deprived of their colour, still attract us by the spirit and clearness of the design. he was sometimes fond of displaying the manner of vinci, as in his picture of the patient christ, between two angels, painted for the church of ambrogio; so complete in every part, so beautiful and devotional, combined with so fine a relief, as to be esteemed one of the most excellent productions that adorn that church. bernardino had two brothers, not known beyond vercelli; gaudenzio, of whom there is said to be an altar-piece in the sacristy of the padri barnabiti representing the virgin between various saints; and his second brother girolamo, from whose hand i have seen a descent from the cross, belonging to a private individual. both display some distant resemblance to bernardino in the natural expression of the countenances, the former also in the force of his colouring, though alike greatly inferior in design. three other giovenoni, subsequent to girolamo, flourished about the period of lanini, whose names were paolo, batista, and giuseppe; the last became an excellent portrait-painter. he was brother-in-law to lanini, two of whose sons-in-law were likewise good artists; soleri, whom i reserve for the school of piedmont, and gio. martino casa, a native of vercelli, who resided, however, at milan, whence i obtained my information. perhaps the last in the list of this school was vicolungo di vercelli. in a private house at that place, i saw his supper of belshazzar, tolerably well coloured, abounding with figures, extravagant drapery, poor ideas, and no way calculated to surprise, except by exhibiting the successors of raffaello reduced thus gradually to so mean a state. good landscape painters were not wanting in this happy epoch in milan, particularly in the school of bernazzano, their productions appearing in several collections, though their names are unknown. to this list perhaps belongs the francesco vicentino, a milanese so much commended by lomazzo, who, in a landscape, succeeded even in shewing the dust blown about by the wind. he was also a good figure-painter, of which a few fine specimens remain at the grazie and other churches. some ornamental painters and of grotesques we have already noticed, to which list we may add aurelio buso, mentioned with praise among the native venetian artists, and here again justly recorded for his labours. vincenzio lavizzario, an excellent portrait-painter, may be esteemed the titian of the milanese, to whose name we may unite that of gio. da monte of crema, treated in the preceding book, and deserving of repetition here. along with him flourished giuseppe arcimboldi, selected for his skill in portrait, as the court-painter of maximilian ii., in which office he continued also under the emperor rodolph. both these artists were much celebrated for those capricci, or fancy pieces, which afterwards fell into disuse. at a distance they appeared to be figures of men and women; but on a nearer view the flora disappeared in a heap of flowers and leaves, and the vertumnus was metamorphosed into a composition of fruits and foliage. nor did these fanciful artists confine themselves to subjects taken from ancient fable; they added others in which they poetically introduced various personifications. the former even represented cucina, with her head and limbs composed only of pots and pans and other kitchen utensils; while the latter, who acquired great credit from these strange inventions, produced a picture of agriculture, consisting of spades, ploughs, and scythes, with other appropriate implements. we have lastly to record an art connected with the inferior branches of painting, scarcely noticed by me in any other place, being, indeed, purposely reserved for the milanese school, where it more particularly flourished. this is the art of embroidering, not merely flowers and foliage, but extensive history and figure-pieces. it had continued from the time of the romans in italy, and there is a very valuable specimen remaining in the so called casula dittica, at the museo di classe at ravenna, or more properly some strips of it brocaded with gold, on which, in needlework, appear the portraits of zenone, montano, and other saintly bishops. it is a monument of the sixth century, and has been described by the ab. sarti, and afterwards by monsig. dionisi. the same custom of embroidering sacred walls with figures would appear, from the ancient pictures, to have continued during the dark ages, and there are yet some relics to be seen in some of our sacristies. the most entire are at s. niccolo collegiata in fabriano, consisting of a priest's cope, with figures of apostles and different saints; and a vestment with mysteries of the passion, worked in embroidery, with the dry and coarse design of the fourteenth century. in vasari we find frequent mention of this art; and, to say nothing of the ancients, he presents us with many names greatly distinguished in it in more cultivated ages: such as paolo da verona, and one niccolo veneziano, who being in the service of the prince doria, at genoa, introduced perin del vaga at that court, as well as antonio ubertini, a florentine, to whom we alluded under his own school. lomazzo traces the account of the milanese from the earliest period. luca schiavone, he observes, carried this branch to the highest degree, and communicated it to girolamo delfinone, who flourished in the times of the last duke sforza, whose portrait he executed in embroidery, besides several large works, among which is the life of our lady, worked for the cardinal baiosa. this skill became hereditary in the family, and scipione, the son of girolamo, was equally distinguished. his chases of different animals were in great request for royal cabinets, a number of them being collected by philip of spain and the english king henry. marcantonio, son of scipione, followed the genius of the family, and is mentioned by lomazzo in as a youth of great promise. this writer has also praised for her skill in the same line, caterina cantona, a noble milanese lady, and has omitted the name of pellegrini, the minerva of her time, only perhaps because she had then hardly become celebrated. other individuals of this house are mentioned in the list of artists. andrea, who painted in the choir of s. girolamo, and a pellegrino his cousin, celebrated in the history of palomino for his productions in the escurial, and being both architect and painter to the royal court. the lady of whom i write, how far related to them i know not, devoted herself wholly to her needle, and by her hand were embroidered the great pallium (vestment) and other sacred furniture, still preserved in the sacristy of the cathedral, and exhibited to strangers with other curious specimens of ancient learning and the arts. in the guide for , she is called antonia, and in that for lodovica, unless, indeed, they were two different persons. in the following age boschini mentioned, with high commendation, the unrivalled dorothea aromatari, who, he adds, produced with her needle all those beauties which the finest and most diligent artists exhibited with their pencil. to hers he unites with praise the names of some other female embroiderers of the age; and we, in mentioning that of arcangela paladini, had occasion to commend her paintings and her needlework at the same time. school of milan. epoch iii. _the procaccini and other foreign and native artists establish a new academy, with new styles, in the city and state of milan._ the two series which we have hitherto described have gradually brought us towards the seventeenth century, when there scarcely remained a trace either of the vinci or gaudenzio manner. this arose from their latest successors, who adopted, more or less, those new manners which were gradually introduced into milan at the expense of the ancient style. as early as the time of gaudenzio appeared in that city the coronation of thorns, painted by titian, which was so greatly admired that several of his pupils came to establish themselves there, besides other foreigners. some unfortunate circumstances also occurred; particularly the plague, which more than once, in the same century, desolated the state, and which, sweeping off native artists, opened the way to strangers who succeeded to their commissions. hence lomazzo, at the close of his tempio, only commends three among the milanese figure-painters, who then flourished, luini, gnocchi, and duchino, the rest being all foreigners. the attachment shewn by several noble families to the arts, conduced to invite them thither, and in particular that of the borromea, which presented to the archiepiscopal seat of their country two distinguished prelates, cardinal carlo, who added to the number of saints at the altar, and federigo, who nearly attained the same honours. both were inspired by the same spirit of religion; they were simple in private, but splendid and liberal in public. out of their economy they clothed and fed numbers of citizens, and promoted the dignity of the sanctuary, and of their country. they erected and restored many noble edifices, and decorated with paintings a far greater number both in and beyond the city, insomuch as to make it observed that milan was no less indebted to the borromei than florence to her medici, or mantua to her gonzaghi. the car. federigo, who received his education first at bologna, then at rome, not only possessed a decided inclination but a taste for the fine arts; and he also enjoyed a longer and more tranquil pontificate than carlo, so as to enable him to afford them superior patronage. not satisfied with employing the ablest architects, sculptors, and painters in public works, he rekindled, as it were, the spark that yet survived of vinci's academy, instituting, with much care and expense, a new academy of the fine arts. he provided it with schools, with casts, and a very choice picture gallery,[ ] for the benefit of the young students, taking advantage of the plan and rules of the roman academy, founded a few years before, with his co-operation. the grand colossal figure of s. carlo reflects equal honour on the new school and on its founder, being executed in bronze from the design of cerani, and exhibited at arona, the place where the saint was born; a statue fourteen times the height of the human figure, and vieing with the grandest productions of greek or egyptian statuary. in painting, however, to say the truth, the new is not equal to the ancient school, though by no means deficient in fine artists, as we shall shew. meanwhile we must resume the thread of our history, and explain how the milanese, being reduced to very few artists, while painters were much in request for the ornament of churches and other public edifices, greatly on the increase, were superseded by foreign artists, such as the campi, the semini, the procaccini, and the nuvoloni, who introduced new styles, while others were sought out in foreign parts by some of the citizens of milan, particularly by cerano and by morazzone. these became the instructors of almost all the milanese youth, and of the state; these commencing their labours about , which they continued until after , at length rose so superior to the ancient schools, not so much in soundness of taste and maxims, as in the amenity of their colours, as gradually to extinguish them. nor did they only aim at teaching new styles; some of them began to treat them with so much haste as to fall into mannerism, from which period their school began to decline, and appeared to have adopted as a maxim to praise the theory of the ancients, and to practise the haste of the moderns. but let us return to our subject. footnote : he was one of the first in italy who collected paintings of the flemish school, which was then fast rising into reputation. his agreement with gio. breughel still exists, who painted for the academic collection at milan the four elements, pictures very often repeated, of which copies are to be seen in the royal gallery at florence, in the melzi collection at milan, and in several at rome. the artist, who had great skill in drawing flowers, fruits, herbs, birds, and animals, of which he formed copious and beautiful compositions, displayed a grand variety in these, and was no less admirable in his high finish, in the clearness of his colours, and in other qualities which acquired him the esteem of the greatest artists, among whom rubens was one who availed himself of his talents for landscape, which he introduced into his own pictures. i mentioned, not far back, in treating of titian's disciples, the names of callisto da lodi and gio. da monte, and i have here to add that of simone peterzano, or preterazzano, who, on his pietà, at s. fedele, inscribed himself _titiani discipulus_; and his close imitation seems to confirm its truth. he produced also works in fresco, and particularly at s. barnaba several histories of st. paul. he there appears to have aimed at uniting the expression, the foreshortening, and the perspective of the milanese to the colouring of the venetian artists; noble works, if they were thoroughly correct; and if the author had been as excellent in fresco as in oil painting. from venice, or rather from its senate, we trace the name of cesare dandolo, who went to settle at milan, and whose paintings adorn various palaces, esteemed no less for their art than on account of the rank of the noble artist. the campi were among the most eager to establish themselves at milan, where they were much employed, and bernardino more than the rest. he painted, likewise, in the adjacent cities, and it was at that period that he completed for the certosa, at pavia, the before-mentioned altar-piece of andrea solari, which, remaining unfinished at his death, was, after the lapse of many years, completed in the same style by bernardino, so as to appear wholly from the same hand. unable alone to despatch his commissions, he had his cartoons coloured by his pupils, who became, like their master, accurate, precise, and worthy of the commendations bestowed upon them by lomazzo. one of these was giuseppe meda, both painter and architect, who represented upon an organ, in the metropolitana, the figure of david seen playing before the ark. this work is cited by orlandi, under the name of carlo meda, who, perhaps, belonged to the family of the preceding, and who, as stated in the dictionary, appears younger. few of his other pictures are to be seen, as is observed by scannelli. another was daniello cunio, of milan, who became a landscape painter of great merit; perhaps a brother, or other relation of the same ridolfo cunio, who is met with in several milanese collections, and is particularly celebrated for his design. the third was carlo urbini da crema, one of the least celebrated but most deserving artists of his age, and one whom we have commemorated elsewhere. lamo observes, that bernardino had a vast number of scholars and assistants, and from his account, we are here enabled to add the names of andrea da viadana, giuliano or giulio de' capitani, of lodi, and andrea marliano, of pavia. perhaps, also, andrea pellini belongs to this list, who, though unknown in his native city of cremona, is celebrated at milan for his descent from the cross, placed at s. eustorgio, in . of a later date, appeared at milan the two semini, from genoa; both of whom were much employed, and both disciples of the roman more than any other style. ottavio, the eldest, instructed paol camillo landriani, called il duchino, who was justly praised in the tempio of lomazzo as a youth of the greatest promise. he subsequently produced a number of altar-pieces, among which was a nativity, at s. ambrogio, in which, to the design and elegance of his master, he unites perhaps a greater degree of softness. the professors hitherto described, do not reach the era of the art's decline, except, possibly, in their extreme old age; insomuch as to be fully worthy of the praise i bestow. the artists, however, who more particularly employed themselves in painting and teaching at milan during this period, were the procaccini of bologna. though not mentioned by lomazzo in his treatise, in the year , they are afterwards, in , recorded with much honour in his tempio; so that we may infer that they became celebrated during the intervening period at milan, where they afterwards established themselves in . ercole is at the head of this family, whom orlandi, following malvasia, represents in a military manner, as having lost the field at bologna, where he could no longer "make head against the samacchini, the cesi, the sabbatini, the passarotti, the fontana, the caracci, though he afterwards encountered the figini, the luini, the cerani, and the morazzoni, at milan." i am at a loss how to verify such an assertion. ercole was born in , as i gathered from a ms. of p. resta, in the ambrosian library; and in , when the "temple of painting" first issued from the press, he was very old, nor did he ever exhibit any of his pictures in public at milan, so that lomazzo ought to have sought subjects for commendation of him from parma, and more particularly bologna. many of his works still remain there, from which we may decide whether malvasia and baldinucci had more reason to represent him as an artist of mediocrity, or lomazzo to entitle him a very successful imitator of the great coreggio's colouring, as well as of his grace and beauty. in my own opinion he appears somewhat minute in design, and feeble in his colouring, resembling the tone of the florentines; a thing so common among his contemporaries, that i know not why it should be made a peculiar reproach to him. for the rest he is more pleasing, accurate, and exact, than most artists of his age; and possibly his over diligence acted as an obstacle to him in a city where the rapid fontana bore the chief sway. but this quality, besides exempting him from the mannerism then beginning to prevail, rendered him an excellent preceptor; whose principal duty is found to consist in checking the impatience of young artists, and accustoming them to precision and delicacy of taste. thus many excellent pupils sprung from his school, such as samacchini, sabbatini, and bertoia. he instructed also his three sons, camillo, giulio cesare, and carlo antonio, from which last sprung ercole the younger; all masters of young milanese artists, and of whom it will be our business to treat in succession. camillo is the only one of the three who was known to lomazzo, who describes him as an artist distinguished both for his design and his colouring. he received his first instructions from his father, and often displays a resemblance in his heads, and in the distribution of his tints; though, where he painted with care, he both warmed and broke them, as well as employed the middle colours, in a superior manner. he studied other schools, and if we are to believe some of his biographers, he practised at rome from the models of raffaello and michelangiolo, besides being passionately devoted to the heads of parmigianino, an imitation of which is perceptible in all his works. he possessed wonderful facility both in conception and execution; added to nature, beauty, and spirit, always attractive to the eye, though they do not always satisfy the judgment. nor is this surprising, as he early threw off the reign of paternal instruction, and executed works enough to have employed ten artists, at bologna, at ravenna, reggio, piacenza, pavia, and genoa. he was by many called the vasari, and the zuccaro of lombardy; although to say truth, he surpasses them in sweetness of style and of colours. he was particularly engaged at milan, a city which boasts some of his best productions, by which he obtained reputation there; and many of his worst, with which he satisfied those who valued his name. of his earliest works there, and the most free from mannerism, are those adorning the exterior of the organ at the metropolitana, along with various mysteries of our lady, and two histories of david playing upon his harp; all described very minutely by malvasia. but he produced nothing in milan equal to his judgment at s. procol di reggio, esteemed one of the finest specimens of fresco in all lombardy; and to his s. rocco among the sick and dying of the plague, a picture that intimidated annibal caracci, when he had to paint a companion for it, (see malvasia, p. ). the pictures produced by camillo, in the cathedral of piacenza, where the duke of parma had placed him in competition with lodovico caracci, whose genius was then mature, are well and carefully executed. he there represented our lady crowned queen of the universe by the almighty, surrounded with a very full choir of angels, in whose forms he displayed the most finished beauty. it was the part of lodovico to represent other angels around; and opposite to the coronation the _padri del limbo_. the first occupied the most distinguished place in the tribune; though both then and now he was esteemed by spectators the least worthy of the two. however advantageously he there appears, and entitled to the applause of girupeno and other historians, as well as travellers, he at the same time loses a portion of his consequence at the side of caracci, who, by the novelty of his ideas, the natural expression of his countenances, of his attitudes, and of his symbols, especially in those angels opposed to the more common conceptions of his rival, makes the monotony and weakness of procaccini the more remarkable. caracci's superior dignity, likewise, in his figures of the patriarchs, throws that of camillo's divinity into the shade. they also executed some histories of the madonna, placed opposite each other; and almost bearing the same proportion as we have already mentioned. but as the caracci were few, procaccini for the most part triumphed over his competitors. he is even now well received in the collections of the great, and our own prince has recently obtained one of his assumptions, with apostles surrounding the tomb of jesus, a picture full of variety, and in a grand manner. giulio cesare, the best of the procaccini, at first devoted himself to sculpture with success, subsequently attaching himself to painting, as to a less laborious and more pleasing art. he frequented the caracci academy at bologna; and it is said, that taking offence at some satirical observations of annibal's, he struck, and even wounded him. his french biographer states giulio's birth to have occurred in , though he postpones this quarrel until , in which year the procaccini established themselves at milan. it must have occurred, however, much earlier, as in giulio was a renowned painter, while annibal was in his decline. giulio cesare's studies were directed to the models of coreggio, and it is the opinion of many, that no one approached nearer to the grand style of that artist. in his small pictures, with few figures, in which imitation is more easy, he has often been mistaken for his original, though his elegance cannot boast the same clear and native tone, nor his colours the same rich and vigorous handling. one of his madonnas, at s. luigi de' francesi, at rome, was, in fact, engraved not long since for a work of allegri, by an excellent artist; and there are other equally fine imitations at the sanvitali palace, in parma; in that of the careghi, in genoa, and other places. among his numerous altar-pieces, the one i have seen, which displays most of the coreggio manner, is at s. afra, in brescia. it represents the virgin and child, surrounded with some figures of angels and saints, which are seen gazing and smiling upon him. he has perhaps, indeed, gone somewhat beyond the limits of propriety, in order to attain more grace, which is the case with his nunziata, at s. antonio, in milan; in which the holy virgin and angel are seen smiling at each other; a circumstance hardly compatible either with the time or the mystery. in his attitudes, also, he was occasionally guilty of extravagance, as in his martyrdom of s. nazario, in the church of that name, a picture attractive by its harmony and its grace, though the figure of the executioner is in too forced a position. giulio left many very large histories, such as his passage of the red sea, at s. vittore, in milan; and more in genoa, where soprani has pointed them out. what is surprising, in so vast a number of his pieces, is the accuracy of his design, the variety of his ideas, and his diligence both in his naked and dressed parts, combined at the same time with a grandeur, which, if i mistake not, he derived from the caracci. in the sacristy of s. maria, at sarono, is his picture of saints andrea, carlo, and ambrogio, displaying the most dignified character of their school; if, indeed, we are not to suppose, that in common with the caracci, he acquired it from those magnificent models of the art at parma. to these two may be added carlantonio procaccini, not as a figure, but a good landscape painter, and a tolerable hand in drawing fruits and flowers. he produced a variety of pieces for the milanese gallery, which happening to please the court, then one of the branches of spain, he had frequent commissions from that country, insomuch that he rose, though the weakest of the family, into the highest repute. the procaccini opened school at milan, where they obtained the reputation of kind and able masters, educating, both for the city and state, so great a number of artists, that it would be neither possible nor useful to comprise them all in a history. they could boast among them some inventors of a new style, the same as the disciples of the caracci; though most of them aimed at observing the manner of their masters; some maintaining it by their accuracy, and others injuring it by their over haste. we reserve the series of them, however, to the last epoch, in order not to disperse the same school through different parts. the last of the foreigners who then gave instructions at milan, was panfilo nuvolone, a noble cremonese, of whose style we treated at length in the list of the cav. trotti's disciples. he was a diligent rather than an imaginative artist, and produced no works of any extent at milan, except for the nunneries of saints domenico and lazzaro, where he painted in the ceiling the history of lazarus and the rich man, with true pictoric splendour; which is no less apparent in his assumption of the virgin, in the cupola of the passione. in his altar-pieces, and histories executed for the ducal gallery at parma, he aimed rather at perfecting than at multiplying his figures. he instructed his four sons, two of whom are unknown in the history of the art, and the two others are frequently mentioned by different illustrators of the paintings of milan, of piacenza, of parma, and of brescia; where they are also surnamed, from their father, the panfili. we shall, however, treat of them more particularly in the age during which they flourished. fede galizia introduced another foreign style into milan, a female artist, who, according to orlandi, was a native of trent. her father, annunzio, was a celebrated miniaturist, born at the same place, and a resident at milan, and from him perhaps she acquired that taste for accuracy and finish of hand, no less remarkable in her figures than in her landscapes; in other points, more similar to the bolognese predecessors of the caracci, than to any other school. there are some specimens of her style in foreign collections. one of her best studied pictures is seen at s. maria maddalena, where she painted the titular saint, with the figure of christ in the dress of a gardener. this lady has been criticised by the excellent author of the guide, for her too great study of the ideal, which she aimed at introducing both into her design and colouring, at the expense of nature and of truth, a practice pretty much in vogue at that period in italy. about the same time, one orazio vaiano was employed a good deal at milan, where he long resided, called il fiorentino from his extraction. he, in some way, came to be confounded, in some of his pictures, with the elder palma, as we are informed by orlandi; but how, it is difficult to say. the specimens of his composition at s. carlo and at s. antonio abate, are judicious and diligent, though somewhat feeble in point of colouring; and in the distribution of their lights much resembling the tone of roncalli. he likewise visited genoa; but neither he nor galizia, as i am aware, left any pupils at milan. the same may be said of the two carloni, noble fresco painters belonging to genoa, and of valerio profondavalle, from lovanio, who painted glass, as well as in oil and in fresco, for all which he had frequent commissions at court. we ought here to add the name of federigo zuccari, an artist invited by the card. federigo borromeo to take up his residence at milan, where, as well as at pavia, he painted, as we have mentioned, (at p. , vol. ii). i am indebted to the polite and kind attention of sig. bernardo gattoni, chaplain and rector of the other borromean college at pavia, for correcting an error into which i had fallen, from following the local tradition rather than the written authority of the same zuccheri, in his "passaggio per l'italia," a very rare work, and which i had not seen at that time. in it are described the pictures of the borromean college at pavia; and it appears, that zuccari produced no other besides the principal picture, that of s. carlo, who is seen in the consistory in the act of receiving the cardinal's hat; the rest being from the hand of cesare nebbia, who flourished at the same period. in order to have them retouched at leisure, while they were left to dry, the cardinal federigo despatched the two artists to visit the sacred mount of varallo, whence they passed to arona, and next to the isola bella, situated upon the lago maggiore, where the cardinal joined them, and where each of them left a work in fresco, upon two pilasters of the chapel at that place. there has since been found in the archives of the college, an original letter of the cardinal, in which he recommends to the then rector, that nebbia should be received into the college, and the sums of money disbursed to both, entered in the books of account. proceeding next to those artists who studied at other places, i shall briefly mention ricci of novara, with paroni and nappi of milan, not omitting others of the same place, commemorated in the lives of baglioni. residing at rome, they in no way contributed to the fame of their native school, neither by their pupils, nor their example; and even at rome, they may be said to have added rather to the number of paintings than to the decoration of the city. ricci was a fresco painter, very well adapted to the hasty temper of sixtus v., whose works he superintended, and promoted the effeminate taste then so prevalent; he possessed much facility and beauty of forms. paroni pursued the manner of caravaggio, but his career was short. nappi displays great variety; and when he painted in his lombard manner, such as in his assumption, at the cloister of the minerva, with other pieces at the umiltà, he shewed himself a naturalist far more pleasing than the mannerists of his time. there flourished likewise, for a few years, at rome, the cav. pier francesco mazzuchelli, called from his birthplace morazzone. after practising there for a period, from all the best models, which influenced both his mind and his productions, he directed his attention to the milanese school, in which he taught, and succeeded beyond all example, in improving his own style. it will be sufficient to compare his picture of the epiphany which he painted in fresco for one of the chapels of s. silvestro _in capite_, which boasts no beauty beyond that of colouring; and his other epiphany, placed at s. antonio abate, at milan, which appears like the production of another hand; such is the superiority of the design, the effect, and the display of drapery, in the manner of the venetians. he is said to have studied titian and paul veronese; and some of his angels are painted with arms and legs, in those long proportions that are not the best characteristics of tintoretto. in general, the genius of morazzone was not adapted for the graceful, but for the strong and magnificent; as appears in his s. michael's conquest over the bad angels, at s. gio. di como, and in the chapel of the flagellazione, at varese. in he was invited to piacenza, to paint the grand cupola of the cathedral, a work which was left very incomplete by his death, and bestowed upon guercino. he had drawn the figures of two prophets, which, in any other place, would have appeared to the greatest advantage; but there they are thrown into the shade by those of his successor, that magician of his art, who threw into it the whole enchantment of which he was capable. morazzone was employed for different collections, no less than for churches; and received a number of commissions from cardinal federigo, and the king of sardinia, from which last he received his title of cavalier. contemporary with him flourished gio. batista crespi, better known by the name of cerano, his native place, a small town in the novarese. sprung from a family of artists, which left specimens of its genius at s. maria di busto, where his grandfather gio. piero, and raffaello, his father or uncle, (i am not certain which,) had been employed. he studied at rome, and at venice, uniting to that of painting great knowledge in the art of modelling, as well as in architecture; being, moreover distinguished for good taste in literature and for polite accomplishments. with such qualifications he took the lead at the court of milan, from which he received a salary; no less than in the great undertakings of the card. federigo, and in the direction of the academy. not to dwell upon the buildings, statues, and bassi-relievi, which he either designed or executed, but which are less connected with my subject, he painted a great number of altar-pieces, in which he at once exhibited, if i mistake not, great excellences and great defects. he is invariably free, spirited, and harmonious; but he frequently, from too great affectation of grace or of magnificence, falls into a degree of mannerism, as in some of his histories at the pace, where his naked figures are heavy, and the attitudes of others too extravagant. in his other subjects these defects are less apparent; but here he has also overloaded his shadows. in the greater part of his works, notwithstanding, the correct and the beautiful so far abounds, as to shew that he was one of the first masters of his school. thus in his baptism of s. agostino, painted for s. marco, he rivals giulio cesare procaccini, whose productions are placed opposite, and in the opinion of some he surpasses him. another instance occurs in his altar-piece of saints carlo and ambrogio, at santo paolo, where, in taste of colouring at least he surpasses the campi; and a third in his celebrated picture of the rosario, at s. lazzaro, which casts into shade the fine fresco painting of nuvoloni. he was particularly skilled in drawing birds and quadrupeds, of which he composed pictures for private ornament, as we gather from soprani in his life of sinibaldo scorza. he educated many pupils, whom we shall reserve for an inferior epoch, excepting daniele crespi of milan, who, on account of his worth, and the period in which he flourished, ought not to be separated from his master. daniele is one among those distinguished italians who are hardly known beyond their native place. he possessed, however, rare genius, and, instructed by cerano, and afterwards by the best of the procaccini, undoubtedly surpassed the first, and in the opinion of many likewise the second, though he did not live to reach the age of forty. he had great penetration in learning, and equal facility in executing, selecting the best part of every master he studied, and knowing how to reject the worst. familiar with the maxims of the caracci school, even without frequenting it, he adopted and practised them with success. he shews this in his distribution of colours, and in the varied expression of his countenances; select and careful in disposing them according to the prevailing passions of the mind; and above all, admirable in catching the beautiful and devotional spirit that ought to inspire the heads of saints. in the distribution of his figures he at once observes a natural and well judged order, so that no one would wish to behold them placed otherwise than they are. their drapery is finely varied, and very splendid in the more imposing characters of the piece. his colouring is extremely powerful, no less in oil than in fresco; and in the highly ornamented church of la passione, for which he painted his grand descent from the cross, he left many portraits of distinguished cardinals, all composed in the best titian taste. he is indeed one of those rare geniuses who delight in being constant rivals of themselves, calling forth their highest energies in each production, in order that they may in some way surpass the last; geniuses, who know how to correct in their later paintings the errors they committed in their first, exhibiting in them the full maturity of those excellences which they discovered in their early attempts. his last pieces, consisting of acts from the life of s. brunone, at the certosa, in milan, are of all the most admired. that of the dottor parigino is more particularly celebrated, in which, having raised himself on his bier, he declares his state of reprobation. what desperation he exhibits! what horror in the faces of the beholders! nor is that of the duke of calabria less excellent, where, in going to the chase, he meets with the holy hermit, a picture upon which the artist inscribed, _daniel crispus mediolanensis pinxit hoc templum_. _an. ._ this was the year before his death, as he was unhappily cut off by the plague of , together with his whole family. we may here add, as a sort of corollary to the foregoing, the names of some other artists who displayed great merit, though it is uncertain of what school. such is gio. batista tarillio, by whom there was an altar-piece with the date of , painted for the now suppressed church of s. martino in compito. there are some pictures by another native of milan, named ranuzio prata, at pavia. these i have not seen; they are, however, greatly commended by others. he flourished about . the novarese also boasted at that period two artists who were brothers, both of whom coloured in pretty good taste. these were antonio and gio. melchiore tanzi, the former a very able designer, who competed with carloni at milan, distinguished himself at varallo, and painted at s. gaudenzio di novara the battle of senacherib, a work full of spirit and intelligence. there are likewise other of his works preserved in the galleries of vienna, of venice, and of naples, representing both histories and perspectives; but of his brother there is nothing remaining of any great degree of merit. school of milan. epoch iv. _the art continues to decline after the time of daniele crespi. a third academy is founded with a view of improving it._ we now approach the last epoch, which may be truly entitled the decline of this school. i recollect hearing the opinion of a good judge, that daniele crespi might be called the last of the milanese, just as in another sense cato was pronounced _ultimus romanorum_. the observation is correct, so far as it applies to certain geniuses superior to the common lot, but false if we should extend it to the exclusion of every artist of merit from the period which it embraces. it would be injustice to the names of nuvoloni and cairo, and several others who flourished in an age nearer our own. but in the same way as cassiodorus and some other writers are insufficient to remove the stain of barbarism from their age, so the artists we treat of cannot redeem theirs from the stigma of its decline. it is the majority which invariably gives a tone to the times; and he who may have seen milan and its state would be at no loss to remark, that after the introduction of the procaccini school, design was more than ever neglected, and mechanical practice succeeded to reason and taste. artists, after the visitation of the plague, had become more rare; and subsequent to the death of the cardinal borromeo, in , they became less united, insomuch that the academy founded by him remained closed during twenty years; and if by the exertions of antonio busca it was then re-opened, still it never afterwards produced works similar to those of other times. whether owing to the manner of teaching, to the want of its great patron, or to the abundance of commissions and the kindness of those who gave them, which urged young artists prematurely to make abortive efforts; no school, perhaps, on the loss of its great masters, was filled with so great a number of inferior and bad ones. i shall not give much account of them, yet must not omit such names as have attained to some consideration. in general it may be remarked of the artists of this epoch, that though the pupils of different schools, they display a mutual resemblance, as much as if they had been instructed by the same master. they possess no character that strikes the eye, no beauty of proportions, no vivacity of countenance, no grace in their colouring. their whole composition appears languid, even their imitation of the head of the school does not please, as it is either deficient, or overdone, or falls into insignificance. in their choice of colours we detect a certain resemblance to the bolognese school, to which their guides were not very much opposed, though we often perceive that sombre cast which then prevailed in nearly all the other schools. to this uniformity of style in milan, ercole procaccini the younger most probably contributed, an artist in whom an unprejudiced critic will be at no loss to detect the character we have described. but in his more studied works, as we find in an assumption, at s. m. maggiore, in bergamo, he exhibits dignity, spirit, and a happy imitation of the coreggio manner. he received his first instructions from his father carlantonio, and next from giulio cesare, his paternal uncle. it is known that by public report, by his insinuating manners, and by the family reputation, he arrived at a degree of consideration beyond his merit, and lived till he reached the age of eighty. hence he induced many to follow his maxims, and the more as he kept an open academy for the study of the naked figure at his own house, and succeeded his uncles in their instructions; equal to them perhaps in rapidity, but not so well grounded in the art. he painted much; and in the best collections in milan, if he is not in as much request as many others, he yet maintains his place. two young artists educated in his school reflected credit upon it; carlo vimercati, who owed his success to the most pertinacious study of daniele's works at the certosa, which he daily visited for a long period while at milan, and antonio busca, who likewise employed his talents upon the best models both at milan and rome. vimercati exhibited few of his pictures in public at milan; he painted more at codogno, and in his best manner, as well as in a new one in which he was greatly inferior. busca assisted his master, and at s. marco also was employed in competition with him. there, placed opposite to some histories by procaccini, is seen his picture of the crucifixion full of pious beauty, surrounded with figures of the virgin, of mary magdalen, and s. john, who are all weeping, and almost draw tears from the eyes of the spectator. but he did not always succeed as in this specimen; the gout deprived him of the use of his feet, and he fell into a weak and abject style, the result of mere mechanic practice. in this state of health, i imagine, he must have conducted two holy histories, placed opposite each other, in the chapel of s. siro at the certosa in pavia, in which he idly repeated in the second the same features as distinguished the first, so greatly is an artist sometimes in contradiction with himself. a similar complaint might be alleged for a different reason, in regard to the style of cristoforo storer, a native of constance. a pupil to the same ercole, he also produced works of solid taste, as in the instance of his s. martino, which i saw in possession of the ab. bianconi, a picture much valued by its intelligent owner. subsequently he became a mannerist, and not unfrequently adopted gross or common ideas. in other points he displays much spirit, and is one of the few belonging to that age who may lay claim to the title of a good colourist. i am uncertain whether gio. ens, of milan, sprung from the same school, as well as at what precise time he nourished; i know that he was an artist of less talent, whose delicacy often bordered upon weakness, as we may perceive at s. marco in milan. lodovico antonio david of lugano, a scholar of ercole, of cairo, and of cignani, resided at rome. there he produced some portraits, and at one period made the tour of italy. the city of venice possesses one of his nativities at s. silvestro, conducted in a minute manner, that betrays a disciple of camillo more than of any other of the procaccini. he wrote too upon painting, and compiled some account of coreggio, for which the reader may consult orlandi under the head of that artist,[ ] or perhaps in preference, tirasboschi, in his life of him. footnote : in the additions to the dictionary, made by guarienti, following the article orlandi, we find lodovico david of lugano, of whose pencil he could only trace the picture at s. silvestro in venice. this is one of the mistakes committed by this continuator. next to the nephew of the best procaccini, i may place the son-in-law of one of the others. this is the cav. federigo bianchi, on whom, after affording him his instructions, giulio cesare bestowed the hand of one of his daughters. he derived from his father-in-law his maxims, rather than his forms and attitudes, which display an original air in bianchi, and are at once graceful and beautiful without affectation. some of his holy families at s. stefano and at the passione are held in much esteem, besides some of his other pictures exhibiting few, but well conceived figures. such is that of a visitazione at s. lorenzo, every way creditable to one of the favourite pupils of giulio cesare. he was not distinguished in compositions of a grander character; but he was full of ideas, united to harmony and good keeping, and altogether one of the first milanese artists in the present age. he was much employed in piedmont, and we are indebted to him for notices of many artists which he communicated to p. orlandi, by whom they were made public. this artist is not to be confounded with one francesco bianchi, a friend and almost inseparable companion of antonmaria ruggieri. they painted together for the most part in fresco, and without the least dispute consented to share all the emolument, all the praise and blame they might receive. they belong to the present age, to which they have bequeathed a more noble example of mutual attachment than of the art they professed. the greater part of the procaccini disciples sprung from the school of camillo. he had likewise taught at bologna, though his only pupil known there is lorenzo franco, who, with his instructions, afterwards became an excellent imitator of the caracci. in the opinion of p. resta, however, his style was somewhat too minute; this artist resided and died at reggio. the school of camillo at milan was always full, and no one reflected upon it greater credit than andrea salmeggia of bergamo, of whom we treated in the preceding book. becoming a follower of raffaello at rome, he occasionally returned to his native place, where he attracted admiration by his productions. like the rest gio. batista discepoli, called zoppo di lugnano, was at one time the disciple of camillo, but afterwards added much of other styles, and was one of the most natural, powerful, and rich colourists of his time. for the rest he is to be included in the rank of the naturalists, rather than among the lovers of the ideal. several of his pictures are at milan, in particular that of his purgatorio at s. carlo, executed with much skill; and he painted a good deal for his native place and its confines, as well as at como, where he ornamented santa teresa with a picture of the titular saint, with lateral squares, esteemed one of the best altar-pieces belonging to the city. carlo cornara acquired equal reputation, though in an opposite style. he produced few works, but all conducted with an exquisite degree of taste, peculiarly his own, which renders them valuable in collections. one of his best altar-pieces was painted for s. benedetto, at the certosa, in pavia, a picture now much defaced by time, and there are a few others completed by one of his daughters after his death, who added to them some original pieces of her own. giovanni mauro rovere, an artist who exchanged the manner of camillo for that of giulio cesare, was among the earliest followers of the procaccini, and might be referred to their epoch from the period in which he flourished, did not his inferior character, arising from too great rapidity of hand, prevent his admission into the same rank. he had all that fire, which, when directed with judgment, is the soul of painting, but when abused destroys the beauty of the art. it was very seldom that he was able to command it, though, in a supper of our lord, at s. angelo, in which he used great care, he obtained corresponding success. he had two brothers, named giambatista and marco, who assisted him in his labours both for churches and private houses, both of whom were inaccurate but spirited. they have left works in fresco, besides some histories in oil, perspectives, battle-pieces, and landscapes, to be met with in almost every corner of the city. i find that they were also surnamed rossetti, and still better known under the name of fiamminghini, derived from their father riccardo, who came from flanders to establish himself at milan. to these three rossetti, succeeded the three santagostini, of whom the first, named giacomo antonio, was pupil to carlo procaccini. he gave few pieces to the public, though his sons agostino and giacinto were more indefatigable, both conjointly, as we may gather from their two grand histories at s. fedele, and separately. they were distinguished above most of their contemporaries, more especially agostino. he was the first who wrote a little work upon the paintings of milan; it was entitled _l'immortalità e glorie del pennello_, and published in . whatever rank a book with such a title ought to assume among the writers of the age, it is certain that his pictures exhibit him in the light of a good painter for his time, in particular a holy family, painted for s. alessandro, and a few others among the more highly finished, in which he displays expression, beauty, and harmony, although somewhat too minute. the names of ossana, bissi, ciocca, ciniselli, with others still less celebrated at milan, i may venture to pass over without much loss to this history. the two nuvoloni, not long since mentioned, though instructed by their father, may be said, in some way, to belong to the procaccini. thus carlo francesco, the elder, early adopted the manner of giulio cesare; and in giuseppe we every where trace a composition and colouring derived from that school. the former, however, impelled by his genius, became a follower of guido, and so far succeeded as to deserve the name, which he still enjoys, of the guido of lombardy. he does not abound in figures, but in these he is pleasing and graceful, elegant in his forms and the turn and air of his heads, united to a sweetness and harmony of tints which are seldom met with. i saw one of his heads at s. vittore, where he drew the miracle of st. peter over the porta speciosa, and many other pieces at milan, parma, cremona, piacenza, and como, in the same excellent taste. this artist was selected to take the portrait of the queen of spain when she visited milan; and there still appear in private houses those of many noble individuals who employed him. the faces of his madonnas are in high request for collections, one of which is in the possession of the conti del verme, displaying all the grace and beauty so peculiar to him, and which he has here perhaps indulged at the expense of that dignity which should never be lost sight of. orlandi gives an account of his devotional exercises, which he always performed previous to his painting the portraits of the virgin. i know not what opinion may be formed upon this point, either by his or my readers. for my own part i indulge the same peculiar admiration of this artist in the rank of painters, as i do of justus lipsius among literary men, who, though both seculars, always observed great filial piety towards our holy lady; a piety that has descended from the earliest fathers of the church, in a regular line, down to the elect of our own times. his younger brother painted on a much larger scale; boasted more pictoric fire and more fancy; but he did not always display equal taste, nor was exempt from harsh and sombre shadows that detract from his worth. he was more indefatigable than carlo, painting not only for the cities of lombardy above mentioned, but for the state of venice, and many churches in brescia. his pictures at s. domenico in cremona, in particular his grand piece of the dead man raised by the saint, adorned with beautiful architecture, and animated with the most natural expression, are among some of his best works. they were apparently executed in the vigour of life, inasmuch as there are others bearing traces of infirmity, he having pursued the art until his eightieth year, in which his death occurred. i cannot learn that he left any pupils of note. his brother, carlo francesco, however, instructed gioseffo zanata, extremely well versed in the art, according to the opinion of orlandi. under him, and subsequently under the venetian artists, studied likewise federigo panza, an artist who began with using strong shadows, which he improved as his genius grew more mature. he was well employed and remunerated by the court of turin. filippo abbiati frequented the same school, a man of wonderful talent, adapted for works on an immense scale; rich in ideas, and resolute in executing them. he painted with a certain freedom, amounting to audacity, which, however imperfect, does not fail to please, and would have pleased much more had he been better versed in the principles of his art. he was placed in competition with federigo bianchi, in the grand ceiling of s. alessandro martire, and with other fine fresco painters; and he every where left evidence of a noble genius. he appears to singular advantage in his preaching of s. john the baptist at sarono, a picture to which is affixed his name. it has few figures, but they are fine and varied, with strong tints, and very appropriate shadows, which produce a good effect. pietro maggi, his disciple, was not equal to him in genius, nor did he observe his moderation and care. giuseppe rivola, employed for private persons more than for the public, is also deserving of mention, his fellow citizens esteeming him among the best of abbiati's pupils. cerano, though engaged in a variety of other labours, instructed many pupils, and more particularly melchiorre giraldini, with success. he very happily caught the manner of his teacher, easy, agreeable, and harmonious, but still inferior to him in the more masterly power of his pencil. at the madonna at s. celso is seen a picture of s. caterina da siena by his hand, that has been greatly commended. cerano gave him his daughter in marriage, and left him the whole of his studio. he engraved in acqua forte some minute histories and battle-pieces in the manner of callot, and he instructed his son in the same branch, whose battle-pieces have been much prized in collections. he also taught a young artist of gallarate, named carlo cane, who, devoting himself at a more advanced age to the manner of morazzone, became a great proficient in it. he imitated with some success his strength of colouring and his relief; in other points he was common both in his forms and conceptions. he painted some altars, and in the larger one of the cathedral at monza, there is one representing different saints, at the feet of whom is seen the figure of a dog, which he inserted in all his pieces, even that of paradise, to express his name. he observed an excellent method in his frescos, his histories of saints ambrogio and ugo, which he painted for the grand church of the certosa at pavia, as well as others, still retaining all their original freshness. he opened school at milan, and we may form an idea of the character of his pupils from his own mediocrity. cesare fiori, indeed, acquired some degree of reputation, several of whose ornamental works on a great scale, have been made public. he too had a scholar named andrea porta, who aimed at catching the manner of legnanino. there are others who approach the two best of the cerani, namely, giuliano pozzobonelli, an artist of good credit, and bartolommeo genovesini,[ ] by whom there remain works possessing some degree of grandeur; besides gio. batista secchi, surnamed from his country caravaggio, who painted for s. pietro in gessato, an altar-piece of the epiphany with his name. footnote : i thus named him in the former edition, because all other writers had so done before me, but his family name was roverio and his surname genovesino. see the first index. morazzone had to boast a numerous list of pupils, imitators, and copyists, both at milan and elsewhere. the cav. francesco cairo reflected honour upon this school, who, having commenced his career, as is usual, by pursuing his master's footsteps, afterwards changed his manner on meeting with better models, which he studied at rome and venice. he also worked on a great scale, and coloured with effect, united, however, to a delicacy of hand and grace of expression, altogether forming a style that surprises us by its novelty. his pictures of the four saints, founders of the church at s. vittore, of his s. teresa swooning with celestial love at s. carlo, his s. saverio at brera, various portraits in the titian manner, and other pieces, public and private, at milan, at turin, and elsewhere, entitle him to rank high in the art, though he is not always free from the reproach of sombre colouring. morazzone derived some credit from the two brothers gioseffo and stefano danedi, more commonly called the montalti. the first, after being instructed by him in the art, became more refined in his taste under guido reni, of whose style he sufficiently partakes, as we may perceive in his slaughter of the innocents at s. sebastiano, and in his nunziata its companion. stefano frequented no foreign schools that i know of, though he did not wholly confine himself to morazzone's manner, rather aiming at refining it upon the example of his brother, and painting with a degree of accuracy and study that he did not find recommended by the taste of his times. his martyrdom of s. giustina, which he produced for s. maria in pedone, forms a specimen of this refinement, while it is moreover exempt from that cold and languid tone which diminishes the value of his other works. one of those artists most attached to morazzone's style, and who nearest approaches him in the boldness of his pencil, is the cav. isidoro bianchi, otherwise called isidoro da campione, a better fresco than oil painter, from what we gather at the church of s. ambrosio at milan, and in others at como. he was selected by the duke of savoy, to complete a large hall at rivoli, left imperfect by the decease of pier francesco. there he was declared painter to the ducal court in . about the same period flourished at como, besides the bustini,[ ] the two brothers gio. paolo and gio. batista recchi, whose chief merit was in painting frescos, disciples likewise of morazzone. these artists decorated s. giovanni, and other churches of their native place, two chapels at varese, with others in the same vicinity. the second of them also became eminent beyond the state, particularly at s. carlo in turin, where he is placed near his master. his style is solid and strong, his colouring forcible, and in the skill of his foreshortening on ceilings, he yields to very few of his day. pasta in his guide for bergamo has deservedly praised him on this score, when speaking of a santa grata, seen rising into heaven, a work, he observes, that is admirably delightful. in some of the chambers of the veneria, at turin, he was assisted by one gio. antonio his nephew. the milanese guide mentions several other artists, apparently, judging from their style, instructed by the preceding, such as paolo caccianiga, tommaso formenti, and giambatista pozzi. footnote : benedetto crespi, who possessed, according to orlandi, a manner at once strong and elegant, with antonio maria, his son and pupil, and pietro bianchi, to whom he left his designs, all three called bustini. whilst the milanese school was thus hastening to its close, and no longer afforded masters of equal promise, either to the first or second of its series, its youth were compelled to have recourse to richer and more genuine sources, and at this period began to disperse in search of new styles. i omit the family of the cittadini, which established itself at bologna, or to say truth, i reserve it to its own school. stefano legnani, called il legnanino, in order to distinguish him from his father cristoforo, a portrait-painter, became one of the most celebrated artists in lombardy towards the beginning of this century, having studied the schools of cignani at bologna, and maratta at rome. in either of these cities he would have been esteemed one of the best disciples of these two masters, had he left there any of his productions; although in course of time he fell into a degree of mannerism. he is tasteful, sober, and judicious in his compositions, with a certain strength and clearness of colouring, not common among the disciples of maratta. he became famous for his fresco histories, which are seen at s. marco and at s. angiolo, where there is also one of his battles, which is won by the protection of st. james the apostle, which shews a pictoric fire equal to handling the most difficult themes. he left too a variety of works in genoa, turin, and piedmont, besides his painting of the cupola at novara, in the church of s. gaudenzio, than which he produced nothing more truly beautiful. andrea lanzani, after receiving the instructions of scaramuccia, pupil to guido, who remained for some period at milan, passed into the school of maratta at rome. but his genius finally decided him to adopt a less placid style, and he began to imitate lanfranco. his best productions, as it has been observed of others, are those which on his first return from rome he executed in his native place, while still fresh from the roman maxims and the roman models. a proof of this is seen in his s. carlo beatified, which on certain days is exhibited along with other pictures in the capital. he painted also a fine piece for the ambrosian library, representing the actions of cardinal federigo, in which there is a rich display of imagination, of drapery, and good effect of chiaroscuro. he is for the most part praised on account of his facility, and the boldness of his hand. he died in germany, after being honoured with the title of cavalier, and left no better pupil behind him in italy than ottavio parodi, who resided for a long period at rome, and is mentioned with commendation by orlandi. from rome also, and from the school of ciro ferri, ambrogio besozzi returned to milan, in order to study the cortona manner as a counterpoise to that of maratta. but he chiefly employed himself in ornamental, rather than historic painting, though very able in the last, as far as we may judge from his s. sebastian, at s. ambrogio. he studied pagani at venice, and likewise taught there, boasting the celebrated pellegrini as one of his disciples. zanetti remarks that he introduced into the academies of that city a new taste of design for the naked figure, somewhat overstrained, indeed, but of good effect. he left there a few pieces in public, and returned to close his days in lombardy. the churches and collections of milan abound with his pictures, and there are others in the dresden gallery. pietro gilardi passed from his native school into that of bologna, and there, under franceschini and giangioseffo del sole, greatly improved himself. his style is clear, easy, harmonious, and adapted to adorn cupolas, ceilings, and magnificent walls, as appears in the refectory of s. vittore, at milan, where his works do him credit. at varese he completed the chapel of the assumption, after the cartoons of legnanino, who died before it was finished; and a few of his own works left imperfect by death were, in their turn, continued and finished by the cav. gio. batista sassi. the style of this artist, who had assiduously employed himself under solimene in naples, is tolerable in regard to design. though he painted for several churches in pavia, and at milan, he acquired most reputation from his small pictures, intended for private ornament. i am not certain whether he introduced into these parts those greenish tints in colouring, which, from naples, spread through different schools, or whether it came by way of turin, where one corrado giaquinto was employed in drawing figures, and in painting. such method, however, did not here displease. gioseffo petrini da carono, pupil to prete of genoa, has carried it to its highest point, while piero magatti of varese is not wholly free from it, who flourished very recently: both were reputed good artists according to their time. nor could so great a city be in want of some venetian disciples, who have distinguished themselves in our own times; we behold some imitations of piazzetta, and some of tiepolo, in a few of the churches, it being usual with young artists to follow living masters in lucrative practice, in preference to the deceased whose emoluments are past. we ought here to insert the name of an eminent milanese, who reflected honour on his native state in foreign parts. this was francesco caccianiga, well known at rome, though little among his own countrymen. having treated of him, however, in the roman school, i shall merely recall his memory and merits to my readers. neither must i omit his contemporary, antonio cucchi, who remained at milan, not as his equal, but because he became eminent in the footsteps of the romans, for the diligence, if not for the spirit of his pencil. nor shall i pass over ferdinando porta, distinguished for a number of pictures, conducted in imitation of coreggio; an artist, however, too inconstant and unequal to himself. these names will suffice for the present epoch, which produced, indeed, others of some note, but not known beyond the confines of their own state. such works as the _pitture d' italia_, and the _nuova guida di milano_, will furnish the curious with information respecting them, until some further accounts of them be presented to the public. from the period when the capital began to encourage the foreign schools preferably to her own, the cities of the state followed the example, in particular that of pavia, which, during this last century, has had to boast more professors than any other state. yet none of these moderns are much known beyond the precincts of their native place. carlo soriani,[ ] however, deserved to be better known, an artist who painted for the cathedral his picture of the rosario, accompanied by fifteen mysteries, an elegant production in the taste of soiaro. the series of the artists alluded to begins with carlo sacchi, who is said by orlandi to have been taught by rosso of pavia, but most probably by carlantonio rossi, a milanese, who painted for the cathedral of pavia his s. siro, and two lateral pieces in the best procaccini taste, and is described in the _abbeccederio_ as an eccentric man, though well versed in his art. sacchi continued his studies at rome and venice, and when he wished to imitate paul veronese, as in his miracle of the dead resuscitated by s. jacopo, which is placed at the osservanti, he succeeded admirably, shewing himself a good colourist, splendid in ornament, spirited in attitude, except that in these he is somewhat extravagant and affected. he supplied different collections, and i saw an adam and eve by him in possession of the cav. brambilla at pavia, entitled to a place in that fine collection. it is doubtful whether gio. batista tassinari ought to be ranked among his fellow disciples, if we only regard the period in which he flourished. but we may with more certainty, upon orlandi's authority, pronounce carlo bersotti to have been his pupil, an excellent artist in inferior branches, to which he confined himself. tommaso gatti, together with bernardino ciceri, were, however, his best pupils, the first of whom pursued his studies at venice, the second at rome, and both succeeded at least as practical artists. gatti instructed marcantonio pellini, and then consigned him to the schools of venice and bologna, which did not carry him beyond the sphere of his master. ciceri was succeeded by his disciple gioseffo crastona, who, embued with roman erudition, became a painter of figures and of landscapes in that city, of which a number may be seen at pavia. among the latest are pierantonio barbieri, pupil to bastiano ricci, and carlantonio bianchi, a disciple of the roman manner. the artists whom i have described almost in a series, have filled all the churches of pavia, though many, with their respective paintings and their frescos, conferring additional novelty perhaps, but little additional splendor upon their native state; and no one visits pavia altogether on their account. footnote : he is thus called by bartoli. others also belonging to the state and its vicinity, about the time of sacchi, quitted their native place, and became celebrated in other quarters; as mola, of the state of como, of whom we have treated; and pietro de' pietri, who, born in the novarese, studied and died at rome, where he has been commended by us in the school of maratta. antonio sacchi, also a native of como, acquired his knowledge at rome, whence returning into lombardy, he undertook to paint a cupola for his native place, but fixing on too high a point of perspective, he made his figures so gigantic that he broke his heart and died. from como likewise sprung one fra emanuele, of the order of the minori riformati, whose name is incorrectly inserted by orlandi in the _abbeccedario_, as a self-taught painter. the fact is, that on being sent to reside at messina, he became a pupil to silla, and improving the feeble manner he had acquired in his native town, he decorated a number of places belonging to his order, both in rome and sicily, in a better taste. there are two of his pictures at como, at the riformati; a supper in the refectory, feebly executed in the style of the declining school of milan, and a pietà in the church, with different saints, in a better manner; such is the advantage of practice, reflection, and good guidance even at a mature age. this epoch produced a fine perspective painter, of whom mention is made under the roman school, in which he studied and left some works. this is gio. chisolfi, a pupil of salvator rosa, who, on his return to milan, besides his architectural pieces, which were esteemed among the very first, devoted himself to large histories and altar-pieces, and executed frescos in a good taste for the certosa of pavia, and the santuario of varese. he was followed with success by one of his nephews, bernardo racchetti, whose perspectives, no less than those of clemente spera, are frequently met with in collections. torre makes mention also of a native of lucca, who succeeded in perspective and in figures, named paolo pini. i have seen only of his a history of rahab, at s. maria di campagna, at piacenza, of which the architecture is very fine, the figures light and touched with a spirited hand. in extensive works of ornamental fresco, pier francesco prina is commended by orlandi, with the two mariani, domenico and his son gioseffo. the father remained stationary at milan, and educated, among other pupils, castellino da monza; but the son visited bologna, and there succeeded in improving his paternal manner so as to distinguish himself throughout italy and germany. these names will suffice to give a view of a period, not remarkable for the best taste in this species of painting. fabio ceruti was a landscape painter of some repute in the style of agricola his master. his pictures are pretty numerous, both throughout the city and the state. mention is also made of one perugini, recorded by the cav. ratti, in his life of alessandro magnasco of genoa, called lisandrino. the latter, educated in the school of abbiati, and a long time resident in milan, added to the pictures of perugini, of spera, and other artists, small figures of such merit as will be entitled to a particular description in his native school. in compositions of a minor branch, wholly executed by himself, magnasco may be pronounced an able artist, especially in those diminutive pieces on the flemish scale, consisting of childish scenes and representations of a popular cast, with which he decorated many collections. he also opened school at milan, and was imitated by coppa and other artists, though bastiano ricci approached him the nearest of any, possessing a wonderful versatility of genius in respect to imitation. in a similar taste martino cignaroli painted at milan, who had acquired at verona and at the school of carpioni, singular skill in conducting pictures for private cabinets. he established himself together with pietro his brother and his family, in this his new abode, where he had a son named scipione, who became a good landscape painter at rome, and subsequently flourished at milan and at turin. about the year lorenzo comendich established himself in the former of these cities, an artist already recorded in this work among the disciples of monti. in the residence of the baron martini, his patron, he produced a variety of works, the most commended among which was his battle of luzzara, won by louis xiv., who is said to have beheld it, as represented by this artist, with singular pleasure. in pictures of herds of animals of every kind, more perhaps than for his human figures, carlo cane rose into some repute. orlandi likewise greatly commends angiolmaria crivelli in the same branch, though i have seen nothing from his hand entitling him to so much eulogy. at milan this artist is known by the name of crivellone, in distinction to his son jacopo, whose principal merit lay in his drawings of birds and fishes. he was much employed by the court of parma, and died in . still nearer us in point of time is londonio, an artist also of some repute for his herds of cattle: his rural and pastoral views are in possession of the counts greppi, and other noble houses. at como flourished one maderno, whose skill consisted in drawing all kind of kitchen furniture, in the taste of the bassani, with whom less experienced judges are apt to confound him. i have seen several small pictures by him in possession of the counts giovio, that display great beauty. he was also a fine flower-painter, though he was here surpassed by mario de' crespini, one of his pupils, whose productions are interspersed throughout his own and the adjacent cities. of some other artists of inferior note i have given accounts in different places. it remains for me to mention a third academy which was founded at milan in , by that distinguished princess, maria teresa, and which was afterwards invariably encouraged by new benefactions from her two sons, the emperors joseph and leopold, and by their successor to the empire, francis ii. who, amidst all the distractions of war, is not unmindful of the prosperity of the fine arts. the complete institutions of which this academy had to boast, even in its outset, are described in a compendious manner by its accomplished secretary, in his work entitled the new guide, already frequently cited. in this we find an account of the number, the variety, and the merit of the different professors; the collections of models, of designs, of prints, and of books, which are there provided for the use of the students; to which he adds the methods of education there inculcated, to the great benefit of the nation, which has already, for some time past, been embued with a more refined taste, and displayed a more extended cultivation. end of vol. iv. j. m'creery, tooks court, chancery-lane, london. transcriber's notes punctuation, use of hyphens, and accent marks were standardized. obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged. for example, the author consistently uses 'bonarruoti' rather than the usual 'buonarroti,' 'accessaries' for 'accessories,' and 'canvass' for 'canvas.' footnotes were indented and moved to follow the paragraph in which the anchor occurs. the following changes were made for consistency within the text: 'michel angiolo' to 'michelangiolo' 'rilievo' to 'relievo' 'intitled' to 'entitled' additional changes: ' ' to ' ' in the table of contents, school of milan, epoch i 'wmser' to 'wumser' 'batista' to 'battista' 'imtator' to 'imitator' 'musaicists' to 'mosaicists' 'developement' to 'development' 'recal' to 'recall' 'coregio' to 'coreggio' 'begun' to 'began' ... when the cortona manner began to lose ground ... 'boccaccini' to 'boccaccino' added 'to' ... nor yet has he referred to him as a pupil ... 'pourtrayed' to 'portrayed' 'monistero' to 'monastero' 'andai' to 'andai' 'brenghel' to 'breughel' (from images generously made available by the intenet archive.) paul gauguin his life and art by john gould fletcher _with ten illustrations_ nicholas l. brown new york mcmxxi [illustration: self-portrait of gauguin.] to m.t.h.s. who helped me with advice and criticism "improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are the roads of genius." william blake. contents part i: the formation - part ii: the struggle with impressionism - part iii: the school of pont-aven - part iv: the return to savagery - part v: the fight against civilization - list of illustrations self-portrait of gauguin, _frontispiece_ portrait of gauguin's mother the painter schuffenecker and his family struggle of jacob with the angel the idol tahitian women hina maruru (feast to hina) the old spirit calvary matamua (olden days) paul gauguin part i: the formation - about the middle of the last century, there occurred in paris a series of events which seemed at the time likely to be of importance to future history, secondary only to the days of the french revolution. you will seek paris in vain for any public monument to these events, known as the revolution of . only the name of the hideously utilitarian boulevard raspail may perhaps remind you, that in this year france achieved another one of those political failures which have been so curiously common in her history since . in february of that year, king louis philippe and his ministers had fled before the rising storm of popular feeling. it seemed at last that the great popular revolution of the working classes, dreamed of by every artist since , proclaimed in the rabelaisian caricatures of daumier, latent in the troubled romanticism of the epoch, was at hand. a provisional republic was formed and elections were held to the national assembly. but the provinces showed that it mattered little to them whether the form of government was changed or not. so long as the peasant had his farm, his cow, his money safely stowed away in a stocking, a hard-working wife, a pipe and a glass of wine, he was content with things as they were. if the industrial classes of paris were starving, that was not his affair. he shared none of their fanatic socialism, none of their dreams of the millennium. he wanted to be left alone. the national assembly proved to be overwhelmingly moderate, and the leaders of the provisional government discovered that they preferred to stand with the majority rather than to fall with the parisian extremists. but the latter were not to be beaten without a struggle. on the fifteenth of may, a mob attempted to take the assembly by storm, and failed. on the eighteenth, lamartine, the former idol of the revolutionaries, was hooted down while making a conciliatory speech. the government found that it must either provide work and wages for the parisian unemployed or run the risk of an appeal to force. a scheme was started, but it proved to be costly, and on the twenty-first of june the government faced about and announced that it intended to proceed no further with its project. three days later the storm broke. two hundred and twenty-one barricades arose as if by magic in the streets, crowned with red flags and manned by sixty thousand men. for three days the mob kept up a desperate resistance; then the last barricade fell, the blood was washed off the pavements, the cause of "moderation" and "good sense" was restored. there is a poetic justice in the coincidence of some events. on the seventh of june a son, paul, was born to m. and madame gauguin, residing in paris. this infant, brought obscurely into the world to the sound of cannon, was destined by one of the ironic dispensations of nature to become later the leader of an art-revolution as far reaching and as important in its effects as the great attempt of . his life was to be a constant struggle with the growing bourgeois civilization, the middle-class morality, of the late nineteenth century; his art was to speak the promise of a renewed world, a world where man could again walk naked, unashamed and free, as in eden. he was destined to break beneath the inert weight of social conventions and stupidities, as the revolution had been broken by the armed forces at the disposal of the government: but his ideas were to point the way to, new conceptions of art and of life, which only the future can realize. clovis paul gauguin, to give the father his full name, was a petty journalist from orleans. he had a post as collaborator on one of the obscure newspapers of liberal opinion, that so greatly flourished about this time. his influence upon his son was slight, as is the case with the fathers of most artists. it is to madame gauguin that we must turn for an explanation of the character of her famous son. [illustration: portrait of gauguin's mother.] aline marie gauguin was the daughter of a certain chazal, of whom we know nothing, and of the then celebrated socialist pamphleteer and agitator, flora tristan. flora tristan was born in at lima, peru. her father was a spaniard of noble descent, mariano tristan y moscoso. he served as an officer in the peruvian army, and probably took part in the wars of independence which severed peru from spain, since we find him and his family later occupying positions of dignity and affluence under the republic. in he sent his daughter to school in paris. she eloped the next year with chazal and was disowned by her parents. after the birth of her child she separated from her husband and returned to peru, seeking a reconciliation with her family. but the family had determined to do nothing for the self-willed, impulsive daughter, and she drifted back to paris, where she attempted to support herself by writing pamphlets of strongly socialistic tendencies. she became a pioneer of woman's suffrage, of humanitarianism, of the trade-union movement. she toured france making speeches. in she had the misfortune to meet chazal again in paris, who stabbed her in a fit of jealousy and was condemned to twenty years of penal servitude for the offense. a few years later she died in bordeaux, and the trade-unions, remembering her zeal for their cause and her personal beauty--which had moved them perhaps more than the fervor of her speeches--subscribed the sum necessary to put up a monument. such were the parents and the grand-parents of the child who had just been born into the world. the tragic and violent union of chazal and flora tristan serves to explain the man and the artist he later became. in chazal we find the source of his violence and headstrong irritability; in flora tristan we see whence he drew his love of personal and individual liberty, his hatred of moral restraint, his scorn of the bourgeoisie, his spanish hauteur and stoicism. half-savage spanish blood flowed in his veins, a mixture of arab, celt and african. perhaps in his peruvian descent there were even other currents--currents of that inca race which the spaniards had subdued but not conquered. whatever else destiny held in store for him, it was certain from the beginning that paul gauguin could never be wholly assimilated to the intellectual effort of the frivolous and fickle city of paris. ii the earliest adventures of the future painter combined the peculiar strands of tragedy, romance and savagery which were to recur so often in his later life. in december, , the makeshift republic came to an end and louis napoleon, by an easy _coup d'état_, restored the empire. clovis gauguin found himself ruined with the suspension of the liberal paper for which he wrote. there was only one hope remaining: that flora tristan's relations in lima might do something for paul and his sister marie. so the family set out for peru. on the way, during the terrible passage through the straits of magellan, clovis gauguin was seized with heart failure and died. his body was taken ashore and buried at port famine, or punta arenas, the southernmost town in the world, in chile. the mother and her two orphaned children were received with kindness by the head of the family, flora tristan's uncle, don pio tristan y moscoso. concerning this personage gauguin himself told many anecdotes in later years. probably most of these were inexact to the point of being fable pure and simple. we must remember that gauguin at this time was scarcely four years of age. we know that the family were wealthy nobles, of high social standing, who lived in the old castillian manner of luxury and indolence. from such surroundings gauguin doubtless derived much of the "hidalgo manner" that distinguished him throughout life--a blend of haughtiness, reserve and egoism, masking often a real shyness before people. and here he saw, also for the first time, works of art produced by a non-european civilization: ceramics, jewelry, fabrics of inca origin. the remembrance of these specimens of savage, primitive art undoubtedly influenced his mind in later years. gauguin's stay in lima did not last long. four years later his paternal grandfather died in france, and his mother returned to that country in order to obtain her share of his estate, which proved to be only a small sum. in later years, the painter believed, or affected to believe, that if his mother had remained in peru and had neglected her relations in france she would have been left heiress to don pio tristan's property. it is probable that gauguin was here merely romancing, as he often did, when desiring to mystify and startle people about his life. it is an enchanting but fruitless speculation to wonder what course the boy's mind might have taken had it been subjected for a few more years to the influence of peruvian life. peru undoubtedly gave him a love for the tropics, for exotic, out-of-the-way, old-fashioned places, unspoiled by the nineteenth century. unconsciously many of the traits that made his character so little comprehensible to the frenchmen of his day were planted in him during these years. france was now to give him something different. he was to be educated, or rather to receive what passed for an education. he remained at a seminary at orleans till the age of seventeen, hating his studies, becoming more and more intractable and unteachable. this seminary, as all such institutions in france at the time, was conducted by jesuit priests. in later days he declared that all he had learned from the years that he had spent at the seminary were a hatred of hypocrisy, false virtue and spying. and with malicious irony he said: "and i also learnt there a little of that spirit of jesuit casuistry, which is a force not to be despised in the struggle with other people." his sole ambition was to escape, to get to sea again, to make voyages to the tropics. his mother dreamed of placing him as a cadet in the navy, but he ignominiously failed to pass the necessary examination. he was therefore placed in the merchant marine. this decision of his mother he regretted bitterly to the end of his life. in he embarked aboard the _luzitano_, a cargo boat, on a voyage from havre to rio de janeiro. his grade aboard this ship was that of a pilot's apprentice. of this voyage, which enabled him to see again the tropics, gauguin retained in later years important memories. in the fragmentary note-books he kept in tahiti he declared that it was during this voyage that he heard from the lips of a ship-mate a story of the latter's life when ship-wrecked among the natives of the society islands in the pacific. the remembrance of that story may have influenced him later in his choice of tahiti as an ideal residence. at least the appearance of rio de janeiro's harbor awakened in his mind fresh enthusiasm for the tropics. the stay at rio was further signalized by a liaison with an actress, of that eminently casual kind which gauguin was to experience so often later on. finally the return voyage brought about another liaison, this time with a prussian woman, and in defiance of ship's discipline. it was certain that his character--was not of the sort that could be fitted easily into the mold of self-restraint necessary to produce a capable naval officer. at all events, the next thing we hear is that gauguin quitted the merchant service and enlisted in the french navy as a common sailor, in february, . probably by this time his mother had refused to support him, and he was forced into this position through necessity. the cruiser _jerome napoleon_, on which he found himself, was, to his chagrin, ordered to cruise in northern waters. so instead of seeing the tropics again, gauguin's new experiences were only of the ice-bound greenland coast and the barren north cape. this was bad, but still worse was to follow. the vessel was on its way to spitzbergen when news was brought to its captain that france had declared war upon prussia. "where are you going?" said the second officer, seeing the captain put the helm about. "to charenton," replied the indignant first officer; charenton being the great lunatic asylum near paris! the vessel got no nearer to france than copenhagen, when the melancholy news of sedan came. the name _jerome napoleon_ was painted out, that of _desaix_ substituted, and the unfortunate cruiser was obliged to remain in the waters off copenhagen till the close of the war in , contenting herself with the capture of one small ship as prize. iii in , after the cessation of hostilities, gauguin obtained leave, renewable at the end of eighteen months, to quit the navy. he was now heartily sick of the sea, because of the enforced idleness and wearisome discipline that he had now endured aboard the _desaix_ for three years. besides the opportunity of another career was offering itself and he felt that he must seize it. his mother had died in the interval since he had last seen france and, in dying, had confided the care of her two children to a well-to-do paris banker, gustave arosa. this man immediately found for paul a place at bertin's, a banking house with which he was connected. and now there opened for the young man a period not only the most prosperous but in retrospect the most amazing of his career. though his character had already displayed itself to be that of an instinctive nomad, a lover of the tropics and essentially a pagan savage, yet it is apparent that he now yielded readily to the entrancing prospect of amassing a fortune by speculation on the bourse, without troubling himself too much with the question whether his new position might not entail heavier responsibilities in the future. he had not been long at bertin's before he found out how to make money quite easily. possibly this was not a very difficult thing to do, for the paris stock market had been utterly disorganized by the events of - , and, now that peace was signed, france was making one of those rapid recoveries that have been so common in her history. stocks were going up and trade was booming. gauguin was able to take advantage of these circumstances to such an extent that in one year, we are told, he made as much as forty thousand francs. in he married, thus saddling himself with a responsibility he was never wholly to shake off. his wife, mette sophia gad, was the daughter of a protestant clergyman of copenhagen. the family was a good one and enjoyed an honorable position in the society of the danish capital. the daughters had been educated at paris, and one of them had married a member of the norwegian parliament, while another had become the first wife of the painter, fritz thaulow. when or where gauguin first met his future bride is uncertain, but it was probably during the stay of the _desaix_ at copenhagen. at any rate it seems that he was eager to marry, as the ceremony (a purely civil one, owing to his wife being a protestant) was delayed owing to the loss of his father's certificate of birth in the bombardment of st. cloud. at this time, through his wife's friends and connections, through gustave arosa, through emile schuffenecker--a fellow employee at bertin's--and through others, a new interest came into his life. he began to paint, although pressure of work did not permit him to regard this fresh occupation as more than an amusement at first. arosa was, in his way, an amateur of art and had collected a number of pictures by french artists of the day--among them delacroix and courbet. these works he engraved in photogravure--an art then in its infancy--and sent copies of the engravings to his personal friends. through schuffenecker gauguin was brought closely into touch with the impressionists, who were then making a sensation in paris. gauguin bought brushes and colors and began by painting on sundays and holidays. it was only slowly that he began to look upon painting as anything but a distraction. his first essays in art were purely academic. he painted in the prevailing style of the salons and even sent one picture to the salon of . at the same time he began to attempt sculpture. he worked at first in marble, a material afterwards entirely rejected in favor of the more coarsely-grained surface of wood, clay or paste. he liked a rough surface and counseled young sculptors to mix sand with the clay in order to emphasize this roughness. gauguin's was a many-sided and a versatile nature. his early years at sea had given him much of the sailor's ingenuity. he had a tremendous interest in the technical processes of art. during his life he was able to do almost equally well at painting, lithography and sculpture. he also attempted etching, stained glass and pottery. his writings, particularly his share in "noa noa," show a considerable grasp of direct, poetic narrative--a gift that might very possibly have made of him a good poet. throughout his life we are unable to regard him solely as a painter of pictures; his influence in opening new channels for art-decoration is even more important than his pictorial work. even in literature his achievements have a certain force as inspiration. the problems he set himself were as varied in their way as those that occupied his english contemporary, william morris, almost as varied as those that occupied leonardo da vinci. he acquired knowledge easily; his problem was always how to weigh, sift and make use of it. but his growth to artistic maturity was slower than in the case of artists who limit their field of effort, because he attacked many subjects at the same time. it may seem strange to consider this many-sided versatility as a proof, not of a complex, but of a primitive nature. yet it is undoubtedly true that in the primitive stages of art the artist is able to do almost everything. the interchangeability, the essential unity of all the arts, is the strongest characteristic of art in its early stages. as civilization and consequently technique become more advanced, it grows more and more difficult for a man to become master of any single branch of art. perhaps that is why, in our modern industrialized states, the arts tend to disappear, to become the interest and hobby of a rapidly diminishing minority. [illustration: the painter schuffenecker and his family.] all this was not suspected by gauguin at the time, nor for years afterwards. for the time he was content to paint and to follow the prevailing fashions in his painting. and he soon found that the prevailing fashion of the day in paris was impressionism. * * * * * to define impressionism it is not necessary, as many professional art-critics have done, to enter into long dissertations as to the supremacy of pure colors, nor to see in constable or turner the ancestry of the movement. impressionism was neither more nor less than the cult of realism--or to speak better, naturalism--carried out in painting. this cult had already possessed in painting one important precursor, gustave courbet. but it is to literature, always the advance guard of the arts, that we must turn to understand what impressionism intended and why it failed. a little before , which year marks a turning point not only in france's political but also in her intellectual life, there came a change over her literature. romanticism, which had startled the world in with lamartine, de musset, de vigny, hugo and balzac, was now dead. the heroic, the napoleonic, the byronic attitude had somehow gone out of life. under the second empire, the bourgeois triumphed over the tuileries. a few years before the crash of , charles baudelaire gave to the world his _fleurs du mal_--the exasperated cry against life of a soul tortured with too great a sensibility. almost at the same time gustave flaubert, in _madame bovary_, erected his monument of infamy to the memory of the bourgeois. these two books opened the path to naturalism, to the "human document," to the de goncourts, to de maupassant, and to zola. impressionism was the logical outgrowth, in another sphere, of the work of these naturalist writers. it abolished the lighting of the studio and substituted for it natural sunlight. it abolished the classical "subject" and left the painter free to paint, as manet said, "_n'importe quoi_." thus, on the one side, it led directly to the analysis of atmospheric vibration, foreshadowed by constable and turner, but not by them elevated to the rank of a science; and on the other side, it led with equal inevitability to the total dependence of the painter upon nature, and the consequent atrophy of his imagination. it was, as manet said again, "nature seen through a temperament." against impressionism, as against romanticism, only one artist had dared to continue the tradition of classical, decorative painting descending from giotto, through raphael and poussin, to prud'hon and to ingres. this was the norman, puvis de chavannes. but puvis, though nearly fifty, was still unknown, still dreaming of walls to conquer, still buried away from the eyes of the young men in the slumbrous depths of the official salons, while impressionism was the _succès de scandale_ of the day. gauguin heard of impressionism and became a devout follower of its theories. he painted pictures in the manner of camille pissarro, who was a compatriot of madame gauguin, having been born in the island of st. thomas in the antilles, then danish territory. gauguin took part in the exhibitions of the impressionist group in and . huysmans, then as later the disciple of naturalism pushed to its extreme limit, praised a nude of his because it was ugly. gauguin began to be talked about, not only as a well-to-do amateur, but as a coming artist. but his work at the bourse was exhausting his strength and his time. although he had now a wife and five children dependent on him, gauguin in january, , took the rash step of quitting the financial world and devoting himself solely to art. this decision was, as dr. segalen says in his valuable preface to the letters gauguin wrote from tahiti, the true turning-point in his career. when paul gauguin said to himself, "henceforward i will paint every day," he was not only satisfying his vague and latest personal ambition and aptitude, he was setting himself to the fulfillment of a great impersonal duty: he was beginning to clear away the sophistications not only of his own nature but of modern art. iv it is important to note that gauguin was thirty-five years of age when he came to this decision. this proves that the decision was no hasty one, of which he was liable to repent later. at such an age a man has arrived at his intellectual maturity; and, when this man is a paul gauguin, we may feel sure that he does not alter his whole manner of living from a mere desire for change. gauguin had something to express and knew it. he had better work to do than dabbling in stocks and shares. and to this work he was determined to devote himself despite all opposition. but had he not been instinctively a nomad and a savage, with the desire for freedom, for life without compromise and for the harmony that comes only from a natural expression of one's deepest instincts, this decision might never have been taken. as a husband and father he now had others dependent upon him. that he set aside their claims to follow the deeper call proves that, as he later said, he believed himself to have the right to dare everything. and he was probably at first confident of success, thinking an artistic career likely to be as easy to manage as that of a speculator. madame gauguin seems to have acquiesced in this decision. she was naturally desirous to be ranked as the wife of a famous and successful man, and her husband may well have dazzled her with the prospects of his success. in any case, she was soon destined to sad disillusionment. gauguin found it impossible to support himself and six others on the sums he had saved. as for his pictures, they were not sufficiently well known to sell. it was necessary, above all things, to gain time. so he decided to sacrifice a collection of modern pictures which he had bought with the proceeds of his career on the bourse, in order to support himself. the list of these pictures is interesting, as it shows clearly the direction of his tastes at this period. it included a manet, several renoirs, some claude monets, two cézannes (still life and landscape), an early pissarro, together with examples of guillamin, sisley, jongkind, lewis brown and, most significant of all, two designs by daumier. whether it was that gauguin had continued to maintain his family in a style above his present means and was therefore now in debt, we do not know. nor do we know whether the sale of his collection realized an appreciable sum or not. probably the amount was small, for the impressionists, though talked about, had not achieved that purely commercial popularity which is the modern substitute for fame. in any case, the painter soon found himself again without resources. he had ignominiously failed to carve out a new career for himself in paris. he found that he could not now obtain another commercial post to take the place of bertin's. so it was madame gauguin's turn to act. she decided on a removal to copenhagen, where she hoped her family would use their influence in obtaining a position for her husband. once in the danish city, however, the basic difference between husband and wife showed itself in violent form. the atmosphere of rigid protestant piety, in which his wife's family lived, jarred on the passionate southern temperament of the painter. he discovered that he hated everything in denmark, the scenery, the climate, the prudery and provinciality of the inhabitants, the lack of parisian bohemianism--everything except the cookery of his mother-in-law! and he took no pains to conceal his hatred. he defiantly persisted in maintaining his parisian freedom of speech and manners. one day, walking on the road that overlooks the bay of the sund, he chanced to look down. each of the estates adjoining the beach is equipped with a small cabin for bathing. it is the custom there for the sexes to bathe separately and entirely naked. gauguin chanced to stop and look down at the moment when the wife of a protestant minister was stepping into the water. instead of going on, he decided to indulge his æsthetic interest in the nude. the daughter of the minister's wife saw him and called out to her mother to return. the lady turned and started hastily back to her cabin. but gauguin continued his inspection. next day there was the inevitable scandal. such a state of affairs could clearly not continue. gauguin would yield nothing to the prejudices of the danes, nor would his wife's family change their ideas of respectability to suit his queer notions. a separation between husband and wife was inevitable. in it came about with, one may imagine, no great regrets on either side. to the painter this marriage had all along been a matter of convenience. we shall have ample opportunity to observe throughout his career that gauguin attached practically no sentiment to the sexual relations into which he entered with various women. he was probably more affectionate with his children, particularly with his daughter aline, than ever with his wife. it was now far more convenient for him that his wife should remain with her relations, where she would at least have a roof over her head, than accompany him to paris, whither he was determined to return. madame gauguin agreed with this arrangement, hoping to see her husband, now disembarrassed of his family, make a rapid conquest of the parisian art-world. and so in paul gauguin returned to france once more to try his fortune. v he was now thirty-seven years old. hitherto the events of his life had been largely controlled by chance; from now on he began to strive more consciously to be the master of his own destiny. it is therefore necessary, before going further with this story, to take stock of the man, both as regards his physical appearance and his intellectual equipment. gauguin was of not more than middle height, but stockily built and of strong physical development. his hair, which later grew thinner and lost much of its coloring, was chestnut inclining towards red, and fell in large straggling masses over a broad but rather low forehead. the eye-brows were arched and gave a skeptical appearance to the eyes, which were heavy-lidded, small and gray-green in color--the eyes of one who has spent many years at sea. the nose was large, thick and aquiline. a thin drooping mustache, lighter in color than the hair, hung over the mouth, with its large, coarse lips drooping at the corners. the chin was pointed and retreating and, in later life, furnished with a short tufted beard similar in color to the mustache. after gauguin's return from the antilles in it is the testimony of all who knew him that his skin had become as bronzed as an indian's, and that he dressed and looked altogether like a sailor. even his excessive devotion to tobacco, a habit that later was seriously to injure his health, had something sailor-like in it. gauguin rolled his own cigarettes in the spanish fashion and smoked commonly a short clay pipe. his hands, too, were not those of an artist but of a seaman--coarse, square and red. altogether he was in appearance curiously creole; he did not resemble a frenchman of france. the dark tint of his skin and the formation of the face and features belied the color of the eyes and hair. his personal characteristics were unfavorably judged by most of those with whom he came in contact. it must be remembered, however, that he was by nature reserved and even suspicious, as are many people of fundamental genius. he differed from those about him in that he worked by instinct, while they worked according to some conscious method. he therefore obtained out of himself, by means of slow thinking and laborious effort, the knowledge which many have at the beginning. further, the study and practice of art is in itself so exhausting of physical and emotional fibre as to leave its possessor with little reserve of tact and dissimulation with which to face the world. finally, gauguin was shy, actually and by nature shy. people took this shyness for rudeness and this reserve for disdain. and gauguin was not always unwilling to profit by this misunderstanding. he carefully cultivated his rudeness, both to create an effect and to keep bores at a distance. as regards his work, he was on the way to find his path, although he never entirely found it, even to the end of his career. his versatility prevented his art from ever becoming fixed and dead, like that of many popular and highly successful painters. mention has already been made of his appearance in among the impressionists and of the praise bestowed by huysmans on one of his pictures for its frank realism. this very nude, however, shows gauguin massing his shadows, making them heavy and dark, which was the direct contrary to impressionist practice. a year later we find huysmans complaining of the low and muddy color of his pictures; another proof that the painter was already trying to mass tones, to escape from the division of tones employed by the impressionist group. we are safe in assuming also that gauguin felt already an inward desire to paint nature as he had seen her in the tropics. his early years had shown him the tropics; and the art of the greatest masters, as well as of the worst daubers, is based on the instinctive knowledge they have obtained during childhood and the use they have made of it in later years. pissarro, too, had seen the tropics; but they had not in any way influenced his color sense, which, indeed, grew colder and grayer as his years advanced. but he may have had something to do with gauguin's inclination towards tropical subjects, though the feeling of kinship with nature which gauguin brought to such subjects was all his own. if gauguin had but known it, there waited for him not the future of fame and fortune of which he dreamed, but seventeen years of life-and-death struggle with actual hunger in a world that gave him neither the means of living nor the slightest encouragement, but only hampered him in every way, so that he was forced to paint his finest decorative pictures on small pieces of board or canvas instead of on great walls. he was to quit his own country, and to go to the ends of the earth, only to find that the system of civilization possessed by his country, whatever its other advantages, did not permit of an artist to live and enjoy the fruits of his labor. he was finally to sink into an unmarked grave, to be almost forgotten, and to attain to a commercial apotheosis only when no longer able to profit by it. even if gauguin could have realized this, it is doubtful if he would have changed his mind. ready to dare everything, he strode forward into the future. part ii: the struggle with impressionism - i with the return of gauguin to paris there opened for him the second stage of his career, the struggle to maintain himself on the productions of his brush and chisel. during the first stage his character had been formed by the hard experiences of seafaring and by the comparative leisure and affluence of his epoch of splendor, during which he found time to discuss the principles of art with the best exponents of the latest french tradition. he had not only met and talked with men like manet, pissarro, and cézanne, he also visited the museums of paris, and did not confine himself to the louvre, but made a special study of the musée guimet with its collection of art works from the far east, and later of the trocadero, with its casts of cambodian sculpture. his stay at bertin's had been of good service in giving him the mental equipment, the self-education necessary to begin the struggle for artistic independence. yet in his case we know far less of what passed in his mind during these important years of development than in the case of most of his contemporaries. "he was the sort of man to be awake to everything new in art that was going on," says one who knew him in this period, "but not to acknowledge indebtedness to anything or anybody." what he absorbed was by instinct; and instinct cautioned him not to share his knowledge with people who might fail to make good use of it. amid the noisy chatter of parisian art-circles he passed silent and unnoted. he rented a studio and began to busy himself with all sorts of experimental projects, particularly with sculpture. but very shortly his resolution and character were further tested by the new experience of hunger. for a time he suffered extreme privation. he was forced at last to accept a salary of three francs fifty centimes a day for pasting advertisements on the walls of the gare du nord in order to save himself from starvation. "i have known," he wrote in a small notebook dedicated to his daughter aline, "extreme misery, that is to say hunger and everything that follows upon hunger. it is nothing, or almost nothing. one grows accustomed to it and, with will-power, one can end by laughing at it. but what is terrible is to be prevented from working, from developing one's intellectual faculties. it is true that suffering sharpens one's ability. but it is necessary not to suffer too much or suffering will kill you. "with a great deal of pride i have ended by having a great deal of energy, and i have forced myself to be full of will-power. "is pride a fault, or must one develop one's pride? i believe pride must be developed. it is the best weapon we have against the human animal that is in us." this quotation gives us the man entirely. he was one of those who are not to be beaten, one of those who do not turn back. he was to go forward and to maintain himself while seeking a path. in he contributed no less than nineteen pictures to an exhibition of the impressionist group, together with a relief in wood, which seems to foreshadow the later creator of _la guerre et la paix_. most of these early works of gauguin seem to have disappeared. very few can recall seeing one. it is therefore interesting to read the following appreciation by felix fenéon, which shows that gauguin was already traveling far from the formulas that satisfied the other impressionists:-- "the tones of m. paul gauguin's pictures are very little separated from each other; because of this, there is in his work a dull harmony. dense trees rise from the fertile soil, abundant and humid, invade the frame, pursue the sky. the air is heavy. bricks seen between the trunks indicate a nearby house; things are lying about, muzzles are scattered in the thicket--cows. these reds of roofs and of cattle the artist constantly opposes to his greens and reflects them again in the waters, encumbered with long grasses, which run between the tree-trunks." this shows clearly that gauguin was treating landscape at this period already as a synthesis, a decorative whole and not, like manet, pissarro or the divisionists, as an exercise in the analysis of atmospheric vibration. as for the relief on wood, fenéon writes: "on the pear-tree wood, which we regret to see left in monochrome, a naked woman stands out in half relief, her hand to her hair, seated rectangularly in a landscape. this is the only number of sculpture. nothing in painted wood, in glass-paste, in wax." paris with her art-theories had nothing now to teach gauguin. he must find his own way, create his own tradition. aloof alike from the theories of the impressionists and from those of their successors, the pointillists--theories of the disassociation of tones and of the analytic disintegration of light, based on the scientific treatises of chevreuil and helmholtz--he was painfully tending back to the old decorative tradition that a picture must be an unit, the harmonious expression of a single emotion. hunger proved again the best friend of the independent artist. he fled from paris and sought refuge in the country. ii the place of refuge which gauguin found was the village of pont-aven in the district of finistère in brittany. there is no doubt that this chosen spot and its surroundings had upon his art an influence only secondary to that exercised later by tahiti. indeed the charm of tahiti itself was slow to efface this influence. the celtic fringe of europe--cornwall, the highlands of scotland, ireland, wales, brittany, galicia--presents everywhere a great similarity in natural feature and in the character of its inhabitants. the celt is an outcast. driven backward by successive waves of civilization and conquest, he has finally occupied those lands which were so unprofitable to his conquerors that he was able to remain in them undisturbed. long residence in these desolate places has made of him a natural mystic, a conservative. perhaps he might never have been anything else had not the nineteenth century--with its railroads and the life-weariness of its cultivated classes--made of him a curiosity. the hordes of tourists, of bad artists, of dealers in journalese, who rave about brittany, cornwall, or ireland as picturesque summer-resorts, show that civilization has obtained its revenge on the savage who prefers to remain a savage. paul gauguin did not assuredly go to brittany to discover the picturesque. had he done so his painting would have ranked no higher than the painting of charles cottet or of lucien simon. his real home as an artist, as he was later to discover, lay elsewhere--under less troubled skies, in the midst of more tropical vegetation. but the gloom, the melancholy inertia, the mystic faith, the simplicity of this land of wind-mills, small trees, granite coasts and menhirs, worked strongly on the yet untamed primitive in him. stronger still perhaps was the appeal of the sea, the most restless and yet the most changeless element in nature. gauguin was in appearance, as in manners, a sailor--the eye, the direct curt speech, the reserved disdain, the freedom of manners, all these in him had been accentuated by his early experiences. in brittany he found the sea; he found an unspoiled people; he found, above all, repose from the everlasting chatter of art-theories that, like the bubbling of endless bottles of too light champagne, frothed eternally in the cafés of paris. brittany gave him greater faith in himself; brittany began to dispel the nineteenth century skepticism that was slowly stifling him. [illustration: struggle of jacob with the angel.] his first stay in pont-aven was destined to be short. it is chiefly remarkable for the fact that here he was visited by emile bernard, then only about seventeen years of age, whose relations with gauguin and other painters afford matter for so much controversy that they must be examined in detail. bernard was the type of infant phenomenon that springs up, mushroom-like, in an overheated atmosphere of artistic and literary controversy. at the age of sixteen he was writing violently naturalistic and extremely bad poetry. he next went in for painting, raced off to brittany to see gauguin, was received with coolness, ran back to paris. here he found van gogh fresh from holland and, when van gogh in turn went to arles, became his most industrious correspondent. later he heard that the crazy old hermit, paul cézanne, was living at aix--so off to aix went bernard. more letters were the outcome of the visit. meanwhile he progressed in painting from a divisionist and neo-impressionist technique to a facile imitation of gauguin's breton style, then to a combination of cézanne and gauguin, to conclude with painting of oriental subjects in a style not so very far removed from that of gerome. he imitated everyone in turn, only to end by becoming that drab eclectic thing--what the french call a "pompier" or we an "academician." thus he justified gauguin's sardonic prophecy that "bernard would end up something like benjamin constant!" we owe bernard a debt in that he has preserved for us the beautiful letters which van gogh wrote to him, and--more precious debt--that he has given us those rare talks and letters in which that old stoic cézanne revealed a glimpse of his agony. but we owe bernard nothing in that he has seen fit to defame the art and character of the man whose style he was the first to copy--paul gauguin. but of this more later. iii the winter of found gauguin again in paris. here he met another artist whose life was destined to have upon his an influence quite different from that of emile bernard. this was vincent van gogh, newly arrived from holland. gauguin has left on record in a piece of prose called _les crevettes roses_ his first impression of van gogh, which proves beyond dispute that gauguin loved van gogh and admired him, despite his habitual reserve and the haughty disdain with which he was already looking upon all things european. at this time gauguin was still painfully seeking, still patiently and laboriously struggling towards his own self-realization. van gogh, although five years younger, had fully realized himself in essence--was, in fact, realized from the beginning. the difference between them was that van gogh was an humble dutch peasant, with the mystic blend of religion and animality which is common to flemish and dutch artists (for example, breughel, rubens or verhaeren), while gauguin was a spaniard, hard and aristocratic, but corrupted by cosmopolitan influences and the strain of french blood. for van gogh the future only held the liberating spiritual worship of the sun, which was to raise his art to its highest pitch of lyric ecstacy and to destroy the brain that had created it. for gauguin the future held a long and stoic struggle with the ironic destiny that left him half-an-european to the end, his work only a broken fragment of what he had dreamed. it is a pity, in a way, that these men ever met. but their meeting and the drama which was played out later between them, had in it the inevitable quality of greek tragedy. for the moment their meeting was without result, except that perhaps it woke gauguin to a realization that to be a great artist one must love life as well as love art. in short, one must be religious. but where was gauguin to find his religion? certainly not in paris, the capital of intellectual skepticism. nor, for the moment, in sleepy and mournful brittany. the memories of his early initiation into the splendors of the tropics awoke in him and he undertook, in , a voyage to the martinique in company with a young painter, charles laval. there is no doubt that this journey completely revealed to gauguin his own primitivism, although it left him for the time an invalid, threatened with dysentery, suffering from constant intestinal pains, and although it brought laval to the brink of the grave. if the reader wishes to know something of what martinique was at this time, he should turn to lafcadio hearn's "two years in the french west indies." hearn, like gauguin, was a disillusionized cosmopolite, disgusted with the banal artifice, the blatant commercialism, the pedantic and puritanic hypocrisy of our occidental civilization. like gauguin, hearn found in the west indies a revelation of a world which had not lost touch with nature--a world of men who were content to remain, in nature's eyes, something as ephemeral and as harmonious as the trees, the flowers, the beasts among which they lived. like gauguin again, hearn was nearly destroyed by this vision, but yet kept faith with it to the last. [illustration: the idol.] in the pictures which gauguin produced during his stay in martinique, we find the first rude indications of his later manner--the manner of a mystic poet who sees all life, the life of man, of vegetation, of the earth and the sea, as being parallel, harmonious manifestations of the same divine presence and therefore essentially in unity with each other. if gauguin did not realize himself in martinique, he at least found himself on the road to realization. but the unchecked power of the sun, steadily sapping not only the white race, but also the race of mixed blood, with which he, like hearn, felt so much sympathy, banished him from this eden at the same time as it gave him a hint for the future. his health demanded a return to france. he came back, bringing with him pictures--experimental, tentative efforts to reconcile the glow and gloom of the tropics with pissarro's analysis of paler northern sunlight. he brought back also the germ of thousands of other pictures which he, as yet, could not paint. he brought back with him an idea. iv after seeing the antilles and returning to paris, gauguin was again brought face to face with the problem against which he had already struggled--the problem of his poverty. he had obtained at martinique the vision of a new world of art, which he knew he was some day destined to realize. but for the present he had neither lodging and studio, nor resources of any kind. he was forced to live on charity. charity came to him in the shape of emile schuffenecker, who had also given up finance for a career as artist. schuffenecker was not a genius, but he knew ability when he saw it, and opened his doors freely to this needy colleague. it is a pity that gauguin repaid this generous hospitality of a friend by insulting schuffenecker as an artist. gauguin's relations with his friends are amongst the most painful episodes of his life. one is almost inclined to think with emile bernard that "the basis of gauguin's character was a deep-seated egoism," or, with meier-graefe, that gauguin was nothing but a great child. neither of these views is, however, wholly correct. gauguin was the son, be it remembered, of a radical journalist and the grandson of a socialist pamphleteer. journalism in france is not the same thing as in england. there is scarcely any polite journalism in france. gauguin himself was always talking, according to bernard, of art and life needing "the blow of the fist." paul déroulède, edmond drumont, henri rochefort, octave mirbeau, zola, clemenceau, and other celebrated journalists of the dreyfus period (the heyday of french journalism) knew quite well what this "blow of the fist" meant, and practiced it upon every opportunity. moreover, gauguin was nearly forty, had knocked about the world a great deal, banging himself against many sharp corners in the process, and was face to face with want. it is also possible that he felt bound, for the sake of his wife and children, to make as much money as possible. finally, he believed in himself as an artist, if no one else did. the world had well hammered into him the hard lesson that one must either hold a high opinion of oneself or become an object of contempt. as he put it himself, "is it necessary to be modest, or, in other words, an imbecile?" so he accepted the use of schuffenecker's studio, sold as many of his own pictures as he could, and sneered loudly at schuffenecker's attempt to paint. later on we find him accepting similarly van gogh's hospitality, irritating van gogh to the pitch of madness, and--after van gogh's death--sending to bernard and seeking to oppose the proposed exhibition of van gogh's pictures on the ground that van gogh was only a madman. and later still, when van gogh's reputation began to rise in public esteem, gauguin declared that van gogh had learned from him and had called him master. such traits are deplorable, if we consider gauguin as an ordinary man. but if we treat genius as ordinary humanity and insist upon it conforming in every particular to ordinary standards, it is quite certain that we will never have any genius worthy of the name. gauguin sinned in good company, with michaelangelo who thought raphael had plotted against him, and with berlioz who has left on record his opinion of wagner's music. to understand gauguin one must share to some extent the opinion of flaubert--which, incidentally, browning almost endorses--that the man is nothing, the work is all. it is not easy to read between the lines of gauguin's self-imposed reserve and self-determined resolve to shock the bourgeoisie. if we attempt to do so, we find a man so set upon his own path that he was almost without friends. van gogh he loved without understanding. daniel de monfreid he perhaps loved and understood. the shadowy figure of tehura, a figure perhaps idealized, was to be the only woman who greatly moved him. puvis de chavannes, an artist to whom gauguin owed much, similarly held himself aloof from all. so did degas and ingres, two other artists of gauguin's stamp. so in ancient greece did sophocles. the truly strong spirits of this world are not those who exist solely on the surface of things. one can only sympathize with them, share their imaginings through long and patient study. gauguin was not altogether strong; on some sides he was weak, as he himself admitted. but his work increased in vitality and in strength as his aim became more clear. schuffenecker's studio was useful to him; he stayed in paris just long enough to sell as many pictures as he could and to copy manet's _olympia_, a picture he greatly admired. then once more he took the road to brittany. v despite the fact that gauguin had, before leaving paris, held his first one-man show and had actually sold a few pictures, his general situation was not improved. he was now heavily in debt, and his health, undermined at martinique, remained bad. he was at an age at which most men find themselves obliged to take stock of the past and to calculate their chances for the future. in gauguin's case the chances were very small. he was crushed by his own impotence to realize the art he had dreamed. it was at this juncture that vincent van gogh, now at aries, came forward and offered him a lodging, despite the fact that he himself could not sell his own pictures and was entirely dependent on the self-sacrificing efforts of his brother theodore. for a time gauguin did not respond to van gogh's generous offer to share their fortunes in common. but he sent his own portrait to vincent, a gloomy, powerful piece of painting which, in the opinion of some, so startlingly resembles robert louis stevenson--like gauguin a wanderer, but with what a difference! to vincent this portrait suggested a prisoner, with its yellow flesh and deep blue shadows. he was more than ever determined to draw gauguin out of the slough of despond into which he was falling, and to work together with him for the better establishment of both their reputations. one can only admire van gogh for this decision. an artist of a childlike simplicity of soul, a combination of don quixote, the good samaritan and that jesus of nazareth whom he loved, van gogh was even greater as a man than as an artist. but gauguin was, as he knew himself later, greater as an artist than as a man. it was natural for him to accept the invitation of a man whom he knew, after all, very slightly, because he saw in this acceptance possible advantages to himself. van gogh's enthusiasm was unfortunately not backed, as was gauguin's, by a strong reserve of nervous strength. his was one of those souls whose longing for spiritual reality followed inevitably the mystic path traced by william blake:-- i will go down to self-annihilation and to eternal death lest the last judgment come and find me unannihilate, and i be seiz'd and given into the hands of my own selfhood. gauguin's path tended to a different goal and followed the way foreseen by whitman:-- o, to struggle against odds, to meet enemies undaunted! to be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand to look strife, torture, prison, popular odium face to face, to mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect nonchalance, to be indeed a god! van gogh was a lyric painter. his desire was to lose himself in the ecstacy of the divine. gauguin was a narrative, an epic painter. his aim was to grow to divine stature through self-realization. what could there be in common between the fervent admirer of rembrandt, delacroix, monticelli, ziem, and the brooding, patient workman who was building up his art on the classic tradition of ingres, cézanne and degas? surely even less than between michaelangelo and tintoretto. a drama between these men was inevitable. it was not slow in declaring itself.[ ] of what actually occurred we have only gauguin's account, of how van gogh first attacked him, and then strove to take his own life. van gogh, upon whose shattered nervous organism the shock had spent itself, went voluntarily into a lunatic asylum at arles, where, as his grip on life grew weaker under the pressure of the inner flame that devoured him, he painted visions of worlds tortured by the sun. gauguin returned to brittany, as he said, "armed against all suffering." but he had seen something. in striving to paint van gogh's portrait he had seen a vision, once again to quote his own words, of "jesus preaching goodness and humility." and perhaps, in vincent's hour of agony, while he lay bloodless and inanimate on the bed in that little room which he had loved and had painted so lovingly, gauguin had another vision--of the sombre garden of gethsemane. thus maybe there was awakened still more clearly in his spirit that desire for harmony between the flesh and the soul, between nature and god, between the earth and the stars that hang over the earth, which he was to seek desperately to the last and strive to realize, despite the baseness of that other part in him, the civilized, unprimitive part, which strove merely to destroy the harmony and to smile at its work of baseness. [footnote : gauguin and van gogh were actually together from the th october to the d december, .] part iii: the school of pont-aven - i in there opened in paris on the champ-de-mars the universal exposition, to celebrate the centennial of the taking of the bastile. of this exhibition and of the palace built to house it, nothing now remains except the melancholy eiffel tower. the pictures admitted to the exhibition were, rather naturally, of a kind sanctioned by academic officialdom. wherefore visitors who happened to patronize the café volpini near the entrance were doubtless startled to find upon the walls a hundred pictures of a kind calculated to shock all their susceptibilities in art matters. their perplexity cannot have been greatly lessened by the receipt of a catalogue bearing this title: "catalogue of the exposition of pictures of the impressionist and syntheticist group, held on the premises of m. volpini, at the champ-de-mars, ." the exhibitors were people of whom the respectable patrons of the café volpini had for the most part never heard. their names were:--e. schuffenecker, emile bernard, charles laval, louis anquetin, louis roy, léon fauché, georges daniel, ludovic nemo (a pseudonym of bernard's) and lastly, paul gauguin. lithographs, printed in black upon yellow paper and not less extraordinary than the pictures, were also visible upon request. these were by bernard and gauguin. the result of this exhibition was that the public laughed, the papers protested, the young students of art in the various ateliers of paris were stimulated to furious discussion. but a few spirits, more venturesome or more prophetic, took the trouble to test the new ideas. a few, chief among them sérusier of the académie julian, even set out to visit the birthplace of the new movement, a lonely inn kept by a family of the name of gloanec at le poldu, a short distance from pont-aven. a brief survey of the history of syntheticism is necessary to an understanding of the theories of the new school. here we enter upon debatable ground. it has already been said that the chief opponents of the academicism of cabanel and bougereau were the impressionists. their movement was already through its second phase and entering upon its third. the earliest of the impressionists, led by manet, insisted that a picture was only nature seen through a temperament; in other words, that a picture must be naturalistic. this doctrine found parallel literary expression in the writings of the de goncourts, de maupassant and zola. the first phase in impressionism was therefore synthetic and maintained a belief in form. it was succeeded by an analytical phase, based upon the application to color of the scientific theories of light, of rood, chevreuil and helmholtz. to claude monet, the founder of this new school of impressionism, nothing mattered in a picture but the atmosphere. form was abandoned. after monet, renoir, pissarro, sisley, guillamin, a new group, of whom the chief were seurat and signac, attempted to combine the tenets of their two sets of predecessors. they retained formal composition but broke up color into minute points or dots. this third generation of impressionists were originally termed neo-impressionists but now, more frequently, pointillists. three artists stood out against the tendency towards scientific theory. puvis de chavannes had, within the very precincts of the official salon, created an art based on something wholly distinct, alike from the photographic and frigid eclecticism of cabanel and bougereau and from the work of both manet and monet. puvis was a decorator who could think and paint only in terms of walls. he had achieved, after a long struggle, a decorative synthesis of his own, based upon the ruthless simplification of masses, contours and coloring. reserved, cold, solitary, he had emptied his art of all rhetorical emphasis and in his old age was tending closer and closer to the methods of giotto, that father of all european painting. paul cézanne, the hermit of aix, had faced the problem of painting with the impressionist palette while preserving the mass structure of his true spiritual ancestors--the venetians and el greco. as a result he was thought to be mad and even considered by some to be a myth, for he lived far from paris and had for long enough sent no pictures to be exhibited. finally, degas, associating himself with the impressionists at the outset, had been careful to preserve the classic line and composition of ingres, who might be called the last of florentines. degas was considered an artist of small importance because, unlike manet, he scorned to give himself airs. he lived a retired life in paris, and did not exhibit. these three men--puvis de chavannes, cézanne and degas--had, through their own inner necessity, become syntheticists. but no one of them preached syntheticism, because their adherence to the creed was unconscious. the doctrine was first voiced by the men who exhibited with paul gauguin at the café volpini in , who lived and worked with him at the gloanec inn, near pont-aven. it was from these men that the reaction against impressionism started, a reaction which, in its turn, was destined to provoke another reaction towards the theories of mathematical and analytical abstraction of line, color and form, which we know as cubism, futurism and vorticism. it was these men surrounding gauguin, who forged the last living link in the chain of art tradition which goes back through giotto and cimabue to the byzantine mosaics, and, through these, to the first essays in art of cave-men and savages. with cubism, futurism and vorticism we may be witnessing the beginning of a new tradition. with gauguin and his fellows we see the renaissance of an old one. ii as early as , in an article in the _revue indépendante_, the well-known critic eduard dujardin had spoken of a group calling themselves the cloissonists, who painted in flat patches of tone, divided from each other by black lines. cloissonism, as the name indicates, was borrowed from the japanese. but as a method of painting, it had been derived less from cloisonné enamel than from the technique of the japanese color-print artists. the artistic gods of the cloissonists were hokusai, hiroshige, utamaro. it may be remembered that since men like zola, manet, monet, whistler, the de goncourts--in short the entire generation of the naturalists--had collected these color prints, written about them, talked about them. gauguin himself, when he returned to paris at the close of this year , pinned a frieze of hokusai and utamaro prints round the walls of his studio. but the existence of this somewhat baroque and exotic school of cloissonism, of which the leader was anquetin (later ranked with the syntheticists), does not fully explain the use of syntheticism with its greater insistence upon decorative unity, and its clearer affinities to the work of the italian primitives. as to the origin of syntheticism we have divergent statements from contemporary witnesses. the english artist, a.s. hartrick, who was studying in paris from to and who knew personally both gauguin and van gogh, ascribes the synthetic theory to gauguin in these terms:-- "from a study of thirteenth century glass he (gauguin) got an idea of design and color which exactly suited his state of development, and he then proceeded to translate it into an art of his own, using oil paint as a vehicle."[ ] of similar opinion is the well known french artist and writer, maurice denis, whose work has done so much to popularise gauguin. he declares in his book "theories,"[ ] that gauguin was the "incontestable originator" and master of the new movement, to which he gives two names: neo-traditionism and symbolism. in the first account which he wrote of the movement in , an account obtained from the lips of paul sérusier, one of the earliest of gauguin's disciples after , denis includes the following interesting paragraph: "did not paul gauguin originate this ingenious and unpublished history of modeling? "at the beginning there was the pure arabesque, as little deceptive of the eye as possible; a wall is empty; cover it with symmetrical spots of form, harmonious in color:--stained glass, egyptian pictures, byzantine mosaics. "from this comes the painted bas-relief:--metopes of the greek temple, the church of the middle ages. "then the attempt to attain to the ornamental deception of the eye practised in antiquity is resumed in the fifteenth century by the italian primitives, who replace the painted bas-relief by paintings modeled to imitate bas-relief, but in other respects preserve the first idea of decorative unity. recall also under what conditions michaelangelo, a sculptor, decorated the sistine ceiling. "perfection of this modeling; modeling in high-relief. this leads from the first academy of the caracchi to our decadence." emile bernard holds a contrary opinion. his view was originally published in the _mercure de france_ and reasserted in his preface to the letters written to him by van gogh.[ ] bernard, who revolted from the atelier cormon with anquetin, had, as we have seen, been repulsed by gauguin in in . after a brief return to paris he went off to saint-briac, where he covered the walls of the inn with frescoes and painted the windows, in imitation of stained-glass, employing essence of turpentine as a medium. in , before gauguin came to arles, bernard was brought into contact with him again through the mediation of theodore van gogh and, although young enough to be gauguin's son (being about twenty at this time), shared with him the honors of the volpini exhibition. bernard claims that he, and he alone, invented syntheticism, and bases his claim on the evidence of the pictures (all dated) which gauguin painted previous to , and in which gauguin was still definitely impressionist in technique. he maintains that gauguin abruptly changed his style after the second meeting in , when he first saw what his younger rival had been doing. furthermore, bernard contends that this style was solely based upon the application of cézanne's discoveries in technique. against these contentions there are three objections to be made. in the first place it is known that gauguin, during his stay in martinique in , painted pictures that are undeniably essays in syntheticism. martinique showed gauguin the impossibility of painting tropic sunlight by means of the impressionistic division of tones. always purely intuitive as an artist, gauguin began to realize at martinique, however vaguely, that one cannot reproduce the natural decomposition of light by the artificial decomposition of color attempted by pissarro and the other impressionists. he therefore sought to translate sunlight into color by simplifying and exaggerating the contrast of colors. in the second place, bernard's argument leaves unexplained why it was not he, but gauguin, who after painted those magnificent pictures _le christ jaune, le christ vert_ and _la vision après le sermon_[ ] and carved the two superb bas-reliefs _soyez amoureuses et vous serez heureuses_ and _soyez mystérieuses_. moreover, the careful reader of van gogh's letters to his brother will find that throughout ' and ' bernard stood in relation to gauguin as a pupil to a master. finally, even if bernard's contention be partially true and if his own essays did induce gauguin to reject the last vestiges of impressionism, his story fails to account for the masterly grasp of synthetic symbolism shown by gauguin immediately after their second meeting. it is quite impossible to trace to cézanne's essays in synthetic impressionism the more severely linear and decorative design of either bernard or gauguin. cézanne, later on, even went so far as to assert that gauguin had misunderstood him. therefore it is clear that the opinions of a.s. hartrick and of maurice denis better fit the facts. gauguin was the sole originator of the synthetic style. that style was derived, perhaps mainly, from the careful study of thirteenth century glass, which does perfectly what gauguin wished to do: translate the effect of sunlight into luminous color. but it was also derived from egyptian painting, byzantine mosaics and the kakemonos of the japanese. in short, it was as complete a rejection of impressionism as possible and a return to the linear arabesque and decorative spacing of balanced color and form practiced by the primitives of all times and preserved, in the nineteenth century, in the works of artists whom gauguin admired: ingres, puvis de chavannes, cézanne and degas. [footnote : "post-impressionism," by a.s. hartrick. _imprint,_ may, .] [footnote : paris, l'occident, .] [footnote : paris, vollard, .] [footnote : now known as _la lutte de jacob avec l'ange_.] iii the exhibition at the café volpini brought notoriety to gauguin. various young artists, wearying of the academic "receipt for art"--the phrase is gauguin's--which they were being taught in the ateliers of paris, took the road for pont-aven. among these were paul sérusier, chamaillard, and the dutchman, de haahn. acting under the influence of these, and especially under that of sérusier, whose mind was metaphysical and filled with neo-platonic mysticism, gauguin attempted to become the teacher of a definite doctrine. hitherto he had been an artist of the type of ingres, working purely intuitively, with one eye upon tradition and another upon nature. but his new pupils were eager for a theory, a formula, and a formula this hater of the dogmatic attempted to create. artists are singularly unhappy in their attempts to explain themselves. whistler is not the only example of an artist who might have been greater had he not wasted so much time in controversy. the public always takes too literally the efforts of an artist to analyze his own methods. all art is a synthesis, and no artist can be at the same time synthetic and analytical. gauguin was no exception to this rule. take for example, his often-quoted statement about the use of primary colors:-- "always use colors of the same origin. indigo is the best basis. it becomes yellow in saltpeter, red in vinegar. you can obtain it at any chemist's. keep to these three colors." gauguin himself did not follow this precept. an examination of his palette shows that it was arranged thus, from left to right: --ultramarine, silver white, emerald green, veronese green, yellow ochre, burnt sienna, yellow chrome, vermilion, and crimson lake. no artist needs to be told that many of these colors are dangerously fugitive, whether used pure or in mixture. so with another celebrated saying: "seek harmony and not contrast, the agreement and not--the clash of color." this saying not only goes contrary to the previously quoted remark on the use of primary colors, but is opposed to those equally famous dicta: "does that trunk of a tree seem to you blue? paint it as blue as possible," and, "a mile of green, is more green than half a mile." it is therefore more valuable to summarize the main lines of gauguin's teaching than to quote this or that paradoxical remark. gauguin was not a man holding a high-school debate on theory, but a creator. he refused even to be called a decorator, he preferred the title of artisan. he declared outright that he had no technique. "or perhaps i have one, but very vagabond, very elastic, according to the way i feel when i awaken in the morning, a technique which i apply to my own liking in order to express my thought, without taking account of the truth of nature, externally apparent. people think nowadays that all the technical means of painting are exhausted. i do not believe it, if i am to judge by the numerous observations which i have made and put into practice.... painters have still much to discover." gauguin therefore boldly called his pupils anarchists and left to them this remark: "do what you please, so long as it is intelligent." this did not prevent him from having a great respect for art tradition. he knew that tradition is not a "recipe for making art," but the sum-total of collective human intelligence working in the past on the same problems that face the artists of to-day. he realized that the essential substance of art is always the same. art is an eternal renewal of this substance. "the artist is not born of a single unity. if he adds a new link to the chain already begun, it is much. the artist is known by the quality of his transposition." the "transposition" that he himself strove for may be clearly read in his pictures. he strove incessantly for a renewal of the decorative art of the great venetians, by blending the venetian glow of color with the calm line of primitive and especially of egyptian primitive design. his problem was essentially the same as that of puvis de chavannes, the problem of how to cover a flat wall space with design and color so as to leave it still essentially a wall and not, as veronese and tiepolo left it, an optically deceptive piece of stage-scenery. puvis had solved the problem by the artificial means of lowering his scale of colors and by simplifying his drawing. gauguin solved his by the elimination of modeling, and of graduations of tone, and by reducing his drawing to the strongest possible arabesque of outline. in everything he sought for the essential form, the form that contains all the other inessential forms. as sérusier puts it: "the synthetic theory of art consists in reducing all form to the smallest possible number of component forms:--straight lines, arcs of a circle, a few angles, arcs of an ellipse." and to express this form he sought for the most harmonious balance of color. maurice denis says:--"recall that a picture, before being a war-horse, a nude or some anecdote, is essentially a flat surface covered with colors arranged in a certain order." [illustration: tahitian women.] therefore and above all, gauguin told his pupils not to draw from the model, but from memory. he admitted that it was useful for young painters to have a model, as all knowledge of facts could only be obtained from the study of models. but he added that it was better to draw a curtain before the model while painting it. one of his pupils declared: "we went into the country to paint seascapes and to the seashore to do landscapes." gauguin's teaching in this respect exactly agrees with the methods practiced for centuries by the great chinese and japanese painters. he would have enjoyed that story of a chinese painter, who was sent out by the emperor to paint the most celebrated landscape views in the empire, and who returned without having painted anything. when the emperor asked him: "but where are your pictures?" he replied: "i have them here"--and pointed to his forehead. gauguin, with his hatred of copying either from nature or from the masters of the past, would also have appreciated the chinese idea of a "copy"--a free rearrangement of old material according to one's temperament. lastly, he counseled his pupils not to paint movement but repose. "let everything you do breathe peace and calm of soul. avoid all animated attitudes. each of your figures should be perfectly static. give everything a clear outline." this counsel sounds strange to ears deafened by the tumult of modern life and by the clamorous theories of cubists, futurists and vorticists. but to gauguin it was the basis of his own mystical religion. he gave it to the world, however, not for this reason, but because he realized that painting to be decorative must be architectural. he himself was a builder, an artisan. in brittany he painted the walls and windows of the inn where he lived; he made furniture, carved and ornamented a pair of wooden sabots for himself, worked at bas-reliefs, decorated pottery. movement, restlessness, would have but troubled the lines of that ideal building, which, even then, he was erecting in his dreams. such was the doctrine of paul gauguin. it may seem strange that such ideas could have ever been considered revolutionary. in the far east at all events, they had been the commonplaces of art for centuries. revolutionary or not, gauguin went on his way undisturbed. from an examination of his letters, and of the statements of those who knew him, the fact emerged that this "anarchist" preserved throughout his life a great respect for artists of the past. rembrandt especially, in his mystical and visionary phase, appealed to him and rembrandt's influence may be traced in more than one of gauguin's tahitian pictures. velazquez, rubens, proudhon, corot, whistler--gauguin was able to learn something from all these men as well as from memling and holbein. as for his pupils, the measure of the intelligence they displayed in following his precepts may be judged by the fact that gauguin remarked about one of them: "his faults are not sufficiently accentuated for him to be considered a master," and by the fact that the first synthetic picture of another was, according to maurice denis, painted on the lid of a cigar box! iv it is in the works of this period that we must seek for a solution of gauguin's mystic doctrine and for an explanation of the struggle that went on in his soul: a struggle that was solved finally by his denial of civilization and affirmation of pagan savagery at tahiti. gauguin, as has been seen, was not naturally but only deliberately a teacher of others. especially in his intimate and personal concerns, he commonly guarded an air of defiant reserve. in the matter of views on art, he contented himself with the expression of dogmatic and paradoxical opinions which, if disputed, were merely affirmed with greater violence. it is related of him that, if any one persisted in holding an opinion contrary to his own, gauguin would reply only by an oblique glance from those cold gray eyes an answer that usually reduced the speaker to an embarrassed silence. nevertheless, we owe to the fortunate preservation of various fragmentary notes, made in the solitude of his last desperate years, indications of what gauguin's religious and political opinions were. here are some of them:-- "if i gaze before me into space, i have a vague sense of the infinite; nevertheless i am the conclusion of something that has been begun. i understand then, that there has been a beginning and that there will be no end. "in this i do not possess the explanation of a mystery, but merely the mysterious sense of this mystery--and this sensation is intimately linked to the belief in an eternal life, promised by jesus. "but then, if we in ourselves are not the beginning when we come into the world, it is necessary to believe, with the buddhists, that we have always existed. "a change of skin. "all this is very strange. "the unfathomable mystery remains what it has always been and what it is, unfathomable. god does not belong to the scholar, the logician. he belongs to the poets, to their dreams. he is the symbol of beauty, beauty itself." from these and other jottings we can understand what was passing in gauguin's mind when he painted the pictures: _le christ jaune_ and _le christ au jardin d'oliviers_; when he carved the contrasted bas-reliefs: _soyez amoureuses and soyez mystérieuses_; when he drew the lithographs: _la cigale et les fourmis_, and _léda_ which bears the defiant inscription "honi soit qui mal y pense." gauguin was a mystic who sought instinctively for religious illumination, not in the systems of philosophers and theologians, but in nature and in man. among the higher types of civilized man he saw only a false system of morality, politics and religion, which elevated the wealthy above the level of the rest of humanity and forbade to the thinker, the artist, the independent workman, the very right to live. against the organized materialism of the nineteenth century, he recognized in jesus christ a revolt and a protest; but a revolt and a protest that had failed. humanity had not yet produced, save by exception, the higher type of man, the man capable of "selling all and giving to the poor," the man chosen "to enter the kingdom of heaven." a terrible epoch, he foresaw, was coming in europe for the next generation: an epoch where the tyranny of money would destroy mankind. therefore, in contemplating christ, he was moved by a sense of despair, of the futility of this sacrifice. his attitude to christianity became purely protestant. across his pictures there moves no gracious shadow of the beneficent virgin, sharing with humanity the joys and sorrows of maternity. in _le christ jaune_ he gives us the symbol of a faith which has proved impotent to elevate mankind to its level. _le christ au jardin d'oliviers_ echoes the awful cry, "my god, my god, why hast thou forsaken me?" the terrible little picture, _les misères humaines_ sums up in its two figures the despair and hypocrisy of our vaunted civilization. even the later tahitian _birth of christ_ renders nothing but the physical anguish and exhaustion of maternity. in the _ia orana maria_, or the salutation to mary, the virgin is represented merely as a happy human mother. nature, on the other hand, seen by him luxuriant and unfettered, as at martinique, taught him the uselessness of revolt, struggle and effort, the need of fatalism, of resignation. he grew to believe that man was better, more rational, more harmonious when no longer struggling against the inexorable laws of birth, begetting, and death. thus in his art he aimed at repose, the quietism of the buddhists. his knowledge of buddhism was not deep--indeed in his eyes, buddhism, too, was a vain revolt against nature--but his respect for buddhistic doctrine remained greater than his respect for christianity. at the bottom of his soul there dwelt an old, old thought, the essence of all paganism: "eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we may die." as he put it later in the pages of his tahitian recital:-- "to the eyes of tagatha (the god) the most splendid glories of kings and their ministers are but dust and spittle: "to his eyes, purity and impurity are like the dance of the six serpents: "to his eyes, the search for the way of buddha is like the coming of flowers." it is only by meditating long on this disillusioned mysticism of a man who was never more than half an european, that we are able to understand how the same mind could have conceived the exasperated sensuality of the bas-relief, _soyez amoureuses et vous serez heureuses_ and the somber despair of _le christ au jardin d'oliviers_. that mind, as we have seen, was neither wholly christian or pagan--though the untamed pagan element in it was destined slowly to get the better of the more refined christian side. therefore it is useless to ask ourselves whether gauguin as an artist, displayed more of the classic tradition than of the gothic. gothic as well as classical strains remained mingled in him up to the last. throughout his work there runs a longing--obscure, tormented, and ultimately foiled--for a natural religion: a religion that would reconcile man with nature in one harmony, a religion, which, like the rest of his striving, would be a synthesis. v by the end of the year , gauguin's name had acquired a certain renown, and he naturally gravitated back to paris. being however still without resources, he took residence once more with emile schuffenecker. at that period, the literary and artistic school which had produced naturalism and impressionism was growing rapidly old-fashioned. paris was on the verge of her æsthetic nineties. a small group of writers, chief of whom were verlaine, mallarmé, and huysmans, had proclaimed a sort of revolt against the nineteenth century, and had been, in consequence of their love for the remote past, at first labelled decadents. this title was soon abandoned for the better designation of symbolists. gauguin appeared to the smaller fry of symbolism as a sort of hero. here was a man whose revolt was something not fictitious. he had definitely broken away from his own commercial surroundings. he had defiantly ruptured his own family ties. he had abolished impressionist science and had sought to restore art to its primitive condition, revealing in the process the inexhaustible strength and vitality of peasant and popular art. his appearance amongst them, in a sailor's jersey, a sailor cap, sailor's trousers, and carved wooden shoes, excited a sensation. he became to the facile crowd of hero-worshipers and hangers-on, a sort of symbol. some critics have stated that gauguin's head was turned by this adulation, but in reality, under a new veneer of affectation, he remained what he had always been. no man was less fitted for living in the midst of cultivated society than he. for a time, during that strange epoch of his financial career, he had indeed become, to outward seeming, largely an european; but this was merely on the surface and had completely vanished in the course of his later vagabondage. an invincible shyness and indisposition to reveal himself to others were in him, masked by an appearance of sullen reserve and discourtesy. this shyness disappeared when he was with children, peasants, or natives. but to every one else gauguin attempted to be as rude as possible, in order to keep them at a distance. and, generally, he succeeded. it is small wonder then that schuffenecker shortly found his guest again intolerable, and that gauguin had to seek out a more modest lodging. schuffenecker is scarcely to be pitied. he seems never to have realized that gauguin was the sort of man whom it was worth while trying to love and understand. in losing gauguin, he lost the one thing that was ever likely to bring him fame, the reputation which his studio had already acquired in the eyes of certain amateurs, as housing gauguin's collection of pictures and sculptures by himself, by cezanne, van gogh, and odilon redon. gauguin shortly found a better friend perhaps the only real friend he ever had--who was willing to give him the use of a studio. this was daniel de monfreid, who had, incidentally, under the name george daniel taken part in the volpini exhibition. it is worthy of note that what brought them together was not a community of taste in matters of art, but a common love of the sea. de monfreid, like gauguin, had been a sailor. he was a man enjoying a certain competence who had taken to yachting as an amusement. every summer, he dropped his palette and brushes, put on his master mariner's cap, which he had won after an apprenticeship aboard a coasting vessel, and set forth in his own schooner of thirty-six tons for a cruise in the mediterranean. this went on for years until de monfreid, weary of dodging quarantine restrictions, and getting entangled in the complications of maritime law, retired from the sea, generously offering his schooner to the naval school at cette, where she ultimately met her end. at this period he was known to his artistic friends in paris as "the captain," and had been introduced to gauguin by schuffenecker, on the former's return from martinique in . to this man all lovers of gauguin's art owe an immense debt. whether it was due to the independent and roving disposition, shared by both, or to their common love and experience of the sea, or to the fact that both were painters (de monfreid's experiences in the mediterranean had made of him a good colorist), or to a certain bond of savage frankness and nomad primitiveness to which all the rest of their common tastes were due, is unknown. the fact remains that the friendship between them was of that ideal kind that is never broken: the friendship between the creator and helper, which all artists long for and to which so few attain. in finding de monfreid, gauguin experienced almost the last stroke of good fortune that he was to have in life. the last stroke of all came a little afterwards when, in the year after accepting de monfreid's hospitality, he suddenly decided to leave europe for tahiti. [illustration: hina maruru (feast to hina).] the happy discovery of a letter which gauguin wrote at this time to a danish painter, willemsen by name, clears up the long-vexed point of what induced him to take this decision.[ ] he chanced to attend, or to read the report of, a lecture on tahiti, given by a certain van der veere. van der veere apparently pitched the tone of his discourse to suit the tastes of a fashionable audience. he pictured tahiti as a terrestrial paradise where money was unknown. "under a sky without winter, upon an earth of a marvelous fertility, the tahitian has only to lift his hands to gather in his food; so he never works. for him life means singing and making love." it is easy to picture the effect of such phrases on the mind of a born lover of repose like gauguin. tahiti held out the hope that martinique had failed to realize; the hope that he might be the first painter of the tropics. gauguin's imagination was fired by the idea. he declared that he intended to quit europe and live in tahiti henceforward. there he could perhaps forget all the hardships of the past, and die forgotten by paris, happy and free to paint "sans gloire aucune pour les autres." and if his children could join him there, all the better--his isolation would then be complete.[ ] the young symbolists of course shouted "bravo!" at the news of the proposed voyage. tahiti! another symbol! they had already spoilt gauguin sufficiently for serious art, by persuading him to embark on various symbolistic enterprises, such as the production of a masterpiece entitled _loss of maidenhood_, which has fortunately vanished, and an etching representing mallarmé with poe's raven in the background. perhaps their eagerness to see gauguin safely embarked for tahiti only concealed a growing boredom with their idol of yesterday. at all events gauguin was fêted, wined, dined. thirty of his works were auctioned off at the hôtel drouot, producing the small sum of nine thousand six hundred and eighty francs. the government consented to make his voyage to oceania an official "artistic mission," on condition that this did not involve them in a responsibility for the expenses. a banquet was held at the café voltaire, where all the symbolists were assembled. gauguin has left some ironical observations on this or on a similar banquet, which show clearly his opinion of the ceremony. finally a benefit performance was given by the théâtre d'art for the departing artist and also for verlaine, then rapidly sinking into the squalor of his last years.[ ] the most interesting fact about the performance was that, included in the program by a strange stroke of irony, maurice maeterlinck's play _l'intruse_ made on this occasion its first appearance on the stage. death walked the stage before gauguin's eyes, as if to show him what to expect. and yet he did not draw back. on the fourth of april , gauguin, abandoning paris, started on his voyage of discovery to tahiti. morice, in his interesting book on gauguin, declares that when the decision was irrevocably made, and the mission to tahiti had been stamped with official approval, gauguin's self-possession momentarily abandoned him, and he broke down, and wept. and when morice asked the reason, he replied in these strange, tragic, touching words:-- "listen to me.... i have never known how to keep alive both my family and my thought. i have not even been able, up to now, to keep alive my thought alone. and now that i can hope for the future, i feel more terribly than i have ever felt, the horror of the sacrifice i have made, which is utterly irreparable." with this knowledge in his heart, gauguin abandoned civilization. [footnote : _les marges_, paris, may , .] [footnote : gauguin had also undoubtedly read loti's book. his letters show that before deciding upon tahiti he had considered the possibility of going to tonkin or madagascar.] [footnote : it may be noticed that gauguin received no financial profit whatever from this performance, and verlaine very little.] part iv: the return to savagery - i tahiti, the largest of the french society islands, lies in the south pacific ocean. that is about the limit of the average person's knowledge. many perhaps understand vaguely that the climate is tropical but modified by sea breezes, the scenery wonderful, the people famous for beauty and licentiousness. nevertheless, a more thorough knowledge of the island's mysterious racial story could not fail to interest. tahiti, samoa (known to us through stevenson), hawaii, new zealand and the marquesas (familiar to readers of melville's "omoo"), which are the chief links in that story, were all, at the time the islands were discovered, inhabited by the same people and a people utterly different in appearance from the woolly-haired papuans of new guinea and fiji, or from the straight-haired malays of the peninsula, made familiar to us through the stories of joseph conrad. these island people, the polynesians, were found speaking all the same tongue, though in different dialects; they had, for the most part, the same social organization and their religion, manners and customs were very similar; they had, in many cases, traditions pointing to a common place of origin in the island of samoa. and yet from samoa they lived separated by thousands of miles of intervening ocean, still imperfectly known, abounding in coral reefs, liable to dangerous storms, full of shifting currents. how then had they reached tahiti? the anthropologists assure us that the race is physically a branch of the caucasian or indo-european. though their skin is dark, it is for the most part less dark than that of the natives of india. set a maori soldier from new zealand beside an indian cavalryman and note the difference between the clear yellow skin of the former, which seems to give out light and the swarthy, somber brown of the latter. in other characteristics too the polynesians are essentially caucasian. they are a tall, well built, massive race, contrasting favorably with the malay. their hair is black--or in some cases copper brown--and wavy, again contrasting with the straight hair of the malay or the fuzzy mop of the papuan. finally, the cast of face is purely caucasian and in many cases very beautiful. only the nose appears abnormally broad and flat, due to artificial flattening in infancy. we must suppose then, that at some period unknown, but probably after the christian era (the folk-lore of hawaii, which must have been settled late, goes back to the fifth century) a seafaring race of indo-european stock set sail from some part of the indian peninsula in decked ships, capable of carrying one or two hundred persons and provisions for a voyage of some weeks. (we know the polynesians were capable of building such ships.) from india they made their way to the malay peninsula, where traces of their passing still exist, and so gradually to samoa, whence they spread northwards to hawaii, southwards to new zealand, eastwards to tahiti, to the marquesas and to easter island. in order to accomplish all this, their seafaring enterprise, warlike energy and astronomical knowledge must have been great. later on, under the influence of too luxuriant a climate, the polynesians became indolent, careless, effeminate. and, as such, they were discovered by the enterprising anglo-saxon, by the frenchman with his parisian vices, by the thorough and scientific german. the combined influences of missionaries, drink, disease and the labor market reduced the inhabitants from , in to , in . to these people came paul gauguin, unwitting of the tragedy of their history. it is true that he was weary of europe and had set out with the aim he had cherished since the martinique days--to be the first painter of the tropics. but it is probable that he chose tahiti at hazard, because he believed that here was a country where one could live for almost nothing. it must always be remembered that gauguin had no private means and that his pictures, like all works in advance of their time, did not sell. cezanne, degas, could afford not to sell their pictures because they had other resources. but gauguin was forced to find some way of existing while producing pictures that, as he knew well, it would take the public some time to accept. in a letter to de monfreid he stated his system: "from the beginning, i knew that this would be a life from day to day; so, logically, i habituated myself to it. instead of losing my strength in work and worry for the moment, i put all my strength into the day--like the wrestler who does not employ his body except in the moment of wrestling. when i lie down in the evening i say to myself: one more day is gained, perhaps to-morrow i shall be dead. in my work as a painter, ditto--i do not trouble about anything, but each day for itself--at the end of a certain time, this covers a considerable extent of surface. if men would not waste their time in disconnected struggles and labors! every day a link. that is the great point." such was the frame of mind in which gauguin went to tahiti. what he found there was not the "pays de cocaigne" he probably expected. the gods do not give their gifts in this fashion. gauguin asked much from tahiti and much was given. but he asked for material comfort and was offered instead spiritual salvation. in tahiti, paul gauguin found, at last, his soul; and the work that he achieved there, though it brought him in no material fortune, was to stand and speak to later ages, its own terrible parable to all men. ii on the night of the eighth of june , after sixty-three days of voyaging, gauguin at last arrived at papeete, the capital of tahiti. he was at the time suffering from bronchitis, contracted during the last winter in paris, and within a few days of his arrival was obliged to take to his bed. he was now within a few days of his forty-third birthday. although possessed of a normally strong constitution, fortified by the open-air existence of his youth and by various athletic exercises, such as boxing, fencing and swimming, of which he was very fond, his health, when he reached tahiti, became immediately worse. this was largely due to his constant over-indulgence in tobacco and partly also to the privations which he had endured throughout his five years' struggle for livelihood. his prospects were not brilliant. the governor, lacascade, an ignorant and brutal negro, learning that he had an official mission, at once took him for a spy sent out from paris, and by every possible means attempted to hinder his getting into contact with the degraded and exploited native population. the society of the pseudo-european capital, papeete, disgusted him. the natives of the interior were suspiciously hostile to all whites. a few days after his arrival a public event occurred which roused his interest. it was the death of the last male representative of the old royal house of tahiti, pomare v, the son of the unfortunate queen pomare, who had vainly struggled to enlist great britain's sympathy in her opposition to the french occupation. pomare v had abdicated eleven years previously; now he was dead and, with his death, the last dying gleams of tahitian hopes for independence became extinct. pomare was buried in the uniform of a french admiral, with full official ceremony and according to the rites of christianity; but in the attitude of the natives to this event, gauguin was able to see that the embers of paganism still smoldered in the island and were ready to revive at any favorable opportunity. he decided to quit papeete and to hire in the interior a hut--a process which went far to exhaust his small capital. there he attempted to live as a native and to get in touch with the inhabitants. this made still further inroads on the nine thousand francs he had brought away with him from france. the natives held aloof, suspicious; they were only ready to approach him and to act as models at the sight of provisions, liquor, money. his efforts to get into closer touch with them were met only by enigmatic and evasive smiles. nevertheless gauguin persisted. though we must regard the account given by himself in the pages of "noa noa" as representing rather the dream than the reality, he undoubtedly made a brave attempt to persuade the natives to accept him as one of their own kind. but, unfortunately, the natives had seen thousands of europeans before him, either voyagers of the pierre loti type or commercial exploiters looking upon them as "dirty kanakas." they now had their revenge in the only way possible to a conquered race. they spent his money, flattered his painting and his vanity, and smiled behind his back. before a year was out his capital had vanished. there were no buyers for his pictures on the island and paris was far away. gauguin found that he had suddenly aged--a common experience enough for white men coming suddenly into a tropic climate. his heart began to give him trouble. this savage eden, which the white men had found and corrupted, was taking its little revenge. he attempted to persuade the governor to furnish funds for his passage back to france. in vain. he hoped that buyers for his pictures would come forward in paris. useless. fortunately his fame was now spreading to neutral countries. thanks to his wife's efforts he was invited to take part in an exhibition in denmark. [illustration: the old spirit.] on the eighth of december, , he forwarded a packet of eight pictures to this exhibition, among which was the superb canvas _l'esprit veille_. the picture created an immense stir at copenhagen when exhibited the next year and brought him in some money. but in paris his fame steadily declined and he was every day less talked about. albert aurier, a young critic who had written in his favor and helped to make his art known, was dead. theodore van gogh, who had supported him and had attempted to find buyers for his work, had followed his unfortunate brother into the grave. meanwhile his pupils of yesterday, bernard, sérusier and the rest, were going about paris vaguely hinting that they had taught gauguin something and that cézanne and van gogh were better artists. the halo of victory which had crowned his departure from paris was rapidly fading. he had painted already at tahiti, as he knew, magnificent pictures--pictures better than anything he had done before. moreover, he believed that he could now paint others from memory as well in paris as elsewhere. what he had seen in tahiti had given him the necessary material upon which his imagination, always synthetic and non-realistic, could work. his health and his future prospects could only suffer by a longer stay. he believed that in returning to paris he could make himself once and for all an outstanding figure. if he did not, perhaps it would be better to give up painting altogether. he was growing old. on the thirtieth of august , he arrived at marseilles with four francs in his pocket, after a terrible voyage in the steerage, in the height of summer, during which three unfortunate passengers died of heat in the red sea. it is almost incredible to think of, that this man, during the two years he had been away from france, had painted, despite failing health, and financial miseries, over forty canvases, among them such masterpieces as l'esprit veille, matamua, and ia orana maria. and yet this very same man arrived back in france a pauper! truly, he might well say of himself, that he was born with the evil eye, which brings to its owner, as well as others, only misfortune. iii paris has been for a century the most fickle and cruel city in the world. since her spoiled darling napoleon fell, there has been no one to whom she is willing to grant her favors for more than a day. there are a few exceptions to this rule. hugo, because he lived in exile; balzac, because he, too, was a hermit, continually pestered by his creditors; and of recent years verlaine, because he haunted the lowest cafés, the vilest dens, and only emerged from these to go into a hospital or a prison. such men may be the idols of paris. for the rest, paris is willing only to think of her children as sons for a day. gauguin returned, picturing a complete conquest of paris. but he had already enjoyed the brief hour of glory that was to be his. had he but managed his affairs more wisely, he might, on the strength of the sensation his pictures had created in denmark and subsequently in sweden, norway, and germany, have now concluded with a picture-dealer an arrangement enabling him to obtain a small fixed sum every year for his work. but gauguin demanded all or nothing! and, as was the case before with his mother and her peruvian relatives, the result was nothing. he decided to give a general exhibition of his entire tahitian work, forty-four pictures and two pieces of sculpture. durand-ruel gave him a gallery and charles morice, chief of the young symbolists whom gauguin had met after the volpini show, wrote a preface to the catalog, which probably only served to mystify the public still further. for the effect of the exhibition on public and press was to produce frank bewilderment. of the forty-four pictures exhibited, thirty-three remained unsold. what misled visitors more than anything else were the titles that gauguin had seen fit to attach to his pictures. these titles were in the tahitian language. every one immediately supposed that in order to understand the pictures, it was necessary to be expert in the history, the folk-lore, the manners and customs of tahiti. naturally therefore the pictures seemed to be mere archæological and ethnological puzzles, only to be read by those possessing the key. gauguin, of course, had intended something else. just as he had used brittany to suggest the somber passion and suffering of christ, so he had used tahiti to suggest the primal innocence, the enigmatic mystery of life as it was lived in eden and in the days of man's awakening--in that golden age dreamed by every great poet and every great painter. but it was useless for him to try to explain that tahiti had merely given him material out of which his imagination had evolved pictures. morice pictures him standing at the exhibition, day after day, and listening with perfect composure to the stupid remarks and laughter of the crowd. it was, as he later said of himself, the torture of the indian who smiles at the stake. only degas came and understood. to him on the last day of the exhibit, gauguin said: "monsieur degas, you have forgotten your cane," and taking down a cane he himself had sculptured handed it to the astonished painter. the bitterness of sheer starvation would assuredly have been his, had not fortune, with sly mockery and with perhaps a desire to save gauguin for better things, sent him means of salvation. a brother of his father died in orleans, well-to-do and a bachelor. from his estate, gauguin inherited thirteen thousand francs. the exhibition had been a mistake, but his next move was sheer folly. instead of reflecting calmly upon his situation, he rented a studio and determined to make one more attempt to impress and startle paris. morice admits that this was done at the insistence of his so-called friends. if this was the case gauguin would have done well had he uttered the well-known prayer, "deliver me from my friends!" for morice, even, admitted later that it was, under the circumstances, a mistake. about gauguin's studio and his life at this period the legends have grown with the years. it is undoubtedly a fact that his walls were colored pale yellow, and his windows painted with tahitian subjects in imitation of stained glass (these same windows were, by the way, on exhibition at a dealer's in paris a few years ago). it is true that his rooms were decorated with trophies, boomerangs, wooden clubs, spears. it is true that he kept a monkey and a model, a mulatto woman who is said to have come from java and who was certainly more of a trial to him than anything else. it is true also that he wore a strange costume, consisting of a long blue riding coat with pearl buttons, a blue waistcoat embroidered yellow, brown pantaloons, and a gray slouch hat with a blue ribbon. but the importance of these and of similar details is very slight. gauguin has been dead now for some years and it is time that the recollection of these pitiable attempts to attract the attention of heedless paris were dead also and forgotten. despite this parade of self-satisfied vanity, gauguin found himself ill-at-ease. the facile adulation of the symbolists, who frequented the tea-parties he gave at his studio, could not hold him. he wandered off to bruges, where he remained rapt with admiration before memling and astounded, half-overwhelmed by the brutal energy of rubens. he lost interest in the new pupils who offered themselves, seguin and o'connor. after a vain attempt to get a post from the government as a resident in oceania, he again drifted back to pont-aven. there, one day, promenading upon the beach with the persistent mulatto model at his side, he was jeered at by some sailors. in a moment, all his ridiculous artifices and carefully-studied poses slipped from him. he was again a savage, fighting for the right to exist in his own way. he attacked the sailors but they were too many for him and one, slipping behind him, launched a well-aimed kick and broke his leg at the shin. the mulatto fled, took a train to paris, entered the empty studio, seized whatever she could lay her hands on and vanished. as for gauguin, he lay on a stretcher, uttering not a groan but stoically rolling and smoking a cigarette. iv little by little there had been dawning in his mind a vague understanding; and now, as he lay on his bed in the inn at pont-aven, this understanding became a conviction. he saw and understood at last what it was that he had tried to accomplish and why he had failed. he knew now what his art had been; a great protest, an external manifestation of the inner revolt that had gone on in his soul. what he had fought against was the cunning extortion, the moral degradation, the bargaining hypocrisy, of nineteenth century europe. and nineteenth century europe had risen against him, was casting him out, was destroying him. he must either submit or declare war, for the sake of his life, his art, his soul. among the people of tahiti, labeled contemptuously "savages" by the very folk who had hampered the development of his art at every opportunity, among these savages he knew that he had found honor, courage, moral dignity, and disinterested kindness as he had found them nowhere else. among these oppressed and exploited savages, there still survived vestiges of a civilization in which art had its proper place in the scheme of things, as a means to fuller and more joyous life and as a door opening upon the mysteries of that beyond which neither scientists nor theologians could ever pierce. among these savages he had found a dark subterranean hatred of the new civilization, which they knew to be destroying them; and now he looked and saw the same hatred in his own soul. on september , , he wrote to daniel de monfreid:-- "as you say, i have not given any news of myself recently and every one is complaining. the reason is, you see, that i have lost all my strength through suffering, above all at night, which i frequently pass without any sleep. and into the bargain naturally i have done nothing this infernal month except spend money. for the rest, i have made a fixed resolve to go back and live always in oceania and shall return to paris in december in order to occupy myself exclusively in selling all my bazar at no matter what price. if i succeed i shall leave as soon as possible in february. i can then finish my days without care for the morrow and without the external struggle against fools--farewell to painting, except as a means of distraction. my house will be in sculptured wood." the resolve expressed by this letter was carried out. gauguin returned to paris and threw the "bazar," as he called it, upon the market. an auction sale was planned of the pictures remaining in the studio. on his return from tahiti, gauguin had met august strindberg, then living in paris. strindberg had taken a certain interest in his work and for a time the two men had lived together. gauguin now applied to him for a preface to the sale catalog. the following letter was strindberg's response and in its words we read intellectual europe's complaint against gauguin: "you insist absolutely upon having the preface for your catalog which i wrote in remembrance of the winter - , when we were living here, behind the institute, not far from the pantheon, more important still, close to the cemetery of montparnasse! i would have willingly given you this souvenir, to take away with you to that isle of oceania, where you wish to seek a decoration in harmony with your powerful stature, and a breathing space, but i feel myself in an equivocal position from the outset, and i respond immediately to your request by an 'i cannot' or, more brutally, by an 'i will not.' ... "i cannot grasp your art and i cannot love it--i know that this avowal will neither astonish nor wound you, because you seem to be only strengthened by the hatred of others; your personality, careful to remain intact, is pleased by the antipathy that it arouses. perhaps with reason, for, from the instant when, approved and admired, you obtain partisans, either they will rank you or classify you or give to your art a name which the younger men shall have used for five years to designate a super-annuated style of painting. ... "it was of puvis de chavannes that i thought last night, when to the southern sounds of mandolin and guitar, i saw on the walls of your studio an uproar of sunlit pictures, which pursued me in my sleep. i saw trees which no botanist will discover, animals unsuspected by cuvier and men which only you can create. "a sea which pours forth from a volcano, a sky in which no god can live--sir, said i in my dream, you have created a new heaven and earth, but i am not delighted in the midst of your creation. it is too sunny for me; i prefer more chiaroscuro. and in your paradise there lives an eve who is not my ideal, because truly i, too, have a feminine ideal or two! "this morning, i went to the luxembourg gallery to look at chavannes, who always comes back to my mind. i contemplated with a profound sympathy his picture of the poor fisherman, so attentively occupied in watching the boat, which brings him to the faithful love of his spouse, and slumbering child. that is beautiful. but it seemed to me this fisherman wore a crown of thorns, and that shocked me. for i hate christ and all crowns of thorns. you understand that i hate them. i do not desire this pitiful god who accepts blows. my god is rather vitsliputsli, who, in the sun, eats the hearts of men. "no, gauguin is not formed from the work of chavannes, nor from that of manet, nor from that of bastien-lepage. "who is he then? he is gauguin, the savage who hates a wearisome civilization; something of a titan who, jealous of his creator, in his idle moments makes his own little creation; a child who breaks up his toys to make others; he who denies and defies the rabble, preferring to see the sky red, rather than blue, as they do. [illustration: calvary.] "bon voyage, master: but come back here to me. i shall by that time perhaps have learned to understand your art better, which will permit me to make a true preface for a new catalog of a new sale, since i am beginning also to feel an immense need for becoming savage and creating a new world." to this letter, gauguin replied-with the following profession of faith:-- "i have received to-day your letter; your letter, which is a preface for my catalog. i had the idea of asking you for a preface, when i saw you the other day in my studio playing the guitar and singing, your blue northern eyes gazing attentively at the pictures on the walls. i had then the presentiment of a revolt, of a shock between your civilization and my barbarism. "you suffer from your civilization. my barbarism is to me a renewal of youth. "before the eve of my choice, which i have painted in forms and harmonies of another world, your remembrances have perhaps evoked a sorrow of the past. the eve of your civilized conception makes you and the rest of us almost always misogynists; the old eve, which in my studio frightens you, will perhaps smile at you less bitterly some day. this world of mine, which neither a cuvier nor a botanist can find, will be a paradise, which i shall have only sketched out. and from the sketch to the realization of the dream is very far. what matter? to envisage happiness, is that not a foretaste of nirvana? "the eve that i have painted, she alone, logically can remain naked before one's eyes. yours in that simple state could not walk without shame, and too beautiful (perhaps), would be the evocation of an evil and a sorrow." in february, , the pictures were sold bringing in twelve thousand francs. and shortly after the artist shook the dust of europe from his feet and departed for his final voyage to tahiti. as morice says, he left paris with a smile, and without turning his head to look back. v it was in the same spirit as that in which he quitted europe finally, that gauguin set himself the task of writing the story of his life in tahiti. this story, which appears in the pages of the book he entitled "noa noa" (a native word meaning "fragrant"), is at once the best commentary on and the final analysis of his mind. we do not know when gauguin first conceived or executed the part of the book that is his. it may have been during his long hours of solitude on his first visit to the island; perhaps it was during his stay in paris; perhaps it was after his return. the part of the book that is not his refers in passing to events that took place as late as . gauguin wished to write the story of his conversion to savagery--the conversion of a man who realized that he himself was tainted with civilization, incapable of becoming more than half-a-savage, yet realizing utterly that savagery was naked, healthy and sound, while civilization was corrupt, over-luxuriant and decaying. to accomplish this task, he sought for a style as free from literary artifice as possible. his aim was to state what he had seen in tahiti, in the style of a folk-tale. he deliberately eschewed rhetoric, exotic ornament, all the devices of the tourist, the journalist, the professional litterature. what he wanted, above all, was to make others feel, in the incidents of a naïve story, the essence of tahiti--the soul of the native. it is therefore useless to ask whether the story of his return to savagery told by gauguin in this book, has any basis in fact or whether it is largely allegory. it may be both or neither. it contains certain undoubted facts: first, that gauguin saw on his arrival at papeete the royal funeral and was struck by the attitude of the natives to that event; second, that he quitted papeete and attempted to live as a native, abandoning european dress and speech as far as possible; third, that in the course of his stay in the island he entered into relations with one or more native women; finally, that he quitted the island, owing to money troubles and in the hope of obtaining a substantial triumph in france. these facts are not important, and are merely the vague skeleton upon which the fascinating story of gauguin's spiritual development is bit by bit, built up. he made use of these facts in the same way as he made use of models in his pictures, as the basis for the suggestion of beautiful forms. all art to him was transposition, and in the pages of his recital he deliberately attempted to transpose his opinions on civilization, savagery, and life, into a series of imaginary adventures, which we are at liberty to believe or not as we choose. so we follow him from papeete into the backwoods. we find him holding aloof from the savages at first and marveling at their simple hospitality. we see him making his first tentative attempts at establishing a community of thought. he tries to persuade the natives to sit for their portraits--with little success. he tries to find solace in the companionship of the half-caste titi, in vain. then jotefa comes upon the scene, the young man whose body reveals to him the hitherto unsuspected fact that civilization has only accentuated differences of sex, and thereby rendered sex more dangerous, more artificial, more unnatural. so he gets his first gleam of intelligence. the next comes, when jotefa declares that he cannot touch the chisel, that an artist is not like other men, but some one producing a thing useful to others. this further enlightens him. he contrasts this opinion on art as something useful to man with art as the european sees it, a mere freakish amusement. finally, he hazards everything. he takes a young native girl and makes her his wife, not without qualms of fear. all goes well until one day away from home, when he is out fishing with the natives. they laugh at his luck. he asks them why. because his line has caught in the lower jaw of the fish and that is a sign of a man's wife being unfaithful to him. he returns home, half-believing the superstition. the native girl prays, weeps, asks to be beaten. he cannot beat her. he can only forgive and understand. so the story closes. from such a story, we should naturally receive the impression that gauguin's life in tahiti was ideally happy. but his letters reveal that he was even more unhappy there than in france. so whatever elements of fact may be in his story, it is evident that they cannot be disentangled from the fictional details. it is better to take "noa noa" altogether as a series of fictitious adventures, designed to bring out the fact that gauguin became, despite himself, as nearly one with the natives as it is possible for any european to be. thus we see, bit by bit, the tahitians claiming him as one of their own, from the day that he is forced by necessity to accept their food offered and at first scornfully refused, to the day when he finds that he shares their superstitions and even their easy tolerance of marital infidelity. if we look at the story in this light, it becomes an allegory easily readable, an allegory of civilization going down before primitive nature, expressed in a series of parables. unfortunately, gauguin suspected that this story would seem too bare and devoid of literary charm if he published it as it stood, and he asked charles morice to collaborate. morice thereupon wrote a series of highly florid descriptions and poems, inspired by gauguin's pictures, in a style strongly tinged with the influence of stéphane mallarmé. these poems and descriptions were intercalated between the pages of gauguin's recital.[ ] the result is that "noa noa" contains two books; the first gauguin's, the second, morice's, and the reader is liable to be confused unless he remembers that the sections by gauguin are all headed "le conteur parle," and that these sections form by themselves a continuous story. morice's contributions can therefore be disregarded. it is perhaps better not to discuss whether or not these contributions add anything to gauguin's recital. some people may even prefer the glow of morice's rhetoric to the naked blaze of gauguin's poetry. gauguin himself philosophically remarked that he wished morice's work to stand beside his, in order that people might observe the difference between a civilized decadent and a naïve and brutal savage. [footnote : they have been wisely omitted from the english translation.] part v: the fight against civilization - i with gauguin's last return to tahiti there opened for him the final and most important phase of his life, the last stand of the savage against encroaching civilization. the letters that he sent to de monfreid during this period are painful reading. they breathe the weary cry of a man who knows that fate's dice are loaded against him, the complaint of a warrior who realizes that fighting is useless, but who has no choice but to fight on. for gauguin was now exhausted by the struggle that he had carried on so long with the world out-side and within himself. the wound in his leg, given him by the sailors, had never properly healed; under the climate of tahiti, it reopened. owing to the rash exposure of his skin to the effects of tropical light, both legs were attacked by eczema. night after night was spent in sleepless pain. to add to his troubles, his eyesight began to fail; nature was taking her revenge on him, was wreaking upon his body retribution for the sins of which the white race had been guilty in their dealings with the natives. it seemed to him that the gods he worshiped had become his enemies. before leaving france, a number of friends had agreed to buy his pictures, and assure him a steady income. these now withdrew their support. he had leased a plot of ground in order to build the house of sculptured wood which he dreamed of; the construction of the house carried away his remaining capital. he was everywhere fleeced, not only by the french colonists, but also by the natives, who were growing more and more corrupt every day, thanks to the happy influence of civilization. even after his house was built, he was not allowed to keep it in peace. the owner of the ground died, leaving his affairs in a tangle; gauguin was forced to obtain another plot and to reconstruct the house, or see it destroyed. this last he refused to do, so he was forced, finally, to borrow money, a thing he had never done in his life before. towards the end of , his situation grew even worse. his eyes, now permanently inflamed, were so painful that he could not even touch a brush. the tragic portrait of himself in profile, which he sent about this time to de monfreid, clearly reveals the condition of his eyesight. de monfreid had sent him colors, but these were useless--he could not even exchange them for bread. and to add to all he was in debt, more and more heavily, month after month. de monfreid wrote him encouragingly, tried to sell his pictures, spoke of articles, of a press campaign on his behalf. the answer was--"i only desire silence, silence and again silence. let me die in peace, forgotten, or if i ought to live, let me live in peace, forgotten.... what matter if i am the pupil of bernard or sérusier? if i have painted daubs, why set out to gild them, to deceive people as to their quality?" early in his resolution was taken. weary, exhausted, at the end of his tether, he decided to meet death half-way. he finished a large picture, a sort of strange allegory of despair, entitled _d'où venons nous? que sommes nous? où allons nous?_ and then took arsenic. the dose was too strong and only brought about terrible nausea, which recurred for some months afterwards whenever he attempted to take food. meanwhile his creditors menaced him with the destruction of the house that had taken him so much trouble to build. in order to obtain food, he shortly afterwards returned to papeete and, at the age of fifty, took up a position as a shipping clerk at the board of public works, with a salary of six francs a day. to such straits was he reduced, and yet he continued the fight. can one help admiring his tenacity? meanwhile, the devoted de monfreid had been busy. he had enlisted the interest of degas, of vollard and others, and had succeeded in selling some of the artist's pictures. gauguin might now have counted upon a steady income, had he chosen to forget past injuries. but with him, there was to be no compromise. because bernard, sérusier, maurice denis had made his theories popular and had even claimed to have some influence on his development, he refused either to be ranked with them or to exhibit in their company. of course he merely made himself more unpopular in paris by such conduct. but gauguin's personality was of a kind unable to endure the society of second-rate people. he admired genius where he found it, in a few solitaries such as degas, poe, balzac, and mallarmé. for ordinary society, he preferred either natives or children. nevertheless his pictures were sold and, by de monfreid's efforts, he found himself out of debt in and able to return to his house, now in a deplorable state of neglect and decay. things seemed to improve a little, though he was now permanently crippled by the disease of his legs. he set himself once more to paint and to plant the flower seeds which de monfreid had sent, at his request, from france. ill, ruined in health and physique, a victim to drugs, he went onward to his goal. [illustration: matamua (olden days).] ii it is difficult to judge fairly the next stage in gauguin's career, unless we remember that he had suffered so much from his physical ailments, from the complete solitude in which he found himself and from the terrible crisis of the previous year, that he was afflicted for the time being with something closely resembling persecutional mania. he had been driven to war on civilization and he believed that some unknown power was now pursuing him with its hatred. in his next stage, we find him turning even against the natives. on his return to tahiti he had taken a young native girl aged thirteen-and-a-half for wife, companion and model. she had served him devotedly, had procured him food when he was unable to walk, had nursed him in his illness. after his return to the house from papeete, she had resumed with him the old life and had given birth to a child. now, for some reason or no reason, gauguin suddenly took it into his head that she had robbed him, and drove her out. the poor soul, however, returned and, as the painter was by this time a helpless cripple, he attempted to call in the law to enforce her removal, claiming that her return was a violation of his domicile. of course, the law did nothing. this only further enraged gauguin. he decided to attack the entire colonial administration. since his return, he had been everywhere treated by the europeans at tahiti as a madman or fool. now he would get his revenge. with the aid of a copying apparatus he set up and printed several numbers of a paper called, first _les guèpes_, and later _le sourire_. the contents of these papers have been printed and are the poorest stuff that gauguin ever wrote. but these crude gibes at the governor and at the colonial administrations generally, together with the equally crude caricatures that gauguin drew of prominent people in the colony, seem to have produced a stir. people began to fear him at last; it was, for a moment, a triumph. but tahiti had by this time grown too civilized to hold him. a railway had been built into the interior; the protestant missionaries grew every day more powerful; disease and drink were rapidly carrying off the natives. gauguin for a time thought of turning doctor and even wrote to de monfreid for medicines. but shortly he found his own need of medicine as great as that of any of the wretched natives. an epidemic of influenza struck the island and the painter was obliged to take to the hospital, where he had to pay twelve francs a day. to add to his griefs, the supply of food in the island became scarce and prices ran up to an impossible figure. hearing that life in the marquesas islands was cheaper, that the natives there were physically more unspoilt, also that europeans were few and far between, he decided to quit tahiti and install himself in the island of hiva-hoa or dominica. he hoped to find there elements of a purer savagery and to paint with fresh strength. this hope was destined to be realized only in part. gauguin's art is almost entirely associated with three spots, martinique, brittany and tahiti. he might have done better work at other places, had he had the time, the opportunity or the strength. in the case of his removal to the marquesas it was the strength that was lacking. traces of the exhaustion of his endurance and of the affection of his eyes are to be found even in his latest tahitian pictures. owing to his habit of dating his pictures, we can follow the failure of his power. the first things that he painted after his return are, on the whole, superior to the productions of - . the _te arii vahine_ or reclining woman, of is finer in design even than the _l'esprit veille_ of - . the _youth between two girls, la case_ ( ), the beautiful _navé navé mahana_ (delightful days) of , with its feeling of a terrestrial paradise--these are masterpieces of their kind. but the portrait of himself ( ) already shows signs of inability to finish and remains a sketch, albeit a powerful one. and with many of the succeeding works there came a greater impatience, a greater carelessness, a more hectic and feverish lack of control. the more savage gauguin's work grew, the less became his strength to produce it. one is reminded of a similar case to his, that of the irish dramatist, synge. the gauguin who sought solitude of far-off hiva-hoa was not the gauguin of ten years before. he was an extinct volcano, a burned-out crater. and he was destined to find only death in this last solitude. nevertheless, before death came, his art attained its final summit of expression. pictures like the _jeune fille à l'eventail_ ( ) or the magnificent _contes barbares_ (also ) in which the marquesas type appears, are the last word of gauguin's gospel of beauty, the revelation of a new heaven and earth. the flame burned clear in him just before the close--then the shattered body yielded and all was darkness. iii the marquesas islands are small and, in contrast to the coral and basaltic formation of tahiti, of volcanic origin. they lie about a thousand miles nearer to the equator and this makes their climate more humid and less supportable to white men. owing to this fact, and to the fact that they are out of the track of steamers between san francisco and sydney, they have preserved more of their unspoilt character. the natives are said to be the finest in appearance of any polynesian peoples. in distinction to the tahitians, who are either red or olive brown, their skin is largely of a clear golden color. in this they resemble the maories of new zealand, as in the practice of face-tattooing common among the males. they were formerly great fighters and ferocious cannibals, as herman melville's "omoo" tells us. the first white settlers amongst them were french roman catholic missionaries who, by buying up most of the valuable land, by discouraging the drink traffic and by preventing other familiar colonial abuses, have succeeded in preserving the native stock fairly well. the marquesas have never become the sink of vice and corruption which is tahiti. it was on the chief island of this group that gauguin installed himself. his capital enabled him to buy a plot of ground and to start constructing another house. this, like his house in tahiti, was ornamented with bas-reliefs in wood and large decorative paintings. in the garden, stood a rude clay statue--a sort of combination of a buddha and a maori idol--under a canopy. gauguin called this statue te atua--the god, and was reported to say his prayers to it every day. on the base of the statue were engraved these words, taken from morice's verses in "noa noa": "the gods are dead and tahiti dies of their death, the sun, which once lit the isles with flame, now sleeps, a sorrowful sleep, with brief dream wakenings: now the shadow of regret pierces the eyes of eve, who pensively smiles, gazing upon her breast, sterile gold, sealed by some divine design." altogether in the marquesas, gauguin found a great charm and repose. he seems to have rapidly established a great friendship with the natives and to have looked upon himself as being a sort of king. but his health was so bad that he was unable to leave the house and but for one chinese boy, he lived alone. he even dreamed of abandoning the marquesas (not because he was weary of the place, but because he knew his strength was small) and seeking a more favorable climate in spain, where he thought he might be able to paint. except for the constant trouble with his health, his only difficulty was with the missionaries. with the exception of a few settlers, they were the only whites on the islands. gauguin had advanced in savagery to such a point as to be unable to bear the presence of white people. he refused to see that the catholic missionaries had at least attempted to save the natives from the worse fate that had befallen them under the protestant missionaries in tahiti. the insistence of the catholics upon monogamy, upon european dress, upon mission schools and religious observances infuriated him. he made a statue of a nude woman and set it up in his garden. the bishop protested. gauguin promptly made a caricature in clay of the bishop, with horns on his head like the devil, and set it up facing the statue. something of the old gothic love of the grotesque, something, too, of the typically parisian desire to "_épater de bourgeois_" remained in him to the last. but this was not all. gauguin was not the sort of man to end his days in peace. although de monfreid had worked devotedly, his position in france was still insecure; vollard might at any moment refuse to take more pictures to sell. the wound he had received by his failure to impress paris in still smarted. he determined to write two articles containing his opinions on art, technique, painting, life and morality, in order to confound the parisian critics. these articles, entitled "anecdotes of an apprentice" and "before and after," are little more than a series of feverishly jotted notes. later, with other notes of a similar nature, they were embodied in a large album entitled "avant et après," which remains the fullest body of information about gauguin's life and art we possess. the _mercure de france_ judged, perhaps rightly, that their tone was too personally violent and refused to print them. the other old score that he had to wipe out was with the french colonial administration. in tahiti, he had fought the governor, the law courts, and the gendarmes. here it was the customs officials who roused his wrath. two american ships had recently visited the island and a certain amount of goods had been sold to the natives, through the connivance of the gendarmes, without paying tax. gauguin immediately wrote a letter on the subject to the administration, stating the facts as he understood them and protesting, on behalf of the natives, against the bribery and corruption of the customs in this instance. the only reply made was a notice from the law courts that the administration intended to take steps against him for the dissemination of an untrue statement. gauguin appeared in court, where he was promptly condemned to prison for three months and to a fine of a thousand francs. it was ruin, but gauguin determined to appeal. the tribunal was irregularly constituted and his facts had been proven to be in part, at least, true. he was sure of winning his case, but an appeal necessitated a return to tahiti and the costs of an attorney, and his capital was again running low. he wrote to de montfreid, begging him to find a buyer for three pictures, at the price of fifteen hundred francs; he sent off ten more pictures to vollard. then he prepared to make his appeal. death surprised him suddenly and paul gauguin's appeal will never be heard in this world. a letter from the only white man, the protestant minister vernier, who knew him, leaves no doubt on the subject of the cause of gauguin's death. it was not the eczema of the legs, nor leprosy, as some have hinted, nor another dose of arsenic, nor syphilis, that ended his life; it was a simple syncope of the heart. his energy, with which he had kept up for so many years the struggle with the world and out of which he had drawn so many beautiful pictures, was worn out. the machine slackened and stopped. paul gauguin died on the th of may, . a few days before his death he had written his last letter to charles morice, the words of which stir one like a trumpet. "i am on the ground but i am not beaten. the indian, who smiles while he is being tortured, is not conquered. you are mistaken if you meant that i am wrong in calling myself a savage. i _am_ a savage, and the civilized feel this, for there is nothing in my work which could produce bewilderment save this savage strain in me, for which i am not myself responsible. it is therefore inimitable. every human work is a revelation of the individual. hence there are two kinds of beauty; one comes from instinct, the other from labor. the union of the two, with the modifications resulting therefrom, produces great and very complicated richness. art-criticism has yet to discover the fact.... raphael's great science does not for a moment prevent me from discovering the instinct of the beautiful as the essential quality in him. raphael was born with beauty. all the rest in him is modification. "physics, chemistry, and above all the study of nature, have produced an epoch of confusion in art, and it may be truly said that artists robbed of all their savagery have wandered into all kinds of paths in search of the productive element they no longer possess. they now act only in disorderly groups and are terrified if they find themselves alone. solitude is not to be recommended to every one, for a man must have strength to bear it and to act alone. all i have learnt from others has been an impediment to me. it is true i know little, but what i do know is my own." yet civilization, after all, had the last word. the very bishop, whom gauguin in life had hated and caricatured, intervened when he lay cold and lifeless and the body of the painter was interred with full catholic rites in the cemetery of the church at atuana. and, by a concluding stroke of irony, the grave was left unmarked. thus one of the greatest painters of the later nineteenth century, and one of the bravest men the world has ever seen, mingled his dust with that of the humblest natives, in the same way as blake, one of the greatest painters of the early nineteenth century, had been buried before him in an unmarked grave among the paupers, at bunhill fields. iv the immense industrial development which occurred during the nineteenth century took place so rapidly and universally, that no one was able to estimate its significance or dispassionately to weigh its effects. at the outset of the century the vital idea that pervaded europe and america was the spiritual idea of liberty and the rights of man, born in the fires of the french revolution. after this idea gradually vanished, and another took its place; the purely material idea of progress. the perfected application of steam and the consequent development of machinery; the immense tapping of the world's resources of coal, metals, agricultural products; the equally immense, universal exploitation of human effort necessary to develop these resources to their maximum; the creation of an international finance, resting upon vast hoards of wealth in the hands of a limited few, whose world-wide interests were linked together by railways, steamship lines, telegraphs, telephones; the ordered regimenting of mankind into a small capitalist class, invisibly controlling the old, decayed aristocracy, the official church, the machinery of the law; a larger middle class, dependent upon and subservient to the capitalists; and an immense laboring class, exploited in the interests of the two preceding classes: all these were virtually the creation of a single century. against this overwhelming flood of change, a few exceptionally gifted men vaguely protested, affirming the greater value of human life over mechanical invention; maintaining the antique dignity of man. their protest was incoherent, individualistic. these men were like broken and scattered fragments of dykes, still unsubmerged and striving to hold back the waters of a flood. among them must be ranked the artist whose life-story i have written. all that is vital and valuable in french painting of the nineteenth century, since ingres, springs directly from the enthusiasm and spiritual energy of the french revolution. the somber fury of delacroix, the colossal caricature of daumier; the peasant art of millet; the sane realism of courbet; the mordant irony of degas and forain; even the feeling for nature and the open air which the impressionists gave us, all represent phases of humanity's vague and enormous hunger for personal freedom, for human liberty and development. when gauguin arrived on the scene, the reaction was already taking place. the official, academic painters were merely ringing the changes upon a stock of outworn formulas. on the other hand, the impressionists were striving to render nature scientifically, unemotionally. nature was becoming to them no longer the mother and nurse of man but a collection of chemical formulas for soil, air, sunlight. only puvis de chavannes remained, aloof and misunderstood, painting great decorations that seemed but the remembrance of some golden age of the past, and easel pictures of a profound, hopeless pessimism. gauguin began to paint, and the protest against science, against materialism, against unemotional vision began. at the outset he attempted to follow the scientific formulas of the impressionists. but, by the purest instinct he discovered, as cézanne had already discovered, that the sensation of light could not be painted, could only be rendered in color. and he also discovered (this time the discovery came from puvis de chavannes) that the sensation of form could not be painted either--that out of the variety of shifting forms offered to us by nature, the artist must select those most significant to him and that even these must be transposed, altered, accentuated or suppressed to suit the harmony of the composition. thus unconsciously, almost without volition on his part, he was led to understand that the primitives everywhere were the truly great artists, since they expressed great human emotions about man and nature, without troubling whether their vision was or was not exact. and so he fought, bitterly, savagely, for the actual restoration of primitive art and life; for the cause of natural humanity against the cause of mechanical, dehumanized efficiency. unless we realize this fact, we have not grasped the key, either to his art or to his life. gauguin himself admitted that his painting was only a fragmentary indication, an unrealized promise of an unaccomplished world. and he may have had knowledge also of the fundamental discord and disorder of his own life, but have despaired of ever attaining to harmony with himself. at least the caricature of himself in _contes barbares_ is here to remind us that he was not altogether the spoiled child that some imagine him to be. having both the world and himself to struggle against, he at least determined that his pictorial work should represent the best part of his personality, even if his life proved only to be, as he said in his last letter to de montfreid, "a downfall followed by an attempt to rise, followed by another downfall." and so in his pictures we realize the truth of the remark made by van gogh after the disaster that parted them: "gauguin made one feel that a good picture should be the equivalent of a good action." and indeed it is so. every artist carries upon his shoulders a profound moral responsibility. this responsibility is not, as supposed, the duty of teaching us to conform to the modern official distortion of christian ethics, by which we are ruled. it is not the duty of upholding a system of negations, of prohibitions, of compromises, striking at the very roots of life. it is a far nobler, far more difficult task. the duty of the artist is to affirm the dignity of life, the value of humanity, despite the morbid prejudices of puritanism, the timid conventionality of the mob, despite even his own knowledge of the insoluble riddle of suffering, decay and death. this duty gauguin in his art strove to accomplish. he affirmed his faith in man and in the scene of man's labor, the earth. cézanne, perhaps a more accomplished painter, endowed perhaps with a deeper respect for nature and for the style of the great painters of the past, shrank from making gauguin's affirmation. he accepted in his own life a compromise; in his art he ruthlessly eliminated the role of the creative and interpretive imagination. and then, towards the end of his life, cézanne complained that gauguin had vulgarized him. "gauguin has not understood me; never will i accept the lack of gradation and of tone; it's nonsense." it would have been better for cézanne to have said that he could not, dared not understand gauguin. nor is this all that gauguin accomplished. he restored painting to its proper place in the ordered hierarchy of the arts. he showed us that its place is between architecture and music, and that sculpture is its twin sister. he was the first man to suspect that the progress of the scientific spirit among the greeks had produced the same effects in disassociating and destroying the arts, as has the progress of the scientific spirit in the present day. he believed, and constantly affirmed, that painting was entering upon a new musical phase and he built up his pictures on a definite scale of color harmonies, as well as upon the chosen architectural proportions of form, which, whether given by perspective or not, seemed to him necessary. thus he reconciled the venetians and the primitives, and showed that the goal of both form and color is decoration. william blake might perhaps have admired this rude artisan, who painted his dream of a golden age in his own way, who steadfastly strove to grasp the essential truth in every tradition: egyptian, cambodian, persian, chinese, gothic, greek and renaissance. but gauguin could never, had he known of blake, have pardoned in him the ultimate ascetic negation, the contemptuous denial of earthliness, of "the delusions of the goddess nature." in gauguin, the spirit never conquered the flesh, and he remained to the end, a man. blake was possibly the greater visionary: gauguin is certainly the better stone on which to build. v after gauguin's death, his art rapidly became almost forgotten in france. he remarked himself towards the end of his life that there were not fifty of his pictures in that country. even the few there are, hang in scattered private collections, each containing one or at most three or four. the great bulk of his work is in germany, scandinavia and russia. it proved impossible even in to raise sufficient money to buy _l'esprit veille_ for the louvre. it is greatly to be regretted that no museum or collection has been able to assemble a considerable quantity of his work. gauguin was, above all things, a decorator, and half a dozen of his pictures make a greater effect than one. one does not judge puvis de chavannes, another decorator, solely by his easel pictures, but by the great decorative schemes in paris, at amiens and in boston. this remark applies equally to other decorators, such as raphael, michelangelo, tintoretto and veronese. a room hung with twenty gauguins would produce an immense effect of monumental power. that such a room exists in moscow can be small consolation to western europeans at present. his pupils and followers either plodded along unimaginatively, like sérusier, or drifted off into academicism, like bernard, or watered down their technique into the tasteless picture-book and stage-costume decoration of maurice denis. none of them seized gauguin's secret of remaining simple, direct and savage. aristide maillol is an honorable exception. a sculptor and tapestry designer, he was able to work upon the indications that gauguin had left for the guidance of these branches and to show us, in part at least, how they might be realized. the main stream of french art simply ignored gauguin. instead of making with him a bold leap backwards to the origins of all tradition, it went forward to even more scientific and unemotional essays in painting. the neo-impressionists with their spots of complementary colors were followed by disciples of cézanne, who sought to reduce all forms to certain geometrical primaries, basing their doctrine on certain words which the master of aix had let fall concerning the simplification of form. out of these emerged matisse, whose art became, through a more and more ruthless elimination of modeling, through a more and more arbitrary placing of colors, an abstraction, an utterly unemotional series of hieroglyphs. then picasso came upon the scene, eliminated color altogether and began to paint the abstract geometry of form. the cubists followed picasso. the futurists in their turn started another kind of abstract painting, the painting of mechanical energy, the dynamism latent in form. the expressionists, meanwhile, held to van gogh's and gauguin's idea that the picture must represent some emotion, but they denied gauguin's corollary that some form derived from nature was necessary to transpose this emotion into its pictorial equivalent. consequently they eliminated form and strove to paint abstract emotion. finally, the vorticists combined futurism and expressionism into a single whole and painted the abstraction of an abstraction--the emotion of dynamic energy, thus declaring painting to be an absolute-thing-in-itself, an art utterly innocent of any illustrative purpose whatsoever. the motives of all these confused art movements, perplexing and apparently in-congruous, were identical. they were all actuated by a mania for scientific discovery, a desire to analyze phenomena until the reality behind phenomena could be found. the physicists, chemists, philosophers had proven that the world of appearances was not the real world--that everything that existed was merely a question of ions and electrons, of radiant or non-radiant energy, or perhaps of elasticity and inelasticity. these young art revolutionaries, who gave themselves so many queer labels, were not, as many supposed, either insincere or insane. they were merely smitten with the desire to make painting--and not only painting, but even other arts as well--a branch of abstract science. the world of phenomena had been proved to be an illusion, making some abstract concept. therefore they strove to paint, not what seemed to them unreal, but their absolute conceptions. this new metaphysic, this new attempt at absolute realism, this final development of scholastic art-dogma, as narrow and soul-destroying in its way as the rules for painting religious ikons, evolved and practiced for centuries by the byzantine monks of mount athos, was rapidly conquering the whole field of aft when the past war broke out. nor has the war altogether suppressed its manifestations. the enormous destruction of human life, of nature, of art, in the past war has been altogether out of proportion to the military results achieved by either side. however true it may be to hold the germans as primarily responsible for this destruction, in the first instance, yet it remains true that none of the contending forces can escape responsibility for the later developments of the struggle. apart from germany's undeniable guilt in starting the war, civilization as a whole must answer for the horror of its method. a piece of heavy artillery is equally destructive, whether it be cast at essen or at le creusot; a caproni aeroplane can carry as many bombs as a gotha; the submarine was first employed in war by the americans; the machine gun is an english invention. for all these devices of destruction we of the twentieth century, with our belief in purely material progress, stand guilty to-day; and the blood of our guilt has reddened earth already for over four years and may continue to do so for many generations to come. the past war before it came to an end had long ceased to be a contest between national ideals and had become a struggle between man and an inhuman, scientific, organized machine. and the machine was victorious. just as the scientific spirit, conquering art before the war, led to the extravagances of cubism and vorticism so, since the war, it has attacked life itself; and made of national existence, no longer a problem of human bravery, resource and intelligence, but merely a problem of relative man-power and munitions. we have learned to speak of "man-power" as our books on physics speak of "horse-power." the task we, in the war, set ourselves was a grisly paradox; we proposed to save civilization, to undo a great wrong, by destroying the very basis of human life on which all civilization stands. it is therefore with a sense of liberation that we now turn back to a few artists who, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, foresaw that material progress would end in annihilating humanity, that nature and humanity, hand in hand, are more sacred than all the shells that could ever be produced, the guns that could ever be mounted or the laws that could ever be written. with a sense of spiritual release we revert to those who dreamed of the great return to nature--to rousseau, whitman, gauguin, as well as to others who, although perhaps lesser men than they, followed in their path--david thoreau, richard jefferies. they were the prophets of the new gospel that must some day prevail--the gospel that will set humanity above material progress and nature above æsthetic negation. their vision was of something not in themselves but of something higher and nobler, as gauguin knew when he deliberately caricatured himself in _contes barbares_. as he knew also, the vision was of something stated only fragmentarily, inscribed as a promise, a foretaste, an indication of what might be. in rousseau's prose, in whitman's poetry and in gauguin's painting we see the only gleam of hope for self-tortured humanity, and the promise of a land where nature and man are one and where reigns a peace that passes all understanding. bibliography of works consulted works of biography: . paul gauguin par jean de rotonchamp, imprimé à weimar par les soins du comte de kessler et se trouve à paris, chez edouard druet, rue de faubourg saint honoré, no. . . edition limited to copies. . gauguin, by charles morice. floury, paris, . this and the preceding work are the standard sources of gauguin's life. . lettres de paul gauguin à charles daniel de monfreid. paris, cres, . . white shadows in the south seas, by frederick o'brien. new york, the century co., . a travel book, with a few new sidelights on gauguin's final period. . avant et après. paul gauguin aux marquises. . copies only published in photo-reproduction from the original manuscript. a translation into german has also appeared. kurt wolf verlag, berlin, . works of art criticism in english: . modern painting, by willard huntingdon wright. new york, the john lane company. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) the art and life library edited by walter shaw sparrow. volume i. the british home of to-day a book of modern domestic architecture and the applied arts. (_published june, . out of print_). volume ii. the gospels in art the life of christ by great painters from fra angelico to holman hunt. (_published november, _). volume iii. women painters of the world from the time of caterina vigri ( - ) to rosa bonheur and the present day. dedicated to her majesty queen alexandra. (published march, ). hodder & stoughton, , paternoster row, london. [illustration: british school, "joy and the labourer." reproduced from the original picture in the collection of w. a. cadbury, esq. mrs. mary young hunter, painter] women painters of the world _from the time of caterina vigri - to rosa bonheur and the present day_ _edited by walter shaw sparrow_ the art and life library h&s hodder & stoughton paternoster row-london dedicated by graciovs permission to her majesty qveen alexandra in this year of ovr lord one thovsand nine hvndred & five printed by percy lund, humphries & co., ltd. the country press, bradford. [illustration: british school, "missed!" reproduced by permission of charles cheston, esq., from: the original water-colour dated , the year in which the painter's famous "roll-call" was purchased by queen victoria at the royal academy. lady elizabeth butler, painter] preface what is genius? is it not both masculine and feminine? are not some of its qualities instinct with manhood, while others delight us with the most winning graces of a perfect womanhood? does not genius make its appeal as a single creative agent with a two-fold sex? but if genius has its mirandas and its regans no less than its infinite types of men, ranging from prospero and ferdinand to caliban and trinculo, its union of the sexes does not remain always at peace within the sphere of art. sometimes, in the genius of men, the female characteristics gain mastery over the male qualities; at other times the male attributes of woman's genius win empire and precedence over the female; and whenever these things happen, the works produced in art soon recede from the world's sympathies, losing all their first freshness. they may guide us, perhaps, as finger-posts in history, pointing the way to some movement of interest; but their first popularity as art is never renewed. style is the man in the genius of men, style is the woman in the genius of the fair. no male artist, however gifted he may be, will ever be able to experience all the emotional life to which women are subject; and no woman of abilities, how much soever she may try, will be able to borrow from men anything so invaluable to art as her own intuition and the prescient tenderness and grace of her nursery-nature. thus, then, the bisexuality of genius has limits in art, and those limits should be determined by a worker's sex. as examples in art of complete womanliness, mention may be made of two exquisite portraits by madame le brun, in which, whilst representing her little daughter and herself, the painter discloses the inner essence and the life of maternal love, and discloses them with a caressing playfulness of passion unattainable by men, and sometimes unappreciated by men. here, indeed, we have the poetry of universal motherhood, common to the household hearts of good women the wide world over. such pictures may not be the highest form of painting, but highest they are in their own realm of human emotion; and they recall to one's memory that truth in which napoleon the great ranked the gentler sex as the most potent of all creative artists. "the future destiny of children," said he, "is always the work of mothers." but some persons may answer: "yes, but the achievements of women painters have been second-rate. where is there a woman artist equal to any man among the greatest masters?" persons who do not think are constantly asking that question. the greatest geniuses were all hustled and moulded into shape by the greatest epochs of ambition in the lives of nations, just as the mountains of switzerland were thrown up to their towering heights by tremendous forces underground; and, as the alps do not repeat themselves, here and there, for the pleasure of tourists, so the greatest geniuses do not reappear for the pleasure of critics or of theorists. and this is not all. why compare the differing genius of women and men? there is room in the garden of art for flowers of every kind and for butterflies and birds of every species; and why should anyone complain because a daisy is not a rose, or because nightingales and thrushes, despite their family resemblance, have voices of their own, dissimilar in compass and in quality? the present book, then, is a history of woman's garden in the art of painting, and its three hundred pictures show what she has grown in her garden during the last four centuries and a half. the editor has tried to free his mind of every bias, so that this book, within the limits of pages, might be as varied as the subject. the choice of pictures has not been easy, and a few disappointments have attended the many communications with the owners of copyrights; but only two invited artists have declined to contribute. it is not often that so much willing and generous help has come to an editor from so many countries; and it is with gratitude that i acknowledge the assistance received from the contributors of to-day. seven pictures are reproduced in colour-facsimile, thanks to the courtesy of the following artists and collectors: mrs. allingham, miss ann macbeth, mr. james orrock, r.i., mr. w a. cadbury, mr. charles cheston, mr. klackner, and mr. charles dowdeswell. the dedication page, the initials letters, the end papers, are all designs by miss ethel larcombe, while the title page and the cover are the work of mr. david veazey. the silhouettes by mlle. nelly bodenheim, used as tail-pieces, are published by permission of s. l. van looÿ, amsterdam. this volume being the first illustrated history of the women painters of the world, her majesty queen alexandra has honoured it by graciously accepting the dedication; and in this encouraging act is revealed the untiring interest and solicitude with which her majesty has ever followed the progress of women's work. the editor. [illustration: silhouette by nelly bodenheim, holland.] [illustration: school of british water-colour, contemporary an english hebe. after the original drawing h.r.h. the princess louise, duchess of argyll] contents preface: "on the scope of the present volume." by the editor. chapter i: "women painters in italy since the fifteenth century." by walter shaw sparrow chapter ii: "early british women painters." by the editor. chapter iii: "modern british women painters." by ralph peacock. chapter iv: "women painters in the united states of america." by the editor. chapter v: "of women painters in france." by léonce bénédite. translated into english by edgar preston. chapter vi: "women painters in belgium and in holland." by n. jany. translated into english by edgar preston. chapter vii: "women painters in germany and austria, in russia, switzerland and spain." by wilhelm schölermann. translated into english by wilfrid sparroy. chapter viii: "some finnish women painters." by helena westermarck. facsimile plates in colour . mrs. mary young hunter. "joy and the labourer" frontispiece page . lady elizabeth butler (elizabeth thompson). "missed!" . h.i.m. the empress frederick of germany ( - ). "the akropolis, athens: from the balcony of the crown prince's house" . miss eleanor fortescue brickdale, a.r.w.s. "youth and the lady" . miss ann macbeth. "elspeth" . mrs. helen allingham, r.w.s. "a cottage near crocken hill" . helen hyde. "day dreams" rembrandt photogravures . rosalba carriera. "portrait of a lady unknown" . madame vigée le brun. "herself and her daughter" . madame adèle romany. "portrait of gaËtano apollino baldassare vestris, dancer" . mademoiselle marie amélie cogniet. "portrait of madame adÉlaÏde d'orlÉans" . rosa bonheur. "shepherd watching his sheep" . francine charderon. "sleep" monochrome plates . h.r.h. the princess louise, duchess of argyll. "an english hebe." . sophonisba anguisciola. "her three sisters playing at chess" . artemisia gentileschi. "mary magdalene" . rosalba carriera. "charity and justice" . elisabetta sirani. "the dream of st. anthony of padua" . signorina elisa koch. "the little sister" . catharine read. "the lady georgiana spencer" . angelica kauffman, r.a. "the sibyl" . mrs. stanhope forbes, a.r.w.s. "the fisher wife" . mrs. william de morgan (evelyn pickering). "flora" . miss eleanor fortescue brickdale, a.r.w.s. "to-day for me" . miss cecilia beaux. "mother and child" . miss kate greenaway. "a. for apple pie: e. eat it" . mrs. annie l. swynnerton. "the sense of sight" . mrs. anna lea merritt, r.b.a. "love locked out" . miss cornelia w. conant. "the end of the story" . mary cassatt. "baby's toilette" . helen hyde. "the bamboo fence" . madame vigée le brun. "herself and her daughter" . berthe morisot. "portrait of a young woman seated" . madame jacqueline comerre-paton. "mistletoe" . madame eva gonzalès. "portrait of a lady" . madame fanny fleury. "the pathway to the village church" . madame vallet-bisson. "the departure" . mlle. consuélo fould. "will you buy?" . judith leyster. "the merry young man" . mevrouw bilders van bosse. "landscape near oosterbeek" . mlle. thérèse schwartze. "the children of mr. a. may, amsterdam" . madame henriette ronner. "the last move" . mlle. marie bashkirtseff. "a meeting" . mlle. ottilie roederstein. "le mois de marie" . antonia de bañuelos. "the little fishers" . mary cassatt. "childhood in a garden" . mary cassatt. "mother and two children" duplex plates . mrs. marianne stokes. "the queen and the page." duplex plate . miss lucy kemp-welch, r.b.a. "labourers of the night." duplex plate . madame benoits. "marie pauline, princesse borghese." duplex plate . rosa bonheur. "study of a bull." duplex plate owing to various reasons, the work of several well-known painters could not be obtained until this book had passed through the press, and a supplement of pictures has therefore been placed between page and page . it includes work by lady alma-tadema, mrs. seymour lucas, mrs. marrable, miss maud earl, miss julia b. folkard, miss maude goodman, miss flora m. reid, miss blanche jenkins, and madame arsène darmesteter. it is hoped that the women painters of to-day may be studied again in a second volume. in the present book, dealing with years of work, the living painters could not be fully represented, for there are thousands of ladies who now win a place in the art exhibitions of europe and america. women painters represented page abbéma, mlle. louise abran, madame allingham, mrs. helen, r.w.s. , alma-tadema, miss anna anderson, mrs. sophie angell, mrs. coleman anguisciola, sophonisba , , angus, christine art, mlle. berthe bakhuyzen, mme. c. j. van de sande bañuelos, antonia de , barton, miss rose, a.r.w.s. bashkirtseff, mlle. marie , bauck, jeanna , bauerlë, miss a., a.r.e. beale, mary beauclerk, lady diana beaux, miss cecilia , benoits, madame bilders van bosse, mme. , , bisschop-robertson, mme. suse blatherwick, lily (mrs. a. s. hartrick) blau-lang, frau tina , bodenheim, mlle. nelly , , , bonheur, rosa , , , , , bouillier, mlle. bourbon, de, infante paz , bovi, madame boznauska, de, olga breslau, mlle. louise , brickdale, miss e. fortescue, a.r.w.s. , , , , , brockmann, doña elena brownscombe, miss jennie butler, lady elizabeth , byrne, anne frances cameron, miss katharine cameron, miss margaret , capet, marie gabrielle carpenter, mrs. margaret , carpentier, madeleine carriera, rosalba , , , cassatt, miss mary , cazin, madame marie , charderon, francine chase, miss marian, r.i. chatillon, de, mme. laure chaudet, elisabeth cheviot, miss lilian claudie, mlle. cogniet, mlle. marie amélie colin-libour, madame comerre-paton, mme. j. conant, miss cornelia cool, de, mme. delphine coomans, mlle. diana cosway, maria curran, miss a. danse, mlle. louise davids, fräulein davin, madame dealy, jane m. (mrs. lewis) demont-breton, madame , de morgan, mrs. evelyn , , destrée-danse, madame dieksee, miss margaret isabel dolci, agnese dubos, mlle. angèle dubourg, mme. victoria dufau, mlle. , , duffield, mrs. william ellenrieder, anna marie empress frederick of germany enault, madame alix fanner, miss alice , fanshawe, catherine maria fautin-latour, mme. (victoria dubourg) fichel, mme. jeanne filleul, madame , fleury, mme. fanny fontana, lavinia , , forbes, mrs. stanhope , , fould, mlle. achille fould, mlle. consuélo frampton, mrs. george gardner, elizabeth , gentileschi, artemisia , , ghisi, diana gilsoni-hoppe, madame godefroid, mlle. marie e. gonzalès, eva , gow, miss mary l., r.i. granby, marchioness of greenaway, miss kate , gutti, rosina m. guyard, madame , hammond, miss g. demain, r.i. hart, miss emily havers, miss alice heitland, miss ivy hemessen, catharina van heming, mrs. matilda herford, mrs. john herland, mlle. e. hilda, mlle. e. hitz, dora , hobson, miss a. m., r.i. hogendorp, baronne van holroyd, lady hotham, amelia houdon, mlle. m. j. a. houssay, mlle. joséphine houten, mme. mesdag van houten, mlle. barbara van , how, miss beatrice , hunter, mrs. mary v., frontispiece, , hyde, miss helen , jensen, frau marie jopling, mrs. louisa, r.b.a. kauffman, angelica, r.a. , , kemp-welch, miss l. e., r.b.a. , king, miss jessie m. koch, elisa kollwitz, fräulein käthe laucota, fräulein herstine larcombe, miss ethel, dedication page, end-papers, initial letters le brun, madame vigée , , , , , , , , leleux, madame armand le roy, madame lescot, madame haudebourt leyster, judith , longhi, barbara louise, h.r.h. princess, duchess of argyll lucas-robiquet, mme. macbeth, miss ann macdonald, miss biddie macgregor, miss jessie marcotte, mlle. e. martineau, miss edith, a.r.w.s. maupeou, caroline von mayer, constance mee, mrs. anne meen, mrs. margaret merian, maria s. , merritt, mrs. anna lea, r.b.a. meunier, mlle. georgette morin, eulalie morisot, berthe , moser, mary, r.a. nicolas, mlle. marie normand, mrs. (henrietta rae) offor, b. (mrs. f. littler) oppenheim, mlle. a. parlaghy, frau vilms paymal-amouroux, mme. petiet, mlle. marie phillott, miss constance, a.r.w.s. prestel, maria c. réal del sarte, mme. ragnoni, barbara read, catharine , reis, maria g. silva robertson, mrs. j. roederstein, mlle. ottilie , romani, juana romany, mme. adèle rongier, mlle., jeanne ronner, mme. henriette , rothschild, de, baroness lambert rude, mme. sophie ruysch, rachel salanson, mlle. eugénie salles-wagner, adelaïde sawyer, miss amy schjerfbeck, helene , schurman, anna maria schneider, mme. félicie schwartze, thérèse , , , sindici, doña stuart sirani, elisabetta , sister a, sienese nun , sister b, sienese nun smythe, miss minnie, a.r.w.s. sonrel, Élisabeth spencer, lavinia, countess staples, mrs. (m. e. edwards) starr, louisa (mme. canziana) stokes, mrs. marianne , strong, mrs. elizabeth subleyras, maria tibaldi swon, mrs. j. m. swynnerton, mrs. a. l. tavernier, de, mme. e. templetown, viscountess thesleff, ellen valory, de, mme. caroline vallet-bisson, mme. vanteuil, de, mlle. vigri, caterina waterford, louisa lady , waternau, mlle. hermine watson, caroline wentworth, mrs. cecilia wesmael, mlle. e. white, miss florence wiik, maria , wolfthorn, frau julie wytsman, mme. juliette youngman, miss a. m., r.i. , zappi, lavinia fontana , , zillhardt, mlle. jenny [illustration: venetian school. - portrait of a lady unknown. after the pastel in the musée de chantilly, from a photograph by braun, clément & co., paris rosalba carriera, pastellist - ] women painters in italy since the fifteenth century by walter shaw sparrow older than the authenticated history of greek art is a tradition that connects a girl's name with the discovery of a great craft, the craft of modelling portraits in relief. kora, known as the virgin of corinth, and daughter of a potter named butades, sat one evening with her betrothed in her father's house; a torch burned, a fire of wood bickered in a brasier, throwing on the wall in shadow a clear silhouette of the young man's profile; and kora, moved by a sudden impulse, took from the hearth a charred piece of wood and outlined the shadow. when the girl's father, butades, saw the sketch which she had made, he filled in the outline with his potters' clay, forming the first medallion. it is a pretty, chivalrous tradition, and it recalls to one's memory the fact that the ancient greeks had really some women artists of note, like aristarete, daughter and pupil of nearchus, celebrated for her picture of aesculapius; or like anaxandra (about b.c. ), daughter of the painter nealces, or like helena, who painted the battle of issus, about b.c. . passing from greece to ancient rome, we find only one woman painter, lala by name, and she was a greek by birth and education. lala lived and laboured in the first century before the birth of christ. she went to rome during the last days of the republic, and won for herself a great reputation by her miniature portraits of ladies. as the early christians turned away from all luxury and adornment, the influence of christ's life was very slow in gaining its benign ascendency in the arts; but among the civilisations which were founded on the ruins of rome's decline and fall, there were some women who still deserve to be remembered for their patronage of art. amalasontha, daughter of theodoric the great, theodelinda, queen of the lombards, hroswitha, in her convent at gandershein, and ava, the first german poetess, these ladies, and many others, made colonising names, names that visited distant lands and gave ambition to other women. briefly, the renaissance was heralded by a long, troubled dawn; but it came at last, and its effects on the destinies of women were immediate and far-reaching. in italy, one by one, the universities were opened to the fair, that of bologna leading the way in the th century, when betisia gozzadini studied there with success, dressed as a boy, like plato's pupil, axiothea. and a line of girl graduates connects betisia gozzadini with the women lecturers who became so famous at bologna in the th century: anna manzolini, laura bassi, clotilde tambroni, maria agnesi, and maria dalle-donne. it is not easy to explain why the italian towns and universities gave so much encouragement to the higher aspirations of girls. in poetry, in art, in learning, that encouragement was equally remarkable, and i am tempted to assign its origin to the martial temper of the middle ages, which drew many young men from the universities to take part in the exercises of the tilt-yard or in the perils of the battlefield, leaving the fields of learning in need of zealous labourers. women, on the other hand, exposed their hearts, but not their lives, to the hazards of duels, tournaments and wars; they lived longer than men, as a rule, and hence it was worth while to encourage publicly those gifts of the female mind and spirit which had long been cultivated privately for the benefit of peaceful nunneries. still, whatever the origin of it may have been, the pride taken by the italians in their gifted women is among the most important facts in the history of their renaissance. but for that pride, the scores of ladies who became noted in the arts would have remained unknown in their homes, and the story of those times would lack in its social life a counterpart of that radiant chivalry that cast so much tenderness and sanctity about the motherhood of mary and the infancy of jesus christ. as this chapter is nothing more than a brief introduction to the study of a very important subject, i can say only a few words about the different groups of painters into which the women artists of italy are divided, beginning with the early nuns, whose art was not so much a craft as a confession of faith. caterina vigri was the earliest of these nuns, and the picture by which she is represented on page , "st. ursula and her maidens," was painted in the year . not only is it typical of the young bolognese school, but, despite the primitiveness of the drawing, it has two qualities in which the swift temperaments of women, so truth-telling in their emotions, commonly manifest themselves in art: the first is a certain naturalness of gesture and of pose; the second is an evident wish to impart life and liveliness to the faces, even although that liveliness and life may not accord with the subject in its higher spiritual significance. it is this natural wish of women to be homely and attractive that so frequently brings their art nearer to the people's sympathies than the work done by men; and if we study the four illustrations on pages and , representing pictures by the sienese nuns of santa marta, we shall see how motherly in tenderness was the feminine ideal of christ's infancy. i can gain no information about barbara ragnoni and the two other sister nuns, whose names have passed into time's limbo of forgotten things, and whom i have ventured to describe as sister a. and sister b. they were true artists, each one having a sweet graciousness of her own, playful, yet devout and reverent, devotional but not austere. in these pictures the maternal instincts are at play; the painters are so happy in their subject that their whole womanhood responds to it, making it a holy experience of their own glad hearts. there is much to admire also in the way in which the figures are grouped and co-ordinated; and how charming is that glympse of country painted by barbara ragnoni in her "adoration of the shepherds." these were not the only gifted and gracious nuns in the early history of italian art. there was plautilla nelli, who formed her style on that of fra bartolommeo; she became prioress of a convent in florence, the convent of st. catherine, and died in , aged sixty-five. barbara longhi of ravenna, another painter of the same period, was not a nun, but i mention her now in order that attention may be drawn to a painter having a genuine sympathy and style (see page ). we pass on to a little bevy of emigrants, women painters who visited foreign courts where they met with great successes. sophonisba anguisciola, born of a noble family in cremona, was enriched by philip ii. of spain; artemesia gentileschi came to london with her father and found a patron in charles i.; maria la caffa ( th century), a flower painter, came upon her mæcenas in the court of tyrol; it was in german courts that isabella del pozzo ( th century), like felicita sartori ( th century), plucked bay leaves and laurels; and violanta beatrice siries, after making for herself a name in paris, returned home to florence and painted many famous persons of the th century. then we have rosalba carriera, whose career ended in blindness and loss of reason, and whose whole life is a touching story. as a child she made point of venice lace; at the age of fourteen or fifteen she painted snuff boxes with flowers and pretty faces; then miniatures of well-known persons kept her brushes busy; but this minute art tried her eyes so seriously that rosalba adopted pastels instead, and soon became the most famous pastellist of her period. she journeyed pretty well all over the continent, winning an extraordinary success wherever she went, as well as a place in all the academies of note, from the clementina at bologna to the royal academy at paris. rosalba carriera arrived in paris in april ; she kept a diary of her experiences, and students of french history should read it in the edition annotated by alfred sensier. but here we are concerned with the art alone of rosalba carriera, an art rich in colour, swift and nervous in drawing, full of character, and modelled always with vigour and with ease. returning now to an earlier traveller, sophonisba anguisciola, we meet with another portraitist of real merit, more self-contained than rosalba, less impetuous, but fresh, witty, sincere and charming. it is probable that she was born in . after studying for some time at cremona, under bernardino campi, sophonisba anguisciola began to make fun of the little girls of the period. vasari set the greatest store by one of these satirical sketches, representing a boy with a lobster clawed to his finger, and a small girl laughing at his nimbleness. the subject of another skit was an old woman studying the alphabet, much to the amusement of a baby girl. [illustration: school of cremona, xvi century three sisters of sophonisba anguisciola playing at chess. from a photograph by hanfstaengl after the painting in the raczynski collection. vasari saw this picture and said that "the figures wanted only voice to be alive." sophonisba anguisciola or angussola, painter (?)- ] that sophonisba anguisciola was very young when she first attracted notice from the great, is proved by the fact that she sent a likeness of herself--a likeness now at vienna--to pope julius iii., who died in . it was in her twenty-seventh year that she made her way, with ten attendants, to the spanish court, there to paint a history in admired portraits of the great age of the _auto-da-fé_: a history which _tempus edax_ has devoured, leaving us only those works which sophonisba turned out in her native country, far away from the dark tragedies of the escorial. philip the second married his protegée to a wealthy sicilian noble, don fabrizio de monçada, giving her a huge dowry of , ducats, a pension of , scudi, and a dress loaded with pearls, besides other presents. sophonisba retired with her husband to palermo, where she soon became a widow. then philip and his queen wished her to return to madrid; but the artist pleaded an excuse, the excuse of homesickness, and set sail for italy. the captain of the galley of war, orazio lomellini, was a handsome man of good family, a native of genoa; his gallantry had suffered a sea-change, was altogether breezy, sailor-like, delightful; and sophonisba not only fell in love with him, she took him at a leap-year advantage, and soon changed her "weeds" for a bridal dress. when van dyck met her at genoa ( ), and painted several members of her husband's family, sophonisba was upwards of eighty-seven years old, and quite blind; but the blithe old lady still went on painting so well in her familiar conversations that van dyck said he had learnt more from her talk than from his other teachers. had steele an inkling of this magnificent compliment when he said that to love the lady elizabeth hastings was a liberal education? addison may have heard of it in italy, and in turning over his thoughts before master richard, may have dropped it generously. but, however this may be, stirling gives too much point to van dyck's words; for he says boldly, in _the annals of the artists of spain_, that my painter's portraits are little inferior to those by titian. "of this evidence is afforded," says he, "by that beautiful portrait of her, which is now no mean gem of the galleries and libraries of althorp." perhaps one may defy critics to name a single latter-day "realist" among the fair who has attained to artemisia gentileschi's masterful and singular ruthlessness, as in the several pictures of judith that she painted. one of these pictures will be found on page . it is the least relentless of the series, but it shows clearly enough the grip of artemisia's hand in tragedy. curiously, the suave guido was artemisia's first teacher, but she learnt more from domenichino, and more still from the years she passed at naples, then known as "the sink of all iniquity." but artemisia gentileschi is sometimes kind in her work, and gentle; she does not always remind us of that artemisia who fought so well at salamis, causing xerxes to cry: "behold! the men behave like women, and the women like men!" in her excellent portraits, and in pictures like the "mary magdalene," on page , she blends some graciousness of thought with vigour and variety of technique. lavinia fontana and elisabetta sirani were the ablest women painters whose travels did not extend beyond italy. the first was a member of the old roman academy, and pope gregory xiii. made her his portraitist in ordinary. she was born of good family in bologna, anno . it was her father that shaped the laggard talents of lodovico carracci, and from him came the girl's first lessons in drawing. lavinia spent most of her life in rome, where, for close on two generations, she held society by the austere truth of her portraiture. ladies of high rank vied with one another to become her sitters, and a long red line of cardinals sat to her. pope paul the fifth was among lavinia's models; very high prices were paid readily for her work, and not a few noblemen wished to marry her; but the artist remained true to the young count of imola, giovanni paolo zappi, a good, kind, simple-hearted fellow, an aristocratic barnaby rudge. him she married, and it was her ill-hap to see his simplicity repeat itself in one of their two sons, a lad who kept the pope's antechamber merry. my artist's style, though modelled to some extent on that of the carracci, has a distinction of its own. even the arid kügler gives lavinia his rare good word, reckoning her a better artist than her father, and adding: "her work is clever and bold, and in portraiture, especially, she has left good things." does elisabetta sirani take precedence of lady waterford? perhaps they may be regarded as two equal queens in the world of woman's art, each with a beautiful artistic intellect. even at the age of nineteen, as old bartsch admits, elisabetta etched exquisite plates; and, before she was twenty-three, her paintings were sought after by all the patron-critics of her country. yet her male rivals hinted that she was dishonest, that she did not paint her own pictures, but had "ghosts" to win fame and fortune for her--especially her father, a poor "ghost," afflicted with inherited gout. elisabetta happily soon turned the sneer against her rivals. this she did by working before an audience of distinguished persons, like cosimo, crown prince of tuscany, who on may th, , stood by whilst she painted a likeness of his uncle, the prince leopold. malvasia gives in his spirited monograph a list of pictures by elisabetta sirani; and lanzi deemed it marvellous that one who died so young should yet have brought to completion so many hopeful efforts of real genius. the brilliant girl painted with great rapidity. one of her finest achievements--the "baptism of christ"--is a very large picture, and the story of its conception is noteworthy. elisabetta was little more than twenty at the time, and the clergy who had been sent to order the work for the church of the certosini at bologna, looked on whilst she, radiant with inspiration, made her first impulsive sketch in pen-and-ink. the beholders were enchanted, and the huge picture, differing little in essentials from the sketch, was painted almost as rapidly as dumas repeopled the distant past. in brief, elisabetta sirani, like all women of genius, worked under an intuitive rather than technical guidance; and in her art, consequently, as in lady waterford's, we find those blemishes and beauties which belong to a native habit of spontaneous workmanship. as to her private life, it is full of heroic virtues. the noble girl kept the whole family: her mother, who was stricken with paralysis; her father, who suffered intolerably from the gout; and her two sisters, whom she educated with a large class of girl art-students. then cupid came, saw, and was overcome, and elisabetta, by way of celebrating this unkind victory, painted the little god in the act of crowning his victor. but the pity of it all was this: the girl had so many taut strings to her bow that the frail bow could not but break. elisabetta's health gave way, a painful disease of the stomach assailed her; and yet to the last day but one of her short life--i.e., august th, --she remained true to her colours, and was one of art's truest soldiers. "the best way not to feel pain is not to think of it," said she, and then went slowly back to her studio. the present book contains adequate examples of the work of elisabetta sirani, of lavinia fontana zappi, of artemisia gentileschi, of sophonisba anguisciola, of rosalba carriera; and there is a good drawing by diana ghisi, the painter-engraver, an excellent copy by maria tibaldi subleyras, and two characteristic pictures by agnese dolci, sister of carlo dolci and his equal in talent. these painters and the early nuns, caterina vigri and the three sisters of santa marta, siena, are enough to represent the old italian schools; while three characteristic pictures by elisa koch, juana romani, and rosina gutti, unite the present with the far-distant past, a past separated from the present day by four hundred and fifty years. walter shaw sparrow. [illustration: bolognese school, xvii century "mary magdalene." after the painting in the pitti gallery florence. from a photograph by anderson, rome artemisia lomi, called artemisia gentileschi, painter - ] [illustration: bolognese school, xv century saint ursula and her maidens. from a photograph by alinari after the original picture in the royal academy of fine arts, venice santa caterina vigri di bologna, painter - ] [illustration: sienese school, xvi century adoration of the shepherds. after the original picture at siena in the provincial institute of fine arts sister a., convent of santa marta, siena, painter] [illustration: the holy family with john the baptist. after the original picture at siena in the provincial institute of fine arts sister b., convent of santa marta, siena, painter about ] [illustration: sienese school, xvi century the adoration of the shepherds. after the original picture at siena in the provincial institute of fine arts sister barbara ragnoni, painter about ] [illustration: madonna and child, with st catharine and other saints. after the original picture at siena in the provincial institute sister a., convent of santa marta, siena, painter about ] [illustration: school of cremona, xvi century portrait (painted by herself) of sophonisba anguisciola or angussola, far-famed in her time as one of the leading italian artists; she did much work for philip ii. of spain. when she was very old and blind, van dyck met her at genoa, and said that he had learnt more from her talk than from his other teachers. from a photograph by anderson, rome, after the original painting at milan in the poldi-pezzoli collection sophonisba auguisciola or angussola, painter (?)- ] [illustration: venetian school, xviii century charity and justice. after the pastel in the royal gallery dresden. from a carbon print by braun, clÉment & co., paris rosalba carriera, pastellist - ] [illustration: italian school xvi century marriage of st. catharine, after an etching by n. muxel lavinia fontana zappi, painter - (?)] [illustration: portrait of a lady. after an etching by n. muxel sophonisba anguisciola, painter -(?) ] [illustration: a victor in his triumphal chariot. after the drawing in the print room of the british museum, from a photograph by w. e. gray diana ghisi, called mantuana, painter-engraver - ] [illustration: bolognese school, xvi century portrait (executed by herself) of lavinia fontana zappi, painter in ordinary to pope gregory xiii. from a carbon print by braun, clÉment & co., paris, after the original painting in the uffizi gallery, florence lavinia fontana zappi, painter - (?)] [illustration: bolognese school, xvi century jesus christ talking with the woman of samaria. after the original painting in the national museum, naples. from a photograph by alinari lavinia fontana zappi, painter - (?)] [illustration: mary and the child jesus in the act of crowning a saint. after the original painting in the louvre, paris, from a photograph by messrs. w. a. mansell & co. barbara longhi, painter end of th century] [illustration: bolognese school, xvii century portrait: (executed by herself) of artemisia gentileschi, who lived for a time in england and worked for charles the first. from a photograph by hanfstaengl after the original painting in earl spencer's collection artemisia lomi, called artemisia gentileschi, painter - ] [illustration: bolognese school, xvii century "the dream of saint anthony of padua." from a photograph by anderson, rome, after the painting in the pinacoteca in bologna elisabetta sirani, painter - ] [illustration: bolognese school, xvii century judith and her maid with the head of holofernes. from a photograph by alinari after the original painting in the pitti gallery, florence artemisia lomi, called artemisia gentileschi, painter - ] [illustration: bolognese school, xvii century the madonna weeping. from an original etching dated , in the british museum elisabetta sirani, painter-etcher - ] [illustration: the flight into egypt. from the original etching in the british museum elisabetta sirani, painter-etcher - ] [illustration: florentine school, xvii century mary and the child jesus. from a photograph by braun, clement & co., paris, after the original painting in the besancon museum "jesus took bread and blessed it..." from a photograph by braun clÉment & co., paris, after the original painting in the louvre agnese dolci painter died about ] [illustration: venetian school, xviii century portrait study of a lady with her pet monkey. from a photograph by lÉvy & sons after the original pastel in the louvre, paris portrait study of cardinal de polignac. from a photograph by anderson after the original pastel in venice rosalba carriera, pastellist - ] [illustration: italian school, about the little sister. reproduced from a photograph by permission of braun, clement & co., paris signorina elisa koch painter] [illustration: venetian school, xviii century portrait study of a girl. from a photograph by lÉvy & sons, paris, after the original pastel in the louvre portrait of rosalba carriera, the most famous pastellist of her time. from anderson's photograph of the original pastel in rome rosalba carriera, pastellist - ] [illustration: roman school, xviii century mary magdalene at the feet of jesus christ in the house of simon the pharisee. from a photograph by alinari after the painting in rome in the galleria capitolina. it is a copy after a picture by the artist's husband, pierre subleyras, a picture now in the louvre, paris. maria tibaldi subleyras presented this copy to pope benedict xiv, who sent her a thousand scudi, and placed her work in his collection at the capitol maria tibaldi subleyras, painter born ] [illustration: italian school, contemporary the peacemaker. reproduced after the original drawing from a photograph by the autotype co., new oxford street, london rosina mantovani gutti, artist] [illustration: italian school, contemporary study from a model. after the original painting from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris juana romani, painter] [illustration: school of english water colour, xix. century "the akropolis, athens: from the balcony of the crown prince's house." from the water-colour drawing in the collection of james orrock, esq., r.i. h.i.m. the empress frederick of germany, r.i. - ] early british women painters everybody knows that it has fallen to england's lot to gem the remote seas with shining repetitions of herself. but everybody does not remember that she has done this quite at haphazard, just as the winds carry seeds from a garden to a waste ground. in herself, with fitful moments of purposeful energy, england has been self-critical and self-distrustful, disinclined to value her own doings or to take precautions when in the midst of dangers. but for the individual enterprise of her children, which she has often disowned and punished, her colonies would have been the isle of man and the isle of wight. and it is singular to note also that the history of england's genius in art has followed the traditional character of her devious makeshifts in commerce and in war. despite all inherent weaknesses, she has achieved at random a recognised greatness in art, and is so surprised at it that she hesitates always to encourage the gifts of her own craftsmen, preferring rather to have confidence in the work which she can buy from men of genius in other countries. from the time of henry viii. to the coming of the school of reynolds, she allowed her own painters to starve in order that she might employ strangers; and to-day, as in the past, she butterflies from foreign school to foreign school and treats her own native arts to side-glances and half-friendly nods. now, as this has ever been england's disposition, it is not surprising to find that englishwomen, as well as englishmen, long hesitated to follow the arts professionally. at a time when italy and france had scores of women painters, england had scarcely one. perhaps the earliest of any note, if we except susannah penelope gibson, a miniature painter, was mrs. mary beale, daughter of a suffolk clergyman named cradock. she lived between the years and . after modelling her style on that of lely, she worked with great courage, showing much real talent, particularly in quiet portraiture. she painted broadly and well, drew with force and discrimination, and although she told the truth plainly at a time when other painters flattered and fawned, she yet achieved success, and was encouraged by the highest in the land, from king charles the second to archbishop tillotson. time has robbed her colour of its first freshness, but the character remains, and the portraits on page represent mary beale in a characteristic manner. the next english women painters in order of merit were lady diana beauclerk, an amateur with much untutored talent, and catharine read, a distinguished professional artist of the reynolds period. that she was appreciated in her day is proved by the fact that her portraits were engraved, side by side with those of reynolds and gainsborough. to-day she is forgotten, and very little can be learnt about her life or about the present owners of her pictures. catharine read lived near st. james's and sent frequently to the exhibitions. in she went to the east indies, but in a few years returned to london, where she died in or about the year . angelica kauffman, r.a., though born at coire, the capital of the grisons, belongs to the british school, and holds in the early history of that school a position similar to that which has been assigned in france to madame vigée le brun. the art of the two ladies differs widely to be sure, that of angelica kauffman having less mirth, less wit, less sprightliness and homeful sincerity; it is quite artificial in spirit, with a strong bias towards the sentimental; but it has for all that considerable charm and ability, qualities, let us remember, that won the admiration of reynolds and of goethe. turner, also, possessed two of her drawings, as i am told by his descendant, mr charles mallord w. turner. but in recent times angelica kauffman has been remembered for the romance of her personal life and treated with cool contempt in all that appertains to her work. critics have searched in her pictures for manly qualities, and finding there the temperament of a sentimental woman, their judgment has failed them. the very men who would be astonished beyond measure if a prima donna sang to them in a voice like the leading tenor's, do not hesitate to complain when the voice in a woman's painting is one filled with womanhood. in england, at the close of the th century, quite a number of ladies came to the front in art, like caroline watson, the admirable stipple engraver (page ), or like catherine maria fanshawe, a painter-etcher who could put a body into a peasant's smock and could show in a rustic figure the mingled influences of morland and gainsborough, while keeping a tender sympathy of her own (page ). amelia hotham, too, in the native art of water-colour, attained to a broad and vigorous style in landscape, while taking far too many hints from the scenic pomp that francis nicholson made popular in outdoor scenes (page ). nevertheless, amelia hotham's work has interest in the history of british water-colour, like that of three other ladies who followed her, the viscountess templetown (page ), matilda heming and mrs. john herford, the grandmother of mrs. allingham. matilda heming's picture on page , "backwater, weymouth, dorset," is weak in the drawing of the hills, but the rest of the design is quite admirable, the boats particularly being very well drawn. we see, then, that during the last decades of the th century, and at the beginning of the nineteenth, a little band of englishwomen studied landscape painting seriously; and this fact is worth remembering, as women have seldom been drawn in art to nature in the woods and fields. the gentler sex, as a rule, has not appreciated landscapes. on the other hand, they have shown in art a great love for the beauty of flowers, the colour and the forms of insects, and the "other-naturalness" of many kinds of animals. maria sibylla merian, rachel ruysch, rosa bonheur, fidelia bridges, mrs. coleman angell, madame ronner, mlle. e. hilda, miss lucy kemp-welch--these ladies will not be forgotten, let us hope, as long as there are students who take delight in plants, flowers, birds and animals. among the flower and fruit painters in england, during the th century and the first few decades of the nineteenth, conspicuous places must be assigned to mary moser, r.a., mrs. margaret meen, and anne frances byrne, illustrations of whose pictures will be found on page ; and the reader will do well to compare this early work with that of mrs. coleman angell, the female counterpart of william hunt (page ). whilst these flower-painters were busy, another small group of ladies won considerable popularity by their little figure-subjects, such as the countess spencer's drawing on page , or again, like the fanciful miniatures by mrs. mee or the sentimental portraits by mrs. j. robertson, types of which are given on page . miss curran's portrait of shelley is a valuable portrait-sketch historically (page ), and it has something of the charm that distinguishes the able portraits drawn to-day by the marchioness of granby. what can be said about mrs. margaret carpenter? is she not to be placed among those quiet, unpretentious portrait-painters whose thoughts are so wrapped up in their determination to be true that they never think of striving after exhibition-room effects? margaret carpenter gives us the character of her sitters, and not technical displays of her own cleverness. born at salisbury, in , the daughter of captain geddes, this able painter came to london in , and married, in , william carpenter, who for many years was keeper of the print room in the british museum. she exhibited often at the royal academy until , and made a great reputation by her portraits. she died in , leaving a son, william carpenter ( - ), to continue the art tradition which she had herself carried on in her family. [illustration: english school, xviii century portrait of the lady georgiana spencer. after the painting in the collection of earl spencer. from a photograph by hanfstaengl catharine read, painter died about ] some may think that margaret carpenter began the modern history of women painters in england; others may grant that distinction to the intuitive and radiant work of lady waterford, that most gifted of all amateurs. it seems truer to say that margaret carpenter is best described as a connecting-link between the old and the new, and that lady waterford is not only so faithful to herself but so spontaneous, that her good gifts belong to no particular school or period. they certainly owed much to the colour of the venetian school, far more to that old source of inspiration than to any influence of the th century. but the main characteristics of lady waterford's appeal come to us from the painter's own heart and beautiful æsthetic intellect. the ease with which she composed, and the charming animation of all her designs, these were natural qualities uninfluenced by any teaching; and they won the ardent admiration of the late mr. g. f. watts. it is the spirit alone of lady waterford's art that we should admire; we must not look closely at the drawing, for lady waterford neither tried nor wished to perfect her faulty technical equipment. most of her art-work was done after a day spent in other charities. it was lady waterford's joy to dole out alms herself, and it never occurred to her that she might do such good actions by proxy, just as queen charlotte picked up five old books in the booths of holywell street. the truth is that lady waterford valued practicalness more than imagination, as do the great majority of women; she longed to _see_ the good she did, and she could not realise to herself that art has a permanent ethical influence. closing her eyes to this truth, lady waterford wrote as follows to one of her friends:-- "i could never attain to even one work that i see in my mind's eye, and if i could it would be less than those of the great men of old, _whose greatest works have not quelled evil or taught good_.... i could not live for art--it would not be what i am put in the world to do. i do not despise art, but i should feel that it was not given for that. two homes have been given me, and it is to try to do what i can in them that they are given for brief life." is not that pathetic? is it not the very music of a woman's rationalism? what has "quelled evil?" but if our hearts and minds rise to an entire sympathy with lady waterford's sketches, we shall certainly feel that a noble spirit in art does indeed "teach good," is a spiritual almsgiving for all time, a charity that goes on ministering, through long generations, to that which is best in human nature. walter shaw sparrow. [illustration: design by christine angus.] modern british women painters by ralph peacock it is the privilege of man, in his youth, to ignore his limitations. for this ignorance he pays in failure the price of a possible success. in his wiser middle age he does not repent, he finds that it is only by some sort of an attack on his limitations that apparent results are attained, and he learns to take on faith the difference there is in fact between the attainment and the attempt. the experience of a woman is, i take it, very similar. it follows in no way that, because her limitations are different from, and in a physical sense greater than, man's, the brutal laws which go to produce results are in her case different. she is marching along the same road, and though she may have other stopping places by the way and perhaps may take up more modest quarters in the end, it is a journey and an arrival, an effort and a result, and the things seen by the wayside become of significance to her as the painted banners under which she seeks her way. englishwomen do not seem to have done much in painting before the generation or two that are just past. public opinion was against them. the early victorian conditions under which a woman like charlotte brontë produced her great results in another art are more or less familiar to all, and in the matter of painting the voice of prejudice has had still more to say. by these days it has croaked itself into the feeble hoarseness of a respectable and decent old age, and we can already look back to a succession of women painters who seem to have been conscious at first of their leading-strings, but who have shown a development more than corresponding to that of the conditions under which they worked. kate greenaway, who died only a few years ago, was no doubt a good example of the charming results to be obtained in leading-strings. to compare her with an artist who works in a similar field to-day is to note an advance, not only of a generation, but of the changing educational conditions within the generation. it is a far cry from kate greenaway to miss alice woodward, for instance, and it is difficult to imagine that another age will say anything more, or less, of miss woodward than that she was a most distinguished artist. the leading-strings are gone. it will always be a special field for women, the production of work in the first place for children, and it is unnecessary to spend time in emphasising or over-emphasising its importance. art itself reckons little with motives and much with results. in a more general view it would, perhaps, be better to start this small article with some notice of the women painters of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. there is mrs. mary beale, who was a child when cromwell was lord protector, and who later on painted a most excellent portrait of charles ii. there is some work of hers in the national portrait gallery, london, work of the quiet, genuine kind, and better than most of the painting that came for some time afterwards. then there is angelica kauffman, r.a., who provides us with perhaps the only well-known name of the early periods, and there are some portrait-painters of interest, like miss catharine read, of reynolds' time, or like mrs. anne mee, of the early part of last century. but it must be confessed that it would be a sorry list for a couple of centuries if it were a fact that women had had the same opportunities and no greater disabilities than the men of the period. it is not indeed until we reach such painters as margaret carpenter, the portrait painter, mrs. matilda heming, the landscapist, and lady waterford, that more than charming amateur who might have done so much, that we begin to feel we have a reasonable genesis of the worker of to-day. these painters show to us now rather the influences of their time or the limitations of their opportunities, than personalities which are outside such considerations, but they nevertheless provide us with evidence of a very genuine and lively activity. [illustration: british school, xviii century the sibyl. after the picture in the royal gallery, dresden. from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris maria angelica kauffman, r.a., painter - ] the work of mrs. heming is interesting in a rather more special way. it is distinctly rare to find the ordinary landscapist of her time working with an eye to truth rather than to the making of a so-called composition of the period, rare enough in fact to place her quite above the ordinary. it is at first sight a curious thing that more women painters have not even in these days been attracted by pure landscape. it is strange in the sense that they have among them such painters as lady butler and miss lucy kemp-welch. but no branch of art is more that of the specialists than landscape. it developed later in history than any other, and it calls to those who would tire of the didactic in human thought and who might find in the study of any obviously human affair something to remind them of a phase of experience they would, in paint, avoid. no doubt the empress frederick turned to landscape as an occupation of relief from the pressing human affairs in which her life was involved, and it is just in such a way that the natural landscapist turns from the human side of life to the more abstract emotions he finds in the garden of the great spirit. women, i believe, are more held by the personal than the abstract. mrs. allingham may be one of the exceptions. in any case mrs. allingham claims quite a special place for herself in any sketch-survey of the work of english women painters. few women have shown a more definitely english sympathy in landscape than she has. her method is simple, obvious and plain for all to see. for that reason it would fail to appeal in any way to the eclectics, or to those among them, at any rate, who, in the words of a subtle eclectic, confound the natural with the commonplace. a distinctly home-bred feeling, such as mrs. allingham has among women, or, in the grand manner, fred walker among men, is however a very rare thing and is becoming rarer. how far it may, in individual cases, change to other things may be seen in some of the more modern painters, in the remarkably strong work of miss margaret cameron, miss biddie macdonald, miss alice fanner, and miss beatrice how. this latter painter has not merely been affected in matters of technique, but gives us, most delightfully, the very sentiment of the country people she paints. it is quite a little miracle of transplanted adaptability. it has been said that every good woman has in her marching outfit a supply of adaptability which, in sum total, accounts for most of the happiness enjoyed by the human race at large. if so, it may be added that in its superior manifestations the affair is sub-conscious, artistic, most natural and not at all one of the commonplaces of life. it perhaps explains, or rather is illustrated by, the number of painters in the very first rank among women who have shown in their work the influence of some near relative. in any case, lady alma-tadema for one has produced work so extraordinarily good in itself that it is easy to believe the similarity of her technique to that of sir laurence alma-tadema to be merely one of the happy chances of her life. a very similar thought arises in connection with the work of the late miss margaret dicksee. it is easy to influence technique, but first causes are not set in action by human hands. if one who did not know her may say so, there is written on the canvases that miss dicksee has left behind the evidence of a most lovable nature. mrs. stanhope forbes, miss lucy kemp-welch and lady granby are isolated examples whose work has no connection in itself and shows very little affinity, beneath the surface, with the special influences of their time. the strong brushwork of mrs. stanhope forbes, it is true, may be said to have arrived by way of newlyn, but the fanciful sentiment underlying her work has an arrival quite of its own. miss lucy kemp-welch has made, and deserved, a place for herself the last few years, and she stands alone among women as an animal painter of power. lady granby, who is an amateur, is also an artist. magna est ars et prevalet. ave! miss mary gow, the late alice havers, miss jessie macgregor, miss anna alma-tadema, miss lily blatherwick, miss amy sawyer, and louisa starr (madame canziana) also make a special appeal, each in her own way. mrs. swynnerton is a lady who has given us a great deal of work of a very high order indeed. in the first place she has always something to say that is worth saying. her work is exuberant with the joy of life, the joy of colour. her very brush is surcharged with a high and lavish spirit. blue eyes look out, so blue, from happy sunburnt faces, so sunburnt, that take their places on her canvases as in a drama to tell us something of her thoughts and of themselves. mrs. swynnerton, plus her faults, is genuine through and through. the work of another painter, mrs. de morgan, naturally comes into consideration when we turn to symbolism. more tenaciously in earnest and more austere in every way than mrs. swynnerton, her work is as the poles apart. the one romps, if the term be allowed, in a flower-spangled meadow, the other's province is the study; and, as is the way with students, her mind is often on the thought of the past rather than with affairs of the present. before one of mrs. de morgan's pictures one thinks through, by way of burne-jones, to botticelli and the great ancestors of art, and it is saying a very great deal for mrs. de morgan that in such case one can bless the passive hand that gives and the hand that receives. her work may very well lead us to a small band of artists, not definitely connected in themselves, but allied with each other in the sense that they work for somewhat similar ends: mrs. marianne stokes, miss eleanor fortescue brickdale and mrs. young hunter. to these, perhaps, may one day be added a name very little known at present, miss milicent e. gray. it is not unusual in speaking of the work of either of these first three artists, and more especially of miss eleanor brickdale, to refer to the pre-raphaelite influence in art. it is, however, extremely probable that the influence takes direct effect in these days more as a method than as a conviction. the great conviction itself has leavened art, and the individualities of these painters are so strong that it becomes in their case a nearer interest to ignore all potters and regard the clay. mrs. young hunter has a quaint flitting fancy that wanders over hill and dale and seizes from life subtle little touches that are full of the elusiveness of tales told after school hours. mrs. marianne stokes is made of sterner stuff. she has worked of late in that most stern and stubborn medium, tempera, and small things of hers in various exhibitions attract one always with the desire to know more of her most attractive work. miss eleanor brickdale works, or plays, always with an idea. and the idea she is not satisfied to leave until it has taken on for other eyes a most cunning and beautiful bodily shape, in line, in form, in colour--above all in line. she is probably, without knowing it, as good an antithesis as may be found of the impressionist, so-called. the impressionist is the incarnation of the abstract in terms of paint, the symbolist uses the material to convey definite abstractions in thought. it is, by contrast with music, the motive of symphony as compared to the motive of oratorio or opera, and the apposite methods may be equally well, or badly, used or abused. abuse may lead the militant impressionist to an impasse of assertive agnosticism as pedantic in its way as the lucubrations of the most literary pedant in paint. on the other side of the lantern you may have watts, and the painted canvases of a whistler. so be it. art is a long lane with many turnings, and down each there may be found a little house with a fireside and human hearts thereby. ralph peacock. [illustration: silhouette by nelly bodenheim] [illustration: school of british water-colour, . youth and the lady. reproduced from the original water-colour, by kind permission of charles dowdeswell, esq., the owner of the picture and its copyright. miss eleanor fortescue brickdale, painter] women painters in the united states of america during the th century, in the united states of america, there came slowly into existence a new school of painting--new often in temper rather than in manner, for its followers usually came to europe for their methods. race, climate, religion, commerce, social life, influence art, and the painters of the united states reveal in their work all the characteristics for which their country has long been famous: vivacity, invention, constant enterprise, a democratic enthusiasm, a love of truth (truth often united with romance or else with sensationalism), and last, but not least, a rare felicity in transforming borrowed knowledge into something quite original. it is not often that a civilisation embodies itself in the genius of one man, giving an epitome of all its dominant qualities; but in mr. john s. sargent, r.a., we recognise a painter of tremendous gifts who does for the united states what the manly, swaggering rubens did for flanders, symbolising a people and a civilisation. one sign of the democratic spirit in the progress of american art is to be noticed in the fact that women have participated largely in the honours gained by the pioneers. it is noteworthy, for instance, that the first book on women painters should have been written by an american lady, mrs ellet, as far back as . mrs. ellet showed great industry, but following a custom rashly encouraged by writers on art, she believed that she could teach painting and sculpture by the use of words alone, in recording biographical facts, and in offering criticisms on work that her readers could not see in illustrations. written history is the phonograph of all past centuries, but the understanding of art owes little to its words. still, the enthusiasm that fired mrs. ellet was shared by many of her countrywomen, and to it we owe some truly clever artists, like the four sculptors, harriet hosmer, florence freeman, edmonia lewis and emma stebbins, or like the following painters: emily sartain (portraits and genre), sara m. peale (portraits), mrs. j. w. dewing (portraits, subject pictures, flowers and still-life), annie c. shaw (cattle and landscapes), mrs. adèle fassett (portraits) mrs. elisa greatorex (landscapes), mrs. henry a. loop (portraits), ella a. moss (portraits), jennie brownscombe (subject pictures), may alcott (copies after j. m. w. turner and still-life), elizabeth boott (figure subjects), charlotte b. coman (landscapes in the manner of corot), and that delicate recorder of pleasant secrets learnt from nature in the fields, fidelia bridges. the very titles of this lady's pictures have the fragrance of field flowers or else they glow with the plumage of birds. it has been said of fidelia bridges that her art sings little pastoral lyrics, and her art is certainly very fresh and sweet, charmed with much sympathetic appreciation of nature in some of her unnumbered smiling moods. for fidelia bridges, like birket foster, paints as though the year were all springtime, a series of twelve may months, all full of gaiety and bounty. she seldom takes heed of that eternal warfare which accompanies nature's bountifulness, filling the seed-carrying winds with the presence of death, and setting every living thing to prey upon another. to this part of nature's life fidelia bridges usually shuts her eyes, unlike miss e. m. carpenter, whose landscape art reveals at times the menacing suggestion of great rivers and of high solitary mountains. it would serve no useful purpose to enumerate all the earlier women painters of the united states. they worked bravely and well, and if their doings are now forgotten or undervalued, it is only because the harvest sowed by them is being reaped by the present generation. to-day the names of at least two american women painters, mary cassatt and cecilia beaux, are known in every country where good art is studied. mary cassatt, the only pupil of degas, is bracketed always with berthe morisot, for both ladies became impressionists at about the same time, adding the charm of their personalities to a rugged revolt in art. the work of each has great interest, but that of mary cassatt is the more attractive and the more enduring. it is not overburdened with a heavy adherence to methods originated by men; and it is richer with the emotions of the painter's own heart. to mary cassatt, impressionism is a chosen dialect, a means by which she can express herself in colour and form; to berthe morisot, on the other hand, it was in itself the final word in painting. so, mistaking the clay of art for the finished statue, she obeyed the methods of a school with so much zeal and so much self-sacrifice that her own nature became enslaved to the difficulties of technique. compare berthe morisot's able study (page ) with the charming homeliness of mary cassatt's picture (page ), and you will see at a glance how wide is the difference between the emotional and æsthetic value of the subjects represented. berthe morisot remains a student, while mary cassatt passes beyond technique to a universal delight in childhood. she feels both the pathos and the humour of the beginnings of our life, and she makes infancy welcome in art because she understands it and shows no maudlin sentiment. something of the same kind is done by miss cornelia conant, in her domestic picture called "the end of the story" (page ); and another view of child-life, delightfully rendered by helen hyde, may be seen in colour on page . the pictures by which miss cecilia beaux is represented in this book show very clearly that her genius has dramatic strength, sustention, and flexibility. the portrait on page is handled with a sculptural vigour that responds admirably to the character of the sitter, while the "mother and child" (page ) has a quietness of tone, a reserved simplicity of style, a permeating suggestion of pathos, having much in common with whistler's portrait of his mother. miss cecilia beaux is a dramatist in her studies of character, and her art is probably more subtle and more various than that of any woman painter who has devoted her life to portraiture. the reader will do well to contrast her style with that of mrs. anna lea merritt, the first woman painter whose work was purchased by the chantrey fund, london (page ). it is fitting now that a list should be given of other leading artists of the united states, though their work is not represented here, owing to the adventures in delays that attend a despatch of letters from london to america. . sarah c. sears (mrs. j. montgomery sears), pupil of turner, brush and tarbell; prizes at new york, , chicago, , paris, , buffalo, , charleston, . . miss mary l. macomber, pupil of boston museum; prizes at boston, , atlanta, , national academy of design, , pittsburgh, . . miss katherine abbot, bronze medal at paris, . . miss elizabeth f. bonsall, pupil of howard pyle, prize winner at philadelphia, , , . . miss matilda browne, pupil of dewey and bisbing, medals at chicago, , national academy of design, and . . miss maria brooks, pupil of the royal academy schools, london. . mrs. brewster sewell, pupil of duran in paris, of chase in new york; winner of several prizes, as at charleston in . . rosina emmet sherwood, pupil of chase and of julian's school, paris; prizes in paris, , chicago, , buffalo, . . mrs. emily m. scott, prizes at buffalo, , new york, . . miss rhoda h. nicolls, born in england and studied in england; a frequent prize-winner. . edith m. prellwitz, a frequent prize-winner and a pupil of brush, in new york, of julian, in paris. . lydia field emmet, pupil of bouguereau, in paris, of chase, in new york; prizes at chicago, , atlanta, , buffalo, . . mrs. kenyon cox, pupil of the national academy of design; prize-winner at paris, , at buffalo, . . emma l. cooper, medals at chicago, , atlanta, . . mrs. charlotte b. comans, medal at san francisco, . . miss clara s. macchesney; and last, but not least, miss mary f. macmonnies. w. s. s. [illustration: british school, contemporary the queen and the page. after the original painting, from a photograph by dixon & son, london mrs. marianne stokes, painter] [illustration: british school, xvii century portrait of the english poet, abraham cowley ( - ). from a photograph by w. a. mansell & co., after the original painting in the national portrait gallery, london mrs. mary beale, born cradock, painter - ] [illustration: portrait of king charles ii of england. from a photograph by w. a. mansell & co., after the original painting in the national portrait gallery, london mrs. mary beale, born cradock, painter - ] [illustration: british school, xviii century caricature of edward gibbon, historian. in the print room, the british museum lady diana beauclerk, amateur - ] [illustration: cupids. after an engraving by f. bartolozzi, r.a. lady diana beauclerk, amateur - ] [illustration: british school, xviii century ariadne. after the original painting in the dresden gallery, from a photograph by v. a. bruckmann, munich maria angelica kauffman. r.a., painter - ] [illustration: british school, xviii century portrait of miss harriot powell. from a mezzotint by richard houston. the proof lent by mr. alfred davis miss catharine read, painter died about ] [illustration: portrait of miss jones. from an engraving by j. watson, dated . the print lent by mr. alfred davis miss catharine read, painter died about ] [illustration: british school, contemporary "the fisher wife." after the drawing in water-colour and crayon, from a photograph by w. e. gray, london mrs. stanhope forbes, a.r.w.s., painter] [illustration: british school, xviii century portrait (painted by herself) of angelica kauffman, r.a., after the original picture in the uffizi gallery. from a photograph by alinari] [illustration: the vestal virgin. after the original picture in the royal gallery, dresden, from a photograph by hanfstaengl maria angelica kauffman, r.a., painter - ] [illustration: school of british water-colour, riverside landscape with a castle in the distance. painted in , when turner and girtin were only eighteen. the breadth and manner of this drawing are therefore remarkable, especially as coming from a lady of that time. the scenic pomp of the design points to the influence of francis nicholson. after the original water-colour ( - / inches by - / inches) in the print room of the british museum, from a photograph by w. e. gray amelia hotham, painter end of th century] [illustration: british school, end of xviii century and beginning of xix century a country boy. reproduced from an original soft-ground etching that shows the mingled influences of gainsborough and morland catherine maria fanshawe, painter-etcher - ] [illustration: portrait of sarah, countess of kinnoull, from a stipple engraving after a miniature by samuel shelley caroline watson, engraver to queen caroline (?)- ] [illustration: british school, early xix century a pinch of snuff. after an engraving by madame bovi, a pupil of f. bartolozzi, r.a. the print lent by mr. alfred davis lavinia countess spencer, amateur died ] [illustration: portrait of percy bysshe shelley ( - ). after the original drawing in the national portrait gallery, london. from a photograph by j. caswall smith miss a. curran, amateur died ] [illustration: british school, contemporary "flora." reproduced from a photograph of the original painting miss evelyn pickering (mrs. william de morgan), painter] [illustration: british school, early xix century portrait of mrs. stuart from a mezzotint by s. w. reynolds, kindly lent by mr. alfred davis mrs. j. robertson, painter worked to ] [illustration: portrait of lady dalrymple hamilton, daughter of admiral lord duncan from an engraving by j. agar mrs. anne mee, born foldsone, painter died very old in ] [illustration: british school to vase of flowers. painted in and formerly in the collection of queen charlotte. after the tempera painting at south kensington mary moser, r.a. (mrs. hugh lloyd) - ] [illustration: group of flowers in a jar. painted in for princess elizabeth, daughter of george iii. after the water-colour at south kensington mrs. margaret meen, painter worked to ] [illustration: flowers and grapes. painted in . after the water-colour at south kensington miss anne frances byrne, painter - ] [illustration: wood scene. after the drawing in india ink on a water-colour tint at south kensington viscountess templetown, amateur died ] [illustration: school of british water-colour, early xix. century backwater, weymouth, dorset. after the original water-colour in the british museum from a photograph by w. e. gray, london mrs. matilda heming, born lowry, painter - ] [illustration: landscape at kenilworth after an original water-colour by the grandmother of mrs. helen allingham, r.w.s. mrs. john herford, amateur] [illustration: british school, early xix century portrait of henrietta shuckburgh, after the water-colour in the british museum mrs. margaret carpenter, born geddes, painter - ] [illustration: portrait of margaret carpenter. after the water-colour in the british museum mrs. margaret carpenter, born geddes, painter - ] [illustration: lodona. from pope's "windsor forest." from the engraving by f. bartolozzi, r.a. mrs. maria cosway, born hadfield, painter - ] [illustration: british school, contemporary "elspeth." after the original portrait in body-colour, by kind permission of mrs. j. m. currie, london miss ann macbeth, painter] [illustration: school of british water-colour, xix century palm branches. after the original drawing from a photograph by j. caswall smith, london louisa marchioness of waterford, painter - ] [illustration: spring. after the original drawing in water-colour from a photograph by j. caswall smith louisa marchioness of waterford, painter - ] [illustration: british school, xix century portrait of john gibson, r.a., sculptor ( - ). after the painting in the national portrait gallery, london, from a photograph by w. a. mansell & co. mrs. margaret carpenter, born geddes, painter - ] [illustration: portrait of r. p bonington, painter ( - ). after the painting in the national portrait gallery, london, from a photograph by w. a. mansell & co. mrs. margaret carpenter, born geddes, painter - ] [illustration: british school, xix century jesus christ among the doctors after the original water-colour from a photograph by j. caswall smith louisa marchioness of waterford, painter - ] [illustration: school of british water-colour, xix century study of a bird's nest. reproduced from the original drawing in water-colour by permission of messrs. brown & phillips mrs. helen cordelia angell, born coleman, painter - ] [illustration: british school, "to-day for me." from a photograph by h. dixon & son, after the water-colour in the collection of miss evans miss eleanor fortescue brickdale, a.r.w.s., painter] [illustration: british school, elaine. reproduced from a photograph of the original painting by permission of the arts committee, the walker art gallery, liverpool mrs. sophie anderson, painter] [illustration: british school, sintram and his mother (vide de la motte fouque). reproduced from a photograph by permission of the arts committee, the walker gallery, liverpool louisa starr (madame canziana), painter] [illustration: school of british water-colour, - through the wood. reproduced from the original water-colour at south kensington miss ivy heitland, painter - ] [illustration: mother and child. dated . from the water-colour in the ionides collection at south kensington miss mary l. gow, r.i., painter] [illustration: british school, "blanchisseuses." reproduced from a photograph of the original painting by permission of the arts committee, the walker art gallery, liverpool miss alice havers, painter died ] [illustration: school of british water-colour, contemporary a cottage near crocken hill from the original water-colour mrs. helen allingham, r.w.s., painter] [illustration: school of british water-colour, the potato harvest. after the original water-colour, dated , from a photograph kindly lent by the artist miss edith martineau, a.r.w.s., painter] [illustration: british school, in memoriam. after a photograph by henry dixon & son, by kind permission of miss mary a. dicksee and frank dicksee, esq., r.a. miss margaret isabel dicksee, painter - ] [illustration: british school, and good friends. after the original painting, dated , from a photograph by newidein, paris mrs. elizabeth strong, painter] [illustration: the end of a story. after the original painting from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris miss emily hart, painter] [illustration: british school, "sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care." from a photograph by dixon & son, london, after the original water-colour in the collection of miss evans miss eleanor fortescue brickdale, painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary labourers of the night. from the study in oil-colour on drawing paper miss lucy e. kemp-welch, painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary study from the life. after the original chalk drawing evelyn pickering (mrs. william de morgan), painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary yellow roses. after the original water-colour mrs. william duffield, r.i. from a neapolitan villa. after the original water-colour miss a. m. youngman, r.i.] [illustration: room at leicester in which shakespeare is said to have acted before queen elizabeth. after the original sketch in water-colour dated miss alice m. hobson, r.i., painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary "a for apple-pie: e eat it." after the original drawing in the collection of john greenaway, esq. reproduced by permission of frederick warne & co. miss kate greenaway, illustrator - ] [illustration: "who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too" after the original picture exhibited at the royal institute of water-colour in miss a. m. youngman, r.i.] [illustration: british school, contemporary st. bridget. from a photograph by r. j. w. haines mrs. louise jopling, r.b.a., painter waifs from the great city. copyright reserved by the artist mrs. staples (m. ellen edwards), illustrator] [illustration: united states of america, contemporary mother and child after the original painting miss cecilia beaux, painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary drapery study. reproduced from a photograph of the original drawing evelyn pickering (mrs. william de morgan)] [illustration: portrait of the lady alix. egerton, from a photograph of the original painting miss biddie macdonald, painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary white treasures after the original painting from a photograph by the autotype co. new oxford street, london miss florence white, painter] [illustration: "hush! remind not eros of his wings." after the original water-colour miss katharine cameron, painter] [illustration: british school, after work a study in lead pencil miss lucy kemp-welch, artist] [illustration: british school, contemporary "olivia." reproduced from the original drawing by permission of messrs. brown & phillips, london mrs. mary young hunter, illustrator] [illustration: "he married a wife." after the original water-colour in the collection of miss evans miss eleanor fortescue brickdale, a.r.w.s., painter] [illustration: british school, xix century "a. for apple pie: c. cut it." after the water colour drawing in the collection of john greenaway, esq., reproduced by permission of messrs. frederick warne & co., owners of the copyright miss kate greenaway, designer - ] [illustration: british school, contemporary portrait of the hon mrs. walter james. after the original picture from a photograph by messrs. dixon & son, london mrs. marianne stokes, painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary an interesting story after the original water-colour miss marian chase, painter] [illustration: "where shall wisdom be found?" after an original picture painted in mrs. mary young hunter, painter] [illustration: british school, portrait of mrs. blair with her dogs. after an original painting that gained a "mention honorable" in the salon of miss margaret cameron, painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary a song of the sea from the original etching miss amelia bauerlë, painter-etcher] [illustration: fauns from the original etching miss amelia bauerlë, painter-etcher] [illustration: british school, the sense of sight. reproduced from the painting in the walker gallery, liverpool, by permission of the arts committee mrs. annie l. swynnerton, painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary riverside landscape after the original painting miss alice fanner, painter] [illustration: memories. after the original water-colour exhibited in at the royal institute of painters in water-colour miss gertrude demain hammond, r.i., painter] [illustration: british school, bluebells from the original painting the royal academy, miss christabel a. cockerell (mrs. geo. frampton), painter] [illustration: school of british water-colour, ponte widman, venice. after the original out-door sketch in water-colour mrs. helen allingham, r.w.s., painter] [illustration: campanile san stefano, venice. after the original out-door sketch in water-colour mrs. helen allingham, r.w.s., painter] [illustration: british school, the herdsman of admetus after the original picture exhibited in at the royal society of painters in water-colours. copyright reserved miss constance phillott, a.r.w.s., painter] [illustration: united states of america, "love locked out." after the painting in the chantrey collection in the tate gallery, london, from a photograph by hanfstaengl mrs. anna lea merritt, painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary miss eleanor fortescue brickdale, illustrator] [illustration: british school, contemporary reproduced from the original drawing in crayons. miss e. fortescue brickdale, illustrator le repas. exhibited at the paris salon in miss beatrice how, painter] [illustration: the late cecil rhodes. after the pencil drawing the late lord salisbury. after the pencil drawing the marchioness of granby, portraitist] [illustration: british school, contemporary on the way to the horse fair. from a photograph by the autotype co., new oxford street london miss lilian cheviot, painter] [illustration: almond blossom in london after the original water-colour miss rose barton, a.r.w.s., painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary day-dreams. after the original picture in water-colour jane m. dealy (mrs. lewis), r.i., painter baby. after the original portrait in water colour jane m. dealy (mrs. lewis), r.i., painter] [illustration: united states of america, contemporary "day dreams." from the coloured woodcut in the japanese manner. printed in japan by native workmen under the supervision of the artist. reproduced by permission of mr. c. klacker. , haymarket, london. copyright in all countries miss helen hyde, designer and painter] [illustration: british school of water-colour, contemporary "in with you!" reproduced from the original picture in body-colour] [illustration: "cuckoo." reproduced from the original picture in body-colour mrs. stanhope forbes, a.r.w.s., painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary in the reign of terror. after the original painting, dated , in the walker gallery, liverpool miss jessie macgregor, painter] [illustration: in a dutch cottage. after an original painting exhibited at the paris salon in miss beatrice how, painter] [illustration: british school of water-colour, may evening after the original picture mrs. e. stanhope forbes, a.r.w.s., painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary a cottage girl. reproduced from the original water-colour miss minnie smythe, a.r.w.s., painter] [illustration: portrait of sir charles holroyd. reproduced from the original painting lady holroyd, painter] [illustration: united states of america, the end of the story. reproduced from a copyright photograph by permission of braun, clÉment & co., paris cornelia w. conant, painter] [illustration: british school, ophelia: "there's rue for you." reproduced by kind permission of the arts committee, the walker art gallery, liverpool mrs. e. normand (henrietta rae), painter] [illustration: british school, "steady the drums and fifes!" from a photograph of the original picture, by kind permission of lady elizabeth butler and of messrs. goupil & co., london and paris, publishers of the large reproduction recently issued lady elizabeth butler, painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary after the bull-fight from the original picture miss margaret cameron, painter] [illustration: wintry weather after the original picture lily blatherwick (mrs. a. s. hartrick), painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary a yorkshire trout stream. after the original picture miss alice fanner, painter portrait of miss anna alma-tadema. after the original painting miss anna alma-tadema, painter] [illustration: united states of america, contemporary baby's toilette. reproduced from the original pastel, by permission of messrs. durand-ruel & sons, paris the owners of the copyright. miss mary cassatt, pastellist and painter] [illustration: british school, contemporary from the original pen-drawing miss jessie m. king, illustrator] [illustration: the music lesson mrs. j. m. swan, painter panel of a screen after the original painting miss amy sawyer, painter] [illustration: british and american schools, contemporary. ophelia. from a photograph by the autotype co., new oxford street, london miss offor (mrs. f. littler), painter, england.] [illustration: prayer. after the original picture, from a carbon-print photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris mrs. cecilia wentworth, painter, u.s.a., america.] [illustration: united states of america, contemporary the peace ball after the declaration of independence: the french officers, lafayette and rochambeau, being introduced to washington's mother. reproduced by permission of c. klackner, haymarket, london miss jennie brownscombe, painter] [illustration: united states of america, contemporary. portrait. reproduced from a photograph of the original painting kindly lent by the artist. miss cecilia beaux, painter.] [illustration: united states of america, contemporary the bamboo fence. from a woodcut designed in the japanese manner and printed in colours by japanese workmen. reproduced by permission of c. klackner, new york, u.s.a., and , haymarket, london. date of copyright, miss helen hyde, designer] [illustration: french school, - portrait of madame vigée le brun and her daughter. after the painting in the louvre, from a photograph by braun, clément & co., paris madame Élisabeth louise vigée le brun, painter - ] of women painters in france by léonce bénédite. translated into english by edgar preston woman in art is a fruitful subject. it is both psychological and æsthetic, involving as it does a question of paramount interest. at the same time it includes a special up-to-date character, by virtue of the grave questions arising from the position of woman in our social system of to-day. it is, indeed, the position of woman which has for so long a period set limits to her production of creations of the mind, and her position has had a distinct bearing on her inspiration. thus it will be grasped, in these times of ours when the movement for the total emancipation of woman has commenced, and when the first franchises granted to her have already borne conclusive results, how it is that our honoured colleague, the editor of this book, has been led, both as an artist and as a writer on art, to conduct a sort of historical examination enabling one to understand the position woman has won in the realms of art in the past, and permitting one to foresee the place she is called upon to occupy in the future. with regard to the productions of the mind, it becomes necessary to establish a well-defined distinction, at least in so far as the past, anterior to the th century, is concerned, between the position of women artists and that of literary women. the literary woman, like the man of letters, was not subjected to any special obligation beyond the official sanction granting her the privilege of publication--a sanction which bore only on the question of morals and religion. every woman was free to write without let or hindrance, without any preliminary education, and even without going through the formalities of publication or the necessities of printing, since a famous woman like madame de sévigné owed her celebrity to letters which were not destined to be made public. this explains the number of charming writers among women who have added lustre to french literature by their novels, stories, or simply by their letters, and enables one to realise how these women authors are, in contradistinction to women artists, persons of high standing. the chronicles of the hôtel de rambouillet constitute an interesting little chapter in the history of letters in france, just as the "précieuses ridicules" or the "femmes savantes" of molière reveal to us the defects and eccentricities into which the literary pretensions of the feminine world had fallen in the th century. it cannot, however, be denied that the fair sex freely infused into the literature of that period spontaneity, life and spirit, piquancy, affectation, and the delicate sentiments inherent to its nature, and that it had its share of influence on french taste at that time. altogether different is the position of their sisters, the women-painters. let us first look into that of the men. painters formerly were part of a guild such as that of the drapers, bakers and butchers, and in their case it was a guild which was far from occupying the first place in the hierarchy of guilds. the butchers were beyond doubt higher up in the scale than the painters. the painters were subjected to narrow and despotic regulations; rigorous conditions governed both apprenticeship and mastership, conditions hardly encouraging to those who had a vocation, more especially in the case of women, ill-protected by the weakness of their sex, by prevalent custom, and ill-adapted for the struggle. the _régime_ of the académies, which followed that of the guilds, did not bring in its wake conditions in any degree profitable to womankind. the académie de saint-luc, while pretending to safeguard the professional interests of artists, displayed such tyrannical pretensions that a certain number of artists rose in revolt against it, and appealed to the royal power, which, approached by its chief painter, charles le brun, came to their rescue, by helping them to found the celebrated académie royale de peinture et de sculpture ( ). the académie royale proved itself somewhat more liberal. it set no limits to the reception of those who seemed worthy of its suffrages; we know that it welcomed into its bosom a number of strangers of merit, and that it opened its doors to women. therein lies a victory of appreciable importance, if one considers the energy and the talent which women artists were compelled to display, in order to conquer ancient prejudices in so signal a fashion. henceforth a place was assigned in art to women, a place still hedged in with limitations, and which could be attained only by the few privileged ones. for, in its turn, the académie served the purpose of a few, but not that of the many. the académie reserved the monopoly of exhibitions exclusively for its members; and artists who did not, in one way or other, belong to this congregation, were allowed to exhibit their works in public only once a year. it was on the one day of the octave of corpus christi, for a space of two hours, in the open air, and within the circumference of the place dauphine. all great artists had to submit to this treatment, ere they could force the portals of the académie. but times have changed! our contemporaries, so inconstant, so impatient, who wear out the attention of the public by the excessive multiplicity of their exhibitory manifestations, should occasionally think of the conditions under which their forerunners laboured. imagine a woman placed in the midst of these quarrels and struggles of rival academies, with men in strong and often fierce antagonism on all sides of her; picture not only these general difficulties, but those of a more particular sort which arise from the disabilities of her sex, her subordinate state; think of the drawbacks--the prejudices, the _convenances_ to be considered, and then the embarrassing promiscuity of life in studio and school, particularly as regards the study from the living model--and one can realise how brave, how energetic, or how ambitious must be the woman who would win the title of artist. it is clear that the royal academy's liberal measure in opening its doors to women of talent was an event of some importance, from the moral point of view at any rate. it was the public recognition of woman's capacity in matters of art, the official consecration of merit which might come to light; also it afforded a goal to strive for--a goal hard to reach and very remote, doubtless, but still a goal possible of attainment to the most courageous and the most hopeful among women. the real, as distinct from the moral, advantages were, however, rather limited. from , the date which marks the admission of the first woman artist, to , when the last was admitted--that is to say during a period of eighty years--exactly fifteen women painters were elected, and among them were three foreigners. in , indeed, on the nomination of mlle. giroust, wife of roslin, the painter, it was decided that, as there were already in the company two other women previously elected, there must not be more than four women in all within the academy. this measure of restriction was renewed in and ratified by royal ordinance on the election of mme. vigée le brun. nevertheless there was an appreciable number of women artists in france throughout the course of the th century. their social rank was strictly confined. there were no "women of quality," such as were to be found in the world of letters, no representatives of the _bourgeoisie_ even. the women artists, with very rare exceptions, all belonged to artist families. they were the wives, the daughters, the sisters or the nieces of artists, and this tradition, as we shall see, even continued long into the th century. catherine duchemin, the first woman elected to the academy, was the wife of the sculptor, girardon, while geneviève and madelaine boulogne, both academicians, were related to distinguished painters of that name. mlle. reboul was mme. vien, and mme. labille des vertus became mme. vincent on her second marriage. then we have mlle. natoire, sister of the director of the academy of france, catherine van loo, one of the innumerable family of van loo, mme. de valsaureaux, _née_ parrocel, of the no less numerous family of parrocel, mme. therbouch, _née_ liscewska, all this family, father, mother, and daughters alike, being painters; and mme. vigée herself, who married the picture dealer le brun, was the daughter of a portrait painter. during the th and th centuries these great artist families intermarried to such an extent as to form a series of veritable dynasties--for instance, those of the coypels, the coustous, the van loos, the boulognes, the parrocels, and the vernets, to name but a few of the most renowned. artist families became allied just as do those of lawyers and merchants. thus their social life grew more limited, each category more and more distinct and apart, for these artist families rarely strayed beyond their own _milieu_. and those very circumstances which tended to retard the development of the artistic calling in woman exerted their influence over the inspiration of the female artist. the impossibility of pursuing very far the study of anatomical drawing, owing to the nudity of the model, diverted them almost entirely to the studies of observation and of imitation, to portrait work, and flowers and animals and still-life. later, when they obtained greater liberty, they devoted themselves to _genre_ of a size and kind demanding less substantial preparation. but as for composition, they never touched "history," as it was termed--that is, lofty, heroic or allegorical subjects--and if there should chance to have been any exception to this rule, it was simply in the direction of religious _motifs_. [illustration: french school, about - portrait of gaëtano apollino baldassare vestris, dancer ( - ). reproduced from a photograph by permission of braun, clément & co., paris madame adèle romany, née de romance, painter exhibited from to ] further, they long affected what may be called medium processes: pastel, water-colour, miniature, all kinds of work offering opportunity of finish and _éclat_. they showed a partiality for oil painting after the manner of the smaller dutch masters, who had no more faithful imitators in all france. mme. vien, mme. de valsaureaux, _née_ parrocel, and particularly mme. vallayer coster--"_femme qui fut un habile homme_," according to the verses written in her honour--excelled in this style. some of the "_académistes_"--to use the old french expression--won real celebrity, but few there were who achieved lasting glory. in the reign of louis xiv, the woman artist whose reputation shone with the clearest lustre was elisabeth sophie chéron, who excelled in all the arts--for she was a clever painter, a consummate musician, a poet of merit and _femme d'esprit_ into the bargain. following the general rule she belonged to one of the numerous artist families. daughter of a painter (louis chéron), she was also sister of a painter. this latter, who was her junior, had talent, but not to the extent of the elder. Élisabeth sophie chéron was of huguenot family, as was frequently the case among the academicians, although, from what absurd prejudice i know not, the _réformés_ were regarded as less artistic than other folk. but in ,--she was twenty then--terrified no doubt by the ever-increasing persecution of the protestants--a persecution which was soon to result in the edict of nantes--she, like her sister, abjured her faith, whereas her brother, remaining true to the family faith, was forced to take refuge in london, where he died.[ ] [ ] several académiciens of the reformed religion were excluded, or obliged to submit to the catholic religion. sophie translated into french the psalms of david, which her brother illustrated admirably, and she has left at least one important engraved work, but above all, she has left a number of portraits of well-known people of her time, portraits that the sitters made her copy four and even five times. among other "_académistes_," interesting if not so well known, was that sister of the "_visitandine_" order, anne marie trésor, who decorated with religious subjects the church of the monastery of the "dames de ste. marie de chaillot." she was received by the academy in , and the choice of the academy showed, as its accepted members were of such different views, that the body was after all somewhat broad in character. another proof of this liberal spirit is to be found in the fact that the academy received foreign artists within its body. there were three of them; the first was mlle. haverman, of dutch origin, who was, however, excluded shortly after her election--she attempted to justify her election by sending in a painting which was not her own, but the work of her master, van huysum. the second foreign "_académiste_" was specially illustrious and worthy of the honour conferred on her. she was rosalba carriera, a venetian, a woman who was really original, and whose reputation has lived through the centuries, but about whom, in this chapter devoted to france, i must not speak at length. the last of the three was mme. terbouche, or, more exactly, therbousch, who, although born in at berlin, was numbered by our old museum catalogues in the ranks of the french school. may st, , was an exceptionally important date for the academy, in respect of women artists. on that day were received mme. vigée le brun and mme. adélaïde labille guyard (or guiard). one may say that at that very hour began officially the rivalry which constantly existed between the two women, both of real merit, throughout their careers--a rivalry which has been maintained in the preference shown for one or the other, after death, by their historians. mme. vigée le brun was the more celebrated of the two, and rightly so, for one might say that of all the women painters of her time she had a personality quite her own, quite feminine, rich in grace, ease, variety of attitude, gesture and composition, discreet and delicate affectedness, freshness and brightness. mme. vigée le brun was the daughter of a somewhat mediocre painter, and the wife of a well-known picture dealer, whom she married when quite young. she had lessons from doyen, greuze and joseph vernet, and her success was quickly achieved. mlle. adélaïde labille des vertus, the daughter of a mercer, was married to a certain guyard, a neighbour. she did not live long with him, and had lessons from an old friend, the painter vincent (the father), and afterwards from la tour. while mme. le brun, whose work was admired by marie antoinette, was supported by the court, mme. guyard secretly made friends in the body of the academy itself, painting the portraits of first one member and then another. on the day of the election, she seemed to be overcoming her rival, whom her friends succeeded in putting on one side because the rules of the academy forbade the traffic in pictures. mme. le brun was received only by order of the king. her own autobiography, as well as the pamphlets of the time, depict for us the powerful rivalry which existed, and also the many calumnies with which the three women painters were attacked (there was a third candidate, mme. vallayer coster), even in their private life, the persecution of offensive insinuations, and the existence of the accusation so often levelled against women painters, that their work is not their own. posterity has reconciled the rivals on the walls of our galleries. if mme. vigée le brun certainly holds pride of place, mme. guyard, by her more solid talent, perhaps more characteristic, has an enviable position at her side. by the side of these celebrated women there are a few others of whom the recollection is not quite so keen, but who were not without a touching grace, though they lived their life within the sphere of their masters' influence, illuminated by the renown of these masters and breathing their atmosphere. it would not be right to say that these women artists copied their masters, or slavishly imitated them, but they transposed their qualities, elevated them by feminising them. of these, i may mention mlle. ledoux, who followed in the wake of greuze; mlle. marguerite gérard, who lived under the shadow of fragonard; and that exquisite and sorrowful figure, mlle. constance mayer, whose devotion for her master prudhon found its supreme expression in her tragic end. less brilliant, rather hidden in the twilight of history, these women yet exercise on our thoughts an influence more subtle and delicate, and more penetrating. the approach of the great national crisis, and even the worst days of that period, at the same time glorious yet barbaric, did not extinguish the zeal of the women painters. it seems rather as though they shut themselves up in the study of their art so as to secure a refuge for their hopes and their dreams. in the first "salons" of the century, one is surprised to find works by a comparatively large number of women painters. in , of exhibitors they number ; eight years later, in the "salon" of , they are out of . the difficulties set up by the academy were overcome, the liberty to exhibit was a fresh encouragement, even an exceptional stimulus. the figures, therefore, rise still further in the first quarter of the century, so that in the women number out of exhibitors. the "staff," so to speak, of the women artists of that day, surrounding mme. vigée le brun, whose glorious and somewhat chequered career did not close till , included a number of distinguished women, such as mlle. bevic and mlle. capet, pupils of mme. guyard; mme. chaudet, the wife of the sculptor; mlle. eulalie morin; mme. adèle romance, who also signed romany, or romany de romance; the "good" mlle. godefroid, pupil of baron gérard, who helped him in so many of the portraits of contemporary cosmopolitan people of distinction, commissions for which rained in the master's studio, after the entry of the allied forces into paris. later on, we have mlle. cogniet; mme. filleul; mme. rude, the wife of the great sculptor, who had a severe yet confident talent. lastly, there was the woman artist who benefited by all the advantages of fashion, mme. haudebourt-lescot. [illustration: french school, - madame vigÉe le brun and her daughter. after the painting in the louvre, from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame Élisabeth louise vigée le brun, painter - ] mlle. lescot, wife of haudebourt, the architect, and pupil of lethière--mischievous tongues, of course, declared that he painted her pictures--was a strange creature, who, at the start, owed the popularity she obtained as much to her personal charm as to her real talent. her first success was in the drawing-room, where people admired her dances. "she was," says a writer, "ugly and captivating, with crooked eyes and a charming expression, her mouth ill-shaped, but tender and inviting," such as ingres represented her in one of his finest pencil drawings. hitherto, women had certainly banished themselves into the domain of portrait or still-life painting, that is to say, they had done little that was not sheer copying. but, little by little, under the influence of the lesser dutch masters, who had been passionately appreciated since the close of the previous reign, and thanks to the opening of the royal collections at the luxembourg palace, where they could be studied and copied, the women-painters, following the example of the masters who gained inspiration therefrom, began to devote themselves to landscape and to _genre_. they sought out little touching subjects, which very frequently bordered on the ridiculous. for example, "the child's bed catches fire through the carelessness of the nurse who has fallen asleep, and the dog attempts to waken her." mlle. lescot cut herself adrift from all these insipidities. the opportunity came for her to spend several years in rome. she was struck by the popular customs of the country, by its colour and that singular and picturesque charm which granet had been the first to discover--the charm which, after her own time, was to be made further known by the paintings of the well-known léopold robert. as a matter of fact, she was practically the creator of the type of exotic subjects borrowed from italy, to which numerous artists in france devoted themselves--hébert, bonnat and jules lefebvre, to name but a few of the most important of them. in choosing her _motifs_ she displayed wit and inventiveness, and at times a delicate grace, notably in her first pictures, before the desire to satisfy a daily increasing connection had driven her into unduly hurried work. her technique, too, was brisk, yet careful, as it should be in small works such as hers. her lightly-touched lithographs, together with those which she did "after" her own pictures, contributed to popularise her special subjects and her name. the novelty of these paintings, devoted to the cult of "local colour," caused them to be adopted as "romantic." it was the same with schnetz and léopold robert, who shared the popularity. but the real "young romantic" among artists was mlle. de fauveau. what one discovers with regard to her is that she is not a painter but a sculptor. the royal academy of the th century had already boasted certain wood carvings by _la demoiselle_ massé. also, there was mme. falconet. but the great and austere art was cultivated only as a rare exception by woman. mlle. félicie de fauveau was the first pre-raphaelite, although the return to the primitive italian masters of the th century dates further back, but with cropped head under a velvet toque, after the style of raphael himself, she unceasingly uttered curses against that noble personality, whose brush produced the highest incarnation of the art of painting. but the naturalist movement it was that witnessed the development of the greatest artistic personality in the feminine world of to-day--rosa bonheur. the _rôle_ played by rosa bonheur is important from the feminine point of view, for the reason that she broke away from ancient traditions. she revealed what woman was capable of in the matter of energy, of continuity of purpose, of method, of scientific direction, in a word, in the indispensable impetus of inspiration. before her day, the woman-painter had always been looked upon rather as a phenomenon, or her place in the domain of art was conceded to her on the grounds that she was indulging in an elevating and tasteful pastime, coming under the category of "accomplishments." rosa bonheur gave to woman a position equal to that of man. she won for herself unanimous admiration, based, not on the singularity of her life, not on looseness of morals, not on social triumphs, not on friends at court, but on her robust, virile, observant and well-considered talent, which in its turn was based on a primary study of anatomy and osteology, developed by a continuous observation of the constitution and the life of the animal world. her long life was crowned with glory. she held an exceptional place in art, akin to that of george sand in the world of letters. from that day forth, there appeared a new phase in the artistic life of woman. art became for her, not merely an intellectual pastime, but a vocation and a career. rosa bonheur lived nearly to the close of the nineteenth century, seeing many revolutions both in french life and in french art, but remaining always quite true to herself. perhaps the most uncertain period of all, historically, so far as women were concerned, was that period of wave-like fluctuation in french art that occurred in the seventies and eighties, reflecting itself in the work of such women painters as angèle dubos, jeanne fichel, marie petiet, laure de chatillon, félicie schneider, eva gonzalès, marie nicolas, and rosa bonheur's successor--her heiress, so to speak--madame virginie demont-breton, the daughter, wife and niece of a family of distinguished artists. she has achieved a well-deserved popularity with her subjects of popular and rustic life, and, like rosa bonheur, has attained the rank of officer of the legion of honour. two other feminine personalities have attracted the attention of both public and artists, the one, the sister-in-law of manet, the delightful mademoiselle morisot, who has, so to speak, improved on the refinement of her master; the other, that strange and alluring young russian girl, who adopted france as her fatherland, and whom france adopted as artist. marie bashkirtseff, struck down by a cruel and premature death, at the age of twenty-three, revealed something far more than mere happy gifts. one is surprised at the amount of studies produced by the unfortunate and beautiful creature in the short space allotted to her for her life-work. we now enter upon the present period of woman's artistic life, the active period, let us call it. we no longer trouble about her place at our exhibitions, since she has nowadays her own exhibition, or rather exhibitions proper to herself. among the many youthful _amateurs_ who constitute the bulk of feminine artists, one finds a number of true artists. to name a few: mademoiselle louise abbéma, madame madeleine lemaire, madame nanny adam, mlle. fiérard, mme. vallet-bisson, madame chatrousse, madame darmesteter, mme. delacroix-garnier, mme. baury-saurel, and many others, as this book proves. several women-artists have won their place in the national museum, wherein first rank is held, after rosa bonheur and mme. demont-breton, by madame marie cazin, painter and sculptor, madame victoria dubourg (widow of fantin-latour), mlle. dufau, who has just been commissioned to execute some important decorations for the sorbonne, mlle. delasalle, mlle. marie gautier, señora eva gonzalès, and a couple of semi-naturalised foreigners, miss mary cassatt, an american, and mlle. breslau, a swiss--both dames of the legion of honour. to conclude, women are proving just now not only that the domain of art should be open to them as freely as it is to men, on the grounds of right and reason, but also that they are specially gifted by their delicate sensitiveness, their quickness of comprehension, their initiative faculty, and lastly, by all the phases of their natural temperament, and by their intelligence to endow art with the elements of expression and beauty proper to womankind. lÉonce bÉnÉdite. [illustration: french school, - portrait of marie pauline, princesse borghese. after the painting at versailles, from a photograph by newidein, paris madame marie guilhelmine benoits, painter - ] [illustration: french school, xvii and xviii centuries portrait of madame victoire de france. after the original painting at versailles, from a photograph by braun clement and co., paris madame guyard, née labille des vertus, painter - ] [illustration: portrait of marie de rabutin-chantal, marquise de sÉvignÉ ( - ) after the original painting at versailles, from a copyright photograph by newidein, paris mademoiselle de vanteuil, painter th century] [illustration: french school, xviii century the sons of charles x. of france. after an original picture in the musÉe de versailles, from a photograph by newidein, paris madame anna rosalie filleul, née bocquet, painter died ] [illustration: french school, xviii century portrait of the duc d'angoulÊme, son of charles x from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris, after an original pastel at versailles madame filleul, née bocquet, pastellist died ] [illustration: portrait of madame rÉcamier in the year . from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., after an original painting at versailles madame eulalie morin, painter late th century] [illustration: french school, xviii century portrait of elisabeth of france, duchess of parma. after the original painting at versailles from a photograph by newidein, paris madame adélaïde guyard, née labille des vertus, painter in second marriage mme. f. a. vincent - ] [illustration: french school, xix century portrait of madame adélaïde d'orléans ( - ). after the painting at chantilly, from a photograph by braun, clément & co., paris mademoiselle marie amélie cogniet, painter - ] [illustration: french school, xviii and xix centuries portrait of queen marie antoinette and her children. after the original painting at versailles, from a carbon print by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame Élisabeth louise vigée le brun, painter - ] [illustration: french school, between and portrait in the pinacoteca at turin dated . from a photograph by alinari madame Élisabeth louise vigée le brun, painter - ] [illustration: "the miniature." from the painting in the glasgow gallery after a photograph by hanfstaengl madame caroline de valory, pupil of greuze, painter early th century] [illustration: french school, xviii and xix centuries portrait of madame le brun, after the original painting in the national gallery, london, from a photograph by hanfstaengl portrait of louise marie adÉlaÏde de bourbon ( - ). after the original painting at versailles, from a photograph by newidein, paris madame Élisabeth louise vigée le brun, painter - ] [illustration: french school, early xix century portrait of an actress, probably mlle. bÉlier. reproduced from a photograph of the original painting by permission of braun, clÉment & co., paris mademoiselle bouilliar, painter early th century] [illustration: french school, xix century study of a bull reproduced from a photograph, by permission of braun, clement & co., paris, owners of the copyright mademoiselle rosa bonheur, painter - ] [illustration: french school, early xix century portrait of dame de longrois ( - ). after the pastel in the trocadÉro from a carbon print by braun, clement & co., paris mlle. marie gabrielle capet, pupil of madame guyard, painter - ] [illustration: french school, xviii and xix centuries madame vigÉe le brun at her easel. after the original painting in the uffizi, florence, from a photograph by w. a. mansell & co. madame Élisabeth louise vigée le brun, painter - ] [illustration: french school, - the happy mother. after the original painting in the louvre, paris, from a copyright photograph by braun, clÉment & co. mademoiselle marie françoise constance mayer, painter -(committed suicide) ] [illustration: french school, xviii and xix centuries portrait of marie antoinette, queen of france ( - ). after the original painting at versailles from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame Élisabeth louise vigée le brun, painter - ] [illustration: french school, xviii and xix centuries portrait of the duchess of polignac. from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame Élisabeth louise vigée le brun, painter - ] [illustration: french school, to portrait of madame villot, nÉe barbier. from a carbon print by braun, clÉment & co., paris mme. jeanne Élisabeth chaudet, née gabiou, painter - ] [illustration: portrait of marguerite j. a. houdon, first cousin of houdon the sculptor. photograph by braun clÉment & co. mlle. marguerite j. a. houdon, painter - ] [illustration: french school, - portrait of madame de staËl ( - ). after the original painting at versailles, from a photograph by newidein portrait of charles maurice, prince of talleyrand-perigord ( - ). from a photograph by newidein, after the painting at versailles mademoiselle marie eléonore godefroid, painter - ] [illustration: french school, xviii and xix centuries portrait of madame molÉ-raymond, actress of the comÉdie-franÇaise. after the original painting in the louvre, from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. madame Élisabeth louise vigée le brun, painter - ] [illustration: french school, xix century "shepherd watching his sheep." after the picture in the musée de chantilly, from a copyright photograph by braun, clément & co., paris rosa bonheur, painter - ] [illustration: french school, xix century portrait of marshal lefÈvre, duke of dantzic. from a photograph by newidein after the painting at versailles madame c. h. f. davin, née mirvault, painter - ] [illustration: portrait (painted by herself) of madame rude, pupil of david. from a photograph by newidein, paris, after the original painting at dijon madame sophie rude, née frémiet, painter - ] [illustration: french school, early xix century a good daughter. reproduced after the original picture, from an engraving by s. w. reynolds madame antoinette cécile haudebourt lescot, painter - ] [illustration: french school, ploughing in the nivernais. dated . after the original painting in the musÉe du luxembourg, from a carbon print by braun, clÉment & co. mademoiselle rosa bonheur, painter - ] [illustration: french school, xix century the horse fair. after the original picture in the tate gallery, london, from a photograph by the autotype company, new oxford street, london mademoiselle rosa bonheur, painter - ] [illustration: french impressionist school, xix century portrait of a young woman seated. reproduced from the original painting by permission of messrs. durand-ruel & sons, paris and new york berthe morisot, painter - ] [illustration: french impressionist school, xix century the jetty.--an outdoor impression. reproduced from the original painting by permission of messrs. durand-ruel & sons, paris and new york berthe morisot, painter - ] [illustration: french school, the king of the desert. from an original painting in the prado, madrid, dated . after a photograph by j. laurent & co., madrid mademoiselle rosa bonheur, painter - ] [illustration: french school, about 'brisco,' a shepherd's dog. after the original painting in the wallace collection, london, from a photograph by w. a. mansell & co. mademoiselle rosa bonheur, painter - ] [illustration: french school, and a new song. from the original painting, dated , after a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. mademoiselle angèle dubos, painter] [illustration: the bouquet. from the original painting, dated , after a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame jeanne fichel, née samson, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary mistletoe. after the original painting from a photograph by messrs. braun, clÉment & co., paris madame jacqueline comerre-paton, painter] [illustration: french school, and the knitter asleep. after the original picture, dated , from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris mademoiselle marie petiet, painter] [illustration: a young adolescent. from a picture exhibited at the salon in , after a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. madame laure de chatillon, painter] [illustration: french school, private and confidential. after an original picture exhibited at the paris salon in madame armand Émilie leleux, painter] [illustration: sitting for a portrait in . after the original picture from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris mademoiselle jeanne rongier, painter] [illustration: french school, about "rÉgalez-vous, mesdames!" after the original painting, dated , from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. mlle. jenny zillhardt, painter by the bank of a stream. from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris mlle. hermine waternau. painter] [illustration: french school, father ricard. after a painting exhibited at the salon in , from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. mlle. marie nicolas, painter] [illustration: the last survivors of a family. from a photograph of the original painting by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame félicie schneider, painter] [illustration: french school, xix century portrait of a lady seated. after the pastel in the musÉe du luxembourg, from a photograph by newidein, paris madame eva gonzalès, pastellist - ] [illustration: french school, between and charity. after the original painting from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame uranie colin-libour, painter] [illustration: "fleurs de serre." from a photograph of the original painting by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame alix enault, painter] [illustration: french school, on the sea-shore. after the original painting in the luxembourg, paris, dated , from a photograph by messrs. lÉvy & sons, paris madame virginie demont-breton, painter] [illustration: french school, to about before the dance. after an original painting dated , from a photograph by newidein, paris madame e. de tavernier, painter] [illustration: desolation. after the original study from a photograph lent by the artist madame marie cazin, painter] [illustration: french school, and in the gynÆceum. dated . from a photograph of the original painting by braun, clÉment & co., paris mlle. diana coomans, painter] [illustration: at low tide. after the original picture, dated . from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. mlle. eugénie salanson, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary "sleep." reproduced from a photograph by permission of braun, clément & co., the owners of the copyright. francine charderon, painter] [illustration: french school, from to the present day the fruit girl. after the original picture by permission of messrs. durand-ruel & sons, paris madame eva gonzalès, painter - ] [illustration: study from a model. after the original painting from a photograph lent by the artist mademoiselle dufau, painter] [illustration: french school, and a good cigarette. after the original painting, dated , from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. madame delphine de cool, née fortin, painter] [illustration: a holiday at sosthÈne. after the original painting, dated , from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. madame blanche paymal-amouroux, painter] [illustration: french school, "stella maris." after the original painting, dated , and exhibited at the salon in , from a photograph by newidein, paris madame virginie demont-breton, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary maternal love. after the original painting from a photograph by braun, clement & co., paris elizabeth gardner (madame w. a. bouguereau), painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary "the pathway to the village church." after the original painting from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame fanny fleury, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary the goddesses before paris. from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. Élisabeth sonrel, painter] [illustration: winter. after the original painting from a photograph by braun, clement & co. mlle. louise abbéma, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary the judgment of paris. after the original picture from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. elizabeth gardner (madame w. a. bouguereau), painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary mother and child after the original picture madame marie cazin, painter] [illustration: the shepherd after the original painting madame marie cazin, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary impression of a city. after the original painting mademoiselle dufau, painter] [illustration: a basket of flowers. after the original painting madame victoria dubourg (fantin-latour), painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary "the departure." reproduced by permission after a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame vallet-bisson, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary character in spain after the original study mademoiselle dufau, painter] [illustration: study of tigers. after the original painting madame abran, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary "les chandelles." after an original painting exhibited at the salon in , from a photograph by newidein, paris madeleine carpentier, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary in search of prey. after an original picture exhibited at the paris salon in , from a photograph by newidein mademoiselle e. hilda, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary romeo and juliet. after an original painting exhibited at the paris salon in , from a photograph by newidein mademoiselle a. oppenheim, painter] [illustration: french school, about . will you buy? after the original painting from a photograph by messrs. braun, clÉment & co., paris mademoiselle consuélo fould, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary children eating soup in a charity school. from an original picture exhibited at the paris salon in . from a photograph by newidein mademoiselle e. herland, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary courtship from a photograph of the original painting by braun, clÉment & co., paris mdlle. achille-fould, painter] [illustration: french school, contemporary "bÉbÉ et zizon." reproduced from a photograph by newidein madame lucas-robiquet, painter "do you want a model?" from a photograph by newidein madame réal del sarte, painter] [illustration: the lesson. after the original painting from a photograph by braun clÉment & co. mlle. joséphine houssay, painter] [illustration: french school, and portrait. after the original painting, from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris madame le roy, painter] [illustration: flora. after the original painting, from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris mademoiselle claudie, painter] women painters in belgium and in holland by n. jany. translated by edgar preston as far as we are able to ascertain, the history of the present subject takes us back to the time of hubert and jean van eyck, whose sister marguerite made a name for herself in art. in the important volume by m. j. du jardin, "l'art flamand," there is reproduced a drawing "after" a miniature by marguerite van eyck, representing st. catherine and st. agnes, but we read elsewhere that "no work can with certainty be attributed to her." among women workers a century later, we find: clara de keyzer, suzanne horebout and anna smyters, all three of ghent. clara de keyzer, who flourished about , visited germany, italy, france and spain. suzanne horebout ( - ) was the daughter of gerard horebout, a painter of ghent, who betook himself to england, and became painter to henry viii. dürer knew him at antwerp, in , and there paid homage to the skill of his daughter, who was then barely years of age. she accompanied her father to england, and was there received with the utmost favour; she made a rich marriage with john parcker (or parker), one of the king's archers, and died full of honours in her adopted country. anne smyters who flourished about , is named in words of praise by van mander, vaernewyck and guicciardini. she married the celebrated sculptor, jean de heere, and was the mother of luc de heere, the painter, who made a long stay in england, where, among other works of importance, he did a series of decorative paintings for the earl of lincoln. siret's "dictionnaire" tells us that "in , m. lescart, a barrister of mons, was the possessor of the only known picture by catherine van hemessen. this is a half-length study of the virgin fondling the infant christ, with a background of landscape wherein one perceives snow. it is painted on wood, and bears the signature: 'caterina de hemessen pingebat.'" but there is in london an interesting portrait of a man, by her, dated , and an illustration of it will be found on page . then comes a series of daughters (and a sister) of famous painters, viz: justine van dyck; gertrude van veen; catherine pepyn; catherine peeters; anne-marie, françoise-catherine and marie-thérèse van thielen; and laurence-catherine ykens. the daughter of antony van dyck was born in london, in . "she was wedded at the age of ," says siret's "dictionnaire," "to sir john stepney de prendergast, and abjured protestantism at antwerp on the th of august, . left a widow, she made a second marriage with martin de carbonell. van dyck's daughter was unfortunate, for she found herself compelled to ask the king for a pension, which she obtained." the daughter of otto van veen, known as venius, the teacher of rubens, was born at antwerp in . she was a pupil of her father, and married louis malo. the brussels gallery contains a portrait of her father, from her brush. she died in . the daughter of martin pepyn lived in antwerp about . she specialised in portrait work, and was received into the corporation of st. luke, of that city, in , by virtue of being a daughter of the master. the success obtained by the flower-paintings of seghers and breughel suddenly caused a great development of this special branch of art, to which, moreover, the celebrated dutchman jean-david de heem, then domiciled in antwerp, was a notable contributor. among the women who became inspired by their example and followed their technique may be mentioned: catherine peeters, and the three daughters, pupils of the painter, jean-philippe van thielen (himself a direct disciple of seghers), and laurence-catherine ykens. the registers of the antwerp academy for contain the name of marie baesten, _née_ ommeganck. siret's "dictionnaire" also mentions (at bruges), the daughter of louis de deyster, the painter. anne de deyster ( - ) attracted notice by the perfection with which she copied her father's pictures. gertrude de pelichy, of utrecht ( - ), was appointed an honorary member of the imperial and royal academy of painting in vienna, and at bruges she painted the portrait of the emperor joseph ii., and that of the empress maria-theresa. at the opening of the th century, the art of the miniature was cultivated--as they expressed it in those days--by marie-josephe dargent of liège, a daughter and pupil of michel dargent, the elder, hortense van baerlen, and amélie van assche, whose sister, isabelle catherine, a pupil of her uncle, henry van assche, had devoted herself to landscape painting. siret's dictionary then notices a large number of women painters both historical and _genre_. marie-adelaide kindt of brussels, who was a pupil of david and of navez, and visited germany and france; julie-anne-marie noël, wife of the painter, j. b. van eycken, of brussels; mme. isabelle-marie-françoise geefs, _née_ corr, of brussels, a pupil of navez; mme. de keyzer, _née_ marie isabelle telghuis, wife of the former director of the antwerp academy, nicaise de keyzer. as to mme. o'connel, _née_ frédérique miethe, of berlin, a pupil of begas and of gallait, "there is (writes c. lemonnier in his 'histoire des beaux arts en belgique'), in her wild paintings, as it were, a reflection of rubens." mlle. c. de vrient, of ghent, sister of the painters albert and julien, was a flower painter of distinction, like mlle. renoz, mlle. de franchimont, mlle. f. capesius and mlle. e. de vigne. marie ommeganck, a sister of the renowned balthazar ommeganck, surnamed the "racine des moutons," painted several landscapes in the manner of her brother; mlle. euphrosine beernaert, of ostend, a pupil of l. kuhnen, painted landscapes characteristic of zeeland and the campine. the brussels gallery has several of her works, including _les vieux chênes, île de walcheren_, and a _lisière de bois en hollande_. before citing the names of the professional women painters who continue to contribute to the fame of the belgian school, let me say a word in admiration of the talent of sundry "amateurs" (as they are called, to distinguish them from the others), chief among whom is h.r.h. the comtesse de flandre. the small-sized portraits in oils painted by the duchesse d'ursel are restrained in manner and full of charm. furthermore, the pastel portraits by the baroness lambert de rothschild attract attention by the richness of their colouring and their firm drawing, while those of the comtesse ghislaine de caraman impress one by their distinction and their style. madame philippson, who is at present devoting herself specially to sculpture, has exhibited oil paintings, boldly handled and decorative in effect, and madame rolin-jacquemyns has engraved in most skilful fashion several etchings representing "the desolate spots of the campine." the most notable of the women-painters of the belgian school to-day is certainly madame marie collart, who with rare skill, has chosen a path to herself whereon she walks alone with an admirable instinct for intimate rusticity, showing much deep feeling. the painting of mlle. anna boch, on the other hand, is bright and gay. she formed one of the famous group of the xx., and following the example of several of its members, she has now turned her attention to the special study of light in the open air. mlle. louise héger, after painting the lonely _dunes_ of flanders, and the campine, has been studying and skilfully representing the slaty tints of the high plateau of the ardennes. the most interesting of the "ménages d'artistes" existing at present in the belgian school is that of the wytsmans. while rodolph wytsman seeks out the characteristic aspects of the landscapes of brabant and the silent spots among the flemish towns, mme. juliette wytsman, for her part represents, so to speak, the floral life of the sites chosen by her husband. she has indeed created a _genre_ in which she is without a rival. the daughters of the german engraver, hoppe, one of whom has married bernier, the animal painter, and the other the landscapist, gilsoul, have likewise attained celebrity. [illustration: dutch school, xvii century the merry young man. from a photograph by hanfstaengl after the painting in the rijksmuseum amsterdam. judith leyster, painter (?)- ] the daughters and granddaughters of famous artists form yet another section. mlle. alice ronner, of brussels, daughter of mme. henriette ronner, is beyond dispute the foremost painter of still-life in belgium to-day. her technical qualities are of the highest order, her _mise-en-page_, her draughtsmanship and her colour are in the grand style, and her works one and all have a really masterly air. mlle. marguerite verboeckhoven, the granddaughter of the famous animal painter, has set herself to study the delicate gradations of colour seen on the belgian littoral. mlle. verwée, daughter of the painter of the _beau pays de flandre_, exhibits portraits, which display the wealth of her palette; and the still-life subjects by mlle. georgette meunier, daughter of the engraver, jean baptiste, and niece of the great constantin meunier, are delicate both in design and in colouring. she is a pupil of alfred stevens. mme. destrée-danse and mlle. louise danse, daughters of auguste danse, the engraver, have revealed themselves worthy of their father's high gifts. mlle. wesmael, in some remarkable landscapes, and mme. marie durand, who has done some interesting heads, both prove that in auguste danse the teacher is fully worthy of the artist. with regard to mlle. alix d'anethan, c. lemonnier, in his "history of belgian fine art," writes in the following terms:--"in the antwerp salon of were two canvases by mlle. d'anethan, _l'affiche_ and _l'enfant malade_, which had the freshness and the limpidity of chardin, with a grace, a delicacy of touch, a feminine sense revealing the teaching of that most imperious of masters, alfred stevens." mlle. berthe art, too, followed this prodigious master painter. she has made her position by means of pastels which, while preserving their natural charm, have all the solidity of oil-paintings. mlle. marie antoinette marcotte at first devoted herself to the representation of the life of the poor. since then, however, she has created an altogether original _genre_, which has won for her many a success--the painting of glass-house interiors. she was "coached" by emile claus, the landscapist, among whose pupils were mme. de weert and mlle. montigny. the number of women painters is ever on the increase. there were as many as thirty-nine represented at the brussels salon of , while at the last brussels salon in , they were more than a hundred; and to close this rapid survey of feminine art in belgium, i may record a success of another kind. in , mlle. l. brohée, after the various eliminating trials, found herself among the half-dozen artists permitted to take part in the final examination for the prix de rome. machteld van lichtenberg, wife of egbert van boecop, is the first name of a dutch woman painter given in siret's "historical dictionary." she was born at utrecht, of noble family, and made a speciality in portrait painting. her name is mentioned by j. van beverwyck. her daughter cornélie also took up painting, and died at a great age in . marguerite godewyck, of dordrecht ( - ), was styled a "second anne schurman." she was one of the most learned women of her time, and was further surnamed "la perle de la jeunesse de dordrecht," and "la fleur du paradis des arts et des sciences." she specialised in portrait painting. judith leyster, of haarlem, likewise enjoyed great fame. from the year she was a member of the guild of st. luke, of haarlem. in she had a pupil, guillaume wauters by name, who on leaving her entered the studio of franz hals. she was married at heemstede on the st of june, , to the painter jean molenaer, also a native of haarlem. she is eulogistically mentioned by th. schrevelius, the historian of haarlem, who describes her as a famous woman, justly, as he remarks, called "the true guide in the arts"--(_de ware leyster in de konst_), her name leyster signifying 'guide.' she died in . the most celebrated of the dutch women painters of the th century was rachel ruysch, of haarlem. her flowers and fruit, painted with keen spirit and with extraordinary firmness, are extremely rich and varied in their arrangement. she was a pupil of guillaume aelst. in she married jurian pool, and was admitted into the hague corporation of painters in , the same year as her husband. without neglecting her duties as a mother (she had ten children) she was constantly devoted to her art. in she was appointed court painter of the elector palatine. poets have sung the virtues and the gifts of this renowned woman. agathe and cornélie van der myn, sister and daughter of herman van der myn, accompanied the latter when he settled in london. notable work was produced by three miniaturists: henriette van pee, wife of herman wolters, was born at amsterdam, in , and became her father's pupil. peter the great and the king of prussia visited her studio, which had a high reputation, and the customary poets wrote the customary verses in her honour. caroline-petronille van cuyck was made an honorary member of the _pictura_ of the hague, in . anne folkema, who lived between and , was an active assistant of her brother, jacques, in his numerous works. nor must one forget alida carré, who confined herself, for the most part, to painting fans; mlle. van kooten, whose name was inscribed in on the registers of the confrérie de st. luc, at utrecht; marguerite wulfraat, of arnhem ( - ), and elisabeth gertrude wassenberg, of groningue, ( - ), who painted _genre_ and portraits. at the opening of the th century the women painters of still-life, flowers and fruit, were still in large numbers. an interesting figure who has left a poetical memory is cornélie lamme, of dordrecht, who married j. b. scheffer, and was the mother of the celebrated painters henry and ary, who belong to the french school. after the death of her husband she settled in paris, and there ended her days. her attainments, her wit, her eminent merits, made her one of the most remarkable women of her day. she was a draughtsman and an engraver. the name of henriette ronner is one of great popularity. this indefatigable artist is known as "the painter of cats," and she has charmingly "hit off" both the heavy laziness of the mature animal, and the frolicsomeness of the kitten. the flower pictures by mme. van de sande-bakhuyzen, of the hague, so well known, tempted that excellent engraver, philippe zilcken, who has "translated" with marvellous success their freshness and their _éclat_. mme. bilders van bosse, of the hague, is well known by her skilfully drawn and powerfully painted landscapes, and mlle. thérèse schwartze, of amsterdam, a painter of high merit, has the art of giving character to a portrait; and knows how to group her figures and paint them in strong and sombre tones. mme. mesdag van houten, of the hague, wife of the famous marine painter, affects the landscape at dark, and realises fully the melancholy tenderness of the hour. it may be interesting now to name a truly remarkable artist who never exhibits--mlle. barbara van houten, niece of mme. mesdag van houten. she is an excellent painter of figure pictures and still-life; her etchings are of the highest quality, and embrace a large number of subjects--interiors with lamp effects, children's heads, landscapes, dead birds, bouquets of enormous sunflowers and gaudy tulips. further, she has interpreted in masterly fashion, eugène delacroix, jules dupré, gustave courbet and other great masters of the french school. mention must be made of mme. bisschop-robertson, who paints popular subjects with astounding vigour; mme. marie heyermans, whose pictures deal with the life and surroundings of the poor; mlles. anna abrahams and anna kerling, whose charming still-life pieces are coloured now in bright, now in sombre, tones; mme. la baronne hogendorp s' jacob, of the hague, who has turned her attention to flower painting; mlle. nelly bodenheim, who does some very clever comic scenes, for the benefit of children; and mlle. wally moes, of amsterdam, a painter of portraits and peasant subjects. last we come to mlle. marius, whose fair-tinted and most distinguished still-life works have been seen and admired. she is an excellent art critic, and is now publishing an important work on dutch painting of the th century. n. jany. [illustration: flemish school, portrait of a flemish gentleman. after the original painting in the national gallery, london, from a carbon print by braun, clÉment & co., paris catharina van hemessen, painter th century] [illustration: dutch school, xvii century young man encouraging a girl to smoke and drink. from a photograph by w. a. mansell & co., after the original picture in a private collection judith leyster, painter (?)- ] [illustration: dutch school, xvii and xviii centuries picture of fruit with insects and lizards. from a photograph by anderson after the original masterpiece in the pitti gallery, florence rachel ruysch, painter - ] [illustration: dutch and flemish schools, late xix century after a photograph of the original painting. mme. gilsoul-hoppe, painter belgium] [illustration: after a photograph of the original painting baronne van hogendorp, painter holland] [illustration: study of still life: roses in a basket. from a translator's-etching by p. zilcken madame g. j. van de sande bakhuyzen, painter holland, - ] [illustration: dutch school, between - landscape near oosterbeek from the original chalk drawing mevrouw marie philippine bilders van bosse, painter - ] [illustration: dutch school, late xix century a bleak pastoral scene after the original water-colour madame mesdag van houten, painter] [illustration: windmill at heelsum after the original oil painting madame marie philippine bilders van bosse, painter - ] [illustration: dutch school, contemporary portrait study of a girl after the original picture mlle. barbara van houten, painter] [illustration: orphans. from a photogravure of the original picture painted in mlle. thérèse schwartze, painter] [illustration: dutch school, contemporary portrait of mlle. thÉrÈse schwartze. painted by herself for the uffizi gallery, florence, by request of the italian government. reproduced from a photograph by brogi mlle. thérèse schwartze, painter] [illustration: dutch and flemish schools, contemporary a pool near oosterbeek. after the original painting madame bilders van bosse, painter - ] [illustration: with the poor at home. reproduced from a photograph of the original painting mademoiselle e. marcotte, painter belgium] [illustration: dutch school, contemporary portraits of the children of mr a. may, amsterdam. reproduced from a photograph of the original pastel mademoiselle thérèse schwartze, painter and pastellist] [illustration: dutch school, contemporary "loutje." from a sketch mlle. barbara van houten, painter] [illustration: portrait of a. g. c. van duyl, author. from a photograph of the original pastel mlle. thérèse schwartze, pastellist and painter] [illustration: flemish school, contemporary study of still life: grapes and partridges. after a photograph of the original painting mademoiselle berthe art, painter] [illustration: flemish school, contemporary portrait study of the countess florence fabbricotti baroness lambert de rothschild, painter] [illustration: portrait of monsieur gevaert. reproduced from the original painting baroness lambert de rothschild, painter] [illustration: flemish and dutch schools, contemporary portrait of mlle. dethier. after a proof of the original etching mlle. louise danse, painter-etcher belgium] [illustration: a dutch peasant woman. from a photograph of the original painting madame suse bisschop-robertson, painter holland] [illustration: flemish school, contemporary "the last move." reproduced from the original painting by permission of messrs. braun, clÉment & co., paris, owners of the copyright madame henriette ronner, painter] [illustration: flemish school, contemporary new tenants--nouveaux locataires. after the original picture, from a carbon print by braun, clÉment & co., paris, owners of the copyright madame henriette ronner, painter] [illustration: flemish school, contemporary study of a heron. from a photograph of the original painting mlle. georgette meunier, painter] [illustration: the massacre of the innocents. after matteo di giovanni da siena madame marie destrée-danse, etcher] [illustration: flemish school, contemporary a sunset in the campine. reproduced by permission from an etching after the painting by joseph coosemans in the brussels museum mademoiselle e. wesmael, etcher] [illustration: flemish school, contemporary lilies in the courtyard of a house of rest at bruges. after a photograph of the original painting madame juliette wytsman, painter] in germany and austria, in russia, switzerland and spain by wilhelm schölermann. translated into english by wilfrid sparroy when we look into the past history of the present subject, the first german name we come upon is that of the nun of nuremberg, sister margareta, who worked from to , and who copied many religious works. a century later, at udina, in italy, irene von spilimberg was born, descending from a noble german family; and although irene died at the age of nineteen, she yet lived long enough to win the hearty admiration of her great master, titian. as a picture by irene von spilimberg could not be obtained for this book, the editor has begun the german section with anna maria schurman and with maria sibylla merian. the first was a clever painter-etcher as well as the most learned lady of her time; the second was the daughter of matthew merian, and the exquisite studies she made, in water-colour, of insects and of plants and flowers, have never been excelled in their own line. from maria sibylla merian ( - ) we pass on to an admirable mezzotint, after morland, by maria prestel, who died in ; and then we are brought into the heart of the th century by the searching industry and skill of anna maria ellenrieder, a very capable painter-etcher, who lived between the years and . ellenrieder looked to the past for her inspiration, going to the art of the early dutch masters. she has little or nothing in common with the other german women artists of her time. how different is her ideal, for instance, from that of the well-known painter of historical subjects, the baroness hermione von preuschen, whose dramatic and sensational spirit appeals so strongly to the great public, as in that canvas in which is represented the corpse of irene von spilimberg, young and beautiful, lying in state in her venetian gondola, draped with black and covered with flowers. artists do not often care for pictures of this romantic type; and they find higher and more subtle qualities in the quiet wisdom of julie wolfthorn, a berlin painter of note, and a follower of the modern school of psychological portraiture. julie wolfthorn combines depth of feeling and refinement of taste with keenness of penetration into the mystery of individual character. her portrait of a young sculptor, given in the illustration on page , is a good example of the painter's methods. another berlin artist of note is fräulein käthe kollwitz, whose principal field of artistic expression has hitherto been restricted to the burin and copper plate. she has studied etching almost entirely by herself, and by dint of persistent courage and skill has developed her gifts in a direction all her own. the subjects that appeal most forcibly to her mind are taken with scarcely an exception from the darkest and most painful sides of social life and social unrest. take a glance at the father, mother, and child, reproduced on page , and entitled "destitution and despair." are you not inclined to marvel, almost, how a woman had the courage to depict, without flinching, the sad truths of such bitter poverty? can you not fancy that you hear the moan of misery, the shrill scream of starvation, the cries of rebellion and death, as when, on the outbreak of the strike, the bulk of the working classes casts itself upon the streets? such masses in motion have been made real to us in her series of plates from the "peasants' war." an artist of considerable versatility and intuition is dora hitz, of berlin. born at altdorf, near nürnberg, she began her studies at munich, afterwards continuing them at intervals in paris. in she acted upon the invitation of carmen silva, the poet-queen of roumania, and executed a series of decorative panels for the royal castle of pétès, at sinaivo, the pictorial subjects of which were chosen from the literary works of her majesty. four years later she settled in paris, and there she remained till . during all that time her industry never flagged, and she was much indebted to the friendly interest which eugène carrière took in her work. the portrait of a little girl which may be seen here on page , belongs to the modern collection in the berlin national gallery. our next lady painter, though of german descent, her grandfather being a native of hamburg, was herself born in sweden. her name is jeanna bauck. when she was twenty-three years of age she saw the fulfilment of her life-long yearning to go to germany for the purpose of studying painting, and there, with a few short breaks, she has remained ever since, first in dresden and düsseldorf, and then at munich, where she has now taken up her abode. she was also in paris for a while, for the sake of study. at first exclusively a landscapist, she afterwards turned to portrait painting, an example of which may be found on page . for seven years ( - ) she lived in berlin, and painted landscapes and portraits alternately, whilst superintending a flourishing school of art for ladies. in drawing your attention to her landscape on page , i should like to add that jeanna bauck takes rank among the most serious women painters of to-day. there is yet another portrait painter who deserves a memory for the sake of her refinement and sensibility. i refer to the wife of wilhelm jensen, the historical novelist and poet of schleswig-holstein. now, frau marie jensen (munich), once a pupil of the late emil lugo, devotes herself to her art in private. most of her portraits, too, give proof of this same love of retirement, originating as they do in the family circle (see page ). the portrait of a lady, on page , is the work of that very gifted portrait painter, fräulein maria davids. this capable artist has produced some excellent likenesses; among others those of the poet gustav frenssen, of professor weber, of freiburg, of fräulein von sydow, a daughter of the minister of state, and of frau vermehren of lübeck. another portrait painter of fame and much power of expression, is frau vilma parlaghy, her draughtsmanship being particularly good. hungarian by birth, she lives and works for the most part in the german capital. her handling of the brush is vigorous, yet sober, her colouring is warm and harmoniously balanced, and her insight into character quite strikingly true and convincing. the finest and most successful efforts, in my opinion, are the portrait of the aged field-marshal count von moltke, taken in his eighty-ninth year, shortly before his death, and that of windhorst, the german statesman. in austria, in the dominions of the emperor francis joseph, women painters are numerous, but those of more than average gifts are not perhaps so plentiful as elsewhere. in the bohemian capital of prague, fräulein hermine laucota has worked her way up to a position of distinction quite on her own grounds. leading a most retired life, devoted chiefly to the pursuit of natural history and art, she studied first in prague, and then partly at antwerp and in munich, but since the year she has resided altogether in her native town. it is not in colours so much as in etching on the copper plate that she has found her medium of artistic expression, and the subjects she has chosen are for the most part of a symbolical character, as in the distinguished etching on page . to come to vienna, a couple of names of good repute occur to me: frau olga wisinger-florian and frau tina blau-lang, the latter a refined landscapist (see pages and ). the two views of the prater will speak for themselves. with their charming freshness and their genial breadth of handling, they tell us as plain as words that "all's right with the world" in the springtime. every touch is so bracing that it needs no praise. frau blau-lang is an optimist beyond a doubt, and that as much by temperament as by choice of motive. and when we look beyond austria and germany, we find everywhere among women the same enthusiasm for art, and the same unflagging courage in mastering the difficulties that thwart their every effort. that their persistence has been crowned with much success is shown in a very remarkable manner by this present book. how admirable, for instance, is the work done in finland by maria wiik and helene schjerfbeck! in switzerland, too, if we take a glance at the country where anna wasser, at the beginning of the th century, achieved fame by her paintings--there, too, we are welcomed by a particularly interesting painter's painter, mdlle. louise breslau, who, with her thorough knowledge of modern realism, never truckles to the taste of the general public; and there, also, we find another woman painter whose art has been inspired on several occasions by the life of christ: a woman painter so much occupied with the conception of her pictures that her technique has a tendency to lag behind the almost literary eloquence of her design. but mdlle. ottilie roederstein is nevertheless an artist of real ability. from switzerland we must turn to spain if we would do for ourselves what the accompanying illustrations will do for us in the pleasantest of pleasant ways. take, for example, the airy, fresh, excellent landscape, a "scene at comillas," painted in water-colour by the infante doña paz de bourbon. then, again, the "carriage race at naples," by doña stuart sindici, with its splendid dash and dexterity of composition, and the court outside a "roman hostelry," by elena brockmann, likewise a sunny scene, simply teem with warmth and colour, and with life and beauty. not quite so strong and independent are the "fisher boys," by antonia de bañuelos, the conception and the execution alike being apparently inspired by that mild and noble master of spanish painting, esteban murillo. again, in russia, we meet with a portrait-painter, olga de boznanska (page ), whose work unites a certain independent character of its own with the influences of her parisian training: qualities that marked in a much higher and more perfect degree the pictorial appeals of that young and marvellously spirited genius whose premature death cut short a career of infinite promise: marie bashkirtseff, the friend of bastien lepage, and a realist full of subtlety and of penetration. wilhelm schÖlermann. some finnish women painters by helena westermarck, critic and painter art in finland, pictorial art, like much else in that country, is a young growth. it is in the nineteenth century that we are first able to verify its existence, and it is only in the year , or thereabouts, that we find any traces of women who seriously devoted themselves to the study of painting. the pioneers in this may be said to be mathilda rotkirch and victoria abey. somewhat later, in or about , fanny churberg, after working in düsseldorf and paris, evinced much independent and original talent in landscape painting, her art having also an inaugural character, in that she was the first who applied herself to the decoration of textile fabrics, adapting to her purpose the old national finnish patterns, a practice which has since then had a large following in the field of applied design. her career, unfortunately, was soon ended by illness and an early death. after her came the generation of women artists who are at present carrying forward a young school of enthusiastic workers. in the sphere of painting, the women artists of finland study under much the same circumstances as their male comrades. the schools of art subsidized by the state are open both to male and to female pupils, and this applies also to all prizes and rewards of merit. some account of the principal women painters may be of interest. maria wiik ( ), after an apprenticeship in the finnish schools of art and in professor becker's private academy, spent several years of study in paris--occasionally moving her easel in the summers to brittany, to normandy, or even to st. ives, in england. she has further developed her art in later years by visits to holland and to italy. her talent lies in the direction of portrait and genre painting and she has now the name of being among the best finnish portrait painters. she has executed many public commissions, such as the portrait of the professor at the rein university in helsingfors, for the finnish literary society, and that of the poet, z. topelius, for a large public school for girls. many will remember her portrait of the school inspector, ohberg, which now hangs in the helsingfors board school. maria wiik has exhibited at the paris salons, and at picture exhibitions in moscow, copenhagen, and dresden, and besides the prizes awarded her in her own country, she has received a bronze medal in paris ( ) for a picture painted in st. ives, called, "out into the world." helene schjerfbeck ( ), also a pupil of the finnish schools of art and of prof. becker's private academy, continued her studies in paris and afterwards visited brittany, england, austria and italy. she has painted some important historical pictures, taking her subjects from finnish and swedish history, as in her two admirable paintings, "liuköping's prison in " and "the death of w. v. schwerin." she has also painted a few landscapes and a number of genre pictures, many of them with subjects taken from french and english life. helene schjerfbeck has exhibited both at home and at the paris salons, has twice been awarded the lesser money prize given yearly by the finnish state (for the two historical pictures mentioned above), while at the exhibition in paris in , she received a bronze medal. she has also held an appointment as teacher in the finnish academy of art, in the department of painting and in the drawing class from the living model. her many pictures have been among the best that our women artists have produced. venny soldan-brofeldt ( ) is another pupil of the finnish schools of art and of prof. becker's academy, and has studied later in paris, and in spain and italy. her best work is in the genre style, many of her pictures being very characteristic and true scenes of finnish peasant life, such as "meal time in a peasant's hut" and "pietists." her landscapes, too, are remarkable for a sensitive conception of nature; especially is this true of her pictures of our coast scenery, with its low granite rocks, washed over by the sea waves. mrs. soldan-brofeldt has illustrated also some books for children, among others a part of a large scandinavian edition of topelius' saga tales for children. at the paris exhibition of , she received a "mention honorable," and in , a bronze medal. she is the wife of the author, juhani aho. brofeldt. mrs. soldan-brofeldt's work is not illustrated in this book, as a photograph of her most important picture was broken into fragments in its journey from finland to london. it is characteristic of all these painters that their artistic bias was determined by their study in paris of the french naturalists, who inspired them with a stern respect for drawing, and taught them to study nature seriously. starting from this common standpoint, they have, whilst working in their own way, developed along their own individual lines. many another woman artist deserves mention, but the limited space at my disposal permits me to give only a list of their names. there is ellen thesleff, a figure painter; there is elin danielson-gambogi (wife of the italian painter, r. gambogi), well-known for her portraits and landscapes; there is julia stigzelius de cock (wife of the belgian artist, césare de cock), a clever landscape painter; there is amélie lundahl, figure painter; and ada thilén, with her landscapes; and hanna rönnberg, with her subject pictures and outdoor scenes; and anna sahlstén, a figure painter; and last, but not least, i name annie torselles-schybergson, a good painter of animals. helena westermarck. [illustration: silhouette by nelly bodenheim.] [illustration: russian school, "a meeting." after the original painting in the luxembourg, paris, from a photograph by levy & sons, paris mademoiselle marie bashkirtseff, painter - ] [illustration: german school, xvii century plant study painted in water-colour on vellum. after one of the many drawings by the same artist in the british museum. they once belonged to sir hans sloane, who purchased them at a high price. maria sibylla merian (frau graff), painter - ] [illustration: german school, xvii century portrait etched by herself of anna maria schurman perhaps the most famous linguist of her time in europe anna maria schurman, painter-etcher - ] [illustration: plant study painted in water-colour on vellum. reproduced from the original drawing in the british museum maria sibylla merian (frau graff), painter - ] [illustration: german school, end of xviii century gypsies on a common after george morland frau maria catharina prestel, engraver died ] [illustration: german school, and portrait of a woman. from the original etching in the british museum] [illustration: portrait of a man. reproduced from the original etching in british museum anna marie ellenrieder, painter-etcher - ] [illustration: german school, late xix century a girl of bohemia. from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris caroline von maupeou, painter] [illustration: breton girl praying. from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris frau adelaïde salles-wagner, painter] [illustration: german school, contemporary portrait of frÄulein von sydow. from the original painting fräulein maria davids, painter portrait. from a photograph by hanfstaengl kindly lent by the artist jeanna bauck, painter] [illustration: german and spanish schools, contemporary a woodland lake. after the original picture jeanna bauck, painter, germany] [illustration: the castle and palace of pena in cintra. after the original picture from a photograph by j. laurent & co., madrid maria g. silva reis, painter, spain] [illustration: german school, contemporary motherhood. from a photograph lent by the artist dora hitz, painter] [illustration: desolation and despair after the original etching fräulein käthe kollwitz, painter-etcher] [illustration: german school, contemporary portrait of a little girl. after the original picture from a photograph by franz kullrich, berlin, lent by the artist dora hitz, painter] [illustration: portrait of wilhelm jensen, poet and historical novelist. after the original painting from a photograph lent by the artist frau marie jensen, painter] [illustration: german and swiss schools, contemporary portrait of a sculptor. from a photograph by franz kullrich kindly lent by the artist frau julie wolfthorn, painter germany] [illustration: "anaÏs." after the original painting from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. mlle. louise breslau, painter switzerland] [illustration: swiss school, contemporary their daily bread. after the original painting, reproduced by permission from a carbon print by braun, clÉment & co. mademoiselle ottilie roederstein, painter] [illustration: austrian school, contemporary springtime in the prater, vienna. after the original painting from a photograph by j. lÖwy, vienna, kindly lent by the artist frau tina blau-lang, painter] [illustration: austrian school, contemporary by the shore of lethe lake after a proof of the original etching fräulein hermine laucota, painter-etcher] [illustration: austrian school, contemporary view in the prater, vienna. after the original picture from a photograph by j. lÖwy, vienna, kindly lent by the artist frau tina blau-lang, painter] [illustration: finnish school, contemporary portrait of a lady. after the original picture maria wiik, painter] [illustration: finnish school, the convalescent after the original painting helene schjerfbeck, painter] [illustration: swiss school, contemporary "le mois de marie." reproduced after the original painting from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co. mademoiselle ottilie roederstein, painter] [illustration: finnish school, from to about preparing to leave home. from a photograph of the original painting, dated maria wiik, painter] [illustration: at work. reproduced from a carbon-print photograph of the original painting helene schjerfbeck, painter] [illustration: finnish and swiss schools, about a finnish peasant girl from the original drawing ellen thesleff, painter finland] [illustration: a portrait-group of friends. after the original picture from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co mlle. louise breslau, painter switzerland] [illustration: russian school, xix century portrait of marie bashkirtseff. after the original pastel in the musÉe du luxembourg, from a photograph by lÉvy & sons, paris mlle. marie bashkirtseff, pastellist - ] [illustration: portrait of the comtesse de toulouse. after the original pastel in the musÉe du luxembourg, from a photograph by newidein mlle. marie bashkirtseff, pastellist - ] [illustration: german and russian schools, and portrait (dated ) of the late ludwig windhorst, german statesman from a photograph by v. a. bruckmann, munich frau vilma parlaghy, painter germany] [illustration: portrait of a lady (dated ), recently purchased for the luxembourg, paris mlle. olga de boznanska, painter russia] [illustration: spanish school, a carriage race at naples from a photograph by j. laurent & co., madrid doña stuart sindici, painter] [illustration: spanish school, a scene at comillas. reproduced after the original water-colour, dated , from a photograph by j. laurent & co., madrid infante doña paz de bourbon, painter] [illustration: spanish school, outside a roman hostelry from a photograph by j. laurent & co., madrid doña elena brockmann, painter] [illustration: spanish school, and my model. after the original water-colour, from a photograph by laurent, madrid infante doña paz de bourbon, painter] [illustration: study of a baby laughing. after the original picture, from a photograph by j. laurent & co., madrid antonia de bañuelos, painter] [illustration: spanish school, "the little fishers." after the original painting, from a photograph by braun, clÉment & co., paris antonia de bañuelos, painter] index abbÉma, mlle. louise: "winter," . abran, madame: "study of tigers," . allingham, mrs. helen, r.w.s.: "a cottage near crocken hill," ; "ponte widman, venice," ; "campanile san stefano, venice," . alma-tadema, miss anna: "portrait of miss anna alma-tadema," . anderson, mrs. sophie: "elaine," . angell, mrs. helen cordelia: "study of a bird's nest," . anguisciola, sophonisba: "three sisters of sophonisba anguisciola playing at chess," ; "portrait of sophonisba anguisciola," ; "portrait of a lady," . angus, christine: design, . art, mlle. berthe: "study of still life: grapes and partridges," . bakhuyzen, mme. g. j. van de sande: "study of still life: roses in a basket," . baÑuelos, antonia de: "study of a baby laughing," ; "the little fishers," . barton, miss rose, a.r.w.s.: "almond blossom in london," . bashkirtseff, mlle. marie: "a meeting," ; "portrait of marie bashkirtseff," ; "portrait of the comtesse de toulouse," . bauck, jeanna, "portrait," ; "a woodland lake," . bauerlË, miss a., a.r.e.: "a song of the sea," ; "fauns," . beale, mary: "portrait of the english poet, abraham cowley," ; "portrait of king charles ii. of england," . beauclerk, lady diana: "caricature of edward gibbon," ; "cupids," . beaux, miss cecilia: "mother and child," ; "portrait," . benoits, madame: "portrait of marie pauline, princesse borghese," . bilders van bosse, mme.: "landscape near oosterbeek," ; "windmill at heelsum," ; "a pool near oosterbeek," . bisschop-robertson, mme. suse: "a dutch peasant woman," . blatherwick, lily (mrs. a. s. hartrick): "wintry weather," . blau-lang, frau tina: "springtime in the prater, vienna," ; "view in the prater, vienna," . bodenheim, mlle. nelly: silhouettes, , , , . bonheur, rosa: "study of a bull," ; "shepherd watching his sheep," ; "ploughing in the nivernais," ; "the horse fair," ; "the king of the desert," ; "brisco," . bouilliar, mlle.: "portrait of an actress," . bourbon, de, infante paz: "a scene at comillas," ; "my model," . bovi, madame: . boznanska, de, olga: "portrait of a lady," . breslau, mlle. louise: "anaïs," ; "a portrait-group of friends," . brickdale, miss eleanor fortescue, a.r.w.s.: "youth and the lady," ; "to-day for me," ; "sleep, that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care," ; "he married a wife," ; "designs," ; "iseult of brittany," . brockmann, doÑa elena: "outside a roman hostelry," . brownscombe, miss jennie: "the peace ball after the declaration of independence," . butler, lady elizabeth: "missed," ; "steady the drums and fifes!" . byrne, anne frances: "flowers and grapes," . cameron, miss katharine: "hush! remind not eros of his wings," . cameron, miss margaret: "portrait of mrs. blair with her dogs," ; "after the bull-fight," . capet, marie gabrielle: "portrait of dame de longrois," . carpenter, mrs. margaret: "portrait of henrietta shuckburgh," ; "portrait of margaret carpenter," ; "portrait of john gibson, r.a., sculptor," ; "portrait of r. p. bonington, painter," . carpentier, madeleine: "les chandelles," . carriera, rosalba: "portrait of a lady unknown," ; "charity and justice," ; "portrait study of a lady with her pet monkey," ; "portrait study of cardinal de polignac," ; "portrait study of a girl," ; "portrait of rosalba carriera," . cassatt, miss mary: "baby's toilette," ; "childhood in a garden," ; "mother and two children," . cazin, madame marie: "desolation," ; "mother and child," ; "the shepherd," . charderon, francine: "sleep," . chase, miss marian, r.i.: "an interesting story," . chatillon, de, mme. laure: "a young adolescent," . chaudet, mme jeanne elisabeth: "portrait of madame villot, née barbier," . cheviot, miss lilian: "on the way to the horse fair," . claudie, mlle.: "flora," . cogniet, mlle. marie amÉlie: "portrait of madame adélaïde d'orléans," . colin-libour, madame: "charity," . comerre-paton, mme. j.: "mistletoe," . conant, miss cornelia w.: "the end of the story," . * * * * * [illustration: supplement. british school, contemporary "we are but little children weak, nor born to any high estate." from a large photogravure of the original picture by permission of the berlin photographic company, london, w. mrs. marie seymour lucas, painter] [illustration: supplement. british school, contemporary "her morning ride" after the original picture miss blanche jenkins, painter] [illustration: supplement. british school, contemporary "faith" from the original picture miss flora m. reid, painter] [illustration: supplement. british school, contemporary "hush!" from a photograph of the original picture by permission of the berlin photographic co., london, w. miss maude goodman, painter] [illustration: the child handel. from a photograph of the original picture by permission of the berlin photographic co., london, w. miss margaret isabel dicksee, painter - ] [illustration: supplement. british school, contemporary "nothing venture, nothing have." from a large photogravure of the original picture by permission of the berlin photographic company, london, w. lady alma-tadema, painter] [illustration: supplement. british school, contemporary isola bella lago maggiore from the original water-colour mrs. marrable, painter] [illustration: "i showed her the ring and implored her to marry" from the original picture miss julia b. falkard, painter] [illustration: supplement. british school, contemporary skirmishers: cocker spaniels. from "british hounds and gun-dogs"] [illustration: bull terrier: position of trust. from the series on "terriers and toys" published by the berlin photographic company, london, w.] [illustration: foxhounds: a burning scent. from "british hounds and gun-dogs" miss maud earl, painter] [illustration: supplement. french school, contemporary portrait (painted by herself) of madame arsÈne darmesteter madame arsène darmesteter, painter] [illustration: supplement. french school, contemporary study from the original picture madame arsène darmesteter, painter] * * * * * cool, de, mme. delphine: "a good cigarette," . coomans, mlle. diana: "in the gynæceum," . cosway, mrs. maria: "lodona," . curran, miss a.: "portrait of percy bysshe shelley," . danse, mlle. louise: "portrait of mlle. dethier," . davids, frÄulein: "portrait of fräulein von sydow," . davin, madame c. h. f.: "portrait of marshal lefèvre, duke of dantzic," . dealy, jane m. (lady lewis), r.i.: "day-dreams," ; "baby," . demont-breton, madame: "on the sea-shore," ; "stella maris," . de morgan, mrs. evelyn: "flora," ; "study from the life," ; "drapery study," . destrÉe-danse, madame: "the massacre of the innocents," . dicksee, miss margaret isabel: "in memoriam," . dolci, agnese: "mary and the child jesus," ; "jesus took bread and blessed it," . dubos, mlle. angÈle: "a new song," . dubourg, mme. victoria: "a basket of flowers," . dufau, mlle.: "study from a model," ; "impression of a city," ; "character in spain," . duffield, mrs. william, r.i.: "yellow roses," . ellenrieder, anna marie: "portrait of a woman," ; "portrait of a man," . empress frederick of germany, the: "the akropolis, athens," . enault, madame alix: "fleurs de serre," . fanner, miss alice: "riverside landscape," ; "a yorkshire trout stream," . fanshawe, catherine maria: "a country boy," . fantin-latour, mme. (victoria dubourg): "a basket of flowers," . fichel, mme. jeanne: "the bouquet," . filleul, madame: "the sons of charles x. of france," ; "portrait of the duc d'angoulême," . fleury, mme. fanny: "the pathway to the village church," . fontana, lavinia: "marriage of st. catharine," ; "portrait of lavinia fontana zappi," ; "jesus christ talking with the women of samaria," . forbes, mrs. stanhope, a.r.w.s.: "the fisher wife," ; "in with you!" ; "cuckoo," ; "may evening," . fould, mlle. achille: "courtship," . fould, mlle. consuÉlo: "will you buy?" . frampton, mrs. george (christabel a. cockerell): "bluebells," . gardner, elizabeth: "maternal love," ; "the judgment of paris," . gentileschi, artemisia: "mary magdalene," ; "portrait of artemisia gentileschi," ; "judith and her maid with the head of holofernes," . ghisi, diana: "a victor in his triumphal chariot," . gilsoul-hoppe, madame: "interior," . godefroid, mlle. marie e.: "portrait of madame de staël," ; "portrait of charles maurice, prince of talleyrand-périgord," . gonzalÈs, eva: "portrait of a lady seated," ; "the fruit girl," . gow, miss mary l., r.i.: "mother and child," . granby, marchioness of: "the late cecil rhodes," ; "the late lord salisbury," . greenaway, miss kate: "a. for apple pie: e. eat it," ; "a. for apple pie: c. cut it," . gutti, rosina m.: "the peacemaker," . guyard, madame: "portrait of madame victoire de france," ; "portrait of elisabeth of france, duchess of parma," . hammond, miss g. demain, r.i.: "memories," . hart, miss emily: "the end of a story," . havers, miss alice: "blanchisseuses," . heitland, miss ivy: "through the wood," . hemessen, catharina van: "portrait of a flemish gentleman," . heming, mrs. matilda: "backwater, weymouth, dorset," . herford, mrs. john: "landscape at kenilworth," . herland, mlle. e.: "children eating soup in a charity school," . hilda, mlle. e.: "in search of prey," . hitz, dora: "motherhood," ; "portrait of a little girl," . hobson, miss a. m., r.i.: "room at leicester in which shakespeare is said to have acted before queen elizabeth," . hogendorp, baronne van: "flowers," . holroyd, lady: "portrait of sir charles holroyd," . hotham, amelia: "riverside landscape," . houdon, mlle. m. j. a.: "portrait of marguerite j. a. houdon," . houssay, mlle. josÉphine: "the lesson," . houten, mme. mesdag van: "a bleak pastoral scene," . * * * * * [illustration: united states of america, contemporary childhood in a garden. reproduced from the original painting by permission of messrs. durand-ruel & sons, paris and new york miss mary cassatt, painter] [illustration: mother and two children. reproduced from the original painting by permission of messrs. durand-ruel & sons, paris and new york miss mary cassatt, painter] * * * * * houten, mlle. barbara van: "portrait study of a girl," ; "loutje," . how, miss beatrice: "le repas," ; "in a dutch cottage," . hunter, mrs. mary y.: "joy and the labourer," frontispiece; "olivia," ; "where shall wisdom be found?" . hyde, miss helen: "day dreams," ; "the bamboo fence," . jensen, frau marie: "portrait of wilhelm jensen," . jopling, mrs. louise, r.b.a.: "st. bridget," . kauffman, angelica, r.a. "the sibyl," ; "ariadne," ; "portrait of angelica kauffman, r.a.," ; "the vestal virgin," . kemp-welch, miss l. e., r.b.a.: "labourers of the night," ; "after work," . king, miss jessie m.: "the court-yard," . koch, elisa: "the little sister," . kollwitz, frÄulein kÄthe: "desolation and despair," . laucota, frÄulein hermine: "by the shore of lethe lake," . larcombe, miss ethel: dedication page; end-papers; initial letters. le brun, madame vigÉe: "portrait of madame vigée le brun and her daughter," ; "madame vigée le brun and her daughter," ; "portrait of queen marie antoinette and her children," ; "portrait in the pinacoteca at turin," ; "portrait of madame le brun," ; "portrait of louise marie adélaïde de bourbon," ; "madame vigée le brun at her easel," ; "portrait of marie antoinette, queen of france," ; "portrait of the duchess of polignac," ; "portrait of madame molé-raymond," . leleux, madame armand: "private and confidential," . le roy, madame: "portrait," . lescot, madame haudebourt: "a good daughter," . leyster, judith: "the merry young man," ; "young man encouraging a girl to smoke and drink," . longhi, barbara: "mary and the child jesus in the act of crowning a saint," . louise, h.r.h. princess, duchess of argyll: "an english hebe," . lucas-robiquet, mme.: "bébé et zizon," . macbeth, miss ann: "elspeth." . macdonald, miss biddie: "portrait of the lady alix egerton," . macgregor, miss jessie: "in the reign of terror," . marcotte, mlle. e.: "with the poor at home," . martineau, miss edith, a.r.w.s.: "the potato harvest," . maupeou, caroline von: "a girl of bohemia," . mayer, constance: "the happy mother," . mee, mrs. anne: "portrait of lady dalrymple hamilton," . meen, mrs. margaret: "group of flowers in a jar," . merian, maria s.: "plant study," ; "plant study," . merritt, mrs. anna lea, r.b.a.: "love locked out," . meunier, mlle. georgette: "study of a heron," . morin, eulalie: "portrait of madame récamier," . morisot, berthe: "portrait of a young woman seated," ; "the jetty," . moser, mary, r.a.: "vase of flowers," . nicolas, mlle. marie: "father ricard," . normand, mrs. (henrietta rae): "ophelia: 'there's rue for you,'" . offor, b. (mrs. f. littler): "ophelia," . oppenheim, mlle. a.: "romeo and juliet," . parlaghy, frau vilma: "portrait of the late ludwig windhorst," . paymal-amouroux, mme.: "a holiday at sosthène," . petiet, mlle. marie: "the knitter asleep," . phillott, miss constance, a.r.w.s.: "the herdsman of admetus," . prestel, maria c.: "gypsies on a common," . rÉal del sarte, mme.: "do you want a model?" . ragnoni, barbara: "the adoration of the shepherds," . read, catharine: "portrait of the lady georgiana spencer," ; "portrait of miss harriot powell," ; "portrait of miss jones," . reis, maria g. silva: "the castle and palace of pena in cintra," . robertson, mrs. j.: "portrait of mrs. stuart," . roederstein, mlle. ottilie: "their daily bread," ; "le mois de marie," . romani, juana: "study from a model," . romany, mme. adÈle: "portrait of gaëtano apollino baldassare vestris, dancer," . rongier, mlle. jeanne: "sitting for a portrait," . ronner, mme. henriette: "the last move," ; "new tenants," . rothschild, de, baroness lambert: "portrait study of the countess florence fabbricotti," ; "portrait of monsieur gevaert," . rude, mme. sophie: "portrait of madame rude," . ruysch, rachel: "picture of fruit with insects and lizards," . salanson, mlle. eugenie: "at low tide," . salles-wagner, adelaÏde: "breton girl praying," . sawyer, miss amy: "panel of a screen," . schjerfbeck, helene: "the convalescent," ; "at work," . schurman, anna maria: "portrait of anna maria schurman," . schneider, mme. fÉlicie: "the last survivors of a family," . schwartze, thÉrÈse: "orphans," ; "portrait of mlle. thérèse schwartze," ; "portraits of the children of mr. a. may," ; "portrait of a. g. c. van duyl," . sindici, doÑa stuart: "a carriage race at naples," . sirani, elisabetta: "the dream of saint anthony of padua," ; "the madonna weeping," ; "the flight into egypt," . sister a., sienese nun: "adoration of the shepherds," ; "madonna and child with st. catharine and other saints," . sister b., sienese nun: "the holy family with john the baptist," . smythe, miss minnie, a.r.w.s.: "a cottage girl," . sonrel, Élisabeth: "the goddesses before paris," . spencer, lavinia, countess: "a pinch of snuff," . staples, mrs. (m. e. edwards): "waifs from the great city," . starr, louisa (mme. canziana): "sintram and his mother," . stokes, mrs. marianne: "the queen and the page," ; "portrait of the hon. mrs. walter james," . strong, mrs. elizabeth: "good friends," . subleyras, maria tibaldi: "mary magdalene at the feet of jesus christ," . swan, mrs. j. m.: "the music lesson," . swynnerton, mrs. a. l.: "the sense of sight," . tavernier, de, mme. e.: "before the dance," . templetown, viscountess: "wood scene," . thesleff, ellen: "a finnish peasant girl," . valory, de, mme. caroline: "the miniature," . vallet-bisson, mme.: "the departure," . vanteuil, de, mlle.: "portrait of marie de rabutin-chantal, marquise de sévigné," . vigri, caterina: "saint ursula and her maidens," . waterford, louisa marchioness of: "palm branches," ; "spring," ; "jesus christ among the doctors," . waternau, mlle. hermine: "by the bank of a stream," . watson, caroline: "portrait of sarah, countess of kinnoull," . wentworth, mrs. cecilia: "prayer," . wesmael, mlle. e.: "a sunset in the campine," . white, miss florence: "white treasures," . wiik, maria: "portrait of a lady," ; "preparing to leave home," . wolfthorn, frau julie: "portrait of a sculptor," . wytsman, mme. juliette: "lilies in the courtyard of a house of rest at bruges," . youngman, miss a. m., r.i.: "in a neapolitan villa," ; "who loves a garden loves a greenhouse too," . zappi, lavinia fontana: "marriage of st. catharine," ; "portrait of lavinia fontana zappi," ; "jesus christ talking with the woman of samaria," . zillhardt, mlle. jenny: "régalez-vous, mesdames!" . [illustration: silhouette by nelly bodenheim.] * * * * * transcriber's note: archaic and inconsistent punctuation, spelling and syntax were retained. the original had illustrations imbedded in the index. _illustrated handbooks of art history._ english painters by h. j. wilmot-buxton, m.a. with a chapter on american painters by s. r. koehler. illustrated handbooks of art history of all ages. _crown vo, cloth extra, per volume, s._ =architecture: classic and early christian=. by professor t. roger smith and john slater, b.a. comprising the egyptian, assyrian, greek, roman, byzantine, and early christian. illustrated with engravings, including the parthenon, the erechtheum at athens, the temple of zeus at olympia, the colosseum, the baths of diocletian at rome, saint sophia at constantinople, the sakhra mosque at jerusalem, &c. =architecture: gothic and renaissance=. by professor t. roger smith and edward j. poynter, r.a. showing the progress of gothic architecture in england, france, germany, italy, and spain, and of renaissance architecture in the same countries. illustrated with more than engravings, including many of the principal cathedrals, palaces, and domestic buildings on the continent. =sculpture=: a manual of egyptian, assyrian, greek, and roman. by george redford, f.r.c.s. with illustrations of the most celebrated statues and bas-reliefs of greece and rome, a map of ancient greece, descriptions of the statues, and a chronological list of ancient sculptors and their works. =painting: classic and italian=. by edward j. poynter, r.a., and percy r. head, b.a. including painting in egypt, greece, rome, and pompeii; the renaissance in italy; schools of florence, siena, rome, padua, venice, perugia, ferrara, parma, naples, and bologna. illustrated with engravings of many of the finest pictures of italy. =painting: german, flemish, and dutch=. by h. j. wilmot-buxton, m.a., and edward j. poynter, r.a. including an account of the works of albrecht dürer, cranach, and holbein; van eyck, van der weyden, and memline; rubens, snyders, and van dyck; rembrandt, hals, and jan steen; wynants, ruisdael, and hobbema; cuyp, potter, and berchem; bakhuisen, van de velde, van huysum, and many other celebrated painters. illustrated with engravings. =painting: english and american=. by h. j. wilmot-buxton, m.a. including an account of the earliest paintings known in england; the works of holbein, antonis more, lucas de heere, zuccaro and marc gheeraedts; the hilliards and olivers; van dyck, lely, and kneller; hogarth, reynolds, and gainsborough; west, romney, and lawrence; constable, turner, and wilkie; maclise, mulready, and landseer; and many other celebrated painters. with illustrations. =painting: french and spanish=. by gerard smith, exeter coll., oxon. including the lives of ribera, zurbaran, velazquez, and murillo; poussin, claude lorrain, le sueur, chardin, greuze, david, and prud'hon; ingres, vernet, delaroche, and delacroix; corot, diaz, rousseau, and millet; courbet, regnault, troyon; and many other celebrated artists. with illustrations. nearly ready. [illustration: the valley farm. _by_ constable. a.d. . _in the national gallery._] _illustrated handbooks of art history_ english painters by h. j. wilmot-buxton, m.a. with a chapter on american painters by s. r. koehler [illustration] london sampson low, marston, searle, & rivington crown buildings, fleet street (_all rights reserved_.) [illustration] preface. this brief sketch of the rise and progress of painting in england has been drawn from a variety of sources. the little that can be traced of artistic work previous to the end of the fifteenth century does not fill many pages. ignorance, carelessness, and "iconoclastic rage" all contributed to the defacement of paintings which we have every reason to believe at one time abounded in our churches and public buildings, as they did at the same period in italy; and there is good evidence that some of our early english artists are not to be despised. our forefathers were too much engaged in the rough contests of war to care much for the arts of peace. in the sixteenth century several foreign artists of more or less celebrity were induced to visit and stay in england. foremost of these was holbein, and to his example english artists are deeply indebted. in the next century there were a few excellent miniature painters, whose work is not to be surpassed at the present day, and then came a succession of foreigners--rubens and van dyck from flanders, lely and kneller from germany, and a host of lesser men, who seem to have in a great measure monopolized portrait painting--then in vogue among the nobility--for more than a hundred years. early in the eighteenth century came hogarth, followed by reynolds, gainsborough and romney, and from that time to the present, art has year by year progressed, till now english painters have become a recognised power in the state, and contribute, in no small degree, to the enlightenment, pleasure and refinement of the age. h.j.w.-b. _november_, . [illustration] contents. painting in england. chapter i. page early english art chapter ii. english art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries chapter iii. english art in the eighteenth century--william hogarth chapter iv. the royal academy and its influence chapter v. the progress of english art in the eighteenth century chapter vi. book illustrators--miniature painters chapter vii. painters in water colours chapter viii. english art in the nineteenth century--sir thomas lawrence and his contemporaries chapter ix. landscape painters chapter x. historic painters chapter xi. subject painters painting in america. introduction first, or colonial period second, or revolutionary period third period, or period of inner development fourth, or present period index of names [illustration] list of illustrations. . the valley farm _constable_ _frontispiece_ page . age of innocence _reynolds_ xiv . from st. ethelwold's benedictional _godeman_ . arthur, prince of wales (_miniature_) . henry, prince of wales (_miniature_) . nicolas kratzer _holbein_ . edward, prince of wales (_miniature_) _holbein_ . a dutch gentleman _more_ . countess of pembroke _hilliard(?)_ . sir philip sidney (_miniature_) _isaac oliver_ . james i. (_miniature_) _hoskins_ . countess of devonshire _van dyck_ . oliver cromwell _lely_ . grinling gibbons _kneller_ . william hogarth and his dog trump _hogarth_ . morning _wilson_ . mrs. bradyll _reynolds_ . mrs. siddons _gainsborough_ . titania and bottom _fuseli_ . death of wolfe _west_ . death of major peirson _copley_ . mercury inventing the lyre _barry_ . marquis of stafford _romney_ . charity _northcote_ . the watering-place _morland_ . from dante's inferno _blake_ . the dream _stothard_ . the portrait _smirke_ . the woodcock _bewick_ . tail-piece _bewick_ . morning walk _chalon_ . evening _turner_ . the tomb of the scaligers at verona _prout_ . berncastle, on the moselle _harding_ . the view from richmond hill _de wint_ . old english hospitality _cattermole_ . master lambton _lawrence_ . trial of queen catherine _harlow_ . swiss peasant girl _howard_ . the grand canal, venice _turner_ . trent in tyrol _callcott_ . the fisherman's departure _collins_ . st. gomer, brussels _roberts_ . francis i. and his sister _bonington_ . belshazzar's feast _martin_ . terminati marina _stanfield_ . the pleasant way home _creswick_ . the rape of europa _hilton_ . the dangerous playmate _etty_ . greek fugitives _eastlake_ . joash shooting the arrows of deliverance _dyce_ . harold presents himself to edward the confessor _maclise_ . the maid of saragossa _wilkie_ . choosing the wedding gown _mulready_ . sancho panza and the duchess _leslie_ . captain macheath _newton_ . peace _landseer_ . the arab scribe _lewis_ . our village _walker_ . death on the pale horse _west_ . general knox _stuart_ . death of montgomery in the attack of quebec _trumbull_ . jeremiah and the scribe _allston_ . a surprise _mount_ . desolation _cole_ . noon by the sea-shore--beverly beach _kensett_ . sunset on the hudson _gifford_ . lambs on the mountain-side _hunt_ [illustration: age of innocence. _by_ sir j. reynolds. _in the national gallery_.] painting in england. by h. j. wilmot-buxton. [illustration] english painters. chapter i. early english art. the current english school of art is a creation of a comparatively modern date. it is a mistake, however, to assume that there were no native painters in england under the plantagenets, and that we were entirely dependent on foreigners for such art as we possessed. the little care which has been taken of early english pictures and their destruction, sometimes accidental, sometimes wilful, have led many to imagine that ancient england had no art of her own. it has been customary to imagine that in italy alone, in the thirteenth century, existed the renaissance and growth of modern design. later research has, however, shown that the renaissance in painting was not the sudden creation of giotto, nor that of sculpture the work of niccola pisano. the renaissance in italy was a gradual growth, and there was in england and in other countries a similar renaissance, which was overlooked by those whose eyes were fixed on italy. it has been shown that there were english artists, contemporaries of giotto and pisano, whose works were as good as any paintings or sculptures which the italians produced in the thirteenth century. it is quite true that we know very little of these englishmen. some gave themselves to illumination, and produced delicate representations of human beings, as well as of animals, leaves, and flowers. in the british museum there are several manuscripts of a very early date, which are ornamented with paintings undoubtedly by english artists. the duke of devonshire possesses a manuscript, the _benedictional of st. ethelwold_, written between a.d. and , and illuminated, with thirty drawings, by a monk of hyde abbey, named godeman, for ethelwold, bishop of winchester. it is a folio of leaves of vellum, - / inches in height by - / in width. other artists painted and gilded the images of wood or stone by their brother craftsmen, and were classed in the humble category of _steyners_. they devoted much of their time to heraldic devices, and by degrees passed from the grotesque to the natural, and produced what were styled _portraits on board_. painting on glass was a favourite art in this early period, and, although the artists had no more noble title than that of _glaziers_, some of their works survive to prove their merits. many of these craftsmen combined the arts of the painter, sculptor, or "marbler," and architect. among these obscure pioneers of english art was william torell, a goldsmith and citizen of london, supposed to be descended from an english family whose name occurs in domesday book. torell modelled and cast the effigy of henry iii. for his tomb in westminster abbey, as well as three effigies of eleanor of castile, about a.d. . these latter works were placed in westminster abbey, blackfriars' monastery, and lincoln cathedral. the figures in westminster abbey show the dignity and beauty of the human form, and are masterpieces of a noble style. the comparison between the effigy of margaret of richmond, executed for henry vii.'s chapel by the florentine torrigiano, and the figures by torell, is decidedly in favour of the latter. no work in italy of the thirteenth century excels in beauty these effigies by the english sculptor. at an earlier period than this, during the life of henry iii., some english artists, as well as foreigners, were employed to embellish the cathedrals and palaces of the king. these native craftsmen, who seem to have been at once artists, masons, carvers, upholsterers, or sometimes tailors,[a] are mostly forgotten, but we can trace the names of master edward of westminster, or edward fitz odo--probably the son of odo, goldsmith to henry iii.--master walter, who received twenty marks "for pictures in our great chamber at westminster," and master john of gloucester, who was plasterer to the king. the names of the "imaginators" of queen eleanor's crosses are also well known. the early pictorial art of england has been so neglected or forgotten, that it is commonly said to have commenced with the portrait painters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [illustration: from st. ethelwold's benedictional. _by_ godeman, a monk of hyde abbey. a.d. . _an illuminated ms. in the possession of the duke of devonshire_.] ignorance, indifference, and bigotry have destroyed, or suffered to perish, the paintings which adorned the walls of almost every church, and the panels of nearly every rood-screen, hundreds of years before the date assigned to the english school. in kempley church, gloucestershire, the walls appear to have been painted early in the twelfth century with large figure subjects. those in the chancel are in a good state of preservation, and represent the vision in the apocalypse, and christ in majesty, attended by the twelve apostles and the saints, painted in life size. in chaldon church, surrey, the chancel walls are ornamented with subjects illustrating the _scala humanæ salvationis_, works apparently of the twelfth century, which, though necessarily rude, are as good as any italian examples of the same period. in westminster abbey there is an important series of small paintings by an english artist contemporary with cimabue. these pictures once formed the chief ornaments of a frontal, and belonged to the high altar.[b] the work in question consists of a rectangular piece of framed and richly panelled wood-work, about eleven feet long by three feet high. the general design consists of three central figures painted under canopies. on each side are four star-shaped panels filled with painted groups of figures; beyond these on each side is another single figure under a canopy. the wood is covered with fine stucco, or _gesso_, to the thickness of cardboard, as is always the case with old paintings on panels, and generally when on stone. the pictures still extant on the frontal comprise, in the centre, a figure of christ in the act of benediction, holding an orb in his left hand. at the right hand is the virgin mary, bearing her emblem of the lily; on our left is st. john, with a book; on our right is st. peter, with the keys. in the star-shaped panels we find the miracles of the raising of jairus's daughter, the loaves and fishes, and the restoration of the blind man. these figures, though somewhat like those of the early florentine school, possess a character of their own, and are undoubtedly english. the well-known portrait of _richard ii_. (died ), now in the abbey at westminster, is believed to have been painted by an english artist of the fourteenth century. the figure of the king is of large life size, seated in a coronation chair. he is in royal robes, with the globe in one hand and sceptre in the other. this picture for many years hung near the altar. the history of art in england during the reigns of edward i. and edward ii. is a blank; probably men were too busy with swords and bucklers to turn to the gentle arts of painting and sculpture. the reign of edward iii. shows a revival in art and letters, and the patron of chaucer adorned the chapel of st. stephen, westminster, with the best works of native artists. the fire of , which destroyed the old houses of parliament, almost obliterated these interesting relics. the walls of the chapel were painted in oil colours with scriptural and historic episodes on the prepared surface of the stonework. there seems to have been at this period a method, peculiar to london, of producing a blue colour, which is mentioned in a german ms. of the fourteenth century as "the london practice." it is noticeable that a blue colour can still be traced in the relics saved from st. stephen's. the society of antiquaries has published coloured copies of the paintings which adorned the chapel. when we recall the state of england at the period which succeeded the death of edward iii., the turbulence of the feudal barons, the constant lawlessness and blood-shedding, and the ignorance which prevailed even among the upper classes, we cannot wonder that art made little progress. some advance doubtless took place, but we look in vain for originality among the artists who were alternately employed to decorate a baron's pageant, or adorn an altar. there is a good portrait of _henry iv._, removed from hampton court, herefordshire, and now at cassiobury. to the reign of henry v., or at latest to the early days of henry vi., belongs the earliest authentic specimen of historical portraiture in england. it represents _henry v. and his relations_, painted on wood, less than life size, and was at one time the altar-piece of shene church. the portraits which were attempted in the troublous period of the wars of the roses, though unlovely and ghastly to look upon, show that art was gradually emerging from the fetters of monastic teaching, where bad pupils copied bad masters, and reproduced saints and angels, whose want of form and symmetry was atoned for by a liberal allowance of gilding. a fairly expressive portrait of _richard iii._, which must have been painted about this time by a very capable artist, is among the treasures of knowsley. in the well-known tapestry in st. mary's hall, coventry, there is a representation of king henry vi. kneeling before the altar, attended by cardinal beaufort, the duke of gloucester, and many courtiers, in which the drawing will bear comparison with similar work executed in italy or flanders at the same time. this tapestry was probably made at arras, from english designs. [illustration: arthur, prince of wales. [b. . d. .] _from a miniature at windsor castle_.] the gradual spread of knowledge at this period induced the english nobility to promote the adornment of manuscripts, chiefly missals and romances of chivalry. these pictures comprise the best specimens of english later mediæval art, and in richness and delicacy of colour they closely approach oil paintings. with the discovery of printing came a check to the art of illuminating manuscripts, and the wild fanaticism of the first reformers led them to burn at once the religious manuals of rome, and the wit and wisdom of poet or philosopher. to these ruthless iconoclasts we owe the obscurity in which early english pictorial art remains. it must have been during the later years of the reign of henry vii. that two miniatures, now at windsor castle, were painted, probably for the king. one represents _arthur, prince of wales_, who, at the age of fifteen, married catherine of aragon; the other is his brother, who became henry viii. (_see engravings_.) in the reign of henry vi. there was an artist of note, undoubtedly an englishman, who may not be passed in silence. this was william austen, sculptor, to whom we owe the monument ("in fine latten," _i.e._ brass) of richard, earl of warwick, in the church of st. mary, warwick, a work which flaxman somewhat courageously considered equal to the productions of austen's italian contemporaries, ghiberti and donatello. [illustration] chapter ii. english art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. the period of the renaissance found all eyes directed to italy, and presently england welcomed a number of foreign artists who became the teachers, more or less worthy, of our countrymen. henry vii. was fonder of money than of art, yet he invited several of these strangers to england; but there are no grounds for supposing, though it is frequently stated, that mabuse was among the number. among the foreign artists of this period who visited england, were gerrard lucas horebout, or hornebolt, of ghent ( -- ), who was employed by henry viii., and probably by his predecessor; and susannah horebout, daughter of gerrard lucas, a miniature painter, is said to have married an english sculptor named whorstley. dürer, in his journal, says of her, "it is a great wonder a woman should do so well." henry viii. was as lavish as his father had been careful of money; naturally fond of display, and jealous of the magnificence of francis i. and charles v., the king became a liberal patron of artists. he is said to have invited raphael, primaticcio, and titian to visit england, but if so, the invitations were declined. among lesser names, however, we find that of antonio toto, who came here in , and was appointed serjeant-painter to the king. none of his works is now recognised. girolamo da treviso is supposed to have designed the historic painting of the _field of the cloth of gold_, formerly at windsor, and now in the possession of the society of antiquaries at burlington house. [illustration: henry, prince of wales. [b. . d. .] afterwards king henry viii. _from a miniature at windsor castle_.] lucas cornelisz of leyden ( -- ), son of cornelis engelbrechtsen, came to england and entered the service of the king. it is said that he taught holbein in some branches of art, and, as he survived the great painter of augsburg for nine years, it is _possible_ that some of the works attributed to holbein after were painted by him. henry viii. seems to have had two other serjeant-painters besides antonio toto, and previous to the coming of holbein. these were andrew wright and john brown, whose names proclaim them to be natives. these artists or craftsmen had positions of trust and honour, wore a special dress, and received a weekly wage. jan van eyck had a similar post as _varlet de chambre_ to philippe le bon. it was the age of pageants, and one great duty of the king's artists was to adorn these singular spectacles. among the archives of the church of st. mary redcliffe, bristol, is the following curious notice of a religious pageant held at a somewhat earlier date:-- "memorandum: that master cumings hath delivered, the th day of july, in the year of our lord , to mr. nicholas bettes, vicar of radcliffe, moses couteryn, philip bartholomew, and john brown, procurators of radcliffe, beforesaid, a new sepulchre, well gilt, and cover thereto; an image of god rising out of the same sepulchre, with all the ordinance that longeth thereto: that is to say--item, a lath, made of timber, and iron work thereto. item, thereto longeth heaven, made of timber and stained cloth. item, hell, made of timber and iron work, with devils in number thirteen. item, four knights, armed, keeping the sepulchre, with their weapons in their hands, that is to say, two axes, and two spears. item, three pair of angels' wings; four angels, made of timber, and well painted. item, the father, the crown, and visage; the ball, with a cross upon it, well gilt with fine gold. item, the holy ghost coming out of heaven into the sepulchre. item, longeth to the angels four chevelers." [illustration: nicolas kratzer: astronomer to henry viii. _by_ hans holbein. dated . _in the louvre_.] it is not surprising that art made little progress whilst it was mainly directed to the painting and gilding of timber angels and of solid devils for a hell of iron and wood-work. things were not much better in the reign of henry viii. his love of ostentation made him fond of pageants, and the instructions which he left for his own monument are curious. "the king shall appear on horseback, of the stature of a goodly man while over him shall appear the image of god the father holding the king's soul in his left hand, and his right hand extended in the act of benediction." this work was to have been executed in bronze, but was never finished. elizabeth stopped the necessary payments, and the uncompleted figure was sold by an unsentimental and puritan parliament for £ . the influence of the reformation was decidedly antagonistic to art in england and elsewhere. in attempting to reform, the leaders tolerated destruction, and whilst pretending to purify the church they carried away not only the "idols," but much that was beautiful. they literally "broke down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers." pictures and altar-pieces were ruthlessly destroyed. fortunately a considerable number of old paintings still exist in our churches. a little work on "wall paintings in england," recently published by the science and art department, mentions five hundred and sixty-eight churches and other public buildings in england in which wall paintings and other decorations have been found, all dating from an earlier period than the reformation, and there are doubtless many not noticed. the branch of art which suffered least from the iconoclastic reformers was that of portrait-painting, and this received a great impetus in england by the opportune arrival of-- hans holbein, the younger, of augsburg ( -- ), who came, in , with a recommendation from erasmus to sir thomas more, by whom he was welcomed and entertained at chelsea. unlike albrecht dürer, the other great german painter of the reformation epoch, holbein was a literal painter of men, not a dreamer haunted by visions of saints and angels. his ideas of heaven were probably modelled far more on the plan of the bristol pageant, than on that of the italian masters. such an artist came exactly at the right moment to england, where protestantism was becoming popular. holbein's wonderful power as a colourist and the fidelity of his likenesses exercised a lasting effect on english art. he founded no school, however, though he had many imitators among the foreign artists whom henry had invited.[c] [illustration: edward, prince of wales, afterwards king edward vi. _by_ holbein. _from a miniature in the possession of the duke of devonshire._] in holbein was made painter to the king, with a salary of £ a year, in addition to the payment given for his works. the chief pictures painted by holbein in england are portraits; and tradition says that henry specially employed him to delineate the features of any fair lady on whom he had cast a favourable eye. among the portraits we may mention those of _nicolas kratzer_, _erasmus_, _anne of cleves_, and _sir richard southwel_ (in the louvre); _archbishop warham_ (lambeth palace); _sir henry guildford_, a _merchant of the steelyard_, and _lady rich_ (windsor); _lady vaux_ and _john reskimer_ (hampton court); _henry viii._; the _duchess of milan_[d] (arundel castle); _sir william_ and _lady butts_ (mr. w. h. pole carew); _the ambassadors_, a most important work, and _erasmus_ (lord radnor, longford castle). there is at windsor a series of eighty portraits of the english nobility, drawn by holbein in black and red chalks, which are of infinite value as works of art; and at windsor likewise, and in other galleries, are many carefully painted miniatures ascribed to him, of the greatest artistic and historic value. hans holbein, like most artists of his age, could do more than paint portraits. at basle are noble subject pictures by him. he was an architect, a modeller, and a carver. he was specially gifted in designing wood-blocks for illustrating books, and in the ornamentation of sword-hilts, plate, and the like. a book of designs for jewels, by holbein, once the property of sir hans sloane, is now in the british museum. holbein died of the plague, in london, between october th and november th, . another painter in the service of king henry viii. at this time was the above-named girolamo pennacchi, who was born at treviso, in . he was an imitator of raphael, and painted portraits--chiefly at genoa, faenza, bologna, and venice, and in came to england. he was killed by a cannon-ball while acting as a military engineer in the king's service near boulogne, in . there is an altar-piece by him, signed ieronimvs trevisivs p (no. in the national gallery.) in the "old masters" exhibition of , was a portrait of _sir t. gresham_ (no. ), a fine whole-length, standing, life-size picture of the famous merchant, with a skull on the pavement at our left. this work is dated , the year of sir thomas's marriage, in his twenty-sixth year, and, as we have seen above, of treviso's death. it is the property of the gresham committee of london, and every expert has accepted it as a work of the italian painter, engineer, and architect, who was important enough to be honoured with a separate biography by vasari in his "lives of the painters." girolamo's salary from the english king was scudi per annum. much likeness exists between the art of gresham's portrait and that of the masterly life-size, whole-length picture of the _earl of surrey_, with his motto, _sat super est_, which is one of the chief ornaments of knole, and almost worthy of velasquez himself. this picture (which is dated ) is attributed to the undermentioned gwillim stretes (or street). it is much more like an italian production than a dutch one, and so fine that da treviso might have painted it at his best time. it is not like the beautiful portraits of _edward vi._ at windsor and petworth, which are exactly such as we attribute to a man in stretes's position, and which, while differing from the productions of holbein, are, technically speaking, by no means unworthy of him. the charming windsor portrait of _edward vi._ was no. in the national portrait exhibition of . in the same collection were more works of the same period, including the portrait of _henry viii._, no. , lent by the queen. the following are among the painters who flourished at this time of whom records exist and are more or less confused, yet are so valuable that they deserve to be sifted in comparison with the large numbers of pictures. the artists' names are important because they prove how many of the owners were englishmen. these persons were all employed by henry viii. they were john brown, who received a pension of £ a year; andrew wright, died ; vincent volpe, who translated his name into "fox" and died . he, _c._ , was paid at the rate of £ a year, a great sum in those days, when holbein himself had but £ a year. antonio toto succeeded wright as sergeant-painter to the king, a dignity which afterwards fell to sir james thornhill and hogarth successively. gerrard lucas horebout, or hornebolt ( -- ), and lucas horebout (died ), his son, flemings, were painters of distinction here and abroad, whose works have been added to those of holbein. their wages were more than £ per annum each. susanna horebout was a painter of miniatures, much employed by the king and his courtiers. a picture of _henry viii._ at warwick castle has for centuries borne the name of lucas of this family. it is doubtless rightly named, and may some day furnish a key to the style of the distinguished owner himself. it was no. in the national portrait exhibition of , and no. of the manchester art treasures of . a somewhat similar picture is now in the national portrait gallery. we may, in future, recognise in some of the beautiful miniatures of this period, which are now ascribed to holbein, the much-praised works of susanna horebout. doubtless some of the works of lucas have been bestowed on lucas de heere, who is mentioned below. bartholomew penni, and alice carmillion succeeded in honour. lavinia terling (born benich), "paintrix," as they called her, had for quarterly wages £ , and was mentioned by vasari as of bruges. [illustration: portrait of a dutch gentleman. _by_ sir antonis more.] in the reign of edward vi. gwillim stretes was made painter to the king. strype records that he was paid fifty marks for two pictures of the king, and one of _henry howard, earl of surrey_, who was beheaded in . katherine maynors and gerbach flick--evidently a dutchman, one of whose drawings belonged to richardson and is dated --were here at this time; flick's likeness of _cranmer_ (signed gerbarus flicius), painted in , is now in the national portrait gallery. they continued the practice of art in this country. at irnham is a fine full-length portrait of _lord darcy of chirke_, dated . nicholas lyzardi was second painter to king edward, and succeeded toto, as sergeant-painter to elizabeth. johannes corvus painted the likeness of _fox, bishop of winchester_, which belongs to corpus christi college, oxford, and which was at the national portrait exhibition, , no. . corvus has been identified by mr. scharf as the artist of a fine portrait, dated , of _mary tudor_, wife of louis xii., and the duke of suffolk. william key, or caius, as he called himself, was born at breda in and died . some of his pictures were, as mr. scharf has noticed, in the collections of charles i., and the duke of buckingham. a carver, and probably painter, well known at this period in england, whose works are, however, no longer to be identified, was nicholas of modena, who made _pictures_, possibly small coloured statues, of henry viii. and francis i. it is worth while to mention that one p. oudry, apparently a frenchman, was busily employed in this country about , and painted various portraits of _mary, queen of scots_, one of which is in the national portrait gallery, while others are at cobham, hardwick, hatfield, and welbeck. in the reign of mary i. we find art represented by sir antonis mor, moro, or more ( -- -- ), a native of utrecht, who had painted and studied in italy, spain, and portugal. philip ii. was his especial patron, and gave him a gold chain for the portrait of his gloomy queen. he came to england in , was made painter to the court, and received very large prices for his pictures. he remained till the queen's death, in , when he returned to madrid. he afterwards established himself at brussels, under the protection of the duke of alva, but in removed to antwerp, where he died. his portraits of _jeanne d'archel_, in the national gallery, and of _sir t. gresham_, in the national portrait gallery, are excellent examples of his skill. joost van cleef ( ?), a native of antwerp, also painted portraits at this time with considerable success. from his overweening conceit, which led him into furious quarrels, he was called zotte (foolish) cleef. his portrait, by himself, is in the althorp gallery. it has been said of elizabeth, that although she had not much taste for painting, she loved pictures of herself. her court painter was a fleming, lucas de heere ( ?-- ), who had also been employed by queen mary, whose portrait (dated ) by him belongs to the society of antiquaries, and was at the "old masters," in , no. . he painted, in , the gallery of the earl of lincoln, describing the characteristics of different nations. with a sarcastic wit, which elizabeth doubtless appreciated, he represented the typical englishman as naked, with a pair of shears, and different kinds of clothes beside him, unable to decide on the best fashion. de heere painted elizabeth in full state, as she loved to be depicted, attended by juno, minerva and venus. this picture remains at hampton court (no. ), and is dated . mr. wynne finch has a capital picture of small figures, representing _frances brandon, duchess of suffolk, and her second husband adrian stokes_, dated , by this able painter. many other works by him exist in english seats. other foreign artists of this reign were cornelius vroom, who drew designs for tapestry, representing the victory of lord howard over the famous "armada" of the spaniards (these tapestries were burnt with the houses of parliament in ); federigo zucchero ( -- ), whose portrait of the queen in a fantastic dress is in the possession of the duke of devonshire, and was no. in the national portrait exhibition, ; and marc gheeraedts, or garrard ( -- ), of bruges. there are three portraits ascribed to gheeraedts in the collection of the marquis of exeter, and others were exhibited in the first ( ) national portrait exhibition. the most important of all the works attributed to gheeraedts is the group of eleven _english and spanish statesmen_ assembled at somerset house, which has been recently acquired for the national portrait gallery at the hamilton palace sale.[e] a very fine little example, signed "m.g.," is a full-length portrait of _queen elizabeth_, standing, holding a branch of olive, with a sword and a little shock dog at her feet. it belongs to the duke of portland, and was long lent to the south kensington museum. a head of _camden_, in the bodleian, is signed with the artist's name in full. a very fine full-length portrait is at woburn abbey; other signed specimens are at barron hill and penshurst. [illustration: countess of pembroke. "sidney's sister, pembroke's mother." _by_ nicholas hilliard (?). _from a rare engraving._] more interesting than these foreign artists is the name of nicholas hilliard ( -- ), an englishman, and the first native artist of importance, whose fame remains to the present time. the "old masters" exhibition of contained many likenesses said to have been painted by hilliard; among these was one of _queen elizabeth_. hilliard's skill was specially shown in his miniatures, of which that of jane seymour, at windsor, is a crowning piece. the duke of buccleuch has a noble series of hilliard's and oliver's paintings of this kind. dr. donne says of the former-- "an hand or eye by hilliard drawn is worth a historye by a worse painter made." the influence of holbein is traceable in the works of hilliard, and in those of his successor, and, probably, pupil, isaac oliver. one of the most able painters of this age was sir nathaniel bacon, half-brother to the great sir francis bacon, whose life-size portrait of himself, belonging to the earl of verulam, has been engraved in walpole's "anecdotes." sir n. bacon died in . [illustration: sir philip sidney at penshurst. _by_ isaac oliver. _from a miniature in windsor castle._] the miniatures of isaac oliver ( -- ) are considered by some critics to rival those of holbein. both isaac and his son peter oliver ( -- ) painted in the reign of james i., who, if not a great patron of art, yet encouraged foreign portrait painters to work in england. most famous among these were daniel mytens, paul van somer, and cornelis jonson. van somer, a fleming, is specially noted for his fidelity, mytens for the spirit and dignity of his likenesses and his landscape backgrounds, and jonson for the accuracy of his portraits. jean petitot ( -- ), of geneva, also came to england and painted portraits in enamel for charles i. but native art was not altogether unrepresented. _nicholas stone_, the sculptor, flourished; and john hoskins, who died in , was celebrated as a miniature painter. the special art of miniature painting was at this time lucrative to its professors, as it was the fashion to wear pictures of friends, set in gold and precious stones. there were symptoms of a growing taste for art in england, and men were learning that it was possible to paint a good picture without living on the continent. [illustration: portrait of king james i. _by_ hoskins, after van somer. _from a miniature in windsor castle._] the first englishman of high degree who collected works of art in the manner to which we apply the phrase, was the earl of arundel, who was followed by prince henry, son of james i. the accession of charles i. marks a new and bright period in the history of english painting. walpole, in his "anecdotes of painting," speaking of charles i., says, not very accurately, "the accession of this prince was the first era of real taste in england. as his temper was not profuse, the money he expended on his collections, and the rewards he bestowed on men of true genius, are proofs of his judgment. he knew how and where to bestow." the king was not only a patron of art, but an artist. we are told by gilpin that charles "had singular skill in limning, and was a good judge of pictures." another authority states that he often amused himself by drawing and designing. charles inherited pictures which had been collected by henry viii. and prince henry, all of which were scattered in the different royal palaces. to these works, one hundred and fifty in all, the king added a vast number of valuable examples. the manuscript catalogue, left incomplete by vanderdoort, the keeper of the royal galleries, mentions pictures at whitehall, including by titian, by raphael, by correggio, by holbein, by giulio romano, by parmigiano, by rubens, by tintoretto, by rembrandt, by van dyck, by paolo veronese, and by leonardo da vinci.[f] charles bought, in , the collection of paintings belonging to the duke of mantua for £ , s. d.; and many foreign courts made presents of rare and valuable pictures to the king of england. the good example of their master was followed by some of the nobility, and the duke of buckingham, the earl of somerset, the earl of pembroke, and the earl of arundel were liberal patrons of art. the last made a noble collection of statues and drawings; some of the latter are in the british museum; many of the sculptures are at oxford. charles vainly invited albani to visit england, but in rubens arrived as a confidential diplomatic representative of the archduchess isabella, infanta of spain, and was induced to remain for about nine months. the king delighted to honour the great painter, and made him a knight. during his stay in england, rubens, among other works, painted his allegoric picture of _peace and war_ (national gallery); _st. george_ (buckingham palace); the _assumption of the blessed virgin_, for the earl of arundel; and the designs for the ceiling of whitehall. the influence from this brief sojourn was very marked, and it was followed by that of-- anthony van dyck ( -- ), a native of antwerp, after a brief and unsatisfactory visit to england, returned here and was created court painter in . charles i. knighted him in . his influence affected the portrait painters who lived a century after him, and survived till the advent of reynolds. the best of van dyck's pictures are in the possession of the crown and private collectors in england. there is one famous _portrait of charles i._ in the louvre, and another in the hermitage at st. petersburg. the _three children of charles i._ is among his pictures in windsor castle. in the national gallery the best specimen of van dyck's art is the _emperor theodosius and st. ambrose_, no. . the _gevartius_, no. , is probably by rubens. there are magnificent portraits by van dyck in many private galleries. gerard van honthorst ( -- ), a native of utrecht, passed some years in england, painting portraits for charles i. and his courtiers, and giving lessons to his daughter elizabeth, afterwards queen of bohemia. william dobson ( -- ), a dwarf, was apprenticed to sir robert peake, an obscure painter and picture dealer, and learnt to copy van dyck so accurately, that he attracted the notice of the great master, who introduced him to the king. he became, after his patron's death, serjeant-painter, and groom of the privy chamber. his career, like himself, was brief. when the civil war broke out, dobson was a prisoner for debt, and he died three years before the execution of his royal master. his portraits are often mistaken for those of van dyck. at hampton court is a fine picture of the painter himself with his wife. the _beheading of st. john the baptist_, which resembles a honthorst, is at wilton house; and a portrait of _cleveland_, the poet, is in the ellesmere collection. several of dobson's portraits have been exhibited in the national portrait exhibition, and in the collections of works by the "old masters" at burlington house. [illustration: the countess of devonshire. _by_ van dyck. _from the engraving by p. lombart._] george jamesone ( -- ), the son of an aberdeen architect, is styled by cunningham "the scottish van dyck." he studied abroad under rubens, in the company of van dyck, and in commenced a prosperous career in scotland. he painted the portrait of charles i., in , when the king visited that country. jamesone also painted historic pictures, landscapes, and subjects from the bible. during the contest of the king with his parliament, the arts could not but languish. some of the great collectors fled to the continent, where more than one of them existed by the sale of portable works of art, such as medals. the parliament ordered the furniture of the royal palaces and the contents of the picture galleries to be sold by auction, and the proceeds to be applied to the expenses of the war in ireland and the north. by an order of the house of commons, , all such pictures and statues at york house as bore the image of the virgin mary were to be forthwith destroyed as gendering superstition. although art, as represented in england at this time, had been devoted to any but religious purposes--and many of its manifestations were grossly indecent and infamous, or, at best, shocking to unaccustomed eyes--these orders were not obeyed universally. many pictures were bought by foreign princes, some by cavaliers, others by the puritans, among whom colonel hutchinson was an extensive purchaser. cromwell, on becoming protector, stopped all the sales of royal paintings and property. to him we owe the preservation of raphael's cartoons. they were valued by the commissioners at £ and ordered to be sold, but cromwell stopped the sale. in the reign of charles ii., these cartoons would have been lost to england; the king had offered to sell them to barillon, minister of louis xiv., and it was only by lord danby's means that the sale was prevented. cromwell employed as his portrait painter-- [illustration: oliver cromwell. _by_ sir peter lely. _in the pitti palace, florence._] robert walker, who died in . the protector insisted upon having the warts and pimples on his face faithfully portrayed, and gave strict injunctions both to walker and sir peter lely not to flatter him. one of walker's portraits of _cromwell_ is at warwick castle. some capital examples of his skill are in the national portrait gallery. the restoration was not favourable to design. charles ii. had neither taste for art, nor money to encourage painters. the unbridled license of the court defiled the studio as it did the stage; and the most popular pictures were the portraits of the rakes and wantons who clustered round the king. sir peter lely ( -- ), originally named van der faes, was the very accomplished painter of the court, some of whose better works may be compared with van dyck's. he came to england in , and profited by his art under charles i., the protectorate, and charles ii. walpole said of lely's nymphs that they are "generally reposed on the turf, and are too wanton and too magnificent to be taken for anything but maids of honour." the well-known collection of lely's portraits at hampton court includes, among others, those of the _duchess of richmond_; the _countess of rochester_; _mrs. middleton_ the celebrated beauty; the _countess of northumberland_; the _duchess of cleveland, as minerva_; the _countess de grammont_, and _jane kellaway, as diana_ (misnamed princess mary). _mrs. middleton_, in the national portrait gallery, by lely, is remarkably good. lely fell dead before his easel, while painting a portrait of the _dowager duchess of somerset_, november th, . several english artists practised in this reign. henry anderton ( --after ) was a portrait painter employed at court. isaac fuller ( -- ) painted portraits and allegoric pieces. he is described as extravagant and burlesque in his tastes and manners, and his works bear the mark of this character. an epigram on a "drunken sot" is to this effect:-- "his head doth on his shoulder lean, his eyes are sunk, and hardly seen; who sees this sot in his own colour is apt to say, ''twas done by fuller.'" john greenhill ( -- ) was the most celebrated of lely's pupils. robert streater ( -- ) was made serjeant-painter to charles ii., and painted landscapes and historic works. his work still survives in the theatre at oxford, but we cannot echo the praise accorded to it by a rhymester who says-- "that future ages must confess they owe to streater more than michael angelo." that most delightful of gossips, samuel pepys, has much to say about art, of which he was no mean critic. writing on february st, , pepys said: "i was carried to mr. streater's, the famous history-painter, whom i have often heard of, but did never see him before; and there i found him and dr. wren and several virtuosos, looking upon the paintings which he is making for the new theatre at oxford; and indeed they look as if they would be very fine, and the rest think better than those of rubens in the banqueting-house at whitehall, but i do not fully think so. but they will certainly be very noble; and i am mightily pleased to have the fortune to see this man and his work, which is very famous, and he is a very civil little man, and lame, but lives very handsomely." samuel cooper ( -- ) was a miniature painter of a high order, whose art attested the influence of van dyck; the duke of buccleuch has the two famous unfinished portraits of the protector by him, and a galaxy of other works of this class. pepys, speaking of a portrait-painter named john hayls, of whom he thought highly, said: "he has also persuaded me to have cooper draw my wife's picture, which though it cost over £ , yet i will have it done." he called cooper "a limner in little," and referred to him several times in his diary. on the death of sir peter lely, another foreigner became the popular painter of the court. this was-- sir godfrey kneller ( -- ), a native of lübeck, who came to the court of charles ii. in , and maintaining his popularity during the reign of james ii., william iii., and anne, lived to paint the portrait of _george i._ kneller's works are chiefly portraits. of these the famous kit-kat series of likenesses of distinguished men is invaluable. his portrait of his fellow-countryman, _grinling gibbons_, is one of his best paintings. he was the fashionable painter of the age, and kings and fine ladies, wits and statesmen, are embodied in his art. dryden was amongst his sitters, and the poet has left the following praises of the painter:-- "such are thy pictures, kneller! such thy skill, that nature seems obedient to thy will; comes out and meets thy pencil in the draught, lives there, and wants but words to speak the thought." [illustration: grinling gibbons, the sculptor. _by_ godfrey kneller.] the popularity of allegoric painting did much to hinder the progress of english art. nature gave place to naked gods and impossible shepherdesses, who were painted on walls and ceilings at so much a square foot. charles ii. had probably acquired a taste for such painting abroad, and it retained its popularity for a considerable period. fuseli said: "charles ii., with the cartoons in his possession and the magnificence of whitehall before his eyes, suffered verrio to contaminate the walls of his palaces, or degraded lely to paint the cymons and iphigenias of his court, while the manner of kneller swept completely away what might be left of taste among his successors. it was reserved for the german lely and his successor kneller to lay the foundation of a manner which, by pretending to unite portrait with history, gave a retrograde direction for nearly a century to both; a mob of shepherds and shepherdesses in flowing wigs and dressed curls, ruffled endymions, humble junos, withered hebes, surly allegros, and smirking pensierosos usurp the place of propriety and character." we can see the triumphs of allegory over nature fully illustrated in hampton court palace. chief among painters of this class of art was antonio verrio ( -- ), who received from charles ii. £ , for the decoration of windsor castle. louis laguerre ( -- ) was associated with verrio, and carried on similar work after verrio's death. his best works are at blenheim. in his later years laguerre found a coadjutor in sir james thornhill ( -- ), whose decorations are superior to those of verrio or laguerre. his chief productions are in the cupola of st. paul's cathedral, the great hall of greenwich hospital, an apartment at hampton court, and a saloon in blenheim palace. thornhill was knighted by george i., being the first english artist who received that honour, and he sat in parliament for his native place, melcombe regis. perhaps the most enduring fact about him is that he was the father-in-law of hogarth. walpole said of the reign of george i.:--"no reign since the arts have been in any estimation produced fewer works that will deserve the attention of posterity." it was not only in england that art slumbered. the flemish, dutch, and spanish schools had passed from the brilliance of their seventeenth-century period. in italy art had shrivelled with the last of the bolognese school. france possessed some original painters, but not of the highest order. before passing on to the period of hogarth and the creation of the english school, we may mention a few names of painters in england. these were john riley ( -- ); james parmentier ( -- ); william aikman ( -- ); mary beale ( -- ); john clostermann ( -- ); michael dahl ( -- ); gerard von soest ( -- ); john vanderbank ( ?-- ); william wissing ( -- ); joseph michael wright ( ?-- ?), a pupil of jamesone; jonathan richardson ( -- ), a pupil of riley; charles jervas ( -- ), a follower of kneller, and the friend of pope, who, with the fulsome flattery of the day, compared him to zeuxis. george knapton ( -- ) was famous for crayon portraits; a large group, in oils, representing the princess of wales and her family, by his hand, is at hampton court. in the middle of the eighteenth century, thomas hudson ( -- ) became the fashionable portrait painter. his chief remaining claim to fame is that he was the first master of joshua reynolds. francis hayman ( -- ) lived long enough to write himself r.a. among the earliest members. his _finding of moses_ may be seen at the foundling hospital; and his own portrait in the national portrait gallery. he seems to have been highly esteemed, and, among other works, executed some for vauxhall gardens. his fame is now almost as extinct as the lamps of that once famous place of entertainment. [illustration] chapter iii. english art in the eighteenth century--william hogarth. hitherto we have seen painting in england confined to foreign artists, or to natives who more or less slavishly copied them. we have seen, likewise, that many of the english painters of the latter days of the seventeenth century were decorators rather than artists, who, forsaking all truth and nature, covered the walls and ceilings of houses with simpering shepherdesses and impossible deities. the time of change came, however, and with it the man who was to be the first original painter of his country. it is to plain william hogarth, the son of the cumberland schoolmaster, the apprentice of the silver-plate engraver, ellis gamble, that we owe the origin of the english school of painting. the term "school of painting" is, however, hardly correct, as hogarth founded no school, nor has there existed one in england till very recently. we should rather say that hogarth was the first english artist who forsook exhausted conventionalities for large truthfulness and original thought, and thus paved the way to a new life in art. a man who laughed at the "black masters," as he called the painters of the most popular works of the period; and who declared that copying other men's pictures was like pouring wine from one vessel to another, a process which did not increase the quality, and allowed the flavour to evaporate, was naturally regarded as an innovator of a monstrous order. like all reformers, hogarth had to defeat opposition and ridicule. but he dared to think for himself, and in that courage lay the secret of success. [illustration: william hogarth and his dog trump. _by_ hogarth. _in the national gallery._] william hogarth was born in in ship court, old bailey, hard by ludgate hill, in a house which was pulled down in . his father, who had received a good education at st. bees, kept a school in ship court, and sought work from booksellers. but, like many another poor scholar, he could not make a living, and died disappointed. after spending some time at school, william hogarth, warned by the example of his father, determined to pursue a craft in preference to literature, and was apprenticed, probably in , to ellis gamble, a silversmith in cranbourne alley. here, though his drawings and engravings were mostly confined to heraldic devices and the like, the young artist gained accuracy of touch, to which he added truthfulness of design, and prepared himself to delineate that london life which was to furnish him with models for his art. he tells us how he determined to enter a wider field than that of mere silver-plate engraving, though at the age of twenty to engrave his own designs on copper was the height of his ambition. the men and women who jostled him in london streets, or rolled by him in their coaches, were his models. besides the keenest powers of observation, and a sardonic, sympathizing, and pitying humour, he possessed a wonderfully accurate and retentive memory, which enabled him to impress a face or form on his mind, and reproduce it at leisure. occasionally, if some very attractive or singular face struck his fancy, he would sketch it on his thumb-nail, and thence transfer it. hogarth tells us that "instead of burdening the memory with musty rules, or tiring the eye with copying dry or damaged pictures, i have ever found studying from nature the shortest and safest way of obtaining knowledge of my art." thus, whether he was watching "society" on its way to court, or mingling in the midnight orgies of a tavern, hogarth was storing portraits which were to appear, some in silks and satins, as in the _marriage à la mode_, others among the humours of _beer street_ and the misery of _gin lane_. hogarth's apprenticeship ended probably in ; we find him studying drawing from the life in the academy in st. martin's lane. in he published _an emblematical print on the south sea (scheme)_, which was sold at one shilling a copy, and though defective in the sardonic humour which marked his later works, shows promise of what was to come. in the same year _the lottery_ was published. in he engraved _masquerades and operas_, a satire, which represents "society" crowding to a masquerade, and led by a figure wearing a cap and bells on his head, and the garter on his leg. this engraving delighted the public whom it satirised, and hogarth lost much through piracies of his work. he was employed by the booksellers to illustrate books with engravings and frontispieces. in "mottraye's travels" ( ) there are eighteen illustrations by hogarth, seven in the "golden ass of apuleius" ( ), and five frontispieces in "cassandra" ( ). walpole says, somewhat too severely, that "no symptoms of genius dawned in those early plates." in was published, besides his twelve large prints, which are well known, an edition of "hudibras," illustrated by hogarth in seventeen smaller plates. of this walpole says, "this was among the first of his works that marked him as a man above the common; yet in what made him then noticed it surprises me now to find so little humour in an undertaking so congenial to his talents." the designs of hogarth are not so witty as the verses of butler, but we must remember that the painter had never seen men living and acting as they are described in the poem; they were not like the men of whom he made his daily studies. at this period he who dared to be original, and to satirise his neighbours, had much trouble. the value set upon his work in those early days may be estimated when we read that j. bowles, of the black horse, in cornhill, patronised hogarth to the extent of offering him half-a-crown a pound weight for a copperplate just executed. in , we find a certain upholsterer named morris refusing to pay thirty pounds to the artist, because he had failed, in morris's opinion, to execute a representation of the _element of earth_, as a design for tapestry, "in a workmanlike manner." it is on record that the verdict was in favour of hogarth, who was paid £ for his work and £ for materials. in , hogarth made a secret marriage at old paddington church, with jane, only daughter of sir james thornhill, serjeant-painter to the king. he had frequented thornhill's studio, but whether the art of the court painter, or the face of his daughter was the greater attraction we know not. there is no doubt that hogarth's technique was studied from thornhill's pictures, and not from those of watteau or chardin, as has been supposed. hogarth was painting portraits years before . mr. redgrave, in his "century of painters," describes some wall pictures in the house no. , dean street, soho, which is said to have been a residence of sir james thornhill. some of the figures here are thoroughly of the hogarth type, especially that of a black man in a turban, a familiar form in the _marriage à la mode_. for a time after his marriage hogarth confined himself to painting portraits and conversation pieces, for which he was well paid, although walpole declares that this "was the most ill-suited employment to a man whose turn was certainly not flattery." truthfulness, however, is more valuable in a portrait than flattery, and we surely find it in hogarth's portraits of himself, one in the national gallery, and in that of _captain coram_, at the foundling. in , hogarth published the first of those wonderful unspoken sermons against vice and folly, _a harlot's progress_, which was followed immediately by _a rake's progress_, issued in . _a harlot's progress_, in six plates, met with an enthusiastic reception; it was a bold innovation on the cold stilted style of the day, and its terrible _reality_ stirred the hearts of all beholders. _a rake's progress_, in eight plates, was scarcely so popular, and the professors of the kind of art which hogarth had satirised found many faults with the reformer. hogarth was now a person of consequence, and the once unknown and struggling artist was the talk of the town. _the sleeping congregation_ is a satire on the heavy preachers and indifferent church-goers of that period. _the distressed poet_ and _a midnight modern conversation_ soon followed. the latter, in which most of the figures are actual portraits, is considered in france and germany the best of this master's single works. in due course appeared _the enraged musician_, of which a wit of the day observed that "it deafens one to look at it," and _the strolling actresses_, which allan cunningham describes as "one of the most imaginative and amusing of all the works of hogarth."[g] one of the best of hogarth's life stories is the _marriage à la mode_, the original paintings of which are in the national gallery; they appeared in prints in . these well-known pictures illustrate the story of a loveless marriage, where parents sacrifice their children, the one for rank the other for money. mr. redgrave ("a century of painters") tells us that "the novelty of hogarth's work consisted in the painter being the inventor of his own drama, as well as painter, and in the way in which all the parts are made to tend to a dramatic whole; each picture dependent on the other, and all the details illustrative of the complete work. the same characters recur again and again, moved in different tableaux with varied passions, one moral running through all, the beginning finding its natural climax in the end." some of the most striking points in the satire of hogarth's picture are brought out in the background, as in the first picture of _marriage à la mode_, where the works of "the black masters" are represented ludicrously, and the ceiling of the room is adorned with an unnatural picture of the destruction of the egyptians in the red sea. in appeared _the march of the guards to finchley_, which is "steeped in humour and strewn with absurdities." it was originally dedicated to george ii., but, so the story goes, the king was offended by a satire on his guards, and he declared "i hate boetry and bainting; neither one nor the other ever did any good." certain it is that hogarth was disappointed by the reception of his work, and dedicated it to the king of prussia. the painting of _the march to finchley_, on publication of the print, was disposed of by lottery, and won by the foundling hospital. we cannot do more than mention some of the remaining works by which the satirist continued "to shoot folly as she flies." _beer street_, and _gin lane_, illustrate the advantages of drinking the national beverage, and the miseries following the use of gin. _the cockpit_ represents a scene very common in those days, and contains many portraits. _the election_ is a series of four scenes, published between and , in which all the varied vices, humours, and passions of a contested election are admirably represented. the pictures of this series are in sir john soane's museum, lincoln's inn fields. hogarth's last years were embittered by quarrels, those with churchill and wilkes being the most memorable. the publication in of his admirable book, called "the analysis of beauty," in which hogarth tried to prove that a winding line is the line of beauty, produced much adverse criticism and many fierce attacks, which the painter could not take quietly. he was further annoyed by the censures passed on his picture of _sigismunda_, now in the national gallery, which he had painted in for sir richard grosvenor, and which was returned on his hands. two years previously hogarth had been made serjeant-painter to the king. he did not live to hold this office long; on october th, , the hand which had exposed the vices and follies of the day so truly, and yet with such humour, had ceased to move. hogarth died in his house at leicester fields; he was buried in chiswick churchyard, where on his monument stands this epitaph by garrick;-- "farewel, great painter of mankind! who reached the noblest point of art; whose _pictured morals_ charm the mind, and through the eye correct the heart. if genius fire thee, reader, stay; if _nature_ touch thee, drop a tear; if neither move thee, turn away, for hogarth's honour'd dust lies here." and yet it is of this man that walpole says, that "as a painter he has slender merit." charles lamb remarks wisely, in his fine essay on "the genius and character of hogarth, that his chief design was by no means to raise a laugh." of his prints, he says, "a set of severer satires (for they are not so much comedies, which they have been likened to, as they are strong and masculine satires), less mingled with anything of mere fun, were never written upon paper, or graven upon copper. they resemble juvenal, or the satiric touches in _timon of athens_." [illustration] chapter iv. the royal academy and its influence. hogarth was the first original painter of england, and he was too original either to copy or to be copied; but he founded no school. what he did was to draw aside the curtain and show the light of nature to those who had been hitherto content to grope amid the extravagances of allegory, or the dreams of mythology. two circumstances specially stood in the way of the progress of english art--the absence of a recognised academy, where a system of art-study could be pursued, and where rewards were offered for success; and the want of a public exhibition where painters could display their works, or learn from one another. there were no masters, properly speaking, in england, and therefore no pupils. instead of gathering around them students on the atelier system of the continent, painters in england had apprentices, who were employed to grind their colours, clean their brushes, and prepare their canvas. such apprentices might become mechanical copyists of their employers. nevertheless, such was the system under which all the pupils of all the great italian masters, some of whom became great masters in their turns, were trained. several attempts to supply the want of a recognised system of art-teaching in london had been made from time to time. sir balthasar gerbier had a drawing school in whitefriars so long ago as the days of charles i.; van dyck promoted studies of this kind at his house in blackfriars; the duke of richmond in endeavoured to form a school at the priory garden, westminster; sir godfrey kneller supported an academy for drawing and painting at his house in great queen street, till his death in ; another society existed in greyhound court, arundel street, strand, till , when the members joined the st. martin's lane academy. these, like the following, were drawing and painting schools, under recognised teachers, but neither honour-bestowing, benevolent, nor representative bodies. each pupil paid for the use of the models and premises, except those which were supplied by the duke of richmond to his guests. in sir james thornhill had opened an art academy at his house in james street, covent garden; it existed till his death in ; he suggested to the prime minister, lord halifax, the idea of a royal academy. vanderbank for a time had a school with living models in a disused presbyterian chapel. william shipley maintained an art academy in st. martin's lane for thirty years, and we know that hogarth studied there. but none of these schools had a prescribed system of teaching. the absence of a public exhibition was felt as a great misfortune by the artists of this period. hogarth, however, who regarded the painters of his country from a gloomy point of view, had no belief in the regenerating power of academies or paid professors. apart from the exhibitions of the society of artists in and , for which hogarth designed the frontispiece and tailpiece to the catalogue, the first public exhibition of pictures was that of sign boards, promoted by hogarth and b. thornton in . the impetus which hogarth's success gave to native art, however, was soon visible; and the society of arts and the dilettanti society encouraged young painters by giving prizes, and by suggesting the formation of a guild or confraternity of artists. the first private exhibitions of pictures were held in the foundling and st. bartholomew's hospitals, to which hogarth and some of the leading painters of the day presented their works. this happened in . in the society of artists was rent in two, and a new body, the free society, remained in the adelphi. the society of artists removed to spring gardens, and in obtained a charter of incorporation: it was thenceforward called the incorporated society. owing to the mismanagement and consequent dissensions in this body arose the royal academy of arts, established by george iii. on december th, , though without a royal charter of incorporation. this institution, which was to exercise so marked an influence on the art of england, supplied two wants--a definite system of teaching, and an exhibition of meritorious works. before noticing the three eminent painters who mark a new era in english painting, and who became members of the new academy, we must speak of others who were not without their influence on the world of art. allan ramsay ( -- ) was considered one of the best portrait painters of his time. he was the son of allan ramsay, the poet, and was born at edinburgh. after studying in italy he came to london and established himself there, frequently visiting edinburgh. walpole specially praises his portraits of women, even preferring some of them to those of reynolds. in ramsay was made painter to george iii., and his portraits of the king and _queen charlotte_ are still at kensington. as a man of literary tastes and great accomplishments, allan ramsay received the praises of dr. johnson and sir joshua reynolds. in the exhibition of was exhibited a portrait of the _duke of argyll_, by ramsay. portrait painting was still the popular branch of art in england, and the influence of hogarth had produced no advance towards the study of landscape. among those, however, who attempted it was george lambert ( -- ), a scene-painter, and founder of the "beefsteak club." this latter distinction makes him remembered, whilst his landscapes, after the manner of poussin, are forgotten. william smith ( -- ), george smith ( -- ), john smith ( -- ), usually known as the smiths of chichester, were very popular in their day. they painted landscapes from the scenery round chichester, but gave it a foreign and unnatural air by copying claude and poussin. though they exercised considerable influence on english landscape-painting, we cannot wonder at the popularity of these painters when we remember how utterly barren this branch of art still remained in england. peter monamy( ?-- ) was a marine painter of the school of the van de veldes, whose pupil he may have been. a sea piece by him at hampton court (no. ) shows that he was an artist of a high order. portraits of monamy and his patron are in a picture by hogarth at knowsley. samuel scott ( ?-- ) was a friend of hogarth, and a marine painter after the mode of the van de veldes. walpole considered him "the first painter of his age, one whose works will charm in any age." they have, however, ceased to do so in this. another marine painter was charles brooking ( -- ), one of whose productions is at hampton court. he occasionally worked in concert with dominic serres ( -- ), a royal academician (a native of gascony), whose four large pictures of _the naval review at portsmouth_, painted for george iii., are likewise at hampton court. the works of dominic serres have been confounded with those of his son, john thomas serres ( -- ), who was a far superior painter to his father. we pass on to speak of three celebrated painters, who when already famous became members of the royal academy--wilson, reynolds, and gainsborough. the story of richard wilson ( -- ) is the story of a disappointed man. born at pinegas, montgomeryshire, the son of the parson of that place. wilson's early taste for drawing attracted the attention of sir george wynne, by whom he was introduced to one wright, a portrait painter in london. following the popular branch of art in his day, wilson in due course became a portrait painter, and although nothing remarkable is known of his portraits, he managed to make a living. in he visited italy, and whilst waiting for an interview with the landscape painter zuccarelli he is said to have sketched the view through the open window. the italian advised the englishman to devote himself henceforth to landscapes, and wilson followed his advice. after six years' stay in italy, during which period he became imbued with the beauties of that country, wilson returned to england in , and found zuccarelli worshipped, whilst he himself was neglected. his _niobe_, one version of which is in the national gallery, was exhibited with the society of artists' collection, in spring gardens, , and made a great impression, but, in general, his pictures, infinitely superior to the mere decorations of the italian, were criticised, and compared unfavourably with those of zuccarelli, and it was not till long after wilson's death that he was thoroughly appreciated. he was often compelled to sell his pictures to pawnbrokers, who, so it is said, could not sell them again. poverty and neglect soured the painter's temper, and made him irritable and reckless. he had many enemies, and even sir joshua reynolds treated him with injustice. wilson was one of the original thirty-six members of the royal academy, and in applied for and obtained the post of librarian to that body, the small salary helping the struggling man to live. the last years of his life were brightened by better fortune. a brother left him a legacy, and in wilson retired to a pleasant home at llanberis, carnarvon, where he died two years later. mr. redgrave says of him: "there is this praise due to our countryman--that our landscape art, which had heretofore been derived from the meaner school of holland, following his great example, looked thenceforth to italy for its inspiration; that he proved the power of native art to compete on this ground also with the art of the foreigner, and prepared the way for the coming men, who, embracing nature as their mistress, were prepared to leave all and follow her." wilson frequently repeated his more successful pictures. _the ruins of the villa of mæcenas, at tivoli_ (national gallery), was painted five times by him. in the same gallery are _the destruction of niobe's children_, _a landscape with figures_, three _views in italy_, _lake avernus with the bay of naples in the distance_, &c. in the duke of westminster's collection are _apollo and the seasons_ and _the river dee_. wilson, like many another man of genius, lived before his time, and was forced one day to ask barry, the royal academician, if he knew any one mad enough to employ a landscape painter, and if so, whether he would recommend him. [illustration: morning. _by_ richard wilson.] singularly unlike wilson in his fortunes was a painter of the same school, named george barret ( ?-- ), an irishman, who began life by colouring prints for a dublin publisher, and became the popular landscape painter of the day, receiving vast sums for his pictures, whilst wilson could hardly buy bread. patronised by burke, who gained him the appointment of master-painter to chelsea hospital, and receiving for his works £ , a year, barret died poor, and his pictures, once so prized, are neglected, whilst the works of wilson are now valued as they deserve. another artist who derived his inspiration from wilson was julius cÆsar ibbetson ( -- ), who painted landscapes with cattle and figures and rustic incidents with much success. joshua reynolds ( -- ) was born at plympton, devon, the son of a clergyman who was a master in the grammar school. his father had intended him for a doctor, but nature decided that joshua reynolds should be a painter. he preferred to read richardson's "treatise on painting" to any other book, and when his taste for art became manifest he was sent to london to study with hudson, the popular portrait painter of the day. before this time, however, the young reynolds had studied "the jesuit's perspective" with such success that he astonished his father by drawing plympton school. there is at plymouth a portrait of the _rev. thomas smart_, tutor in lord edgcumbe's household, which is said to have been painted by reynolds when twelve years old. it was in that joshua reynolds began his studies with hudson, and as that worthy could teach him little or nothing, it is fortunate for art that the connection only lasted two years. on leaving hudson's studio reynolds returned to devonshire, but we know little about his life there till the year , when his father died, and the painter was established at plymouth dock, now devonport, and was painting portraits. many of these earlier works betray the stiffness and want of nature which their author had probably learnt from hudson. having visited london, and stayed for a time in st. martin's lane, the artists' quarter, reynolds was enabled, in , to realise his great wish, and go abroad. his friend commodore keppel carried him to italy, and reynolds, unfettered and unspoilt by the mechanical arts of his countrymen, studied the treasures of italy, chiefly in rome, and without becoming a copyist, was imbued with the beauties of the italian school. michelangelo was the object of his chief adoration, and his name was the most frequently on his lips, and the last in his addresses to the royal academy. a love of colour was the characteristic of reynolds, and his use of brilliant and fugitive pigments accounts for the decay of many of his best works; he used to say jestingly that "he came off with _flying colours_." doubtless the wish to rival the colouring of the venetians led reynolds to make numerous experiments which were often fatal to the preservation of his pictures. it has been said of him that "he loved his colours as other men love their children." in reynolds returned to england, and settled in london, first in st. martin's lane, then in newport street, and finally in a grand house in leicester fields. his course was one of brilliant success. at his house, wit and wisdom met together, and the ponderous learning of dr. johnson, the eloquence of burke, and the fancy of goldsmith, combined to do honour to the courteous, gentle painter, whom all men loved, and of whom goldsmith wrote:-- "his pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; his manners were gentle, complying, and bland. still, born to improve us in every part-- his pencil our faces, his manners our heart." most of the leaders of the rank and fashion of the day sat for their portraits to the painter who "read souls in faces." in joshua reynolds was chosen first president of the royal academy, and was knighted by george iii. he succeeded, on the death of ramsay, to the office of court painter. his "discourses on painting," delivered at the royal academy, were remarkable for their excellent judgment and literary skill. it was supposed by some that johnson and burke had assisted reynolds in the composition of these lectures, but the doctor indignantly disclaimed such aid, declaring that "sir joshua reynolds would as soon get me to paint for him as to write for him." a lesser honour, though one which caused him the greatest pleasure, was conferred on reynolds in , when he was elected mayor of his native plympton. in the same year he exhibited his famous _strawberry girl_, of which he said that it was "one of the half dozen original things" which no man ever exceeded in his life's work. in the failure of his sight warned sir joshua that "the night cometh when no man can work." he died, full of years and honours, on february rd, , and was buried near sir christopher wren in st. paul's cathedral. [illustration: mrs. bradyll. _by_ reynolds. _in the possession of sir richard wallace, bart._] reynolds was a most untiring worker. he exhibited two hundred and forty-five pictures in the royal academy, on an average eleven every year. in the national gallery are twenty-three of his paintings. amongst them are _the holy family_ (no. ), _the graces decorating a terminal figure of hymen_ ( ), _the infant samuel_ ( ), _the snake in the grass_ ( ), _robinetta_ ( ), and portraits of himself, of _admiral keppel_, _dr. johnson_, _boswell_, _lord heathfield_, and _george iv. as prince of wales_. mr. ruskin deems reynolds "one of _the_ seven colourists of the world," and places him with titian, giorgione, correggio, tintoretto, veronese, and turner. he likewise says, "considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, i think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters. titian paints nobler pictures, and van dyck had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as sir joshua did into the minor varieties of heart and temper."[h] it is as "the prince of portrait painters" that sir joshua will be remembered, although he produced more than one hundred and thirty historic or poetic pieces. messrs. redgrave, speaking of his powers as an historic painter, declare that "notwithstanding the greatness of reynolds as a portrait painter, and the beauty of his fancy subjects, he wholly fails as a painter of history. allowing all that arises from 'colour harmony,' we must assert that, both as to form and character, the characters introduced into these solemn dramas are wholly unworthy to represent the persons of the actors therein." they argue that the _ugolino_ fails to represent the fierce count shut up in the tower of famine, on the banks of the arno, and that the children of the _holy family_ "for all there is of character and holiness, might change places with the cupid who fixes his arrow to transfix his nymph." the child who represents _the infant samuel_, delightful as it is, in common with all sir joshua reynolds's children, has nothing to distinguish it as set apart to high and holy offices. we may mention as among the best known of the historic and poetic subjects of this master:--_macbeth and the witches_, _cardinal beaufort_, _hercules strangling the serpents_, painted for the empress of russia, and _the death of dido_. famous, too, as portraits, are _mrs. siddons as the tragic muse_ (duke of westminster's and dulwich gallery), _garrick between tragedy and comedy_, _the strawberry girl_, _the shepherd boy_, _the little girl in a mob cap_ (penelope boothby), _the little duke_, and _the little marchioness_; many others which are scattered in the galleries and chambers of the english nobility and gentry, and which are now frequently seen on the walls of burlington house as each "old masters" exhibition passes by. thomas gainsborough ( -- ), the son of a clothier, was born at sudbury, in suffolk. he early showed taste for art, and would linger among the woods and streams round sudbury to sketch. nature was his model, and to this fact we owe the pictures which make him and wilson the founders of our school of landscape painting. the details of this master's life are few and uneventful. when between fourteen and fifteen years of age, his father sent thomas gainsborough to london to study art. his first master was gravelot, a french engraver of great ability, to whose teaching gainsborough probably owed much. from him he passed to hayman in the st. martin's lane academy, a drawing school only. gainsborough began as a portrait and landscape painter in hatton garden, but finding little patronage during four years of his sojourn there, returned to his native town, and presently married margaret burr, who had crossed his line of sight when he was sketching a wood. the lady's figure was added to the picture, and in due course became the wife of the artist. for a man so careless as gainsborough, an early marriage was good, and we owe the preservation of many of his works to the thoughtfulness of his wife. settling in ipswich, he began to make a name. philip thicknesse, governor of landguard fort, opposite harwich, became his earliest patron, and officiously maintained a friendship which was often trying to the painter. gainsborough, at his suggestion, painted a view of _landguard fort_ (the picture has perished), which attracted considerable attention. in he removed to bath, and found a favourable field for portrait-painting, though landscape was not neglected. fourteen years later gainsborough, no longer an unknown artist, came to london and rented part of schomberg house, pall mall. he was now regarded as the rival of reynolds in portraiture, and of wilson in landscape. once, when reynolds at an academy dinner proposed the health of his rival as "the greatest landscape painter of the day," wilson, who was present, exclaimed, "yes, and the greatest portrait painter, too." one of the original members of the royal academy, gainsborough exhibited ninety pictures in the gallery, but refused to contribute after , because a portrait of his was not hung as he wished. a quick-tempered, impulsive man, he had many disputes with reynolds, though none of them were of a very bitter kind. gainsborough's _blue boy_ is commonly said to have been painted in spite against reynolds, in order to disprove the president's statement that blue ought not to be used in masses. but there were other and worthier reasons for the production of this celebrated work, in respect to which gainsborough followed his favourite van dyck in displaying "a large breadth of cool light supporting the flesh." it is pleasant to think of the kindly minded painter enjoying music with his friends; and, rewarding some of them more lavishly than wisely, he is said to have given _the boy at the stile_ to colonel hamilton, in return for his performance on the violin. it is pleasant, too, to know that whatever soreness of feeling existed between him and sir joshua, passed away before he died. when the president of the royal academy came to his dying bed, gainsborough declared his reconciliation, and said, "we are all going to heaven, and van dyck is of the company." this was in . gainsborough was buried at kew. the englishness of his landscapes makes gainsborough popular. wilson had improved on the dutch type by visiting italy, but gainsborough sought no other subjects than his own land afforded. nature speaks in his portraits or from his landscapes, and his rustic children excel those of reynolds, because they are really sun-browned peasants, not fine ladies and gentlemen masquerading in the dresses of villagers. mr. ruskin says of gainsborough, "his power of colour (it is mentioned by sir joshua as his peculiar gift) is capable of taking rank beside that of rubens; he is the purest colourist--sir joshua himself not excepted--of the whole english school; with him, in fact, the art of painting did in great part die, and exists not now in europe. i hesitate not to say that in the management and quality of single and particular tints, in the purely technical part of painting, turner is a child to gainsborough." [illustration: mrs. siddons. _by_ gainsborough. a.d. . _in the national gallery._] among the most popular pictures by this great master are _the blue boy_, _the shepherd boy in the shower_, _the cottage door_, _the cottage girl with dog and pitcher_, _the shepherd boys with their dogs fighting_, _the woodman and his dog in the storm_ (burnt at eaton park, engraved by simon, and copied in needlework by miss linwood). there are thirteen pictures by gainsborough in the national gallery, including _the market cart_, _the watering place_, _musidora_, _portraits of mrs. siddons_, and _orpin, the parish clerk of bradford-on-avon_. in the royal collection at windsor are seventeen life-size heads of the sons and daughters of george iii., of which, say the messrs. redgrave, "it is hardly possible to speak too highly." we may here fittingly mention a contemporary of gainsborough, hugh robinson (about -- ), who only gained a tardy though well-merited right to rank among england's portrait painters by the exhibition at the "old masters," in , of his _portrait of thomas teesdale_, which was followed in the next exhibition by the _piping boy_. the remainder of the works of this talented young yorkshireman--who exhibited but three pictures at the royal academy (in and ), and who died on his way home from italy, whither he had gone to study art--are chiefly family portraits. the two mentioned above best display his happy blending of landscape and portraiture, and, though somewhat recalling the manner of gainsborough, are full of natural talent. [illustration] chapter v. the progress of english art in the eighteenth century. it will here be convenient to notice briefly some foreign painters who worked in england in the middle of the eighteenth century. giovanni battista cipriani, r.a. ( -- ), a florentine, came to london in and remained here, gaining a great reputation as an historic painter at a time when foreign artists were specially popular. he was one of the original members of the royal academy, and designed the diploma of that body. to cipriani the english school owes some refinement tempering the rough originality of hogarth, but his art, "the worn-out and effete art of modern italy," left few permanent traces on that of england. angelica kauffman, r.a. ( -- ), a native of schwartzenberg, in austria, came to london in , and, aided by fashion and the patronage of queen charlotte, became prominent in the art world. her romantic and sad fortunes added to her popularity. "her works were gay and pleasing in colour, yet weak and faulty in drawing, her male figures particularly wanting in bone and individuality." (_redgrave_.) her pictures were often engraved in her own days, but they are now thought little of. a specimen of angelica kauffman's work may be seen in the ceiling of the council chamber of the royal academy, of which she was a member; another is in the national gallery. johann zoffany, r.a. ( -- ), was born at frankfort, and on his first arrival in england met with little success. he was, however, one of the original royal academicians, and was patronised by george iii., whose portrait he painted, together with those of many members of the royal family. as a portrait painter zoffany was truthful, natural, and unaffected, and his influence for good was not lost on the art of his adopted country. in he went to india, where he remained fifteen years, painting pictures of incident, of which _the indian tiger hunt_ is an example; works produced after his return to england are less interesting than these. francesco zuccarelli, r.a. ( -- ), born in tuscany, has already been mentioned as advising wilson to cultivate landscape-painting. after becoming famous abroad, he came to london in , and secured a fortune, whilst wilson, his superior, was too poor to buy a canvas to paint on. zuccarelli's landscapes and rural villages are of the stage rather than nature. he was the last of that artificial school of painters who tried to paint a beautiful world without looking out of doors. philippe james de loutherbourg, r.a. ( -- ), a native of strasburg, studied in paris, under casanova, the battle-painter. he acquired fame by delineating landscapes, battles, and marine subjects, and was already a member of the french academy when he came to england in . for a time de loutherbourg was employed as a scene-painter at drury lane, receiving a salary of £ a year from garrick. his scenery was extremely meritorious, effective, and popular, but he too frequently obtruded scenic characteristics into his other pictures. he was elected an associate of the royal academy in , and a full member in the following year. becoming somewhat deranged in his latter days, he assumed the gift of prophecy, and pretended to cure diseases. he was buried at chiswick, near hogarth. de loutherbourg was a clever draughtsman, but neglected nature. peter pindar laughed at his "brass skies, and golden hills," and his "marble bullocks in glass pastures grazing." nevertheless turner owned great obligations to him, and he succeeded in varying the aims of landscape painters, and gave what may be called animation and dramatic expression to their art. his best-known works are, _lord howe's victory on the st of june_, _the fire of london_, _the siege of valenciennes_, _a lake scene in cumberland_ (national gallery), _warley common_ (windsor castle). the _eidophusicon_ was a moving diorama in spring gardens, painted by de loutherbourg, which "all the world went to see." henry fuseli, or more correctly, _fuessli_ ( -- ), born at zürich, exercised very considerable influence on english art by his pictures and lectures. he was a scholar as well as a painter, and had been educated for the church. on first coming to england fuseli turned his attention to literature, but was advised by sir joshua reynolds, who had seen his sketches, to cultivate art. when nearly thirty years old he went to italy, where, like reynolds, his chief devotions were paid to the shrine of michelangelo. returning to england after eight years' absence, fuseli made his first decided mark by _the nightmare_, painted three years after his return. it is said that fully to realise the horrors of this subject the enthusiastic swiss supped on raw pork! in , alderman boydell, a successful engraver and art publisher, proposed a shakespeare gallery, with the view of proving that england contained really good painters of history. fuseli executed nine out of the eighty-six examples in this gallery. his studies of the works of michelangelo fitted him for the just treatment of the subjects, including _hamlet and the ghost_, and _lear and cordelia_. it has been objected that his men are all of one race, whether in reality classic, mediæval, or scandinavian, and that shakespeare's women are, in his pictures, all alike, too masculine and coarse. shakespeare is thoroughly english in taste and character, and his men and women, even if represented in verona, or prospero's isle, are still english in heart. fuseli was scarcely able to enter into this characteristic of our greatest poet. he was more at home with the majestic creations of milton, to which he next turned his thoughts. he projected a milton gallery of forty-seven large pictures, which, however, was not a financial success, therefore in fuseli complained that the public would feed him with honour, but leave him to starve. he became a royal academician, and professor of painting, a post which he held till his death. [illustration: titania and bottom. _by_ _fuseli_. _in the possession of mr. carrick moore._] * * * * * in proceeding to speak of artists of the english school, we must remember that we have not to deal with men gathered round a great master, as is the case with many foreign painters. each english artist has originality, and stands by himself. it will be most convenient therefore to treat them according to the special branch of art which they severally followed, _i.e._ historic, portrait, landscape, or animal painting. historical painting had hitherto found little favour in england, nor were the pictures produced in that line worthy of much regard. reynolds attempted it in _ugolino_ and the _infant hercules_, but it is not by means of such pictures he will be remembered. there were others who devoted themselves to what they styled high art, with earnestness worthy of greater success than they achieved. [illustration: death of wolfe. _by_ west. _in the possession of the duke of westminster._] benjamin west ( -- ) was born at springfield, pennsylvania, and of quaker parents who descended from a buckinghamshire family of the same persuasion. he early showed signs of artistic genius, and strange stories have been told of the precocity of the child. west received his first colours from indians, and made his first paint-brush from a cat's tail. a box of colours, given by a merchant when he was nine years old, encouraged him to persevere; and we know that the donor of the box introduced him to a painter named williams, of philadelphia, from whom he derived instruction. west started in life at eighteen as a portrait painter; first at philadelphia, then at new york. in , he visited italy, and, after remaining there three years, proceeded to england. he had intended to return to america, but became so successful that he settled in london. in rome the young american created a sensation, and the blind cardinal albani, whose acquaintance with americans must have been limited, asked if he was black or white. in london west was greatly sought after, and in , three years after his arrival, he finished _orestes and pylades_ (national gallery); his house was besieged by the fashionable world, eager for a glimpse of the picture. west now found many patrons, among them the bishops of bristol and worcester, and drummond, archbishop of york. the archbishop was so charmed by _agrippa with the ashes of germanicus_, that he introduced west to george iii., who became a warm and faithful supporter of the artist. from to west was almost exclusively employed by the king, and received large sums of money. he was one of the original members of the royal academy, and on the death of reynolds, became president. his inaugural address, which, like all he did, was highly praised, had two subjects--the excellence of british art and the gracious benevolence of his majesty. the illness of george iii. put an end to west's attendance at court, and he proceeded into a wider field of art, choosing that of religion. here he was more successful than in many of his former pictures, as in _christ healing the sick_ (national gallery), _christ rejected_, and _death on the pale horse_. he died on the th of march, , aged eighty-two. west, so popular in the days of george iii., is utterly neglected now. if he aimed at being great, he succeeded only in the size of his pictures. a cold, passionless mediocrity was the highest point to which he attained, and of his pictures we may say as the old scotsman said of rob roy, that they are "too bad for blessing, and too good for banning." redgrave says: "his compositions were more studied than natural, the action often conventional and dramatic; the draperies, although learned, heavy and without truth. his colour often wants freshness and variety of tint, and is hot and foxy." we owe to west, however, the example of courage in attempting great religious subjects, and in departing from the absurd custom of representing the warriors of all nations clad like ancient romans. in his _death of wolfe_, west insisted, contrary to the advice of reynolds, in painting his soldiers in their proper dress. john singleton copley, r.a. ( -- ), was born at boston, america, then one of our colonies, his father being english and his mother irish. boston in those days could offer no facilities for art-education, but copley went to nature--the best of teachers. he commenced with portraits and domestic life, and between and sent pictures to london, where they excited considerable interest. in , he visited the old world, first england, then italy, and finally settled in london in . in the following year he exhibited a "conversation" piece at the royal academy, and was elected an associate in . in , william pitt, earl of chatham, whilst speaking in the house of lords against the practice of taxing our colonists without their consent, was seized with a fatal illness. this incident, specially interesting to an american, suggested _the death of the earl of chatham_ (national gallery), which at once raised the painter to a high place in the ranks of british artists. the popularity of copley was greatly owing to his choice of subjects. instead of dealing with ancient history or classic fables, with which the general public was but imperfectly acquainted, he selected events of the day, or of modern times, and contrived to combine portraiture, ever popular in england, with the dramatic incidents of his pictures. copley was made a full member of the royal academy in , and maintained his popularity by _the death of major peirson_ (national gallery)--which represents an attack of the french on st. helier's, jersey, in , and the fall of young major peirson in the moment of his victory. following the path thus wisely selected, copley produced _charles i. ordering the arrest of the five members_, _the repulse of the spanish floating batteries at gibraltar by lord heathfield_ (painted for the city of london, now in the guildhall), _the assassination of buckingham_, _the battle of the boyne_, &c. he exhibited only forty-two works in the royal academy, all of which were portraits except _the offer of the crown to lady jane grey_, and _the resurrection_. in sacred subjects, copley was far less successful than in the particular style of art to which he mainly adhered. his son became famous as lord chancellor lyndhurst. [illustration: death of major peirson. _by_ copley. a.d. . _in the national gallery._] [illustration: mercury inventing the lyre. _by_ barry.] james barry, r.a. ( -- ), who was a contemporary of benjamin west, and, like him, aimed at high art, formed a marked contrast to the favourite painter of george iii. whilst west was well fed and well clothed, rich, easy-tempered, and happy, barry was often ragged, sometimes starving, always poor, and seldom out of a passion. he was born at cork, the son of a small coasting trader who kept a tavern. from such uncongenial surroundings barry made his way to dublin, and exhibited _the baptism of the king of cashel by st. patrick_. this work attracted considerable notice, and secured for the artist the patronage of burke, who sent him to italy. this was in , but previously to this date barry had already visited london, and lived by copying in oil the drawings of "athenian stuart," the serjeant-painter who succeeded hogarth. barry's studies in italy confirmed his ambitious design to become a painter of high art subjects. with characteristic boldness he entered the field against the greatest masters, and whilst at rome painted _adam and eve_, which he thought superior to raphael's masterpiece of the same subject. returning to england in , barry exhibited this picture, and began _venus rising from the sea_, which was exhibited in ; he was elected a r.a. in the following year. his undisciplined temper ensured him many enemies, and estranged his few friends; he even quarrelled with burke. his pride and courage were indomitable, and he worked on through good and ill reports, never swerving from the course he had marked out, and contemptuously dismissing any chance sitter for a portrait to "the fellow in leicester square," as he styled sir joshua reynolds. in , barry undertook to paint in the great room of the society of arts at the adelphi a series of pictures illustrating _human culture_. he had previously offered to decorate the interior of st. paul's. he began to work at the adelphi with sixteen shillings in his pocket, and toiled there during seven years, being often in absolute want. the society provided him with models and materials only, and barry was to receive the proceeds of exhibiting his work in return for his unpaid labours. the hope of fame enabled "the little ordinary man with the dirty shirt" to support himself through the long years of want and semi-starvation, whilst he was working for the glory which never came. barry finished the pictures at the adelphi in , and called them severally _the story of orpheus: a thanksgiving to ceres and bacchus_; _the victors of olympia_; _navigation, or the triumph of the thames_; _distribution of premiums in the society of arts_; and _elysium, or the state of final retribution_. the luckless artist had been appointed professor of painting at the royal academy in , but outbursts of passion and furious attacks on his brethren led to his removal from the post, and, in , to his expulsion from the academy. he died miserably, in , at the wretched house he called a home, and the honours which had never blossomed for the living man were bestowed on the corpse, which lay in state at the adelphi, surrounded by the work of his hands. he was buried in st. paul's. "there he rests side by side with the great ones of his profession. posterity had reversed the positions of west and his competitor, the first is last, and the last first; but it was hardly to be expected that the young would be anxious to follow barry in a line of art in which neither ability nor perseverance seemed to succeed, or to start in a career for which not even princely patronage could obtain public sympathy, nor innate genius, with life-long devotion, win present fame, hardly indeed a bare subsistence." (_redgrave._) returning for a moment to _portrait painters_, we find two of that class who were contemporary with sir joshua reynolds, and of whom the first nearly equalled the president in popularity. [illustration: marquis of stafford. _by_ romney. _in the possession of the duke of sutherland._] george romney ( -- ) was born near dalton-in-furness, north lancashire, and for some years followed his father's craft of cabinet-making. the story of his life is one of marked success and singular selfishness. he first studied art with edward steele, of kendal, a portrait painter of some skill and reputation, who had painted sterne. whilst assisting his master to elope with his future wife, romney fell ill, and was nursed by young mary abbot. he rewarded the devotion of his nurse by marrying her, and when she was the mother of two children, by leaving her at home poor and alone, whilst he was rich and famous in london. during a long and successful career romney only visited his family twice, to find on the second occasion his daughter dead, and his son grown up and in holy orders. the painter's strange, selfish life ended in imbecility, and the patient wife who had nursed the youth of twenty-three, soothed the last hours of the man of seventy, whose fame she had never shared. romney was as eccentric in life as in his genius. shunning the society of his fellow artists, he complained of their neglect, and refused to enter the royal academy. it was said of sterne that "he would shed tears over a dead donkey whilst he left a living mother to starve." in like manner romney wrote gushing words of sympathy for the widow of another man, whilst his own wife had been practically widowed for more than thirty years. of the intercourse of romney with the fair and frail emma lyon, who, as lady hamilton, exercised an influence for evil over him and over nelson, it is not our province to speak. the fitful temper of the painter led him to begin numerous pictures he never finished, cart-loads of which were removed from his house at hampstead. romney's want of steadfastness often compelled him to abandon works of which the conception was greater than the power to carry it out. there was a want of _thoroughness_ about him, and even the pictures which he finished seemed incomplete to those who did not understand them. noteworthy among these are _ophelia_, _the infant shakespeare_, and _the shipwreck_, from "the tempest." his portraits, however, form the greater class of his productions. in the national gallery are _study of lady hamilton as a bacchante_, and _the parson's daughter_. "we may sum up all that is to be said of romney in this: that whatever he did reynolds had done much better; that his art did not advance the taste of the age, or the reputation of the school, and that it is quite clear, however fashion or faction may have upheld him in his own day, the succeeding race of painters owed little or nothing to his teaching." (_redgrave._) a harsh and unsympathizing judgment. truer is it that he never offended the finest taste in art, that he was a very fair draughtsman, a sound and accomplished painter, who delineated ladies with the taste of a greek, and children with exemplary sweetness. joseph wright ( -- ) is, from his birth-place, commonly known as wright of derby. quitting his native town, where his father was an attorney, he reached london in and became a pupil of hudson, the portrait painter. wright aimed at historical painting, but his works are chiefly single portraits, and conversation pieces. after revisiting derby, he returned to hudson's studio for a while, and then settled in his native town, where he practised his art with success. he often represented candle-light and fire-light effects, as may be seen in _the orrery_, _the iron forge_, and _the experiment with the air-pump_ (national gallery). marrying in , wright went with his wife to italy and remained there two years. he witnessed an eruption of mount vesuvius, and painted that event with success, as well as the display of fire-works at the castle of st. angelo, at rome, which is known as the _girandola_. returning to england, wright painted at first at bath; but being unsuccessful, he returned to derby, where he died in . he contributed a few works to the royal academy after quitting italy; _vesuvius_, and the _girandola_ were exhibited there in . wright was elected an associate in , but removed his name from the academy books two years later. this step was taken either because edmund garvey, a landscape painter, was elected a r.a. before him, or because wright had refused to comply with one of the academy rules, and present works to the society before receiving his diploma. he was said to be a shy, irritable man, always ill, or fancying himself so, and ready to take offence easily. such are the unconfirmed statements of the advocates of the academy. he painted landscapes in his latter days, _the head of ulleswater_ was his last picture. best known among his works are _the dead soldier_, _belshazzar's feast_, _hero and leander_, _the storm_ (from "winter's tale"), and _cicero's villa_. wright's most remarkable fire-light effects are _the hermit_, _the gladiator_, _the indian widow_, _the orrery_, and, already mentioned, the _air-pump_. like hogarth and copley, he painted in that solid old english method which insured the preservation of his works. "on the whole it cannot be said that wright's pictures have added much to the reputation of the british school. as a portrait painter he is hardly in the second rank." his portraits have a heavy look; of his landscapes it has been averred that "they are large and simple in manner, but heavy and empty." the successors of sir joshua reynolds. portrait-painting, always popular in england, continued to flourish after the deaths of reynolds and gainsborough. although the magic touches of these masters cannot be found in the art of their immediate followers, their influence produced several original and independent artists, who, though successors, were not imitators. nathaniel dance ( -- ) studied art under frank hayman, r.a., and visited italy with angelica kauffman. returning to england he achieved success as a painter, both of portraits and historic pieces. he was one of the original members of the royal academy, from which he retired in , on marrying a wealthy widow: he took the name of holland and was made a baronet ten years later. his best-known works are the _death of virginia_, _garrick as richard iii._, _timon of athens_ (royal collection) and _captain cook_ (greenwich hospital). james northcote ( -- ), the son of a watchmaker of plymouth, spent seven years as an apprentice to his father's craft, all the while longing to be a painter. he was a man of indefatigable industry, who, in spite of a defective education and few opportunities for improvement, made his mark both as an artist and a writer on art. he was the favourite pupil of sir joshua reynolds and his first biographer. leaving reynolds in , northcote returned to devonshire, and for two years successfully painted portraits. from to he was in italy studying the old masters, especially titian. he settled in london on returning home, and maintained himself by portrait-painting. he was, however, ambitious to succeed with historic pictures, though compelled to confine himself to more saleable subjects, such as _a visit to grandmamma_, and similar domestic scenes. boydell's shakespeare gallery gave northcote a new opening in the line he yearned to practise. among nine pictures produced for this series, that of the _murder of the young princes in the tower_, painted in , brought the artist prominently into notice. the _death of wat tyler_, now in guildhall, london, is one of his best works. his _diligent and dissipated servants_, a series suggested by hogarth's _idle and industrious apprentices_, falls very far below the standard of the original series. noteworthy facts in northcote's historic pictures are the incongruity of the dresses, and frequent gross anachronisms. thus we have sisera lying on a feather bed and attired like a trooper of cromwell's ironsides, and jael dressed like a modern maid-of-all-work. in the shakespearian pictures hubert of the thirteenth century, and richard iii. of the fifteenth century, alike wear the dress of elizabeth's day. wat tyler and the murderers in the tower wear the same armour, which belongs to the stuart period. such mistakes, however, were common among all painters of his time. [illustration: charity. _by_ northcote. a.d. .] john opie ( -- ), the rival and friend of northcote, was like him a west countryman, and like him rose from the ranks. born at st. agnes, near truro, the son of a carpenter, opie early showed intelligence and quickness in acquiring knowledge which marked him out for a higher sphere than a carpenter's shop. after evincing taste for art, and disgusting his father by decorating a saw-pit with chalk, he found patrons in lord bateman and dr. wolcot, the famous _peter pindar_. some biographers have described opie as becoming the doctor's footboy, but this is a mistake. walcot brought the young painter to london and introduced him to sir joshua reynolds, but the selfish patronage of the doctor soon came to an end. opie was at first vigorously advertised in london as "the cornish wonder"-- "the cornish boy, in tin-mines bred, whose native genius, like his diamonds, shone in secret, till chance gave him to the sun." reynolds told northcote that opie was "like caravaggio and velasquez in one." in the painter married his first wife, from whom he was subsequently divorced owing to her misconduct. although opie was no longer the wonder of the hour in fickle london, he was achieving more enduring fame. his defective education, both in literature and art, left much to be learned, and he set himself to supply his defects with a laborious zeal which finally affected his brain and prematurely ended his life. his earliest works in london were studies of heads and portraits. in , he produced the _assassination of james i. of scotland_, a _sleeping nymph_, and _cupid stealing a kiss_. next year saw his _murder of david rizzio_. he was elected an associate of the royal academy in , and a full member within a year. in the next seven years he exhibited twenty pictures, all portraits. opie was engaged to paint for boydell's shakespeare gallery, and contributed five pictures, which improved as they progressed. portrait-painting continued to be, however, the most lucrative pursuit, and having been introduced to some patrons at norwich, opie saw and married amelia alderson, who afterwards wrote memoirs of her husband, and described the hard struggles which he had at times to encounter. his love for art and untiring industry remained to the last. even when dying, and at times delirious, he gave advice about the finishing of pictures which he wished to send to the academy. it was said of him, that "whilst other artists painted to live, he lived to paint." he was buried in st. paul's. opie wrote several works on art, and was professor of painting in the royal academy. his answer to a troublesome inquirer truly expresses the character of his work. "what do i mix my colours with? why, with brains." two of opie's pictures are in the national gallery--a _portrait of william siddons_, and _troilus, cressida, and pandarus_. of his art generally it may be said that he possessed considerable power and breadth of treatment. his handling was often coarse, and his colouring crude, especially in female portraits; in fact, coarseness was the leading characteristic of works which were never tame or spiritless. sir william beechey ( -- ) was a portrait painter who received a considerable share of court favour. he is variously stated to have begun life as a house-painter, or as a solicitor's clerk. he devoted himself to the study of art at the royal academy. he lived for a time at norwich, produced conversation pieces in the style of hogarth, but finally settled in london as a portrait painter, and practised with considerable success. in beechey was elected a.r.a., and executed a portrait of _queen charlotte_, who was so well pleased with it that she appointed him her majesty's portrait painter. thus introduced to court, beechey trod "the primrose path" of success, and in painted an equestrian portrait of george iii., with likenesses of the prince of wales and duke of york at a review in hyde park. the painter was knighted, and elected a royal academician. the picture of _george iii. reviewing the rd and th dragoons_ is at hampton court. his _portrait of nollekens_, the sculptor, is in the national gallery. beechey's chief merit is accuracy of likeness. john hoppner ( -- ) was another portrait painter who prospered at court. at first a chorister in the chapel royal, he studied art at the academy schools, became an associate in , and was elected full member in . he enjoyed vast popularity as a portrait painter, finding a rival only in lawrence. many of hoppner's best works are at st. james's palace. three of them are in the national gallery--_william pitt_, _"gentleman" smith_, the actor, and the _countess of oxford_. three of his works are at hampton court; among them is _mrs. jordan as the comic muse_. examples of the work of nearly all the above-mentioned portrait painters may be consulted in the national portrait gallery at south kensington. animal painters. the first animal painters in england were willing to win money, if not fame, by taking the portraits of favourite race-horses and prize oxen for the country squires, who loved to decorate their walls with pictures of their ancestors, and their studs. the first to make a name in this branch of art was john wootton, a pupil of john wyck. he became famous in the sporting circles of newmarket for his likenesses of race-horses, and received large sums for pictures of dogs and horses. later, he attempted landscapes, chiefly hunting scenes. his works are in country mansions, especially at blenheim, longleat, and dytchley. wootton died in . james seymour ( -- ) was famous also as a painter of race-horses and hunting-pieces; he is best known by the engravings after his works. george stubbs ( -- ) was the son of a liverpool surgeon, from whom he probably inherited his love for anatomy. he worked at painting and conducted anatomic studies with equal zeal throughout his life, and is said to have carried, on one occasion, a dead horse on his back to his dissecting-room. this story is more than doubtful, though stubbs was a man of great physical strength. he was the first to give the poetry of life and motion to pictures of animals, and to go beyond the mere portrait of a newmarket favourite or an over-fed ox. the royal academy elected him an associate in , but as he declined to present one of his works, he was never made a full member. among his works are a _lion killing a horse_, a _tiger lying in his den_, a noble life-size portrait of the famous racing-horse _whistle-jacket_, which is at wentworth woodhouse, and _the fall of phaeton_. the last picture he repeated four times. he published _the anatomy of the horse_, with etchings from his own dissections. sawrey gilpin ( -- ) attained considerable success as an animal painter. he was born at carlisle, and was sent to london as a clerk. like many others he preferred the studio to the office, and having obtained the favour of the duke of cumberland at newmarket, gilpin was provided with a set of rooms, and soon became known as a painter of horses. in he exhibited at spring gardens _darius obtaining the persian empire by the neighing of his horse_, and next year _gulliver taking leave of the houyhnhnms_. gilpin was elected a r.a. in . [illustration: the watering place. _by_ morland.] george morland ( -- ), though not exclusively an animal painter, is best known in that branch of art. his life's story describes wasted opportunities, reckless extravagance, and misused talents. brought up with unwise strictness by his father, henry robert morland (died ), a portrait painter of note, george morland no sooner escaped from home discipline than he began that course of riotous living which ended in a dishonoured grave, for which he prepared the epitaph:--"here lies a drunken dog." it is a mistake to suppose that morland was a self-taught genius, since, although his father objected to his entering the academy schools, he himself was his teacher, and so assiduously kept the boy at his studies that he learned to hate the name of work. as early as young morland was an honorary exhibitor of sketches at the academy. at nineteen he had thrown off home ties, and was living a reckless life of debauchery. like most prodigals who think themselves free, morland became a slave. his task-master was a picture dealer, who made money by the genius of the youth whose ruin he promoted. leaving him, the artist went to margate, and painted miniatures for a time, going thence to france. he would settle to no regular work, although his necessities compelled him at times to labour lest he should starve. the next scene in morland's life is his sojourn with his friend william ward, the mezzotint-engraver, where an honourable attachment to nancy ward for a time induced him to work. the pictures he painted at this time were suggested by hogarth's works, and had subjects with which morland was only too well acquainted. _the idle and industrious mechanic_, _the idle laundress and industrious cottager_, _letitia_, or _seduction_ (a series), were studied from the life. in morland married miss ward, but there was no improvement in his manner of life. sometimes he was surrounded by eager purchasers, and using his popularity as a means for greater extravagance. at one time we see him keeping ten or twelve horses, and cheated right and left by profligates who combined horse-racing, betting, and picture dealing. the luckless morland was the ready victim of these associates. his pictures were copied as he painted them, during his temporary absence from the studio. in morland was at his best, _the gipsies_ being painted two years later. his last days were dark indeed. loaded with debt, and dreading arrest, he laboured like a slave, seldom leaving his studio, where his pot-companions alternately rioted and acted as his models, and dogs, pigs, and birds shared the disorderly room. in , he was arrested, and lived within the rules of the fleet, amid all the debaucheries of that evil place and time. freed by the insolvent act in , the painter, broken in health and ruined in character, was once again arrested for a tavern score, and ended his life in a sponging-house on october th, . his wife died of grief three days later, and was interred with her husband in the burial-ground of st. james's chapel, hampstead road. morland chiefly painted country scenes, the memories of happier days, and introduced animals, such as pigs and asses, to his works. produced for existence, and in a fitful, uncertain manner, his pictures were hastily conceived, and painted with little thought or study. he did much to bring the simple beauty of english scenes before the eyes of the public, and to teach englishmen that they need not go to italy in search of subjects for their art. morland loved low company, even in his pictures, and was at home in a ruined stable, with a ragged jackass, and "dirty brookes," the cobbler. in the national gallery are: _the inside of a stable_, said to be the white lion at paddington, and _a quarry with peasants_, by him. in the south kensington museum is an excellent example of his art, called _the reckoning_; and in the national portrait gallery is his own portrait, painted by himself at an early age. [illustration] chapter vi. book illustrators. the earliest book illustrations in england were illuminations and repetitions of them on wood. frontispieces followed, in which a portrait was surrounded by an allegory. of this branch of art william faithorne ( -- ) and david loggan (about -- ) were practitioners. topographical views, subjects from natural history, and botany followed. hogarth's designs for "hudibras" were among the earlier illustrations of a story. francis hayman ( -- ), his friend, illustrated congreve's plays, milton, hanmer's shakespeare, and other works. he was followed by samuel wale (died ), and joseph highmore ( -- ), who illustrated "pamela." towards the close of the eighteenth century, book illustrations had become a recognised class of art-works. bell's "british poets," commenced in , the british theatre, and shakespeare, opened a wide field for artists of this order. cipriani, angelica kauffman, william hamilton, and francis wheatley, all members of the royal academy, were employed to illustrate bell's publications. famous among book illustrators was-- [illustration: from dante's inferno. _by_ blake.] william blake ( -- ).--though born in no higher grade than that of trade, and in no more romantic spot than broad street, golden square, william blake, a hosier's son, was a poet, a painter, an engraver, and even a printer. his genius was of an original, eccentric kind, and there were many who believed him crazed. during his long life he was "a dreamer of dreams" and a poetic visionary. now he was meeting "the grey, luminous, majestic, colossal shadows" of moses and dante; now believing that lot occupied the vacant chair in his painting-room. anon he fancied that his dead brother had revealed to him a new process of drawing on copper, which he practised with great success. neglected and misunderstood, blake was always busy, always poor, and always happy. he lived beyond the cares of every-day life, in a dream-world of his own, occasionally "seeing fairies' funerals, or drawing the demon of a flea." in spite of poverty and neglect, the poet-painter was contented. rescued from the hosier's business, for which he was intended, blake at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to the younger basire, an engraver. throughout his life he worked not for money but for art, declaring that his business was "not to gather gold, but to make glorious shapes, expressing godlike sentiments." hard work with the graver gave him bread, and when the day's toil was over he could illustrate teeming fancies in pictures and in verses. he worked at first chiefly at book illustrations. marrying in his twenty-fifth year, his wife, named katherine boucher, proved a faithful and useful helpmeet, one who considered her husband's excursions to be dictated by superior knowledge. blake's courtship was brief and characteristic. as he was telling his future wife of his troubles, caused by the levity of another damsel, she said, "i pity you." "do you pity me?" answered the painter; "then i love you for it!" and they were married. it is not wonderful that blake's contemporaries thought him mad, as he often did strange things. in blake designed and engraved six plates to illustrate "tales for children" by mary wollstonecraft, and later, his "book of job," dante's "inferno," young's "night's thoughts," blair's "grave," and other series. many of his designs show majestic and beautiful thoughts, a bizarre, but frequently soaring and stupendous invention, great beauty of colour, energy, sweetness, and even beauty of form; they were rarely otherwise than poetic. some are natural and simple, with occasional flashes, such as belonged to all blake's productions. the process of drawing on, or rather excavating copper, which he declared had been revealed to him by his brother's ghost, furnished a raised surface, from which blake was able to print both the design and the verses he composed. by this process he produced his own "songs of innocence and of experience," sixty-eight lyrics, of which it has been said that "they might have been written by an inspired child, and are unapproached save by wordsworth for exquisite tenderness or for fervour." then followed "america, a prophecy," and "europe, a prophecy," irregularly versified, imaginative, and almost unintelligible productions. he was illustrating dante when he died, and, happy to the last, passed away singing extemporaneous songs. [illustration: the dream. _by_ stothard.] thomas stothard ( -- ) began life as a designer for brocaded silks, but, on finding the true bent of his genius, he made designs for the "town and country magazine," and the "novelist's magazine," "ossian," and bell's "poets." his works deal with the gentler and sweeter side of human nature, and we can trace the quiet, simple character of the man in them. his eleven illustrations of "peregrine pickle" appeared in , and are excellent examples of his truthfulness and grace. he was essentially a quietist, and scenes of passion and tumult were foreign to his genius. trunnion and pipes became living men under his pencil, and "clarissa" and others of richardson's romances gained from him an immortality which they would never have acquired by their own merits. in stothard produced illustrations of the "pilgrim's progress," which, though possessing sweetness and beauty, deal with subjects beyond his grasp. his designs for "robinson crusoe" are among his best works. stothard was made an a.r.a. in , and a full member of the royal academy in . his best known painting is _intemperance_, on the staircase of burghley house, in northamptonshire. there are eight works by him in the national gallery, including the original sketch of _intemperance_. one of his most popular, though not the best of his pictures, is the _procession of the canterbury pilgrims_. a collection of stothard's designs is in the british museum. john hamilton mortimer ( -- ), a native of eastbourne, came to london, and made a promising beginning in the world of art. he gained the society of arts's premium of a hundred guineas with _st. paul converting the britons_, and painted other large historic pictures. mortimer, however, fell into extravagant habits, and neglected art. his oil paintings are "heavy and disagreeable in colour;" his drawings are better. he drew designs for bell's "poets," "shakespeare," and other works, choosing scenes in which bandits and monsters play conspicuous parts. thomas kirk (died ), a pupil of cosway, was an artist of much promise. his best works were designs for cooke's "poets." richard westall ( -- ) was a designer for books as well as a water-colour painter. he made designs for bibles and prayer-books, which were very popular. his best-known works are illustrations of the "arabian nights." his brother william westall ( -- ), was a designer of considerable note, especially of landscapes. [illustration: the portrait. _by_ smirke.] robert smirke ( -- ), a native of wigton, in cumberland, is chiefly known by his illustrations of shakespeare and cervantes. he came early to london, and, as an apprentice to an heraldic painter, decorated coach panels. he studied at the academy, and in exhibited _sabrina_, from "comus," and _narcissus_. when chosen a full member of the academy smirke's diploma picture was _don quixote and sancho_. in the national gallery are twelve illustrations of "don quixote," three representing scenes of the same story, and a scene from the "hypocrite," in which _mawworm, dr. cantwell, and lady lambert_ appear. thomas uwins ( -- ) began life as an apprentice to an engraver, entered the royal academy schools, and became known as a designer for books, as well as a portrait painter. his book designs were chiefly frontispieces, vignettes, and title-page adornments. uwins for a time belonged to the society of water-colour painters--from to . in he visited italy, and, after seven years' sojourn, returned to win fame and honour by oil paintings. he was elected an a.r.a. in ; a royal academician in , and subsequently held the offices of librarian to the academy, surveyor of her majesty's pictures, and keeper of the national gallery. among his best pictures are _le chapeau de brigand_, and the _vintage in the claret vineyards_ (national gallery); _the italian mother teaching her child the tarantella_, and a _neapolitan boy decorating the head of his innamorata_ (south kensington museum). * * * * * before quitting this branch of art mention must be made of one who, though an engraver and not a painter, occupies an important place among book illustrators:-- thomas bewick ( -- ), born at cherryburn, near newcastle-on-tyne, adopted a fine mode of wood-engraving. hitherto many illustrations of books had been engraved on copper, and were necessarily separate from the letterpress. bewick's process allowed the cut and the words it illustrated to be printed at the same time. in this way he adorned "gay's fables," a "general history of quadrupeds," and his most famous work, "the history of british birds" ( ), in which he showed the knowledge of a naturalist combined with the skill of an artist. his last work was the illustrations of Æsop's fables, upon which he was engaged six years. he was assisted by his brother john bewick, who founded a school of wood-engravers, and by some of john's pupils, among whom were robert johnson and luke clennell. we have already seen that modern english art began with portraiture, which always has been, and always will be, popular. we have noticed some miniature painters, or "limners in little," who flourished in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when miniature painting had among its greatest masters samuel cooper, who has never been surpassed. [illustration: the woodcock. _from "history of british birds," by_ thomas bewick.] thomas flatman ( -- ), an oxford man and a barrister, who deserted the bar and became a painter, obtained great success in miniature. alexander browne, his contemporary, painted portraits of charles ii. and other members of the court. he was also an engraver and published, in , a work entitled "ars pictoria," with thirty-one etchings. lewis crosse (died ) was the chief miniature painter of queen anne's reign. [illustration: _tailpiece by_ bewick.] charles boit, a swede by birth, practised at this period as a miniature painter. failing in his business as a jeweller, he left london in order to teach drawing in the country. here he is said to have induced a pupil, daughter of an officer, to promise him marriage, and the intrigue having been discovered, the expectant bridegroom was thrown into prison for two years, where he employed himself in acquiring the art of enamel-painting. miniature painting is of two kinds--portraits in water colour on ivory and in enamel on copper, the latter being the more complicated mode. boit on his release practised miniature-painting in london, and gained high prices for his works, although his colouring is by no means pleasant. he was in favour at court, but, while attempting to prepare a plate larger than ordinary to contain portraits of the royal family and chief courtiers, queen anne died, and boit, having borrowed money for the plate, was left without hope of being able to pay his creditors. escaping to france, he again succeeded in his art, and died at paris in . christian frederick zincke ( -- ), though a native of dresden, identified himself with art in england. he was a pupil of boit, but soon outshone his master. his enamel painting was simple yet refined, his drawing graceful, his colour pleasing. george ii. was among his numerous patrons. several of zincke's enamels are in the royal collection. james deacon succeeded zincke as a tenant of his house in tavistock street, covent garden, and bid fair to succeed to his place as a miniature painter, when he caught gaol fever at a trial at the old bailey, and died in . jarvis spencer, who had been a domestic servant, gained by his talent and perseverance a high place among miniature painters of this period. indeed, after the death of deacon, he was the fashionable painter of his class. he died in . other artists combined the skill of a jeweller and goldsmith with that of an enameller. it was the fashion to decorate watches, brooches, snuff-boxes, and other trinkets with portraits of friends and lovers of the owner, and thus the work of the goldsmith and the miniature painter were allied. george michael moser, r.a. ( -- ), the son of a sculptor at st. gall, in switzerland, came to england in his early days, and first gained notice as a chaser of brass-work, the favourite decoration of the furniture of that period. as an enamel painter he was justly celebrated, and employed to decorate the watch of george iii. with portraits of the two elder princes. he designed the great seal. moser was a member of the st. martin's lane academy, and in joined the incorporated society of artists. he was a founder of the royal academy, and its first keeper. nathaniel hone ( -- ) stands next to zincke as a miniature painter, although there is a wide gulf between them. he was self-taught, and on quitting his native dublin, spent some time in the provinces practising as a portrait painter, and afterwards achieved great success in london. he was one of the foundation members of the royal academy, but brought himself into disgrace with that body by lampooning the president in a picture which he sent for exhibition. jeremiah meyer ( -- ) is said to have been a pupil of zincke, but this is probably an error. passing from the st. martin's lane academy, meyer, a native of würtemberg, became enamel painter to george iii., and miniature painter to the queen. careful study of reynolds is apparent in his works. he was one of the original members of the royal academy. richard collins ( -- ), a pupil of meyer, held the post of miniature painter to george iii., and his works formed important elements in the academy exhibitions. samuel shelley, though born in whitechapel, surely an inartistic locality, and having little art education, became a fashionable miniature painter. he studied reynolds with advantage, and treated historic incidents in miniature. he was one of the founders of the water-colour society, and died in . james nixon, a.r.a. (about -- ), was limner to the prince regent, and a clever designer of book illustrations. ozias humphrey ( -- ) commenced miniature-painting at bath, after being a pupil in the academy in st. martin's lane. he returned to london at the invitation of reynolds. a miniature exhibited by him in attracted universal notice, and gained for him patronage from the king. compelled by ill health to go abroad in , humphrey studied italian art, and came back in five years fired with a desire to attempt historical painting. here he failed, and neither by historic subjects nor portraits in oil could he gain the success attending his miniatures. disappointed, he went to india in , and painted illustrious natives of that country. three years later humphrey was re-established as a miniature painter in london, where he was elected a royal academician in . six years later his eyesight entirely failed. it is said of his miniatures that they are the nearest to the pictures of reynolds. humphrey was also successful in crayons. george engleheart, who exhibited miniature portraits at the royal academy as early as , was, in , appointed miniature painter to the king. he painted on both enamel and ivory. he exhibited until . richard cosway ( -- ) was famous for skill in miniature-painting, in which no one of his day could approach him, and for vanity, extravagance, and eccentricity. a _specialité_ of his was the composition of small whole-lengths, the bodies of which were executed in pencil, the faces in colour. no beauty of the day was happy unless her charms had been delineated by cosway; the fair companions of the prince regent were among his warmest patrons, and the prince was a frequent visitor to the artist. cosway's wife, maria, was a clever miniature painter, and worked for boydell's shakespeare and macklin's "poets." of the scandals concerning her and her husband we need not speak. in his latter years cosway professed to believe in swedenborg, and in animal magnetism, pretended to be conversing with people abroad, claimed to have the power of raising the dead, and declared that the virgin mary frequently sat to him for her portrait. he was elected associate of the royal academy in , and full member in . henry bone ( -- ) commenced life as an apprentice to a porcelain manufacturer at plymouth, where he painted flowers and landscapes on china, and secured success as an enameller. passing from the manufactory, bone began work in london by enamelling small trinkets. he first came into general notice in , by means of a portrait of his own wife. bone's success was rapid. he was made an academician in , and was enamel painter to george iii., george iv., and william iv. his most famous works were miniatures after reynolds, titian, murillo and raphael. remarkable also are his portraits of the russell family from henry vii.'s reign, the famous royalists of the civil war, and eighty-five likenesses of elizabethan worthies. henry edridge ( -- ) was another miniature painter, who owed some of his success to careful following of reynolds. he painted miniatures on ivory, and for a time on paper, using the lead pencil over indian ink washes. he was also highly successful as a landscape painter in water colours. andrew robertson ( -- ), the son of a cabinet-maker at aberdeen, came to london on foot in , and gained the patronage of benjamin west, the president, whose portrait he painted. robertson became, in due course, a very successful miniature painter, and practised his art for more than thirty years. his likenesses are truthful, but do not stand in the first rank of miniature-painting. alfred edward chalon ( -- ), born in geneva, and of french extraction, holds a high place in the history of english art as a portrait painter in water colours; his miniatures on ivory are full of life, vigour, and originality. he was elected r.a. in . as a painter in oils, alfred chalon achieved a high degree of success. _hunt the slipper_, _samson and delilah_ (exhibited for the second time at the international exhibition in ), and _sophia western_ deserve notice among his oil paintings. chalon could not only paint with originality, but could catch the manner of the old masters with such accuracy, that some of his works were attributed even by the skilful to rubens, watteau, and others. his elder brother, john james chalon ( -- ), obtained celebrity as a landscape painter. william essex ( -- ) painted in enamel, and exhibited a portrait of the _empress josephine_, after isabey, at the royal academy in . in he was appointed painter in enamels to the queen, and in to the prince consort. he was one of the last of the painters in enamel. [illustration: morning walk. _by_ alfred e. chalon.] william derby ( -- ) was celebrated for his careful copies in miniature of celebrated portraits. he was largely employed on lodge's "portraits of illustrious persons." with sir william charles ross ( -- ) ends the school of deceased miniature painters. ross was an artist even in the nursery. he became an assistant to andrew robertson, and although his forte was miniature-painting, he longed for the higher flight of historic art. his _judgment of brutus_, _christ casting out devils_ (exhibited in ), and _the angel raphael discoursing with adam and eve_ (to which an additional premium of £ was awarded at the cartoon exhibition in ), are specimens of his power in this branch of art, at different periods. it is as a miniature painter that he will live in the history of art. he was elected to the full rank of r.a. in , and was knighted in the same year. the court smiled upon him. he painted miniatures of the queen and royal family, the saxe-gotha family, and the king and queen of portugal. the late emperor of the french, when prince louis napoleon, was among his numerous sitters. [illustration] chapter vii. painters in water colours. ( -- .) water-colour painting is in one sense the most ancient mode of pictorial art. we find examples of it in the tombs of the egyptians, in the roman catacombs, and in the houses of pompeii. oil painting is, in comparison, a modern process, though the statement that it was only discovered by the van eycks in the beginning of the fifteenth century, is now known to be a mistake. the earliest pictures were produced with colours soluble in water and mixed with certain ingredients necessary to fix them. in this way wall paintings were executed in tempera, a process familiar to us as _painting in distemper_. raphael's cartoons are specimens of tempera-painting on paper, and mantegna's _triumph of cæsar_ (hampton court) furnish examples of the like process on canvas. the art of water-colour painting was practised by the early italian and german artists, and by those of the flemish and dutch schools. in most of the illuminations of missals, in this and other countries, water colours were used, mixed extensively with body white. such was the case with the early miniature painters of england, who began by using opaque colours, and gradually advanced to transparent pigments. notwithstanding the antiquity of painting in water colours, the creation of a school of water-colour art, in the sense in which that term is now understood, belongs to this country. it was not to the tempera painter, nor to the illuminator of missals, nor to the early miniaturist that we owe this modern school. we must look for its germ in the practice of the topographer, who drew ruins, buildings, and landscapes for the antiquary. the earliest of such works were executed in outline with a reed pen. examples are to be seen in some small pictures by albrecht dürer, in the british museum. the pigments used were transparent, and applied on paper. the earliest of these pictures are in monochrome, black or grey; next, colour was added here and there, and the whole effect was something like that of a coloured print. such were "the tinted," or "steyned" drawings in which our modern water-colour paintings originated. the early method prevailed for a long time, as may be seen in the historic collection of water-colour paintings at south kensington, but gradually the art developed, better pigments were used, and, as early as , a marked improvement accrued, which led to the triumphs of girtin and turner, and the more brilliant examples of later days. one great advantage belongs to the modern school of water colours--it started from nature, untrammelled by conventional rules or traditions. the early topographers were brought face to face with nature; some of them, like webber and alexander, extended their observations to foreign lands; others, finding out the beauties of their own country, were content to copy nature. it remained to our artists towards the end of the last, and early in the present century, to give a new and higher character to water-colour art, which from obscure beginnings has risen to be a purely national and original school. practised by a succession cf men of great genius, a distinct branch of art has been created, taking rank with works in oil. more luminous, and hardly less powerful than pictures in that medium, it has lent itself, in skilled hands, to the fullest expression of nature, and perfect rendering of the ideal. paul sandby ( -- ) has been called "the father of water-colour art;" but as he never advanced beyond the tinted mode, and to the last used indian ink for shadows, and the pen for outlines, the title is unmerited. sandby was a native of nottingham, and having served in the drawing office in the tower, he settled at windsor in , and became instructor in drawing to the children of george iii. he was one of the original members of the royal academy in , and at the same time was made drawing master in the military school at woolwich. he painted many scenes in the neighbourhood of windsor, and for sir watkin w. wynn and sir joseph banks landscapes in wales. specimens of his art in body-colour and tinting are in the south kensington collection, including _an ancient beech tree_, which is painted in body-colour; _the round temple_ is in indian ink, slightly tinted; _landscape with dog and figures_, is in the fully tinted manner. thomas hearne ( -- ) came early from wiltshire to london, and was intended for trade. he was, however, apprenticed to woollett, the engraver. in , he went to the leeward isles as draughtsman to the governor, and this new occupation induced him to abandon engraving for topography. he tinted landscapes, with local colour largely used. his _village alehouse_, _view of richmond_, two shipping scenes after van de velde, and _caistor castle_ are at south kensington. william payne, who at one time held a civil appointment in plymouth dockyard, came to london in . he had previously exhibited tinted pictures of devonshire scenery, which attracted the notice of reynolds. he is best known as the introducer of a neutral colour, styled _payne's grey_. alexander cozens (died ), a natural son of peter the great, was born in russia. after studying art in italy he came to england in , and practised as a teacher of drawing. gifted with a fine poetic feeling, and having a noble sense of breadth, this artist made a deep impression on those who followed him. john webber ( -- ) travelled in italy, france, and switzerland, and made numerous drawings. he was draughtsman to captain cook in his last voyage, and a witness of his death. john robert cozens ( -- ), son of alexander cozens, was one of the earliest who practised water-colour painting in the modern sense of the term. his works in the tinted manner are full of poetic beauty, and exhibit a marked improvement on those of his predecessors. at south kensington may be seen his _chigi palace near albano_. constable, who was much impressed by cozen's art, said that he was "the greatest genius who ever touched landscape." he was the first to go beyond topography, and to impart pathos to his pictures. although he worked mainly in the received method of tinting, there are signs in his pictures of a noble progress, which was soon to become more marked. john smith ( -- ), called "warwick smith," probably because he travelled in italy with the earl of warwick, or on his behalf. six of his italian sketches are at south kensington. gainsborough said "he was the first water-colour painter who carried his intention through." in he was president of the society of painters in water colours. we must here briefly mention thomas rowlandson ( -- ), who is best known by caricatures, including illustrations to "doctor syntax," "the dance of death," and "dance of life." william alexander ( -- ) accompanied lord macartney to china, in , as draughtsman to the mission. he was afterwards made keeper of prints and drawings in the british museum. he illustrated many books of travel. joshua cristall ( -- ), one of the foundation members of the water-colour society, of which he was more than once president. he usually painted classic figures with landscape backgrounds, and genre subjects. his _young fisher boy_ and _fish market on hastings beach_ are at south kensington. henry edridge, who made excellent drawings in paris and in normandy, we have already mentioned among the miniature painters. robert hills ( -- ) represented animal painting in water colours, and may be styled the father of this branch of art. he frequently worked in conjunction with other artists; as in _deer in a landscape_ (south kensington), where the deer are painted by hills, and the landscape is by barret. michael angelo rooker ( -- ) originally practised as an engraver, but, having been instructed in painting by paul sandby, forsook the graver, and worked as a student at the royal academy. subsequently, he became principal scene-painter at the haymarket theatre. he used much local colour in tinted drawings, as may be seen in _st. botolph's priory_, and _boxgrove priory church_ (south kensington collection). conspicuous among those artists who showed that the power and richness which were supposed to belong to oil painting only, could be produced in water colours, was-- thomas girtin ( -- ), who entirely revolutionised the technical practice of his forerunners, by laying in a whole picture with the local colours of its parts. girtin found a friend and helper in dr. monro, who possessed many fine drawings, and allowed the young painters of the day free access to them. in the riverside scenery visible from the doctor's house at the adelphi, girtin found congenial subjects for his art, as well as amid the old-world spots about chelsea and wandsworth. later, he extended his travels, choosing cathedral cities in england, and visiting the lake district, scotland, and wales. girtin loved to depict scenes of gloom and grandeur, such as the melancholy cumberland hills, and the sterner scenery of scotland, whilst turner, his friend and fellow-worker at dr. monro's house, depicted light, even when treating similar subjects to those which his friend affected. girtin spent a great deal of valuable time in painting a panorama of london, which was much admired. he died at the age of twenty-nine, but he had lived long enough to make a great advance in water-colour painting, and to add power of effect, of colour, and of execution to the poetry with which cozens had invested it. favourable specimens of girtin's art may be seen in a _view on the wharfe_ and _rievaulx abbey_ (south kensington). george barret the younger ( -- ) was one of the foundation members of the water-colour society. he especially delighted in sunset effects. william de la motte ( -- ) was originally a pupil of president west, but abandoned oil for water colours. he painted landscapes in the style of girtin, but more chiefly architecture and marine pieces. of joseph mallord william turner ( -- ), we shall speak hereafter as a painter in oils; here we must describe his influence in water-colour art, which was greater even than that of girtin. "many date the perfect development of water-colour painting from girtin, but it is far more due to turner, who, while he could paint in that medium with the power and strength of girtin, added to that strength, delicacy and _quality_" (_redgrave_). turner is famous as a painter both in water colour and in oil, and as the artist of "southern coast scenery," "england and wales," "rivers of france," roger's "italy" and "poems." his _liber studiorum_ is a collection of valuable studies in monochrome, now in the national gallery. his etchings from them are very celebrated. mr. redgrave says of him, "if ever writer dipt his pen in poetry, surely turner did his facile pencil, and was indeed one of nature's truest poets." his water-colour drawings are well represented in the national gallery. [illustration: evening.--"_datur hora quieti._" _from a drawing by_ turner.] in spite of the marked progress of water-colour painting, there was as yet no adequate accommodation for the exhibition of drawings produced in that mode. the room assigned to works in water colour at the royal academy exhibitions was described as "a condemned cell." the general public still believed in the superiority of oil painting, and worshipped a big, indifferent picture in that mode, whilst they allowed gems of art to hang unnoticed in the water-colour room. to remedy this the water-colour society was founded on november th, , the originators being hills, pyne, shelley, wills, glover and varley. william sawrey gilpin was the first president. this society gave new and increased vigour to water-colour art, and a second body, the associated artists in water colours, was formed in . the older society exhibited the works of members only, the new association was less exclusive: the career of the latter was brief. the water-colour society also lost popularity after a while, and in the members determined to dissolve it. twelve of their number, however, were averse to this course, and maintained the annual exhibition during a few years, with small success. meanwhile, the other members, in , opened an exhibition in new bond street, and invited contributions from british water-colour artists who belonged to no other society. this effort failed. the original body styled itself "the society of painters in oil and water colours," for a time admitted oil paintings, and made other alterations in its rules, but in returned to its original constitution. in it was established in its present premises in pall mall east, since which date it has flourished. in it became the royal society of painters in water colours. in the new water-colour society was formed, a body which two years later changed its title to that of the new society of painters in water colours. in it became the institute of painters in water colours, a title it still retains. the great increase in the numbers of artists of this class rendered the formation of the second society necessary. a third exhibition of water colours was formed in the dudley gallery, which has recently undergone a reorganization in its committee of management. john varley ( -- ) was at first the assistant of a silversmith, then of a portrait painter, and subsequently of an architectural draughtsman. after a time he found his true vocation in landscape-painting with water colours. he was as we have seen, one of the founders of the water-colour society. his works are noteworthy for simplicity and pathos, but his later productions, owing to the necessity of working against time, are very slight. varley chiefly painted welsh scenes, many of which are at south kensington, _e.g._ _beddgellert bridge_ and _harlech castle_. william havell ( -- ), another of the foundation members of the water-colour society, was a constant exhibitor till , when he visited india. on his return he chiefly contributed oil paintings to the royal academy. havell was one of those who aided to carry water-colour painting beyond mere topography, and in later works he adopted the "sunny method" of turner. samuel prout ( -- ) is best known by his sketches of continental scenery, _e.g._ _würzburg_, the _arch of constantine at rome_, and the _porch of ratisbon cathedral_ (south kensington). he excelled as a painter of cottages and ancient ruins, but rarely succeeded with foliage. he published drawing-books, containing studies from nature. david cox ( -- ), the son of a blacksmith, was born at birmingham. he was a weakly child, and amused himself with drawing instead of the rougher sports of his companions. instructed by a local artist, he found employment in painting lockets, and as a scene-painter at the theatre at birmingham and at astley's amphitheatre in lambeth. devoting himself to landscape, and assisted by john varley, cox soon became one of the most eminent artists of his school, remarkable for the truthfulness of his colouring, the purity and brilliancy of the light in his pictures. he was elected a member of the water-colour society in . his style may be studied at south kensington. his works are now highly prized. thomas miles richardson ( -- ), a native of newcastle-on-tyne, is said to have been seized with a desire to become a painter on seeing a landscape by cox. he began as apprentice to a cabinet-maker. exchanging this vocation for that of a schoolmaster, he finally accepted art as his calling, and became a distinguished landscape painter. [illustration: the tomb of the scaligers at verona. _by_ prout.] anthony vandyke copley fielding ( -- ) proved worthy of the names he bore. he was a pupil of varley, and contributed his first picture to the water-colour exhibition of . from that time his success was assured. during his life his works commanded very high prices. he was elected president of the water-colour society in , and held that office till his death. fielding executed some excellent oil paintings. "he delights in distances, extensive flats, and rolling downs. it is true that while space is often obtained, the result is emptiness." an example of this is _the south downs, devon_, at south kensington. marine pieces are among fielding's best works, but even these are mannered. peter de wint ( -- ) was born in staffordshire, and of dutch origin. a constant contributor to the water-colour society, painting scenes direct from nature, he chose the northern and eastern counties of england. corn-fields and hay-harvests are among his favourite subjects. he is very largely represented in the south kensington collection. george fennel robson ( -- ), after leaving his native durham, exhibited many pictures at the royal academy, but his best works appeared at the exhibitions of the water-colour society. he illustrated many books, and painted in conjunction with hills, who contributed animals. three of his works are at south kensington. thomas heaphy ( -- ) was born in london, and having been, like many other artists, apprenticed to an uncongenial craft, left it to pursue the art of an engraver. this, however, gave place to painting, and he commenced with portraiture. he exhibited at the royal academy for the first time in , and was admitted an associate exhibitor of the water-colour society in , and a member in . for a time he accompanied the english army in the peninsula, and found patrons among the officers. at south kensington are two of his figure subjects, _coast scene, with figures_, and _the wounded leg_. [illustration: berncastle, on the moselle. _by_ harding.] william henry hunt ( -- ) was one of the most original as well as the most versatile of the water-colour school. starting as a landscape painter, he, in later years, excelled in rustic figure subjects, whilst as a painter of fruits and flowers he was without a rival. hunt was a pupil of varley, and had the advantage of dr. monro's friendship. the varied character of his art may be seen at south kensington, in _boy and goats_, and a _brown study_ (a negro boy puzzling over an addition sum), which illustrate his figure subjects, whilst _hawthorn blossoms and bird's nest_, _primroses and birds' nests_, and _plums_, are examples of another side of hunt's genius. his humorous pictures _the attack_, _the defeat_, _the puzzled politician_, and _the barber's shop_ are well known. james duffield harding ( -- ), the son of an artist, was intended for a lawyer, but chose to become a painter. at the age of fifteen he was a pupil of samuel prout, and at first his works owed much to that artist. like his master he did not succeed in foliage. harding gained the silver medal of the society of arts for a water-colour drawing, and became very popular as a drawing-master. he published many lesson books, in which he called in lithography to his aid. his visit to france and italy resulted in numerous studies, which are embodied in _the landscape annual_. he is represented at south kensington by _a landscape with hovels_. harding is described as the first water-colour artist who used, to any extent, body-colour mixed with transparent tints. his example was almost always injurious. [illustration: the view from richmond hill. _by_ de wint.] george cattermole ( -- ) was a native of dickleburgh, norfolk. he started in life as a topographical draughtsman, and studied architectural antiquities. this fitted him for the mediæval and romantic subjects in which he delighted brigands, robbers, and knights figure largely in his works. his travels in scotland bore fruit in illustrations to the waverley novels. his pictures were due to his memory, rather than to new inspirations, and as he advanced in years they became tame. among cattermole's principal works are _sir walter raleigh witnessing the execution of essex in the tower_, _hamilton of bothwellhaugh preparing to shoot the regent murray_, _the armourer's tale_, _cellini and the robbers_, _pirates at cards_, which are all at south kensington. james holland ( -- ) began as a flower painter and teacher of that branch of art. he found a wider sphere, and is known as a painter of landscapes and sea subjects. in his works high colouring is remarkable. his _nymwegen, in holland_, is at south kensington, where there is also a series of sixteen of his drawings made in portugal. samuel palmer ( -- ) first exhibited, at the british institution, in . in he was elected an associate of the water-colour society, and became a full member in ; and it was at the exhibitions of that society that his works were most often seen. his paintings are chiefly pastoral scenes, treated in an ideal manner, and display imaginative and poetic genius of a high order. he drew inspirations for his paintings from the writings of milton and virgil, with which he was very familiar. he was influenced in his art by the work of william blake, and to some extent by that of his father-in-law, john linnell. samuel palmer executed a few highly-prized etchings. * * * * * edward henry wehnert ( -- ), francis william topham ( -- ), aaron edwin penley ( -- ), edward duncan ( -- ), george shalders ( -- ), george haydock dodgson ( -- ), were all members of one or other of the water-colour societies, and attained fame in their various walks of art. [illustration: old english hospitality. _by_ george cattermole. a.d. .] [illustration] chapter viii. english art in the nineteenth century.--sir thomas lawrence and his contemporaries. in tracing the progress of british painting, we have seen that early in the eighteenth century the english public thought most of foreign artists. there was no belief in the power of englishmen to create original works, and therefore no encouragement was given against the "slavery of the black masters." no one dared to hang a modern english painting which aimed at being original. if a portrait was desired the artist considered it necessary to imitate kneller. if a landscape were needed, it was thought right to seek it in italy. if a painter desired to prosper, he was forced to be more of a house-decorator than an artist. we have seen also how this spell was broken, first by hogarth, who had the courage to abide by his originality, although but one purchaser appeared at a sale of his pictures; next by reynolds, who painted portraits like living persons, and not mere dolls. we have seen wilson and gainsborough create a school of english landscape-painting, and show the hitherto neglected beauties of our own land. we have marked historic painters bravely struggling against neglect, like barry uncared for, believing in his art; and like copley, who treated history with freshness and truth. to west we owe an attempt to depict scenes from scripture, and a bold stand against the ridiculous fashion which represented any warrior, even a red indian, attired as a soldier of ancient rome. and we must not forget the poetic fancies of romney, the dramatic force of opie, the grace of stothard, the great inspiration of blake, and the wild nightmare illustrations of fuseli. we have seen art too long wedded to literature, and yet making great advances under the treatment of those who turned their attention to book illustration and miniature-painting, rising to a high pitch of popularity. we have observed how the royal academy improved the social position of english painters, who had previously been regarded as representing a better kind of house-decorators, and how the establishment of the water-colour societies promoted a branch of art which, starting from the topographer's sketch, has attained high excellence and beauty. * * * * * among the foremost men of the beginning of the nineteenth century was-- [illustration: master lambton. _by_ lawrence. a.d. . _in the possession of the earl of durham._] thomas lawrence, who was born, in , at bristol; his father, trained as a lawyer, being at that time landlord of an inn. at an early age the future painter was removed with the rest of the family to the "black bear" at devizes, whither the fortunes of the elder lawrence led him. the inn was a well-known posting-house on the way to bath, and young thomas had abundant opportunities for displaying his precocious talents to the guests who stopped there. his father had given him desultory lessons in reading and recitation. nature furnished him with a wonderful gift of art; and when only five years old the beautiful child, with long flowing hair, was introduced to all customers, and would recite milton and collins, or take their portraits, according to their several tastes. we are told of his drawing a remarkably truthful likeness of lady kenyon at this early age. of regular education lawrence had little or none beyond two years' schooling at bristol, but he learnt much from the conversation of distinguished patrons and friends in early life. in the lawrence family moved from devizes to oxford, where the boy drew many portraits. leaving oxford and settling at bath, lawrence contributed to the wants of the family by drawing portraits in crayons for a guinea and a guinea and a half each. his fame rapidly spread. mrs. siddons sat to him, so did the duchess of devonshire, and, in , the society of arts awarded him their silver pallet, "gilded all over," for a crayon copy of the _transfiguration_ by raphael, executed when lawrence was only thirteen. london was the fittest place for the development of such talents as his, and accordingly the elder lawrence went thither with his son in , and the latter was entered as a student in the royal academy. he contributed seven works to the exhibition of the same year, was introduced to sir joshua reynolds and kindly treated; the great painter encouraged the youthful genius, and advised him to study nature instead of the old masters. lawrence took this advice, and avoided the temptation to try processes of colouring, which proved fatal to many of sir joshua's works. the course of the youth was one of unvarying success. the king and queen were interested in him. in , he was elected an associate of the academy, and a year after was appointed principal painter-in-ordinary to the king, a post rendered vacant by the death of reynolds. the dilettanti society broke its rules to make lawrence a member, and painter to the society; in , when nearly twenty-five years old, the artist was elected a royal academician. never, perhaps, did painter rise so rapidly and from such slight foundations, and never was studio more crowded by sitters than that of lawrence. messrs. redgrave, in criticising his portraits, say, "after reynolds and gainsborough, lawrence looks pretty and painty; there is none of that power of uniting the figure with the ground--that melting of the flesh into the surrounding light which is seen in the pictures of the first president. lawrence's work seems more on the surface--indeed, only surface--while his flesh tints have none of the natural purity of those by his two predecessors; we think them pretty in lawrence, but we forget paint and painting in looking at a face by reynolds or gainsborough." the same critics remark of lawrence's portraits of children that sir joshua was greatly his superior in this branch of art, and that the former "had no apparent admission into the inner heart of childhood." on the other hand, fuseli, his contemporary, considered lawrence's portraits as good or better than van dyck's, and recommended painters to abandon hope of approaching him. in , lawrence exhibited his _satan calling his legions_, now the property of the royal academy. various and conflicting are the criticisms on this picture, a fair specimen of the painter's powers in history. a contemporary critic says of it, "the figure of satan is colossal, and drawn with excellent skill and judgment." fuseli, on the other hand, characterizes the principal figure briefly and strongly as "a d--d thing, certainly, but not the devil." lawrence himself rightly thought _satan_ his best work. on the death of west, in , lawrence was unanimously chosen president of the royal academy. five years earlier the prince regent had knighted him. foreign academies loaded him with honours. he made a foreign tour at the request of the government to paint portraits of the various illustrious persons who had engaged in the contest with napoleon i. ten years after his accession to the president's chair lawrence died. the best critics declare that no high place among painters may be accorded to him. much of his popularity was due to the fact that he flattered his sitters, and led the artificial style of the day. he lost in later years the fresh vigour of his prime. it must be allowed, however, that he was no copyist of reynolds, nor of any one, but treated his subjects in a style of his own. he is accused of introducing "a prevailing chalkiness" into his pictures, derived from his early studies in crayon. when he died there was no one to take his place. the waterloo chamber at windsor castle contains the pictures of _pius vii._, the _emperor francis_, and _cardinal gonsalvi_. famous among his portraits of children are _master lambton_, _lady peel and daughters_, and _lady gower and child_; for the last he received , guineas. in the national gallery are nine of his works, including _hamlet with yorick's skull_, and portraits of _benjamin west_ and _mrs. siddons_. the contemporaries of sir thomas who practised portraiture were all indebted to reynolds. george henry harlow ( -- ) emerged from a childhood, in which he was petted and spoilt, to a brief manhood which the society of actors and actresses did not improve. he was, for a time, a pupil of lawrence, and it is supposed that if he had lived harlow would, as a portrait painter, have been his successful rival. after a foreign tour, he, like many of his brethren, longed to succeed in historic painting. his _queen catherine's trial_, in which mrs. siddons appears as the queen, does not prove that he would have succeeded in this branch of art. it was at the "old masters" exhibition, . william owen ( -- ), the son of a bookseller at ludlow, came to london in , after receiving a good education at the ludlow grammar school. he became a pupil of charles catton, landscape and animal painter, and of the academy. in he exhibited a _portrait of a gentleman_, and a _view of ludford bridge_. he is chiefly known as a portrait painter, and found that branch of art remunerative, but his real tastes appeared in _blind beggar of bethnal green_, _the fortune teller_, _the village schoolmistress_, and other simple stories of country life. a picture of two sisters gained him one of the two as a wife; and portraits of _pitt_, _lord grenville_, the _duke of buccleuch_, and other noteworthy persons brought him into fashion. owen was elected full member of the academy in , and appointed portrait painter to the prince of wales in . he was an unwearied worker, and his subject-pictures commanded an interest which does not continue. in the national gallery is _the dead robin_. his _william croker_ and _lord loughborough_ are in the national portrait gallery. [illustration: trial of queen catherine. _by_ harlow. a.d. . in the possession of mrs. morrison.] martin archer shee ( -- ), a native of dublin, commenced art studies in the dublin academy. in dublin he became known as a portrait painter. he came to london in , where he was introduced to burke, and by him to reynolds, who advised the young painter to study at the royal academy, advice which he somewhat unwillingly followed. gradually winning his way, he became a successful portrait painter of men. in , he was made a r.a. though devoting himself to portraiture martin shee turned ever and again to subject-pictures, of which _belisarius_, _lavinia_, and a _peasant girl_ are specimens. a more ambitious work was _prospero and miranda_, exhibited in . shee owed his election to the academy to his position as a portrait painter, and he justified the choice by his defence of the institution against those who attacked its privileges. in , he was elected president, and knighted. three of his works are in the national gallery, _the infant bacchus_, and portraits of morton the comedian, and _lewis as the marquis in the 'midnight hour.'_ the first illustrates shee's later style; the picture of lewis, painted in , his early method. besides paintings, shee was the author of several literary productions, including a tragedy, a novel, "rhymes on art," and art criticisms. [illustration: swiss peasant girl. _by_ howard.] henry howard ( -- ), though not intended originally for an artist, early showed a talent for drawing, became a pupil of philip reinagle and the academy, where, two years later, he gained the silver medal of the life school, and the gold medal in the painting school for _caractacus recognising the dead body of his son_, which reynolds, then president, warmly praised. from to howard travelled in italy, and painted _the death of abel_ for the travelling studentship of the academy, which he did not obtain. the promise of his youth was not fulfilled. "his works are graceful and pretty, marked by propriety, and pleasing in composition; his faces and expressions are good, his drawing is correct, but his style cold and feeble." (_redgrave._) most of howard's works are small: he selected classic and poetic subjects, such as _the birth of venus_, _the solar system_, _pandora_, and _the pleiades_, and occasionally he painted portraits. he was secretary and professor of painting to the royal academy. in the national gallery is _the flower girl_, a portrait of his own daughter. james ward ( -- ) began life as an engraver, and was thirty-five years old before he devoted himself to painting. he selected animal portraiture, and bulls and horses were his favourite subjects. his most famous, but not his best picture is _a landscape, with cattle_ (national gallery), produced at the suggestion of west to rival paul potter's _young bull_, at the hague, which ward had never seen. ward's cattle were all painted from life. morland was a brother-in-law of ward, and his influence is obvious in the latter's pictures. the life-size cattle in the before mentioned picture are an alderney bull, cow, and calf in the centre, another cow, sheep, and goat in the foreground. in the national gallery, too, is his large landscape of _gordale scar, yorkshire_. thomas phillips ( -- ) was a native of dudley, and began as a glass painter at birmingham. coming to london, he was assisted by west, then president of the academy, and in exhibited a _view of windsor castle_, and next year _the death of talbot, earl of shrewsbury, at the battle of chatillon_. phillips was more successful as a portrait painter: his likenesses are faithful, his pictures free from faults, and possess a pleasant tone, though as a colourist he does not occupy a high place. he was professor of painting in . in the national gallery are a portrait of _sir david wilkie_, and a _wood nymph_. the latter looks more like a young lady fresh from a drawing-room. henry thomson ( -- ), the son of a purser in the navy, was born at portsea, or, as some say, in london. his works consist of historic and fancy subjects, and portraits. his first picture exhibited at the academy was _daedalus fastening wings on to his son icarus_. thomson was, in , appointed keeper of the academy in succession to fuseli. he exhibited, from to , seventy-six pictures, chiefly portraits. _the dead robin_ is in the national gallery. john jackson ( -- ) rose from the simple home of the tailor, his father, to a high place in the world of art. he was freed from the craft of his father by lord mulgrave and sir george beaumont. the latter encouraged him to visit london, and allowed him £ a year and a room in his house while he studied in the academy. the young painter soon obtained success as a portrait painter, and in was elected a full member of the academy. in , he visited rome with sir f. chantrey, and painted for him a portrait of _canova_. a portrait of _flaxman_, painted for lord dover, is considered jackson's masterpiece. leslie, speaking of the subdued richness of his colouring, said that lawrence never approached him; and lawrence himself declared that the portrait of flaxman was "a great achievement of the english school, one of which van dyck might have felt proud to own himself the author." three portraits by jackson are in the national gallery--the _rev. w. h. carr_, _sir john soane_, and _miss stephens_, afterwards the late countess of essex. jackson's own portrait, by himself, is in the national portrait gallery. [illustration] chapter ix. landscape painters. joseph mallord william turner ( -- ) stands at the head of english landscape painters. it has been said that though others may have equalled or surpassed him in some respects, "none has yet appeared with such versatility of talent." (_dr. waagen._) the character of turner is a mixture of contradictory elements. he possessed a marvellous appreciation of the beautiful in nature, yet lived in dirt and squalor, and dressed in a style between that of a sea-captain and a hackney coachman. the man who worked exquisitely was sometimes harsh and uncouth, though capable of a rude hospitality; disliking the society of some of his fellow-men, he yet loved the company of his friends, and though penurious in some money transactions, left a magnificent bequest to his profession. turner owed nothing to the beauty or poetic surroundings of his birth-place, which was the house of his father, a barber in maiden lane, covent garden. but as lord byron is said to have conjured up his loveliest scenes of greece whilst walking in albemarle street, so the associations of maiden lane did not prevent turner from delineating storm-swept landscapes, and innumerable splendours of nature. the barber was justly proud of his child, who very early displayed his genius, and the first drawings of turner are said to have been exhibited in his father's shaving-room. in time the boy was colouring prints and washing in the backgrounds of architects' drawings. dr. monro, the art patron, extended a helping hand to the young genius of maiden lane. "girtin and i," says turner, "often walked to bushey and back, to make drawings for good dr. monro at half-a-crown a piece, and the money for our supper when we got home." he did not, of course, start from london. [illustration: the grand canal, venice. _by_ turner. a.d. .] in , turner became a student in the academy, and exhibited a picture in the next year at somerset house, _view of the archbishop's palace at lambeth_. he was then only fifteen. from that time he worked with unceasing energy at his profession. indeed, the pursuit of art was the one ruling principle of his life. he frequently went on excursions, the first being to ramsgate and margate, and was storing his memory with effects of storm, mist, and tempest, which he reproduced. in , when made a.r.a., turner had already exhibited works which ranged over twenty-six counties of england and wales. in he was made full academician, and presented, as his diploma picture, _dolbadarn castle, north wales_. in this year he visited the continent, and saw france and switzerland. five years later turner was appointed professor of perspective to the royal academy. we are told his lectures were delivered in so strange a style, that they were scarcely instructive. of his water-colour paintings and of the _liber studiorum_ it is impossible to speak too highly; he created the modern school of water-colour painting, and his works in oil have influenced the art of the nineteenth century. he visited italy for the first time in ; again ten years later, and for the last time in . his eccentricity, both in manner and in art, increased with age. though wealthy, and possessing a good house in queen anne street, he died in an obscure lodging by the thames, at chelsea, a few days before christmas, , turner bequeathed his property to found a charity for male decayed artists, but the alleged obscurity of his will defeated this object. it was decided that his pictures and drawings should be presented to the national gallery, that one thousand pounds should be spent on a monument to the painter in st. paul's, twenty thousand pounds should be given to the royal academy, and the remainder to the next of kin and heir at law. the national gallery contains more than one hundred of his pictures, besides a large number of water-colour drawings and sketches. in his earlier works turner took the old masters as his models, some of his best pictures showing the characteristics of the dutch school, as _the shipwreck_, and _the sun rising in a mist_. in _the tenth plague_, and _the goddess of discord_, the influence of poussin is visible, whilst wilson is imitated in _Æneas with the sibyl_, and _a view in wales_. turner was fond of matching himself against claude; and not only did he try his powers in rivalry with the older masters, he delighted to enter into honest competition with painters of the day, and when wilkie's _village politicians_ was attracting universal notice, turner produced his _blacksmith's shop_ in imitation of it. in his later pictures turner sacrificed form to colour. "mist and vapour, lit by the golden light of morn, or crimsoned with the tints of evening, spread out to veil the distance, or rolled in clouds and storms, are the great characteristics of turner's art as contrasted with the mild serenity of the calm unclouded heaven of claude." (_redgrave._) turner in his choice of colours forsook conventionality, and "went to the cataract for its iris, to the conflagration for its flames, asked of the sea its intensest azure, of the sky its clearest gold." (_ruskin._) the same critic considers turner's period of central power, entirely developed and entirely unabated, to begin with the _ulysses_, and to close with the _téméraire_, a period of ten years, -- . john constable ( -- ) was born at east bergholt, in suffolk, june th, , and the sunny june weather in which the painter first saw the light seems to pervade all his pictures. constable's father was a miller, and intended that his son should succeed to his business; it has been said also that it was proposed to educate him for holy orders. constable, however, was meant for a painter, and became one of the best delineators of english scenery. in , he became student in the royal academy. in , he exhibited his first picture. in , he was elected a.r.a., and became a full member ten years after. constable's earlier efforts were in the direction of historical painting and portraiture, but he found his true sphere in landscape. he was thoroughly english. no foreign master influenced him, and rustic life furnished all he needed. he said, "i love every style and stump and lane in the village: as long as i am able to hold a brush, i shall never cease to paint them." to this determination we owe some of the most pleasant english pictures, full of fresh, breezy life, rolling clouds, shower-wetted foliage, and all the greenery of island scenes. he loved to paint _under the sun_, and impart a glittering effect to his foliage which many of his critics could not understand. indeed, constable was not appreciated thoroughly till after his death. he seems to have known that this would be the case, for early in his career he wrote, "i feel now more than ever a decided conviction that i shall some time or other make some good pictures--pictures that shall be valuable to posterity, if i do not reap the benefit of them." constable did not attempt bold or mountainous scenery, but loved the flat, sunny meadows of suffolk, and declared that the river stour made him a painter. in the national gallery are his: _the corn-field_, _the valley farm_ (see _frontispiece_), (a view of "willy lott's house," on the stour, close by flatford mill, the property of the painter's father), _a corn-field with figures_, and _on barnes common_. [illustration: trent in tyrol. _by_ callcott. _in the possession of mr. samuel cartwright._] sir augustus wall callcott ( -- ) has been styled the english claude. he was born at kensington gravel pits, then a pretty suburban spot. he was, for some years, a chorister at westminster abbey, but early adopted painting as his profession. callcott was a pupil of hoppner, and began as a portrait painter. he soon devoted himself to landscape, with an occasional attempt at history. he became a full member of the academy in , his presentation picture being _morning_. his best pictures were produced between and , during which period he produced _the old pier at littlehampton_ (national gallery), _entrance to the pool of london_, _mouth of the tyne_, _calm on the medway_ (earl of durham). callcott married in , and went to italy. on his return in the following year he soon became a fashionable painter. "his pictures, bright, pleasant of surface, and finished in execution, were suited to the appreciation of the public, and not beyond their comprehension; commissions poured in upon him." (_redgrave._) the queen knighted him in , and in the same year he exhibited his _raphael and the fornarina_, engraved for the art union by l. stocks, which, if it possesses few faults, excites no enthusiasm. in appeared _milton dictating paradise lost to his daughter_, a large picture, which overtaxed the decaying powers of the artist. among callcott's later pictures are _dutch peasants returning from market_, and _entrance to pisa from leghorn_. as a figure painter he does not appear at his best. examples of this class are _falstaff and simple_, and _anne page and slender_ (sheepshanks collection). [illustration: the fisherman's departure. _by_ collins. _painted in_ a.d. _for mr. morrison_.] william collins ( -- ) was born in london, where his father carried on business as a picture dealer, in addition to the somewhat uncertain calling of a journalist. the future painter was introduced to morland, a friend of his father, and learnt many things, some to be imitated, others to be avoided, in that artist's studio. from he exhibited at the academy, of which he became a full member in . he exhibited one hundred and twenty-one pictures in a period of forty years, specially devoting himself to landscape, with incidents of ordinary life. now he would paint children swinging on a gate, as in _happy as a king_ (national gallery); children bird-nesting, or sorrowing for their play-fellows, as in _the sale of the pet lamb_. collins was also specially successful in his treatment of cottage and coast scenery, as in _the haunts of the sea-fowl_, _the prawn catchers_ (national gallery), and _fishermen on the look-out_. after visiting italy, collins forsook for a time his former manner, and painted the _cave of ulysses_, and the _bay of naples_; but neither here nor in the _christ in the temple with the doctors_, and _the two disciples at emmaus_, do we see him at his best. he wisely returned to his first style. william linton ( -- ) was employed in a merchant's office in liverpool, but quitted it to begin an artist's career in london. in , he exhibited his first picture, _the morning after the storm_. after visiting the continent, linton returned to england, and produced pictures of the classic scenes he had studied. after a second foreign tour, in which he visited greece, sicily, and calabria, he exhibited _the embarkation of the greeks for troy_, _the temples of pæstum_ (national gallery), and several works of a like character. patrick nasmyth ( -- ), son of a scotch landscape painter, was born in edinburgh, and came to london. his first exhibited picture at the academy was a _view of loch katrine_, in . in the british institution gallery of the same year his _loch auchray_ appeared. it is by his pictures of simple english scenery that nasmyth is best known. he took hobbema and wynants as models, and chose country lanes, hedge-rows, with dwarf oak-trees, for his subjects. nasmyth was deaf in consequence of an illness, and having lost the use of his right hand by an accident, painted with his left. in the national gallery are a _cottage_, and _the angler's nook_; at south kensington are _landscape with an oak_, _cottage by a brook_, and _landscape with a haystack_. [illustration: st. gomer, brussels. _by_ david roberts.] david roberts ( -- ), a native of stockbridge, near edinburgh, began life as a house-decorator, and, becoming a scene-painter, found employment at drury lane in . marked success in this capacity led him to attempt a higher flight in architectural landscape. he exhibited _rouen cathedral_ at the academy in , and very often contributed pictures to the british institution and society of british artists; of the last-named body he was a foundation-member. roberts made a tour in spain for materials of pictures and sketches; noteworthy among the results of this journey are _the cathedral of burgos_, an exterior view, and a small interior of the same, now in the national gallery. extending his travels to the east, roberts produced _the ruins of baalbec_, and _jerusalem from the south-east_. he was made a full member of the academy in , and lived to see his pictures sold for far higher prices than he had originally assigned to them. david roberts is well known by "sketches in the holy land, syria, and egypt." richard parkes bonington ( -- ) passed most of his life abroad. he studied in the louvre when a child, and gained his knowledge of art exclusively in paris and italy. his influence on the french school of _genre_ and dramatic art was very great indeed, almost equal to that which constable produced on the french artists in landscape. he died, aged twenty-seven, from the effects of a sunstroke received while sketching in paris. bonington excelled in landscape, marine, and figure subjects. he exhibited in the british institution, among other pictures, two _views of the french coast_, which attracted much notice, and _the column of st. mark's_, _venice_ (national gallery). sir richard wallace possesses several of his best works, notably _henri iv. and the spanish ambassador_. [illustration: francis i. and his sister. _by_ bonington. _in the possession of sir richard wallace, bart._] william john mÜller ( -- ) was another landscape painter whose career was brief, and who chiefly painted foreign scenery. he travelled in germany, italy and switzerland, and for a time practised as a landscape painter at bath, though with little success. in müller visited greece and egypt, and in he was in lycia. he had previously settled in london. his pictures were chiefly of oriental scenes, and his fame was rapidly growing when he died. his works now command high prices. in the national gallery we have a _landscape, with two lycian peasants_, and a _river scene_. john martin ( -- ) held a distinguished place as a painter of poetic or imaginative landscapes and architectural subjects. he was born near hexham, and began the study of art in the humble field of coach painting at newcastle. coming to london, martin worked at enamel painting, and in exhibited his first picture at the academy, _sadak in search of the waters of oblivion_, which is one of his best works. this was followed by _joshua commanding the sun to stand still_ ( ), _the death of moses_ ( ), _the last man_ (from campbell's poem), _the eve of the deluge_, _destruction of sodom and gomorrah_, &c. martin's most famous works were not exhibited at the academy, _e.g._ _belshazzar's feast_, _the fall of babylon_, and _the fall of nineveh_. many of his compositions were engraved, securing for them a wide circulation. mr. redgrave said: "we can hardly agree with bulwer, that martin was 'more original, more self-dependent than raphael or michael angelo.'" but if in his lifetime martin was over-praised, he was unjustly depreciated afterwards. many of his brother artists and the public, when the first astonishment his pictures created had passed away, called his art a trick and an illusion, his execution mechanical, his colouring bad, his figures vilely drawn, their actions and expressions bombastic and ridiculous. but, granting this, wholly or partially, it must be remembered that his art, or manner, was original; that it opened new views, which yielded glimpses of the sublime, and dreams and visions that art had not hitherto displayed; and that others, better prepared by previous study, working after him, have delighted, and are still delighting, the world with their works. [illustration: belshazzar's feast. _by_ john martin. _exhibited at the british institution in_ a.d. .] the norwich school. we must now speak of a provincial school of landscape painters which was founded by john crome ( -- ). the father of the norwich society of artists is generally known as "old crome," to distinguish him from his son, who was likewise a painter. crome, the son of a journey-man weaver, born in a small tavern at norwich, was in due course apprenticed to a house and sign-painter. the young house-painter spent his spare time in painting something more attractive than the walls of houses, and chose the scenery round norwich for his subjects. the flat, sunny landscapes, dotted with farms and cottages, through which the sleeping river glided slowly, and the norfolk broads, with their flocks of wild fowl, remained to the last the frequent subjects of crome's pencil. determining to be a painter in good earnest, crome, when his apprenticeship was over, eked out his scanty resources by giving lessons in drawing and painting. at the royal academy he exhibited only fourteen pictures, but in his native town one hundred and ninety-six. with the exception of _the blacksmith's shop_, all the works shown at the academy were landscapes. "he wanted but little subject: an aged oak, a pollard willow by the side of the slow norfolk streams, or a patch of broken ground, in his hands became pictures charming us by their sweet colour and rustic nature." "crome seems to have founded his art on hobbema, ruysdael, and the dutch school, rather than on the french and italian painters; except so far as these were represented by our countryman, wilson, whose works he copied, and whose influence is seen mingled with the more realistic treatment derived from the dutch masters." (_redgrave._) in the national gallery are his _mousehold heath_, _view of chapel field_, and _windmill on a heath_: all views near norwich. _a clump of trees, hautbois common_ (fitzwilliam gallery, cambridge), is another favourable specimen of his art. james stark ( -- ) was a pupil of crome, and takes rank next to him in the norwich school. in , he was elected a member of the norwich society of artists. in , he came to london, and became a student in the royal academy. there appeared some of his best works: _boys bathing_, _flounder fishing_, and _lambeth, looking towards westminster bridge_. illness obliged stark to return to norwich, where he produced his "scenery of the rivers yare and waveney, norfolk;" a series of illustrations engraved by goodall and others. stark lacked the vigour of crome in colour and drawing. george vincent ( --about ) is best known for his _view of greenwich hospital_, shown from the river. it was painted for mr. carpenter, of the british museum, and was in the international exhibition of . vincent was specially fond of sunlight effects or clouds in his pictures. john sell cotman ( -- ) having escaped the life of a linen-draper's shopman, devoted himself to art, and coming to london found a friend and patron in dr. monro. from to cotman exhibited pictures at the academy, and, returning to norwich, was made a member and secretary of the society of artists there. in the year he contributed to the norwich exhibition sixty-seven works. cotman paid many visits to normandy, and after was professor of drawing in king's college school, london. he was more successful as a water-colour artist than a painter in oils. he painted chiefly landscapes, marine pieces, and executed many engravings of architecture. the norwich school no longer exists as a distinct body. * * * * * francis danby ( -- ) excelled martin in the poetry of landscape art. he was born near wexford, and gained his first knowledge of art in dublin, where, in , he exhibited his first picture, _evening_. in , he was established at bristol as a teacher of drawing in water colour. he became known to the artistic world of london by his _upas tree of java_, which was at the british institution of , an intensely poetic work, now in the national gallery. his _sunset at sea after a storm_, exhibited at the royal academy in , was purchased by sir thomas lawrence. a year later danby exhibited _the delivery of israel out of egypt_, for which he was elected an a.r.a. he is most famous, however, for quiet scenes, calm evenings at sea, sunset effects, combined with some poetic incident, and always remarkable for great brilliancy of colour, among which are _the artist's holiday_ and _the evening gun_. in the national gallery is _the fisherman's home, sunrise_. he never became a r.a. william clarkson stanfield ( -- ) holds one of the highest places among english landscape and marine painters. beginning life as a sailor in the royal navy, he sketched vessels as they passed his own. a severe fall compelled retirement from the navy. he began his art career as a scene-painter in the old royalty theatre, wellclose square, and later became scene-painter to drury lane theatre. his first exhibited picture was _a river scene_ in the academy, . in the same year _a study from nature_ was at the british institution. he exhibited _ben venu_, and _a coast scene_, at the institution in . in , he was a foundation-member of the society of british artists, and sent five pictures to their first exhibition in that year. stanfield's large _wreckers off fort rouge_, was exhibited at the british institution in . in appeared _a calm_, in the royal academy. from that time stanfield's success was assured. his truthfulness in reading nature, whether in naval battle scenes, views of foreign sea-ports, or mountain and river scenery, has seldom if ever been surpassed. he became a full member of the academy in . an unwearied worker, he exhibited one hundred and thirty-two pictures at the royal academy. we may mention _the battle of trafalgar_; _the victory, with nelson's body on board, towed into gibraltar_; _entrance to the zuyder zee_; _lake of como_, and _the canal of the giudecca, venice_ (all in the national gallery). among his earlier works are _mount st. michael, cornwall_; _a storm_; _a fisherman off honfleur_, and _the opening of new london bridge_. [illustration: terminati marina. _by_ stanfield. a.d. . _in the possession of the marquis of lansdowne._] james baker pyne ( -- ), born in bristol, began life in a solicitor's office, which he quitted to make a precarious subsistence by painting, teaching, or restoring pictures. he went to london in , where a picture exhibited a year after at the academy attracted notice, and opened the way of success. he became famous as a delineator of lake scenery, and for _pseudo_-turner-like treatment of sunlight effects. thomas creswick ( -- ), one of the most pleasing modern english landscape painters, was born at sheffield. he came to london when only seventeen, and his pictures were exhibited by the british institution and the royal academy in that year, . having settled in london, he delighted lovers of landscape with views in ireland and wales, and, later, turned his attention to the north of england, the rocky dales and rivers of which furnished subjects for his finest works. in , he was elected an associate of the academy, and received a premium of fifty guineas from the british institution for the general excellence of his productions. in , creswick became a full member of the academy, and somewhat later executed pictures into which frith and ansdell introduced figures and cattle. there is a charm in his paintings, the character of which may be gathered from _the old foot road_, _the hall garden_, _the pleasant way home_, _the valley mill_, _the blithe brook_, _across the beck_. in the national gallery is _the pathway to the village church_. "he painted the homely scenery of his country, especially its streams, in all its native beauty and freshness; natural, pure, and simple in his treatment and colour, careful and complete in his finish, good taste prevailing in all his works, and conspicuously so in his charming contributions to the works of the etching club, of which he was a valued member, and also in his many designs on wood." (_redgrave._) [illustration: the pleasant way home. _by_ creswick. _exhibited in ._] john linnell ( -- ) the son of a carver and gilder in bloomsbury, was at first brought up to his father's trade, and had many opportunities of studying pictures. at eight years of age he copied morland so well that his versions were often taken for originals. soon afterwards he became a pupil of john varley, and in his studio met mulready and w. h. hunt, with whom he frequently went on sketching tours. in , when only fifteen years of age, linnell sent his first pictures, _a study from nature_, and _a view near reading_, to the royal academy exhibition, to which for more than seventy years he was a regular contributor. he frequently painted portraits, and was particularly successful in landscapes with many trees. mr. ruskin says, "the forest studies of john linnell are particularly elaborate, and in many points most skilful." for many years towards the close of his life he lived at redhill, with his two sons and his son-in-law, samuel palmer, all landscape painters, near him. during his long life he painted many hundred pictures, which are now for the most part scattered in private galleries in england. two of his works are in the national gallery, _wood cutters_, and _the windmill_; and three at south kensington, _wild flower gatherers_, _milking time_, and _driving cattle_. edward william cooke ( -- ), the son of an engraver, was intended for his father's profession; but he preferred the brush to the graver. in he was made an associate and in a full member of the royal academy, to whose exhibitions he was a most constant contributor: he also exhibited at the british institution. his works are, for the most part, coast and river scenes, generally in england, and frequently on the thames or medway. paintings by him are in the national gallery and the south kensington museum. [illustration] chapter x. historic painters. many of our painters who aspired to high art in the field of history were forced to abandon these ambitious designs, and confine themselves to the more lucrative branches of their calling. it was not so with william hilton ( -- ), who, although chilled and saddened by neglect, and generally unable to sell his pictures, maintained his position as a history painter, and suffered neither poverty nor the coldness of the public to turn him aside. few details are known of his life; he was a gentle, silent, and retiring man, who knew much sorrow and shunned publicity. rescued from a trade to which he was destined, hilton was allowed to learn drawing, and became a pupil of j. raphael smith, the mezzotint engraver. he entered the academy schools, and paid special attention to the anatomy of the figure. his earliest known productions were a series of designs in oil to illustrate "the mirror," and "the citizen of the world." hilton's early exhibited works had classic subjects, such as _cephalus and procris_, _venus carrying the wounded achilles_, and _ulysses and calypso_. in , he produced a large historic painting, called _citizens of calais delivering the keys to edward iii._, for which the british institution awarded him a premium of fifty guineas. for the _entombment of christ_ he received a second premium, and for _edith discovering the dead body of harold_ a third of one hundred guineas. nevertheless, the public did not appreciate his works, and they were unsold. the directors of the british institution, who had already marked their sense of this painter's ability, purchased two of his sacred pieces, _mary anointing the feet of jesus_, which was presented to the church of st. michael, in the city, and _christ crowned with thorns_, which was given to that of st. peter's, eaton square, but which has since been sold. in hilton became a full member of the academy, and was appointed keeper in , a position for which he was specially fitted, and where he gained the affection of the students. in the next year he married. the death of his wife, in , crushed his energy and hope. he saw himself painting for a public which did not value his art. [illustration: the rape of europa. _by_ hilton. a.d. . _in the possession of the earl of egremont._] in addition to the above examples, we may mention hilton's _serena rescued by the red cross knight, sir calepine_, and _the meeting of abraham's servant with rebekah_ (national gallery), and a triptych of _the crucifixion_, which is at liverpool. most of hilton's works are falling to decay through the use of asphaltum. benjamin robert haydon ( -- ) was the son of a bookseller at plymouth, and his "fitful life"--marked by "restless and importunate vanity"--was ended by his own act. haydon refused to follow his father's business, and insisted on becoming a painter. of his thoughts, hopes, and dreams, we have been well informed. he was in the habit of writing in an elaborate diary all that concerned himself. he came to london in with £ in his pocket, entered the academy schools, and worked there with vigour and self-reliance. northcote did not encourage his enthusiastic countryman when he told him that as an historic painter "he would starve with a bundle of straw under his head." we admire the courage of haydon in holding fast to the branch of art he had embraced, but his egotism fulfilled the prophecy of northcote. when twenty-one, haydon ordered a canvas for _joseph and mary resting on the road to egypt_, and he prayed over the blank canvas that god would bless his career, and enable him to create a new era in art. lord mulgrave became his patron, and this may have added to the painter's hopes. he painted _dentatus_, and, intoxicated by flattery, believed the production of this his second work would mark "an epoch in english art." _dentatus_, however, was hung in the ante-room of the royal academy, and coldly received. in , he began _lady macbeth_ for sir george beaumont; quarrelling with his patron, he lost the commission, but worked on at the picture. although deeply in debt, he quarrelled with those who would have been his friends. his _judgment of solomon_, a very fine picture, was painted under great difficulties and privations. west, the president, whom the painter accused of hostility to him, is said to have shed tears of admiration at the sight of this work, and sent haydon a gift of £ . _solomon_ was sold for guineas, and the british institution awarded another hundred guineas as a premium to its author. in haydon produced _christ's entry into jerusalem_, and during its progress he, as he recorded, "held intercourse only with his art and his creator." this picture was exhibited at the egyptian hall, piccadilly, and brought a large sum of money to the painter. unsold in england, the work of which haydon had expected much was purchased for £ , and sent to america. he established an art school, where several able painters were trained, but the master was constantly in great pecuniary difficulties. in , he exhibited the _the raising of lazarus_, containing twenty figures, each nine feet high, which is now in the national gallery. of this work mr. redgrave says: "the first impression of the picture is imposing; the general effect powerful, and well suited to the subject; the incidents and grouping well conceived; the colouring good, and in parts brilliant. the christ is weak, probably the weakest, though the chief figure in the picture." misfortune still dogged the painter. he was thrown into prison for debt; released, he worked in poverty, afraid of his "wicked-eyed, wrinkled, waddling, gin-drinking, dirty-ruffled landlady." the closing scenes of his life grew darker and darker. in , he painted _venus and anchises_, on commission, began _alexander taming bucephalus_, and _euclus_, and was once more in prison. an appeal in the newspapers produced money enough to set him again at liberty. then appeared the _mock election_, and _chairing the member_, the former being purchased by the king. no success, however, seemed to stem the tide of haydon's misfortunes. he lectured on art with great ability in , continued painting for bread, and finally, disgusted by the cold reception of _aristides_, and _nero watching the burning of rome_, the over-wrought mind of the unfortunate man gave way, and he committed suicide, leaving this brief entry in his journal--"god forgive me! amen. finis. b. r. haydon. 'stretch me no longer on the rack of this sad world.'--_lear_." a sad finish to his ambitious hopes! of haydon's art generally mr. redgrave says: "he was a good anatomist and draughtsman, his colour was effective, the treatment of his subject and conception were original and powerful; but his works have a hurried and incomplete look, his finish is coarse, sometimes woolly, and not free from vulgarity." [illustration: the dangerous playmate. _by_ etty. a.d. . _in the national gallery._] william etty ( -- ), the son of a miller at york, had few advantages to help him on the road to fame. his education was slight, and his early years were spent as a printer's apprentice in hull. but he had determined to be a painter; and his motto was, as he tells us, "_perseverance_." in , he visited an uncle, in lombard street, and became a student at the academy, though his earliest art-school was a plaster-cast shop in cock lane. through his uncle's generosity, he became a pupil of lawrence, who had little time to attend to him. though overwhelmed with difficulties etty persevered bravely. he laboured diligently in the "life school," tried in vain for all the medals, sent his pictures to the academy only to see them rejected; unlike haydon, he never lost heart. in _the coral finders_ was exhibited at the academy, and in the following year _cleopatra_. his patience and diligence were rewarded; henceforth his career was one of success. in , he visited italy, and in became a full member of the academy. his art was very unequal. he chiefly devoted himself, however, to painting women, as being the embodiments of beauty. as a colourist few english painters have rivalled him, and as a painter of flesh he stands high. as showing the different forms of his many-sided art, we may mention _judith and holofernes_, _benaiah_, _the eve of the deluge_, _youth on the prow and pleasure at the helm_, _the imprudence of candaules_, _the dangerous playmate_, and _the magdalen_ (all in the national gallery). etty died unmarried, and the possessor of a considerable fortune. henry perronet briggs ( -- ), distinguished as an historic and portrait painter, began his art studies at the academy in , and was made a full member of that body in . his best-known works are _othello relating his adventures_, _the first conference between the spaniards and peruvians_, and _juliet and her nurse_; the two latter are in the national gallery. this master in his later years forsook historical painting for portraiture. [illustration: greek fugitives. _by_ eastlake. _painted for sir matthew white ridley, bart._ _exhibited at the royal academy in_ a.d. .] charles lock eastlake ( -- ), son of the solicitor to the admiralty in that town, was born at plymouth, and educated first in plympton grammar school, where reynolds had studied, and afterwards at the charterhouse, london. choosing the profession of a painter, he was encouraged, doubtless, by his fellow-townsman, haydon, who had just exhibited _dentatus_. eastlake became the pupil of that erratic master, and attended the academy schools. in , he exhibited at the british institution a large and ambitious picture, _christ raising the daughter of the ruler_. in the following year the young painter was sent by mr. harman to paris, to copy some of the famous works collected by napoleon in the louvre. the emperor's escape from elba, and the consequent excitement in europe, caused eastlake to quit paris, and he returned to plymouth, where he practised successfully as a portrait painter. a portrait of napoleon, which eastlake enlarged from his sketch of the emperor on board the _bellerophon_ when bound for st. helena, appeared in . this picture now belongs to lord clinton. in the same year he exhibited _brutus exhorting the romans to avenge the death of lucretia_. in eastlake visited greece and italy, and spent fourteen years abroad, chiefly at ferrara and rome. the picturesque dress of the italian and greek peasantry so fascinated him that for a long period he forsook history for small _genre_ works, of which brigands and peasants were the chief subjects. a large historical painting, _mercury bringing the golden apple to paris_, appeared in . seven years later, _the spartan isidas_, now in the possession of the duke of devonshire, was exhibited at the academy, and procured for the painter the associateship. it illustrates the story told by plutarch, in his "life of agesilaus," of the young warrior called suddenly in his bath to oppose the thebans. rushing forth naked with his sword and spear, he drove back the thebans and escaped unhurt. in , eastlake produced _italian scene in the anno santo, pilgrims arriving in sight of st. peter's_, which he twice repeated. in _lord byron's dream_, a poetic landscape (national gallery), was exhibited, and eastlake becoming an academician, returned to england. then followed _greek fugitives_, _escape of the carrara family from the duke of milan_ (a repetition is in the national gallery), _haidee_ (national gallery), _gaston de foix before the battle of ravenna_, _christ blessing little children_, _christ weeping over jerusalem_ (a repetition is in the national gallery), and _hagar and ishmael_. to his labours as a painter eastlake added the duties of several important offices, and much valuable literary work. he was secretary to the royal commission for decorating the new palace of westminster, librarian of the royal academy, and keeper, and afterwards director of the national gallery. in , he succeeded sir martin shee as president of the royal academy, and was knighted. from that time till his death, at pisa, in , he was chiefly engaged in selecting pictures to be purchased by the british government. he was editor of kugler's "handbook of the italian schools of painting," and author of "materials for a history of oil painting." [illustration: joash shooting the arrows of deliverance. _by_ dyce. a.d. . _in the possession of mr. bicknell._] william dyce ( -- ), a native of aberdeen, commenced his art studies at the royal scottish academy. visiting italy he studied the old masters, and their influence had a lasting effect upon his style. in dyce exhibited at the royal academy _bacchus nursed by the nymphs_. in , he settled in edinburgh, and achieved marked success. _the descent of venus_ appeared at the academy in . having removed to london, dyce exhibited, in , _joash shooting the arrows of deliverance_, and was elected an associate. in , he produced the sketch of a fresco executed at osborne house, _neptune assigning to britannia the empire of the sea_. dyce was chosen, in , to decorate the queen's robing-room in the houses of parliament, and commenced, but did not quite finish, a large series of frescoes illustrating _the legend of king arthur_. he produced other historic works, chiefly of biblical subjects, and of great merit. george harvey ( -- ) was born at st. ninian's, fifeshire, and apprenticed to a bookseller at stirling. he quitted this craft at the age of eighteen, and commenced his art career at edinburgh. in scotland he gained a wide popularity. he took an active part in the establishment of the royal scottish academy, and was knighted in . his favourite subjects were puritan episodes, such as _covenanters' communion_, _bunyan imagining his pilgrim's progress in bedford gaol_, and _the battle of drumclog_. thomas duncan ( -- ), a native of perthshire, first attracted notice by his pictures of a _milkmaid_, and _sir john falstaff_. in , he exhibited at the royal academy his historical painting, _entrance of prince charlie into edinburgh after preston pans_, and next year produced _waefu' heart_, from the ballad of "auld robin gray," which is now at south kensington. [illustration: harold, returned from normandy, presents himself to edward the confessor. _by_ maclise. a.d. . _from the "story of the norman conquest."_] daniel maclise ( -- ) was born at cork, and was intended for the unromantic calling of a banker's clerk. fortunately for the world he soon left the bank stool for the studio of the cork society of arts. in , he transferred his attention to the academy schools in london, and soon obtained the gold medal for the best historic composition, representing _the choice of hercules_. he had previously exhibited _malvolio affecting the count_. in due course appeared, at the british institution, _mokanna unveiling his features to zelica_, and _snap-apple night_, which found a place at the royal academy. maclise became a full academician in . his latter years were chiefly occupied with the famous water-glass pictures in the houses of parliament, _the interview of wellington and blucher after waterloo_, and _the death of nelson at trafalgar_. the noble cartoon (bought by subscriptions of artists, who likewise presented the designer with a gold port-crayon) of the former is now the property of the royal academy. maclise executed many book illustrations, including those for "moore's melodies," and "the pilgrims of the rhine." he executed a noble series of designs delineating _the story of the norman conquest_. a collection of his drawings has been bequeathed to the south kensington museum by mr. john forster. maclise painted a few portraits, among them that of charles dickens, who spoke thus of the dead painter, "of his prodigious fertility of mind and wonderful wealth of intellect, i may confidently assert that they would have made him, if he had been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter. the gentlest, and most modest of men; the freest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants; and the frankest and largest-hearted as to his peers. no artist ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more free from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the goddess whom he worshipped." the most remarkable works of maclise are _macbeth and the witches_; _olivia and sophia fitting out moses for the fair_; _the banquet scene in macbeth_; _ordeal by touch_; _robin hood and coeur de lion_; _the play scene in hamlet_ (national gallery); _malvolio and the countess_ (national gallery). charles landseer ( -- ), the elder brother of the more famous sir edwin landseer, was a pupil of haydon and the royal academy schools. in appeared his _sacking of basing house_ (now in the national gallery). he was elected an a.r.a. in the following year, became a full member in , and keeper in . amongst other good works by him are _clarissa harlowe in the spunging house_ (national gallery), _charles ii. escaping in disguise from colonel lane's house_, and _the eve of the battle of edgehill_. charles lucy ( -- ) began life as a chemist's apprentice in his native town of hereford. he soon forsook the counter, and went to paris to study painting. coming to london, he exhibited _caractacus and his family before the emperor claudius_, a work which formed the introduction to a long series of historic pictures, noteworthy among which are _the parting of charles i. with his children_, _the parting of lord and lady russell_, and _buonaparte in discussion with the savants_, all of which were exhibited at the academy. lucy established a great reputation in europe and america. john phillip ( -- ) was one of the best colourists of the english school. he was a native of aberdeen, began life as an errand boy to what the scotch call a "tin smith," and afterwards became an apprentice to a painter and glazier, and seems to have had instruction in his early pursuit of art from a portrait painter of his native town, named forbes, who was very generous to him. a picture by phillip secured him the patronage of lord panmure, who sent him to london. in the young painter entered the academy schools. he exhibited two portraits in , and two years later returned to aberdeen, exhibiting in the royal academy _tasso in disguise relating his persecutions to his sister_. once more returning to london, phillip exhibited _the catechism_, and several pictures of scottish life, as _the baptism_, _the spae wife_, _the free kirk_. illness compelled him to visit spain in , and here he produced many excellent pictures of spanish life, which greatly added to his reputation, and gained for him the sobriquet of "don phillip of spain." _a visit to gipsy quarters_, _the letter-writer of seville_, and _el paseo_ are examples of his spanish pictures. in phillip was elected associate of the royal academy, and exhibited the _prison window in seville_. elected a full member in , he painted next year _the marriage of the princess royal_, by command of the queen. _la gloria_, one of his most celebrated works, appeared in . his pictures combine correctness of drawing with boldness, if not refinement, of colouring--which is seldom met with in the works of our best painters. alfred elmore ( -- ), an irishman by birth, won for himself fame as a painter of historic scenes and _genre_ subjects. among his works are _rienzi in the forum_; _the invention of the stocking loom_ and _the invention of the combing machine_; _marie antoinette in the tuileries_; _marie antoinette in the temple_; _ophelia_; and _mary queen of scots and darnley_. he was elected a r.a. in . [illustration] chapter xi. subject painters. domestic subject, or _genre_, painting in england may be said to have originated with hogarth, but it made slow progress after his death till the commencement of the nineteenth century. historic pictures of a large size were neither popular nor profitable. corporate bodies did not care to spend money on the adornment of their guild halls, and ordinary householders had no room for large pictures. englishmen are essentially _domestic_, and pictures small enough to hang in small houses, and illustrative of home life, suit their necessities, and appeal to their feelings far more strongly than vast canvases representing battles or sacred histories. in _genre_ painting the dutch school has ever been prominent; to it we doubtless owe much of the popularity of this branch of art in england, where our painters have chosen familiar subjects, without descending to the coarse or sensual incidents in which some old dutch artists delighted. the _genre_ painters of this country have mainly drawn their subjects from our national poets and prose writers and the every-day life of englishmen, sometimes verging on the side of triviality, but on the whole including pleasing works, which, as it has been well said, "bear the same relation to historic art as the tale or novel does to history." david wilkie ( -- ) was born in his father's manse at cults, fifeshire. it was fully intended that wilkie should follow in his father's steps, and become a minister of the scottish kirk, but it was not to be so. he was placed, at his own earnest desire, in the trustees' academy, at edinburgh, and there in justified the wisdom of this choice by gaining the ten-guinea premium for the best painting of the time, the subject being _callisto in the baths of diana_. next year young wilkie visited his home, and painted _piltassie fair_, which he sold for £ . he painted portraits, and with the money thus acquired went to london in . having entered himself as a student at the academy, wilkie soon attracted attention by the _village politicians_, which was exhibited at the royal academy in . one hundred of his paintings appeared from time to time on the academy walls; each succeeding early work added to its author's fame. all his earlier works were _genre_ pictures. his favourite subjects are shown in _the blind fiddler_, _card-players_, _the rent day_, _the jew's harp_, _the cut finger_, _the village festival_, _blindman's buff_, _the letter of introduction_, _duncan gray_, _the penny wedding_, _reading the will_, _the parish beadle_, and _the chelsea pensioners_, the last painted for the duke of wellington. wilkie was elected a.r.a. in , and a full member in . he went abroad in , and again in , when he visited germany, italy, and spain. the study of the old masters, especially correggio, rembrandt, and velazquez, had a marked effect on wilkie, who changed both his style and subjects. he forsook _genre_ for history and portraiture, and substituted a light effective style of handling for the careful execution of his earlier works. _john knox preaching_ (national gallery) is a good specimen of this second period of wilkie's art. he succeeded sir thomas lawrence in as painter in ordinary to the king, and was knighted six years later. in wilkie visited the east, and painted the portrait of the sultan abdul medjid. next year, whilst far from home, on board a steamer off gibraltar, he died, and found a grave in the sea. there are eleven of his pictures in the national gallery. her majesty possesses most of the pictures painted by wilkie in spain, such as _the guerilla council of war_, and _the maid of saragossa_. another spanish picture, painted in england, is _two spanish monks in the cathedral of toledo_, belonging to the marquis of lansdowne. in it we notice the painting of the hands, which are full of life and action, a characteristic in which wilkie excelled. "his early art certainly made a great impression on the english school, showing how dutch art might be nationalized, and story and sentiment added to scenes of common life treated with truth and individuality. as to his middle time, such pictures as the _john knox_ also had their influence on the school, and the new mode of execution as supported by wilkie's authority, a very evil influence, bringing discredit upon english pictures as entirely wanting in permanency. his methods and the pigments he used were soon discarded in england, but at the time they influenced, and have continued to influence, his countrymen long after his death." (_redgrave._) [illustration: the maid of saragossa. _by_ wilkie. a.d. . _in the possession of the queen._] william frederick witherington ( -- ) combined landscape and subject painting in his art. he exhibited his first picture, _tintern abbey_, in , and his succeeding works were principally landscapes and figure subjects in combination. witherington was elected a.r.a. in , and became a full member ten years later. favourable specimens of his thoroughly english and pleasing pictures are _the stepping stones_ and _the hop garland_ in the national gallery, and _the hop garden_ in the sheepshanks collection at south kensington. abraham cooper ( -- ), the son of an inn-keeper, was born in london, and early showed singular skill with his pencil. the inn stables furnished his first and favoured subjects, and the portrait of a favourite horse belonging to sir henry meux gained him his first patron. in cooper exhibited at the british institution _tam o'shanter_, which was purchased by the duke of marlborough. in _the battle of marston moor_ secured his election as an associate of the academy: he became a r.a. in . there is little variety in the subjects of this painter's works. the best known are _the pride of the desert_, _hawking in the olden time_, _the dead trooper_, _richard i._ and _saladin at the battle of ascalon_, and _bothwell's seizure of mary, queen of scots_. william mulready ( -- ), the ablest _genre_ painter in england except wilkie, was born at ennis, in the county clare. although his works are familiar to most of us as household words, few details of his life are known. we know that his father was a maker of leather-breeches, and that he came to london with his son when the latter was about five years old. the child is said to have shown very early the artistic power which was in him. he sat as a model for solomon to john graham, who was illustrating macklin's bible and probably the surroundings of the studio stimulated young mulready's artistic instincts. by the recommendation of banks, the sculptor, he gained entrance to the academy schools; at the age of fifteen he required no further pecuniary aid from his parents. mulready worked in the academy schools, as he worked through life, with all his heart and soul. he declared he always painted as though for a prize, and that when he had begun his career in the world he tried his hand at everything, "from a caricature to a panorama." he was a teacher all his life, and this accounts, perhaps, for the careful completeness of his pictures. mulready married when very young, and did not secure happiness. he began by painting landscapes, but in produced _old kasper_, from southey's poem of "the battle of blenheim," his first subject picture. _the rattle_ appeared a year later, and marked advance. both pictures bear evidence that their author had studied the dutch masters. in mulready was chosen a.r.a., but before his name could appear in the catalogue he had attained to the rank of a full member. this was in , when he exhibited _the fight interrupted_ (sheepshanks collection). from this time he was a popular favourite, and his pictures, of which he exhibited on an average scarcely two a year, were eagerly looked for. we may specify _the wolf and the lamb_, _the last in_, _fair time_, _crossing the ford_, _the young brother_, _the butt_, _giving a bite_, _choosing the wedding gown_, and _the toyseller_ (all in the national gallery or in the south kensington museum). "with the exception perhaps of some slight deterioration in his colouring, which of late years was obtrusively purple, he was in the enjoyment of the full powers of his great abilities for upwards of half a century. * * * he was distinguished by the excellence of his life studies, three of which in red and black chalks, presented by the society of arts, are in the gallery." (_national gallery catalogue._) [illustration: choosing the wedding gown. _by_ mulready, a.d. . _in the sheepshanks gallery in the south kensington museum._] alexander fraser ( -- ), a native of edinburgh, exhibited his first picture, _the green stall_, in . having settled in london, he became an assistant to his countryman wilkie, and for twenty years painted the still-life details of wilkie's pictures. the influence of his master's art is visible in fraser's pictures, which are usually founded upon incidents and scenes in scotland, as, for example, _interior of a highland cottage_ (national gallery) and _sir walter scott dining with one of the blue-gown beggars of edinburgh_. other examples are _the cobbler at lunch_, _the blackbird and his tutor_, and _the village sign-painter_. [illustration: sancho panza and the duchess. _by_ leslie. a.d. . _in the national gallery._] charles robert leslie ( -- ) was born in london, probably in clerkenwell, of american parents. his father was a clockmaker from philadelphia, who returned with his family to america when the future painter was five years old. the boy was apprenticed to a bookseller, but his true vocation was decided by a portrait which he made of cooke, the english tragedian, who was performing in philadelphia. this work attracted so much notice among leslie's friends that a subscription was raised to send him to england, the bookseller, his master, liberally contributing. in , leslie became a student of the royal academy, and received instruction from his countrymen washington allston and benjamin west. leslie, however, considered teaching of little value. he said that, if materials were provided, a man was his own best teacher, and he speaks of "fuseli's wise neglect" of the academy students. influenced, probably, by the example of allston and west, leslie began by aiming at classic art. he mentions that he was reading "telemachus," with a view to a subject, and among his early works was _saul and the witch of endor_. even when he commenced to draw subjects from shakespeare, he turned first to the historic plays, and painted _the death of rutland_ and _the murder scene from "macbeth_." unlike wilkie and mulready, leslie did not strive to _create_ subjects for his pictures. he preferred to ramble through literature, and to select a scene or episode for his canvas. wilkie invented scenes illustrating the festivities of the lower classes, mulready chose similar incidents; it was left to leslie to adopt "genteel comedy." like his countryman and adviser, washington irving, he had visited, doubtless, many scenes of quiet english country life, and one of these is reproduced in his well-known picture of _sir roger de coverley going to church_, which was exhibited in . he had previously shown his power in humorous subjects by painting _ann page and slender_. leslie had discovered his true vocation, and continued to work in the department of the higher _genre_ with unabated success. the patronage of lord egremont, for whom he painted, in , _sancho panza in the apartment of the duchess_, was the means of procuring him many commissions. the picture in the national gallery, of which we give an illustration, is a replica with slight alterations, executed many years later. he married in , and became a full member of the academy a year later. in he exhibited _the dinner at page's house_, from "the merry wives of windsor"--one of his finest works. no painter has made us so well acquainted with the delightful old reprobate, falstaff, with bardolph, and the merry company who drank sack at the boar's head in eastcheap. there is a repetition of _the dinner at page's house_ in the sheepshanks collection, slightly varied from the first, and bearing traces of constable's influence. in , leslie was appointed teacher of drawing at the american academy at west point, and with his family he removed thither. it was a mistake, and the painter returned to england within a year. he illustrated shakespeare, cervantes, goldsmith, and sterne, the latter furnishing him with the subject of _uncle toby and the widow wadman_. in , leslie, by request of the queen, painted _her majesty's coronation_--which is very unlike the usual pictures of a state ceremonial. in he was commissioned to paint _the christening of the princess royal_. the domestic life of leslie was peaceful and prosperous, till the death of a daughter gave a shock from which he never recovered. he died may , . mr. redgrave says of his art, "leslie entered into the true spirit of the writer he illustrated. his characters appear the very individuals who have filled our mind. beauty, elegance, and refinement, varied, and full of character, or sparkling with sweet humour, were charmingly depicted by his pencil; while the broader characters of another class, from his fine appreciation of humour, are no less truthfully rendered, and that with an entire absence of any approach to vulgarity. the treatment of his subject is so simple that we lose the sense of a picture, and feel that we are looking upon a scene as it must have happened. he drew correctly and with an innate sense of grace. his colouring is pleasing, his costume simple and appropriate." [illustration: captain macheath. _by_ newton. a.d. . _in the possession of the marquis of lansdowne._] gilbert stuart newton ( -- ), connected with leslie by friendship and similarity of taste, was a native of halifax, nova scotia. in , when travelling in europe, newton met with leslie at paris, and returned with him to london. he was a student of the academy, and soon attracted attention by _the forsaken_, _lovers' quarrels_, and _the importunate author_, which were exhibited at the british institution. newton began to exhibit at the academy in , and delighted the world with _don quixote in his study_, and _captain macheath upbraided by polly and lucy_. in he surpassed these works with _the vicar of wakefield reconciling his wife to olivia_, and was elected an a.r.a. _yorick and the grisette_, _cordelia and the physician_, _portia and bassanio_, and similar works followed. in newton became a full member of the academy, and visiting america, married, and returned with his wife to england. the brief remaining period of his life was clouded with a great sorrow; his mind gave way, and having exhibited his last picture, _abelard in his study_, he became altogether insane. augustus leopold egg ( -- ) was born in piccadilly, and on becoming a painter chose similar subjects to those of leslie and newton. he had not the humour of leslie; indeed, most of egg's subjects are melancholy. his first works were italian views, and illustrations of scott's novels, which attracted little notice. _the victim_ promised better. egg showed pictures in the suffolk street gallery, and, in , _the spanish girl_ appeared at the royal academy. failing health compelled him to winter abroad, and on the rd of march, , he died at algiers, and was buried on a lonely hill. three years before his death egg had become a full member of the academy. he is described as having a greater sense of colour than leslie, but inferior to newton in this respect. in execution he far surpassed the flimsy mannerism of the latter. his females have not the sweet beauty and gentleness of leslie's. in the national gallery is _a scene from "le diable boiteux_," in which the dexterity of egg's execution is visible. he partially concurred with the pre-raphaelites in his later years, and their influence may be traced in _pepys' introduction to nell gwynne_, and in a scene from thackeray's "esmond." other noteworthy pictures are _the life and death of buckingham_; _peter the great sees catherine, his future empress, for the first time_; _the night before naseby_; and _catherine and petruchio_. edwin henry landseer ( -- ) was eminent among english animal painters. no artist has done more to teach us how to love animals and to enforce the truth that-- "he prayeth best who loveth best all things both great and small." not only did landseer rival some of the dutch masters of the seventeenth century in painting fur and feathers, but he depicted animals with sympathy, as if he believed that "the dumb, driven cattle" possess souls. his dogs and other animals are so human as to look as if they were able to speak. the painter was the son of john landseer, the engraver, and was born in london. he received art lessons from his father, and, when little more than a baby, would sketch donkeys, horses, and cows at hampstead heath. some of these sketches, made when landseer was five, seven, and ten years old, are at kensington. he was only fourteen when he exhibited the heads of _a pointer bitch and puppy_. when between sixteen and seventeen he produced _dogs fighting_, which was engraved by the painter's father. still more popular was _the dogs of st. gothard rescuing a distressed traveller_, which appeared when its author was eighteen. landseer was not a pupil of haydon, but he had occasional counsel from him. he dissected a lion. as soon as he reached the age of twenty-four he was elected an a.r.a., and exhibited at the academy _the hunting of chevy chase_. this was in , and in he became a full member of the academy. landseer had visited scotland in , and from that date we trace a change in his style, which thenceforth was far less solid, true and searching, and became more free and bold. the introduction of deer into his pictures, as in _the children of the mist_, _seeking sanctuary_, and _the stag at bay_, marked the influence of scotch associations. landseer was knighted in , and at the french exhibition of was awarded the only large gold medal given to an english artist. prosperous, popular, and the guest of the highest personages of the realm, he was visited about by an illness which compelled him to retire from society. from this he recovered, but the effects of a railway accident in brought on a relapse. he died in , and was buried in st. paul's cathedral. on the death of sir charles eastlake, in , he was offered the presidentship of the royal academy, but this honour he declined. in the national gallery are _spaniels of king charles's breed_, _low life and high life_, _highland music_ (a highland piper disturbing a group of five hungry dogs, at their meal, with a blast on the pipes), _the hunted stag_, _peace_ (of which we give a representation), _war_ (dying and dead horses, and their riders lying amidst the burning ruins of a cottage), _dignity and impudence_, _alexander and diogenes_, _the defeat of comus_, a sketch painted for a fresco in the queen's summer house, buckingham palace. sixteen of landseer's works are in the sheepshanks collection, including the touching _old shepherd's chief mourner_, of which mr. ruskin said that "it stamps its author not as the neat imitator of the texture of a skin, or the fold of a drapery, but as the man of mind." [illustration: peace. _by_ landseer. a.d. . _in the national gallery._] william boxall ( -- ), after study in the royal academy schools and in italy, exhibited at the royal academy in his first picture--_milton's reconciliation with his wife_--and continued to contribute to its exhibitions till . though his first works were historic and allegoric, he finally became famous as a portrait painter, and reckoned among his sitters some of the most eminent men of the time--poets, painters, writers on art, and others, _e.g_. copley fielding, david cox, coleridge, wordsworth. in boxall became an associate, and in a full member of the royal academy; he was director of the national gallery from to ; and received the honour of knighthood in , in recognition of the valuable services which he rendered to art. paul falconer poole ( -- ), a painter of high class of _genre_ pictures as well as of history, exhibited his first picture at the academy in , _the well, a scene at naples_. in he produced _the emigrant's departure_. other pictures are _may queen preparing for the dance_, _the escape of glaucus and ione_, _the seventh day of the decameron_. among the historic works of this artist are _the vision of ezekiel_ (national gallery) and others. poole became a full member of the academy in . george hemming mason ( -- ), a native of witley, staffordshire, found art to be surrounded by difficulties. his father insisted on his following the profession of medicine, and placed him with dr. watts, of birmingham. a portrait painter having visited the doctor's house, young mason borrowed his colour-box, and, unaided, produced a picture of such promise that the artist advised him to follow art. mason left the doctor's house, made his way to italy, and, without any teacher, developed an original style which is marked by simplicity of design, refinement of colour, delicacy of chiaroscuro, and pathos of expression. he was elected a.r.a. in , but died of heart-disease before becoming a full member. mason's best-known works are _campagna di roma_, _the gander_, _the return from ploughing_, _the cast shoe_, _the evening hymn_, and _the harvest moon_, unfinished. robert braithwaite martineau ( -- ), son of one of the masters in chancery, nephew of miss martineau, commenced life as an articled clerk to a solicitor. after four years' study of the law he forsook it for the brighter sphere of art, and entered the academy schools. in martineau exhibited at the academy _kit's writing lesson_, from "the old curiosity shop," which indicated the class of subjects which he delighted in. his _last day in the old house_, and _the last chapter_, by their originality of conception, and exquisite painting, won the artist a renown which he did not long live to enjoy. he died of heart-disease. john frederick lewis ( -- ), the son of an eminent london engraver, began his career in art by painting studies of animals, and in was elected a member of the society of painters in water-colours. he afterwards travelled in spain and italy, painting many subjects, such as a _spanish bullfight_, _monks preaching at seville_, &c., and thence went to the east, where he stayed some years. he returned to england in , and four years afterwards was made president of the water-colour society. in he exhibited _a frank encampment in the desert of mount sinai_, which mr. ruskin called "the climax of water-colour drawing." in the same year he began to paint in oil colours, and frequently exhibited pictures of eastern life, such as _the meeting in the desert_, _a turkish school_, _a café in cairo_, &c. in he was made an associate of the royal academy, and in a full member. in the south kensington museum there are two of lewis's water-colour drawings, _the halt in the desert_ and _peasants of the black forest_, and a few of his studies from nature. [illustration: the arab scribe. _by_ john frederick lewis. a.d. .] edward matthew ward ( -- ) became a student at the academy by the advice of wilkie, who had seen his first picture, a portrait of mr. o. smith as don quixote. in ward was a student in rome. thence he proceeded to munich, and studied fresco-painting with cornelius. in he returned to england, and exhibited _cimabue and giotto_. joining in the competition for the decoration of the houses of parliament, he produced _boadicea_, which was commended, but did not obtain a premium. _dr. johnson reading the ms. of goldsmith's "vicar of wakefield"_, first brought him to notice. it was followed by _dr. johnson in lord chesterfield's ante-room_, and the painter was elected an a.r.a. this work as well as _the disgrace of lord clarendon_, _the south-sea bubble_, and _james ii. receiving the news of the landing of william of orange_, are in the national gallery. in and later ward executed eight historic pictures in the corridor of the house of commons. he was elected a royal academician in . his pictures are too well known to need description; most popular among them are _charlotte corday led to execution_, _the execution of montrose_, _the last sleep of argyll_, _marie antoinette parting with the dauphin_, _the last moments of charles ii._, _the night of rizzio's murder_, _the earl of leicester and amy robsart_, _judge jeffreys and richard baxter_. frederick walker ( -- ) died just as he had fulfilled the promise of his youth. after spending a short time in the office of an architect and surveyor, he left this uncongenial region to practise art. he occasionally studied in the academy schools, and began his artistic career by illustrating thackeray's "philip" in the "cornhill magazine," thus winning much praise. he became a member of the old water-colour society, and an a.r.a. a career full of promise was cut short by death at st. fillan's, perthshire, in : the young painter was buried at his favourite cookham, on the thames. his chief works are _the lost path_, _the bathers_, _the vagrants_, _the old gate_, _the plough_, _the harbour of refuge_, and _the right of way_. mr. redgrave said, "his genius was thoroughly and strikingly original. his works are marked by a method of their own; the drawing, colour, and execution, alike peculiar to himself. they are at once refined and pathetic in sentiment, and novel in their conception of nature and her effects. his figures have the true feeling of rustic life, with the grace of line of the antique." [illustration: our village. _by_ frederick walker. _exhibited at the water-colour society's exhibition._ a.d. .] gabriel charles dante rossetti ( -- ), poet, and painter of sacred subjects and scenes inspired by the writings of dante, was the son of an italian patriot, a political refugee, who became professor of italian in king's college, london. he exhibited at the portland gallery his first picture, _the girlhood of the virgin_, in , and became the founder of the pre-raphaelite school, which included millais, holman hunt, and other artists now celebrated. rossetti's best-known pictures are _dante's dream_ (now at liverpool), _the damosel of the sancte graal_, _the last meeting of lancelot and guinevere_, _the beloved_ (an illustration of the song of solomon), and _proserpina_. he seldom exhibited his paintings in public, but they were seen by art-critics, one of whom wrote (in )--"exuberance in power, exuberance in poetry of a rich order, noble technical gifts, vigour of conception, and a marvellously extensive range of thought and invention appear in nearly everything mr. rossetti produces." he was equally celebrated as a writer of sonnets and a translator of italian poetry. * * * * * it is not within the province of this work to include notice of living artists. to give an account of all the celebrated painters would require another volume. during the past decade art has advanced with steady progress, and we can confidently say that at no time have the ranks of the royal academicians and the two water-colour societies been filled more worthily than at the present day. the last quarter of the nineteenth century is likely to be a golden era in the history of british art. painting in america. by s. r. koehler. [illustration] painting in america. introduction. the history of art in america is in reality the record only of the dying away of the last echoes of movements which had their origin in europe. although the western continent has given birth to new political ideas and new forms of government, not one of its states, not even the greatest of them all, the united states of north america, to which this chapter will be confined, has thus far brought forth a national art, or has exercised any perceptible influence, except in a single instance, on the shaping of the art of the world. nor is this to be wondered at. the newness of the country, the mixture of races from the beginning, and the ever-continuing influx of foreigners, together with the lack of educational facilities, and the consequent necessity of seeking instruction in europe, are causes sufficient to explain the apparent anomaly. even those of the native painters of the united states who kept away from the old world altogether, or visited it too late in life to be powerfully influenced, show but few traces of decided originality in either conception or execution. they also were under the spell, despite the fact that it could not work upon them directly. the attempt has been made to explain this state of things by assuming an incapacity for art on the part of the people of the country, and an atmosphere hostile to its growth, resulting from surrounding circumstances. these conclusions, however, are false. so far as technical skill goes, americans--native as well as adopted--have always shown a remarkable facility of acquisition, and the rapidity with which carpenters, coach-painters, and sign-painters, especially in the earlier period of the country's history, developed into respectable portrait-painters, almost without instruction, will always remain cause for astonishment. of those who went abroad at that time, england readopted four men who became famous (west, copley, newton, leslie), and she still points to them with satisfaction as among the more conspicuous on her roll of artists. nor has this quality been lost with the advance of time. it has, on the contrary, been aided by diligent application; and the successes which have been achieved by american students are recorded in the annals of the french salon. there is one curious trait, however, which will become more and more apparent as we trace the history of art in america, and that is the absence of a national element in the subjects treated. if we except a short flickering of patriotic spirit in the art of what may be called the revolutionary period, and the decided preference given to american scenes by the landscape painters of about the middle of the present century, it may be said that the artists of the country, as a rule, have imported with the technical processes also the subjects of the old world; that they have preferred the mountains of italy and the quiet hamlets of france to the hills of new england and the rocky mountains of the west, the arab to the indian, and the history of the old world to the records of their own ancestors. even the struggle for the destruction of the last vestiges of slavery which was the great work entrusted to this generation, has called forth so few manifestations in art (and these few falling without the limits of the present chapter), that it would not be very far from wrong to speak of it as having left behind it no trace whatever. all this, however, is not the fault of the artists, except in so far as they are themselves part of the nation. the blame attaches to the people as a whole, whose innermost thoughts and highest aspirations the artists will always be called upon to embody in visible form. there is no doubt, from the evidence already given by the painters of america, that they will be equal to the task, should they ever be called upon to exert their skill in the execution of works of monumental art. * * * * * the history of painting in america may be divided into four periods:-- . _the colonial period_, up to the time of the revolution; . _the revolutionary period_, comprising the painters who were eye-witnesses of and participators in the war of independence; . _the period of inner development_, from about the beginning of the century to the civil war; . _the period of the present_. it will be seen that the designations of these divisions are taken from the political rather than the artistic history of the country. and, indeed, it would be difficult to find other distinguishing marks which would allow of a concise nomenclature. as to the influences at work in the several periods, it may be said that the colonial and revolutionary were entirely under the domination of england. in the earlier part of the third period the influence of england continued, but was supplemented by that of italy. later on a number of american artists studied in paris, without, however, coming under the influence of the romantic school, and towards the middle of the century many of them were attracted by düsseldorf. a slight influence was exercised also by the english pre-raphaelites, but it found expression in a literary way rather than in actual artistic performance. in the fourth or present period, finally, the leadership has passed to the colouristic schools of paris and munich, to which nearly all the younger artists have sworn allegiance. first, or colonial period. the paintings which have come down to the present day from the colonial period, so far as they relate to america, are almost without exception portraits. many of these were, as a matter of course, brought over from england and holland; but that there were resident painters in the colonies as early as , is shown by a passage in cotton mather's "magnalia," cited by tuckerman. it is very natural that these "limners," to use a favourite designation then applied to artists, were not of the best. the masters of repute did not feel a call to dwell in the wilderness, and hence the works belonging to the beginning of this period are for the most part rude and stiff. several of these early portraits may be seen in the memorial hall of harvard university, at cambridge, mass. the first painters whose names have been preserved to us were not born to the soil. the honour of standing at the head of the roll belongs to john watson ( -- ), a scotchman, who established himself at perth amboy, n.j., in . of his portraits none are at present known, but at the chronological exhibition of american art, held in brooklyn, n.y., in , there was shown an india ink drawing by him, _venus and cupid_, executed on vellum. a better fate was vouchsafed to the works of john smybert, another scotchman, who came to rhode island in with dean, afterwards bishop, berkeley, in whose proposed college he was to be an instructor--probably the first movement towards art education made in the colonies. smybert settled and married in boston, where he died in or . he was not an artist of note, although his most important work, _the family of bishop berkeley_, a large group, in which he has introduced his own likeness, now in the possession of yale college, at new haven, conn., shows him to have been courageous and not without talent. not all the pictures, however, which are attributed to him, come up to this standard. a very bad example to which his name is attached may be seen in the portrait of _john lovell_, in the memorial hall of harvard university. the influence exercised by smybert on the development of art in america is due to an accident rather than to actual teaching. he brought with him a copy of the head of cardinal bentivoglio, by van dyck, which he had made in italy, and which is still preserved in the hall just named. it was this copy which first inspired trumbull and allston with a love of art, and gave them an idea of colour. of the other foreigners who visited the colonies during this period, the more prominent are blackburn, an englishman, who was smybert's contemporary or immediate successor, and is by some held to have been copley's teacher; williams, another englishman, who painted about the same time in philadelphia, and from whose intercourse young west is said to have derived considerable benefit; and cosmo alexander, a scotchman, who came to america in , and was stuart's first instructor. the earliest native painter who has left any lasting record is robert feke, whose life is enveloped by the mystery of romance. sprung from quaker stock, and separated from his people by difference of religious opinion, he left home, and was in some way taken a prisoner to spain, where he is said to have executed rude paintings, with the proceeds of which he managed to return home. feke painted in philadelphia and elsewhere about the middle of the last century, and his portraits, according to tuckerman, are considered the best colonial family portraits next to west's. specimens of his work may be seen in the collections of bowdoin college, brunswick, me.; the redwood athenæum, newport, r.i.; and the r. i. historical society, providence, r.i. nearest to feke in date--although his later contemporaries, west and copley, were earlier known as artists, and the first named even became his teacher in england--is matthew pratt ( -- ), who started in life as a sign-painter in philadelphia. pratt's work is often spoken of slightingly, and does not generally receive the commendation it deserves. his full-length portrait of _lieutenant-governor cadwallader colden_, painted for the new york chamber of commerce in , and still to be seen at its rooms, shows him to have been quite a respectable artist, with a feeling for colour in advance of that exhibited by copley in his earlier work. still another native artist of this period, henry bembridge, is chiefly of interest from the fact that he is said to have studied with mengs and battoni, which would make him one of the first american painters who visited italy. he seems to have painted chiefly in charleston, s.c., and his portraits are described as of singularly formal aspect. the most celebrated painters of this period, however, and the only ones whose fame is more than local, are john singleton copley and benjamin west. but as both of them left their country at an early age, never to return, they belong to england rather than to america. copley ( -- ) was a native of boston, and did not go to europe until , when his reputation was already established. in he gave his income in boston at three hundred guineas. he first went to italy and thence to london, where he settled. some speculation has been indulged in as to copley's possible teachers. he must have received some aid from his stepfather, peter pelham, a schoolmaster and very inferior mezzotint engraver; and it has also been supposed that he may have had the benefit of blackburn's instruction. this does not seem likely, however, judging either from the facts or from tradition. copley was undoubtedly essentially self-taught, and the models upon which he probably formed his style are still to be seen. several of them are included in the collection in the memorial hall of harvard university. one of these portraits, that of _thomas hollis_, a benefactor of the university, who died when copley was only six years of age, is so like the latter's work, not only in conception but even in the paleness of the flesh tints and the cold grey of the shadows, as to be readily taken for one of his earlier productions. in england copley became the painter of the aristocracy, and executed a considerable number of large historic pictures, mostly of modern incidents. he is elegant rather than powerful, and quite successful in the rendering of stuffs. his colour, at first cold and rather inharmonious, improved with experience, although he has been pronounced deficient in this respect even in later years. copley's most celebrated picture is _the death of the earl of chatham_. many specimens of his skill as a portrait-painter can be seen in the museum of fine arts in boston, and in the memorial hall of harvard university, the latter collection including the fine portrait of _mrs. thomas boylston_. the public library of boston owns one of his large historic paintings, _charles i. demanding the five members from parliament_. benjamin west ( -- ) was born of quaker parentage at springfield, pa., and was successfully engaged, at the age of eighteen, as a portrait-painter in philadelphia. in he went to rome, and it is believed that he was the first american artist who ever appeared there. three years later he removed to london, where he became the leading historic painter, the favourite of the king, and president of the royal academy. his great scriptural and historic compositions, of which comparatively few are to be seen in his native country (_king lear_, in the museum of fine arts in boston; _death on the pale horse_ and _christ rejected_, at the pennsylvania academy, philadelphia), show him in the light of an ambitious and calculating rather than inspired painter, with a decided feeling for colour. his influence on art in general made itself felt in the refusal to paint the actors in his _death of wolfe_ in classic costume, according to usage. by clothing them in their actual dress, he led art forward a step in the realistic direction, the only instance to be noted of a directing motive imparted to art by an american, but one which is quite in accordance with the spirit of the new world. west's influence upon the art of his own country was henceforth limited to the warm interest he took in the many students of the succeeding generation who flocked to england to study under his guidance. [illustration: death on the pale horse. _by_ west. a.d. . _in the pennsylvania academy, philadelphia._ _copyright_, , _by harper and brothers_.] second, or revolutionary period. the revolutionary period is, in many respects, the most interesting division, not only in the political, but also in the artistic history of the united states. it is so, not merely because it has left us the pictorial records of the men and the events of a most important epoch in the development of mankind, but also because it brought forth two painters who, while they were thoroughly american in their aspirations, were at the same time endowed with artistic qualities of a very high order. gilbert stuart and john trumbull, the two painters alluded to, have a right to be considered the best of the american painters of the past, and will always continue to hold a prominent place in the history of their art, even if it were possible to forget the stirring scenes with which they were connected. [illustration: general knox. _by_ gilbert stuart _copyright_, , _by harper and brothers_.] gilbert stuart was born in narragansett, r.i., in , and died in boston in . he was of scotch descent, and it has already been mentioned that cosmo alexander, a scotchman, was his first teacher. after several visits to europe, during the second of which he studied under west, stuart finally returned in , and began the painting of the series of national portraits which will for ever endear him to the patriotic american. among these his several renderings of washington, of which there are many copies by his own hand, are the most celebrated. the greatest popularity is perhaps enjoyed by the so-called athenæum head, which, with its pendant, the portrait of _mrs. washington_, is the property of the athenæum of boston, and by that institution has been deposited in the museum of fine arts of the same city. the claim to superiority is, however, contested by the _gibbs washington_, at present also to be seen in the museum alluded to. it was painted before the other, and gives the impression of more realistic truthfulness, while the athenæum head seems to be somewhat idealized. stuart's work is quite unequal, as he was not a strict economist, and often painted for money only. but in his best productions there is a truly admirable purity and wealth of colour, added to a power of characterization, which lifts portraiture into the highest sphere of art. it must be said, however, that he concentrated his attention almost entirely upon the head, often slighting the arms and hands, especially of his female sitters, to an unpleasant degree. many excellent specimens of his work, besides the washington portraits, are to be found in the museum of fine arts at boston and in the collection of the new york historical society, the latter including the fine portrait of _egbert benson_, painted in . his _chef-d'oeuvre_ is the portrait of _judge stephen jones_, owned by mr. f. g. richards, of boston, a remarkably vigorous head of an old man, warm and glowing in colour, which, it is said, the artist painted for his own satisfaction. stuart's most celebrated work in england is _mr. grant skating_. when this portrait was exhibited as a work by gainsborough, at the "old masters," in , its pedigree having been forgotten, it was in turn attributed to all the great english portrait-painters, until it was finally restored to its true author. [illustration: death of montgomery in the attack of quebec. _by_ j. trumbull. _at yale college._ _copyright_, , _by harper and brothers_.] still more national importance attaches to john trumbull ( -- ), since he was an historic as well as a portrait-painter, took part in person as an officer in the american army in many of the events of the revolution, and was intimately acquainted with most of the heroes of his battle scenes. america enjoys in this respect an advantage of which no other country can boast--that of having possessed an artist contemporaneous with the most important epoch in its history, and capable and willing to depict the scenes enacted around him. colonel trumbull, the son of jonathan trumbull, the colonial governor of connecticut, studied at harvard, and gave early evidences of a taste for art. at the age of nineteen he joined the american army, but in , aggrieved at a fancied slight, he threw up his commission and went to france, and thence to london, where he studied under west. trumbull must not be judged as an artist by his large paintings in the capitol at washington, the commission for which he did not receive until . to know him one must study him in his smaller works and sketches, now gathered in the gallery of yale college, where may be seen his _death of montgomery_, _battle of bunker hill_, _declaration of independence_, and other revolutionary scenes, together with a series of admirable miniature portraits in oil, painted from life, as materials for his historic works, and a number of larger portraits, including a full-length of _washington_. as a portrait-painter, trumbull is also represented at his best by the full-length of _alexander hamilton_, at the rooms of the new york chamber of commerce. the most successful of his large historic pieces, _the sortie from gibraltar_, painted in london, is at the museum of fine arts in boston. goethe, who saw the small painting of _the battle of bunker hill_ while it was in the hands of müller, the engraver, commended it, but criticized its colour and the smallness of the heads. it is true that trumbull's drawing is somewhat conventional, and that he had a liking for long figures. but his colour, as seen to-day in his good earlier pictures, is quite brilliant and harmonious, although thoroughly realistic. in his later work, however, as shown by the scripture pieces likewise preserved in the yale gallery, there is a marked decadence in vigour of drawing as well as of colour. owing to an unfortunate concatenation of circumstances, trumbull has not received the full appreciation which is his due, even from his own countrymen. thackeray readily recognised his merit, and cautioned the americans never to despise or neglect trumbull--a piece of advice which is only now beginning to attract the attention it deserves. among the portrait-painters of this period, charles wilson peale ( -- ) takes the lead by reason of quantity rather than quality. peale was typical of a certain phase of american character, representing the restlessness and superficiality which prevail upon men to turn lightly from one occupation to another. he was a dentist, a worker in materials of all sorts, an ornithologist and taxidermist, rose to the rank of colonel in the american army, and started a museum of natural history and art in philadelphia. but his strongest love seems, after all, to have been for the fine arts. among the fourteen portraits of _washington_ which peale painted, according to tuckerman, is the only _full-length_ ever done of the father of his country: it shows him before the revolution, attired as an officer in the colonial force of great britain. a large number of peale's portraits may be seen in the pennsylvania academy and in independence hall, philadelphia. the new york historical society owns, among other works by his hand, a washington portrait and a group of the peale family comprising ten figures. much of peale's work is crude, but all of his heads have the appearance of being good likenesses. among a number of other painters of this period we can select only a few, whose names receive an additional lustre from their connection with washington. joseph wright ( -- ) was the son of patience wright, who modelled heads in wax at bordentown, n.j., before the revolution. while in england he painted a portrait of the prince of wales. in the year washington sat to him, after having submitted to the preliminary ordeal of a plaster mask. tuckerman speaks of this portrait as inelegant and unflattering, and characterizes the artist as unideal, but conscientious. wright's portrait of _john jay_, at the rooms of the new york historical society, authorizes a more favourable judgment. it is, indeed, somewhat austere, but lifelike, well posed, and cool in colour. e. savage ( -- ) seems to have been nearly as versatile as peale, emulating him also in the establishment of a museum, at first in new york, then in boston. his portrait of _general washington_, in the memorial hall of harvard university, is carefully painted and bright in colour, but rather lifeless. his _washington family_, in the boston museum (a place of amusement not to be confounded with the museum of fine arts), which he engraved himself, has similar qualities. a little picture by him, also in the boston museum, representing _the signers of the declaration of independence in carpenters' hall_, is interesting on account of its subject, but does not possess much artistic merit. the portrait of _dr. handy_, on the contrary, which is assigned to him, at the new york historical society, is a very creditable work, good in colour, luminous in the flesh, and simple in the modelling. william dunlap ( -- ), finally, may also be mentioned here on account of his portrait of _washington_--painted when the artist was only seventeen years old--although he belongs more properly to the next period, and is of more importance as a writer than a painter. he published, in , a "history of the arts of design in the united states," a book now quite scarce and much sought after. a group of himself and his parents, painted in , is in the collection of the new york historical society. third period, or period of inner development. the example of trumbull found no followers. the only other american painter who made a specialty of his country's history seems to have been john blake white ( -- ), a native of charleston, s.c., who painted such subjects as _mrs. motte presenting the arrows_, _marion inviting the british officer to dinner_, and the battles of _new orleans_ and _eutaw_, placed in the state house of south carolina. white's fame is quite local, however, and it is impossible, therefore, to judge of his qualities accurately. had there been more painters of similar subjects, a national school might have resulted; but neither the people nor the government took any interest in colonel trumbull's plans. it was necessary to employ all sorts of manoeuvring to induce congress to give a commission to the artist, and the result was disappointment to all concerned; and when, later, the further decoration of the capitol at washington, the seat of government, was resolved upon, the artist selected for the work was carlo brumidi ( -- ), an italian artist of the old school. the healthy impetus towards realistic historic painting given by trumbull thus died out, and what there is of historic and figure painting in the period now under consideration is mainly dominated by a false idealism, of which washington allston is the leading representative. to rival the old masters, to do what had been done before, to flee from the actual and the near to the unreal and the distant, to look upon monks and knights and robbers and venetian senators as the embodiment of the poetic, in spite of the poet's warning to the contrary, was now the order of the day; and hence it was but natural that quite a number of the artists who then went to europe turned to italy. it was in this period, also, that the first attempts were made to establish academies of art in philadelphia and new york--attempts which, while they were laudable enough in themselves, inasmuch as these institutions were intended to provide instruction at home for the rising generation, still pointed in the same direction of simple imitation of the expiring phases of european art. [illustration: jeremiah and the scribe. _by_ washington allston. _at yale college_. _copyright_, , _by harper and brothers_.] washington allston ( -- ) was a native of south carolina, but was sent to new england at an early age, and graduated from harvard college in . the year following he went to england, to study under west, and thence to italy, where he stayed four years, until his return to boston in . after a second absence in europe of seven years' duration, he finally settled in cambridge, near boston. allston's art covered a wide range, including scripture history, portraiture, ideal heads, _genre_, landscape, and marine. it is difficult to understand to-day the enthusiasm which his works aroused, if not among the great public, at least within a limited circle of admiring friends. he was lauded for his poetic imagination, and called "the american titian," on account of his colour; and this reputation has lasted down to our own time. the allston exhibition, however, which was held two years ago at the museum of fine arts in boston, has somewhat modified the opinions of calm observers. allston was neither deep nor very original in his conceptions, nor was he a great colourist. one of his most pleasing pictures, _the two sisters_, is full of reminiscences of titian, and it is well known that he painted it while engaged in the study of that master. in the case of an artist upon whose merits opinions are so widely divided, it may be well to cite the words of an acknowledged admirer, in speaking of what has been claimed to be his greatest work, the _jeremiah and the scribe_, in the gallery of yale college. mrs. e. d. cheney, in describing the impression made upon her by this picture after a lapse of forty years, says:--"i was forced to confess that either i had lost my sensibility to its expression, or i had overrated its value.... the figure of the prophet is large and imposing, but i cannot find in it the spiritual grandeur and commanding nobility of michel angelo. he is conscious of his own presence, rather than lost in the revelation which is given through him. but the scribe is a very beautiful figure, simple in action and expression, and entirely absorbed in his humble but important work. it reminds me of the young brother in domenichino's _martyrdom of st. jerome_." the same lack of psychological power, here hinted at, is still more apparent in the artist's attempts to express the more violent manifestations of the soul. in _the dead man revived by touching elisha's bones_--for which he received a premium of guineas from the british institution, and which is now in the pennsylvania academy--the faces of the terrified spectators are so distorted as to have become caricatures. this is true, in a still higher degree, of the heads of the priests in the great unfinished _belshazzar's feast_, in the museum of fine arts, boston. the unnatural expression of these heads is generally explained by the condition in which the picture was left; but the black-and-white sketches, which may be examined in the same museum, show precisely the same character. the unhealthy direction of the artist's mind is apparent, furthermore, in his love of the terrible--shown in his early pictures of banditti, and in such later works as _saul and the witch of endor_ and _spalatro's vision of the bloody hand_; while, on the contrary, it will be found, upon closer analysis, that the ideality and spirituality claimed for his female heads, such as _rosalie_ and _amy robsart_, resolve themselves into something very near akin to sweetness and lack of strength. in accordance with this absence of intellectual robustness, allston's execution is hesitating and wanting in decision. a somewhat similar spirit manifested itself in the works of john vanderlyn ( -- ), rembrandt peale ( -- ), samuel f. b. morse ( -- ), and cornelius ver bryck ( -- ). john vanderlyn is best known by his _marius on the ruins of carthage_, for which he received a medal at the paris salon of , and his _ariadne_, which forms part of the collection of the pennsylvania academy. vanderlyn, as the choice of his subjects, coupled with his success in france, shows, was a very good classic painter, trained in the routine of the academy. the _ariadne_ is a careful study of the nude, although somewhat red in the flesh, placed in a conventional landscape of high order. a large historic composition by him, _the landing of columbus_, finished in , fills one of the panels in the rotunda of the capitol at washington. as a portrait painter vanderlyn was most unequal. rembrandt peale--the son of charles wilson peale, best known through his portraits--deserves mention here on account of his _court of death_, in the crowe art museum of st. louis, and _the roman daughter_, in the boston museum. technically he stands considerably below his leading contemporaries. s. f. b. morse, whose fame as an artist has been eclipsed by his connection with the electric telegraph, was a painter of undoubted talent, but given somewhat to ostentation both in drawing and colour. good specimens of his style are found in his _dying hercules_, yale college, new haven, and the rather theatrical portrait of lafayette in the governor's room of the city hall of new york. morse essayed to paint national subjects, and selected for a theme the interior of the house of representatives, with portraits of the members; but the public took no interest in the picture, although it is said to have been very clever, and the artist did not even cover his expenses by exhibiting it. cornelius ver bryck painted bacchantes and cavaliers, and a few historic pictures, with a decided feeling for colour, as evidenced by his _venetian senator_, owned by the new york historical society. he stands upon the borderland between an older and a newer generation, both of which, however, belong to the same period. thus far the influence of italy had been paramount; in the years immediately following düsseldorf claims a share in shaping the historical art of the united states. the only names that can be mentioned here in accordance with the plan of this book, which excludes living artists, are emmanuel leutze ( -- ), edwin white ( -- ), henry peters gray ( -- ), w. h. powell (died ), thomas buchanan read ( -- ), and j. b. irving ( -- ). leutze was a german by birth, and his natural sympathies, although he had been brought to america as an infant, carried him to düsseldorf. the eminence to which he rose in this school may be inferred from the fact that he was chosen director of the academy after he had returned to america, and almost at the moment of his death. although of foreign parentage, he showed more love for american subjects than most of the native artists, but the trammels of the school in which he was taught made it impossible for him to become a thoroughly national painter. his most important works are _washington crossing the delaware_, _washington at the battle of monmouth_, and _washington at valley forge_; the two last named are at present in the possession of mrs. mark hopkins of california. in the capitol at washington may be seen his _westward the star of empire takes its way_; _the landing of the norsemen_ is in the pennsylvania academy; _the storming of a teocalle_, in the museum of fine arts, boston. edwin white, an extraordinarily prolific artist, who studied both at paris and düsseldorf, also painted a number of american historic pictures, among them _washington resigning his commission_, for the state of maryland. the bulk of his work, however, weakly sentimental, deals with the past of europe. h. p. gray's allegiance was given, almost undividedly, to the masters of italy, and his subjects were mostly taken from antiquity. in his best works, such as _the wages of war_, he appears in the light of an academic painter of respectable attainments; but there is so little of a national flavour in his productions, that the label "american school" on the frame of the picture just named is apt to provoke a smile. gray's _judgment of paris_ is in the corcoran gallery at washington. w. h. powell is best known by his _de soto discovering the mississippi_, in the rotunda at washington, a work which is on a level with the average of official monumental painting done in europe, in which truth is invariably sacrificed to so-called artistic considerations. as a portrait-painter he does not stand very high. t. b. read, the "painter-poet," enjoyed one of those fictitious reputations which are unfortunately none too rare in america. without any real feeling for colour, and with a style of drawing which made up in so-called grace for what it lacked in decision, he attained a certain popularity by a class of subjects such as _the lost pleiad_, _the spirit of the waterfall_, &c., which captivate the unthinking by their very superficiality. several of his productions, among them his _sheridan's ride_, may be seen at the pennsylvania academy. j. b. irving, a student at düsseldorf under leutze, was a careful and intelligent painter of subjects which might be classed as historic _genre_, including some scenes from the past history of the united states. among the foreign artists who came to america during this period must be named christian schÜssele ( -- ), a native of alsace, who has exercised some influence through his position as director of the schools of the pennsylvania academy, in philadelphia. his _esther denouncing haman_, in the collection of the institution just named, shows him to have been an adherent of the modern french classic school, in which elegance is the first consideration. a place all by himself must finally be assigned to william rimmer ( -- ), of english parentage, who spent much of his life in the vicinity of boston. dr. rimmer, as he is commonly called, since he began life as a physician, is of greater importance as a sculptor than as a painter. he, nevertheless, must be mentioned here on account of the many drawings he executed. to an overweening interest in anatomy he added a somewhat weird fancy, so that his conceptions sometimes remind one of blake. his most important work is a set of drawings for an anatomical atlas, in which special stress is laid upon the anatomy of expression. his oil-paintings, such as _cupid and venus_, &c., are marred by violent contrasts of light and dark, and an unnatural, morbid scheme of colour, which justifies the assumption that his colour-vision was defective. but rimmer will always remain interesting as a brilliant phenomenon, strangely out of place in space as well as in time. the same absence, in general, of a national spirit is to be noticed in the works of the _genre_ painters. among the earliest of these are to be named charles robert leslie ( -- ), many of whose works may be seen in the lenox gallery, new york, and at the pennsylvania academy, philadelphia; and gilbert stuart newton ( -- ), a nephew of stuart, the portrait-painter, who is represented at the new york historical society and in the museum of fine arts in boston. these two artists are, however, so closely identified with the english school, and draw their inspiration so exclusively from european sources, that they can hardly claim a place in a history of painting in america. the one american _genre_ painter _par excellence_ is william sydney mount ( -- ), the son of a farmer on long island, and originally a sign-painter. no other artist has rivalled mount in the delineation of the life of the american farmer and his negro field hands, always looked at from the humorous side. as a colourist, mount is quite artless, but in the rendition of character and expression, and the unbiassed reproduction of reality, he stands very high. his _fortune teller_, _bargaining for a horse_, and _the truant gamblers_, the last named one of his best works also as regards colour, are in the collection of the new york historical society; _the painter's triumph_ is in the gallery of the pennsylvania academy; the corcoran gallery, washington, has _the long story_. several inferior artists have shown, by their representations of scenes taken from the political and social life of the united states, how rich a harvest this field would offer the brush of a modern teniers. but in spite of the popularity which the reproductions of their works and those of some of mount's pictures enjoyed, the field remained comparatively untilled. [illustration: a surprise. _by_ mount. _copyright, , by harper and brothers._] of other painters of the past, henry inman ( -- ), better known as a most excellent portrait-painter, executed a few _genre_ pictures based on american subjects, such as _mumble the peg_ in the pennsylvania academy; and richard caton woodville (about -- ), who studied at düsseldorf, became favourably known, during his short career, by his _mexican news_, _sailor's wedding_, _bar-room politicians_, &c.; while among the mass of work by f. w. edmonds ( -- ) there are also several of specifically american character; but the majority of artists preferred to repeat the well-worn themes of their european predecessors, as shown by w. e. west's (died ) _the confessional_, at the new york historical society's rooms, or the paintings of james w. glass (died ), whose _royal standard_, _free companion_, and _puritan and cavalier_, are drawn from the annals of england. the indian tribes found delineators in george catlin ( -- ) and c. f. wimar ( -- ), while william h. ranney (died ) essayed the life of the trappers and frontiersmen. none of these artists, however, approached their subjects from the genuinely artistic side. as an ornithological painter, scientifically considered, john james audubon ( -- ), the celebrated naturalist, occupied a high rank. the animal world of the prairies and the great west in general was the chosen field of william j. hays ( -- ). a large picture by him of an american bison, in the american museum of natural history at new york, shows at once his careful workmanship, his ambition, and the limitation of his powers, which was too great to allow him to occupy a prominent place among the animal painters of the world. the skill in realistic portraiture, eminently shown by the american painters of the preceding century, was fully upheld by their successors of the third period. most of the historic painters named above were well known also as portraitists, and their claims to reputation are shared with more or less success by j. w. jarvis ( -- ), thomas sully ( -- ), samuel waldo ( -- ), chester harding ( -- ), william jewett (born ), ezra ames (flourished about -- ), charles c. ingham ( -- ), j. neagle ( -- ), charles l. elliott ( -- ), joseph ames ( -- ), t. p. rossiter ( -- ), g. a. baker ( -- ), and w. h. furness ( -- ). specimens of the work of most of these artists, several of whom were of foreign parentage, will be found in the collections of the new york historical society, the governor's room in the city hall of new york, the pennsylvania academy, and the museum of fine arts at boston. the most prominent among the later names is charles loring elliott, who was born and educated in america, but whose work, when he is at his best, nevertheless shows the hand of a master. e. g. malbone ( -- ), whose only ideal work, _the hours_, is in the athenæum, at providence, r.i., is justly celebrated for his delicate miniatures, a department in which r. m. staigg ( -- ) likewise excelled. as a crayon artist, famous more especially for his female heads, seth w. cheney ( -- ) must be named. * * * * * the most interesting, however, because the most original, manifestation of the art instinct in this period is found in landscape. in this department also it seemed for a time as if the influence of the old italian masters would gain the upper hand. but the influence of düsseldorf, aided by that of england, although not through its best representatives, such as constable, gave a different turn to the course of affairs, and in a measure freed the artists from the thraldom of an antiquated school. although, naturally and justly enough, the landscape painters of america did not disdain to depict the scenery of foreign lands, they nevertheless showed a decided preference for the beauties of their own country, and diligently plied their brushes in the delineation of the favourite haunts of the catskills, the hudson, the white mountains, lake george, &c., and, at a later period, of the wonders of the rocky mountains and the valley of the yosemite. it has become the fashion in certain circles to speak rather derisively of these painters as "the hudson river school," a nickname supposed to imply the charge that they preferred the subject to artistic rendering and technical skill. there is no denying that there is some truth in this charge, but later experience has taught, also, that a more insinuating style is apt to lead the artists to ignore subject altogether. it is precisely the comparative unattractiveness of the methods employed which enabled these painters to create what may be called an american school, while, had they been as much absorbed in technical processes, or in the solving of problems of colour, as some of their successors, they would probably have rivalled them also in the neglect of the national element. it is worthy of note that the rise of this school of painters of nature is nearly contemporaneous with the appearance of william cullen bryant, whose "thanatopsis" was first published in , and who is eminently entitled to be called the poet of nature. the first specialist in landscape of whom any record is to be found is joshua shaw ( -- ), an englishman, who came to america about . the specimens of his work preserved in the pennsylvania academy show him to have been a painter of some refinement, who preferred delicate silvery tones to strength. in the same institution may also be found numerous examples by thomas doughty ( -- ), of philadelphia, who abandoned mercantile pursuits for art in , and who may claim to be the first native landscape-painter. his early work is hard and dry and monotonous in colour, but nevertheless with a feeling for light. as he advanced, his colour improved somewhat. alvan fisher ( -- ), of boston, also ranks among the pioneers in this department, but he was more active as a portrait-painter. [illustration: desolation. _from the "course of empire."_ _by_ thomas cole. _in the possession of the new york historical society._ _copyright, , by harper and brothers._] the greatest name, however, in the early history of landscape art in the united states is that of thomas cole ( -- ), who came over from england with his parents in , but received his first training, such as it was, in america. cole spent several years in italy, and remained for the rest of his life under the spell of claude, salvator rosa, and poussin. he aspired to be a painter of large historic, or rather allegoric landscapes, and some of his productions in this line, as, for instance, _the course of empire_ (new york historical society), a series of five canvases, showing the career of a nation from savage life through the splendours of power to the desolation of decay, will always secure for him a respectable place among the followers of the old school. he therefore shared, with most of his american colleagues, the fatal defect that his work contained no germ of advancement, but was content to be measured by standards which were beginning to be false, because men had outlived the time in which they were set up. cole did not, however, confine himself to such allegoric landscapes. he was a great lover of the catskills, and often chose his subjects there, or in the white mountains. but in the specimens of this kind to be seen at the new york historical society's rooms, he shows himself curiously defective in colour, and mars the tone by undue contrasts between light and dark. he is at his best in the representation of storm effects, such as _the tornado_, in the corcoran gallery at washington. among the ablest representatives of the "hudson river school" were j. f. kensett ( -- ), and sanford r. gifford ( -- ). for kensett, it may indeed be claimed that he was the best technician of his time, bolder in treatment than most of his colleagues, and with a true feeling for the poetry of colour. gifford, who divided his allegiance about equally between america, italy, and the orient, loved to paint phenomenal effects of light, which often suggest the studio rather than nature. one of the principal works of this very successful and greatly esteemed artist, _the ruins of the parthenon_, is the property of the corcoran gallery, which also owns several pictures by kensett. [illustration: noon by the sea-shore: beverly beach. _by_ j. f. kensett. _copyright, , by harper and brothers._] as one of the leading lights of the little cluster of american pre-raphaelites, we may note john w. hill (died ), who painted landscapes chiefly in water-colour. the united states being a maritime power, it would be quite natural to look for a development of marine painting among her artists. until lately, however, very little has been done in this branch of art, and that little mostly by foreigners. thomas birch, an englishman (died ), painted the battles between english and american vessels in an old-fashioned way in philadelphia, while boston possessed an early marine painter of slender merit in salmon. a. van beest, a dutch marine painter, who died in new york in , is chiefly of interest as the first teacher of several well-known american painters of to-day. john e. c. petersen ( -- ), a dane, who came to america in , enjoyed an excellent reputation in boston. the leading name, however, among the artists of the past in this department is that of james hamilton ( -- ), who was brought to philadelphia from ireland in infancy, and went to england for purposes of study in . in many of his phantastic productions, in which blood-red skies are contrasted with dark, bluish-gray clouds and masses of shadow, as in _solitude_, and an oriental landscape in the pennsylvania academy, the study of turner is quite apparent. but he loved also to paint the storm-tossed sea, under a leaden sky, when it seems to be almost monochrome. one of his finest efforts, _the ship of the ancient mariner_, is in private possession in philadelphia. his _destruction of pompeii_ is in the memorial hall, fairmount park, in the same city. hamilton, whose somewhat unsteady mode of living is reflected in the widely varying quality of his work, very properly closes our review of this epoch, as he might not inappropriately be classed with the artists of the period next to be considered. fourth, or present period. it has been remarked already that the american students who went to england up to the middle of the present century were not influenced by those painters who, like constable, are credited with having given the first impulse towards the development of modern art. this is true also of those who went to france. they fell in with the old-established classic school, and were not affected by the rising romantic and colouristic school until long after its triumphant establishment. within the last ten or fifteen years, however, the tendency in this direction has been very marked, and the main points of attraction for the young american artist in europe have been paris and munich. one of the results of this movement, consequent upon the preponderating attention given to colour and technique, has been an almost entire neglect of subject. what the art of america has gained, therefore, in outward attractiveness and in increase of skill, it has had to purchase at the expense of a still greater de-americanisation than before. the movement is, however, only in its inception, and its final results cannot be predicated. nor will it be possible to mention here more than a very few of its adherents, as, self-evidently, the greater part of them belong to the living generation. [illustration: sunset on the hudson. _by_ s. r. gifford. _copyright_, , _by harper and brothers_.] one of the first to preach the new gospel of individualism and colour in america was william morris hunt ( -- ), who, after his return from europe, made his home in boston. in he went to düsseldorf, which he soon exchanged for paris, where he studied with couture, and later with millet. hunt was in a certain sense a martyr to his artistic convictions, and his road was not smoothed by his eccentricities. had he found a readier response on the part of the public, he might have accomplished great things. as it was, those to whom he was compelled to appeal could not understand the importance of the purely pictorial qualities which he valued above all else, and instead of sympathy he found antagonism. as a fact indicating the difficulties which stood in his way, it is interesting to know that the first idea for the mural paintings, _the flight of night_ and _the discoverer_, which he executed in the new capitol at albany, shortly before his death, was conceived over thirty years ago. it is not to be wondered at, therefore, that his mind was embittered, and his work even more unequal than that of so many of his older colleagues. but even so he has left a number of works, as for instance the original sketch for the _flight of night_, several portraits, and a _view of gloucester harbour_, which will always be counted among the triumphs of american art. prominent among the american students in the french school was robert wylie, a native of the isle of man, who was brought to the united states when a child, and died in brittany at the age of about forty years in . his _death of a breton chieftain_, in the metropolitan museum of new york, and _breton story-teller_, in the pennsylvania academy, two very fine pictures, although somewhat heavy in colour, show him to have been a careful observer, with a power of characterisation hardly approached by any other american painter. [illustration: lambs on the mountain-side. _by_ william morris hunt.] as a remarkable artist, belonging also to the french-american school, although he never left his native land, we must mention r. h. fuller, of boston, who died comparatively young in . fuller had a most extraordinary career and displayed extraordinary talent. originally a cigar-maker, and later a night watchman, he was almost entirely self-taught, his study consisting in carefully looking at the french landscapes on exhibition at the stores, and then attempting to reproduce them at home. the knowledge thus gained he applied to the rendering of american landscapes, and he had so assimilated the methods of his french exemplars, that his creations, while they often clearly betrayed by what master they had been inspired, were yet thoroughly american. * * * * * this sketch of the history of painting in america is necessarily very fragmentary, by reason of its shortness, as well as by the limitation imposed by the plan of this book, which excludes all living artists. many prominent representatives of the various tendencies to which the reader's attention has been called, have, therefore, had to be omitted. it is believed, nevertheless, that, while the mention of additional names would have made the record fuller, the general proportions of the outline would not have been materially changed thereby. nor is the apparently critical tone, the repeated dwelling on the lack of originality in subject as well as method, to be taken as an expression of disparagement. a fact has simply been stated which admits of a ready explanation, hinted at in the introductory remarks, but which must be kept steadily in view if american art is ever to assume a more distinctive character. the painters of america, considering the circumstances by which they have been surrounded, have no reason to be ashamed of their past record. they have shown considerable aptitude in the acquisition of technical attainments, and the diligence and enthusiasm in the pursuit of their studies on the part of the younger artists, promise well for the future. it rests altogether with the nation itself whether this promise shall be fulfilled. index of names. page aikman, william, alexander, cosmo, alexander, william, allston, washington, ames, ezra, ames, joseph, anderton, henry, audubon, john james, bacon, sir nathaniel, baker, g. a., barret, george, barret, george, the younger, barry, james, beale, mary, beechey, sir william, bembridge, henry, bewick, john, bewick, thomas, birch, thomas, blackburn, blake, william, boit, charles, bone, henry, bonington, richard parkes, boxall, sir william, briggs, henry perronet, brooking, charles, brown, john, , browne, alexander, brumidi, carlo, caius (key), callcott, sir augustus wall, carmillion, alice, catlin, george, cattermole, george, chalon, alfred edward, chalon, john james, cheney, seth w., cipriani, giovanni battista, cleef, joost van, clostermann, john, cole, thomas, collins, richard, collins, william, constable, john, cooke, edward william, cooper, abraham, cooper, samuel, copley, john singleton, , cornelisz, lucas, corvus, johannes, cosway, maria, cosway, richard, cotman, john sell, cox, david, cozens, alexander, cozens, john robert, creswick, thomas, cristall, joshua, crome, john, crosse, lewis, dahl, michael, danby, francis, dance, nathaniel, deacon, james, de heere, lucas, de la motte, william, de loutherbourg, philippe james, derby, william, de wint, peter, dobson, william, dodgson, george haydock, doughty, thomas, duncan, edward, duncan, thomas, dunlap, dyce, william, eastlake, sir charles locke, edmonds, f. w., edridge, henry, , edward, master, egg, augustus leopold, elliott, charles loring, elmore, alfred, engleheart, george, essex, william, etty, william, faithorne, william, feke, robert, fielding, anthony vandyke copley, fisher, alvan, flatman, thomas, flick, gerbach, fraser, alexander, fuller, isaac, fuller, r. h., furness, w. h., fuseli, henry, gainsborough, thomas, garvey, edmund, gerbier, sir balthasar, gheeraedts, marc, gifford, sandford r., gilpin, sawrey, girtin, thomas, glass, james w., godeman, gray, henry peters, greenhill, john, hamilton, james, harding, chester, harding, james duffield, harlow, george henry, harvey, george, havell, william, haydon, benjamin robert, hayman, francis, , hays, william j., heaphy, thomas, hearne, thomas, highmore, joseph, hill, john w., hilliard, nicholas, hills, robert, hillton, william, hogarth, william, holbein, hans, holland, james, hone, nathaniel, hoppner, john, horebout, gerrard lucas, , horebout, lucas, horebout, susannah, , hoskins, john, howard, henry, hudson, thomas, humphrey, ozias, hunt, william henry, hunt, william morris, ibbetson, julius cæsar, ingham, charles c., inman, henry, irving, j. b., jackson, john, jamesone, george, jarvis, j. w., jervas, charles, jewett, william, john, master, jonson, cornelis, kauffman, angelica, kensett, j. f., key, william, kirk, thomas, knapton, george, kneller, sir godfrey, laguerre, louis, lambert, george, landseer, charles, landseer, sir edwin henry, lawrence, sir thomas, lely, sir peter, leslie, charles robert, , leutze, emmanuel, lewis, john frederick, linnell, john, linton, william, loggan, david, lucy, charles, lyzardi, nicholas, mabuse, maclise, daniel, malbone, e. g., martin, john, martineau, robert braithwaite, mason, george hemming, maynors, katherine, meyer, jeremiah, modena, nicholas of, monamy, peter, mor, sir antonio, morland, george, morland, henry robert, morse, s. f. b., mortimer, john hamilton, moser, george michael, mount, william sydney, müller, william john, mulready, william, mytens, daniel, nasmyth, patrick, neagle, j., newton, gilbert stuart, , nixon, james, northcote, james, oliver, isaac, oliver, peter, opie, john, oudry, p., owen, william, palmer, samuel, parmentier, james, payne, william, peale, charles wilson, peale, rembrandt, penley, aaron edwin, penni, bartholomew, petersen, john e. c., petitot, jean, phillip, john, phillips, thomas, poole, paul falconer, powell, w. h., pratt, matthew, prout, samuel, pyne, james baker, ramsay, allan, ranney, william h., read, thomas buchanan, reynolds, sir joshua, richardson, jonathan, richardson, thomas miles, riley, john, rimmer, william, roberts, david, robertson, andrew, robinson, hugh, robson, george fennel, romney, george, rooker, michael angelo, ross, sir william charles, rossetti, gabriel chas. dante, rossiter, t. p., rowlandson, thomas, sandby, paul, savage, e., schüssele, christian, scott, samuel, serres, dominic, serres, john thomas, seymour, james, shalders, george, shaw, joshua, shee, sir martin archer, shelley, samuel, shipley, william, smirke, robert, smith, george (of chichester), smith, john " ", smith, william " ", smith, john (of warwick), smybert, john, soest, gerard von, spencer, jarvis, staigg, r. m., stanfield, william clarkson, stark, james, stothard, thomas, streater, robert, stretes, gwillim, , stuart, gilbert, stubbs, george, sully, thomas, terling, lavinia, thomson, henry, thornhill, sir james, topham, francis william, torell, william, toto, antonio, , treviso, girolamo da, , trumbull, john, turner, joseph mallord william, , uwins, thomas, van beest, a., vanderbank, john, vanderlyn, john, van dyck, sir anthony, van honthorst, gerard, van somer, paul, varley, john, ver bryck, cornelius, verrio, antonio, vincent, george, volpe, vincent, vroom, cornelis, waldo, samuel, wale, samuel, walker, frederick, walker, robert, walter, master, ward, edward matthew, ward, james, watson, john, webber, john, wehnert, edward henry, west, benjamin, , west, w. e., westall, richard, westall, william, white, edwin, white, john blake, wilkie, david, williams, ----, wilson, richard, wimar, c. f., wissing, william, witherington, william frederick, woodville, richard caton, wootton, john, wright, andrew, , wright, joseph, wright, joseph (of derby), wright, joseph michael, wyck, john, wylie, robert, zincke, christian frederick, zoffany, johann, zuccarelli, francesco, zucchero, federigo, printed by j. s. virtue and co., limited, city road, london. * * * * * illustrated biographies of the great artists. _each volume is strongly bound in cloth, crown vo, price s. d. unless marked otherwise._ =sir joshua reynolds.= by f. s. pulling, m.a. with engravings of penelope boothby--strawberry girl--muscipula--mrs. siddons--duchess of devonshire--age of innocence--and other paintings. =william hogarth.= by austin dobson. with reproductions of groups from the rake's progress--southwark fair--distressed poet--enraged musician--march to finchley--and other subjects. =gainsborough= and =constable=. by g. brock-arnold, m.a. with engravings of the blue boy--mrs. graham--duchess of devonshire--and others, by gainsborough; and salisbury cathedral--the corn-field--the valley farm--and others, by constable. =sir thomas lawrence= and =george romney=. by lord ronald gower, f.s.a. with engravings of the duchess of sutherland--lady peel--master lambton--and nature, by lawrence; the parson's daughter--and other pictures, by romney. price s. d. =turner.= by cosmo monkhouse. with engravings of norham castle--the devil's bridge--the golden bough--the fighting téméraire--venice--and others. =sir david wilkie: a memoir.= by j. w. mollett, b.a. with engravings of groups from the rent day--penny wedding--blind man's buff--duncan gray--and other paintings. =sir edwin landseer: a memoir.= by f. g. stephens. with fac-similes of etchings--low life--a shepherd's dog--four irish greyhounds--return from deerstalking--sheep and lambs, &c. =giotto.= by harry quilter, m.a. at padua, florence, and assisi. with engravings of various frescoes--bas-reliefs on the campanile, florence--and a coloured plate of the madonna at assisi. =fra angelico=, =masaccio=, and =botticelli=. by c. m. phillimore. with engravings of the resuscitation of the king's son, by masaccio--adoration of the kings, by fra angelico--coronation of the virgin, by botticelli--and other paintings. =fra bartolommeo=, =albertinelli=, and =andrea del sarto=. by leader scott. with engravings of the enthronement of the virgin--st. mark--salvator mundi, by fra bartolommeo; the virgin and saints, by albertinelli; the madonna del sacco, by del sarto--and other paintings. =ghiberti= and =donatello=. by leader scott. with engravings of the marble pulpit of pisano--gate of baptistery at florence, by ghiberti ( pages)--st. george, by donatello--and others. s. d. =della robbia= and =cellini=. by leader scott. with illustrations of the singers, by luca della robbia--perseus, by cellini--mercury, by giovanni da bologna--and others. s. d. =mantegna= and =francia=. by julia cartwright. illustrated with engravings of lodovico gonzaga and his son--part of the triumphs of cæsar--the madonna della vittoria, by mantegna; the virgin and saints--the deposition--a pietà, by francia--and other paintings. =leonardo da vinci.= by dr. j. paul richter. illustrated with engravings of the last supper--the virgin and st. anne--mona lisa--the vierge aux rochers--and others. =michelangelo buonarroti.= by charles clÉment. with engravings from frescoes of the last judgment--prophet isaiah--and of the statues of moses--lorenzo and giuliano de'medici--and others. =raphael.= by n. d'anvers. with engravings of lo sposalizio--la belle jardinière--madonna di foligno--st. cecilia--madonna della sedia--the transfiguration--and other paintings. =titian.= by r. f. heath, m.a. with engravings of la bella di tiziano--the tribute-money--the assumption of the virgin--st. peter martyr--titian's daughter--and others. =tintoretto.= by w. r. osler. from recent investigations at venice. with engravings of the marriage at cana--the entombment--the crucifixion--the betrothal of st. catherine--and others. =correggio.= by m. c. heaton. with engravings of la notte--il giorno--marriage of st. catherine--the madonna of francis at dresden--and other paintings. price s. d. =velazquez.= by e. stowe, m.a. with engravings of isabel of spain--duke of olivarez--water-carrier--the topers--surrender of breda--maids of honour--and other paintings. =murillo.= by ellen e. minor. with engravings of the immaculate conception--the prodigal son--the holy family (with the _scodella_), at madrid--and others. price s. d. =albrecht dÜrer.= by r. f. heath, m.a. with engravings of the conversion of st. eustace--great white horse--knight, death, and the devil--christ taking leave of his mother--and others. =little masters of germany.= by w. b. scott. an account of altdorfer, hans sebald beham, bartel beham, aldegrever, pencz, bink, and brosamer. illustrated with many engravings. =hans holbein.= by joseph cundall. with engravings of the meyer madonna--archbishop warham--family of sir thomas more--hubert morett--the dance of death--the bible cuts--and many others. =overbeck.= by j. beavington atkinson. comprising his early years in lübeck, studies at vienna, and settlement at rome. illustrated with many engravings. =rembrandt.= by j. w. mollett, b.a. with engravings of the lesson on anatomy--the night watch--burgomaster six--the three trees--ephraim bonus--and other celebrated etchings. =rubens.= by c. w. kett, m.a. with engravings of rubens and isabella brandt--the descent from the cross--the château de steen--le chapeau de poil--and other paintings. =van dyck= and =hals=. by p. r. head, b.a. with engravings of charles i. and the marquis of hamilton--henrietta maria, with princes charles and james, &c., by van dyck; and hals and lisbeth reyners--the banquet of arquebusiers--a cavalier, &c., by frans hals. =figure painters of holland.= by lord ronald gower, f.s.a. with engravings of paternal advice, by terborch--hunchback fiddler, by ostade--inn stable, by wouwerman--dancing dog, by steen. =watteau.= by j. w. mollett, b.a. with engravings of fêtes galantes, portraits, studies from the life, pastoral subjects, &c,. price s. d. _nearly ready._ =vernet= and =delaroche=. by j. runtz rees. with engravings of the trumpeter's horse--the death of poniatowski--the battle of fontenoy, and others, by vernet; and richelieu with cinque mars--death of the duc de guise--charles i. and cromwell's soldiers--and the hemicycle, by delaroche. =meissonier.= by j. w. mollett, b.a. with engravings from the chess players--la rixe--the halt--the reader--the flemish smoker--and many book illustrations. price s. d. london: sampson low, marston, searle, & rivington, crown buildings, , fleet street. * * * * * the following typographical errors were corrected by the etext transcriber: several english astists practised in this reign.=>several english artists practised in this reign. the first english artist who receveid=>the first english artist who received an innvoator of a monstrous order=>an innovator of a monstrous order durin his life=>during his life like his master he not succeed in foliage=>like his master he did not succeed in foliage footnotes: [a] at least, like most of the great italian masters before and after their time, and like clouet the frenchman, they designed garments, and painted banners of state; they decorated coffers and furniture, book covers, and, like holbein and cellini, made designs for jewellery. [b] when we discover that the whole frontal has been used as the _top of a cupboard_, we need not wonder at the present scarcity of specimens of early english art. [c] many pictures executed during the ten years after his death, some even in the windsor collection, have been attributed to holbein. [d] now lent to the national gallery. she was the youthful daughter of the king of denmark, and widow of the duke of milan. holbein was sent to brussels to paint her portrait for his royal master. [e] see _the athenæum_, august th, . [f] this is dallaway's summary, note to p. of walpole's "anecdotes," as above, . of course, all the pictures were not really by the artists whose names they bore. there must have been more than sixteen van dycks in the royal collection. the above are whitehall pictures only. the entire gatherings of king charles were far more numerous. [g] his painting of this subject, for which he received only twenty-six guineas, was destroyed by fire in . [h] northcote, "conversations," , p. , said, "sir joshua undoubtedly got his first idea of the art from gandy." james gandy ( -- ), who painted in ireland and devonshire, was the last representative of the art of van dyck, whose pupil he was. colour. entered at stationers' hall. [illustration: sunset] colour as a means of art: being an adaptation of the experience of professors to the practice of amateurs. by frank howard, author of "the sketcher's manual," "the spirit of shakspeare," &c. london: henry g. bohn, york street, covent garden. mdcccxlix. dedication to sir augustus wall callcott, r.a. &c. &c. &c. dear sir, the endeavour of the present work is to fix and develope, for the benefit of the amateur and the student, some of the acknowledged general principles of colouring as a means of art, without reference to the purposes to which such art shall be applied,--without reference to poetical expression or character, or to the imitation of the details of nature, which are requisite for the production of great works. and i have much pleasure in being permitted to dedicate it to you, who have so recently shown that the capability to execute in the higher walks of art does not depend, as is erroneously supposed, upon mechanical skill attained by constant practice and devotion to one class of subjects; but upon intellectual qualifications and mental refinement, which has ever been conspicuous in your treatment of the subjects generally adorned by your pencil. i have the honour to remain, your obedient servant, frank howard. contents. page preface v introduction chapter i. colouring as a means of art _section ._--harmony _section ._--tone chapter ii. rules for producing pictures in colour _section ._--cuyp's principle _section ._--both's principle _section ._--hobbima and ruysdael's principles _section ._--teniers and ostade's principles _section ._--the principles of titian and the venetian school _section ._--ludovico caracci's principle _section ._--another principle of titian _section ._--ruben's principle _section ._--turner's principle _section ._--another principle of turner _section ._--modern manner _section ._--abstract principles to which these arrangements may be referred chapter iii. fine colouring _section ._--principles of colouring objects _section ._--colours of lights and shadows _section ._--sunshine _section ._--sunset _section ._--moonlight _section ._--grey daylight list of plates. frontispiece. sunset. (to face title page.) page . cuyp's principle . both's principle . ruysdael and hobbima's principle . tenier's and ostade's principle . titian and the venetian school . ludovico caracci's principle . another principle of titian . ruben's principle . turner's principle . another principle of turner . modern manner . the neri . the bianchi . the dutch school . sunshine . moonlight . grey daylight preface. in the sketcher's manual, the general principles of making pictures in black and white, or, as it is technically termed, in chiaroscuro, have been briefly, but it is hoped distinctly, explained. the following work on colouring proceeds upon the same method. it treats first of the arrangements of masses of colours which have been established by various masters or schools, and which have been recognized as satisfactory or agreeable by the public voice; it then points out the abstract principles to which these several arrangements may be referred; and finally directs attention to the qualities of colouring in art which are requisite as regards the imitation of nature. it does not profess to descend to details, for these require a considerable advance in the art, and consequently could not possibly be rendered intelligible in any publication, because they would require the exercise of first-rate powers, to colour every individual impression of the plates. for examples of the details of colouring, the amateur and the student must be referred to the best pictures of the several masters whose general principles are herein exhibited. but it should be observed, that although the several masters, whose names have been brought forward in the present work, and in the sketcher's manual, as the originators of the several principles of chiaroscuro and colour, are generally distinguished by some exercise of the principles to which their names are attached, they have produced many and valuable works in other and very different styles. it is not intended to imply that all the works of these masters are constructed upon the same principles; still less is it intended to imply that the principal merit of these masters resides in the particular principle of picture-making, which they have mainly, if not entirely, contributed to develope; for this would reduce the art of painting to a "mechanical trade," or mere means of gratifying the eye. least of all has it been intended to afford to critics a means of attack upon the modern masters, whose names have been introduced into these little works, as "painters of pictures on receipt, or on a principle of manufacture." the development of a new principle of art, whether relating to composition, chiaroscuro, or colour, is as meritorious and worthy of distinction as, if not more so than, the production of an able work upon the principles of art previously established by others. the author is fully sensible that _he_ must submit to criticism with respect to whatever he may place before the public; nor is he in the least disposed to complain of any censure of the _matter contained_ in the works, or of the _manner_ in which that matter is placed before the public. he can even afford to smile at the criticism that a work addressed to the amateur and the student on picture-making in chiaroscuro, "will not make a raffaelle or a titian," particularly as the great merit of the latter was colouring; and he may observe that he does not expect that even the present work, which is solely devoted to colouring, "will make a titian." it will be sufficient if he shall have placed in a tangible shape before the reader _some_ of the principles by which the effects of colouring, and light and shade have been made, by certain masters, subservient to higher purposes;--the art is but the means to an end. but the author feels that he has a right to complain of a criticism of his work, in which the _censures_ of the _critic_ upon _third_ parties are made to appear to have proceeded from the author; and he now begs to disclaim having said anything disrespectful either of mr. stanfield or mr. roberts, either directly or indirectly, as will be evident upon the inspection of the sketcher's manual. and the author feels it necessary to remove an erroneous impression with respect to the nature and intention of these works, by stating, that they are expressly intended for the amateur or the beginner in art; that they are not intended to be argumentative or controversial; nor are any matters introduced that require the support of argument, evidence, or authority, although these could easily be adduced, if requisite; but the desire of the author has been to lay before the amateur such principles of art as have received the sanction of years, and are universally appreciated by the public in their effects: and the only merit claimed is that of having brought them together in such a form as to distinguish them clearly; and to render the principles as evident as possible. but there is no pretension of limiting the whole art of colouring to the principles of colouring contained herein. for the method in which the plates of the present work have been executed, i am indebted to a recent improvement in lithography, made by mr. hullmandell. it is capable of producing more nearly the effects of painting than any other style of engraving; but from these plates professing only to represent masses of colour and general tone, and being the first that have been attempted in this particular application, they are not calculated to display mr. hullmandell's improvement to advantage. introduction. sir joshua reynolds in one of his discourses has stated, that the edifice of art has been gradually raised by the contributions of the great men of past ages, and that although every addition to knowledge required the exertion of a mind far in advance of its contemporaries to effect it, the results have now become the common property of all artists, and may easily be appropriated by every student--"that much may now be taught, which it required vast genius to discover." it will not be necessary to adduce any argument in support of this proposition. the difference of opinion will principally refer to "what part can be taught?" and hereon there have been as great divisions and disputes as have arisen with regard to the part of the pig that was forbidden to be eaten by the followers of mahomet; only it should be observed that the discussions have terminated in an almost opposite result; for whereas the whole pig was eaten, scarcely any of the art has been taught. numerous works have been published and numerous methods of instruction adopted; but they are almost all directed to points of mechanical execution, or the representation of individual objects, which mainly depend upon skill. skill is the natural result of practice or fortunate organization, and will, of course, differ with the perseverance or capacity of the student, which has led to the persuasion that the productions of art are dependent upon what is called natural genius. but what is _known_ of art may be as easily communicated as any other fact, and as easily acquired as a knowledge of history, or any other appeal to the memory, and is indispensable equally to the critic and to the amateur. on this subject there are few if any works; and it is rarely touched by professed teachers of the art. the method of private tuition at present in favour is, to make a drawing before the pupil, who is expected to appreciate the course of proceeding, and to imitate the effect. watching a drawing thus in progress, it will be observed that the greater part is done apparently without a thought; it appears to be literally at the "fingers' ends" of the artist: and this will be found to comprehend much, it not all that confers the effect of a picture. but in what does this consist? repeated practice, and continued study of works of art, will undoubtedly, _in time_, bring it to the "fingers' ends" of the student also, and it will insensibly become an inexplicable habit, manner or style. but this is, in fact, what may be taught or communicated in a short time; it is the knowledge resulting from the experience of ages,--the edifice built up of discoveries from time to time contributed to the fund of art by the success and failures of our predecessors. this is the _knowledge_ or science of painting, which should precede all practice or attainment of skill, and such portion as relates to colouring, it is the intention of the present work to supply. skill will follow as a result of the endeavour to make use of the means to produce the end--pictures. there has been, unfortunately, so great confusion in the use of the terms applicable to colours, that it becomes difficult to convey any distinct information respecting them, without hazarding the charge of pedantry by limiting the signification of certain words. tints, tones, and shades of colour have been, and still are, too commonly used so indiscriminately to mean the same and different things, that no definite impression can be given, unless there exist a previous knowledge of the mode in which each word is applied. it will, therefore, be necessary to explain the meanings with which each word will be used in the present work. tints are those specific and definite qualities of colours, by which the individuals of a class are distinguished from each other: as of reds; scarlet, crimson, pink, rose-colour, &c.: of greens; apple-green, olive-green, pea-green, &c.: of yellows; straw-colour, amber, &c.: of blues; sky-blue, garter-blue, indigo, &c. shades of colour imply the degree of brilliancy or depth, as bright or deep crimson; light or dark blue. tones of colour are of more general application, as indicating the general aspect of classes of tints or shades; and especially designating the degree of warmth or coldness: as cool greens, warm greys. there may be lighter and darker _shades_ of the same tone, but not of the same tint. rose-colour and crimson may be said to be lighter and darker shades of the same _tone_. the word tone is also used by itself in opposition to crudity or rawness of colour; and hence is technically descriptive of the ternary compounds, of whatever tint or shade; while the primary colours and the binary compounds, blue, red and yellow, and purple, orange and green, are technically distinguished as colour. the lighter shades of tone in this sense are technically included under the term _greys_; warm, as they contain orange; cool, as they contain purple or green. tints and tones are further classed as _pure_, as they approach purple, and those tints observed in mother of pearl, hence, also pearly tints; warm or hot as they approach orange; heavy, and unless they are exceedingly transparent, muddy, as they approach green. half-tints express those gradations of _colour_, and half-lights those gradations of _light_, between the greatest brilliancy and the shadows. colours are said to be supported by others which present some resemblance, but are inferior in brilliancy; as blues by purples, crimsons by reddish-browns, yellows by orange: --contrasted by those which are the most opposite, as blues by orange or browns, reds by green, yellows by purples: --balanced when by opposition they are so neutralized that no one appears principal or predominant. the author of a recent publication on colour is quite in error, when, in describing technical terms, he states "the balance of colouring is the harmony produced by _supporting_ one colour by _another_ introduced in _different parts_ of the picture, either _of the same colour_, or one approaching to it." this is spreading _a colour_ through the picture, and though it may _contribute_ to the balance of colouring by _contrasting_ and _neutralizing_ the _other_ colours in the work, it is in itself the very opposite of the _balance_ of _colouring_, as it consists entirely in loading one side of the beam. to this it may be added that colours are said to be supported by similar tints _adjacent_, and echoed by them when "in different parts of the picture." there are many other errors in the book above-mentioned, but as this is not intended to be a controversial disquisition, those mistakes only will be noticed which might otherwise lead to confusion; but to the correction. the definition of "mellowness," as "caused by those warm colours which, when blended, produce an agreeable _tone_ or _hue_, and would then be said to _sympathize_ and create _harmony_," is as incorrect and indefinite, as the remainder of the paragraph is without foundation:--"on the contrary, if, in mixing two or more colours, a disagreeable and harsh effect were produced, they would be said to have an _antipathy_, and create _rawness_--this adulteration of one colour by another causes what painters term a muddy effect." painters term an effect _muddy_ when it is dirty in colour and wanting in transparency. this fancy respecting the sympathy and antipathy of certain colours, which is more distinctly alluded to in the following passage:--"when, to produce a particular tint, the mixing of two colours which do not sympathize is unavoidable; one or more may be introduced whose sympathy is greater, that a pleasing and harmonious effect may be produced, &c."--this is wholly groundless. how the sympathy and antipathy alluded to are supposed to act is not very evident, but they have no existence whatever. the definition of a "pearly hue," as "obtained by softening or blending the _warm_ colours without adulterating one with the other," is equally liable to objection as untrue. the attempt at a philosophical account of the _cause_ of the colours produced at sunset and sunrise, has been incidentally exposed in the third chapter of the present work. this error undoubtedly does not originate with the professed author of the publication alluded to; and as the greater part of the book is evidently, though without acknowledgment, compiled from mr. burnett and other writers on the subject, the other errors are probably in a great measure also the result of compilation. chapter i. colouring as a means of art. colouring is the decorative part of art. it answers to rhythm and rhyme in poetry, as the means of attracting the senses. as it is a means of producing, so its indispensable qualification is,--beauty. in the higher aims of art it should be made subservient to character and expression, by according with the nature of the subject; but, still under the limitation and regulation of those principles which govern pictorial effect. under all circumstances, and to whatsoever purposes applied, the first qualification of colouring as a means of art is, that it should produce a picture. a picture has been elsewhere defined as an arrangement of one or more objects and accessories so as to afford an agreeable subject of contemplation. and the principles which regulate chiaroscuro and general arrangement for this purpose, have been pointed out. the same principles must regulate colouring as a means of art. the mere representation of any object, however accurately detailed and coloured, does not constitute a picture. it must be represented with accessories and under pictorial effect. this as regards chiaroscuro has been shown to depend upon breadth. as regards colouring it depends upon harmony. chapter i. section i. harmony. harmony is a term borrowed from the sister art of music, to denote a degree of relation or congruity between two or more colours, so as mutually to support or develope each other's beauties, as is the case with a chord or concord of sounds. the degrees of relation, or qualification for harmony, of sounds, can be ascertained by mathematical calculation incapable of erroneous results. not so, those of colours; at least in the present state of the science of optics. if it should be proved that colours are the effect of vibrations of the air, or any other fluid, as are sounds, the harmony of colours may equally become the subject of mathematical calculation, with equally certain results; at present we cannot go beyond rude approximations by guess or supposition; and are vaguely placed under the regulation of _taste_, itself as protean and undefined. the theory of the three or seven colours being all equally necessary to each other, which has been derived from the division of the ray of light by a prism, has been supposed to afford the relative proportions of the various tints necessary to harmony in a picture, _because existing in light_; and fanciful, but entirely unfounded, analogies have been drawn by enthusiasts between the seven colours and the seven notes, and the three colours and the notes of the common chord in music: but without going into the question of how far this would be likely to assist in our present inquiry, _if true_, it may be sufficient to observe that these relative proportions _vary_ with the substance of the prism by means of which the ray of light is divided; so that the whole induction falls to the ground. but were the proportions always the same, the induction would be equally untenable. for, though light may be very beautiful; and the rainbow may be very beautiful; a totally different kind of beauty is required for a picture. the colours of the rainbow may perfectly harmonize; but it is more than doubtful whether the person whose whole picture was a representation of a rainbow, would be considered to have produced a finely coloured work of art. harmony, in pictorial colour, does not depend upon any particular proportionate quantities of the different tints; nor in any particular disposition or arrangement of them; but upon the qualities and the treatment of the individual colours. a picture may be painted with every variety of the most brilliant colours; or, on the other hand, as rembrandt treated light, the work may contain only one small spark of colour, the remainder being made up of neutral tints; and even the small spark of colour may be dispensed with, and the whole picture be made up of a variety of tones. having dwelt so much in the sketcher's manual, upon the principle of breadth being indispensable for the production of pictorial effect, it will scarcely be requisite to point out that it is equally necessary that colours should be so treated as to produce _unity_; and that, as with lights and shadows, so whatever variety of tints may be introduced into a picture, they must be so blended and incorporated with each other, that they still form parts of a whole;--that whether the lights be white, and the shadows black, or differently coloured, the same necessity for graduation remains; so that colours must not be in flat patches. and in the treatment of colours, besides the graduation requisite for breadth of chiaroscuro, it is necessary to pay attention to the peculiar quality termed tone, which is indispensable in a coloured work of art. as well as breadth of chiaroscuro, there must be breadth of tone, the fundamental quality of harmony. chapter i. section ii. tone. this is a term also borrowed from the vocabulary of music, to denote a property or quality of colour, the opposite of gaudiness or harshness; and implies a richness or sobriety, inviting quiet contemplation. it confers what is technically termed _repose_. it bears that relation to colours in general, that the quality of a musical note does to that of an unmusical sound or mere noise. in music, this is known to depend upon the vibrations of the air being _isochronous_, or at regular intervals. should it be discovered that colours are also produced by vibrations, tone in its present application may prove to arise from a similar regularity. tone implies a degree of transparency, which in oil colours is attainable with great facility, by a process termed _glazing_; viz. passing a transparent colour over a previously prepared tint. there are also some other practical methods of producing it, which are more advisable in certain cases, but which need not be further noticed here. in water colours, the greater number of pigments used are transparent, and the legitimate method of using them proceeds upon the principle of working entirely in transparent media; which has, at all times, excited great hopes with regard to that branch of art, as affording a better means than oil colours (in which the light tints are all composed with opaque white) of producing the brilliancy and truth of nature, in combination with the transparency (tone) which is required in a work of art. and it is to be regretted, that in some few, and those popular instances, this advantage arising out of the legitimate use of water colours, should have been thrown away, without obtaining any equivalent, other than that of hiding or correcting blunders; and that attempts should have been made, by the use of opaque body colours, and a similar method of working, to imitate the effect of oil painting. the progress of the true art of water-colour drawing, must necessarily receive a check from the adoption of such a practice, which will doubtless be sanctioned by the idle or the hurried; and attempts to carry out the original prospects and genuine advantages of the transparent medium, will probably become rare, if they should not cease entirely. it is true that opaque water-colours are supposed to have an advantage over oil-colours, in light and brilliant parts, in consequence of the tendency of the oil (the _vehicle_, as it is technically termed) to come to the surface, and thus to give a tinge to, or obscure, the purer tints of skies and distant brilliant objects. on this account, they are said to be used by turner in these parts, when he desires to attain great clearness and purity of colour. but, however, the _union_ of water-colours with oil may be advantageous for these purposes, and thus _opaque_ water-colours may receive a partial sanction; it cannot be denied that, in the instances previously alluded to, in which the opaque water-colours are used for no other purpose than the facility of recovering half-tints that had been too much obscured, the only advantage of water-colours is abandoned, without obtaining the equivalent of _richness_, arising from texture in oil; and the purity of the one art is lost, without attaining the force of the other. a crumbly, bungling appearance is produced, and for no reason, as the practice can never be successfully employed in the parts or objects, in which the use of semi-transparent colours is so invaluable in oil. and in fact, opacity, the reverse of what is desired, tone, is produced by the very same means in water-colours, by which transparency is attained in oil. breadth of tone is obtained by a process termed _breaking the colours_, which is the same with the method of incorporating lights with each other, described in the sketcher's manual; viz. graduating each tint into those adjacent, by which means a certain degree of affinity is diffused throughout the whole picture, and harmony, or breadth of tone, is produced. the same results are effected, by a process perhaps abused in the present day, termed glazing, which consists in passing some transparent pigment of the tone desired, over the whole picture, and thus breaking all the tints in the work with the same colour which produces the affinity required. chapter ii. rules for producing pictures in colour. although harmony or pictorial colouring does not _depend_ upon any _particular_ quantities or arrangement of _particular_ tints, as the slightest consideration of the infinite variety of pictures that have been produced will prove; certain quantities and arrangements of certain colours, have been found to effect it. these discoveries have been made from time to time, and have each been adopted as principles by different artists; and though admitting of considerable variation in details, their effects have been so evidently distinguished by the public as uniform in general aspect, that they have been ranged in classes or schools, to one of which any individual work is instantly referred, by those who have even a slight acquaintance with the art. by _writers_ upon art it has been very generally contended, that there _must_ be a balance of warm and cold colours. a little consideration will show, that this, as well as _all_ restrictive regulations, such as that blue must not come in the front of the picture, &c. are unfounded, or nearly the whole of the dutch school of landscape and interiors must be condemned as wanting in harmony, or bad colourists; for ruysdael and hobbima, teniers and ostade, seem to have had a horror of warm colours, while, on the other hand, cuyp and both seem to have had an equal dread of cool tints. that a balance of warm and cold colour is _one_ principle by which pictorial harmony may be obtained, is perfectly true; and that there are various means of balancing them is also true; which affords numerous varieties of style or character of pictures. and that the principle deduced by sir joshua reynolds from the venetian school, that one-third of the picture should (may) be cool, and the remaining two-thirds warm, is also just; and will be productive of beautiful results. the error consists in making these relative proportions _indispensable_ to harmony. this chapter will contain such principles as have been found to ensure harmony. there may, perhaps, be many others in store for future discovery. these principles are of universal application, whatever objects may be the subject of the drawing or picture, whether landscape, figures, animals, flowers, or altogether; and they are wholly independent of poetical or dramatic colouring,--the application of colour to expression and character,--and of the colouring of individual objects. the art of composition, in regard to colour, consists in arranging objects in such a manner, that their true colouring will produce the combination required by the principle adopted. the art of too many of the artists of the present day, consists in introducing the colours required, without any reference to their being found in nature or not. [illustration: cuyp's principle] chapter ii. section i. cuyp's principle. the simplest arrangement and treatment of colours will be found in the style of cuyp and both; objects in shadow are relieved against a warm sunny sky. for the reasons given in the sketcher's manual, with regard to progressive execution, these are the best adapted to beginners; objects in shadow do not present much variety of tint. the whole aspect or general tone of the picture is warm. the shadows are cooler than the lights, but very far from cold; being of a sepia brown, and sometimes warmer, with some cool reflections from the air. the sky is gently graduated from a rich yellow to the most delicate warm grey. the middle ground affords some blackish-green half-tints or shadows; and some golden lights are introduced in front. cuyp treated figures, animals, and boats in this way. the points requiring attention and care are, first, the tone of the sky and yellow lights, which must be obtained from yellow and roman ochres; the sky should have a creamy quality of colour; and what little grey is introduced, must be cobalt blue, or ultramarine with carmine, or lake, so as to prevent the slightest appearance of green; secondly, the masses of shadow must be of agreeable shape and must not be too dark. plate. [illustration: both's principle] chapter ii. section ii. both's principle. the style of both is only a slight variation from that of cuyp. he adopted a different character of subject, usually contriving to relieve a mass of rock or bank, and a tree with delicate foliage against the sky; and he increased the warmth of the general aspect of the picture, by making the tree and part of another _light_ bank, of the rich brown afforded by burnt terra de sienna, and by introducing some red clouds in the sky. in some instances both has not escaped the dangers that present the difficulty to his followers; the tone of these pictures appears hot, and thereby a vulgarity is occasioned, and that refinement which is required by taste in the fine arts, is destroyed. plate. [illustration: ruysdael's and hobbima's principle] chapter ii. section iii. hobbima and ruysdael's principles. these masters have adopted a style which, though apparently as opposite to that of cuyp and both as cold is to warm, resembles it in this respect--they rarely, if ever, admit positive colours in force, and thus offer another simple principle for the treatment and arrangement of tints. in hobbima and ruysdael, who painted landscapes, dark brownish masses are relieved against a cloudy grey sky, and some white or grey light is introduced in front to carry the colour of the sky through the work. the general aspect of the picture is cold. what little warmth of tone may be admitted, is to be found in the centre of the shadows; and the only approximation to positive colour, is in the sky, a little cold feeble blue, obtained in water-colours from indigo; and a small portion of a deeper shade of the same tone of blue on mountains or trees in shadow in the distance; or a little cold green in the middle ground. if ever any red be introduced, it must be a mere speck of vermilion shaded with grey, to give value by contrast to the neutral tones, which make up the principle part of the picture. plate. [illustration: ostade's principle] chapter ii. section iv. teniers and ostade's principles. teniers and ostade have treated homely interiors upon the same principle, making up the greater part of the picture with brownish grey tones, and introducing in the light, some very feeble spots of the primary colours, carefully shaded with grey, to assimilate them with the general aspect of the work. what little warmth is admitted, is found in the shadows and reflections, as in the productions of ruysdael and hobbima. but the lights afford a greater purity of tone; so that while the works of ruysdael and hobbima would be said to have a grey tone, teniers, and particularly ostade, are said to have a silvery tone. plate. [illustration: principle of titian and the venetian school] chapter ii. section v. the principles of titian and the venetian school. the venetian school, founded by titian, adopted a combination of rich warm browns, yellows, and greens, supported by crimsons, all deep in tone, overspreading two-thirds of the picture, opposed by very rich, almost warm, blues, and animated by a point of white, sometimes accompanied by black in the front of the subject. no violent contrasts are admitted, no crude colours. the white is toned down to assimilate with flesh tints, which are again toned to accord with golden lights, gradually deepening into yellowish browns, and emerging through warm greens to join the blues, which are kept in check by the opposition in some places to rich reddish browns of the same relative shade, so that one shall not be darker than the other; the blue is graduated as it approaches the white, into which it is blended by the interposition of fleshy-coloured tints. the whole aspect of the picture is rich and warm, but subdued. the lights are golden and the shadows brown, with just so much cool green, white, and blue, as shall prevent the picture appearing rusty. but though these tints are called cool, because they are cooler than the rest of the work, as in the style of cuyp and both, they must not be cold; but above all it is requisite to take care that they are not crude. white must be toned with yellow or red; blue must incline to purple; and if black be introduced, it must not be _blue_ black. plate. [illustration: ludovico caracci's principle] chapter ii. section vi. ludovico caracci's principle. ludovico caracci followed the venetian school, but subdued the colours of the whole picture, to what sir joshua reynolds calls a "cloistered tone," the effect of a "dim religious light, through storied pane." neither white nor black are admitted: the deepest shadows do not descend below a rich brown; the brightest lights do not rise above a creamy yellow. the blue is no longer opposed to a brown of the same relative shade, but is introduced in the half-lights, and carefully blended into the shadows, by means of warm reflections, and the interposition of reddish purple shadows. the chiaroscuro is broader and more tranquil than in the works of the venetian school. plate. [illustration: another principle of titian] chapter ii. section vii. another principle of titian. titian has adopted another principle in the painted ceiling of the hall of judgment, in the ducal palace at venice. pure greys are interspersed amongst masses of bright crimson, which are opposed to some pure white and blue, broken by flesh tints. the reds and greys are supported by some warm yellows, and the whole assimilated by rich brown shadows. the contrasts of colour and chiaroscuro are vivid, and require care in the shapes, as well as the situations of the masses and points of relief. plate. this principle of colouring is applicable to gorgeous historical subjects, portraits, and flowers. sir thomas lawrence frequently adopted it with a slight variation, resulting from the combination of some portion of the following principle which was developed by rubens. [illustration: ruben's principle] chapter ii. section viii. rubens' principle. rubens is the founder of another school in which the most violent contrasts of colour and chiaroscuro are admitted in the focus of the picture. the deepest black, supported by rich yellows, crimsons, and blues, is opposed to the brightest vermilion, sometimes heightened with gold, and the purest white, which is graduated through every variety of pearly tint into bright blues, interspersed with purply greys, creamy and fleshy half-tints. great simplicity of chiaroscuro is requisite in this style of colouring. both the white and the black must graduate uninterruptedly into the half-lights, which form the greater part of the picture. the crimsons, blues, and yellows, that support the black, must all partake of the same tone. the vermilion must graduate into purply tints, which will emerge through greys and greens to the bright blue. plate. [illustration: turner's principle] chapter ii. section ix. turner's principle. turner has controverted the old doctrine of a balance of colours, by showing that a picture may be made up of delicately graduated blues and white, supported by pale cool green, and enlivened by a point of rich brownish crimson. it requires some care in the graduation and shapes of the masses of blue and white, and in the situation of the point of colour. plate. [illustration: another principle of turner] chapter ii. section x. another principle of turner. another principle adopted by turner is, to contrast rich autumnal yellows in the foreground, with a brilliant italian blue sky, graduated through a series of exquisitely delicate pearly tints, to meet the cooler green tints of the middle ground. the warm colours in the foreground are qualified by purply half-tints, and supported by warm shadows and some rich crimsons; or sometimes reduced to comparative sobriety by the opposition of the brightest orange and white. plate. [illustration: modern manner] chapter ii. section xi. modern manner. a very favourite manner of the present day is partially to relieve a tower, steeple, spire, or some upright object, rendered of a purple colour, against a white cloud which is graduated with purply greys, creamy and fleshy tints, and opposed to some bright patches of blue; the lower part of the building or object is graduated through cool greens or greys, into some warmer yellows or browns in the foreground, which are interspersed with points of bright colours, such as cobalt blue, vermilion, lake, and sometimes white and black, but always introducing in front some dull red, as of bricks or tiles, contrasted with fresh greys. plate. chapter ii. section xii. abstract principles to which these arrangements may be referred. these several styles of colouring may be reduced to certain abstract principles, which may be made the foundation for other and different arrangements, as the taste and talent of the artist or amateur may dictate. pictures may be made up of a balance, or harmonic arrangement of tones. or, of a balance, or harmonic arrangement of colours. or, of a balance, or harmonic arrangement of tones and colours. or, by relieving a spark of colour against a mass of tones. or, by relieving a spot of black or white, _the concentration of_ tones, against a general aspect of colours. pictures may be warm in tone, qualified by so much cool tint as will prevent their appearing hot. or cool, with so much warm tint as will prevent their appearing cold. a small spark of bright colour will balance a large mass of subdued tint. equal brightness will require equal masses. for the principles by which the shapes and situations of masses and points must be governed, the reader is referred to the sketcher's manual, where they will be found at length, and carefully illustrated. the same regulations that govern the distribution of several lights or shadows, must guide the positions of several masses of the same colour. if two or more are introduced, they must not be equal in size, nor similar in shape, nor must they be so placed, that a line drawn through them, would be either horizontal or vertical--parallel with either base or side. the great principle of colouring being variety within the limits of harmony, such masses of similar tints should be of different sizes and shapes, and should be interspersed at different distances through the picture, so as to suggest an undulating line, traversing all, or at least three, of the four quarters of the picture, that all the particular colour shall not be on one side, and none on the other, nor all at the lower, and none in the upper half of the picture. but if the arrangement of relieving a spark of colour against a mass of tones, or the reverse be adopted, it must not be placed in the centre of the picture, nor equidistant from either top and base, or the two sides. with regard to the beauty of individual tints, it would be difficult to come to any very strict definition, as what is pleasing to one person, is not so to another; and particularly in reference to the use of colours in art, for they then become so dependent upon the other tints by which they are surrounded, that they may be said to cease to have positive designations, and to become only comparative; and there is scarcely any tint, however disagreeable in itself, but may be made by art to appear agreeable, if not beautiful. but the object of the present work being to collect the certain or decided principles of art, for the benefit of those who desire to derive pleasure or amusement from it, the doubtful or questionable hypotheses will be left untouched, and those points only brought forward which are calculated to ensure success. for this purpose, the amateur should avoid greenish blues and greenish yellows; they both appear sickly: and never place such a green between blue and yellow as would result from the mixture of the particular tints of those two colours which are made use of. both blue and yellow become agreeable as they incline to red. red becomes rich as it inclines to blue, brilliant as it inclines to yellow. all shades and tones of purple or orange are agreeable; but of greens, those only which incline to yellow. blueish greens require either to be very pale, as shown in turner's first principle (_see plate_), or moderated with black, so as almost to cease to be colours, and become tones. all shades and tints of the tertiary compounds are agreeable in their places; they receive value by the opposition of the colour which enters least into their composition, and become difficult to manage only when they approach full blueish green. white and black give value to all colours and tones. it may be necessary to make an observation upon the foregoing warning, and almost proscription, of the use of green in art, as that colour is found to be exceedingly agreeable in nature, and is used with success in manufactures, and for other general purposes. it is found to afford great relief to weak sight, and is abstractedly so much admired, that it appears singular and paradoxical to say, that green must be sparingly used in pictures, even in landscapes, whose greatest charm in nature consist of luxuriance of vegetation: but such is the case. the general tone of a picture may be yellow, as in the works of cuyp, both, ludovico caracci (_see plates_); red, as in the second principle of titian (_see plate_); blue, as in the first principle of turner (_see plates_); grey or brown, as in the works of ruysdael and the dutch school (_see plates_); but a green picture, however true to nature, instantly excites an universal outcry as being disagreeable; and if any of the modern school, to which we shall presently advert, have been for a moment tolerated, it has arisen from the previous great reputation of the artist, or for other merits in the work, and in _spite_ of its being a green picture. the following hypothesis _may_ be the mode of accounting for this paradox, and, at the same time, _may_ throw some light upon another, which will be noticed; that although painting is an imitative art, imitation, to the extent of deception, does not constitute its highest excellence. the eye is excited by colour, and the object of painting, independent of poetical expression or character, is to excite the eye agreeably. but green is found to excite the eye _less_ than any other tint, (thereby affording some corroboration to the idea that, strictly speaking, its opposite red, is the only true _colour_,) not even excepting black; so that it acts as an opiate, and is used for counteracting the brightness of the sun, by means of parasols or glasses, and to guard weak eyes from the effects of light by means of silk shades. it is thrown out as a suggestion that, in looking at a picture in which excitement to the degree of pleasure is _expected_, a disappointment _may_ arise from finding a prevalence of those tints which do not excite, except to a very slight extent, and that _thus_ a green picture _may_ occasion dissatisfaction. in looking at nature we do not wish to be always excited, and green is admired or valued as affording repose; but in looking at a picture, the very object is excitement, within certain limits, which green has a tendency to destroy. certain tints of green become disagreeable in certain parts of pictures, from association of ideas. green in flesh, excites the idea of corruption and decay. green in skies, occasioned by blending the warm yellows of sunset with the blue, excite the impression of want of skill to prevent the one tint running into the other. but in reservation it must be repeated, that there is no tint that cannot be controlled and made available, by great skill and management, to the purposes of art. these warnings are for beginners and amateurs; and the work is intended to show them what they may do with safety; as they attain proficiency, they may attempt difficulties, which principally reside in _truth_ of detail _in combination_ with agreeable general effect. when to this is added a just subservience to poetical character, the greatest requisitions of the art have been complied with; all other difficulties, of whatever nature, being merely a species of mountebank trickery, beneath the aim of high art, and deserving of the well-known sarcasm of dr. johnson upon some difficult music, that "he wished it were impossible." chapter iii. fine colouring. having shown in the preceding chapters certain principles upon which pictorial arrangements of colours may be ensured, the attention of the reader must be directed to what other qualities are requisite to constitute fine colouring. fine colouring must not be confounded with fine colours. some of the finest colourists have avoided fine colours, and sir joshua reynolds adduces as a _proof_ that apelles was a fine colourist, the statement by pliny, that, "after he had finished his pictures, he passed an _atramentum_, or blackness, over the whole of them." nor is truth of imitation sufficient of itself to constitute fine colouring, though it always confers a value on a work of art. fine colouring, in the higher walks of art, implies an adaptation of the general aspect or style of colouring to the expression and character of the subject; it then acquires the title of poetical colouring, which is its highest commendation as a means of art. but, independent of subject, there are other abstract qualifications of fine colouring to be sought for, in the representation of objects. it not only requires such an arrangement of tints and tones as shall produce an agreeable whole, but descends to minutiæ, and demands that such tints and tones, shall be obtained by a degree of refinement or idealization, within probability, of the ordinary appearances of nature, or by a selection of the greatest beauties she displays, and such a combination of them as shall contribute to convey the most pleasing impressions, and present _her_ under the most attractive aspect. chapter iii. section i. principles of colouring objects. proceeding to consider colouring independently of character or expression, to which it should be subservient in the higher walks of art, the attention of the reader must be directed to a circumstance connected with truth of representation. it has commonly been the practice, under the almost universal sanction of great authorities, to place the student who may be desirous of acquiring the art of painting, before some object, and to direct him to copy _what he sees_. but what does he see? we need not go into the question of _how_ impressions are produced upon the mind, through the medium of the eye; whether a species of picture of the object be, during the inspection, as it were painted upon the retina; and whether that be inverted or anywise different from the real object; or whether, and to what extent, association rectifies the imperfections of our sight. these, and other investigations into the philosophical and physical nature of vision, may be left to the consideration of those who desire to account for particular facts; we have to do with the facts themselves. in whatever manner the effect may be produced, it is indisputable, that a certain and distinct impression is produced upon the mind, through the medium of the eye, by every object which may be before it, and that impression has a strict relation to the real character of the object; for instance, a marble statue, it appears, or an impression is conveyed of, an object of one unvaried tint. how this impression is conveyed, is of no consequence; it is conveyed; and a series of tints may be artificially arranged upon paper (or any other convenient material), so as also, if not equally, to convey to the mind the impression of a marble statue of uniform whiteness. but upon examination of the drawing or painting, it would be seen, that scarcely any two parts of the _representation_ of the statue were of exactly the same tint. some parts would be delicately graduated from a point of light, through a series of darker tints, to give the appearance of roundness; while others would be made nearly black by shadow, to give the appearance of projection. the present enquiry has reference solely to colours, but the same difficulties occur with regard to forms. here there is a discrepancy, occasioned by association, which we shall scarcely find language to explain, but which will in most cases prove of serious perplexity to the student; for there are some other persons like queen elizabeth, who have no idea of shadow, unless it be the shadow of a parasol or tree, under which they may escape the intensity of a noon-day sun. the statue will appear, or an impression will be conveyed to the mind, of uniform whiteness. but pictorially speaking, one spot only, that which reflects the greatest light, will appear quite white. all the other parts will _appear_, that is, to convey the impression, they must be made, of an infinite variety of tints, from the brightest light to the deepest shadow. the statue _is_ actually uniformly white, and it appears uniformly white, yet the _appearance_ or representation which must be put upon paper, to convey an impression of that _appearance_ by drawing or painting, is totally opposite, being an infinite variety of tints. but in a statue, by reason of its convexity, the second species of _appearance_, the pictorial, is much more readily appreciated, from the strong opposition of light and shadow, than in a flat surface,--a ceiling, a pavement, or meadow, in which the perception of the modifications of colour, arising from what is termed aerial perspective, is considerably influenced, by the association above mentioned, until the eye has become educated to observe these minute and delicate gradations of tint. thus, in looking at a meadow, we know the grass to be generally of the same colour throughout, and to an uneducated eye it _appears_ equally green from one end to the other: or the ceiling of a well lighted room, we know it to be of one colour throughout, and it _appears_ of one even tint from the nearest to the most distant extremity; yet pictorially speaking, it _appears_ of an infinite variety of tints, for the effect of the atmosphere is such as to rob the grass of its colour, and to make the white ceiling grey, as they recede from the eye. it will scarcely be necessary to guard against misconception as to the use of the terms describing the effect of the atmosphere, by explaining that it is not intended to assert that an _actual change_ takes place, or that there is any _actual_ difference in the colour of those parts of objects which are at a distance from the eye; or, that the colour in the distance does not appear to be, as we know it is, the same with that nearest the eye; but that the effect of distance is the _pictorial appearance_ of a modification of tint, by the interposition of the atmosphere, perceptible only to an educated eye. we know the grass to be equally green throughout, and it appears of the tints which convey that impression; while association conceals the modification occasioned by the interposition of the atmosphere (which the generality of observers consider as only "air," and of no consequence), and excites the notion that the meadow appears of one equal flat tint. but the distant extremity of the meadow is seen through more or less atmosphere, which is more or less dense; and in proportion to its density will the colour of the grass be _apparently_ altered or changed thereby; and in some instances, as in case of a fog, entirely concealed. in looking at any object through a perfectly transparent medium, such as plate glass, we do not perceive any alteration in the real colours. but when the medium is not perfectly transparent, which is the case with the atmosphere, the colours of all objects seen through it are modified or tinged in proportion to its density, until they are sometimes lost or absorbed in the tint of the medium. the slightest possible colourless opacity gives a medium approaching to a whitish film, which is very evident when there is light behind it; as in the case of the beams of the moon. this is the clearest state of the atmosphere. as it increases in density, it becomes more and more white, until it becomes a white mist, fog or cloud. the atmosphere is sometimes coloured, as will hereafter be mentioned; at present we have to do with its colourless state. the opacity of the atmosphere, as a white film over the darkness of space, occasions the blue appearance of the sky; and in proportion to the rarity or density of the medium, is the intensity of colour, or rather depth of tone. if the atmosphere be extremely rare, as in the polar regions, or at the height of mont blanc, the sky appears almost black. and if the atmosphere be thick with vapour, the sky assumes a milky colour, and the blue tint is lost in that of the medium. when the atmosphere is just so rare as to be scarcely perceptible in its influence upon terrestrial objects,--as in italy, or the eastern climes, where the most distant buildings appear diminished in size, but almost as distinct as those close to the spectator,--yet sufficiently dense to become a veil to the expanse of space, the colour of the sky appears the most intense blue. as near as we can superficially ascertain it,--in the exact medium between such rarity of atmosphere as would afford blackness, and such opacity as would afford whiteness,--we may expect to find the most intensely blue colour in the sky. as the effect of this colourless opacity of the atmosphere is, to render the appearance of the _darkness of space_ a blue colour, so all dark terrestrial objects are similarly affected by the intervening of this medium, and, in a corresponding degree, become more or less blue. the dark mountains in wales and scotland appear of a deep blue, sometimes verging upon purple; and a slight comparison between the colour of the trees close to the spectator and those in the distance, will show how much more blue the latter become, from the influence of the medium through which they are viewed. and as objects, in proportion to their distance, are more or less affected by the interposition of the atmosphere, so, also, do the parts of the individual objects themselves, become more or less grey as they recede. the boundaries of a white object are less white, and of a black object less black, than the parts nearest the eye. a tree is most green at the prominent parts, and greyer at the top and sides. this truth is so decidedly felt by the public in general--though perhaps insensibly appreciated and but tacitly acknowledged,--that, as the atmosphere reduces the colours of all objects to a blue tint, so all blue colours convey an impression of distance, and all tints approaching to blue are accordingly designated _retiring colours_. but the atmosphere is not always colourless. the rays of the sun tinge it with yellow. the rays from a fire or candle tinge it with a colour approaching to red. the combination of smoke tinges it with black or brown; and fogs infuse various degrees of dingy yellow. all these variations affect the colours of the objects seen through the atmosphere, and modify the degree of blue, or quality of grey, tint communicated thereby. when the atmosphere is coloured by the light of the sun, the blue is modified, more or less, into a warm grey. but owing to the brilliancy resulting from the blaze of light, the tints remain of the utmost purity. all tendency to green is kept in subordination by the pearly tints of those parts which are in shadow. the atmosphere is rendered more dense at the same time that it is coloured by the light of the sun; but the light parts of the objects seen through it are rendered, by the same cause, so much more brilliant, that the density of the medium is partially compensated; while its full effect is apparent upon the shadows seen through it, over which a bright haze diffuses a beautiful blue tint, slightly warmed by the golden colour of the illuminating power. the contrast of the yellow tinge in the lights makes these shadows appear to incline to purple; and at sunset and sunrise, when by the greater quantity of the medium, rendered more dense by the aqueous vapours close to the earth, the colour of the sun's light is enriched to a deep golden hue approaching orange and red, the shadows assume a decidedly purple tint, of which the blue is supplied by the density, and the red by the colour, of the medium. as the light of the sun decreases, the colour of the atmosphere is more evidently tinged with red, until the sun has sunk so far below the horizon, that the shadows of night incorporating with the colour of the vapours, render them a dull grey, sometimes approaching a brown. in proportion as the atmosphere is illumined does it also become opaque. the sky close to the sun appears much less blue than on the opposite side of the heavens. the beams of the sun, or moon, or even the rays of a candle, become so opaque, as absolutely to conceal all objects behind them. in a glowing sunshine, the particles of the atmosphere loaded with light, produce that soft haze or _caligine_, "as the italian hath it," by which the colours of every object seen through it, are assimilated in one broad, warm, grey tone, however varied the tints of the objects in reality may be. another singular appearance takes place in remote objects, of which no one has so fully availed himself as turner, for the production of pictorial beauties, and the brilliancy of sunshine. the atmosphere, which becomes most visible when before shadows, is frequently so much illuminated by the sun's rays, as to make the shadows appear nearly equally light with the illuminated parts of the objects; and the only distinction between the lights and shadows is to be found in the difference of tint--the shadows being blue or purple, and the lights a warm yellow, or fleshy colour. the practice in art, both in oil and in water colours, has been an imitation of the process of nature, and with similar results. it is usual in oil to paint the distance stronger in colour than it is intended to remain, and when dry, to pass some very thin opaque colour (technically to scumble) over the whole. thus the most perfectly aerial tints are produced. in water colours, owing to the different quality of the materials employed, another method is adopted. white, or any opaque pigment (except when used in conjunction with oil painting), has a disagreeable effect; so it is considered advisable partially to wash out the too highly coloured distance, and aerial tints similar to those produced by the scumble are obtained. however requisite it may be philosophically to account for these appearances, it is unnecessary to perplex the reader of the present work with a questionable statement of the greater impetus of rays of certain colours enabling them to penetrate through the dense atmosphere, while others are more feeble, and are swallowed up and absorbed by the medium through which they in vain essay to pass. this may be a very pretty story to amuse children with, and such philosophers as are verging on their second childhood; but while so simple a method can be discovered of accounting for the blueness of the sky and distant objects, and one that can be so easily exemplified as that given in the previous pages, we shall not be the parties to contribute to that amusement, by writing "the history of some blue rays that were lost in a fog." nor is this the place to point out the absurdity of such theories; it will be sufficient to remark that _if_ they are correct, all distant objects must appear _red_; and the blueness of the sky can only be accounted for by the hypothesis, that the atmosphere is a sort of trap for the blue rays of all the light that has passed and is passing through it! such being the effect of the atmosphere, and such being the antagonizing influence of association in looking at nature, it has been found necessary for the purposes of art, in representation, to exaggerate the former, to overstep the modesty of nature, and thus to produce what may be termed conventional imitations or translations of nature. for, in looking at a picture, association again affects us; and as we know what is before us to be a flat surface, this can only be overcome by increasing the effects produced by atmospheric influence, reflections, refractions, &c. hence the colour of all distant objects are reduced to some tone of grey, oscillating between the extremes of bright blue or even purple, and the medium between black and white as the subject, may be in sunshine cold daylight; or, as the taste of the artist may lead him to prefer one scale of colouring to another. those who delight in the sunny skies of italy, or tropical climates, represent the distance by the purest blue that ultramarine affords. others, who delineate the village church or cathedral tower, represent them of a dark grey. mountain scenery is represented of a deep indigo blue, sometimes inclining to a decided purple, as all must remember in the drawings of the late mr. robson. if this exaggeration or pictorial license be objected to, as an unnecessary departure from truth or the beauty of nature, let the most inveterate worshipper of verisimilitude place himself before a landscape under bright sunshine, on a clear day, and make an exact representation, if he be able, of what he sees; and he will be convinced that in such an instance, something more and very different is required, to make a finely coloured picture. it cannot be that the colours of the original are deficient in beauty, but that an essential quality of the beauty of nature cannot be preserved by imitative art. he will find that it will not be possible to preserve even slightly the gradation of tints before him, without descending almost to blackness in the shadows, which will be destructive of brilliancy of sunshine, and at the same time, of that quality which is indispensable in a work of art, _breadth_. he will find that in comparison with the brightness of the sky, the trees will look as dark as they are represented by ruysdael and hobbima, but who incontestibly do not give the idea of sunshine. as in translating from one language to another, he will find that a literal version may give the bones, but not the spirit of the text; and that something more is required to transfer the full force and character of the original. herein consists a great part of the art of colouring objects. it may be that the scene being unbounded in nature, is acted upon by extraneous circumstances which cannot be called to the aid of a picture. as it is impossible with pigments to rival the brightness of light, it has been found necessary to adopt some method of forcing the effect of colours, so as to conceal or to supply a compensation for this deficiency, and _apparently_ to produce the vigour of truth. this has led to a division, which rivals in fierceness as in name, the feud of the bianchi and the neri of italy, into two great schisms or factions of colourists, of whom, it is to be regretted, too many are apt to consider those of the opposite party as lost in the depths of absurdity. the hostility and contempt are quite mutual, and equally ungrounded. a writer in blackwood's magazine of the neri faction says, "we have received a prescriptive right to make war upon the rising heresy of light pictures, and we will wage it to the knife," or some such expressions. certain tones of colour have been found to be almost universally recognized as agreeables; and by the above mentioned class of artists and critics, the neri, it is held to be "fine colouring," to reduce every representation, without consideration of propriety, to these conventionally agreeable tones. plate. sir joshua reynolds commends a picture of a moonlight scene by rubens, which is so rich in colour, that if you hide the moon it appears like a sunset. the background of the far-famed mercury, venus and cupid, by corregio, in the national gallery, and the sky of the bacchus and ariadne, by titian, in the same collection, are instances of this practice, the use of conventionally agreeable tones, which may be seen by every one. it would be difficult to say what the former was meant for, except _background_ to the figures; and no one ever saw a sky such a blue as the latter. it irresistibly brings to mind the counter-criticism of a sceptic to the admiration of a landscape by poussin, in which sir ----, a worshipper of the old masters, was indulging:--"what i like so much is, it looks so _like_ an _old picture_."--"yes," said the sceptic, "and the _sky_ looks as _old_ as the _rest_ of the _picture_, for you never see such a sky now-a-days." the neri apparently give up all hope of rivalling the brightness of nature; but by forcing the shadows and general tone of the whole picture, endeavour to produce the same _gradation_ of light and shadow as in nature, but on a lower scale. the bianchi party, on the other hand, endeavour to compensate for the want of positive brilliancy, by refining or increasing the delicacy and beauty of the tints. light is the origin, or immediate cause of _colour_, and the brighter the light, the greater variety of tints will be found or displayed. as we cannot rival the cause, the bianchi contend that we must increase the effect by introducing _colour_ in lieu of those _tints_ which in nature appear neutral; and thus conceal the weakness of our imitation of the cause, by making it apparently produce greater effects. thus all greys are rendered by pure ultramarine blue tints, or delicate pearly purple, and the greatest possible variety of beautiful and delicate colours are introduced in the light; while the shadows are generally of a neutral colour, the most decidedly contrasting with the tints in the light. but sometimes the colour is also carried through the shadows as well as the lights; positive crimson being introduced into those of leaves or grass; while those of flesh are rendered by a dull red; and those of a sandy bank by pure blue. plate. the neri complain that the bianchi want tone, and the bianchi that the neri want purity and light. each of these factions contends, that all the difficulty of fine colouring is to be found only in their own aim; while they hold in perfect contempt the productions of their opponents, as being of such facile achievement as to the sarcasm of michael angelo,--to be "fit only for children," and beneath the attention of those who profess to study the fine arts. [illustration: the neri] the main difference between the principles of these two parties or factions, will be found to lie in the treatment of the atmospheric influence and association, previously alluded to. the bianchi availing themselves of the former circumstance, as a reason for introducing a great variety of pearly greys, on the purity and beauty of which they contend fine colouring is dependent; and the neri availing themselves of the latter, as an excuse for the introduction of breadth of warm tones, and the omission of as much as possible of the cool tints, which are deemed so indispensable by their rivals; they limit the representation of atmospheric influence to the least possible degree. titian's venuses are masses of the local colour of flesh, broken with so little half-tint, that they are scarcely round, and satisfy few but critics sufficiently learned in the art, to be contented with the beauties of _art_, as a substitute for the imitation of _nature_. this class of colouring is founded upon the power of association, previously alluded to, by which, the local colour overpowers the greys of atmospheric influence; in other words, that to the eyes of the many, _flesh_ looks of a _flesh_ colour, and ought to be so represented. but the _full_ effect of association is here not allowed for. in looking at flesh, we know it to be flesh colour; and we know it to be round; and it requires some education of the eye to discover the atmospheric influence, as well as the minute gradations in form. but on the other hand, in looking at a picture, we know it to be a flat surface; and however far the _imagination_ may be willing or have a tendency to supply the deficiencies in the representation, _association_ is an _antagonist_ and not an ally. this will become evident upon making outlines of objects and filling them up with flat tints; imagination will not have power to make them appear to be round, or to recede. the beauties of this class of colouring are solely conventional. titian, giorgione, and sir joshua reynolds lead the van of the neri; rubens, vandyke, and lawrence are at the head of the bianchi; unless, indeed, we should consider turner as general-in-chief of the latter. claude was probably of the bianchi faction; but time, who is the great ally of the neri, has made him appear in some of his productions an adherent of that party. it may be added, that most historical painters lean to the neri faction, on account of the disadvantage arising from too close an approach to the common appearance of every-day nature, of which the effect is described in the proverb, that "familiarity breeds contempt," and consequently is destructive of that grandeur, solemnity, or refinement which is indispensable in high art; and they take refuge in the "cloistered tone" of ludovico caracci, so commended by sir joshua reynolds, a conventional beauty which will presently be noticed. the landscape painters, on the other hand, almost universally belong to the bianchi party; as truth or _apparent_ truth is so much more indispensable in subjects that only display the scenery of nature, and which depend upon that resemblance for producing an impression, than in subjects which appeal to the passions by the display of some stirring incident. from the nature of the materials employed, the tendency of oil painting is to the side of the neri; whilst the general inclination induced by water-colour drawing, is in favour of the bianchi party. the _alleged_ principle of the colouring of the neri is deduced from the hypothesis laid down by sir isaac newton, that neither white nor black are _colours_, therefore say the neri, "neither should appear in a finely coloured picture; the brightest lights should not be white; the deepest shadows should not be black;" nevertheless, those productions which are cited by this party as the finest specimens of colour in existence, _do_ contain both _white_ and _black_. in the celebrated picture by giorgione, copied recently by mr. ward, r.a., to the eye of the uninitiated are presented both white lights, and black shadows. the former, it is true, are reduced by _time_ or glazing; and the latter are excused as having lost their original colour. but this principle can scarcely be said to be carried out, except in such pictures as possess the "cloistered tone" of ludovico caracci alluded to. here the lights are warm and golden, as if transmitted through stained glass. the atmospheric greys are introduced to no greater extent than is indispensable to prevent the picture appearing rusty. the shadows are deep rich browns, into which are thrown still warmer reflections; and the whole picture is subdued to a soft-mysterious effect, which is admirably adapted to produce what is technically termed _repose_, and to excite gentle, reverential, solemn, and even affectionate feelings. it is a style of colouring peculiarly suited to religious subjects; and in representations of interiors, may be said to be like nature, because nature _may_ be made to appear like it. (_see plate._) [illustration: the bianchi] this principle of colouring may be carried out on a higher scale than is generally found among the productions of its advocates, and abstractedly, is undoubtedly calculated to lead to very beautiful results; though it may be questioned, whether it is sufficient to entitle the party exclusively to arrogate to themselves the designation of _colourists_, as they are in the habit of doing. for the principle of the bianchi is likewise adapted to produce exceedingly beautiful colouring; and without some rational or scientific standard by which the comparative beauty of individual colours may be determined, so as to distinguish between fine colours and fine colouring, the admirers of this class of colours may, with the greatest justice, contend that it is equally beautiful with that of the opposite party; while it has this superiority, that it will enable the artist to produce much more resemblance in the representation of _external_ nature, and will be much less artificial in the effects produced as imitation of interiors. and they derive a strong argument in favour of their mode of proceeding being correct, and most likely to stand, from the circumstance, that the pictures of vandyke, many of which are _now_ claimed by the neri as painted on their principle, when first done were frequently censured as being too _raw_ or _white_. further, it should be observed that, by too many of the neri party, their great object of worship, _tone_, is limited to the rich warm brownish yellow which is legitimately superinduced in oil pictures by the action of time, or glazing; and surreptitiously obtained by washing with tobacco-water. but an inspection of the works of the dutch school, who belong to a third party which considers both the bianchi and neri to be in the wrong, as too artificial, will show that _tone_ may be cool as well as warm, and that there is a silvery _tone_ which has as devoted admirers as those of the golden image--(_see plates of ruysdael and of ostade_). [illustration: the dutch school] it may not be becoming in the author of the present work to decide between these great disputants; but from the statement respecting vandyke's pictures, that they were considered _raw_ when fresh painted, as well as from the nature of the materials employed, it is evident, that the productions of titian, giorgione, and other celebrated colourists, were not, when first painted, of such deep tones as they exhibit now; and it may be suspected that the reputation, which was derived from the _original_ colouring of their pictures, has, to a certain extent, been attached to the colouring they at present exhibit; and that veneration of talent, and respect for authority, have given sanction to what would be repudiated by the great men whose names form the slogan of the party, and is not really entitled to commendation. that the two principles may be combined, and so produce higher qualities than either affords alone, is hardly possible, when their opposite treatment of the effects of atmospheric influence and association are taken into consideration. but this compromise may be made between them with advantage both to amateurs and artists; that the style of the neri, including that of the dutch school, may be considered as most applicable to the representation of interiors and quiet or grand subjects; while that of the bianchi may be considered as most suited to exteriors, and subjects of gaiety and animation. for the benefit of the amateur, it will be necessary to say something more upon the style of colouring adopted by the dutch school, the productions of which among the cognoscenti, are termed pictures of _tone_; tone being in this instance used in opposition to positive colour, and as implying varieties of the ternary combinations, called neutral tints, or greys, but otherwise possessing the qualities of tone in a general sense, namely, transparency. this style of colouring is peculiarly adapted to the class of subjects on which the masters of the dutch school generally exercised their pencils, homely interiors; but when applied to out-of-door scenes, although undoubtedly possessed of certain conventional beauties, such as harmonious arrangement and balance of tones, it has a tendency to look dull and heavy. the landscapes of ruysdael and hobbima do not reckon among their beauties, that of vivacity or cheerfulness. they may be clear and bright and fresh, as their admirers say, but they do not represent nature under her most bewitching aspect, nor is the style of the school adapted to do so. it leans to the side of the neri, from its dread of brilliant colours. it is unaffected, sober, and in many instances, such as interiors or close woody scenes under grey daylight, possesses great truth; but from its limited application, and unpretending effect, is scarcely to be put into competition, as a style of fine colouring, with the higher aims of the two great parties before mentioned. plate. such is the present state of the theory of fine colouring; from which it is evident, that, except in a very limited class of subjects, truth _cannot_ be made the test--that even in this class of subjects, it is disputed whether it _should_ be made the test; and that it is also disputed, to what extent a departure from truth is admissible; or rather, what quantity of resemblance to nature is indispensable, and what method may be the best of compensating the want of accurate transcription; in short, what is the true _idiom_ of fine colouring in art, so as fully to translate the beauties of nature. the fashion of the day rather leans to the bianchi party in water-colour drawings, if not in oil paintings; but the principles of _none_ of the parties are _fully_ developed in the works of their existing followers. the followers of the dutch school are sacrificing part of their truth for some, but it may be doubted whether the best, part of the conventional tones of both the other parties. the bianchi are more regardless of truth than they need be, even to develope their principles to the utmost. and the neri admit themselves to be wandering in a maze, without any fixed ideas of their own principles, and therefore are less frequently successful than the reverse; and they are equally obnoxious to the charge of departing farther from truth, than is necessary to give their own principles full play. very recently a heresy of this faction adopted a peculiarity of tone, which is not to be found in the works of any of the great men of their party; and which is obnoxious to two serious objections. it is a greenish tone that unavoidably excites the idea of corruption and decay, which, having a tendency towards the disgusting, is not tolerable in the fine arts; and the second objection is, that, in their zeal for transparency, they had lost solidity to such an extent, that a portrait of george iv. by a celebrated artist, had the appearance of a vision, or of having been spun out of green glass bottles. the beginner and the amateur have already been warned against the dangers of green in pictures. and it may now be added, that transparency should reside in the _colours_ to conceal the appearance of pigments, but that the substances represented should appear as _solid_ as in nature. chapter iii. section ii. colours of lights and shadows. whatever party of colourists may find favour in the eyes of the reader, it will be necessary for him to be aware of certain effects observed in nature, of which he will make such use as is admissible under the principle he may adopt. colours reside in the light parts of objects, if not brightest on the lightest parts, closely adjacent to them. shadows reduce, blacken, or render negative the colours of objects. the edges, extremities, or boundaries of _all_ shadows are _grey_. from the effect of contrast, shadows appear _comparatively_ of the opposite colour to that of the light. the bianchi take advantage of this circumstance, and sometimes force or increase the colour of the shadow, to bring out that of the light without really tinging it so _deeply_ as is the case in nature; whereby greater brilliancy is retained. the colours of the lights and shadows depend upon that of the illuminating power, whether sunshine, moonlight, or grey daylight. these will be separately pointed out. [illustration: sunshine] chapter iii. section iii. sunshine. the degree to which the colours of objects will be affected by that of the source of light, will very much depend upon the strength of the illuminating power. the light of the noonday sun is so vivid that it diffuses its colour over all the illumined parts of the objects under its influence. these assume a rich golden hue, through which the local colours of the objects are slightly distinguishable, but rather as modifications of the warm tone diffused by the rays of the sun, than as integral varieties of tint. as already has been noticed, the obvious effect of a yellowish light upon a blue object would be to induce a greenish tint; but in the case of sunshine, this is counteracted by the brilliancy of the light, and in representation, it is necessary for the same purpose, to infuse sufficient red into the light of blue objects under the influence of sunshine, or a disagreeable heavy effect will be produced. green, yellow, and orange objects become particularly brilliant in sunshine. the shadows of the foreground are, in nature, particularly negative or colourless; but as they recede, become gradually more blue. sir joshua reynolds has made the shadows on the arm of his sleeping girl nearly black. he is one of the neri. the bianchi would have made them partake more of the colour opposite to that of light, purply brown, broken with red reflections. the shadows on green objects in the foreground would be rendered by dark crimson. sir thomas lawrence frequently used pure lake in the shadows of his grass or shrubs. plate. chapter iii. section iv. sunset. at sunset there is even less variety of colour observable in the illumined parts of objects than when the sun is higher in the sky. this arises from the influence of the atmosphere previously alluded to. a greater quantity of the medium is loaded with light, and the local colours of the objects seen through it are consequently affected to a greater degree thereby. the colour of the light is also affected by the medium through which it passes, and it becomes much richer, and more nearly approaching to orange. the light in the sky, or illuminating power, is made yellow; but the lights on objects are rendered of a fleshy colour, which is made to appear warmer by the opposition of positive purple shadows, while those objects which do not receive any of the sun's light are kept very cool grey (the effect of reflected light from the blue sky), which by contrast throws the whole of the illuminated part of the picture into warmth. frontispiece. [illustration: moonlight] chapter iii. section v. moonlight. the light of the moon being white or silvery grey, the shadows are made comparatively warm browns. the appearance of moonlight is given by the colours on the illuminated objects in the picture, which are made to appear cooler than they really are, by the contrast with the warm shadows. by this means, much more colour may be introduced into the light than is usually observed in nature, and without impairing the effect of moonlight; and the bianchi contend that by such means greater brilliancy is obtained. the blues in the sky near the moon are kept very pure for the same purpose. plate. [illustration: grey daylight] chapter iii. section vi. grey daylight. grey daylight also affords brownish shadows, but from the greater quantity and diffusion of comparatively colourless light, the local colours of objects become more visible, while the shadows are more varied by reflection and refraction. reflections take their colours from those of the objects by which they are occasioned. the lights on objects are treated as in the case of moonlight; they are made _positively_ warmer than they appear in nature, and are rendered _comparatively_ cool by the warmth of the shadows.--plate. * * * * * the degrees to which these licences may be carried, must depend upon the style of colouring adopted. the amateur has had them placed before him, and whichever he may choose, he will be certain to meet with success in the eyes of one party; he cannot hope to please all. j. m. burton, ipswich steam press. british artists john pettie, r.a., h.r.s.a. [illustration: bonnie prince charlie (cover page)] in the same series birket foster, r.w.s. kate greenaway george morland a. and c. black . soho square . london, w. agents america the macmillan company & fifth avenue, new york australasia oxford university press flinders lane, melbourne canada the macmillan company of canada, ltd. richmond street west, toronto india macmillan & company, ltd. macmillan building, bombay bow bazaar street, calcutta [illustration: portrait of john pettie] john pettie r.a., h.r.s.a. sixteen examples in colour of the artist's work with an introduction by martin hardie, b.a., a.r.e. [illustration] published by a. & c. black , & soho square, london mcmx list of plates owner of original . portrait of john pettie _tate gallery_ . the vigil " . the step _kenneth m. clark, esq._ . a drum-head court-martial _mappin art gallery, sheffield_ . treason " . rejected addresses _the rt. hon. baron faber_ . ho! ho! old noll! _w. j. chrystal, esq_. . a sword-and-dagger fight _corporation art gallery, glasgow_ . two strings to her bow " [a] . bonnie prince charlie _charles stewart, esq._ . disbanded _fine art institution, dundee_ . portrait of sir charles wyndham as david garrick _sir charles wyndham_ . the clash of steel _john jordan, esq._ . a storm in a teacup _colonel harding_ . grandmother's memories _trustees of the late alex. rose, esq._ . the chieftain's candlesticks _by permission of the late mrs. morten_ [a] _on the cover_ john pettie, r.a. like many great painters, john pettie was of humble origin. born in edinburgh in , he was the son of a tradesman who, having reached some prosperity, purchased a business in the village of east linton and moved there with his family in . the boy was born with art in his blood, and nature never intended him for the dull and respectable vocation to which his father was anxious that he should succeed. more than once, when despatched on an errand to storeroom or cellar, he was discovered making drawings on the lid of a wooden box or the top of a cask, totally oblivious of his journey and its object. a portrait of the village carrier and his donkey, done when he was a boy of fifteen, struck neighbouring critics as being almost "uncanny," and overcame even his father's objections to art as a possible career. greatly daring, his mother carried off her son to edinburgh, a bundle of drawings beneath his arm, to visit mr. james drummond, one of the leading members of the royal scottish academy. "much better make him stick to business," was his verdict, after listening to the mother's story. but his tone changed when he had seen the drawings. not a word was uttered while he turned them over; but then, handing them back, he said: "well, madam, you can put that boy to what you like, but he'll die an artist!" with every encouragement pettie now entered the trustees' academy, where he became a student under robert scott lauder, r.s.a. among pettie's fellow-students were george paul chalmers, w. q. orchardson, j. macwhirter, hugh cameron, peter graham, tom graham, and w. mctaggart. they were destined to form a school which breathed new life into scottish art and inaugurated a fresh epoch. all of them gave free expression to their own personality, but one and all made beautiful colour their highest ideal. in pettie exhibited his first picture at the royal scottish academy; and in made his first venture at the royal academy in london with "the armourers," which was hung on the line. it was followed in by "what d' ye lack, madam?" a picture of the saucy 'prentice in scott's "fortunes of nigel." with the exhibition of this picture his success was assured, and the encouragement he received led him to leave the north and seek his future in the greater world of london. in we find pettie sharing a studio in pimlico with orchardson and tom graham. a year later, taking c. e. johnson in their company, they moved to , fitzroy square, a house afterwards tenanted by ford madox brown. i have before me a solemn agreement dated september , : "we, w. q. orchardson, j. pettie, and t. graham, agree to each other that we shall pay the following proportions of rent for house, no. , fitzroy square (w. q. orchardson, £ s.; john pettie, £ s.; t. graham, £ s.), or in these proportions whether of increase or reduction." here they lived a happy bohemian existence, with guinea-pigs running about the studio floor; their cash-box an open drawer where bank-notes, gold and silver were mixed in cheerful confusion with bottles of varnish and tubes of colour; their general factotum one joe wall, a retired prize-fighter, who had been model to landseer and frith. to the two years spent in fitzroy square, and to the ten years following, belong several of pettie's finest works. his keen perception of dramatic incident, his fine sense of colour, and his brilliance of craftsmanship, soon drew the attention they deserved. in his "drum-head court-martial" was one of the pictures before which visitors clustered daily when it hung on the academy walls. it is a dashing picture, full of spirit in idea and design; and the artist seldom painted anything better, or more full of character, than the heads of those commanders sitting in judgment. in the following year, at the early age of twenty-seven, he was elected an associate of the royal academy, winning the coveted honour eighteen months before his friend and companion, orchardson. with "treason," exhibited in , he burst into a triumph of dramatic intensity and glowing colour. the picture has a grip and unity of conception that places it on a higher level than any of his previous works. to the three following years belong such fine subjects as "the sally" and "the flag of truce," which, with "treason," are now in the mappin art gallery, sheffield; the "tussle with a highland smuggler"; and "touchstone and audrey." "rejected addresses," exhibited in , has all pettie's charm of colour and fluent brushwork. among other comedies in little, touched with light fancy and the joy of life, are "a storm in a teacup" and "two strings to her bow." the latter is one of pettie's happiest pieces of pure sentiment, persuasive in its natural charm and its touch of romance. light-hearted gaiety and the ecstasy of existence sing in rippling music from lines and colours vibrant with joy. in pettie was elected a royal academician, filling the vacancy caused by the death of sir edwin landseer. his first exhibits were two of his finest works, "a state secret," and "ho! ho! old noll!" the scene in the latter is a tennis-court where two cavaliers are looking on with a chuckle of amusement at the spirited caricature which a third has made upon the wall. "ho! ho! old noll" is the work of a master draughtsman. the light pose and easy grace of the cavalier who makes the sketch, the foreshortening of his arm, the hand that holds the chalk--so lightly that it seems to move--are all superbly rendered. two years later, in , he exhibited "the step," a picture of a little girl with golden hair, in a pale blue dress, dancing before her grandmother. the same old lady, with spinning-wheel and high-backed chair, formed the subject of a picture titled "grandmother's memories." "a sword-and-dagger fight," exhibited in the following year, is one of many pictures that show pettie's dramatic perception and his power of representing physical exertion and momentary movement. almost at the same time was painted "disbanded," a rough and ragged but stalwart highlander, without doubt a rebel of "the ' " on his return from culloden. this is one of many subjects for which the artist sought inspiration in the novels of sir walter scott. "the clash of steel," painted in , obviously owes its origin to the first chapter of "the fortunes of nigel." it depicts the time when the cry of "clubs! clubs! 'prentices!" often echoed along a london street. "the chieftain's candlesticks," of , will puzzle those who do not recall the scene in scott's "legend of montrose." angus m'aulay, a proud highlander, on a visit to his friend, sir miles musgrave, in england, had six candlesticks of solid silver set before him on the table at dinner-- "sae they began to jeer the laird, that he saw nae sic graith in his ain poor country; and the laird, scorning to hae his country put down without a word for its credit, swore, like a gude scotsman, that he had mair candlesticks, and better candlesticks, in his ain castle at hame, than were ever lighted in a hall in cumberland." when the laird welcomed the englishman on an unexpected visit shortly after, his purse and credit were both at stake, for he had nothing of more value than some tin sconces. but m'aulay was helped out of the dilemma, to his own surprise, by his retainer, donald: "'gentlemans, her dinner is ready, _and her candles are lighted, too_,' said donald. "the two english strangers, therefore, were ushered into the hall, where an unexpected display awaited them. behind every seat stood a gigantic highlander, holding in his right hand his drawn sword, and in the left a blazing torch.... 'lost, lost,' said musgrave gaily--'my own silver candlesticks are all melted and riding on horseback by this time, and i wish the fellows that enlisted were half as trusty as these.'" another scott scene, chosen from "waverley," was painted in , and shows "bonnie prince charlie" at the moment when the young chevalier is entering the ballroom at holyrood, with flowers strewn at his feet. this, one of the last of pettie's works, is one of the most brilliant and energetic in its colour scheme. the last years of pettie's life were lean years for the painter of genre. the period preceding marked the climax of the prejudice against the "literary idea" in paint. it was a prejudice somewhat unjust, for there is nothing to prevent the subject-picture from being true art, any more than the subject-poem from being poetry. at the same time there was a natural reaction after the banalities of the mid-victorian painters of genre on the one hand, and the over-wrought preciousness of the pre-raphaelites on the other. pettie had often painted portraits for his own pleasure, and in these lean years they became to some extent a necessity. his portrait work is naturally not so well known as his subject-painting, yet now and then he produced things that in sheer power and interest of colour and technique rank among his highest achievements. one of them is his own portrait, now in the tate gallery, which is masterly in its brushwork, with a rubens-like quality in its rich impasto of brilliant colour, its fine amber tones, and its translucent carnations. another of his finest portraits is that of sir charles wyndham, in his character of david garrick at the moment of recognizing ada--"if i had but known." it is not only a brilliant portrait, but a magnificent piece of characterization, summing up and seizing all the intensity of the actor's emotion at the most dramatic moment of the play. it required a great actor so to express, almost in silence, by the look of a moment, that world of sorrow and regret. it was a great painter who could catch and throw upon his canvas the poignant emotion of an "instant made eternity." the greatness of pettie's art owes much to his strong personality. his art was the immediate response to his own vigorous nature, and rarely has an artist's temperament been more absolutely reflected in subject as well as style. a painting of action was to pettie, vigorous and robust, as natural a fulfilment of his own spirit as was an exquisite dreamy nocturne to whistler, the fragile man of nerves and sentiment. nature and inclination led pettie to the dramatic motive, the treatment of anecdote, the representation of the "brute incident." he loved romance; he delighted in costly stuffs, in frills and ruffles, silks and satins, the glitter of a sword, the sheen of military accoutrements. his work shows the possession of that quality which the formal critics of literature call vision. he actually saw the things that he painted, as they really were, in their own atmosphere, whether of the seventeenth century or of fifty years ago, whether they were things of state, plots and deep-laid treachery, or things of romance--the tragedies and humours of life, whether in palace, camp, or country lane. his pictures are quick and alive--_une tranche de la vie_. it is no mean art that can give on one canvas the whole spirit and circumstance of a period in history. though pettie's subjects make a universal appeal, his claim to greatness must rest on something higher than this. the great picture depends for its greatness not on its subject, but on a combination of inherent qualities of line, form, colour, and chiaroscuro. the greatest of these, the very language of the painter, is colour; and in colour pettie excelled. as a young student in edinburgh he used to visit george paul chalmers at his lodgings, and stay talking with him till he had to remain all night. so they would retire to bed, still talking, till they fell asleep; and, says chalmers' biographer, "their talk was all of colour." whether in shadow or light, pettie's colour has, in a high degree, those qualities of resonance and vibration which distinguish the masters of this essential of the painter's craft. he loved colour not only for its full brilliance, its magnificent contrasts, its satisfying opulence, but also for its suave delicacy, its possibilities of subtle orchestration. it is as a great colourist that he will live. in a brief note like this, intended mainly as an introduction to an admirable series of reproductions of pettie's work, it is impossible to picture the man, or to analyze adequately his work and his methods. i should like, however, to add here two extracts from unpublished letters by him, which have recently come into my hands and throw some light on the man and his attitude towards his work. to a question about the number of versions of his picture "the laird," he writes as follows: "in april, , i sold to mr. e. f. white, the dealer, _three_ canvases, one a blot of colour, my first idea, a few inches long. the second was a finished sketch, which was carried on at the same time as the picture; and the third, the picture now in manchester. it was my habit at that time (and is so still, to some extent) to design my subject-pictures first by a blot of colour, then by a large study, generally half the size of the picture. on this i try any alterations or variety of effect during the progress of the larger picture, sometimes finishing as highly as the principal one." the second letter, of march , , shows him indignant at an opinion, quoted to him by sir frederick mappin, that he was getting into the hands of dealers and hurrying his work under pressure from them: "fortunately, or unfortunately, members of my profession who make any mark at all are the subject of much criticism and talk which is often presumptuous, wrong, or utterly foolish. none knew this better, i dare say, than john phillip, your old friend. i have never desired the favour of critics and newspaper men, thinking, with byron, that 'a man must serve his time to every trade save censure. critics all are ready-made.' i have to look to members of my own profession for position and honour in it. it is therefore with me a matter of the highest importance that my pictures should be as good as i can make them, and thoroughly well studied. i should be unworthy indeed if money influenced me in the smallest degree as regards the _quality_ of my work.... in conclusion, let me assure you that while i am by no means inclined to be self-confident in my own powers, yet i have judgment to see that being consciously true to my art i need not fear in the long run to receive my due from my profession and from the public as well." some critics--by no means all, for he had his meed of praise--have abused pettie's work in his lifetime and since; the storied idea always their stumbling-block. but painters--and i have spoken with many whose own art is at the opposite pole to pettie's in aim and method--are always enthusiastic in their homage to his colour and workmanship. i venture to think that no painter, however modern, and no critic, however biassed, could stand in front of that little portrait head in the tate gallery and honestly refrain from admiration and respect. pettie need not fear to receive his due. i have said little of the man himself. by his death in the world lost not only a fine painter, but one of the most honest, loyal, and generous of mankind. when writing pettie's biography a year or two ago, i asked a well-known artist, who had been his life-long friend, for any recollection that would lend "atmosphere" to my memoir. he gave me several reminiscences, telling tale after tale of pettie's cheeriness, loyalty, and unselfishness, and he ended: "have you ever seen john pettie's portrait of himself in the aberdeen gallery? it's all pure and luminous, all rich coral and amber and gold. that's the atmosphere you must suggest. pettie was pure and honest through and through. his nature was all amber and gold." martin hardie. [illustration: the vigil] [illustration: the step] [illustration: a drum-head court-martial] [illustration: treason] [illustration: rejected addresses] [illustration: ho! ho! old noll!] [illustration: a sword-and-dagger fight] [illustration: two strings to her bow] [illustration: disbanded] [illustration: portrait of sir charles wyndham as david garrick] [illustration: the clash of steel] [illustration: a storm in a teacup] [illustration: grandmother's memories] [illustration: the chieftain's candlesticks] [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare constable - ====================================================================== plate i.--the valley farm. (frontispiece). national gallery. in "the valley farm," exhibited at the royal academy in , two years before his death, constable returned to the scenes of his boyhood, to willy lott's house on the banks of the stour. his hand and eye have lost something of their grip and freshness, but his purpose is as firm as ever. "i have preserved god almighty's day light," he wrote, "which is enjoyed by all mankind, excepting only the lovers of old, dirty canvas, perished pictures at a thousand guineas each, cart grease, tar, and snuff of candle." the old adam, you perceive, was still strong in him. [illustration: plate i.--the valley farm.] ====================================================================== constable by c. lewis hind illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents chap. i. the year ii. the brown tree iii. his life iv. his sketches v. his pictures vi. his personality and opinions list of illustrations plate i. the valley farm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece (national gallery) ii. the hay wain (national gallery) iii. the corn field (national gallery) iv. flatford mill (national gallery) v. dedham mill (victoria and albert museum) vi. a country lane (national gallery) vii. salisbury cathedral from the bishop's garden (victoria and albert museum) viii. salisbury (national gallery) [illustration: constable] chapter i the year john constable was forty-eight years of age in , a memorable year in the history of landscape painting. a date to be remembered is , for in that year constable's "hay wain" was hung in the french salon. that picture, which is now in the national gallery, marked an epoch in landscape art. reams have been written about the influence of "the hay wain" upon french art, by critics who are all for constable, by critics who are complimentary but temperate; and by critics who are lukewarm and almost resentful of the place claimed for constable as protagonist of nineteenth century landscape art. a guerilla critical warfare has also raged around the influence of turner. constable and turner! most modern landscape painters have, at one time or another, learnt from these two great pioneers. turner is more potent to-day, but his influence took longer to assert itself. it was not until that monet visited london to be dazzled by the range and splendour of turner at the national gallery. forty-six years had passed since "the hay wain" was exhibited at the salon. in that half-century the barbizon school, those great men of , corot, rousseau, millet, daubigny, troyon, diaz, and the rest had come to fruition. constable has been claimed as their parent. thoré, the french critic, who wrote under the name of g. w. burger, affirms that constable was the _point de depart_ of the barbizon school; but albert wolff, another eminent french critic, was not of that opinion. thoré, writing in , also said that although constable had stimulated in france a school of painting unrivalled in the modern world, he had had no influence in his own country, a far too sweeping statement. ====================================================================== plate ii.--the hay wain. national gallery. painted in , exhibited in the french salon in , "the hay wain," with two other smaller works, which had been purchased from constable by a french connoisseur, aroused extraordinary interest in paris, and had a potent influence on french landscape art. so impressed was delacroix with the naturalness, the freshness, and the brightness of constable's pictures at the salon, that he completely repainted his "massacre of scio" in the four days that intervened before the opening of the exhibition. [illustration: plate ii.--the hay wain.] ====================================================================== the truth about constable's influence on french art would seem to be midway between the opinions of thoré and wolff. that constable's exhibits at the salon of , which included two smaller landscapes besides "the hay wain," did arouse extraordinary interest, and did have a potent influence on french landscape art, there is no shadow of doubt. so impressed was delacroix with the naturalness, the freshness, and the brightness of constable's pictures at the salon, that, after studying them, he completely repainted his "massacre of scio" in the four days that intervened before the opening of the exhibition; and the following year delacroix visited london eager to see more of constable's work. there is also the testimony of william brockedon, who, on his return from the salon, wrote thus to the painter of "the hay wain." the text of the letter is printed in c. r. leslie's memoirs of the _life of constable_, a mine of information in which all writers on john constable, whom de goncourt called "_le grand, le grandissime maître_," must delve. "my dear constable," wrote william brockedon, "you will find in the enclosed some remarks upon your pictures at paris. i returned last night and brought this with me. the french have been forcibly struck by them, and they have created a division in the school of the landscape painters of france. you are accused of carelessness by those who acknowledge the truth of your effect; and the freshness of your pictures has taught them that though your means may not be essential, your end must be to produce an imitation of nature, and the next exhibition in paris will teem with your imitators, or the school of nature versus the school of birmingham. i saw one man draw another to your pictures with this expression--'look at these landscapes by an englishman; the ground appears to be covered with dew.'" note these passages: _they have created a division in the school of the landscape painters of france--paris will teem with your imitators--the ground appears to be covered with dew._ constable received the gratifying news very quietly. writing to fisher from charlotte street, fitzroy square, on th december , he remarked--"my paris affairs go on very well. though the director, the count forbin, gave my pictures very respectable situations in the louvre in the first instance, yet on being exhibited a few weeks, they advanced in reputation, and were removed from their original situations to a post of honour, two prime places in the principal room. i am much indebted to the artists for their alarum in my favour; but i must do justice to the count, who is no artist i believe, and thought that as the colours are rough they should be seen at a distance. they found the mistake, and now acknowledge the richness of texture, and attention to the surface of things. they are struck with their vivacity and freshness, things unknown to their own pictures. the truth is, they study (and they are very laborious students) pictures only, and as northcote says, 'they know as little of nature as a hackney-coach horse does of a pasture' ... however, it is certain they have made a stir, and set the students in landscape to thinking." note the passages: _they are struck with their vivacity and freshness--the truth is they study pictures only._ i have quoted these letters at length, because they are first-hand authorities, and because they state, with simple directness, the effect of constable's pictures at the salon of . the two smaller works that accompanied "the hay wain" we may disregard for the moment, and ask what is there in "the hay wain" that it should have so startled the french painting world, and that it should have marked an epoch in the history of landscape art. stand before "the hay wain" in the national gallery and ask yourself that question. if you are honest, you will admit, perhaps only to yourself, that "the hay wain" looks a little old-fashioned. and you will also admit that the full-sized sketch for "the hay wain," which you have surely noticed hanging in the constable room at the victoria and albert museum, pleases you better on account of its greater brilliance, vigour, and impulse. the finished picture, though very powerful, seems a little stolid, a little laboured, as if the painter had left nothing to "happy accident" but had worked with john bull conscientiousness over every inch of the canvas. you have in the last decade or two seen so many landscapes--pearly, atmospheric, spacious, vivid and vibrating with sunshine, that this "hay wain" by honest john, this english pastoral with the great sky, the shimmering water, and the leaves carefully accented with colour to represent the flickers of light, does not astonish you. perhaps you pass it by without a pause, without even a cursory examination. but remember this is , and "the hay wain" made its sensation in . in those eighty-five years landscape painting has progressed at a faster rate than in all the preceding centuries. in "the hay wain" was a fresh vision, very new and arresting. why? simply because constable returned to nature and painted nature. again and again has this happened in the history of art from the time of giotto onwards. the little men falter on, copying one another, "studying pictures only," in constable's phrase; the public accepts their wooden performances as true art; then the great man arises, often a very simple, straight-thinking, modest man like this john constable, and the great man does nothing more miraculous than just to use his own eyes; he refuses to be dictated to by others as to what he should see and do, and lo! the world looks at what he has done, and either rejects him altogether (for a time), or says, "here is a genius. let us make much of him." one thing is certain. it was not by taking thought, by planning or scheming, that john constable made that sensation at the salon of . it was born in him to be what he became--a painter of nature. how easy and simple it seems. everybody paints nature to-day; but in the early years of last century one had to be a great original to break away from tradition and from academic formulæ, and to paint--just nature. the awakening came to john constable in , when he was twenty-six years of age. in a letter to his friend dunthorne, constable wrote from london: "for the last two years i have been running after pictures and seeking the truth at second hand ... i shall return to bergholt, where i shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me. there is little or nothing in the exhibitions worth looking up to. _there is room for a natural painter_." a natural painter he became--the painter of england, of simple rural scenes. at forty-seven years of age he lamented that he had never visited italy, but the mood passed as quickly as it came, and he cries: "no, but i was born to paint a happier land, my own dear old england." and from his own dear old england he banished the brown tree. but the droll story of the brown tree deserves a new chapter. chapter ii the brown tree "a constant communion with pictures, the tints of which are subdued by time, no doubt tends to unfit the eye for the enjoyment of freshness." so wrote the wise leslie in a chapter narrating certain passages of art talk between constable and sir george beaumont, when the painter was visiting the amiable baronet at cole-orton. the modern world is a little amused by sir george beaumont--collector, connoisseur, and painter--who, in his own ripe person, precisely and accurately exemplified constable's criticism of certain french artists. "they study (and they are very laborious students) pictures only." sir george loved art, as he understood the term, and it was not his fault that he could not see eye to eye with the young vision of constable. quite content and happy was sir george; he did not wish to change. loved art? he had a passion for art. did he not always carry with him upon his journeys claude's picture of "hagar"? in he presented "hagar," which is now catalogued under the title of "landscape with figures," to the nation; but he felt so disconsolate without his adored picture that he begged to have it returned to him for his life-time. that was done, and on sir george's death in his widow restored "hagar" to the national gallery. study "hagar," and you have the measure of the art predilections of sir george beaumont, collector, connoisseur, painter, patron, and friend of john constable, and author of the famous question, "do you find it very difficult to determine where to place your brown tree?" constable's answer is recorded. "not in the least, for i never put such a thing into a picture." sir george did. observing the brown tree sprawling in the formal and academic pictures he prized and copied, he reproduced it laboriously in his own works. apparently it never occurred to him that those brown trees may once have been green. "sir george," says leslie, "seemed to consider the autumnal tints necessary, at least to some part of a landscape." and leslie is the authority for two oft-told stories about gaspar poussin and about the cremona fiddle. ====================================================================== plate iii.--the cornfield, or country lane. national gallery. painted in , and presented to the national gallery in by an association of gentlemen, who purchased it of the painter's executors. a typical work. john constable was pleased with his cornfield. writing of it to archdeacon fisher, he said--"it is not neglected in any part; the trees are more than usually studied, well defined as well as the stems; they are shaken by a pleasant and healthful breeze at noon." [illustration: plate iii.--the cornfield, or country lane.] ====================================================================== sir george having placed a small landscape by gaspar poussin on his easel, close to a picture he was painting, said, "now, if i can match these tints i am sure to be right." "but suppose," replied constable, "gaspar could rise from his grave, do you think he would know his own picture in its present state? or if he did, should we not find it difficult to persuade him that somebody had not smeared tar or cart grease over its surface, and then wiped it imperfectly off?" the fiddle story can be told in fewer words. sir george having recommended the colour of an old cremona fiddle for the prevailing tone of everything in nature, constable answered by laying an old fiddle on the green lawn before the house. sir george beaumont was one of the last of the servile disciples of claude lorraine and the poussins, who conjured their followers into believing that a landscape must be composed in the grand or "classical" manner, and must conform to certain academic rules. claude's drawings, preserved in the british museum, proclaim that he could be as frank, delightful, and impulsive as constable in his sketches; but when claude constructed a landscape of ruined temples and fatuous biblical or legendary figures, the inspiration of his drawing usually evaporated. claude's genius remained, and there are pictures by him, notably "the enchanted castle," that in their particular manner have never been surpassed; but alas! it was not the genius that sir george beaumont imitated, but claude's mannerisms and limitations. the stay-at-home dutchmen who flooded the seventeenth century with their simple, homely, and often beautiful landscapes had no attraction for grandiose sir george and his kin. the genius of watteau which flashed into the eighteenth century, the commanding performances of richard wilson and gainsborough in landscape, had no influence upon the practitioners of the grand manner. and in truth those pioneers suffered for their temerity. wilson, who never quite cast off the classical mantle, accepted with gratitude, at the height of his fame, the post of librarian to the royal academy. gainsborough would have starved had he been obliged to depend upon landscape painting for a living, and constable would have been in financial straits had he been obliged to depend for the support of his family entirely upon the sale of his pictures. wilson died in , gainsborough in , and j. r. cozens, whom constable described as "the greatest genius who ever touched landscape," in ; but the careers of these men cannot be said to have influenced their landscape contemporaries. while wilson, gainsborough, and cozens were still alive, certain boys were growing up in england, who were destined to make the nineteenth century splendid with their landscape performances. what a galaxy of names! old crome and james ward were born in ; turner and girtin in ; constable in . cotman saw the light in , the year of wilson's death; david cox in ; peter de wint in , and the short and brilliant life of bonington began in . but landscape painting was still, and was to remain for long, the cinderella of the arts. in cotman wrote a letter beginning, "my eldest son is following the same miserable profession." constable's british contemporaries being men of genius of various degrees, men of individual vision, it is quite natural that his influence upon them should have been almost negligible. turner, old crome, and bonington owed nothing to constable; but in france it was different. in the early years of the nineteenth century when englishmen were producing magnificent work which was to bring them such great posthumous fame and such small rewards during their lifetime, landscape painting in france was still slumbering in classical swathing-bands. as if frightened out of originality by the horrors of the french revolution of , the landscape painters of france for thirty years and more remained steeped in the apathy of classicism. david ( - ) dominated the french art world, and no mere landscape painter was able to dispel the heavy tradition that david imposed in historical painting. true there were protestors, original men (there always are), but they were powerless to stem the turgid stream. there was paul huet and there was georges michel, happy no doubt in their work, but unfortunate in living before their time. michel, neglected, misunderstood, was excluded from the salon exhibitions after , on account of his revolutionary tendencies. we note signs of the brown tree obsession in michel's spacious and simple landscapes, but he painted the environs of paris, and did not give a thought to theatrical renderings of plutarch, theocritus, ovid, or virgil. france was ripe for constable at that memorable salon of , simple, straight-seeing constable, who painted his suffolk parish, not the tumbling ruins of italy, and who showed that "the sun shines, that the wind blows, that water wets, and that air and light are everywhere." but constable's influence on the french painters, although great, must not be overstated. change was in the air. herald signs had not been lacking of the rebirth of french landscape painting. the french critics of the salons had already begun to complain of the stereotyped classical ruins and brown-tree landscapes; they announced that they were weary of "malarious lakes, desolate wastes, and terrible cliffs." joyfully they welcomed in the salon of the brilliant water-colours of bonington, copley fielding, and other englishmen, and then came with constable showing that the bright, fresh colours were also possible in oil, and that a fine picture could be made out of an "unpicturesque locality," a lock, a cottage, a hay-wain, a cornfield, quite as well as from a "plague among the philistines at ashdod," or an "embarkation of the queen of sheba." as has been already explained, constable did not dream of the success and fame that was in store for him in paris. "the hay wain" was painted in ; he was then forty-five, and as will be seen from the following letter written in , he had not found art remunerative. "i have some nibbles at my large picture of 'the hay wain' in the british gallery. i have an offer of seventy pounds without the frame to form part of an exhibition in paris. i hardly know what to do. it might promote my fame and procure me commissions, but it is the property of my family; though i want money dreadfully; and, on this subject, i must beg a great favour of you, indeed, i can do it of no other person. the loan of twenty pounds or thirty pounds would be of the greatest use to me at this time, as painting these large pictures has much impoverished me." in the nibble became a bite. "the hay wain" with the two other pictures was sold "to a frenchman" for two hundred and fifty pounds. the frenchman's object was to make a show of them in paris. he did so to some purpose. and it is odd to note that the name of this farseeing frenchman has never been disclosed. above "the hay wain" in the national gallery hangs james ward's fine picture called "view of harlech castle and surrounding landscape." that is the official title, but i suggest that the title should be, "the end of the brown tree." you will observe that the brown tree has been cut down and is being hurried away in a cart drawn by four grey horses. i do not accuse the director of the national gallery of joking; but i cannot think it was altogether without intention that, in the rehanging of the room, james ward's allegory of the end of the brown tree should have been hung above constable's "hay wain," the pioneer picture of the new movement. chapter iii his life constable had a happy, uneventful life and a quiet death. a happy life? yes. for the loss of friends and the depression of spirits that clouded his closing years are events that happen to not a few who have lived the major portion of their lives pleasantly and successfully. practical, level-headed, industrious, there is no hint of the aberrations or eccentricities of genius in the orderly and fruitful sixty-one years of his existence, which began in , and ended in . probably the severest blow in his life was the death of his wife in , leaving him with seven children. it came, almost without warning, the year after the family had settled so contentedly in well walk, hampstead. "this house," he wrote, "is to my wife's heart's content; it is situated on an eminence at the back of the spot in which you saw us, and our little drawing-room commands a view unsurpassed in europe, from westminster abbey to gravesend. the dome of st paul's in the air seems to realise michael angelo's words on seeing the pantheon; 'i will build such a thing in the sky.'" after his wife's death constable returned to his former residence in charlotte street, fitzroy square; but he retained well walk, and often sojourned there. ====================================================================== plate iv.--flatford mill on the river stour. national gallery. painted in . constable was then forty-one, a somewhat mature age for a man to produce what may fairly be called his first important work. it is a picture of england--ripe, lush, carefully composed, carefully executed, but fresh as are the meadows on the banks of the stour; and the sky, across which the large clouds are drifting, is sunny. [illustration: plate iv.--flatford mill on the river stour.] ====================================================================== probably the greatest surprise, and certainly one of the most comforting episodes of his life, was the receipt of a legacy of twenty thousand pounds on the death of his wife's father, which elicited the remark that now he could "stand before a six-foot canvas with a mind at ease, thank god!" constable developed slowly as a painter, but having once found himself he strode steadily onward, knowing exactly what he meant to do, turning neither to the right nor to the left, indifferent to tradition, schools, and influences. consequently the earlier years of his life, when he was breaking away from tradition and beginning to see things with his own eyes are the more interesting. he was born at east bergholt in suffolk on th june , the second son of golding constable, owner of water and wind mills. at the dedham grammar school he was renowned for his penmanship, and before he left school, at seventeen years of age, he had already shown a strong inclination towards painting. in this he was encouraged by his friend john dunthorne, plumber and glazier, a man of parts, who devoted his leisure time to landscape painting. fate was complaisant to constable. born in an opulent and wooded quarter of suffolk, on a spot overlooking the fertile valley of the stour, with a friend close at hand who loved nature and painted her for pleasure not for profit, can we wonder that, later in life, constable wrote enthusiastically and gratefully of "the scenes of my boyhood which made me a painter." a painter he was from the beginning, for his father's proposal that he should take orders was never really seriously entertained, and the year that he spent as a miller was surely of more service to him as a student of nature than if he had spent the period as a student in an art school. as a miller, the "handsome miller" he was called, he learnt at first hand the ways of winds, clouds, and storms; in an art school he would have learned how his predecessors had decided that antique statues should be drawn and "shaded." yes; everything conspired to make john constable "a natural painter." the art schools would serve him later, but that year as a miller watching the skies, noting the winds, observing the growth of crops, and the demeanour of trees, was the foundation of his originality. he was but sixteen--that impressionable period when everything is new, and the eyes of body and soul absorb and retain. in that fresh and impulsive sketch called "spring," now in the victoria and albert museum, he painted, later in life, one of the mills in which he worked, upon the timbers of which he had carved the words "john constable, ." in the second edition of his "life," published in , leslie says that the name and date, neatly carved with a penknife, "still remain." leslie also prints constable's description of this "spring" sketch which was engraved by david lucas. "it may perhaps give some idea of one of those bright silvery days in the spring, when at noon large garish clouds surcharged with hail or sleet sweep with their broad shadows the fields, woods, and hills; and by their depths enhance the value of the vivid greens and yellows so peculiar to the season. the _natural history_, if the expression may be used, of the skies, which are so particularly marked in the hail squalls at this time of the year, is this...." then follows a lengthy and intimate study of _the natural history_ of the skies, showing what stores of knowledge he had amassed during the year he worked as a miller. is it exaggeration to describe that year as the most important of his life. it gave him the independent outlook, the rough intimacy with fields and hedgerows under the influences of light and weather, that new-old knowledge which so astonished the french artists at the salon of . constable began with the skies of nature, he went on to study the skies of claude, ruysdael, and other masters; but he returned to the skies and pastures of nature, never to leave them again. ====================================================================== plate v.--dedham mill. victoria and albert museum. painted in , three years after "flatford mill." constable's father was the owner of the watermills at flatford and dedham. many years before the date of this picture, constable, writing of a landscape of dedham by an acquaintance, said--"it is very well painted, and there is plenty of light without any light at all." in "dedham mill," he progresses in his purpose to infuse true light into his pictures. [illustration: plate v.--dedham mill.] ====================================================================== here is a further episode of constable's youth before he visited london, another example of the luck, there is no other word for it, that attended his art beginnings. the dowager lady beaumont lived at dedham, where golding constable owned a water-mill, and as the families were friendly, constable early made the acquaintance of her son, sir george beaumont, who was twenty-three years his senior. he had already approved of some copies made by the youth in pen and ink after dorigny's engravings of the cartoons of raphael, and he had showed him the "hagar" by claude, already mentioned, which sir george always carried about with him when he travelled. what was still more important, he displayed before his protegé thirty water-colours by girtin. the claude and the array of girtins produced an enormous impression upon young constable. in claude he made acquaintance with an old master, who had been the first to paint pure landscape in the approved grand or classical manner; in girtin was revealed to him the harbinger of a new epoch in landscape painting, the young girtin, friend and fellow-student of turner, who died in at the age of twenty-seven, and of whom turner said--"had girtin lived, i should have starved." in constable made a tentative visit to london, "for the purpose of ascertaining what might be his chance of success as a painter." he carried with him a letter to joseph farrington, pupil of richard wilson, who predicted that "his style of landscape would one day form a distinct feature in the art." constable also made the acquaintance of john thomas smith, the engraver, known as "antiquity smith," who gave him the following excellent advice, which shows that the revolt against the academic landscape had already begun in england: "do not," said "antiquity smith," "set about inventing figures for a landscape taken from nature; for you cannot remain an hour in any spot, however solitary, without the appearance of some living thing that will in all probability accord better with the scene and time of day than will any invention of your own." that visit to london "for the purpose of ascertaining what might be his chance of success as a painter," would seem to have been encouraging neither to himself nor to his parents. no immediate answer was forthcoming, and while the decision was in abeyance his time was divided between london and bergholt. it is on record that he worked hard: that he studied leonardo's _treatise on painting_; that he read hessner's _essay on landscape_; and that he painted two pictures--"a chymist" and "an alchymist"--of very little merit. gradually it seems to have been recognised that he was to become not a painter, but a clerk in his father's counting-house. in , at the age of twenty-one, young constable wrote to "antiquity smith": "i must now take your advice and attend to my father's business ... now i see plainly it will be my lot to walk through life in a path contrary to that in which my inclination would lead me." poor john! not even a peep of the skies from the windmill, merely a stool in the counting-house. this threat of the counting-house stool seems to have been only a temporary menace. his biographer dwells very briefly on those dark disillusioned days. suddenly the clouds lift, and in we find him admitted a student of the royal academy schools. his biographer breaks the news dramatically, with the statement--"in the year he had resumed the pencil, not again to lay it aside." no record is given of the period he presumably passed in his father's counting-house. we know only that at twenty-three years of age he attained his heart's desire. the following passage from a letter written to dunthorne, on th february , inaugurates constable's career as a painter: "i am now comfortably settled in cecil street, strand, number twenty-three. i shall begin painting as soon as i have the loan of a sweet little picture by jacob ruysdael to copy." no doubt he learned much from copying ruysdael and other masters, but nature was his real tutor. later in the year he writes from ipswich: "it is a most delightful country for a painter. i fancy i see gainsborough in every hedge and hollow tree." and in he makes that memorable communication by letter to dunthorne after a visit to sir george beaumont's pictures, to which reference has already been made. "for the last two years i have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second hand ... i shall return to bergholt, where i shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me ... _there is room for a natural painter_. the great vice of the day is _bravura_, an attempt to do something beyond the truth." constable had now thirty-five years of life before him, through which he worked unwearyingly, joyfully, to become a natural painter. henceforth he was the interpreter of english "cultivated scenery"--pastures and the skies, trees and cottages, the farm-hand, the farm-waggon, the farm-horse, the fugitive rain and the wind that passes. mountains, the sea, the piled up majestic picturesqueness of nature did not attract him. in brain, heart, and vision he was essential pastoral england, and never did he better express his innermost feeling than when he wrote: "i love every stile and stump and lane in the village; as long as i am able to hold a brush, i shall never cease to paint them." the life of a painter is not usually exciting, and constable's life was no exception, here are a few dates. in , at the age of twenty-six, he exhibited his first picture, under the unambitious title "a landscape," at the royal academy; in , at forty, he married; in , at forty-three, he was elected a.r.a.; in , his "hay wain" was exhibited at the salon; in his wife died; in , at fifty-three, he was elected r.a., and in he died. the end was sudden. he had been at work during the day on his last picture of "arundel mill and castle," and although his friends noticed that he was not looking well, he was able to go out that evening on an errand connected with the artists' benevolent fund. he retired to bed about nine o'clock, read as was his custom, and when the servant removed the candle by which he had been reading, he was asleep. later he awoke in great pain, and died within an hour. the post-mortem revealed no indications of disease, and the extreme pain, says leslie, from which constable suffered and died could only be traced to indigestion. the vault in the south-east corner of the churchyard at hampstead where his wife had been buried, and from the shock of whose death he never quite recovered, was opened, and he was laid by her side. his art was sane and healthy, but his letters show that during the latter part of his life he suffered from depression and morbid fancies. "all my indispositions," he wrote to fisher, "have their source in my mind. it is when i am restless and unhappy that i become susceptible of cold, damp, heats, and such nonsense." and, to sum up, leslie recalls a passage written by constable ten years before his death, in which, after speaking of having removed his family to hampstead, he says: "i could gladly exclaim, here let me take my everlasting rest." but his life was an extremely happy one on the whole; the legacies he received, placed him in comfortable circumstances, and if, outside his own fraternity, his art was but little encouraged, that was the lot of all landscape painters. it is said that he was nearly forty before he sold a landscape beyond the circle of his relatives and personal friends. this was probably the "ploughing scene in suffolk," bought from the royal academy exhibition of by mr allnutt. but to set against this tardy recognition, there was the splendour of the acknowledgments that came later--his gold medal at the salon, and the gold medal at lille in for his "white horse." the priced catalogue of the sale of his pictures and sketches after his death shows how enormously the appreciation of constable has increased. the two magnificent studies for "the hay wain" and "the leaping horse" now at the victoria and albert museum, were sold in one lot for fourteen pounds ten shillings; "salisbury cathedral from the bishop's garden," went for sixty-four pounds one shilling, and "the opening of waterloo bridge" for sixty-three pounds. constable fell under the ban of ruskin--unjustly, "i have never seen any work of his in which there were signs of his being able to draw" is the opening of an oft-quoted passage; but when _modern painters_ was being written, as mr sturge henderson points out, the magnificent collection of constable's tree studies and sketches, now at south kensington, were still in private hands. ruskin could never have taunted constable with not being able to draw had he examined those studies. although not a great draughtsman he was certainly a conscientious, competent, and life-long student of drawing. constable has now his assured high place in british art. so valuable have his paintings become, that he has long been a prey to the forger and the clever copyist. mr c. j. holmes, in his exhaustive and discriminating work on constable, devotes four pages to an examination of the methods of the forgers. in another appendix he prints a chronological list of constable's chief pictures and sketches, from , the year of his earliest dated work, "a study after claude," to the "arundel mill and castle," exhibited at the royal academy in . at the beginning of the record of each year's work there is a line giving the "places visited" by constable during the year. these bare records are like so many windows opening to the country places which constable loved, where he spent joyous, enthusiastic days; for constable was never so happy as when he stood with brushes and palette face to face with nature. turner was a world traveller--the world of europe. constable was a home traveller--the homely stiles, stumps, and lanes of the village. what a vista the following mere record of the places visited in gives: london, southgate, suffolk, salisbury, gillingham, sherbourne, fonthill, cole-orton. can you not see him drawing from each place fresh and dewy inspiration? not "truth at second-hand": truth direct from the source. and does not the heart respond to constable's generous enthusiasm for his great contemporary. here is his testimony to turner's contributions to the royal academy exhibition of : "turner has some golden visions, glorious and beautiful. they are only visions, but still, they are art, and one could live and die with such pictures." ====================================================================== plate vi.--a country lane. national gallery. this sketch probably served as the motive for the picture of "the cornfield." the sobriety of the work places it in a category between the careful construction of the exhibition pictures and the impetuosity of most of the sketches. [illustration: plate vi.--a country lane.] ====================================================================== chapter iv his sketches constable exhibited one hundred and four works at the royal academy. in addition to these and other paintings, he produced many brilliant sketches and a number of drawings. like turner, his achievements may be exhaustively studied in public exhibitions in london, and as with turner, the difficulty is where to begin. at the national gallery there is a wall composed, with one exception, entirely of his works; the victoria and albert museum contains a room, or rather a hall of his pictures, sketches, and studies, and he is also represented at the tate and diploma galleries. some of the examples were bequeathed to the nation by his last surviving daughter, miss isabel constable, in . two years later henry vaughan bequeathed a number of works, including "the hay wain." the casual visitor finds little emotional excitement, and no literary interest in these honest interpretations of english scenery. constable was never dramatic ("the opening of waterloo bridge" may be counted an exception) or idealistic like turner. from a scenic point of view, "the hay wain" is dull compared with "ulysses deriding polyphemus," and knowledge of art history is not so widely diffused as to give to "the hay wain" the interest it should command as a pioneer picture in modern landscape. constable does not thrill. roast beef does not thrill, but it is wholesome and life-communicating. constable was a prosaic man of genius. once he said that "painting is another word for feeling," but he also made that most characteristic retort to blake, who, when looking through one of constable's sketch-books, exclaimed on seeing a drawing of fir-trees on hampstead heath--"why, this is not drawing, but inspiration." to which constable quietly replied--"i meant it for drawing." constable never desired to thrill; his ambition was merely to be a natural painter, and he would probably not have been in the least distressed at the episode related by mr sturge henderson in his biography. an elegant and attractive american woman after examining "the glebe farm" in the national gallery, remarked to her son, a typical undergraduate: "does this thrill you?" "not the least in the world," replied the son, and they passed on. no doubt these cultured moderns desired in a painting the "beauty touched with strangeness," that botticelli and piero della francesca offer: there is no place in such æsthetic lives for the familiarity touched with honesty of john constable. to-day his innovations--his attempts to represent the vibration of light, his spots and splashes of colour to counterfeit the sun glitter, his touches and scrapings laid on with the palette knife to obtain force and brightness--have become a commonplace. constable, being a pioneer, was accustomed to misunderstanding and also to badinage. his breezy and showery effects, blowing wind, rustling grasses, waving trees, and wet rain, were occasionally the subjects of banter from his fellow academicians and others. fuseli, professor of painting, a bad artist, but a good joker, was once seen to open his umbrella as he entered the exhibition. "what are you doing with your umbrella up?" asked a friend. "oh," replied fuseli, "i am going to look at mr constable's pictures!" that was really a great compliment, and i may cap the story by quoting the brief, bald, criticism of sir william beechy on constable's "salisbury from the meadows." "why, d--n it, constable, what a d----d fine picture you are making; but you look d----d ill, and you have got a d----d bad cold." no. constable of the "unpicturesque localities" does not thrill, and his pictures evoke a meditative rather than an ecstatic mood. in his large works one never finds the haunting charm of a fine corot, the majesty of a rousseau, or the clarity of light and colour of a harpigny. he did not, except in rare cases, select from the abundance of nature; he was content with facts as he saw them, and he laboured at his surfaces until sometimes one can hardly disentangle the incidents for the paint in which they are enveloped. "the leaping horse," in the diploma gallery, is a magnificent performance in picture-making but it is heavy--heavy as a mid-day english sunday dinner. it has force, strength, knowledge, vigour, but little beauty, except perhaps in the sweep of sky; and certainly no strangeness. the signs of labour are written all over it; you feel that he has carefully and conscientiously composed this picture for an exhibition, and that in the long labour he has lost the early impulse and freshness of the _pensée mère_. to see how much he lost you have only to study the large sketch for "the leaping horse," in the victoria and albert museum, finer, bolder, much more instinct with life and inspiration than the finished production. which brings me to the two great divisions of constable's life-work--the sketches, which we are told he did not regard as "serious," and the finished pictures. his sketches are innumerable, and all, or at any rate the great majority of them possess the impulse, the lyrical note, so often lacking in his larger canvases. of course, this criticism applies to all painters. the sketch is made for love, the picture for an exhibition. what could be more luminously spacious, unworried and unfettered by the convention of picture-making than his small oil-sketch of "harwich: sea and lighthouse," in the tate gallery, of which there is a pencil sketch at south kensington, dated . here is the first impression caught and transferred to canvas while the blood was still hot, the pulse quick, and the eyes eager to record this scene of desolate beauty, vast sky, rippling ocean, bare foreshore, lonely lighthouse, and one figure in the foreground, with notes of almost indistinguishable figures beyond the lighthouse, and a few remote sails upon the sea. it has not the learning of "the hay wain" or "the leaping horse," and the steady flame of constable's fame would probably long ago have been extinguished had it depended for existence entirely upon his sketches; but, speaking for myself, it is to his sketches that i go for joy. verily this student of nature, who disliked autumn and loved spring; who painted summer, "its breezes, its heat, its heavy colouring," its gusts of winds, its sudden storms; verily he lives in our hearts wherever our eyes meet his sketches. they induce, they compel one to linger in such places as the dark staircase of the diploma gallery, in burlington house, the walls of which sing out with two groups of his sketches, significant moments seen in nature. that beach and sea; the rain-storm streaming down the canvas; those floating clouds, only the clouds and the sky visible; that boat with the red sail labouring in the heavy water--they are essential constable. and what an object lesson in the making of a landscape painter is provided by the hall of drawings, pictures, and sketches at the victoria and albert museum. they are a standing refutation of ruskin's words--"i have never seen any work of his in which there were signs of his being able to draw, and hence the most necessary details are painted by him insufficiently." constable was not an inspired draughtsman; but that he worked hard at drawing, and that he achieved considerable mastery with his pencil is abundantly testified by the many examples at south kensington, notably, "the study of trees at hampstead," the "windsor castle from the river," the "cart and horses," and above all the magnificent and minute "stem of an elm tree," none of which, as has already been noted, ruskin had ever seen. these are all interesting, almost meticulously conscientious, but for john constable in more daring mood, carried away by the riot of the scene, we must turn to such sketches as the chaotic cloud forms of "weymouth bay," and the splashy, opulent splendour of the oil sketch called "view on the stour." or to the sketches that emerge, modestly but clamantly, from the large works on the wall devoted to his achievement at the national gallery, which contains no fewer than twenty-two examples by constable. one of them, "a country lane," illustrated in these pages, served as a motive for his picture of "the cornfield." the sobriety and somewhat heavy handling of this oil sketch places it in a category between the careful construction of the exhibition pictures, and the impetuosity of most of the sketches. but the atmospheric "salisbury" that hangs below, to the left of "a country lane," which is a preliminary study without the rainbow for the picture of "salisbury from the meadows," has all the quick, almost feverish informality of his best sketches. it is larger than the sketches, but shows no anxiety. the hand following the eye stopped when the vision of the eye was recorded, when all the hurry of the wet glitter of the scene had been stated in broken pigment. as a contrast, examine "a cornfield with figures," a tranquilly beautiful suggestion of late summer--fifteen and a half inches by nine and a half--thinly painted rain-clouds floating past, the heat haze hovering in the field of corn partly reaped and stocked. the vivid, "summer afternoon after a shower," hanging near by has an interest apart from its spontaneity and vigour. it is precisely what it looks, the recollection of a summer shower, noted in an ecstatic moment, and recorded at a sitting. the story is told by leslie--how constable was travelling by coach either to or from brighton; how at redhill he saw this effect; how he treasured the memory of it until the coach reached its destination, and how "immediately on alighting," he made this sketch of one wild moment snatched from nature. ====================================================================== plate vii.--salisbury cathedral from the bishop's garden. victoria and albert museum. in the interval between the painting of "the hay wain" ( ) and its exhibition in paris ( ), constable produced "salisbury cathedral from the bishop's garden," wherein he attempted to represent the glitter of sunlight by spots of pure pigment, which his friends called "constable's snow." [illustration: plate vii.--salisbury cathedral from the bishop's garden.] ====================================================================== it was this constant study of nature that distinguished constable from those of his academic predecessors and contemporaries who studied only the works of other painters. it was in this solitary communion with nature that constable showed the originality of his genius. how thorough he was. he was not content to note only what his eyes saw, but he also observed and recorded the time of day and the direction of the wind. "twenty of constable's studies of skies made during this season ( ) are in my possession," says leslie, "and there is but one among them in which a vestige of landscape is introduced. they are painted in oil, on large sheets of thick paper, and all dated, with the time of day, the direction of the wind, and other memoranda on their backs. on one, for instance, is written: 'fifth of september . ten o'clock morning, looking south-east, brisk wind at west. very bright and fresh, grey clouds running fast over a yellow bed, about half-way in the sky.'" that is the real constable speaking, the constable who had "found himself." but we are never wholly emancipated from tradition, and knowing the difficulties of his craft he retained his admiration for the great ones among his predecessors. in , he wrote: "i looked into angerstein's the other day; how paramount is claude..." maybe. but claude had to be left alone. constable knew that in his heart, and, as he advanced in wisdom, art at second-hand held him less and less, and art at first hand, which is nature, more and more. he learnt to rely upon his eyes and the cunning of his hand. and when he "thanked heaven he had no imagination," there was more in that utterance than appears on the surface. chapter v his pictures in one of his letters, dated , constable refers to "a sweet little picture by jacob ruysdael i am copying." he was then twenty-three years of age, a devoted admirer and student of his predecessors in landscape, and able, strange as it may seem to us, to call a ruysdael sweet. in the style of the old masters he continued working until he was nearly forty, learning from them how to construct a picture, and "acquiring execution" as he expressed it. a methodical man was john constable, a builder who spared no trouble to make his foundations sound; but during those years of spade work in his voluntary apprenticeship, he never disregarded his determination to become a natural painter. it was his custom to study and copy the old masters during his sojourn in london, but to paint in his own original way, directly from nature and in the open air, when in the country. an early result of "being himself" during holiday time was the "dedham vale" oil sketch of , now at south kensington, a careful, reposeful picture with trees rising formally at the right, and the church tower visible just beyond the winding river. he utilised this sketch for the large picture exhibited, under the same title, in . the influence of other painters such as the dutch landscape men, gainsborough and girtin, may be traced in many of his pictures produced in the opening years of the nineteenth century when he was "acquiring the execution" on which he based his originality. he also painted portraits; indeed at one time he proposed to live by portrait painting. during and the next few years he produced several, notably mr charles lloyd of birmingham and his wife, which mr c. j. holmes describes as "amateurish and uncertain in drawing and execution." but there was nothing amateurish or uncertain about the "portrait of a boy," which i have lately seen, a ruddy country boy, clad in pretty town-like clothes, an honest, direct, rich piece of work, without a hint of affectation, just the vision of the eye set down straightforwardly. and the foxgloves that stand growing by the boy's right hand are painted as honestly as the striped pantaloons that this open-air boy wears. just the kind of portrait that john constable would have painted. he also produced two altarpieces--in , a "christ blessing little children" at brantham church, suffolk; and in , a "christ blessing the elements" at nayland church. eight years later, in , he painted "flatford mill on the stour," no. in the national gallery, which forms one of our illustrations. constable was then forty-one, a somewhat mature age for a man to produce what may fairly be called his first important picture. but all his past life had been a preparation for this photographic, pleasant transcript of english scenery. nothing is left to the imagination, everything is stated, every inch of canvas is painted with equal force, yet what an advance it is upon most of the classical landscapes then in vogue. it is a picture of england, ripe, lush, carefully composed, carefully executed, but fresh as are the meadows on the banks of the stour; and the sky across which the large clouds are drifting is sunny. this picture was bought in at the constable sale, held the year after his death, in , for the very modest sum of thirty-three guineas. "the white horse," called also "a scene on the river stour," exhibited at the royal academy in , which is now in the possession of mr pierpont morgan, was one of constable's early successes. it attracted "more attention than anything he had before exhibited," and was bought for one hundred guineas, "exclusive of the frame," by archdeacon fisher, who wrote on th april:--"'the white horse' has arrived; it is hung on a level with the eye, the frame resting on the ogee moulding in a western side light, right for the light in the picture. it looks magnificently." "the white horse" realised one hundred and fifty guineas at the constable sale, and in , fifty-six years later, was bought by messrs agnew for six thousand two hundred guineas. with "the white horse" constable also sent to the british gallery a picture called "the mill," which is supposed to be identical with the "dedham mill, essex," at the victoria and albert museum. was a successful year for constable, a golden year. he was summoned to bergholt to receive the four thousand pounds he had inherited from his father; in this year mrs constable also inherited four thousand pounds; and he was elected an associate of the royal academy. it was in this year while at bergholt that he wrote to his wife from a grateful and overflowing heart a letter of which the following is an extract:--"everything seems full of blossom of some kind, and at every step i take, and on whatever subject i turn my eyes, that sublime expression of the scriptures, 'i am the resurrection and the life,' seems as if uttered near me." there spoke the true landscape painter, the man of deep feeling, conscious that in his painting he was interpreting god's handiwork, and expressing in his chosen medium the miracle of growth, the eternal movement of nature from birth to re-birth. when standing in that hall at the victoria and albert museum devoted to his achievement--growth, growth, growth--from pencil sketch to completed picture, there are moments when those words of his seem uttered near to us. "dedham mill" may look to our spoilt modern eyes a little tame, but detach yourself from the present, drift into harmony with the picture, and you may perhaps invoke the spirit of the dead man who saw temperate beauty in this scene of his boyhood, and who tried to state his love and gratitude laboriously with paint and brushes--poor tools to express the living light and life of nature. two years later, in , at the age of forty-five, he painted "the hay wain," to which i have referred at length in the opening chapter. perhaps some day when the re-organisation of the national collections is complete, it will be found possible to hang the brilliant full-sized sketch of "the hay wain" now at south kensington alongside the finished picture in the national gallery. in the rough magnificent sketch you will observe that he had already begun to use the palette-knife freely in putting on the colour, a practice to which he became more and more addicted. ====================================================================== plate viii.--salisbury. national gallery. a preliminary study, without the rainbow, for the large picture of "salisbury from the meadows," exhibited at the royal academy in . it is larger than his usual sketches, but shows no anxiety. the hand following the eye stopped when the vision of the eye was recorded, when all the hurry of the wet glitter of the scene had been stated in broken pigment. [illustration: plate viii.--salisbury.] ====================================================================== "the hay wain" established his fame; but constable was not the man to sit down under success and repeat his triumphs in one particular method. in the interval between the painting of "the hay wain" and its exhibition in paris, he produced "salisbury from the bishop's garden," now in the south kensington collection, wherein he attempted to represent the glitter of sunlight by spots of pure pigment which his friends called "constable's snow." to us, accustomed to modern pictures of sunlight, the "spots and scumbles of pure pigment" in "salisbury cathedral from the bishop's garden" are hardly noticeable, but in they were an innovation, although not altogether a new discovery. pinturicchio, in his frescoes in the library of siena cathedral, experimented in pointillism, and you may trace it, too, in some of the pictures by vermeer of delft. "salisbury from the bishop's garden" gave constable considerable trouble. he was ill and his children were ill. "what with anxiety, watching, nursing, and my own indisposition, i have not see the face of my easel since christmas, and it is not the least of my troubles that the good bishop's picture is not yet fit to be seen." later he describes "salisbury from the bishop's garden" as "the most difficult subject in landscape i ever had upon my easel," adding that it "looks uncommonly well," and that "i have not flinched at the windows, buttresses, etc., but i have still kept to my grand organ colour, and have, as usual, made my escape in the evanescence of the chiaroscuro." "the lock," another of his well-known pictures, was purchased from the royal academy exhibition of by mr morrison for "one hundred and fifty guineas, including the frame." the superb oil sketch for "the lock" was sold at christie's in for nineteen hundred guineas. it is an upright picture of sunshine and gusty wind, and represents a lock-keeper opening the gates for the passage of a boat. "my 'lock'" wrote constable to fisher, "is liked at the academy, and indeed it forms a decided feature, and its light cannot be put out, because it is the light of nature, the mother of all that is valuable in poetry, painting, or anything else where an appeal to the soul is required.... but my execution annoys most of them, and all the scholastic ones. perhaps the sacrifices i make for lightness and brightness are too great, but these things are the essence of landscape, and my extreme is better than white-lead and oil, and dado painting." probably no other landscape painter has expressed the intention of his art as clearly in writing as with his brushes. light! the light of nature! the mother of all that is valuable in painting! that was constable's secret--the knowledge of light, a secret that was hidden from the eyes of worthy sir george beaumont. "the leaping horse" of , to which reference has already been made, called by some his "grandest painting," reposes in the diploma gallery at burlington house. several changes were made in the picture after its exhibition at the royal academy, which the curious can verify by a study of the full-sized sketch at south kensington. from this year onward the movement of nature and the brilliancy of objects in sunlight intrigued him more and more, although his passion for light never reached the white-hot fervour of turner in his latter years. for turner the sunrise, a world almost too beautiful and evanescent to be real; for constable the noonday glow, the still heat haze, seen between cool, dark trees, hovering over a field of ripe corn, as in "the cornfield," painted when he was fifty--a typical constable. constable was pleased with "the cornfield." writing of it to fisher he said: "it is not neglected in any part; the trees are more than usually studied, well defined as well as the stems; they are shaken by a pleasant and healthful breeze at noon 'while now a fresher gale sweeping with shadowy gusts the fields of corn....'" this picture, perhaps the best known and most popular of his works, was presented to the national gallery in , by an association of gentlemen, who purchased it of the painter's executors. some of them wished to substitute for this gift the fine "salisbury cathedral from the meadows" with the rainbow, of which the "salisbury," no. , in the national gallery, is a study, but "the boldness of its execution" we are told "stood in its way," and the "cornfield" was purchased instead. the association of gentlemen need not have been apprehensive that the "boldness of the execution" of "salisbury from the meadows" would have frightened succeeding generations. the munich secessionists would call it commonplace, and the most old-fashioned member of the selecting committee of a current royal academy exhibition would see in it only a fine picture, forcibly painted but too insistent on detail. the landscape point of view has changed since . the magnificent "opening of waterloo bridge" which, to those who had not seen it in sir charles tennant's collection, came as a revelation when shown at the old masters' exhibition, gave constable continuous trouble and anxiety. he was years over it, and "he indulged in the vagaries of the palette-knife to an excess." it was not understood: it was not liked. "very unfinished, sir," was the comment of his friend, thomas stothard, r.a.; and, says leslie, "the picture was generally pronounced a failure." this brilliant presentation of the king embarking at whitehall stairs, the water dancing, the air fluttering with gay banners and the sails of bright and sumptuous barges, was hung next to a grey sea-piece by turner, who promptly placed a bright spot of red lead in the foreground of his own grey picture. the vivacity of constable's river fete lost something by that spot of vivid red. "turner has been here and fired a gun," said constable. the flash remained, although "in the last moments allowed for painting, turner glazed the scarlet seal he had put upon his picture, and shaped it into a buoy." considerable doubt has been thrown on leslie's statement "that soon after constable's death the picture was toned to the aristocratic taste of the period by a coat of blacking." the picture bears no trace of a coat of mourning. in the somewhat solemn and simple "valley farm," painted in , two years before his death, constable returned to the scenes of his boyhood, to willy lett's house on the bank of the stour. his hand and eye have lost something of their grip and freshness, but his purpose is as firm as ever. "i have preserved god almighty's daylight," he wrote, "which is enjoyed by all mankind, excepting only the lovers of old dirty canvas, perished pictures at a thousand guineas each, cart grease, tar, and snuff of candle." the old adam, you perceive, was still strong in him. "the cenotaph," now in the national gallery, was exhibited in the royal academy of --the subject being the cenotaph erected by sir george beaumont in memory of sir joshua reynolds, a tribute of affection and respect. it is somewhat heavy in treatment. did constable, i wonder, realise that his work was nearly done? was the uninspiriting "cenotaph" in his mind when, in the autumn of this year, he wrote so generously about the pictures that his great contemporary was exhibiting:--"turner has outdone himself; he seems to paint with tinted steam, so evanescent and so airy." constable's last work was "arundel mill and castle," upon which he was engaged on the day of his death, st march . his pictures are familiar to many who have not seen all the originals, through david lucas's mezzotints. the first series of twenty mezzotints was published in under the title, "various subjects of landscape, characteristic of english scenery, principally intended to display the phenomena of the chiar'oscuro of nature." constable devoted much attention to the enterprise during the remainder of his life, inspired to make it as fine as possible by the example of claude's "liber veritatis" and turner's "liber studiorum." but its "duration, its expense, its hopelessness of remuneration" oppressed him. "it harasses my days and disturbs my rest at nights" he wrote in . constable took things hardly, very hardly, after his wife's death in . chapter vi his personality and opinions the personality of constable was not romantic. in writing of him one has no moods of wonderment or bafflement, and the pen is not tempted to flights of wonder or fancy. the life of turner might inspire a poem; but plain prose is the only vehicle for a consideration of the life of constable. he was a sane, level-headed man compact of common-sense and practicality, a man of one great, embracive idea: that having studied the science of picture-making from the earlier masters, the landscape painter must learn from nature and not from the derivative pictures of his contemporaries. constable pursued that course with the single-heartedness of a man who devotes his life to some great commercial undertaking. indeed the portraits of constable might represent a prosperous and cultured banker, especially those of his later years, were it not for the full, observant eye that you feel surveys a wider domain than lombard street. religious in the true sense, dutiful, humble before the mysteries of things; old-fashioned in the true sense, a lover and a quoter of good poetry and of the bible, he had on occasion a sharp and shrewd tongue, but the sting was salved by the absolute sincerity of his intention. leslie devotes considerable space to a record of constable's opinions and sayings, many of which have been quoted in these pages. of a certain contemporary he said--"more over-bearing meekness i never met with in any one man." of his own pictures he said--"they will never be popular, for they have no handling. but i do not see any handling in nature." here is a saying about his art which sums up the whole tendency of his life--"whatever may be thought of my art, it is my own; and i would rather possess a freehold, though but a cottage, than live in a palace belonging to another." and here is his comment on the unintelligent connoisseurship of his time--"the old rubbish of art, the musty, commonplace, wretched pictures which gentlemen collect, hang up, and display to their friends, may be compared to shakespeare's-- 'beggarly account of empty boxes, alligators stuffed,' etc. nature is anything but this, either in poetry, painting, or in the fields." the lectures on landscape painting that he delivered at the royal institution in albemarle street, at the hampstead assembly rooms, and at worcester were never written, although an abstract of the first was found among his papers. he spoke from brief notes and made much use of a number of copies and engravings affixed to the walls. the notes taken by leslie and embodied in his _life of constable_ are the only record we have apart from the abstract of the first lecture. the belittlers of claude should make a note of constable's idolatry for him:--"in claude's landscape all is lovely--all amiable--all is amenity and repose;--the calm sunshine of the heart. he carried landscape, indeed, to perfection, that is, human perfection." constable selected four works as marking four memorable points in the history of landscape--titian's "peter martyr," poussin's "deluge," rubens' "rainbow," and rembrandt's "mill." in the choice of the rubens and the rembrandt everybody must concur. as constable never visited italy he can only have known the "peter martyr" from engravings. it was destroyed by fire in , but a copy exists at s. giovanni paolo in venice. constable had the courage of his opinions, and of all his opinions the most astonishing is his strong disapproval of a national collection of pictures. in he wrote--"should there be a national gallery (which is talked of) there will be an end of the art in poor old england, and she will become, in all that relates to painting, as much a nonentity as every other country that has one. the reason is plain; the manufacturers of pictures are then made the criterions of perfection, instead of nature." as a lecturer constable seems to have relied in a great measure on the inspiration of the moment. leslie also records the charm of a most agreeable voice, although pitched somewhat too low, and the play of his very expressive countenance. his survey of the history of landscape painting closed with an eulogy of wilson, gainsborough, cozens, and girtin, and i may close with a brief passage, essential constable, from the lecture delivered at hampstead on th july . "the landscape painter must walk in the fields with a humble mind. no arrogant man was ever permitted to see nature in all her beauty. if i may be allowed to use a very solemn quotation, i would say most emphatically to the student--'remember now thy creator in the days of thy youth.'" the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry e. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. _others in preparation_. [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare romney ====================================================================== plate i.--the horsley children. from the picture in the possession of messrs. thos. agnew & sons. (frontispiece) few painters have rivalled romney in expressing the simplicity and naïveté of children. these portraits of master george and miss charlotte horsley are excellent examples of his mastery of an artless pose, and of the reticence of his colour. how delightfully the flowers tell against the white dresses. [illustration: plate i.--the horsley children.] ====================================================================== romney by c. lewis hind illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents chap. i. three periods of romney's life ii. romney, reynolds, and others iii. his vicissitudes of fame iv. his portraits in public galleries v. his portraits in private collections vi. emma, and the end list of illustrations plate i. the horsley children . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece from the picture in the possession of messrs. thos. agnew & sons ii. sketch portrait of lady hamilton from the picture in the national gallery iii. mrs. mark currie from the picture in the national gallery iv. the parson's daughter: a portrait from the picture in the national gallery v. lady with a child from the picture in the national gallery vi. mrs. robinson--"perdita" from the picture in the wallace collection vii. miss benedetta ramus from the picture in the possession of the hon. w. f. d. smith viii. miss ramus from the picture in the possession of the hon. w. f. d. smith [illustration: romney] chapter i three periods of romney's life high over the western boundary of cavendish square rose a tripod wooden scaffolding, supporting a gigantic crane cutting the arch of the sky; on windy days the smoke from the engine was blown upwards into space. below, twentieth-century mansions were growing on the site of old harcourt house, for cavendish square, like the rest of london, was suffering an architectural change into something strange and new. some of the eighteenth-century houses remain, and as i sought no. , in the early summer of , i wondered if this dwelling of memories had escaped the builder. abundant memories! into that house, through the later years of the eighteenth century, passed the flower of english loveliness, breeding, valour, brains, wit and frailty. for this was romney's house, with the large painting-room at the back, which he, greatly daring, rented in , to the satisfaction of the landlord, whose property had been untenanted since the death of francis cotes, r.a., five years before. soon the great sir joshua showed signs of olympian jealousy at the success of the raw man from the north, reserved, silent, moody, whose acquaintance with the _beau monde_ did not go beyond his studio door; who worked by night on designs for "great or heroic art," and who had a genius for fixing the fleeting loveliness of a woman's face so simply and fragrantly that we liken a fine romney to a rosebud arranged in a pattern of artless leaves. ====================================================================== plate ii.--sketch portrait of lady hamilton. (from the picture in the national gallery) her rich brown hair falls in tempestuous disorder over a pillow; the mouth is open; the eyes are as near to tragedy as the volatile emma could go. this sketch (circular, ft. in.) was presented to the national gallery in . [illustration: plate ii.--sketch portrait of lady hamilton.] ====================================================================== sir joshua, at work in leicester square, realised that the stream of fashion flowing to his studio had been diverted. he did not refer to romney by name! he merely called him "the man in cavendish square," and be sure that some candid friend repeated to him thurlow's public declaration: "the town is divided between reynolds and romney; i belong to the romney faction." if you think that plain-speech thurlow exaggerated, glance at the verbatim transcript of romney's diaries, giving the names and appointments of his sitters, printed in the monumental work by mr. humphry ward and mr. w. roberts. in less than twenty years over nine thousand sittings in the house in cavendish square are recorded. if the stones of cavendish square had language! to no. came warren hastings, burke, thurlow, garrick, john wesley, lords and ladies innumerable, the two lovely ramus girls, the beautiful mrs. lee acton, mrs. mark currie, mrs. "perdita" robinson, and the adorable miss vernon. other men seek elation in wine, or spring, in mozart or grieg; romney found it in the flash of a new face, "lit with the shock of eager eyes." thither came the pretty gower, clavering, warwick, and horsley children, and one day in that "divine lady" emma, when romney was forty-eight. in she floated, laughter in her eyes, joy on her lips, sunshine in her presence--shadowed by her cavalier, charles greville, whose emotions were as precisely under control as running motor to a chauffeur. thus joy entered into his life, and joy left him, when, nine years later, he painted emma for the last time after her marriage to sir william hamilton. the syren having departed he was soon to be on his way--a broken man, still ambitious but ineffectual--to the arms of deserted griselda, patiently awaiting her faithless husband in kendal. having reached this point in my meditations, i came abreast of no. , and found a brand-new, pleasing house, without tablet or bust. sir joshua marched conquering to the goal: romney fell before the last lap. i paced the square and thought of his life that has given immortality to so many. the eighteenth century is vocal on the canvases of her great painters. the other day i saw the two ramus girls smiling from a wall in a house by henley-on-thames, and they seemed more alive than the goggled, huddled women that had just flashed along the highroad in a motor car. and as i mused by the trees in cavendish square, dominated by that vast crane--the sign-mark of new london--cutting the sky, i saw clearly the three periods of romney's life symbolised by a _horse_, a _house_, and the words _home again_. the horse it is march , . george romney, aged twenty-eight, mounts his nag at kendal and rides forth, with fifty pounds in his saddle-bags, to seek fame and fortune as a painter in london. nothing matters but his career. doubtless he is sure--or as sure as an emotional, impressionable man, taking his colour from his surroundings, but conscious of great powers, can be--that when his pockets are full of guineas, he will send for mary and the children; but that is all vague. he knows, if he does not confess it to himself, that he has outgrown the pretty, patient creature he married seven years before, after she had nursed him through fever in his kendal lodgings. as he rides he recalls his early days in the farmhouse at beckside: his versatile father--farmer, cabinet-maker, draughtsman, and a dozen other things; his affection for williamson, watchmaker and musician; the influence of christopher steele--"itinerant dauber"; his stay in york, where he saw sterne; the first picture he painted--a hand holding a letter for the post-office at kendal; the portraits he produced at two guineas for a head and six guineas for a whole length; then more success, and finally that lottery of his unsold works at the kendal town hall, eighty-two tickets at half-a-guinea each. the proceeds, added to his savings, made him master of a hundred guineas. half went to mary; and here he is, with the other fifty in his saddle-bags, a free man, jogging towards london. somehow he will find the intricate key to fame. but first he must seek a lodging. he scans bewildering london, puts up at the castle inn, and a fortnight later moves to dove court, near the poultry end of cheapside. the house it is march , --fourteen years have passed. romney is in his cavendish square house waiting for the first sitter recorded in his diaries--"lord parker at o'clock." two more are to follow that day, "miss vernon at half-past ," and "lady betty compton at ¼ to ." seven more are booked for the three following days, and on sunday he expects "at two a lady." he is well pleased. fame is at his elbow. fourteen busy years have glided by since his nag first clattered on the cheapside cobbles. he has painted many pictures, always believing that "heroic art" is his forte, and portraits merely a means of living, and he has refused to exhibit at the royal academy, holding that public competition is bad for a man with "aspen nerves, shy, private, studious, and contemplative." in those fourteen years the _gauche_ north countryman has seen something of the world. he has visited paris, and he has made a tour lasting two years and three months through italy, without which the education of an eighteenth-century painter was considered incomplete. troubles he has had, of course. there was that cruel affair of the society of arts' competition, in which his picture of "the death of wolfe" won the prize; but the award of fifty guineas was, for some mysterious reason, withdrawn, and he had to be content with a consolation gift. romney believes that reynolds had a hand in it; but that is hard to credit. italy and success and the cavendish square venture have blotted out that early disappointment. taking francis cotes' large house was a bold step, and it had been complicated, at the critical moment, by an offer from lord warwick to visit warwick castle and paint a companion to the "very respectable portraits, chiefly by vandyke, collected by the earl." romney refused that tempting offer (he painted the family group later), determined to let nothing delay the cavendish square plunge. how well it has turned out! like sir joshua he has begun a diary of his sitters. the hands of the clock point to nine. it is time lord parker arrived. and at half-past ten, joy! he will be shyly welcoming the beautiful miss vernon. the image of mary, in the far-away north, is very faint. home again more than twenty years have passed. the cavendish square house is let to sir martin archer shee: romney has given up portrait painting, and in the hampstead studio purposes to devote himself to heroic art and win immortality with his miltonic subjects. but his health grows worse. the game is up. oppressed, conscious of numbness in his hand and a swimming in his head, chagrined at the muddled failure of his building experiments at holly bush hill, hampstead--that "whimsical structure covering half the garden,"--where some of his pictures were destroyed by weather and others stolen, he longs only for peace and escape from himself. yet how triumphant has been the course of those twenty years in cavendish square. never throwing off the mask of the recluse, he has made friends after his own kind; he has moved in the eartham set which revolved round the orb of the preposterous hayley. there he met cowper, and that "elegant female," miss seward, the "swan of lichfield," who would address him as "beloved and honoured titiano," or as raphael, while he would greet her as sappho; flaxman, too, he has known, who bought for him in italy ten large cases of casts--the laöcoon, the apollo belvedere, and so on. these the painter would exhibit to his select friends and pupils in his studio at night, a powerful lamp shining down upon the laöcoon. then was romney happy. away from the distraction of the "new face lit with the shock of eager eyes," he could bemuse himself with the contortions of the laöcoon, and believe that he was surrounded by the creations of "great art." but the game is now up. sorely hurt in the battle, seeing nothing clearly, little dreaming how famous his portraits--"that cursed drudgery"--would make him in the twentieth century, he leaves london and makes his way back to mary. she nurses him, and buries him after two years of "complete imbecility." * * * * * ====================================================================== plate iii.--mrs. mark currie. (from the picture in the national gallery) a typical and charming romney. miss elizabeth close married mr. mark currie on january , , and sat to romney for the first time on the th of may in the same year. the painter received sixty guineas for this portrait. [illustration: plate iii.--mrs. mark currie.] ====================================================================== the sun is shining cheerfully in cavendish square, and romney's troubles have been long quieted, forgotten in the pleasure his work gives us. no! i do not feel any sadness in recalling his life. death pays all debts. no. looks very spick and span in the bright sunshine, and as i gaze at it i perceive above the tall ground-floor windows two heads of cherubs in stone, just like sir joshua's heads of angels in the national gallery. is it intentional, i wonder? did the architect of this new house wish subtly to suggest that he, like lord thurlow, belonged to the sir joshua faction? maybe. i don't know, but i shall never pass the house without thinking so. poor romney! he hated irony and wit--and irony in stone is more enduring than irony in words or paint. chapter ii romney, reynolds, and others the rivalry between reynolds and romney, that echoes faintly from eighteenth-century memoirs, is focussed by thurlow's remark made in : "the town is divided between reynolds and romney; i belong to the romney faction." romney returned the compliment by proclaiming that his full-length of thurlow was his best production in portraiture--a judgment with which everybody disagrees. romney was an ill judge of his own work. like most creative artists, he honoured the things that he did with difficulty, and cheapened those that were the true expression of his temperament. "this cursed portrait painting," he wrote to hayley, at the age of fifty-two, "how i am shackled with it. i am determined to live frugally, that i may enable myself to cut it short as soon as i am tolerably independent, and then give myself up to those delightful regions of the imagination." in another letter he refers to portrait painting as "the trifling part of my profession." but that was when he was "shattered and feeble," and tired of the interminable sitters. it is by his portraits that romney lives, not by the heroic designs that were so near to his heart. we esteem him for his lovely faces set in a simple decorative design; his ambition was to excel as a painter of "sublime" and historical subjects--scenes from shakespeare and milton, and poetical themes for which his egregious friend hayley ransacked the eartham library. romney was sensitive, eternally in love with the fleeting loveliness of women and children, the artist born in him again each time he saw a new face, but constantly diverted by his ambition, and by the bombastic sentimentalists moving in the hayley mutual admiration circle at eartham, where, for twenty years, he spent his summer vacation. it would have been to romney's advantage had he seen more of lord thurlow and less of hayley. "before you paint shakespeare," cried the tonic thurlow, "for god's sake read him!" on another occasion when the chancellor was asked to subscribe to the shakespeare that romney and others were illustrating, he said: "what! is romney at work for it? he cannot paint in that style; it is out of his way. by god, he'll make a balderdash business of it!" i suspect that it was not altogether artistic convictions that made the chancellor ally himself to the romney faction. there was more of the man in sir joshua than in romney; and when thurlow suggested to reynolds that orpheus and eurydice would be an excellent subject for a series of pictures, sir joshua snubbed him. the pliable romney, when thurlow broached the idea to him, was delighted. he listened so sympathetically (we can imagine the appreciation in his large liquid eyes) to the chancellor's translation of the episode from virgil, that the great man was delighted with his _protégé_, asked him to paint the portraits of his daughters, and bought one of the four pictures which romney had painted in illustration of hayley's poem, "the triumphs of temper." the composure of the benign sir joshua must have been ruffled by thurlow's championship of his rival; but romney, who was a modest man, may be said in his quiet way to have belonged to the reynolds faction. he is recorded to have said that no man in europe could have painted such a picture as reynolds's "hercules strangling the serpents"; and when a pupil told him that his picture of mrs. siddons was considered superior to reynolds's portrait, he answered, "the people know nothing of the matter, for it is not." romney never sent a picture to the royal academy, and consequently his name never came up for election. he seems to have thought that to a man of his excitable temperament it would be better to pursue his art cloistrally and to avoid competition. hayley encouraged him in this. romney was his private preserve, and the painter submitted to the ring-fence that his cunning friend built about him. in the town may have been divided between reynolds and romney, but posterity has a clear idea of the rank of the masters of eighteenth-century portraiture. ahead of all stand reynolds and gainsborough, followed at no great distance by the virile raeburn; romney takes rank above hoppner, and below them is lawrence of the decadence and his followers in the curtain and column school. looking at a fine romney, such as "mrs. lee acton," or "mrs. mark currie," or "lady hamilton," with her left hand tucked beneath her chin, or the earlier painted ramus girls, one feels that exquisiteness and simplicity of design can go no further; but pass from "mrs. mark currie" to raeburn's "portrait of a lady," hanging on the staircase of the national gallery, from "mrs. lee acton" to, say, reynolds' "nelly o'brien" at hertford house, or from romney's "mrs. robinson" to gainsborough's "mrs. robinson," and the superiority of reynolds, gainsborough, and raeburn sounds out like a thunder-clap. romney at his best is one of the glories of english portraiture, but in many of his multifarious portraits he is not at his best. few painters are able to stand the test of a collected exhibition of their works, and it is no wonder that romney did not emerge artistically scatheless from the grafton gallery ordeal of his collected works in . the first impression was delightful. "charming!" one murmured, but in the end monotony ruled, and, satisfactory as his clear colour often is, the romney brick-dust red is not eternally agreeable. yet through him lady hamilton and other delightful creatures have achieved immortality. we may criticise, belittle, and place him; but a fine romney produces the elation of sudden sunshine, or the first sight in spring-time of a bank of primroses. he had no recreations except his violin: his life was entirely devoted to his art. at eartham, during his summer holiday, he worked incessantly. there, in "a riding-house of wood" converted into a studio, which "afforded him a walk of a hundred feet under cover," he "meditated" on the various pictures from shakespeare that he meant to produce. in london, at the height of his prosperity, he worked till bedtime, occasionally when the days grew longer drinking tea at kilburn wells, or dining at the long room, hampstead. married early, he left his wife, as all the world knows, to seek fame in london at the age of twenty-eight, found it, enjoyed it, lost his health, became hypochondriac, and returned to his wife, at the age of sixty-five, a broken and shattered man. his biographers have censured or excused his marital conduct. mary seems to have made no complaint. she knew george and understood him, knew that he had ceased to care for her, and that his art held, and would always hold, chief place in his affections. i am not tempted to play the part of moralist. romney's niche in the temple of fame is as painter, not as husband. tennyson treated the domestic side in his poem "romney's remorse." the painter, according to the bard-- "... made the wife of wives a widow bride, and lost salvation for a sketch." edward fitzgerald, a bachelor, observes in one of his letters: "when old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her, and she received him and nursed him till he died. this quiet act of hers is worth all romney's pictures; even as a matter of art, i am sure." romney supported his wife, no great tax on a man who made nearly £ in one year, and he paid her two or three visits in the course of his triumphant career. the ugly part of the story is that he posed in london as a bachelor. ====================================================================== plate iv.--the parson's daughter: a portrait. (from the picture in the national gallery) this dainty portrait was called "the parson's daughter" by a former owner. romney must have enjoyed the brief task of painting her. she gave him no trouble, you may be sure. easily as a thrush sings he suggested the powdered hair framing the coquettish face masked in demureness, the long neck springing from the slight frame, and the note of green in the auburn curls. [illustration: plate iv.--the parson's daughter: a portrait.] ====================================================================== shy, something of a recluse, impressionable, with delicate perceptions that made him a favourite among women, he was a man of good physical strength and robust appearance. according to cumberland, he talked well. his harangues on art were "uttered in a hurried accent, an elevated tone, and very commonly accompanied by tears, to which he was by constitution prone." we are also informed that a noble sentiment never failed to make his eyes to overflow and his voice to tremble. the early biographies of romney were written to counteract one another. hayley's foolish volume of was composed to correct the "coarse representation" of cumberland, which was published in the _european magazine_. cumberland was a sensible man, and he wrote well. the useful but too appreciative volume by his son, john romney, was a counterblast to hayley. later lives have been george paston's admirable study, and the indispensable _catalogue raisonné_ by mr. w. roberts, with a biographical and critical essay by mr. humphry ward, which also includes the text of romney's diaries from to , acquired at miss romney's sale in . romney lived in an age when men and women of sensibility wrote poems of praise to one another. cowper's is perhaps the best known. "but this i mark, that symptoms none of woe in thy incomparable work appear." it is poor stuff; but better than the effusions of hayley, miss seward, and john halliday. chapter iii vicissitudes of fame to-day--one hundred and five years after his death--no millionaire's gallery is complete without a romney, and the desire to possess a fine example grows fiercer yearly. doubtless, the purchasers at public auction in of the "ladies caroline and elizabeth spencer," in white and red dresses, for £ , , and, in , of miss sarah rodbard fondling a skye terrier curled up upon a stone pedestal, for the same price, were well content with their bargains. romney received £ apiece for these pictures. his "lady hamilton as nature," which was bought by mr. fawkes of farnley, turner's friend, for guineas in was resold after the grafton exhibition for, it is said, , guineas. the picture is now in paris. the witchery of his portraits of dainty dolls, the sweet composure of his young matrons, the charm of his children, the delicacy of his presentments of men, such as the "wesley" and the "warren hastings," captivate the unlearned as well as connoisseurs. the appeal of his gift for expressing momentary loveliness is instantaneous. he was a poet in paint to a far greater degree than the so-called poets of the eartham set were in words. no problem is offered; the freshness of the flower-like faces is stated simply and without hint of cleverness. the reticent colour lingers on sash or ribbon, and beneath the powdered fair hair the rose and cream tints of these pretty mondaines bloom like the petals of carnations against the light. so virginal are the typical romney ladies, that it is almost a shock to read that some of the portraits were never paid for, because the bright creatures had been passed on from the protector who gave the commission for the portrait. john romney found a neat phrase when he said that his father "could impart to his female figures that indescribable something--that _je ne sais quoi_--which captivates the spectator without his being able to account for it." ====================================================================== plate v.--lady with a child. (from the picture in the national gallery) the dark blue eyes of the child gaze out upon the world in reposeful wonder. the pose is delightfully natural. romney's genius for design never failed him when his subject was a girl, a mother and child, or a group of children at play. [illustration: plate v.--lady with a child.] ====================================================================== strange it is that until the middle of the nineteenth century, when the romney revival began, fostered by the "old masters' exhibitions" and auction sales, his fame had suffered an almost total eclipse. his portraits were hidden in private collections, the national gallery set had not been acquired, and nobody cared about his heroic and historical cartoons and studies, at cambridge and elsewhere. the eclipse of the fame of romney is no doubt partly due to the fact that he never exhibited at the royal academy, which in those days meant that "outsiders," so far as the public was concerned, were truly in outer darkness. when romney retired from contact with the fashionable world, with which he never associated himself except as a painter; when he forsook his disastrous building experiments at hampstead, for the living death (of his later years) at kendal, he passed out of public life. his portraits ceased to be a topic. there were no weekly art columns in newspapers to fan the embers of his fame; the national gallery was not founded, and the age of illustrated essays on private collections had not dawned. the pages of the diaries record, as i have already said, about nine thousand sittings in less than twenty years--a colossal labour; but some of the portraits were never finished, others have been lost or stolen. he kept no diary until he had settled in cavendish square in , after his journey to italy. before that period romney had painted hundreds of pictures of which but scanty records remain. a few examples may still be found in the houses of the descendants of the original owners around kendal. forty-five portraits of lady hamilton are recorded in messrs. ward and roberts' _catalogue raisonné_, sixteen illustrations of shakespeare, two of milton, and over fifty miscellaneous and fancy subjects. in the fitzwilliam museum at cambridge are a number of pictorial designs and studies presented by the rev. george romney in , and at the liverpool royal institution are eighteen cartoons, presented in . it would be unjust to call these historical and heroic subjects a monument of misdirected effort; but if romney's claim to fame rested upon them, he would be of less account even than west and fuseli. his ardour was indefatigable, but it often spent itself when the novelty of beginning a sketch or portrait had worn off. in reading, too, his quick imagination soon flagged. at the end of one act, even of one scene, of shakespeare's, he was ready to begin his picture. "the more he painted," says hayley, "the greater was his flow of spirits." a friend surprised him one night working at an "accusation of susannah by the two elders" by lamplight. it was never finished. late in life he conceived a gargantuan scheme of founding a milton gallery which should rival boydell's shakespeare gallery. the most attractive of his fanciful subjects is "shakespeare nursed by tragedy and comedy," perhaps because lady hamilton was the model for comedy (not in person; she was in naples at the time), and romney's brush was always inspired when he painted her adorable face. shakespeare--a robust, nude babe--sits on a cradle in the landscape holding a flageolet, to the accompaniment of endearments from the pretty tragedy and comedy ladies. the least attractive, indeed the silliest, is the "shipwreck," an early work engraved in hayley's _life_. a huddle of exaggeration and emphasis, it has all the vices of the melodramatic heroic pictures of the period. romney had some talent as a musician, and as a boy he debated whether he should be a musician or a painter. cumberland records that once he heard the painter perform on his own home-made violin in a room hung with his own pictures--"a singular coincidence of arts in the person of one man." reviewing his life, i seem to see him drawing, like paganini on a memorable occasion, exquisite strains from one string only--romney of the one string--a fantasia on the beauty of fair and fragile women, pretty and graceful children, and delicate-visaged men, the sweetest sounds coming when he extemporised in praise of emma, the "divine lady" who came into his life when he was forty-eight, and who renewed his youth. chapter iv his portraits in public galleries the national gallery possesses in "mrs. mark currie," purchased in , a typical and charming romney. the pose, the reticent colour, the simplicity of the design, the background landscape, all please the eye. there is no sign of the labour that he bestowed upon his shakespearean picture of "the tempest," that formidable enterprise, containing eighteen figures, which was pruned and extended to meet suggestions of his friends. mrs. mark currie sits demurely self-conscious, as his quick eyes saw her in the first impressionistic glance, artfully clad in a simple muslin dress, relieved by the pale crimson sash and the ribbons of the same colour that nestle in fichu and sleeves. the fair hair is powdered; the large eyes gaze from the soft oval face conscious of, and content with, its comeliness; the landscape is sufficiently reminiscent of nature to harmonise with the pretty artificiality of the contented little lady who left duke street, bloomsbury, to sit in the studio of "the man in cavendish square" on may , , , july , , , of the year . "paid for," continues the extract from the diaries in the _catalogue raisonné_ "in full by mr. currie, december , £ ; sent home june , ." it was through romney's influence that a delightful change towards simplicity and slight and delicate colours was made in the feminine fashions of his day, for he persuaded some of his sitters to discard the ugly, long-waisted bodices in favour of the simple white gown and fichu that mrs. mark currie wears. emma hart he clothed according to his fancy. i shall devote a separate chapter to her, but we must glance at his charming portrait of the "divine lady" as a bacchante that hangs near mrs. mark currie. it is a study, possibly for the larger picture; the light brown curls, partly confined by the yellowy swathe, escape in disorder over the smooth brow. the mocking eyes glance sideways, the chin rests upon the shoulder, which, for romney, is daringly bare; an impression, a momentary attitude, roughed in with his favourite red, done in a morning--a mood of emma's, who could take any pose at an instant's notice, always charming and always inspiring to the painter. near by is another sketch of emma, rather hot in colour. the rich brown hair, in tempestuous disorder, flows over a pillow, the mouth is open, the eyes are as near to tragedy as the volatile emma could go. so she must have looked during that weary time in naples, when charles greville, of the level head and the tepid heart, whom she truly loved, would not write, and refused to reopen his arms to his young and deserted flame. "o, grevell, what shall i dow? what shall i dow?" she wrote. at a spelling bee, emma and romney would have competed for the lowest place. the oval known as "the parson's daughter," a title given by a former owner to the dainty girl with the large eyes and the tilted nose, is also essential romney. she gave him no trouble, you may be sure. easily as a thrush sings he painted the powdered hair framing the pretty face, the long neck springing from the slight body and the note of green in the auburn curls. country cousins who visit the national gallery always pause before his "lady with a child," attracted by the naturalness of the little one, whose dark blue eyes gaze with reposeful wonder at the spectator, and by the clarity of the paint. romney's genius for design rarely failed him when his subject was a girl, a mother and child, or children at play, such as the buoyant group of the little gower family dancing in a ring. to realise how hard and tight his handling could be when not inspired by his subject, look at the early "portraits of mr. and mrs. william lindow," in the adjoining room, painted in lancaster in before his visit to italy. if this highly-glazed group was not duly catalogued under his name, one could hardly believe it to be a romney. ====================================================================== plate vi.--mrs. robinson--"perdita." (from the picture in the wallace collection) hanging on the same wall in the wallace collection as reynolds's seaward-gazing "mrs. robinson" and gainsborough's superb full length, romney's portrait of the famous lady is put to a severe test. nevertheless, this small picture of "perdita," with a muff, dressed for walking, looks very charming. [illustration: plate vi.--mrs. robinson--"perdita."] ====================================================================== the "mr. morland of capplethwaite," in hunting costume with a dog, is another hard and uninteresting early romney. his son, in the _memoirs_, grows excited over the dog. "no representation," he wrote, "can approach nearer to the truth of nature than the portrait of this dog; the sleekness of the skin, and the characteristic sagacity of the animal are so well depicted as to give it the appearance of reality." neither is the remaining romney in the national gallery, "portrait of lady craven," a first-rate example, although it has its own sedate and simple charm. this oval once hung in the breakfast-room at strawberry hill, and inspired horace walpole to compose the following lines:-- "full many an artist has on canvas fix'd all charms that nature's pencil ever mix'd-- the witchery of eyes, the grace that tips the inexpressible douceur of lips. romney alone, in this fair image caught each charm's expression and each feature's thought; and shows how in their sweet assemblage sit, taste, spirit, softness, sentiment and wit." romney does not shine in the wallace collection. his sole example, "mrs. robinson," is but a "twinkling star" (his own phrase to express the charms of the greatest beauties of the eighteenth century compared with lady hamilton) in the galaxy of masterpieces in the large gallery at hertford house. hanging on the same wall is reynolds's version of seaward-gazing "mrs. robinson," and the superb full length by gainsborough that dominates the gallery, quite eclipsing our romney's modest presentment of the famous lady, dressed for walking, with her hands in a muff. her high powdered hair is crowned by a cap, the strings of which are tied beneath her plump chin. there is more character and resolution in the face than in the generality of romney's portraits. indeed, she is almost matronly, but the complexion has all his rose-leaf freshness; the touch of colour he permits in the sleeve is characteristic. this room at hertford house, with its three portraits of mrs. robinson, by reynolds, gainsborough, and romney, is the place to brood over and speculate upon the dazzling career of this charming woman. a recital of the facts is enough; imagination can supply the rest. first a _protégé_ of hannah more; then the attraction of the town as "perdita" at drury lane, she dazzled the prince of wales and became his mistress. in receipt of a pension of £ a year at the age of twenty-five, she amused herself writing novels, poems, and plays, was a member of the delia cruscan school, and died, "poor and palsied," in at the age of forty-two. among the nine romneys at the national portrait gallery is a winsome and smiling emma. her elbows are upon a table, and her firm chin rests upon her hands; but face and hands suffer from an excess of the romney red. here also is the crayon sketch of cowper which inspired the poet's sonnet to romney, and of which cowper wrote, "romney has drawn me in crayons, and, in the opinion of all here, with his best hand and with the most exact resemblance possible"; his friend richard cumberland gazing upwards for inspiration; a "flaxman modelling the bust of hayley," an example of "heroic portraiture"; and the adam walker family group--the last picture romney painted, and interesting for its connection with william blake. in a letter to hayley, after romney's death, blake, who was collecting material for the _life_ by hayley, wrote in : "he (adam walker) showed me also the last performance of romney. it is of mr. walker and his family, the draperies put in by somebody else. it is an excellent picture, but unfinished." unfinished also is the large autograph portrait of himself "as he appeared in the most active season of his existence," painted at eartham in . "he looks a man of genius" is the comment of visitors to the national portrait gallery. certainly he looks an impressionable, sensitive, and easily moved man, with his large, somewhat mournful eyes and the high brow. place beside romney's portrait a photograph of huxley, and you have two types, poles apart, remote as a perugino from a frans hals. a noble portrait is that of warren hastings at the india office, everything subservient to the finely-cut head with its fringe of silvery hair, and the dark grey eyes looking shrewdly out at the world. romney took his colour from his environment. with a lovely woman before him he painted loveliness; confronted by warren hastings he painted intellect and power; confronted by a wesley, intellect and spirituality. but he failed when he tried to imagine something "noble and heroic," such as the melodramatic "milton dictating 'paradise lost' to his daughters," or a story picture such as the replica of "serena reading 'evelina' by candlelight," at the south kensington museum. what inspiration could he derive from hayley's "triumph of temper." the personality of warren hastings or charles wesley could stimulate his genius--not such verses as the following:-- "sweet evelina's fascinating power had first beguil'd of sleep her midnight hour; possesst by sympathy's enchanting sway she read, unconscious of the dawning day." chapter v portraits in private collections the names of reynolds, gainsborough, raeburn, romney, and hoppner are universally known, and many of their pictures, not always the best examples, are familiar; yet how few britons have any idea of the chronological life-work of these masters. their pictures in our public galleries are chance acquisitions, sometimes representative, often mere byways of their achievement. romney was an unequal painter. a classification of his achievement in order of merit would begin with the score or so of masterpieces, and dwindle downwards through his good, fair, poor, and bad pictures. there is no other word but bad for such productions as "the shipwreck" and "the infant shakespeare surrounded by the passions"; and if bad be an unfair description of "newton displaying the prism," it is certainly a poor picture, although better than "milton dictating 'paradise lost.'" i have only seen a photograph of "newton displaying the prism," but redgrave, who examined the picture in the early sixties, describes it as poor in drawing, dirty and hot in colouring, and weak and common-place in treatment. romney stands or falls by his portraits and portrait groups, by the score or so of masterpieces that he painted better than he knew. these are the true "great art," the presentment through the eyes of temperament and training of the thing seen, that he was always striving to escape from in his pursuit of a false "great art," which he struggled to approach through the portals of literature guided by other eyes and other brains. the inequality of romney was shown at the old masters' exhibition at burlington house. in the six contributions from his brush, or ascribed to him, there was one superb example, the second mrs. lee acton; one good example, the first mrs. lee acton, and one bad example, the hard and discordant sketch of edward wortley montagu. the muddy portrait of a "lady in a white dress," and the dull and common painting of the rev. thomas carwardine, although not as bad as the edward montagu, were indeed poor romneys. one only had to turn from the "lady in a white dress" to the raeburn, "mrs. anderson of inchyra," to realise the difference between journeyman-work and inspiration, between a muddy amalgam of paint, and quality and vivacity. but the second mrs. lee acton! ah! there was romney at his loveliest, easy in mind, seeing the completed design from the inception, unworried by any literary groping after arrangement on the lines of "great art," instantly inspired by the beauty of this second wife of nathaniel lee acton of livermere park and bramford, sussex, when she rustled into his vision one day in . this dryad, masquerading in the pretty clothes of a mortal, lurks in a glade; her dainty feet rest near a pool of blue water; her white dress, the simple gown that no doubt romney persuaded her to wear, golden in the sun, which is setting behind the distant hills and flushing the trees to warmth. her complexion has the peach-like porcelain quality in which romney, at his best, rivalled gainsborough; and as for her fair powdered hair, i think the secret of its touch-and-go, intimate rendering is now lost. there is hardly any colour in the picture, and yet it is all colour. time, no doubt, has co-ordinated the glow that enwraps and illuminates this sophisticated dryad, whose folded hands and arch simper seem to announce that her momentary condescension has given the painter immortality. ====================================================================== plate vii.--miss benedetta ramus. (from the picture in the possession of the hon. w. f. d. smith) the younger of the beautiful ramus girls, who afterwards became lady day. miss benedetta of the lovely eyes, that languish and sparkle as if pleading against oblivion, rests her hands upon a book in reverie. this beautiful girl and her sister were also painted by gainsborough. that lovely work was most unfortunately destroyed by fire. [illustration: plate vii.--miss benedetta ramus.] ====================================================================== recalling the pleasure that a beautiful romney such as this gives, and eager to pass on my delight to my friends, i imagine a room hung with reproductions of fine romneys, where the twentieth century could burn a little incense to the eighteenth-century master. but there must be two rooms, for lady hamilton must have a compartment to herself, as in this little book. the romneys in the first room would include a reproduction of this "mrs. lee acton" from the collection of lord de saumarez; "mrs. mark currie," "the parson's daughter," and the "lady with a child" from the national gallery, with "mrs. robinson" from the wallace collection. beside them i would place those adorable girls, miss ramus and miss benedetta ramus, who were also painted together by gainsborough in the picture known as "the sisters." that lovely work was, alas! burnt in the fire at waddesdon. i remember a poem by mr. andrew lang in longmans' magazine on one of these sisters. a verse ran-- "mysterious benedetta! who that reynolds or that romney drew was ever half so fair as you or is so well forgot? those eyes of melancholy brown, those woven locks, a shadowy crown, must surely have bewitched the town; yet you're remembered not." forgotten? remembered not? living and very near seemed the sisters when i made an expedition to henley-on-thames, and was allowed to see romney's portraits of miss ramus and miss benedetta in the hall of greenlands, mr. w. f. d. smith's country house. these half-figure portraits have not the frolic daintiness of the "mrs. lee acton," or the "mrs. mark currie." they antedated those sparkling full-lengths by nearly fifteen years. compared with them miss ramus and miss benedetta are almost prim. if romney had wished to make them the centre of a sumptuous decorative scheme, the artist in him knew that such was not the way to treat those dark and dainty gentlewomen. nowhere, i think, are there better examples of his simplicity of design and handling, his frank statement, without a fleck of personal cleverness or pride, than these sisters who smile on either side of the doorway that issues from the hall at greenlands. miss benedetta of the lovely eyes, that languish and sparkle as if pleading against oblivion, lost in reverie, rests her hands upon a book. the binding of the volume is light brown, the table dark brown; there is a rosy flush in her cheeks and down the tips of her slim fingers; in the grey band, looped with pearls, that binds her hair there is a glint of green; otherwise, the portrait has little colour save in the break of blue sky that surges across the background. i suppose every one compares and makes a choice between the two sisters. the appeal of benedetta is swiftest, yet when i look at miss ramus i know that i should not like to be obliged to choose. the bow of her red lips may be a thought too precise, but how vibrant she is in spite of her composure! how keen and quick the look of that high-bred face! no; i should not like to have to choose between the merry languishing benedetta and the merry alert miss ramus, in her pink dress, with the flaming green gauze veil, and the gleams of gold in hair and gown. another beautiful girl, "miss vernon as hebe," now in warwick house, would have an honoured place in my roomful of fine romney productions. well may this charming goddess claim to restore beauty and youth to those who have lost them. abundant brown hair crowns the pure, untroubled brow; she glides forward, bearing the wine cup, and looking upwards as she advances. as in the miss ramus, candour and nobility have here taken the place of the romney prettiness. perhaps it is the curling powdered hair, perhaps the pout of disdain on the lips or the flicker of contempt in the eyes, that gives to "lady altamount" (lady sligo) the air and very essence of an eighteenth-century aristocrat. this proud and fragile beauty found in romney, son of a cabinet-maker, the man who could perfectly interpret her exquisiteness. does the large white hat, tied with blue ribbons beneath her chin, that "miss cumberland" wears, suit the lady? i think so, and so thought romney, when this dark-eyed daughter of his friend richard cumberland decked herself one day in an old-fashioned hat to amuse her family. romney happened to call, saw the charm of the decoration, and saw his picture. when i come upon a portrait of a fragile blonde by romney, i feel that he is at his best with fair women; when i see one of his bold beauties, such as "lady morshead," the tangle of her profuse brown hair contrasted with the simple folds of her muslin fichu, i feel that he is at his best with dark women. this "lady morshead," doing nothing, but looking charming; bright-eyed "mrs. raikes," playing on a spinet; the dark cholmeley girls; bewitching sarah with the ringlets; and the more dignified catherine--they were painted on romney's best days. a few of his "mother and child" groups must also have place on the walls of my imaginary room--the "mrs. russell," in a green dress at swallowfield park, holding the sash of her small child, who is standing upon a table, back to the spectator, regarding its chubby face in a circular mirror--a happy design this, most natural and winning; the "mrs. canning," seated beneath a tree and clasping her infant to her bosom, but quite conscious that her portrait is being painted; and the "mrs. carwardine," in a high white cap, who is consoling her baby and ignoring the painter--a charming and restful group. also the boy "lord henry petty," at landsdowne house, a quaint figure in his blue tail-coat and amber-coloured trousers, standing in an affected attitude, with his fingers marking the passage in a book, which he pretends to have been reading. the boy is posing. romney did not always succeed in suggesting the simplicity of childhood. even in the famous group of the "children of the earl of gower," now in the possession of the duke of sutherland, delightful as it is, one is conscious that the actions of the children are not spontaneous. clasping each other's hands, the lively creatures dance round in a ring, their sandalled feet tripping to a measure played by lady anne upon a tambourine held in the "grand manner" above her left shoulder. this group has been called romney's masterpiece. the murmur of pleasure that rises to the lips at the first sight of the "clavering children" is checked by the feeling that the small boy must eternally and wearily hold his right arm outstretched on a level with his head. so romney has fixed him, holding high aloft the leash that confines the two spaniels. otherwise, the group is delightful. the little girl fondles a puppy, her brother's left arm clasps her waist, and the children, conscious that they are being watched, trip forward through the landscape. in another of the large groups, "the countess of warwick and her children," there is something very taking in the small old-fashioned figure of the boy with the hoop, and in the intimate movement of the girl, who is whispering to her listening mother. the group of "the horsley children," so simply painted and so sure, was designed on one of romney's happy days. george and charlotte stand on the steps of a garden terrace beneath a tree, in white dresses with blue sashes. in her right hand the girl holds poppies; in her left a corn-flower. ====================================================================== plate viii.--miss ramus. (from the picture in the possession of the hon. w. f. d. smith.) connoisseurs in beauty have long disputed as to which is the lovelier of the two ramus girls painted by romney. the bow of miss ramus' lips may be a thought too precise, but how vibrant she is in spite of her composure i how keen and quick the look of her high-bred face! it would be hard to make a choice between miss ramus and miss benedetto. [illustration: plate viii.--miss ramus.] ====================================================================== two portraits of men i should include in my collection of significant romneys--the "warren hastings," with its watchful dignity, and the inward smile that flickers on the calm, purposeful face of john wesley. from the following extract, printed in _wesley's journal_, january , , i judge that he, like thurlow, belonged to the romney faction: "mr. romney is a painter indeed. he struck off an exact likeness at once, and did more in an hour than sir joshua did in ten." no one ever accused romney of a lack of quickness. he could always begin; he could not always continue to the end. chapter vi emma, and the end the life of romney, apart from his paintings, has interested the world in two particulars--his desertion of his wife and his passion for emma lyon. this extraordinary woman, the daughter of a blacksmith, began as a nursemaid: she suffered from libertines, loved charles greville and lived under his protection, married sir william hamilton, became world-famous as the beloved of nelson, and died in calais, an exile, where she was buried "at the expense of a charitable english lady." romney did not meet her until the year , when he was forty-eight, although it has been suggested that the acquaintance began earlier. certain it is that greville brought the lovely girl to the studio in cavendish square in , and that, until her departure for naples in , she was the joy, the light and the inspiration of romney's life. mr. humphry ward quotes in his essay a letter romney wrote to her at naples, "astonishing in its orthography." a passage runs: "i have planned many other subjects for pictures, and flatter myself your goodness will indulge me with a few sittings when you return to england--i have now a good number of ladys of (? fashion) setting to me since you left england--but all fall far short of the sempstress. indeed, it is the sun of my hemispheer, and they are the twinkling stars. when i return to london i intend to finish the cassandra and the picture of sensibility." it was during her absence that the dejection darkening his latter years began. she returned in , and joy revived when she tripped into his studio "attired in turkish costume." sunshine again flooded his clouding brain, and the man of fifty-seven writes thus to hayley: "at present, and the greatest part of the summer, i shall be engaged in painting pictures from the divine lady. i cannot give her any other epithet, for i think her superior to all womankind." shortly afterwards the painter was plunged into gloom by an apparent coolness on the part of the lady, but it passed. she again sits to him, and we read of romney, the recluse, giving a party in cavendish square in her honour: "she is the talk of the whole town and really surpasses everything, both in singing and acting, that ever appeared." then followed her marriage to sir william hamilton at marylebone church and return to italy. romney and emma never met again. from caserta she wrote him a long letter, which shows the innate goodness and sweetness of this beautiful butterfly, who was always pursued, and who was sometimes (not always unwillingly) caught. here is a passage from that letter of simple self-revelation: "you have known me in poverty and prosperity, and i had no occasion to have lived for years in poverty and distress if i had not felt something of virtue in my mind. oh, my dear friend! for a time i own through distress virtue was vanquished. but my sense of virtue was not overcome." emma was not only a versatile actress; she was also an artist's model of genius, able to give charm and personality to any character she was asked to assume, and she was shrewd enough to see that there was no surer and more enjoyable avenue to a popular appreciation of her beauty than romney's brush. other men, including sir joshua, painted the auburn hair, the perfect mouth, the flower-like complexion, the bewitching eyes, and the infinite phases of expression; but romney limned her with the insight of a lover. for him there was no disillusion. he alone made her eternally beautiful. did she love him? i think not. she liked him unfeignedly and was flattered by his admiration, but all her love, before the nelson epoch, was given to charles greville. her marriage to sir william hamilton was a bargain for social advancement. he, at the instigation of nephew charles, appraised her beauty, and succumbed. her early admirer, sir harry featherstonehaugh, of up park, succumbed and rode away. sir william hamilton placed the nuptial ring upon the slender finger of his charmer. emma sat to romney once only after she had become lady hamilton, and after that sitting, on september , , there is not a single entry in his diary until the th of the following month. we may infer that the marriage and departure of the "sun of his hemispheer" put him temporarily out of humour with painting. the most bewitching of his sitters could not fill her place. as well offer charmian or iras to antony when cleopatra was away. in the _catalogue raisonné_, already mentioned, which contains all the extant information about romney's pictures, the authors state that very many so-called "lady hamiltons" are neither by romney nor of lady hamilton. over eighty authentic examples remain detailed in their list. romney painted many renderings of some of the fanciful characters for which emma sat--as a bacchante, for example, of which twelve versions are catalogued. the half-length in the national portrait gallery with the eloquent eyes, her rich hair confined in a long linen swathe tied turban-wise, i have already mentioned; also the mocking study in the national gallery. the parent of all the bacchantes was the half-length painted about and sent to sir william hamilton at naples, with greville's comment: "the dog was ugly, and i made him paint it again." the best known is the full length in the possession of mr. tankerville chamberlayne. laughing, with head on one side, she glides beneath a tree, leading a goat that is fading into nothingness; but the dog, leaping and barking at the prospect of a scamper with his pretty mistress, is as lively as the lovely priestess of bacchus. romney's earliest picture of emma was the "lady hamilton as nature," an attraction, in coloured reproductions of varying merit, of london print-shops. she is seated before a formal but charming landscape background holding a dog, almost too large for a pet, in her arms. the red dress is cut low, her bright hair is bound with a double green fillet. she is the personification of youth and gaiety, but let the eighteenth-century poet, who sang her praises as "nature," speak-- "flush'd by the spirit of the genial year, her lips blush deeper sweets--the breath of youth; the shining moisture swells into her eyes in brighter glow; her wishing bosom heaves with palpitations wild." so a picture may preserve minor verse. it is amazing to recall that the full-length "circe" realised but fourteen and a half guineas at the romney sale in . twenty years later, in , croker's contemptuous query, "what is a ramsey or a romney worth now?" shows that the star of romney was still obscured; but in , at the sale of long's effects, with the figures of the animals painted in by that artistic surgeon, this same circe realised guineas. bare-footed, with left hand upraised, she advances from the gloom of the rocks, lit on the left by a gleam of sky and sea. her dress is pale red, the fillet in her hair and the veil that flows behind are pale blue; but it is the face at which we gaze, the pure, childlike, lovely face whose subtleties of simplicity were revealed to the eyes of her constant lover, so sure that in her he had found the realisation of the artist's dream. it is difficult to say which of the romney lady hamiltons is the most beautiful. hard it is to choose between those i have mentioned and the lovely mystery of sir arthur ellis's sketch for the "cassandra"; or the dark hair hooded in white of "the spinster"; or the startled eyes "reading the gazette"; or the half-length, belonging to lord rothschild, seated in pensive mood, with her left hand under her chin, the brow shadowed by the black hat, and the eyes pensive as a nun's. a print-shop near bond street utilises a reproduction of this portrait as a hanging sign, as a tailor in holborn uses the moroni "portrait of a tailor." men whose route from office to train lies through the neighbourhood have been known to go out of their way for the sake of a glance at emma. she cheered romney. she cheers still. i might well end on this note. the rest, if not silence, is best forgotten. it has been referred to in the first chapter. romney lived for eleven years after emma's marriage and painted some good pictures, but he suffered increasingly from failing health and depression. in after the disastrous building experiment at hampstead he sold the lease of cavendish square to martin archer shee and returned to his wife and child. he bought an estate at whitestock, near ulverstone, but did not live to build the house. his brain was clouded during the last two years of his life, and his wife, nursing him, watched the "worn-out reason dying in her house." to faithful mary he murmurs, in tennyson's poem, these valedictory words-- "beat, little heart, on this fool brain of mine. i once had friends--and many--none like you. i love you more than when we married. hope! o yes, i hope, or fancy that, perhaps, human forgiveness touches heaven, and thence-- for you forgive me, you are sure of that-- reflected, sends a light on the forgiver." the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. carlo dolci. george hay. luini. james mason. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. _others in preparation._ masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare murillo - ====================================================================== plate i.--the immaculate conception. frontispiece. (from the louvre, paris) this greatly admired canvas is one of the painter's many studies of a familiar subject. there are more than a dozen pictures of the immaculate conception whose authenticity is undisputed, and there are many others on offer in spain, clever and sometimes old imitations of the master's mannerisms. in this case the figure of the virgin is rather over-elaborated, but the treatment of the attendant cherubs is delightful and the composition very skilful. [illustration: plate i.--the immaculate conception] ====================================================================== murillo by s. l. bensusan illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. the immaculate conception . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece from the louvre, paris ii. the beggar girl from the dulwich gallery iii. the holy family from the louvre, paris iv. madonna of the rosary from the dulwich gallery v. the beggar boy from the dulwich gallery vi. a boy drinking from the national gallery, london vii. the nativity from the louvre, paris viii. the marriage of the virgin from the wallace collection [illustration: murillo] i there have been long years in which the name of bartolomé esteban, known to the world as murillo, was one to conjure with. velazquez, el greco, ribera, zurburan, goya, were long uncertain in their appeal, recognised only by the enlightened among their contemporaries and ignored by the great majority of their fellow-countrymen. the pendulum of taste swings slowly from one extreme to the other, and, as the moods and needs of men change so they cast their idols into the dust, where they remain until another generation restores what it can find to the old pedestals. nowadays murillo has fallen from his high estate among the elect; they prefer to magnify his shortcomings rather than to acknowledge his many merits, to ignore the splendid service he rendered to spanish art and the profound effect of his pictures in drawing countless simple souls within the sheltering folds of the church. the fifty years of his devoted labours count for nothing, the self-searching and criticism that enabled the painter to move from a low plane to a high one are forgotten. this is not as it should be. bartolomé esteban murillo had his limitations, but remains, despite them all, one of the world's teachers, and such glimpses of his life as may be seen through the shadows of some two hundred and fifty years reveal him as a serious artist who added to splendid natural gifts a steadfastness of purpose, a determination to do his best, a love of andalusia, and a devotion to the religion in which he was brought up that must compel the admiration of thinking men however critical, and enable the artist to stand alone. in the early years of his sojourn he suffered from the pinch of poverty. he was born when diego de silva velazquez was just about to enter upon his splendid career, in fact, murillo would have been about five years old when his great contemporary left seville for madrid. perhaps if we could see with understanding eyes we might be tempted to believe that the less distinguished artist enjoyed the happier life, for velazquez in the court of kings had much to endure that never troubled the younger man who laboured in the service of the king of kings, and may have seen such visions as lightened the labours of beato angelico in the convent of the dominicans of st. anthony in padua, and st. francis in assisi. for the best of murillo's canvases whisper to us of inspiration, of devout belief, and of an overmastering love for the "maria santissima," and when the simple-hearted painter saw that his work brought honour to the cathedrals and convents for which he laboured he must have felt that his art was its own exceeding great reward. ====================================================================== plate ii.--the beggar girl (from the dulwich gallery) we should prefer to call this picture the flower-seller, for the girl is not really a beggar at all. her clothes are worn with some approach to nicety, and she carries roses that command a ready sale in seville if the seller be attractive and young. murillo has given us a very charming type of spanish girl, and has obtained some striking colour harmonies. [illustration: plate ii.--the beggar girl] ====================================================================== to this day andalusia is a country of dreamers, and seville, despite its electric trams and motor cars, its barracks and cosmopolitan hostelries, is _par excellence_ the city of dreams. how much more so then, three hundred years ago, when murillo was born to enjoy its beauty? in seville wealth is a mere accident, even the poor may return thanks without mental reservation for the nugatory gift of life. faith flourishes to-day in the agnostic generation as of old time, blended with what we would regard as superstition, but sharing this fault with all the latin countries. in the cathedral and the caridad, to say nothing of smaller religious houses, the pictures of murillo still remind us that to the catholic religion the world owes the worship of a woman. to murillo, god and the virgin were not pale abstractions; they were his father and his mother, for he was hardly more than ten years old when his earthly parents fell victims to one of the epidemics so common in europe in days when sanitation and isolation were not understood. for twenty years, the most impressionable of his life, murillo lived alone. those who sneer at his work in these early times ignore the conditions under which it was done, forget that the cost of canvas and pigment was a very serious item in his exchequer, and that his reward was of the smallest. wealth never came his way until he was no longer quite young, but as his circumstances became easier he did all that in him lay to express his message more completely and, while his labour was unremitting, his last work was his best, and included masterpieces that may hold their own in any company, even though it include the masters before whom artist and layman bow the head. murillo has been cheapened by forgers and copyists who have succeeded in placing many of his shortcomings and very little of his quality on their hurried canvases. every picture dealer in a spanish city of any pretensions has a murillo or two that he is prepared to vouch for even though the canvas gives the lie to his protestations. the artist's work has been used shamelessly for purposes of advertisement, it has paid the fullest penalties of popularity, and yet, a real murillo in the best manner is a picture to which we can turn again and again, to find over and above the conquest of technical difficulties and the beauties of colour the qualities of imagination and inspiration that are associated with the select few in every branch of creative work. one might go as far as to say that seville would lose as much as madrid if the murillos were taken from the one and the velazquez pictures from the other. there would be no hesitation on the writer's part to say as much if the capital of andalusia had never been rifled of its proper store by the french conquerors of spain. it is not in foreign galleries that one must go to see the work of a great artist, but in the city that was his home--the city wherein the sources of his inspiration linger and his pictures find an appropriate setting. transplanting is not good for anything. the trees and flowers, the birds and beasts of a foreign land may endure in a clime for which they were not intended, but there is no more than an arrested growth; they cannot do justice to themselves. frankly and without reserve we admit that murillo was almost as much an andalusian as a painter, but when we know his city and his work there, a fine picture in the national gallery or the louvre will bring seville back to us as surely as a sea-shell brings back the ceaseless murmur of the waves. ii the artist's life murillo came into the world with the close of the year , and was baptized in a church destroyed during the french invasion nearly two hundred years later; the record of his baptism is preserved to-day in the church of st. paul. history is silent about his early years, but the authorities make it clear that his parents were among the very poorest of the city and that he was brought up in the old jewish quarter, always the abiding place of indigence and suffering. in all probability he roamed the streets of the triana and the arrebola, little better off than the beggar boys who were destined to provide so much striking material for his brush. when his parents died of the plague that visited seville the lad and his sister were adopted by an uncle who was a struggling doctor. times were bad in spite of the epidemic; probably there was more demand than payment for medical services of the quality that don juan lagares could offer: but his little nephew's cleverness with brush and pencil was too obvious to escape notice, and don juan del castillo, one of the city's leading painters, was induced by the doctor to accept the lad as a pupil without payment of a fee. in the studio of a moderately successful artist a pupil would be required to do menial work--to grind colours, clean brushes, sweep floors; he would pick up what he could of the master's methods when he had nothing else to do. it was no good apprenticeship for a beginner whose youthful talent required direction from a bigger man, but beggars cannot be choosers, and doubtless uncle and nephew were grateful to castillo, who has few claims upon our memory save in his capacity as master of seville's great painter. he found a willing pupil whose work was admitted to some of the poorer religious houses in the city when he was only fifteen, and the relations between the two would seem to have been pleasant, for murillo worked in the studio for ten years or more, and probably received some small regular payment in return for his services as soon as he had demonstrated their value. then juan del castillo moved to cadiz, and murillo remained in seville. judging by his actions in years to come, he remained because the city was very dear to him; he would undoubtedly have been useful to his master, and beyond doubt the closing of castillo's workshop left him at the age of twenty-three in dire financial straits. he had his sister to support, and the means of doing so were of the smallest, for he was only known to the poorer brethren of the church who had few commissions to offer and very little to pay for them. the best paid work was in strong hands and, if no high dignitaries of the church in seville knew much about the struggling painter, it must be confessed that he had not done much to attract or to deserve attention. he was an artist in the making just then, and the making was a slow and painful process. ====================================================================== plate iii.--the holy family (from the louvre, paris) this is one of the masterpieces of the paris collection, beautiful alike in conception, colouring and composition, with all the merits of the artist in evidence, and the most of his weaknesses conspicuous by their absence. [illustration: plate iii.--the holy family] ====================================================================== without the means for pursuit of serious study and with urgent need for present pence, the young painter was forced to do as the lowest members of his class were doing, and he did work not unlike that with which needy gentlemen adorn street corners in our own year of grace. to be sure he did not choose a pitch and decorate it with busts of the reigning family, the ruling minister, a church, a ship at anchor, and a flock of sheep in a snowstorm, but he purchased the cheapest and coarsest cloth he could buy, cut it up, stretched it, and painted pictures for the fair. at least once a week there would be a fair in the triana or macarena, every day would witness the arrival there of country farmers and dealers with something to buy or sell; and when a man's store or purse was full, when he had eaten well, and was conscious of the joy of life, he would often consent to become a patron of the arts in response to the petition of some needy son of the brush who showed him a flaming, flaring picture of a madonna or a holy family, or produced a piece of unspoilt saga-cloth and offered to paint a portrait almost as quickly as the itinerant photographer of brighton beach or margate sands can prepare the counterfeit of his victim with the aid of evil-smelling collodion plates. such pictures were always to be bought at the feria, though the writer has not found itinerant artists at the fairs of either seville or cordova in the past few years--perhaps they can make more money by painting "genuine murillos" for small dealers and owners of shops that sell second-hand goods. doubtless, the young painter was a quick worker, his gifts in those days were readily expressed, and when he lacked a commission from any of the visitors to the fair he prepared a few canvases for traders who sent them to the religious houses of south america, where the influence of spain was so widely and heavily felt. it is not easy to guess how long he would have been content with such work, but when he had followed it for about two years a great change came into his life, and for the first time he became acquainted with better things. in the studio or workshop of juan del castillo he had formed a friendship with a lad from granada, one pedro moya, who, on leaving castillo, seems to have followed art and war and to have served his native land in the low countries, where there were ample chances for the soldier of fortune who had the good luck to pass unscathed across the stricken field. moya's talent was stimulated by a chance acquaintance with van dyck's work, and in order to study this great master he retired from the army and left for london, where van dyck, then in the last year of his life, admitted him as a pupil. when van dyck had passed away, moya found his occupation gone, so he left our fogbound shores for his native andalusia, took up his residence in seville, and renewed his friendship with his old friend and fellow-student. murillo soon found in his friend's work qualities he had never seen before; they revealed the poverty of his own efforts, and filled him with an overmastering desire to travel and to learn. it was easier to feel the desire than to respond to it. italy, then as now the mecca of the spanish artist, was far beyond his reach, but he had heard stories of the success that had come to his fellow-countryman velazquez in madrid, and thought that if he could go to him he would gain a little of the advice and instruction of which he stood so much in need. with this idea he entered into an arrangement with a picture exporter, who carried on a large trade with south america, and undertook to paint a large number of works at a special price. working at high pressure he completed the order, received his pay, placed his young sister under the care of friends, and shook the dust of the macarena from his feet. his road lay towards the north, and once in the capital of spain, he presented himself before velazquez. we do not know much about the private life and character of the greatest of spanish painters, but the little that is known is all to his credit. he did not hesitate to take the raw, ill-trained lad of five-and-twenty under his protection, though his only claims upon the court painter were his talent and such kinship as may be said to exist between two men, the one distinguished, the other unknown, who hail from the same city. what velazquez did was done thoroughly. as soon as he was satisfied of the _bonâ fides_ of his visitor, he gave him a home, examined his work, and pointed out its defects, procured his admission to the royal galleries, and advised him to copy the work of ribera and van dyck. these opportunities were all murillo required. he could not have seen or hoped to see velazquez very often, for the court painter was a man whose leisure was much restricted, but he settled down to his work, and for two years or more was a painstaking copyist who lacked no opportunities. velazquez, not content to do all he could unaided, had even shown his pupil's work to his own patron the duke of olivares then still at the zenith of his power and, either directly or through olivares, had brought it before the notice of the king. when velazquez returned from lerida in , murillo had made so much progress that his patron thought he was quite fit to complete his studies in italy, and offered him the necessary introductions and money. all lovers of murillo must wish that he had availed himself of the opportunity, but in the circumstances it is not altogether surprising that he did not. doubtless, he had heard seville calling through all the days and nights of his sojourn in castile. madrid is not a pleasant city to those who know the south, and then, too, the young painter would have been lonely, and must have remembered that his sister, his only near relative, would be anxiously awaiting his return. he had learned a great deal; he may have felt that his gifts such as they were would secure him a good living in his own city, perhaps he felt he had assimilated as much as he could express for many years to come. we cannot tell what was in his mind, though to those of us who have fallen under the spell of seville there is not much difficulty in forming an opinion about it, and we are inclined to think that his decision offended his splendid patron, for the two great sevillians never met again. henceforward murillo's home was to be in the city of his birth, and his work was to be limited by the commissions that the city could yield him. doubtless, he travelled gladly to the south to take up his residence in the plaza de alfaro, and display his latest work to men who might possibly become his patrons. he had left seville unknown and undistinguished, now he had enjoyed the advantage of training under the greatest sevillian of all. ====================================================================== plate iv.--madonna of the rosary (from the dulwich gallery) the virgin sits enthroned, with the holy child on her knee and attendant cherubs at her feet. her expression is full of sadness. the composition is admirably thought out and the colouring effective. [illustration: plate iv.--madonna of the rosary] ====================================================================== he was still poor, and his poverty induced him to accept an ill-paid commission from the fathers of the franciscan convent for eleven pictures. fresh from the long course of study in madrid, conscious that this his first chance might be his last if he did not do his best, he set to work and produced a series that roused the city to enthusiasm. literally, he woke one morning to find himself famous. the franciscan convent was destroyed by fire in , but the pictures were not lost, for marshal soult had carried off ten out of eleven, and the other had passed into the gallery of a spanish grandee on its way to this country. the french invaders of spain were connoisseurs as well as soldiers, and in consideration of their _flair_ we may at this time of day overlook the shortcomings in their ethical code. murillo had made the franciscan convent famous; the franciscans had put their painter beyond the reach of monetary trouble and had settled for him the lines his talent was to follow. the painter of a picture, like the writer of a book or a play, must pay this one tribute to success; he must do the work that the public looks for. should he venture to discover himself in other directions his early patrons will turn and rend him. happily the whole trend of this artistic talent was in the direction of sacred picture painting, and in the years that follow we find little else from his hand save a few portraits and a landscape or two of minor importance. it may occur to the reader to ask what was the special quality of murillo's work that made so prompt an appeal to his countrymen, and the answer is not far to seek. hitherto sacred subjects had been dealt with in most unattractive fashion. art, the handmaiden of the church, had delighted in the presentation of ascetic figures as far removed from struggling humanity as the heavens are above the earth. saints and martyrs looking as though they were newly escaped from the grip of the inquisition were to be met with on every side; the virtues, the kindliness, and even the humanity of the lives of saints and devotees altogether were ignored. murillo peopled his canvas with an entirely new class of people, as human and as fascinating as the sevillians themselves. on murillo's canvases his fellow-countrymen saw no more long-drawn agonies of martyrdom, but gracious madonnas and delightful children, and saints who had not been soured in the pursuit of righteousness. it was a revelation to andalusia this strange new view of holiness, this mingling of the heavens with the earth, this insistence upon a common bond that united the aureoled saint with the sick beggar to whom he gave alms. then, too, the rich almost sensuous colouring of the new work was a quality hitherto unknown to seville, although we may wonder why some of the spaniards from other cities, who may have been warm colourists, had not been attracted to sun-loving seville, where they could have created an immediate market for work that responded to the unvarying humour of the people. ====================================================================== plate v.--the beggar boy (from the dulwich gallery) the little gallery near dulwich college, some five miles away from the boundaries of the city of london, is rich in works by murillo. this study of a beggar boy possesses more than the interest created by the artist's clever treatment of shadow and light, the happiness of the posing and the skilled brushwork. it reveals the truth that between the beggar of nigh three hundred years ago and to-day there is little or no difference in spain. you may meet this child to-day in and round the andalusian country the painter knew so well. [illustration: plate v.--the beggar boy] ====================================================================== the painter's studio was now thronged with the _élite_ of seville, by the crowds that muster when genius has been acclaimed by responsible parties and they need have no fear of their own taste. the man who had painted _pinturas de la feria_ only three years ago could now choose his own commissions. he made the best use of his opportunities, and, a couple of years after his work for the franciscans had given him a start in life, he married dona beatrice de cabrera y sotomayor. a portrait by murillo said to be of the lady, is in the collection of sir j. stirling-maxwell, but, seen through the medium of a photograph, it does nothing to explain why the painter married her. perhaps the facts that she was of noble family, and had wealth, may be trusted to provide the key. her flatterers could hardly have said that she was attractive. in the picture she wears a mantilla, and a flower in her hair after the fashion of the sevillana, and looks as though she seldom suffered from good temper, but if the portrait does stand for the painter's wife, it is only fair to add that we have no record to suggest that she was as difficult as she appears here. the suggestion that one of his later portraits of a really attractive woman represents his mistress is not supported sufficiently to convince us. down to the year of his return to seville the painter's work is of small importance, and in all probability the most of it has been lost. in a country where the wealthy were better prepared to buy pictures than to attach any importance to those who painted them, it is hardly likely that the rough immature efforts of the painter who sought his patrons at the weekly fair would command attention. critics of murillo divide his works into three periods, the first dating from to , when his outlines were hard and the background lacked depth, and the colouring was more or less metallic. following this came a short period of transition lasting till , when more of the individuality behind the brush becomes expressed on the canvas, and one does not see the joints in the composition, or the definite effects by which the colour scheme has been secured. from murillo may be said to have entered into his kingdom, to have expressed his conception of holy family and saints as they occurred to his mind, to stand outside the conventions that had fettered him hitherto. some hold that these changes were merely the result of constant study, but the writer inclines to a strong belief that they were more than the fruit of mere technical efficiency. the painter was turning more and more from things of earth, to what he held to be things of heaven, his emotional nature was responsive to the ceremonial of the church, and to the lives of its worthiest representatives. nearly all his work was done, whether directly or indirectly, in the service of the faith, and he learned devoutly to believe in the miracles he was asked to express on canvas. then it was that he sought to represent female forms of simple but enduring beauty, making luminous the surrounding air, angels hovering over saints, little cherubs, whose feet had never touched our own hard earth, smiling from folds of the madonna's robes. unconsciously, perhaps, he was doing as the florentine and venetian painters of the renaissance had done before him; he was studying the motherhood and childhood in the streets around him, and transferring it with sure touch and reverent hand to his canvas. small wonder then that his work in the latter days went home more directly than ever to the people among whom he lived, and that they looked upon murillo as they looked upon the cathedral, or the giralda tower, as a monument to their city and an instruction to strangers. to this day in the ancient city if you would praise a work of art of any description, you say it is a murillo, _i.e._ a masterpiece. perhaps the source of the painter's struggle gives us also the key-note to his weakness. the church gave him faith and commissions, but it also imposed upon him a certain stilted handling of his subjects. his angels and cherubs came from the streets around his home, and sometimes one feels that they are a little tired, a little intolerant of the pose he has inflicted upon them, and are anxious to return to less unnatural surroundings. for all his facility he had no daring; he felt and uttered the restrictions that the church imposed. do not let us blame him for this, we should rather remember his achievement in humanising the heavenly host than his failure to make it human without self-consciousness. only a wider training and a deeper knowledge in many directions could have freed his brush, but had it been too free, he would have found his occupation gone. there must have been zealous churchmen who looked askance at many of his pictures, for the bulk of these clerics could hardly have looked at art save through the narrowing glasses of theology. to estimate the debt that spanish art owes to murillo, let us look at the representation of the subjects he made his own by any of the men who preceded him. although murillo was so largely concerned with sacred art and religious feeling that his pictures for religious houses are largely in excess of all others, he took an intelligent interest in the social and artistic life around him. his home became one of the centres of intellectual communion in a city that has never devoted itself altogether to affairs of the mind, and he associated with the heads of sevillian society in and out of the church. the old lean years were far behind him, his pictures commanded the highest prices in the city, and were in demand beyond its boundaries, though it is extremely unlikely that he left seville for long at any time. he may have gone as far as cadiz, before he went to his death there, but that would have been the extreme limit of his excursions. now and again by way of relaxation he painted a landscape--there are one or two in madrid which have not yet been explained away by critics--and he painted portraits from time to time, though he preferred to give to some saint the features he was asked to record. doubtless he felt that the church had the first and final claims upon his services, and that he had no right to devote his time to secular subjects. ====================================================================== plate vi.--a boy drinking (from national gallery, london) when murillo was not concerned with virgin, saints or martyrs, he loved to turn to the picturesque types of childhood that he found in the streets around him. he has undoubtedly brought more character, more humanity, and above all more movement into his child-life studies than into his sacred pictures. the national gallery is the fortunate possessor of one of the painter's most successful studies of children, reproduced here. [illustration: plate vi.--a boy drinking] ====================================================================== as his social influence and his opportunity for intercourse with leading contemporaries increased, he entertained the idea of establishing in seville a public academy of art. in pursuit of this idea he would have received the hearty encouragement of the ecclesiasts who looked upon art as a sure aid to devotion, and it may be that their assistance contributed largely to the success of the inaugural meeting held in seville in the beginning of the year , when a score or more of the leading painters of andalusia drew up the constitution of the new body, and elected murillo and the younger herrera as joint presidents. students were to be admitted on payment of what they could afford, and the suggestion that the church was supporting the new venture is justified by the fact that every student was required to abjure profanity and profess his orthodoxy by reciting an established formula. the presidents devoted a week in turn to the academy, teaching, criticising, and advising, and the struggling young artists of the city and its environs made haste to avail themselves of the chance of securing tuition and assistance. herrera did not remain constant to his self-imposed task, and doubtless murillo found it irksome, but the academy was to no small extent the creation of his own brain, and he did his best for it, taking up the burden that his fellow president had laid aside. it is clear that he must have possessed some talent for organisation and administration; the academy seems to have thrived as long as he was able to direct its affairs, but shortly after his death its doors were closed. some of the spanish writers who have had access to old papers and correspondence declare that murillo's position was one of great difficulty from the first, that the jealousy of men who were older and less successful than he hampered him very considerably, and that many of his best intentioned efforts were thwarted. it is not difficult to understand that the painter's extraordinary career had provided him with plenty of detractors, and that his position at the head of the academy would be resented by the elderly unsuccessful gentlemen who knew that the experiment was being watched from the highest quarters in madrid. it is not possible in this place to refer at any length to the important work executed by murillo in the first fifteen years of his latest manner. to attempt such a task would be to compile a catalogue that could hardly be of interest, save to the few english lovers of murillo, who know his work in national gallery, louvre, prado, hermitage, and the public and private collections in seville. let it suffice for the moment to point out that he had been honoured with commissions to paint pictures for the cathedral of seville, once a temple to venus, and possessing to this day, if the writer has been truly informed, dungeons wherein the officers of holy inquisition wrought their will upon the _corpus vile_ of the heretic. he decorated the chapel royal in honour of the canonisation of st. ferdinand. in the chapter room of the cathedral are eight portraits painted in oval for the dome. all are saints, six men and two women, the latter being st. justa and st. rufina, the patron saints of the city. in years to come goya was asked to paint st. justa and st. rufina, and showed his respect for their sanctity by employing two courtesans to sit for the portraits; but this is another story, and belongs to the time of the french war and ferdinand the desired. there are countless studies of christ in the cathedral, one as a lad, another at the baptism by st. john, a third in which the child christ appears to st. anthony of padua, another after the scourging. the picture of christ and st. anthony was probably one of the finest of the master's works, but it has been vilely restored. as a rule, the gentlemen employed in spain to restore masterpieces seem to have as much knowledge of art as the african witch doctor has of the healing art that is practised by a london doctor of medicine. it is only now and again, when one finds murillo at his best in a picture that has defied the assaults of time, that one can realise what the cruel mercies of the restorer have done to obscure the painter's work. they have accentuated the obvious, turned sentiment into sentimentality, and made colour schemes lose their refinement. if shakespeare's sonnets had been found mutilated, and had been restored by that "philosopher true," the late martin tupper, we should have had in literature a counterpart of the result we have here in art. beyond murillo's highly important work in seville cathedral, attention must be called to the pictures he painted for the church of santa maria la blanca, the convent of the capuchins, and the caridad. only one of them, a "last supper," not in the painter's best manner, remains there to-day; but the splendid semicircular picture of the conception, now in the louvre, was painted for santa maria la blanca, and hung there until marshal soult cast his rapacious, but well cultivated, regard upon it; and in the academy of san fernando in madrid, where so many of the fine goyas are preserved, we can see two others, "the dream" and "the senator and his wife before the pope." the story set out is founded upon the legend of a roman senator and his wife, who being childless vowed to leave their wealth to the virgin. she appeared to them in a dream, the infant christ in her arms, and bade them erect to her a church on the esquiline, at a spot she indicated. to this dream the church of santa maria maggiore in rome is said to owe its foundation. the two canvases stolen or annexed by soult were returned to spain after his death. ====================================================================== plate vii.--the nativity (from the louvre, paris) on several occasions murillo chose the nativity for the subject of his great canvases. he was always safe to attract the admiration of his clients by his reverent treatment of a scene that left so much to the imagination of the artist. his pictures were very greatly admired by the french invaders of spain, and it was to marshal soult that many frenchmen owed their first introduction to murillo. [illustration: plate vii.--the nativity] ====================================================================== the caridad, a well-managed hospital, scrupulously clean, light and airy, thrives to-day on the banks of the guadalquivir, close to the tower of the gold, and doubtless the writer is but one of many who have spent long hours there, content to endure the sights and sounds of suffering for the sake of the remnant of work that still graces the wall of church and hospital. there would be much more than can be seen to-day but for the visits of the indefatigable marshal soult, who had such a penchant for the master's work that neither cathedral nor hospital could guard it from his eyes and hands. it is easy enough to study murillo in the public galleries, but it seems more satisfactory to see his canvases in the places for which they were painted, and a special interest attaches to the hospital of the caridad, because it was founded by one of the men whom an age of devout belief is apt to produce from time to time--a desperate sinner turned saint. don miguel manara of calatrava, born a few years after murillo, was a man of pleasure who wasted his substance in riotous living. one night as he was reeling home from a debauch he saw a funeral procession approaching him, the open bier surrounded by torch-bearing priests. "whom do you carry to the grave?" he cried, and one of the priests replied, "don miguel manara." greatly terrified, the profligate looked at the corpse and recognised the features as his own. then he knew no more until morning broke and he found himself in a church. had he lived in this prosaic age his friends would have taken him to a nursing home to enjoy the benefits of bromide and a rest cure, but two hundred and fifty years ago a man had to work out his own salvation. he did so very thoroughly, turned from a profligate to a devotee and, after infinite labour, founded the hospital and church of the caridad on the ruins of an early building of the same character. it is a splendid institution, and preserves to this day the character proposed by its founder, whose anxious careworn face looks at us from the canvas painted by juan de valdes in the cabilda. murillo painted ten or eleven pictures for the church of san jorge attached to the hospital; three remain: one is in madrid, and two are in the town house of the duke of sutherland. perhaps the "moses" is the best of those that remain, but the saint elizabeth of hungary, now in madrid, is a master work. gratitude for such favours as he had received would appear to have been one of the painter's characteristics, and may be held accountable for the splendid effort on behalf of the franciscans, who in early days had given the commission that made him famous. when the brethren appealed to him in he was a rich man, and able to work as cheaply as in the days when every real was worth saving. the convent, then on the outskirts of the city, had taken forty years or more in the building. now it needed decoration, and the brethren did not appeal in vain to the greatest ecclesiastical painter of the day. we do not know his fee, but we do know that he devoted six years to his task. upwards of a score of pictures testified at once to his devotion and to his skill, for they are among the best he has painted, and happily the most of them are to be seen in the murillo salon of the seville museum. the brethren of st. francis, though they made one or two exchanges of the kind that glaucus made with diomedes, had the sense to put the canvases they elected to preserve beyond the reach of marshal soult, and the salon of trabella holds _inter alia_ the "st. francis at the foot of the cross," "justa and rufina," "st. thomas of villanueva," and two conceptions. it will be remembered that the papal edict declaring the immaculacy of the mother of god was issued in the year of murillo's birth, and doubtless many a devout catholic believed that the painter was given to spain as a reward to philip iv. by whose strenuous endeavour pope paul v. had issued his momentous decree. the pictures painted for the franciscans were held by murillo's contemporaries to place a crown upon his achievements. brilliant as his work had been for the cathedral and the caridad, for the hospital known as los venerables, and for the church of the augustines, the franciscans were held to have been the most fortunate of all the painter's patrons, and his pictures gave an immense stimulus to the labours of the church. the capuchins of cadiz besought him to journey to their city and to paint some pictures for their house. he had already reached a great age and an assured position, and no pecuniary recompense that the capuchin friars had to offer could have drawn him from his beloved native city; but the temptation to work for the greater glory of god was irresistible, and he set out. it was an unfortunate journey. while engaged on a picture of the marriage of santa catherine, he stumbled in mounting the scaffolding, and ruptured himself badly. suffering great pain, and unable or unwilling to describe his condition precisely, he was brought back to seville, and we may feel assured that the journey must have aggravated his symptoms. his children and friends did all they could to alleviate his sufferings, but in those days of elemental knowledge rupture was not readily diagnosed, nor was there any effective treatment. we are told that the dying man was taken every day to the church of the holy cross, where he prayed beneath the shadow of campana's "descent." feeling that his end was upon him he sent for all his family and friends, and with the evening of april , , the end came. he was buried under campana's "descent from the cross," and his funeral afforded an occasion for all classes of seville to show how greatly they respected the distinguished dead. he left but little money, though he had some real estate and a valuable collection of plate and pictures. by his will he left instructions that four hundred masses were to be said for the repose of his soul--a generous allowance surely for one whose life was singularly free from blame. his wife had predeceased him, but his sister, for whom he had laboured in the far-off early days, survived; she had married a distinguished man of noble birth. his children were two sons and a daughter; the elder son was in the west indies: the second, who took to art, died before middle age. you may find his work in all the great galleries to-day, but to know murillo intimately one must go to spain--to seville and madrid for choice. france boasts a fine collection, and many of those that adorn our national gallery, dulwich and wallace collections, are worthy of the painter. in rome, florence, dresden, munich, berlin, vienna, and st. petersburg he is represented by work that demands attention. doubtless much of his output has been lost, much has been restored to death, some pictures remain to be discovered, but it should not be difficult to compile a list of pictures painted by murillo, the greater part in the third or "vaporoso" manner, and painted in the last twenty-five years of his life. had he not received the commission from cadiz, or had he refused to accept it, we may suppose that his output would have been considerably greater than it was, for he was in excellent health, was a conscientious worker, and was painting his finest pictures. he has enabled us to know what manner of man he was by the records of his life, by his work, and by several portraits of himself that he painted. two are in england. one of the painter in his youth was bought by sir francis cook at the louis philippe sale in , and is now at doughty house; another painted in later years is in lord spencer's famous collection at althorp. there are said to be others on the continent; one, said by those who have seen it to be the best of all, was formerly in the louvre, but its present resting-place is not known to the writer. the artist suffers to-day from the fact that velazquez was his contemporary, and from the indiscriminate praise of those who became acquainted with him for the first time when soult came back from the wars. his panegyrists ignored or never saw his weakness, the theatrical posing of his figures, the ever-recurring sacrifice of reason to sentiment, of strength to prettiness. his detractors, on the other hand, have blinded themselves to the beauty of his conceptions, the skill of his compositions, the exquisite quality of his colouring, and the spirit of genuine belief that kept a subject from becoming hackneyed, even when he had painted it a score of times. he did repeat himself; if we are not mistaken he has more than a score of canvases known to-day, setting out the story of the immaculate conception. the writer has seen some ten or twelve in spain and france, and though the treatment is fairly uniform, each has been the object of the artist's most meticulous handling; indeed, it is on this account that the central figure lacks the charm that comes to the little angels clinging round her. ====================================================================== plate viii.--the marriage of the virgin (from the wallace collection) this is a panel-picture of considerable merit, full of charm and very sincerely felt. as is customary with murillo, the grouping is better than the colouring, which has a certain tendency to crudity, not altogether restrained by the limits of the canvas. [illustration: plate viii.--the marriage of the virgin] ====================================================================== murillo must have loved little children; he is never so happy and free from his besetting sin of posing figures stiffly as when he turns for inspiration to the little ones. we have several examples of this branch of his art in and round london. the national gallery holds the "drinking boy," while dulwich has several groups of beggar children and the delightful "flower girl." one may remark in passing that it is a thousand pities that the beauties of the dulwich collection are so little known to the general body of picture lovers. it can be reached on foot in two hours from the bank of england, and is served by bus and train. nearly all the murillos are early ones, and the velazquez (philip iv.) is not altogether above suspicion, but the collection is a remarkable one, and sadly neglected by the public. it has often been urged against the murillo children at dulwich that they exhibit the painter's sin of theatrical posing in a very glaring light, but surely those who make this charge have overlooked the extraordinary self-consciousness of the spanish beggar be he old or young. for once murillo is justified. among the beggars of spain, rags that only hold together by grace of providence are worn as though they were purple and fine linen; and the writer has seen the outcast, whose only possession beyond his rags was the cigarette that had just been given him, swagger along a dusty country high-road as though he were a grandee in electric motor passing through the ranks of his friends in the park by the prado when madrid is in full season. there is much justification for the pose of the beggar children, the serious blame that attaches to the painter is for treating his divinities and saints as though they were no whit better than the exquisites of sierpes or the beggars of the macarena. even his lambs are profoundly conscious that they are sitting for their portrait, and have made up their mind that if they are spared to grow up and become sheep they will be worthy of their pastures. the painter was not justified in this, although we must never forget, if we would do him justice, that the church kept a watchful eye on everything he did, and spoke to him with an authority he would have been the last to disregard. the catholic church is essentially spectacular in its worship, and surely the high dignitaries of the seventeenth-century church would never have suffered murillo to go unrebuked had he presented his figures in simpler pose and without any ostentation in their attitude. as things were he had brought the godhead dangerously close to earth. our entire conception of the province of art has altered beyond recognition since murillo lived and died. the modern artist, whether he work with paint or words, keeps his morality and his art distinct from one another. art, he says, is not concerned with a rule of life, it is essentially non-moral. murillo, on the other hand, accepted the theory that art is the handmaiden of the church, that only the handling of the chosen picture is the affair of the painter. where faith was concerned he was not far removed from beato angelico, and those who like to compare the products of an age in different countries, may remember that carlo dolci, the florentine painter of cardinal virtues, was born about the same time as murillo. the church did for him in italy what it did for murillo in spain, but the latter artist was made of sterner stuff, and had infinitely more brains and talent than his florentine contemporary. but between carlo dolci's best work and murillo's worst, there is a measure of resemblance that justifies one in remembering that they were born within a year of each other, and that both passed in the penultimate decade of the seventeenth century. in conclusion it may be said for murillo that, quite apart from his merits as a man, he may claim the admiration of the unbiassed critic of all time for some of his finest pictures. there were occasions when he painted figures that neither velazquez nor titian would have felt ashamed to own, there were times when his saints and redeemer were expressed with exquisite dignity and restraint. judged by the light of modern criticism, he was uneven in his work, but that criticism has no reason to believe that its arguments would have conveyed anything to murillo himself. his entire output suggests that he knew what his message was to be, and delivered it as he received it. we can find pictures in which the proportions of the figures are bad, and the outlines are hard and unpleasing, there are a few in which the colour scheme is poor and ineffective. but if against his worst moments we are content to put his best, the artist has not much to fear. apart from the value of his labours on purely artistic grounds, let us remember that he brought the madonna and infant christ from the heaven in which they had been inaccessible to the rank and file of spain, to the earth where they might be seen and known, by those who walk in darkness. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry e. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. _others in preparation._ masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare leighton - ====================================================================== plate i.--"and the sea gave up the dead which were in it."--rev. xx. . (frontispiece) (at the tate gallery, london) this panel was intended to form part of a scheme of decoration for the dome of st. paul's cathedral, and is interesting as an example of leighton's methods of design. both in subject and mode of treatment it departs markedly from the customary direction of his paintings, but its largeness of style and imaginative power give it an important place in the series of his works. [illustration: plate i.--"and the sea gave up the dead which were in it."] ====================================================================== leighton by a. lys baldry illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page art] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. "and the sea gave up the dead which were in it." (rev. xx. ) . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece at the tate gallery ii. the syracusan bride in the possession of f. b. mildmay, esq., m.p. iii. gathering citrons in the possession of f. b. mildmay, esq., m.p. iv. clytemnestra at leighton house, kensington v. the bath of psyche at the tate gallery vi. a noble lady of venice in the possession of lord armstrong, rothbary vii. elijah in the wilderness at the walker art gallery, liverpool viii. portrait of sir richard burton at the national portrait gallery [illustration: leighton] it is true that a definite connection can almost always be traced between the temperament of an artist and the work that he produces. one of the first things that must be taken into account in any study of his achievement is the manner of his training during the most impressionable years of his boyhood. youthful associations and surroundings must obviously have a very real influence upon the direction in which any man develops in after life, and much of his later success or failure must depend upon the kind of cultivation that is given at the outset to his natural tastes and instinctive preferences. everything which helps to define his personality, or to shape his character, has an actual bearing upon his ultimate efficiency as a producer, and counts for something in the building up of his scheme of active existence; the discipline of a judicious up-bringing puts his temperament under the control of his intelligence, and by pointing the way in which he can best apply his powers, saves him from wasting his energies in unprofitable experiment. he starts his career with a knowledge of himself, and with confidence in his personal qualifications for the profession he has chosen; and this confidence enables him to use his individuality not only to his own advantage, but for the benefit of other men as well. it would not be easy to find a better instance of this connection between the artist's personality and the character of his performance than is afforded by the life and practice of lord leighton, nor one which marks more definitely the effect produced by early associations and training. indeed, to understand his art at all, it is necessary to trace from his childhood the sequence of events by which the trend of his æsthetic convictions was determined, and to follow, step by step, the evolution of that creed in which he retained, to the end, the fullest and most absolute faith. he was no opportunist in art matters, momentary fashions did not affect him, and he did not yield to the temptation, which many artists are unable to resist, to make experiments in unaccustomed directions; what he once believed he believed always, and neither his catholicity of taste, nor his generous toleration of methods of practice quite opposed to his own, had any effect upon the consistency of his effort. what he conceived to be his mission he fulfilled to the utmost, and there is no plainer proof of his strength than the firmness of his adherence to the course which he had decided at the outset was the one he ought to follow. ====================================================================== plate ii.--the syracusan bride (the plate represents the centre portion of the picture, now in the possession of mr. mildmay, m.p., at ivybridge) a typical example of the artist's earlier manner--characteristically suave in line arrangement and dignified in effect--this picture shows well how he could manage the intricacies of an elaborate composition. the decorative beauty of the whole design and the grace of individual figures can be sincerely admired. [illustration: plate ii.--the syracusan bride] ====================================================================== leighton does not seem to have owed to heredity any of his particular gifts as an artist. his father and grandfather were both medical men, and, during several generations preceding his birth, no member of his family appears to have possessed more than an ordinary degree of taste in art matters. yet the desire for the pictorial expression of his ideas was one of the first of his childish inclinations; and in , before he was ten years old--he was born at scarborough on december , --this desire had become so strong that his parents began seriously to consider whether it ought not to be accepted by them as determining the profession which he was eventually to follow. their final decision on the subject was postponed for some years longer, for they felt the need for caution lest his powers should prove to be insufficient to justify them in consenting that he should become a professional artist. but meanwhile his father, himself a man of culture and a lover of the classics, determined that the boy should receive a good general education, and that, though art teaching was not to be denied to him, it should be one only of the subjects in which he was to be trained. so for the next four or five years his work was very judiciously varied. in he had gone with his parents to rome, and during the two years he remained there he had regular drawing-lessons from signor meli. then came a year spent partly at dresden and partly at berlin, which gave him further opportunities for art study, a short stay during at a school at frankfort, and another move, in , to florence. this wandering life under his father's guidance was of no small advantage to him, for it not only offered him chances of becoming acquainted with various types of art, but enabled him to acquire that command of languages which was of so much service to him in his after career. it gave him, too, a wide experience of people and things such as comes seldom enough to a lad of his age, and had undoubtedly a very valuable influence upon his mental development. it was in florence that the question whether he was or was not to be an artist was finally decided. his father sought the advice of hiram powers, the american sculptor, to whom he showed examples of the boy's work and asked whether he should "make him an artist." when powers declared that nature had done that already, and, in answer to further questioning as to young leighton's chances of success, said that he would become as eminent as he pleased, the parental doubts and hesitation came to an end. immediate steps were taken to give him a grounding in the rudiments of the profession which opened up to him such brilliant prospects. his general education still went on, but he was allowed time for special study, and not only entered the accademia delle belle arti at florence, but also set to work to study anatomy under zanetti at the hospital in that city; and on these lines his training was continued for some little while. when he left florence it was to return to his school at frankfort, where he remained till he was nearly seventeen, and then he spent a year in the stadtlesches institut there. he moved next to brussels, where he came in contact with wiertz and gallait, and then for a few months to paris, to worship at the shrine of ingres and ary scheffer. but during this period his art work was carried on without the systematic direction of any master, and though on his travels he had picked up much useful knowledge, and had acquired sufficient confidence in himself to attempt two or three pictures of some importance, he felt at last the need for real discipline. so at the end of he left paris, and returned to frankfort to put himself under the rigid rule of steinle, a master from whom he knew that he would receive just the drilling which was necessary to bring his somewhat errant youthful fancies under proper control. steinle was an artist who had little sympathy with those redundancies of style which were at that time characteristic of the florentine school. he was a believer in severity of manner, in formality and strict simplicity, and that leighton should have chosen him as the one man from whom he desired to receive tuition is proof enough that the young artist was fully conscious of the deficiencies in his own early performance. with this consciousness to spur him on it can well be imagined that the two years he spent with steinle were not wasted; he worked hard, and if he had to unlearn much that he had learned before, he acquired thereby a sounder judgment of the relative value of different forms of practice, and added largely to his knowledge of technical processes. he had, during his earlier wanderings from place to place, seen and studied many phases of art, and he had gathered impressions with what was, perhaps, rather dangerous facility; to bring this mass of oddly assorted information into proper shape, and to sift out from it what had real value, was a task in which he needed the assistance of a disciplinarian with high ideals and firm convictions. he had full confidence in steinle's judgment, and though his own æsthetic creed was even then too clearly defined to be changed in essentials by the asceticism of his master, he responded readily to the suggestions of a man who could show him plainly just where the extravagances of this creed required to be curbed, and how what was best in it could most fitly be developed. he left frankfort in the autumn of and went to live at rome; and soon after he had settled there he commenced the picture which was destined, on its appearance at the royal academy in , to put him instantly among the most prominent of the artists of his time. in this picture--"cimabue's madonna carried in procession through the streets of florence"--he not only summarised all his previous experience, but forecasted what was to be his artistic direction during the rest of his life. though he had painted other canvases before, and exhibited them at frankfort, it was with this one that his career as an artist of admitted distinction really began. it introduced him dramatically to the british public; it was bought by queen victoria--a fact which immediately advertised its importance to art lovers in this country--and it amply justified the hopes and expectations as to his future, which had been formed by his many friends abroad and by the judges who had had opportunities of estimating the value of his student work. this was the picture which thackeray had seen in progress at rome, and which, by the impression it made upon him, induced him to tell millais that he had come across "a versatile young dog who will run you hard for the presidentship one day"--a much-quoted prophecy of which we have had since the complete fulfilment. ====================================================================== plate iii.--gathering citrons (in the possession of mr. mildmay, m.p.) few of leighton's paintings of eastern subjects illustrate better than this one the certainty and precision of his draughtsmanship and his power of dealing with architectural details. but this "old damascus--jews' quarter"--as it was called when it was first exhibited in --is much more than a simple study of architecture; it sums up many of the artist's best qualities as a craftsman and a shrewd observer of nature. [illustration: plate iii.--gathering citrons] ====================================================================== but in an analysis of leighton's art this famous composition claims a place of even greater importance than in the historical summary of his life's work. that it has faults in draughtsmanship, and that in certain details its composition is open to criticism, can be frankly admitted; these defects, however, are but what might have been expected in so ambitious an effort by an artist whose years did not number more than four-and-twenty, and who necessarily lacked that comprehensive grasp of executive processes which comes only with long experience and exhaustive practice in the mechanism of painting. when the circumstances of its production are taken into account it must always rank as one of the most triumphant demonstrations of youthful genius which have ever been recorded. that its reception at the academy was really enthusiastic can well be understood; it must have come as a welcome surprise to the people who were growing impatient of the atmosphere of mediocrity by which at that period nearly the whole of british art was pervaded. now, the significance of such an example of leighton's early achievement is made more emphatic by comparison with the long series of his later works. at twenty-four the italian influence was strong upon him, and the impressions of his boyhood, modified but not effaced by the teaching of steinle, had still power to control his artistic intelligence. the triviality of italian art, its love of detail, and its seeking after superficialities of expression, did not appeal to him, but in its sumptuousness and sensuous charm he found something with which he could fully sympathise. in yielding to this sympathy, however, he was kept by his fastidious taste and innate love of refinement from running to extremes. he worked in the italian spirit, but the spirit was that of the older masters rather than that of the modern men, and even then it underwent a kind of transmutation in his mind. for the greater qualities of the picture were not simply the outcome of his imitation of the mannerisms of the school to which at that time he belonged by association, rather were they due to his personal conception of the functions which the imaginative painter was called upon to fulfil--to an independent belief which was capable of being asserted in many ways. this belief, formed in his early manhood, persisted, indeed, in all its essentials to the end of his days, and was as surely evidenced in his later classicism as in the first few examples of his italian adaptations. it was founded upon the idea that a work of art to be really great must be rightly decorative, that whatever the pictorial motive chosen, it must be treated as the basis of a studied arrangement of form and colour, and must be brought as near to perfection of design as is possible by the exercise of all the devices of craftsmanship. leighton undoubtedly saw in decoration the only permissible application of painting, but he saw also that decoration could be made much more than a narrow and unreal convention, and that so far from hampering the artist with high ideals, it offered him the greatest opportunities of satisfying his aspirations. he appreciated, too, the fact that the most exquisite naturalism could be attained in every part of a picture which was designed purely to express an ideal fancy. therefore, he did not hesitate to select, for many of his most exactly reasoned compositions, subjects which had either an historical allusion, or which illustrated some myth or legend. he was so sure of the principle of his art that he did not fear that in telling the story, and in embroidering it with a wealth of minutely perfected detail, he would lose the vitality or the purity of his decoration. to this confidence was due emphatically both the power and the charm of the cimabue picture. the subject, in itself merely episodical, was one capable of just that refinement of design, and balance of colour, which the decorator who is adequately conscious of his responsibility regards as indispensable; and leighton, spurred to emulation by the noble examples of decorative painting with which he had been familiar from his childhood, and endowed with a just appreciation of his own great gifts, had no hesitation in attempting to turn this incident from art history into a painting which would be an avowal of all the articles of his æsthetic creed, and a profession of the faith to which he had sworn allegiance. it is characteristic of his courage that he should have chosen to make in this manner his first appearance in an english exhibition; a man of less independence would probably have hesitated to stake so much upon a piece of work which, by the very frankness of its revelation of the artist's intention to go his own way, was quite as likely to excite opposition as to be received with approval. but it was no part of his scheme of existence to tout for popularity by coming down to a lower level, and he valued consistency more than the adulation of the public. indeed, by his very next picture, "the triumph of music," which was exhibited in , he brought himself into conflict with the critics and students of what was accepted as correct art. "the triumph of music" represented orpheus playing a violin to pluto and proserpine, and the combination of figures from a classic story with an instrument invented only in the middle ages was resented by every one who did not understand, or did not sympathise with the artist's decorative and symbolical intention. but in this instance also he was following the lead of the great italian masters, who had provided him with many precedents for such a pictorial combination; and it is quite probable that he knew beforehand what would be the effect upon a modern public of his attempt to give new life to an ancient tradition. at least, he proved that he was quite ready to go to all necessary lengths in his advocacy of freedom of practice, and showed that he was not likely to enrol himself among the conventionalists and the followers of the mid-victorian fashion. ====================================================================== plate iv.--clytemnestra (at leighton house, kensington) the strength and statuesque dignity of this figure are not less remarkable than the power with which the subject as a whole is suggested. the picture has a wonderful degree of dramatic effect, and is especially impressive in its reticence and scholarly restraint. the admirable drawing of the draperies should be particularly noted. [illustration: plate iv.--clytemnestra] ====================================================================== this picture was painted in paris, whither he had gone in the autumn of . he made that city his headquarters for some two years during which he worked assiduously, and found many friends among the leaders of french art. in he stayed for a time in london, and by coming in contact with some of the younger painters, who were then contributing an important chapter to our art history--with men like millais, rossetti, and holman hunt--he obtained a closer insight into certain artistic movements of which, while abroad, he had probably heard but the faintest echoes. by this time the pre-raphaelite rebellion had produced its effect and was not in need of his support, but it may fairly be assumed that, if the need had arisen, he would have been on the side of those who were fighting for the emancipation of british art. in the following year he was again in italy, and during the spring he worked in capri; it was there that he executed that marvellous drawing of the "lemon tree," which has always, and with justice, been counted among his masterpieces; but in he decided to settle in london, and established himself in orme square, bayswater. life in london did not, however, mean that his excursions to other countries were to be abandoned, he continued regularly to spend some months in each year in travel abroad, and he visited in succession spain, damascus, egypt, and other parts of the east, besides renewing his acquaintance with many places which he had seen before. these wanderings were always productive; they added much to his stock of material, and the results of them are embodied in a number of his pictures, as well as in that long series of open air sketches which show how sensitive he was to the beauty of nature, and how delicately he could interpret her moods. ====================================================================== plate v.--the bath of psyche (at the tate gallery, london) one of the most fascinating of leighton's classic compositions. it was painted six years before his death, and represents perfectly the art of his later period, when his powers had fully matured and he had acquired complete control over refinements of practice. exhibited in the royal academy in . purchased by the chantrey trustees in . [illustration: plate v.--the bath of psyche] ====================================================================== four years after leighton became a british artist, by residence as well as by birth, he was elected an associate of the royal academy. in this same year, , he exhibited a picture, "golden hours," which is notable as one of the most successful examples of his italian manner. but though the memories of his youth were still powerful, and had, even at that date, an influence upon his art, there was a definite change coming over his practice. whether this change was due to closer contact with the traditions of english painting, or simply to the inevitable maturing of his convictions as he drew near to middle age, it is hard to say; but certainly as years went on he inclined more and more away from the sumptuousness of italy, towards the purer and less emotional dignity of greece. he sought more persistently for the classic atmosphere, his idealism became more severe, and his decoration more reticent, and he turned more frequently for his subjects to the greek myths. as an illustration of his new view, it is interesting to compare his "syracusan bride leading wild animals for sacrifice to the temple of diana," exhibited in , with the "cimabue's madonna," by which his reputation had been established eleven years before. both are processional compositions of large size, both have the same sort of decorative intention; but while there is in the first some kind of story, and some attempt to realise the atmosphere of a particular period of history, in the second there is little more than a purely fanciful pattern of forms and colours, which is interesting solely on account of its beauty. a similar comparison might be made between the "dante going forth into exile," which belongs to the same year as the "golden hours," and the "venus disrobing for the bath" of , or the "helios and rhodes," "electra at the tomb of agamemnon," and "dædalus and icarus," of . in this latter year he exhibited also his diploma picture, "st. jerome in the desert"--as he had been elected a royal academician in --but this, a study of strong action, and vehemently dramatic in effect, is neither italian nor classic, and belongs really to a class of art into which he only occasionally digressed. as time went on the statuesque repose of his canvases increased, and the classic severity became perceptible even when he treated subjects which had no grecian allusion. it is quite apparent in his large picture of "hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis" ( ), though in this there is no lack of vigorous movement; it gave a particular charm to his conception of the exquisite "summer moon" ( ), perhaps the most perfect work he ever produced; and it is felt most of all in the vast composition, "the daphnephoria," which, exhibited in , rounds off significantly that important decade in his career which opened with the "syracusan bride." henceforth leighton must be counted among the many artists of distinction who have, in this country, striven assiduously to keep alive the greek tradition. he never sank into a mere pictorial archæologist, and rarely tried to produce those cold and lifeless reconstructions of ancient life which are too often put forth by painters who depend for their inspiration upon book-learning and museum study rather than imagination. but the beauty of greek art, its strength and delicacy, its dignity and ideal grace, absorbed him as they did fred walker and albert moore, and, like these two british masters, he allowed its influence to determine the way in which the whole of his painting was treated. even in such pictures as "the slinger," an egyptian subject, or "gathering citrons; a court in damascus," which was one of the results of his eastern travel, both of which belong to this period, he made no pretence of avoiding, for the sake of what may be called local exactness, the antique preconception; both are as evidently statuesque in design, and classic in manner, as any of his grecian fantasies; and, to take another instance, it is instructive to note how, in his "noble lady of venice," a subject which seemingly demanded a purely italian quality, the sumptuousness of effect has been refined and purified by a kind of simplicity of statement borrowed obviously from antique art. it is curious, however, that in the first important piece of sculpture for which he was responsible, the "athlete struggling with a python," which was at the academy in , he should have avoided almost entirely any hint of greek spirit. this statue is essentially italian, both in its general design and in its details of modelling. it has none of the firmness of line, and little of the largeness of method, which are so decisively characteristic of antique sculpture, and owes plainly more to donatello than to phidias. yet it has great and distinguished merits, and can be placed in the company of the few great things which have been produced in this branch of art during modern times. as an anatomical study it is most convincing, for it reveals an astonishingly complete knowledge of the construction of the human form, and is exceedingly true in its realisation of muscular action. perhaps the chief objection that can be urged against it as a work of art is that it records an impossibility--a snake of the size represented would be more than a match for a man even with the fine physique of the athlete, and the ending of such a struggle, the difficulty of which the statue hardly suggests, would be prompt and disastrous. but leighton's fine craftsmanship has made even an impossibility seem credible, and his work must not be condemned because it involves an error in natural history. he exhibited another large statue, "the sluggard," in , which, like the "athlete struggling with a python," has found a permanent home in the tate gallery. it is again a study of action which, if less violent than that of the earlier figure, is still vigorous enough to show how well the artist understood anatomy; and it is again italian rather than greek. it is also open to criticism because there is an apparent contradiction between the suggestion of the title and the physical character of the "sluggard." this well knit, muscular youth, stretching himself in an attitude of graceful freedom, could have lived no slothful life. activity and the capacity for strong exertion are evident in every line, and his condition is too good to have been obtained without exercises which the sleepy, sluggish man would not have cared to perform. the title, indeed, is unfortunate because it implies an intention on the artist's part to illustrate a particular motive which he has failed to express, though what he has actually given us is artistically admirable and full of noble beauty. in the interval between and leighton's pictorial production continued without intermission, and without any abatement in the loftiness of his aim. "the music lesson" ( ), "winding the skein" ( ), and "nausicaa," in the same year, "psamathe" ( ), "the idyll" ( ), and "cymon and iphigenia" ( ), are all typical examples of his mature performance, and with them must be included "cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline," which though an earlier picture--it was exhibited in --is in style and character closely allied to the "music lesson." nor must his "phryne at eleusis" ( ) be overlooked, though this is scarcely one of his happiest achievements, and is a little too pedantic in style. it claims consideration chiefly for its richness of colour and fine drawing of the nude female figure. ====================================================================== plate vi.--a noble lady of venice (at lord armstrong's seat, rothbury castle, northumberland) as a technical exercise, searching, precise, and careful, and yet distinguished by a sumptuous breadth of effect, this memorable study of a fine type of feminine beauty takes high rank among the artist's smaller paintings. it bears most plainly the stamp of his correct and cultivated taste. [illustration: plate vi.--a noble lady of venice] ====================================================================== into this decade fall two of the greater events of his life, his election as president of the royal academy, and the execution of his famous wall paintings, "the arts of war," and "the arts of peace," in the south kensington museum. on the death of sir francis grant, who had held the presidential office since , leighton was chosen, on november , , to fill the vacant post. in making this selection, the members of the academy did honour to a man who had raised himself, by sheer strength of personality, to a position of acknowledged leadership in the art affairs of this country, but they also secured as their president an artist who was almost ideally fitted to deal with the many responsibilities which have necessarily to be incurred by the head of such an institution. leighton's commanding and yet attractive presence, his great power of organisation and grasp of details, his wide knowledge of the world, and his unusual capacity as a linguist, gave him not only a high degree of authority as an official, but also ensured to him the sincere confidence of those associated with him. to every one outside the academy he was the personification of all that was best in academic art; and by his breadth of mind, his wise toleration of all types of earnest effort, and his ready sympathy with the struggling worker to whom merit had not brought success, he gained the respect and even affection of the great mass of the profession. no president since reynolds has been so worthy to direct the policy of the academy, and it may fairly be said that none, reynolds not excepted, has ruled over it with more discretion, or with better appreciation of the possibilities of the position. the other event, the carrying out of the south kensington wall paintings, is specially notable because in these works sir frederic leighton--he received the honour of knighthood on his election as president--was able to put to legitimate uses all his capacities as a decorator, and to prove that in paintings on the largest scale he was as much a master of his craft as in the easel pictures to which, for want of greater opportunities, he was obliged to confine himself. he had made a previous experiment in this direction in , when he executed the fresco of "the wise and foolish virgins" in the church at lyndhurst, an admirable composition treated with rare intelligence and distinctive originality; but the south kensington lunettes were more exacting undertakings, and calculated to test his powers to the utmost. "the arts of war" was begun towards the end of the 'seventies and took several months to finish, the companion lunette was painted two or three years later; and both of them, though some of the preliminary work was done by assistants, are substantially from his hand. in many respects "the arts of war" is the more satisfying performance. a scene from mediæval italian life, it is handled with something of his earlier manner, but with an amount of breadth and freshness which he scarcely approached in his younger days. it has infinite grace without a hint of weakness, firmness without formality, and style without conventionality; and it is, above all, a true decoration erring neither in the direction of excessive pictorial effect, nor in that of dull unreality. "the arts of peace" is less masculine and more studied, and is neither so ingenious in design, nor so happy in its grouping; though in parts it shows quite his finest art, and there are in it individual figures which are delightful examples of his masterly skill as a draughtsman. it suffers, perhaps, most of all from the want of freedom of brush-work, and from the substitution of an over-careful precision of touch for the looser and larger handling which is one of the sources of the charm of "the arts of war." two other decorative achievements must be added to the record of sir frederic's effort in this direction, the ceiling for the music-room of mr. marquand's house in new york, painted in , and the admirable panel, "phoenicians bartering with britons," executed nine years later for the royal exchange. it is greatly a matter for regret that it should be possible to include in such a meagre list practically the whole of the artist's work as a serious decoration. it is true that he was concerned in one of the many schemes which have been devised for the decoration of st. paul's cathedral, but this scheme was never advanced beyond the preliminary stage, and his part in it is represented only by the cartoon symbolical of the resurrection--"and the sea gave up the dead which were in it"--which now hangs in the tate gallery. the chances which he desired were denied to him, as they were to g. f. watts, and to other painters of like ambitions, and the world has in consequence lost much which would have been of supreme interest. that he, with his often renewed memories of the frescoes of the italian masters, must have felt resentment at the british indifference to this noble form of art can well be imagined. he knew that, with his aspirations, and his power, triumphs as great as any of the old painters achieved were well within his reach, but with all his earnest advocacy, even he was unable to induce the stolid patron of art to believe that an artist should be encouraged to produce anything but canvases of a convenient size, which would serve for the furnishing of modern houses. so it comes to this, that his only commission for mural decoration on a large scale was for the two lunettes at south kensington; the lyndhurst fresco was a gift he made to the church, as a thank-offering, it is said, for his recovery from an illness, and the marquand ceiling, the resurrection cartoon, and the royal exchange panel were only paintings on canvas. it is a poor record, indeed, and one of which the people in this country have every reason to feel ashamed. but the thwarting of his ambitions in one direction did not make him in others a less conscientious artist. "the arts of peace" was finished during , and for another ten years he went on painting pictures into which he put all his love of ideal beauty, and all his striving for greater perfection of technical expression. there is certainly no diminution of power to be perceived in any of these later works, though for some while before his death he suffered increasingly from the heart trouble to which at last he succumbed on january , . ====================================================================== plate vii.--elijah in the wilderness (at the walker art gallery, liverpool) though this canvas is scarcely typical of leighton's usual achievement, it has a particular value as an illustration of his adaptability as a painter. the contrast between the figure of the prophet and that of the angel, between the rugged vigour of the man and the grace of the celestial being, is curiously effective. [illustration: plate vii.--elijah in the wilderness] ====================================================================== indeed, it was during this last ten years that some of the most memorable additions were made to the list of his successes. "the last watch of hero" ( ), as charming in sentiment as in execution; the large composition, "captive andromache" ( ); "the bath of psyche" ( ), a delicate piece of fancy in his happiest manner; "perseus and andromeda" and "the return of persephone," in ; "the garden of the hesperides" ( ); "hit" ( ); "summer slumber" ( ); "'twixt hope and fear," and that wonderful study of glowing colour, "flaming june," in ; and the "clytie," which was at burlington house after his death, are worthy of praise as generous and unhesitating as can be given to anything he showed before. "the bath of psyche" and the "clytie" are, in fact, pictures which have few rivals among his other works, the first because of its inimitable purity of feeling and classic refinement, the other because of its convincing force and dramatic passion. in this last effort of a dying man it is easy to find a kind of symbolical meaning: there is a pathetic significance in the attitude of the nymph who loved the light, as she kneels with arms outstretched towards the setting sun. such a conception, and such a treatment of the subject, typify so exactly the sadness of an artist who was working actually under the shadow of death, and with full consciousness that his days were nearly numbered, that it is difficult not to look upon the "clytie" as leighton's farewell to the world in which he had found so much beauty and so much brightness. the sun was setting for him, and though he was too brave a man to despair or rail at fate, his yearning for a little longer spell of sunshine was not to be repressed. his death, which released him from sufferings that had towards the end become scarcely endurable, was the more pathetic because an honour had just been bestowed upon him which showed in a most significant fashion how highly his claims to special recognition were approved. in he had been created a baronet, and a bare month before he died he was advanced by queen victoria to be a peer of the united kingdom, with the title of baron leighton of stretton. it is sad, indeed, that he should not have lived to enjoy a distinction which he had so amply earned, and to use his splendid mental gifts in the wider sphere of activity which was opened up to him by accession to the peerage. there was so much he might have done, so much he would have wished to do, to help on those artistic movements which were always first in his thoughts, that to have lost him then, just as greater opportunities of usefulness were promised than had ever before been offered to him, was an irreparable disaster for british art. as he died his last words were, "give my love to the academy," that institution with which he had been associated for more than thirty years, and in the service of which nearly half his life had been spent. to most people it would seem incredible that such a career could be spoken of as anything but a success, or that an artist so respected and so honoured should not be counted among the very few to whom fate has been consistently kind. and yet to say that leighton died a disappointed man would not be untrue. he had been a great figure socially, he had played his part in public as an official with brilliancy and distinction, he had enjoyed the friendship of the greatest of his contemporaries, but no one knew better than he did that the popular homage was offered to his personality rather than to his art. he was conscious that he had failed to convey to the people among whom he lived that æsthetic message which was to him so vital and so urgent, and that the purpose and principle for which he always laboured remained to the end unintelligible to the world. he felt that the public attitude towards him was exactly summed up in that cynical saying with which whistler has been credited: "oh yes, a marvellous man! he is a great speaker, a master of many languages, a fine musician, a leader of society; and they tell me he paints too." that which was to him the one thing worth living for seemed to every one else the last and least of his accomplishments! it is small wonder that he can be spoken of as disappointed; he had given so much for art, and in return he was recognised as nothing more than an amazingly clever man of the world, who painted pictures in his spare moments. yet it can be freely admitted that his work was not of the kind which was likely to appeal as a matter of course to ordinary men. it was, as has been already said, the outcome of his own temperament, and had from the first a specific character which was too personal to be wholly intelligible to people accustomed to look only at the surface of things. it must be remembered that he had naturally a very remarkable mind, and that he received an education which was quite unlike that usually given to men who adopt the artist's profession. he had a sound basis of book-knowledge, and was taught especially to study and understand the classics, but to this was added, by his prolonged residence abroad, an intimate insight into many things which never come within the view of the majority of men, or at best are only dealt with in later life when the receptivity of youth has become dulled. he was encouraged partly by his father's precepts, partly by circumstances, to analyse and investigate, to compare this and that phase of thought and form of expression, to seek for the reasons why there should be such marked differences between the methods of workers who all professed to be advocating the same principles. superficial information could not, and did not, satisfy him; he had to get down to the foundation and to find out the causes for the results which were presented to him. but of course when he came to build a system of art practice upon his early experiences, and to shape it by the aid of his analytical habit, he evolved something which most men could scarcely appraise at its full value. therefore, his artistic purpose was persistently misunderstood and, it may be added, habitually misrepresented. his art was over the heads of his contemporaries because their tastes and sympathies had never been cultivated to his level, because their grosser preferences failed to find satisfaction in the purity of his idealism. he was absorbed always in the pursuit of beauty, which he had sought and found in many lands, and it was his earnest desire to give to his representations of this beauty a kind of unhuman perfection, passionless, perhaps, and cold, but exquisite always in its studied refinement. no hint of coarseness or sensuality ever crept into his pictures; it would be a strangely constituted mind indeed that could find in his work any suggestiveness, or anything to gratify the baser instincts of humanity. he kept aloof from the common things of existence, and lived in a self-created paradise to which the rest of mankind could hardly hope to gain admission. ====================================================================== plate viii.--portrait of sir richard burton (at the national portrait gallery, london) it would be no exaggeration to describe this painting of the famous explorer as one of the more notable of modern portraits, so strong is it in characterisation and so masterly in manner. the artist was fortunate in having a sitter with such a striking personality, and the sitter in being painted by a man of leighton's deep insight and great executive power. [illustration: plate viii.--portrait of sir richard burton] ====================================================================== his choice of subjects, too, was made with little consideration for the prejudices or the wishes of the public. it was nothing to him that by a course of graceful sentimentality and pretty incident he could bring himself into a secure haven of popularity. all he cared for was that he should have scope to exercise his powers of invention, and to develop those subtleties of decoration which were, as he held, of such engrossing interest. whether he decided upon heroic motives like the "hercules wrestling with death" or "perseus and andromeda," upon dainty fancies like "cleoboulos instructing his daughter cleobouline," "greek girls playing at ball," or "winding the skein," or upon simple studies of beautiful reality like the "noble lady of venice," "kittens," or the "idyll," to quote almost at random from the long series of his paintings which come into this last class, he never allowed himself to forget that the result was to be as nearly in accordance with his ideals as it could be made; and whether or not this result would be what the public expected was the last thing about which he concerned himself. but it was natural after all that he should feel some measure of disappointment at the discovery that there were so few minds capable of apprehending the supreme significance of the truths which he sought to teach. as an executant--an exponent of the craft of painting--he had certain peculiarities. his technique was precise, careful, and rather laborious, without any happy audacities of brushwork, and without any display of cleverness for its own sake. it bore some resemblance, perhaps, to that of painters like prud'hon or ary scheffer, but it had more vitality, and on the whole more power. leighton, like g. f. watts, did not attach much importance to that ready directness of handling which is so greatly advocated by men of the modern school; the finish and elaboration of surface which he desired were not to be obtained by treating his picture as if it were to be no more than a brilliant sketch. he aimed at exhaustive accuracy of drawing, exact correctness of modelling, the perfecting of every detail, and the equal completion of all the parts of his canvas; and this manner of working led necessarily to sacrifice of spontaneity of touch. but, on the other hand, it did not result in fumbling, or in that tentative kind of method which can be noted in the performances of artists who are uncertain of their power to solve the more serious executive problems. he had a regular system by which his pictures were built up stage by stage, and he knew perfectly well how far each stage could carry him towards the end he had in view, and how much it would contribute to the pictorial scheme he had devised. his method was his own, and, being his own, he used to say that it was the only one which it was right for him to use, though for a man with other purposes in art, and another kind of temperament, it would probably be entirely wrong. this mode of practice, however, served leighton well in nearly everything he undertook. it enabled him to give charm and delicacy to his figure subjects, and wonderful virility and strength to his portraits, and in the painting of the landscapes which he so often used as backgrounds to his figure compositions, it helped him to attain an admirable serenity and breadth of effect. where it led him astray was in his treatment of drapery, which under his deliberate method was apt to become lifeless through its very excess of realism. the masses of his draperies he designed with dignity, with a fine sense of line, and with a proper feeling for the forms of the figure beneath, but these masses he often cut up by a multiplicity of little folds, all so precisely drawn and carefully accounted for that they conveyed to the eye a map-like impression of lines without meaning, and surfaces without modelling. he seemed to have worried over them until he had lost by needless intricacy all largeness of suggestion. but in his portraits he maintained with rare discretion the right proportion between large character, and the little things by which the individuality of a face is determined. his heads of "sir richard burton" and "professor costa," for instance, are magnificent and give him undoubtedly a place among the masters of portraiture. if an attempt were made to explain in a few words leighton's position in art, it would probably be most correct to say that he was, by instinct and habit of mind, more a sculptor than a painter. he looked at nature with a sculptor's eye, and he adopted a kind of technical process which in its progressive building up was closely akin to modelling. and if pictures like his "phryne," his "clytemnestra," his "electra," and even his wholly charming "bath of psyche," are considered from this point of view, their resemblance to beautifully tinted sculpture is apparent enough. even his "cimabue's madonna" and the "daphnephoria" suggest bas-reliefs. that he had the sculptor's habit of mind is proved by many of his studies in which he drew a figure, or group of figures, from three or four points of view, so as to arrive at what may be called the anatomy of the pose. but discussions as to his right to be described as a sculptor who chose to give himself up to painting, or as a painter who had all the qualifications to become a master of sculpture, are a little futile. he was a great artist and he proved his powers in both forms of practice. what is more material is that people should learn to do justice to his greatness, and should try to estimate at its proper worth everything that he did. to scoff at his art, as the unthinking are ready to do, is utter folly; to say that he has no place in art history, as a certain school of critics are in the habit of asserting, is merely stupid prejudice; he will in years to come, when the memories of his wonderful personality have died away, be accepted on his work alone as one of the noblest teachers of the fundamental principles of the best and purest type of æstheticism. his time has not yet arrived; had he lived three or four centuries ago he would be honoured now as a master. because he was a man of the nineteenth century our familiarity with him has bred, if not actually contempt, at least a habit of undervaluing him which is almost as unreasonable. printed in great britain. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/ / / / / / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/ / / / / / -h.zip) the later work of titian by claude phillips keeper of the wallace collection [illustration: titian. from a photograph by g. brogi.] [illustration] list of illustrations copper plates portrait of titian, by himself. uffizi gallery, florence. frontispiece la bella di tiziano. pitti palace, florence. titian's daughter lavinia. berlin gallery. the cornaro family. collection of the duke of northumberland. illustrations printed in sepia drawing of st. jerome. british museum. landscape with stag. collection of professor legros. illustrations in the text madonna and child with st. catherine and st. john the baptist. in the national gallery. cardinal ippolito de' medici. pitti palace, florence. francis the first. louvre. portrait of a nobleman. pitti palace, florence. s. giovanni elemosinario giving alms. in the church of that name at venice. the girl in the fur cloak. imperial gallery, vienna. francesco maria della rovere, duke of urbino. uffizi gallery, florence. the battle of cadore (from a reduced copy of part only). uffizi gallery, florence. the presentation of the virgin in the temple. accademia delle belle arti, venice. the magdalen. pitti palace, florence. the infant daughter of roberto strozzi. royal gallery, berlin. ecce homo. imperial gallery, vienna aretino. pitti palace, florence pope paul iii. with cardinal farnese and ottavio farnese. naples gallery danaë and the golden rain. naples gallery charles v. at the battle of mühlberg. gallery of the prado, madrid venus with the mirror. gallery of the hermitage, st. petersburg christ crowned with thorns. louvre the rape of europa portrait of titian, by himself. gallery of the prado, madrid st. jerome in the desert. gallery of the brera, milan the education of cupid. gallery of the villa borghese, rome religion succoured by spain. gallery of the prado, madrid portrait of the antiquary jacopo da strada. imperial gallery, vienna madonna and child. collection of mr. ludwig mond christ crowned with thorns. alte pinakothek, munich pietà. by titian and palma giovine. accademia delle belle arti, venice the later work of titian chapter i _friendship with aretino--its effect on titian's art--characteristics of the middle period--"madonna with st. catherine" of national gallery--portraits not painted from life--"magdalen" of the pitti--first portrait of charles v.--titian the painter, par excellence, of aristocratic traits--the "d'avalos allegory"--portrait of cardinal ippolito de' medici--s. giovanni elemosinario altar-piece._ having followed titian as far as the year , rendered memorable by that sensational, and, of its kind, triumphant achievement, _the martyrdom of st. peter the dominican_, we must retrace our steps some three years in order to dwell a little upon an incident which must appear of vital importance to those who seek to understand titian's life, and, above all, to follow the development of his art during the middle period of splendid maturity reaching to the confines of old age. this incident is the meeting with pietro aretino at venice in , and the gradual strengthening by mutual service and mutual inclination of the bonds of a friendship which is to endure without break until the life of the aretine comes, many years later, to a sudden and violent end. titian was at that time fifty years of age, and he might thus be deemed to have over-passed the age of sensuous delights. yet it must be remembered that he was in the fullest vigour of manhood, and had only then arrived at the middle point of a career which, in its untroubled serenity, was to endure for a full half-century more, less a single year. three years later on, that is to say in the middle of august , the death of his wife cecilia, who had borne to him pomponio, orazio, and lavinia, left him all disconsolate, and so embarrassed with the cares of his young family that he was compelled to appeal to his sister orsa, who thereupon came from cadore to preside over his household. the highest point of celebrity, of favour with princes and magnates, having been attained, and a certain royalty in venetian art being already conceded to him, there was no longer any obstacle to the organising of a life in which all the refinements of culture and all the delights of sense were to form the most agreeable relief to days of continuous and magnificently fruitful labour. it is just because titian's art of this great period of some twenty years so entirely accords with what we know, and may legitimately infer, to have been his life at this time, that it becomes important to consider the friendship with aretino and the rise of the so-called triumvirate, which was a kind of council of three, having as its _raison d'être_ the mutual furtherance of material interests, and the pursuit of art, love, and pleasure. the third member of the triumvirate was jacopo tatti or del sansovino, the florentine sculptor, whose fame and fortune were so far above his deserts as an artist. coming to venice after the sack of rome, which so entirely for the moment disorganised art and artists in the pontifical city, he elected to remain there notwithstanding the pressing invitations sent to him by francis the first to take service with him. in he was appointed architect of san marco, and he then by his adhesion completed the triumvirate which was to endure for more than a quarter of a century. it has always excited a certain sense of distrust in titian, and caused the world to form a lower estimate of his character than it would otherwise have done, that he should have been capable of thus living in the closest and most fraternal intimacy with a man so spotted and in many ways so infamous as aretino. without precisely calling titian to account in set terms, his biographers crowe and cavalcaselle, and above all m. georges lafenestre in _la vie et l'oeuvre du titien_, have relentlessly raked up aretino's past before he came together with the cadorine, and as pitilessly laid bare that organised system of professional sycophancy, adulation, scurrilous libel, and blackmail, which was the foundation and the backbone of his life of outward pomp and luxurious ease at venice. by them, as by his other biographers, he has been judged, not indeed unjustly, yet perhaps too much from the standard of our own time, too little from that of his own. with all his infamies, aretino was a man whom sovereigns and princes, nay even pontiffs, delighted to honour, or rather to distinguish by honours. the marquess federigo gonzaga of mantua, the duke guidobaldo ii. of urbino, among many others, showed themselves ready to propitiate him; and such a man as titian the worldly-wise, the lover of splendid living to whom ample means and the fruitful favour of the great were a necessity; who was grasping yet not avaricious, who loved wealth chiefly because it secured material consideration and a life of serene enjoyment; such a man could not be expected to rise superior to the temptations presented by a friendship with aretino, or to despise the immense advantages which it included. as he is revealed by his biographers, and above all by himself, aretino was essentially "good company." he could pass off his most flagrant misdeeds, his worst sallies, with a certain large and rabelaisian gaiety; if he made money his chief god, it was to spend it in magnificent clothes and high living, but also at times with an intelligent and even a beneficent liberality. he was a fine though not an unerring connoisseur of art, he had a passionate love of music, and an unusually exquisite perception of the beauties of nature. to hint that the lower nature of the man corrupted that of titian, and exercised a disintegrating influence over his art, would be to go far beyond the requirements of the case. the great venetian, though he might at this stage be much nearer to earth than in those early days when he was enveloped in the golden glow of giorgione's overmastering influence, could never have lowered himself to the level of those too famous _sonetti lussuriosi_ which brought down the vengeance of even a medici pope (clement vii.) upon aretino the writer, giulio romano the illustrator, and marcantonio raimondi the engraver. gracious and dignified in sensuousness he always remained even when, as at this middle stage of his career, the vivifying shafts of poetry no longer pierced through, and transmuted with their vibration of true passion, the fair realities of life. he could never have been guilty of the frigid and calculated indecency of a giulio romano; he could not have cast aside all conventional restraints, of taste as well as of propriety, as rubens and even rembrandt did on occasion; but as van dyck, the child of titian almost as much as he was the child of rubens, ever shrank from doing. still the ease and splendour of the life at biri grande--that pleasant abode with its fair gardens overlooking murano, the lagoons, and the friulan alps, to which titian migrated in --the epicureanism which saturated the atmosphere, the necessity for keeping constantly in view the material side of life, all these things operated to colour the creations which mark this period of titian's practice, at which he has reached the apex of pictorial achievement, but shows himself too serene in sensuousness, too unruffled in the masterly practice of his profession to give to the heart the absolute satisfaction that he affords to the eyes. this is the greatest test of genius of the first order--to preserve undimmed in mature manhood and old age the gift of imaginative interpretation which youth and love give, or lend, to so many who, buoyed up by momentary inspiration, are yet not to remain permanently in the first rank. with titian at this time supreme ability is not invariably illumined from within by the lamp of genius; the light flashes forth nevertheless, now and again, and most often in those portraits of men of which the sublime _charles v. at mühlberg_ is the greatest. towards the end the flame will rise once more and steadily burn, with something on occasion of the old heat, but with a hue paler and more mysterious, such as may naturally be the outward symbol of genius on the confines of eternity. the second period, following upon the completion of the _st. peter martyr_, is one less of great altar-pieces and _poesie_ such as the miscalled _sacred and profane love_ (_medea and venus_), the _bacchanals_, and the _bacchus and ariadne_, than it is of splendid nudities and great portraits. in the former, however mythological be the subject, it is generally chosen but to afford a decent pretext for the generous display of beauty unveiled. the portraits are at this stage less often intimate and soul-searching in their summing up of a human personality than they are official presentments of great personages and noble dames; showing them, no doubt, without false adulation or cheap idealisation, yet much as they desire to appear to their allies, their friends, and their subjects, sovereign in natural dignity and aristocratic grace, yet essentially in a moment of representation. farther on the great altar-pieces reappear more sombre, more agitated in passion, as befits the period of the sixteenth century in which titian's latest years are passed, and the patrons for whom he paints. of the _poesie_ there is then a new upspringing, a new efflorescence, and we get by the side of the _venus and adonis_, the _diana and actæon_, the _diana and calisto_, the _rape of europa_, such pieces of a more exquisite and penetrating poetry as the _venere del pardo_ of paris, and the _nymph and shepherd_ of vienna. this appears to be the right place to say a word about the magnificent engraving by van dalen of a portrait, no longer known to exist, but which has, upon the evidence apparently of the print, been put down as that of titian by himself. it represents a bearded man of some thirty-five years, dressed in a rich but sombre habit, and holding a book. the portrait is evidently not that of a painter by himself, nor does it represent titian at any age; but it finely suggests, even in black and white, a noble original by the master. now, a comparison with the best authenticated portrait of aretino, the superb three-quarter length painted in , and actually at the pitti palace, reveals certain marked similarities of feature and type, notwithstanding the very considerable difference of age between the personages represented. very striking is the agreement of eye and nose in either case, while in the younger as in the older man we note an idiosyncrasy in which vigorous intellect as well as strong sensuality has full play. van dalen's engraving very probably reproduces one of the lost portraits of aretino by titian. in crowe and cavalcaselle's _biography_ (vol. i. pp. - ) we learn from correspondence interchanged in the summer of between federigo gonzaga, titian, and aretino, that the painter, in order to propitiate the mantuan ruler, sent to him with a letter, the exaggerated flattery of which savours of aretino's precept and example, portraits of the latter and of signor hieronimo adorno, another "faithful servant" of the marquess. now aretino was born in , so that in he would be thirty-five, which appears to be just about the age of the vigorous and splendid personage in van dalen's print. some reasons were given in the former section of this monograph[ ] for the assertion that the _madonna with st. catherine_, mentioned in a letter from giacomo malatesta to the marchese federigo gonzaga, dated february , was not, as is assumed by crowe and cavalcaselle, the _madonna del coniglio_ of the louvre, but the _madonna and child with st. john the baptist and st. catherine_, which is no. at the national gallery.[ ] few pictures of the master have been more frequently copied and adapted than this radiantly beautiful piece, in which the dominant chord of the scheme of colour is composed by the cerulean blues of the heavens and the virgin's entire dress, the deep luscious greens of the landscape, and the peculiar, pale, citron hue, relieved with a crimson girdle, of the robe worn by the st. catherine, a splendid venetian beauty of no very refined type or emotional intensity. perfect repose and serenity are the keynote of the conception, which in its luxuriant beauty has little of the power to touch that must be conceded to the more naïve and equally splendid _madonna del coniglio_.[ ] it is above all in the wonderful venetian landscape--a mountain-bordered vale, along which flocks and herds are being driven, under a sky of the most intense blue--that the master shows himself supreme. nature is therein not so much detailed as synthesised with a sweeping breadth which makes of the scene not the reflection of one beautiful spot in the venetian territory, but without loss of essential truth or character a very type of venetian landscape of the sixteenth century. these herdsmen and their flocks, and also the note of warning in the sky of supernatural splendour, recall the beautiful venetian storm-landscape in the royal collection at buckingham palace. this has been very generally attributed to titian himself,[ ] and described as the only canvas still extant in which he has made landscape his one and only theme. it has, indeed, a rare and mysterious power to move, a true poetry of interpretation. a fleeting moment, full of portent as well as of beauty, has been seized; the smile traversed by a frown of the stormy sky, half overshadowing half revealing the wooded slopes, the rich plain, and the distant mountains, is rendered with a rare felicity. the beauty is, all the same, in the conception and in the thing actually seen--much less in the actual painting. it is hardly possible to convince oneself, comparing the work with such landscape backgrounds as those in this picture at the national gallery in the somewhat earlier _madonna del coniglio_, and the gigantic _st. peter martyr_, or, indeed, in a score of other genuine productions, that the depth, the vigour, the authority of titian himself are here to be recognised. the weak treatment of the great titianesque tree in the foreground, with its too summarily indicated foliage--to select only one detail that comes naturally to hand--would in itself suffice to bring such an attribution into question. [illustration: _madonna and child with st. catherine and st. john the baptist. national gallery. from a photograph by morelli._] vasari states, speaking confessedly from hearsay, that in , the emperor charles v. being at bologna, titian was summoned thither by cardinal ippolito de' medici, using aretino as an intermediary, and that he on that occasion executed a most admirable portrait of his majesty, all in arms, which had so much success that the artist received as a present a thousand scudi. crowe and cavalcaselle, however, adduce strong evidence to prove that titian was busy in venice for federigo gonzaga at the time of the emperor's first visit, and that he only proceeded to bologna in july to paint for the marquess of mantua the portrait of a bolognese beauty, _la cornelia_, the lady-in-waiting of the countess pepoli, whom covas, the all-powerful political secretary of charles the fifth, had seen and admired at the splendid entertainments given by the pepoli to the emperor. vasari has in all probability confounded this journey of charles in with that subsequent one undertaken in when titian not only portrayed the emperor, but also painted an admirable likeness of ippolito de' medici presently to be described. he had the bad luck on this occasion to miss the lady cornelia, who had retired to nuvolara, indisposed and not in good face. the letter written by our painter to the marquess in connection with this incident[ ] is chiefly remarkable as affording evidence of his too great anxiety to portray the lady without approaching her, relying merely on the portrait, "che fece quel altro pittore della detta cornelia"; of his unwillingness to proceed to nuvolara, unless the picture thus done at second hand should require alteration. in truth we have lighted here upon one of titian's most besetting sins, this willingness, this eagerness, when occasion offers, to paint portraits without direct reference to the model. in this connection we are reminded that he never saw francis the first, whose likeness he notwithstanding painted with so showy and superficial a magnificence as to make up to the casual observer for the absence of true vitality;[ ] that the empress isabella, charles v.'s consort, when at the behest of the monarch he produced her sumptuous but lifeless and empty portrait, now in the great gallery of the prado, was long since dead. he consented, basing his picture upon a likeness of much earlier date, to paint isabella d'este gonzaga as a young woman when she was already an old one, thereby flattering an amiable and natural weakness in this great princess and unrivalled dilettante, but impairing his own position as an artist of supreme rank.[ ] it is not necessary to include in this category the popular _caterina cornaro_ of the uffizi, since it is confessedly nothing but a fancy portrait, making no reference to the true aspect at any period of the long-since deceased queen of cyprus, and, what is more, no original titian, but at the utmost an atelier piece from his _entourage_. take, however, as an instance the _francis the first_, which was painted some few years later than the time at which we have now arrived, and at about the same period as the _isabella d'este_. though as a _portrait d'apparat_ it makes its effect, and reveals the sovereign accomplishment of the master, does it not shrink into the merest insignificance when compared with such renderings from life as the successive portraits of _charles the fifth_, the _ippolito de' medici_, the _francesco maria della rovere_? this is as it must and should be, and titian is not the less great, but the greater, because he cannot convincingly evolve at second hand the true human individuality, physical and mental, of man or woman. it was in the earlier part of that titian painted for federigo gonzaga a _st. jerome_ and a _st. mary magdalene_, destined for the famous vittoria colonna, marchioness of pescara, who had expressed to the ruler of mantua the desire to possess such a picture. gonzaga writes to the marchioness on march , [ ]:--"ho subito mandate a venezia e scritto a titiano, quale è forse il piu eccellente in quell' arte che a nostri tempi si ritrovi, ed è tutto mio, ricercandolo con grande instantia a volerne fare una bella lagrimosa piu che si so puo, e farmela haver presto." the passage is worth quoting as showing the estimation in which titian was held at a court which had known and still knew the greatest italian masters of the art. it is not possible at present to identify with any extant painting the _st. jerome_, of which we know that it hung in the private apartments of the marchioness isabella at mantua. the writer is unable to accept crowe and cavalcaselle's suggestion that it may be the fine moonlight landscape with st. jerome in prayer which is now in the long gallery of the louvre. this piece, if indeed it be by titian, which is by no means certain, must belong to his late time. the landscape, which is marked by a beautiful and wholly unconventional treatment of moonlight, for which it would not be easy to find a parallel in the painting of the time, is worthy of the cadorine, and agrees well, especially in the broad treatment of foliage, with, for instance, the background in the late _venus and cupid_ of the tribuna.[ ] the figure of st. jerome, on the other hand, does not in the peculiar tightness of the modelling, or in the flesh-tints, recall titian's masterly synthetic way of going to work in works of this late period. the noble _st. jerome_ of the brera, which indubitably belongs to a well-advanced stage in the late time, will be dealt with in its right place. though it does not appear probable that we have, in the much-admired _magdalen_ of the pitti, the picture here referred to--this last having belonged to francesco maria della rovere, duke of urbino, and representing, to judge by style, a somewhat more advanced period in the painter's career--it may be convenient to mention it here. as an example of accomplished brush-work, of handling careful and yet splendid in breadth, it is indeed worthy of all admiration. the colours of the fair human body, the marvellous wealth of golden blond hair, the youthful flesh glowing semi-transparent, and suggesting the rush of the blood beneath; these are also the colours of the picture, aided only by the indefinite landscape and the deep blue sky of the background. if this were to be accepted as the _magdalen_ painted for federigo gonzaga, we must hold, nevertheless, that titian with his masterpiece of painting only half satisfied the requirements of his patron. _bellissima_ this magdalen undoubtedly is, but hardly _lagrimosa pin che si puo_. she is a _belle pécheresse_ whose repentance sits all too lightly upon her, whose consciousness of a physical charm not easily to be withstood is hardly disguised. somehow, although the picture in no way oversteps the bounds of decency, and cannot be objected to even by the most over-scrupulous, there is latent in it a jarring note of unrefinement in the presentment of exuberant youth and beauty which we do not find in the more avowedly sensuous _venus of the tribuna_. this last is an avowed act of worship by the artist of the naked human body, and as such, in its noble frankness, free from all offence, except to those whose scruples in matters of art we are not here called upon to consider. from this _magdalen_ to that much later one of the hermitage, which will be described farther on, is a great step upwards, and it is a step which, in passing from the middle to the last period, we shall more than once find ourselves taking. [illustration: st. jerome. pen drawing by titian (?) _british museum_.] it is impossible to give even in outline here an account of titian's correspondence and business relations with his noble and royal patrons, instructive as it is to follow these out, and to see how, under the influence of aretino, his natural eagerness to grasp in every direction at material advantages is sharpened; how he becomes at once more humble and more pressing, covering with the manner and the tone appropriate to courts the reiterated demands of the keen and indefatigable man of business. it is the less necessary to attempt any such account in these pages--dealing as we are chiefly with the work and not primarily with the life of titian--seeing that in crowe and cavalcaselle's admirable biography this side of the subject, among many others, is most patiently and exhaustively dealt with. in we read of a _boy baptist_ by titian sent by aretino to maximian stampa, an imperialist partisan in command of the castle of milan. the donor particularly dwells upon "the beautiful curl of the baptist's hair, the fairness of his skin, etc.," a description which recalls to us, in striking fashion, the little st. john in the _virgin and child with st. catherine_ of the national gallery, which belongs, as has been shown, to the same time. it was on the occasion of the second visit of the emperor and his court to bologna at the close of that titian first came in personal contact with charles v., and obtained from that monarch his first sitting. in the course of an inspection, with federigo gonzaga himself as cicerone, of the art treasures preserved in the palace at mantua, the emperor saw the portrait by titian of federigo, and was so much struck with it, so intent upon obtaining a portrait of himself from the same brush, that the marquess wrote off at once pressing our master to join him without delay in his capital. titian preferred, however, to go direct to bologna in the train of his earlier patron alfonso d'este. it was on this occasion that charles's all-powerful secretary, the greedy, overbearing covos, exacted as a gift from the agents of the duke of ferrara, among other things, a portrait of alfonso himself by titian; and in all probability obtained also a portrait from the same hand of ercole d'este, the heir-apparent. there is evidence to show that the portrait of alfonso was at once handed over to, or appropriated by, the emperor. whether this was the picture described by vasari as representing the prince with his arm resting on a great piece of artillery, does not appear. of this last a copy exists in the pitti gallery which crowe and cavalcaselle have ascribed to dosso dossi, but the original is nowhere to be traced. the ferrarese ruler is, in this last canvas, depicted as a man of forty or upwards, of resolute and somewhat careworn aspect. it has already been demonstrated, on evidence furnished by herr carl justi, that the supposed portrait of alfonso, in the gallery of the prado at madrid, cannot possibly represent titian's patron at any stage of his career, but in all probability, like the so-called _giorgio cornaro_ of castle howard, is a likeness of his son and successor, ercole ii. titian's first portrait of the emperor, a full-length in which he appeared in armour with a generalissimo's baton of command, was taken in from brussels to madrid, after the formal ceremony of abdication, and perished, it would appear, in one of the too numerous fires which have devastated from time to time the royal palaces of the spanish capital and its neighbourhood. to the same period belongs, no doubt, the noble full-length of charles in gala court costume which now hangs in the _sala de la reina isabel_ in the prado gallery, as a pendant to titian's portrait of philip ii. in youth. crowe and cavalcaselle assume that not this picture, but a replica, was the one which found its way into charles i.'s collection, and was there catalogued by van der doort as "the emperor charles the fifth, brought by the king from spain, being done at length with a big white irish dog"--going afterwards, at the dispersal of the king's effects, to sir balthasar gerbier for _£_ . there is, however, no valid reason for doubting that this is the very picture owned for a time by charles i., and which busy intriguing gerbier afterwards bought, only to part with it to cardenas the spanish ambassador.[ ] other famous originals by titian were among the choicest gifts made by philip iv. to prince charles at the time of his runaway expedition to madrid with the duke of buckingham, and this was no doubt among them. confirmation is supplied by the fact that the references to the existence of this picture in the royal palaces of madrid are for the reigns of philip ii., charles ii., and charles iii., thus leaving a large gap unaccounted for. dimmed as the great portrait is, robbed of its glow and its chastened splendour in a variety of ways, it is still a rare example of the master's unequalled power in rendering race, the unaffected consciousness of exalted rank, natural as distinguished from assumed dignity. there is here no demonstrative assertion of _grandeza_, no menacing display of truculent authority, but an absolutely serene and simple attitude such as can only be the outcome of a consciousness of supreme rank and responsibility which it can never have occurred to any one to call into question. to see and perpetuate these subtle qualities, which go so far to redeem the physical drawbacks of the house of hapsburg, the painter must have had a peculiar instinct for what is aristocratic in the higher sense of the word--that is, both outwardly and inwardly distinguished. this was indeed one of the leading characteristics of titian's great art, more especially in portraiture. giorgione went deeper, knowing the secret of the soul's refinement, the aristocracy of poetry and passion; lotto sympathetically laid bare the heart's secrets and showed the pathetic helplessness of humanity. tintoretto communicated his own savage grandeur, his own unrest, to those whom he depicted; paolo veronese charmed without _arrière-pensée_ by the intensity of vitality which with perfect simplicity he preserved in his sitters. yet to titian must be conceded absolute supremacy in the rendering not only of the outward but of the essential dignity, the refinement of type and bearing, which without doubt come unconsciously to those who can boast a noble and illustrious ancestry. again the writer hesitates to agree with crowe and cavalcaselle when they place at this period, that is to say about , the superb _allegory_ of the louvre (no. ), which is very generally believed to represent the famous commander alfonso d'avalos, marqués del vasto, with his family. the eminent biographers of titian connect the picture with the return of d'avalos from the campaign against the turks, undertaken by him in the autumn of , under the leadership of croy, at the behest of his imperial master. they hazard the surmise that the picture, though painted after alfonso's return, symbolises his departure for the wars, "consoled by victory, love, and hymen." a more natural conclusion would surely be that what titian has sought to suggest is the return of the commander to enjoy the hard-earned fruits of victory. [illustration: _cardinal ippolito de' medici. pitti palace, florence. from a photograph by g. brogi_.] the italo-spanish grandee was born at naples in , so that at this date he would have been but thirty-one years of age, whereas the mailed warrior of the _allegory_ is at least forty, perhaps older. moreover, and this is the essential point, the technical qualities of the picture, the wonderful easy mastery of the handling, the peculiarities of the colouring and the general tone, surely point to a rather later date, to a period, indeed, some ten years ahead of the time at which we have arrived. if we are to accept the tradition that this allegory, or quasi-allegorical portrait-piece, giving a fanciful embodiment to the pleasures of martial domination, of conjugal love, of well-earned peace and plenty, represents d'avalos, his consort mary of arragon, and their family--and a comparison with the well-authenticated portrait of del vasto in the _allocution_ of madrid does not carry with it entire conviction--we must perforce place the louvre picture some ten years later than do crowe and cavalcaselle. apart from the question of identification, it appears to the writer that the technical execution of the piece would lead to a similar conclusion.[ ] to this year, , belongs one of the masterpieces in portraiture of our painter, the wonderful _cardinal ippolito de' medici in a hungarian habit_ of the pitti. this youthful prince of the church, the natural son of giuliano de' medici, duke of nemours, was born in , so that when titian so incomparably portrayed him, he was, for all the perfect maturity of his virile beauty, for all the perfect self-possession of his aspect, but twenty-two years of age. he was the passionate worshipper of the divine giulia gonzaga, whose portrait he caused to be painted by sebastiano del piombo. his part in the war undertaken by charles v. in , against the turks, had been a strange one. clement vii., his relative, had appointed him legate and sent him to vienna at the head of three hundred musketeers. but when charles withdrew from the army to return to italy, the italian contingent, instead of going in pursuit of the sultan into hungary, opportunely mutinied, thus affording to their pleasure-loving leader the desired pretext for riding back with them through the austrian provinces, with eyes wilfully closed the while to their acts of depredation. it was in the rich and fantastic habit of a hungarian captain that the handsome young medici was now painted by titian at bologna, the result being a portrait unique of its kind even in his life-work. the sombre glow of the supple, youthful flesh, the red-brown of the rich velvet habit which defines the perfect shape of ippolito, the red of the fantastic plumed head-dress worn by him with such sovereign ease, make up a deep harmony, warm, yet not in the technical sense hot, and of indescribable effect. and this effect is centralised in the uncanny glance, the mysterious aspect of the man whom, as we see him here, a woman might love for his beauty, but a man would do well to distrust. the smaller portrait painted by titian about the same time of the young cardinal fully armed--the one which, with the pitti picture, vasari saw in the closet (_guardaroba_) of cosimo, duke of tuscany--is not now known to exist.[ ] [illustration: _francis the first. louvre. from a photograph by neurdein_.] [illustration: _portrait of a nobleman. pitti palace, florence. from a photograph by e. alinari_.] it may be convenient to mention here one of the most magnificent among the male portraits of titian, the _young nobleman_ in the sala di marte of the pitti gallery, although its exact place in the middle time of the artist it is, failing all data on the point, not easy to determine. at florence there has somehow been attached to it the curious name _howard duca di norfolk_,[ ] but upon what grounds, if any, the writer is unable to state. the master of cadore never painted a head more finely or with a more exquisite finesse, never more happily characterised a face, than that of this resolute, self-contained young patrician with the curly chestnut hair and the short, fine beard and moustache--a personage high of rank, doubtless, notwithstanding the studied simplicity of his dress. because we know nothing of the sitter, and there is in his pose and general aspect nothing sensational, this masterpiece is, if not precisely not less celebrated among connoisseurs, at any rate less popular with the larger public, than it deserves to be.[ ] [illustration: _s. giovanni elemosinario giving alms. in the church of that name at venice. from a photograph by naya._] the noble altar-piece in the church of s. giovanni elemosinario at venice showing the saint of that name enthroned, and giving alms to a beggar, belongs to the close of or thereabouts, since the high-altar was finished in the month of october of that year. according to vasari, it must be regarded as having served above all to assert once for all the supremacy of titian over pordenone, whose friends had obtained for him the commission to paint in competition with the cadorine an altar-piece for one of the apsidal chapels of the church, where, indeed, his work is still to be seen.[ ] titian's canvas, like most of the great altar-pieces of the middle time, was originally arched at the top; but the vandalism of a subsequent epoch has, as in the case of the _madonna di s. niccola_, now in the vatican, made of this arch a square, thereby greatly impairing the majesty of the general effect. titian here solves the problem of combining the strong and simple decorative aspect demanded by the position of the work as the central feature of a small church, with the utmost pathos and dignity, thus doing incomparably in his own way--the way of the colourist and the warm, the essentially human realist--what michelangelo had, soaring high above earth, accomplished with unapproachable sublimity in the _prophets_ and _sibyls_ of the sixtine chapel. the colour is appropriately sober, yet a general tone is produced of great strength and astonishing effectiveness. the illumination is that of the open air, tempered and modified by an overhanging canopy of green; the great effect is obtained by the brilliant grayish white of the saint's alb, dominating and keeping in due balance the red of the rochet and the under-robes, the cloud-veiled sky, the marble throne or podium, the dark green hanging. this picture must have had in the years to follow a strong and lasting influence on paolo veronese, the keynote to whose audaciously brilliant yet never over-dazzling colour is this use of white and gray in large dominating masses. the noble figure of s. giovanni gave him a prototype for many of his imposing figures of bearded old men. there is a strong reminiscence, too, of the saint's attitude in one of the most wonderful of extant veroneses--that sumptuous altar-piece _ss. anthony, cornelius, and cyprian with a page_, in the brera, for which he invented a harmony as delicious as it is daring, composed wholly of violet-purple, green, and gold. chapter ii _francesco maria della rovere--titian and eleonora gonzaga--the "venus with the shell"--titian's later ideals--the "venus of urbino"--the "bella di tiziano"--the "twelve cæsars"--titian and pordenone--the "battle of cadore"--portraits of the master by himself--the "presentation in the temple"--the "allocation" of madrid--the ceiling pictures of santo spirito--first meeting with pope paul iii.--the "ecce homo" of vienna--"christ with the pilgrims at emmaus_." within the years and , or thereabouts, would appear to fall titian's relations with another princely patron, francesco maria della rovere, duke of urbino, the nephew of the redoubtable pope julius ii., whose qualities of martial ardour and unbridled passion he reproduced in an exaggerated form. by his mother, giovanna da montefeltro, he descended also from the rightful dynasty of urbino, to which he succeeded in virtue of adoption. his life of perpetual strife, of warfare in defence of his more than once lost and reconquered duchy, and as the captain first of the army of the church, afterwards of the venetian forces, came to an abrupt end in . with his own hand he had, in the ardent days of his youth, slain in the open streets of ravenna the handsome, sinister cardinal alidosi, thereby bringing down upon himself the anathemas of his uncle, julius ii., and furnishing to his successor, the medici pope leo x., the best possible excuse for the sequestration of the duchy of urbino in favour of his own house. he himself died by poison, suspicion resting upon the infamous pier luigi farnese, the son of paul iii. francesco maria had espoused eleonora gonzaga, the sister of titian's protector, federigo, and it is probably through the latter that the relations with our master sprang up to which we owe a small group of his very finest works, including the so-called _venus of urbino_ of the tribuna, the _girl in a fur cloak_ of the vienna gallery, and the companion portraits of francesco maria and eleonora which are now in the venetian gallery at the uffizi. the fiery leader of armies had, it should be remembered, been brought up by guidobaldo of montefeltro, one of the most amiable and enlightened princes of his time, and, moreover, his consort eleonora was the daughter of isabella d'este gonzaga, than whom the renaissance knew no more enthusiastic or more discriminating patron of art. [illustration: _the girl in the fur cloak. imperial gallery, vienna. from a photograph by löwy._] a curious problem meets us at the outset. we may assume with some degree of certainty that the portraits of the duke and duchess belong to the year . stylistic characteristics point to the conclusion that the great _venus_ of the tribuna, the so-called _bella di tiziano_, and the _girl in the fur cloak_--to take only undoubted originals--belong to much the same stage of titian's practice as the companion portraits at the uffizi. eleonora gonzaga, a princess of the highest culture, the daughter of an admirable mother, the friend of pietro bembo, sadolet, and baldassarre castiglione, was at this time a matron of some twenty years' standing; at the date when her avowed portrait was painted she must have been at the very least forty. by what magic did titian manage to suggest her type and physiognomy in the famous pictures just now mentioned, and yet to plunge the duchess into a kind of _fontaine de jouvence_, realising in the divine freshness of youth and beauty beings who nevertheless appear to have with her some kind of mystic and unsolved connection? if this was what he really intended--and the results attained may lead us without temerity to assume as much--no subtler or more exquisite form of flattery could be conceived. it is curious to note that at the same time he signally failed with the portrait of her mother, isabella d'este, painted in , but showing the marchioness of mantua as a young woman of some twenty-five years, though she was then sixty. here youth and a semblance of beauty are called up by the magic of the artist, but the personality, both physical and mental, is lost in the effort. but then in this last case titian was working from an early portrait, and without the living original to refer to. but, before approaching the discussion of the _venus of urbino_, it is necessary to say a word about another _venus_ which must have been painted some years before this time, revealing, as it does, a completely different and, it must be owned, a higher ideal. this is the terribly ruined, yet still beautiful, _venus anadyomene_, or _venus of the shell_, of the bridgewater gallery, painted perhaps at the instigation of some humanist, to realise a description of the world-famous painting of apelles. it is not at present possible to place this picture with anything approaching to chronological exactitude. it must have been painted some years after the _bacchus and ariadne_ of the national gallery, some years before the _venus_ of the tribuna, and that is about as near as surmise can get. the type of the goddess in the ellesmere picture recalls somewhat the _ariadne_ in our masterpiece at the national gallery, but also, albeit in a less material form, the _magdalens_ of a later time. titian's conception of perfect womanhood is here midway between his earlier giorgionesque ideal and the frankly sensuous yet grand luxuriance of his maturity and old age. he never, even in the days of youth and giorgionesque enchantment, penetrated so far below the surface as did his master and friend barbarelli. he could not equal him in giving, with the undisguised physical allurement which belongs to the true woman, as distinguished from the ideal conception compounded of womanhood's finest attributes, that sovereignty of amorous yet of spiritual charm which is its complement and its corrective.[ ] still with titian, too, in the earlier years, woman, as presented in the perfection of mature youth, had, accompanying and elevating her bodily loveliness, a measure of that higher and nobler feminine attractiveness which would enable her to meet man on equal terms, nay, actively to exercise a dominating influence of fascination. in illustration of this assertion it is only necessary to refer to the draped and the undraped figure in the _medea and venus (sacred and profane love)_ of the borghese gallery, to the _herodias_ of the doria gallery, to the _flora_ of the uffizi. here, even when the beautiful venetian courtesan is represented or suggested, what the master gives is less the mere votary than the priestess of love. of this power of domination, this feminine royalty, the _venus anadyomene_ still retains a measure, but the _venus of urbino_ and the splendid succession of venuses and danaës, goddesses, nymphs, and heroines belonging to the period of the fullest maturity, show woman in the phase in which, renouncing her power to enslave, she is herself reduced to slavery. these glowing presentments of physical attractiveness embody a lower ideal--that of woman as the plaything of man, his precious possession, his delight in the lower sense. and yet titian expresses this by no means exalted conception with a grand candour, an absence of _arrière-pensée_ such as almost purges it of offence. it is giovanni morelli who, in tracing the gradual descent from his recovered treasure, the _venus_ of giorgione in the dresden gallery,[ ] through the various venuses of titian down to those of the latest manner, so finely expresses the essential difference between giorgione's divinity and her sister in the tribuna. the former sleeping, and protected only by her sovereign loveliness, is safer from offence than the waking goddess--or shall we not rather say woman?--who in titian's canvas passively waits in her rich venetian bower, tended by her handmaidens. it is again morelli[ ] who points out that, as compared with correggio, even giorgione--to say nothing of titian--is when he renders the beauty of woman or goddess a realist. and this is true in a sense, yet not altogether. correggio's _danaë_, his _io_, his _leda_, his _venus_, are in their exquisite grace of form and movement farther removed from the mere fleshly beauty of the undraped model than are the goddesses and women of giorgione. the passion and throb of humanity are replaced by a subtler and less easily explicable charm; beauty becomes a perfectly balanced and finely modulated harmony. still the allurement is there, and it is more consciously and more provocatively exercised than with giorgione, though the fascination of correggio's divinities asserts itself less directly, less candidly. showing through the frankly human loveliness of giorgione's women there is after all a higher spirituality, a deeper intimation of that true, that clear-burning passion, enveloping body and soul, which transcends all exterior grace and harmony, however exquisite it may be in refinement of voluptuousness.[ ] it is not, indeed, by any means certain that we are justified in seriously criticising as a _venus_ the great picture of the tribuna. titian himself has given no indication that the beautiful venetian woman who lies undraped after the bath, while in a sumptuous chamber, furnished according to the mode of the time, her handmaidens are seeking for the robes with which she will adorn herself, is intended to present the love-goddess, or even a beauty masquerading with her attributes. vasari, who saw it in the picture-closet of the duke of urbino, describes it, no doubt, as "une venere giovanetta a giacere, con fieri e certi panni sottili attorno." it is manifestly borrowed, too--as is now universally acknowledged--from giorgione's _venus_ in the dresden gallery, with the significant alteration, however, that titian's fair one voluptuously dreams awake, while giorgione's goddess more divinely reposes, and sleeping dreams loftier dreams. the motive is in the borrowing robbed of much of its dignity and beauty, and individualised in a fashion which, were any other master than titian in question, would have brought it to the verge of triviality. still as an example of his unrivalled mastery in rendering the glow and semi-transparency of flesh, enhanced by the contrast with white linen--itself slightly golden in tinge; in suggesting the appropriate atmospheric environment; in giving the full splendour of venetian colour, duly subordinated nevertheless to the main motive, which is the glorification of a beautiful human body as it is; in all these respects the picture is of superlative excellence, a representative example of the master and of venetian art, a piece which it would not be easy to match even among his own works. more and more, as the supreme artist matures, do we find him disdaining the showier and more evident forms of virtuosity. his colour is more and more marked in its luminous beauty by reticence and concentration, by the search after such a main colour-chord as shall not only be beautiful and satisfying in itself, but expressive of the motive which is at the root of the picture. play of light over the surfaces and round the contours of the human form; the breaking-up and modulation of masses of colour by that play of light; strength, and beauty of general tone--these are now titian's main preoccupations. to this point his perfected technical art has legitimately developed itself from the giorgionesque ideal of colour and tone-harmony, which was essentially the same in principle, though necessarily in a less advanced stage, and more diversified by exceptions. our master became, as time went on, less and less interested in the mere dexterous juxtaposition of brilliantly harmonising and brilliantly contrasting tints, in piquancy, gaiety, and sparkle of colour, to be achieved for its own sake. indeed this phase of venetian sixteenth-century colour belongs rather to those artists who issued from verona--to the bonifazi, and to paolo veronese--who in this respect, as generally in artistic temperament, proved themselves the natural successors of domenico and francesco morone, of girolamo dai libri, of cavazzola. yet when titian takes colour itself as his chief motive, he can vie with the most sumptuous of them in splendour, and eclipse them all by the sureness of his taste. a good example of this is the celebrated _bella di tiziano_ of the pitti gallery, another work which, like the _venus of urbino_, recalls the features without giving the precise personality of eleonora gonzaga. the beautiful but somewhat expressionless head with its crowning glory of bright hair, a waving mass of venetian gold, has been so much injured by rubbing down and restoration that we regret what has been lost even more than we enjoy what is left. but the surfaces of the fair and exquisitely modelled neck and bosom have been less cruelly treated; the superb costume retains much of its pristine splendour. with its combination of brownish-purple velvet, peacock-blue brocade, and white lawn, its delicate trimmings of gold, and its further adornment with small knots, having in them, now at any rate, but an effaced note of red, the gown of _la bella_ has remained the type of what is most beautiful in venetian costume as it was in the earlier half of the sixteenth century. in richness and ingenious elaboration, chastened by taste, it far transcends the over-splendid and ponderous dresses in which later on the patrician dames portrayed by veronese and his school loved to array themselves. a bright note of red in the upper jewel of one earring, now, no doubt, cruder than was originally intended, gives a fillip to the whole, after a fashion peculiar to titian. [illustration: _la bella di tiziano. from a photograph by aplinari. walter l. cells. ph._] the _girl in the fur cloak_, no in the imperial gallery at vienna, shows once more in a youthful and blooming woman the features of eleonora. the model is nude under a mantle of black satin lined with fur, which leaves uncovered the right breast and both arms. the picture is undoubtedly titian's own, and fine in quality, but it reveals less than his usual graciousness and charm. it is probably identical with the canvas described in the often-quoted catalogue of charles i.'s pictures as "a naked woman putting on her smock, which the king changed with the duchess of buckingham for one of his majesty's mantua pieces." it may well have suggested to rubens, who must have seen it among the king's possessions on the occasion of his visit to london, his superb, yet singularly unrefined, _hélène fourment in a fur mantle_, now also in the vienna gallery. the great portraits of the duke and duchess of urbino in the uffizi belong, as has already been noted, to . francesco maria, here represented in the penultimate year of his stormy life, assumes deliberately the truculent warrior, and has beyond reasonable doubt made his own pose in a portrait destined to show the leader of armies, and not the amorous spouse or the patron of art and artists. praise enthusiastic, but not excessive, has ever been and ever will be lavished on the breadth and splendid decision of the painting; on the magnificent rendering of the suit of plain but finely fashioned steel armour, with its wonderful reflections; on the energy of the virile countenance, and the appropriate concentration and simplicity of the whole. the superb head has, it must be confessed, more grandeur and energy than true individuality or life. the companion picture represents eleonora gonzaga seated near an open window, wearing a sombre but magnificent costume, and, completing it, one of those turbans with which the patrician ladies of north italy, other than those of venice, habitually crowned their locks. it has suffered in loss of freshness and touch more than its companion. fine and accurate as the portrait is, much as it surpasses its pendant in subtle truth of characterisation, it has in the opinion of the writer been somewhat overpraised. for once, titian approaches very nearly to the northern ideal in portraiture, underlining the truth with singular accuracy, yet with some sacrifice of graciousness and charm. the daughter of the learned and brilliant isabella looks here as if, in the decline of her beauty, she had become something of a _précieuse_ and a prude, though it would be imprudent to assert that she was either the one or the other. perhaps the most attractive feature of the whole composition is the beautiful landscape so characteristically stretching away into the far blue distance, suggested rather than revealed through the open window. this is such a picture as might have inspired the netherlander antonio moro, just because it is italian art of the cinquecento with a difference, that is, with a certain admixture of northern downrightness and literalness of statement. about this same time titian received from the brother of this princess, his patron and admirer federigo gonzaga, the commission for the famous series of the _twelve cæsars_, now only known to the world by stray copies here and there, and by the grotesquely exaggerated engravings of Ægidius sadeler. giulio romano having in [ ] completed the sala di troja in the castello of mantua, and made considerable progress with the apartments round about it, federigo gonzaga conceived the idea of devoting one whole room to the painted effigies of the _twelve cæsars_ to be undertaken by titian. the exact date when the _cæsars_ were delivered is not known, but it may legitimately be inferred that this was in the course of or the earlier half of . our master's pictures were, according to vasari, placed in an _anticamera_ of the mantuan palace, below them being hung twelve _storie a olio_--histories in oils--by giulio romano.[ ] the _cæsars_ were all half-lengths, eleven out of the twelve being done by the venetian master and the twelfth by giulio romano himself.[ ] brought to england with the rest of the mantua pieces purchased by daniel nys for charles i., they suffered injury, and van dyck is said to have repainted the _vitellius_, which was one of several canvases irretrievably ruined by the quicksilver of the frames during the transit from italy.[ ] on the disposal of the royal collection after charles stuart's execution the _twelve cæsars_ were sold by the state--not presented, as is usually asserted--to the spanish ambassador cardenas, who gave £ for them. on their arrival in spain with the other treasures secured on behalf of philip iv., they were placed in the alcazar of madrid, where in one of the numerous fires which successively devastated the royal palace they must have perished, since no trace of them is to be found after the end of the seventeenth century. the popularity of titian's decorative canvases is proved by the fact that bernardino campi of cremona made five successive sets of copies from them--for charles v., d'avalos, the duke of alva, rangone, and another spanish grandee. agostino caracci subsequently copied them for the palace of parma, and traces of yet other copies exist. numerous versions are shown in private collections, both in england and abroad, purporting to be from the hand of titian, but of these none--at any rate none of those seen by the writer--are originals or even venetian copies. among the best are the examples in the collection of earl brownlow and at the royal palace of munich respectively, and these may possibly be from the hand of campi. although we are expressly told in dolce's _dialogo_ that titian "painted the _twelve cæsars_, taking them in part from medals, in part from antique marbles," it is perfectly clear that of the exact copying of antiques--such as is to be noted, for instance, in those marble medallions by donatello which adorn the courtyard of the medici palace at florence--there can have been no question. the attitudes of the _cæsars_, as shown in the engravings and the extant copies, exclude any such supposition. those who have judged them from those copies and the hideous grotesques of sadeler have wondered at the popularity of the originals, somewhat hastily deeming titian to have been here inferior to himself. strange to say, a better idea of what he intended, and what he may have realised in the originals, is to be obtained from a series of small copies now in the provincial museum of hanover, than from anything else that has survived.[ ] the little pictures in question, being on copper, cannot well be anterior to the first part of the seventeenth century, and they are not in themselves wonders. all the same they have a unique interest as proving that, while adopting the pompous attitudes and the purely decorative standpoint which the position of the pictures in the castello may have rendered obligatory, titian managed to make of his emperors creatures of flesh and blood; the splendid venetian warrior and patrician appearing in all the glory of manhood behind the conventional dignity, the self-consciousness of the roman type and attitude. [illustration: _francesco maria della rovere, duke of urbino. uffizi gallery, florence. from a photograph by e. alinari_.] these last years had been to titian as fruitful in material gain as in honour. he had, as has been seen, established permanent and intimate relations not only with the art-loving rulers of the north italian principalities, but now with charles v. himself, mightiest of european sovereigns, and, as a natural consequence, with the all-powerful captains and grandees of the hispano-austrian court. meanwhile a serious danger to his supremacy had arisen. at home in venice his unique position was threatened by pordenone, that masterly and wonderfully facile _frescante_ and painter of monumental decorations, who had on more than one occasion in the past been found in competition with him. the friulan, after many wanderings and much labour in north italy, had settled in venice in , and there acquired an immense reputation by the grandeur and consummate ease with which he had carried out great mural decorations, such as the façade of martin d'anna's house on the grand canal, comprising in its scheme of decoration a curtius on horse-back and a flying mercury which according to vasari became the talk of the town.[ ] here, at any rate, was a field in which even titian himself, seeing that he had only at long intervals practised in fresco painting, could not hope to rival pordenone. the friulan, indeed, in this his special branch, stood entirely alone among the painters of north italy. the council of ten in june issued a decree recording that titian had since been in possession of his _senseria_, or broker's patent, and its accompanying salary, on condition that he should paint "the canvas of the land fight on the side of the hall of the great council looking out on the grand canal," but that he had drawn his salary without performing his promise. he was therefore called upon to refund all that he had received for the time during which he had done no work. this sharp reminder operated as it was intended to do. we see from aretino's correspondence that in november titian was busily engaged on the great canvas for the doges' palace. this tardy recognition of an old obligation did not prevent the council from issuing an order in november directing pordenone to paint a picture for the sala del gran consiglio, to occupy the space next to that reserved for titian's long-delayed battle-piece. that this can never have been executed is clear, since pordenone, on receipt of an urgent summons from ercole ii., duke of ferrara, departed from venice in the month of december of the same year, and falling sick at ferrara, died so suddenly as to give rise to the suspicion of foul play, which too easily sprang up in those days when ambition or private vengeance found ready to hand weapons so many and so convenient. crowe and cavalcaselle give good grounds for the assumption that, in order to save appearances, titian was supposed--replacing and covering the battle-piece which already existed in the great hall--to be presenting the battle of spoleto in umbria, whereas it was clear to all venetians, from the costumes, the banners, and the landscape, that he meant to depict the battle of cadore fought in . the latter was a venetian victory and an imperial defeat, the former a papal defeat and an imperial victory. the all-devouring fire of annihilated the _battle of cadore_ with too many other works of capital importance in the history both of the primitive and the mature venetian schools. we have nothing now to show what it may have been, save the print of fontana, and the oil painting in the venetian gallery of the uffizi, reproducing on a reduced scale part only of the big canvas. this last is of venetian origin, and more or less contemporary, but it need hardly be pointed out that it is a copy from, not a sketch for, the picture. [illustration: _the battle of cadore (from a reduced copy of part only). uffizi gallery, florence. from a photograph by g. brogi._] to us who know the vast battle-piece only in the feeble echo of the print and the picture just now mentioned, it is a little difficult to account for the enthusiasm that it excited, and the prominent place accorded to it among the most famous of the cadorine's works. though the whole has abundant movement and passion, and the _mise-en-scène_ is undoubtedly imposing, the combat is not raised above reality into the region of the higher and more representative truth by any element of tragic vastness and significance. even though the imperialists are armed more or less in the antique roman fashion, to distinguish them from the venetians, who appear in the accoutrements of their own day, it is still that minor and local combat the _battle of cadore_ that we have before us, and not, above and beyond this battle, war, as some masters of the century, gifted with a higher power of evocation, might have shown it. even as the fragment of leonardo da vinci's _battle of anghiari_ survives in the free translation of rubens's well-known drawing in the louvre, we see how he has made out of the unimportant cavalry combat, yet without conventionality or undue transposition, a representation unequalled in art of the frenzy generated in man and beast by the clash of arms and the scent of blood. and rubens, too, how incomparably in the _battle of the amazons_ of the pinakothek at munich, he evokes the terrors, not only of one mortal encounter, but of war--the hideous din, the horror of man let loose and become beast once more, the pitiless yell of the victors, the despairing cry of the vanquished, the irremediable overthrow! it would, however, be foolhardy in those who can only guess at what the picture may have been to arrogate to themselves the right of sitting in judgment on vasari and those contemporaries who, actually seeing, enthusiastically admired it. what excited their delight must surely have been titian's magic power of brush as displayed in individual figures and episodes, such as that famous one of the knight armed by his page in the immediate foreground. into this period of our master's career there fit very well the two portraits in which he appears, painted by himself, on the confines of old age, vigorous and ardent still, fully conscious, moreover, though without affectation, of pre-eminent genius and supreme artistic rank. the portraits referred to are those very similar ones, both of them undoubtedly originals, which are respectively in the berlin gallery and the painters' gallery of the uffizi. it is strange that there should exist no certain likeness of the master of cadore done in youth or earlier manhood, if there be excepted the injured and more than doubtful production in the imperial gallery of vienna, which has pretty generally been supposed to be an original auto-portrait belonging to this period. in the uffizi and berlin pictures titian looks about sixty years old, but may be a little more or a little less. the latter is a half-length, showing him seated and gazing obliquely out of the picture with a majestic air, but also with something of combativeness and disquietude, an element, this last, which is traceable even in some of the earlier portraits, but not in the mythological _poesie_ or any sacred work. more and more as we advance through the final period of old age do we find this element of disquietude and misgiving asserting itself in male portraiture, as, for instance, in the _maltese knight_ of the prado, the _dominican monk_ of the borghese, the _portrait of a man with a palm branch_ of the dresden gallery. the atmosphere of sadness and foreboding enveloping man is traceable back to giorgione; but with him it comes from the plenitude of inner life, from the gaze turned inwards upon the mystery of the human individuality rather than outwards upon the inevitable tragedies of the exterior life common to all. this same atmosphere of passionate contemplativeness enwraps, indeed, all that giorgione did, and is the cause that he sees the world and himself lyrically, not dramatically; the flame of aspiration burning steadily at the heart's core and leaving the surface not indeed unruffled, but outwardly calm in its glow. titian's is the more dramatic temperament in outward things, but also the more superficial. it must be remembered, too, that arriving rapidly at the maturity of his art, and painting all through the period of the full renaissance, he was able with far less hindrance from technical limitations to express his conceptions to the full. his portraiture, however, especially his male portraiture, was and remained in its essence a splendid and full-blown development of the giorgionesque ideal. it was grander, more accomplished, and for obvious reasons more satisfying, yet far less penetrating, less expressive of the inner fibre, whether of the painter or of his subject. but to return to the portrait of berlin. it is in parts unfinished, and therefore the more interesting as revealing something of the methods employed by the master in this period of absolute mastery, when his palette was as sober in its strength as it was rich and harmonious; when, as ever, execution was a way to an end, and therefore not to be vain-gloriously displayed merely for its own sake. the picture came, with very many other masterpieces of the italian and netherlandish schools, from the solly collection, which formed the nucleus of the berlin gallery. the uffizi portrait emerges noble still, in its semi-ruined state, from a haze of restoration and injury, which has not succeeded in destroying the exceptional fineness and sensitiveness of the modelling. although the pose and treatment of the head are practically identical with that in the berlin picture, the conception seems a less dramatic one. it includes, unless the writer has misread it, an element of greater mansuetude and a less perturbed reflectiveness. the double portrait in the collection of her majesty the queen at windsor castle, styled _titian and franceschini_[ ] has no pretensions whatever to be even discussed as a titian. the figure of the venetian senator designated as franceschini is the better performance of the two; the lifeless head of titian, which looks very like an afterthought, has been copied, without reference to the relation of the two figures the one to the other, from the uffizi picture, or some portrait identical with it in character. a far finer likeness of titian than any of these is the much later one, now in the prado gallery; but this it will be best to deal with in its proper chronological order. we come now to one of the most popular of all titian's great canvases based on a sacred subject, the _presentation in the temple_ in the accademia delle belle arti at venice. this, as vasari expressly states, was painted for the scuola di s. maria della carità, that is, for the confraternity which owned the very building where now the accademia displays its treasures. it is the magnificent scenic rendering of a subject lending itself easily to exterior pomp and display, not so easily to a more mystic and less obvious mode of conception. at the root of titian's design lies in all probability the very similar picture on a comparatively small scale by cima da conegliano, now no. in the dresden gallery, and this last may well have been inspired by carpaccio's _presentation of the virgin_, now in the brera at milan.[ ] the imposing canvases belonging to this particular period of titian's activity, and this one in particular, with its splendid architectural framing, its wealth of life and movement, its richness and variety in type and costume, its fair prospect of venetian landscape in the distance, must have largely contributed to form the transcendent decorative talent of paolo veronese. only in the exquisitely fresh and beautiful figure of the childlike virgin, who ascends the mighty flight of stone steps, clad all in shimmering blue, her head crowned with a halo of yellow light, does the artist prove that he has penetrated to the innermost significance of his subject. here, at any rate, he touches the heart as well as feasts the eye. the thoughts of all who are familiar with venetian art will involuntarily turn to tintoretto's rendering of the same moving, yet in its symbolical character not naturally ultra-dramatic, scene. the younger master lends to it a significance so vast that he may be said to go as far beyond and above the requirements of the theme as titian, with all his legitimate splendour and serene dignity, remains below it. with tintoretto as interpreter we are made to see the beautiful episode as an event of the most tremendous import--one that must shake the earth to its centre. the reason of the onlooker may rebel against this portentous version, yet he is dominated all the same, is overwhelmed with something of the indefinable awe that has seized upon the bystanders who are witnesses of the scene. [illustration: _the presentation of the virgin in the temple. accademia delle belle arti, venice. from a photograph by naya._] but now to discuss a very curious point in connection with the actual state of titian's important canvas. it has been very generally assumed--and crowe and cavalcaselle have set their seal on the assumption--that titian painted his picture for a special place in the albergo (now accademia), and that this place is now architecturally as it was in titian's time. let them speak for themselves. "in this room (in the albergo), which is contiguous to the modern hall in which titian's _assunta_ is displayed, there were two doors for which allowance was made in titian's canvas; twenty-five feet--the length of the wall--is now the length of the picture. when this vast canvas was removed from its place, the gaps of the doors were filled in with new linen, and painted up to the tone of the original...." that the pieces of canvas to which reference is here made were new, and not titian's original work from the brush, was of course well known to those who saw the work as it used to hang in the accademia. crowe and cavalcaselle give indeed the name of a painter of this century who is responsible for them. within the last three years the new and enterprising director of the venice academy, as part of a comprehensive scheme of rearrangement of the whole collection, caused these pieces of new canvas to be removed and then proceeded to replace the picture in the room for which it is believed to have been executed, fitting it into the space above the two doors just referred to. many people have declared themselves delighted with the alteration, looking upon it as a tardy act of justice done to titian, whose work, it is assumed, is now again seen just as he designed it for the albergo. the writer must own that he has, from an examination of the canvas where it is now placed, or replaced, derived an absolutely contrary impression. first, is it conceivable that titian in the heyday of his glory should have been asked to paint such a picture--not a mere mural decoration--for such a place? there is no instance of anything of the kind having been done with the canvases painted by gentile bellini, carpaccio, mansueti, and others for the various _scuole_ of venice. there is no instance of a great decorative canvas by a sixteenth century master of the first rank,[ ] other than a ceiling decoration, being degraded in the first instance to such a use. and then vasari, who saw the picture in venice, and correctly characterises it, would surely have noticed such an extraordinary peculiarity as the abnormal shape necessitated by the two doors. it is incredible that titian, if so unpalatable a task had indeed been originally imposed upon him, should not have designed his canvas otherwise. the hole for the right door coming in the midst of the monumental steps is just possible, though not very probable. not so that for the left door, which, according to the present arrangement, cuts the very vitals out of one of the main groups in the foreground. is it not to insult one of the greatest masters of all time thus to assume that he would have designed what we now see? it is much more likely that titian executed his _presentation_ in the first place in the normal shape, and that vandals of a later time, deciding to pierce the room in the scuola in which the picture is now once more placed with one, or probably two, additional doors, partially sacrificed it to the structural requirements of the moment. monstrous as such barbarism may appear, we have already seen, and shall again see later on, that it was by no means uncommon in those great ages of painting, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. when the untimely death of pordenone, at the close of , had extinguished the hopes of the council that the grandiose facility of this master of monumental decoration might be made available for the purposes of the state, titian having, as has been seen, made good his gravest default, was reinstated in his lucrative and by no means onerous office. he regained the _senseria_ by decree of august , . the potent d'avalos, marqués del vasto, had in conferred upon titian's eldest son pomponio, the scapegrace and spendthrift that was to be, a canonry. both to father and son the gift was in the future to be productive of more evil than good. at or about the same time he had commissioned of titian a picture of himself haranguing his soldiers in the pompous roman fashion; this was not, however, completed until . exhibited by d'avalos to admiring crowds at milan, it made a sensation for which there is absolutely nothing in the picture, as we now see it in the gallery of the prado, to account; but then it would appear that it was irreparably injured in a fire which devastated the alcazar of madrid in , and was afterwards extensively repainted. the marquis and his son francesco, both of them full-length figures, are placed on a low plinth, to the left, and from this point of vantage the spanish leader addresses a company of foot-soldiers who with fine effect raise their halberds high into the air.[ ] among these last tradition places a portrait of aretino, which is not now to be recognised with any certainty. were the pedigree of the canvas a less well-authenticated one, one might be tempted to deny titian's authorship altogether, so extraordinary are, apart from other considerations, the disproportions in the figure of the youth francesco. restoration must in this instance have amounted to entire repainting. del vasto appears more robust, more martial, and slightly younger than the armed leader in the _allegory_ of the louvre. if this last picture is to be accepted as a semi-idealised presentment of the spanish captain, it must, as has already been pointed out, have been painted nearer to the time of his death, which took place in . the often-cited biographers of our master are clearly in error in their conclusion that the painting described in the collection of charles i. as "done by titian, the picture of the marquis guasto, containing five half-figures so big as the life, which the king bought out of an almonedo," is identical with the large sketch made by titian as a preparation for the _allocution_ of madrid. this description, on the contrary, applies perfectly to the _allegory_ of the louvre, which was, as we know, included in the collection of charles, and subsequently found its way into that of louis quatorze. [illustration: _the magdalen. pitti palace, florence. from a photograph by anderson._] it was in that vasari, summoned to venice at the suggestion of aretino, paid his first visit to the city of the lagoons in order to paint the scenery and _apparato_ in connection with a carnival performance, which included the representation of his fellow-townsman's _talanta.[ ]_ it was on this occasion, no doubt, that sansovino, in agreement with titian, obtained for the florentine the commission to paint the ceilings of santo spirito in isola--a commission which was afterwards, as a consequence of his departure, undertaken and performed by titian himself, with whose grandiose canvases we shall have to deal a little later on. in weighing the value of vasari's testimony with reference to the works of vecellio and other venetian painters more or less of his own time, it should be borne in mind that he paid two successive visits to venice, enjoying there the company of the great painter and the most eminent artists of the day, and that on the occasion of titian's memorable visit to rome he was his close friend, cicerone, and companion. allowing for the aretine biographer's well-known inaccuracies in matters of detail and for his royal disregard of chronological order--faults for which it is manifestly absurd to blame him over-severely--it would be unwise lightly to disregard or overrule his testimony with regard to matters which he may have learned from the lips of titian himself and his immediate _entourage_. to the year belongs, as the authentic signature and date on the picture affirm, that celebrated portrait, _the daughter of roberto strozzi_, once in the splendid palace of the family at florence, but now, with some other priceless treasures having the same origin, in the berlin museum. technically, the picture is one of the most brilliant, one of the most subtly exquisite, among the works of the great cadorine's maturity. it well serves to show what titian's ideal of colour was at this time. the canvas is all silvery gleam, all splendour and sober strength of colour--yet not of colours. these in all their plentitude and richness, as in the crimson drapery and the distant landscape, are duly subordinated to the main effect; they but set off discreetly the figure of the child, dressed all in white satin with hair of reddish gold, and contribute without fanfare to the fine and harmonious balance of the whole. here, as elsewhere, more particularly in the work of titian's maturity, one does not in the first place pause to pick out this or the other tint, this or the other combination of colours as particularly exquisite; and that is what one is so easily led to do in the contemplation of the bonifazi and of paolo veronese. [illustration: _the infant daughter of roberto strozzi. royal gallery, berlin. from a photograph by f. hanfstängl._] as the portrait of a child, though in conception it reveals a marked progress towards the _intimité_ of later times, the berlin picture lacks something of charm and that quality which, for want of a better word, must be called loveableness. or is it perhaps that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have spoilt us in this respect? for it is only in these latter days that to the child, in deliberate and avowed portraiture, is allowed that freakishness, that natural _espièglerie_ and freedom from artificial control which has its climax in the unapproached portraits of sir joshua reynolds. this is the more curious when it is remembered how tenderly, with what observant and sympathetic truth the relation of child to mother, of child to child, was noted in the innumerable "madonnas" and "holy families" of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; how both the italians, and following them the netherlanders, relieved the severity of their sacred works by the delightful roguishness, the romping impudence of their little angels, their _putti_. it has already been recorded that titian, taking up the commission abandoned by vasari, undertook a great scheme of pictorial decoration for the brothers of santo spirito in isola. all that he carried out for that church has now found its way into that of the salute. the three ceiling pictures, _the sacrifice of isaac, cain and abel_, and _david victorious over goliath_, are in the great sacristy of the church; the _four evangelists_ and _four doctors_ are in the ceiling of the choir behind the altar; the altar-piece, _the descent of the holy spirit_, is in one of the chapels which completely girdle the circular church itself. the ceiling pictures, depicting three of the most dramatic moments in sacred history, have received the most enthusiastic praise from the master's successive biographers. they were indeed at the time of their inception a new thing in venetian art. nothing so daring as these foreshortenings, as these scenes of dramatic violence, of physical force triumphant, had been seen in venice. the turbulent spirit was an exaggeration of that revealed by titian in the _st. peter martyr_; the problem of the foreshortening for the purposes of ceiling decoration was superadded. it must be remembered, too, that even in rome, the headquarters of the grand style, nothing precisely of the same kind could be said to exist. raphael and his pupils either disdained, or it may be feared to approach, the problem. neither in the ceiling decorations of the farnesina nor in the stanze is there any attempt on a large scale to _faire plafonner_ the figures, that is, to paint them so that they might appear as they would actually be seen from below. michelangelo himself, in the stupendous decoration of the ceiling to the sixtine chapel, had elected to treat the subjects of the flat surface which constitutes the centre and climax of the whole, as a series of pictures designed under ordinary conditions. it can hardly be doubted that titian, in attempting these _tours de force_, though not necessarily or even probably in any other way, was inspired by correggio. it would not be easy, indeed, to exaggerate the venetian master's achievement from this point of view, even though in two at least of the groups--the _cain and abel_ and the _david and goliath_--the modern professor might be justified in criticising with considerable severity his draughtsmanship and many salient points in his design. the effect produced is tremendous of its kind. the power suggested is, however, brutal, unreasoning, not nobly dominating force; and this not alone in the _cain and abel_, where such an impression is rightly conveyed, but also in the other pieces. it is as if titian, in striving to go beyond anything that had hitherto been done of the same kind, had also gone beyond his own artistic convictions, and thus, while compassing a remarkable pictorial achievement, lost his true balance. tintoretto, creating his own atmosphere, as far outside and above mere physical realities as that of michelangelo himself, might have succeeded in mitigating this impression, which is, on the whole, a painful one. take for instance the _martyrdom of st. christopher_ of the younger painter--not a ceiling picture by the way--in the apse of s. maria del orto. here, too, is depicted, with sweeping and altogether irresistible power, an act of hideous violence. and yet it is not this element of the subject which makes upon the spectator the most profound effect, but the impression of saintly submission, of voluntary self-sacrifice, which is the dominant note of the whole. it may be convenient to mention here _the descent of the holy spirit_, although in its definitive form, as we see it in its place in the church of the salute, it appears markedly more advanced in style than the works of the period at which we have now arrived, giving, both in manner and feeling, a distinct suggestion of the methods and standpoint which mark the later phase of old age. vasari tells us that the picture, originally painted in , was seriously damaged and subsequently repainted; crowe and cavalcaselle state that the work now seen at the salute was painted to replace an altar-piece which the brothers of santo spirito had declined to accept. even as the picture now appears, somewhat faded, and moreover seen at a disadvantage amid its cold surroundings of polished white marble, it is a composition of wonderful, of almost febrile animation, and a painting saturated with light, pierced through everywhere with its rays. the effect produced is absolutely that which the mystical subject requires.[ ] abandoning the passionless serenity which has been the rule in sacred subjects of the middle time, titian shows himself more stimulated, more moved by his subject. it was in the spring of that the master first came into personal contact with pope paul iii. and the farnese family. the meeting took place at ferrara, and our painter then accompanied the papal court to busseto, and subsequently proceeded to bologna. aretino's correspondence proves that titian must at that time have painted the pope, and that he must also have refused the sovereign pontiff's offer of the _piombo_, which was then still, as it had been for years past, in the possession of sebastiano luciani. that titian, with all his eagerness for wealth and position, could not find it in his heart to displace his fellow-countryman, a friend no doubt of the early time, may legitimately excite admiration and sympathy now, as according to aretino it actually did at the time. the portraits of the farnese family included that of the pope, repeated subsequently for cardinal santafiore, that of pier luigi, then that of paul iii. and this monstrous yet well-loved son together,[ ] and a likeness of cardinal alessandro farnese. upon the three-quarter length portrait of paul iii. in the naples museum, crowe and cavalcaselle have lavished their most enthusiastic praise, placing it, indeed, among his masterpieces. all the same--interesting as the picture undoubtedly is, remarkable in finish, and of undoubtedly titianesque origin--the writer finds it difficult, nay impossible, to accept this _paul iii._ as a work from the hand of titian himself. careful to excess, and for such an original too much wanting in brilliancy and vitality, it is the best of many repetitions and variations; of this particular type the original is not at present forthcoming. very different is the "paul iii." of the hermitage, which even in a reproduction loudly proclaims its originality.[ ] this is by no means identical in design with the naples picture, but appears much less studied, much more directly taken from the life. the astute farnese pope has here the same simiesque type, the same furtive distrustful look, as in the great unfinished group now to be described.[ ] this titian, which doubtless passed into the hermitage with the rest of the barbarigo pictures, may have been the first foundation for the series of portraits of the farnese pope, and as such would naturally have been retained by the master for his own use. the portrait-group in the naples museum, showing, with paul iii., cardinal alessandro farnese and ottavio farnese (afterwards duke of parma), is, apart from its extraordinary directness and swift technical mastery, of exceptional interest as being unfinished, and thus doubly instructive. the composition, lacking in its unusual momentariness the repose and dignity of raphael's _leo x. with cardinals giulio de' medici and de' rossi_ at the pitti, is not wholly happy. especially is the action of ottavio farnese, as in reverence he bends down to reply to the supreme pontiff, forced and unconvincing; but the unflattered portrait of the pontiff himself is of a bold and quite unconventional truth, and in movement much happier. the picture may possibly, by reason of this unconventional conception less than perfectly realised, have failed to please the sitters, and thus have been left in its present state.[ ] few of titian's canvases of vast dimensions have enjoyed a higher degree of popularity than the large _ecce homo_ to which the viennese proudly point as one of the crowning ornaments of the great imperial gallery of their city. completed in [ ] for giovanni d'anna, a son of the flemish merchant martin van der hanna, who had established himself in venice, it was vainly coveted by henri iii. on the occasion of his memorable visit in , but was in purchased for the splendid favourite, george villiers, duke of buckingham, by the english envoy sir henry wotton. from him the noblest and most accomplished of english collectors, thomas, earl of arundel, sought to obtain the prize with the unparalleled offer of £ , yet even thus failed. at the time of the great _débâcle_, in , the guardians and advisers of his youthful son and successor were glad enough to get the splendid gallery over to the low countries, and to sell with the rest the _ecce homo_, which brought under these circumstances but a tenth part of what lord arundel would have given for it. passing into the collection of the archduke leopold william, it was later on finally incorporated with that of the imperial house of austria. from the point of view of scenic and decorative magnificence combined with dramatic propriety, though not with any depth or intensity of dramatic passion, the work is undoubtedly imposing. yet it suffers somewhat, even in this respect, from the fact that the figures are not more than small life-size. with passages of titianesque splendour there are to be noted others, approaching to the acrid and inharmonious, which one would rather attribute to the master's assistants than to himself. so it is, too, with certain exaggerations of design characteristic rather of the period than the man--notably with the two figures to the left of the foreground. the christ in his meekness is too little divine, too heavy and inert;[ ] the pontius pilate not inappropriately reproduces the features of the worldling and _viveur_ aretino. the mounted warrior to the extreme right, who has been supposed to represent alfonso d'este, shows the genial physiognomy made familiar by the madrid picture so long deemed to be his portrait, but which, as has already been pointed out, represents much more probably his successor ercole ii. d'este, whom we find again in that superb piece by the master, the so-called _giorgio cornaro_ of castle howard. the _ecce homo_ of vienna is another of the works of which both the general _ordonnance_ and the truly venetian splendour must have profoundly influenced paolo veronese. [illustration: _ecce homo. imperial gallery, vienna. from a photograph by löwy_.] [illustration: _aretino. pitti palace, florence. from a photograph by e. alinari_.] to this period belongs also the _annunciation of the virgin_ now in the cathedral of verona--a rich, harmonious, and appropriate altar-piece, but not one of any special significance in the life-work of the painter. shall we not, pretty much in agreement with vasari, place here, just before the long-delayed visit to rome, the _christ with the pilgrims at emmaus_ of the louvre? a strong reason for dating this, one of the noblest, one of the most deeply felt of all titian's works, before rather than after the stay in the eternal city, is that in its _naïveté_, in its realistic episodes, in its fulness of life, it is so entirely and delightfully venetian. here again the colour-harmony in its subdued richness and solemnity has a completeness such as induces the beholder to accept it in its unity rather than to analyse those infinite subtleties of juxtaposition and handling which, avoiding bravura, disdain to show themselves on the surface. the sublime beauty of the landscape, in which, as often elsewhere, the golden radiance of the setting sun is seen battling with masses of azure cloud, has not been exceeded by titian himself. with all the daring yet perfectly unobtrusive and unconscious realism of certain details, the conception is one of the loftiest, one of the most penetrating in its very simplicity, of venetian art at its apogee. the divine mansuetude, the human and brotherly sympathy of the christ, have not been equalled since the early days of the _cristo della moneta_. altogether the _pilgrims at emmaus_ well marks that higher and more far-reaching conception of sacred art which reveals itself in the productions of titian's old age, when we compare them with the untroubled serenity and the conventional assumptions of the middle time.[ ] to the year belongs the supremely fine _portrait of aretino_, which is one of the glories of the pitti gallery. this was destined to propitiate the grand duke cosimo of tuscany, the son of his passionately attached friend of earlier days, giovanni delle bande nere. aretino, who had particular reasons for desiring to appear before the obdurate cosimo in all the pomp and opulence of his later years, was obviously wounded that titian, true to his genius, and to his method at this moment, should have made the keynote of his masterpiece a dignified simplicity. for once unfaithful to his brother triumvir and friend, he attacks him in the accompanying letter to the tuscan ruler with the withering sarcasm that "the satins, velvets, and brocades would perhaps have been better if titian had received a few more scudi for working them out." if aretino's pique had not caused the momentary clouding over of his artistic vision, he would have owned that the canvas now in the pitti was one of the happiest achievements of titian and one of the greatest things in portraiture. there is no flattery here of the "divine aretino," as with heroic impudence the notorious publicist styles himself. the sensual type is preserved, but rendered acceptable, and in a sense attractive, by a certain assurance and even dignity of bearing, such as success and a position impregnable of its unique and unenviable kind may well have lent to the adventurer in his maturity. even titian's brush has not worked with greater richness and freedom, with an effect broader or more entirely legitimate than in the head with its softly flowing beard and the magnificent yet not too ornate robe and vest of plum-coloured velvet and satin. chapter iii _the visit to rome--titian and michelangelo--the "danaë" of naples--"st. john the baptist in the desert"--journey to augsburg--"venus and cupid" of the tribuna--"venus with the organ player" of madrid--the altar-piece of serravalle--"charles v. at the battle of mühlberg"--"prometheus bound" and companion pictures--second journey to augsburg--portraits of philip of spain--the so-called "marqués del vasto" at cassel--the "st. margaret"--"danaë" of madrid--the "trinity"--"venus and adonis"--"la fede."_ at last, in the autumn of , the master of cadore, at the age of sixty-eight years, was to see rome, its ruins, its statues, its antiquities, and what to the painter of the renaissance must have meant infinitely more, the sixtine chapel and the stanze of the vatican. upon nothing in the history of venetian art have its lovers, and the many who, with profound interest, trace titian's noble and perfectly consistent career from its commencement to its close, more reason to congratulate themselves than on this circumstance, that in youth and earlier manhood fortune and his own success kept him from visiting rome. though his was not the eclectic tendency, the easily impressionable artistic temperament of a sebastiano luciani--the only eclectic, perhaps, who managed all the same to prove and to maintain himself an artist of the very first rank--if titian had in earlier life been lured to the eternal city, and had there settled, the glamour of the grand style might have permanently and fatally disturbed his balance. now it was too late for the splendid and gracious master, who even at sixty-eight had still before him nearly thirty fruitful years, to receive any impressions sufficiently deep to penetrate to the root of his art. there is some evidence to show that titian, deeply impressed with the highest manifestations of the florentine and umbro-florentine art transplanted to rome, considered that his work had improved after the visit of - . if there was such improvement--and certainly in the ultimate phases of his practice there will be evident in some ways a wider view, a higher grasp of essentials, a more responsive sensitiveness in the conceiving anew of the great sacred subjects--it must have come, not from any effort to assimilate the manner or to assume the standpoint which had obtained in rome, but from the closer contact with a world which at its centre was beginning to take a deeper, a more solemn and gloomy view of religion and life. it should not be forgotten that this was the year when the great council of trent first met, and that during the next twenty years or more the whole of italy, nay, the whole of the catholic world, was overshadowed by its deliberations. titian's friend and patron of that time, guidobaldo ii., duke of urbino, had at first opposed titian's visit to the roman court, striving to reserve to himself the services of the venetian master until such time as he should have carried out for him the commissions with which he was charged. yielding, however, to the inevitable, and yielding, too, with a good grace, he himself escorted his favourite with his son orazio from venice through ferrara to pesaro, and having detained him a short while there, granted him an escort through the papal states to rome. there he was well received by the farnese pope, and with much cordiality by cardinal bembo. rooms were accorded to him in the belvedere section of the vatican palace, and there no doubt he painted the unfinished portrait-group _paul iii. with cardinal alessandro farnese and ottavio farnese_, which has been already described, and with it other pieces of the same type, and portraits of the farnese family and circle now no longer to be traced. vasari, well pleased no doubt to renew his acquaintance with the acknowledged head of the contemporary venetian painters, acted as his cicerone in the visits to the antiquities of rome, to the statues and art-treasures of the vatican, while titian's fellow-citizen sebastiano del piombo was in his company when he studied the stanze of raphael. it was but three years since michelangelo's _last judgment_ had been uncovered in the sixtine, and it would have been in the highest degree interesting to read his comments on this gigantic performance, towards which it was so little likely that his sympathies would spontaneously go out. memorable is the visit paid by buonarroti, with an unwonted regard for ceremonious courtesy, to titian in his apartments at the belvedere, as it is recalled by vasari with that naïve touch, that power of suggestion, which gives such delightful colour to his unstudied prose. no _imaginary conversation_ among those that walter savage landor has devised equals in significance this meeting of the two greatest masters then living, simply as it is sketched in by the aretine biographer. the noble venetian representing the alternating radiance and gloom of earth, its fairest pages as they unfold themselves, the joys and sorrows, the teeming life of humanity; the mighty florentine disdainful of the world, its colours, its pulsations, its pomps and vanities, incurious of mankind save in its great symbolical figures, soaring like the solitary eagle into an atmosphere of his own where the dejected beholder can scarce breathe, and, sick at heart, oppressed with awe, lags far behind! [illustration: _pope paul iii. with cardinal farnese and ottavio farnese. naples gallery. from a photograph by e. alinari._] titian the gracious, the serene, who throughout a long life of splendid and by comparison effortless achievement has openly and candidly drunk deep of all the joys of life, a man even as others are! michelangelo the austere, the scornful, to whom the pleasures of the world, the company in well-earned leisure of his fellow-man, suggest but the loss of precious hours which might be devoted to the shaping in solitude of masterpieces; in the very depths of whose nature lurk nevertheless, even in old age, the strangest ardours, the fiercest and most insatiate longings for love and friendship! let vasari himself be heard as to this meeting. "michelangelo and vasari going one day to pay a visit to titian in the belvedere, saw, in a picture which he had then advanced towards completion, a nude female figure representing _danaë_ as she receives the embrace of jove transformed into a rain of gold, and, as the fashion is in people's presence, praised it much to him. when they had taken leave, and the discussion was as to the art of titian, buonarroti praised it highly, saying that the colour and handling pleased him much, but that it was a subject for regret that at venice they did not learn from the very beginning to design correctly, and that its painters did not follow a better method in their study of art." it is the battle that will so often be renewed between the artist who looks upon colour as merely a complement and adjunct to design, and the painter who regards it as not only the outer covering, but the body and soul of art. we remember how the stiff-necked ingres, the greatest raphaelesque of this century, hurled at delacroix's head the famous dictum, "le dessin c'est la probité de l'art," and how his illustrious rival, the chief of a romanticism which he would hardly acknowledge, vindicated by works rather than by words his contention that, if design was indeed art's conscience, colour was its life-blood, its very being. the _danaë_, seen and admired with reservations by buonarroti in the painting-room of titian at the belvedere, is now, with its beauty diminished in important particulars, to be found with the rest of the farnese pictures in the gallery of the naples museum. it serves to show that if the artist was far beyond the stage of imitation or even of assimilation on the larger scale, he was, at any rate, affected by the roman atmosphere in art. for once he here comes nearer to the realisation of tintoretto's ideal--the colour of titian and the design of michelangelo--than his impetuous pupil and rival ever did. while preserving in the _danaë_ his own true warmth and transparency of venetian colour--now somewhat obscured yet not effaced--he combines unusual weightiness and majesty with voluptuousness in the nude, and successfully strives after a more studied rhythm in the harmony of the composition generally than the art of venice usually affected. [illustration: _danaë and the golden rain. naples gallery. from a photograph by e. alinari._] titian, in his return from rome, which he was never to revisit, made a stay at florence with an eye, as we may guess, both to business and pleasure. there, as vasari takes care to record, our master visited the artistic sights, and _rimase stupefatto_--remained in breathless astonishment--as he had done when he made himself acquainted with the artistic glories of rome. this is but vague, and a little too much smacks of self-flattery and adulation of the brother tuscans. titian was received by duke cosimo at poggio a caiano, but his offer to paint the portrait of the medici ruler was not well received. it may be, as vasari surmises, that this attitude was taken up by the duke in order not to do wrong to the "many noble craftsmen" then practising in his city and dominion. more probably, however, cosimo's hatred and contempt of his father's minion aretino, whose portrait by titian he had condescended to retain, yet declined to acknowledge, impelled him to show something less than favour to the man who was known to be the closest friend and intimate of this self-styled "scourge of princes." crowe and cavalcaselle have placed about the year the extravagantly lauded _st. john the baptist in the desert_, once in the church of s.m. maria maggiore at venice, and now in the accademia there. to the writer it appears that it would best come in at this stage--that is to say in or about --not only because the firm close handling in the nude would be less explicable ten years later on, but because the conception of the majestic st. john is for once not pictorial but purely sculptural. leaving rome, and immediately afterwards coming into contact for the first time with the wonders of the earlier florentine art, titian might well have conceived, might well have painted thus. strange to say, the influence is not that of michelangelo, but, unless the writer is greatly deceived, that of donatello, whose noble ascetic type of the _precursor_ is here modernised, and in the process deprived of some of its austerity. the glorious mountain landscape, with its brawling stream, fresher and truer than any torrent of ruysdael's, is all titian. it makes the striking figure of st. john, for all its majesty, appear not a little artificial. the little town of serravalle, still so captivatingly venetian in its general aspect, holds one of the most magnificent works of titian's late time, a vast _virgin and child with st. peter and st. andrew_. this hangs--or did when last seen by the writer--in the choir of the church of st. andrew; there is evidence in titian's correspondence that it was finished in , so that it must have been undertaken soon after the return from rome. in the distance between the two majestic figures of the saints is a prospect of landscape with a lake, upon which titian has shown on a reduced scale christ calling peter and andrew from their nets; an undisguised adaptation this, by the veteran master, of the divine urbinate's _miraculous draught of fishes_, but one which made of the borrowed motive a new thing, no excrescence but an integral part of the conception. in this great work, which to be more universally celebrated requires only to be better known to those who do not come within the narrow circle of students, there is evidence that while titian, after his stay at the papal court, remained firm as a rock in his style and general principles--luckily a venetian and no pseudo-roman,--his imagination became more intense in its glow, gloomier but grander, than it had been in middle age--his horizon altogether vaster. to a grand if sometimes too unruffled placidity succeeded a physical and psychical perturbation which belonged both to the man in advanced years and to the particular moment in the century. even in his treatment of classic myth, of the nude in goddess and woman, there was, as we shall see presently, a greater unrest and a more poignant sensuality--there was evidence of a mind and temperament troubled anew instead of being tranquillised by the oncoming of old age. are we to place here, as crowe and cavalcaselle do, the _venus and cupid_ of the tribuna and the _venus with the organ player_ of the prado? the technical execution of these canvases, the treatment of landscape in the former, would lead the writer to place them some years farther on still in the _oeuvre_ of the master. there are, however, certain reasons for following them in this chronological arrangement. the _venus and cupid_ which hangs in the tribuna of the uffizi, as the pendant to the more resplendent but more realistic _venus of urbino_, is a darker and less well-preserved picture than its present companion, but a grander if a more audacious presentment of the love-goddess. yet even here she is not so much the cytherean as an embodiment of the venetian ideal of the later time, an exemplification of the undisguised worship of fleshly loveliness which then existed in venice. it has been pointed out that the later venus has the features of titian's fair daughter lavinia, and this is no doubt to a certain extent true. the goddesses, nymphs, and women of this time bear a sort of general family resemblance to her and to each other. this piece illustrates the preferred type of titian's old age, as the _vanitas, herodias_, and _flora_ illustrate the preferred type of his youth; as the paintings which we have learnt to associate with the duchess of urbino illustrate that of his middle time. the dignity and rhythmic outline of eros in the _danaë_ of naples have been given up in favour of a more naturalistic conception of the insinuating urchin, who is in this _venus and cupid_ the successor of those much earlier _amorini_ in the _worship of venus_ at madrid. the landscape in its sweeping breadth is very characteristic of the late time, and would give good reason for placing the picture later than it here appears. the difficulty is this. the _venus with the organ player_[ ] of madrid, which in many essential points is an inferior repetition of the later _venus_ of the tribuna, contains the portrait of ottavio farnese, much as we see him in the unfinished group painted, as has been recorded, at rome in . this being the case, it is not easy to place the _venus and cupid_, or its subsequent adaptation, much later than just before the journey to augsburg. the _venus with the organ player_ has been overrated; there are things in this canvas which we cannot without offence to titian ascribe to his own brush. among these are the tiresome, formal landscape, the wooden little dog petted by venus, and perhaps some other passages. the goddess herself and the amorous ottavio, though this last is not a very striking or successful portrait, may perhaps be left to the master. he vindicates himself more completely than in any other passage of the work when he depicts the youthful, supple form of the venetian courtesan, as in a merely passive pose she personates the goddess whose insignificant votary she really is. it cannot be denied that he touches here the lowest level reached by him in such delineations. what offends in this _venus with the organ player_, or rather _ottavio farnese with his beloved_, is that its informing sentiment is not love, or indeed any community of sentiment, but an ostentatious pride in the possession of covetable beauty subdued like that of danaë herself by gold. if we are to assume with crowe and cavalcaselle that the single figure _ecce homo_ of the prado gallery was the piece taken by the master to charles v. when, at the bidding of the emperor, he journeyed to augsburg, we can only conclude that his design was carried out by pupils or assistants. the execution is not such as we can ascribe to the brush which is so shortly to realise for the monarch a group of masterpieces. it was in january that titian set forth to obey the command of the emperor, "per far qualche opera," as count girolamo della torre has it in a letter of recommendation given to titian for the cardinal of trent at augsburg. it is significant to find the writer mentioning the painter, not by any of the styles and titles which he had a right to bear, especially at the court of charles v., but extolling him as "messer titiano pittore et il primo huomo della christianita."[ ] it might be imagined that it would be a terrible wrench for titian, at the age of seventy, to transplant himself suddenly, and for the first time, into a foreign land. but then he was not as other men of seventy are. the final years of his unexampled career will conclusively show that he preserved his mental and physical vigour to the end. further, the imperial court with its spanish etiquette, its spanish language and manners, was much the same at augsburg as he had known it on previous occasions at bologna. moreover, augsburg and nuremberg[ ] had, during the last fifty years, been in close touch with venice in all matters appertaining to art and commerce. especially the great banking house of the fuggers had the most intimate relations with the queen-city of the adriatic. yet art of the two great german cities would doubtless appeal less to the venetian who had arrived at the zenith of his development than it would and did to the bellinis and their school at the beginning of the century. the gulf had become a far wider one, and the points of contact were fewer. the trusted orazio had been left behind, notwithstanding the success which he had achieved during the roman tour, and it may be assumed that he presided over the studio and workshop at biri grande during his father's absence. titian was accompanied to augsburg by his second cousin, cesare vecellio,[ ] who no doubt had a minor share in very many of the canvases belonging to the period of residence at augsburg. our master's first and most grateful task must have been the painting of the great equestrian portrait of the emperor at the battle of mühlberg, which now hangs in the long gallery of the prado at madrid. it suffered much injury in the fire of the pardo palace, which annihilated so many masterpieces, but is yet very far from being the "wreck" which, with an exaggeration not easily pardonable under the circumstances, crowe and cavalcaselle have described it. in the presence of one of the world's masterpieces criticism may for once remain silent, willingly renouncing all its rights. no purpose would be served here by recording how much paint has been abraded in one corner, how much added in another. a deep sense of thankfulness should possess us that the highest manifestation of titian's genius has been preserved, even though it be shorn of some of its original beauty. splendidly armed in steel from head to foot, and holding firmly grasped in his hand the spear, emblem of command in this instance rather than of combat, cæsar advances with a mien impassive yet of irresistible domination. he bestrides with ease his splendid dark-brown charger, caparisoned in crimson, and heavily weighted like himself with the full panoply of battle, a perfect harmony being here subtly suggested between man and beast. the rich landscape, with a gleam of the elbe in the distance, is still in the half gloom of earliest day; but on the horizon, and in the clouds overhead, glows the red ominous light of sunrise, colouring the veils of the morning mist. the emperor is alone--alone as he must be in life and in death--a man, yet lifted so high above other men that the world stretches far below at his feet, while above him this ruler knows no power but that of god. it is not even the sneer of cold command, but a majesty far higher and more absolutely convinced of its divine origin, that awes the beholder as he gazes. in comparison with the supreme dignity of this ugly, pallid hapsburger, upon whom disease and death have already laid a shadowy finger, how artificial appear the divine assumptions of an alexander, how theatrical the olympian airs of an augustus, how merely vulgar and ill-worn the imperial poses of a napoleon. [illustration: _charles v. at the battle of mühlberg. gallery of the prado, madrid. from a photograph by braun, clement & cie._] no veracious biographer of titian could pretend that he is always thus imaginative, that coming in contact with a commanding human individuality he always thus unfolds the outer wrappings to reveal the soul within. indeed, especially in the middle time just past, he not infrequently contents himself with the splendid outsides of splendid things. to interpret this masterpiece as the writer has ventured to do, it is not necessary to assume that titian reasoned out the poetic vision, which was at the same time an absolutely veracious presentment, argumentatively with himself, as the painter of such a portrait in words might have done. pictorial genius of the creative order does not proceed by such methods, but sees its subject as a whole, leaving to others the task of probing and unravelling. it should be borne in mind, too, that this is the first in order, as it is infinitely the greatest and the most significant among the vast equestrian portraits of monarchs by court painters. velazquez on the one hand, and van dyck on the other, have worked wonders in the same field. yet their finest productions, even the _philip iv._, the _conde duque olivarez_, the _don balthasar carlos_ of the spaniard, even the two equestrian portraits of charles i., the _francisco de moncada_, the _prince thomas of savoy_ of the fleming, are in comparison but magnificent show pieces aiming above all at decorative pomp and an imposing general effect. we come to earth and every-day weariness again with the full-length of charles v., which is now in the alte pinakothek of munich. here the monarch, dressed in black and seated in a well-worn crimson velvet chair, shows without disguise how profoundly he is ravaged by ill-health and _ennui_. fine as the portrait still appears notwithstanding its bad condition, one feels somehow that titian is not in this instance, as he is in most others, perfect master of his material, of the main elements of his picture. the problem of relieving the legs cased in black against a relatively light background, and yet allowing to them their full plastic form, is not perfectly solved. neither is it, by the way, as a rule in the canvases of those admirable painters of men, the quasi-venetians, moretto of brescia and moroni of bergamo. the northerners--among them holbein and lucidel--came nearer to perfect success in this particular matter. the splendidly brushed-in prospect of cloudy sky and far-stretching country recalls, as morelli has observed, the landscapes of rubens, and suggests that he underwent the influence of the cadorine in this respect as in many others, especially after his journey as ambassador to madrid. another portrait, dating from the first visit to augsburg, is the half-length of the elector john frederick of saxony, now in the imperial gallery at vienna. he sits obese and stolid, yet not without the dignity that belongs to absolute simplicity, showing on his left cheek the wound received at the battle of mühlberg. the picture has, as a portrait by titian, no very commanding merit, no seduction of technique, and it is easy to imagine that cesare vecellio may have had a share in it. singular is the absence of all pose, of all attempt to harmonise the main lines of the design or give pictorial elegance to the naïve directness of the presentment. this mode of conception may well have been dictated to the courtly venetian by sturdy john frederick himself. the master painted for mary, queen dowager of hungary, four canvases specially mentioned by vasari, _prometheus bound to the rock, ixion, tantalus_, and _sisyphus_, which were taken to spain at the moment of the definitive migration of the court in . crowe and cavalcaselle state that the whole four perished in the all-devouring conflagration of the pardo palace, and put down the _prometheus_ and _sisyphus_ of the prado gallery as copies by sanchez coello. it is difficult to form a definite judgment on canvases so badly hung, so darkened and injured. they certainly look much more like venetian originals than spanish copies. these mythological subjects may very properly be classed with the all too energetic ceiling-pictures now in the sacristy of the salute. here again the master, in the effort to be grandiose in a style not properly his, overreaches himself and becomes artificial. he must have left augsburg this time in the autumn of , since in the month of october of that year we find him at innsbruck making a family picture of the children of king ferdinand, the emperor's brother. that monarch himself, his two sons and five daughters, he had already portrayed. much feasting, much rejoicing, in the brilliant and jovial circle presided over by aretino and the brother triumvirs, followed upon our master's return to venice. aretino, who after all was not so much the scourge as the screw of princes, would be sure to think the more highly of the friend whom he really cherished in all sincerity, when he returned from close and confidential intercourse with the mightiest ruler of the age, the source not only of honour but of advantages which the aretine, like falstaff, held more covetable because more substantial. to the year belongs the gigantic woodcut _the destruction of pharaoh's host_, designed, according to the inscription on the print, by "the great and immortal titian," and engraved by domenico delle greche, who, notwithstanding his name, calls himself "depentore venetiano." he is not, as need hardly be pointed out, to be confounded with the famous veneto-spanish painter, domenico theotocopuli, il greco, whose date of birth is just about this time ( ). titian, specially summoned by the emperor, travelled back to augsburg in november . charles had returned thither with prince philip, the heir-presumptive of the spanish throne, and it can hardly be open to question that one of the main objects for which the court painter was made to undertake once more the arduous journey across the alps was to depict the son upon whom all the monarch's hopes and plans were centred. charles, whose health had still further declined, was now, under an accumulation of political misfortune, gloomier than ever before, more completely detached from the things of the world. barely over fifty at this moment, he seemed already, and, in truth, was an old man, while the master of cadore at seventy-three shone in the splendid autumn of his genius, which even then had not reached its final period of expansion. titian enjoyed the confidence of his imperial master during this second visit in a degree which excited surprise at the time; the intercourse with charles at this tragic moment of his career, when, sick and disappointed, he aspired only to the consolations of faith, seeing his sovereign remedy in the soothing balm of utter peace, may have worked to deepen the gloom which was overspreading the painter's art if not his soul. it is not to be believed, all the same, that this atmosphere of unrest and misgiving, of faith coloured by an element of terror, in itself operated so strongly as unaided to give a final form to titian's sacred works. there was in this respect kinship of spirit between the mighty ruler and his servant; titian's art had already become sadder and more solemn, had already shown a more sombre passion. the tragic gloom is now to become more and more intense, until we come to the climax in the astonishing _pietà_ left unfinished when the end comes a quarter of a century later still. and with this change in the whole atmosphere of the sacred art comes another in the inverse sense, which, being an essential trait, must be described, though to do so is not quite easy. titian becomes more and more merely sensuous in his conception of the beauty of women. he betrays in his loss of serenity that he is less than heretofore impervious to the stings of an invading sensuality, which serves to make of his mythological and erotic scenes belonging to this late time a tribute to the glories of the flesh unennobled by the gilding touch of the purer flame. and the painter who, when charles v. retired into his solitude, had suffered the feeble flame of his life to die slowly out, was to go on working for king philip, as fierce in the intensity of his physical passion as in the fervour of his faith, would receive encouragement to develop to the full these seemingly conflicting tendencies of sacred and amorous passion. the spanish prince whom it was the master's most important task on this occasion to portray was then but twenty-four years of age, and youth served not indeed to hide, but in a slight measure to attenuate, some of his most characteristic physical defects. his unattractive person even then, however, showed some of the most repellent peculiarities of his father and his race. he had the supreme distinction of charles but not his majesty, more than his haughty reserve, even less than his power of enlisting sympathy. in this most difficult of tasks--the portrayal that should be at one and the same time true in its essence, distinguished, and as sympathetic as might be under the circumstances, of so unlovable a personage--titian won a new victory. his _prince philip of austria in armour_ at the prado is one of his most complete and satisfying achievements, from every point of view. a veritable triumph of art, but as usual a triumph to which the master himself disdains to call attention, is the rendering of the damascened armour, the puffed hose, and the white silk stockings and shoes. the two most important variations executed by the master, or under his immediate direction, are the full-lengths of the pitti palace and the naples museum, in both of which sumptuous court-dress replaces the gala military costume. they are practically identical, both in the design and the working out, save that in the florence example philip stands on a grass plot in front of a colonnade, while in that of naples the background is featureless. as the pictures are now seen, that in the pitti is marked by greater subtlety in the characterisation of the head, while the naples canvas appears the more brilliant as regards the working out of the costume and accessories. to the period of titian's return from the second visit to augsburg belongs a very remarkable portrait which of late years there has been some disinclination to admit as his own work. this is the imposing full-length portrait which stands forth as the crowning decoration of the beautiful and well-ordered gallery at cassel. in the days when it was sought to obtain _quand même_ a striking designation for a great picture, it was christened _alfonso d'avalos, marqués del vasto_. more recently, with some greater show of probability, it has been called _guidobaldo ii., duke of urbino_. in the _jahrbuch der königlich-preussischen kunstsammlungen_,[ ] herr carl justi, ever bold and ingenious in hypothesis, strives, with the support of a mass of corroborative evidence that cannot be here quoted, to prove that the splendid personage presented is a neapolitan nobleman of the highest rank, giovan francesco acquaviva, duke of atri. there is the more reason to accept his conjecture since it helps us to cope with certain difficulties presented by the picture itself. it may be conceded at the outset that there are disturbing elements in it, well calculated to give pause to the student of titian. the handsome patrician, a little too proud of his rank, his magnificent garments and accoutrements, his virile beauty, stands fronting the spectator in a dress of crimson and gold, wearing a plumed and jewelled hat, which in its elaboration closely borders on the grotesque, and holding a hunting-spear. still more astonishing in its exaggeration of a venetian mode in portraiture[ ] is the great crimson, dragon-crowned helmet which, on the left of the canvas, cupid himself supports. to the right, a rival even of love in the affections of our enigmatical personage, a noble hound rubs himself affectionately against the stalwart legs of his master. far back stretches a prospect singularly unlike those rich-toned studies of sub-alpine regions in which titian as a rule revels. it has an august but more colourless beauty recalling the middle apennines; one might almost say that it prefigures those prospects of inhospitable sierra which, with their light, delicate tonality, so admirably relieve and support the portraits of velazquez. all this is unusual, and still more so is the want of that aristocratic gravity, of that subordination of mere outward splendour to inborn dignity, which mark titian's greatest portraits throughout his career. the splendid materials for the picture are not as absolutely digested, as absolutely welded into one consistent and harmonious whole, as with such authorship one would expect. but then, on the other hand, take the magnificent execution in the most important passages: the distinguished silvery tone obtained notwithstanding the complete red-and-gold costume and the portentous crimson helmet; the masterly brush-work in these last particulars, in the handsome virile head of the model and the delicate flesh of the _amorino_. the dog might without exaggeration be pronounced the best, the truest in movement, to be found in venetian art--indeed, in art generally, until velazquez appears. herr carl justi's happy conjecture helps us, if we accept it, to get over some of these difficulties and seeming contradictions. the duke of atri belonged to a great neapolitan family, exiled and living at the french court under royal countenance and protection. the portrait was painted to be sent back to france, to which, indeed, its whole subsequent history belongs. under such circumstances the young nobleman would naturally desire to affirm his rank and pretensions as emphatically as might be; to outdo in splendour and _prestance_ all previous sitters to titian; to record himself apt in war, in the chase, in love, and more choice in the fashion of his appointments than any of his compeers in france or italy. an importance to which it is surely not entitled in the life-work of the master is given to the portrait of the legate beccadelli, executed in the month of july , and included among the real and fancied masterpieces of the tribuna in the uffizi. to the writer it has always appeared the most nearly tiresome and perfunctory of titian's more important works belonging to the same class. perhaps the elaborate legend inscribed on the paper held by the prelate, including the unusual form of signature "titianus vecellius faciebat venetiis mdlii, mense julii," may have been the cause that the canvas has attracted an undue share of attention.[ ] at p. of crowe and cavalcaselle's second volume we get, under date the th of october , titian's first letter to philip of spain. there is mention in it of a _queen of persia_, which the artist does not expressly declare to be his own work, and of a _landscape_ and _st. margaret_ previously sent by ambassador vargas ("... il paesaggio et il ritratto di sta. margarita mandatovi per avanti"). the comment of the biographers on this is that "for the first time in the annals of italian painting we hear of a picture which claims to be nothing more than a landscape, etc." remembering, however, that when in , at the end of his life, our master sent in to philip's secretary, antonio perez, a list of paintings delivered from time to time, but not paid for, he described the _venere del pardo_, or _jupiter and antiope_, as "la nuda con il paese con el satiro," would it not be fair to assume that the description _il paesaggio et il ritratto di sta. margarita_ means one and the same canvas--_the figure of st. margaret in a landscape_? thus should we be relieved from the duty of searching among the authentic works of the master of cadore for a landscape pure and simple, and in the process stumbling across a number of spurious and doubtful things. the _st. margaret_ is evidently the picture which, having been many years at the escorial, now hangs in the prado gallery. obscured and darkened though it is by the irreparable outrages of time, it may be taken as a very characteristic example of titian's late but not latest manner in sacred art. in the most striking fashion does it exhibit that peculiar gloom and agitation of the artist face to face with religious subjects which at an earlier period would have left his serenity undisturbed. the saint, uncertain of her triumph, armed though she is with the cross, flees in affright from the monster whose huge bulk looms, terrible even in overthrow, in the darkness of the foreground. to the impression of terror communicated by the whole conception the distance of the lurid landscape--a city in flames--contributes much. [illustration: _venus with the mirror._ _gallery of the hermitage, st. petersburg. from a photograph by braun, clement, & cie._] in the spring and summer of were finished for philip of spain the _danaë_ of madrid; for mary, queen of hungary, a _madonna addolorata_; for charles v. the _trinity_, to which he had with titian devoted so much anxious thought. the _danaë_ of the prado, less grandiose, less careful in finish than the naples picture, is painted with greater spontaneity and _élan_ than its predecessor, and vibrates with an undisguisedly fleshly passion. is it to the taste of philip or to a momentary touch of cynicism in titian himself that we owe the deliberate dragging down of the conception until it becomes symbolical of the lowest and most venal form of love? in the naples version amor, a fairly-fashioned divinity of more or less classic aspect, presides; in the madrid and subsequent interpretations of the legend, a grasping hag, the attendant of danaë, holds out a cloth, eager to catch her share of the golden rain. in the st. petersburg version, which cannot be accounted more than an atelier piece, there is, with some slight yet appreciable variations, a substantial agreement with the madrid picture. of this hermitage _danaë_ there is a replica in the collection of the duke of wellington at apsley house. in yet another version (also a contemporary atelier piece), which is in the imperial gallery at vienna, and has for that reason acquired a certain celebrity, the greedy duenna is depicted in full face, and holds aloft a chased metal dish. satisfaction of a very different kind was afforded to queen mary of hungary and charles v. the lady obtained a _christ appearing to the magdalen_, which was for a long time preserved at the escorial, where there is still to be found a bad copy of it. a mere fragment of the original, showing a head and bust of christ holding a hoe in his left hand, has been preserved, and is now no. in the gallery of the prado. even this does not convince the student that titian's own brush had a predominant share in the performance. the letter to charles v., dated from venice the th of september , records the sending of a _madonna addolorata_ and the great _trinity_. these, together with another _virgen de los dolores_ ostensibly by titian, and the _ecce homo_ already mentioned, formed afterwards part of the small collection of devotional paintings taken by charles to his monastic retreat at yuste, and appropriated after his death by philip. if the picture styled _la dolorosa_, and now no. in the gallery of the prado, is indeed the one painted for the great monarch who was so sick in body and spirit, so fast declining to his end, the suspicion is aroused that the courtly venetian must have acted with something less than fairness towards his great patron, since the _addolorata_ cannot be acknowledged as his own work. still less can we accept as his own that other _virgen de los dolores_, now no. in the same gallery. [illustration: landscape drawing in pen and bistre by titian.] it is very different with the _trinity_, called in spain _la gloria_, and now no. in the same gallery. though the master must have been hampered by the express command that the emperor should be portrayed as newly arisen from the grave and adoring the _trinity_ in an agony of prayer, and with him the deceased empress isabel, queen mary of hungary, and prince philip, also as suppliants, he succeeded in bringing forth not indeed a complete masterpiece, but a picture all aspiration and fervent prayer--just the work to satisfy the yearnings of the man who, once the mightiest, was then the loneliest and saddest of mortals on earth. the crown and climax of the whole is the group of the trinity itself, awful in majesty, dazzling in the golden radiance of its environment, and, beautifully linking it with mortality, the blue-robed figure of the virgin, who stands on a lower eminence of cloud as she intercedes for the human race, towards whom her pitying gaze is directed. it would be absurd to pretend that we have here a work entitled, in virtue of the perfect achievement of all that has been sought for, to rank with such earlier masterpieces as the _assunta_ or the _st. peter martyr_. yet it represents in one way sacred art of a higher, a more inspired order, and contains some pictorial beauties--such as the great central group--of which titian would not in those earlier days have been equally capable. there is another descent, though not so marked a one as in the case of the _danaë_, with the _venus and adonis_ painted for philip, the new king-consort of england, and forwarded by the artist to london in the autumn of . that the picture now in the _sala de la reina isabel_ at madrid is this original is proved, in the first place, by the quality of the flesh-painting, the silvery shimmer, the vibration of the whole, the subordination of local colour to general tone, yet by no means to the point of extinction--all these being distinctive qualities of this late time. it is further proved by the fact that it still shows traces of the injury of which philip complained when he received the picture in london. a long horizontal furrow is clearly to be seen running right across the canvas. apart from the consideration that pupils no doubt had a hand in the work, it lacks, with all its decorative elegance and felicity of movement, the charm with which titian, both much earlier in his career and later on towards the end, could invest such mythological subjects.[ ] that the aim of the artist was not a very high one, or this _poesia_ very near to his heart, is demonstrated by the amusingly material fashion in which he recommends it to his royal patron. he says that "if in the _danaë_ the forms were to be seen front-wise, here was occasion to look at them from a contrary direction--a pleasant variety for the ornament of a _camerino_." our worldly-wise painter evidently knew that material allurements as well as supreme art were necessary to captivate philip. it cannot be alleged, all the same, that this purely sensuous mode of conception was not perfectly in consonance with his own temperament, with his own point of view, at this particular stage in his life and practice. the new doge francesco venier had, upon his accession in , called upon titian to paint, besides his own portrait, the orthodox votive picture of his predecessor marcantonio trevisan, and this official performance was duly completed in january , and hung in the sala de' pregadi. at the same time venier determined that thus tardily the memory of a long--deceased doge, antonio grimani, should be rehabilitated by the dedication to him of a similar but more dramatic and allusive composition. the commission for this piece also was given to titian, who made good progress with it, yet for reasons unexplained never carried the important undertaking to completion. it remained in the workshop at the time of his death, and was completed--with what divergence from the original design we cannot authoritatively say--by assistants. antonio grimani, supported by members of his house, or officers attached to his person, kneels in adoration before an emblematic figure of faith which appears in the clouds holding the cross and chalice, which winged child-angels help to support, and haloed round with an oval glory of cherubim--a conception, by the way, quite new and not at all orthodox. to the left appears a majestic figure of st. mark, while the clouds upon which faith is upborne, rise just sufficiently to show a very realistic prospect of venice. there is not to be found in the whole life-work of titian a clumsier or more disjointed composition as a whole, even making the necessary allowances for alterations, additions, and restorations. though the figure of faith is a sufficiently noble conception in itself, the group which it makes with the attendant angels is inexplicably heavy and awkward in arrangement; the flying _pulli_ have none of the audacious grace and buoyancy that lotto or correggio would have imparted to them, none of the rush of tintoretto. the noble figure of st. mark must be of titian's designing, but is certainly not of his painting, while the corresponding figure on the other side is neither the one nor the other. some consolation is afforded by the figure of the kneeling doge himself, which is a masterpiece--not less in the happy expression of naïve adoration than in the rendering, with matchless breadth and certainty of brush, of burnished armour in which is mirrored the glow of the doge's magnificent state robes. chapter iv _portraits of titian's daughter lavinia--death of aretino--"martyrdom of st. lawrence"--death of charles v.--attempted assassination of orazio vecellio--"diana and actaeon" and "diana and calisto"--the "comoro family"--the "magdalen" of the hermitage--the "jupiter and antiope" and "rape of europa"--vasari defines titian's latest manner--"st. jerome" of the brera--"education of cupid"--"jacopo da strada"--impressionistic manner of the end--"ecce homo" of munich--"nymph and shepherd" of vienna--the unfinished "pietà"--death of titian_. it was in the month of march that titian married his only daughter lavinia to cornelio sarcinelli of serravalle, thus leaving the pleasant home at biri grande without a mistress; for his sister orsa had been dead since .[ ] it may be convenient to treat here of the various portraits and more or less idealised portrait-pieces in which titian has immortalised the thoroughly venetian beauty of his daughter. first we have in the great _ecce homo_ of vienna the graceful white-robed figure of a young girl of some fourteen years, placed, with the boy whom she guards, on the steps of pilate's palace. then there is the famous piece _lavinia with a dish of fruit_, dating according to morelli from about , and painted for the master's friend argentina pallavicino of reggio. this last-named work passed in from the solly collection into the berlin gallery. though its general aspect is splendidly decorative, though it is accounted one of the most popular of all titian's works, the berlin picture cannot be allowed to take the highest rank among his performances of the same class. its fascinations are of the obvious and rather superficial kind, its execution is not equal in vigour, freedom, and accent to the best that the master did about the same time. it is pretty obvious here that only the head is adapted from that of lavinia, the full-blown voluptuous form not being that of the youthful maiden, who could not moreover have worn this sumptuous and fanciful costume except in the studio. in the strongest contrast to the conscious allurement of this showpiece is the demure simplicity of mien in the avowed portrait _lavinia as a bride_ in the dresden gallery. in this last she wears a costume of warm white satin and a splendid necklace and earrings of pearls. morelli has pointed out that the fan, in the form of a little flag which she holds, was only used in venice by newly betrothed ladies; and this fixes the time of the portrait as , the date of the marriage contract. the execution is beyond all comparison finer here, the colour more transparent in its warmth, than in the more celebrated berlin piece. quite eight or ten years later than this must date the _salome_ of the prado gallery, which is in general design a variation of the _lavinia_ of berlin. the figure holding up--a grim substitute for the salver of fruit--the head of st. john on a charger has probably been painted without any fresh reference to the model. the writer is unable to agree with crowe and cavalcaselle when they affirm that this _salome_ is certainly painted by one of the master's followers. the touch is assuredly titian's own in the very late time, and the canvas, though much slighter and less deliberate in execution than its predecessors, is in some respects more spontaneous, more vibrant in touch. second to none as a work of art--indeed more striking than any in the naïve and fearless truth of the rendering--is the _lavinia sarcinelli as a matron_ in the dresden gallery. morelli surely exaggerates a little when he describes lavinia here as a woman of forty. though the demure, bright-eyed maiden has grown into a self-possessed venetian dame of portentous dimensions, sarcinelli's spouse is fresh still, and cannot be more than two-or three-and-thirty. this assumption, if accepted, would fix the time of origin of the picture at about , and, reasoning from analogies of technique, this appears to be a more acceptable date than the year - , at which morelli would place it. [illustration: _titian's daughter lavinia._] one of the most important chapters in our master's life closed with the death of aretino, which took place suddenly on the st of october . he had been sitting at table with friends far into the night or morning. one of them, describing to him a farcical incident of rabelaisian quality, he threw himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter, and slipping on the polished floor, was thrown with great force on his head and killed almost instantaneously. this was indeed the violent and sudden death of the strong, licentious man; poetic justice could have devised no more fitting end to such a life. in the year crowe and cavalcaselle, for very sufficient reasons, place the _martyrdom of st. lawrence_, now preserved in the hideously over-ornate church of the jesuits at venice. to the very remarkable analysis which they furnish of this work, the writer feels unable to add anything appreciable by way of comment, for the simple reason that though he has seen it many times, on no occasion has he been fortunate enough to obtain such a light as would enable him to judge the picture on its own merits as it now stands.[ ] of a design more studied in its rhythm, more akin to the florentine and roman schools, than anything that has appeared since the _st. peter martyr_, with a _mise-en-scène_ more classical than anything else from titian's hand that can be pointed to, the picture may be guessed, rather than seen, to be also a curious and subtle study of conflicting lights. on the one hand we have that of the gruesome martyrdom itself, and of a huge torch fastened to the carved shaft of a pedestal; on the other, that of an effulgence from the skies, celestial in brightness, shedding its consoling beams on the victim. the _christ crowned with thorns_, which long adorned the church of s. maria delle grazie at milan, and is now in the long gallery of the louvre, may belong to about this time, but is painted with a larger and more generous brush, with a more spontaneous energy, than the carefully studied piece at the gesuiti. the tawny harmonies finely express in their calculated absence of freshness the scene of brutal and unholy violence so dramatically enacted before our eyes. the rendering of muscle, supple and strong under the living epidermis, the glow of the flesh, the dramatic momentariness of the whole, have not been surpassed even by titian. of the true elevation, of the spiritual dignity that the subject calls for, there is, however, little or nothing. the finely limbed christ is as coarse in type and as violent in action as his executioners; sublimity is reached, strange to say, only in the bust of tiberius, which crowns the rude archway through which the figures have issued into the open space. titian is here the precursor of the _naturalisti_--of caravaggio and his school. yet, all the same, how immeasurable is the distance between the two! [illustration: _christ crowned with thorns. louvre. from a photograph by neurdein_.] on the st of september died the imperial recluse of yuste, once charles v., and it is said his last looks were steadfastly directed towards that great canvas _the trinity_, which to devise with titian had been one of his greatest consolations at a moment when already earthly glories held him no more. philip, on the news of his father's death, retired for some weeks to the monastery of groenendale, and thence sent a despatch to the governor of milan, directing payment of all the arrears of the pensions "granted to titian by charles his father (now in glory)," adding by way of unusual favour a postscript in his own hand.[ ] orazio vecellio, despatched by his father in the spring of to milan to receive the arrears of pension, accepted the hospitality of the sculptor leone leoni, who was then living in splendid style in a palace which he had built and adorned for himself in the lombard city. he was the rival in art as well as the mortal enemy of benvenuto cellini, and as great a ruffian as he, though one less picturesque in blackguardism. one day early in june, when orazio, having left leoni's house, had returned to superintend the removal of certain property, he was set upon, and murderously assaulted by the perfidious host and his servants. the whole affair is wrapped in obscurity. it remains uncertain whether vengeance, or hunger after the arrears of titian's pension, or both, were the motives which incited leoni to attempt the crime. titian's passionate reclamations, addressed immediately to philip ii., met with but partial success, since the sculptor, himself a great favourite with the court of spain, was punished only with fine and banishment, and the affair was afterwards compromised by the payment of a sum of money. titian's letter of september , , to philip ii. announces the despatch of the companion pieces _diana and calisto_ and _diana and actæon_, as well as of an _entombment_ intended to replace a painting of the same subject which had been lost on the way. the two celebrated canvases,[ ] now in the bridgewater gallery, are so familiar that they need no new description. judging by the repetitions, reductions, and copies that exist in the imperial gallery of vienna, the prado gallery, the yarborough collection, and elsewhere, these mythological _poesie_ have captivated the world far more than the fresher and lovelier painted poems of the earlier time--the _worship of venus_, the _bacchanal_, the _bacchus and ariadne_. at no previous period has titian wielded the brush with greater _maestria_ and ease than here, or united a richer or more transparent glow with greater dignity of colour. about the compositions themselves, if we are to take them as the _poesie_ that titian loved to call them, there is a certain want of significance, neither the divine nor the human note being struck with any depth or intensity of vibration. the glamour, the mystery, the intimate charm of the early pieces is lost, and there is felt, enwrapping the whole, that sultry atmosphere of untempered sensuousness which has already, upon more than one occasion, been commented upon. that this should be so is only natural when creative power is not extinguished by old age, but is on the contrary coloured with its passion, so different in quality from that of youth. the _entombment_, which went to madrid with the mythological pieces just now discussed, serves to show how vivid was titian's imagination at this point, when he touched upon a sacred theme, and how little dependent he was in this field on the conceptions of his earlier prime. a more living passion informs the scene, a more intimate sympathy colours it, than we find in the noble _entombment_ of the louvre, much as the picture which preceded it by so many years excels the madrid example in fineness of balance, in dignity, in splendour and charm of colour. here the personages are set free by the master from all academic trammels, and express themselves with a greater spontaneity in grief. the colour, too, of which the general scheme is far less attractive to the eye than in the louvre picture, blazes forth in one note of lurid splendour in the red robe of the saint who supports the feet of the dead christ. in this same year titian painted on the ceiling of the ante-chamber to sansovino's great library in the piazzetta the allegorical figure _wisdom_, thus entering into direct competition with young paolo veronese, schiavone, and the other painters who, striving in friendly rivalry, had been engaged a short time before on the ceiling of the great hall in the same building. this noble design contains a pronounced reminiscence of raphael's incomparable allegorical figures in the camera della segnatura, but excels them as much in decorative splendour and facile breadth of execution as it falls behind them in sublimity of inspiration. crowe and cavalcaselle are probably right in assigning the great _cornaro family_ in the collection of the duke of northumberland to the year or thereabouts. little seen of late years, and like most venetian pictures of the sixteenth century shorn of some of its glory by time and the restorer, this family picture appears to the writer to rank among titian's masterpieces in the domain of portraiture, and to be indeed the finest portrait-group of this special type that venice has produced. in the simplicity and fervour of the conception titian rises to heights which he did not reach in the _madonna di casa pesaro_, where he is hampered by the necessity for combining a votive picture with a series of avowed portraits. it is pretty clear that this _cornaro_ picture, like the pesaro altar-piece, must have been commissioned to commemorate a victory or important political event in the annals of the illustrious family. search among their archives and papers, if they still exist, might throw light upon this point, and fix more accurately the date of the magnificent work. in the open air--it may be outside some great venetian church--an altar has been erected, and upon it is placed a crucifix, on either side of which are church candles, blown this way and the other by the wind. three generations of patricians kneel in prayer and thanksgiving, taking precedence according to age, six handsome boys, arranged in groups of three on either side of the canvas, furnishing an element of great pictorial attractiveness but no vital significance. the act of worship acquires here more reality and a profounder meaning than it can have in those vast altar-pieces in which the divine favour is symbolised by the actual presence of the madonna and child. an open-air effect has been deliberately aimed at and attained, the splendid series of portraits being relieved against the cloud-flecked blue sky with a less sculptural plasticity than the master would have given to them in an indoor scheme. this is another admirable example of the dignity and reserve which titian combines with sumptuous colour at this stage of his practice. his mastery is not less but greater, subtler, than that of his more showy and brilliant contemporaries of the younger generation; the result is something that appears as if it must inevitably have been so and not otherwise. the central figure of the patriarch is robed in deep crimson with grayish fur, rather black in shadow; the man in the prime of manhood wears a more positive crimson, trimmed with tawnier fur, browner in shadow; a lighter sheen is on the brocaded mantle of yet another shade of crimson worn by the most youthful of the three patricians. just the stimulating note to break up a harmony which might otherwise have been of a richness too cloying is furnished--in the master's own peculiar way--by the scarlet stockings of one boy in the right hand group, by the cinnamon sleeve of another.[ ] [illustration: the cornaro family. in the collection of the duke of northumberland.] to the year belongs, according to the elaborate inscription on the picture, the magnificent _portrait of a man_ which is no. in the dresden gallery. it presents a venetian gentleman in his usual habit, but bearing a palm branch such as we associate with saints who have endured martyrdom. strangely sombre and melancholy in its very reserve is this sensitive face, and the tone of the landscape echoes the pathetic note of disquiet. the canvas bears the signature "titianus pictor et aeques (sic) caesaris." there group very well with this dresden picture, though the writer will not venture to assert positively that they belong to exactly the same period, the _st. dominic_ of the borghese gallery and the _knight of malta_ of the prado gallery. in all three--in the two secular portraits as in the sacred piece which is also a portrait--the expression given, and doubtless intended, is that of a man who has withdrawn himself in his time of fullest physical vigour from the pomps and vanities of the world, and sadly concentrates his thoughts on matters of higher import. on the st of december titian wrote to the king to announce the despatch of a _magdalen_, which had already been mentioned more than once in the correspondence. according to vasari and subsequent authorities, silvio badoer, a venetian patrician, saw the masterpiece on the painter's easel, and took it away for a hundred scudi, leaving the master to paint another for philip. this last has disappeared, while the canvas which remained in venice cannot be identified with any certainty. the finest extant example of this type of _magdalen_ is undoubtedly that which from titian's ne'er-do-well son, pompinio, passed to the barbarigo family, and ultimately, with the group of titians forming part of the barbarigo collection, found its way into the imperial gallery of the hermitage at st. petersburg. this answers in every respect to vasari's eloquent description of the _magna peccatrix_, lovely still in her penitence. it is an embodiment of the favourite subject, infinitely finer and more moving than the much earlier _magdalen_ of the pitti, in which the artist's sole preoccupation has been the alluring portraiture of exuberant feminine charms. this later _magdalen_, as vasari says, "ancorchè che sia bellissima, non muove a lascivia, ma a commiserazione," and the contrary might, without exaggeration, be said of the pitti picture.[ ] another of the barbarigo heirlooms which so passed into the hermitage is the ever-popular _venus with the mirror_, the original of many repetitions and variations. here, while one winged love holds the mirror, the other proffers a crown of flowers, not to the goddess, but to the fairest of women. the rich mantle of venetian fashion, the jewels, the coiffure, all show that an idealised portrait of some lovely cytherean of venice, and no true mythological piece, has been intended. at this date, or thereabouts, is very generally placed, with the _rape of europa_ presently to be discussed, the _jupiter and antiope_ of the louvre, more popularly known as the _venere del pardo_.[ ] seeing that the picture is included in the list[ ] sent by titian to antonio perez in , setting forth the titles of canvases delivered during the last twenty-five years, and then still unpaid for, it may well have been completed somewhere about the time at which we have arrived. to the writer it appears nevertheless that it is in essentials the work of an earlier period, taken up and finished thus late in the day for the delectation of the spanish king. seeing that the _venere del pardo_ has gone through two fires--those of the pardo and the louvre--besides cleanings, restorations, and repaintings, even more disfiguring, it would be very unsafe to lay undue stress on technique alone. yet compare the close, sculptural modelling in the figure of antiope with the broader, looser handling in the figure of europa; compare the two landscapes, which are even more divergent in style. the glorious sylvan prospect, which adds so much freshness and beauty to the _venere del pardo_, is conspicuously earlier in manner than, for instance, the backgrounds to the _diana and actæon_ and _diana and calisto_ of bridgewater house. the captivating work is not without its faults, chief among which is the curious awkwardness of design which makes of the composition, cut in two by a central tree, two pictures instead of one. undeniably, too, there is a certain meanness and triviality in the little nymph or mortal of the foreground, which may, however, be due to the intervention of an assistant. but then, with an elasticity truly astounding in a man of his great age, the master has momentarily regained the poetry of his youthful prime, and with it a measure of that giorgionesque fragrance which was evaporating already at the close of the early time, when the _bacchanals_ were brought forth. the antiope herself far transcends in the sovereign charm of her beauty--divine in the truer sense of the word--all titian's venuses, save the one in the _sacred and profane love_. the figure comes in some ways nearer even in design, and infinitely nearer in feeling, to giorgione's _venus_ at dresden than does the _venus of urbino_ in the tribuna, which was closely modelled upon it. and the aged titian had gone back even a step farther than giorgione; the group of antiope with jupiter in the guise of a satyr is clearly a reminiscence of a _nymph surprised by a satyr_--one of the engravings in the _hypnerotomachia poliphili_ first published in , but republished with the same illustrations in .[ ] [illustration: _the rape of europa. from the engraving by j.z. delignon_.] according to the correspondence published by crowe and cavalcaselle there were completed for the spanish king in april the _poesy of europa carried by the bull_, and the _christ praying in the garden_, while a _virgin and child_ was announced as in progress. these paintings, widely divergent as they are in subject, answer very well to each other in technical execution, while in both they differ very materially from the _venere del pardo_. the _rape of europa_, which has retained very much of its blond brilliancy and charm of colour, affords convincing proof of the unrivalled power with which titian still wielded the brush at this stage which precedes that of his very last and most impressionistic style. for decorative effect, for "go," for frankness and breadth of execution, it could not be surpassed. yet hardly elsewhere has the great master approached so near to positive vulgarity as here in the conception of the fair europa as a strapping wench who, with ample limbs outstretched, complacently allows herself to be carried off by the bull, making her appeal for succour merely _pour la forme_. what gulfs divide this conception from that of the antiope, from titian's earlier renderings of female loveliness, from giorgione's supreme venus![ ] [illustration: _portrait of titian, by himself. gallery of the prado, madrid. from a photograph by braun, clément, & cie_.] the _agony in the garden_, which is still to be found in one of the halls of the escorial, even now in its faded state serves to evidence the intensity of religious fervour which possessed titian when, so late in life, he successfully strove to renew the sacred subjects. if the composition--as crowe and cavalcaselle assert--does more or less resemble that of the famous _agony_ by correggio now at apsley house, nothing could differ more absolutely from the parmese master's amiable virtuosity than the aged titian's deep conviction.[ ] to the year belongs the nearly profile portrait of the artist, painted by himself with a subtler refinement and a truer revelation of self than is to be found in those earlier canvases of berlin and the uffizi in which his late prime still shows as a green and vigorous manhood. this is now in the _sala de la reina isabel_ of the prado. the pale noble head, refined by old age to a solemn beauty, is that of one brought face to face with the world beyond; it is the face of the man who could conceive and paint the sacred pieces of the end, the _ecce homo_ of munich and the last _pietà_, with an awe such as we here read in his eyes. much less easy is it to connect this likeness with the artist who went on concurrently producing his venuses, mythological pieces, and pastorals, and joying as much as ever in their production. vasari, who, as will be seen, visited venice in , when he was preparing that new and enlarged edition of the _lives_ which was to appear in , had then an opportunity of renewing his friendly acquaintance with the splendid old man whom he had last seen, already well stricken in years, twenty-one years before in rome. it must have been at this stage that he formed the judgment as to the latest manner of titian which is so admirably expressed in his biography of the master. speaking especially of the _diana and actæon_, the _rape of europa_, and the _deliverance of andromeda_,[ ] he delivers himself as follows:--"it is indeed true that his technical manner in these last is very different from that of his youth. the first works are, be it remembered, carried out with incredible delicacy and pains, so that they can be looked at both at close quarters and from afar. these last ones are done with broad coarse strokes and blots of colour, in such wise that they cannot be appreciated near at hand, but from afar look perfect. this style has been the cause that many, thinking therein to play the imitators and to make a display of practical skill, have produced clumsy, bad pictures. this is so, because, notwithstanding that to many it may seem that titian's works are done without labour, this is not so in truth, and they who think so deceive themselves. it is, on the contrary, to be perceived that they are painted at many sittings, that they have been worked upon with the colours so many times as to make the labour evident; and this method of execution is judicious, beautiful, astonishing, because it makes the pictures seem living." no better proof could be given of vasari's genuine _flair_ and intuition as a critic of art than this passage. we seem to hear, not the tuscan painter bred to regard the style of michelangelo as an article of faith, to imitate his sculptural smoothness of finish and that of angelo bronzino, but some intelligent exponent of impressionistic methods, defending both from attack and from superficial imitation one of the most advanced of modernists. among the sacred works produced in this late time is a _crucifixion_, still preserved in a damaged state in the church of s. domenico at ancona. to a period somewhat earlier than that at which we have arrived may belong the late _madonna and child in a landscape_ which is no. in the alte pinakothek of munich. the writer follows giovanni morelli in believing that this is a studio picture touched by the master, and that the splendidly toned evening landscape is all his. he cannot surely be made wholly responsible for the overgrown and inflated figure of the divine _bambino_, so disproportionate, so entirely wanting in tenderness and charm. the power of vivid conception, the spontaneous fervour which mark titian's latest efforts in the domain of sacred art, are very evident in the great _st. jerome_ of the brera here reproduced. cima, basaiti, and most of the bellinesques had shown an especial affection for the subject, and it had been treated too by lotto, by giorgione, by titian himself; but this is surely as noble and fervent a rendering as venetian art in its prime has brought forth. of extraordinary majesty and beauty is the landscape, with its mighty trees growing out of the abrupt mountain slope, close to the naked rock. in the autumn of we actually find the venerable master, then about eighty-seven years of age, taking a journey to brescia in connection with an important commission given to him for the decoration of the great hall in the palazzo pubblico at brescia, to which the vicentine artist righetto had supplied the ceiling, and palladio had added columns and interior wall-decorations. the three great ceiling-pictures, which were afterwards, as a consequence of the contract then entered upon, executed by the master, or rather by his assistants, endured only until , when in the penultimate year of titian's life they perished in a great fire. the correspondence shows that the vast _last supper_ painted for the refectory of the escorial, and still to be found there, was finished in october , and that there was much haggling and finessing on the part of the artist before it was despatched to spain, the object being to secure payment of the arrears of pension still withheld by the milanese officials. when the huge work did arrive at the escorial the monks perpetrated upon it one of those acts of vandalism of which titian was in more than one instance the victim. finding that the picture would not fit the particular wall of their refectory for which it had been destined, they ruthlessly cut it down, slicing off a large piece of the upper part, and throwing the composition out of balance by the mutilation of the architectural background. [illustration: _st. jerome in the desert. gallery of the brera, milan. from a photograph by anderson_.] passing over the _transfiguration_ on the high altar of san salvatore at venice, we come to the _annunciation_ in the same church with the signature "titianus fecit fecit," added by the master, if we are to credit the legend, in indignation that those who commissioned the canvas should have shown themselves dissatisfied even to the point of expressing incredulity as to his share in the performance. some doubt has been cast upon this story, which may possibly have been evolved on the basis of the peculiar signature. it is at variance with vasari's statement that titian held the picture in slight esteem in comparison with his other works. it is not to be contested that for all the fine passages of colour and execution, the general tone is paler in its silveriness, less vibrant and effective on the whole, than in many of the masterpieces which have been mentioned in their turn. but the conception is a novel and magnificent one, contrasting instructively in its weightiness and majesty with the more naïve and pathetic renderings of an earlier time. the _education of cupid_, popularly but erroneously known as _the three graces_[ ] is one of the pearls of the borghese gallery. it is clearly built in essentials on the master's own _d'avalos allegory_, painted many years before. this later allegory shows venus binding the eyes of love ere he sallies forth into the world, while his bow and his quiver well-stocked with arrows are brought forward by two of the graces. in its conception there is no great freshness or buoyancy, no pretence at invention. the aged magician of the brush has interested himself more in the execution than in the imagining of his picture. it is a fine and typical specimen of the painting _di macchia_, which vasari has praised in a passage already quoted. a work such as this bears in technique much the same relation to the productions of titian's first period that the great _family picture_ of rembrandt at brunswick does to his work done some thirty-five or forty years before. in both instances it is a life-time of legitimate practice that has permitted the old man to indulge without danger in an abridgment of labour, a synthetic presentment of fact, which means no abatement, but in some ways an enhancement of life, breadth, and pictorial effect. to much about the same time, judging from the handling and the types, belongs the curious allegory, _religion succoured by spain_--otherwise _la fé_--now no. in the gallery of the prado. this canvas, notwithstanding a marked superficiality of invention as well as of execution, is in essentials the master's own; moreover it can boast its own special decorative qualities, void though it is of any deep significance. the showy figure of spain holding aloft in one hand a standard, and with the other supporting a shield emblazoned with the arms of the realm, recalls the similar creations of paolo veronese. titian has rarely been less happily inspired than in the figure of religion, represented as a naked female slave newly released from bondage. [illustration: _the education of cupid. gallery of the villa borghese, rome. from a photograph by e. alinari_.] when vasari in paid the visit to venice, of which a word has already been said, he noted, among a good many other things then in progress, the _martyrdom of st. lawrence_, based upon that now at the gesuiti in venice. this was despatched nearly two years later to the escorial, where it still occupies its place on the high altar of the mighty church dedicated to st. lawrence. the brescian ceiling canvases appeared, too, in his list as unfinished. they were sent to their destination early in , to be utterly destroyed, as has been told, by fire in . the best proof we have that titian's artistic power was in many respects at its highest in , is afforded by the magnificent portrait of the mantuan painter and antiquary jacopo da strada, now in the imperial gallery at vienna. it bears, besides the usual late signature of the master, the description of the personage with all his styles and titles, and the date mdlxvi. the execution is again _di macchia_, but magnificent in vitality, as in impressiveness of general effect, swift but not hasty or superficial. the reserve and dignity of former male portraits is exchanged for a more febrile vivacity, akin to that which lotto had in so many of his finest works displayed. his peculiar style is further recalled in the rather abrupt inclination of the figure and the parallel position of the statuette which it holds. but none other than titian himself could have painted the superb head, which he himself has hardly surpassed. it is curious and instructive to find the artist, in a letter addressed to philip on the nd of december , announcing the despatch, together with the just now described altar-piece, _the martyrdom of st. lawrence_, of "una pittura d'una venere ignuda"--the painting of a nude venus. thus is the peculiar double current of the aged painter's genius maintained by the demand for both classes of work. he well knows that to the most catholic majesty very secular pieces indeed will be not less acceptable than those much-desired sacred works in which now titian's power of invention is greatest. [illustration: _religion succoured by spain. gallery of the prado, madrid. from a photograph by braun, clément, & cie_.] our master, in his dealings with the brescians, after the completion of the extensive decorations for the palazzo pubblico, was to have proof that italian citizens were better judges of art than the king of spain, and more grudging if prompter paymasters. they declared, not without some foundation in fact, that the canvases were not really from the hand of titian, and refused to pay more than one thousand ducats for them. the negotiation was conducted--as were most others at that time--by the trusty orazio, who after much show of indignation was compelled at last to accept the proffered payment. [illustration: _portrait of the antiquary jacopo da strada. imperial gallery, vienna. from a photograph by löwy_.] [illustration: _madonna and child. collection of mr. ludwig mond_.] the great victory of lepanto, gained by the united fleets of spain and venice over the turk on the th of october , gave fitting occasion for one of paolo veronese's most radiant masterpieces, the celebrated votive picture of the sala del collegio, for tintoretto's _battle of lepanto_, but also for one of titian's feeblest works, the allegory _philip ii. offering to heaven his son, the infant don ferdinand_, now no. in the gallery of the prado. that sanchez coello, under special directions from the king, prepared the sketch which was to serve as the basis for the definitive picture may well have hampered and annoyed the aged master. still this is but an insufficient excuse for the absurdities of the design, culminating in the figure of the descending angel, who is represented in one of those strained, over-bold attitudes, in which titian, even at his best, never achieved complete success. that he was not, all the same, a stranger to the work, is proved by some flashes of splendid colour, some fine passages of execution. in the four pieces now to be shortly described, the very latest and most impressionistic form of titian's method as a painter is to be observed; all of them are in the highest degree characteristic of this ultimate phase. in the beautiful _madonna and child_ here reproduced,[ ] the hand, though it no longer works with all trenchant vigour of earlier times, produces a magical effect by means of unerring science and a certainty of touch justifying such economy of mere labour as is by the system of execution suggested to the eye. and then this pathetic motive, the simple realism, the unconventional treatment of which are spiritualised by infinite tenderness, is a new thing in venetian, nay in italian art. precisely similar in execution, and equally restrained in the scheme of colour adopted, is the _christ crowned with thorns_ of the alte pinakothek at munich, a reproduction with important variations of the better-known picture in the long gallery of the louvre. less demonstratively and obviously dramatic than its predecessor, the munich example is, as a realisation of the scene, far truer and more profound in pathos. nobler beyond compare in his unresisting acceptance of insult and suffering is the munich christ than the corresponding figure, so violent in its instinctive recoil from pain, of the louvre picture. [illustration: _christ crowned with thorns. alte pinakothek, munich. from a photograph by f. hanfstängl_.] it is nothing short of startling at the very end of titian's career to meet with a work which, expressed in this masterly late technique of his, vies in freshness of inspiration with the finest of his early _poesie_. this is the _nymph and shepherd_[ ] of the imperial gallery at vienna, a picture which the world had forgotten until it was added, or rather restored, to the state collection on its transference from the belvedere to the gorgeous palace which it now occupies. in its almost monochromatic harmony of embrowned silver the canvas embodies more absolutely than any other, save perhaps the final _pietà_, the ideal of tone-harmony towards which the master in his late time had been steadily tending. richness and brilliancy of local colour are subordinated, and this time up to the point of effacement, to this luminous monotone, so mysteriously effective in the hands of a master such as titian. in the solemn twilight which descends from the heavens, just faintly flushed with rose, an amorous shepherd, flower-crowned, pipes to a nude nymph, who, half-won by the appealing strain, turns her head as she lies luxuriously extended on a wild beast's hide, covering the grassy knoll; in the distance a strayed goat browses on the leafage of a projecting branch. it may not be concealed that a note of ardent sensuousness still makes itself felt, as it does in most of the later pieces of the same class. but here, transfigured by a freshness of poetic inspiration hardly to be traced in the master's work in pieces of this order, since those early giorgionesque days when the sixteenth century was in its youth, it offends no more than does an idyll of theocritus. since the _three ages_ of bridgewater house, divided from the _nymph and shepherd_ by nearly seventy years of life and labour, titian had produced nothing which, apart from the question of technical execution, might so nearly be paralleled with that exquisite pastoral. the early _poesia_ gives, wrapped in clear even daylight, the perfect moment of trusting, satisfied love; the late one, with less purity, but, strange to say, with a higher passion, renders, beautified by an evening light more solemn and suggestive, the divine ardours fanned by solitude and opportunity. and now we come to the _pietà_,[ ] which so nobly and appropriately closes a career unexampled for duration and sustained achievement. titian had bargained with the franciscan monks of the frari, which contained already the _assunta_ and the _madonna di casa pesaro_, for a grave in the cappella del crocifisso, offering in payment a _pietà_, and this offer had been accepted. but some misunderstanding and consequent quarrel having been the ultimate outcome of the proposed arrangements, he left his great canvas unfinished, and willed that his body should be taken to cadore, and there buried in the chapel of the vecelli. [illustration: _pietà. by titian and palma giovine. accademia delle belle arti, venice. from a photograph by e. alinari._] the well-known inscription on the base of the monumental niche which occupies the centre of the _pietà_, "quod titianus inchoatum reliquit, palma reverenter absolvit, deoque dicavit opus," records how what titian had left undone was completed as reverently as might be by palma giovine. at this stage--the question being much complicated by subsequent restorations--the effort to draw the line accurately between the work of the master on one hand and that of his able and pious assistant on the other, would be unprofitable. let us rather strive to appreciate what is left of a creation unique in the life-work of titian, and in some ways his most sublime invention. genius alone could have triumphed over the heterogeneous and fantastic surroundings in which he has chosen to enframe his great central group. and yet even these--the great rusticated niche with the gold mosaic of the pelican feeding its young, the statues of moses on one side and of the hellespontic sibyl on the other--but serve to heighten the awe of the spectator. the artificial light is obtained in part from a row of crystal lamps on the cornice of the niche, in part, too, from the torch borne by the beautiful boy-angel who hovers in mid-air, yet another focus of illumination being the body of the dead christ. this system of lighting furnishes just the luminous half-gloom, the deeply significant chiaroscuro, that the painter requires in order to give the most poignant effect to his last and most thrilling conception of the world's tragedy. as is often the case with tintoretto, but more seldom with titian, the eloquent passion breathed forth in this _pietà_ is not to be accounted for by any element or elements of the composition taken separately; it depends to so great an extent on the poetic suggestiveness of the illumination, on the strange and indefinable power of evocation that the aged master here exceptionally commands. wonderfully does the terrible figure of the magdalen contrast in its excess of passion with the sculptural repose, the permanence of the main group. as she starts forward, almost menacing in her grief, her loud and bitter cry seems to ring through space, accusing all mankind of its great crime. it is with a conviction far more intense than has ever possessed him in his prime, with an awe nearly akin to terror, that titian, himself trembling on the verge of eternity, and painting, too, that which shall purchase his own grave, has produced this profoundly moving work. no more fitting end and crown to the great achievements of the master's old age could well be imagined. there is no temptation to dwell unnecessarily upon the short period of horror and calamity with which this glorious life came to an end. if titian had died a year earlier, his biographer might still have wound up with those beautiful words of vasari's peroration: "e stato tiziano sanissimo et fortunate quant' alcun altro suo pari sia stato ancor mai; e non ha mai avuto dai cieli se non favori e felicità." too true it is, alas, that no man's life may be counted happy until its close! now comes upon the great city this all-enveloping horror of the plague, beginning in , but in attaining to such vast proportions as to sweep away more than a quarter of the whole population of , inhabitants. on the th of august, , old titian is attacked and swept away--surprised, as one would like to believe, while still at work on his _pietà_. even at such a moment, when panic reigns supreme, and the most honoured, the most dearly beloved are left untended, he is not to be hurried into an unmarked grave. notwithstanding the sanitary law which forbids the burial of one who has succumbed to the plague in any of the city churches, he receives the supreme and at this awful moment unique honour of solemn obsequies. the body is taken with all due observance to the great church of the frari, and there interred in the cappella del crocifisso, which titian has already, before the quarrel with the franciscans, designated as his final resting-place. he is spared the grief of knowing that the favourite son, orazio, for whom all these years he has laboured and schemed, is to follow him immediately, dying also of the plague, and not even at biri grande, but in the lazzaretto vecchio, near the lido; that the incorrigible pomponio is to succeed and enjoy the inheritance after his own unworthy fashion. he is spared the knowledge of the great calamity of , the destruction by fire of the sala del gran consiglio, and with it, of the _battle of cadore_, and most of the noble work done officially for the doges and the signoria. one would like to think that this catastrophe of the end must have come suddenly upon the venerable master like a hideous dream, appearing to him, as death often does to those upon whom it descends, less significant than it does to us who read. instead of remaining fixed in sad contemplation of this short final moment when the radiant orb goes suddenly down below the horizon in storm and cloud, let us keep steadily in view the light as, serene in its far-reaching radiance, it illuminated the world for eighty splendid years. let us think of titian as the greatest painter, if not the greatest genius in art, that the world has produced; as, what vasari with such conviction described him to be, "the man as highly favoured by fortune as any of his kind had ever been before him."[ ] footnotes: [footnote : "the earlier work of titian," _portfolio_, october .] [footnote : according to the catalogue of , this picture was formerly in the sacristy of the escorial in spain. it can only be by an oversight that it is therein described as "possibly painted there," since titian never was in spain.] [footnote : it is especially to be noted that there is not a trace of red in the picture, save for the modest crimson waistband of the st. catherine. contrary to almost universal usage, it might almost be said to orthodoxy, the entire draperies of the virgin are of one intense blue. her veil-like head-gear is of a brownish gray, while the st. catherine wears a golden-brown scarf, continuing the glories of her elaborately dressed hair. the audacity of the colour-scheme is only equalled by its success; no calculated effort at anything unusual being apparent. the beautiful naked _putto_ who appears in the sky, arresting the progress of the shepherds, is too trivial in conception for the occasion. a similar incident is depicted in the background of the much earlier _holy family_, no. . at the national gallery, but there the messenger angel is more appropriately and more reverently depicted as full-grown and in flowing garments.] [footnote : crowe and cavalcaselle, vol. i. pp. , ; _tizian_, von h. knackfuss, p. .] [footnote : crowe and cavalcaselle, appendix to vol. i. p. .] [footnote : no. in the long gallery of the louvre.] [footnote : see the canvas no. in the imperial gallery of vienna. the want of life and of a definite personal character makes it almost repellent, notwithstanding the breadth and easy mastery of the technique. rubens's copy of a lost or unidentified titian, no. in the same gallery, shows that he painted isabella from life in mature middle age, and with a truthfulness omitting no sign of over-ripeness. this portrait may very possibly have been done in , when titian appeared at the court of the gonzagas. its realism, even allowing for rubens's unconscious exaggeration, might well have deterred the gonzaga princess from being limned from life some twelve years later still.] [footnote : crowe and cavalcaselle, vol. i., appendix, p. .] [footnote : the idea of painting st. jerome by moonlight was not a new one. in the house at venice of andrea odoni, the dilettante whose famous portrait by lotto is at hampton court, the anonimo (marcantonio michiel) saw, in , "st. jerome seated naked in a desert landscape by moonlight, by ---- (sic), copied from a canvas by zorzi da castelfranco (giorgione)."] [footnote : see "the picture gallery of charles i.," _the portfolio_, january , pp. and .] [footnote : the somewhat similar _allegories_ no. and no. in the imperial gallery at vienna (new catalogue, ), both classed as by titian, cannot take rank as more than atelier works. still farther from the master is the _initiation of a bacchante_, no. (cat. ), in the alte pinakothek of munich. this is a piece too cold and hard, too opaque, to have come even from his studio. it is a _pasticcio_ made up in a curiously mechanical way, from the louvre _allegory_ and the quite late _education of cupid_ in the borghese gallery; the latter composition having been manifestly based by titian himself, according to what became something like a custom in old age, upon the earlier _allegory_.] [footnote : a rather tiresome and lifeless portrait of ippolito is that to be found in the picture no. in the national gallery, in which it has been assumed that his companion is his favourite painter, sebastiano del piombo, to whom the picture is, not without some misgivings, attributed.] [footnote : it has been photographed under this name by anderson of rome.] [footnote : in much the same position, since it hardly enjoys the celebrity to which it is entitled, is another masterpiece of portraiture from the brush of titian, which, as belonging to his earlier middle time, should more properly have been mentioned in the first section of this monograph. this is the great _portrait of a man in black_, no. in the louvre. it shows a man of some forty years, of simple mien yet of indefinably tragic aspect; he wears moderately long hair, is clothed entirely in black, and rests his right hand on his hip, while passing the left through his belt. the dimensions of the canvas are more imposing than those of the _jeune homme au gant_. no example in the louvre, even though it competes with madrid for the honour of possessing the greatest titians in the world, is of finer quality than this picture. near this--no. in the same great gallery--hangs another _portrait of a man in black_ by titian, and belonging to his middle time. the personage presented, though of high breeding, is cynical and repellent of aspect. the strong right hand rests quietly yet menacingly on a poniard, this attitude serving to give a peculiarly aggressive character to the whole conception. in the present state of this fine and striking picture the yellowness and want of transparency of the flesh-tones, both in the head and hands, gives rise to certain doubts as to the correctness of the ascription. yet this peculiarity may well arise from injury; it would at any rate be hazardous to put forward any other name than that of titian, to whom we must be content to leave the portrait.] [footnote : this is the exceedingly mannered yet all the same rich and beautiful _st. catherine, st. roch, with a boy angel, and st. sebastian_.] [footnote : see giorgione's _adrastus and hypsipyle (landscape with the soldier and the gipsy)_ of the giovanelli palace, the _venus_ of dresden, the _concert champêtre_ of the louvre.] [footnote : it is unnecessary in this connection to speak of the darmstadt _venus_ invented by crowe and cavalcaselle, and to which as a type they so constantly refer. giovanni morelli has demonstrated with very general acceptance that this is only a late adaptation of the exquisite _venus_ of dresden, which it is his greatest glory to have restored to barbarelli and to the world.] [footnote : _die galerien zu münchen und dresden von ivan lermolieff_, p. .] [footnote : palma vecchio, in his presentments of ripe venetian beauty, was, we have seen, much more literal than giorgione, more literal, too, less the poet-painter, than the young titian. yet in the great _venus_ of the fitzwilliam museum, cambridge--not, indeed, in that of dresden--his ideal is a higher one than titian's in such pieces as the _venus of urbino_ and the later _venus_, its companion, in the tribuna. the two bonifazi of verona followed palma, giving, however, to the loveliness of their women not, indeed, a more exalted character, but a less pronounced sensuousness--an added refinement but a weaker personality. paris bordone took the note from titian, but being less a great artist than a fine painter, descended a step lower in the scale. paolo veronese unaffectedly joys in the beauty of woman, in the sheen of fair flesh, without any under-current of deeper meaning. tintoretto, though like his brother venetians he delights in the rendering of the human form unveiled, is but little disquieted by the fascinating problem which now occupies us. he is by nature strangely spiritual, though he is far from indulging in any false idealisation, though he shrinks not at all from the statement of the truth as it presents itself to him. let his famous pictures in the anticollegio of the doges' palace, his _muses_ at hampton court, and above all that unique painted poem, _the rescue_, in the dresden gallery, serve to support this view of his art.] [footnote : crowe and cavalcaselle, _life of titian_, vol. i. p. .] [footnote : two of these have survived in the _roman emperor on horseback_, no. , and the similarly named picture, no. , at hampton court palace. these panels were among the mantua pieces purchased for charles i. by daniel nys from duke vincenzo in - . if the hampton court pieces are indeed, as there appears no valid reason to doubt, two of the canvases mentioned by vasari, we must assume that though they bore giulio's name as _chef d'atelier_, he did little work on them himself. in the mantuan catalogue contained in d'arco's _notizie_ they were entered thus:--"dieci altri quadri, dipintovi un imperatore per quadro a cavallo--opera di mano di giulio romano" (see _the royal gallery of hampton court_, by ernest law, ).] [footnote : the late charles yriarte in a recent article, "sabionneta la petite athènes," published in the _gazette des beaux arts_, march , states that bernardino campi of cremona, giulio's subordinate at the moment, painted the twelfth _cæsar_, but adduces no evidence in support of this departure from the usual assumption.] [footnote : see "the picture gallery of charles i.," _the portfolio_, october , pp. , .] [footnote : nos. - --catalogue of --provincial museum of hanover. the dimensions are . _c._ by . _c._] [footnote : of all pordenone's exterior decorations executed in venice nothing now remains. his only works of importance in the venetian capital are the altar-piece in s. giovanni elemosinario already mentioned; the _san lorenzo giustiniani_ altar-piece in the accademia delle belle arti; the magnificent though in parts carelessly painted _madonna del carmelo_ in the same gallery; the vast _st. martin and st. christopher_ in the church of s. rocco; the _annunciation_ of s. maria degli angeli at murano.] [footnote : no. in the winter exhibition at burlington house in . by franceschini is no doubt meant paolo degli franceschi, whose portrait titian is known to have painted. he has been identified among the figures in the foreground of the _presentation of the virgin_.] [footnote : see a very interesting article, "vittore carpaccio--la scuola degli albanesi," by dr. gustav ludwig, in the _archivio storico dell' arte_ for november-december .] [footnote : a gigantic canvas of this order is, or rather was, the famous _storm_ of the venetian accademia, which has for many years past been dubitatively assigned to giorgione. vasari described it as by palma vecchio, stating that it was painted for the scuola di s. marco in the piazza ss. giovanni e paolo, in rivalry with gian bellino(!) and mansueti, and referring to it in great detail and with a more fervent enthusiasm than he accords to any other venetian picture. to the writer, judging from the parts of the original which have survived, it has long appeared that this may indeed be after all the right attribution. the ascription to giorgione is mainly based on the romantic character of the invention, which certainly does not answer to anything that we know from the hand or brain of palma. but then the learned men who helped giorgione and titian may well have helped him; and the structure of the thick-set figures in the foreground is absolutely his, as is also the sunset light on the horizon.] [footnote : this is an arrangement analogous to that with the aid of which tintoretto later on, in the _crucifixion_ of san cassiano at venice, attains to so sublime an effect. there the spears--not brandished but steadily held aloft in rigid and inflexible regularity--strangely heighten the solemn tragedy of the scene.] [footnote : crowe and cavalcaselle, _life of titian_, vol. vi. p. .] [footnote : the writer is unable to accept as a genuine design by titian for the picture the well-known sepia drawing in the collection of the uffizi. the composition is too clumsy in its mechanical repetition of parts, the action of the virgin too awkward. the design looks more like an adaptation by some bolognese eclectic.] [footnote : this double portrait has not been preserved. according to crowe and cavalcaselle, the full length of pier luigi still exists in the palazzo reale at naples (not seen by the writer).] [footnote : the writer, who has studied in the originals all the other titians mentioned in this monograph, has had as yet no opportunity of examining those in the hermitage. he knows them only in the reproductions of messrs. braun, and in those new and admirable ones recently published by the berlin photographic company.] [footnote : this study from the life would appear to bear some such relation to the finished original as the _innocent x._ of velazquez at apsley house bears to the great portrait of that pope in the doria panfili collection.] [footnote : this portrait-group belongs properly to the time a few years ahead, since it was undertaken during titian's stay in rome.] [footnote : the imposing signature runs _titianus eques ces. f. ._] [footnote : the type is not the nobler and more suave one seen in the _cristo della moneta_ and the _pilgrims of emmaus_; it is the much less exalted one which is reproduced in the _ecce homo_ of madrid, and in the many repetitions and variations related to that picture, which cannot itself be accepted as an original from the hand of titian.] [footnote : vasari saw a _christ with cleophas and luke_ by titian, above the door in the salotta d'oro, which precedes the sala del consiglio de' dieci in the doges' palace, and states that it had been acquired by the patrician alessandro contarini and by him presented to the signoria. the evidence of successive historians would appear to prove that it remained there until the close of last century. according to crowe and cavalcaselle the louvre picture was a replica done for mantua, which with the other gonzaga pictures found its way into charles i.'s collection, and thence, through that of jabach, finally into the gallery of louis xiv. at the sale of the royal collection by the commonwealth it was appraised at £ . the picture bears the signature, unusual for this period, "tician." there is another _christ with the pilgrims at emmaus_ in the collection of the earl of yarborough, signed "titianus," in which, alike as to the figures, the scheme of colour, and the landscape, there are important variations. one point is of especial importance. behind the figure of st. luke in the yarborough picture is a second pillar. this is not intended to appear in the louvre picture; yet underneath the glow of the landscape there is just the shadow of such a pillar, giving evidence of a _pentimento_ on the part of the master. this, so far as it goes, is evidence that the louvre example was a revised version, and the yarborough picture a repetition or adaptation of the first original seen by vasari. however this may be, there can be no manner of doubt that the picture in the long gallery of the louvre is an original entirely from the hand of titian, while lord yarborough's picture shows nothing of his touch and little even of the manner of his studio at the time.] [footnote : purchased at the sale of charles i.'s collection by alonso de cardenas for philip iv. at the price of £ .] [footnote : crowe and cavalcaselle, _life of titian_, vol. ii., appendix (p. ).] [footnote : moritz thausing has striven in his _wiener kunstbriefe_ to show that the coat of arms on the marble bas-relief in the _sacred and profane love_ is that of the well-known nuremberg house of imhof. this interpretation has, however, been controverted by herz franz wickhoff.] [footnote : cesare vecellio must have been very young at this time. the costume-book, _degli abiti antichi e moderni_, to which he owes his chief fame, was published at venice in .] [footnote : "das tizianbildniss der königlichen galerie zu cassel," _jahrbuch der königlich-preussischen kunstsammlungen_, funfzehnter band, iii. heft.] [footnote : see the _francesco maria, duke of urbino_ at the uffizi; also, for the modish headpiece, the _ippolito de' medici_ at the pitti.] [footnote : a number of fine portraits must of necessity be passed over in these remarks. the superb if not very well-preserved _antonio portia_, within the last few years added to the brera, dates back a good many years from this time. then we have, among other things, the _benedetto varchi_ and the _fabrizio salvaresio_ of the imperial museum at vienna--the latter bearing the date . the writer is unable to accept as a genuine titian the interesting but rather matter-of-fact _portrait of a lady in mourning_, no. in the dresden gallery. the master never painted with such a lack of charm and distinction. very doubtful, but difficult to judge in its present state, is the _portrait of a lady with a vase_, no. in the same collection. morelli accepts as a genuine example of the master the _portrait of a lady in a red dress_ also in the dresden gallery, where it bears the number . if the picture is his, as the technical execution would lead the observer to believe, it constitutes in its stiffness and unambitious _naïveté_ a curious exception in his long series of portraits.] [footnote : it is impossible to discuss here the atelier repetitions in the collections of the national gallery and lord wemyss respectively, or the numerous copies to be found in other places.] [footnote : for the full text of the marriage contract see giovanni morelli, _die galerien zu münchen und dresden_, pp. - .] [footnote : joshua reynolds, who saw it during his tour in italy, says: "it is so dark a picture that, at first casting my eyes on it, i thought there was a black curtain before it."] [footnote : crowe and cavalcaselle, vol. ii. p. .] [footnote : they were, with the _rape of europa_, among the so-called "light pieces" presented to prince charles by philip iv., and packed for transmission to england. on the collapse of the marriage negotiations they were, however, kept back. later on philip v. presented them to the marquis de grammont. they subsequently formed part of the orleans gallery, and were acquired at the great sale in london by the duke of bridgewater for £ apiece.] [footnote : this great piece is painted on a canvas of peculiarly coarse grain, with a well-defined lozenge pattern. it was once owned by van dyck, at the sale of whose possessions, in , a good number of years after his death, it was acquired by algernon percy, earl of northumberland. in it was in the exhibition of old masters at the royal academy.] [footnote : the best repetition of this hermitage _magdalen_ is that in the naples museum; another was formerly in the ashburton collection, and yet another is in the durazzo gallery at genoa. the similar, but not identical, picture in the yarborough collection is anything but "cold in tone," as crowe and cavalcaselle call it. it is, on the contrary, rich in colour, but as to the head of the saint, much less attractive than the original.] [footnote : this picture was presented by philip iv. to prince charles of england, and was, at the sale of his collection, acquired by jabach for £ , and from him bought by cardinal mazarin, whose heirs sold it to louis xiv. the cardinal thus possessed the two finest representations of the _jupiter and antiope_ legend--that by correggio (also now in the louvre) and the titian. it was to these pictures especially that his touching farewell was addressed a few hours before his death.] [footnote : see crowe and cavalcaselle, vol. ii., appendix, p. .] [footnote : see as to the vicissitudes through which the picture has passed an article, "les restaurations du tableau du titien, _jupiter et antiope_" by fernand engerand, in the _chronique des arts_ of th may .] [footnote : this picture came to england with the orleans gallery, and was until lately at cobham hall in the collection of the earl of darnley. it has now passed into that of mrs j.l. gardner of boston, u.s. it is represented in the prado gallery by rubens's superb copy. a venetian copy on a very small scale exists in the wallace collection.] [footnote : a very clever adaptation of this work is no. in the prado gallery under the name of the master. it is remarkable for the contrast between the moonlight which irradiates the christ and the artificial light supplied by the lantern carried by one of the soldiers.] [footnote : this picture is mentioned in the list of furnished by titian to secretary antonio perez. a _perseus and andromeda_ by, or attributed to, titian was in the orleans gallery. is this the canvas now in the wallace collection, but not as yet publicly exhibited there? this last piece was undoubtedly produced in the _entourage_ and with the assistance of titian, and it corresponds perfectly to vasari's description of the _deliverance of andromeda_. it has the loose easy touch of the late time, but obscured as it at present is by dirt and successive coats of now discoloured varnish, no more definite opinion with regard to its merits can be given. no. in the hermitage is a canvas identical in subject and dimensions with this last-named picture. it was once attributed to tintoretto, but is now put down to the school of titian.] [footnote : somewhat earlier in the order of the late works should come in, if we may venture to judge from the technique of a work that is practically a ruin, the _adam and eve_ of the prado, in which, for the usual serpent with the human head of the feminine type, titian has substituted as tempter an insignificant _amorino_. far more enjoyable than this original in its present state is the magnificent copy, with slight yet marked variations, left behind by rubens. this is also to be found in the prado. a drawing by the great antwerper from titian's picture is in the louvre. this is more markedly flemish in aspect than the painted canvas, and lacks the foolish little love.] [footnote : formerly in the collection of the earl of dudley, upon the sale of which it was acquired by mr. ludwig mond. it was in the venetian exhibition at the new gallery. there is an engraving of it by pieter de jode, jun.] [footnote : this is no. in the catalogue of . an etching of the picture appeared with an article "les Écoles d'italie au musée de vienne," from the pen of herr franz wickhoff, in the _gazette des beaux arts_ for february . it was badly engraved for the teniers gallery by lissebetius.] [footnote : now in the accademia delle belle arti of venice.] [footnote : it was the intention of the writer to add to this monograph a short chapter on the drawings of titian. the subject is, however, far too vast for such summary treatment, and its discussion must therefore be postponed. leaving out of the question the very numerous drawings by domenico campagnola which morelli has once for all separated from those of the greater master, and those also which, while belonging to the same class and period, are neither titian's nor even campagnola's, a few of the genuine landscapes may be just lightly touched upon. the beautiful early landscape with a battlemented castle, now or lately in the possession of mr. t.w. russell (reproduction in the british museum marked - - - ) is in the opinion of the writer a genuine titian. _the vision of st. eustace_, reproduced in the first section of this monograph ("the earlier work of titian") from the original in the british museum, is a noble and pathetic example of the earlier manner. perhaps the most beautiful of the landscape drawings still preserving something of the giorgionesque aroma is that with the enigmatic female figure, entirely nude but with the head veiled, and the shepherds sheltering from the noonday sun, which is in the great collection at chatsworth (no. in venetian exhibition at new gallery). later than this is the fine landscape in the same collection with a riderless horse crossing a stream (no. in venetian exhibition at new gallery). the well-known _st. jerome_ here given (british museum) is ascribed by no less an authority than giovanni morelli to the master, but the poor quality of the little round trees, and of the background generally, is calculated to give pause to the student. a good example of the later style, in which the technique is more that of the painter and less that of the draughtsman, is the so-called _landscape with the pedlar_ at chatsworth. but, faded though it is, the finest extant drawing of the later period is that here (p. ) for the first time reproduced by the kind permission of the owner, professor legros, who had the great good fortune and good taste to discover it in a london book-shop. there can be no doubt that this ought to be in the print room at the british museum. a good instance, on the other hand, of a drawing which cannot without demur be left to titian, though it is a good deal too late in style for domenico campagnola, and moreover, much too fine and sincere for that clever, facile adapter of other people's work, is the beautiful pastoral in the albertina at vienna (b. ), with the shepherd piping as he leads his flock homewards.] index "agony in the garden, the" (escorial), alfonso d'avalos, marqués del vasto (madrid), alfonso d'avalos, with his family, portrait of (louvre), , "alfonso d'este" (madrid), , "annunciation, the" (venice), "annunciation of the virgin" (verona), aretino, portrait of (pitti gallery), , , , acquaviva, duke of arti, portrait of, "bacchanals, the" (madrid), , , "bacchus and ariadne" (national gallery), , , "battle of cadore, the," , beccadelli, legate, portrait of (uffizi), , "bella, la" (pitti), "boy baptist," "cain and abel" (venice), , charles v., portrait of (munich), "charles v. at mühlberg" (madrid), , - "christ crowned with thorns" (louvre), "christ crowned with thorns" (munich), "christ with the pilgrims at emmaus" (louvre), cornaro family (duke of northumberland's collection), cornaro, portrait of (castle howard), "cornelia, la," portrait of, "danaë and the golden rain" (naples museum), , "danaë with venus and adonis" (madrid), - "david victorious over goliath" (venice), , "deliverance of andromeda, the," "descent of the holy spirit, the" (venice), , "destruction of pharaoh's host, the," "diana and actæon" (bridgewater gallery), , , , "diana and calisto" (bridgewater gallery), , , "ecce homo" (madrid), ; (munich), ; (vienna), , . "education of cupid, the" (rome), "entombment, the" (louvre), "entombment, the" (madrid), ercole d'este, portrait of, , farnese family, portrait of, "flora" (uffizi), , francis the first, portrait of (louvre), , frederick of saxony, portrait of (vienna), "girl in a fur cloak" (vienna), , gonzaga, eleonora, portraits of, , , gonzaga, federigo, portrait of, gonzaga, isabella d'este, portrait of, , "herodias" (doria gallery), , "ixion," "jupiter and antiope," , , lavinia, titian's daughter, , "madonna addolorata," , "madonna and child in a landscape" (munich), , "madonna and child" (mr. ludwig mond's collection), "madonna and child with st. catherine and st. john" (national gallery), , , "madonna and child with st. peter and st. andrew" (serravalle), "madonna del coniglio" (louvre), - "magdalen" (florence), , "martyrdom of st. lawrence, the" (venice), , , medici, portrait of ippolito de' (pitti), , , - "nymph and shepherd" (vienna), , "ottavio farnese with his beloved": see _venus with organ player_ philip ii., portrait of (madrid), "pietà," , , , pope paul iii., portrait of (naples), ; (hermitage), pope paul iii. with alessandro farnese and ottavio farnese (naples), , "portrait of a man" (dresden), "portrait of a man in black" (louvre), (footnote) "presentation of the virgin in the temple" (venice), - "prometheus bound to the rock," "prince philip of austria in armour" (madrid), ; (pitti), ; (naples), "rape of europa," , , , "religion succoured by spain" (madrid), "sacred and profane love" (borghese gallery), , , "sacrifice of isaac" (venice), "st. jerome in prayer" (louvre), "st. jerome in the desert" (milan), "st. john in the desert" (venice), "st. margaret in a landscape" (madrid), "st. peter martyr," , , , , "sisyphus" (madrid), strada, jacopo da, portrait of (vienna), "tantalus" (madrid), "three ages, the" (bridgewater gallery), titian, portrait of, by himself (berlin), , ; (madrid), ; (pitti), ; (uffizi), , "titian and franceschini" (windsor castle), "trinity, the," "twelve cæsars, series of," - vasto, marqués del: see _alfonso d' avalos_ "venere del pardo" (paris), ; see also _jupiter and antiope_ "venetian storm landscape" (buckingham palace), "venus anadyomene" (bridgewater gallery), "venus and cupid" (tribuna), , , , "venus of urbino," , , , , "venus with the mirror" (hermitage), "venus with the organ player" (madrid), "virgen de los dolores" (madrid), "worship of venus" (madrid), , , "young nobleman, portrait of" (florence), the history of painting in italy. vol. iii. the history of painting in italy, from the period of the revival of the fine arts, to the end of the eighteenth century: translated from the original italian of the abate luigi lanzi. by thomas roscoe. _in six volumes._ vol. iii. containing the school of venice. london: printed for w. simpkin and r. marshall, stationers'-hall court, ludgate street. . j. m'creery, tooks court, chancery-lane, london. contents of the third volume. history of painting in upper italy. book the first. venetian school. page epoch i. _the old masters_ epoch ii. _giorgione, titian, tintoretto, jacopo da bassano, paolo veronese_ epoch iii. _innovations of the mannerists of the seventeenth century. corruption of venetian painting_ epoch iv. _of exotic and new styles in venice_ history of painting in upper italy. book i. venetian school. this school would have required no farther illustration from any other pen, had signor antonio zanetti, in his highly esteemed work upon venetian painting, included a more ample consideration of the artists of the state, instead of confining his attention wholly to those, whose productions, ornamenting the churches and other public places, had all been completed in the city of venice alone. he has, nevertheless, rendered distinguished service to any one ambitious of succeeding him, and of extending the same subject beyond these narrower limits; since he has observed the most lucid order in the arrangement of epochs, in the description of styles, in estimating the merits of various painters, and thus ascertaining the particular rank as well as the age belonging to each. those artists then, whom he has omitted to commemorate, may be easily reduced under one or other of the divisions pointed out by him, and the whole history enlarged upon the plan which he first laid down. in cultivating an acquaintance with these additional names, the memorials collected by vasari; afterwards, on a more extensive scale, by the cavaliere ridolfi, in his lives of the venetian painters; and by boschini, in the _miniere della pittura_, in the _carta del navegar pittoresco_, and in other works: materials drawn from all parts of the venetian state--will be of signal advantage to us. no one, it is hoped, will feel displeased at the introduction of the name of vasari, against whom the historians of the venetian school were louder in their complaints than even those of the roman, the siennese, and the neapolitan schools; all whose causes of difference i have elsewhere recounted, adding to them, whenever i found them admissible, my own refutations. these it would be needless now to repeat, in reply to the venetian writers. i shall merely observe that vasari bestowed very ample commendations upon the venetian professors, in different parts of his history, and more particularly in the lives of carpaccio, of liberale, and of pordenone. let me add that if he was occasionally betrayed into errors, either from want of more correct information, or from a degree of jealousy or spirit of patriotic rivalry, which probably may have secretly influenced him in his opinions, it will be no difficult task in the present enlightened period,[ ] to substitute the real names, more exact accounts, and more impartial examinations of the earlier professors of the school.[ ] in respect to the more modern, up to whose period he did not reach, i possess historical matter, which, if not very copious, is certainly less scanty than such as relates to many of the other schools of italy. besides ridolfi, boschini, and zanetti, it includes the historians of the particular cities, the same from whom orlandi selected his various notices of artists; and among whom none is to be preferred to signor zamboni for the fulness and authenticity of his materials, in his work, entitled _fabbriche di brescia_. i am, moreover, in possession of several authors who have distinctly treated of the lives, or published other accounts of those who flourished in their own cities;--such as the commendatore del pozzo, in his notice of the veronese,[ ] count tassi of those of bergamo, and signor verci of the bassanese artists. and no slight assistance may also be drawn from the different "_guides_," or descriptions of paintings, exhibited in many cities of the state, although they are far from being all of equal merit. there is the "guida trevigiana," of rigamonti, that of vicenza printed by vendramini mosca, that of brescia by carboni, and that of verona, expressly drawn from the "_verona illustrata_" of the marquis maffei, with the still more valuable one of venice, dated , from the able pen of antonio m. zanetti. to these we may likewise add that first published by rossetti, now revised and improved by brandolese, abounding with historical memoirs of the painters of padua; and the guide of rovigo by bartoli, communicating much new and interesting information, which serves to point out more accurately certain eras among the professors of the art, while the same may, in part, be observed of that of bergamo, by the dottore pasta. nor are these all; for i am not a little indebted to several notices published in the "elogj" of signor longhi, and in some of the catalogues of private collections; besides other anecdotes, in part collected by myself, in part[ ] communicated by my friends, and in particular by the very accomplished sig. gio. maria sasso,[ ] who has already promised to gratify us with his "venezia pittrice," accompanied with designs of the most esteemed paintings of this school, accurately engraved. [footnote : it is observed by signor bottari, that giorgio, in his life of franco, was too sparing of his praises of tintoret and paul veronese; and the same might be said also of gambera, and many others, who flourished at the same period, or were already deceased when he wrote. to his opinions have succeeded those of the caracci, and of many other distinguished professors of the art, which may be safely relied upon.] [footnote : there very opportunely appeared, in the year , at bassano, a "notizia d'opere di disegno"--"upon works of design," the anonymous production, apparently, of some inhabitant of padua, about . it was published and illustrated by the learned abbate morelli, and contains several anecdotes, relating more particularly to the venetian school.] [footnote : the celebrated painter, cignaroli, besides drawing up a complete _catalogue raisonné_, of the painters of verona, already published in the chronicle of zagata, vol. iii., left behind him ms. notes upon the entire work of pozzo, in the margin.] [footnote : i have been enabled in this edition, by means of count cav. de lazzara, to avail myself of a ms. from the pen of natal melchiori, entitled, "_lives of the venetian painters_," drawn up in . the author is deserving of credit, no less on account of having been himself a painter, than from his personal acquaintance with the chief part of those whose lives he commemorated.] [footnote : this excellent man is now no more, and his work has not hitherto appeared. that, however, by the sig. co. canonico de rinaldis, on the painters of friuli, we have received. it embraces a much more correct and enlarged view of that noble school, than we before possessed in the scantier notices from the pen of altan. still he is not always exact, and he would undoubtedly have written better, had he seen more. at length, however, we are in possession of the work of padre m. federici, in two volumes, relating to the artists of the "marca trevigiana," accompanied by documents; a work better calculated than the former to satisfy the expectations of a reader of taste. but, as is generally the case, when an author hazards new opinions, we are sometimes compelled to suspend our assent to his conclusions.] venetian school. epoch i. _the ancients._ if in the outset of each school of painting i were to pursue the example held up in the _etruria pittrice_, of introducing the account of its pictures by that of some work in mosaic, i ought here to mention those of grado, wrought in the sixth century, distinguished by the name of the patriarch elia, those of torcello, and a few other specimens that appeared at venice, in the islands, and in terra firma, produced at periods subsequent to the increase of the edifices, together with the grandeur of the venetian state. but admitting that these mosaics, like many at rome, may really be the production of the greeks; the title of my work, confined as it is to painting, and to the period of its revival in italy, leads me to be little solicitous respecting those more ancient monuments of the fine arts, remnants of which are to be found scattered here and there, without any series of a school. i shall still, however, occasionally allude to them, according as i find needful, were it only for the sake of illustration and comparison, as i proceed. but such information ought to be sought for in other works; mine professes only to give the history of painting from the period of its revival. the most ancient pictorial remains in the venetian territories i believe to be at verona, in a subterraneous part of the nunnery of santi nazario and celso, which, however inaccessible to the generality of virtuosi, have, nevertheless, been engraved on a variety of plates by order of the indefatigable signor dionisi. in this, which was formerly the chapel of the faithful, are represented several mysteries of our redemption; some apostles, some holy martyrs, and in particular the transit of one of the righteous from this life, on whom the archangel, st. michael, is seen bestowing his assistance. here the symbols, the workmanship, the design, the attitudes, the drapery of the figures, and the characters united, permit us not to doubt that the painting must be much anterior to the revival of the arts in italy. but most writers seem to trace the rudiments of venetian painting from the eleventh century, about the year , at the period when the doge selvo invited the mosaic workers from greece to adorn the magnificent temple, consecrated to st. mark the evangelist. such artificers, however rude, must have been acquainted, in some degree, with the art of painting; none being enabled to work in mosaic who had not previously designed and coloured, upon pasteboard or cartoon, the composition they intended to execute. and these, observe the same writers, were the first essays of the art of painting in venice. however this may be, it speedily took root, and began to flourish after the year , when constantinople being taken, venice was in a short time filled, not indeed with grecian artists, but with their pictures, statues, and bassi relievi.[ ] had i not here restricted my observations to existing specimens of the art, bestowing only a rapid glance upon the rest, along with their authors, i might prove, that from the above period, the city was no longer destitute of artists; and was enabled, in the thirteenth century, to form a company of them with their appropriate laws and institutions. but of these elder masters of the art, there remains either only the name, as of a giovanni da venezia and a martinello da bassano, or some solitary relic of their labours without a name, as in the sarcophagus, in wood, of the beata giuliana, painted about the year , the same in which she died. this monument remains in her own monastery of san biagio alla guidecca, long held in veneration, even after the body of the blessed saint had been removed, in the year , into an urn of stone. there are there represented san biagio, the titular saint of the church, san cataldo, the bishop, and the blessed giuliana, the two former in an upright, the latter in a kneeling posture; their names are written in latin, and the style, although coarse, is nevertheless not greek. probably that of the painter is also in the same corner, a picture of whom, a pietà, has recently been discovered by the ab. boni, who considers him a new cimabue of the venetian art. as it has already been described by him in his florentine collection of "opuscoli scientifici,"[ ] i shall not extend my account of it; for the reader will there find other names, as will afterwards be shewn, recently discovered by the indefatigable author of some early venetian writers, until this period unknown to history. among these are stefano pievano, of s. agnese, a picture by whom, dated , is described; alberegno, belonging to the fifteenth century, and one esegrenio, who flourished somewhat later, to which time we may refer two fine and highly valued figures of holy virgins, not long since discovered, of tommaso da modena, and which, from the disputes they have elicited, have been subjected to experiments at florence, to ascertain whether they are painted in oil or distemper--experiments that tend only to prove that this tommaso was unacquainted with the art of colouring in oil. it was only subsequent to the year , that the names, united to the productions of the venetians, began to make themselves manifest; when, partly by the examples held out by giotto, partly by their own assiduity and talent, the painters of the city and of the state visibly improved, and softened the harshness of their manner. giotto, according to a ms. cited by rossetti,[ ] was at padua in ; according to vasari, he returned from avignon in ; and a little while afterwards he was painting at verona, in the palace of can della scala, and at padua, employed on a chapel in the church of the titular saint. he adds, that towards the close of his days he was again invited there, and embellished other places with his pieces. nothing, however, remains of him in verona; but in padua there still exists the chapel of the nunziata all'arena, divided all round into compartments, in each of which is represented some scriptural event. it is truly surprising to behold, not less on account of its high state of preservation, beyond any other of his frescos, than for its full expression of native grace, together with that air of grandeur which giotto so well knew how to unite. with respect to the chapel, it is believed that vasari was less accurately informed, inasmuch as savonarola, who has been cited by sig. morelli,[ ] relates that giotto ornamented the little church of the arena, _capitulumque antonii nostri_, and the chapter _of our st. antony_. and in fact, in the apartment of the chapter house, there yet remain several traces of ancient painting, though turned white with age. in a very ancient ms., of the year ,[ ] there is made mention of his also having been employed _in palatio comitis_, which others suppose ought to be read _communis_, intended to apply to the saloon, of which i shall shortly have to give some account. to giotto succeeded giusto padovano, so called from the place of his naturalization and usual residence; being, in truth, a florentine, sprung from the family of the menabuoi. as a disciple of giotto, vasari attributes to him the very extensive work which adorns the church of st. john the baptist. in the picture over the altar, if it be his, giusto has exhibited various histories of st. john the baptist; on the walls are represented both scriptural events and mysteries of the apocalypse; and on the cupola he has drawn a choir of angels, where we behold, as if in a grand consistory, the blessed arrayed in various garments, seated upon the ground; simple, indeed, in its conception, but executed with an incredible degree of diligence and felicity. it is mentioned in the _notizia morelli_, that formerly there was to be read there an inscription over one of the gates--_opus johannis et antonii de padua_,--probably companions of giusto, and, probably, as is conjectured by the author of the ms. above alluded to, the painters of the whole temple. this would seem to augment the number of the paduan artists, no less than the imitators of giotto; since the works, already described, are equally as much in his manner as those by taddeo gaddi, or any other of his fellow pupils in florence. the same commendation is bestowed upon jacopo davanzo, of whom i treat more at length in the school of bologna. a less faithful follower of giotto was guariento, a paduan, held in high esteem about the year , as appears from the honourable commissions he obtained from the venetian senate. one of his frescos and a crucifixion yet remain at bassano;[ ] and in the choir of the eremitani, at padua, there are many of his figures now retouched, from which zanetti took occasion to commend him for his rich invention, the spirit of his attitudes, and the felicity with which, at so early a period, he disposed his draperies. at padua there is an ancient church, dedicated to st. george, erected about , which boasts some history pieces of st. james, executed by the hand of alticherio, or aldigieri, da zevio in the veronese; and others of st. john, the work of one sebeto,[ ] says the historian, a native of verona. these, likewise, approach pretty nearly the style of giotto, and more especially the first, who painted also a good deal in his native place. to these two i may add jacopo da verona, known only by his numerous paintings in fresco at san michele of padua, which remain in part entire; and taddeo bartoli, of siena, who has shewn himself ambitious at the arena, of emulating the contiguous labours of giotto, without attaining the object in view. another production of the same period is seen in the great hall at padua, reported to be one of the largest in the world, consisting, as it does, of a mixture of sacred historic pieces, of celestial signs borrowed from igino, and of the various operations carried on during the respective months of the year, besides several other ideas certainly furnished by some learned man of that age. it is partly the work, says morelli in his _notizia_, upon the authority of campagnuola, of an artist of ferrara, and partly that of gio. miretto, a paduan. this recent discovery justifies my own previous opinions, having been unable to prevail upon myself to ascribe such a production to giotto, although it partakes strongly of his style, which appears to have spread pretty rapidly throughout the territories of padua, of verona, of bergamo, and great part of the terra ferma. besides this manner, which may be, in some measure, pronounced foreign, there are others equally observable in venice, no less than in treviso, in the chapter of the padri predicatori, and in other of the subject cities, and these might more accurately be termed national, so remote are they from the style of giotto, and that of his disciples before mentioned. i have elsewhere pointed out how far the miniature painters contributed to this degree of originality, a class of artists, with whom italy, at no time destitute, more fully abounded about that period, while they still continued to improve by employing their talents in drawing objects from the life, and not from any greek or italian model. indeed they had already made no slight advances in every branch of painting, when giotto first arrived in those parts. i have myself seen, in the grand collection of mss., made in venice, by the abbate canonici, a book of the evangelists, obtained in udine, illustrated with miniatures in pretty good taste for the thirteenth century, in which they were produced; and similar relics are by no means rare throughout the libraries of the state. i suspect, therefore, that many of those new painters, either having been pupils of the miniaturists, or induced to imitate them from the near connexion between the arts, attempted to vie with them in design, in the distribution of their colours, and in their compositions. hence, it is clearly accounted for, why they did not become the disciples, though acquainted with the works of giotto, but produced several respectable pieces of their own. to this class belongs m. paolo, whom zanetti found recorded in an ancient parchment, bearing the date of . he is the earliest in the national manner, of whom there exists a work with the indisputable name of its author. it is to be seen in the great church of st. mark, consisting of a tablet, or, as it is otherwise called, _ancona_, divided into several compartments, representing the figure of a dead christ, with some of the apostles, and historic incidents from the holy evangelist. there is inscribed underneath--_magister paulus cum jacobo, et johanne filiis fecit hoc opus_; and signor zanetti, page , observes in regard to it as follows:--_among the specimens of simple painting, in st. mark's, the ball centre of the great altar is remarkable for several small tablets of gold and silver, on which are painted several figures in the ancient greek manner. san pietro urseolo had it constructed about the year , at constantinople, and it was removed to this place in the time of the doge ordelafo faliero, in , though it was afterwards renovated by command of the doge pietro ziani, in ._ this historian did not discover the inscription which i found upon it in the year . the artist is sufficiently distinguished for the period in which he flourished, although the stiffness in the design, false action, and expression, beyond those of the best followers of giotto, are perceptible, so much as to remind us of the greek specimens of art.[ ] there can, likewise, be no doubt, that a painter of the name of lorenzo, was one of these venetians, whose altarpiece in st. antony of castello, to which is attached his name, with the date of , _paid him three hundred gold ducats_, has been commended by zanetti. besides, we read inscribed on a picture belonging to the noble house of ercolani, at bologna, the words manu laurentii de venetiis, ; and there is every appearance of his being the author of the fresco in the church of mezzaratta, not far from bologna, representing daniel in the lions' den; and bearing the signature of _laurentius, p._ it is a work that bears no resemblance to the style of giotto, and appears to have been completed about the year . it is equally certain that niccolo semitecolo was a venetian, he having also inscribed his name as we find it written upon a trinity, which represents the virgin, along with some histories of st. sebastian, still preserved in the chapter library of padua:--"nicoleto semitecolo da veniexia impense, ." the work is an excellent specimen of this school; the naked parts are tolerably well drawn, and the proportions of the figures, though sometimes extravagantly so, are bold and free; and what is more important to our present purpose, it discovers no resemblance to the style of giotto, being inferior in point of design, though equal to him in regard to the colouring. two other painters, whose style betrays nothing of giotto, were discovered by signor sasso, in venice, upon the strength of two altarpieces, to which they had affixed their names. upon one, found in the convent of _corpus domini_, he read _angelus pinxit_; and upon the other, also in the same place, _katarinus pinxit_. while on this subject, i ought not to pass over the opinion of baldinucci himself, who always appears to have respected the freedom and independence of the venetian as opposed to the florentine school, by refusing to insert the name of a single venetian in his tree of cimabue. he merely maintained, that the venetian painters had improved their style by the labours of angiol gaddi, and of one antonio, a venetian, whom, in spite of the authority of vasari, he has declared to be a florentine; on which point we must refer to what has already been stated in the first volume (p. ) of this work. moreover, he asserts of the same antonio, that he took up his residence at venice, and thence acquired the appellation of veneziano; but that he took his departure again, owing to the intrigues of the national professors, as much as to say, of a school formed anterior to his arrival. and so long anterior was it, indeed, that the whole state, as well as the adjacent places, abounded not less with pictures than with pupils, although few of their names with their productions have survived.[ ] among these few is a simon da cusighe, who painted an altarpiece and a fresco, still remaining in his native parish, situated near the city of belluno, where there exist memorials of one pietro, and other artists of the thirteenth century, along with some very tolerably executed figures, bearing the epigraph of _simon pinxit_. to these i add a native of friuli, of whom there are no authentic remains beyond gemona, where he painted the façade of the dome, and under a picture of the martyrdom of i know not what saint, appears his name written, mcccxxxii. magister nicolaus pintor me fecit. to this artist is ascribed, by some writers, that vast and meritorious production, still in such a fine state of preservation, ornamenting the dome of venzone, and which represents the solemn scene of the consecration; but its author is a matter of mere conjecture, founded in this instance upon the vicinity of the place and time, and resemblance of manner. there are also pecino and pietro de nova, who employed their talents, during a period of many years subsequent to , in the church of santa maria maggiore, at bergamo. but these, like the artist of padua before mentioned, approach very nearly the composition of giotto, and possibly might have imbibed such a taste at milan.[ ] the splendor of venetian painting becomes more strikingly manifest in the fifteenth century; a period that was gradually preparing the way for the grand manner of the titians and the giorgioni. the new style took its rise in one of the islands called murano; but it was destined to attain its perfection in venice. i first recognized the work of one of the oldest of these artists, subscribing himself, _quiricius de muriano_, in the studio of signor sasso. it represents our saviour in a sitting posture, at whose feet stands a veiled devotee; but there is no mark by which to ascertain its age. there is, likewise, of uncertain date, yet still very ancient, a bernardino da murano, of whose productions zanetti saw nothing more than a rude altarpiece. an andrea da murano flourished about the period , whose style, whatever it may retain of harsh and dry, neither superior in composition, nor in choice of features to that of his predecessors, discovers him to have been tolerably skilful in design, even in regard to the extremities, and in placing his figures well in the canvass. there remains in his native place, at san pier martire, an altarpiece painted by his hand, in which a st. sebastian forms so conspicuous a figure for the beauty of its torso, that zanetti suspects it must have been copied from some ancient statue. it is he who introduced the art into the house of the vivarini, his compatriots, who in a continued line of succession preserved the school of murano for nearly a century; and who produced as rich a harvest of their labours in venice, as did the campi afterwards in the city of cremona, or the procaccini in milan. i shall treat of them with brevity, but with such new sources of information, as will at once serve to correct and amplify what has already been written. the first among the vivarini mentioned by historians is luigi, of whom a painting at santi giovanni e paolo, has been cited by them, which represents our redeemer bearing the cross upon his shoulders. the work has been a good deal retouched, and there has been added to it another portion, which gives the name of the author, dated . not being an autograph, we are led to suspect some kind of mistake attaching either to the name or the date; there having been another luigi vivarini, as we shall shew, towards the close of the century. the one in question, then, might probably be an ancestor of the latter, though it be difficult to persuade ourselves of it, as there remains no other superscription, or notice of any of that name so ancient. next to this artist, according to ridolfo and zanetti, are to be enumerated giovanni and antonio vivarini, who flourished about the year . the authority they adduce for this, is an altarpiece in san pantaleone, which bears the inscription of _zuane e antonio da muran pense _. but this giovanni,[ ] if i mistake not, is the same who signs his name on another picture in venice, _joannes de alemania et antonius de muriano pinxit_; or as it is thus written in padua, _antonio de muran e zohan alamanus pinxit_. giovanni, therefore, was a companion of antonio, a german by birth; and traces of a foreign style are clearly perceptible in his paintings. the reason of his omitting to insert his birthplace in the picture at san pantaleone, arose, i suspect, from the fact of his name and acquaintance with antonio being too well known to admit of doubt. after the year there is no more mention made of giovanni, but only of antonio; sometimes alone, sometimes together with some other of the vivarini. thus, his name is subscribed alone in san antonio abate di pesaro, upon an altarpiece of the titular saint, surrounded by the figures of three young martyrs, with some smaller paintings attached; the production of a very animated colourist, and displaying forms inferior to none in the school of murano. i have seen two other specimens, in which he is mentioned together with a second vivarino. the least excellent of these is to be found in san francesco grande, at padua, consisting of a madonna, with some saints, in various compartments; and, at the foot of it, is the following memorandum, _anno , antonius et bartholomeus fratres de murano pinxerunt hoc opus_. similar to this, the two brothers had produced another the year preceding, in the certosa of bologna, where it is still in a high state of preservation, beyond any other specimen i have seen belonging to this family. there is much worthy of commendation in each figure of the whole piece; features dignified and devout; appropriate dresses; care in the disposition of the hair and beards, united to a colouring warm and brilliant. according to what appears, bartolommeo must have been held of less account than antonio, until the discovery of painting in oil being introduced into venice, he became one among the first to profit by it, and, towards the period in which the two bellini appeared, was held in pretty high repute. the first specimen of his painting in oil exists at s. giovanni e paolo, not far from the gate, and exhibits, among other saints, p. san agostino, with an indication of the year . from that period he continued to distinguish himself, producing a great number of pieces both in oil and in water colour, sometimes with more, and sometimes with less care, but always in the ancient taste for subdividing the altarpiece into several parts, in each of which he represented separate heads or entire figures. in these he often marked the name of vivarino, with the year of their production; and occasionally he has added a finch or linnet by way of allusion to his family name. his last work, bearing the date of the year, is a christ risen from the dead, at san giovanni, in bragora, where boschini read the date of , which is now no longer apparent; but it is a piece which, in every part, may be said to vie with that of the best venetian artists who flourished during the same period. contemporary with him was a luigi of the same name, one of whose productions was seen by zanetti, in a collection of paintings, with the date of , and as appeared to him, strongly approaching, in point of taste, to the best style of bartolommeo. to luigi, also, must undoubtedly be ascribed the altarpiece, which, in san francesco di trevigi, bears his name. there is another at the battuti, in belluno, representing the saints piero, girolamo, and some others, a work which cost that school gold ducats, besides the expenses of the artist, who has attached to it his name. but superior to every other of his existing specimens, is that fine picture in the school of san girolamo, at venice, in which he represented a history of the titular saint, in emulation of giovanni bellino, whom he here equalled, and of carpaccio, whom he surpassed. he has drawn the saint in the act of caressing a lion, while several monks are seen flying in terror at the sight. the composition is very fine; the passions are tolerably well pourtrayed, the colours as soft and delicate as in any other of the vivarini; the architecture solid, and in the ancient taste, while the epoch is more modern than that which could be ascribed to the supposed luigi, the elder. such is our exposition of the whole series of the school of murano, up to the period of its greatest improvement, so as to bring it under one point of view. i shall now, therefore, resume the thread of my narrative, relating to the elder artists of the fourteenth century, who competed with the oldest of the school of murano, until the era of painting in oil; and i shall afterwards proceed to treat apart of the more modern. in the early part of the century, an artist of the name of gentile da fabriano, had been employed in the public palace at venice, highly distinguished in his time, but of whom i must not here repeat what has been said in the first volume of this work. he there depicted a naval battle scene, a production greatly extolled in former times, which has long since perished. he produced, also, some disciples, as we find mention of a jacopo nerito, from padua, who, in a painting at san michele di padova, according to rossetti, subscribes himself one of his pupils. nasocchio di bassano, the elder, is to be ranked also, either as one of his scholars or his imitators, if, indeed, a small picture pointed out to me by the late signor verci was by his hand. among other venetians, jacopo bellini, at once the father and the master of gentile and giovanni of the same name, of whom more hereafter, was certainly a pupil of gentile da fabriano. jacopo, however, is better known by the celebrity of his sons, than by his own works, at this time either destroyed or unknown. he had painted in the school of s. giovanni evangelista at venice, and in the chapel of the gatta melata, at the santo di padova, about ; but these labours survive only in history, nor have i met with any other specimen besides a madonna, discovered by sig. sasso, bearing the signature of its author. the style appears taken from that of squarcione, to which he is supposed to have applied himself in his more advanced years. there was also another jacopo in very high repute,[ ] called jacobello del fiore, who has been falsely accused by vasari, of having drawn his figures all resting on the tip of their toes, in the manner of the greeks. his father, francesco, was considered in the light of a coryphæus of the art, and his tomb is still to be seen at santi giovanni e paolo, with a figure of him in his toga, and a commendatory epitaph in latin verse. no works of his, however, are to be seen in venice,[ ] a dittico, or small altar, with his name having been conveyed to london, bearing the date of . it was obtained by the chevalier strange, together with some other productions of the old venetian artists. the son of francesco rose to a still higher degree of celebrity. he began to make himself known as early as , by producing an altarpiece at san cassiano di pesaro, in which city i discovered another, with the date of , and both bear the signature of _jacometto de flor_. a much nobler work is a coronation of the virgin, in the cathedral of ceneda, extremely rich in figures, insomuch as to have deserved the name of the "painting of paradise," in a ms. of the lives of the bishops of that place, which is preserved in the episcopal residence, and declares the work to have been executed, _ab eximio illius temporis pictore jacobello de flore_, , at the expense of the bishop, ant. correr. there is a madonna, indisputably by his hand, in possession of sig. girolamo manfrini, painted in , besides the _giustizia_, drawn between two archangels, in the _magistrato del proprio_, bearing the date of . i may venture to say that few artists of that time equalled him; both on account of his having few rivals who had so early ventured to attempt drawing figures as large as the life, and because of his power of conferring upon them a certain grace and dignity, and, where called for, a vigour and ease rarely to be met with in other paintings. the two lions which he represented as symbols of his _giustizia_ (justice), are truly grand, though the rest of the figures would have appeared to more advantage had they been less loaded with ornaments, and in particular the draperies glowing with gold lace, according to the custom of his age. he had a rival in giacomo morazone, known by an altarpiece seen in the island of st. elena, of which i shall have to speak elsewhere. two pupils of jacobello are recorded by ridolfi, one of whom, donato, is superior to his master in point of style, and the other, carlo crivelli, of whom the capital can boast only one or two pieces, and of whom little mention is made in venetian history. it would appear that he long resided out of his native place, and in the marca trevigiana, from which circumstance we find him repeatedly named in the _storia picena_, in the _guida di ascoli_, and in the catalogue of fabrianese paintings. at san francesco di matelica, i saw an altarpiece and _grado_ by his hand, with his name in the following inscription--_carolus crivellus venetus miles pinxit_, as well as another with his name at the osservanti, in macerata, and a third which bears the year , in possession of the cardinal zelada. he is an artist more remarkable for his force of colouring than for his correctness of design: and his principal merit consists in those little history pieces, in which he has represented beautiful landscapes, and given to his figures grace, motion, and expression, with some traces of the colouring of the school of perugia. hence his productions have occasionally been taken for those of pietro, as in the instance of that in macerata; and if i mistake not, such an opinion was entertained, even by the learned father civalli, (p. ). in piceno, likewise, in monsanmartino, or in penna s. giovanni, there remain altarpieces by vittorio crivelli, a venetian, most probably of the same family, and produced in the years and , from which period i lose sight of him, whether owing to his early decease, or his having set out in pursuit of better fortune into foreign parts. hitherto we have examined only the productions of the capital and of the annexed island. but in each of the other cities, now comprehended in the state, there flourished painters during the same period, guided by maxims differing both from those of venice and of murano. the school of bergamo had even then made distinguished progress under the direction of the two nova, who died at the commencement of the century; and mention is made of a commenduno, one of their pupils, besides some other contemporaries, whose works, however, cannot, with any degree of certainty, be pointed out. the same may be said of those in the adjacent city of brescia, which could then, also, boast of possessing some excellent artists. of these, there is nothing more than the name now remaining, yet brandolin testorino and ottaviano brandino are names placed in competition with that of gentile di fabriano, and, perhaps, they are preferred to him. the former was supposed to have been engaged along with altichiero, in ornamenting the great hall in padua, entitled _sala de' giganti_.[ ] subsequent to both of these appeared vincenzio foppa, of brescia, founder of an ancient school at milan, of which i shall treat more at length in the following book. vasari makes mention of a vincenzio da brescia, or vincenzio verchio, who is the same vincenzo civerchio di crema, commended by ridolfo, and so much admired by the french in the capture of crema, that they fixed upon one of his pictures, then ornamenting the public palace, to be presented to their king, and to this artist we shall also again allude. about the commencement of the fifteenth century there flourished, in verona, an artist of the name of stefano,[ ] declared, as it appears to me, by vasari, sometimes a native of verona, sometimes of zevio, a territory adjacent to the former. the same author makes honourable mention of him in several places, exalting him above the best disciples of angiolo gaddi, to whose style, judging from what i have myself observed at san fermo and elsewhere, he added a certain dignity and beauty of form, while such was his excellence in frescos, as to be extolled by donatello beyond any of the artists who were then known for similar compositions in those parts.[ ] the commendatore del pozzo brings his labours down as far as the year , an incredible assertion, as applied to a scholar of gaddi. to this period might better be referred vincenzio di stefano, apparently one of his sons, of whom nothing survives but his name, and the tradition of having conferred the first lessons of the art upon liberale. highly distinguished, on the other hand, both by the consent of the veronese and of foreigners, is the name of vittor pisanello; although there exists great confusion of dates in his history. vasari makes him a disciple of castagno, who died about the year ; yet del pozzo informs us that he has in his house a holy figure, with the annexed signature of vittore, and dated , most probably before the birth of castagno. again we are told by oretti that he was in possession of one of his medals, representing the sultan mahomet, struck in the year , a supposition which, admitting the picture of pozzo, we are unable to reconcile to facts, so that the medal was, perhaps, taken from some painting of pisanello, coloured at a former time. to whatever master vittore may have been indebted, certain it is that several of his too partial admirers have placed him above masaccio, in regard to the services rendered by him towards the progress of the art, though impartial judges will not refuse to give him a station near him. the whole of his labours, both in venice and in rome, have now perished. at verona, also, little remains; even that noble piece of san eustachio, so highly extolled by vasari himself, having been destroyed; and his _nunziata_, at san fermo, being greatly defaced by time, in which, however, is still visible a country house, thrown into such admirable perspective, as to delight the beholder. there remain several little altarpieces, containing histories of san bernardino, finished in the style of the miniaturists, in the sacristy of san francesco; but they are crude in their colouring, and the figures more than usually long and dry. the _guide_ of the city announces them as the productions of pisanello; but there is no authority for this, and upon the strength of a date of , which is seen upon one of them, i do not scruple to pronounce them by another hand. he is commended by facio, (p. ) for his almost poetical style of expression; and there is a specimen of an effort at caricature, with which vittore embellished his historic painting of frederick barbarossa, in the ducal palace at venice. he is, moreover, praised by the same author for his skill in drawing horses and other animals, in which he surpassed every other artist. his name is not unknown to the antiquaries; many medals struck by him, of different princes, being found in museums, which acquired for him, in an equal degree with his pictures, the esteem and applauses of guarino, of vespasiano strozza, of biondo, and of several other distinguished scholars. in the adjacent city of vicenza, resided a jacopo tintorello, strongly resembling vittore in his style of colouring, however inferior to him in the perfection of his design, as far as we are enabled to judge from a picture of the saviour, with a crown of thorns, exhibited at santa corona; a piece which reflects credit upon that school. it is yet more highly honoured by an _epiphany_, painted in san bartolommeo, by marcello figolino, an artist commemorated by ridolfi, under the name of giovanni batista, and who flourished, according to his account, at the period of the two montagna. he must, however, at that time, have been far advanced in years, if it be true that the era of his birth preceded that of gian bellini.[ ] his manner is undoubtedly original; so much so, that i find nothing resembling it, either in venice or elsewhere; it embraces great diversity of countenance, and of costume, skilful gradation of light and shade, with landscape and perspective; and is remarkable for ornament, and the finish and smoothness of every part. it was fully entitled to render its author the father of a new epoch in the history of art; if, indeed, we are to believe him, which does not sufficiently appear, to be as ancient as has been affirmed. up to this period i have described the merits of the artists of the city and of the state, who appeared in the early part of the century; but i have not yet recorded its greatest master; i mean squarcione, of padua, who from his ability in bringing up pupils, was pronounced by his followers the first master of painters, and continued to educate them until they amounted to . ambitious of seeing more of the world, he not only traversed the whole of italy, but passing into greece, he took designs of the best specimens, both in painting and sculpture, of every thing he met with, besides purchasing several. on returning to his native place, he began to form a studio, which proved the richest of any known at that period, not merely in designs, but in statues, torsos, bassi relievi, and funereal urns. thus devoting himself to the instruction of students, with such copies, aided by his precepts, rather than by his own example, he continued to live in comparative affluence, and divided many of the commissions which he received among his different pupils. in the church of the misericordia is preserved a book of anthems, illustrated with very beautiful miniatures, commonly ascribed to mantegna, the ornament of that school: but so great is the variety of the different styles, that the most competent judges conclude it to be one of the works committed to squarcione, and by him distributed among his disciples. of these we are not yet prepared to treat, the chief part of whom are known to have flourished subsequent to the introduction of painting in oils, while little can be said of the productions of squarcione himself, though much in respect to his labours as a master. and, indeed, he may be considered the stock, as it were, whose branches we trace, through mantegna, in the grand school of lombardy; through marco zoppo in the bolognese; while it extended some degree of influence over that of venice itself. for jacopo bellini, having come to exercise his talents in padua, it would appear that he took squarcione for his model, as before stated. there is nothing remaining from the hand of squarcione, in padua, that can be relied upon with certainty, except an altarpiece, formerly to be seen at the carmelitani, but now in possession of the accomplished conte cav. de' lazara. it is drawn in different compartments; the chief place is occupied by the figure of san girolamo. around him appear other saints; but the work is in parts re-touched, though there is sufficient of what is original to establish the character of the painter. rich in colouring, in expression, and above all in perspective, it may be declared one of the best specimens of the art produced in those parts. the painting of the altarpiece, here alluded to, was assigned him by the noble family of the lazara, of which the contract is still preserved by them, dated , the salary being paid in , the period at which it was completed. the artist subscribes himself _francesco squarcione_, whence we are enabled to correct the mistake of vasari, who, invariably unfortunate in his nomenclature of the venetians, announces his name as jacopo, an error repeated also in the dictionaries of artists. besides this specimen, there still exist, in a cloister of san francesco grande, some histories of that saint in _terra verde_, which are to be referred to the early part of his life, there being good authority for believing them to be by the same hand, though with the assistance of his school, as the more and less perfect parts render sufficiently apparent. near them were placed some other pieces of squarcione also in _terra verde_, which were defaced in the time of algarotti, who regrets their loss in one of his elegant and pleasing letters. their style is altogether analogous to that of his school; animated figures, neat in the folds, foreshortenings not usual in works of that age, and attempts, though yet immature, at approaching towards the style of the ancient greeks. proceeding from padua, in the direction of germany, we meet with some anonymous paintings, in the districts of trevigi and friuli, which ought, apparently, to be referred to this epoch; so far removed are they in style from the nobler method, we shall shortly have to describe. the name of antonio is well known in treviso, an artist who produced a s. cristoforo, of gigantic stature, tolerably well executed, in san niccolo, and that of liberale da campo, author of a _presepio_, which is placed in the cathedral. superior to both of these must have been giorgio da trevigi, if we are to believe rossetti, where he mentions his introduction into padua, in , in order to paint the celebrated tower of the horologe. there exist other pictures of the fourteenth century, more or less perfect, interspersed throughout the marca trevigiana, and more particularly in serravalle. other places in italy, indeed, bear the same name, derived from the inclosed form of the mountains; this, however, is the largest of the whole, being a rich and ornate city, where titian was in the habit of spending some months in the year at the house of his son-in-law, by way of amusement, and has left there several memorials of his art. but the whole of the church of the battuti appears ornamented in a more antique taste, executed in such a manner, that i was assured, by a person who witnessed it, that it most of all resembled a sacred museum of art. the whole must have been the work of the same artists that we have just been recording in other cities, inasmuch as the names of no natives are known beyond the single one of valentina. he, indeed, verged upon the improved age; but in ceneda, that boasts various altarpieces of his hand, as well as in serravalle itself, where he painted another, with some saints of the holy family, he still appears a disciple of the ancients, and a copyist of squarcione, of padua. we shall soon discover more celebrated artists rising up in this province, after the introduction into the trevigiana, of the method of the bellini. the artists of friuli availed themselves of it less early, not having sufficiently imbibed the principles of modern taste, even as late as the year , either, in the opinion of rinaldis, from the secluded situation of the place, or from the disturbed and revolutionary character of the times. hence it is that the provincial painters of that period are to be referred wholly to this, not to the subsequent era of the art. to such belongs andrea bellunello, of san vito, whose masterpiece is a crucifixion, among various saints, with the date of , exhibited in the great council chamber at udine. it has some merit in regard to the size, and the distribution of its figures; but displays neither beauty of forms, nor colour, and we might almost pronounce it an ancient piece of tapestry, when placed by the side of a beautiful picture. nevertheless, in his own district, he was considered the zeuxis and apelles of his age.[ ] contemporary with him, was domenico di tolmezzo, who painted an altarpiece in various compartments for the cathedral of udine; a madonna, in the taste of those times, with some saints, figures which all partake of the ancient venetian style, even to the colouring, insomuch that one might believe him to have been a disciple of that school. he has attached his name and the year, , and it would appear that there belonged to the same piece, exhibiting a figure of the blessed bertrando, patriarch of aquileja, two oblong tablets, one of which represents his offering of alms, the other the circumstances of the death he suffered. the whole of these paintings, which i have noticed, are tolerably executed, in particular the two histories, and are preserved in two chambers of the canonica. not far from the same place is seen a figure of the saint, in fresco, painted by francesco de alessiis, in , and placed over the door of a house, formerly the college of s. girolamo. while the schools of the state thus continued to advance, a knowledge of design became more general in venice; and in the latter part of the century, its artists, for the most part, had acquired a taste similar to what i have already described as influencing those of other places--a taste rather removed from the antique coarseness, than adorned with the elegance of the moderns. although the use of canvass had been already adopted in venice, like that of boards elsewhere, a circumstance for which vasari accounts, in treating of the bellini, there was no composition besides water colours, or distemper; excellent, indeed, for the preservation of tints, as we perceive from unfaded specimens in the present day, but unfriendly to the production of union, smoothness, and softness. at length appeared the secret of colouring in oils from flanders, a discovery conferring a happier era upon the italian schools, and in particular upon that of venice, which availed itself of it above every other, and apparently the very first of all. in the florentine school i have described the origin of this invention, ascribing it, along with vasari, to giovanni van eych, and both there and in the neapolitan, i have also shewn that the first who communicated it to italy was antonello da messina, having been instructed in it by giovanni himself in flanders. the historical account of this messinese, as i have repeatedly before observed, has never been sufficiently elucidated. vasari and ridolfi state such facts respecting him as are not easily reconcilable to the period of life in general assigned to him, reaching only to forty-nine years; and i have proved, in collecting memorials, to which they had no access, alluded to in the neapolitan school, that there were two distinct visits made by antonello to venice. the first, it appears to me, must have taken place soon after his return into italy; at which time he concealed the discovery from every one, except it were domenico veneziano, who is known to have availed himself of it for many years, both in venice and elsewhere. during that period antonello visited other places, and more especially milan, whence he returned to venice for the second time, and as it is said, _received a public salary_, and then he divulged the method of painting in oils to the venetian professors; a circumstance which, according to the superscriptions attached to his pictures, appears to have taken place about the year . other signatures are to be met with as late as , insomuch that he must have run a longer career than that which has above been assigned him. and we are here arrived at an era, at once the happiest and most controverted of any. but of the venetians we shall treat presently, after alluding to the works of this foreign artist apart. two altarpieces by his hand are recorded, which were painted for the two churches of the dominante, besides several madonnas, and other holy pieces intended for private houses, together with some few productions in fresco. there is no doubt but he also produced many others, both at the instance of natives and of foreigners, relieving himself from the multiplicity of his commissions by the aid of pino di messina, the same who is commended in the memoirs of hackert, as the pupil and companion of antonello's labours at venice. it is not mentioned whether he produced any specimens of his art in sicily, nor am i certain whether he returned thither. in many venetian collections, however, they are still preserved, and display a very correct taste, united to a most delicate command of the pencil; and among others is a portrait in the possession of the family martinengo, bearing the inscription _antonellus messaneus me fecit, _. in the council hall of the ten is also to be seen one of his pictures of a pietà, half-length, subscribed, _antonius messinensis_. the features of the countenances, though animated, are not at all select, nor have much of the italian expression; and his colours in this and other of his productions that i have seen, are less vivid than in some venetian artists of that age, who carried the perfection of colouring to its highest pitch. there is good authority for believing that, together with antonello, or very near the same period, there flourished in venice one of the best flemish disciples of giovanni van eych; called by vasari, ruggieri da bruggia. there appears, in the palazzo nani, adorned by its present owner in the hereditary taste of his noble family, with the most splendid monuments of antiquity, a san girolamo between two holy virgins, a picture, as is shewn from the following inscription, by his hand,--_sumus rugerii manus_. it is drawn with more merit in point of colouring than of design, upon venetian pine wood, not upon flemish oak; and for this reason it is considered by zanetti, as the production of a native artist. but if the venetians had really possessed a painter of so much merit, towards the year , how is it possible that he should be distinguished only by this solitary specimen of his powers. even the very imposing formula he made use of in subscribing his name, contrary to the usual practice of those times, without mention either of family or of place, is it not altogether like that of an artist who feels and displays his own celebrity?[ ] to me it does not appear at all improbable that ruggieri, on arriving in italy,[ ] sought to employ his talents upon some subject, in the same way as ausse,[ ] his disciple, ugo d'anversa, and other flemish painters of that period, whose names are commemorated along with his by vasari, in the twenty-first chapter of his introduction. reverting to antonello, we are told by borghini and ridolfi, that gian bellini, having assumed the dress and character of a venetian gentleman, for the pretended purpose of having his portrait taken, penetrated by this disguise into the studio of the messinese; and watching him while he painted, discovered the whole secret of the new method, which he speedily applied. but zanetti conjectures that antonello was not very jealous of his secret, by which means it was quickly diffused among the different professors of the art. and this is clearly shewn by a picture of vivarini, coloured in oil, as early as , no less than by others from different hands in the years following. argenville even goes farther; for he asserts that such was the generosity with which antonello taught in venice, that he drew a crowd of pupils, who assisted in spreading a knowledge of the discovery through all parts. and among these we find several foreigners, such as theodore harlem, quintinus messis, along with several others mentioned in the preface to the third volume, p. iii. this we are likewise inclined to admit during the period of his public instructions in the city. all that now remains before we reach the times of titian and giorgione, is comprised in that last stage of the art which, in every school, has opened a path to the golden period which ensued. the masters who were to distinguish the stage alluded to, in venice, as in almost all other parts, are found to retain traces of the ancient stiffness of manner, and sometimes exhibit, like the naturalists, imperfect forms copied from the life; as, for instance, in those extravagantly long and spare figures which we noticed in pisanello. in venice such forms were in high repute with mansueti, sebastiani, and other of their contemporaries, nor were they disliked by the bellini themselves. and, indeed, where they selected good proportions, they are apt to arrest the attention by that simplicity, purity, care, and, as it were timidity of design, which attempts to avoid every approach to exaggeration. such artists we might suppose to have been educated by the more ancient greek sculptors, in whose works the exhibition of truth attracts the spectator, like that of grandeur in others. their heads, more particularly, are correct and fine; consisting of portraits taken from the life, both among the populace, and among persons of superior birth, whether distinguished for learning, or for their military exploits. and to this practice, familiar also to artists of the thirteenth century, we are indebted for many likenesses which were copied at the instance of giovio, for his museum. thence they were again multiplied both by painting and engraving, in different parts of the world. often also the artist of those times inserted his own portrait in his composition; a circumstance so favourable to vasari's history; but this species of ostentation was gradually abandoned as real cultivation in italy advanced. but then, as in the heroic and still more uncivilized times, such species of boasting was not esteemed offensive: and surely, if the literati of the fourteenth century were in the habit of extolling themselves in their own works; if the typographers were so fond of exalting themselves and their editions by superb titles, and more vaunting epigrams, even to a ridiculous degree; the more modest ambition of sometimes handing down their own features to posterity, may be excused in our painters. the colours of these artists are likewise simple and natural, though not always in union, more especially with the ground, nor sufficiently broken by the chiaroscuro. but above all, they are most remarkable for the extreme simplicity of the composition of their pieces. it was very seldom they inserted histories, it being sufficient for the ambition of those times to give a representation of our lady upon a throne, surrounded with a number of saints, such as the devotion of each was supposed to require. nor were those drawn in the manner they had before been, all erect at equal distances, and in the least studied motions; but their authors attempted to give them some degree of contrast, so that while one was drawn gazing upon the virgin, another appeared reading a book; if this were in a kneeling attitude, that is seen standing erect. the national genius, always lively and joyous, even then sought to develop itself in more brilliant colours than those of any other school. and, perhaps, in order that the figures, of such glowing tints, might stand in bolder relief, they kept the colour of the airs most generally pale and languid. they aimed, indeed, as much as lay in their power, at enlivening their compositions with the most pleasing images; freely introducing into their sacred pieces, sportive cherubs, drawn as if vieing with each other in airy grace and agility; some in the act of singing, some of playing: and not unfrequently bearing little baskets of fruit and flowers so exquisitely drawn as to appear moist with recent dew. in the drapery of their figures they were simple and natural; the most exempt perhaps from that trite and exact folding, as well as from that manner of bandaging the bodies so common in mantegna, and which infected some other schools. nor did they lay small stress upon certain accessaries of their art, such as the thrones, which they composed in the richest and most ostentatious manner; and the landscapes, which they drew with an astonishing degree of truth from nature, besides the architecture frequently constructed in the forms of porticos or tribunes. it may sometimes be observed, also, that adapting themselves to the workmanship and to the design of the altar, they feigned a continuation of it within the painting, so that by the resemblance of colour and of taste, the eye is deceived, the illusion produced rendering it doubtful where the exterior ornament[ ] terminates, and where the picture begins. we ought not, therefore, easily to give credit to certain writers who have undervalued the merits of such masters, pronouncing their labours mechanical, as those of mere practical artificers, inasmuch as serlio is known to have supplied several of them with architectural designs.[ ] we ought rather to subscribe to the opinion of daniel barbaro, whose extensive learning did not prevent him, in his work entitled _pratica di prospettiva_, from expressing his admiration of them, even from the commencement, as follows: "in this art they left many fine remnants of excellent works, in which we behold not only landscapes, mountains, woods, and edifices, all admirably designed; but even the human form, and other animals, with lines drawn to the eye, as if to a centre placed in the most exact perspective. but in what manner, and by what rules they proceeded, no author of whom i am aware, has left any account to instruct us." as this progress of style was more greatly promoted by gian bellini than by any other master, with him i shall commence my account, afterwards proceeding to treat of his contemporaries, and such of his scholars as more or less resembled him. nor, i flatter myself, will it be unpleasing to the reader, to find mention of the imitation of giorgione and of titian, as it were anticipated, inasmuch as it happens with the professors of the art of painting, as occasionally with those writers who have flourished on the confines of two ages; that their style to a certain degree seems to partake of the colour of both. thus giovanni bellini himself will afford us, in his numerous productions, which commence before , and continue down to the year , a sort of regular gradation of his progress, that may be considered, at the same time, the progress of his school. even in his earliest pictures, we trace the ambition of the artist to ennoble and to enlarge the national manner. the noble house of their excellencies corner, which at the time of the queen of cyprus, gave frequent commissions to his hand, possesses several specimens of his first style, proceeding gradually to others appearing always to grow more beautiful. among these last is a san francesco drawn amidst a thick wood; a piece that might well excite the envy of the best landscape masters themselves. having reached the period of , in which he produced an altarpiece still preserved in the sacristy of the conventuali, we find he extorts the praises of vasari, no less as a good mannerist than a fine designer. with still greater success he executed other works from the examples afforded by giorgione. it was then he conceived his subjects more boldly, gave rotundity to his forms, and warmth to his colours; he passed more naturally from contrasted tints, his naked figures became more select, his drapery more imposing; and if he had succeeded in acquiring a more perfect degree of softness and delicacy in his contours, he might have been held up as one of the most finished examples of the modern style. neither pietro perugino, ghirlandajo, nor mantegna attained to it in an equal degree. the lover of art will find various specimens of him, both in venice and elsewhere. his altarpiece, painted for san zaccaria, in , is well worthy his attention, as well as that of s. giobbe, of the date of . to these we may add a bacchanal, in the villa aldobrandini, at rome, dated , which, on account of the artist's advanced age, was left imperfect. i have seen other pictures by his hand, without date, but of striking merit; more especially a virgin in the cathedral of bergamo; a baptism of our lord at santa corona, of vicenza, a holy child slumbering on the lap of the virgin, between two angels, a production that lies treasured up in a chest at the capuchins, in venice, and which truly fascinates the eye of the beholder. it displays a striking union of that beauty, grace, and expression, of which, in this school, he may be said to have set the example. it would appear that he continued to employ his talents to an extreme old age, there remaining, in the select gallery of santa giustina, at padua, one of his madonnas, painted in .[ ] such figures, together with those of the dead christ, are the most frequent paintings of his hand that we meet with. should any one, not content with the commendations i have bestowed, feel inclined to prefer a bellini to a raffaello, because he was his superior in architectural design, let him consult the opinion of boschini, p. , of his _carta da navigare_, but let him recollect that the same writer possesses nothing of the poet beyond the measure of the verse, and the exaggeration of his praises. the name of giovanni ought not to go down unaccompanied by that of his brother gentile, who preceded him, alike in the period of his birth and of his death. though living apart, in regard to family, they were of congenial mind and disposition, esteeming one another as friends and brethren, mutually encouraging and respecting each other, as superior in merit. but in giovanni this was modesty, in gentile only truth. for the latter had a more confined genius; but by diligence, that sometimes compensates the neglect of nature, he was enabled to attain an honourable station among his contemporaries. he was employed by the republic upon an equal footing with his brother, to adorn the hall of the great council; and when the grand turk sent to venice in search of an eminent portrait painter, he was commissioned by the senate to go to constantinople, where in the exercise of his profession he added glory to the venetian name. besides his works in painting, he there struck a fine medallion for mahomet ii., bearing the head of the emperor, with three crowns on the reverse; a rare work, of which, however, i learn there is a specimen in possession of his excellency, theodore corer. however inferior we are to consider him to his brother, and tenacious of that ancient harshness in many of his works, there are still several of a more beautiful description, such as his histories of the holy cross at san giovanni, and the preaching of s. mark, at the college of that saint; a piece, which, placed near that of a paris bordone, does no discredit to its author. he shews himself a faithful copyist, inasmuch as every thing he remarked in a concourse of people, is faithfully pourtrayed. the features of the audience, and the peculiar conformations of the body are as diversified as we see them in nature, including even instances of deformity, into which through her own general laws, nature is known to fall; and we are thus presented with caricatures, with bald, and lean, and pursy, and, what is more remarkable, the auditors of s. mark are drawn without regard to times, in the costume of venetians or of turks. yet from its exact imitation of the truth, its arrangement, and its animated style, the work does not fail to please and strike the beholder. i shall even go further; for there are pictures on a smaller scale, by the same hand, executed with so much taste, that they may be esteemed not unworthy of the name of his brother. such is a presentation of the infant jesus at the temple, in half length, which adorns the palazzo barbarigo, at san polo, a duplicate of which was painted for that of the grimani, with still more delicacy and care. opposite to this of gentile is a fine picture of gian bellini, which, however, superior in the softness of its tints, is considered scarcely equal in point of beauty and other qualities of the art. the two bellini and the last of the vivarini had a competitor in vittore carpaccio, either a venetian or a native of capo d'istria,[ ] and along with these he was selected to ornament the ducal palace. it was destroyed by fire in , when that noble collection of ancient historic pieces perished, though subsequently restored by the most celebrated artists of later times. yet there still remains a specimen of vittore's style in the oratory of santa ursula, sufficient to entitle him to rank among the best artists of the age. it consists of eight histories drawn from the acts of that saint, and of her eleven thousand companions, which were all about that time very generally admitted to be true. the production is not wanting in power of conception, developing numerous and novel combinations, nor in the order of their distribution; in richness of ideas, both in varying the features and costume, nor in architectural skill and landscape, serving to adorn them. still more remarkable is its expression of nature and simplicity; an expression which so frequently invited zanetti himself to a renewed contemplation of it. he there remarked the various passions of the people, who appeared to understand every thing passing; and, in their earnest attention, expressed sentiments in unison with the representation; whence he concludes his description by saying that carpaccio felt the truth in his very heart. he produced still nobler specimens of his genius in the college of san girolamo, which rivalled those of giovanni bellini, without, in this instance, yielding to them. his character, which might frequently be confounded with that of gentile, shines most conspicuous, perhaps, in his altarpieces, where he is original in almost every composition. the most celebrated in venice is one of the purification at san giobbe, in which, however, the s. vecchio simeone is represented in a pontifical dress, between two servants arrayed like cardinals. if we except this error, in point of costume, and add a little more warmth of colours to the flesh, more delicacy of contour, the piece would not discredit the first artist of any times. owing to the fault of his early education, however, these qualities he never attained. this, also, happened to lazzaro sebastiani, his disciple and follower; to giovanni mansueti, to marco, and to pietro veglia, as well as to francesco rizzo, of san croce, a territory in the district of bergamo;[ ] artists who, however nearly they touched upon the golden period, did not succeed in freeing themselves from the influence of the old and uniform taste, and for this reason are often confounded with each other. i do not here treat of the paintings left by them at venice, as they have so frequently been described elsewhere. it will be enough to inform the reader that in these, also, we discover several noble traces of the style of gentile and carpaccio, more especially in the architecture, and that their colouring, which, in this school, is considered cold and languid, would be termed, in several of the others, both soft and animated enough for that period. the one who, if i mistake not, approaches nearer to the modern, and in some degree towards the style of giorgione, is benedetto diana, as well in his altarpiece of santa lucia, at the ss. apostoli, as in the limosina de' confratelli di san giovanni, painted at their college in competition with the bellini. we next come to marco basaiti, sprung from a greek family in the friuli, and a rival also of giovanni; but more successful than carpaccio. the church of san giobbe, here mentioned for the third time, possesses his picture of christ praying in the garden, painted in . it is now a little defaced, but has been highly extolled by ridolfi and others, who beheld it in a more perfect condition. above all his productions, however, the vocation of san pietro to the apostleship, in the church of the certosa, is the most celebrated; a piece, of which there is seen a duplicate in the imperial gallery at vienna. it is certainly one of the most beautiful pictures of that age; and most generally there is no kind of merit in gian bellini, in which basaiti does not either equal, or very closely approach him. indeed he appears to exhibit even a freer genius, a more happy composition, and a more skilful art in uniting the grounds of his pictures with the figures. these are beautiful, and for the most part incline to the free style; their look is full of fire; the tints of the fleshy parts of a rosy glow; the middle tints inclining sometimes to paleness, but not without grace. though not a native, he resided a long period at venice, which contains a good number of his works, a few of which are in the ancient taste, but the most part bordering upon the modern. his native place of friuli possesses no other specimen besides a christ taken from the cross, in the monastery of sesto, consisting of large figures, with a fine group in the background of the picture, and with a landscape full of nature. in several parts it is defaced by age; but a true connoisseur will still, perhaps, prefer it to the others, for being free from the retouches of modern art. among the pupils of gian bellini, who were very numerous, are some who ought to be referred to another epoch, like giorgione, and to different schools, like rondinello of ravenna; several, however, take their place here, who, in the opinion of their national contemporaries, did not fully attain to the possession of the new style. the family of the heads of the school, produced also a bellin bellini, who being educated in that academy, very happily imitated its manner. he painted madonnas for private individuals, which, their author being little known, are for the most part attributed to gentile, or to giovanni. the artist who is mentioned by vasari as the pupil of giovanni, named girolamo mocetto, was one of the earliest and least polished among his disciples. he did not reach the sixteenth century; and left behind him some engravings upon copper, now become extremely rare; besides small pictures, one of which, subscribed with the author's name, in , is in the possession of the before mentioned house of corer. the veronese, who are in possession of his portrait, amongst those of the painters of their town, in the scuola del nudo, can also boast one of his altarpieces, bearing the name and date of , in their church of s. nazario e celso. such information i obtained from signor saverio dalla rosa, a veronese painter of merit. another less distinguished, and somewhat stiff scholar or imitator of bellini, has affixed his name in several places, at the foot of sacred figures, as follows: "_marcus martialis venetus_;" and in a _purificazione_, existing in the conservatory of the penitents, we meet with the year . and from a _supper of emmaus_, belonging to the family of the contarini, with the painter's name, we learn that in the year he was still alive. an artist of a better taste appeared in vincenzio catena, a wealthy citizen, who obtained a good deal of celebrity by his portraits and pictures for private rooms. his masterpiece consists of a holy family, in the style of giorgione, ornamenting the noble pesaro gallery; and if he had produced nothing more than this, he would no longer be included in the present epoch; but his other pieces, exhibiting more traces of the old style, which remain at san maurizio, at san simeone grande, at the carità, and elsewhere, authorise our enumeration of them here. they are beautiful; but not sufficiently in the modern taste. his reputation, however, while living, was so great, that in a letter written by marc antonio michiel from rome, to antonio di marsilio in venice, dated th of april, , when raffaello was just deceased and buonarotti infirm, it is recommended to catena to be upon his guard, "since danger seems to be impending over all very excellent painters."[ ] one giannetto cordegliaghi enjoyed also a high reputation, if he be rightly named by vasari, who commends him for his soft and delicate manner, superior to many of his contemporaries; adding, that he had produced an infinite number of pictures for private persons. in venice he is termed, i suppose for the sake of brevity, cordella; and to him is attributed the beautiful portrait of the cardinal bessarione in the college of la carità, with a few other specimens, the rest having dropt into oblivion. probably his real name was double, _cordella aghi_. it is certain that zanetti read, upon a beautiful madonna, belonging to the learned zeno, _andreas cordelle agi, f._ this last is of the same family as giannetto; or perhaps also in place of giannetto, vasari ought to have written andrea; as instead of jacopo he ought to have said francesco squarcione. nor can it be denied, that if we except the artists of verona and friuli, this historian was deficient in information, as he himself declares, relating to the venetian school. it is sufficient to turn to his proëmium of the life of carpaccio, in order to observe how many times, in a very few lines, he is guilty of making mistakes. of lazzaro sebastiani, he made two painters; two others out of marco basaiti, dividing him into marco basarini and marco bassiti, and assigning to each his several works. moreover, he wrote vittore scarpaccia, vittor bellini, giambatista da cornigliano, and confounded the labours of all the three together. elsewhere we meet with mansuchi for mansueti; guerriero and guarriero, instead of guariento; foppa is made into zoppa, giolfino into ursino, morazone into mazzone, bozzato into bazzacco, zuccati into zuccheri and zuccherini; and thus he continued to blunder through other lombard and venetian names, insomuch as almost to vie with harms, with cochin, and with similar inaccurate foreigners. the following names were slightly esteemed or slightly known by vasari, and therefore omitted in his history: piermaria pennacchi of trevisi, and pier francesco bissolo, a venetian. of the former there remain two entablatures, painted for churches, more excellent in point of colouring than design. one is in venice, the other at murano. of these artists, pier francesco painted on the least extensive scale, but was more finished and beautiful. his altarpieces in murano, and in the cathedral of trevigi, may be put in competition with those of the elder palma; and one in possession of the family of renier, representing the meeting of simeon, still nearer approaches to the fulness and softness of the moderns. girolamo di san croce was still more deserving of commemoration than these. yet vasari omitted him; boschini is silent on the subject; and ridolfi has found in him more to blame than to praise, asserting that he had never freed himself from the ancient style, though flourishing at a period when the less celebrated geniuses attempted to modernise their taste. happily, however, for this distinguished man, not a few of his best labours have been preserved, of which zanetti has pronounced his opinion that, "he approaches nearer to the manner of giorgione and titian, than any of the others." and such commendation is justified by his altarpiece of s. parisio, so highly mentioned in the guide of treviso, and which is to be seen at the church of that saint. in venice itself there are some of his pictures which display uncommon merit, such as the _supper of our saviour_, with the name of santa croce, which is in s. martino; and a _salvatore_, at s. francesco della vigna, which though in a precise taste, shows extreme richness of colouring. there also appears, at the same place, his picture of the martyrdom of s. lorenzo; a repetition of which is found in the noble house of collalto, nearly resembling the original, and in other places. it abounds in figures of about a palm's length, imitated, in some part, from the celebrated composition of bandinelli, engraved by marc antonio, whose impressions to girolamo proved a rich mine of art, affording originals for those small but valuable paintings, meant to adorn private rooms. in none of them, however, was he a mere copyist; he varied the figures, and more especially the landscapes, in which he was a very skilful hand. in this manner he produced many of those bacchanals, which are to be met with in different collections. in that of the casa albani, at bergamo, is a s. gio. elemosinario (almsgiver) in grand architecture, seen among a crowd of paupers; and in the collection of count carrara, also at bergamo, there is a saviour taken from the cross, highly valued for the portrait of the artist, which points to a holy cross, the symbol of his name. not any of these productions are embued with traces of the ancient style. they display a grace of composition, study of foreshortening, and of the naked parts, a harmony of colours, forming a mixture of different schools, in which the roman predominates, and least of all the venetian. further we would refer the reader to what has already been stated at page . to these venetian professors, or at least, established in venice, it will be proper to add several educated by giovanni, in the provinces, and in this way resume the thread of our pictoric history of the state. there was no place in the whole dominion which did not boast either of his disciples or imitators. we shall proceed to treat severally of these, beginning with the name of conegliano, which he derived from a city in the marca trevigiana, his native place, whose mountainous views he has introduced into his paintings, as if to serve for his device. the artist's name, however, is giambatista cima, and his style most resembles the better part of that of gian bellini. the professors indeed may often be confounded together, to such a degree do we find conegliano diligent, graceful, lively in his motions and his colouring, although less smooth than bellini. perhaps one of his best pieces that i have seen, is in the cathedral at parma, though it is omitted in the catalogue of his works. that at the church of santa maria dell' orto, one of the most rich in paintings, in all venice, possesses less softness; but in point of architecture, in the air of its heads, and in the distribution of its colours, there is something so extremely attractive, that we are never weary of contemplating it. the different collections in italy, no less than those in other parts, are many of them in possession, or said to be in possession, of specimens from this artist's hand; and if we add to these his altarpieces, sufficiently numerous, they will be found to amount to a very considerable class. we are informed, however, by padre federici, that one of cima's sons, of the name of carlo, imitated so closely the style of his father, that there are pictures which ought often to be attributed to the former instead of to the latter. this artist resided but a short time in his own province; and the altarpiece placed by him in the cathedral of his native place, in , is considered a youthful performance. he continued to exercise his art until the year , according to ridolfi, and died in the maturity of his powers. the date of , which we find at san francesco di rovigo placed upon an altarpiece of conegliano, (if it be not a copy,) marks only the era of the erecting of the altar, which was painted afterwards. he is said by boschini to have been the tutor of vittor belliniano, by vasari called bellini; the same who represented in the college of st. mark's, the martyrdom of the saint. the best portion of this history is the architecture it displays. the artists, educated in the school of giovanni, who flourished at friuli, were two natives of udine: giovanni di m. martino, as he is entitled in some family documents, and gio. martini, by vasari; and martino d'udine, who in the _storia pittorica_, is called pellegrino di s. daniello. the style of the former was harsh and crude, though not destitute of grace in the countenances and in the colouring. the name of pellegrino was bestowed upon the latter by bellini, in honour of his rare genius, while the name of the country was attached to him from his long residence in s. daniello, a territory not far from udine. this city is, nevertheless, the place where he appears to most advantage, in competition with giovanni; as the same emulation they had felt while fellow pupils, continued, as sometimes happens, when they became masters. in that city appear the labours of each, and more particularly in the two chapels contiguous to the dome, where the first of them was employed in the year , the second in . giovanni, in his altarpiece of st. mark, there produced the richest specimen which appeared from his hand; and pellegrino left that of his st. joseph, preferred by vasari, in some degree, to the work of martini. i have seen the last mentioned picture in oil, faded indeed in colour, and in other respects defaced; yet still worthy of admiration for its architecture, which gives a graceful fulness to the whole canvass, and a striking relief to the three figures, consisting of s. joseph with the holy child in his arms, and s. john the baptist, each of which displays the finest contours and the best forms. other specimens of the same pencil are to be seen in udine, among which are the ss. agostino and girolamo, in the public council hall, a picture remarkable also for its power of colouring. as this artist advanced in age, he improved in the softness of his tints, as well as in every other quality. the altarpiece at santa maria de' battuti, which is in cividale, and represents the virgin seated between the four virgins of aquileja, besides the saints batista and donato, and a cherub, partakes of giorgione; it is enumerated among the rarest paintings of friuli, and was executed in the year . yet above any of his productions, are esteemed those various histories of the life of our saviour, painted in fresco at s. daniele, in the church of s. antonio, together with the titular saint, and several other portraits of the brethren of that chapel, so richly adorned by his hand, all breathing and glowing proofs of his art. by his means, also, one of the pictoric schools of friuli rose into high repute, and will be elsewhere described. at rovigo, in possession of the noble family of casalini, is a picture of the circumcision of our saviour, bearing this memorandum: _opus marci belli discipuli johannis bellini_. he is a good disciple of the school, and would appear to be a different artist from that marco, son of gio. tedesco, who was employed in at rovigo. in the adjacent city of padua, the style of the bellini was less followed, a very natural circumstance in a place where squarcione, the avowed rival of giovanni, held supreme sway. still there are several pictures belonging to this age remaining there, which partake of the venetian style; and vasari, in his life of carpaccio, records, that in fact niccolo moreto executed many works in padua,[ ] besides many other artists connected with the bellini. a picture of christ risen from the dead, merits particular mention; it adorns the episcopal palace at padua, along with the portraits of all the paduan bishops, and the busts of the apostles, including several of their acts, executed with much elegance in chiaroscuro. the work is dated , in which the painter subscribes his name _jacobus montagnana_; not montagna, as it is written in vasari and ridolfi. there remains of his a very extensive altarpiece, at the santo, the style inclining as much as in any others, to the modern; and to whatever degree it may partake of the venetian in taste of colours, in its design it partakes of a more precise and spare expression upon the principle of the paduan school. to this, also, he very manifestly conformed himself, in that celebrated picture left in belluno, at the hall of council, in which he represented[ ] roman histories. it is an immense production, and at the first view would incline us to attribute it to the pencil of mantegna, such is the design, the drapery, and the composition of the figures; while even several of them are known to have been accurately copied, with the same forms and motions, from those mantegna had already introduced into his grand chapel at the eremitani. here we have a clear proof that both received the same education, or at least, that montagnana had profited much by the paduan school. i say only _much_, for in point of costume he does not shew any traces of the erudite instructions of squarcione; but commits faults resembling those of the bellini, to whom by popular opinion, recorded by the very diligent author of the new guide of padua, he has been given as a pupil. i have before treated of squarcione, and of his method, reserving for a fitter place the consideration of his disciples, more especially andrea mantegna. he will, however, be included in the present list as a scholar; although, as a master of the school of lombardy, we are bound to speak of him with more commendation, in another chapter. but even the first essays of great characters are valuable; and vasari does not scruple to commend andrea's first altarpiece as a work worthy of his old age. it was placed in santa sofia, where the artist has signed himself _andreas mantinea patavinus annos vii. et x. natus sua manu pinxit, _. squarcione was so much delighted with his early genius, that he adopted him for his son. but he afterwards regretted his own generosity, when the young artist took to wife the daughter of his rival, jacopo bellini; so that he then began to blame him, yet at the same time to instruct him better. andrea having been educated in an academy which adopted the study of marbles, indulged great admiration of several greek bassi relievi, in the ancient style, such as is that of the primarii dei, in an altar of the capitol. he was therefore extremely bent upon acquiring the chasteness of the contours, the beauty of the ideas and of the bodies; but not content with adopting that straitness of the garment, those parallel folds, and that study of parts which so easily degenerates into stiffness, he neglected that portion of his art which animates the otherwise uninformed images--expression. in this respect he greatly failed in his picture of the martyrdom of s. jacopo, placed in the church of the eremitani, and from which squarcione took occasion to reprehend him severely. these complaints led him to adopt a better method, and in his representation of the history of s. cristoforo, placed opposite his s. jacopo, he threw more expression into his figures; and in particular, his production about the same period of san marco, in the act of writing the gospel, painted for santa giustina, displays in the features the absorbed mind of the philosopher and the enthusiasm of a saint. if squarcione thus contributed by his reproaches to render this artist great, the bellini, perhaps, co-operated with him by friendship and relationship, in producing the same result. he resided little in venice, but during that time he did not fail to avail himself of the best portion of that school; and we thus perceive in some of his pictures, landscapes and gardens quite in the venetian character, besides a knowledge of colours not inferior to the best venetian artists of the age. i am uncertain whether he or some other communicated to the bellini that species of perspective so much commended by barbaro; but i know that lomazzo, in his "tempio della pittura," page , has put on record _that mantegna was the first who gave us true notions relating to this art_: and i know that the most distinguished characters of those times were equally eager, either to become scholars in such points as they were themselves deficient in, or masters in such as were wanting in others. the style of mantegna being known, it will not be difficult to divine that of his fellow pupils, educated in the same maxims, and instructed by his examples. the chapel before mentioned exhibits specimens of three, the first of whom, niccolo pizzolo is pointed out by vasari. a picture of the assumption of the virgin in an altarpiece, with other figures on the wall, are by his hand. there is also a fresco in one of the façades with the motto _opus nicoletti_: and in both places he not only strongly resembles, but approaches near the composition of mantegna. two other artists also painted there certain histories of s. cristoforo, under one of which is inserted _opus boni_; under the other, _opus ansuini_, an artist of forli. both of these might elsewhere have been admired; but there they appear only as scholars by the side of their master. an artist more nearly approaching mantegna, and who, in the chief part of his figures might be mistaken for him, is bernardo parentino, who painted for a cloister of santa giustina, ten acts in the life of san benedetto, and little histories in chiaroscuro, representing upon each the portrait of a pontiff of the name of benedict. i have seen no painting adapted to a religious cloister so well conceived in every part; and it is known that it was superintended by a distinguished scholar of that learned order, the abate gaspero da pavia. attached to it is the name of parentino and the dates of and . the work was continued by a girolamo da padua, or girolamo dal santo, celebrated for his miniatures, as it is recorded by vasari and ridolfi. here, however, he exhibits himself a poor artist, in point of design, and still more so in expression, though praiseworthy in many accessaries of his art, more particularly in his study of ancient costume, an acquisition as general in this, as rare in the venetian school. those histories, indeed, are frequently found ornamented with ancient bassi relievi, with sarcophagi, and with inscriptions copied, for the most part, from paduan marbles; a practice followed, also, by mantegna, but with more moderation, in the chapel of the eremitani. the rest of his contemporaries, in padua, were lorenzo da lendinara, esteemed an excellent artist, but of whom no traces remain; marco zoppo, of bologna, who more nearly resembled, perhaps, his master than his fellow pupil, but of honourable account, as the head of the bolognese school; and dario da trevigi, whose productions are to be seen in s. bernardino, at bassano, opposite to those of mantegna, as if to exhibit their inferiority. girolamo, or rather gregorio[ ] schiavone, whose style is between that of mantegna and the bellini, is a pleasing artist, whose pictures are frequently to be met with, ornamented with architectural views, with fruits, and above all with joyous little cherubs. one of the most delightful i have seen, was in fossombrone, in possession of a private individual, and it bears inscribed, _opus sclavonii dalmatici squarzoni s. (scholaris)_. hieronymus tarvisio is another, but doubtful pupil of squarcione, whose name i found subscribed in some pictures at trevigi, an artist poor in colours, but not unacquainted with design. we find mention in sansovino, an author not always to be relied upon in his account of venetian paintings, of lauro padovano, who produced several histories of s. giovanni for the carità in venice; but i so far agree with the above author, in pronouncing these altogether in the style of mantegna. nearly approaching also to the composition of this school, is the style of maestro angelo, who painted in the ancient refectory of santa giustina, a crucifixion of the saviour, with figures, both in proportions and in spirit truly great. i have nothing to add to the name of mattio dal pozzo, enumerated in this class by scardeone, (p. ) inasmuch as there are none of his works now surviving. at the period, when the school of padua was opposed to the venetian, the other cities of the state, as far as we can learn, had adopted a taste rather for the ornamental style of the latter, than the more erudite maxims of the former; it might, perhaps, be added, on account of its greater facility; because the beauty of nature is everywhere more obvious than the monuments of antiquity. bassano then boasted a francesco da ponte, vicenza the two montagna and bonconsigli, all of whom, though born in the immediate vicinity of padua, became disciples of the bellini. da ponte, a native of vicenza, was pretty well embued with a taste for polite literature and philosophy, extremely desirable in the head of a school, such as he became in the instruction of jacopo, and through him of the bassanese; a school highly distinguished during, and even beyond the sixteenth century. the style of his altarpieces, when compared with each other, acquaints us with the earliest and latest specimens of his pencil. he is diligent, but dry in that of his s. bartolommeo, in the cathedral at bassano; more soft in another at the church of s. giovanni, but far better in one of the pentecost, which he painted for the village of oliero, almost in the style of the moderns, displaying studied composition, and a colouring various, beautiful, and harmonious; and what is still more, a fine expression of the passions, best adapted to the mystery. we are led to believe, from the account of lomazzo, that he likewise painted, at another period, in lombardy; observing that a certain francesco, of vicenza, produced a work at the _grazie_ of milan, well executed in point of design, but not so pleasing in the effect of its lights and shades. the two montagna flourished about the period , in vicenza, and were employed together, however unequal in genius, being equally followers of the bellini, at least if we are to give credit to ridolfi, who must have seen many of their productions, now no longer in existence. in those which i have seen, there appeared strong traces of the style of mantegna. benedetto is not mentioned by vasari, who is apt to omit the names of all artists whom he accounted of inferior worth. he mentions bartolommeo, as a pupil of mantegna,[ ] and he would certainly have done him more justice had he seen the works he produced in his native place, which, so far from having done, he asserts that the artist constantly resided in venice. vicenza boasts many of his pieces, which display the gradual progress of his style. if we wish to estimate the extent of his powers, we ought to consult his altarpiece at s. michele, and another at s. rocco, to which may be added a third, in that of the seminary at padua. in none of these are we able to discover any composition beyond what was in most general use at that period, already so frequently mentioned by us; and they retain more of the practice of gilding, which, in other places, was then becoming obsolete. in fine, this artist will be found to rank equal with the chief part of his contemporaries; exact in design, skilful in the naked parts, while his colours are fresh and warm. his cherubs are peculiarly graceful and pleasing, and in his altarpiece, at s. michele, he has introduced an architecture which recedes from, and deceives the eye with a power of illusion, sufficient of itself to have rendered him conspicuous. of giovanni speranza, there remain a few pieces which are much esteemed, though not remarkable for strength of colouring. but we can meet with no public specimens of veruzio, and most probably his name is a mere equivoque of vasari.[ ] giovanni bonconsigli, called marescalco, or the steward, was esteemed beyond any other of the artists of vicenza, who flourished at this period, and he certainly approaches nearest to the modern style, and that of the bellini. the practice, however, of ornamenting friezes with tritons and similar figures, taken from the antique, he most likely derived from the adjacent cities of padua or verona, one of which then professed the study of antiquity, the other that of monuments. neither vasari nor ridolfi gives any account of his productions, except such as he painted in venice, at this time either wholly perished or defaced. those which he executed in vicenza are still in good condition, nor ought a stranger of good taste to leave the place without visiting the chapel de' turchini, to admire his madonna in the style of raffaello, seated upon a throne, between four saints, among which the figure of s. sebastian is a masterpiece of ideal beauty. indeed an able professor of the city considered it one of the finest specimens of the art the place could boast, though in possession of many of the first merit. in common with montagna, figolino, and speranza, bonconsigli abounds in perspective views, and discovers a natural genius for architecture; like them he appears to give promise of the approach of a divine palladio, the glory of his country and of his art; along with the scamozzi, and many other citizens, who have rendered vicenza at once the boast and wonder, as well as the school of architects. there are two altarpieces of his hand remaining in montagnana. this artist must not be confounded with pietro marescalco, surnamed lo spada, (the sword,) whom the ms. history of feltre mentions as a native of this city, and complains of vasari's silence upon it. one of his altarpieces is to be seen at the nunnery of the angeli, at feltre, where signor cav. de lazara informs me that he read the name of _petrus marescalcus p_. among other figures is a madonna, between two angels, upon a large scale, and in good design, sufficient to entitle pietro to an honourable rank in the history of art. if we compare him with giovanni, he will be found less vivid in point of colouring, and, apparently, of a somewhat later age. in the order of our narrative, we ought now to pass on to verona, where liberale, a disciple of vincenzio di stefano, at that time held sway. he had also been a scholar or rather imitator of jacopo bellini, to whose style, says vasari, he invariably adhered. moreover, in his picture of the epiphany, to be seen in the cathedral, there is a choir of angels with a graceful folding of drapery, and a taste so peculiarly that of mantegna, that i was easily led to believe him an artist belonging to that class. certain it is that the vicinity of mantua might also have facilitated his imitation of mantegna, traces of which are visible in some other of his works, as well as in those of the more and less known veronese artists of the time. he did not attain the excellence of giovanni bellini, nor did he give the same grandeur to his proportions, and the same enlargement of the ancient style, although he continued to flourish until the year . the colour of his tints is strong; his expression studied and graceful; a very general merit in the painters of verona; and his care is exquisite, especially in his diminutive figures, an art in which he became extremely expert, owing to his habit of illustrating books in miniature, which are still to be seen in verona and in siena. he had a competitor, at his native place, in domenico morone, or rather the latter, educated also by a disciple of stefano, is to be held second to him. this artist was succeeded in the course of time, by his son, francesco morone, superior to his father, and by girolamo da' libri. these two, bound by the strictest habits of friendship from their youth, were frequently employed in the same labours together, and may be said to have adopted the same maxims. the first has been commended by vasari, for the grace, the design, the harmony, and the warm and beautiful colouring he contrived to bestow upon his pictures, in a degree inferior to none. from the same source we learn that the year of his decease is supposed to have been . but girolamo da' libri was his superior, both in point of taste and general celebrity. the son of a miniature painter of choral books and of anthems, who had hence acquired the name of francesco da' libri, from his father he received both a knowledge of the art and his surname, both of which he also transmitted to his son, francesco, as we again learn from vasari. it is not, however, within my province to enter into a consideration of their books; but in regard to the altarpieces of girolamo, i cannot remain silent. that of s. lionardo, near verona, i have never seen; a picture in which the artist having drawn a laurel, the birds are said to have frequently entered at the church windows, fluttering around as if wishing to repose in its branches. another which i beheld at s. giorgio, with the date , scarcely retains a trace of the ancient character. it represents the virgin between two holy bishops, portraits select and full of meaning; together with three exquisitely graceful figures of cherubs, both in face and gesture. in this little picture may be traced, to a certain degree, the character of a miniaturist who paints, or a painter drawing miniature; while the charms of the several professions are seen there exhibited in one point of view. the church, indeed, is a rich gallery, containing numerous masterpieces of the art; among which the s. giorgio of paolo (veronese) too far transcends the rest; but the painting of girolamo shines almost like a precious jewel, surprising the spectator by an indescribable union of what is graceful, bright, and lucid, which it presents to the eye. he survived many years after the production of this piece, highly esteemed, and in particular for his miniatures, in which he was accounted the first artist in italy; and as if to crown his reputation, he became the instructor, in such art, of don giulio clovio, a sort of roscius, if we may so say, of miniature painting. however flourishing in valuable masters we may consider the city of venice during this era, the fame of mantegna, with the vicinity of mantua, where he taught, attracted thither two artists from verona, whom i reserve for that school, of which they were faithful followers. these were monsignori, and gio. francesco carotto, formerly a pupil of liberale. his brother giovanni, a noble architect, and designer of ancient edifices, was but a feeble imitator of his style. he richly deserves a place in history as the instructor of paolo, an artist excellent in many branches of painting, and in architecture almost divine. it is supposed that paolo must have acquired this degree of excellence by studying at first under carotto, and afterwards perfecting himself, as we shall shew, by means of badile. to such as are most known we might here add names less celebrated, which the marchese maffei, however, has already inserted in his history; as, for instance, a matteo pasti, commended by us in the first volume; but i have, perhaps, already treated sufficiently of the merits of the old veronese artists. about this period there flourished two distinguished artists in brescia, who were present at the terrific saccage of that opulent city, in the year , by gaston de foix. one of these is fioravante ferramola, who was honoured and remunerated upon that occasion by the french victor for his striking merit, and became sufficiently conspicuous in various churches of the country. his painting of s. girolamo is seen at le grazie, extremely well conceived, with fine landscape, and in a taste so like that of muziano, that we might almost suppose it prognosticated his appearance. and it might be said that he afforded the latter a prototype, if he does not aspire to the name of his master. the other is paolo zoppo, who depicted the above desolation of the city in miniature, upon a large crystal bason; a work of immense labour, intended to be presented to the doge gritti: but in transporting it to venice, the crystal was unfortunately broken, and the unhappy artist died of disappointment and despair. the specimens of his style remaining at brescia, among which is one of christ going up to mount calvary, at s. pietro in oliveto--a piece falsely attributed by others to foppa--serve to shew that he approached near to the modern manner, and was not unacquainted with the bellini. finally, bergamo boasted in andrea previtali one of the most excellent disciples of gian bellini. he appears, indeed, less animated than his master, and less correct in the extremities of his figures; neither have i discovered any of his compositions which are free from the ancient taste, whether in the grouping of his forms, or in the minute ornamenting of the accessaries of his art. nevertheless, in a few pictures produced, perhaps, later in life, such as his s. giovanni batista, at s. spirito; his s. benedetto, in the dome of bergamo, and several more in the carrara gallery, he very nearly attained to the modern manner; and was indisputably one of the most distinguished artists, in point of colours and perspective, belonging to the school of the bellini. his madonnas are held in the highest esteem; in whose features he appears less a disciple of gian bellini, than of raffaello, and of vinci. two of them at milan i have seen, both bearing his name: one is in possession of the cavalier melzi; the other in that of monsig. arciprete rosales, painted in ; and both are surrounded with figures of other saints, portraits executed with discrimination and truth. there is also a picture of our lord announced by the angel, at ceneda, a work so uncommonly beautiful in regard to the two heads, that titian, in passing occasionally through the place, is said, according to ridolfi, to have repeatedly contemplated it with rapture; charmed by the spirit of devotion it expressed. upon the same boundaries, between the ancient and modern taste, we find various other painters, natives of the valleys of bergamo, a fruitful source both of wealth and intellect to the city. such is antonio boselli,[ ] from the valle brembana, of whom there has recently been discovered a fine altarpiece at the santo of padua; besides two other artists of the same vale, who approach even nearer to the softness, if not to the elegance of previtali. these are gian giacomo, and agostino gavasii di pascante. we may add to these jacopo degli scipioni, of averara, and caversegno, of bergamo, besides others handed down to us by tassi. these, having flourished at a period so distinguished for the art of colouring, may be compared to certain writers of the fourteenth century, who throw little light upon learning; but who, observes salvini, in respect to language, appear to me as if every separate page were embued with gold. i have already pointed out to the reader, the best masters of the venetian school, contemporary with, and followers of gian bellini; a number which, though we subtract from it several names of inferior note, will leave a larger proportion than is generally supposed. the state, indeed, is full of specimens founded upon his models, the authors of which remain doubtful; yet it is certain they composed in bellini's style, while their designs partake more or less both of the modern and ancient taste.[ ] undoubtedly, no other school affords a proof of so great a number of disciples from one master, and following so closely in his footsteps. granting this, i cannot easily give credit to the numerous specimens of madonnas attributed to his single hand, besides other pictures in different collections. a cautious judge will not be apt to pronounce any work his, which displays much of ideal beauty; bellini having, for the most part, repeated in his feminine figures an expression of countenance, partaking in some degree of an apish character. nor will he be easily led to ascribe to him pictures which display a minute care and finish, approaching to the miniature style, inasmuch as he embodied and coloured his conceptions with a free and fearless hand. in short, a certain vigour of colour, warm and lively; a certain reddish tinge of the drapery, approaching a rosy hue; a certain brightness of varnish, are not the usual characteristics of his hand, however much his style of design may be mixed up with them; and such pieces may reasonably be presumed the production of those artists of the state bordering nearest upon lombardy, whence, likewise, a few of the venetian state derived the mechanical part of their colouring. within the limits proposed to myself, i may here annex to my consideration of the painters in water colours and in oil, other less distinguished branches of the art. among these is that species of inlaid work with wood of different colours, which was intended more particularly for the ornament of choirs where the divine service was chaunted. i can trace nothing of its inventors, whether of german or other origin;[ ] though it is said to have taken its rise in an imitation of mosaic work, and of works in stone. no other coloured woods besides black and white were at first in use; nor any other objects beyond large edifices, temples, colonnades, and in short ornaments with architectural views, attempted to be represented. brunelleschi at florence gave instructions in perspective to architects, that edifices might be drawn according to good rules; and massaccio in painting, greatly availed himself of his precepts, as well as benedetto da majano in his inlaid works. there remain at florence, as well as other places in italy, several ancient choirs very highly prized in that age, but afterwards despised, when the art of staining wood with boiled water colours and penetrative oils, came into use. thus, after the imitation of buildings, easily drawn from the number of their right lines, that of figures began to be practised in an able manner, though it had formerly been tried with less success. the chief merit of such improvement, or rather perfection of the art, was due to the venetian school. lorenzo canozio, from lendinara, a fellow student of mantegna, who died about , inlaid the entire choir of the church of s. antonio, even, as it would appear, with figures. the whole, however, having been consumed by fire, there is nothing remaining but the epitaph of the artificer, in which he is highly applauded for his labours. there likewise exist other works of the same kind, in the armadj, chests, or presses, of the sacristy, and, as it is supposed, also in some of the confessionals. besides lorenzo, his brother cristofano, and his son-in-law pierantonio, who assisted him in these labours, are equally applauded by matteo siculo, as worthy of vieing with phidias and apelles themselves. tiraboschi likewise enumerates the two brothers among the artists of modena, whose fellow citizens they were. but the fame of these soon expired. for giovanni da verona, a layman of oliveto, not long after, surpassed them in the same art. he practised it in various cities of italy, and at rome itself, in the service of pope julius ii; but still more successfully in the sacristy of his own order, where his works are still to be seen in the best condition. f. vincenzo delle vacche, also a native of verona, and a layman of oliveto, mentioned by the learned morelli in his _notizia_ of works of design, during the first half of the sixteenth century, deserves mention here for the merit of his inlaid works; and in particular for those wrought in padua, at the church of s. benedetto novello. unacquainted, however, with the period in which he flourished, i shall not venture to announce him either as a pupil or assistant to fra giovanni. similar productions, from the hand of fra raffaello da brescia, also of oliveto, adorning the choir of s. michele in bosco at bologna, might here be mentioned in competition with those in the sacristy of verona, by natives of oliveto. moreover, there remains fra damiano da bergamo, a dominican monk, who ornamented his own church at bergamo, and that of bologna in a still better style; in which the choir is inlaid with the greatest art. in s. pietro, at perugia, he also wrought the most beautiful histories. the same artist, as we find recorded in vasari, succeeded also in refining the art of colours and of shades, to such a degree as to be held the very first in this line. he possessed either a rival, or a pupil, in gianfrancesco capodiferro, whose mansions at s. maria maggiore, in bergamo, are the finest specimens of the kind, though occasionally betraying some traces of stiffness in their manner. there too he worked after the designs of lotto, and instructed in the art his brother pietro and his son zinino, so that the city continued to be supplied with excellent artificers during a number of years. the largest and most artificially wrought figures i have seen in this line are in a choir of the certosa at pavia, distributed one by one upon each side. the artificer is said to have been one bartolommeo da pola, whose name i have not met with elsewhere. in each of the squares is represented a bust of one of the apostles, or some other saint, designed in the taste of the da vinci school. a few of the pictures of these artists are to be found in galleries of art; among which, those from the hand of f. damiano are the most esteemed. finally, this species of workmanship, embracing materials too much exposed to the moth and to the fire, by degrees began to grow out of date: and if more lately it appears to have again revived, it has failed hitherto in producing any works deserving of commemoration. [footnote : rannusio guerra di costantinopoli, book iii. p. .] [footnote : vol. vi. p. , anno .] [footnote : see his _descrizione delle pitture_, &c. p. . the learned morelli also, in his annotations to the _notizia_, confirms, by fresh arguments, the same epoch, p. .] [footnote : page .] [footnote : this was given to the public by muratori, with the following title--_riccobaldi ferrariensis, sive anonimi scriptoris compilatio chronologica usque ad annum ._ (rerum italicarum scriptores, vol. ix. p. .)] [footnote : sig. sasso observed one extremely like it in venice, with the subscription _guglielmus pinxit_, ; from which he inferred that he had belonged to the school of guariento.] [footnote : this _sebeto_ of vasari appeared so new to maffei, that he would willingly have substituted stefano; (_see ver. illust._ p. iii. col. ,) but stefano da verona, or da zevio, is a name posterior to these times. the _notizia_ of the anonymous writer, recently published, says, that the church of the before mentioned s. george was ornamented by "jacopo davanzo, a paduan, or a veronese, if not, as some will have it, a bolognese; by altichiero veronese, according to campagnuola, p. ." it must be observed that vasari also consulted the latter, or probably one of his latin letters to niccolo leonico tomeo, quoting it several times. (see morelli, p. .) now in this it was probably written, _ab alticherio de jebeto_; that is, da zevio, which was at one time called _jebetum_, and vasari believed it to be the name of an unknown painter. such is the conjecture communicated to me by sig. brandolese, and it appears extremely probable.] [footnote : signor abbate morelli, since p. della valle, has discovered another painting existing in the sacristy of the padri conventuali, at vicenza, with this inscription, , paulus de venetiis pinxit hoc opus, (_notiz._ p. ). he adds also, two other venetian painters, with whom i have enriched this new edition; the name of one found in a small picture of the conventuali, at s. arcangelo, under an image of the virgin, among various saints, dated . _jachobelus de bonomo venetus pinxit hoc opus._ the other, in the territory of verruchio, on a crucifixion, with the symbols of the four evangelists, is in the possession of the agostiniani, and inscribed : _nicholaus paradixi miles de venetiis pinxit_.] [footnote : among these is counted stefano pievano, of st. agnese, an able artist, who left his name along with the date, , on an altarpiece of the _assumption_:--a piece in which the venetian colouring is displayed to advantage, while the expression, lively and full of meaning, compensates for its inaccuracy of design. another artist deserving of being known is jacopo di _alberegno_, whose family still remains in venice, and who has been ascertained to be the author of a painting without date, representing the crucifixion of our saviour, among various saints. tommaso da modena has also been referred to the venetian school, who, about the period of , produced two holy virgins at venice; a st. catherine, at present in the gallery of n. h. ascanio molin, together with the two preceding, and other rare venetian pictures of the same epoch; and a s. barbara, belonging to the abbate mauro boni, so fraught with expression, grace, and power of colouring, as to lead me to conjecture he had flourished at a much later period, were it not for the inscribed date. his beginning to be known at venice is some reason why he should be referred to this school, if the name of his native place, _de mutina_, did not restrain us from so doing without some further doubt. the ab. boni, who has given us an account of these pictures in an article put forth by the italian academy, was the first to discover them.] [footnote : before their time, however, bergamo could boast a school of painting, as witness what count tassi adduces in a parchment of the year , naming a certain guglielmo, _pittore_. it does not appear in what style he drew. one of his successors, who painted the tree of st. bonaventura, abounding in sacred figures, shews himself an artist more rude, indeed, but more original than either of the brothers de nova. of his name we are, however, ignorant, as he only attached the date of .] [footnote : in the work intitled _narrazione dell'isola di murano_, by _g. a. moschini_, the supposition i have above stated has been combated by its excellent author. a picture in the gallery of the n. h. molin, at venice, subscribed _johannes vivarinus_, seems to have persuaded him of my mistake. in a work embracing an account of some thousand painters, i cannot pretend to boast of its being free from some human errors, and was about to express my gratitude to the above mentioned author for having pointed one of them out. but i am now convinced that the picture is from the hand of another artist, and that the signature in question is a forgery, the author of which has confounded the character of what is called gothic and roman, in place of imitating the true character of those times, which he might very easily have done, inasmuch as he had before his eyes a small chart, with a most devout oration, _deus meus charitas_, &c. in the most complete gothic, or rather german character that can be conceived. the impostor therefore must have been extremely ignorant of his art. the examination was made by the cavalier gio. da lazara, abate mauro boni, bartolommeo gamba, names sufficiently known to the public to justify our adoption of their opinion. the very able brandolese has likewise pronounced the inscription false, and published thereon a little work, entitled "_doubts respecting the existence of such a painter as giovanni vivarino da murano, newly confirmed; and a refutation of some recently asserted authority, to confirm them_." and in this he displays much sound criticism, and many arguments, all tending to strengthen my own conjecture.] [footnote : this artist ought not to be confounded with jacometto da venezia, a miniature painter, and artist of the same age, but who flourished somewhat later. he also was celebrated in his day, and is frequently recorded in the _notizia morelli_, for his small pictures, adapted for private rooms, his portraits, and his miniatures. it was sometimes doubted whether a certain work was from the hand of john of bruges, of antonello da messina, or of jacometto da venezia. (_see notizia morelli_, p. .)] [footnote : the picture referred to by the p. moschini, in his _narrazione dell'isola di murano_, is not to be admitted as genuine, the inscription upon it being forged by the same author, who counterfeited that of giovanni vivarini, before alluded to in the note to page .] [footnote : see _morelli notizia_, p. .] [footnote : i had supposed, in my first edition of this work, misled by the opposite names, that sebeto was a different personage from this stefano da zevio. i was afterwards undeceived by the appearance of the work of the learned brandolese, pronouncing them one and the same artist; and i willingly here retract what i had before advanced, expressing, at the same time, my acknowledgements for the emendation.] [footnote : _drawn in the most perfect manner_, are the words of vasari, while he adds, that the whole of his works were imitated and copied by pietro di perugia, an experienced artist in _fresco_, and more especially in miniature, with which "he ornamented the whole of the books in the library of pope pius," in the dome at siena. he is not known, however, in perugia, nor mentioned at siena among those employed at the cathedral, as is noticed by father della valle; yet the present work abounds with examples of artists, unknown in their own cities, on account of having resided elsewhere; and the before mentioned annotator of vasari was unable to discover the name of liberal da verona, an undoubted illustrator of the books, in such registers. i think we ought not to refuse to give credit, therefore, to vasari, as father guglielmo insists; but to admit a new pietro di perugia, anterior to vanucci, who might design the frescos of stefano in verona and mantua, so extolled in the early part of , and who copied them in those very beautiful and graceful miniatures at siena; an art which he probably acquired at verona, where it was then in such high repute.] [footnote : see on this head, the _descrizione delle bellezze di vicenza_, p. . p. .] [footnote : in the cathedral of pordenone, under one of his altarpieces, we read-- "andreas zeusis nostræque ætatis apelles hoc bellunellus nobile pinxit opus." (_altan._)] [footnote : ruggieri indeed had acquired a great reputation in italy as early as , when ciriaco anconitano, being in ferrara, saw a picture of christ taken from the cross, belonging to the duke. he thus writes respecting the artist: _rugerus brugiensis pictorum decus_ agathÊi tuchÊi.--_rugierius in brussella post præclarum illum brugiensem picturæ decus joannem, insignis n. t. pictor habetur_, &c. see colucci a. p. vol. xxiii. p. . he is also commended in high terms by bartolommeo facio in his little work _de viris illustribus_. see morelli, _notizia_, p. .] [footnote : he arrived there, and was at rome in the _anno santo_. see facius, lib. cit. p. .] [footnote : this is one of the usual mistakes found in vasari. baldinucci (tom. iv. p. ) calls him ans or hans. this is his flemish appellation, which in our tongue, signifies giovanni; and in the _notizia_ morelli he is termed gianes da brugia; somewhat nearer our own tongue. with sansovino he is gio. di bruggia, john of bruges. see morelli, p. ; and by him he is distinguished from _gio. van eych_.] [footnote : in a similar taste was the perspective introduced by giovanni bellino in his celebrated altarpiece at san zaccaria, in venice. another was placed in the great altar of the dome at capo d'istria, by carpaccio the elder, still more striking. in the background of the picture, the virgin appears seated on a magnificent throne, with the divine infant, in an upright posture, upon her knees, surrounded by six of the most venerable patrons of the place, disposed around her, in three ranks, displaying a fine diversity of drapery as well as of action. to these are added some cherubs, engaged in playing upon musical instruments, and apparently beholding the spectator with an air of puerile simplicity, as if inviting him to caress them. a long and lofty colonnade, in excellent perspective, leads the way to the throne, at one time united to a fine stone colonnade, which extended from the altarpiece through the chapel, producing a fine illusion, amounting to a sort of enchantment of perspective. it was removed along with the stone columns, in order to enlarge the tribune. the oldest citizens, who witnessed this beautiful spectacle, speak of it to strangers with delight, and i am glad to put it on record, before the recollection of it be entirely obliterated.] [footnote : _notizia_, p. .] [footnote : albert durer, arriving the same year at venice, bestowed on giovanni one of the most favourable testimonies to his talents that now remains. after rebuking the envy of the other painters, who spoke of him with contempt, he says of him:--"every one assures me that he is _gran galantuomo_, for which reason i wish him well. he is already very old, but, notwithstanding, the best painter we have." v. _morel. not._ p. .] [footnote : the country is impressed with this persuasion in spite of his own signatures, attached even to the pictures in istria. in that, cited at page , it is written _victor charpatius venetus pinxit, _; in another, at san francesco di pirano, _victoris charpatii veneti opus, _. benedetto carpaccio, probably a son or nephew of the preceding, was also a venetian, of whom there remains a picture of the coronation of the virgin, at capo d'istria, in the rotunda, subscribed, _benetto carpathio veneto pingeva, _. at the osservanti, is the picture of the _nome di gesù_, with the same words, but dated . he is not mentioned in venetian history, though highly deserving a place in it; for whatever traces he retains of the ancient stiffness of manner, in the extremity of his figures, yet he yields not to many in softness of tints; in the taste of his colours; expression of features, and the effect of his chiaroscuro. i am led to think, that from residing out of the capital, this artist was supposed to be a native of istria, but he was indisputably of a venetian family, most probably tracing its origin from murano.] [footnote : we find traces of his paintings from the year . see tassi, in his _lives of the painters, &c._ p. , where he corrects a mistake of zanetti, who, instead of one painter, had divided him into two. one of his pictures, in the parish church of endine, will remove every doubt. there he signed himself, _franciscus rizus bergomensis habitator venetiis, _. in another piece, in the parochial church of serina, he wrote _francesco rizo da santa croxe depense, _. his last work, of which i find any account, is also in the parochial church of chirignano, in the mestrina, dated . father federici, who describes it, makes francesco the son of girolamo da s. croce, or s. croce, whose name we find subscribed in both ways, but not ever rizo. i cannot agree with him, first, because ridolfi says only, (p. ,) that they were of _the same family_; second, because the pictures of girolamo, according to tassi, commence later, and are traced also later than those of francesco, that is in ; and thirdly, because the style of girolamo is incomparably more modernized, as we shall presently shew.] [footnote : morelli _notizia_, p. .] [footnote : in the _statuti de' pittori_, it is written mireti; and the same work contains memoirs of him in and ; years, however, which do not accord with his dependence on the bellini. this girolamo might possibly have been the brother, or other relation, of that gio. miretto, for whom see p. . these two names will do away with the _moreto_ of vasari, and we must substitute mireto or miretto.] [footnote : i repeat the epigram, which is subscribed in ancient characters, on the strength of which we may believe that the work was esteemed one of the most valuable the art had produced up to that period, transcribed by the very frequently commended sig. co. cav. lazara; it is thus: non hic parrhasio, non hic tribuendus apelli, hos licet auctores dignus habere labor. euganeus, vixdum impleto ter mense, jacobus ex montagnana nobile pinxit opus.] [footnote : he is thus named in the "statuti de' pittori," of padua, and in the _ms. zen._ whence we may correct ridolfi, who calls him girolamo.] [footnote : in vol. iii. ed. rom. p. , it is written by mistake mantegna, where it says that he, speranza, and veruzio, studied design under mantegna.] [footnote : padre faccioli, in his third volume of the _inscrizioni della città e territorio di vicenza_, records the following epigraph, _jo. sperantiæ de vangeribus me pinxit_, in which vangeribus may, perhaps, apply to some small village in the territory of vicenza. he is wholly silent respecting veruzio, thus confirming the suspicion that his name is a mere mistake of vasari, whom it is hoped our posterity will still continue to correct, and yet leave sufficient employment for their children. the following is my conjecture. p. faccioli gives an account of a picture that remains in s. francesco di schio; it is composed in the manner usually adopted in the composition of the marriage of s. catherine; and there are also other saints well executed in the mantegna style, as is observed by the cav. gio. de lazara, whose authority i esteem excellent. it bears the inscription, "franciscus verlus de vicentia pinxit xx. junii. m. d. xii.;" and to this is added by faccioli another old painting by the same hand, remaining at sercedo. now i contend that the name of this painter, being reported to vasari, with its diminutive termination, like many others, borrowed either from the stature or the age, (in the venetian dialect it was verlucio or verluzo) it was afterwards given by him in his history as veruzio. the critics of the greek writers will know how to do me justice in this, for this mode of discovering and correcting names i have derived from them.] [footnote : to judge from some pictures at bergamo, we might suppose him educated in the style of the fourteenth century; but he afterwards approached nearer to the modern, as we perceive at padua, where he resembles palma vecchio; and this is sufficiently conspicuous also in friuli, where we make mention of him at a more cultivated era.] [footnote : in this character is the larger picture at s. niccolo, a church of the dominicans in treviso, in which the cupola, the columns, and the perspective, with the throne of the virgin seated with the infant jesus, and surrounded by saints standing, the steps ornamented by a harping seraph, all discover bellini's composition; but i had not seen the work, until after the former edition of my history at bassano. it was painted in , by p. marco pensaben, assisted by p. marco maraveia, both dominican priests, engaged for the purpose from venice. they remained there until july, , when the first of them secretly fled from the convent, and the altarpiece of treviso was completed in a month by one gian-girolamo, a painter invited from venice; supposed to be girolamo trevisano, the younger. this artist is not, however, mentioned, as i am aware, either, by the citizens, or by foreigners, by any other name than girolamo, and calculating from the chronology of ridolfi, he must then have been thirteen years of age. until this subject be more clearly investigated, i must confess my ignorance of such a gian-girolamo. but i am better acquainted with the name of pensaben, who was afterwards found, and in was, as before, a dominican friar at venice; but a few years after, in , is mentioned in authentic books belonging to the order, being registered among those who had either left the order or were dead. p. federici believes him to have been the same as f. bastiano del piombo, an untenable supposition, as i have elsewhere shown. i believe pensaben to have been an excellent artist in the bellini manner, though not commemorated in history, nor by his order. in an order so prolific with genius, and in an age abounding with great names, he is by no means a solitary instance of this: the present work being found to contain many other examples.] [footnote : as early as the eleventh century, or thereabouts, it would appear that some similar kind of art was in repute in germany. the monk theophilus, in the works before mentioned, "de omni scientiâ artis pingendi," alluding, at the commencement, to the most esteemed productions of every country, observes: "quidquid in fenestrarum varietate preciosâ diligit francia; quidquid in auri, argenti, cupri, ferri, lignorum, lapidumque subtilitate sollers laudat germania." _codice viennese._] venetian school. second epoch. _giorgione, titian, tintoret, jacopo da bassano, paolo veronese._ behold us at length arrived at the golden period of the venetian school, which like the others of italy, produced its most distinguished ornaments about the year ; artists who at once eclipsed the fame of their predecessors, and the hopes of attaining to equal excellence on the part of their successors. in reaching this degree of eminence, it is true they pursued different paths, though they all aimed at acquiring the same perfection of colouring; the most natural, the most lively, and the most applauded of any single school of the age; a distinction they likewise conferred upon their posterity, forming the distinguishing characteristic of the venetian painters. the merit of this has been attributed to the climate by some, who assert, that in venice, and the adjacent places, nature herself has bestowed a warmer and deeper colour upon objects than elsewhere; a frivolous supposition, and undeserving of much of our attention, inasmuch as the artists of holland and flanders, in climates so extremely opposite, have obtained the same meed of praise. neither is it to be attributed to the quality of the colours; both giorgione and titian having been known to make use of few, and these, so far from being selected or procured elsewhere, exposed to sale in all the public shops in venice. if it should again be objected, that in those days the colours were sold purer and less adulterated, i admit there may be some degree of truth in this, inasmuch as passeri, in his life of orbetto, complained at that time of the early decay of many pictures, "owing to the quality of the colours fraudulently sold by the retailers." but i would merely inquire, if it were possible, that materials thus pure and uncontaminated should so often fall into the hands of the venetians and their flemish imitators, yet be so seldom met with in the rest of the schools. the cause of their superiority is to be sought, therefore, in their mechanism and art of colouring; in regard to which the best venetian painters conformed, in some points, to the most celebrated artists of italy. in other points, however, they differed from them. it was a common practice at that period, to prepare with a chalk surface the altarpieces and pictures which were intended to be executed; and that white ground, favourable to every variety of tint the painter could lay upon it, equally favoured the production of a certain polish, floridity, and surprising transparency; a custom which, being laid aside out of indolence and avarice, i am happy to perceive seems about to be renewed. but in addition to this the venetians were in possession of an art that may be considered peculiar to themselves. for it may be observed, that the chief part of them during these three centuries, produced the effect of their paintings, not so much by a strong layer of colours, as by separate strokes of the pencil; and each colour being thus adapted to its place, without much repeating or refining it, they still continued augmenting the work, by which the tints were preserved clear and virgin; a result which requires no less promptness of hand than of intellect, besides education, and a taste cultivated from the earliest period. hence the artist vecchia was accustomed to say, that by dint of copying pictures executed with diligence, a painter will acquire the same quality; but to succeed in copies from a titian or a paolo, and to imitate their stroke, is a task surmounted only by the venetians, whether natives or educated in their school. (_boschini_, p. .) should it here be inquired what good result may attend such a method, i reply that boschini points out two very considerable ones. the first of them is, that by this mode of colouring, which he terms _di macchia_ and _di pratica_, a certain hardness of style may more easily be avoided; and the other, that, better than any other, it gives a bolder relief to paintings in the distance: and pictures being intended to be thus viewed, rather than closer to the eye, such an object is by this process most easily attainable. i am aware of the moderns having misapplied and abused these maxims; but they were meant to have been judiciously employed, and i only wish to propose as examples the most celebrated of the school who so ably comprehended the method, and the limits of such a practice. nor was the harmony of colours better understood by any other artists, insomuch, that the mode of assimilating and of contrasting them, may be considered as the second source of the delightful and lively, so predominant in their works, and more especially in those of titian and his contemporaries. such skill was not merely confined to the fleshy parts, in whose colour the disciples of titian have so far excelled every other school; it extended also to the drapery. for indeed, there are no pieces of velvets, of stuffs, or of crapes, which they did not imitate to perfection, more particularly in their portraits, in which the venetians of that period abounded, displaying specimens the most ornamental and beautiful. the cavalier mengs is of opinion, that also to this branch of the art, requiring the strictest attention to truth, and conferring a peculiar kind of interest upon a picture, may be in some measure attributed the degree of power and truth acquired by those eminent colourists. their merit was moreover conspicuous in imitating every kind of work in gold, in silver, and every species of metal; so much so, that there are no royal palaces or lordly feasts, read of in any poet, which do not appear more nobly represented in some venetian paintings. it was equally remarkable in point of landscape, which sometimes surpassed the efforts of the flemish painters, and in architectural views, which, with a magnificence unknown elsewhere, they succeeded in introducing into their compositions, as we had before occasion to observe of the artists of the fourteenth century; a species of industry extremely favourable, likewise, to the distribution, the variety, and to the complete effect of groups of figures. in these extensive compositions, which about the period of the bellini abounded in half-length or diminutive figures, there has since been displayed a grandeur of proportions which has led the way to the most enlarged productions, on the scale we have more recently seen. the most terrific among these is the supper of paolo veronese at s. giorgio, in which the gifts of nature are so nobly seconded by the exhibition of talent, which appears to have been transmitted by succession through this school, nearly until the present day. such ability consists in finely designing all the details of any work, however great, including the transmission and gradations of light, so that the eye of itself seems to follow its track, and embraces the entire effect from one end of the canvass to the other. and it has been observed by several who have witnessed ancient paintings (a violation of good taste, of late but too common,) cut up and curtailed to adapt them to the size of walls and doors, that such an operation often succeeds tolerably well with the pictures of other schools, but is extremely difficult with those of the venetians; so intimately is one part connected with another, and harmonized with the whole. these, along with other similar qualities that flatter the eye of the spectator, that attract the learned and the unlearned, and seem to transport the mind by the novelty and the reality of the representation, constitute a style which is termed by reynolds the ornamental, who, likewise, among all the schools, yields the palm in this to the venetians; a style afterwards introduced by vovet into france, by rubens into flanders, and by giordano into naples and into spain. the same english critic places it in the second rank, next to the grand style, and remarks that the professors of the sublime were fearful of falling into luxurious and pompous exhibitions of the accessaries; no less because prejudicial to the artist's industry in point of design and in point of expression, than because the transitory impression which it produces upon the spectator, seldom reaches the heart. and truly, as the sublime of tully is more simple than the ornament of pliny, and seems to dread any excitement of admiration for the beautiful, lest its energy should be unnerved by too studied a degree of elegance; so is it with the grandeur of michelangiolo and of raffaello, that without seeking to occupy us with the illusions of art, goes at once to the heart; terrifies or inspires us; awakens emotions of pity, of veneration, and the love of truth, exalting us, as it were, above ourselves, and leading us to indulge, even in spite of ourselves, the most delicious of all feelings, in that of wonder. it is upon this account that reynolds considered it dangerous for students to become enamoured of the venetian style; an opinion, which, judiciously understood, may prove of much service to such artists as are calculated to succeed in the more sublime. but since amidst such diversity of talent, there must appear artists better adapted to adorn than to express; it would not be advisable that their genius should be urged into a career in which it will leave them always among the last, withdrawing them, at the same time, from another in which they might have taken the lead. let him, therefore, who in this art of silent eloquence possesses not the energy and spirit of demosthenes, apply himself wholly, heart and soul, to the elegance, the pomp, and the copiousness of demetrius phalereus. let it not from this be supposed, that the sole merit of the venetians consists in surprising the spectator by the effects of ornament and colour, and that the customary style and true method of painting, were not understood in those parts. yet i am aware of the opinion of many foreigners, who having never removed beyond their native spot, are inclined to pronounce a general censure upon these artists, as being ignorant of design, too laboured in their composition, unacquainted with ideal beauty, and even unable to understand expression, costume, and grace; finally, that the rapidity so much in vogue with the whole of the school,[ ] led them to despise the rules of art, not permitting them to complete the work before them, out of an anxiety to engage in other labours, for the sake of the profits afforded by them. to some of their painters, doubtless, these observations may apply, but assuredly not to the whole; for if one city be obnoxious to them, another is not so much so; or if they can be affirmed of a certain epoch or class of artists, it would be an idle attempt to fix them upon all. this school is in truth most abundant, no less in artists than in fine examples in every characteristic of the art; but neither one nor the other are sufficiently known and appreciated. yet it is hoped the reader will be enabled to form a more correct idea of both; and after having cultivated an acquaintance with the bellini, the giorgioni, and the titians, besides other masters, will trace, as it were from one parent stock, the various offshoots transplanted throughout the state, imbibing, according to the nature of the soil, and the vicinity of other climes, new tastes and qualities, without losing at the same time their original and native flavour. and if in the progress of our history we shall here and there, among plants of nobler growth, meet with some "_lazzi sorbi_," to use the words of our poet, some bitter apples, growing at their side; let these only be attacked; but let not the disgrace attaching to a few careless artists be calumniously extended to the whole of their school. the happy era we are now entering upon, commences with giorgione and with titian, two names which, connected together, yet in competition with each other, divided between them, as it were, the whole body of disciples throughout the capital and the state; insomuch that we find no city that had not more or less adopted for its model one or other of these masters. i shall proceed to describe them separately, each with his own class, as i believe such a method most favourable, to shew how the whole of the school i am describing was almost entirely derived and propagated from two masters of a similar style. giorgio barbarelli of castelfranco, more generally known by the name of giorgione, from a certain grandeur conferred upon him by nature, no less of mind than form, and which appears also impressed upon his productions, as the character is said to be in the handwriting, was educated in the school of the bellini. but impelled by a spirit conscious of its own powers, he despised that minuteness in the art which yet remained to be exploded, at once substituting for it a certain freedom and audacity of manner, in which the perfection of painting consists. in this view he may be said to be an inventor; no artist before his time having acquired that mastery of his pencil, so hardy and determined in its strokes, and producing such an effect in the distance. from that period he continued to ennoble his manner, rendering the contours more round and ample, the foreshortenings more new, the expression of the countenance more warm and lively, as well as the motions of his figures. his drapery, with all the other accessaries of the art became more select, the gradations of the different colours more soft and natural, and his chiaroscuro more powerful and effective. it was in this last indeed, that venetian painting was the most deficient, while it had been introduced into the rest of the schools by vinci previous to the sixteenth century. vasari is of opinion that from the same artist, or rather from some of his designs, it was first acquired by giorgione, a supposition that boschini will not admit, maintaining that he was only indebted for it to himself, being his own master and scholar. and, in truth, the taste of lionardo and of the milanese artists who acquired it from him, not only differs in point of design, inclining in the contours and in the features more towards the graceful and the beautiful, while giorgione affects rather a round and full expression; but it is contrasted with it, likewise, in the chiaroscuro. the composition of lionardo abounds much more in shades, which are gradually softened with greater care; while in regard to his lights he is far more sparing, and studies to unite them in a small space with a degree of vividness that produces surprise. giorgione's composition, on the other hand, is more clear and open, and with less shade; his middle tints, also, partake in nothing of the ironcast and grey, but are natural and beautiful; and in short, he approaches nearer to the style of coreggio, if mengs at least judges rightly, than to any other master. still i am far from concluding that vinci in no way contributed to the formation of giorgione's new manner; every improvement in the art having taken its rise from some former one, which being admired for its novelty, became familiar to surrounding artists by example, and to more distant ones by its reputation, thus adding what was before wanting to the perfection of the art. and in this way have geniuses in different parts arisen, destined to increase and improve such advantages. this, if i mistake not, has been the case with the science of perspective, subsequent to the time of pier della francesca; with regard to foreshortening after melozzo; and also with chiaroscuro after lionardo. the works of giorgione were, for the chief part, executed in fresco, upon the façades of the houses, more particularly in venice, where there now remains scarcely a relic of them, as if to remind us only of what have perished. many of his pictures, on the other hand, both there and in other places, painted in oil and preserved in private houses, are found in excellent condition; the cause of which is attributed to the strong mixture of the colours, and to the full and liberal use of his pencil. in particular we meet with portraits, remarkable for the soul of their expression, for the air of their heads, the novelty of the garments, of the hair, of the plumes, and of the arms, no less than for the lively imitation of the living flesh, in which, however warm and sanguine are the tints which he applied, he adds to them so much grace, that in spite of thousands of imitators, he still stands alone. in analyzing some of these tints, ridolfi discovered that they bore little resemblance to those used by the ancient greeks, and quite distinct from those tawny, brown, and azure colours, since introduced at the expense of the more natural. such of his pictures as are composed in the style of his dead christ, in the monte di pietà at trevigi, the s. omobono at the scuola de' sarti, in venice, or the tempest stilled by the saint, at that of s. marco, in which among other figures are those of three rowers drawn naked, excellent both in their design and their attitudes; such are the rarest triumphs of his art. the city of milan possesses two of an oblong shape, in which several of the figures extend beyond the proportions of poussin, and may be pronounced rather full than beautiful. one of these is to be viewed at the ambrosiana, the other in the archepiscopal palace; esteemed by some the happiest effort of giorgione that now survives. it represents the child moses just rescued from the nile, and presented to the daughter of pharaoh. very few colours, but well harmonized and distributed, and finely broken with the shades, produce a sort of austere union, if i may be allowed the expression, and may be assimilated to a piece of music composed of few notes, but skilfully adapted, and delightful beyond any more noisy combination of sounds. giorgione died at the early age of thirty-four, in . thus his productions, rather than the pupils he educated, remained to instruct the venetians. vasari, however, mentions several who have been contested by other writers. a pietro luzzo is recorded by ridolfi;--a native of feltre, called zarato, or zarotto,--who after being a pupil became a rival of giorgione, and seduced from his house a woman, to whom he was passionately attached, at whose loss it has been asserted by some that the disappointed artist died in despair. by others, on the contrary, he is said to have died of a disease contracted during his intercourse with the same lady. this zarato, as we read in a ms. history of feltre, and in a ms. upon the pictures of udine, is the same whom vasari entitles, _morto da feltro_; and adds, that he went when young to rome, and subsequently flourished in florence and elsewhere, distinguished for his skill in grotesques; of which more hereafter. going afterwards to venice, he is known to have assisted giorgione in the paintings he made for the fondaco de' tedeschi, about the year ; and, lastly, having remained some time at his native place, he embraced a military life, obtaining the rank of captain. proceeding to zara, he fell in battle near that place in his forty-fifth year; at least such is the account of vasari. from the mention of his native place of feltre, his assisting giorgione in his works, and his surnames of _zarato_ and _morto_, i think there is some degree of probability in the assertion contained in these mss. though the dates attaching to the life of morto in vasari, will not countenance the supposition of ridolfi, of his being the pupil of giorgione, a man considerably younger than himself; so that i should conjecture that ridolfi may have denominated him a scholar of giorgione, because, when already of a mature age, he painted under him as his assistant. notwithstanding the assertion of vasari, he had a tolerable genius for figures, and in the history already cited, written by cambrucci, and in possession of the bishop of feltre, a picture of our lady between saints francesco and antonio, placed at s. spirito, and another at villabruna, besides a figure of curtius on horseback, upon a house at teggie, are attributed to his hand. we gather from the same history that another luzzi, by name lorenzo, a contemporary and perhaps friend of pietro, painted very skilfully in fresco, at the church of s. stefano; and that he was equally successful in oils, he himself assures us in his altarpiece of the proto-martyr s. stefano, conspicuous for correctness of design, beauty of forms, force of tints, and bearing his name and the date of . the most distinguished disciple of the school of giorgione is sebastiano, a venetian, commonly called, from the habit and office he afterwards assumed at rome, fra sebastiano del piombo. having left gian bellini, he attached himself to giorgione, and in the tone of his colours, and the fulness of his forms, imitated him better than any other artist. an altarpiece in s. gio. crisostomo, from his hand, was by some mistaken for the work of his master; so strikingly does it abound with his manner. it may be presumed, indeed, that he was assisted in the design; sebastiano being known to possess no surprising richness of invention,--slow in the composition of most of his figures; irresolute; eager to undertake, but difficult to commence, and most difficult in the completion. hence we rarely meet with any of his histories or his altarpieces comparable to the nativity of the virgin, at s. agostino, in perugia, or the _flagellazione_ at the osservanti of viterbo, which is esteemed the best picture in the city. pictures for private rooms, and portraits, he painted in great number, and with comparative ease; and we no where meet with more beautiful hands, more rosy flesh tints, or more novel accessaries than in these. thus, in taking the portrait of pietro aretino, he distinguished five different tints of black in his dress; imitating with exactness those of the velvet, of the satin, and so of the rest. being invited to rome by agostino chigi, and there esteemed as one of the first colourists of his time, he painted in competition with peruzzi, and with raffaello himself; and the rival labours of all three are still preserved in a hall of the farnesina, at that period the house of the chigi. sebastiano became aware, that in such a competition, his own design would not appear to much advantage in rome, and he improved it. but occasionally he fell into some harshness of manner, owing to the difficulties he there encountered. yet, in several of his works, he was assisted by michelangiolo, from whose design he painted that _pietà_, placed at the conventuali of viterbo, and the transfiguration, with the other pieces which he produced, during six years, for s. pietro in montorio, at rome. it is stated by vasari, that michelangiolo united with him, in order to oppose the too favourable opinion entertained by the romans, of raffaello. he adds, that on the death of the latter, sebastiano was universally esteemed the first artist of his time, upheld by the favour of michelangiolo; giulio romano, and the rest of the rival school, being all inferior to him. i am almost at a loss how to judge of a fact, which, if discredited, seems to cast an imputation upon the historian, and, if received, reflects very little credit upon buonarotti; and the reader will do best, perhaps, to decide for himself. the name of sebastiano must also be added to the list of inventors, for his new method of oil painting upon stone, upon which plan he executed the _flagellazione_, for s. pietro in montorio, a work as much defaced by time as the others which he made in fresco remain at the same place entire. he coloured also upon stone several pictures for private houses, a practice highly esteemed at its earlier period, but which was soon abandoned owing to the difficulty of carriage. upon this plan, or some other resembling it, we find several pictures of the sixteenth century executed, and which, at this period, are esteemed in museums real antiques.[ ] among the disciples of the school of giorgione, were, likewise, gio. da udine and francesco torbido, a veronese, who has been surnamed _il moro_, and both were distinguished practisers of his tints. in regard to giovanni, afterwards a pupil of raffaello, we have written, and we shall again write elsewhere. moro remained but little with giorgione, a much longer while with liberale. of this last he imitated very truly both the diligence and the design, in the former even surpassing him; always a severe critic upon himself, and slow in completing his undertakings. we rarely meet with him in altarpieces, still more rarely in collections of paintings, for which he was often employed in sacred subjects and in portraits; deficient in nothing, except, perhaps, we could wish to see somewhat greater freedom of hand. in the dome of verona, he painted several histories in fresco, among which is the assumption of the virgin, truly admirable; but the designs are not his, giulio romano having prepared the cartoons. his style of execution, however, is clearly enough perceived, which, in respect to colouring and to chiaroscuro, discovers him to be an artist, as vasari has recorded, "as careful in regard to his use of colours, as any other who flourished at the same period." the other names that here follow, are included, according to history, in the train of giorgione, not as his pupils, but his imitators. yet all exhibit traces of bellini, because the venetian manner, up to the time of tintoretto, did not so much aim at inventing new things, as at perfecting such as had already been discovered; not so desirous of relinquishing the taste of the bellini, as of modernizing it upon the model of titian and giorgione. hence it arose, that a people of painters were formed in a taste extremely uniform; and the exaggerated observation, "that whoever had cultivated an acquaintance with one venetian artist of that age, knew them all," seemed to have some ground in truth. but still, as i have said, it is exaggeration, as there is certainly much diversity of style and merit when compared with one another. among the leading disciples of giorgione are to be ranked three, who belong to the city or territory of bergamo, and these are lotto, as is most generally supposed, palma, and cariani. they resemble their master most frequently in fulness, but in the mixture and selection of colours they often appear of the school of lombardy. more particularly in cariani there is apparent a certain superficies, like that of wax, equally diffused over the canvass, which shines so as to enliven the eye; and when seen at a distance, with but little light, appears in full relief, a result which others have also noticed in the works of coreggio. the name of lorenzo lotto is recorded by vasari and elsewhere, in which accounts his country is considered as consisting of the entire state, as he himself, indeed, affixed to his picture of s. cristoforo di loreto, _laurentius lottus pictor venetus_.[ ] the late annotator of vasari, observing the grace of countenance and the turn of the eyes remarkable in his pictures, supposed him to be a disciple of vinci, an opinion that might be supported by the authority of lomazzo, who mentions the names of cesare da sesto and lorenzo lotto together, both being imitators, in the distribution of their lights, of da vinci. lotto most likely profited by his vicinity to milan, in order to cultivate an acquaintance with, and to imitate vinci in many points; though i am not, therefore, inclined to discredit the account which gives him for a pupil to bellini, and a rival to castelfranco. but the style of the disciples of lionardo, so uniform in luini and in the other milanese, is very slightly perceptible in the productions of lotto. his manner is, in truth, wholly venetian, bold in its colours, luxurious in its draperies, and like giorgione, of a deep red in the fleshy parts. his hand, however, is less bold and free than that of the latter, whose loftier character he is fond of tempering with the play, as it were, of his middle tints; selecting, at the same time, lighter forms, to whose heads he gives a character more placid and a beauty more ideal. in the background of his pictures he often retains a peculiar clear or azure colour, which if it do not harmonize so much with the figures, confers distinctness on each individual, and presents them in a very lively manner to the eye. his pictures of s. antonino, at the dominicans in venice, and of s. niccolo, at the carmine, which design he repeated in the s. vincenzio of the dominicans at recanati, are compositions extremely novel and original. in his others he varies little from the usual style; that of a madonna seated on a throne, surrounded with saints, with cherubs in the air, or upon the steps. yet these he relieves by the novelty of perspective, or by attitudes, or contrasted views. thus in his specimen of the s. bartolommeo, at bergamo, entitled by ridolfi wonderful, he bestows upon the virgin and the infant jesus such finely diversified and contrasted motions, that they seem as if conversing with the holy bystanders, the one on the right and the other on the left hand. and in that of s. spirito, sparkling as it were with graces, we meet with a figure of s. john the baptist, drawn as a child, standing at the foot of the throne, in the act of embracing a lamb, and expressing so natural and lively a joy, at once so simple and innocent, with a smile so beautiful, that we can hardly believe while we gaze upon it, that raffaello or correggio could have gone beyond it. such masterpieces as these, with others that are to be seen at bergamo, in churches and private collections, place him almost on a level with the first luminaries of the art. if vasari did not fairly appreciate his merits, it arose only from his having viewed several of his less studied and less noble pieces. and it is true that he has not always exhibited the same degree of excellence, or force of design. the period in which he chiefly flourished may be computed from the year , when he was selected, among many professors of reputation, to adorn the altar for the church of the dominicans at bergamo; and, perhaps, the decline of his powers ought to be dated from , an epoch inscribed upon his picture of san jacopo dell'orio, in venice. he was employed also at ancona, and in particular at the church of s. dominico, at recanati, where, interspersed among pieces of superior power, more especially in his smaller pictures, we detect some incorrectness in his extremities, and stiffness of composition, resembling that of gian bellini; whether, as it is conjectured by vasari, they were among the earliest, or more probably among some of his latest efforts. for it is well known, that when far advanced in years, he was accustomed to retire to loreto, a little way from recanati, and that engaged in continual supplication to the virgin, in order that she might guide him into a better method, he there closed the period of his days in tranquillity. jacopo palma, commonly called _palma vecchio_, to distinguish him from his great-nephew jacopo, was invariably considered the companion and rival of lotto, until such time as combe first confused the historical dates relating to him. by ridolfi we are told that palma employed himself in completing a picture left imperfect by titian, at the period of his death in . upon this, and similar authorities, combe takes occasion to postpone the birth of palma, until ; adding to which the forty-eight years assigned him by vasari, the time of his decease is placed in . in such arrangement the critic seems neither to have paid attention to the style of jacopo, still retaining some traces of the antique, nor to the authority of ridolfi, who makes him the master of bonifazio, any more than to vasari's testimony, in the work published in , declaring him to have died several years before that period in venice. he does not even consider, what he might more easily have ascertained, that there was another jacopo palma, great-nephew of the elder, who, according to the authority of boschini (p. ), was a pupil of titian's as long as the latter survived; and that ridolfi, on this occasion, entitled him _palma_, without the addition of _younger_, on account of its being so extremely unlikely that any would confound him with the elder palma. such, notwithstanding, was the case, and is, in fact, only a slight sample of the inaccuracies of the whole work. the same error has been repeated by too many authors, even among the italians; and the most amusing of all is, that palma the elder is said to have been born about the year , while almost, in the same breath, the younger palma is declared to have been born in . so much must here suffice as to his age, proceeding in the next instance to his style. much attached to the method of giorgione, he aimed at attaining his clearness of expression, and vivacity of colouring. in his celebrated picture of saint barbara, at s. maria formosa, one of his most powerful and characteristic productions, jacopo more especially adopted him as his model. in some of his other pieces, he more nearly approaches titian, a resemblance we are told by ridolfi, consisting in the peculiar grace which he acquired from studying the earliest productions of that great master. of this kind is the supper of christ, painted for santa maria _mater domini_, with the virgin at san stefano di vicenza, executed with so much sweetness of expression as to be esteemed one of his happiest productions. there are many examples of both styles to be met with in the grand carrara collection, as given in the list of count tassi, (p. ). finally, zanetti is of opinion that in some others he displays a more original genius, as exemplified in the epiphany of the island of saint helena, where he equally shines in the character of a naturalist who selects well, who carefully disposes his draperies, and who composes according to good rules. the distinguishing character then of his pieces is diligence, refinement, and a harmony of tints, so great as to leave no traces of the pencil; and it has been observed by one of his historians, that he long occupied himself in the production of each piece, and frequently retouched it. in the mixture of his colours, as well as other respects, he often resembles lotto, and if he be less animated and sublime, he is, perhaps, generally speaking, more beautiful in the form of his heads, especially in those of boys and women. it is the opinion of some, that in several of his countenances he expressed the likeness of his daughter violante, very nearly related to titian, and a portrait of whom, by the hand of her father, was to be seen in the gallery of sera, a florentine gentleman, who purchased at venice many rarities for the house of the medici, as well as for himself, (boschini, p. ). a variety of pictures intended for private rooms, met with in different places in italy, have also been attributed to the hand of palma; besides portraits, one of which has been commended by vasari as truly astonishing, from its beauty; and madonnas, chiefly drawn along with other saints, on oblong canvass; a practice in common use by many artists of that age, some of whom we have already recounted, and others are yet to come. but the least informed among people of taste, being ignorant of their names, the moment they behold a picture between the dryness of giovanni bellini and the softness of titian, pronounce it to be a palma, and this, more particularly, where they find countenances well rounded and coloured, landscape exhibited with care, and roseate hues in the drapery, occurring more frequently than any of a more sanguine dye. in this way palma is in the mouths of all, while other artists, also very numerous, are mentioned only in proportion as they have attached their own names to their productions. one of these, resembling palma and lotto, but slightly known beyond the precincts of bergamo and some adjacent cities, is giovanni cariani, as to whom vasari is altogether silent. one of his pieces, representing our saviour, along with several saints, and dated , i have myself seen at milan, which appears to have been altogether formed upon the model of giorgione. if i mistake not, it is a juvenile production, and when compared with some others, which i saw at bergamo, very indifferent in its forms. the most excellent of any from his hand, is a virgin, preserved at the servi, with a group of beatified spirits, a choir of angels, and other angels at her feet, engaged in playing upon their harps in concert. it is an exceedingly graceful production, delightfully ornamented with landscape and figures in the distance; very tasteful in its tints, which are blended in a manner equal to the most studied specimens of the two artists of bergamo, already mentioned; thus forming with them a triumvirate, calculated to reflect honour upon any country. it has been stated by tassi, that the celebrated zuccherelli never visited bergamo, without returning to admire the beauties of this picture, pronouncing it one of the finest specimens of the art he had ever beheld, and the best which that city had to boast. cariani was also no less distinguished as a portrait painter, as we gather from a piece belonging to the counts albani, containing various portraits of that noble family; and which, surrounded with specimens of the best colourists; would almost appear to be the only one deserving of peculiar admiration. the city of trevigi may boast of two artists belonging to the same class, though widely differing from each other. one of these is rocco marconi, distinguished by zanetti among some of the best disciples of bellini, and erroneously referred by ridolfi to the school of palma. he excelled in accuracy of design, taste of colouring, and diligence of hand, though not always sufficiently easy in his contours, and for the most part exhibiting a severity almost approaching to plebeian coarseness in his countenances. even in the earliest production attributed to him, executed in the year , and preserved in the church of san niccolo, at trevigi, ridolfi detects that peculiar clearness of style, which may be traced also so strongly in his three apostles, at ss. giovanni and paolo, as well as in his few other pictures dispersed among the public places. indeed half-length figures of this artist are by no means of rare occurrence in private collections, though he can boast no single specimen so beautiful, or so completely _giorgionesque_ as his judgment of the adulteress, to be seen in the chapter of san giorgio maggiore, and of which there is either a duplicate or a copy at san pantaleo, and in other places. the other of these two artists is paris bordone, the elevation of whose mind and genius seemed to correspond with that of his birth. after having been a pupil of titian for a short period, he became an enthusiastic imitator of giorgione, finally adopting an originality of manner, whose peculiar grace bears no resemblance to that of any other painter. his forms may truly be said to breathe, to glow, and even to laugh, with a force of colouring, which, incapable of displaying a greater degree of truth than that of titian, aimed, nevertheless, at more variety and attraction; while, at the same time, they were not wanting in delicacy of design, novelty of drapery, propriety of composition, and a peculiarly lively air of the heads. in the church of s. giobbe he produced a picture of s. andrew embracing his cross, with an angel seen hovering above, in the act of bestowing upon him the crown of martyrdom; while in one of the two saints, represented at the side, he drew the figure of s. peter, in the act of gazing upon him with a kind of envy; an idea equally novel and picturesque. a similar method he adopted in other of his works, produced in great part for the ornament of his native place and its vicinity. not a subject but is taken from the antique; yet each of them is treated with originality. of such kind, is that picture of a true paradise, seen in the ognissanti at trevigi, and those evangelical mysteries in the cathedral of the same city, represented in an altarpiece, divided into six different groups, at the request, it is presumed, of the person who engaged him to execute it. here we behold, assembled in a small space, every thing of the most pleasing and beautiful kind, which he has elsewhere scattered throughout the whole of his works. in venice, his representation of the restoration of the ring to the doge by a fisherman, possesses a high reputation; and this, accompanied with that of the tempest, shortly before described, by giorgione, forms an admirable contrast in its beauty to the terrors abounding in the latter. decorated with the finest specimens of architecture, and a profusion of animated and well adapted figures, as varied in their actions as in their draperies, it has been commended by vasari as the masterpiece of his labours. the same artist is, likewise, highly prized in collections. madonnas of his are to be met with, characterized by the uniformity of their countenance, as well as some of his portraits, often attired in the manner of giorgione, and composed with fine and novel embellishments. being invited to the court of francis ii., he acquired the favour of that monarch and of his successor, thus enriching himself by the exercise of his talents. he had a son who pursued the same branches of the art; but from his picture of daniel, remaining at santa maria formosa in venice, it is evident how very inferior he must have been. at the same time flourished one girolamo da trevigi, a different artist to his namesake already mentioned by us, who, induced probably by the example of his noble fellow citizen, and turning his attention to a more select style than the generality of the venetian school, applied himself to the models of raffaello, and the romans. he is entitled by padre federici, upon the authority of mauro, pennacchi, and is considered by him the son of that piermaria, of whom we made brief mention before, (page ). there is little from his hand remaining at venice, but more in bologna, particularly at san petronio, where he painted in oil the histories of s. antony of padua, with judgment and grace, combined with an exquisite degree of polish, which obtained for him the commendation of vasari. it was here he happily succeeded in uniting the excellences of the two schools, though he did not flourish long enough to mature them, having devoted himself to the military occupation of an engineer, to which service he fell a victim in , while in england; he was killed, according to vasari, in his thirty-sixth year. on this last point we can scarcely admit the emendation offered us by the author of the description of vicenza, who would substitute for this earlier date the age of seventy-six years, a period of life when men seldom encounter their final doom in the field. in this instance, perhaps, the emendator was not aware that there exist signatures of a girolamo da treviso, met with upon pictures from the year to that of , uniformly of ancient design; an artist, who could not, in the common course of life, have survived to become an excellent disciple of raffaello, and the assistant of pupini at bologna, about the year . he failed, therefore, to make a distinction between two painters of the same name, as it will be perceived we have done, followed by the authority of padre federici. finally, in this list must be enumerated gio. antonio licinio, either sacchiense, or cuticello,[ ] until such period, as happening to be wounded in the hand by his brother, he renounced all title to his family name, assuming the appellation of regillo. he is commonly, however, called pordenone, from his native place, formerly a province, and now a city of the friuli. "in this province," it is observed by vasari, "there flourished, during his time, a great number of excellent artists, who had never visited either florence or rome; but he stood pre-eminent above all, surpassing his predecessors in the conception of his pieces, in design, in boldness, in the use of his colours, in his frescos, in rapidity, in grandeur of relief; and, indeed, in every other attribute of the arts." it is uncertain whether he attended the school of castelfranco, as it has been supposed by some, and much more so, whether he was a fellow student along with him and titian, under giovanni bellini, a supposition started by rinaldis, (p. ). to me, the opinion reported by ridolfi appears nearer the truth, that having first studied, in his youth, the productions of pelligrino, at udine, he subsequently adopted the manner of giorgione, following the bias of his own genius, invariably the artist's safest guide in the formation of a style. other disciples of giorgione, more or less resembled him in manner, but pordenone seemed to vie with him in spirit, a spirit equally daring, resolute, and great; surpassed by no other, perhaps, in the venetian school. yet in lower italy he is little known beyond his name. the picture with the portraits of his family, preserved in the palazzo borghese, is the best production of his that i have met with in these parts. and elsewhere, indeed, we rarely behold such histories as his exquisite picture of the raising of lazarus, in possession of the conti lecchi, at brescia. nor does he abound in altarpieces, beyond the province of friuli, which boasts of several in different places, though not all equally genuine. the few executed in pordenone, are unquestionably his, inasmuch as he has himself described them in a memorial still extant.[ ] the collegiate church possesses two of these; one consisting of a holy family, with s. christopher, executed in , very finely coloured, but not exempt from some inaccuracies. the other bears the date of , representing s. mark in the act of consecrating a bishop, along with other saints, and with perspective; a piece, says its author, _posta in opera, non finita_, begun, indeed, but not finished. a more complete specimen was to be seen at san pier martire di udine, in his annunciation, since re-touched and destroyed. some there are who have preferred, before every other, that preserved in s. maria dell'orto, at venice. it consists of san lorenzo giustiniani, surrounded by various saints; among whom s. john the baptist appears naked according to the rules of the most learned schools; while the arm of s. augustine is seen, as it were, stretched forth out of the picture, an effect of perspective this artist has repeated in various other places. the most beautiful of his pieces in piacenza, where he had established himself, is his picture of the marriage of s. catherine, upon a dark ground, which gives a roundness to the whole of the figures; it is full of grace in those of a more tender character, and displays grandeur in the forms of s. peter and s. paul, represented on the two sides; in the last of whom, as well as in the s. rocco of pordenone, he gave a portrait of himself. but his works in fresco display the highest degree of merit; great part of which he produced in the friuli, besides numerous others scattered throughout castles and villas, no longer distinguished by strangers, except from the circumstance of possessing some painting of pordenone. such places are castions, valeriano, villanova, varmo, pallazuolo, where he is with certainty known to have employed his talents. a few remnants are likewise preserved in mantua, in the casa de' cesarei, and in the palazzo doria, at genoa; some at s. rocco, and the cloisters of s. stefano, in venice, and many specimens in high preservation in the dome of cremona, and at santa maria di campagna, in piacenza, where, in collections, and in the façades of houses, other pieces of his are pointed out. his labours in fresco, however, are not all equally studied and correct; more particularly those in his native friuli, which he produced at an early age in great abundance, and for a small price. he is more select in his male forms than in those of his women, whose model he appears to have frequently taken from very robust rather than very beautiful subjects, most probably met with in the adjacent province of carnia, where he is said to have indulged his early passions. but in every thing he undertook we may invariably trace the workings of a vigorous fancy, rich in conceiving, in varying, and developing his ideas; powerful in his exhibition of the passions, displaying the master-hand that encounters the difficulties of the art with the most novel combinations in the science of foreshortening, with the most laboured perspective, and with a power of relief which appears perfectly starting from the canvass. in venice, he seemed to surpass all he had before done. the competition, or rather enmity subsisting between him and titian, served as a spur both by day and night, to actuate him to fresh exertions. he was at times even accustomed to paint with arms at his side; and it is the opinion of many, that such emulation was of no less advantage to titian, than was the rivalship of michelangiolo to raffaello. in this instance, also, the one excelled in strength, the other in grace of hand; or, as it has been observed by zanetti, nature prevailed in titian in a superior degree to manner, while in pordenone both shone with an equal degree of excellence. to have competed with titian is a circumstance not a little honourable to his name, and has acquired for him in the venetian school the second rank at least, in a period so prolific in excellent artists. a portion of the people, indeed, then preferred him to titian; for, as i have elsewhere observed, there is nothing so well calculated to surprise the multitude as the production of fine effect and of the chiaroscuro, in which art he is known to have first preceded guercino. pordenone was highly favoured, and presented with the title of cavalier by charles v.; and being subsequently invited to the court of ercole ii. duke of ferrara, he died there shortly after, not without suspicion of having been poisoned. we have in the next place to give an account of his school. bernardino licinio, from his surname probably a relation of the foregoing, was an artist who is here deserving of mention. we gather from history, as well as from his manner, that he was also a pupil of pordenone; and there remains at the conventuali, in venice, an altarpiece of the usual antique composition, quite in the style of the other licinio, from his hand. it is reported, likewise, that some of his portraits are preserved in different collections which have been erroneously ascribed to the elder pordenone. sandrart makes mention of giulio licinio da pordenone, a nephew and scholar to gio. antonio, adding that he employed himself in venice; thence transferred his residence to augusta, where he left behind him some truly surprising specimens in fresco, which obtained for him with some a higher reputation than his uncle. he would appear to be the same giulio lizino, who, in competition with schiavone, paul veronese, and other artists, produced the three tondi, in the library of st. mark, in the year . by zanetti he is considered of roman origin,[ ] but this is a mistake, arising from giulio's having assumed the title of romano during his residence in the capital; while he retained it in venice, the better to distinguish him from the other _licinj_, in the same manner as we have already observed of one of the trevisani, about the same period. giannantonio licinio the younger, was a brother to giulio, and more commonly named sacchiense, an artist who has been highly commended, but whose works are no longer to be seen, not even in como, as far as we can learn, where he died. after the licinj we ought next to record the name of calderari, a distinguished pupil of gio. antonio, who has succeeded in sometimes imposing upon the most acute judges. thus it has occurred in the parish church of montereale, where he produced many scripture histories in fresco, which had been uniformly ascribed to the hand of pordenone, until the discovery of a document establishing the contrary. he is even little known in his native place of pordenone, and his frescos in the cathedral were attributed to the pencil of amalteo. pordenone may also boast of another disciple in francesco beccaruzzi da conigliano. for this we have the authority of ridolfi, confirmed by the artist's own work, ornamenting his native place, of st. francis in the act of receiving the _stigmata_, or marks of christ, a figure more striking in point of relief than of colouring. to the same school has been added by orlandi, the name of gio. batista grassi, a good painter, but more excellent as an architect, and the same from whom vasari drew his notices of the painters of friuli. i should be inclined, however, to refer him to some other school, both on account of vasari's silence on a point so creditable to him, and his resemblance to the manner of titian in such of the few pieces as have been well preserved, and are exempt from modern retouches of art. of this kind are his pictures of the annunciation; the translation of elias; and the vision of ezekiel, in the cathedral of gemona, on the doors of the organ there. the last name to be enumerated in this class, is that of pomponio amalteo, a native of san vito, and of a noble family which yet boasts its descendants at uderzo. he was one of the most excellent of giannantonio's pupils, and introduced his master's style into the friuli, for which reason we shall here give him a place, together with the whole of his followers. he was son-in-law to pordenone, and the artist who succeeded him in his school at friuli. both there and in other places he employed himself in works of distinguished merit. he preserved the manner of his father-in-law, as has been observed by ridolfi, who erroneously ascribes to licinio the three judgments, indisputably the production of amalteo, which he represented in a gallery at ceneda, in which causes are decided. they consist of the judgment of solomon, of that of daniel, and a third of trajan; the whole completed in the year . it is everywhere evident that he aspired to originality of manner; his shading is less strong, his colours are brighter, and the proportions of his figures, and all his ideas are upon a less elevated scale than those of his father-in-law. some faint idea of his works may be gathered from vasari and ridolfi, who omitted, however, many of them, among others the five pictures of roman histories adorning the hall of the notaries at belluno: but it is only some faint idea, inasmuch as neither these two writers, nor altan, who collected memorials of him in a little work, were at all enabled to do full justice to the labours of an artist who continued to occupy himself, assisted by various other hands, until the latest period of his life. hence it is that the bulk of his works can by no means boast the same degree of excellence as the three judgments we have mentioned, or the picture of s. francis, at the church of that name, in udine, esteemed one among the valuable pieces belonging to the city. still, wherever or upon whatever subject he employed himself, he displayed the powers of a great master, educated by pordenone; and one who not only shewed himself, with the generality of venetians, a splendid colourist, but designed far more accurately. the same merit continued, for some period, to characterize his successors, who, however, if i mistake not, were greatly inferior to him in genius; excepting only his brother, with whom we shall commence the history of pomponio's school. his name was girolamo, and, receiving the instructions of his brother, he is supposed to have assisted him in his labours, giving proofs of a noble genius, which he more peculiarly manifested in works of design; in small pictures, which appeared like miniature, in several fables executed in fresco, and in an altarpiece which he painted in the church of san vito. ridolfi commends him highly for his spirited manner, and another of the old writers, as we learn from rinaldis, gives his opinion, that if he had flourished for a longer period, he would, perhaps, have proved no way inferior to the great pordenone. hence i find reason to conclude that girolamo continued, during life, the exercise of his art; and that the report transmitted to us through ridolfi, about a century after his death, of his brother pomponio having devoted him out of jealousy of his genius to mercantile pursuits, as was certainly the case with a brother of titian's, must have been wholly without foundation. pomponio likewise availed himself of the aid of antonio bosello in the paintings he produced at ceneda, as well as for the patriarch within the gallery just before recorded, and for the canons in the organ of the cathedral. this artist must assuredly have arrived at some degree of perfection, inasmuch as we are in possession of the particulars of various salaries paid to him, distinct from such as were paid to the principal. as i find mention in bergamo of an antonio boselli, memorials of whom subsist there between the period of and that of , it is extremely probable that he was the same painter, who, being unable to contend with the fame of lotto, and so many other of his contemporaries in that celebrated school, sought for better fortune beyond his native place. it is certain he exercised his talents in padua, and thence he might easily penetrate into friuli, and give his assistance to pomponio, whilst employed at ceneda during the years , , and . in the course of time, amalteo, having bestowed two of his daughters in marriage, appears to have obtained the assistance of his sons-in-law, both painters, and promoted by him in the progress of their art. quintilia, who had the reputation of a fine genius, familiar with the principles both of painting and engraving, and more particularly excellent in portraits, became united to gioseffo moretto, of friuli, although there remains only a single altarpiece of his in the friuli, in the province of san vito, bearing the following inscription: _inchoavit pomponius amalteus, perfecit joseph moretius, anno _; a short time previous to which date, his father-in-law had resigned his profession with his life. the other daughter espoused sebastiano seccante, mentioned by ridolfi, and esteemed in udine for his two grand pictures embellished with fine portraits, with which he ornamented the castle of the city; and still more so for several of his altarpieces. of these there is one at san giorgio, representing the redeemer, suffering under the cross, between various figures of cherubs, holding other instruments of his passion; a piece that displays all the excellent maxims derived from his education. this artist may be pronounced the last of the great school, whose productions do credit to a good collection. his brother, giacomo, who did not apply himself to painting until he had attained his fiftieth year; sebastiano, the son of giacomo, who became early initiated in the art, without even equalling his father, with their relative seccante, who lived at the same period, were none of them esteemed, even in udine, beyond mediocrity in their respective lines. two natives, however, of san vito, named pier antonio alessio, and cristoforo diana, were much commended by cesarini, one of amalteo's contemporaries. they were employed in their studies at the very period that the former wrote his dialogue; though there remain no memorials of pier antonio, similar to those of cristoforo, of whom altan discovered several specimens at san vito, in a very good style, besides one preserved in the monastery of sesto, bearing traces of his name, which he had inscribed upon it. we shall close this catalogue with the name of another disciple of amalteo, belonging to san daniele, where, among some other remains, there is a tolerably good fresco, preserved in the façade of one of the inns in the suburbs of the place. it represents the virgin, seated with the divine child, her throne surrounded by s. thomas the apostle, and s. valentine, along with other saints; and it bears the inscription, _opus julii urbanis, _; it partakes of the taste of amalteo, and of pordenone, the succession of whose school we have just completed, history affording us no farther materials for description. whilst the school of amalteo continued to embellish various cities, provinces, and villas of the friuli, another from the same place started into competition with it, first introduced by pellegrino, of which mention has been made at page , though i reserved its description for this place. the whole of pellegrino's disciples followed him at a very unequal pace, and few of their works can be pointed out which appear to catch the spirit of his fresco of s. daniel, or his altarpiece at cividale, already mentioned with praise. luca monverde was an artist who flourished but for a short period, nor ever advanced beyond the bellini manner, imbibed from his master at a very early age. in this, however, he arrived at so high a degree of perfection, that his picture, adorning the great altar of the grazie at udine, a church dedicated to s. gervasio and s. protasio, which is there placed around the throne of the virgin, was highly commended previous to its being retouched. and we are elsewhere informed that luca, while he flourished, was regarded as a sort of prodigy of genius. girolamo d'udine, supposed also to come under this standard, has been omitted by grassi, in his sketch of the painters transmitted to vasari, and is not otherwise known than for his little picture of the coronation of our lady, remaining in san francesco at udine, with his name attached. the vigour of its colours is striking, the invention novel, but rather strained; and, if i mistake not, the whole betrays an artist educated with other maxims. i pass over martini, though i am aware altan maintains him to have been a scholar, rather than a fellow pupil of pellegrino; but the authority of vasari, combined with his own beautiful picture at s. mark's, so nearly simultaneous with that of pellegrino, induce me to retain my own opinion. i should hardly venture to decide to which of the two preceding masters bernardino blaceo ought to be referred; an artist who appears, from the great altarpiece of s. lucia, with his name attached, to have retained the ancient style of composition, while in other points his manner is sufficiently graceful and modern. another artist who has been with more certainty given as a pupil to pellegrino, was by birth a greek, of singular merit in his art, but who has retained only his national appellative of n. greco. thus the number of disciples from san daniele, at all worthy of such a master, is reduced to two, florigerio and floriani. the labours of the former in udine, executed in fresco, have however perished, though his picture of s. george, in the church of the same name, still survives, of itself sufficient to constitute an artist's fame. it is esteemed by many the best specimen in the city, displaying both in the figures and the landscape a strength of hand which appears to rival giorgione, more than any other model we could mention. he painted, likewise, with equal spirit, though scarcely perhaps with equal softness, in the city of padua; and there he subscribed his name to one of his frescos, florigerio, as it has been read by the _guida_ of padua, in which i agree; and not flerigorio, as he has been called by some historians. francesco floriani, together with his brother antonio, though devoting his talents to the service of maximilian ii., at vienna, boasts, nevertheless, a high reputation in udine. he was more particularly excellent in portrait, a specimen of which is in possession of signor gio. batista de rubeis; being a portrait of ascanio belgrado, which might almost be placed in competition with moroni or tinelli. he produced several altarpieces for churches, the most highly admired of which was, perhaps, that placed at reana, a village near udine. it has recently been purchased and divided into as many small pictures as the number of saints which it contained, and which now belong to a private collection. but it is at length time to proceed to tiziano vecellio, a name the reader has probably long wished to greet. yet i fear i shall hardly gratify his expectations; for where we have formed enlarged ideas of an artist's worth, every attempt to do justice to the splendid merits we admire, appears not only inferior, but in some measure derogatory to the character we would exalt. but if in treating on the qualities of artists, we may consider a particular estimation of their characteristic talents preferable to warm commendations, i shall avail myself of the judgment of an excellent critic, who was accustomed to say that titian observed and drew nature in all her truth, better than any other artist. to this i might add the testimony of another, that of all painters he was most familiar with nature, in all her forms; the universal master, who, in every subject he undertook, whether figures, elements, landscape, or other pieces, imprinted upon all that lively nature, constituting the great charm of his genius. he was gifted, likewise, with a peculiarly sound judgment, tranquil, penetrative, and decidedly studious of what was true, rather than what was novel and specious; a character no less essential to the production of true painters than of true writers. the education he first received from sebastiano zuccati, a native of the valteline, though supposed to have been of trevigi,[ ] and next from gian bellini, had the effect of rendering him a minute observer of every object falling under the senses. to such a degree of excellence did he carry it, that when, later in life, he wished to compete with albert durer, and produced, at ferrara, the christ to whom the pharisee is seen offering the piece of money,[ ] he executed it with so much exactness as to surpass even the minuteness which characterises that artist. indeed, in several of those figures, the hairs might be numbered, the skin of the hands, the very pores of the flesh, and the reflection of objects in the pupils; yet with all this, the work failed not of success, for where the pictures of durer appear to diminish and lose their effect at a distance, this improves in size, and grows, as it were, upon the spectator. but he never repeated any specimen in this style, adopting, as is well known, while yet very young, that free and unshackled manner, first originating with his fellow student, afterwards his rival, giorgione. a few of the portraits, indeed, painted by titian, during that short period, are not to be distinguished from those of giorgione himself. i say during that period, because shortly afterwards he formed a new style, less bold, clear, and fiery, but one peculiarly his, the sweetness of which attracts the spectator more by its artless representation of truth, than by the novelty of its effect. the first specimen he is known to have produced altogether in the titian manner, is preserved in the sacristy of san marziale, representing the archangel raphael, with tobias at his side, painted in the thirtieth year of his age. following at a short interval, if we are to give credit to ridolfi, he next produced that fine representation of our lord, for the college of the carità, one of the grandest pictures, and the richest, perhaps, in point of figures, which we have now to boast; many of them having since perished in different conflagrations. from these, and a few others, painted in the zenith of his fame, his critics have gathered the general idea of his style; the greatest contest which they have amongst themselves, relating to the design. by mengs he is denied the title to rank among good designers,[ ] considering him an artist of ordinary taste, by no means familiar with, however well he might, if he pleased, have succeeded in the study of the antique, possessing so very exact an eye in copying objects from nature. vasari appears to be of the same opinion, where he introduces michelangiolo observing, after viewing the leda of titian,[ ] _that it was a great pity the venetian artists were not earlier taught how to design_. the judgment formed of him by tintoret, though placed in competition with him, was less severe, namely, _that titian had produced some things which it was impossible to surpass, but that others might have been more correctly designed_. and among these more excellent pieces, he might indisputably have included his san pietro martire, in the church of ss. giovanni and paolo, a piece, says algarotti, which the best masters have agreed in pronouncing _free from every shade of defect_; besides that fine bacchanal, and a few others, ornamenting a cabinet of the duke of ferrara, and declared by agostino caracci prodigies of art, and the finest paintings in the world.[ ] fresnoy was of opinion that in the figures of his men he was not altogether perfect, and that in his draperies he was somewhat insignificant;[ ] but that many of his women and boys are exquisite, both in point of design and colouring. this commendation is confirmed by algarotti, in respect to his female forms, and by mengs in those of his boys. indeed it is almost universally admitted that in such kind of figures, no artist was ever comparable to him; and that poussin and fiammingo,[ ] who so greatly excelled in this particular, acquired it only from titian's pictures. reynolds[ ] also affirms that, "although his style may not be altogether as chaste as that of some other schools of italy, it nevertheless possesses a certain air of senatorial dignity; and that he shone in his portraits as an artist of first rate character;" and he concludes by observing that he may be studied with advantage even by lovers of the sublime. zanetti assigns him the first rank in design, among all the most distinguished colourists; asserting that he was much devoted to the study of anatomy, and copying from the best antique;[ ] but supposes that he was not ambitious of affecting an extensive knowledge of the muscles, nor aimed at displaying an ideal beauty in his contours; whether he had not early enough acquired facility in these, or for some other reasons. for the rest, he adds, the titian manner was uniformly elegant, correct, and dignified in its female forms, and in its boys; elevated, great, and learned for the most part, in those of its men; while in testimony of his naked figures, he adduces the history pieces, painted for the sacristy of la salute, whose beauty of design appears to triumph, even in the extremities, while it boasts the rare merit of a striking acquaintance with the science of foreshortening, both appearing blended together. had the historian been desirous of extending his notice to such works as are to be met with in foreign parts, he might have added much valuable matter upon the subject of his bacchanals, and his pictures of the venus; one of which, adorning the royal gallery at florence, was justly thought to vie with that of the medici herself, the most exquisite triumph of grecian art. for skill in his draperies, zanetti further brings the example of his s. peter, painted on an altar of the casa pesaro, with a very artificially wrought mantle; adding that he occasionally sacrificed the appearance of the drapery, purposely to give relief to some neighbouring object. in this contest of opinion, between true judges of the art, i shall decline interfering with my own, observing only, in justice to so extraordinary a genius, that if happier combinations had led him to become familiar with more profound maxims of design, he would probably have ranked as the very first painter in the world. for he would have been allowed to be the first and most perfect in design, as he is by all allowed to have no equal in point of colouring. many critics have pushed their inquiries from the artist, into the peculiar character of his chiaroscuro; and the most copious among these is signor zanetti, who devoted years to its examination. i select some of his observations, premising, however, that he left a large portion of them to the more studious, desirous themselves of developing them, in the works of titian. and, in truth, his pictures are the best masters to direct us in the right method of colouring; but, like the ancient classics, that are equally open, and equally the subjects of commentary to all, they are only of advantage to those who are accustomed to reflect. i have already mentioned the lucid clearness predominating in venetian paintings, and more especially in those of titian, whom the rest adopted for their model. i then too pronounced it to be the result of very clear primary grounding, upon which a repetition of colours being laid, it produces the effect of a transparent veil, and renders the tints of a cast no less soft and luscious than lucid. nor did he adopt any other plan in his strongest shades, veiling them with fresh colour, when dry; renewing, invigorating them, and warming the confines that pass into the middle tints. he availed himself, very judiciously, of the power of shade; forming a method not altogether that of a mere naturalist, but partaking of the ideal. in his naked forms he cautiously avoided masses of strong shades and bold shadows, although they are sometimes to be seen in nature. they certainly add to the relief, but they much diminish the delicacy of the fleshy parts. titian, for the most part, affected a deep and glowing light; whence, in various gradations of middle tints, he formed the work of the lower parts; and having very resolutely drawn the other parts, with the extremities, stronger, perhaps, than in nature, he gave to objects that peculiar aspect which presents them, as it were, more lively and pleasing than the truth. thus in his portraits he centers the chief power in the eyes, the nose, and the mouth, leaving the remaining parts in a kind of pleasing uncertainty, extremely favourable to the spirit of the heads, and to the whole effect. but since the variations of depth and delicacy of shades are insufficient, without the aid of colours, in this branch he likewise found for himself an ideal method, consisting of the use in their respective places, of simple tints, copied exactly from the life, or of artificial ones, intended to produce the illusion required. he was in the habit of employing only few and simple colours; but they were such as afforded the greatest variety and contrast; he knew all their gradations, and the most favourable moments for their application and opposition to each other. there appears no effort, no degree of violence in them, and that striking diversity of colours which seems to strive, one above another, for the mastery, as it were, in his pictures, has all the appearance of nature, though an effect of the most bold and arduous art. a white dress, placed near a naked figure, gives it all the appearance of being mingled with the warmest crimson, while he employed nothing beyond simple terra rossa, with a little lake in the contours, and towards the extremities. certain objects, in themselves dark and even black, produce a similar effect upon his canvass; and which, besides enlivening the adjacent colour, give force to the figures, wrought, as was before stated, with gradual middle tints. it is said to have been his favourite opinion, transmitted to us by boschini, p. , that whoever aspires to become a painter, must make himself familiar with three colours, and have them ready upon his palette; these are white, red, and black; and that an artist, while attempting the fleshy parts, must not expect to succeed at once, but by repeated application of opposite tints, and kneading of his colours. here i shall subjoin some observations by the cavalier mengs, who entered so very deeply into the titian manner. he pronounces him the first, who, subsequent to the revival of painting, knew how to avail himself of the ideal, as it were, of different colours in his draperies. before his time all colours had been applied indifferently, and artists used them in the same measure for clear and for obscure. titian was aware, if indeed he did not acquire his knowledge from giorgione, that red brings objects nearer to the eye, that yellow retains the rays of light, that azure is a shade, and adapted for deep obscure. nor was he less intimate with the effects of juicy colours, and was thus enabled to bestow the same degree of grace, clearness of tone, and dignity of colour, upon his shades and middle tints, as upon his lights, as well as to mark with great diversity of middle tints, the various complexions, and the various superficies of bodies. no other artist, likewise, was more accurately acquainted with the mutual power or equipoise of the above three colours, upon which the harmony of pictures so much depends; an equipoise, too, so difficult in practice, to which not even rubens, however excellent a colourist, perfectly attained. both titian's inventions and compositions partake of his usual character; he produced nothing in which nature was not consulted. in the number of his figures he is inclined to be moderate; and in grouping them he displays the finest unshackled art; an art he was fond of exemplifying by comparison with a bunch of grapes, where a number of single ones compose the figure of a whole, agreeably rounded, light through the openings, distinct in shades, in middle tints, and in lights, according as it receives more or less of the solar rays. no contrasts are to be met with in these compositions that betray a studied effect; no violent action that is not called for by the incidents of the story; the actors in general preserve their dignity, and a certain composure, as if each seemed to respect the assembly of which he formed a part. whoever is attached to the taste of the greek bassi relievi, in which all is nature and propriety, will invariably prefer the sober composition of titian to the more fiery one of paul veronese and tintoret, whose merits we shall canvass in another place. neither was titian ignorant of those strong contrasts of limbs and action, then in such high vogue with his countrymen; but these he reserved for his bacchanals, his battle pieces, and other subjects, in fine, which called for them. it is on all hands admitted, that as a portrait painter, he was quite incomparable; and to this species of excellence he was in great part indebted for his fortune, smoothing, as it did, his reception into some of the most splendid courts, such as were that of rome in the time of paul iii. and those of vienna and of madrid, during the reign of charles v. and his successors. it is the opinion of vasari that in this branch of his art he was inimitable; being engaged in drawing the portraits of numbers of the most distinguished characters, both for rank and letters, who flourished during the same period. we wish we could add to these the name of cosmo i., grand duke of tuscany, who, little to his credit, evinced an objection to have his likeness taken by so celebrated a hand. he was no less successful in depicting the passions of the mind. the death of s. peter the martyr, at venice, with that of a devotee of s. antony, at the college of the same name in padua, display scenes than which i know not whether painting can afford us any thing more terrific in the ferocity of those who strike, or more full of compassion in the whole attitude of the falling saint. and thus the grand picture of the coronation of thorns, in the grazie at milan, abounds with powers of expression that enchant us. he has left us also not a few examples of costume, and of erudition in the antique, every way worthy of imitation, as we may observe in the coronation above alluded to, where, desirous of marking the precise period of the event, he inserted in the pretorium a bust of tiberius; an idea that could not have been better conceived, either by raffaello or poussin. in his architecture he sometimes availed himself of other works, in particular those of the rosa, of brescia; but his perspectives, like that of his picture of the presentation, are extremely beautiful. he was equalled by none in his landscape; and he was careful not to employ it, like some artists, as a mere embellishment; several artists esteeming themselves so highly in this particular, that they hardly scruple to present us with cypress trees growing out of the sea. but titian makes his landscape subservient to history, as in that horrific wood, whose dreary aspect adds so much to the solemnity of s. peter's death; or to give force to his figures, as we perceive them in those pieces where the landscape is thrown into the distance. his natural manner of representing the various effects of light may be best gathered from his martyrdom of san lorenzo, belonging to the jesuits at venice, in which he displayed such an astonishing diversity in the splendour of fire, in that of torchlights, and in that of a supernatural light, which appears to fall upon the martyr; a picture unfortunately much defaced by age, but of which there is a near imitation or duplicate in the escurial. he likewise expressed, with the utmost felicity, the time of the day in which the event is supposed to have taken place, and he frequently selected nightfall, drawing forth all its most beautiful attributes for the canvass. from the whole of this it may be inferred that titian is not to be included in that class of venetian artists, whose rapidity of hand overpowered their judgment, rendering them somewhat careless and inaccurate; though, at the same time, we must speak of his celerity with some degree of reservation. a freedom of pencil must doubtless be granted to him, and he thus applied it without failing in point of design, to his paintings in fresco, as they are to be seen in padua, and which, in some measure, compensate us for the loss of those in the venetian capital. in that city we have nothing of the same kind in preservation, if we except, perhaps, his s. christopher, adorning the ducal palace; a majestic figure, both in its character and its expression. we are not, however, to look for the same degree of freedom in his pictures in oil. indeed he was by no means ambitious of displaying it; but rather encountered much painful labour to arrive at a perfect knowledge of his subjects. with this view, after throwing off a rough draught of his intended works, with a certain freedom and resolution, he was in the habit of laying them for some time aside, and again returned to them with an eye prepared to detect every the least defect. the noble casa barbarigo, among a fine selection of his most highly finished pictures, preserves, also, a few of these first sketches. it is well known that he underwent extreme labour in the completion of his works, and, at the same time, was very solicitous to conceal the pains he bestowed upon them. yet in some of his pieces such spirited and resolute strokes are to be met with as seem to imprint upon every object the true character of nature, attain at once the points that have been long laboriously aimed at, and perfectly delight professors. to this practice he adhered in the zenith of his fame; nor was it until near the close of his existence, falling a victim to the plague when within a year of completing a century, that both his hand and eye failing him, his style became less elegant, being compelled to paint with repeated efforts of the brush, and with difficulty mingling his tints. vasari, who saw him once more in , even then was no longer able to recognize titian in titian, and it must have been much more difficult in the few following years. yet, as is customary with old age, he was not at all aware of his failings, and continued to receive commissions until the final year of his life. there remains at s. salvatore, one of these pictures of the annunciation, which attracts the spectator only from the name of its master. yet when he was told by some that it was not, or at least appeared not to have been executed by his hand, he was so much irritated, that in a fit of senile indignation, he affixed to it the following words, "_tizianus fecit fecit._" still the most experienced judges are agreed that much may be learned even from his latest works; in the same manner, as the poets pronounce judgment on the odyssey, the product of old age, but still by homer. several of these last specimens, distributed throughout private collections, are nevertheless doubtful, as well as a few copies made by his pupils, but retouched by his hand; and in particular some madonnas and magdalens, which i have seen in various places, displaying little or no variety. upon this point we ought not to omit the account given by ridolfi, of his having purposely left his studio open for the free access of his disciples, in order that they might secretly take copies of such pictures as he had placed there. that afterwards when he found such copies became vendible, he gladly took possession of them, and retouching them with little trouble, they were passed as his originals. the reporter of this incident added a marginal note to his account, as follows: _vedi che accortezza!_ behold what a degree of forecast! and to this i might rejoin with another of my own: "note, that the worth of titian ought not to be estimated, as is too often the case, by this multiplication of originals." following the usual order, i shall now proceed to describe the imitators of titian; by no means so excellent a master as an artist. whether disliking the interruption and tediousness attaching to such a character, or apprehensive of meeting with a rival, he was always averse to affording his instructions. he was extremely harsh with paris bordone, and even entered into decided hostility against him, an artist who burned with an ambition to resemble him. he banished tintoret from his studio, and artfully directed his own brother to mercantile pursuits, though he displayed uncommon talents for painting. "hence," observes vasari, "there are few who can really be called his disciples, inasmuch as he taught little; but each learned more or less according as he knew how to avail himself of the productions of titian." his family of itself enumerated several artists, the series of whom may be seen at cadore, and in part at the adjacent city of belluno. there, too, contemporary with the vecellj, flourished one niccolo di stefano, a painter deserving of commendation, no less for having competed with the family of titian, than for the reputation he acquired in such competition. his rivals among the vecellj, were francesco, the brother, and orazio, a son of titian, who approached him pretty nearly in point of style. they devoted, however, little attention to the arts, one of them having duties of a military and mercantile nature to discharge, and the other having thrown away much of his time and fortune upon the idle pursuit of alchemy. several pictures by francesco are to be seen at san salvatore, in venice, consisting of a tolerably well executed magdalen, appearing at the feet of christ risen, at oriago, on the banks of the river brenta, and a grand nativity of our lord, at san giuseppe, in belluno, which, until lately, was esteemed a fine specimen of titian, when monsignor doglioni traced it by authentic documents to its real author. the production, however, which gave rise to titian's jealousy, was the altarpiece at san vito, in cadore, in which, among the other saints, he represented the figure of the denominator of the town, in a military dress. orazio was considered a good portrait painter, even so far as to rival his father; and he likewise painted, for the public palace a history piece, very beautiful, though retouched by titian's hand, which has since perished by fire. i find no account of pomponio, another son of titian's, having applied himself to the art, though he survived both his father and brother, who both died in the same year, and dissipated his inheritance. marco vecellio conferred more honour upon his family, and being the nephew, the pupil, and intimate companion of the great vecellio in his travels, received the title of marco di tiziano. in simple composition and mechanism of the art, he was a good disciple of his master; but he had not the genius to inspire his figures and interest the eye of the spectator, like his great contemporary. he was, nevertheless, esteemed worthy of the honour of ornamenting several chambers of the venetian senate, with history pieces and portraits of saints that are yet preserved. some of his altarpieces, likewise, still exist at venice, in trevigi, and in the friuli; while one of his large pictures, adorning a parish church at cadore, the native place of the vecellj, has more particularly elicited the highest commendations. in this appears the crucifixion, represented in the midst, with two histories of s. catherine, _v. m._, her controversy, and her martyrdom, supporting either side. tiziano vecellio, called, to distinguish him from the former, tizianello, was the son of marco, whose name i include with those of the other vecellj, in order to avoid recurring to a family of artists which ought to be made known and described in full. this last artist flourished about the beginning of the seventeenth century, when mannerism began its innovations upon venetian painting. and those specimens of him possessed by venice, at the patriarchal church, at the servi, and elsewhere, exhibit him in a very opposite taste to that of his predecessors, with larger forms, but less imposing; a full and free pencil, but destitute of softness of hand; so powerful is the influence of reigning example over family descent and education. in portraits, nevertheless, and in heads, very capriciously varied and ornamented, i find him to be in much esteem among artists. fabrizio di ettore traced his origin to another branch of the vecellj. his name had hitherto been confined within his native spot of cadore, until brought to light by rinaldis, who gives some account of a fine painting he executed for the council hall of the parish, and for which he was paid sixteen gold ducats, no despicable sum at the period when he flourished. he died in the year . his brother, of the name of cesare, was likewise long unknown to pictorial history, although his productions are pointed out at lintiai, at vigo, at candide, and at padola. his name is more familiar to engravers, inasmuch as he gave to the world two works of etchings, during the period of his residence in venice. one of these, at present very scarce, contains, "ogni sorte di mostre di punti tagliati, punti in aria," &c. the other is upon "ancient and modern costume," and has been several times republished, and once in , with a false title; where cesare is mentioned as a brother of the great titian. a third vecellio, an artist of the name of tommaso, has, in a similar way, sprung into notice, one of whose productions, consisting of a _nunziata_, is preserved in the parish church of lozzo, as well as a supper of our lord, both which the historian pronounces estimable. this artist died in . another scion from the stock, though not from the studio of titian, is girolamo dante, otherwise girolamo di tiziano, and first among his followers to be here mentioned. he was educated and employed, both as a scholar and assistant, by titian, in his less important works. and in fact, by dint of assisting and copying the originals of his master, he attained such a degree of excellence, that such of his pieces as were retouched by titian, bid defiance often to the most exact connoisseurs. he also produced works of design, and the altarpiece attributed to him at san giovanni in olio, reflects credit upon so great a school. domenico delle greche, named in the dictionary of artists, domenico greco, and in another article, domenico teoscopoli, was an artist employed by titian in engraving his designs. the very copious print of the submersion of pharaoh, to say nothing of the others, is sufficient proof of his worth in this kind of engraving. no specimen of his painting is pointed out with certainty in italy; many, however, in spain, where, having accompanied his master thither, he resided during the remainder of his days. there, too, he produced portraits and altarpieces, which, according to palomino, appeared to be from the hand of titian himself. but he entered upon a new style, in which he altogether failed, and for a more particular account of this artist we must here refer the reader to the _lettere pittoriche_, (vol. vi. p. ). the shortness of their career interrupted the fame of two other venetians, both dying young, after having given the most astonishing and lively promise of future distinction. the name of one was lorenzino, who produced, at ss. giovanni and paolo, several finely designed ornaments over a tomb, with two noble figures of virtues, still highly esteemed for their symmetry, their attitude, and their colouring. the other was natalino da murano, as excellent in portrait as any other of the fellow pupils of his time, as well as a good composer in pictures for private ornament, from which venetian dealers reaped greater profit than the artist. one of his magdalens, which, in spite of frequent retouches, preserved much of the titian manner, was put up to sale in udine, where i saw it; and after some difficulty deciphered his name and the date of , in very faint characters. there was likewise one polidoro, a venetian, who supplied the shops to abundance with specimens of his sacred figures. he appears, for the most part, a feeble disciple of titian; one who made a trade of his profession. to judge from an altarpiece preserved at the servi, and some other pictures in venice, we may pronounce him a tolerably good composer, though he never distinguished himself much in the rank of his contemporaries. yet when the great school declined, his labours, such as they were, acquired more esteem, and were exhibited in the studios of those artists, much in the same manner as sculptors are accustomed to collect specimens of ancient marbles, however inferior, as advantageous in the pursuit of their art. such is the influence of a great master's reputation, and the maxims of a flourishing epoch, in the estimation of an artist's merit. doubts have been started as to his real name, although in the necrologio of s. pantaleone he is expressly called _polidoro pittore_. this supposition appears to have arisen from a little oblong painting, in the style of polidoro's madonnas, preserved by the noble casa pisani, where is formed so valuable a collection of monuments and books. the painter's name affixed to it, is "_gregorius porideus_;" but whatever resemblance we trace in the two names, it is not sufficient to mark polidoro for the author of that piece, most probably the production of one of titian's imitators, whose name is fallen with many others of an inferior class, into oblivion. we must not, however, include that of gio. silvio, a venetian, which, omitted in the history of his native place, still vindicates its title to notice, by numerous works dispersed throughout the state of trevigi, and a very elegant altarpiece, executed for the collegiate church of piove di sacco, a municipality of the padovano. it represents san martino in his episcopal chair, between the two apostles peter and paul; three angels form the accessaries, two in the act of raising his pastoral staff, and the third playing upon a harp, at the foot of the throne, extremely graceful, like the rest, and displaying a degree of taste and nature, such as we find in titian. if we cannot then adduce authority sufficient to prove that silvio was his scholar, it may, at least, from such a specimen, be strongly suspected. i am indebted to sig. ab. morelli, who in the _notizia_ already cited, has pointed out the true birthplace of bonifazio veneziano, who appears, notwithstanding the authority of vasari, ridolfi, and zanetti, to have been a native of verona, not of venice. he is pronounced by ridolfi a pupil of palma, and by boschini, on the other hand, the disciple of titian, whom he followed as closely as his shadow. it was an usual observation, during the time of boschini, and yet repeated indeed, in regard to certain doubtful pieces; is it a titian or a bonifazio? he approached nearest, perhaps, to vecellio, in his supper of our lord, preserved in the monastery of the certosa. for the most part he boasts a freedom, a spirit, and grandeur of hand, peculiarly his; although it is known that he greatly admired the vigour of giorgione, the delicate taste of palma, and the attitude and composition of titian. the merit of this professor of the art was early appreciated, and historians have often observed that the three most distinguished artists of that period were titian, palma, and bonifazio. public edifices abound with his productions, and the ducal palace, among other of his historical pieces, boasts that grand expulsion of the money dealers from the temple, which, for the number of the figures, for its spirit, and power of colouring, as well as for its fine perspective, is enough to render his name immortal. a more than mortal air of divinity shines in the countenance of the redeemer, who, alone and unsupported, throws consternation into a crowd of people intent upon their worldly interests, and with a mere scourge of ropes, from which they fly in the utmost terror. and how anxiously is some wretch seen collecting his money upon those tables glittering with silver and gold; and with what dread he looks back, in order that he may escape from the blows! what an expression of alarm is seen in the countenance of each spectator; women, boys, people of every rank, terrified at the strangeness of the spectacle! this noble picture was presented to the public collection, not long ago, by the family of the contarini; and for this reason we find no notice taken of it in the work of zanetti. other paintings might be mentioned upon a grand scale, and rich in figures, adapted for private collections; the most celebrated, perhaps, of which are his series of triumphs, taken from petrarch; pieces that have since passed into england. he likewise employed himself upon pictures of a smaller size, rarely, however, to be met with. one of these, a holy family at rome, is in possession of prince rezzonico. the scene represents the workshop of s. joseph, where he is seen reposing, while the virgin is intent upon her domestic duties, and a group of angels surrounds the infant jesus, who is playing with the instruments of the saint's occupation. one of these is employed in placing two pieces of wood in the form of a cross, an idea frequently imitated by albano. it is worth observation that orlandi and other writers have confounded this artist with bonifazio bembo, many years anterior to him, and born at cremona. the resemblance of names has likewise misled a more recent author in regard to another venetian painter, mistaken for a native of lucca. he painted a virgin with four saints for san francesco, at padua; a piece between the style of the moderns and the bellini, to which is affixed the name _paulus pinus ven. _. and in the castle of noale, in the state of trevigi, he adorned with historical figures, adapted to the place, the public gallery, both interior and exterior, near which the judge is accustomed to hear cases and decide differences. whoever is acquainted with the "dialogue upon painting," published by this professor at venice as early as , where, in the dedication, he professes himself a venetian, and whoever has seen his works will be in no danger of confounding him with paul pini, of lucca, of the caracci school, whom we shall meet with beyond the precincts of his native place, like numerous others of his fellow citizens. an imitator of titian, in his colouring, though with a share of original vivacity, is andrea schiavone, of sebenico, surnamed _medula_. few artists have so early evinced a decided taste for their profession, of which it is said his father became aware when accompanying him through the city, yet a child, in order to fix upon his future destination. observing him highly entertained with productions of the art, he instantly applied to the artists, and devoted him to the profession. but fortune was not favourable to him, and he became compelled, by penury, to obtain a subsistence rather as a daily hireling, than as an artist. hence it was, that, destitute of a knowledge of design, he was obliged to paint, meeting with no other patrons than some master _muratore_, or wall painter, who had it in his power to recommend him for the façades, or some painter of household articles to employ him as an assistant. titian conferred upon him some degree of credit, by proposing him, along with others, for ornamenting the library of s. mark, where he worked more correctly, perhaps, than in any other place. tintoret, also, did him justice, often aiding him in his labours, to observe the artifice of his colouring; and even gave one of his pictures a place in his own studio, observing that it would be well if every other artist would follow his example, though he would do ill not to design better than his model. moreover he wished to imitate him, and placed an altarpiece at the church of the carmini, so much resembling his style, that vasari pronounced it to be the work of schiavone. yet the same historian held him in such slight esteem, as to say that it was _only by mistake that he occasionally produced a good piece_; a sentence severely criticised by agostin caracci, as we gather from bottari, in his "life of franco." and, in truth, except for design, the whole composition of schiavone is highly commendable; spirited in his attitudes, drawn from the engravings of parmigianino; his colours, approaching to the sweetness of andrea del sarto, beautiful; and his hand altogether that of a great master. his fame increased after his death, and his paintings, for the most part, of a mythological character, were removed from the chests and benches to adorn the cabinets of connoisseurs. guarienti cites three of these in the collection at dresden, and rosa four, in the cesarean one of vienna. i have seen several very graceful specimens in the casa pisani, at san stefano, and almost in every other gallery in venice. in rimini, also, i saw two of his pictures, painted as companions, at the padri teatini; the nativity of our lord, and the assumption of the virgin, small figures upon the poussin scale, and among the most beautiful he ever drew. santo zago, and orazio da castelfranco, called dal paradiso, are known for a very few works in fresco, but too well executed to be here omitted. cesare da conegliano, also, is the author of a single altarpiece, at the santi apostoli, of the same place, which represents our lord's supper, and sufficient of itself to place him near bonifazio, and the best of that class. vasari, who has omitted some of the preceding, twice makes honourable mention of gio. calker, or calcar, as it is written by others, an excellent portrait painter, of flemish extraction. he was also a good painter, both of small and large figures, several of which, according to sandrart, have been attributed to titian; and others, when he changed his manner, to raffaello. he died young, in , at naples. treating of dietrico barent, in venice known by the name of sordo barent, baldinucci supposes him to have been titian's pupil, by whom he was regarded as his son. to these ridolfi adds three excellent foreigners, one lamberto, a german,[ ] who is supposed the lombardo, or sustermans, who gave assistance in their landscapes alternately to titian and to tintoret, and left a very beautiful picture of san girolamo, at the teresiani, in padua; the others were cristoforo scuarz, and one emanuel, a german. these, like many others, resorting to titian for instruction, on their return to their native place introduced a taste for the venetian school; and there continued to flourish. he must have presented more disciples to spain, when being invited by charles v. he removed to his court, and founded in his dominions a school, which acquired and continued to boast of excellent artists, particularly in point of colouring. one don paolo de las roelas is mentioned by preziado, who, in mature age, became a priest and canon. there is a grand picture from his hand in the parochial church of san isidoro, at seville, representing the death of the bishop. the style is altogether that of titian, though he could not have been his disciple, if he was, indeed, born in , when that artist was no longer in spain. but in regard to foreigners, it is enough to have alluded to them in a history of italians; and we must return to those natives of italy, in particular of the state of venice, who are esteemed among titian's imitators. we may begin with the friuli; although, the school of the great pordenone there holding the sway, the genuine followers of titian, excepting the cadorini already mentioned, are very few and almost forgotten in history. among others of friuli, ridolfi mentions a gaspero nervesa, who painted at spilimbergo, and calls him titian's scholar. no genuine picture of his, however, is pointed out, though father federici discovered one at trevigi. the same author likewise extols irene de' signori di spilimbergo, a lady of singular accomplishments, highly celebrated by the poets of the fifteenth century. she left behind her three little pictures of sacred histories, preserved by the noble family of maniago, and which are still to be seen at the house of conte fabio, equally distinguished for his acquaintance with science and with art. they display but little skill in the design, though they are coloured with a degree of masterly power, not unworthy the first artist of the happiest period. a bacchanal, by the same hand, is at monte albodo, in possession of the claudj family. titian took the portrait of this lady, being known to be extremely intimate with her family; and for this reason it is believed that he must have had some share in the pictorial education of the fair artist. lodovico fumicelli was an artist of trevigi, reported to have been a pupil of titian. at all events he was one of his most distinguished imitators. one of his pieces, adorning the great altar of the church of the eremitani, at padua, displays both the design and colouring of a great master. his native place can boast works that have been equally extolled. it is mortifying then to recall to mind that he abandoned his profession for the art of fortification. one of his assistants, in trevigi, was francesco dominici, who may be said to rival him in the cathedral of the city, in those two processions which they painted, opposite to each other. this young artist, of great promise, especially in portraits, produced little, being cut off in the flower of his days. with pleasure i annex to these a friend of paolo, and excellent pupil of titian's, whom, in some things, he imitated; but who has been erroneously denominated by historians:[ ] my information respecting him, as well as other artists of castelfranco, has been obtained from a ms. communicated to me by the learned dottore trevisani.[ ] he took the name of gio. batista ponchino, and the surname of bozzato, a city of his native place, where several of his paintings in fresco still exist, together with his celebrated piece of the limbo,[ ] in san liberale, the finest, if we except the works of giorgione, which that city has to boast, and it is greatly admired by strangers. he painted also at venice and vicenza, during the lifetime of his consort, a daughter of dario varotari; but on her death he assumed the ecclesiastical habit, nor interested himself much in his art. padua boasted two noble scholars from the hand of titian; damiano mazza, and domenico campagnola. the former, however, was rather promised than conferred upon us; dying very young, after producing a single piece deserving of commemoration, in his native place. this was a ganymede borne away by the eagle, depicted on an entablature, which, for its exquisite beauty, was attributed to the hand of titian, and removed from the place. venice must have been his sphere of action; a few of his pictures remaining in different churches, executed with striking power and relief, if not with much delicacy of hand. the other artist is better known, said to have been of the family of campagnola, though with no authority for the assertion. he was nephew to the girolamo mentioned by vasari among the disciples of squarcione, and son to that giulio,[ ] whose genius is commended in the literary history of tiraboschi, (vol. vi. p. ) and in the _storia pittorica_ of vasari. he was a fine linguist, miniature painter, and engraver, and the author of several altarpieces, which betray some traces of the ancient style. domenico's appears more modern, so much so, as to have awakened, it is said, the jealousy of titian; an honour he enjoyed in common with bordone, with tintoret, and other rare artists. and his works give authority to the tradition, not so much in venice as in padua, a city for whose embellishment he would appear to have risen up. he painted in fresco, at the college of the santo, in the style of an able scholar, emulating an incomparable master of his art. his pictures in oil resemble him the nearest of any, as we see in the college of s. m. del parto, a complete cabinet of his works. he represented on the entablature, the holy evangelists, with other saints, in various compartments; and he seems to have aspired to a vastness of design, beyond that of titian; and to mark the naked parts with a more evident degree of artifice. contemporary with campagnola, though scarcely heard of beyond padua, were gualtieri, one of his relatives, and a stefano del arzere, who, in his picture of christ upon the cross, at san giovanni di verzara, appears ambitious, however rudely, of imitating titian. both were, nevertheless, esteemed by ridolfi for their paintings in fresco, and both, together with domenico, were employed in ornamenting a large hall, representing the figures of emperors and illustrious characters, upon nearly a colossal scale. for this reason it was denominated the sala de' giganti, afterwards converted into a public library. these figures are, for the most part, of an ideal cast, various in point of design, in some dignified, in others heavy. the antique costume is not always strictly observed, but the colouring is rich and of a fine chiaroscuro, and it would be difficult to find in all italy a piece which appears to have suffered less from time. niccolo frangipane is supposed to have been a paduan, though his birthplace is disputed,[ ] and he is not mentioned by ridolfi. still he may be esteemed worthy of being recorded for his exquisite style as a _naturalist_, in which he painted his picture of the assumption, at the conventuali, in rimini, dated , and a half-length figure of san francesco, with that of , at s. bartolommeo, in padua. a picture also of san stefano is attributed to him by the _guide of pesaro_, though his genius was more adapted to burlesques, several specimens of which are yet in the possession of private individuals. vicenza boasts the name of giambatista maganza, the head of a family of artists, who long devoted themselves, both in public and private, to the ornament of their native province. his descendants, however, adopted various styles, as we shall see, while giambatista was only ambitious of treading in the steps of titian, his master, which he did with success. he was an excellent portrait painter, and also left several works of pure invention at vicenza, in which he displayed the same easy genius as in his poetry. he wrote in the rustic idiom of padua, under the name of _magagnò_, while such contemporaries as sperone, trissino, tasso, and other celebrated wits, not ignorant of the dialect, applauded the excellence of his rude and sylvan strains. giuseppe scolari was an artist, supposed by most to have been a native of vicenza, though referred by the cavalier pozzo to verona. a pupil of maganza, he excelled in works in fresco, and in chiaroscuro, enlivened by certain yellow tints, at that period in great vogue. he was a good designer, which appears from his works, both in vicenza and verona; and he likewise produced several large pictures in oil at venice, much commended by zanetti. possibly another disciple of maganza, from the period at which he flourished, was gio. de mio of vicenza, an artist who competed with schiavone, porta, zelotti, franco, and with paul veronese himself, in the library of s. mark, though history makes no mention of his master any more than of mio; if, indeed, he should not be the same as fratina, recorded by ridolfi, as one of the assistants in ornamenting the library. the name of gio. de mio was met with in one of the archives, and fratina was possibly his surname. among the veronese disciples of titian, we have to mention brusasorci, and, according to some writers, also farinato. both at least visited venice, either for the purpose of studying his works, or in his school. zelotti has been pronounced in more open terms the scholar of titian. but of these and other distinguished artists of verona, it will be preferable to give the reader some account when treating on the merits of paul caliari, a plan that will bring under immediate view the state of that noble school during its most flourishing period. about the same time several brescian artists greatly distinguished themselves, although too little known for want of enjoying a metropolitan city for their sphere of action. luca sebastiano, an aragonese, who died towards the close of the sixteenth century, was celebrated, we are told, rather as a fine designer than a painter. an altarpiece with the initial letters _l. s. a._ has been attributed to his hand. it is the saviour represented between two saints, the composition of which is common; the foldings of the drapery want softness; but the figures, the colours, and the attitudes are excellent. i apprehend that, however learned in his art, he would have been anxious to avoid competition with the two celebrated citizens, of whom we shall now give some description. the first is alessandro bonvicino, commonly called moretto of brescia, who was among the earliest of titian's school, to introduce his master's whole style of composition into his native district. this is clearly seen in his picture of s. niccolo, painted in for the madonna de' miracoli, in which he depicted several figures of children, and of a man presenting them to the saint; portraits in titian's best manner. subsequently attracted by the composition of raffaello, as exhibited in some pictures and engravings, he changed his style, adopting one altogether new, and so rich in its attractions, that many dilettanti have gone out of their way, and visited brescia, for the sole purpose of feasting their eyes with them. the manner of raffaello may be as strongly traced as we can imagine possible for a painter who had never seen rome; we meet with graceful features, elegant proportions, if they do not sometimes appear too slender; accuracy in the attitudes and expression, which, in his sacred subjects, display, as it were, the peculiar feeling of remorse, of pity, and even of charity itself. the drapery is diversified, but not sufficiently select, while all the accessaries of the perspective and other embellishments are as splendid as in any venetian artist, although not lavished with so much profusion; and he displays an exact, diligent, and delicate hand, which appears, to use a modern expression often applied, to write what it paints. in regard to colouring, moretto pursued a method, which surprises by its combined novelty and effect. its chief characteristic consists of a very beautiful play of light and shadow, not disposed in great masses, but finely tempered and contrasted with each other. the same degree of art he applies both to his figures and his skies, where he sometimes depicts clouds whose colours are contrasted in a similar way. for the most part his grounds are clear and bright, from which the figures seem to rise with admirable relief. his fleshy parts often remind us of the freshness of titian's; in his tints, moreover, he is more varied than the latter, or any other of the venetians. little azure appears in his draperies, the union of reds and yellows in a picture having been apparently more to his taste. it is the same with other colours, a circumstance i have noticed in some of his contemporaries, both of brescia and bergamo. vasari, who has recorded his name, along with that of many other brescian artists, in his life of carpi, commends him for his skill in imitating every kind of velvet, satin, or other cloth, either of gold or silver; but as he did not see, or failed to commemorate, some of his choicest works, he has by no means done justice to his character. moretto produced some works in fresco, though, if i mistake not, he coloured better in oils; as is the case where diligence and depth of parts are not equally matched with pictorial rapidity and fire. he employed himself a good deal in his native province and the adjacent parts, in general distinguishing himself more by his delicacy than by his grandeur of hand. a fine specimen of this last, however, may be seen in his terrific picture of elias, placed in the old cathedral. he was intimate with all the best methods of his art; but he did not always care to practise them. his picture of s. lucia, in the church of s. clemente, is not so much studied as that of s. catherine, and even this yields to his painting of the great altar, representing our lady in the air, with the titular and other saints seen below. the composition is conducted in every part with exquisite taste, and the piece is considered one of the best the city has to boast. an altarpiece, consisting of various saints at s. andrea, in bergamo, another at s. giorgio, in verona, with the fall of s. paul, at milan, with which last he appears to have been so much pleased, as to subscribe, which was very unusual with him, his name--are all likewise of the most finished composition. he was esteemed excellent in portrait, and educated for this branch of art gio. batista moroni. this last was a native of albino, in the territory of bergamo, where he produced, both for the city and the state, a variety of altar and history pieces, which he continued to supply from early youth, until within a few months of his decease. so much has been made out, from authentic documents, by the conte tassi, who brought forward a long series of his noble compositions. this artist is not, however, at all comparable to his master in point of invention, of composition, or design; which last sometimes betrays a dryness approaching that of the _quattrocentisti_. pasta notices the same defect, in his incoronazione of our lord at the trinità, although very finely coloured, and a work equalling any of his others in point of merit. for the rest, it is certain that no artist of the venetian school, besides titian, has excelled him in the truth and nature of his portraits, and in the life and spirit of his heads, insomuch that titian was in the habit of recommending him to the governors of bergamo, as the best face painter he could offer them. there exist specimens in the carrara collection, in possession of the conti spini, and in other noble houses, which still appear to breathe and live; the drapery is in the titian manner, and if any thing can be said to be wanting, it is a greater degree of mastery in the design and attitude of the hands. francesco ricchino, of brescia, is another name deserving of record among the better disciples of moretto, even in point of colouring. he was desirous, however, from what we learn from his pieces at san pietro in oliveto, of extracting improvement from the pictures, or at least from the engravings of titian. luca mombelli followed him in some of his earliest works, until giving into too great delicacy of manner, his productions became somewhat feeble and tame. girolamo rossi, another pupil or imitator, has, if i mistake not, better displayed his master's manner than any other, particularly in an altarpiece, placed at san alessandro, representing the virgin between various saints. bagnatore was also a good copyist of the same style, an artist who, in his slaughter of the innocents, subscribes his name _balneator_, and who, if not displaying great power, is nevertheless judicious, correct, and sober in his works in oil; and he was one to whom was committed by public order the task of copying a picture by moretto. contemporary with moretto flourished romanino, of brescia, about the year ; the same who in s. giustina at padua subscribes his name _hieronymus rumanus_. he was the rival of bonvicino, inferior to him in the opinion of vasari, but his equal according to ridolfi. and truly it would appear that he surpassed him in genius and boldness of hand; but could boast neither the same taste nor diligence, several of his works appearing to be executed with a hasty pencil. still he in general displays the qualities of a great master, both in his altarpieces and his histories, to say nothing of his burlesque compositions. the same character he maintained at verona, where he painted the martyrdom of the titular saint, at s. giorgio, in four large pictures abounding with great variety of figures, some of the most spirited, and the most terrible, in the executioners, that i ever saw. the same richness of invention, accompanied even with more select forms, is displayed in his altarpiece of the holy virgin in calcara, at brescia, in which he represented the bishop, s. apollonio, administering the eucharist to the crowd. it is a work altogether charming, the splendour of the place, and of the sacred vessels; the religious aspect of the prelate, of the levites, and of the people; the great variety of features and of rank; so many singular pictorial beauties are all placed within the limits of propriety and truth. less full, but no less perfect, is his descent of christ from the cross, at ss. faustino and giovita, a piece commended by palma for its extreme resemblance to the venetian style, most probably alluding to that of titian, although in some other works he very strongly resembles bassano. titian, however, would appear to have been his model, to which he wholly devoted himself; whether he acquired so high a regard for him from his own master, stefano rizzi, an artist of mediocrity, or despairing of forming a new style, like his rival, he was in hopes of surpassing him by such means. and, in fact, he still retains admirers in those parts, who prefer him to moretto, as well for grandeur of composition and energy of expression, as for a capacity of genius that embraced every variety of subject. girolamo muziano acquired the art of design from romanino, and taking his style of colouring from the works of titian, he subsequently flourished at rome, in which school he has been already mentioned. in this place we must include lattanzio gambara, the pupil and companion of romanino, as well as his son-in-law, at least if we are to credit ridolfi and other writers, in this last point sanctioned by the popular tradition of brescia. vasari alone, who resided in his house only a short time before he gave some account of him, observes that he was son-in-law to bonvicino, a point in which his memory, doubtless, betrayed him. lattanzio was not inferior to his master in spirit, and, at the same time, better instructed in the rules of the art, and more learned. having attended the academy of campi, in cremona, until his eighteenth year, and cultivated an acquaintance with the best foreign masters that he always retained, he added to this knowledge all the richest and most tasteful colours of the venetian school. like pordenone, he employed his talents, for the most part, in frescos, which are still to be seen at venice, as well as within and without the confines of the state. his manner, however, was less strong and shaded, but in other points much resembling him in the beauty and variety of his forms, variously coloured according to his subjects; in his knowledge of anatomy, without affectation, spirited attitudes, difficult foreshortenings; in a relief that deceives the eye, and in novelty and play of invention. to these we may add even a greater propriety of ideas, and sweetness of tints, acquired from other schools; lattanzio having studied giulio romano at mantua, and coreggio in parma. in the corso de' ramai, at brescia, there yet remain three façades, adorned with various histories and fables, truly beautiful, executed by his hand. they are not, however, so imposing as some of his scriptural pieces, to be seen in still better preservation in the cloister of s. euphemia, engravings of which have been promised to the public. the spectator often recurs to them, and always with fresh pleasure. when for want of space the figures could not be put in an upright posture, he foreshortened them with admirable nature and facility, so that no other attitudes could be imagined so becoming to each figure. professors have detected some degree of imperfection in the naked parts, very common, indeed, to the most celebrated painters of frescos; but it is such as cannot be perceived at a distance, or if seen, resembles only some false quantity in a good poet, easily to be pardoned in the number of poetical beauties with which his verses abound. he painted still more copious histories for the cathedral at parma, containing, perhaps, his greatest and most studied production, and which fails not to please, even in the presence of those of coreggio. there are several altarpieces likewise in oil at san benedetto, in mantua, all of which are not equally happy. a nativity of our lord, at ss. faustino and giovita, is his only picture in oil remaining at his native place in public; it is very graceful, displaying certain traits of the raffaello manner. his picture of a pietà, at san pietro, in cremona, is also highly esteemed by professors, one among whom, who had designed a good deal from the works of lattanzio, declared to me that he had never witnessed any other so exquisite in point of design, nor coloured with so much delicacy, clearness, and taste and softness of tints. yet this great artist only reached his thirty-second year, leaving in giovita, a brescian artist, (likewise called brescianino) an excellent disciple, particularly of works in fresco. geronimo savoldo, sprung of a noble family in brescia, flourished also about , and is ranked by paolo pino among the best artists of his age. i know not where he acquired the rudiments of his art; but from a specimen which i saw at brescia, he must have possessed great accuracy and delicacy of hand. upon transferring his residence to venice, he is known to have become one of the most formidable of titian's rivals; not, indeed, in works of a large scale, but in smaller pieces conducted with an exquisite degree of care, which may, in a manner, be said to have been his chief characteristic. with such as these he beguiled his time, presenting them gratuitously as ornaments for churches. he produced others for private persons, now extremely rare and valuable, in different collections. zanetti, in his description of his little _presepio_, (christ in the manger), recently retouched, which is to be seen at san giobbe, observes that the tint of his pictures is truly beautiful, and the whole composition conducted with a singular degree of care. in venice, says ridolfi, he is known by the name of girolamo bresciano, neither romanino nor muziano having employed themselves there, with whom he might possibly have been confounded. there he resided for many years, and terminated his days at the same place. his happiest production, though unknown to the historian, was placed in the altar-maggiore, of the padri predicatori, at pesaro, a noble piece, which produces a striking impression upon the eye. our lord is seen placed on high, seated upon a cloud, which appears truly illuminated by the sun, and on the foreground are represented four saints, drawn with a force of colouring that seems to bring them as near to the eye, as the soft colour of the perspective and of the upper part of the picture throws its objects into the distance. a small, but beautiful piece, in excellent preservation, is also seen in the royal gallery of florence, exhibiting the transfiguration of our lord, placed there along with specimens of other venetian artists, by the cavalier puccini, one who has conferred so many obligations upon that princely collection of art. finally, after savoldo, may be placed, among the brescian disciples of titian, pietro rosa, son of cristoforo, and nephew to stefano rosa, both excellent artists in oil. he was one of those pupils whom titian, induced by the friendship he bore his father, instructed with most care, and the best success. hence it is, we trace that clear and true force of colouring, which shines in every one of his pieces. brescia boasts several, at the church of san francesco, in the dome, and at the grazie, where such as have the fewest figures produce the happiest effect. in his composition he is not so perfect as in other parts, whether it were that he had not naturally the best talent for it, or, as is more probable, that it is a branch of the art most difficult to young practitioners. for he died in the outset of his career, at the same period as his father, in , whether from the plague or from poison is not known. although bergamo, at that period, boasted many distinguished imitators of giorgione, it yet produced an artist, girolamo colleoni, who ought to be included in the present list. some frescos from his hand are found at bergamo, and an oil painting in the carrara gallery. it exhibits the marriage of s. catherine, which the best judges, on a first view, pronounced to be the work of titian, till the superscription, with the name of _hieronymus colleo, _, vindicated it for his own. this distinguished artist, conscious of his merit, and not finding himself appreciated in his own country, foreign and inferior painters being preferred before him, sought better fortune at the court of madrid. but before setting out, he painted upon a façade the figure of a horse, of which great encomiums, in different works, are all that remain; and to this he affixed as a motto, _nemo propheta in patriâ_. he is known to have employed, as an assistant, filippo zanchi, who, together with a brother of the name of francesco, has more recently been brought into view by count tassi, besides some others who might here add to the number, but not to the eminence, of so rich a school. an artist celebrated also by ridolfi, ought not, in this place, to be omitted; the beauty of his tints, the design of his infant figures, and the nature of his landscape, all shewing that he aspired to the titian manner. he painted in fresco, but possessed an universal genius, as has been pronounced by muzio, in his "teatro di bergamo;" the truth of which more clearly appears from his own works. his name was giovan-batista averara, and he died young about the middle of the most flourishing period of the art. another artist deserving commemoration is francesco terzi, who long resided at the austrian court, and is distinguished in most of the capitals of italy for works he has there left. he has been mentioned by lomazzo, in whose native place are still seen, at san sempliciano, two noble histories, representing our lord with his apostles, somewhat dry in point of design, but bold in colouring. in gio. da monte, crema boasted a disciple of titian, as he is described by torre, who numbers him among the more distinguished artists who ornamented milan. a grado, executed by him in chiaroscuro for an altar of santa maria, at san celso, where he ought also to have painted the altarpiece, obtained for him a high reputation; but he was deprived of the altarpiece, owing to the intrigues of antonio campi.[ ] the work of campi still remains there, and the opinion is that though it was paid for at a higher rate than the grado itself, it is yet a work of inferior merit to that of giovanni, which much resembles polidoro da caravaggio, giving rise to a suspicion that aurelio buso, of cremona, a scholar and assistant of polidoro's, in rome, may have been the only, or at least the earliest master of giovanni. we know from ridolfi that buso produced various histories, in his native place, in the manner of his master, and historians of genoese art record other works from his hand in their city. they assert that he departed thence unexpectedly, while ridolfi concludes his life, by saying, that notwithstanding his worth, he died in poverty. from the period in which he flourished, he might possibly have been the master of gio. da monte, no less than titian. callisto piazza is likewise announced, by orlandi, as another imitator of the latter, which is very evident from his picture of the assumption, in the collegiate church of codogno. it contains figures of apostles, and two portraits of the marchesi trivulzi, not unworthy of any of titian's disciples. and for such, indeed, was callisto esteemed, both elsewhere and in lodi, possessing, in the church of the incoronata, three chapels, each ornamented with four of his very beautiful histories. one of these contains the mysteries of the passion, another the acts of s. john the baptist, and the third displays histories in the life of the virgin. a report is current there, that titian, in passing through lodi, produced several heads, probably only a story originating in the exceeding beauty that may be observed in some. it appears, however, certain, that he also imitated giorgione, in whose style he conducted his altarpiece, representing the virgin between various saints, at san francesco, in brescia, esteemed one of the most beautiful in the whole city. he produced others for brescia, for crema, for the dome of alessandria, and for lodi, though in this last he succeeded better in fresco than in oil. from the circumstance of his residing in so many different places, i shall not refer him to the school of milan, preferring to place him here, no less because of the vicinity of crema to lodi, than from his belonging to the list of the imitators of titian.[ ] little justice has been done to the memory of such a man by ridolfi, who commends him for nothing besides his colouring in fresco, and water colours; when, in fact, he boasts very noble design, and forms tolerably select, more particularly in the assumption already mentioned. moreover, he calls him callisto da lodi bresciano, as if da lodi were a family name; although in signing his own name, he gave it _callixtus de platea_, at the incoronata, and elsewhere desirous of marking his country, _callixtus laudensis_. ridolfi, too, says little or nothing of the period in which he flourished. padre orlandi found, affixed to one of his pictures, at brescia, the date of . i may add, that in lodi he gave the years and ; and that, in the nuptials of cana, in the refectory of the padri cisterciensi, at milan, he marked . it is truly a surprising production, no less for its boldness of hand than for the number of its figures, although the whole of them are not equally well studied, and a few, among others that seem to breathe and live, are really careless and incorrect.[ ] he painted in the same city, within a courtyard, the choir of the muses, including the portraits of the president sacco, the master of the house, and of his wife; respecting which, writes lomazzo, i may, without fear of temerity, observe, that it is impossible to produce any thing more perfectly graceful and pleasing, more beautiful in point of colouring, among works in fresco. (_trat._ p. .) we next arrive at the name of jacopo robusti, the son of a venetian dyer, and for this reason surnamed tintoret. he was pupil to titian, who, jealous of his talents, soon banished him from his studio. he did not aspire, like the preceding artists, to the name of titian's follower; for he burned with ambition to become the head of a new school which should carry his manner to perfection, adding to it all that was yet wanting; a vast idea, the offspring of a grand and fervid genius, and as bold as it was great, not even banishment from his master's school being able to damp his ardour. constrained by circumstances to confine himself to an incommodious apartment, he ennobled it with specimens of his early studies. over the door of it he wrote, "michelangiolo's design, and the colouring of titian;" and as he was an indefatigable imitator of the latter, so he was equally studious, both night and day, in copying the models, taken from the statues in florence, belonging to the former. to these he added many more of bassi relievi, and of ancient statues. in a catalogue of ancient pieces of sculpture, cited by morelli, and belonging to the year , is recorded a head of vitellius, upon which "_tintoretto was always employed in designing and learning_," (note, p. ). he was frequently in the habit of designing his models by lamplight, the better to obtain strong shades, and thus acquire skill in the use of a bold chiaroscuro. with the same view he wrought models in wax and chalk, and having clothed them carefully, he adapted them to little houses, composed of pasteboard, and slips of wood, supplying them through the windows with small lights, by which he might thus regulate his own lights and shades. the models themselves he suspended from the ceiling by cords, placing them in a variety of positions, and designing them from different points of view, the better to acquire a mastery of the _sotto in sù_, or foreshortening on the ceiling, a science not so familiar to his school as to that of lombardy. nor did he neglect the study of anatomy, to obtain a thorough knowledge of the muscles, and the structure of the human frame. he designed also the naked parts, as much as possible, in various shortenings and attitudes, in order to render his compositions as diversified as nature herself. by such studies he prepared himself to introduce the true method to be pursued by his followers, beginning with designing from the best models, and having obtained the idea of a correct style, proceeding to copy the naked parts, and to correct their defects.[ ] to such aids he united a genius which extorted the admiration of vasari, one of his severest critics, who pronounced it the most terrible of which the art could boast--an imagination fertile in new ideas, and a pictorial fire which inspired him with vigour to conceive well the boldest character of the passions, and continued to support him until he had given full expression to them on his canvass. yet to what did it amount?--what is the noblest genius, and all the rarest qualities meeting in a single artist, without diligence, a virtue which of itself, says cicero, seems to include all the rest. tintoretto possessed it for a period, and produced works in which the most captious of critics could not find a shade of defect. of such kind is that miracle of the slave, adorning the college of st. mark, a piece he executed in his thirty-sixth year, and which is held up as one of the wonders of venetian art. the colours are titian's; the chiaroscuro extremely strong; the composition correct and sober; select forms; studied draperies; while equally varied, appropriate, and animated beyond conception, are the attitudes of the men assisting at the spectacle, in particular of the saint who flies to succour, giving an idea of the swiftness of an aërial being. there, too, he painted other beautiful pieces, whose merit extorted from the lips of pietro da cortona these words: "did i reside in venice, not a festival should pass without still resorting to this spot, in order to feast my eyes with such objects, and above all, with the design!" his picture of the crucifixion at the college of san rocco, is also esteemed a work of singular merit; displaying as it does, so much novelty upon so hackneyed a subject. nor are other examples of his sovereign power wanting in the same place, filled with pictures as various as new; but, for brevity's sake, i shall merely record, in the third place, his supper of our lord, now at the salute, having been removed from the refectory of the crociferi, for which it was drawn. those who have beheld it in its place, write of it as a miracle in the art, inasmuch as the construction of the place was so well repeated in the picture, and imitated with so much knowledge of perspective, as to make the apartment appear double its real size. nor are these three works to which he affixed his name, as his favourite productions, the only ones worthy of his genius, zanetti having enumerated many more, conducted with the most finished care; the whole exhibited to the venetian public, without including those dispersed throughout the different cities of europe. but diligence is rarely found long united to a rage for achieving much; the true source in this instance, as in numerous others, of false, or at least of inferior composition. hence, annibale caracci observed, that in many pieces tintoretto was inferior to tintoretto; while paul veronese, so ardent an admirer of his talents, was in the habit of reproaching him with doing injustice to the professors of the art, by painting in every manner, a plan that went far to destroy the reputation of the profession (_ridolfi_). similar exceptions will be found to apply to such of his works as, conceived at a heat, executed by habit, and in great part left imperfect, betray certain errors both in point of judgment and design. sometimes there appears a crowd of superfluous or badly grouped figures, and most generally all in the most energetic actions, without any spectators regarding them in quiet, as was practised by titian and all the best composers. neither in these figures are we to look for that senatorial dignity, which reynolds discovers in titian. tintoretto aimed rather at liveliness than at grace, and from the studied observation of the people of his native state, perhaps the most spirited in italy, he drew models for his heads, as well as his attitudes, sometimes applying them to the most important subjects. in a few specimens of his suppers, the apostles might occasionally be taken for gondoliers, just when their arm is raised, ready to strike the oar, and with an air of native fierceness they raise the head either to look out, to ridicule, or to dispute. he likewise varied titian's method of colouring, making use of primary grounds no longer white, and composed of chalk, but shaded; owing to which his venetian pictures have felt the effects of time more than the rest. neither were the choice, nor the general tone of his colouring the same as titian's; the blue, or the ash coloured, being that which predominates; one which assists the effect of the chiaroscuro, as much as it diminishes the amenity of the whole. in his fleshes there appears a certain vinous colour, and more particularly in his portraits. the proportions of his bodies are also different; he does not affect the fulness of titian; he aims more at lively action than the latter, and sometimes attenuates his figures too much. the least correct portion of his pictures is the drapery; few of them being free from those long and straight folds, or flying abroad, or in some other way too common and obvious. it would be useless to insist upon his want of judgment, or rather his pictorial extravagances, vasari having already said too much of them, upon the subject of his universal judgment, at santa maria dell'orto. he ought to have tempered the severity of his criticism, however, by admitting, that if the author of that great picture had bestowed as much pains upon the several parts as upon the whole, it would have been a magnificent production. even in those pictures, in which he wished to display the talent as it were of an _improvvisatore_, he still vindicated his title to the name of a great master, in the command and rapidity of his pencil, in his manifestations of original powers, where he seems to triumph in his play of light, in the most difficult shortenings, in fanciful inventions, in his relief, in harmony, and, in the best supported of his pieces, even in the beauty of his tints. but his sovereign merit consisted in the animation of his figures, it being an universal opinion, that has almost acquired the force of a proverb, that the power of action ought to be studied in tintoretto. upon this point pietro da cortona used to observe, that if we carefully examine the whole of those pictures which have been engraved, no artist will be found equal to him in the pictorial fire he infused into his forms (_boschini_, p. ). he flourished for a long period, exerting his talents until we could with difficulty make a catalogue of his works, still giving the rein to his divine ardour in many pieces of great size, or at least abounding with a great variety of actors. among these last, his picture of the paradiso, in the hall of the great council, was greatly esteemed, even by the caracci; and though the production of advanced age, the figures are almost innumerable. had they only been better grouped and distributed, the artist would not have given occasion for algarotti to criticize such a painting as he did, adducing it as an example of badly conceived composition. tintoretto's genuine productions are not often met with in the different collections of italy. in venice, however, they are not rare, and there we may learn, what appears so very improbable in ridolfi, that tintoretto wrought with a degree of finish equal to that of a miniature painter. the noble casa barbarigo, at s. polo, possesses a _susanna_ of this character, where, in small space, is included a park, with birds and rabbits disporting, together with every thing desirable in a pleasure garden; the whole as studiously finished as his figures. there is little to add relating to his school on which none conferred greater credit than his son, domenico tintoretto. he trod in the steps of his father; but, like ascanius following Æneas, "non passibus æquis." still he may boast much resemblance in his countenances, in his colouring, and in harmony, but there is a wide distinction in point of genius, though some of his most spirited pieces have been ascribed to his father, or at least suspected of having been chiefly indebted to his hand. many works, however, upon a large scale, are attributed to the son; those which he has filled with portraits being far the most commended; his merit in this branch having been thought equal by zanetti to that of his father. one of these is seen at the college of st. mark, where, as in the rest of his compositions, the figures are disposed with more sobriety than those of jacopo, as well as finished with more care, and with more enduring colours. as he grew older his style fell somewhat into that of a mannerist, which at that period, as we shall see, much prevailed. by these distinctions his productions may be frequently known from his father's, and we may be enabled to refute the assertions of dealers, who, to obtain a higher price, attribute them indiscriminately to jacopo. yet domenico produced many pieces, more especially portraits for different collections, besides several mythological and scriptural histories, to which he sometimes added his name, as in his picture boasting such exquisite tints which adorns the campidoglio; the subject of which is a penitent magdalen. contemporary with domenico, we ought not to omit the name of his sister marietta, so exquisite a painter of portraits, as to receive invitations from the emperor maximilian, and from philip ii. of spain, to visit their respective courts. but her father would never consent to such a measure, in order to enjoy her society at home, though he was deprived of her not long afterwards, cut off in the flower of her genius and her age. jacopo possessed few disciples beyond his two children, though he profited in some measure from these few. paolo franceschi, or de' freschi, a fleming, and martino de vos d'anversa, were artists he employed to draw his landscapes. the former was esteemed one of the best landscape painters of his time, while he succeeded also in figures. he was engaged to paint for the palazzo publico, and several churches in venice, where he terminated his days. the second resided also at rome; and, in the church of san francesco a ripa, painted his _concezione_, a picture, indeed, abounding with too many figures, but beautiful and exquisite in its tints. with still greater felicity he depicted the four seasons for the colonna family, very pleasing little pictures, presenting a happy union of various schools, fine perspective, fine relief, with correct and graceful design. passing into germany, and increasing in reputation no less by his works than by the engravings made of them by sadeler, there, full of years and fame, he died. lamberto lombardo has been just before recorded as the assistant of tintoretto, but not his disciple. odofardo fialetti, a native of bologna, was educated in the school of tintoretto, where he acquired a reputation for good design, and a thorough acquaintance with all the precepts of the art, yet he was still far from emulating his master, not possessing vivacity of genius equal to the task. to avoid a competition with the caracci he long continued, and died at venice, where many of his works are highly esteemed, and in particular his picture of the crucifixion, painted for the croce. among the imitators of tintoretto appears the name of cesare dalle ninfe, an artist who aimed at reaching the sharp expression of ridicule, the novelty of ideas, and the rapidity of hand, so remarkable in his prototype; though unequal in his design. flaminio floriano seems to have been ambitious of imitating only the more correct parts of his model; so uniformly exact, temperate, and precise does he appear in his picture of san lorenzo, to which he affixed his name. the name of melchior colonna also occurs, though hardly known in venice, and some perhaps would add that of bertoli, a venetian, to be met with affixed to a picture at the chapel of san niccola, in tolentino. it represents the plague that visited that city, if i mistake not, and which disappeared at the solicitation of the patron saint. there is also an account of another artist, who from his age might have received the instructions of tintoretto, or at all events obtained them from his works; his name was gio. rothenamer di monaco. arriving in italy with but a small fund of knowledge, acquired in the studio of a poor national artist, he distinguished himself at rome, and perfected his style in venice, adopting in a great measure the maxims of tintoretto. there, at the incurabili, he left a santa cristina, a nunziata at san bartolommeo, and, as we have reason to believe, other works in private possession, by which he obtained some degree of credit. subsequently arriving at a handsome practice in england, he nevertheless contrived to die there in poverty, his funeral expenses being defrayed by the alms of some venetians. but few others, observes zanetti, pursued the same path, probably because at that period more pleasing and popular styles were in vogue. ridolfi, on the other hand, asserts, that all young artists towards the end of the century were anxious to study him for their model; and we shall find, in treating of the _mannerists_, that he was acknowledged by them as their sovereign master. we must, in the next place, enter upon a consideration of the school of bassano. jacopo da ponte, son to that francesco, who, in the preceding epoch, was commended as one of the better artists who flourished during the fourteenth century, was nearly contemporary with tintoretto, and was instructed by his father in the art. his earliest efforts, that are seen in the church of san bernardino, in his native place, bear the impress of such an education. on resorting to venice he was recommended to bonifazio, a master no less jealous of his art than titian or tintoretto; insomuch that jacopo never obtained the advantage of seeing him colour, except by secretly watching him through a crevice in the door of his studio. he resided but a little time in venice, employed in designing the cartoons of parmigianino, and in taking copies of the pictures of bonifazio and titian, whose scholar, upon the authority of some manuscript, he had also been. and, if conformity of manner were sufficient evidence, by no means always a certain guide, we might admit the truth of such supposition; his second style being altogether that of titian. a few of his pictures are met with in his native place, such as his flight into egypt, at san girolamo, and a nativity of the redeemer, in possession of sig. dottor larber, both youthful productions, but which seemed to promise another titian; so richly were they imbued with his sweetness of taste. upon his father's death jacopo was compelled to return, and settle in his own province, whose city is at this day both rich and populous, and in those times it was esteemed by no means despicable; its situation delightful, abounding with flocks and herds, and well adapted for the sale of merchandize, and for fairs. from these elements arose by degrees his formation of a third style, full of simplicity and grace, and which gave the first indications in italy of a taste altogether foreign; that of the flemish. in the use of his pencil, jacopo may be said to have pursued two different methods. the first of these is much softened with a fine union of tints, and at last determined with free strokes. the second, resulting in a great measure from the other, was formed by simple strokes of the pencil, with clear and pleasing tints, and with a certain command, or rather audacity of art, that, nearly viewed, appears a confused mixture, but forms in the distance an enchanting effect of colouring. in both of these he displays the originality of his own style, chiefly consisting in a certain soft and luscious composition. it partakes at once of the triangular and the circular form, and aims at certain contrast of postures; so that if one of the figures is in full face, the other turns its shoulders; and at the same time at a kind of analogy, so that a number of heads shall meet in the same line, or in a want of these, some other form elevated in the same direction. in regard to his lights, he appears partial to such as are confined to one part, and displayed masterly power in rendering it subservient to the harmony of the whole; for with these rare lights, with the frequent use of middle tints, and the absence of deep obscure, he succeeded admirably in harmonizing the most opposite colours. in the gradation of lights he often contrives that the shadow of the interior figure shall serve as a ground for one more forward; and that the figures should partake of few lights, but extremely bold and vivid at their angles; as for instance, on the top of the shoulder, on the knee, and on the elbow; for which purpose he makes use of a flow or sweep of folds, natural to all appearance, but in fact highly artificial, to favour his peculiar system. in proportion to the variety of his draperies, he varies the folds with a delicacy of judgment that falls to the share of few. his colours every where shine like gems; in particular his greens, which display an emerald tinge peculiar to himself. whoever would become more familiar with the mechanism, and at the same time peruse a very full analysis, of bassano's style, may refer to sig. verci, the able historian of the marca trevigiana, who drew it up from the _ms. volpati_, cited by us in another epoch, and in the index to the writers. at the outset jacopo aspired to a grandeur of style, which is apparent from some of his pictures remaining in the façade of the casa michieli. among these, a samson slaying the philistines meets with much praise, and indeed they all partake of the boldness of michel angiolo. but, whether the result of disposition or of judgment, he afterwards confined himself to smaller proportions, and to subjects of less power. even the figures in his altarpieces are generally less than life, and so little animated, that it was observed by some one, that in tintoretto even his old men were spirited, but that the youths of bassano were mere dotards. we do not meet with any of that noble architecture in his paintings, that adds so much dignity to those of the venetian school. he appears rather anxious to find subjects in which to introduce candlelight, cottages, landscape, animals, copper vessels, and all such objects as passed under his eye, and which he copied with surprising accuracy. his ideas were limited, and he often repeated them, a fault to be attributed to his situation, it being an indisputable fact, that the conceptions both of artists and of writers become enlarged and increased in great capitals, and diminish in small places. all this may be gathered from his pictures produced for private ornament, the most familiar occupation of his life, inasmuch as he executed very few large altarpieces. he conducted them at leisure in his studio, and, assisted by his school, he prepared a great number of various dimensions. he then despatched them to venice, and sometimes to the best frequented fairs, thus rendering the number so very great, as to make it rather a disgrace for a collection not to possess copies by his hand, than an honour to have them. in these may be viewed, almost invariably, the same subjects; consisting of acts of the old and new testament; the feasts of martha, of the pharisee, of the glutton, with a splendid display of brazen vessels; the ark of noah, the return of jacob, the annunciation of the angel to the shepherds, with great variety of animals. to these we may add, the queen of sheba; the three magi, with regal pomp of dress, and the richest array; the deposition of our lord from the cross, by torchlight. his pieces upon profane subjects exhibit the sale of beasts and of brazen vessels; sometimes rural occupations, corresponding to the seasons of the year; and sometimes without human figures, merely a kitchen, furniture, a fowl yard, or similar objects. nor is it only the histories or the compositions themselves that recur in every collection to the eye; but even countenances taken from individuals of his own family; for instance, arraying his own daughter either as a queen of sheba, or a magdalen; or as a villager, presenting fowls to the infant jesus. i have likewise seen entire pieces, with the title of the _family of bassano_, sometimes in small size, and sometimes in larger. of the former, i remarked a specimen in genoa, in possession of signor ambrogio durazzo, where the daughters of the painter are seen intent upon their feminine occupations, a little boy playing, and a domestic in the act of lighting a candle. one of the second kind may be seen in the _medicean museum_, a picture which represents an academy of music. by this method he seemed to confess the poverty of his imagination, though he derived from it a very remarkable advantage. by dint of continually repeating the same things, he brought them to the utmost point of perfection of which they were susceptible; as we may gather from his picture of the nativity of our lord, placed at san giuseppe, in bassano; the master not only of jacopo, but in point of force of colours and the chiaroscuro, of every thing that modern painting has to boast. the same is seen in his burial of christ, at the seminario of padua, a picture of which an engraving was taken by order of madame patin, among the portraits of celebrated painters; having met with no other that seemed to breathe such a spirit of pity and holy terror. finally, in his sacrifice of noah, at santa maria maggiore in venice, in which he collected specimens of all the birds and animals he had drawn elsewhere, he preserved the same character; and by this production so far won the regard of titian, that he wished to purchase a copy for the ornament of his own studio. hence it happens, that the works of bassano, conducted at a certain age and with singular care, are estimated very highly, and purchased at large sums, though not altogether exempt from some errors of perspective, from some awkwardness of posture, and some fault in composition, particularly in point of symmetry. indeed it was the general belief, that he possessed little practical skill in designing the extremities, thus avoiding, as much as lay in his power, the introduction of feet and hands into his pictures. these accusations, with others before alluded to, might be greatly extenuated by producing such examples of bassano as would fully prove, that he could, when he pleased, draw much better than he was accustomed to do. he knew how to vary his compositions, as we perceive in his nativity, at the ambrosiana in milan; and he might as easily have varied his other pieces. he was capable also of conceiving with equal novelty and propriety, as we gather from his san rocco, at vicenza; and he might thus have shone on other occasions. moreover, he knew how to draw the extremities, as appears from his picture of s. peter, at venice, adorning the church of the umiltà; and he could give dignity to his countenances, as in his queen of sheba, which i have seen in brescia; and he might have displayed the same dignity in other pieces. but whether he found such a task too irksome, or from whatever other cause, he displayed his powers rarely; content with having arrived at his peculiar method of colouring, of illuminating, and of shading, with a sovereign skill. so universally was he admired, that he received innumerable commissions from various courts, and an invitation to that of vienna. what is more honourable, notwithstanding his defects, he extorted the highest praises, if not from vasari, from many of the most renowned artists; from titian, from annibal caracci, who was so much deceived by a book painted upon a table, that he stretched out his hand to take it up; and from tintoretto, who commended his colouring, and in some measure wished to imitate him. above all, he was highly honoured by paul veronese, who entrusted him with his son carletto, for a pupil, to receive his general instructions, "and more particularly in regard to that just disposition of lights reflected from one object to another, and in those happy counterpositions, owing to which the depicted objects seem clothed with a profusion of light." such is the flattering testimony given by algarotti to the style of jacopo da ponte. bassano educated four of his sons to the same profession, which thus became transmitted to others, so that the bassanese school continued for the length of a century, though still declining and departing fast from its primitive splendour. francesco and leandro were the two members of jacopo's family best disposed to pursue his footsteps, and he was accustomed to pride himself upon the inventive talents displayed by the former, and the singular ability of the latter for portrait painting, of his two other sons, giambatista and girolamo, he used to observe, that they were the most accurate copyists of his own works. all of these, more especially the two latter, were instructed by their father in those refinements of the art he himself practised, and they so far succeeded, that many of their copies, made both during and after the lifetime of their father, very frequently imposed upon professors, being received for the originals of jacopo. the whole of them, however, produced original works, and francesco the eldest, having established himself in venice, gave ample proof of it in those histories drawn from venetian records, which he painted for the palazzo grande. they are placed near those of paul veronese, and appear to advantage even in such competition. his father here assisted him with his advice; himself attending upon the spot, and instructing him where he found occasion, how to add force to his tints, to improve his perspective, and to bring the whole work to the most perfect degree of art. his pencil may be very clearly traced in that of his son, as well as his style, which in the opinion of critics is somewhat too much loaded, especially in his shades. francesco, likewise, produced several beautiful altarpieces, in which, on the other hand, he appears less vigorous than his father; as may be seen in his paradiso, at the gesù, in rome, or in his san apollonio, at brescia, one of the most beautiful pieces in the church of s. afra, and much admired by foreigners. and he would have achieved still greater things, had he not been afflicted with severe fits of melancholy, such as to deprive him of the use of his faculties and his time, until he was driven by sudden desperation to throw himself from a window, and, by this accident, still in the prime of his days, he lost his life. the works which he left imperfect in the ducal palace, and in other places, were completed by leandro, the third son of jacopo, and a professor in high repute. he followed the same maxims in the art, except that by his practice in portrait taking, he acquired more originality of countenance; and in the use of his pencil approaches nearer to the first than to the second style of jacopo. he is, moreover, more variable in it, and inclines somewhat to the mannerism of his age. one of his best performances perhaps, is to be seen at san francesco, in bassano; santa caterina crowned by our lord; amidst various saints, distributed upon the steps of the throne, with figures larger than customary in the bassanese school. his pictures likewise of the resurrection of lazarus, placed at the carità; and of the nativity of the virgin, at santa sofia; besides others he produced at venice, as well as for the state, are distinguished by their large proportions. if familiar with the father's productions, we may often detect domestic plagiarisms in leandro; who often repeats the family of da ponte, copied in innumerable pieces by jacopo, by his sons, and by their descendants. even in his pictures for private ornament, conducted according to his own style and fancy, he was fond of adopting paternal subjects and examples; being skilful in drawing animals of every kind from nature. but nothing proved so favourable to his reputation, both in italy and throughout europe, as the immense number of his portraits, admirably executed, and not unfrequently with a certain original fancy, both for private persons and for princes. those that he executed for the imperial palace were particularly relished; insomuch that he received an invitation from rodolph ii., to accept the place of his court painter; an honour which leandro thought fit to refuse. he was more ambitious of enjoying fame at venice than at vienna; for the doge grimani, the better to obtain a noble portrait of himself, had already created him his cavalier. and leandro supported his dignity with an imposing demeanour: he lodged, dressed, and maintained his table in a noble manner. he appeared in public ornamented with a collar of gold, and with the insignia of st. mark, accompanied by a train of disciples, who dwelt at his house. one of these bore his gold cane, another the repertory, in which he noted down all that was to be done during the day. the same were bound to attend upon him at table; and as he was suspicious of poison, he was accustomed, like the great, to have his tasters, who took something of every dish he eat; but they were ordered not to taste much, as in such case the great man became little, and gave rise to much mirth. like his brother, he was subject to fits of melancholy, but he contrived to manage them so well, as only to give birth to comic, never to tragic scenes. giambatista da ponte, is a name almost unmentioned in history; nor is there any production attributed to him, besides an altarpiece in gallio, with his name, and which by some writer has been given, from its style, to leandro. girolamo, the last of the family, is better known by an altarpiece which he conducted in venice, after the composition of leandro, as well as for others executed in bassano and its vicinity. he cannot be denied a certain graceful air in his countenances; and in some of his works, displaying the simplest composition, very graceful colouring. such is his picture of s. barbara, adorning the church of s. giovanni, at bassano, where the saint is seen between two upright virgin figures, with their eyes fixed upon heaven, where the holy virgin is represented in the usual manner of the times. not only was jacopo attached to the soil and very walls of his native country, from which no prospects of honour or of profit could tempt him away; but he liberally granted his instructions to his fellow citizens, which both his sons and their family continued after his decease. the best disciple whom they produced, was jacopo apollonio, the offspring of jacopo's daughter. though only acquainted with the two least celebrated of his uncles, he made rapid progress in his art, a case in which he may be compared to certain writers, who have wholly made use of their native dialect, without mingling it with any of a foreign growth. in like manner he is _bassanese_ in his ideas, in his draperies, in his architecture, and more than all, in his landscape, which he touched with a master's hand. he might easily at times be mistaken for the real bassani, were he not inferior to them in the vigour of his tints, in the delicacy of his contours, and in the strokes of his pencil. some of his best works consist of a magdalen, seen in the dome of bassano, a san francesco at the riformati, which present fair examples by which to judge of his style. yet above all, his picture of the titular with various other saints at san sebastiano, is one of the most exquisite finish, and possesses every estimable quality in the art, except that of softness. some have considered him the only artist among the disciples of this school worthy of commemoration. yet the natives of bassano set some store by two brothers named giulio and luca martinelli, very estimable scholars of jacopo. they also hold in some esteem antonio scaiario, son-in-law to giambatista da ponte, as well as his heir, owing to which he sometimes signs himself _antonio da ponte, antonio bassano_. nor do they omit the name of jacopo guadagnini, the offspring of a daughter of francesco da ponte, who acquired some merit in face painting, and in copying, however feebly, the works of his ancestors. upon his decease in , every vestige of the manner and of the school of jacopo became extinct in bassano. there nevertheless arose about the same period in cittadella, a place adjacent to bassano, a young genius of the name of gio. batista zampezzo, who, directed by apollonio, and having concluded his studies at venice, devoted himself to copying the works of jacopo. so well did he imitate his santa lucilla baptized by san valentino, a piece at the grazie in bassano, that bartolommeo scaligero pronounced it comparable with the original. he flourished about ;[ ] and subsequent to him appeared the noble gio. antonio lazzari, a venetian, who succeeded in deceiving the most skilful artists, says melchiori, by dint of copying jacopo, and passing for him. it will not have been irksome, i trust, to my readers, thus to have connected together a series of the school of bassano, by aid of which the copies taken by so many artists, at different periods, and with various degrees of merit, may be better distinguished.[ ] whilst the bassanese school employed itself in drawing the simplest objects of rural nature upon a small scale, a different one sprung up in verona, which surpassed all others by copying, upon the most ample grounds, every thing most beautiful in art; such as architecture, costume, ornaments, the splendour of trains of servants, and luxury worthy of kings. this then remained still to be completed, and it was reserved for the genius of paul caliari to accomplish. the son of gabriele, a sculptor at verona, he was destined by his father for the same art. instructed in a knowledge of design, and modelling in clay, he nevertheless evinced so strong a genius for painting, as to induce his father to give him as a pupil to badile, under whom, in a short time, he made an astonishing progress. he had, however, appeared in an age that made it incumbent on him to exert himself greatly, such were the splendid talents that distinguished the veronese school. it is deserving, indeed, of separate mention, inasmuch as it might of itself form a school apart, were it not that its principal masters had acquired a knowledge of their art, either from mantegna of padua, or from the venetian bellini; from giorgione, or as we shall have occasion to see, from titian. it was thus derived rather from the artists of the state, than from its own or from foreign sources; though it flourished by its own industry, and produced as many various styles as any other place in the terra firma. i have already alluded to the remark of vasari, that "verona having constantly devoted itself, after the death of f. giocondo, to the study of design, produced at all times excellent artists, &c." such praise as he bestowed on no other city of the venetian state. i noticed also its superiority in force of expression, and its very general taste, in animating and giving an air of liveliness to its heads, so general indeed as to be almost characteristic of the nation. to these it added a beauty peculiar to itself; more light and elegant, and less full than in the venetian paintings, though not so fresh and rubicund in the fleshy parts. it is also equally happy with any other in its inventions, availing itself of mythology and history to form fanciful compositions, and for the ornament of palaces and villas. the national genius so well adapted for poetry, aided the artists in the conception of such compositions; while the advice of able men, always abounding in the city, helped to perfect them. the climate too was favourable for the production, as well as for the preservation of paintings; for while at venice the saltness of the air destroyed many beautiful pieces in fresco, in verona and its adjacent towns a great number remained entire. we have already alluded to its leading masters of the preceding epoch, observing that many were entitled from their works to rank in this brighter period. to these i add paolo cavazzola, pupil to moroni, and in the opinion of vasari, much superior to him. he died at the age of thirty-one, leaving many fine specimens of a mature judgment in different churches. the two falconetti were also worthy of some notice. gio. antonio, an excellent draughtsman of fruits and animals; and gio. maria, a scholar of melozzo (_notizia_, p. ,) and a celebrated architect and painter, though not one of the most copious, more especially in fresco. these two brothers were descendants of old stefano da verona, or da sevio, whichever he is to be called. nor less worthy in the opinion of vasari was one tullio, or india il vecchio, an able artist in fresco, a portrait painter, and a celebrated copyist. his son bernardino appears to advantage, no less in a bold than a delicate style; in which last, if i mistake not, he is superior, as we perceive from specimens in the churches, and other collections in verona. many of his pictures betray a style approaching that of giulio romano. he is recorded by vasari, together with eliodoro forbicini, famous for his grotesques, and assistant in many of his labours to india, as well as to various other artists of no mean fame. dionisio battaglia distinguished himself by an altarpiece of santa barbara, mentioned by pozzo as being at santa eufemia; no less than did scalabrino by his two scriptural histories placed at san zeno. two other artists of the same period are very deserving of mention, both on account of their productions and their pupils; niccolo giolfino (in vasari called ursino) the master of farinato; and antonio badile, the tutor and the uncle of caliari. giolfino, or golfino, according to ridolfi, partakes something of the dryness of the quattrocentisti, less select and animated than the best of his contemporaries, his colours not very vivid, but pleasing and harmonious. most probably educated by some one of these miniaturists, he succeeded better in pictures upon a small than upon a large scale, such as in his resurrection of lazarus, to be seen in the church of nazareth. born in , badile flourished during another eighty years, and was the first, perhaps, of any in verona, to exhibit painting altogether free from traces of antiquity, while he excelled no less in external forms than in depicting the inward affections and passions of the mind. he was moreover the author, at the same time, of a peculiar softness, yet freedom of hand; though it is not known from whom he acquired it. he affixed to his works only the first syllable of his name, formed in a cypher. his picture of the raising of lazarus, painted for san bernardino, and another with some holy bishops at san nazaro, both so much commended by ridolfi, serve to shew from what source his two pupils, paolo and zelotti, derived that elegant manner, which they mutually improved by assisting one another. a similar style was for some years displayed by orlando fiacco, or flacco, from which he is supposed to have been a scholar of badile, though vasari, who extols him particularly in portrait, gives him to another school. however this may be, it is certain he inclined to a boldness of style, approaching that of caravaggio. he flourished but a short period, during which he acquired more merit than fortune. this resulted from the too great abundance of good artists in verona, a circumstance that induced many to seek better fortune in foreign parts. orlandi, on the authority of vasari, has inserted in the abecedario a professor of the name of zeno, or donato, a native of verona, who in the church of san marino at rimino, painted the titular saint with singular care. i saw it, and it displayed great simplicity of composition, good design, and still better colouring, more particularly in the dress of the bishop, which he laboriously ornamented with little figures of saints. he seems to have belonged to the golden period of art; and it is known that he left other works at the same place, and most probably never changed his residence, or at least did not return, so far as we know, to verona. two other artists, named batista fontana, much engaged at the imperial court of vienna; and jacopo ligozzi, who long flourished at the court of tuscany, as i have observed in its place, also adopted the resolution of quitting their native city. of the former scarcely any thing remains there; though there are a few pieces by the hand of the second, among which at s. luca a saint helena, who, surrounded by her court ladies, assists in the discovery of the holy cross, a picture displaying the best venetian taste in its tints, and in the richness of its draperies; but certainly all the worst, in regard to transferring our own customs to more ancient times. giovanni ermanno had either a brother or other relation who approached him very nearly in point of merit, as may clearly be seen at the santi apostoli in verona. but those who had there obtained the ascendancy, when paul veronese first began to make himself known, were three fellow citizens, who still maintain a high character in their native place, inferior only to that of paul himself. their names are batista d'angelo, surnamed del moro, as the son-in-law and pupil of torbido; domenico ricci, called il brusasorci, from his father's custom of burning rats; and paul farinato, likewise called degli uberti. all three were invited by the cardinal ercole gonzaga to mantua, in order that each might exhibit in the cathedral an altarpiece; while together with these appeared paul, the youngest of the whole; but who according to vasari and ridolfi, surpassed them in the competition. but it is not yet time to enter upon his merits, having first to treat of his rivals, before we venture upon him and his followers, so as not to have occasion for interrupting the remainder of this history, until we arrive at a new epoch. giambatista was the least celebrated of the three, though each of his works obtained so much credit, that when santa eufemia had one of its walls demolished to make way for a new edifice, his picture of st. paul before ananias, that adorned it, was carefully preserved at considerable expense, and replaced over the door of the church; yet this was one of his earliest productions. he produced a great many others, both in oil and in fresco, not unfrequently in competition with paul. he follows torbido in point of diligence, and in his strong and unctuous colouring. he has more softness, however, of design; and, if i mistake not, more grace; of which he gave a distinguished specimen in an angiolo at san stefano, in the act of distributing the palms to the ss. innocenti. he was employed, also, in venice, where the most studied and animated production, going by his name, is not positively pronounced his by ridolfi, but only _esteemed to be his_, while it is ascribed by boschini to francesco alberti, a venetian, known merely by this single production. it is an altarpiece in santa maria maggiore, representing the virgin between st. john and st. mark, and several lords in ducal robes, with their sons, in the act of adoring her; very lively portraits of the marcello family, for whom the altar was painted. vasari gives a brief account both of him and his son marco, his pupil and assistant, though he did not mention giulio, brother to batista, who distinguished himself alike in all the arts, and is called by zanetti _dotto pittore_. both, like batista, exercised their talents in venice, and whoever compares the four _coronati_ of giulio, placed at san apollinare, with the _paradiso_ of marco at san bartolommeo, will discover an elegance, a precision, and an arrangement of style, sufficient to mark them for disciples of the same school. brusasorci may be termed the titian of this school. it is not known that he received the instructions of any other master besides giolfino, but it is certain that he studied the works of giorgione and of titian, in venice. he has exhibited the style of the latter in a few of his pictures with great accuracy, as we see in his _san rocco_, in the church of the padri agostiniani at verona, and in several other pictures for private persons, among which he has drawn nymphs and venuses. an eye accustomed to the originals of the best venetians, detects a diversity of tints which in the artist of verona are less glowing. his genius could not confine itself to the imitation of a single model, like some of the venetians; he became fond of giorgione, and to judge from one of his pieces remaining at mantua, also of parmigianino. there in the ducal palace we meet with the fable of phaeton exhibited in different pieces, which, however much defaced by time, are still admired for the fancy and vivacity they display, no less than for their abundance of figures, and the difficult foreshortenings he has inserted. but his chief merit was shewn in his frescos, with which he decorated villas and palaces with the erudition of a fine poet and the execution of a fine painter. he produced, likewise, his histories; and the masterpiece of all i have seen is the procession of clement viii. and of charles v. through bologna, a picture exhibited in a hall of the noble casa ridolfi, and which has been engraved. a nobler spectacle cannot well be imagined; and although other specimens, both of this and similar subjects are met with very generally at rome, in venice, and in florence, none produce equal effect; combining in one piece, a large concourse, fine distribution of figures, vivacity of countenances, noble attitudes in the men and horses; variety of costume, pomp, and splendour and dignity, all bearing an expression of pleasure adapted to such a day. this piece may compete with another in the palazzo murari at ponte nuovo, also in fresco, though this last is preferred in the estimation of many before that of the casa ridolfi, as i have been informed by the learned signor dalla rosa. felice riccio, otherwise brusasorci the younger, and the son of domenico, became an orphan before he had completed his studies with his father, which he continued under the care of ligozzi, at florence. on returning thence to verona, he introduced a style very different to the manner of his father. it is extremely elegant and refined, as displayed in his madonnas, with boys and beautiful cherubs, adorning various collections; and with features something resembling those of paul veronese, if not a little more spare. nor is he deficient in strength where his subject requires it, as i remarked in a picture belonging to the conti gazzola, representing the forge of vulcan, with cyclops, designed in good florentine taste, and powerfully coloured. many of felice's works are interspersed through the churches of verona, among which his santa elena, belonging to the church of that name, is extremely beautiful. he did not exercise his talents, like his father, in fresco, nor had he equal genius; though he produced pieces on a large scale, the extreme of which was the fall of manna, painted for the church of s. giorgio, a picture both vast and well conceived, and which received its last touches from ottini and orbetto, two of his best disciples, whose names i reserve to another epoch. several little pictures, likewise, both on sacred and other subjects, executed on stone or marble, which he coloured with great skill, availing himself for his shades of the marble itself, are attributed to his hand. even his portraits are in high esteem; though nearly equalled by those of his sister cecilia, who acquired skill in the art from her father. gio. batista brusasorci, brother of the preceding artists, and a scholar of paul veronese, presented verona with several highly esteemed pictures; but passing into germany he became painter to the emperor, in whose service he died. surviving the whole of these, and almost all the caliari family, we meet with the name of paolo farinato, as grand an artist perhaps as his namesake was beautiful. after leaving the school of giolfino, he is supposed to have studied the works of titian and giorgione, at venice; and if we may judge also from his style, he must have received the instructions of giulio romano in design; though he made use of the venetian tints, out of which he formed a system of his own. he survived till his eighty-first year, still preserving his natural good humour; and as is customary with men of so advanced an age, he prided himself upon it, affixing his name to a picture he produced at san giorgio, placed opposite to one by felice, stating he had painted it in his seventy-ninth year. it is a representation of the multiplication of loaves in the desert, abounding with very numerous figures, in part portraits of his own family, and in part ideal heads. he is one of the few painters whose merit did not deteriorate in advanced age, for though in some early pieces he betrays a certain dryness of manner, in this last he left nothing imperfect, neither in fulness of contours, in the fancy of his draperies and embellishments, nor in the study of his figures and landscape. his design has been much commended, which was the case with few others of his school; and even in the time of ridolfi his sketches, the cartoons of his first studies, and his models of figures in wax, were all eagerly sought after for ornamental cabinets. a san onofrio is pointed out at the church of san tommaso, in a sitting posture, taken from the celebrated torso di belvedere; which, as well as many other of his attitudes, and subjects where he introduced naked figures, discovers an acquaintance with the ancient style not common among the venetians. to his fleshes he gives a bronze colour, which produces a pleasing effect, and harmonizes well with his tints, for the most part sober and even flat in his grounds; giving a repose to the eye which attracts without dazzling it. he is generally esteemed, however, a weak colourist, and better in his frescos than in oil. i know not whether it may be owing to partiality, or to the merit of this great man, but certain it is, that on my quitting bologna he was the only artist, the whole of whose works i regretted not having seen; so much of all that is rare and beautiful did i meet with in those i saw. more likewise i beheld in mantua, in san sisto at piacenza, in the ducal gallery at modena, in padua, and other places. i have sometimes observed a kind of snail that paolo is said to have chosen for his device, remarking that he likewise bore his house upon his head. his son orazio practised the art only for a few years. his best praise is, that during that short period he made approaches towards the style and merit of his father. there is one of his pieces at san stefano, representing the faithful receiving the holy spirit from the apostles;[ ] and, if we except only paul veronese, it makes a distinguished figure, placed near some of the best artists of verona. resuming here the thread of our former discourse, we must observe that paul caliari found the public prepossessed in favour of the three foregoing artists, and obtained little consideration in his own district while young. the world, ever disinclined to admit the claims of rising reputation, either knew not, or believed not, that in his competition with the mantuan artists he had surpassed them all; insomuch that this youthful genius was compelled by penury to quit verona, leaving behind him, upon an altar at san fermo, a madonna between two saints, with a few other proofs of his early powers. he first went to vicenza, and thence passed on to venice. his genius was naturally noble, and even magnificent and vast, as well as pleasing; and no provincial city was capable of supplying him with ideas proportionate to his genius, like venice. there he aimed at improving his style of colouring, upon the models of titian and tintoretto, as well as to surpass them, as it would appear, in elegance and variety of ornament. hence his pupils were accustomed to say, that at that time he devoted himself to the study of casts taken from ancient statues, to the engravings of parmigiano, and to those of albert durer. the first works that he produced for the sacristy of s. sebastiano in venice, present us only with the elements of that style he subsequently acquired, in the air of the heads, and in the variety of drapery and of attitudes. for the rest his pencil was still timid, inclined rather to unite his tints with care, than to a bold and free manner of handling. but it was not long before he displayed more freedom, and more attraction, in painting the ceilings of the same church, where he represented the history of esther, a work whose novelty conciliated public admiration and became a stepping stone to very honourable commissions from the senate. in the meanwhile he enjoyed an opportunity of visiting rome, in company with the ambassador grimani, where, surrounded by its grand ancient and modern productions, "_al volo suo sentì crescer le penne_," he felt his wings enlarging as he rose, of which he soon gave proofs in the palazzo pubblico, at venice. here his imagination seems to revel in every piece coloured by his hand; but particularly in that which may be called the apotheosis of venice, in regal costume, seated on high, crowned by glory, celebrated by fame, attended by honour, liberty, and peace. juno and ceres are seen assisting at the spectacle, as symbols of grandeur and felicity. the summit is decorated with specimens of magnificent architecture, and with columns; while lower down appears a great concourse of ladies with their lords and sons, in various splendid habits, all represented in a gallery; and on the ground are represented warriors upon their chargers, arms, ensigns, prisoners, and trophies of war. this oval picture presents us with an union of those powers, with which paul so much fascinates the eye, producing a general effect altogether enchanting, and includes numerous parts all equally beautiful; bright aërial spaces, sumptuous edifices, which seem to invite the foot of the spectator; lively features, dignified, selected for the most part from nature, and embellished by art. add to these, very graceful motions, fine contrasts and expressions; noble vestments, both for their shape and materials; with crowns and sceptres, magnificence worthy of so august a scene; perspective that gives distance to objects, without displeasing us when near;[ ] the most lively colours,[ ] whether similar or contrasted, and harmonized with a peculiar degree of art, such as is not to be taught. not inferior to these was the handling of his pencil, which to the utmost rapidity unites the greatest judgment, that effects, decides, and achieves something in every stroke; gifts which he had at that age rendered familiar to him, and which form the character of his genius. whoever has resolution enough to read boschini (for it is not every one in italy that can boast as much) will find at p. and further, in addition to the description of this picture, the commendations he bestowed on it, along with strozza, mignard, and other able artists, as one of the rarest specimens in the world. yet this did not obtain for him so high a reputation as his "suppers." whoever undertakes to describe his style, ought by no means to pass over a representation, perhaps the most familiar to him of all, having repeated it so many times, until by force of exercising his powers and varying it in different ways, the first sovereigns in the world became desirous of obtaining copies. several i have seen upon a small scale, but always beautiful; one, the supper of the eucharist, at santa sofia, in venice; another, upon the same subject, and of exquisite workmanship, at the casa borghese, in rome; and the feast given by san gregorio to the poor, belonging to the serviti, in vicenza; besides others in different collections. in venice he painted four suppers for the same number of refectories in religious houses, both large and rich in point of invention. the first representing the marriage of cana, is still preserved at san giorgio maggiore, thirty palms in length, copies of which every where abound, and which is highly estimable on account of the great number of the figures, amounting to one hundred and thirty, as well as for its portraits of princes and illustrious men, who flourished at the period. it was nevertheless executed for the price of only ninety ducats. the second is in better preservation, placed at san giovanni and san paolo, representing the supper prepared by matthew for our lord; and is very highly extolled for its heads, all of which ricci, at a mature age, copied for his studio. the third is at san sebastiano, consisting of the feast of simon. the fourth, along with the same feast, formerly placed at the refectory of the servi, was presented to louis xiv. of france, and deposited at versailles; and this was preferred by venetian professors to all the rest. for this reason numerous copies were presented by them to the world; although the artist himself took one for the refectory of the monks of ss. nazario and celso, along with the same supper, now in the fine doria collection at genoa; and which, however inferior in size to the rest, is considered equal to any of the preceding, and has been engraved by the hand of the celebrated volpato. another, likewise of simon, was sent from venice to genoa, which i saw in possession of the durazzo family; with a magdalen that may be esteemed a miracle of art; and i also met with an old copy in the casa paolucci, at pesaro. what novel methods he adopted in all these to decorate the place with architecture, and how well he availed himself of them to add to the spectators at the festival! what passions depicted in each of the principal actors, and how appropriate to the period! what splendour in the preparation, luxury of dishes, and pomp of guests! whoever considers these, will easily excuse such an artist for some occasional imperfection of design, and for inattention to ancient costume, in which he is always faulty.[ ] even guido, an artist so highly celebrated, so far excused them, that he was accustomed to say, "were it given me to choose what painter i would be, i should prefer being paul veronese; for in others every thing appears the effect of art, but he alone seems all nature." he continued to produce specimens until he was sixty years of age, though he cannot, like many others, be accused of having painted too much; each piece is worthy of paul veronese, and each has been multiplied by some copyist; an honour that artists have not bestowed upon the works of tintoretto, or those of many others. his method of making use of clear grounds, and as much as possible of virgin colours, has greatly contributed to the preservation and freshness of his colouring. in venice we meet with several of his pictures yet glowing with the peculiar grace he shed over them. a remarkable specimen is seen in that belonging to the noble house of pisani, exhibiting the family of darius presented to alexander, which surprises as much by its splendour as it affects us by its expression. equal admiration was at one time evinced for his rape of europa, which he drew upon a large scale, in various groups, much in the same manner as coreggio, in his leda. in the first she appears among her virgins in the act of caressing the animal, and desirous of being borne upon him: in the second, she is seen carried along, applauded by her companions, as she enjoys the scene riding along the shore. in the third, (the only one in grand dimensions) she cleaves the sea in terror, in vain desired and lamented by her virgin train. this work, ornamenting the ducal palace, suffered much from the effects of time, and has subsequently been restored. in verona, boasting a clime more favourable to paintings, we more frequently meet with his pictures in complete preservation. many noble houses, in particular that of bevilacqua, at one period his patrons, are in possession of several. as an expression of his gratitude, he represented in a portrait of one of the bevilacqua family, his own figure standing upright, with the air of his attendant. but his san giorgio, surrounded by the two grand histories of farinato and of brusasorci already described, by some esteemed to be the best painting in verona, is, perhaps, in the most perfect state of any that remain. the san giuliano of rimini is likewise a valuable piece, which may, perhaps, compete with the san giorgio. the san afra, at brescia, and the s. giustina, at padua, placed in their respective churches, have also suffered little; but the last, indeed, is in too lofty a situation. his labours for different collections were very great, consisting of portraits, venus, adonis, cupids, nymphs, and similar figures, in which he displayed the most rich and varied beauty of forms, fancy in their embellishment, and novelty in his inventions; all subjects indeed familiar to his pencil, and which are to be seen in different galleries, not omitting even the imperial one. among his sacred subjects he was more particularly attached to the marriage of st. catherine, one of the most laboured of which fell to the share of the royal collection of pitti. he produced, also, several holy families, in which the better to depart from the common practice, he gave birth to new inventions. they are to be met with in ridolfi (p. ), copied from one of his own mss. but his devotional pieces were also, for the most part, copious histories; such as the slaughter of the innocents, laboured in the miniature style, at the palazzo borghese; the esther, at turin, in possession of the king of sardinia. the queen of sheba, among a troop of handmaids at the throne of solomon, a picture lately acquired by the reigning sovereign at florence. halls, chambers, and façades likewise, decorated by him in fresco with allegorical poems and representations of histories, are frequently met with in venice, and in the palaces and seats belonging to the state. highly meriting notice is the palace of his serene highness manin, doge of venice, to be seen in the territory of asolo; the architecture is that of palladio; the stuccoes, of vittoria; while the pictures of the muses, and of many other pagan deities, are from the hand of paul; forming an union of artists sufficient to render the place as celebrated among modern villas, as was that of lucullus among the ancients. the school of paul veronese commences like those already described, with his own family; in the first place, with benedetto, his younger brother, and with his two sons, carlo and gabriele. benedetto was remarkable for the fraternal affection he displayed towards paul, assisting him in the ornamental part of his labours, particularly in his perspectives, in which he possessed considerable skill. and, after his death, he shewed the same affection to the two sons, directing them by his advice, supporting them in their undertakings, and leaving his inheritance to their family. his genius for the art was not very great, and in the pieces conducted by his own hand, he appears only as an imitator of paul, occasionally happy however in a few heads, or in his drapery, but by no means equal with himself. there is hardly a work in which the connoisseur may not easily detect something weak or faulty, as in the last supper, in the flagellation, in the appearance of the saviour before the tribunal of pilate, which he painted for the church of san niccolo, and which are some of his best productions. if he ever appears to have surpassed himself, as in the instance of his picture of st. agatha, placed at the angeli, in murano, the work has been ascribed to paul, and has even been engraved under his name. according to ridolfi he succeeded better in fresco than in oils; and both he and boschini, who examined his roman histories, and his mythological fables, painted in stone colour, in the cortile of the mocenighi, give us a very favourable idea of them; and the same where they speak of his ornamental work, in halls and other places, which admitted of his introducing a display of architecture and embellishments, rather than of figures. carlo caliari, generally entitled carletto, the diminutive of his name, from the circumstance of his dying at the early age of twenty-four,[ ] as we find in the register of his parish, owing to his excessive application to study, was gifted with a genius like that of his father. his disposition was particularly docile and attentive, and he was the boast of his parent, whose style he emulated better than any other artist. but paul, ambitious that he should even excel him, was unwilling, that by forming himself upon a single model, he should succeed only in becoming a feeble sectarist. he sent him, therefore, to study the school of bassano, the robustness of which blended with his own elegance, would, he expected, produce an original manner superior to either of the other two. at the period when carletto closed the eyes of his beloved father, he was only in his sixteenth, or at farthest his eighteenth year, though he had attained such progress and reputation in the art as to be enabled to complete several pictures left unfinished by his parent, nor was he ever in want of commissions. his productions often appear by the hand of paul; whether at that time he did not wholly depend upon his own resources, or that his father, at least, might have retouched his pieces, is not certain. skilful judges, indeed, have pretended to discern, or rather to count the number, of the strokes traced by the paternal pencil, from their inimitable ease, lightness, and rapidity. thus it has occurred in an altarpiece of san frediano vescovo, to which is added st. catherine, and some other saint, placed in the medicean museum, and bearing the son's name, though boasting at the same time all the grace of his father. but, wherever carlo executed his pieces alone, he is easily distinguishable; his pencil is somewhat more full and heavy, while his tints are stronger and deeper than those of his father. we have an instance in his san agostino, at the church of la carità, whose colouring betrays that union of the two schools so much desired by paul. gabriele executed little in which he was not assisted by his brother. in several altarpieces we read as follows: "_heredes pauli caliari veronensis fecerunt_;" which alludes to such pieces as paul himself left imperfect, the completion of which became a joint labour; a system they continued, likewise, in others, which they produced for churches, and for the public palace. ridolfi awards the chief merit to carlo, placing gabriele second, and adding, that benedetto had, likewise, his share, more especially in the architectural parts. probably too some other pupil of paul assisted them. for, in these, we find represented the maxims of the master, even his studies, and the same figures as his. still there is occasionally some diversity of hand perceptible, as in the martyrdom of an apostle at s. giustina of padua, where one of the figures appears so much loaded with shade, as not merely to betray a difference of hand, but of schools. gabriele survived the other artists of his family; residing subsequently in venice, more in the character of a merchant than a painter. still he continued occasionally to produce a few portraits in crayons, extremely rare, or some picture of a cavalcade; nor did he desist from visiting the studio of the artists, where he assisted them, when agreeable, with his advice. arriving at the period of , memorable for the great pestilence in italy, and impelled by those noble precepts of humanity inculcated in the gospel, he generously exposed his life in the service of his afflicted fellow citizens, and fell a sacrifice to the task. proceeding to the other disciples of paul, and to his imitators, it will not be found easy to enumerate them. for having been interested beyond any other painter in the cultivation of an art, whose object is to give pleasure, so he excelled all others in the number of his followers. we are told by zanetti, that many of them were also very successful, owing to which, less accurate judges are apt to confound the master with those of his school, if they do not cautiously attend to the two following points, in which none will be found to equal him. these are, st, the fineness and peculiar lightness of his pencil combined with sound judgment; d, a very ready and spirited expression of grace, and a dignity in his forms, particularly in the air of his heads. it must, however, be observed, that his scholars, in the progress of time, for the most part varied the grounds and the colouring, as they approached the style of the succeeding epoch. among the venetians, there is only enumerated by zanetti the name of parrasio michele,[ ] an artist who enriched with the designs of paul, and experienced in the art of colouring them, produced several works worthy of him, more especially that of a pietà, adorning a chapel within the church of san giuseppe, a piece in which he added a portrait of himself. the people of coneglia have preserved the recollection of one of their citizens named ciro, to whom they attribute an altarpiece of the nativity of christ, as nearly resembling the style of paul as possible, for which reason it was transferred from the church of the riformati in that city to rome; and they add, that its author was a youth, who never attained to mature age. castelfranco boasts one cesare castagnoli as a pupil of paul; though in his numerous paintings in fresco he cannot be said to display much power, at least beyond a certain degree of spirit, promptness, and copiousness of ideas. a few less shewy and fanciful productions from the hand of bartolo, his brother, executed in oil, acquired for him higher reputation than that of cesare. angelo naudi, an italian, is much commended by palamino for his labours in the royal palaces, and in various churches in spain, when painter to the court of king philip. there is reason to doubt whether he really received the instructions of paul, instead of imbibing his manner by dint of study and copying, like bombelli and many others; it being recorded of this writer, otherwise very estimable, that in regard to masters he was apt to embrace opinions by no means always true. omitting the names of a great number of foreigners, we make mention here only of the veronese, in order that their master should not appear unaccompanied by the noble train of disciples bestowed by him upon his country. luigi benfatto, known by the name of dal friso, a sister's son, and for many years the guest of paul, copied him in the outset even to servility; though he afterwards gave himself up to an easy and rapid style of composition, little short of the licence of the mannerists. it has been supposed that he only availed himself of this facility in such commissions as were of small value. he approaches nearest to paul in the church of san raffaello; in other places he resembles palma. a more free and spirited imitator of paul was found in maffeo verona, a pupil and son-in-law to luigi; but the quantity of vermilion with which he heightened the colour of his fleshes, detracts from his worth. francesco montemezzano, a veronese, approached still more frequently than either of the preceding to the character of the head of his school. he acquired great reputation by a picture of the annunciation, painted for the church of the osservanti alla vigna; and he was employed, also, in the ducal palace. he partakes of caliari in his countenances, in his costume, and in the beauty of his figures: as to the rest, he was slow of hand, and feeble in his colouring. his picture at san giorgio, in verona, consisting of the apparition of christ to the magdalen, appears extremely languid in competition with that of paul, which is one of the most brilliant productions remaining of that period. to these we might add the names of other veronese, as aliprando, and anselmo canneri, characterised by vasari as an able assistant to paul his master. among all the veronese artists most resembling paul, when ambitious of doing so, was his friend and companion, though his rival, batista zelotti. instructed in the same academy, he was occasionally the companion of his labours, and occasionally taught and executed works himself--always however observing the same rules. vasari mentions him with commendation in his life of san micheli, where he entitles him batista da verona, and includes him among the disciples of titian. i have seen a holy family by this artist in titian's style in the carrara collection, frequently extolled by us before; and from such a studio it would appear we are to look for that warmth of tints, in which, for the most part, he excels caliari; as well as that power of design in which zanetti is of opinion that he also surpassed him, although others think very differently. he often surpasses him, likewise, in grandeur, and in what appertains to painting in fresco; a circumstance paul was aware of, and for that reason sought to obtain his assistance in works of that kind. he possessed great fertility of ideas, and a rapid hand, while he was profound and judicious in his compositions. indeed, he might have been esteemed another paul, had he been able to compete with him in the beauty of his heads, in variety, and in grace. in truth, his productions were frequently given to paul, even those he painted for the council of ten having been engraved under the latter name by valentino le febre. he was doubtless one of the first artists of his time, though not estimated according to his deserts, from having worked chiefly in fresco, and at a distance from capital cities; in villages, in country seats, and palaces. one of his grandest works is seen at cataio, a villa belonging to the marchese tommaso obizzi, where, about , he represented in different rooms, the history of that very ancient family, distinguished no less in council than in arms. the place is continually sought by foreigners, attracted thither by its splendour, by the fame of these pictures, and by the valuable museum of antiquities, collected by the hand of the marchese; a task of few years, but in point of taste, abundance, and rarity of specimens, calculated to confer honour upon the state. in his oil paintings zelotti could not compete with caliari, though he approached him near enough, in his fall of st. paul, and his fishing of the apostles, which he executed for the dome of vicenza, to merit the honour of having them attributed to the pencil of caliari. this city was his chief theatre of action; he remained there during some time, and initiated one antonio, a youth called tognone, in the art, from whose hand a few works in fresco are pointed out in the city, while he is honoured by ridolfi both with a life and eulogy. zelotti was in vicenza, both alone and together with paul; where with the help of one of his best pupils he established a school, which partook of the taste of both these masters. i reserve a list of his followers for the succeeding epoch. it is here the place to inform our readers, that the various styles, hitherto described as attaching to the venetian school, do not comprehend all that flourished in the state. ridolfi remarks this in his preface, and laments, that owing to the conflagrations occurring in the city, or by the neglect of writers, not a few materials had perished, that might have added interest to his history. in truth, he was not merely ignorant of several of the more ancient artists, but in the period we are describing omitted the names of jacopo fallaro and jacopo pisbolica, whom vasari, in his life of sansovino, records with praise, citing from the hand of the former a picture of san gio. colombino, at the domenicani delle zattere; and of the latter, his ascension of christ at santa maria maggiore. he likewise passed over vitrulio, several of whose productions are the ornament of monte novissimo, bearing his name. these artists, judging from their manner and other points, are to be referred to the age of titian. ridolfi made mention, and more at length, of another, who, exactly contemporary with paul, continued to flourish many years after him, but always assailed by fortune; and though a good colourist, being greatly deficient in point of invention and design. his name was antonio foler; and, as a convincing proof of his mediocrity, it will be sufficient to allude to his martyrdom of st. stephen, at the church of that name; it is nevertheless, one of his best altarpieces. in small figures, however, he appears to have had merit. before concluding the present epoch, it will be proper to mention two painters; one a foreigner, the other a venetian, both of whom followed a style altogether different from such as we have already described. the artist of venice is batista franco, called semolei. he has been treated of in the first volume in several parts, and especially in what relates to baroccio, to whom he was master. he pursued his studies in rome, and so great was his progress in the art of design, that he was accounted one of the best imitators of michel angiolo. in ornamenting san gio. decollato, a church belonging to the florentines in rome, he appears to have been ambitious of making a parade of his powers, and his style became somewhat loaded in the attempt. in his other pictures which i have seen in the dome at urbino, and in that of osimo, where he painted in , in bologna, and in venice, i have not met with any thing similar. he invariably appears to have been an able follower of michel angiolo, and a more powerful colourist than the chief part of the florentine artists. it is easier to become acquainted with him in the states of the church than in his native city of venice, whither he seems to have retired towards the close of his days, since, in , he was among the artists selected to adorn the library of st. mark. there he represented his fable of actæon, along with several symbolical inventions; and a few other of his pictures are exhibited there in public. he died not long subsequently in the year . the foreign artist is giuseppe porta della garfagnana, already mentioned, likewise, under the roman school, in which he was instructed by francesco salviati, whose surname he assumed. for this reason he is sometimes entitled in history salviati the younger. he accompanied his master to venice, on the latter being invited by the patriarch grimani to embellish his palace, where he produced his celebrated psyche, still to be seen there, near two pictures by the hand of porta. francesco, however, soon left venice; vasari adducing as a very sufficient reason, that it was no place for the residence of artists distinguished for excellence in design. but the success of porta, who became established and died at venice, clearly proves the contrary. initiated in a knowledge of design by francesco, he wholly retained the character of the florentine school, only enlivening it with tints in the venetian taste. nevertheless, he was approved by titian, and selected along with paul and other leading names to paint in the library of st. mark; he was continually engaged to work in fresco and in oil, both in public and in private; and was always distinguished there as one of the most able masters of his age.[ ] several of his altarpieces remain, and among others one of the assumption; a beautiful piece, at the servi, in venice, besides a christ taken from the cross, at murano, displaying powers of invention wholly original, full of expression, and an air of majesty not very usual in this school. he repeated the same subject frequently; and there was a duplicate in the ducal collection at modena, subsequently transferred to dresden. following these artists, the reader must not be surprised to meet with the name of jacopo sansovino, who, as will appear from the index, derived his surname also from his master. he was much courted in venice, owing to his excellence in the art of statuary, as well as in that of an architect, with which he ornamented public places. still he failed not to exercise some influence over that of painting, at least of design; in which he had been well instructed by andrea del sarto, in florence. indeed, as the director of the edifice of st. mark, numerous artists were dependent upon him; and it is known, that he received some commissions for designs in mosaic work, which i do not, however, find particularized; as well as others, most probably, in tapestry, for the altar of the sacrament, as it has been conjectured from their style, by signor zanetti. in regard to foreign styles, we must proceed, without dwelling upon the cavalier zuccaro, passignano, and others already treated in their respective schools, to make brief mention of giuseppe calimberg, or calimperg, by birth a german, who flourished a considerable time at venice, where he died about . there is the battle of constantine, by his hand, still preserved at the servi; and had he always displayed the same taste, i should not scruple to pronounce him excellent, though somewhat heavy, in the practice of his art. subsequent to him appears to have flourished gio. de chere loranese, who ought to be mentioned, before we proceed to treat of the sect of mannerists, and of the _tenebrosi_.[ ] ranking among the scholars of the best venetian masters, he produced a history piece for the grand council hall. other names of foreign artists are to be looked for in the guida: it is my object in this school, as in the rest, to record only such as are most deserving of commemoration. in the progress of the present history, the reader may probably have observed, that no distinction had yet been made between certain species of painting, previous to the sixteenth century. the figurist copied every thing, and availed himself of every thing to adorn his compositions; landscapes, animals, fruits, flowers, and perspective, were all employed as accessaries in favour of the leading art; the execution of which was about as difficult to the great masters as the throne of jupiter to phidias, after having completed the figure of the god. by degrees, however, they began to separate, and to treat these parts of painting severally. the flemish were among the first, who, pursuing the bent of their genius, selected the respective branches, and composed pictures, in which, landscape for example, became the principal object, while the figure in its turn became an accessary. and we may here remark, with bellori, that "the best of these artists dipped their pencil in those fine venetian colours;" by no means one of the least boasts of the venetian school. the italians, likewise, attended severally to these branches of the art, and in particular to landscapes. it was titian who opened the true path to our landscape painters; although nearly the whole of his champaign scenery was introduced in aid of his figures; never the contrary. one of these, consisting of a holy family, was in possession of the duchess of massa and carrara, lately deceased, who left it as a legacy to the prince carlo albani, of milan. it is one of the most beautiful of the kind i ever saw. titian was imitated by many flemish artists; and among the venetians by gio. maria verdizzotti, one of his literary friends, who painted under his direction several landscapes, much esteemed in different collections, where they are rarely to be seen. the bassani produced examples of small pictures of quadrupeds and birds, which consisting of copies taken from those seen in their histories, are easily recognized. they are not so numerous, however, as their history pieces; nor do i recollect having seen specimens of them except in the venetian state. in drawing fish, an artist of the name of genzio or gennesio liberale, a native of friuli, has been mentioned with praise by vasari, and afterwards by ridolfi. a taste for grotesque, was introduced into venice from rome, by a citizen of the republic, recorded by me elsewhere as the master of this kind of art. his name was morto da feltro, who, in the company of giorgione, employed himself in venice, though without leaving any traces of his hand. there are specimens of grotesque, in the ducal palace, painted by batista franco, who had likewise beheld ancient examples of them at rome. there were others painted for the patriarch of aquileja, his patron, by giovanni di udine, mentioned by vasari under the names of manni and ricamatore; an artist very celebrated in his line, and almost unique in drawing every kind of birds, quadrupeds, fruits, and flowers. i have included him in the school of giorgione; and he is stated more at length in that of raffaello; for he remained but little while with his first master, and in upper italy; but longer in rome, and during some time in florence. his pictures of birds, or fruits, executed in oil, are pointed out in different collections, though, if i mistake not, they are not all genuine. it is not, indeed, that he produced no specimens in oil, although it is extremely difficult to discover any that are certain; nor that he was incapable of drawing larger figures than such as we see in his satyrs, in his boys, and nymphs, with which he diversified the little landscapes and the tracery of his grotesques. vasari mentions some of his standards, one of which, executed in udine, for the fraternity of castello, presents in rather large proportions, a blessed virgin with the divine child, and an angel making her an offering of the same castle. the original, though much defaced, still exists, and there is also a copy in the chapel, executed by pini in . there likewise remains in the archiepiscopal palace, a chamber containing, among some grotesques, two scriptural histories, drawn in half-length figures, not so perfect as the ornamental part, but valuable from their rarity. his other productions, both in udine and the state, have been enumerated in a learned letter written by the ab. boni, upon the standard or gonfalone, just described. if we might hazard a conjecture relative to the school of giovanni and of feltro, we should be inclined to give for a pupil to one of these, giorgio bellunese, an artist, as we are informed by cesarini, "_very excellent in friezes and in minute ornaments_," and moreover an able portrait painter. he flourished at san vito, a place in the friuli, about the middle of the sixteenth century; so that the time, the place, and his employment in ornamental work, seem equally to favour our opinion. the art of architectural design received great assistance in venice during this period, from the works of sansovino, palladio, and other consummate architects, who gave finished examples of magnificent edifices; while daniel barbaro composed very useful treatises upon perspective; and it became an attribute of the art to feign colonnades, galleries, and rich cornices, for those halls in which real architecture would not admit of them. in this, cristoforo and stefano rosa more particularly distinguished themselves. they were from brescia, very intimate with titian, and merited the honour of being employed by him, in his architectural ornaments for several of his pieces. in brescia, in venice, and particularly in the anti-chamber to the library of s. mark, we may meet with some of their perspectives, so admirably executed as to surprise us by their air of majesty, cheating the eye by their relief; and when beheld in different points of view, always producing a good effect. their school continued to flourish during many years, in their native state; and was subsequently supported by bona, excellent also in figures, as well as by other artists. boschini bestows many commendations upon it in different parts of his work in verse; and in particular at p. , where he declares, that brescia was the source of this art; which applies of course to the venetian state. finally, the art of mosaic work, in stone and coloured glass, at that time, attained such a degree of perfection in venice, that vasari observed with surprise, "that it would not be possible to effect more with colours."[ ] the church and portico of s. mark remains an invaluable museum of the kind; where, commencing with the eleventh century, we may trace the gradual progress of design belonging to each age up to the present, as exhibited in many works in mosaic, beginning from the greeks, and continued by the italians. they chiefly consist of histories from the old and new testament, and at the same time furnish very interesting notices relating to civic and ecclesiastical antiquity. a portion of the most ancient specimens had long either perished, or fallen into decay, and it had been resolved to substitute fresh ones in their place. it is not improbable, that after the year , upon the revival of painting, a desire prevailed to banish the taste of the greeks; and certain it is, that in the mosaics of that age we meet with the modern antique style, the same as in regard to pictures. it will be enough to cite the chapel of the _mascoli_, decorated by michele zambono with histories of the life of the virgin, executed with extraordinary care, and designed in the best taste of the vivarini. the same taste prevailed in the time of titian; and to this he gave a renewed spirit, and even furnished several of these artists with designs. marco luciano rizzo and vincenzo bianchini are the first, who, about , succeeded in a complete reform of the art. to the last is referred that celebrated judgment of solomon, which adorns the portico, or vestibule. both these, however, were surpassed by francesco and valerio zuccati of treviso, or rather of the valtelline, sons of the same sebastian who initiated titian in the first rudiments of the art. of these, likewise, there appears in the portico a san marco, among various prophets and doctors, and with two histories that may be pronounced the best mosaic works, produced during the age of painting. i have seen altarpieces for churches, and pictures for private ornament, in the same taste. the royal gallery at florence possesses a portrait from life of cardinal bembo, worked by valerio; and a san girolamo, by francesco, is known to have been presented by the republic to the court of savoy. subsequent to these, whom vasari erroneously calls sometimes zuccheri, sometimes zuccherini, arminio, a son of valerio, was in much repute. nor did this family only possess the art of colouring stone and glass with admirable skill; but they understood the principles of design, more particularly francesco, who had been a painter before entering upon mosaic works. the family of bianchini, and the other artists then employed at s. mark, were not equally well instructed; and, stimulated by feelings of envy, they declared open enmity against the zuccati, for having assisted with the brush to supply some parts of the design to be executed in mosaic; nor did they fail to cry down the ability of valerio, to whom it would appear that titian and his son afforded succour. it would be tedious here to relate the various persecutions, litigations, and losses, owing to this quarrel; the particulars of which were extracted by zanetti from authentic documents, and minutely described. enough, that he concludes with extolling the zuccati, together with vincenzio bianchini; to whom, as being acquainted with design, it was sufficient to furnish a rough draught for the intended work. others were, for the most part, in want of cartoons, and complete paintings, in order to model their mosaic works, and even then they conducted them with skill much inferior to their predecessors. in this list he computes domenico, the brother, and gio. antonio, the son of vincenzio bianchini, as well as bartolommeo bozza, at one time a pupil, and then an accuser along with the rest, of the zuccati. in the time of these were first adopted, and practically applied, the works and designs of salviati and of tintoretto. the names succeeding these, were gio. antonio marini, a pupil of bozza, and lorenzo ceccato, both admirable artificers; luigi gaetano and jacopo pasterini, with francesco turestio, notices of whom are brought up to the year . they worked after the cartoons of the two tintoretti, of palma the younger, of maffeo verona, of leandro bassano, of aliense, of padovanino, of tizianello, besides several others. about the year commenced a series of artists less generally known; a list of whose works may be consulted at the close of that very valuable publication, "_della pittura veneziana_." these last, however, have confined their labours to the decoration of new walls, from modern designs; as since , a decree has been in force against the destruction of ancient mosaic works, in however rude or greekish a taste; but in case of impending destruction, they were to be removed and restored with care, and afterwards refixed in the same place. by this measure a series of monuments is preserved to posterity, which, in its kind, is quite unique in italy, and the world. [footnote : it is related by vasari, that titian was in the habit of painting natural objects from the life, without making any previous design, "a practice adopted for many years by the venetian painters, by giorgione, by palma, by pordenone, and others who never visited rome, nor studied other specimens of greater perfection than their own." i know not how far the above writer was acquainted with their method. but their designs are still extant in various collections; and the cartoon of the celebrated s. agostino, painted by pordenone in that city, is now in possession of the count chiappini in piacenza, in good condition.] [footnote : i made mention elsewhere of p. federici's supposition, as being at least probable, that f. sebastiano was the same person as f. marco pensaben, a dominican. the year of their birth is certainly the same. but other dates are too discordant; if, indeed, we are not to suppose that the whole of what vasari has written of sebastiano, in his life of him, as well as in those of sanzio and peruzzi, is merely fanciful. it is by no means worth our while to draw minute comparisons between the epochs of these two painters. in , we found pensaben in venice; next at trevigi, where he remained till july, . now sebastiano, the venetian, was, at this very period, at rome. the car. giulio de'medici had committed to raffaello the picture of the _transfiguration_, which having hardly completed, that artist died on good friday, ; and during the same time, as if in competition with raffaello, sebastiano was employed in painting the resurrection of lazarus, for the same cardinal, which, soon after, was exhibited along with the transfiguration, and then sent into france. more still--he likewise drew the martyrdom of santa agata, for the cardinal of aragona; a piece which, in the time of vasari, was in possession of the duke of urbino; then in the palazzo pitti at florence, whence it passed into france. there is the name of _sebastianus venetus_, and the year affixed to it. this artist therefore can, by no means, be confounded with f. marco, nor the painting of this last at trevigi be ascribed to the former. such a mistaken opinion has been attributed to me by the learned p. federici; (vol. i. p. ) but on what ground i know not.] [footnote : we confess our obligations to sig. giuseppe beltramelli, who informs us, in a work published in , that this painter, generally supposed from bergamo, was really a venetian, being thus mentioned in a public contract: _m. laurentius lottus de venetiis nunc habitator bergomi_. father federici, who, on the strength of some historian, pronounces him of trevigi, brings forward another document in which lotto is called: _d. laurentii lotti pictoris, et de presenti tarvisii commorantis_. if, therefore, _habitator bergomi_ does not prove him a native of bergamo, will the words _tarvisii commorantis_ make him a native of trevigi? but father affò, in one of his earliest pictures, found him entitled _tarvisinus_. who, however, can assure us that it is in fact the handwriting of lotto, which he there found written?] [footnote : thus called by the oldest writers, though, from his father's testament, recently brought to light, it appears to be erroneous. here his father is entitled, _angelus de lodesanis de corticellis_, (or in a ms. of the signori mottensi of pordenone _de corticelsis brixiensis_).] [footnote : it is inserted in a _transunto_ of mss. belonging to the noble ernesto mottensi of pordenone, communicated to me by the p. d. michele turriani barnabita, extremely skilled in the parchments and ancient memorials of friuli.] [footnote : see his work on venetian painting, p. .] [footnote : by means of sig. ab. gei, of cadore, a young man of the most promising abilities, i have obtained notice of an artist belonging to that place, who, from various authorities, is supposed to have been the instructor of the great titian. it is certain he flourished towards the close of the fifteenth century; nor does there exist accounts of any other artist of cadore, capable of initiating his countrymen in a knowledge of the art. three of his pictures in water colours, in the usual style of composition at that time, so frequently described, are yet extant; the first, a fine altarpiece, adorning the parish church at selva, in which the titular s. lorenzo, with others, in an upright posture, are seen surrounding the throne of the virgin; a second, of smaller size, is in the oratory of sig. antonio zamberlani, in the parish church of cadore, where the throne appears encompassed with cherubs playing upon instruments; the third, placed at san bartolommeo of nabiù, is divided into six compartments; the best, or at least the most free from harshness of manner of the whole. it is inferior, however, in design to jacopo bellini, though equal, perhaps, in point of diligence and colouring, and similar in its style. upon the first he has inscribed, _antonius rubeus de cadubrio pinxit_; upon the second, _opus antonii_ rubei: but the letter e being defaced, the word looks like rubli; upon the third is found _antonius zaudanus_ (da zoldo) _pinxit_. thus if we combine these inscriptions it will appear that this ancient painter, whom we now place at the head of the artists belonging to that prolific clime, was antonio rossi cadorino.] [footnote : see ridolfi. this picture is now in dresden, and italy abounds with copies. one of these i saw at s. saverio di rimini, inscribed with the name of titian on the band of the pharisee, a very beautiful production, and believed by many to be a duplicate rather than a copy. albert was in italy in and in . in venice, one of his pictures, in the council of the ten, is cited by zanetti; it is jesus christ shewn to the people; and an altarpiece is also mentioned by sansovino, placed at s. bartolommeo, commended both by him and by other writers. (see the sig. morelli's annotations on the _notizia_, p. .)] [footnote : opere, tome i. p. .] [footnote : see his life of titian.] [footnote : see bottari, notes to vasari, in the life of titian.] [footnote : see _idea della pittura, edizione rom._ p. .] [footnote : see passeri.] [footnote : on the arts of design, discourse, &c.] [footnote : he drew his head of san niccolo a' frari from a cast of the laocoon; and from other models of the antique, that of s. john the baptist, and of the magdalen of spain. from a greek basso relievo he likewise copied the angels of his s. peter martyr. the same artist drew the cesars, at mantua, a work very highly commended, and impossible to have been so well executed without a knowledge of ancient sculpture, of which there yet exists a fine collection at mantua. but what he drew from the antique, he also inspired with nature, the sole method of profiting by it, when a painter aspires to a higher character than that of a mere statuary. see ridolfi, p. .] [footnote : lamberto lombardo, of liege, is the artist whose life was written in latin, by his disciple golzio, a work edited in bruges in . in his youth he adopted the surname of suterman, or susterman, in the latin tongue _suavis_, and having likewise been an excellent engraver, his signature was sometimes l. l., at others, l. s. the whole of this account is to be met with in orlandi, and other books. yet orlandi and the new guide of padua, acknowledge another lamberti, also surnamed suster, upon the authority of sandrart, who mentions him, p. . according to orlandi, this artist was the assistant to titian and tintoret, by whom he is first recorded as lamberto suster, and again as lamberto tedesco. the same author mentions a federigo di lamberto, whose name occurs in our first volume, (p. ), likewise called del padovano and _sustris_, certainly from _suster_, for which see vasari and his annotators. these lamberti, founded upon the diversity between the liege and german names of susterman and suster, received upon the authority of sandrart, not always very critical, are, i have reason to think, one and the same artist. for in venice one lamberto only is alluded to by ridolfi, boschini, and zanetti, without a surname, but by the last held to be the same as lombardo; and what signifies it, whether he was called suster or susterman, of germany, or of liege, in italy.] [footnote : he is called by vasari, zanetti, and guarienti, bazzacco and brazzacco da castelfranco, and guarienti makes him a scholar of badile.] [footnote : they consist only of a few pages relating to the painters of castelfranco. i cannot explain why padre federici (pref. p. ) supposes that i should have announced this as the ms. melchiori, although sig. trevisani may have drawn various notices from that quarter.] [footnote : padre coronelli, in his travels in england, (part i. p. ), ascribes this picture to paul veronese, a mistake that is cleared up by the tenor of the contract, preserved in the archives of san liberale. he adds that the picture contained a number of naked figures, to which draperies were afterwards adapted by another hand--an assertion wholly groundless.] [footnote : in a ms. by a contemporary author cited in the new guide of padua, he is called domenico veneziano, educated by julio campagnola.] [footnote : thus stated in the _lettere pittoriche_, vol. i. p. . recent writers of friuli make him a native of udine, a modern supposition, inasmuch as grassi, a very diligent correspondent of vasari, would hardly have been silent upon such a name. it took its rise, most likely, from the existence of a noble family of the same surname, in udine, and from three of the artist's pictures having been discovered in the same place, one with the date . yet none are to be seen at casa frangipane, a circumstance very unusual in regard to excellent artists. we must look, therefore, for other proofs before we can pronounce him a native of udine, and before we can assent to the conjecture of rinaldis, who would admit two artists of the name of niccolo frangipane, the one a painter by profession, and the other a dilettante; and yet contemporaries, as appears from the authority of the dates of the pictures, already referred to.] [footnote : this fact cannot easily be refuted, in the manner attempted by zaist, in his "historical notices of the cremonese painters," with true party zeal, p. . (see the new guide of milan, p. .)] [footnote : to these the name of _francesco da milano_ has recently been added, on the strength of an altarpiece, quite _titianesque_, exhibited with his name in the parish church of soligo, to which is added the date of :--time may probably clear up the mystery of this.] [footnote : he flourished several years subsequent, as appears from the _new milan guide_, with ms. corrections, by signor bianconi, of which the cavalier lazara has a copy. he there remarks that he had seen in the greater monastery, now suppressed, belonging to the nuns of san maurizio, other paintings by piazza; as washing the disciples' feet, in the refectory, and the multiplication of loaves, upon canvass. also within the interior church, among other scriptural stories in fresco, is found, the adoration of the magi, the marriage of cana, and the baptism of christ, bearing the date of .] [footnote : zanetti, p. . see also ridolfi, parte ii. p. , where he informs us that tintoret, in the maturity of his powers, being employed in painting for the church of la trinità, adam and eve seduced by the serpent, and the death of abel, "designed the figures from nature, placing over them a thin veil. to which figures he added a peculiar grace of contours, which he acquired from studying relievi."] [footnote : this date is pointed out by boschini, and corresponds with the fortieth year of the artist, who, on the authority of melchiori, made a noble copy of giorgione's san liberale, at castelfranco, besides producing several original works in his native place and the vicinity. specimens of his labours exist in water colours, taken from pictures in fresco executed by paolo and by zelotti, in different palaces belonging to venetian noblemen. the cavalier liberi, his venetian master, aware of his singular talent for such species of painting, often employed him, to the no small advantage both of his art and his fortune.] [footnote : it would be too difficult to attempt to enumerate the names of his foreign imitators, particularly the flemish, who were much devoted to his style, some of whose copies i have seen in collections believed to be originals. but the handle of their pencil, the clearness of colouring, and sometimes, the diminution of the figures, not common to the bassani, afford means to distinguish them; not however with such a degree of certainty, but that connoisseurs themselves are of different opinions. this occurred in my own time at rome, respecting a fine picture of the nativity of jesus christ, in the rezzonico collection. one of the best imitators of that style was david teniers, who, by his exquisite skill acquired the surname of bassano. to him i am happy to add another foreigner, pietro orrente di murcia, whom spanish writers give as a pupil to jacopo; and were there no other authority, we might upon that of sig. conca, receive him as his very exact imitator. in his two pictures referred to (vol. i. p. ) he is pronounced superior to the bassani, meaning, perhaps, superior to the sons of jacopo; it would be too absurd a proposition to prefer him to the head of the school.] [footnote : it is, as i am informed by signor dalla rosa, a picture of the pentacost.] [footnote : he attained this effect by drawing these figures with rather bold contours, and the other parts after his works were completed. owing to his knowledge, as well as his felicity and grace of hand, they are not in the least disagreeable to those who observe them near. (_zanetti_, p. .)] [footnote : this was easily produced by his rapidity of execution, by which his tints always remained clear and simple. the artist who repeats his touches frequently, and uses much research, can with difficulty preserve freshness, to obtain which another method must undoubtedly be pursued. (_zanetti_, p. .)] [footnote : it has been stated in his defence, that had he clothed the whole of his figures with those tunics and ancient mantles, he would have become monotonous, and consequently uninteresting in his great history pieces. but i am of opinion, that whoever is familiar with ancient statues and bassi relievi, will find means of varying his compositions. the cavalier canova has recently produced two bassi relievi, on the condemnation of socrates. the greek vests are two, the tunic and pallium; yet these are finely varied, though there are a number of spectators.] [footnote : according to ridolfi, however, he is said to have attained his twenty-sixth year; but certainly not more.] [footnote : father federici has, in the course of this year, , brought to light another scholar of paul, and afterwards of carletto, born, like parrasio, in venice. he calls him giacomo lauro, and giacomo da trevigi, because, having established himself in that city, with his family, while still a youth, no one could distinguish him by any other patronymic than that of trevigiano. thus speak several anonymous contemporaries, from whose mss. the reverend father has extracted no slight information relative to the pictures executed by lauro in his new country. there he enjoyed the friendship of the fathers of san domenico, for whose church he painted his celebrated picture of st. rocco, in which he exhibited, with great tragic power, the terrific scourge of the plague. it is honourable to this artist, who died young, that this altarpiece, as well as his other pictures, both in oil and in fresco, have, until lately, been attributed either to paul or to carlo, or to some less celebrated hands, but always to good and experienced artists.] [footnote : see boschini, carta, p. . zanetti, p. .] [footnote : a class of artists so called, from their excessive use of deep shades and dark colours. _tr._] [footnote : there was an attempt to revive it, made in florence. roscoe, in his "life of lorenzo de' medici," (vol. ii. p. , th ed.) relates, that, with gherardo, lorenzo associated domenico ghirlandajo to work in mosaic at the chapel of san zenobio: but that this undertaking, so admirably begun, was interrupted by lorenzo's death; insomuch that "his attempts," observes the historian, "were thus in a great degree frustrated." this honour appeared to be reserved for venice.] venetian school. third epoch. _innovations of the mannerists of the seventeenth century. corruption of venetian painting._ a sort of fatality seems to prevail in all human things, rendering their duration in the same state of short continuance; so that after attaining their highest elevation, we may assuredly at no distant period look for their decline. the glory of precedency, of whatever kind, will not long remain the boast of one place, or in possession of a single nation. it migrates from country to country; and the people that yesterday received laws from another, will tomorrow impose them. those who today are the instructors of a nation, will tomorrow become ambitious of being admitted in the number of its disciples. numerous examples might be adduced in support of this proposition, but it would be quite superfluous. for whoever is even slightly acquainted with civil or literary history, whoever has observed the passing events of the age in which we live, will easily furnish himself with proofs, without the aid of writers to direct him. we have already traced the same revolution of affairs in the art of painting, in the two schools of rome and florence, which, arriving at the zenith of their fame, fell into decay precisely at the period when that of venice began to exalt itself. and we shall now perceive the decline of the latter, during the same age in which the florentine began to revive, in which the school of bologna acquired its highest degree of reputation; and what is still more surprising, seemed to rise by studying the models of the venetian. so indeed it was: the caracci were much devoted to titian, to giorgione, to paul veronese, and tintoretto, and thence formed styles, and produced pupils that conferred honour upon the whole of the seventeenth century. the venetians, too, studied the same examples, and derived from them a certain mannerism reprehensible enough in them, but much more so in their disciples. these, devoting themselves in their first studies to more classical artists, and attaining a certain practice both in design and colouring, next aimed at displaying upon a grand scale, figures, not so much taken from life, as from engravings and pictures, or from their own imaginations; and the more rapidly these were executed, the better did they suppose they had succeeded. i am inclined to believe, that the examples of tintoretto proved, in this respect, more prejudicial than useful. few were ambitious of emulating his profound knowledge, which in some measure serves to veil his defects; but his haste, his carelessness, and his grounds, they more willingly adopted; while his great name was advanced as a shield to cover their own faults. and the earliest of these, not yet unmindful of the maxims of a better age, did not rush blindly into all these errors and excesses; but by their superiority of spirit, and by their tints, maintained their ground better than the mannerists of the roman and florentine styles. but to these succeeded others, whose schools degenerated still more from the ancient rules of art. we advance this without meaning the least imputation upon really good artists, who flourished even during this period; for an age rarely occurs in which good sense becomes altogether extinct. even during the barbarity of the dark ages, we meet with specimens of some marble busts of the cæsars, and some of their medals, which approach a better taste; and thus also in the age we are describing appeared geniuses, who either wholly, or in great measure, kept themselves free from the general infection; "et tenuere animum contra sua sæcula rectum." _propert._ jacopo palma the younger, so called to distinguish him from the other palma, his great uncle, was an artist who might equally be entitled the last of the good age, and the first of the bad. born in , after receiving the instructions of his father antonio, a painter of a confined genius, he exercised himself in copying from titian, and the best of the national artists. at the age of fifteen years he was taken under the patronage of the duke of urbino, and accompanied him to his capital. he afterwards spent eight years in rome, where he laid a good foundation for his profession, by designing from the antique, copying michelangiolo and raffaello; and, in particular, by studying the chiaroscuros of polidoro. this last was his great model, and next to him came tintoretto; he being naturally inclined, like them, to animate his figures with a certain freedom of action, and a spirit peculiarly their own. on his return to venice, he distinguished himself by several works, conducted with singular care and diligence; nor are there wanting professors who have bestowed on him a very high degree of praise, for displaying the excellent maxims of the roman, united to what was best in the venetian school. it is observed by zanetti, that some of his productions were attributed by professors to the hand of giuseppe del salviati, whose merit, in point of design and solidity of style, has been already noticed. the whole of these are executed with peculiar facility, a dangerous gift both in painting and in poetry, which this artist possessed in a remarkable degree. though he made the greatest exertions to bring himself into notice, he was little employed; the post was already occupied by men of consummate ability, by tintoretto and paul veronese; and these monopolized all the most lucrative commissions. palma, however, obtained the rank of third; chiefly by means of vittoria, a distinguished sculptor and architect; whose opinion was adopted in the distribution of the labours even of artists themselves. displeased at the little deference shewn him by robusti and paul, he began to encourage palma, and to assist him also with his advice, so that he shortly acquired a name. we have related a similar instance in regard to bernini, who brought forward cortona against sacchi, at rome, besides several more, productive of the greatest detriment to the art. so true it is that the same passions prevail in every age, every where pursue the same track, and produce the same results. nor was it long before palma, overwhelmed with commissions, remitted much of his former diligence. in progress of time, he became even yet more careless, until upon the death of his eldest rivals, including corona, who in his latest works had begun to surpass him, free from competition he asserted unquestioned sway, and despatched his pieces rapidly. his pictures, indeed, might often be pronounced rough draughts, a title bestowed upon them in ridicule by the cavalier d'arpino. in order to prevail upon him to produce a piece worthy of his name, it became requisite, not only to allow him the full time he pleased, but the full price he chose to ask, without further reference, except to his own discretion, in which truly he did not greatly abound. upon such terms he executed that fine picture of san benedetto, at the church of ss. cosmo and damiano, for the noble family of moro. it resembled many of those he had produced in his best days at venice, and in particular that celebrated naval battle of francesco bembo, placed in the palazzo pubblico. other valuable specimens are found scattered elsewhere, in part mentioned by ridolfi, and in part unknown to him. such are his santa apollonia, at cremona, his san ubaldo and his nunziata, at pesaro, and his invenzione della croce, at urbino, a piece abounding in figures, and full of beauty, variety, and expression. his tints are fresh, sweet, and clear, less splendid than those of paul, but more pleasing than in tintoretto; and though scantily applied, they are more durable than those of certain foreign pictures more heavily laid on. in the animation of his figures he approaches the two preceding artists, particularly in his more studied works, as he has shewn in his chastisement of the serpents, a picture that seems embued with horror. in every other instance he has always sufficient art to please; and it is surprising how a man who led the way to the most corrupt period in venice, as it has been observed of vasari at florence, and of zuccaro at rome, could thus exhibit so many attractions, both of nature and of art, calculated to feast the eye, and to fix the soul of the spectator. both guercino and guido were sensible of the power of his pencil; and when examining one of his altarpieces, at the cappucini, in bologna, "what a pity," they exclaimed, "that the master of such a pencil should be no more." (boschini, p. .) in observance of my plan of accompanying each master with his train of followers, i set out with marco boschini, a venetian, who flourished during this same deterioration of a nobler age. he was a pupil to palma, and has left some memorials of the different professors of the third epoch, not to be met with in any other work. professing the art of engraving, rather than that of painting, he had, nevertheless, so much merit in the latter, as to approach the manner of palma, in his picture of the supper of our lord, in the sacristy of san girolamo; as well as that of tintoretto, as we gather from a few of his altarpieces in the territory of padua, and his pictures for private ornament, remaining at venice, at least as far as i can learn. he was the author of several works recorded in the preface to this work, the most remarkable of which is composed in quartine, with the following title; and, by this production, he is perhaps best known: "the chart of pictorial navigation, a dialogue between a venetian senator (a dilettante) and a professor of painting, under the names of ecelenza and compare, divided into eight _venti_, or winds, with which the venetian vessel is borne into the deep sea of painting, as its absolute mistress, to the confusion of such as do not understand the loadstone and the compass." thus, much in the same manner as we judge from the facade of the style of a whole edifice in the gothic taste, the reader may gather, from this very loaded title, the exact nature of boschini's work. it is, indeed, written in the most verbose style of the seicentisti; a mixture of unsound reasoning, strange allegory, tame allusions, frivolous conceits invented on every name, and phraseology that surpasses even that of ciampoli and melosio; for these at least wrote in the italian dialect, whereas boschini protests that he does not pretend to a _foreign idiom_, but to speak like the venetian people. from this undistinguishing kind of nationality arises his malevolence against vasari, and the methods of the foreign schools, as well as his exaggerated praise of the venetian artists, whom he prefers, as we learn from his title page, to all the painters in the world, not merely as respects their manner of colouring, but in point of invention and design. what is worse, he makes no distinction between the fine old painters and the mannerists of his own times, and speaks as if the masters of the former age were still flourishing, and teaching in their schools, or as if the modern possessed the same powers and the same reputation; a gross equivocation into which the tiresome _compare_, or gossip, is continually falling, and which his credulous excellency as frequently commends. if, however, in treating of vasari, i in some measure excused his partialities, in consideration of the prejudices acquired by his education, which are afterwards with difficulty eradicated; i ought to make use of the same liberality in regard to boschini, more especially as he possessed fewer opportunities of ridding himself of them, never having visited rome or florence, and giving his opinions upon foreign schools, from the hearsay relations of others. it is true that he cites in favour of the venetians the opinion of many distinguished men; as that of velasco, who protested to salvator rosa, that raffaello was no longer a favourite with him after having seen venice; or that of rubens, who, after spending upwards of six years at rome to little purpose, formed his style on the models of titian. albano likewise regretted that he had not commenced his studies in venice, preferably to rome; and pier da cortona having seen the works of the venetian school, cancelled some of his labours, and ornamented afresh two chambers of the palazzo pitti, and one in the casa barberini. but these authorities, which he adduces along with others, taken chiefly from artists who preferred beauty of colouring to accuracy of design, do not prove much, and might be opposed by other authorities, even of great painters, more particularly english and french, who embraced a contrary opinion. besides, the panegyrists thus cited by him, did not commend the modern so much as the ancient venetian painters, so as by no means to possess the weight he would attribute to them. moreover, in the present day, when so much has been written upon italian painting, we shall not, on investigating what is to be admired and imitated, and what to be shunned or approved in the examples of the venetians, appeal to the vain boastings of the sixteenth century, but to the critics of our own times. still we do not mean to deny, but that the work in question, however strangely written, contains many valuable historical notices, and many pictorial precepts, particularly useful to such as cannot aspire to any thing beyond the character of mere naturalists, incapable of drawing a stroke that does not appear in their model, and content with portraying the dimensions of any kind of head or body, provided they be of the human shape, inventing with infinite difficulty, slow in resolving, and quite incapable of forming a grand history, more especially of battles, of flights, in short of any objects they never saw. this sect, which at that period boasted many followers, and which is not even yet extinct, is there ridiculed in a vein it is impossible to surpass, and would that the party proceeding to the opposite extreme of mannerism, at that time triumphant in venice, had not met with equal applause! but how difficult is it to observe the golden mean! though the artists of bologna will point out the way in due time. at present we must return to those of venice. numerous other artists very nearly approached the style of palma. boschini enumerates six, whose manner so extremely resembles him, as to impose upon those who have not tact enough to detect the peculiar characteristics of each; (and in palma there is a mixture of the roman and venetian,) consisting of the names of corona, vicentino, peranda, aliense, malombra, and pilotto. the same author extols them as illustrious painters; and truly, besides the splendour of their colouring, they composed upon a magnificent scale, emulating, for the most part, the fire and the striking contrasts that produced such an impression after the time of titian, executing pictures every way deserving of a place in good collections. leonardo corona, of murano, who, from a copyist, succeeded in becoming a painter, was the rival of palma, and nevertheless enjoyed the patronage of vittoria; whether to keep alive the emulation of the former, or for some other reason, is uncertain. he sometimes prepared models in clay, to discover the best distributions of his chiaroscuro. by aid of these he painted his annunciation, at ss. giovanni and paolo, a work very highly commended, as well as his picture at san stefano, displaying a grandeur that arrests the eye, and reminds us more of titian than any other model. in general, however, corona exhibited more of tintoretto, if not in his colouring, which in the present day appears to more advantage, at least in many other points. he produced a crucifixion so much in this artist's style, that ridolfi has defended him with the utmost difficulty from the charge of theft. he availed himself likewise of the engravings of flemish artists, particularly in the composition of his landscape. he did not long flourish; but left an excellent imitator of his style in baldassare d'anna, an artist of flemish origin, who completed a few of his master's pieces. he also produced some original pieces for the servi and other churches, which, though inferior to those of corona in the selection of forms, yet surpass them in the softness, and sometimes in the force of their chiaroscuro. andrea vicentino was, according to some writers, a venetian, and pupil to palma; not excelling in point of taste, he was nevertheless very skilful in the handling of his colours, and shewed great power of invention. being employed in many labours, both within and without the boundaries of venice, and even in depicting histories of the republic, which still continue to adorn several halls in the palazzo grande, he was one of the most popular artists of his time. he rarely fails to exhibit in his works some perspective, or some figure borrowed, according to the custom of the plagiarists, from the best masters: including even bassano, an artist of few ideas constantly repeated, and so far less easily pillaged with impunity. at the same time he bestows upon his plagiarisms a beauty of composition, and a general effect that does honour to his talents, applicable to every variety of subject. he could also employ a very delicate, tasteful, and effective pencil, when he chose to exert himself. in his grounds, however, he must have been less successful, many of his paintings being already much defaced. in collections, always more favourable to their duration than public places, we may find several in good preservation, and deserving of much commendation, as we gather from his solomon anointed on becoming king of israel, preserved in the royal gallery at florence. marco vicentino, son of andrea, also acquired some celebrity by his imitations, and more by the name of his father. santo peranda, a scholar of corona and of palma, and tolerably well versed in roman design, having passed some time at rome, aimed at a diversity of styles. his usual manner a good deal resembles that of palma, while, in his large histories, which he produced at venice and at mirandola, he appears in a more poetical character of his own. yet he was naturally of a more slow and reflective turn, and more studious of art, qualities that in the decline of age led him to adopt a very delicate and laboured manner. he was not ambitious of equalling his contemporaries in the abundance of his works; his aim was to surpass them in correctness; nor did he any where succeed better in his object than in his christ taken from the cross, painted for the church of san procolo. among his disciples, matteo ponzone, from dalmatia, more particularly distinguished himself, assisting peranda in his great works executed at mirandola. in progress of time he formed an original style, which surpasses in softness that of his master, though not equal to it in point of elegance. he was fond of copying from the life, without attempting much to add to its dignity. his scholar, gio. carboncino, pursued his studies at rome also, where we do not, however, find mention of him,[ ] owing probably to his speedy return to venice. among the few pieces produced by him for churches, there is a bto. angelo, at the carmini, which has been much commended by melchiori, and a san antonio, at la pietà, mentioned by guarienti. two others, named maffei, of vicenza, and zanimberti, of brescia, will come under consideration in their respective states. antonio vassilacchi, called aliense, a native of the island of milo, inherited from the line climate of greece a genius adapted to confer honour upon the arts, and particularly on works of a vast and imaginative character. paul veronese, struck with his first efforts, banished him, with a feeling of jealousy, from his studio, advising him at the same time to confine himself to small pictures. aliense observing paul engaged in reviving the examples of titian, renewed as far as lay in his power those of tintoretto. he studied casts taken from the antique, designing from them both day and night; he exercised himself in acquiring a knowledge of the human frame, modelled in wax, copied tintoretto with the utmost assiduity, and, as if wholly to forget what he had learnt from paul, he sold the designs made at his school. yet he could not so far divest himself of them, but that in his earliest productions, remaining at the church of le vergini, he displayed the manner of paul. he has been accused by historians of having abandoned this style for one less adapted to his genius; and moreover of having been misled by the innovations of the mannerists. sometimes, however, he painted with extreme care, as in his epiphany, for the council of ten, though in general he abused the facility of his genius, without fear of risking his credit, inasmuch as his rivals palma and corona pursued the same plan. in order better to oppose his great enemy vittoria, he attached himself to another architect, who possessed much influence, named girolamo campagna, the disciple of sansovino; and he moreover enjoyed the favour of tintoretto. in this manner aliense obtained many commissions, both for the public palace and the venetian churches, besides being engaged in many works for other cities, more especially for perugia, at s. pietro, all upon a magnificent scale; yet without acquiring that degree of estimation which the felicity of his genius deserved. he was assisted by tommaso dolobella, of belluno, a good practitioner, and well received in poland, where he long continued in the service of sigismond iii. in his life of aliense, ridolfi makes mention also of pietro mera, a fleming, whose portrait aliense painted, as being his friend; but neither from history, nor from his own style, can we gather that he was aliense's disciple. he resided, and employed himself much in venice, at ss. giovanni and paolo, at la madonna dell' orto, and elsewhere: while the judgment pronounced upon him by zanetti is, that he appeared to have greatly attached himself to the venetian artists, and to have derived sufficient profit. pietro malombra, a venetian by birth, deserves almost to be excluded from the list of palma's disciples, and even from that of the mannerists. if he sometimes deviated from the right path, it must rather be attributed to human error, than to erroneous maxims. born in a degree of comparative ease, he acquired from education a sense of the value of that excellent axiom, "that honour is better than gain." after employing himself in the studio of salviati, where he obtained a good knowledge of design, he continued to paint for his own pleasure. but equally intelligent and docile, he never scrupled to bestow the utmost pains to bring his works to a higher degree of perfection, than was the usual practice of his times. afterwards experiencing a reverse of fortune, he entered upon the art as his profession, and ornamented parts of the ducal palace. in his portraits and pictures upon a small scale, he was also very successful. he represented at san francesco di paola, various miracles of the saint, in four pictures; and his figures display a precision in their contours, a grace, and an originality which lead us to doubt whether they can belong, not merely to the epoch, but to the school of which we are here treating. similar specimens he produced for galleries, sometimes enlivening with them his perspective views, in which he possessed equal skill and assiduity. those in which he exhibited the grand piazza, or the great hall of council, representing in them their respective sacred or civil ceremonies, processions, ingresses, public audiences, great spectacles, to which the place adds an air of grandeur, extorted the plaudits of all ranks. girolamo pilotto occupies the sixth place among those, who, in the opinion of boschini, are apt to be confounded with palma. zanetti is content with observing, that he was a true follower of that style, and that in his works may be recognized the ideas of his master, conducted in a very happy manner. venice boasts few of his pieces, although we are elsewhere informed that he died at an advanced age. his picture of the nuptials of the sea, painted for the public palace, is extolled in high terms by orlandi, while others have greatly admired his san biagio, which he produced for the great altar of the fraglia, in rovigo; a picture displaying great sweetness of manner, and signed with his name. to attempt a full list of the rest of the mannerists, who followed more or less the composition of palma, would only weary the reader with a repetition of names. from these i select, therefore, merely a few of the most remarkable in venice and its vicinity, having to make mention of others in the respective schools of terra firma. girolamo gamberati, a scholar of porta, acquired the art of colouring from palma, upon whose model he painted at le vergini, and other places. it is still suspected, however, that the character displayed in his pieces, must have come from the hand of palma, whose friendship occasionally assisted him. in the guide by zanetti, we find mention of a jacomo alberelli, a disciple of palma, who painted the baptism of christ at the church of the ognisanti. there is a slight allusion to him in ridolfi, by whom he is entitled albarelli; and he adds, that he produced the bust for the tomb of his master, in whose service he lived during thirty-four years. camillo ballini is also recorded among the palmese mannerists, whether a native of venice or of the state is not certain. in his manner he is pleasing, though neither spirited nor vigorous; and he was likewise employed in the ducal palace. boschini moreover extols bianchi, dimo, and donati, all venetians, and his own friends; but i would omit them, finding no commendations in any other work. i omit also antonio cecchini da pesaro, whose age, as reported in the index, cannot be brought to agree with the period of palma's professorship. in trevigi, ascanio spineda, a noble of that city, is held in some estimation, and included among the disciples of palma; from whom he is sometimes with difficulty distinguished. one of the most exact in point of design, he also colours with much sweetness and grace of tints; an artist deserving to be known in his native district, which abounds with the best of his works. he employed himself there, for many churches, succeeding perhaps better at san teonisto than at any other place. no one surpassed him in the number of his pieces for public exhibition, if we except indeed one bartolommeo orioli, who, about the same period, displayed the talent of a good practiser, though with less repute. this last belonged to that numerous tribe who, in italy, were ambitious of uniting in themselves the powers of poetry and painting; but who, not having received sufficient polish either in precept or in art, gave vent to their inspiration in their native place, covering the columns with sonnets, and the churches with pictures, without exciting the envy of the adjacent districts. father federici praises him for his portraits; a valued ornament, at that period, of large pictures, and well introduced by orioli, in the church of st. croce, where a numerous procession of the people of trevigi appears, taken from the life. burchiellati, a contemporary historian of the place, adds, as a companion to the foregoing, the name of giacomo bravo, a painter of figures and ornamental works, which are still held in some degree of estimation. paolo piazza, of castelfranco, who afterwards became a capuchin by the name of father cosimo, is enumerated by baglione among the good practisers, and the pupils of palma. yet he bears little resemblance to him, having formed a style of his own, not powerful indeed, but free and pleasing, which attracted the eye of paul v., the emperor rodolph ii., and the doge priuli; all of whom availed themselves of his ability. both the capital and the state boast many of his pieces in fresco, and some altarpieces: nor is rome without them, where, in the palazzo borghese, he painted those very fanciful ornaments in friezes, for various chambers, as well as histories of cleopatra for the great hall, and in the campidoglio at the conservatori, a celebrated picture of christ taken from the cross. while residing in rome he attended to the instruction of andrea piazza, his nephew, who in course of time entered the service of the duke of lorraine, by whom he had the honour of being made a cavalier. upon returning to his own state, he produced his great picture of the marriage of cana, for the church of santa maria; one of the best pieces that adorn the place. matteo ingoli, a native of ravenna, resided from early youth, until the period of his immature decease, in the city of venice. he sprung from the school of luigi del friso, and proposed for himself, says boschini, paul veronese and palma as his models. if i mistake not, however, he aspired to a more solid, but less beautiful style, as far as we can gather from one of his pictures at the corpus domini, from his supper of our lord at san apollinare, and from others of his works; in all which we trace the hand of precision and assiduity. he was also a good architect, and terminated his days during one of those awful periods in which the venetian state was visited by the plague, adding another instance of loss to the fine arts, similar to those which we have noticed in other schools. another victim to the same contagion was pietro damini, of castelfranco, who, it is averred, had he survived a little longer, would have displayed the powers of a titian; an expression we are to receive as somewhat hyperbolical. he acquired the art of colouring from gio. batista novelli, a good scholar of palma, who, more for amusement than for gain, ornamented castelfranco and the adjacent places with several well executed pieces. damini next devoted much time to the theory of the art, and to the study of the best engravings, upon which he modelled his design. by this method, it is said, that he freed himself from the shackles of the mannerists, though it gave to his colours a degree of crudity; and in truth this is a defect that strikes the eye in many of his productions. numerous specimens remain at padua, where he established himself at the age of twenty; several at vicenza, at venice, and still more in castelfranco, where his altarpiece of the blessed simone stoch at santa maria, is highly estimated, as well as the tabernacle surrounded with twelve histories, from both the old and new testaments; a novel idea, and executed with real taste. his style is elegant and pleasing, but not uniformly excellent. he is observed to have frequently changed his manner, in aspiring to reach a higher degree of perfection in his art. we might, in some instances, pronounce him an excellent naturalist; in others more of an adept in ideal beauty, as we gather from his picture of the crucifixion at santo di padova, which displays rare beauty and harmony combined, though he did not live long enough to produce others of equal merit. he died early, and at a short interval his brother giorgio, seized by the same disorder, followed him to the tomb, an artist excellent in portrait, and pictures with small figures. subsequent to this period, ( , ,) in which the deaths of a number of artists occur, the traces of the old venetian style, in its best school, began still more to disappear; and the venetian paintings produced after the middle of the century, display for the most part a different character. it is remarked by signor zanetti, that several foreign artists established themselves about this period in the city, and held sway over the art at their own discretion. attached to various schools, and chiefly admirers of caravaggio, in his plebeian manner, they agreed amongst themselves in nothing, perhaps, except two points. one of these was, to consult truth in a greater degree than had before been done; an extremely useful idea to render art, now degenerated into a paltry trade, once more real art. but the plan was not well executed by many, who were either incapable of selecting what was natural, or of ennobling it when found; while, at all events, they were too apt to mannerize it with an excessive use of strong shades. the other plan was to avail themselves of very dark and oily grounds, which were as favourable to despatch as injurious to the duration of paintings, as we have more than once had occasion to observe. indeed this had so far come into vogue, in most places, as even to infect, in some degree, the great school of the caracci. hence it has arisen that in many of those pictures the lights only have remained durable, and the masses of shade, the middle tints having disappeared; insomuch that posterity has distinguished this class of artists by the new appellation of the sect of _tenebrosi_, or the dark colourists. boschini, who first put forth his _carta del navegar pitoresco_ in , is very severe, as we have before stated, upon the sect of mere naturalists, stigmatizing them generally, and upbraiding them for coming to seek their bread at venice; while, at the time that they employed themselves in crying down the taste, the spirit, and the rapid hand of the venetians, their own productions bore ample witness to the pitiable efforts by which they were produced. he gives no names; but it is not difficult to gather from the whole his aversion to the roman and florentine artists, of whom we shall shortly give an account. upon these he certainly does not bestow encomiums, as he does upon all others at that period engaged in venice, his commendations being sometimes extremely vague, and at others extravagant. if we wish to avoid forming erroneous judgments, then, we must abandon his painter's chart of navigation, and attach ourselves to the _pittura veneziana_, a very different guide to that of boschini. in this the author takes care to distinguish, with the precision of a good historian, such as were followers of caravaggio, like saraceni; excellent pupils of guercino, like triva; fine colourists, however much accustomed to copy rather than invent, like strozza, and though less select, his scholar langetti; to whom we may add a third genoese artist, who flourished during those times at venice, though he left no public specimen of his labours; this was niccolo cassana. of these, as well as of a few others, i shall treat in the schools to which they respectively belong. several other names are omitted by the author, either on account of such artists having produced little in the city, or from his being unacquainted with their education and the place of their birth. among these is antonio beverense, an artist who painted for the college of the nunziata, the marriage of the virgin mary, a picture that displays accuracy of design, superiority of forms, and a very fine chiaroscuro. he was, for the most part, a disciple of the bolognese, and from his united taste and diligence fully deserving of being more generally known. i suspect, however, that he ought to be named a native of bavaria, and to the circumstance of his speedy return into his own country, we are, perhaps, to ascribe the little notice he seems to have attracted. returning to the authority of zanetti, we find, that besides giving a favourable opinion of the authors just mentioned, he bestows equal commendation upon those who are soon to follow; explaining their respective excellences and defects, and detecting such as belonged to the class of _tenebrosi_ through their own fault, and such as became so owing to the bad priming of those times; in treating of whom i follow the path he has pointed out. pietro ricchi was an artist who resided for a long period at venice, where he left a great number of works, and is generally known by the name of il lucchese. it remains doubtful whether he deserves to be accused of having introduced the oily and obscure method of painting already mentioned. it is at least certain, that besides having made use of bad priming, he was in the habit of covering his canvass with oil whenever he applied his pencil, which has occasioned the loss of so many of his works that once produced an excellent effect, but which are now either defaced or perished. this is the case with those that remained in venice, in vicenza, brescia, padua, and udine; some of which, indeed, are not greatly to be regretted; the production of mere mechanic skill, and that not always executed correctly. a few, however, are conducted with much care, as we find in his s. raimond, at the dominicans of bergamo, and his epiphany at the patriarchal church in venice, both highly deserving of commemoration, no less for the union of their colours, than for the taste displayed in the whole composition. we may easily perceive that they are the productions of a scholar, or at least of an imitator of guido; of one accustomed to consult the pictures of tintoretto, and of the most celebrated venetians. another artist equal to ricchi in the handling of his pencil, and more accurate in the union of his colours, will be found in federigo cervelli of milan, who, on opening his school at a somewhat later period in venice, obtained the celebrated ricci for one of his pupils. at the school of san teodoro, we meet with a history piece of that saint, from the hand of cervelli; and in this we may trace all the features of the same style, that was afterwards continued by ricci, who added dignity, however, to its forms, and executed them upon canvass and upon grounds better calculated to bear the effects of age. the other artists to be enumerated in the same class, are francesco rosa, a pupil rather than follower of cortona, for an account of whom we must refer the reader to the fifth book of the fifth volume; and giovanni batista lorenzetti, whose composition, bold, rapid, and magnificent, displays a powerful and correct hand. the merit of the second is conspicuous in his frescos, exhibited at santa anastasia, in his native city of verona, for which he received twelve hundred ducats, including only the decoration of the chapel. add to these the name of ruschi, or rusca, a roman, and a disciple of caravaggio in his forms, and of his age in the mixture of his colours. he was wholly unknown at rome, though he acquired some degree of reputation in the cities of venice, of vicenza, and of trevigi. his paintings are admitted into collections, where several of his oblong pieces are to be met with in pretty good preservation. contemporary with him was girolamo pellegrini, a native, of the same place, not mentioned in the guide of rome, but commemorated in that of venice for some works, chiefly executed in fresco upon a large scale, in which he appears neither a very select, various, nor spirited painter, though of a sufficiently elevated character. bastiano mazzoni, a florentine, is another artist unknown in his native city, belonging to the class of the naturalists, though possessed of a certain delicacy, roundness of style, and ease of handling. he was also an excellent architect, of whose talents the cavalier liberi availed himself in the erection of his fine palace at venice, which appears to exceed the fortune of a painter. count ottaviano angarano, a venetian noble, if he did not altogether avoid the style then current, avoided at least its extravagance; and the nativity which he placed at san daniele, confers upon him double honour, having been both painted and engraved by his hand. stefano pauluzzi, a citizen of venice, has been enumerated among the best belonging to this sect, if indeed he is to be included in it, as the deterioration of his pictures may be rather attributed to the badness of his grounds than to the artist. niccolo renieri mabuseo also flourished at the same period, an artist, who at rome, under manfredi, a follower of caravaggio, formed a taste partaking of his early flemish and of his italian education; very pleasing in the opinion of zanetti, and in general displaying much strength of hand. he had four daughters who inherited their father's talents, all of whose productions were highly admired in venice. two of these, of the name of angelica and anna, remained with their parent; clorinda entered into an union with vecchia, and lucrezia with daniel vandych, a frenchman, who afterwards entered into the service of the duke of mantua, as the keeper of his gallery of pictures; himself a fine portrait painter, and by no means despicable in his histories. to his i add the name of d. ermanno stroifi, a paduan, first a pupil, and an excellent imitator of prete the genoese, and afterwards of titian though occasionally, owing to an excessive attention to the chiaroscuro, he deviated too much from the right path. we are informed by boschini that he travelled for the purpose of observing other schools, and that on returning to venice, he still continued to rise in the estimation of the venetians. a madonna from his hand is to be seen at the great altar of the carmini in that city; and in padua, his pietà, placed at san tommaso cantuariense. i conclude this list with one matteo, a florentine artist, not commemorated in his own state, from the circumstance of having resided abroad; better known by the name of matteo da' pitocchi. he displayed most talent in his representation of mendicants, heads of which class are to be met with in venice, in verona, in vicenza, and elsewhere, as well as several burlesques and other fanciful pieces, in the galleries of many italian nobles. he painted likewise for churches, more particularly in padua, where he most probably died; and the serviti are in possession of some on a larger scale, designed in the character of a mere naturalist. these names we trust will be found sufficient, however various and unequal both in point of style and merit, as affording examples of the taste of that age. but inasmuch as it is difficult, as i have before observed, for an entire age to become wholly corrupt, so among the mannerists, who mark the character of this epoch, there nourished some good imitators of titian, of paul veronese, and of raffaello himself, both in the capital and its adjacent provinces. in the last, indeed, they were more numerous, because the artists of the terra firma did not so greatly abound in those masterpieces of the art, of which the venetians themselves were enabled so easily to become the plagiarists, to the serious deterioration of the art. in the first rank then of supporters of the solid style, i must mention giovan contarino, who flourished in the time of palma, a companion of malombra, and an exact imitator of titian's method. he did not always succeed in improving and embellishing the nature which he copied, though, at the same time, he displayed a soundness of taste that was truly that of titian. he shewed exquisite skill in his foreshortening from above (di sotto in sù), and in the church of san francesco di paola, he exhibited a resurrection in the entablature, or ceiling, along with other mysteries and figures, so beautifully coloured, so distinct, and so finely expressed, as to be considered some of the most perfect of which the city can boast. he employed himself much for collections, even extending to germany, by which he obtained from the emperor rodolph ii., the collar of the order of cavaliers. his favourite subjects were such as he drew from mythology, being possessed of sufficient learning to treat them with classic propriety, and of these, in the barbarigo collection, i saw a considerable number. he was so extremely accurate in his portraits, that on sending home one which he had taken of marco dolce, his dogs, the moment it appeared, began to fawn upon it, mistaking it for their master. his fame was nevertheless eclipsed in portrait by tiberio tinelli, at first his scholar, afterwards an imitator of leandro bassano, and raised to the rank of cavalier by the king of france. pietro da cortona, on beholding one of his portraits, exclaimed that tiberio had not merely infused into it the whole soul of the original, but added his own also. i have met with several at rome, bearing a very high price, and still more are to be seen in the venetian state. sometimes they are left unfinished, at the desire of the parties for whom they were taken, in order to diminish their price; sometimes they are thrown into an historical character; and a venetian lord, for instance, will appear as marc antony--his wife, as cleopatra. many of this artist's pieces for private ornament, of the portrait size, are very highly estimated: they are alternately borrowed from scripture and from fable. such is that of his _iris_, belonging to the conti vicentini, at vicenza, simple in point of composition, very natural and pleasing; and what is still more surprising, quite original. he did not display equal facility in more copious compositions, requiring a larger portion of time and leisure than he ever enjoyed, in order to leave behind him a work which could give him full satisfaction. succeeding him, appears girolamo forabosco, a distinguished portrait painter, of venetian origin according to orlandi, though believed by the paduans, to have been one of their fellow citizens. two of the most celebrated schools contended for the honour of adding him to their respective ranks. he flourished in the time of boschini, who bestowed upon him and liberi the precedency over all other venetians of the age. in order better to commend him in the spirit of his age, he puns upon his name, declaring forabosco one of those who emerged _fuor del bosco_, or out of the wood, into full day; in other words that he rose out of obscurity into considerable note. we are to forgive similar conceits upon the part of boschini, in consideration of the notices he handed down to us; and we may add likewise with zanetti, that forabosco possessed a noble and penetrating genius; a genius delighting the professed artist by its display of judgment; arresting the observer by its beauty; and which unites sweetness with refinement, beauty with force, studious in every part, but particularly in the airs of its heads, that appear endued with life. to form an adequate idea of these, we ought not so much to direct our inquiries to churches, which rarely boast any of his altarpieces, as to those collections which preserve his portraits; his half-length figures of saints, and his little history pieces, of which three are recorded in the catalogue of the dresden gallery. resembling forabosco in diligence and delicacy of finish, though inferior to him in genius, we may mention his pupil pietro bellotti. by some he is reproached for his minuteness and dryness of style, which leads him to distinguish almost every hair, though always an exact and faithful transcriber of nature. boschini considers him in the light of a prodigy, for having succeeded in uniting to so much diligence, a most exquisite delicacy in his tints, to a degree never before known. his compositions, more particularly his portraits and his caricatures, which are to be met with in galleries, are held in much esteem. several i have seen in different places, even out of the limits of the state; two of them very excellent--portraits of an old man and an old woman, in possession of the cavalier melzi, at milan, and such as are not to be exceeded by the most polished and exquisite specimens of flemish art. at the same period flourished the cavalier carlo ridolfi, a native of vicenza, but who received his education and distinguished himself at venice. his natural good sense led him to shun the peculiar style of his times, no less in writing than in painting; and we may observe the same character that is displayed in his "lives of the venetian painters," written with equal fidelity and judgment, preserved also in his pictures. thus his _vizitazione_, painted for the church of the ognissanti at venice, has been much extolled; a piece that exhibits some novelty in the adaptation of the colours; a fine relief, and exactness in every part. other specimens of him are to be met with in public places, both in venice and throughout the state; but a great part of his productions were for private persons, consisting of portraits, half-length figures, and historical pieces. ridolfi imbibed excellent principles of the art from aliense, which he afterwards improved in vicenza and verona, by copying the best models he could find, and attending to perspective, to the belles lettres, and to other pursuits best calculated to form a learned artist. such he likewise appears in the two volumes of his "lives," which are at present extremely rare, and deserving of republication, either with the plates which i heard were still in existence at bassano, or without them, since it is no very serious loss after all to remain ignorant of the features of celebrated men, provided we become acquainted with their virtues. upon a comparison of ridolfi's style of writing with that of boschini, we might suppose that these authors flourished at two different epochs, though they were very nearly contemporary. bayle's observation, indeed, may be considered correct, as applied to them; that there exists a certain mental, as well as physical epidemic; and as, in the last, every individual is not seized with the disorder, so, in the former, good sense, as evinced in thinking and in writing, does not become altogether extinct. thus the cav. carlo, as i before noticed, was not only a good writer, but one of the best biographers of artists we have. not that he was wholly exempt from every kind of grammatical error, any more than baldinucci himself, though one of the della crusca academicians; but he knew how to avoid errors of judgment, into which others fell; such as relating old stories, fit only to amuse children when they first begin to draw eyes and ears; making inquisition into the life and manners of every artist, and wasting time in long preambles, episodes, and moral reflections, quite out of place. on the contrary he is precise, rapid, and eager to afford fresh information for his readers in a small space, with the exception of quoting largely sometimes from the poets. his pictorial maxims are just; his complaints against vasari always in a moderate tone, and his descriptions of paintings and of grand compositions very exact, and displaying great knowledge, both of mythology and history. he concludes the work with an account of his life, in which he complains of the envy of rivals, and the ignorance of the great, too often combining together to trample upon real merit. his epitaph, as given by sansovino, a contemporary writer, and afterwards by zanetti, refers the year of his decease to . boschini, on the contrary, in his carta, page , speaks of him as one of the living authors in , in which year his book was given to the world. i am inclined to think that those verses in which ridolfi is commended, were the production of boschini while the former was still living, and that after his death he neglected to retouch them. two others, among the best of these imitators of a more solid taste, are vecchia and loth, fully entitled as much as the rest to the rank they hold. pietro vecchia sprung from the school of padovanino, but he did acquire altogether his style, most probably because padovanino, like the caracci, gave an individual direction to the talents of his pupils, in the path he judged best adapted to their success. the genius of vecchia was not at all calculated for lighter subjects. he had imbibed from his master an admiration of the ancients, as well as the art of imitating them; and with these principles he arrived at such a degree of excellence, that several of his pictures pass for those of giorgione, of licini, and even of titian. it is true, that by dint of copying and exactly imitating old paintings, much darkened by time, he contracted the habit of colouring with considerable dulness of lights, affording an example for every young artist, that he should learn to tinge with lively colours, previous to taking copies of similar pictures. for though he, indeed, acquired the colouring of the ancients, he added neither much variety nor much choice of countenances; and he still remained a naturalist, limited in his ideas, and more inclined towards the burlesque than the serious. some of his best productions consist of pictures for private ornament; of youths armed, or equipped and ornamented with plumes, in the manner of giorgione, though not without some degree of caricature. one of these, an astrologer telling their fortune to some soldiers, is in possession of the senator rezzonico at rome, altogether of so beautiful a character that giordano painted a companion to it; a little picture quite in the same taste. but although his humourous pieces please us in some, they disgust us in many of his other subjects, and more particularly in the passion of our saviour; a sacred mystery, in which the spectator ought never to be presented with cause for mirth. but vecchia seemed to forget this, and introduces, like callot, certain caricatures among his sacred pieces, of which specimens are to be seen in the church of ognissanti at venice; in possession of the conti bevilacqua at verona, and in other places. in other points, with a style rather strong and loaded with shade than pleasing, he shewed himself an excellent artist, both in his naked parts and his draperies; which he designed and coloured at the same time in the academies. his fleshes are dark red, his handling easy, his colour thick and heavy, the effects of his light new and studied, and his whole taste so far from any degree of mannerism, and of such a composition, that to any one unversed in pictorial history, he would appear to have flourished at least two ages before his real time. melchiori bestows particular commendation upon him for his talents in restoring old pictures; and conjectures that he, in this way, acquired the appellation of vecchia, his family name being, as we have noted in the index, that of _muttoni_. he instructed several pupils in the art, none of whom pursued their master's career. agostino litterini, and bartolommeo his son, were among these, both artists well known in venice and the islands, and both distinguished for clearness and boldness of style, though the latter surpassed his father in this way. a specimen of his altarpieces at san paterniano, displays an imitator of titian, and of the better age. melchiori likewise gives the reputation of an excellent artist to his daughter caterina, though commendations of this sort ought always to be understood in reference to the time in which the artists flourished. the same reasoning might apply also to politics. the title of your excellency used once to be applied to minor sovereigns, but it has since become applicable also to the great officers and ministers of state. gian carlo loth, an artist from monaco, resided during a long period, and subsequently died, at venice, in the year , aged sixty-six years, as we find written in his epitaph. both orlandi and zanetti are mistaken in giving him as a scholar to caravaggio, who died before carlo was born. it is probable, however, that he acquired his strong and loaded manner of composition, and his exact representation of nature without ennobling it, from the study of caravaggio's pictures. and if he were really the pupil, as is supposed, of liberi, he failed to make himself master of the lively and ideal character of that school; nor did he perhaps derive any thing from it, but a certain rapidity of hand, and an elevation of manner that distinguished him from the naturalists of his time. he took a rank among the first four painters of his age, all of whom bore the name of carlo, as i have elsewhere observed. he was much employed in germany for the emperor leopold i., as well as in italy for the churches, and still more for different collections. many cabinet pictures from his hand are to be met with in every state, in the style of caravaggio and guercino, with histories; of which kind is the dead abel, so much praised in the royal gallery at florence. one in the best preservation i have seen, is to be found at milan; a picture of lot inebriated, in the trivulzi palace, celebrated among men of taste as a museum of antiquities; newly arranged by the present young and accomplished marquis, and forming a collection not unworthy of a royal house. daniele seiter, a fine colourist, to whom we shall again allude, was instructed in the art by loth, during a period of twelve years. he was distinguished both in rome and at turin; and was succeeded by ambrogio bono, one of the best disciples formed by the same master in venice, where he left a variety of works, all executed in the taste he had so early imbibed. other artists, about the same period, flourished in venice, who by dint of imitating the most approved models, and also through their own talents, obtained easy access into the most choice collections. jean lys, from oldenburg, came early among these, bearing along with him the style of golzio. but, on beholding the venetian and roman schools, he adopted an exceedingly graceful style, partaking of the italian in its design, and of the flemish in its tints. he chiefly produced figures upon a middle scale, such as his prodigal son, in the royal museum at florence; or of smaller dimensions, as in his various little pictures of village sports and combats, with similar subjects, in the flemish mode of composition. yet he produced a few pictures for churches, like his st. peter, in the act of resuscitating tabitha, at the filippini, in fano; and his more celebrated san girolamo, at the theatini, in venice, where he died. valentino le febre, from brussels, is a name omitted by orlandi; while his very numerous engravings of paul veronese, and of the best venetian artists, are ascribed by him to another artist of the same name. he painted little; and always pursued the track of paul veronese, of whom he was one of the most successful imitators and copyists known. his countenances bear no stamp of a foreign origin, and his colours none of the bad character of his age; while his touches are always strong, without offending our taste. his smaller pieces are full of research and finish; though he has less merit upon a larger scale, and is occasionally wanting in point of composition. we meet with another distinguished imitator of paul, in sebastiano bombelli, from udine; guercino's scholar in the outset, and subsequently a fine copyist of the best works of paul veronese, which are scarcely to be distinguished from the copies he took; until he gave up the more inventive branches of the art, and devoted his attention to portraits. here he restored the lost wonders of a former age; his portraits being remarkable for strong likeness, vivacity, and truth of colouring, both in the drapery and the fleshes. in his painting there is a happy union of the venetian and the bolognese manner; and in some specimens of his portraits that i have seen, he seems to have preferred the delicacy of guido to the vigour of his own master. he was esteemed also beyond italy; he was employed by the archduke joseph at inspruck; took the portraits of several german electors; of the king of denmark, and of the emperor leopold i., by whom he was largely honoured and rewarded. it is a matter of regret, that, owing to a peculiar varnish of pitch and gum,[ ] which at the time produced a good effect, a great portion of his pictures should have become obscured; and that many by the more ancient masters, which he wished to restore, should have been altogether blemished or destroyed like his own. among the imitators of titian, of tintoretto, and of paul, one giacomo barri is likewise mentioned by melchiori; though he is the sole authority we have upon the point. it is now easy to meet with his engravings in aqua fortis, but not with his pictures. he was also the author of a little work entitled by him _viaggio pittoresco d'italia_, which has become somewhat rare, owing, i imagine, to its small dimensions, and to the researches made after it by those who preserve a series of pictorial works; for the rest, his authority is of a middling character. in the changes which produced such an alteration in the state of painting at venice, several cities of the provinces also in some measure partook, but in others many eminent geniuses arose, capable of resisting the moral contagion that invaded the capital, and of barring its entrance into their native provinces. the school of the friuli, after the death of pomponio amalteo and sebastiano seccante, owing to the mediocrity of sebastian's followers, or of the younger branches of his family, had declined, as we before stated, from its original splendour. it numbered, indeed, other pupils by different masters; limited in point of invention, dry in design, and somewhat hard in their colouring. none appeared capable of restoring the art, and succeeded only in furnishing the city with works reasonably well executed, more or less, and borrowed from familiar models. to this class belong vincenzo lugaro, mentioned by ridolfi for his altarpiece of san antonio, at the grazie in udine; giulio brunelleschi, whose _nunziata_ in one of the fraternities presents a good imitation of the style of pellegrino; and fulvio griffoni, who received a commission from the city to produce a picture of the miracle of the manna, to be placed in the public palace near the supper of amalteo. add to these andrea petreolo, who ornamented the panels of the organ, in the dome of his native town of venzone, as well on the interior, where, in a very beautiful manner, he exhibited the histories of san geronimo and san eustachio, as on the outside, where, surrounded with fine architecture, he represented the parable of the wise and foolish virgins. without dwelling upon the names of lorio and brugno, of whom there remain but few works, which obtained little celebrity, we shall newly record the name of eugenio pini, the last it may be said of those artists who but slightly addicted themselves to foreign methods. he flourished about the middle of the seventeenth century, was frequently employed at udine, and in his own state; extremely diligent and skilled in every office of a painter, if we except, perhaps, his want of a more perfect harmony of tints. the repose of egypt, in the dome of palma, and his san antonio in that of gemona, are pronounced by the abbate boni among his noblest productions. during the period the latter flourished at udine, antonio carnio, a native of a town of portogruaro, came to establish himself in the city. instructed in the art by his own father, a very able artist, he subsequently appears, as far as we may judge from his style, to have studied the works of paul veronese and tintoretto. next to pordenone, the friuli perhaps never produced a finer genius; equally original in all the branches of historic painting, bold in his design, happy in his colouring, more particularly of his fleshes; expressive in every variety of passion; and all these comprehended within the limits of a grand naturalist, though he frequently became a mannerist, in order to expedite his works. several of his best productions are, at this period, lost to udine, owing to the fault of the artist who retouched them; and among the most studied and the best preserved, there still remains his san tommaso di villanuova, adorning an altar of santa lucia. he produced likewise several histories for private ornament, half-length figures, portraits and heads in caricature, for which he displayed a peculiar talent, and which still exist at udine. both the city and province are well supplied with his pieces, few of which, however, are to be found coloured with strength of handling or very highly finished. he was never without numerous commissions, even though confining his talents to the friuli; but either from want of prudence, or some other reason, he nevertheless died in penury near portogruaro. a few of his pictures in that place are still pointed out; but those seen at san francesco, among which are the washing the disciples' feet, and our lord's last supper, said to have been executed by him in , either bear a false date, or are rather to be attributed to his father. for, at that period, antonio could not have produced them, since he was still alive in the year ; and on this point we ought to admit the authority of pavona, at one time his pupil, from whom guarienti received his notices of carnio, which he inserted in the abecedario. this artist must not be confounded with another carnio, named giacomo, who flourished posterior to him, and was much inferior to antonio in point of merit. sebastiano bombelli was born at udine, as i just observed, though he studied and resided at other places. he left no specimens of his art in the friuli, if we except a few portraits and pieces for private ornament, along with some heads or busts of saints; while his altarpiece of the redeemer upon the cross, between some saints, in the parochial church of tricesimo, is considered a very rare piece. he had a brother of the name of raphael, whose labours were more abundant, but the whole of them, together with his name, were confined within the limits of the friuli. while the art thus declined in these parts of the venetian dominions, it appeared equally to revive in others; from whence it arose, that though greatly diminished in the capital, the glory of the state did not become wholly extinct. the city of verona was its greatest support; for in addition to having given birth to ridolfi, to turchi, and ottoni, all of whom did honour to their country, it produced likewise dario varotari, who having established himself at padua, laid the foundation of a very flourishing school. he exercised his talents under paul veronese, at verona, to whom he has occasionally some resemblance, though his taste appears to have been chiefly formed upon other models. his design is very chaste, by no means an uncommon acquisition among the veronese; though he shews some traces of timidity in the method of some of those pupils of the _quattro-centisti_,[ ] who, whilst they draw their contours fuller than those of their masters, appear as if they were afraid in every line of departing too far from the models before them; and this he has exemplified in the pictures of san egidio at padua. in others, conducted at a more mature age, he seems to have aspired at imitating more modern artists, sometimes paul veronese, and sometimes titian himself in point of design, particularly in the airs of the heads; although his colours, however true and harmonious, can boast neither the venetian strength nor beauty. dario painted in venice, at padua, and in the polesine; yet he produced little in reference to the age in which he flourished. he educated several pupils, among whom was gio. batista bissoni, whose life has been given us by ridolfi. this last was also a scholar of apollodoro, named di porcia, a portrait painter of much celebrity, and the style which he formed for himself is exactly that of a good painter of portraits, with which he is fond of filling his pictures, clothing them in the manner of his time. we may observe this in his miracles of san domenico, placed in the church belonging to his order, drawn upon a large scale, as well as in other pieces, scattered throughout the city in almost every street. we must not omit the name of his daughter, chiara dario, a lady extolled by ridolfi for the beauty of her portraits, and fully deserving of the honour conferred upon her by the grand dukes of tuscany, who placed one of herself in their noble series of painters, where it is still to be seen. boschini seems to be of opinion that she gave public instructions in the same manner as the fair sirani of bologna; and that she initiated in the art caterina taraboti and lucia scaligeri, a niece of bartolommeo. yet the passage referring to this, (p. ) in the venetian poet, is somewhat ambiguous, and he perhaps only meant to assert that these two young women pursued the same career. but the chief honour and crown of dario's reputation, was his own son and pupil, named alessandro, who, though left an orphan at an early age, shortly after set out for venice, where he soon began to distinguish himself. he there received the name of padovanino, which he retained at an advanced age, and by which he is now generally known. he first studied titian's works in fresco, such as he found in padua, and his copies still continue to attract the admiration of the greatest professors. in venice he persevered in his assiduous attention to the same incomparable master, penetrating so far by degrees into his peculiar character, as to be preferred by many to any of titian's other disciples. but comparison is invariably disagreeable, and i am inclined to think that those who personally received from the lips of great artists a few brief and sound rules, as to what ought to be avoided or achieved in order best to resemble them, are entitled to a high degree of respect: all the speculations of the finest genius upon their works are not half so valuable; for the second century is fast passing away, since the oral tradition of the best colourists wholly ceased, and we have been attempting to attain their method, in which we cannot succeed. padovanino was always equal to the task of handling any subject that had before been treated by titian; his softer ones with grace, his more powerful with strength, his heroic pieces with dignity; in which last, if i mistake not, he surpassed every other disciple of this master. "le donne, i cavalier, l'armi, e gli amori," these, and let us add to them his boys, were the favourite subjects of his pencil, which he exhibited to most advantage, and which he most frequently introduced into his compositions. and he knew how to treat landscape as well; which, in some of his small pictures, he has succeeded in admirably. he was familiar with the science of the sotto in sù,[ ] of which he gave the most favourable specimen in the church of san andrea di bergamo, in three admirable histories of that saint. it is a work embellished with beautiful architecture, and replete with graces in every part. he has approached equally near his model in the sobriety of his composition, in the very difficult use of his middle tints, in his contrasts, in the colour of his fleshes, in smoothness and facility of hand. but titian was still to remain unequalled in his art; and varotari is not a little inferior to him in animation, and in the expression of truth. nor can i believe that his method of preparing his canvass, and of colouring it, was the same as that pursued by titian's disciples, many of his pieces being much darkened, with the shades either deepened or altered. this is very perceptible even in varotari's dead christ, at florence, a painting which the prince not very long since purchased for his gallery there. in other points he appears to me to have observed the same method, in regard to his model, as poussin, who aimed at raffaello's manner, without reaching it, either from want of ability, or from a dread of falling into servility. his masterpiece is said to be the supper of cana, a piece that has been engraved by patina, among the _select paintings_. it was formerly in padua, and is now at venice in the chapter of la carità; with few figures in proportion to the place; a rich display of costume and ornament; dogs that appear like those of paul, full of life; grand attendance, women of the most exquisite forms warmed with more ideal beauty than those of titian, and drawn in the most graceful attitudes. still it is not every one who will approve of his introduction of them for the service of such a table, in preference to men, as is the more general custom. the above picture cannot, however, boast such fresh and lucid tints as his four histories of the life of san domenico, which are to be seen in a refectory of santi giovanni and paolo, containing as it were the flower of padovanino's best style. this very elegant artist spent his time between the capital and his native province, where alone his pictures abound in public; in other cities they are more rarely met with, and are scarce even in private collections. in forming a judgment of his productions, it is necessary to be upon our guard against a variety of copies, many of his disciples having so happily imitated him, that venetian professors themselves with difficulty distinguish their hand from that of their master. bartolommeo scaligero ranks among the most celebrated pupils and imitators of padovanino, an artist enumerated by the people of padua among their fellow citizens, although they can boast little from his pencil; while the venetians are in possession of his pictures in various churches, the most beautiful, perhaps, at the _corpus domini_. gio. batista rossi, from rovigo, produced one of his pictures for san clemente at padua; subsequently he flourished at venice, executing few things for public exhibition, but which are much extolled by boschini. giulio carpioni was accounted also among the pupils of varotari, and acquired a reputation rather for his small than his larger compositions; but we shall have occasion to allude to him again. maestri and leoni are names recorded in the _guida_ of venice, distinguished for their works in fresco, exhibited at the conventuali. the former was most probably a foreigner, as well as the latter, whom we shall find at rimino. were boschini somewhat of a less profuse panegyrist, we might here add to this list the name of dario, a son of padovanino, uniting the character of the physician, the poet, the painter, and engraver. in the index to the _carta del navegar_, we find him placed in the rank of dilettanti, from the circumstance of his producing little in the art, and this more with the object of presenting his pictures as gifts than of gain. nevertheless we meet with an encomium upon them,[ ] sufficient to satisfy the claims even of a good professor; besides which, several of his virtues and portraits, with an excellent body of colouring, are equally extolled for the spirit of their attitudes, and exquisite taste in the giorgione manner. we have next to treat of pietro liberi, an artist who succeeded padovanino in sustaining the honour of his native place. he ranks among the great men of his art, and is esteemed by many the most learned in point of design, of all who adorned the venetian school. from his early studies of the antique at rome, of michelangiolo, and of raffaello, of coreggio at parma, and of all the most excellent masters in the city of venice, he was led to form a style partaking of every school; a style that pleased in italy, but far more in germany, and which obtained for him the titles of count and cavalier, with wealth to support them handsomely in venice. and, in fact, to estimate his merits rightly, we ought not to consider him as a painter in one style, but in many. for according to his own confession, he employed for the eye of true judges a free and rapid pencil, not very studious of finish; for the less intelligent he worked with a very careful one, which bestowed the last touch upon every part, distinguishing the very hairs in such a manner that one might number them; and these paintings he executed on panels of cypress wood. most probably the fire of this man's genius became quenched whenever he attempted to paint slowly, and his pieces were certainly less perfect, which is known to have occurred to several painters in fresco. but with the exception of these enthusiasts, who are extremely rare, and always adduced by the indolent in defence of their haste, an observing diligence is the perfection of every artist; and even those two thunderbolts, let us call them, of art, tintoretto and giordano, where they most practised it, succeeded most in charming the eye of taste. the style of this artist may also be distinguished into the sublime and beautiful. he produced fewer specimens, however, in the former, of which venice boasts a slaughter of the innocents, vicenza a noah just landed from the ark, bergamo the great deluge, in which the shore is said to have been the work of m. montagne; the whole of them painted for churches, robust in their design, displaying fine variety of foreshortenings and of attitudes, with naked parts in grand character, and more in emulation of the caracci than of michelangiolo. he even abused the singular skill that he thus displayed; drawing the supreme deity by an unprecedented example, without the least drapery, in the church of santa caterina at vicenza, an error of judgment which detracts from the worth of one of his most beautiful productions. in a lighter character he produced several pictures for private ornament, sometimes consisting of fables familiar to us, and sometimes of _capricci_ and allegorical subjects, too obscure even for oedipus himself to unravel. most frequently he drew naked figures of venus, in the taste of titian; and these are esteemed his masterpieces, which have acquired for him, indeed, the name of libertino. it is asserted, that being unequal to the formation of the folds of his draperies, for the most part ill disposed and vague, he the more willingly exercised himself in these schools. we meet with a great number in different collections, and after beholding one, we are at no loss to recognize the remainder, both from the heads which are often repetitions of each other, and from the rosy tinge of his fleshes, and of the general tone of his pictures. he was extravagantly fond indeed of this last colour; which he often misapplied in regard to the hands and the extremities of the fingers. for the rest the composition of his colours was sweet; his shades delicate, in the correggio manner, and his profiles often borrowed from the antique, while his whole handling was free and elevated. marco liberi, his son, was not in any way comparable to his father, either in point of dignity or beauty, when left to his own invention. his forms are either caricatures, in a manner, of those of his father, or are very inferior where they are original. this striking difference may be observed in numerous collections, where their paintings of venus are placed together, as we see in that of prince ercolani at bologna. still he was an excellent copyist of his father's works, a talent possessed by many others of the same school, whose imitations are easily mistaken for originals, even by professors themselves. an excellent foreign artist ought not to be omitted in this place, one who flourished during a long period, and taught and died in padua. his name is luca ferrari, from reggio, fully deserving of being enrolled in the _abbeccedario pittorico_. although guido's pupil, his style became rather lofty than delicate; so that judging by the pictures that he produced for santa maria della ghiaja in reggio, scannelli pronounced him a disciple of tiarini. in some of the airs of his heads, however, and in certain graceful motions, he shews himself not unworthy of the character of the former master. in padua there is a _pietà_ of his at san antonio, of a very masterly kind, a picture that displays the rarest beauty of colouring. in his pieces abounding with figures, like that of the plague of , painted for the domenicani, he does not appear to so much advantage; nor had guido, indeed, offered him any great examples in this line, being accustomed rather to weigh than to number his figures. minorello and cirello, two of his pupils and followers, continued to support in padua some relish of the bolognese school. their names might be added to the dictionary above mentioned, as rosetti seemed to wish, and the former, who might sometimes be confounded with luca, ought to hold a higher place in it than the latter. francesco zanella deserves likewise to be recorded there, as an artist of spirit, though neither very diligent nor very learned in his art. he is esteemed almost the giordano of this city, from the great number of his works conducted in a short time, and may be computed almost as the last of the school; for pellegrini, who flourished during the same age, was not a native, though tracing his origin to padua; nor did he reside there many years. the city of vicenza produced nothing original during this epoch; though it possessed a school, sprung from that of paul veronese and from zelotti, of which i promised the reader a series in a more appropriate part of the work. in regard to its style, this school, in part, belongs to a better age; but its productions are chiefly so very indifferent, and so much the result of mechanic art, that it may rather be ascribed to the present. vicenza indeed might have had reason to boast, had it possessed artists at all equal in point of genius to its architects. i shall first commence with the name of lucio bruni, whether a native of the state or a foreigner is uncertain, an artist who produced, for san jacopo, a little altarpiece, representing the marriage of s. catherine, executed in , and partaking of the genius of a better age. i have met with no other notice of him; for as he was probably little known in times when italy abounded with the choicest artists, he found no historian who might have rescued his reputation from oblivion. yet this i would willingly do, if not by giving him a rank in this school, at least including him in the list of artists of the city, where i find mention of his name. giannantonio fasolo received the instructions of paul, and for a longer period those of zelotti; still adhering, however, to paul as his first example. at san rocco there is one of his pictures, a probatica, so beautifully decorated with perspective, and so finely filled with sick figures, in various groups and distances, that paul veronese would not have disclaimed it for his own. there are likewise three roman histories in the ceiling of the prefectory palace; mutius scævola before porsenna, horatius at the bridge, and curtius before the gulf; the whole of them nobly executed. by some strange mistake orlandi mentions verona as the place of his birth, and where he exercised his talents. among his pupils was alessandro maganza, son of the same giambatista whose name i recorded among titian's followers. fasolo inspired him with his own taste; and we may likewise consider him a fine imitator of zelotti and of paul veronese; as he has shown in his epiphany, at san domenico; and in his martyrdom of s. giustina, at san pietro. in his architecture he was excellent, judicious in his composition, very pleasing in his countenances; in his fleshes inclining towards white; in his folds somewhat hard and monotonous; and for the most part wanting in expression. vicenza has an abundance of his paintings, both private and in public; besides the provinces and the adjacent cities, to such an amount, that we have no difficulty in believing that he flourished till his seventy-fourth year; that he painted for good prices, and with little trouble. a few of his pictures, such as we meet with at vicenza, are amply sufficient to give us an idea of the rest; not unfrequently presenting us with the same features and the same attitudes and motions. we are to look for the cause of this, not so much in his genius, which he shows in many of his works to have been excellent, as in his domestic anxieties, occasioned by a numerous family for whom he had to provide. this artist was extremely unfortunate as a father. giambatista, the eldest of his sons, emulated him in knowledge; and if we may venture to judge from one of his histories, of san benedetto, at the church of s. giustina, in padua, he was superior to him in point of elegance. but the support he derived from this young man's talents was soon cut off by his early death, leaving a young family of his own to the care of their grandfather. his second son, girolamo, who had also to make provision for his own children, and marcantonio, quite a youth, afterwards assisted their father in his productions, and already began to acquire some degree of reputation from their own. when, in the year , their native place was ravaged by the plague, alessandro had the grief to witness the death of his two sons, and, one by one, of the whole of his grandchildren; until left "the last of his race," to lament over the destruction of his kindred, he shortly followed them to the tomb, closing with his death that noble school which the two illustrious veronese had founded in vicenza. yet it did not altogether perish; but was continued by maffei, by carpioni, and by cittadella, three artists who, compared with the maganza, sometimes appear to have sprung from the same academy, either from having studied in vicenza the models they imitated, or because the style, which partakes both of that of paul and palma, was then in high repute, as that of cortona at another period among us. they were all three, like alessandro himself, rapid in their composition; and were their pictures, even belonging to the city, to be enumerated, they would most likely be found to equal those of all the other foreign or native artists employed there. francesco maffei, from vicenza, had been the pupil of peranda, some of whose unfinished pieces he completed. he next undertook to imitate paul veronese, with a tolerable degree of spirit and learning. his style is on a lofty scale; in so much that boschini entitles him the great mannerist, extolling him as the painter of giants. nor is he wanting in a certain grace peculiarly his; which distinguishes him from the mannerists. his picture of st. anna, at san michele di vicenza, besides many works produced at the same place for the public palace, and elsewhere, extremely poetical, full of fine portraits, and coloured in the best venetian taste, show that he was able to compete with more skilful artists than carpioni and cittadella, his contemporaries. and as he, perhaps, did not consider them very formidable rivals, he did not finish his pieces with much care, leaving many of his heads, besides other portions of his figures, incomplete; scanty in his colouring, employing dark grounds, and altogether painting rather for years than for ages. at san francesco, in padua, there is a grand picture of his "paradise," which, owing to this method, has lost almost every trace of colour. this result extinguishes the praise which boschini bestows upon him, that with four touches of his pencil he could make the observer raise his eyebrows with admiration, and is a very excellent warning, we think, for over expeditious artists. their pictures may be said, indeed, to resemble certain children, the offspring of unhealthy parents, who sometimes exhibit a florid countenance in youth, accompanied with every other symptom of health, but, declining as they advance, their constitution becomes exhausted in a few years. giulio carpioni, a pupil to padovanino, and for the same reason familiar with the composition of paul veronese, has assuredly more vivacity, power of expression, and poetry than maffei. he was not, however, equally inclined to grand proportions, and works upon an extensive scale. his figures do not usually exceed the size of those of bassano; and they are more frequently met with in collections than in churches, throughout the whole venetian state. in many noble houses we also find pictures consisting of bacchanals, dreams, fables, and capricci, or fancy pieces, as well as histories, all touched with a spirit and a taste in his tints, which his master himself might have thought worthy of his pencil. he appears to have produced others for the people, if indeed they are not the work of his pupils, or of his son carlo, who is supposed to have followed, in all points, the example of his father; though i never met with any piece that was positively genuine. he was, likewise, a good portrait painter; and in the public council hall at vicenza, as well as in the church of the servi at monte berico, appear the portraits of several of the magistrates in that government, accompanied by their trains; in which, to singular correctness of feature, we meet with much ideal beauty in his representation of the virtues, that he introduced with appropriate and noble inventions. such an artist ought to be well known in venice and vicenza, where he flourished during many years. he passed his latter days in verona, where his contemporary, bartolommeo cittadella, had likewise taken up his residence; last of the three whom i have just before mentioned. it is uncertain whether he was a pupil, or only a companion of carpioni; but he is indisputably his inferior in point of genius and ability. to the same school we may add the name of niccolo miozzi, of vicenza, recorded in the _gioielli pittoreschi_ of boschini; and, though more doubtful, that of marcantonio miozzi, known by his superscription attached to a sacred subject, in possession of the house of muttoni, at rovigo. towards the close of the century, one of the artists in most request was menarola, whose style approaches nearer to the modern. he was pupil to volpato, though chiefly following the manner of carpioni. next to him was costantin pasqualotto, more distinguished for colouring than for design; and antonio de' pieri, called zoppo, of vicenza, who possessed a rapid, but less decided hand; along with some others who may be recognized in this description. still higher in repute than these was pasquale rossi, little of whom remains in vicenza, having chiefly attached himself to the roman school, where he will be found mentioned. gio. bittonte, leaving vicenza, established himself, and painted a good deal at castelfranco; where, from the circumstance of founding a school both of painting and of dancing, he acquired the surname of ballerino. melchiori represents him as pupil to maffei, and master of melchiore, his father, who lived also in castelfranco, where he was much employed, although engaged also at venice, in the casa morosini, where he competed with the cavalier liberi. when the ancient school had become wholly extinct at bassano, there appeared a gio. batista volpati, who produced many pictures for his native state; somewhat resembling carpioni in his capricci and in his style, but more common, perhaps, in his features and whole design. his pupils are said to have been one trivellini, and one bernardoni, both still inferior to their master. he left behind him several treatises upon the pictoric art, which are yet existing in ms. in the rich and select library of count giuseppe remondini. in the preface to these he asserts that he had no master, though he is said, in a ms. at castelfranco, to have been a pupil of novelli. the work is interspersed with good remarks, such as to lead us to suppose him a tolerable theorist; and algarotti took a copy of it, as we learn from the index of his works upon the fine arts, already before the public. we have above alluded to a branch of the veronese school, transplanted to padua, where it flourished with extraordinary success. referring to its origin, and to those veronese artists who lived contemporary with palma, and until the close of the th century, it must be observed, that they maintained the national reputation no less than those of padua, and were even more constant in the good old method of managing their grounds and their style of colouring. i have noticed the name of claudio ridolfi[ ] in a former school, from the circumstance of his having flourished in the pontifical state. he did not, however, desist from his labours in the venetian state, some of which appear in the capital and the adjacent cities, particularly in his native place, and padua. in the celebrated church of s. giustina, there is a very fine piece, representing the honours of the benedictine order, professed by princes, adorned by martyrs, and the nurse of the most distinguished pastors of the holy church. the invention is very appropriate, the execution altogether elegant and well finished, and the ornaments equally rich as in any of his other works. he presented his country with a good disciple of his style, in gio. batista amigazzi, though his chief talent seemed to consist in the excellence of his copies. in san carlo, at verona, there is one taken from a supper by paul veronese, not only finely drawn, but exhibiting colours fresh and vivid even at the present day. still superior to him, and almost equal to his master, we meet with benedetto marini, of urbino, an artist unheard of in his own country, though greatly distinguished at piacenza.[ ] posterior to ridolfi appeared three scholars of felice brusasorci, in addition to creara, an artist less celebrated; all of whom, on the death of their master, pursued their studies at rome. there they imbibed, more or less, the prevailing style; and all of them occupy a distinguished rank in the history of the art. alessandro turchi, surnamed _orbetto_, is, in particular, distinguished among the first of his age; he was called orbetto, observes pozzo, because, when quite a boy, he was in the habit of guiding an old blind mendicant, either his father, or some other person. passeri declares that he derived it from his having a defect in one of his eyes; which was observable in his left eye, as i am informed by signor brandolese, after having seen his portrait, engraved after the original, in possession of the signori vianelli. brusasorci, from certain undoubted symptoms, discovered in him a fine genius for the art; and, giving him the best instructions, in a few years encountered a rival, rather than a disciple. residing afterwards in venice, under carlo caliari, and thence proceeding to rome, he formed a style wholly his own, possessing some strength but more elegance. he established himself in rome, where he entered into competition with the followers of the caracci, with sacchi, and with berrettini; with whom he appears to advantage in the church of the concezione, as well as in a few others. but no city has so many of his pieces in public as verona, to say nothing of those he painted for private persons. the family of the marchesi girardini alone, who patronised him and supported him at rome, for which we have original letters and documents, possesses sufficient to enrich several collections, among which it is amusing to trace his progress from the inferior to the more correct specimens, and from a lower degree of ornament to the highest. some, indeed, have ventured to put him in competition with annibal caracci; a comparison that, in other times, would have created as great a sensation in bologna as the celebrated rape of the bucket, and one which ought not to be listened to, indeed, any where. annibal was a painter worthy of our veneration, and turchi succeeded in imitating his design in the "sisara" of the casa colonna and elsewhere. but he was not so happy in every instance, and, generally, his naked figures, (which approach, in annibal, to those of the ancient greeks,) are not equal to such as he has thrown into costume. on the contrary, passeri, in describing his picture at the camaldolesi, in rome, admits that he did not display _perfect_ taste in his art, while pascoli, in his life of gimignani, says he enjoyed _some_ degree of reputation at rome; an incautious expression, if i mistake not, but which at least shews that turchi is not entitled to a comparison with annibal caracci. still he exhibits so many attractions, that he never fails to please us in every subject. he seems to have aimed at forming an union of various schools, and added to it a certain originality in giving dignity to the portraits introduced into his histories, with the most animated, yet the most delicate complexions. he excelled in the choice and distribution of his colours, among which he introduces a reddish tint, which much enlivens his pictures, and is one of the indications by which we may recognise the author. he is said to have employed exquisite care in the application of his tints, and to have possessed some secret art, by means of which they continue to attract the envy of posterity. the truth is, he selected, purified, and kneaded well his colours, besides consulting chemists upon the subject. from some pictures we feel inclined to turn away in disgust, so extremely do the colours resemble the tints made use of by coach painters; and we have reason to complain of want of refinement in many instances. but how very few apply themselves seriously to select and refine their materials, to make experiments, and to analyse those colours that have been once applied. at the church of san stefano, in verona, there is exhibited his "passion of the forty martyrs," a work that, in regard to depth of colours and foreshortening, partakes much of the lombard; in point of expression and design, of the roman; and in its colouring, of the venetian school. it is one of the most studied, finished, and animated pieces that he produced: there is a choiceness in the heads that approaches guido's; and a skill of composition, that throws into the background of the picture a great portion of the multifarious history, as appearing in a field of vast extent, where his figures are admirably varied, according to the distances in which they are supposed to appear. yet he does not belong to that class of artists who go about in search of personages for their histories, in order to fill them with figures. on the other hand, he appears to take more pleasure in introducing an inferior number. thus his picture of a pietà painted for the church of la misericordia, at verona, exhibits only a dead christ, the virgin, and nicodemus; but the whole so well designed, arranged, and animated, as well as coloured, that it has been esteemed by many his masterpiece, and is certainly one of the best paintings in verona. in that of his epiphany also, in possession of the signori girardini, of which the rough draft is preserved in the casa fattorini, at bologna, he is by no means lavish of his figures; but he succeeded in arraying those of the magi in so noble a manner, as to remind us of titian and bassano. turchi died at rome, leaving behind him two excellent disciples in gio. ceschini, and gio. batista rossi, called il gobbino. the first of these produced copies of his master's works, that had all the appearance of originals. both continued to employ themselves at verona, though declining in importance and in credit in proportion as they advanced in years. pasquale ottini, the same who, with orbetto, completed some pictures by felice, was a good artist in regard to his forms, and of no common expression, particularly in the works he conducted after having seen raffaello's. of this we have a striking specimen in the "slaughter of the innocents," placed at san stefano, although it is subjected to an unfavourable comparison, being placed opposite to one of the finest productions of orbetto. he appears to more advantage, perhaps, at san giorgio, where we meet with his picture of san niccolo, with other saints, in the best venetian style of colouring; whereas, in other instances, his colours are somewhat languid; a defect most probably arising from time, and unfavourable situations. finally, he is in high repute in his own country; and in the learned alessandro carli's _history of verona_, he is mentioned as approaching the nearest of all, in point of excellence, to paul veronese. subsequent to him, and not inferior in talent, we meet with marc antonio bassetti, who, leaving his fellow pupils, set out, very young, to complete his studies at venice. after again joining them, he next transferred his residence to rome; and having copied from the best models of both schools, he ultimately returned to his native place. he is particularly commended by ridolfi in the branch of design, in which he was truly great; add to which, he was an excellent colourist. and he was accustomed to advise those who aimed at good colouring to return, in the first place, to venice, and again to consult the most beautiful productions of the art. there is one of his altarpieces at san stefano, in verona, representing various holy bishops of the city, all arrayed in their sacred habits, all admirably contrasted, and in a taste nearly approaching that of titian, were it not for the vicinity of turchi, who seems here again to throw him somewhat into the shade. he left no succession of the school,[ ] nor, indeed, many works of his own, though they were highly valued. for he was accustomed to say that painting ought not to be pursued by journeymen, like a mechanic art, but with the leisure that is bestowed upon literature, for the sake of the pleasure it affords. it would appear that dante adopted almost the same maxim in his poetry, when he watched for, observed, and encouraged the impressions that nature, the first guide of all true geniuses, implanted in his spirit.[ ] these two friends met their fate together, dying of the plague in the year , as well as many other scholars of brusasorci, mentioned by the commendatore del pozzo. but i omit their names, either because of their early death, or want of talent to distinguish themselves. thus, about the same year, when orbetto had already established himself in rome, the succession of brusasorci's school ceased in verona. the disciples of paul veronese, mentioned subsequent to him, montemezzano, benfatto, verona, and others, died likewise about this period; insomuch that every trace of the municipal school may be said to have disappeared, and it was succeeded by a variety of foreign styles. indeed, for some time before, the young veronese artists had become attached to foreign academies, and several strangers had established themselves in verona. dionisio guerri had formed, under the direction of feti, a very striking and clear style; in himself equal to repairing the loss of many artists. but he died young, in , leaving few works behind him, in a great measure dispersed through foreign collections; and he was much lamented. francesco bernardi, called _bigolaro_, supposed to have been a native of brescia, until the commendatore del pozzo proved him to have been of verona, was an artist educated by the same master. he exhibited, in his picture of the titular saint, at the church of s. carlo, seen in the act of attending his infected brethren, as well as in another piece, a companion to it, all the taste of his master. but he produced much more for private collections, than for the public. the cavalier barca was an artist who sprung from mantua, though he subsequently became a citizen of verona. it is uncertain whether he was instructed by feti. his style is various; and in a pietà of his, remaining at san fermo, he appears a painter capable of producing a good effect; in other pieces, at the scala, he abounds with pictorial grace and beauty, and he is fully worthy of commemoration. the city of bologna, likewise, contributed to repair the loss sustained by verona of so many artists. guido and albani conferred great obligations, by instructing the cavalier coppa (his real name, however, was antonio giarola, or gerola) who is to be enumerated in the list of their best disciples, though he is somewhat too loaded in his composition, and, with a view of catching the sweetness of guido, became wanting in strength of colouring. there is one of his magdalens in the desert, however, placed at the servi, which is full of fine expression. and in the refectory, also, of the veronese college, is his supper of emmaus, a picture conducted in the style of the best venetians. although addicted to the style of guido, he was also considered by albani as one of his favourite pupils, who sent him as court painter to the duke of mantua, as we are informed by malvasia.[ ] from the same academy sprung giacomo locatelli, distinguished for several works, chiefly produced for san procolo, as well as on account of the merit of some of his pupils. they rose into notice in the decline of the art, about the close of the seventeenth century. andrea voltolino, a careful but cold painter, was more fitted to succeed in portraits than in compositions; biagio falcieri, instructed also by the cavalier liberi at venice, possessed much of the fire and imagination abounding in the venetian school. of this he gave an example in his great picture representing the council of trent, where the figure of st. thomas, in the act of overthrowing heretics, appears conspicuous on high, a piece that adorns the church of the domenicans. santo prunato was instructed by these two professors, an artist who brought the veronese school into fresh notice, as we shall have occasion to observe in the following period. the school of moretto continued during this epoch to flourish in brescia; _a master exquisitely delicate in his colours, and extremely diligent, as is evident from his works_. such is the opinion expressed by vasari; but he did not always preserve the same excellence. there is not the same degree of finish in his disciples, and it was, indeed, too difficult, while so large a portion of the state put a high value upon celerity of hand, to pursue more tedious processes. the brescian artists who succeeded him, having in part received a venetian education, the city abounded in mannerists and the class of _tenebrosi_. still there appeared among these some excellent painters. antonio gandini and pietro moroni, or maroni, are enumerated among the pupils of paul. the former sometimes imitated vanni, without neglecting palma; vast, varied, and ornate in his compositions, an artist every way deserving of consideration in the grand history of the cross, which he painted in the old cathedral, where his son bernardino, a poor imitator of his father, also employed himself. moroni studied a good deal the works of titian, and was one of the most accurate and fine designers the school could, at that time, boast; nor does he yield to any of his contemporaries in the strong body, and in the clearness of his colouring. such at least he appeared to me at san barnaba, in his picture of christ going to mount calvary, when compared with other productions of the same period exhibited there. filippo zanimberti, pupil to peranda, and an artist of fine character, and a fine hand, as well as a very natural colourist, has never been sufficiently appreciated in brescia. but in venice, where he resided many years, and where he painted with real genius and skill for different churches, he is very highly esteemed. in santa maria nuova appears his grand picture of the manna, so much commended by ridolfi, by boschini, and by zanetti; though he chiefly seems to have employed himself in the ornament of palaces. he possessed singular talent for drawing small figures, and composing fables and histories, which were eagerly sought after, insomuch that the poet of the venetian paintings affirms that whoever possessed zanimberti's pictures, was sure of his money. francesco zugni, of brescia, is mentioned by ridolfi among the best of palma's disciples. he could not compete with him in the beauty of his forms and attitudes, though he surpassed him in the fulness of his colouring, and in the spirit in which he conducted his works. these were for the most part in fresco, and frequently exhibited the perspectives of sandrini, an architect of great merit. with him he was employed in the hall of the podestà, in that of the capitano, and in several villas. he displayed equal excellence in his oil paintings, as we gather from that of the circumcision at the grazie, and from some small figures adorning one of the choirs, designed and touched with great spirit. grazio cossale, or cozzale, produced a variety of pieces upon a large scale, still remaining in his native province. he was gifted with a rich imagination, and of a character, compared by cozzando, the historian of brescia, to that of palma; and he indeed appears to have emulated his facility without abusing it. his picture of the presentation, which he left at the church of the miracoli; his epiphany at the grazie, and other pieces dispersed throughout brescia, are all calculated to arrest the eye of the spectator, who must likewise possess little feeling, should he fail to lament the unhappy fate of so great a man, who fell by the hand of one of his own sons. neither in camillo rama, ottavio amigoni, nor in jacopo barucco, all disciples of palma, have i met with any works of equal beauty throughout that city, the last of whom, indeed, has loaded his pieces with a more than ordinary degree of shade. amigoni, who had been pupil to gandino, likewise held his school, in which he counted, among other scholars, pompeo ghiti, an artist who, under zoppo of lugano, succeeded in improving his manner, or rendered it at least more powerful. he possessed a rich imagination, excellent in the art of design, and in his touch similar to, though perhaps not so strong as the luganese. francesco paglia was a pupil and imitator of guercino, and the father of antonio and angelo, both devoted to the art. he was most successful in his portraits, though he painted also scriptural pieces; one of the most esteemed of which is to be seen at la carità. he was excellent in the laying on of his colours, and in chiaroscuro, but displayed little spirit, while his proportions were frequently too long and slender. but to describe minutely the manner of the successors of ghiti and paglia, would occupy too much of our space; such are the names of tortelli, very spirited in venetian composition, of cappelli, instructed likewise by pasinelli at bologna, and by baciccio at rome, along with some others of a more modern character, who succeeded tolerably in the path marked out by the artists of bologna, and a few of whom may be referred to the ensuing epoch. during the time of palma and the venetian mannerists, the art had been maintained in bergamo by the successors of lotto, and of his contemporaries. we meet with ample commendations of gio. paolo lolmo, a good artist in diminutive pictures. in the altarpiece of santi rocco and sebastiano at s. maria maggiore, and executed about , not one of his earliest pieces, he displayed a great partiality for the design of the fourteenth century; diligent, a minute observer of refinements in figures, though not sufficiently modern. but there were two excellent artists, altogether in the modern style, who flourished at the same period; salmeggia and cavagna, who competed with one another in perfect amity, for many years, in ornamenting their native province. one of them died in , the other in the following year. enea salmeggia, called talpino, received instructions in the art from the campi at cremona, and from the procaccini in milan; whence proceeding to rome, he studied for a period of fourteen years the models of raffaello, imitating him during the remainder of his life. orlandi and other writers join in extolling his san vittore, at the olivetani in milan, as well as a few other of his works, observing that they had been even ascribed to raffaello. and whoever attentively examines that fine specimen, will not feel inclined to refuse salmeggia one of the most distinguished places in the rank of raffaello's followers. the clearness of his contours (sometimes, however, carried to the borders of littleness) the expression of his youthful countenances, the smoothness of his pencil and the flow of his drapery, together with a certain graceful air in the motions and expressions, sufficiently mark him for an admirer of that sovereign master, however much inferior to him in point of dignity, in imitation of the antique, and in felicity of composition. his method of colouring was also different. he affects greater variety of colours in his draperies; the tints in a large portion of his works are at present faded; and the shades as in other pictures of the same period, are much altered. yet it is probable that this great artist, as it has been observed of poussin and of raffaello himself, did not always bestow the same degree of care upon his colouring, satisfied with displaying from time to time his surpassing excellence in this department. in the church of la passione at milan, he produced his christ praying in the garden, as well as his picture of the flagellazione, works conducted in his best style. the former of these is finely coloured in the manner of the bassani; and the latter, of a more lofty and animated character, is superior to the other even in force of colouring. bergamo boasts other specimens of him, and in particular in the two great altars of santa marta and of santa grata. there we meet with two noble pictures, each of which may boast its separate admirers who prefer it to the other; and each displays an union of colours, at once so fresh, clear, and beautiful, that we are never weary of contemplating them. in both he has observed the same general composition; the virgin being represented on high, crowned with a glory, while below her are seen the figures of several saints; but in the second, perhaps, he has employed a greater degree of care. here he has introduced a splendid variety of shortenings, of attitudes, and of lineaments; and even inserted the city of bergamo, with some fine architecture in the style of paul veronese. the figures are arrayed with extreme care, among which appears a bishop in his sacred paraphernalia, that serves to remind us of titian himself. his pictures for private ornament are rare and valuable, but not sufficiently known beyond his native province and its vicinity, a circumstance common to many very excellent artists belonging to all our schools. italy, indeed, is too abundantly supplied with distinguished names to admit of the whole of them being generally known and estimated as they deserve. the style of enea was not such as to be easily maintained, without consulting the great examples of raffaello as he had done. his two sons, francesco and chiara, although educated by their father, succeeded rather in imitating his studies and his figures, than in thoroughly penetrating into the principles of his art. the fruits, however, of a good education were sufficiently apparent in them; and when placed in competition with some of their contemporaries, they appear, if not very animated, at least very sedulous artists, and greatly exempt from the faults of the mannerists. the city is in possession of many of their public works; in some of the best of which their father is supposed to have afforded them his assistance. gianpaolo cavagna seems in some way to have escaped the notice of boschini, and even of orlandi, who had bestowed so much commendation upon his rival. he ranks, in his native province, as high as salmeggia, and he certainly appears to have possessed a still more enlarged genius, more decision, and more talent for extensive works. a pupil of morone, the great portrait painter, as we have already mentioned, he evinced a taste for the venetian school, attaching himself in particular to paul veronese, in whose style he conducted some of his best productions. he was ambitious of surpassing him likewise in point of design, which he assuredly did in his naked figures, exhibiting even the adult form with a degree of masterly power. he had acquired the best method of painting in fresco, in his native place, and he succeeded in it admirably, as appears from the choir of santa maria maggiore, where he represented the virgin received into heaven, a very spirited and varied composition, abounding with figures of angels and of prophets, truly great; the distinguishing characteristic, perhaps, of this artist's genius. nor did he appear to less advantage in oils, more particularly when the immediate vicinity of other celebrated painters put his talents to the test. of this kind the most successful, perhaps, are his daniel in the lions' den, and his picture of san francesco receiving the stigmata, forming side pictures to one of the best altarpieces by lorenzo lotto at san spirito; yet they are nevertheless worthy of that distinguished post. his crucifixion, between various saints, placed at santa lucia, has been still more highly extolled as one of the finest productions the city has to boast, and preferred by many judges to any of the altarpieces of talpino. i shall abstain from expressing an opinion upon a subject in which artists themselves would disagree, merely observing that it is more difficult to meet with inferior or careless pieces from the hand of salmeggia than from cavagna's. he had also a son a painter of the name of francesco, called cavagnuola, who, surviving his father, acquired some degree of celebrity. he attached himself wholly to the style of gianpaolo, as well as certain foreigners sprung from the same school, such as girolamo grifoni, in whose productions we seem to trace the copy of a copy of the style of paul. if the artists named santa croce belong to bergamo, and to one family, as we are informed in the _guida_ of padua, we ought here to insert the name of pietro paolo, the least distinguished among the santa croce, but not unworthy of commemoration for one of his madonnas at the arena, and for other pictures at different churches in padua, in all of which he appears attached to the school of cavagna, or at least to the less mannered class of the venetians. subsequent to the above two artists, we meet with the name of francesco zucco, a good pupil of the campi at verona, and of moroni at bergamo. from this last he acquired the art of giving a singular degree of spirit to his portraits, and from paul veronese the mode of ornamenting them with most taste and fancy. even in his larger compositions he sometimes adhered so closely to the same artist, that several of them were ascribed even by his fellow citizens to paul, a circumstance that occurred to his pictures of the nativity and of an epiphany, on the organ of san gottardo. he adopted, moreover, a variety of manners, apparently ambitious of displaying to the public his power of imitating cavagna or talpino, as he pleased. contemporary with these artists, he so far rivalled them, (as in his san diego at le grazie, or in the large altar at the cappuccine,) as to approve himself worthy of such emulation. in other works he gives us occasion to wish for a better union of his colours, in which he cannot be pronounced equal to the first masters of the school, so admirable in this department. subsequent to the year , there was no want of artists of ability at bergamo, among whom we may mention a fabio di pietro ronzelli, whose style, if not sufficiently select and ideal, was at least solid and robust. to his we may add the name of carlo ceresa, an artist of much study and research, pleasing in his colouring, and having apparently formed his taste upon the models of the best age, successful in giving ideal beauty to his countenances. the former of these, most probably the son of one piero, known as a good portrait painter, and respectable in point of composition, painted the martyrdom of san alessandro, for the church of santa grata, while the latter added the two side pictures without the least traces of mannerism. contemporary with both these, domenico ghislandi distinguished himself as a painter of frescos, more particularly in architecture. he was the father of fra vittore, called likewise frate paolotto, whom we shall have occasion to mention hereafter. at present it will hardly be desirable that i should extend my remarks to other names scarcely heard of beyond the limits of their native province; though in justice to the city i must observe that in its dearth of native talent, it spared no expense in decorating public places with the works of the best foreign artists, of every country. ample proofs of this liberality may be seen in the cathedral and the adjacent church of santa maria maggiore. such are among the advantages enjoyed by cities, which are equally in possession of taste and of riches. but when deficient in either of these, they will be compelled to adopt the plan pursued in rural occupations, where each agriculturist employs the oxen that belong to his own fields. crema, at this period, might pride itself on having produced such an artist as carlo urbini, who, though of limited genius, was very pleasing skilful in perspective, and equal to grand historical pieces. he had afforded a specimen of his powers in one of the public halls, in which he exhibited national battles and victories, besides having employed his talents in different churches. in ornamenting that of san domenico, however, an artist of the name of uriele, most probably of the gatti family at cremona, was preferred before him, though extremely inferior. this injustice seemed to alienate his mind from his native place, and he proceeded to milan, by whose writers he has been recorded with honour. yet his history piece at san lorenzo, conducted in fresco, seems to contain rather the seeds than the fruits of noble painting, and he appears to greater advantage in oil colours, as we gather from his picture of our saviour taking leave of his virgin mother previous to his sufferings, a production ornamenting santa maria near san celso, where it may compete with the best lombard masters of that time. lomazzo makes mention of him in reference to such as produced pieces most suitable to the places for which they were intended; an useful practice, familiar to the old masters, who took care to adapt their pictures, not only to places, but to household furniture, insomuch that in many of their vases and drinking cups, which we meet with in the kingdom of naples, are represented, for the most part, scenes of festivity, mysteries, and fables of the bacchanalian god. subsequent to him flourished jacopo barbello, whose paintings in various churches at bergamo are extolled by pasta, more particularly in that of san lazzaro, an altarpiece representing the titular saint, remarkable no less for its dignity of design, than for decision of hand. in the series of this school i find mention of no other artist after him, a school distinguished in its origin by the name of polidoro, and afterwards adorned by few but very select artists. we shall next proceed, according to our plan, to treat of certain painters of landscape, of battle pieces, of perspective, flowers, and similar subjects. henry de bles, a bohemian, better known under the name of civetta, an owl, from the frequent introduction of that bird into his landscapes, was an artist who resided for a long period in the venetian state. besides his specimens of landscape to be met with in venice, and which uniformly present some traces of ancient crudeness, he painted a nativity of our lord, for san nazaro in brescia, resembling in its style of composition the manner of bassano. its prevailing tone is sky-coloured, and in the features of its countenances it partakes of a foreign expression. i have also seen small pictures from his hand intended for cabinets, often thronged with minute figures, known by the name of _chimere_ and _stregozzi_, or witch pieces, a kind in which he was extremely fanciful. but on this head we shall have occasion to return to him in a short time, and proceed to a flemish artist, who flourished, about the beginning of , in the state. his name was lodovico pozzo, or pozzoserrato, called also da trevigi, from his long residence in that city, where he died, leaving it, as federici relates, beautifully decorated with specimens of his hand. he excelled in the representation of distant objects, like his rival paol brilli of venice, in such as were viewed near; and he is more pleasing and select than the latter in, his variation of clouds and distinctions of light; while at the same time he was celebrated for his altarpieces. subsequent to these appeared several foreign artists, eminent for their skill in landscape, in the time of boschini at venice, where several specimens of their art must be still in existence. they were afterwards extolled likewise by orlandi. there was a mr. filgher, a german, who very happily represented the different seasons of the year, and even the different lights throughout the day; a mons. giron, a french artist, extremely natural in all kind of views, both of a terrestrial and aerial character, and a m. cusin who imitated the noble manner of titian in his landscapes, with much success. nor ought we to omit biagio lombardo, a citizen of venice, an artist highly commended by ridolfi, who declares that he rivalled both the best italian and flemish painters in his landscape. girolamo vernigo, surnamed also da' paesi, and particularly celebrated in his native city of verona, where he fell a victim to the plague in , is entitled to rank in the same list. jacopo maffei succeeded admirably in his display of incidents at sea, a picture of which kind was engraved by boschini. another artist of the name of bartolommeo calomato has been pointed out to me by his excellency persico, in his cabinet of medals; and he ought apparently to be referred to this epoch, judging from his less vigorous and less refined style, although graceful and lively in his expression. he was remarkable for his small pictures representing both rural and civic views, along with small figures very animated and well composed. a taste for battle pieces had begun to gain ground in this part of italy from the time of borgognone. the first who procured for himself a name in this branch was francesco monti, of brescia, and a pupil of ricchi, as well as of borgognone himself. he was commonly called ii brescianino delle battaglie, the brescian battle painter, in which line he exercised his talents in different italian cities, ultimately establishing himself at parma, where he opened a school, and instructed one of his sons in the same style of painting. he pursued, as far as lay in his power, his master's example, though he remained much inferior to him in point of colouring. his productions are not scarce, but in many collections they do not appear under his name, being frequently attributed to the school at large of borgognone. one of his fellow citizens and scholars, called fiamminghino, but whose real name was angiolo everardi, acquired great reputation also by his battle scenes, but they are seldom to be met with, owing to his having died young. another of his disciples, a native of verona, named lorenzo comendich, flourished also about the year , in high repute at milan. antonio calza, a veronese, is to be referred to the same period. being ambitious of representing military actions, he left the school of cignani, and transferred his residence to rome, where, assisted by cortesi himself, he met with success. he spent his time in tuscany, at milan, and in particular at bologna. there we meet with his pictures pretty abundantly, innumerable copies of them having been taken by his pupils, who by frequently varying the disposition of the groups, succeeded in giving a seeming novelty to his pictures. upon the authority of the melchiori ms., i am inclined to add to the list of good battle painters, agostino lamma, a venetian, who employed himself for collections; and in that of sig. gio. batista curti, there is a piece of his representing the siege of vienna, very excellent in point of taste, modelled according to his custom upon that of matteo stom. towards the year , when the three artists, civetta, bosch, and carpioni, had already filled the galleries with that very tasteful class of pictures called capricci; when salvator rosa had produced such curious examples of his transformations and necromancies; and brughel, surnamed _dall'inferno_, had drawn from the scenes of that abyss, and from its monsters, a large supply for every capital in italy; at that period another artist, gioseffo ens, or enzo, the son of him i have mentioned in the preface, and father of daniele, a tolerably good figurist, was acquiring rapid celebrity in venice with some highly imaginative little pictures, partaking in some measure of the style of the above artists. for the chief part they represent allegorical fictions, in which are introduced sphinxes, chimeræ, and monsters in grotesque shape; or to speak more correctly, perhaps, extravagances of imagination quite unauthorized by ancient example, and formed out of the grotesque union of various parts of different animals, much in the same manner as they are seen by persons in their delirious dreams. boschini adduces an example of this strange poetical folly at page , where pallas is seen putting to flight a troop of these wild fancies, haunting an old decayed mansion, buried in fire and smoke, as the symbol of virtue dispersing the shades of ignorance and error. in such a career did enzo arrive at the honour of being made a chevalier of the cross, by his holiness pope urban viii. subsequently, however, he applied himself with more judgment to the study of truth, and left behind him, in venice, several altarpieces, one of which adorning the church of the ognissanti is extremely beautiful. i have also noticed in different collections some burlesques of dwarfs, &c. from the hand of faustino bocchi, a brescian, and pupil to fiamminghino. he was admirable in his portraits of these embryos, as it were, of the human race; representations by no means displeasing to some of the ancients, and of which we have examples afforded us in what are termed etruscan vases. in the production of fables, in which the dwarfs were to appear as actors, he displayed the most fanciful combinations, and in the carrara collection at bergamo, there is represented a sacrifice of these pigmies, and a popular feast in honour of an idol, full of humour, in which one of them is seen caught in the claws of a crab, while some of his own party attempt to save him, and his mother hastens, half distracted, to his relief. in order to convey a better idea of their size he inserted a small water melon, which appears almost like a mountain by their side. the design does not seem to differ much from that of timanthes, who introduced little satyrs, in the act of measuring one of the cyclops' thumbs with their thyrsus, as he lies asleep, to give a just notion of his bulk. it is to be regretted that bocchi became addicted to the sect of the _tenebrosi_, owing to which many of his labours seem to be fast losing their value. the same period likewise abounded in painters of flowers and fruits, in every part of italy; but i observe that their names are, for the most part, forgotten, or where they exist in books, are accompanied by no mention of their works. fortunately, among the pictures at rovigo, i meet with the name of francesco mantovano, whether his surname or patronymic is uncertain, an artist who excelled in similar works about the time of borghini; besides those of antonio bacci and antonio lecchi, or lech, both florists, and all mentioned by martinioni in his _additions to sansovino_. to the number of these add the name of marchioni, a native of rovigo, an artist considered as the bernasconi of the venetian school, from her singular skill in flower painting, though not equalling the roman lady in point of celebrity. their works are to be seen in some of the collections at rovigo, which abound also with many celebrated figure painters, no less of the venetian than of other italian schools. pictures of animals do not seem to have been much in vogue with venetian artists about this period, if, indeed, we are not to include giacomo da castello in the venetian state. from verbal communications i learn that in collections at venice he is not at all rare. i have seen only a few specimens at the caza rezzonico, and these consisting of various species of birds, drawn with great truth and force of colouring, as well as beautifully disposed. domenico maroli, a painter of flocks and herds, as well as of other rural subjects, was born at messina, and exercised his talents in venice. he was intimate with boschini, who extolled him as a new bassano, and as a specimen of his talents, inserted in his _carta del navegar_ an engraving after one of his designs. it represents a shepherd with his flocks, figures of cows with a dog, very forcibly and beautifully drawn; and it is altogether one of the best designs that has been engraved for that work. there resided also at venice, where he was employed in the casa sagredo, and in that of contarini, an artist named gio. fayt di anversa, who, in addition to his paintings of fruits, and various rural implements, was esteemed one of the best copyists of animals, both alive and dead, in which he displayed a very polished, natural, and novel manner. among the perspective pieces of this epoch, ornamenting different collections, those by malombra, as i have before stated, have been particularly commended by ridolfi. and in architectural views we may mention aviani, a native of vicenza, very superior in this branch, as well as in sea views and landscapes. he was born during the lifetime of palladio, or at least while his school still flourished, and resided in a city where every street presented specimens of a taste for architecture. he thus produced pictures of so fine a character, filled with little figures by carpioni, under his direction, so extremely pleasing, that it is surprising he did not acquire equal celebrity with viviano and other first rate artists. probably he did not long flourish, and then, for the most part, in his native place. in the foresteria, or stranger's lodge, of the padri serviti, are four of his views, exhibiting temples and other magnificent edifices, while several more are to be met with in possession of the marchesi capra, in the celebrated rotunda of palladio, as well as of other nobles in various places. he likewise decorated the ceilings, or cupolas of several churches. indeed there was then a pretty considerable school established for this branch of the art in brescia. tommaso sandrino was an artist who distinguished himself in it, as well as ottavio viviani his pupil, though he displayed a less sound and more loaded style than his master. faustino moretto, belonging to the same state, employed himself more at venice than at brescia. domenico bruni was an artist highly extolled by orlandi; he exercised his talents at the carmini, in his native place, as well as at venice, along with giacomo pedrali, also a brescian, who flourished in the time of boschini. together with these appeared bortolo cerù, whose scenes have been engraved in aqua fortis by boschini himself. zanetti also records the name of giuseppe alabardi, called schioppi, and of giulio cesare lombardo, an artist still superior to him. i might here introduce other artists and architects of the ornamental class, distinguished in proportion to their antiquity; for towards the close of the century architectural exhibitions became too much loaded with vases, figures, and a variety of ornament, which detracted much from that simplicity of taste so essential in some way towards the effect of every thing really great or beautiful. a kind of minor painting is believed to have been introduced at this epoch, by a priest called evaristo baschenis, from bergamo. he flourished contemporary with the three great artists, cavagna, salmeggia, and zucchi; and he appears to have been instructed by one of these in representing every kind of musical instrument with much nature and effect. he arranged them upon tables covered with the most beautiful kinds of cloth, and mingled with them music books, leaves, boxes, fruits, inkstands, &c., drawn just as they might happen to lie; and from these objects he composed pictures executed with so much art as quite to deceive the spectator. such was their effect, that they are still very much valued in different collections. there were formerly eight of them to be seen in the library of san giorgio, the ingenuity of which has been highly commended by zanetti. [footnote : in the _memorie trevigiane_, i find that this artist was known also at rome, in the guide to which place, however, his name is not to be met with. i have some doubt it may have been confounded with that of gio. carbone. but this last was from s. severino, and a follower of caravaggio; the other a venetian, attached to titian; and, in some pictures he produced at san niccolò of trevigi, he subscribes not _carbonis_, but _carboncini opus_.] [footnote : let no one, from this instance, altogether condemn the use of varnishes in the restoration of paintings; for by the application of mastic, and of gum water, according to all the most recent experiments, the colour does not suffer. but oil is injurious to ancient paintings, for the new never becomes incorporated with the old, and, in a short time, every fresh touch is converted into a stain.] [footnote : _quattro-centisti._ artists of the fourteenth century.] [footnote : literally from below to above. foreshortening on a ceiling.] [footnote : vide pp. and .] [footnote : v. tom. ii. p. ; and, in the same place, i gave him as a pupil to dario pozzo, on the authority of the commendatore del pozzo. but writers disagree in regard to the chronology of this man; which, until it be further cleared up, may rest, for me, without this honour.] [footnote : an account of him may be found, tom. ii. p. , and in the series of painters of the barocci school.] [footnote : melchiori informs me of a pupil of his, unknown to pozzo, probably because a non-resident in verona. this was father massimo cappucino, a veronese by birth, and, in the historian's opinion, an excellent artist. in proof of this, he mentions four large pictures, placed in the dome of montagnana, besides several altarpieces, distributed by him among the churches of his order. along with this ecclesiastic i find mention of two contemporary lay brothers, who assisted him in the art, neither of them unworthy of being placed upon record. these are fra semplice, a native of verona, and pupil to brusasorci, and fra santo, of venice; both of whom were particularly employed in painting for churches and convents, within the venetian territory. fra semplice produced also some for rome. a fine picture of san felice, from his hand, placed at castelfranco, was engraved in .] [footnote : io mi son un che quando amore spira noto; ed a quel modo che detta dentro vo significando.--_purg._ c. .] [footnote : tom. ii. p. .] venetian school. epoch iv. _of exotic and new styles in venice._ if, according to the plan laid down by pliny, and which i have hitherto observed, each several epoch ought to be deduced from one or more masters of a school, who may have given a new aspect to the art, it will be proper, in this instance, to vary my system. the epoch here nearest to us will be found to take its rise at a period when the venetian artists, having almost wholly abandoned their national models, attached themselves some to one, and some to another foreign method, or formed out of them one of their own. such were the times of which signor zanetti, in his work, observes, "there appeared in venice as many different manners, as there were artists to practise them." this would appear to have been the state of the art towards the end of the th century. those artists who followed, approaching still nearer to modern times, although various in point of style, resembled each other in a study of ideal beauty, and all agreed in copying from the modern roman, or bolognese schools, with the addition, however, of their own defects. still the old masters were not, on this account, underrated; but were rather spoken of as the ancients who flourished at a golden period, whose customs are to be admired, indeed, but not imitated. fashion, as it sometimes happens also in sciences, had usurped the seat of reason; while the artists who followed in her train alleged in excuse, that the age was fond of such novelties, and that it was incumbent upon them to second its inclination, in justice to their own fortunes. amidst these changes, the venetian school, which had always preserved its ascendency in point of colouring, then began to alter, losing the truth of nature, as it became more brilliant. thus few artists flourished at that period who might not, more or less, be termed mannerists in colouring. but in other respects the school appears to have improved, and particularly in treating its history pieces more appropriately, without the introduction of portraits, dresses, and other accessaries, ill adapted to them; a defect to which it had been more attached, and had more obstinately adhered, than any other of the schools. yet it cannot be denied, that during this period of the decline of art throughout italy, the venetian school shone peculiarly conspicuous in the number of superior inventors it produced. for whilst lower italy aimed at nothing beyond the striking contrasts of the followers of cortona; whilst in so many schools of upper italy, the imitators of the imitators of the caracci were esteemed the great models; in venice, and the adjacent state, various styles were seen to spring up, which, though not perfect, were at least original, and valuable in their way; if, indeed, the whole of europe has not been deceived in its estimation of them, purchasing the pictures of the ricci, of tiepolo, of canaletto, of rotari, and of numerous other artists of the same time, at immense sums. but we must take a more particular survey of them. the cavalier andrea celesti, who died in the early part of the century, was disciple to ponzoni, but without becoming his imitator. as an artist, he is very pleasing, fertile in noble images, flowing in his outlines, with delightful scenery, with airs, with features, and with draperies all graceful, and often resembling paul veronese. his style of colouring, also, was not remote from nature, equally lucid, pleasing, and soft. owing to his fondness for the chiaroscuro, one of the chief attractions of his style, or rather, perhaps, to the imperfection of his grounds, there are few of his productions that continue to preserve their original beauty. occasionally he seems to belong to the sect of tenebrosi, and his middle tints have in some instances disappeared, destroying the harmony that in some of his best-conducted pictures was admirable. his distinguishing character was a happy audacity of hand, in which he is excelled by very few. he painted both history, and altarpieces for churches, a specimen of which is seen in his _probatica_ at the ascension. in the public palace there is one of his histories from the old testament, abounding with all that masterly talent for which he was so remarkable, creating at once admiration and surprise. he produced pieces for private ornament, from profane history, with conversations, games, and rencounters, like caravaggio's. alberto calvetti, an inferior artist, educated in his school, resembles him as little in talent, as, for the most part, in his style. antonio zanchi da este was an artist, also, better known in venice for the number, than for the excellence of his works. his style is altogether distinct from that of the foregoing, and it is uncertain whether he derived it from his master ruschi, or from some other of the sect of naturalists whom we have before described. such, at least, appears the cast of his genius, common in its forms, sombre in its colours; but nevertheless exciting surprise, by a certain fulness and felicity of hand, by its picturesque spirit, by its effect of chiaroscuro, and by a grand general result, which imposes upon us by its power. if we examine more particularly into his manner, we shall not unfrequently discover an incorrectness of design, along with that kind of indecision, and indistinctness of outline, which is mostly the resource of weak, or, at least, of very hasty artists. he chiefly attached himself to tintoretto, some traces of whom may be found in his style. in the college of s. rocco, where that great master rendered his name immortal, we behold one of the best specimens of zanchi. the subject, admirably fitted to his manner, contributed greatly to his success. he has there given a bold exhibition of the great plague that afflicted venice in , a picture filled with a concourse of the sick, the dying, and the dead, borne to one universal grave. opposite to this grand painting there is another from the hand of pietro negri, his pupil, as is supposed, but more probably his rival, which represents the liberation of the city from that fatal scourge; and in it, too, we perceive the peculiar ease, and the manner of zanchi, somewhat improved, however, and ennobled in its forms. francesco trevisani, another of his pupils, took up his residence at rome, in the list of whose professors he has already been commended (tom. ii. p. ). gio. bonagrazia, however, remained in the venetian state; and acquired some reputation in his native town and province of trevigi, more particularly for his paintings at san vito. antonio molinari belonged, likewise, to the same school, but almost wholly renounced the maxims he had acquired in it.[ ] his style is by no means equally sustained; a case that frequently occurs to such as abandon the methods in which they have been educated, and attempt to strike into new paths. i have seen some of his pictures at venice, and elsewhere, in fine relief, and others quite the contrary; at times, too, he appears beautiful, but cold. in the vigour of his powers, however, when he produced the works most decisive of his merits, such as his history of oza, at the corpus domini, he displays a style no less solid than pleasing, and which equally satisfies the judgment and the eye. there is a study both of design and of expression, ample beauty of forms, richness of drapery, with a taste and harmony of tints not surpassed by any artist of the times. we may mention, likewise, as distinguished by their manner, antonio bellucci, and giovanni segala, two painters who, like their masters, became addicted to the use of strong shades. yet they possessed sufficient intelligence to derive some advantage even from a wrong direction of their powers. for the former disposed them in grand masses, yet delicate, and moreover united to pleasing colouring; while the latter made use of dark grounds, which he contrasted with very spirited lights, and with a skill that enlivens while it enchants us. indeed, the style of both seemed adapted for great works, and both possessed genius enough to conduct them well. segala, however, is preferred by zanetti to his contemporary, and his picture of the conception, executed for the college of la carità, is particularly extolled by him, and, in truth, he there competes with, if he does not surpass, some of the first painters of the age. we ought to estimate the merit of bellucci from those specimens he conducted with most care, and upon the best grounds, such as his scripture piece in the church of the spirito santo. he appears to most advantage, perhaps, in small figures, many of which he inserted in the landscapes of the celebrated tempesta. when at vienna, he became court painter to joseph i. and to charles vi.; and subsequently to other german princes, which he chiefly owed to this kind of talent.[ ] to this epoch, also, belongs the name of gio. antonio fumiani, who acquired from the bolognese school, in which he was educated, an excellent taste, both in composition and design. and from the works of paul, which he studied with assiduity, he obtained a knowledge of architectural and other ornaments. some have considered him deficient in warmth of tints, and in a just counterpoise of lights and shades, to which i should add, also in expression; appearing, as he does to me, cold in all his attitudes, even beyond the custom of this school. perhaps his dispute of jesus with the doctors, at the church of la carità, is his finest work. bencovich, having resided at bologna, will be enumerated among the followers of cignani. nearly contemporary with fumiani, though he flourished longer and painted more, was the cav. niccolo bambini, a pupil of mazzoni, in venice, and afterwards of maratta, at rome. there he became accomplished in design, exact and elegant, and capable of sustaining those noble conceptions derived from nature, which he developed in very enlarged works, both of oil and fresco. fortunate, indeed, had he succeeded as well in his colouring; in which branch he was so sensible of his own mediocrity, as to forbid his scholars practising the art from his pictures. his taste is sometimes wholly roman, as in his altarpiece at san stefano, executed soon after his return from rome. at other times, he has a more flowing manner, like that of liberi, which he imitated for several years with success, ever afterwards retaining the beauty of his heads, especially in his women. again he occasionally soars above himself, and in such works as he himself conceived and executed, and which were afterwards re-touched and animated, as it were, by cassana, the genoese, he shines as a great portrait painter, and a very powerful colourist. in the _guida_ of zanetti, we meet with the names of giovanni and stefano bambini, two of his sons, and most probably his pupils, though from the same, and from another more extensive work, where he makes no mention of them, we can gather that they were held in very small esteem. girolamo brusaferro, and gaetano zompini were also his pupils, and ambitious, as well, of imitating ricci, forming a kind of mixed style not altogether destitute of originality. the second of these received honourable commissions from the court of spain, in which he displayed a rich fund of imagination, and, in some measure, distinguished himself by his engravings. gregorio lazzarini was pupil to rosa, and not only freed himself from the sombre sect, but rising into great reputation, wholly banished it from the venetian school, of which, for accuracy of design, he might be pronounced to be the raffaello. whoever contemplates the pictures of lazzarini would, at first, suppose he must have received his education at bologna, or rather, perhaps, at rome. yet he never left venice, and by the strength of his genius alone, acquired the esteem of the most learned professors in the art, and particularly of maratta, a very scrupulous panegyrist of his contemporaries. thus the venetian ambassador at rome, having occasion to apply to him for a picture, intended to ornament the hall of the scrutinio, he declined the commission, expressing his surprise that it should be deemed requisite to apply to him at rome, while they had lazzarini at venice. and the latter artist produced a piece which justified the judgment of maratta, representing in the noblest manner the triumphal memory of morosini, surnamed by the venetians, peloponnesiaco, which adorns the forementioned hall. he most distinguished himself by his picture of san lorenzo giustiniani, painted for the patriarchal church; perhaps the best specimen in oil displayed by the venetian school during this period, whether for its taste of composition, its elegance of contours, or the original beauty and variety of its countenances and its attitudes. it possesses, likewise, force of colouring, in which he was not always equally successful. in small figures he was extremely graceful, a specimen of which may be seen in a choir of santa caterina, at vicenza, where he executed some very beautiful histories, in the most glowing colours imaginable. the last altarpiece, bearing his own name, was completed by his excellent pupil, giuseppe camerata, who in this, as well as other pieces produced for churches, pursued the same career as his master. another of lazzarini's pupils, however, silvestro manaigo, persevered in an opposite course, for though of a fine character, he was too rapid, and too much of a mannerist. there flourished, likewise, at that period, two artists of trevisi, francesco, included in the list of the roman school, and angiolo trevisani, who, both by birth and domicile, must be claimed for that of venice. fine in his inventive pieces, as we gather from those at la carità, and various other churches in the capital, he was still more celebrated for his portraits. in exercising this branch, he formed a style founded upon nature, not, indeed, sublime, but very select, and in part conformable to the schools then in vogue. his pencil displayed diligence and research, especially in his management of the chiaroscuro. jacopo amigoni can scarcely be justly estimated in venice, where, if we except his picture of the visitation at the monastery of san filippo, there is nothing of his remaining in public in his best manner; that which he acquired by studying the masterpieces of the flemish school in flanders. it was there that his genius, naturally fertile and animated, uniting with facility qualities of grandeur and of beauty, and seizing upon the finest subject for copious histories, also discovered the kind of colouring he had in vain sought for at venice. there, too, he "_achieved the art of attaining, by force of shades, even to pure black, which colour he employed to produce perfect clearness, without injuring the beauty of his piece_:" thus we are informed by signor zanetti. had he succeeded in giving a little more relief to his pictures, and employed less care in giving brilliance to every part of his composition, he would have appeared to more advantage; but only in the eyes of good judges, as the multitude could not well be presented with any thing more calculated to enchant them than one of his pictures. nor was it without reason that his style was so much applauded throughout england, germany, and spain, in which last country he died, when painter to the court, in . various productions of his hand are to be met with, though but rarely, in possession of private families in italy, chiefly consisting of little histories, conversations, and similar pieces, in the manner of the flemish artists. of the flemish, i say, in respect to the size, not the perfection of the drawing, this artist being accustomed to alter his tints in some degree, particularly in the shifting hues, to labour by touching, often leaving his outline undefined, and to raise the colour so as to produce effect in the distance. his pieces upon a larger scale are more rare, though i have seen several exhibiting great truth in the expression of countenance, and a rich flow of drapery, in possession of the celebrated musician, farinello, at bologna. and in these portraits the musician himself always appeared, as received at different courts, and in the act of being applauded and rewarded by the european sovereigns. giambatista pittoni, though less generally known than the preceding, is still entitled to a rank among the first artists of his age. the disciple and nephew of francesco pittoni, here mentioned, rather from his pupil's merit than his own, he subsequently became attached to foreign schools, and formed a style which displays some novelty in the warmth of its colouring, and in a certain pictorial amenity and attraction which prevail throughout the whole. he cannot, indeed, be said to be very select, but he is in general correct, polished, and intelligent in his entire composition. he particularly shone in figures, smaller than the life; and the galleries in the venetian state are thus by no means scantily furnished with his histories; while we may observe of his altarpieces that they seem to increase in beauty in proportion to the diminution of their size. this we perceive at the santo in padua, where he painted in competition with the best of his contemporaries, the martyrdom of san bartolommeo, which he coloured upon a small canvass. a very rapid tourist attributes it to the pencil of tiepolo, whose manner is altogether different. gio. batista piazzetta, on the other hand, was an artist of as sombre a cast as the two preceding were animated and lively. he had acquired a good knowledge of design, either under his father, a tolerably skilful statuary in wood, or under some very exact naturalist; and in his early attempts he painted in a free and open style. afterwards he embraced an opposite manner, and employing himself with spagnolo at bologna, and there likewise studying guercino, he aimed at producing an effect by strong contrasts of lights and shades, and in this he succeeded. he had long, as it is supposed, observed the effects of light applied to statues of wood and models in wax; and by this he was enabled to draw, with considerable judgment and exact precision, the several parts that are comprehended in the shadowing, owing to which art his designs were eagerly sought after, and his works repeatedly engraved with assiduity. one of these, placed at the domenicani delle zattere was engraved by the celebrated bartolozzi; another by his school; that is to say, his san filippo, painted for the church of that name in venice. many were engraved also by pitteri, by pelli, and by monaco, besides other prints that were executed in germany. his method of colouring, however, diminished in a great measure the chief merit of his pictures. thus his shades having increased and altered, his lights sunk, his tints become yellow, there remains only an inharmonious and unformed mass, which the venerators of names, indeed, may admire, but can hardly give a reason why. where we happen to meet with a few of his pictures in good preservation, the effect is altogether so novel and original as to make a strong impression at first sight, more especially where the subject requires a terrific expression, as that of his beheading of st. john the baptist in prison, produced at padua, a work placed in competition with those of the first artists in the state, and at that period esteemed the best of all. yet if we examine him more narrowly he will not fail to displease us by that monotonous and mannered colour of lakes and yellows, and by that rapidity of hand, by some called spirit, though to others it often appears neglect, desirous of abandoning its labour before it is complete. piazzetta could hardly boast strength enough to deal with pictures abounding with figures, and having received a commission from a venetian noble, to represent the rape of the sabines, he spent many years in conducting it. in his altarpieces and other sacred subjects he produced a pleasing effect from the spirit of devotion, but never for the dignity he displayed in them. duly estimating his own ability, he was more desirous of painting busts and heads for pictures adapted for private rooms than any other subjects. in his caricatures he succeeded admirably, several of which in possession of the conti leopardi d'osimo would excite the risible muscles of a professed enemy to mirth. at one period this artist had a great number of followers, a fashion nevertheless that soon ceased. francesco polazzo, a good painter, but a better restorer of ancient pictures, somewhat softened down the style of piazzetta with that of ricci. domenico maggiotto also tempered it in his miracle of san spiridione, and in his other works engraved at venice and in germany. various artists of this school in the same way gave softness to his manner by studying other models. perhaps the one most addicted to his method was marinetti, from the name of his native place more commonly called chiozzotto. the last of the venetian artists who procured for himself a great reputation in europe, was gio. batista tiepolo, so frequently commended by algarotti. he was honoured likewise with a poetical eulogy by the ab. bettinelli, became celebrated in italy, in germany, and in spain, where he died painter to the court of madrid. pupil to lazzarini, whose deliberate and cautious style served to curb his too great warmth and rapidity, he subsequently studied piazzetta, animating and enlivening as it were his manner, as he appears to have done in his picture of the shipwreck of san satiro at san ambrogio in milan. he next became an assiduous imitator of paul veronese, whom, though inferior to him in the airs of his heads, he very nearly approached in his folds and his colouring. from the engravings also of albert durer, that storehouse of copious composers, he derived no little advantage. nor did he at any time abandon the study of nature in observing all the accidents of light and shade, and the contrasts of colour best adapted to produce effect. in this branch he succeeded admirably, particularly in his works in fresco, for which he appears to have been endued by nature with promptness, rapidity, and facility in great compositions. while others were accustomed to display the most vivid colours, he only availed himself in his frescos of what are termed low and dusky colours; and by harmonizing them with others of a common kind, but more clear and beautiful, he produced a species of effect in his frescos, a beauty, a sunlike radiance, unequalled, perhaps, by any other artist. of this the grand vault belonging to the teresiani in venice presents a fine specimen. he has there represented the santa casa, accompanied by numerous groups of angels finely foreshortened and varied, surrounded by a field of light that appears to rise into the firmament. such an artist would have been truly great, had he, in works upon this scale, succeeded in observing equal correctness in every part; in the whole he always produces an agreeable effect. he appears more correct and careful in his oil pieces, which we find dispersed throughout the metropolitan city as well as the state. at san antonio in padua we meet with his martyrdom of santa agatha, a picture alluded to by algarotti as a very rare example of fine expression, at once uniting that of terror at approaching fate, and of joy for the glory of beatitude in view. many other beauties are remarked by rossetti in this picture, which he admits, however deeply interested in defending it from every imputation cast upon it by cochin, is not altogether perfect in point of design. in the list of his disciples we find the name of fabio canale, mentioned with honour in the work so often cited, from the pen of zanetti; and to such of his pictures as he mentions we may add those he produced in palazzo zen at the frari, and in that of the priuli at the bridge of the miglio. to this artist we might join a few others of this last age, recorded in the guide to venice, the same that was published by zanetti in , and some of whom are likewise mentioned in the _pittura veneziana_, where, beginning at p. , he gave a catalogue of the names of such of the members of that estimable academy, as were then alive, some of whom are still in existence. but whoever is desirous of cultivating an acquaintance with them and with their works which are in possession of the public, may consult the above books as well as some of the more recent guides of the city, which have continued from time to time to appear. i ought to add, that the signor alessandro longhi has presented us with the portraits and the elogj of the most celebrated of these moderns, in the year , and this work also may supply what my brevity or my silence has omitted or compressed. proceeding in the next place from venice to the cities of the state, we shall find that these also have produced many memorable artists. the friuli will occupy but little of our attention, boasting few masters, and none of them distinguished for their figures. pio fabio paolini, a native of udine, studied at rome, where he produced in fresco his san carlo, which adorns the corso, and was united to the academy there in . returning thence into his own country he painted several altarpieces and other minor pictures, such as to entitle him to a high place among the followers of cortona. giuseppe cosattini, born at the same place, and canon of aquileja, devoted himself to the same pursuit, and rose into so much estimation as to be declared painter to the imperial court. he particularly distinguished himself by his picture of san filippo, preparing to celebrate mass, painted for the congregation of udine; the work of a real artist not of a dilettante, as he appears in some other of his paintings. pietro venier, a disciple of the venetian artists, displayed some merit in his oil pieces, not uncommon at udine; and more in his frescos in the ceiling of the church of san jacopo, where he appears to great advantage. but the best painter of frescos in these later times, amongst his countrymen, was giulio quaglia, a native of como. from his age and style i should suspect that he belonged to the school of the recchi, although his design is less finished than that of gio. batista recchi, the head of that family of painters. it would appear that he visited friuli young, towards the close of the last century, and there he conducted works, for the most part, in fresco, to an amount that almost defies enumeration. his histories of our saviour's passion, ornamenting the chapel of the monte di pietà at udine, are held in high estimation, although he conducted works upon a much larger scale, for various halls of many noble families, in all which we trace a fecundity of ideas, a decision of pencil, a power for vast compositions, sufficient to have distinguished him in his age not only in the limits of como but at milan. i omit the names of those professors of the art who merely designed without colouring, or who never attained to mature age; and those of a few others i have to reserve for foreign schools, and for different branches of painting. proceeding towards the marca trevigiana, i meet with an artist's name that has been claimed by different schools of italy, according to the place in which he painted, or studied, or gave instructions in the art. for this reason i have judged it best to speak of him as connected with his native place, which boasts a sufficient number of his works. this artist is sebastiano ricci, which the venetians write rizzi, one who can be reckoned second to none among the professors of our own epoch, in point of genius for the art, and the taste and novelty of his style. he was born in cividal di belluno, educated, as we have observed, by cervelli at venice, and afterwards conducted by his master into milan; he there acquired, both from him and from lisandrino, every thing that was of importance in the pursuit of his profession. thence he went to study at bologna and at venice, subsequently transferring his residence to rome and florence. lastly he made the tour of all italy, employing his pencil wherever he received commissions, at any price. having acquired reputation, and being invited by different potentates, he passed into germany, england, and flanders, in which last country he perfected his style of colouring, which had been always very pleasing and spirited, even in his first attempts. from his acquaintance with such a variety of schools, he stored his mind with fine images, and by dint of copying many models, his hand became practised in different styles. in common with giordano he possessed the art of imitating every manner; some of his pictures in the style of bassano and of paul, continuing yet to impose upon less skilful judges, as in the instance of one of his madonnas at dresden, for some time attributed to coreggio. the chief advantage he derived from his travels was, that on having occasion to represent any subject, he was enabled to recollect the manner in which different masters might have treated it, availing himself of it without plagiarism accordingly. thus the adoration of the apostles at the last supper, a piece adorning the church of santa giustina at padua, betrays many points of resemblance to the painting on the cupola of san giovanni at parma, while his san gregorio at san alessandro in bergamo recalls to mind one by guercino, executed at bologna. the same method he observed in his scriptural histories, produced for ss. cosmo and damiano, which are preferred to any others he conducted in venice, or perhaps in any other parts, and which frequently present us with fine imitations, but never with plagiarisms. he did not early acquire a good knowledge of design, but he afterwards succeeded in this object, which he cultivated with extreme assiduity in the academies, even in mature age. the forms of his figures are composed with beauty, dignity, and grace, like those of paul veronese; the attitudes are more than usually natural, prompt, and varied, and the composition appears to have been managed with truth and with good sense. although rapid in the handling, he did not abuse his celerity of hand, as so many artists have been known to do. his figures are accurately designed, and appear starting from the canvass, most frequently coloured with a very beautiful azure, in which they shine conspicuous over all. such pieces as he conducted in fresco, still preserve the native freshness of their tints; while some of his others seem to have suffered, owing to the badness of the grounds, or of the body of colour, which was weaker in the later than in the earliest venetian artists. the amenity of ricci's style soon procured for him disciples, in the list of whom marco, his nephew, greatly distinguished himself, and subsequently devoting himself to the composition of landscape, he accompanied his master upon his travels, employing himself a good deal, both at paris and in london. gasparo diziani, his fellow countryman, was an artist who excelled in his facility of painting large theatrical works, and in that line was employed in germany. he was, moreover, a very pleasing composer of pictures for private ornament, several of which are now to be met with in the collections of the sig. silvestri and sig. casalini at rovigo. francesco fontebasso, a pupil also of bastiano, succeeded, notwithstanding some degree of crudeness, in acquiring celebrity in his day, both in venice and the adjacent cities. in the guide of padua rosetti includes, in the list of its painters, antonio pellegrini, as being the son of one of its citizens, who had established himself, however, at venice, where antonio was born. and the venetians, indeed, may concede him to that city without much sacrifice of fame. for the surprising success he met with in some of the most civilized kingdoms of europe, is to be attributed to the decline of the art, and to the lively and mannered style he assumed, which found a welcome reception in all parts. he may be pronounced an artist of some ingenuity, facility, and sprightly conception; but he was by no means well grounded in the art; and he expressed his ideas with so little decision, that the objects which he represents sometimes appear to float in a kind of half-existence between visible and invisible. he was so very superficial a colourist, that even in his own times it was said his productions would not continue to last during a half century. and, in truth, those i have seen at venice and at padua are already become extremely pallid; while such as he executed at paris will, doubtless, be in the same state. yet in that city he obtained a large sum in the year , for merely painting a frieze in the celebrated hall of the mississippi, which he executed in about six weeks. his best work is, perhaps, to be found at san moisè, consisting of the serpent of bronze, erected by moses in the desert; no other equal to it having issued from his studio. as the preceding one is considered the last of the paduan artists of any note, we may mention, as the last among those of bergamo, at least of any merit in composition, antonio zifrondi, or cifrondi, pupil to franceschini. indeed he greatly resembled the former in his natural bias for the art, in an imagination adapted for great compositions, in facility and rapidity of hand, to such a degree as to dash off a picture in two hours. he likewise passed into france, though without meeting with success, and then resided in his native place, employing himself for those churches that are adorned with so many of his pictures, few of which are free from errors of over haste and carelessness. thus he did not scruple at the church of s. spirito, to place near his picture of a nunziata, conducted in his best style, three other historical pieces of quite an opposite character. we meet with his name mentioned more than once, in the lettere pittoriche, with much commendation. several other artists, whose names are to be met with in tassi, and his continuator, are known to have flourished at the same period. nor ought we, by any means, here to omit that of vittore ghislandi, who, though little skilled in works of invention, yet in his portraits, and some of his heads, in the way of capricci, has almost equalled in our own times the excellence of the ancients. he was instructed in the art by bombelli, and by dint of very assiduous study, particularly in the heads of titian, in order to develop his whole artifice, he attained a degree of perfection that is truly surprising. whatever can be esteemed most desirable in a portrait painter, such as lively features, natural fleshes, imitations of the most varied drapery, to make a distinction in dresses; these constitute a portion of his merits. the carrara collection, above any other, may boast of several, distinct both in point of age and costume; and though surrounded by very select pictures from every school, and though mere portraits, they fail not to attract and surprise us. less celebrated than many others, he is nevertheless an artist whose productions would do no discredit to any palace. one more generally known, however, is bartolommeo nazzari, pupil to trevisani in venice, and afterwards under luti, and the other trevisani, he perfected himself at rome. finally he established himself at venice, though he continued to visit various capitals, both of italy and of germany, invariably extolled, as well for his portraits of princes and of their courtiers, as for his heads of old men and youths, drawn from life, very fancifully dressed and ornamented. pietro avogadro was a brescian, and the scholar of ghiti, who adopted the models of bologna, imitating them without affectation, adding some mixture of venetian colour, more particularly in his ruddier fleshes. the contours of his figures are correct, his shortenings pleasing and appropriate, and his compositions very judicious; the whole expressing great harmony and beauty. next to the three leading artists of this city, he is entitled to the fourth place, at least in the esteem of many. perhaps his masterpiece is to be seen in the church of san giuseppe, representing the martyrdom of the saints crispino and crispiniano. andrea toresani was also a brescian, who flourished at the same period; excellent in design, with which he ornamented the cities of venice and milan more than his native place. his chief merit, however, lay in an inferior branch, that of painting animals, sea views, and landscapes in the titian manner, often accompanied with figures in tolerably good taste. having taken a hasty view of the other cities of the state, we must dwell some little while on that of verona, which, from the beginning of the century, until the present time, has enjoyed a high degree of reputation. though ravaged by the plague, we have already seen how it again flourished, with the aid of other italian schools, to which we might add that of the french, inasmuch as louis dorigny, a parisian, and pupil of le brun, arriving in italy at an early age, devoted himself to the study of roman and venetian models. he established himself at verona, where, having for some time employed his talents, and obtained several pupils, he died in the year . he also left works behind him in venice, the most esteemed of which adorns the church of san silvestro, as well as in other cities, both of the state and of all italy. he resided likewise with prince eugene in germany. there was another foreigner, who, about the same period, became a resident at verona. his name was simone brentana, a venetian, well versed in literature, as well as in the information necessary to form an artist. he devoted himself with extreme assiduity to the works of tintoretto, whom he emulated in his pictorial enthusiasm, which scarcely permitted him to bestow sufficient time upon the completion of his labours. in his forms and colouring he partakes of the roman manner of his time, and displays something extremely novel and original in his compositions. his pictures were sought after to adorn the galleries of sovereigns, no less than for private persons. several are to be met with in the churches of the state, and in that of s. sebastiano at verona is one representing the titular saint, well drawn, without drapery, in the act of consummating his martyrdom, while an angel is supporting him in his arms, a figure both in aspect and in attitude extremely graceful. girolamo ruggieri, an artist born at vicenza, was pupil to cornelio dusman of amsterdam, and having established himself at verona, he there produced several history pieces, landscapes, and battle scenes, in the flemish style. approaching the veronese artists and their neighbours, some of them will be found to have flourished in the beginning of the century, whose merits deserve to be here recorded. one of these is alessandro marchesini, pupil to cignani, of whom there remains little exhibited in public at venice, and not much at verona. he chiefly employed himself for private persons, with fables and histories, consisting of small figures, in which he succeeded, though having addicted himself to these compositions as a trade, he despatched them with more facility than care. in similar little pieces francesco barbieri also displayed the most merit, an artist called il legnago, from his native place. an imitator of ricchi, and in some measure of carpioni, he displayed great pictorial enthusiasm in every kind of history, in capricci, and in rural views; but he was inferior in point of design, having applied himself to it too late in life. antonio balestra of verona was at first devoted to a mercantile life, until at the age of twenty-one, after studying in venice under bellucci, and thence passing to bologna, and afterwards to rome, under maratta, he selected the best from every school, uniting a variety of beauties in a style of his own, which partakes least of all of the venetian. he is an artist of judgment and high finish, well versed in design, of a rapid hand, lively and animated, but always with a solidity of talent that makes us respect him. he taught in venice and in the college of la carità, where he painted the nativity of our lord, and the taking down from the cross, while he competes equally well with the first artists of his time in other places. commissions from foreign courts and the cities of the state, never allowed him to be idle. he was particularly employed at padua in an altarpiece for the church del santo, representing santa chiara. he painted also a good deal for his native place; his picture of san vincenzo at the domenicans,[ ] being one of the finest altarpieces he ever produced, and one of the best preserved, for his method of colouring with boiled oils has been found injurious to many of his pieces. such as he painted, however, in oil less boiled, have better resisted the effects of time. many of these figures are in possession of the conti gazzola, ornamenting one of their halls, and in particular a very beautiful one of mercury. he promoted the reputation of the venetian school, both by his lectures and example, besides affording an excellent imitator in gio. batista mariotti, and in his pupil giuseppe nogari, a painter of portraits, as well as of half-length figures, held in much esteem, insomuch as to recommend him, for a great length of time, to the service of the court of turin. in pieces of composition, such as his san piero, placed in the cathedral of bassano, he appears a respectable artist, and somewhat ambitious of reconciling his master's style with that of piazzetta. another venetian of the name of pietro longhi, first instructed by balestra, and afterwards by crespi, aimed at pleasing the eye in collections, by those humourous representations of masks, of conversazioni, landscapes, &c. which we find in various noble houses. angelo venturini, also a venetian, is mentioned in the guida of zanetti, for his paintings in the church of gesù e maria, of which he adorned the ceiling, and various portions of the walls. another pupil of balestra's, in verona, was carlo salis, who approached very near his style, more particularly in the handling of his colours. he prosecuted his first studies in bologna, under giuseppe dal sole. some of his pictures are also to be met with in the state, such as his san vincenzio, in the act of administering to the sick at bergamo, a piece finely mellowed, and more than commonly spirited. an artist named cavalcabò, a native of a district in roveredo, was instructed by balestra, and afterwards by maratta. in the choir of the carmine at his native place, he left behind him a very beautiful altarpiece, representing the holy simone stoch, with four lateral pieces of great merit. for a more particular account of these and other works by this artist, we may refer the reader to his life, written by the cavalier vannetti. the whole of the names, however, we have here mentioned, scarcely excepting that of balestra himself, have been thrown into the shade by the talent of the conte pietro rotari. he was honoured with the title of painter to her court, by the empress of all the russias, and in her dominions he closed the period of his days. this very elegant artist, who devoted many years to the art of design, succeeding in attaining a grace of feature, a delicacy of outline, united to a vivacity of motion and expression, and to a natural and easy mode of drapery, that would have left him second to none of his age, had he possessed, in an equal degree of perfection, the art of colouring. but his productions often partake so much of the chiaroscuro, or at least of a strong ash colour, as to render them remarkable among all. some, indeed, have attributed this defect to want of clearness of sight, while others conjecture it must have been owing to his long practice in design, previous to his attempting colours, in the same manner as polidoro da caravaggio and the cavalier calabrese are known to have failed as colourists, falling like him into a weak and languid tone. the education he received from balestra may also have tended to produce it, as both he and the disciples of maratta were somewhat addicted to a certain duskiness of style, which we may particularly observe in several examples seen at naples, where he resided for some time. whatever it be owing to, there still prevails a repose and harmony in that melancholy expression of his colouring, that is far from unpleasing, in particular where he affords somewhat warmer touches to his tints. this he appears to have done in his picture of a nunziata at guastalla, in that of san lodovico in the church del santo at padua, and in a nativity of the virgin at san giovanni, in the same city. this last specimen, indeed, is almost unequalled in its attractions, and seems to authorize the praises bestowed upon rotari by a poet, "that he resembled his fellow citizen catullus in being nursed by the graces," a species of eulogy applicable also to balestra and to other veronese artists. santo prunati was contemporary with marchesini and balestra, and after receiving the instructions of voltolino and falcieri in verona, he attended those of loth in venice. better to acquire superior correctness and dignity of manner, he next proceeded to bologna. in that school he found the taste in colouring that he wanted, at once soft and natural. in the design, and in the expression of his heads, he displays more of the naturalist, if i mistake not, than any of those who preceded him. he was engaged also for larger compositions, in which he distinguished himself, both in his own district and elsewhere, and left behind him a son named michelangiolo, who pursued, as far as lay in his power, the footsteps of his father. in the cathedral of verona, however, is one of his pictures, placed near the san francesco di sales of his father, which serves to mark the wide difference that exists between them. in the same school, along with michelangiolo, studied gio. bettino cignaroli, an artist instructed also by balestra. until about the year he ranked among the first of his time, receiving very flattering invitations from foreign courts, to which he invariably preferred the convenience of his own house and country. the prices he was in the habit of attaching to his works, were, nevertheless, those of a court painter; and many were executed for the principal royal galleries, as well as for the cities of the state, and those of other parts of italy; but which, we must admit, are by no means of equal merit. i omit his paintings in fresco, on account of his having abandoned that branch of the art, owing to his state of health, while yet young, though not until he had afforded specimens of his powers in the noble house of labia at venice, during a four years' residence there. it is his pictures in oil, of which we here speak, and to which he owed his great reputation. the one at pontremoli, however, representing, as it is said, a san francesco in the act of receiving the marks of christ, and extremely well executed, i have not seen. his san zorzi at pisa stands conspicuous among a number of excellent pencils, all employed in the ornament of that single cathedral. perhaps his finest is his journey into egypt, seen at san antonio abate in parma. in this he has represented the virgin with the holy child, in the act of passing a narrow bridge, while s. joseph appears engaged in assisting them to cross it in safety. in the countenance and whole action of the saint, his anxiety for them is strongly depicted, which is beautifully expressed by his disregarding a part of his mantle, fallen from his shoulders into the water below, an image equally skilful and natural in every point of view. the rest of the picture is also in his best style. the angels in attendance, the divine infant, the holy virgin, all drawn, as he so well knew how, with a sedate and dignified beauty, in the usual manner of maratta. in some points, indeed, cignaroli much resembled him; in certain attitudes, in a peculiar sobriety of composition, in a certain choice and vicinity of colours, though not in their just and equal tone. his fleshes, too much mannered with green, in a few places touched with red, render his colouring less agreeable to admirers of what is true, while his chiaroscuro, sometimes sought for beyond the limits of nature, is apt to produce an effect in his paintings, not so pleasing to the judgment as to the eye. he often displays novelty in the individual parts, availing himself of architecture, of sea views, and of landscape, in a manner above common; besides introducing into his compositions, for the most part of a scriptural character, the playful figures of cherubims, with other enlivening incidents. this artist was indisputably possessed of a fine genius, and born in times favourable to the eminence he enjoyed. memoirs of him were collected and published by the celebrated padre bevilacqua dell'oratorio in the year , and eulogies were pronounced upon him both in prose and verse, by a number of literary characters connected with that city, so highly polished and so grateful to such of its citizens as reflect honour upon their native place. a collection of these was subsequently made, and put forth in the year , and from such publications it would appear that few artists had received equal honours, during their lifetime, from the great, particularly from the emperor joseph ii., who was used to declare, "that he had beheld two very rare sights in verona--one the amphitheatre, and the other the most celebrated painter in europe." he appears, likewise, to have been an artist of great learning, as well as fond of conversing with learned men; he was acquainted with philosophical systems, wrote tuscan poetry, relished the roman classics, besides producing treatises upon his own art, written with so much taste and sound judgment, that we have only to regret, for the sake of the art he loved, the too sparing use he made of such talents. the academy, on which he bestowed the whole of his works upon painting, after his decease, still preserves his bust along with his eulogy, a farther honour conferred upon him by the liberality of his country. he left several pupils, among whom giandomenico, his brother, produced some paintings in bergamo that have been commended by pasta. the padre felice cignaroli, minore osservante, is an artist likewise worthy of mention. he painted little, and his masterpiece appears in the refectory of san bernardino, his convent at verona, consisting of a supper of emmaus, in which, though less studied, he displays no less invention than his brothers. next to these, who escaped oblivion as belonging to the family of cignaroli, an artist named giorgio anselmi deserves best to be put upon record, and in particular for his painting of the cupola of san andrea at mantua, ably executed in fresco: at one time he was the pupil of balestra. marco marcola was an almost universal artist, rapid in his labours, abundant in his inventions, though i am unable to learn who had been his master. tiepolo gave instructions to francesco lorenzi, distinguished both for his frescos and his oils, and always by his adherence to his master's example. there are various ceilings painted by his hand in verona, and brescia presents a holy family, all of which display an able artist, according to the manner of the age. in inferior branches of the art, there flourished, during this period, professors of much repute. the art of drawing in crayons rose to a high degree of excellence, through the genius of a distinguished lady of the name of rosalba carriera,[ ] whose paintings in miniature have been highly commended by orlandi. she next proceeded to the use of oils, but finally devoted her talents to that of crayons. so great was her progress in this branch that her specimens in point of force were often equal to oil pieces. they were in much request from the period in which she flourished, both in italy and other parts; nor did they merely please by their clearness and beauty of colouring, but were remarkable for the grace and dignity of design, with which she animated every thing she drew. her madonnas and other scriptural subjects at once unite elegance and majesty of manner, while her portraits continued to increase in value without losing any thing of their truth. we meet with another excellent portrait paintress in niccola grassi, pupil to cassana, of genoa, and a rival of rosalba. nor was she unequal to works of invention, one of the most extensive of which adorns the church of san valentino in udine, where she painted the assumption in the ceiling, a fine piece on the large altar, and drew figures for other pictures of various saints belonging to the order of the serviti. pietro uberti, son of domenico, an artist of mediocrity, is celebrated in the guida of zanetti for his portraits, of which he produced eight, representing the avogadori of his times, for the avogaria or courthouse, which was considered a very honourable commission, bestowed formerly upon paolo de' freschi, domenico tintoretto, tinelli, bombelli, artists all celebrated in the same career. orlandi bestows great commendation upon gio. batista canziani of verona, distinguished likewise in this branch, and who, on being banished from his native place for an act of homicide, continued to exercise it with success in bologna. i do not recollect to have seen the landscapes of pecchio in verona, though the fine encomium bestowed upon him by balestra, in one of his _lettere pittoriche_, leads me to hold him in high esteem. in the adjacent parts at salò appeared gio. batista cimaroli, a pupil of calza, who was much admired, both by foreigners and natives at venice. among landscape painters i find in several galleries the name of formentini, the figures of whose pieces were from the pencil of marchesini. d. giuseppe roncelli of bergamo is another artist who acquired reputation, and whose virtues procured for him, from the pen of mazzoleni, the honour of a life, while his singular skill in depicting nocturnal conflagrations, as well as landscapes, induced celesti to add figures to them. in padua the landscapes of marini were in high repute, to which brusaferro likewise added variety with his figures. still more than these luca carlevaris, an excellent painter of landscape at udine, rose into notice, no less distinguished also by his perspectives and sea views. public specimens of his labours still remain at venice, though not so numerous as in private houses, particularly in possession of the zenobri family, who so far patronized his talents as to procure for him the name of luca di cà zenobrio. to him succeeded the nephew of sebastiano ricci, named marco, who, pursuing the safe career chalked out by titian, and availing himself of the delightful site of his native place at belluno, became one of the ablest landscape painters belonging to the venetian school. it would be no exaggeration to say that few before his time distinguished themselves with equal force of truth, and that those who succeeded him have never equalled him in this respect. in order to estimate his worth, we are not to consult such landscapes as he painted for sale and disposed of to dealers; nor those executed in water colours upon goatskin, which, though very pleasing, are wanting in solidity. we ought to consult only his oil productions, conducted with far more care, and more commonly to be met with in england than in italy. indeed he had a much more extended taste than he displayed in his works. the two brother artists named valeriano, declared that he had afforded them the most enlightened views of the art. these were domenico, a painter of perspectives, and giuseppe, a figure painter, both employed in ornamenting different churches, and more particularly theatres, in venice, and indeed throughout italy and other parts of europe. francesco zuccarelli passed a great portion of his life in the city of venice, an artist already recorded by us among the florentines, and by whose example giuseppe zais was formed as a landscape painter, being particularly employed in that branch by the british consul smith, a distinguished patron of youthful genius devoted to the art. in point of invention he was more varied and copious than his master, but inferior to him in the mellowness of his tints. he had acquired from simonini, who also resided during a long period at venice, the art of painting battle pieces, in which he shewed equal skill. but he failed to sustain either his own dignity or that of his art, and giving himself up to carelessness and dissipation, he died a common mendicant in the hospital of trevigi. carlevaris and ricci are names likewise highly esteemed in architectural painting. several specimens of this are to be seen in possession of his excellency girolamo molin, placed as it were in competition with each other in one of the halls. if we compare them, the former will appear somewhat languid and monotonous, although he must be allowed to be an accurate observer of perspective, and succeeds in harmonizing his figures well with the picture. the latter, however, displays more strength, partaking of the erudite taste of viviano, while the figures introduced into it by his uncle are full of pictorial fire and attraction, and greatly add to its worth. but both of these, to use the language of dante, were afterwards _cacciati di nido_, driven from their nest, by antonio canal, more generally called canaletto. sprung from a painter of theatres of the name of bernardo, he embraced the profession of his father, attaining to a novelty of design, and a promptness of hand in this branch, that were afterwards of great use to him in painting innumerable smaller pictures for private ornament. disgusted with his first profession, he removed while still young to rome, where he wholly devoted himself to drawing views from nature, and in particular from ancient ruins. on returning into venice he continued in like manner to take views of that city, views that nature and art seem to have vied with each other in rendering the most novel and magnificent in the world. a great part he drew exactly as he saw them, a pleasing illusion for the satisfaction of those who were never so fortunate as to behold the adriatic queen with their own eyes. he moreover composed a great number of inventive pieces, forming a graceful union of the modern and the antique, of truth and of fancy together. several of these he produced for algarotti; but the most novel and instructive of any, as it seems to me, is the production in which the grand bridge of rialto, designed by palladio, instead of that which at present is seen, overlooks the great canal, crowned beyond with the cathedral of vicenza, and the palazzo chericato, palladio's own works, along with other choice edifices, disposed according to the taste of that learned writer, who has so much contributed to improve that of all italy, and even beyond italy itself. for the greater correctness of his perspectives, canaletto made use of the optic camera, though he obviated its defects, especially in the tints of the airs. the first indeed to point out the real use of it, he limited it only to what was calculated to afford pleasure. he aimed at producing great effect, and in this partakes somewhat of tiepolo, who occasionally introduced figures into his pieces for him. in whatever he employs his pencil, whether buildings, waters, clouds, or figures, he never fails to impress them with a vigorous character, always viewing objects in their most favourable aspect. when he avails himself of a certain pictorial license, he does it with caution, and in such a way that the generality of spectators consider it quite natural, while true judges only are sensible of its art, an art that he possessed in a very eminent degree. his nephew and pupil, bernardo bellotto, approached so nearly to his style, that it is with difficulty their respective pieces are distinguished. he also visited rome, though when orlandi bestowed his encomiums upon him in his work, he was at dresden, and it is uncertain whether he again returned into italy. francesco guardi was recently esteemed a second canaletto, his views of venice having attracted the admiration not only of italy but of foreign parts, yet with such persons alone who are satisfied with the spirit, the taste, and the fine effect which he invariably studied; as in other points, in accuracy of proportions, and in judgment as regards the art, he cannot pretend to vie with his master. several others likewise excelled in this species of painting, whose pictures i saw in the algarotti collection and in other places; such as jacopo marieschi, who was also a good figurist, and antonio visentini, whose views were ornamented with the figures of tiepolo and zuccherelli. gio. colombini of trevigi, pupil to bastian ricci, whose pecile was the domenican convent in that place, succeeded in his perspectives, in giving illusion to the eye, and in the masterly gradation of the different objects of view. the figures he has introduced are his own, though he was less skilful in this branch. he filled that place with his portraits, introducing another family as it were of painted domenicans, and not without some appearance of caricature. in other minor branches of the art, the flowers of domenico levo were extremely admired. he was pupil to felice bigi of parma, who opened school in verona. to his we may add those of one caffi and a few other natives, though the most choice collectors pride themselves upon the specimens of gaspero lopez, a neapolitan. thus at least he subscribes himself in one of his most beautiful works, in possession of the conti lecchi at brescia, where, as well as in the capital, he resided during a long period. about the middle of the century there appeared one of his imitators, named in various collections duramano, an artist somewhat too much given to mannerism. both the flowers and birds of count giorgio durante of brescia were eagerly sought after, no less on account of their exact imitation of the life, than for their taste of composition, and the truly beautiful and picturesque attitudes in which they were drawn. they are rarely to be met with beyond brescia, though several noble venetian families, and among these that of nani, possess a few specimens; but the best, perhaps, of all is to be seen in the royal court at turin. the name of ridolfo manzoni is distinguished in the same line of composition; he was a native of castelfranco, and several of his little pictures in oil, in the best taste, are there found in possession of different individuals. but he derived his chief reputation, as well as profit, from his miniature productions. in the history of painting in the frioul, we meet with the name of another artist, paolo paoletti, a native of padua. he passed his early youth in udine, and was employed for many years in the house of the conti caiselli. although more particularly celebrated in his flowers, he drew with great truth all kind of fruits, herbs, fishes, and game. the family in which he was domesticated possesses quite a museum of these rarities, and numerous specimens are met with in other hands, both within and beyond the limits of the frioul. in his flower paintings he is compared by altan even with the celebrated segers, an extent of liberality in which i by no means agree. in the last place we have here to treat of an art that received great improvement during this century in venice, an art which, though not directed to the increase of copies, is nevertheless of some importance to painting, inasmuch as it favours the duration of ancient productions, by adopting the most judicious means of preserving and restoring them. such methods were more valuable also to venice than to any other city, its climate being particularly unfavourable to paintings in oil, owing to the salts with which the air is impregnated, gradually eating away or injuring the colours. for this reason the government very judiciously appointed a number of artists to inspect the public exhibitions, and watch over the preservation of the paintings which were found inclined to decay, restoring them without incurring the risk, as it sometimes happens, of a new one being substituted for an ancient specimen. a studio for this purpose was opened in , consisting of a large saloon at the santi giovanni e paolo, the superintendence of which was entrusted to the care of the learned peter edwards, who received the title of president. the various processes adopted in the restoration of each specimen are extremely long and tedious, and executed with surprising accuracy; and in instances where the picture has not suffered too greatly from the effects of injury or time, it returns with renewed youth from the studio, calculated to survive the lapse of many more years. other equally useful methods have been adopted by the republic for the preservation of the fine models that adorn its churches, in order that they should not run the risk of being sold and carried away. hence it is that the state, even throughout its most diminutive districts and towns, has been enabled to preserve so many valuable paintings; while, at the same time, it has furnished provision for its youthful artists, best calculated to facilitate their improvement. during several centuries the ancient company of painters, ennobled by the names of distinguished pupils, continued to flourish; but there was still wanting the sort of reputation arising from dignity of situation and establishment, from the number and assiduity of its masters, and from the distribution of rewards. since the year it was decreed, and confirmed in , that a magnificent academy should be erected, devoted to the fine arts, "upon the plan," as was further stated, "of the principal institutions in italy and throughout europe." and it forms indeed an object gratifying to the mind of the most accomplished foreigners, to behold this seat of art, and to cultivate an acquaintance with its objects and pursuits. these views of the government have been promoted by the private individuals of that most splendid body of nobility, an assembly in which the abate filippo farsetti very liberally distinguished himself, by presenting the institution with a large collection of paintings, and casts taken from the finest antique statues. their successors have displayed the same kind of spirit, nor do they merely afford students access to the study of these monuments; but their finest productions, in every year, are selected according to the judgment of public professors, and rewarded with all the ceremony and munificence worthy of such an institution. nor have other nobles and gentlemen throughout the city and the state of venice been wanting in liberality towards young artists of genius, enabling them to pursue their studies both at home and abroad, until they have completed their education. few contributions indeed confer so much honour upon families as these; for in addition to the merit of succouring a fellow creature, and a fellow citizen, there are thus expectations to be indulged that some genius may rise up capable of conferring honour upon the arts, and perhaps restoring them to their ancient merit. we have it in our power to record various instances of this liberal spirit; we could mention a number of excellent artists who express their gratitude for the kindness of their patrons, did not the rule we have laid down for ourselves not to introduce the eulogies of living artists, in order to avoid occasion of complaint to such as may be omitted, forbid the enumeration of them. still i may allude to an instance of it in another branch of the art, which is very generally known, and this is the generous encouragement afforded by their excellencies falier and zulian, to antonio canova, the celebrated sculptor, encouragement to which rome and italy are in a great degree indebted for such an artist. he suffices to convince us, that though fortune may indeed deprive our country of her great masterpieces of art, she cannot destroy the genius capable of reproducing them. [footnote : melchiori mentions also with commendation, gio. batista, father of antonio, and pupil to vecchia, who had been unable to assist his son antonio, left an orphan at a very tender age.] [footnote : father federici mentions also his son gio. batista, citing a fine altarpiece of his at sorigo, and adds, that he would have become celebrated, had he not preferred the ease permitted him by a handsome fortune, to the glory of a great painter.] [footnote : in the guide of verona, of which i availed myself, i only found one picture by rotari in the refectory at santa anastasia. i inquired by whom that of s. vincenzo, which appeared extremely beautiful, was painted. i received for answer, that it was by balestra, but it is in fact from the hand of rotari, and engraved by valesi.] [footnote : melchiori gives us an account of this lady's master, not undeserving of being added to the last edition. this was the noble gio. antonio lazzari, a venetian, who had talents that rivalled those of rosalba in crayons, had not his natural timidity proved a bar to his fame. in painting also he attempted little of an inventive character, copying much, and more particularly from bassano with great success, as we have observed at page .] end of vol. iii. j. m'creery. tooks court, chancery-lane, london. transcriber's notes: standardized spacing after apostrophes in italian names and phrases. standardized hyphenation. retained archaic spelling and punctuation, except as noted below. moved footnotes to the end of each chapter. other adjustments: for consistency in the text, standardized 'bassirilievi', 'bassi rilievi', and 'bassi relievi' as 'bassi relievi'. changed 'thereis' to 'there is' ...there is made mention of his... changed 'alter-pieces' to 'altarpieces' ...under one of his altarpieces, we read... added missing close quotes in footnotes and ...in the library of pope pius,"... ...hoc bellunellus nobile pinxit opus."... added 'in' to ...'in spite of the authority of vasari'... deleted duplicate word 'of' ...a picture of the engravings of parmigiano... changed 'develope' to 'develop' ...sought to develop itself... transcriber's note: whole and fractional parts of numbers displayed as: - / emphasis notation: =bold= and _italic_ text * * * * * [illustration: picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son. sc. titian _prado gallery, madrid_] masterpieces of art titian a collection of fifteen pictures and a portrait of the painter with introduction and interpretation by estelle m. hurll boston and new york houghton mifflin company copyright, , by houghton, mifflin & co. all rights reserved preface to give proper variety to this little collection, the selections are equally divided between portraits and "subject" pictures of religious or legendary character. the flora, the bella and the philip ii. show the painter's most characteristic work in portraiture, while the pesaro madonna, the assumption, and the christ of the tribute money stand for his highest achievement in sacred art. estelle m. hurll. new bedford, mass. march, . contents and list of pictures page portrait of titian. painted by himself. _frontispiece._ picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. introduction i. on titian's character as an artist vii ii. on books of reference xi iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection xii iv. outline table of the principal events in titian's life xiv v. some of titian's contemporaries xvii i. the physician parma picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl ii. the presentation of the virgin (detail) picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. iii. the empress isabella picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. iv. madonna and child with saints picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl v. philip ii picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. vi. st. christopher picture from photograph by d. anderson vii. lavinia picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl viii. christ of the tribute money picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. ix. the bella picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. x. medea and venus picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. xi. the man with the glove picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. xii. the assumption of the virgin picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. xiii. flora picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. xiv. the pesaro madonna picture from photograph by d. anderson xv. st. john the baptist picture from photograph by d. anderson xvi. the portrait of titian pronouncing vocabulary of proper names and foreign words introduction i. on titian's character as an artist. "there is no greater name in italian art--therefore no greater in art--than that of titian." these words of the distinguished art critic, claude phillips, express the verdict of more than three centuries. it is agreed that no other painter ever united in himself so many qualities of artistic merit. other painters may have equalled him in particular respects, but "rounded completeness," quoting another critic's phrase, is "what stamps titian as a master."[ ] to begin with the qualities which are apparent even in black and white reproduction, we are impressed at once with the vitality which informs all his figures. they are breathing human beings, of real flesh and blood, pulsing with life. they represent all classes and conditions, from such royal sitters as charles v. and philip ii. to the peasants and boatmen who served as models for st. christopher, st. john, and the pharisee of the tribute money. they portray, too, every age: the tender infancy of the christ child, the girlhood of the virgin, the dawning manhood of the man with the glove, the maidenhood of medea, the young motherhood of mary, the virile middle life of venetian senators, the noble old age of st. jerome and st. peter, each is set vividly before us. the list contains no mystics and ascetics: life, and life abundant, is the keynote of titian's art. the abnormal finds no place in it. health and happiness are to him interchangeable terms. yet it must not be supposed that titian's delineation of life stopped short with the physical: he was besides a remarkable interpreter of the inner life. though not as profound a psychologist as leonardo or lotto, he had at all times a just appreciation of character, and, on occasion, rose to a supreme touch in its interpretation. in such studies as the flora, where he is interested chiefly in working out certain technical problems, he takes small pains to make anything more of his subject than a beautiful animal. the man with the glove stands at the other end of the scale. here we have a personality so individual, and so possessing, as it were, that the portrait takes rank among the world's masterpieces of psychic interpretation. in his best works titian's sense of the dramatic holds the golden mean between conventionality and sensationalism. in the group of sacred personages surrounding the madonna and child there is sufficient action to constitute a reason for their presence,--to relieve the figures of that artificial and purely spectacular character which they have in the earlier art,--yet the action is restrained and dignified as befits the occasion. the pose of both figures in the christ of the tribute money is in the highest degree dramatic without being in any way theatrical. the tempered dignity of titian's dramatic power is also admirably seen in the assumption of the virgin. the apostles' action is full of passion, yet without violence; the buoyant motion of the virgin is unmarred by any exaggeration. the same painting illustrates titian's magnificent mastery of composition. perhaps the pesaro madonna alone of all his other works is worthy to be classed with it in this respect. it is impossible to conceive of anything better in composition than these two works. not a line in either could be altered without detriment to the organic unity of the plan. the crowning excellence of titian is his color. the chief of the school in which color was the characteristic quality, he represents all the best elements in its color work. if others excelled him in single efforts or in some one respect, none equalled him for sustained grandeur. a recent criticism sums up his color qualities succinctly in these words: "he had at once enough of golden strength, enough of depth, enough of éclat; his color, profound and powerful _per se_, impresses us more than that of the others, because he brought more of other qualities to enforce it."[ ] titian's works easily fall into a few groups, according to the subject treated. in mythological themes he was in his natural element. here he could express the sheer joy of living which was common to the venetian and the greek. here physical beauty was its own excuse for being, without recourse to any ulterior significance. here he could exercise unhindered his marvellous skill in modelling the human form along those perfect lines of grace which give greek sculpture its distinctive character. it is in his earlier period that his affinity with the greek spirit is closest, and we see it in perfect fruition in the medea and venus. titian's treatment of sacred subjects is in the diverse moods of his many-sided artistic nature. the great ceremonial altar pieces, such as the assumption of the virgin, and the pesaro madonna, are a perfect reflection of the religious spirit of his environment. religion was with the venetians a delightful pastime, an occasion for festivals and pageants, a means of increasing the civic glory. these great decorative pictures are full of the pomp and magnificence dear to venice, full of the joy and pride of life. yet in another mood titian paints the life of the holy family as a pastoral idyl. a sunny landscape, a happy young mother, a laughing baby boy, bring the sacred subject very near to common human sympathies. some of titian's professedly sacred pictures are in the vein of pure _genre_, painted in a period when this department of art had not yet attained independent existence. we see such works in the st. christopher and the st. john. these direct studies of the people throw an interesting light upon the painter of ideal beauty: they show an otherwise unsuspected vigor. the christ of the tribute money stands alone in titian's sacred art. the technical qualities are thoroughly characteristic of his hand, but a new note is struck in spiritual feeling. virile, without coarseness; gentle, without weakness, the chief figure is perhaps the most intellectual ideal of christ which has been conceived in art. titian's landscapes, though holding an accessory place only in his art, are counted by the critical art historian with those of giorgione, as the practical beginning of this branch of art. he knew how to express "the quintessence of nature's most significant beauties without a too slavish adherence to any special set of natural facts."[ ] his imagination interpreted many of nature's moods, from the pastoral calm environing medea and venus to the stormy grandeur of the forest in which st. peter martyr met his fate. it is undoubtedly as a portrait-painter that titian's many great qualities meet in their utmost perfection. his feeling for textures, the delicacy with which he painted the hair and the hands; his skill in modelling; his instinct for pose; the infinite variety of his resources, made an incomparable equipment in the secondary matters of portrait painting. to these he added, as we have seen, the two highest essentials of the art, the power of giving life to his sitter, and the gift of insight into character. nature made him a court painter; he loved to impart to his sitter that air of noble distinction whose secret he so well understood. yet he was too large a man to let this or any other natural preference hamper him. something of himself, it is true, he frequently put into his figures, yet he was at times capable of thoroughly objective work. he stands perhaps somewhere between the extreme subjectivity of van dyck and the splendid realism of velasquez. the noble company of his sitters, emperors, kings, doges, popes, cardinals and bishops, noblemen, poets and beautiful women, still make their presence felt in the world. theirs was a deathless fame on whom the painter conferred the gift of his art. titian's temperament was keenly sensitive to the influences of his environment, and in his extraordinary length of days, venice passed through various changes, political, social, artistic and religious, which left their mark upon his work. one cannot make a random selection from his pictures and pronounce upon the qualities of his art. the work of his youth, his maturity, his old age, has each a character of its own. it is this rounding out of his art life through successive stages of growth and even of decay that gives the entire body of his works the character of a living organism. ii. on books of reference. the original source of biographical material relating to titian is in vasari's "lives of the painters," the best edition of which is the foster translation, annotated with critical and explanatory comments by e. h. and e. w. blashfield and a. a. hopkins. the most complete modern biography is that by crowe and cavalcaselle, in two large volumes (published in ), but as this is now out of print, it can be consulted only in the large libraries. some of the conclusions of these writers have been challenged by later critics, morelli and others, and should not be accepted without weighing the new arguments. the volume on "titian: a study of his life and work," by claude phillips, keeper of the wallace collection, london, is in line with the modern methods of criticism, and is written in a delightful vein of appreciation. the two parts of the book, the earlier work and the later work, correspond to the two monographs for "the portfolio," in which the work was first published. in the general histories of italian art, valuable chapters on titian are contained in kugler's "handbook of the italian schools" (to be read in the latest edition by a. h. layard) and mrs. jameson's "early italian painters" (to be read in the latest revision by estelle m. hurll). a monograph on titian is issued in the german series of art monographs, edited by h. knackfuss. interesting suggestions upon the study of titian's art will be found in the following references: in mrs. oliphant's "makers of venice;" in berenson's "venetian painters of the renaissance;" in symonds's volume on fine arts in the series "renaissance in italy." burckhardt's "cicerone" has some valuable pages on titian, but the book is out of print. a list of titian's work is given in berenson's "venetian painters." iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection. _portrait frontispiece._ probably the portrait mentioned by vasari as painted in . in the prado gallery, madrid. size: ft. in. by ft. - / in. . _the physician parma._ it appears that there is no direct testimony to prove the authorship of this picture, the attribution to titian having been made by an early director of the gallery, following certain evidence from rudolfi. herr wickhoff claims the picture for domenico campagnola, and the recent biographer of giorgione (herbert cook) includes it among the works of that painter. the attribution to titian is, however, not disputed by the two severest of modern critics, morelli and berenson. in the vienna gallery. size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _the presentation of the virgin (detail)._ painted for the brotherhood of s. maria della carità, and now in the venice academy. date assigned by berenson . size of entire picture: ft. in. by ft. - / in. . _the empress isabella._ probably one of the two pictures referred to in a letter of from titian to charles v. in the prado gallery, madrid. size: ft. in. by ft. - / in. . _madonna and child with saints._ an early work in the vienna gallery, similar to a picture in the louvre, to which it is considered superior by crowe and cavalcaselle. called an "atelier repetition" by claude phillips. size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _philip ii._ painted , and now in the prado gallery, madrid. size: ft. in. by ft. - / in. . _st. christopher._ painted in fresco on the wall of the doge's palace, venice, in honor of the arrival of the french army at san cristoforo (near milan), . ordered by the doge andrea gritti, who was a partisan of the french. . _lavinia._ painted about , and now in the berlin gallery. size: ft. - / in. by ft. - / in. . _christ of the tribute money._ according to vasari, painted for duke alfonso of ferrara in for door of a press. assigned by crowe and cavalcaselle to the year , the date accepted by morelli. in the dresden gallery. size: ft. - / in. by ft. in. . _the bella._ painted about . in the pitti gallery, florence. size: ft. - / in. by ft. in. . _medea and venus._ date unknown, but fixed approximately by morelli between and . in the borghese gallery, rome. size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _the man with the glove._ assigned to titian's middle period. in the louvre, paris. size: ft. - / in. by ft. in. . _the assumption of the virgin (detail)._ ordered for high altar of s. maria gloriosa de' frari, venice. shown to public, march , . now in the venice academy. size: ft. in. by ft. - / in. . _flora._ painted after . in the uffizi gallery, florence. size: ft. - / in. by ft. - / in. . _the pesaro madonna._ finished in after being seven years in process. still in original place in the church of the frari, venice. . _st. john the baptist._ painted in . in the venice academy. size: ft. in. by ft. in. iv. outline table of the principal events in titian's life.[ ] . titian born at cadore in the friuli, north of venice. circa . removal to venice. bet. - . work on frescoes of fondaca de' tedeschi with giorgione. . in padua and vicenza. frescoes in the scuola del santo, padua. circa . marriage. . assumption of the virgin begun for the church of the frari, venice. titian's first connection with alfonso i. and the court of ferrara. . assumption finished. . visit in ferrara, and the bacchanal, now in the madrid gallery. . altarpiece for brescia, and short visit there. . visits at mantua and ferrara. . visit in ferrara. circa . birth of titian's son pomponio. . pesaro madonna. . visit in ferrara. . visit in bologna. st. peter martyr delivered april , for church of ss. giovanni e paolo, venice. death of titian's wife. . visit in ferrara. removal from town to suburban residence in biri. . summons to court of charles v. at bologna. portraits of the emperor. . with the emperor at astic. . portraits of duke and duchess of urbino and the battle of cadore. paintings in hall of council of venice (destroyed by fire ). . visit to mantua to attend the funeral of patron duke federico gonzaga. . appointment with emperor at milan. . guest of cardinal farnese at ferrara and brussels. portraits of cardinal farnese and pope paul iii. . two portraits of the dead empress isabella sent to charles v. . visit to rome, and portraits of paul iii. and his grandsons. . departure from rome, visit to florence and return to venice. . completion of altarpiece of serravalle. . journey to augsburg to meet charles v., and equestrian portrait of the emperor. to milan to meet prince philip and duke of alva. portrait of alva. . purchase of the house at biri, formerly rented. . visit to court at augsburg, and portraits of philip ii. . pictures completed and sent to charles v. and philip ii. in spain: the virgin lamenting, the trinity, the danaë. venus and adonis sent to london to philip upon marriage with mary tudor. . marriage of titian's daughter lavinia. perseus and andromeda sent to king philip. . st. john the baptist, painted for s. maria maggiore. . entombment sent to philip. . christ in the garden, and the europa. last supper begun. . visit to brescia. . visit to cadore, and plans for frescoes in the pieve church. . martyrdom of st. lawrence, and a venus sent to madrid. . visit from cardinals granvelle and pacheco. . visit from henry iii. of france. allegory of lepanto finished for philip ii. . pieta begun. . death of titian from plague at venice. v. some of titian's contemporaries. rulers. _emperors_:-- maximilian i. of germany, - . charles v. of germany (i. of spain) crowned holy roman emperor, . died . _kings_:-- philip ii. son and successor of charles v., accession, ; death, . henry viii. of england, reigned - . edward vi. " " - . mary tudor " " - . elizabeth " " - . francis i. of france, " - . henry ii. " " - . catherine de' medici real ruler of france in reigns of francis ii. and charles ix., - . _popes_:-- sixtus iv., . paul iii., . innocent viii., . julius iii., . alexander vi., . marcellus ii., . pius iii., . paul iv., . julius ii., . pius iv., . leo n., . pius v., . adrian vi., . gregory xiii., . clement vii., . _doges of venice_:-- giov. mocenigo, . francesco donato, . marco barbarigo, . marco trevisan, . agostino barbarigo, . francesco venier, . leonardo loredan, . lorenzo priuli, . antonio grimani, . girolamo priuli, . andrea gritti, . pietro loredan, . pietro lando, . alvise mocenigo i., . _painters_:-- giovanni bellini, - . perugino, - . leonardo da vinci, - . michelangelo, - . bazzi (ii sodoma), - . giorgione, - . palma vecchio, - . raphael, - . sebastian del piombo, - . andrea del sarto, - . correggio, - . giorgio vasari, - . tintoretto, - . paolo veronese, - . _men of letters_:-- ariosto, - , poet. aretino, - , poet. tasso, - , poet. pietro bembo, - , cardinal and master of latin style. jacopo sadoleto, - , cardinal and writer of latin verses. baldassare castiglione, - , diplomatist and scholar. aldo manuzio, - , printer; established press at venice, . guicciardini, - , historian. i the physician parma we are about to study a few pictures reproduced from the works of a great venetian painter of the sixteenth century,--titian. the span of this man's life covered nearly a hundred years, from to , a period when venice was a rich and powerful city. the venetians were a pleasure-loving people, fond of pomp and display. they delighted in sumptuous entertainments, and were particularly given to pageants. we read of the picturesque processions that paraded the square of st. mark's, or floated in gondolas along the grand canal. the city was full of fine buildings, palaces, churches, and public halls. their richly ornamented fronts of colored marbles, bordering the blue water of the canals, made a brilliant panorama of color. the buildings were no less beautiful within than without, being filled with the splendid paintings of the venetian masters. the pictures in the churches and monasteries illustrated sacred story and the fives of the saints; those in the public halls depicted historical and allegorical themes, while the private palaces were adorned with mythological scenes and portraits. titian engaged in works of all these kinds, and seemed equally skilful in each. the great number and variety of his pictures bring vividly before us the manners and customs of his times. his art is like a great mirror in which venice of the sixteenth century is clearly reflected in all her magnificence. as we study our little prints, we must bear in mind that the original paintings glow with rich and harmonious color. as far as possible let us try to supply this lost color from our imagination. nearly all the notable personages of the time sat to titian for their portraits,--emperors, queens, and princes, popes, and cardinals, the doges, or dukes, of venice, noblemen, poets, and fair women. wearing the costumes of a bygone age, these men and women look out of their canvases as if they were still living, breathing human beings. the painter endowed them with the magic gift of immortality. though the names of many of the sitters are now forgotten, and we know little or nothing of their lives, they are still real persons to us, with their life history written on their faces. such is the man called parma, who is believed to have been a physician of titian's time, but whose only biography is this portrait. if we were told that it was the portrait of some eminent physician now practising in new york or london, we should perhaps be equally ready to believe it. we might meet such a figure in our streets to-morrow. there is nothing in the costume to mark it as peculiar to any century or country. the black gown is such as is still worn by clergymen and university men. the man would not have to be pointed out to us as a celebrity; we should know him at once as a person of distinction. [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son. sc. the physician parma vienna gallery] the science of medicine was making great progress during the sixteenth century. it was then that the subject of anatomy was first developed by the celebrated fleming, vesalius, court physician to charles v.[ ] in this period, also, the science of chemistry first came to be separated from alchemy, and progressive physicians applied the new learning to their practice. we may be sure that our doctor parma belonged to the most enlightened class of his profession. his strong: intellectual face shows him to be one who would have little patience with quackery or superstition. he has a high, noble forehead, keen, penetrating eyes, and a firm mouth. his beautiful white hair gives him a venerable aspect, though he is not of great age. it blows about his face as fine and light as gossamer. he is an ideal "family physician," of a generation ago. we can imagine how children would learn to look upon him with love and respect, perhaps also with a little wholesome fear. the hand which holds the folds of the long, black gown has a character of its own as definite as that of the face. it is a strong, firm hand, which looks capable of guiding skilfully a surgeon's knife. two fine seal rings ornament it. such rings, sometimes of curious design and workmanship, were often bestowed as gifts by wealthy noblemen upon those who had done them some service. the doctor parma looks as good as he is wise. this benign face would grace an assembly of notable clergymen. indeed, the picture suggests a well-known portrait of the great john wesley, whose features were cast in the same strong mould, and who also had an abundance of bushy white hair. by another play of the fancy we could imagine this a portrait of some eminent judge. there is that in the face which indicates the calm, impartial, deliberate mind that belongs to the character. he might now be about to charge the jury, or perhaps even to pronounce sentence. still another opinion is that here we have a venetian senator in his official robes. the man is in any case an ideal professional man, a person of brains and character, who could fill equally well a position of responsibility in medicine, law, administrative affairs, or divinity. with a strict sense of justice, a stern contempt for anything mean and base, and a fatherly tenderness for the weak and oppressed, he is one in whom we could safely put confidence. ii the presentation of the virgin (_detail_) in the town of nazareth many centuries ago lived a pious old couple, named joachim and anna. it is said that they "divided all their substance in three parts: " one part "for the temple," another for "the poor and pilgrims," and the third for themselves. the delight of their old age was their only child mary, who afterwards became the mother of jesus. she had been born, as they believed, in answer to their prayers, and they cherished her with peculiar devotion. that mary was a good and lovable child beyond common measure we can have no doubt: she was set apart for a strange and holy service. the beautiful story of her early life is told in an old latin book called the "legenda aurea," or the "golden legend." this was a collection of old legends written out for the first time by jacopo de voragine, an italian archbishop of the thirteenth century. the early english translation by caxton, in which we still read the book, preserves the quaint flavor of the original. there is one portion of it describing the dedication, or presentation, of the virgin in the temple. before mary was born, the mother, anna, had promised the angel of the lord that she would present the coming child as an offering to the lord. long before her day, a certain hannah had made a like vow under similar circumstances. her son samuel, a "child obtained by petition," was "returned," or "lent," to the lord as long as he lived.[ ] a child thus dedicated was early carried to the temple to be educated within its precincts for special service to god. the presentation of mary was on this wise: "and then when she had accomplished the time of three years ... they brought her to the temple with offerings. and there was about the temple, after the fifteen psalms of degrees, fifteen steps or grees to ascend up to the temple, because the temple was high set. and nobody might go to the altar of sacrifices that was without, but by the degrees. and then our lady was set on the lowest step; and mounted up without any help as she had been of perfect age, and when they had performed their offering, they left their daughter in the temple with the other virgins, and they returned into their place. and the virgin mary profited every day in all holiness, and was visited daily by angels, and had every day divine visions."[ ] we see at once the picture there is in the story, the little girl ascending alone the long flight of steps, with the fond parents gazing after her in wonder. many artists have put the subject on canvas, and among them our venetian painter titian. his is an immense picture, from which the central figure only is reproduced in our illustration. [illustration: picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the presentation of the virgin (detail) _venice academy_] we must imagine ourselves standing with a great throng of people in the public square in front of the temple. men, women and children jostle one another near the steps. the old man joachim and his wife anna are easily singled out among the number. the windows of the adjoining palaces are full of faces looking into the square. a group of senators stand somewhat apart, looking on. an old peasant woman with a basket of eggs sits in the shadow of the steps. all eyes are turned towards the little child who is walking alone up the great stone staircase. on the topmost step the high priest advances to meet her, resplendent in his rich priestly garments. the figure of the little virgin is very quaint in a long gown made of some shimmering blue stuff. the golden hair is brushed back primly and woven into a heavy braid, whence it at last escapes in beautiful profusion. it would be hard to guess the child's age, for her demeanor is that of a little woman as she gathers her long skirt daintily in her right hand. she carries herself erect in the new dignity of the great moment, and advances with perfect self-confidence. the face, however, is quite childlike and innocent, and is lifted to the priest's with a happy smile. the left arm is raised in a gesture of wonder and delight. the whole figure is surrounded by a halo of golden light. this is the oval-shaped glory which the italians call the _mandorla_, from the word meaning "almond." it is of course the symbol of the virgin's peculiar sanctity. the painter has not tried to make the little girl particularly pretty, but he gives her the indescribable charm which we call winsomeness. she is perhaps one of the most lovable children art has ever produced. as we study the artist's method of work in the picture we see how very simply the figure is drawn. titian was fond of rich and voluminous draperies, as we shall learn from several examples which are to follow. here, however, he draws a dress with tight sleeves and scanty skirt absolutely without decoration of any sort. it is this simplicity which gives the childlike appearance to the figure. there is a pathos in the little figure which we cannot altogether appreciate in our illustration. we have to remember that the whole picture measures twenty-five feet in width by eleven in height, and then imagine how tiny the child looks ascending alone the great staircase in the centre of this vast panorama. the isolation of the figure suggests the singular destiny of mary, set apart from others in the loneliness of a unique service. iii the empress isabella the most illustrious of titian's many patrons was the emperor charles v., whose wife was the empress isabella of our portrait. this powerful monarch had inherited from one grandfather, ferdinand, the kingdom of spain, and from another, maximilian, the empire of germany. his marriage was arranged chiefly for political reasons, but proved to be a happy one. isabella was the daughter of emmanuel the great, late king of portugal, and the sister of john iii., the reigning king. she was a princess of uncommon beauty and accomplishments. the portuguese government bestowed a superb dowry of nine hundred thousand crowns upon her, and the marriage was celebrated in seville in . the ceremony was splendid, and there were great festivities following. soon after, the emperor travelled with his bride through andalusia and granada that he might see his new kingdom. called at last to other parts of his dominion, he left isabella as regent in spain, and went to italy, where in he first called titian into service to paint his portrait. in the years that followed the painter found the emperor a constant and generous patron, and was frequently summoned to meet the court at various places. in the meantime, however, the lovely empress never had had a sitting to the first painter of the day. she stayed quietly at home and had her portrait painted by such inferior artists as were at hand. when she died in charles was left disconsolate, without any satisfactory portrait of her beloved face. he accordingly sent to titian a portrait of her painted at the age of twenty-four, and required him to use it as the basis of a picture. the painter obeyed, and soon sent, his royal patron two canvases, begging him to return them with criticisms if he wished any changes made. as they were never sent back we infer that charles found them as much like the original as could have been expected. the fame of isabella's beauty and goodness had of course come to the painter's knowledge, and this was perhaps a better inspiration than the old portrait which was his guide. certainly the picture he produced shows a winning personality. the empress is seated near a window, holding a little book open in one hand, probably a prayer-book or book of hours. the lady is not reading, but gazes somewhat pensively before her, as if thinking over the familiar words. the face is gentle and refined, and has an innocent purity of expression like that of a child. [illustration: picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son. sc. the empress isabella _prado gallery, madrid_] the features are small, and modelled with an almost doll-like regularity. yet the mouth is set firmly enough to indicate a strong will behind it. isabella was indeed a woman of remarkable self-control. a story is told that once when ill and in great pain she turned her face in the shadow that none might see her suffer, and uttered no sound of complaining. her nurses remonstrated, but she replied firmly, "die i may, but wail i will not." the costume of a spanish queen of the sixteenth century naturally interests us. apparently spanish court etiquette of the period dictated a dress made with high neck and long sleeves. the bodice is of red velvet, the loose sleeves lined with satin. the under bodice, which we should call a _guimpe_, is of white muslin with gold fillets. a jewel adorns the red hair, and a long necklace of pearls is caught on the bosom with a pendant of rubies and emeralds. the careful dressing of the hair, the strict propriety of the gown, and the attitude of the queen herself suggest the regard of conventionality which governed the great lady. what the portrait lacks is the quality of lifelikeness which makes other pictures by titian so wonderful.[ ] naturally the painter could not so easily impart vitality to the picture when not working directly from the living model. to make up, as it were, for this defect, he painted the various textures of the dress with marvellous skill. satin, velvet, and muslin, each is distinguished by its own peculiar lustre. the bit of landscape seen through the window is another beautiful part of the picture. the distance gives depth to the composition and avoids the crowded effect it might otherwise have. we shall see a similar setting again in the portrait of lavinia. the emperor had been very fond of his wife, and an old historian says that "he treated her on all occasions with much distinction and regard." if this seems nothing surprising to note, we must remember that at the same period henry viii. of england was treating his queens quite differently. in the last years of his life charles v., weary of the cares of government, relinquished his kingdom to his son. he retired to the convent of yuste to end his days, taking with him this portrait of his wife. when he lay on his death-bed he asked to see the picture, and when at last he died his body was laid to rest beside isabella. their son, philip ii., whose portrait we are presently to study, succeeded to a portion of his father's dominion. iv madonna and child with saints there was never a child so longed for as the child jesus, and none whose infancy has been held in such loving remembrance. centuries before his birth the prophets of israel preached to the people of his coming. year after year men waited eagerly for one who would teach them the way of righteousness. on the night when he was born the angels of heaven appeared in the sky with the glad tidings. his birthday ushered in a new era. we all know the story of his infancy in the bethlehem manger, of his boyhood in the little town of nazareth, of the years of his ministry throughout judea, and of his crucifixion on calvary. the narrative of his life was written by the four evangelists, and has been told in nearly every part of the world. many of the great painters have drawn the subjects of their best pictures from the story in the gospels. a favorite subject has been the mother mary holding the babe in her arms, as in our illustration. to understand why the other figures are included in the scene, a few words of explanation are necessary. in the early days of christianity the followers of the new faith had to endure great persecutions, and many laid down their lives for their master. the religious liberty we enjoy to-day is due to the courage and loyalty of these early saints and martyrs. much, too, is due to the work of those teachers who are called the fathers of the church. these saints and heroes of the olden time have been honored in art and song and story. it is fitting to associate their memory with that of him to whom they gave their lives. this is the reason why in pictures of the mother and child jesus we often see them standing by. such pictures do not represent any actual historical event. the various persons represented may not even be contemporaries. it is in a devotional and not a literal sense that they worship the christ child together. in our picture the mother tends her babe at one side while three saints form an attendant company. the nearest is st. stephen, the young man "full of faith and power," who did "great wonders and miracles among the people" of jerusalem in the apostolic days. when false witnesses accused him of blasphemy his face was like "the face of an angel." nevertheless, when his accusers heard his defence they were angry at his frank denunciations, and casting him out of the city, stoned him to death.[ ] [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son. sc. madonna and child with saints _vienna gallery_] the old man standing next is st. jerome, one of the latin fathers of the fourth century. he was both a preacher and a writer, and his greatest service to the world was his translation of the bible into latin (the vulgate). this is the book from which he is now reading, and st. george seems to look over his shoulder. st. george is the hero saint who rescued the princess cleodolinda from the dragon. he suffered many tortures at the orders of the emperor diocletian, and was finally beheaded for his faith.[ ] we learn to identify these and other saints in the old pictures by certain features which the masters long ago agreed upon as appropriate to the characters. st. stephen we recognize here because he is young, and carries a palm as the symbol of his martyrdom. st. jerome is always an old man and is known here by his book, and st. george is distinguished by his armor. the three make an interesting group as they represent three ages of man,--youth, maturity, and old age. they stand, too, for distinctly different temperaments. st. stephen has the ardent imaginative nature of a dreamer, st. george the active prosaic temper of the warrior, and st. jerome the grave contemplative mind of the scholar. each serves the christ with his own gift. in the picture the three seem to be reading together some passage referring to the birth of christ, perhaps that glorious verse from the prophet isaiah, "unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given." coming to the words "wonderful, counsellor," st. stephen lifts his face adoringly. the child is innocently unconscious of his grave guests. he lies across his mother's lap kicking his feet gleefully and looking up to her with a playful, appealing gesture. she bends over him smiling, and the two seem to talk together in the mystic language of babyhood. the artist, we see, painted the mother as beautiful and the child as winsome as he could well imagine them. he did not try to discover how a woman of judea was likely to have looked centuries before. he preferred to think of mary as one of the beautiful venetian women of his own day. he may have seen some real mother and babe who suggested the picture to him, but in that case he painted them largely according to his own fancy. the madonna's dress is not according to any venetian fashions, but in the simple style chosen as most appropriate by old masters. red and blue were the colors always used in her draperies, and it was also an ancient custom to represent her as wearing a veil over her head as befitting her modesty. the mother has the fresh comely look of perfect health, yet with much delicacy and refinement in her gentle face. both she and the babe seem to rejoice in abounding health and vitality. the picture is full of the joy of life. v philip ii philip ii. was the son of the emperor charles v. and the empress isabella, whose portrait we have seen. he had therefore, like most princes, a union of several nationalities in his lineage. upon his birth in , all spain rejoiced that there was now an heir to the throne. charles himself counted eagerly upon the help his son would give him in the administration of his vast dominions. from the first philip was a grave and thoughtful child, pursuing his studies first with his mother and then with a tutor. when he was twelve years old his mother died; and two years later his father, who had scarcely seen the boy, returned to spain, and devoted himself for a while to teaching him the principles of government. philip was an apt pupil, and showed great fondness for statesmanship. at the age of sixteen a great responsibility fell upon the young prince. charles was called to germany and left philip as regent of spain. a marriage had already been arranged between the youth and his cousin mary of portugal, and this took place soon after the emperor's departure. philip's regency was eminently successful, and he won the lasting affection and loyalty of the spanish people. the emperor now planned that the prince should make a journey through the empire to become acquainted with his future subjects. the spanish parted with him reluctantly, and he set forth accompanied by a great train of courtiers. six months he was on his way, everywhere greeted by festivals, banquets and tourneys. philip, being of a reticent and sombre nature, had little taste for these festivities, but having political ambition, submitted as gracefully as possible. at length he made a state entry into brussels. this was in ; and in the two years that followed, the emperor and prince were together, planning their future policy of government. the lessons which charles most deeply impressed upon philip were those of self-repression, patience and distrust. the leading element in his policy was to be absolute ruler. it was at the close of these two years, that is, in , that the emperor, attending a diet in augsburg, summoned thither titian to paint the portrait of philip. the prince was now in his twenty-fourth year, and stood, as it were, on the threshold of his great career. there could scarcely be a more unattractive subject for a portrait. philip had a poor figure, with narrow chest and large ungainly feet, and his features were exceedingly ill-formed. his eyes were large and bulging, he had a projecting jaw and full fleshy lips which his scanty beard could not conceal. titian, however, had the great artist's gift of making the most of a subject. we forget all philip's defects when we look at this magnificent portrait. [illustration: picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. philip ii. _prado gallery, madrid_] the skill with which the splendid costume is painted would alone make the picture a great work of art. philip wears a breastplate and hip pieces of armor, richly inlaid with gold, slashed embroidered hose, as the short trousers are called, white silk tights and white slippers. the collar of the golden fleece is the crowning ornament. the attitude of the prince is full of dignity. he stands in front of a table on which his helmet and gauntlets are laid. the right hand rests on the helmet, and the left holds the hilt of the rapier which hangs at his side. the most remarkable quality in the portrait is the impression of royalty it conveys. though philip has little to boast of in good looks, he has inherited from generations of royal ancestors that indefinable air of distinction which belongs to his station. it is this which the painter has expressed in his attitude and bearing. young as the face is, with little of life's experience to give it individuality, the painter makes it a revelation of the leading elements in philip's character. the seriousness of the boy has developed into the habitual gravity of the man. already we see how well the father's lessons have been learned, how self-contained and cautious the prince has become. the affairs of state seem to weigh heavily upon him. the proportions of the figure to the size and shape of the canvas add something to the apparent height of philip. titian has done everything a painter could do to give an ill-favored prince an appearance befitting his royal prestige: it is a kingly portrait. three years after it was painted, the picture was sent to england to be shown to queen mary. philip, now a widower, had become a suitor of the english queen. the report came that mary was "greatly enamoured" of the portrait, and the marriage was soon after effected. philip, however, did not win great favor with the english, and after mary's death he chose a french princess for his next wife, and spent his life in spain. upon the abdication of his father, he became the most powerful monarch in europe, and had the best armies of his time. he was constantly at war with other nations, usually two or more at a time, and by undertaking too many schemes often failed. it was during his reign that the netherlands were lost to spain, and the famous spanish armada was destroyed by the english. vi saint christopher there was once in the land of canaan a giant named offero, which means "the bearer." his colossal size and tremendous strength made him an object of terror to all beholders, and he determined to serve none but the most powerful being in the world. he accordingly joined the retinue of a great king, and for a while all went well. one day while listening to a minstrel's song, the king trembled and crossed himself every time the singer mentioned the devil. "then," thought offero, "there is one more powerful than the king; and he it is whom i should serve." so he went in search of the devil, and soon entered the ranks of his army. one day as they came to a wayside cross he noticed his master tremble and turn aside. "then," thought offero, "there is one more powerful than the devil, and he it is whom i should serve." he now learned that this greater being whom the devil feared was jesus, who died on the cross, and he earnestly sought to know the new master. an old hermit undertook to instruct him in the faith. "you must fast," said he. "that i will not," said offero, "lest i lose my strength." "you must pray," said the hermit. "that i cannot," said offero. "then," said the hermit, "go to the river side and save those who perish in the stream." "that i will," said offero joyfully. the giant built him a hut on the bank and rooted up a palm tree from the forest to use as a staff. day and night he guided strangers across the ford and carried the weak on his shoulders. he never wearied of his labor. one night as he rested in his hut he heard a child's voice calling to him from the shore, "offero, come forth, and carry me over." he arose and went out, but seeing nothing returned and lay down. again the voice called, "offero, come forth and carry me over." again he went out and saw no one. a third time the voice came, "offero, come forth, and carry me over." the giant now took a lantern, and by its light found a little child sitting on the bank, repeating the cry, "offero, carry me over." offero lifted the child to his great shoulders, and taking his staff strode into the river. the wind blew, the waves roared, and the water rose higher and higher, yet the giant pushed bravely on. the burden which had at first seemed so light grew heavier and heavier. offero's strong knees bent under him, and it seemed as if he would sink beneath the load. yet on he pressed with tottering steps, never complaining, until at last the farther bank was reached. here he set his precious burden gently down, and looking with wonder at the child, asked, "who art thou, child? the burden of the world had not been heavier." "wonder not," said the child, "for thou hast borne on thy shoulders him who made the world." then a bright light shone about the little face, and in another moment the mysterious stranger had vanished. thus was it made known to offero that he had been taken into the service of the most powerful being in the world. from this time forth he was known as christ-offero, or christopher, the christ-bearer.[ ] [illustration: d. anderson, photo. saint christopher] with this story in mind we readily see the meaning of our picture. the giant has reached mid-stream, with his tiny passenger perched astride his shoulders. already the burden has become mysteriously heavy, and offero bends forward to support the strain, staying himself with his great staff. he lifts his face to the child's with an expression of mingled anguish and wonder. the situation is full of strange pathos. the babe seems so small and helpless beside the splendid muscular strength of the brawny giant. yet he is here the leader. with uplifted hand he seems to be cheering his bearer on the toilsome way. the figures in the picture seem to be taken from common every-day life. some venetian boatman may have been the painter's model for st. christopher, whose attitude is similar to that of a gondolier plying his oar. the child, too, is a child of the people, a sturdy little fellow, quite at ease in his perilous position. we shall understand better the range of titian's art by contrasting these more commonplace figures with the refined and elegant types we see in some of our other illustrations. the picture of st. christopher is a fresco painting on the walls of the palace of the doges or dukes in venice. it was originally designed to celebrate the arrival of the french army in , at an italian town called san cristoforo. it is so placed that it might be the first object seen every morning when the doge left his bed-chamber. this was on account of an old tradition that the sight of st. christopher always gives courage to the beholder. "whoever shall behold the image of st. christopher, on that day shall not faint or fail," runs an old latin inscription. as fresco painting was a method of art comparatively unfamiliar to titian, it is interesting to know than an eminent critic pronounces our picture "broad and solid in execution, rich and brilliant in color."[ ] we see from our reproduction that the paint has flaked from the wall in a few places. vii lavinia something of the home life of titian must be known in order to understand the loving care which he bestowed upon this portrait of his daughter lavinia. the painter's works were in such demand that he could afford to live in a costly manner. he had a true venetian's love of luxury, and liked to surround himself with elegant things. his society was sought by rich noblemen, and he himself lived like a prince. when somewhat over fifty years of age titian removed to a spot just outside venice in the district of biri, where he laid out a beautiful garden. the view from casa grande, as the house was called, was very extensive, looking across the lagoon to the island of murano and the hills of ceneda. here titian entertained his guests with lavish hospitality. a distinguished scholar of that time, one priscianese, who had come to venice in to publish a grammar, describes how he was entertained there: "before the tables were set out," he writes, ... "we spent the time in looking at the lively figures in the excellent pictures, of which the house was full, and in discussing the real beauty and charm of the garden.... in the meanwhile came the hour for supper, which was no less beautiful and well arranged than copious and well provided. besides the most delicate viands and precious wines, there were all those pleasures and amusements that are suited to the season, the guests and the feast.... the sea, as soon as the sun went down, swarmed with gondolas, adorned with beautiful women, and resounded with the varied harmony of music of voices and instruments, which till midnight accompanied our delightful supper." the darling of this beautiful home at casa grande was the painter's daughter lavinia, and the portrait shows how she looked in . her mother had died before the removal of the family to biri, and the aunt, who had since tried to fill the vacant place, died about the time this portrait was painted. a new responsibility had therefore fallen upon the young girl, and she was now her father's chief consolation. it is thought that the picture was painted for titian's friend argentina pallavicino of reggio. as a guest at her father's house this gentleman must often have seen and admired the charming girl, and the portrait was a pleasant souvenir of his visits. lavinia is seen carrying a silver salver of fruit, turning, as she goes, to look over her shoulder. the open country stretches before her, and it is as if she were stepping from a portico of the house to the garden terrace to bring the fruit to some guest. she is handsomely dressed, as her father would like to see his daughter. the gown is of yellow flowered brocade, the bodice edged with jewelled cording. over the neck is thrown a delicate scarf of some gauzy stuff, the ends floating down in front. an ornamental gold tiara is set on the wavy auburn hair, an ear-ring hangs from the pretty ear, and a string of pearls encircles the neck. imagine the figure against a deep red curtain, and you have in mind the whole color scheme of this richly decorative picture. [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son. sc. lavinia _berlin gallery_] lavinia, however, would be attractive in any dress, with her fresh young beauty and simple unconscious grace. her features are not modelled in classic lines: the charm of the face is its fresh color, the pretty curves of the plump cheek, and, above all, the sweet open expression. the hands are delicate and shapely, as of one well born and gently reared. lavinia is perhaps not a very intellectual person, but she has a sweet sunny nature and is full of life and spirits. it would seem impossible to be sad or lonely in her cheery company. she holds her precious burden high, with an air of triumph, and turns with a smile to see it duly admired. the delicious fruit certainly makes a tempting display. the girl's innocent round face and arch pose remind one of a playful kitten. the painter has chosen a graceful and unusual attitude. the curves of the outstretched arms serve as counterbalancing lines to the main lines of the figure. the artist himself was so pleased with the pose that he repeated it in another picture, where lavinia assumes the gruesome rôle of salome, and carries in her salver, in place of the fruit, the head of st. john the baptist! a few years after our portrait was painted, lavinia was betrothed to cornelio sarcinelli, of serravalle, and a new portrait was painted in honor of the event. when the marriage settlement was signed lavinia brought her husband a dowry of fourteen hundred ducats, a royal sum in those days. the wedding was on the th of june, . some years after her marriage lavinia again sat to her father for her portrait. her beauty, as we have noted, was not of a lasting kind, and in the passing years her fresh color faded, and she became far too stout for grace. yet the frank nature always made her attractive, and it is pleasant to see in the kindly face the fulfilment of the happy promise of her girlhood. viii christ of the tribute money during the three years of christ's ministry, his words and actions were closely watched by his enemies, who hoped to find some fault of which they could accuse him. not a flaw could be seen in that blameless life, and it was only by some trick that they could get him into their power. one plan that they devised was very cunning. palestine was at that time a province of the roman empire, and the popular party among the jews chafed at having to pay tribute to the emperor cæsar. on the other hand the presence of the roman governor in jerusalem made it dangerous to express any open rebellion. jesus was the friend of the people, and many of his followers believed that he would eventually lead them to throw off the roman yoke. as a matter of fact, however, he had taken no part in political discussions. his enemies now determined to make him commit himself to one party or the other. if he declared himself for rome, his popularity was lost; if against rome he was liable to arrest. the evangelists relate how shrewdly their question was framed to force a compromising reply, and how completely he silenced them with his twofold answer. this is the story:-- "then went the pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. and they sent out unto him their disciples with the herodians, saying, master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of god in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. tell us therefore, what thinkest thou? is it lawful to give tribute unto cæsar, or not? "but jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? shew me the tribute money. and they brought unto him a penny. and he saith unto them, whose is this image and superscription? they say unto him, cæsar's. then saith he unto them, render, therefore, unto cæsar the things which are cæsar's; and unto god the things that are god's. when they had heard these words, they marvelled and left him, and went their way."[ ] that was indeed a wonderful scene, and it is made quite real to us in our picture: christ and the pharisee stand face to face, engaged in conversation. a wily old fellow has been chosen spokesman for his party. his bronzed skin and hairy muscular arm show him to be of a common class of laborers. the face is seamed with toil, and he has the hooked, aquiline nose of his race. as he peers into the face of his supposed dupe, his expression is full of low cunning and hypocrisy. he holds between thumb and forefinger the roman coin which christ has called for, and looks up as if wondering what that has to do with the question. [illustration: picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son. sc. christ of the tribute money _dresden gallery_] christ turns upon him a searching glance which seems to read his motives as an open page. there is no indignation in the expression, only sorrowful rebuke. his answer is ready, and he points quietly to the coin with the words which so astonish his listeners. the character of christ is so many-sided that any painter who tries to represent him has the difficult task of uniting in a single face all noble qualities of manhood. let us notice what elements of character titian has made most prominent, and we shall see how much more nearly he satisfies our ideal than other painters. refinement and intellectual power impress us first in this countenance: the noble forehead is that of a thinker. the eyes show penetration and insight: we feel how impossible it would be to deceive this man. it is a gentle face, too, but without weakness. here is one who would sympathize with the sorrowing and have compassion on the erring, but who would not forget to be just. strength of character and firmness of purpose are indicated in his expression. the highest quality in the face is its moral earnestness. its calm purity contrasts with the coarse, evil face of the questioner as light shining in the darkness. there is, perhaps, only one other head of christ in art with which it can properly be compared, and this is by leonardo da vinci, in the last supper at milan. the two painters have expressed, as no others have been able to, a spiritual majesty worthy of the subject. the early painters used to surround the head of christ with a circle of gold, which was called a nimbus, a halo, or a glory. the custom had been given up by titian's time, but we see in our picture the remnant of the old symbol in the three tiny points of light which shine over the top and sides of the saviour's hair. they are a mystic emblem of the trinity. the artistic qualities of the picture are above praise. there are few, if any, of titian's works executed with so much care and delicacy of finish, but without sacrificing anything in the breadth. we recognize the painter's characteristic touch in the disposition of the draperies, in the delicacy of the hair, the modelling of the hands, and the pose of christ's head. the figures have that quality of vitality which we observe in titian's great portraits. the color of christ's robe is red, and his mantle a deep blue. ix the bella among titian's wealthy patrons was a certain duke of urbino, francesco maria della rovere, who, as the general-in-chief of the venetian forces, came to venice to live when our artist was at the height of his fame. from this time till the duke's death the painter was brought into relations with this noble family. this was the period when the bella was painted, and the picture has, as we shall see, an intimate connection with these patrons. the duke's wife was eleanora gonzaga, sister of the duke of mantua, celebrated for her beauty and refinement. a contemporary (baldassare castiglione) writing of the lady, says: "if ever there were united wisdom, grace, beauty, genius, courtesy, gentleness, and refined manners, it was in her person, where these combined qualities form a chain adorning her every movement." the duke himself was deeply in love with his wife. a week after his marriage he wrote that "he had never met a more comely, merry, or sweet girl, who to a most amiable disposition added a surprisingly precocious judgment, which gained for her general admiration." eleanora, on her part a showed an undeviating affection for her husband, and they lived together happily. from the date of her marriage, we can reckon that the duchess must have been well into her thirties when she came to venice to live. from a portrait titian painted of her, when she was about forty, we see that much of the fresh beauty of her girlhood had faded. she had, however, good features, with large, fine eyes and arching brows. her figure was graceful and her neck beautiful: the head was particularly well set. all these qualities kindled the artistic imagination of titian. in the matron of forty his inner eye caught a vision of the belle of twenty. thereupon, he wrought an artist's miracle: he painted pictures of eleanora as she had looked twenty years before. one of these, and perhaps the most famous, is the bella of our illustration.[ ] the identity of the original is hidden under this simple title, which is an italian word, meaning the beauty. an ancient legend tells of a wonderful fountain, by drinking of which a man, though old, might renew his youth and be, like the gods, immortal. there were some who went in quest of these waters, among them, as we remember, the spanish knight, ponce de leon, who, thinking to find them north of cuba, discovered our florida. the duchess of urbino found such a fountain of youth in the art of titian. comparing her actual portrait with the bella, painted within a few years, it seems as if the lady of the former had quaffed the magic draught which had restored her to her youthful beauty. [illustration: picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son. sc. the bella _pitti gallery, florence_] the bella is what is called a half length portrait, the figure standing, tall, slender, and perfectly proportioned. the lady turns her face to meet ours, and whether we move to the right or the left, the eyes of the enchantress seem to follow us. we fall under their spell at the first glance; there is a delightful witchery about them. the small head is exquisitely modelled, and the hair is coiled about it in close braids to preserve the round contours corresponding to the faultless curves of cheek and chin. the hair is of golden auburn, waving prettily about the face, and escaping here and there in little tendrils. over the forehead it forms the same perfect arch which is repeated in the brows. the slender throat is long and round, like the stalk of a flower; the neck and shoulders are white and firm, and shaped in beautiful curves. the rich costume interests us as indicating the fashions in the best venetian society of the early th century. comparing it with that of the empress isabella in our other picture,[ ] we notice that at the same period the venetian styles differed considerably from the spanish, to the advantage of the former. instead of the stiff spanish corset which destroyed the natural grace of the figure, the bella wears a comfortably fitting bodice, from which the skirt falls in full straight folds. the dress is of brownish purple velvet, combined with peacock blue brocade. the sleeves are ornamented with small knots pulled through slashes. a long chain falls across the neck, and jewelled ear-rings hang in the ears.[ ] it is pleasant to analyze the details of the figure and costume, but after all the charm of the picture is in the total impression it conveys. applied to this lovely vision of womanhood the words of castiglione seem no flattery. in her are united "grace, beauty, courtesy, gentleness, and refined manners." the essence of aristocracy is expressed in her bearing: the pose of the head is that of a princess. there is no trace of haughtiness in her manner, and no approach to familiarity: she has the perfect equipoise of good breeding. the picture gives us that sense of a real presence which it was the crowning glory of titian's art to achieve. the canvas is much injured, but the bella is still immortally young and beautiful. x medea and venus (_formerly called sacred and profane love_) a charming story is told in ovid's "metamorphoses" of jason's adventures in search of the golden fleece, and of his love for medea.[ ] jason was a greek prince, young, handsome, brave, and withal of noble heart. he had journeyed over seas in his good ship argo, and had at last come to colchis to win the coveted treasure. the king Æëtes had no mind to give up the fleece without a struggle, and he set the young hero a hard task. he was ordered to tame two bulls which had feet of brass and breath of flame. when he had yoked these, he was to plough a field and sow it with serpent's teeth which would yield a crop of armed men to attack him. while jason turned over in his mind how he should perform these feats, he chanced to meet the king's beautiful daughter medea. at once the two fell in love with each other, and jason's fortunes took a new turn. medea possessed certain secrets of enchantment which might be of practical service to her lover in his adventure. she had a magic salve which protected the body from fire and steel. she also knew the charm--and it was merely the throwing of a stone--which would turn the "earth-born crop of foes" from attacking an enemy to attack one another. finally she had drugs which would put to sleep the dragon guarding the fleece. to impart these secrets to jason might seem an easy matter, but medea did not find it so. she was a loyal daughter, and jason had come to take her father's prized possession. she would be a traitor to aid a stranger against her own people. the poet tells how in her trouble the princess sought a quiet spot where she might take counsel with herself. "in vain," she cried, "medea! dost thou strive! some deity resists thee! ah, this passion sure, or one resembling this, must be what men call love! why should my sire's conditions seem too hard? and yet too hard they are! why should i shake and tremble for the fate of one whom scarce these eyes have looked on twice? whence comes this fear i cannot quell? unhappy! from thy breast dash out these new-lit fires!--ah! wiser far if so i could!--but some new power constrains, and reason this way points, and that way, love." the struggle goes on for some time, and the maiden's heart is torn with conflicting impulses. summoning up "all images of right and faith and shame and natural duty," she fancies that her love is conquered. a moment later jason crosses her path and the day is lost. together they pledge their vows at the shrine of hecate, and in due time they sail away in the argo with the golden fleece. [illustration: from a carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. medea and venus _borghese gallery, rome_] our picture illustrates the scene of medea's temptation at the fountain. the tempter is love, in the form of venus, the greek goddess represented in the old mythology as the inspirer of the tender passion. she is accompanied by the little love-god cupid, the mischievous fellow whose bow and arrow work so much havoc in human hearts. the perplexed princess sits beside the fountain, holding her head in the attitude of one listening. venus leans towards her from the other side and softly pleads the lover's cause. cupid paddles in the water as if quite unconcerned in the affair, but none can tell what mischief he is plotting. we notice a distinct resemblance between the faces of the two maidens, and perhaps this is the painter's way of telling us that venus is only medea's other self: the voice of the tempter speaks from her own heart. the expression is quite different on the two faces, tender and persuasive in venus, dreamy and preoccupied in medea. if we turn again to ovid for the interpretation of the picture, we may fancy that venus is describing the proud days when, as jason's bride, medea would journey with him through the cities of greece. "my head will touch the very stars with rapture," thought the princess. the dress of medea is rich and elegant, but quite simply made; the heavy folds of the skirt describe long, beautiful lines. in one gloved hand she holds a bunch of herbs, and the other rests upon a casket. the figure of venus is conceived according to classic tradition, undraped, as the goddess emerged from the sea-foam at her birth. in the greek religion the human body was honored as a fit incarnation for the deities. sculptors delighted in the long flowing lines and beautiful curves which could be developed in different poses. titian's picture translates the spirit of greek sculpture, so to speak, into the art of painting. the figure of venus may well be compared with the marble venus of milo, in the pure beauty of the face, the exquisite modelling of the figure, and the sweeping lines of grace described in the attitude.[ ] the painter contrasts the delicate tint of the flesh with the rich crimson of the mantle which falls from the shoulder. the landscape is a charming part of the picture, stretching on either side in sunny vistas, pleasantly diversified with woods and waters, hills and pasture lands, church and castle.[ ] sunset lights the sky, and lends its color to the glowing harmonies of the composition. xi the man with the glove the man with the glove is so called for lack of a more definite name. nothing is told by titian's biographers about the original of the portrait, and the mystery gives a certain romantic interest to the picture. not being limited by any actual facts we can invent a story of our own about the person, or as many stories as we like, each according to his fancy. the sitter certainly makes a good figure for the hero of a romance. he is young and handsome, well dressed, with an unmistakable air of breeding, and singularly expressive eyes. such eyes usually belong to a shy, sensitive nature, and have a haunting quality like those of some woodland creature. the title of the man with the glove is appropriate in emphasizing an important feature of the costume. in the days of this portrait, gloves were worn only by persons of wealth and distinction, and were a distinguishing mark of elegance. though somewhat clumsily made, according to our modern notions, they were large enough to preserve the characteristic shape of the hand, and give easy play to the fingers. they formed, too, a poetic element in the social life of the age of chivalry. it was by throwing down his glove (or gauntlet) that one knight challenged another; while a glove was also sometimes a love-token between a knight and his lady. the glove has its artistic purpose in the picture, casting the left hand into shadow, to contrast with the ungloved right hand. the texture of the leather is skilfully rendered, and harmonizes pleasantly with the serious color scheme of the composition. besides the gloves, the daintily ruffled shirt, the seal ring, and the long neck chain, show the sitter to be a young man of fashion. not that he is in the least a fop, but he belongs to that station in life where fine raiment is a matter of course, and he wears it as one to the manner born. his hands are delicately modelled, but they are not the plump hands of an idler. they are rather flexible and sensitive, with long fingers like the hands of an artist. the glossy hair falls over the ears, and is brushed forward and cut in a straight line across the forehead. the style suits well the open frankness of the countenance. we must note titian's rendering of both hair and hands as points of excellence in the portrait. there is a great deal of individuality in the texture of a person's hair and the shape of his hands, but many artists have apparently overlooked this fact. van dyck, for instance, used a model who furnished the hands for his portraits, irrespective of the sitter. titian, in his best work, counted nothing too trivial for faithful artistic treatment. [illustration: picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son, sc. the man with the glove _the louvre, paris_] if we were to try to explain why the man with the glove is a great work of art we should find the first reason, perhaps, in the fact that the man seems actually alive. the portrait has what the critics call vitality, in a remarkable degree. again, the painter has revealed in the face the inner life of the man himself; the portrait is a revelation of his personality. it has been said that every man wears an habitual mask in the presence of his fellows. it is only when he is taken unaware that the mask drops, and the man's real self looks out of his face. the portrait painter's art must catch the sitter's expression in such a moment of unconsciousness. the great artist must be a seer as well as a painter, to penetrate the secrets of human character. the young man of our picture is one of those reticent natures capable of intense feeling. in this moment of unconsciousness his very soul seems to look forth from his eyes. it is the soul of a poet, though he may not possess the gift of song. he has the poet's imagination as a dreamer of noble dreams. the time seems to have come when he is just awakening to the possibilities of life. he faces the future seriously, but with no shrinking. one recalls the words of gareth, in tennyson's idyll: "man am i grown, a man's work must i do. * * * * * live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the king-- else wherefore born?"[ ] the lofty ideals of the knights of king arthur's round table are such as we feel sure this gentle spirit would make his own:-- "to reverence the king as if he were their conscience, and their conscience as their king, to break the heathen and uphold the christ, to ride abroad redressing human wrongs, to speak no slander, no nor listen to it, to lead sweet lives in purest chastity, to love one maiden only, cleave to her, and worship her by years of noble deeds until they won her."[ ] it may be of these "noble deeds" of chivalry that our young man is dreaming, or it may be of that "one maiden" for whose sake they are to be done. certainly these candid eyes see visions which we should be glad to see, and show us the depths of a knightly soul. xii the assumption of the virgin (_detail_) the virgin mary, mother of jesus, has for over nineteen centuries represented to christendom all the ideal qualities of womanhood. in her character, as revealed in st. luke's gospel, we read of her noble, trustful humility in accepting the message of the annunciation; of her decision and prudence shown in her visit to elizabeth; of her intellectual power as manifested in the song of the magnificat; of the contemplative nature with which she watched the growth of jesus; of her maternal devotion throughout her son's ministry,--and of her sublime fortitude and faith at his crucifixion.[ ] such was the woman so highly favored of god, she whom the angel called "blessed among women." art has pictured for us many imaginary scenes from the life of mary. the most familiar and best loved subject is that of her motherhood, where she is seen with her babe in her arms. there are other subjects, less common, showing her as a glorified figure in mid-air as in a vision. one such is that called the immaculate conception, which the spanish painter murillo so frequently repeated.[ ] another is the assumption, representing her at her death as borne by angels to heaven. the "golden legend" relates how "the right fair among the daughters of jerusalem ... full of charity and dilection" was "joyously received" into glory. "the angels were glad, the archangels enjoyed, the thrones sang, the dominations made melody, the principalities harmonized, the potestates harped, cherubim and seraphim sang laudings and praisings." also, "the angels were with the apostles singing, and replenished all the land with marvelous sweetness."[ ] the assumption of the virgin is the subject of a noble painting by titian, one of the most celebrated pictures in the world. a group of apostles stand on the earth gazing after the receding figure of the virgin as she soars into the air on a wreath of cloud-borne angels. from the upper air the heavenly father floats downward with his angels to receive her. as the canvas is very large, over twenty-two feet in height, a small reproduction of the entire picture is unsatisfactory, and our illustration gives us the heart of the composition for careful study. [illustration: picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son. sc. the assumption of the virgin (detail) _venice academy_] the virgin rises buoyantly through the air, and the figure is so full of life and motion that it seems as if it would presently soar beyond our sight. the heavy folds of the skirt swirl about the body in the swiftness of the ascent. the rushing air fills the mantle like the sail of a ship. yet the source of motion is not within the figure itself, for we see the feet resting firmly on the cloud. it is as if she were borne aloft in a celestial chariot composed of an angelic host. the face is lifted with a look of rapture; the arms are extended in a gesture of exultation. the pose of the head displays the beautiful throat, strong and full like that of a singer. the features are cast in a large, majestic mould. the hands, turned palm outward, are large and flexible, but with delicate, tapering fingers. we have already seen in other pictures what was titian's conception of the virgin in her girlhood and motherhood. we find little of the ethereal and spiritual in his ideal, and nothing that would in any way suggest that true piety is morbid or sentimental. other painters have erred in this direction, but not titian. to him the virgin was no angel in disguise, but a strong, happy, healthy woman, rejoicing in life. but though a woman, she was in the poet's phrase "a woman above all women glorified." she possessed in perfection all the good gifts of human nature. titian's ideal coincided with the old greek formula, "a sound mind in a sound body." the virgin of the assumption is in fact not unlike a greek goddess in her magnificently developed physique and glorious beauty. our illustration includes a few of the baby angels from the wreath supporting the madonna. they are packed so closely together in the picture that their little limbs interlace like interwoven stems in a garland of flowers. yet the figures are cunningly arranged to bring into prominence a series of radiating lines which flow towards a centre in the madonna's face. we see in the corner of our print a little arm pointing to the virgin, and above it is a cherub's wing drawn in the same oblique line. frolicsome as is this whole company of angels, they are of an almost unearthly beauty. a poetic critic has told of standing before the picture contemplating these lovely spirits one after another, until, as she expresses it, "a thrill came over me like that which i felt when mendelssohn played the organ and i became music while i listened." she sums up the effect of the picture as "mind and music and love, kneaded, as it were, into form and color."[ ] when we analyze the drawing of the madonna's figure we see that it is drawn in an outline of long, beautiful curves. the principle of repetition is skilfully worked into the composition. the outer sleeve falls away from the right arm in an oval which exactly duplicates that made by the lower portion of the mantle sweeping out at one side. by tracing the main lines of the drapery one will find them running in parallels. xiii flora besides the portraits intended as actual likenesses of the sitters, titian was fond of painting what may be called ideal portraits, or fancy pictures. while real persons furnished the original models for these, the painter let his imagination have free play in modifying and perfecting form and feature. we have seen an illustration of this process in the picture called the bella, an idealized portrait of eleanora gonzaga. the flora is another example. we do not know the name of the original, but we may be sure that it represents an actual person. there is a tradition that she was the daughter of one of titian's fellow-painters, palma, with whom he was in love. as a matter of fact, palma had no daughter, and the young woman was doubtless only a favorite venetian model whom both painters employed. apparently it was she who posed for both figures in the picture of medea and venus which we have studied.[ ] flora's hair is of that auburn tint which the venetians loved, and which, it is believed, was artificially produced. it is looped into soft, waving puffs over the ears, and gathered back by a silken cord, below which it falls like a delicate veil thinly spread over the shoulders. the skin is exquisitely white and soft, and the thin garment has been allowed to slip from one shoulder so that we may see the full, beautiful neck. we notice with what art the painter has arranged the draperies. from the right shoulder the garment falls in delicate, radiating folds across the figure. over the garment is thrown a stiff, rose-colored brocade mantle, contrasting pleasantly with the former both in color and texture. a glimpse of this mantle is seen at the right side and above the left shoulder and arm, over which the hand gathers it up to prevent it from slipping. this action of the left hand introduces a new set of lines into the picture, breaking the folds of the drapery into eddying circles which offset the more sweeping lines of the composition.[ ] the drawing here is well worth studying, and we may give it more attention since we must lose the lovely color of the painting in the reproduction. the main lines flow in diagonals in two opposite directions. there is the long line of the right arm and shoulder drawn in a fine, strong curve across the canvas. parallel with it is the edge of the brocade mantle as it is held in the left hand. the counter lines are the curve of the neck and left shoulder, with which the upper edge of the undergarment runs parallel. the wide spaces between these enclosing lines are broken by sprays of radiating lines, one formed by the folds of the undergarment, and the other smaller one by the locks of hair on the left shoulder. [illustration: picture from carbon print by braun, clément & co. john andrew & son. sc. flora _uffizi gallery, florence_] the graceful pose of the head, inclined to one side, suggests the soft languor of a southern temperament. it was often adopted by titian, and we see another instance in the attitude of the venus. we fancy that the painters liked particularly the long curve thus obtained along the neck and shoulder. the angle made on the other side between head and shoulder is filled in with the falling hair. the title of flora is given to the picture after the fashion of titian's time for drawing subjects from mythology. the revival of classic learning had opened to italian art a delightful new field of illustration. we see how titian took advantage of it in such pictures as medea and venus. in england the love of the classics was seen in the poetry which took much the same place there that painting held in italy. flora was the ancient goddess of flowers and is made much of in elizabethan verse.[ ] some pretty lines by richard carlton describe "when flora fair the pleasant tidings bringeth of summer sweet with herbs and flowers adorned." in our picture the goddess holds a handful of flowers, roses, jessamine and violets, as a sign of her identity. we confess that her type of beauty hardly corresponds to our ideal of flora. she is a gentle, amiable creature, but not ethereal and poetic enough for the goddess of flowers. were we to choose a character for her from mythology it would be juno, the matronly "ox-eyed" goddess, who presided over marriage and whose emblem was the productive pomegranate. as we compare flora with the other fair women of our collection, we see that her beauty is of a less elegant and aristocratic type than that of the bella, and less delicate and refined than that of the empress isabella. her face is perhaps too broad to satisfy a connoisseur of beauty, and she is quite plainly of plebeian caste. like lavinia her charm is in the healthy vitality which was the special characteristic of the venetian beauties of the time. the figure glows with warm pulsing life. xiv the pesaro madonna high on a great marble pedestal, between the stately pillars of a temple, sits the mother mary with her child jesus, receiving worshippers. beyond the pillars is seen the blue sky veiled with fleecy clouds. a tiny cloud has floated within the enclosure, bearing two winged cherubs, who hold a cross between them, hovering over the group below. the company of worshippers kneel on the tessellated pavement: we see from their dress that they are wealthy venetians of the sixteenth century. it is the family group of a certain jacopo pesaro, who was at that time bishop of paphos. he is known by the familiar nickname of "baffo," and played an important part in venetian history. when the venetians went forth in the new crusade to attack the turks, pesaro or "baffo" was the commander of the galleys sent by the borgia pope alexander vi. the expedition being successful, the bishop wished to show his gratitude for the divine favor. accordingly, in the course of time, he ordered this picture as a thank-offering commemorative of his victory. he comes with his kinsman benedetto and other members of his family to consecrate the standards taken from the enemy. the bishop himself has the most prominent place among the worshippers at the foot of the throne steps, while benedetto, with a group behind him, kneels opposite. the victorious commander is accompanied by st. george, who carries the banner inscribed with the papal arms and the pesaro escutcheon. he leads forward two turkish captives to whom he turns to speak. st. george was a warrior saint, and being besides the patron of venice his appearance in this capacity is very appropriate here. there are other saints to lend their august presence to the ceremony. as the picture was to be given to a church dedicated to the franciscan friars or "frari," two of the most celebrated members of this order are represented. they are st. francis, the founder, and st. anthony, of padua, the great preacher, and they stand in the habits of their order beside the throne. midway on the steps st. peter is seated reading a book from which he turns to look down upon jacopo. the key, which is the symbol of his authority in the church, stands on the step below. the saints, we see, form a connecting link between the exalted height of the madonna and child and the worshippers. st. peter introduces the bishop, and st. francis seems to ask favor for the group with benedetto. the scene is full of pomp and grandeur. the superb architecture of the temple, the rich draperies of the sacred group, the splendid dresses of the worshippers, the red and gold banner, all contribute to the impression of magnificence which the picture conveys. the colossal scale of the composition gives us an exhilarating sense of spaciousness. the color harmony is described as glorious. [illustration: d. anderson, photo. john andrew & son. sc. the pesaro madonna _church of the frari, venice_] though the bishop of paphos comes to render thanks, his attitude is far from humble. there are no bowed heads in the kneeling company. these proud pesari all hold themselves erect in conscious self-importance. it is as if they were taking part in some pageant. only the face of the youth in the corner relaxes from dignified impassivity and looks wistfully out at us. the madonna leans graciously from her high throne and looks into the face of the bishop. she, too, has the proud aspect and demeanor which these haughty venetians would demand of one whom they were to honor. her splendid vitality is what impresses us most forcibly. the child is a merry little fellow who does not concern himself at all with the ceremony. he has caught up his mother's veil in the left hand, drawing it over his head as if in a game of hide and seek with st. francis. the little foot is kicked out playfully as he looks down into the good saint's face. let us consider a moment the skill with which titian has united the various parts of his picture. the canvas was of an awkward shape, being of so great height. to fill the space proportionately, the virgin's throne is placed at a height which divides the picture. the little cloud-borne cherubs break the otherwise undue length of the temple pillars. the composition of the group is outlined in a rather odd-shaped triangle. all its main lines flow diagonally toward a focus in the face of the virgin, who is of course the dominant figure in the company. notice the continuous line extending from the top to the bottom of the group. the folds of the madonna's drapery are ingeniously carried on in the rich velvet throne hanging; and st. peter's yellow mantle falls well below, where the bishop's robe takes up the lines and carries them to the pavement. there is a veritable cascade of draperies flowing diagonally through the centre of the picture. the staff of the banner describes a line cutting this main diagonal at exactly the same angle, and thus avoiding any one-sided effect in the picture. in the right of the composition the outline of the christchild's figure, the arm of st. francis, and the stiff robe of benedetto make a series of lines which enclose the triangle on that side. the critic ruskin has enunciated a set of laws of composition nearly all of which find illustration in this painting.[ ] _principality_ is well exemplified in the prominence of the virgin's position and the flow of the lines toward her. _repetition_, _contrast_, and _continuity_, are seen in the drawing of the compositional lines, as has been indicated. finally, the picture is perfect in _unity_, which is the result of masterly composition, its many diverse parts being bound closely together to form a harmonious whole. xv st. john the baptist st. john the baptist was the cousin of jesus, and was the elder of the two by about six months. before his birth the angel gabriel appeared to his father, zacharias, and predicted for the coming child a great mission as a prophet. his special work was to prepare the way for the advent of the messiah. zacharias was a priest and a good man, and both he and his wife elizabeth were deeply impressed with the angel's message. not long after, their cousin mary came from nazareth to bring them news of the wonderful babe jesus promised her by the same angel. he was to be the messiah whom john was to proclaim. the two women talked earnestly together of the future of their children, and no doubt planned to do all in their power to further the angel's prediction. the time came when all these strange prophecies were fulfilled. as john grew to manhood he showed himself quite different from other men. he took up his abode in the wilderness, where he lived almost as a hermit. his raiment was of camel's hair fastened about him with a leathern girdle; his food was locusts and wild honey. at length "the word of god came unto him," and he began to go about the country preaching. his speech was as simple and rugged as his manner of life. he boldly denounced the pharisees and sadducees as "a generation of vipers," and warned sinners "to flee from the wrath to come." the burden of all his sermons was, "repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." the fame of his preaching reached jerusalem, and the jews sent priests and levites to ask him, "who art thou?" his reply was in the mystic language of the old hebrew prophet isaiah, "i am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the lord." it was a part of john's work to baptize his converts in the river jordan. he explained, however, that this baptism by water was only a symbol of the spiritual baptism which they were to receive at the hands of the coming: messiah. "one mightier than i cometh," he said, "the latchet of whose shoes i am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the holy ghost and with fire."[ ] at last jesus himself sought to be baptized by john. the baptist protested his unworthiness, but jesus insisted, and the ceremony was performed. and "it came to pass that ... the heaven was opened, and the holy ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, thou art my beloved son; in thee i am well pleased."[ ] this was the promised sign by which john knew jesus as the messiah, and he straightway proclaimed him to his disciples. [illustration: d. anderson, photo. john andrew & son. sc. st. john the baptist _venice academy_] his life work was now consummated, but he was not permitted to see the fruits of his labors. for his open denunciation of king herod he was cast into prison, and was soon after beheaded. in our picture st. john stands in a mountain glen preaching. as his glance is directed out of the picture it is as if his audience were in front, and we among their number. his pointing finger seems to single out some one to whom he directs attention, and we know well who it is. this must be that day when seeing jesus approach the prophet exclaimed, "behold the lamb of god which taketh away the sin of the world. this is he of whom i said, after me cometh a man which is preferred before me; for he was before me."[ ] the lamb which lies on the ground beside him is the outward symbol of his words. the slender reed cross he carries is an emblem of his mission as the prophet of the crucified one. from head to feet the baptist impresses us with his muscular power. there is no hint of fastings and vigils in this strong athletic figure. here, as elsewhere. titian will have nothing of that piety which is associated with a delicate and puny physique. he is the art apostle of that "muscular christianity" of which charles kingsley used to preach. the baptist's skin is bronzed and weather-beaten from his active out-of-door life. yet the face shows the stern and sombre character of the prophet. there are traces of suffering in the expression, as of one who mourns profoundly the evil in the world. something of the fanatic gleams in the eyes, and the effect is heightened by the wild masses of unkempt hair which frame the countenance. nature too seems to be in a somewhat wild and sombre mood in this spot. a dark bank rises abruptly at the side, and st. john stands in its shadow, just under a tuft of coarse grass and bushes jutting from its upper edge. the sky is overcast with clouds. a narrow stream falls over a rocky bed, and in the distance slender trees lift their feathery branches in the air. in titian's time landscape painting had not developed into an independent art, but was an important part of figure compositions. our painter always took great pains with his landscapes, making them harmonize, as does this, with the character of the figures. the picture reminds us of the st. christopher which we have examined, being, like it, a study direct from the life of some athletic model. yet here we see to better advantage titian's work in modelling the nude figure. we can understand that one reason why he could make a draped figure so lifelike was because he studied the anatomy of the human body in undraped models. the figure here stands out almost as if it were done in sculpture. xvi portrait of titian probably no other painter in the world's history was ever granted so long a life in which to develop his art as was titian. he was a mere boy when he began to paint, and he was still busy with his brush when stricken with plague at the age of ninety-nine. the years between were full of activity, and every decade was marked by some specially notable work as by a golden milestone. the assumption of the virgin was painted at the age of forty, the pesaro madonna at fifty, the presentation of the virgin in his early sixties, the portrait of philip ii. at about seventy, and st. john the baptist at eighty. how interesting it would be if we could have a portrait of the man himself painted at each decade! titian, however, seems to have been quite lacking in personal vanity. though a handsome and distinguished-looking man, a fine subject for a portrait, he seldom painted his own likeness. we value the more the fine portrait of our frontispiece painted at the age of eighty-five. the years have dealt so gently with him that we may still call him a handsome man. yet the face has the shrunken look of old age, there are deep hollows about the eyes, and the features are sharpened under the withered skin. there is an expression which seems almost like awe in the eyes. the painter gazes absently into space as if piercing beyond the veil which separates this world from the next. the mood does not seem to be one of reminiscence, but rather of grave anticipation. as we study the face we are interested to read in it what we know of the man's character and history. titian was, as we have seen, a man who enjoyed very much the good things of life, and passed most of his days in luxurious surroundings. he was thoroughly a man of the world, at ease in the society of princes and noblemen, and a princely host in his own house. our portrait shows that his courtly bearing did not fail him in his old age: we can fancy the ceremonious courtesy of his manner. the figure is extended well below the waist, perhaps that we may see how erect the old man is. titian, too, had not a little taste for literature and the society of the learned. his fine high brow and keen eyes are sufficient evidence that he was a man of intellect. that he was a fond father we have no doubt, and we like to trace the lines of kindliness in the fine old face. age cannot quench the old man's ardor for his art. the brush is still his familiar companion, and will go with him to the end. he holds it here in his right hand, in the attitude of a painter pausing to get the effect of his work. it may be from this that he would have us think that his glance is directed toward his canvas. in that case, the serious expression would indicate that the subject is a solemn one, perhaps the ecce homo, or the pieta, which he painted in his later years. we see that his hand had not lost its cunning in summoning before us the real presence of a sitter, and that he could paint his own likeness as readily as that of another. the portrait shows us the best elements in a man of a many-sided nature. this is titian the master, whom the world honors as one of the greatest of his kind. pronouncing vocabulary of proper names and foreign words the diacritical marks given are those found in the latest edition of webster's international dictionary. explanation of diacritical marks. a dash ([=_]) above the vowel denotes the long sound, as in f[=a]te, [=e]ve, t[=i]me, n[=o]te, [=u]se. a dash and a dot ([.=_]) above the vowel denote the same sound, less prolonged. a curve ([)_]) above the vowel denotes the short sound, as in [)a]dd, [)e]nd, [)i]ll, [)o]dd, [)u]p. a dot ([._]) above the vowel a denotes the obscure sound of a in p[.a]st, [.a]bate, americ[.a]. a double dot ([:_]) above the vowel a denotes the broad sound of a in fäther, älma. a double dot ([_:]) below the vowel a denotes the sound of a in b[a:]ll. a wave ([~_]) above the vowel e denotes the sound of e in h[~e]r. a circumflex accent ([^_]) above the vowel o denotes the sound of o in bôrn. a dot ([_.]) below the vowel u denotes the sound of u in the french language. [n] indicates that the preceding vowel has the french nasal tone. th denotes the sound of th in the, this, ç sounds like s. [/c] sounds like k. [g=] sounds like z. [=g] is hard as in get. [.g] is soft as in gem. Æëtes ([.=e][=e]'t[.=e]z). andalusia ([)a]n-d[.a]-l[=o][=o]'z[)i]-[.a] _or_ än-dä-l[=o][=o]-th[=e]'ä). anthony ([)a]n't[)o]-n[)i]). argo (är'[=g][=o]). armada (är-mä'dä _or_ är-m[=a]'d[.a]). augsburg (owgs'b[=o][=o]rg). baffo (bäf'f[.=o]). bäldässä'r[)e]. b[)e]l'lä. belvedere (b[)e]l-v[)e]-d[=a]'r[)e] _or_ -d[=e]r'). benedetto (b[=a]-n[=a]-d[)e]t't[=o]). b[)e]th'l[=e]h[=e]m. biri (b[=e]'r[=e]). borgia (bôr'jä). brussels (br[)u]s'[)e]lz). cæsar (s[=e]'z[.a]r). calvary (k[)a]l'v[.a]-r[)i]). canaan (k[=a]'n[.a]n _or_ k[=a]'n[.=a]-[.a]n). carlton (kärl't[)u]n). casa grande (kä'sä grän'd[.=a]). castiglione (käs-t[=e]l-y[=o]'n[.=a]). caxton (k[)a]ks't[)u]n). ceneda (ch[=a]-n[=a]'dä). christopher (kr[)i]s't[.=o]-f[)e]r). cleodolinda (kl[.=a]-[.=o]-d[.=o]-l[)i]n'dä). cl[)o]s's[)o]n. colchis (k[)o]l'k[)i]s). cornelio (k[.=o]r-n[=a]'l[.=e]-[.=o]). cristoforo (kr[.=e]s-t[=o]'f[.=o]-r[=o]). c[=u]'p[)i]d. diocletian (d[.=i]-[.=o]-kl[=e]'sh[)i]-[.a]n). ecce homo ([)e]k'k[)e], _or_ [)e]k's[=e], h[=o]'m[=o]). eleanora ([.=a]-l[.=a]-[.=o]-n[=o]'rä). elizabeth ([.=e]-l[)i]z'[.a]-b[)e]th). emmanuel ([)e]m-m[)a]n' [.=u]-[)e]l). f[=e]r'd[)i]n[)a]nd. fl[)e]m'[)i]ng. flôr[)e]nce. francesco (frän-ch[)e]s'k[=o]). franciscan (fr[)a]n-s[)i]s'k[)a]n). frari (frä'r[=e]). g[=a]br[)i][)e]l. g[=a]'r[)e]th. giorgione (jôr-j[=o]'n[.=a]). g[)o]nzä'gä. gr[)a]nä'd[.a]. guimpe ([=g][)a][n]p). guinevere (gw[)i]n'[)e]-v[=e]r). hebrew (h[=e]'br[=o][=o]). hecate (h[)e]k'[.=a]-t[.=e]). herod (h[)e]r'[)u]d). herodians (h[)e]r-[=o]'d[)i]-[.a]nz). isabella ([)i]z-[.a]-b[)e]l'[.a]). isaiah (i-z[=a]'y[.a]). israel ([)i]z'r[.=a]-[)e]l). jacopo (yä'k[=o]-p[=o]). jameson (j[=a]'m[)e]-s[)u]n). jason (j[=a]'s[)u]n). jerome (j[.=e]-r[=o]m' or j[)e]r'[)u]m). j[)e]r[=u]s[.a]l[)e]m. joachim (j[=o]'ä-k[)i]m). jôrd[.a]n. jud[=e]'[.a]. j[=u]'n[=o]. kingsley (k[)i]ngz'l[)i]). läv[)i]n'[)i][.a]. legenda aurea (l[)e][=g]-[)e]n'dä ow'r[)e]-ä _or_ l[=e]-j[)e]n'd[.a] [a:]'r[.=e]-[.a]). leon, ponce de (p[=o]n'th[=a] d[=a] l[=a]-[=o]n'). leonardo (l[=a]-[=o]-när'd[=o]). levites (l[=e]'v[=i]tz). l[)o]t't[=o]. lynette (l[)i]-n[)e]t'). m[.a]d[)o]n'n[.a]. m[)a]gn[)i]'f[)i]c[)a]t. mandola (män-d[=o]'lä). m[)a]n't[.=u][.a]. maximilian (m[)a]k-s[)i]-m[=i]l'[=i]-[.a]n). m[=e]d[=e]'[.a]. m[)e]n'd[)e]lss[=o]hn. m[)e]ss[=i]'[.a]h. m[)e]t[.a]môrph[=o]s[=e][s=]. milan (m[)i]l'[.a]n _or_ m[)i]-l[)a]n'). m[=i]'l[=o]. murano (m[=o][=o]-rä'n[=o]). murillo (m[=o][=o]-r[=e]l'y[=o]). naz'areth. netherlands (n[)e]th'[~e]r-l[.a]ndz). offero ([)o]f'f[.=e]-r[=o]). ovid ([)o]v'[)i]d). p[)a]d'[.=u][.a]. p[)a]l[)e]st[=i]ne. pallavicino, argentina (är-[.g][)e]n-t[=e]'nä päl-lä-v[=e]-ch[=e]'n[=o]). päl'mä. p[=a]'ph[)o]s. pär'mä. pesari (p[=a]-sä'r[=e]). pesaro, jacopo (yä'k[=o]-p[=o] p[=a]-sä'r[=o]). pharisee (f[)a]r'[)i]-s[=e]). pieta (p[.=e]-[=a]'tä). portugal (p[=o]r't[.=u]-g[.a]l). portuguese (p[=o]r't[.=u]-g[=e]z). priscianese (pr[)i]s-ch[=e]-ä-n[=a]'s[.=a]). reggio (r[)e]d'j[=o]). rovere, francesco maria della (frän-ch[)e]s'k[=o] mä-r[=e]'ä d[)e]l'lä r[=o]-v[=a]'r[=a]). r[)u]s'k[)i]n. sadducees (s[)a]d'[.=u]-s[=e]z). salome (s[)a]-l[=o]'m[.=e]). sarcinelli, cornelio (k[=o]r-n[=a]'l[.=e]-[=o] sär-ch[.=e]-n[)e]l'l[.=e]). serravalle (s[)e]r-rä-väl'l[.=a]). seville (s[.=e]-v[)i]l'). titian (t[)i]sh'[.a]n). uffizi ([=o][=o]f-f[=e]t's[.=e]). urbino ([=o][=o]r-b[=e]'n[.=o]). van dyck (v[)a]n d[=i]k'). vasari (vä-sä'r[=e]). velasquez (v[=a]-läs'k[=a]th). venetian (v[.=e]-n[=e]'sh[.a]n). venice (v[)e]n'[)i]s). v[=e]'n[)u]s. veronese (v[=a]-r[=o]-n[=a]'z[.=a]). v[)e]s[=a]'l[)i][)u]s. vi[)e]n'n[.a]. vinci, leonardo da (l[=a]-[=o]-när'd[=o] da v[)i]n'ch[=e]). voragine, jacopo de (yä'k[=o]-p[=o] d[.a] v[=o]-rä-j[=e]'n[.=a]). v[)u]l'g[=a]te. wesley (w[)e]s'l[)i]). yuste (y[=o][=o]s't[=a]). zacharias (z[)a]k-[.a]-r[=i]'[.a]s). footnotes [ ] see notes on titian in vasari's _lives of the painters_, edited by e. h. and e. w. blashfield and a. a. hopkins. [ ] notes on titian in vasari's _lives of the painters_, by e. h. and e. w. blashfield and a. a. hopkins. [ ] claude phillips. [ ] compiled from the index to _titian: his life and times_, by crowe and cavalcaselle. [ ] as the various so-called portraits of vesalius are said to have little in common upon which to base a resemblance, one is almost tempted to set up a theory that this portrait may be that of the great anatomist. [ ] samuel, chapter i., verses , - . [ ] _the golden legend_, in caxton's translation, edited by f. s. ellis (temple classics, vol. v., pp. , ). the story is retold in mrs. jameson's _legends of the madonna_, p. . [ ] for instance, lavinia, flora, and the man with the glove. [ ] see the acts of the apostles, chapters vi. and vii. [ ] the lives of st. jerome and st. george are related in detail in _the golden legend_. see caxton's translation edited by f. s. ellis (temple classics), vol. v., pages - , for st. jerome, vol. iii., pages - , for st. george. mrs. jameson's _sacred and legendary art_ contains condensed accounts of the same two saints. see page for st. jerome and page for st. george. [ ] see the story as related in mrs. jameson's _sacred and legendary art_, page , and in h. e. scudder's _book of legends_. [ ] claude phillips. [ ] matthew, chapter xxii., verses - . [ ] others are the venus of the uffizi gallery, florence, and the girl in the fur cloak in the belvedere, vienna. [ ] see page . [ ] in the later venetian art, as in the pictures by veronese, we see more elaborate costumes. [ ] see book vii. in henry king's translation, from which the quotations here are drawn. the same story is delightfully modernized in hawthorne's _tanglewood tales_ and kingsley's _greek heroes_. [ ] see the volume on _greek sculpture_ in the riverside art series, chap. xiii. [ ] in our reproduction a small portion of the landscape is cut off at each end. [ ] from _gareth and lynette_. [ ] from _guinevere_. [ ] this analysis of mary's character is suggested in the introduction to mrs. jameson's _legends of the madonna_, p. . [ ] see the volume on _murillo_ in the riverside art series, chapter i. [ ] see _the golden legend_, in caxton's translation, edited by f. s. ellis (temple classics), vol. iv., pages , , . [ ] mrs. jameson in _sacred and legendary art_, page . [ ] see page . [ ] this feature of the picture is pointed out by john van dyke in his notes on closson's engraving of the subject. [ ] it should be remembered that a portion of elizabeth's reign ( - ) fell within titian's lifetime. [ ] see _elements of drawing_, lecture iii. [ ] luke, chapter iii., verse . [ ] luke, chapter iii., verses , . [ ] john, chapter i., verses - . lessons in the art of illuminating. [illustration: plate ix.--facsimile page of a book of hours, th century.] _vere foster's water-color series._ lessons in the art of illuminating a series of examples selected from works in the british museum, lambeth palace library, and the south kensington museum. with practical instructions, and a sketch of the history of the art, by w. j. loftie, b.a., f.s.a., author of "a history of london," "memorials of the savoy palace," "a century of bibles," "a plea for art in the house," etc. london: blackie & son; glasgow, edinburgh, and dublin. the colored illustrations are printed by w. g. blackie & co., glasgow, from drawings by j. a. burt. _the ornamental border and initial of the title-page are interesting examples of italian work of the fifteenth century. they are from the harleian collection, british museum ( and ) different works, but evidently executed by the same hand. the colors are represented in the engraving by means of lines (as explained on page ), so that by the aid of these directions the student can reproduce them in the colors employed in the original mss._ contents. title-page--border and initial, italian work of fifteenth century. general sketch of the art of illuminating, example of illumination by giulio clovio, sixteenth-century writing, from "albert durer's prayer-book," practical instructions as to materials and modes of working, illuminated plate i.--initials by english illuminators of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, description of plate i., french initials, from an alphabet of the fifteenth century, illuminated plate ii.--twelve initial letters from french manuscript of the fifteenth century, description of plate ii., large initial letter of the twelfth century, from harleian mss. , british museum, illuminated plate iii.--examples of thirteenth-century work from two manuscripts in the british museum, description of plate iii., outline drawings of two pages of a book of hours of the fourteenth century, illuminated plate iv.--facsimile page of a manuscript in lambeth palace library--fifteenth century, description of plate iv., outline drawings of two pages of a book of hours of the fourteenth century, illuminated plate v.--ornaments and large initial from manuscripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in the british museum and south kensington museum, description of plate v., outline drawings of bands and border ornaments of the fourteenth century, illuminated plate vi.--a full page and separate initials from a book of hours (low countries, fifteenth century), and border from manuscript in british museum, description of plate vi., french initial letters and border ornaments of the fourteenth century, illuminated plate vii.--borders of thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,--and heraldic designs, from manuscripts in british museum and heralds' college, description of plate vii., outline drawing of border and text, with adoration of the three kings, sixteenth century, illuminated plate viii.--examples from the book of kells (ninth century), in library of trinity college, dublin, description of plate viii., outline drawings of early irish initial letters, illuminated plate ix.--facsimile page of a book of hours in lambeth palace library--early in fifteenth century, description of plate ix., _the outlined initials on pp. xv, , , , , , and are taken from a manuscript of the fifteenth century, preserved at nuremberg. the originals are very highly but delicately colored, the ground being gold; the body of the letter, black; and the scroll work and foliage pink, blue, green, and yellow. the book, which is dated , is a treatise entitled the "preservation of body, soul, honour, and goods." the tailpieces throughout represent heraldic animals, from the rows roll and other authentic sources._ [illustration: heraldic boar.] the art of illuminating. general sketch. perhaps the art of illumination, although it is closely connected with that of writing, may be entitled to a separate history. men could write long before it occurred to them to ornament their writings: and the modern student will find that what he looks upon as genuine illumination is not to be traced back many centuries. true one or two roman manuscripts are in existence which may be dated soon after a.d. , and which are illustrated rather than illuminated with pictures. but the medieval art, and especially that branch of it which flourished in our own country, has a different origin, and sprang from the system, not of illustration, but of pure ornamentation, which prevailed in ireland before the eighth century, but which reached its highest development among the oriental moslems. the works of the irish school were for long and are sometimes still called "anglo-saxon," and there can be no doubt that the irish missionaries brought with them to iona and to lindisfarne the traditions and practice of the art, which they taught, with christianity, to the heathens of england. i will therefore refer the reader who desires to know more of palæography in general, and of the principal foreign schools of the art of writing, to the great works of m. sylvestre, of messieurs wyatt and tymms, of henry shaw, and miss stokes, and to various isolated papers in the transactions of the antiquarian societies; and i will begin with the earliest practice of the art in our own country and by our own ancestors. during the eighth century rivalry to irish art sprung up in the south; and the immediate followers of st. augustine of canterbury founded a scriptorium which produced many fine specimens. in less than two centuries a very high standard had been reached, and many of my readers will remember the utrecht psalter, as it is called, which, though it is one of the oldest anglo-saxon mss. now preserved, is full of spirited drawings of figures and of illuminated capital letters. the volume formerly belonged to england, but was lost, and subsequently turned up in holland. by the tenth century the art had reached such a pitch of perfection that we find a charter of king edgar wholly written in letters of gold. the duke of devonshire possesses a volume written and illuminated for ethelwold, bishop of winchester from to , by a "scriptor" named godemann, afterwards abbot of thorney, the first english artist with whose name we are acquainted, if we except his more famous contemporary, archbishop dunstan, whose skill in metal work is better remembered than his powers as an illuminator. the wonderful irish mss. the book of kells, which is in the library of trinity college, dublin, the book of durham, and others more curious than beautiful, belong to a slightly earlier period, perhaps to the ninth century, as miss stokes has suggested. many schools of writing throughout england were destroyed in the danish wars, and the princes of the norman race did little to encourage literary art. though one or two interesting mss. of this period survive, it is not until the accession of the angevins that english writing makes another distinct advance. by the beginning of the thirteenth century the art had risen to the highest pitch it has ever reached. the scriptorium of st. albans was the most celebrated. the works of matthew paris written there are still extant, and testify, by the character of the pictures and colored letters, to a purity of style and to the existence of a living and growing art which has never been surpassed in this country. it is believed that the numerous little bibles of this period were chiefly written at canterbury, and certainly, as examples of what could be done before printing, are most marvellous. one of these mss. is before me as i write. the written part of the page measures - / inches in width and - / inches in height, and the book is scarcely more than an inch thick, yet it contains, on pages of fine vellum in a minute almost microscopic hand, the whole bible and apocrypha. the beginning of each book has a miniature representing a scripture scene, and a larger miniature, representing the genealogy of the saviour, is at the beginning of genesis. although this is the smallest complete bible i have met with, others very little larger are in the british museum, and with them one, of folio size, exquisitely ornamented in the same style, which bears the name of the artist, "wills. devoniensis," william of devonshire. besides chronicles and bibles the thirteenth century produced psalters, the form and character of which were eventually enlarged and grew into the well-known "horæ," or books of devotional "hours," which were illuminated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. placing side by side a number of psalters and hours, and tracing by comparison the prevalence of single sets of designs--all, however, originating in the wonderful vitality of the thirteenth century--is a very interesting study, though seldom possible. it was possible to make such a comparison, however, in , when a large number of magnificently illuminated books were exhibited together at the rooms of the burlington club in london. it was then seen that when the form and subject of a decoration were once invented they remained fixed for all generations. a psalter of the thirteenth century, probably of flemish execution, which was in the collection of mr. bragge, was ornamented with borders containing grotesque figures, and had a calendar at the beginning, every page of which represented a scene appropriate to the month, with the proper sign of the zodiac. thus, under january there was a great hooded fire-place, and a little figure of a man seated and warming himself. the chimney formed a kind of border to the page, and at the top was a stork on her nest feeding her brood. this ms. was so early that some good judges did not hesitate to assign it to the end of the twelfth century. close to it was a book of hours, written in the fifteenth if not early in the sixteenth century, and under january we have the self-same scene, though the grotesqueness, and indeed much of the quaint beauty of the design has disappeared. it is the same with scriptural and ritual scenes. the bibles always had the same set of pictures; the psalter and hours the same subjects; and the same arrangement of colors was handed down as suitable for the representation of certain scenes, and was unvaried. it may enable the reader to form a clearer idea of what these highly ornamented volumes were like if i extract the full description of one which was lately in the catalogue of an eminent london bookseller:--it was a book of hours, written in france at the beginning of the sixteenth century, or, say during the reign of our henry the seventh, to . it consisted of seventy-seven leaves of vellum, which measured about seven inches by five, with an illuminated border to every page. there were twenty miniatures, some the size of the full page and some smaller. the borders were composed of flowers and fruit, interspersed with grotesque animals, birds, and human figures, most eccentrically conceived. both the capital letters and the borders were heightened with gold, sometimes flat, and sometimes brilliantly burnished.[ ] this is, of course, an unusually rich example. about the same period great pains were taken to ornament the calendar with which these books usually commenced. some of these calendars consist simply of a picture in a gold frame, the composition so arranged that it does not suffer by a large blank space being left in the middle. in this space the calendar was written; and the rest of the page was occupied with an agricultural scene, emblematic of the season. in the sky above, painted in gold shell on the blue, was the sign of the zodiac appropriate to each month. in some the border was in compartments. one compartment contained the name of the month in gold letters or a monogram. another contained an agricultural scene, another the zodiacal sign, another a flower, and the rest the figures of the principal saints of the month. [ ] the miniatures were as follows:-- . the annunciation, a beautiful miniature with the border painted upon a gold ground; this is the case with all the borders containing miniatures. . the meeting of mary and elizabeth. . the infant jesus lying in the manger at the inn at bethlehem, joseph and the virgin mary kneeling in adoration. . the announcement of the birth of the saviour to the shepherds by night. . the worship of the magi. . the presentation in the temple. . the journey into egypt. . the coronation of the virgin. . the crucifixion. . the descent of the holy spirit on the day of pentecost. . saint anthony; a small miniature. . the martyrdom of saint sebastian; a small miniature. . king david at his devotions in a chamber within his palace. . the raising of lazarus. . the virgin mary with the infant jesus, guarded by angels; a small miniature. . the body of jesus taken down from the cross. . saint quentin the martyr. . saint adrian. . mater dolorosa. . the virgin and child. the four last were small. the student turns with relief from this comparative monotony to chronicles in which historical scenes are given. one of the oldest is among the harleian manuscripts in the british museum, and relates to the deposition of richard ii. it has been engraved in _archæologia_, vol. xx., so that it is accessible wherever there is a good library. a little later french romances were similarly decorated, and we have innumerable pictures to illustrate the manners and costumes of the knights and ladies of whom we read in the stirring pages of froissart. illumination did not decline at once with the invention of printing. on the contrary some exquisite borders and initials are found in books printed on vellum, one very well known example being a new testament in the lambeth library, which was long mistaken for a manuscript, though it is, in reality, a portion of the great bible supposed to have been printed at mentz before , and to be the earliest work of the press of fust and schoyffer. a few wealthy people had prayer-books illuminated for their own use down to a comparatively recent period. the celebrated jarry wrote exquisite little volumes for louis xiv. and his courtiers. a very fine book of hours was in the bragge collection, and must have been written in the sixteenth century, perhaps for some widow of rank in france. it contained sixteen miniatures which closely resembled limoges enamels, the only decided color used being the carnation for the faces, the rest of the design being in black, white, gold, and a peculiar pearly grey. each page had a border of black and gold. from another manuscript, a book of hours written in france in the fourteenth century (and exhibited at the burlington club by mr. robert young), we have some outline tracings of the ivy pattern (see page ). the famous illuminations of giulio clovio (a native of croatia, who practised in italy - ) hardly deserve the admiration they receive. they are in fact small pictures, the colors very crude and bright, and without the solemnity which attaches to ancient religious art. an illuminated work by clovio was recently sold in london for the enormous sum of £ . it had been long in the possession of an old lancashire family, and is believed to have been illuminated for cardinal alexander farnese, and by him presented to his uncle paul iii., who was pope between and . in england the latest illuminators became the first miniature painters; and the succession of english artists is carried on from godemann and paris, through nicholas hilliard ( - ) and isaac oliver ( - ), to the school of cooper ( - ) and dobson, whose portraits are on vellum. [illustration: conversion of st. paul, by giulio clovio. from "st. paul's epistle to the romans," in the soane museum.] short as is this survey of the history of illumination, it will not do to omit all reference to heraldry. heraldic manuscripts, it is curious to remark, are rarely illuminated with borders or initials; but in the chronicles of matthew paris shields of arms are frequently introduced with good effect. occasionally in books of hours the arms of the person for whom the work was undertaken are placed in the border. some fine examples of this kind are to be found in the so-called bedford missal, which is really a book of hours, and was written for john, duke of bedford, the brother of henry v. most of the manuscripts now extant on the subject are of late date and rude execution, consisting chiefly of rolls of arms, catalogues with shields in "trick"--that is, sketched with the colors indicated by a letter, or lists of banners, of which last a fine example is in the library of the college of arms. heraldry may be studied to advantage by the modern illuminator, who should endeavour to become so conversant with the various charges that in making a border or filling a letter he may be able to introduce them artistically without violating the strict laws of the "science." a late but very beautiful ms., in four little square volumes, which belongs to mr. malcolm of poltalloch, has been identified as having been written for bona of savoy, duchess of milan, who died in . this identification has been made by means of the frequent occurrence of her badge and mottoes in the borders, many of which contain other devices of a semi-heraldic character, such as a phoenix, which is known to have been a favourite emblem of the duchess, an ermine, a rabbit, and a child playing with a serpent or dragon, all of them allusive to the heraldry of the lady and her husband. the study of heraldry has a further advantage in offering certain fixed rules about the use of colors which may help the student to attain harmony, and also in accustoming the eye and the hand to adapting certain forms to the place they have to fill, as for instance, the rampant lion within his shield, so as to leave as little vacant space as possible. some examples of animals treated in heraldic style will be found interspersed in this work as tailpieces. one of these, at the end of the contents, represents a wild boar, to whose neck a mantle, bearing a coat of arms, is attached. it will be understood that what are called in heraldry "supporters" were a knight's attendants, who disguised themselves as beasts, and held their master's shield at the door of his tent at a tournament. the figures cannot, therefore, be too much conventionalized. (see the examples shown in plate vii.) some of the other designs are from the rows roll, a heraldic manuscript of the time of the wars of the roses. some beautiful heraldic designs are to be found in drummond's _noble families_. they were drawn by mr. montagu, the author of a charming volume on _heraldry_. our facsimile reproductions of ancient manuscripts have been selected with a view to supply such examples as are most likely to prove useful to the student. for this purpose we have preferred in several instances to present the whole page with its writing complete, so that the modern illuminator may see how the ancient one worked, and how he arranged his painting and his writing with respect to each other. to this we may add, that for the rest we have chosen our examples as much as possible because they were pretty, instructive, and of english workmanship, a majority of our pictures being copied from manuscripts written in our own country. i need only call attention to the well known but very beautiful style usually called the "english flower pattern," which admits of an endless series of variations and even improvements, and which is as characteristic of our mediæval painters as the perpendicular style in gothic is of our architects, both having flourished here and here only during a long period. and in conclusion i should be inclined to advise the illuminator against stiffness. we are too fond of a vellum which is like sheets of ivory, and of working on it with mathematical precision. the old illuminators used a material much more like what is now called "lawyer's parchment," but perfectly well adapted for taking color and gold. a moment's inspection of our examples will show the freedom and ease of the old work, and the dislike evinced by almost every ancient book painter to having his work confined within definite lines. such freedom and ease are only attained by careful study combined with experience. every one has not the ability to originate, but without great originality it may still be found possible to avoid servility. "who would be free himself must strike the blow;" but those who aspire to climb must first be certain that they can walk. the thing that most often offends the eye in modern illumination is that the artist, to conceal his own want of style, mixes up a number of others. incongruity is sometimes picturesque, but this kind of incongruity is always disagreeable, from the staring and inharmonious evidence of ignorance which it betrays. [illustration: heraldic bear from the rows roll.] [illustration: sixteenth-century writing--from "albert durer's prayer-book."] practical instructions. unless when intended for mere practice, all illuminated work should be executed upon _vellum_; its extreme beauty of surface cannot be imitated by any known process of manufacture, while its durability is well known. _bristol board_ approaches nearest to it in appearance, is equally pleasing to work upon, and for all practical purposes of the amateur is quite as good. but, if even that is not attainable, excellent work may be done on any _smooth grained drawing paper_. brushes.--_red sable brushes_ are preferable to all others for illuminating purposes, and are to be had in goose, duck, and crow quills,--the larger for laying on washes of color, or large grounds in body color,--the duck and crow for filling in the smaller portions of color, for shading and general work. one of the smallest size should be kept specially for outlining and fine hair-line finishings. for this purpose all the outer hairs should be neatly cut away with the scissors, leaving only about one-third of the hair remaining. drawing-pen--circle or bow-pen.--for doing long straight lines or circles these instruments are indispensable; they give out ink or color evenly, making a smooth, true line of any thickness required for lining any portion of the work, as in border margins, or any part requiring even lines, unattainable by the hand alone. it is necessary to put the ink or color into the pen with the brush after mixing it to the proper consistency for use. ink or _body color_ may be used with equal facility. before starting, the pen should always be tried upon a piece of loose paper, to test the thickness of the line, and also to see if the ink in the pen is not too thick or too thin: if too thick, it will not work evenly, while, if too thin, it will flow too rapidly, and _run_ upon a color ground as if on blotting paper. straight-edge, parallel-ruler, &c.--a thin wooden straight-edge, or, what is better, a parallel-ruler, and also a set square (a right-angled triangular piece of thin wood), will be found necessary for planning out the work. burnisher and tracer.--_agate burnishers_ are to be had at the artists' colormen's, either pencil or claw shaped; the former will be most useful to a beginner. an ivory _style_, _or point_, is requisite for tracing, and useful for indenting gold diapers. [illustration] pens.--for text or printing, either the quill or the steel pen may be used; both require special manipulation to fit them for the work. it will be most convenient, however, for the amateur to use the quill, as being more easily cut into the shape required; though a steel pen, once made, will last for years if taken care of. the point must be cut off slightly at an angle, such as may be found most convenient. if a steel pen is used, it will be necessary, after cutting off the point, to rub the pen carefully on an oilstone to smooth the roughened edges, and prevent it from scratching the paper. the text pen, when properly made, should work smoothly, making every stroke of equal thickness. it is well to have text pens of different widths, to suit for lettering of various thicknesses of body stroke. the pen should be held more upright than for ordinary writing. a broad, almost unyielding point, will give a fine upward and a firm downward or backward stroke with equal facility. for finer writing the pen should be cut with a longer slope in the nib. fine-pointed pens, for finishing and putting in the hair lines into the text, should also be provided. for this the fine _mapping_, or _lithographic_, pen, made by gillott and others, is most suitable. text or printing letters.--this is a kind of penmanship which the amateur will, at first, find very difficult to write with regularity, as it requires much special practice to attain anything like proficiency in its execution. but as much of the beauty and excellence of the illuminating depends upon the regularity and precision of the text, it is well worth all the application necessary to master it. the styles of text usually introduced within the illuminated borders are known under the names of "black letter," "church text," "old english," and "german text." indian ink and lamp black are the only paints generally used for black text; the difference being that indian ink is finer, and therefore better adapted for writing of a fine or delicate character. it works freely, and retains a slight gloss, while lamp black gives a full solid tint, and dries with a dull or mat surface;--a little gum-water added will help the appearance in this respect. some illuminators recommend a mixture of indian ink and lamp black, with a little gum-water, as the best for text of a full black body, working better than either alone. the mixture should be well rubbed together in a small saucer with the finger before using. if a portion of the text is to be in red, it should be in pure vermilion. if in gold, it must be shell gold, highly burnished with the agate, as hereafter described. colors.--not to confuse the learner with a multiplicity of pigments, we will only mention such as are essential, and with which all the examples in the following studies may be copied. as experience is gained by practice, the range of colors may be increased as requirements may dictate. gamboge. crimson lake. burnt umber. prussian blue. indian yellow. sepia. lamp black. burnt sienna. vermilion. emerald green. chinese white. cobalt. yellow ochre. a little experimental practice with the colors will do more to show the various combinations of which they are capable than any lengthy exposition. various portions of color may be tried, particularly for the more delicate tints, for greys, neutrals, and quiet compounds, where great purity is required, and the most pleasing noted for future use. there are two methods or styles of coloring, which are used either alone, or in conjunction. in the celtic, and other early styles, including that of the fourteenth century, where the colors are used flat--no relief by shading being given--it is purely a surface decoration, the colors well contrasted, merely graduated from deep to pale, and outlined with a clear, black outline. the masses of color or gold are here usually enriched by diapers, while the stems, leaves, &c., are elaborated by being worked over with delicate hair-line finishings on the darker ground. the other method of treating ornamental forms embraces a wide range of style of illuminating, approaching more nearly to nature in treatment, the ornament being more or less _shaded_ naturally, or conventionalized to some extent. it is important to lay the color evenly in painting, not getting it in ridges, or piling it in lumps, as the amateur is apt to do. this will be best attained by painting as evenly as possible with the brush, mostly in one direction, and not too full of color, and refraining from going back over the parts just painted, if it can be avoided. patches always show, more or less, and can hardly ever be made to look smooth. gold, silver, &c.--to the inexperienced, the laying on of gold or silver may seem a difficult affair; but it is really comparatively easy, especially when gold and silver shells, sold by artists' colormen, are used. these contain the pure metal ground very fine with gum, and need no preparation. when a drop of water is added, the gold can be removed from the shell, and used with the brush in the ordinary way as a color. one brush should be kept for painting gold or other metallic preparations. as silver is liable to turn black, we would advise the use of aluminium instead, which is not affected by the atmosphere. it can be had in shells in the same manner. in applying gold, or other metal, it should be painted very level and even, especially if it is to be burnished, which make irregularities more prominent. gold that is to be burnished should be applied before any of the coloring is begun, as the burnisher is apt to mark and injure the effect of the adjoining parts. when the gold is laid on, put a piece of glazed writing paper over it, and, with the burnisher, rub the paper briskly, pressing the particles of gold into a compact film: this gives it a smooth even surface. in this way it is principally used, and is called _mat gold_. for _burnished gold_, the paper is removed, and the agate rubbed briskly upon the gold surface, not dwelling too long upon any one part, until a fine, evenly-bright metallic surface is produced. rubbing the gold lightly with the finger, after touching the skin or hair, facilitates the action of the burnisher. preparing for work, &c.--the vellum or paper having been strained, the surface will, when dry, be perfectly flat and smooth. if the paper or vellum is to be much worked upon, it will be found advantageous to fasten it to a board by drawing-pins or by glueing the edges, having previously damped the back; when this is dry, the surface will be perfectly level, and not apt to bag in working. paper so mounted should be larger than the size required, to allow for cutting off the soiled margin when completed. to prevent the margins being soiled, a sheet of paper should now be fastened as a _mask_ over the page, with a flap the size of the work cut in it, by folding back portions of which any part of the surface may be worked upon without exposing the rest. it is almost impossible to erase pencil lines from vellum. the black lead, uniting with the animal matter of the skin, can never be properly got out--india rubber or bread only rubbing it into a greasy smudge. it is, therefore, better to prepare a complete outline of the design upon paper first, which can afterwards be transferred to the strained sheet. for this purpose _tracing paper_ is required, possessing this advantage, that corrections upon the sketch can be made in tracing, and, in placing it upon the vellum, if the sheet has been previously squared off for the work, its proper position can be readily seen and determined. the tracing paper should be about one inch larger each way, to allow of its being fastened to the mask over the exposed surface of the page. a piece of _transfer paper_ of a convenient size is then placed under the tracing. when the tracing is fixed in its proper position by a touch of gum or paste at the upper corners, slip the transfer paper, with the chalked side downwards, between the vellum and the tracing, and tack down the bottom corners of the tracing in the same way, to prevent shifting. seated at a firm table or desk of a convenient height, with the strained paper or drawing board slightly on an incline, the amateur may consider all ready for work. all the lines of the tracing are first to be gone over with the tracing point, or a very hard pencil cut sharp will answer the purpose. a corner may be raised occasionally to see that the tracing is not being done too firmly or so faintly as to be almost invisible. a piece of stout card should be kept under the hand while tracing, to avoid marking the clean page with the prepared transfer paper underneath, by undue pressure of the fingers. for larger work, not requiring such nicety of detail, the sketch may be transferred direct--especially if the paper is thin--without the use of tracing paper, by merely chalking the back of the drawing, and going over the lines with the tracing point; but the other method is best, and the transfer paper may be used over and over again. when the subject is carefully traced on the prepared page, and the tracing and transfer paper removed, it will be best to begin with the text. the experienced illuminator will generally, after arranging his designs and spacing out his text, with the initial letters in their proper places, transfer all to his vellum, and do the writing before he begins coloring, covering up all the page except the portion he is working upon. when the lettering is complete, it will in its turn be covered, to prevent its being soiled while the border is being painted. work out the painting as directed under "colors," beginning with the gold where it is in masses, burnishing it level when dry, as before explained: smaller portions can more readily be done afterwards. paint each color the full strength at once, keeping in mind that it becomes lighter when dry, and finishing each color up to the last stage before beginning another. outlining and finishing.--when the work is at this stage, the colors will have a dull and hopeless appearance; but, as the outline is added, it changes to one more pleasing. the addition of the fine white edging and hair-line finishings (as in fourteenth-century style), still further heightens the effect, giving the appearance of great elaborateness and brilliancy to the coloring, and beauty and decision to the forms. in the conventional style of treatment in coloring, a careful outline is an imperative necessity, and, in this part of the work, practice in the use of the brush is essential. sometimes objects are outlined in a deeper shade of the local color--as a pink flower or spray with lake, pale blue with darker blue, &c.; but this is not very usual. in the _real_ or natural treatment of the objects forming the subject of the illumination, an outline is seldom used, everything being colored and shaded as in nature. lamp black with a little gum water will be found the best medium, being capable of making a very fine or a firm line, at the same time retaining its intense glossy black appearance. a little practice will enable the learner to know the best consistency to make the ink. as it evaporates, a few drops of water may be added, and rubbed up with the brush or finger. for _hair-line finishing_, either light lines upon a darker ground or _vice versâ_, the same kind of brush will be used as for outlining. for _diapers_ of a geometrical character, the drawing-pen and small bow-pen will be of great use, either upon color or gold grounds. the ivory tracing point is used to indent upon gold scrolls or diapers. sometimes there is put over the entire back-ground a multitude of minute points of gold, but not too close together, and punctured with the point of the agate or tracing-point, producing a beautiful glittering effect. description of plate i. designed by english illuminators of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the initials on this plate must be separately described. those at the left top corner are the oldest, and show a certain stiffness of form and dulness of color which contrasts strongly with the spirit and lightness of the letters to the right side of the plate. these letters, which may be found in manuscripts of many different periods, should be carefully studied. there are some examples in which the initial is simply red or blue, as the case may be. next it is red and blue combined, the two colors being carefully kept apart by a narrow line of white, which the student will do well not to mark with white paint but to leave out by delicate manipulation. next the edge of the letter both within and without is followed with a line of red or blue drawn a little way from it and never touching. then the space so marked within the letter is filled by a tracery of slight flourishes in red and blue, the latter always predominating in the whole design so as to obtain the more harmony of effect. the blue and gold letters are very sparingly treated with red. the blue is prussian, but very deep in tint in the original. (addl. mss. , .) the initial s in the lower left-hand corner is of earlier date. it will probably, like the letters above it, be seldom used for ornamental purposes, and it will suffice here to mention that the colors used are as follows:--cobalt raised with chinese white for the blue parts; for the red, vermilion shaded with lake; and for the cool pale olive tint, indigo and yellow ochre, toned with chinese white. the large initial e shows a sacred scene, and is of english late thirteenth century work, in a private collection. the harmony is studiously correct, and the original, which is slightly larger, glows with color. it is rather more than four inches square. the figures are firmly outlined, as are their draperies. the gold is leaf, the architectural portion being left very flat, but the nimbus and the border are burnished. it has been found impossible to reproduce exactly the pattern of the ground in chromo-lithography, but as it may readily be done by hand, a description taken direct from the original will be acceptable to the pupil. the blue ground within the letter is dark: on it is ruled a square cross-bar of deep olive lines of great fineness. intersecting them, and so to speak keeping them down, is a net-work of very fine nearly white lines, the points of intersection being marked by minute circles. within the little spaces thus divided are minute circles of vermilion. the outer groundwork is of olive diapered with a deeper shade of the same color. the ground outside the letter is pink divided into squares by brown lines, each square having a little red circle in it. the edges of the draperies are marked by minute white lines, and there is less shading than in the reproduction. altogether this letter represents the best work of the period, and is an admirable example of the painstaking care by which alone great effects are produced. even a genius, such as was the artist who produced this little picture, must condescend to take infinite trouble if he would obtain an adequate reward. [illustration: heraldic popinjay.] [illustration: plate i.--initials by english illuminators, th and th centuries.] [illustration: letters from an alphabet of the fifteenth century. (the remainder of the alphabet is shown in colors in plate ii.)] description of plate ii. executed in the fifteenth century, probably in the north of france, the small manuscript from which the twelve initial letters are taken is in a private collection. it consists of twenty-four leaves of rather stout vellum, measuring - / inches by inches, and has evidently been a sampler or pattern book for a school of illumination. it contains two alphabets. the letters in the plate are selected from one of them. outlines of the rest of this alphabet are on the back of plate i. in copying them for color the student will remember that those letters which contain blue flowers are red, and _vice versâ_. each letter is painted on a ground of leaf-gold highly burnished, and is ornamented with a natural flower. we may recognize the rose, the pansy, the strawberry, the columbine, the wall-flower, the corn-flower, the sweet pea, the iris, the daisy, the thistle, and others. pinks, dog-roses, and forget-me-nots also occur, and the little volume forms, in this respect, a curious and interesting record of the produce of the flower garden so long ago as the time of the english "wars of the roses." the second alphabet is of a wholly different character, the letters, not the ground on which they are placed, being gilt, and the ground colored red or blue. over the red and the blue is a scroll pattern in white, but the red is sometimes decorated with a pattern in body-yellow, which produces an exceedingly gorgeous effect. in two or three cases the ground is green, worked over in a darker olive tint heightened with yellow. in one, a flower or scroll of grey is placed on a ground of blue dotted all over with minute gold spots. the blue used in copying these initials for the plate was prussian, mixed with chinese white, and shaded with pure color. the green is a mixture of indian yellow and prussian blue. the pink is lake and white shaded with pure lake. the red terminals which appear in some of the letters are of vermilion, shaded with lake. chinese white body color is largely used in working diapers over the letters of both colors. these letters are good examples of the form chiefly in use for illuminated manuscripts and in ornamental sculpture all over northern europe from the twelfth century to the sixteenth. they are generally called "the lombardic character," from some real or fancied connection with lombardy. such names must be cautiously accepted. "arabic numerals," for example, have been proved to be somewhat modified greek letters. but the lombardic capitals, whatever their origin, lend themselves readily to the exigencies of the illuminator, and are all the more effective from the contrast they present to the text. it is now almost universally acknowledged that all the forms of the mediæval and modern alphabet may be traced to egyptian hieroglyphics. a very interesting passage in mr. isaac taylor's learned book on "the alphabet," shows us the development of the letter m from the egyptian picture of an owl. "it will be noticed," he says, "that our english letter has preserved, throughout its long history of six thousand years, certain features by which it may be recognized as the conventionalized picture of an owl. in the capital letter m the two peaks, which are the lineal descendants of the two ears of the owl, still retain between them a not inapt representation of the beak, while the first of the vertical strokes represents the breast." it would be easy to show the same ancient origin for many other letters, and for most of those in the greek alphabet. f was a horned snake. g was a basket with a handle. k was a triangle. l was a lion seated. n was a zigzag line, of which only three strokes have survived. p was a faggot of papyrus. there is no perceptible difference between the long s still sometimes in use and the hieroglyphic form. u was a quail. z was a serpent. the initial e at the beginning of the previous page is of english work, and represents edward the black prince receiving a charter from the hands of his father king edward iii. the prince places one knee on his helmet, and has on his head only the ornamental cap called a "bonnet." his arms and those of the king are colored on their respective "tabards." the large letter m on the back of plate ii. is from a volume now in the british museum (harl. mss. ), which was written in germany in the twelfth century. it is illuminated in three colors. the ground is emerald green; the letter itself red; and the scroll-work also in red outline, a pale purple ground being substituted for the green in the circular spaces. it would be instructive to the student to color the outline from this description. [illustration: plate ii.--initial letters from french manuscript, th century.] [illustration: large initial letter of twelfth century. harleian mss. , british museum.] description of plate iii. the beauty of the work executed in the thirteenth century in england, and that part of what is now france which then belonged to england, can hardly be exceeded. in this plate are gathered a few examples of the period. they are from two books, both in the british museum, but one probably written in france and the other at canterbury. the initials from the french manuscript may be readily distinguished. the scroll-work is irregular and even wild, and in some examples the artist seems to have aimed at nothing less than startling the reader by his eccentricities. the volume is numbered in the catalogue, additional mss. , , and contains a treatise on the art of war. the letters numbered in the plate , , and , are from this book. the student will observe the simple scale of harmonious coloring, blue predominating, as is necessary, and both yellow and also gold being used to heighten the effect. in copying them the artist used these colors, besides chinese white and shell gold: namely, prussian blue, lake, indian red, emerald green, indian yellow, shaded with burnt sienna, and burnt umber, with sepia for the outlines. in imitating or copying these initials, the student will find a firm but delicate and even outline of the greatest importance. if the hand is very steady it may be put in with a small brush, which is particularly useful in the erratic flourishes in which this writer rejoiced so much. the english letters are much more sober and rectilinear in character. the t (fig. ) commences the prologue of the book of wisdom, for the volume is a bible (bibl. reg. d. ), and a small portion of the text is given with the initial as a guide to the arrangement. the colors are the same as in the french examples. the lines and dots in white are very delicate, and may be closely imitated by the use of chinese white with a very fine brush, care being taken not to disturb the underlying color. this is the book mentioned in the general sketch as being the work of a writer named "wills. devoniensis," or william of devonshire. it is a small folio in size and is written in double columns. at the commencement of the book of psalms there is a magnificent illumination covering the greater part of the page, and showing, with much scroll-work by way of border, a series of small vignettes, which include a crucifixion, and a number of scenes from the life of st. thomas of canterbury, better known in history as thomas becket. a somewhat similar bible, but not so delicate in workmanship, is also in the british museum ( b. ), and was written at salisbury in by william de hales. the writing of the thirteenth century differs considerably from that of the two following centuries. it is not so stiff, but much more legible. the distinction will be apparent from a comparison of this plate with those two which are copied from manuscripts at lambeth (plates iv. and ix.) modern illuminators seem to have preferred the later style, but the advantages of the early should recommend it. the chronicles written at st. albans by and under the superintendence of matthew paris are all in this style. facsimiles of several pages are given in the volumes published under the direction of the master of the rolls. the initial t on the previous page is from a beautiful nuremberg treatise of on the "preservation of body, soul, honour, and goods." on the back of plate iii. are two pages in outline from a small book of hours in the collection of robert young, esq., belfast. this kind of work is known as the "ivy pattern." it was exclusively practised in france in the fourteenth century. the coloring is usually of a very sober character: the prevailing colors being blue and gold only. [illustration: hart, badge of richard ii.] [illustration: plate iii.--examples of thirteenth-century work.] [illustration: pages from a book of hours of fourteenth century.] description of plate iv. our next plate is from a manuscript in the lambeth library. leave to copy it was readily granted to us by the lamented archbishop tait. it is no. in the library catalogue, and contains no fewer than twenty miniatures, as well as borders like this one. it belongs like plate ix. (the frontispiece) to the english flower pattern style of the fifteenth century, and is remarkable for the sober effect of the gorgeous colors employed, and for the delicacy of the scroll-work in black. a great deal of this effect is due to the application of gold. the illuminators employed both what we call "shell gold" and leaf. they attached the greatest importance to skill in gilding, and the result is that their "raising" survives after centuries, when that executed at the present day often cracks off after a few weeks or months, if not very carefully handled. many books, containing the secret of making these preparations, and sizes of all kinds, are in existence; and show that while the same end was attained by many different kinds of processes, one ingredient was never omitted, namely, great care and pains, and the gradual gathering of skill through experience. it is difficult to explain the method of using gold-leaf without an actual demonstration: and the student will learn more in ten minutes by watching a competent gilder than by reading a library of books on the subject. the "raising" is to be obtained from any artist's colorman, and nothing but practice long and assiduous can secure the power to use it. the same rule must be laid down for burnishing, which is an art not to be acquired in a day. it might be well to commence with the dotted work, common in the fourteenth century, and when we have learned to make a burnished dot with our agate point we may go on and burnish a larger surface. the effect of burnished leaf gold cannot be given in chromo-lithography, but it may be worth while to remark that all the gilding in the original illumination from which this plate is copied is burnished on a raised surface, even the small letters in the text. the colors employed by the copier were of a more mixed and complicated character than those for the other page from the lambeth library. the reason is apparent in a moment on comparing the two. in this page the brilliancy is so tempered as to produce a comparatively subdued effect. in the general sketch mention has already been made of miniatures in which the artist restricted himself to the use of certain colors, so as to insure a peculiar and delicate effect. here there has been no such restriction, but each color has been softened and so worked over with patterns and lines in body white or in pale yellow, that there is no glare or contrast. the student should be careful how he obtains harmony by this method, as he may find all his work weakened and paled; but, skilfully used, the system may be made to produce the most charming results. the blue is prussian, over which are dots and lines of chinese white. the pink is obtained by mixing lake and chinese white, shaded with darker lake, and also heightened with white lines and dots. the orange is pale indian yellow shaded with burnt sienna, and with an admixture of lake in the deeper shadows. the green in this example is obtained by mixing prussian blue and indian yellow in different proportions. on the back of plate iv. are two more outlines from mr. robert young's little french book of hours. they are admirable models of a kind of work which for fully half a century was to france what the "flower pattern" was to england. the branches are generally dark blue delicately lined with white. the leaves are sometimes gold, that is where there is not already a gold ground, and sometimes yellow, red, and blue. the prevailing tint is blue, and in some pages no other color, besides the gilding, is employed. some outline borders and ornaments of the same period and style are to be found on the back of plates v. and vi. the coloring of some of them will be indicated by a reference to plates iii. and i. [illustration: bull, badge of neville.] [illustration: plate iv.--facsimile of manuscript in lambeth palace library, th century.] [illustration: pages from a book of hours of fourteenth century.] description of plate v. plate v. shows three ornaments from manuscripts of late date, all in the national collections. the border with the raspberries is from a missal of the sixteenth century in the british museum (addl. , ), and was probably written and illuminated in the low countries. we have already mentioned the extraordinary freedom and ease of the flemish work of that period. every beautiful object was made use of for pictorial effect. children, birds, jewels, shells, as well as fruit and flowers, are to be found. they particularly excelled in painting pearls. one border is green, with chains and ropes of pearls strewn all over it. the calendar represents domestic scenes, each strongly surrounded with a double gold line, the written part being simply left out in the middle, so that the scene forms its border. the gold ground presents a slightly different appearance from that shown in our engraving, as it is flat, being painted with shell-gold not put on very thickly. the shadows are of burnt umber, which has a very transparent effect on the gold ground. beside this border is a fine letter of somewhat earlier date from a chorale book, german work in all probability, which, with many others, italian and flemish as well as german, were ruthlessly cut up into fragments, perhaps at the reformation, perhaps more recently, and are now in the art library of the south kensington museum. they are much rubbed and faded, and our chromo-lithograph represents this initial c as it appeared when first finished. in much of the northern work of this period--about the middle of the fifteenth century, say --there is a beautiful style of ornamental scroll-work, which some have proposed to call the "leather pattern." it may represent the cut leather work of the mantling of a knight's tilting helmet. a small specimen of it is shown in the turned-back petals of the flowers in this letter, but whole volumes are to be seen entirely decorated with it, and some of the best work of the period was accomplished in it. the third of these ornaments is also from the collection in the south kensington museum. in this design the thing to be most noticed is perhaps that which is least prominent, namely, the gold spots, with black filaments, as it were, floating from them. they serve to eke out and fill up the composition, and in some books are used with fine effect on almost every page. they should be thickly gilt on a raised surface, and should have dark outlines, and the filaments rapidly and lightly drawn, either with a pen or with a very fine brush, pruned down almost to a single hair. many other pretty effects may be obtained by early training the hand and eye to draw single lines in this way. the letters in one of our other plates (no. i.) are entirely filled with tracery of the kind, and the patterns principally in use are easily learned. anything free is preferable to servile imitation and tracing, and these diapers in particular lose more than almost anything else in the whole art of illumination by direct copying. the student should learn to adapt his delicate lines--chiefly in red and blue--to any form of letter, and while drawing them should not let his hand falter or hesitate for a moment. it is the same with the lace-like patterns in white which were so much in vogue for heightening the edges of letters in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. they are very necessary to the effect, but must be painted in with a light touch and great rapidity, or they lose all spirit. the initial p on the previous page, and also the initials in pages vii. and , have been taken from mss. illuminated with the "english flower-pattern." an attempt has been made to represent the colors employed by means of lines. this system was first applied to heraldry in the first half of the seventeenth century. horizontal lines represent blue; vertical, red; cross hatching, black; dotting, gold or yellow. green is denoted by lines "in bend dexter," and purple by lines "in bend sinister." the bands and borders on the back of plate v. are of the fourteenth century, but similar ornaments were common at all times. they are chiefly red or blue, with patterns in white lines and dots, and in highly burnished gold. they are employed both as borders and to fill up incomplete lines of writing. [illustration: plate v.--ornaments and large initial, th and th centuries.] [illustration: bands and border ornaments--fourteenth century.] description of plate vi. a page of writing and five separate initials from a book of "hours," written in flanders or holland at the end of the fifteenth century, are here shown, with a border of the same period from another volume. the first book, which is in a private collection, affords an example of the kind of illumination which is styled by the french "grisaille," a word which may be translated "grey-work." in this style, which consists usually in the artist restricting himself to certain colors, or to black, grey, and white only, very few books were ever written. i have already, in the general sketch, mentioned one which had pictures in imitation of limoges enamels. a volume apparently illuminated by the same hand as those in our ms. is in the burgundian library at brussels. the figure pictures in both look as if they were not painted by the same artist as the writing and illumination of the letters, and it is probable two or more were employed in the production. there was great activity in all the arts in the low countries during the fifteenth century, and the most gorgeous books ever illuminated were written there at that period. at dortrecht, at bruges, and other places there were schools of illuminators, and the practice of the art was not confined, as in england, to ecclesiastics and the cloister. the books written were, however, mainly religious; and the same designs were used over and over again. it would, in fact, be easy to identify each guild of miniature painters by their employment of the same set of forms. this eventually led to deterioration, and only the introduction of oil painting, by turning the minds of the artists into a wider channel, saved flemish art. the masters of the van eycks, of memling, of matsys, of van romerswale were undoubtedly the teachers of illumination in books. the artist in "grisaille" always took especial pains with his draperies. he had so little wherewith to produce his effect that he sometimes almost reached the _chiaro-scuro_ of a later period. some of the pictures of this school which i have seen look as if they were intended to represent moonlight views. in the present volume the effect of the soberly coloured figure subjects is greatly enhanced by the rich colors of the border, and the brilliantly burnished gilding. the ground on which the letter o is gilded in plate vi., is quartered into red and blue, and the outer part "counter-changed," as they say in heraldry. a delicate pattern is worked over the colors in body-white. the small leaves are painted with thick coats of emerald green. the border is from a book of hours in the british museum. the gilding in the original is laid on with shell, worked very flat and very thin, so as rather to impart a yellow tone to the ground than to give it any special lustre. there are other borders in the book of a similar character, and some which, on a green or a purple ground, show jewels of various kinds, especially pearls, sometimes strewn irregularly over the ground, sometimes worked up into ornaments, or made to look as if they were mounted in richly designed gold settings. in fact, at that age the artist let nothing escape him that would go to enhance the beauty or brilliancy of his page. in the original this border enclosed a very elaborate miniature. these miniatures are very carefully and delicately painted, but perhaps by a different hand, as they are not equal in refinement to the borders. the office for the dead is ornamented with a black border, on which is architectural tracery in gold on which skulls are arranged, one of them with a pansy or heartsease and forget-me-not, beautifully painted, growing out of the hollow eyes. the border of the picture of the annunciation is made with a tall lily growing from an ornamental vase at the side. the dutch and flemish illuminators at this period excelled in manipulation, and many of the books which they painted have all the merit and almost all the importance of pictures. anything and everything was used as ornament. in some no two pages are even in what can be called the same style; but delicacy of workmanship, the faces especially being finished as real miniatures, is characteristic of all. it is probable that whole schools of artists worked on a single volume, dividing the labour according to the skill of each artist. on the back of plate vi. will be found some further examples of the ornaments, letters, and "line finishings" of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, chiefly from french books. the a and the z are from the same ms. as nos. and on plate iii. the kl united form the heading of the calendar in a book with ivy pattern borders. [illustration: plate vi.--page and initials (low countries, th century). border from ms. in british museum.] [illustration: french initial letters and border ornaments--fourteenth century.] description of plate vii. pictorially considered the illustrations on plate vii., it must be admitted, are more quaint than beautiful. all the subjects on this page are, with the exception of the thirteenth and fourteenth century borders ( ), ( ), more or less heraldic in character. it will be best to take them in the order in which they are numbered. the lady seated ( ) holds in either hand the arms of the duke of burgundy, slightly varied as to quarterings. the picture is taken from the famous "bedford missal" in the british museum, which is not a missal at all, but a book of hours, illuminated in france for the duke of bedford, one of the brothers of henry v. it therefore belongs to the fifteenth century. the lady is sitting on what in heraldry is called "a mount vert," which in turn is supported by the little half architectural scroll-work below; her dress is purple, shaded with grey, in opaque color; the arms are painted in prussian blue and vermilion, the gold being shell. the gentleman to the right ( ) is sir nele loring, a knight of the garter. some time in the fourteenth century a monk of st. albans, thomas walsingham, compiled a list of the benefactors of the abbey, and as far as possible presented his readers with a portrait of each. they are rather rough but eminently picturesque. the book is particularly interesting from the curious particulars it gives us as to the expenses of the illuminator. one alan strayler, it tells us, "worked much upon this book," and the editor or compiler ran up a debt with him of the comparatively large sum of three shillings and fourpence, equal to at least £ , _s._ _d._ of our money, for the colors he had used. the book came into the possession of the great lord verulam, better known as lord chancellor bacon, and by him it was given to sir robert cotton, who collected the cottonian mss. it is known in the british museum as "nero d. vii." from its place in the book-case of sir robert cotton which bore the effigy of that cæsar. sir nele, or nigel, loring died in , having given the abbey many gifts, and as he was k.g. he is represented in a white robe diapered with "garters." our next picture ( ) is from a very curious and beautiful, but much injured manuscript, reckoned the number ii. in the collection at heralds' college. by the kindness of "somerset herald" we are allowed to copy it. the book is a list of banners used probably at a tournament in the reign of henry viii. heraldry became more or less the kind of "science" it still is under the last of the plantagenet kings, and was kept up in great glory by their successors, the first two tudors. the banner here given is that of henry stafford, who was made earl of wiltshire in . it shows the swan, the crest of the staffords, with a crown round its neck and a chain, and the ground, partly black and partly red, the colors of the family, is powdered with "stafford knots," their badge. across, in diagonal lines, is the motto "d'umble et loyal." these banners, which might well be imitated in modern illumination, are made up of livery colors, with crests and badges, and are usually accompanied by the coat of arms of the person to whom each belonged. the last of the heraldic features of the page ( ) is also the earliest. it represents part of the border of a psalter made, it is believed, in honour of the intended marriage of prince alphonso, the son of edward i., with a daughter of the king of arragon. he died at the age of ten years in ; but it is possible that the illuminations refer to the intended marriage of his sister, the princess eleanor, with alphonso, the young king of arragon. in any case the manuscript certainly belongs to the middle of the thirteenth century. to the right we see a knight in the chain armour of the period with his shield hung over his arm. small gold crosses, alternating with "lions rampant" on a blue ground, form part of the border, the other part consisting of "lions passant" on a red ground. two shields bear, one, the arms of the son of king edward, "england, differenced with a label, azure," and the other, those of leon. crests and mottoes had not been invented, and the artist had little scope for his fancy. but it may not be out of place to call attention to the fact that even at this early period heraldry was made use of for ornament, as in this border, and that it answered the purpose admirably. on the back of plate vii. is the outline of an illumination of the adoration of the magi, from a french ms. of the th century. borders of this type though very rich seldom occur in books ornamented in england. the branch work is in delicate black lines, with leaves and berries in gold or color. the scrolls are generally in blue, turned up with gold, red, or pink; blue being, however, always the predominant color, so as to insure a certain measure of harmony. the effect, however, depended more on the skill with which the branch work in black was disposed. [illustration: plate vii.--borders of thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and heraldic designs.] [illustration: border and text, with adoration of the three kings--sixteenth century.] description of plate viii. no book on this subject would be complete without something more than a passing reference to the earliest of all the fashions in illumination which have prevailed in our islands. this plate gives some examples from the very curious manuscript in the library of trinity college, dublin, known as the "book of kells." this venerable volume contains the four gospels in latin, and, it is sometimes asserted, dates from the seventh century, but more probably belongs to the ninth. the late sir m. d. wyatt says of it: "of this very book mr. westwood examined the pages, as i did, for hours together, without ever detecting a false line, or an irregular interlacement. in one space of about a quarter of an inch superficial, he counted, with a magnifying glass, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements, of a slender ribbon pattern, formed of white lines, edged by black ones, upon a black ground. no wonder that tradition should allege that these unerring lines should have been traced by angels." the examples before us are purposely taken from a less complicated page, but will be found sufficient to try the skill and patience of even the most painstaking student. the colors are rather more vivid than in the original, which has now greatly faded through age and ill-usage. there is little to be said as to the beauty of the design. grotesques have an attraction in spite of their ugliness: but we can hardly expect the most enthusiastic admirer of antiquity to imitate these extraordinary complications of form and color, except as an exercise of skill and patience. in one respect, however, early manuscripts and especially manuscripts of this class, are well worthy of imitation. the writing is very clear and distinct. it is easier to read a charter of the seventh or the eighth century than one of the seventeenth. illuminators might do worse than learn the old irish alphabet, if only on this account. there is no gilding in the book of kells, but some occurs in the contemporary, or nearly contemporary book of durham. the effect depends wholly on the skill of the scribe in using a very limited palette so as to make the most of it. the modern student would do well to remember this. a wide range of colors does not always conduce to bright or good coloring. harmony is often found to follow from a sparing use of the more brilliant pigments at our disposal, with a careful eye to effect. the beginner too often imagines that he can make his border or his initial look well if he puts enough gold or vermilion on; but he should remember that the more sober and simple his scale of coloring the more splendid will the bright colors look when he does employ them. it is well to remember that absolute harmony is obtained by the use of blue, red, and yellow in these proportions:--blue, eight; red, five; yellow, three; and that all good pictures or illuminations must depend on this principle. white and black, and also in some cases gilding, may be treated as neutrals. there is usually a sufficiency of black in the lettering of a page. white, in the shape of dots and as heightening, may be largely employed if there is any want of harmony detected. gold should not be used for this purpose, except in certain styles; and the student may rest assured that a design which does not look well without gold will not look better with it. a few other specimens, without color, will be found on the back of plate viii. it might be good practice for the student to tint them in the style of the colored examples. the byzantine style, as it is called, prevailed about the same period in the countries of eastern and northern europe. the books are of a very different but equally ungraceful character. the work is not so minute or complicated, but the lavish use of gold distinguishes them. sometimes a page is written in gold letters on vellum stained purple; sometimes the page is entirely gilt. none of the examples in the british museum are worth the trouble and indeed expense of copying, but they are curious as specimens of barbaric splendour. [illustration: heraldic lion.] [illustration: plate viii.--examples from the book of kells, th century.] [illustration: early irish initial letters.] description of plate ix. (frontispiece.) such measure of perfection as had been attained by english illuminators in the latest period is well illustrated by this plate. it is from a book of hours in the library of the archbishop of canterbury at lambeth. leave to copy it was kindly accorded to us by his grace the late lamented archbishop tait. the volume is square in shape and rather thick, the vellum not being of the fineness seen in the bibles of the thirteenth century, already noticed. it is numbered in the catalogue, and is described by mr. s. w. kershaw, f.s.a., in his book on the _art treasures of the lambeth library_, who assigns it to the early part of the fifteenth century. the illuminations in this book are admirable examples of what is known as the english flower pattern, a style, as we have already observed, which was as peculiar to our insular artists as the perpendicular style in architecture. it was used for all kinds of manuscripts, and even law deeds are sometimes to be seen thus ornamented. even after the invention of printing it continued to flourish for a while; and books are sometimes found printed on vellum abroad, and illuminated in england with the beautiful native flower pattern in borders and initials. mr. kershaw observes regarding the book from which the present page has been taken: "this, a very nice example, is fairly written, and ornamented with a profusion of beautiful illuminated initials of english art. the volume contains but two miniature paintings, the remainder usually found in mss. of this class having been abstracted. the initial letters vary in size and pattern; they are all upon backgrounds of gold, and frequently form with their finials short marginal ornaments of elegant tracery work. pink, blue, and orange brown are the prevailing colors, the blue being often heightened on the outer edge with flat white tints. the larger initials are rich in design and varied in their coloring, and would supply the artist or amateur with abundant materials for study." i would desire to call the student's attention to one or two points of importance. in imitating or copying work of this kind it is well to observe that though the artist appears to have used the utmost freedom of line and direction, he has really been most careful in his composition. the initial o comes well out from among its surroundings, and is not overpowered by the weight of its dependent ornament. the scroll-work requires especial attention. that which fills the centre of the letter appears to press tightly against the edge, and is so arranged as to fill completely the vacancy for which it is intended. there is nothing limp about it. too often modern work can be detected by its want of what i must call the crispness of the original. with regard to the writing, it will be observed that a great change in the form of the letters has taken place since the thirteenth century. the difference between u and n is often hardly perceptible, and has led to many curious mistakes. nevertheless, if the student is careful about such particulars, this is a very beautiful style, and admirably suited for modern requirements. the colors used by the artist who copied this page were as follows:--for the blue, prussian, lined and dotted with chinese white; for the pink, lake and chinese white, shaded with the same color darker; the deepest shadows are lake; for the orange, pale indian yellow for the lights, shaded with burnt sienna, and lake for the deepest shadows. in some books illuminated in this style the centre of the letter is occupied with a scene containing figures, and occasionally a picture extends across the page, the initial fitting close up to it. the picture, in this case, is always surrounded with a double line or framework of blue, or red, and gold; and the color has a delicate white line on it, and occasionally gives out a branch which, crossing the gold line, bursts into flower in the margin. this style was largely used for official documents for a long period, and many excellent facsimiles representing examples are to be found as frontispieces to the volumes of the roll series. it lasted with more or less modification until the reign of charles i. * * * * * vere foster's water-color books. "we can strongly recommend these volumes to young students of drawing."--_the times_, dec. , . painting for beginners.--first stage. teaching the use of one color. ten facsimiles of original studies in sepia, by j. callow, and numerous illustrations in pencil. with full instructions in easy language. in three parts, to, _d each; or one volume, cloth elegant, _s._ _d._ painting for beginners.--second stage. teaching the use of seven colors. twenty facsimiles of original drawings by j. callow, and many illustrations in pencil. with full instructions in easy language. in six parts to, _d._ each; or one volume, cloth elegant, _s._ simple lessons in flower painting. eight facsimiles of original water-color drawings, and numerous outline drawings of flowers. with full instructions for drawing and painting. in four parts to, _d._ each; or one volume, cloth elegant, _s._ "everything necessary for acquiring the art of flower painting is here; the _facsimiles_ of water-color are very beautiful."--_graphic._ simple lessons in marine painting. twelve facsimiles of original water-color sketches. by edward duncan. with numerous illustrations in pencil, and practical lessons by an experienced master. in four parts, to, _d._ each; or one volume, cloth elegant, _s._ "must prove of great value to students. nothing could be prettier or more charming than these sketches."--_graphic._ simple lessons in landscape painting. eight facsimiles of original water-color drawings, and thirty vignettes, after various artists. with full instructions by an experienced master. in four parts to, _d._ each; or one volume, cloth elegant, _s._ "as a work of art in the book line we have seldom seen its equal; and it could not fail to be a delightful present, affording a great amount of pleasurable amusement and instruction, to young people."--_st. james's gazette._ studies of trees. in pencil and in water-colors, by j. needham. a series of eighteen examples in colors, and thirty-three drawings in pencil. with descriptions of the trees, and full instructions for drawing and painting. in eight parts to, _s._ each; or first series, cloth elegant, _s._; second series, cloth elegant, _s._ advanced studies in flower painting. by ada hanbury. twelve beautifully finished examples in colors, and numerous outlines in pencil. with a description of each flower, and full instructions for drawing and painting by blanche hanbury. in six parts, to, _s._ each; or one volume, cloth elegant, _s._ _d._ easy studies in water-color painting. by r. p. leitch and j. callow. a series of nine pictures executed in neutral tints. with full instructions for drawing each subject, and for sketching from nature. in three parts to, _s._ _d._ each; or one volume, cloth elegant, _s._ sketches in water-colors. by t. m. richardson, r. p. leitch, j. a. houston, t. l. rowbotham, e. duncan, and j. needham. a series of nine pictures executed in colors. with full instructions for drawing each subject, by an experienced teacher. in three parts to, _s._ _d._ each; or one volume, cloth elegant, _s._ "the names of the artists are quite sufficient to stamp these books with the highest qualities. the pictures are judicious in selection and artistic in execution, while the instructions are so full and clear as to almost supersede the need of a teacher."--_liverpool courier_. illuminating. nine examples in colors and gold of ancient illuminating of the best periods of this interesting and almost forgotten art, with numerous illustrations in outline, historical and other notes, and full descriptions and instructions by the rev. w. j. loftie, b.a., f.s.a. _immediately_. adopted by the science and art department, south kensington. vere foster's drawing copy-books. graded and progressive. with instructions and paper to draw on. in twelve parts at one shilling each. _part i._--elementary lessons. _part ii_--objects with curved lines. _part iii._--plants and flowers _part iv._--ornament, by f. e. hulme. _part v._--trees in lead pencil. _part vi._--landscape in lead pencil. _part vii._--marine, by callow, &c. _part viii._--animals, by h. weir. _part ix._--animals, by h. weir (_continued_). _part x._--human figure. _part xi._--practical geometry. _part xii._--mechanical drawing. published also in fifty numbers at threepence each. elementary lessons. a initiatory lessons. a letters and numerals. b objects (straight lines). b domestic objects (simple). objects with curved lines. c domestic objects (flat treatment). c domestic objects (perspective). d leaves (flat treatment). d leaves (natural treatment). plants and flowers. e plants (simple forms). e plants (advanced). g flowers (simple forms). g flowers (advanced). ornament, by f. e. hulme. i elementary forms. i simple forms (fretwork, &c). i advanced forms (carving, &c.). i ornament (classic, &c.). trees in lead pencil. j oak, fir, &c. j beech, elm, &c. j oak, chestnut, birch. j birch, larch, poplar, &c. landscape in lead pencil. k rustic landscape in outline. k shaded objects, &c. k shaded landscape. k advanced landscape. marine, by callow, &c. m boats, foregrounds, &c. m fishing craft, coasters, &c. m yachts and other vessels. m drawing of waves. human figure. q features. q heads, hands, &c. q rustic figures, by duncan. q figure from the antique. animals, by h. weir. o birds and quadrupeds. o poultry, various breeds. o british small birds. o british wild animals. o horses (arab, hunter, &c.). o horses (racer, trotter, &c.). o dogs (seventeen species). o cattle, sheep, pigs, &c. o lambs, ass, foal, &c. o foreign animals, &c. practical geometry. r definitions and simple problems. r practical geometry. r applied geometry. practical mechanical drawing. t initiatory. t details of tools, &c. t models for working drawings, &c. t details of machines and engines. z blank exercise book. vere foster's drawing cards. beautifully printed on fine cards and done up in neat packets. _first grade, set i._--familiar objects, cards, _s._ _first grade, set ii._--leaf form, cards, price _s._ _first grade, set iii._--elementary ornament, cards, price _s._ _second grade._--ornament, by f. e. hulme, large cards, price _s._ _advanced series._--animals, by harrison weir, cards, price _s._ _d._ _of vere foster's drawing-books_ _the standard says_--there is no book of instruction in drawing, no matter what its price, so well calculated to aid self-help as vere foster's books. even in schools that possess the advantage of apt and experienced teachers of drawing, their advantages will speedily become manifest. mr. vere foster has done a public service by the production of this series. _the graphic says_--if any parent who reads these lines has a boy or girl who wishes to learn how to be an artist, let us boldly recommend vere foster's drawing-book. it is not only the cheapest, but by far the best that we have seen. _the art journal says_--it would be difficult to overrate the value of this work--a work that is not to be estimated by its cost: one is great, the other very small. any learner may find in it a huge volume of thought, his studies rightly directed by a competent practical teacher, who will teach him nothing by which he can be led astray, or that he will have to unlearn when he consults the great book of nature. adopted by the science and art department, south kensington. poynter's south kensington drawing-book. this new series of drawing copies has been issued under the direct superintendence of e. j. poynter, r.a. the examples have been selected for the most part from objects in the south kensington museum, and the drawings have been made under mr. poynter's careful personal supervision by pupils of the national art training school. _each book has fine cartridge paper to draw on._ two books. elementary freehand drawing. sixpence each. i.--simple geometrical forms. ii.--conventionalized floral forms. six books. freehand drawing, ornament, first grade. sixpence each. i.--simple objects and ornament--_flat._ ii.--various objects--_flat._ iii.-objects and architectural ornament--_flat and perspective._ iv.--architectural ornament--_flat._ v.--objects of glass and earthenware--_perspective._ vi.--common objects--_perspective._ six books. freehand drawing, plants, first grade. sixpence each. i.--leaves and flowers--_simplest._ ii.--leaves, flowers, fruits. iii.--flowers, fruits, &c. iv.--flowers and foliage. v.--flowers. vi.--flowers. four books. freehand drawing, second grade. one shilling each. i.--forms of anthemion ornament, &c.--_flat._ ii.--greek, roman, and venetian--_flat and perspective._ iii.--italian renaissance--_flat._ iv.--roman, italian, japanese, &c.--_flat and perspective._ the same subjects on cards. elementary freehand (cards), four packets, price d. each. first grade, freehand ornament (cards), six " " / " first grade, freehand plants (cards), six " " / " second grade, freehand (cards), four " " / " four books. elementary human figure. sixpence each. i.--michelangelo's "david"--features. ii.--masks, from antique sculpture. iii.--hands, from sculpture. iv.--feet, from sculpture. three books. advanced human figure, imp. to, two shillings each. book i.--head of the venus of milos. book ii.--head of the youthful bacchus. book iii.--head of david by michelangelo. four books. figures from the cartoons of raphael. imp. to, s. each. twelve studies of draped figures. drawn direct from the originals in the south kensington museum. with descriptive text, and paper for copying. four books, s. each. elementary perspective drawing. one vol., cloth, s. by s. j. cartlidge, f.r.hist.s., lecturer in the national art training school, south kensington. book i.} for second grade examination of the department. book ii.} book iii.--accidental vanishing points. book iv.--higher perspective. the pall mall gazette says: "the choice of subjects is admirable; there is not an ugly drawing in the book. parents and teachers who have been looking in vain for drawing-books that should really train the eye in the study of beautiful forms, as well as the hand in the representation of what the eye sees, will be very grateful to the science and art department for these cheap and most satisfactory productions." blackie & son's books for the young. _price s. d._ =the universe:= or the infinitely great and the infinitely little. a sketch of contrasts in creation and marvels revealed and explained by nature and science. by f. a. pouchet, m.d. with engravings on wood. th edition, medium vo, cloth elegant, gilt edges. _price s._ =true to the old flag:= a tale of the american war of independence. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. cloth elegant, olivine edges. =in freedom's cause:= a story of wallace and bruce. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. cloth elegant, olivine edges. =with clive in india:= or the beginnings of an empire. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. cloth elegant, olivine edges. =bunyip land:= the story of a wild journey in new guinea. by g. manville fenn. with full-page illustrations by gordon browne. cloth elegant, olivine edges. =the golden magnet:= a tale of the land of the incas. by geo. manville fenn. with full-page pictures by gordon browne. cloth elegant, olivine edges. =the life and surprising adventures of robinson crusoe.= by daniel defoe. beautifully printed, and illustrated by above pictures designed by gordon browne. cloth elegant, olivine edges. [reprinted from the author's edition.] =in the king's name:= or the cruise of the _kestrel_. by geo. manville fenn. with full-page pictures by gordon browne. cloth elegant, olivine edges. =under drake's flag.= a tale of the spanish main. by g. a. henty. with full-page pictures by gordon browne. cloth elegant, olivine edges. _price s._ =st. george for england:= a tale of cressy and poitiers. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations. cl. elegant. =menhardoc:= a story of cornish nets and mines. by g. manville fenn. with full-page illustrations. cl. elegant. =the pirate island:= a story of the south pacific. by harry collingwood. with full-page pictures. cloth elegant. =the wigwam and the warpath:= stories of the red indians. by ascott r. hope. with full-page pictures. cloth elegant. =by sheer pluck:= a tale of the ashanti war. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations. cloth elegant. =stories of old renown.= tales of knights and heroes. by ascott r. hope. with illustrations by gordon browne. cloth elegant, olivine edges. =facing death:= or the hero of the vaughan pit. by g. a. henty. with full-page illustrations. cloth elegant. =nat the naturalist:= or a boy's adventures in the eastern seas. by geo. manville fenn. with full-page pictures. cloth elegant. _price s. d._ =cheep and chatter;= or lessons from field and tree. by alice banks. with character illustrations by gordon browne. cloth elegant. with gilt edges, s. =the wreck of the nancy bell:= or cast away on kerguelen land. by john c. hutcheson. illustrated by full-page pictures. cloth extra. =picked up at sea:= or the gold miners of minturne creek. by john c. hutcheson. with full-page pictures in tints. cloth extra. =dr. jolliffe's boys:= a tale of weston school. by lewis hough. with full-page pictures. cloth extra. =traitor or patriot?= a tale of the rye-house plot. by mary c. rowsell. illustrated by full-page pictures. cloth elegant. =brother and sister:= or the trials of the moore family. by elizabeth j. lysaght. with full-page illustrations. cloth extra. =dora:= or a girl without a home. by mrs. r. h. read. with full-page illustrations. cloth extra. =garnered sheaves.= a tale for boys. by mrs. emma r. pitman. with full-page illustrations. cloth extra. =florence godfrey's faith.= a story of australian life. by mrs. pitman. with full-page illustrations. cloth extra. =life's daily ministry.= a story of everyday service for others. by mrs. emma r. pitman. with full-page illustrations. cloth extra. =my governess life:= or earning my living. by mrs. emma r. pitman. with full-page illustrations. cloth extra. _price s. d._ each book is beautifully illustrated, and bound in cloth extra. =brothers in arms:= a story of the crusades. by f. bayford harrison. =jack o' lanthorn:= a tale of adventure. by henry frith. =winnie's secret:= a story of faith and patience. by kate wood. =a waif of the sea:= or the lost found. by kate wood. =hetty gray:= or nobody's bairn. by rosa mulholland. =miss fenwick's failures:= or "peggy pepper-pot." by esmÉ stuart. =the ball of fortune:= or ned somerset's inheritance. by charles pearce. =the family failing.= by darley dale. =stories of the sea in former days:= narratives of wreck and rescue. =adventures in field, flood, and forest:= stories of danger and daring. a complete list of books for the young, prices from d. to s. d., with synopsis of their contents, will be supplied on application to the publishers. london: blackie & son, & old bailey, e.c.; glasgow, edinburgh, and dublin. immortal youth _a study in the will to create_ _behold my most beautiful work: the souls that i have sculptured. these they cannot destroy. let the wood burn! the soul is mine._ --romain rolland: _colas breugnon_ imprinted mcmxix mcgrath-sherrill press graphic arts building boston copyright nineteen nineteen lucien price _the first printing of this memoir is one thousand copies. when these are gone, those who wish more can obtain them from mcgrath-sherrill press, the publisher, graphic arts building, boston, massachusetts, for one dollar a copy._ [music] in _the third act of wagner's last music-drama there comes a flourish of muted horns, remote, mysterious. in it sounds the grandeur of that quest which never ends--the quest of the holy grail. the phrase is repeated, and over the flower-starred meadow under the april sun of good friday morning comes a knight in dark armor, his visor down, carrying the holy spear. it is_ parsifal. _his errand is the errand of aspiring youth in all lands and all ages. i set that phrase of music, compact with the poetry and pain of idealism, at the beginning of these pages in token of the spiritual brotherhood._ [illustration: _portrait of the artist by himself_] immortal youth give me that man that is not passion's slave, and i will wear him in my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart, as i do thee. --hamlet i there was a humble restaurant on charles street where cabmen and chauffeurs could be induced to tell the story of their lives over a combination-supper of lamb chop and two fried eggs costing (that was in ), with coffee and rolls, twenty-five cents. across the table one evening in the spring of that year sat a young man about twenty-four years old. anyone would have taken a second look at him; also a third, a fourth, and as many more as good manners would permit. what was there about him that attracted attention? it was hard to say. the dark eyes with a somber light burning in them? the rugged features and swarthy complexion with a ruddy glow of health in each jowl? the hands; very large and finely muscled? (i have never seen a more beautiful pair of hands on a human being.) it was all of these things and none of them. rather it was the look of one with immense forces in reserve, bound on an errand. impossible to guess anything from his clothes: dark suit, shirt of gray flannel, and black knitted tie. chauffeur? hardly. well then, what? who? (this is no isolated personal impression. wherever he went people felt the same intense curiosity about him. sometimes they stared at him so that he asked me if his face was smudged.) was this stranger conversible? he was. presently he was speaking of the colonial doorways on chestnut street with a discrimination which suggested the architect. no. it appeared that he was studying under mr. tarbell at the boston museum school of fine arts. next, that he came from pittsburgh. here was a bond in common. as two young middle westerners we resented the social cold storage which new england imposes as a probationary period of acquaintance. we condoled. we fraternized. we were as neighbors meeting in a foreign land. at last somebody with whom it was safe to scrape acquaintance in the good old-fashioned middle western way without incurring suspicion of designs on one another's souls, bodies, or estates. he climbed beacon hill with me to the house where i lived, carrying a paper bag which, he explained modestly, contained his breakfast: two bananas and a shredded wheat biscuit. the evening was mild. windows stood open to the breeze which rumpled the leaves of an old linden where it spread its boughs in the brick-walled court. he promptly took off his coat, displaying in the rays of a green-shaded student lamp a pair of forearms worthy of the hands which went with them. summer and winter he wore his sleeves rolled above his elbows. his wrists resented cuffs as wild creatures resent cages. he stretched out his long legs on a cot which did duty by the fireplace as a sofa; pushed his hair off his forehead with both hands, fingers interlocked, a trick he had; and gave symptoms of feeling at home. was he talkative? not much! never did clam yield shell to knife edge more gingerly. he would and he would not. shy, reserved, proud, devoured with ambition, savagely determined, a prey to some misgivings, genuinely modest, and anxious to talk it over with the right person, but by no means sure who the right person was. on sped the ambrosial hours of the spring evening. bit by bit he revealed himself. this was his third year in the museum school. he admired the technique of mr. tarbell and mr. benson; he prized their instruction. but he distrusted their smoothness. he missed vigor. all round him he saw students neglecting their own creative bents to produce "little bensons" and "little tarbells." already he had resolved to quit boston as soon as his student days were over. "i don't say i shall ever be able to paint as well as they can; but i must be myself,--not an imitation tarbell." there had been two years in cornell before he came to boston. he had rowed in his class eight on lake cayuga. hence that physical self-respect which betokens the young man accustomed unconcernedly to strip in a college boathouse or gymnasium. but to eyes grown impatient with the college athlete's all too customary intellectual torpor and social complacency it was a holiday to find this well-made body, tall, broad in the shoulder, narrow at hips, lean and muscular, housing also the brain of the thinker and the spirit of the pioneer. for the astonishing thing was to find a young man of this type studying to be a portrait painter instead of a bond salesman. it didn't sound yankee. i said so. that shot rang the bell. he began to open up. he was, it appeared, of german extraction. his grandfather, who had wished to become an artist, had come to america in a period when artists were about as much in request among us as concert pianists on a cattle ranch. he had earned his living as an architectural sculptor. the talent plunged, like a river, underground for a generation; then reappeared. what happened when this little fellow's fingers began to itch for the pencil was easy to guess. the father and grandfather put their heads together and resolved that he should have his chance. it began to unravel. now one understood the earnestness which seemed at first precocious--the seemingly cool indifference to the call of the world, the flesh and the devil which usually troubles youngsters of twenty-four. here was something more than ambition. loyalty, affection, gratitude, and family pride. this boy had more than talent. he had character. * * * * * with this we are in the heart of the conflict between the artist and the trader: between the will to create and the will to possess. it is the central conflict of any age; especially of this, and especially in america. the young man comes to the forks of the road where he must decide whether he shall acquire or create; whether he shall be a business man or a prophet. he finds himself in a society which offers princely rewards to the commercial career and little but pains and penalties to those who would create. this youngster was just learning his way around in the problem. he recited, with comical irony, the squalid platitudes which are chewed out at a youth bold enough to follow his creative bent: "'is there any _money_ in it?' 'oh, of course, if you get to be a great painter. but how do you know you've got it in you to be a great painter? think you have? got a pretty good opinion of yourself, haven't you?' 'what if you fail? suppose you wake up some morning and find yourself a middle-aged man and a fizzle? guess you'll wish then that you'd stuck to plain everyday business and dropped all this highfalutin about art.' 'yes. i suppose it's an easy life: sitting around and painting pictures. pretty soft, eh? give me a man's job!' 'don't you think it's a little rash, my boy, to risk so much, when if you'd settle down to a good business you'd be sure of a decent living? and what about marriage? if you marry you'll have to paint pot boilers, and then what becomes of your art? you might as well be a business man and be done with it. and if you don't, is it worth going without a wife and children in order to paint pictures, and so come at last to a lonely old age?'" he knew all the old ones by heart. later we used to recite them together in concert like school children in the geography class. if you took the roof off any chamber of commerce you would find half a dozen retired business men whose guilty secret it is that they dabble on the quiet with paint tubes, or modeling clay, or scenarios, or a violin--the poor, damned souls of artists. they have made their "pile." house and lot, wife and children, motor car and country club--all these they have; and yet, gnawing at their hearts is the secret knowledge that they have missed the big thing. they were born to beget children of the spirit; they were born to create in art, in music, in literature, in social experiment; and the ignoble standards of the society in which they live have bludgeoned and ridiculed them into prostituting their highest powers in the market-place. in such relationship did this young man stand to the life of his country and his time. with unflinching eye he listened to its taunt: "artist, create at your peril! you may starve, for all me, until you win a reputation that is a commercial asset. after which, having despised you, i will do my best to corrupt you by rewards and flatteries gratifying to my intellectual snobbery." such were the terms. this youth, uncertain of his own powers, accepted them with quiet courage and imperturbable good humor. such was the secret of that look of settled purpose so intriguing on a face so young, and such the secret of the fire which smouldered behind those dark eyes. he was prepared for a siege. he was ready to go to the mat. it had taken three generations--son, sire, and grand-sire--to make this stand against the all-devouring maw of american commercialism: three generations to conquer and produce an artist. and mindful of his end i ask myself whether they did conquer. we shall see. * * * * * midnight clanked from the city clocks. "gosh!" said he, "is it as late as that?" he stood up and knocked the ashes out of his pipe against the red bricks of the hearth. "by the way, i don't know your name." i told him. "mine," said he, "is fred demmler." explaining that i already had a friend named fred i asked if he had any objection to being called fritz. "none whatever." "fritz it is, then." and fritz it remained. ii a once-aristocratic residential street now reduced to a teaming thoroughfare; pedestal to beacon hill; narrow, ill-paved, spattered with mud to the second story, double row of tall brick town houses, where thackeray and dickens were once guests, now placarding "rooms to let;" assorted antique shops and restaurants,--"the long, unlovely street" of _in memoriam_, yet with a certain wistful charm in its decayed gentility: that is charles street. number maintained its rubber plant on console-table in dark vestibule. there was a contraption, usually out of order, by which you pulled a bell five times to save yourself the climb if the art colony in the fifth-floor-back did not answer the ring. the young barbarians were usually out. it was a colony of three: ralph heard, small, slender, fair, escaped from a western military academy of which he could tell tales that froze the blood; irving sisson, a tall, rangy berkshire yankee, dry and droll, an artemus ward turned art student (though known as "siss" it would never have occurred to anyone to call him "sissie," and if anyone _had_ been so rash, sisson's grim reply would have been, like the man in the yarn, "smile when you say that"), and fritz. their room was a first act stage-set for an american version of _la bohème_. it was large, low-ceiled, and had one of those sepulchral white marble mantel-pieces of the black walnut period. there was an iron bed and a cot, a gaslight always out of kilter, a writing-table strewn with pipes, unanswered letters, tiny bottles of india ink, drawing pens, crayons, thumb tacks, jars holding bouquets of paint brushes, and scurrilous caricatures of one another scrawled on scraps of white cardboard. the place reeked with that heavenly odor of paint tubes. by the window was a drawing board and portfolios. canvases were stacked in a dark corner, faces to the wall. their windows looked into a deep courtyard formed by a triangle of tall brick houses,--the rears of houses on charles and brimmer streets, the fronts of three quaint italianate red-brick dwellings,--all enclosing a tiny greensward on which slender poplars rustled their glossy leaves. in the farthest corner of this court rise the walls and mullioned windows of the church of the advent, and on mild evenings when casements were open, the thrush-like voices of the choir boys over the melodious thunder of great organ floated up to these windows. but i was never able to observe that it produced any pietistic tone in number . on the contrary they affected to take a lively interest in the upper windows of the houses opposite and threatened to keep a pair of field glasses on their window sill. as you go down pinckney street to the river you pass a break in the solid row of house fronts through which you can look up and see the two windows of that fifth-floor-back. one always did look, and if they were lighted, it was impossible not to go up; for in that room there was always some form of what is technically known as "trouble." i never pass the spot now without looking up to see if there is a light in those windows.... they are dark. * * * * * on the walls of the room were two paintings by fritz; student works. one was a small landscape sketch--smouldering red of a sunset after rain, burning through ragged drab clouds over a hill country bathed in violet mists of twilight. it was modest, quiet. there was a strain of thoughtful poetry in it. but the striking part was its sincerity. there was none of that striving after effect, that ambitious rhetoric which youngsters usually mistake for eloquence: no attempt to make the scene anything more than what it was. the other was a portrait study of a workman naked to the waist. it was bold, vigorous, masculine, and overflowing with the joy of bodily health. so far so good. but something else was in store. out of the canvases stacked against the wall he dug a study of a woman's head in profile. one looked; and then looked again. "who was she?" she had come to the school as a model for one week: that was all they knew. but her secret was on this canvas. she must have been in her early thirties. her face was quite serene. it was the serenity of a place reduced to ashes. utter resignation. "endure. life has done its worst." by what divination had this youngster of twenty-four guessed a secret like that? from that moment it was clear to me that he was a portrait painter. "what," i asked, "is that little star in the lower corner of the canvas?" "that? oh," he explained diffidently, "that is put on pictures which the school saves for its exhibition." iii that golden spring! clandestine dinners at an obscure french café in an obscure court, where one went because, though the food was something less than so-so, the sauces were exotic; "clandestine" because, behind closed shutters, they served _vin ordinaire_ without a license. our parties, to the disgust of jacques, were teetotal, the real attraction being that the joint might be pinched any minute. on may afternoons in the fenway, disguised in a baseball suit of gray flannel, fritz rejoiced as a strong man to swat the pill. the pill swatted him one day, broke his thumb, and in the end he had to have it rebroken and reset under ether. his first words on coming to were: "give me my paint box." all the nurses of his ward fell for him with a loud crash. in all innocence he told what a lot of extra trouble they went to for him. his friends smiled in their sleeves. as often as there was a play of shaw or ibsen or galsworthy or maeterlinck or shakespeare or synge there were expeditions to peanut heaven. knoblauch's _kismet_ happened along and fritz appropriated the cry: "alms! for the love of allah" for occasions choicely inappropriate. when a fine may morning of blue and gold came winging over the city on the northwest wind he would get up extra early, hustle through his shave and cold tubbing and join me in the tramp over beacon hill, across the common, and down into newspaper row for breakfast at the celebrated spa. on the way up chestnut street, where the brahmin pundits live, the favorite sport was to crack jokes at the expense of the sources of income which sustained these georgian fronts and mahogany-and-brocade interiors: here, a famous brand of ale; there, notorious industrial nose-grinding in fall river spinning mills--merry clank of dividend skeleton in genteel closet.... on the common, jocund morning, fresh green of turf and tree, sweet breath of the earth; sunshine, bird-song, youth, ... spring! and on a stool at the spa, fritz's provoking grin and sly banter of a waitress who, after a good look at him, would conclude that if she was being kidded she liked it and was cheerfully ready for more. after which breakfast he trudged the mile and a half to the art museum to see the morning and to save his father carfares. * * * * * it appeared that he was a walker, and not afraid of rain. he proved it. on a may evening brewing thunder we did a dissolving view out of the city on a train for cape ann. at the end of the shore road around the cape awaited lodgings at an inn and a midnight supper. at gloucester he was introduced to one of wonson's clam chowders and we set off at dusk. that evening came the first inkling of his larger purpose--his higher than personal ambition: what he would paint after his portraits assured him a livelihood. something was said about pittsburgh and the mills. "they ought to be painted," said he, "exactly as they are. not sentimentalized like the magazine covers; not made romantic, as joseph pennell has made them; but painted in all their horror. some day. i don't know enough yet." thunder had been muttering distantly. the night had turned pitch black. there were sullen flashes, and drops began to patter. would he be for turning back? not he! then the storm came crashing and pelting across the granite moors of the cape. gorgeous flashes which flushed the winding tidal inlets and the rocky hills a brilliant rose pink. flash! crash! swish went the rain. and the harder it stormed the better he liked it. he strode along intoxicated with color and sound. near annisquam is a double shade-row of willows overarching the road. not far beyond, yellow lamplight was streaming from the windows of a tiny cottage. wading knee-deep in wet grass we knocked. now it is a complicated process explaining to two aged new england spinsters on a lonely road at nine o'clock of a stormy night what your errand is, especially when you haven't any. they listened; lifted the lamp on us for an inspection--particularly on fritz; one soon got used to seeing people inspect him furtively--and invited us in. "walkin' round the cape to rockport, be ye? and in the rain? for the fun of it! well, come in and set down. i'd like to get a good look at someone who'd walk to rockport in the rain for the fun of it. set down, young gentlemen." we set. they were sisters. one was small and timid: she was of the sort that remain naïve to the end. the other was tall, angular and sardonic, with a mother wit smacking of the soil and the salt water. she addressed herself to fritz: "you ain't an escaped murderer, be ye?" fritz cackled lustily. "how do you know i'm not?" said he. "you look like that fella who's on trial in boston now. i see his pictures in the paper ... and you come knockin' on the door at dead o' night in a thunder squall like in a story book." "would you say i looked like a murderer?" inquired fritz with relish. "you might look worse 'n him," replied our free-speech hostess. "by his pictures he's a good-lookin' fella. i says to saide whiles we was weedin' garden this morning, 't wouldn't be safe to let him go now, for half the women in new england are ready to fall in love with him--he's been that advertised." she eyed us with her sardonic grin. i looked at fritz. he was blushing. to her shrewd yankee wits we were clearly two lunatics, but harmless; and the object was to extract as much entertainment from us as the law allowed. such was the tone of her farewell, half an hour later. "if anyone asks who was here," said she, "i'll tell them it was two young fellas walkin' to rockport in the rain for the fun of it.--and then they'll think _i'm_ one!" * * * * * past midnight, stumping dog-tired into the inn; cold meat and bread, ravenously devoured; bed, and the sleep of the just. ... morning; and such a morning as never was. quite forgetting to dress, fritz lost himself staring out of the open window at the quaint harbor, the fishing fleet, the blue bay and the gaunt headlands until it was suggested to him that passers by might be enjoying him as much as he was enjoying the morning. there was an hour for soaking it in before the train left for the city, and soak it in he did. a sea of pale blue, like molten glass, untroubled by a breeze; sky the deep blue of a morning after storms; air sweet with the scent of blossoming orchards and dooryard lilacs and tart with the tang of salt brine; merry twitter of robins; lazy splash of surf; the long headlands tapering down to the sea; the squat white tower of straitsmouth light solitary on its rocky islet, "and overhead the lovely skies of may." in the midst of it stood a young artist, dumb with delight. his eyes drank. oh brethren of the possessing class, ye who must own this and that before you can enjoy, this world can never give the bliss for which ye sigh. that pilgrimage cost less than $ . per. * * * * * evening. above the tiny grass-plat and spindling poplars in mount vernon square floats the magic of a night in mid-june. the windows of the fifth-floor-back in charles are lighted and open to the breeze. from those of the advent come gusts of music,--rumbles of organ and the fresh voices of boys: choir rehearsal. but i think the sounds which float down from the windows of are more in tune with the night: peal after peal of infectious laughter. it was clear to the meanest order of intellect that sisson was telling stories which were more joyous than dutiful: also that he had fritz going. there was no mistaking that laugh. a belated delivery man, basket on arm, pauses beside me to listen and grin. "i bet that was a good one," says he. "say, but can't that guy laugh!" iv in the autumn he reappeared bronzed and husky from a summer on a pennsylvania farm. that spring had been the overture. now the curtain rose. how can my thin piano score reproduce that richly glowing orchestration? gradually the artist in him unfolded. it was like a process of nature--slow, silent, sure. in speech he was inarticulate. the spoken word was not his trade; he knew it, and the knowledge made him self-conscious. but give him a brush and he found tongue. his silences were formidable. "the better to eat you with, my dear!" nothing escaped him. with a secret, fierce impetuosity he was storing away impressions: glances, gestures, lines of faces, colors, inflections of voices, landscapes, phrases, incidents, ideas: he soaked them in like a thirsty sponge. everything was fish that came to his net. what sometimes looked like an intellectual torpor was the boa constrictor digesting the zebra whole. i doubt if he realized the tremendous vitality of his creative instinct. he went about it as a wild creature roams the forest for its food: it was a law of his being. on tramping trips he would stalk miles in silence; stopping stock still until he had taken in the scarlet-and-gold maple grove in a purple autumn mist; or a mossy wood pile under pines; or the rolling diversity of hill and woodland. no apologies; no explanations. business. it was soon clear that this young man knew exactly what he wanted and that he intended to get it. there was a kind of animal sagacity about his mind which told it what food to accept and what to reject. "_künstler_," says goethe, "_rede nicht. bilde!_" (artist, don't talk. create!) fritz lived this precept. he would do first, and then let the doing speak for itself. when a young man is so determined to do something that he cannot be got to talk about it, you may consider the thing as good as done. here was a hungry mind, seeking what it might devour and devouring it. all that provender was being assimilated. it could not evaporate in talk, for fritz was no talker. it had to be expressed somehow and that somehow would have to be with a brush.... oh, he came and went disguised in the business suit of a young man dedicated to the career of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest: pleasant, friendly, a prodigious eater, a sound sleeper, invincibly healthy,--and with only that silent intentness of eye to betray the secret of the creative power he carried within him. but that winter it was surprised out of him. fred middleton, then twenty-seven years old, six years out of harvard college, thoroughly conversant with the ethics of modern business, was preparing to _de_-class himself and earn an honest living by manual labor on the land--a farmer, and not a "gentleman farmer." with mock solemnity fritz was commissioned to do a portrait of fred. the transaction was conducted on a basis of "free agreement" which would have satisfied even peter kropotkin. the painter was to do it any way he chose--absolute free speech. the sitter was to choose any clothes he liked, to sit till he was tired, and stretch when he pleased. the purchaser was to pay what he was able. so everybody was happy, being free. in the third floor back on pinckney street (it had north light) decks were cleared for action: two rickety orange boxes covered with a steamer rug did duty as a dais. with paint box, easel and palette fritz came down from exeter where he had just finished a portrait of an old lady. there was a glowing fire in the grate; a bluster of march winds in the brick court; the roar of blast through the antlers of the old linden; waning light of saturday and sunday afternoons; pages of nietzsche's epigrams and of _jean-christophe_ read aloud; pauses to rest and consult. fritz always noticed people's hands. he found almost as much character in them as in faces. he admired the hands in rodin's work, especially that of the sculptor in his _pygmalion_:--"the tenderness of that hand!" he said. fred's large hands interested him. the right one he caught hot off the bat. the left caused him no end of trouble. finally one day he threw down his brush and exclaimed: "i've watched that left hand come down to rest on that leg a dozen times. i've tried everything else and now i'm going to paint it exactly as it is. after all, it _is_ a hand." "_thank_ you; _thank_ you!" replied fred, bowing suavely. "people usually refer to it as a ham. a photographer once told me that i had a mitt like an elephant's hoof." * * * * * and fritz painted. and the secret was out. it came out in two installments: the first, when he was spreading on canvas a life history of fred middleton compressed into terms of a rugged face and two large hands; the second came three years later. fred had remarked, after one of his sittings, that it was all he could do to keep his face straight at some of the grimaces fritz made while painting. the precaution was needless. if he had laughed outright it is doubtful if fritz would have noticed it. most of the time while he was painting the portrait of me, three years later, i was absorbed in my own work and paid no attention to him. but one afternoon when my wheels refused to grind i took a holiday and watched him out of the tail of my eye.... it was as if some one you supposed you knew all about had removed a set of false whiskers and spoken in his natural voice. was this our shy, silent fritz? why, the impudence of him! the shameless way he peered into the secret places of a face! "see here, young gentleman, who gave you permission to rummage through that trunkful of old letters?" here at last was fritz, on his native heath, naked and unashamed, talking his own language and, confident of its not being understood, indulging in the most appalling candor. what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. while he pried into my secrets i pried into his. i amused myself by painting a portrait of fritz painting. some day i meant to show it to him.... but here it is: "he may not be able to talk with his tongue. but give him his brushes and his whole body talks. no gymnastics: but his whole being aquiver. silent, but his arms, fingers, head, shoulders make animated dumb show. he is conversing delightedly with himself over his work. he has forgotten time and place. intense mental concentration, and nervous energy. he squints, grimaces, stoops and looks at his canvas wrong-side up. he sets his teeth, compresses lips, squares his shoulders,--lost in his work. he mixes colors with minute particularity. sometimes he dabs with a tiny brush, a peek here, a peck there, like a dainty bird. again he paints in sweeping flourishes, beating a kind of rapturous rhythm with his brush, gesturing with it between strokes, like an orchestral conductor hewing out the rhythms of a symphony.... he pauses; he hangs limp over his palette, considering.... or he gives a joyous little bounce in his chair as the decision comes. his hands and forearms, strong and supple, talk in every sinew. fingers mobile, infinitely expressive: they thumb the brush; turn its handle in a ruminating pause; reflect a sudden resolution in the stiffening of tendons.... "and above all this quiet animation and silent dexterity is the regnant, gallant head with dark eyes flashing mastery; the mouth set with purpose; the thick mass of shining black hair breaking into a wave as it falls away from the clear forehead--and all in complete self-forgetfulness, the oblivion of the artist rapt in the joy of creating." it was quite simple. here was a soul which dwelt in a prison of shyness. painting unlocked the door. out it rushed. free. it could be itself at last. no fears; no concealments. liberty! that was all very well for fritz, but how about his sitter? about the time the sitter sensed what was going on he felt moved to exclaim: "just a moment, fritz. don't you think you are getting a trifle familiar?" i heard one of his painter friends, eyeing a canvas which fritz had just finished, mutter, "there is some marvelous subtlety about that mind." already his knack of guessing people was damnable. he played no favorites. "i am going to paint what i see or i am not going to paint at all." if what he saw was fatuous, he told it with the disconcerting gusto of a child; if it was sad, he told it (as in that student portrait) so as to produce a burning pressure behind the eyelids; if it was strong and gentle, he told it (as in the portrait of the young farmer) so as to kindle respect and affection. often all this was unconscious. again he knew exactly what he was doing and took a wicked relish in it. of some wealthies whom he was painting he confided with a grin: "of course they patronize me within an inch of my life, but i sometimes wonder what would happen if they knew...." perhaps he was not so unsophisticated as advertised in the catalogue. he helped himself pretty generously out of the popular supposition that an artist is a mild form of lunatic. he made good use of his talent for silence. but what ears and eyes! nobody who had seen him paint could ever feel quite safe with him again. v it happened that alexander james was studying at the museum school. that the son of "the psychologist who made psychology read like a novel" and the nephew of "the novelist who made a novel read like psychology" should have identified fritz's talent the first crack out of the box was about the least surprising thing in the world. the two young painters proceeded to form an offensive and defensive alliance. where one was, there was the other also; on the baseball field, on painting expeditions, on pilgrimages in early spring into new hampshire to climb chocorua, and on occasional voyages into the land of pretty girls. it was good to see the pair together: two thoroughbreds. both athletes, both artists, one dark, the other fair, both about the same height and build. people would turn to look after them as they passed with an expression of "wonder who they are. somebody out of the ordinary." alexander was wont to disguise his frank admiration of fritz behind a smoke screen of banter. this fritz would suffer with an amused grin and the massive calm of a mastiff, for he had no such arsenal of repartee as this young gentleman from the household of a harvard professor; but once in a while he would land a retort so neat as to set alexander spinning. it did not take the cambridge youth long to discover the use fritz made of his talent for silence and it was his delight to give him away in his game of holding his tongue the better to use his eyes,--as alexander said: "the wise old bruin!" * * * * * in massachusetts the anniversary of the battle of lexington, april , is a holiday. it was . in the parlor of an inn whose windows look northward across the snug haven of rockport to the surf-scoured ledges of pigeon cove i was seated at a piano, back to the door, painfully dissecting a score of _tristan_. the door opened and a voice exclaimed, "good lord!" it was fritz. with him was alexander james. both were half ossified with the chill of the mid-april afternoon, for they had been painting on the shore down towards straitsmouth. general astonishment. the two expeditions had originated quite independently. it was whimsically like those momentous chance encounters in picturesque spots which abound in the novels of alexander's uncle henry; but the novelist, be it noted, doesn't always save these coincidences from a slightly fishy sound which was totally wanting in this. they thawed themselves out and exhibited their sketches. fritz had, as usual, gone after it and got it--a spirited bit: druidical heaps of pink granite boulders against dashing surf: dazzling white of foam-crest on deep blue. there was a jolly supper in the brown-walled dining room (it had been the kitchen of an eighteenth century farm house) which the last rays of the spring sun flooded with red golden light; the two painters comparing notes on the exhibitions of the scandinavians and the ten americans. they departed for a home-talent play at a local hall in a frame of mind which boded no good for the performance.... about eleven o'clock they breezed in with the announcement that there was a northwest wind (the new england wind which sweeps the sky cloudless blue), a full moon and a dashing sea; and that to go to bed was a crime. away, then, for land's end, along shore paths at the edge of grassy cliffs, by bushy lanes, over meadows, moors, popple beaches and brooks, across the moon-blanched land beside the moon-burnished sea. straitsmouth light burned a yellow spark. the twin lights on thatcher's island shone weird blue in their tall towers. low on the rim of sky and sea hung gigantic masses of cloud whitened by the bluish pallor of the moon. in the marsh bottoms frogs cheeped their shrill sweet song of spring: the northwester bellowed through the willow twigs ... mournful pour of surf ... splendor of spring moon ... the lonely moor ... the steadfast light-house flames ... the white walls and gray roofs of the sleeping town.... at one in the morning, tip-toeing into the dining room, we devoured a plate of bread and butter left for late comers. both of them were too genuine artists to comment on what we had seen. * * * * * it is a lovely afternoon of june, , at the pier of the allan line steamships in charlestown. the ship is the old _nubian_, safe and slow, saloon upholstered in plush of maple sugar brown, brass oil lamps swinging in gimbles as befitted a smart packet of the late 's. boston to glasgow. scotland swarmed the wharf. mixed in was an artists' colony. for that was the great day. fritz and alexander were sailing for a year's study abroad: london, paris, munich. the gang which came to see them off were _dramatis personae_ of act ii of _la bohème_: four painters, an interior decorator, an illustrator assorted scribblers, and a scottish chieftain (lord of an ancient clan, hero of a hundred skin-of-your-teeth escapes, veteran of polish revolutionary escapades, uncrowned king of an african tribe: as _raconteur_ he had his rival, robert louis stevenson, lashed to the bed). this day he strode resplendent in plaid knee socks, plaid kilt, a murderous hieland dirk swung at his hip, short jacket the breast of which blazed with medals, and long black locks caught up under a cap. as he crossed the wharf planking at a stride like deer-stalking over his native crags, the rest of us half expected the assembled scots to prostrate themselves and knock foreheads on flooring in fealty. he did excite some attention. sisson said--well, no matter what sisson said.[ ] [ ] after all, why not? some one was explaining that the chief (who was a genuinely fine fellow) had come to america to raise funds for his clan. sisson said: "he'll he lucky if he gets back to scotland with his kilt." it was a great occasion. fritz, his black eyes snapping with excitement, came up the gang plank from deck to wharf to be pounced on by a jolly crew. he was outwardly cool, but his engines were racing. after him came alexander james. pounce number two. showers of rice clattered on a bridal pair close by, but their festival was tame compared to this. to meet henry james and john sargent in london: to study in paris and munich: to see the great galleries. they were embarking on greater seas than the atlantic. this was the great day, the great hour, and with a troop of friends rejoicing in their good fortune to sweeten it.... away to the land of heart's desire.... romance.... bohemia.... europe. "o youth, and the days that were!" from the caplog at the pier head as the _nubian_ swung into midstream of the charles, the band of pariahs bawled ribald farewells and wrung out handkerchiefs in mock tears. alexander james, the clive newcome of the adventure, leaned on the teakwood rail, waving his straw hat; and fritz, the "j.j." of the story, sat on the lowest ratline of the shrouds, feet on rail, pretending to weep into his hat and then emptying the brine into the brine. the ship's side, black hull and white upperworks, took a burnishing from the late afternoon sun. under the gaiety there was a queer feeling. there, divided from us by a hundred yards of harbor water, were the two friends with whom we had just shaken hands, and the strip between was widening, would widen to an ocean. they stood out amid the throng of passengers as distinct as though they had been the only souls aboard. they waved: we waved. as the vessel straightened away in her course they imitated our several gestures to signify personal farewells: it was thought and done impromptu. and long after their figures grew indistinct as the ship lessened down the harbor lane between elbowing wharves and the piled masses of city towers and spires, there were gleams of two white straw hats which we knew.... all the same, it was a trifle too much like a dress rehearsal for death. * * * * * then, in less than six weeks, a world in tumult. continental ateliers were emptying their students on the battlefield. fritz, who was in england, prudently kept out of the rush homeward and made the most of his few weeks. he was in downing street in front of that dingy georgian façade the night the british cabinet sat waiting for germany's reply to their ultimatum. "it gave one an odd feeling," said he, "to realize that behind those drawn shades sat men who were settling the question of life or death for hundreds of thousands of their fellow creatures. the crowd cheered. i did not." of henry james he saw comparatively little, for the novelist was in poor health, but he was immensely stimulated by the little he did see, for beginning with _roderick hudson_ he had been quick to discover how much this master of style had to teach a painter of what he had himself learned from painters. there was a memorable session with mr. sargent in his london studio. mr. sargent happened just then to be doing a portrait of lord curzon, and fritz related with wicked glee (imitating mr. sargent as he backed away from his easel) how the painter had remarked: "i have not made up my mind how to finish it. if i can't get enough interest out of the face, i'll put a scarlet coat on him." * * * * * it was late in october before he sailed for home, as one of a handful of passengers on a freighter. the voyage was one of continuous foul weather which, to the mystification of the others, was vastly to the delight of fritz. he lived on deck, begrudging time to sleep. he fraternized with the crew. one day of thin drizzle and greasy swells, getting into old togs, he helped the deck-hands greatly to their satisfaction and somewhat to the scandal of the other passengers, shovel coal down a hatch. "they didn't think i'd stick it through," said he. after that he was one of them. vi he had chosen to live in pittsburgh, partly because it was his home and partly because it promised him more elbow room. "i want to paint," said he, "and i do not want to have to play social politics in order to get commissions, as i am afraid i would have to do in boston. besides, in pittsburgh, there are fewer painters to influence me. i stand more chance of being myself." alexander james said it was brutal of fritz to go away to pittsburgh. the rest of the colony agreed. but it became fritz's delight to swoop down on us in boston unannounced. ... it is late in a wild night of mid-winter, a furious gale of wind and snow whipping across the gables and chimney stacks of beacon hill: a night for tucking oneself up in a wing chair beside a fire with a book and reading lamp, roar of storm in ears.... a rap sounds on the door. "come!" the rap is repeated. "come in!" the door opens and framed in its blackness stands fritz. with him is ralph heard in a state of jubilation. "you remember," says he, "i told you only two days ago that i sort of had a hunch that fritz might be dropping in on us most any time now? well, to-night i was sitting at my writing-table, when the door opened with a bang. i thought, without looking around, 'that is the way fritz opens a door.' and there was fritz." his one emotional luxury was this enjoyment of watching his friends fall all over their own feet in the glad surprise of seeing him. he was on his way to paint some portraits of exeter schoolmasters. it was slowly wormed out of him that romance had visited his shores. a st. louis woman was motoring to new york. in a street of pittsburgh a tire blew out. as it was raining, she got out of the car and went into an art store in front of which it had stopped, to wait for repairs. her errand in new york was to choose a portrait painter. in the art store a portrait by fritz was on exhibition. she decided that there was no need of going on to new york. that evening fritz was called to her hotel. it ended by his going on to st. louis and painting portraits of the whole family. what his bread-and-butter problems were i never fully knew. i think they were more in what he faced than in what he had to encounter. within two or three years after he left the museum school, he was paying his own way. he lived with the utmost frugality. his studio was a workshop: four walls and a north light. "i keep it bare on purpose," he confided, "to frighten away loafers." it appeared that certain amiable slayers of their own and others' time, envisaging a studio of divans, russian cigarettes, tea and twaddle, paid one visit, and only one. his attitude toward money was an island of sanity in a lunatic ocean. it was no time before he sensed the absurdity of attempting to measure creative work by commercial values, and that is, of course, the avenue by which the artist-thinker divines the idiotic husbandry of organizing society to batten those who distribute and those who own by penalizing those who produce and those who create. money he viewed as an article neither to be spent nor to be hoarded, but rather to be reinvested where it would draw intellectual dividends. his one extravagance was to buy his mind the food it needed if he had the wherewithal to pay for it. "and," as erasmus remarks, "after that, some clothes." the same independence which had fortified him against those who had once pointed him out as a crack-brained youngster with the presumption to suppose he could be a great artist sustained him now when he was pointed out as a promising portrait painter who was already "getting good money for his work." finding himself, as he did, endowed with a creative purpose considerably at odds with the structure of the society around him; put to it, as he was, to protect that fledgling from the well-intentioned but fatal meddlings of the mediocre, not a shadow of ill-humor did he allow to cross his average human intercourse. he made me think of a wise old cat who, having carefully hidden her kittens in the hayloft, presents a tolerant frame to the cuffs and caresses of the children. by the beginning of it was clear to anyone who knew him that all he needed to reach the summit was to keep climbing, and this he appeared abundantly able and determined to do. vii he was growing up. shy he would always be, but in place of his boyish self-distrust had come a quiet confidence in his own powers. his mind was on the watch for its food, like an eagle ready to pounce. there was an eager, vigilant look in his eyes when one spoke of certain books unknown to him: he was questioning whether they would be what he wanted. he would pump me about the content of certain authors. i could see him accepting and rejecting. he read the poets as one quarrying marble for architectural designs of his own. his hungry reading was as different from that of the perfunctory college student as the oarsmanship of a dory fisherman on the grand banks is from that of an eight-oared crew on the placid charles: the producer as contrasted with the consumer. george meredith and walt whitman became two of his great companions. once he told me that he was reading everything of thomas hardy he could lay his hands on. "why?" i asked. "he knows how to set the human figure against vast backgrounds of nature: figures outlined half against a heath and half against sky." i wonder if romain rolland realizes the intimacy of the friendship which has sprung up between _jean-christophe_ and the youth of to-day. fritz and christophe took an amazing shine to each other from the start. it was _christophe_ who led fritz to read everything else of romain rolland he could find, and thus his steps were guided to the summit of that mount of vision, rolland's _life of tolstoy_, whence he looked far and wide into the stern grandeur of that moral wilderness unsubdued by man through which the heroic thinker and prophet pushes on alone.... to look is to follow. he began to devour tolstoy's works. _the kreutzer sonata_ he sat up half the night beside my fire to finish. waking towards morning i saw him scowling over it. he asked to take the book away with him. soon he was up to his neck in the dramatists: ibsen, strindberg, brieux, sudermann, galsworthy, synge, shaw. there was a performance of _candida_ with mr. milton rosmer as the poet. they say that a secret can be told only to him who knows it already. there is a secret in two tremendous speeches at the close of that play which (as the dramatist himself says) few but poets know: morell: (_alarmed_) candida: don't let him do anything rash. candida: (_confident, smiling at eugene_) oh, there is no fear. he has learnt to live without happiness. marchbanks: i no longer desire happiness: life is nobler than that. parson james, i give you my happiness with both hands. those lines stung fritz as the whip stings a mettled horse. his flesh rebelled, but the poet in him leaped to the truth. on march , , the colony at charles street adjourned to a performance of _man and superman_. fritz kept his room-mate up until two in the morning discussing it. the next night he routed me out of bed at ten and quizzed me about it until three in the morning. he had had his glimpse of the collision between sex and ambition; between the impulse of the woman to create children of flesh and blood, with the man as adjunct and provider; and the impulse of the man to create children of the spirit independently of the woman. he was quick to realize that he had struck something which he had to settle, and he was settling it. the thing was deliciously transparent. here was a young gentleman tremendously in earnest about being an artist. being an artist he loved beauty. hitherto, in his shy way, he had secretly been rather tickled by the flutter which his striking head created in the dove cots of pretty girls. but after march , , the tune changed. he was affable, delighted to make their acquaintance--but on his guard. he had not the slightest intention of letting sex thwart his ambition. "yes, but...?" "yes, but...." he played the game. a commercial society decrees that the artist cannot have a livelihood until his work is accepted at a commercial value. pending that acceptance, if he assumes the responsibility of wife and children he also assumes the risk of shackling himself to pot-boiling work for life. society also decrees a standard of prenuptial chastity for the male. suppose the male happens to be more interested in art than in domesticity. he must then ask himself whether he shall abide by a decree which bourgeois society promulgates with more emphasis than sincerity. with his eyes wide open to the fact that the very society which promulgates this decree openly winks at its evasion, fritz abode by it. a slightly sterner set to his jaw; a slightly darker flash in his eye; a slightly grimmer stoicism in the grip on his emotions were all that betrayed the battle which had raged in him between the two creative forces: sex and intellect. he never pretended that the battle was won for keeps. the crust on which he walked he knew to be thin. but it was won for the present. he well knew that there are no bargain days at life's counter: he had come there to purchase one of the most precious commodities--a creative career--and he was willing to pay the fee. if he found the fee somewhat high (and i have reason to know that he did) he never complained. it was his reward to enjoy that supreme luxury of conduct--to be the thing he seemed. he lived in that kind of glass house which is not damaged by any amount of stone-throwing, because there is nothing to hit: a glass house with all the curtains up. "naked and unashamed" could have been written over the door of his mind. time and again he quoted a passage from _trilby_ in which du maurier says that mental chastity begins in the artist when the model drops her last garment. he was frank to add that this was strictly true; that in the intense concentration of his mind on problems of form and color he had found in painting from the nude no room for images of sex but on the contrary an actual release from the heats and fevers which plague young men. the remedy he proposed was: "get rid of mystery." there is a portrait painted at about this time which tells the story of the inner struggle which he was fighting and winning. it is of a young girl, about his own age, with a wondrously sweet expression and sparkling eyes. the delicacy, the spirituality which shines through it makes it hard to believe that the portrait could have been painted by a young man. not a hint of sexuality. he later told me that the girl was afflicted with a lameness and he told how grateful he was to her for valuing him for his mind and not obtruding sex. i doubt if he knew how publicly yet with what delicacy he had thanked her. there were moods of him, as when he stood silently drinking in a landscape, which made me think of that fine old chant which one hears in the churches: "o worship the lord in the beauty of holiness." * * * * * in the emptiness left by his death i came to realize that one of the principal anticipations of my life had been looking forward to watch, year by year, the unfolding of his mind and the ripening of his powers. his talent had long since passed the stage at which it was a sporting proposition--the stage at which one could chaff him about cashing in heavily some day on a pair of "early demmlers." there was no kind of doubt that he carried within him the creative "daimon." his very instincts betrayed it. he went at a landscape the way hugo wolf went at a song: he lived with the poem before creating the music. for the first few days in a novel countryside he never thought of touching brush to canvas. he walked around in the scene, his every sense alert to its feature and color, to its sound and smell. he laid in wait for its moods. he eyed it in every circumstance of wind and weather, as if it had been a face he was preparing to paint, or a woman he was preparing to wed. no words. the quality he most appreciated in a companion at such times was silence. and it was entertainment enough to watch the play of expression in his face as his eyes roamed meadow, hill or sea horizon--vigilance, delight, eagerness, discriminating study, instructions to memory, brooding thought--his life was a perpetual honeymoon with nature for his bride. then would come the day and the hour when he was ready to paint. by that time, in the wealth of his materials, his only study would be not what to put in but what to leave out. i doubt if he had reached the point of knowingly causing his subconscious to work for him, but it will be apparent from the foregoing that he was doing so unconsciously. he was able, somehow, to communicate his sense of form and color to another, without resort to speech, or with only the fewest words. perhaps it was the stimulus of seeing how much there was for him in the distant shining of sunlight on winding waters, or a range of low hills scrawling their signature on the chill blue of horizon sky, which taught others to find the wonder and dignity in what they would once have looked on as commonplace. at any rate, i find myself, in all seasons, seeing landscapes through his eyes.... "now that looks commonplace, but it isn't. fritz would have seen something in these somber march-brown meadows drowned in the freshets of spring; these red-budding birches; this delicate flush of pink in a drab evening sky...." and so he, being dead, yet seeth. he was well aware, by this time, that the artist who is not also a thinker is a one-legged man. he accepted the obligation of understanding matters which, superficially, might have seemed far outside his province. it was in that he encountered tolstoy's great work on christian anarchism, _the kingdom of god is within you_. it revolutionized his view of life. it convinced him of the futility of violence as a method of settling disputes, personal or national. and the shock of having to transvalue all the accepted values, of having, in a world organized on the basis of fear, to conceive of a world organized on the basis of good will, made him a thinker in his own right. next he encountered romain rolland's _life of michael angelo_. far from being chilled by the classic austerity of that work, it warmed him. in it he found the food he had been seeking. he made it a part of him. it confirmed, with revelations of the laws of mental conduct which governed that giant of the renaissance, principles which this young man had been formulating and practising by the naked instinct of his will to create. things which he had been doing or forbearing to do, he could not have told you why, here received their sanction or veto in the experience of a genius. little as was said about this between us, it was easy to see how profoundly this discovery of the similarity between his own mental processes and those of a great master had strengthened his confidence in himself. michael angelo was added to the list of his great companions. he had another. rembrandt. there was a gallery in london, which one i forget, which he visited day after day. "in the first room you entered," said he, "was a portrait of an old woman by rembrandt, painted in his last period. time after time i went there intending to see the rest of the gallery. sometimes i even tried a room or two. what was the use? i went back to that portrait. it seemed like a waste of time to look at the other pictures. everything they said--if they said anything--was said in that portrait by rembrandt and said better. it seemed to me as if the whole history of humanity were concentrated in that old woman's face.... finally i surrendered and went only to see that." * * * * * there is a chastity of the mind, just as there is a chastity of the body. there are certain creative processes which a sincere thinker would no more reveal to casual eyes than he would strip in a public place. a rule of mental chastity: do not hold promiscuous mental intercourse. the shallow would intrude into these austere places like picnickers in a sanctuary, littering it with their luncheon refuse. let the artist raise his thought-stained face from his toil, smiling but mute. fritz guarded his secrets well. a sudden flash of arrested eye, a certain silent intentness of gaze, an interest in a subject which would seem altogether out of proportion to its importance, a look of perpetual expectancy were all that betrayed his search. he was learning, learning, learning: every hour, every minute. sometimes for days together he would seem dormant--practical people would have said loafing--lazily absorbing impressions as it had been through his pores. again he seemed to devour scenery, faces, books, ideas with an appetite that was insatiable. a young sculptor, meeting fritz, observed to me privately, "what an unromantic exterior for an artist!" the joke was too good to tell fritz for, all innocently on the sculptor's part, it revealed a secret which i was not supposed to know: that fritz instinctively cultivated this young-man-just-out-of-college-and-doing-well-in-business exterior as a high board fence behind which, free from intrusion, to train the muscles of his mind and cultivate the golden orchards of his soul. he had to. for once he had mastered the tools of his trade there was absolutely no one to teach him the things he most needed to know. he must go it alone. he knew it. and he was going. that was the secret of the watchful, hungry look of him--the look of one aware of a ravenous appetite and never sure of his next meal. that was the secret of his inarticulate gratitude to anyone who happened to be able to put him in the way of finding the food his spirit craved. he discovered that the composers knew more about painting than most painters, and he used to turn up at symphony concerts or at the opera with the look of a small boy fresh from a session with the jam pot behind the pantry door. he wasn't saying anything, but you knew that he'd got it. he made a bee-line for beethoven and wagner. he came away after a performance of _tristan_ most divinely drunk on the strongest wine in music. for the method of these composers was the method which he had chosen for himself unconsciously. he was not satisfied to write a thin melody. he was determined to teach his brush the rich and complicated instrumentation of an orchestral score. not this face or that landscape was what he planned to put on canvas, but the abundance of life which he had absorbed through every avenue of sense. not a violin alone, nothing less than the full orchestra would content him. i ask myself whether i shall ever see anything more inspiriting than the quiet, secret quest of this young man for an excellence and a mastery not only unrecognized and unrewarded by the social order in which he lived, but not even comprehended. this is the courage of the creative mind: that it is prepared to meet alike its triumph or its defeat in an utter moral solitude. stories of the physical courage which fritz displayed on the field of battle were to come later.... which is likely to advance the kingdom of heaven on earth more speedily--the courage of the body, to destroy; or the courage of the mind, to create? is all this too eulogistic? "oh, come! he must have had faults, weaknesses, common spots." ... i suppose so. to tell the truth i never noticed them. there was a trait, as i first remember him, of too ready assent to the opinions of others which it amused me to attribute to peasant ancestry; but, after all, that conformity was only outward and it soon disappeared. in matters really vital to him his will was granite and he commanded a silence which could vociferate "hands off!" his very inarticulate tongue gave promise of greatness. one saw all this life-stuff entering into him. he could never express it in speech. it was a necessity of his being to express it somehow. it would have to come out on canvas. oh, once in a great while the curtain would be dropped. some lucky turn of conversation would relax the inhibitions and liberate his tongue. then for a few minutes, perhaps for an hour, one would be shown the treasure house within. what shall i say of those glimpses? there are times to walk fearfully lest one smash something which cannot be replaced, and these occasions were of them. treasures not of this world; possessions which honored the possessor by being held in honor; bins heaped, as it had been, with jewels and brocades; others which gaped with a sacrificial emptiness; spaces eked out with the heroic poverty of one dedicated to the monasticism of a creative career. enough.... i saw--what i saw. * * * * * and withal he was half pagan. the physical gratification with which he drank in the beauty of the world reminded me of that statuette by _roderick hudson_, dipsos ("thirst")--a boy, feet planted wide apart, head thrown back, slaking his throat out of a gourd held in both hands. fritz was that boy. the ugliness of modern clothes disgusted him. he was alert for chances to take off his own: impromptu baths in cold brooks on walking trips, or long days of summer sunshine on lonely stretches of sea beach with gleaming yellow sands. there was some place among the mountains of west virginia where he used to go: ledges of flat rock above a rushing river. all day long they gathered warmth from the sun, retaining it well into the night. when the moon had risen he loved to steal away for a plunge in the river, then lie out naked in the moonlight on these great slabs of warm rock, alone with the magic night. viii in may, , he came to boston from pittsburgh. i was in parkersburg, west virginia. he came there. conscription impended. under his composure the struggle was going on. tolstoy had converted him. what was he to do? "if there were no one but myself to consider...," said he, "but the suffering which you would have no hesitation in imposing on yourself you hesitate to impose on those dearer to you than yourself." he was thrilled by the nonresistance of the still-young russian revolution: "wonderful people, liberated by their refusal to kill! they fold their arms and say 'shoot!' the cossacks refuse to shoot them. and a despotism, centuries old, comes tumbling down. it proves everything that tolstoy has said." for three days, tramping about the scrubby countryside, rambling along the banks of the ohio, rowing up the swift, muddy current of the kanawah, the dilemma of a man born to create and commandeered to destroy was threshed out. never before had he spoken so freely. the economic causes of the trouble he understood fairly well, but it was startling with what a seeing eye he pierced the illusions which beset that time. by that faculty of divination peculiar to the artist's mind he reached, at one leap, conclusions which the thinker only arrives at after laborious effort. and he was a young man without an illusion left, steadfastly looking the ugliest facts of our social order in the face. on the last evening of his stay we were standing on the steel spider web of a suspension bridge which spans the ohio, watching a sunset unfurl its banners of blood and fire. all day there had been thunder and rain, and eastward behind the towers and spires of the city skyline still hung the retreating clouds, sullen and dark. fritz pointed to where, against that gloomy cloud bank, high above the city and gilded red from the setting sun, rose two symbols: one on the tip of a spire, the other on the staff atop a tower: cross and flag. "church," said he grimly, "and state." the next day he returned to pittsburgh to register for the draft. * * * * * july found me back in new england at a farm on the banks of the merrimac in west newbury. returning one noon from an errand up the hills to the village i was hailed by the children with a shout: "a friend of yours is here." "who is he?" "he told us his name but we've forgotten it." "what does he look like?" descriptions varied: "he's awfully strong," said the boy. "he has shiny black hair and black eyes," said the littlest girl. "he wears his coat off and his sleeves rolled up," said the biggest little girl, and she added, with the spontaneous poetry of childhood, "and his hands are beeootiful!" "where is he?" "down by the river." under the maples, lying in the tall grass at the foot of a steep bank which sloped to the stream, with children clambering all over him, was fritz. he scrambled to his feet and came forward putting out his hand with that awkwardness of meeting after an absence which he never quite outgrew, but his eyes snapped with enjoyment at my astonishment. it appeared that he had been painting some one in a massachusetts mill city and had dashed up here between-whiles. there is a tiny hut perched like a brown owl on a knoll in a grove of hickories beside the river. to this hermitage we retired and he related the news of the intellectual underworld in pittsburgh. roger baldwin had been there, much to his comfort. a friend whose portrait he had been painting, aware that the mildest radicalism had now become high treason, had remarked by way of chaffing him, "i hope they give you a cell with a north light." he unburdened with a tone of sheer physical relief: "this frantic enthusiasm for 'democracy,'" said he, "on the part of people who have spent their whole lives combating it!" he sat relaxed in a deep chair, hands hanging limp on its arms--hands large, strongly muscled, marked with heavy veins, the fingers full-fleshed at their tips, the skin bronzed by the sun. tatters of sunlight, reflected from the wavelets of the river obliquely up underneath the hickory boughs, flickered on the ceiling and walls of the hut. disillusioned he was, but not cynical. his humor was a bath to a sore spirit. he kindled, in the moral solitude of that hour, a little fire of faith and hope. it struck me anew, eyeing him as he sat there, what a beautiful creature he was, inside and out. there was in him, too, an odd streak of stoicism. keen as he was for "the eats," he delighted in little acts of self-discipline. that afternoon, it being necessary for me to try for a nap, he cleared out to gather views of river and woods. an hour later i discovered this young spartan, hands clasped behind head, spine stretched along the plank flooring of the narrow ledge in front of the hut, sleeping quietly.... the next day he made himself everlastingly solid with the people at the farm by spending the whole morning fitting screens to the multitudinous doors and windows of their ark of a house. everyone wanted fritz to stay a month. at nine that evening he left. as we trudged over the road in the warm darkness of the summer night, he talked soberly of the dubious future. * * * * * he was not called until the following april, . twice that winter he came to boston. number charles street had been dismantled. but the third-floor-back on pinckney street received him with an extra cot for bivouac. ... this should have been the longest chapter of all, and the best. i find that i cannot write it. * * * * * only a postscript. i asked him for a picture of himself. "what do you want," he inquired, "a painting?" my ideas had been far more modest: "beggars should not be choosers. i will take what i can get: painting, photograph, snap-shot: and be thankful." "what size would you like?" "small enough so that it can go wherever i go." he made no promises. his way was to wait until the time came and then let the performance speak. not three weeks later it came: a sketch in oils, head and shoulders, ten inches by twelve, not at all the cold greenish grays i had anticipated from his habitual attitude of self-effacement, but on the contrary a scheme of rich golden browns. he has painted his own portrait with the same reticence which looks out of its eyes. strangers seeing it remark, "what a striking face!" his friends view it and say, "he was much finer looking than that." ix the rest is seen dimly, as through a mist. his voice is heard, distinct and clear, but as from a great distance. to ralph heard he writes from camp lee, virginia: "i am eating, sleeping, and drilling with physical enthusiasm," and later, "tell the fellows that the dust is gathering on my palette." a letter to me in may tells of taking his pipe at the day's end and strolling into the woods of the camp to be alone with the song of birds and tints of sunset. late in july came a letter from france describing a march "between gleam of gold in the west and a rising full moon in the east, ... aëroplanes in action overhead and cannonading over the hills to the east." then occurs this: "i am little different from as you know me, even though now in a machine gun company:--curious irony.--" and this: "continue your work.... other victories are transient." and this was his farewell: "we have seen great visions and dreamed splendid dreams. and the faith you have in me,--which i prize so desperately,--i have in you, no matter where each of us may be headed. we will live the best we can--that, through our friendship, is all we ask of each other." * * * * * on january , , one of his brothers writes from le mans, france: "st. remis du plain is the name of the little town where fred's company was billeted. it is perched on the top of a hill in the middle of a vast plain and was visible for a long time as i headed towards it. this was the trip i had planned long ago, and pictured a happy meeting; however, it was decreed otherwise. passing up the narrow street i saw 'headquarters, m. g. bn.' written on the door of an old stone house. the orderly room was full of officers. i inquired for lieut. rew, the one who had previously written to me, and introduced myself as fred's brother. the officer who was dictating stopped work, came over and shook hands with me. the captain commanding the battalion came from behind the table, greeted me and offered a word of sympathy. soon all the officers were grouped about me and i saw that fred was considered one of their number. the captain said, 'he was the best sergeant i ever had.' they invited me to mess with them, and lieut. rew said i was to bunk with him, 'for my men have cooties,' but i saw this was all done so that they might have a chance to speak of fred. one of the sergeants told me that when the news came, the officers were even more broken up about it than the men. "i was introduced to the noncoms with whom fred seems to have been a favorite. in the evening, as we sat around an open fireplace, i asked if fred had had a 'buddy.' the sergeant with whom fred used to sleep said, 'no. he was everybody's friend.' "as i was walking up to the kitchen, a private stepped out of the mess line and came up to me saying he knew me through my resemblance to fred. soon the mess line was demoralized and i was the center of a lively mass all talking at once and i could easily see why the captain recommended him so highly as a sergeant.--'he never said a harsh word,'--'he was always cheerful and never kicked,'--'when we complained about the feed or anything, he said it would be better later.' they talked so long that at last the cook asked me if i would not please eat so that they would eat and let him get through. * * * * * "the division left camp lee, june , , and sailed from newport news on the italian transport _caserta_. it was a dirty boat, the feed rotten, and the trip rough. everybody was disgusted. fred was about the only one of the company who never missed a meal. a private told me that he and fred were standing at the rail in the bow of the ship one night talking about a number of things. this fellow voiced the sentiment of most of the company when he said he only wanted to make one more ocean trip and that was in the reverse direction. fred looked far out across the water and remarked: 'i could stand a few more.' "they landed at brest on july and entrained at once for souville. they used the french type of compartment cars where with ten men and full equipment there wasn't much room to move about. fred was in charge of his compartment and, with his usual ingenuity, devised means of disposing of the equipment to best advantage for their comfort. he also carefully arranged the daily menu consisting of bread, corned beef, tomatoes, beans, and jam. he did all this in such a serio-comic way that the fellows are still laughing over the memories of the trip. "on september the division led the drive into the argonne forest. this is reputed to have been the hardest battle of the war in respect to the germans' shell fire and the suffering caused by the rainy weather and lack of shelter. through it all there was not a healthier nor more cheerful man than fred. recognized by the commanding officer as having 'the coolest head in the company and afraid of nothing' he was made a sergeant after this battle over the heads of some old national guardsmen; but there was not a murmur--all were satisfied. when they came out of the woods he helped the doctor with the wounded (he seems to have helped everywhere, from the kitchen to the captain's private office). after they had all been attended to, he asked the doctor to look him over. he had received three flesh wounds in shoulder and arm. he picked out the pieces of shrapnel himself and had the doctor bandage him. after which he went about his work as usual. "october found the company in the st. mihiel sector, and on october it moved into belgium. all this meant miles of weary hiking under a full pack; but fred remained the same cheerful fellow as ever. he amused the whole company with his doings. he found an old hair-clipper among some salvage and immediately opened a barber shop where lieutenants as well as privates got their hair cut. another thing that i recognized as characteristic were the remarks pertaining to his appetite. he never lost it. he was known to have 'eats' on his person all the time. he had a special knack of hunting out farm houses, engaging _madame_ in conversation, and coming away with bread, eggs, or cheese in his knapsack. occasionally he did some sketching and his letters were a joy to the lieutenant who censored them because of the excellent descriptions they contained.... "the company went over the top early in the morning of october . fred was wounded in the left side by a piece of high explosive shell at about : a.m. it was before daylight and few knew he had been hit. when they did hear it, they were far in advance and fred had been carried to evacuation hospital number five, at staden, belgium. he died there on november . one of the boys who helped carry him to the rear says that he was fully conscious despite the serious nature of his wound, and tells of how he directed them what to do--how he told them to leave him when the shells fell too fast (which they wouldn't do)--of how they left him, quite himself, at the first-aid station.... "he was never referred to as a bully or even as a fighter--he was spared the grewsome experience of hand-to-hand fighting, for from the first the germans were in full flight; but he was remembered for his cheerfulness, his kindness toward others and especially for his lack of harsh words. his favorite text from the bible was that part of the sermon on the mount known as the beatitudes, _and he often wondered why ministers did not preach on it more_. _he constantly spoke of this to the men._ (the italics are not in the original.) "his fire has gone out, but he left a glow in the hearts of these men which will never go out." * * * * * and now it is time that a few questions be asked, simple and direct. it is due him. why is it that when he set himself to create he had to contend against that dead-weight of indifference if not the active hostility of organized society recorded in these pages; but when he was commandeered to destroy, that society clothed him, fed him, sheltered him, trained him, transported him, paid him, nursed him, and buried him? it is well that we should know what has been squandered. he that might have ennobled generations of men with his great visions and his splendid dreams is mingling his clay with the soil of belgium. he had the seeds of genius. capitalism made him a machine gunner. is this the best we can find for our artists to do? is it any wonder that the creative minds of to-day are finding themselves driven to social revolution as their art-form? in the brown-owl hut beside the merrimac that summer day in he remarked in a tone of indulgent irony: "the 'military experts' have found a nice, polite term for men killed or too badly maimed to fight any more." "what is it?" i asked. "'wastage.'" [music:--beethoven: finale of the ninth symphony.] x visitation here, at the end, let those measures of the ninth symphony sound: no dirge; but a pæan of joy. for in that choral ecstasy of beethoven's hymn to human brotherhood speaks the whole meaning and purpose of the life that was. why have i detained you for a tale so plain? what was he but an obscure young painter, thirty years old, with his way to make? why should i point him out to you among the millions? because he was my friend? no. because he is yours. because i thought i saw in him the seeds of greatness? no. because the seeds of greatness which were in him are in you; and he shall make you see them. i give him to you young men to be your friend, loyal and high-minded. i give him to you young women to be your lover, clean of body and of soul. he will be worthy of your friendship and of your love, and you shall be worthy of his in return. i give him to you in all the beauty of his youth and he shall never grow old, but he shall himself become one of the heroic friends, one of the great companions. i give you his soul to carry in your own, a life within a life. through his eyes you may see the wonder and glory of the beautiful world which he saw so joyously. let his generous heart beat through yours his passion for an ideal society and a better time than ours. he is to be immortal. and it is you who must make him so. let him kindle in your hearts a fire which will not go out. he that would have made great canvases glow with the might of his spirit and the splendor of his imagination shall not now live by art alone, but by the living deeds of you. you shall be his masterpieces. you, immortal youth, shall be his immortality. away from the dust and heat of the day, when the loud world crowds and clamors, he shall make for you, all in a dim, cool chamber of your souls, a sanctuary--a little space of sacred friendship--where you may enter and, closing the door, renew your vows. you may have him to stand beside you in hours of triumph, and in hours of disaster; steadier of your aim, sustainer of your courage. sit in the twilight with folded hands and he shall speak to you. when moonbeams pour their silent music into your chamber at dead of night and your sight rejoices in them, it is he. hearken to the beat of surf along a lonely shore; to the song of the hermit thrush in dense thickets; to the whisper of the night wind among the leaves: "it is he!" kindle to the charm and mystery of a face in the crowd, and "it is he!" thrill at the return of many-blossomed spring, at the strength of men, at the grace of women, and your joy shall be his joy. in every visitation to you of the truth that not by hate, not by blows, but only by the love of the human heart can the world be won from its evil, he shall live, he shall live again. and the color and rhythm of life, the joy of begetting which he never knew, the joy of creating which he knew so abundantly, when it is yours shall be his also. and so all that is highest and best in you, all that inspired him and that he inspired, shall be the works of art by which he is remembered. immortal youth, let him be comrade and friend to you as he was to me; let him live forever in your young hearts, himself forever young, bathed in the glory of eternal dawn. [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare delacroix -- ===================================================================== plate i.--the entry of the crusaders into constantinople. frontispiece (in the louvre) painted in for the gallery at versailles, whence it was subsequently removed to the louvre, this large, dramatic composition belongs to the period when delacroix's palette, inspired from the first by rubens and veronese, had assumed increased richness under the influence of eastern light and colour. it is significant of the lack of appreciation shown to the master by his contemporaries, and even by his supporters, that the commission was accompanied by the request that the picture should not look like a delacroix. [illustration: plate i.--the entry of the crusaders into constantinople.] ===================================================================== delacroix by paul g. konody illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page logo] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. the entry of the crusaders into constantinople . . . frontispiece in the louvre ii. algerian women in their apartment in the louvre iii. the death of ophelia in the louvre iv. the crucifixion in the louvre v. the bride of abydos in the louvre vi. dante and virgil in the louvre vii. the execution of the doge marino faliero in the wallace collection viii. faust and mephistopheles in the wallace collection [illustration: delacroix] "delacroix, lac de sang, hanté de mauvais anges, ombragé par un daïs de sapins toujours vert, où, sous un ciel chagrin, des fanfares étranges passent comme un soupir étouffé de weber." --baudelaire, "fleurs du ma ." i to-day, as one examines the ten masterpieces by delacroix in the salle des États at the louvre--ten pictures which may without fear of contradiction be asserted to form an epitome of the art of the man who is now generally acknowledged to be the fountain-head of all modern art--one can only with difficulty understand the bitter hostility, the fierce passion, aroused by these works when delacroix's name was the battle-cry of the moderns, when delacroix was the leader of the numerically small faction which waged heroic war against the inexorable tyrannic rule of academic art. what was once considered extreme and revolutionary, has become what might almost be described as a classic basis of a revaluation of æsthetic values. even manet's "olympia," the starting-point of a more recent artistic upheaval, a picture which on its first appearance at the paris salon of was received with wild howls of execration, now falls into line at the louvre with the other great masterpieces of painting. it marks a bold step in the evolution of modern art, but it is no longer disconcerting to our eyes. and delacroix can no longer be denied classic rank. to understand the significance of delacroix in the art of his country, and the hostility shown to him by officialdom and by the unthinking public almost during the whole course of his life, one has to trace back the art of painting in france to its very birth. it will then be found that the history of this art, from the moment when french painting emerges from the obscurity of the middle ages until well into the second half of the nineteenth century, is a history of an almost uninterrupted struggle between north and south. all the efforts of chauvinistic french critics have failed to establish the existence of an early indigenous school. nearly all the early painters who are mentioned in contemporary documents were flemings who had settled in france. their art is so closely allied to that of the northern schools, that it is sometimes impossible to establish the origin of pictures that are traditionally ascribed to french painters. but at the same time, perhaps in the train of the popes who had transferred their court to avignon, italian art began to invade france from the south. simone martini's frescoes in the papal palace at avignon certainly left their mark upon the school that arose in the provençal city; and gradually traces of italian influence made themselves felt in an art that remained northern in its essential features. there is at the national gallery an early french panel, a "scene from the legend of st. giles" (no. ), which clearly shows the harmonious blending of the two currents. ===================================================================== plate ii.--algerian women in their apartment (in the louvre) this picture was one of the first-fruits of delacroix's journey to morocco with count mornay's mission. it was painted in , the year after his return to france, commissioned by the state at the price of frs. the handling of the upright figure of the negress suggests spanish influence, and was in turn obviously well known to manet when he painted his "olympia." [illustration: plate ii.--algerian women in their apartment] ===================================================================== italianism became paramount in french painting when, in the fourth decade of the sixteenth century, rosso and primaticcio followed the call of francis i. and founded the school of fontainebleau. from about right into the nineteenth century, the official art of france, that is to say, the art favoured by the rulers and encouraged by the academy, was based on the imitation of raphael and the italians of the decline--an art that was essentially intellectual, cold, and dominated by drawing and design, not by colour. in the reign of louis xiv., when le brun became the art despot of his country, the foundation of the academy, and subsequently of the french school at rome, led to the formulating of definite canons of formal beauty and of the "grand style." evolution on these lines was impossible. french art was only saved from stagnation by the influence of northern art, from which it continued to derive its vitality. it was saved by painters who, like philippe de champaigne and watteau, had come from the north, or who, like the brothers le nain, chardin, boucher, fragonard, and finally delacroix, had drawn their inspiration either from the dutchmen or from rubens and the flemings. during the "grand" century there are only isolated instances of painters who resisted the tyranny of academic rule and the exclusive worship of classic antiquity. but whilst the professional painters meekly submitted to le brun's tyranny, the revolt which was to transform the art of painting in france in the eighteenth century was heralded, nay initiated, in the field of polemic literature. a fierce battle was waged between the traditional advocates of the supremacy of line and the champions of colour, or rather of paint that fulfils a more vital function than the colouring of spaces created by linear design. it was the battle of the "poussinistes" and the "rubénistes," the two factions deriving their names from the great masters whose art was the supreme embodiment of the two opposed principles: poussin and rubens. félibien was the leader of those who espoused the cause of academic design with superimposed colour as a secondary consideration; and roger de piles became the chief defender of colour as a constructive element. the dawn of the eighteenth century, and the advent of watteau, brought the signal victory of the rubénistes. the pompous style of the seventeenth century ebbed away with the life of the _grand monarque_. the new age demanded a new art--the graceful and dainty art of the boudoir. at the very outset, watteau carried the emotional expressiveness of pigment to a point where it could not be maintained by his followers and imitators. he had never been to italy; and though he had studied the works of the venetian colourists, his art was mainly derived from flemish sources. but the academy continued to send its most promising pupils to its branch school in rome, where they were taught to worship at the shrine of raphael and his followers, and whence they returned to continue the tradition of the school. thus italianism did not die, though it became transformed by the ascendency of the rubens influence and by the new social conditions. mythology and allegory continued to rule supreme in the art of boucher, which is the most typical expression of the french eighteenth century, but they are adapted to the decoration of the boudoir, and colour and brushwork are no longer subordinated to design. boucher, the most french of all french painters, is inconceivable without two centuries of the italian tradition of design and without rubens's example of handling paint. in the art of fragonard, that great virtuoso of the brush, the influence of rubens becomes absolutely paramount. only a few youthful failures recall his study of the italians. fragonard witnessed the end of the _ancien régime_ and the great political upheaval of the french revolution. with the monarchy died the sensuous art of the _fêtes galantes_. the painting that flourished in the napoleonic era was more formal, cold, and academic than at any previous epoch. david and his followers sought their inspiration in roman history, and set purity of line and the dogmas of the school higher than ever. their idealism was of a bombastic, rhetorical order; their painting absolutely uninspired tinting of pseudo-classic designs. at no period had french art sunk to such a level of dulness. the death of david left his great pupil ingres, the most perfect draughtsman of the nineteenth century, the undisputed leader of the school. but the day of freedom was at hand--and the liberating word was to be pronounced by delacroix. the seventeenth-century war between the "poussinistes" and the "rubénistes" was to be resumed, although the two parties were now re-christened "classicists" and "romanticists." but this time the war was one of deeds, and not of words. ingres was the leader of an army; delacroix fought almost single-handed. and, for once, victory did not favour the large battalions. ii eugène delacroix, who was born on the th floréal of the year vi., as the republican calendar has it, or the th april , according to our own reckoning, belonged to a distinguished family. his father, charles delacroix, an ardent republican, who had voted for the death of his king, took a very active part in the political life of his country, and filled successively the posts of minister for foreign affairs, ambassador to vienna, departmental prefect, and ambassador to the batavian republic. his mother, victoire, was the daughter of boulle's pupil, the famous cabinetmaker oeben, and was connected by family links with the even more illustrious riesener. his brother, charles henri, achieved fame in the napoleonic campaigns, was created baron of the empire in , and became quartermaster-general in . the military career was also adopted by his other brother henri, who fell at friedland in . his sister married raymond de verninac, who became prefect of the rhône and subsequently ambassador to the swiss republic. delacroix was not an infant prodigy. he showed none of that irresistible early impulse towards art which is so often discovered by posthumous biographers of great masters. indeed, his inclinations tended more towards music; and at one time he thought of adopting a military career. even when, at the age of seventeen, he left college to enter guérin's studio, he was by no means determined to devote himself exclusively to painting. there was not much sympathy between master and pupil. the impetuous youth, with his keen sense of the dramatic and romantic, and his passionate love of music, even if his emotionalism was held in check by intellectuality, felt repelled by the icy coldness of the man in whom the teaching of david had stifled any personal talent he may have possessed. and delacroix soon found that he could learn more from copying rubens, raphael, and titian at the louvre than from guerin's dry instruction. moreover, he had the good fortune of gaining the friendship of his fellow-student, géricault, who, inspired by a spirit akin to that of delacroix, had already broken away from the tradition of the school, and who heralded the dawn of a new era with his intensely dramatic and almost revolutionary "raft of the medusa." delacroix himself tells in his journal that he was so powerfully impressed by the intense realism of his friend's work, that on leaving the studio he ran through the streets like a madman. how much he benefited by géricault's example became clear when his "dante and virgil" appeared at the salon of , raising its author with a single bound to fame. delacroix's mother died in . his small heritage was swallowed up by a lawsuit. his position would have been desperate, but for the help of géricault, who procured him a commission for an altarpiece for the convent of the ladies of the sacred heart at nantes. there is no trace of his later romanticist fire in this altarpiece, and in the "vierge des maisons" for the church of orcemont, which dates from the same period. both pictures are based on the study of raphael. among delacroix's intimates of these early days was the english painter, thales fielding, from whom he not only acquired his knowledge of the art of water-colour painting--then scarcely practised in france--but who awakened or strengthened in him the taste for english literature and especially for shakespeare and byron. with the "dante and virgil" of , delacroix definitely dissociated himself from the frigid, lifeless tradition of the david school, of which ingres was soon to become the acknowledged leader. "that school of ingres," delacroix once expressed himself on one of those rare occasions when he broke through his habitual reticence concerning his critical views on his contemporaries, "wants to make painting a dependency of the antiquaries; it is pretentious archæology; these are not pictures." "cameos are not made," he wrote on another occasion, "to be put into painting; everything ought to keep its proper place." the "dante and virgil" was his first pictorial protest against the rule of cold classicism. to-day we may be surprised that a picture so balanced in design, so sober in colour, so sculpturally plastic in the modelling of the human form, could have been considered in any way revolutionary and should have evoked such violent abuse as was showered upon it by the davidists. but turn from this "dante" to david's "oath of the horatii" and "leonidas," which may be taken to typify the artistic standard of the time, and you will grasp the full significance of delacroix's bold step. true, géricault had already followed similar aims with his "raft of the medusa"; but this astounding picture, a record of a disaster which was then still fresh in the people's memory, was considered rather as a magnificent piece of pictorial journalism than as a work to be judged by the canons of the "grand style." ===================================================================== plate iii.--the death of ophelia (in the louvre) this is one, and perhaps the most successful of many slightly varying versions of the same subject, which the artist first lithographed in and painted in . the louvre picture was executed in . delacroix, from his school days to his death, was an ardent admirer of shakespeare's genius, and was deeply impressed by the shakesperian productions which he witnessed during his short sojourn in london. [illustration: plate iii.--the death of ophelia] ===================================================================== the case of delacroix was different. he had dared to bring passion and intense dramatic expressiveness into a subject taken from literature. he had chosen a mediæval poet, instead of going back to classic antiquity. and he had used pigment as it was not used by any of his contemporaries. he had used it in truly painter-like fashion, making the colour itself contribute to the emotional appeal of the drama and giving to the actual brushwork functional value in the building up of form. the writhing bodies of the damned surrounding the boat and gleaming lividly through the terrible gloom are painted with a superb mastery which recalled to thiers "the boldness of michelangelo and the fecundity of rubens," and which made gros exclaim, "this is rubens chastened!" the outcry raised by the davidists did not prevent the government from purchasing the picture for the not very formidable amount of £ . the artist thus honoured and acclaimed a genius by the most competent judges was in the same year placed last among sixty candidates in a competition for one of the school prizes! henceforth delacroix abstained from exposing himself to such rebuffs. even gros' tempting offer to prepare him at his studio for the coveted prix de rome could not shake his determination. he continued to work independently, gaining his bare livelihood by caricatures and lithographic illustrations of no particular distinction. he never went to italy; and it is worthy of note that herein he followed the rare example of the two greatest _painters_ of his country: both watteau and chardin had kept clear of rome and its baneful influence. the horrors of the greek war of independence provided delacroix with a magnificent subject in the "massacre of scio," which he sent to the salon of . here was indeed rank defiance of those rules of "the beautiful" in art which had been formulated by the school of david, and which even in a scene of bloodshed and horror expected heroic poses and the theatrical grouping of the "grand style." delacroix had dared to depict hideous death in the agonised face of the woman with the child on the right of the picture, blank despair verging on insanity in the old woman by her side, the languor of approaching death in the limp form of the man in the centre. he had arranged his composition contrary to all accepted rules; he had painted it with the fire of an inspired colourist. the glitter of light and atmosphere was spread over the receding landscape and sky--delacroix had seen constable's "hay wain" and two other works by the english master at this very salon. they came to him as a revelation. he obtained permission to withdraw his picture for a few days, and--so the story goes--completely repainted it with incredible rapidity. the truth is probably that under the impulse of the profound impression created upon him by constable's art, he added certain touches and extensive glazes to the background. in this connection it is interesting to note that m. cheramy, whose magnificent collection includes a superbly painted study of the dead mother and child for the "massacre of scio," has bequeathed this important fragment to the national gallery, on condition that it shall hang "beside the best constable." the "massacre of scio" was violently attacked as an outrage against good taste, but found a warm defender in the baron gérard, and was again bought by the government for £ . it may not be out of place here to state that there is but scant justification for the often-repeated assertion that delacroix's rare genius did not receive official recognition until very late in the master's life, and that he was not given his fair share of official commissions. we have seen that, in spite of the outcry raised by the academic faction, the government encouraged the young artist by acquiring the first two pictures exhibited by him at the salon. at brief intervals he continued to receive important commissions: for the "death of charles the bold," from the ministry of the interior; the great battle-piece "taillebourg," for the gallery at versailles; the decoration of the chamber of deputies, of the libraries at the luxembourg and the palais bourbon, of the salon de la paix at the hôtel de ville, of a chapel in the church of saint sulpice; a wall-painting in the church of st. denis; the "st. sebastian" for the church of nantua; and the ceiling of the galerie d'apollon at the louvre--not to speak of the numerous works commissioned or bought from him by louis-philippe. thus, it will be seen, there was no lack of "official recognition," although it is quite true that to within a few years of his death he was generally forced to accept wholly inadequate prices for his paintings. iii delacroix's friendship with thales fielding and bonington and his love of english romantic literature had awakened in him the desire to visit london. he undertook the little journey in . he was much impressed by the immensity of london, the "absence of all that we call architecture," the horses and carriages, the river, richmond, and greenwich; and, above all, by the english stage. he had occasion to admire the great kean in some of his shakespearian impersonations, and terry as mephistopheles in an adaptation of "faust." he was deeply stirred by these productions, which had a by no means beneficial influence upon his art. to his love of the stage may be ascribed the least acceptable characteristics of his minor pictures and lithographs--exaggerated action, stage grouping, and a certain lack of restraint. it is difficult to understand goethe's highly eulogistic comment upon delacroix's "faust" illustrations, unless it was a case of _faute de mieux_, or that he had not seen the complete set. to modern eyes, at any rate, they are the epitome of the master's weaknesses. the drawing is frequently inexcusably bad; the sentiment is carried beyond the merely theatrical to the melodramatic. next to the stage, he was interested by the works of the contemporary british artists, with many of whom he entered into personal relations. in his letters he expressed the keenest admiration not only for bonington (with whom he shared a studio in the following year), constable, and turner, whose influence upon the french school he readily admitted, but also for lawrence--"the flower of politeness and truly a painter of princes ... he is inimitable"--and for wilkie, whose sketches and studies he declared to be beyond praise, although "he spoils regularly all the beautiful things he has done" in the process of finishing the pictures. unfortunately the principal work painted by delacroix in the year after his return from england, the "justinian composing the institutes," for the interior of the conseil d'État, perished by fire in . the salon was only reopened, after an interval of two years, in , when delacroix was represented by no fewer than twelve paintings, including "the death of sardanapalus," "marino faliero," and "christ in the garden of olives." the extreme daring, the tempestuous passionate disorder of the design of the large "sardanapalus" alienated from him even the few enlightened spirits who had espoused his cause on the two former occasions. the reception of the picture was disastrous. delacroix himself admitted that the first sight of his canvas at the exhibition had given him a severe shock. "i hope," he wrote to a friend, "that people won't look at it through my eyes." the picture raised a hurricane of abuse. his own significant dictum that "you should begin with a broom and finish with a needle," was turned against him by a critic who spoke of the work of an "intoxicated broom." another described him as a "drunken savage," and yet another referred to the picture as the "composition of a sick man in delirium." his other pictures were scarcely noticed, although they included a masterpiece like the "marino faliero" (now in the wallace collection), which delacroix himself held to be one of his finest achievements, and which certainly rivals the great venetians in harmonious sumptuousness of colour. in this picture delacroix is intensely dramatic without being theatrical. nothing could be more impressive than the massing of light on the empty marble staircase, the grand figure of the executioner, the statuesque immobility of the nobles assembled at the head of the staircase. the picture was exhibited in london in , when it was warmly eulogised, which is the more remarkable as delacroix never seemed to appeal strongly to british taste--the scarcity of his works in our public and private collections may be adduced as proof. it was on the occasion of this salon that the terms "romanticism" and "romanticists" first came into general use. their exact definition is not an easy matter. broadly speaking, the romantic movement in literature, music, and painting signifies the accentuation of human emotions and passions in art, as opposed to the classic ideal of purity of form. delacroix himself did not wish to be identified with any group or movement, but in the eyes of the public he stood as the leader of the romanticists in painting, just as victor hugo, with whom he had but little sympathy, did in literature. ===================================================================== plate iv.--the crucifixion (in the louvre) this small panel, which forms part of the thomas thiery bequest to the louvre, is a picture of precious quality and soft colouring, painted for his friend, mme. de forget, who had exercised her influence in official quarters when delacroix endeavoured to obtain the post of director of the gobelins manufactory. it was painted in . there are numerous replicas in existence. [illustration: plate iv.--the crucifixion] ===================================================================== delacroix's "sardanapalus" led to humiliations that he felt more keenly than the abuse showered upon him by the press. he was sent for by sosthene de la rochefoucauld, then director of the beaux-arts, to be advised in all seriousness to study drawing from casts of the antique, and to change his style if he had any aspirations to official encouragement. the threat had no effect upon a man of delacroix's strength of conviction. he yielded never an inch. he continued to follow the promptings of his artistic conscience which permitted no concessions, no compromise. during the very next year, in spite of de la rochefoucauld's threat, the state commissioned from him the painting of "the death of charles the bold at the battle of nancy" (now at the nancy museum). the picture was not finished and exhibited before , when this magnificently conceived scene of wild conflict under a threatening winter sky--so different from the grandiloquous style of the painters of the napoleonic epopee--met with the usual chorus of disapprobation for being historically incorrect, "as bad as could be in drawing," "incredibly dirty in colour"--the horses bad as regards anatomy, the sky impossible! although delacroix was too completely absorbed in his art, which--his one great passion--took up his entire life, to take any active part in politics, he was deeply stirred by the events of the july revolution of . "the th july ," or "the barricade," one of the nine works by which he was represented at the salon of , was an unmistakable confession of his political faith. here, for once, delacroix found his moving drama not in romance or in the history of the past, nor in the picturesque east which, owing to its comparative remoteness and inaccessibility at a time that did not enjoy the prosaic advantages of a cook's agency, was still invested with the glamour of romance; for once he devoted himself to the reality of contemporary life, even though the daring departure into realism was thinly veiled by the introduction of that rather unfortunate allegorical figure of liberty with her clumsy draperies and badly painted tricolour flag. the top-hat and frock-coat, hitherto considered incompatible with a grand pictorial conception, enter with triumphant defiance into the painter's art; and they detract nothing from the epic grandeur of this truly historical composition. in many ways "the barricade" was more daringly unconventional than any of the earlier pictures which had stamped delacroix as a revolutionary. yet its success was immediate and final. that the artist was awarded the cross of the legion of honour, was perhaps a recognition of his political sympathies rather than of his artistry. but this time delacroix found favour with the public and the critics. at the same salon was to be seen another of delacroix's most striking masterpieces, "the assassination of the bishop of liège," for which he had found the subject in sir walter scott's "quentin durward," and which was painted for louis-philippe, then duke of orleans. it is a marvellously vivid realisation of this terrific scene. "who would ever have thought that one could paint noise and tumult?" wrote théophile gautier in his enthusiastic appreciation of this work. "movement is all very well, but this little canvas howls, yells, and blasphemes!" the realisation of the wild and sanguinary orgy described by scott is complete and absolute; and yet, in the long list of delacroix's "illustrative" pictures, there is none that is so strictly pictorial in conception and less tied to the letter of the author's description. it is not so much the detail, the personal action of each participator in the drama, upon which the artist depends to tell this ferocious tale of unbridled passion, but the atmosphere of vague terror, the mysterious gloom of the lofty hall, the flaring flames of the torches, the flashes of brilliant reflections thrown up from the luminous centre provided by the white tablecloth, of the importance of which delacroix was well aware when he said one evening to his friend villot: "to-morrow i shall attack that cursed tablecloth which will be my austerlitz or my waterloo." it was his austerlitz. ===================================================================== plate v.--the bride of abydos (in the louvre) a great reader of english literature, delacroix found the inspiration for many remarkable paintings in the works of byron, who was one of the idols of the french romanticists. as was his wont, delacroix produced several versions of this subject, which shows zuleika trying to prevent selim from giving the signal to his comrades. a smaller variant, painted like the louvre picture in , and measuring only in. by in., realised the high price of £ at public auction in . [illustration: plate v.--the bride of abydos] ===================================================================== "the assassination of the bishop of liège" was painted in , the same year to which we owe that superbly handled and strangely fascinating auto-portrait of the artist at the louvre, which he left to his faithful servant, jenny le guillou, on condition that she should give it to the louvre on the day when the orleans family were to gain once more possession of the throne. this event did not come to pass, but the picture nevertheless reached its final destination by gift of mme. durieu in . delacroix's strangely fascinating personality is completely revealed in this masterpiece of artistic auto-biography. in every feature it recalls that famous description of the master given by baudelaire in his series of critical essays, "l'art romantique":-- "he was all energy, but energy derived from the nerves and the will; for, physically, he was frail and delicate. the tiger, watching its prey, has less light in its eyes and has less impatient quivering in its muscles, than could be perceived in our great painter when with his whole soul he flung himself on an idea or endeavoured to seize a dream. the very physical character of his physiognomy, his peruvian or malay complexion; his eyes which were large and black but had narrowed owing to the habit of half closing them when fixing an object, and seemed to test the light; his abundant and glossy hair; his obstinate forehead; his tight-drawn lips to which the perpetual tension of the will had given a cruel expression--in a word, his whole person suggested the thought of an exotic origin." it is interesting to note how completely this vivid description of the mature man tallies not only with the painted portrait of delacroix at the age of thirty-one, but with another description of the adolescent, left by his college friend, philarète chasle, who speaks of him as "a lad, with olive-hued forehead, flashing eyes, a mobile face with prematurely sunken cheeks, abundant wavy black hair, betraying southern origin." iv the _légion d'honneur_ was not the only reward that attended delacroix's success at the salon of . he received permission to accompany, at the expense of the government, count mornay's mission to morocco, which set out in january of the following year. to visit the east had been the dream of delacroix's life. its fulfilment marked an important step in the evolution of his art. now at last he was brought into actual contact with that life and colour of the romantic east which had for so many years been pictured by his vivid imagination. he was away altogether about six months, and much of this time was spent _en route_ and in spain which he visited on his home journey, so that it was obviously impossible for him to undertake any works on an ambitious scale during his sojourn in africa. but he never interrupted his feverish activity, and brought back with him a whole series of sketch-books filled with pictorial and literary notes to which he had many an occasion to refer when, after his return to the daily routine of his paris life, he proceeded upon embodying his new experience of brilliant light, sumptuous colour, and picturesque life in a long succession of paintings devoted to eastern subjects. delacroix's moroccan sketch-books, which are among the treasured possessions of the louvre, constitute one of the most interesting documents ever left by artist's hand. there is always a peculiar fascination about an artist's self-revelations in moments when his mind is far away from the public to whom he directs his appeal in his finished pictures. and these sketch-books were intended for no eyes but his own. they contain a diary of his progress day by day, vivid impressions of land and people, interspersed with accounts and notes of purchases, and through all the pages run his swiftly sketched, brilliant pictorial notes, set down with the sureness of long experience and practice--sketches of scenery, life, types of natives and animals, architectural details and details of costumes, jotted down with any material that happened to be handy. some are sketched in pure colour-washes in bold flat masses, some in pencil or pen and ink heightened with strong blobs of water-colour, others in pure outline; and generally they are accompanied by explanatory notes hastily scribbled in pencil. throughout is to be noted the same swift impulsiveness and definiteness of purpose, the utmost expressiveness obtained by the greatest economy of means. there are some slight thumb-nail sketches--i can recall one in particular of a galloping bedouin arab--that verge on the miraculous in the sense of life and movement, the summing up of all the essentials by means of a few strokes of the pen of almost niggardly paucity. but infinitely more important in its bearing upon his future work than all the tangible yield of this fruitful journey, was the retention by delacroix's memory of the brilliant colour visions which had met his delighted eyes in the dazzling light of the east. the result was an entirely new conception of chromatic effects and an infinitely more sensuous use of his pigments than is to be found in any of his earlier works. before his journey to morocco, delacroix, though already essentially a colourist in his method if compared with the draughtsmen of the david-ingres school, paid but little attention to the quality of paint _per se_. colour served him to enhance the dramatic effectiveness of his compositions, and pigment had assumed a vital function in the building up of forms; but he was still addicted to an excessive use of bituminous browns and warm glazes and paid little or no attention to what the modern studio jargon terms the "preciousness of paint." with the "algerian women in their apartment," which he sent to the salon of , he entered upon an entirely new phase. it is painted in a rich impasto of luminous colours which sparkle in unbroken strength through an ambient of soft silvery grey atmosphere. the very choice of subject indicates a significant change. in the place of dramatic climax or tempestuous movement and passion and violent emotion, we find here complete repose and the indolent lassitude engendered by the luxurious comfort and by the strong scent of burning spices in the eastern harem. in a subject of this kind the artist could allow himself to yield completely to the sensuous enjoyment of the rare and at the time entirely novel harmonies of pure, beautiful colour evolved by his brush. the superbly painted negress on the right of the composition undoubtedly owes much to the spanish masters whom delacroix must have studied during his brief visit to the peninsula; and there is as little doubt that she in turn became the progenitor of the wonderful negress in manet's "olympia." indeed, delacroix at this stage must be considered manet's precursor and source of inspiration. the "algerian women" was a state commission for which delacroix was paid the absurdly inadequate sum of £ . his indignation was great when he learnt that a higher value had been put upon a worse than mediocre picture by decaisne. he almost refused to deliver the picture, but was eventually reconciled by the placing with him of a more important commission, namely, "the entry of the crusaders into constantinople" for the gallery of versailles. he was given the commission--but he was at the same time informed that the king wanted a picture which did "not look like a delacroix"! this picture, which is now at the louvre, was first shown at the salon of , and is undoubtedly one of the finest works of the master's maturity. one has only to compare it with "the massacre of scio"--in many ways a kindred subject--to realise the master's prodigious advance during the intervening years. the earlier picture, in spite of its undeniably fine qualities, cannot compare with "the crusaders" as regards subdued splendour of colour. delacroix himself admitted that the idea of "the massacre" came to him in front of gros's "the plague-stricken at jaffa." "j'ai mal lavé la palette de gros," was the wording of his own confession. there is no trace of gros in the sumptuous scheme of "the crusaders," and the violent expression of his youthful sense of the dramatic is toned down by a note of sympathetic sadness in the principal figure, accentuated by the unconventional massing of shadow over the group which occupies the centre of the composition. in the year after his return from morocco, delacroix was, largely through the influence of m. thiers, entrusted with the decoration of the salon du roi, at the palais bourbon, and thus given the first opportunity for a display of his decorative genius which, whatever has been said to the contrary, was generously acknowledged by his contemporaries, and was given ample scope from to the time of his death in . but before discussing his architectural decorations it may be as well to sketch in brief outline the course of the remaining years of his life--a life of ceaseless productive energy, interrupted only by spells of illness, but otherwise strangely uneventful. after the references in the preceding pages of the important pictures which constitute, as it were, the landmarks in delacroix's career, it would be as impossible as it is superfluous to describe, or even to enumerate, the masterpieces produced year by year by his indefatigable brush. a volume of considerable bulk would be needed for a mere list, for, according to robaut's statement at the beginning of his catalogue: "eugène delacroix has left about works, of which number are paintings, pastels, water-colours, or wash-drawings, drawings, engravings, lithographs, and over albums!" ===================================================================== plate vi.--dante and virgil (in the louvre) this is the great picture with which delacroix, then twenty-four years of age, made his debut at the salon of . the dramatic power of the central group and the frenzied movement and superb modelling of the nude figures clinging to the boat, caused an immense sensation with a public accustomed to the frigid classicism of the david school. unfortunately the picture is now badly cracked and discoloured, probably owing to the use of bituminous pigment, which delacroix only discarded at a later period. [illustration: plate vi.--dante and virgil] ===================================================================== whether it be due to his unshaken perseverance on the path he had chosen from the very outset, or to the waning interest caused by the wearing off of the novelty, delacroix's art was now more readily accepted, or, at any rate, discussed without the bitterness of the early attacks. nevertheless, even now, and indeed to the end of his life, he could only obtain wretched prices for his pictures, and the academy remained implacably hostile, until the special collection of his principal works at the international exhibition of brought him at last that general public applause that had till then been denied to him. delacroix himself showed no bitterness to the academy, and presented himself time after time for election, his claims being invariably couched in terms as modest as they were dignified. his first attempt was in , when the votes were cast in favour of schnetz. two vacancies occurred in , and on both occasions delacroix knocked at the doors of the academy, but langlois and couder were preferred to him. his next attempt was in , when cogniet secured the majority of votes. when he presented himself again in , insult was added to injury, his very candidature being refused! time has avenged the wrong; the names of schnetz, langlois, couder, and cogniet are all but forgotten, whilst delacroix has become immortal. encouraged by his triumph at the universal exposition of , delacroix presented himself for the sixth time when the next vacancy arose in , and this time his perseverance at last found its reward--he was elected just before he entered upon the seventh decade of his life. but even now he was denied peaceful enjoyment of his tardy success. his next contributions to the salon, in , led to a renewed outburst of vituperative criticism and abuse, and this time delacroix was hurt to the quick. he decided not to expose himself in future to the gibes of his detractors, and for the remaining four years of his life, although continuing his artistic activity to the very end, refrained from contributing to public exhibitions. the years - mark a fruitful epoch in delacroix's career. the masterpieces that issued from his studio in these years would alone have sufficed to establish his lasting fame. in he painted the magnificent "battle of taillebourg," which is the glory of the gallery of battle pictures at versailles, but found so little favour with the jury of the salon that it narrowly escaped being rejected. the tumult and confusion of hand-to-hand fighting had never before been rendered with such force and such absence of heroic attitudinising. to the next year we owe "the enraged medea," of the lille museum, and that extraordinary scene of fitful, jerky, furious movement known as "les convulsionnaires de tanger," which, after having twice changed hands at public auction during the artist's lifetime, for £ in and for £ in , rose to £ at a sale held in , and finally found a purchaser for £ in . the "jewish wedding in morocco," in which the painter's concern with true tone-values and beautiful quality of pigment is carried even further than in the "algerian women," and the intensely dramatic "hamlet and the gravediggers"--both are now at the louvre--were his chief works in ; whilst in the following year he devoted his energies to the large "justice of trajan" (now extensively restored) at the rouen gallery, and the powerful "shipwreck of don juan," surely one of the most tragic and impressive pictures ever conceived by human genius. it bears the same relation to the "dante and virgil" that "the crusaders" bears to "the massacre of scio." and it is one of the most striking instances of delacroix's power to make colour itself expressive of the mood of the drama. the conception, though based on byron's poem, owes little to the literary foundation--that is to say, it is not illustrative in the sense that acquaintance with the poem is essential for its appreciation. it is just a vivid realisation of the combined horrors of shipwreck and starvation in which the tragic aspect of sea and sky is as significant as the ghastliness of the wretches whom hunger has turned into cannibals. the sombre tonality and the flashes of livid light, recall el greco in his later period. to the year belongs "the entry of the crusaders into constantinople," of which mention has already been made. at the salon of appeared the large painting of "the sultan of morocco surrounded by his guard," which was bought by the state for the toulouse gallery at the price of £ . baudelaire, ever an ardent admirer of delacroix, draws attention to the peculiar quality of the colour harmony in this picture which, "notwithstanding the splendour of the tones, is grey, grey like nature, grey like the atmosphere of a summer day, when the sunlight spreads like a twilight of vibrating dust upon every object." "the sultan of morocco" was one of the last large canvases produced by the master, whose best energies were now absorbed by his gigantic decorative tasks, although he continued to paint an endless succession of easel pictures, many of which were variations of earlier compositions. v the decoration of the salon du roi, which occupied delacroix from to , and for which he received the niggardly pay of £ , was the first great task of this kind entrusted to him. nevertheless he knew how to adapt design and colour to the architectural conditions in a manner that could scarcely have been bettered by life-long experience. and these conditions were by no means favourable for pictorial decoration, since the walls of the square room are pierced all round by real and blind windows and doors, and the lighting is about as bad as could be. delacroix's scheme consists of eight large single figures in grisaille for the pilasters; a continuous band, with figure compositions, connecting the spandrils and forming a kind of frieze which is painted in delicate, tender tones, suggestive of faded tapestry, that lead up to the rich colouring of the eight panels in the ceiling and the surround of the skylight. unfortunately the ceiling is not domed, so that the strong light filtering through the round glazing does not reach the panels and only serves to dazzle one's eyes. it is only by shutting out this central light and by the use of mirrors that it is possible to appreciate the noble, reposeful allegorical groups of _justice_, _agriculture_, _industry_, and _war_, which fill the four oblong panels, and the four graceful cupids carrying the corresponding attributes in the corners. the frieze, which is divided from the moulding of the ceiling by an ornamental band with appropriate latin inscriptions, is remarkable for the masterly skill with which the design of the figures and groups is adapted to the awkward shape of the spandrils between the semi-circular arches, and for the lucid clearness of the allegorical representations, the subjects on each wall being closely connected with those on the corresponding panels of the ceiling. thus under the "justice" panel are to be seen truth and wisdom inspiring a greybeard composing the laws, meditation interpreting the law, strength with a tamed lion at the foot of three judges, and the avenging angel pursuing two culprits. "agriculture" is illustrated by a bacchanalian vintage festival, a harvest scene, and arcadian figures. "industry" by allegorical scenes of commerce, navigation, and silk-growing; and "war" by the manufacture of arms, and a group of fettered women being taken into captivity. the heroic figures in grisaille on the pilasters are personifications of the atlantic, the mediterranean, and the six principal rivers of france, namely the garonne, the saone, the loire, the rhine (which then belonged to france as much as to germany), the seine, and the rhône. before delacroix had completed the paintings in the salon du roi, that is to say in , he was entrusted with the even more important commission for the decoration of the libraries of the chamber of deputies at the palais bourbon, and of the senate at the luxembourg; three years earlier, in , he had experimented in the technique of fresco painting, which he found more congenial than distemper, when executing three overdoor panels of leda, anacreon, and bacchus, at valmont, where they still remain _in situ_ in all their pristine freshness. the library of the palais bourbon has been described by a well-known recent german critic as the "french sistine chapel." to any one examining this vast work in an unprejudiced spirit it will be difficult to share this enthusiasm. the cool and noble intellectuality which is at the basis of delacroix's art, even where it is apparently most spontaneous and fugous, certainly renders these decorations supremely interesting. but the appeal is intellectual rather than sensuous. the beholder is filled with profound respect, instead of being thrilled by the emotional effect of colour. nor can this be entirely due to bad lighting and to the serious deterioration and indifferent restoring of the paintings, of which scarcely more than the design is by delacroix's own hand, the execution being almost entirely due to lassalle bordes and other assistants, who are also largely responsible for the actual painting of the luxembourg decoration. the work in the library of the chamber of deputies consists of two hemicycles of "peace" (orpheus bringing civilisation to greece) and "war" (attila bringing barbarism back to italy), and twenty pendentives--four in each of the five cupolas--with connecting ornamental bands and cartouches. in the first cupola, poetry is illustrated by "alexander and homer's poems," "the education of achilles," "ovid with the barbarians," and "hesiod and the muse." theology is the subject of the second dome: "adam and eve," "the babylonian captivity," "the death of st. john," and "the tribute money." law of the third: "numa and egeria," "lycurgus," "demosthenes," and "cicero"; philosophy of the fourth: "herodotus," "chaldean shepherd astronomers," "seneca's death," and "socrates"; and science of the fifth: "the death of pliny," "aristoteles," "hippocrates," and "archimedes." each pendentive depicts, not a single figure, but an admirably composed scene of history or legend. the series was commenced in and completed in . the two hemicycles are painted in the encaustic manner direct upon the wall, whilst all the rest is executed in oils on canvas. the decoration of the library in the luxembourg palace took from to . it consists of a fan-shaped hemicycle of over feet in width, the subject of which is alexander, after the battle of arbela, ordering the works of homer to be enclosed in a golden casket captured from the persians; and the paintings in the cupola--a composition in four parts but without division (dante presented to homer by virgil, a group of greek philosophers, orpheus charming the beasts, and illustrious romans), and four pendentives, st. jerome, cicero, orpheus, and the muse of aristoteles. ===================================================================== plate vii.--the execution of the doge marino faliero (in the wallace collection) delacroix himself considered this picture, which was painted in , to be his masterpiece. exhibited first at the salon of , when "the death of sardanapalus" caused a veritable torrent of abuse to be showered upon the artist, it failed to attract the favourable attention which its nobly balanced design, brilliant colour, and intensely dramatic feeling would otherwise surely have commanded, and which was given to it in the following year by the london public. "marino faliero" is unquestionably the finest example of delacroix's art in england. [illustration: plate vii.--the execution of the doge marino faliero] ===================================================================== earlier in date than the library of the senate is the large mural painting in wax colours of the "pietà" in the church of st. dénis-du-saint-sacrement. it bears the date , and is, apart from the passionate intensity of movement and expression, and its linear rhythm, interesting as an instance of the almost incredible rapidity with which delacroix proceeded upon the actual execution of his paintings, once the scheme had taken definite shape in his mind. according to moreau, who had this information from the artist himself, the whole painting of about ft. by ft. was finished in seventeen days, each day's progress being marked by delacroix on the wall. the decoration of the two libraries was scarcely finished when two new commissions of equal importance gave him further opportunity for the triumphant display of his decorative genius. a few sketches and engravings are unfortunately all that is left to us of the circular centre, the eight shaped oblong panels and the eleven lunettes which constituted the pictorial decoration of the salon de la paix at the old hôtel de ville, since the building was destroyed by fire in may in the days of the commune. delacroix worked on these designs from to , and was only paid £ for the whole series. if the labour and thought expended upon the salon de la paix were destined to lead to such short-lived results, the magnificent centrepiece of the ceiling in the salon d'apollon can be seen to-day in its unimpaired freshness--the most striking testimony to its creator's genius. the decoration of this gallery was entrusted to le brun as far back as ; and it was louis xiv.'s favourite painter who conceived the idea of paying homage to his master, the "roi soleil," by depicting "the triumph of apollo" in the centre panel, with appropriate subjects in the other ten compartments. but his work was interrupted, when he was called upon to supervise the decoration of versailles, before he had even sketched out the design for "the triumph of apollo." the ten minor compartments remained neglected for over a century, and were allowed to get into a deplorable condition, until the restoration was taken in hand in , the painting of the great centre being at the same time entrusted to delacroix. apart from the fact that apollo was to be the hero of the design, delacroix had an entirely free hand, and chose to depict the god vanquishing the python, with diana, mercury, minerva, hercules, vulcan, boreas, zephyrus, victory, iris, and nymphs as subsidiary figures. although the design offends against the fundamental rule of all ceiling decorations, that there should be no "above" and "below," and that the composition should be devised so as to be equally intelligible from every point of view, one cannot but admire the noble co- and subordination of the different groups and figures, the lucid clearness of the pictorial statement of an essentially intellectual conception, the astonishing colour-magic, and, above all, the manner in which the master has adapted his own work to the somewhat gaudy and over-decorated surroundings. "delacroix," says robaut in his "catalogue raisonné," "has here shown himself as great in execution as in invention, and the apollo ceiling is one of the most perfect works of art that reflect glory upon all the centuries"--a judgment which has been endorsed by two generations of artists and critics. the ceiling, for which the master was paid the sum of £ , was finished in . about two hundred sketches and drawings for details of the composition figured in the sale held after delacroix's death. we have seen that from the time when delacroix began his work for the salon du roi in until the completion of the salon de la paix in , he had no sooner brought any of his monumental decorations to a successful conclusion when some other decorative work was entrusted to him. and so again, in , when he had just finished the hôtel de ville series, he was made to proceed immediately upon that great fresco decoration of the chapel of the saints-anges at st. sulpice, which, completed in , was his last work of real importance, and is in many respects the crowning achievement of his great career. here, for once, delacroix found himself able to work under conditions similar to those under which the florentine masters of the quattrocento wrought their marvellous frescoes. here was no complete scheme of ornate architectural details, no sumptuous framework in which spaces had been left for the addition of painted panels that had to be treated in a more or less florid manner to fit into their rich surroundings. here everything was left to the painter's free will, checked only by the consideration of the fitness of the subjects for the site and by the architectural proportions of the little chapel. and it is not too much to say that delacroix solved the problem in more masterly fashion than any painter between the glorious days of the italian renaissance and the advent of puvis de chavannes, the greatest decorator of modern times. like all true fresco decoration, the two large paintings of "jacob wrestling with the angel" and "heliodorus driven from the temple" do not attempt to give the illusion of plastic life, or of an opening cut through the wall, but duly accentuate the flatness of the surface. the scale of colour adopted for this admirable decoration aims, without the least sense of monotony or dulness, at the exquisiteness of the greens and greys of a fine panel of faded flemish tapestry, and has nothing in common with the rich, glowing palette which delacroix had inherited from rubens and the venetian colourists. the tapestry-like effect is particularly noticeable in the treatment of the trees which are so important a feature in the composition of "jacob wrestling with the angel," the figures being comparatively small in scale, though by no means subordinate to the landscape. nothing could be more impressive than the contrast of the terrific muscular exertion of jacob and the easy grace with which it is made ineffective by his invincible supernatural opponent. the group is one of the noblest creations of modern art--worthy of the brush of a pollaiuolo or a signorelli. in the "heliodorus" the accidents of nature's architecture are replaced by the equally imposing but deliberate and formal lines of the architecture created by human builders. the general disposition of the design is not unlike that of the earlier "justice of trajan"; but there is this significant difference between the earlier work and the st. sulpice fresco, that the very first glance reveals the essentially human element in the first, and the irresistible force of the supernatural in the second. the tempestuous, sweeping onrush of the two flying angels contrasted with the calm consciousness of all-conquering strength expressed not only in the mounted heavenly messenger but in the very action of his noble horse--the horses in delacroix's paintings invariably reflect the mood of the drama or tragedy that forms the subject of the picture--are a pictorial conception of unsurpassed grandeur. the only unsatisfactory part of the st. sulpice decoration is the ceiling, where st. michael is depicted overthrowing the demon. probably the execution of this oval composition was almost entirely the work of assistants, as delacroix's failing health, aggravated by lead poisoning caused by the extensive use of white of lead paint in his large decorations, would not have allowed him to work under such fatiguing conditions as are unavoidable in painting a ceiling _in situ_. ===================================================================== plate viii.--faust and mephistopheles (in the wallace collection) it was probably during his visit to london in that delacroix first realised the pictorial possibilities of goethe's great drama. his correspondence shows that he was deeply impressed with a performance of "faust" which he witnessed in london, and which probably suggested to him the series of nineteen lithographs, published by sautelet in . goethe himself referred to these lithographs in terms of exaggerated praise. the catalogue of delacroix's works includes quite a number of paintings illustrative of scenes from "faust," of which the one in the wallace collection is one of the most successful. [illustration: plate viii.--faust and mephistopheles] ===================================================================== the frescoes in the chapel of the saints-anges were the swan-song of delacroix's genius. in the two years that followed their completion, he still continued to paint and to draw--the practice of his art was for him the very breath of life--but he produced nothing that need be considered in the record of his achievement. in march , the affection of his eyes, of which he had suffered intermittently for years, took a turn for the worse. on the th of may he left paris for champrosay, but during the journey had a severe attack of hemorrhage of the lungs, which recurred five days later; and he had to be taken back to paris. his illness became worse and worse, and after a month he was taken back to the country, only to be sent back again to paris on july . his days were counted. he took to his bed immediately upon his arrival, and breathed his last at six o'clock in the morning on august , . vi how strangely delacroix's art was misunderstood by his contemporaries who, nurtured on the tinted cartoons of the ruling school, stood aghast before the passionate utterance of the master's "intoxicated broom," or, assuming the role of beckmesser, marked with offensive rap of chalk on the blackboard of the public press his sins against their dogmatic rules. in their blindness they even went so far as to accuse him of being unable to draw! what seemed altogether to escape their perception, was that the fiery impulse, the tempestuous _élan_ of delacroix's romantic imagination was largely controlled by his cool intellectuality. delacroix was a thinker and a man of profound culture. he had, moreover, the greatest respect for tradition. if, in the actual painting of his pictures, he was carried away by his enthusiasm and worked like one inspired, he never started upon this the final stage without an enormous amount of preparatory sketches for every figure, every detail--never before the idea had taken firm and definite shape in his mind. the sweep of the brush, the vitalising amplifications and elements of movement may have been left to the inspiration of the moment; but chance played no part in the disposition of the design and the arrangement of the colour-scheme. it was that amplification and exaggeration of forms, by which alone movement can be expressed in art, that led the unthinking to the belief that delacroix "could not draw." of course, the application of ingres's standard of classic perfection in drawing might justify the conclusion, but one need only glance at delacroix's sketch-books and studies to realise that he was a great draughtsman, if drawing, as it was to him, is considered the means towards an end, and not an end in itself. and his mastery of spontaneous, nervously expressive drawing was as complete as it could be, if mastery can be acquired through the curbing of impetuous genius by half a century's methodical, steady practice. for delacroix, from his early student days to his death, never started on his day's work without having first "got his hand in" by half-an-hour's practice in sketching or drawing, just as a pianist will first run through his finger exercises and scales, to make sure of his mastery over his instrument. thus, by unremitting practice, delacroix acquired such absolute command of the language of line and form that, in the pictorial expression of his ideas, he used it as an orator uses the language of words--in a steady flow, without doubts and hesitations. his inspiration was not checked and weakened by the struggle for an adequate form of expression. there was nothing in life and in nature that did not stimulate his artistic curiosity, and all his sketches betray the same passionate search for the really essential, the elements of life and movement and mood, which are often to be obtained only by the sacrifice of literal correctness. he never tired of making drawings after rembrandt's etchings, and he spent many hours at the jardin des plantes, in the company of the animal sculptor barye, sketching and painting wild beasts from life. indeed, delacroix was rarely rivalled, and probably never surpassed, as a painter of animals either in repose or in the very frenzy of movement. his astonishing rapidity of production has already been exemplified by his painting of the large "pietà" at st. dénis-du-saint-sacrement in seventeen days. an even more striking instance is afforded by the "king rodrigo losing his crown," now in the cheramy collection. a number of artists had agreed to contribute towards the decoration of a room in a villa taken by alexandre dumas père in . delacroix was of their number; and the day agreed for the completion of the pictures was to be celebrated by a ball. when delacroix arrived at midday of the day in question he found that all the panels were in their proper places, leaving only an unexpectedly large gap for his own contribution. "he had meant only to paint a few flowers. 'listen,' said dumas, 'i have just been reading something that will do for you,' and he described the first canto of the 'romancero,' in which rodrigo loses his crown. delacroix began at once, and had painted the whole scene by sunset, in the most unusual colours, a harmony in yellow, unique in his work. great was the enthusiasm in the evening when the friends saw the picture; barye, in particular, who had contributed an excellent panel, is said to have been beside himself."[ ] delacroix's life, apart from his struggle for recognition--a struggle which he fought entirely with his brush, leaving the controversial side to others--was singularly uneventful. his only passions were his art, his love of romantic literature, and his staunch friendship. a few journeys and frequent spells of illness were the only events that broke the even tenor of his life. as a writer, delacroix has left a marvellous "journal," which ought to be consulted and carefully studied by every artist, and a number of carefully constructed magazine articles on various æsthetic questions, which only reveal the cool intellectual side of his dual nature. he was a man of great reticence, who rarely allowed himself to be drawn into criticising the art of his contemporaries. in his critical comments on the masters--even on those whose style was diametrically opposed to his own temperament--he always proved himself keenly appreciative of their great qualities. strangely enough, delacroix, who is considered the leader, and certainly was one of the main inspirers of the romanticist movement, not only disliked the application of this term to his own art, but had little sympathy with the romanticist literature of his own time and country. his attitude towards victor hugo almost amounted to hostility; and he always treated baudelaire, who had espoused his cause with keen enthusiasm, with the most calculated reserve. in music his tastes were severely classical--"he refreshed himself with mozart, was never quite able to convert himself to beethoven, abhorred the modern french composers, and was the first to condemn wagner." if delacroix, except for a very brief period at the beginning of his career, never suffered real poverty, he, on the other hand, never received adequate pecuniary reward for his work. to the very end he was forced to sell his finest pictures at ridiculously inadequate prices; and on some of his large decorative commissions he found himself actually out of pocket. it was probably the conviction that posthumous justice would inevitably be done to his genius, which made him insist in his will upon the sale of his remaining works by public auction. and events proved that he was right. the sale, which was held from february - , , was estimated to produce about £ , but resulted in a total of close upon £ , . the instructions about his burial, left by delacroix in his will, reflect something of his noble aloofness and his respect for great tradition in art. "my tomb shall be in the cemetery of père-lachaise, on the height and in a place a little apart. there shall be placed upon it neither emblem, nor bust, nor statue. my tomb shall be copied very exactly from the antique, or vignole, or palladio, with very pronounced projections, contrary to all that is done in the architecture of to-day." [ ] julius meier-graefe, "modern art," vol. i. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. corot. sidney allnutt. delacroix. paul g. konody. _others in preparation._ [illustration: cover art] masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare botticelli ===================================================================== plate i.--the birth of venus. from the tempera on canvas in the uffizi. (frontispiece) this picture is generally regarded as the supreme achievement of botticelli's genius. it was probably painted about , after his return from rome. the canvas measures ft in. by ft in., so that the figures are nearly life size. no reproduction can do justice to the exquisite delicacy of expression in the original. something of the same quality will be found in the "mars and venus" in the national gallery, which was probably painted about the same time. the two figures on the left are usually described as zephyrus and zephyritis, representing the south and south-west winds: that on the right may be one of the hours of homer's hymn, or possibly the spring. [illustration: plate i.--the birth of venus.] ===================================================================== botticelli by henry bryan binns illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page logo] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh list of illustrations plate i. the birth of venus . . . . . . . . . . . . _frontispiece_ from the tempera on canvas in the uffizi ii. spring from the tempera on wood in the florence academy iii. portrait of a man from the panel in the florence academy iv. the madonna of the magnificat, known also as the coronation of the virgin from the tondo in the uffizi v. the madonna of the pomegranate from the tondo in the uffizi vi. the annunciation from the panel in the uffizi vii. the virgin and child with st. john and an angel from the panel in the national gallery viii. the virgin and child by an open window from the panel in the national gallery [illustration: botticelli] from florence, in the second half of the fifteenth century, men looked into a new dawn. when the turk took constantinople in , the "glory that was greece" was carried to her by fleeing scholars, and she became for one brilliant generation the home of that platonic worship of beauty and philosophy which had been so long an exile from the hearts of men. i say platonic, because it was especially to plato, the mystic, that she turned, possessed still by something of the mystical intensity of her own great poet, himself an exile. when, in , pope eugenius left her to return to rome, florence was ready to welcome this new wanderer, the spirit of the ancient world. and the almost childish wonder with which she received that august guest is evident in all the marvellous work of the years that followed, in none more than in that of sandro botticelli. ===================================================================== plate ii.--spring. (from the tempera on wood in the florence academy) the date of this painting is much debated. it may probably be about , before the roman visit. it is somewhat larger than the "venus," but the figures are of similar size. reading from the left they are usually described as mercury, the three graces, venus, primavera the spring-maiden, flora, and zephyrus. the robed venus is in striking contrast with that of the later picture. [illustration: plate ii.--spring.] ===================================================================== he indeed was born in the very year of that new advent, lived through the period of its sunshine into one of storms--stygian darkness and frightful flashes of light--and went down at last, an old broken man, staggering between two crutches, to his grave. his times were those of lorenzo the magnificent, who was a few years his junior, the unacknowledged despot of the tuscan republic, a prince, cold and hard as steel, worthy to be an example for young macchiavelli, yet none the less a poet, and a devoted lover both of philosophy and of all beautiful things. it was an age when a new synthesis was being made, and old enemies reconciled, so that men were less ready then to blame than to admire, and the best feeling of the time was that of reverent wonder. it is this which, more than any other painter, botticelli has expressed for us. his pictures are living witnesses to the reverence which, in his day, the mystery of human life evoked in spirits such as his. but while this is true, and true in the first degree of sandro and his work, they express besides other moods, and betray other influences. the later quatrocento was the time not only of lorenzo and the platonists, but of savonarola also, the last great figure of the middle ages, strangely proclaiming the new days; and with him, of foreign incursions into italy and florence, of violence and all the black-brood of religious and civil strife. and at the end of those days came michael angelo, whose sombre masculine genius stands in such striking contrast to all the subtle grace and wistful gladness of botticelli. but botticelli, who was of the circle of the neo-platonists, was also among those who loved the friar of ferrara; if he was the friend of leonardo da vinci he was associated also with michael angelo. in his life, and in the work which is the expression of that life, we can read plainly the perplexity and the discords, as well as the new and arresting harmonies of that time. his wonder is not all a glad reverence; it is sometimes, and increasingly, a poignant questioning of the sibyls. i the life of the painter appears to have been uneventful, and all that is known of him can be told in little space. his father was a florentine tanner, and his elder brother followed the same trade, and was nicknamed botticello, "little barrel." the family patronymic was dei filipepi, but the painter signed himself "sandro di mariano," the latter being his father's name. sandro (alexander) was, perhaps, the son of a second marriage, for he was young enough to have been the child of his brother giovanni, the tanner, whose nickname became affixed to him. he was probably born in , in a house close to all saints (ognissanti) cemetery in the present via della porcellana. his father was now in middle life, and a prosperous man. the lad was delicate, quick and wilful, perhaps a spoilt child. he was older than usual when he went at about fifteen into a goldsmith's shop, doubtless that of antonio his second brother. but he was not long contented there. a year or two later he was studying painting under that famous friar, fra lippo lippi. unless browning has misunderstood the carmelite brother, the worship of beauty was his real religion; and, mere child of nature as he was, he sought to tell the significance which he found in her face--not indeed by the mere illustration of theological doctrine and pietistic conception, but by the transcription in pure line and perfect colour of a language that had for him no other words. the friar was living in the neighbouring city of prato, painting frescoes in the cathedral, when sandro joined him and became his favourite pupil. how long he remained with his master is uncertain, but it is probable that the fruitful relationship continued until after he came of age. perhaps he was twenty-four when he returned to florence, and became associated with the brothers pollajuolo, for whom, in , he executed the first commission of which we have record. but as he was now twenty-six, this cannot be his earliest work. there is a hillside shrine near settignano, which contains a madonna--madonna della vannella--formerly ascribed to the friar, but which is now believed to be one of the earliest efforts of his pupil. and in the national gallery the long panel of the "adoration" officially ascribed to "filippino lippi" has by general consent been transferred to sandro, and assigned to the period before his association with the pollajuoli. here it should be said that none of botticelli's paintings is clearly signed and dated; and even indirect documentary proofs are wanting in the case of the majority of his works. much has therefore to be decided by the doubtful and highly technical tests of internal evidence. these are rendered more difficult by the receptivity of this artist, who came late to maturity and was throughout his life profoundly affected by external influence; but on the other hand, his work has certain mannerisms as well as excellences special to it, which even his imitators and students failed to reproduce. the brothers piero and antonio pollajuolo exercised a profound influence over the young artist. filippo had taught him to paint emotion--the pollajuoli were masters in another school, and sought to delineate physical force. there is a little panel by antonio in the uffizi, of hercules and the hydra, in which every line is almost incredibly tense with the expression of energy--the fierce muscular swing and clutch of struggle. to some extent sandro was already a man standing upon his own feet; and the scientific studies of anatomy and perspective in which he was now encouraged, increased his power of expression without distracting it from its proper purpose. in fra filippo died, and three years later his son filippino, then fourteen years old, became sandro's pupil. from this it would appear that by , when he was twenty-eight years of age, botticelli had left the pollajuoli, and had a workshop, or bottega, of his own, in the family house where the income-tax returns of describe him as still working. here in lorenzo the magnificent, who four years earlier had become master of florence, commissioned him to paint a st. sebastian; and from this time forward the medici gave him frequent proofs of their appreciation. in the following year he went to pisa, where he had some prospect of a large commission. this, however, fell through; he failed, vasari tells us, to satisfy himself in his trial picture of the assumption of the virgin, a subject not well suited to his mind. instead he returned home and painted a banner of pallas, for lorenzo's younger brother giuliano, the idol of florence, to carry in the magnificent tournament of january . the banner has been lost, but it marks a point of departure in sandro's art; as a banner, it recalls the fact that the artist was also a craftsman, and introduced a new method of making such things; the new patron, too, whose life and love were alike destined to so brief a course, whose personality was so vivid and so knightly, exercised no little influence on the painter; but most of all we note the changed theme, first among those classical subjects which the artist was in a special sense to make his own. botticelli painted portraits both of giuliano dei medici and his adored lady, simonetta, the beautiful young wife of marco vespucci; and, though these are lost, it is generally believed that simonetta's lovely and innocent charm of face and character inspired many of his happiest fancies. she died in , and two years later, giuliano was assassinated during mass in the duomo. sandro was employed by his brother--who himself had narrowly escaped death on the same occasion--to commemorate the assassins' shame by painting their portraits on the face of the palazzo publico. a task more suited to his temper was the celebration of lorenzo's diplomatic success, when in he succeeded in detaching the king of naples from a hostile alliance against florence. this occasioned the painting of "pallas and the centaur," now on the walls of the pitti, one of sandro's most consummate pieces of decorative work. ===================================================================== plate iii.--portrait of a man. (from the panel in the florence academy) this portrait of a young man holding a medal of cosimo dei medici is interestingly related to the only other undisputed separate portrait of sandro's, that in the national gallery. it is supposed to represent giovanni, younger son of cosimo, who died in : if this be correct the portrait cannot have been painted by botticelli for several years after its subject's death. there is little convincing evidence on the matter. the panel measures by inches. [illustration: plate iii.--portrait of a man.] ===================================================================== the enumeration of these commissions shows that the artist had become closely associated with the medici. lorenzo's palace and country villas were at this time the centre of the most brilliant group of scholars, philosophers, poets, and artists in the world. in this atmosphere botticelli's genius came to flower. he appears, moreover, to have enjoyed the friendship of leonardo da vinci, a man eight years his junior, who had been studying in verocchio's workshop, hard by that of the pollajuoli. his was a spirit yet more subtle than sandro's own--subtle even with the subtlety of the serpent--and the two men must have understood one another intimately. botticelli himself was a pleasant, even a jovial man, but a man of moods. like leonardo he never married. another contemporary, very different from leonardo, with whom sandro was brought into frequent contact, was ghirlandajo, the dexterous genre illustrator, decorator, and popular realist. ghirlandajo's work is, in its essentials, the antithesis of sandro's, but it is marked by great journalistic talent. crowded with interest for the florentines, it brought its author an immense success. in both he and botticelli were painting together in the church of all saints, and at the close of the year they were both invited to rome by pope sixtus iv. to decorate his new (sixtine) chapel. thither they repaired with their assistants and other artists, probably remaining there during the greater part of the next three years. sandro is believed to have had some general oversight or arrangement of the whole work, while he himself contributed certain portraits of popes, and three great frescoes occupying nearly a thousand square feet of the chapel walls. during his prolonged stay in rome he must also have painted some easel pictures; one, an "adoration of the magi," is now in st petersburg. this roman interlude in his florentine life, marked by direct rivalry and daily contact with artists of genius different from his own, is in every respect central in his story. he was now in his maturity, a man approaching forty years of age, working on a conspicuous task, in that eternal city to which the greatest sons of florence were ever the foremost to offer spiritual homage. but it may be doubted whether the task itself was calculated to evoke his highest powers and most characteristic qualities. neither in its subjects, its scale, nor the conditions under which it was accomplished, was it well suited to sandro's genius, and while the frescoes contain noble passages and inimitable illustrations of his art, they cannot be regarded as among his masterpieces. the frescoes were completed and the chapel opened in august . vasari tells how great renown, above that of all his fellows, in the work, sandro gained in rome, and what large sums he received and squandered there. before settling again in his own city, he worked with ghirlandajo upon the decorations of the medici villa at volterra. from to he was probably regarded as the greatest of living masters in florence, and was busy with many commissions. to this period belong several of his greatest works, probably the "birth of venus," greatest of them all, with the madonnas of the pomegranate and of st. barnabas, certainly the lemmi frescoes and the bardi madonna. venus and the frescoes are in the perfect manner which characterises his classical subjects. the others are marked by some decline in technical handling. but in saying this, one must add that sandro's work is, in all periods, amazingly unequal, alike in execution and conception. one almost wishes indeed that vasari's dictum, that he worked "when he was minded," was even more true than it appears to be. for sandro's subtle, wilful, whimsical genius hardly ever expressed its true nature in mere rivalry with other artists, or in the service of ecclesiastical patrons. yet his undisputed works are too few, hardly fifty in all, for us really to wish any away. even the panels of the st. barnabas predella, and the tondo of the ambrosiana madonna can hardly be spared. we come now to the later and stormier years of his life and work--years dominated for him and for florence by the figure of the dominican prior of san marco. savonarola had already been for a time in the city, but it was not till that he made it his home, and began to fill it, as he was soon to fill the whole world, with his prophetic denunciations of corruption both in the republic and in the church. saw not only the death of lorenzo, and with him of the golden age in florence, but the enthronement of a borgia as father of the church. it was the end of an epoch. for a few years the prior held the city by the power and fascination of his inspired personality. he welcomed charles viii. of france as a new cyrus, the sword of the lord, restorer and protector of the liberties of the republic; and when the king and his army became a public menace, it was he who bade them on their way. in he was at grips with the pope. but two years later he had lost his hold upon florence, and died upon the gallows amid the ferocious yells of the populace. sandro, the poet-painter, was less happy than pico della mirandola, the beautiful marvellous youth, who had died at the beginning of these troubles wrapped in a friar's cloak, the beloved follower of the lion-hearted preacher. his own brother simone, with whom he lived, was one of the prate's followers, and suffered exile for his cause. there can be no doubt that he himself was profoundly influenced by savonarola. after the tragedy of may , , his workshop became a rendezvous for the many unemployed artists who had sympathised with the lost cause; and during the long evenings, those men would talk together of the dead days when "christ was king of florence." sandro lived on for more than a decade, through evil days. ghirlandajo had died in the same year as pico, when charles had entered the city: in his own pupil filippino preceded him to the grave. the pollajuoli were dead; leonardo was but an occasional visitor, while michael angelo was dividing his time between florence and rome. in botticelli was one of the artists consulted as to the position which should be allotted to the great sculptor's "david." he still shared some small property with his brother, but his principal patrons were dead, the times were out of joint, and he was seeking consolation in the study of dante. a folio volume of drawings by his hand, illustrating the divine comedy, remains uncompleted; whether owing to the death of him for whom it was intended, or of the artist himself, we cannot tell. sandro died on may , , and was buried in all saints. ===================================================================== plate iv.--the madonna of the magnificat, known also as the coronation of the virgin. (from the tondo in the uffizi) probably painted about , this is the most perfect example of botticelli's circular pictures. the lines of the composition have been compared with those of the corolla of an open rose. the colour is rich and harmonious, and every detail exquisitely finished. the virgin is still writing her song of the magnificat, while the child handles a symbolic pomegranate. the tondo is inches in diameter. [illustration: plate iv.--the madonna of the magnificat, known also as the coronation of the virgin.] ===================================================================== ii botticelli was a florentine in as intimate a sense as was dante himself, and nowhere but in his native city can his work be fully appreciated. it is true that notable examples of his art have been carried away from time to time to other places, and that pictures attributed to him are still more widely scattered. new york has one of his most beautiful early works, the madonna formerly belonging to prince chigi, for whose sale to america the unpatriotic prince was heavily fined; st. petersburg has an "adoration of the magi" belonging to sandro's years in rome. the "st. sebastian" painted for lorenzo has found its way to berlin, where there is besides the bardi madonna; the badly damaged frescoes celebrating the wedding of lorenzo tornabuoni are at the head of a staircase in the louvre; rome has the sixtine frescoes; milan has two madonnas; bergamo has a panel; while our own national gallery has five works, ranging from the earliest to the latest period. but it is in florence that all but a small minority of sandro's masterpieces are to be found, and it is in florence that one first really comes under the spell of the magician. there, in the uffizi, in the sala de lorenzo monaco, in the holy company of fra angelico's saints and angels, is sandro's masterpiece, "the birth of venus." it is a large canvas painted in tempera:[ ] but a horizontal join just apparent and running right across the picture, together with the medium used, gives it at first sight the appearance of being executed upon wood. it is in the pale cool colours of early morning, enriched by the heavy red of the robe which is about to embrace the wanderer's lovely form. there is a great sense of space behind her, over the grey sea. all about her the wind blows, making the light very clean and clear. she stands upon the edge of the great gleaming shell which has carried her, tilting it down with her weight as she leans forward to step ashore. her figure, tall, slender, and quite central in the picture, feels the wind and light about it, but not shrinkingly. it floats and moves, yet without consciousness of movement, as it were a somnambulist moving across the sea. the pearly luminous quality of this living ethereal body, the heavy golden tresses of the long hair that hangs heavily against the wind, which with one hand she holds, while she lays the other dreamily on her breast, these are in the most perfect harmony with that flower-like immortal wistfulness which sandro has put into her face. in striking contrast with this sea-born vision of love, this strange visitant from an unknown world, stands the comparatively prosaic maiden who welcomes her and is about to wrap her in a rich mantle. this earth maiden, the representative of the spring, in her pale gown sprigged with cornflowers, and her long plaits of dark hair, is garlanded, like the goddess in "pallas and the centaur," with olive branches. the curves of the mantle, which she holds out against the boisterous wind, make a delicious line that balances that of the "venus." after the figure of the goddess, however, who really is no venus, but rather the muse of sandro's art, the ideal of his aspirations--after her figure, the interest of the picture lies in the intricate whirl of living lines, of dark wings, pale limbs, and delicately coloured scarfs, with which botticelli has symbolised the winds of spring, stirring up the water with their feet and blowing the voyager on her way. ===================================================================== plate v.--the madonna of the pomegranate. (from the tondo in the uffizi) a companion to the earlier tondo, this was probably not painted before sandro's return from rome, about the same time as the "venus." it is broader in treatment and of more sombre colour than the "magnificat." the eyes of the child, who raises his hand in blessing, look straight out of the picture, in marked contrast to the attitude of the earlier work. there is a striking resemblance in many details, but the two pictures are quite distinct in character and feeling. this tondo measures inches. [illustration: plate v.--the madonna of the pomegranate.] ===================================================================== any attempt to convey by description the mystical significance of this decorative design would obviously be idle. yet to miss that significance is to miss all. regarded as the mere illustration of some verse of politian's, or of homer's hymn, the picture is open to endless criticism--the figure of venus is out of drawing; the promontories, waves, and laurel trees are bare shorthand notes. it is when the spirit in the onlooker responds to the spirit entangled in the magical lines and tones and colours of the painting, that its indefinable beauty dawns upon him. you must love botticelli's drawing if you are to understand it. in the same room hangs a smaller picture, very different in style, an "adoration of the kings"--a masterpiece too, and worthy of the closest study, but worlds removed from the "venus." it is very highly and deliberately finished, and unlike its companion, belongs to the years before sandro worked in rome. it contains portraits of the medicis and, more important to us, of the painter himself.[ ] detached from the others he stands in the right-hand corner, under the peacock, wrapped in an orange mantle, gazing at us over his shoulder--a tall figure of a man with powerful enigmatic face. the composition of this picture, with its thirty figures and varied colouring, has been often and rightly praised. in spite of the clear individualisation of personalities and the elaboration of magnificent accessories, the unity and balance of design with its semi-circular grouping and the nobility and distinction of its lines, are well kept. if it was painted in rivalry with ghirlandajo, for whose work it was at one time mistaken, it is marked by an intensity of realisation foreign to that worthy painter. these two pictures of the sala di lorenzo monaco, the "venus" and the "adoration," are representative of the two realms in which sandro worked; the one, of pure imagination, wedding platonic ideas with a new conception of the possibilities of decorative art; the other, of the patrons and atmosphere of fifteenth-century florence. very few of his pictures belong exclusively to the one realm or the other, but to one or other belongs the influence which predominates in any one. of the first class are notably the remaining works painted with classical motives. foremost among these is the "spring" of the florence academy, with its inimitable group of the graces dancing in a marvellous rhythm of flowing intertwining lines, somewhat over-mannered, it is true, and with feeling a little forced, but yet of quite unique grace and intensity of conception. much wordy debate over the literary signification of this painting has come between the vital meaning of the design and those who behold it. we may find suggestions in lucian or alberti, in politian's or lorenzo's verses, but as a work of art it derives only secondarily from any of these. it is a representation of beauty in a whimsical and even bizarre group of figures gleaming whitely under the dark trees between whose trunks shines the pale serene sky, while the grass through which their delicately modelled feet are moving is rich and full of flowers. this picture, in which the figures are nearly life size, while it has much in common with the "venus," belongs to an earlier period, and is probably nearer in date to the "adoration" already described, painted when the artist was about thirty-four years old. some two years later he painted his "pallas and the centaur." the figure of the goddess, beautiful as it is, lacks something of the vitality and motion of the "spring" and the "venus"; perhaps the artist has given too much thought to the lovely wreathing of the symbolic olive boughs about her breast and arms and head; but on the other hand, the melancholy centaur whom she leads by his heavy forelock is one of the most perfect expressions of his art. it is among the peculiar qualities of sandro that he makes one feel, in looking at this picture, that it is one's own hand which grasps those dark curling locks; just as in the "venus" one is conscious of the light and the wind falling upon one's own body. behind the centaur rises a mass of sculptured overhanging rocks, beyond lies a boat in the bay. almost always there is some note of vista and distance in botticelli's pictures. the colour of this large canvas is very pleasing. pallas is clad in a loose green mantle and an under-robe of white adorned with the triple rings of the medici; she is wreathed with olive, her auburn hair blows out behind her, and her feet are covered with a sort of orange buskin. nothing could be finer than the contrast she presents with the dark, wild, pathetic figure of "chaos and old night" whom she is leading captive. the most beautiful of sandro's earlier works, a little panel only inches by , representing the return of judith to bethulia after the slaying of holofernes, is in the uffizi. it has suffered from repainting, the figure of judith having been shortened and its movement limited by the drawing back of the right foot at least half an inch, so that it does not now correspond with that of abra following so close behind with her horrid burden; but in spite of this, it retains a wonderful joyous serenity of light, line, and colour, and the same windy clearness of air and buoyant rhythmical movement as distinguishes the "venus." the figure of judith is so closely related to that of the fortezza, painted for the pollajuoli in , and exhibited in the same gallery, that it may well belong to the years immediately succeeding it, when sandro was between twenty-six and thirty years of age. the companion panel of holofernes, though interesting, is much inferior as a design and is somewhat comic in its frank and ghastly violence; it was evidently painted while the artist was under the influence of the pollajuoli. ===================================================================== plate vi.--the annunciation. (from the panel in the uffizi) this interesting picture is probably only in part the work of botticelli. it seems to have been produced in his workshop about for the monks of cestello. it is less harmonious and convincing in colour than sandro's masterpieces, but is redeemed by the living movement expressed in the figure of gabriel, which is usually regarded as his work. this figure is related to two others of his angels, one in the ambrosiana tondo, the other in the predella of the "coronation." [illustration: plate vi.--the annunciation.] ===================================================================== there are two other masterpieces which belong to this division of sandro's work, but they are neither of them in florence. the beautiful, but sadly mutilated fresco of giovanna (albizzi) tornabuoni, with venus and the graces, long hidden under coats of whitewash in a villa near fiesole, was discovered in by dr. lemmi, then its owner, and carefully cleaned and removed. in it was acquired by the french government. in spite of the blank patches, and the great cracks which break its surface, this remains one of the most gracious and captivating of sandro's works. it has the joyousness of flower-like colour, the breadth and simplicity of treatment, and withal the virginal quality which, in his best moments, were characteristic of the artist. the masterly contrast between the flowing moving lines and strange symbolic faces of the four visitors, and the upright demure girl with the kerchief on her head who receives them is very striking. the second fresco, of giovanna's husband, lorenzo, introduced into the company of the liberal arts and philosophy, is less interesting. a third fell to pieces immediately after discovery. all were painted about the year , probably a little later than the "venus." the remaining picture of this group is the so-called "mars and venus" in our own national gallery, a long panel designed to stand above a doorway, and probably painted about the same time as the more famous "spring." as in the case of that picture, its subject has been a matter of much ingenious conjecture. some commentators see in the two figures portrait studies of giuliano dei medici, and of simonetta vespucci, and conceive that the sleeping giuliano is dreaming of his lady, formerly clad in all the panoply of pallas, but now disarmed by laughing loves. it is obvious, however, that the armour belongs to the man who lies asleep leaning upon some of it. the little satyrs with their roguish baby faces, curly goats' flanks, and budding horns, who play with the warrior's lance and helm, blow the conch in his ear, and wriggle through his breastplate, seem to have been suggested by a passage in lucian describing the marriage of alexander. but the subject of the picture need not now detain us, nor need the long outstretched figure of the dreaming warrior; its charm is in the exquisitely realised youthful grace of the lady in her long white robe, leaning upon a crimson cushion with the dark grove of laurels behind her. she is of the same spiritual family as the graces, and the central figure of venus in the "spring." she may indeed be simonetta, perhaps simonetta already deceased, of whom her lover dreams; but, whatever her name, her face and figure, and from her the whole picture, is radiant with that singleness and intensity of artistic conception, which gives to some of sandro's pictures the power of suggesting a sort of immortality of life. and they have a surcharge of meaning, an enigmatic quality like that of life itself, which is seen in no other pictures of the time with the exception of leonardo's--and in sandro's the enigma suggests no sinister solution. his women are creations of passionate love and human intimacy, but withal they have an abiding quality which only a very reverent and chaste lover, a lover not unlike pico della mirandola, could have adored and chosen. the date of this picture is quite uncertain. the lady's face is curiously related to the faces in the lemmi fresco described above. [ ] though his contemporaries were beginning to use the new medium of oil for their easel paintings, botticelli adhered to _tempera_, or distemper, in which yolk of egg was generally the vehicle employed. nearly all his pictures, except, of course, his frescoes, are upon wood. the "pallas and the centaur," "venus," and "nativity" of , are however on prepared canvas. [ ] there are two separate portraits by sandro which are full of character and interest: the portrait of a youth in our national gallery, and of a man holding a medal in the florence academy. other portraits, such as those of giuliano dei medici at berlin and bergamo, and of simonetta, may have come from his workshop, but are not now numbered among the master's own works. iii we must turn to the principal pictures in botticelli's other, and as i think, inferior manner, indicating first, however, the links which exist between the two groups. the first of these is the "calumny," painted to the description given in alberti's treatise on painting of a picture by apelles. it is a comparatively small panel, feet by , containing ten figures, and an elaborate background of sculptured marble arches, literally covered with friezes and bas-reliefs. it belongs to sandro's later years, and is marred by a busy and somewhat theatrical violence. one can hardly look without laughing at the helpless boyish figure of innocence, with crossed ankles and folded hands, dragged along dancingly by the ladylike calumny; and unfortunately, these form the central motive. their poses mar a little the detached nude figure of truth, standing on the extreme left with arm upraised and noble face lifted to heaven. she is intimately related to the figure of venus anadyomene--but here she seems tragically out of place. the fancy lavished upon the bas-reliefs bears witness to sandro's whimsical imagination even in the midst, as we may suppose, of the dark days when florence was full of the false spirit suggested in this panel. with the "calumny" i must mention, though only in passing, the several panels of the life of saint zenobius, two of which are in the collection of mrs. ludwig mond. less theatrical, but often more violent in manner than the "calumny," and not less definitely of the genre character of illustration, they contain some pleasing colour, geranium reds, soft greys, and mauves, blues, and much white. these, with the illustrative panels from the stories of virginia and lucretia, were probably painted after , for wedding chests. a more important group of pictures comprises the six--including the "adoration" already described--which centre in the three figures of the holy family, whether they be called adorations or nativities; and the sixtine frescoes. all these pictures are full of figures, most of them are set in large, carefully studied landscapes, which seem to challenge leonardo's assertion that botticelli was indifferent to this part of his art. the two most pleasing compositions, after the aforesaid "adoration"--the "adoration" now in st. petersburg, and the "scenes from the life of moses" in the sixtine chapel, were painted about the same time in rome. in the former, the holy family is housed, as in the tondo in the national gallery, under a wooden shed erected between the ruined pillars of an older order, a temple or perhaps a palace of kings. it contains some forty figures, besides horses, which sandro loved to introduce, not always very successfully, into his pictures. too often, like the charger of holofernes, they are studied not from life, but from some other model: occasionally, as for example in the medicean "adoration," one recognises the real creature. this st. petersburg "adoration" is broadly conceived, and full of interest, but it suffers from that conscious and obvious emotion which belongs to sandro's inferior work. in his best, his figures are pure creations, certain of their purpose, confident of conveying a sense of beauty transcending mere subject-interest; they are not "lifelike," they are ideas and symbols of life, and therefore able to convey the spiritual contact of living forms. this is not the case in any of the adorations i am describing, nor is it in any of the sixtine frescoes if we except that of "moses at the well." ===================================================================== plate vii.--the virgin and child with st. john and an angel. (from the panel in the national gallery) this beautiful painting is no longer ascribed to botticelli; but it is obviously an indirect, if not a direct, product of his genius. the virgin is distinct in type from those of the master, and the painting of the child is dissimilar. the name of giuliano da san gallo, one of sandro's friends, and a famous florentine architect, is written across the back of the picture. [illustration: plate vii.--the virgin and child with st. john and an angel.] ===================================================================== but in this marvellous central scene of a large fresco, the very sheep are so intensely realised as to have an individuality over and above their mere sheepiness. by the well, under the great oak tree of the papal (rovere) family, moses is pouring water into the troughs for zipporah and her sister. his long luxuriant hair falls about a sensitive face. behind and below him are the sheep, so woolly that you can in fancy pass your hand over their fleeces. on the opposite side of the well are the two midianitish maidens, standing out, the bright central motive of the whole design; one with her back turned and hands extended, the other walking in a sort of dream, her head drooping forward under the long thick locks of its heavy hair. a skin full of fruit is slung round her waist, and a distaff is in her hand. about this group, whose lines follow those of the well-mouth, the painter has contrived to introduce half-a-dozen other incidents from moses' life. it was of the little terrier in this picture that ruskin wrote: "without any doubt i can assert to you that there is not any other such piece of animal painting in the world--so brief, intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth: as tenderly drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as landseer's lord chancellor poodle." he is sure that the dog has been barking all the morning at moses. i quote this because it is almost the only passage of ruskin's which is true to botticelli's work. sandro's "venus" is a creative spirit, she is not a mere individual, but a living platonic idea; and through his power of realisation, this little terrier, a mere accessory in the foreground of a great fresco filled with details, has a life of its own. thus, at its best, his work is not representation at all, nor mere illustration; it is the re-creation in a new medium of the creatures and ideas he has conceived, even to their least characteristics. the two other sixtine frescoes represent the "punishment of korah," painted in celebration of the revolt and suicide of the archbishop of krain; and that known either as the "leper's offering," or the "temptation of christ," which was also intended to flatter the sensibilities of the pope. iv we now come to the second great division of sandro's pictures, his madonnas and saints, tondos, panels, and altar-pieces, painted for different patrons at intervals during his lifetime. the most celebrated of these are the two tondos, or round panels, of mary with the child and several young angels, hanging opposite to one another in the uffizi. somewhat similar in design, they are yet essentially different. from its style, the first was probably painted about , and the second in the same period as the "venus," and the "bardi madonna" ( - ); the two pictures being thus separated by sandro's sojourn in rome. the earlier, that of the "magnificat," is more brilliant and varied in colour, and of consummate finish: mary's face is related to that of the "pallas "; between her and the group of angels on the left is a distant landscape with curving river; behind her shoulder, supporting on one side the celestial crown, which is so much too large to rest upon her head, is a beautiful young angel of a distinctive type which hardly recurs in sandro's work. this composition, with its intricately curved, and unobtrusively harmonious lines, so perfectly adapted to the circular form, has often been praised. in the later tondo, the madonna with the pomegranate, there is no distant scene, but the sense of infinite vista is conveyed by the far-away, pensive expression, not only of the central figure with her slender drooping shoulders, but, as i think, of the child himself. the grouping is simple, but less perfect than in the earlier work; and there is a lack of harmony between the secular little beings with their wings, flowers, and singing books, and the rapt mother and child, which we did not feel in the other, where madonna herself, guided by the babe, is writing her song of praise. but here botticelli has concentrated the religious feeling of the picture in mary's face, and in it he has struck again the mystical note which vibrates through the whole of his "venus." much has been said of the misery of this madonna; for myself, i see in her face far more of the rapt vision of one who sees immortal things in a mystery. she is not glad because of them, but her whole thought and being is separated by them from the things that change, being set upon the things that endure. with these two tondos, i must mention for beauty and unity of conception the "chigi" madonna and that in the poldo-pezzoli gallery at milan. the former is generally regarded as among his earlier works. an open casement shows a river winding among wooded hills, a church steeple having been painted in as an afterthought. mary's attitude, as she fingers the ears of corn thrust among the grapes in the bowl presented by a mysterious garlanded angel, is not unlike that of the "magnificat," to which the whole composition is related. but mary herself is of a very different type, more nearly related to the madonna at milan of which i shall now speak. she, also, is seated by a window, and like her sister of the "magnificat" she is reading in a missal with decipherable words. as in that picture too, the child looks up at her with his hand on hers, a crown of thorns circling his chubby wrist. the colour is rich and harmonious; mary being magnificently coiffed and clad. another madonna in milan, that in the ambrosiana gallery, bears some resemblance both to the virgin just described, and to her of the "magnificat." as in the poldo-pezzoli madonna, the glories are either repainted or unusually elaborate, and mary has a star embroidered on her left shoulder. here again is the open missal, but now quite undecipherable, resting upon a cushion. it is possible to conceive of the babe being another version of that in the poldo-pezzoli picture. but this ambrosiana madonna with her unimaginative face and uncompromising attitude, this grotesquely sentimental child, these three spiritless attitudinising angels prancing about on their errands, is perhaps the least pleasing or characteristic of all the works now attributed to the master. the picture is conventional to a degree; a great canopy hangs in space over the virgin, between its curtains are seen the hills, towers, and river of a distant scene.[ ] a somewhat similar canopy overhangs the virgin in the madonna of st. barnabas in the florentine academy. here, too, angels are holding back the curtains, while others display the crown of thorns and the nails. mary sits on a raised throne worked with elaborate bas-reliefs. before her, with their backs to her and the child, are six saints, among them, with beautiful face, but rather bunchy figure, st. catherine. similarly elaborate and enthroned, though this time under a canopy of palm, is the bardi "madonna with the two saints john" at berlin. this, perhaps the most elaborately detailed of all sandro's pictures, measures feet by . like augustine in the st. barnabas picture, the evangelist is occupied with his book and pen, while an eagle stands behind him; the baptist, carrying his tall staff and banderole, "behold the lamb of god," is very nobly drawn, recalling in handling the figure of the "centaur." but the picture is not a happy one; it is set and conventional, the result of great skill and labour, but little love. ===================================================================== plate viii.--the virgin and child by an open window. (from the panel in the national gallery) an interesting school-work, in which the different parts of the picture are all taken from some design or painting of the master. the colour and line are, however, lacking in the distinction belonging to his own work. [illustration: plate viii.--the virgin and child by an open window.] ===================================================================== the same must be said of the "coronation of the virgin" in the florence academy, one of sandro's largest tempera works, an upright altar-piece measuring feet by , commissioned by the guild of gold-workers for savonarola's church of san marco. it is painted in two sections--like titian's "assumption"--the lower, containing four too carefully posing saints; the upper, a sort of tondo, with a golden ground, in which the figures of the virgin and the father are both obviously incommoded by the shape of the frame. but the picture is notable for its ring of dancing angels, and the plucked roses scattered among them are like those in the "birth of venus." much the same plan is adopted in the last of sandro's paintings, which is evidently related to this one, the "nativity" in the national gallery, already referred to. here again is an upper and a lower picture, and in the upper, the dancing angels re-appear against the "glory." instead of roses, however, there are crowns and banderoles, and the angels carry olive branches. at the head of this picture is an inscription in base greek which has been thus translated: "this picture was painted by me, alessandro, at the end of , during the troubles of italy, at the half time after the time which was prophesied in the eleventh chapter of st. john the evangelist, and the second woe of the apocalypse, and when satan shall be loosed on the earth for three years and a half. after which the devil shall be enchained, and we shall see him trodden under foot as in this picture." it indicates sandro's belief in a final reconciliation and justification, and refers plainly to the execution of savonarola which had occurred just three and a half years before. thus it forms a kind of sequel to the "calumny." while the picture is somewhat naïvely explanatory, it is filled with intense feeling, and suggests the influence upon sandro of the prate's favourite master, fra angelico.[ ] it is generally believed to be the last of his paintings, but it seems probable that the drawings to illustrate the divine comedy may belong to a time even later. they were made for a second-cousin and namesake of the magnificent, lorenzo di pier francesco, who died in and was a patron of michael angelo as well as of sandro. the original ms. was purchased about the beginning of last century by the then duke of hamilton, but was sold in to the prussian government. it is now in the berlin museum, and contains eighty-five drawings in silver-point, finished with pen and ink. eight other drawings belonging to the same series are in the vatican library. as eight are still missing, the complete series would have consisted of a hundred, in addition to the chart of the inferno. the drawings vary much in value and interest. many of them are deficient in both respects; but some are perfect examples of his art. such is the design for paradise i., with its slender trees bowing their tops to the morning breeze in the meadows watered by the circling stream eunoë, over which beatrice and dante rise together against the wind, lifted by the light of divine love. it is full of aspiration and wide air, and has a curious japanese quality. very different in suggestion is that of the chained giants (inferno xxxi.) which recalls some early german work, and reminds us that sandro may have been influenced by the drawings of schongauer, and other northern artists and designers. vasari says that botticelli was a prolific designer, and some of his drawings, notably the exquisite "abundance," in the british museum, are among his finest works. [ ] the "annunciation" in the uffizi, is an interesting but doubtful work. the figure of gabriel is closely related to two others of sandro's; one the angel supporting the child in the ambrosian madonna, the other the gabriel in the predella to the coronation. but in the larger work the angel is much more fully realised; in face he is nearest in type to the beautiful angel already noted in the tondo of the "magnificat," but graver. the colour of the picture is hard, crude, and unpleasing. it is supposed to have been painted about . [ ] there are many other uncertain pictures which were formerly credited to botticelli; and several of these still parade under the master's name in our national gallery. no. , reproduced in this volume, may have issued from his workshop. it has san gallo's name written on the reverse side. neither nos. nor are by sandro. but the genuine works in london include the attractive portrait of a young florentine (no. ); and the two "adorations" ascribed to his pupil filippino lippi ( , ). the print-room in the british museum has the exquisite drawing of the "abundance" (silver-point). in the basement of the national gallery are copies (arundel society) of the sixtine frescoes, the "birth of venus," "spring," and the best of the lemmi frescoes. facsimiles of the drawings for the divine comedy have been published. the other london pictures usually accredited to sandro are the "madonna" (partly by his hand) in mr. heseltine's collection and the panels already referred to in that of mrs mond, all belonging to his later years. the former shows the use botticelli made of gold to give a sunny sheen between the spectator and distant hillside. v in reviewing the subjects chosen by sandro for his pictures, one is struck by certain characteristic omissions. with the exception of a most perfunctory and even grotesque panel of christ rising from the sepulchre, forming part of the s. barnabas predella, of the doubtful "pieta" at munich, which may have been partially executed by sandro after savonarola's great sermons in holy week, and the figure of christ thrice introduced as an afterthought into the first of the sixtine frescoes; botticelli has only painted the central figure of christian art as an infant. twice only has he introduced the figure of god the father into his work, and then without distinction. his devotional pictures represent a very young madonna, with a chubby but thoughtful child, and, where there are other figures, either an aged patriarchal joseph, or one or more attendant or messenger angels, winged in the later work, and certain saints. his favourite amongst these was augustine. but botticelli is at his best when he escapes from conventionality of subject, and is able to give wing to a lyrical imagination comparable to that of shelley. he is one of those who feel the wind of the spirit blowing out toward new worlds. he loved the wind, and all things that the wind caresses, trees, draperies, floating hair, and the naked body. also he loved the light and hated darkness. he had inspired moments when he beheld that the old order of the mediæval world had passed already away, and the hearts of men were turning to the pure worship of living incarnate loveliness--the mystery of a re-born and immortal pleasure, venus anadyomene, beheld with mystic sight. but in that age it was a prophetic vision, and his own eyes failed him. he died in a time of darkness. for four centuries his visions were forgotten, to be beheld again by us with a renewal of the wonder and aspiration, the passionate desire for freedom and for beauty, out of which they came. printed by ballantyne, hanson & co. edinburgh & london in the same series artist. editor. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. lewis hind. romkey. lewis hind. greuze. alice eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. leighton. a. lys baldry. rembrandt. josef israels. watts. w. l. hare. titian. s. l. bensusan. raphael. paul g. konody. _others in preparation_ [illustration: (_see page ._)] elementary color by milton bradley. author of "color in the schoolroom" and "color in the kindergarten." with an introduction by henry lefavour, ph.d., professor of physics, williams college. third edition. milton bradley co., springfield, mass. copyrighted, , by milton bradley co., springfield, mass. contents. page. the theory of color why artists and scientists have disagreed the speculations of the past what the primary teacher needs to consider concerning the solar spectrum six spectrum standards of color the color wheel and maxwell disks the bradley system of color instruction color definitions practical experiments the color wheel the color top use of the disks how to begin the experiments the old theories tested by mixture of three pigments old theories tested by the color wheel or color top concerning the complementary colors citrines and russets olives vermilion, burnt sienna, raw sienna and indian red classification of harmonies the work of chevreul reviewed simultaneous, successive and mixed contrast contrasted harmony color with white black with white color with black colors with gray contrast of colors dominant harmonies complementary harmonies analogous harmonies perfected harmonies field's chromatic equivalents colored papers color teaching in the schoolroom the glass prism how the bradley color standards were chosen paper color tablets color wheel or top the study of tones neutral grays explanation of broken colors an exercise in broken colors formulas for a chart of broken spectrum scales certain color puzzles chart of pure spectrum scales completed the work of cutting and pasting a variety of designs analysis of color materials the bradley colored papers engine colored papers water colors color blindness outline of a course in color instruction the solar spectrum pigmentary spectrum colors study of tones broken colors complete chart of pure spectrum scales in five tones advanced study of harmonies introduction. the movement in educational reform at present is in the direction of unification. it is held that in framing the programme for any grade the interest not only of the next higher but of all higher grades must be considered. this is done not solely that those who are to enter the higher grades may be directly prepared for their more advanced studies, but especially because it is felt that better work will thus be done for those whose school training is soon to terminate. for the child's education is never finished and a mind rightly directed at the start will gather from its practical experience that with which it may develop and augment the resources and the ideas already received. no education can be sound which teaches anything that is inconsistent with the more advanced truths, however complex and profound those truths may be. there should be no unlearning in the course of an education nor any expenditure of time on that which has no permanent value. it is of importance therefore to consider in connection with the study of any special subject what the problems are which lie at the end of the educational journey and what basis will be needed in the child's maturer thought. there will thus be the inspiration of the goal to be attained and guidance in the selection of the most helpful methods. there is scarcely any subject that has so many practical and scientific aspects as the subject of color. its great importance in the arts and its contribution to the enjoyment of life are matched by the multiplicity of problems in the physical and philosophical sciences with which it is connected. without attempting to enumerate all of the scientific problems related to this subject, it may be of interest to briefly summarize those which are most prominent. at the outset we have such purely physical questions as the nature of light, the cause of its emission, the mode of its propagation, the difference in the waves which give rise to the various color sensations, the principles of absorption, of reflection and of refraction, and the nature of material surfaces whereby they acquire their characteristic colors. then comes the physiology of the eye, including its structure and its function and involving the much discussed questions of primary and secondary colors, and these are closely related to the psychological or psycho-physical study of the nature, duration and delicacy of color vision and color judgment. next to these comes the study of pigments and of the chromatic effects of their mixture, essentially a chemical and technical question, and finally, the most important of all, the purely psychological or æsthetic problem touching the harmonization and grouping of the various colors and their modifications. the recent advance made in experimental psychology has given an impetus to the study of the whole subject and we may reasonably expect that rational explanations may be found for questions in æsthetics hitherto considered purely arbitrary. it will be readily seen that there must be a well developed and carefully trained color sense at the basis of an education which is to lead to the consideration of these and similar chromatic problems. as in the development of any special perceptive power, a great deal depends upon making a beginning early in life, when the mind is most receptive and there are no preconceptions to be overcome. every means should be employed that will help the child to distinguish between principal colors and between modifications of principal colors. his attention should be directed at as early a stage as possible to the analysis of composite colors and the effects obtained by the combination of colored lights and the results of irradiant light. the principles of chromatic harmony are perhaps not simple, but a child, before whom right standards of color combinations are constantly presented, will acquire a correct æsthetic judgment that may become intuitive. the effect of such a training on the higher development of our people and on their appreciation of true art would be of the greatest value. if the instruction in color is to be systematic and efficient, it is unquestionable that there must be a simple nomenclature for the standard colors; and for the teacher's guidance at least as well as for the use of the older pupils, a scientifically accurate system of describing any required modification of these recognized standards. the system presented in this book is based on the well-known principle of the maxwell wheel and has been elaborated by one who has had in view not only the theory of the subject but also the practical possibilities of its use in preparing educational material. this fact, i feel sure, greatly enhances the value of the conclusions at which he arrives. henry lefavour. williams college, december , . preface. ever since newton discovered the solar spectrum it has been referred to in a poetic way as nature's standard of color. but as soon as the author attempted, some twelve years ago, to use it practically by making pigmentary imitations of the spectrum colors as standards they were decried as vulgar and inartistic. under such circumstances it was a great pleasure to him to hear a celebrated art professor answer his inquiry if the solar spectrum is the proper place to look for standards of color with the emphatic assertion, "certainly, there is no other place to go." where there are no standards there can be no measurements, and if in color we have no measurements of effects, no records can be made, and hence no comparisons of results at various places and times, and consequently no discussion and little progress. because there have been no accepted standards and no measurements of color very little has thus far been decided regarding psychological color effects. in drawing, as at present taught in our best schools from the kindergarten to the university, the foundation of art in black and white is laid in form study. from the drawing teachers we learn that a good touch and a fine sense for light and shade in all their subtle relations to each other are without value, unless due care has been given to the commonplace consideration of lengths and directions of lines, that is to say to the measurement of lines and angles, and to the laws of perspective. we cannot have measurements without standards. by the foot or the metre we measure lines and by the divided circle we measure angles. geometrical forms have already been so definitely analyzed by the science of mathematics that if destroyed to-day these solids and surfaces could be reconstructed at any future time from written or printed directions. but suppose all material samples of color to be lost, it would be impossible by the ordinary system of color nomenclature to even approximately restore a single one from written or verbal descriptions. color is one of the first things to attract the attention of the infant, almost as soon as a sound and long before form appeals to him, so that a collection of colored papers will often prove more interesting and instructive than a picture book to the baby, while the graduate from a two year's course in the kindergarten may have a better color sense than is at present enjoyed by the average business or professional man. if we could determine the colors used by the great masters in the past, we could add much to our knowledge of the fine arts; and if we knew what colors chevreul, the master dyer of the gobelins tapestry works, refers to in his writings, and which he indicated by hundreds of numbered samples filed away in his cabinet, we should in this generation have a wonderful fund of information to increase our knowledge of harmonies, on which to base our study of color in the industrial arts. but alas! the paintings of the old masters have faded and the great dyer had no language in which to describe his colors in his writings, and therefore it is claimed that little or no advance in color perception has been made in modern times, if indeed we have held our own. the further assertion is made that those semi-civilized nations whose drawings are the least artistic greatly surpass us in natural color perceptions. if color is the one thing in which we are deficient and in which we are making no advance, is it not necessary that we adopt a new line of operations for our color instruction in the primary grades? it is self-evident that in primary work highest art is not expected in either literature, music, drawing or painting, but as has been the aim in literature for a long time and in drawing and music more recently, so in coloring, our instruction should be based on those principles on which highest art must rest. when through the introduction of colored papers in the kindergartens and primary schools the teachers began to call for better assortments of colors in their papers than were to be found in the market, and some of us in the field attempted to meet their wants, the solution of the problem seemed almost a hopeless task, because no two wanted the same colors; each teacher was a law to herself and one thought a color "just lovely" which another declared "perfectly horrid." according to the early theories then in vogue the first colors called for were red, yellow and blue for primaries, but no two persons were sure just what they wanted for either of these, and there was no authority to be referred to for a decision. in this strait, which was practically a serious difficulty, the artists were appealed to for a decision as to the three "primary colors," and also for examples showing in what proportions the "ideal primaries" must be mixed to produce the "ideal secondaries." but in this there was no satisfaction because hardly two agreed in the primaries and necessarily the secondaries were much less definite, which was the result that should have been expected. it is a self-evident proposition that if two indefinite primaries are combined in indefinite proportions the possible secondaries which may thus be produced must be exceedingly numerous, and if this idea is carried out in the production of tertiaries by the combination of the secondaries the resulting colors may be almost infinite. in view of the indifference of the artists and the popular ignorance regarding the subject the solution of this question and the discovery of any solid basis on which to formulate a system of elementary color instruction seemed very problematical. but after much experimenting and many conferences with artists and scientists a basis for operation was decided upon and at the end of fifteen years the efforts begun in doubt have resulted in a definite system of color instruction which it is the purpose of this book to concisely set forth. it is prepared in response to inquiries from primary school teachers for a clear and condensed explanation of the bradley system of color instruction. the aim is to offer a definite scheme and suitable material for a logical presentation of the truths regarding color in nature and art to the children of the primary schools. much of this instruction is so simple that it should be familiar to children who have had kindergarten training and has therefore already been explained in substantially the same form in "color in the kindergarten." a few years ago it might well have been thought necessary to preface a treatise on the subject with arguments to prove that color is a legitimate object for school instruction, but to-day this is not a question with thoughtful educators, whether considered from the practical, industrial or æsthetic standpoint. with the establishment of professorships of practical psychology and the equipment of laboratories, provided with delicate and expensive apparatus for making and recording tests, there comes with increasing force the demand for some means by which the experiments in color made in various localities may be unified both as to the colors used and the terms and measurements for recording the result. it is the hope of the author that the system here outlined may be the initial step in gathering together such facts regarding color effects as will form a fund of knowledge little dreamed of at the present day. [illustration] the theory of color. in order to place the study of color on a broad and safe foundation, the work must commence at the bottom with a rational presentation of the subject, based on experiments and the use of color material. we must intelligently consider the relation that exists between the pure science of light which is the source of all color and the use of color materials with their effect on our color perceptions. while it is true in all study that there is here and there found a natural genius in some line of work who seems to have such inborn perceptions as to require little or no logical instruction in his special line, it is also manifest that the masses must gain their knowledge through a systematic presentation of the subject, if they secure it at all. therefore with the growth of modern pedagogics the laboratory work of the psychologist has become a necessity. this consists in collecting and tabulating the results of hundreds and thousands of experiments regarding any subject under investigation, and the averaging of these to form theories and laws. in making these experiments there must be standards and measurements on which they may be based and some nomenclature in which to make the records; and the standards, measurements and nomenclature adopted must be common to those who desire to compare their results made in different places at different times. from the results of many physical experiments properly measured and recorded certain psychological theories are deduced. these experiments are tried on hundreds and thousands of individuals and the average results establish the theories, which will ultimately stand or fall according to the truth and accuracy with which the experiments have been made. experiments are useless for formulating any exact theories unless they can be recorded in some generally accepted terms for comparison with other experiments made under similar conditions and recorded in the same terms. so in color perceptions it is not necessary that we know anything of the theories of color in order to see colors, and if endowed by nature with a natural genius for color, education in color may not be necessary, but if there is to be education in color which can be transmitted to a second party there must be some standards of colors and some measurement of color effects which can be recorded in accepted terms. why artists and scientists have disagreed. in the realm of art there is no necessity for any purely scientific analysis of sunlight, which is the origin of natural colors, because all the practical value of color is found in its æsthetic effects on the mind, and in order to enjoy these even in the highest degree it is not necessary that we understand the scientific origin of the colors, any more than it is necessary for the artist to know the chemical composition of his pigments in order to produce best effects with them on his canvas. because of this almost self-evident fact, artists have as a rule been very impatient when any reference has been made to the science of color in connection with color education, believing that color is an exception to the general subjects of study to such a degree that it lies outside of all scientific investigations. consequently they have not been in sympathy with the physio-psychological investigations which have been prosecuted with such promising results in other lines, when such investigations have been proposed regarding color. while it is not essential for best results in his own work that an expert artist shall know anything of the science of color, still if he is to communicate his knowledge of art to any others except his personal pupils, he must have some language in which to make known his ideas, and on the same grounds if any psychological tests are to be made regarding color, it is evident that there must be some accepted terms in which to record the results, which has not hitherto been the case. when the well known newton and brewster theory of three primary colors red, yellow and blue, was advocated by those scientists there appeared to be something of interest and value in it for the artists also, because with the three pigments red, yellow and blue, they seemed to be able to confirm the truth of the scientific theories regarding the spectrum colors. but the scientists have long been convinced that there is no truth in this theory and have quite generally accepted the young-helmholtz idea of three other color perceptions red, green and violet, from which they claim all color vision is produced, and which they call fundamental colors. this more modern theory has seemed so far removed from the realm of the artists and the colorists that they have not been able to see anything in it of truth or value to them, and so have continued to repeat the old, old story of the three primaries red, yellow and blue, from which the secondaries orange, green and purple are made etc., etc., all of which is the more pernicious when accepted as a correct theory because of its seeming approximation to the facts. and yet there is not in it all any scientific truth on which to build a logical system of color education, and some of the effects which are considered prominent arguments for the system are directly opposed to well known facts in the science of color. consequently, the artist has failed to gain from the investigations of the scientists anything to aid him in his pigmentary work, and the scientist has not been interested in the æsthetic ideas of the artists which in fact he has generally been unable to fully appreciate, from lack of training and associations. the system of color instruction here presented for primary grades is based on the results of careful study and experiment for many years in which the attempt has been made to bring the scientist and the artist on to common ground, where they may work in sympathy with each other instead of at cross purposes as has been the case heretofore, and the results with children have already been such as to testify fully to the efficiency of this line of work. thus the feeling for color which every true artist has, may be to a certain extent analyzed so that it can be understood by the scientist and recorded for the benefit of fellow artists one hundred or a thousand miles away and in time an aggregation of facts regarding the psychological effects of color collected which will form the beginning of a valuable fund of color knowledge to be increased from age to age. the speculations of the past. ever since newton produced the prismatic solar spectrum, the so-called science of color as applied to pigments and coloring, has been a most curious mixture of truth, error and speculation. it was supposed by newton and brewster that in the solar spectrum the colors were produced by the over-lapping of three sets of colored rays red, yellow and blue. the red rays at one end were supposed to overlap or mix with the yellow rays to make the orange, and on the other side of the yellow the blue rays were supposed to combine with the yellow to produce green. following the same theory in pigmentary colors, it has been claimed that all colors in nature may be produced by the combination of pigments in these three colors red, yellow and blue, and hence they have been called primary colors. it is still claimed by the advocates of this theory that from the three primaries red, yellow and blue the so-called secondaries orange, green and purple can be made, and that the secondaries are complementary to the primaries in pairs; the orange to the blue, the green to the red and the purple to the yellow. by similar combinations of the secondaries it is claimed that three other colors, in themselves peculiar, and different from the first six, may be made, the orange and green forming citrines, orange and violet russets, and green and violet olives and these are called tertiaries. after having accepted this fiction as a scientific theory for so many years, it is very difficult to convince the artists and colorists that in it all there is nothing of value to any one, but such is practically a fact, because from no three pigmentary effects in red, yellow and blue can the three colors orange, green and purple of corresponding purity be produced, neither are the primary colors complementary to the secondaries as claimed nor are the so-called tertiaries new and distinct colors but simply gray spectrum colors. because the red, yellow and blue theory would not stand the test of scientific investigation the young-helmholtz theory of three other primaries red, green and violet, has been quite generally adopted by the scientists of the past generation. what the primary teacher needs to consider. all these discussions of the scientists are intensely interesting and no doubt of great importance in the line to which they pertain, but practically neither the artists nor the primary school teachers care for all these theories and discussions and because the scientists have closely confined themselves to these lines, the artists and teachers have seen nothing of value to them in their theories. in going to the solar spectrum for standards on which to base pigmentary standards, we have given little attention to these various theories in their details, but the one fact of science has received careful attention, namely, that all color effects in nature and art are produced by light reflected from material surfaces. therefore, inasmuch as the light reflected from any surface must be affected by both the material color of the surface and the color of the light which illuminates the surface, it is necessary that every one having to do with this subject be informed as to what color must be expected to result from given conditions. in order that this phase of the subject be discussed and thus more fully understood, there must be a terminology or nomenclature in which to express the results produced by given conditions, and also standards by which to analyze, measure and record these results. in selecting these standards more regard must be given to the æsthetic or psychical effect of the pigmentary standards than to the purely scientific or physical properties of colored light. this selection is of great interest to the physiological psychologist because it is only by the comparison and averaging of thousands of experiments made on different people that valuable theories can be formulated. with standards and a nomenclature, color will be placed on an equal footing with other subjects, so that perceptions of color effects may be recorded and discussed with much of the definiteness with which we treat form and tone. because this has not heretofore been possible, comparatively little advance has been made during the last two decades in the æsthetic consideration of material color _which is the only practical phase of the subject_, and if any greater progress is to be achieved in the future it evidently must be along new lines. from the nursery to the university we are constantly asking two questions, "what is it?" and "why is it?" and this is what the educator from the kindergarten to the college is called upon to answer. in his laboratory the psychologist is collecting physical facts by tests regarding the powers of the eye and the ear, the sense of touch, weight, memory, etc., and these experiments when classified, arranged and averaged, furnish a basis for formulating theories, all of which is called psychology. in vision, form and color play the principal parts, in fact cover the whole ground if we include light and shade in color where it belongs. experiments regarding form can be and have long been very definitely recorded but this has not been true with color. to froebel must be given the honor of introducing logical form study into primary education, and on this has been built the present admirable system of drawing in our higher grades of schools, and the introduction of the standard forms in solids and surfaces has brought about a definite use of geometrical terms by young children which would have seemed very unnaturally mature a generation ago. but in color no corresponding advance has been made because there have been no generally accepted standards in color to correspond to the sphere, cube, cylinder, circle, ellipse and triangle in form, nor any means for measurements to take the place of the foot or metre for lengths and the divided circle for angles. it is not expected that the children in the lowest grades will learn much of the science of color, but it is desirable that the teachers have such knowledge of it that they will not unconsciously convey to the children erroneous impressions which must be unlearned later in life. concerning the solar spectrum. more than two hundred years ago sir isaac newton discovered that a triangular glass prism would transform a beam of sunlight into a beautiful band of color. if the prism is held in a beam of sunlight which enters a moderately lighted room, there will appear on the walls, ceiling or floor, here and there, as the glass is moved, beautiful spots in rainbow colors. if the room is darkened by shutters, and only a small beam of light is admitted through a very narrow slit and the prism properly adjusted to receive this beam of light, a beautiful band of variegated colors may be thrown on to a white ceiling or screen, and this effect is called a prismatic solar spectrum. a perfect solar spectrum once seen under favorable conditions in a dark room is a sight never to be forgotten. the accompanying illustration shows the relative positions of the parts named. a is the beam of light as it enters the room. b is the triangular prism. the dotted lines represent groups of rays extending to the vertical band of colors indicated by the letters v for violet at the top, then blue, green, yellow, orange to red at the bottom. the explanation of this phenomenon is that the beam of sunlight is composed of a great number of different kinds of rays, which in passing through the prism are refracted or bent from their direct course, and some are bent more than others, the red least of all and the violet most. it is supposed that light is propagated by waves or undulations in an extremely rare substance termed ether which is supposed to occupy all space and transparent bodies. these waves are thought to be similar to sound waves in the air or the ripples on the smooth surface of a pond when a pebble is thrown into it. because so many of the phenomena of light can be satisfactorily explained by this theory, it has been very generally adopted by the scientists. the amount that rays of light are refracted from a straight line in passing through a prism is in proportion to the number of waves or undulations per second, and in inverse proportion to the length of the waves. the red waves are refracted the least and are the longest, while the violet rays are refracted the most and are the shortest. [illustration: fig. .] whether this theory of the spectrum formation is absolutely correct or not, the fact is established that the colors found in a prismatic solar spectrum are always the same under the same conditions and the order of their arrangement is never changed. by means of the quality of spectrum colors called the wave length, a given color can always be located in the spectrum, and hence if a spectrum color is selected as a standard it can always be determined by its recorded wave length. six spectrum standards of color. therefore it seems possible to establish certain standards of color by a series of definitely located portions of the solar spectrum and in the system here presented six have been chosen, namely red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. these six are more distinctly recognized than the others, and from them by combination in pairs of colors adjacent in the spectrum all the other colors can be very closely imitated, and hence these six are selected as the spectrum standards. in these standards the most intense expression of each color is chosen i.e. the reddest red, greenest green, etc. which by the closest scientific investigation have been located by their wave lengths so that if they are in doubt in future they can be re-determined by individuals or if disputed, may be corrected by any authoritatively established congress, selected for the purpose. the wave lengths of our six standards are represented by the following numbers in ten millionths of a millimeter. red, ; orange, ; yellow, ; green, ; blue, ; violet, . having thus scientifically established these unchangeable standards the attempt is made to secure the best possible pigmentary imitation of each. to any one who has ever compared a piece of colored material with a good presentation of a spectrum color, it is unnecessary to say that the result in an attempt to match the spectrum color with the material or pigmentary color is a very weak approximation, but the one thing aimed at is to secure nearly as possible the same kind of color. for example in the red, it is the aim to obtain the same _kind_ of red, by which we mean the same location in the spectrum, i.e. a red neither more orange nor more violet than the reddest spot in the spectrum. this selection must be based on a purely æsthetic perception or impression of color. the same is true of each of the six standard colors, as for example, for orange we select the location which has seemed to a large number of good judges to best represent the feeling of orange as between the quite well defined red on one hand and the equally definite narrow band of yellow on the other, and it is quite wonderful what unanimity of opinion there is on this particular color which would naturally seem to be the one most doubtful in its location. on the other side of the yellow the green seems to offer little difficulty and the pure paris or emerald green is very nearly the standard. the violet being at the other end of the spectrum is as easily decided as the red, but the blue between the green and violet is not so easily determined, because, from the best blue the hue runs so imperceptibly into the violet on one side and the green on the other. pure ultramarine blue is the nearest approach to the spectrum standard of blue of any of the permanent pigments, but even this is a trifle too violet. for educational purposes papers coated with pigments afford at once the purest colors and the most economical and useful material, and on this plan a line of colored papers has been prepared for color instruction in the kindergartens and primary schools in imitation of the above described spectrum standards. from the pure spectrum standards it is possible by reflected light to combine the two standards to produce a color between them, for example if two small mirrors are held in a spectrum one at the "red" and the other at the "orange" and the two reflected on to the same spot on a white surface, the result is a color between the red and the orange. so also if we mix red and orange pigments together we may produce colors between the two which may be termed orange-red or red-orange; but unfortunately there is no means known by which we can measure the proportion of the red and orange color-effect which is produced by any given mixture of these two pigments, because color-effect cannot be measured by the pint of mixed paint or the ounce of dry pigment. the color wheel and maxwell disks. we, however, have another means for measuring color effect which just in this emergency seems providential. it is a fact well known to every boy that if he rapidly whirls a lighted stick the fire at the end produces the effect of a circle of light, which phenomenon is explained by a quality of the eye called retention of vision, by which the impression made by the point of light remains on the retina of the eye during an entire rotation. it is a fact, based on the same quality of vision, that if one color is presented to the eye, and instantly replaced by another the effect is a combination of the two colors. therefore if one-quarter of the surface of a disk of cardboard is covered with orange paper and three-quarters with red paper, and then the disk placed on a rapidly rotating spindle, the color effect is a mixture of red and orange, and the effect is exactly in proportion to the angular measurements of the two sectors, so that if the circumference is divided into equal parts the resultant color will be definitely represented by the formula "red, ; orange, ." less than forty years ago an english scientist named j. clerk maxwell while making experiments with such painted disks happily conceived the idea of cutting a radial slit in each of two disks from the circumference to the center so that by joining the disks they could be made to show any desired proportion of each and hence they are called maxwell disks. with such disks made in the six pigmentary standards red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, the intermediate pigmentary spectrum colors may be very accurately determined by combination and rotation. if we give to each of these standards a symbol as r. for red, o. for orange, y. for yellow, g. for green, b. for blue, v. for violet, we then have the basis for a definite nomenclature of colors in imitation of the pure spectrum colors. as all pigmentary or material colors are modified by light and shade thus producing in high light tints and in shadow shades of the colors, we must seek for some means of imitating these effects, and fortunately find them in white and black disks. if with a standard color disk we combine a white disk we may have a line of tints of that color, and with a black disk, shades. giving this white disk a symbol of w. and the black disk n. we complete our nomenclature. we cannot use b for black because b has already been used for blue, and therefore we use n. for _niger_, the latin word for black. the bradley system of color instruction. briefly stated then this system of color instruction is comprised under the six general heads: spectrum standards; pigmentary standards based on the spectrum standards; maxwell rotating disks in the pigmentary standards and black and white; a color nomenclature based on the accepted standards and their disk combinations; and colored papers and water colors made in accordance with these standards. for spectrum standards, six definite locations expressing the natural æsthetic or psychological impressions of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet are selected. six standards are chosen instead of a larger number as for example twelve, because for the purpose of a nomenclature the smaller number is more convenient than a greater number. the six are selected rather than three, four or five, because while in the consideration of colored light alone the smaller number would possibly suffice to form by combinations imitations of all other colors, any number smaller than six is entirely inadequate to form by pigmentary or disk combinations fairly good expressions of the corresponding spectrum color combinations. in selecting the spectrum standards special prominence has been given to the psychological color perceptions of experts in determining those locations in the spectrum best expressing the color feeling of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, while the purely scientific consideration of these several questions has not been ignored or lightly treated. for pigmentary standards the best possible pigmentary imitations of the six spectrum standards are secured and to these are added the nearest approach to white and black that can be produced in pigments. pigmentary standards on which to base a nomenclature are valueless without some means by which measurements of standards embraced in a given compound color can be expressed. the maxwell color disks are the only known means by which we may measure the relative proportions of color effect embodied in a given color, and therefore the eight color disks are the foundation of the original color nomenclature herein advocated. colored papers are chosen for primary color instruction because paper is a valuable medium for simple schoolroom manual training and because no other pigmentary medium is at once so economical and affords such pure colors as may be secured in specially prepared colored papers, without a glazed surface. before leaving this part of the subject we do well to remember that in the present conditions of chemistry as applied to the preparation of pigments it is not possible to establish any absolutely definite science of such color combinations. nor is it possible to establish permanent pigmentary standards without great expense, but if the locations of the standard colors in the spectrum are established by wave lengths the pigmentary standards may be re-determined at any time and produced, in the purest pigments available at the time. in art or harmony effects, the purity of the pigmentary standard is not so important as its hue, i.e. its location in the spectrum, which may always be determined by the established wave length. this last statement may be illustrated by the investigations regarding complementary harmonies. scientifically one color is not considered complementary to another unless when combined in equal quantities they produce white light, or in other words when combined by the rotation of disks each color must occupy a half circle and the result must be a neutral gray. but this is not essential in considering a complementary harmony, as harmonies in different tones and in various proportions are pleasing and as yet the proportions and tones which produce the best combinations have not been determined. the entire question of harmonies or pleasing color effects is dependent on individual color perception, and the establishment of rules and laws on these points can result only from a comparison of the opinions of many experts in various localities and at different times. this cannot occur without some means for recording these opinions in generally accepted terms. it is too late for any individual opinion to be accepted as authority regarding the relative values of two different harmonies in color and this will be still less possible as we become better educated in color and able to sense finer distinctions in color combinations. [illustration] color definitions. among other advantages to be gained by a logical study of the psychology of color is the establishment of more accurate color terms and definitions. if experiments and discussions based on accepted standards and methods of comparisons can be carried on we may hope in time to have as definite expressions of color terms as we now have in music and literature. all color terms used by artists, naturalists, manufacturers, tradesmen, milliners and the members of our households are as indefinite as one might naturally expect from the utter lack of a logical basis for the whole subject. without definitions or means for intelligently naming any color, it is not strange that the terms used in speaking of colors and color effects are so contradictory as to lose much of their force, if perchance they retain anything of their original meaning. for example, probably most people apply the term shade to any modification of a color, either a hue, tint or shade. it is true that a concise and reasonably full dictionary of color terms must be the outcome of long experience in the logical study of the science of color and its use in our every-day lives, and at the best only suggestions can be made at present. but as there must be a beginning and some terms seem to be fairly well established, the following incomplete list of definitions is offered, always subject to amendment by the majority vote, for whenever such changes indicate advance they should be welcomed. _ray of light._--the finest supposable element of light impression in the eye. _beam of light._--a number of rays. _standard colors._--as used in this system of color nomenclature, the best pigmentary imitation of each of the six spectrum colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet and black and white. these are more specifically called _pigmentary standards_ in distinction from spectrum standards. _spectrum standards._--the six colors found in the solar spectrum and definitely located by their wave lengths, as follows in the ten millionths of a millimeter. red, ; orange, ; yellow, ; green, ; blue, ; violet, . _pigmentary colors._--all colors used and produced in the arts and sciences. this is in distinction from colors seen in nature, as in flowers and the solar spectrum. the term refers not only to pigments in the strictest sense but to all surfaces coated, painted or dyed artificially. _pure colors._--a pure or full color, also called a saturated color, is the most intense expression of that color without the admixture of white or black or gray. all spectrum colors are pure, while no pigmentary color is absolutely pure, but the pigmentary color which approaches most nearly to the corresponding color in the spectrum must be selected as the pigmentary type of purity of that color. for example, the standard for green must be the best possible pigmentary imitation of the spot in the spectrum which by general consent is called green, and so not only for the six standards but for all their combinations which produce the other colors in nature. in pigmentary colors the term pure is entirely one of relative degree. as processes of manufacture are improved and new chemical discoveries made, there is good reason to believe that we shall have much more intense colors and hence much better imitations of spectrum colors than are at present possible. therefore as our pigments become purer those now accepted as full colors will in time become tints or broken colors and new standards will be adopted. _hue._--the hue of a given color is that color with the admixture of a smaller quantity of another color. an orange hue of red is the standard red mixed with a smaller quantity of orange. with the disks, pure hues are secured only by mixing two standards _adjacent_ in the spectrum circuit. for convenience in speaking and writing about colors in this system of color instruction, all the spectrum colors other than the six standard spectrum colors are designated as intermediate spectrum hues, and often for convenience in speaking of them they are called simply spectrum hues. to these are also added the colors between red and violet which are not in the spectrum. when so used the term must be considered as purely technical in this particular relation, because a color between the standard blue and the standard green is in the abstract no more a hue than either of these colors. if two standards not adjacent in the spectrum circuit are combined the result is not a _pure_ spectrum hue but always some _broken_ spectrum color. _local color._--a term applied to the natural color of an object when seen in ordinarily good daylight and at a convenient distance, as a sheet of paper at arms length, a tree at twice its height, etc. _tint._--any pure or full color mixed with white, or reduced by strong sunlight. in the disk combinations a spectrum color combined with white. _shade._--a full color in shadow, i.e., with a low degree of illumination. in disk combinations a spectrum color combined with a black disk produces by rotation a shade of that color. in pigments the admixture of black does not usually produce as satisfactory shades of a color as may be secured with some other pigments, and each artist has his own preferences in making shades of the various colors on his palette. _scale._--a scale of color is a series of colors consisting of a pure or full color at the center and graduated by a succession of steps to a light tint on one side and a deep shade on the other. _tone._--each step in a color scale is a tone of that color, and the full color may be called the normal tone in that scale. in art this word has had such a variety of meaning as to render it very convenient for amateur art critics, together with such terms as breadth, atmosphere, quality, values, etc., but in the consideration of color it should have this one definite meaning. _warm colors._--red, orange and yellow, and combinations in which they predominate. _cool colors._--usually considered to be green, blue and violet, and the combinations in which they predominate. but it is, perhaps, questionable whether green and violet may properly be termed either warm or cool. the term cool as applied to colors is quite indefinite, except in a general way, but red, orange and yellow are universally considered as warm, and blue and green-blue as cool. _neutral gray._--white in shade or shadow. pure black and white mixed by disk rotation. black and white pigments mixed do not usually produce a neutral gray, but rather a blue gray. _warm gray._--a neutral gray with the admixture of a small quantity of red, orange or yellow. _cool gray._--a neutral gray with a small quantity of blue or green-blue. _green gray._--a neutral gray having combined with it a small quantity of green. as this color could hardly be classed with either warm or cool grays this fourth class of grays is suggested as helpful in giving definiteness to the more general color expressions. _broken colors._--gray colors, often improperly called broken tints. for simplicity, a tint of a color is described as the pure color mixed with white and a shade as the color mixed with black, and the corresponding broken color is the same color mixed with both white and black or with neutral gray. a tint of a color thrown into a shadow or a shade of a color in bright sunlight gives a broken color. for various reasons a very large proportion of the colors in nature are broken. broken colors are much easier to combine harmoniously than full colors, or even tints and shades. in disk combinations when a pure color is combined with both a white and black disk the result will be a broken color. when a color is mixed with both black and white, i.e., with gray, and becomes thereby a broken color, it then belongs to a broken scale and educationally has no place in any pure scale, i.e., a scale in which the key tone is a pure color. neither has a broken scale of a color any place in a chart of pure scales or spectrum scales. _neutral colors._--a term often improperly applied to grays, white, black, silver and gold. see passive colors. _passive colors._--a term suggested as covering black, white, silver, gold and very gray colors. the term "neutral colors" is often used in this sense but this is evidently improper if we are to confine the term "neutral gray" to the representation of white in shadow because as soon as a gray has any color in it, it is no longer neutral. _active colors._--those colors neither passive or neutral. necessarily both the terms "active" and "passive" used in relation to colors must be quite indefinite. _complementary colors._--as white light is the sum of all color if we take from white light a given color the remaining color is the complement of the given color. when the eye has been fatigued by looking intently for a few seconds at a red spot on a white wall and is then slightly turned to the wall, a faint tint of a bluish green is seen, and this is called the accidental color of the red, and is supposed to be identical with its complementary color. if with the disks we determine a color which with a given color will produce by rotation a neutral gray, we have the complementary color more accurately than by any other means at present known in the use of pigmentary colors. _harmony._--two colors are said to be in harmony or to combine harmoniously if the effect is pleasing when they are in juxtaposition or are used in a composition. _spectrum circuit._--if a pigmentary imitation of the solar spectrum with the addition of violet red at the red end and red violet at the violet end be made, and the two ends joined, we shall have a spectrum circuit. this may be in the form of a circle, an ellipse or an oval. _primary colors._--in the brewster theory red, yellow and blue. in the young-helmholtz theory red, green and violet are termed primary colors because it is supposed that from these three sensations all color perceptions are experienced. in purely scientific investigations of color perceptions these last three or others which are supposed to serve the same purpose are also called fundamental colors. practically every spectrum color is a primary, because each has its own wave length. _secondary colors._--in the brewster theory orange, green and purple have been called secondary because it is claimed that they are produced by the combination of primary colors in pairs. _tertiary colors._--a term used in the brewster theory to denote three classes of colors called russet, citrine and olive, made by mixing the secondaries in pairs. these are all broken spectrum colors. the orange and purple produce russet; the orange and green form citrine; the green and purple, olive. there seems to be no good reason for perpetuating the indefinite terms secondaries and tertiaries as applied to color. _values._--this word is very freely used in discussing effects in works of art, both in color and in black and white. at present it seems to be a very difficult term to define, and yet each artist is quite sure that he can "feel" it, although few will attempt to put into words a definition satisfactory even to themselves. when an engraver, who is also an artist, attempts to interpret nature in black and white on the metal plate or wooden block, he endeavors to reproduce the "values" of the various parts of the subject before him. in doing this he, for one thing, attempts to produce a variety of neutral grays which will express to the eye by means of black and white lines the same tones of color effect as are seen in the several parts of the subject under investigation. if this were the whole problem the matter would be easily expressed by the disk nomenclature. for instance, if we are to consider a certain red object which may be represented by the standard red disk, we place a medium sized disk of that color on the spindle, and in front of it, smaller disks of white and black united. by rotation the white and black disks become a neutral gray at the center of the red disk. if this gray is made nearly white all observers will agree that the gray is lighter than the red, and if it is nearly black the opinion will be equally unanimous that it is darker than the red. consequently there evidently must be a gray somewhere between these two extremes which a large majority of experts may agree to be equal in depth or tone to the red, i.e., neither lighter nor darker. but the artist-engraver will insist that to him the term "value" expresses much more than this and that he must use different lines in the sky or distance from those which he uses in the foreground; and some engravers will also insist that two different colors in the foreground must receive different treatment with the graver in order to express their true values. we know that true values of colors are not expressed in a photograph, as the warm colors are too dark and the blue far too light. if the term "value of a color" is to be used as expressing something more than a neutral gray of such a tone as to seem equal to it, then possibly this latter quality must be expressed by the word tone, and yet this use of that word will seem to enlarge its scope beyond its present limits as it now is used to express the relations between the different localities in _one_ scale of color, while this new use will extend to the comparison of tones in various color scales, including neutral grays. _luminosity._--the luminosity of a color is determined by comparing it with a neutral gray. when a color seems to be of the same brightness as a given neutral gray, i.e., not lighter nor darker, then that gray is its measure of luminosity. a noted authority says: "no colored object can have the luminosity of a white object reflecting practically the whole of the light impinging upon it. therefore if we take absolute reflection as a fraction of will give the relative luminosity of any body." luminosity is another expression of the quality above described as forming a prominent feature in the term values. _potentiality._--the ability or strength of a color to affect other colors by combinations with them. for example, white has a greater potentiality than black, yellow greater than red, and violet the least of all the spectrum colors. it is a pertinent question whether any quality is involved in this term which is not found in value, tone and luminosity, but it expresses a somewhat different phase of a line of color effects. _quality._--this term seems to be used rather indefinitely when applied to color, but perhaps it is not far removed from the term hue or kind of color. [illustration] practical experiments illustrating the theory of color. in the foregoing pages an attempt is made to explain clearly and as briefly as possible the principles on which the bradley system of color instruction is based, and also to suggest a few definitions necessary to an intelligent discussion of the general subject of color. owing to the peculiar nature of the questions involved, demonstration by actual experiment is more convincing than the mere statement of theories can possibly be, and therefore a few of the following pages will be devoted to the explanation of some valuable experiments, all of which may be tried by the teacher in private, while many of them can be shown the pupils with great advantage. in this system the maxwell color disks are the means for color combinations and the basis for measurements, and therefore for a color nomenclature. for this reason the present chapter treats largely of the proper use of the wheel and incidentally the theory of red, yellow and blue primaries with combinations to produce secondaries and tertiaries. no teacher using the material connected with this color scheme can hope to meet with success without a knowledge of the principles on which it is based, and in this subject as in all others, it is essential that the teacher shall know much more of it than he or she is ever required to teach. [illustration: fig .] the color wheel. for most convenient use the machine should be clamped to the front of a table and near one end, so that the speaker using it can stand at the end of the table and operate it with the right hand. fig. represents the normal school color wheel showing the face of the disks as seen by the audience. facility in the operation of the color wheel is rapidly acquired by practice and the exact position is easily determined by the operator after a few trials. fig. shows the primary school color wheel, which has only two sizes of disks, while the largest machine has four sizes and is much finer in construction. the smaller machine does not require clamping to a table, but may be steadied by the left hand while being operated by the right hand. [illustration] the color top. many of the experiments of the color wheel can be produced with a small toy called a color top, which is shown in fig. . it is composed of a thick cardboard disk forming the body of the top and a central wooden spindle on which the disk closely fits. a number of colored paper disks are provided with this top so that very many of the experiments performed before a class can be repeated individually by the pupils and in this way the facts which may have been demonstrated to the class with the color wheel can be fixed in the minds of the pupils by their own experiments with the top. also as a home toy in the hands of the pupils it can be of value, not only to the children, but to the parents as well. [illustration] use of the disks. fig. shows the method of joining two maxwell disks and fig. their appearance when properly joined to be placed on the rotating spindle of the color wheel. in joining two or more disks for use on a color wheel or top, care should be taken to place them in such relation to each other that when rotated the radial edges exposed on the face toward the audience will not "catch the wind." with small disks on the color wheel this is not important, and if there is no whole graduated disk on the arbor behind the slitted disks there is no advantage, but in using the larger disks it is well to put the graduated disk behind the others for this purpose, as at best it is quite laborious to keep up speed when using several of the large disks, even with the best possible conditions. with the thin paper disks of the color top this is an important matter. it will be noticed that the method of joining the disks for use on the color top is the reverse of that to be observed with the disks of the color wheel as shown in fig. . [illustration] fig. shows the same two color disks placed in front of a large white disk having its edge graduated to one hundred parts, so that the relative proportions of two or more colors to be combined can be determined accurately. as the smaller disks offer so much less resistance in rotation than the larger ones they are most desirable in private experiments or before a small class, and the largest disks of the normal school wheel are necessary only when more than three expressions of color are required to be shown at the same time. in making experiments before an audience those persons in front should if possible be at least ten feet from the color wheel. from ten to forty feet there seems to be but little difference in the color perception, but for best tests fifteen to twenty feet is the most desirable position. for private practice with the color wheel a small mirror may be placed five or six feet in front of the wheel in such position as to furnish an image of the disks to the person operating the machine. owing to a slight loss of light by reflection the closest criticism may not be possible when working with a mirror in this way, but if a plate mirror is used the results are very good and a bevel plate mirror about x inches without frame, can usually be procured at small cost; this method is much more satisfactory for personal experimenting than an assistant to turn the wheel. these disks have heretofore been used as a curious piece of philosophical apparatus rather than because they have been supposed to have any practical value in color training, but in establishing a color nomenclature based on six spectrum colors the disks at once assume a great value and are indispensable in a system of color instruction founded on the science of color and on the psychological perception of colors. let us suppose that the two disks shown in fig. are yellow and green, parts yellow and parts green; then by rotation we shall have a green yellow indicated by the symbol y. , g. . no argument is necessary to prove that when an exact expression of color effect is required this is better than the simple statement that it is a greenish yellow. how to begin the experiments. for practice it is profitable to commence with the red and orange disks combined on the spindle, with a smaller red disk in front of them, the smallest being preferable. begin by introducing say five per cent of orange and notice that a change from the standard red at the center is visible. gradually increase the orange until it seems difficult to say whether the resulting color is more like red or orange, and then exchange the small red disk for an orange disk of the same size, and continue adding orange in the larger disks until the difference cannot be detected between the small disk and the larger combined disks. the standards may be combined in pairs, as has been indicated with the red and orange, to produce all the intermediate hues throughout the spectrum, but it must be remembered that these combinations are to be made by joining in pairs, colors adjacent in the spectrum, red and orange, orange and yellow, yellow and green, green and blue, blue and violet. we then shall have representations of all the spectrum colors, but there are still the colors between violet and red, known in nature and art as purples, which must be produced by uniting the red and violet disks, thus completing a circuit of colors containing all the pure colors in nature. in nature all colors are modified by light and shade, strong light producing tints and shadows more or less deep forming shades. these effects are imitated on the color wheel by the use of a white disk combined with a disk of a standard color for tints and a black disk for shades, and can be tested in the same order as indicated for the hues, by combining each standard disk with a white or a black disk in varying proportions. it will be noticed early in disk experiments that a very small amount of white produces a decided effect in the tone of a color while a comparatively large amount of black is necessary to produce a marked change. as this is exactly the reverse of the effects of white and black pigments it is always a subject of remark. in pigments these effects are imitated by the mixture of white with a color to produce tints, and black for shades, or more generally instead of black some dark natural pigment approaching the hue of the color, may be preferred because a black pigment will too often impart an unexpected and undesirable hue to the color. as for example, in making shades of red some natural brown pigment is better than black, and so various dark browns and grays are used for different colors. even with the disks it is impossible to imitate purest tints of all the standard colors, because in some of the colors, as peculiarly in red and blue, the rotation of the white disk seems to develop a slightly violet gray, for which effect there has as yet been no scientific explanation. this gray dulls the purity of the tint as compared with that which is found in the color under a bright illumination, but on the whole both tints and shades as well as the hues can be better illustrated with the disks than in any other way, and in addition, the advantage is secured of being able to measure and record the tone by the graduated disk in the same way as the hues are measured and recorded. a further advantage is secured in the use of disks in color instruction because with pigments, the only other method by which colors can be combined, much time must be lost not only in the mixing and applying of the colors but in the delay necessary to allow them to dry before the true results can be seen. the shades of yellow as shown on the wheel will not be generally accepted without criticism, but careful comparison with yellow paper in shadow will prove the substantial truth of the disk results. this experiment may be tried as follows: join two cards with a hinge of paper or cloth to form a folding screen like the covers of a book as in fig. . on the surface a, paste a piece of standard yellow paper and on b, a piece of yellow shade no. . hold these two surfaces toward the class in such a position that the strong light will fall on b, which is the yellow shade, and thus bring the face a, which is a standard yellow, in a position to be shaded from the light. by varying the angle of the covers with each other and turning them as a whole from side to side, a position will be secured in which the two faces will seem so nearly alike as to convince the class that this color which they may have thought to be green, is not green, but a color peculiar to itself, a shade of yellow; because the darker paper when in full light appears substantially the same as the standard yellow in the shade or shadow. [illustration] in our experiments thus far with the wheel we have combined the standards in pairs to produce the colors of the spectrum between the standards, which for convenience may be called intermediate spectrum hues, and also have combined a white disk with each of the standards to produce tints of the standards and a black disk to make shades. by combining a white disk with an orange and a yellow disk, for example, forming a trio of disks, a variety of tints of orange yellow and yellow orange may be made. also by the use of the black disk instead of the white a series of shades of the intermediate hues may be produced, and thus a great variety of tints and shades of many spectrum colors shown. now if the white and black disks are combined with each other the result will be a shade of white, i.e., a white in shadow, which is an absolutely neutral gray. as the experiments progress it will be seen that this neutral gray is a very important feature in the study of color, and therefore it may be well at this point to make sure that the disk combinations give the true gray of a white in shadow by a test similar to the one used for the shade of yellow, thus disarming criticism. such a test may conveniently be made by covering the reverse sides of the folding covers with white on one cover and "neutral gray paper no. " on the other. as the neutral gray papers are made in imitation of combinations of black and white disks this experiment is as convincing as the one regarding the yellow shade. this is but one of many examples of the value of disk combinations in the classification and analysis of colors. in an elaborate chart of colors highly recommended for primary color instruction a dozen years ago no correct understanding of the classification of colors is shown, the tints and shades being indicated by a very decided change of hue rather than a consistent modification of tone. for example, in the red scale the standard or normal red is vermilion, i.e., an orange red; shade no. is simply a red less orange in hue than the standard, and shade no. a shade of the standard red advocated in this system; while tint no. is a broken yellow orange and tint no. is much more yellow and more broken than no. . similar inconsistencies occur in all the other scales, showing that the author had no correct knowledge of the analysis of colors, and yet this was the best and practically the only aid offered for instruction in color at that time. neither were there any true standards for neutral grays and the term "neutral" was used in such an indefinite way as to rob it of all actual value, until by the aid of disk combinations it came to be confined to white in shadow as closely imitated by the combinations of white and black disks. [illustration] with colored papers made in imitation of the six standards and two tints and two shades of each, six scales of colors may be produced by arranging the five different tones of each color in a row, as in fig. , which represents the orange scale with tints at the left and shades at the right. if, in addition to these six scales, we have two scales between each two of the standards, we may have between the orange scale and the yellow scale a yellow orange scale and an orange yellow scale, and if we thus introduce the intermediate scales between each of the other two standards, and include the red violet and violet red, we shall have eighteen scales of five tones each. the eighteen scales as above named may be arranged as shown in fig. to form a chart of pure spectrum scales which is very valuable for study and comparison and especially so in the study of the theory of harmonies. all these tones are called pure tones and this chart is therefore called a chart of pure spectrum scales. the idea that soft, dull, broken colors produce best harmonies when used in combination may or may not be a universally accepted truth, but there is a general belief that it is much easier to make acceptable combinations with broken colors than with pure spectrum colors and their tints and shades, and therefore the temptation has been strong to select a general assortment of colors which easily harmonize because of the pleasing effect, instead of having regard solely to the educational value of colors. truth in education requires that when colors are classified as spectrum colors they shall all be the nearest approach possible to the true spectrum colors, and in the spectrum there are no broken or impure colors. therefore, whenever the spectrum is set up as nature's standard or chart of colors and an imitation is made in pigments or papers, great care should be used to secure the most accurate imitation possible, but in the past this has not been the case, because of the prevailing idea that the colors must all be possible combinations of three primaries, and hence the orange, green and violet have often been very broken colors. while pure colors and their tints and shades may be advantageously combined with various tones of broken colors in one composition for artistic effect, they should be definitely divided when classified for educational purposes, and their differences clearly explained to students. in a scale of tones in any color the several papers will harmonize more easily if the tints and shades are not too far removed from the standard, but it is thought by many good judges that the educational advantage in learning to see the relationship of color in the more extreme tones is of greater importance in the elementary grades than the facility for making most pleasing combinations. consequently in the bradley colored papers the tints are very light and the shades quite dark. if, instead of adding either a white disk or a black disk to a spectrum color, by which we make pure tints and shades, we add both white and black, a line of gray colors or so-called broken colors is formed. this is most beautifully shown with the disks, and in this way a line of _true broken colors_ is secured, because in each case a true neutral gray has been added to the color, which cannot be insured in the mixture of gray pigments. as an example, this may be shown with the three smaller sizes of the orange disks. with the medium size of these three make the combination orange, ; white, ; black . with the larger size disks make the proportions orange, ; white, ; black, , and with the smallest size orange, ; white, ; black, . place these three sets of disks on the spindle at one time and you have the three tones of a broken orange scale. with similar combinations applied to the six standards and one intermediate hue between each two, there will be material for a chart of broken spectrum scales, as shown in fig. , including twelve scales of three tones each. these are the most beautiful colors in art or nature when combined harmoniously. because of the loss of color in broken colors it is not advisable to attempt so many different hues or so many tones of each hue as in pure colors, for slight differences in either hues or tones are not as readily perceived. in these two charts of color scales two distinct classes of colors are represented, namely, pure colors and broken colors. the pure colors consist of the purest possible pigmentary imitations of spectrum colors, with their tints and shades, and the broken colors are these pure colors dulled by the admixture of neutral grays in various tones. this distinction is readily recognized under proper training, so that if a broken color is introduced into a combination of colors from a pure scale it will be readily detected, which always occurs when the attempt is made to produce a series of spectrum scales by the combination of the three primary colors red, yellow and blue. by this method, if logically carried out, the orange, green and violet are dark broken colors, and hence to a less extent the intermediate colors also, because each of these is a mixture of a pure color with a broken color. the usual result, however, is that the orange made from the red and yellow seem so out of place in the warm end of the spectrum that it is modified and made much nearer the pure color, usually, however, too yellow, while the greens and violets, which are deep and rich broken colors, may seem more harmonious, but are so dark as to be out of place among spectrum colors. [illustration] if light broken colors are properly combined a beautiful imitation rainbow is produced, which is more harmonious than the spectrum made from full colors. a series of such colors combined in spectrum order produce a more pleasing effect when separated by a small space of white, black, gray, silver or gold. the reason for this may be found in the discussion of simultaneous contrasts. in nature nearly all colors are broken. first, there is always more or less vapor together with other impurities in the air, so that even in a clear day objects a few hundred feet from us are seen through a gray veil, as it were, and in a misty or hazy day this is very evident. in the case of somewhat distant foliage the general color effect is produced by the light reflected from the aggregation of leaves, some of which may be in bright sunlight and others in shadow, with a mixture of brown twigs. all these tints and shades of green and brown are mingled in one general effect in the eye. also, owing to the rounded forms and irregular illumination of objects, we see very little full or local color in nature. therefore the study of broken colors becomes the most fascinating branch of this whole subject, and it also has an added interest because nearly all the colors found in tapestries, hangings, carpets, ladies' dress goods, etc., come under this head. in fact it would be hazardous for an artisan or an artist to use any full spectrum color in his work, except in threads, lines or dots. a considerable quantity of pure standard green, for instance, would mar the effect of any landscape. it is a very interesting diversion to analyze samples of the dress goods sold each season under the most wonderful names. for example:-- "ecru," a color sold a few seasons ago, is a broken orange yellow with a nomenclature o. , y. , w. , n. , while this year "leghorn" and "furet" are two of the "new" colors, the former having a nomenclature of o. , y. , w. , n. , and the latter o. , y. , w. , n. , all of which are very beautiful broken orange yellows. "ashes of roses" of past years is a broken violet red which can be analyzed as follows: r. - / , v. - / , w. - / , n. . "anemon" of this season is r. , v. , w. , n. , which is another broken violet red. "old rose" is a broken red: r. - / , w. - / , n. . "empire" of past seasons is g. - / , b. , w. - / , n. , while "neptune" of this season is g. - / , b. - / , w. , n. , both being broken blue greens. "topia," a beautiful brown, is o. , n. , a pure shade of orange, while "bolide" is a lighter yellow orange with a nomenclature of o. - / , y. - / , w. - / , n. - / . we might analyze "elephant's breath," "baby blue," "nile green," "crushed strawberry" and others common in the market, but while the names will no doubt occur each season the colors will change with the fickle demands of the goddess of fashion and the interests of the manufacturers and dealers. in writing any color nomenclature the letters should be used in the following order: r.-o.-y.-g.-b.-v.-w.-n., thus always listing the standard colors before the white or black. for example, never place y. before o. or r., and never use n. before w. if this order is strictly adhered to the habit is soon acquired and a valuable point gained. it has been shown that combined white and black disks form neutral gray, which is a white in shadow or under a low degree of illumination. if to such a gray a very small amount of color is added, as orange for example, by the introduction of an orange disk, this neutral gray becomes an orange gray, but unless the amount is considerable it can not be detected as an orange, but the gray may be termed a warm gray, denoting that it is affected by some one of the colors near the red end of the spectrum. if blue instead of orange is added to the neutral gray, a cool gray is produced. when green is added to a gray the result can not fairly be called either warm or cool, and hence we have termed it a green gray. according to this plan we have four classes of grays, neutral, warm, cool and green grays. as there may be many tones of each, and many intermediate combinations from red to green, or green to blue, the number of grays in nature is infinite, but these four classes with two tones of each in the papers form what may be called standards or stations from which to think of the grays, the same as the six standards in the spectrum constitute points from which to think of pure colors. a careful consideration of the foregoing pages, accompanied with a color wheel or even a color top, can hardly fail to give a student who will make the experiments a clear idea of the use of the disks in the system of color education in which they form such an important feature, and therefore the old theory of three primaries, red, yellow and blue, and all that it leads to can be very intelligently considered and tested by them in the experiments which follow. this old theory briefly restated is as follows: it is said "there are in nature three primary colors, red, yellow and blue; and by the mixture of these primary colors in pairs, orange, green and violet may be made." in fact leading educators have said that "in the solar spectrum, which is nature's chart of colors, the principal colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet; _of these_ red, yellow and blue are primaries from which may be made the secondaries, orange, green and violet." all such statements as heretofore made in any popular treatment of the subject are understood to mean that in a pigmentary imitation of a spectrum the secondaries as enumerated may be produced by the mixtures of the primary pigments, because pigmentary mixtures are the only combinations generally recognized. this theory has also included the statement that the primaries are complementary to the secondaries in pairs, and that the combination of the secondaries in pairs may produce a distinct class of colors called tertiaries. it will be the aim of the following pages to demonstrate that in all this there is neither scientific or æsthetic truth nor educational value. the old theories tested by mixture of three pigments. experiments in mixing the three pigments, red, yellow and blue, to produce the secondaries, orange, green and violet, have been very carefully made with interesting and instructive results. all such experiments are valueless unless made with one accepted set of primaries for the three combinations, because it is self-evident that if we select a vermilion red which is very decidedly an orange red, and choose for our yellow one of the orange yellows, the mixture will more nearly approach a true orange than if a standard red and standard yellow are used. also in making a violet, if we mix a carmine, which is a violet red, with a decidedly violet blue, of which there are many, the result will be a better violet than the combination of the standard red and blue. so also in the mixing of blue and yellow to make green, a greenish yellow and a greenish blue will necessarily produce better results than the standards. therefore, to test the matter fairly, the same pigments which are used to coat the standard red, yellow and blue papers have been combined so as to produce the best possible orange, green and violet, and these results when analyzed on the color wheel are as follows:-- the orange made by mixing standard red and yellow pigments in the best proportions is equal to o. , w. , n. . the violet is equal to v. , w. , n. , and the nearest approach to a standard green is shown by disk analysis to be g. , w. , n. , which is better than the violet and nearly as good as the orange. these experiments show that heretofore when a line of standards of six colors has been prepared from three primaries, red, yellow and blue, even though the purest possible colors may have been selected for the primaries, the secondaries have not been in the same class of colors, and that all of them are very dark broken colors. therefore, in using educational colored papers based on such a scheme, the pupil has received no correct impressions of the relative values of the several colors involved in pure spectrum scales, but has been shown at the outset a mixture of pure and broken colors _as standards_. this is not a matter of opinion regarding best harmonies, because it is easy to demonstrate that less skill is required to combine broken colors harmoniously than pure colors, but it is a choice between truth and error in the early education of color perception. old theories tested by the color wheel or color top. while it may be impossible for the reader to secure pigments exactly like the standards, red, yellow and blue, used in the above experiments, and therefore the statement here made can not be accurately verified, any one having a color wheel or even a color top may test the same combinations by use of disks. if it is true, as claimed, that a good standard orange can be made by mixing red and yellow, then it should follow that when a red and yellow disk are combined and a smaller orange disk placed in front of them, that it ought to be possible to so adjust the proportion of red to yellow that by rotation the outer ring of color will match the central orange disk. a trial of this experiment will show that while the color resulting from the best possible combination of red and yellow is a kind of orange, it is not even an approximation to the standard orange, but is a shade of orange which may be matched by combining the smaller orange disk with a black disk in the proportion of o. , n. , the larger disks being r. , y. . in combining red and blue disks to make a violet the result is more satisfactory, while if we attempt to produce a green by combining the yellow and blue disks the result will be surprising, but probably not convincing, because the statement that yellow and blue make green has been so persistently reiterated as a fundamental axiom that people who have given the subject but little attention will feel that to doubt it is rank heresy. in a text book treating of color is found the following passage: "green substances reflect the green, i.e., the blue and yellow rays of the sunlight and absorb all the others." it is a fact, however, that in the mixture of blue and yellow light there is little or no trace of green, as a single experiment with a color top or color wheel will readily demonstrate. in response to this convincing experiment a colorist of the "old school," (and there are few others) will doubtless say, "such an assertion seems to be true when applied to these rotating disks, but we see no practical value in experiments of this kind, because in the use of color we must depend on pigmentary combinations, and in pigments yellow and blue do make green." the author of a statement of this kind is always honest in making it, and yet it is absolutely untrue, because as has already been shown, the green resulting from the mixture of yellow and blue can not be placed even approximately in the same class as the yellow and blue of which it is composed. in accepting the disk combinations of standard pigmentary colors we are assuming a system of color investigation based on the combination of colored light rather than the mixture of pigments, and to an artist who has given the subject little thought this seems quite radical, not to say startling. but, logically, why is it not the most natural as well as the correct basis for this work? art in color must be based on the imitation of natural color effects. we must first learn to see color correctly and to know what we see, and after that it is a very simple matter to learn which pigments to combine for producing any desired result which is already clearly defined in the mind. in fact the best selection of pigments must often be based on their chemical and mechanical qualities as much as on their peculiar hues. all color impressions of material substances are produced by colored light reflected from a material surface to the retina of the eye, through which by some unknown means it is conveyed to the brain. when the white sunlight falls on a material substance a portion of the rays are absorbed and others are reflected to the eye, thereby conveying impressions of color. if on a surface of yellow material we throw a strong orange light through a colored glass, some of the orange rays from the glass will mingle with the yellow rays and the two are reflected to the eye, thereby producing an orange yellow or yellow orange effect where before it was yellow. so in a summer evening landscape when there is a so-called red sunset, everything is illuminated by an orange light and each color in the landscape is affected by the orange rays which mingle with the rays of the local color and are reflected to the eyes of the observer, producing the effect of local colors mixed with orange. in a room where the windows open on to a green lawn with many trees in close proximity to the house, nearly all the light is reflected from green surfaces, and hence is green light. in such a case a correct painting of objects in that room would have a general green effect. the afternoon light in a room on the west side of a city street may be nearly all red light, reflected from an opposite red brick wall, and such a room would be ill-adapted to showing fine dress goods, because the hues of the more delicate colors would be entirely changed, and hence would give a false impression as to the relations of the several colors in combination as seen in white or clear daylight. if a piece of light blue silk is illuminated by sunlight passing through a bit of yellow glass, no trace of green effect will be produced, but a gray either slightly yellow or blue, according to the relative strength of the colors in the glass and the silk. this same effect would be secured if the yellow light of the setting sun illuminated the same material, but under such conditions everything else would be similarly affected so that the effect would not be so apparent. the idea that all color is derived from the three primaries, red, yellow and blue, is so generally believed that our best writers among artists, colorists and educators have repeated it for many years. george barnard, an english artist, in a very valuable book on water color painting, speaking of the colors of the spectrum which may be re-combined to form white light, says that if the yellow and blue rays are combined they produce green. chevreul also states in his invaluable book on color contrasts that yellow and blue threads woven into a texture, side by side, produce green. this statement is the more remarkable because the writer was a very careful investigator and is but another evidence of the strong hold which the newton and brewster theory has had on the public mind for so many years. the story is told of an artist who wished to introduce into a composition of still life a blue vase with a bit of yellow lace thrown over a portion of it, and having been educated to believe that yellow and blue made green, gave a green effect to the portion of the vase covered by the lace. had he known that blue and yellow light combined make gray instead of green he would have avoided the error. the fact that gray is the product of blue and yellow light is sometimes taken advantage of in forming backgrounds in lithographic printing, in which a stippling of alternate dots of yellow and blue, very close together but not overlapping, is used to produce a beautifully transparent gray much more pleasing than any one tint of gray. this result is due to the blending of the two colors in the eye with the same effect as the colors of two rotating disks are mingled. the fact that there is a difference between the color effects produced by mixing two pigments and the mixing of the light reflected from similar colored surfaces is a very strong argument for a system of color instruction based on disk combinations, rather than on pigmentary mixtures. in order to obtain the most truthful effects of color in nature the artist should have sufficient knowledge of the principles which govern the combination of colors by reflected light, so that his reason may aid his eyes. a little experimenting with the rotating disks and with pigments will convince any one that the disk combinations form the only possible basis at present known for logical color instruction. concerning the complementary colors. having shown that the three colors, red, yellow and blue, can not be combined to make an orange, a green or a violet of a corresponding degree of purity, we will consider the other claim which is set up by the advocates of the brewster theory, namely, that the secondaries are complementary to the primaries in pairs, the green to the red, the violet to the yellow and the orange to the blue. as all color is contained in white light, if we take from white light any given color, the color remaining is the complementary. if a small disk of standard red paper is placed on a white wall and the eyes fixed intently on it for a few seconds, and then the eyes slightly moved back and forth, a ring of a bluish green tint will be seen surrounding the red paper, or if the eyes are fixed intently on the disk for a short time and the paper suddenly removed, a disk of the same blue green tint will be seen in place of the red disk. this is called the accidental color and is supposed to be identical with the complementary color, although the image is too faint to give any very exact effect, but it is sufficient to furnish a clue to the complementary, and we may infer that a color between green and blue is that which is required. now if we can determine in what proportions red, blue and green must be united to produce white light we may solve the problem. this is not possible in the use of any pigmentary colors, because of the impurity of all pigments as compared with spectrum colors. although the mixture of colored light reflected from the disks, which are made of pigmentary colors, gives much purer color than the actual mechanical mixture of the two pigments, still, because it is a reflection of pigmentary colors, it is far lower in tone than the corresponding mixture of spectrum colors. therefore it can not be a pure white, but may be white in shade or a neutral gray, which, as already shown, can be produced by the combination of a white and a black disk. therefore if red, blue and green disks of medium size are joined on the wheel and in front of them small white and black disks are combined, we have a means for solving this problem. if these various disks can be so adjusted that when rotated the effect of the three colored disks is a neutral gray, (or white under a low degree of illumination) exactly matching a gray that may be obtained by adjusting the small black and white disks, then one step in the solution is taken, as shown in fig. . [illustration] with such an arrangement a very close match is produced, when the combined disks show the proportions to be r. - / , b. - / , g. for the larger disks, and for the small disks w. , and n. . now if blue and green are combined in the same proportions, as indicated above and in quantities sufficient when added together to fill the entire circle of parts, blue will contain . parts and green, . parts, as shown in fig. , and the disks when rotated will give the color which is the complementary of red: namely, a blue green. in the same way the complementary of each of the other standard colors, and in fact of any color, may be obtained. the complementary of orange is another color between the green and blue, but more largely blue. the complementary of green is a violet red, and of violet a color between yellow and green, while yellow and blue are very nearly complementary to each other. these figures furnish the results in a very well-lighted room, with a perfectly white interior. it is a well-established fact that this experiment is somewhat affected by the degrees of illumination, and also that colored light from the walls and ceiling of a room must of necessity have its effect, but all these matters are so insignificant as to be of no material consequence in the æsthetic study of the subject, and they can be very nearly eliminated when necessary by a careful selection of conditions. whenever accurate experiments in pigmentary color comparisons are to be made, either by the use of rotating disks or otherwise, it is desirable to have a very well-lighted room, with a northern exposure and to select a morning or noonday light from a slightly overcast sky. these conditions obviate the unpleasant effect of direct sunlight in the room and also the very slightly blue effect of the clear sky. these precautions are unnecessary in experiments relating to the ordinary æsthetic consideration of color combinations, but even in such work it is important to exclude all light reflected from neighboring trees or colored buildings. also the interior of the room should be as free from color as possible; a clean white surface is especially desirable. a chart of complementary colors, shown in fig. , has been found very valuable in fixing in the minds of teacher and pupils the complementaries of the six standards. in this chart, which is about eighteen inches in diameter, the circles at the ends of the six diameters are colored papers selected from the bradley coated papers, as approximating the true complementaries. in the majority of cases they are not far from correct, but are least satisfactory in the blue and yellow. theoretically the complementary of the ideal standard blue is a slightly orange yellow, and of the standard yellow a slightly violet blue. but there is as yet no blue pigment in the market suitable for commercial use which is free from a slightly violet effect. therefore the standard blue paper is practically as good a complementary for the standard yellow as the violet blue paper. but notwithstanding these slight imperfections which are at present unavoidable, the chart is a valuable aid in fixing in the mind the positions of the complementary pairs in the spectrum circuit. [illustration] each of the foregoing experiments furnishes an interesting class exercise, and may be very closely repeated by the pupils with their tops. also the computation of the proportion of green and blue when raised to the full circle may form a practical problem in proportion for pupils of the higher grades. taken together, these experiments prove that the complementaries of the old primaries are not found in the secondaries. the last claim of the brewster theory is that the secondaries by combination form three lines of colors peculiar to themselves, called citrines, russets and olives. it is asserted that the mixture of orange and green makes citrine; orange and violet russet; green and violet olive. although these names may be very convenient terms to express three general classes of colors, they must of necessity be too general and indefinite to be of value for accurate expression of color effects, and are in fact so vague that hardly two persons can be found in a large company who will agree as to the best expression of either of them. the following are formulas for a number of colors in each class, as made from analyses of colors coming under these names. it is an interesting exercise to produce some of these colors by means of the rotating color disks and test the opinions of the different members of a company as to which best represents to each one of them a tertiary color, as citrine, for example. for this purpose three different formulas may be shown at the same time, with three sizes of disks. citrines. o. . y. . w. - / . n. - / . y. . w. . n. . y. . w. . n. . g. . o. . y. . w. . n. . o. . y. . w. . n. . russets. r. . o. . w. . n. . r. . w. - / . n. - / . r. . o. . w. . n. . r. . o. . w. . n. . r. . o. . w. . n. . olives. g. . b. - / . w. - / . n. . g. . b. . w. . n. . g. . b. . w. . n. . g. - / . b. . w. . n. - / . g. - / . b. - / . w. . n. . the term citrine theoretically covers all possible combinations of orange and green, but as generally understood those colors which are so near the orange or the green as to very decidedly approach either the one or the other are not included, and, as shown in the above analyses, a citrine is a very broken color ranging from an orange yellow through yellow to a green yellow. although the russets would theoretically range from violet to orange, yet the general conception of russet will hardly accept a violet red, but will cover only the red and orange reds as above indicated, while olives are confined to blue greens and green blues. these tests are based on combinations of the bradley standard orange, green and violet pigments, and therefore are far stronger in color than those colors usually termed citrine, russet and olive, made by mixing the pigmentary secondaries. for example, if a yellow and blue pigment are mixed to form a green, and red and yellow pigments to make an orange, and then this green and orange are mixed to produce a citrine, the result will be very much darker and more broken than the mixture of the purer orange and green colors used as standards. restricted to these limits these names may become very useful terms for general color expressions, as covering three different classes of broken colors. if any one believes that these color formulas do not correctly represent the three classes of colors indicated, a series of experiments with even the small color top will prove very convincing. when the subject of standards as a means for identifying colors is mentioned artists frequently express the feeling that the names of pigments are good enough for them, such as ultramarine blue, prussian blue, vermilions, the siennas, indian red, etc. the following are the analyses of several samples of vermilion, burnt sienna, raw sienna, and indian red of the best tube oil colors in the market:-- vermilion. r. . o. . w. . r. . o. . w. . r. . o. . w. . burnt sienna. r. - / . o. . w. . n. - / . r. - / . o. - / . w. . n. . r. . o. - / . w. - / . n. . raw sienna. o. - / . y. - / . n. . o. . y. . w. . n. . o. - / . y. - / . w. . n. . indian red. r. - / . o. . w. . n. - / . r. - / . o. - / . w. - / . n. - / . a careful examination of these formulas and a reproduction and comparison of the colors on the color top will convince any one that in no case does the commercial name determine the color with a degree of accuracy sufficient for any valuable nomenclature. classification of harmonies. the theory of the harmonies of colors is a subject which awaits very careful investigation and a general discussion by artists and expert colorists. such investigations must include many experiments based on common standards and uniform methods of measurements and records. harmonies naturally seem to fall into a few general classes which are convenient for comparison and discussion as well as for elementary instruction, but no one person can set himself or herself up to decide which are the _best_ harmonies. the practices and recommendations of noted artists who have appeared to be gifted with intuitive perceptions regarding color combinations have frequently included those for which there seemed to be no recognized authority, and yet their beauty could not be questioned. as the rules of grammar are but the correlation of the practices of the best scholars, so the rules governing color combinations must be the summary of the practices and recommendations of the best artists, if they are to be generally accepted as final, and hence we must patiently await the growth of similarly established laws by the comparison of the opinions of critics of acknowledged ability in various departments of the world of art. this has not been possible in the past and can never occur until there is a language of color through which color facts can be somewhat accurately expressed in verbal and written language, and this language cannot exist until there is an accepted alphabet of color on which it can be based. this alphabet is now in part furnished by the spectrum standards and completed by the pigmentary standards and the rotating disks made like them. together they form the basis for a nomenclature by the use of which the questions involved in harmonies can be discussed and the results expressed in written language. in the investigation of any subject with a view to elementary instruction, classification is an important factor, but one which heretofore has been almost ignored as regards color education. consequently at present the more definite division of harmonies into classes is very much a matter of personal opinion, but mr. henry t. bailey, state supervisor of drawing in massachusetts, has suggested a very useful classification in which he arranges all harmonies under these five heads: contrasted, dominant, complementary, analogous and perfected. _contrasted._--the contrasted harmonies are those in which color is contrasted with non-color, or more accurately in which an active color, that is a tone from the spectrum circuit, is contrasted with a passive color, white, black, gray or silver and gold; for example, a blue green tint with white, or green blue with warm gray no. . _dominant._--by dominant harmonies we mean those in which are combined different tones from one color scale. for example, red tint no. , and red shade no. , or a green blue tint, green blue, and a green blue shade. a dominant harmony composed of grays, or white, gray and black, is sometimes called a neutral harmony. _complementary._--this term refers to those harmonies in which are combined opposite or complementary colors in the spectrum circuit. the best of them show not only opposition in color but also opposition in tone. thus, tints of one color with shades of its complementary produce a more pleasing effect than do complementaries of equal value. the best complementary harmonies contain one or more passive colors. _analogous._--this name is applied to those harmonies in which are combined tones from scales of neighboring colors in the spectrum circuit. for example, in a composition of colors from that part of the spectrum containing yellow, green yellow and yellow green the following simple combination may be made: yellow tint no. , green yellow and yellow green shade no. . _perfected._--by perfected harmonies we mean those in which the general effect of one analogous harmony is complementary to that of another. the above classification of harmonies is very valuable for fixing in the mind the various effects of color combinations, and yet they may seem to somewhat merge into each other in their application, until the underlying principles which govern them are understood. it is unwise to suppose that because the above classification of harmonies is based on the science of color we can infer that it furnishes definite rules for producing best effects. the work of chevreul reviewed. the good or bad effect of two or more colors in combination in decorative designs or fine art depends very largely upon phenomena which are elaborately explained in a book entitled "the principles of harmony and contrasts of colours" by m. chevreul.[a] the first edition of this book was prepared in and published in . the author had at that time been employed for a number of years as superintendent of the manufactory of gobelin tapestries in paris under the control of the french government. [a] the principles of harmony and contrasts of colours and their application to the arts. by m. e. chevreul. translated from the french by charles martel. third edition. london. george bell and sons. . in this book are described in detail the results of a great number of experiments which were instigated by complaints regarding certain colors produced in the dyeing department of the manufactory, and which afford the most elaborate exposition of the subject ever published. one of the first things which led chevreul to make his investigation was the complaint that certain black yarns used as shades in blue draperies were not a full black but more or less gray. the author says in his preface, "the work i now publish is the result of my researches on simultaneous contrasts of colours; researches which have been greatly extended since the lectures i gave on this subject at the institute on the th april, . in reflecting on the relations these facts have together, in seeking the principle of which they are the consequence, i have been led to the discovery of the one which i have named the _law of simultaneous contrast of colours_." the closing sentence of the preface to the first edition and dated is as follows:-- "i beg the reader never to forget when it is asserted of the phenomena of simultaneous contrast, _that one colour placed beside another receives such a modification from it_, that this manner of speaking does not mean that two colours, or rather the two material objects that present them to us, have a mutual action, either physical or chemical; it is really only applied to the modification that takes place before us when we perceive the simultaneous impression of these two colours." it was not till three years later that a publisher could be found for this book, which is still a standard. the english translation comprises over five hundred closely printed pages with many engraved and colored plates, and yet, it has been of comparatively little value in _popular instruction_ because of the lack of a generally accepted color nomenclature or list of well defined color terms, by which the readers might have understood and repeated for themselves the experiments described. unfortunately chevreul was fully impressed with the newton-brewster idea of three primaries, red, yellow and blue, and therefore some of his deductions from his experiments seem to have been more or less influenced by the attempt to make them harmonize with this theory, and yet the subject which he has treated so exhaustively and intelligently is one of the most important in the æsthetic study and use of colors. in all expressions of colors in combination with each other, whether in nature, fine arts or the decorative and industrial arts, every color is affected by its surrounding colors, a fact which is exhaustively treated in this book. while with our present knowledge of the subject it does not seem that the material use of color can be reduced to an exact science, this should not prevent us from accepting all the natural and scientific aids which have been or may be discovered toward this desirable result. because of this lack of scientific knowledge in chevreul's time much of the worth of his experiments is lost to us, yet there is very much of value in his work, suggesting as it does experiments which may be tried with present standards and modern methods. if the use of maxwell disks had been known to chevreul his deductions from his experiments would have been quite different in their details. for example, in accepting the proposition that there are three primaries, red, yellow and blue, which may be combined in pairs to make the secondaries, orange, green and violet, he states that owing to the impurities of the pigments the secondaries are not as pure as the primaries. consequently he believes that this may account for many of the shortcomings which he was too observing to overlook; but notwithstanding such an error in theory this wonderful investigator made many practical experiments and established very valuable facts regarding color contrasts. the term simultaneous contrast seems rather restricted for a title covering such a range of effects, and the author subdivides the subject into simultaneous contrasts, successive contrasts and mixed contrasts, which he defines as follows:-- simultaneous contrast. "in the simultaneous contrast of colors is included all the phenomena of modification which differently colored objects appear to undergo in their physical composition and in the height of tone of their respective colors, when seen simultaneously." successive contrast. "the successive contrast of colors includes all the phenomena which are observed when the eyes, having looked at one or more colored objects for a certain length of time, perceive, upon turning them away, images of these objects having a color complementary to that which belongs to each of them." mixed contrast. "the distinction of simultaneous and successive contrast renders it easy to comprehend a phenomenon which we may call the mixed contrast; because it results from the fact that the eye, having seen for a time a certain color, acquires an aptitude to see for another period the complementary of that color, and also a new color, presented to it by an exterior object; the sensation then perceived is that which results from this new color and the complementary of the first." these last two effects may be shown very clearly in simple experiments. there are various phenomena which may be classed as successive contrasts sometimes called "after images." the phenomena which chevreul groups under the term "simultaneous contrast of colors" belong to a class of physio-psychological effects termed after images, and more definitely to the subdivision called negative images. the positive after images are not important in the consideration of the theories of color and therefore are not described here. the specific effect most directly involved in the subject of harmonies may be observed if the eyes are fixed upon a small disk of red paper on a white wall for a few seconds and then the paper is suddenly removed, as there will appear on the wall in place of the full red disk a faint tint of a blue green. this is called an after image, and is nearly or exactly a tint of the color complementary to red. for making this experiment mount a circle of red paper, say three inches in diameter on a square white card, four or five inches across, and grasping the card by one corner hold it in front of a white wall or a sheet of white paper pinned on any support. tell the observer to look intently at the red disk for a half minute, and then without giving any notice suddenly remove it and ask what color is seen in place of it. at the first trial the result may not be entirely successful, because the eyes of the observer may naturally follow the red spot when it is removed instead of remaining fixed in the original position, but a second trial will bring the expected result. to illustrate mixed contrast, fasten on the wall a piece of red tint no. paper four or five inches square. this may be very conveniently done by using a bit of beeswax on each corner of the paper, which will not soil the wall. then having the three-inch circle of standard red paper mounted on a white card somewhat larger than five inches square hold the card in front of the red tint on the wall and repeat the experiment as before. the effect now should be a three-inch disk of very light gray in the center of the pink square, which is a "mixed contrast" according to chevreul. the reason is simple. the after-image or successive contrast of light blue-green is projected on the red tint and being complementary the resulting effect is a gray. if the red tint could be exactly graded to the complementary effect in the eye the resulting gray circle would be a true neutral gray. another illustration of the same physical effect by which the complementary is induced may be shown by substituting for the tint of red a light tint of the blue-green paper retaining the full red disk as before. the same blue-green after image is now projected on to the light blue-green paper and hence a circle of more intense blue-green is produced. thus it is seen that chevreul's successive and mixed contrasts are both due to the same physiological effect, the only difference being in the ground on to which the after image is projected. it probably is unnecessary to state that these experiments may be made with any color and its complementary and that red and blue-green are used here merely as an example. another phase of the same physical effect is seen under other conditions which may at first seem to be quite different from those described, but which on examination appear somewhat similar. it is a well established fact that when two surfaces approximating each other in color, as red and orange for example, are placed side by side, both are rendered less brilliant, an effect which might be reasonably expected because in order to see both the eye is naturally directed first to one and then to the other, and in each case the after image induced is a green-blue or blue-green, which being approximately complementary to both, dulls both. or in other words, it is as though one examines for a long time a line of goods of similar colors so that the eye becomes fatigued and the color dulled. it is said that a good salesman of colored materials will endeavor to occasionally attract a customer's attention for a few moments to some other colors approximating a complementary, so that when the attention is again directed to the goods under consideration the full effect of the color may be secured. if it is true that the phenomenon of the after image is the cause of the peculiar effects expressed by the terms simultaneous, successive and mixed contrasts, and that by these effects all harmonies in color are governed, it is certainly profitable to understand them while using color material with the children, for their good as well as our own pleasure. contrasted harmony. returning to our classification of harmonies, already stated, we find the first to be contrasted harmony, which covers those combinations in which a positive color, as a spectrum color for example, is combined with white, black or gray, leaving out for the present silver and gold, which may be confusing, and can at best be used only as outlines. the simplest combinations of colors are found in this class, all of which are not equally harmonious, and some may not perhaps be entitled to be classed as harmonies, although not positively inharmonious. in this class, as in all others, there is involved contrast of tone and contrast of color, which may best be considered in several divisions. color with white. according to the results of chevreul's elaborate experiments the effect of a combination of an active color with white is to render the color more brilliant and to give to the white the effect of the complementary of the active color. he admits that the modification of white is very indefinite, but claims that, knowing what to expect, a complementary effect may be seen which otherwise would not be noticed. there is also a contrast of tone which in all cases tends to strengthen a color when used with white. black with white. white and black are both intensified by combination with each other, and this is the type of "contrast of tone." contrast of tone is very clearly shown when two or more grays of different tones are placed contiguous to each other. this experiment is easily tried by mounting side by side several strips of gray papers of different tones. if more than two are used they should be arranged in order from lightest to darkest. in this case each band will appear to be graded in tone from one edge to the other, each being lighter at the edge next to the darker paper. this effect is plainly shown on the color wheel by producing several rings of grays with white and black disks of several sizes graduated from light at the center to darker at the circumference. color with black. in consequence of this law of contrast of tone the contrast of black with active colors generally tends to intensify the black and lower the tone of the color, i.e., to weaken it as though white or light gray was mixed with it, but this effect is modified by contrast of color. contrast of color is perceptible in black when combined with color simply because the black is not perfectly black but a very dark gray, and hence there is the same complementary effect which shows in white and the lighter grays, but in a smaller degree. this effect is most clearly seen when the color used in combination is blue or blue-green, which induces in the black, yellow or red complementaries and gives the black a "rusty" appearance. on the other hand, for example, red with black adds the complementary green-blue to the black, which improves it. the orange and yellow have a similar effect by their blue complementaries to relieve the black from any rusty appearance and a green yellow induces a violet effect in the black. colors with gray. when a color is contrasted with white the light from the pure white surface is so intense as to very largely obscure the complementary effect on the white, while on the other hand the feeble light from the black is not favorable for the exhibition of a complementary. so it might naturally be inferred that some tone between the white and black would be much more favorable than either for the observance of this effect, which is proved by experiment to be the case. this fact is illustrated in the familiar experiment of placing a white tissue paper over black letters on a colored ground, by which the black is practically rendered a neutral gray and the color a light broken color, and in appearance the gray letters receive a color complementary to the color of the page on which they are printed. each color has its own tone of gray most susceptible to this complementary effect. the truth of this proposition can be perfectly shown on the color wheel by forming with three different sizes of disks a gray ring on a colored surface. for example, select small disks of orange and white of equal size, then a black and a white disk of the second size and an orange and a white disk of the third size. first place the large orange and white disks on the spindle, then join the two medium-sized white and black disks and put them in front of it, and lastly add the small orange and white disks. by rotation the result is the required neutral gray ring on a light orange surface. by the joining of the white disk with each of the orange disks the orange surface may be changed to a variety of tints for trial with the different grays which may be made from the black and white disks, so that the best tones of both orange and gray may be secured. when the best proportions are obtained the effect will be surprising, because when such disks are properly adjusted the complementary effect is so strong in the gray that it appears as a very definite color, a broken green-blue. it is said that the tone of gray should have the same relation to the tone of the color that its complementary would have in order to get best results. for the same reason if a circle of lightest neutral gray paper, say four inches in diameter, is placed on a piece of yellow paper about six inches square, and another circle just like it is put on a piece of blue paper of similar size, it will be quite difficult to convince any one who has not previously seen the experiment that both gray circles are from the same sheet of paper. the results observed in this experiment are produced by a contrast of tone which causes one to look lighter than the other, and a contrast of hue which gives one a blue and to the other a yellow hue, in contrast to the color on which it is mounted. contrast of colors. if two colors contiguous in the spectrum circuit are placed in juxtaposition the effect of the contrast of hue is to throw them away from each other. for example, if orange red and the red orange papers are put side by side the former will seem more red and the latter more orange. therefore, when colored papers are pasted up or laid in order to form a spectrum, for example, the colors not only fail to blend together but each line of contact is very disagreeably prominent. if two colors are separated by a narrow strip of light gray, gold, black or white, the effect is greatly improved. for this reason a design in analogous colors is often improved by separating certain colors by a fine line of black, gold or gray. if two colors not closely related to each other in the spectrum circuit are placed in juxtaposition, each is modified by an effect which is the complementary of the other. for example, if red and yellow are placed side by side, in contact, the red is rendered more violet by the added effect of blue, which is the complementary of yellow, and the yellow is modified by the blue-green complementary of the red, which tends to dull the yellow and change it slightly toward green. if blue and yellow are joined both are improved, as the two are so nearly complementary to each other that each is intensified by simultaneous contrast, blue being added to blue and yellow to yellow. dominant harmonies. in the use of colored papers those combinations classified as dominant harmonies are the most simple to make because they are all in one family, as the little children like to consider the relationship. the red family consists of the standard red and its tints and shades, or in other words the red scale. with the several papers ready made this harmony becomes very simple, but in the use of pigments the production of a true color scale is not a thing to be confidently undertaken by a novice. in a very elaborate color chart for primary education prepared with great care by dr. hugo magnus and prof. b. joy jeffries, and published at large expense about ten years ago with hand-painted samples in oil colors, this lack of classification of hues is very noticeable, although at that time it was by far the best publication of the kind and was not criticised on this point. for example in a scale of five tones of red the following are the analyses, beginning at the lightest tint:-- tint no. , o. , y. , w. , n. . tint no. , o. , y. , w. , n. . standard, r. , o. . shade no. , r. , o. . shade no. , r. , n. . in this scale according to the bradley nomenclature the standard or full color is a very fine vermilion expressed by r. , o. , i.e. an orange red, and therefore in order to form a perfect scale both tints and shades should be in the orange reds, but in fact the tints are both broken colors, the lightest a very broken yellow-orange and the deeper tint very nearly a light broken orange. the lightest shade is a pure orange-red but with a larger proportion of red to the orange than the standard, while the darkest tone is a pure shade of red. thus in the five tones we have the following arrangement, beginning at the lightest tint:-- broken yellow-orange, broken orange, orange-red; another pure orange-red but more red, and lastly red shade, thus embracing in one orange-red scale parts of four scales from yellow-orange to red. in these defects in the best chart of its kind in the market only ten years ago is seen the best possible evidence of the advance made since that time in color perception, largely due to the use of the color disks in determining scales. while in the use of colored papers the dominant harmony may be the simplest and the one in which there is least danger of really bad work, some of the combinations are much better than others, and superiority is perhaps secured as much by the relative quantities of each tone used in a composition as in the selecting of the tones. in the entire range of the spectrum even this class of harmonies involves problems too complex to be solved by a few rules, but it is a very interesting field in which the children may safely be allowed to roam and experiment. complementary harmonies. complementary harmonies may perhaps be classified next to dominant because they are more easily described and more definitely limited than those effects termed analogous harmonies. a pure complementary harmony consists of the combination of tones from two scales which are complementary to each other. for example, the red scale is complementary to the blue-green scale, as also the green to the violet-red, and so on throughout the entire range of the spectrum scales. as explained on page , the complementary of any color can be determined by means of the color wheel, or nearly enough for æsthetic purposes with the color top. but even though the colors complementary to each other may be determined scientifically there will always remain ample opportunity for the exhibition of color sense and artistic feeling in the choice of colors because the difference between a very beautiful composition in complementary harmony and an indifferently good one may be found in the choice of tones, or in the proportions of each and their arrangement with relation to each other. this harmony certainly contains great possibilities with comparatively few limitations. while it is perhaps approximately true that complementaries are harmonious in combination, yet best authorities do not seem to fully sustain this opinion and it is quite evident that pure tones of some complementary pairs when combined are very hard in their effects, if not positively unpleasant. this can be relieved very decidedly and oftentimes very pleasing results secured by modifying the colors to tints and shades or various broken tones. but as has before been stated, and must be constantly reiterated, all fine questions of harmonies can only be determined by a general agreement of experts in color based on accepted standards. analogous harmonies may seem to be more closely related to the dominant than the complementary and hence, logically, should perhaps be considered before the complementary, but there may be greater difficulties involved in the analogous than in the complementary because they are not so definitely limited. analogous harmonies. in an analogous harmony we may use tones from a number of scales more or less closely related in the spectrum circuit. in some parts of the spectrum it is possible to include a much wider range than in others. it is comparatively easy to produce safe compositions through that part bounded by the orange-yellow and the green scales, while from the green to the violet experiments are much less safe. in almost any section of the spectrum a range of three scales is safe if the tones are properly selected and proportioned, and in some sections as many as five or six may possibly be included, by an artist, with striking and pleasing effect. perfected harmonies. the compositions which have been classified as perfected harmonies may be defined as the combination of two analogous harmonies which as a whole are approximately complementary to each other, or in which the key tones of the analogous harmonies are complementary to each other. such compositions may be entirely composed of analogous colors with the addition of but one complementary color, and this is in fact a very safe harmony, especially if that one color is used as a border line or an outline here and there in the design, in which case it may sometimes be strong in color and tone. the chart of spectrum scales as made from colored papers cut in squares is of great value in explaining the classification of harmonies. fig. is a reduced copy of the chart of pure spectrum scales shown on page , and which is here placed horizontally for convenience. [illustration] the black zig-zag lines are designed as graphic illustrations of the various classes of harmonies. contrasted harmonies as defined are limited to designs in one active color mounted on a background of one of the passive colors and thus need no further explanation, although experience will prove that some combinations are very much more pleasing than others. the dominant harmonies which are defined as combinations of tones from one scale cannot be made more clear by a diagram, which would be simply a straight vertical line through any one of the eighteen scales, indicating that the five tones in that scale or any selection from them may be used in a dominant harmony. the analogous harmony has given students the most trouble and the diagram is principally prepared to illustrate the great variety in harmonies of this class. commencing at the left, the first line indicates a harmony in three scales beginning with red-violet shade no. and passing to shade no. , then to standard violet and thence to blue-violet tints no. and no. . the next is in two scales, beginning at violet-blue shade no. , thence to blue shade no. ; back to normal violet-blue; again into the blue scale at tint no. and back to violet-blue tint no. . the next begins at green-blue shade no. and ends in green tint no. . theoretically the line beginning in g. b. s. . and leading to g. t. . and thence to y. s. . may represent an analogous harmony, but it may be doubtful whether a range of such an extent in that part of the spectrum could be made very harmonious. this may be divided into two harmonies at g. t. . and each part may be extended to g. t. . the straight line from g. s. . to o. y. t. ., embracing five scales, might be extended to include the joining broken line running into the y. o. scale and finishing at o. y. s. . the remaining lines at the red end of the chart may be considered as indicating one harmony in six tones, or two harmonies in three tones each. if the two ends of the chart of spectrum scales are joined so as to form an endless band or a cylinder, bringing the violet-red scale adjoining the red-violet, as in the spectrum circuit, the same graphic illustration could be given of harmonies extending from violet to red. the complementary harmonies require no diagrams, because they are limited to the combination of two scales complementary to each other and would be represented by two parallel vertical lines through any two complementary colors, as for example vertical lines through the red and green-blue scales. the compositions termed perfected harmonies may be fairly well illustrated in the diagram by the combination of the line in v. b. and b. with the broken line commencing in g. y. s. . and ending in g. y. t. .; or again by the line in r. v. to b. v. combined with the straight line from g. t. . to y. s. .; or the broken line g. to y. s. . or again, the entire range of the double combination o. s. ., o. r. t. ., v. r. and o. r. s. . with the broken line from g. b. s. . to g. t. . another sample of perfected harmony is found in the union of line o. r. s. ., v. r., o. r. t. ., with line g. b. s. . to g. t. . these diagrams are designed to show the range or extent which a single composition may cover under its special definition and do not imply a necessity for using at one time all the colors through which the line passes, or that they are specially good harmonies. a striking illustration in nature of a perfected harmony was seen one bright autumn morning in a species of woodbine covering the side of a red brick building, in which could be discovered an infinite variety of colors in greens and violet-reds whose tones were increased in number and intensified in effect by the reflections of the sunlight and the corresponding shadows, producing very light tints and very dark shades of various hues of the complementary colors, and forming a complicated and wonderfully beautiful effect very definitely classified as a perfected harmony. field's chromatic equivalents. so much has been said and written about field's equivalents that there is a very general impression among artists and others that they constitute an important element in harmonious compositions of color. this proposition as given in owen jones' grammar of ornament is as follows:-- "the primaries of equal intensities will harmonize or neutralize each other, in the proportions of yellow, red and blue--integrally as . the secondaries in the proportions of orange, purple, green--integrally as . the tertiaries, citrine (compound of orange and green), ; russet (orange and purple), ; olive (green and purple), --integrally as ." in commenting on this in "the theory of color" dr. von bezold says: "it is often maintained that the individual colors in a colored ornament should be so chosen, both as regards hues and the areas assigned to them, that the resulting mixture, as well as the total impression produced when such ornaments are looked at from a considerable distance, should be a neutral gray. starting from this idea, the attempt has been made to fix the proportional size of the areas, which would have to be assigned to the various colors usually employed in the arts, for the purpose of arriving at the result indicated. this idea was especially elaborated by field, an englishman, who gave the name of 'chromatic equivalents' to the numbers of the proportions obtained, a designation which has since been very generally adopted. in reality, however, these 'chromatic equivalents' have no value whatever." the same writer also says: "it will always remain incomprehensible that even a man like owen jones in the text accompanying his beautiful "grammar of ornament" should have adopted this proposition in the form given to it by field, since among all the ornaments reproduced in the work just mentioned there are scarcely any which will really show the distribution of colors demanded by the proposition in question."[b] [b] the theory of color in its relation to art and art industry. by dr. william von bezold. translated from the german by s. k. koehler with introduction and notes by edward c. pickering. boston; l. prang & company, . in accordance with this eminent authority any one familiar with disk combinations will know by experiment that no combinations of red, yellow and blue approaching the proportion named by field can produce a neutral gray effect in the eye. colored papers. for practical study of color some economic material is absolutely necessary and nothing so well combines manual work with æsthetic cultivation as colored papers, if specially prepared in standard colors and with a dead plated surface. in the manufacture of the colored papers adopted in the bradley scheme of color instruction, the effort has constantly been to produce the closest possible imitations of natural colors consistent with the material. with this aim in view we have secured the brightest possible red, orange, yellow, green and blue and have chosen a violet which has the same relation to the other pigmentary colors that the soft beauty of the spectrum violet bears to the other parts of the spectrum. it however happens that in the pure aniline colors discovered in recent years a line of purples and violets has been found so much purer than the other pigments that we cannot with our red and violet make a perfect imitation of the brightest aniline purples used in some of the goods now in the market. purple is a general name for the several modifications of violet, red-violet and violet-red as peacock blue is a name given to the beautiful hues of blue-green and green-blue. these aniline purples are but another indication that we may expect such advance in the science of pigment manufacture in the comparatively near future that a much purer line of standards may be secured than is now possible in papers. but it does not materially affect the value of the present standards as long as they are accepted as indicating the kind of color, i.e., its location in the spectrum, and the _artists_ certainly should not object to this lack of purity, because their only present criticism is that the standards are too "raw," which is but another term for pure. in the glazed colored papers in the market we may find some of these purples, especially in the tints or "pinks" which when placed beside the unglazed surfaces of the standard papers render the latter quite subdued. but in primary color education there is no place for these purest purple papers, until chemistry discovers other colors correspondingly brilliant to complete a purer chart of spectrum colors than is now possible. [illustration] color teaching in the schoolroom. in the preceding sections of this book the author has aimed to so guide the teacher who is looking for aids in elementary color teaching that she can by actual experiment determine for herself the truths regarding color, and hence be able to choose such facts as are suited to the needs of her pupils from time to time, and to present them in such a logical order as to render them of the greatest value in practical results. it should be possible to interest the children in color more easily than in any other subject. examples are always around them at home, in the street, in the garden and the field, if perchance they are fortunate enough to see the field, and those who see no attractive colors elsewhere certainly should find them in the schoolroom. to a teacher who is in love with the subject the world will be full of examples, every day. the beautiful yellows and greens of the spring leaves, the flowers, birds and butterflies of the summer, the autumn foliage, the sunsets and blue and purple mountains of winter, are but hints of the multitude of object lessons in color all around us; and if none of these are available the more commonplace subjects found in the latest seasonable colors of dress goods and house furnishings will be almost equally valuable. when the children are once interested they will discover, through their own observation, examples of such value as to surprise one who has had experience with only the old methods of trying to teach color, or rather the utter lack of all methods heretofore in vogue. the value of kindergarten training has been so thoroughly demonstrated as to be beyond controversy, and all progressive school boards must soon recognize the necessity of adopting kindergarten methods in the lower primary grades, until such time as it may be possible to introduce the complete kindergarten for all the children, to precede the school proper. the conditions prevailing in the kindergarten are peculiarly favorable to the study of color, because of the opportunities afforded for introducing it in connection with the manual exercises of the gifts and occupations. the first gift of the kindergarten, as originally introduced by froebel, consists of six soft worsted balls in six colors, which he seems to have selected as standards without care or knowledge regarding the theory of "three primaries and three secondaries," although no doubt he may have indifferently accepted it, because it was the only one in his day suggesting any logical scheme of color combinations. the use of colored papers educationally in a systematic way originated in the kindergarten, and comprised folding, cutting, pasting and weaving, from which some color instruction was incidentally derived by the children. but with the papers formerly in the market little special training in the selecting, matching and naming of colors, such as is of so great value at the present time, was possible. the call for better colors in papers came first from the kindergartners, and the diversity of ideas expressed by them caused the writer to institute a series of investigations which have resulted in the system to which this book is devoted. the occupations of paper folding, cutting and pasting have been adopted into the primary school from the kindergarten, and there is no question but the occupation of paper mat weaving as practiced in the kindergarten should also be introduced in the lowest primary grades for those who have not had kindergarten training, because of its value in simple manual work and in designing symmetrical patterns and harmonious color combinations. by general consent colored papers have been chosen as the most available material for this work, because while relatively cheap, the purest colors possible in pigments are secured, and the material is adapted to the most elementary manual training and education in form as well as color. it is not the author's aim to here provide a definite course of lessons to be given in a perfunctory way or in a fixed order, but rather to furnish suggestions based on practical work in the schoolroom that may be of value to those who have carefully examined the preceding pages of this book and become familiar with the experiments described. the suggestions are based on the experience of teachers who have been using the system here advocated for several years and testing it in various ways, and therefore it is hoped that they may be of value to any earnest worker who is not fully satisfied with her efforts in teaching color up to date. consequently a brief outline of work is suggested for the earliest years, according to a definite order, and then further suggestions and experiments are introduced, somewhat in the order in which they may naturally present themselves. the time has passed when it is necessary to offer any argument for the study of color in the schoolroom. every child begins his school life with many color impressions which he has been acquiring since the day when his baby fingers first stretched toward some bit of color, and his development demands a clear presentation to him during the earliest school years of the fundamental facts concerning color upon which all later work must be based. the glass prism. a glass prism is one of the first requisites in the appliances for teaching color, and a prism which may be bought for a few cents will work wonders in the hands of an interested teacher, although a more perfect instrument, such as is sold with physical apparatus, will give colors which are better defined. experience in many schoolrooms has proved that a spectrum can be shown somewhere in the average room at some hour in every sunny day, especially in the longer days of spring and summer, and it is well to have the prism when not in use so fixed as to project the spectrum into the room much of the time, so that it may become familiar to the younger children. observation of the spectrum enthuses the children with a feeling for color which can be developed in no other way, and they never tire with watching the wonderful vibrating effects of the liquid colors; and by studying it the mental image of each of the six colors becomes as distinct as that of the cube after it has been handled and modeled. if the schoolroom is provided with shutters or dark curtains a much better spectrum can be produced by closing them, as even a slight change from a bright sunny daylight has a very perceptible effect in bringing out the colors. a person who has never seen a carefully prepared spectrum in a room almost perfectly dark can have no realizing sense of the purest possible expressions of color. accident once disclosed a simple means by which one teacher secured a very good spectrum. there was a deep, dark closet opening from the schoolroom and one bright day when the prism was being used the spectrum was accidentally thrown into this closet, and the sudden and enthusiastic expression of approval by those pupils who were in position to discover it was certainly interesting to the teacher of that country school, with a dark coal closet. in a spectrum such as can be produced in a dark room with the most perfect form of prism, all the various colors can be separated and carefully examined and by special appliances compared with pigmentary colors. experiments of this kind are exceedingly interesting and instructive, and demonstrate the wonderful intensity and purity of the spectrum colors as compared with the purest pigmentary colors that can be produced. such experiments were carried to a great degree of perfection when the six standard colors for the bradley colored papers were selected. how the bradley color standards were chosen. after many months of labor in securing samples of material colors, and many days spent with the spectrum, a committee of artists, scientists, teachers, and artizans unanimously decided that æsthetically and psychologically the colors adopted were the best possible material expression of the six localities in the spectrum corresponding to the feeling or psychological perception of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. many subsequent experiments have apparently proved that practically the same six colors best serve the purpose of primaries from which to make all others by combination. in accordance with these selections the educational colored papers have been made, and since that time an expert scientist has accurately located each of these colors in the spectrum by its wave length. consequently after the children have come to know the six colors in the sun spectrum the six standard colors of the papers may be shown as the best imitations possible. in studying the six colors from the spectrum in a schoolroom it frequently happens that one color may be best seen on the floor, another on the wall or even the blackboard, and another on the ceiling, and after the order of the colors in the whole spectrum has been observed, it is well to get each color where it can be best secured. paper color tablets. when the spectrum has been studied so that the children have some idea of the six colors and their location relative to each other, give each of the children a package of the colored paper tablets, one inch by two inches, containing the eighteen normal spectrum colors, i.e., those in the central vertical column in the chart of pure spectrum scales, page , and tell them to select from the eighteen the six which they have seen in the spectrum and which may be named to them as red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.[c] [c] tablets of paper instead of cardboard are recommended because in primary instruction the standards or types of color presented to the child ought to be the purest possible expressions of the colors represented, and a piece of color material cannot meet this requirement after having been used one year by a child. the necessary expense of cardboard tablets practically precludes a new supply each year. but the papers can finally be used to form, by pasting, some chart or combination which the pupil may be allowed to own as a sample of his work. if a sheet of neutral gray cardboard can be secured for use on each desk all early color work will be more valuable, because of the undesirable effect of the usual yellow or orange color of the wood of the desk. if some of the pupils do not make the correct selection of the papers it may be well to let the error pass for that time and have another exhibition of the spectrum before the next trial. get as many of them as possible to make the selection of the six colors from the eighteen solely by comparison with the spectrum. later if some are still unable to succeed, a paper spectrum may be shown to them, or what is better, six bits of paper like their own, pasted on a card, with an interval as wide as two papers between each two. when every child can readily select the six standard colors from the eighteen then all of them may with advantage be told to lay the six in a row on the gray cardboard or desk, in their proper order, and sufficiently separated to allow room for two other papers between each two. when all have made the attempt and some have failed to arrange the papers correctly the card having them properly mounted may again be shown and each one in error may make the necessary corrections by comparison. in a solar spectrum such as is possible in the ordinary schoolroom the intermediate colors between the standards cannot be very distinctly seen but the child can be shown that between the red and orange, with which he is familiar, there are colors different from both and possibly he may be led to see that these colors seem to be a mixture of the two. with this impression in the minds of the children the following experiment may be a very interesting psychological test of the natural color perception of each child, or in other words his "color feeling." ask the children to arrange the remaining twelve papers between the six standards in pairs and one outside of the red and violet at the ends. this exercise will serve to bring each of the other colors to the critical attention of the children so that they may not be entirely strangers to them in the succeeding exercises. at this stage the color wheel or color top or both will be most valuable. color wheel or top. if the wheel is available let the teacher place on it combined red and orange disks of medium size and in front a small red disk. before beginning the six papers should be laid on the desk in order, separated by two spaces. call attention to the fact that the red disks are like the red sample of paper. explain how the disks are joined and that the two larger ones can be made to show more or less of the orange and the red. then introduce a small amount of orange, perhaps not enough to cause the effect to be perceived by the children when the wheel is in motion, and rotate. ask if they see any difference between the small disk at the center and the larger surface. add more orange till they see a difference, and continue to add orange to the red until nearly one-half the disk is orange or till it may be questionable whether the color made by rotation is more nearly orange or red. this point will be reached before the orange nearly equals the red, because the orange is more luminous. explain that all these colors which the children have been seeing are orange-reds and ask the pupils to select that color from their papers which is orange-red, or most like the orange and red. in the meantime set the orange and red disks to the proportion of r. , o. , which nearly or exactly matches the orange-red paper. when the children have selected the paper which they think is orange-red, put the wheel in motion and ask them if their selection is like the color on the wheel. if not, see that all understand and have selected the orange-red paper to place next the red sample. when this has been done remove the disks from the wheel and readjust the larger ones so as to show a combination that is nearly all orange; then replace them and substitute in front a small orange disk instead of the red one and proceed to show a series of red-orange colors from the orange toward the red, as previously shown from the red toward the orange. with experiments before adults this break in the order of proceeding and the change of disks would be unnecessary, but with children it is desirable to mark a distinction between the orange-red and the red-orange colors, a fact which is emphasized by the mechanical manipulation. when the children have been asked to place their red-orange paper in its proper position the disks may be set to r. , o. , and an imitation of their red-orange paper shown. if the school is provided with color tops their use may be begun at this point by allowing the children to attempt to repeat the wheel experiments with the tops and thus produce for themselves an imitation of the two intermediate spectrum hues in the papers. in all combinations of colors by disks as well as pigments there is some loss of purity and hence the colors of papers in the intermediate hues may be a little brighter in some cases than the results of two disks in combination. this suggestion for the presentation of one pair of the intermediate spectrum hues may serve to illustrate all the others, and the time which can be devoted to the whole subject must determine the detail with which each pair is treated. if the tops are provided in a school but no color wheel then the teacher must begin with a top as a substitute for the wheel and let the children follow her with their tops by dictation. at first this will be much more difficult than if the wheel could be used, but after the children have become somewhat familiar with the handling of the top by dictation the result will be quite surprising. there will be in every school some children who are exceedingly awkward in the manipulation of the top, until the happy day arrives when all school children are graduates of kindergartens. at present the average kindergarten pupil will handle the top better than the children in the lowest primary grades who have not had the advantages of kindergarten instruction. when all the hues except the red-violet and violet-red have been located, the teacher should be prepared with a chart made by pasting the eighteen paper samples, including standards and intermediate hues, in their order on a strip of paper, so that by bringing the ends together the children may see that when they place the violet-red at one end of their row and the red-violet at the other they are really completing a spectrum circuit and forming a chart of natural colors. ever since newton's day it has been fashionable to speak of the spectrum as nature's chart of colors. this expression is but partially true and is entirely false if we mean that it contains examples of all the colors in nature. the spectrum is valuable in color study only from the fact that it enables us to establish permanent standard colors from which all colors in nature and the arts may be named and by the combinations of which such colors may be imitated. unless the standard colors in a system of color instruction are the closest possible imitations of corresponding spectrum colors there is no logical relation between such a system and a chart of colors based on the spectrum, because the spectrum does not furnish a complete circuit of colors and its only value is, as before stated, in furnishing a permanent standard on which to found a nomenclature of colors. up to this time we have not suggested the practice of introducing any natural objects or calling the attention of the children to various colors found in their surroundings. each teacher must use her judgment regarding this matter, but as soon as miscellaneous colors are to be considered the two questions of hues and tones are necessarily involved, and experienced teachers have been divided in their opinions as to which should be first considered, tone or hue. when it was thought necessary to occupy a long time in presenting all the spectrum colors this question assumed greater importance than at present, but very many teachers have become convinced that we have not been giving the children credit for nearly as much ability in the recognition of colors as they deserve, and that with the methods at present in use the six standard colors and twelve hues can be learned in a few weeks, during which time it may not be necessary to discuss the complicated combinations of colors in nature and our domestic surroundings. this is not intended to mean that the child will in this time be able to name the various hues when seen separately, but that having the eighteen paper tablets he may feel their relations to each other to such an extent as to be able to lay them in their spectrum order. those pupils who seem to have no natural perception of the proper relationship of colors will require more experience than the rest of the class before they can be sure of their colors and the teacher must exercise her judgment in deciding how long to hold the class to this subject of spectrum hues on their account. as in other class work it is not necessary that the dull children perfectly comprehend all that is told them at each step, because there will always be some in a class who will comprehend and thus the others may learn by observation, and in this subject particularly every step in advance must necessarily include a continual review of all that has preceded. consequently when a teacher has given as much time to the study of hues in the arrangement of the papers as she deems profitable, considering the entire time that can be devoted to the subject during the year, she may well proceed to tones. the study of tones. it is unnecessary at the beginning to use the word tones with the children, as "light and dark" colors will be understood more clearly. the first lesson in light and shade may be given with some book bound in a bright color, as red for example, which is common in cloth bindings. for this experiment partially open the book and hold it vertically, with back toward the class, in such position that a strong light from one side of the room will fall directly on one cover while the other is in the shade. if properly manipulated this simple experiment may be made effective to an entire class by moving the book in various directions to accommodate the several members, so that at different times all the pupils may get very clearly the idea of light and dark colors in the same scale. this idea can be more clearly shown by means of a simple model very easily made for the purpose. take, for example, three pieces of standard red paper, × inches, and mount them on a piece of cardboard side by side, in a row. trim the card parallel to the edges of the papers, leaving a margin of uniform width, and with the point of a knife "score" a line partially through the card from the front, at the joining of the papers, so that it can be neatly bent to the form shown in fig. which represents the model as seen by the class. by holding one of the rear edges with each hand the faces can be folded to different angles with each other and the model turned to different positions with relation to the children. possibly the windows at the rear of the room may be partially darkened to advantage; they certainly can be if they have a sunny exposure at the time. the object is to give a fair daylight on the central surface for the standard, a strong light on one side to form a tint of the standard and a shadow on the other for a shade of the same color. [illustration] by a trial before school, in company with some other teacher perhaps, the best positions for different parts of the room as well as best lighting of the room may be determined in advance and thus such a success achieved with the first experiment that the whole idea of tint and shade may be impressed on each child for all time and definitions firmly fixed in his mind for these two most abused words in our every day vocabulary. added interest may be excited by showing similar models in several other colors during the same lesson, thus avoiding the possible impression on any mind that the term tint and shade apply to any special color. tints and shades may also be shown very beautifully by some kinds of colored materials. colored satin ribbons, folded or crumpled, and velvets and plushes give good object lessons. one of the most effective exhibitions of tints and shades may be found in a material used for upholstering furniture and technically called "crushed plush," which is a worsted plush embossed in figures and very changeable in its effects as its relation to the light is changed, giving at the same time very light tints and very dark shades in different portions. having thus shown how real tints and shades in nature are produced, the color wheel may be introduced with advantage. if it were practicable to use opaque colors in the school they could be employed to show that the effect of a tint is produced in pigments by mixing white with the standard color and a shade by mixing black with it, but while the mixture of white may produce the best imitations of some tints in nature, the same result does not hold good in the use of black to form shades, and black pigments are rarely used for this purpose, because they impart various untruthful hues, according to the colors with which they are mixed. for this reason, and others which will appear later, the white and black disks of the color wheel are found to be better than any other single method for representing tones. in shades the black disk produces by far the best imitation of nature, and so does the white disk for more than half of the colors. but, as previously stated, there is an effect which has never been satisfactorily explained by which the tints of red and blue especially receive an unexpected violet gray tinge by rotation. therefore in showing tints on the wheel it is well not to show very light tints of red or blue until the class has received some impressions of tones in other colors. in the orange and violet the tints seem to be practically perfect, and in the yellow and green not far from correct, but in the green they run a trifle toward the blue and in the yellow become a little gray or broken. but in the shades the black disk has done wonders for color instruction, particularly in making standard neutral grays which cannot be imitated by white and black pigments, and in determining the shades of yellow, as has been explained. see page . therefore, after having shown actual tints and shades with the folded models, and perhaps the other materials suggested, place a colored disk combined with a white disk on the wheel, and in front of them a smaller colored disk of the same color as the larger one for comparison, and by changing the relative proportions show various tints. then substitute a black disk for the white and show shades. if, for example, orange is taken, all proportions of both tints and shades may be shown very truthfully, the deeper shades being very rich browns. having in this way impressed on the children the terms tints and shades, give them the paper tablets, selection no. , in the deepest tints and the lightest shades, reserving the lightest tints and deepest shades found in selection no. for later use. let each member of the class lay the spectrum in the normal colors and then select the six tints corresponding to the six standards. when all of them think they have done this, tell them to choose the corresponding shades. if a number fail in the attempt it may be well to set up three sizes of disks on the color wheel in shade, standard and tint of red. in showing a tint of red with the disks it is not a good plan to make a tint lighter than r. , w. , which is about r. t. . if the wheel is not available samples of papers may be held up in the three tones so that the class can get the correct idea. there is no best method of reaching all pupils in any class, but in some way at this point in color education every pupil ought to acquire such knowledge of the subject as to be able to select at least the six standard scales in three tones, and this should be practically accomplished before much time is devoted to the consideration of such materials as flowers, fabrics and miscellaneous papers, because until the child understands both hues and tones he can do nothing in either analyzing or naming colors. as soon as these six scales are familiar to the pupil the selecting of various objects and placing them in general families may be very valuable work, but until that time the classification of colors cannot be carried out very accurately, or at best the families will be very likely to include some uncles, and cousins and aunts, and yet, on the other hand, if even the distant relatives are recognized in preference to strangers the choice will give evidence of a sympathetic feeling for color relations, favorable to future progress and indicating something of the natural color sense of the child. if such occupations as paper cutting and pasting, or weaving of mats have a place in the school, combinations in two or three tones of the six standards can now be made. at this stage names are of little importance, but they will come in play early, as it is natural to give names to everything, and as soon as the child knows the definite names which belong to colors they will be used. neutral grays. immediately following the first idea of tints and shades or tones, the grays should have attention, because in the occupations with papers they will play an important part. for this purpose white, black and the neutral gray papers are included in selection no. of the paper tablets and should be made familiar to the children while the tints and shades are being studied. the suggestion that a neutral gray is a tint of black or a shade of white may or may not aid a child to better understand the relation of the neutral grays to the color chart, but it is a thought worthy of the attention of the teacher, as expressing a fact important in the consideration of color impressions. this gray may also be illustrated on the wheel by the union of white and black disks, and should be early presented in this way, because this is the only means by which we can secure standards for pigmentary neutral grays, and the fact that this special and peculiar gray is so important in all color investigation furnishes sufficient argument for making it prominent before the other grays. even at this early period in his color education a child may be shown that white in shadow is a gray, and the fact that it is a neutral gray is not essential to him, as he has no knowledge of any other gray and probably it may not be desirable to call attention to the various classes of grays until after the broken colors have been studied. a sheet of white card or heavy paper may serve to show that white in shade or shadow is a gray. for this experiment fold the card or paper very sharply and hold it with the folded edge vertical and projecting toward the class, and in such a position relative to the windows that half of the paper is in very full light and the other in shadow. a comparison of neutral gray paper no. with a true shade of white or white in shadow, as explained on page , will serve to connect the gray papers with the shades of white. after the idea of tones is made clear to the children, so that they can readily form the six standard scales in three tones, the completing of the chart of spectrum scales in three tones will be merely a matter of drill, as no new principles are involved. when the pupils can lay the chart of pure spectrum scales in three tones correctly, the thoughtful teacher will naturally ask herself what is the next logical step, and it may at first seem as though the completion of the chart in five tones ought to immediately follow. but it is very desirable that the pupils begin as early as possible to make a practical application of their knowledge of colors to the familiar objects around them; and it is evident that before any very accurate comparison of miscellaneous colors can be intelligently undertaken the child should be able to recognize the effect of mixing gray with a color, in distinction from the pure tints and shades of that color. explanation of broken colors. very few of the common colors seen in fabrics and house furnishings are either full pure colors or their tints and shades, but nearly all are broken colors. therefore it seems desirable to introduce the study of broken colors, before considering the extreme tones of the pure colors as represented in tints and shades no. in the chart of pure spectrum scales in five tones. this order of presentation seems specially advisable, because the distinguishing of the extreme tones where the color is lost to so great a degree is more difficult than anything connected with the subject of broken colors. therefore at this point paper tablets, selection no. are introduced. from this collection of tablets when properly arranged a chart of broken spectrum scales of twelve colors in three tones may be made, and in addition there are tablets illustrating the several classes of grays other than neutral grays. the first result desired is a definite distinction in the mind of each pupil between a broken color and any tint or shade of the same color. in order that the explanation of this distinction shall be intelligently comprehended each child must have such a clear idea of the meaning of the terms "tints" and "shades" that he shall not fail to readily understand any statement regarding them because of confusion as to the definite meaning of these terms. the child should know clearly that a "tint" is a color in a strong light or mixed with white either in pigments or disks, while a "shade" is a color in shade or shadow, i.e. with less than the normal illumination, or mixed with black. when this has been fixed in the mind of a pupil, and he has also been shown that neutral gray, the only gray he has learned anything of, is the result of the combination of white and black, it will not be difficult for him to see that a broken color is produced by the mixture of both white and black with the pure color. much later it will be possible for him to think of a broken color as a tint thrown into a shade or shadow, as may be observed by casting a strong shade or shadow on to a piece of colored paper in some one of the _tints_ of the spectrum scales. the color wheel and tops furnish the simplest and most effective means for the presentation of broken colors, because they automatically analyze every color shown, so that the pupil sees for himself just what has been done. an exercise in broken colors. after having refreshed the minds of the class as to tints and shades and grays by a brief restatement of the conditions involved in these terms, the idea of broken colors may be shown with disks on the color wheel or top. for this experiment place on the spindle, for example, a combination of orange, white and black disks, and in front of these disks put combined orange and black disks of smaller size. make the proportions of the larger disks, o. , w. , n. , and the smaller, o. , n. . in rotation the larger ring will show a dark broken orange and the inner one a dark shade of orange, and the difference in quality will be readily seen and felt. the effect is more valuable as a lesson if the tones of the two are nearly equal, although this is not necessary. a very much lighter pair of colors is secured by using the following formulas, o. , w. , n. , and o. , w. . both these experiments may be made with the primary color wheel or color top. if the high school color wheel is in use so that the four rings of color can be shown at one time, the two larger rings may show two tones of broken color and the smaller rings a tint and shade of pure color. in the use of tops two may be spun at once as near together as possible, the two broken tones on one top and the tint and shade on another. in green similar experiments may be tried, with the following formulas:-- g. , w. , n. . g. , w. , n. . g. , n. . g. , w. . practically the same methods may be adopted in the study of broken colors as were employed with the pure colors. the paper tablets contained in selection no. , comprising broken colors and grays, will now come into use to accompany experiments with disks in broken colors. the tablets in the broken spectrum colors number thirty-six, comprising twelve scales of three tones each, thus producing but one intermediate hue between each two standards, instead of two, as in the chart of pure colors. exercises in selection and arrangement of these tablets to form a chart may be employed to familiarize the pupils with the new kind of colors. the colors are not so pronounced as in the pure scales, and for this reason the arranging may be more difficult, but the smaller number of hues simplifies it somewhat, so that, with the better-trained color perception which the child will have acquired at this stage, no greater effort will be required than in the earlier lessons. when the chart of broken scales can be laid with reasonable accuracy by the majority of the class the two charts as far as studied, each in three tones, may be laid on the desk at the same time for comparison and thus the difference in quality or character emphasized. all kinds of materials may now be considered and classified, and great interest inspired in the subject generally. flowers, autumn leaves, dress goods and anything with color can be studied and the colors analyzed. before the study of broken colors was taken up some few flowers could be quite accurately matched with the disks and analyzed, but now very many more of the flowers and plants as well as other material can be accurately analyzed and a definite nomenclature given to each sample. selection no. of tablets contains, in addition to the twelve scales of broken colors, six colored grays, which must at some stage be considered in connection with gray colors or broken colors, to which they are closely related. as has already been stated, there is a point where by the continued addition of gray to a color, the color is so far obscured that its identity is practically lost and the result becomes a colored gray. although the line between gray colors and colored grays cannot be definitely drawn there are so many grades visible beyond the point where the exact color used with the gray can be determined, that the term "colored gray," which covers the three classes, warm, cool and green grays, is convenient for common use. it is very desirable that a distinction be observed between the terms "colored grays" and "gray colors," and therefore broken colors may be a better term to apply to the gray colors because a distinction is thus more strongly emphasized between these two classes of colors. the following table furnishes formulas from which the colors of the chart of broken spectrum scales may be very nearly imitated on the high school color wheel. each scale should be shown by the three smaller sets of disks, namely, the smallest for light tone, next size for standard or medium, and the third size for darkest tone. this list of disk combinations is furnished here for the convenience of teachers who may have occasion to illustrate the compositions of the various classes of colors comprised in the chart of broken spectrum scales, which covers the entire range of the æsthetic colors and from which by modifications every subdued color in material substances can be analyzed and definitely named. owing to the color usually found on the interior of a schoolroom and the lack of pure white light from outside it is not probable that these proportions will exactly match the papers, but the formulas will enable the teacher to approximate the color, and then the more accurate match in conformity to the conditions in each case may be secured by making changes in accordance with suggestions from a majority of the class, an exercise which will afford valuable practice for the pupils. formulas for a chart of broken spectrum scales. light. medium. dark. red. r. , w. , n. . r. , w. , n. . r. - / , w. , n. - / . orange red. r. , o. - / , w. , n. - / . r. , o. , w. - / , n. - / . r. , o. - / , w. - / , n. . orange. o. , w. - / , n. - / . o. - / , w. , n. . o. , w. , n. - / . yellow orange. o. , y. , w. , n. . o. - / , y. - / , w. , n. . o. , y. - / , w. , n. - / . yellow. y. , w. - / , n. - / . y. , w. - / , n. - / . y. - / , w. , n. - / . green yellow. y. , g. , w. , n. . y. , g. , w. , n. . y. , g. , w. , n. . green. g. , w. , n. . g. , w. , n. . g. , w. , n. . blue green. g. - / , b. - / , w. , n. . g. , b. , w. , n. . g. , b. , w. , n. . blue. b. - / , w. , n. - / . b. , w. , n. . b. , w. , n. . blue violet. b. , v. - / , w. - / , n. . b. , v. , w. , n. . b. , v. , w. , n. . violet. v. , w. , n. . v. , w. , n. . v. , w. , n. . red violet. r. , v. , w. , n. . r. - / , v. , w. , n. - / . r. , v. , w. , n. . in preparing the papers for the chart of broken spectrum colors the selection of the tones of the several colors has been made in accordance with the æsthetic color feeling of those to whom the matter was intrusted, but the hues of the colors are based on the standards of the pure spectrum colors. if these colors are considered independently of their relation to a general system of color education, it may seem that a stronger and purer line of colors would be more beautiful; but the more broken or subdued colors have been chosen after very careful consideration, because they are intended for elementary instruction and therefore should be so far removed from the pure color scales as to impress themselves on the minds of the children as a distinct and representative class of colors. when the color sense of the pupils has been sufficiently cultivated to observe smaller distinctions, a variety of color scales much less broken may be shown with the disks. different selections for a score of charts could be made, all beautiful and representing broken colors, but after much consideration these thirty-six were selected from a very large number of hand-painted samples made for the purpose, as furnishing a sufficient number of typical broken colors for elementary color instruction, and in such hues and tones as to form a harmonious chart for comparison with the chart of pure spectrum scales. certain "color puzzles." when the children have advanced far enough to understand the analysis of a color, i.e., to correctly name a color, exercises which may be called color puzzles can be introduced from time to time with great interest and profit. the idea is simply to suddenly show to the class a series of disks in rapid rotation and ask them to guess what colors it is composed of, i.e., what the definite name of the color is. the following is a suggestion for this exercise, supposing that a broken green yellow is to be shown:-- select a green, a yellow, a white and a black disk of medium size and combine them as follows: y. , g. , w. , n. . then, having previously removed the nut from the spindle of the wheel and laid it in a convenient place, take the combined disks and lay on the top of them any other disk of a larger size, with the center holes of all corresponding with each other and place all these disks on the spindle of the wheel with the larger disk still covering the face of the others. having previously furnished an assistant with a sheet of cardboard of sufficient size to conceal the disks from the class have it held in front of the wheel while the disk which conceals the combination is removed, the nut screwed to place and the disks put into rapid rotation; then order the card taken away and ask the class what color they see, still continuing the rotation. the correct answer should be broken green-yellow, and not a shade of green-yellow, a broken yellow-green, a tint of yellow or a yellow shade; for there is but one true name and that should be stated. definite expressions of color are as possible as the terms used regarding other scientific subjects, and should be encouraged. much interest can be inspired and valuable instruction imparted to the children by experiments with the color wheel, but whenever color analysis is the object in view, if disks of more than one of the standard colors are used in the same combination they must be of colors adjacent to each other in the spectrum. for example, if a blue and a yellow disk are united and placed in rotation the result may be a blue gray, a yellow gray, or perhaps very nearly a neutral gray, because blue and yellow are so nearly complementary to each other. but a nomenclature of the resulting color effect expressed in terms of blue and yellow is not of practical value, because it is evident that in the analysis of a gray-blue, yellow has no logical place. if in an attempt to match a color which seems to be a broken blue, something else besides the blue, white and black is required, it must be either green or violet, i.e., one of the two standard colors adjacent to the blue in the spectrum. in other words, every color in nature is a spectrum color, i.e., either a pure spectrum color, a tint or a shade of a spectrum color, or a broken spectrum color. hence every color can be matched, and therefore analyzed by the combination of one disk of a standard color with a white disk, a black disk or both, or else by two adjacent spectrum standards with white and black or both. there are many combinations of disks outside the limitations above named which are valuable and interesting in color investigation when not used for simple analysis, but if they are presented as pleasing experiments before the pupils can understand their logical relation to the subject of color education, the result may be entirely misleading rather than instructive. in making experiments in broken colors with the wheel the most satisfactory results are secured in orange, violet, green and yellow, while the red is fairly good and the blue less satisfactory than the others because of the slight effect of gray or violet which comes into the lighter tones by rotation, to which reference has already been made. as explained on page , the so-called tertiary colors, russets, citrines and olives were formerly supposed to be classes of peculiar colors to which these names were given. the fact that these are all broken spectrum colors was first demonstrated by the use of the color wheel and they are now quite generally accepted as such by those who have given heed to modern methods of color instruction. as already shown the disks have also seemed to correctly define the several scales of colors, so that in contrast to the color charts of a dozen years ago a distinction is clearly drawn between the colors in the yellow and the orange scales, or even between the yellow-orange and the orange-yellow scales, so accurately do the disks determine the hue of a color. when the pupils have progressed so far that they can arrange the paper tablets to form the chart of pure spectrum scales in three tones and also the chart of broken scales, they will be prepared to intelligently begin the use of papers in cutting and pasting designs in the several classes of harmonies, but before most effective results can be produced the lightest tints and deepest shades of the full chart of pure scales in five tones must be considered. chart of pure spectrum scales completed. the entire mastery of these extreme tones will be quite difficult because they are so far removed from the standards, and the children can hardly be expected to recognize and name them when seen separately. if a pupil is able to correctly arrange them in connection with the other tones of the chart, his accomplishment will show a high grade of color perception. but these extreme tones are introduced because their use in the more advanced work of paper cutting and pasting produces stronger and more beautiful harmonies and a higher degree of color training than would result were the tints and shades nearer the standards in tone. no detailed rehearsal of the lessons for this work is necessary to enable a teacher who has pursued the course of instruction thus far to complete it in a logical way, and relatively little time will be required by the pupils to become sufficiently familiar with these tones for practical purposes, because of their more acute color perception which will be developed at this period. the work of cutting and pasting. in the study of color the work of cutting and pasting designs in educational colored papers affords the earliest and best practical expression of the color feeling which has been acquired and stimulates the further development of color perception. the order in which the use of these papers can be most profitably taken up in the occupations of cutting and pasting may be determined by a careful consideration of the subject of harmonies as explained quite fully in the foregoing section entitled "practical experiments," pages to . the first in order is contrasted harmony, in which cut papers in one color may be mounted on a ground of some passive color as white or gray. in selecting the gray, analogy is usually preferable to contrast, while neutral gray is fairly safe for all colors. according to this suggestion the warm grays may be used with the warm colors and the cool grays with the cool colors, and in a majority of the cases the lightest tone of gray is preferable. without question dominant harmonies or the arrangement in families are the most profitable and safe for early practice. in this class a light tint may be used for the background on which to mount any of the other tones of the same scale. beyond these two classes of harmonies the order of presentation must be determined by the teacher. if the complementary is attempted with simple geometrical forms a light tint may most safely be selected for a background in the least aggressive of the two colors and the design or pasted forms in some of the complementary tones other than the normal color. do not attempt to combine full complementary colors in elementary work. the analogous harmony may be used in simple designs with beautiful effects when judicious selections are made, but owing to the latitude necessarily involved in the definition of this class of combinations the children cannot very early be trusted to make their own selections. it is evident that nothing can be attempted in the perfected harmonies in any of the ready-cut forms, but beautiful results can be produced in this class with well-drawn and accurately cut ornamental designs in colored papers, which may even surpass in strength and beauty any effects which can be produced in water colors such as can be used by the children. for earliest practice in making designs in colored papers the ready cut forms of the kindergarten, technically called "parquetry papers" are very convenient and may be procured either with or without gum on the back. these are prepared in various geometrical forms based on the one-inch standard, among which the most useful for pasting decorative designs are the circle, half-circle, square, half-square and equilateral triangle. where models and tablets are used in form study the tablets may serve as patterns from which the children can mark out the papers which they can then cut for themselves, and thus the oval and ellipse may be added to the forms, and also practice in accurate cutting secured. in the use of tablets as patterns the outlines should be made on the backside of the paper, by holding the tablet in place with one finger and working carefully around it with a well-pointed pencil. the marking to the pattern and cutting to the line provides valuable elementary practice in manual training. as it is the prime object of these papers to treat of color no attempt is here made to give directions for designing units of ornament or for folding and cutting designs. all such exercises furnish the best possible practice in both designing and manual work, but they belong more directly to the department of drawing and are fully treated in the hand books explaining modern systems of drawing. we offer here a number of simple arrangements of such forms as may be found in ready-cut papers or may be marked from the form study tablets as before mentioned, with the addition of a few other figures which involve some very simple designs for free-hand cutting. a variety of designs. the accompanying illustrations show a number of simple arrangements of such forms as are found in ready-cut papers or may be marked from the form study tablets already mentioned, with the addition of a few other figures which include some very simple forms requiring free-hand cutting. suggestions for more elaborate designs and specific directions for paper cutting can be found in elementary books treating of decorative drawing and those devoted solely to paper cutting. [illustration] figs. to show arrangements of one-inch kindergarten parquetry papers in one color, used as units to form border designs in contrasted harmony on a white or a gray ground, in all of which there is repetition of form as well as color. a narrow strip of paper in the same color as the units may be used at top and bottom to finish the design. [illustration] figs. to show border designs, each of which is made with one form in two colors or tones in alternation. [illustration] [illustration] figs. and show border designs in one color, with forms marked from the elliptical and oval tablets and cut by hand. in fig. borders are made by combining half-squares which may be used with or without narrow strips of the same color. [illustration] figs. and are made by using one form with alternation of tone and of position. fig. is derived from fig. by laying the dark squares with the corners in contact and placing the light squares over them. fig. shows alternation of form and color or tone, which is also the scheme employed in fig. in a design less simple with the addition of the half-circles. figs. and show two other simple and pleasing designs with alternation of both form and tone or color. figs. , , , and comprise designs in two forms and two tones or colors, in which some hand cutting is necessary on the part of the pupils. [illustration] figs. to are rosettes made from parquetry papers with the addition of a small circle or square at the center cut by hand. [illustration] figs. to are principally hand-cut forms, and , and show surface patterns made from parquetry squares and half-squares. [illustration] [illustration] colored papers can be used more advantageously in decorative designs than in imitations of natural objects, for which water colors are much better suited, but some copies of natural flowers and autumn leaves have been made in colored papers which were exceedingly close imitations of water color paintings when seen at a little distance, rivaling in the case of the autumn leaves the best water color effects in brilliancy and depth of color. there need be no definite rules governing the continuation of color study from this point by a teacher who is interested in the subject and has tried the experiments suggested in the preceding pages. the work will become very interesting at this stage, because now all sorts of material may be introduced for analysis and classification and from this point forward, to the highest achievements of the artist, nature will furnish abundant stimulus to color thought and investigation, if the foundation has been laid according to the true theory of color perception which it is the object of this system to explain. analysis of color materials. a valuable and interesting phase of color investigation and color training may be found in the analysis and naming of the natural colors found in flowers, minerals and the plumage of birds. the necessity for a definite and adequate nomenclature which naturalists experience in this department of education has been emphasized by the publication within a few years of a book entitled "a nomenclature of colors for naturalists, and a compendium of useful knowledge for ornithologists." this book has been prepared with great care by robert ridgway of the united states national museum, and contains a large number of hand-painted plates showing nearly two hundred colors which represent selections from three hundred and fifty names of colors which are given in english, latin, german, french, spanish, italian and norwegian or danish.[d] [d] a nomenclature of colors for naturalists and compendium of useful knowledge for ornithologists by robert ridgway, curator, department of birds, national museum. boston, little, brown & co., . the fact that a book involving so much technical knowledge and the expenditure of so much time and money was deemed justifiable is an evidence of the great need for some definite nomenclature. in the introduction the author says: "undoubtedly one of the chief desiderata of naturalists, both professional and amateur, is a means of identifying the various shades of colors named in descriptions, and of being able to determine exactly what name to apply to a particular tint which it is desired to designate in an original description. no modern work of this character it appears, is extant,--the latest publication of its kind which the author has been able to consult being syme's edition of 'werner's nomenclature of colors,' published in edinburgh in . it is found, however, that in syme's 'nomenclature' that the colors have become so modified by time, that in very few cases do they correspond with the tints they were intended to represent." the following are the opening sentences of the preface: "the want of a nomenclature of colors adapted particularly to the use of naturalists has ever been more or less an obstacle to the study of nature; and although there have been many works published on the subject of color, they either pertain exclusively to the purely scientific or technical aspects of the case or to the manufacturing industries, or are otherwise unsuited to the special purposes of the zoologist, the botanist and the mineralogist." in the same book the chapter on principles of color opens with the following sentences: "the popular nomenclature of colors has of late years, especially since the introduction of aniline dyes and pigments, become involved in almost chaotic confusion through the coinage of a multitude of new names, many of them synonymous, and still more of them vague or variable in their meaning. these new names are far too numerous to be of any practical utility, even were each one identifiable with a particular fixed tint. many of them are invented at the caprice of the dyer or manufacturer of fabrics, and are as capricious in their meaning as in their origin; among them being such fanciful names as 'zulu,' 'crushed strawberry,' 'baby blue,' 'woodbine-berry,' 'night green,' etc., besides such nonsensical names as 'ashes of roses' and 'elephant's breath.'" these extracts from this valuable and interesting book by an author of large experience are quoted here to emphasize the practical necessity for more definite color education based on analysis and nomenclature. with the color wheel or color top, the colors of flowers and leaves as well as all other objects in nature and art may be analyzed and named, and the names definitely recorded in the terms of a nomenclature based on permanent standards. the following list of flowers and leaves of plants and trees with their analyses in terms of our nomenclature is taken from a recently published paper entitled "on the color description of flowers," by prof. j. h. pillsbury, to whom the writer is indebted for some of the earliest suggestions regarding the practical application of the scientific facts of color to color teaching, and also for valuable scientific work which he has done including the exact location of the six color standards in the solar spectrum by their wave lengths:-- "with these standards to work from, i undertook to determine the color analysis of certain of our common flowers. the following results, will, i think, be interesting to botanists. the numbers given indicate per cent. of color required to produce the hue of the flower:-- common forsythia, f. viridissima: pure spectrum yellow. fringed polygala, p. paucifolia: r. , v. . wistaria, w. frutescens, wings: r. , v. . wistaria, w. frutescens, standard: r. , v. , w. . flowering quince, cydonia japonica: r. , v. , w. . wild cranesbill, geranium maculatum: r. , v. , w. . the variations of color in the early summer foliage is also interesting. the following analyses are for the upper side of fresh and well developed healthy leaves. it is not impossible that a little attention to these variations in the color of foliage on the part of artists would save us the annoyance of some of the abominable green which we so often see in the pictures of artists of good reputation:-- white oak: y. . , g. . , n. . apple: y. , g. , w. , n. . copper beech: r. , v. , n. . hemlock: y. , g. , n. . white pine: y. . , g. , n. . . white birch: y. . , g. . , w. , n. . hornbeam: y. . , g. . , n. . shagbark hickory: y. . , g. . , n. . these analyses were made in a moderately strong diffused light with maxwell disks of the standard hues referred to above." these are but a few of the numerous flowers the colors of which may be perfectly imitated and consequently analyzed and named with the color wheel or the top. in fact for individual work in natural history the top is more convenient than the wheel and sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes, while it is a very fascinating occupation for child or adult. in the use of disks for analyzing colors it must be remembered that every material color is some quality of some color in the spectrum circuit, and therefore may be matched with not more than two standard disks, either alone or with white or black or both. if more than two color disks, besides white and black, are used they will neutralize each other more or less, and a neutral gray or a gray and some spectrum color will be the result. for example, if yellow and blue in nearly equal parts are introduced in connection with red and orange, the yellow and blue being nearly complimentary to each other will produce practically a neutral gray, and the result will be the same as if only red, orange, white and black were used. [illustration] owing to the recent advances in the art of dyeing there are some textile goods which are too intense in color to be exactly imitated by the disk standards, but this fact need not prevent a practical analysis of such colors, because by very slightly reducing with white the color to be examined the same color is retained, the modification making it, of course, somewhat lighter. fig. , showing a small circle representing a disk of the material mounted on thick paper, illustrates this statement. suppose we have a piece of rich brown cloth, so intense in color that when red, orange and black are combined in the proportions of r. , o. , n. , the material is still a little richer in color than can be made with the disks of the color wheel. if we introduce a small amount of white into the brown of the material we may hope to match it with the disks and this may be done by cutting a bit of fairly heavy white paper in the form shown in the diagram and loosening the nut of the color wheel slightly, after which we insert the point of the triangle under the nut so that when tightened the white paper may be held in front of the brown disk, as in the illustration. trim the outer end even with the disk and then rotate. if the effect of the white is too great trim off a little from the side of the white paper to make it narrower, until a perfect match is secured. the small disk in rotation is then of the same color but not quite so intense as before, or in other words, is a very deep tint of the color. in this way the nomenclature can be recorded as follows: brown , w. , = r. , o. , n. . this result does not often occur, but the subject is noticed here in detail that no one may be in doubt when such cases do come to light, as they will sooner or later. the aniline colors give some purples which are much more brilliant than either the violet or red which otherwise should by combination produce them, so that with these standards they cannot be made, but must be reduced with white, or possibly with white and black. if a color wheel is not available many of these experiments may be tried on the color top, but not as satisfactorily, because of the accuracy necessary in cutting so small a disk in a woven material. in using the top for analysis of all ordinary colors, the best plan is lay the material on a table or other level surface and spin the top on it. if quite an accurate test is desired the cardboard disk of the top may be trimmed down to the size of the largest paper disk, so that there will be no intervening ring of light color to separate the color of the rotating disks from the material on which it is spun. practical applications of the color top are already being made, as for example, in the selection of house furnishings. for this purpose disks of the top are combined at home to produce the desired colors to match the wood finishings and papers or draperies in a partially completed room, the top being used as a guide in preliminary selections of additional materials from the stores. if a number of colors are required it is convenient to use several combinations of disks, each set being slightly gummed together. in this way standards for various colors with a top spindle for rotation in the salesroom may be carried in a very small space. the bradley colored papers. as every competent artisan must understand the use for which each implement is designed, in order to secure the best results with it, possibly a brief explanation of the principles on which the colors in the bradley educational colored papers are selected and classified may be of value. in the sample books of these colored papers there are four sections. the first section of the book, following the title leaf called "pure spectrum scales" consists in part of the six standard colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, with two intermediate hues between each two standards, which eighteen colors form the central vertical column in the chart of pure spectrum scales shown on page . in addition to these eighteen normal spectrum colors, there are two tints and two shades of each, thus producing eighteen spectrum scales of five tones, in which the normal colors as indicated in the central column aim to be the purest possible pigmentary expressions of the spectrum colors represented. in determining the number of colors to adopt in the preparation of the papers enough have been selected to furnish types of all the colors in the spectrum, and also the hues between red and violet, but at the same time the number has been so restricted as to secure a reasonably simple nomenclature of the intermediate hues. a hue of a color is defined as the result of the admixture of that color with a smaller quantity of another color; thus a hue of red approaching the orange is an orange hue of red, or an orange-red. if a small amount of red is added to orange the result is a red hue of orange, or a red-orange. therefore in selecting two hues between each two standards, rather than a larger number, the simplest nomenclature possible is secured, and one in which no mental effort is necessary to recall the color indicated by each symbol. for example, we have four colors indicated as r, or, ro, o; red, orange-red, red-orange, orange; or more extended, red, orange hue of red, red hue of orange, orange. thus by using as symbols familiar terms, no effort of the memory is required to recall the color indicated by each symbol, as would necessarily be the case if there were a greater number of hues and therefore more arbitrary symbols. the use of rotating color disks on the wheel and the top by which an infinite variety of intermediate hues can be made and accurately named by the pupils reduces the required number of papers to those types necessary for first primary work, and thus prepares the child for the use of pigments at an earlier age than would be possible without such color instruction. the second section of the sample book contains white, black and grays as indicated on the separating fly leaf. in these the best pigmentary expression of black and white are furnished. in material colors as found in industrial products, there are various so-called blacks and whites. for black there are blue-black, green-black, and brown-black; and in white, cream-white and pearl-white. cream-white is a yellow-white and pearl-white a blue-white. in fine white papers either blue, red or yellow is generally added to the pulp to counteract or cover up the gray tone of the natural material. the standard black here presented is the best possible pigmentary imitation of a very deep black hole, as for example, the projecting end of a large iron water or sewer pipe of considerable length buried in the ground, which is the blackest thing known. the white is an imitation of new-fallen snow. neither of these standards can be very nearly approached although we often hear of things as "white as snow" and as "black as night." in the same group and following the black and white are two examples each of the four kinds of grays: green gray, warm gray, cool gray and neutral gray. a pure white in shadow is the true neutral gray and a perfect imitation of this is made by the rotation of combined black and white disks on the color wheel. if to the black and white disks we add a blue disk we have cool grays. with red, orange or yellow the warm grays are produced, while the use of a green disk gives green grays. in the papers two tones of each gray are furnished. the papers found in the first two sections comprise all the colors necessary for earliest primary color instruction, and should become familiar to the children before explanation is made of the colors in the succeeding collections. in the third section, designated "broken spectrum scales" will be found a collection of gray colors or broken colors. as has before been stated, a broken color is a pure color mixed with a neutral gray. in the combination of pigmentary colors a tint of a color is the pure color mixed with white, a shade is the color mixed with black, and a broken color is a pure color mixed with both black and white, which is a neutral gray. therefore if with red, for example, we mix a certain amount of a given neutral gray and call that the normal tone of a broken scale of red, for the tint in that scale we must mix with the standard red a lighter gray and for the shade a darker gray. when a comparatively small quantity of neutral gray is combined with a pure color the result is a "gray color," as above described, because the color is quite definitely retained, but more or less modified by the gray. on the other hand, if a relatively small quantity of color is added to a neutral gray, the resulting color is properly called a "colored gray," because it is still a gray modified by color, and in this class we have warm grays, cool grays, etc., according to the color combined with the gray. the gray colors are quite generally termed "broken colors" and this seems a very useful practice, because it avoids the confusion of the somewhat similar terms "gray color" and "colored gray." by reference to the chart of broken spectrum scales on page it will be seen that we have only twelve scales and but three tones in each scale, instead of eighteen scales and five tones, as in the pure scales, for which there is a good reason. for educational purposes in the elementary grades, which is the only place where there is a legitimate use for colored papers, the steps in gradation of hue or tone must not be too short, and if the saturation or intensity of the normal colors in the several scales is reduced by adding gray, as in the broken colors, there is not the possibility for as many steps in either hues or tones without leaving those colors adjacent to each other too nearly alike. therefore in the broken colors there are but thirty-six, instead of ninety, as in the pure scales. the distinction between pure colors with tints and shades, and broken colors in various tones, should be made very plain to the children whenever the subject is brought to their notice, because it is a vital point in the classification of colors. educationally this is one of the most objectionable features in the old red, yellow and blue theory of color composition, because no distinction is observed between pure and broken colors in classification. in the bradley colored papers the distinction is made very decided for educational purposes, so that no one would for a moment tolerate the mixture of the normal colors from the pure scales with the normal colors from the broken scales in the formation of a spectrum. this may be illustrated by a selection as follows: first lay in order the normal spectrum colors with the pure colors found in the first section of the sample book, thereby forming the central vertical column of fig. . then substitute for the orange, green and violet, those colors selected from the collection of broken colors, and the result will seem to render the operation absurd, but it is the same in principle as the results produced in the attempt to form a spectrum by the combination of three primary pigments, red, yellow and blue, because so produced the orange, green and violet, show by disk analysis from to per cent of black and white and are therefore as much broken as the corresponding colors in the papers of the broken scales, but not exactly the same in tone. engine colored papers. those papers which are termed "engine colored papers" are so named from the process of manufacture as distinguished from "coated papers" which comprise the first three sections of the book. in coated papers a white paper is covered with a coating of colored pigment "fixed" with a small amount of white gum, gelatine or glue, and in this way the pure color of the pigment is obtained. in the engine colored papers the color is mixed with the paper pulp in the process of making the paper. in a paper mill the tub or vat in which the pulp is kept stirred up and perfectly mixed is called the engine, and hence this technical term has been applied to such papers as are colored in the pulp. in this class of papers both sides are alike, and for this reason in some of the folding exercises these papers are preferred, also because they are thinner and tougher. heretofore, it has been impossible to obtain engine colored papers in "families" or scales, but in this assortment the numbers from one to six, furnish six scales of three tones each, comprising the normal tones with tints and shades. following these from seven to sixteen are a collection of unclassified colors including grays which are much used. all these can be analyzed and classified by the color wheel. black and white complete this class. it is impossible to make any close approximation to a black in this class of papers, as when they are compared with the coated blacks the result is a very gray black, or very dark gray. all the colors in these papers from no. a to no. are quite light broken spectrum colors, but less broken than the coated papers designated as broken spectrum colors. while great care has been bestowed on the original selection of the colors of all these above-described papers and every effort is constantly exercised to keep them the same from year to year, the subject is materially complicated by the guarantee required of the manufacturers that no arsenic colors shall be used in the preparation of any of the papers. this guarantee is strictly insisted on, because, while the writer has never been able to learn of any authentic case where a child has been injured by the use of plated or glazed papers, he believes that the opinions of parents and teachers should be respected in the matter, although the arsenic colors are often the most permanent and the aniline substitutes which are necessarily used belong to a class which is the most fugitive of all colors. the line of colored papers now in use is the result of many experiments on the part of the writer and careful tests by experienced teachers for several years, and in its present condition affords but small indication of the time and care which has been expended on it. this has been inevitable, because the peculiar system on which the colors are based has been one of growth and the papers have been designed to afford the necessary material colors for this special scheme of instruction. in preparing the tints and shades in the papers many experiments have been made to determine the true effect of light and shadow on each normal color, and then to imitate these effects in the papers. all this is independent of the professional tricks which artists use to heighten their effects, some of which are legitimate, while others may be questionable on sound principles. it is a common habit with artists to introduce very warm effects into all sunlight by the use of orange or yellow in the warm colors. this extreme tendency has been intentionally avoided in the preparation of these papers, however desirable or allowable it may be considered in heightening effects. so also in the shades as in the tints, the aim has been to keep all the tones of one color in the same scale, even though artists often run the various tones of the same piece of color into two or three analogous scales. it is the object of color education to train the eye to see color wherever or however it may be produced, either by actual color reflection or contrasted effects, and in order that these effects may be understood as explained under simultaneous contrasts it is necessary that the prepared material be truthful to nature, the more so because these effects are sometimes greatly exaggerated by artists. water colors. when the subject of color was introduced into the curriculum of the common schools of this country, the use of paints was a novelty. so little was known regarding the possibilities of water colors as a means of education, that the teachers may be excused for having had grave doubts about the practicability of the scheme. very few teachers in the lower grades of schools had received at that time any definite instruction in the harmonies of colors or the manipulation of pigments; and what little thought had been given to the subject was based on the three-color theory of brewster, which was the only one available at that time. during the intervening years much has been done to make entirely feasible the introduction into school and kindergarten of this pleasing and educating occupation. color standards have been adopted, which are nothing less than selections from the solar spectrum itself, and the manufacture of pigments has improved so much that it may almost be said to be a new industry. in the training of teachers, also, color instruction is now given an important place, so that the kindergartner and primary teacher can give the attention that it deserves to a subject which is so interwoven with all that is beautiful in the material world around us. passing from one form of color work to another, it is exceedingly important that children of any grade should find the same principles obtaining in each step of the way, and also that the knowledge gained in the earliest stages of the work should be available in the higher forms. this is particularly true of color instruction as it is now found in the best schools, and the principal reason why water colors are so much better adapted to use in the schools to-day than in former years, is because paints are now made to correspond in color with the standards with which the children have become familiar in the colored papers and other material of the kindergarten. at present it is generally conceded that these six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, which stand out so prominently in the solar spectrum, are pre-eminently adapted to serve as standards and as the basis of an alphabet of color. there should, therefore, be no question as to the adoption of these same colors as the palette of paints for the earliest color work, even with the babes in the kindergarten, when anything beyond the colored papers and the usual kindergarten occupations is wanted. not very long ago it was the practice to give the child a box of colors and let him paint at random without any definite instruction as to the relation which each color should bear to the others. in fact, with the usual cheap box of paints then in the market there was no decided correlation of the colors nor any educational selection, both of which we have to-day. water colors are now furnished which so closely approach the standards of the colored papers that they are of the greatest assistance in developing the æsthetic taste and judgment of the pupils, and it is remarkable how early in the training of children paints can be used with advantage. in some of the previous pages of this book we have treated of the false theory of sir david brewster, who supposed that there were three primary colors in the solar spectrum and that all the other colors were produced by the overlapping or mixing of these in pairs. this error, being applied to pigments, has worked much harm and has greatly retarded the progress of color study. even now some teachers recommend the use of the red, yellow and blue palette on the ground of simplicity and economy. all the recent scientific writers on color treat this three-color scheme as already exploded, because the simplest as well as the most complex experiments with colored light prove its falsity. nevertheless, the fact that yellow and blue, which with light make very nearly white, do in the mixture of pigments produce a green, has deceived many persons. but the best green that can be so procured is a very broken color and not to be successfully compared with the beautiful and brilliant green of the spectrum. why then, should we not have in our paints imitations of the solar green, orange and violet as well as the red, yellow and blue? it is not well to sacrifice so much for alleged simplicity, and as for economy, it will take but a moment's reflection to see that it would take no more paint to cover a given surface with six colors than with three. oil colors, of course, are out of the question and pastels almost equally so, for although full colors may be produced in both these mediums, they are not suited to the use of young children, and at best are neither neat nor convenient, while colored pencils are not sufficiently satisfactory in results. therefore water colors seem to be better adapted to primary work than any other pigmentary material. of necessity the pupil must later be able to recognize any pigment he may meet and to classify it according to its color value and also to give it a definite name, other than the one by which it is sold. more than one professional artist has already worked successfully from nature in oil colors with a palette consisting of only close approximations to the six standard colors with white and a few grays. a person whose color perception has been trained by the use of the color disk in six standard colors with colored papers to correspond, will undoubtedly be able to more truthfully reproduce the colors which he sees in nature, on the canvas or paper by means of such a palette than if he had been taught by any other system and used the ordinary pigments. color blindness. the subject of color blindness has received much attention because of its practical importance in the affairs of our daily lives. the use of colored lights as signals on ships and railroads has necessitated very strict regulations regarding the employment of persons whose color vision is defective, and therefore in some states specialists have been employed by the state authorities to examine from time to time the school children regarding their perception of colors. possibly this condition of things may not at present be considered a serious reflection on the methods of color instruction, or lack of such instruction in our schools because it has become so common as to attract little attention. but if it were necessary for the same course to be pursued in any other department of our public education that fact would not fail to occasion very uncomplimentary remarks regarding the methods employed. for example, if a state official were necessary to determine whether pupils are deaf or not after they have been through our grammar schools, and preliminary to accepting positions of responsibility, it would seem that something was wrong, and yet after a child has had instruction in color according to a logical system there should be no more necessity for an examination regarding his ability to properly distinguish colors than there should regarding his ability to hear. color blindness has quite generally been divided into three classes, red, green, and violet blindness, those afflicted with red blindness being most numerous, and the cases of violet blindness being very rare, if indeed there are any which may properly be so called. this classification, known as the holmgren system, seems to have been based on the young-helmholtz theory that all color perceptions are the result of three primary effects in the eye, namely, red, green and violet, rather than on any analytical classification of actual experiments concerning color blindness. color tests should be so arranged as to detect either a defect in the brain which renders it difficult for the pupil to remember the names of the several colors, or in the eye, by which he cannot see a difference between two dissimilar colors. a person totally color blind would see in the solar spectrum a band of gray in various tones, and hence if a red and a green should seem to be of the same tone of gray he would call both either red or green, and after much experience would come to give color names to various tones of gray. such cases, however, are exceedingly rare, if in fact they exist. other scientists and physiologists have doubted the truth of the claims made by both holmgren and helmholtz, and some have made extended experiments regarding color blindness which seem to oppose the holmgren theory. in view of these conditions it does not seem necessary for a teacher in the elementary grades to attempt to grasp the situation very fully, and much less to aid in the solution of the problem. very fortunately this is unnecessary, because in all the scientific tests proposed for adults nothing is accomplished which any primary school teacher will not be easily able to determine during the first two or three years of ordinary school work, if the modern system of color instruction is pursued. there is no better material than colored papers for testing the color perceptions, and the exercises of selecting, matching and arranging the spectrum colors by means of the small color tablets generally in use in the first years of school are the very best that can be devised without regard to any of the abstract theories concerning either the cause or the possible classification of color blindness. for some reason the most common form of color blindness occasions a confusion between red and green, as for example, we are told, by some people, that in picking wild strawberries in a field the fruit can be distinguished from the leaves and grass only by the shape, and the green fruit from the ripe by the touch or taste. if a teacher discovers that a child is unable to readily give the name of a color it may not indicate want of color vision, but merely inability to remember names, and therefore various tests which will naturally suggest themselves can be made to aid in reaching a decision on this point. should the results of the tests seem to indicate some defect in color vision, the nature of the trouble should be sought and memoranda made from time to time for future reference, and if the final result shows a radical lack of color perception the parents should be informed of the fact and a physician consulted. it is probable that the number of color blind women is very much less than that of men, and much time has been spent in debating the matter, but some doubt remains as to whether this opinion does not obtain because the girls are brought so much more intimately into relation with colored materials in selecting their articles of dress, and consequently come to know the names of colors much better, and in fact enjoy a much better color education than the men. a more correct decision regarding this question can better be reached when both the boys and girls receive a systematic color education and their color sense is more equally cultivated. outline of a course in color instruction. [illustration] the course of color instruction suggested in the preceding pages is not arbitrarily divided into lessons or even years, because the conditions in the city and rural schools in the various states of this country are so varied that no uniform allotment or division of time can be suggested which will be satisfactory to all. the number of hours that can be devoted to any subject must be determined by those who prepare the school programme and the progress must be more or less rapid, with instruction correspondingly superficial or complete at each stage, according to the time allowed, the preparation of the teacher and the natural ability of the pupils. the teaching of color is usually classed with drawing because both relate directly to art, but inasmuch as color enters into our every day experiences so much more largely than the graphic arts there seems to be good reason for teaching it very fully where little attention is given to drawing. every competent teacher can and will become expert and even enthusiastic in teaching color, if she fully understands the system which it is the object of the foregoing pages to explain. the following brief outline suggests the order in which the facts concerning color may be presented and the material which can be used in an elementary course, beginning with the first primary grade pupils, who for the most part have not had kindergarten training. as a part of the material the bradley educational colored papers, cut to tablets each x inches, are prepared and put up in four small envelopes which are enclosed in one larger envelope. on the larger envelope these words are printed: "the bradley paper tablets for primary color education, selections , , , for complete course." the four small envelopes are labeled in this way: "selection no. , eighteen pieces from chart of pure spectrum scales, the normal spectrum colors." "selection no. , forty pieces from chart of pure spectrum scales, tint no. and shades no. , with white, black and neutral grays." "selection no. , forty-two pieces comprising complete chart of broken spectrum scales and warm, cool and green grays." "selection no. , thirty-six pieces from chart of pure spectrum scales, tints no. and shades no. ." the solar spectrum. material. a glass prism, the cost of which need not exceed a few cents, as almost any lamp or gas pendent in the form of a prism will serve the purpose. by the use of such a prism a small spectrum can be shown on the wall of any schoolroom having a sunny exposure during any part of the day. this spectrum will make plain the fact that sunlight is composed of many colors. method. show to the pupils the best solar spectrum that can be produced under the controlling conditions. call attention to the six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, and the order of their arrangement in the spectrum. present the colors separately as far as possible, selecting the best conditions available for each one. pigmentary spectrum colors. material. neutral gray or white card to cover desk top for a background. chart of pure spectrum scales. colored paper tablets, selection no. , embracing the six standards and the intermediate spectrum hues, eighteen pieces. color wheel or tops. method. ask the pupils to separate the six standards from the twelve spectrum hues. standards to be arranged in spectrum order. teach the names of the standards. test natural color perceptions by the attempts of the pupils to lay the spectrum in the eighteen papers. explain the intermediate hues by the color disks, and drill with the tablets. continue the practice of having the pupils lay the entire spectrum with the papers until it is familiar to them. practical occupations. pasting simple designs in either of the six standard colors, on white or gray background, with ready-cut papers. marking forms from tablets and cutting and pasting them on backgrounds. study of tones. material. folding models to show light and shade. crumpled satins and plushes. standard color disks with white and black, on wheel or tops. paper tablets, selection no. , tints no. , shades no. , white, black and neutral grays. method. ask each pupil to lay spectrum in eighteen normal colors. lay tints and shades of the six standards. have the children complete tints and shades no. of entire spectrum circuit. illustrate neutral grays by white in shadow with folding model, also with white and black disks combined. begin to classify into families the miscellaneous color material brought by the pupils. practical occupations. pasting of ready-cut papers in standard and shade on a background of the tint of same scale. paste designs in three tones of one scale on white or neutral gray background. mat weaving in tones of one scale. mat weaving in neutral gray and one or two tones of one color. broken colors. material. disks on wheel or top. paper tablets, selection no. . chart of broken spectrum scales. method. illustrate broken colors by disk combinations. let the pupils lay paper tablets to form chart of broken scales. compare this chart with the chart of pure scales laid with the papers. classifying of miscellaneous materials with reference to pure and broken colors. analysis of samples of pure and broken colors in cloths and flowers. practical occupations. paper cutting and pasting to be continued. following the broken colors in three tones which form the chart of broken spectrum colors, the three kinds of colored grays, warm, cool and green, may be considered preparatory to their use in contrasted effects. complete chart of pure spectrum scales in five tones. material. paper tablets, selection no. . chart of spectrum scales in five tones may be introduced for observation when the children are able to lay it with their papers. method. continue the study of tones with pure spectrum scales in five tones, as was done in the first three tones. from the chart of spectrum scales the study and classification of harmonies can begin in a simple way. from this time on free-hand paper cutting and pasting may be introduced at pleasure, employing the colored papers in five tones when required. advanced study of harmonies. by taking advantage of the instruction imparted in a course of color study such as has been outlined in the preceding pages the pupil will be able to advance in his ability to perceive colors and to make definite analyses of colors in natural and manufactured material. in this way the advanced study of harmonies can be greatly facilitated so that it will be possible for the student to apprehend and appreciate many delicate and subtle color effects in art and nature never before imagined. in fact the foundation of color study will have been laid in such a logical and fascinating manner that its further advance will be but a pleasure to the pupil and teacher, so that no arbitrary plan will be necessary, because so many lines of work will suggest themselves to all who are interested in the subject. water colors. this outline would not be complete without a reference to water colors, but this is not the place to give definite instructions as to their use. kindergartners and primary teachers are now generally competent to direct the children in this work, if they will avail themselves of such aid as is furnished by recently published books on the subject. non-poisonous paints, cheap and still of fair quality, can now be obtained in standard colors and put up in various forms. the moist paints in collapsible tubes are the most convenient as well as the most economical for school use. this form should be accompanied by a small mixing palette containing several compartments, which can be bought at so small a price that each pupil can have one. the paint in the tubes can then be dealt out only as required for each day's use. $material for color instruction.$ where the price is preceded by a star the article is too large to be sent by mail. in other cases where no postage is given the goods are sent postpaid on receipt of price. $water colors.$ in ordering it will be necessary to give only the number of the box. no. price . an enameled box containing eight pans of semi-moist colors, six standards and two grays, one brush, per box $ . . an enameled box containing ten pans semi-moist colors, six standards, black, white, cool gray and warm gray, one brush, per box . . same box as above, containing five pans semi-moist colors. red, two yellows, blue and gray, one brush, per box . . enameled box containing four pans semi-moist colors, red, yellow, blue and gray, one brush, per box . . same as above, red, two yellows and blue, per box . . a decorated box containing eight cakes of dry colors, six standards and two grays, one brush, per box . . a decorated box containing four large cakes of dry colors. red, yellow, blue and gray, one brush, per box . . same box as above. red, two yellows and blue, two brushes, per box . . nine tubes moist colors in strong paper box. six standards, warm gray, cool gray and black, per set . . photograph colors. a box of eight colors, the six standards and a chinese white and a brown, with one brush. these colors are expressly prepared for coloring photographs, half tone prints, maps, etc. . bradley's school colors, moist in tubes. the most economical form for school use. these colors are so prepared that they remain moist out of the tube. the set comprises the following colors: postage carmine, crimson lake, vermilion, gamboge, chinese yellow, hooker's green, no. i, hooker's green, no. ii, ultramarine, prussian blue, sepia, warm sepia, burnt sienna, payne's gray, ivory black, chinese white and the six standards, with warm, cool and neutral gray, black and white, per tube . little artist's complete outfit, comprising a mixing palette with its seven compartments filled with semi-moist colors and a brush, the whole enclosed in a strong cardboard case . . $accessories.$ standard mixing palette, with seven compartments for paints and two for mixing. almost indispensable in using tube colors. extra deep, per doz. . . water cups. an enameled metal cup, practically indestructible, per doz. . . camel's hair brushes, quill, per doz. . . camel's hair brushes, long handles, per doz. . . japanese school brushes, per doz. . . artists' camel hair brushes, no. , wooden handles, per doz. . . milton bradley co.'s water color pads--made of extra quality paper for water color work. no. , pad of sheets, × , each . . no. , pad of sheets, × , each . . $apparatus.$ high school color wheel, with disks in box * . one set of disks for above, in box * . primary school color wheel, with disks * . one set of disks for above in portfolio . . color top, by mail, each . color top, by mail, per doz. . no. prism, at buyer's risk . no. prism, at buyer's risk . no. prism, at buyer's risk . rainy day spectrum, made from colored papers, mounted on cardboard, one inch by , each . . large spectrum, by inches, mounted on cloth, each . . chart of pure spectrum scales, no. x, on cardboard, x inches, hinged and folded. ninety papers one inch square, each . . chart of pure spectrum scales, no. x. size, x , folded and hinged. ninety papers two inches square, each . . chart of broken spectrum scales, no. . size, x inches, with paper - / inches square, comprising twelve scales of three tones each . . chart of broken spectrum scales, no. . size, x inches, with the same papers as no. , three inches square, each . . chart of complementary colors. on cardboard inches square, each *. standard color chart. on two cards x inches, hinged and eyeleted for hanging. this is a combination chart comprising "spectrum standards," "pure spectrum scales," "complementary contrasts," "broken spectrum scales," and "grays." printed suggestions for using the charts on the back, each . . $books on color.$ water colors in the schoolroom, by milton bradley, boards . a new book of practical suggestions, valuable to every one who would undertake to teach the use of water colors. elementary color, by milton bradley, cloth . gives the principles on which the bradley system is based and an explanation of the use of the glass prism, color wheel, maxwell disks, color top, colored papers, color charts and water colors. the little artist by marion mackenzie, cloth . . a practical book of water color work for children, with beautiful, colored plates. size of book, by inches. color in the kindergarten, by milton bradley, paper covers . a manual of the theory of color and the use of color material in the kindergarten. a class book of color, by prof. mark m. maycock. teachers' edition, cloth . pupils' edition, boards . a very complete teachers' handbook in color. practical color work, by helena p. chace, paper . a handbook for the educational use of colored papers in teaching color in primary and ungraded schools. the color primer, by milton bradley, paper. teachers' edition, pages . pupils' edition, pages . simple and direct teachings. $miscellaneous material.$ paper tablets, set no. , x in. . paper tablets, set no. , x in. . paper tablets, set no. , x in. . paper tablets, set no. , x in. . sample book, one by four inches, containing the full assortment . . package, x papers, pieces . . package, x papers, pieces . . fun, physics and psychology in color. a box of material for simple experiment, each . . complementary color contrasts. a box of large material for popular experiments in color vision, each . . the dunn and curtis illustrative sewing cards, in color. two sets: a. literature illustration. b. cards for special occasions. set of eight cards . dozen of any design . $milton bradley company,$ $springfield, mass.$ transcriber's note _italic text_ has been enclosed in underscores. $bold text$ has been enclosed in dollar signs. the history of painting in italy. vol. v. the history of painting in italy, from the period of the revival of the fine arts to the end of the eighteenth century: translated from the original italian of the abate luigi lanzi. by thomas roscoe. _in six volumes._ vol. v. containing the schools of bologna, ferrara, genoa, and piedmont. london: printed for w. simpkin and r. marshall, stationers'-hall court, ludgate street. j. m'creery, tooks court, chancery lane, london. contents of the fifth volume. history of painting in upper italy. book the third. bolognese school. page epoch i. _the ancient masters_ epoch ii. _various styles, from the time of francia to that of the caracci_ epoch iii. _the caracci, their scholars and their successors, until the time of cignani_ epoch iv. _pasinelli, and in particular cignani, cause a change in the style of bolognese painting. the clementine academy and its members_ book the fourth. school of ferrara. epoch i. _the ancient masters_ epoch ii. _artists of ferrara, from the time of alfonso i. till alfonso ii., last of the este family in ferrara, who emulate the best italian styles_ epoch iii. _the artists of ferrara borrow different styles from the bolognese school--decline of the art, and an academy instituted in its support_ book the fifth. epoch i. _the ancient masters_ epoch ii. _perino and his followers_ epoch iii. _the art relapses for some time, and is re-invigorated by the works of paggi and some foreigners_ epoch iv. _the roman and parmesan succeed to the native style--establishment of an academy_ book the sixth. history of painting in piedmont and the adjacent territory. epoch i. _dawn and progress of the art until the sixteenth century_ epoch ii. _painters of the seventeenth century, and first establishment of the academy_ epoch iii. _school of beaumont, and restoration of the academy_ history of painting in upper italy. book iii. bolognese school. during the progress of the present work, it has been observed that the fame of the art, in common with that of letters and of arms, has been transferred from place to place; and that wherever it fixed its seat, its influence tended to the perfection of some branch of painting, which by preceding artists had been less studied, or less understood. towards the close of the sixteenth century, indeed, there seemed not to be left in nature, any kind of beauty, in its outward forms or aspect, that had not been admired and represented by some great master; insomuch that the artist, however ambitious, was compelled, as an imitator of nature, to become, likewise, an imitator of the best masters; while the discovery of new styles depended upon a more or less skilful combination of the old. thus the sole career that remained open for the display of human genius was that of imitation; as it appeared impossible to design figures more masterly than those of bonarruoti or da vinci, to express them with more grace than raffaello, with more animated colours than those of titian, with more lively motions than those of tintoretto, or to give them a richer drapery and ornaments than paul veronese; to present them to the eye at every degree of distance, and in perspective, with more art, more fulness, and more enchanting power than fell to the genius of coreggio. accordingly the path of imitation was at that time pursued by every school, though with very little method. each of these was almost wholly subservient to its prototype; nor was it distinguished in any other portion of the art than that by which its master had surpassed all competitors. even in this portion, the distinction of these followers consisted only in copying the same figures, and executing them in a more hasty and capricious manner, or at all events, in adapting them out of place. those devoted to raffaello were sure to exaggerate the ideal in every picture: the same in regard to anatomy in those of michelangiolo: while misplaced vivacity and foreshortening were repeated in the most judicious historic pieces of the venetians and the lombards. a few, indeed, there were, as we have noticed, in every place, who rose conspicuous above those popular prejudices and that ignorance which obscured italy, and whose aim was to select from the masters of different states the chief merit of each; a method of which the campi of cremona more especially furnished commendable examples. yet these artists being unequal in point of genius and learning, broken into different schools, separated by private interests, accustomed to direct their pupils only in the exact path they themselves trod, and always confined within the limits of their native province, failed to instruct italy, or at least to propagate the method of correct and laudable imitation. this honour was reserved for bologna, whose destiny was declared to be the art of teaching, as governing was said to be that of rome; and it was not the work of an academy, but of a single house. gifted with genius, intent upon attaining the secrets more than the stipends of their art, and unanimous in their resolves, the family of the caracci discovered the true style of imitation. first, they inculcated it through the neighbouring state of romagna, whence it was communicated to the rest of italy; so that in a little while nearly the whole country was filled with its reputation. the result of their learning went to shew that the artist ought to divide his studies between nature and art, and that he should alternately keep each in view, selecting only, according to his natural talents and disposition, what was most enviable in both. by such means, that school, which appeared last in the series that flourished, became the first to instruct the age; and what it had acquired from each it afterwards taught to all: a school which, until that period, had assumed no form or character to distinguish it from others, but which subsequently produced almost as many new manners, as the individuals of the family and their pupils. the mind, like the pen, would gladly arrive at that fortunate epoch; aiming at the most compendious ways to reach it, and studiously avoiding whatever may impede or divert its course. let malvasia exclaim against vasari as much as he pleases: let him vent his indignation upon his prints, in which bagnacavallo appears with a goat's physiognomy, when he was entitled to that of a gentleman: let him farther vituperate his writings, in which bolognese professors are either omitted, dismissed with faint praise, or blamed, until one mastro amico and one mastro biagio fall under his lash:--to attempt to reconcile or to aggravate such feuds will form little part of my task. concerning this author i have sufficiently treated in other places; though i shall not scruple to correct, or to supply his information in case oaf need, on the authority of several modern writers.[ ] nor shall i fail to point out in malvasia occasional errors in sound criticism, which seem to have escaped him in the effervescence of that bitter controversy. the reader will become aware of them even in the first epoch; in treating which, agreeably to my own method, i shall describe the origin and early progress of this eminent school. together with the bolognese, i shall also give an account of many professors of romagna, reserving a few, however, for a place in the ferrarese school, in which they shone either as disciples or as masters. footnote : no italian school has been described by abler pens. the co. canon. malvasia was a real man of letters; and his life has been written by crespi. his two volumes, entitled _felsina pittrice_, will continue to supply an abundance of valuable information, collected by the pupils of the caracci, to whom he was known, and by whom he was assisted in this work; charged, however, with a degree of patriotic zeal at times too fervid. crespi and zanotti were his continuators, whose merits are considered in the last epoch. to these volumes is added the work entitled, "pitture, sculture, e architetture di bologna," of which the latest editions have been supplied with some very valuable notices, (drawn also from mss.) by the ab. bianconi, already commended by us, and by sig. marcello oretti, a very diligent collector of pictoric anecdotes, as well as by other persons. i cite this work under the title of the _guide_ of bologna; in addition to which i mention in romagna that of ravenna by beltrami, that of rimini by costa, and of pesaro by becci, which is farther illustrated by observations upon the chief paintings at pesaro, and a dissertation upon the art; both very ably treated by the pen of sig. canon. lazzarini. bolognese school. epoch i. _the ancients._ the new guide of bologna, published in the year , directs our attention to a number of figures, in particular those of the virgin, which, on the strength of ancient documents, are to be assigned to ages anterior to the twelfth century. of some of these we find the authors' names indicated; and it forms, perhaps, the peculiar boast of bologna to claim three of them during the twelfth century: one guido, one ventura, and one ursone, of whom there exist memorials as late back as . most part, however, are from unknown hands, and so well executed, that we are justified in suspecting that they must have been retouched about the times of lippo dalmasio, to whose style a few of them bear considerable resemblance. yet not so with others; more especially a specimen in san pietro, which i consider to be one of the most ancient preserved in italy. but the finest monument of painting possessed by bologna, at once the most unique and untouched, is the _catino_ of san stefano, on which is figured the adoration of the lamb of god, described in the apocalypse; and below this are several scriptural histories; as the birth of our lord, his epiphany, the dispute, and similar subjects. the author was either greek, or rather a scholar of those greeks who ornamented the church of st. mark in venice with their mosaics; the manner much resembling theirs in its rude design, the spareness of the limbs, and in the distribution of the colours. it is besides, certain, that these greeks educated several artists for italy, and among others the founder of the ferrarese school, of whom more in its appropriate place. however this may be, the painter exhibits traces that differ from those mosaic workers, such as the flow of the beard, the shape of the garments, and a taste less bent on thronging his compositions. and in respect to his age, it is apparent it must have been between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from the form of the characters, collated with other writings belonging to the same period. entering upon the age of giotto, the most disputed of all, on account of the florentines having declared themselves the tutors of the bolognese, and the aversion of the latter to admit that they have been instructed by the florentines;--i decline to dwell upon their writings, in which the heat of controversy has effectually obscured the candour of real history. i shall rather gather light from the figures of the _trecentisti_ dispersed throughout the city and all parts of romagna, and from the ample collections which are to be seen in various places. such is that of the padri classensi at ravenna, that of the institute at bologna, and in the same place one at the malvezzi palace, where the pictures of the ancient masters are exhibited in long series, with their names; not always inscribed, indeed, in ancient character, nor always equally genuine; but still calculated to reflect honour upon the noble family that made the collection. in all these i discovered paintings, some manifestly greek; some indisputably giottesque; certain others of venetian style; and not a few in a manner which i never saw, except in bologna. they possess a body of colouring, a taste in perspective, a method of designing and draping the figures, not met with in any other cities; as for instance, in several places i saw scripture histories, where the redeemer invariably appears arrayed in a red mantle; while other characters appear in garments trimmed in a certain novel style with gilt borders; trifles in themselves, yet not apparent in any other school. from similar observations we seem to be justified in concluding that the bolognese of that age likewise had a school of their own, not indeed so elegant, nor so celebrated, but nevertheless peculiar, and so to say, municipal, derived from ancient masters of mosaic, and also from those in miniature. on this head, notwithstanding our proposed brevity, i must here refer to the words of baldinucci in his notices of the miniature painter, franco: "after giotto, that very celebrated florentine painter, had discovered his novel and fine method by which he gained the name of the first restorer of the art of painting, or rather to have raised it from utter extinction; and after he had acquired with industrious diligence that fine mode of painting which is called _di minio_,[ ] which for the most part consists in colouring very diminutive figures; many others also applied themselves to the like art, and soon became illustrious. one of these was oderigi d'agubbio, concerning whom we have spoken in his proper place among the disciples of cimabue. we discovered that this oderigi, as we are assured by vellutello in his comment upon dante, in the eleventh canto of the purgatorio,[ ] was master in the art to franco bolognese, which assertion acquires great credit from his having worked much in miniature in the city of bologna, according to these words that i find said of him by benvenuto da imola, a contemporary of petrarch, in his comment upon dante: 'iste odorisius fuit magnus miniator in civitate bononiæ, qui erat valde vanus jactator artis suæ.' from this franco, according to the opinion of malvasia, the most noble and ever glorious city of bologna received the first seeds of the beautiful art of painting." footnote : _di minio_, a peculiar red colour, used also in oil painting, and well known to the ancients, who on festal days were accustomed to ornament with it the face of jove's statue, as also that of the victors on days of triumph. pliny and others explain the ancient method of employing it. the term, in its simple acceptation, means here the art of designing and colouring in miniature, (from _di minio_) early applied to the ornamenting and illuminating of ancient works and mss. r. footnote : "oh dissi lui non se' tu oderisi, l'onor d'agubbio, e l'onor di quell'arte che alluminar è chiamata a parisi? frate, diss'egli, più ridon le carte che pennellegia franco bolognese: l'onor è tutto or suo, e mio in parte. ben non sarei stato sì cortese mentre ch'io vissi per lo gran disìo dell'eccellenza, ove mio cor intese. di tal superbia qui si paga il fio." with this narrative does the author proceed, like a careful culturist, gently sprinkling with refreshing drops his pictoric tree, whose seed he had shortly before planted, in order to trace the whole derivation of early artists from the leading stock of cimabue. it has elsewhere been observed that this famous tree can boast no root in history; that it sprung out of idle conjectures, put together as an answer to the _felsina pittrice_ of malvasia, in which the bolognese school is made to appear, as it were, _autoctona_, derived only from itself. now baldinucci, in order to give its origin to florence, would persuade us that oderigi, a miniaturist, and master of franco, the first painter at bologna on the revival of the arts, had actually been a disciple of cimabue. his argument amounts to this: that dante, giotto, and oderigi, being known to have lived on the most intimate terms together, and all three greatly devoted to the fine arts, must have contracted their friendship in the school of cimabue; as if such an intimacy might not have sprung up at any other time or place amongst three men who travelled. it is besides difficult to believe that oderigi, ambitious of the fame of a miniaturist in ornamenting books, should have applied to cimabue, who in those times was not the best designer of figures, though the most eminent painter in fresco, and of grand figures. a more probable supposition, therefore, is that oderigi acquired the art from the miniaturists, who then greatly abounded in italy, and carried it to further perfection by his own design. neither are the epochs themselves, fixed upon by baldinucci, in favour of his system. he would have it that giotto, at ten years of age, being about the year , began to design in the school of cimabue, when the latter had attained his forty-sixth year; nor could oderigi have been any younger, whose death happened about , one year before that of cimabue, his equal in reputation, and in the dignity of the pupil, who already surpassed the master. how difficult then to persuade ourselves that a genius, described by dante as lofty and full of vaunting, should demean himself by deigning to design at the school of a contemporary, near the seat of a mere child; and subsequently surviving only thirteen years, should acquire the fame of the first miniaturist of his age, besides forming the mind of a pupil superior to himself. it is no less incredible that oderigi, after having seen giotto's specimens in miniature, "_should in a short time become famous_." giotto, in , when twenty-two years of age, was at rome in the service of the pope; where, observes baldinucci, he also illuminated a book for the car. stefaneschi; a circumstance not mentioned by vasari, nor supported by any historical document. yet taking all this for granted, what length of time is afforded for oderigi to display his powers, on the strength of seeing giotto's models; for oderigi, who having been already some time before deceased, was found by dante in purgatory, according to baldinucci's computation, in the year ? i therefore refer this miniaturist to the bolognese school, most probably as a disciple, assuredly as a master; and, on the authority of vellutello, as the master of franco, both a miniaturist and a painter. franco is the first among the bolognese who instructed many pupils; and he is almost deserving the name of the giotto of this school. nevertheless he approached only at considerable distance, the giotto of florence, as far as we can judge from the few relics which are now pointed out as his in the malvezzi museum. the most undoubted specimen is one of the virgin, seated on a throne, bearing the date of ; a production that may compare with the works of cimabue, or of guido da siena. there are also two diminutive paintings, displaying much grace, and similar miniatures, ascribed to the same hand. the most eminent pupils educated by franco in his school, according to malvasia, are by name, vitale, lorenzo, simone, jacopo, cristoforo; specimens of whose paintings in fresco are still seen at the madonna di mezzaratta. this church, in respect to the bolognese, exhibits the same splendor as the campo santo of pisa, in relation to the florentine school; a studio in which the most distinguished trecentisti who flourished in the adjacent parts, competed for celebrity. they cannot, indeed, boast all the simplicity, the elegance, the happy distribution, which form the excellence of the giottesque; but they display a fancy, fire, and method of colouring, which led bonarruoti and the caracci, considering the times in which they lived, not to undervalue them; insomuch that, on their shewing signs of decay, these artists took measures for their preservation. in the forementioned church, then, besides the pupils of franco already named, galasso of ferrara, and an unknown imitator of the style of giotto, asserted by lamo in his ms. to have been giotto himself, painted, at different times, histories from the old and new testament. i am inclined rather to pronounce the unknown artist to be giotto's imitator; both because vasari, in mezzaratta, makes no mention of giotto, and because, if the latter had painted, he would have ranked with the most eminent, and would have been selected to pursue his labours, not in that corner ornamented with paintings in the florentine style, but in some more imposing situation. i ought not to omit to mention in this place, that giotto employed himself at bologna. there is one of his altar-pieces still preserved at san antonio with the superscription of magister ioctus de florentia. we, moreover, learn from vasari that puccio capanna, a florentine, and ottaviano da faenza, with one pace da faenza, all pupils of giotto, pursued their labours more or less at bologna. of these, if i mistake not, there are occasional specimens still to be met with in collections and in churches. nor are there wanting works of the successors of taddeo gaddi, one of the school of giotto, which, as i have seen great numbers in florence, i have been able to distinguish with little difficulty among specimens of this other school. besides this style, another was introduced into bologna from florence, that of orcagna, whose novissimi of s. maria novella were almost copied in a chapel of san petronio, painted after the year ; the same edifice which vasari on the strength of popular tradition, has asserted, was ornamented by buffalmacco. from this information, we are brought to conclude that the florentines exercised an influence over the art, even in bologna; nor can i commend malvasia, who, in recounting the progress of his school, gives them no place, nor makes them any acknowledgment. their models, which at that period were the most excellent in the art, there is reason to suppose, may in those times have afforded assistance to the young bolognese artists, as those of the school of caracci, in another age, instructed the youth of florence. it is time, however, to return to the pictures of mezzaratta. the authors of those just recorded, were, some of them, contemporary with the disciples of giotto; others flourished subsequent to them; nor is there any name more ancient than that of vital da bologna, called _dalle madonne_, of whom there are accounts from till the year . this artist, who painted for that church a picture of the nativity, and from whose hand one of s. benedetto with other saints is seen in the malvezzi palace, had more dryness of design than belonged to the disciples of giotto at that period; and he employed compositions that differed from that school, so extremely tenacious of giotto's ideas. if baldinucci ventured to assert of him that his style, in every particular, agrees with that of his florentine contemporaries, he wrote on the faith of others; a sufficient reason with him for affirming that he was pupil to giotto, or to some one of his disciples. i would not venture so far; but rather, to judge from the hand of vitale, which baldi, in his biblioteca bolognese, entitles "manum elimatissimam," from the dryness of design, and from his almost exclusive custom of painting madonnas, i argue that he had not departed much from the example set by franco, more of a miniaturist than a painter, and that his school could not have been that school more elevated, varied, and rich in ideas, formed by giotto. lorenzo, an artist, as is elsewhere observed, of venice more probably than of bologna,[ ] who produced the history of daniel, on which he inscribed his name, painted during the same period, and attempted copious compositions. he was greatly inferior to the memmi, to the laurati, to the gaddi, though he is represented as their equal in reputation by malvasia. he betrays the infancy of the art, no less in point of design than in the expressions of his countenances, whose grief sometimes provokes a smile; and in his forced and extravagant attitudes in the manner of the greeks. hence it is here out of the question to mention giotto, in whose school, cautiously avoiding every kind of extravagance, there predominates a certain gravity and repose, occasionally amounting to coldness; described by the author of the bolognese guide as the statuary manner; and it is one of those marks by which to distinguish that school from others of the same age. footnote : vol. iii. p. . at a later period flourished galasso, who is to be sought for in the list of artists of ferrara, along with the three supposed disciples of vitale; namely, cristoforo, simone, and jacopo; all of whom, in mature age, were engaged in pictures to decorate the church at mezzaratta, which were completed in . vasari writes that he is uncertain whether cristoforo belonged to ferrara, or da modena; and whilst the two cities were disputing the honour, the bolognese historians, baldi, masini, and bumaldo, adjusted the difference by referring him to their own felsina. for me his country may remain matter of doubt, though not so the school in which he flourished; inasmuch as he certainly resided, and painted a great deal, both on altar-pieces and on walls, at bologna. at that period, he must have attracted the largest share of applause; since to him was committed the figure of the altar, which is still in existence, with his name. the signori malvezzi, likewise, are in possession of one of his altar-pieces, abounding with figures of saints, and divided into ten compartments. the design of these figures is rude, the colouring languid; but the whole displays a taste assuredly not derived from the florentines, and this is the principal difficulty in the question. simone, most commonly called in bologna da crocifissi, was eminent in these sacred subjects. at s. stefano, and other churches, he has exhibited several fine specimens, by no means incorrect in the naked figure, with a most devotional cast of features, extended arms, and a drapery of various colours. they resemble giotto's in point of colouring, and in the posture of the feet, one of which is placed over the other, but in other respects they approach nearer the more ancient. i have seen also some madonnas painted by him; sometimes in a sitting posture, at others in half-size, with drapery and with hands in the manner of the greek paintings. in features, however, and in the attitudes, they are both carefully studied and commendable for those times; a specimen of which is still to be seen at s. michele in bosco. among the bolognese trecentisti jacopo avanzi is the most distinguished. he produced the chief part of the histories at the church of mezzaratta, many in conjunction with simone, and a few of them alone; as the miracle of the probation, at the bottom of which he wrote _jacobus pinxit_. he appears to have employed himself with most success in the chapel of s. jacopo al santo, at padua, where, in some very spirited figures, representing some exploit of arms, he may be said to have conformed his style pretty nearly to the giottesque; and even in some measure to have surpassed giotto, who was not skilful in heroic subjects. his masterpiece seems to have been the triumphs painted in a saloon at verona, a work commended by mantegna himself as an excellent production. he subscribed his name sometimes _jacobus pauli_; which has led me to doubt whether he was not originally from venice, and the same artist who, together with paolo his father, and his brother giovanni, painted the ancient altar-piece of san marco at that place. the time exactly favours such a supposition; the resemblance between the countenances in the paintings at s. marco and at the mezzaratta, farther confirms it; nor can i easily persuade myself that avanzi would have entitled himself _jacobus pauli_, had there flourished another artist at the same period, likely, from similarity of signatures, to create a mistake. in the _notizia_ of _morelli_, p. , he is called _jacomo davanzo, a paduan, or veronese, or as some maintain a bolognese_, words which may create a doubt of the real place of his birth. without entering on such a question, i shall only observe, that i incline to believe that his most fixed domicile, at least towards the close of his days, was at bologna; and it has already been remarked, that some artists were accustomed to assume their place of residence for a surname. it would seem that two painters of this age derive their parentage from him: one who on an altar-piece at s. michele in bosco signs himself _petrus jacobi_, and the same orazio di jacopo mentioned by malvasia. at all events it is observable in each school, that, where an artist was the son of a painter, he gladly adopted his father's name as a sort of support and recommendation of his own. one giovanni of bologna, unknown in his own country, has left at venice a painting of s. cristoforo, in the school of the merchants at s. maria dell'orto, to which he adds his name, though without date; and, from his ancient manner, we are authorized to believe that he really belongs to the place which is here assigned him. lippo di dalmasio, formerly believed to be a carmelite friar, until the turin edition of baldinucci proved that he had died married, sprung from the school of vitale, and was named lippo dalle madonne. it is not true, as reported, that he instructed the beata caterina vigri in the art, by whom there remain some miniatures, and an infant christ painted on panel. lippo's manner scarcely varies from the ancient, except perhaps in better harmony of tints and flow of drapery; to which last, however, he adds fringes of gold lace tolerably wide, a practice very generally prevalent in the early part of the fifteenth century. his heads are beautiful and novel, more particularly in several madonnas, which guido reni never ceased to admire, being in the habit of declaring that lippo must have been indebted to some supernatural power for his exhibition in one countenance of all the majesty, the sanctity, and the sweetness of the holy mother, and that in this view he had not been equalled by any modern. such is the account given by malvasia, who relates it, he adds, as he heard it. he moreover assures us, on the authority of guido, that lippo painted several histories of elias in fresco, with great spirit; while, on the experience of tiarini, he would persuade us that he painted in oil at s. procolo in via s. stefano, and in private houses; on which point he impugns the commonly received opinion respecting antonello, examined by us more than once. contemporary with lippo must have flourished maso da bologna, painter of the ancient cupola of the cathedral. subsequent to , the latest epoch of the paintings of lippo, the bolognese school began to decline; nor could it well be otherwise. dalmatio, an instructor of youth, was not by profession a painter of history; and, as portrait painters never particularly promoted the progress of any school, so on his part he conferred little benefit on his own. this decline has been attributed to some specimens of art brought from constantinople, overcharged with dark lines in the contours and folds, and in the remaining parts resembling rather the dryness and inelegance of the greek mosaic-workers, than the softness and grace then sought to be introduced by the most eminent italians in the art. copies of these were eagerly inquired for in bologna, and in all adjacent cities, which produced that abundance of them, still to be seen in the sale shops and private houses throughout those districts, besides several in the city and state of venice.[ ] but, in these instances, they were only copied; in bologna they were imitated likewise by several pupils of lippo, who, either in part or altogether, adopted that style in their own compositions. one lianori, usually inscribing his name _petrus joannis_, and known by some works interspersed in different churches and collections, is most accused of this extravagance; an orazio di jacopo, (perhaps dell'avanzi) of whom there remains a portrait of s. bernardino, at the church of the osservanza; a severo da bologna, to whom is ascribed a rude altar-piece, in the malvezzi museum; with several others, either little known or unmentioned, whose names i am not surprised should be omitted by vasari, who, in the same way, passes over the least distinguished of his own country. it is true, he makes mention of one galante da bologna, who, he avers, designed better than lippo, his master; but in this he is still taken to task by malvasia, who includes galante among the inferior pupils of dalmasio. footnote : the greeks, during the earliest periods, having uniformly represented the virgin in so rude a style, were always pleased with similar paintings. i state this to remove a very prevalent error, that every madonna of greek style, with distended eyes, long fingers, and dark complexion, in the style of that of pisa, called _degli organi_, or those of cimabue, is to be referred to the remotest dates. indeed i have seen specimens of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and even eighteenth centuries, particularly in the classe museum, in that of cattaio, and in the palaces of venetian nobles. one in the possession of the e. e. signori giustiniani recanati, has, notwithstanding its very antique air, red letters inscribed on a gold ground, expressing, cheir emmanouÊl iereÔs ..... a ... lx, _manus emanuelis sacerdotis_. an. . from the hand of the same greek priest, well known to venetian artists, there are other altar-pieces with a similar inscription; and it is still customary in that city to reproduce specimens of a similar kind, to satisfy the continual inquiries of the greek merchants. to judge correctly, then, of the age of such images, we must look for other indications besides their design, such as the _letters_, (see vol. i. p. ), the fashion of the cornice, the method of colouring, or those cherubs, holding a gold crown over the head of the virgin, in the edges and the folds of whose drapery are imprinted marks of ages nearer to our own. nevertheless, the germ of good painting was not wanting, as far as the times permitted it to exist, both in bologna and throughout romagna. malvasia commends one jacopo ripanda, who long flourished at rome, where, as is commemorated by volterrano, he began to design the bassi-relievi of the trajan column; one ercole, a bolognese, who somewhat improved the symmetry of the human figure; one bombologno, a carver of crucifixes, like simone, but of more refined composition. he more particularly celebrates a michel di matteo, or michel lambertini; in whose commendation it may be enough to state, that albano praised one of his pictures, supposed to be in oil, completed in , for the fish-market, and even preferred it for its softness to those of francia. the few which we still possess in our own times, both at the churches of s. pietro and s. jacopo, might be put in competition with the contemporary works of almost any master. but the artist who produced an epoch in his school is marco zoppo, who having transferred his education under lippo to the studio of squarcione, rose to equal eminence with pizzolo and dario da trevigi; and, like them, vied with the genius of mantegna, and gave a farther spur to his exertions. he also studied some time in the venetian school, where he painted for the osservanti, at pesaro, a picture of the virgin on a throne, crowned, with s. giovanni the baptist, san francesco, and other saints, and signed it _marco zoppo da bologna dip. in vinexia_, . this is the most celebrated production which he left behind him; from which, and a few other pieces in the same church, and at bologna, we may gather some idea of his style. the composition is that common to the quattrocentisti, particularly the venetians, and which he probably introduced into bologna, a style which continued to the time of francia and his school, for the most part unvaried, except in the addition of some cherub to the steps of the throne, sometimes with a harp, and sometimes without. it is not a free and graceful style, like that of mantegna, but rather coarse, particularly in the drawing of the feet; yet less rectilinear in the folds, and bolder, and more harmonious, perhaps, in the selection of the colours. the fleshes are as much studied as in signorelli, and in others of the same age; while the figures and the accessories are conducted with the most finished care. marco was, likewise, a fine decorator of façades, in which kind of painting he was assisted by his companion and imitator, jacopo forti, to whose hand is ascribed a madonna, painted on the wall, at the church of s. tommaso, in mercato. in the malvezzi collection there is also attributed to jacopo a deposition of the saviour from the cross; a work which does not keep pace with the progressive improvements of that age. the same remark will apply to a great number of others, produced about the same period, in the same city, which, towards the close of the century, displayed a striking deficiency in good artists. it was owing to this circumstance that gio. bentivoglio, then master of bologna, wishing to ornament his palace, which, had fortune favoured him, would one day have become that of all romagna, invited a number of artists from ferrara and modena, who introduced a better taste into bologna, besides affording an occasion for the grand genius of francia to develop itself likewise in the art of painting, as we shall proceed to shew. this artist, whose real name was francesco raibolini, _was_, according to malvasia, _esteemed and celebrated as the first man of that age_; and he might have added, _in bologna_, where many so considered him; being there, as is attested by vasari, _held in the estimation of a god_. the truth is, that he had a consummate genius for working in gold; on which account the medals and coins taken with his moulds rivalled those of caradosso, the milanese; and he was also an excellent painter, in that style which is termed modern antique, as may be gathered from a great number of collections, where his madonnas rank at the side of those of pietro perugino and gian bellini. raffaello, too, compares him with them, and even greater artists, in a letter dated , edited by malvasia, in which he praises his madonnas, "never having beheld any more beautiful, more devotional in their expression, and more finely composed by any artist." his manner is nearly between that of these two heads of their schools, and participates in the excellence of both; it boasts perugino's choiceness and tone of colours; while, in the fulness of its outlines, in the skill of the folding, and ample flow of the draperies, it bears greater resemblance to bellini. his heads, however, do not equal the grace and sweetness of the former; though he is more dignified and varied than the latter. in the accessories of his landscapes he rivals both; but in landscape itself, and in the splendor of his architecture, he is inferior to them. in the composition of his pictures he is less fond of placing the divine infant in the bosom of the virgin than upon a distinct ground, in the ancient manner of his school; and he sometimes adds to them some half figures of saints, as was customary with the venetians of that period. on the whole, however, he approaches nearer to the roman school; and, not unfrequently, as is noticed by malvasia, his madonnas have been ascribed by less expert judges to pietro perugino. he likewise produced works in fresco at bologna, commended by vasari; and both there and elsewhere are many of his altar-pieces yet remaining, displaying figures of larger dimensions than those usually painted by bellini and perugino; the peculiar merit of the bolognese school, and by degrees extended to others, augmenting at once the grandeur of painting and of the temples it adorned. but the chief praise due to him yet remains to be recorded, and this is, that he did not begin to exercise his pencil until he had arrived at manhood, and, in the course of a few years, displayed the rare example of becoming a scholar and a master, able to compete with the best artists of ferrara and modena. these, as we have mentioned, were invited by gio. bentivoglio, in order to decorate his palace. there, too, francia was employed; and he was afterwards commissioned to paint the altar-piece of the bentivogli chapel, in , where he signed himself _franciscus francia aurifex_, as much as to imply that he belonged to the goldsmith's art, not to that of painting. nevertheless, that work is a beautiful specimen, displaying the most finished delicacy of art in every individual figure and ornament, especially in the arabesque pilasters, in the mantegna manner. in process of time he enlarged his style; a circumstance that induced historians to make a distinction between his first and second manner. cavazzoni, who wrote respecting the madonnas of bologna, wishes to persuade us that raffaello himself had availed himself of francia's models, in order to dilate that dry manner which he imbibed from perugino. we shall award this glory to the genius of raffaello, whose youthful performances at san severo of perugia, display a greater degree of softness than those of his master and of francia; and after his genius, to the examples of f. bartolommeo della porta, and of michelangiolo; leaving, we fear, no room to include the name of francia. when raffaello, at rome, was regarded rather in the light of an angel than a man, and had already executed some works at bologna, he began a correspondence with francia, urged to it by his letters; raffaello became his friend; and, on sending to bologna his picture of s. cecilia, he intreated him, on discovering any error in it, to correct it; an instance of modesty in our apelles, more to be admired even than his paintings. this occurred in , in which year vasari closes his life of francia, who he declares died with excess of passion, on first beholding that grand performance. malvasia, however, refutes him, by proving francia to "have lived many years afterwards, and when aged and declining, even to have changed his manner;" and in what way, except upon the models of raffaello? in his new manner he painted and exhibited, in a chamber of the mint, his celebrated piece of s. sebastian, which, according to a tradition handed from the caracci to albano, and from the latter to malvasia, served as a studio for the bolognese pupils, who copied its proportions with as much zeal as the ancients would have done those of a statue of polycletes, or the moderns of the apollo, or of the supposed antinous of belvidere. albani has added that francia, on perceiving the concourse of people increase round his picture, and diminish round the st. cecilia of raffaello, then dead, apprehensive lest they should suspect him of having executed and exhibited his own in competition with such an artist, instantly removed and placed it in the church of the misericordia, where, at this time, there remains a copy of it. the precise year of his decease, hitherto unknown, has been communicated to me by the sig. cav. ratti, who found on an ancient drawing of a female saint, now in possession of sig. tommaso bernardi, a noble of lucca, a memorandum of this event having occurred on the seventh day of april, . francia, in addition to his cousin giulio, who devoted himself but little to painting, gave instructions in the art to his own son of the name of giacomo. it is often doubtful, as we find in the gallery of the princes giustiniani, whether such a madonna is by the hand of francesco francia, or by that of his son, who, in similar pictures imitated closely his father's style, although, in malvasia's judgment, he never equalled it. in works on a larger scale too, he is sometimes to be pronounced inferior, in comparison with his father, as in s. vitale, at bologna, where francesco painted the cherubs round a madonna, in his first manner, somewhat meagre, perhaps, but still beautiful and full of animated movements, while giacomo drew the figures, representing a nativity of our lord, more soft in point of design, but with features less beautiful, and in attitudes and expressions bordering on extravagance. at other times, the son seems to have surpassed the father, as at s. giovanni, of parma, where there is no artist who would not wish to have produced that fine picture by giacomo, marked with the year , rather than the deposition from the cross, by francesco. elsewhere too, as in the picture of s. giorgio, at the church of san francesco in bologna, he rivals, perhaps, the finest works by his father; insomuch that this specimen was ascribed to the latter, until there was recently noticed the signature i., (meaning _jacobus_) _francia_, . he appears, from the first, to have practised a design approaching that of the moderns; neither have i observed in his paintings such splendid gildings, nor such meagre arms, as for some time distinguished the elder francia. he rather, in progress of time, continued to acquire a more free and easy manner, insomuch that a few of his madonnas were more than once copied and engraved by agostino caracci. his heads were extremely animated, though generally less select, less studied, and less beautiful, than his father's. he had a son, named giambatista, by whom there remains, at s. rocco, an altar-piece, and a few other specimens, displaying mere mediocrity. among the foreign pupils of francia, the bolognese enumerated lorenzo costa, and, indeed, he thus ranks himself, by inscribing under the portrait of gio. bentivoglio, _l. costa franciae discipulus_. true it is, that such inscriptions, as i have frequently found, might come from another hand; or that, granting he wrote it, he may have done so more out of regard to such a man, than for the sake of acquainting the world, as malvasia contends, that he had been his sole master. vasari is of a different opinion, introducing him to us at bologna as an established artist, already employed in several considerable cities, and bestowing the highest eulogium on his earliest production, the s. sebastiano at the church of s. petronio, declaring it the best specimen in water-colours that had, till then, been seen in the city. add to this, that francia exhibited his first altar-piece in the bentivogli chapel in , a few years after he had devoted himself to the art; and there costa placed the two lateral pictures, tolerably excellent in point of composition, and filled with those very spirited portraits of his in . now had he boasted only francia for his master, of what rapid improvement must we suppose him to have been capable! besides, would not his style almost invariably resemble that of francia, at least in the works he produced at bologna? yet the contrary is the case; and from his less free, and sometimes ill drawn figures; from the coarser expression of his countenances, his more hard and dull colouring, and his abundance of architecture, with the taste shewn in his perspective, it is evident he must have studied elsewhere. still i believe that he received the rudiments of his education in his own country; that then passing into tuscany, he formed himself, not by _the voice_, but, as vasari avers, upon the pictures of lippi and gozzoli; and that finally seeking bologna, he painted for the bentivogli, and resided also with francia rather in quality of an assistant than a pupil. a farther proof i gather from malvasia himself; that in the journals of francesco, in which he read the names of two hundred and twenty pupils, he found no mention of costa. in the rest, however, i concur; as to his having availed himself of the works of francia, in imitation of whom a number of madonnas are seen in the collections at bologna, much inferior to the paintings of the supposed master; but occasionally not unworthy of being compared with them. such is an altar-piece, divided into several compartments, removed from faenza into the casa ercolani; a production characterized by crespi, in his annotations to baruffaldi, as being executed "with a fervour, a refinement, softness, and a warmth which may be pronounced altogether raffaellesque." he particularly shone in his countenances of men, as may be seen from those of the apostles at s. petronio, and from his san girolamo, which there offers the finest specimen of his art. he was less employed in his own country than in bologna, though he gave several pupils to the former; among others the celebrated dosso and ercole of ferrara. he mostly resided at mantua, at which court he was highly appreciated, although mantegna had been his immediate predecessor, and giulio romano succeeded him. i may refer to what i there wrote respecting this artist. a less doubtful pupil of francia's was girolamo marchesi da cotignola. his portraits are much praised by vasari, but his compositions much less so. he was by no means happy in all; and in particular one which he produced at rimini, is severely criticised by the historian. there are various altar-pieces by him at bologna and elsewhere, all of the usual composition of the quattrocentisti, which goes to redeem his fault. one of these, exhibiting very beautiful perspective, is in possession of the serviti at pesaro, where the virgin is seen on a throne, before which, in a kneeling posture, is the marchesa ginevra sforza, with her son constantius ii.; nor is this the only specimen of his works conducted in the service of royal houses. the design is rather dry, but the colour very pleasing; the heads grand, the draperies well disposed; and in short, were it the only production of his hand, he would well deserve to rank among the most illustrious painters in the old style. that he obtained no reputation at rome, or naples, as vasari observes, was owing to his arriving in those cities too late, namely, in the pontificate of paul iii.; so that his style being then regarded merely in the light of an article out of fashion, he was unable to make his way. he died during the same pontificate, between the interval of and . orlandi, who brings in the decease of cotignola as early as , is not only refuted by the above dates marked by vasari, and, with slight difference, by baruffaldi, but moreover by a picture of s. girolamo at the church of the conventual friars of s. marino, executed in . amico aspertini is enrolled by malvasia (pp. , ) in the school of francia, a fact that vasari did not choose to notice, being wholly bent on amusing posterity with a portrait of the person and manners of "mastro amico," who was indeed a compound of pleasantry, eccentricity, and madness. he had adopted a maxim in painting, which in regard to literature, was commonly received in that age; to wit, that every individual ought to impress upon his works the image of his own genius; and, like erasmus, who exposed to ridicule cicero's imitators in writing, this artist was fond of deriding those of raffaello in painting. it was his leading principle to take the tour of italy, to copy here and there, without discrimination, whatever most pleased him, and afterwards to form a style of his own, "like an experienced inventor," to preserve an expression of vasari. conducted on this plan is a pietà by him, in the church of s. petronio, which may be compared with the trecentisti in point of forms, the attitudes, and the grouping of the figures. we may add, however, with guercino, that this artist seemed to handle two pencils; with one of which he painted for low prices, or out of despite, or for revenge; and this he made use of in s. petronio and several other pieces; the other he practised only on behalf of those who remunerated him honourably for his labours, and were cautious how they provoked him; and with this he displayed his art in various façades of palaces, commended by vasari himself; in the church of s. martino; and in many other works cited by malvasia, who describes him as a good imitator of giorgione. he had an elder brother of the name of guido, a youth who employed uncommon diligence and care, carried perhaps to excess, in his art. he died at the age of thirty-five, and was lamented by his more poetical fellow citizens in elegiac strains. malvasia is of opinion, that, had he survived, he would have equalled the fame of bagnacavallo; such was the promise held forth by a painting of the crucifixion under the portico of s. pietro, and by his other works. according to the same biographer, it was vasari's malice which led him to assign ercole of ferrara for guido's master, being jealous of affording m. amico the fame of forming such a pupil. i feel persuaded, with vasari, no less from the age of guido than from his taste, and from the date of , which he inscribed on this highly commended picture, that assuredly it cannot belong to the pupil of a pupil formed by francia. similar critical errors we have already noticed in baldinucci; and they are not very easily to be avoided where a party spirit is apt to prevail. gio. maria chiodarolo, a rival of the preceding, and subsequently of innocenzo da imola, in the palace of viola, left behind him a name above the generality of this school. malvasia mentions twenty-four other scholars of francesco francia, in which he was followed by orlandi, when treating of lorenzo gandolfi. by some mistake these pupils are referred by him to costa; while bottari, misled by orlandi, fell into the same error, although he laments "that men, in order to spare trouble, are apt to follow one another like sheep or cranes." yet in very extensive and laborious works it is difficult sometimes not to nod; nor should i occasionally note down others' inequalities, except in the hope of finding readers considerate enough to extend the same liberality towards mine. the forementioned names will prove of much utility to those who, in milan, in pavia, in parma, and other places in italy, may turn their attention to works in the ancient bolognese style, and may hear them attributed, as it often happens, to francia, instead of the pupils formed by him to practice in those districts, and invariably tenacious of his manner. he had also others, who from their intercourse with more modern artists, claim place in a better epoch; and for such we shall reserve them. we must previously however take a survey of some cities of romagna, and select what seems to belong to our present argument. we shall commence with ravenna, a city that preserved design during periods of barbarism better than any other in italy. nor do we elsewhere meet with works in mosaic so well composed, and in ivory, or in marble, cut in so able a manner; all vestiges of a power and grandeur worthy of exciting the jealousy of rome, when the seat of her princes and exarchs was removed to ravenna. this city too having fallen from its splendour, and after many vicissitudes being governed by the polentani, was no less indebted to them for an illustrious poet in the person of dante, than a great painter in giotto.[ ] this artist painted in the church called porto di fuori, several histories from the evangelists, which still remain there; and at s. francesco and other places in the city, we may trace reliques of his pencil, or at least of his style. the polentani being expelled, and the state brought under the subjection of venice, from this last capital the city of ravenna derived the founder of a new school. footnote : it is remarkable that, a century previous to the arrival of giotto, we find in ravenna one _johannes pictor_; a fact supplied by the learned count fantuzzi, to whom both ravenna and the public owe so much valuable information. see his "_monumenti ravennati_, during the middle ages, for the most part inedited," vol. i. p. . in vol. ii. p. , there is mention of a parchment of , in which one graziadeo, a notary, orders that in the portuense church there be made "imagines magnæ et spatiosæ ad aurum," which means mosaic, or painting upon a gold ground, a custom so much practised in those times. this was niccolo rondinello, mentioned by vasari as one "who, above all others, imitated gian bellini, his master, to whom he did credit, and assisted him in all his works." in the life of bellini, and in that of palma, vasari gives a list of his best paintings, exhibited in ravenna. in these his progress is very perceptible. he displays most of the antique in his picture of s. giovanni, placed in that church, for which he also executed one of the virgin, upon a gold ground. his taste is more modern in the larger altar-piece of san domenico; whose composition rises above the monotony of the age, giving a representation of saints in great variety of attitudes and situations. the design is exact, though always inclining to dryness, the countenances less select, and the colouring less vivid than those of his master; with equal care in his draperies, richly ornamented with embroidery in the taste of those times. it is, however, uncertain whether he had obtained any idea of the last and most perfect style of bellini. he had a pupil and successor in his labours at ravenna in francesco da cotignola, whom bonoli, in his history of lugo, and that of cotignola, as well as the describer of the parmese paintings, agree in surnaming marchesi, while in the guide to ravenna, he is denominated zaganelli. vasari commends him, as a very pleasing colourist; although inferior to rondinello in point of design, and still more of composition. in this he was not happy, if we except his celebrated resurrection of lazarus, which is to be seen at classe; his extremely beautiful baptism of jesus christ, at faenza, and a few other histories, where he checks his ardour, and more carefully disposes his figures, for the most part fine and well draped; occasionally whimsical, and in proportions less than life. one of his most extraordinary productions is a large altar-piece at the church of the osservanti, in parma, where he represented the virgin between several saints, enlivened by several portraits in the background. he never, in my opinion, produced any work more solid in conception, nor more harmoniously disposed, nor more ingenious in the colonnade, and the other accessary parts. here he preserved the most moderate tints, contrary to his usual practice, which was glowing and highly animated, and distributed more in the manner of mantegna, than of any other master. he had a brother named bernardino, with whom, in , he painted a very celebrated altar-piece, representing the virgin between s. francesco and the baptist, placed in the interior chapel of the padri osservanti, in ravenna; and another to be seen at imola, in the church of the riformati, with the date . bernardino, likewise, displayed tolerable ability alone, and among the paintings at pavia, there is one at the carmine, inscribed with his name; a fact that may correct an error of crespi, who names the elder brother francesco bernardino, making the two into one artist. contemporary with him, baldassare carrari was employed at ravenna along with his son matteo, both natives of that state. they painted for san domenico the celebrated altar-piece of s. bartolommeo, with the grado, containing very elegant histories of the holy apostle. such is its merit, as hardly to yield to the gracefulness of luca longhi, who placed one of his own pictures near it. it was one of the earliest which was painted in oil in ravenna; and it deserved the eulogium bestowed by pope julius ii., who on beholding it, in , declared, that the altars of rome could boast no pieces which surpassed it in point of beauty. the painter there left his portrait in the figure of s. pietro, and that of rondinello in the s. bartolommeo, somewhat older; an observance shewn in those times by the pupils towards their masters. yet i should not here pronounce it such, as vasari is not only wholly silent as to his school, but omits even his name. at rimini, where the malatesti spared no expense to attract the best masters, the art of painting flourished. it was at this time that the church of san francesco, one of the wonders of the age, was nobly erected, and as richly decorated. a number of artists at rimini had succeeded giotto in his school; and it is to them the author of the guide ascribes the histories of the b. michelina, which vasari conceived were from giotto's own hand.[ ] at a later period one bitino, whose name i am happy to rescue from oblivion, was employed at the same place; an artist not perhaps excelled in italy, about the year , when he painted an altar-piece of the titular saint, for the church of s. giuliano. around it he represented the discovery of his body, and other facts relating to the subject; extremely pleasing in point of invention, architecture, countenances, draperies, and colouring.[ ] another noble production is a s. sigismondo, at whose feet appears sigismondo malatesta, with the inscription, _franciscus de burgo_, _f._ ; and by the same hand there is the scourging of our saviour. both these paintings are seen on the wall of s. francesco; abounding in perspectives and _capricci_, with character approaching so nearly to the taste of pietro della francesca, then living, as to induce me to believe, that they are either by him, and that he has thus latinized the name of his house, or by some one of his pupils, whose name has perished. not such has been the fate of benedetto coda, of ferrara, who flourished at rimini, as well as his son bartolommeo, where they left a number of their works. vasari, in his life of gio. bellini, makes brief mention of them, describing benedetto as bellini's pupil, "though he derived small advantage from it." yet the altar-piece representing the marriage of the virgin, which he placed in the cathedral, with the inscription of _opus benedicti_, is a very respectable production; while that of the rosary, in possession of the dominicans, is even in better taste, though not yet modern. this, however, cannot be said of the son, one of whose pictures i saw at s. rocco da pesaro, painted in , with such excellent method, as almost to remind us of the golden age. it represents the titular saint of the church along with s. sebastiano, standing round the throne of the virgin, with the addition of playful and beautiful cherubs. another pupil of gio. bellini is noticed by ridolfi. lattanzio da rimino, or lattanzio della marca, referred by others to the school of pietro perugino, which, perhaps too, produced gio. da rimino, one of whose pictures, bearing his signature, belongs to the grand ercolani collection at bologna.[ ] footnote : to this period belonged that _joannes rimerici pictor arimini_, who is pointed out to us in by count marco fantuzzi, in his _monumenti ravennati_, vol. vi. edited in the year . footnote : in the above named volume (vi) we find mention of the son of this distinguished man: "_magister antonius pictor quondam mag. bictini pictoris de arimino_, ." footnote : i made a mistake in my former edition in supposing him to have been a pupil of bellino, who died in . concerning this gio. who subscribed himself likewise gio. francesco, we observe that oretti, in his _memorie_, _mss._, points out two pictures with the dates of and . he adds, that there are accounts of his having been living in . forli, as far as i can learn, boasts no artist earlier than guglielmo da forli, a pupil of giotto. his paintings in fresco, conducted at the francescani, no longer survive, nor in the church of that order could i meet with any specimen of the thirteenth century, besides a crucifix by some unknown hand. from that period, perhaps, a succession of artists appeared, there being no scarcity of anonymous paintings from which to conjecture such a fact; but history is silent until the time of ansovino di forli, who has already been included among the pupils of squarcione. i have my doubts whether this artist could be the master of melozzo, a name venerated by artists, inasmuch as he was the first who applied the art of foreshortening, the most difficult and the most severe, to the painting of vaulted ceilings. considerable progress was made in perspective after the time of paolo uccello, with the aid of piero della francesca, a celebrated geometrician, and of a few lombards. but the ornamenting of ceilings with that pleasing art and illusion, which afterwards appeared, was reserved for melozzo. it is observed by scannelli, and followed by orlandi, that in order to acquire the art he studied the works of the best ancient artists, and though born to fortune, he did not refuse to lodge with the masters of his times, in quality of attendant and compounder of their colours. some writers give him as a pupil to pietro della francesca. it is at least probable, that melozzo was acquainted with him and with agostino bramantino, when they were employed at rome by nicholas v., towards the year . however this may be, melozzo painted on the ceiling of the great chapel, at santi apostoli, the ascension of our lord, where, says vasari, "the figure of christ is so admirably foreshortened as to appear to pierce the vault; and in the same manner the angels are seen sweeping through the field of air in two opposite directions." this painting was executed for card. riario, nephew to pope sixtus iv. about the year ; and when that edifice required to undergo repairs, it was removed and placed in the quirinal palace in ; where it is still seen, bearing this inscription: "opus melotii foroliviensis, qui summos fornices pingendi artem vel primus invenit vel illustravit." several heads of the apostles which surrounded it, and were likewise cut away, were deposited in the vatican palace. taken as a whole, he approaches mantegna and the paduan school nearer than any other in point of taste; finely formed heads, fine colouring, fine attitudes, and almost all as finely foreshortened. the light is well disposed and graduated, the shadows are judicious, so that the figures seem to stand out and act in that apparent space; dignity and grandeur in the principal figure, and white drapery that encircles it; with delicacy of hand, diligence and grace in every part. what pity that so rare a genius, pronounced by his contemporaries "an incomparable painter, and the splendour of all italy,"[ ] should not have had a correct historian to have described his travels and his pursuits, which must have been both arduous and interesting, before they raised him to the eminence he attained, in being commissioned by card. riario to execute so great a work. at forli, there is still pointed out the façade of an apothecary's shop, displaying arabesques in the first style; and over the entrance appears a half-length figure, well depicted, in the act of mixing drugs, said to have been the work of melozzo. vasari states, that in the villa of the dukes of urbino, named the imperial, francesco di mirozzo, from forli, had been employed a long while previous to dosso; and it would appear that we are here to substitute the name of melozzo, to correct one of those errors which we have so frequently before remarked in vasari. in the lives of the ferrarese painters there is named a marco ambrogio, detto melozzo di ferrara, who seems to be confounded with the inventor of foreshortening; but it is my opinion that this was quite a different artist, of which his name itself gives us reasons to judge. melozzo di forli was still alive in : since f. luca paccioli, publishing the same year his "summa d'aritmetica e geometria," ranks him among painters in perspective, "_men famous and supreme_," who flourished in those days. footnote : morelli notizie, p. . towards the beginning of the sixteenth century, or shortly afterwards, bartolommeo di forli flourished in the same city, a pupil of francia, noticed by malvasia, whose style was more dry than that of the generality of his fellow pupils. next to him i place palmegiani, transformed by vasari into parmegiano; a good, yet almost unknown artist, of whom, in books upon the art, i have found mention only of two works, although i have myself seen a great number. he was cautious too that posterity should not forget him, for the most part inscribing his name and country upon his altar-pieces, and upon pictures for private ornament, as follows: _marcus pictor foroliviensis_: or _marcus palmasanus p. foroliviensis pinsebat_. he seldom adds the year, as in two in possession of prince ercolani, on the first of which we find the date of , and on the second that of . in the forementioned pictures, and more particularly in those of forli, we may perceive that he practised more than one style. his earliest was in common with that of the quattrocentisti, in the extremely simple position of the figures, in the gilt ornaments in study of each minute part, as well as in the anatomy, which in those times consisted almost wholly in drawing with some skill a s. sebastian, or some holy anchorite. in his second manner he was more artificial in his grouping, fuller in his outlines, and greater in his proportions; though at times more free and less varied in his heads. he was accustomed to add to his principal subject some other unconnected with it, as in his picture of the crucifixion, at s. agostino di forli, where he inserted two or three groups on different grounds; in one of which is seen s. paul visited by s. antony; in another, s. augustine convinced by the angel on the subject of the incomprehensibility of the supreme triad; and in these diminutive figures, which he inserted either in the altar-pieces or on the steps, he displays an art extremely refined and pleasing. his landscape is likewise animated, and his architecture beautiful, while his madonnas and other portraits are superior in point of beauty to those of costa, but not equal to francia, whose style of colouring he less resembles than that of rondinello; a circumstance which led vasari to attribute to the artist of ravenna an altar-piece in the cathedral, undoubtedly from the hand of palmegiani. the works of the latter are very numerous in romagna; and exist in the state of venice. one of his madonnas was in possession of the ab. facciolati, in padua, and mentioned by bottari; and another belongs to the sig. dottore antonio larber, at bassano. the select gallery of count luigi tadini, at crema, possesses a third; the going up of jesus to mount calvary; and i saw a dead christ, between nicodemus and joseph, in the vicentini palace at vicenza; a very beautiful picture, in which the dead has truly the appearance of death, and those living of real life. i had long entertained a curiosity to learn whose pupil so considerable an artist could have been; until i was gratified by finding that paccioli, in his dedication of the above cited volume, addressed to guidubaldo, duke of urbino, calls him the "attached disciple of melozzo." i was made acquainted with an artist of forli, who flourished at the period of palmegiani, by his eminence card. borgia, who in the church of s. maria dell'orto, at velletri, transcribed the following inscription: "jo. baptista de rositis de forlivio pinxit, i. s. o. o. de mense martii." the picture is on panel, and displays both good design and good colouring. it represents the virgin, with the holy child in her arms, seated in a round temple supported by four columns, and each of these columns is clasped by an angel, as if bearing the temple in procession through the air. the angels are wholly arrayed in heroic dress. for this description i am indebted to the very worthy cardinal. in respect to the other cities of romagna, i can easily suppose that i am rather in want of materials, than that these have had no artists to boast. i have recorded, not long since, one ottaviano, and also one pace da faenza, pupils of giotto; and there was pointed out to me as the production of the latter, an ancient figure of our lady, in a church of the same city, an edifice formerly belonging to the templars. giacomo filippo carradori is included, from his style, among the ancients; in other points it is hardly possible that he could have reached the fifteenth century. there are more especially two pictures, in which he exhibits a change of style, although he never displayed the powers of a superior artist. one of them bears the date of ; the other that of . another artist of faenza better deserved mention in the first edition, but i had then no account of him. this was giambatista da faenza, one of whose pictures is preserved in the communal collection of the lyceum, with the author's name, and dated . it exhibits the holy virgin; on whose right two angels support the mantle, and on the steps of the throne appear st. john the baptist, a youth, and another cherub, in the act of playing on the harp. it is correct in point of design, the tints are very pleasing, and the folds something similar to those of albert durer; in other respects, equal to costa, and perhaps, also, not inferior to francia. he was the father of jacopone da faenza, and of his brother, raffaello, from whom descended gio. batista bertuzzi, likewise an artist. there is a francesco bandinelli da imola, a pupil of francia, pointed out by malvasia; and one gaspero, also of imola, was employed in painting at ravenna. in his native state, there is to be seen, at the conventual friars, a picture of our lady, between saints rocco and francis, in a style inclining to the modern, accompanied with two portraits, very animated in point of expression. school of bologna. epoch ii. _various styles from the time of francia to that of the caracci._ subsequent to the discovery of the new style, when every school of italy was devoted to its cultivation in the track of one of its masters, the bolognese artists having none at home from whom to acquire it, either removed elsewhere to study it under the eye of living masters, or, if remaining in their native place, they contrived to attain it from such foreigners as had there conducted, or at least sent thither their works. of these they possessed, besides the st. cecilia, and a few small paintings by raffaello, other productions by his pupils, such as the st. john, coloured by giulio, and the st. zacchary, a work by garofolo. nor was it long before the lombard style was introduced into bologna, parmigianino having there produced his st. rocco and his st. margaret, pictures which are enumerated among his happiest efforts, and girolamo da carpi, and niccolo dell'abate having long resided, and left there many fine specimens of their mixed style, between the lombard and the roman. another artist sojourning there was girolamo da trevigi, an imitator of raffaello, not without some mixture of venetian taste, some of whose productions are still seen at bologna. a still more constant resident there was tommaso laureti, a sicilian, a pupil, according to vasari, of sebastian del piombo, and assuredly a more powerful colourist than most of his age. he there conducted a number of works, and among others the painting of a recess _di sotto in su_, for the house of vizzani, which father danti, commending vignola's perspective, pronounces perfectly unique in its kind. at the same place he left compositions abounding in figures, displaying much fancy, not however to be placed in competition with the history of brutus, which he afterwards completed, along with several more in the campidoglio at rome, where he long resided and taught. at bologna is also the altar-piece of boldraffio, pupil to vinci, and various other pieces by a florentine, who signs himself _iul. flor._ read by some for _julius_, and by others _julianus_. possibly he might be that giulian bugiardini, poor both as inventor and composer, but excellent in point of copying and colouring. whoever he may have been, the whole of his productions, particularly his st. john, which adorns the sacristy of st. stephen's, shew him to have been an imitator of vinci, almost on a par with the luini, and the best known milanese artists. michelangiolo shone there in the character of a statuary in the time of julius ii., but neither produced any paintings, nor left behind him, among artists, any wish for his return, having for some little indiscreet word treated francia and costa with the most sovereign contempt, in the same manner as at another period he criticised pietro perugino. his style, nevertheless, took root in bologna within a very few years, no less from the studies pursued by tibaldi at rome, as will be seen, than from the examples left by giorgio vasari at san michele in bosco, in bologna, in michelangiolo's style. nor did these examples prove more useful to the bolognese than they had done to the florentine artists; and here also they opened the path to a less correct style. it is known that vasari's works were much commended there, and copied by young artists; that he had, moreover, assistants among the bolognese, such as bagnacavallo, the younger, and fontana, who instructed not a few of his fellow citizens in the art. to these causes we may attribute the circumstance, that those bolognese artists, nearest to the caracci, were accustomed to colour, for the most part, like the florentines of the third epoch, that several were extremely careless of the chiaroscuro, and frequently pursued the ideal and the practical, more than nature and truth. yet these complaints do not apply either to so great a number of bolognese, or to so long a period, as to give a different aspect to the whole epoch. the one which we are now about to describe, abounds with excellent artists; and to this shortly succeeded the epoch of the caracci, which improved the good, and brought many extravagant artists into a correct method. the earliest founders of the new school were bartolommeo ramenghi, called bagnacavallo, being sprung from thence, and innocenzio francucci da imola. both educated by francia, the former subsequently went to rome, where we have given an account of him among raffaello's assistants; the latter to florence, where he attached himself to the school of albertinelli, besides studying very accurately, if i mistake not, the works of frate and andrea del sarto. both, on returning to bologna, met with rivals, though less with the pencil than the tongue, in aspertini and cotignuola, artists whose works present no instance of a style wholly modern. one master, domenico, a bolognese, then flourished, equal to compete with the first names, but who resided out of his native place. his name, lost during two or more centuries, was brought to light, a few years ago, from the archives of s. sigismondo of cremona, in whose church he executed, upon the ceiling, a picture of jonah ejected from the whale, which, in respect of the _di sotto in su_, is most admirable. it was completed in , when this art was yet new in italy; and i am at a loss to say whether domenico acquired it from coreggio, or, as is more likely, from melozzo, whose style he most resembles of the two. i have seen no other work, nor met with any other notice of this artist, unknown even to the bolognese historians, perhaps on account of his constant residence out of the place. the first artist, therefore, who introduced a new style into bologna, and established it there, was bagnacavallo, who had practised at rome under raffaello, and not without advantage. he had not the depth of design possessed by giulio romano, or perino; but he nearly approached to the latter, and was perhaps equal to him in taste of colouring, while, in the gracefulness of his countenances, at least of the infantine and boyish, he surpassed him. in his composition he most affected raffaello, as may be gathered from the celebrated dispute of st. augustine at the scopetini, where the maxims of the school of athens, and of other copious and noble conceptions of sanzio, are apparent. indeed in those subjects, treated by the latter, bagnacavallo contented himself with being a mere copyist, declaring that it was madness to attempt to do better; in which it would seem he followed vida's opinion, and that of other poets of his age, who inserted in their pages fragments of virgil, because they despaired of excelling him. such a maxim, which, whatever truth it may contain, opens a wide field for indolence and plagiarism, very probably injured him in the eyes of vasari, who confers on him the praise due to a good practitioner rather than to a master grounded in the theory of his art. still he conducted some paintings, on the strength of his own invention, at s. michele in bosco, at s. martino, and at s. maria maggiore, which absolve him from such an accusation; nor can i believe that the caracci, albano, and guido, would have copied from him and imitated his works, had they not recognized in them the hand of a master. there was a son of bagnacavallo, named gio. batista, who was employed as an assistant to vasari in the palace of the chancery at rome, and to primaticcio in the court of france. he likewise left various original works in bologna, more nearly inclining, if i judge rightly, to the decline of the art in his own time, than to the examples of his father. in addition to his son, mention ought here to be made of bagnacavallo's companion, called biagio pupini, and sometimes maestro biagio dalle lamme, who, having been at rome with ramenghi, contracted with him at bologna a community of labours and of interests, and assisted him in the dispute just before mentioned, as well as in other works. he formed the same connexion with girolamo da trevigi and others, uniformly acquiring, if we are to credit vasari, more money than reputation, and at times injuring that of his companion by his eagerness to finish. whatever opinion we may entertain regarding such facts, this artist by no means merits contempt; and perhaps vasari might have treated him with more lenity, had there not existed between them mutual rivalship and disgust. in pupini's style, where he exerted his powers, we trace the manner of francesco francia, his master, though a good deal enlarged, with the relief, and the various other characteristics of the good age. of this taste is a nativity of our lord which he painted at bologna, and which now adorns the institution of that place. innocenzio, born at imola, but residing always in bologna, was admitted into the school of francia in ; from which we are not to infer, with malvasia, that he did not spend some years at florence in company with albertinelli. this is attested by vasari, and confirmed by the resemblance of his style to that of the most distinguished florentines of the age. he produced several altar-pieces, composed in the taste of the fourteenth century; but following the example of frate and of andrea, he placed the virgin above, without the ancient gildings, and with great art he grouped and disposed the saints who attend her; while, with equal novelty, he distributed the train of cherubs over the steps and through the surrounding space. sometimes, as in the extraordinary picture displayed in the cathedral of faenza, and another in possession of prince ercolani, he added some noble architecture, bold and drawn from the antique. in other instances, as in the church of the osservanti, at pesaro, we observe the most attractive landscape, combined with an aërial perspective, sufficient to remind us of vinci. he was accustomed too to insert little histories, as in s. giacomo at bologna, where, at the foot of the picture, he painted a christ in the manger, of which it is enough to add, that it is perfectly raffaellesque. this, indeed, was the style to which he invariably aspired, and so nearly attained, that very few of raffaello's own pupils could equal him. those who may be desirous of convincing themselves, may examine the altar-piece at faenza in all its parts, and that of s. michele in bosco; to say nothing of his madonnas and his holy families, interspersed throughout the bolognese collections, and in the adjacent cities. he is preferred to francia and to bagnacavallo, in all that relates to erudition, majesty, and correctness. i am not aware that he executed compositions very new, or subjects requiring fire and vigour, nor would they have been consistent with his genius, which is described as of a gentle and tranquil cast. the fame of the two masters, just celebrated, did not then extend far beyond their native districts, being eclipsed by the celebrity of many contemporaries, who swayed the regions of the art; in the list of whom was giulio romano. his reputation drew to mantua francesco primaticcio, instructed in design by innocenzio, and by bagnacavallo in colouring. under giulio he afterwards became a painter on a great scale, and a very copious composer of large histories, as well as a decorator in wood and stucco in a magnificent style suitable only for a palace. in this way, having studied six years in mantua, he was sent by giulio to the court of the french king francis, and there, though rosso the florentine had arrived a year before, and executed a variety of works, yet we learn that "the first stuccos and the first works in fresco of any consideration in france, took their rise from primaticcio," in the words of vasari. nor has he omitted to mention, that the king bestowed upon this artist the abbey of st. martin, though he did not add that it brought him an annual income of eight thousand crowns, while rosso possessed only a canonship worth one thousand. in regard to this last omission he is severely taxed with malice by malvasia, with what reason the reader will best judge for himself. we farther learn from vasari that this artist employed himself, as well as his young assistants, in decorating a number of the halls and chambers at fontainebleau, that he supplied the court with many ancient marbles, and many moulds of excellent sculpture, from which he had casts afterwards taken in bronze; in a word, that he was like another giulio, if not in architecture, at least in every other kind of knowledge appertaining to the arts. the works conducted by him in france have been described by felibien, and from the same pen is that appropriate eulogy--"that the geniuses of france are indebted to primaticcio and to m. niccolo, (dell'abate) for many exquisite productions, and that they are entitled to the fame of having been the first who introduced roman taste into france, with all the beau ideal of ancient painting and sculpture." at the te of mantua there remains the frieze of stuccos, so highly commended by vasari, from primaticcio's own hand, as well as a few pictures, which last, however, are not so assuredly his. his pictures indeed are objects of the utmost rarity in italy, and in bologna itself. in the grand zambeccari gallery there is a concert by him, with three female figures, altogether enchanting; the forms, the motions, the colouring, the taste of the lines and folding so easy and chaste, all combined with a certain originality pervading the whole, are well calculated to attract and rivet the eye at the first moment. when dying, he assigned niccolo abati, called too dell'abate, to continue his grand works, because he had brought him from bologna, and laid the ground-work of his fortunes. an account of this delightful painter may be found in the modenese school. he was not primaticcio's pupil, but one ruggiero ruggieri was, and conducted by him into france, he left few paintings in his own country; to whom we may perhaps add one francesco caccianemici, called by vasari his disciple, from whose hand, at bologna, there only remain a few doubtful specimens. much under the same circumstances as primaticcio and abati appeared pellegrino pellegrini, whose patronymic was tibaldi, a native of valdelsa in the milanese; though residing from his childhood, educated, and established at bologna. he next filled the same situation at the court of spain, as the two preceding had done at that of france; he decorated it with his paintings, improved its taste in architecture, formed pupils, and rose in fortune until he at length became marquess of that valdelsa, where his father and uncle had resided as poor masons before they went to bologna. it is not known who first imbued his liberal spirit with the elements of learning; but vasari traces his progress from some pictures of his in the refectory of s. michele in bosco, copied by tibaldi when young, along with other select pieces at bologna. from this place he follows him to rome in , eager to study the finest works in that capital, where, after three years' residence, he re-conducts him to bologna, still very young, but advanced in the knowledge of his art. his style was in great part formed upon the models of michelangiolo--vast, correct in drawing, bold, and happy in his foreshortenings; yet, at the same time, tempered with so much mellowness and softness, as to induce the caracci to denominate him the reformed michelangiolo. the first work which he conducted, subsequent to the year , is in the bolognese institution, and it is the most perfect, in vasari's opinion, ever executed by him. it contains in particular various stories from the odyssey, and this work, with that by niccolino, mentioned elsewhere,[ ] both executed for the institution, were afterwards finely engraved by sig. antonio buratti of venice, accompanied with the lives of the two painters, written by zanotti. both there, and in the great merchants' hall at ancona, where he subsequently represented hercules, the monster-slayer, tibaldi exhibited the true method of imitating the terrible in the style of michelangiolo, which consisted in a fear of too nearly approaching him. although vasari greatly commends these works, the caracci, to whose judgment we would rather defer, have bestowed higher praises on those executed by pellegrino for the church of s. jacopo; and it was on these pictures that both the caracci and their pupils bestowed most study. in one is represented the preaching of st. john in the desert; in another the separation of the elect from the wicked, where, in the features of the celestial messenger announcing the tidings, pellegrino displayed those of his favourite michelangiolo. what a school for design and for expression is here! what art in the distribution of such a throng of figures, in varying and in grouping them! in loreto too, and in different adjacent cities, he produced other histories, less celebrated perhaps, but all nearly as deserving of the burin as those executed at bologna. such is the entrance of trajan into ancona, in possession of the marchese mancinforte; and various exploits of scipio, belonging to the accomplished nobleman, marchese ciccolini, which decorate one of his halls, where he himself pointed them out to me. it is a work conceived in a more refined and graceful taste than we meet with in other compositions of tibaldi; and of the same composition i have seen some of his pictures on a very small scale; but rare, like all his pieces in oil; wrought with the exquisite finish of a miniaturist; mostly rich in figures, full of fine spirit, vivid colouring, and decorated with all the pleasing perspectives that architecture could afford. this indeed was his favourite art; which, after he had afforded some beautiful specimens of it in piceno, and next at milan, procured him an appointment from philip ii. to superintend the engineers at the spanish court. there again, after the lapse of twenty years, during which he never touched the easel, he resumed the art of painting; and we meet with a list of his works in the escurial of mazzolari. footnote : in vol. iv. p. . domenico tibaldi de' pellegrini, once conjectured to be the son, was the pupil and brother of pellegrino; and his name is in great repute among the architects and engravers of bologna. his epitaph at san mammolo states him also to have been a distinguished painter; but we must receive the authority of epitaphs with some caution; and not even a portrait from his hand is to be met with. faberio speaks less highly of his powers, and in the funeral oration upon agostino caracci, whose master he had been, he mentions him as an able designer, engraver, and architect. pellegrino's pupils in painting, and no obscure artists, were girolamo miruoli, commended by vasari among the artists of romagna, who left one of his frescos at the servi, in bologna, and several other pieces at parma, where he filled the office of court-painter, and there died; and secondly, gio. francesco bezzi, called nosadella, who painted a great deal at bologna and in other cities, in the style of his master, exaggerating it in point of power, but not equalling it in care, and in short, reducing it to mere mechanic labour and despatch. vasari, in his life of parmigianino, has mentioned with praise vincenzio caccianemici, of a good family in bologna, respecting whom there have been some discussions, to avoid confounding him with francesco, who bore the same surname. the correctors of the old _guide_ suppose him to be the author of a decollation of st. john, placed at s. petronio, in the family chapel; a picture well designed and better coloured, and executed, as they observe, in the style of parmigianino. whilst the three great geniuses of the bolognese school were residing abroad, the two first mentioned in france, and the third in milan, and afterwards in spain, the art continued stationary, or, more correctly, declined in bologna. in the year three masters are pointed out by vasari, namely, fontana, sabbatini, and sammachini, whom he calls fumaccini. for what reason he excluded ercole procaccini, an artist, if not of great genius, at least of finished execution, i am unable to say. certain it is that lomazzo, whilst he resided with him in milan, mentioned him in the highest terms, and enumerated in the list of his pupils sabbatini, and sammachini too. i shall not here repeat what i have detailed in the milanese school respecting ercole and his sons; but, passing on to the others, i shall begin with fontana, the principal cause of the decline above alluded to. the long protracted life of this artist comprehended the whole of the period now under our view, and even extended beyond it. born in the time of francia, educated by imola, who at his death selected him to finish one of his pictures, and subsequently employed for a long period as the assistant of vaga, and of vasari, he continued to labour and to teach without intermission, until the caracci, once his disciples, drew all his commissions and followers to themselves. for this result he was indebted to his own conduct. devoted to pleasure (the most fatal enemy to an artist's reputation) he could only provide the means of gratification by burthening himself with works, and executing them with little care. he possessed a fertility of ideas, a vehemence, and a cultivation of mind, well adapted for works of magnitude. abandoning, therefore, the careful finish of francucci, he adopted the method of vasari, and like him covered with his works a vast number of walls in a short space of time, and nearly in the same taste. in design he is more negligent than vasari, in his motions more energetic; his colours have the same yellow cast, but rather more delicacy. in città di castello a hall of the noble family of vitelli is filled with family histories, painted by him in a few weeks, as malvasia informs us, and the work confirms the assertion. similar specimens, or but little superior, are met with in rome, at the villa giulia, and at the palazzo di toscana, in the campo marzio, and in various houses in bologna. yet in other places he appears an artist of merit for a declining age; as in his epiphany, at the grazie, where he displays a facility, a pomp of drapery, and a magnificence nearly approaching the style of paul veronese. this work bears the name of the painter written in letters of gold. but his best claim to distinction is founded on his portraits, which are more highly prized in cabinets than are his compositions in the churches. it was this talent which induced michelangiolo to present him to julius iii. by whom he was pensioned as one of the palatine painters of his time. he had a daughter and a pupil in lavinia fontana, named also zappi, from the family of imola, into which she was married. this lady executed several altar-pieces at rome and at bologna in the paternal style, as far as regards colouring; but less successful in point of design and composition. she felt the inferiority, as is observed by baglione, and sought reputation from portrait-painting, a branch in which she is preferred by some to prospero. it is certain that she wrought with a sort of feminine perseverance, in order that her portraits should more faithfully express every line and feature of nature in the countenances, every refinement of art in the drapery. she became painter to pope gregory xiii., and was more particularly applied to by the roman ladies, whose ornaments she displayed more perfectly than any male artist in the world. she attained to so high a degree of sweetness and softness in the art, especially after knowing the works of the caracci, that one or two of her portraits have been attributed to guido. with equal ability she produced a number of cabinet pictures, such as that holy family for the escurial, so much commended by mazzolari, and her sheba at the throne of solomon, which i saw in the collection of the late marchese giacomo zambeccari. she has there expressed, in the form of allegory, the duke and duchess of mantua, surrounded by many lords and ladies of their court, arrayed in splendid style; a painting that would reflect credit on the venetian school. gifted with such genius, she was by no means chary of her own likenesses executed by herself, which ornament the royal gallery of florence and other collections. but there remains no specimen more truly speaking and delightful than the one belonging to the conti zappi, at imola, where it is accompanied by the portrait of prospero in his declining days, also painted by her. lorenzo sabbatini, called likewise lorenzin di bologna, was one of the most graceful and delicate painters of his age. i have heard him enumerated among the pupils of raffaello by keepers of the galleries, deceived doubtless by his holy families, designed and composed in the best roman taste, although invariably more feebly coloured. i have also seen some of his holy virgins and angels painted for private ornament, which resemble parmigianino. nor were his altar-pieces inferior; the most celebrated of which is that of st. michael, engraved by agostino caracci, from an altar of s. giacomo maggiore; and this he held up as an example of gracefulness and beauty, to his whole school. he was, moreover, a fine fresco painter, correct in design, of copious invention, universal master in the subjects of the piece, and what is still more remarkable, most rapid in point of execution. endowed with such qualities, he was engaged by many noble houses in his native place; but on proceeding to rome in the pontificate of gregory xiii., according to baglione, he there met with success; insomuch, that even his fleshes and naked figures were highly commended, though this was by no means a branch of his pursuits at bologna. in the capella paolina, he represented the histories of st. paul; in the royal hall, the picture of faith, shewn in triumph over infidelity; in the gallery and the lodges a variety of other pieces, always in competition with the best masters, and always with equal applause. hence, in the immense list of artificers at that period congregated at rome, he was selected to preside over the labours of the vatican, in the enjoyment of which honourable post he died at an early age in . it is difficult to believe, as asserted by some writers, that giulio bonasone was his pupil, an artist who practised engraving in copper as early as . on reaching a more mature age, he seems to have devoted himself to painting, leaving several paintings on canvass, but feeble and varying in their style. at s. stefano there is one of purgatory, in the style of sabbatini, extremely fine, and composed, as it is conjectured, with the assistance of lorenzino. the productions, also, of cesare aretusi, of felice pasqualini, and of giulio morina, are in existence, though the name of sabbatini might perhaps be justly substituted for theirs; such was the part he took in their labours. the latter, with girolamo mattioli, after the celebrity gained by the caracci, became their eager followers. the labours of mattioli, who died young, were distributed among different private houses, particularly in that of the noble family of zani: those of morina are seen in various churches at bologna, and for the most part betray a degree of affectation of the style of parma, at which city he some time painted in the service of the duke. orazio samacchini, the intimate friend of sabbatini, his contemporary, and who followed him at a short interval to the tomb, began his career by imitating pellegrino and the lombards. proceeding next to rome, and employed in painting for the royal hall, under pius iv.; he succeeded in catching the taste of the roman school, for which he was praised by vasari, (who calls him fumaccini) and afterwards by borghini and lomazzo. in the display of this his new style, however, he contrived to please others more than himself; and returning to bologna, he was accustomed to lament that he had ever removed from upper italy, where he might have carried his early manner to greater perfection, without deviating in search of a new. still he had no reason to feel dissatisfied with that which he had thus formed of various others, and so moulded by his own genius, as to exhibit something singular in its every character. in his altar-piece of the purification, at s. jacopo, it is all exquisite delicacy, in which the leading figures enchant us with at once a majestic and tender expression of piety; while those infant figures seen conversing near the altar, and that of the young girl holding a little basket with two doves, gazing on them in so peculiar a manner, delight us with their mingled simplicity and grace. skilful judges even can take no exceptions but to the display of too great diligence, with which, during several years, he had studied and polished this single painting. this, however, as one of the most celebrated of its school, was engraved by agostino, and it would seem that even guido availed himself of it in his presentation, painted for the cathedral of modena, yet he was an equally powerful artist where his subjects required it of him. his chapel, of which we gave an account in the parmese school, is highly commended, though his most vigorous effort is shewn in the ceiling of s. abbondio, at cremona. the grand and the terrible seem to strive for mastery in the figures of the prophets, in all their actions and positions; the most difficult from confinement of space, yet the best arranged and imagined. there is, moreover, a truth in the shortenings, and a skilful use of the _sotto in su_,[ ] which appears in this instance to have selected the most difficult portion of the art, in order to triumph over it. his forte is believed to have consisted in grand undertakings in fresco, on which he impressed, as it were, the seal of a vast spirit, at once resolute and earnest, without altering it by corrections and retouches, with which he laboured his paintings in oil, as we have stated. footnote : foreshortening figures; here meant on a ceiling. bartolommeo passerotti has been commended by borghini and lomazzo; and he is casually named also by vasari among the assistants of taddeo zuccaro; indeed, it may rather be said, this is the artist with whom vasari ceases to write, and malvasia to inveigh.[ ] he possessed excellent skill in designing with his pen; a gift which drew to his school agostino caracci, and which assisted the latter as a guide in the art of engraving. he likewise wrote a book, from which he taught the symmetry and anatomy of the human body, essential to the artist; and was the first who, to make a grander display, began to vary scriptural histories at bologna by drawing the naked torsi. the finest of these specimens are, the beheading of st. paul, at rome, in the tre fontane; and at s. giacomo, of bologna, a picture of the virgin among various saints; a work meant to compete with the caracci, and embellished by their praise. one of his pictures too of "tizio" was much celebrated, which, being exhibited to the public, was supposed by the professors of bologna to have been the work of michelangiolo. this exquisite degree of diligence and refinement he rarely used; most generally he was bold and free, somewhat resembling cesare, only more correct. in his portraits, however, he is by no means a common painter. after titian, guido included him among the very first, not preferring before him the caracci themselves, whose name, indeed, in several galleries, is attached to the portraits of passerotti. the most commendable of all however, are those he executed for the noble family legnani--entire figures extremely varied in costume, in action, and attitudes; it being his usual custom to compose portraits, such as ridolfi described of paris, which should appear ideal pictures. by means of such a talent, which made him agreeable to the great, by his polite and refined manners and malicious strictures, he became a match for the caracci; for whom he also prepared rivals in a number of his sons, whom he carefully instructed in the art. among these, tiburzio possessed real merit, of which his fine picture of the martyrdom of st. catherine, conducted in the taste of his father, displays sufficient proof. passerotto and ventura, however, were below mediocrity. aurelio was a good miniaturist, and in the same branch gaspero, a son of tiburzio, also met with success. in the works of bartolommeo we often meet with a sparrow, the symbol of his own name; a custom derived from the ancients, and followed by many of our own artists. it is a well-known fact relating to two sculptors, batraco and sauro, that for their proper names they substituted, the former a frog, and the latter a lizard. footnote : this worthy writer would appear to have been aware that he sometimes exceeded due bounds. in the course of that work we meet with other expressions highly creditable to vasari; and it is well known, that having spoken contemptuously of raffaello, by designating him _boccalaio urbinate_, the potter of urbino, because some vases there had been painted from his designs, "he repented of the expression so much as to lead him to erase it from as many copies of the work as he could meet with." _lett. pitt._ vol. vii. p. . dionisio calvart, born at antwerp, and hence also called dionisio the fleming, came, when young, into bologna, and displayed some ability in landscape painting. in order to become a figure painter, he entered first the school of fontana, and next that of sabbatini, whom he greatly assisted in his labours for the vatican. but after quitting also this master, and occupying himself, some little time, in designing from raffaello's pictures, he returned to bologna, opened a studio, and there educated as many as a hundred and thirty-seven masters in the art, some of whom were excellent. he was a fine artist for his age; understood perspective well, which he acquired from fontana, and designed both correctly and gracefully in the taste of sabbatini. he moreover possessed the art of colouring, in the taste of his own countrymen, a quality which induced the bolognese to regard him as a restorer of their school, which in this branch of painting had declined. if there were some degree of mannerism in his style, some action in his figures too little dignified, or too extravagant; the former was the fault of his age, and the latter of his temperament, which is described as extremely restless and violent. notwithstanding, he instructed his pupils with assiduous care, and from the cartoons of the most celebrated inventors he gave them lectures in the art. different collections abound with his small pictures, painted chiefly on copper, representing incidents from the gospel, which attract by the abundance of the figures, by their spirit, and by the lusciousness of their tints. similar commissions in this line were then very frequently given in bologna; most times proceeding from the noviciate nuns, who were in the habit of carrying with them into the cloister similar little paintings to decorate their lonely cells; and calvart provided abundance of them, with the assistance of his young men, whose pieces he retouched; and they obtained immense circulation both in italy and flanders. in particular those conducted by albano and guido, his two pupils, boast the most attractive graces, and may be known by a certain superior decision, knowledge, and facility. in the list of his altar-pieces, the s. michele, at s. petronio, and the purgatory, at the grazie, bear the palm; and from these, as well as others, the best disciples of the caracci confessed the assistance which they received. on the rise of the new bolognese school, the pupils of calvart for the most part changed their manner, attaching themselves some to one master, and some to another. those who preserved most evident traces of their former education, in other words, who continued more feeble and less natural than the caracceschi, were but few. malvasia enumerates gio. batista bertusio in this list, who vainly aspired at resembling guido, leaving a variety of paintings both at bologna and its villages, displaying beauties more apparent than real. two other artists, pier maria da crevalcore, a painter in oil, and gabriel ferrantini, known by his frescos, called also gabriel degli occhiali, seem both to have seen, and attempted to imitate the caracci. emilio savonanzi, a bolognese noble, attached himself to the art when nearly arrived at manhood, but he attended cremonini more than calvart; and strongly addicted to changing masters, entered the school of lodovico caracci, next that of guido at bologna, of guercino at cento, and finally the studio of algardi, an excellent sculptor at rome. by such means he became a good theorist and an able lecturer, applauded in every particular of his art; nor was he wanting in good practice, uniting many styles in one, in which however that of guido most prevails. still he was not equally correct in all his pieces, even betraying feebleness of touch, and not scrupling to denominate himself an artist of many hands. he resided at ancona, next at camerino, at which places, as well as in the adjacent districts, he left a variety of works. of another bolognese, who flourished at the same period, there remains at ancona a picture of the offering of the infant jesus at the temple, ornamenting the larger altar of s. jacopo. the inscription shews him to have resided at brescia, _f. tiburtius baldinus bononiensis f. brixiæ_, . this date proves him to have belonged to the present epoch. his taste, from what i am informed by sig. cav. boni, extremely well informed on subjects of the fine arts, reminds us of the excellent school that flourished in : magnificence in the architecture, great copiousness of composition, and clearness of effect, except that in the general tone of his tints, and in his fleshes, he is somewhat cold. one artist there was, who declared that he had laid down for himself a maxim, never to alter with other styles that of calvart; and this was vincenzo spisano, called likewise spisanelli. he however is inferior in solidity and truth of design, and displays quite as much caprice and mannerism as any of the practitioners of his time. nor does he always preserve the colours peculiar to his school; but deadens them with a leaden hue, which is still not unpleasing. his altar-pieces, executed at bologna, and in the neighbouring cities, are less celebrated than his small pictures for private ornament, which abound in bologna, and which he was in the habit of enlivening with very attractive landscape. it has already been observed that those who were mannerists in their style, like zuccaro and cesari, always when working on a small scale, improved upon themselves. bartolommeo cesi fills the rank also of head of a school, among those who cleared the path to the good method pursued by the disciples of the caracci. from him tiarini acquired the art of painting fresco, and his works gave the first impulse to guido in attaining to his sweet and graceful manner. on examining a work by cesi, it sometimes seems doubtful whether it may not have been that of guido when young. he dares little, copies every thing from nature, selects fine forms of each period of life, and makes sparing use of the ideal; his lines and folds are few, his attitudes measured, and his tints more beautiful than strong. he has some paintings at san jacopo, and at san martino, which are extremely pleasing; and it is said that guido, during his early youth, was in the habit of sitting to contemplate them sometimes for hours. his frescos, perhaps, display more power, where he has introduced many copious histories with great judgment, variety, and mastery; and such are those of Æneas, in the favi palace. his arch of forli, painted for clement viii., with different exploits, surprises us even more. though exposed to the action of the open air, during so many years, this piece retains the vividness of its tints to a surprising degree. malvasia's opinion, in commendation of this artist, is very remarkable, that he had a manner which at once satisfies, pleases, and enamours the beholder, as truly exquisite and sweet as any style of the best tuscan masters in fresco. in the larger chapel of the bolognese monastery of carthusians, there are distinguished examples in both kinds of painting; and the describer of the carthusian monastery, in his account of them, likewise enumerates cesi's works for other monasteries of the same order, those of ferrara, of florence, and siena. he was held in esteem by the caracci, and very generally so by the different professors, no less for the candour of his character, than for his love of the art. to his efforts it was chiefly owing that the company of painters, in , obtained a separation from the artificers of swords, of saddles, and of scabbards, with all of whom they had for centuries been united in the same corporation, and that a new one being formed of painters and of cotton manufacturers,[ ] it not being possible wholly to exclude the latter, they were to rank inferior to the artists, or, to use the words of malvasia, "that they should condescend to furnish to the amount of two hundred, or more, crowns, rich purple cloaks to decorate the wearer of the laurel crown, preceding their vice steward."[ ] footnote : in the original the term used for these cotton merchants is _bambagiai_. footnote : in the italian called _promassaro_. cesare aretusi, a son, perhaps, of pellegrino munari,[ ] was distinguished as a colourist in the venetian taste, but in point of invention weak and dull; while gio. batista fiorini, on the other hand, was full of fine conceptions but worthless in his colouring. friendship, that introduces community in the possessions of friends, here achieved what is narrated in the greek anthology of two poor rogues, one of whom was blind and stout, and carried on his shoulders a sharp-eyed cripple, who thus provided himself with a friend's pair of feet, while he afforded him the advantage of as many eyes. so it fared with our two artists, who separately could accomplish very little; though in uniting their powers they produced paintings of considerable merit. in the _guida di bologna_ they are very properly rarely divided from each other; and i believe, that in every painting we find attributed to aretusi, we ought farther to seek for some companion of his labours. of such kind is a nativity of the virgin at s. afra in brescia, passing under his name, and painted in a very powerful style. respecting this picture, however, averoldi is of opinion that it was in part the workmanship of bagnatore, in part of other painters, or, perhaps, only painter; in other words that of his useful friend aretusi. nevertheless in the branch of portrait, cesare possessed merit above sharing it with others, and in this capacity he was employed by different princes, and he also succeeded in copying the works of excellent masters better than any other of his age. he could assume the style of almost every painter, and even pass off his imitations for the originals. in his imitation of coreggio, he was more particularly successful, and received a commission to execute a painting from the celebrated night, by that master, for the church of s. gio. di parma, where it still remains. mengs, who saw it, declared that were the original at dresden by any accident lost, it might be well supplied by so fine a duplicate. it was this performance that obtained him the honour of restoring the painting, formerly executed by coreggio for the same church, of which mention was made in the school of parma, and to which we here refer the reader. here too we should add, that such was the success of that picture, "from its accurate imitation of the taste displayed in the original, of its conception, and of its harmony, as to lead those unacquainted with the fact to suppose it to be the work of allegri." such are the words of ruta in his _guida_. footnote : see vol. iv. p. . little attention seems to have been given to inferior branches of the art during this epoch, if, indeed, we except that of portrait, whose leading artists must not again be introduced here, having treated of their merits in the proper place. nor probably were there then wanting painters in oil, who severally produced ornamental pieces of landscape and animals, besides cremonini and baglione, whose ability in this line we shall shortly notice, in the class of ornamental fresco painters; though none, as far as i can learn, acquired celebrity. in one instance only i meet with handsome eulogiums on a miniature painter, occasionally mentioned throughout this work. he was called gio. neri, also gio. degli ucelli, from his peculiar talent in delineating all kinds of birds from the life. with these, and with fish of various species, with quadrupeds and other animals, he filled seven folio volumes, which are cited by masini in the studio of ulisse aldovrandi. throughout the whole of this epoch we find no mention in malvasia of any ornamental or perspective painters, except, perhaps, some figurist, who paid little attention to decorations. there is reason, however, to suppose that the celebrated sebastiano serlio, while yet a youth, painted perspectives. the cav. tiraboschi, in the seventh volume of his history, remarks that "there is no account of serlio's occupation during the early part of his life." but the _guida_ of pesaro, p. , alludes to him at the close of , and subsequently in , as residing in that city in quality of an artist; and in what branch can we more probably suppose him to have been engaged than in perspective? for this, indeed, was the tirocinium of other able architects, where, previous to being entrusted with the anxious duties of their profession, they were enabled, with more facility, to sustain themselves, until their reputation permitted them to assume the character of architects, and abandon the pursuit of painting. indisputably he could not have been an architect at pesaro, otherwise there would never have been written on a parchment of , remaining in the archives of the servi:--_sebastiano qu. bartholomæi de serlis de bononia pictore habitatore pisauri_. and it is about that we have an account of his being at venice, no longer handling the pencil, but the square. masini, who had written his _bologna perlustrata_ only a short period before the _felsina pittrice_, commends an agostino dalle prospettive, who had reached such a degree of perfection in that art, as even to deceive animals and men with his illusive staircases and similar works, executed at bologna. it is doubtful whether he did not belong to another school, and may have been omitted by malvasia as a foreigner. i suspected him to be a milanese in my fourth volume (p. ), and pupil to the great soardi, not inferior to his master. next to him, and to laureti, gio. batista cremonini of cento was employed in such commissions more than any other artist. he had received rather superior instructions in the rules of perspective, and respectable practice in the line of statues, figures, and histories, with whatever went to give splendour and effect to a façade, a theatre, or a hall; more particularly he succeeded in delineating animals, however ferocious and wild. there was scarcely a house of any account in all bologna, which, if nothing more, could not boast some specimen of his chiaroscuro, some frieze for ornament, chimney-piece, or vestibule, decorated by cremonini; to say nothing of his numerous works in fresco which filled the churches. he was also employed for the adjacent cities, and in different courts of lombardy kept open school and instructed guercino, savonanzi, fialetti, who flourished in venice as before stated. he had for his companion bartolommeo ramenghi, cousin of gio. batista, with whom also lived scipione ramenghi, son of gio. batista himself, and both eminent ornamental painters during that period. cremonini had a rival in one cesare baglione, an artist in the same sphere, and of the same eager and expeditious character in the art. he was, moreover, a better painter of landscape, and even surpassed all others, including the most ancient, in the method of drawing his foliage. in his inventions too, both of a serious and comic kind, he displayed greater novelty and variety than cremonini. he thus became a favorite at parma, where in the ducal palace he left some of his best works, all in harmony with the places which he painted; in the larder illusive eatables of every kind, and cooks employed in dressing them; in the bakehouse utensils for the bakers, and incidents relating thereto; in the washhouses women were seen busied in their different duties, and all in dismay at some untoward or comic accidents; works abounding in spirit and reality sufficient to procure him reputation in his line, had he shewn less eagerness in the execution. this praise will not apply, however, to his decorative taste, which excited the ridicule of the caracci, who were in the habit of laughing at the fantastic ornaments of his capitals, and those arabesques, most resembling, they declared, the staves of barrels; as well as that custom of filling his compositions with useless ornaments, without rule or discretion, which his own pupils afterwards proceeded to introduce, especially spada and dentone. several others were instructed by him in the art, as storali and pisanelli, and some of less note, who painted well in perspective, without aspiring to the reputation of figurists. thus we have taken a brief survey of the state of painting in bologna from the time of bagnacavallo to the caracci, who already rising into repute about , in some measure competed with the elder artists, and in some measure by their example, and the spirit of emulation, tended to improve them, of which more in the following epoch. meanwhile, let us turn our attention to what was passing during this period in romagna. ravenna prides herself on the name of jacopone, a pupil of raffaello, who, by his paintings at s. vitale, introduced into that city the principles of the modern style, and of whom we shall shortly state our opinion, not without some degree of novelty. another of raffaello's disciples, if what is averred of him be correct, nourished at ravenna about , called don pietro da bagnaia, a canon of the lateran. in the church of his order he painted the altar-piece of s. sebastian; in the refectory, the scriptural history of the loaves and fishes, besides leaving in another place a history-piece of the crucifixion of jesus christ, abounding in figures equal to the preceding. to these, enumerated by orlandi, may be added the picture of padua, with the virgin between st. john the baptist and st. augustine, executed for the church of s. giovanni di verdara; in the sacristy of which is a holy family by him, imbued with all the graces of raffaello in every feature and action, but sadly wanting in strength and harmony of colouring. there is another holy family at the lateran friars in asti, on a larger scale, designed and composed with equal grace, but with similar feebleness of tints, even more lifeless; and to both pieces is appended an inscription, entreating the beholder to pray for the soul of the painter. i am not aware whether this worthy ecclesiastic was in ravenna in , at the period of vasari's visit thither, but the latter makes no mention of his name. yet he mentioned, among the excellent artists who still flourished there, luca longhi, whose ability in the essentials of the art is highly praised. he regrets, however, that he should always have resided in his native place, which had he left for objects of improvement, he might have become a very distinguished artist. he was a good portrait-painter, and produced a great number of pictures for ravenna. some, too, he sent elsewhere, and they are met with at san benedetto in ferrara, in the abbey at mantua, in that of praglia near padua, at s. francesco in rimini, with the date of , in pesaro, and other places. they are chiefly composed in the ancient manner, but on comparing some of the earlier with those that follow, a more modern air is perceptible, a circumstance attributed by vasari to his own conversations with the artist. longhi's style, however, was opposed to that of vasari, being very correct and highly finished; his conceptions sweet, varied, and graceful; with a powerful union of colours; more nearly resembling innocenzo da imola, if i mistake not, than any other artist of the times, though inferior to him in point of grandeur and beauty. luca's most perfect pictures that i have met with in ravenna are those of s. vitale, of s. agata, of s. domenico, all with a representation of the virgin between two or more saints, and with some graceful cherubs playing above. there are others more laboured, which please us less, and demonstrate that to succeed in grand compositions, it is previously necessary to have studied the great schools. luca had a daughter, named barbara, yet a child at the period when vasari published his work, but who had begun to paint "with a tolerable degree of grace and manner." from the hand of this lady there is only a single specimen remaining in public. respecting a son of luca, named francesco, the historian is wholly silent, being, doubtless, at the time he wrote, still younger than his sister, but who became an artist in maturer years. in he produced a picture for the church of the carmine, and there are accounts of him, even down to . he chiefly pursued the steps of his father, though he is more common in his countenances, and more feeble in point of colouring, which he copied rather from vasari. francesco scannelli mentions a pupil of raffaello at cesena, omitted by all other historians, named scipione sacco. he painted a picture of s. gregory for the cathedral of cesena, in a grand style,[ ] and the death of st. peter the martyr for the church of s. domenico. doubtless he was of raffaello's school, and not remembered out of romagna. footnote : on this picture is inscribed, _cæsenas_, . _oretti_, _memorie_, mss. while the family of the longhi was employed at ravenna, that of the minzocchi, which was surnamed san bernardo, was distinguishing itself at forli. francesco, called also the elder di s. bernardo, studied the works of palmigiani in his native place; and there remain pictures conducted in his youth, but feeble in point of design, such as his crucifixion at the padri osservanti. but under genga, according to vasari, and, as some writers add, under pordenone, he changed his manner, assuming a more correct style, graceful, animated, and of an expression which looks like nature herself in these his subsequent productions. among the works he executed with most care are two lateral pictures at the cathedral of loreto, in a chapel of s. francesco di paola. these consist of a sacrifice of melchisedec, and the miracle of the manna, in which the prophets and the principal characters boast all the dignity and nobleness of drapery becoming the school of pordenone. the crowd, however, is represented in the most popular features and attitudes, sufficient almost to excite the envy of teniers, and the most natural artists of the flemish school. his delineations in these pictures, of numerous and various animals, are expressed to the life, with baskets and different utensils like reality, though the attempt to excite our mirth in treating serious subjects has a bad effect. scannelli extols a specimen of his works in fresco at s. maria della grata in forli, representing the deity on the ceiling, surrounded by a number of angels; figures full of spirit, majestic, varied, and painted with a power and skill of foreshortening, which entitles him to greater celebrity than he enjoys. he left a variety of productions, likewise, at s. domenico, at the cathedral, and at private houses in his native place, where such is his reputation, that on the chapels being taken down, his least celebrated frescos were carefully cut out, and replaced elsewhere. among his sons and pupils were pietro paolo, mentioned also by vasari, and sebastiano, both artists of the same natural style, not very select, with little relief, and mediocrity of invention. to pietro paolo belong several figures at the padri francescani at forli, of feeble execution; and to sebastiano a picture at s. agostino, composed in in the ancient taste, and of a style like his other works, inferior to the character of his age. subsequent to the elder minzocchi, forli produced two other artists deserving commemoration; namely, livio agresti, conspicuous in the histories of vasari and baglione, as a daring designer, a copious composer, and universal in point of manner; the other, francesco di modigliana, an artist of more limited genius, but still deserving to be known. of livio, i spoke in the third epoch of the roman school, to which, as pupil to perino, and resident in rome, where he was employed at the castello, in the vatican, at s. spirito and elsewhere, he doubtless belongs. his native place, however, seems to have culled the fairest fruit of his labours, rome possessing nothing nearly so raffaellesque, as are his scriptural histories in the public palace at forli. nor ought we to pass over that finely decorated chapel in the cathedral, where he represented the last supper, with some majestic figures of the prophets upon the ceiling; a work that for depth and intricacy of perspective yields in nothing to minzocchi. i shall not stop to inquire, with malvasia, whether having gone to rome in a moment of disgust and in haste, instead of there advancing himself, he wholly failed; but of this i am convinced, that his history in the cappella paolina, is by no means his masterpiece. francesco di modigliana is said to have been pupil to pontormo, in whose school he almost fills the same rank as bronzino in that of florence; not remarkably powerful, nor always consistent with himself, but very graceful and beautiful, and deserving a place in our pictoric lexicons, where his name is wanting. his works at urbino consist of those which are pointed out under the name of francesco da forli; a picture of christ taken down from the cross, in oil, at s. croce; and some angels in fresco at s. lucia; productions much commended, and resembling in style his best at the osservanti in forli, and at the rosario in rimini. here, perhaps, he most distinguished himself; in his picture of adam driven from eden, his deluge, the tower of babel, with similar histories already treated by raffaello at rome, and by agresti in forli, from imitating whom, if i mistake not, he greatly improved and advanced himself. dying suddenly he left his work imperfect, afterwards continued by gio. laurentini, called arrigoni, who painted the death of abel at the same place. after bartolommeo da rimini, who inclined more towards the modern than the ancient style, i find no other artist of celebrity in that city besides arrigoni. even his name has not been recorded by orlandi, nor by his continuator. he diligently employed himself in his native place, and two of his pictures representing martyrdoms, met with surprising success; one of st. john the baptist, at the augustine friars, and another of the saints john and paul, at the church bearing their name. yet they do not display that _beau ideal_, so attractive at that period in the productions even of the inferior disciples of the roman school; but they convey the impression of grand compositions, a vivacity of action, a boldness of hand, a splendor in the retinue of horse and arms, and military ensigns, calculated to compete with the chief part of the painters employed at rome in the service of gregory and of sixtus. faenza, too, at the opening of this epoch, boasted her jacopone, or jacomone, of whom we treated among the assistants of raffaello, and among the masters of taddeo zuccaro. vasari makes brief mention and smaller account of this artist; recording only one of his productions, the tribune of s. vitale at ravenna, and which has ceased to exist. in the cupola of the church, however, subsequently repainted by another hand, there were visible, in the time of fabri, author of "ravenna ricercata," (researches in that city) several figures of saints richly apparelled, bearing this inscription: "opus jacobi bertucci et julii tondutii faventinorum. pari voto f. ."[ ] at present i no longer doubt but that under this jacopo was concealed the name of jacopone di faenza, though according to orlandi they were two several painters, and though it has never occurred to baldinucci and bottari, and other writers of pictoric history, to unite them into one. my conjecture is founded upon a picture which i saw in the church of the dominican nuns in faenza, representing the birth of the virgin, with the name of jacopo bertucci of faenza, and dated . it is a work which arrests the eye by its resemblance to the style of raffaello, though his harmonious gradations have not been well observed, and the colouring inclines more to the strong than to the beautiful. the women busied about the couch of st. anne are beautiful, graceful, and animated figures, and there are some animals, and in particular a fowl, which a bassano himself would not have been sorry to have painted. now what other jacopo of faenza could in the year , have painted in this style, with more shew of reason and probability than jacopone da faenza, whose family would here appear to be discovered? footnote : sig. abbate zannoni, a librarian in faenza, assisted by sig. zauli, a distinguished professor of design in that lyceum, has made some clever remarks upon that school. they observe that this date of fabri must be erroneous, it not being possible for jacopone to have commenced painting in , and much less tonduzzi, pupil to giulio romano, probably, in mantua: i suspect that the order of the last two figures should be inverted, so as to read . they inform me that i was misled in supposing the picture of the dominican nuns to be from the hand of jacopone, its great height preventing me from distinguishing the name. it belongs to his nephew and pupil, gian batista, and thus resembles his style, though coloured with stronger tints in the taste of titian, whom he is known to have greatly consulted in after years. other pictures of jacopone might be cited, that still exist, but injured by time and by retouches of other destroyers. yet, they continue, all are surpassed by a figure that was placed at the celestini, and is now in the general collection. it represents st. john pointing out to the ecclesiastic who ordered the picture, the virgin crowned, between saints celestino and benedetto; a grand piece wonderfully preserved, formed upon the composition of raffaello, and coloured after titian. on the right side is written, "f. jo. bapt. para brasius hoc opus ob devotionem fieri jussit anno domini :" (the most assured epoch of his life;) and on the left hand, "et semper jacobius bertusius f. (for faventinus) invicto tandem momo faciebat." who this momo was, against whose desire (since we must read _invito_) he completed the picture, i know not; whether a painter, or perhaps a friar, whom jacopone's dilatoriness had offended, and who wished to substitute another artist, in which good office he did not succeed. the same city possesses a variety of other pieces by this bertucci, and in the soffitto of s. giovanni, various histories, both of the old and new testament, were pointed out to me as his. there too are several of inferior character attributed to another bertucci, his son, an artist who in his heads repeats the same idea, even to satiety. still his merit ought not, i think, to be estimated from a single work, but rather from some pictures cited by crespi.[ ] one of these is the beheading of st. john the baptist, animated and high toned in its colours, beautiful in point of design and character, and worthy of decorating the ercolani collection at bologna. upon it is inscribed "bertucius pinxit, ." the other is at the celestini of faenza, a singular work, as crespi denominates it, from which he appears to have learnt the proper name of this younger bertucci, whom he calls giambatista. baldinucci treats of jacopone at the commencement of his fifth volume, and on the credit of count laderchi, he enumerates his different paintings, which then remained at faenza. of his surname he mentions nothing; nothing of his altar-piece of the nativity; nothing of s. vitale; nothing of the son, or the other artist of faenza lately alluded to. he adds, that works of jacopone were to be seen up to the year , but i believe these last to have belonged to the son, inasmuch as the father, at the period when vasari wrote, was already deceased. other pictures by this artist are mentioned, painted in glowing and attractive colours, and in particular the baptizing of christ, preserved in the public collection, valuable from its giving the epoch of , which must have been towards the close of his days. footnote : lettere pittoriche, vol. vii. p. . by giulio tonduzzi there is pointed out at ravenna the stoning of st. stephen, on the large altar of a church consecrated to that saint, a beautiful picture, but not indisputably proved to be his. i conjecture it to be a copy of the st. stephen that decorates the church of faenza, in which the whole style of giulio romano is apparent; so much so, that it has been attributed to him, a mistake arising from resemblance of names; but tonduzzi is known to have been giulio's pupil. i omit other productions of this excellent artist, though i ought to notice, that in the soffitto of s. giovanni, he also painted several sacred histories, in competition with all the first artists, who then flourished at faenza, on which account that very cultivated city has preserved the whole of these paintings, although much defaced by age, in the lyceum collection, belonging to the commune, mentioned in other places. i also find one m. antonio da faenza, commended by civalli for a very excellent picture, possessing fine relief, at the church of the conventuali of monte lupone, in the marca, dated . contemporary with these must have been figurino da faenza, enumerated by vasari among the best disciples of giulio romano, though i meet with no mention of him elsewhere. it is conjectured, however, with good reason, that figurino was only a surname given to marc antonio rocchetti, a painter of great reputation at faenza, who in youth took great delight in minute drawing, producing, among other pieces, little histories of st. sebastian, for the ornament of that church, now destroyed, when they came into possession of various individuals who treasure them up in the present day. in maturer years he enlarged his manner, attaching himself to the imitation of baroccio, which he did with a simplicity of composition and sweetness of tints, that made him conspicuous in different churches which he adorned, as we may gather from the picture of the titular saint at s. rocco, with the year , the latest period which we find mentioned on his productions. in the communal collection, also, there is seen a picture of the virgin, known in faenza under the name of the madonna of the angels, with a st. francis, a holy bishop, and two portraits below. it bears the inscription, _m. antonius rochettus faventinus pingebat, _. it was requisite to mention this picture, which i find extolled above all other specimens that have remained. the name of niccolo paganelli, before unknown to us, is also met with in the oretti correspondence, contained in a letter of zanoni, which we cite in treating of benedetto marini. he is supposed to have been a good pupil of the roman school, and some attribute to him the fine picture of s. martino, in the cathedral of faenza, the supposed work of luca longhi. his genuine pictures are recognized by the initials n.+p. subsequent to the period of jacopone, who never acquired fortune, marco marchetti greatly distinguished himself. so at least he is named by baglione, or marco da faenza, according to vasari, who observes that he was "particularly experienced in regard to frescos; bold, decided, terrible; and especially in the practice and manner of drawing grotesques, not having any rival then equal to him." nor perhaps has any artist since appeared who equals him in this respect, and in happily adapting to grotesques little histories, full of spirit and elegance, and with figures which form a school for design. such is the slaughter of the innocents, in the vatican. he succeeded sabbatini in the works of gregory xiii. and entered the service of cosmo i. for whom he decorated the palazzo vecchio at florence. he painted little in his own country, though a few pieces in oil are still pointed out, and an arch in a public way, with festoons of flowers, monsters, and capricci, resembling the work of an ancient artist. the whole reminds us of mythology and erudition, while at subsequent periods it became customary in this kind of painting to dare every extravagance and excess. perhaps his most finished piece adorns the communal collection, representing the feast of christ in the house of the pharisee. his death occurred in . contemporary with him flourished gio. batista armenini, also of faenza, an able artist, and author of the "true precepts of painting,"[ ] published at ravenna in , a work that re-appeared in the ensuing century at venice. in fact armenini was a better theorist than a practitioner; nor has he any production in his native place, except a large picture of the assumption, on which he inscribed _jo. bapt. armenini primiliæ_, meaning, that it was among the first, or perhaps the very first altar-piece which he ever painted. perotti, the author of certain _farragini_,[ ] which are still preserved in the library of the seminary at faenza, there observes, that armenini was a pupil of perin del vaga. nor is there a great interval between him and cristoforo lanconello, an artist of faenza, first discovered to us in the letter of crespi, just before cited. he is celebrated for his picture in the casa ercolani, in which the virgin appears crowned with a glory, attended by saints francis and chiara, and two more; a work displaying great freedom of hand, beauty of colouring, fine airs of the heads, and altogether in the composition of barocci. footnote : _veri precetti della pittura._ footnote : a mixture of all styles and subjects we must not take our leave of the cinquecentisti[ ] without first noticing a cavalier of faenza, who flourished till the year , in which he died at the age of . his name was niccolo pappanelli, and such was his enthusiasm for the art, that he attended all the most distinguished masters then in vogue at rome. on his return to his native place, he produced, along with some pieces of mediocrity, a few of an exquisite character, such as his picture of s. martino at the cathedral, so well executed in point of design, force of colouring, and expression, as to be truly admirable. he, too, attempted to follow in the track of barocci. footnote : artists of the fifteenth century. other artists of romagna, belonging to this period, are treated of in the schools where they chiefly flourished, such as ingoli of ravenna, at venice, zaccolini of cesena at rome, and ardente, a native of faenza, in piedmont. bolognese school. epoch iii. _the caracci, their scholars, and their successors, until the time of cignani._ to write the history of the caracci and their followers would in fact be almost the same as to write the pictoric history of all italy during the last two centuries. in our preceding books we have taken a survey of almost every school; and everywhere, early or late, we have met with either the caracci or their pupils, or at least with their successors, employed in overthrowing the ancient maxims, and introducing new, until we reach the period when there was no artist who, in some respect or other, might not be said to belong to their school. now, as it is grateful to the traveller, after long following the course of some royal river, to ascend still higher to its source, so i trust it will, in like manner, prove delightful to my readers, to be here made acquainted with those principles that conferred this new style upon the world of art, and in a short time filled with its specimens, and took the lead of every individual school. what, in my opinion, too, is still more surprising is, that it should owe its origin to lodovico caracci, a young artist, who appeared of a slow, inactive intellect in early years, and better adapted to grind colours than to harmonize and apply them. he was advised, both by fontana, his master at bologna, and by tintoretto, who directed his studies in venice, to adopt a new profession, as quite unqualified for the art of painting; his fellow pupils likewise bantering him with the epithet of the ox, in allusion to his extreme dulness and tardiness. indeed, every thing seemed to conspire to discourage him; he alone did not despair; from the obstacles he had to encounter he only gathered courage, and inducements to rouse, not to alarm himself. for this, his dilatory character, did not spring from confined genius, but from deep penetration; he shunned the ideal of the art as a rock on which so many of his contemporaries had suffered shipwreck; he pursued nature every where; he exacted of himself a reason for every line he drew; and considered it the duty of a young artist to aim only at doing well, until at length it grows into a habit, and such habit assists him in expediting his work. resolute, then, in his purpose, after having studied the best native artists in bologna, he proceeded to do the same under titian and tintoretto at venice. thence he passed to florence, and improved his taste from the pictures of andrea, and the instructions of passignano. at that period, the school of the florentines had attained to that crisis, described in treating of its fourth epoch. nothing could be more advantageous to young lodovico than to observe there the competition between the partizans of the old and the new style; nor could there be better means of ascertaining the causes of the decline, and of the revival of the art. such a scene was assuredly of the greatest use to him, though hitherto not much noticed, in attempting the reform of painting, and carrying it to a higher degree of perfection. the most eminent florentines, with the view of improving the languid colouring of their masters, turned to the models of coreggio and his followers; and their example, i am of opinion, induced lodovico to leave florence for parma, where, observes his historian, he wholly devoted himself to that master and to parmigianino. on his return to bologna, although well received and esteemed as a good artist, he soon became aware that a single individual, so reserved and cautious as he was, could ill compete with an entire school; unless, following the example of cigoli at florence, he were to form a party among the rising pupils at bologna. in the first instance, he sought support in his own relatives. his brother paolo cultivated the art, but was deficient both in judgment and in ability, and calculated only to execute with mediocrity the designs of others. on him he placed no reliance, but a good deal on two of his cousins. he had a paternal uncle named antonio, by profession a tailor, who educated his two sons, agostino and annibale, at home. such was their genius for design, that lodovico was accustomed to say in his old age, that he had never had, during his whole professional career, a single pupil to equal them. the first devoted his attention to the goldsmith's art--always the school of the best engravers; the second was at once the pupil and assistant of his father in his calling. though brothers, their dispositions were so opposite, as to render their society insufferable to each other, and they were little less than enemies. accomplished in letters, agostino always sought the company of learned men; there was no science on which he could not speak; at once a philosopher, a geometrician, and a poet; of refined manners, ready wit, and averse to the pursuits of the crowd. annibale, on the contrary, neglected letters, beyond the mere power of reading and writing, while a natural bluntness of manner inclined him to taciturnity, and when compelled to speak, it was mostly in a satirical, contemptuous, or disputing tone. on devoting themselves, at the suggestion of lodovico, to the pictoric art, they still found themselves opposed to each other in genius, as they were in manners. agostino was timid, and extremely select, backward in resolve, difficult to please himself, and was never aware of a difficulty that he did not encounter, and attempt to vanquish it. annibal, in common with numbers of artificers, was an expeditious workman, intolerant of doubts and delays, eagerly seeking every remedy for the intricacies of the art, trying the most easy methods, and to perform much in little time. had they indeed fallen into other hands, agostino would have become a new samacchini, annibal a new passerotti; and painting would have owed no improvement to their efforts. but their cousin's fine judgment led him, in their education, to imitate isocrates, who, instructing ephorus and theopompus, was accustomed to say, that he was compelled to apply spurs to the one, and a rein to the other. with similar views he consigned agostino to fontana, as an easy and rapid master, and retained annibal in his own studio, where works were carried to higher perfection. by such means too he kept them apart, until riper age should by degrees remove the enmity subsisting between them, and convert it into a bond of amity, when devoted to the same profession, they might unite their capital, and mutually assist each other. in a few years he succeeded in reconciling them, and in he placed them at parma and at venice, of which an account has been given under those schools. during this period agostino collected materials for his varied learning, and enlarged his design; and as before leaving bologna he had made great progress in engraving under domenico tibaldi, he continued in venice to practise it under cort with such success, as to excite his master's jealousy, who drove him, but in vain, from his studio; for agostino was already esteemed the marc antonio of his time. annibal, devoted to a single aim, both at parma and venice continued to paint, availing himself of the works and conversation of illustrious men, with whom at that period the venetian school abounded. it was then, or shortly subsequent, that he executed his beautiful copies of coreggio, titian, and paul veronese; in whose taste he also conducted some small pictures. several specimens of these i saw in possession of the marchese durazzo at genoa, displaying opposite, but very graceful styles. returning accomplished artists into their native place, they struggled long and nobly with their fortunes. their first undertakings consisted of the exploits of jason, in a frieze of the casa favi; these, though conducted with the assistance of lodovico, were vituperated with excessive scorn by the old painters, as deficient both in elegance and correctness. to this censure, the credit of these masters who had flourished at rome, who were extolled by the poets, adorned with diplomas, and regarded by the declining age as pillars of the art, seemed to give weight. their disciples echoed their words, and the crowd repeated them; and such murmurs proceeding from a public, gifted with as much volubility in conversation as would suffice for purposes of declamation or controversy elsewhere, wounded the feelings of the caracci, overwhelmed and depressed them. i was informed by the accomplished cav. niccolò fava, that lodovico's change of fortune, along with that of his cousins, occurred on an occasion, and at a period little differing from the above; which is supported by a tradition to the same effect. the two cousins had executed the frieze in the same hall where cesi adorned another, in opposition to it, with histories of Æneas, which we have already mentioned, (p. ). the work, conducted in the old style, was certainly beautiful, but lodovico, in the new, painted another chamber with other histories, twelve in number, of Æneas, of which mention is made in the guide of bologna, (p. ); histories in no way inferior to those in the casa magnani. here was the beginning of the caracci's fortune, and of the fall of the old masters, bologna at length preparing to do justice to the worth of that divine artist, and to verify in respect to cesi that sentence of hesiod, of which, to the best of my ability, i here offer a version from the greek, as follows: folle chi al più potente fa contrasto! che perde la vittoria; e sempre al fine, oltra lo scorno, di dolor si è guasto! _opera_ v. . fool, that will dare to cross the path of one more powerful! and ever to the loss of victory, at last add scorn and grief. it was now that the caracci, more than ever confident in their style, answered the voice of censure only by works full of vigour and nature, opposed to the works of older masters, feeble and void of truth. by such means that revolution of style which had so long been meditated, at length took place; but it became necessary, in order to accelerate it, to bring over the students of the art to their party, the better to insure the hopes of a new and improved era. this too the caracci achieved, by opening an academy of painting at their house, which they entitled _degli incamminati_, supplying it with casts, designs, and prints, in the same manner as those of their rivals; besides introducing a school for the drawing of the naked figure, and for the study of anatomy and perspective: in short, every thing requisite to the art; directing the whole with a skill added to a kindness that could not fail to procure it abundance of pupils. in particular, the fiery temper of dionisio calvart contributed to fill it, who, being in the habit of striking, and even wounding his disciples, drove guido, albano, and domenichino, to transfer their talents to the studio of the caracci. panico too entered it from the school of fontana, and from all sides the best young artists assembled, drawing after them fresh ranks of students. finally, the other academies were closed; every school was left to solitude; every name gave way before that of the caracci; to them the best commissions, to them the meed of praise were accorded. their humbled rivals soon assumed another language, especially when the grand hall of magnani was thrown open, presenting the wonders of the new carraccesque art. it was then cesi declared that he would become a disciple of the new school; and fontana only lamented that he was too grey-headed to keep pace with it, while calvart alone, with his usual bravado, ventured to blame the work, being the last of all to recant, or at least to become silent. it is now time to record the pursuits and the maxims of an academy, which, besides educating many illustrious pupils, perfected the art of their masters; and confirmed the axiom, that the shortest method of learning much is that of teaching. the three brothers were on the most perfect understanding as to the art of teaching, as free from venality as from envy; but the most laborious branches of the professorship were sustained by agostino. he had drawn up a short treatise of perspective and architecture, from which he expounded to the school. he explained the nature of the bones and muscles, designating them by their names, in which he was assisted by lanzoni the anatomist, who also secretly provided the school with bodies for such dissections as were required. his lectures were sometimes founded upon history, at others upon fictions; and these he illustrated, and offered for designs, which being exhibited at stated intervals, were examined by skilful judges, who decided upon their respective merits; as we gather from a ticket written to cesi, one of the arbiters. the meed of fame was sufficient for the crowned candidates, round whom the poets collected to celebrate their name; with whom agostino enthusiastically joined both with harp and voice, applauding the progress of his scholars. these last were likewise instructed in true criticism, and to give due praise or blame to the works of others; they were also taught to criticise their own works, and whoever could not give good reasons for what he had done, and defend his own work, must cancel it upon the spot. each, however, was at liberty to pursue what path he pleased, or rather each entered upon that to which nature had best adapted him, which gave rise to so many original manners from the same studio; yet each style was to be founded upon reason, nature, and imitation. in all more doubtful points, recourse was had to the opinion of lodovico; the cousins presided over the daily exercises of design, full of assiduity, industry, and perseverance. even the recreations of the academicians had a view to art; to draw landscapes from nature, or to sketch caricatures, were the customary amusements of annibale and the disciples of the school, when they wished to relax from study.[ ] footnote : it must be observed that the two younger caracci visited rome, where they continued to instruct their pupils on the same plan. passeri, in his life of guido, says, that they were joined by literary men, who proposed history-pieces to them, with premiums for such as should be best executed; and that on one occasion domenichino, one of the youngest, being preferred above all, guido was seized with the most lively emulation to eclipse him. the historian adds, that the same method was soon adopted in the roman academy, and that car. barberini, nephew to urban viii., presided at the election of the first, and rewarded him with money, and those that next followed, to the fourth member. moreover he gave the first a commission for a picture from the same subject as the design. what a secret is here shewn for promoting the fine arts. the maxim of uniting together the study of nature, and the imitation of the best masters, already touched upon in the outset of this book, formed the real foundation of the school of caracci; although they took care to modify it according to particular talents, as we have seen. their object was to collect into one whatever they found most valuable in other schools, and in this process they observed two methods. the first resembles that of the poets, who, in several canzoni, propose different models for imitation; in one, for instance, borrowing from petrarch, in another from chiabrera, in a third from frugoni. the second method is like that of those, who, being masters of these three styles, form and harmonize them into one, like corinthian metal, composed of various other kinds. thus the caracci, in some of their compositions, were accustomed to present different styles in a variety of different figures. so lodovico, in his preaching of st. john the baptist, at the church of the certosini (where crespi is especially opposed to paul veronese), has exhibited the audience of the saint in such a manner that a judge described them by these names:--the raffaellesque, the tizianesque, and the imitator of tintoretto. annibal too, who had long admired only coreggio, having finally adopted lodovico's maxim, painted his celebrated picture for the church of st. george, where, in his figure of the virgin, he imitated paolo; in that of the divine infant and st. john, coreggio; in st. john the evangelist he exhibited titian; and in the very graceful form of st. catherine, the sweetness of parmigianino. most generally, however, they pursued the second path, and still more examples might be adduced of less apparent and more free and mixed imitations, so modified as to produce a whole of a perfectly original character. and the ingenious agostino, emulating the ancient legislators, who embodied all their laws in a few verses, composed that very picturesque, rather than poetical sonnet, in praise of niccolino abati, but which also well explains the maxim of their school, in selecting the peculiar merits of each different style. it has been handed down to us by malvasia, in his life of primaticcio, and runs as follows:-- chi farsi un buon pittor brama e desia il disegno di roma abbia alla mano, la mossa coll'ombrar veneziano, e il degno colorir di lombardia; di michelangiol la terribil via, il vero natural di tiziano, di coreggio lo stil puro e sovrano, di un raffael la vera simmetria; del tibaldi il decoro e il fondamento, del dotto primaticcio l'inventare, e un po' di grazia del parmigianino: ma senza tanti studii e tanto stento si ponga solo l'opre ad imitare che qui lasciocci il nostro niccolino. to paint for fame, who nurtures high desire, will rome's design keep ever in his view; to the venetian shade and action true, of lombardy's whole colouring never tire; kindle at michael's terrors, and his fire, seize titian's living truth, who nature drew; allegri's pure and sovereign graces too; to heavenly raphael's symmetry aspire: tibaldi's solid sense, appropriate air, and primaticcio's learn'd inventive thought, with parmigiano's graceful sweetness fraught. and should all these ask too much studious care, turn to our niccolino's bright display of wondrous works, the envy of his day. it is not easy to ascertain how far the caracci may have carried this project, though it must always reflect the highest degree of credit upon them to have executed it in a superior manner to all other artists. in the outset they most felt their deficiency in their imitation of the antique, called by agostino the design of rome. he and annibal, however, while residing there as strangers, in some measure reproduced and restored it to roman artists themselves; and lodovico, though remaining at bologna, shewed that he was by no means unacquainted with it. at first, observes mengs, they devoted much study to coreggio, both in their ample outline and in their general design, although they did not observe the same exact equilibrium in their concave and convex lines, but rather affected the latter. there were other points which they did not attempt to include in such imitation, as in the shortening of the heads, and exhibiting them so very frequently with that smile so much repeated by the parmigiani, by barocci, and vanni. they took their heads from life, and improved upon them by general ideas of the beautiful. hence annibal's madonnas, many of them of a small size on copper, exhibit a peculiar and original beauty derived from his studies; and the same may be said of lodovico, who, in his softer heads, often gives the portrait of a lady named giacomazzi, celebrated for her beauty at that time. the caracci were extremely well-grounded in a knowledge of anatomy, and of the naked figure; and it would be manifest injustice not to give them credit for due estimation of michelangiolo, whom they also imitated. one of them indeed is known to have said, with some acrimony towards the rival school, that bonarruoti ought to have covered his bones with a little flesh, in the manner of their own tibaldi. it is true they availed themselves less of the naked form in composition than the florentines, though more largely than the other schools. in their costume, they were not so anxious to observe the exactness and richness of paul veronese, as the grandeur of his folds and form; nor did any other school give more ample flow of drapery, or arrange it with dignity more suitable to the figures. yet mengs denies that they were consummate colourists, though they studied the lombard and venetian schools, an opinion confirmed by lodovico's paintings in oil, which are faded and almost gone. this arose, either from the nature of his grounds, from too abundant use of oil, or from not allowing due time between preparing his canvass and colouring it. the same remark will not apply to his frescos, which, on a near view, exhibit a boldness of hand equal almost to paolo's; nor, in the opinion of bellori, was there any work which, in point of colouring, reflected higher credit on the caracci, and on the age, than their pictures in the casa magnani. they boast a truth, force, mixture, and harmony of colours, such as to entitle them also in this portion of the art to the praise of being reformers of the age. they effectually banished those wretched yellows, and other weak, washy tints, introduced from parsimony, in place of the azures and different colours of higher price. in this bellori accords most merit to annibal; declaring it was owing to him that lodovico himself renounced his first method of colouring, which was formed on that of procaccini. in action and expression they aimed at vivacity, but without ever losing sight of propriety, of which they were extremely observant; and to which they were ready to sacrifice any of the graces of the art. in taste of invention and composition, they come near that of raffaello. the caracci were not lavish of their figures, conceiving twelve sufficient for any historical piece, except in crowds, or in battle-pieces, where they were still moderate, in order to give greater relief to particular groups. that they were competent to compose with judgment, learning, and variety, is fully apparent from their sacred histories represented on altars, where they avoided, as much as possible, the very trite representation of a madonna between various saints. this truth is still more remarkably shewn in their profane histories, and in none better than those of romulus, in the family just before mentioned. the three relations there appear universal in the art, as perspective, landscape, and ornamental painters, masters of every style, and concentering in one point of view whatever is most desirable in any single work. the three artists seem to disappear in one; and the same is observed also in several galleries and churches of bologna. they followed the same maxims, and in the same studio designed in union with one another, conferring and taking measures how best to complete every work in hand. in several instances it still remains matter of doubt whether pictures are to be attributed to annibal or to lodovico; and the three scriptural histories of the sampieri, in which the three relations wished to display their respective powers, do not exhibit a diversity which might essentially characterize their respective authors. some indeed there are who may detect in lodovico a more general imitation of titian, than is observable in the cousins, agostino inclining more to the taste of tintoretto, annibal to that of coreggio. it has sometimes been remarked that the figures of the first of the three are light in form, those of the third, robust; while those of agostino hold a middle rank. at bologna i found lodovico enjoying most repute for a certain elevation and grandeur; agostino for his inventive powers; annibal for grace. every one must judge, however, according to his own views. it is now my duty to consider these separately. lodovico, doubtless, rises into the sublime in many of his works at bologna. his picture of the "_probatica_" so excellent both in point of architecture and the design of the figures; that of s. girolamo, who, suspending his pen, turns towards heaven with a look and gesture so truly impressive and dignified; his limbo of holy fathers, which, as if to renew his delight in it, he repeated in the cathedral of piacenza, and sketched also under a crucifixion at ferrara: these have ever been regarded in that school as models of the sublime. nevertheless, if we examine the "assumption," at the teresiani, the "paradise," at the barnabiti, or the "s. george," in which is represented that admirable virgin, who is seen seized with terror in the act of flight, it will be allowed that annibal himself could not have exhibited more grace in his drawing of young maidens or of boys. more excelling, therefore, than great, lodovico may be said to be transcendant in every character; and it would even seem that he had aimed at this boast in the two frescos that have perished, with which he decorated, at s. domenico, the chapel of the lambertini. in one he exhibited the holy founder, with s. francis, in a manner very easy and pleasing to the eye, with few lights and as few shades, but both powerful, and with few folds in the drapery; the countenances full of piety; insomuch that the whole performance, in the words of malvasia, "rose to a pitch of grandeur not to be excelled." in the other piece he represented "charity," in a style equally soft, graceful, and polished, and which was subsequently, says the historian, esteemed "the model and the rule of modern painting." he proceeds to relate, that albani, guido, and domenichino all derived their sweetness from this source, in the same way, most probably, that cavedoni took his first style from the s. domenico; and from his paul at the conventuali guercino acquired his grand power of chiaroscuro. in short, if we may give credit to history, lodovico in his own school ranks like homer among the greeks, _fons ingeniorum_. individual artists in him have recognized what constituted the character of their own knowledge, because in every branch of painting he was truly profound.[ ] footnote : see crespi's analysis of the two pictures at the church of the certosa, (p. ,) one representing the scourging of christ, the other his crown of thorns, where the most beautiful art of disposing the light to produce the desired effect is remarkable; with an exquisite effect of perspective, and a degree of invention not to be surpassed in representing the suffering of our redeemer. the masterly dignity of his character appears to most advantage in the cloister of s. michele in bosco, where, assisted by his pupils, he represented the actions of st. benedict and st. cecilia in thirty-seven separate histories. by his hand is the conflagration of mount cassino, and some other portions; the remaining parts are by guido, by tiarini, by massari, by cavedoni, by spada, by garbieri, by brizio, and other young artists. these paintings have been engraved, and are worthy of the reformers of that age. on beholding what we may term this gallery by different hands, we should be almost inclined to bestow upon the school of lodovico this trite eulogy; that from it, as from the trojan horse, there issued only princes. what does him still more honour is, that his relatives themselves, down to the least and last, uniformly venerated him as a preceptor, insomuch that annibal, on the completion of the farnese gallery, invited him to rome, as the adviser, arbiter, and umpire of that work. he remained there less than two weeks, and then returning to his beloved bologna, he survived agostino seventeen years, and annibal ten. being separated from the two cousins, he employed himself at an advanced age in a manner less studied, but still exemplary and masterly. nor ought a few slight inaccuracies of design to detract from the praise due to him, inaccuracies which he fell into about this period, as in the drawing of the hand of the redeemer, in the act of calling st. matthew to follow him, or in the foot of the madonna of the annunciation painted at s. pietro, a fault which he saw too late, and it may be added, for which he died of affliction. other less well founded criticisms advanced against him by a traveller have been fully rebutted and confuted by the can. crespi.[ ] footnote : _lettere pittoriche_, tom. vii. lettera . agostino, occupied for the most part in engraving, painted but little, this employment supplying him at once with the means of subsistence, and of shining in the class of artists. doubtless painting here sustained a loss, deprived of a genius equally calculated as his relations to promote the art. his powers of invention surpassed those of the other caracci, and many rank him foremost in point of design. it is certain that in his engraving he corrected and improved upon the outlines of his originals. on his return from venice he applied himself more effectually to colouring, and succeeded in that of a horse, so far as to deceive the living animal, a triumph so much celebrated in apelles. he once competed with his brother annibal for an altar-piece intended for the church of the carthusians. his design was preferred; and it was then that in his communion of s. girolamo he produced one of the most celebrated pictures of which bologna can boast. nothing can be imagined finer than the expression of devotion in the aged saint, the piety of the priest at the communion, the looks of the spectators, who support the dying, who catch his last accents, committing them instantly to writing, lest they escape; countenances finely varied and animated, each breathing and speaking, as it were, peculiar mind. on its first exhibition, the pupils thronged around the picture to make their studies, insomuch that annibal, urged by jealousy, assumed more of his brother's taste, becoming more select and slow, contriving further to addict his brother to engraving; a plan in which he succeeded. he returned, as a painter, to rome; and the fine representation of poetry, so much admired in the farnese gallery, was, in great part, owing to his talent; and the same may be said of the fables of cephalus and galatea, exquisitely graceful productions, which seem dictated by a poet, and executed by a greek artist. hence it was rumoured that in the farnesian paintings the engraver had surpassed the painter; at which annibal, no longer able to subdue his envy, removed his brother from the undertaking under a variety of false pretences; nor was any humility on the part of agostino, any advice of his elders, or any mediation of the great, sufficient to appease him. quitting rome, agostino entered into the service of the duke of parma, for whom he painted celestial love, terrestrial love, and venal love, to adorn one of the halls, a very beautiful work, which he terminated only just before his death. a single figure remained wanting, and this the duke would never consent to have supplied by any other hand. at the point of death he was seized with lively remorse, on account of his many licentious engravings and prints, and even wept bitterly. at that period he designed a picture of the last judgment, which, however, he was unable to complete. in the account of his funeral, and in the oration recited on that occasion by lucio faberio, mention is made of a head of jesus christ, in the character of the universal judge, painted at that time, though unfinished, upon a black ground. such a head is pointed out in the albani palace at rome, and duplicates exist elsewhere. in the features we see exhibited all that is at once most majestic and most terrible within the limits of the human imagination. annibal was greatly celebrated in lombardy in every peculiar taste which he chose to pursue. in his earliest works mengs declares that he traces the appearance, but not the depth and reality of coreggio's style; but it is an appearance so extremely plausible, that it compels us to pronounce him one of the most perfect imitators of that consummate master. his taking down from the cross, at the church of the capuccini in parma, may challenge the most distinguished followers of the parmese school. his picture of s. rocco is still more celebrated, comprising the perfections of different artists, a piece engraved in aqua forte by guido reni. it was executed for reggio, thence transferred to modena, and from the last place to dresden. he represented the saint, standing near a portico on a basement, and dispensing his wealth to poor mendicants; a composition not so very rich in figures as in knowledge of the art. a throng of paupers, as different in point of infirmity as in age and sex, is admirably varied, both in the grouping and the gestures. one is seen receiving with gratitude, another impatiently expecting, a third counting his alms with delight; every object is misery and humiliation, and yet every thing seems to display the abundance and dignity of the artist. but proceeding to rome in the year , he entered on another career; "he checked his fire," observes mengs, "he improved the extravagance of his forms, imitated raffaello and the ancients, retaining at the same time a portion of the style of coreggio to support dignity." (tom. ii. p. .) albano makes use of nearly the same words in a letter given by bellori, (p. ,) adding, that annibal, in the opinion of competent judges, "far surpassed his cousin, from a knowledge of the works of raffaello, in addition to that of the most beautiful ancient statues." he was there employed in various churches, though his crowning effort, and nearly the whole foundation of the art, as restored by his means, are to be sought for in the farnese palace. the subjects were selected by monsig. agucchi; and together with the allegories may be read in bellori. in a small chamber he gave representations of the virtues, such as his _choice of hercules_, _hercules sustaining the world_, _ulysses the liberator_; in the gallery various fables of virtuous love, such as those of arion and prometheus; with others of venal love, among which a wonderful figure of a bacchanal is one of the most conspicuous. the work is admirably distributed and varied with ovals, cornices, and with a variety of ornamental figures, sometimes in stucco, at others in chiaroscuro, where the effect of his assiduous studies of the farnesian hercules is very apparent, as well as of the _torso_ of the belvidere, which he accurately designed, without even having the model before him. the whole of the other parts breathe attic elegance combined with raffaellesque grace, and imitations not only of his own tibaldi but of bonarruoti himself, no less than all the sprightly and the powerful added to the art by the venetians and lombards. this was the earliest production, where, as in pandora's box, all the geniuses of the italian schools united their several gifts; and in its fit place i described the astonishment created by it at rome, with the revolution it occasioned in the whole art. on account of this work he is ranked by mengs next after the three leading masters in the fourth degree, and even esteemed supereminent in regard to the form of his virile figures. poussin asserts, that after raffaello there were no better compositions than these, and he prefers the decorative heads and figures already mentioned, with the other naked forms, in which the artist was said to have surpassed himself, even to his fables so beautifully painted. to him baglione refers the method of colouring from nature, which was nearly lost, as well as the true art of landscape-painting, afterwards imitated by the flemish. to these might likewise be added the use of caricatures, which no one better than he knew how to copy from nature, and to increase with ideal power. in the roman galleries many of annibal's pictures are to be met with, conducted in this new style; and there is one in the lancellotti palace, small, and painted _a colla_,[ ] rivalling, i had almost said, the best pieces of ercolani. it is a pan teaching apollo to play upon the pipe; figures at once designed, coloured, and disposed with the hand of a great master. they are so finely expressive, that we see in the countenance of the youth, humility, and apprehension of committing an error; and in that of the old man, turning another way, peculiar attention to the sound, his pleasure in possessing such a pupil, and his anxiety to conceal from him his real opinion, lest he might happen to grow vain.[ ] footnote : in colours, of which yolk of egg, or a kind of glue, is the vehicle. footnote : see the _dissertazione su la pittura_, by the canon lazzarini, in the catalogue of pictures at pesaro, p. . no other pieces so exquisitely finished are found by his hand at bologna, where there prevails the same strong party, commenced in the time of the caracci, and which prefers lodovico to annibal. when we reflect that annibal, in addition to the patrimony left by his school, conferred upon it the riches which the genius of the greeks, throughout many ages and many places had collected to adorn their style; when we reflect on the progress, which, on observing his new style at rome, was made by domenichino, guido, albano, lanfranco, with the new light which it afforded to algardi, according to the supposition of passeri, in respect to sculpture, and the improvement which by his means took place in the very pleasing and attractive painting of flanders and of holland, we feel inclined to coincide with the general sentiment entertained beyond the limits of bologna, that annibal was the most eminent artist of his family. at the same time we may allow, that agostino was the greater genius, and lodovico, to whom we are indebted for both, the greater teacher of these three. as such, too, the learned ab. magnani, librarian and lecturer upon eloquence to the institution, assigns to him the office of teacher, in an able oration upon the fine arts, printed at parma by bodoni, along with others by the same author. the three caracci may be almost said to define the boundaries of the golden age of painting in italy. they are her last sovereign masters, unless we are willing to admit a few of their select pupils, who extended that period during the space of some years. excellent masters, doubtless, flourished subsequently; but after their decease, the powers of such artists appearing less elevated and less solid, we begin to hear complaints respecting the decline of the art. nor were there wanting those who contended for a secondary age of silver, dating from guido down to the time of giordano, as well on account of the minor merit of the artists, as for the prices, so much greater than formerly, which guido introduced into the art. the caracci themselves had been only scantily remunerated. count malvasia admits this fact, not omitting to point out the small dwelling, and to describe the narrow circumstances in which lodovico died, while his two relatives left the world still more impoverished than himself. the caracci, moreover, did not, like other painters, leave legitimate sons to perpetuate their school; they never married, and were accustomed to observe that the art was sole partner of their thoughts. and this beloved mistress they adored and served with a love so passionate, as to abandon almost all worldly care for themselves. even while sitting at their meals they had the implements of their art before them; and wherever they observed an action or gesture adapted to adorn it, they took instant note of it. and to this their free estate, more than to any other cause, were they indebted for their noble progress and improvement. had they "taken to themselves a wife," how easily would their agreeable friendship and attachment, from which each of the three derived light and knowledge from the rest, have been broken in upon by tattling and trifles beneath their care. most probably, too, it might have occasioned too great rapidity of hand, at the expense of study; such at least having been the result with regard to many, who, to indulge a woman's taste, or to provide for the wants of a family, have addicted themselves to carelessness and despatch. at the period, then, of the decease of the two cousins, and the advanced age of lodovico, there remained of the family only two youths, one, named francesco, at bologna, the other, antonio, in rome. francesco was a younger brother of agostino and annibal. confiding in his connexions and in his own talent, excellent in point of design, and reasonably good in colouring, he ventured to oppose a school of his own to that of lodovico, his master, inscribing upon the door: "this is the true school of the caracci." he enjoyed no reputation at bologna, but was rather held in dislike, on account of his opposition to and detraction of lodovico, to whom he owed what little he executed at that place, namely, an altar-piece, with various saints, at s. maria maggiore, the whole of which had been retouched by his kind and able cousin. having gone to rome, he was first received with applause, but becoming better known he was soon despised; and, without leaving a single specimen of his pencil, he died there in his twenty-seventh year, in the hospital. antonio caracci, a natural son of agostino, and pupil to annibal, was of a totally different disposition. prudent, affectionate, and grateful to his relatives, he received annibal's last sighs at rome, bestowed upon him a splendid funeral in the same church of the rotonda, where raffaello's remains had been exhibited, and deposited his ashes at the side of that great artist. he survived, a valetudinarian, during some years, and died at the age of thirty-five, in rome, where he left some works in the pontifical palace, and at s. bartolommeo. they are rarely met with in cabinets, though i saw one in genoa, a veronica, in possession of the brignole family. bellori had written his life, which, although now lost, leads to the supposition that he possessed great merit, inasmuch as that writer confined himself to the commemoration of only first rate artists. baldassare aloisi, called galanino, a kinsman and scholar of the caracci, yielded to few of his fellow-pupils in his compositions. his picture of the visitation, at the church of the carità in bologna, so much extolled by malvasia, to say nothing of various other pictures, executed at rome, and favourably recorded by baglione, affords ample proofs of it. his fortune, however, was not equal to his merit; so that he wholly devoted himself to portraiture, and as we have stated, in the roman school, he there for some period boasted the chief sway in the branch of portraits, which were uniformly characterized by great power and strong relief. other bolognese artists, educated in the same academy, took up their residence also at rome, or in its state; nor were they few in number, since, as was observed in the fourth epoch of that school, they were received there with distinguished favour. we shall commence with the least celebrated. lattanzio mainardi, called by baglione lattanzio bolognese, had visited rome previous to annibal, and in the pontificate of sixtus v., conducted several works for the vatican, which augured well of his genius, had he not died there very young; as well as one gianpaolo bonconti, at an age still more immature, having vainly followed his master to rome, where he had only time to make a few designs, but conceived in the best taste. innocenzio tacconi was kinsman, according to some, and assuredly enjoyed the confidence of annibale. from him he received designs and retouches, tending to make him appear a more considerable artist than he really was. to judge from some of his histories of st. andrew, painted for s. maria del popolo, and s. angiolo, in the fish-market, he may be said to have rivalled his best fellow-pupils. but abusing his master's goodness, and alienating his regard from agostino, from albano, and from guido, by misrepresentations, he received the usual recompence of slanderers. annibal withdrew his support, deprived of which he gradually became more and more insignificant. anton maria panico early left rome, and, entering the service of mario farnese, resided upon his estates, being employed in painting at castro, at latera, and at farnese, in whose cathedral he placed his picture of the mass, to which annibal also put his hand, even conducting some of the figures. baldassare croce is an artist enumerated by orlandi among the pupils of annibal; by malvasia, among the imitators of guido. baglione describes him as superior in age to all three of the caracci, introducing him into rome as early as the times of gregory. towards reconciling the accounts of these writers, it might be observed, that continuing to reside at rome, he may have taken advantage, as he advanced in age, of the examples afforded by his noble fellow-citizens. his style, from what we gather of it in the public palace of viterbo, and a cupola of the gesù, as well as from his large histories of s. susanna, and other places in rome, is easy, natural, and entitling him to the name of a good mechanist and painter of frescos, but not so easily to that of a follower of the caracci. gio. luigi valesio entered, though late, into the same school, and chiefly attached himself to engraving and to miniature. proceeding to rome, he was there employed by the lodovisi under the pontificate of gregory xv., and obtained great honours. we find him commended in the works of marini and other poets, though less for the art, in which he only moderately excelled, than for his assiduity and his fortune. he was one of those wits, who in the want of sound merit know how to substitute easier methods to advance themselves; seasonably to regale such as can assist them, to affect joy amidst utter humiliation, to accommodate themselves to men's tempers, to flatter, to insinuate, and to canvass interest, until they attain their object. by means like these he maintained his equipage in rome, where annibal, during many years, obtained no other stipend for his honourable toils, than a bare roof for his head, daily pittance for himself and his servant, with annual payment of a hundred and twenty crowns.[ ] in the few pieces executed by valesio at bologna, such as his nunziata of the mendicants, we perceive a dry composition of small relief, yet exact according to the method of the miniaturists. he appears to have somewhat improved at rome, where he left a few works in fresco and in oil, exhibiting his whole power, perhaps, in a figure of religion, in the cloister of the minerva. to these artists of the caracci school it will be sufficient only to have alluded. they were indeed no more than gregarious followers of those elevated standards of their age. footnote : see _malvasia_, vol. i. p. . the five, however, who next follow, deserve a nearer view, and more accurate acquaintance with their merits. these, remaining indeed at rome, became leaders of new ranks, which from them assumed their name and device; and hence we have alternately been compelled to record the disciples of albano, of guido, and so of the rest. this repetition, however, in other places, will now permit us to treat of them in a more cursory view. domenico zampieri, otherwise domenichino, is at this day universally esteemed the most distinguished pupil of the caracci; and has even been preferred by count algarotti to the caracci themselves. what is still more, poussin ranked him directly next to raffaello; and in the introduction to the life of camassei, almost the same opinion is given by passeri. during the early part of his career his genius appeared slow, because it was profound and accurate; and passeri attributes his grand progress more to his amazing study than to his genius. from his acting as a continual censor of his own productions, he became among his fellow pupils the most exact and expressive designer, his colours most true to nature, and of the best _impasto_, the most universal master in the theory of his art, the sole painter amongst them all in whom mengs found nothing to desire, except a somewhat larger proportion of elegance. that he might devote his whole being to the art, he shunned all society, or if he occasionally sought it in the public theatres and markets, it was in order better to observe the play of nature's passions in the features of the people;--those of joy, anger, grief, terror, and every affection of the mind, and to commit it living to his tablets; and thus, exclaims bellori, it was, he succeeded in delineating the soul, in colouring life, and rousing those emotions in our breasts at which his works all aim; as if he waved the same wand which belonged to the poetical enchanters, tasso and ariosto. after several years' severe study at bologna, he went to parma to examine the beautiful works of the lombards; and thence to rome, where he completed his erudite taste under annibal, who selected him as one of his assistants. his style of painting is almost theatrical, and he in general lays the scene amidst some splendid exhibition of architecture,[ ] which serves to confer upon his compositions a new and elevated character in the manner of paul veronese. there he introduces his actors, selected from nature's finest models, and animated by the noblest impulses of the art. the virtuous have an expression so sweet, so sincere, and so affectionate, as to inspire the love of what is good. and in the like manner do the vicious, with their guilty features, create in us as deep aversion to their vice. we must despair to find paintings exhibiting richer or more varied ornaments, accessaries more beautifully adapted, or more majestic draperies. the figures are finely disposed both in place and action, conducing to the general effect; while a light pervades the whole which seems to rejoice the spirit; growing brighter and brighter in the aspect of the best countenances, whence they first attract the eye and heart of the beholder. the most delightful mode of view is to take in the whole scene, and observe how well each personage represents his intended part. in general there is no want of an interpreter to declare what the actors think and speak; they bear it stamped upon their features and attitudes; and though gifted with audible words, they could not tell their tale to the ear, more plainly than they speak it to the eye. surely, of this, we have proof in the scourging of st. andrew, at s. gregorio, at rome, executed in competition with guido, and placed opposite to his st. andrew, in the act of being led to the gibbet. it is commonly reported that an aged woman, accompanied by a little boy, was seen long wistfully engaged with viewing domenichino's picture, shewing it part by part to the boy, and next turning to the history by guido, she gave it a cursory glance, and passed on. some assert, that annibal, being acquainted with the fact, took occasion from the circumstance to give his preference to the former piece. it is moreover added, that in painting one of the executioners, he actually threw himself into a passion, using threatening words and actions, and that annibal surprising him at that moment, embraced him, exclaiming with joy, "to-day, my domenichino, thou art teaching me!" so novel, and at the same time so natural it appeared to him, that the artist, like the orator, should feel within himself all that he is representing to others. footnote : he was likewise very eminent in this branch, being named by gregory xv. as architect for the apostolic palace. yet this picture of the scourging is in no way to be compared with the communion of s. jerome, or to the martyrdom of s. agnes, and other works, conducted in his riper years. the first of these is generally allowed to be the finest picture rome can boast next to the transfiguration of raffaello; while the second was estimated by his rival guido at ten times the merit of raffaello's own pieces.[ ] in these church paintings one great attraction consists in the glory of the angels, exquisitely beautiful in feature, full of lively action, and so introduced as to perform the most gracious offices in the piece; the crowning of martyrs, the bearing palms, the scattering of roses, weaving the mazy dance, and waking sweet melodies. in the attitudes we often trace the imitation of coreggio; yet the forms are different, and for the most part have a flatness of the nose, which distinguishes them, and gives them an air of comeliness. much, however, as domenichino delighted in oil-painting, he is more soft and harmonious in his frescos; some of which are to be seen, besides those in naples, at fano, but the greatest part of them were destroyed by fire. they consist of scriptural histories in a chapel of the cathedral; of mythological incidents in villa bracciano, at frascati; the acts of s. nilo, at grotta ferrata; and various sacred subjects interspersed through different churches at rome. in the corbels of the cupolas at s. carlo a' catinari, and at s. andrea della valle, he painted, at the former, the four virtues, at the latter, the four evangelists, still regarded as models after innumerable similar productions. at s. andrea also are seen various histories of that saint in the tribune, besides those of st. cecilia, at s. luigi; others at s. silvestro, in the quirinal of david, and other scriptural subjects, which in point of composition and taste of costume are by some esteemed superior to the rest. footnote : the cav. puccini very justly condemns this opinion in his _esame critico del webb_, p. . it seems almost incredible, that works like these, which now engage the admiration of professors themselves, should once, as i have narrated, have been decried to such a degree, that the author was long destitute of all commissions, and even on the point of transferring his genius to the art of sculpture. this was in part owing to the arts of his rivals, who represented his very excellences as defects, and in part to some little faults of his own. domenichino was less distinguished for invention than for any other branch of his profession. of this, his picture of the rosary at bologna affords an instance, which neither at that period nor since has been fully understood by the public; and it is known not to have pleased even his own friends, which led the author to regret its production. diffident thenceforward of his powers in this department, he often borrowed the ideas of others; imitated agostino in his st. jerome, the s. rocco, of annibal, in his almsgiving of st. cecilia; and even other less eminent artists; observing, that in every picture he found something good, as pliny said, that from every book we may cull some useful information. these imitations afforded occasion for his rivals to charge him with poverty of invention, procuring an engraving of agostino's st. jerome, of which they circulated copies, denouncing domenico zampieri as a plagiarist. lanfranco, the chief agent in these intrigues, exhibited on the contrary only his own designs, invariably novel, and made a display of his own celerity and promptness of hand, as contrasted with his rival's want of resolution and despatch. had domenichino enjoyed the same advantages of party as the caracci in bologna, which he well deserved, he would soon have triumphed over his adversaries, by proving the distinction between imitation and servility,[ ] and that if his works were longer in being brought to perfection than his rival's, their reputation would be proportionally durable. the public is an equitable judge; but a good cause is not sufficient without the advantage of many voices to sanction it. domenichino, timid, retired, and master of few pupils, was destitute of a party equal to his cause. he was constrained to yield to the crowd that trampled him, thus verifying the observation of monsig. agucchi, that his worth would never be rightly appreciated during his lifetime. the spirit of party passing away, impartial posterity has rendered him justice; nor is there a royal gallery but confesses an ambition for his specimens. his figure pieces are in the highest esteem, and fetch enormous prices. he is rarely to be met with except in capital cities; his david is a first rate object of inquiry to all strangers visiting the college of fano, who have the least pretensions to taste; the figure of the king, as large as life, being of itself sufficient to render an artist's name immortal. footnote : see the defence set up by crespi, both for domenichino and massari, another imitator of agostino's picture. it is inserted in the _certosa di bologna_, described at p. . he has also been commended by bellori for his slowness of hand, who brings forward some of his maxims, such as that, "no single line is worthy of a real painter which is not dictated by the genius before it is traced by the hand; that excellence consists in the full and proper completion of works;" and he used to reproach those pupils who designed in sketch, and coloured by dashes of the pencil (p. ). we meet with a third apology in passeri, (p. ,) for some figures borrowed from the farnese gallery, and imitated by domenichino in the histories of st. jerome in the portico of s. onofrio. at p. too he defends him in regard to the style of his folds, in which by some he was thought too scanty, and too hard in their disposition. there is a small, but inestimable picture of st. francis, that belonged to the late count jacopo zambeccari, at bologna. the saint is seen in the act of prayer, and by the animated and flushed expression of the eyes, it appears as if his heart had just been dissolved in tears. two pictures, likewise beautifully composed, i have seen at genoa; the death of adonis bewailed by venus, in the durazzo gallery just before mentioned, and the s. rocco in the brignole sale, offering up prayers for the cessation of the plague. the attitude of the holy man; the eagerness of those who seek him; the tragic exhibition of the dying and the dead around him; a funeral procession going by; an infant seen on the bosom of its dead mother, vainly seeking its wonted nutriment; all shake the soul of the spectator as if he were beholding the real scene. among his pictures from profane history the most celebrated is his chase of diana, in the borghesi palace, filled with spirited forms of nymphs, and lively incidents. in the same collection are some of his landscapes, as well as in that of florence; and some of his portraits in others. here too he is excellent, but they are the least difficult branches to acquire. respecting his other works, and the most eminent of his pupils, enough has been stated in the roman and neapolitan schools. he educated for his native place gio. batista ruggieri; and to his numerous other misfortunes was added the pain of finding him ungrateful, after having rendered him eminent in his art. this pupil united with gessi in quality of assistant; and as we shall shew, also took his denomination from him. passeri dwells on this disappointment of domenichino incidentally in his life of algardi, (p. ). next to zampieri comes his intimate friend francesco albani, "who, aiming at the same object," observes malvasia, "and adopting the same means, pursued the like glorious career." they agree in a general taste for select design, solidity, pathetic power, and likewise in their tints, except in albani's fleshes being ruddier, and not unfrequently faded, from his method of laying on the grounds. in point of original invention he is superior to domenichino, and perhaps to any other of the school; and in his representation of female forms, according to mengs, he has no equal. by some he is denominated the anacreon of painting. like that poet, with his short odes, so albani, from his small paintings, acquired great reputation; and as the one sings venus and the loves, and maids and boys, so does the artist hold up to the eye the same delicate and graceful subjects. nature, indeed formed, the perusal of the poets inclined, and fortune encouraged his genius for this kind of painting; and possessing a consort and twelve children, all of surprising beauty, he was at the same time blest with the finest models for the pursuit of his studies. he had a villa most delightfully situated, which farther presented him with a variety of objects, enabling him to represent the beautiful rural views so familiar to his eye. passeri greatly extols his talent in this branch, remarking, that where others, being desirous of suiting figures to the landscape, or its various objects to one another, most frequently alter their natural colour, he invariably preserves the green of his trees, the clearness of his waters, and the serenity of the air, under the most lovely aspect; and contrived to unite them with the most enchanting power of harmony. upon such grounds, for the most part, he places and disposes his compositions, although he may occasionally introduce specimens of his architecture, in which he is equally expert. his pictures are often met with in collections, or to speak more correctly, they re-appear, inasmuch as both he himself made repetitions, and practised his pupils in them, giving them his own touches. he exhibits few bacchanals, avoiding figures that had already been so admirably treated by annibal in many of his little pictures, from which, if i mistake not, albano drew the first ideas of his style; adapting it to his own talent, which was not so elevated as that of annibal. his most favourite themes are the sleeping venus, diana in her bath, danae on her couch, galatea in the sea, europa on the bull, a piece which is also seen on a large scale in the colonna and bolognetti collections at rome, and in that of the conti mosca at pesaro. how beautifully do those figures of the loves throw their veil over the virgin, in order to protect her from the sun's rays, while others are seen drawing forward the bull with bands of flowers, or goading him in the side with their darts. at times he introduces them in the dance, weaving garlands, and practising with their bows at a heart suspended in the air for a target. occasionally he conceals some doctrine, or ingenious allegory, under the veil of painting; as in those four oval pictures of the elements in the borghesi palace, which he repeated for the royal gallery at turin. there too are cupids seen employed in tempering vulcan's darts; spreading their snares for birds upon the wing; fishing and swimming in the sea; culling and wreathing flowers, as if intended to represent the system of the ancients, who referred every work of nature to genii, and with genii accordingly peopled the world. to sacred subjects albano devoted less attention, but did not vary his taste. the entire action of such pieces was made to depend on the ministry of graceful cherubs, in a manner similar to that which was subsequently adopted by p. tornielli in his marine canzonettes, where, in every history of the virgin and holy child, he introduces a throng of them as a sacred train. another very favourite repetition of idea is that of representing the infant christ, with his eye turned towards heaven upon the angels, some in the act of bringing thorns, some the scourge, some the cross, or other symbols of his future passion. there is a picture of this kind in florence, to which i alluded in the _description_ of the ducal gallery, and it is also found somewhat varied in two fine pieces; one at the domenicani in forli, the other in bologna, at the filippini. these, and other works of albani, interspersed throughout different cities, as in matelica, in osimo, in rimini, besides his fresco paintings in bologna, at s. michele in bosco, at s. jacopo, of the spaniards at rome, with the design of annibal; these sufficiently exhibit his superior talent for large paintings, although he applied himself with greater zest and vigour to those on a smaller scale. albani opened an academy for several years at rome, and at bologna, invariably a competitor of guido, both in his magisterial and his professional capacity.[ ] hence arose those strictures upon his style which guido's disciples affected to despise as loose and effeminate, wanting elegance in the virile forms, while those of the boys were all of the same proportion, and his heads of the holy family, and of saints had always one idea. similar accusations, advanced likewise against pietro perugino, are not calculated to depress so great an artist's merit, so much as the esteem of annibal, his own writings, and his pupils, serve to raise him in our regard. it is matter of historical fact that annibal, seized with admiration of some of his small pictures, and among others a bacchante, seen at a fountain pouring out wine, purchased it, and declared that he had not even paid for the drops of water so exquisitely coloured by the wine. of his writings there remain only a few fragments, preserved by malvasia, not indeed reduced to method, a task that ought to devolve on some other pen, but highly valuable from the information and maxims which they contain. among his pupils sacchi and cignani are in themselves sufficient to reflect credit upon their master, the first of whom sustained the art at rome, the other at bologna, and to whose efforts it was owing that its reputation so long continued in both those schools. there, moreover, we recounted the names of speranza, and mola, of lugano, his noble disciples; and to these, besides cignani, to whom we refer elsewhere, we can add a considerable number. gio. batista mola, a frenchman, long continued with albano, and, according to boschini, resided with the other mola at venice, where they copied a vast work of paul veronese for cardinal bichi. he displayed surprising skill in drawing rural scenes and trees, and being preferred by many in this branch to his master, he often added landscape to his master's figures, and occasionally adapted figures to his own landscape, very beautiful, in albani's style, but without his softness. in the excellent collection of the marchesi rinuccini, at florence, is a picture of the repose in egypt, by the same hand. two other foreign pupils also did him credit; antonio catalani, called il romano, and girolamo bonini, also from his native place, entitled l'anconitano, who, in imitating albani, was equalled by few, and who enjoyed his perfect confidence and friendship. settling at bologna, they there employed themselves with reputation in some elegant works, and left several histories in fresco in the public palace. in this last branch, pierantonio torri also distinguished himself, called, in guarienti's lexicon, antonio, dropping pietro on the authority of the passagiere disingannato; and torrigli, in the guide of venice, where he painted the architectural parts in the church of s. giuseppe for the figures of ricchi. filippo menzani is known only as the attached disciple and faithful copyist of his master. gio. batista galli, and bartolommeo morelli, the former called from his birth-place, bibiena, the latter pianoro, were similarly employed in taking copies from him; though the second applied to it with extreme reluctance, on account of albani being "too highly finished, diligent, and laborious, for the task of copying." both these artists are commended by the continuator of malvasia. bibiena, though he died early, conducted works that might be ascribed to albani, in particular the ascension at the certosa, and his st. andrew at the servi in bologna. pianoro succeeded admirably well in his frescos, more especially in the chapel of casa pepoli at s. bartolommeo di porta, decorated by him throughout in such exquisite taste, that, were history silent, it would be said to have been designed and coloured by albani's own hand. footnote : this rivalship is questioned in many places by malvasia, and denied by orlandi, who in the article francesco albano, designates him as the sworn friend of guido reni, in close union with whom he prosecuted their delightful art; but this can only apply to their early years. by some, guido reni is esteemed the great genius of the school; nor did any other single artist excite so much jealousy in the caracci. lodovico was unable to disguise it; and from a pupil he made him his rival, and in order to humble him, bestowed his favour on guercino, an artist in quite another taste. annibal too, after some years, on seeing him at rome, blamed albani for inviting him thither; and, in order to depress him, he put domenichino in opposition to him. even from the age of twenty, when he left the school of calvart, the caracci discovered in him a rare genius for the art, so elevated and ambitious of distinction, that he aspired to something great and novel from the outset of his career. some of his early efforts are to be seen in the bonfigliuoli palace, and in other choice collections, displaying a variety of manner. he devoted much study to albert durer, he imitated the caracci, studied the forms of cesi, and, like passerotti, aimed at giving strong relief and accuracy to the drawing of the muscles. in some instances he followed caravaggio, and in the aforesaid palace is a figure of a sibyl, very beautiful in point of features, but greatly overlaid with depth of shade. the style he adopted arose particularly from an observation on that of caravaggio one day incidentally made by annibal caracci, that to this manner there might be opposed one wholly contrary; in place of a confined and declining light, to exhibit one more full and vivid; to substitute the tender for the bold, to oppose clear outlines to his indistinct ones, and to introduce for his low and common figures those of a more select and beautiful kind. these words made a much deeper impression on the mind of guido than annibal was aware of; nor was it long before he wholly applied himself to the style thus indicated to him. sweetness was his great object; he sought it equally in design, in the touch of his pencil, and in colouring; from that time he began to make use of white lead, a colour avoided by lodovico, and at the same time predicted the durability of his tints, such as they have proved. his fellow pupils were indignant at his presuming to depart from the caracci's method, and returning to the feeble undecided manner of the past century. nor did he pretend to be indifferent to their remarks and advice. he still preserved that strength of style, so much aimed at by his school, while he softened it with more than its usual delicacy; and by degrees proceeding in the same direction, he, in a few years, attained to the degree of delicacy he had proposed. for this reason i have observed that in bologna, more than elsewhere, his first is distinguished from his second manner, and it is made a question which of the two is preferable. nor do all agree with malvasia, who pronounced his former the most pleasing, his latter manner the most studied. in these variations, however, he never lost sight of that exquisite ease which so much attracts us in his works. he was more particularly attentive to the correct form of beauty, especially in his youthful heads. here, in the opinion of mengs, he surpassed all others, and, according to passeri's expression, he drew faces of paradise. in these rome abounds more richly than bologna itself. the fortune in the capitol; the aurora, belonging to the rospigliosi; the helen to the spada; the herodias to the corsini; the magdalen to the barberini, with other subjects in possession of several princes, are regarded as the wonders of guido's art. this power of beauty was, in the words of albano, his most bitter and constant rival, the gift of nature; though the whole was the result of his own intense study of natural beauty, and of raffaello, and of the ancient statues, medals, and cameos. he declared that the medicean venus and the niobe were his most favourite models; and it is seldom we do not recognize in his paintings either niobe herself, or one of her children, though diversified in a variety of manner with such exquisite skill, as in no way to appear borrowed. in the same way did guido derive advantage from raffaello, coreggio, parmigianino, and from his beloved paul veronese; from all of whom he selected innumerable beauties, but with such happy freedom of hand as to excite the envy of the caracci. and, in truth, this artist aimed less at copying beautiful countenances, than at forming for himself a certain general and abstract idea of beauty, as we know was done by the greeks, and this he modulated and animated in his own style. i find mention, that being interrogated by one of his pupils, _in what part of heaven, in what mould_ existed those wondrous features which he only drew, he pointed to the casts of the antique heads just alluded to, adding, "you too may gather from such examples beauties similar to those in my pictures, if your skill be equal to the task." i find, moreover, that he took for model of one of his magdalens, the extremely vulgar head of a colour-grinder; but under guido's hand every defect disappeared, each part became graceful, the whole a miracle. thus too in his naked figures he reduced them, whatever they were, to a perfect form, more especially in the hands and feet, in which he is singular, and the same in his draperies, which he often drew from the prints of albert durer, enriching them, freed from their dryness, with those flowing folds or that grandeur of disposition best adapted to the subject. to portraits themselves, while he preserved the forms and age of the originals, he gave a certain air of novelty and grace, such as we see in that of sixtus v., placed in the galli palace at osimo, or in that wonderful one of cardinal spada, in possession of some of his descendants at rome. there is no one action, position, or expression at all injurious to his figures; the passions of grief, terror, sorrow, are all combined with the expression of beauty; he turns them every way as he lists, he changes them into every attitude, always equally pleasing, and every one equally entitled to the eulogy of displaying in every action, and in every step, the beauty which secretly animates and accompanies it.[ ] footnote : illam quidquid agat, quoquo vestigia vertat, componit furtim, subsequiturque decor.--tibul. what most surprises us is the variety which he infuses into this beauty, resulting no less from his richness of imagination than from his studies. still continuing to design in the academy up to the close of his career, he practised his invention how best to vary his idea of the beautiful, so as to free it from all monotony and satiety. he was fond of depicting his countenances with upraised looks, and used to say that he had a hundred different modes of thus representing them. he displayed equal variety in his draperies, though invariably preferring to draw the folds ample, easy, natural, and with clear meaning, as to their origin, progress, and disposition. nor did he throw less diversity into the ornaments of his youthful heads, disposing the tresses, whether loose, bound, or left in artful confusion, always different, and sometimes casting over them a veil, fillet, or turban, so as to produce some fresh display of grace. nor were his heads of old men inferior in this respect, displaying even the inequality of the skin, the flow of the beard, with the hair turned as we see on every side, and animating the features with a few bold, decided touches, and few lights, so as to give great effect at a distance, altogether with a surprising degree of nature; specimens of which are seen at the pitti palace, the barberina and albana galleries; and yet among the least rare of this artist's productions. he bestowed similar attention to varying his fleshes; in delicate subjects he made them of the purest white, adding, moreover, certain livid and azure, mixed among middle tints, open to a charge, at least by some, of mannerism.[ ] footnote : the harmony and union of colour of this artist would seem to excuse some trifling licenses, respecting which see lazzarini upon the paintings of pesaro, p. . the preceding commendations, however, will not extend to the whole of guido's works. his inequality is well known, but not owing to any maxim of his art. it arose from his love of play, a failing which obscured his many moral qualities. his profits were great; but he was kept continually in a state of indigence by his losses, which he endeavoured to repair by the too negligent practice of his art. hence we trace occasional errors in perspective, and deficiency of invention, a defect so much insisted upon by the implacable albani. hence too his incorrectness of design, the disproportion of his figures, and his works put to sale before their completion. yet these are not excluded from royal cabinets, and that of turin possesses one of marsyas, a finely finished figure, before which is seen standing little more than the sketch of an apollo. to form then a fair estimate of guido, we must turn to other efforts which raised him to high reputation. among his most excellent pieces i am of opinion that his crucifixion of st. peter, at rome, is a specimen of his boldest manner; the miracle of the manna at ravenna, the conception at forli, the slaughter of the innocents at bologna; and there too his celebrated picture of saints peter and paul in the casa sampieri. specimens of his more tender manner may be found in the st. michael at rome, the purification at modena, the job at bologna, st. thomas the apostle at pesaro, the assumption at genoa, one of guido's most studied pieces, and placed directly opposite the st. ignatius of rubens. guido taught at rome, and gave his pupils, as we have stated, to that city. he educated still more for his native place, where he opened a school, frequented by more than two hundred pupils, as we are informed by crespi. nor are we by this number to measure the dignity of his character as a master. he was an accomplished head of his school, who, in every place, introduced into the art a more sweet and engaging manner, entitled in the times of malvasia the modern manner. even his rivals took advantage of it, the fact being indisputable that domenichino, albano, and lanfranco, along with their best disciples, derived that degree of delicacy, in which they sometimes surpass the caracci, from none but guido. he would not permit the scholars in his studio to copy in the first instance from his own works, but exercised them in those of lodovico, and the most eminent deceased masters. it is conjectured also by crespi, that he grounded his scholars in the principles of the art of imitation, and all the first requisites, without reference to the minutiæ, which are easily acquired in the course of practice. guido particularly prided himself on giacomo semenza, and francesco gessi, whom he thought equal to any masters at that time in bologna. he employed them in that chapel of the cathedral at ravenna, a perfect miracle of beauty, and gave them commissions from the court of mantua and savoy, assisting them also, both at rome and his native place; in return for all which he was repaid by semenza with gratitude, but by gessi with bitter persecutions. he was followed by both in point of style, and specimens are to be seen in some choice collections. semenza emulated guido in both his manners, and displayed more correctness, erudition, and strength. his pictures at araceli and other places sufficiently distinguish him from the immense crowd of fresco-painters at rome. there too are many of his altar-pieces, none more beautiful, perhaps, than the s. sebastian, at s. michele in bologna. gessi surpassed him in spirit, invention, and rapidity, for which last quality even guido envied him. this enabled him too, from the first, to vary his works in point of manner until he hit upon the right one, as in his very beautiful st. francis at the nunziata, little inferior to guido, as well as in several others conducted in his earlier and best days. to these he was indebted for his name of a second guido; but subsequently he abused his talents, as is the case with those who are held in slight esteem for performing much and rapidly. thus bologna abounds with his pictures, in which, with the exception of their fine character and much delicacy, there is nothing to commend; his pictures are cold, his colouring is slight; the shape and features are often too large, and not seldom incorrect. he is known to have invariably affected the second manner of guido, and hence he is always more feeble, dry, and less harmonious than his master. by these distinctions are the differences between salesmen and purchasers usually decided, as to whether such a piece be a poor guido or a gessi. yet gessi had a numerous school at bologna, on guido's retiring, and formed scholars of some reputation, such as giacomo castellini, francesco coreggio, and giulio trogli, who, devoting himself to perspective, under mitelli, and publishing a work entitled paradossi della prospettiva, went ever afterwards by the name of the _paradox_. ercole ruggieri was a faithful follower of gessi's style, insomuch as at first sight to be mistaken for his master. he was called ercolino del gessi, and his brother batistino del gessi, an artist of rare talent, commended by baglione, and much esteemed by cortona, in whose arms he breathed his last. batistino was first a pupil of domenichino, as before mentioned; and might more properly be named dello zampieri than del gessi, from his education and his style. he accompanied gessi to naples, and subsequently became his rival, and surpassed him at s. barbaziano in bologna. finally he fixed his residence at rome, where remain some of his paintings in fresco, in the cloister of the minerva, in the cenci palace, and elsewhere, which shew in him the promise of a very distinguished artist; but he did not survive his thirty-second year. to guido reni belongs ercole de maria, or da s. giovanni, called ercolino di guido. so pliant was his genius to that of his master, that when the latter had half completed a picture, his pupil made a copy and substituted it for the original, and guido continued the work, unsuspicious of the cheat, as if it had been his own. he willingly employed him, therefore, in multiplying his own designs, two of which copies are yet seen in public, extremely beautiful, though not displaying the same freedom as others which he conducted on private commission, at a more advanced age. in these there appears a decision and flow of pencil which imposed upon the best judges, a talent that procured him admiration at rome, with an honour received by no other copyist, being created a cavalier by urban viii.; but this artist also died in the flower of his age. another good copyist and master of guido's style appeared in gio. andrea sirani. on his master's death he completed the great picture of st. bruno, left unfinished at the certosini, with others throughout the city in the same state. whether owing to guido's retouches, or want of freedom, sirani's earliest works bear much resemblance to that master's second manner, more particularly his crucifixion in the church of s. marino, which seems like a repetition of the s. lorenzo in lucina, or that in the modenese gallery, in whose features death itself appears beautiful. in progress of time sirani is supposed to have aimed at the stronger style of guido in his early career, and conducted in such taste are his pictures of the supper of the pharisee, at the certosa, the nuptials of the virgin, at st. giorgio, in bologna, and the twelve crucifixions, in the cathedral of piacenza, an extremely beautiful painting, ascribed by some to elisabetta sirani, a daughter and pupil of gio. andrea. this lady adhered faithfully to guido's second manner, to which she added powerful relief and effect. she is nearly the sole individual of the family, whose name occurs in collections out of bologna. anna and barbara, her two sisters, also artists, as well as their father himself, yield precedence to her single name. how surprising that a young woman, who survived not her twenty-sixth year, should have produced the number of paintings enumerated by malvasia, still more that she should execute them with so much care and elegance; but most of all, that she could conduct them on a grand scale and in histories, with none of that timidity so apparent in fontana, and in other artists of her sex. such is her picture of christ at the river jordan, painted for the certosa; her st. antony, at s. leonardo, and many other altar-pieces in different cities. in the subjects which she most frequently painted by commission, she still improved on herself, as we perceive in her magdalens and figures of the virgin and infant christ, of which some of the most finished specimens are in the zampieri, zambeccari, and caprara palaces, as well as in the corsini and bolognetti collections at rome. there are also some small paintings of histories on copper, extremely valuable, from her hand, as that of lot, in possession of count malvezzi, or the st. bastian, attended by s. irene, in the altieri palace; the former at bologna, the latter at rome. i have also discovered some portraits, no unfrequent commissions which she received from a number of sovereigns and innumerable distinguished personages throughout europe. of this class i saw a singularly beautiful specimen at milan, being her own likeness crowned by a young cherub. it is in the possession of counsellor pagave. elisabetta died by poison, administered by one of her own maids, and was bewailed in her native place with marks of public sorrow. she was interred in the same vault which contained the ashes of guido reni. besides her two sisters, who imitated her in the art, were many other ladies; veronica franchi, vincenzia fabri, lucrezia scarfaglia, ginevra cantofoli; of which last, as well as of barbara sirani, there remain some fine pictures, even in some churches of bologna.[ ] footnote : see crespi, p. . among the bolognese pupils of guido, domenico maria canuti obtained great celebrity. he was employed by the padri olivetani, (an order the most distinguished for its patronage of first rate artists,) in several monasteries, more particularly at rome, padua, and bologna, whose library and church he decorated with numerous paintings. one of these, the taking down from the cross by torch-light, is greatly admired, several copies of which are met with, in general called the night of canuti; also a st. michael, painted in part within the arch, and in part on the exterior, is considered a rare triumph of the power of perspective. his entire work in that library was afterwards described and printed by the manolessi. he left immense works also in two halls of the pepoli palace, in the colonna gallery at rome, in the ducal palace at mantua, and elsewhere, being esteemed one of the best fresco painters of his time. his fertility and vivacity please more than his colouring, while his individual figures are, perhaps, more attractive than the general effect of the picture. he was excellent too in oil, and succeeded admirably in copying guido, whose magdalen of the barberini was taken so exactly, that it appears the best among all the copies seen at s. michele in bosco. canuti opened school at bologna; but his pupils, during his tour to rome, attached themselves chiefly to pasinelli, in whose school, or in that of cignani, they will be found included during the last epoch. other of guido's scholars are indicated by malvasia, among whom he highly extols michele sobleo, or desubleo, from flanders, though resident at bologna. but he left little in public there, and that is a mixture of guercino and of guido. several churches at venice were decorated by his hand, and the altar-piece at the carmelite friars, representing also various saints of that order, is among his most celebrated works. from the same country was enrico fiammingo, whom we must not confound with arrigo fiammingo, an artist made known to us by baglione. both fixed their abode in italy, and the follower of guido, formerly pupil to ribera, painted some pictures at s. barbaziano in bologna, that may compete with those of gessi, were it not for the fleshes being of a darker tinge. a few pictures by another foreigner are preserved at the capuccini and elsewhere; his name, pietro lauri, or rather de laurier, a frenchman, whose crayons were frequently retouched by guido, and whose oil pictures also shew traces of the same hand. respecting another, whose name only remains, it will be sufficient to mention an altar-piece of the magdalen, placed in the oratory of s. carlo, at volterra, relating to which is a letter of guido to the cav. francesco incontri, stating that he had retouched it, particularly in the head; but that, with the aid of guido's design, it was painted by the signor camillo. he is said to have been a member of that noble family, of whom memorials have been preserved by his house. returning to the bolognese artists, gio. maria tamburini will be found to hold a high rank, the author of many fresco histories in the portico of the conventuals, and of the nunziata at the vita, a very graceful painting drawn from his master's sketch. yet he was surpassed by gio. batista bolognini, by whose hand there is a s. ubaldo at s. gio. in monte, altogether in the style of guido. this artist had a nephew and pupil in giacomo bolognini, who painted large pictures and capricci, and is mentioned by zanotti and crespi. bartolommeo marescotti is hardly deserving notice; at s. martino he appears only as a hasty imitator, or rather a corrupter of the guido manner. mentioned, too, by various writers, is a sebastiano brunetti, a giuliano dinarelli, a lorenzo loli, and in particular a pietro gallinari, on whom his master's predilection conferred also the name of pietro del sig. guido. his earliest pieces, retouched by reni, are held in high esteem, and others which he produced for the court, and in various churches at guastalla, are valuable. he was an artist of the noblest promise, but cut off prematurely, not without suspicion of poison. many foreigners who acquired the art from guido, particularly at bologna, were dispersed throughout various schools, according to the places where they resided; such were boulanger, cervi, danedi, ferrari, ricchi, and several more. two artists who chiefly dwelt in bologna and romagna in high esteem, i have reserved for this place, named cagnacci and cantarini. guido cagnacci, referred by orlandi to castel durante, though the arcangelesi more properly claim him for their fellow-citizen, was a rare exception to italian artists, in having sought his fortunes in germany, where he was highly deserving of the success he met with at the court of leopold i. what he has left in italy, such as his st. matthew and st. teresa, in two churches of rimini, or the beheading of st. john, in the ercolani palace at bologna, shew him to have been a diligent and correct, as well as a refined artist, in his master's latest style. malvasia was of opinion that he carried the colour of his fleshes, now rather faded, somewhat too high; to others it appeared that he drew the extremities too small in proportion to his figures; while some have remarked a capricious degree of freedom, shewn in sometimes representing his angels at a more advanced age than was customary. all, however, must acknowledge guidesque beauties apparent in every picture, added to a certain original air of nobility in his heads, and fine effect of his chiaroscuro. his pictures for the most part were painted for the ornament of cabinets, such as are seen in the ducal gallery at modena, and in private houses. there is his lucretia in the casa isolani, and his magnificent david, which is esteemed one of the noblest pieces, in possession of the princes colonna; two pictures abundantly repeated both in the bolognese and roman schools, and of which, indeed, i have seen more copies than even of the celebrated david by guido reni. simone cantarini da pesaro became an exact designer under pandolfi, greatly improved in the school of claudio ridolfi, and by incessant study of the caracci engravings. for colouring he studied the most eminent venetian artists, and, more than all, the works of barocci. in one of his holy families he shews great resemblance to this last artist, a picture preserved in casa olivieri, along with several others, and some portraits, of different taste, but by the same hand. this was caused by the arrival of the grand pictures by guido, of st. thomas at pesaro, and the nunziata, and the st. peter, in the adjacent city of fano, after which he so wholly devoted himself to the new style, as to induce him to emulate, and, if possible, to attempt to surpass that artist. in the same chapel where guido placed his picture of st. peter receiving the keys, simone displayed his miracle of the saint at the porta speciosa, where he so nearly resembled, as to appear guido himself; and even in malvasia's time, foreigners were unable to detect any difference of hand. it is certain he possessed much of that artist's more powerful manner, which is shewn in his principal picture; the heads very beautiful and varied, the composition natural; fine play of light and shade, except that the chief figure of his history is too much involved in the latter. the better to approach his prototype, simone proceeded to bologna, and became guido's disciple, affecting at first much humility and deference, while he artfully concealed the extent of his own skill. then gradually developing it, he soon rose in high esteem, no less with his master than the whole city, aided as he was by his singular talent for engraving. shortly he grew so vain of his own ability, as to presume to censure not only artists of mediocrity, but domenichino, albano, and even guido. to the copies made by the pupils from their master's pieces, he gave bold retouches, and occasionally corrected some inaccuracy in their model, until at length he began to criticise guido openly, and to provoke his resentment. owing to such arrogance, and to negligence in executing his commissions, he fell in public esteem, left bologna for some time, and remained like a refugee at rome. here he studied from raffaello, and from the antique, then returned and taught at bologna, whence he passed into the duke of mantua's service. still to whatever country he transferred his talents, he was accompanied by the same malignant disposition; a great boaster, and a despiser of all other artists, not even sparing giulio and raffaello, insomuch that the works could not be so greatly esteemed as the man was detested. incurring also the duke's displeasure, and not succeeding in his portrait, his pride was so far mortified as to throw him ill, and passing to verona, he there died, aged , in , not without suspicion of having been poisoned, no very rare occurrence with defamers like him. baldinucci, supported by most of the dilettanti, extols him as another guido; and assuredly he approaches nearer to him than to any other, and with a decision which belonged to few imitators. his ideas are not so noble, but in the opinion of many they were even more graceful. he is less learned, but more accurate; and may be pronounced the only artist who in the hands and feet very assiduously studied the manner of lodovico. he was extremely diligent in modelling for his own use, and one of his heads in particular is commended, from which he drew those of his old men, which are extremely beautiful. from the models, too, he derived his folds, though he never attained to the same majestic and broad sweep as guido and tiarini, a truth which he as candidly admitted. in point of colouring he is varied and natural. his greatest study was bestowed upon his fleshes, in which, though friendly to the use of white lead, he was content with moderate white, avoiding what he called the cosmetics of domenichino and the shades of the caracci. in his outlines and shadows, dismissing the use of the lacca and terra d'ombra,[ ] he introduced ultramarine and terra verde, so much commended by guido. he animated his fleshes with certain lights from place to place, never contrasting them with vivid colours, except in as far as he frequently studied to give them from depth of shadow, that relief which serves to redouble their beauty. if there was nothing decidedly bold in his painting, yet he covered the whole with an ashy tone, such as guido applied in his st. thomas, and which became so perfectly familiar to cantarini as to acquire for him from albani the surname of _pittor cenerino_. spite of this opinion, however, he is considered by malvasia as _the most graceful colourist_, and he adds, the _most correct designer_ of his age. his most beautiful pictures that i have seen, in which his heads of saints are always conspicuous for beauty and expression, are the st. antony, at the franciscans di cagli; the st. james, in the church of that name in rimini; the magdalen, at the filippini of pesaro; and, in the same city, his st. dominick, at the predicatori; in whose convent are also two evangelists, half-size figures, animated to the life. there is also a s. romualdo, in possession of the noble paolucci, a figure that seems to start from the canvass, and at the casa mosca, besides various other works, is a portrait of a young nun that rivets every beholder. many of his holy families also are to be seen in bologna, in pesaro, and at rome; nor are his heads of st. john very rare, any more than his half-figures, or heads of apostles, a specimen of which is to be seen in the pitti palace. footnote : lacca, a dark red; terra d'ombra, umber. simon cantarini educated a few of his fellow-citizens to the art. one of these was gio. maria luffoli, many of whose paintings, which display the school, are to be met with in his native place, particularly at s. giuseppe and at s. antonio abate. gio. venanzi (or francesco) had been already instructed by guido, when he entered the school of cantarini, though he resembles neither of these masters so nearly as he does the gennari. when we inspect the two beautiful histories of st. antony, in the church of that name, we might pronounce him their disciple. an ancient ms. of pesaro, edited along with the pictures of the city,[ ] places him at the court of parma, most probably for the purpose of decorating the palace, there being nothing from his hand in the churches. in the same ms. mention is made of domenico peruzzini, as born at pesaro, and the pupil of pandolfi. in orlando's lexicon and other books there is frequent mention made of one cav. giovanni, and he is given out as belonging to ancona, and a disciple of simone. the pesarese guide, in which the very diligent can. lazzarini indisputably took part, informs us that these artists were brothers, both born at pesaro, and that they transferred their services to ancona, their adopted country, (p. ). from the dilettanti of ancona i could gather tidings of only one peruzzini; and i doubt whether his being named domenico by the author of the ms. may not have arisen from mistake, as he proceeds to relate matters chiefly appertaining to giovanni. however this be, there is a picture of s. teresa by peruzzini at the carmelite friars in ancona, bearing some traces of baroccio's manner. that of the beheading of st. john, at the hospital, is extremely beautiful; and here he appears rather a disciple of the bolognese. he seems to have displayed a similar character elsewhere; it being known that this artist, after forming a style participating of those of the caracci, of guido, and of pesarese, took to a wandering life, and painted in various theatres and churches, if not with much study, with tolerable correctness, a knowledge of perspective, in which he was excellent, and with a certain facility, grace, and spirit, which delight the eye. his paintings are dispersed through various places in the picenum, even as far as ascoli on the confines, where are a number of works by his hand. there are some at rome and at bologna, where he painted in the cloister of the servi a lunette,[ ] very fairly executed within twenty-four hours; at turin, where he was made a cavalier; and in milan, where he died. at rome are some specimens too from the hand of his son and pupil, paolo, entitled in the aforesaid ms. a good and decided painter. footnote : see p. . this ms. is said to have been drawn up previous to . i believe it must be somewhere about , venanzi being therein described as still young. notices of the artists of pesaro and urbino, collected by giuseppe montani, a good landscape-painter, who flourished some time at venice, are now lost. (of him, see malvasia, vol. ii. p. .) i have recently read a letter from sig. annibale olivieri to the prince ercolani, in which, computing the age of venanzi, he is unable to make him out a pupil of cantarini; from which it would appear that he was ignorant of the date of venanzi's birth, which was about . i admit that he could not have been long instructed by him, nor by guido, and am more than ever confirmed in my conjecture that he was pupil to gennari. footnote : lunetta, an architectural term; meaning that semicircular space, or any other portion of a circle, placed in the walls between the different supports of ceilings. an undoubted scholar of simone was flamminio torre, called _dagli ancinelli_, who came from the studio of cavedone and guido. his chief talent consisted in an easy perfect imitation of every style, which brought him as high a price for his copies as was given for the originals of eminent artists, sometimes even more. though not learned in the theory of the art, by his practical ability he acquired the manner of cantarini, dismissing, however, his ashy colour, and often turning to the imitation of guido. he was court-painter at modena; and at bologna in particular are preserved both scriptural and profane histories, displaying very pleasing figures as large as poussin, or on the same scale. some i saw in possession of monsig. bonfigliuoli, others in the collection of the librarian magnani; and some still more firm, and in the best style of colouring, in the ratta palace. yet we rarely meet with them uninjured by the use of rock oil, which he carried to excess; and his church paintings, such as a depositing from the cross at s. giorgio, as they have been least attended to, have suffered the most. on the death of simone, as his first pupil, he succeeded to his magisterial office, and promoted the progress of the scholars whom he left. girolamo rossi succeeded better in engraving than in painting. lorenzo pasinelli became an excellent master, but of a different style, as we shall see in another epoch. the most eminent among torre's disciples was giulio cesare milani, rather admired in the churches of bologna, and extolled in many adjacent states. but it is now time to turn our attention from guido and his disciples to guercino, which will afford the same pleasure, i trust, to my readers, as the dilettanti enjoy, in beholding two styles, so strikingly opposed, immediately contrasted. in a similar manner, to adduce an instance taken from the spada gallery, it yields delight to turn our eye from guido's rape of helen to the funeral pyre of dido, painted by guercino, and placed directly opposite. gio. francesco barbieri, surnamed guercino da cento, would, to speak with precision, be better ranked among the artists of ferrara, to which city cento is subject; but we must observe the almost universal custom of including him among the caracci's disciples. this has arisen either from a tradition that his genius at an early age received some bias towards design from the caracci, which but ill accords with the epoch of his age, or from the circumstance of his having taken one of lodovico's pictures for a model, which is slight ground enough for attaching him to the school. moreover, he never frequented the caracci's academy; but, after staying a short time with cremonini, his fellow-countryman, at bologna, he returned to cento, and there resided with benedetto gennari the elder, first as his pupil, next his colleague, and lastly his kinsman. some too would contend that one among the masters of gio. francesco was gio. batista gennari, who in painted for s. biagio, in bologna, a madonna among various saints, in a style resembling procaccini. and indeed the paradise, at s. spirito in cento, and an altar-piece at the capuccini, with other early works by guercino, partake of the old style. subsequently he studied, along with benedetto, to find by experiment what constituted grand effect in the art, in which taste i cannot distinguish, with the generality of dilettanti and writers, two manners only; he having openly professed three, as we learn from sig. righetti, in his description of the paintings of cento. of these the first is the least known, consisting of abundance of strong shades, with sufficiently animated lights, less studied in the features and in the extremities, with fleshes inclining to the yellow; in the rest less attractive in point of colouring; a manner distantly resembling that of caravaggio, in which kind are to be found several specimens both at cento and in s. guglielmo a' ministri degl'infermi at bologna. from this he passed to his second manner, which is by far the most pleasing and valuable. he continued to improve it during several years, with the aid of other schools; in this interval often visiting bologna, residing for some time at venice, and remaining many years at rome along with the most eminent followers of caracci, and entering into terms of friendship with caravaggio. his taste is mainly founded on the style of this last master; displaying strong contrast of light and shadow; both exceedingly bold, yet mingled with much sweetness and harmony, and with powerful art of relief, a branch so greatly admired by professors.[ ] hence some foreigners have bestowed on him the title of the magician of italian painting; for in him were renewed those celebrated illusions of antiquity, such as that of the boy who stretched forth his hand to snatch the painted fruit. from caravaggio too he borrowed the custom of obscuring his outlines, and availed himself of it for despatch. he also imitated his half-sized figures upon one ground, and for the most part composed his historical pictures in this method. yet he studied to become more correct in point of design, and more select than caravaggio; not that he ever attained peculiar elegance or peculiar dignity of features, though most frequently he drew his heads, like a sound observer of nature, with graceful turns, easy natural attitudes, and a colouring, which if not the most delicate, is at least the most sound and most juicy. often in comparing the figures of guido with guercino's, one would say that the former had been fed with roses, as observed by one of the ancients, and the latter with flesh. how far he excelled as a colourist in his draperies, formed in the taste of the best venetians, in his landscape, and in his accessories, will sufficiently appear on beholding his s. petronilla in the quirinal, or his picture of christ risen from the dead, at cento,[ ] or his st. helen, at the mendicants in venice; excellent specimens of his second manner. to the same belong in general all that he left at rome, even his greater works, such as the s. gio. grisogono in the soffitto of that church, or the aurora, adorning the villa lodovisi. yet he surpassed even these, to the surprise of all, in the cupola of the piacenza cathedral; and in the same city he appears to have competed with pordenone, and in point of vigour of style to have gone beyond him. footnote : "to me it seems that painting ought to be considered excellent, the more it inclines towards relief." bonarruoti, letter to varchi, inserted among the lettere pittoriche, vol. i. p. . footnote : there is a description of this painting contained in a letter of algarotti, addressed to the learned zanotti, dated sept. , in which, though in other works he observes guercino to have excelled more in colouring than in design, yet respecting this specimen he declares, "that pesarese himself would here have detected little or nothing to which to object. the folds, especially those of a cloth wrapped round the body of christ, are admirable. the force and sweetness of his tints are equal to the bold relief of the picture, and the passion with which it is conducted.... i never beheld two figures better set off in one picture, nor did ever guercino's close light and shade so well unite perhaps in effect as here; whilst the figures are pourtrayed within an apartment, in which that kind of light which affords such strong relief to objects, is represented with an admirable degree of truth." some years having elapsed, after his return from rome to cento, he began to emulate guido, perceiving that his sweetness of manner obtained such distinguished applause. by degrees he softened down that power of hand just noticed, and painted more open and vividly. he added somewhat more attraction and variety to his heads, and a certain study of expression, almost indescribable, which is surprising in some of his pictures of this period. some have assigned such a change of manner to the time of guido's decease, when guercino, perceiving that he could take the lead at bologna, left cento, in order to fix his residence in that great city. but several pictures which he had conducted in his third manner, previous to reni's death, fully confute such an opinion. on the contrary, it was rumoured that guido remarked this change, which he construed into commendation of himself, declaring that he had avoided guercino's style as much as possible, whilst the latter approached as nearly as he could to guido's. in this taste, though partaking of the preceding, is the circumcision of jesus, placed in the church of gesù e maria, in which the study of architecture and drapery vies with that of the figures; and it is difficult to decide whether these most please by their form, or by their expression. we might add the nuptials of the virgin, at s. paterniano in fano, the s. palazia in ancona, the nunziata at forli, the prodigal son in the royal palace at turin, a history piece of entire figures, which is met with in half figures in many galleries. however attractive this last manner may be found, skilled judges would have wished guercino not to have swerved from the vigour of the second, to which his genius was moulded, and in which he shone unrivalled and unique. the frequency of his commissions contributed, perhaps, to put him upon a more easy method, no less than his own incredible genius for execution and despatch. he produced a hundred and six altar-pieces, and a hundred and forty-four large pictures for princes and other persons of distinction, without including numbers of others painted for private persons, madonnas, portraits, half-length figures, and landscapes, in which the rapidity of execution is highly original. hence he is by no means rare in collections. the noble zolli family at rimino possesses about twenty of his pieces, count lecchi at brescia also a great number; all perfect and polished according to his manner. among these is a portrait of a friar of the osservanti, his father confessor, quite a miracle of art. guercino's school greatly flourished at cento, in bologna not so much, owing to his own choice of having his two nephews the gennari, and a few other intimate friends with him, which led him to exclude strangers in some degree from his studio. few bolognese artists, therefore, belong to this master; such as giulio coralli, whom orlandi, a contemporary writer, gives as pupil to guercino at bologna, and of cairo at milan, and who, crespi adds, was much employed at parma, at piacenza, and at mantua. he was a better portrait-painter, if i mistake not, than a composer. fulgenzio mondini was an artist of more merit; he painted two fresco histories in the church of s. petronio at bologna, relating to the paduan saint. he died young at florence, where, after having painted some time for the court, he was employed by the marchesi capponi to decorate their villa of colonnata, and his memory has been honoured with a long eulogy by malvasia. the latter declares that he knew none gifted with qualities that promised so much in that age, and conjectures that had he survived he would have become the first fresco painter of his age. the two young gennari were sons of gio. francesco's sister, and of ercole, son of benedetto gennari. respecting ercole, it is stated that no more exact copyist of the works of guercino was to be met with. his sons, benedetto and cesare, likewise distinguished themselves in copying the original compositions of their uncle, and the numerous repetitions of guercino's sibyls, of his pictures of st. john, of his herodiads, and similar pieces, are ascribed more particularly to them. they may all be recognized, however, by a more feeble tone in their tints; and i once saw in the ercolani palace a bathsheba of guercino, along with a copy by one of the gennari. the former appeared as if newly painted at the time, the latter as if many years previously, such was its inferiority in strength of hand. the two brothers were employed in cento, in bologna, and in other cities of italy; while benedetto, the ablest of them, was engaged also in england, as court-painter under two reigns. both would seem to have inherited the style along with the fortune of gio. francesco, and, i may also add, his studies; because in the manner of sectaries, they made repeated copies of the heads of his old men, women, and boys, which he himself was in the habit of repeating on his canvass too frequently. there is a s. leopardo by benedetto in the cathedral at osimo, and a s. zaccaria at the filippini in forli, which might have been mistaken for the uncle's, had the nephew displayed somewhat more strength and power of relief. in the same way cesare, in a mary magdalen of the pazzi, at s. martino in bologna, and in other pieces, has succeeded in giving the features better than the spirit of barbieri. it ought to be observed that cesare preserved his first manner to the close of his life, and that he was assiduous in teaching at bologna, where his school was frequented also by foreigners, among whom simon gionima distinguished himself as a follower of guercino, and was well received at vienna. benedetto subsequently formed for himself a style in england, both more polished and careful, and exemplified it more particularly in his portraits, which he conducted there for charles ii. and the royal family. on the expulsion of that family he returned to italy, almost transformed into a dutch or flemish painter, such was the truth with which he imitated velvets, lawns, lace, gems, and other ornaments in gold, indeed all that can enrich a portrait, besides drawing it extremely like, and artfully freed from any blemishes in the original. by means of this taste, new in italy, benedetto obtained much applause and much employment in portrait, both from princes and individuals. we may here add a bartolommeo gennari, brother to ercole, who resembles guercino less than any of the three preceding, though extremely natural and spirited. he has a picture of st. thomas at the rosario di cento, in the act of putting his hand to our saviour's side, and the admiration both of him and the other apostles is very finely expressed. the pupil, and probably the relation of guercino, was one lorenzo gennari di rimini, at which place is one of his pictures at the capuccini, very fairly executed. francesco nagli, surnamed, from his country, centino, was much employed at the angeli and in other churches at rimini. he was an excellent imitator of barbieri, in point of colouring and chiaroscuro; in the rest somewhat dry in design, cold in his attitudes, and no way novel in his ideas. to the same district belonged stefano ficatelli, a painter of good invention, who decorated several churches of ferrara; but more especially an excellent copyist of guercino, not inferior in this respect to francesco bassi, of bologna, so highly commended by crespi. among guercino's copyists, gio. francesco mutii, or mucci, of cento, son of a sister of guercino, distinguished also as an engraver, held a high rank. stefano provenzali, likewise from cento, and a pupil of barbieri, applied his talents to battle-pieces, much extolled by crespi, from whose mss. i have borrowed several of my notices of the centese artists. two of these, followers of guercino, are mentioned by malvasia. they are cristoforo serra, a faithful and excellent imitator of gio. francesco, and preceptor of cristoforo savolini, who has a fine picture of the saint at s. colomba in rimini; and cesare pronti, an augustine, born at rimini, if we give credit to the author of its city guide, and called _da ravenna_, on account of his long residence at that place. both the above cities exhibit his altar-pieces, much extolled, and some chiaroscuri happily enough disposed; in particular those histories of st. jerome painted in the confraternity of his name at rimini, with abundant grace and spirit. in pesaro, also, he exhibited in the church of his order a st. thomas da villanova, with beautiful specimens of architecture, and in a more original taste than the two gennari. the life of this able ecclesiastic has been written by pascoli, who knew him, insomuch that we may give him credit when he declares that he was born at the cattolica, of the family of the baciocchi, afterwards assuming the name of pronti, the maiden name of his mother. he gives other anecdotes of him; and what is more interesting is the account of his first passion for the art, on contemplating, when a boy, a collection of fine pictures in a shop at the fair of sinigaglia. he gazed upon them during several hours, unmindful of his meals, and of his parents, who were in search of him through the city, and who on finding him could with difficulty tear him from the spot. they were unable, however, to destroy the fixed determination of his soul to become a painter; the impression was indelible, and he set out for bologna. there he first entered the school of barbieri; and afterwards, as we have already remarked, the cloister. respecting different scholars of guercino, such as were preti, ghezzi, and triva, it is unnecessary here to repeat what has already been stated in several other schools. gio. lanfranco, one of those distinguished disciples of the caracci who followed annibal to rome, was born at parma. he was early employed by the conti scotti in piacenza, where, for mere pastime, drawing some figures in charcoal upon a wall, his rare genius shone forth, and was assigned to the cultivation of agostino caracci. frequent mention of him is made in the course of this work. at parma the reader finds him a pupil to agostino, and on his death under the care of lodovico, after which he pursued his studies under annibal at rome. both there and in naples we have seen him celebrated as a professor and preceptor in both schools. the character of his genius was sought, conceitedly perhaps, but still with truth, by bellori, in his name; and doubtless it would be difficult to find an artist more bold and striking, alike in conception and in execution. he had formed a peculiar manner, which both in design and expression partakes of the caracci's, while the composition is drawn from coreggio. it is a manner at once easy, and elevated by the dignity of the countenances and actions, by the ample and well disposed masses of light and shade, by the nobleness of the drapery and its imposing folds, broad and wholly novel in the art. for this precise reason its grandeur is without that last finish which adds to the worth of other artists, but would in him diminish it. in such a style he was enabled to be less exact without displeasing us, possessing so many admirable qualities, rare conceptions, colours wonderfully harmonized, if not animated; very beautiful foreshortening; contrasts of parts and figures, which have served as models, as is observed by mengs, for the tasteful style of the moderns. he adopted this style in a number of pictures for private ornament, both for the dukes farnesi, in whose palace at rome he first began to paint, and for other noblemen. his polyphemus, conducted for the casa borghese in that city, is highly extolled, as well as his scriptural histories at s. callisto. there are many pictures also from his hand; his st. andrea avellino at rome, enriched with splendid architecture, boasts singular merit; his dead christ at foligno, with the "padre eterno," a figure, which though in human form, nevertheless impresses us with grand ideas of the divine being; the transit of our lady, in macerata; the s. rocco, and the s. corrado, in piacenza; perhaps the most finished among lanfranco's productions, and deservedly the most celebrated. but he exhibited this style still more fully in cupolas and other scenes on a grand scale, according to coreggio's example. when young, he executed a small coloured model of the cupola of the cathedral at parma, emulating his whole style, in particular that grace of motion, of all by far the most difficult. he imitated it too at s. andrea della valle at rome, and in his picture availed himself of the example afforded by michelangiolo in architecture, when unable to execute a more beautiful cupola than brunelleschi's, and desirous of differing from it, he worked from a new design, and succeeded to admiration. this production forms an epoch in the art, inasmuch "as he was the first," says passeri, "to irradiate the opening of a celestial glory with a splendour of light, of which there was formerly seen no example." ... "lanfranco's cupola remains a solitary specimen in the way of glories; because, in respect to its celestial idea, in the opinion of the most dispassionate judges, he has attained the highest degree, as well in the harmony of the whole, its chief object, as in the distribution of the colours, in the parts, and in force of chiaroscuro," &c. nor was this, on which he spent four years, the sole example he left of a fecundity of idea and rare elevation of mind, of which we meet with no account in any other artist, even among the ancient painters. add to this, the cupolas at the gesù, and at the tesoro of s. gennaro at naples, where he succeeded domenichino, with various tribunes and chapels in rome and naples, adorned with equal majesty, and which have given to lower italy the most genuine examples in this kind, of which the art can boast. from him it was that the machinists acquired the power of gratifying the eye at larger distances, painting only in part, and in part leaving the work, as he was accustomed to express it, for the air to paint. in the two schools above-mentioned we have embraced his best disciples: to the bolognese he gave no pupils, as far as i learn, any more than to romagna and its dependencies; if we except gio. francesco mengucci, of pesaro, who assisted him in the cupola of st. andrea; a painter, i believe, for collections, who has been much extolled by malvasia. next to the five heads of schools hitherto recorded, ought to be mentioned sisto badalocchi; and the more as he was annibal's disciple, and long resided with him at rome. he was fellow citizen, and a faithful companion too of lanfranco, whose style he approached very nearly. sisto designed admirably, being preferred by annibal in this branch to any of his fellow pupils, and even, with singular modesty, to himself. ample testimony of his ability is proclaimed in the engravings of raffaello's _loggie_, executed in conjunction with lanfranco, and dedicated to annibal; besides the six prints of coreggio's grand cupola, a work which, to the public regret, was left incomplete. he was also selected by his master to decorate the chapel of s. diego, where he directed him to paint from one of his cartoons a history of that saint. in point of invention he was not equal to the leaders of his school; so that, employed in filling up the secondary parts, he assisted guido and domenichino at s. gregorio; and attended albani at the verospi palace; although his picture of galatea left there is worthy of the hand of a great master. he appears to advantage in competition, and mostly excels, as we may gather from the church of st. sebastian at rome, where he painted along with tacconi; and at reggio, where he rivalled some of the less distinguished artists of bologna. besides his other works, that city has to boast the rich cupola of s. giovanni, on which sisto conducted a small, but very beautiful copy of that in the cathedral at parma. other of his specimens are to be met with in the modenese state, particularly in the ducal palace at gualtieri, where he represented in one chamber the trials of hercules. of his pictures at parma the most celebrated is that of st. francis, at the cappuccini; a painting, both in point of figures and landscape, composed in the best taste of the caracci. for the rest, we may add what has been said of lanfranco, that he most frequently executed much less than he knew. so far we have treated of the followers of the caracci employed at rome; and these in general, judging from their style, shewed more deference to annibal than any other of the family. many others remained at bologna, who either never visited rome, or produced nothing there worthy of consideration. these were chiefly attached to lodovico, in whose studio they had been educated, with the exception of alessandro tiarini, who sprung from another school, though he benefited by his advice and example, as much as if lodovico had really been his master. but he was pupil to fontana, subsequently of cesi, and finally also of passignano at florence. he had fled thither from his native place on account of a quarrel; and after a lapse of seven years, through the intervention of lodovico, he was enabled to return to bologna, leaving at florence and some places in the state a few paintings in his first easy style, resembling passignano's. in such style he conducted his s. barbara, at s. petronio, a work which failed to please the bolognese public. to give it greater attractions, he next proceeded to copy from, and to consult lodovico, not in order to attain his manner, but with the view of improving his own. this task was short to a man of genius, well grounded in the theory of his art, and perhaps more philosophical than any other artist of bologna. he soon became a different painter, and in his novel taste of composing, of distributing his lights and expressing the passions, he shone like a disciple of the caracci. nevertheless he preserved a character distinct from the rest, grounded upon his naturally severe and melancholy disposition. all in him is serious and moderate; the air of his figures, his attitudes, his drapery, varied with few, but noble folds, such as to excite the admiration of guido himself. he avoids, moreover, very gay and animated colours, chiefly contenting himself with light violets or yellows, and tawny colours, tempered with a little red; but so admirably laid on and harmonized, as to produce the finest feeling of repose to enchant the eye. his subjects, too, are well adapted to his taste, as he generally selected, when he could, such as were of a pathetic and sorrowful cast. for this reason his magdalens, his s. peters, and his madonnas in grief--one of which, presented to the duke of mantua, drew tears from his eyes--are held in high esteem. subsequently he became expert in foreshortening, and all the intricacies of the art, more particularly in point of invention. there is scarcely one of his works to be met with, that does not exhibit a certain air of novelty and originality of idea. on occasion of representing the virgin in grief, in the church of s. benedict, he drew her seated together with st. john and the magdalen; the one upright, the other kneeling, in the act of contemplating the redeemer's crown of thorns. other incidents of his passion also are alluded to; all are silent indeed, but every eye and attitude is eloquent in its silence. obtaining a commission for an altar-piece in s. maria maggiore, to represent st. john and st. jerome, he shunned the trite expression of drawing them in a glory; but he feigned an apparition, through which the holy doctor, while intent at his studies, appears to receive from the beatified evangelist lectures in theology. his most distinguished production, however, is at s. domenico, the saint seen raising a man from the dead; a picture abounding with figures varied in point of feature, attitude, and dress; every thing highly select. lodovico expressed his astonishment at it, and declared that he knew of no master then to compare with tiarini. it is true that, in this instance, having to compete with spada, he raised his tone of colouring, and shunned every common form; two precautions which, had he introduced into every work, would have left him perhaps second to none of the bolognese. he survived until his ninetieth year, and during a long period dwelt at reggio, whence he had often occasion to proceed to other cities of lombardy, which preserve many of his altar-pieces, and cabinet pictures. the modenese gallery abounds with them, his st. peter being more particularly extolled, seen struck with remorse as he stands outside the prætorium. the architecture, the depth of night lighted up with torches, christ's judgment beheld in the distance, all conspire to raise the tragic interest of the scene. he was employed also by the duke of parma, for whose garden he painted some incidents from the jerusalem delivered, conducted in fresco; but which, though much extolled, are no longer met with. in short tiarini was one of the most eminent artists next to the caracci, at least in point of composition, expression of features and of the passions, perspective, power and durability of colouring, if not of the most exact elegance. lionello spada was one of the leading geniuses of the school. sprung from the lowest origin, and employed by the caracci as a grinder of colours, by dint of hearing their conferences, and observing the process of their labours, he began to design; first under them, and next with baglione, he acquired a knowledge of the art; during several years studying no other models besides the caracci. he lived on familiar terms with dentone, and thus became skilful in the use of perspective. incensed by a jest of guido's, he determined to seek revenge by opposing his delicacy of manner with another more full and strong; for which purpose going to rome, he studied both there and in malta under caravaggio, and returned home master of a new style. it does not indeed lower itself to every form, like his, but still is not so elevated as that of the caracci: it is studied in the naked parts, but not select; natural in point of colouring, with good relief in the chiaroscuro, but too frequently displaying a ruddy tone in the shadows, giving an expression of mannerism. one of lionello's most characteristic marks is a novelty and audacity, the result of his natural disposition, which was equally agreeable for its pleasantry, and hateful for its insolence. he often competed with tiarini, always superior in point of spirit and force of colouring; but inferior in all the rest. thus at s. domenico, where he represented the saint in the act of burning proscribed books; and this is the best picture on canvass which he exhibited at bologna. at s. michele in bosco also is seen his miracle of st. benedict, which the young artists call the scarpellino of lionello; a picture so wholly novel as to induce andrea sacchi, who was greatly struck with it, to copy the design. in a similar way at the madonna di reggio, where both artists painted as usual in competition, as well in oils as in fresco, they appeared, as it were, to go beyond themselves. we often meet with specimens of spada in private galleries; holy families and scripture histories in half-length figures, like those of caravaggio and guercino; his heads full of expression, but not very select. he seems most frequently to have repeated the decollation of st. john the baptist, often met with in the bolognese galleries, and the best perhaps is in that of the malvezzi. he became painter to duke ranuccio at parma, where he decorated that admirable theatre, which then stood unrivalled. in that city, and at modena, as well as other places, i have seen some of his pictures in a taste wholly opposed to those of bologna, displaying a mixture of the caracci and of parmigianino. his histories in the ducal gallery at modena are highly beautiful; such as the susanna and the elders, and the prodigal son. one of his most remarkable is the martyrdom of a saint, at s. sepolcro in parma, and the st. jerome, in the carmelitani, in the same city. specimens such as these must have been among his last, at a period when he was residing in affluence at court, and enabled to conduct his works at leisure. his good fortune terminated with the life of ranuccio; for with the loss of such a patron his talent, too, seemed to have deserted him, and he shortly followed to the tomb. the names of some of his scholars occur in the schools of lombardy. here too we ought to add that of pietro desani of bologna, who following him into reggio, there established himself; a young artist of rapid hand and quick genius, whose works are to be met with very frequently in reggio and its vicinity. lorenzo garbieri was an artist of more learning and caution than lionello, though resembling him in point of style. his austere, and almost fiery disposition, with an imagination abounding in wild and mournful ideas, impelled him to a style of painting less open than that of the caracci. to this cause must be added his emulation of guido, whom, like lionello, he wished to humble, by adopting a very powerful manner; and, though he did not put himself under caravaggio, he eagerly copied his pictures, including all the best at bologna. garbieri was one of the most successful imitators of lodovico; less select in the heads, but grand in the forms, expressive in the attitudes, and studied in his large compositions; insomuch that his paintings at s. antonio in milan, which are less loaded with shade, were attributed by santagostini in his guide to the caracci. to this style of the caracci he added the daring character of caravaggio, and he was skilful in selecting always funereal subjects most suitable to his genius; so that we meet with little else than scenes of sorrow, slaughter, death, and terror, from his hand. at the barnabiti, in bologna, he painted for the chapel of s. carlo an altar-piece with two lateral pictures; it presents us with the horrors of the milanese plague, amidst which is seen the saint visiting the sick, and conducting a penitential procession. he painted also at the filippini in fano a picture of st. paul, near the st. peter of guido, in the act of raising the young man from the dead; a work of such power of hand and expression as to excite at once terror and pity in the beholders. at s. maurizio, in mantua, he exhibited in a chapel the martyrdom of s. felicita and her seven children; a piece inferior indeed to the miracle of st. paul in point of vigour, but containing such variety of images, and such deathly terror, as not to be surpassed in tragic interest by any thing from the same school. he had the choice of establishing himself as court-painter at mantua, an office he rejected, preferring to take a wife with a handsome dowry at bologna. this step was a loss, however, to the art, as mentioned by malvasia; since from that period finding himself rich, and occupied with family cares, he painted little, and with as little study, leaving his final labours by no means equal to the preceding. his son carlo applied still less than his father to the profession, though he gave proofs in several works exhibited in public, that in time he would have equalled his father. lorenzo educated few other pupils, but he was highly esteemed for his profound knowledge, and for his method of communicating it, at once easy and precise, resting upon few but comprehensive maxims. giacomo cavedone was from sassuolo, and hence included among the artists of the modenese state by tiraboschi, in whose work we may read the origin of his career. his genius was more limited, his spirit less animated, than those of the preceding; but being assisted by the caracci in the right path, he attained to equal, and even greater celebrity. leaving the intricacies of the art to the more enterprising, he fixed upon attitudes comparatively easy and devoid of foreshortening, gentle expressions distinct from the stronger passions, correct design in his figures, and more particularly in the hands and feet. nature had endued him with promptness and facility; so that on occasion of designing models, or copying pictures, he with rare exactness took the substance of the subject, and afterwards reduced the whole by a more easy method in his own peculiarly resolute and graceful touch, in which he has always remained original. he was equally novel in his frescos; employing few tints, but so attractive, that guido was induced to make him his pupil, and retained him at rome as his assistant. another striking characteristic was his strength of colouring, which he acquired from those venetians themselves, who shone the masters of his masters. here he attained to such excellence, that albani, when asked whether there were any pictures of titian's at bologna, replied, there were not; but we may substitute the two at s. paolo by cavedone (a nativity and an epiphany) which look like titian's, and are executed with a bolder hand. one of his most distinguished productions at bologna is the s. alò at the mendicanti, in which girupeno discovers, besides its fine design, a titianesque taste that excites astonishment; and a french tourist entitles it a most admirable work, such as might be fairly attributed to the caracci. the mistake indeed has occurred to persons of first rate tact, most frequently at imola, on contemplating the beautiful picture of st. stephen at that church; and yet more out of italy, in regard to his pictures of private ornament, in which he is more than usually attractive and perfect. judges know how to recognize cavedone's hand by his very compendious manner of treating the hair and beards, as well as by that graceful and rapid touch, loaded with much lightish yellow, or burnt terra gialla. length of proportions is likewise considered another peculiarity, with a flow of the folds more rectilinear than in other artists of the same school. such ascendancy in the art was maintained by cavedone during some years, till the death of a favourite son, who had early distinguished himself in the same career, united to other heavy sorrows, deprived him of his powers, and he subsequently executed nothing of importance. a specimen of that period is in possession of the fathers of s. martino; an ascension that excites only our compassion, with similar pieces met with throughout bologna, that can boast no glimpse of grace. still deteriorating, he was at length deprived of commissions and reduced to penury, which, in his old age, attended him to the tomb. lucio massari possessed a more joyous spirit, ever glad and festal; devoted to the theatre and to the chase, rather than to his academy and his pallet; being usually impatient and averse to commence his subjects, until his genius and good humour were propitious. for this reason his works are few, but conducted in a happy vein, graceful and finished, both in colour and in taste appearing to breathe of cheerfulness. his style most resembles annibal's, whose works he copied to admiration, and after whose example, while a few months at rome, he designed the most finished and noble remnants of grecian sculpture. there shines also in his countenances the spirit of passerotti, his earliest master, and more frequently the gracefulness of his near friend, albani, whose society he enjoyed both in his studio and his villa, and in works undertaken in conjunction. his s. gaetano, at the teatini, is crowned with a glory of exquisitely graceful cherubs, that seem from the hand of albani; and in his other pictures we often recognise those full countenances, those delicate fleshes, that sweetness, and those sportful expressions, in which revelled the genius of albani. in point of beauty, the _noli me tangere_, at the celestini, and the nuptials of st. catherine, at s. benedetto, are among his most esteemed pieces; to say nothing of his histories at the cortile of s. michele in bosco, where he left many very elegant specimens. on occasion of treating strong or tragic subjects, he did not shrink from the task; and although he had a real knowledge of the art, he conducted them without that extreme study of foreshortenings and naked parts, of which others make so lavish a display. he shewed noble clearness and decision, fine colouring, a grand spirit, enlivening them with light and graceful figures, more particularly of women. such is the slaughter of the innocents, at the bonfigliuoli palace, and the fall of christ, at the certosini, a most imposing production, from the number, variety, and expression of the figures, whose pictoric fire surpasses all we could mention from the hand of albani. he has left some cabinet pictures, always in good design, and mostly possessing soft and savoury tints; so that all we would farther look for is, occasionally, a more gradual distribution of tints in the background of his pieces. among other pupils, he instructed sebastiano brunetti, polished by guido, a sweet and delicate artist, but of brief career; and antonio randa of bologna. malvasia has observed, that there is little good to be said respecting him, apparently alluding to a deed of homicide committed by him at bologna. in other respects, he includes him among the best pupils, first of guido, next of massari, to whose style he became attached. on account of his reputation the duke of modena granted him an asylum in his state, declaring him, according to orlandi, his court-painter, in . here he was much employed, and subsequently at ferrara, for the most part at s. filippo; also in many places of the polesine, where i find his martyrdom of s. cecilia, in possession of the sign. redetti, at rovigo, the most celebrated of his productions. finally, he betook himself to the cloister, a fact unnoticed by malvasia, which might have induced him to speak of him in milder terms. pietro facini entered late into the profession, at the suggestion of annibal caracci, who from one of his playful sketches in charcoal, declared how excellent a painter he would become, if he were to enter his school. annibal subsequently regretted the discovery, not only because facini's progress excited his jealousy, but, because, on leaving the academy, he became his rival in educating young artists, and even plotted against his life. he has two striking characteristics, vivacity in his gestures, and in the expression of his heads, such as to place him on a footing with tintoretto, and a truth of carnations, which induced annibal himself to observe, that he seemed to have ground human flesh in his colours. with this exception, he has nothing superior; feeble in point of design, too large in his naked figures of adults, incorrect in the placing of his hands and heads. neither had he time to perfect himself, dying young, and before the caracci, in . there is a picture of the patron saints, at s. francesco, in bologna, with a throng of cherubs, which is indeed among his best works. in the malvezzi collection, and in others of the city, are much esteemed some of his country dances, and sports of boys, in the manner of albani, but on a larger scale. he had a pupil in gio. mario tamburini, who afterwards attached himself to guido, forming himself on his manner, as we have already stated. francesco brizio, gifted with rare genius, was, up to his twentieth year, employed as a shoe-maker's boy. impelled, at length, by his bias for the art, he acquired a knowledge of design from passerotti, and of engraving from agostino caracci. lastly, he commenced painting under lodovico, and very soon arrived at such celebrity, that by some he has been pronounced the most eminent disciple of the caracci. doubtless, if we except the previous five, he was equal to any others, and, excepting domenichino, gifted with the most universal genius. he was not deficient, like guido, in perspective; nor in the branch of landscape, like tiarini; nor in splendour of architecture, like so many others. in these accessaries he surpassed all his rivals, as we gather from his histories, painted for s. michele in bosco; at least such was the opinion of andrea sacchi. he is extremely correct in his figures, and perhaps approached lodovico more closely than any other artist. the graceful beauty of his cherubs excites admiration, an excellence at that period so greatly studied by all the school; and here, in the opinion of guido, he outshone even bagnacavallo. his chief talent lay in imitation; owing to which, and his character for indecision, in addition to the number of great artists, superior to him in manners, he was deprived of assistants and commissions, and reduced to execute such as he had solicited at very insignificant prices. one of the most extensive altar-pieces in the city is from his hand, representing the coronation of the virgin, at s. petronio, with a few figures in the foreground truly joyous and well arranged; besides others in the distance grouped and diminished with art; a picture of great merit even in strength of colouring. he produced also for the noble family angelelli the table of cebes, in one grand painting; the work of an entire year, which displayed all the depth, imagination, and genius of a great artist. there are also a number of small engravings from his hand, in which he often approaches guido. his son filippo and domenico degli ambrogi, called menichino del brizio, were his most distinguished disciples. these artists painted more for private ornament than for that of the churches. the latter became celebrated for his design; was employed chiefly in friezes for chambers, in architecture, and landscape in fresco, sometimes in conjunction with dentone and colonna, sometimes alone. he was also a finished artist of pictures for private rooms, occasionally exhibiting there copious histories, as in that we read of in the full and well drawn up catalogue of the sig. canon vianelli's pictures at chioggia. it presents us with the entrance of a pontiff into the city of bologna. it is not surprising that he should be acknowledged and esteemed even in the venetian territories, having been the preceptor of fumiani, and master of pierantonio cerva, who painted a good deal for the paduan state. gio. andrea donducci, called from his father's profession mastelletta,[ ] inherited a genius for the art. impatient, however, of the precepts of the caracci, his masters, he neglected to ground himself in the art, was unequal to designing naked figures, and far from producing any masterpiece. his method was short, and wholly intent upon attracting the eye by effect; loading his pictures with shadow in such a way as to conceal the outlines, and opposing to his shadows masses of light sufficiently strong, thus succeeding in disguising from judges the inaccuracies of his design, and gratifying the multitude with a display of apparent novelty. i have often imagined that this artist had great influence with the sect of the tenebrosi, which afterwards spread itself through the venetian state, and almost every district in lombardy. he was enabled to support his credit by a noble spirit of design, by a tolerable imitation of parmigianino, the sole artist adapted to his disposition, and by a natural facility that enabled him to colour a very large extent of canvass in a short time. among such specimens are the death, and the assumption of the virgin, at the grazie, and some similar histories, not unfrequent in bologna. perhaps his picture of s. irene, at the celestini, is superior to any other. when advanced in life, hearing the applause bestowed on the clear, open style, he began to practise it, but with no kind of success, not possessing ability to appear to advantage out of his own obscure manner. in his former one he had painted at s. domenico two miracles of the saint, which were esteemed his masterpieces; but these he altered according to his new method, and they were thenceforth regarded among his most feeble performances. in his half-figures the same diversity of manner is observable; and those executed in the first, such as his miracle of the manna, in the spada palace, with others at rome, are justly held in esteem. the same may be said of his landscapes, which, in many galleries, are attributed to the caracci; but the taste in the rapidity of touch, very original and remarkable in mastelletta, is sufficient to distinguish them. annibal was so well pleased with these pictures for galleries, that, having his company at rome, he advised him to settle there and confine himself to similar labours; advice by no means pleasing to donducci. but he a good deal frequented the studio of tassi, and these artists mutually assisted each other, freely communicating between themselves what they knew. soon after he returned to bologna, and resumed his more extensive works; but met with serious disappointments, such as to induce him to enter as a friar, first among the conventuals, next with the canons of s. salvatore. he educated no pupils of merit, except that one domenico mengucci, of pesaro, resembled mastelletta a good deal in his landscape; an artist better known at bologna than in his native place. footnote : a pail or bucket maker. besides the forementioned disciples of the caracci academy, several others are entitled to consideration; such as schedone and more names recorded in the schools already described, with a few yet left to mention in those of which we have to treat. many names will also find a place among the bolognese painters of landscape, or those of perspective. a few others, who devoted themselves to figures, have been scarcely alluded to by malvasia, either because then living, or not so distinguished as some of the preceding; nevertheless they are not despicable, for to hold a second or third rank, where domenichino and guido are the foremost, is a degree of honour not to be regretted. one of these is francesco cavazzone, a writer too on the art, of whom the canon crespi subsequently collected very ample notices, in particular extolling a magdalen kneeling at the feet of the redeemer, a truly imposing picture, that ornamented the church of that saint in via s. donato. of much the same degree of merit was vincenzio ansaloni, who gave only two altar-pieces to the public, but sufficient to establish his title to the character of a great artist. giacomo lippi, called also giacomone da budrio, was another distinguished artist, of universal genius, in whose fresco histories at the portico of the nunziata we trace the pupil of lodovico, not very select, but of prompt and practised hand. some pictures in fresco too by piero pancotto, at s. colombano, gave rise to feelings of disgust from the ridicule attempted to be cast on his own parish priest, caricatured by him in the features of a holy evangelist, though as an artist he could not be despised. among the histories at s. michele in bosco, already described, is seen the sepulture of the ss. valeriano and tiburzio by alessandro albini, a painter of spirit; the giving alms of s. cecilia, by tommaso campana, who afterwards followed guido; the st. benedict among the thorns, by sebastiano razali; the conference between cecilia and valeriano, by aurelio bonelli; all respectable artists, except that malvasia blames the last mentioned as unworthy of a school productive of so many noble disciples; but it is rare that in such rich abundance some abortive specimen does not appear. florio and gio. batista macchi, enea rossi, giacinto gilioli, ippolito ferrantini, pier-maria porettano, antonio castellani, antonia pinelli;[ ] all these gave to the bolognese public some superior specimens of their skill, and more in the adjacent places; and we may add gio. batista vernici, who was subsequently employed by the duke of urbino. nothing remains there from the hand of andrea costa, or of vincenzio gotti; of whom the former, according to malvasia, painted for the s. casa of loreto some admirable pieces, now known, if i mistake not, under another name. the latter resided in the kingdom of naples, mostly at reggio, an artist of singular rapidity, whose altar-pieces in that city alone amount to the number of two hundred and eighteen. other followers of the caracci are known to have renounced painting in favour of engraving and sculpture. the academy was closed on lodovico's death; and the casts, with other requisites for the art, remained for a long period at bologna. domenico mirandola, on the opening of facini's academy, quitted that of lodovico, became a celebrated sculptor, enriched himself with the spoils of both, and kept an open studio, regulated according to the method of his first masters; called for this reason by some the studio of the caracci. names, however, are not realities; and correctness of design was not maintained in this _soi-disant_ academy, but gradually deteriorated; the honour of its revival being reserved for the genius of cignani, of whom we shall say more in our fourth epoch. footnote : the wife of bertusio, and admired by lodovico caracci for her singular modesty and attachment to the art. her finest production adorns the nunziata, composed from lodovico's design, in which she drew her own portrait with a bonnet, and that of her husband. the review of the bolognese artists is here complete. in the year the state of ravenna had to boast a guarini, an artist of a sound style, not far removed from that of the caracci, if we may judge from a pietà, at s. francesco, in rimini, to which place he belonged. there too was one matteo ingoli, who is mentioned in the venetian school, to which he wholly devoted his talents. to the same state belonged the family of barbiani, who have continued down to this period their services to their country. giambatista, the most ancient, is mentioned by orlandi; his school is not known, though he possesses an attractive manner, much resembling cesi's, but differing from him in the study of each figure, and on this account unequal with himself. his st. andrew, and his st. joseph, on two altars at the francescani; his s. agatha, in the church of that name, with other pieces in different places, are well executed in oil. in the chapel of n. signora del sudore, in the cathedral, is the vaulted ceiling painted by him with an assumption of the virgin, which, even compared with guido's cupola at ravenna, does not displease. a son of gio. batista succeeded him in his profession, not in his reputation; from whom, or some other member of the family, sprung andrea barbiani, who, on the corbels of the said ceiling, coloured the four evangelists, and painted several altar-pieces both at ravenna and at rimini. after examining his manner, and in particular his tints, i believe him to have been a pupil, or at least a disciple of p. pronti of rimini, shortly before commended among guercino's disciples along with gennari, also from that place. here likewise we shall mention a third, sprung from the school of padovanino, but residing in his native place; a painter more of pictures for private ornament than for churches. his name was carlo leoni, and he competed with centino in his picture of the penitence of david, at the oratorio, and with other excellent figurists who then flourished in romagna. among guercino's disciples will be found also natives of cesena; and i am convinced that many other artists of romagna were retained by him at cento; a fact which is alluded to in his life, without any mention of the names. at faenza, in the time of the caracci, flourished one ferraù da faenza, with the additional family appellation of fanzoni, or faenzoni, derived probably from his country. according to titi he was pupil to vanni, but left nothing at rome besides his fresco paintings at the scala santa, at s. gio. laterano, and in great number at s. maria maggiore. they consist of scripture histories, of exact design, very pleasing tints, and good mixture of colours; mostly executed in competition with gentileschi, salimbeni, novara, and croce. from his hand is the s. onofrio, in the cathedral at foligno, with several pieces at ravenna and faenza, where however his manner seems to have changed. there i heard him included among the pupils of the caracci, from whom perhaps he some time studied. nor is this at all difficult to believe on contemplating the chapel of s. carlo, in the cathedral, or his deposition from the cross, at the nunnery of s. domenico; or his probatica, at the confraternity of s. giovanni, which is the best preserved of all his pictures in the district, and nearest resembling lodovico's style. i am assured that his real family was the fenzoni, of noble origin, now extinct at faenza; and that he died in his native place in , aged . it is related that he perpetrated an atrocious deed, having assassinated, out of mere professional jealousy, one manzoni of faenza, a young artist of rising reputation, as is apparent from several of his pictures, of which two are in the possession of the ab. strocchi, giudice di pace, in faenza. nor is he less esteemed for his altar-pieces, particularly that of the martyrdom of s. eutropio vescovo, exhibited in that church. he would have shone a distinguished ornament of the art, had not his career been thus untimely cut short by envy. the assassin artist failed to restore to painting that of which he had deprived her, even by educating his two young daughters, teresa, who painted much for her native place, and claudia felice, perhaps her superior, at bologna, where she died in . one tommaso misciroli left several specimens of his hand at faenza, known generally by the name of pittor villano. he flourished after ferraù, and owed his reputation to his genius rather than to any precepts of the art. neither in his design, his expression, nor his costume, has he any thing to recommend him, and in these he often errs. but in the vivacity of his attitudes, in his colouring, acquired from guido, his draperies from the venetians, he is equal to many of this school; yet this remark applies only to a few works executed with much care. the best of these is at the church of s. cecilia, where he has exhibited the martyrdom of that saint; and in the scene is introduced an executioner stirring up the flames, a figure almost copied from the grand picture by lionello, at the church of s. domenico in bologna. gaspero sacchi da imola is known to me only from some pictures he conducted at ravenna, and recorded first by fabbri, next by orlandi. it is uncertain to what country the cav. giuseppe diamantini belonged, called by some in mistake giovanni; but generally acknowledged to have been a native of romagna. in the twenty-eighth volume of the _antichità picene_ it is asserted that he came from fossombrone. he resided at venice, and left at s. moisè an epiphany, in which he displays great freedom of hand, and a bold effect in the execution. he is more celebrated in collections belonging to the venetian state than in churches, being met with at rovigo and at verona, where, in casa bevilacqua, are some heads of philosophers in a very novel manner. his character indeed consisted in this kind of painting, and he would seem to have derived his idea of them from salvator rosa. we shall now proceed to treat of the landscape, flower, and perspective painters; all artists in short connected with minor branches of the art. on this subject the historians who preceded me have attributed no improvement to the caracci, except in landscape; though i believe that their prevailing maxim of shunning all caprice and fallacy, and confining themselves to representations of truth and nature in the art, spread its influence from the human figure down to the insect, from the tree to the fruit, from the palace to the cottage. in a similar way too was introduced the maxim of avoiding in literature that affectation, prevalent in the sixteenth century, in favour of the purity of better ages; owing to which the style of writing, from that of history even to familiar correspondence, from the poetry of the epic to the sonnet, shone with real lustre. gio. batista viola and gio. francesco grimaldi were the two leading painters of landscape at that period, in the manner of the caracci. viola was among the first to exclude from painting that hard, dry style so much practised by the flemish. he has been mentioned as being at rome, where he established himself, and decorated with landscape-frescos different villas belonging to those nobles; in particular the villa pia. but portable pictures of this artist are rarely to be met with, except, that being in company with albani at rome, his landscapes were frequently introduced into the pictures of the latter, and may be recognized in that city by judges as those of viola, like mola's in other pieces of albani at bologna. grimaldi continued many years in the service of different pontiffs at rome; and some years in that of the car. mazarini at paris, and of louis xiv. he surpassed viola in good fortune as well as science; a noble architect, excellent in perspective, in figures, and as an engraver of titian's landscapes and of his own. his prints display singular judgment in the individual parts, and great beauty in their edifices; he is also much more ample in drawing the foliage than the caracci, and also very different; as is observed in the _lettere pittoriche_.[ ] his design always answers to the workmanship; his touch is light, his colouring very strong, only partaking too much of the green. he was employed by innocent x., in competition with other artists, in the quirinal and in the vatican palace; and was also selected to decorate some churches, in particular at s. martino a' monti. the colonna gallery is enriched with his views, and he is often met with in others, though not so much sought after in foreign parts as claude and poussin. such is their number, that i doubt not some of his works were executed by his son alessandro, who, according to orlandi, was a disciple and follower of gio. francesco. his specimens are not equally abundant at bologna, where, about the same period, other landscape painters are known to have flourished. footnote : vol. ii. p. . we have extolled mastelletta, and now for a similar taste we must praise benedetto possenti, a pupil of lodovico, and also a spirited painter of figures. his landscapes present us with seaports, embarkations, fairs, festivals, and the like objects. bartolommeo loto, or lotti, was also held in high esteem, first a disciple and next competitor of viola, one who invariably adhered to the taste of the caracci. paolo antonio paderna, a pupil of guercino, afterwards of cignani, displayed in his landscape admirable imitation of guercino's manner. there was likewise antonio dal sole, from the circumstance of painting with his left hand, denominated il monchino de' paesi,[ ] francesco ghelli, and filippo veralli, all sprung from the school of albani, and all much prized for their rural views in different collections. footnote : the handless landscape painter. annibal formed, as stated in the second volume, a gio. da udine of his own, in a distinguished painter of fruits, called il gobbo di cortona, or il gobbo de' caracci. similar reputation was acquired by two bolognese artists, antonio mezzadri, whose flowers and fruits are in abundance at bologna; and anton maria zagnani, who received commissions even from princely foreigners. both were excelled by paolo antonio barbieri, as famous for his representation of animals, flowers, and fruits, as his brother gio. francesco for the human figure. he bestowed, however, little study on the art, being too much occupied with his family affairs.[ ] there was a pupil of guido, by birth a milanese, but settled at bologna, named pierfrancesco cittadini, commonly called il milanese, who surpassed all his fellow scholars. some of his altar-pieces shew him to have been capable of greater performances; but following the genius and example of several artists whom he saw at rome, he restricted himself to painting small pictures on canvass, and small branches of histories and landscapes. yet these were excelled by his specimens of fruits and flowers, with birds of every kind, to which he occasionally added portraits and very graceful figures, in the same piece. bologna abounds with his paintings, as such a line of study proved useful to the quadraturists,[ ] who were often desirous to secure cittadini's assistance and that of his pupils in their ornamental labours. footnote : as the head of the domestic establishment, he inserted in a book the pictures on which he and his brother were employed, with the prices which they obtained. on his death this was continued by benedetto and cesare gennari, who recorded the works conducted by their surviving uncle. such a registry was very useful to ascertain the dates and prices of the guercinesque pictures; from the family of gennari it came into possession of the prince ercolani, who made a valuable collection of mss. and very rare books on the fine arts. footnote : ornamental and architectural painters. for portraits drawn from life, without any other accessaries, gio. francesco negri, pupil of fialetti, in venice, was then in credit at bologna; where he had for his fellow pupil boschini, who finally became a designer and engraver in copper. commendations of negri are met with in the volumes of malvasia and of crespi. bologna had to boast little that was great in regard to ornamental architecture up to the time of dentone (girolamo curti), who became its restorer also in other parts of italy. i say restorer, inasmuch as gio. and cherubino alberti at rome, and the sandrini at brescia, with the bruni in venice, had produced some fine specimens. nor, if we consider the times, were agostino dalle prospettive and tommaso lauretti, in bologna itself, destitute of merit, as we have already stated. but their models being either neglected or corrupted by their successors, produced no solid advantage to the art; so that there were either no quadraturists in any cities of italy, or they were extremely rare, and esteemed only as the refuse of the figurists. dentone, with his companions, not only revived, but elevated and enlarged this art. sprung from a spinning manufactory of the signori rizzardi, he commenced under lionello spada to attempt the design of figures; and finding this too difficult, he turned to ornamental painting, and acquired from baglione the use of the rule, and to draw the lines. he proceeded no farther with this master; but, having purchased the works of vignola and serlio, he in these studied the different orders of architecture, grounded himself in perspective, formed a solid and well regulated taste, which he farther improved with what he saw at rome, among the remains of ancient architecture. he attempted much in the form of relief, which is indeed the soul of this profession. his fine illusions of cornices, colonnades, lodges, balustrades, arches, and modiglioni, seen with the effect of foreshortening, have led to the supposition of his being assisted by stuccos, or some materials of strong relief; while the whole is produced by the effect of chiaroscuro, brought to a facility, truth, and grace never before seen. in his colours he preserved those of the stones and marbles; avoiding those tints of gems and precious stones, afterwards introduced at the expense of all verisimilitude. it was an invention of his to lay gold-leaf over his works in fresco. he made use of burnt oil, with turpentine and yellow wax, melted together, and placed, in a dissolved state, with a fine pencil, on the parts where the lights occur, and where the gold leaf is applied. still he but sparingly availed himself of such discovery, consigning its abuse to his followers. anxious for durability, he was accustomed to rough sketch, and afterwards to fill up with other layers, then making of the whole one solid impasto, or mingled layers of colours; while in the most exposed spots, not trusting wholly to the plaster, he united very fine portions of white marble, as subtly inserted as we see in the façade of the grimaldi palace. he thus conferred fresh lustre on both palaces and churches; and next proceeding to the theatres, he exhibited novel spectacles in them. the nearmost scenes he painted with the most commanding power of shade, and diminishing its depth by degrees, conducted the eye to the most remote with sensations of harmony and delight. this contrast of depth and sweetness gave the illusion of an immense prospect in small space; and such was the degree of relief in the edifices there represented, that numbers, on the first appearance, went upon the stage in order to explore the reality more nearly. his excellence in this respect soon obtained him commissions out of bologna; from the card. legate, at ravenna, from the sovereigns of parma and modena, and at rome from prince lodovisi, for whom he painted a hall, which outshone the sala clementina, decorated by gio. alberti, until then esteemed the most admirable of its kind. it was dentone's custom to retain the services of a figurist, in order to model his statues, prepare his chiaroscuri, figures of boys, and sometimes even animals and flowers, with all which he ornamented, not always with discreetness, his architectural views. the most erudite among the young artists here vied in offers of their services, desirous of profiting by the same art, and acquiring reputation. in the hall of the conti malvasia, at trebbio, he was assisted by brizio, francesco and antonio caracci, and valesio; also by massari, in the grand chapel of s. domenico, who attended him as well in the library of the fathers of s. martino, where he painted the celebrated dispute of s. cirillo. in the tanara palace he even engaged guercino, who there exhibited his grand hercules; while elsewhere he was assisted by campana, galanino, and spada, and a few cartoons were afforded him by guido himself. but his most useful colleague was angiol michele colonna, who arriving at an early age from como, and having studied some time under ferrantini, finally united himself with dentone, and became celebrated throughout europe. this artist, according to crespi, enjoyed the reputation of the greatest fresco painter of whom bologna could boast; such was his spirited drawing both of men and animals, such his eminence in perspective, and every species of ornamental work, that he was himself alone equal to any grand undertaking, and painted alone an entire chamber at the florentine court, and a chapel at s. alessandro, in parma. the perspectives in the tribune of that church were by his hand; the figures by tiarini; and in several other places the perspectives were by dentone, the figures by colonna. it formed his peculiar talent, with whatever painter he might engage, so to adapt himself to the style and spirit of his colleague, that the entire work seemed the idea of the same mind, the product of a single hand. nor did he require any delay; for whilst his companion proceeded with his own portion, he, with wonderful velocity, consistency, and admirable harmony, despatched the work; a gift for which he was very generally sought after, and more particularly by dentone, who retained him after his return from rome, until the period of his decease. whilst these two celebrated men thus promoted their profession, there was rising into notice one agostino mitelli, a youth of very prolific genius, not unacquainted with the figure, which passeri supposes he acquired from the caracci, and well-grounded in perspective and architecture, under falcetta. when the two friends were engaged in decorating the archiepiscopal palace at ravenna, and at the courts of parma and modena, mitelli alternately assisted the figurist and the quadraturist. this last, however, was the art he most affected, and to which, on separating from his masters, he finally devoted himself. his first labours proved very attractive to the public; not that they equalled the force, solidity, and reality of dentone, but on account of their peculiar grace and beauty, such as almost to obtain for him the fame of the guido of the quadraturists. employing his own taste, he softened down the harder features of the art, made the elevations more delicate, the tints more mild, and added a style of foliage, scrolls, and arabesques, decorated with gold, such as seemed to breathe of grace. the play of the ornaments varied with the nature of the edifices; some ideas were adapted to halls, some to churches, and others to theatres. each ornament filled its appropriate place, at just intervals; the entire work finally according with a delightful symmetry and harmony, so as to take by surprise people not yet familiar with similar illusions, and to remind them, as it were, of the enchanted palaces of the romancers. mitelli's first assistants were two of his fellow pupils in this art, andrea sighizzi and gio. paderna, with occasionally the figurist ambrogi; names not unworthy of a place in the history of the arts, though unequal to compete with such a colleague. colonna alone seemed born to associate with him, as he did after the death of his favourite curti. an intimacy ensued, which was like the second act of angiol michele's life; an intimacy which, strengthened by mutual esteem and interest, and cherished by habit and kind offices, continued during twenty-four years, until terminated by the death of mitelli. these two friends added greatly to the excellent models of the art at bologna; and among their most celebrated labours are the chapel of rosario, and the hall of the conti caprara. elsewhere, as in the bentivogli and pepoli palaces, agostino produced only specimens of architecture; and in others we see his pictures of perspective conducted _a guazzo_, with figures by gioseffo, his son, a disciple of torre, who engraved even better than he painted. in their commissions beyond bologna, mitelli and colonna were always invited together; as to parma, to modena, to florence, by their respective rulers; by the marchesi balbi to genoa, and by cardinal spada to rome, whose ample hall they enlarged, as it were, and dignified by means of feigned colonnades, artful recesses, and magnificent steps, where numbers of figures, arrayed in varied and novel drapery, were seen ascending and descending. called subsequently to the court of philip iv., they decorated three chambers and a magnificent hall in madrid, where colonna, too, produced his so highly extolled fable of pandora. they here sojourned for the space of two years, the last of mitelli's life, who died much regretted by the whole court, and by the spanish artists, at whose head stood diego velasquez. colonna returned into italy, and as a third act of his life, we may record the twenty-seven years which he afterwards lived; during the earlier portion, availing himself, for his architectures, of the services of giacomo alboresi, mitelli's great pupil; and in the latter, of giovacchino pizzoli, his own scholar, known also among painters of landscape. crespi adds the name of gio. gherardini, and antonio roli, or rolli according to the cav. titi, whose specimens in this branch, at the certosa of pisa, he extols as perfect miracles of the art (p. ). in this trio are included all belonging to colonna's school. it is observed by malvasia, that from mitelli's society, angiol michele himself derived utility, as regarded architecture; not that he ever equalled his deceased friend, but from adopting thenceforward a more elegant manner. this progress is apparent in the cupola of s. biagio; as well as in the ceiling and in a chapel of s. bartolommeo, decorated by him after his return from spain. other specimens he produced at this period, at ponzacco, a villa of the marchese nicolini, of florence; in the morisini palace, at padua, and at paris, for m. lionne, state secretary to the french king. colonna attained the age of eighty-six, and left, at his death, numerous professors of an art, which he and his two colleagues may almost be said to have invented, and given to the public. i have enumerated different young artists of these schools; and they, too, united together, traversing italy in the service of princes and nobles, and forming pupils in every place; so that no art ever spread more rapidly. gio. paderna, pupil to dentone, and next an accomplished imitator of mitelli, became the colleague of baldassare bianchi; and the latter, at the death of paderna, having become mitelli's son-in-law, was placed companion, by the father-in-law, with gio. giacomo monti. this partnership also met with success in italy, in particular at mantua, where they both received regular salaries. their figure-painter was gio. batista caccioli, of budrio, pupil to canuti, and a good disciple of cignani, who left frescos, altar-pieces, and private pictures; in particular, his heads of old men, in high request. another son-in-law of mitelli, giacomo alboresi, was much employed at the court of parma, in that of florence, and in the villa capponi, of colonnata. he was assisted in his figures by fulgenzio mondini, and on his death, by giulio cesare milani, who was esteemed the best pupil of torre. domenico santi, named mengazzino, was also one of the ablest among mitelli's pupils, and left, at the servi, in s. colombano, and in the ratta palace, some fine works in perspective, with figures by giuseppe mitelli, by burrini, and most of all by canuti, never having left his native place. his perspectives, on canvass, are highly esteemed in cabinets, and are sometimes hardly to be distinguished from those of agostino. andrea sighizzi, the father and master of three artists, was employed also at turin, mantua, and parma, where he received a salary from the court, and had pasinelli for his best companion. it would carry us too far, to recount all the quadraturists sprung from these schools; nor would all, perhaps, deserve commemoration. though no art was more rapidly extended, none sooner degenerated; caprice usurped the place of sound rules of architecture, and was carried to a pitch of extravagance and impertinence, when the borrominesque taste began to extend through italy. architecture itself, which forms the basis of this profession, began, in course of time, to be regarded as an accessary; a greater share of study was employed in the vases of flowers, in festoons, in fruits, and foliages, and certain novelties of grotesque, against which both algarotti and crespi have so justly and successfully inveighed. we cannot close this account without the name of giovannino da capugnano, an artist very fully treated of by malvasia and orlandi, and highly extolled in the studies of the painters, even in our own days. misled by a pleasing self-delusion, he believed himself born to become a painter; like that ancient personage, mentioned by horace, who imagined himself the owner of all the vessels that arrived in the athenian port. his chief talent lay in making crucifixes, to fill up the angles, and in giving a varnish to the balustrades. next, he attempted landscape in water-colours, in which were exhibited the most strange proportions, of houses less than the men; these last smaller than his sheep; and the sheep again than his birds. extolled, however, in his own district, he determined to leave his native mountains, and figure on a wider theatre at bologna; there he opened his house, and requested the caracci, the only artists he believed to be more learned than himself, to furnish him with a pupil, whom he intended to polish in his studio. lionello spada, an admirable wit, accepted this invitation; he went and copied designs, affecting the utmost obsequiousness towards his master. at length, conceiving it time to put an end to the jest, he left behind him a most exquisite painting of lucretia, and over the entrance of the chamber some fine satirical octaves, in apparent praise, and real ridicule of capugnano. his worthy master only accused lionello of ingratitude, for having acquired from him in so short a space the art of painting so beautifully from his designs; but the caracci at last acquainted him with the joke, which acted as a complete antidote to his folly. in some bolognese galleries his pictures are preserved as specimens, in some degree connected with pictorial history;[ ] and which, though composed with all becoming gravity, are as diverting as any caricature of miel or of cerquozzi. were we to desire a second example of such imbecility in the art, it would be found in crespi,[ ] who gives some account of one pietro galletti. equally persuaded of having been born a painter, pietro became a laughing-stock to the students, who solemnly invested him with a doctorial degree in the art, assembling for that purpose in the cellar of a monastery. footnote : see lettere pittoriche, vol. ii. p. . footnote : crespi, p. . bolognese school. epoch iv. _pasinelli, and in particular cignani, cause a change in the style of bolognese painting. the clementine academy and its members._ the commencement of the final epoch of the bolognese school may be dated some years previous to ; when lorenzo pasinelli and carlo cignani had already produced a striking alteration in painting. the disciples of the caracci, who had imitated lodovico, and those who had produced new manners, had all disappeared; while the pupils who still continued attached to their taste were very few; consisting of guercino's gennari, of gio. viani, formerly pupil to torre, and some other less distinguished names. pasinelli himself ceased to exist, on the opening of the new century, leaving the entire credit of the preceptorship in the hands of cignani. this, too, was shortly increased by the formation of a public academy of the fine arts in the city, to which he was appointed president during life. these details are to be met with in the excellent "history of the clementine academy" composed by giampietro zanotti. here we are made acquainted with the principles and progress of that celebrated society, which, in the year , received from pope clement xi. its sanction and its name, from the senate its rooms, and its organization from count luigi ferdinando marsili; besides effectual support both from him and other nobles; and here also we are presented with the lives of the academicians up to the year . to zanotti's history, as well as to others of an older date, much useful supplement was added by the canon crespi; and upon these two recent works, with a due degree of caution, i propose to rest the authority of my succeeding narrative. in tracing the origin of the new taste, it will be requisite to go back to , or near that period; when pasinelli and cignani, after their return from rome, commenced teaching and operating, each in their respective method. lorenzo pursued the design of raffaello, combined with the fascination of paul veronese; while carlo delighted in the grace of coreggio, united to annibal's learning; and both had executed at rome studies agreeable to their genius. it is reported, that one day they happened to enter upon a long discussion of the relative merits of raffaello and coreggio. would that they had been joined by some new borghini, as a third party, who might have put the discourse into the form of a dialogue, and have preserved it for posterity! in course of time, cignani came into higher repute than pasinelli, though this excited no kind of jealousy; they had both of them wisdom enough to be satisfied each with his own share of genius, and to commend his competitor; thus abstaining from that indulgence of rivalry which gives, even to the most celebrated artists and writers, an air of meanness. thus, when the clementine academy was instituted, the pupils of both masters readily united in serving that new assembly; voluntarily submitting to the direction of cignani, placed by the pontifical diploma at their head. thenceforward the style of cignani came into vogue; though others sprung from it, composed of two or more manners, which may yet be called national. each has in it something of the caraccesque, owing to the young artists having commenced their career by designing from the works of the three brothers. a few of these painters exhibit even too much of their manner, and that of the best among other artists; we find figures taken partially from different ancient masters, and worked up into one composition; as we see sometimes done in poetry, with the lines of one or more writers. about this period the study of the beau-ideal received some accession, by means of the casts with which the academy was supplied. the style of coloring is far from careless; though in the principles then adopted, there was a certain method pursued by different artists, from which their shadows have grown deeper, and assumed a rusty colour; and towards the middle of the same epoch, false and capricious colours came into use, and long continued to find patrons. nor was this error confined solely to the bolognese school. balestra, in one of his letters, dated , inserted in the pictoric collection, (vol. ii.) laments the decline of "all the italian schools," from their having fallen into mistaken methods. possessing himself in verona three scholars, capable of great performances, namely, pecchio, who became a fine landscape painter, rotari, and cignaroli, he seems to have had his fears even for them. in particular, speaking of the last, he says, "i fear lest he, too, should suffer himself to be borne away by the prevailing stream, and become enamoured of certain ideal manners, and of a rapid touch; consequently careless of good practice and of rules." respecting these alterations, however, it is not yet time to treat. to come down, at present, to the two heads of the school; pasinelli, who first ceased to live, will first come under our consideration. he received his education in the art from cantarini; subsequently from torre, whose school he too early left, owing to which, most probably, he never attained to perfect correctness of design. in this, nevertheless, he surpassed paul veronese, who formed his great prototype. he did not imitate him, according to the sectarists; he borrowed from him that effective and majestic composition; but the ideas of the faces, and the distribution of the colours he acquired elsewhere. he was naturally too inclined to create surprise by the display of copious, rich, and spirited compositions; such as his two pictures at the certosa, of christ's entrance into jerusalem, and his return into limbo; and such too is his history of coriolanus, in the casa ranuzzi, a piece found repeated in many collections. no one can behold these paintings without granting to pasinelli a true painter's fire, great novelty of idea, and a certain elevated character, never the boast of middling artists. with these gifts, however, he is sometimes too extravagant in his attitudes, and in his paolesque imitation of spectacles, and strange novel draperies, which he is thought to have carried to an extreme, as in his preaching of john the baptist, in which his rival, taruffi, found, instead of the desert of judea, the piazza of st. mark, in venice. he knew, withal, to restrain his fire according to the genius of his themes, as we may see in that holy family in possession of the scalzi; a work partaking of albani. he painted more for private persons than for the public; uniform in the spirit, varied in the colours of his pictures. some of these private pictures boast, at once, a softness of hand, and a peculiarly vivid and gay light, that might be taken for those of the venetians or lombards; in particular, a few of his venuses, which are supposed to be portraits of one of his three wives. in a few of his other specimens he displays very little relief, whole colours, a tint almost like that of the bolognese artists preceding the caracci; and these i should either attribute to his early youth, or his closing days. one of the four leading artists of his age was the cav. carlo cignani, as elsewhere stated, a genius more profound than prompt; a hand eager to engage in labours, but most difficult, and ever dissatisfied in their completion. his picture of joseph's flight into egypt, belonging to the counts bighini, of imola, cost him six months' labour; and many similar instances are recorded. nevertheless, he always appears complete, never hard or laborious; and his facility is esteemed one of his rarest gifts. cignani's inventions are often referable to albani, who was his master. he produced, for a monastery of piacenza, a picture of the conception of the virgin, who, robed in a white garment, is seen bruising the serpent's head; and arrayed in a garment of rich purple, her infant son at her feet, who, with an air at once of dignity and grace, places his foot upon that of his mother;--what a language does this speak, how truly sublime! there is much, too, of a novel and poetic cast, in his birth of the virgin, at the cathedral of urbino; a picture that at rome was censured even for its novelty. cignani was likewise a good composer, and so disposed his figures, by the example of the caracci, as to give his pictures an air of larger dimensions than they really have. his four scriptural histories, in four ovals, each sustained by two cherubs, among the most perfectly beautiful in bologna, are truly attractive ornaments of s. michele in bosco; nor are two others less so, of the public hall, where he represented francis i., in the act of healing the lepers; and paul iii. seen entering into bologna. less majestic, perhaps, but more beautiful, is one of his paintings, in the palace of the ducal garden at parma. agostino caracci had there decorated the ceiling of a chamber; there cignani exhibited, on the walls, various fables, illustrative of the power of love; in which, if he surpassed not that great master, he, in the opinion of many, at least equalled him. in design he invariably emulated coreggio; but, in his outlines, in his beauteous and noble countenances, and in his grand, ample folds, he preserved something original, and distinct from the lombards; while he is less studious than they respecting the use of foreshortening. he aimed at a strong layer of colours, which were clear and animated like coreggio's, to which he added, also, a sweetness derived from guido. he was especially careful in his chiaroscuro, and gave a great degree of roundness to all his objects; which, though in certain subjects it may appear overwrought, and more ample than in nature, is nevertheless pleasing. his historical pieces are rare; but not so a number of others, containing one or two half-length figures, and still less his madonnas. one of the most beautiful is in the albani palace, painted for clement xi., with the holy child; and another, representing her grief, belongs to the princes corsini, extremely graceful, as is also the angel seen consoling her. it would be difficult to decide whether he excelled most in oils or in fresco, which last is the kind of painting in which great artists have ever distinguished themselves. he spent the closing years of a long life at forli, where he established his family, and left the proudest monument of his genius in that grand cupola, perhaps the most remarkable of all the pictoric productions belonging to the eighteenth century. the subject is the assumption of our lady, the same as in the cathedral at parma; and here, too, as there, it exhibits such a real paradise, that the more we contemplate it, the more it delights us. near twenty years were devoted to its production, from time to time; the artist, occasionally, during that period, visiting ravenna, to consult the cupola by guido, from whom he took his fine figure of st. michael, and some other ideas. it is reported that the scaffolds were, against his wish, removed, as he appeared to be never satisfied with retouching and bringing the work to his usual degree of finish. from these two masters i now proceed to their disciples, and shall annex, also, a few others, who sprung from other schools. pasinelli had the good fortune to inherit, from canuti, an excellent master, a number of fine scholars, on the latter quitting bologna. one of these was gio. antonio burrini, who, while he retained his first master's manner, became attached, also, to the composition of paolo, so much to the taste of pasinelli. indeed, he himself appeared naturally inclined to it, by the richness of his imagination, and his surprising eagerness and industry in his works. he devoted much time to paolo veronese, at venice, often imitating him in those pictures which are referred to his first style. distinguished among these is an epiphany, painted for the noble ratta family, which yields to very few pieces in their collection. he subsequently executed a martyrdom of s. vittoria for the cathedral of mirandola, in competition with gio. gioseffo dal sole; who on beholding it so greatly superior to his own picture, was bitterly mortified. he was reassured, however, by pasinelli, their common master, who predicted he would become a better artist than burrini, whose own facility of genius would at length betray him into a mere practical line. and this prediction was very exactly fulfilled, though he continued upwards of fifteen years to paint with tolerable care, both for the prince of carignano at turin, and at novellara. he in particular appeared to advantage as a fresco painter at bologna, being by some termed the pier da cortona, or the giordano of his school. his fresco histories in the casa albergati are well deserving notice, as are those in the alamandini and the bigami families, with others produced in early youth. impelled at length by the cares of an increasing family to look for greater profits, he gave way by degrees to his facility of hand, and formed a second style, which, owing to the indolence of human nature, obtained more disciples than his first. gio. gioseffo dal sole, on the contrary, burned to become each day more perfect, and raised himself to one of the first posts among the artists of his age. he had constant commissions from noblemen, both native and foreign, and received invitations also from the courts of poland and of england. for some time he preserved a style conforming to pasinelli's; and in order to improve it from the same sources he frequently returned to venice, though he never attained to that degree of beauty, in his more elegant subjects, that formed the boast of his master. in many particulars, however, he displays exquisite grace; as in the hair and plumes of the angels, and equally in the accessaries, such as the veils, bracelets, crowns, and armour. he seems to have been inclined also more than pasinelli to treat powerful themes; more observant of costume, more methodical in composition, and more informed in point of architecture and landscape. in these indeed he is almost unique; and the most beautiful specimens, perhaps, are to be seen at the casa zappi in imola, representing evening, night, and morning, all very pleasingly distributed, and with sober tints, such as the subject required. his other works display, in most instances, the most lovely play of vivid fluctuating light, more especially in his holy pieces and celestial visions, as we see in the st. peter of alcantara, at s. angiolo in milan. moreover, he was more exact and polished than pasinelli; not that he was by any means deficient in celerity in conducting his works, but esteemed it unworthy of an upright character to confer upon them less perfection than he was capable of bestowing. being employed at verona for the noble family of giusti, where he left several mythological pieces and scriptural histories, truly beautiful, he completed one of bacchus and ariadne, which artists pronounced excellent, within a week. yet he cancelled almost the whole, to remodel it according to his own wish, declaring that it was enough to have shewn his rapidity of hand to satisfy others, but that it became his duty, by additional accuracy, to satisfy also himself. hence his fresco at s. biagio in bologna, which is his greatest work, cost him an infinite deal of labour in its completion; and in conducting his altar-pieces, few and valuable, as well as in his private pictures, which are very numerous, he called for high remuneration, persevering in his determination to paint only with care. in this artist, as many others, two manners are observable, of which the second partakes of guido reni's. it is on record, that he became attached to it late in life, and was less successful in it. it appears to me that a large portion of his pictures nearly approach the taste of guido, and that the surname of the modern guido, conferred upon him by so many, has not been granted as matter of favour, nor at the expense of little time. no artist of these times could boast more disciples than giangioseffo dal sole, if we except solimene, who was held by him in high esteem. in order to study his paintings, executed for the counts bonaccorsi, dal sole went to macerata, where he conducted a few works for the church of the vergini, and for the house of the said nobles. i am uncertain if he derived from this visit that style of colouring, more attractive than natural, such as we find it in some of his smaller pictures, and in some bolognese artists who succeeded him. from his school sprung felice torelli of verona, and lucia casalini, his wife, of a bolognese family. torelli came to it already instructed in the art, acquired in his native place from sante prunato, whose taste he, in a great measure, preserved. he became a painter of strong character, fine chiaroscuro, and of no common merit in canvass paintings for altars. these are found at rome, turin, milan, and other cities of italy. that of s. vincenzio is most conspicuous, in the act of freeing a female possessed, at the domenicans of faenza; a picture finely varied in the heads, in the draperies, and the attitudes. lucia likewise painted for some churches, as nearly as she could in her consort's style; but her chief merit lay in portrait, such as to obtain for her admission of her own in the royal gallery at florence. another artist of her sex, initiated in the art of design by sirani, and in colouring by taruffi and pasinelli, received her last instructions from gioseffo dal sole. her name was teresa muratori scannabecchi, who was in the habit of painting a good deal by herself, and with great credit. assisted by her master, she executed a picture of st. benedict in the act of preserving the life of a child; a very graceful production and of good effect, exhibited in a chapel of s. stefano. francesco monti, another pupil of the same school, was endowed by nature with an enthusiasm for ample and copious subjects, to which he applied himself without much previous culture, either from imitation or from art. he executed for the counts ranuzzi, who patronised him, a picture of the rape of the sabines; and for the court of turin the triumph of mardocheo; works abounding with figures, and highly extolled; besides many other oil paintings for different collections and churches. but his surpassing merit is to be sought for in his frescos, and more particularly at brescia, in which city he fixed his residence. he also conducted many pieces for the adjacent places, applauded for his fertile genius and his masterly style of colouring. a number of churches and noble houses, such as the martinengo, the avogadro, the barussi, were also decorated by him on a very extended scale of painting. some portraits, too, executed by his daughter eleonora, who received constant commissions from the same nobility, are held in high esteem. gio. batista grati and cesare mazzoni remained at bologna, and as belonging to the clementine academicians who then flourished, we meet with their lives in zanotti. subsequent to their decease, crespi was enabled to treat their memory with more fairness. he praises the accuracy of the former, and regrets his want of talent; the second he pronounces a commendable artist, observing that he was long employed at faenza, turin, and rome, as well as at bologna itself; though not with good fortune. antonio lunghi also flourished for the most part in foreign states; at venice, in rome, and the kingdom of naples. he returned, at an advanced age, to his native place, where there is his picture of s. rita at s. bartolommeo, and others in different churches, which merited for their author some favourable consideration of crespi. yet he has omitted him, for the purpose, as i suppose, of reserving him for the fourth volume of the "felsina pittrice." it would be too much to attempt a complete sketch of gio. gioseffo's disciples who flourished in other schools, such as francesco pavona of udine, a good painter in oil, and better in crayons; superior in his large altar-pieces, and still more in his portraits. he afterwards studied at milan, and thence proceeded to genoa; next into spain, portugal, and germany, being well received in all these courts; after which he married and had a family at dresden. subsequently he returned to bologna, which he left in the course of a few years for venice, where he shortly afterwards died. francesco comi also left bologna, called il fornaretto,[ ] and the mute of verona, being deprived both of speech and hearing. nevertheless he was distinguished in the art, and is commemorated by pozzo among the artists of his country, and also by orlandi. there are others, of whom we make mention in almost every school. footnote : literally, the little baker. donato creti, a cavalier of the gold spurs, ranks as one of the most eminent of pasinelli's pupils, and as the most attached to his manner; though he was inclined to modify it with that of cantarini, and of both composed a third, sufficiently noble and graceful. he would have made it still more free and original, had he applied himself diligently in early youth; which he omitted to do, and carried his regrets for such omission down with him to the tomb. his merit is impaired by his colouring, which has in it something hard and crude; entertaining a maxim, that tints, such as they are in nature, ought to be employed, and left to time for sobering and harmonizing--a maxim by some attributed to paul veronese. if there were ever a painter who knew not when to remove his hand from the canvass, it was creti. in painting his s. vincenzio, intended to be placed opposite the s. raimond of lodovico, he completed it with every attention to the art; yet was dissatisfied with the work, insomuch that the person who gave the commission was compelled to take it by force out of his studio, in order to place it in the grand church of the padri predicatori. this is, perhaps, his best altar-piece. his alexander's feast also boasts some merit, executed for the noble fava family; by some even it is supposed to be his masterpiece. creti had a pupil, named ercole graziani, who added greater power of execution to his master's style, a more enlarged character, greater freedom of hand, with other qualities which display his superiority. he approached franceschini and others who succeeded to the school of cignani. he has been accused by one of his rivals of too much effeminacy in his painting, and study of minutiæ in his ornaments. others seek for a more just equality in his colours; others more spirit; though all must give him credit for genius and industry equal to compete with the eminent artists of his day, and to surpass many, had he enjoyed the good fortune to have met with an experienced master. he painted for s. pietro, that apostle in the act of ordaining s. apollinare; a history both copious and full of dignity; commissioned by the cardinal lambertini, who, on becoming pope, caused him to make a duplicate for the church of s. apollinare at rome. also his pictures of s. pellegrino, in sinigaglia, the princes of the apostles, who take leave, with the most beautiful expression, to meet their martyrdom, placed at s. pietro in piacenza, with others belonging to his happier hours, are equally excellent. to creti and graziani we have to add count pietro fava, in whose house both were, during some time, brought up, at once assistants and companions in the studies of this noble artist. he is ranked among pasinelli's pupils and the clementine academicians; and we have an account of his studying the works of the caracci, to whose manner, equally with any other artist, he became attached. although the cavalier is described as a dilettante in the art, yet on beholding his altar-pieces of the epiphany and of the resurrection of christ, which he presented to the cathedral of ancona, with a few other productions at bologna, he appears more worthy of enrolment among its noble professors. aureliano milani acquired the principles of painting from cesare gennari and pasinelli; but, struck with the caracci's style, he devoted his whole time to copying their compositions entire, as well as separate, repeating his designs of the heads, the feet, the hands, and the outlines. he caught their spirit, without borrowing their forms. it is remarked by crespi, that no bolognese shewed more of the caraccesque in the naked figure, and in the whole symmetry and character of his painting. after cignani, too, i have heard it noticed, that no one better maintained the design and the credit of the school. in colouring he was not so excellent; sometimes a follower of gennari, as in his st. jerome, at the church of the vita in bologna, and in some degree in his st. john beheaded, at the church of the bergamaschi in rome. here he took up his residence, being ill able to support a family of ten children at bologna. here, too, he abounded with commissions, and promoted with muratori, another pupil of pasinelli, established there from early youth, the honour of his native place. of the last one, however, we have treated under that school. aureliano taught during many years at bologna, and among other pupils of his was the celebrated giuseppe marchesi, called il sansone. he first studied under franceschini, whose taste he nearly approaches in the vaulted ceiling of the madonna di galiera. it is even the opinion of some, that, in his skill of foreshortening, and in the tone of his colours, no artist succeeded in imitating him so well. he took his design from milani; though at times his naked portion is rather too much loaded, which i would not venture to say of his master. among his best pictures is the martyrdom of s. prisca, in the rimini cathedral; an altar-piece of many and fine figures, and good tints, for which the s. agnese of domenichino supplied him with some ideas. he painted much for galleries, and among other pieces, one of his pictures representing the four seasons, (where it now is i cannot say,) is reputed, by a first rate judge, among the first works of the modern bolognese school. antonio gionima was some time also a pupil of milani. he was a paduan of obscure birth, whose father and grandfather had been artists; educated first by simone his father (p. ), afterwards by milani, and for a longer period by crespi. he died young, leaving works highly prized at bologna for their inventive spirit and for the high tone and clearness of their colouring. his picture of st. florian and accompanying martyrs was engraved by mattioli; and a grand canvass history of haman is shewn in the ranuzzi apartment, conspicuous among numbers in the same place, where no common artists gained admittance. leaving aside certain other pupils of pasinelli, of less account, as odoardo orlandi, or girolamo negri, who had a place, however, in the dictionary of painters, we shall close this catalogue with two others, who, becoming friends in the school of lorenzo, continued their intimacy to extreme old age; giuseppe gambarini and gian pietro cavazzoni zanotti. gambarini attended the studio of cesare gennari, whose rapidity of touch and power of natural effect, he afterwards retained. he added no dignity of forms; owing to which his few altar-pieces and other serious subjects obtained him no reputation. applying himself subsequently to flemish composition, he represented women intent on domestic affairs, boys' schools, mendicants begging alms, with similar popular objects, copied faithfully from life; in all which he abounded with commissions. at bologna such familiar pieces by him and his able pupil gherardini are very common, and please by their spirit and their exactness. sometimes he represented also serious subjects, as in that picture in casa ranuzzi, exhibiting the coronation of charles v. during the government of a gonfalonier of the family. zanotti is well known among the writers on pictoric subjects; and few have been more successful in wielding with equal excellence both pencil and pen. his "directions for the progress of young artists" contain some learned maxims, which were meant to stem the corruption of the art, by rescuing it from a low mechanical manner, and replacing it upon its true principles. upon the same maxims he composed his "history of the clementine academy," although he was not enabled to adopt corresponding freedom of style; having there written the lives of the academicians, then lately deceased, or still alive. this work, printed by lelio dalla volpe, in , with a splendor nearly unknown, up to that period, in italy, excited some degree of indignation in good artists, who found, next their own, many names of mere mediocrity distinguished by portraits and lives, on a footing with themselves. the complaints raised by spagnuolo, are recorded by the canon crespi in his felsina, (p. , &c.). other accusations were doubtless advanced against him by inferior parties, who, though commended beyond their merits, secretly, perhaps, believed themselves deserving of still higher praise. zanotti, too, inserted notices relating to himself, who held in that assembly the offices of president and of secretary, for a much longer period. but domestic and literary matters combined, withdrew his attention from painting in his maturer years; whence we may date his more feeble performances, which convey no great idea of him. before, however, he had conducted works which exempted him from the pictoric crowd; in which list we may include his grand picture of an embassy from the people of romagna to the bolognese, which ornaments the public palace. in private houses, too, are other compositions, either historical or mythological, composed in excellent taste, one of which is in possession of the signore biancani tazzi, a piece greatly admired by algarotti, as a perfect model of refined taste. a similar graceful little picture of a cupid and nymphs, which i saw at signor volpi's, displays much poetical imagination, this artist delighting in poetical composition, very different from lomazzo's and boschini's, to an extreme old age.[ ] footnote : see lett. pittor. tom. iv. p. . from zanotti, who was an excellent master, ercole lelli acquired his knowledge of design. his extraordinary genius, his anatomical preparations in wax, made by himself and manzolini for the institution, and his great influence in the instruction of young artists, in the three branches of the fine arts, acquired him great reputation in italy. at the same time, it is known that he lectured much better than he painted; the art requiring, like a knowledge of languages, close and persevering application, such as lelli could not command. one of his altar-pieces is reported in the bolognese guide; and standing in need of defence, it was truly stated, that it was among his earliest pieces. in the guide to piacenza, another, his s. fedele, at the cappuccini, is also noticed; though it is added, with more candour, that his highest merit did not consist in painting. gio. viani was fellow-pupil to pasinelli in the school of torre; but it is only a conjecture that he was also his assistant. he was a learned painter, not inferior in design to any contemporary of the same school; and added to his powers by assiduous drawing from the living model in the academy, and the study of anatomy, until the close of his career. to such knowledge he united elegance in his forms, softness of colouring, engaging attitudes, lightness of drapery, studying much from life, and giving it an air of grace, in the manner of torre, or of guido. that exquisite picture of st. john di dio, at the hospital of the buonfratelli, is such a specimen of his art. in the portico of the servi he represented, in a lunette, s. filippo benizi, borne up to heaven by two angels; a figure which, both in countenance and action, breathes an expression of beatitude, conspicuous, even at the side of another history, by cignani. in other lunettes of the same portico he does not excite equal admiration, and gives us an idea of an artist able to compete with the best masters, but obliged to work with a much larger share of study than they were accustomed to bestow. viani opened school opposite that of cignani, and taught to some extent; in which he was succeeded by his son domenico, whose life was written by guidalotti, who, in point of merit, prefers him to his father. few will subscribe to this opinion, he not having attained to that exactness, much less to that dignity of design, exhibited by his father; and inferior to him in the nature, truth, and clearness of his colouring. still he possessed a grander character in his outline, a stronger execution, like guercino's, more splendid ornaments, like the venetians, whom he assiduously studied in their own capital. there is his st. antony, at s. spirito, in bergamo, in the act of convincing a sceptic by a miracle; a surprising picture, extolled by rotari and tiepolo, and perhaps the best work which he left at bologna. at the same place is his jove, painted on copper, for the casa ratta, besides other works in private houses, to which he chiefly devoted himself. his fellow-pupils in the paternal school were four clementine academicians, whose altar-pieces we find mentioned among the "paintings of bologna." these were gian girolamo bonesi, who renounced both the name and style of viani, in order to follow cignani, and complained of being included in viani's school. however this might be, his pictures pleased, by adding to the beautiful a peculiar delicacy and sweetness that characterize him. carlo rambaldi, imitating both the viani, was not the less employed by bonesi; and pictures of both are met with, especially half-length figures, in select galleries at bologna, and a few historical pieces in the royal collection at turin. antonio dardani possessed more universal talent than either of the preceding, but was not equally refined. pietro cavazzi was a fine connoisseur in prints, and only on this account was celebrated in italy and abroad. tronchi, pancaldi, montanari, with others, not admitted into the clementine academy, may be found mentioned in crespi. no one, i imagine, would desire an account of the under graduates, when the academicians who enjoyed the first rank, were many of them, according to zanotti, only artists of mediocrity. from the school of cignani, to which i now proceed, scarcely any disciple issued who ultimately adhered to his style. a master, whose maxim it was to labour every picture, as if his entire reputation depended on it; who preferred to cancel, rather than retouch his less successful pieces, might, perhaps, have scholars, but not many emulators. two of his family, however, imitated him; count felice his son, who long assisted him, particularly in the cupola at forli; and the count paolo his grandson, whom he, perhaps, instructed in the outset; while his father indisputably employed him at forli, and mancini at rome. both were gifted with facility of genius; but being sufficiently wealthy, they only devoted themselves to the art for the sake of the pleasure it afforded. felice is seldom mentioned in the guide to bologna; in which, however, his st. antony, at the carità, meets with praise. at forli is the altar-piece of st. philip, by some ascribed to him, and by others to count carlo, in his declining years; so inferior is it to the best style of that artist. in collections his paintings are not rare; though appearing, like a young boy in the presence of his father. of count paolo's i only recollect a single altar-piece at savignano, representing st. francis in the act of appearing to st. joseph da copertino, and putting a demon to flight. the scene appears illuminated by torch-light, and has a fine effect; and the figures, in regard to their studied and finished manner, display the taste of his grandfather. after the relatives of carlo comes emilio taruffi, his fellow-pupil with albani, as well as his assistant, first at bologna, in decorating the public hall, and next at rome, where he resided three years, sometimes employed at s. andrea della valle, at others for private houses. no artist then better conformed to cignani's style; and taruffi could at least second him in painting histories. but his genius lay more in minor compositions. he was an excellent copyist of any ancient manner; a portrait painter of great spirit, and, in landscape, one of the best pupils formed by albani. in these three branches he obtained his usual commissions, which he ever discharged with credit. he also conducted some altar-pieces, and that of s. pier celestino, at the church of that name, yields to few of the same period. cignani's most distinguished pupils and heads of new schools were franceschini and crespi. the cav. marcantonio franceschini left the school of gio. batista galli for that of cignani, and became his most effective assistant and intimate friend. this friendship was cemented by his union with cignani's cousin, sister of quaini, whom i shall shortly again mention. some productions of franceschini might be taken for cignani's himself; but these were among his earliest, before he had formed his characteristic manner. he remained with his friend many years, and possessing peculiar gracefulness of design, cignani availed himself of it to draw from life the individual portions of his compositions, engaging him to consult various models, in order to select the best forms from each. by this study of nature, in which he persevered, and by copying from the designs and under the eye of his master, he attained much of the taste, the nice selectness, and the grandeur of cignani. to these he added a certain grace of colouring, and a facility which gave a novel character to his productions; besides an originality, equal to any other artist, in the form of his heads, in his attitudes, and in the costume of his figures. his freshness, his harmony, his just equilibrium of full and retreating parts; in short, his whole style presents a glowing spectacle never before seen. if we trace in his works, especially on an extended scale, a degree of mannerism, it may almost be excused: would that his disciples had restrained themselves within the same limits! but easy roads to painting are like walking on a declivity, where it is difficult to count one's steps, or restrain one's motions. franceschini seemed born to execute works on a large scale, fertile in ideas, and with facility to dispose them in every point of view, and to colour them at any distance. he was accustomed to compose his cartoons in chiaroscuro, and, having fixed them in the intended spot, to judge of the success of his proposed work; a method it would be desirable to inculcate and adopt more generally. his large fresco paintings are numerous; the recess in the ranuzzi palace, the cupola and ceiling in the church of corpus domini, the tribune of s. bartolommeo at bologna. among those in other states we shall mention only the corbels of the cupola, with three histories, in the cathedral of piacenza, and the grand ceiling of the hall of public counsel at genoa. this painting, of which it is enough to state that mengs devoted many hours in examining it in detail, the noblest of franceschini's performances, perished by fire, without a single engraving having been taken to commemorate its grandeur of conception. the same fertility of ideas and attraction of style are conspicuous in his grand histories, dispersed among the first galleries of europe, and in his no less copious altar-pieces. such is the s. tommaso da villanova, in the act of dispensing alms, placed at the agostiniani di rimini; a picture truly imposing by its magnificent workmanship, and which surprises by the beauty of its figures. what is equally surprising, the cavalier franceschini, when nearly an octogenarian, displayed pictorial powers equal to his best days; as we gather from his pietà, at the agostiniani of imola, and his bb. fondatori, at the serviti in bologna, which betray no traces of decline. this artist rejected the most advantageous offers from courts, which all vied in soliciting his services. giordano even was not invited to that of madrid, until the situation had been refused by franceschini. he chose to reside in upper italy, there assuming the same rank, as head of his school, with almost the same success as cortona in lower italy. both schools adhered much to the caracci's style, and in some measure rendered it more popular; and hence, those who at rome are not familiar with the features and contrasts characteristic of cortona's sect, would easily confound them with the more modern artists of bologna. luigi quaini, cousin to carlo cignani, and brother-in-law to franceschini, was one of the most animated characters of his time; equally well versed in history, in architecture, and in poetry. the pupil, first of guercino, next of cignani, he was employed by the last as an assistant, and with such success, that, in painting, his hand could not be distinguished from that of his master. in distributing their labours to franceschini and to quaini, he ordered the former to paint the fleshes for the roundness and softness he gave to them; while to the latter he committed certain gay and spirited countenances, and a certain finishing of parts, in which, from his peculiar talent, he admirably succeeded. later in life, he united with franceschini, and leaving to him the inventive parts, he followed him in the style of the figures; inferior, doubtless, to that of cignani, in force of chiaroscuro and colouring, but more attractive from its peculiar beauty and felicity. he would, afterwards, wholly ornament the composition by himself, with flowers, armour, beautiful landscape, and noble perspective; an art acquired from francesco, his own father, a fine pupil of mitelli. in this way did these two artists continue to paint, conjointly, at bologna, at modena, piacenza, genoa, and rome; at which last place they composed some cartoons for the cupola of st. peter's, which were afterwards executed in mosaic. quaini also painted many historical pictures of his own invention. they decorate private houses; his only composition in public being his st. nicholas visited in prison by our lady, a beautiful altar-piece, occupying the best place in the church of that name. marcantonio's school, from which he also derived those assistants who followed quaini, dates its commencement from his son, the canon jacopo franceschini. the bolognese historians only represent him in the character of an honorary academician; so that, by their account, i ought here to omit him. the cav. ratti, however, informs us that marcantonio, coming to genoa to adorn the church of s. filippo, brought with him his son as his assistant, together with giacomo boni. in the same city, too, i saw a large history, in the hall of the marchese durazzo, as well as other pieces by him, well worthy commendation. at bologna, also, are several paintings in public, all conducted in the style, and with the assistance of his father. boni was employed by franceschini in many of his works, more particularly in that at rome. he had been pupil also to cignani, along with a few more, to be mentioned in the same school; under whose care he chiefly had in view works of a more difficult cast. such was the ceiling of s. maria della costa, at s. remo, and of s. pier celestino, at bologna; besides several paintings at genoa, where he became established. two of his pictures, at the church of the magdalen, met with great applause; namely, a preaching at gethsemane, and a pietà. he more particularly distinguished himself in fresco; and in a chamber of his excel. pallavicini is an infant jove, in the act of receiving nutriment from a goat, executed in the most elegant style. he was much employed in that capital, where, says crespi, "there is neither palace, nor church, nor monastery, nor house, in which his works are not met with; all striking and commendable." nor did he produce little at brescia, at parma, and at remo; besides being honoured with commissions from prince eugene of savoy, and the king of spain, for whose chapel he forwarded an altar-piece. this artist sometimes betrays the haste of a mere mechanist, not completing fully, or polishing his work; besides colouring with a degree of lightness of hand which easily yields to age. yet he always retains a delicacy and a precision in his contours, with a certain open spirit and joyousness which delight the eye. antonio rossi never conducted works on so large a scale as boni, but he surpassed him in diligence; which induced his master, when entrusting commissions to his pupils, to prefer him to any other. he exercised himself in painting pictures for churches, and greatly added to his reputation by his martyrdom of s. andrea, placed at s. domenico. he was much occupied, also, with architectural pictures and landscape, to which he added small figures, so well adapted as to appear by the same hand. on this account he was an artist much liked by the artificers of similar representations, particularly by orlandi and brizzi. girolamo gatti was less employed for churches than rossi, but is distinguished for small figure pieces, with one of which he decorated the hall of the anziani. it exhibited the coronation of charles v. in s. petronio, and shewed the artist to be as good a figurist as a painter of perspective. although educated by franceschini, as we learn from the new _guide_, he did not imitate his colouring: this he sought to attain from cignani. giuseppe pedretti long resided in poland; and on his return to bologna executed a number of works in a good style. giacinto garofolini, a pupil and kinsman of marcantonio, displayed very middling ability when employed alone; but in conjunction with his relative, and with boni, he conducted various works in fresco, from which he is entitled to what reputation he obtained. to these bolognese artists and academicians various foreigners might be added, as one gaetano frattini, known at ravenna by some altar-pieces at the _corpus domini_, and a few others whom we have referred to different schools. we shall now return to that of cignani. giuseppe maria crespi, whom for his neatness of attire his fellow pupils surnamed lo spagnuolo, was instructed first by canuti, next by cignani; being early grounded in the best principles of taste. with unwearied assiduity he copied the caracci paintings at bologna; and at his leisure studied those of the first venetians in that capital. he examined, too, coreggio's at modena and parma, and long sojourned in urbino and pesaro to consult the works of baroccio. some of these he copied, and sold at bologna for the originals. his object invariably was, to form a new manner out of many others, which he accomplished; at some times baroccio would be his most admired model; at another, when he wished to employ more shade, he chose guercino; nor did he dislike cortona in respect to taste of composition. to the examples, too, of the dead, he added the observation of the living; and was averse, if we may credit his son, to the labours of a mere mechanist. he drew every thing from nature, and even had a camera optica in his house, from which he copied the objects that offered themselves to view, and remarked the various play and picturesque reflections of the vivid light. his compositions, indeed, teem with these novelties, and his shortenings also are as singular; so that he often places a number of figures in a small space, while the conceptions which he interweaves in his pictures, are more peculiarly fanciful. this turn for novelty at length led his fine genius astray; insomuch that mengs is brought to lament that the bolognese school should approach its close in the capricious crespi, (vol. ii. p. ). in his heroic pieces, and even in scriptural subjects, he left room occasionally for caricature. wishing to exhibit novelty in his shadows and in his draperies he fell into mannerism; and varying his first method of colouring similar to the old painters, he adopted another more lucrative but less excellent. it consists of few colours, selected chiefly for effect, and very common and oily; gums applied by him to colouring, as other artists use them for a veil, or varnish; few strokes, employed indeed with judgment, but too superficial and without strength or body. such was the method which we see pursued in so many of his pictures; or to speak more correctly, which are no longer to be seen, the tints having decayed or disappeared, so as to require them to be newly copied by another hand. his son did not attempt to conceal this fault, though he wished to excuse it. the reader may peruse the defence in his _felsina pittrice_, p. ; and should he feel convinced by it, with similar benignity he may apologize for piazzetta, who acquired his method of colouring from crespi; with others who more or less pursued the same practice, at this period extinct. as a specimen of his more solid style, the picture of the bb. fondatori, at the church of the servi, appears to much advantage; our lord's supper, also, in casa sampieri; a few pieces in the royal pitti palace, where he was long employed by the great prince ferdinando; besides a few other of his first productions. in his other style are various pictures conducted for the galleries of the roman nobility; the ss. paolo and antonio as eremites, for the princes albani; the magdalen for the chigi palace; the seven sacraments for the card. ottoboni, of which i have seen copies in the albani palace at urbino. the whole of these seven pictures display certain bold coruscations and contrasts which dazzle the eye; all shew novelty of idea; in particular that of the spousals between a young girl and an octogenarian, to the visible mirth of the spectators. spagnuolo lived to advanced age, honoured by the pope with the insignia of cavaliere, esteemed among the first of his age, while his paintings everywhere abounded. different houses, both in and beyond bologna, possess them in great number; histories, fables, and familiar pieces. he received most part of his commissions from the signori belloni, who decorated various chambers with his historical pieces, remunerating him with one hundred crowns each, though they contained but few figures, and all of an ell's length. spagnuolo's manner was not one that could be pursued by every pupil with applause. those artists who were unable to direct it with equal imagination, power of design, spirit and facility, produced very trifling results. even his own sons, d. luigi the canon, and antonio, who painted for various churches, did not wholly follow their father's style, but appear invariably more studied. the canon wrote much upon the art, as the lives of the bolognese artists, or the third volume of the _felsina pittrice_, edited in ; notices of the painters of ferrara and romagna, still unpublished; various treatises; with numerous letters inserted by bottari in the pictoric collection. to few of his age is the history of painting so much indebted, although in certain national subjects he failed to satisfy the whole of his fellow citizens. the authors of the new guide of bologna require from him more diligence in examining documents; greater fidelity as a public instructor; more justice to the real merit of ercole lelli. the four dialogues in defence of his _felsina pittrice_, written by a friend, were published by bottari in the seventh volume of the work just cited, and are worth perusal. in the same volume (p. ) we also meet with a letter of crespi, in which he confesses his different errors, declaring that he would correct them in the fourth volume of his _felsina_, which he was then composing, and which i am uncertain whether he ever completed. from these notices we gather, that, notwithstanding his violent temper, he was not wanting in fidelity as an historian, and in that readiness to retract his own errors, without which none can pretend to maintain the true literary or historical character. for the rest, he must have afforded occasion for those clamours against his _felsina_ and other writings by some satirical strokes, which are assuredly severe, accompanied by many personal reflections on his contemporaries. concerning that very respectable academy he relates some observations of his deceased father, which had better have been consigned to oblivion. he disapproves the methods introduced into his school, and laments, that owing to the failure of good masters, bologna was no longer frequented as formerly by students. he detects, too, certain little impositions introduced into the art; such for instance as displaying in the studio a number of pictures prepared for colouring, to convey an idea of possessing abundance of commissions; pronouncing in a breath a number of anatomical terms on the bones and muscles, to inspire a high opinion of the artist's learning; publishing eulogiums on some particular painting in an article of the day, which only the artist himself could have conceived, and written, paid for, and believed to be true. such, or similar details, which must have sufficed to recognize particular individuals, doubtless provoked many replies from persons not publicly known, as the author gave no contemporary names, but deeply offended and provoked to retaliate upon him. among the pupils of crespi was gionima, who survived only, as i have stated, to his thirty-fifth year. nor did cristoforo terzi reach a much more advanced age, the pupil also of different masters. from his outset he boasted a decision of hand, able to sketch at few strokes very spirited heads, which, however, by dint of excessive retouching, he deprived of much of their expression. this defect he remedied under crespi, and improved himself by residing several years at rome. many collections at bologna possess some of his half-length figures and heads of old men, which are mistaken by less experienced judges for those of lana. in the list of crespi's pupils, too, are giacomo pavia of bologna, who flourished in spain; gio. morini d'imola; pier guarienti, a veronese, who flourished at venice, and was afterwards appointed director of the dresden gallery; and the same who wrote the additions to orlandi's dictionary. francesco l'ange of savoy, a pupil of crespi, became a philippine monk at bologna. his chief merit lay in small scriptural pictures, some of which i saw in vercelli, in possession of his eminence martiniana, bearing the author's name, and quite deserving, by their design and colouring, of a place in that collection. besides franceschini and crespi, many others were educated by cignani. their names have been given by zannelli, who published their lives; a book i have vainly endeavoured to obtain while engaged in writing the present work. by crespi we have an account of some pupils whom he instructed in perspective and landscape, as well as in flowers; this skilful preceptor being accustomed to ascertain the young artists' talents, and confine them to the inferior, when not competent to the higher branches of art, and even to direct them to other professions when unequal to these. such pupils as he retained, ought not, then, to be lightly contemned, although little celebrated, either because they died young, were dispersed abroad, or obscured by brighter names. among such are baldassare bigatti, domenico galeazzi, pietro minelli, known in history by a few altar-pieces. matteo zamboni died young, leaving in some private houses a few specimens of his works, as much in cignani's style as those of any artist. i am uncertain what public works he conducted in bologna; but he acquitted himself well, for his age, in two histories at s. niccolo in rimini; the one representing st. benedict, the other s. pier celestino. antonio castellani is included by guarienti in the school of cignani, though i think by mistake, as he belongs to that of the caracci. not so giulio benzi, also mentioned in the guide of bologna, and to be distinguished from the genoese of that name. i may observe the same of guido signorini, recorded by crespi, and not to be confounded with another guido signorini, heir to guido reni. so far of the artists of bologna. federigo bencovich was a foreigner of a dalmatian family, and i give his name as he himself wrote it.[ ] in the dictionaries it is spelt boncorich and bendonich; and by zannelli, benconich; so that foreigners may be well excused for often mistaking the names of italian painters. federigo, commonly called in his own time, federighetto, acquired more of cignani's solidity than amenity of style; correct in his design, strong in his execution, and well informed in the best principles of his art. some of his altar-pieces are at milan, bologna, and venice; though most of his productions adorn collections, even in germany, where he resided many years. in that of the signori vianelli of chioggia, mention is made of his s. jacopo sedente; and in another collection, of count algarotti, at venice, his landscape, with a village girl, to which piazzetta added another figure. occasionally, his manner is somewhat too much loaded with shadows, but by no means to be pronounced contemptible, as asserted by zanetti, (p. ) in opposition to the opinion of guarienti. footnote : in his two letters, directed to rosalba carriera. see catalogue of the deceased canon vianelli's collection, (p. ). this artist also published a _diary_, in and , written at paris by the same lady; in which she notices her own works, her remuneration, and honours. it is accompanied by learned notes. i have recently received notice of the work, which causes me to mention it in this school. girolamo donnini also resided out of his country; born at coreggio, he lived at bologna; and being inclined to that school, was first treated of by crespi, next by tiraboschi. he had studied under stringa at modena, and under giangioseffo dal sole at bologna. thence he went to forli, at the instigation of cignani, not so much to become a machinist and a painter in fresco, as in order to treat less difficult subjects in oil. his chief merit lay in painting for private ornament, and orlandi, then living, bore testimony that his pictures were held in high request for the decoration of houses. he excelled also on a larger scale; one of his altar-pieces of s. antonio, at the filippini in bologna, being conducted in a very masterly style; as well as others, dispersed about romagna, at turin, in his native place, and elsewhere, the manner of which, as is remarked by crespi, clearly displays the hand of cignani's disciple. a favourite pupil of donnini, and whom he assisted in a variety of circumstances, was francesco boni, termed also il gobbino[ ] de' sinibaldi, from being in the service of those lords. he was from faenza, and left several good pictures in his native place; among others, a s. teresa, with s. gio. della croce, at the carmelitani; a _noli me tangere_, and the meeting of s. domenico and s. francesco, in the church which formerly belonged to the domenicans. pietro donzelli, of mantua, placed an altar-piece in the cathedral of pescia, in which he represented s. carlo administering to the sick of the plague, displaying the style of a pupil of cignani; and this constitutes all the information i could obtain respecting him. footnote : gobbino, the little hunch-back. the other foreign pupils of the cav. carlo, who diffused his manner through the italian schools, are commemorated in the places where they flourished; as lamberti, for instance, at rome, and parolini at ferrara. here i shall add a brief sketch of the artists of romagna, whom i unite to those of bologna. antonio santi was an ariminese, whose school only is mentioned by crespi; but in the guide of rimini, where a few of his works remain, he is extolled as one of its best pupils, though he died young. the same guide makes mention of some paintings in oil and fresco, particularly in the church of the angioli, attributed to angiolo sarzetti, pupil to cignani; from whom, also, he obtained a design for an altar-piece at s. colomba. innocenzio monti is included by crespi among the bolognese, and by orlandi among the painters of imola, where he left some works. one, of the circumcision of our lord, at the gesù of mirandola, executed in , is extolled in a little book of poems. he was more industrious than ingenious, and more successful in germany and in poland than in italy. gioseffo maria bartolini, also of imola, is esteemed, in his native place, for a miracle of s. biagio, and for other works at s. domenico, and in other churches. he was employed a good deal at imola, where he opened school, and throughout romagna; an artist of great facility, and partaking, in some degree, of the manner of pasinelli, his first master. the artists of forli, among whom cignani lived during some years, are not a few. filippo pasquali was colleague to franceschini, whose grand altar-piece at rimini he surrounded with a very pleasing ornament. some of his earliest efforts are met with in bologna, at the portico of the serviti; but not equal to the altar-piece in the church of s. vittore at ravenna, which he painted at a more advanced age, and which does him great credit. andrea and francesco bondi, two brothers, are recorded by guarienti; though, in the guides of pesaro and ravenna only one is alluded to, whose name is not given; and what pieces i saw at forli itself would seem to have proceeded from one hand; such as the chapel of s. antonio, at the carmelites, the crucifixion at s. filippo, besides others. he boasts the fine execution of cignani; but the forms and expressions are not equally select. among other artists of forli, instructed by cignani, was the priest sebastiano savorelli, employed in some church paintings even in the adjacent cities. to him we may add mauro malducci, and francesco fiorentini, both priests, too, of forli; of all of whom there is found some account in the life of cignani. under the roman school we treated of francesco mancini, from s. angelo in vado, who, along with agostino castellacci, from pesaro, was instructed by cignani; both nearly contiguous to romagna, but of unequal powers. agostino is little known, even in his own state; but mancini was celebrated throughout lower, as much as franceschini in upper italy; and he also educated several artists for the countries adjacent to romagna. sebastian ceccarini was mancini's pupil, born at urbino, and often mentioned in the guide of rome, where, in the time of clement xii., he painted the altar-piece for the swiss chapel at the quirinal. he is more known, however, at fano, where he was established, and long continued to live, with a handsome salary from that city. there he appears an artist of various styles, who would have shone little inferior to his master, had he always adhered to his best manner. his s. lucia, at the agostiniani, and different sacred histories, in the public palace at fano, display many fine imitations, strong chiaroscuro, and well-varied tints. the canon gio. andrea lazzarini, from pesaro, also acquired his knowledge from mancini. he was both a good poet and prose writer, and truly well informed in sacred and profane literature. few italian writers can compare with him in treating pictoric subjects. his "account of the paintings in the cathedral at osimo,"[ ] and particularly, his "catalogue of the pictures in the churches at pesaro," cited by us elsewhere, afford ample proofs of his superiority, no less than those brief "observations" on the best works there met with, and that very full "dissertation upon the art of painting," that has been often republished. it relates wholly to the branch of "invention;" and he has other unedited works of equal merit, on "composition," on "design," on "colouring," and on "costume," which were read in the academy of pesaro, as early as . these embrace a true course of painting, an art which he taught gratuitously in his native place.[ ] count algarotti, in drawing up his essay on painting, both read and profited by them, as i heard, at least, from lazzarini; and as the count, indeed, candidly himself confessed, in a letter which he forwarded to him with the work. he also evinced his high regard for his pictoric talents, by giving him a commission for two paintings to adorn his select gallery, which were afterwards inserted in the catalogue. the subjects consist of cincinnatus called to the dictatorship, and archimedes absorbed in his scientific studies, during the storming of syracuse. these two histories are well executed, inasmuch as lazzarini was perfectly master of good painting, as well as good writing; easy, yet always studied in every part; at once noble and graceful, with depth of learning to throw an air of antiquity round his productions, but, at the same time, free from all affectation and parade. his first colouring was of a strong character, as appears from a pietà, at the hospital of pesaro, conducted, i believe, after having studied the venetian and the lombard schools, in the course of a pictoric tour. subsequently, he imbibed a certain sweetness, which i may call more like maratta's, in which his rivals discover a want of vigour. though he enjoyed long life, he did not leave many works, as he applied himself with assiduity to his clerical duties. frequently he had occasion to paint for private families, and succeeded admirably in his madonnas; one of which, seen weeping, in the varani collection at ferrara, is among his most studied pieces. his native place possesses three altar-pieces at the magdalen, three at s. caterina, others in different churches, and in general upon a small scale. but his genius is more clearly apparent in some larger pictures, which are to be seen in the cathedrals of osimo and of foligno; at s. agostino, of ancona; and the two at s. domenico, in fano. one of these contains various saints of the order, placed around the virgin, whose portraits, positions, and action, exhibit singular variety and grace. the other represents s. vincenzio, seen in the act of healing the sick, before the people assembled by sound of bell; nor is it easy, in this immense throng, to find any one figure resembling another, or superfluous, or less happy in expressing what it ought. but the work in which he appears, as i have been informed, to surpass himself, adorns the chapel of the counts fantuzzi, in gualdo, a diocese of rimini. he had spent several years at rome, at the house of monsig. gaetano, afterwards cardinal fantuzzi; for whom he made that fine collection of pictures, from each school, which afterwards went to his heirs, one of whom, count marco, is well known to the public by his "monuments of ravenna," edited and illustrated in several volumes, with much research and erudition; and to whose courtesy i owe much of my information respecting lazzarini. in this collection are several of the canon's paintings, of various kinds; landscape, a branch in which he appears to perfection; instruments and books of music, porcelain, and fruits that deceive the eye; and, in particular, two pictures, on imperial canvass, one exhibiting the baptism of christ; the other, the flight out of egypt; where, in the egyptian plants and monuments we seem to recognize that ancient land itself. still the altar-piece at gualdo shews a greater degree of originality, as he here displayed his utmost care in imitating raffaello, whom he had accurately studied, so as to derive from his forms and composition all that could go to adorn a picture of the virgin and holy child, seen between st. catherine the martyr, and the b. marco fantuzzi, a franciscan, who will, perhaps, obtain the honours of a solemn canonization. the place is decorated with architecture, the pavement variegated with marbles of different colours. the holy child, placed with the divine mother, upon a pedestal, is seen putting a crown on st. catherine's head; while the mother holds another in her hand, in order that the b. marco may be crowned by her in his turn. two angels form the train, one of whom points to the wheel, a symbol used by the saint, and indeed touches with his finger a sharp point, the better to give an idea of the sufferings of her martyrdom. the other is an angel of the apocalypse, with book and sword; a figure well suited to the last judgment, whose terrors the b. marco inculcated in his sermons. there are two other beautiful cherubs, which add to the interest; one standing near st. catherine, holds a roll of egyptian papyrus, with some coptic characters, in which were described the acts of her passion; while his companion points the attention of the spectator to a maxim continually repeated by the b. marco, "nolite diligere mundum," inscribed upon marble. how widely different, in point of invention, appears an artist versed in literature, and one with no taste for letters! this, however, is not the whole merit of such a painting: the saint and one of the angels are truly raffaellesque figures; the beato in extasy, brings to mind the b. michelina of baroccio; the other figures are all exceedingly well studied, and seem intended to display the artist's refined gratitude towards his patrons. footnote : these paintings, executed in the abside of the cathedral, with the assistance of his pupils, constitute his most celebrated frescos. in this "account" there is a discourse, well worth notice, on ancient marbles of different colours, which he introduced in those paintings, and the method he adopted in uniting them. such a treatise, not to be found in any other writer, renders this little volume valuable; which shews, too, that he likewise excelled in architecture. footnote : these treatises were published at pesaro in ; and, although, as the industrious editor well observes, they were drawn up from unfinished sketches, they still gratify us, no less by their extensive information, than by the ingenuity which they display. the best professors that romagna could boast at this period have already been recounted in different bolognese schools; for which reason, without treating them separately, i shall proceed to the painters of landscape. among these, excelling as well in drawing as in figuring, orlandi gives us the name of maria elena panzacchi, instructed in the art by taruffi; but her landscapes are now little known, even in bologna; and crespi has indicated not more than two. those of paolo alboni, her contemporary, are recognized in naples and rome itself, and in germany, where he passed many years. those which are seen in the pepoli palace, at the march. fabri's, and in other noble galleries, might be mistaken, according to crespi, for the productions of holland or flanders, on whose models he was almost incessantly employed. angiol monticelli formed a style under franceschini and the younger viani, which the same biographer highly extols. no artist, at this period, better knew how to dispose his colours; none tinged his leaves, his earths, his buildings, and his figures, with more nature and variety. but he was cut short in mid-career: he became blind when his talents were in their perfection. nunzio ferraiuoli, called also degli afflitti, was born at nocera de' pagani, not a bolognese. from the studio of giordano, he went to that of giuseppe dal sole, in bologna, in which city he was established. he incessantly employed himself in taking rural views, both in oil and fresco, and succeeded to admiration, equal, says p. orlandi, to claude and poussin; an opinion to be attributed to the friendship subsisting between them. he had a mixed style, half foreign and half albanesque, if we except his colouring, which is not so natural. cavazzone provided him with two pupils, who, urged by their own genius, assisted by ferraiuoli, became tolerably good landscape painters; namely, carlo lodi and bernardo minozzi. the first was an excellent disciple of his master; the second formed a manner peculiar to himself. besides his ability in frescos, he was distinguished for his landscape in water-colours, which he illuminated on pasteboard, and it met with much admiration both at home and abroad. gaetano cittadini, nephew to pier francesco, excelled in the same manner, his rural views displaying singular taste, fine effect of the lights, and spirited figures. i have met with them throughout romagna, as well as in bologna. in romagna, however, marco sanmartino, a neapolitan, or venetian, is more generally met with; and, in particular, at rimini, where he some time fixed his residence. his pieces are ornamented with beautiful little figures, in which he excelled. he also attempted more extensive works, such as the baptism of constantine, in the cathedral of rimini, and the saint preaching in the desert, in the college of s. vincenzio, at venice; though there, too, he is distinguished by his landscape, which formed, indeed, his profession. in the guide of rimini, he is named sammartino, as well as by zanetti and guarienti. this last declares that he remained at venice most part of his life; and, in the next article, gives the name of one marco sanmarchi, a venetian, both a landscape and a figure painter, on a small scale, much extolled by malvasia, and flourishing about the time of sammartino. on the authority of melchiori, who names him sammartino, or sanmarchi, i believe that these two landscape-painters of guarienti resolve themselves into one; and that the mistake arose from the resemblance of the two names, by which one and the same person was popularly known; as we have had occasion to observe in other instances. moreover, what could be the reason that this sanmarchi, a venetian, is not known in venice itself, but only in bologna, where it does not appear that he ever had a permanent abode? the elder cittadini, who excelled in flowers, and fruits, and animals, is commended in the preceding epoch. in the present, we shall make mention of his three sons, carlo, gio. bastista, and angiol michele, who, however able in figures, at least the two first, are known to have assisted their father, and imitated him in the subjects most familiar to him; hence they were termed by albano, syndic to the bolognese professors,[ ] the fruiterers and florists. from carlo sprung gaetano, the landscape painter, and gio. girolamo, who down to our own days, though without attempting figures, excelled in painting different animals, fruits, and vases of flowers. but this family was successfully rivalled by domenico bettini, a florentine professor in the same line; who, after remaining a long time at modena, where we have mentioned him, came to establish himself at bologna, towards the end of the sixteenth century. he had learnt design under vignali, and next continued to improve himself in the school of nuzzi, at rome. he was among the first, says orlandi, who dismissing those obscure and dismal grounds, painted more clear and openly; adding attractions to such paintings, by the invention of situations, and by the introduction of perspective: he was frequently invited to different italian cities, to decorate halls and cabinets. but the favourite artist in this kind, of his day, was candido vitali, who, taught by cignani, always attentive to the peculiarities of his pupils, made rapid progress in these attractive branches of the art. the freshness which appears in his flowers and fruits, the beauty of his quadrupeds and birds, are farther recommended by a taste of composition, and a delicacy of hand, which are prized both in italy and abroad. baimondo manzini, a miniaturist rather than a painter, painted less in oil; but with such a degree of nature, that his animals, exhibited in cartoons, and placed by him in a certain light, have deceived even painters themselves; for which he has been extolled by zanotti as a modern zeuxis. an assemblage of his fishes, birds, and flowers, is to be seen in the fine gallery of the casa ercolani. footnote : malvasia, vol. ii. p. . at the same period the art was indebted to the judgment of cignani for a good painter of battle-pieces in antonio calza, a veronese, mentioned in the third volume; where it is observed that, being subsequently assisted by borgognone, he became master of that branch of art at bologna. contemporary with him was another pupil of cortese, who resided during several years in the same city, named cornelio verhuik, of rotterdam. besides his battle-pieces in his master's manner, displaying strong and vivid colouring, he painted in the flemish style markets, fairs, and landscape, which he enlivened with small figures, like those of callot. from cignani also the bolognese school received an excellent portrait painter in sante vandi, more commonly called santino da' ritratti. few of his age were qualified to compete with him in point of talent, grace, and correctness in the characteristic features, particularly when drawn in small proportions, such as were calculated even to decorate boxes and rings. for these he had constant commissions, both from private persons and from princes, most of all from the grand duke ferdinando of tuscany, and ferdinando, duke of mantua, who gave him a salary at his court, until his return to bologna on the duke's death. but he remained there only a short time, being still invited to different cities, so that he educated no pupils for his native place, and died abroad. with him, observes crespi, "disappeared the manner of producing portraits at once so soft and powerful, combined with such natural expression." above every other branch of inferior painting, however, the ornamental and perspective then flourished at bologna. this art, as we have stated, after the solid foundations on which it had been placed by dentone and mitelli, aimed too much at a pleasing and beautiful, without consulting a natural effect. but the school did not all at once deteriorate, being some time maintained by imitators of some of the most correct models. in this number zanotti extols jacopo mannini, a most accurate artist, who decorated a chapel at colorno for the duke of parma, in which the cav. draghi was employed as figurist, whose genius was at once as eager and rapid as mannini's was slow. much like two steeds of opposite temper yoked to the same vehicle, their sole occupation seemed that of biting and kicking each other; and it became necessary to separate them, the slow one being sent back to his native bologna, where owing to this blemish he never met with any encouragement. arrigo haffner, a lieutenant, with antonio his brother, who died a philippine friar in genoa, were also followers of mitelli in delicacy and harmony of colour. they had been much employed at rome under canuti, their master in figures, and the former was chosen by franceschini to paint the perspectives in the church of corpus domini. they produced also a good deal at genoa and its state, sometimes with one, sometimes with another of the more eminent figurists. antonio acquired most reputation, superior perhaps in all but invention to his brother, particularly in the sweet union of his tints, as well as in the estimation of distinguished personages. he was called by the grand duke gio. gastone to florence, to consult him respecting the altar of _pietre dure_, intended for the chapel of the depositi at s. lorenzo. a still higher station in this profession was attained by marcantonio chiarini, an excellent architect as well as writer in that department. he had frequent invitations from italian princes and lords, and even from germany, where he painted along with lanzani in the palace of prince eugene of savoy. many of his pictures, conducted in perspective for noble bolognese families, still remain, and are held as models of a sound and true taste, imitating the ancient colouring and design, without giving admission to certain marbles, which appear like gems, but please only the inexperienced. from chiarini's manner was derived that of pietro paltronieri, universally known under the name of the _mirandolese dalle prospettive_. he was the viviano of this latter age, and his architectural pieces on the ancient model are met with, not only in bologna, where he resided, but in rome, where he long continued, and in a number of other cities. they consist of arches, fountains, aqueducts, temples, ruins, tinged with a certain reddish colour, which serves to distinguish them among many others. to these he adds skies, fields, and waters, which appear real; nor do they want appropriate figures, introduced by graziani and other select young artists at bologna. we must not confound mirandolese with perracini, also known in bologna by the name of mirandolese, who flourished at the same period, but with no sort of reputation beyond that of a tolerable figurist. the school of cignani increased that of the perspective painters. it first presented them with tommaso aldrovandini, nephew to mauro; both of whom accompanied cignani's figures in the public palace of forli. tommaso was employed with cignani himself at bologna and parma. conforming himself, under the eye of this celebrated master, to his best style, he so far succeeded, that the whole appears the work of carlo alone, more especially in the chiaroscuro. his ornamental portion, too, is there conducted so that neither the precise extent of the light, nor of the shade, is apparent, but only an effect resulting from them, as we see it in nature. he executed the architectural ornaments in the grand hall of genoa, painted, as we have said, by franceschini; and he left other works in that capital. it was his invariable custom to modify his style, alternately soft or strong, in the manner of the figurist. he instructed in the art pompeo, son of mauro, and his cousin, who, after having displayed some specimens at turin, vienna, dresden, and in many other foreign cities, resided, and died at rome, with the reputation of a very elegant artist. from the school of pompeo sprung two ornamental painters, gioseffo orsoni, and stefano orlandi, who, in conjunction, painted some able frescos in various italian cities, besides many theatrical pieces for the same places. whatever splendor of ornament may have been conferred upon the theatre by the aldrovandini family, so greatly devoted to it; that of the galli, in the present age, sprung from gio. maria, pupil to albani, surnamed, from his country, bibiena, has acquired still greater celebrity. by the same surname were distinguished ferdinando and francesco, his sons, with their posterity; nor has any pictoric family, either in this or any other age, advanced higher claims to public notice. there was hardly any court that invited not some of the bibieni into its service; nor was any sphere more eligible for that family than the great courts, whose sovereign dignity was equalled by the elevation of their ideas, which only princely power could carry into execution. the festivals which they directed on the occasion of victories, of nuptials, or of royal entrances, were the most sumptuous that europe ever witnessed. the genius of ferdinando, formed for architecture, and for this reason wholly directed to it by cignani, attained such excellence, that he was enabled to teach it, in a volume which he printed at parma. he afterwards corrected some parts of it, in two little volumes published at bologna; the one upon civil architecture, the other on the theory of perspective. indeed, his genius and works gave new form and character to the theatres. he was the real inventor of those magnificent scenes which we now witness, and of that rapid mechanic motion with which they are seen to move and change. he spent great part of his life in the duke of parma's service; a good deal at milan, and at vienna, in the court of charles vi.; always more esteemed as an architect than as a painter. but here, too, he shone, not only in colouring scenes, and similar productions for public festivals; but in perspectives for palaces and temples, more particularly for the state of parma. francesco, less learned, but an equally prompt and elevated designer, pursued the same line, and extended it in different cities, being invited to genoa, naples, mantua, verona, and rome, at which last he remained three years. he entered the service of the emperors leopold and joseph, who changed his resolution of proceeding to england, and subsequently to spain, where philip v. had already declared him his architect. in different collections the perspective pieces of the two brothers appear; and they are occasionally enlivened with figures by the hand of francesco, who acquired his knowledge from pasinelli and cignani, instances of which i have seen in different collections at bologna. ferdinando had a numerous family, of whose members we shall mention alessandro, antonio, and giuseppe; not because equal to their predecessors, but as being versed in the practice of their manner, both in oil and fresco; and on this account eagerly sought after by the different courts of europe. the first entered into the service of the elector palatine, in which he terminated his days. the second was much employed at vienna and in hungary. on returning into italy, too, he still removed from place to place, being retained by all the first cities in tuscany; and still more in lombardy, until the period of his death, which occurred at milan. he was an artist more admired for his facility of genius than for his correctness. giuseppe, who, on his father's departure from vienna on account of illness, was substituted architect and painter of court festivals in his twentieth year, afterwards left that city for dresden, where he enjoyed the same office, and, after the lapse of many years, also at berlin. he was invariably patronised by princes, who gave him regular salaries; and by other members of the empire, who engaged him, at the moment, to adorn their festivals and theatres. his son carlo pursued the same career, being pensioned first by the margrave of bareith, and afterwards by the king of prussia, as successor to his father; but he acquired greater reputation in foreign countries. for, germany becoming involved in war, he took occasion to make the tour of france, proceeding through flanders and holland, and visiting rome on his return into italy. last of all he made a voyage into england, and at the court of london rejected very advantageous offers to take up his residence in that city. many of the decorations invented by giuseppe and carlo, on occasion of public festivals, have been engraved from their designs, in the production of which they were equally rapid, masterly, and refined. where the bibieni had failed in introducing their novel inventions for grand spectacles, their disciples finally succeeded. in this list, according to the history of zanotti and of crespi, the most eminent rank is held by domenico francia, once the assistant of ferdinando at vienna, afterwards architect and painter to the king of sweden. after his term with that court had elapsed, he visited portugal, and again proceeded to italy and germany, till his arrival in his native place, where he died. to him we may add the name of vittorio bigari, mentioned in high terms by zanotti, an artist employed by different sovereigns of europe, and the father of three sons, who pursued the same career. he also displayed singular merit in his figures. nor must we omit serafino brizzi, who obtained equal reputation for his perspectives in oil interspersed both throughout foreign and native cities. it would form, however, an undertaking no way adapted to a compendious history, to collect the names of all the professors of so extended an art; and the more so as, in the course of the present age, it was becoming the general opinion that in many respects such art was greatly on the decline, owing to the prevalence of only middling and inferior artificers. not many years ago, however, it seemed to revive, and a new epoch opened upon the public, the praise of which is due to mauro tesi, to whom his friends raised a marble monument in s. petronio, with a bust and the following inscription: "mauro tesi elegantiæ veteris in pingendo ornatu et architectura restitutori." he belonged to the state of modena, and, when young, was put to the school of a very poor painter of arms in bologna. thus it was his lot, writes algarotti, to have had not a single master of architecture among the moderns. by means of a peculiar natural genius, and studying the designs of mitelli and colonna, examining at the same time their models throughout the city, he re-conducted the art to a style, solid in architecture, sparing in decoration, as it had formerly been, and in some parts still more philosophical and learned. his patron, the excellent count algarotti, assisted in perfecting his taste, and made him his companion on his tours, encouraging him to make very excellent observations on the works of the ancients. whoever has perused his life and publications, a fine edition of which appeared at venice, edited by the learned aglietti, will have perceived that he was as much attached to tesi as if he had been his own son. nor did tesi shew less respect to algarotti than to a father; and when the latter went to pisa for his health, his young friend devoted himself so assiduously to him, as to contract the same disease, of which he died two years afterwards, still very young, at bologna. here he left various works, the most conspicuous consisting of a gallery belonging to the deceased marquis zambeccari, with marbles, camei, and figures, very well executed; a picture displaying grand relief combined with the most finished exactness. in tuscany also are some remains of his taste, at s. spirito in pistoia, and in the hall of the marquis gerini at florence. i saw, too, in possession of the count's heirs at venice, two pictures, conceived by algarotti and painted by mauro. one of these, which he has described (vol. vi. p. ) represents a temple of serapis, decorated in the egyptian manner, with bassi-relievi and pyramids in the distance; fit to adorn the choicest cabinet. it is enriched with figures by zuccherelli, in the same way as tiepolo added them to tesi's other pieces. there are engravings of some of mauro's works in possession of the same nobles, as well as his whole studio of designs, landscapes, views of architecture, capitals, friezes, figures; a rich and copious assemblage of materials, almost superfluous in so short but bright a career. after mauro, no greater proofs of esteem in this art were shewn by algarotti to any one than to gaspero pesci, to whom he directed a number of his letters; of him too algarotti's heirs possess two pictures, consisting of ancient architecture, with slight sketches of figures, scarcely indicated. but at length we approach a conclusion. the bolognese academy still continues to flourish in pristine vigour; the aids afforded to the pupils have even been extended; and, in addition to the academical prizes, there are dispensed others, which the noble families marsili and aldrovandi established at stated meetings, and which still go by their name. i cannot, however, as in other schools, record very splendid remunerations to the masters. but this forms the more rare and distinguished honour of the bolognese artists--to labour for distinction, and to confer their preceptorial services in the arts and sciences upon their country, not only without reward, but even to their own loss, a subject fully treated of by crespi (pp. , ) in his _felsina_. notwithstanding these disadvantages they have continued to maintain, during two centuries, the character of masters in the art. from the time the caracci first spoke, almost every other school listened and was silent. their disciples followed, divided into a variety of sects; and these continued, for a long period, to hold sway in italy. the reputation of the figurists being somewhat on the decline, a substitute sprang up in the decorative and perspective painters, who established laws, and produced examples, still eagerly imitated both in italy and other parts. neither the bibieni, the tesi, nor the others whom i have mentioned towards the close, are so exclusively entitled to historical consideration, but that the gandolfi[ ] family, with several others, which have either recently become extinct, or still flourish, may claim a share. doubtless these will not be in want of deserved eulogy from other pens, that will successively follow mine. footnote : previous to the present edition, gaetano gandolfi breathed his last; ubaldo, his elder brother, having already preceded him to the tomb, at the time he was preparing to decorate the cupola of s. vitale in ravenna. ubaldo had been pupil to torelli, to graziani, and in particular under lelli had exercised his talents in drawing successfully from the naked model, and to such a foundation added dignity of style. of this, several works in painting conducted with extreme care, as well as some in clay and stucco, at bologna, and other places in romagna, are the proof. but to judge more particularly of his merits, we ought to examine his academical designs. in his ideas he was common, and not very natural in his colouring, and generally considered on this account inferior to his brother gaetano, who was esteemed in italy one of the most able artists of his day. bologna, always grateful to its eminent citizens, expressed at his decease the degree of esteem in which he was held while living. his obsequies, of which a separate account was published in folio, equal what we read in malvasia respecting those of agostino caracci; and the oration there recited in his praise by sig. grilli, deserves insertion in any of the most select works written on the art. there too, gandolfi, very judiciously, is not held up as a model in painting; a forbearance which he himself displayed, even refusing to receive pupils, and observing that he was himself in want of instruction. yet from the influence of his great reputation he was frequently imitated, and, as it happened, with most success in his worst qualities, more particularly in his tints. in this respect he had been ill grounded by his elder brother; but improved himself by studying for the space of a year at the fountain head of colourists, in venice, and by copying for a venetian dilettante the finest pieces of the caracci at bologna. it is difficult to account for his fine colouring in some paintings, equal at least to the good artists of his time, and his inferior colouring in others, as that of the death of socrates, at monsig. trenta's, bishop of foligno. it is feeble and deficient in truth, owing either to caprice or to age. in his preparations of paintings he was more commendable: his first conceptions were sketched on slate with pencil, and more carefully on paper. he next began to select; modelled the figures in chalk, and draped them; afterwards forming the design on a large scale, and by aid of his experiments, and of the living model, he went on completing and retouching his work. he has been accused of borrowing a little too freely from ancient models; but whoever had seen him, aged as he was, devoting himself in the public academy to the practice of modelling, will not unjustly confound him with those plagiarists, so notorious in our own day. moreover, he may be pronounced inimitable to most artists, in those rare gifts, which nature had lavished upon him: enthusiasm, fertility of invention, sensibility, and skill in depicting the passions; to which he added a correct eye, and ability both to design and compose, in the decoration of friezes for the institute, exotic plants and other rarities of nature, as well as to engrave with much elegance, and skill to paint in oil as well as in fresco. a really impartial biographer must pass his opinion on every man, and let his verdict result from an examination of his masterpieces. such belonging to gandolfi are his assumption, in the ceiling at s. m. della vita, and the nuptials of cana, at the refectory of s. salvatore in bologna; not to insist on the martyrdom of s. pantaleone, at the church of the girolimini in naples, with some other works scattered through various parts of italy. book iv. school of ferrara. epoch i. _the ancients._ ferrara, once the capital of a small principality under the dukes of este, but, since the year , reduced into a legation, dependant upon the see of rome, lays claim to a series of excellent artists, greatly superior to its power and population. this, however, will appear less extraordinary, if we call to mind the number of its illustrious poets, commencing even before the time of boiardo and ariosto, and continued down to our own days; a sure indication of national genius, equally fervid, elegant, and inventive, adapted, more than common, to the cultivation of the agreeable arts. added to this felicity of disposition was the good taste prevalent in the city, which, in its distribution of public labours, or its approbation of their results, was directed by learned and enlightened men, of whom it could boast in every department. thus the artists have in general observed appropriate costume, kept their attention on history, and composed in such a manner that a classical eye, particularly in their paintings in the ducal palaces, recognizes the image of that antiquity of which it has previously obtained a knowledge from books. the conveniences of its site, also, have been favourable to the progress of painting at ferrara; which, situated near venice, parma, and bologna, not far from florence, and at no very great distance from rome itself, has afforded facility to its students for selecting from the italian schools what was most conformable to the peculiar genius of each. hence the origin of so many beautiful manners as adorn this school; some imitating only one classic master, others composed of various styles; so that giampietro zanotti was in doubt whether, after the five leading schools of italy, that of ferrara did not surpass every other. it is not my purpose to decide the question, nor could it be done without giving offence to one or other of the parties. i shall here only attempt a brief history of this school upon the same plan as the rest; and i shall include a few artists of romagna, agreeably to my promise in the preceding book, or, to speak more correctly, in its introduction. the most valuable information which i have to insert will be extracted from a precious ms. communicated to me by the ab. morelli, the distinguished ornament of his age and country, no less than of the learned office he fills.[ ] this ms. contains the lives of ferrarese professors of the fine arts, written by doctor girolamo baruffaldi, first a canon of ferrara, next archpriest of cento. to these is prefixed a laboured preface by pierfrancesco zanotti, with copious emendations and notes by the canon crespi. such a work, drawn up by this polished writer, and thus approved, continued, and illustrated by two men of the profession, was long a desideratum in italy; nor do i know why it never made its appearance. a specimen, indeed, was given by bottari, at the end of his life of alfonso lombardi, in the course of which he inserted the life of galasso, and of a few other artists of ferrara. moreover, in the fourth volume of the "lettere pittoriche," he published a letter of the deceased can. antenore scalabrini, relating to baruffaldi's ms., which underwent this noble ecclesiastic's corrections, communicated by him to crespi, who inserted them in his annotations. baruffaldi, also, having commenced the lives of the artists of cento, and of lower romagna, a work left unfinished, crespi supplied all it wanted; and it has been mentioned by us in the school of guercino, and among some artists who flourished at ravenna and other cities of romagna. cittadella, author of the "catalogue of ferrarese painters and sculptors," (edited in , in vols.) declares that he drew his chief information from baruffaldi, (vol. iii. p. ). he complains, however, in the preface, that a more correct work being either destroyed or lost, (alluding probably to this work with crespi's notes), "he has not been in possession of such undoubted authorities as might be desired;" a very candid admission, fully entitled to credit. but this work having come into my possession, through the courtesy of my learned friend, i shall avail myself of it for public information. on such authority i shall freely ground this part of my history, adding notices drawn from other sources, and not unfrequently from the guide of ferrara, published by the learned frizzi, in ; a work that may be included among the best yet given to italy. so much we state by way of exordium. footnote : that of head librarian at st. mark's. the ferrarese school took its twin origin, so to say, with that of venice, if we may credit a monumental testimony, cited by dr. ferrante borsetti, in his work called "historia almi ferrariensis gymnasii," published in . this memorial was extracted from an ancient codex of virgil, written in ; which, according to baruffaldi, passed from the library of the carmelites at ferrara, into the possession of the counts alvarotti at padua, whose books, in course of time, were added to the library of the paduan seminary. at the end of this codex is read the name of gio. alighieri, the miniaturist of this volume; and in the last page there had afterwards been added, in the ancient vulgar tongue, the following memorial:--that in , azzo d'este, first lord of ferrara, committed to one gelasio di niccolo, a painting of the fall of phaeton; and from him too filippo, bishop of ferrara, ordered an image of our lady, and an ensign of st. george, which was used in going to meet tiepolo, when he was despatched by the venetian republic as ambassador to ferrara. gelasio is there stated to belong to the district of st. george, and to have been pupil in venice to teofane of constantinople, which induced zanetti to place this greek at the head of the masters of his school. on the authority of so many learned men, to whom such memorial appeared genuine, i am led to give it credit; although it contains some marks that, at first sight, appear suspicious. i have further made inquiries after it in the paduan seminary, but it is not to be found there. approaching the fourteenth century, i find mention, that whilst giotto was returning from verona into tuscany, "he was compelled to stop at ferrara, and paint in the service of these lords of este, at their palace; also some pieces at s. agostino, which are still there;" that is, in vasari's time, from whom these words are cited. i am uncertain whether any yet exist; but they afford sufficient authority to believe that the ferrarese school, directed by such models, revived in an equal degree with the other schools of italy. there are no accounts of the artists who flourished nearest to giotto, from which we may judge how far they were influenced by his manner. his successors, however, must have been one rambaldo and one laudadio, who, about , are recorded, in the annals of marano, to have painted in the church of the servi. this is now demolished, nor does there exist any account of the style of these painters. as early as appeared paintings in fresco in the monastery of s. antonio, by an unknown hand, and also retouched, but of whose style i find no indication. in the bolognese school i treated of one cristoforo, who painted about the same time, at the church of mezzaratta; but as it is a disputed question whether he belonged to ferrara or to modena, nothing certain can be concluded as to his manner. thus the history of letters affords us some degree of light, up to the opening of the fifteenth century; but the history of existing monuments only dates from galasso galassi, an undoubted ferrarese, who flourished subsequent to the year , when even in florence the giottesque style had begun to decline in favour of more recent artists. the master of this artist is unknown; nor can i easily suppose, with some, that he was educated at bologna. i found my objection upon an observation made upon galasso's pictures, mentioned by us in the church of mezzaratta at bologna, and obvious to all. they consist of histories of the passion, signed by the author's name; and, if i mistake not, they are wholly opposed to the style of all other pieces in the same place. the character of the heads is well studied for that period, the beards and hair more in disorder than in any other old painter i have seen; the hands small, and fingers widely detached from each other; and, in the whole, something peculiar and novel, apparently not derived from the bolognese, from the venetians, nor from the florentines. i conjecture, then, that he acquired this style of design when young, and introduced it from his native place; the more so, as this production appearing in , according to baruffaldi, must have formed one of his earliest specimens at bologna. he afterwards remained there many years, though i cannot think the date , said to be attached to one of his histories, genuine; and, if there, it must have been added subsequently; but other proofs are not wanting of his permanent residence. for he there took the portrait of niccolo aretino, the sculptor, who died in , as we are assured by vasari; and on other authority, he produced some altar-pieces, one of which yet exists at s. maria delle rondini. it represents the virgin sitting among various saints, and boasts, says crespi, a depth of colouring, combined with architecture, countenances, and drapery not ill designed. he has also a nunziata, in the malvezzi museum, a picture displaying ancient design, but well finished and of soft colouring. his best piece was a history in fresco, representing the obsequies of the virgin, conducted by order of the card. bessarion, bolognese legate, at s. maria del monte, in ; a work much admired by crespi, in whose time it was destroyed. from similar facts, added to the commendations bestowed on galasso by leandro alberti, i conclude that he must have obtained much reputation in the above city. he died in his native place, in what precise year is uncertain. vasari treats of him at length in his first edition, but in the second he is dismissed with a few lines. hence the ferrarese also have directed against him the same complaints as the other schools. in the time of galasso flourished antonio da ferrara, a disciple of the florentines. vasari bestows on him a short eulogy, among the pupils of angiolo gaddi; observing that he "produced many fine works at s. francesco d'urbino, and at città di castello." treating too of timoteo della vite, born at urbino, the son of calliope, daughter of mastro antonio alberto da ferrara, he adds, that this last artist was "a very fair painter for his age, such as his works at urbino and elsewhere declare him." nothing undoubted now remains of him; if, indeed, a picture on gold ground in the sacristy at s. bartolommeo, representing the acts of the holy apostle, with others of the baptist, in small figures, is not from his hand. the work doubtless belongs to that age; bearing much resemblance to angiolo, with colours even more soft and warm. in ferrara he left nothing that now survives; the chambers which he painted for alberto d'este, marquis of ferrara, in his palace, afterwards changed into a public studio, being destroyed. this work was conducted about , when the general council for the reunion of the greeks was opened at ferrara, in the presence of pope eugenius iv., and john paleologus, the emperor. the marquis ordered antonio to represent this grand assembly on different walls, with the likenesses of full size of the principal personages then present. in other apartments he exhibited the glory of the blessed, which conferred on that place the name it still bears, of the palace of paradise. from a few relics of this work it may with certainty be deduced, that this artist displayed greater beauty in his heads, more softness of colouring, more variety in the attitude of his figures, than galasso. orlandi calls him antonio da ferrara, adding, that he flourished about the year ; a term of life too protracted for us to venture here to confirm. towards the middle of the fifteenth century appeared bartolommeo vaccarini, whose paintings, signed with the artist's name, baruffaldi declares that he himself had seen. there was also oliviero da s. giovanni, a fresco painter, whose madonnas were then by no means rare in the city. to these we may add ettore bonacossa, painter of that holy image of our lady called del duomo, which not long ago was solemnly crowned, at the foot of which is read the name of ettore, and the year . still they were only artists of mediocrity; but others attained greater celebrity, having modernized their style in some degree, after the example, as i incline to think, of two foreigners. one of these was pier della francesca, invited to ferrara to paint in the palace of schivanoia by niccolo d'este, as it is conjectured in a note to baruffaldi. surprised by sickness, he was unable to complete the work, but he painted there a few apartments, which yet remain as a model for young artists. the other was squarcione, who also, in the days of niccolo d'este and his son borso, opened a school in padua; whose manner had followers without number throughout italy, and must have influenced the ferrarese artists; distant, perhaps, two days' journey from padua. possessing such means appeared cosimo tura, whom vasari and other historians term cosmè, and give him as pupil to galasso. he was court-painter in the time of borso d'este and tito strozzi, who left a poetic eulogy upon him. his style is dry and humble, as was customary in that age, still far removed from true dignity and softness. the figures are treated in the style of mantegna, the muscles clearly expressed, the architecture drawn with care, the bassi-relievi highly ornamented, and laboured in the most minute and exact taste. this is remarkable in his miniatures, which are pointed out to foreigners in the choral books of the cathedral and the certosa, as extreme rarities. nor does he vary in his oil paintings; as in his presepio, in the sacristy of the cathedral; the acts of s. eustace, in the monastery of s. guglielmo; various saints surrounding the virgin, in the church of s. giovanni. in his larger figures he is not so much commended; though baruffaldi speaks highly of his works in fresco, in the forementioned palace of schivanoia. the design was distributed into twelve compartments, in a grand hall; and it might well be entitled a small poetic series, representing the exploits of borso. in each picture was included a month in the year, which was scientifically indicated with astronomical symbols and classical deities, adapted to each; an idea very probably borrowed from the saloon at padua. in each month, too, was introduced the prince in his usual employment at such season; in the judgment-hall, in the chase, at spectacles, with great variety of circumstances, and full of poetry in the execution. there was also an artist of considerable merit named stefano da ferrara, pupil to squarcione, and recorded by vasari, in the life of mantegna, as a painter of few pieces, among which were the miracles of s. antonio painted round the ark. though vasari describes his works only as tolerable, it must be observed that he was considerably above mediocrity, at least in the smaller figures; since michele savonarola (de laud. patavii, . i.) says of the specimens before mentioned, that they seemed to move, while the dignity and importance of the place in which he painted conveys a high idea of his reputation. this work is lost; but there remains in the same temple a half-figure of the virgin, which vasari attributes to stefano; and in the church of the madonnina at ferrara is one of his altar-pieces of s. rocco, in a good manner. baruffaldi supposes that he flourished till about , when he found mention of the death of one stefano falsagalloni, a painter; an age very likely to be correct, when speaking of a contemporary of mantegna. on the other side, there is cited an altar-piece at s. maria in vado, executed in , but which might possibly come from the hand of another stefano. however it be respecting this epoch, certain it is, that towards the beginning of the sixteenth century ferrara was in no want of celebrated artists; since vasari, as we have observed in the bolognese school, affirms that gio. bentivoglio caused his palace to be decorated "by various ferrarese masters," besides those of modena and of bologna. among these he included francia, on whom, about , he confers the name of "a new painter." in the list of artists of ferrara i included lorenzo costa; and from the circumstance of francia being then a "new painter," and other reasons, i drew an argument against the received opinion that costa was the pupil of francia; which, therefore, i shall not here repeat. i must not, however, omit other information respecting him, as connected with ferrara, where he resided before coming into notice at bologna. at court, as well as for private individuals, he there conducted pictures and portraits, with other works "held in much esteem;" and at the padri di s. domenico he painted the whole choir, now long since destroyed; where "we recognise the care which he used in the art, and how much study he bestowed upon his works." these, i believe, and other pieces conducted at ravenna, acquired him reputation at bologna, and disposed the bentivogli to avail themselves of his talents. it remains to discover on which of the ferrarese artists who attended him, such commission was conferred. cosmè and stefano were then living; but it is known that more closely connected than these with the bentivogli, was cossa of ferrara, a painter almost forgotten in his native place, from having resided so long at bologna. some of his pieces are still there, consisting of madonnas, seated between saints and angels, with tolerably good architecture. one of these, bearing his name, and date of , is now in the institute, vulgar in point of features and but middling in colouring. this, however, is not his best specimen, there being two portraits of the bentivogli, (one at the church of the baracano, the other in the merchants' palace,) from which i should conjecture that he is one of those artists of whom we are in search. nor, at this time, is there any other ferrarese artist whom i can add to him, besides baldassare estense, some of whose pictures, signed by himself, are cited by baruffaldi; and in museums are some of his medals, two, more particularly, in honour of ercole d'este, duke of ferrara, very ably executed in the year . on the subject of first rate artists i am often constrained to introduce notices in different places; in particular, when they were employed in some cities, and in others became heads of schools. such was costa in respect to ferrara. he formed pupils for other schools; as one gio. borghese, from messina, and a nicoluccio calabrese, who, apprehending that he was caricatured in one of costa's productions, fiercely assaulted, and almost despatched him with his dagger. i pass over others ascribed to him by orlandi, bottari, and baruffaldi; in which they are mistaken, as i remarked in the school of bologna, when treating of francia. the ferrarese constitute his real honour; costa being here what bellini was at venice, and francia at bologna, the founder of a great school, and a public teacher. some of his pupils competed with the best artists of the fourteenth century; and part approached the splendor of the golden age. we shall review the whole series, which, commencing at this period, and continuing to the following epoch, gives him a claim to a primary station among the masters of italy. all his disciples became excellent designers and noble colourists, transmitting both these qualities to their successors. their tints exhibit a peculiar kind of strength, or, as a great connoisseur used to express it, of fire and ardour, which often serves to characterize them in collections; a quality not so much derived from costa as from some other masters. ercole grandi, called by vasari, in his life, ercole da ferrara, became an abler designer than his master costa, and is greatly preferred to him by the historian. such too i believe to have been the public opinion from the period when grandi was employed with costa at bologna, in preference to whom he was invited to different places to paint alone. but his affection for his master, and his own modesty, led him to reject every advantageous offer; so that when costa went to mantua, he would have followed, had he been permitted so to do. lorenzo, however, could no longer brook a disciple who already surpassed him; owing to which, and the necessity of completing the painting he had begun in the garganelli chapel at st. peter's, he left grandi in his stead at bologna. ercole there produced a work which albano pronounced equal to mantegna, to pietro perugino, or any artist who professed the modern antique style; nor perhaps did any boast a touch altogether so soft, harmonious, and refined. he painted to advance the art, and spared neither time nor expense to attain his object, employing seven years on his fresco histories at st. peter's; and five more in retouching them when dry. this was only at occasional intervals, employing himself at the same period in other works, sometimes at, and sometimes out of bologna. he would even have continued to render his work more perfect, had it not been for the jealousy of some artists in the city, who nightly robbed him of his designs and cartoons, which so greatly incensed him that he abandoned his labours, and bologna itself. such is the account of baruffaldi, and it agrees with the invidious character of certain artists of that period, drawn by vasari, who in this respect also drew down upon himself the indignation of malvasia. in the chapel of garganelli ercole painted, on one side, the death of the virgin, and on the other the crucifixion of christ; nor did he produce in such a variety any one head like another. he also added a novelty in his draperies, a knowledge of foreshortening, an expression of passionate grief, "such," says vasari, "as can scarcely be conceived." the soldiers "are finely executed, with the most natural and appropriate action that any figures up to that time had displayed." many years ago, when this chapel was taken down, as much as possible of ercole's painting was preserved, and placed in the wall of the tanara palace, where it may still be seen. it is indeed his masterpiece, and one of the most excellent that appeared in italy during his times, in which the artist seemed to have revived the example of isocrates, who devoted so many years to the polish of his celebrated panegyric. there is little else of his remaining at bologna; but at s. paolo in ferrara is a genuine altar-piece, and nothing more in public. some other of his works are preserved in the church of porto in ravenna, and some pictures in the public palace at cesena. he has some specimens in foreign galleries; two of his pictures are at dresden, a few others at rome and florence; though frequently his name has been usurped by that of another painter, ercole not having enjoyed the celebrity which he deserved. thus his picture of the woman taken in adultery, used to be pointed out in the pitti palace for a work of mantegna. for the rest, his paintings are extremely rare, as he did not survive beyond his fortieth year, during which period he painted with the caution of a modest scholar, more than with the freedom of a master. lodovico mazzolini is not to be confounded with the mazzolino mentioned by lomazzo in his "idea of the temple or theatre of painting;" thus entitling francesco mazzuola, as if in sport. mazzolini of ferrara was transformed by vasari into malini, by a florentine writer into marzolini, and by others divided into two, so as to become a duplicate, and answer for two painters--one malini, another mazzolini; both of ferrara, and pupils to the same costa. to crown his misfortunes, he was not sufficiently known to baruffaldi himself, who described him as "no despicable scholar of costa," having probably seen only some of his more feeble efforts. he did not excel in large figures, but possessed very rare merit in those on a smaller scale. at s. francesco in bologna is one of his altar-pieces, the child jesus disputing in the temple; to which is added a small history of his birth. it was admired by baldassare da siena; and lamo, in his ms. often before cited, describes it as an excellent production; but this piece was retouched by cesi. other little pictures, and among these the duplicates of his histories already recorded, are to be seen at rome in the aldobrandini gallery, presented, perhaps, as a legacy by the cardinal alessandro, who in mazzolini's time was legate at ferrara. other pieces are at the campidoglio, formerly belonging to card. pio, as i gather from a note of mons. bottari. from such specimens, in considerable number and genuine, we may form an idea of mazzolini's manner, which baruffaldi laments should continue to be one nearly unknown to the dilettanti. it displays an incredible degree of finish; sometimes appearing in his smallest pictures like miniature; while not only the figures, but the landscape, the architecture, and the bassi-relievi, are most carefully executed. there is a spirit and clearness in his heads, to which few of his contemporaries could attain; though they are wholly taken from life, and not remarkably select; in particular those of his old men, which in the wrinkles and the nose sometimes border on caricature. the colour is of a deep tone, in the style before mentioned; not so soft as that of ercole; with the addition of some gilding even in the drapery, but sparingly applied. in some collections his name has been confounded with that of gaudenzio ferrari, perhaps derived by mistake from lodovico da ferrara. thus, in the royal gallery at florence, a little picture of the virgin and holy child, to whom s. anna is seen presenting fruits, with figures of s. giovacchino and another saint, has been attributed to ferrari. but it is the work of mazzolini, if i do not deceive myself, after the comparison made with others examined at rome. from the resemblance of his style to costa, and even superior in the heads, it is conjectured that michele coltellini sprung from the same school. some specimens of his works are recorded in the church and convent of the pp. agostiniani of lombardy, two of which yet remain in existence; one an altar-piece at the church, in the usual composition of the fourteenth century, and in the refectory a s. monica with four female saints belonging to that order. the date inscribed, together with his name, on an altar-piece, informs us that he was still living in the year . it is uncertain in what school domenico panetti received his education; but i know that his works, during several years, appear only feeble efforts. his former pupil, garofolo, however, returning subsequently from rome, after acquiring the new style under raffaello, he received his old master, panetti, as a pupil, and so greatly improved him as to render his latter works worthy of competition with the best masters of the fourteenth century. such is his st. andrew, at the agostiniani, just before recorded, in which he displays not only accuracy, but, what is far more rare for his times, a dignified and majestic manner. the artist's name, which is affixed, with several other works conducted in the same taste (one of which is now seen in dresden) bear evidence of a change in pictoric character without example. gio. bellini and pietro perugino, indeed, improved themselves upon the models of their disciples, but they had previously attained the rank of eminent masters, which cannot be averred of panetti. vasari relates that garofolo was pupil to domenico lanero, in ferrara; an error resembling that of orlandi, who terms him lanetti, and all these are the same individual domenico panetti. he flourished some years during the sixteenth century, in the same manner as the two codi, and the three cotignoli, who though belonging to lower romagna, having flourished abroad, have been included in the school of bologna, or in its adjacent places. a few others, known only by their names, such as alessandro carpi, or cesare testa, may be sought for in the work of cittadella. school of ferrara. epoch ii. _artists of ferrara, from the time of alfonso i. till alfonso ii., last of the este family in ferrara, who emulate the best italian styles._ the most flourishing epoch of the ferrarese school dates its commencement from the first decades of the sixteenth century. it traces its source to two brothers named dossi, and to benvenuto da garofolo, or, more correctly perhaps, to duke alfonso d'este, who employed them in his service, so as to retain them in their native place, where they might form pupils worthy of themselves. this prince, whose memory has been embalmed by so many distinguished poets, was peculiarly attached to the fine arts. in his court titian painted, and ariosto conferred with him upon the subjects of his pencil, as we learn from ridolfi in the life of titian himself. this was subsequent to the year , when gian bellini, already old, left in an unfinished state his noble work of the bacchanals, which has long decorated the aldobrandini gallery at rome; and when titian was called upon to complete it. he likewise conducted various paintings in fresco, which still remain in a small chamber, in the palace of ferrara; besides others in oil, such as portraits of the duke and duchess, and his celebrated cristo della moneta, which we have extolled for one of his most studied productions. pellegrino da s. danielle, another pupil of gian bellini, but not to compare with titian, though not inferior to many of the same school, was retained and honoured by the same court, where he left a few works,[ ] of which there remains no account, or confounded, perhaps, with those of dosso, an artist of much celebrity, and of various styles, at the same court, as we now proceed to shew. footnote : see renaldis, p. . assisted by such models, the talents of dosso dossi, and of his brother, gio. batista, born at dosso, a place near ferrara, may have been considerably improved. they were, first, pupils to costa, and afterwards, says baruffaldi, resided six years at rome, and five in venice, devoting themselves to the study of the best masters, and drawing portraits from life. by such means they formed their peculiar character, but of different kinds. dosso succeeded admirably in figures, while gio. batista was perhaps below mediocrity. still he aimed at them; sometimes even in spite of his brother's remonstrances, with whom he lived at continual variance, though unable to separate from him by command of the prince who gave him as his brother's assistant. he was thus like a slave at the oar, ever drudging against his will; and when obliged to consult respecting their common labours, he wrote what suggested itself, refusing to communicate by word of mouth. envious and spiteful in his mind, he was equally deformed in person, expressing as it were the picture of his internal malignity. his real talent lay in ornamenting, and still more in landscape, a branch in which, according to lomazzo, he was inferior neither to lotto, to gaudenzio, to giorgione, nor to titian. there remain some specimens of his friezes in the palace of the legation, and in still better preservation some works noticed by baruffaldi at the villa of belriguardo. the two brothers obtained constant employment at alfonso's court, and subsequently from ercole ii. they, likewise, composed the cartoons for the tapestries at the cathedral of ferrara, and for those which are in modena, part at s. francesco and part at the ducal palace, representing various exploits of the esti. how far vasari may be entitled to credit in his account of ercole's invitation of pordenone to compose cartoons for his tapestries, there being no good figurists at ferrara for "themes of war," it is difficult to decide. he adds, that pordenone died there, shortly after his arrival, in , as was reported, by poison. this assertion, by no means flattering to the dossi who then flourished, has not been noticed, i believe, by any ferrarese writers, who else would, doubtless, have defended their reputation by citing the exploits of arms figured in a variety of tapestries. on other points, indeed, this has been done, particularly in regard to their paintings, which decorated a chamber of the imperiale, a villa belonging to the dukes of urbino. it is observed by vasari, that "the work was conducted in an absurd style, and they departed from the duke francesco maria's court in disgrace, who was compelled to destroy all they had executed, and cause the whole to be repainted from designs by genga." the answer made to this is, that the destruction of that work was owing to the jealousy of their competitors, and still more "to the policy of that prince, who did not wish his artists of urbino surpassed by those of ferrara." these are the words of valesio, from malvasia, (vol. ii. p. ) though i believe that too much deference was paid to valesio in adopting such an excuse; as it seems inconsistent with the judgment and taste of the prince to suppose him capable of this species of barbarism, and from the motive which is adduced. i rather apprehend that the work must have failed by the fault of gio. batista, who, dissatisfied with his allotted grotesques and landscapes, insisted on shining as a figurist. there is a similar example in a court-yard of ferrara, where he inserted some figures against dosso's wishes, and acquitted himself ill. for the rest, a much better defence of their talents was made by ariosto. for he not merely availed himself of dosso's talents to draw his own portrait, and the arguments to the cantos of his furioso, but has immortalized both his and his brother's name, along with the most eminent italian painters when he wrote, "leonardo, andrea mantegna, e gian bellino, duo dossi;" names which are followed by those of michelangiolo, raffaello, tiziano, and sebastiano del piombo. such commendation was not a mere tribute to friendship, but to dosso's merit, always highly extolled likewise by foreigners. his most distinguished works are now perhaps at dresden, which boasts seven of them, and in particular the altar-piece of the four doctors of the church, one of his most celebrated pieces. his st. john in patmos is at the lateranensi in ferrara; the head, free from any retouching, is a masterpiece of expression, and acknowledged by cochin himself to be highly raffaellesque. but his most admired production was at the domenicani of faenza, where there is now a copy, the original having been removed on account of its decay. it exhibits christ disputing among the doctors; the attitudes so naturally expressive of surprise, and the features and draperies so well varied, as to appear admirable even in the copy. there is a little picture on the same subject in the campidoglio, formerly belonging to card. pio of ferrara, full of life, polish, and coloured with most tasteful and mellow tints. by the same hand i have seen several "conversazioni" in the casa sampieri at bologna, and a few holy families in other collections, one in possession of sig. cav. acqua at osimo. in pictoric works i sometimes find him compared with raffaello, sometimes with titian or coreggio; and certainly he has the gracefulness, the tints, and chiaroscuro of a great master. he retains, however, more of the old style than these artists, and boasts a design and drapery which attract the spectator by their novelty. and in some of his more laboured pieces he adds to this novelty by a variety and warmth of colours which nevertheless does not seem to diminish their union and harmony. dosso survived gio. batista some years, during which he continued to paint, and to form pupils, until infirmity and old age compelled him to desist. the productions of this school are recognised in ferrara by their resemblance of style; and from their great number it is conjectured that the dossi directed the works, while their assistants and disciples executed them. few of these however are known, and among them one evangelista dossi, who has nothing to recommend him but his name, and whose works scannelli did not care to point out to posterity. jacopo pannicciati, by birth a noble, is mentioned by historians as a first rate imitator of the dossi, though he painted little, and died young, about the year . niccolo rosselli, much employed at ferrara, has been supposed to belong to this school, from his resemblance in some pictures to dosso, particularly in that of christ with two angels, on an altar of the battuti bianchi. but in his twelve altar-pieces at the certosa, he imitated also benvenuto and bagnacavallo, with several other artists. his school, then, must remain uncertain; the more so as his composition, so very laboured, soft, and minute, with reddish tints like those of crayons, leaves it even doubtful whether he studied at ferrara at all. the same taste was displayed by leonardo brescia, more a merchant than a painter; from which some have supposed him roselli's pupil. better known than these is the name of caligarino, in other words the little shoe-maker, a title derived from his first profession. his real name was gabriel cappellini; and one of the dossi having said, in praise of a pair of shoes made by him, that they seemed to be painted, he took the hint and relinquished his awl to embrace his new profession. the old guide of ferrara extols his bold design and the strength of his colours. the best that now remains is his picture of the virgin between two saints john, at s. giovannino; the ground of which has been retouched, or rather spoiled. an altar-piece, in good preservation, is also ascribed to him in s. alessandro, at bergamo, representing our lord's supper. the manner partakes in some degree of that of the fourteenth century, though very exact and boasting good tints. in time, however, he approached nearer to the moderns, as we gather from another holy supper, a small picture in possession of count carrara. this new style has led to the supposition that he was pupil to paul veronese, which it is difficult to believe respecting an artist who was already employed in his art as early as . gio. francesco surchi, called dielai, was pupil and assistant to the dossi, when employed in painting at belriguardo, at belvedere, at the giovecca, and at cepario, in which palaces they gave the most distinguished proofs of their merit. thus instructed by both brothers, he became perhaps the most eminent figurist among his fellow-pupils, and beyond question the best ornamental painter. he left few specimens in the second branch, but many in the first. in rapidity, vivacity, and grace in his figures, he approaches dosso, and in a similar manner in his easy and natural mode of draping. in the warmth of his colouring, and in his strong lights, he even aimed at surpassing him; but, like most young artists who carry to excess the maxims of their schools, he became crude and inharmonious, at least in some of his works. two of his nativities at ferrara are highly extolled, one at the benedettini, the other at s. giovannino, to which last is added the portrait of ippolito riminaldi, a distinguished civilian of his age. writers are divided in opinion respecting the comparative excellence of these two altar-pieces, but they agree in awarding great merit to both. we proceed to treat of benvenuto, another great luminary of this school; and we must first premise that there are some mistakes as to his name, which has often betrayed our dilettanti into errors. besides benvenuto tisio, surnamed from his country garofolo, there flourished at the same period gio. batista benvenuti, by some said to have been also a native of garofolo, and from his father's occupation denominated ortolano, the gardener. now, by many, he has been confounded with tisio, both from resemblance of name and taste, so far as to have had even his portrait mistaken for the former, and as such inserted in vasari's edition that appeared at bologna. there ortolano had pursued his studies about , from the works of raffaello, which were few, and from those of bagnacavallo, whose style he afterwards emulated in some pictures. leaving that place sooner than he had intended, owing to an act of homicide, he never attained to a complete imitation of raffaello. but he excelled in his taste for design and perspective, united to more robust colouring, observes baruffaldi, than what we see in raffaello himself, and it is habitual in this school during nearly the whole of the sixteenth century. several of his altar-pieces have been transferred into the roman galleries, where in the present day they are attributed, i believe, to tisio, whose first manner, being more careful than soft and tasteful, may easily be mistaken for that of ortolano. there are others at ferrara, both in public and private, and one in the usual old style of composition at s. niccolo, with the date affixed of . in the parochial church of bondeno there is another, which is extolled by scannelli (p. ), in which are represented the saints sebastian and rocco, and demetrius, who, in military dress, is seen leaning on the hilt of his sword, absorbed in thought; the whole attitude so picturesque and real as at once to attract the eye of the beholder. we cannot be surprised that his name should have been eclipsed by tisio, an artist deservedly extolled as the most eminent among ferrarese painters. of him we have treated rather at length in the roman school, both as occupying a high station in the list of raffaello's pupils, and as the one most frequently met with in the roman collections. we have a little before mentioned benvenuto's first education under panetti, from whose school he went to cremona, under niccolo soriani, his maternal uncle, and next under boccaccio boccacci. on niccolo's death, in , he fled from cremona, and first resided during fifteen months in rome, with gian baldini, a florentine. thence he travelled through various italian cities, remained two years with costa in mantua, and then returning for a short space to ferrara, finally proceeded back to rome. these circumstances i here give, on account of a number of benvenuto's works being met with in ferrara and elsewhere, which partake little or nothing of the roman style, though not excluded as apocryphal, as they are attributed to his earlier age. after remaining a few years with raffaello, his domestic affairs recalled him to ferrara; having arranged these, he prepared to return to rome, where his great master anxiously awaited him, according to vasari, in order to accomplish him in the art of design. but the solicitations of panetti, and still more, the commissions of duke alfonso, retained him in his native place, engaged with the dossi in immense undertakings at belriguardo and other places. it is observed by baruffaldi, that the degree of raffaellesque taste to be traced in the two brothers' works, is to be attributed to tisio. he conducted a great number of other paintings, both in fresco and in oil. his most happy period dates from , when he painted in s. francesco the slaughter of the innocents; availing himself of earthen models, and copying draperies, landscape, and in short every thing from the life. in the same church is his resurrection of lazarus, and his celebrated taking of christ, commenced in , and finished in . no better works appeared from his hand, nor better composed, more animated, conducted with more care and softness of colouring. there only remains some trace of the fourteenth century, in point of design; and some little affectation of grace, if the opinion of vasari be correct. the district formerly abounded with similar specimens of his in fresco; and they are also met with in private, as that frieze in a chamber of the seminary, which in point of grace and raffaellesque taste is well deserving of being engraved. many of his works, also, in oil remain, exhibited here and there throughout the churches and collections of ferrara; at once so many and so beautiful as alone to suffice for the decoration of a city. his st. peter martyr was more particularly admired by vasari; a picture ornamenting the dominicans, remarkable for its force, which some professors have supposed to have been painted in competition with st. peter martyr, by titian; and in case of its loss to have been able to supply its place. his helen, too, a picture of a more elegant character, at the same place, is greatly admired; this gracefulness forming one of benvenuto's most peculiar gifts. and, indeed, not a few of his madonnas, his virgins, and his boys, which he painted in his softer manner, have occasionally been mistaken for raffaello's. his picture of the princes corsini deceived good judges, as we are informed by bottari; and the same might have happened with the portrait of the duke of modena, and others scattered through the roman galleries, where are many of his pieces on a large scale, particularly in the chigi palace. all these must be kept in view, in forming an estimate of garofolo. his little pictures, consisting of scriptural histories, are very abundant in different cabinets, (prince borghesi himself being in possession of about forty) and although they bear his mark, a gilly-flower or violet, they were, i suspect, merely the production of his leisure hours. those without such impress are frequently works of panelli, who was employed along with him; often copies or repetitions by his pupils, who must have been numerous during so long a period. baruffaldi gives him gio. francesco dianti, of whom he mentions an altar-piece at the madonnina, in the style of garofolo, and his tomb, also at the same place, with the date of his decease in . batista griffi and bernardin flori, known only by some ancient legal instrument belonging to the period of , do not seem to have surpassed mediocrity; which is also remarked by vasari of all the others who sprung from the same school. we may except a third, mentioned in the same legal act, and this was carpi, of whom i shall now proceed to treat. it is uncertain whether the proper title of girolamo be da carpi, as stated by vasari, or de' carpi, as is supposed by superbi; questions wholly frivolous, inasmuch as his friend vasari did not call him a native of carpi, but of ferrara; and giraldi, in the edition of his _orbecche_ and of his _egle_, premised that the painter of the scene was mes. girolamo carpi, from ferrara. and in this city he was instructed by garofolo, whose young attendant, in the parchment before cited, he is said to have been in . he afterwards went to bologna, where he was a good deal employed in portrait painting; until happening to meet with a small picture by coreggio, he became attached to that style, copying every piece he could meet with, both at modena and parma, by the same hand. from vasari's account we are to conclude that he was never acquainted with coreggio, raffaello, and parmigianino, whatever other writers may have said. it is true he imitated them; and from the latter, more particularly, he derived those very gracefully clasped and fringed garments; and those airs of heads, which, however, appear rather more solid and less attractive. on removing to bologna, in addition to what he conducted in company with pupini, he singly executed a madonna with s. rocco and other saints, for s. salvatore; and an epiphany, with smaller figures, full of grace, and partaking of the best roman and lombard manner, for the church of s. martino. returning at length to ferrara, he conducted, along with his master, several pictures in fresco, particularly in the ducal palazzina, and in the church of the olivetani, where baruffaldi clearly recognised his style, invariably more loaded with shadow than that of benvenuto. in he himself represented, in a loggia of the ducal palace of copario, the sixteen princes of este; twelve of whom with the title of marquis, the rest as dukes, had swayed the sceptre of ferrara. the last was ercole ii., who committed that work to girolamo, honourable to him for the animation and propriety of the portraits, for the decoration of the termini, of the landscape, and of the perspective, with which he adorned that loggia. titian himself had raised carpi in that prince's consideration; not at the time when he came to ferrara to continue the work of bellini, since girolamo was then only a child, but when he returned at another period; and this i mention in order to correct one of vasari's mistaken dates. his altar-pieces in oil are extremely rare; the pentecost at s. francesco di rovigo, and the s. antonio at s. maria in vado di ferrara, are the most copious, and perhaps the most celebrated which he produced. he was employed also for collections, mostly on tender and graceful subjects; but there too he is rarely to be met with. his diligence, the commissions of his sovereigns, the study of architecture, a profession in which he served pope julius iii. and duke ercole ii., his brief career, all prevented him from leaving many productions for the ornament of cabinets. in his style of figures he had no successors: in the art of decorating with feigned bassi-relievi, colonnades, cornices, niches, and similar architectural labours, he was rivalled by bartolommeo faccini, who in that manner embellished the grand court-yard of the palace. he afterwards painted there, as carpi had done elsewhere, the princes of este, or more correctly, placed in the niches a bronze statue of each of them; in constructing which work he fell from the scaffolding, and died in . he was assisted in the same labour by his brother girolamo, by ippolito casoli, and girolamo grassaleoni, all of whom continued to serve their native place in quality of ornamental painters. whilst benvenuto and girolamo were thus bent on displaying all the attractions of the art, there was rising into notice, from the school of michelangiolo at rome, one who aspired only to the bold and terrible; a character not much known to the artists of ferrara up to that period. his name was bastiano filippi, familiarly called bastianino, and surnamed _gratella_,[ ] from his custom of covering large pictures with crossed lines, in order to reduce them with exactness to a small scale; which he acquired from michelangiolo, and was the first to introduce into ferrara. he was son to camillo, an artist of uncertain school, but who, in the opinion of bononi, "painted with neatness and clearness, as in his annunziata at s. maria in vado;" in the ground of which is a half-figure of st. paul, which leads to the conjecture, that camillo aspired to the style of michelangiolo. it would seem, therefore, that bastiano imbibed from his father his ardent attachment to that style, on account of which he secretly withdrew from his father's house, and went to rome, where he became one of the most indefatigable copyists and a favourite disciple of bonarruoti. how greatly he improved may be seen in his picture of the last judgment at ferrara, completed in three years, in the choir of the metropolitana; a work so nearly approaching michelangiolo that the whole florentine school can boast nothing of the kind. it displays grand design, great variety of figures, fine grouping, and very pleasing repose. it seems incredible that, in a theme already treated by michelangiolo, filippi should have succeeded in producing such novel and grand effect. like all true imitators, he evidently aimed at copying the genius and spirit, not the figures of his model. he abused the occasion here afforded him, like dante and michelangiolo, to gratify his friends by placing them among the elect, and to revenge himself on those who had offended him, by giving their portraits in the group of the damned. on this unhappy list, too, he placed a young lady who had broken her vows to him; elevating among the blessed, in her stead, a more faithful young woman whom he married, and representing the latter in the act of gazing on her rival with looks of scorn. baruffaldi and other ferrarese prefer this painting before that of the sistine chapel, in point of grace and colouring; concerning which, the piece having been retouched, we can form no certain opinion. there is, moreover, the testimony of barotti, the describer of the ferrarese paintings, who, at page , complains, that "while formerly those figures appeared like living flesh, they now seem of wood." but other proofs of filippi's colouring are not wanting at ferrara; where, in many of his untouched pictures, he appears to much advantage; except that in his fleshes he was greatly addicted to a sun-burnt colour; and often, for the union of his colours, he overshadowed in a peculiar taste the whole of his painting. footnote : gratella, literally a gridiron, or lattice-work. besides this, his masterpiece, filippi produced a great number of other pictures at ferrara, in whose guide he is more frequently mentioned than any artist, except scarsellino. where he represented naked figures, as in his grand s. cristofano at the certosa, he adhered to michelangiolo; in his draped figures he followed other models; which is perceptible in that circumcision in an altar of the cathedral, which might rather be attributed to his father than to him. being impatient, both in regard to invention and to painting, he often repeated the same things; as he did in one of his annunciations, reproduced at least seven times, almost invariably with the same ideas. what is worse, if we except the foregoing judgment, his large altar-piece of st. catharine, in that church, with a few other public works, he conducted no pieces without losing himself either in one part or other; satisfied with stamping upon each some commanding trait, as if to exhibit himself as a fine but careless painter to the eyes of posterity. there are few of his specimens in collections, but these are more exactly finished. of these, without counting those of ferrara, i have seen a baptism of christ in casa acqua at osimo, and several copies from michelangiolo at rome. early in life he painted grotesques, but subsequently employed in such labours, cesare, his younger brother, a very excellent ornamental painter, though feeble in great figures and in histories. contemporary with, and rival of filippi, was sigismondo scarsella, popularly called by the ferrarese mondino, a name he has ever since retained. instructed during three years in the school of paul veronese, and afterwards remaining for thirteen at venice, engaged in studying its best models along with the rules of architecture, he at length returned to ferrara, well practised in the paolesque style, but at considerable distance as a disciple. if we except his visitation at s. croce, fine figures and full of action, we meet with nothing more by him in the last published guide of ferrara. the city possesses other of his works, some in private, some retouched in such a manner that they are no more the same, while several are doubtful, and most commonly attributed to his son. this is the celebrated ippolito, called, in distinction from his father, lo scarsellino, by whom singly there are more pictures interspersed throughout those churches, than by many combined artists. after acquiring the first rudiments from sigismondo, he resided almost six years at venice, studying the best masters, and in particular paul veronese. his fellow-citizens call him the paul of their school, i suppose on account of his nativity of the virgin at cento, his s. bruno, in the ferrarese certosa, and other paintings more peculiarly paolesque; but his character is different. he seems the reformer of the paternal taste; his conceptions more beautiful, his tints more attractive; while some believe that he influenced the manner of sigismondo, and directed him in his career. on comparison with paul it is clear that his style is derived from that source, but that his own was different, being composed of the venetian and the lombard, of native and foreign, the offspring of an intellect well founded in the theory of the art, of a gay and animated fancy, of a hand if not always equal to itself, always prompt, spirited, and rapid. hence we see a great number of his productions in different cities of lombardy and romagna, to say nothing of his native place. there, his pictures of the assumption and the nuptials of cana, at the benedettini; the pietà, and the s. john beheaded, in that church; with the _noli me tangere_, at s. niccolo, are among the most celebrated; also at the oratorio della scala, his pentecost, his annunciation, and his epiphany, conducted in competition with the presentation of annibal caracci; of all which there are seen, on a small scale, a number of repetitions or copies in private houses. they are to be met with too at rome, where scarsellino's paintings are not rare. some are at the campidoglio, and at the palaces of the albani, borghesi, corsini, and in greater number at the lancellotti. i have sometimes examined them in company with professors who never ceased to extol them. they recognised various imitations of paul veronese in the inventions, and the copiousness; of parmigianino in the lightness and grace of the figures: of titian in the fleshes, and particularly in a bacchanal in casa albani; of dossi and carpi in his strength of colour, in those fiery yellows, in those deep rose-colours, in that bright tinge given also to the clouds and to the air. what sufficiently distinguishes him too, are a few extremely graceful countenances, which he drew from two of his daughters; a light shading which envelopes the whole of his objects without obscuring them, and that slightness of design which borders almost on the dry, in opposition, perhaps, to that of bastiano filippi, sometimes reproached with exhibiting coarse and heavy features. ippolito's school, according to baruffaldi, produced no other pupil of merit except camillo ricci, a young artist who, scarsellino declared, would have surpassed himself, and whom, had he appeared a little later, he would have selected for his own master. from a pupil, however, he became scarsellino's assistant, who instructed him so well in his manner, that the most skilful had difficulty to distinguish him from ippolito. his style is almost as tender and attractive as his master's, the union of his colours is even more equal, and has more repose, and he is principally distinguished by less freedom of hand, and by his folding, which is less natural and more minute. his fertile invention appears to most advantage in the church of s. niccolò, whose entablature is divided into eighty-four compartments, the whole painted by camillo with different histories of the holy bishop. his picture of margherita, also at the cathedral, is extremely beautiful, and might be referred to scarsellino himself. his smaller paintings chiefly adorn the noble house of trotti, which abounds with them; and there too is his own portrait, as large as life, representing genius naked, seated before his pallet with his pencil in hand, surrounded by musical books, and implements of sculpture and architecture, arts to which he was wholly devoted. among the pupils of ippolito, barotti enumerates also lana, a native of codigoro, in the ferrarese, though i leave him to the state of modena, where he flourished. cittadella also mentions ercole sarti, called the mute of ficarolo, a place in the ferrarese. instructed by signs he produced for his native place, and at the quadrella sul mantovano, some pictures nearly resembling the style of scarsellino, except that the outline is more marked, and the countenances less beautiful. he was also a good portrait painter, and was employed by the nobility at ferrara as well as for the churches. there is mentioned, in the guide, an altar-piece in the sacristy of s. silvestro, and the author is extolled as a successful imitator both of scarsellino and of bononi. contemporary with the filippi and the scarsellini is giuseppe mazzuoli, more commonly called bastaruolo, or, as it means in ferrara, the vender of corn, an occupation of his father's, not his own. he is at once a learned, graceful, and correct artist, probably a pupil of surchi, whom he succeeded in painting for the entablature of the gesù some histories left unfinished by the death of his predecessor. mazzuoli was not so well skilled in perspective as in other branches. he injured his rising reputation by designing some figures in too large proportion, owing to which, added to his slowness, he became proverbial among his rivals, and considered by many as an artist of mediocrity. yet his merit was sufficiently marked, particularly after the formation of his second manner, more elevated in design, as well as more studied in its colouring. the foundation of his taste is drawn from the dossi; in force of chiaroscuro, and in his heads he would seem to have owed his education to parma; in the natural colour of his fleshes, more particularly at the extremities, he approaches titian; and from the venetians too seem to have been derived those varying tints and golden hues, introduced into his draperies. the church of gesù contains, besides two medallions of histories, admirably composed, an annunciation and a crucifixion, both very beautiful altar-pieces. the ascension at the cappuccini, conducted for a princess of the estense family, is a magnificent piece, while an altar-piece of the titular saint, with half figures of virgins that seem to breathe, at the zitelle of s. barbara, is extremely beautiful. several other pieces, both in public and private, are met with at ferrara. mazzuoli was drowned, while bathing for his health, at that place; an artist every way worthy of a better fate, and of being more generally known beyond the limits of his own country. domenico mona (a name thus read by baruffaldi from his tomb, though by others called monio, moni, and monna,) attached himself to the art after trying many other professions, ecclesiastical, medical, and legal. he possessed great fervour and richness of imagination, learning, and rapidity of hand. instructed by bastaruolo, he soon became a painter, and exhibited his pieces in public. but not yet founded in technical rules, monotonous in his heads, hard in his folding, and unfinished in his figures, he was ill adapted to please a city already accustomed to behold the most finished productions at every step, so as no longer to relish any thing like mediocrity or inferiority of hand. mona then applied with fresh diligence to the art, and corrected, at least, some of his more glaring faults. from that time he was more readily employed by his fellow citizens, though his works were by no means equally approved. some, however, were good, such as the two nativities at s. maria in vado, one of which represented the virgin, the other the divine child; both displaying a taste of colouring nearly resembling the florentine of that period, here and there mingled with a venetian tone. the best of all, however, is his deposition from the cross, placed in the sagrestia capitolare of the cathedral. a number of others only approach mediocrity, though still pleasing by their spirit, and a general effect which proclaims superior genius. even his colouring, when he studied it, is calculated to attract by its warmth and vividness, though not very natural. a few of his works are in such bad taste as to have induced his pupil, jacopo bambini, out of compassion, to retouch them; and baruffaldi also notices this singular inequality. for, after greatly extolling his deposition from the cross, he adds: "it must surprise the spectator to contrast this with his other pieces, nor can he reconcile how he should possess such capacity, and yet show such indifference for his own fame." all, however, is explained when we know that he was naturally subject to insanity, of which he finally became the victim, and having slain a courtier of the card. aldobrandino, he ended his days in banishment from his native place. by some, however, the deed was attributed, not to insanity, but to hatred of the new government; and in fact, so far from acting like a madman, he concealed himself, first in the state, and next at the court of modena. finally, he sought refuge in that of parma, where he is declared to have produced pieces, during a short period, in his best taste. orlandi calls him domenico mora, and has extolled his two large pictures of the conversion and the martyrdom of st. paul, which adorn the presbytery of that church at ferrara. he moreover adds, that he flourished in , for which date i am inclined to substitute that of , as it is known that he commenced the practice of the art late in life, and died, aged fifty-two years, in . from his school is supposed to have sprung gaspero venturini, who completed his education under bernardo castelli, in genoa. this, however, is mere conjecture, founded on the style of gaspero, which, in point of colouring, partakes of that ideal taste so pleasing to castelli, to vasari, fontana, galizia, and others of the same period; nor was mona himself free from it. jacopo bambini, whom we have before commended, and giulio cromer, commonly called croma, were assuredly from the school of mona, though they acquired little from it. subsequently they became more correct designers by studying from the naked model in the academy, which they were the first to open at ferrara, and from the best antiques which they possessed in their native place--an art in which they attained singular excellence. nor were they destitute of invention; and to cromer was allotted the honour of painting the presentation and the death of the virgin, at the scala; a fraternity, which, previous to its suppression, was regarded as a celebrated gallery, decorated by superior artists. bambini had studied also in parma, whence he brought back with him a careful and solid style; and, if he sometimes displayed the colouring of mona, he corrected its hardness, and excluded its capriciousness. this artist was assiduously employed at the gesù, in ferrara, and in that at mantua. croma was a painter of high reputation, and much inclined to the study of architecture, which he introduces in rather an ostentatious manner in nearly all his pictures. in other respects he more resembles bambini than mona, invariably studied, ruddy in his complexions, somewhat loaded in all his tints, and the whole composition sufficiently characteristic to be easily distinguished. he may be well appreciated in his large histories of the saint at st. andrea, near the chief altar, and in several pictures belonging to the minor altars. superbi, in his _apparato_, describes one gio. andrea ghirardoni as an able artist. he left some respectable works, but coloured in a languid, feeble style, with more of the effect of chiaroscuro than of painting. the names of bagnacavallo, rossetti, provenzali da cento, and others belonging to the ferrarese state, who properly appertain to this epoch, have been already described under other schools. school of ferrara. epoch iii. _the artists of ferrara borrow different styles from the bolognese school.--decline of the art, and an academy instituted in its support._ such, as just described, was the degree of excellence to which the pictoric art arrived under the esti, whose dominion over ferrara terminated in the person of alfonso ii., who died in . these princes beheld nearly all the classic styles of italy transferred into their own capital by classic imitators, which no other potentates could boast. they had their raffaello, their bonarruoti, their coreggio, their titian, and their paul veronese. their memory yet affords an example to the world; because, like true citizens of their country, they fostered its genius, the love of letters, and all the arts of design. the change of government occurred in the pontificate of clement viii. for whose solemn entry into the place the artists scarsellino and mona were employed about the public festivals; being selected as the ablest hands, equal to achieve much in a short space of time. various other painters were subsequently employed, in particular bambini and croma, who were to copy different select altar-pieces of the city, which the court of rome was desirous of transferring into the capital; leaving the copies only at ferrara, to the general regret of the ferrarese historians. subsequently the card. aldobrandini, nephew to the pope, was there established as legate; a foreigner indeed, but much attached to the fine arts. like other foreigners, he was more bent upon purchasing the works of old masters, than upon cultivating a genius for painting among the citizens. the same feeling may, for the most part, be supposed to have influenced his successors; since, about , cattanio, as we read in his life, ascribed the decline of the art to its want of patrons, and induced card. pio, a ferrarese, to allot pensions to young artists, to enable them to study at bologna and at rome. but such temporary aids afforded no lasting support to the school, so that if the others of italy were greatly deteriorated during this last century, that of ferrara became almost extinct. it may, therefore, boast greater credit for having retrieved itself under less favourable circumstances, and for having continued so long to emulate the most distinguished originals. about the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the new civil government commenced at ferrara, a new epoch also occurred in its pictoric school, which i call that of the caracci. i can furnish no account respecting that pietro da ferrara, mentioned by malvasia, along with schedone, among the pupils of lodovico caracci. i have no where met with his name in any other work. dismissing him, therefore, i may award the chief station in this epoch to two able artists, who acquired the taste, without entering into the academy of the caracci. these were bonone of the city of ferrara, and guercino belonging to the state; of whom, as residing so long with his school at bologna, i have there written what need not here be repeated. they were succeeded by other painters in the legation, nearly the whole of them pupils of caracci's followers, or again of their disciples; insomuch, that what now remains of the ferrarese school, is almost a continuation of that of bologna. it is the crowning glory of the ferrarese to have boasted superior emulators of the final school of italy, as they had of all the preceding. but it is now time to proceed to the particulars. carlo bonone, called by the admirable cochin invariably bourini, was pupil to bastaruolo. on being deprived of his master, he continued to exercise his acquired manner; but he subsequently inclined to the strong, to contrast of light and shadow, and to the difficult parts of composition, more than any other contemporary ferrarese. i suspect that, despairing of competing in grace with scarsellino, he intended to oppose him by a more robust and enlarged manner. nor had he far to seek for it, while the caracci flourished in bologna. he left his native place; and perhaps passing through that city, he conceived the first idea of his new style. arrived at rome, he there continued above two years designing the beautiful from nature in the academy, and out of it from the works of art; and then returned to bologna. here he remained a year, "until he had mastered the character and colouring of the caracci, and devoted himself exclusively to the principles and practice thus adopted, entirely renouncing all other manners." thus states baruffaldi; and adds, that he resided also at venice, whence he departed more confounded than instructed, with the fixed intention of never in the least departing from the caraccesque manner. he went also to parma, and saw the works of coreggio, according to some, though without departing from his maxim. what progress he made in the path thus selected, may be easily gathered from the opinions of experienced bolognese, contained in different histories, who, on examining one of his works, ascribed it, without hesitation, to lodovico caracci; and it is also to be inferred from the public voice, which extols him as the caracci of ferrara. this mistake is apt to be made in those compositions with few figures, rather than in his large histories. in the former his dignity of design is calculated to deceive us; as well as the conception and attitudes of his heads of men, the form and fulness, the fall and folding of the drapery, the choice and distribution of the colours, and the general tone which in some works, more correctly conducted, greatly resemble the bolognese style. but in his compositions on a grand scale, he does not closely imitate the caracci, always sparing in their figures, and anxious to make them conspicuous by a certain disposition peculiarly their own; but rather follows the venetians, and adopts methods to multiply the personages on the scene. the grand suppers which he painted (of a few of which we have engravings by bolzoni) might be almost pronounced from the genius of paul veronese, so greatly do they abound with perspective, stages, and staircases; so thronged is every situation with actors and spectators. his herod's feast, at s. benedetto, is much celebrated, as well as the marriage of cana, at the certosini, at s. maria in vado, and other places in ferrara, but, in particular, his supper of ahasuerus, in the refectory of the canonici regolari of s. giovanni, at ravenna. the canvass is large, as well as the vestibule which fills it, while the multitudes which there appear, thronged together, is excessive; guests, spectators, domestics, musical choirs and companies in the balconies, and in a recess, through which is seen the garden, appear other tables surrounded by guests, with so beautiful an illusion of aerial perspective, as at once to relieve and to gratify the eye with infinite variety. there is as much diversity also in the attitudes, novelty of drapery, richness of plate, &c., of which it seems impossible to finish the inspection. a few figures too are more studied, such as that of ahasuerus, of the master of the feast, and of a kneeling page, in the act of presenting the royal crown to the king. to these add several of the singers, which rivet the eye by their respective dignity, vivacity, or grace. in no other work did bonone succeed equally well in captivating others and in pleasing his own taste. yet the church of s. maria in vado boasts so great a number of his paintings on the walls, so many in the vault and in the ceiling, conducted too with so perfect a knowledge of foreshortening, that, in order to estimate the vastness of his talents, we ought to see that magnificent temple itself. when guercino left cento for ferrara, he used there to spend hours devoted only to the contemplation of bonone. i find mention that, for such productions, "he was elevated even to a competition with coreggio and the caracci," and he assuredly adhered much to that method, designing accurately, modelling his figures in wax, arranging the foldings, and exhibiting them to a nocturnal light to examine their best effect, which he aimed at even more than the caracci. still i have too great deference for public opinion, which acknowledges no rivals to these noble masters, though they had imitators; and i have heard judges express a wish for more constant accuracy of design, choice in his heads, stronger union of colours, and a better method of laying on his grounds, than they find in bonone. notwithstanding similar exceptions, however, this artist stands as one of the very first, after the caracci. though inferior in age, he could not be called inferior in merit, to scarsellino; and the city, divided into parties, could not agree to award the palm either to the elder or to the younger. they pursued different manners; each was eminent in his own, and when they came into competition each exerted his utmost industry not to be outshone, which left the victory still doubtful. there were a few years ago at the scala, and are yet at other places, a number of these rival productions, and it is wonderful to see how bonone, accustomed so much to fill his canvass on a large scale, can adapt his genius, equal to any, to study and refinement, even painting his figures of small proportion almost in the style of miniature, in order that scarsellino, in these ornaments of the cabinet, should not excite greater admiration than himself. different collections, and particularly that of the noble bevilacqua, possess fine specimens of him; in public is his martyrdom of st. catherine, in that church, a real treasure, much sought for by foreigners, who have frequently offered for it large sums without success. no disciple of bonone's school acquired much celebrity, and, least of any, lionello, nephew to carlo, and his heir. he was indebted to his uncle for his knowledge of the art, but could never be induced to practise it with diligence. what he has left was either executed with carlo's assistance, and from his designs, or is of very middling merit. others, who had successfully attained the manner of this master, died young, as gio. batista della torre, born at rovigo, and camillo berlinghieri, both artists of genius and highly estimated in collections. some early pieces of great promise adorn the church of s. niccolo, where the former painted the vaulted ceiling, but on some defect in the work being pointed out by the master, he refused to complete it, and setting out in anger for venice he there took up his residence, and shortly came to an untimely end. by the second was painted the picture of the manna, at s. niccolo, besides several others throughout the city, and a few also at venice, where he obtained the name of the ferraresino, and where he died before completing his fortieth year. the highest reputation was obtained by alfonso rivarola, likewise called, from some property left to him, il chenda. on his master's death he was proposed, as the most familiar with his style, by guido reni, to complete an unfinished work of bonone. at s. maria in vado is the marriage of the virgin, sketched by bonone, and which chenda painted, lionello having declined to venture upon such a task. this picture has a powerful rival in one of bonone's, placed opposite to it, though it still displays a hand not unworthy of following that of bonone. his fellow citizens entertained the same opinion of his other early efforts, such as the baptism of the saint, exhibited in a temple of noble architecture at s. agostino, in a style of foreshortening that displays a master. his fables, too, from guarini and tasso, conducted in the villa trotti, as well as the pictures yet belonging to the same nobles, and to different houses in the city, are held in esteem. but he executed little for churches and collections, aiming more at popular admiration, which he obtained by exercising at once the office of architect and of painter at public festivals, and in particular at tournaments, then so very prevalent in italy. one of these, which he conducted at bologna, laid the foundation of his early decease. either he met with little applause, and took it to heart, or, according to others, had such success as to lead to his being carried off by poison. thus, in few years, carlo bonone's school approached its close, not without leaving, however, numerous works which, owing to their uniform style, are now attributed generally to the school, not in particular to any artist. i reserved for the series of the caracci the name of francesco naselli, a ferrarese noble, though stated by some to have been initiated in the art by bastaruolo. this, however, is uncertain; it is only known that he designed from the naked model with assiduity in an academy opened in conjunction with his efforts, at ferrara; and that going thence to bologna, he took copies of various works by the caracci and by their disciples. in the churches of his native place, and in private cabinets, numerous proofs of these studies are met with, the most laborious of which are two miracles of st. benedict, copied in the cloister of s. michele in bosco, and now placed at s. giorgio of the olivetani in ferrara. of these, one is borrowed from lodovico, the other from guido; but preferred to both is his communion of s. girolamo, which decorates the certosa, a copy from the original by agostino. guercino also was one of his favourites; of his he copied every thing he could meet with, having selected him, after the caracci, for his first guide. by such practice francesco succeeded in designing and painting with good success in his own manner, on a large scale, animated, soft, with rapid execution and strong union of colours, inclining in those of his fleshes to a sun-burnt hue. of his own design is the s. francesca romana at the olivetani, the assumption at s. francesco, several suppers, abounding in figures, belonging to private institutions, five of which are in the cistercian monastery. he likewise painted at the scala in competition with one of the caracci, with bonone, and with scarsellino. nor was he judged unworthy of them; and at the sale of those valuable paintings for the relief of the hospital, in , considerable prices were offered for his productions. although noble, and in easy circumstances, he never ceased to persevere, and it would appear that he was desirous of promoting the success of one of his domestics in the same art. crespi declares that he had read a statement, showing alessandro naselli to be the son of francesco, but, according to historians, he was an artist of mediocrity, the omission of whose works will scarcely be any loss to my readers. it is here necessary to interrupt for a moment our series of the caracci's disciples, to make mention of two geniuses, who also became painters, like naselli, but in the venetian taste. gio. paolo grazzini, one of bonone's best friends, professed the goldsmith's art, and it was owing only to his bias for painting, imbibed from bonone and other contemporaries, that he acquired its principles in familiar conversation. eager to put them to the test, he commenced his altar-piece of s. eligio, for the goldsmith's school. it occupied him eight years in its completion, but it was executed in such a masterly style as alone to decide his excellence, approaching quite as nearly as any to the manner of pordenone. being then about fifty years of age, it excited the utmost surprise throughout ferrara, yet he still persevered, and conducted some minor pieces, which decorate private buildings, in the same taste. so rare an example, or rather one so wholly novel, appeared to me well worth historical mention. somewhat at a later period giuseppe caletti, called il cremonese, came into notice. he acquired the art rather from the models of the dossi, and of titian, than from masters, imitating not only their manner of design, but their colouring, which is so difficult. he contrived also to imitate that antique tone which time gives to paintings, and thus adds to their harmony. he painted a good deal for collections, such as half-length figures, bacchanals, and small histories. baruffaldi recognized several in some noble galleries at bologna, and has been compelled to argue the point with judges, who maintained that they were titian's. he farther relates, that an excellent pupil of pietro da cortona purchased a great number, at a high price, at ferrara, being confident of reselling them at rome for titian's, or at least for works of his school. in ferrara, which is filled with his pictures, it is difficult to succeed in these impostures. he is there distinguished by fleshes of a sun-burnt hue, by certain bold lights, strengthened by contrast with somewhat loaded shadows, by the fleeciness of his clouds, and by other careless and ill-conducted accessories. often too the extravagance of the composition betrays the real author, when, for instance, in a bacchanal, much resembling titian, there is inserted a chase, or some modern sport, which is like representing wild boars in the sea, or dolphins in the woods. in a similar manner are his other fine qualities impaired for want of judgment, without which no artist is well calculated for the decoration of churches. in that of s. benedict, however, his four holy doctors, on an altar, are seen to advantage; and upon another his admirable st. mark, a grand and correct figure, full of expression, and very picturesquely surrounded by abundance of volumes, in whose drawing he is so true and natural, as to have been called the painter of books. having completed this work, il cremonese disappeared out of the city, nor were farther tidings heard of him, although some writers conjecture that he died about . returning to the disciples of the bolognese, the first deserving of mention here is costanzo cattanio, a pupil of guido. his portrait, both on canvass and in prints, i have seen, and it has always a threatening kind of expression. that martial, or bravo character, affected by so many artists about the times of caravaggio, also misled this excellent genius from the right career. at times costanzo was an exile, now at open defiance, and now wholly occupied in shielding his protectors, who never ventured out unarmed, from dread of their rivals, and to whom he pledged himself that they should not be assassinated in his presence. when he applied himself to his art his peculiar disposition appeared stamped on the expression of his figures. the characters whom he was most fond of introducing into his histories were soldiers and bullies, whose fierce aspects seemed but ill adapted to the soft style of his master. these, and many other ideas, he borrowed from the prints of durer, and luca of holland, which he reduced to his own diligent and studied manner, particularly in his heads and his steel armours. although attached to strong expression, and borrowing something from the other schools of italy which he saw, he nevertheless at times betrays sure traces of guido's school. thus, in his s. antonio, painted for the parish church of corlo, and in our lord's supper, which he placed in the refectory of s. silvestro, and in every other instance when he aimed at the guidesque, he succeeded to admiration. another ferrarese, antonio buonfanti, called il torricella, is said to have sprung from the school of guido, though baruffaldi is silent on this point. two large scripture histories by him are at s. francesco; but there are few other paintings or accounts of him at ferrara; and he seems to have taken up his residence elsewhere. it is certain that the young artists who succeed this period are all ascribed to the school of cattanio. such are francesco fantozzi, called parma, carlo borsati, alessandro naselli, camillo setti, artists who scarcely awaken the curiosity of their countrymen. giuseppe avanzi is more known by his very numerous works, for the most part confused, and painted almost at a sitting. he is described more like an artisan bent on earning good wages by his day's labour. his picture of st. john beheaded, however, at the certosa, is extremely guercinesque; and some others on canvass and on copper, which he retouched and studied a good deal, do him great credit. but cattanio's chief praise consists in his education of gio. bonatti, and in his recommendation of him to card. pio, who greatly assisted him, by placing him first at bologna under guercino, afterwards under mola at rome. he long supported him also at venice, studying the heads of that school; besides defraying his pictoric tours through lombardy, and giving him the custody of his paintings at court. in fact, he bestowed upon him such favours that the public, considering him as the dependant of that prince, always termed him _giovannino del pio_. at rome he was esteemed among the best of his age; select, diligent, learned in the different styles of italian schools; the view of which, during his picturesque tour, he declared was highly advantageous to him. and true it is that the painter, like the writer, is formed by the study of great models; but the one may behold them all collected in the same library, while the other has to seek them in different cities, and in every city to study them at different places. at rome his only public works are a picture at the church dell'anima, a history of s. carlo at the vallicella, and an altar-piece of s. bernardo, at the cisterciensi, highly commended in the guide of rome. the rest of his works, and they are but few, belong to private persons; his health declining at the age of thirty-five, he lingered eleven years afterwards, and died at rome. lanfranco likewise supplied a pupil to this school, called by passeri, antonio richieri, a ferrarese. he followed his master to naples and rome, where he painted at the teatini after the designs of lanfranco:--the sole information i have been enabled to collect respecting his paintings. i am well aware that he devoted himself to engraving, as we learn also from passeri, and that at naples he engraved an altar-piece by his master, which was rejected by the person who gave the commission for it. there is more known of clemente maiola, whom the ferrarese assert to be their fellow-citizen and pupil to cortona. he conducted many works at ferrara; one of s. nicola supported by an angel, in the church of s. giuseppe. he is moreover mentioned as a fine pupil of pietro, in the notizie of m. alboddo, for works there extant. titi gives account of others left in rome at the rotonda and in other temples; but he differs respecting his master, declaring that he was instructed by romanelli. meanwhile cignani's academy rose into notice, owing to its master's reputation, and among those who repaired thither from ferrara were maurelio scannavini and giacomo parolini. maurelio must be included among the few whose object was to emulate their master in that scrupulous exactness, which we noticed in its place. he was naturally slow, nor could he prevail on himself to despatch his work from the studio until he beheld it already complete in all its points. though impelled by domestic penury to greater haste, he varied not his method; and, free from envy, beheld the rapidity of avanzi, who abounded with commissions and money, whilst he and his family were destitute. the noble house of bevilacqua assisted him much; and it redounds to its honour, that on remunerating him for some figures in an apartment where aldrovandini had conducted the architecture, a very large sum was added to the price agreed upon. he produced few other pieces in fresco; a process that requires artists of more rapid hand. he painted more in oil; among the most esteemed of which is his s. tommaso di villanova, at the agostiniani scalzi; and at the church of the mortara his st. bridget in a swoon, supported by angels. the families of bevilacqua, calcagnini, rondinelli, and trotti, possess some of his pictures for private ornament; among which are portraits that display maurelio's singular talent in this branch; and histories of half-length figures in the manner of cignani. they exhibit gracefulness, union of colouring, and strength of tints, which leave him nothing to envy in the artists by whom he is surrounded, except their fortune. giacomo parolini, pupil to the cav. peruzzini in turin, afterwards to cignani at bologna, was present at maurelio's decease, and completed a few works left imperfect, out of regard to his friend, and for the relief of his orphan family. he did not possess that true finish peculiar to the followers of cignani; though he still maintained the reputation of his second school, by the elegance of his design, the propriety and copiousness of his composition, and his very attractive colouring, particularly in the fleshes. aware of his own power in this difficult part of painting, he is fond of introducing into his pieces the naked figure, more especially of boys, from the proportions of which judges are enabled to recognize their author. his bacchanals, his albanesque country-dances, his capricci, are all of such frequent occurrence at ferrara, as to render it more easy to enumerate the collections in want of them, than those where they are. foreigners also possess specimens; and there are engravings in acqua forte by the designer's own hand. his picture of the cintura, representing the virgin among various saints, nearly all of the order of st. augustine, a piece engraved by andrea bolzoni, is held in much esteem. nor are the three altar-pieces in the cathedral unworthy of notice; and in particular the entablature of s. sebastiano at verona, which greatly raised his reputation, representing the saint in the act of mounting into glory, amidst groups of angels; a beautiful and well executed work. parolini is the last among the figurists whose life was written at length by baruffaldi; the last, also, on whose tomb was inscribed the eulogy of a good painter. with him was buried for a season the reputation of ferrarese painting in italy. the author of the "catalogue," in the fourth volume has collected the names and drawn up the lives of certain other painters, interspersing several episodes. concerning these figurists, little else is related than mere failures and misfortunes. for instance, gio. francesco braccioli, pupil to crespi, though promising well in some of his works for galleries, subsequently fell into infirmity of mind; one lost his taste for the profession; another cultivated the art with remissness, or only as a dilettante; a third produced some tolerable efforts, but was mostly extravagant; one had genius and died early; another long life without a spark of talent. meanwhile, this dearth of native artists was for some years supplied by gio. batista cozza, from the milanese; a painter of a copious, easy, and regulated style. not that he was invariably correct, though very popular, and when he pleased satisfying even judges of the art; as in that picture representing different ss. serviti, in the church called di cà bianca. after him appeared the modern artists, who now enjoy deserved reputation in the academy of ferrara, which, owing to the particular patronage of his eminence card. riminaldi, has recently risen into distinguished notice. with the name of this noble citizen and of the professors whom he himself selected and promoted, future writers will doubtless commence a fourth epoch of painting. by him the academy was supplied with laws, and took its established form. to his care and munificence several young artists were indebted for their residence at rome, and all the rest for the benefit of a well regulated institution at ferrara. he also did much for the cause of letters in the university. but this is not the place to give an account of it; and his merits, commended as they are to posterity in numerous books and monuments, and impressed on the hearts of his grateful fellow citizens, are not likely soon to fall into oblivion. it remains to speak of other kinds of painting, and it will be best to commence with perspective. after this art had assumed a new aspect at bologna, and spread through italy, as already stated, it was introduced by francesco ferrari, born near rovigo, into ferrara. he had been instructed in figure painting by a frenchman, and afterwards became professor of architectural and ornamental painting under gabriel rossi, the bolognese, of whose name, to say nothing of his style, i find no traces left at bologna. to those who had the means of comparing the manners of these two artists, it appeared that francesco did not equal him in the dignity of his architecture, but surpassed him in strength and durability of colouring, and in that relief so attractive in these performances. moreover, he had a considerable advantage over his master, in his knowledge of appropriately painting histories. the dispute of s. cirillo is still to be seen, and the rain granted to the prayer of elias, in the church of s. paolo: pictures, observes baruffaldi, which rivet the eye. other proofs of his genius for history pieces are met with at the carmine and at s. giorgio, but still they yield to his architectural labours, which may be said to have formed his trade. he worked also for theatres, and in different italian cities, and in the service of leopold i. at vienna. being constrained to leave germany on account of his health, he returned to ferrara, and there opened school. among his pupils were mornassi, grassaleoni, paggi, raffanelli, giacomo filippi, and one who surpassed all the rest, antonfelice ferrari, his son. this artist did not attempt figures, but confined himself to architecture, in which he added to the somewhat minute style of his father, a magnificence well adapted to attract the public eye. he was employed with success in the calcagnini palace, in that of the sacrati, fieschi, and in other private and public places in ferrara, as well as at venice, ravenna, and elsewhere. suffering much however in health by painting in fresco, and on this account being reduced to live with less comfort, he conceived such aversion for the art, that on making his will he enjoined that his son was to forfeit his inheritance if he ever became a fresco painter. some of his pupils therefore succeeded him, among whom giuseppe facchinetti most distinguished himself. he painted at s. caterina da siena and other places, at once in a delicate and sound style, and is almost reputed the mitelli of his school. maurelio goti of ferrara nearly approached his style, not without marks of plagiarism. from the same country and school was girolamo mengozzi colonna, who became a long resident at venice. he accompanied the figures of zompini with ornamental work at the church of the tolentini, and those of tiepolo at the scalzi; and conducted the architecture in the ducal palace and elsewhere. zanetti, in his guide, mentions his name as above; but, in his "pittura veneziana," (thirty-eight years afterwards) he calls him colonna mengozzi, and a native of tivoli. guarienti extols him as the first architectural and ornamental painter of his time. the art of landscape painting, which, after the age of the dossi, had almost fallen into disuse at ferrara, was revived there by some foreigners. giulio avellino, called, from his native place, the messinese, resided some time in this city, and died there at the beginning of the century. he had been pupil to salvator rosa, whose style he somewhat softened, and richly ornamented with views of ruins and architecture, as well as with some small and well composed figures. the signori cremona and donati possess select specimens; and there is scarcely a collection in ferrara or romagna which does not value itself on possessing them. after him appeared giuseppe zola, born, according to crespi, at brescia, a landscape painter, of a taste devoted to no single master, but formed upon many. he was exceedingly rich in conception and in expedients; his buildings are of a rustic kind; his ruins partake of the modern, and are picturesquely covered with creeping plants and ivy; the backgrounds of an azure hue, and great variety of objects and figures, in which he was less happy than in his landscape. his earlier works are held in most esteem; when he obtained greater commissions, he performed them with a more mechanical hand, and, with the exception of his colouring, which he always studied, he bestowed little care on the rest. those pictures are in general most complete, in which he introduced the smallest figures; and such may be seen even out of private houses, in the monte della pietà, and in the sacristy of s. leonardo. he formed several pupils, the best of whom was girolamo gregori. instructed as a figurist by parolini, and afterwards by gioseffo dal sole, he failed for want of perseverance, except very rarely, in greater works. yet he produced many, and his landscapes have been highly extolled. the same may be observed of avanzi, mentioned by us shortly before; who, in addition to his very pleasing landscapes on canvass and on copper, surpassed all his fellow citizens in the drawing of flowers and fruits. an invention, finally deserving of mention, and extremely useful to painting, was made known during this last epoch by a ferrarese, and afterwards brought to perfection by others. antonio contri, son of a ferrarese lawyer, who, for domestic reasons, had long settled at rome, and next at paris, feeling a natural bias for design, practised it in both those cities; but first displayed greater excellence in embroidery than painting. returning into italy, and establishing himself at cremona, he was instructed in landscape by bassi, in which he was accustomed also to introduce flowers, the branch of painting in which he most distinguished himself. he also succeeded well in perspectives and in animals. his pictures, and those of his son francesco, who pursued his style, remain at cremona, ferrara, and their vicinity; but it was his new discovery, just alluded to, which obtained a more wide circulation and repute. this is the method of removing from walls to canvass any picture without the least injury to its design or colouring. various trials of it, during the space of a year, instructed him how to compose a sort of glue, or bitumen, which he spread over a canvass of equal size with the picture he wished to transfer to it. having applied this to the painting, and beaten it firm with a mallet, he cut the plaister round it, and applied to the canvass a wooden frame well propped, in order that the work might take hold, and come off equal throughout. in a few days he cautiously removed the canvass from the wall, which brought with it the painting; and, having extended it on a smooth table, he applied to the back of it another canvass, varnished with a composition more adhesive than the former. he then placed over the work a quantity of sand, which should equally compress it in all its parts; and, after a week's space, he examined the two pieces of canvass, detached the first by means of warm water, and there then remained on the second the whole painting taken from the wall. he applied this method in different houses of cremona, for baruffaldi in ferrara, and in mantua for prince d'harmstadt, governor of the city; so as to enable him to send some heads, or other works of giulio romano, thus removed from the ducal palace, to the emperor. the secret composition of his glue contri always concealed, but similar attempts were made about the same period in foreign countries. in the journal of trevoux it is stated that louis xv. caused the celebrated painting of st. michael, by raffaello, to be removed from its original canvass to a new one, a process which succeeded admirably, for on this last the chinks and creases disappeared which had greatly injured the former.[ ] from this account i have been led to doubt whether contri were really the inventor of this art, as asserted by ferrarese writers. i say only doubted, since i am unable to judge the question with precision, for want of ascertaining the exact year in which he first applied the method with success. what is indisputable however is, that he was the first who was induced to make such trial of it upon painted walls, and that the plan which he adopted was only of his own invention. but whether he discovered the art, or only the method of applying it, at this period his secret, or something equivalent to it, is pretty well known in italy. on passing through imola, i saw, in a private house, two histories of the life of the virgin, which had been painted by cesi in the cathedral of that city, removed thence, and replaced on large new canvass. had this invention been elicited a few years previously, several of those ancient works might have been preserved, mention of which is now only to be met with in books, to the regret of every lover of the fine arts. footnote : see il sig. ab. requeno, in his "essays for the re-establishment of the ancient art of the greek and roman painters." ed. ven. p. . here too we must give some account of an exceedingly interesting art, as regards that of painting; an art which, after the lapse of centuries, in some degree re-appeared in italy, owing chiefly to the exertions of an ingenious spaniard. he resided many years at ferrara, and was assisted by the artists there in his experiments and undertakings. some years before, attempts had been made at paris to recover the method of painting in caustic, or that which the greeks and romans succeeded in by the medium of fire.[ ] a few words in vitruvius and pliny, and these very obscure in our days, and to which various meanings are given by critics, formed the only chart and compass to direct the inquirer. it was known that wax was employed in ancient painting, much the same as oil in the modern; but how to prepare it, to combine it with the colours, to use it in a liquid state, and how to apply fire to the process until the completion of the work--was the secret to be discovered. count caylus, who pursued antiquarian researches less for the sake of history than of the arts, was perhaps the principal promoter of so useful an inquiry. the royal academy of inscriptions joined him, and offered a public premium for the discovery of a method of painting in caustic, such as should be found worthy of its approbation. many experiments were at this period made; and philology, chemistry, painting, all united in throwing light upon the subject. among various methods proposed by three academicians, caylus, cochin, and bachiliere, two of them received premiums, though in some measure the same, and both proposed by the last of the three mentioned names. the whole account may be read in the encyclopedia, under the head of _encaustique_. thenceforward native artists did not fail to make new trials, and practise themselves in pictures _all'encausto_. one of these, who arrived at florence in , exhibited to me a head, and some portion of the figure, thus painted by himself. i likewise saw him so employed. he had near him a brazier, on which were placed small pans filled with colours, all of a different body, and mixed with wax, but with what third ingredient i know not; whether salt of tartar, as recommended in the dissertation remunerated at paris, or some other composition. a second brazier was fixed behind the cartoon or panel on which he painted, in order to preserve it always warm. the work being finished, he went over the whole with a small hair brush, and gave it a clear and vivid glow. footnote : see the encyclopedia, at the art. _encaustique_. some there were at that time in italy who much admired this art. the numerous reliques of ancient painting, preserved free from the effects of time at naples and at rome, may be said to exhibit a manifest triumph over modern productions, which so much sooner become aged and fade away. this it was that induced the ab. vincenzo requeno to publish the book shortly before cited, at venice, first in . in him were united all the requisite qualities for promoting the new discovery--the learning of a man of letters, experience of an artist, philosophical reasoning, and persevering experiment. his work is in every one's hands, so as to enable them to form an opinion, for this is not the place to enter into a discussion of its various merits. it has been done by the cav. de rossi in three extracts from that work, published in the first volume of the "memorie delle belle arti," one of the most brief and at the same time admired journals in italy. my sole object is to do justice to his singular penetration and industry. he gave a solution of the difficulty mentioned in the encyclopedia, and discovered a new process. he shewed that salt of tartar was not made use of by the greeks to dissolve wax, and adapt it to the brush, because they were unacquainted with such a substance; while his own experience convinced him it was useless for the purpose. he knew that the application of fire to the back of the painting was not the method adopted by the greeks, inasmuch as it was inapplicable to their paintings upon large walls. he tried many experiments, and he at length found that the resinous gum, called mastic, would produce the effect which he had vainly sought from salt of tartar. with the gum and wax he made crayons, and found various ways of combining the colours, so as best to adapt them for the use of painting. when the work was finished, he was accustomed sometimes to give it a slight covering of wax, in place of varnish, and sometimes to leave it without; but in every process which he observed, he perfected the work by the application of fire, or as he himself observes, by burning it. this he effected by holding a brazier near the front of the picture, and lastly going over the work with a small linen cloth, which clears and enlivens the tints. i have seen the first trials, as made by the ab. requeno himself, or by artists directed by him, in possession of his excellency pignatelli at bologna, who added to the discovery no small share of information and patronage. but it was not to be expected that a new kind of painting could be perfected by means of a single studio. aware of this, the author of the work thus expresses himself: "at the moment when a resinous gum shall be found better, that is, more white and hard, and equally soluble with wax and water as those employed by me, the pictures and caustics will become more beautiful, consistent, and durable. i am not a painter by profession, nor do i merit any particular commendation among dilettanti. my pictures have been conducted solely for the purpose of shewing a method of painting with ease and consistency in wax, without oil, without glue, and by means of gums only, with wax and water." on this account he thenceforward invited professors to join in promoting his discovery, and lived to witness its effects. omitting to speak of the chemists who aided in throwing light upon the progress of this art,[ ] the pictoric school at rome undertook in a manner to promote and bring it to its last degree of perfection. at that period lived counsellor renfesthein, the friend of mengs and of winckelmann, a man of exquisite taste in the arts of design, and ever surrounded by numbers of artists, who either received from him the benefit of his advice, or commissions from foreigners, private persons, and sovereigns. to these he proposed sometimes one, sometimes another method of the caustic art; and in a short time he beheld his cabinet filled with pictures on canvass, on wood, and on different kinds of stones, which he had already submitted to every proof, by putting them under ground, in water, and exposing them to every variety of weather without injury. from this time the new discovery spread to different studii, and was communicated successively to the italian cities, and to foreign nations. entire chambers have thus been painted by caustic, a specimen of which is seen in that which the archduke ferdinand, governor of milan, caused to be thus decorated in his villa of monza. and in ornamental paintings and landscape this art may hitherto boast still more attractions than in figures. all however must be aware that it has not yet attained that degree of softness and finish possessed by the ancients in their paintings in wax, and in oil and varnish by the moderns. but where many unite to perfect it, it may be hoped that some van eyck may rise up, who will succeed in discovering, or more properly in perfecting that which "all artists had long looked for and ardently desired."[ ] footnote : see the _discorso della cera punica_, by the cav. lorgna, verona, . also _osservazioni intorno alla cera punica_, by count luigi torri, verona, . in the work of federici is an account of another little production by gio. maria astorri of treviso, edited in venice, ; in which spanish honey is much praised for the purpose of preparing and whitening the wax; and being a painter he relates several experiments he made with this and other methods, which succeeded well. gio. fabroni, keeper of the royal cabinet at florence, likewise wrote concerning it. see the roman anthology for the year . footnote : vasari. book v. genoese school. epoch i. _the ancients._ last among the ancient schools of italy is to be enumerated the genoese, in regard to the period in which it flourished, not to its merit, which i consider as being equal to that of many others. in liguria the first revival of painting appeared tardy; not so its progress, which was rapid and distinguished. in genoa and savona, as well as in other cities situated on the sea-shore, there remain some ancient paintings by unknown hands, one of which, over the gate of savona, is distinguished by the date of . the first artist known by any extant production, is one _franciscus de oberto_, as he signs himself on the edge of a painting of the virgin between two angels, which is in the church of s. domenico, at genoa, displaying nothing of the giottesque, and executed in . it cannot be ascertained that he was altogether a native artist, as may be confidently asserted of the monk of ieres, and of niccolo da voltri, names known to history though not by any surviving works. the monk of the isole d'oro, or of ieres, or stecadi, where he long resided, was not pointed out to us by name by any ancient writer. his surname was cybo, and historians place him in the genealogical tree of innocent viii. besides being a good provençal poet, and historian, it is said that he became an excellent miniaturist, and on this account, a favourite with the king and queen of aragon, to whom he presented several of his illuminated books. he also delighted in representing in his paintings birds, fish, quadrupeds, trees with fruits, ships of various forms, perspectives of cities and edifices, objects, in short, which he beheld in the islands around him. it is conjectured by baldinucci that giotto's models, in an age thronged with miniaturists, and not wanting in painters, had influenced the efforts of this isolated artist. how this assertion can be confirmed i know not, the more so as history describes him as having devoted himself late in life to design, and in the island of lerino, where it is not known there were any followers of giotto. voltri was also a figure painter; some of his altar-pieces survived to the time of soprani, who extols them, without, however, pointing out with precision the peculiarities of his taste or school. during the fifteenth century, and part of the following, the capital city, and those depending on it, were supplied, for the most part, with foreign painters, almost all unknown to their native schools on account of their having, as it appears, resided in liguria. some account remains of a german called giusto di alemagna, in a cloister of s. maria di castello, at genoa. he there painted in fresco an annunciation in , a precious picture of its sort, finished in the manner of miniaturists, and which seems to promise for germany the style of an albert durer. at the same period jacopo marone, of alessandria, painted an altar-piece at s. jacopo in savona, in distemper, consisting of various compartments, and in the midst of it a nativity with a landscape, a work conducted with exquisite care in every part. at s. brigida, in genoa, too, are seen, by the same hand, two altar-pieces, one with the date of , the other of . the author was one galeotto nebea, of castellaccio, a place not far from alexandria. the three principal archangels in the first, and s. pantaleone with other martyrs in the second, are represented on a gold ground, very tolerably executed, both in forms and draperies, which are extremely rich, with stiff and regular foldings, not borrowed from any other school. it exhibits also the grado or step, with minute histories, a work somewhat crude, but displaying diligence. turning from the head city to savona, a third native of alexandria, called gio. massone, painted about the year , in the church erected by sixtus iv. for the sepulture of his family. although not mentioned in history, he must have been distinguished in his time, to have been selected for such a work, and remunerated with one hundred and ninety-two ducats for his labour. it is comprised in a small altar-piece, where, seen at the feet of the virgin, are the portraits of the pope, and the cardinal giuliano, his nephew, afterwards julius ii. the same city, preserving so many ancient memorials, has also snatched from oblivion the names of one tuccio di andria, an artist employed at s. jacopo in , and of two natives of pavia, who somewhat later perhaps painted on canvass, and signed themselves, the one _laurentius papiensis_, the other _donatus comes bardus papiensis_. another foreigner, by birth a brescian, and a carmelite by profession, presents us with a signature, to be found at s. giovanni, below an altar-piece of the nativity of our saviour. it has written on it, "_opus f. hieronymi de brixia carmelitæ, _." by the same hand, in the cloister of the carmelitani at florence, is a pietà with this inscription, _f. hieronymus de brixia_. this artist is well deserving of notice, if only on account of his knowledge in perspective, an art so much cultivated after foppa in brescia, and throughout lombardy. doubtless he was a pupil of that monastery, in which the art of painting was then cultivated; as it is stated by averoldi, who extols one f. gio. maria da brescia, and the cloister of the carmine, decorated by him with a number of histories of elias and of eliseas. this girolamo i believe to have been his companion or disciple, a name that has in some way escaped orlandi, who belonged to the same order. no one of the foreign painters is known to have opened school in liguria, except a native of nizza, who, through his succession, is almost regarded as the progenitor of the ancient genoese school. he is called lodovico brea, and his works are by no means rare at genoa and throughout the state, with notices of him between the years and . in point of taste he is not equal to the best among his contemporaries in other schools, employing gilding, and more strongly adhering to the old dryness of design. his style, nevertheless, yields to that of few in the beauty of its heads, and in the vividness of its colouring, which still remains almost unimpaired. his folding is also good, his composition tolerable, he selects difficult perspectives, and his attitudes are bold. from his whole painting he might be rather pronounced the head of a new, than the follower of any other school. he never attempted grand proportions; in smaller, as we see in the slaughter of the innocents, at s. agostino, he is excellent. his s. giovanni, in the chapel of the madonna di savona, executed by commission for the card. della rovere, in competition with other artists, is highly praised. thus, until the year , painting in genoa was in the hands of strangers, and if the natives at all practised it they were few only, as we shall shortly show, while both one and the other were far behind the best methods of their age. ottaviano fregoso, elected doge in the above year, at length shed new lustre on the arts. he invited to genoa gio. giacomo lombardo, a sculptor, and carlo del mantegna, a painter, who succeeded, as we have stated, both to the works and reputation of his master. carlo not only painted in genoa but taught, and with a success that would seem quite incredible, were it not that the works of his imitators are still in existence. thus the genoese school first took its rise from brea, and was promoted by carlo, as we find it described by two painters in two volumes; a school of a long, uninterrupted, and illustrious succession. the first volume is by raffael soprani, a patrician of the city, who wrote lives of the genoese professors of design up to ; and added also notices of foreign ones who had been employed in that splendid capital. the second is by the cav. carlo ratti, secretary to the ligustic academy, who, after having republished the lives of soprani, accompanied by useful notes, continued the same work in another volume and on the same plan, down to the present day. he has moreover published, in two small volumes, a guide, intended to give an account of the best specimens of art, both in private and public, which genoa and every district of the state can boast; an extremely useful undertaking, and, if i mistake not, without example either in or beyond italy. thus, owing to the exertions of this deserving citizen, the pictoric history of liguria has become one of the most complete among those of all italy as respects the number of its artists, and the most certain in enabling us to form a correct opinion of their merits. directed by these, and by other additional information received on the spot from sig. ratti himself, as well as from others, i proceed to resume the thread of my narrative. about the period that carlo arrived at genoa, the same city was also so fortunate as to become the residence of pier francesco sacchi, commended by lomazzo, who calls him pierfrancesco pavese, an artist well skilled in the style then prevailing at milan. he was a good perspective painter, delightful in landscape, and a diligent, correct designer. the public is still in possession of his altar-piece of the four holy doctors in the oratory of s. ugo. the style of sacchi nearly resembles that of carlo del mantegna, from what we gather from his works in mantua, there remaining no vestiges of them in genoa. two youths of very fine genius for the art were at this period educating in the school of lodovico brea. one was named antonio semini, the other teramo piaggia, or teramo di zoagli, the place of his birth. there is no account of their being indebted either to the advice or examples of the new masters, when they began to be employed for the public, but their altar-pieces display the fact. they painted conjointly, and affixed both their names to their productions. in that of the martyrdom of st. andrew, which they conducted for the church of that name, they likewise added their own portraits. none can have witnessed this very beautiful altar-piece, without seeing traces of brea's style already enlarged and changed into one more modern. the figures are not of those dimensions which we subsequently see in a better age, nor is the design sufficiently soft and full, but there is a clearness in the countenances that rivets attention, an union of colouring that attracts; the folding is easy, the composition somewhat thronged, though not by any means despicable. few originators of the style which is now termed modern antique, can be fairly preferred before these two artists and friends. teramo in his individual specimens at chiavari and at genoa itself, retains somewhat more of the antique, particularly as regards composition, but is always animated in his countenances, studied and graceful. antonio appears to me almost like the pietro perugino of his school. in his deposition from the cross he approaches nearer the better age, a painting in possession of the dominicans at genoa, as well as in some other pieces highly commended for the figures, and the accessories of perspective and landscape, though his great merit does not appear most conspicuous here. for this we should consult his nativity, painted for s. domenico in savona, and we shall be convinced that he also emulated perino and raffaello himself. before proceeding to an improved epoch, we ought here to insert the names of a few other native artists to whom we already alluded. it is doubtful whether aurelio robertelli ranks in this list, by whom, at savona, is a figure of the virgin painted on a column of the old cathedral, dated , and transferred to the new one, where it excites the particular veneration of the people. a little subsequent appeared a painting by niccolo corso, at genoa, bearing the date of . it represents a history of s. benedict, painted in fresco for the villa of quarto belonging to the padri olivetani, in whose refectory, cloister, and church near the corso, he was much employed. soprani enumerates other histories, of which he extols the richness of invention, the passionate expression, and especially the vividness and durability of the colouring. he adds, that were he less hard, he might rank among the very first of his profession. the same writer commends andrea morinello for an altar-piece formerly seen at s. martino di albaro, dated ; an artist very graceful in his countenances, excellent in portrait, soft and clear in his outlines, and one of the first in those parts who opened the way for the modern manner. he likewise praises f. lorenzo moreno, a carmelite, skilled in fresco, who painted the annunciation in a cloister of the carmine, now cut out of the exterior wall of the building in order to preserve it. finally he extols an ecclesiastic of the franciscan order, by name f. simon da carnuli, who, in his church at voltri, painted two histories in one large altar-piece in . one of these represents the institution of the eucharist, the other the preaching of st. antony. still it is not free from the hardness peculiar to the age as regards the figures; but in the architecture of the edifices, and in the gradual receding of the perspective, it is so perfect that the celebrated andrea doria was eager at any price to purchase it, in order to present it as a gift to the escurial. but the people of voltri refused every offer, and still keep possession of it. a few others, who enjoyed a degree of reputation from their sons, will be mentioned along with them in the epoch of which we shall next proceed to treat. genoese school. epoch ii. _perino and his followers._ whilst the art was advancing in genoa and her territories, there occurred the celebrated siege of rome, and the calamities which accompanied and followed it, in consequence of which the scholars of raffaello were dispersed, and established themselves some in one city and some in another. we have seen in the course of this work polidoro and salerno in naples, giulio in mantua, pellegrino in modena, and gaudenzio in milan, distinguish themselves as the masters of eminent schools; and we find one school founded by perino del vaga in genoa, which has maintained the splendour of its origin in a way inferior to none. perino arrived in genoa in a state of distress in , after the sacking of rome. he was there liberally welcomed by prince doria, who employed him for several years in the decoration of his magnificent palace without the gate of s. tommaso. he superintended as well the external decorations of the sculptures, as the internal ornaments of the stuccos, the gilding, the arabesques, the paintings in fresco and in oil. this place, in consequence, breathes all the taste of the halls and loggie of the vatican; the celebrated works of which, at that time, attracted universal admiration, and in the execution of part of which perino had a considerable share. this artist has indeed no where displayed his talents to such advantage as in the doria palace; and it is doubtful whether perino in genoa, or giulio in mantua, have best sustained the style of raffaello. we find in the palace some small histories of celebrated romans, of cocles, for example, and scævola, which might pass for compositions of raffaello; a group of boys at play, likewise, has all the air of that master; and on a ceiling, in the war of the giants against the gods, we seem to behold in conflict the same persons whom raffaello had represented as banqueting in the casa chigi. if the expression be not so noble, the grace so rare, it is because that grand specimen of art may be emulated by many, but equalled by none. it may be added, that perino's style is less finished than his master's, and that, in his drawing of the naked figure, he, like giulio, partakes of the style of michelangiolo. four chambers, vasari informs us, were painted in the palace from the cartoons of vaga, by luzio romano, and some lombards, his assistants; one of whom, of the name of guglielmo milanese, followed him to rome, and held in that court the office of frate del piombo. the others have left no name behind them, and must have been individuals of inferior talents and poorly paid, as we occasionally find rude and heavy figures. such defects are not uncommon in the works which perino undertook, for when he had made his cartoons or designs he gave them to his pupils to execute, with material advantage to his pecuniary interests, but with detriment to his reputation. this is observed by vasari, nor do i know how he could have the courage to mention in connexion with this circumstance the works which were executed with the assistance of their scholars by raffaello and giulio romano, illustrious masters, irreproachable in the selection of their assistants, indefatigable in their application, and contemning that avidity of gain which drew down on perino merited reprehension. there is still, in the palace doria, a frieze of boys, commenced by him in one of the loggie, continued by pordenone, and finished by beccafumo; and the remains of what was there painted by girolamo da trevigi, who, through jealous rivalry towards perino, forsook both the city and the state. perino painted some pictures for the churches in genoa; where too we find some by eminent foreign hands, amongst which is the st. stephen, painted by giulio romano for the church of that saint; an altar-piece perhaps the most copious in composition, and the most striking that issued from the studio of that master. it was at this time too that many noble individuals applied themselves to collect foreign specimens of every school, and they have since been emulated by their posterity, who in this pursuit perhaps surpass all the private collectors in italy, except those of rome. by these means the country became enriched with beautiful works, and began to turn itself to a more perfect style, which it attained with a celerity unknown to any other school. the transition from the style of brea, which was that of the thirteenth century, to that of raffaello, occupied but a few years; and even the scholars of nizzardo, as we have observed, very soon became worthy imitators of the first of modern masters. these principles were sure to make the most prosperous advances amongst a people rich in genius and industry; and amidst a nobility that abounded in wealth, and who in no way lavished it more freely than in raising splendid sanctuaries to religion, and sumptuous habitations for themselves, which in grandeur, decorations, tapestries, and in other kinds of luxuries, scarcely yielded to royalty. from munificence like this, the school of genoa derived aid and encouragement, though not much known abroad, as her artists were sufficiently occupied at home. its characteristic excellence, in the opinion of mengs, consisted in the number of its excellent fresco painters; so that a church or palace of any antiquity is scarcely to be named which does not possess the most beautiful works, or at least the memory of them. and it is a remarkable fact, when we consider how exposed the city is to the sea air, that so many works in fresco, executed by early artists, should have remained in so perfect a state. nor did the school of genoa want celebrity in oil paintings, particularly in the qualities of truth and force of colouring, which excellences, derived first from perino and afterwards from the flemish, it always retained; not yielding in this respect to any school of italy, except the venetian. it has produced also noble designers; although some, like other mannerists, have debased the pencil by hasty and negligent performances. not having in public many examples of ideal excellence, it has supplied the deficiency by the study of the natural; and in the figure it has rather adopted the healthy, and the robust, and the energetic, than the delicate and the elegant. the study of portraits, in which this school had excellent masters and most lucrative practice, had a great influence on the figures of its first epoch; those of its last, if they have more beauty, have less spirit. there existed a talent for extensive composition, but in middle size rather than in great. in these they had not epic masters, like paolo and other venetians; they did not, however, so often violate decorum and costume. this was, perhaps, the result of the attachment to literature entertained by many of the genoese painters, amongst whom are enumerated a greater number of men of letters, and especially gentlemen, than in any other school. this latter circumstance was, in a great measure, owing to paggi, who, in a treatise of considerable length, defended the nobility of the art,[ ] and obtained a public decree,[ ] declaring the art honourable, and worthy of cultivation by men of the noblest birth; an event from which the art derived the greatest dignity. we now return to particulars. footnote : it is inserted in the th vol. of the lettere pittoriche, p. . footnote : the decree is given by the cavalier ratti in the notes to soprani. the names of the noble painters, amateurs of the art, may be found in those two authors. the first who attached themselves to perino for instruction, were lazzaro and pantaleo calvi, the sons and scholars of an agostino calvi, a good painter in the old style, and one of the first in genoa who forsook the gold ground for one of colour. lazzaro was at that time twenty-five years of age, his brother somewhat more; nor did the latter rise in reputation, except in lending to the works of lazzaro his aid and his name. these works abounded in genoa and her territories, at monaco and at naples, in every variety of composition, arabesques, and stuccos with which are decorated palaces and churches. some of these are excellent, as the façades of the palace doria, (now spinola,) with prisoners in various attitudes, considered as a school of design; and several historical compositions in colours and chiaroscuro, in the best taste.[ ] in the palace pallavicini, at zerbino, is a composition of theirs commonly called the continence of scipio; a remark which i owe to sig. ratti, who not having included it in his edition of , obligingly communicated it to me for this work. to this they also added naked figures, with so happy an imitation of perino that, in the opinion of mengs, they might be adjudged to that master. moreover, we know that perino was liberal to them in designs and cartoons; whence, in these better works, we may always presume on the aid of the master's hand. however it might be, lazzaro indulged in a self-conceit of his own powers, and left behind some specimens of an extravagance which no painter has since followed, except corenzio. he was particularly jealous of any young artist, who he thought might interfere with his fame or interests, and to gratify his envy had recourse to the blackest arts. one of these rivals, giacomo bargone, he took off by poison; and to depress the others he drew around himself a crowd of adherents and hirelings, who influenced the opinion of the vulgar, by praising the works of lazzaro to the skies, and depreciating those of his competitors. these cabals were more strongly instanced in the chapel centurioni, where he painted the birth of st. john, in competition with andrea semini and luca cambiaso, who there also painted other pictures from the history of that saint. this work was one of his happiest efforts, and the most approaching to the style of his master; but he could not crush the genius of cambiaso, which after this occasion appeared more brilliant than his own; whence the prince doria selected that artist to execute a very considerable work in fresco for the church of s. matteo. this so enraged calvi, that he gave himself up to a sea life, and abandoned the pencil for twenty years. he ultimately resumed it, and continued, though with a hardness of style, to paint till his eighty-fifth year. one of his last works is to be seen on the walls and in the cupola of s. catherine; but it is cold, meagre, and bears all the marks of senility. indeed after his return to the art, and particularly after the death of pantaleo, who had assiduously assisted him in every work, lazzaro was only memorable for the extreme protraction of his life, which extended to years. footnote : this work is extolled by lomazzo as one of the best of lazzaro; it is classed with the triumphs of giulio romano, polidoro, and other eminent artists, in the _trattato della pittura_, p. . of the two semini, andrea and ottavio, it is not ascertained that they had in genoa any other master than their father antonio; but after the example of their father, they deferred much to perino, as did also luca their contemporary. in confirmation of which it is said, that perino having found them engaged with a print of titian, and hearing them remarking on some incorrectness in the drawing, reproved them by observing, that in the works of the great masters we ought to pass over their faults and extol their excellence. but the two brothers, enchanted by the style of raffaello, became ambitious of drinking at the fountain of the art, and, repairing to rome, applied themselves to the diligent study of the works of that master, and the remains of antiquity, particularly the trajan column. they were afterwards employed both at genoa and in milan, where they painted many works, both in conjunction and separately, all in the roman style, particularly in their early career. andrea discovered less talent than ottavio; and was, perhaps, more tenacious than he in his imitation of raffaello, especially in the contours of his faces. he sometimes wants delicacy, as in a crucifixion lately come into the possession of the duke of tuscany; and sometimes correctness, as in the presepio, in the church of st. francis in genoa, which is in other respects very raffaellesque, and may be reckoned among his best works. ottavio, an unprincipled man, was an eminent artist, and succeeded so well in the imitation of his master, as is scarcely credible to those who have not seen his works. he painted the façade of the palace doria, now invrea, and there displayed so fine a taste in the architecture, and decorated it with busts and figures of such relief, and particularly with a rape of the sabines, that giulio cesare procaccini took it for a performance of raffaello, and asked if that great master had left any other works in genoa. of equal merit, or nearly so, were many of his frescos, painted for the nobility, until, as is often the case with fresco painters, he ended his career in a freer but less finished style. of these latter he left many specimens at milan, where he passed the latter years of his life. in that city the entire decoration of the chapel of s. girolamo at s. angelo is painted by him, the chief composition of which is the funeral group which accompanies the saint to the sepulchre. it possesses, if not a noble design, yet great fertility of invention, great spirit, and a strong and beautiful colour, as he possessed that part of the art in an eminent degree in works of fresco; for in oils he was either unwilling or unable to colour well. luca cambiaso, called also luchetto da genoa, did not quit his native country to obtain instruction, nor did he frequent any other school than that of his father; obscure indeed, but of a good method, and sufficient to a mind of genius. giovanni his father, a tolerable _quattrocentista_, and a great admirer of vaga and pordenone, after having exercised him in copying the designs of mantegna, a master of chasteness of contour, and having instructed him in the art of modelling, so useful in relief and foreshortening, carried him to the palace doria, and there pointed out to his attention those great prototypes of art, with the addition of his own instruction. the study of these performances, by a youth who was born a painter, awakened in him such emulation, that he began in his fifteenth year to produce works of his own invention; and gave promise of one day ranking, as he did, with the first painters of his age. he displayed facility, fire, and grandeur of design, and was on that account adduced by boschini as an example of fine contours, and held in high esteem in the cabinets of the dilettanti. he embodied his ideas with such despatch and success, that armenini affirms that he had seen him paint with two pencils at a time, and with a touch not less free, and more correct than tintoretto. he was, moreover, fertile and novel in his designs, skilful in introducing the most arduous foreshortenings, and in surmounting the difficulties of the art. he was deficient at first in the true principles of perspective; but he soon acquired the theory from castello, his great friend and companion, as we shall shortly see. through him he improved both his colouring and his style of composition. in conjunction with castello he executed several works, so much alike, that one hand can scarcely be distinguished from the other. these, however, were not his best performances. he must be seen where he painted alone; and he shines no where more than in genoa, nor beyond a period of twelve years, within which space soprani circumscribes his best time. let it not appear strange to those who hear this opinion of that writer. luca had not the good fortune to benefit from those great masters who, with a word, put their scholars in the right path; he went on, however, improving from his own resources, a long and laborious course, in which a thousand wishes are formed before the goal is reached. but cambiaso attained it, and held it until an ungovernable passion, as we shall see in the sequel, threw him back again. confining ourselves to the works of the best twelve years of his practice, we see in him a man who possessed a high predilection for the roman school; deriving instruction from prints, and impelled by his own genius to attempt i know not what of originality. where this originality appears, we should not wish cambiaso other than himself, and where it does not appear, we should not wish him any thing but an imitator. of the first kind is the martyrdom of st. george in the church of that saint, which for the noble character of the sufferer, the sympathy of the spectators, the composition, variety, and force of chiaroscuro, is considered his chef d'oeuvre. of the second kind there are, perhaps, more specimens to be found; as the picture at the rocchettini, of s. benedetto with john the baptist and st. luke, very much in the style of perino and raffaello; and above all, the rape of the sabines in terralba, a suburb of genoa, in the palace of the imperiali. every thing combines to please in this work; the magnificence of the buildings, the beauty of the horses, the alarm of the virgins, the ardour of the invaders, the several episodes which, in various compartments, crown the principal subject, and, as it were, continue the story. it is related that mengs, after having viewed this picture, said, that out of rome he had not seen any thing that more strongly brought to his recollection the loggie of the vatican, than these works. he also executed other works of singular merit, particularly for private collections, among which i have found more pictures of a free than of a devout description. being left a widower, he became enamoured of a female relative, whom he in vain endeavoured to obtain permission from the pope to marry. this disappointment induced the neglect of his art. he then repaired to the court of madrid, with the view of facilitating his wishes, and when he found himself deprived of all hope in this object, he fell sick and died. he left many works in the escurial, and amongst these the subject of paradise, in the vault of the church, a large composition, and a work very much praised by lomazzo, but not equally so by mengs, who had seen and examined it for several successive years. gio. batista castello, the companion of cambiaso, is commonly called in genoa il bergamasco, to distinguish him from gio. batista castello, a genoese, a scholar of cambiaso, and the most celebrated miniature painter of his age. our present subject, born in bergamo, and brought, when a youth, to genoa, by aurelio buso, (_v._ vol. iii. page ) was, on his sudden departure, left by him in that city. in this state of desertion he found a patron in one of the pallavicini family, who gave him a friendly reception, and assisted him with the means of prosecuting his studies; sending him to rome, from whence he returned to genoa an accomplished architect, sculptor, and painter, not inferior to cambiaso. his taste, formed by studying at rome, was similar to that of luca, as i have already observed; and in the church of s. matteo are works painted by them in concert. we may observe in these the style of raffaello already verging on mannerism, but not so much so as that which prevailed in rome in the time of gregory and sixtus. connoisseurs discover in cambiaso a greater genius and more elegance of design; in the bergamese more care, a deeper knowledge, and colour occasionally partaking more of the school of venice than of rome. it is however very probable that when so friendly an intercourse subsisted they may have aided each other, even in those places where they worked in competition, where each claimed his own work, and distinguished it by his name. thus at the nunziata di portoria luca represented on the walls the final state of the blest and the rejected in the last judgment; while gio. batista, in the vault, painted the supreme judge in the midst of the angelic choir, calling the elect to bliss. he appears in the attitude of uttering the words _venite benedicti_, appended in capital letters. it is a highly finished performance, and of so exalted a character that we should think that luca, when he painted the laterals to it, was asleep, so inferior are they in composition and expression. on many other occasions he painted alone, as the s. jerome surrounded by monks terrified at a lion, in s. francesco in castelletto; and the s. sebastian in the church of that saint, receiving the crown of martyrdom; a picture rich in composition, studied in execution, and far beyond any commendation of mine. he painted in genoa other pictures, and always discovered an air of life in the countenances, a magnificence in the architecture, a strength of colour and chiaroscuro, which makes one regret that he was so little known in italy; and possibly he was prevented from being known as an oil painter by the numerous works in fresco which he executed in genoa; the largest of which is in the palazzo grillo. we there see a portico painted in arabesque, and a saloon, in the ceiling of which is represented the banquet given by dido to Æneas; a beautiful work, particularly the arabesques, but not sufficiently studied. this artist, in his latter years, was painter to the court at madrid, whither, on his death, luca cambiaso was called to finish the larger historical subjects; but the grotesques, and the ornamental parts interspersed with figures, were continued by the two sons of gio. batista, whom he had carried with him to madrid as his assistants. palomini makes honourable mention of them, and the padre de' santi teresiani, and the padre mazzolari girolamino, in their description of the escurial, enumerate their works, commending their variety, singularity, and beauty of colour. one was called fabrizio, the other granello; and the latter, as ratti conjectures, was the son of nicolosio granello, an able fresco painter of the school of semini, whose widow was married to castelli, and probably brought with her this son of her first marriage. painters have in general been found to impart instruction more freely to native scholars than to strangers; and yet the latter have always profited more than the former, so that it rarely happened that on the death of the chief of a school the reputation of that school has been continued by a son or a nephew. such was the case with the genoese, where calvi, the semini, and cambiaso, had each a numerous progeny, and a progeny too attached to the art; and yet amongst so many there was not one who passed the bounds of mediocrity, except perhaps orazio, the son of luca cambiaso, of whom soprani merely says that he followed in a praiseworthy manner his father's style, and initiated some pupils in the art. it was therefore to his better scholars that cambiaso was indebted for assistance in his profession; one of whom, lazzaro tavarone, followed him even into spain, and remained there for some years after his master's death. he afterwards returned to genoa, stored with the designs of luca, and loaded with riches and honours. luca seemed to live again in his scholar, so fully did he possess his style. he moreover distinguished himself by a method of colouring in fresco, which, if i mistake not, raised him above all his predecessors in this school, and above all who succeeded him, except carloni. this peculiarity consisted in a richness, brightness, and variety of colour, which brings distant objects vividly to the sight, the whole composition appearing brilliantly illuminated, and the tints splendidly and harmoniously blended. one may perhaps occasionally wish in them more softness, but in general they have all the richness of oil paintings. the tribune of the duomo, where the patron saints of the city are represented, particularly s. lorenzo, from whose history some passages are selected, is the chef d'oeuvre of his public works. the façade of the palace of the doge is also a considerable performance, representing st. george slaying the dragon; around it and above are other numerous figures of citizens of eminence, of the virtues, of genii with nautical weapons and the spoils of the enemy, some of which might pass for the work of pordenone. this grand work is exposed to the sea, the spray of which has affected, but not destroyed it. in many other churches and palaces also are to be found the works of tavarone; histories, fables, and imaginary compositions, often so well preserved that the scaffolding and the steps by which the artists ascended and descended, appear as if just removed. fortunate, had his works been fewer in number, and finished with equal care. some pictures in oil are mentioned by him, but more rare and of less merit than his frescos. cesare corte was of pavian extraction. valerio, his father, who was born in venice, was the son of a gentleman of pavia, and became, under the instruction of titian, an excellent portrait painter; and his talents insuring him a favourable reception in genoa, he settled there. he remained in that city for the rest of his life, and died in poverty, his means being all consumed in fruitless experiments in alchemy. he was the intimate friend of cambiaso, whose life he wrote; and to him he committed the instruction of his son cesare. this son did not indeed equal his father, but he surpassed the greater number of his fellow scholars. in the church of s. piero he painted the tutelar saint at the foot of the madonna, surrounded by angels; a picture of chaste design and of a true and harmonious colouring. his historical pictures and his portraits are found in many collections: one of the former, in the casa pallavicino, on a subject from the inferno of dante, was celebrated by chiabrera in an elegant sonnet. the fame of this artist was tarnished by his heretical opinions, imbibed by the perusal of some pernicious work, as often happens to the half informed, who read every thing, understand little, and finally believe nothing. he however abjured his errors, though never released from his prison, where he died. david, his son, restricted himself to the limits of a copyist; and in this so highly distinguished himself, that his pictures are placed in some collections at the side of the originals as wonders of art. bernardo castello frequented the school of andrea semini more than that of cambiaso; in his principles he inclined more to the latter, and in practice he followed both indifferently. travelling afterwards through italy he saw other works, and formed a style not devoid of grace, nor of correctness, when he worked with care; as in the martyrdom of st. clement and st. agatagnolo, in the church of s. sebastian, and the st. anne at s. matteo. he had a fertile invention, in which he was aided by the poets of the age, whose friendship he assiduously cultivated.[ ] he was eulogized by lionardo spinola, d. angiolo grillo, ceva, marino, chiabrera, and by tasso, for whose jerusalem he made the designs which were in part engraved by agostino caracci. his reputation raised him not only to the rank of one of the first masters of his school, but of italy itself; and he was thus selected to work in the vatican, as has been mentioned. he there painted st. peter called to the apostleship, a picture which was soon afterwards removed, and one by lanfranco substituted in its place, either because it was injured by damp, or had not given satisfaction. castello indeed did not possess that vigorous style which rome at this time demanded, refusing her applause to the vasaris and zuccaris. he had much of their style of colour, nor was he exempt from their despatch; and, like them, he opened the way in his school to facility instead of correctness. genoa is filled, or rather glutted, with his works, yet they still maintain their reputation, as they are all sustained by a certain vigour and grace of style. he sometimes appears in foreign collections, and in that of the colonna in rome i saw a parnassus by him with poussin figures and a beautiful landscape, which may be ranked amongst his most finished works. soprani informs us that he was again invited to rome, to paint a picture of st. peter, and that he died whilst he was preparing himself for this journey, aged seventy-two. but at so advanced a period of life one may doubt the truth of this report. he had three sons, painters, of whom valerio alone is deserving of commemoration, and we shall notice him in his place. footnote : a strict intimacy existed, especially between him and the cav. marino, among whose letters we may enumerate twenty-eight more to castello than to any other person. it is pleasing to observe the dexterity of the poet, who often praises the "miraculous pencil" and the "divine hand" of the painter, an homage bestowed still more liberally in the _galleria_; and the gratitude of the artist who designed and coloured for his friend gratis, and who exerts himself to requite every letter of the poet by some acceptable work of art, (p. ). among his foreign scholars simon barabbino deserves remembrance, whose rare genius created so strong a jealousy in castello as to induce him to expel him from his school. he retired from it, and afterwards painted at the nunziata del guastato the s. diego, which soprani almost prefers to the best work of castello. but he did not obtain any great celebrity among his countrymen. milan rendered him that honour which his own native place denied; in consequence of which he settled there, and worked in the palaces and churches. there is by him, at s. girolamo, a madonna with a dead christ, accompanied by s. michael and s. andrew. the colour is true, the heads are correctly drawn, the naked figure well understood, the contours sufficiently accurate and well relieved. he would have attained still greater perfection, but he turned to merchandize, where instead of wealth he found only his ruin, and died in gaol. gio. batista paggi, a patrician by birth, was led to the profession of a painter by his predilection for the art, which, in spite of the opposition of his father, he indulged in from his earliest years. he was highly accomplished in letters, and his various attainments in poetry, philosophy, and history, all served to assist him in the composition of his pictures. he was perhaps not so much extolled by the poets as castello, but he attained a greater celebrity among his brother artists. he was directed by cambiaso in his first studies, which was the drawing in chiaroscuro from the casts of antique bassi-relievi, for the purpose of attaining a true idea of the beautiful, and preparing himself for the study of nature. being well skilled in the practice of the crayon, with little labour, and almost alone, he learnt the art of colouring; and without the instructions of a master, taught himself architecture and perspective. whilst he was rising into notice, he was compelled to flee his country for homicide; and, for about the space of twenty years, he resided in florence, protected by that court, and always profitably employed. florence, at that time, abounded with men of first rate genius; and it was then that cigoli, and all the young painters, abandoned their own languid style for the rich and vigorous lombard. paggi had not so much occasion as the others to invigorate his manner, as appears from the works he executed in florence not long after his arrival there. there remains by him a holy family, and another picture in the church degli angioli, and in the cloister of s. maria novella a history piece of s. catherine of siena. it represents the saint liberating a condemned person, and is a large composition, ornamented with beautiful buildings, and so pleasingly executed that i have heard it preferred to all in that convent. nevertheless the great merit of paggi was not at that time vigour, but a certain nobleness of air, which always continued to be his characteristic, and a delicacy and grace which have led some to compare him to baroccio, and even to coreggio. it seems to me that he became more vigorous as he advanced, and a proof of it is to be seen in the stupendous transfiguration, painted in s. mark, which seems almost beyond his powers. in the same style he painted for the certosa at pavia three pictures from the passion of our saviour, which appear to me among his best works. he was ultimately recalled by the republic about the year for his excellence in his art, and the courts both of pavia and madrid invited, and were desirous of employing him. his patriotism however precluded him from accepting these honourable appointments. he illustrated his native city with beautiful works in the churches and in collections. they have not all equal merit, as this artist also was not exempt from the disadvantages of bad priming, domestic anxieties, and the infirmities of age. his best works, according to some, are the two pictures at the church of s. bartolommeo, and the slaughter of the innocents, in the possession of his excellence the sig. giuseppe doria, painted in competition with vandyke and rubens in . he formed also some excellent scholars, the account of whom we shall reserve to the succeeding epoch. we shall there again recur to him, as he is placed on the confines of the two periods of his school, and may be regarded in the one as a scholar, and in the other as a master. genoese school. epoch iii. _the art relapses for some time, and is re-invigorated by the works of paggi and some foreigners._ every school, whatever may have been the celebrity of its founder, betrays in the course of time symptoms of decay, and stands in need of restoration. the genoese, in the hands of castello, experienced a decline about the close of the sixteenth century, but soon afterwards revived, by the return of paggi, and the arrival of some foreigners, who established themselves for a considerable period in that city. to this amelioration sofonisba angussola not a little contributed by the assemblies of scholars and professors of the art, which were held in his house, much to their improvement, as we have before observed. among these were gentileschi, roncalli, and the procaccini, who were employed in various public works. aurelio lomi of pisa settled in genoa, taught there, and left some excellent works at san francesco di castelletto, at the nunziata del guastato and elsewhere. nor ought we to omit simon balli, his scholar, unknown in florence, his native city, but deserving of being remembered for his style, which partook considerably of andrea del sarto's, and for some small cabinet pictures on copper. antonio antoniano of urbino also resorted thither, if we are to believe soprani.[ ] he brought with him the beautiful picture painted for the duomo by baroccio, who was his master; and he himself, in the church of s. tommaso, painted the picture of the saint and another picture; and, if i mistake not, some others for private individuals, which are at the present day attributed to baroccio, so successful was his imitation of that master. there came to genoa from siena salimbeni and sorri, and with them agostino tassi. the two latter remained there for a length of time, both working and teaching; and besides these, ghissoni, who was also a sienese of some merit, a scholar of alberti in rome, and a fresco painter of a vigorous and engaging style. simon vovet also repaired thither, but did not remain long; he however executed some works, one particularly of the crucifixion, at st. ambrose, not unworthy, as soprani informs us, of his great name. amongst the most considerable aid which genoa experienced from foreign talents we must enumerate rubens and vandyck; the first of whom left there some noble public works, and a number of private historical pieces, and the second a very great number of his eloquent and animated portraits. gio. rosa of flanders also established himself there, mentioned by me in rome, where he studied; a happy imitator of nature in her most agreeable forms, especially animals. he died in genoa, and left there giacomo legi, his countryman and scholar; of whom there remain some excellent pictures of animals, flowers, and fruit, though few in number, as he died young. godfrey waals, a german, and gio. batista primi, a roman, scholars of tassi, and landscape painters of much merit, resided there for some time; and cornelio wael, with vincenzio malò, two flemish painters, clever in battles, landscapes, and humorous pieces, and the latter also in altar-pieces. some other flemish artists must have resided there a shorter time, by whom i have seen in some palaces pictures of large size, and to all appearance painted on the spot; and these i regard as additional aids to a school that benefited at that time more from example than from instruction. footnote : in the dictionary of the artists of urbino the existence of this artist is rejected as fabulous; and it is attempted to substitute for him, in soprani's work, antonio viviani, who was indeed in genoa. considerable weight is given to the conjecture, from the family of antoniano not being mentioned in urbino; and i may add the circumstance of not finding any other works of this antonio than those named by soprani and his copyists. and how is it possible that one who came to genoa an accomplished master, should not have left, either in urbino or the neighbouring territory, even a vestige or memorial of his pencil? the young artists of genoa, thus enriched in the course of a few years by fresh examples, entered on a new career, and adopted a more vigorous and grander style than they had before practised. and not a few of them, after receiving the rudiments of instruction in their native place, repaired to parma, or florence, or rome, to finish their studies; and from these and other sources added celebrity to their country. thus the seventeenth century did not possess in genoa so decided a character as the preceding, nor so select or ideal: it had however an abundance of excellent artists, and particularly of the best portrait painters and colourists, sufficient indeed to supply venice with at her least happy epoch. it would also have attained a higher pitch of repute, if the plague of had not swept off a vast number of promising artists; the names of some of whom, cut off at an early period of life, may be found mentioned in soprani. the primary cause of this revival of the art in genoa may be ascribed to the riches and to the taste of her nobility, who invited and supported these eminent foreign artists. and in the next place much of this merit is due to paggi. there was at one time great danger of these excellent colourists being negligent designers; and it is indeed a common opinion, adopted also by algarotti, that the best colourists are seldom correct in design. paggi, in this important point, supported the credit of the school. he had studied design among the florentines, the best masters in italy; and he composed for the instruction of youth a small treatise, entitled _diffinizione o sia divisione della pittura_, which he published in . soprani considers it a useful compendium, and containing, in plain and unaffected language, the principles of the art. it is mentioned with particular commendation in a letter of the younger vasari, which must make us regret the loss of it; and it would be desirable to search the libraries where papers of this description are preserved, to ascertain whether it may be still in existence. all that we at present possess by paggi is the treatise mentioned by us a few pages back. in the mean time we shall commence a new epoch with him and his school. domenico fiasella is called il sarzana, from being born in the city of that name, where he obtained the rudiments of his style. he devoted himself to the study of the noble picture of andrea del sarto, which was then in the church of the predicatori; and where there is at this day a beautiful copy of it. after being instructed for some time by paggi he repaired to rome, and studied raffaello, and imbibed also other favourite styles. he there spent ten years, and became an eminent master, much praised by guido reni, and employed as an assistant by the cav. d'arpino and passignano. he finally returned to genoa, and in that city and in others of higher italy, executed numerous works. a very considerable part of them he left imperfect, being in the habit of neglecting them, or leaving them to be finished by his scholars, as is the tradition of his native place. independent of this impatience he was a great artist, and possessed many eminent qualities, a felicity in grand compositions, a style of design often worthy of the roman school, great life in the heads; an admirable colour in his oil pictures, and an easy imitation of various styles. he is very raffaellesque in a s. bernardo, which is to be seen at s. vincenzio in piacenza; caravaggesque in a s. tommaso di villanova, at s. agostino in genoa; in the duomo of sarzana, where he painted the slaughter of the innocents, and in the archiepiscopal gallery of milan, in an infant christ, he is a follower of guido; and in other places an imitator of annibal caracci and his school. he can command our admiration when he pleases, and has left a stupendous work in the church of the augustines in genoa, representing st. paul, the first hermit, for whose body, discovered in a lonely forest by st. antony the abbot, a lion is in the act of scooping a grave. many of his pictures are found in private collections. i have met with specimens at sarzana, in the house of his excellency the marquis remedi, a house celebrated for the cordial and generous hospitality of the owner; and in others too there and in the state. his madonnas have for the most part a similarity of features; not so ideal as those of raffaello, but still agreeable and prepossessing. on the death of paggi, fiasella became the principal instructor in genoa, and i shall mention his most conspicuous scholars. we may commence with his relative, gio. batista casone, changed by orlandi into carlone, who did not paint much in genoa. if we may judge from the altar-piece delle vigne, representing the virgin surrounded by saints, he retained the style of fiasella, the colouring of which he endeavoured to invigorate. gio. paol oderico, a noble genoese, painted always with great care, was select in his forms, and possessed a strong and rich colouring. the pp. scolopi have a picture by him of the s. angiolo custode, the work of a young hand, but bearing promise of great talents. his historical compositions are also to be found in galleries, but they are rare, according to soprani, and placed among the most precious possessions. his portraits are not of such rare occurrence, and in these he displayed great talents, and had numerous commissions. we find but few public works of francesco capuro, in consequence of his being engaged by the court and individuals in modena, where he passed a great part of his life, at a distance from his own country. he was among the stricter followers of fiasella in regard to design and composition, but in his colouring he partakes of spagnoletto, under whom he studied in naples; and in the style of that painter he executed some pictures of half-size, which probably procured him his highest reputation. we have still fewer public works by the young luca saltarello; but a s. benedetto, in the church of s. stefano, in the act of restoring a dead person to life, a picture of sober colouring, beautifully harmonized, and full of expression and knowledge, sufficiently denotes his early maturity, and his capacity, if he had lived, of forming an epoch in his school. being desirous of adding to his other accomplishments the advantages to be derived from the ancient marbles, he repaired to rome, and died there through excess of study. gregorio de' ferrari of porto maurizio received from sarzana instructions conformable to his principles, but which did not correspond with the genius of the scholar, which was naturally disposed to a style of greater freedom and grandeur. he repaired to parma to study the works of coreggio, and there made a most careful copy of the great cupola, which was purchased many years after by mengs; and he returned home with a very different style to his first. coreggio was his only prototype, and he imitated him most happily in the air of the countenances, and in many individual figures; but not in the general style of composition, in which he is not so ideal; nor in the colouring, as in his frescos he is somewhat languid. he is in general negligent in his drawing; so that, with the exception of the two pictures at the theatines of s. pier d'arena, this censure attaches to all his works. in his foreshortenings and in his draperies he sometimes falls into affectation. he possesses however considerable attractions: he is ingenious and novel, and displays a vigorous, rich, and correct colouring, particularly in the fleshes. by these qualities his s. michele, at the church of the madonna delle vigne, predominates amongst the pictures of that church: and it may be justly ranked with those venetian productions in which the spirit and noble colourings atone for the inaccuracy of the drawing. he was much employed in turin and in marseilles; and still more so in the principal palaces in his own country, particularly in that of the balbi. there however the great names of that celebrated collection, both foreign and native, wage against him, as we may say, a continual war. valerio castello is one of the greatest members of the genoese school. he no sooner made his appearance amongst his fellow scholars than he distanced the oldest of them, and soon afterwards even rivalled his masters. the son of bernardo, and the scholar of fiasella, he followed neither the style of the one nor the other, but selected other prototypes more consonant to his genius, the procaccini in milan, and coreggio in parma; and from the study of these, and a grace wholly his own, he formed a style unique and peculiarly belonging to himself. if it is not the most correct, it seems to deserve pardon for its select composition, for its beautiful colouring and chiaroscuro, and for the spirit, facility, and expression, which always distinguish his pencil. he excelled in frescos, so as to please even by the side of carloni; and is perhaps sometimes, as in s. marta, even superior to him. in his perspectives he occasionally employed gio. maria mariani d'ascoli, who also lived in rome. nor was he inferior in oil pictures. he painted in the oratory of s. jacopo the baptism of that saint, in competition with the chief of his contemporaries, and eclipsed them all, with the exception perhaps of castiglione. he worked also for collections; and in the royal gallery of florence his rape of the sabines is highly prized, a subject which, on a more extended scale, but yet with some resemblance both of figures and architecture, he repeated in the palace brignole. he is not however frequently met with, as he died early, and from the great celebrity he acquired, his works were in much request in all the first collections, and thus his productions were dispersed. he taught gio. batista merano, and, after his own example, sent him to study at parma, in which city he met with sufficient employment both from the prince and private individuals. the slaughter of the innocents, at the gesù in genoa, is pointed out to us as one of his best pictures, and is a copious and careful composition, extremely well arranged. we must not confound this artist with francesco merano, called, from his first employ, il paggio, a scholar and a respectable follower of fiasella. returning to the scholars of gio. batista paggi, one of them, who was himself the educator of a generous race to his country, was gio. domenico cappellino. he had an extraordinary talent for imitation, whence, in his first works, he came very near his master. there was not in him that air of nobility that in paggi and bordone seems to have been derived from their birth and education. he possessed nevertheless other qualities of art which fail not to interest the spectator. this is evident in the death of s. francesco, placed in s. niccolò; and at s. stefano in the s. francesca romana, who to a dumb girl imparts the powers of speech. they are works which possess in the whole a peculiar originality, and in the separate figures a natural charm, and an expression of the affections and a delicacy of colouring highly attractive. he afterwards changed his style, as may be seen in two pictures of the passion at s. siro, and in many others at genoa, always vigorous, but less spirited than at first, rather obscure in tints, and removed from the manner of paggi. he aimed at originality, and, finding her, pursued her without a rival. he had the good fortune to be the instructor of a foreigner, one of those men of genius who in themselves illustrate a whole school. this artist was of the family of pioli, which had already produced an excellent miniature painter called gio. gregorio, who died in marseilles, and a pier francesco, a scholar of sofonisba, who died young, with the reputation of being one of the best imitators of cambiaso. pellegro piola, of whom we have now to treat, enjoyed a still shorter period of life, being assassinated at the age of twenty-three, by an unknown hand; and, as it is believed, through envy of his rare talents. it is not easy to describe very precisely the style of this young man; for, as a student, he studied all the best works and formed himself upon them, and willingly inclined to the more beautiful. he then tried a wider flight, and pursued it always with exquisite diligence, and a taste which charms us; and whatever style he adopted he seemed to have grown grey in it. a madonna by him, which is now in the great collection of the marchese brignole, was considered by franceschini an original of andrea del sarto. his s. eligio, in the street of the goldsmiths, was by mengs ascribed to lodovico caracci. he however aspired at something far beyond mere imitation, and said that he had a mental conception of the beautiful, which he did not despair to attain if his life should be spared. but he was prematurely cut off, as i have stated, and his works in consequence are very rarely met with. the rarity of the productions of pellegro was compensated for by a brother, who filled the city and the state with his works. this was domenico piola, a scholar of pellegro and cappellini, the associate of valerio castelli in many works, and for some time an imitator of that master, afterwards of castiglione; and, finally, the founder of a style bordering on that of cortona. there is not in it a sufficient contrast; the forms are various, ideal for the most part, nor without beauty; the chiaroscuro is generally little finished; the design partakes of the roman. there is, however, a considerable resemblance to pietro in the distribution of the colours, and in his facility and despatch. he had a singular talent for the representation of children, and he refined it by the imitation of fiammingo. he enlivened every composition by their introduction, and in some palaces he interwove them in elegant friezes. from this soft and easy manner, examples of which are to be met with in every part of the genoese territories, he could occasionally depart, as in the picture of the miracle of st. peter at the beautiful gate of the temple, painted at carignano, where the architecture, the fleshes, the gestures, are highly studied; and there is a force of effect which seems to emulate the guercino, which is opposed to it. he also departs from his ordinary style in the repose of the holy family at the gesù. of three sons whom domenico instructed, paolo will be mentioned among the most excellent artists of a future epoch; antonio commendably followed his father's style in his youth, but afterwards changed his profession. gio. batista could copy or follow the designs of others, but nothing beyond. this latter had a son, domenico, who, whilst he was beginning to emulate the glory of his family, was cut off by death, and with him was extinguished a family which, for the course of nearly two centuries, had conferred honour on the profession. giulio benso, the scholar of paggi, excelled all his school in architecture and perspective. genoa, perhaps, does not possess any work in this department superior to that of benso in the nunziata del guastato; in the choir of which he represented one of those perspective pictures with balustrades and colonnades, in which colonna and mitelli so much excelled. these two artists were great admirers of this work of giulio, but to us it may perhaps appear too much loaded with ornament. he there represented the glorification of the virgin, and added some histories, in which he rigorously observed the laws of the _sotto in su_; an art then little practised in his school. giovanni and batista carloni, who painted so much in this church, are surpassed by him in this department; nor do they much exceed him in composition and colour. benso left but few oil paintings in genoa; that of s. domenico in the church of that saint is one of the best, and partakes more of the school of bologna than that of genoa. castellino castello possessed a sober style of composition, like that of paggi his master, and, as far as we may judge from various pictures, was a correct and elegant artist. he highly distinguished himself in the picture of the pentecost, placed on the great altar of the church of the spirito santo. he, however, like many others of this period, is indebted for his celebrity to his success in portrait painting; in confirmation of which it is sufficient to state, that vandyck was desirous of being commemorated by him, and painted him in return. this fact exalts his reputation even more than the commendations he received from contemporary poets, among whom were chiabrera and marino, whose features he also preserved for posterity. he was appointed portrait painter to the court of savoy, and in this department he had a rival in his own family, in niccolo his son, who was in high reputation in genoa when soprani wrote. some others of the school of paggi, distinguished in landscape or in other branches of painting, are reserved for the conclusion of this epoch. paggi had a rival in sorri of siena. his style is a mixture of passignano and paol veronese; and, if i err not in my judgment, of marco da siena also, whose deposition from the cross in araceli was, in a manner, repeated by sorri at s. siro in genoa. he there instructed carlone and strozzi, two luminaries of this school. gio. carlone repaired soon to rome, and afterwards to florence, where he was taught by passignano, the father-in-law and master of sorri. passignano was not so remarkable for his colouring as for his design and grandeur of composition; but we have already observed, that the style of colour is that portion of the art least influenced by precept, and which is formed more than any other by the individual genius of the painter. carlone possessed as great talents for composition as any of his contemporaries; correct and graceful in design, decided and intelligent in expression; and above all, he had an extraordinary brilliancy of colour in his frescos. in this branch he was anxious to distinguish himself; and although he saw eminent examples at florence and in rome, he did not adhere to them so much as, if i am not wrong in my conjecture, he attempted to follow, or rather to surpass and to reduce to a more pleasing practice, the style exhibited by tavarone, in the histories of s. lorenzo. i have already described that style; the vigour, beauty, and freshness with which it prepossesses the spectator, and approximates the most distant objects. if, in respect of giovanni, we wish to add any greater praise, it is that he surpassed tavarone in these gifts; and besides, he is more correct in his contours, and more varied and copious in composition. but in all these qualities they were both excelled by gio. batista carlone, a scholar also of passignano, and a student in rome, afterwards the associate of giovanni, his elder brother, in principle and practice, whom he survived fifty years, as if to carry their style to the highest pitch of perfection. the church of the nunziata del guastato, a splendid monument of the piety and the riches of the noble family of lomellini, and an edifice which confers honour on the city, which has enlarged and ornamented it as its cathedral, possesses no work more astonishing than the three naves, almost nearly the whole of which are decorated by the two brothers. in the middle one the elder brother represented the epiphany of our lord, his entrance into jerusalem, the prayer at gethsemane, the resurrection, the ascension, the descent of the holy ghost, the assumption of the virgin, and other passages of the new testament. in one of the smaller naves, the younger brother painted st. paul preaching to the multitude, st. james baptizing the neophytes, st. simon and st. jude in the metropolis of persia; and in the opposite nave three histories from the old testament, moses striking the rock, the israelites passing the jordan, and joseph, on a high seat, giving audience to his brethren. all these stories seem to be adopted as giving scope to a fancy rich in invention, and capable of peopling these immense compositions with figures almost innumerable. it is not easy to mention a work on so vast a scale executed with so much zeal and care; compositions so copious and novel, heads so varied and so animated, contours so well expressed and so strongly relieved, colours so enchanting, so lucid and fresh after such a lapse of years. the reds (which perhaps are too frequent) are as deep as purple, the blues appear sapphires, and the green, above all, which is a wonder to artists, is bright as an emerald. in viewing the brilliancy of these colours we might almost mistake them for paintings on glass or enamel; nor do i recollect to have seen in any other artists of italy so original, beautiful, and enchanting a style of colour. some persons who have compared these colours with those of raffaello, coreggio, or andrea del sarto, have thought them too near bordering on crudeness; but in matters of taste, where the sources of pleasing are so many, and where there are so many gradations in the merits of artists, who can possibly gratify all? the similitude of style would lead the unskilled to believe them the works of the same master; but the more experienced are able to ascertain the composition of gio. batista from a peculiar delicacy of tints and of chiaroscuro, and from a grander style of design. it has been attempted to ascertain more minutely his method of colouring; and it has been discovered, "that in decorating the ceilings and walls of rooms, he previously laid on the dry wall a colour ground, to protect his work from the action of the lime. these paintings were executed with the most delicate gradations, and the most surprising harmony; hence his frescos have all the richness of oil colours." these are the words of ratti, and mengs joins him in the encomium. i have only enumerated the paintings which these artists exhibited in the guastato, but giovanni left numerous works in the same style and on similar subjects, at the gesù and at s. domenico in genoa, and at s. antonio abate in milan, where he died; without mentioning the many fables and stories with which he adorned various palaces in his native city. of the other brother it is not equally easy to recount all that he painted in private houses, and in the before-mentioned churches, and at s. siro and elsewhere. the histories of the chapel in the palazzo reale are amongst his most original and delightful works; columbus discovering the indies; the martyrdom of the giustiniani at scio; the remains of the baptist brought to genoa, and other ligurian subjects. nor is it easy to enumerate his many altar-pieces and oil pictures to be found in the churches. i shall limit myself here to the three histories of s. clemente ancirano at the guastato; pictures, characterised by such congruity, such truth, and such a peculiar horror, as to force us to withdraw our eyes from the inhumanity of the scene. some persons may, perhaps, be indisposed to give full credit to all that i have written of gio. batista; as it seems incredible that an artist should be so little known, who united in himself the most opposite qualities; a wonderful skill both in oil and fresco; equal excellence in colour and design; facility and correctness; an immense number of works, and a diligence shewn by few fresco painters. but they who have viewed the works i have mentioned, with unprejudiced eyes, will not, i feel confident, differ far from me in opinion. he lived to the age of eighty-five, and lost neither his vigour of invention nor his genius for grand composition; nor the freedom of hand, and incomparably fine pencil with which he treated them. i shall allude, in another epoch, to his sons andrea and niccolo; but i must not neglect to observe, that both pascoli and orlandi have written of this family with little accuracy. the other great colourist and scholar of sorri was bernardo strozzi, better known under the name of the capuchin of genoa, from his professing that order. he is also called _il prete genovese_, because he left the cloister, when a priest, to contribute to the support of an aged mother and a sister; but the one dying and the other marrying, he refused to return to his order; and being afterwards forcibly recalled to it and sentenced to three years of imprisonment, he contrived to make his escape, fled to venice, and there passed the remainder of his days as a secular priest. the larger compositions of this artist are only to be seen in genoa, in the houses of the nobility, and in san domenico, where he executed the great picture of the paradiso, which is one of the best conceived that i have seen. there too, in novi and in voltri, are various altar-pieces; and above all, an admirable madonna in genoa, in a room of the palazzo reale. some of his works are also to be seen in venice, where strozzi was preferred to every other artist, to replace a _tondo_, executed in the best age of venetian art, in the library of st. mark, and there painted a figure of sculpture. he, however, left few public works. whoever wishes to see admirable productions, must observe his pictures in eminent collections; as the st. thomas incredulous, in the palazzo brignole. when placed in a room of excellent colourists he eclipses them all by the majesty, copiousness, vigour, nature, and harmony of his style. his design is not very correct, nor sufficiently select; we there see a naturalist who follows neither sorri nor any other master; but one who, after the example of that ancient master, derives instruction from the multitude. there is a deep expression of force and energy in the heads of his men, and of piety in those of his saints. in the countenances of his women and his youths he has less merit; and i have seen some of his madonnas and angels vulgar and often repeated. he was accustomed to paint portraits, and in his compositions derived all his knowledge from the study of nature; and often painted half figures in the style of caravaggio. the royal gallery at florence has a christ by him, called _della moneta_; the figures half-size, and exhibiting great vivacity. he is esteemed the most spirited artist of his own school; and in strong impasto, in richness and vigour of colour, has few rivals in any other; or rather, in this style of colouring he is original and without example. his remains were deposited at s. fosca in venice, with this inscription: _bernardus strozzius pictorum splendor, liguriæ decus_; and it is his great praise to have merited this encomium in the seat and near the ashes of the greatest colourists. gio. andrea de' ferrari perfected himself under this master, having been previously the scholar of castelli, whose feeble style may be detected in the theodosius, painted by ferrari as an altar-piece in the gesù. in many works he is a respectable follower of strozzi; as in the nativity in the duomo of genoa, and in the nativity of the virgin, in a church of voltri, full of figures which seem inspired with life. although little known, and perhaps too little commended by soprani, he is one of the first genoese artists; and, to establish his reputation, it is sufficient to state, that he was the master of gio. bernardo carbone, the chief of this school of portrait painters. even by the more experienced his portraits were often mistaken for those of vandyke, or purchased at prices little inferior to those given for a true vandyke. he also composed well, as may be seen in his picture of the king s. louis at the guastato. but this picture did not please the person who gave the commission, and a second was ordered in paris, and afterwards a third, which successively superseded each other on the altar. but they did not prove satisfactory, and that of carbone was restored to its place, and the other two were added as laterals, as if to attend on it. another deserving scholar of strozzi resided a considerable time in tuscany, and there distinguished himself; clemente bocciardo, from his great size called clementone. he first studied in rome, afterwards in florence, and practising much with castiglione, he formed a style more correct and ideal than that of his master, to whom, however, he is inferior in truth of colour. pisa was his theatre of art, where, in the duomo and elsewhere, he left some highly respectable works; over all of which, in his life, the preference is given to s. sebastian, placed in the church of the carthusians. he painted his own portrait for the royal gallery of florence, which has had a better fate than those of many common artists, and remains there to the present day. a third pupil of this school resided a considerable time in venice, afterwards in mirandola. this was gio. francesco cassana, a soft and delicate colourist, and master of langetti. by the venetians he was but little esteemed, and painted only for private collections. he afterwards repaired to the court of mirandola, and painted a s. jerome for the duomo of that city, and other pictures in various churches, which enhanced his reputation. he was the founder of a family that conferred honour on the art. niccolo, his eldest son, who became one of the most celebrated portrait painters of his age, passed the chief part of his life at florence, and died at the court of london. the grand duke possesses some of his historical compositions, and some portraits full of expression, in the royal gallery, amongst which are two half figures of two court buffoons, admirably executed. it is said that his style, which nearly approaches to strozzi, cost him great trouble, and that, when painting, he was so intent on his work as not to hear a person addressing him; and sometimes, in a rage, he would throw himself on the ground, exclaiming against his work as deficient both in colour and spirit, till snatching his pencil again he brought it to his wishes. gio. agostino, called l'abate cassana, from the clerical dress which he always wore, was a good portrait painter, but distinguished himself more in the representation of animals. there are many of his pictures in the collections of florence, venice, and genoa, and italy in general, and they often indeed pass under the name of castiglione. the third brother was gio. batista, and excelled in flowers and fruits, which he painted with great effect. they had also a sister, of the name of maria vittoria, who painted sacred figures for private collections, and who died in venice at the beginning of the last century. in all i have said of the cassana family i have adhered to ratti, as to a native and correct author. some who have written on the gallery of florence, where the portraits of the three first are found, differ in some particulars, ascribing to the one works belonging to the other. niccolo was in fact the one that there enjoyed the highest favour of prince ferdinand; and he it is who is mentioned in the note to borghini (p. ) where it is said that the picture by raffaello, transferred from pescia to the pitti palace, was finished by cassana. but with respect to this notice, and others regarding the cassani, we may consult the catalogo vianelli, p. , where we find described a remarkable portrait of a young man studying, painted by niccolò; and it is succeeded by a long memoir, which throws additional light on the history of this family. i must now speak of another celebrated ligurian, but neither a scholar of paggi, nor of sorri, nor indeed of any other considerable master, and almost self-instructed; for the elements of the art, which he learned from orazio cambiaso, a painter of mediocrity, could not carry him far. he was born in voltri, his name gio. andrea ansaldo. he is the only one of the school who contested precedency in perspective with giulio benso, by whom, in a quarrel, prompted by jealous feelings of his talents, he was wounded: an attempt which was repeated by an unknown hand, after an interval of some years. near the choir of the nunziata, painted by benso, we behold the cupola of ansaldo, injured by damp, yet notwithstanding remarkable for a most beautiful division and grandeur of the architecture, and for many figures which remain uninjured. when we survey this fine work, we cannot refuse to this artist a great talent for the decoration of cupolas, which may be esteemed the summit of the art of painting, as the colossal is of sculpture. his other works in fresco, in churches and in private houses, are very numerous; and he is particularly admired for his works in the palace spinola at s. pier d'arena, where he has represented the military exploits in flanders of the marchese federico, the boast of this family. amongst his oil pictures a st. thomas baptizing three kings in a church, is celebrated. it is placed in the chapel of that saint, and exhibits much vigour of design, a brilliant decoration of scenery and persons, and a display of graceful and delightful harmony. such is his prevailing character, which is in part his own, acquired by an unwearied application, and in part derived from the venetians, and especially paolo. ansaldo is one of those masters who painted both much and well. of his scholars, the one who followed him the closest was orazio de' ferrari, his countryman and kinsman. he painted well in fresco, but better in oil. we need only inspect the last supper in the oratory of s. siro, to form a most favourable idea of this young artist. giovacchino assereto profited more from the design than the colour of ansaldo; in general he attempted his chiaroscuro in the manner of borzone, his first master, as in the picture of s. rosario at s. brigida. giuseppe badaracco was ambitious of introducing a new style into his native place, and repaired to florence, where he remained many years copying and imitating andrea del sarto. he left many works there in private collections, and i imagine they are there still; but, as always happens to copyists and imitators, his name is never mentioned, and his works pass as belonging to the school of andrea. in genoa itself his name is almost lost. it is known that he in general painted for collections; but not for what houses. i found in the house of a gentleman of novi an achilles in scyros, with the name of badaracco, and with the date of . in this work the artist seems to have forgotten andrea, and to have followed the naturalists of his own country. there is no public work by him except a s. philip, which is preserved in the sacristy of s. niccolò in _voltri_. to the foregoing masters we may add gio. batista baiardo, of i know not what school, but certainly commendable for the talents displayed in his pictures at the portico of s. pietro, and in the convent of s. agostino, painted with vigour, freedom, and grace. the inferior works in that convent are certainly by another hand. baiardo, badaracco, oderico, primi, gregorio de' ferrari, and others in this school, were carried off by the plague in . but we have now spoken sufficiently of the higher class of works, and shall here pass to those of another kind, completing the notices which we have occasionally interspersed before. we have often spoken of portrait painting, a lucrative branch of the art in every capital, and more cultivated in genoa than in most cities. besides the noble models of art left, as we have before mentioned, by the best flemish artists, those of del corte, a scholar of titian, and of his son cesare, were of great service. from the school of this master arose a succession of noble portrait painters, instructed by luciano borzone, who in the time of cerano and procaccini also studied in the milanese school, and derived benefit from it; an artist highly esteemed by guido reni. he is entitled to a place in the higher walks of art for his numerous paintings for the churches and for collections; where however his greatest merit is the expression, which as a good portrait painter, or rather naturalist, he gives to his heads, which partake more of natural truth than of select beauty. the folds of his drapery are true and simple, and his style on the whole is not so strong as that of guercino, but sufficiently so to please the eye. the presentation at s. domenico, and the b. chiara at s. sebastiano, are of this character. but his best works are at s. spirito, where he painted six pictures, and amongst them the baptism of christ, which is much extolled. he initiated in his own profession two sons, gio. batista and carlo, who on his death finished some of his pictures in a manner not to be distinguished from his own hand. carlo surpassed his brother in small portraits; and with him gio. batista mainero, gio. batista monti, silvestro chiesa, all scholars of borzone, all worthy of commemoration, and all of whom shared the same fate, being carried off by the pestilence of the year . the first who distinguished himself in the lower branch of the art in the genoese school was sinibaldo scorza, born in voltaggio, who, guided by a natural genius, and directed by paggi, proved an excellent painter of landscapes enlivened by figures of men and animals in the style of berghem. it would be difficult to name an artist in italy who so successfully engrafted the flemish style on his own. i have seen a picture of cattle passing a stream, in the collection of the illustrious carlo cambiaso, where the animals rival those of berghem, and the human figures appear painted by a superior artist. other collections possess specimens of him in sacred subjects and classical fables; in which he rises far above the flemish artists. he also painted in miniature, if indeed his oil paintings, from the care bestowed on them, ought not themselves to be called miniatures. his works were celebrated by the poets of the age, particularly by marini, who introduced him to the court of savoy. he was engaged, and employed there until hostilities took place between the governments of piedmont and genoa, which obliged him to return home. he was then denounced to the government by some malicious rivals as a partizan of savoy, and passed two years in exile between massa and rome. from thence he returned much improved, whence his latter pictures far exceed the first in invention and copious composition. antonio travi, more commonly called il sestri, or il sordo di sestri, from being a grinder of colours in the studio of strozzi, and a friend of the flemish artist waals, soon emulated both the one and the other. he learned from the latter the art of painting landscape, with buildings in perspective, and ruins; and he afterwards copied from nature the beautiful country of the riviera, with avenues of trees and rich orchards. but as waals was a feeble painter of figures, travi availed himself of the instructions of strozzi to enliven his landscapes with beautiful and spirited figures, not so much painted as sketched with a few strokes by a master's hand, to gratify the eye when viewed at a distance. thus, although his landscapes are not highly finished, they please us by their agreeable disposition, by their azure skies, the verdure of the trees, and their freedom of touch. the state abounds with his pictures; but a great proportion of those that bear his name are by his sons, who succeeded him in his profession, but not with their father's talents. ambrogio samengo and francesco borzone deserve also to be enumerated among the landscape painters. ambrogio was the scholar of gio. andrea ferrari, a painter of flowers and fruit; and his works are rare in consequence of his early death. francesco, after a miraculous escape from the plague, applied himself to the composition of marine subjects and landscapes in the style of claude and dughet; and his pictures, from their clearness, sweetness, and fine effect, attracted the notice of louis xiv., who invited him to his court, where he remained many years; and this is the reason of the scarcity of his works in italy. we might here mention raffaele soprani, the biographer of the genoese artists, and many noble genoese with him; but in a work where the names of many painters themselves are omitted, it will not be expected that we should record all the amateurs of the art. i may place in this class of artists gio. benedetto castiglione; not that he wanted talents for larger works, as many altar-pieces in genoa, and particularly the very beautiful nativity in st. luke, one of the most celebrated pictures in the city, sufficiently prove, but because the great reputation which he has acquired in europe has been derived from his cabinet pictures, where he has represented in a wonderful manner animals, either alone or as accessories to the subject. in this department of the art he is, after bassano, the first in italy; and between these two the same difference exists as between theocritus and virgil; the first of whom is more true to nature and more simple, the second more learned and more finished. castiglione, the scholar of those accomplished artists paggi and vandyke, ennobles the fields and woods by the fertility and novelty of his invention, by his classical allusions, and his correct and natural expression of the passions. he displays a freedom of design, a facility, grace, and generally a fulness of colour; but in some pictures a greater richness is desired by maratta. the general tone is cheerful, and often reddish. we find by him in collections large pictures of animals with figures, as in that belonging to his excellency the doge agostino lomellino; at other times sacred subjects, among which the most celebrated are those from genesis, the creation of animals, and their entry into the ark; and the return of jacob with a numerous body of servants and cattle, a stupendous performance in the palazzo brignole sale. sometimes we find fabulous compositions, as the transformations of circe, in the collection of the grand duke of tuscany; at other times hunting pieces, as that of the bull in the collection of the marchesi riccardi at florence; often markets and shews of cattle in the flemish manner, and always more finished and more gay when painted on a smaller scale. such is a tobias in the act of recovering his sight, a most elegant picture, which i saw in possession of the gregori family at foligno. it would require a volume, as soprani observes, to describe all his pictures in genoa; but there is an abundance of them, not to mention those abroad, in every part of italy, as he studied both at rome and venice, and a longer time at mantua, where he died in the service of the court. he there, for the correctness and beauty of his colouring, obtained the name of grechetto; and, for his peculiar style of etching, he was also called a second rembrandt. in that city are to be found some pictures in his manner by his son francesco and his brother salvatore, in which they often make near approaches to him. francesco repaired afterwards to genoa, where he employed himself in painting animals, which less experienced connoisseurs sometimes ascribe to gio. benedetto. no genoese, except francesco, rivalled him in this branch; for gio. lorenzo bertolotti, who studied under him for some time, dedicated himself to the painting of altar-pieces; and in that of the church of the visitation he highly distinguished himself. anton maria vassallo was a reputable painter of landscape, flowers, fruits, and animals. his chief merit is in his colouring, which he learned from malò, the scholar of rubens. he excelled also in figures; but his short life did not allow him to obtain a more extended celebrity. genoese school. epoch iv. _the roman and parmesan succeed to the native style. establishment of an academy._ many masters of this school being cut off by the plague in the year , others deceased in the course of nature, not a few incapacitated from age, and some also turned to mannerism, the genoese school fell into such a state of decline, that most of the young artists had recourse to other cities for instruction, and in most instances repaired to rome. in consequence, from the beginning of this century to our own days, the roman style has predominated among these painters, varying, according to the schools from which it descended, and according to the scholars that practised it. few of them have preserved the style unmixed; and some have formed from the roman and the genoese a third manner, deserving of commendation. on this account my readers should be cautioned not to judge of these artists from works which some of them left when studying in rome, as i have known to be sometimes the case. artists ought to be estimated by their mature works, which, in this art, are like the corrected editions of a work in letters, by which every author wishes to be judged. i noticed, in a former volume, gio. batista gaulli. this artist, after many years practice under luciano borzone, unwilling to remain in a city depopulated by the plague, went to rome; and there, by studying the best masters and by the direction of bernino, made himself master of a new style, grand, vigorous, full of fire, his children gracefully drawn, and altogether enchanting. he contributed some pupils to the roman school, and two of them he educated for their native school; gio. maria delle piane, called, from his father's profession, ii molinaretto, and gio. enrico vaymer. their pictures were composed in a good style, and there are some of their works in the churches of genoa; particularly of the first, by whom there is at sestri di ponente a decollation of st. john the baptist, highly celebrated. but they owed both their fame and their fortune to portrait painting. the accomplishments of their master in that respect, above all other artists, insured them a reputation, whence they abounded in commissions, both in genoa, which on that account is full of portraits painted by them, and also in foreign countries. vaymer was three times called to turin to paint the king and royal family; and was invited by very considerable offers to remain there, which he, however, always rejected. molinaretto, after several visits to parma and piacenza, where he furnished the court with portraits, and left some pictures in the churches, was invited by king charles of bourbon to naples, where he died, in a good old age, painter to the court. pietro da cortona also contributed some good scholars to genoa. a doubtful celebrity remains to francesco bruno of porto maurizio, who left in his native country some altar-pieces in the style of pietro, and a copy of one of the pictures of that master. he is an unequal painter, if, indeed, we may not conclude, with sig. ratti, that some inferior works are improperly ascribed to him by common report. with still less foundation francesco rosa of genoa is conjectured to have sprung from this school, who studied about the same time in rome. the frescos and oil pictures which he left in that city, at s. carlo al corso, and particularly at the churches of s. vincenzio and anastasio, evince him a follower of a different style. he there approaches tommaso luini and the dark mannerists of that period. he painted in a much better style, at frari in venice, a miracle wrought by s. antonio; a large composition, in which besides a most beautiful architecture he displays much knowledge of the naked figure, good effect of chiaroscuro, great vivacity in the heads; in the latter, however, little select, and in the general effect partaking more of caracci than cortona. there is no doubt that gio. maria bottalla was instructed by cortona. the cardinal sacchetti, his patron, from his happy imitation of raffaello surnamed him raffaellino; an appellation which i am not sure was confirmed to him in rome, and it certainly was refused to him in genoa. in both those cities he left very considerable works, in which he did not go so far in his imitation of pietro, as to neglect the style of annibal caracci. a large composition of jacob, by his hand, is to be seen in the collection of the campidoglio, formerly in the sacchetti; and there exists in the casa negroni in genoa, a picture in fresco by him. both are very considerable works for a painter who had not passed his thirty-first year. another undoubted scholar of pietro was gio. batista langetti, although in his colouring he adhered more to the elder cassana, his second master. langetti is one of the foreign painters who, after , flourished in venice, and excited the poetic genius of boschini. he extols him as an artist eminent in design and execution;[ ] and this commendation is confirmed by zanetti; with an understanding, however, that this extends only to his more studied pictures; as, for instance, his crucifixion in the church delle terese. as to the rest he generally painted for profit; painting heads of old men, philosophers, and anchorets, for which he is very remarkable in venetian and lombard collections. it is said that he was accustomed to paint one a day; his portraits were always drawn with truth, without adding that ideal grandeur which we so much admire in the greek sculptures in similar subjects. he animated these countenances, however, with a strength of colour and with a vigour of pencil that caused them to be highly sought after; often receiving for them not less than fifty ducats a-piece. his name is not found in the abbeccedario, which is not to be wondered at, for in so vast a work it is impossible to notice every individual artist. footnote : l'opera con bon arte, e colpi franchi, l'osserva el natural con bon giudizio, in l'atizar l'atende al bon ofizio, che i movimenti sia vivi e nò stanchi. _carta del navegar pittoresco_, p. . but the greater number of scholars that genoa sent to rome attached themselves to maratta. gio. stefano robatto of savona repaired twice to his school, and remained in it several years. he matured his genius, by visiting other schools of italy, and went also into germany, and at a mature age settled in his own country. he there executed some works that confer honour on her; as the st. francis receiving the stigmata, painted in fresco in the cloister of the cappuchins. others of these, his first works, have obtained unqualified praise, especially for their colouring, which excited even the admiration of the professors of genoa, accustomed to study the first works of art. but he afterwards gave himself up to gaming, and, losing all desire of distinction, he degraded both his pencil and his name, producing, like a mechanic, works of mediocrity at a trifling price. hence it may be said, that savona had not a better nor a worse painter than robatto. gio. raffaello badaracco, the son of giuseppe, who is mentioned in a former epoch, passed from the school of his father to that of maratta; and afterwards, aspiring to a freer style, he became in a great measure cortonesque, very soft in execution, of a good impasto, with an abundance of the finest ultramarine, which has conferred on his pictures both durability and celebrity. his historical subjects are very numerous in collections; the certosa of polcevera possesses two of the largest, from the history of the patron saint. a rolando marchelli was a fine scholar of maratta; but, attaching himself to merchandise, he left few works. the most remarkable in this band are the sons of three celebrated masters; andrea carlone, paolgirolamo piola, and domenico parodi. the first was son of giambatista, from whose style and that of rome, and afterwards from that of venice, he formed a mixed manner, which, if i mistake not, is more pleasing in oil than in fresco. he painted much in perugia and the neighbouring cities; far from the finish and grace of his father, and less happy in composition; but displaying a venetian style of freedom, vigour, and spirit; particularly in some histories of s. feliciano, painted at foligno, in the church of that saint. returning to rome, he improved his manner; and his works after that period are much his best. such are some passages from the life of s. xavier, at the gesù in rome; and many poetical subjects at genoa, in the palaces brignole, saluzzo, and durazzo. this painter affords an excellent admonition to writers on art, not to form their judgment too hastily on the merit of artists, without having first seen their best productions. whoever judged of carlone from the picture he painted at the gesù in perugia, would not persuade himself that he could, in genoa, have left so many fine works as to be ranked, according to ratti, among the painters of genoa most worthy of commemoration. niccolò, his brother, may be also added as his scholar. he is the least celebrated of the family; not that he wanted talent, but it was not of a transcendant kind. piola, the son of domenico, as i have noticed in a former place, is one of the most cultivated and finished painters of this school; a true disciple of maratta, as regards his method of carefully studying and deliberately executing his works, but otherwise not his close imitator. in this respect it should seem he attached himself more to the caracci, whom he very much copied in rome; and traces of this style may be seen in his beautiful picture of s. domenico and ignazio, in the church of carignano, and in every place where he painted. it is known that he was rebuked by his father for slowness; but by this he was not moved; intent on a more exalted walk than his father, and exhibiting more selection, grandeur, tenderness, and truth. he had singular merit in works in fresco; and being a man of letters, he designed extremely well fables and historical subjects, in decorating many noblemen's houses. his parnassus, painted for sig. gio. filippo durazzo, has been much praised; and it is added, that that nobleman said, that he was glad he had not sent for solimene from naples, whilst genoa possessed such an artist. had he painted less on walls and more on canvass, his merit would have become known also to foreigners. domenico parodi was, like his father, a sculptor, and moreover an architect; but he owed his reputation to painting. less equal to himself than piola, he enjoyed a greater fame; as he had a more enlarged genius, a more extended knowledge of letters and the arts, a more decided imitation of the greek design, and a pencil more pliable to every style. he first studied in venice under bombelli, and there remain, in a casa durazzo, some excellent copies of venetian pictures made at that period; nor did he forsake this style during the many succeeding years that he studied in rome. he painted, in a good marattesque style, the noble picture of s. francesco di sales at the filippini, and several other pictures; but of him, as well as of the caracci, we find works partaking in an extraordinary manner of the style of tintoretto or paolo, and which are described in his life. his most celebrated work is the sala of the palace negroni. some professors have expressed their opinion, that there is not so fine a performance in all genoa; and it is a fact, that mengs's attention was there arrested for several hours by a painter that he had never before heard of. a correct design, a vigour and harmony of colour, a mode of decorating the walls peculiarly his own, attempted by many, but not understood by any, render this a most remarkable production; nor is it a little aided by the poetical invention and the beautiful distribution and grouping of the figures. the whole is devoted to the glory of this noble family, whose escutcheon is crowned by prudence, continence, and other virtues, expressed by their several symbols; and there are also fables of hercules slaying the lion, and achilles instructed by chiron, which indicate the honours acquired by this family in letters and in arms. portraits are added to these decorations, and every part is so well connected, and so well varied, and so enriched by vestures, drapery, and other ornaments, that, though many noble families may boast of being more highly celebrated by the muse, few have obtained such distinguished honours from the sister art. other noble houses were also ornamented by him in fresco; and the gallery of the sig. marcello durazzo, decorated with stories, and fables, and chiariscuri, which might be taken for bassi-relievi, is a work much resembling the one just described. in some pictures, as in the s. camillo de' lellis, he does not seem the same; and probably some of his scholars had the greater share in them. his most celebrated scholar was the priest angiolo rossi, one of the best imitators, in humorous subjects, of piovan arlotto; and in painting a good follower of maratta, though he left but few works. batista parodi was the brother of domenico, but not the scholar; he partook of the venetian school; expeditious, free, fertile in invention, and brilliant in colouring, but not sufficiently select, nor equal to the better artists. he lived for some time in milan and bergamo. pellegro, the son of domenico, resided in lisbon, and was a celebrated portrait painter in his day. the abate lorenzo, the son of gregorio ferrari, though educated in genoa, had much of the roman style. he was one of the most elegant painters of this school, and an imitator of the foreshortenings and the graces of coreggio, as was his father, but more correct than he, and a good master of design. in refining on delicacy he sometimes falls into languor; except when he painted in the vicinity of the carloni, (as in the palace doria, at s. matteo), or some other lively colourist. he then invigorated his tints, so that they possess all the brilliancy of oil, and yield the palm to few. he excelled in fresco, like most of this school, and is almost unrivalled in his chiaroscuro ornaments. the churches and palaces abound with them; and in the palace of the noble family of carega is a gallery, his last work, decorated with subjects from the Æneid, and ornamented with arabesques, stuccos, and intaglios, by artists under his direction. he also painted historical subjects. in his first public works he painted from his father's designs; afterwards, as in the picture of various saints of the augustine order, at the church of the visitation, he trusted to his own genius, and enriched his school with the best examples. he too was a painter whose reputation was not equal to his merits. in bartolommeo guidobono, or prete di savona, we find the delicate pencil of ferrari, and an imitation of coreggio, but with less freedom of style. this artist, who was in the habit of painting earthenware with his father, at that time in the employ of the royal court of savoy, established the first rudiments of the art in piedmont; and i have seen, in turin, some pictures by him partaking of the neapolitan style of colour, which was at one time in favour there. he afterwards went to parma and venice, and by copying and practising became a very able painter, and had an abundance of commissions in genoa and the state. he is not so much praised for correctness of design in his figures, as for his skill in the ornamental parts, as flowers, fruits, and animals; and this excellence is particularly seen in some fabulous subjects in the palazzo centurioni. he had diligently studied the style of castiglione, and made many copies of him, which are with difficulty distinguished from the originals. he is not, however, a figurist to be despised; and it is his peculiar praise to unite a great sweetness of pencil with a fine effect of chiaroscuro; as in the inebriation of lot, and in three other subjects in oil, in the palace brignole sale. in piedmont too there remain many works by him, and by his brother domenico, also a delicate and graceful painter, by whom there is in the duomo of turin a glory of angels, which might belong to the school of guido. he would have been preferred to prete if he had always painted in this style; but this he did not do, and in genoa there remain of his, amongst a few good, many very indifferent pictures. before i quit the followers of the school of parma, i shall return to the cav. gio. batista draghi, to whom i alluded in the third book. he was a scholar of domenico piola, from whom he acquired his despatch; and was the inventor of a new style, which i know not where he formed, but which he practised very much in parma, and more in piacenza, where he long lived and where he died. we may trace in it the schools of bologna and parma; but in the character of the heads and in the disposition of the colours there is a novelty which distinguishes and characterizes him. though he painted with extraordinary celerity, yet we cannot accuse him of negligence. to a vivacity and fancy that delight us, he added an attention to his contours and colouring, and a powerful relief, particularly in his oil pictures. there are many pictures by him in piacenza, and amongst them the death of st. james in the church of the franciscans, in the duomo his st. agnes, in s. lorenzo his picture of the titular saint, and the great picture of the religious orders receiving their regulations from s. augustin; a subject painted already in the neighbouring town of cremona by massarotti, and well executed, but inferior to draghi. the sig. proposto carasi particularly praises the picture he painted at busseto, in the palace pallavicino. in genoa he painted, i believe, only some pictures for private collections. orlandi, who does not even notice this excellent painter, places among the first artists of europe gioseffo palmieri, who, together with the preceding artist, flourished in the early part of the eighteenth century. this praise seems exaggerated, and he probably refers only to the merit which palmieri exhibited in his pictures of animals, which he was employed to paint even for the court of portugal. still in the human figure he is a painter of spirit, and of a magic and beautiful style of colour; very harmonious and pleasing in those pictures where the shades do not predominate. he is, however, reprehended for his incorrect drawing, although he studied under a florentine painter, who seems to have initiated him well; for in the resurrection at the church of st. dominic, and in other pictures more carefully painted, judges of the art find little to reprove. a pietro paolo raggi obtained also celebrity in invention and colouring. i know not to what school to assign him, but he was certainly a follower of the caracci in a s. bonaventura contemplating a crucifix; a large picture in the guastato. there are bacchanal subjects by him in some collections, which partake of the style of castiglione, as ratti has observed, and also of that of carpioni, as we read in one of the _lettere pittoriche_, inserted in the fifth volume. we there find him highly extolled. nor is he any where better known than in bergamo; where, amongst other works which he executed for the church of st. martha, a magdalen borne to heaven by angels is particularly esteemed. he is described as a man of a restless disposition, irascible, and dissatisfied with every place he inhabited. this truant disposition carried him to turin, then to savona, then afresh to genoa, now to lavagna, now to lombardy, and last to bergamo, where death put an end to his wanderings. about this time died in finale, his native place, pier lorenzo spoleti, formerly a scholar of domenico piola. his favourite occupation was to copy in madrid the pictures of morillo and titian. by this practice he was prevented from distinguishing himself by any works of invention; but he became a very accomplished portrait painter, and was employed in that branch of the art at the courts of spain and portugal. he had also the habit of copying the compositions of others, and of transferring them with remarkable ability from the engraving to the canvass, enlarging the proportions and expressing them with a colouring worthy of his great originals. a copyist like this painter has a better claim to our regard than many masters, whose original designs serve only to remind us of our ill fortune in meeting with them. among these native artists i may be allowed to commemorate two foreigners, who came to genoa and established themselves there, and succeeded to the chief artists of this epoch, or were their competitors. the one was jacopo boni of bologna, who was carried to genoa by his master franceschini as an assistant, when he painted the great hall of the palazzo publico. boni from that time was esteemed and employed there, and established himself there in . there are some fine works by him, especially in fresco, in the palazzo mari and in many others; and the most remarkable which he executed in the state is in the oratory of the costa, at s. remo: but we have spoken sufficiently of him in the third book. the other, who repaired thither three years afterwards, was sebastiano galeotti, a florentine, and in his native city a scholar of ghilardini, in bologna of giangioseffo dal sole, a man of an eccentric and facile genius; a good designer when he pleased, a bold colourist, beautiful in the air of his heads, and fitted for large compositions in fresco, in which he was sometimes assisted in the ornamental parts by natali of cremona. he decorated the church of the magdalen in genoa; and those frescos, which first made him known in the city, are among his most finished productions; but he was obliged, after painting the first history, to soften his tones in some degree. he worked little in his native city, and that only in his early years; whence he does not there enjoy so high a reputation as in upper italy. he traversed it almost all in the same manner as the zuccheri, peruzzini, ricchi, and other adventurers of the art, whose lives were spent in travelling from place to place, and who repeated themselves in every city, giving the same figures, without any fresh design, and often the same subject entire. hence we still find the works of this painter, not only in many cities of tuscany, but also in piacenza and parma, where he executed many works for the court; and also in codogno, lodi, cremona, milan, vicenza, bergamo, and turin, in which latter city he was appointed director of the academy. in this office he ended his days in . genoa was however his home, where he was succeeded by two sons, giuseppe and gio. batista, who were living in , and are mentioned with commendation by ratti as excellent painters. from the middle of the century to our own days, what from the evils of war in which genoa was involved, and the general decline of the art in italy, but few artists present themselves to our notice. domenico bocciardo of finale, a scholar and follower of morandi, possessed considerable merit in historical cabinet pictures; a painter of not much genius, but correct, and a beautiful colourist. at s. paolo in genoa there is by him a s. giovanni baptizing the multitude; and although there are many better pictures by him in the state, still this is sufficient to render him respectable. francesco campora, a native of polcevera, also possessed some reputation. he had studied in naples under solimene, from whose school came also gio. stefano maia, an excellent portrait painter. a batista chiappe of novi, who had spent much time in rome in drawing, and had become a good colourist in milan, gave great promise of excellence. in the church of s. ignazio of alessandria there is a large picture of the patron saint, one of his best performances, well conceived and well composed; a noble ground, a beautiful choir of angels, a fine character in the principal figure, except that the head does not present a true portrait. we should have seen still better works, but the author was arrested in his career by death; and he is described by ratti as the last person of merit of the genoese school. this school was for some time scanty in good perspective painters. although padre pozzi was in genoa, he did not form any scholars there. bologna, more than any other place, supplied him with them. from thence came colonna and mitelli, at that time so much esteemed; thither also repaired aldovrandini and the two brothers haffner, henry and antony. the latter joined the monks of the order of st. philip in genoa, and decorated the church of that saint and other places, and initiated in the profession gio. batista revello, called il mustacchi. his works were also studied by francesco costa, who was an ornamental painter from the school of gregorio de' ferrari. these two young men, from the similarity of their profession, one which combines in itself the greatest rivalry and the greatest friendship, became in process of time inseparable. they both conjointly served, for nearly the space of twenty years, the various historical painters mentioned in this epoch, preparing for them the perspectives and ornaments, and whatever else the art required. they are both alike commended for their knowledge of perspective, their grace, brilliancy, and harmony of tints; but revello, in the embellishment of flowers, is preferred to his companion. their best performance is considered to be at pegli, in the palazzo grillo, where they ornamented a saloon and some chambers. there are also many works which they conducted separately, being considered as the colonna and mitelli of their country. the most justly celebrated landscape painter of this epoch is carlo antonio tavella, the scholar of tempesta in milan, and of gruenbrech, a german, who, from the fires he introduced into his landscapes, was called solfarolo. he at first emulated this artist; he then softened his style, from studying the works of castiglione and poussin, and the best flemish painters. amongst the genoese landscape painters he ranks the next after sestri. his works are easily distinguished in the collections of genoa, particularly in the palace franchi, which had more than three hundred pictures by him, and acquired for him the reputation of one of the first artists of the age. we are there presented with warm skies, beautiful distances in the landscape, pleasing effects of light; the trees, flowers, and animals are gracefully touched, and with wonderful truth of nature. in his figures he was assisted by the two pioli, father and son; and oftener by magnasco, with whom he was associated in work. he sometimes inserted them in his pictures himself, copying them indeed from the originals designed by his comrades, but identifying them by a style peculiarly his own. tavella had a daughter of the name of angiola, of a feeble invention, but a good copyist of her father's designs. he had also many other imitators; amongst whom one niccolò micone, or as he is commonly called by his fellow-citizens lo zoppo, most nearly resembles him. alessandro magnasco, called lissandrino, was the son of one stefano, who was instructed by valerio castello, afterwards resided many years in rome, and died young, leaving behind him few pictures, but extreme regret for the death of an artist of so much promise. his son was instructed by abbiati in milan; and that bold and simple stroke of the pencil, which his master used in his larger pictures, he transferred to his subjects of humour, shows and popular meetings, in which he may be called the cerquozzi of his school. his figures are scarcely more than a span large. ceremonies of the church, schools of maids and youths, chapters of friars, military exercises, artists' shops, jewish synagogues, are the subjects he painted with humour and delight. these eccentric pieces are not rare in milan, and there are some in the palazzo pitti at florence, where magnasco resided some years, a great favourite with the grand duke gio. gastone and all his court. when he accompanied other painters in their works, as often happened to him, he added very apposite subjects; this he did, not only in the landscapes of tavella and others, but also in the ruins of clemente spera in milan, and in other pictures of architecture. this artist was more esteemed by foreigners than by his own countrymen. his bold touch, though joined to a noble conception and to correct drawing, did not attract in genoa, because it is far removed from the finish and union of tints which these masters followed; hence magnasco worked little in his native country, and left no scholar there. in the school of venice he educated a celebrated scholar, sebastian ricci, of whom mention has been made more than once. not many years since died gio. agostino ratti of savona, a painter of delightful genius. he ornamented the theatres with beautiful scenes, and the cabinets with lively caricatures, which he also engraved. he was clever in church paintings, as may be seen in the church of s. giovanni at savona, where, besides other subjects of the baptist, there is a much praised decollation. he painted also in the church of s. teresa in genoa; and was always a follower of luti, whose school he had frequented when in rome. he was also a good fresco painter; and i have seen his works in the choir of the conventual church in casale di monferrato, where he added figures to the perspective of natali of cremona. but subjects of humour were his forte. in these he had an exhaustless fancy, fertile and ever creative. nothing can be more amusing than his masks, representing quarrels, dances, and such scenes as form the subjects of comedy. luti, who was his master in rome, extolled him as one of the first artists in this line, and even equalled him to ghezzi. this information respecting gio. agostino was communicated to me by his son, the cavaliere often mentioned in the course of this work,[ ] and who died in . footnote : he had prepared for the press some further information respecting this school, both with regard to ancient and modern times. the ms. with which he favoured me to perfect this edition of my work, i have unfortunately, and to the great detriment of my own work, mislaid. he was not a great painter, but certainly not deserving of the contempt with which he has been treated. gratitude, friendship, truth, and humanity itself call on me to say all the good i can of him; every thing that malevolence could dictate has been already recorded against him. we may therefore refer the reader to the perusal of the defence of him before mentioned by us, and noticed afterwards with its true title, in our second index, under the head _ratti_. there (whoever may be the author of it,) many works are enumerated which, in our opinion, would confirm to him the title of a praiseworthy artist. but he derives peculiar honour from the opinion of him expressed by mengs, who proposed him as director to the academy of milan; and some historical and national subjects being required in the royal palace in genoa, ratti was recommended to this honourable commission both by mengs and batoni, and he executed them to the entire satisfaction of the public. the more experienced judges pretend to detect in these works something more than an imitation of the great masters; and it is acknowledged, indeed, that he willingly availed himself of the designs of others, either painted or engraved; but how few are there of whom the same may not be said? afterwards in rome, where he lived four years in the house of mengs, he executed under his eye some excellent works; as a nativity, for which mengs made the sketch; which, when painted on a larger scale by ratti, was placed in a church in barcelona. being called on to paint a st. catherine of genoa, afterwards placed there in the church of that saint, mengs designed for him the face of the saint, of an enchanting expression, and afterwards retouched the picture, rendering it a delightful performance. on this it may be observed, that great masters were not accustomed to shew such favours to their scholars and friends, except when they discovered in them considerable talent. as a copyist ratti excelled in the opinion of mengs; the latter purchasing, at a considerable sum, a copy of the s. jerome of coreggio, which ratti had made in parma. another proof of the esteem in which he held him was his instigating him to write on art; for which they must have amassed great materials during the four years they lived together. in the before-mentioned _difesa_ we read of the academies that elected him, the poets and men of letters that extolled him, the cross of a cavalier that he obtained from pius vi., the direction of the academy of genoa, conferred on him for life if he had chosen to retain it; finally, the numerous commissions for pictures he received from various places; all these things have their weight, but the favourable opinion of mengs is the strongest protection that this defence affords to shield him from his enemies. when the materials were prepared for the new edition, the _elogio_ of the cav. azara was published, where it is said that the mss. of mengs were given in a confused mass into the hands of milizia, who took the liberty of modifying at his pleasure the opinions of mengs respecting the great masters. this information, which comes from a very creditable quarter, i have wished to insert here for many reasons. it takes away from mengs the odium of some inconsiderate criticism, or at least lessens it. it confirms what the _difesa_ of ratti says respecting the true author of the life of coreggio, who was in fact ratti; but, with some retouching, it was published as the work of mengs, without reflecting that the author was there placed in contradiction with himself. it also shews us that mengs, for his great name, was indebted not only to his acknowledged merit, but also to his good fortune, which gave him greater patrons and friends than were perhaps ever enjoyed before by any painter in the world. the artists of this school, of our own day, will doubtless also receive their meed of praise from posterity. they are now industriously occupied in establishing their own fame, and conferring honour on their country. the rising generation, who are entering upon the art, may look for increased support from the genoese academy, recently founded for the promotion of the three sister arts. within these few years the members of this academy have been furnished with a splendid domicile, with an abundant collection of select casts and rare designs. with such masters and so many gratuitous sources of assistance to study, this institution may be already numbered amongst the most useful and ornamental of the city. this establishment owes its existence to the genius and liberality of a number of noblemen, who united together in its splendid foundation, and who continue to support it by their patronage. book vi. the history of painting in piedmont and the adjacent territory. epoch i. _dawn of the art, and progress to the sixteenth century._ piedmont, like the other states of italy, cannot boast of a series of ancient masters; but it does not on that account forfeit its claim to a place in the history of painting. that enchanting art, the daughter of peace and contemplation, shuns not only the sound but the very rumour of war. piedmont, from her natural position, is a warlike country; and if she enjoys the merit of having afforded to the other parts of italy the protection necessary for the cultivation of the fine arts, she is at the same time under the disadvantage of not being able to insure them safety in her own territory. hence, though turin has ever been fruitful in talent, to obtain the decorations suitable to a metropolis, she has been compelled to seek at a distance for painters, or at least for pictures; and whatever we find excellent either in the palace or the royal villas, in the churches, in the public buildings, or in private collections, will be found to be wholly the work of foreigners. i may be told that the artists of novara and vercelli, and others from the lago maggiore, are not strangers. that might be true after those communities were included in the dominions of the house of savoy; but they, who were the first in this epoch, were born, lived, and died subjects of other states: and after the new conquests, these artists no more became piedmontese from that circumstance, than parrhasius and apelles became romans from the moment that greece was subjected to rome. for this reason i have classed these artists in the milanese school; to which, though they had not belonged as subjects, they ought still to be assigned by education, residence, or neighbourhood. this plan i have hitherto persevered in: the subject of my history being not the states of italy, but her schools of painting. nor on that account will the artists of monferrato be excluded from this place. this is also a recent addition to the house of savoy, which first possessed it in ; but it is anterior to the other acquisitions, and its artists are scarcely ever named among the pupils of the milanese school. we must also recollect that they either left many works in piedmont, and that this is therefore the proper place to mention them, or that they did not quit their native country; and as it is impracticable to devote a separate book to that place, i have judged it best to include it in this state, on the confines of which it is situated, and to which it eventually became subject. confining ourselves therefore to the ancient state of piedmont, and noticing also savoy, and other neighbouring territories not yet considered, we shall find little written of,[ ] nor have we much to praise in the artists; but the ruling family, who have been always distinguished by their love of the arts, and have used all their influence to foster them, are entitled to our grateful recollections. at the time of their first revival amadeus iv. invited to his court one giorgio da firenze, a scholar, i know not whether of giotto or some other master: it is however certain that he painted in the castle of chambery in , and we find remains of him to , in which year he worked at pinarolo. that he from this time coloured in oil is doubted in piedmont; and the giornale of pisa published a letter on that subject the last year. i know not that i can add any thing further to what i have already written on this question in many places of this work. giorgio da firenze is unknown in his native place, like some others who are commemorated only in this book, who lived much in piedmont, or at least were better known there than elsewhere. in the same age there worked at s. francesco di chieri, quite in the florentine style, an artist who subscribed himself _johannes pintor pinxit_ ; and some feeble fresco painters in the baptistery of the same city. there are also some other anonymous artists in other parts, whose manners differ in some respects from the style of giotto; among whom i may mention the painter of the consolata, a picture of the virgin held in great veneration at turin. footnote : a catalogue of the painters of piedmont, and their works, is given by the count durando in the notes to his _ragionamento su le belle arti_, published in . the p. m. della valle has also written of them in his prefaces to the tenth and eleventh volumes of vasari. some valuable information respecting them has also been contributed by the author of the _notizie patrie_, and more is to be found in the new guide of turin of sig. derossi, and in the first volume of the _pitture d'italia_. and, lastly, further notices are to be gathered from various works on art, of which we shall avail ourselves in the proper place. at a later period, that is, about the year , gregorio bono, a venetian, was invited also to chambery by amadeus viii., in order to paint his portrait. he executed it on panel; nor is it probable that he ever returned to venice, as we find no mention made of him there. a nicolas robert, a frenchman, was painter to the duke from to ; but his works have either perished, or remain unknown; and probably he was a miniature painter, or an illuminator of books, as they were at that time designated, artists who from the proximity of their professions are called painters, as well as the nobler masters of the art. about the same time it appears that there worked in piedmont raimondo, a neapolitan, who left his name on a picture of several compartments in s. francesco di chieri, a piece estimable from the vivacity of the countenances and the colouring, though the drapery is loaded with gold, a mark of the little refinement of the times. of another painter of this period there remains an indication in the church of s. agostino in that city, from this inscription on an ancient picture, _per martinum simazotum, alias de capanigo_, . i find noticed also in the hospital of vigevano a picture with a gold ground by gio. quirico da tortona. but no territory at this period furnishes us with such interesting matter as monferrato, then the feudal state of the paleologhi. we learn from p. della valle, that barnaba da modena was introduced into alba in the fourteenth century, and he certainly was among the first artists that obtained applause in piedmont. we have cursorily noticed him in his school; for to judge from the way in which his works are scattered, he must have lived at a distance. two pictures remain by him at the conventuals at pisa; one in the church, the other in the convent; both figures of the virgin, of whom the second picture represents the coronation, where she is surrounded by s. francis and other saints of his order. sig. da morrona praises the beautiful character of the heads, the drapery, and the colouring; and prefers him to giotto. and p. della valle speaks in the same terms of another picture of the virgin, remaining in the possession of the conventuals of alba, which he says is in a grander style than any contemporary works; and he states that the year is signed to it. as to his assertion that the art in piedmont had derived from him much light and advancement, i know not how to confirm it, as i have never been in alba, and as i find a great interval between him and his successors in that very city. afterwards in the church of s. domenico a giorgio tuncotto painted in ; and in that of s. francesco a m. gandolfino in . to these may be added gio. peroxino and pietro grammorseo, well known for two pictures which they left at the conventuals; the one in alba in , the other in casale in . but the most distinguished artist in those parts, and in turin itself, was macrino, a native of alladio, and a citizen of alba; whence, in a picture which is in the sacristy of the metropolitan church in turin, he subscribes himself _macrinus de alba_. his name was gian giacomo fava, an excellent painter, of great truth in his countenances, careful and finished in every part, and sufficiently skilled in his colouring and shadowing. i am aware that the sig. piacenza has mentioned him in his notes to baldinucci, a work which, to the loss of the history of art and just criticism, remains imperfect, and which i have not now at hand. i know not where macrino studied; but in his picture at turin, which is much in the style of bramante and his milanese contemporaries, he has placed as an ornament in his landscape the flavian amphitheatre; whence we may conclude that he had seen rome; or, if not rome, at least the learned school of da vinci. i found by him in the certosa of pavia another picture, with s. ugo and s. siro; an inferior performance with respect to the forms and the colouring, but very carefully painted in all its parts. but, wherever he studied, he is the first artist in these countries who made advances to the modern style; and he seems to have been held in esteem, not only in asti and in alba, which contain many of his large works and cabinet pictures, but in turin, and in the palace of the prince; to whose family, as i conjecture, belonged a cardinal, represented at the feet of the virgin, and of the saints surrounding her, in the picture at the cathedral. i am persuaded that he left other pictures in turin; but that city, above all the other capitals of italy, has perhaps been the most addicted to substitute modern pictures for the ancient. contemporary with macrino was brea of nizza, whom i mentioned in the school of genoa, together with three painters of alessandria della paglia, all having lived in that state. i shall here only add borghese of nizza della paglia, where, and in bassignana, are pictures inscribed _hieronymus burgensis niciæ palearum pinxit_. in the beginning of the sixteenth century, whether it was that the troubled state of italy called the attention of the princes to more serious objects, or from some other cause, i do not find any interesting records. about the middle of that century it is supposed that antonio parentani flourished, who at the consolata painted within the chapter house a paradise with numerous angels. i do not know his country, but he followed the roman taste of that age, and in a certain way diminished it. at this period the books of the public treasury stand in the place of history, and guide us to the knowledge of other artists. i am indebted for the information to the baron vernazza de fresnois, secretary of state of his majesty, a gentleman not less rich in knowledge than obliging in communicating it. the before-mentioned books record a valentin lomellino da raconigi; and after , in which year he died, or relinquished his place, a jacopo argenta of ferrara. both the one and the other bore the title of painter to the duke; but the world cannot judge of their talents, as no work by them is known either in turin or elsewhere; and it is probable they were rather illuminators than painters. a giacomo vighi is noticed by malvasia and by orlandi, who painted for the court of turin about , and was presented with the castle of casal burgone. the works of this painter too are unknown to the public; but not so the works of those who follow. alessandro ardente of faenza, though some make him a pisan, and others a lucchese,[ ] giorgio soleri of alessandria, and agosto decio, a milanese miniaturist before mentioned by me, painted the portrait of charles emanuel, duke of savoy, for which all three are praised by lomazzo in his treatise, at p. . the two first were also appointed painters to the court. they excelled in historical compositions as well as being celebrated portrait painters. by alessandro we see in turin at the monte della pietà the fall of st. paul, in a style that would lead us to believe he had studied in rome. more of his works remain in lucca; in one of which, a baptism of christ painted at s. giovanni by this ardente, the subject is treated in a highly original manner. (_guida di lucca_, p. .) in the neighbourhood also of that city are many of his works. the sig. da morrona also names him in the second volume of his _pisa illustrata_, and informing us that he has not a sufficient account of him, concludes that he lived a long time out of tuscany. i believe that he resided a considerable time in piedmont, as i find some works by him out of turin; as an epiphany in moncaliëri, inscribed with his name and the year ; and knowing further, that on his death, in , a pension was assigned by the prince to his widow and sons; a proof in my mind that ardente must have served the court many years. footnote : we ought to credit his own testimony. he painted three pictures at s. paolino di lucca, and in that of s. antonio abate he subscribes himself _alexander ardentius faventinus_, ; so says monsig. mansi, archbishop of lucca, in his diario. he however in other places in that little work, and sig. morrona in his _pisa_, call him a pisan, and others a lucchese. of soleri, the son-in-law of bernardino lanini, i have given some account in the milanese school, (tom. iv. p. ). he is also mentioned by malvasia in tom. ii. p. , and compared with passerotti, arcimboldi, gaetano, and with del monte of crema, in portrait painting. his professional education however remains obscure, except as far as we are able to conjecture from his works. i have only been able to find two of his performances; and i am not aware that any other are known. the one is in alessandria, and serves as an altar-piece to the domestic chapel of the conventuals. it represents the virgin and the saints augustin and francis recommending to her protection the city of alessandria, which is represented in the background. the landscape is in the style of bril, as usual with our painters before the caracci; the figures are painted with more labour than spirit; the colour is languid; and the whole presents the style of one desirous of imitating the best period of the roman school, but who had not seen or studied it sufficiently. but there is a more authentic picture in the church of the domenicans of casale, with the inscription, _opus georgii soleri alex. _. it represents s. lorenzo kneeling at the feet of the virgin, who has with her the holy infant; near the saint three angelic boys are playing with a huge gridiron, his customary symbol; and are straining to raise it from the ground. here we most distinctly trace the follower of raffaello, in the chasteness of design, the beauty and grace of the countenances, and the finished expression; if indeed the design of these angels is not taken from coreggio. to render the picture more engaging, there is represented a landscape, with a window, whence there appears in the distance a beautiful country, with fine buildings; nor are there many pictures remaining in the city at this day to be compared with it. if it had possessed a more vigorous colouring, and a stronger chiaroscuro, there would be nothing more to wish for. when i consider the style, i know not to what school to assign it; for it is not that of lanini, although his father-in-law; nor that of any milanese, although he was in milan. perhaps, like others of his day, he formed himself on the engravings after raffaello; or if he copied any other painter, it was bernardino campi, whom, if we except a certain timidity of touch, he resembles more than any other. soleri had a son, a painter of mediocrity, as may be seen in alessandria in the sacristy of s. francesco. the father, to propitiate his success in the art to which he destined him, had given him the two most illustrious names of the profession, calling him raffaele angiolo. but these names served only to flatter parental fondness. with alessandro ardente and giorgio soleri we find mentioned a jacopo rosignoli of leghorn, who was at that time painter to the court. his character is described in an epitaph placed over him at s. thomas in turin, which thus extols him: _quibuscumque naturæ amoenitatibus exprimendis ad omnigenam incrustationum vetustatem_; meaning grotesques, in which he imitated with success perino del vaga. we also find memorials of another painter to the court about the same time. the books of the treasury call him isidoro caracca, and he seems to have succeeded to ardente; for in his name begins to be found, to which others may perhaps add, in progress of time, his country, school, and works. to me it seems that persons who have received such a mark of distinction, ought at least not to be placed among the vulgar; nor should a notice of them be neglected when they fall in our way. we may add to these some others of doubtful schools, as scipione crispi of tortona, who has derived celebrity from the visitation, placed in s. lorenzo in voghera; and in tortona itself there is a picture representing s. francis and s. dominick with the virgin, with his name, and the date . contemporary with crispi was cesare arbasia, of saluzzo, supposed by palomino, but incorrectly so, to be a scholar of vinci, as i mentioned when i spoke of him before.[ ] he resided some time in rome, and taught in the academy of st. luke, and is mentioned with commendation by the p. chiesa in his life of ancina, as one of the first of his age. he went also to spain, where, in the cathedral of malaga, there still exists his picture of the incarnation, painted in ; and there is an entire chapel painted by him in fresco in the cathedral of cordova. he painted too the vault of the church of the benedictines of savigliano; in the public palace of his native place he executed also some works in fresco; and he was held in esteem by the court, who granted him a pension in . footnote : tom. iv. p. . one truth prepares the way for another. i have read in sig. conca, tom. iii. p. , that the style of arbasia partakes of that of federigo zuccaro; an opinion i believe of sig. ponz, the principal guide of conca. if federigo about the same time was chief, and arbasia master in the academy of rome, the style of the first might be caught by the other. when we reflect that the style of da vinci is highly finished, correct, and strong, diametrically opposed to the facility and popular style of federigo, we cannot accord to palomino that authority and veneration which conca bestows on him. what should we think of a critic who should endeavour to palm on us, as the production of the time of horace, an ode written in the style of prudentius? there is ground for believing that soleri, who was married in vercelli, and who lived in casale, had a share in the instruction of the celebrated caccia, surnamed il moncalvo, who gave to monferrato its brightest days of art. we may with propriety say a few words on this subject before we return to turin. monferrato was some time under the paleologhi; afterwards under the gonzaghi; this is a sufficient reason for us to believe that it was willingly frequented by excellent artists. vasari relates that gio. francesco carotto was considerably employed by guglielmo, marquis of monferrato, as well in his court at casale as in the church of s. domenico. after him other artists of merit resorted thither, whose works still remain to the public. we further know that these princes had a collection of marbles and pictures, which were afterwards removed to turin, where they contributed to the ornament of the palace and royal villas. after what we have stated we cannot be surprised that the arts should have flourished in this part of italy and the adjacent country, and that we should there meet with painters deserving of our admiration. such an one was moncalvo, so called from his long residence in that place. he was however born in montabone, and his true name was guglielmo caccia. no name is more frequently heard by cultivated foreigners who pass through this higher part of italy. he commenced his career in milan, where he painted in several churches. he proceeded afterwards to pavia, where he did the same, and where he was presented with the freedom of the city. but he is still more frequently named in novara, vercelli, casale, alessandria, and in the tract of country leading from thence to turin. nor is this the whole itinerary of such as wish to see all his works. we must often deviate from the beaten road, and visit in this district castles and villas, which frequently present us with excellent specimens, particularly in monferrato. he there passed a great part of his life; having been brought up in moncalvo, says p. orlandi, an estate of monferrino, where he had both a home and school of painting. he seems to have begun his career in these parts; and as his first works they point out, in the sacro monte di crea, some small chapels with passages from the sacred writings. p. della valle describes his style at crea as that of the infant graces. he remarks that there are indications of his inexperience in fresco painting, and that by comparing his early works with his last we may trace the improvement in his style. he attained such a degree of excellence as to be considered as an example to fresco painters for his great skill in this department. he is to be seen in milan at s. antonio abate, by the side of the carloni of genoa: he there painted the titular saint, with s. paul, the first hermit; and maintains himself in this dangerous contest. his picture in the cupola of s. paul at novara is a beautiful and vigorous painting, with a glory of angels, painted, as he generally did, in a delightful manner. in oils he was perhaps not so successful. i have seen few of his pictures painted with that strength with which he represented in turin st. peter in the pontifical habit, in the church of s. croce. the picture of s. teresa, in the church of that saint, is also well coloured; and it is celebrated for its graceful design, in which is represented the saint between two angels, overpowered at the appearance of the holy family, which is revealed to her in her ecstacy. to this may be also added the deposition from the cross at s. gaudenzio di novara, which is there by some considered his masterpiece, and it is indeed a work of the highest merit. in general his tints are so delicate, that in our days at least he appears somewhat languid, the fault perhaps of not having retouched his pictures sufficiently. his style of design does not accord with that of the caracci, which leads me to question the opinion prevalent in moncalvo, that he was a pupil of that school. one of the caracci school would have studied fresco in bologna, not in crea; nor would he have adopted in his landscape the style of bril, as moncalvo has done; nor have discovered a preference of the roman style to that of parma. caccia's style of design seems derived from the elder schools, as we may observe in it a manner which partakes of raffaello, of andrea del sarto, and parmigianino, the great masters of ideal beauty. and in his madonnas, which are to be seen in many collections, he sometimes seems the scholar of the one, and sometimes of the other; one of those in the royal palace of turin seems designed by andrea. but the colouring, though accompanied by grace and delicacy, as i said before, is different, and even borders often on debility, in the manner of the bolognese school which preceded the caracci, and more especially of sabbatini. he resembles that master also in the beauty of the heads and in grace; and if it could be satisfactorily proved that moncalvo studied in bologna, we need not look further for a master than sabbatini. but i have before made the remark that two painters frequently fall into the same style, as two different writers sometimes adopt the same characters. and i have also observed, in regard to moncalvo, that in casale he had soleri, a painter of a lively and elegant style; and that there, in vercelli, and in other cities where he resided, there was not wanting to him the best examples of that graceful style to which his genius inclined. he did not however shun nobler subjects; as his works in the church of the conventuals at moncalvo will shew, where there is a rich gallery of his pictures. chieri also has specimens of him in two historical pictures in a chapel of s. domenico. he there painted the two laterals of the altar; in the one is the resuscitation of lazarus, in the other the miracle of the loaves in the desert; works remarkable for their richness of fancy, their excellent disposition, the correctness of the drawing, the vivacity of the action, and the first of which inspires both devotion and awe. they would confer honour on the noblest churches. he executed many works, assisted by scholars of mediocrity; a thing which ought to be avoided by every good master. in casale i heard a giorgio alberino enumerated among his best scholars; and on the relation of p. della valle i may add to them sacchi, also of casale, as his companion in moncalvo; who possessed a more energetic pencil perhaps, and more learning than caccia. he painted in s. francesco a drawing of lots for marriage portions; in which is seen a great assemblage of fathers, mothers, and young daughters; and in the latter the sentiments are most vividly expressed, so that we read the fate of each in her countenance; the face of one beaming with delight at the mention of her name, while another stands wishful, yet fearing to hear herself called. and at s. agostino di casale is a standard, with the virgin and saints, and certain portraits of the gonzaghi princes; a picture ascribed to moncalvo: but if we consult the style and the mode of colouring, i should rather attribute it to sacchi. caccia taught, and was assisted in his labours by two daughters, who may be called the gentilesche, or the fontane of monferrato, where they painted not only cabinet pictures but more altar-pieces than perhaps any other females. the contours of their figures are exactly copied from their father, but they are not so animated. it is said that their manner was so similar, that, in order to distinguish them, the younger, francesca, adopted the symbol of a small bird; and ursula, who founded the convent of ursulines in moncalvo, that of a flower. of the latter her church and casale also have some altar-pieces, and not a few cabinet pictures with landscapes touched in the style of bril, and ornamented with flowers. a holy family by her in this style is in the rich collection of the palazzo natta. lastly i may record the name of niccolò musso, the boast of casalmonferrato, where he lived, and left works which possess an originality of style. he is said by orlandi to have been the scholar of caravaggio for ten years in rome; and there is a tradition in his native place that he studied under the caracci in bologna. musso leans to caravaggio, but his chiaroscuro is more delicate and more transparent; he is very select in his figures and in expression; and is one of those admirable painters almost unknown to italy itself. he did not live long, and generally painted for private individuals. he left however some works in public, and more than one in the church of s. francis, representing that saint at the feet of christ crucified, and angels partaking his lamentations and devotions. the portrait of this artist, painted by himself, is also in casale, in the possession of the marchese mossi; and some memoirs of him were published by the canonico de' giovanni, as i read in p. m. della valle.[ ] footnote : pref. al tomo xi. del vasari, p. . school of piedmont and the adjacent territory. epoch ii. _painters of the seventeenth century, and first establishment of the academy._ returning now to turin and to the seventeenth century, in the early part of which the painters, whom we have mentioned with commendation, were either still surviving, or only lately deceased, we meet with federigo zuccaro, who, in his journey through the various states of italy, (of which baglione speaks,) did not fail to visit turin. he there painted some pictures in the churches, and commenced the decoration of a gallery for the duke; a work which, from some cause or other, was left unfinished. baglione does not inform us that this gallery was destined for the reception of works of art, but it is highly probable that it was so; since, at that time, a considerable collection of ancient marbles,[ ] designs, and cartoons, was already formed, which has been since enlarged, and is now preserved in the archivio reale; and a select cabinet of pictures, to which similar additions have been made, and which is now the principal ornament of the royal palace, and the villas of the sovereign. we there find the works of bellini, holbein, and the bassani; the two large compositions of paolo, executed for the duke charles, and described by ridolfi; several pictures of the caracci and their best scholars, amongst which are the four elements by albano, an admirable production; without mentioning others by moncalvo and gentileschi, both of whom resided for some time in turin, and by other eminent italian artists, or the best flemish painters, some of whom remained a considerable time in that city. hence, in this class of pictures, the house of savoy surpasses every single house in italy, or even many taken together. footnote : galleria del marini, p. . but, to proceed in due course, we may observe, that, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, there existed in turin a rich collection of pictures and drawings, the ornament of the throne, and subservient to the instruction of young artists, the care of which was entrusted to a painter of the court. we first find one bernardo orlando invested with this charge, who was appointed painter to the duke in . this honour, in succeeding years, was conferred on many others, whose pencils were employed in turin and the castle of rivoli; where, however, many of their works were effaced in the present century, and others substituted by the two vanloos. some of these are unknown in the history of art, as antonio rocca and giulio mayno, the first a native of i know not what place, the latter of asti. a della rovere is also an unknown artist, mentioned in the registers from the year ; nor can this be the same who left, in the convent of st. francis, a picture of very original invention, the subject of which is death. it expresses the origin of death, in the transgression of adam and eve; and the fulfilment of it, by the thread spun, wound, and severed, by the three fates, with other fancies in which profane and sacred ideas are confounded together. if the design of this picture cannot command our approbation, its other qualities are still prepossessing, and conciliate our esteem for the painter, who subscribes himself, _jo. bapt. a ruere taur._ f. . but the name of the court painter was girolamo. baglione acquaints us with another, called marzio di colantonio, a roman by birth, who excelled in grotesques and landscapes. there are also some others included in the list of ducal painters, whom we have before mentioned in various schools; as vincenzo conti in the roman, morazzone in the milanese, and sinibaldo scorza in the genoese. these and others, who painted in turin and the neighbourhood about this time, will be found in the _lettere_ and the _galleria_ of the cav. marini, who resided for some time at this court. we must, however, consult him with caution, as he was a poet, and very readily augmented his gallery, by devoting a sonnet to every picture and drawing, so that artists of mediocrity valued themselves more on his applause than painters of merit.[ ] thus malvasia informs us, that he had frequently heard albano boast of having refused marini's request, the gift of a picture, for fear the poet should make it the subject of a sonnet, (tom. ii. p. ). footnote : the mediocrity of some who are extolled in marini's work, which was published about the year , appears from the silence observed towards them by contemporary writers, or the little applause with which they are named. i never elsewhere found mention, to the best of my recollection, of lucilio gentiloni, of filatrava, nor of giulio donnabella, who there figure as eminent designers; nor of annibale mancini, whence i know not, a painter of histories; nor of the two equally renowned frenchmen, m. brandin and m. flaminet, elsewhere transformed into fulminetto; much less a raffaele rabbia, and a giulio maina, who painted the poet's portrait; unless, indeed, the second be the bolognese giulio morina, mutilated in his name, like not a few other artists of this truly ill assorted _gallery_. [this artist would rather appear to be the giulio mayno, of asti, the court painter, mentioned in p. , _ante._ _ed._] the painters whom i have just mentioned were, most probably, the instructors of those artists of turin and the states who flourished elsewhere; as bernaschi in naples, garoli in rome, and others who are said to have been also taught by foreigners, and who distinguished themselves in piedmont. none of this number possess a stronger claim to our notice than mulinari, (or, as he is more frequently called, mollineri) whether with regard to merit, or the order of time. most writers have considered him a scholar of the caracci in rome; from the imitation of whom he received the surname of caraccino from his own countrymen. but i apprehend that this supposed residence of his in rome proceeds from the common source of such mistakes, the resemblance of style, true or supposed. della valle mentions him as being settled in his native place in , and of forty years of age; languid and feeble in his contours, and improving himself by the assistance of some masters, his friends; to which we may perhaps add, the study of the prints of the caracci, and some of their paintings. my suspicions are confirmed by the count durando, a well informed and cautious writer, who denies that positive proof can be given of the reported instruction of mulinari, notwithstanding the surname of caraccino, a title not difficult to acquire from the vulgar, in a city so remote from bologna and rome; as in some countries which have little knowledge of the true style of cicero, a writer may pass for an elegant latinist, while imitating arnobius. in other respects, in the pictures which have acquired him celebrity, he is correct, energetic, and, if not dignified, yet animated and varied in his male heads; for, as durando himself confesses, his females are all deficient in grace. his colouring is also good, though not resembling the caracci; his tints being more clear, differently disposed, and sometimes feeble. at turin, the deposition from the cross at s. dalmazio, is classed amongst his best works; but the composition is crowded, and very different from the principles of the bolognese. in savigliano, where mulinari was born, and where he lived many years, pictures by him are found in almost every church; and his talent and merit are, in fact, only known in that place. there, and in turin, we find some works by a worthy flemish artist, named gio. claret, by some considered the scholar, by others the master of gio. antonio in colouring, but at all events his intimate friend. he is an artist of a free and spirited pencil, and painted in several churches in competition with mulinari. giulio bruni, a piedmontese, was a clever pupil of the genoese school, first under tavarone, then under paggi, and remained painting in genoa, until he was expelled by war. his works there, though not very finished, and too darkly coloured, were well designed, harmonious, and well composed. such is, in the church of st. james, his st. thomas of villanova giving alms. history also mentions one gio. batista, his brother and scholar. giuseppe vermiglio, although born in turin, is not named in the _guide_ of that city. we find pictures by him in piedmont, as at novara and alessandria; and beyond that dominion, in mantua and milan, in which last city is a work which is perhaps his masterpiece. the subject is a daniel amidst lions, in the library of the passione, a large composition, well disposed, with fine architectural decorations, in the paolesque style. the king and people are seen on a balcony admiring the prophet, untouched by the ferocious animals, while his accusers are, at the same instant, precipitated amidst the ravenous beasts, and torn to pieces. in the same composition is also represented the other prophet, borne through the air by an angel, by the hair of his head. we cannot exactly commend the design, which thus unites events incongruous in point of time. but with this exception, this is one of the most valuable pictures painted in milan, after gaudenzio, for correctness, beautiful forms, expression highly studied, and colours warm, varied, and lucid. from the imitative style of the heads, it is evident that he studied the caracci, and was not a stranger to guido; but in the colouring it seemed as if he had imitated the flemish artists. it is reported in milan, perhaps from the resemblance of the style, that he instructed daniel crespi; a circumstance very improbable, since vermiglio continued to work to the year . for we find this date at the foot of a large picture of the woman of samaria, in the refectory of the pp. olivetani, in alessandria, which must be one of his last works, decorated with a beautiful landscape, and a magnificent view of the city of samaria in the distance. i consider him the finest painter in oil that the ancient state of piedmont can boast, and as one of the best italian artists of his day. why he painted so near turin, and yet had no success in that city, and why he was not distinguished by his own sovereign, though well received at the court of mantua, i have not been able to discover. we find one rubini, a piedmontese, certainly not of equal merit with the last artist, who, about the time of vermiglio, worked in the church of s. vito, in trevigi, and whom we find mentioned in the mss. of that city, or in the description of its pictures. giovenal boetto, celebrated amongst the engravers in turin, deserves a place amongst superior artists, from a saloon painted by him in fossano, his native place. it is in the casa garballi, and contains four pictures in fresco. the subject is the illustration of various arts and sciences. theology is represented by a dispute between the thomists and scotists; and in that piece, and in the others, we must admire the truth of nature in the portraits, and the powerful chiaroscuro, as well as the design. little else of him remains. gio. moneri, some of whose descendants were also painters, was born near acqui, and being instructed by romanelli, he brought with him from rome the style of that school. the first proofs of his art were given in acqui, in , where he painted in the cathedral the picture of the assumption, besides a paradiso in fresco, much commended. he continued to advance in his art, as we see both in the presentation in the church of the capuchins, and in other pictures of him remaining in the neighbourhood, exhibiting a greater copiousness, a finer expression, and a stronger relief. it is known that he worked in genoa and milan and their dependencies, and in several places in piedmont; but among these we cannot include turin; nor could it be easy for a provincial painter to find commissions, when the capital had artists in sufficient number to form an academy. until the year the professors of the art in turin did not possess the form of a society, much less the appearance of an academy. in the above year they first began to form themselves into a company, which had the name of st. luke given to it; and which, in a few years, grew into the academy of turin. we may consult, on this subject, the _memorie patrie_, published by the baron vernazza. the court, in the mean time, continued their salaries to the foreign painters, who were the ornament and support of the academy. they were about this time engaged in embellishing the palace, and afterwards that delightful residence, which was built from the design of the same duke charles emanuel ii., and had the name of the veneria reale. their frescos, portraits, and other works, remain to the present day. after one baldassar matthieu of antwerp, by whom there is a highly prized supper of our lord in the refectory of the eremo, gio. miel, also from the neighbourhood of antwerp, a scholar, first of vandyk, and afterwards of sacchi, was appointed painter to the court; a man of a delightful genius, extolled in rome for his humorous, and in piedmont for his serious subjects. in the soffitto of the great hall, where the body guard of the king is stationed, are some pictures of miel, in which, under the fabulous characters of the heathen divinities, are represented the virtues of the royal house; he executed some others, and perhaps more beautiful ones, in the above named villa; and there is an altar-piece by him at chieri, with the date of . we trace in all his works his study of the italian school; a grandeur and sublimity of ideas, an elevation beyond his countrymen, an accurate knowledge of the _sotto in su_, and a fine chiaroscuro, not unaccompanied by great delicacy of colour, particularly in his cabinet pictures. the talent which he possessed in an extraordinary manner in figures of a smaller size, he exhibited more especially in the veneria reale, where he painted a set of huntings of wild beasts, in eight pieces, which are amongst the finest of his works in this department of the art. after him we read of one banier, a painter to the court; in whose time, about the year , the company of st. luke, united since the year to that of rome, was, with the royal assent, erected into an academy; and from this year may be dated the birth of that professional society so much enlarged in our own days. but of all who were at that time or afterwards in the service of the royal house, the most celebrated was daniel saiter, or seiter, of vienna. i have mentioned him as well as miel in the roman school, nor have i passed him over in the venetian, in which he learnt his art, perfecting his style by the study of all the schools of italy. his works are found in the palace and in the villas; nor has he occasion to fear the proximity of miel himself. he yields to the latter, indeed, in grace and beauty, but is superior both to him and others in the force and magic of his colouring. nor in turin do we find in him that incorrect design which pascoli attributes to him in rome. but his oil pictures are by far the most highly finished of his works; as for example, a pieta in the court, which we should say was designed in the academy of the caracci. he also painted the cupola of the great hospital, and it is one of the finest frescos of the capital. we also meet with him in the churches in various places in the state; and we find his works in many private collections out of piedmont, as he painted considerably in venice and in rome. another foreigner, carlo delfino, a frenchman, also flourished at this time; an artist of very considerable merit. from the registers of the archives we learn that he was painter to prince philibert; and from an inspection of his works we may conjecture that he was more employed in the churches than at the court, where we find him an animated and lively portrait painter and colourist. he painted some altar-pieces for the city, in which is displayed a genius more disposed to the natural than to the ideal, and a fire which gives life to the gestures and composition; but sometimes, if i do not estimate him wrongly, his ideas seem forced. thus at the church of s. carlo, wishing to paint a s. agostino overpowered by the love of god, he represented a s. joseph holding in his arms the infant christ, who from a cross-bow directs an arrow against the breast of the saint. the saint struck, falls into the arms of angels, who employ themselves in supporting and comforting him. delfino had a scholar in gio. batista brambilla, who painted at s. dalmazio a large picture on canvass, of the martyrdom of that saint, and was an artist of a correct style and a good colourist. there were other painters employed by the court from the middle to the end of the century: some as portrait painters, as monsieur spirito, the cav. mombasilio, theodore matham of haerlem, and others employed in larger works in oils and fresco. giacinto brandi, already mentioned among the scholars of lanfranc, painted in the palace a sfondo, in competition with some others painted there by saiter. agostino scilla of messina, whom we have elsewhere noticed, painted some virtues there, conjointly with saiter. he was a fine artist, of more talent than industry. gio. andrea casella of lugano, a scholar of pietro da cortona, and one of his best followers, and sometimes in design an imitator of bernino, painted in the veneria reale some fables, assisted by giacomo, his nephew. gio. paolo recchi da como worked there in the same way in fresco, with the assistance of his nephew giannandrea. gio. peruzzini, of ancona, a scholar of simon da pesaro, was also patronised by the court, and was created a cavalier, and contributed by his lectures to the instruction of youth. casella, recchi, and peruzzini, repaired to turin and united their talents in the embellishment of the churches of that city; and we may observe that, towards the close of the century, a great part of the commissions were executed by foreigners. to those already recorded we may add triva, legnani, cairo, and also a gio. batista pozzi, who not succeeding to his wishes in his own country, as i believe, decorated with frescos a vast number of walls in turin, and through all the piedmontese. he was a hasty practitioner, but sometimes produced a good general effect, as in the s. cristoforo of vercelli. we find another, and a better artist of the same name in p. andrea, a jesuit, who resided for a long time in turin, where, in the congregazione de' mercanti, he left four histories from the life of the saviour, painted in oil in his best manner, a manner derived from rubens, chequered by those beautiful and playful lights which may be said to irradiate the composition. he also painted in fresco, in the church of his order, but he was not satisfied with that work; and having afterwards also to ornament the vault of the church of his order at mondovi, he repeated the subject, and executed it more to his satisfaction. there also we find il genovesino, so called from his native place, not so well known in turin as in the state, particularly at alessandria; a painter by no means deficient in grace and colour, whence he is much esteemed in cabinets. the pp. predicatori have a s. domenico by him, and a s. thomas in two altars of their church; the sig. marchese ambrogio ghilini, a christ praying in the garden; the marchese carlo guasco, two madonnas, with the holy infant sleeping, two different designs. the name of this artist was giuseppe calcia, who in consequence of living in a foreign country, is not noticed in his native history, and in the _notizia delle pitture d'italia_, he is confused with marco genovesini, a milanese mentioned by orlandi. this artist was a considerable machinist, of whom there are no remains in milan, except what he painted in the church of the augustines; the genealogical tree, or history of that order, in the gallery, and two grand lateral compositions, in which the figures are finely varied and coloured, but not disposed and put into action with equal art. it would occupy too much time to enumerate all the foreigners who worked at that time in turin, or throughout the state; and some of whom we have occasionally noticed in the various schools of italy. the native painters of reputation were not numerous at this time; and the most considerable, if i mistake not, were caravoglia and taricco. bartolommeo caravoglia, a piedmontese, was said to be the scholar of guercino: he followed his master's footsteps at a distance, affecting a contrast of light and shade; but his lights are much less clear than those of guercino, and the shadows not so strong; a thing which does not occur in the works of the genuine scholars of that master. notwithstanding this feebleness, he pleases us by a certain modest harmony which pervades his pictures, and governs also the invention, the design, the architecture, and the other decorative parts of his composition. in turin is to be seen the miracle of the eucharist, painted in the church of the _corpus domini_, which, to perpetuate the occurrence of that event in turin in , was erected in a sumptuous manner, and magnificently decorated. "sebastiano taricco was born in cherasco, a city of piedmont, in the year ; and it clearly appears from his works that he studied with guido and with domenichino in the great school of the caracci." thus far his historian. i have endeavoured, but in vain, to find any record of the residence of these two great masters in bologna in the year , when taricco was born; they were at that time both dead. i therefore conjecture that the writer meant to say, that taricco studied in bologna the works of the caracci, as guido and domenichino had done before him. that he acquired the principles of his art in that city is believed in piedmont; and his manner does not contradict this supposition. the truth is, that at that time all italy, as it were, was turned to the imitation of the bolognese; and turin, as i have previously observed, had already a few specimens. above all they possessed specimens of guido, and of his followers, carlo nuvolone and gio. peruzzini; and all might influence the style of sebastiano, which was select in the heads, and sufficiently pleasing in general, but of too great facility, and without that refinement which distinguishes the classic painters. this i say after seeing the picture of the trinity, and others of his oil pictures at turin: but i have heard that the sala of the sig. gotti, painted by him in fresco in his native place, and various other works by him interspersed through that vicinity, inspire a higher opinion of his talents. in the seventh volume of the _lettere pittoriche_ there is mention made of a picture of s. martino maggiore at bologna; where are represented the saints giovacchino and anna, and where there is subscribed the initials tar, probably taricco, as has been elsewhere conjectured. but the style of this picture is like that of sabbatini, which is in fact a more ancient style than that which taricco has exhibited in his authenticated works. alessandro mari, of turin, resided only for a short time in his native city, nor did he leave any public works there. he changed both his country and his school, and studied first under piola, next under liberi, and again under pasinelli; always uniting the practice of painting with the cultivation of poetry. he ultimately became a celebrated copyist, and a successful designer of capricci and symbolical representations, by which he established a reputation in milan, and afterwards in spain, where he died. we find the name of isabella dal pozzo inscribed at the foot of a picture at s. francis, which represents the virgin, together with s. biagio and other saints. the birth-place of this fair artist is unknown to me; but i may observe that, in , when she painted, there were not many better artists in turin. somewhat later flourished gio. antonio mareni, a scholar of baciccio, by whom there is a beautiful picture noticed in the _guide_. towards the beginning of the eighteenth century were employed in those churches, and sometimes in competition with each other, antonio mari and tarquinio grassi, whether of the family of niccolò grassi of venice, who painted at s. carlo, i cannot say, but certainly the father of a gio. batista. tarquinio is well known in turin, and seems to have derived some portion of his style from cignani and the bolognese of that age. monferrato was not deficient in good artists in the seventeenth century. some of these i have mentioned in the train of lanini; others in that of moncalvo. i shall here mention only evangelista martinotti, the scholar of salvator rosa, of great excellence in landscapes, small figures, and animals, as orlandi informs us. i may add, that he succeeded also in nobler subjects; a baptism of our lord, in the duomo of casale, is shewn as his, and is a highly finished performance. there are two works there in public by a raviglione di casale, than whom, after musso, i do not think that monferrato has produced a more commendable artist: but we are nevertheless ignorant of his name, his age, and his school. ferdinando cairo was a respectable disciple of franceschini in bologna: he afterwards established himself at brescia, where he continued, with boni and others, to profess that easy style, and the latter city possesses his best works. school of piedmont and the adjacent territory. epoch iii. _school of beaumont, and restoration of the academy._ the eighteenth century was graced by the reign of three successive princes, all lovers of the fine arts, and was consequently rich in patronage; but from the decline of painting it was not equally rich in the production of great works. saiter, who lived some years in this century, was succeeded at the court by agnelli, a roman, whose style was a mixture of those of cortona and maratta. he painted a large hall, which is filled with select pictures, and which now bears his name. agnelli was in his turn succeeded by claudio beaumont of turin, who after having studied in his native place, repaired to rome, where he employed himself for a considerable time in copying the works of raffaello, the caracci, and guido. he did not much regard the masters of the roman school of that day, considering them feeble: he deferred to trevisani, and aimed at emulating his execution and the vigour of his colouring: he was also desirous of studying the works of the old masters at venice, but was prevented by his domestic circumstances. on his return to turin, he became distinguished for the noble style he had acquired in rome. to appreciate him correctly we must inspect the works of his best time; as the deposition from the cross in the church of the s. croce, or the pictures in fresco in the royal library, where, under various symbols, he has celebrated the ruling family; adding to it a genius with a cross of a cavaliere, which was the reward he was ambitious of, and which he obtained. he decorated also other rooms with pictures in fresco; the rape of helen in one cabinet, and the judgment of paris in another, are his productions, alike happy in their general effect and in their separate parts. the court gave an additional stimulus to his industry by employing, in competition with him, many eminent foreigners, particularly in the reign of king charles, to embellish the palace, the villas, and the churches of royal foundation; among the latter of which the most remarkable is the church of the sopperga, erected by victor ii., which contains the family monuments. beaumont was in consequence brought into competition with sebastiano ricci, giaquinto, guidoboni, de mura, galeotti, and gio. batista vanloo, the celebrated scholar of luti. vanloo in turin distinguished himself both in the frescos of the villas, and in church pictures; and had with him carlo, his brother and his scholar, who was his assistant, and executed even more works than he. he painted the beautiful decorations of a cabinet in the palazzo, consisting of subjects from the jerusalem of tasso. these princes were moreover accustomed to send commissions to the most distinguished foreign painters, such as solimene, trevisani, masucci, and pittoni; which gave a stimulus to beaumont to rival them, or at least to endeavour not to be left too far behind. and thus in his best works he sustains his fame in a commendable manner; at one time excelling in design those who conquer him in colour; at another time surpassing in spirit of execution those who excel him in design. it is the general opinion that his genius declined as he advanced in years; and this is attributed to his superintendance of the working of tapestry, for which, while he made the cartoons, he gradually degenerated into negligence of design, vulgarity in his heads, and above all, crudeness and want of harmony in his colours; a defect not uncommon in those who survived him. his memory is deservedly held in veneration in his native place. he was the first to form the turin academy on the model of the greater institutions of that kind: so that it seemed to date a new birth from his time, in (for it was not before extended to all branches of the art) under the appellation of the royal academy; as appears from the orazione of tagliazucchi, and the poetry annexed, in a little volume edited in turin in , entitled, _orazione e poesie per la instituzione dell'accademia del disegno_, in vo. beaumont educated not only many painters of merit, but also engravers, tapestry-workers, and modellers and statuaries; from which epoch the national cultivation of the fine arts has increased, far beyond the example of former times. some of those who were the scholars of beaumont in painting still survive. some are deceased, (and these alone hold a place in this work,) of similar style, though not of equal talents with their master. vittorio blanseri was considered the best amongst them, and was on that account chosen by the court to succeed beaumont. the three pictures by him at s. pelagia, and particularly a s. luigi fainting in the arms of an angel, are much esteemed in turin; and if i err not, he is superior to his master in the distribution of light and shade. a more correct designer than blanseri, but inferior in poetical invention, and in knowledge of harmony and colouring, was gio. molinari, who painted some pictures in the churches; one of which is at s. bernardo di vercelli, a composition of saints, well disposed, with good action, and conducted with great care. in turin there is an addolorata by him at the regio albergo delle virtù; others in various places in the state; amongst which in the abbey of s. benigno is a st. john the baptist, with a landscape by cignaroli. in private collections we meet with his historical pieces and his portraits: he painted one of the king, which was highly applauded, and has been very frequently copied. owing to his character, which was naturally timid, reserved, and modest, he painted history less than he ought to have done. this artist was honoured by the baron vernazza with an elegant eulogium, which will confer a lasting honour on his memory. he died nearly at the same time as another eminent piedmontese of the name of tesio. whether or not tesio was instructed in the art by beaumont, or by others, i cannot state; but i know that he repaired to rome, and there became one of the best scholars of mengs; and at moncalieri, a delightful residence of the royal family, are to be seen some of the finest specimens of his talents. felice cervetti and mattia franceschini worked sometimes alone, sometimes in competition, with more facility but less finish, and are pretty frequently met with in turin. but in turin, and throughout the state, antonio milocco is better known than these, or perhaps any other painter. he was not the scholar, but for some time the companion of the cavalier beaumont; more dry than he in design, less cultivated, and inferior to him in all the qualities of a painter: but from a peculiar facility he was often employed by private individuals, and sometimes by the court. about the same period giancarlo aliberti flourished in asti, his native city, which he adorned with many large compositions. the best of these are at s. agostino, where, in the cupola of the church he has represented the titular saint borne to heaven by a band of angels; and in the presbytery, the same saint baptizing the newly converted in the church of his town of ippona. the subject is well conceived; the perspective, which the vaulting of the edifice rendered difficult, is correctly preserved; the architecture is magnificent; the expression of the figures is in unison with the august ceremony: the style participates of the roman and bolognese of those times. he would probably have left some works of a higher order in the cathedral, a fine church, which was intended to have been wholly decorated by him; but in consequence of demanding fifteen years for the completion of his work, he was deprived of the commission; nor was it difficult to find one to execute it quickly enough, without exciting the jealousy of aliberti. p. della valle found in his style a mixture of maratta, of gio. da s. giovanni, and of coreggio; heads and feet which one should attribute to guido or domenichino; forms peculiar to the caracci; drapery of paolo, colours of guercino, a sacrifice of abraham, imitated from mecherino. i had not myself time to form so many comparisons. the abate aliberti, his son, painted in many of the above-named cities, and, (which i have not found in the father,) in the capital. there is a holy family, of fine effect, painted by him in the church of the carmine, though in the colouring it is not exempt from that greenish tinge which was then in vogue in italy, and which still predominates in the works of some of our artists. francesco antonio cuniberti, of savigliano, a fresco painter of some reputation in the decoration of cupolas and ceilings, worked in his native place and its neighbourhood. pietro gualla di casalmonferrato also employed himself in fresco, and likewise painted in oil in many places of the state, and in the metropolis. although he applied himself late to the study of his art, he became a portrait painter of great spirit. nor ought he to have gone beyond this province, neither possessing a knowledge of design, nor genius equal to greater attempts. when verging on age, he assumed the habit of a friar of s. paul, and in milan undertook to ornament a cupola of the church of that order; but he died before he had finished his work. another department of the art was cultivated in a distinguished manner by domenico olivieri of turin, a man born to amuse by his singular personal appearance, his lively conversation, and the humorous productions of his pencil. his cabinet pictures of spirited caricatures in the style of laer, and other eminent flemish artists, are well known in the collections of piedmont. in his time the royal collection, by the death of prince eugene, was enriched by the addition of nearly four hundred flemish pictures; which are still distinguishable from others by the highly finished carving and fine taste of the frames. no one profited more than olivieri from the imitation of these works. if he had possessed the lucid clearness of their tints, he would have passed for a flemish artist. he is happy in his subject, strong in his colours, and free in his touch. the court has two large pictures of his, crowded with figures of a span in size: one of which is a market scene, with charlatans, drawers of teeth, villagers quarrelling, and the variety of incident usually furnished by a busy assemblage of the vulgar. it might indeed, from its humour, be called a little bernesque poem. he occasionally employed his talents in sacred subjects, as in the miracle of the sacrament, which he represented by a number of small figures in two pictures, which are preserved in the sacristy of the corpus domini. his style was inherited by one graneri, who imitated him successfully, and died only a few years since. the court had also a painter from prague, of the name of francesco antonio meyerle, commonly called monsieur meyer, who did not acquire so much fame from his larger works as from his small pictures in the flemish style: in the latter he was indeed excellent. he was also a fine painter of portraits. the bishop of vercelli possesses one of an old man, scrutinizing some object or other with an eye-glass, executed with great truth and humour; and in the same city, where he spent his latter days, his works are frequently met with, and the more prized the smaller they are found in size. in landscapes and other ornamental pictures, painted in a bold venetian style, and for distant effect, a piedmontese, of the name of paolo foco, distinguished himself, who lived for a long time in casale, where the greater number of his works are to be found. he, too, attempted figures on a larger scale, but with little success. in portraits, in the time of orlandi, a lady of the name of anna metrana, whose mother also was a painter, was much esteemed. in our days a similar reputation was obtained in bologna, by marcantonio riverditi, of alessandria, a very good follower of that school. he painted also in the churches in a clear chaste style, far removed from mannerism; and amongst other pictures which he painted for the church of the monks of camoldoli, is a conception, in which he manifested his predilection for guido reni. he died in the same city in the year . i have found, in the course of my reading, one michela, whether or not of piedmont i cannot determine, who, in the royal castle painted perspectives, ornamented with figures by olivieri; a work executed in competition with lucatelli, marco ricci, and gian paolo pannini, celebrated artists of those times. for the more extensive decorations of the churches and the theatres we find two artists often employed; dellamano, of modena, mentioned by us in the second chapter of the lombard schools,[ ] and gio. batista crosato, of venice, whose genius and fine taste are extolled by sig. zanetti. he has not, however, been able to adduce more than one public picture, in which branch, and in every other of a figurist, he was less admired than in perspective. he is one of those painters who deceive the eye by a strong relief, and he thus gives the semblance of reality to his imitations. he has left proofs of this quality in various parts of piedmont, where he generally resided; and the works which do the most honour to his memory are at the vigna della regina. he conferred a benefit on the school of piedmont, from his instruction of bernardino galliari, a celebrated perspective painter, particularly for the theatres, and of great fame in milan, in berlin, and in other places beyond the mountains. to this respected professor his scholars are indebted for their accurate taste in art. the state has also produced other painters in figures and in landscape; nor will any impartial person blame me for not having particularised every individual of them. on the contrary, i fear that several names here inserted by me, may appear to some of my readers scarcely worthy of admission. such persons ought however to consider, that the mediocrity of the times compels the historian to notice artists of mediocrity. footnote : see vol. iv. p. . the rules of the academy, introduced in turin in , have not subsisted sufficiently long to allow us to judge of their result, as i have done with regard to older establishments. they were given to the public the same year, from the royal press;[ ] and do honour as well to the good taste as to the munificence of victor amadeus iii. his august father had, indeed, already prepared a domicile for the fine arts in the halls of the university, and had founded the new academy of design, under the direction of the first painter of the court. it has since received fresh lustre from the patronage of the present king, and has been enlarged by professorships, stipends, and laws, and aids of all kinds for studious youth. turin has, in the present day, exhibited productions in painting, such as, except in rome, are to be found in few capitals of italy; and in architecture, statuary, and bronze, stands almost unrivalled. i do not particularise the living artists, as they may easily be found in the new city guide, or in the preface to volume xi. of vasari, printed in siena; and some of their names have become better known from the voice of public applause than from the pens of writers. footnote : there is annexed to them a learned treatise, by the count felice durando di villa, with very erudite and copious notes. i here close my history of the art of painting. the indexes, which form the sixth volume, the first, containing the nomenclature and the different ages of the artists; the second, a list of the writers from whom i have derived my information; and the third, a reference to some things more particularly deserving of notice, will complete the work. end of vol. v. transcriber's notes: standardized spacing after apostrophes in italian names and phrases. standardized inconsistent hyphenation. for consistency with prior volumes in this series of books, 'bassi-rilievi' was changed to 'bassi-relievi' and 'master-piece' to 'masterpiece.' moved footnotes to the end of the paragraph in which the anchor occurs. retained archaic spelling and punctuation, except as noted below: 'an' added to footnote ... to supply an abundance of valuable ... 'comunal' to 'communal' ... in the communal collection ... 'reconducts' to 're-conducts' ... he re-conducts him to bologna ... 'emiment' to 'eminent' ...both eminent ornamental painters ... 'ceseno' to 'cesena' ... a pupil of raffaello at cesena ... 'tintoret' to 'tintoretto' ... under titian and tintoretto at venice.... 'chiariscuri' to 'chiaroscuri' ... some chiaroscuri happily enough ... 'ferrau' to 'ferraù' ... he flourished after ferraù ... added 'of' ... names not unworthy of a place in history ...' 'desart' to 'desert' for consistency with remaining text ... desert of judea,... ... the saint preaching in the desert ... 'barruffaldi' to 'baruffaldi' ... relating to baruffaldi's ms.... 'mezzarata' to 'mezzaratta' ...the church of mezzaratta;... 'winckelman' to 'winckelmann' ... and of winckelmann,... 'intituled' to 'entitled' ... in , entitled,... masterpieces in colour edited by--t. leman hare giovanni bellini in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissaro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. _in preparation_ j. f. millet. percy m. turner. memlinc. w. h. james weale. albert dÜrer. herbert furst. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. boucher. c. haldane macfall. watteau. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. john s. sargent, r.a. t. martin wood. and others. [illustration: plate i.--virgin and child. (frontispiece) this picture is interesting, apart from its fine colour and drawing, on account of the landscape background. it will be remembered that bellini was one of the first artists to introduce landscape into his pictures of the virgin. in the academy at venice.] bellini by george hay illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. virgin and child frontispiece in the academy at venice page ii. the doge loredano in the national gallery, london iii. angel playing a lute in the academy at venice iv. madonna with the holy child asleep in the academy at venice v. pieta in the brera gallery at milan vi. allegory: the barque of love in the academy at venice vii. madonna and child in the academy at venice viii. madonna and child in the brera gallery at milan [illustration] introduction from the standpoint of the biographer, it is to be regretted that more of the great italian artists of the fifteenth century were not associated with the church. in the days of the most interesting activity of painters and sculptors, the capacity to write was rarely met beyond the monasteries and few people took the trouble to record any impression of notable men in the early years of their career. we are apt to forget that, for one artist whose name is preserved to us to-day, there are a score of men whose work has perished, whose very names are forgotten. in middle life, or in old age, when commissions from popes or emperors had attracted the attention of the world at large to the best men of the time, there might be some chronicler found to make passing but invaluable reference to those of his contemporaries whose names were common in men's mouths, but such notes were made in very haphazard fashion, they were not necessarily accurate, and might be founded upon personal observation or rumour, or even upon the prejudice that was inevitable when italy was a congerie of opposing states. latter-day historians grope painfully and conscientiously after the scanty records of great painters, searching the voluminous writings of men who have little to say, and very little authority for saying anything about the great personalities of the art world of their time. it is not surprising, under these circumstances, that despite much search the record of many lives that must have been fascinating cannot be found. we learn more of the man from his work than we can hope to learn from any written record and, as the taste for studying pictures grows, so all the internal evidence of a man's thought and ways of life accumulates and the message that underlies canvas and stands revealed in colour and line to the trained eye, is translated for the benefit of a curious generation. we learn to know what manner of man the painter was from the models he chose, the portraits he painted, the qualities and nature of his landscape, the expression of his joy in light and air, his feeling for flowers and birds. by a process of synthetical reasoning we come to see, though it be as in a glass, darkly, the picture that every man paints, from the years of his activity to the last year of his sojourn among mortals--that is the portrait of himself. doubtless we are often misled, because as each critic, artist or layman, finds in the picture a reflection of what he takes there, it remains difficult to arrive at definite conclusions upon which all men can agree about any painter. happily the effort pleases our own generation, and as there are many great men who flourished in the fifteenth century and have left their pictures to be their sole monument, there is no lack of work. naturally in this curious and inquisitive age there are some who would rather discover a well authenticated story about an artist's life than an unexpected masterpiece from his hand, but then the appeal of letters is always more widespread than that of paint. it is always pleasant to endeavour to supply a want, but it is only fair to remember that in writing about people whose life story was not preserved by their contemporaries, the path is strewn with pitfalls. [illustration: plate ii.--the doge loredano this picture, which is of bust length and life size, is one of the ten examples of giovanni bellini in the national gallery, and is perhaps the most important example of the artist as a portrait painter. the doge wears his state robes and cap of office, and the picture is signed on a cartellino.] in dealing with the italians from the days of cimabue to clovio, it has been the custom to depend very largely upon the works of giorgio vasari, and to rely for later and more accurate information upon the volumes written by crowe and cavalcaselle, passing from them to morelli and berenson. vasari, to whom the students of italian art, down to the middle of the sixteenth century, are so deeply indebted, was born in , and lived for more than sixty years. he was a painter and architect, related to luca signorelli, and engaged for a great part of his life upon work in arezzo. he was a great copyist, a painstaking writer, and never did critic wield a milder pen if he chanced to be writing of florentine art, or a more prejudiced one if he dealt with things of venice. he was first a patriot and then a critic. one night, he tells us, a friend of monsignore giovio expressed a wish to add to his library a treatise on men who had distinguished themselves in the arts of design, from the time of cimabue down to the year of the conversation. vasari undertook the work and founded it, he says, upon notes and memoranda which he had made from the time when he was a boy. the compilation was finished about the year , it was written at a time when the painter was very busy with commissions. he did his best in a certain prejudiced fashion, and the result for all its defects is very valuable. naturally enough vasari had not too large a share of the gifts required for his task, nor had he the necessary facts before him for writing really reliable history. much that he wrote was accepted _faute de mieux_, but modern researches have necessitated a revision of very many estimates that vasari formed for us, together with a considerable portion of his facts, and we have learned to understand something of the source and direction of his prejudices. the literary union of crowe and cavalcaselle, who started their joint work in the latter half of the nineteenth century, with better equipment of facts and a larger measure of critical insight, has been far more valuable, and a complete popular edition of their work revised by sympathetic and well qualified writers is greatly to be desired; but in no case can we regard a volume devoted to the biographies of scores of artists as being altogether reliable. the spirit of study is abroad, to-day men will devote more time to the life story of a comparatively obscure artist than they would have given fifty years ago to half-a-dozen painters of european reputation. it is not easy, one might almost say it is not possible, to tell succinctly the story of men who have left no clear record and were not regarded by their contemporaries as fit and proper subjects for a biography. at best we can study the available sources of information, and use such measure of judgment as is in us to construct a reasonable and likely narrative. to delve in all manner of likely and unlikely places, to study and make allowances for the prejudices of the time, to rely upon the painted canvas to confirm or confute the printed word--these are the tasks of the conscientious biographer who must not be ill content if, after sifting an intolerable amount of chaff, he can find a few forgotten grains of corn. i gian bellini's youth giovanni, or gian bellini as he is generally called, the subject of this brief record and appreciation, is one of the most fascinating painters of the fifteenth century. he has left many a lovely picture to the world, but alas he was no diarist, he had no boswell, and there are gaps in the history of his life that will never be filled up. in the vast and unexplored region of italian archives there may be some facts that research will bring to light, but at present we know very little, and can only be grateful that the story of his life is not shrouded altogether in the mist that obscures so much of the personal history of eminent venetians in the fifteenth century. "when zealous efforts are supported by talent and rectitude, though the beginning may appear lowly and poor, yet do they proceed constantly upwards by gradual steps, never ceasing nor taking rest until they have finally attained to the summit of distinction." in this fashion giorgio vasari, who in those admirable but unreliable "lives," seldom fails to speak kindly and enthusiastically of artists whom neither he nor his friends had occasion to dislike, begins his account of the house of bellini. he passes on to deal in detail with jacopo bellini, the father of that giovanni with whose life and work it is proposed to deal briefly in this place. of the father little is known, but he is said to have lived in the shadow of st. mark's great cathedral in venice, and to have worked under some of the umbrian masters in the ducal palace. he must have served and studied in the studio of gentile da fabriano in days when fra angelico had not reached the convent of san marco; there is evidence, too, that he travelled and painted portraits. the date of his death is as uncertain as the year of his birth. it is said that the new paganism held more attractions for him than the old faith, and that the most of his commissions were from the great and flourishing secular institutions of the republic. little is left of his pictures, but a few delightful sketches are preserved in paris and london and, but for the larger fame of his sons, jacopo bellini would doubtless have been forgotten to-day, and such work as is left would be attributed by leading critics to different masters. gentile bellini seems to have been born between and and the date of giovanni's birth is not known definitely. it may be associated with the year . [illustration: plate iii.--angel playing a lute this is a detail from an altar-piece formerly in the church of san giobbé. the work is now in the academy of venice.] at this time it must be remembered that venice was on the road to her ultimate decline. costly wars with milan and florence had seriously damaged the exchequer, the fratricidal sea-fights with genoa had cost a wealth of human life and treasure and, although venice had annexed nearly a dozen provinces in half a century, the outlay had been out of proportion to the results. at the same time, the venetians did not know that their splendid state was on the downward road. the new route to india was unknown. columbus and diaz had yet to withdraw the sea-borne commerce of the world from venice to spain, and so bring about the commercial ruin of the republic, and the republic, with her maritime trade and her wealth of spoils from the east, could furnish endless material for the artists who were rising in her midst. everywhere there was colour in abundance, the "purple east" cast a broad shadow upon the adriatic. then, again, it is worth remarking that the venetian painters did not concern themselves, as their florentine brothers did, with matters lying beyond the scope of their canvas, they did not dally with architecture or sculpture in the intervals of picture painting. in short, pictures represented the tribute of venice to the arts, and this concentration was not without its influence upon the work done. literature did not flourish, because the city reared few literary men and the tendency of the citizens was towards pleasure rather than study. all could admire a picture at a time when few could read a book, and the spirit of the renaissance, fluttering over the venetian republic, had done little more than waken its people to a sense of the beauty of the human form. although in the days when gian bellini was a little boy, the terror of the turkish invasion was upon the eastern end of the mediterranean, it had hardly reached venice or, if it had, only through the medium of envoys and kings who came to ask the assistance of the republic to keep the turk from constantinople. to these appeals the response of venice in those days could not be very efficacious, but the envoys added a more flamboyant note to the city's colouring, and served an artistic if not a political purpose. vasari tells us that jacopo bellini painted his pictures not on wood, but on canvas. "in venice," he writes naïvely, "they do not paint on panel, or if they do use it occasionally they take no other wood but that of the fir, which is most abundant in that city, being brought along the river adige in large quantities from germany. it is the custom then in venice to paint very much upon canvas, either because this material does not so readily split, is not liable to clefts, and does not suffer from the worm, or because pictures on canvas may be made of such size as is desired, and can also be sent whithersoever the owner pleases, with little cost and trouble." perhaps vasari overlooked the effect of sea air upon open frescoed walls, although that effect was clear enough to the venetians. but jacopo, for all that he painted upon canvas, and was employed by some of the leading venetian guilds, makes no outstanding figure upon the page of the art history of venice. he seems to have lived prosperously, honourably, and intelligently, to have caught the earliest possible reflection of the growing spirit of paganism, thereby incurring the anger and mistrust of the church party that had regarded painting as the proper intermediary between faith and the general public, to have pleased his state employers in venice and padua, and then to have died rather outside the odour of sanctity, leaving an honourable name behind him, and children who were destined to spread its fame far and wide. students of gian bellini's life and work can see that only a part of the father's teaching fell upon fruitful soil. jacopo bellini, as we have seen, was a man in whom the early religious spirit that the renaissance did much to cloud over was of small account, but the pagan revival that found so many adherents in florence and venice, towards the close of the fifteenth century, left young gian bellini almost untouched. we shall see that the commissions offered by wealthy patrons, who had no love for sacred subjects, were either rejected, or were accepted and not fulfilled. it is surely permissible to believe that the teaching of early days had a lasting influence upon the outlook of the two bellinis, and strengthened them in the determination to do work that appealed as much to their heart as to their hand. certainly they followed conscience where it led them. in the case of gian bellini, with whom we are mostly concerned here, it is interesting to see that his long life, passed as it was in the very critical time that embraced the fall of constantinople and the league of cambrai, was completely free from cloud. his mind was formed very early. he worked strenuously, carefully, and in the fashion that pleased his conscience, till within a very short time of his death, and the serenity of his spirit, clearly revealed in a series of exquisite pictures, was untouched by all that happened in the world around him. changes came thick and fast upon venice in the years when bellini was hard at work, and new ideas were receiving acceptance on every hand. the renaissance, with its revival of pagan thought in the train of learning, scattered new ideas throughout the venetian studios. bellini's pupil and successor titian could depict pagan goddess and christian deity with equal facility. giorgione was travelling along the same paths when death overtook him, but gian bellini, while he continued to make progress in his art, refused to make any concession to the pagan spirit, and with one possible exception in the case of the bacchanals, a picture painted for the duke of ferrara, now in the alnwick castle collection, his last pictures were as devout in thought and feeling as the first. it seems strange, perhaps, to express doubts about a picture that bears the painter's signature, and has been freely accepted as the work of his hands, but we must not forget that the fifteenth-century painters in italy were the directors of a school as well as the tenants of a studio. the bellini and vivarini families were at the head of venetian painters, and consequently the best students of the time were attracted to their studios, content to mix colours, prepare canvases, and paint the less important parts of a commissioned picture. after a time they even painted pictures, and signed them with the master's name. we have certain facts in connection with the ferrara picture, and few facts are to be found in the case of any others. it is on record that bellini took an unfinished picture to ferrara, completed it under the eye of the duke, and received eighty-five ducats for it. the question becomes whether this is the picture now at alnwick that titian finished, because those who know it say that the background has a landscape of the familiar titian kind, with glimpses of cadore and pieve, where the younger painter was born. we are left, then, with the almost certain knowledge that titian painted a part of the "bacchanal" picture, and that the other part is opposed in sentiment to bellini's theories of art. so the sceptics do not lack a measure of justification. [illustration: plate iv.--madonna with the holy child asleep this is one of the most beautiful of the painter's studies of a familiar theme, and appeals to the spectator from the literary as well as the artistic side. the original is in the venice academy.] in the latter days of his life bellini's studio became something like a factory, and there seems very little reason to doubt that some of his clever pupils like bondinelli, bissolo, marconi, catena and others were allowed to sign, with the master's name, "ioannes bellinus," pictures that had no more than the slightest acquaintance with the master's brush. one of the most distinguished of our modern critics, mr. bernhard berenson, attended an exhibition of venetian pictures held in london a few years ago, and found that the great majority of the pictures attributed to bellini were by his pupils. he pointed out then that the signature upon which the unfortunate owners were accustomed to lean was no better than a broken reed. bellini, of course, was not the only offender in this respect. his great pupil titian copied the master's fault, and there is on record a letter from frederic, duke of mantua, asking titian to send out work that has his touch as well as his signature. with these facts before us, it becomes permissible to doubt whether bellini, in the last years of a long life devoted to sacred work, elected to turn aside, and yield deliberately to the pagan movement he had opposed so long. we can find no other work of his hand that is directly opposed to his theories of religious art, though it is fair to remember that he had a very active mind, and even responded to the influence of his own great pupils titian and giorgione. ii middle life it is not easy to say how far a great painter reflects his time and how far he influences it. tradition and surroundings must needs count for much, but their exact value is not easy to estimate. indeed the influence of a man is often strongest upon the generations that succeed to his own, for no hints are left of the doubts and difficulties that beset the master. the attitude of the venetians towards art in the fifteenth century, when gian bellini started his work, differed from that of the florentines by reason of the splendid isolation of venice. the state was a law to herself; she instituted her own customs, she ruled her own life. her wars had less effect than her commercial victories upon those of her citizens who turned their thoughts towards art, the stress and strife beyond her boundaries left her artists comparatively untouched. the wider significance of the renaissance hardly reached her, her people were not only pleasure-loving, but self-centred. happily, jacopo bellini was by way of being a traveller and his experiences were not lost upon his children. he knew florence and worked in the city at a time when her great men were beginning to rise in all their lasting glory, he may have seen brunelleschi himself at work upon the duomo. he knew padua, where the tradition of giotto was very strong, though that great master himself had long passed away, and so he brought to the art he practised in his own city something of the technique of the new movement, as well as the very definite touch of the pagan sentiment that was to be developed in all its beauty by his son's pupils titian and giorgione. the effect of his travels, limited though they were, was very lasting, and though gian bellini did not see life as his father had seen it, his work paved the way for the masters whose work was in some aspects greater than his. in his early days venice had no very distinctive art. what there was seems to have been ecclesiastical in thought and extremely formal in design. it was the appeal of the clericals to a people who could neither write nor read, but although a state may erect boundaries and may devote itself to the enjoyment of prosperity, those who care for the claims of art cannot escape altogether from the forces that are at work in surrounding cities. one of the chief forces at work in northern italy was the revival of learning that seems to have marched side by side with the discovery of personal beauty. the church had kept beauty in the background, the renaissance brought it to the canvas of every artist. bellini turned the discovery of personal beauty to the service of the madonna. [illustration: plate v.--pieta this fine example of the master's art may be seen at the brera gallery in milan.] students of the life of fra angelico know that a dominican preacher exercised a very great effect upon the painter's life, and was responsible for sending him, at a very early age, to the great convent of the dominicans at fiesole. there he was received as a brother, and from the shelter of the cloister he gave his art message to the world, his story being preserved to us at the same time because the progress of the dominicans was recorded. a few years later giovanni bellini, then a boy newly in his teens, would seem to have fallen under a very similar influence. he was not fourteen when st. bernardino came to padua and preached the doctrine of godliness and jew-baiting to a people who were not ill-disposed towards asceticism. in the fifteenth century a boy of fourteen was a man. the pope made cardinals of lads who were still younger and many, who have left their names written large in italian history, were married when they were fifteen. gian bellini would have been assisting his father in the decoration of the gattemelata chapel of padua at the time and there is no doubt that st. bernardino's addresses impressed him very deeply. to be sure he did not go into a religious house after the fashion of fra angelico, but he turned his thoughts towards religion, and for the rest of his long life his brush was kept almost exclusively for the service of sacred art. the tendencies towards paganism that his father is known to have shown held no attraction for him. he sought to express the beauty of the new testament stories, and it is hard to find throughout all italy an artist whose achievements in that direction can vie with his, for gian bellini brought sensuous beauty and rare qualities of emotion to canvas for the first time in the history of painting. in those early days of the middle century there were two acknowledged leaders of painting in the world that young bellini knew. the first was his father, who is said to have studied in the studios of gentile da fabriano ( to ), and that of pisanello who was born somewhere about the same time as da fabriano, and died a year later. it is worth noting that jacopo bellini called one of his sons gentile after his earliest master, though whether gentile or giovanni was the elder son remains uncertain. mr. roger fry, who writes with great authority upon the subject, is of opinion that gian may have been a natural son of jacopo, and in those days when popes had "nephews" in abundance, and the marriage vow was more honoured in the breach than the observance, very little stigma attached to illegitimacy. the other great painter of gian bellini's time was the paduan painter squarcione, who presided over a large and flourishing school in his native city, and did work that was quite as good as that of his contemporaries. he adopted as his son a lad from padua or mantua named andrea mantegna, who was destined to take such high rank among the painters of the venetian school. although padua and venice were in a sense rivals, there seems to have been a very friendly understanding for many years between squarcione and jacopo bellini, so that gian and gentile were able to watch the progress of the paduan master and his pupils, and to decide for themselves how much they would accept, and what they would reject of the teaching. in early years these influences must have been of great value to the painter, but happily they were not destined to be lasting, for when gian's sister married andrea mantegna, squarcione quarrelled with his adopted son, and the intimacy with the bellini family came to an end. this is as it should have been in the best interests of gian bellini's art, for when he returned to venice and settled down there permanently, he was able to follow his own ideas, and free himself from what was bad in the influence of the stiff, formal, and lifeless school of padua. venice must have been a remarkable city in those years. to-day it stimulates the imagination as few cities in europe can do, then it must have been one of the wonders of the world. there are some striking accounts of the city written in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and though space does not permit any quotation at length, one brief paragraph will not be out of place. philippe de comines, envoy of charles viii., came to venice in , and recalled his impressions of that city in his memoirs. "i was taken along the high street," he writes, "they call it the grand canal, and it is very broad, galleys cross it; and it is the fairest street, i believe, that may be in the whole world, and fitted with the best houses; the ancient ones are painted, and most have a great piece of porphyry and serpentine on the front. it is the most triumphant city i have ever seen, and doth most honour to ambassadors and strangers. it doth most wisely govern itself, and the service of god is most solemnly performed. though the venetians have many faults, i believe god has them in remembrance for the reverence they pay in the service of his church." this brief tribute to the charm of venice is of special value because it helps us to understand why the venetians were not strenuous seekers after knowledge, why their painters did no more than paint, and why their response to the humanities was so small. it explains the decorative quality of bellini's pictures, the splendour of their colours. pageantry and ceremonial were the great desires of venetian life, the man who could add to the lustre of a state procession along the splendid water-way of the grand canal was more to them than the scholar who had written a treatise that moved the more learned florentines to admiration. life was so full of pleasure, so varied in its appeals, that the venetians could not spare time, or even develop the will to study. they had raised the old cry "panem et circenses" and, in the days of gian bellini, there was no lack of either. history is full of records that reveal other nations in a similar light, philosophers have drawn the inevitable conclusions--and the trend of life is no wise altered. [illustration: plate vi.--allegory: the barque of love this is one of a little series of panel pictures by bellini that may be seen in the academy at venice. the others depict evil, fate, luxury, and zeal, and prudence. this picture is sometimes called "venus ruling the world," but such a title seems rather foreign to the painter's own attitude.] under bellini, painting lost the conventions that had been regarded as correct or inevitable in squarcione's studio, and gian's pictures bear the same relation to those of the paduan, and his pupil, as newman's writing bears to bad eighteenth-century english prose. but despite all developments in the technique of his art, gian bellini's painting remained quite constant to the mood that st. bernardino had induced. doubtless, had his gifts been of another kind, he would have entered the church, he would have dreamed dreams and seen visions that would not have found such world-wide expression while, being an artist, inheriting artistic traditions from his father, living in the centre of the small world of venetian and paduan painters, he expressed his beautiful emotions in fashion that has not weakened its claim upon us in more than four hundred years. the glamour of venetian life, the extraordinary beauty of the city that was his home, the splendour and the pageants that were part of a venetian life, the intensity of the colour that surrounded him on all sides--some of it belonging to venice by right, and even more, brought to her shores by the ceaseless traffic of the sea--all these things developed and deepened the emotion that was to find so exquisite an expression from his brush. to him, as to fra angelico, faith was a real and living thing, and like the great monk who died at ripe age while he was yet a boy, gian bellini became a lover of the world in its most picturesque aspect, accepting without hesitation the traditional explanation of its creation. naturally enough his appeal to the artist is founded upon a dozen considerations, mostly technical, his appeal to the layman is direct and spontaneous. a countryman who has never seen a studio can respond to the exquisite beauty of bellini's virgins and children, can feel the charm of the sunshine that fills the air and lights sea and land, can recognise the infinite glamour of the roads that wind away into the mysterious distance of the background, can enjoy the rich, almost sensuous, colouring. perhaps had bellini taken the vows, a great part of these beauties would have been lost, the infinite variety of lovely women and children could hardly have been secured. as a venetian, and a pleasure lover, he could not have responded, as fra angelico did, to the restricted life and rigid discipline of a religious order. it was not easy for gian bellini to devote himself entirely to sacred subjects if he wished to earn a living by his brush, because his father had stood outside the church. in those days, too, the best churchwork was in the hands of one family, the vivarini, whose monopoly was hardly likely to be disturbed by an artist who could show no better credentials than a connection, legitimate or illegitimate, with a painter whose feeling was distinctly pagan. jacopo bellini, for all that he was a most admired artist, had no claims upon the church, and does not seem to have received many commissions from it. various wealthy societies in venice had been accustomed to employ him to decorate their halls with work that, as we have said before, has been lost, and their guilds or _scuole_ would doubtless have given gian all the work he wished to do had he been satisfied to do it. he could not choose for himself. st. bernardino had chosen for him in those years when his mind was most impressionable. gian bellini's hand was doubtless to be seen in padua where he assisted his father, and his earliest independent work is to be found in the casa correr at venice, where one finds a "transfiguration," a "crucifixion," and two "pietas." he painted portraits, one from our own national gallery is to be seen here. this is a picture of the doge, leonardo loredano, who held office from to . the early pictures reveal bellini at the parting of the ways. his figures have many of the defects of the school of padua. his knowledge of anatomy is decidedly small, he lacks confidence in himself, and yet it is not difficult to recognise that the painter is moving into a new country, that his presentation of sacred subjects is developing on lines that must add considerably to their artistic value and to the permanence of their appeal. an amusing story is told of the way in which young bellini acquired his knowledge of oil painting. he is said to have assumed the dress of a venetian nobleman, and to have gone to the studio of a popular artist of the time, under pretext of having his portrait painted. while the artist, one antonello of messina, was busily engaged upon his portrait, bellini is said to have watched the process very carefully and to have secured the much needed lesson. it is more than likely that the story is untrue, but it has obtained a large measure of credence. his first big altar-piece is said to have been done for the altar of st. catherine of sienna, and after one or two other church paintings had been accomplished, giovanni was commissioned to decorate the great council hall of venice with historical paintings. but it is well to remember that altar painting never ceased to interest him, his greatest achievements having been accomplished for churches. there are few things in art more beautiful than gian bellini's altar-pieces. ruskin has paid a special tribute to the "virgin and four saints" in the church dedicated to st. zaccaria, father of the baptist. he says that the zaccaria altar-piece, and the one in the frari, by the same master, are the two finest pictures in the world. of the big works, however, nothing remains, gentile being the only one of the family who is represented to-day by pictures painted on a very large scale. vasari tells us that gian painted four pictures in fulfilment of a commission, one representing the pope alexander iii. receiving frederic barbarossa after the abjuration of the schism of , the next showing the pope saying mass in san marco, another representing his holiness in the act of presenting a canopy to the doge, and the last in which the pontiff is presented with eight standards and eight silver trumpets by clergy assembled outside the gates of rome. these subjects or some of them had been painted by one gueriento of verona when marco corner was doge. petrarch had written the inscriptions for them, but they had faded, and in later years tintoretto painted his "paradiso" over the damaged frescoes. there is a story to the effect that giovanni and gentile bellini had promised the councillors that their pictures should last two hundred years; as a matter of fact, they would seem to have been destroyed by fire within half that period. [illustration: plate vii.--madonna and child this picture shows the centre figures of a very famous painting by bellini in the academy at venice in which the madonna and child are seen between st. catherine and st. mary magdalen. the faces most delightfully painted are full of spiritual grace and the colouring is exquisite.] the style of the picture commissioned makes its own significant commentary upon the times. it was always considered advisable to stir in the venetians appreciation for state ceremonial, which encouraged so much of the pageantry associated with venetian life and, even if giovanni bellini had no keen taste for such work, he could not refuse a commission that would establish his name among his fellow countrymen. to-day the sala del maggior consiglio holds pictures by titian, paul veronese, and other artists who followed closely upon gian bellini's era. iii the latter days shortly after the council hall pictures had been undertaken, in , to be exact, the sultan, mohammed ii., conqueror of constantinople, wished to have his portrait painted, and applied to the doge of venice to send him a competent artist to do the work. it should be remembered that the sultan had been waging a successful war upon venice, and that in january the state had ceded scutari, stalimene, and other territory and had agreed to pay an indemnity of , ducats, with a tribute of , ducats a year for trading rights and the exercise of consular jurisdiction in constantinople. naturally the success of the turks, who had taken constantinople in , was making a very great impression throughout europe, and venice had striven to the uttermost to rouse the powers to concerted action, but in those days nobody was anxious to trust the republic. these are matters, of course, that pertain to history rather than art, but it is curious to remember that throughout the times when the watchers from st. mark's tower saw the reflected glare of burning cities, when the security of christian europe was threatened seriously, when plagues were devastating venice, gian bellini seems to have gone on his way all undisturbed, painting his pictures in the most leisurely fashion, and the fact that art stood right above politics and strife is clearly shown in the action of the sultan in sending to venice for a good artist as soon as peace had been restored. there seems to have been some question of sending gian because his brother was busily engaged on other work in the ducal palace, but after a while it was decided to send gentile, who painted a portrait of the sultan that found its way afterwards into the layard collection in venice. some surprise has been expressed that the sultan should have allowed any one to paint his portrait, because portrait painting is forbidden by the koran[ ], but mohammed ii. was a man of very advanced ideas and he not only gave sittings to gentile bellini, but treated him with the greatest favour, dismissing him with many marks of approval and great gifts. among the presents brought back to venice by the painter were the armour and sword of the great doge dandolo, who had been buried in the year in the private chapel in st. sophia. mohammed ii. had caused the great tomb to be destroyed, but he sent the great patriot's armour back to its native land. vasari tells us that the meeting between the brothers on gentile's return to venice was most affectionate. [ ] mohammed said: "if ye must make pictures, make them of trees and things without souls. verily every painter is condemned to hell fire." this journey to constantinople would seem to have added to the reputation of the house of bellini, and to have increased the demand for portraits by both brothers. this, in its way, would doubtless have led to the multiplying of school pieces. history has very little to tell of the progress of the brothers during the years that followed. we know that the doge loredano, whose portrait has been painted by gian bellini, succeeded to his high office in , that titian would have been working in bellini's studio then, and that bellini himself was in the enjoyment of what was known as a broker's patent, and was official painter to the state. his was the duty of painting the portrait of every doge who succeeded to the control of venetian affairs during his term of office, and he also painted any historical picture in which the doge had to figure. there was a salary attached to the office, and the work was quite light. as far as we can tell gian bellini was still averse from painting secular subjects. he was now an old man, but he had made great progress in his work, conquering many of the difficulties of perspective, shadow, and colouring that had baffled his predecessors. the pageants demanded by the great mutual aid societies (_scuole_) from the artists in their employ, he would seem to have left to his brother gentile, for these pictures had a big political purpose to serve, and they demanded the travel, the experience, and the mood that gian lacked. his brush was sufficiently occupied with altar-pieces and portraits of distinguished venetians, now, alas, lost to the world. one incident that is not without its instructive side in this connection is recorded in the year , when isabella, duchess of mantua, sent her agent in venice to gian bellini to arrange with him to paint a secular subject. the old painter, now in the neighbourhood of his seventieth year, accepted money on account, and then turned his thoughts to other things. the agent worried him from time to time with little or no effect, and wrote despairing letters to the duchess to convey bellini's various excuses. not until , when the duchess was proposing to take legal action, was the picture finished, and then it does not seem to have been what was required. at the same time it must have been a work of great merit, because a year later we find the duchess commissioning another picture, and asking for a secular subject, which the old painter after much hesitation refused to paint. [illustration: plate viii.--madonna and child this picture is from the brera gallery in milan and is held by many of the painter's admirers to be his finest presentment of the mother and the son. it is certainly a work of most enchanting beauty, one to which the eye turns again and again.] happily isabella d'este was not only a voluminous letter writer, but her correspondence has been preserved, and some forty letters were written in connection with the bellini picture, by the lady whom cardinal bembo called "the wisest and most fortunate of women," and of whom a poet wrote, "at the sound of her name all the muses rise and do reverence." she had seen bellini's work, and had admired it in venice, before she asked a friend, one signor vianello, to secure a picture for her _camerino_. at first the old painter raised objections, says vianello. "i am busy working for the signory in the palace," he said, "and i cannot leave my work from early morning until after dinner." then he asked for ducats and said he would make time, then he came down to ducats and accepted on account then as has been explained, he declared that he could not undertake the class of subject that the duchess wanted, and isabella wrote to say that she would accept anything antique that had a fine meaning. vianello writes in reply to say that bellini has gone to his country villa and cannot be reached, and the correspondence and the years pass, until at last the duchess gets quite cross and writes, "we can no longer endure the villainy of giovanni bellini," and goes on to instruct her agent to make application to the doge, leonardo loredano, the one whose portrait, painted by giovanni bellini, is in our national gallery, to commit the old painter for fraud. to this action bellini responds by showing vianello that he has a "nativity" three parts finished, and after a time he sends it to the duchess together with a very humble letter of apology, that the lady is good enough to accept. she even writes, "your 'nativity' is as dear to us as any picture we possess." in albert dürer was in venice where he declares that he found the venetians very pleasant companions, and adds with sly sarcasm that some of them knew how to paint. at the same time he records his fear lest any of them should put poison in his food, but speaks in high terms and without suspicion of gian bellini who had praised his work and offered to buy a picture. all these things are small matters enough, but unhappily the records of bellini's life are so scanty that it is hard to find anything more until the year when gian bellini, well over eighty, found his position as official painter challenged by his pupil titian, who presented a petition to the council of ten, stating _inter alia_ that he was desirous of a little fame rather than of profit, that he had refused to serve the pope, and that he wanted the first broker's patent that should be vacant in the fondaco de' tedeschi on the same conditions as those granted to messer zuan bellin.[ ] the work that was being done was the restoration of the great hall of the council, and the painting had been in progress for some forty years, gian bellini and two pupils being now engaged upon it. there is no doubt that this application by titian annoyed bellini's friends and pupils, and even to us it seems a little unreasonable and in bad form to clamour so eagerly for a place that was already occupied. but it would seem to have been the custom of the time to apply early for any privilege of this kind, for we find in later years that tintoretto applied for titian's place long before the older master's capacity for working had come to an end. [ ] this was the venetian way of spelling gian bellini's name. bellini's friends were successful, although it would appear that the old painter's progress had been too slow completely to satisfy the council of ten. in the following year titian, who had been allowed to start work, was told that he must wait until older claims were satisfied, the expenses of his assistants were disallowed, and his commission came to an end. in the autumn of that year titian brought another petition to the council, asking once more for the first vacant broker's patent, and mentioning the fact that bellini's days could not be long in the land. just about this time the venetian authorities seem to have held an inquiry into the progress of the work that was being done in the hall of the great council, only to find that the amount of money they had spent should have secured them a far larger amount of work than had been accomplished. it is hardly surprising that these inquiries should have become necessary, there must have been a great laxity in the state departments in the years following the working out of the plans that had been made by france, austria, spain, and the pope at cambrai. in the last few years venice had been fighting for her life, lombardy had passed out of her hands, verona, vicenza, and padua had followed. the republic had even been forced to seek aid from the sultans of turkey and egypt, and although venice was destined to emerge from her troubles and light the civilised world a little longer there is small cause for wonder if, in the times of exceptional excitement, her statesmen had not given their wonted attention to the progress of the arts. doubtless gian bellini's leisurely methods and failing strength were accountable for the slow progress of the pictures in the council hall, and titian took advantage of the fact to send in a third petition, offering to finish some work at his own expense, but he had no occasion to take much more trouble. on november , , gian bellini died, well on the road to his ninetieth year, "and there were not wanting in venice," says vasari, "those who by sonnets and epigrams sought to do him honour after his death as he had done honour to himself and his country during his life." one cannot help thinking that half-a-dozen pages of biography would have been worth a bushel of sonnets. with gian bellini the last great painter of purely religious subjects passed away. he had stood between art and paganism. perhaps the younger men found him narrow and pedantic, but it is certain that so long as gian bellini was the leading painter of venice it was not easy for pictures to respond to the ever growing demands that followed the renaissance. now the road was clear, painting was to reach its highest point in the work of giorgione and titian, and was then to decline almost as rapidly as it had risen. gian bellini for all the wide influence that he exerted, not only upon contemporary painting, but upon sculpture too, sent very little work out of venice. examples are to be seen in cities that are comparatively close at hand, rimini, pesaro, vicenza, bergamo, and turin, but his genius seems to have been too completely recognised in his own city for his work to travel far afield, and the portrait of himself in the uffizi gallery is no more than a pupil's work with a studio signature. one of his last undisputed paintings was for the altar of st. crisostom in venice. it is said that he painted it at the age of eighty-five. after death his fame suffered by the rise of those stars of venetian painting, titian, giorgione, and tintoretto, and throughout three centuries his work was held in comparatively small esteem, perhaps because it was often judged by the studio pictures with the forged signatures. as late as the middle of the nineteenth century nobody seemed quite to know the real pictures from the false ones, but with the rise of critics like crowe, morelli, and berenson a much better state of things has been established. copies and student works have been separated from the originals, careful study of technique and mannerism has made clear a large number of points that were doubtful and in dispute, and although the process of separating the sheep from the goats has reduced considerably the number of works that can be accepted as genuine, the gain to the artist's reputation atones for the loss. the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh masterpieces in colour edited by--t. leman hare reynolds - * * * * * in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--mrs. hoare and child. in the wallace collection, london. (frontispiece) this picture is perhaps one of sir joshua reynolds' most beautiful compositions. the flesh painting is very fine and the handling of the dress remarkably free, its delicate colouring being in beautiful harmony with the surroundings. the painter gave us a portrait of the same child when he was a boy; it is now in the collection of baron albert de rothschild. sir joshua made for this picture a sketch in oils which hangs in the gallery at bridgewater house.] reynolds by s. l. bensusan illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. mrs. hoare and child frontispiece in the wallace collection, london page ii. nelly o'brien in the wallace collection, london iii. the three graces in the national gallery, london iv. the age of innocence in the national gallery, london v. lord heathfield in the national gallery, london vi. portrait of two gentlemen in the national gallery, london vii. portrait of lady and child in the national gallery, london viii. duchess of devonshire and child at chatsworth house, derbyshire [illustration] there are certain men born to every generation who approach life with the complete assurance of distinction in any work that they may have chosen for the exercise of their gifts. they are strangers to doubt and uncertainty; they disarm fortune by claiming freely as a right what she is accustomed to grant grudgingly as a favour--"they ride life's lists as a knight might ride." one feels that these fortunate few are destined for success just as the majority are doomed to failure, that nothing save a long series of mishaps can keep them from the goal of their ambition. they have the temperament that makes achievement easy, and a steadfast determination that the demons of mischance cannot resist for long. when one turns to consider english art in the eighteenth century, the name of joshua reynolds stands out in a brighter light than any other. one would not say that he was the greatest painter of his time--gainsborough's gifts exceeded his in many directions, and romney enters into competition too--but reynolds was born under a fortunate star, and nature gave him as a birthday present a rare mixture of talent, industry, and common-sense, together with a sober judgment that could not be turned aside by passion or emotion. such gifts, if they do not always create a genius, may enable their possessor to achieve work that has certain affinities with the masterpieces of the immortals. nobody in these days would deny for a moment that reynolds possessed qualifications of the highest order; but ours is an age of hero-worship, and we are rather inclined to go beyond our brief in dealing with a representative man whose work has survived the criticism (though, alas, it has not always survived the atmosphere) of nearly two centuries. reynolds is not the less a great painter because he did not happen to be the great man so many of his biographers have seen, nor was he a heaven-sent genius of the kind that flutters the musical dovecots from time to time. infant prodigies are hardly known in the world of art, and reynolds started life as a clever young man determined to make a name. he became soon a painter strong enough to realise his own limitations and those of his age, and to take the best possible steps to secure for his own art, and incidentally for that of his country, the highest position in the esteem of the world at large. had there been no reynolds there might have been no royal academy--the institution in its earliest days was indebted very deeply to him. himself far above the squabbles of the hour, he raised the royal academy into the serene and almost untroubled atmosphere in which he lived his life. [illustration: plate ii.--nelly o'brien. (in the wallace collection) this portrait is one of the best examples of sir joshua's art, and was painted in . the shadow on the face is most skilfully managed. the lace round the arm and the skirt are painted in the artist's best manner. it will be remembered that sir joshua painted other portraits of this fascinating woman.] "i will be a painter, if you will give me the chance of being a good one," he is said to have remarked when quite a lad, and this is but one of the simple sentences that hold and in a sense reveal the keynote of his character. reynolds was determined to succeed. when he started his work there were few people in england who could guide him in the right way, and consequently we must not look for any great achievement in the early portraits. the painter may be said to have owed his first success to commodore keppel, who took him on a cruise in the mediterranean and helped him to come into touch with the great masterpieces that will probably stimulate artists for all time. in return, the painter gave the sailor a measure of fame that his naval achievements would hardly have secured. italy turned the dross of reynolds' art to fine gold, and he never shrank from acknowledging the debt. had he stayed in england he might have been a greater man than all his contemporaries, save gainsborough and romney, but he could not have given the world any one of the pictures that are reproduced here. art will not yield to inspiration alone. the musician, or the literary man, with very simple education may be able to achieve wonders, but the artist who looks to brushes and colours for his medium must sacrifice diligently for many years at the shrine of technique before his hand can express what is in his brain. the years between and , devoted by reynolds to studying and copying the vatican frescoes and the pictures of padua, milan, turin, and paris, were invaluable. indeed he was one of the greatest copyists of his time, and sir walter armstrong thinks that one of his copies of a rembrandt is classed among the originals in the national gallery to-day! down to the year of the italian journey the young painter's life had been quite uneventful. born in at plympton in devonshire, where his father was a school-master, he was apprenticed in london to thomas hudson, a portrait painter of the day and a devon man too. hudson gave his pupil guercino's drawings to copy. before the time of apprenticeship had expired reynolds had quarrelled with his master and gone back to devonshire, where he painted work that was of no great importance, under the patronage of the first lord edgcumbe. at his house reynolds met the commodore keppel, whose kindness enabled him to see italy, and it was the sojourn in that real home of art that brought reynolds back to england a portrait painter of the first class. michelangelo had impressed him deeply. in later days he never lost an opportunity of advising students to sit at the feet of the great master, and the influence of the work in the sistine chapel may be noted in the famous picture of mrs. siddons, now to be seen in the dulwich gallery. ludovico caracci and guido had given him hints that were of infinite value in the moulding of his technique; for colour he had gone to titian, tintoretto, and rubens, of whom the last named was beginning to lose his appeal in the last years of reynolds' life. sir joshua had a supreme facility for taking from every artist the best that was in him, melting it in the crucible of his own thought, and applying the product to his pictures. there is no doubt that the sixteenth-century venetians impressed reynolds as much as they impressed ruskin at a later date, but in the middle of the eighteenth century the school of bologna was in the ascendant in england, and it is through reynolds' actions rather than his words that we see how venice had influenced him. sir walter armstrong thinks that reynolds lived well rather than wisely in italy, and that when he came back to town his wild oats were all sown, but it is hard to find any justification for the belief that reynolds was at any time of his life a free liver. the pleasures of the table may have claimed him when he reached middle age; indeed, dr. johnson said to him on one occasion, "you complain about the tea i drink, but i do not count the glasses you empty," or words to that effect. as far as other forms of dissipation go, there is no evidence that reynolds was ever a victim to them. he was always perfect master of his self-control, and when the years had toned down certain faults of thought and manner, he became mellowed, like old wine, and not less stimulating. students of the famous discourses that sir joshua addressed annually to the royal academy after he became first president of the new institution, may be justified if they suspect that the great painter adopted the same rule in dealing with his students that skilled musical composers use when dealing with their pupils. a musican knows that the laws of harmony and counterpoint are not fixed, that the musical horizon widens year by year, and that rules may often be disregarded by a composer who has something to say; but, in order that composition may grow from some definite form, it is necessary that the rules should be mastered before they are disregarded. so in dealing with things of art, reynolds said much to his audience that his own practice did not bear out. he would not hint at his own preferences quite so frankly as his canvases did and it is not at all unlikely that he realised as well as we do, that while students, like the poor, are always with us, great artists are few and far between, and will survive all academic limitations. when reynolds came back to england in , he went down to devonshire to recruit his health. while his sojourn abroad had been productive of so much that had been invaluable to him, he had met with two unfortunate accidents. in minorca he had fallen from his horse and sustained injuries that had left his face scarred for all time. in the vatican he had sustained a chill that brought about the deafness destined to be a life-long infirmity. so he took holiday in the county he loved so well, and after his return he opened a studio in st. martin's street, acting on the advice of his friend and patron, lord edgcumbe. there was no period of weary waiting. thanks to the quality of his work and the patronage granted so freely, he began at once to enjoy the success that belongs to the popular portrait painter. a little later he moved to great newport street, where the accommodation was better suited to the growing claims of sitters, and in he went to leicester square, now an auction-house, where he lived for the remainder of his life. as he moved he raised his prices, but nobody seemed to mind. everybody who was anybody, paid cheerfully. so did some of the other people. [illustration: plate iii.--the three graces. (in the national gallery) this picture was exhibited at the royal academy in and called, "three ladies adorning a term of hymen." it was bequeathed to the national gallery by the earl of blessington. the graces are the three daughters of sir w. montgomery. the one on the left kneeling down is the hon. mrs. beresford, in the centre is the hon. mrs. gardener, mother of lord blessington, and on the right is the marchioness townsend.] many artists remain painters all their lives. meet them in a studio or at a private view and they are illuminating; talk about another lying outside their immediate interests and they are dumb, or worse, for some talk without saying anything, as though they were mere politicians. perhaps we have no right to complain of this lack of mental dimensions, but it is permissible to note with pleasure the few cases in which an artist reveals himself as an accomplished man of the world. reynolds would never have been content to be nothing more than a painter, and he chose his friends so wisely that the living served him as well as the dead. if the great artists of italy had shed light upon his path in one direction, what did he not owe to the men of his own generation, whose society must have been a source of inspiration to any intelligent man? dr. johnson himself could only have been inspiring company, even though we may think in our heart of hearts that the benefit of the inspiration was not without serious drawbacks. reynolds enjoyed also the intimate friendship of garrick, goldsmith, gibbon, and burke, he consorted with many other men who made some mark in the world of thought, and in this atmosphere the extraordinary receptivity of his mind must have served him to great advantage. he had human weaknesses to live down, and it is to his credit that he conquered all or most of them. like so many honest englishmen, there was a touch of the snob about him--witness his correspondence with lord edgcumbe during the first visit to the continent. he was not without jealousy, as may be seen from his pettish condemnation of the work of liotard, the miniature painter and pastellist, and his references to gainsborough and romney, whose success and accomplishments galled him not a little. he was vulgar, until he learned refinement from the distinguished people with whom he was brought into contact--witness the gilded coach and gaudy liveries he bought when he established himself in leicester square, the coach in which his unfortunate sister frances was compelled to drive in order that the man in the street might stare open-mouthed and talk about her brother. there is hardly a "lion comique," or a lady of the music halls drawing prime minister's salary for songs blatant or obscene, who would commit such an offence to-day, and against these lapses from taste sir joshua's acquaintance with the best minds of his day failed to save him. perhaps the atmosphere of leicester square in the eighteenth, as in the twentieth, century was a little theatrical. of course the faults of a man and the merits of his work are distinct and stand apart from one another, but we are too apt to look at reynolds the man in the light of goldsmith's epitaph, and it is the failing of popular biography to supply popular people with a measure of moral equipment that would make a saint self-conscious. it is far more interesting to see great men as they lived, and understand that, like the rest of us, they had a fair, or unfair, share of faults. had sir joshua possessed twice as many failings, he would still remain one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of british portrait painters. had he associated all the virtues with less achievement, he could not have interested us, because happily we do not judge art by the moral standard of the artist. perhaps the most remarkable side of reynolds' mind was seen in its response to the real truths that underlie all the arts. he held his work to be a mode of expressing human experience, he knew that there was a domain lying beyond the reach of rules, and bade his students look "with dilated eye," sacrificing detail to general effect for the sake of the best and most imaginative work. he declared without any reservations, that he had found art in england in the lowest possible state, he compared some of his contemporaries' work with sign-post painting, but his fine courage was only stimulated by the bad conditions that prevailed. he sought to raise them, and as a portrait painter, made it his business to discover the perfections of his sitters, with the result, that, as his genius was wholly interpretative, his pictures stand rather less for his sitters than for their time. a weak man might have succumbed to the temptations that beset reynolds when he had established himself in leicester square. he was in a sense the darling of society, earning a larger income than had been gained by any of his contemporaries, although he painted for prices that a third-rate man could gain to-day, if we do not regard the changed value of money. but reynolds never succumbed to society; he conquered it, showing himself worthy of all the success that came to him. he did his best, he worked hard, relaxing his efforts only when his position was unassailable, took his enjoyment temperately, if we consider the age in which he lived, and never forgot that his chief aim and object in life was to paint portraits, and to paint them as well as he could. there were years in which he completed from three to four portraits every week, but by the time he was president of the royal academy, the output had fallen to sixty or seventy a year, no small achievement for a man who was at liberty to enjoy all that was best, and brightest, and most enduring in london society, and everything most attractive in the country. the life and times of sir joshua have a special interest for british artists, even apart from his work, because he lived through the years of storm and strife that saw the development of the r.a. it is not easy to tell in full the story of its establishment without long and detailed references to the quarrels and intrigues of the artists of the day and even then it is not easy to see the truth clearly through the mists of controversy. none of sir joshua's biographies goes uncontradicted, and it is safe to say that we must be content to forego for all time exact knowledge of certain incidents in the life of reynolds. he had considerable reserve, a fair sense of diplomacy, and was not without knowledge that there were foes as well as friends in the crowd that surrounded him. his contemporaries were often baffled by his silence, and the secrets of his tastes and intimate likes and dislikes died with him. he had friends, but no confidantes. a brief outline of the creation of the r.a. is all that needs be given here. [illustration: plate iv.--the age of innocence. (in the national gallery) this picture was bought at the sale of mr. harman's pictures. it has been engraved two or three times and is one of the most popular examples of the master's work.] in the year , when reynolds was approaching the zenith of his fame, an art exhibition was held in london, attracted a great deal of attention, and became an annual institution. thereafter, we begin to hear of the society of artists, which received from george iii. a certificate of incorporation in , blossomed out with the grandiloquent title of the "incorporated society of artists of great britain," and published a list of two hundred and eleven members, including joshua reynolds. an offshoot from this society was known as the free society of artists; in the history of art there have always been some men "agin the government." heart-burning and jealousy were associated with the work of the incorporated society, and william chambers the architect, who had the king's ear, brought about the foundation of the r.a. reynolds took no visible part in the intrigue, in fact he was abroad during the months when the squabbles were most violent, and when the presidency was offered to him, he asked for time to discuss the matter with dr. johnson and edmund burke. apparently he had studied shakspere's "julius cæsar." in december , the constitution of the royal academy was signed by the king, and the incorporated society was left to linger for a few years in the cold shades of opposition and then depart from a world that had no further use for it. william chambers and benjamin west seem to have done all that was necessary to bring king george on to the side of the new venture, which had a very wide constitution, and thirty-six original members, including two ladies, angelica kaufmann and mary moser. william chambers became treasurer, dalton was appointed antiquary, goldsmith was professor of ancient history, and dr. johnson stood for ancient literature. curiously enough, it was the foundation by captain coram of the foundling hospital that led indirectly to the creation of the royal academy. hogarth, who was a great friend of coram, gave pictures for the gallery in the hospital, reynolds' old master, hudson, reynolds himself, and wilson, a contemporary painter of great achievement, did the same. mr. claude phillips, whose life of sir joshua reynolds is one of the best written and most discerning tributes to the master extant, thinks that the success of the gallery at the foundlings led to the opening of the first exhibition of pictures by living masters in . the society of arts was then six years old, and the society of artists was established in friendly rivalry. we have remarked that at the time when the incorporated society of artists was engaged in the final quarrel that led to the foundation of the academy, sir joshua was travelling abroad with richard burke. his absence from the scene of strife is more likely to have been diplomatic than unintentional. ii we have now come down to the year , and may pause with advantage to recall some of sir joshua's achievements and experiences that have been omitted from a rather hurried survey. he has already painted many of the most famous men and women of his time, and his contributions to the exhibitions of the society of artists have been the admiration of all who take an interest in pictures. here some of his most famous pictures have been hung, the "lady elizabeth keppel as a bridesmaid," the "countess waldegrave," "garrick between tragedy and comedy" (now in lord rothschild's town house) and many others too numerous to be mentioned in such a brief review as this. [illustration: plate v.--lord heathfield. (in the national gallery) this work which is held by good judges to be one of the most characteristic portraits painted by sir joshua reynolds was commissioned by alderman boydell in . in the background there is a view of the rock of gibraltar much obscured by smoke, for the picture commemorates the defence of the rock from to by lord heathfield, then general eliott. the gallant soldier holds the key of the fortress in his hand. the picture was purchased by the government for the national gallery in .] he has made another pleasant journey into devonshire, this time in company with dr. johnson, whose consumption of cider and cream has created a mild sensation. he has visited wilton and longford, where some of his works may be seen to-day; he has enlarged his circle of friends, while his acquaintances are as the sands upon the seashore for multitude. he belongs to the once famous dilettanti society, founded in to study antiquities and arts; he has painted his own portrait to celebrate his election, and presented it to the society. it may be seen in the grafton gallery to-day, together with two groups of members painted at a later date. his drawing has become strong, his modelling firm, and his colour has many of the qualities that distinguished the venetian masters he loved so well, but, alas, he has not learned the secrets of permanent colouring, and some of his most brilliant glazes are beginning to fade before the eyes of the troubled owners of the pictures. he has surrendered to the pseudo-classicism of his age, and some of his compositions are absurdly indebted to mythology; but the fault was a virtue then, and while we complain it is only right to refer the grievance to the time rather than to the man, and a study of boswell explains the painter's attitude, even though it cannot justify it. he has found time to enjoy the pursuits of a country gentleman; he shoots and hunts in the best sporting circles. his home in leicester square is open to all sorts and conditions of men; the leading lights of the day--gainsborough and romney excepted--are welcome. he keeps a liberal but ill-served table, and his friends will find a welcome if they call in time for dinner at five o'clock, even if they must scramble for a fair share of the meal. he has lost the raw manners of early years, _faux pas_ are few and far between. from johnson he has acquired a certain literary style, rather heavy and turgid, perhaps, but precise and final. it is possible, but not certain, that "the club" has been established, and that the twelve original members are meeting for supper at the sign of the turk's head in gerrard street. he has pupils, for whom he does little or nothing, and assistants who paint draperies for him, and receive a little useful instruction now and again. northcote, who is to publish his "memoirs of sir joshua reynolds" nearly half a century later, and become the one successful painter from the leicester square establishment, has met the great man in devonshire with emotions similar to those that reynolds felt in the far away days when, an unknown pupil of hudson, he saw the great and distinguished author of "the rape of the lock" in the centre of an admiring and respectful crowd. who shall do justice to the crowds that thronged the studio? certainly mere words cannot picture the scenes that the old house in leicester square witnessed in those stirring times. deafness could hardly have been an unmixed evil to a man whose sitters were of the most diverse kind. leslie and taylor in their voluminous work, "the life and times of sir joshua reynolds," have written at length upon this aspect of the painter's daily life, and have described the constant stream of men and women who could not have been placed side by side for five minutes save on the walls of the exhibition. representatives of the most opposed school of politics, high church dignitaries, courtesans, soldiers, flaneurs, society women, sailors, ambassadors, actors, children, members of the royal family, men from the street, like white the paviour--one and all claimed the measure of immortality that his brush confers, and if his best work could but have retained its qualities, the latter half of the eighteenth century would be preserved for us in fashion calculated to make future generations envious. unfortunately, sir walter armstrong, the painter's most trenchant latter day critic, is justified when he writes: "speaking roughly, sir joshua's early pictures darken, the works of his middle period fade, those of his late maturity crack. the productions of his first youth and of his old age stand best of all." when the worst has been said, it is a glorious heritage that the painter left to his country, but who can avoid regrets when thinking what it might have been if reynolds had mastered the secrets of permanent colour, if the carmine and lake had endured, and the more brilliant effects had not been so largely experimental--if he had given them a fair trial in studies before he used them for his best work? perhaps his success left no time for experiments. sitters were urgent and could not wait while the painter studied the question of the chemistry of pigments. there is a curiously sane and optimistic note about all the reynolds portraits. even where he does not succeed--in painting portrait groups, for example--the fault is merely one of composition, he keeps to his earliest intention of expressing what is best in the sitter, and seeing him "with dilated eye"; he is merely unable to set several figures upon the same canvas. save for ever increasing deafness and a little trouble with sister frances, who keeps house for him and is not cast in the same placid mould, nothing occurs to disturb the even tenor of his happy life. intellect rules emotions--either he has no feeling for intrigue or he can keep his emotions beyond the reach of prying eyes. even his relations with angelica kaufmann, now in her twenty-eighth year, and an original member of the royal academy, baffle the censors who would fain discover that she was the painter's mistress. "his heart has grown callous by contact with women," says one of his contemporaries or biographers, and this may well be so. angelica kaufmann was one of the women who attract men, and there is no evidence to show that reynolds was more than a good friend to her. long years later, when the visits to leicester square could have been no more than a memory, she attracted goethe, who used to read to her some of his unpublished work. the painter's self-control has made some of his biographers angry; they write as though fearful lest, on account of his virtue, there shall be no more cakes and ale, and ginger shall no longer be hot in the mouth. if they could but catch him tripping, he might return to the highest place in their affections, and all would be forgiven. there is something so human in this attitude that it becomes almost tolerable, though it is hard to avoid a smile when one finds that the subject of the relations between sir joshua and miss kaufmann have been discussed quite seriously by foreign writers. if sir joshua could have made the lady a better artist, if it can be shown that he saved her from being a worse one than she was, there is something to write about; the subject of their personal relations cannot possibly concern the world at large, and is not worth a tithe of the ink that has been spilt in attack or defence. [illustration: plate vi.--portrait of two gentlemen. (in the national gallery) this picture was painted in and presented to the national gallery in by mrs. plenge. the gentleman on the right examining the prints and holding a violin in his right hand is one j. c. w. bampfylde, the one on the left is the rev. george huddersford who was for some years a painter and a pupil of sir joshua.] iii we owe an apology to the new president whom we left standing upon the threshold of the royal academy, which opened its doors with a first exhibition of one hundred and thirty-six pictures! the memory of this commendable modesty should not be allowed to fade in these days when canvas stretches by the acre over the long-suffering walls of burlington house, when artists appear not singly but in battalions and the cry is "still they come." in april reynolds received the honour of knighthood and this seems to have put the finishing touches to his social claims. henceforward he painted fewer portraits; the records of credit him with a mere seventy, and though this figure may make modern men gasp, it compares but feebly with the one hundred and eighty-four that stood to the credit of an earlier year. the president increased the number of his clubs, enlarged his dining circle, became more and more dignified, mellow, gracious, and urbane, farther removed than before from the turmoil that was going on in art circles of the less successful men around him. having all the cream he required, he was not concerned with quarrels about skimmed milk. some of his biographers think that romney was beginning to compete with the master, and that this competition accounts for the diminishing number of his sitters, but it is reasonable to suppose that a man who can make his own prices and is beyond the reach of want may regard seventy portraits as a very satisfactory output for one year, when he has other duties to fulfil and is by temperament a lover of the world's good things. fortune could have given him nothing more, unless the hearing that passed in the old days of the pilgrimage to rome had been restored, and if such a miracle could have been vouchsafed, the painter's splendid indifference to matters that annoy quick, nervous temperaments might have passed, and the latter days might have been clouded. if wisdom at one entrance was nearly shut out, there was plenty left, as may be gathered from a study of the discourses. their vitality is proved by the fact that new editions are still called for, and many members of the more modern schools of painting declare that reynolds saw some aspects of painting with twentieth-century eyes. in plympton remembered its famous artist and elected him mayor, an honour that touched him nearly. one cannot help thinking that it was more to him even than the degree of doctor of civil law, conferred in the same year by oxford university _de honoris causa_, though this too helped him to paint his own portrait in flamboyant style, and the artist loved colour. one portrait of himself was sent to the town of plympton and hung between two pictures that were "old masters" according to the leading lights of the corporation. in truth, they were two of sir joshua's own early works, and from this simple story we may learn that artists come and artists go, but the mental calibre of corporations is constant and not subject to change. he sent another picture of himself to the uffizzi gallery in florence, where so many masters stand self-committed to canvas in pictures that do not err upon the side of making the sitters lack distinction. the next eight years were uneventful, save for the fact that the president was doing some of his best work and enjoying life in the fullest and most complete fashion imaginable. nearly all who knew him loved him, and to the great majority of men and women he was just and kind. for a man so completely free from emotion and self-revelation, reynolds claimed a very large circle of intimates, and it was hardly an age of introspection. men confessed themselves to their maker but not to their friends; the formalities of life and speech presented an effective barrier to the emotions, even the stage was as artificial and pompous as it could be. one may perhaps acknowledge an uneasy feeling that david garrick himself would make a very small impression upon a latter-day audience, if he confronted it with the mid-eighteenth-century style of speech and action. in the academy exhibition was transferred from pall mall to somerset house, where it was destined to remain until , the year of its removal to the national gallery, where it stayed thirty-one years on the way to burlington house. among the portraits painted by the president in that year was one of general oglethorpe, who, according to the "table talk" of samuel rogers (quoted by sir walter armstrong), could tell of the days when he had shot snipe in conduit street. in the following year reynolds painted the wonderful picture of the ladies horatia, laura, and maria waldegrave, one of the few groups whose arrangement is beyond cavil. few will look in vain to that picture for any of the finest qualities of sir joshua's art. he had very little to learn, though in the summer and autumn of he visited the low countries, staying in bruges, brussels, the hague, amsterdam, and other cities, and showing himself strangely indifferent to the pictures of franz hals, though these might have been presumed to appeal to any portrait painter. his records and impressions of the journey were set down most carefully, and are preserved; they show that success had not impaired discernment, and that the painter was responsive to most of the thoughts that stir educated visitors to the dutch galleries to-day. in , the year in which romney painted his first picture of mistress hart, afterwards lady emma hamilton, reynolds sat to his great rival gainsborough, now at the height of his fame and in the last years of his life; the two men disliked each other, and the picture was never completed. some say that reynolds made a hasty remark about his fixed determination not to paint gainsborough's portrait in return, and some mischief-maker carried the words to gainsborough. others think that the touch of palsy or slight attack of paralysis that came to sir joshua about the time of the sitting, brought it to a close. there must be more than this underlying the true story of the affair, for though a visit to brighton and to bath restored the president's health, the sittings were not resumed, even when reynolds wrote to say he was ready to sit again. in sir joshua sent ten portraits to the academy, while gainsborough, exhibiting there for the last time, sent twenty-five pictures, including the famous panels of george iii., and his children, now in windsor. but reynolds added to his fame in this year, for he painted the portrait of mrs. siddons as the tragic muse. then he paid another visit to the low countries, to find with regret that rubens' appeal was failing. [illustration: plate vii.--portrait of lady and child. (in the national gallery) this portrait was purchased in with the peel collection and is said to represent the hon. mrs. musters and her son. the composition does not show sir joshua at his best, and the painting is perhaps rather thin. the identity is not very clearly established, although the names of mr. and mrs. musters are to be found in sir joshua's account books.] in the following year, , sir joshua sent sixteen pictures to the academy, including the famous mrs. siddons, charles james fox, and mrs. abingdon as roxalana. gainsborough had quarrelled with the r.a. and exhibited no more, though he lived until . with december, dr. johnson's strenuous and useful life came to an end; he passed away exhorting his old friend never to paint on sunday, and to read the bible. reynolds has left a very interesting study of the doctor's character. in the following year, the president went for the third time to the low countries, and bought a number of pictures; he also received the honour of a commission from catherine, empress of russia, and painted the beautiful picture of the duchess of devonshire and her baby that hangs at chatsworth to-day. walpole said, "it is little like, and not good," but posterity has declined to accept the verdict. sir walter armstrong considers that it ranks with the "lady crosbie" and "nelly o'brien" as the "most entirely successful creations" of the artist. in ' the president sent thirteen pictures to the academy, including the "angel's heads" now in the national gallery. they are studies of frances isabella gordon, daughter of lord william gordon, and the picture was given to the gallery in . a year later, london saw the picture that the empress catherine had commissioned, the subject is "the infant hercules" and the canvas hangs in the hermitage gallery at st. petersburg. it is one of the artist's failures, and he received fifteen hundred guineas for it. this is the date of the famous marlborough family group that is to be seen at blenheim. a year later, when the president sent some dozen pictures to the r.a., his activity came to a sudden end. some forty years and more had passed since he painted the first of his works that concerns us, and he had not known an idle season. his record would have brought honour to any three men; he had lived as a philosopher should, grateful for the gifts of the gods, and not abusing any. suddenly, in mid-july of , about the time of the fall of the bastille, one eye failed him as he worked at his easel; he laid his brush aside. "all things have an end--i have come to mine," he remarked, with the quiet courage that never deserted him, and he spent what remained to him of life making gradual preparation for the last day, sustained by memories of the past through hours that were not always free from pain and distress. save for a quarrel with the academy, arising out of the contest for membership between bonomi and fuseli, there was nothing to disturb the closing years of the old painter's public life, and even in this quarrel, he was the victor. the general assembly apologised, and reynolds withdrew his resignation, though chambers, now sir william, was obliged to act for him at somerset house. in december of reynolds delivered his final address to the students, the name of michelangelo being last upon his lips. little more than a year before he died, the president sat to the swedish artist von breda, for a picture now in the stockholm academy. west did his presidential work for him in the last months of his life. many friends testify to the tranquillity of these last days, though failing sight and the deprivation of the liberal diet to which he was accustomed had lowered the spirits that were once bright as well as serene. perhaps modern medical science would have availed to lengthen his life, and make the last few years more worth living; but in the eighteenth century one needed a very sturdy constitution to endure the combined attack of a disease and a doctor. sir joshua was in his sixty-ninth year--he had lived in the fullest sense all the time--and when one evening in february death came to the house in leicester square, his visit was quite expected, and was met with a tranquil mind. the body lay in state awhile in the royal academy, and was then taken to st. paul's cathedral, and laid by the side of sir christopher wren. to-day we look at the artist's work with a critical eye--he can no longer thrive by comparison with contemporaries, but must compete with all dead masters of portraiture; and it will be admitted on every side that he holds his own, that before every throne of judgment his best works will plead for him and vindicate the admiration of his countrymen. it is not the least of his claims to high consideration that his art moved steadily forward, that the last work was the best. iv naturally it is impossible within the limits of a small and unpretentious monograph to give an adequate idea of the range and variety of the labours that occupied sir joshua reynolds for half a century or more, and no attempt will be made in this place to do more than indicate the forces that seem to have directed his brush, the masters whose labour inspired it. it has been pointed out in these pages that reynolds was a great assimilator. he took from everybody, but he was always judicious, because, quite apart from his executive faculties, he had a critical gift of the first order. one has but to turn to his diaries to realise that his instinct was singularly sound. he could stand before an admitted masterpiece and enjoy all its beauties, without losing sight of any defect however small, and because his mind was beautifully balanced, the small points of objection did not spoil his appreciation of the whole work. they simply taught him what he should avoid. in the very early days of his career, before he had left devonshire, he made the acquaintance of one gandy, an artist of some small repute, whose father, also a painter, had studied van dyck, and had taught his son to appreciate the fine qualities of rembrandt. the younger gandy afforded reynolds his first glimpse of the world lying beyond the reach of the rank and file of british students, gave him his earliest appreciation of rembrandt, and taught him to look for that master's work when he visited rome. as soon as reynolds reached italy, he examined the great masters with a critical eye, and set himself to copy titian, rubens, rembrandt, guido, raphael, and many others. he soon saw that each of these masters had achieved supreme success in some department of their life's work, and he had the idea of uniting all the excellences that he saw around him, and leaving the defects alone. he sought for the colour of rubens and titian the drawing of raphael, the splendour of design of michelangelo, and the chiaroscuro of rembrandt. naturally this must sound ambitious enough; but we should remember that reynolds was far from standing alone in his ambitions. mengs, who did so much to proclaim the merits of velazquez and achieved a great but temporary success as a painter in madrid before goya's wonderful gifts threw him into well-merited obscurity, had the same ideals, but whereas the best of his accomplishments were but dull and short-lived, reynolds was able to force some way through all the gifts with which he sought to surround himself and to reach a style of his own. the journey lasted very many years, and the road is strewn with failures, chiefly due to an inability to grasp the secret of a durable glaze and, like many men who came before and after him, the painter had to part company with some at least of his ambitions. had his own capacity for self-criticism been less, had he allowed his feeling for fine colour to prevail over the sound judgment that bade him look for other and more enduring excellencies, he would not occupy the place he holds to-day, while on the other hand, if a titian or a rubens had been able to give him the secret of manipulating pigments, he would have stood side by side with the greatest masters of all time. [illustration: plate viii.--duchess of devonshire and child. (chatsworth house, derbyshire) this picture, to which reference has been made in the text, hangs at chatsworth, and has been reproduced by permission of his grace the duke of devonshire. although walpole sneered at it when he saw it for the first time, the composition stands to-day among the most admired of the master's works.] artists tell us that painting should be no more than a harmony of colour and line, that it should not attempt to cross the borderline that separates painting from literature. they are justified in their attitude, but at the same time we cannot discuss painters in terms of paint, or tell of our admiration of their work by expressing that admiration on canvas. those of us who are not painters, can only approach art through literature, and seek to find in a man the explanation of his works, and in the works, the revelation of the man. joshua reynolds possessed a master mind. he had wonderful capacity for synthesis and analysis, and something akin to the skilled physician's gift of diagnosis. as soon as he had built up the foundations of his own art and found a new method of presentation, he turned all his mental capacity to the study of the people who sat for him. as soon as he had achieved technique, the other gifts that no technique could develop came into play, and then his work revealed its extraordinary qualities, side by side with the few limitations that beset his mode of life. in society, reynolds would seem to have been courtly and reserved. he did not expand to women as he did to men, for he looked upon women and children as subjects for classical treatment. he made them extremely beautiful; he gave them graces and gifts that flatter the imagination of those who gaze upon his pictures to-day: but there are not too many portraits of women among those painted by reynolds in which there is a large quality of humanity. he suppresses a great part of the human interest that may have been in them, and replaces it with beauty of colour and line. now and again, of course, he is very fortunate. when he painted the great courtesans of his day, polly fisher, nelly o'brien, and others of that frail sisterhood, the qualities he omitted left the sitters quite human. there was no suggestion of the classic about them. a nelly o'brien at her best is just a woman, while some of the high-born ladies at their best became a little too cold, a little too stately, a little too well-posed for the wicked world they lived in. even when we consider the famous "jumping baby" that hangs at chatsworth, it is impossible to avoid the thought that if the little one had really been so happy and so playful, the mother's fine feathers must have been considerably ruffled, and she must have made haste to give the child back to the nurse. his children, too, are seldom of this world. reynolds was a hardened old bachelor with an eye for beauty. he had not studied bellini and correggio for nothing, and many of his little ones are far more like italian angels in modern dress than english boys and girls. of course there are notable exceptions. "master crewe as henry the eighth" is delightfully english. "the strawberry girl" is another picture painted in hours of delightful inspiration, but "the age of innocence," for all its supreme beauty, has a certain quality of conception that is artificial. to look at reynolds' women and children is to feel assured that the painter lived a celibate life, and that the stories about intrigues with angelica kaufmann and others are misleading and unfounded. we have but to turn to the work of his great contemporaries, gainsborough and romney, to see the difference between women in whose veins the blood runs red, and women who feed on nectar and ambrosia and were never seen at a disadvantage in their lives. it seems to the writer that women and children were to reynolds fit and proper subjects for the exercise of his gifts, but at the same time, folk in whom he had no abiding interest. men interested him, and when he turned the best of his attention to them, he gave the world work that will endure just as long as the pigments he put down upon the canvas. the picture of admiral keppel, hanging to-day in the national portrait gallery, was the first ripe fruit of the painter's italian journey, and had produced in the world of art something akin to a sensation. thereafter reynolds stood alone as the representative eighteenth-century painter of great men. his rivals could not approach him there. he seemed to see right into the heart and brain of the men who sat for him, to realise clearly and judiciously the part they were playing in life, and he strove to set it down in such a fashion that the character and capacities of the sitter should impress themselves at once upon those who saw the portrait. other painters might give one aspect of a man, but reynolds' vision was far larger--it was completely comprehensive; when he had dealt with a subject, it was well-nigh impossible to approach it again, save in the way of imitation. there was a finality about the treatment that must have baffled and exasperated his rivals. the portraits of charles james fox, david garrick, laurence sterne, to name a few, are masterly in their simplicity, in the directness of their appeal, and in the splendid expression of character through features. to satisfy the claims of reynolds' brush it was absolutely necessary that his sitters should have character, even if it was a bad one. that is why the portraits of courtesans arouse attention in fashion that women whose characters were undeveloped either for good or for evil will never succeed in doing. it is not always easy to realise what reynolds' work was like at its best, because so many of his canvases have either lost their original tints or have suffered the final indignity of restoration. in his search after the secret of the venetians he made many elaborate experiments at the expense of his sitters, and pictures that were remarkable in their year for colour that aroused the enthusiasm of connoisseurs grew old even sooner than the sitters. his solid foundations decomposed, the surface colour of many a celebrity is now as pale as the sitter's own ghost may be supposed to be. here there is perhaps some excuse for looking at reynolds' work from the literary standpoint, because though the harmony of line may remain, the harmony of colour has gone beyond recall, and there are some at least of reynolds' pictures in which the colour, had it been preserved, would have been the most effective quality. at times the great artist's draughtsmanship was far removed from excellence. and yet when criticism has said its last word, the name and fame of sir joshua reynolds will remain the pride of british art and the admiration of the civilised world. the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh masterpieces in colour edited by--t. leman hare whistler - in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--old battersea bridge. frontispiece (in the national gallery) this nocturne was bought by the national collections fund from the whistler memorial exhibition. it was one of the canvases brought forward during the cross-examination of the artist in the whistler v. ruskin trial.] whistler by t. martin wood illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. old battersea bridge frontispiece in the national gallery page ii. nocturne, st. mark's, venice in the possession of john j. cowan, esq. iii. the artist's studio in the possession of douglas freshfield, esq. iv. portrait of my mother in the luxembourg galleries, paris v. lillie in our alley in the possession of john j. cowan, esq. vi. nocturne, blue and silver in the possession of the hon. percy wyndham vii. portrait of thomas carlyle in the corporation art galleries, glasgow viii. in the channel in the possession of mrs. l. knowles [illustration] i at the time when rossetti and his circle were foregathering chiefly at rossetti's house, quiet chelsea scarcely knew how daily were associations added which will always cluster round her name. whistler's share in those associations is very large, and he has left in his paintings the memory of many a night, as he returned beside the river. before whistler painted it, night was more opaque than it is now. it had been viewed only through the window of tradition. it was left for a man of the world coming out of an artificial london room to paint its stillness, and also to show us that we ourselves had made night more beautiful, with ghostly silver and gold; and to tell us that the dark bridges that sweep into it do not interrupt--that we cannot interrupt, the music of nature. the figure of whistler emerges: with his extreme concern as to his appearance, his careful choice of clothes, his hair so carefully arranged. he had quite made up his mind as to the part he intended to play and the light in which he wished to be regarded. he had a dual personality. himself as he really was and the personality which he put forward as himself. in a sense he never went anywhere unaccompanied; he was followed and watched by another self that would perhaps have been happier at home. tiring of this he would disappear from society for a time. other men's ringlets fall into their places accidentally--so it might be with the young disraeli. other men's clothes have seemed characteristic without any of this elaborate pose. he chose his clothes with a view to their being characteristic, which is rather different and less interesting than the fact of their becoming so because he, whistler, wore them. other men are dandies, with little conception of the grace of their part; with whistler a supreme artist stepped into the question. he designed himself. nor had he the illusions of vanity, but a groundwork of philosophy upon which every detail of his personal life was part of an elaborate and delicately designed structure, his art the turret of it all, from which he saw over the heads of others. there is no contradiction between the dandy and his splendid art. he lived as exquisitely and carefully as he painted. literary culture, merely, in his case was not great perhaps, yet he could be called one of the most cultured figures of his time. in every direction he marked the path of his mind with fastidious borders. and it is interesting that he should have painted the greatest portrait of carlyle, who, we will say, represented in english literature goethe's philosophy of culture, which if it has an echo in the plastic arts, has it in the work of whistler. in his "heretics" mr. g. k. chesterton condemned whistler for going in for the art of living--i think he says the miserable art of living--i have not seen the book for a long time, but surely the fact that whistler was more than a private workman, that his temperament had energy enough to turn from the ardours of his work to live this other part of life--indicates extraordinary vitality rather than any weakness. whistler was never weak: he came very early to an understanding of his limitations, and well within those limitations took his stand. because of this his art was perfect. in it he declined to dissipate his energy in any but its natural way. in that way he is as supreme as any master. attacked from another point his whole art seems but a cobweb of beautiful ingenuity--sustained by evasions. whistler, one thinks, would have been equally happy and meteorically successful in any profession; one can imagine what an enlivening personality his would have been in a parliamentary debate, and how fascinating. any public would have suited him. art was just an accident coming on the top of many other gifts. it took possession of him as his chief gift, but without it he was singularly well equipped to play a prominent part in the world. as things happened all his other energy went to forward, indirectly and directly, the claims of art. perhaps his methods of self-advancement were not so beautiful as his art, and his wit was of a more robust character. for this we should be very glad; the world would have been too ready to overlook his delicate work--except that it had to feed his inordinate ambition. at first it recognised his wit and then it recognised his art, or did its level best to, in answer to his repeated challenges. [illustration: plate ii.--nocturne, st. mark's, venice (in the possession of john j. cowan, esq.) this picture was first exhibited in the winter of at the royal society of british artists. the painter's election as president of the society taking place just after the hanging of the exhibition. a newspaper criticism at the time was to the effect that the only note-worthy fact about the painting was the price, £ , "just about twenty shillings to the square inch." the figure of an investment, we may add, which was to improve beyond the wildest calculations.] it is easier to explain whistler's personality than his work. in his lifetime most people had recognised all the force of his personality, but it was not so with his art. in this he is as a player of violin music, or a composer after the fashion of the masters of music--his relationship to the subject which suggests the motif, of course, could not be quite so slight as theirs--but it was their standpoint that he adopted and so approached his art from another direction than the ordinary one. to a great extent he established the unity of the arts. without being a musical man, through painting he divined the mission of music and passed from the one art almost into the other. and the effort above everything else for self-expression was in its essence a musical one too, as also the fact that he never allowed a line or brushmark to survive that was not as sensitively inspired--played we might almost say--as the touch of a player, playing with great expression, upon the keyboard of his piano. this quality of touch--how much it counts for in the art of whistler--as it counts in music. it is one of the essential things which we have to understand about his work, to appreciate and enjoy it. both painting and music are so different from writing in this, that the thoughts of a painter and musician have to issue through their fingers, they have to clothe with their own hands the offsprings of their fancy. they cannot put this work out, as the writer does, by dictation to a type-writer. it is not in the style he lays the ink that the poet finds the expression, its thickness or its thinness bears no resemblance to his soul, but the intimacies of a painter's genius are expressed in the actual substance of his paint and in the touch with which he lays it. so in painting the mysterious virtue arises which among painters is called "quality," a certain beauty of surface resultant from the perfection of method. and it is "quality," which whistler's work has superlatively, in this it approaches the work of the old masters, his method was more similar to the old traditions than to the systems current in the modern schools. and part of the remote beauty, the flavour of distinction which belongs to old canvases is simulated by whistler almost unconsciously. mr. mortimer mempes has put on record the painful care with which whistler printed his etchings. the count de montesquieu, whom whistler painted, tells of the "sixteen agonising sittings," whilst "by some fifty strokes a sitting the portrait advanced. the finished work consisted of some hundred accents, of which none was corrected or painted out." from such glimpses of his working days we are enabled to appreciate that desire for perfection which was a ruling factor both in his life and work. in art he deliberately limited himself for the sake of attaining in some one or two phases absolute perfection; he strained away from his pictures everything but the quintessence of the vision and the mood. he worked by gradually refining and refining upon an eager start, or else by starting with great deliberation and proceeding very slowly with the brush balanced before every touch while he waited for it to receive its next inspiration. so he was always working at the top of his powers. those pleasant mornings in the studio in which the academy-picture painter works with pipe in mouth contentedly, but more than half-mechanically, upon some corner of his picture were not for him. full inspiration came to him as he took up his brushes, and the moment it flagged he laid them aside. so that in his art there is not a brush mark or a line without feeling. his inspiration, however, was not of the yeasty foaming order of which mad poets speak, but spontaneity. spontaneous action is inspired. and this is why his work looks always as if it was done with grace and ease, and why it seemed so careless to ruskin. however, such winged moments will not follow each other all day long, and though they take flight very quickly, work at this high pressure--with every touch as fresh as the first one--cannot be indefinitely prolonged. whistler's friends regretted that he should suddenly leave his work for the sake of a garden party. it is more likely that he turned to go to the garden party just when the right moment came for him to leave off working and so conserve the result, for it is the tendency of the artist in inspired moments to waste his inspiration by allowing the work of one moment to undo what was done in the one before it. ii the wit of whistler was not like the wit, let us say, of sheridan, but it was the result of intense personal convictions as to the lines along which art and life move together. about one or two things in this world whistler was overflowing with wisdom, and upon those things his conversation was always salt, his sayings falling with a pretty and a startling sound. he talked about things which were much in advance of his day. his was not the wisdom of the past which always sounds impressive, but the greater wisdom of the future, of instincts not yet established upon the printed page. by these he formed his convictions as he went, referring all his experiences, chiefly artistic ones, back to his intelligence, which as we know was an extraordinarily acute one. other people's ideas, old-fashioned ones, coming into collision with the intensity of his own, produced sparks on every occasion, and this without over anxiety to be brilliant on whistler's part. it is so with original minds. there is a difference between artistic work and other sorts of work. outside the arts, in other professions, what a man's personality is, whilst it affects the way his work is accomplished, does not alter the nature of that work. immediately, however, the work becomes of such a nature that the word art can be inserted, then the personal equation is before everything to be considered. "temperament" meets us at every turn, in the touch of brush to paper, in the arrangement of the design, in the subject chosen, in the way of viewing that subject, in the shape that subject takes. also we can be sure that a picture suffers by every quality, either of mere craftsmanship or surface finish, that tends to obscure individuality of touch and feeling. outside the arts every job must be finished, if not by one man then by another. a half-built motor-car means nothing to any one, it cannot be regarded as a mode of personal expression, but in art it is otherwise, no one can finish a work for some one else, and as whistler pointed out, "a work of art is finished from the beginning." in such a saying whistler showed the depths from which his wit spilt over. his intuitiveness in certain directions was almost uncanny, taking the place of a profound scholarship, and this saying is a case in point. for however fragmentary a work of art is, if it contains only a first impulse, so far as the work there is sufficient to explain and communicate that impulse, it is finished--finish can do no more. and of course this is not to say that art should never pass such an early stage. all this depends on what the artist has to say: sometimes we have to value above everything the completeness, the perfection of surface with which a picture has been brought to an end. whistler's paradox sums up the fact that finish should be inextricably bound up with the method of working and the personal touch never be so "played out" that resort is made to that appearance of finish which can always be obtained by labour descending to a mechanical character. this may sound rather technical, but it is not so really. [illustration: plate iii.--the artist's studio (in the possession of douglas freshfield, esq.) in this whistler stands in profile before his easel. the picture belongs to mr. douglas freshfield. there is another version, in a lower key and less finished, in the lane gift at the city of dublin gallery, from which this was perhaps painted.] here we may remark on all that is due to whistler, as to manet, for disturbing the dust in the academies, at one time so thick that the great difference between art and mere craft seemed almost totally obscured. iii whistler's life is at present a skeleton of dates on which this incident occurred or that, and at which the most notable of his pictures appeared. and this must remain so until an authoritative biography of the painter has appeared. with whom the authority rests was made the subject of a recent law case. till such a work appears we can only deal with his art and with the whistler legend, the impressions, recorded and otherwise, he left upon those who were brought into contact with him.[ ] these are strangely at variance--some having only met him cloaked from head to foot in the species of misunderstanding in which, as he explained, in surroundings of antagonism he had wrapped himself for protection; others remembering him for his kindliness and his old-fashioned courtesy. [ ] since going to press, "the life of whistler," by e. r. and j. pennell has appeared. permitting himself sufficient popularity with a few to be called "jimmy," whistler's full name was james abbot mcneill whistler, and the initials gradually twisted themselves into that strange arabesque with a wavy tail which he called a butterfly and with which he signed his pictures and his letters. born on th july at lowell, massachusetts, he was the descendant of an irish branch of an old english family, and in his seventeenth year he entered the west point military academy, where after making his first etchings on the margins of the map which he should have been engraving, he decided to devote his life to art. he was twenty when he left america and he never returned to it, so that as far as america is concerned infancy can be pleaded. america has since bought more than her share of the fruits of his genius, finding in this open-handed way charming expression for her envy. he went to paris to study art, where he was gay, and attracted attention to himself by the enjoyable way in which he spent his time. it was not until he was twenty-five that he arrived in london, and a little later moving to chelsea commenced work in earnest. a charming picture suggests itself of the painter escorting his aged mother every sunday morning to the door of chelsea old church, as was his habit, bowing to her as she enters and hastening back to the studio to be witty with his sunday friends. whistler's first important picture, "at the piano," issued from chelsea. it was hung in the academy in and was bought by a member of the academy. he followed the next year with "la mère gerard," which belongs to mr. swinburne. he sent a picture called "the white girl," to the salon of . it was, however, rejected. it was then hung at the collection called the "salon des refusés," an exhibition held as a protest against the academic prejudices which still marked the salon. there it met with an enthusiastic reception which set whistler off on his career of defiance. in the painter went to valparaiso for a visit, from which resulted the beautiful valparaiso nocturnes. back again in chelsea, he devoted himself to the river there. he was then living in a house in lindsay row. at this time he was greatly affected by japanese art, and one or two pictures show curious attempts to adapt scenes of the life of the west to the eastern conventions. this phase of his art was beautiful, but he passed it on the way to work of greater sincerity, and more clearly the outcome of his own vision. in the first exhibition of whistler's work was held at a gallery in pall mall, containing among other things "the painter's mother," "thomas carlyle," and "miss alexander." it is interesting that the piano picture, painted just as he emerged from his studentship, is of the flower of his art; he did things afterwards of great significance, and did them quite differently, but the piano picture does not seem a first work preparing his art for future perfection, it is so perfect in itself. and here perhaps we may observe another fact in connection with whistler, that in the last days of his life he painted with the same genius for the beautiful as at the beginning; none of that deterioration had set in, which so often comes in the wake of flattery and belated public esteem. he was never betrayed by success into over, or too rapid, production. he never succumbed to the delight of anticipating a cheque by every post instead of bills. he found no difficulty in declining the most tempting offers. well, work that is held thus sacred by its own creator, should tempt people to search for all that made it seem so valuable to him. whistler had an intense dislike of parting with his work. when a picture was bought from him he was like a man selling his child. sometimes he would see somewhere a picture he had painted, he would borrow it to add to or improve it, but he would keep it and live with it and gradually forget all about its possessor. whatever qualms attacked his conscience for this procrastination, it was no part of his genius to confess, instead he would say "for years, this dear person has had the privilege of living with that masterpiece--what more do they want?" at whistler's death, however, it was found that the circumstances under which a picture had at any time been borrowed were methodically entered up, with minute directions as to the return of one or two pictures, borrowed thus, that were in his studio when he died. in chelsea, rossetti and whistler were good friends, they shared a love of blue china, in fact inventing the modern taste for certain kinds, especially for what they called "long elizas," a specimen upon which slim figures are painted,--"_lange leises_"--tall damsels--as they were called by the dutch. one supposes that it is through rossetti that he came into contact with swinburne, who was inspired to write the poem called "before the mirror," by whistler's picture "the white girl," and of which some of the verses were printed after the title in the catalogue of the royal academy exhibition. the first verse in itself suggests a scheme of white:-- "white rose in red rose-garden is not so white; snowdrops that plead for pardon and pine for fright because the hard east blows over their maiden rows grow not as this face grows from pale to bright." the poem was printed on gilded paper on the frame; this was however removed on the picture going to the academy, and in the catalogue the two following verses were printed after the title:-- "come snow, come wind or thunder high up in air, i watch my face, and wonder at my bright hair; nought else exalts or grieves the rose at heart, that heaves with love of her own leaves and lips that pair. "i cannot tell what pleasure or what pains were; what pale new loves and treasures new years will bear: what beam will fall, what shower, what grief or joy for dower; but one thing knows the flower; the flower is fair." later on, swinburne did not allow the ten o'clock lecture to go unchallenged, and he subjects its glittering rhetoric to a not unkind but cold analysis which, however, whistler has the grace to print with marginal reflections in "the gentle art of making enemies," the book which contains the paradoxes which reflect so well his powers as a thinker. it is doubtful whether whistler in kinder circumstances would have produced his brilliant theories. the irritation caused by misconception, the necessity of justifying even his limitations to a world which was apparently prepared to consider nothing else about him at one time--these were the wine-press of his eloquence. he disliked the rôle of teacher and apologised for it at the beginning of his "ten o'clock," and when, in later life, following the fashion, he started a school, he relied upon the example of his own methods of setting the palette rather than upon precept, with a little banter to keep good humour in his class-room. a young lady protested "i am sure that i am painting what i see." "yes!" answered her master, "but the shock will come when you see what you are painting." a student at the short-lived académie-whistler has written that merely attempting to initiate them into some purely technical matters of art, he succeeded--almost without his or their volition--in transforming their ways of seeing! "not alone in a refining of the actual physical sight of things, not only in a quickening of the desire for a choicer, rarer vision of the world about them, but in opening the door to a more intimate sympathy with the masters of the past." [illustration: plate iv.--portrait of my mother (in the luxembourg galleries, paris) this was first exhibited in the royal academy in . for many years it remained in the painter's possession. it left this country to become the property of the french government in the luxembourg at the sum of £ . in "the gentle art of making enemies" whistler writes of the picture as an "arrangement in grey and black." "to me," he adds, "it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?"] the thing that strikes one in reading "the gentle art" is how badly those who entered into combat with its author came off in the end, some of them in what they consider their witty replies committing suicide so far as their reputation as authorities on art went. notable is the case of the critic of _the times_, replying "i ought to remember your penning, like your painting, belongs to the region of chaff." we have indicated the source of whistler's success as a wit--at that source we find the reason why he always scored when talking about painting. he is playing something more than a game of repartee. his best replies are crystallised from his inner knowledge. in them we get bit by bit the revelation which he had received as a genius in his craft. it was the force of his personality that obtained for whistler's evasive art such recognition in his lifetime as in the natural course only falls to fine painters of the obvious, whom every one delights to honour. he had said that "art is for artists," and it is true that the perfection of his own art is the pleasure of those who study it. it reached heights of lyrical expression where life in completeness has not yet been represented in painting; reached them perhaps because so lightly freighted with elementary human feeling. his work so often leaves us cold, and we turn seeking for art mixed further with the fire of life and alight with everyday desire. but nature showed many things to this her appreciator--i write, her intimate friend. as a moth which goes out from the artificial atmosphere of a london room into the blue night, i think of the painter of the nocturnes--yet always as a lover of nature, never more so than when his subject is the sea. for he has a greater consciousness of the salt wet air than any other sea painter, of the veil behind which all ships are sailing and through which the waves break, the atmosphere which descends so mystically and invisibly and yet which if not accounted for in a canvas leaves ships with their sails set in a vacuum and the waves as if they were crested with candle-grease. is it not absence of this atmosphere which has tortured us on so many occasions when with everything quite real a picture has not brought us pleasure. pleasure comes to us always with reality in art, and the end of art is realism. all is real even around a mystic, though his thoughts are out of our sight. whistler was not a mystic but above everything he wished to suggest the atmosphere which is invisible except for its visible effect, and i cannot help thinking his vision essentially abstract. he did not paint subject pictures. to make our meaning quite clear, let us say such pictures as frith's, or better still, as hogarth's in which we have the extreme. the art of hogarth moved upon a plane lower down, but there it had a strength unknown to whistler, a careless and lavish inspiration of life itself. he had to find speech for all sorts of things in his art, beauty was but one of these, creeping in less as a deliberate aim than as the accident of a nature artistic. whistler in painting desired to express nothing but his sense of beauty. for the rest of his nature, he found expression altogether outside his art in enthusiasm for life itself, its combats, difficulties, and its opportunities for saying brilliant things at dinner. his dinner conversation, i have been told, was like the abstract methods of his etching, always cryptic, full of suggestion,--wonderful conversation, full of short ejaculations which carried your imagination from one point to another with hints that seemed to throw open doorways into passages of thought leading right behind things. [illustration: plate v.--lillie in our alley (in the possession of john j. cowan, esq.) this study in brown and gold was made about the time ( ) when the little rose of lyme regis was painted, one of the most beautiful portraits of an english child. the latter picture unfortunately left these shores and is now in the boston museum, u.s.a.] he had a remarkable regard for purity of speech, as became the painter of such spiritual types of womanhood. it would seem that women liked him, and readily apprehended in his art his sensitive view of life. at table he drank but little and was a slender eater. when alone he would sometimes forget all about his meals, or eat scarcely anything; in later years, feeling the necessity of taking care of himself he would guard against his indifference by always seeking companionship when away from his house. his nervous disposition forced him to content himself with little sleep, his active brain keeping him awake conceiving witticisms and planning the battle for the morrow. iv it would be incomplete in any memoir of whistler to omit the most thrilling battle of his life. to all adventurers there comes at last the event which knocks all their venturousness out of them or is the beginning of a triumphant way. whistler had been before the footlights a long time, but it was his contact with professor ruskin which brought him into the full lime-light, which he was so much prepared to enjoy. ruskin paid him the only tribute strength can pay to strength when it is not on the same side--with a prophetic instinct that as regards picture exhibitions whistler's art was the sign of a coming, and licentious, freedom from the old rules of the game. he saw in whistler's work the end of old fair things, the laws of those old things all set aside. in reading the so well-known criticism of whistler one has a feeling that after all ruskin has only half expressed his feelings in it--however it resulted in the famous libel action. whistler received one farthing damages, which sum he afterwards magnanimously returned to his eminent critic, as his contribution towards the subscription set on foot to pay ruskin's legal expenses. ruskin's criticism was as follows:-- "for mr. whistler's own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser, sir coutts lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of wilful imposture. i have seen, and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." the case came on in the court of exchequer division before baron huddleston on november , , whistler claiming £ damages. "the labours of two days, then, is that for which you ask two hundred guineas!" asked the attorney-general representing ruskin. "no," replied whistler, "i ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime." "do you think now that you could make _me_ see the beauty of that picture?" asked the attorney-general. "no!" he replied. "do you know i fear it would be as hopeless as for the musician to pour his notes into the ear of a deaf man." in resuming the attorney-general said: "let them examine the nocturne in blue and silver, said to represent battersea bridge. what was that structure in the middle? was it a telescope or a fire-escape? was it like battersea bridge? what were the figures at the top of the bridge? and if they were horses and carts, how in the name of fortune were they to get off?" mr. w. p. frith, r.a., was examined and in his evidence said that in his opinion mr. whistler's pictures were not serious works of art. in the margin of the account of the trial in "the gentle art" whistler quotes from that painter's "it was just a toss up whether i became an artist or an auctioneer," and adds, "he must have tossed up." there was a time when policemen had to keep the crowd away from frith's margate sands. there was a time when whistler's pictures were hissed when they were put on the easel at christie's? if the attitude towards these so different kinds of art is changed, it is the resolution whistler showed in life as well as in his art that changed it. and have we not in the above interchange of points of view at the court the whole vexed question--the issue around which the battle of whistler's life always raged? whistler explained to the court that his whole scheme was only to bring about a certain harmony of colour. he tried to dispel the illusion that the painter's craft forms itself upon the desire to communicate a story. it may be so with the literary craft, but there is no life in the drawing or painting that is not inspired by the delight of the artist in the mere outside of things. where there is the expression of that delight, there may be the expression of much beside, of the spiritual meanings behind all beauty--though whistler did not take this flight in his reply. he himself tried to limit the meaning of art almost as narrowly as ruskin. he had this advantage over ruskin, that whatever he said about painting was from the inside knowledge of his genius in painting. ruskin's genius was always approaching that subject from the outside. we could not on any account dispense with what was said at any time by either of them. it was impossible for them to see each other except as enemies across a wide gulf, all speech with each other drowned by the rapids of misunderstanding. the gulf is nearly bridged. in viewing art in its relation to life no one wrote more profoundly than ruskin, but he failed in knowledge of the beautiful and inner mysterious delights of the craft of painting. whilst exalting the mission of painting, he degraded its craft, he seemed to fail in appreciation of the fact that at its highest this is as mystical as inspired--and as unaccountable as the craft in shelley's lyrics. the number of rules he laid down, the gospels he preached upon them reveal always the irritating scholiast and pedant. how eloquently whistler expresses his irritation in the ten o'clock lecture! in his account of the trial in "the gentle art of making enemies," whistler fills the margin with quotations from ruskin so dexterously opposed to the matter in hand as seemingly to discredit for ever ruskin's writings upon art and the mode of thought therein. but at the bidding of whistler, and those who boast his opinions second hand, we cannot abjure all this order of thought. one passage which whistler quotes: "vulgarity, dulness, or impiety will indeed always express themselves throughout, in brown and grey as in rembrandt" is not without its bearing on his own art--which has since then quite altered the meaning of the word grey. and despite the perhaps unfortunate naming of rembrandt one divines that ruskin is here speaking in the light of the highest intuitive knowledge. it must be remembered that in prose, which may accept its motif from anything, from art if it likes, ruskin could sometimes lose himself as completely as whistler often did in the beauty of his own art. and with the waters of beauty closing over their heads, one was as deaf and blind as the other. that trial was ruskin's waterloo. if there is one thing that would make me doubt that whistler was a great man, it is the fact that he never had a waterloo, but perhaps that is reserved for those who have been successful right from the beginning. the light air with which whistler carried his own early troubles is misleading as to their extent. without the thread of coarser stuff that crossed his otherwise over-refined nature some such sadness of fate might have awaited him as awaited meryon, the french etcher, for possessing motives too far in advance of those accepted by his time. for really at first no one hardly seemed to have understood the delicate order of things that whistler was trying to do, especially in his later etchings, in which everything is a symbol counting upon our imagination; everything a pleasure to its creator and nothing a labour; every line one of nervous impulse, the whole etching an inspiration of such impulsive threads. in what loneliness he must have possessed his abnormal delicacy of perception. he hugged to himself the delusion that a knowledge of his craft enabled artists to understand him--but it is common for artists of abundant gifts not to have the necessary refinement of sense, and after all artists are not so numerous that these appreciators will be many. but in the wide world outside the studios there are many people thus delicately attuned, their numbers to be increased when whistler in his subtlety of vision is less ahead of the world in point of evolution. he brought recognition to himself before his time by strident challenges, aggressive at every point and scornful--as they could not have been had the real nature of his superiority dawned on him at the first. in the first thames etchings he has not received his revelation: they do not show his hand quite so conscientiously, nervously, awaiting its inspiration for every movement. [illustration: plate vi.--nocturne, blue and silver (in the possession of the hon. percy wyndham) painted at westminster, looking towards lambeth. on the back of the picture is a card bearing the artist's signature and the butterfly, with title "westminster, blue and silver, j. mcneill whistler, lindsay houses, old chelsea." this places the date of its execution about .] nothing can make us realise the great significance of the whistler influence in art more than the contrast between the esteem in which his etchings are now held and the early criticisms of them which he collected and scornfully embodied in his book. these are indeed the most depressing reading--and whistler's quaint termination to those pages, "they roar all like bears," does very aptly express the feeling of desolation that must overcome any one who appreciates the spirit of his etchings. when praise is forthcoming it is only for the early etchings at the expense of those later ones in which he conceived such an inspired use of the needle. by the criticisms in this book we know the exhausting struggle and how right it was that a life, the first half of which had been spent thus, should have no "waterloo," but end with rest--and with honour, accorded to this "merlin," so evidently great, if only a few knew why. it was , the year of the ruskin trial, that he started working in lithography as a medium, being initiated into the technicalities by mr. thomas way. in the "fair women" exhibition held by the international society, which is open whilst i write, there are some lithographs by whistler, which suggest purity of type and the charm of beautiful womanhood in a manner that puts to flight the claims of many a famous canvas in the gallery. it is the most delicate of all mediums; it suited his touch and the sensitive order of his perceptions. after the ruskin case whistler left london for venice for about a year; upon his return he exhibited at the fine art society the first series of venice pastels, and a little later at the same gallery fifty-three pastels of venice. he also held exhibitions at the dowdeswell gallery in , etchings in in "notes, harmonies, and nocturnes," in all the time still continuing to exhibit at the grosvenor gallery some of his most famous portraits, nocturnes, and marines. v on st december the following amusing letter appeared in _the world_, signed with the well-known butterfly. "atlas, look at this! it has been culled from the _plumber and decorator_, of all insidious prints, and forwarded to me by the untiring people who daily supply me with the thinkings of my critics. read, atlas, and let me execute myself. 'the "peacock" drawing-room of a well-to-do shipowner, of liverpool, at prince's gate, london, is hand painted, representing the noble bird with wings expanded, painted by an associate of the royal academy, at a cost of £ , and fortunate in claiming his daughter as his bride, and is one of the finest specimens of high art in decoration in the kingdom. the mansion is of modern construction.' "he is not guilty, this honest associate! it was i, atlas, who did this thing--alone i did it--i 'hand painted' this room in the 'mansion of modern construction.' woe is me! i secreted, in the provincial shipowner's home, the 'noble bird with wings expanded'--i perpetrated in harmless obscurity, 'the finest specimen of high-art decoration'--and the academy is without stain in the art of its member. also the immaculate character of that royal body has been falsely impugned by this wicked _plumber_! mark these things, atlas, that justice may be done, the innocent spared, and history cleanly written." whistler's picture "la princesse du pays de la porcelaine" had been hung by mr. f. r. leyland in his mansion at prince's gate, and whistler could not reconcile himself to its appearance against the valuable spanish leather on the walls. he was to correct this by treating a little of the wall; meanwhile mr. leyland went down into the country. when he returned it was to find that whistler was painting over the whole of the room. much money had already been spent on the original leather scheme, and whistler had quickly effaced all appearance of its intrinsic worth, but he was in the rapid process of creating the famous peacock room. dissension took place as to terms under the circumstances, and whistler finished the room with a panel of two peacocks fighting, emblematic of the quarrel. mr. leyland was considered one of the most discriminating patrons of his time. just previous to the above events the interior of the house had been reconstructed and decorated in accordance with designs by norman shaw and jekyll. the leather had been the latter architect's scheme for the room where the "princesse du pays de la porcelaine" was hung. the walls were fitted with shelves designed for the display of blue china. whistler painted all the window shutters with gold peacocks on a blue ground, and a panel at the end of the room, which had been reserved for a picture commissioned from him; into this panel he put the fighting peacocks, whose eyes were real jewels, the one a ruby and the other a diamond. it was found possible to move all the decoration without injury and some time after the original owner's death this was done, the purchaser taking it to america. before it left england it was set up temporarily for the purpose of its exhibition at messrs. obach's gallery. the picture "the princesse du pays de la porcelaine," the key-note, was however missing from the scheme, having found another purchaser. the room was the finest example of a less known side of whistler's art. his designs sprung straight from himself, they had no connection with any european tradition. he accepted in their entirety the conventions, the arrangements and devices of the japanese designers. yet his designs could not have been created by any of the great artists of japan. there is too much vitality about them, and these peacocks which belong to a pattern and are conventionalised to the last degree, have a more startling reality than any peacock painted in a modern picture. no one knows how whistler came to know so much about peacocks. a duffer can paint the bird until he comes to the neck--and then we have to turn to photographs for the reality that gives us pleasure, it eludes all modern genius. so for the most part, fortunately, peacocks are left severely alone. the dancing of the _première danseuse_ at the empire, perfected with ardent years of study, is a less recondite theme of movement than a peacock raising its head. it is a delight, to all those who love it, beside which all dancing pales, more gracious and stately in movement than the accumulated grace of many women. that is how it must always seem to those who really know it. whistler arrived at perfect understanding by the instinctive route on which he never went astray. after the peacock-room incident the wildest legends were afloat about the whole matter, one of them that the architect had been driven mad by the sight of what had happened to his leather, and that later he was found at home painting peacocks blue and gold all over the floor. vi in whistler's lecture on art was given in london, oxford, and cambridge; to suit the convenience of londoners who liked to linger over dinner, he fixed the hour of delivery rather later than usual. this was the famous "ten o'clock lecture"--so vague and shadowy in its facts at the beginning, so brilliant at the end, and dispelling the æsthetic fog in which the æsthetes elected to dwell. it is significant of the slight heed given to whistler's real beliefs that characteristics of his appearance were at one time satirised in w. s. gilbert's "bunthorne," confusing him as was common with the æsthetic craze. in "the ten o'clock" his scorn is eloquent enough of the weird cult "in which," as he says, "all instinct for attractiveness--all freshness and sparkle--all woman's winsomeness--is to give way to a strange vocation for the unlovely--and this desecration in the name of the graces!" but for all that the principles which governed in l'art nouveau which followed and may be said to be a part of the movement, are prominent in those two "arrangements" of his own, the portrait of carlyle and the portrait of his mother. [illustration: plate vii.--portrait of thomas carlyle (in the corporation art galleries, glasgow) this portrait is in the possession of the glasgow corporation, the only public body in these islands whose appreciation of the painter was not belated. in spite of protests, to their credit the purchase was made, and direct from the artist for £ . the picture was first seen at the artist's exhibition in , and was painted in the same period as the "portrait of my mother."] no doubt the fame of an _objet d'art_ can last for ever with connoisseurs, if rare enough in itself and rare in the skill displayed, and many a painting is destined to live on these same grounds. but there is a destiny too for the spirit of a picture of which all this valuable perfection is but the outward shrine. where human experience rises to intensity of expression in art it is born into life anew and less perishably. it is thus that the picture of whistler's mother is by common consent enthroned above the level of criticism, what we say for and against it being only as water lapping at the foot of a cliff. incorporate with the traditions of a race it is acknowledged a classic, and of a classic one may speak as one does of life, with freedom as to how it affects oneself. i have challenged the effect of this picture upon myself. the trail of the age seems over it, the self-consciousness which is like a blight upon modern arts and crafts. instead of its figure being painted in some such accidental contact with its environment as would naturally occur, we have an _arrangement_. in rearranging things thus for itself, art is at least one remove farther away from things as they are, and as things as they are reflect the influences that brought them together, art must come closer to life by the interpretation of this reflection than by its alteration. there must be an arrangement in every picture, but the improbability of this one, outside of a studio, spoils the picture for me. the figure is placed in position as we should place a piano. it is not very likely that a lady would sit at right angles to the wall with no fire in front of her, no work-table, no books. these thoughts rise unbidden when i look at the picture--but whistler begs us in a printed letter to consider it as an _arrangement_. incidentally, he says it is interesting to him as a portrait of his mother. yet he misunderstood when he thought the artist's rights extended beyond his creations to the attitude in which one should approach them, and the picture is famous for the beautiful rendering of the lady and to us only incidentally interesting as an arrangement. one does not escape the music of the outline of the figure in the picture, the balance of all parts of the design, the refreshing convention in comparison with other conventions. only conventions perhaps are best left for portraits where the traditional environment connected with the high social status or office of the sitter, supplants in our imagination the more everyday aspect of their life. the unnaturalness of the photographer's art may require concessions from every one; though even here as in painting, the art which conceals art must save the situation; and whistler managed this gracefully enough in all his other portraits. it was gainsborough who was haunted by the smile of a woman. it is whistler who represents her movement as she turns into the room, his art seeming to show a consciousness that the body that turns thus, the grace of the clothes, are but a temporary habitation of swiftly passing spirit. in his early piano picture the trembling white dress of the child surprises him into the representation of stuff itself; later his art passes to an almost ecstatic obliviousness to the quality of things themselves and he surrenders the representation of their surface qualities for a fluid, musical, all-embracing quality of paint in which the artist can render his theme as a virtuoso, ever striving to overtake some almost impossible inflection of tone. and as his art becomes thus abstract, as it assumes such a mission as music, he finds musical terms for the names of his pictures to give the public the clue. his water-colours are executed with an extremely pleasant touch of brush to paper in which he himself delighted, and here, as also in the case of etching, he made the most of the particular qualities of the medium and as ever was careful not to out-step the limitations which an appreciation of those qualities imposed. they do not do much more than register the incident of colour which interested him in any particular scene. it was to register his pleasure in that, rather than to make a full record of surrounding country that he made his water-colours, and the spectator will understand them only by the responsiveness of his imagination to artistic suggestion. by the process of what is termed in the language of art "suggestion" (that is, interpretation by thoughtful, economical, and expressive touches instead of a photographic imitation) all merely mechanical labour is eliminated and there is a consequent spiritualising of the whole method by which the artist makes his communication to our imagination. he infers that we have advanced beyond an understanding merely of the capital letters of art, and that this autographic handling of the brush or etching needle is as intelligible to us as the characteristic penmanship of our friends and as charming. vii the second great public event in whistler's career was his election in to the presidency of the society of british artists in suffolk street, which made exciting history at the time. whistler was just one of those people who want everything in the world arranged after some secret pattern of their own. they make the best reformers. but what could be a more strange spectacle than the revolutionary whistler in the presidential chair of the staidest of art societies? the desire for advertisement overcoming the scruples of older members, whistler's election as a member took place just before their winter exhibition in . _the times_ of the rd of december recorded the fact that artistic society was startled by the news that this most wayward of painters had found a home among the men of suffolk street--of all people in the world. his humour did not forsake him in this new environment. mr. horseley, r.a., lecturing before the church congress, attacked the nude models, especially and in particular at the royal academy schools. shortly after this, in sending a pastel of a nude to the society of british artists, whistler attached the words "horseley soit qui mal y pense," and was only prevailed upon to remove them by the fear of older members that the attack upon an academician might lead up to a libel case with the royal academy. the royal academy students at the time used to drape the legs of the chairs and tables when mr. horseley visited the schools. that was in . it was the following year that whistler was elected president of the society for which he got a royal charter, and to which by his methods--as president--he brought fame for ever as the r.b.a. many of the electors who had supported his membership had concluded that he was not likely to take much part in the workings of the society. however, he came to the meetings and to their surprise took an interest in the proceedings, proffering advice, intruding new ideas, not often welcomed by the older artists. he invited some of the members to one of his famous sunday breakfasts at his studio in tite street, and regaled them with his theories of art. they were influenced by his personality and the character of the elections altered, men of the newer movements were elected, and they soon formed a small but very energetic and loyal group around whistler, finally acquiring sufficient power to elect him as we have shown into the president's chair. after that the meetings of the society were exhilarating in the extreme, and whistler talked with extreme brilliance to the members, and somehow got his way until their gallery was hung with one line of pictures upon a carefully chosen background. but the opposition became too strong from members who wished to run the exhibition on its old lines, and certainly the funds were suffering from these very high ideals. his opponents "brought up the maimed, the halt, and the blind," "all except corpses, don't you know!" as whistler put it, the oldest members, the fact of whose membership had up to that time lingered only perhaps in their own memory, and thus effected his out-voting at the next election. whistler congratulated them, for, as he explained, no longer was the right man in the wrong place. "you see," he said, referring to the group of his followers who resigned with him, "the 'artists' have come out and the 'british' remain." it was the first time in england that pictures had been so artistically arranged. no pictures were badly hung, no member had anything to complain of as far as that went. but they were disturbed at the loss of probable sales which they calculated the empty spaces on the walls might be taken to signify. on the night of the election which ended the whistler dynasty there was great excitement, and the younger members let off steam by playing in the passages during the counting of the votes. [illustration: plate viii.--in the channel (in the possession of mrs. l. knowles) in this impression of grey sea-weather we have the colour equivalent of that expressive economy which whistler practised with his line; and the butterfly touch--like a butterfly alighting.] the society had come into existence with aims of its own. an order of art was represented which had to be represented somewhere. a great amount of capable work for which the academy had not room was on view here, representative of the everyday activity of london studio life. it was amusing to think of whistler as the president of this society as it was constituted in those days--and absurd. he could have nothing in common with its homely aims. but it was an advertisement for the society and for him, he probably did not share the illusions of his followers that he was in the right place. when in after years the leaders of the modern movement formed themselves into the international society, in , through the organisation of mr. francis howard, it was inevitable and natural that whistler should be the president, but at the british artists it was simply a case of cuckoo and the sparrow's nest. with his success, the original element of the society must have gone elsewhere leaving him in possession of their building. it was fitting that sir joshua reynolds should be the president of an academy whose theories he embraced but exposited with greater genius. but whistler's theories had no relation whatever to the body of which he was thus made the head, and he did not surpass in everything as sir joshua; the significance of his genius resting rather with the fact that it is epochal. however, as all this affair happened just at the time when paradox was coming into vogue, there was that much only about it that was fitting. after these events whistler, who was invited on to the jury of the "new salon" then forming, left for paris. viii in the painter returned and held an exhibition at the goupil gallery, and from the date of this exhibition everything altered in his favour. for years he had found it impossible to sell his pictures except to a circle of wealthy patrons. the prejudice excited against his work after the issue with ruskin had closed all other markets for him. he had remained the "impudent coxcomb" in so many people's minds, and his challenge to the omnipotence of ruskin had not been forgiven him. a ban was upon his works. he said that for nearly twenty years the ruskin case affected his sales. but fame he desired more ardently, and this he had,--like prometheus,--and of a kind that would keep till the day came when it could be changed for a quantity of money. when the goupil show was open he found this day was already upon him, and the americans coming over, began to buy his works, and early acquaintances who had acquired them at small prices, themselves sold out, of course much too soon. that was the time when a purchase for the nation should have been made. later he toured through france and brittany until he settled again in paris in the rue de bac, having married mrs. e. w. godwin, the widow of the eminent architect, builder of the white house in tite street, chelsea, which had been whistler's former home. in the old days in the white house he had furnished one or two rooms elaborately, and others, perhaps for lack of funds to make them perfect, hardly at all. it was then he collected the blue china with rossetti as a friendly rival. this was the house in which he instituted his famous sunday breakfasts, and to which everybody used to come who was distinguished. the breakfast-time was twelve o'clock, cook permitting. on one occasion, through some untoward circumstances in the kitchen, it was not placed upon the table until nearly three. mr. henry james was there that day, and has been heard to speak of it since, and how he took a walk to bring him nearer breakfast-time. but all this had to be given up after the expenses of the ruskin trial, and the blue china was "knocked down." whistler wrote a characteristic letter to _the world_ in upon the alterations then being made in the white house by his successor, one of "messieurs les ennemis" a critic. in those days his wit and vivacity had already made him a host of acquaintances, and distinguished men were glad to count him as one among themselves,--whilst reserving their opinion on his painting. but now things were very different, and he was referred to as "the master"--and the house in the rue de bac thoroughly furnished, partly from designs made by his gifted wife. he came to england in and painted at lyme regis, painting "the little rose of lyme regis"--which shows that his art is purely english--though he had said that one might as well talk of english mathematics as of english art. for in this little girl's face something there is that is only found in english art. she descends directly from the beautiful tradition of walker and sir john millais. in december he exhibited a collection of lithographs at the fine art society's gallery. he was again in london in . about this time he painted upon a small scale an almost full-length portrait called "the philosopher." it was of the artist, holloway. holloway died on the th march , and in the sadness of the attendant circumstances the kindness of whistler will always be remembered. there were qualities in holloway's art of which whistler was appreciative, and a characteristic story can be connected with this. there is a picture of the sea in the national gallery at milbanke called "britain's realm," by john brett, r.a. it had great success in its year, at the academy. everybody went to see it, and it was eventually bought for the chantry bequest. it had figured also in an exhibition of sea-pieces at the fine art society. whistler happened to be at this exhibition when somebody very enthusiastic over the picture brought him up to it expecting him to admire it also, but whistler glanced at it through his eye-glass, turned and emphasising his words with a very significant gesture towards the representation of sea--as if knocking at a door--said with his sardonic hé, hé,--"tin! if you threw a stone on to this, it would make a rumbling noise," and turning to a picture by holloway said--"_this_ is art!" also in this year whistler was very preoccupied with the art of lithography. his wife was ill, and they were staying at the savoy hotel. whistler used to sit at the window all day looking out upon the river, and in these circumstances he made one of the best series of lithographs. with the recovery of mrs. whistler they moved up to hampstead, where he said "he was living on a landscape." at the same time he was renting a studio in fitzroy street, at no. , now called the whistler studios. in choosing it, whistler had said, "after all, this is the classic ground for studios," and he had as neighbour a tried friend. on may the th, , mrs. whistler died, and she was buried on the th. the next day he came down to the studios and walked with his friend. they took lunch in the neighbourhood of tottenham court road. whistler spoke of the strangeness of fatality. he had postponed his wife's funeral a day to escape the th, the th was her birthday. they sat on, whistler in the deepest depression, and to divert him his companion, mr. ludovici, pointed to a print exactly over his head. it was of frith's margate sands! after the death of his wife, whistler lived much in retirement, though travelling a little. he returned to chelsea, and died there in his th year in july . his life added as richly to its associations as the lives of his two great contemporaries rossetti and carlyle, both of whom are commemorated upon the embankment of the river close to the places where they lived. there is now a movement well on foot to place a memorial there to whistler, to be designed by that other artist, monsieur rodin, who on so different a scale has been inspired by the same half mystic motives. to appeal to us, not with fairy tales, but with art imaginative in its deference to our imagination. whistler was without excessive, spendthrift, creative power. in many ways his art was slight. yet even so, not because it is empty, but because it outlines for us so much that is only visible to thought, though thought always in relation to external beauty. and the indefiniteness of his art, the grey of its colour, they are emblematic of the times, as the plain red and blue of titian belonged to those days, and are resemblant of the plainer issues that then divided men's thoughts. admitting all his own limitations to himself whistler admitted none of them to other people, and to those who divined his weaknesses at certain points he seemed somewhat of a charlatan. perhaps in the near future his fame will again seem to suffer, from the strict analysis of the pretensions put forward in his name, but if so, only to triumph again as the true character of his achievement comes to be distinguished. he was such an instinctive artist that the explanation of his art must, to some extent, have remained hidden from himself, and art fixing his place among her masters, will remember that great limitation in some ways is always the price of a new and instinctive knowledge in others. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh the history of painting in italy. vol. vi. the history of painting in italy, from the period of the revival of the fine arts, to the end of the eighteenth century: translated from the original italian of the abate luigi lanzi. by thomas roscoe. in six volumes. vol. vi. containing the indexes. london: printed for w. simpkin and r. marshall, stationers'-hall court, ludgate street. . j. m'creery, tooks court, chancery-lane, london. contents of the sixth volume. page index i. _professors of painting mentioned in the work; together with the dates, &c._ index ii. _historical and critical publications relating to the art, cited in the work_ index iii. _of some of the most important matters contained in the work_ *.* _with regard to the abbreviations of words adopted in the above indexes, that of_ b. _is applied to dates of birth, and that of_ d. _to the deaths of artists. the rest will be perfectly intelligible to the english reader._ erratum. page , line , in some copies, _for_ _read_ . first index. _artists referred to in this work, noting the periods of their birth and death, and the authorities for the dates._ a. abate (l') ciccio, _v._ solimene. abati, or dell'abate, niccolo, a modenese, b. or , d. . _tiraboschi._ vol. iv. p. , and vol. v. pp. , . ---- giovanni, his father, d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- pietro paolo, brother of niccolo. _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- giulio camillo, son of niccolo. _tiraboschi._ _ib._ ---- ercole, son of giulio, d. . _tiraboschi._ _ib._ ---- pietro paolo, son of ercole, d. , aged . _tiraboschi._ iv. . abatini, guido ubaldo, of città di castello, d. , aged . _passeri._ ii. . abbiati, filippo, a milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . adda, d', conte francesco, a milanese, d. . _ms._ iv. . agabiti, pietro paolo, of sassoferrato, painted in . _colucci._ ii. . agellio, giuseppe of sorento, pupil to cav. roncalli. _baglione._ ii. . agnelli, n., a roman artist of this age. _ms._ v. . agostino dalle prospettive, painted at bologna in . _masini._ iv. , v. . agresti, livio da forli, painted in . _vasari._ d. about . _orlandi._ ii. , v. . alabardi, giuseppe, called schioppi, flourished towards the end of the sixteenth century. _zanetti._ iii. . alamanni, pietro, of ascola, painted in . _guida d'ascoli._ ii. . albani, francesco, bologn., b. , d. . _malvasia._ i. , ii. , v. . alberegno, flourished in the fifteenth century, iii. . alberelli, or albarelli, giacomo, a venetian, pupil to palma. _zanetti._ iii. . alberino, giorgio, di casale, pupil to moncalvi. _ms._ v. . alberti, cherubino da borgo s. sepolcro, d. , aged . _baglione._ i. . ---- gio., his brother, d. , aged . _baglione._ i. . ---- durante da borgo s. sepolcro, d. , aged . _baglione_, i. . ---- others of the same family, i. . alberti, francesco, a venetian, of whom is cited a single work, and this doubtful. he must have painted about . _v._ zanetti in the _guida_, and in the greater work, p. . iii. . ---- michele, a florentine, pupil to daniele di volterra. _guida di roma._ i. . albertinelli, mariotto, a florentine, d. about , aged . _vasari._ i. . albertoni, paolo, rom., a follower of maratta, d. shortly after . _orlandi._ ii. . albini, alessandro, a bolognese, pupil to the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . alboni, paolo, a bolognese, d. old in . _crespi._ oretti, in his _memorie mss._ calls him paolo antonio. d. sept th, , and buried at s. procolo, v. . alboresi, giacomo, a bolognese, d. , aged . _crespi._ v. . aldrovandini, (more commonly aldovrandini) mauro, from rovigo, b. at bologna, d. , aged . _guida di bologna._ v. . ---- pompeo, son of mauro, b. , d. at rome, . _ms._ v. _ib._ ---- tommaso, cousin of pompeo, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. _ib._ alè, egidio, di liege, flourished the latter half of the seventeenth century. _see guida di roma._ ii. . alemagna, di, giusto, painted at genoa, . _soprani._ v. . ---- zuan, _v._ gio. tedesco. aleni, tommaso, of cremona, painted in . _zaist._ iv. . alessi, matteo perez di, a roman, painted in spain in the time of vargas, i. . _see_ matteo da lecce. ---- pier antonio da s. vito, a pupil of amatteo. _cesarini._ iii. . alessiis, de, francesco, an udinese, painted in . _renaldis._ iii. . alfani, domenico di paris of perugia, b. . _pascoli._ was living in . _mariotti._ ii. . ---- orazio di paris of perugia, b. , d. . _mariotti._ ii. . aliberti, gio. carlo d'asti, b. , died about . _d. valle._ v. . ---- ab. aliberti, his son. v. . alibrandi, girol., of messina, b. , d. . _hack._ ii. . aliense, _see_ vassilacchi. aliprando, michelangiolo, a veronese, pupil to paolo caliari. _pozzo._ iii. . allegretti, carlo di monte prandone, a castle in the district of ascoli; he painted in . _orsini._ ii. . allegri, (also signing himself lieto) antonio, from his native place called coreggio, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. , . ---- lorenzo, his uncle, was living in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- pomponio, son of antonio, b. about . _tiraboschi._ painted in . _affò._ iv. . allegrini, francesco, of gubbio, d. , aged . _orlandi._ ii. , . ---- flaminio, son to francesco. _taia._ ii. . allori, alessandro, called also bronzino, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- cristoforo, his son, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , , . aloisi, _see_ galanino. altissimo, dell', cristofano, a florentine, scholar of bronzino, living in . _vasari._ i. . alunno, niccolò, of foligno; his works appeared between and . _mariotti._ ii. . amadei, stefano, of perugia, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . amalteo, pomponio, from s. vito in the frioul, b. , d. about . _renaldis._ in motta, in the district of trevigi, is found inscribed on an altar-piece, _mottæ civis et incola_; which i think proves his connexion with that place. _federici._ iii. . ---- girolamo, his brother, d. young. _renaldis._ iii. . ---- quintilia, his daughter. _renaldis._ iii. . amato, d', gio. antonio, a neapolitan, b. about , d. about . _dominici._ ii. , . amatrice, dell', cola, (filotesio) painted in . _guida d'ascoli._ ii. . ambrogi, domen., called menichino del brizio, a bolognese, living in . _malvasia._ v. . ambrogio, a greek monk, lived about . _ms._ i. . amerighi, or morigi cav. michelangiolo da caravaggio, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ ii. , , . amico, mastro, _see_ aspertini. amidano, pomponio, of parma, lived in . _ms._ iv. . amigazzi, gio. batista, a veronese, pupil to ridolfi. _pozzo._ iii. . amigoni, ottavio, a brescian, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iii. . ---- jacopo, a venetian, d. , aged . _zanetti._ iii. . amorosi, antonio, of the commune in the district of ascoli. colucci, in vol. xxi. lived in . _pascoli._ ii. . anastasi, of sinigaglia, lived in the beginning of this century. _ms._ i. . ancinelli, dagli, _see_ torre. ancona, d', _see_ lilio. anconitano, l', _see_ bonini. andreasi, ippolito, a mantuan, pupil to giulio. _ms._ iv. . andreasso, or andreani, andrea, a mantuan. _lett. pitt._ i. . andria, di, tuzio, painted in savona in . _guida di genoa._ v. . anesi, paolo, a painter of landscape, flourished the beginning of this century. _ms._ i. , ii. . angarano, co. ottaviano, a venetian, painted about . _zanetti._ iii. . ange, l', franc. di annecy, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . angeli, d', filippo, a roman, called il napolitano, d. young in the pontificate of urban viii. _baglione._ i. , ii. . angeli, giulio cesare, of perugia, b. about , d. about . _pascoli._ ii. . angelini, giuseppe, of ascoli, pupil to tassi. _guida d'ascoli._ ii. . ---- scipione, of perugia, d. , aged . _pascoli._ ii. . angelico, _see_ da fiesole. angelo, pupil to claude lorenese. _passeri._ ii. . ---- d', batista, _see_ del moro. angussola, or angosciola, sofonisba, a cremonese, d. old at genoa about . _ratti._ aged about . _ms._ iv. , v. . ---- lucia, and other sisters. _zaist._ _ib._ anna, d', baldassare, a venetian, pupil to corona. _zanetti._ iii. . annunzio, _see_ nonzio. ans, or hans, _see_ ausse. ansaldo, gio. andrea, b. at voltri in the genovese territory, , d. . _soprani._ v. . ansaloni, vincenzio, a bolognese, a pupil of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . anselmi, giorgio, a veronese, d. , aged , iii. . anselmi, michelang., of parma, called michelangiolo _da lucca_, and more commonly _da siena_, . _ratti._ died in . _affò._ i. , iv. . antelami, or antelmi, benedetto, of parma, a sculptor, his works, and . _affò._ iv. . antoni, degli, or d'antonio, _see_ da messina. antoniano, antonio, of urbino, painted at genoa after the year . _soprani._ ii. . it seems we ought to read antonio viviani. _lazzari._ v. . anversa, d', ugo, flourished in the sixteenth century. _vasari._ iii. . apollodoro, francesco, called porcia of friuli, living in . _statuto ms. de' pittori di padova._ iii. . apollonio, agostino, di s. angelo in vado, nephew and heir to luzio dolce. _colucci._ ii. . ---- greco maestro del safi. _vasari._ i. . ---- jacopo, da bassano, d. , aged . _verci._ or aged . _melchiori._ iii. . appiani, franc., of ancona, b. , d. at perugia, aged . _ms._ ii. . appiano, niccola, sc. del vinci in milano. _lattuada._ iv. . aquila, pietro, a priest of marseilles, was living at the close of the last century. _see orlandi._ ii. . ---- dell', pompeo. _orlandi._ flourished in the sixteenth century, ii. . aragonese, sebastiano, or luca sebastiano da brescia, flourished about . _orlandi._ iii. . araldi, alessandro, of parma, d. about . _affò._ iv. . arbasia, cesare, of saluzzo. notices of him from to . _della valle._ ii. , iv. , v. . arcimboldi, giuseppe, a milanese, d. , aged . _ms._ iv. . arcione, daniele, of milan. _see morelli notiz._, p. , i. . ardente, alessandro, of faenza, (_diario sacro di lucca_) more commonly supposed to be from pisa, and by some from lucca, d. . _ms._ v. . aretino, andrea, lived in . _baglione._ i. . ---- spinello, b. , d. . _bottari, notes to vasari._ i. . aretusi, or munari degli aretusi, cesare, a bolognese citizen, perhaps born at modena, painted in . _tiraboschi._ d. . _necrologio di s. tommaso_, in mercato di bologna. _oretti._ iv. , , v. , . argenta, jacopo, a ferrarese, was living in . _ms._ v. . aristotile, _see_ da s. gallo. armani, piermartire, da reggio, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . armanno, vincenzio, of flanders, d. , aged about . _passeri._ ii. . armenini, gio. batista, of faenza, living in . _orlandi._ v. . arnolfo, a florentine sculptor and architect, d. . _baldinucci._ i. . aromatari, dorotea, a venetian lady, lived in . _boschini._ iv. . arpino, d', _see_ cesari. arrighi, pupil of franceschini. _guida di volterra._ i. . arrigoni, _see_ laurentini. arzere, dall', stef., a paduan, lived about . _new guide of padua._ iii. . ascani, pellegrino, da carpi, a painter of the last century. _tiraboschi._ iv. . asciano, d', gio., educated by berna da siena, i. . aspertini, mastro amico, a bolognese, painted in . _malvasia._ d. , aged . _oretti, mem._ v. , . ---- guido, his brother, painted in . _vasari._ v. . assereto, giovacchino, a genoese, d. , aged . _soprani._ v. . assisi, di, andrea, called l'ingegno, b. about , d. . _galleria imperiale._ ii. . ---- tiberio, he subscribes his name _tiberius diatelevi_, was living in . _mariotto._ ii. . asta, dell', andrea, a neapolitan, d. , aged about . _dominici._ ii. . attavante, _see_ vante. avanzi, giuseppe, a ferrarese, d. , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. , . avanzi, jacopo, a bolognese, flourished . _malvasia._ or davanzo, a paduan, veronese, or bolognese. _notizia morelli._ his work in padua, dated . v. . avanzini, pierant., of piacenza, d. . _guida di piacenza._ iv. . avellino, giulio, called the messinese, d. in . _crespi._ v. . ---- onofrio, a neapolitan, d. , aged . _dominici._ ii. . averara, gio. bat., a bergamese, d. . _tassi._ iii. . aversa, d', mercurio, a pupil to caracciolo. _dominici._ ii. . augusta, cristoforo, from casal maggiore, pupil of malosso, d. young. _zaist._ his altar-piece at s. domenico di cremona, bears his name and date of . _oretti, memorie._ iv. . aviani, of vicenza. _see guida di vicenza._ must have flourished about , iii. . avogadro, pietro, a brescian, flourished about . _see the florentine dictionary._ iii. . ausse, a flemand, pupil to ruggieri. _vasari._ more commonly called ans, or hans, or gianes da bruggia, iii. . autelli, jacopo, a mosaic painter to the g. duke of tuscany, lived in . _baldinucci._ i. . azzolini, or mazzolini, gio. bernardino, a neapolitan, flourished about , ii. . b. baccarini, jacopo da reggio, d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . bacerra, (_vasari_,) or becerra, (_palomino_,) gaspare di baeza, in andalusia, d. , aged about . _palomino._ i. . ii. . bacherelli, vincenzio, a florentine, b. , d. . _roy. gall._ i. . bachiacca, _see_ ubertino. bacci, antonio, a mantuan, mentioned in the travels of p. coronelli, as an artist then living, vol. i. p. ., flourished in . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . baciccio, _see_ gaulli. badalocchi, or rosa sisto di parma. he was young in . _malvasia._ iv. , v. . badaracco, giuseppe, a genoese, b. about , d. . _soprani._ v. . ---- gio. raffaello, his son, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . baderna, bartolommeo, of piacenza, lived in . _guida di piacenza_, iv. . badile, ant., a veronese, b. , d. . _pozzo._ iii. , . bagazoti, camillo, of camerino, a follower of f. sebastiano. _orsini, risp._ ii. . baglione, cav. giovanni, a roman, b. about , painted in . _see_ his life, at the close of the _giornate_, written by him. ii. . baglioni, cesare, a bolognese, d. at parma, about . _malvasia._ v. . bagnacavallo, _see_ ramenghi. bagnaia, da, don pietro, _see guida di ravenna_, appears to have flourished about . i have since found in _oretti_, that one of his pictures, bearing date , is in the church of the passione at milan, a fact which makes it difficult to suppose him the pupil of raffaello. ii. . bagnatore, piermaria, a brescian, painted in . _ms._ he was living in . _zamboni._ iii. . bagnoli, gio. francesco, a florentine, b. , d. . _roy. gall._ i. . baiardo, gio. batista, a genovese, d. , very young. _soprani._ v. . balassi, mario, a florentine, b. , d. . _roy. gall._ i. . baldassari, valerio da pescia, pupil to pier dandini. _ms._ i. . baldelli, francesco, nephew and pupil to barocci. _crispolti._ ii. . baldi, lazzaro, of pistoia, b. , d. . _pascoli._ or b. , april th. _orlandi_, _carteggio_, and _oretti_. i. . baldinelli, baldino, pupil to domenichino del ghirlandaio, i. . baldini, baccio, a florentine, flourished in the time of botticelli. _vasari._ i. , . ---- giovanni, a florentine, lived about . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- giuseppe, a florentine, pupil to gabbiani. _series of illustrious painters._ i. . ---- pietro paolo, pupil to pietro da cortona. _guida di roma._ ii. . ---- taddeo, pupil to salvator rosa, i. . baldino, tiburzio, a bolognese, v. . baldovinetti, alessio, a florentine, b. , d. . _bottari._ i. . baldrighi, giuseppe, a pavese, settled at parma, d. , aged . _ms._ iv. . balducci, or cosci, gio., a florentine, d. in the pontificate of clement viii. _baglione._ i. . ---- gio. pisano. his _memorie_ of and . _da morrona._ i. . balestra, antonio, of verona, b. , d. about . _guarienti_; or , _zanetti_, and _oretti_, who in his _memorie_ states the exact day, st april. ii. , iii. , v. . balestrieri, domenico del piceno. his painting of , ii. . balestriero, giuseppe of messina, d. , aged . _hack._ ii. . ballerino, _see_ bittonte. balli, simone, a florentine, pupil to aurelio lomi. _soprani._ v. . ballini, camillo, painted in venice in the age of the mannerists. _zanetti._ iii. . ---- cav. niccolo, ven., d. , aged . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- gio. and stefano, his sons. _zanetti, guida di venezia._ iii. . bambini, jacopo, a ferrarese, d. young, . _baruffaldi._ v. . bamboccio, _see_ laer. bandiera, benedetto, of perugia, lived about . _orlandi._ or rather b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . bandinelli, baccio, a florentine, b. , d. aged . _vasari._ i. . banier, luigi, a frenchman, lived at turin in . _della valle._ v. . barabbino, simone della valle di polcevera in the genovese, namely of bernardo castello. _soprani._ v. . barbalunga, otherwise antonio ricci of messina, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. , . barbarelli, _see_ giorgione. barbatelli, _see_ poccetti. barbello, jacopo di crema, painted in . _guida di bergamo._ d. . _zibaldone cremasco_ for the year . iii. . barbiani, gio. batista, of ravenna. _see orlandi._ d. at ravenna in sept. . _oretti, mem._ v. . barbieri, dell', domenico, a florentine, and assistant of rosso. _vasari._ i. . ---- alessandro, _see_ fei. barbieri, cav. gio. francesco, called il guercino da cento, b. , d. . _malvasia._ ii. , v. . ---- paolo, antonio, his brother, d. . _malvasia._ v. . ---- francesco, called il legnago, b. , d. at verona, . _orlandi._ iii. . ---- pier antonio, a pavese, b. , painted in . _orlandi._ iv. . barca, cav. gio. batista, a mantuan, flourished at verona about . _guarienti._ iii. . bardelli, alessandro di pescia, a pupil of cav. currado. _ms._ i. . barent, dieterico, scholar of titian. _baldinucci._ iii. . bargone, giacomo, pupil of lazzaro calvi. _soprani._ v. . barile, gio., a florentine, flourished in the time of raffaello. _vasari._ i. . barili, aurelio parmigiano, painted in . _affò._ iv. . barocci, (more recently called baroccio) or fiore federigo of urbino, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , ii. . barocci, giacomo, da vignola, d. , aged . _orlandi._ ii. . barri, giacomo, a venetian, b. soon after ; was living in ; no farther account of him. _ms. melchiori._ iii. . bartoli, franc. da reggio, d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- pier santi, of perugia, d. , aged about . _orlandi._ ii. . bartolini, gioseffo maria, of imola, b. , was living in . _orlandi._ d. . his tomb-stone at the carmine in imola. _oretti, memorie._ v. . bartolo, di, fredi, of siena, lived in . _d. valle._ i. . ---- di, taddeo, of siena, painted in . _d. valle._ d. aged . _vasari._ i. , iii. . ---- domenico, nephew of taddeo, painted in . _vasari._ i. . bartolommeo, maestro, painted at florence in . _lami._ i. . barucco, giacomo, a brescian, painted with gandini, and with randa. _guida di brescia._ iii. . basaiti, marco del friuli, living in . _zanetti._ iii. . baschenis, d. evaristo, of bergamo, b. , d. . _tassi._ iii. . basili, pierangiolo, of gubbio, lived to . _ranghiasci._ ii. . bassano, da, martinello, a painter of the thirteenth century. _verci._ iii. . ---- il, _see_ da ponte. _see also_ teniers. bassetti, marcantonio, a veronese, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ ii. , iii. . bassi, francesco, a cremonese, called il cremonese da paesi, b. , d. the beginning of . _zaist._ iv. . ---- another of the same name and country. _ib._ ---- another francesco bassi, a bolognese, pupil to pasinelli, d. aged . _crespi._ perhaps a false report gave rise to this account, for oretti calls him a scholar of barbieri, and next of gennari, and that he died in , aged ; citing the authority of _filippo bassi_, son of _francesco_, and parish priest of s. felice. v. . bassini, tommaso, a modenese, flourished in the fourteenth century. _tiraboschi._ iv. . bassotti, gio. francesco, of perugia, flourished about . _orlandi._ ii. . bastaruolo, il, or filippo mazzuoli, a ferrarese, d. old in . _baruffaldi._ v. . bastiani, giuseppe of macera, painted in . _ms._ ii. . batistiello, _see_ caracciolo. batoni, cav. pompeo, b. at lucca, , d. . _elogio del cav. boni._ i. , ii. . battaglia, dionisio, a veronese, flourished in . _pozzo._ iii. . battaglie, delle, or delle bambocciate, michelangiolo, _see_ cerquozzi. bavarese, francesco ignazio, scholar of orizzonte. _colonna catalogue._ ii. . baur, gio. guglielmo, d. . _sandrart._ ii. . bazzacco, or brazzacco, _see_ ponchino. bazzani, gaspero da reggio, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- giuseppe, called by mistake in the text gio. mantov., died director of the royal academy of painting in . _volta._ iv. . beaumont, cav. claudio francesco, of turin, b. , d. . _della valle._ v. . beccafumi, or mecherino domenico, senese, d. , aged . _vasari._ or rather lived in . _della valle._ i. , , , v. . beccaruzzi, franc. da conegliano, records of him in trevigi, from to . _federici._ iii. . beceri, domenico, a florentine, pupil of puligo. _vasari._ i. . beduschi, antonio, a cremonese, b. , painted in . _guida di piacenza._ iv. . begarelli, ant. da modena, b. about , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . begni, giulio cesare, a pesarese, d. shortly before . _guida di pesaro._ ii. . beinaschi, or benaschi, cav. gio. batista, of turin, b. . _pascoli._ d. . _dominici._ or . _orlandi._ ii. , , v. . ---- angela, his daughter, b. , was living in , ii. . bellavia, marcantonio, a sicilian, perhaps a scholar of cortona. _guida di roma._ ii. . bellavita, angelo, a cremonese, lived in . _zaist._ iv. . belliboni, gio. batista, a cremonese, pupil to antonio campi. _zaist._ iv. . bellini, bellin, flourished about . _see ridolfi._ iii. . ---- filippo d'urbino, painted in . _colucci_, vol. xxviii. ii. . ---- gentile, a venetian, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ ii. , iii. . ---- gio. his brother, d. soon after , aged . _ridolfi._ ii. , iii. . ---- jacopo, father of the two preceding, painted about . _ms._ from an inscription cited by polidoro, it would seem that jacopo and his two sons painted as early as . this cannot be credited, we should read . ii. , iii. . belliniano, vittore, a venetian, painted in . _ridolfi._ iii. . bellis, de, antonio, a neapolitan, d. young in . _dominici._ ii. . bello marco. one of his pictures, with the initials _m. b._, formerly in argenta, the native place of the artist, is now in the _obizzi museum_, bearing date , iii. . bellotti, pietro, da volzano on the lake of garda, b. , d. . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . bellotto, bernardo, a venetian, lived in . _orlandi._ iii. . bellucci, ant., b. , in the pieve di soligo in the trevisano, d. there . _melchiori._ iii. . ---- gio. batista, his son. _federici._ _ib._ bellunello, andrea, da s. vito, painted in . in a painting of , he signs himself andrea bellone. _renaldis._ iii. . bellunese, giorgio, da s. vito, flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century. _see cesarini._ iii. . beltraffio, gio. antonio, a milanese, d. , aged . _new guide of milan._ iv. . beltrano, agostino, a neapolitan, painted in , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . belvedere, ab. andrea, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ ii. . bembo, bonifazio, or fazio, da valdarno, a cremonese, painted in . _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- gio. francesco, his brother, called il vetraro, was painting in . _zaist._ iv. . benci, domenico, assistant of vasari, lived in . i. . bencovich, federigo, called also federighetto di dalmazia, lived in . _guarienti._ iii. , v. . benedetti, mattia and lodovico, of reggio, flourished about . _tiraboschi._ iv. . benefial, cav. marco, b. at rome, , d. . _lettere pittoriche_, vol. v. ii. . benfatto, luigi, called dal friso, of verona, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . benini, sigismondo, a cremonese, pupil to massarotti. _zaist._ iv. . benso, giulio, b. in the genovese, about , d. . _soprani._ v. . benvenuto, _see_ ortolano. benzi, giulio, a bolognese, d. , aged . _guida di bologna._ v. . bergamasco, il, _see_ gio. batista castello. bergamo, da, f. damiano domenicano, d. . _tassi._ iii. . ---- guglielmo, maestro, lived in . _tassi._ iii. . berlinghieri, camillo, called il ferraresino, d. , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- bonaventura, da lucca, painted in . _bettinelli._ i. , , iv. . bernabei, pier antonio, of parma, called della casa, lived about . _ms._ iv. . ---- tommaso, a cortonese, pupil to luca signorelli. _vasari._ lived in . _mariotti._ i. . bernardi, franc., called il bigolaro, a veronese, pupil to feti. _pozzo._ iii. . bernasconi, laura, a roman lady, and disciple of mario nuzzi. _pascoli._ ii. . bernazzano, a milanese, flourished in . _orlandi._ iv. . bernetz, cristiano, of hamburgh, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . bernieri, ant., da coreggio, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . bernini, cav. gio. lorenzo, b. at naples of florentine parentage, in , d. . _baldinucci._ ii. . berrettini, cav. pietro, of cortona, b. , d. . _pascoli._ i. , ii. . berrettoni, niccolo, di montefeltro, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . berrugese, or berruguete, alonzo, a spaniard, b. . _palom._ or rather at toledo, very old, in . _conca._ i. . bersotti, carlo girolamo, of pavia, b. . _orlandi._ iv. . bertani, gio. batista, a mantuan, lived in . _vasari._ iv. . ---- domenico, his brother. _volta._ _ib._ berto, di, gio., called also _bertus joannis marci_, of perugia, painted as early as , was living in , and perhaps later. _mariotti._ ii. . bertoia, or bertogia, jacopo, parmigiano, lived in . _affò._ iv. . bertoli, a venetian, painted in .... _ms._ iii. . bertolotti, gio. lorenzo, a genovese, b. . d. . _ratti._ v. . bertucci, lodovico, da modena, flourished in the seventeenth century. _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- jacopo, _see_ da faenza. bertusio, gio. batista, a bolognese, was living about . _malvasia._ d. . _oretti, mem._ v. . bertuzzi, porino, of the school of barocci. _ms._ ii. . besenzi, paolo emilio, of reggio, d. , aged . _tiraboschi._ iv. . besozzi, ambrogio, a milanese, b. , d. . _orlandi._ iv. . betti, niccolo, a florentine, and assistant to vasari, i. . ---- p. biagio, a pistoiese theatine, d. , aged . _baglione._ i. . _see also_ pinturicchio. bettini, anton. sebastiano, b. at florence in , d. ----. _roy. gall._ i. . ---- domenico, a florentine, b. , d. , at bologna. _orlandi._ v. . beverense, antonio, iii. . bevilacqua, ambrogio, a milanese, painted in . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- filippo, his brother. _lomazzo._ _ib._ ---- cav., _see_ salembeni ventura. bezzi, gio. franc., a bolognese, called il nosadella, d. . _malvasia._ v. . bezzicaluva, ercole, a pisan, flourished about . _morrona._ i. . biagio, mastro, _see_ pupini. bianchi, baldassare, a bolognese, b. , was living in . _crespi._ d. at modena, , aged . _oretti, memorie._ v. . ---- carlantonio, a pavese, lived . _pitture d'italia._ iv. . ---- cav. federigo, a milanese, painted in . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- filippo, a venetian, lived in . _boschini._ iii. . ---- francesco, a milanese painter of this century. _ms._ iv. . ---- cav. isidoro, da campione, in the milanese, was living in . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- pietro, called bustini, lived in the eighteenth century. _orlandi._ iv. . ---- pietro, a roman, b. . _florentine dictionary._ d. . _ms._ ii. . ---- bonavita franc., a florentine, d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- gio., his father, a milanese, d. . _baldinucci._ i. . bianchi, ferrari, called il frari francesco, a modenese, painted in , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . bianchini, vinc., a venetian mosaic painter in , until . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- domenico, his brother, called rosso. notices of him from until beyond . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- gio. antonio, son of vincenzio, flourished in . _zanetti._ _ib._ bianco, del, baccio, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . biancucci, paolo, a lucchese, pupil to guido. _ms._ d. about , aged . _oretti, memorie._ i. . bibiena, or galli da bibiena, gio. maria, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- franc., his son, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- ferdinand, another son, b. , d. . _crespi._ _ib._ ---- alessandro, son of ferdinand, d. at vienna about . _crespi._ v. . ---- antonio, another son, b. , d. . _guida di bologna._ or d. . _freddy._ _ib._ ---- giuseppe, another son, b. , d. . _crespi._ _ib._ ---- carlo, son of giuseppe, lived in . _crespi._ v. . bicchierai, antonio, painted at rome in . _guida di roma._ ii. . bicci, di, lorenzo, a florentine, d. about . _vasari._ i. . ---- neri, his son. _vasari._ i. . bigari, vittorio, a bolognese, b. , d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . bigatti, galeazzi, minelli, scholars of cignani. _crespi._ v. . bigi, felice, of parma; according to orlandi, a roman, taught at verona about . _orlandi._ iii. . bigio, marco, a sienese, flourished about . _della valle._ i. . ---- _see_ brazzè. bigolaro, _see_ bernardi. bilia, della, gio. batista, of città di castello, lived towards the middle of the sixteenth century. _vasari._ ii. . bilivert, gio., a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . bimbi, bartolom., a florentine, b. , d. about . _roy. gall._ i. . bissolo, franc., a venetian, flourished about . _zanetti._ iii. . bissoni, gio. bat., a paduan, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . bitino, painted at rimini in . _ms._ v. . bittonte, or il ballerino, gio., of vicenza, d. , aged . _melchiori._ iii. . bizzelli, gio., a florentine, pupil to alessandro allori. _borghini._ b. . _orlandi._ i. . blaceo, bernardino, of friuli, painted in . _renaldis._ his work at s. lucia di udine bearing date . _ms._ iii. . blanseri, vittorio, of turin, d. , aged about . _ms._ v. . bles, de, _see_ civetta. boccaccino, boccaccio, of cremona, painted about , d. aged . _vasari._ about . _zaist._ at s. vincenzo is one of his paintings, bearing date . _oretti, memorie._ iv. . ---- camillo, his son, painted in , d. . _zaist._ iv. . ---- franc., d. old, about . _zaist._ iv. . bocchi, faustino, a brescian, b. , living in . _orlandi._ d. about . _ms._ _carbone presso l'oretti._ iii. . bocciardo, clemente, a genoese, called clementone, d. at pisa, about , aged . _soprani._ v. . ---- domenico, di finale, in the genovese, d. , aged about . _ratti._ v. . bocatis, gio. di camerino, painted in . _mariotti._ ii. . boetto, giovenal, di fossano. notices of him from to . _della valle._ v. . bologhino, or rather bolgarino, bartolommeo, a siennese, scholar of pietro laurati. _vasari._ i. . bologna, da, or bolognese, m. domenico, painted in cremona about . _guida di cremona._ v. . ---- ercole, flourished about . _malvasia._ v. . ---- franco, painted in . _ms._ v. . bologna, da, galante, pupil to lippo dalmasio. _vasari._ v. . ---- guido, painted in . _malvasia._ v. . ---- giovanni, an ancient painter, _zanetti._ v. . ---- jacopo di paolo, or avanzi, painted in . _malvasia._ in the _oretti memorie_ is cited the register of s. procolo, where he painted in . v. . _see_ avanzi. ---- lattanzio, _see_ mainardi. ---- lorenzino, _see_ sabbatini. ---- lorenzo, perhaps a venetian, painted in . _ercolani catalogue._ v. . ---- maso, painted in . _orlandi._ v. . ---- orazio, and pietro di jacopo. the first flourished in . _guida di bologna._ v. . ---- pellegrino, _see_ tibaldi. ---- severo, painted about . _malvasia._ v. . ---- simone, called da' crocifissi, painted in . _malvasia._ v. . ---- ventura. his paintings from until . _malvasia._ v. . ---- vitale, called dalle madonne, painted in . _malvasia._ v. . ---- ursone. his notices from until . _malvasia._ v. . bolognini, gio. batista, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- giacomo, his nephew, b. , d. . _crespi._ _ib._ bombelli, sebastiano da udine, b. . _algarotti catalogue._ d. . _renaldis._ or rather was living in . _lett. pitt._ vol. v. iii. , . ---- raffaelle, his brother. _renaldis._ _ib._ bombologno, a bolognese, lived about the middle of the fifteenth century. _malvasia._ v. . bona, tommaso, a brescian, was still painting in . _zamboni._ iii. . bonaccorsi, _see_ del vaga. bonacossa, ettore, da ferrara, lived in . _baruffaldi._ v. . bonagrazia, gio., of treviso, b. , pupil of zanchi. _federici._ iii. . bonarruoti, or rather buonarroti, (_vasari_); or buonaroti, _varchi_; michelang., a florentine, b. , d. . _vasari._ i. , ii. , and elsewhere. bonasia, bartolommeo, a modenese, d. old, . _tiraboschi._ iv. . bonasone, giulio, a bolognese, an engraver from the year . _malvasia._ was employed in , as appears from a picture in casa branchetta. _oretti, memorie._ v. . bonati, _pascoli_, more correctly bonatti, gio., a ferrarese, b. , d. . _baruffaldi._ ii. , v. . bonconsigli, or boni consilii, gio., called il marescalco da vicenza, painted in . _ridolfi._ in the cathedral of montagnana are two of his altar-pieces, dated and . _ms._ iii. . bonconti, gio. paolo, a bolognese, a pupil of the caracci, d. young. _malvasia._ d. , aged . _oretti, memorie._ v. . boncuore, gio. batista, b. in abruzzo a campli, in , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . bondi, andrea and filippo, of forli, pupils of cignani. _guarienti._ v. . bonechi, matteo, a florentine, painted in . _serie de' pittori illustri._ i. . bonelli, aurelio, a bolognese, pupil to the caracci. _malvasia._ was living in . _moreni._ v. . bonesi, gio. girolamo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . bonfigli, benedetto, di perugia, b. about . _pascoli._ was living still in . _mariotti._ i. , ii. , . bongi, domenico, di pietrasanta, painted in . _morrona._ i. . boni, giac., a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . bonifazio,--orlandi writes it bonifacio,--francesco, of viterbo, b. , was pupil to pietro da cortona. _orlandi._ ii. . ---- veneziano. _vas. rid. zanet._ but are all in mistake, as this artist was a veronese. _see morelli notizia, &c._, p. . he died . _zanetti._ aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . boniforti, girolamo, of macera, painted in the seventeenth century. _ms._ or rather francesco, who was living, aged , in . _carteg. oretti._ ii. . bonini, gio. d'assisi, painted in . _della valle._ ii. . ---- girolamo, called at bologna l'anconitano, was living in . _orlandi._ ii. , v. . bonino, gaspare, a cremonese, flourished about . _zaist._ iv. . bonisoli, agostino, a cremonese, d. , aged . _zaist._ iv. . bonito, cav. gius., of castell'a mare, b. . _flor. dictionary._ d. . _roy. gall._ ii. . bono, ambrogio, schol. of loth. _zanetti._ iii. . ---- gregorio, a venetian, painted in . _ms._ v. . ---- n., pupil of squarcione. _guida di padova._ from the notizia morelli we learn he was either a bolognese or a ferrarese. iii. . bonomo, di, jacobello, a venetian, lived in . _morelli._ iii. . bonone, carlo, a ferrarese, b. , d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- lionello, his nephew, lived in . _baruffaldi._ v. . bononi, bartolommeo, a pavese, painted in . _pitture d'italia._ iv. . bonvicino, alessandro, called il moretto da brescia, b. . _orlandi._ not correct, as he was painting in . was living in . _zamb._ iii. . bonzi, _see_ gobbo da cortona. borbone, jacopo, da novellara, painted in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . bordone, cav. paris, of treviso, d. , aged . _necrologio veneto_, cited by _zanetti._ iii. , . ---- n., son of paris, iii. . borgani, franc., a mantuan, lived till after the middle of the seventeenth century. _ms._ iv. . borghese, ippol., a neapolitan, painted in . _orlandi._ ii. . ---- giovanni, da messina, pupil to costa. _vasari._ ii. , v. . ---- girolamo, da nizza della paglia, painted about . _ms._ v. . ---- pietro, _see_ della francesca. borghesi, gio. ventura, of città di castello, d. . _orlandi._ ii. . borgianni, orazio, a roman, d. in the pontificate of paul v., aged . _baglione._ ii. . borgo, da, francesco, painted in . _guida di rimini._ v. . ---- del, gio. paolo, painted about . _vasari._ i. . borgognone, ambrogio, a milanese, flourished about . _see lomazzo._ iv. . ---- il, _see_ cortesi. borro, batista, aretino, lived in . _vasari._ i. . borroni, cav. gio. angelo, a cremonese, b. , d. . _zaist._ iv. , . borsati, carlo, fantozzi franc., setti camillo, all ferrarese, and supposed pupils to cattanio. v. . borzone, luciano, a genovese, b. . _soprani._ v. . ---- gio. batista, his son, d. about . _soprani._ v. . ---- carlo, another son, d. young, in . _soprani._ _ib._ ---- francesco, son of luciano, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . bosch, (as he signs his name,) called by orlandi bosco or boss da bolduch, extolled by mazzolari for his capricci in the escurial. he painted at venice, _zanetti_; and apparently towards the year . iii. . boschi, fabrizio, a florentine, b. about , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- francesco, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- alfonso, his brother, d. young. _baldinucci._ _ib._ ---- benedetto, another brother. _baldinucci._ i. . boschini, marco, a venetian, d. , aged . _melchiori._ iii. , v. . _see_ index second. boscoli, andrea, a florentine, d. about . _baldinucci._ i. . boselli, antonio, a bergamese. his notices from to . _tassi._ iii. , . ---- felice, di piacenza, b. , d. aged . _guida di piacenza._ iv. . bottalla, gio. maria, a genoese, called raffaellino, d. , aged . _soprani._ ii. , v. . bottani, giuseppe, a cremonese, b. , d. . _ms._ iv. , , . botti, rinaldo, a florentine, lived in . _orlandi._ i. . botticelli, sandro filippi. _taia._ or rather filipepi, a florentine, b. , d. . _vasari._ i. , . boulanger, gio., of troyes, pupil to guido. _tiraboschi._ d. , aged . _lettera scritta da modena al p. orlandi cart. oretti._ iv. . bova, ant., a messinese, d. , aged . _hakert._ ii. . bozza, bartol., a venetian, when young a mosaic worker, about , d. old. _zanetti._ iii. . bozzato, _see_ ponchino. braccioli, gio. francesco, a ferrarese, b. . _baruffaldi._ d. . _crespi._ v. . bramante, lazzari, of castel durante, now urbania, in the state of urbino, called also bramante of urbino, b. , d. . _vasari._ documents shewing him to have been of durante, are inserted in the th vol. of sig. colucci. according to others bramante's family was of castel durante; but he was born in monte asdrualdo, a villa of fermignano, four miles from urbino. hence he is called _asdruvaldinus_. the surname of lazzari is merely feigned. said to have been born . _see colucci_, tom. xii. and xxxi. ii. , , iv. . bramantino, di, agostino, a milanese, flourished about . _pagave._ or rather was a disciple of suardi. _lomazzo_, in the index. iv. . ---- or bartol. suardi, a milanese, living in . _pagave._ iv. . brambilla, gio. bat., living in turin in . _n. guida di turino._ v. . brandani, federigo, di urbino, d. . _lazzari._ ii. . brandi, dom., a neapolitan, d. , aged . _dominici._ ii. . ---- giacinto, b. at poli, , d. . _pascoli._ others make him from gaeta. ii. , v. . ---- di, _see_ ottini. brandimarte, benedetto, a lucchese, living in . _orlandi._ i. . brandine, and flaminet, lived about . _marino._ v. . brandino, ottaviano, called in the _notizia_ ottaviano da brescia, and companion of alticchiero. iii. . bravo, cecco, _see_ montelatici. ---- giacomo, of trevisi, lived in . _federici._ iii. . brazzè, gio. batista, called il bigio, a florentine, pupil to empoli. _baldinucci._ i. . brea, lodovico, da nizza. his notices in genoa from to . _soprani._ v. . brentana, simone, a venetian, b. , was living in . _orlandi._ iii. . brescia, da, gio. maria and gio. antonio, ancient engravers. _orlandi._ i. . ---- f. gio. maria, a carmelite monk, painted in brescia about . _orlandi._ v. . ---- f. girolamo, a carmelite monk, painted at savona in . _guida di genoa._ v. _ib._ ---- da, f. raffaello. _see guida di bologna._ d. , aged . _galletti._ _inscript. venetæ romæ extantes._ in the inscription he is called _roberti_; whether his surname or a second name, iii. . ---- leonardo, a ferrarese, flourished in . _orlandi._ d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . brescianino, delle battaglie, _see_ monti. ---- del, andrea, a sienese, flourished along with his brother about . _della valle._ i. . bresciano, vincenzo, _see_ foppa. brill, matteo, of antwerp, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ date to be corrected on the authority of the inscription, which says he died aged . _galletti, insc. romanæ_, tom. ii. p. . ii. . ---- paolo, his brother, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ ii. _ib._ brini, francesco, a painter of the seventeenth century. _ms._ i. . briziano, _see_ mantovano, gio. batista. brizio, franc., a bolognese, d. , aged . _malvasia._ v. . ---- filippo, his son, d. , aged . _oretti dal necrologio di s. giuliano di bologna._ v. . ---- del, menichino, _see_ degli ambrogi. brizzi, serafino, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . bronzino, angiolo, a florentine, was living in , aged . _vasari._ d. aged . _borghini._ i. . ---- alessandro, _see_ allori. bruggia, da, or da brugges, _see_ van eych, _see_ ausse. brughel, abramo, a flamand, died at naples about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- dall'inferno. he signed himself _p. breughel_, as i read it on a little picture in palazzo lante at rome, dated . he is also called pietro brughel the younger, to distinguish him from his father, who had the same name. iii. . ---- gio., brother of the preceding, b. at brussels about . _descamps._ d. . _filibien._ iv. . brughi, thus called in the _guida di roma_, gio. batista, a roman, pupil to gaulli, d. about . _ratti._ ii. . brugieri, gio. domenico, a lucchese, b. , d. . _flor. dictionary._ i. . brugno, innocento, a udinese, lived in . _renaldis._ iii. . brun, le, charles, a parisian, b. , d. . _royal gallery of florence._ ii. . brunelleschi, filippo, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . ---- giulio, a udinese, b. , painted in . _ms._ iii. . brunetti, sebastiano, pupil to guido. _malvasia._ d. . _oretti, memorie._ v. . bruni, domenico, a brescian, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iii. . ---- lucio. his work of . _guida di vicenza._ iii. . ---- girolamo, a pupil of borgognone. _colonna catalogue._ ii. . bruno, nello, calandrino, friends of buffalmacco, i. . ---- antonio, pupil to coreggio. _ms._ iv. . ---- francesco, da porto maurizio, in the genovese, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . ---- giulio, a piedmontese, pupil to paggi. _soprani._ (called _bruni_ by _orlandi_.) v. . ---- gio. batista, his brother, and pupil. _ib._ ---- il, silvestro morvillo, a neapolitan. his works from to . _dominici._ ii. . brunori, or brunoini, federigo, of gubbio, pupil to damiani. _ranghiasci._ ii. . brusaferro, girolamo, a venetian, lived in . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . brusasorci, _see_ riccio. budrio, da, _see_ lippi. buffalmacco, buonamico, of cristofano, a florentine, was living in . _baldinucci._ i. . bugiardini, giuliano, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. , v. . buonamici, _see_ tassi. buonfanti, antonio, a ferrarese, called il torricella, a supposed pupil of guido. _cittadella._ v. . buoni, de', buono, a neapolitan, d. about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- silvestro, a neapolitan, d. about . _dominici._ _ib._ buontalenti, bernardo, a florentine, called delle girandole, b. , d. . _bottari._ i. . buratti, girolamo, pupil to pomaranci. _guida di ascoli._ ii. . burrini, gio. ant., a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . busca, antonio, a milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . buso, or busso, aurelio, of crema, pupil to polidoro da caravaggio. _soprani._ d. about . _ms._ iii. , iv. , v. . bustini, _see_ crespi and bianchi. buti, lodovico, a florentine, flourished about . _baldinucci._ i. . butinone, bernardo, or bernardino, da trevilio, painted in , d. about . _ms._ iv. . butteri, gio. maria, a florentine, painted in . _vasari._ d. . _baldinucci._ i. . c. cabassi, margherita, di carpi, d. , aged . _tiraboschi._ iv. . caccia, guglielmo, called il moncalvo, b. in the novarese, . _orlandi._ d. about . _della valle._ v. . ---- orsola maddalena, his daughter, d. . _orlandi._ v. . ---- francesca, another daughter, d. aged . _orlandi._ _ib._ ---- pompeo, a roman, lived in . _ms._ i. . caccianiga, franc., b. at milan, d. , _memorie delle b. a._, tom. ii., ii. . ---- paolo, formenti, pozzi (gio. batista) milanese artists of recent times, iv. . caccianimici, franc., a bolognese, a disciple of primaticcio, d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . ---- vincenzio, a bolognese, lived about . _see guida di bologna._ v. . caccioli, gio. batista da budrio, in the bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . cades, gius., a roman of french family, d. aged . _ms._ ii. . cadioli, gio., a founder in the eighteenth century of the mantuan academy. _ms._ iv. . caffi, la, a paintress of flowers. _guida di brescia._ iii. . cagnacci, guida da s. arcangelo, b. , d. . _guida di rovigo._ v. . cairo, cav. franc. di varese, in the milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. , v. . ---- ferdinando di casalmonf., d. , aged . _carboni. ms. presso l'oretti._ v. . calabrese, _see_ preti, _see_ cardisco, _see_ nicoluccio. calandra, gio. batista, da vercelli, b. , d. . _pascoli._ or d. , aged or . _passeri._ ii. . calandrucci, giacinto, b. , at palermo, d. . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- domenico, his brother, and gio. batista, his nephew. _pascoli._ _ib._ calcar, or calker, gio. of flanders, died young in . _sandrart._ iii. . calcia, gius., called il genovesino, lived in the last century. _ms._ v. . caldana, ant. d'ancona. _guida di roma._ ii. . caldara, polidoro, or polidoro da caravaggio, d. in . _vasari._ ii. , . calderari, gio. maria di pordenone, who in an altar-piece signed himself _i. m. p. io. maria portunensis_, omitting the surname; an excellent pupil of pordenone, but little known. he died about . _renaldis._ iii. . caletti, giuseppe, called il cremonese, b. about , at ferrara. _cittadella._ d. about . _baruffaldi._ v. . caliari, paolo, a veronese, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ or rather aged . _register cited by zanetti._ iii. , , iv. . ---- carlo, his son, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ or , says _zanetti._ iii. . ---- gabriele, another son, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- benedetto, brother of paul, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . caligarino, il, or gabriele cappellini, a ferrarese, flourished in . _baruffaldi._ v. . calimberg, or calimperg, a german, d. about . _guarienti._ iii. . calomato, bartol., of the venetian school, an artist of the seventeenth century. _ms._ iii. . calori, raffaello, a modenese. his records from till . _tiraboschi._ iv. . calvart, dionisio, of antwerp, or dionisio of flanders, d. at bologna in . _malvasia._ b. about , d. . _oretti_, who cites the inscription on his tomb at the _servi_. v. . calvetti, alberto, a venetian, pupil to celesti. _zanetti._ iii. . calvi, lazzaro, a genoese, b. , d. aged . _soprani._ v. . ---- pantaleo, his brother, d. . _soprani._ _ib._ ---- agostino, their father, lived in . _soprani._ _ib._ ---- giulio, called il coronaro, a cremonese, d. . _zaist._ iv. . calza, ant., a veronese, b. , d. . _guarienti._ or rather b. , d. jan. , . _oretti, mem._ iii. . camassei, andrea, da bevagna, d. , aged . _passeri._ ii. . cambiaso, gio., a genoese, b. , d. old. _soprani._ v. . ---- luca, or luchetto, his son, d. . _palomino._ or , aged . _ratti._ b. , d. about . _mariet. descript._ _ib._ ---- orazio, son of luca. _soprani._ v. . camerata, gius., a venetian, d. , aged . _longhi._ iii. . camerino, da, f. giacomo, painted in . _della valle._ i. , ii. . camillo, according to some, of the noble house of incontri di volterra, pupil to guido, lived in . _guida di volterra._ v. . campagnola, girolamo, a paduan, in mistake referred to the marca trevigiana by _guarienti_; flourished in the fifteenth century. _vasari._ iii. . ---- giulio, his son, flourished about . _guida di padova._ i. , iii. . ---- domenico, supposed son of giulio, but only his pupil and a venetian, not a paduan. _morelli_, _notizia_, p. ii. p. . lived in . _ms._ i. , iii. . campana, andrea, a modenese, lived in the fifteenth century. _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- tommaso, a bolognese, pupil to the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . campanna, pietro, of flanders, d. decrepid in . _palomino._ ii. . campi, galeazzo, a cremonese, d. , aged . _zaist._ iv. . ---- giulio, his son, b. about , d. . _zaist._ iv. . ---- antonio, cav., another son, living in . _zaist._ made his will in . _oretti, memor._ iv. . ---- vincenzio, another son, d. . _zaist._ see what is said relating to the epochs of the three brothers, iv. . ---- bernardino, b. , was living in . _zaist._ some autograph letters of bernardino, copied from oretti, bear date , , and . iv. , . campidoglio, da, michelangiolo, a roman, flourished about . _pascoli._ ii. . campiglia, gio. domenico, a lucchese, b. . _r. gall. di firenze._ i. . campino, gio. da camerino, a painter of the seventeenth century. _orlandi._ ii. . campo, da, liberale, painted in . _federici._ iii. . campolo, placido, a messinese, d. in the plague of , aged . _hakert._ ii. . campora, francesco, della polcevera, in the genovese, d. . _ratti._ v. . canal, antonio, a venetian, called il canaletto, d. , aged . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- fabio, a venetian, b. . _longhi._ d. . _zanetti._ iii. . cane, carlo, of trino, painted in , as we learn from gio. andrea irico, in his account of trino, who cites two altar-pieces dated the said year with the name of _trinensis_. orlandi mistakes in saying he was born in the milanese, , d. aged . iv. , . caneti, f. francescantonio, da cremona, a cappuchin, b. , d. . _zaist._ iv. . canneri, anselmo, a veronese, flourished in . _guarienti._ iii. . canini, gio. angelo, a roman, d. , aged . _pascoli_ and _passeri_. ii. . canozio, _see_ da lendinara. cantarini, simone, or simone da pesaro, b. , d. . _orlandi._ v. . canti, gio., of parma, d. . _volta._ iv. . cantona, caterina, a milanese, lived in . _lomazzo._ she is called by _morigia_ barbara, and died young in . iv. . canuti, domenico maria, a bolognese, d. , aged , _see_ crespi. _felsina pittrice_, p. , where he corrects _orlandi_; and also _la certosa di bologna_, p. , where he again alludes to him. v. . canziani, gio. batista, a veronese, lived about . _orlandi._ iii. . capanna, puccio, a florentine, painted in . _vasari._ died early in life. _vasari._ _manni_ and others read _campana_. ii. . ---- il, a sienese, flourished about . _bottari._ i. . capitani, de, giuliano, or giulio di lodi, pupil of bernardino campi. _lamo._ iv. . capitelli, bernardino, a sienese, lived in . _lett. pittoriche_, vol. i. i. . capodiferro, gianfrancesco, a bergamese, d. about . _tassi._ iii. . ---- pietro, brother of gianfranc. zinino, his son, _ib._ caporali, bartol. da perugia. his works from to . _mariotti._ ii. . ---- giambatista, or bitti, his son, a painter and architect, b. about ; made his will in . _mariotti._ d. about . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- giulio, son of giambatista, lived in . _mariotti._ _ib._ cappella, scipione, a neapolitan, lived in . _dominici._ ii. . cappelli, franc. di sassuolo, once a fief of the house of pio, lived in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . cappelli, gio. ant., a brescian, b. , d. . _flor. dict._ iii. . cappellini, _see_ zupelli, _see_ il caligarino. cappellino, gio. domenico, a genoese, b. , . _soprani._ v. . caprioli, francesco, di reggio, painted in , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . capugnano, da, in the bolognese, gio. or zuannino, lived in the times of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . capuro, francesco, of the district of genoa, pupil to fiasella. _soprani._ v. . caracca, isidoro, painted in . _ms._ v. . caracci, (more properly carracci) lodovico, a bolognese, b. , d. . _malvasia._ i. , ii. , iv. , v. . ---- paolo, his brother. _malvasia._ v. . ---- agostino, his cousin, b. , d. . _see_ inscrip. in the cathedral at parma. i. , ii. , iv. , v. . ---- annibal, brother of agostino, d. , aged . _bellori._ ii. , iv. , v. . ---- francesco, their brother, d. , aged . _malvasia._ v. . ---- antonio, son of agostino, d. , aged . _malvasia._ _ib._ caraccino, _see_ mulinari. caracciolo, gio. batista, called batistiello, a neapolitan, d. . _dominici._ ii. . caradosso, a milanese, worker in niello. _vasari._ or perhaps caradosso foppa da pavia, otherwise called a milanese. _morell. notiz._ flourished about . i. . caravaggio, da, _see_ amerighi, _see_ secchi, _see_ caldara. caravoglia, bartolommeo, a piedmontese, lived in . _n. guida di torino._ v. . carboncino, gio., a venetian knight. his records up to ; when he went to rome. _ms. melchiori._ he afterwards returned and painted much in his native place. _guarienti._ iii. . carbone, gio. di s. severino, acad. of s. luca in . _pascoli._ ii. . carbone, gio. bernardo, a genoese, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . _see also_ scacciani. cardi, _see_ da cigoli. cardisco, called marco calabrese, flourished from to . _vasari._ ii. . carducci, or, as he signs himself, in _conca_, carducho, bartolommeo, a florentine, b. about , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- vincenzio, his brother, d. , aged . _conca._ i. . cariani, gio., a bergamese. his notices to . _tassi._ iii. . carigliano, da, biagio, pupil to ricciarelli. _vasari_; who mistook his country. read cutigliano. i. . carlevaris, luca, of udine, b. , living in . _orlandi._ d. . _ms._ he was called di ca zenobrio, and commonly casanobrio, from the noble family who patronised him, iii. . carlieri, alberto, b. at rome in , living in . _orlandi._ ii. . carlini, p. alberigo da pescia, minore osservante. d. , aged . i. . carlone, or carloni, _orlandi_, gio., a genoese, d. , at milan, aged . _ratti._ iv. , v. . ---- gio. batista, his brother, d. , aged about . _ratti._ iv. , v. . ---- andrea, or gio. andrea, son of the preceding, b. . _pascoli._ or rather , d. . _ratti._ v. . ---- niccolo, brother of andrea, and pupil of the same, v. . carnevale, fra., or f. bartol. corradini, a dominican, from urbino, lived in ; appears to have been deceased in . _lazzari._ ii. , . ---- domenico, da modena, painted in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . carnio, antonio del friuli, was living in . _guarienti._ iii. , . ---- giacomo, survived the year . _renaldis._ iii. . carnuli, da, in the genoese, f. simone francescano, painted in . _soprani._ v. . caroselli, angiolo, a roman, b. , d. . _passeri._ ii. . carotto, gio. franc., a veronese, b. , d. aged . _pozzo._ iii. , iv. , v. . ---- gio., his brother, d. aged about . _pozzo._ iii. , iv. . carpaccio, vittore, a venetian. his works up to . _zanetti._ on his portrait executed by himself, in possession of the giustiniani alle zattere, he inscribed the year . _ms._ iii. . ---- benedetto, also a venetian, although claimed by the people of istria, like the preceding. his notices up to . _ms._ _ib._ carpi and testa, ferrarese artists of the fifteenth century. _cittadella._ v. . ---- or de' carpi, girolamo da ferrara, b. , d. aged . _vasari._ or aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- da, alessandro, pupil of costa. _malvasia._ lived about the middle of the sixteenth century. _oretti. cart._ iv. . ---- ugo, flourished in . _orlandi._ i. , iv. . carpioni, giulio, a venetian, b. , d. . _orlandi._ iii. , , . ---- carlo, his son. _ms._ iii. . carradori, jac. filippo da faenza. his altar-piece at s. cecilia di faenza, with name and date of . _oretti, mem._ v. . carrari, baldassare, and matteo his son, of ravenna, living about . _guida di ravenna._ v. . carrega, b. a sicilian, flourished during the last century. _ms._ ii. . carriera, rosalba, a venetian, b. , d. . _zanetti._ according to _freddy_, b. at vienna in . iii. . carrucci, _see_ da pontormo. cartissani, niccolo, a messinese, b. , d. . _florent. dict._ ii. . casa, gio. martino, di vercelli, lived about . _ms._ iv. . ---- della, _see_ bernabei. casalini, _see_ torelli. casanobrio, ought to be written ca zenobrio, _see_ carlevaris. casella, gio. andrea da lugano, painted at turin in . _nuova guida di torino._ v. . ---- giacomo. _ib._ ---- francesco, a cremonese, lived in . _zaist._ iv. . ---- polidoro, a cremonese, flourished in . _zaist._ iv. . caselli, cristoforo, called cristoforo da parma, and also il temperello, painted in . _affò._ iv. . casembrot, abramo, of holland, a painter of the seventeenth century, in messina. _hakert._ ii. . casentino, di, jacopo, died old in . _vasari._ i. , . casini, gio. da varlungo in the flor. territory, b. , d. . _r. gall. of flor._ i. . ---- valore and domenico, florentine pupils of passignano. _baldinucci._ i. . ---- vittore, a florentine, assistant to vasari, i. . casolani, alessandro, a sienese, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , ii. . ---- cristoforo, or ilario, his son, called by mistake consolano, deceased in the pontif. of urban viii. _baglione._ i. , ii. . casoli, ippolito, a ferrarese, lived in , d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . casone, gio. batista, b. in sarzana, lived in . _soprani._ v. . cassana, gio. francesco, b. in the genoese, d. at mirandola, about , aged . _ratti._ or b. , d. . _roy. gall. of florence_, and _oretti cart._ v. . ---- niccolo, son of gio. francesco, b. at venice in , d. at london, in . _ratti._ or rather . _gio. agostino cassana_, his brother, in a letter of the car. oretti. _ib._ ---- gio. agostino, another son, called ab. cassana, d. at genoa, in , aged . _ratti._ v. . ---- gio. batista, a third son, d. at mirandola, shortly after . _ratti._ _ib._ ---- maria vittoria, daughter of gio. franc., d. at venice, in . _ratti._ v. . cassiani, p. stefano, called il certosino, a lucchese, painted in the certosa of siena, in . _della valle._ _lett. seu._, tom. iii. p. . i. . cassino, di, bartolommeo, a milanese. his altar-piece of the immacolata, dated . _ms._ iv. . castagno, del, (in the florentine state,) andrea, d. about , aged . _baldinucci._ i. . castagnoli, cesare and bartolommeo, of castel franco, the former painted in . _federici._ iii. . castelfranco, da, orazio, flourished in the time of titian. _zanetti._ or in . _melch._; who calls him also, _orazio dal paradiso_. horatio per. p. a. d. m. d. lxviii. is read on a large titianesque palla of s. antonio ab., in the church of the dominicans, at capo d'istria. _mss._ iii. . castellacci, agostino, da pesaro, pupil of cignani, b. . _colucci_, tom. viii. v. . castellani, ant., a bolognese, scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . ---- lionardo, a neapolitan, painted in . _vasari._ ii. . castellini, giacomo, a bolognese, living in . _malvasia._ v. . castellino, il, da monza, or gioseffo antonio castelli, living in . _orlandi._ iv. . castello, da, francesco, of flanders, d. in the pontificate of clement viii., aged . _baglione._ ii. . ---- giacomo, a painter of animals at venice, about . _ms._ iii. . ---- bernardo, a genoese, d. , aged . _soprani._ ii. , v. . ---- valerio, his son, d. , aged . _soprani._ v. . ---- castellino, their relation, d. at turin, , aged , v. . ---- niccolò, his son, living in . _soprani._ _ib._ ---- gio. batista, called il bergamasco, d. . _palom._ , aged . _soprani._ or by _orlandi_. i. , v. . ---- fabrizio and granello, his sons. _ratti._ v. . castellucci, salvi d'arezzo, b. , d. . _ms._ i. , ii. . ---- pietro, his son. _orlandi._ i. . castiglione, gio. benedetto, a genoese, called il grechetto, b. , d. at mantua, . _soprani._ v. . ---- francesco, his son, d. at genoa, at an advanced age, in . _ratti._ v. . ---- salvatore, a brother of gio. benedetto. _ratti._ _ib._ castiglioni, da, bartolommeo, a pupil of giulio romano. _vasari._ iv. . catalani, antonio, called at bologna il romano, pupil of albani. ii. , v. . ---- two others, named antoni catalani, of messina, the first termed _l'antico_, b. , d. , the second, called the younger, b. , d. . _hakert._ ii. . catelani, f. bernardo, a cappuchin of urbino. ii. . catena, vincenzio, a venetian, d. . _zanetti._ iii. . caterino and angelo, artists of the thirteenth century, of the venetian school. _ms._ iii. . cati, pasquale da jesi. d. in the pontificate of paul v., aged . _baglione._ ii. . cattanio, costanzo, a ferrarese, d. , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . cattapane, luca, a cremonese, was young in . _zaist._ painted in . _oretti, mem._ iv. . cattamara, paoluccio, a neapolitan, appears to have lived in . _orlandi._ ii. . cavagna, gio. paolo, a bergamese, painted in , d. . _tassi._ iii. . ---- francesco, his son, called il cavagnuolo, d. about . _tassi._ iii. . cavalli, alberto, a savonese, painted at verona about . _guarienti._ iv. . cavallini, pietro, a roman, d. , (_manni, notes to baldinucci_,) aged . _vasari._ ii. . cavallino, bernardo, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ ii. . cavallucci, antonio, da sermoneta, d. at rome, in , aged about . _elogi del vinci e de rossi._ ii. . cavalori, mirabello, _see_ da salincorno. cavarozzi, _see_ crescenzi. cavazza, pierfranco, a bolognese, d. . _zanotti._ or b. , on th october, . _oretti, mem._ v. . cavazzola, paolo, a veronese, d. aged . _vasari._ iii. . cavazzone, francesco, a bolognese, b. , living in . _crespi._ v. . cavazzoni, _see_ zanotti. cavalcabo, baroni gasparantonio di sacco, b. , d. . _vannetti._ iii. , . cavedone, jacopo, of sassuolo, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. , v. . caversegno, agostino, a bergamese. his will in , and his work, dated . _tassi._ iii. . caula, sigismondo, da modena, b. , painted in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ceccarini, sebastiano, of urbino. _lazzari._ d. at fano, almost an octogenarian, about . _ms._ v. . ceccato, lorenzo, a venetian worker in mosaic, flourished towards the end of the sixteenth century. _zanetti._ iii. . cecchini, ant. di pesaro, b. about . _colucci_, tom. vi. iii. . cecco, bravo, _see_ montelatici. ---- di, martino, a sienese, painted about . _d. valle._ i. . cedaspe, _see_ cespede. celesti, cav. andrea, a venetian, b. , d. . _orlandi._ iii. . celi, placido, a messinese, d. . _hakert._ ii. . celio, cav. gaspare, a roman, d. old, in . _baglione._ ii. . cellini, benvenuto, a florentine, b. , d. . _bottari._ i. . cennini, cennino, da colle, living in . _baldinucci._ i. , . centino, _see_ nagli. ceraiuolo, del, ant., a florentine, pupil of ridolfo ghirlandaio. _vasari._ i. . cerano. _in the gallery of the marini serano._ _see crespi_. ceresa, carlo, a bergamese, d. , aged . _tassi._ iii. . cerquozzi, called michelang. delle battaglie, and michelangiolo delle bambocciate, a roman, b. , (_baldinucci_, ,) d. . _passeri._ ii. . cerrini, giandomenico, called il cavalier perugino, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- lorenzo, a florentine, pupil of cristoforo allori. _baldinucci._ i. , . cerruti, michelangiolo, a painter of this century. _guida di roma._ ii. . certosino, il, _see_ cassiani. cerù, bortolo, a venetian, and pupil of verona, d. before . _boschini._ iii. . cerva, pierantonio, or rather gio. maria, a bolognese, flourished in , or . _guida di bologna._ painted in . _oretti, mem._ v. . ---- della, gio. batista, a milanese, flourished about . _ms._ iv. . cervelli, federigo, a milanese, his work dated . _catalogo vianelli._ flourished in . _orlandi._ iii. . cervetti, felice, of turin, painted in . _n. guida di torino._ v. . cervi, bernardo, a modenese, d. young in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ceruti, fabio, a milanese, pupil of agricola. _ms._ iv. . cesare, padre, _see_ pronti. cesari, cav. giuseppe d'arpino, d. an octogenarian, . _baglione._ or rather aged . _stat. della ch. later._ ii. , , , , . ---- bernardino, his brother, d. young, in the pontificate of paul v. _baglione._ ii. . cesarei, pietro, called sometimes perino, or perino da perugia, living in . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- serafino, of perugia, his painting of . _ms._ ii. _ib._ cesariano, cesare, a milanese, b. , d. . _ms._ iv. . ceschini, gio., a veronese, pupil of orbetto. _pozzo._ iii. . cesi, bartolommeo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _malvasia._ v. , . ---- carlo, b. near rieti, in , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . cespede, or rather cespedes, _palomino_, in rome called cedaspe, paolo, of cordova, painted at rome in the pontificate of gregory xiii. _baglione._ _palomino_ adds, that he painted also in spain, and d. . ii. . chenda, il, or alfonso rivarola, a ferrarese, b. , d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . chere, di, gio., a lorenese, painted in venice, as appears about . _zanetti, guida._ iii. . chiappe, gio., batista, di novi, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . chiari, giuseppe, a roman, b. , d. . _pascoli._ more correctly, he died , aged . _galletti, inscr. rom._ ii. . ---- tommaso, pupil of maratta, d. , aged . _oretti, dall'epatiffio._ _ib._ chiarini, marcantonio, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . chiaveghino, _see_ mainardi. chiavistelli, jacopo, a florentine, pupil to colonna, b. , d. . _roy. gall. of florence._ i. . chiesa, silvestro, a genovese, d. young in . _soprani._ v. . chigi, _see_ ghisi. chimenti, _see_ da empoli. chiodarolo, gio. maria, a bolognese, pupil of francia, _malvasia._ v. . ciafferi, pietro, a pisan, called lo smargiasso, or the bully, living in . _morrona._ i. . cialdieri, girolamo, di urbino, b. . _lazzari._ flourished about . _guida di urbino._ ii. . ciampelli, agostino, a florentine, d. in the pontificate of urban viii., aged . _baglione._ i. . cianfanini, benedetto, pupil to frate. _vasari._ i. . . ciarla, raffaello, an urbinese, a painter of earthenware in the time of taddeo zuccaro. _lazzari._ ii. . ciarpi, baccio, a florentine, b. , d. . _passeri._ i. . ciceri, bernardino, a pavese, b. , living in . _orlandi._ iv. . cigognini, ant., a cremonese of the fifteenth century. _zaist._ iv. . cigoli, da, in the florentine state, cav. lodovico cardi, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . cignani, co. cav. carlo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . ---- co. felice, b. in forli, , d. . _zanotti._ v. . ---- co. paolo, b. there , living in . _zanotti._ d. th february, . _oretti, mem._ _ib._ cignaroli, gio. bettino, a veronese, b. , d. . _bevilacqua, life of cignaroli._ iii. . ---- p. felice, minor osservante, his brother, d. , aged . iii. . ---- gio. domenico, another brother. _guida di bergamo._ _ib._ cima, _see_ da conegliano. cimabue, or gualtieri, gio., a florentine, b. , d. . _vasari._ i. . cimaroli, gio. batista, da salò, on the lake of garda. was living in . _orlandi._ iii. . cimatori, _see_ visacci. cincinnato, romolo, a florentine, d. old in . _palomino._ i. . ---- cav. diego romolo, his son, b. at madrid, d. at rome, in . _palomino._ _ib._ ---- cav. francesco romolo, another son, d. , at rome. _palomino._ _ib._ cinganelli, michele, a florentine, painted at pisa about . _morrona._ i. . cingiaroli, _pozzo_; or cignaroli, _orlandi_. martino and pietro, of verona, lived at milan in . _pozzo._ iv. . cingiaroli, scipione, son of martino, a milanese, living in . _orlandi._ _ib._ cinqui, gio., b. in the florentine state, , d. . _roy. gall. of florence._ i. . ciocca, cristof., a milanese, pupil to lomazzo. _lomazzo._ iv. . cipriani, gio. batista, a native of pistoia, d. in london, about . _ms._ i. . circignani, niccolò, dalle pomarance, d. about , aged . _baglione._ this is not correct, as he was painting in . _guide of volterra._ he signs himself _nicolaus circignanus volterranus_. i. , ii. . ---- antonio, his son, d. in the pontificate of urban viii., aged . _baglione._ i. , ii. . cirello, giulio, a paduan, flourished in . _guida di padova._ iii. . città di castello, da, francesco, pupil to pietro perugino, ii. . cittadella, bartolom., a venetian, living about . _guarienti._ iii. . cittadini, pierfranc., called the milanese, d. at bologna, aged . _crespi._ or died, aged , in . _oretti, registry of the annunziata._ iv. , v. , . ---- gio. batista, his son, d. , aged . _oretti, mem._ _ib._ ---- carlo, another son, d. , aged . _oretti, mem._ _ib._ ---- angiol michele, another son. _crespi._ _ib._ ---- gaetano and girolamo, sons of carlo. _crespi._ v. . civalli, franc., of perugia, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . civerchio, or verchio, called the elder, vincenzio, da crema, painted at milan about . _lomazzo._ but it seems he could scarcely then be so old, as there exist documents at crema shewing him to be living there in . _zibaldone cremasco_ for year . in the _notizia morelli_ he is termed _civerto el forner_. iii. , iv. . civetta, or perhaps enrico de bles, a bohemian, living about . _lomazzo._ d. at ferrara. iii. , . claret, gio., of flanders, painted in piedmont about . _della valle._ v. . claudio, maestro, a french painter of glass, d. in the pontificate of giulio ii. _vasari._ i. . clementone, _see_ bocciardo. clovio, d. giulio, of croazia, d. , aged . _bottari._ i. , iv. . coccorante, lionardo, a neapolitan, painted in . _dominici._ ii. . cockier, or cozier, michele, di malines, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ ii. . coda, benedetto, da ferrara, d. about . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- bartolommeo, his son; he signs himself _bartholomæus ariminensis_, and painted in . _oretti, mem._ _ib._ codagora, and cadagora by _dominici_, viviano, called by mistake il viviani. flourished about . ii. , . codibue, gio. bat., a modenese, painted in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . cola, di, gennaro, a neapolitan, b. about , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . colantonio, di, marzio, a roman, d. at turin in the pontif. of paul v. _baglione._ ii. , v. . coli, gio., a lucchese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ i. . collaceroni, agostino, a bolognese, pupil to p. pozzi. _guida d'ascoli_, ii. , . colle, dal, near città s. sepolcro, raffaellino, painted in . _vasari._ i. , ii. . colleoni, girolamo, a bergamese. his _memor._ from up to , or thereabouts. _see the annotations to tassi._ iii. . colli, antonio, a pupil of p. pozzo. _guida di roma._ ii. . colombano, bernardin, painted at pavia in . _pitture d'italia._ iv. . colombini, gio., of trevisi, d. . _federici._ iii. . colonna, angiol michele, b. , in the diocese of como in district of revel, d. at bologna. _crespi._ i. , v. , . ---- melchior, a supposed pupil of tintoret. _zanetti._ iii. . ---- girolamo, _see_ mengozzi. coloretti, matteo, da reggio, b. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . coltellini, michele, a ferrarese, lived in . _baruffaldi._ v. . comandè, franc., a messinese, a pupil of guinaccia. _hakert._ ii. . ---- gio. simone, his brother, b. , _ib._ comendich, lorenzo, b. at verona, flourished in milan about . _guarienti._ iii. , iv. . comi, girolamo, da modena, flourished about . _tiraboschi._ at s. michele in bosco he inscribed on one of his pictures the year . _oretti, memor._ iv. . ---- franc., otherwise called il muto di verona, or il fornaretto, was living in . _pozzo._ d. the d jan. , aged . _oretti, memor._ v. . commenduno, a bergamese, of the school of nova. _tassi._ iii. . como, da, f. emanuele, _minor. riform._, painted in . _ms._ d. at rome, , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . comodi, andrea, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . compagnoni, cav. sforza, a maceratese, lived about . _ms._ ii. . conca, cav. sebastiano, b. at gaeta, , d. . _memorie delle belle arti._ ii. , . ---- gio., his brother, ii. . conciolo, painted at subiaco in . _ms._ ii. . condivi, ascanio, of ripatransone, pupil to michelangiolo; published a life of him in . i. , . conegliano, da, cesare, flourished in the time of titian. _zanetti._ iii. . ---- ciro, pupil to paul veronese, d. young. iii. . ---- conegliano, gio. batista, cima, called from his native place il conegliano. his notices up to . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- carlo, his son. _federici._ iii. . consetti, antonio, a modenese, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . consolano, _see_ casolani. contarino, cav. gio., a venetian, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ iii. . conte, del, or fassi guido, b. in carpi, , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- jacopino, a florentine, d. , aged . _baglione._ i. , ii. . conti, cesare and vinc. d'ancona, d. in the pontif. of paul v. _baglione._ ii. , v. . ---- domenico, a florentine, pupil to andrea del sarto. _vasari._ i. . ---- conti, francesco, a florentine, b. , d. . _r. gall._ i. . ---- gio. maria, a parmigianese, painted in . _affò._ iv. . contri, antonio a ferrarese, d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- francesco, his son, and successors of the school. _ib._ coppa, a pupil of magnasco at milan. _ratti._ iv. . ---- _see_ giarola. coppi, or del meglio, jacopo, da peretola, in the flor. state, b. , d. . _r. gall. of florence._ i. . coppola, carlo, a neapolitan, living in . _dominici._ ii. . coralli, giulio, a bolognese, b. , d. at an advanced age. _crespi._ v. . corbellini, pupil of ciro ferri. _pascoli._ ii. . cordegliaghi, or cordella aghi giannetto, and andrea, of venice, flourished the beginning of the sixteenth century. _see zanetti._ perhaps this giannetto is the zanin (buffoon) of the comandador, often mentioned in the _notizia_. _see morelli_, p. . iii. . coreggio, francesco, a bolognese, living in . _malvasia._ v. . ---- da, _see_ allegri, and bernieri. corenzio, cav. bellisario, a greek, b. about , d. . _dominici._ ii. . corna, della, antonio, a cremonese, painted in . _zaist._ iv. . cornara, carlo, a milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . cornia, della, fabio, of perugino, of the dukes of castiglione, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . corona, leonardo da murano, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ iii. . coronaro, _see_ calvi. corradi, _see_ del ghirlandaio. corradini, _see_ f. carnevale. corso, gio., vincenzo, a neapolitan, d. about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- niccolo, a genoese, painted in . _soprani._ v. . corte, valerio, from pavia, d. , aged . _soprani._ v. . ---- cesare, a genoese, son of valerio, b. . _ratti._ d. about . _soprani._ _ib._ ---- davide, his son, d. of the plague in . _soprani._ v. . cortese, p. giacomo, called il borgognone, a jesuit, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , , , ii. . ---- guglielmo, called il borgognone, brother of the preceding, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . cortona, da, pietro, _see_ berrettini. ---- urbano, painted in . _della valle._ i. . corvi, domenico, of viterbi, d. , aged about . _ms._ ii. . cosattini, canon. giuseppe, an udinese, painted in ; was still living in . _renaldis._ iii. . cosci, _see_ balducci. p. cosimo, _see_ piazza. cosimo, di (rosselli) piero, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , . cosmati, adeodato di cosimo, a roman, worker in mosaic, i. . cosmè, _see_ tura. cossa, franc., a ferrarese, living in . _guida di bologna._ v. . cossale, grazio, a brescian, or rather cozzale, living in . _zamb._, p. . iii. . costa, andrea, a bolognese, a pupil of caracci. _malvasia._ v. . ---- franc., a genoese, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . ---- ippolito, a mantuan, flourished in . _lamo._ iv. . costa, lorenzo, a ferrarese, painted in , d. about . _baruffaldi._ v. , . ---- another lorenzo, lived about . _vasari._ _ib._ ---- luigi and girolamo, his brothers. _volta._ iv. . ---- tommaso, of sassuolo, b. . _tiraboschi._ aged about . _orlandi_, and _cart. oretti_, iv. . costanzi, placido, a roman, associated to the academy of st. luke, , d. , aged . _ms._ ii. . cotignola, da, francesco, (marchesi or zaganelli) painted at parma in . _affò._ v. . ---- bernardino, a younger brother, lived in . _crespi, in his addenda to baruffaldi._ v. . ---- girolamo marchesi, d. aged , in the pontif. of paul iii. _vasari._ or , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . cozza, franc., b. at istilo in the calabrese, , d. . _pascoli._ ii. , . ---- gio. batista, a milanese, d. at ferrara in , aged . _cittadella._ v. . crastona, (_pitture d'italia_) or cristona, _orlandi._ ---- gioseffo, a pavese, b. , living in . _orlandi._ iv. . creara, santo, a veronese, pupil to felice brusasorci. his works with the year . _oretti, mem._ iii. . credi, di, lorenzo sciarpelloni, a florentine, d. aged , after . _bottari._ i. . cremona, da, niccolo, lived in . _masini._ iv. . cremonese, lattanzio, lived in the fifteenth century. _zaist._ _ib._ ---- simone, perhaps the same as m. simone da napoli, iv. . ---- il, da paesi, _see_ bassi, _see_ caletti. cremonini, gio. batista, da cento, d. . _malvasia._ v. . crescenzi, gio. batista, a roman, d. at madrid, aged about . _baglione._ or aged , in . _palomino._ ii. . ---- del, bartolommeo cavarozzi, da viterbo, d. young in . _baglione._ _ib._ crescione, giovanni, a neapolitan, painted in . _vasari._ ii. . crespi, benedetto, of coma, and anton maria, his son, called i bustini, lived, as it appears, in the seventeenth century. _orlandi._ iv. . ---- gio. batista, called il cerano, from a district in the novarese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- gio. pietro, called also de'castoldi, grandfather of the preceding, painted about . _ms._ _ib._ ---- raffaello, of the same family, painted about . _ms._ _ib._ ---- daniele, a milanese, d. , aged about . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- cav. giuseppe, a bolognese, called lo spagnuolo, b. , d. . _crespi._ iii. , v. . ---- antonio, his son, d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . ---- don luigi, canonico, another son, d. . _guida di bologna._ _ib._ crespini, de', mario, of coma, flourished about . _ms._ iv. . cresti, _see_ da passignano. creti, cav. donato, a cremonese, b. , d. , at bologna. _crespi._ v. . crevalcore, da, piermaria, pupil to calvart. _malvasia._ v. . criscuolo, gio. angelo, a neapolitan, d. about . _descrip. of naples_, . _dominici._ ii. . ---- gio. filippo, his brother, b. at gaeta, d. aged , about . _dominici._ ii. . crispi, scipione, of tortona, painted in . _pitture d'italia_; and in . _co. durando._ v. . cristofori, or cristofani, fabio, del piceno, a worker in mosaic, and academical painter of s. luke in . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- pietro paolo, a roman, his son, a mosaic worker, lived in . _pascoli._ _ib._ crivelli, angiol maria, called il crivellone, d. about . _ms._ iv. . ---- jacopo, his son, d. . _ms._ _ib._ ---- cav. carlo, a venetian. _ridolfi._ painted in . _ms._ ii. , iii. . crivelli, vittorio, also a venetian. in the _antichità picene_, tom. xxix. and xxx. mention is made of his paintings of date of and . ii. , iii. . ---- francesco, a milanese, lived in . _ms._ iv. . croce, baldassare, di bologna, d. , aged . _baglione._ v. . crocifissaio, del, _see_ macchietti. crocifissi, de', _see_ da bologna. cromer, called il croma, giulio, a ferrarese, d. , aged about . _baruffaldi._ v. . also gio. bat. cromer, a paduan, d. about . _guida di padova._ crosato, gio. batista, of the venetian school, d. . _catalogo algarotti._ v. . cucchi, antonio, or gio. antonio, a milanese, painted in . _pitture d'italia_. iv. . cungi, or congi, or cugni. in _guarienti's dictionary_, by mistake, called cugini, lionardo and gio. batista da borgo s. sepolcro, lived in the time of vasari. i. . ---- francesco, son of lionardo, painted in . _guida di volterra._ _ib._ cuniberti, franc. ant. da savigliano, d. . _pitture d'italia_. v. . cunio, daniello, a milanese, pupil to bernardino campi. _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- rodolfo, a milanese, lived about . _ms._ iv. . curia, franc., a neapolitan, b. about , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . currado, cav. francesco, a florentine, b. , d. about . _r. gall. of florence._ i. . curti, _see_ dentone. cusighe, da, in the bellunese, simone. his notices from up to . _ms._ iii. . cusin, m., a landscape painter, flourished in . _boschini._ iii. . cutigliano, _see_ carigliano. d. daddi, bernardo, a florentine, d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- cosimo, a florentine, pupil to naldini. _baldinucci._ lived in . _guida di volterra._ i. . dallamano, giuseppe, a moden., b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. , v. . dalmasio, scannabecchi, a bolognese painter, b. about , living in . _piacenza, nel tom._ ii. _p. _. v. . ---- lippo, his son, commonly called lippo dalmasio, or lippo dalle madonne. his notices from . _malvasia._ his will in , shortly before his decease. _see piacenza, in place cited._ _ib._ damiani, felice, da gubbio, his works from to . _ms._ ii. . damini, pietro, da castelfranco, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- giorgio, his brother, d. . _ridolfi._ _ib._ dandini, cesare, a florentine, b. about , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , ii. . ---- vincenzio, brother of cesare, b. , d. aged . _orlandi._ i. . ---- pietro, his son, b. , d. . _r. gall. of flor._ _ib._ ---- ottaviano, son of pietro, flourished during the eighteenth century. _serie degl'illustri pittori, &c._ i. . dandolo, cesare, a venetian, lived in . _morigia._ iv. . danedi, called montalto, gio. stefano da trevilio in the milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- gioseffo, his brother, d. aged . _orlandi._ _ib._ dante, girolamo, otherwise girol. di tiziano, by whom he was educated. _ridolfi._ iii. . danti, teodora, of perugia, aunt of the three danti who follow, d. , aged . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- p. ignazio, of perugia, a dominican, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- girolamo, his brother, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- vincenzio, another brother, b. , d. . _pascoli._ _ib._ dardani, antonio, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . davanzo, jacopo, a paduan, painted about . _notizia publ. dal morelli_, tom. iii. p. . _see_ avanzi. david, lodovico antonio, di lugano, lived in . _orlandi._ iv. . dei, matteo, a florentine worker in niello of the fifteenth century. _lett. pitt._, tom. ii. i. . delfino, cav. carlo, a frenchman, painted at turin in . _ms._ v. . delfinone, girolamo, a milanese, lived about . _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- scipione delfinone, his son. _lomazzo._ _ib._ ---- marcantonio, son of scipione, lived in . _lomazzo._ _ib._ deliberatore, niccolo, da foligno, his work in . _colucci._ ii. . dello, a florentine, d. about , aged . _vasari._ i. . dentone, otherwise girol. curti, a bolognese, d. . _malvasia._ or died, th december, , aged , and interred at s. niccolo. _oretti, mem._ v. , . desani, pietro, a bolognese, b. , d. . _malvasia._ iv. , v. . desiderio, monsieur, a painter of perspective in the time of corenzio. _dominici._ ii. . desubleo, or sobleo, michele, of flanders, pupil to guido. _malvasia._ v. . diamante, f., a carmelite, da prato, pupil of f. filippo lippi. _vasari._ i. . diamantini, cav. gio., or rather giuseppe da fossombrone. _zanetti_, and _colucci_, tom. xxxi. d. . _melchiori._ v. . diana, benedetto, a venetian, was competitor of the bellini. _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- cristoforo, of s. vito in the friuli, pupil of amalteo. _cesarini._ iii. . dianti, gio. franc., a ferrarese, b. . _baruffaldi._ v. . diatalevi, _see_ d'assisi. dielai, otherwise gio. francesco surchi, a ferrarese, d. about . _baruffaldi._ v. . dimo, giovanni, painted at venice in . _boschini._ iii. . dinarelli, giuliano, a bolognese, pupil of guido. _malvasia._ d. , aged . _oretti, mem._ v. . discepoli, gio. batista, called lo zoppo, of lugano, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . diziani, gaspero, of belluno, d. . _catalogo algarotti._ iii. . do, giovanni, a neapolitan, d. . _dominici._ ii. . dolci, carlo, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- agnese, his daughter, lived beyond the year . _baldinucci._ i. . dolce, luzio, of castel durante, painted in . _ms._ lived in . _terzi._ ii. . ---- ottaviano, his father, and bernardino, his grandfather. _ib._ dolobella, tommaso, of belluno, a pupil of aliense. _ridolfi._ iii. . domenichino, or menichino, _see_ zampieri, _see_ ambrogi. dominici, franc., da trevigi, flourished about . _guida di trevigi._ d. aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- de', bernardo, a neapolitan, published his history in and , ii. . donatello, otherwise donato, a florentine, b. , d. . _vasari._ i. , . donati, bortolo, a venetian. _guida._ was living in . _boschini._ iii. . ---- de', luigi, of coma, painted in . _ms._ iv. . donato, painted in venice in . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- zeno, a veronese, a painter of the sixteenth century. _vasari._ iii. . dondoli, l'abate, of spello, lived the beginning of the eighteenth century. _ms._ ii. . donducci, _see_ mastelletta. doni, adone, d'assisi, his work in . _guida di perugia._ read . living in . _vasari._ signed himself _dono delli doni_. _mariotti._ ii. . donnabella, _see_ gentiloni. donnini, girolamo, da coreggio, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ v. . donnino, di, agnolo, a florentine, and assistant of bonarruoti. _vasari._ i. . donzelli, piero and polito, neapolitans, d. about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- pietro, a mantuan, pupil of cignani. _ms._ v. . dorigny, luigi, otherwise lodovico, a parisian, b. . _orlandi._ d. . iii. . dossi, dosso, d. about . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- gio. batista, d. about . _baruffaldi._ _ib._ ---- evangelista, of the same family. _scannelli._ v. . draghi, cav. gio. batista, a genoese, d. , aged . _guida di piacenza._ v. , . ducci, virgilio, da città di castello, a pupil of albani. _ms._ ii. . duccio, di, boninsegna, a sienese, painted in . his mem. up to . _della valle._ i. . duchino, _see_ landriani. dughet, gasp., b. at rome, , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . duramano, francesco, a venetian. _guarienti._ flourished about the middle of the eighteenth century. iii. . durante, co. giorgio, of brescia, b. , d. . _guida di rovigo_, and _ms. carbone presso l'oretti_. iii. . duro, or durero, alberto, b. in nurimburgh, ; rather born th may, , d. april th, ; which dates are verified by the very accurate _bartsch_, in his new work, entitled _le peintre graveur_, vol. vii., vienna, . _baldinucci._ i. , , , iii. . e. edesia, d', andrino, a pavese, lived about . _lomazzo._ iv. . egogui, ambrogio, a milanese, his altar-piece of . _ms._ iv. . elzheimer, adamo, or adamo di frankfort, or tedesco, d. in the pontificate of paul v. _sandrart._ ii. . emanuele, a greek priest, lived in . v. . empoli, da, in the florentine state, jacopo chimenti, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ he is called cristoforo da empoli in _lezioni del lami_, by mistake. i. . ens, or enzo, cav. giuseppe, d'augusta, called the younger, to distinguish him from his father, a court painter of ridolfo ii. flourished in . _boschini._ orlandi calls him ains, or enzo; zanetti, enzo and heinz. in his celebrated tomb of christ at ognissanti, he signed himself _jos. heinsius_. iii. . ---- daniele, his son, zanetti, _ib._ ---- gio., a milanese, perhaps of the school of the procaccini. _guida di milano._ iv. . episcopio, giustino, once called de' salvolini, di c. durante, lived in . _terzi._ ii. . ercolanetti, ercolano, of perugia, lived in . _orlandi._ ii. . ercole, da ferrara, _see_ grandi. ercolino, di, guido, _see_ de maria. esegrenio, perhaps of the sixteenth century, if not more modern. iii. . estense, baldassare, of ferrara, lived in . _baruffaldi._ v. . evangelisti, filippo, assisted by benefial about . _lettere pittor._, tom. v. ii. . everardi, angelo, a brescian, called il fiamminghino, b. , d. aged . _orlandi._ iii. . f. fabio, di, gentile, of the piceno, flourished in . ii. . fabriano, di, bocco, painted in . _colucci._ ii. . ---- antonio, his work of . _ms._ ii. . ---- giuliano. _ms._ _ib._ fabriano, gentile, his work, ; d. an octogenarian. _vasari._ ii. . fabrizzi, antonio maria, a peruginese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ or b. . _pascoli._ ii. . facchinetti, giuseppe, a ferrarese, pupil of anton felice ferrari. _cittadella._ v. . facciate, delle, bernardino, _see_ poccetti. faccini, bartolommeo, a ferrarese, d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- girolamo, his brother, _ib._ fachetti, pietro, a mantuan, d. , aged . _baglione._ ii. , iv. . facini, pietro, a bolognese, d. young in . _malvasia._ v. . faenza, da, m. antonio, his fine picture of . _civalli._ v. . ---- jacopone, or jacomone, the same as giacomo bertucci. his _mem._ from to . _ms._ ii. . ---- gio. batista, his son, painted in . _crespi._ d. th february, . _cart. oretti._ v. . ---- figurino, pupil of giulio romano. _vasari._ v. . ---- marco, _see_ marchetti. ---- ottaviano, a pupil of giotto. pace, another scholar of giotto. _vasari._ v. . falce, la, antonio, a messinese, d. . _hakert._ ii. . falcieri, biagio, a veronese, d. , aged . _pozzo._ iii. . falcone, aniello, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ ii. . falconetto, gio. maria, a veronese, d. , aged . _vasari._ or rather living in . _ms. cited by temanza._ iii. . ---- gio. antonio, his brother. _vasari._ _ib._ falgani, guasparre, a florentine, scholar of valerio marucelli. _baldinucci._ i. , . fallaro, giacomo, painted with credit at venice, in the time of titian. _vasari._ iii. . fano, da, bartolommeo and pompeo, painted about . _ms._ ii. . fanzone, or faenzone; marini writes it _finzoni_, (_galler._ p. .) ferraù, da faenza, a scholar of vanni. _orlandi._ d. , aged . _cart. oretti._ v. . farelli, cav. giacomo, a neapolitan, b. , d. in . _dominici._ ii. . farinato, paolo, a veronese, sprung from the farinati degli uberti, florentines, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. , . ---- orazio, his son, d. young. _pozzo._ his altar-piece at s. francesco di paola, executed in . _oretti, mem._ iii. . fasano, tommaso, scholar of giordano. _guida di napoli._ ii. . fasolo, gio. antonio, a vicentese, d. aged . _ridolfi._ or aged , in . epitaph in faccioli. _museum lapid. vicentin._, p. . iii. . fassetti, gio. batista, of reggio, b. , living in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . fassi, _see_ del conte. fassolo, bernardino, di pavia, painted in . _ms._ iv. . fattore, il, _see_ penni. fava, co. pietro, a bolognese, b. , (perhaps ,) d. , aged . _crespi._ v. . ---- _see_ macrino. fayt, gio. d'anversa, living in . _guarienti._ iii. . febre, le, valentino, of brussels, d. at venice, about . _zanetti._ iii. . federighetto, _see_ bencovich. federighi, antonio, worked the pavement of the cathedral at siena, in . _della valle._ i. . fei, or del barbiere, alessandro, a florentine, b. . _vasari._ painted in . _borghini._ i. . feltrini, or feltrino, andrea, a florentine, pupil of morto, b. . _vasari._ painted in . _borghini._ i. . feltro, da, morto, d. aged , at zara, some years after . _vasari._ or rather after . _cambrucci._ supposed to be the same with pietro luzzo da feltro, called zarato. i. , ii. , iii. . _see_ luzzo. ferabosco, pietro, a supposed lucchese, painted in . _guarienti._ i. . ---- girolamo, _see_ forabosco. fergioni, bernardino, a roman, living in . _orlandi._ and . _carte oretti._ ii. . fermo, di, lorenzino, master of giuseppe ghezzi. _orlandi._ ii. . fernandi, francesco, called l'imperiali, or rather d'imperiali. _guida di roma._ flourished about . ii. . ferracuti, gio. domenico, a maceratese, lived in the seventeenth century. _ms._ ii. . ferraiuoli, degli afflitti, nunzio, a neapolitan, d. , at bologna, aged . _crespi._ v. . ferramola, fioravante, a brescian, d. . _zamb._ iii. . ferrante, cav. gio. francesco, a bolognese, scholar of gessi, painted much at piacenza, d. . _guida di piacenza._ iv. . ferranti, decio, and agosto his son, lombards, flourished about . _ms._ iv. . ferrantini, gabriele, otherwise gabriele dagli occhiali, a bolognese, flourished in . _guida di bologna._ v. . ---- ippolito, of the school of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . ferrara, da, antonio, or ant. alberto, d. about . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- da, cristoforo, or da modena, called also da bologna, his work of . _guida di bologna._ v. , . ---- galasso, his mem. from up to . _baruffaldi._ v. , . ---- gelasio, di, niccolò, lived in . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- da, pietro, a scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . ---- rambaldo and laudadio, lived in . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- stefano, a pupil of squarcione. _vasari._ or, at least, contemporary, as we collect from savonarola, who wrote about . v. . ---- other stefani da ferrara. _guida della città._ one of them painted in . v. . ferraresino, _see_ berlinghieri. ferrari, antonfelice, his son, a ferrarese, b. , d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . ferrari, bernardo, da vigevano, his imitator. _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- bianchi, _see_ bianchi. ---- francesco, b. near rovigo in , d. at ferrara in . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- gaudenzio, b. in valdugia in the milanese, , d. . _della valle._ ii. , iv. . ---- gregorio, da porto maurizio, in the genovese, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . ---- de', gio. andrea, a genoese, b. , d. . _soprani._ v. . ---- girolamo, a vercellese, iv. . ---- lorenzo, his son, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . ---- luca, da reggio, d. , at padua, aged . _guida di padova._ or b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iii. , iv. . ---- orazio, b. at voltri, , d. . _soprani._ v. . ---- pietro, parmigiano, d. . _affò._ iv. . ---- succession of this school, v. . ferrau, _see_ fanzone. ferretti, gio. domenico, called d'imola, b. at florence, . _roy. gall. of florence._ i. . ferri, ciro, a roman, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ii. . ferrucci, nicodemo, a florentine, from fiesole, d. . _baldinucci._ i. . feti, domenico, a roman, d. aged . _baglione._ in . _orlandi._ ii. , iv. . fiacco, or flacco, orlando, a veronese, flourished about . _baldinucci._ iii. . fialetti, odoardo, a bolognese, b. , aged . _malvasia._ iii. , v. . fiammeri, p. gio. batista, a jesuit, d. old, the beginning of the pontificate of paul v. _baglione._ ii. . fiamminghi, angiolo and vincenzio. _guida di roma._ ii. . ---- gualtieri and giorgio, painters on glass, lived about . _vasari._ i. . ---- giovanni, rossi and niccolò, workers in embroidery and tapestry. _vasari._ i. . fiamminghini, _see_ della rovere. fiamminghino, _see_ everardi. fiammingo, arrigo, d. aged , in the pontificate of clement viii. _baglione._ his altar-piece at s. francesco in perugia, dated ; where he signs himself _henricus malinis_. _mariotti._ ii. . ---- enrico, a scholar of spagnoletto and of guido. _malvasia._ v. . ---- gio., painted in the time of gregory xiii. _taia._ ii. . ---- jacopo, a scholar of maratta. _vita del maratta._ ii. . ---- lodovico, _see_ pozzoserrato. ---- (il), _see_ la longe, _see_ calvart. fiasella, domenico, called, from his district, il sarzana, b. . d. . _soprani._ v. . ficatelli, stefano, of cento, lived in . _cittadella._ v. . ficherelli, felice, a florentine, called felice reposo, b. . d. . _baldinucci._ i. . fidani, orazio, a florentine, his works, dating about , d. young. _ms._ i. . fiesole, da, b. giovanni, a dominican, called il b. gio. angelico, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ painted in the cathedral of orvieto. . _della valle._ i. , ii. . figino, ambrogio, a milanese, flourished about . _orlandi._ living in . _morigia._ iv. . ---- girolamo, living also in . iv. . figolino, gio. batista, or marcello, a vicentese, lived about . _ridolfi._ in two engravings in the imperial cabinet, by his hand, we read, _marcello fogolino_. _zani._ the same in his two pictures at vicenza. i. , iii. . filgher, m. corrado, a german, living in . _boschini._ iii. . filippi, camillo, a ferrarese, d. . _baruffaldi._ i. , v. . ---- bastiano, commonly called bastianino, his son, b. . _baruffaldi._ or rather . _crespi._ _ms._ d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . filippi, cesare, another son, d. shortly after . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- giacomo, a scholar of the ferrari, d. . _cittadella._ v. . ---- (taia,) or rather filipepi, _see_ botticelli. filocamo, antonio, paolo, gaetano, brothers and messinese, d. in the plague of . _hakert._ ii. . finiguerra, maso, a florentine, living in . _gori._ i. . finoglia, paol domenico, d'orta, d. . _dominici._ ii. . fiore, del, colantonio, a neapolitan, d. , aged . _dominici._ or d. young. _summozio._ ii. . ---- francesco, a venetian, deceased in . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- jacobello, his son, memorials from to . _ms._ ridolfi and zanetti were mistaken in ascribing to him the picture della carità, with date of ; whereas the cav. de' lazzara assured me of his having read _johannes alemanus antonius de murano_. iii. . fiorentino, tommaso, lived in spain, . _conca._ i. . ---- giuliano, _see_ bugiardini. ---- michele, _see_ alberti. ---- il, _see_ vaiano, _see_ stefano, _see_ vante. fiori, cesare, a milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- da, mario, _see_ nucci gaspero, _see_ lopez carlo, _see_ voglar. fiorini, gio. batista, a bolognese, living in . _malvasia._ painted along with aretusi, in the church of the carità, in . _oretti, mem._ ii. . firenze, da, giorgio, his works from to . _baron vernazza._ v. . flori, bastiano, and foschi f. salvatore of arezzo, assistants of vasari, about . i. . ---- bernardino, and griffi batista, scholars of garofolo. _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- n. della fratta, a painter of the sixteenth century. _ms._ ii. . floriani, francesco and antonio, of udine, lived in . _vasari._ of the first there remains a picture in his native place, with date of , and another of . _renaldis._ iii. . floriano, flaminio, a supposed scholar of tintoretto. _zanetti._ iii. . florigorio, bastiano, da udine. _ridolfi._ or rather florigerio, painted in . _guida di padova._ iii. . foco, paolo, a piedmontese, lived about . _ms._ v. . folchetti, stefano, of piceno, his work of . ii. . foler, antonio, a venetian, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . foligno, da, f. umile. _guida di roma._ lived the beginning of the eighteenth century. ii. . folli, sebastiano, a sienese, painted in . _della valle._ i. . fondulo, gio. paolo, a cremonese, scholar of antonio campi. _zaist._ iv. . fontana, prospero, a bolognese, b. . _borghini._ interred at the servi, . _oretti, from church registers._ ii. , v. . ---- lavinia, his daughter, b. . _malvasia._ d. at rome, , aged . _oretti, taken from an authentic portrait in the casa zappi._ ii. , _ib._ ---- alberto, a modenese, painted in , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- batista, a veronese, a painter of the sixteenth century. _pozzo._ iii. . ---- flaminio, di urbino, seems to have lived in . _lazzari._ ii. . ---- orazio, brother of flaminio, flourished from up to . _avvocato passeri._ _ib._ ---- salvatore, a venetian, painted at rome in the chapel of sixtus v. _guida di roma._ ii. . fontebasso, franc. salvatore, a venetian, b. , d. . _catalogo algarotti._ iii. . fontebuoni, anastagio, a florentine, d. young in the pontificate of paul v. _baglione._ i. . foppa, vincenzio, da brescia, painted in , d. . _zamboni._ _see also_ caradosso. iii. , iv. . forabosco, (written also ferabosco,) girolamo, a venetian, or paduan, lived in . _boschini._ iii. . forbicini, eliodoro, a veronese, lived in . _vasari._ iii. . forli, da, ansovino, a scholar of squarcione. _guida di padova._ iii. . ---- bartolommeo, a scholar of francia. _malvasia._ v. . ---- guglielmo, (oretti finds him called guglielmo degli organi,) a scholar of giotto. _vasari._ v. . ---- melozzo, (f. francesco,) painted about . _vasari._ was living also in . _paccioli_, _summa aritmetica_. d. , aged . _oretti, mem._ v. . formello, di, donato, deceased in the pontificate of gregory xiii. _baglione._ ii. . formentini, il, a landscape painter of this age. _guida di brescia._ iii. . fornari, moresini simone, di reggio, a painter of the sixteenth century. _tiraboschi._ iv. . forner, el, _see_ civerchio. forti, giacomo, a bolognese, painted in . _malvasia._ v. . fortini, benedetto, a florentine, d. , aged . _moreni_, vol. vi. i. , . fortori, alessandro, di arezzo, lived in . _vasari._ i. . fortuna, alessandro, lived in . _passeri._ ii. . fossano, da, ambrogio, painted about . _guida di milano_ of . iv. . foti, luciano, a messinese, b. , d. . _hakert._ ii. . fracanzani, franc., a neapolitan, d. about . _dominici._ ii. . francesca, della, piero, from borgo s. sepolcro, called also pietro borghese, d. about , aged . _see vasari._ i. , ii. , iv. , v. . franceschi, or de' freschi, paolo, of flanders, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . franceschiello, _see_ de mura. franceschini, baldassare, from his native place called il volterrano, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- cav. marcantonio, b. at bologna, d. . _zanotti._ v. . franceschini, can. giacomo, his son, d. . _guida di bologna._ or d. th december, , aged . _oretti, mem._ v. . ---- mattia, of turin. _pitture d'italia_, painted in . v. . franceschitto, a spaniard, scholar of giordano, d. young. _vita del giord._ of . ii. . francesco, don, a monk of cassino; a painter on glass; opened school at perugia in . _orlandi_, _risp._ i. . franchi, ant., a lucchese, b. , d. . _r. gall._ i. , ii. . ---- cesare, of perugia, d. . _pascoli._ ii. . franchini, niccolò, a sienese, living in . _pecci._ i. . francia, domenico, a bolognese, d. , aged . _crespi._ v. . ---- pietro, a florentine, one of the masters of fei. _borghini._ i. . ---- otherwise raibolini francesco, a bolognese, painted before . _malvasia._ d. . _ms._ i. , v. . ---- giacomo, his son; his work of . _guida di bologna._ d. , and interred at s. francesco. _oretti, mem._ v. . ---- gio. batista, son of giacomo, d. . _malvasia._ v. . ---- giulio, cousin of francesco, flourished about . _baldinucci._ d. , and buried at s. francesco. _oretti, mem._ v. . ---- or francia bigi, or franciabigio, marcantonio, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . franco, alfonso, b. at messina in , d. there of the plague in . _hakert._ ii. . ---- angiolo, a neapolitan, d. about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- batista, called il semolei, a venetian, painted in , d. . _vasari._ i. , iii. . ---- giuseppe, a roman, called de' monti and dalle lodole, d. in the pontificate of urban viii. _baglione._ ii. . ---- lorenzo, a bolognese, d. at reggio about . _orlandi._ aged . _malvasia._ iv. . ---- bolognese, _see_ da bologna. francucci, _see_ da imola. frangipane, niccolò, a paduan; according to some, of udine, or rather of doubtful birth-place. _lett. pitt._, tom. i. p. . his memor. up to . _renaldis._ iii. . frari, _see_ bianchi ferrari. fratacci, or fratazzi, antonio, a native of parma, painted in . _guida di milano._ iv. . frate, il, _see_ della porta. ---- paolotto, il, _see_ ghislandi. ---- del, cecchino, a scholar of f. bartolommeo. _vasari._ i. . fratellini, giovanna (by birth, marmocchini) a florentine lady, b. , d. , aged . _r. gall. of flor._ i. . ---- lorenzo, her son, d. , aged . _serie degli illustri pittori._ _ib._ fratina, _see_ de mio. frattini, gaetano, a scholar of franceschini. _guida di ravenna._ v. . friso, del, _see_ benfatto. friulano, niccolò, painted in , iii. . fulco, gio., a messinese, b. , d. about . _hakert._ ii. . fumaccini, _see_ samacchini. fumiani, ant., a venetian, d. , aged . _zanetti._ iii. , v. . fumicelli, lodovico, of treviso, painted in . _ridolfi._ in the _guida di treviso_ he is called fiumicelli. flumicellus is read in the latin documents, according to _federici_. iii. . fungai, bernardino, a sienese, lived about . _della valle._ i. . furini, filippo, called lo sciameroni, a florentine, pupil of passignano. _baldinucci._ i. . ---- francesco, his son, b. about , d. . _baldinucci._ or d. in , and buried at s. lorenzo. _oretti, memor._ i. . g. gabassi, margherita, a modenese, a paintress of this age. _tiraboschi._ iv. . gabbiani, anton domenico, a florentine, b. , d. . _r. gall. of flor._ i. . ---- gaetano, his nephew. _serie de' più illustri pittori._ i. . gabrielli, camillo, a pisan, d. . _morrona._ i. . gabrielo, onofrio, called in padua onofrio da messina, painted in . _guida di padova._ b. , d. , aged . _hakert._ ii. . gaddo, gaddi, a florentine, d. aged , in . _vasari._ i. . ---- taddeo, his son, b. , living in . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- angelo, son of taddeo, d. , i. . _baldinucci._ aged . _vasari._ i. . ---- gio., brother of angiolo, _ib._ gaeta, da, _see_ pulzone. gaetano, luigi, a venetian, a mosaic worker employed in . _zanetti._ iii. . gagliardi, cav. bernardino, da città di castello, d. , aged . _orlandi._ ii. . galanino, otherwise baldassare aloisi, a bolognese, d. , aged . _baglione._ ii. . galeotti, sebast., a florentine, d. , at piedmont, aged about . _ratti._ i. . ---- giuseppe and gio. batista, his sons, were living in . _ratti._ v. . galizia, fede, di trento, was still a young unmarried lady in . _morizia._ she painted in . _guida di milano._ iv. . galli, gio. antonio, a roman, called spadarino. _orlandi._ a painter of the seventeenth century. ii. . galli, _see_ bibiena. galliari, bernardino, di cacciorna, in the piedmontese, d. , aged . _della valle._ v. . gallinari, pietro, called pierino del sig. guido, d. . _crespi._ v. . gambara, lattanzio, a brescian, d. aged . _ridolfi._ or in or . _zamboni._ iii. . gambarini, gioseffo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . gamberati, girol., a venetian, d. old in . _ridolfi._ iii. . gamberucci, cosimo, a florentine, painted in . _moreni._ i. . gandini, or del grano, giorgio, a native of parma, d. . _affò._ iv. . ---- antonio, a brescian, d. . _orlandi_ and _zamboni_. iii. . ---- bernardino, his son, d. . _ms._ _ib._ gandolfi, gaetano, b. at st. matteo della decima in the bolognese, th august, , d. suddenly th june, . _elogio del sig. grilli._ v. . ---- ubaldo, his brother, d. , aged . _guida di bologna._ _ib._ gandolfino, maestro, was living in . _della valle._ v. . garbieri, lorenzo, a bolognese, d. , aged . _malvasia._ or aged . _oretti_, from the _registry_ of s. gio. in monte. v. . ---- carlo, his son and pupil. _malvasia._ v. . garbo, del, raffaellino, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . gargiuoli, domenico, called micco spadaro, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ ii. . garofolini, giacinto, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . garofolo, carlo, a neapolitan, scholar of giordano, d. a few years after his master. _dominici._ i. . ---- da, otherwise benvenuto tisio, or tisi, b. , in the ferrarese, d. . _vasari._ ii. , v. , . garoli, pierfrancesco, b. at turin in , d. . _pascoli._ ii. , v. . garzi, luigi, b. at pistoia in , d. . _pascoli._ or b. , june d. _orlandi_ and _carte oretti_. ii. . ---- mario, his son, d. young. _pascoli._ ii. . garzoni, giovanna, of ascoli, d. , at an advanced age. _orlandi._ ii. . gasparini, gaspare, a maceratese, lived about . _ms._ ii. . gatta, della, d. bartolommeo, a camaldolese, d. , aged . _vasari._ more probably in . i. . gatti, bernardo, or bernardino, called il soiaro, a cremonese; according to others a vercellese, or pavese; was employed in , d. . _zaist._ iv. , . ---- gervasio, his nephew. his works from up to . iv. . ---- uriele, painted in . _guida di piacenza._ iv. . ---- fortunato, parmig., employed in . _affò._ iv. . ---- girolamo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- tommaso, b. at pavia in , lived in . _orlandi._ iv. . gavasio, agostino, a bergamese, painted in . _tassi._ iii. . ---- gio. giacomo, a bergamese, was employed in . _tassi._ _ib._ gavassetti, camillo, da modena, d. young in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . gavignani, gio., di carpi, b. , living in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . gaulli, gio. batista, called baciccio, b. at genoa in , d. . _pascoli._ ii. , v. . gellée, claudio, commonly called claude loraine, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . generoli, andrea, called, from his birth-place, il sabinese. _orlandi._ called generelli in the _guida di roma_. flourished in the seventeenth century. ii. . genga, girolamo, of urbino, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. , ii. . gennari, benedetto, da cento, lived about . _malvasia._ v. . ---- gio. bat., painted in . _guida di bologna._ _ib._ ---- ercole, a son of benedetto, b. , d. aged . _crespi_ in the _giunte al baruffaldi_. v. . ---- bartolommeo, another son of benedetto. _crespi._ d. , aged . _oretti, mem._ _ib._ gennari, benedetto, the younger son of ercole, b. , d. . _crespi._ _ib._ ---- cesare, another son, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- lorenzo, di rimino, was living in . _guida di rimino._ v. . genova, da, lucchetto, _see_ cambiasi. genovese, il prete, or il cappuccino, _see_ strozzi. genovesini, by orlandi called marco, by others bartolommeo, a milanese, painted in . _ms._ in the _mem. oretti_ the mistake into which many, as well as myself, had fallen, is detected: the above was supposed to be his surname, whereas this writer found in the church of the certosa of garignano, _bartol. roverio d. genovesino_, ; and also in the refectory one of his crucifixions with the year . iv. , v. . genovesino, il, _see_ miradoro, _see_ calcia. gentile, luigi, of brussels, an academician of st. luke in . _orlandi._ d. , at brussels, aged . _passeri._ ii. . ---- di, maestro bartolommeo, d'urbino. his painting of . _ms._ ii. . gentileschi, or lomi orazio, b. , d. . _morrona._ i. . ---- artemisia, his daughter, b. , d. . _morrona._ i. . gentiloni, lucilio, da filatrava, perhaps filattrano, and belladonna, whose designs are extolled by marini in the _gallery_, lived about . v. . gera, a pisan, an old painter. _morrona._ i. . gessi, franc., a bolognese, b. , d. . _oretti, mem._ ii. , v. . ---- del, _see_ ruggieri. ghelli, francesco, of the bolognese territory, lived in . _crespi._ born at medicina, th jan. , d. at bologna, d may, . _oretti_ from _ms._ accounts of artists of that place. v. . gherardi, antonio, da rieti, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . gherardi, cristofano, di borgo s. sepolcro, called doceno, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . ---- filippo, a lucchese, d. soon after . _ms._ i. . gherardini, or ghilardini, alessandro, a florentine, b. , d. . _r. gall. of flor._ i. . ---- gio. a bolognese, pupil of colonna. _crespi._ d. , aged . _oretti, mem._ v. . ---- stefano, a bolognese, scholar of gambarini, d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . ---- tommaso, a florentine, b. , d. . _ms._ i. . gherardo, a florentine, lived towards the end of the fifteenth century. _vasari._ i. . ---- dalle notti, _see_ hundhorst. ghezzi, cav. sebastiano, of the commune in the ascolano, lived some years after . _guida di ascoli._ ii. . ---- cav. giuseppe, his son, b. in the commune in , d. at rome in . _guida di ascoli._ _ib._ ---- cav. pierleone, son of giuseppe, b. at rome in , d. . _r. gall. of florence._ ii. . ghiberti, lorenzo, a florentine, d. , aged and upwards. _baldinucci._ i. , . ---- vittorio, a florentine, lived in . _varchi presso il moreni._ i. . ghidone, galeazzo, a cremonese, lived in . _zaist._ iv. . ghigi, teodoro, or teodoro, a mantuan, a pupil of giulio. _orlandi_ calls him a roman. iv. . ghirardoni, gio. andrea, a ferrarese, lived in . _baruffaldi._ v. . ghirlandaio, del, domenico (corradi) a florentine; in some books also commonly written del grillandaio; b. , d. . _vasari._ i. , . ---- davide, his brother, b. , d. . _vasari._ i. . ---- benedetto, another brother, d. aged . _vasari._ _ib._ ---- ridolfo, son of domenico, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . ---- ghisi, giorgio, called giorgio, a mantuan, an engraver in the time of giulio romano. _orlandi._ iv. . ghislandi, domenico, a bergamese, painted in . _tassi._ iii. . ---- fra vittore, his son, called il frate paolotto, d. , aged . _tassi._ iii. . ghisolfi, (crisolfi and chisolfi) gio., a milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ ii. , iv. . ghissoni, ottavio, a sienese, pupil of gio. vecchi. _soprani._ i. , v. . ghiti, pompeo, a brescian, b. , d. . _orlandi._ iii. . giacarolo, gio. batista, of mantua, scholar of giulio. _volta._ iv. . giacciuoli, n. a pupil of orizzonte. _catalogo colonna._ ii. . giacomone, _see_ lippi, _see also_ da faenza. gialdisi, n., a native of parma, flourished at cremona about . _zaist._ iv. . gianella, _see_ da siena. giannetti, filippo, a messinese, d. , at naples. _hakert._ ii. . giannizzero, scholar of borgognone. _catalogo colonna._ ii. . giaquinto, corrado, di molfetta, d. old in . _conca._ ii. , iv. , v. . giarola, gio., da reggio, d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. , . ---- or gerola, ant., a veronese, called il cav. coppa, d. , aged about . _pozzo._ iii. , iv. . gibertoni, paolo, a modenese, flourished in lucca about . _ms._ iv. . gilardi, piet., a milanese, b. , flourished . _orlandi._ iv. . gilioli, giacinto, a bolognese, a scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ d. th june, , aged . _ms._ v. . gimignani, giacinto, b. , at pistoia, d. . _pascoli._ i. . ---- lodovico, son of giacinto, b. , at rome, d. . _pascoli._ _ib._ ---- alessio, a pistoiese, painted in the th century. _ms._ i. . ginnasi, caterina, a roman lady, d. , aged . _passeri._ ii. . gioggi, bartolo, a florentine, lived about . _baldinucci._ i. . giolfino, or golfino, niccolo, a veronese, master of farinato, _pozzo._ iii. . gionima, simone, a paduan, scholar of cesare gennari. _crespi._ or rather a dalmatian by family, and b. at venice in . _family pedigree in the mem. oretti._ v. . ---- antonio, son of simone, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . giordano, cav. luca, called _luca fa presto_, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ or . _conca._ i. , ii. . ---- stefano, a messinese, painted in . _hakert._ ii. . giorgetti, giacomo, of assisi, a scholar of lanfranco, d. aged . _orlandi._ ii. . giorgio, di, francesco, a sienese, lived in . _vasari._ i. . giorgione, or giorgio barbarelli, da castelfranco in the trevigiano, d. , aged . _vasari._ iii. . giottino, or tommaso di stefano, a florentine, b. , d. aged . _bottari._ i. . giotto, (manni explains angiolotto, others ambrogiotto) of vespignano in the florentine territory, b. , d. . _vasari._ is called giotto di bondone from his father. i. , , ii. , , iii. , iv. , , v. , , . gio, tedesco, or zuane, of germany, was companion of the vivarini. _zanetti._ his works up to . _guida di padova._ iii. . ---- di, tedesco marco, was employed in . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . ---- a painter at chieri in . _ms._ v. . giovenale, painted at rome in . _rondinini._ ii. . giovenone, girolamo, da vercelli, flourished towards . _ms._ two of his pictures at s. paolo di vercelli, bearing dates of and . _lettera del p. allegranza al sig. oretti._ iv. . giovenone, batista, giuseppe, paolo, of the same family. _p. della valle._ iv. . giovita, a brescian, called il brescianino, a scholar of gambara. _ridolfi._ iii. . giraldini, (more correctly gilardino) melchiore, a milanese, d. . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- n., his son, a painter of battle-pieces. _orlandi._ iv. . girandole, dalle, _see_ buontalenti. giron, m., a frenchman, flourished in . _boschini._ iii. . gismondi, _see_ perugino paolo. giulianello, pietro, a painter in the modern-antique style. _ms._ ii. . giuliano, giorgio, da cività castellana, painted in ... _ms._ ii. . giunta, _see_ pisano. giuntalocchio, domen., a pratese, scholar of soggi, d. old. _vasari._ i. . giusti, antonio, a florentine, d. , aged . _orlandi._ i. . gnocchi, pietro, a milanese, called also, as it seems, luini, lived in . _morigia._ iv. . gobbi, marcello, a maceratese, lived about . _ms._ ii. . gobbino, _see_ rossi. gobbo, il, da cortona, il gobbo de' caracci, il gobbo da' frutti, or pietro paolo bonzi, d. aged , in the pontif. of urban viii. _baglione._ _see lett. pitt._, tom. v. ii. , v. . gobbo, del, _see_ solari. gori, angiolo, a florentine, lived in . _descrip. de la gallerie roy. de flor._, . i. . ---- lamberto, a florentine, professor of scagliola work, d. , aged . i. . goro and bernardo di francesco, painters on glass, lived in . _moreni._ i. . goti, maurelio, a ferrarese, scholar of facchinetti. _cittadella._ v. . gotti, vincenzio, a bolognese, d. . _orlandi._ v. . gozzoli, benozzo, a florentine, d. aged . tomb erected to him in . _vasari._ i. . grammatica, antiveduto, b. near rome, of sienese father, d. , aged about . _baglione._ i. , ii. . grammorseo, pietro, painted in , v. . granacci, franc., a florentine, b. , d. . _bottari._ i. . grandi, ercole, da ferrara, d. , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . granello, nicolosio, a genoese, pupil of ottavio semini. _soprani._ v. . graneri, of turin, lived in . _ms._ v. . grano, del, _see_ gandini. grappelli, a painter of the seventeenth century, ii. . grassaleoni, girolamo, a ferrarese, d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . grassi, gio. batista, da udine, lived in . _vasari._ iii. . ---- tarquinio, painted at turin in . _guida di torino._ v. . ---- gio. batista, his son. _ib._ ---- nicola, a venetian, pupil of niccolò cassana. _zanetti._ called guassi by guarienti. in the _guida di udine_ he is called della carnia. iii. , v. . gratella, _see_ filippi. grati, gio. batista, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . graziani, scholar of borgognone. _catalogo colonna._ ii. . ---- ercole, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . grazzini, gio. paolo, a ferrarese, d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . grecchi, marcantonio, a sienese, his work of . _ms._ i. . greche, delle, domenico, or domenico greco, and teoscopoli, d. , aged . _palomino_, who here mistakes, the engraving of pharaoh drowning bearing date of . i. , iii. . grechetto, _see_ castiglione. greco, n., scholar of pellegrino da udine, iii. . grecolini, antonio, painted at rome in . _pascoli._ ii. . gregori, girolamo, a ferrarese, d. , almost . _cittadella._ v. . griffoni, annibale, di carpi, flourished in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- don gaspero, his son, b. , painted in . _tiraboschi._ _ib._ ---- fulvio, an udinese, lived in . _renaldis._ iii. . grifoni, girolamo, a bergamese, scholar of cavagna. _tassi._ iii. . grillenzone, orazio, da carpi, d. old in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . grimaldi, gio. francesco, a bolognese, lived in . _malvasia._ d. at rome, aged nearly . _orlandi._ ii. , v. . ---- alessandro, his son. _orlandi._ v. . grisoni, gioseffo, a florentine, d. . _roy. gall. of flor._ i. . grossi, bartolommeo, parmigiano, flourished about . _affò._ iv. . guadagnini, jacopo, a bassanese, d. . _verci._ iii. . gualtieri, a paduan, lived about . _guida di padova._ iii. . gualla, pietro, di casale, deceased about . _ms._ v. . guardi, francesco, a venetian, d. , aged . _ms._ iii. . guardolino, _see_ natali. guargena, _see_ da messina. guarienti, pietro, a veronese, d. between and . _crespi._ v. . guariento, a paduan, or veronese. _notizia_, p. . painted in . _ridolfi._ iii. . guarini, bernardino, di ravenna, painted in . _ms._, and _l'oretti_, who found his name on an altar-piece in the monache della torre. v. . gubbio, da, oderigi, d. shortly before . _baldinucci._ i. , ii. , v. . ---- da, cecco and puccio, painted about . _della valle._ ii. . ---- da, giorgio, flourished between and . _avvocato passeri._ ii. . guercino, _see_ barbieri. guerra, gio., a modenese, was employed in the pontificate of sixtus v. _baglione._ ii. . guerri, dionisio, a veronese, d. , aged . _pozzo._ iii. . guerrieri, gio. francesco, of fossombrone, flourished in the seventeenth century. _ms._ ii. . guglielmelli, arcangelo, a neapolitan, lived in the eighteenth century. _vita del solimene._ ii. . guglielmi, gregorio, b. , at rome, d. , at st. petersburgh. _freddy._ ii. . guglielmo, supposed to be of the school of guariento. _ms._ iii. . ---- di, giacomo, di castel della pieve, lived in . _mariotti._ called himself also giacomo di guglielmo di ser gherardo. _mariotti._ ii. . guidobono, prete bartolommeo, da savona, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. , . ---- domenico, his brother, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . guidotti, borghese, cav. paolo, a lucchese, d. , aged about . _baglione._ i. . guinaccia, deodato, a neapolitan, and pupil of polidoro. _hakert._ ii. . guisoni, or ghisoni, fermo, da mantova, was living in . _vasari._ iv. . h. haffner, enrico, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ and antonio, his brother, a philippine monk at genoa, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. , . hembreker, called mon. teodoro, b. in haarlem, in . _orlandi._ ii. . hugford, ignazio, a florentine, d. , aged . _ms._ i. . ---- p. ab. enrico, his brother, of vallombrosa, b. , deceased . _novelle letterarie di firenze_, . i. . hundhorst, or honthorst, gherardo, of utrecht, called gherardo _delle notti_, d. aged . _orlandi._ in . _sandrart._ ii. . i. jacone, a florentine, d. . _vasari._ i. . jacopo, di, pierfrancesco, pupil of andrea del sarto. _vasari._ i. . ---- di, nicola, _see_ gera. ibi, _see_ da perugia sinibaldo. imola, da, francesco. _colucci._ ii. . perhaps bandinelli. _malvasia._ v. . ---- gaspero, was living in . _ms._ _ib._ ---- innocenzo, (francucci,) painted from to , d. aged . _vasari._ his painting at s. salvatore, of bologna, bearing date . _oretti, mem._ v. . imparato, francesco, a neapolitan, flourished about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- girolamo, his son, d. about . _dominici._ _ib._, ii. . impiccati, dagl', andrea, so called from having painted some felons hanged. _see_ del castagno. incisori antichi, old engravers, i. . indaco, l', or jacopo, a florentine, called l'indaco, painted in . _bottari._ d. aged . _vasari._ i. , . ---- francesco, brother of jacopo. i. . india, bernardino, a veronese, living in . _vasari._ his altar-piece at s. bernardino of , another of , and a third at s. nazaro, of . _oretti, memor._ iii. . ---- tullio, father of bernardino. _del pozzo._ _ib._ ingegno, l', _see_ d'assisi andrea. ingoli, matteo, da ravenna, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ingoni, gio. batista, or gio. batista, a modenese. _vasari._ d. , aged . _tiraboschi._ iv. . jocino, ant., a messinese, painter of landscape in the seventeenth century. _hakert._ ii. . joli, ant., a modenese, b. about , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . l. laar, (in italian written and pronounced laer,) pietro vander, called il bamboccio, b. at laar in holland, about , d. . _gall. imp._ or in . _argensville._ ii. . lama, gio. bernardo, a neapolitan, b. about , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- gio. batista, a neapolitan, scholar of giordano. _flor. dic._ ii. . lamberti, bonaventura, da carpi, b. about , d. . _tiraboschi._ or b. th december, . letter from his son, in _oretti_. ii. , iv. . lambertini, michele, a bolognese, his work of , with another of . _malvasia._ v. . lamberto, a german, or lamberto, a lombard, or sustermans, or suavis, b. at liege in , flourished about . _orlandi._ iii. . lambri, stefano, scholar of malosso, painted in . _zaist._ iv. . lame, delle, _see_ pupini. lamma, agostino, a venetian, was employed in , at about the age of . _melchiori._ iii. . lamo, pietro, of bologna, scholar of innocenzio da imola, known by a _ms._ on the paintings of the said city. _guida di bologna._ d. , and buried in the cloister of s. francesco, painted by him with histories of that saint. _oretti, memor._ v. . lamparelli, carlo, of spello, pupil of brandi. _orlandi._ ii. . lana, lodovico, da modena, d. , aged . _tiraboschi._ iv. . lancilao and girolamo, paduans, lived towards the beginning of the fifteenth century. _vasari._ i. . lancisi, tommaso, of città s. sepolcro, b. , d. aged . _orlandi._ i. . lanconello, cristoforo, of faenza, perhaps a scholar of barocci. _lett. pitt._, tom. vii. v. . landriani, paol camillo, a milanese, called il duchino, was young in . _lomazzo._ his work at la passione, with his name and the year . _oretti, mem._ deceased shortly before . _borsieri supplemento al morigia._ iv. . lanetti, antonio, da bugnato, a scholar of gaudenzio. _lomazzo._ iv. . lanfranco, cav. gio. di parma, d. , aged . _bellori._ ii. , , iv. , v. . langetti, gio. batista, a genoese, d. at venice in , aged . _zanetti._ v. . lanini, bernardino, di vercelli, was employed in . _guida di milano._ d. about . _della valle._ iv. . ---- gaudenzio and girolamo, his brothers. _ms._ iv. . lanzani, andrea, a milanese, d. . _orlandi._ iv. . laodicia, a pavese, living about . _lomazzo._ iv. . lapi, niccolò, a florentine, b. , d. . _roy. gall. of florence._ i. . lapiccola, nicola, of crotone, a scholar of mancini, ii. . lapis, gaetano, di cagli, b. , d. . _ms._ ii. . lapo, di, _see_ arnolfo, _see_ also vol. i. p. , where it is proved that lapo was fellow-pupil, not the father of arnolfo. lappoli, matteo, of arezzo, scholar of d. bartolommeo. _vasari._ i. . ---- gio. antonio, his son, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . laudati, gioseffo, of perugia, lived in . _orlandi._ ii. . lavizzario, vincenzio, a milanese, flourished in . _ms._ iv. . laurati, _see_ lorenzetti. laurentini, giovanni, called l'arrigoni, lived in . _guida di rimino._ v. . laureti, rather than lauretti, tommaso, a sicilian, d. in the pontificate of clement viii., aged . _baglione._ ii. , , , , v. , . lauri, baldassare, of antwerp, b. about , d. . _baldinucci._ or d. aged . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- filippo, his son, b. at rome in , d. in . _pascoli._ _ib._ lauri, francesco, another son, b. , at rome, d. . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- or de laurier, pietro, a frenchman, scholar of guido. _malvasia._ v. , . lauro, giacomo, a native of venice, resident at trevigi, called giacomo trevigiano, d. young in . _federici._ iii. . lazzari, _see_ bramante. ---- gio. antonio, a venetian, a scholar of cav. liberi, of langetti, of ricchi, of diamantini, a good copyist and painter in crayons, d. , aged . _melchiori._ iii. , . lazzarini, canon. gio. andrea, of pesaro, b. , d. , aged . _see fantuzzi notizie del canon. lazzarini._ ii. , v. . ---- gregorio, a venetian, d. , aged . _zanetti._ or in , aged . _longhi._ or rather in , aged . _guida di venezia_ of . iii. . lazzaroni, gio. batista, a cremonese, d. , aged . _zaist._ iv. . lecce, da, matteo, painted in the pontificate of gregory xiii. _baglione._ ii. . _see also d'alessi._ lecchi or lech, antonio, lived in . _martinioni._ iii. . legi, giacomo, of flanders, d. young about . _soprani._ v. . legnago, _see_ barbieri francesco. legnani, stefano, a milanese, called il legnanino, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. , v. . ---- cristoforo, or ambrogio, his father, iv. . lelli, ercole, a bolognese, d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . ---- gio. antonio, a roman, d. , aged . _baglione._ ii. . lenardi, gio. batista, a scholar of pietro da cortona. _guida di ascoli._ or of baldi, whom he survived. _pascoli._ ii. . lendinara, da, lorenzo canozio, d. about . _guida di padova._ iii. , . ---- cristoforo, his brother, and pierantonio, his son-in-law, iii. . leone, da, giovanni, a scholar of giulio romano. _vasari._ iv. . leon, carlo, di rimino, d. . _guida di rimino._ iii. . ---- gio. da carpi, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- (dai,) girolamo, of piacenza, lived about . _orlandi._ iv. . levo, domenico, a veronese, lived in . _pozzo._ iii. . lianori, pietro, a bolognese, his notices from to . _malvasia._ v. . liberale, da verona, d. , aged . _vasari._ iii. . ---- genzio, di udine, lived in . _vasari._ ridolfi calls him gennesio; renaldis, giorgio or gennesio. iii. . liberi, cav. pietro, a paduan, d. , aged . _register of venice_, cited by _zanetti_. iii. . ---- marco, his son, painted in . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . libri, da, girolamo, a veronese, d. , aged . _vasari._ iii. . ---- francesco, his father, and his son francesco. _ib._ licino, or licinio, cav. gio. ant. da pordenone, called afterwards regillo, and also cuticello,--more correctly corticellis,--and commonly il pordenone, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ or in . _mss. mottensi._ iii. , v. , . ---- bernardino da pordenone, perhaps a relative of gio. antonio. _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- giulio, pupil and nephew of gio. antonio, d. at augusta, in . _sandrart._ _ib._ ---- gio. antonio, the younger, called also sacchiense, brother of giulio, d. at como in . _renaldis._ _ib._ ligorio, pirro, a neapolitan, d. about . _orlandi._ ii. , . ligozzi, jacopo, a veronese, b. , d. . _roy. gall. of florence._ i. , iii. . ---- gio. ermanno, perhaps of the same family;--his father, according to the _elogi de' pittori_. i. , iii. . lilio, or lillio, andrea, of ancona, d. at ascoli, in , aged . _colucci_, vol. viii. called also andrea anconitano, which may correct the error of the _dizionario degli uomini illustri di ancona_, which exhibits him as two painters. v. _col._, vol. xxvii. ii. . linaiuolo, berto, a florentine, lived in the fifteenth century. _vasari._ i. . lione, di, andrea, a neapolitan, b. , d. about . _orlandi._ ii. . lioni, cav. ottavio, a paduan by birth, b. at rome, and there called il padovanino, d. in the pontificate of urban viii., aged . _baglione._ ii. . lipari, onofrio, a sicilian painter of this age. _ms._ ii. . lippi, f. filippo, a florentine, b. about , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- filippino, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . ---- giacomo, called giacomone da budrio, scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . ---- lorenzo, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . lippo, a florentine, flourished about . _vasari._ i. . ---- di, andrea, of pisa, living in . _discorso su la storia letteraria di pisa._ i. . lissandrino, _see_ magnasco. litterini, agostino, a venetian, b. , living in . _melchiori._ iii. . ---- bartolommeo, his son, b. , living in . _melchiori._ iii. . ---- caterina, his daughter, b. , living in . _melchiori._ _ib._ lizini, giulio, a roman. _zanetti._ i believe him to be the same with giulio licinio. he is termed a roman, perhaps, as a surname acquired by his long residence in rome. _renaldis._ he painted at venice in . _zanetti._ iii. . locatelli, giacomo, a veronese, d. , aged . _pozzo._ iii. . lodi, ermenigildo, a cremonese, painted in . _zaist._ iv. . ---- manfredo, his brother. a painting at s. agostino with his name, executed in . _oretti, mem._ _ib._ lodi, carlo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- da, albertino, painted about . _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- callisto piazza, his notices from up to . _ms._ iii. . loli, lorenzo, a bolognese, called lorenzino del sig. guido reni. _malvasia._ d. th april, . _oretti, mem._ v. . lolmo, gio. paolo, a bergamese, d. . _pasta._ or more correctly in . _calvi_ and _tassi_. iii. . lomazzo, gio. paolo, a milanese, b. . _n. guida di milano._ d. . _ms._ iv. . lombardelli, _see_ della marca. lombardi, gio. domenico, a lucchese, called l'omino, b. , d. . _flor. dic._ i. . lombardo, biagio, a venetian, living in . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- giulio cesare, flourished towards the end of the sixteenth century. _zanetti._ iii. . _see also_ lamberto lombardo. lomellino, valentino, da raconigi, flourished in . _ms._ v. . lomi, alessandro and mancini bartolommeo, copyists of dolci. _baldinucci._ i. . ---- baccio, a pisan, living in . _da morrona._ i. . ---- aurelio, a nephew of the preceding, d. , aged . _morrona._ according to cav. titi he lived to his eightieth year. i. , v. . ---- orazio and artemisia, _see_ gentileschi. londonio, francesco, a milanese, b. , living in . _oretti, mem._, written by himself. iv. . longe, la, uberto, or roberto, called _il fiammingo_, b. at brussels, d. , at piacenza. _guida di piacenza_, where it is written _da longe_. iv. . longhi, luca, da ravenna. _vasari._ d. th august, , aged . _carrari orazione_, &c. v. . ---- francesco, his son, living with his sister, . _orazione detta._ _ms._ v. . ---- barbara, daughter of luca. _ib._ ---- pietro, a venetian, b. , living in . _aless. longhi_. pietro longo, or de' lunghi, was pupil to paul veronese. _zanetti._ iii. . lopez, called gaspero da' fiori, a neapolitan, d. at florence about . _dominici._ or at venice. _catalogo algarotti._ i. , iii . lorenese, claudio, _see_ gellée. lorenzetti, ambrogio, a sienese. his works from to . _della valle._ d. , aged . _ms._ i. . ---- called laurati, pietro, brother of ambrogio. his works from to . _della valle._ out of siena, up to . _vasari._ i. . ---- gio. batista, a veronese, painted in . _pozzo._ iii. . lorenzi, francesco, a veronese, d. , aged . iii. . lorenzino da venezia, scholar of titian. _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- da bologna, _see_ sabbatini, _see_ di guido, _see_ loli, _see_ fermo. lorenzo, don., a monk of camaldoli, a florentine, of the school of taddeo gaddi. _baldinucci._ d. aged . _vasari._ i. . ---- di, fiorenzo, di perugia. his notices from up to . _mariotti._ ii. . lorio, camillo, an udinese painter of the seventeenth century. _renaldis._ iii. . loro, da, (in the florentine district,) carlo, living in . _vasari._ i. . loschi, jacopo, of parma. his notices, and . _affò._ iv. . ---- bernardino, of carpi. his notices from to . iv. . loth, gio. carlo, a bavarian, d. , aged . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- onofrio, a neapolitan, d. . _dominici._ ii. . loto, bartolommeo, a bolognese, pupil of viola. _malvasia._ v. . lotto, lorenzo, a bergamese. his notices from to and upwards. _tassi._ d. old at loretto. _vasari._ proved to be a venetian. _beltramelli notizie_, &c. iii. . loves, _see_ lys. luca, santo, a florentine, lived in the eleventh century. _lami._ ii. . ---- di tomè, a sienese, painted in . _della valle._ i. . lucatelli, (in most books locatelli,) pietro, a roman academician of st. luke, . _orlandi._ ii. , v. . ---- andrea, a roman landscape painter. _catalogo colonna._ ii. , , . lucca, da, diodato, painted in . _ms._ i. . ---- (da,) michelangiolo, _see_ anselmi. lucchese, il, _see_ ricchi. lucchesino, _see_ testa. lucchetto, _see_ cambiasi. luffoli, gio. mario, a pesarese, painted before . _guida di pesaro._ his works at s. abate were from to . _oretti_, according to church registers. v. . lugaro, vincenzio, di udine, his notices from to . _renaldis._ iii. . luini, tommaso, a roman, d. in the pontificate of urban viii., aged . _baglione._ ii. . ---- or lovini, bernardino, of luino, in the lago maggiore, lived beyond the year . _ms._ iv. . ---- evangelista, his son, lived in . _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- aurelio, another son, d. , aged . _morigia._ iv. . ---- giulio cesare, valsesiano, a scholar of gaudenzio. _pitture d'italia._ iv. . ---- pietro, _see_ gnocchi. lunghi, antonio, a bolognese, d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . luti, cav. benedetto, b. , at florence, d. . _pascoli._ i. , ii. . luzio, a roman, a scholar of perino, painted at genoa, about . _see vasari._ ii. , v. . luzzo, pietro, da feltre, supposed identical with morto da feltro, in _vasari_. called also zarato, and more truly, by _cambrucci_, zarotto. painted at his native place, in the loggia belonging to s. stefano, in . _cambrucci._ iii. . _see_ da feltro. luzzo, lorenzo, da feltre, painted at his native place, in s. stefano, in . _cambrucci._ iii. . lys, gio., called pan of oldenburgh, d. . _sandrart._ in the short _catalogue of the paintings of st. peter in valle di fano_, ( ,) he is termed gio. loves. iii. . m. macchi, florio and gio. batista, bolognese pupils of the caracci. _malvasia._ _oretti_, in the _memorie_, says of the second, that he died th november, . v. . macchietti, girolamo, a florentine, called del crocifissaio, b. about , living in . _vasari._ i. . macerata, da, giuseppino, living in . _ms._ ii. . macrino, d'alba, or gio. giacomo fava, his notices from to . _co. durando._ v. . maderno, da como, flourished about . _ms._ iv. . madiona, ant., a syracusan, d. , aged . _hakert._ ii. . madonne, delle, carlo, _see_ maratta, _see_ lippo, _see_ dalmasio, _see_ da bologna. madonnina, franc., a modenese of the sixteenth century. _tiraboschi._ iv. . maestri, rocco, a pupil of padovanino. _guida di venezia dello zanetti._ iii. . maffei, jac., a venetian, lived in . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . ---- franc., di vicenza, d. in padua, . _guida di padova._ iii. , . magagnolo, a painter and writer of the fifteenth century, a modenese. _tiraboschi._ iv. . maganza, gio. batista, called magagnò di vicenza, b. , d. . _orlandi._ iii. . ---- alessandro, his son, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- gio. batista, son of alessandro, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- other sons. _ib._ magatta, or domenico simonetti, of ancona, an artist of this age. _ms._ ii. . magatti, pietro, di varese, flourished about . _ms._ iv. . maggi, pietro, a milanese, pupil of abbiati. _ms._ iv. . maggieri, (in a picture of s. agostino, at c. di castello, written _maccerius_,) cesare, of urbino, d. . _lazzari._ ii. . ---- basilio, a portrait painter. _lazzari._ _ib._ maggiotto, domenico, a venetian, d. old in . _ms._ iii. . magistris, de, simone, da caldarola, painted in . _ms._ ii. . magnani, cristoforo, di pizzichettone, lived about . _zaist._ iv. . magnasco, stefano, a genoese, d. , aged about . _ratti._ v. . ---- alessandro, his son, called lissandrino, b. , d. . _ratti._ iv. , v. . maia, gio. stefano, a genoese, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . maiano, da, in the florentine state, benedetto, d. , aged . _vasari._ iii. . mainardi, andrea, called il chiaveghino, of cremona. his notices from to . _zaist._ iv. , , . ---- marcantonio, his nephew, one of his works at castel buttano in the cremonese bears date . _bartoli_ and _oretti_. iv. , . ---- bastiano, a florentine scholar of domenico del ghirlandaio. _vasari._ i. . ---- lattanzio, a bolognese, d. in the pontificate of sixtus v., aged . _baglione._ v. . mainero, gio. batista, a genoese, d. . _soprani._ v. . maioli, or maiola, clemente, a roman, according to some a ferrarese, scholar of pietro da cortona, (_cittadella e guida di m. alboddo_,) or of romanelli. _guida di roma._ v. . malagavazzo, coriolano, a cremonese, painted in . _zaist._ iv. . malatesta, _see_ da pistoia. malducci, mauro, and fiorentini francesco, priests of forli, and scholars of cignani. _guarienti._ v. . malinconico, andrea, a neapolitan, scholar of stanzioni. _dominici._ ii. . malò, vincenzo, of cambray, d. at rome, aged . _soprani._ v. . malombra, pietro, a venetian, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ iii. . malosso, _see_ trotti. malpiedi, domenico, da s. ginesio, in the marca, living in . _colucci._ ii. . ---- francesco, di s. ginesio, of the same epoch. _ms._ _ib._ manaigo, silvestro, a venetian, a scholar of lazzarini. _zanetti._ iii. . mancini, annibale, named in the _gall. del marino_, lived about . v. . ---- francesco, of s. angelo in vado, an academician of st. luke in , d. . _ms._ ii. . manenti, vincenzio, of sabina, d. , aged . _orlandi._ ii. . manetti, rutilio, a sienese, b. , d. . _roy. gall. of florence._ i. . manfredi, bartolommeo, of mantua, d. young in the pontificate of paul v. _baglione._ ii. . manglard, adriano, a frenchman, b. , d. . _flor. dic._ ii. . mannini, jacopo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . mannozzi, _see_ da s. giovanni. mansueti, gio., a venetian, painted at trevigi in . _ms._ iii. . mantegna, cav. andrea, a paduan, b. , d. . _guida di padova._ i. , , , ii. , iii. , iv. . ---- francesco, and another son who survived their father. _bettinelli, arti mantovane._ iv. . ---- del, carlo, a lombard, painted at genoa about . _soprani._ iv. , v. . mantovano, camillo, lived about . _vasari._ iv. . ---- franc., living in . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . ---- gio. batista, or gio. batista briziano, scholar of giulio. _vasari._ iv. . ---- diana, his daughter, called diana mantovana, _vasari._ her name is signed, _diana civis volterrana_: painted in . _bottari._ _ib._ ---- rinaldo, scholar of giulio, d. young. _vasari._ iv. . ---- teodoro, _see_ ghigi. ---- giorgio, _see_ ghisi. manzini, raimondo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . manzoni, ridolfo, of castelfranco, b. , d. . _ms._ iii. . ---- of faenza, d. young, v. . manzuoli, or di s. friano maso, a florentine, b. , d. . _roy. gall. of florence._ i. . marasca, jacopino, a cremonese, lived in . _zaist._ iv. . maratta, cav. carlo, called carlo delle madonne, b. in camurano of ancona, , d. . _pascoli._ i. , ii. , . ---- m. maratta, his daughter, ii. . marca, della, gio. batista lombardelli, called also montano of montenovo, d. about , aged . _orlandi._ ii. . ---- lattanzio, of the pagani family, b. at monterubbiano, called also lattanzio da rimino, lived in . _mariotti._ ii. , v. . marcantonio, da bologna, _see_ raimondi. marchelli, rolando, a genoese, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . marchesi, gioseffo, called il sansone, a bolognese, d. . _guida di bologna._ or b. th july, , d. th february, . _oretti, memor._ v. . ---- or zaganelli, _see_ da cotignola. marchesini, alessandro, a veronese, b. , d. . _guarienti._ or , aged . _zanetti._ or b. , d. th january, . _oretti, mem._ iii. . marchetti, marco, da faenza, d. in the pontificate of gregory xiii. _baglione._ or . _cart. oretti._ ii. , v. . marchioni, la, di rovigo, painted towards . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . marchis, de, alessio, of the kingdom of naples, flourished about . _ms._ ii. . marcilla, da, guglielmo, d. , at arezzo, aged . _vasari._ i. . marcola, marco, a veronese, d. , aged . iii. . marconi, marco, di como, lived about . _ms._ iv. . ---- rocco, trevigiano, painted in . _ms._ iii. . marcucci, agostino, a sienese of the school of the caracci. _malvasia._ i. . mareni, gio. ant., scholar of baciccio. _guida di torino._ v. . marescalco, il, _see_ buonconsigli. ---- pietro, birth-place uncertain, a painter of the sixteenth century. _ms._ iii. . marescotti, bartolommeo, a bolognese, d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . margaritone, d'arezzo, d. after , aged . _vasari._ i. . mari, alessandro, of turin, b. , d. at madrid, . _orlandi._ v. . ---- antonio, of turin. _n. guida di torino._ v. . note that co. durando villa, p. , believes that alessandro and antonio mari are the same painter. maria, de, cav. ercole, a bolognese, called ercolino di guido, d. young about the time of urban viii. _malvasia._ v. . ---- di francesco, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ ii. . mariani, camillo, b. of sienese father in vicenza, d. , aged . _baglione._ i. . ---- domenico, a milanese, flourished in the seventeenth century. _orlandi._ iv. . ---- gioseffo, son of domenico, living in . _orlandi._ _ib._ ---- gio. maria, of ascoli, a companion of valerio castello. _soprani._ v. . marieschi, jacopo, a venetian, scholar of diziani, b. , d. . _ms._ iii. . marinari, onorio, a florentine, b. , d. . _r. gall. of flor._ i. . marinelli, girol. d'assisi, painted in . _descriz. di s. franc. di perugia._ ii. . marinetti, antonio, called il chiozzotto, scholar of piazzetta. _ms._ iii. . marini, antonio, a paduan, flourished about . _guida di padova._ iii. . ---- benedetto, of urbino, painted in . _guida di piacenza._ ii. , iii. . ---- gio. antonio, a venetian mosaic-worker, scholar of bozza. _zanetti._ iii. . ---- n. da s. severino, flourished about . _ms._ ii. . mariotti, gio. batista, a venetian, d. about . _guida di padova._ iii. . marliano, andrea, a pavese, scholar of bernardino campi. _lamo._ iv. . marmitta, francesco, of parma. his notices in and . _affò._ iv. . maroli, domenico, a messinese, (_bosch. hakert._) b. , d. , ii. , iii. . marone, jacopo, di alessandria, painted at savona in the fifteenth century. _guida di genova._ v. . marracci, gio., a lucchese, b. , d. . _orlandi._ i. . ---- ippolito, his younger brother. _orlandi._ i. . martelli, lorenzo and baldini taddeo, florentine copyists and imitators of salvator rosa. _baldinucci._ i. . martinelli, gio., a florentine, lived towards the middle of the seventeenth century. _ms._ i. . ---- luca and giulio, scholars of jacopo bassano. _verci._ iii. . martini, gio., of udine, scholar of gio. bellini, his paintings of and . _renaldis._ in the registers of the school of s. cristoforo at udine the person who made its gonfalone, or banner, is called gio. di martino, and there are accounts of this painter up to . _ms._ iii. . ---- innocenzio, of parma, lived in the sixteenth century. _affò._ iv. . martino, di, bartolommeo, a sienese, painted in . _della valle._ i. . martinotti, evangelista, di casalmonferrato, d. , aged . _orlandi._ v. . martis, or martini, ottaviano, da gubbio, matriculated at perugia in , living in . _mariotti._ ii. . martorana, giovacchino, a sicilian, lived in the eighteenth century. _ms._ ii. . martoriello, gaetano, a neapolitan, d. , aged about . _dominici._ ii. . marucelli, or maruscelli, gio. stefano, a florentine, or of umbria, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ or d. , aged . _epitafio presso l'oretti._ i. . ---- valerio, scholar of santi titi, i. . marullo, giuseppe, of casale d'orta, d. . _dominici._ ii. . marzi, by others mazzi, ventura, of urbino, supposed pupil of barocci. _lazzari._ ii. . marziale, marco, a venetian painter in and . _ms._ iii. . masaccio, di s. giovanni, in the florentine state, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . mascagni, donato, a florentine, called afterwards f. arsenio, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . mascherini, ottaviano, a bolognese, d. in the pontificate of paul v., aged . _malvasia._ ii. . masini, giuseppe, his work of , i. . masolino, _see_ panicale. massa, d. gio., da carpi, d. , almost . _tiraboschi._ iv. . massari, lucio, a bolognese, b. , d. . _malvasia._ v. . massaro, nicola, a neapolitan, d. . _dominici._ ii. . massarotti, angelo, a cremonese, d. , aged . _zaist._ iv. . massei, girolamo, a lucchese, d. in the pontificate of paul v., aged . _baglione._ i. , ii. . massi, d. ant. da jesi, flourished about . _colucci_, vol. x. ii. . massone, gio., of alessandria, painted at savona in . _guida di genova._ v. . mastelletta, or gio. andrea donducci, a bolognese, b. , scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ d. th april, . _oretti, mem._ v. . mastroleo, giuseppe, a neapolitan, b. . _dominici._ ii. . masturzo, marzio, a neapolitan, scholar of rosa. _dominici._ ii. . masucci, agostino, an academician of st. luke in . _ms._ d. , aged . _his epitaph at rome. ms._ ii. . ---- lorenzo, his son, ii. . matham, teodoro, of haarlem, lived in . _orlandi._ v. . mattei, silvestro, of ascoli, d. , aged . _guida di ascoli._ ii. . matteis, de, paolo, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ ii. . matthieu, baldassare, of anvers, painted at turin in . _ms._ v. . mattioli, girolamo, a bolognese, lived in . _malvasia._ v. . maturino, of florence, d. about . _vasari._ ii. . mayno, giulio, of asti, his notices from to . _ms._ v. . mazza, damiano, a paduan, scholar of titian. _ridolfi._ iii. . mazzanti, cav. lodovico, of orvieto, scholar of baciccio. _ratti._ living in . _ms._ ii. . mazzaforte, di, pietro, his work of . _civalli._ ii. . mazzaroppi, marco, of s. germano, painted in , d. . _dominici._ ii. . mazzelli, gio. marco, of carpi, living in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . mazzi, _see_ marzi. mazzieri, antonio, a florentine, scholar of franciabigio. _vasari._ i. . mazzolini, lodov., a ferrarese, d. about , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . mazzoni, or morzoni, _see_ morazzone. mazzoni, cesare, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- giulio, of piacenza, living in . _vasari._ iv. . ---- cav. guido, called also paganini and il modanino, of modena, painted in , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- sebastiano, a florentine, d. about . _guarienti._ iii. . mazzuchelli, _see_ morazzone. mazzuoli, annibale, of siena, d. at an advanced age in . _d. valle._ i. . ---- (_vasari_) written by others mazzuola and mazzola, pierilario, of parma, painted in . _affò._ iv. . ---- michele, his brother. _affò._ _ib._ ---- filippo, another brother, d. . _affò._ _ib._ ---- francesco, his son, called parmigianino, and by _lomazzo_, il mazzolino, b. . _affò._ or . _mariette, descrip._ d. . _vasari._ i. , iv. . ---- girolamo, cousin of franc., living in . _ratti._ iv. . ---- alessandro, son of girolamo, d. . _affò._ iv. . ---- filippo, _see_ bastaruolo. mecherino, _see_ beccafumi. meda, carlo, a milanese, flourished about . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- giuseppe, a milanese, living in . _morigi._ _ib._ medola, _see_ schiavone. meglio, di, supposed the same as coppi. mehus, livio, of oudenard, in flanders, b. , d. . _r. gall._ i. . mei, bernardino, a sienese, his works of and . _d. valle._ i. . melani, cav. giuseppe, a pisan, d. . _morrona._ i. . ---- francesco, his brother, d. . _morrona._ i. . melchiori, melchiore, di castelfranco, father of the historian, b. , d. . _melchiori._ iii. . melchiorri, gio. paolo, a roman, b. , living in . _orlandi._ ii. . melissi, agostino, a florentine, painted in . _baldinucci._ i. . melone, altobello, a cremonese, painted about . _vasari._ and about . _bottari._ iv. . meloni, marco, di carpi, lived in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . melozzo, _see_ da forli. melzi, francesco, a milanese, living at an advanced age in . _vasari._ iv. . memmi, that is guglielmi simone, a sienese, d. . _della valle._ aged . _vasari._ i. , . ---- lippo, (filippo,) a sienese, a relation of the preceding, living in . _d. valle._ i. . menabuoi, _see_ padovano. menarola, cristof., da vicenza. _guida di vicenza._ living in . _melchiori._ iii. . mengazzino, _see_ santi. mengozzi, colonna, or colonna mengozzi, girolamo, a ferrarese, native of tivoli, and academician of venice; his memorials there commence before , and continue up to , when he attained his th year. _zanetti._ v. . mengs, cav. ant. raffaello, b. in aussig. , d. . _cav. azara._ ii. , . mengucci, gianfrancesco, da pesaro, a scholar of lanfranc. _malvasia._ ii. , v. . ---- domenico, a landscape painter, flourished about . _malvasia._ v. . menichino, del, brizio, _see_ ambrogi. menini, lorenzo, a scholar of gessi. _malvasia._ ii. . menzani, filippo, a bolognese, living in . _malvasia._ v. . mera, pietro, of flanders, lived in the time of aliense. _ridolfi._ iii. . merano, gio. batista, a genoese, b. , d. about . _ratti._ v. . ---- francesco, called il paggio, b. , d. . _soprani._ _ib._ mercati, gio. batista, of città s. sepolcro, a painter of the seventeenth century, i. . merli, gio. antonio, painted at novara in . _ms._ iv. . messina, da, antonello, called by some antonello degli antoni, d. aged . _vasari._ or b. in , d. . _gallo._ on the authority of a _ms._ by an artist of susi who lived at the close of the seventeenth century. i. , ii. . his notices in venice from about to . _zanetti._ in trevigi up to . _ridolfi._ iii. , _et seq._ ---- salvo di antonio, nephew of antonello, flourished about . _hakert._ ii. . ---- da, p. feliciano, a capuchin (before he became a priest, called domenico guargena) b. . _hak._ ii. . ---- pino, a scholar of antonello. _hakert._ iii. . messinese, _see_ avellino, _see_ gabrielli. metrana, anna, of turin, living in . _orlandi._ v. . mettidoro, mariotto and raffaello, florentines, lived about . _vasari._ i. . meucci, vincenzio, a florentine, b. , d. . _r. gall._ i. . meyer, or rather meyerle (_necrologio of vercelli_) fran. anton. da praga, d. , aged . _ms._ v. . mezzadri, anton., a bolognese, living in . _crespi._ v. . michela, a painter of perspective. _pitture d'italia._ flourished about . v. . michelangeli, francesco, of aquila, a scholar of luti, d. young. _lett. pitt._, vol. vi., ii. . michele, parrasio, a venetian, scholar of paul veronese. _ridolfi._ iii. . michelini, gio. batista, of foligno, flourished about . _ms._ ii. . michelino, a milanese, living in . _lomazzo._ iv. . micheli, _see_ andrea vicentino. micone, niccolo, a genoese, called lo zoppo (the cripple) of genoa, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . miel, cav. gio., of antwerp, b. about , d. . _baldinucci._ ii. , v. . miglionico, andrea, a scholar of giordano, d. soon after his master. _dominici._ ii. . mignard, nicolas, of troyes, d. . _de piles._ aged . _bardon._ ii. . ---- pietro, his brother, called il romano. _orlandi._ _ib._ milanese, guglielmo, or guglielmo della porta, a pupil of perino in design, a celebrated sculptor, and brother of piombo, living in . _vasari._ _see also baglione._ v. . ---- il, _see_ cittadini. milanesi, filippo and carlo, painters of the fifteenth century. _lomazzo._ iv. . milani, giulio cesare, a bolognese, b. , d. aged . _orlandi._ v. . ---- aureliano, his nephew, b. , d. , at rome. _crespi._ v. . milano, da, agostino, scholar of suardi. _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- andrea, living in . _zanetti._ iv. . ---- another andrea da milano, _see_ solari. ---- francesco, was living in . _federici._ iii. . ---- gio., painted in . _vasari._ i. , iv. . milocco, antonio, of turin, a painter of this age. _pitture d'italia._ v. . minga, del, andrea, a florentine, was living in . _vasari._ i. . mini, antonio, a florentine, pupil of bonarruoti. _vasari._ i. . miniati, bartol., a florentine assistant of rosso. _vasari._ i. . miniera, biagio, of ascoli, d. , aged . _guida di ascoli._ ii. . minniti, mario, a syracusan, b. , d. . _hakert._ ii. . minorello, franc., di este, d. , aged . _guida di padova_, iii. . minozzi, bernardo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . minzocchi, franc., called il vecchio di s. bernardo, of forli. _vasari._ d. , upwards of . _carte oretti._ v. . ---- pietro paolo, his son, v. . ---- sebastiano, another son, his painting of , _ib._ mio, de, gio., di vicenza, perhaps surnamed _fratina_, painted in . _zanetti._ iii. . miozzi, niccolo and marcantonio, of vicenza, lived about . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . miradoro, luigi, called il genovesino, painted in . _zaist._ one of his works is at s. imerio, bearing date . _oretti, mem._ iv. . mirandola, domenico, a bolognese, scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ interred at s. tommaso di mercato in bologna, . _oretti, mem._ v. . mirandolese, _see_ paltronieri, _see_ perracini. mireti, girolamo, a paduan, by vasari called moretto. his notices, and . _ms._ iii. . miretto, gio., a paduan, perhaps brother, or relative of the preceding. _see notizia morelli._ iii. . miruoli, girolamo, of romagna, according to _vasari_, or bologna. _masini._ d. about . _guida di bologna._ v. . misciroli, tommaso, da faenza, called il pittor villano, d. , aged . _orlandi._ v. . mitelli, agostino, b. in the bolognese in , d. . _crespi._ i. , v. , . ---- giuseppe, his son, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. , . mocetto, girol., a venetian, painted in . _ms._ iii. . modanino, il, _see_ mazzoni. modena, da, barnaba, painted in . _tiraboschi._ iv. , v. . ---- niccoletto, his engravings from to . _tiraboschi._ i. , iv. . ---- pellegrino, _see_ munari. ---- tommaso, painted in . _tiraboschi._ i. , iv. . modigliana, di, francesco, di forli. _guida di rimini._ lived about . v. . modonino, gio. batista, d. about . _tiraboschi._ iv. . moietta, vincenzio, da caravaggio, flourished at milan about . _morigia._ iv. . mola, gio. batista, a frenchman, a scholar of albano. _malvasia._ d. , aged . _oretti. register of the chiesa delle lame._ v. . mola, pierfrancesco, of the luganese district, or of the diocese of como, b. , d. . _passeri._ or b. at coldrè, , d. . _pascoli_, and _maiette descriz._ ii. , iv. , v. . molinaretto, _see_ dalle piane. molinari, ant., a venetian, was employed in . _melch._ iii. . ---- gio. batista, his father, b. . _melchiori._ _ib._ ---- gio. di savigliano, scholar of beaumont, b. , d. . _vernazza._ v. . mombasilio, cav., painted at turin about . _see pitture d'italia._ v. . mombelli, luca, a brescian, living in . _orlandi._ iii. . mona, or monna, or monio, domenico, a ferrarese, d. , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . monaco, delle isole d'oro, or d'ieres, of the cibò family, a genoese, d. . _soprani._ v. . monaldi, a scholar of andrea lucatelli, ii. . moncalvo, _see_ caccia. monchino, _see_ dal sole. mondini, fulgenzio, a bolognese, scholar of guercino, d. young in . _guida di bologna._ v. . mone, for simone, da pisa, _see_ del sordo. moneri, gio., b. at visone near acqui in , d. . _della valle._ v. . monosilio, salvatore, a messinese, scholar of cav. conca. _guida di roma._ ii. . monrealese, il, _see_ morelli. monsieur leandro, _see_ reder, mons. rosa, mons. spirito, and others, to be found under their respective names. monsignori, francesco, a veronese, b. , d. . _vasari._ iv. . ---- f. girolamo, a dominican, his brother, d. aged . _vasari._ iv. . montagna, bartolommeo, of vicenza. his notices up to . _ms._ i. , iii. . ---- benedetto, his brother, flourished about . _ridolfi._ in the _notizia morelli_ he is considered the son of bartolommeo. i. . montagna, m. tullio, a roman, pupil of feder. zuccari. _baglione_ and _orlandi_. ii. . ---- of holland; olandese, as he is commonly called in italy, and also m. rinaldo della montagna. _malvasia._ d. at padua in . _ms. monteosso_, seen by sig. brandolese. ii. . montagnana, jacopo, a paduan, living in . _vasari._ iii. . montagne, niccolò de plate, of holland, d. about . _filibert._ ii. . montalti, _see_ danedi. montani, gioseffo, of pesaro, living in . _malvasia._ b. . _oretti, mem._ v. . montanini, pietro, of perugia, d. , aged . _orlandi._ _pascoli_ would have it, aged . ii. . montano, _see_ della marca. monte, da, gio. of crema, flourished about . _ms._ iii. . iv. . montelatici, francesco, called cecco bravo, a florentine, d. . _orlandi._ i. . montemezzano, fran., a veronese, d. young about . _ridolfi._ iii. . montepulciano, il, _see_ morosini. montevarchi, il, scholar of pietro perugino. _vasari._ i. . monti, francesco, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- eleonora, his daughter, b. . _crespi._ _ib._ ---- another francesco, a brescian, b. , d. . _orlandi._ iii. , iv. . ---- gio. batista, a genoese, d. . _soprani._ v. . ---- gio. giacomo, a bolognese, b. . _crespi._ v. . ---- innocenzio, of imola, painted from the year . _crespi._ v. . ---- de', antonio, a portrait painter of gregory xiii. _baglione._ ii. . ---- de', or delle lodole, _see_ franco. monticelli, angelo michele, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . montorfano, gio. donato, a milanese, painted at the grazie in . _n. guida di milano._ iv. . monverde, luca, da udine, scholar of pellegrino, d. aged , painted in . _renaldis._ iii. . monza, da, nolfo, painted about . _scannelli._ iv. . ---- troso. _lomazzo._ employed about . _ms._ iv. . morandi, gio. m., a florentine, b. , d. . _pascoli._ i. , ii. . morandini, francesco, da poppi, in the florentine state, b. , lived in . _vasari._ i. . morazone, giacomo, a lombard, painted in . _zanetti._ iii. , iv. , v. . morazzone, da, pierfrancesco mazzuchelli, cav., d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . morelli, bartolommeo, called, from his native place, il pianoro, in the bolognese, d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- francesco, a florentine, master of cav. baglione. _baglione._ ii. . moreno, f. lorenzo, a genoese carmelite, flourished in . _soprani._ v. . moresini, _see_ fornari. moreto, niccolo, a paduan. _vasari._ _see_ mireti. moretti, cristoforo, called also rivello, a cremonese. his notices from about . _zaist._ iv. . moretto, gioseffo, del friuli, was employed in . _renaldis._ iii. . ---- faustino, di valcamonica in the brescian territory, a painter of the seventeenth century. _orlandi._ iii. . ---- da brescia, _see_ bonvicino. morigi, _see_ caravaggio. morina, (by mistake of marini called maina. _gall._) giulio, a bolognese, pupil of sabbatini. _malvasia._ v. . morinello, andrea, of val di bisagno, (in the genoese) painted in . _soprani._ v. . morini, gio., of imola, was living in . _crespi._ v. . moro, il, _see_ torbido. ---- del, batista, or batista d'angelo, a veronese, living in . _vasari._ iii. . ---- marco, son of batista, flourished about , d. young. _pozzo._ iii. . ---- giulio, brother of batista. _zanetti._ _ib._ ---- del, lorenzo, a florentine, living in . _orlandi._ i. , . morone, domenico, a veronese, b. , d. about . _vasari._ iii. . ---- francesco, his son, deceased in , aged . _vasari._ _ib._ moroni, gio. bat., of albino in the bergamese. his notices from . d. . _tassi._ iii. . ---- pietro, a descendant of gio. batista, d. about . _orlandi._ in the guida di brescia, and in the carte antiche by zamboni, he is called _marone bresciano_. iii. . morosini, francesco, called il montepulciano, a scholar of fidani. _baldinucci._ i. . morvillo, _see_ il bruno. mosca, n., an imitator of raffaello. _ms._ ii. . moscatiello, carlo, a neapolitan, d. , aged . _dominici._ ii. , . motta, raffaello, called raffaellino da reggio, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ ii. , , iv. . muccioli, bartolommeo, da ferrara, father of ---- benedetto, who painted at urbino in , after his father's death. _laz._ ii. . mugnoz, sebastiano, a spaniard, scholar of maratta, d. , aged . _guarienti_; who by mistake terms him _murenos_. _see lett. pittor._ vol. vi. p. ., ii. . mulier, or de mulieribus, cav. pietro, called il tempesta, b. at haarlem, , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . mulinari, or mollineri, called il caraccino, gio. ant. da savigliano in piedmont, b. , d. about . _co. durando._ v. . munari, pellegrino, called also aretusi, and commonly pellegrino da modena, employed in , d. . _tiraboschi._ ii. , iv. . munari, giovanni, his father and master. _tiraboschi._ iv. . mura, de, francesco, a neapolitan, living in . _dominici._ ii. . murano, da, andrea. he has an altar-piece at mussorense, bearing date . _verci._ iii. . ---- bernardino, a painter of the fifteenth century. _zanetti._ _ib._ ---- quirico, a painter of the same century. _ms._ _ib._ ---- natalino, a scholar of titian. _ridolfi._ was employed in . _ms._ iii. . muratori, domenico maria, a bolognese, b. , d. . _letter_ from his son in _oretti_. ii. , v. . ---- negli scannabecchi teresa, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . musso, niccolo, of casalmonferrato, living in . _pitture d'italia._ v. . mustacchi, il, _see_ revello. mutii, or mucci, gio. of cento, a nephew of guercino. _crespi. ms._ v. muto di ficarolo, _see_ sarti; di verona, _see_ comi. muttoni, _see_ vecchia. muziano, girolamo, b. at acquafredda in the brescian territory, , d. . _ridolfi._ or rather . _galletti inscrip. rom._ ii. , , iii. . n. nagli, francesco, called il centino, scholar of guercino. _guida di rimini._ v. . naldini, batista, a florentine, b. . _orlandi._ living in . _ms._ i. . nani, giacomo, a neapolitan, scholar of belvidere. _dominici._ ii. . nannetti, niccola, a florentine, b. , d. . _roy. gall. of florence._ i. . nanni, girolamo, a roman, called il poco e buono, (little and good,) living in . _baglione._ ii. . nanni, or nani, _see_ da udine. nannoccio, a scholar of andrea del sarto. _vasari._ i. . napoli, di, cesare, a messinese, flourished about . _hakert._ ii. . napolitano, il, _see_ d'angeli. nappi, francesco, a milanese, d. in the pontificate of urban viii., aged . _baglione._ iv. . nardini, d. tommaso, of ascoli, d. about , aged . _guida di ascoli._ ii. . naselli, francesco, a ferrarese, d. about . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- alessandro, supposed son of francesco. _ms._ _crespi._ v. , . nasini, cav. giuseppe, b. in the sienese, in , d. . _della valle._ i. . ---- cav. apollonio, a clerk, his son, b. , at florence. _della valle._ d. about . _ms._ i. . ---- d. antonio, a brother of giuseppe, d. . _roy. gall. of flor._ i. . nasocchio, giuseppe, da bassano, painted in the style of the fifteenth century; left a work with date . i call him the elder, to distinguish him from francesco and bartolommeo, who lived in . _verci._ iii. . natali, carlo, a cremonese, called guardolino, b. about . living in . _zaist._ iv. . ---- gio. batista, his son, painted in , d. towards . _zaist._ iv. . ---- giuseppe, di casal maggiore, in the cremonese, b. , d. . _zaist._ iv. . ---- francesco, his brother, d. about . _zaist._ iv. . ---- pietro and lorenzo, their brothers. _ib._ ---- gio. batista, son of giuseppe, d. young. _zaist._ iv. . ---- gio. batista, son of francesco. _zaist._ _ib._ natoire, charles, a frenchman, b. , d. . _roy. gall. of flor._ ii. . naudi, antonio, an italian, scholar of paul veronese. _palomino._ iii. . nazzari, bartolommeo, a bergamese, b. , d. . _tassi._ iii. . nebbia, cesare, of orvieto, d. in the pontificate of paul v., aged . _baglione._ living in . _oretti, mem._ ii. , iv. . nebea, or nebbia, galeotto, of the territory of alessandria, painted at genoa about . _guida di genova._ v. . negri, pietro, a venetian, painted in . _lett. pitt._, vol. iv. iii. . ---- gio. francesco, a bolognese, b. , living in . _orlandi._ v. . ---- or neri, pietro martire, a cremonese, flourished about . _zaist._ iv. . negrone, pietro, a calabrese, d. about , aged . _dominici._ ii. . nelli, pietro, flourished at rome the beginning of the eighteenth century. _ms._ i. , ii. . ---- suor, plautilla, a nun of st. catherine, at florence, d. , aged . _ms._ i. . nello, bernardo di gio. falconi, a pisan, flourished about . _morrona._ i. . neri, gio., a bolognese, living in . _masini._ v. . ---- nello, a pisan, painted in . _morrona._ i. . nerito, jacopo, da padova, scholar of gentile da fabriano. _ms._ iii. . nero, del, durante, da borgo s. sepolcro, painted in . _vasari._ i. . neroccio, a sienese, painted about . _d. valle._ i. . neroni, bartolommeo, _see_ il riccio. nervesa, gaspare, del friuli, of the school of titian. _ridolfi._ iii. . niccolò, a painter employed in gemona, . _ms._ iii. . ---- di, gio., perhaps the same as gio. di pisa, a painter of the fourteenth century. _morrona._ i. . niceron, p. gianfrancesco paolotto, a frenchman. _guida di roma._ ii. . nicoluccio, a calabrese, scholar of lorenzo costa. _vasari._ ii. , v. . ninfe, dalle, cesare, a supposed pupil of tintoretto. _zanetti._ iii. . nobili, de', durante di caldarola, in the picenum, painted in . _guida di ascoli._ ii. . noferi, michele, a florentine, scholar of vincenzio dandini. _baldinucci._ i. . nogari, giuseppe, a venetian, d. , aged . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- paris, a roman, d. in the pontificate of clement viii., aged . _baglione._ ii. . nonzio, a miniature painter, or annunzio, living in , at milan. _morigia._ iv. . nosadella, _see_ bezzi. notti, dalle, gherardo, _see_ hundhorst. nova, de, pecino, a bergamese, painted as early as , d. . _tassi._ iii. . ---- pietro, his brother, notices of him, from the year . _ib._ novara, da, pietro, painted in . _ms._ iv. . ---- pietro, his father. _ms._ _ib._ novellara, da, lelio, _see_ orsi. novelli, gio. batista, da castelfranco, d. , aged . iii. . ---- pietro, cav., called from his birth-place monrealese, termed by mistake morelli, lived in . _guarienti._ he is also praised by rosa, in the _serie della g. i. di vienna_, p. . ii. . nucci, allegretto, di fabriano, painted in . _ms._ ii. . ---- avanzino, di città di castello, d. , aged . _baglione._ ii. . ---- benedetto, di gubbio, d. . _ab. ranghiasci._ iii. . ---- virgilio, his brother. _ranghiasci._ _ib._ nunziata, del, toto, a florentine, scholar of ridolfo ghirlandaio. _vasari._ i. . nuvolone, panfilo, a cremonese, flourished in . _zaist._ d. , aged . _gallerati istruz. della pitt. milanesi._ iv. . nuvolone, carlo francesco, his son, a milanese, called also panfilo, b. , d. . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- gioseffo, another son, a milanese, called also panfilo, b. , d. aged . _orlandi._ iv. . nuzzi, mario, b. at penna, a diocese of fermo, in , d. at rome in . _pascoli._ ii. . o. oberto, di, francesco, painted at genoa in . _guida di genova._ v. . occhiali, dagli, gabriele, _see_ ferrantini, _see_ vanvitelli. odam, girolamo, a roman, b. , living in . _orlandi._ ii. . odazzi, or odasi, giovanni, b. at rome in , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . oddi, giuseppe, a pesarese, scholar of maratta. _guida di pesaro._ ii. . ---- mauro, parmigiano, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . oderico, a canon of siena, and a miniaturist, living in . _della valle._ i. . ---- gio. paolo, a genoese, d. , aged . _soprani._ v. . oderigi, _see_ da gubbio. oldoni, boniforte, a citizen of vercelli, and ercole oldoni, painted in . _della valle._ iv. . oliva, pietro, a messinese, flourished towards . _hakert._ ii. . olivieri, domenico, of turin, b. , d. . _della valle._ v. . omino, l', _see_ lombardi. onofrio, di, crescenzio. _colonna catalogue._ he signed his name also crescenzi, living in . _ms._ ii. . orbetto, _see_ turchi. orcagna, or orgagna, (those desirous of the utmost degree of minuteness in minute matters, may consult _baldinucci_, _bottari_, and _manni_,) andrea, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . orcagna, bernardo, an elder brother of andrea. _vasari._ i. . orioli, bartolommeo, painted at trevigi in . _federici._ iii. . orizzonte, _see_ van bloemen. orlandi, odoardo, a bolognese, b. , living in . _orlandi._ d. . _oretti, mem._ v. . ---- stefano, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . orlandini, giulio, of parma, _orlandi._ lived in the seventeenth century. iv. . orlando, bernardo, painted at turin in . _ms._ v. . ornerio, gerardo, a frisian, painter of glass: painted in . _orlandi._ i. . orrente, pietro, di murcia, a supposed scholar of bassano. _conca._ iii. . orsi, benedetto, di pescia, a pupil of baldassare franceschini. _ms._ i. . ---- bernardino, da reggio, painted in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- lelio, da reggio, called lelio da novellara, d. , aged . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- prospero, a roman, d. under urban viii., aged . _baglione._ ii. . orsoni, gioseffo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ortolano, or gio. batista benvenuto, a ferrarese, painted in . _guida di ferrara._ d. about . _baruffaldi._ v. . orvietani, andrea and bartolommeo, painted in . _d. valle._ ii. . orvietano, ugolino, painted in . _d. valle._ ii. . ossana, biffi, ciniselli, ciocca, followers of procaccini, iv. . ottini, felice, or felicetto di brandi, d. young about . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- pasquale, a veronese, d. , aged about . _pozzo._ ii. , iii. . p. pacchiarotto, jacopo, a sienese, went into france in . _della valle._ i. . pace, del, or paci ranieri, a pisan, painted in . _morrona._ i. . paccelli, matteo, a neapolitan, a pupil of giordano, d. about . _dominici._ ii. , . pacicco, or pacecco, _see_ di rosa. paderna, gio., a bolognese, and scholar of dentone, d. aged . _malvasia._ v. . ---- paolo antonio, a bolognese, b. , d. . _orlandi._ v. . padova, da, girolamo, called girolamo dal santo, d. about , aged . _guida di padova._ iii. , , . ---- lauro, a scholar of squarcione. _sansovino._ iii. . ---- maestro angelo, painted in . _guida di padova._ iii. . padovanino, _see_ varotari. padovano, giusto, or giusto menabuoi, a florentine, d. about . _guida di padova._ iii. . ---- gio. and antonio, painters of the same age. _ib._ ---- del, or di lamberto federigo, of flanders, lived in . _vasari._ i. . paesi, da', _see_ bassi, dal sole, muziano, vernigo. paganelli, niccolo, di faenza, b. , d. . _oretti cart._ v. . pagani, gasparo, a modenese, painted in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- paolo, di valsolda, in the milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- francesco, a florentine, d. , aged . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- gregorio, his son, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ _ib._ ---- vincenzio, da monte rubbiano, in the picenum, painted in , _civalli._ ii. . ---- or da rimino lattanzio, _see_ della marca. paganini, _see_ mazzoni giulio. paggi, gio. batista, a genoese, b. , d. . _soprani._ i. , v. , . paggio, il, _see_ merani. paglia, francesco, a brescian, b. . _orlandi._ d. after the year . _ms._ iii. . ---- antonio and angiolo, his sons; the former d. th february, , aged , the latter d. , aged . _carboni ms., presso l'oretti._ _ib._ pagni, benedetto, da pescia, a scholar of giulio romano. _vasari._ i. , iv. . paladini, arcangela, a pisan lady, b. , d. . _r. gall. of flor._ i. , iv. . ---- cav. giuseppe, a sicilian, lived in the seventeenth century, ii. . ---- litterio, a messinese, d. in the plague of , aged . _hakert._ ii. . palladino, adriano, a cortonese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ i. , ii. . ---- filippo, a florentine, (by _hakert_ it is written paladini,) d. in mazzarino, , aged about . i. . palloni, (_orlandi_,) or polloni, (_baldinucci_,) michelangiolo, da' campi nel fiorentino. passed into poland in . _baldinucci._ i. . palma, jacopo, the elder, d. aged . _vasari._ iii. . ---- jacopo, the younger, b. , d. aged about . _ridolfi._ ii. , iii. . ---- antonio, father of jacopo, the younger, flourished in . _guarienti._ iii. . palmegiani, marco, da forli, his notices of and . _ms._ v. . palmerini, a native of urbino, flourished about . _guida di urbino._ ii. . palmerucci, guido, da gubbio, painted about . _ab. ranghiasci._ ii. . palmieri, giuseppe, a genoese, b. , d. aged . _ratti._ v. . palombo, bartolommeo, a scholar of pietro da cortona. _orlandi._ ii. . palomino, d. antonio, b. near cordova, a married man, and then a priest, d. , aged . _conca._ ii. . paltronieri, gio. francesco, da carpi, lived in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- pietro, called il mirandolese dalle prospettive, b. ..., d. at bologna; d. d july, . _oretti, mem._ v. . pampurini, alessandro, a cremonese, painted in . _zaist._ iv. . pan, _see_ lys. pancotto, pietro, a bolognese, pupil of the caracci. _malvasia._ flourished about . _masini._ v. . pandolfi, giangiacomo, da pesaro, flourished about . _ms._ ii. . panetti, domenico, a ferrarese, b. , d. about . _baruffaldi._ v. . panfilo, _see_ nuvoloni. panicale, da, (in the florentine state,) masolino, d. , aged . _baldinucci._ i. . panico, anton maria, a bolognese, scholar of annibal caracci, d. at farnese. _bellori._ v. . pannicciati, jacopo, a ferrarese, d. young about . _baruffaldi._ v. . pannini, cav. gio. paolo, of piacenza, b. , d. . _guida di piacenza._ ii. , iv. , v. . panza, cav. federigo, a milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . panzacchi, maria elena, a bolognese lady, b. , living in . _orlandi._ d. . _oretti, from the church registry of s. andrea degli ansaldi._ v. . paoletti, paolo, a paduan, d. at udine, in . _renaldis._ iii. . paolillo, a neapolitan, scholar of sabbatini. _dominici._ ii. . paolini, or paulini, pietro, a lucchese, d. old about . _baldinucci._ or d. . _oretti, mem._ i. . ---- pio, an udinese, referred to the academy of rome in . _orlandi._ iii. . paolo, maestro, painted at venice in . _zanetti._ in vicenza, . _morelli notiz._ iii. . ---- jacopo and giovanni, his sons. _ms._ _ib._ papa, simone, a neapolitan, b. about , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- simone, the younger, a neapolitan, b. about , d. shortly before . _dominici._ ii. . paparello, or papacello, tommaso, a cortonese, scholar of giulio romano. _vasari._ living in . _mariotti._ i. . pappanelli, niccolò, d. , aged , v. . paradisi, niccolò, a venetian, painted in , iii. . paradiso, dal, _see_ castelfranco. paradosso, _see_ trogli. parasole, bernardino, a native of norcia, d. in the pontificate of urban viii. _baglione._ ii. . parentani, antonino, painted at turin about . _guida di torino._ v. . parentino, bernardo, or lorenzo, (the one his name before he became a monk, the other his assumed ecclesiastical name) of parenzo, in istria; d. an augustine friar, at vicenza, in , aged . _his epitaph in faccioli._ iii. . paris, di, _see_ alfani. parma, da, lodovico, a scholar of francia. _affò._ scholar of costa. _malvasia._ iv. . ---- cristoforo, _see_ caselli. ---- daniello, _see_ de por. parmigiano, fabrizio, d. in the pontificate of clement viii., aged . _baglione._ ii. , iv. . parmigianino, _see_ mazzuoli, _see_ scaglia, _see_ rocca. parocel, stefano, painted at rome in the early part of the eighteenth century. _see guida di roma._ ii. . parodi, domenico, a genoese, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . ---- batista, his brother, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . ---- pellegro, son of domenico, living in . _ratti._ _ib._ ---- ottavio, a pavese, b. , living in . _orlandi._ iv. . parolini, giacomo, a ferrarese, d. , aged about . _baruffaldi._ v. . parone, francesco, a milanese, d. young in . _baruffaldi._ iv. . parrasio, angelo, a sienese, painted in . _colucci._ i. . pasinelli, lorenzo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. , . pasquali, filippo, a forlivese, scholar of cignani. _orlandi._ v. . pasqualini, felice, a bolognese, scholar of sabbatini. _malvasia._ v. . pasqualino, _see_ rossi. pasqualotto, costantino, da vicenza, lived about . _ms._ iii. . passante, bartolommeo, a neapolitan, pupil of spagnoletto. _dominici._ ii. . passarotti, bartolommeo, a bolognese, flourished about . _guida di bologna._ d. . _oretti, from the registry of s. martino maggiore._ v. . ---- tiburzio, d. . aurelio, d. at rome in the time of clement viii. ventura, d. . passarotto, d. . his sons. _oretti, mem._ v. . passeri, (in some books passari,) gio. batista, a roman, b. about , d. a priest in . _life prefixed by the editor to the lives written by him._ ii. . ---- giuseppe, his nephew, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- andrea, of como, painted in . _ms._ iv. . passignano, da, in the florentine state, cav. domenico cresti, called also passignani, b. , d. . _r. gall. of florence._ if he be admitted master of lodovico caracci, the date of his birth must be placed earlier. i. , ii. , iii. , v. . pasterini, jacopo, a venetian, a mosaic worker, flourished about . _zanetti._ iii. . pasti, matteo, a veronese, living in . _maffei._ i. , iii. . pastorino, da siena, painted at rome about . _taia._ i. . patanazzi, ----, of urbino, about the times of claudio veronese. _ms._ ii. . pavese, il, _see_ sacchi. pavesi, francesco, scholar of maratta. _vita del maratta._ ii. . pavia, giacomo, a bolognese, b. the th february, . _oretti, mem._ d. about . _guida di bologna._ v. . ---- da, donato bardo, painted in savona about . _guida di genova._ v. . ---- gio., a scholar of costa. _malvasia._ iv. . ---- lorenzo, painted at savona in . _guida di genova._ v. . pauluzzi, stefano, a venetian, living in . _boschini._ iii. . pavona, francesco, di udine, d. at venice in , aged . _guida di bologna._ corrected by _renaldis_, for b. , d. . v. . pecchio, domenico, a veronese, and scholar of balestra, living in . _lett. pittor._ d. about . _dizion. istorico._ iii. , v. . pecori, domenico aretino, a pupil of d. bartolommeo. _vasari._ i. . pedrali, giacomo, a brescian, companion of domenico bruni. _orlandi._ d. before . _boschini._ iii. . pedretti, giuseppe, a bolognese, d. , aged . _guida di bologna._ or b. th february, . _oretti, mem._ v. . pedrini, gio., a supposed scholar of vinci at milan. _ms._ iv. . pedroni, pietro, di pontremoli, d. . _ms._ i. . pellegrini, antonio, of a paduan family, b. at venice, . d. . _guida di padova._ iii. . ---- girolamo, a roman, painted about . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- felice, of perugia, b. . _orlandi._ ii. ; and vincenzio his brother, called il pittor bello, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- lodovica, a milanese lady. _nuova guida di milano_ for . or antonia. _nuova guida di milano_ for . painted in . iv. . ---- andrea, a milanese of the same family, living in . _morigia._ _ib._ ---- pellegrino, his cousin, d. . _ms._ _ib._ pellegrino, di, s. daniello, his true name is martino d'udine, d. soon after . _renaldis._ iii. , v. . pellegrino, da modena, _see_ munari. ---- da bologna, _see_ tibaldi. pellini, andrea, a cremonese, painted in . _ms._ his christ taken from the cross at s. eustorgio, bears date . _oretti, mem._ iv. . ---- marcantonio, a pavese, b. , living in . _orlandi._ confirmed by _oretti, from the registry of his baptism_. he had afterwards an account of his death, which occurred st january, , and that he was aged years. iv. . pennacchi, piermaria, di trevigi, flourished about . _zanetti._ iii. . penni, gianfrancesco, or il fattore, b. at florence, d. aged , about . _vasari._ ii. . ---- luca, his brother, assistant of rosso. _vasari._ i. , ii. . pensaben, p. marco, and maraveia p. marco, his assistant, dominicans at venice, painted at trevigi in and ; the former born about , and registered in the bills of mortality for . a painter of singular merit, made known to history by p. m. federici. iii. . peranda, santo, a venetian, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ iii. . perino, _see_ cesarei, _see_ del vaga. perla, francesco, da mantova, a painter of the sixteenth century. _volta._ iv. . peroni, don giuseppe, di parma, d. old in . _affò._ iv. . peroxino, gio., painted in . _della valle._ v. . perraccini, giuseppe, called il mirandolese, a scholar of franceschini, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . perucci, orazio, da reggio, d. , aged . _tiraboschi._ iv. . perugia, da, gianniccola, b. about . _pascoli._ d. . _mariotti._ ii. . ---- mariano, his notices from to . _mariotti._ ii. . ---- sinibaldo, his works in and . _mariotti._ _ib._ perugini, a landscape painter at milan, in the time of magnasco. _ratti._ iv. . another of the same name is met with at milan, d. . _ms._ iv. . perugino, domenico, master of antiveduto grammatica. _baglione._ i. . ---- lello, painted in . _della valle._ ii. . ---- paolo, or paolo gismondi, an academician of st. luke from . _orlandi._ ii. . ---- pietro, or pietro vannucci, b. at città della pieve, whence he signs himself _de castro plebis_, b. , d. . _pascoli._ i. , , ii. , . ---- another pietro da perugia, mentioned by vasari, who appears to have lived about . ii. , iii. . --- il cavaliere, _see_ cerrini. peruzzi, baldassare, called also baldassare da siena, b. in accaiano, (in the sienese) , d. . _della valle._ i. ., ii. . peruzzini, cav. giovanni, of ancona, d. , aged . _orlandi._ v. , . ---- domenico, his brother. _guida di pesaro._ _ib._ ---- paolo, son of cav. gio., painted about , _ib._ pesari, gio. batista, a modenese, living about . _tiraboschi._ iv. . pesaro, da, niccolo trometta, d. in the pontificate of paul v., aged . _baglione._ ii. . pesci, gaspero, a bolognese, living in . _catalogo algarotti._ v. . pescia, da, mariano gratiadei, a scholar of ridolfo ghirlandaio. _vasari._ i. . pesello, pesello, a florentine, b. , d. . _vasari._ i. . pesellino, francesco, his son, b. , d. about . _vasari._ _ib._ pesenti, called il sabbioneta galeazzo, a cremonese, living in the fifteenth century. _zaist._ iv. . ---- martire, of the same family, living in . _zaist._ iv. . petarzano, or preterazzano, simone, a venetian, painted at milan in . _lomazzo._ iv. . petrazzi, astolfo, a sienese, painted in . _della valle._ d. . _baldinucci._ i. . petreolo, andrea, di venzone, living in . _renaldis._ iii. . petri, de', pietro, b. in the novarese, d. , at rome, aged . at rome commonly called de' pietri. _orlandi._ ii. , iv. . petrini, cav. giuseppe, da carono, in the luganese, d. about , aged . _ms._ iv. . piaggia, teramo, or erasmo, di zoagli, in the genovese, was living in . _soprani._ v. . piane, dalle, gio. maria, a genoese, called il molinaretto, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . pianoro, _see_ morelli. piastrini, gio. domenico, a pistoiese, scholar of luti. _serie degli illustri pittori._ i. . piattoli, gaetano, a florentine, b. , d. about . _ms._ i. . piazza, callisto, _see_ da lodi. ---- p. cosimo, da castelfranco, a cappuchin, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- cav. andrea, his nephew, painted in , d. about the year . _ms._ iii. . piazzetta, gio. batista, a venetian, d. , aged . _longhi._ or . _zanetti._ iii. . picchi, giorgio, b. in castel durante, now urbania, was living in , d. aged about . _terzi._ ii. . piccinino and chiocca, lived about . _morigia._ iv. . piccione, matteo, marchigiano, an academician of s. luke in . _orlandi._ ii. . piccola, la, niccola, or lapiccola, of palermo, b. , _florent. dic._ d. . ii. . picenardi, carlo, a cremonese, flourished about . d. young. _zaist._ iv. . ---- another carlo picenardi, flourished about , d. aged . _zaist._ _ib._ piemontese, cesare, flourished in the pontificate of gregory xiii. _taia._ ii. . pieri, stefano, a florentine, d. in the pontificate of clement viii., aged . _baglione._ i. . pieri, de', antonio, called lo zotto, that is, zoppo da vicenza, painted in . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . pierino, _see_ gallinari, _see_ del vaga. pietro, di, lorenzo, _see_ vecchietta. pievano, stefano, di s. agnese, his painting of . _boni opusc. scientifici._ iii. . pignone, simone, a florentine, b. , d. . _r. gall. of florence._ d. th december, , and buried at the teatini. _oretti, mem._ i. . pilotto, girolamo, a venetian, living in . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . pinacci, gioseffo, b. at siena, , living in . _orlandi._ i. . pinelli, antonio, a bolognese, scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ d. . _oretti, mem._ v. . pini, eugenio, an udinese, b. at the beginning of the seventeenth century, living in . _ab. boni._ iii. . ---- paolo, a lucchese. _orlandi._ flourished shortly after the caracci. _ms._ iv. . pino, paolo, a venetian, living in . _guida di padova._ iii. . ---- da messina, _see_ messina. ---- da, marco, called also marco da siena, d. about . _dominici._ i. , ii. , . pinturicchio, bernardino, da perugia, b. , d. . _pascoli._ called also bernardino betti. _mariotti._ i. , ii. , . pio, del, giovannino, _see_ bonatti. piombo, del, f. sebastiano, a venetian, d. , aged . _vasari._ his surname was luciano. _claudio tolomei_, cited in the _pitture di lendinara_, p. . i. , ii. , iii. . piola, gio. gregorio, a genoese, d. , aged . _soprani._ v. . ---- pierfrancesco, b. , d. . _soprani._ _ib._ ---- pellegro, or pellegrino, b. , d. . _soprani._ _ib._ ---- domenico, his brother, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . ---- antonio, son of domenico, b. , d. . _ratti._ _ib._ piola, paolgirolamo, another son, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . ---- gio. batista, another son. _ratti._ v. . ---- domenico, son of gio. batista, d. , aged . _ratti._ _ib._ pippi, giulio romano, d. , aged . _vasari._ ii. , iv. . ---- raffaello, his son, d. , aged . _volta._ iv. , _et seq._ pisanelli, _see_ spisano, _see_ storali. pisanello, vittore, da s. vito, in the veronese. _pozzo._ or rather da s. virgilio sul lago. _maffei veron. illustr. parte , cap. ._ flourished about . _vasari._ he was also called pisano. _morelli notiz._, p. . iii. . pisano, giunta, his notices from to . _morrona._ i. . ---- niccola, d. about . _vasari._ i. , . ---- giovanni, his son, d. . _vasari._ i. , . ---- andrea, an architect and sculptor of the fourteenth century, i. . pisbolica, giacomo, painted at venice in the sixteenth century. _vasari._ iii. . pistoia, da, gerino, a scholar of pietro perugino. _vasari._ painted in . _ms._ i. . ---- giovanni, a scholar of cavallini. _vasari._ ii. . ---- leonardo, a scholar of fattore. _vasari._ he is surnamed guelfo dal celano in the _notizie di napoli_; by others malatesta, and perhaps gratia. it appears there were two artists of the same name, one of whom lived in , the other later. i. , ii. , . ---- f. paolo, a scholar of frate. _vasari._ i. . pitocchi, da, matteo, a florentine, flourished about . _guida di rovigo._ d. at padua about , at an advanced age. _melchiori._ iii. . pittoni, gio. batista, a venetian, d. , about . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- francesco, his uncle, _ib._ pittor bello, _see_ pellegrini. pittor santo, il, _see_ roderico. ---- villano, il, _see_ misciroli. pittor, da' libri, il, _see_ caletti. pittori, lorenzo, a maceratese, painted in . _colucci._ ii. . ---- paolo, del masaccio, accounts of him from , d. . _colucci._ ii. . pizzoli, giovacchino, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . pizzolo, niccolo, a paduan, d. at the end of the fifteenth century. _guida di padova._ iii. . po, del, pietro, a sicilian, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. , . ---- giacomo, his son, a roman, d. , aged . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- teresa, a roman lady, daughter of pietro, an academician of s. luke in . _pascoli._ d. . _dominici._ _ib._ poccetti, bernardino barbatelli, a florentine, called also bernardino delle facciate, or delle grotesche, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ this date should be corrected on the authority of a note by the canon. moreni, (vol. ii. p. ) where it is observed that in he was in his forty-third year. i. . poco e buono, il, _see_ nanni. poggino, di, zanobi, a florentine, scholar of sogliani. _baldinucci._ i. . polla, da, bartolommeo, appears to have flourished about . _ms._ iii. . polazzo, franc., a venetian, d. , aged . _ms._ iii. . poli, two brothers, of pisa, painted in the seventeenth century, i. . polidorino, _see_ ruviale. polidoro, a venetian, d. , aged . _zanetti._ iii. . pollaiuolo, del, antonio, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ or aged . _oretti dall'epitafio._ i. , , , . ---- pietro, his brother, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . pomarance, dalle, _see_ circignani and roncalli. ponchino, gio. batista, called bozzato di castelfranco, b. about , painted in . _ms._ d. . _federici._ vasari, ridolfi, zanetti, bottari, and guarienti, who call him bazzacco, and brazzacco, are all in a mistake, iii. . ponte, da, francesco, b. in vicenza, was father of jacopo, and d. , at bassano. _verci._ iii. . ---- jacopo, from his birth-place called bassano, or bassan the elder, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- francesco, his son, d. , aged . _verci._ iii. . ---- cav. leandro, another son, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- gio. batista, another son, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- girolamo, another son, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ _ib._ ---- da, gio., a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . pontormo, da, in the florentine state, jacopo carrucci, b. , d. aged . _vasari._ i. , . ponzone, matteo, dalmatino, cav., a scholar of peranda. _zanetti._ iii. . ponzoni, de', gio., a milanese, lived about . _ms._ iv. . popoli, de', cav. giacinto d'orta, d. . _dominici._ ii. . poppi, da, _see_ morandini. por, de, daniello, called daniello da parma, d. , at rome. _bottari._ iv. . porcia, il, _see_ apollodoro. porcello, gio., a messinese, b. , d. . _hak._ ii. . pordenone, _see_ licino. porettano, pier maria, a scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . porfirio, bernardino, of the florentine state, a worker in mosaic, living in . _vasari._ i. . porideo, gregorio, a scholar of titian, iii. . porpora, paolo, a neapolitan, an academician of s. luke, , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . porro, maso, a cortonese, painter on glass, shortly before . _vasari._ i. . porta, andrea, a milanese, b. , living in . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- ferdinando, a milanese, b. about . _ms._ or rather b. , d. about , at milan. _oretti_, from a letter of porta's friend, iv. . porta, giuseppe, called del salviati, a native of garfagnana, d. about , aged . _ridolfi._ i. , ii. , iii. . ---- orazio, di monte s. savino, living in . _vasari._ i. . ---- della, or di s. marco, f. bartolommeo domenicano, a florentine, called il frate, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . portelli, carlo, da loro, in the florentine state, scholar of ridolfo ghirlandaio. _vasari._ i. . possenti, bened., a bolognese, scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . poussin, niccolo, b. at andeli, in normandy, , d. . _bellori._ ii. . ---- called gaspare, _see_ dughet. pozzi, gio. batista, a milanese, painted in . _nuova guida di torino._ v. . ---- gio. batista, a milanese, d. in the pontificate of sixtus v., aged . _baglione._ ii. , iv. . ---- giuseppe, a roman, d. young in . _ms._ ii. . ---- stefano, his brother, d. . _ms._ _ib._ pozzo, p. andrea, a jesuit of trent, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. , v. , . ---- dario, a veronese, d. , aged about . or rather in . _pozzo._ ii. . ---- dal, isabella, painted at turin in . _nuova guida di torino._ v. . ---- mattio, a paduan, scholar of squarcione. _scardeone._ _see also notizia morelli._ iii. . pozzobonelli, giuliano, a milanese, living in . _ms._ iv. . pozzoserrato, or pozzo lodovico, of flanders, living in , d. aged . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . pozzuoli, gio., da carpi, d. about . _tiraboschi._ iv. . prata, ranunzio, painted at pavia about . _ms._ at s. francesco of brescia is found an altar-piece representing the marriage of the virgin, and bearing the inscription, _francisci de prato caravajensis opus_, , pronounced by oretti to be _rare_. it not being referred to any school, it may be conjectured, after examination, whether the francesco da prato be one and the same, or rather two artists. see also p. donasana, minor osservante, who wrote a work on the professors, paintings, and sculpture of caravaggio: an extremely rare book. iv. . prato, dal, francesco, a florentine, d. . _vasari._ i. . preti, cav. mattia, called il cav. calabrese, b. at taverna in , d. at malta, . _dominici._ ii. . ---- gregorio, brother of the cavaliere, ii. . previtali, andrea, a bergamese; his works from to , in which year he died of the plague. _tassi._ iii. . preziado, d. francesco, b. , at seville. _r. gall. of flor._ director of the spanish academy at rome. _bottari._ (_lett. pitt._, vol. vi. p. .) d. at rome, . _ms._ ii. . primaticcio, ab. niccolo, b. , at bologna, d. in france about . _guida di bologna._ iv. , v. . primi, gio. batista, a roman, d. , at genoa. _soprani._ i. , v. . prina, pierfrancesco, di novara, living in . _orlandi._ iv. . procaccini, ercole the elder, a bolognese, b. . _ms._ living in . _lomazzo._ it is also read _porcaccini_, pref. xiv. iv. , , , v. . ---- camillo, his son, flourished in . _malvasia._ iv. , v. . ---- giulio cesare, another son, died about , aged about . _orlandi._ iv. , v. . ---- carlantonio, another son. _malvasia._ his work at s. agata in milan, with the name and year . _gallerati istruz., &c._ iv. . ---- ercole the younger, son of carlantonio, a milanese, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- andrea, a roman, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . profondavalle, valerio, di lovanio, d. , aged . _ms._ i. , iv. . pronti, p. cesare, an augustine monk, of cesi, called padre cesare da ravenna. _orlandi._ b. nella cattolica, , d. at ravenna, . _pascoli._ v. . provenzale, marcello, da cento, d. , aged . _baglione._ ii. . provenzali, stef., da cento, d. . _crespi. ms._ v. . prunato, santo, a veronese, b. , living in . _pozzo._ iii. . ---- michelangiolo, his son, b. , living in . _pozzo._ iii. . pucci, gio. antonio, a florentine, studied at rome in . _lett. pitt._, vol. ii. i. . puccini, biagio, a roman, painted about the pontificate of clement xi. _guida di roma._ ii. . puglia, giuseppe, a roman, called del bastaro, d. young in the pontificate of urban viii. _baglione._ ii. . puglieschi, ant., a florentine pupil of pier dandini. _baldinucci._ i. . puligo, domenico, a florentine, d. aged , in . _vasari._ i. . pulzone, scipione, called scipione da gaeta, d. in the pontificate of sixtus v., aged . _baglione._ ii. , , . pupini, biagio, or mastro biagio, a bolognese, and dalle lame, or dalle lamme, flourished in . _guida di bologna._ ii. , v. . q. quaglia, giulio, di como, living in . _renaldis._ iii. . quagliata, gio., a messinese, b. , d. . _hakert._ ii. . ---- andrea, his brother, d. , aged . _hakert._ _ib._ quaini, luigi, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . ---- francesco, his father, a scholar of mitelli. _zanotti._ d. , aged . _oretti, mem._ v. . quirico, gio. da tortona, his altar-piece of the year . _ms._ v. . r. rabbia, raffaello, a portrait painter of marino, was living about . _marini galleria._ v. . racchetti, bernardo, a milanese, d. , aged about . _orlandi._ iv. . raconigi, da, valentin lomellino, living in . _ms._ v. . raffaellino, _see_ bottalla, del colle, del garbo, motta. raffaello, _see_ sanzio. raggi, pietro paolo, a genoese, b. about , d. . _ratti._ v. . raibolini, _see_ francia. raimondi, marcantonio, a bolognese, d. soon after . _vasari._ i. , ii. . raimondo, a neapolitan painter of the fifteenth century. v. . rainaldi, domenico, a roman, mentioned by _titi_, painted in the seventeenth century, ii. . rainieri, francesco, called lo schivenoglia, a mantuan, d. old in . _volta._ iv. . rama, camillo, a brescian, painted in . _orlandi._ iii. . ramazzani, ercole, di rocca, a district in the marca, painted in . _colucci._ ii. . rambaldi, carlo, a bolognese, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . ramenghi, bartolommeo, called il bagnacavallo, b. at bologna in , d. . _guida di bologna._ or rather b. at bagnacavallo, , d. . _baruffaldi_; who produces the documents. ii. , v. . ---- gio. batista, his son, d. th november, . there was another gio. batista ramenghi, son of bartolommeo the younger, who painted in . _oretti, mem._ v. . ---- bartolommeo and scipione. _malvasia._ v. . randa, antonio, a bolognese, painted in . _guida di bologna_; and in . _guida di rovigo._ v. . ratti, gio. agostino, b. at savona in , d. at genoa in . _cav. ratti._ v. . ---- carlo giuseppe, cav., his son, a genoese, b. , d. aged about . _ms._ _ib._ raviglione, di casale, a painter of the seventeenth century. _orlandi._ v. . ravignano, marco, an engraver, and pupil of marcantonio. _vasari._ or marco dente, killed in the sack of rome, in . _carrari oraz. in morte di luca longhi._ i. . razali, sebastiano, a bolognese, a scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . razzi, cav. giannantonio, di vercelli, called il sodoma, lived to about the age of , d. . _vasari._ i. . realfonso, tommaso, a neapolitan, and pupil of belvidere. _dominici._ ii. . recchi, gio. paolo and gio. batista, da como, painted about . _ms._ iv. , v. . ---- gio. batista, a nephew of gio. paolo. _pitture d'italia._ iv. . recco, cav. giuseppe, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ ii. . reder, cristiano, or monsieur leandro sassone, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . redi, tommaso, a florentine, b. , d. . _roy. gall._ i. . reggio, da, luca, _see_ ferrari. reni, guido, a bolognese, d. , aged . _malvasia._ ii. , , v. . renieri, niccolo mabuseo, flourished in the seventeenth century. _zanetti._ ii. . ---- anna, and other sisters, _ib._ renzi, cesare, di s. ginesio, in the picenum, a pupil of guido reni. _colucci._ ii. . resani, arcangelo, b. , at rome, living in . _orlandi._ ii. . reschi, pandolfo, of dantzic, d. about , aged . _orlandi._ i. . revello, gio. batista, called il mustacchi, from the state of genoa, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . ribalta, franc., di valenza, a supposed scholar of annibal caracci, and master of spagnoletto. _conca._ ii. . ribera, cav. giuseppe, originally from valenza, b. at gallipoli in . _dominici._ but more correctly at sativa, now s. filippo. the _antologia di roma_, ; and d. , aged . _balomino._ he was called lo spagnoletto. ii. . iv. . ricamatore, _see_ da udine. ricca, or ricco, bernardino, a cremonese, painted in . _zaist._ iv. . ricchi, pietro, called from his birth-place il lucchese, b. . d. , at udine. _baldinucci._ i. , iii. . ricchino, francesco, a brescian, living in . _vasari._ iii. . ricci, antonio, _see_ barbalunga. ---- camillo, a ferrarese, b. , d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- gio. batista, di novara, d. , aged . _della valle._ ii. , iv. . ---- natale and ubaldo, painters of fermo, belonging to this age. _ms._ ii. . ---- pietro, a milanese, scholar of vinci. _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- or rizzi, bastiano, di cividal di belluno, b. . _orlandi._ or b. , and d. the th of may, . _descriz. de' cartoni di carlo cignani and bast. ricci._ iii. . ---- marco, nephew of bastiano, d. , aged . _zanetti._ iii. , v. . riccianti, antonio, a florentine, scholar of vincenzio dandini. _baldinucci._ i. . ricciardelli, gabriele, a neapolitan, painted in . _dominici._ ii. . ricciarelli, daniele, di volterra, d. . _vasari._ i. , ii. . riccio, il, or bartolommeo neroni, a sienese, painted in . _della valle._ i. , ii. . ---- domenico, called il brusasorci, a veronese, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. , . ---- gio. batista, his son, a scholar of caliari. iii. . ---- felice, his brother, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- cecilia, a sister of felice and of gio. batista. _pozzo._ iii. . ---- mariano, a messinese, b. . _hakert._ ii. . ---- antonello, his son, flourished about . _hakert._ _ib._ ricciolini, michelangiolo, called di todi, b. , at rome, d. . _r. gall. of flor._ ii. . ---- niccolo, b. at rome in . _r. gall. of flor._ _ib._ richieri, antonio, a ferrarese, scholar of lanfranco. _passeri._ v. . richo, andrea, di creta, a greek painter, i. . ridolfi, cav. carlo, b. , at vicenza. _orlandi._ d. about . _calvi bibliot. vicent._, tom. vi. p. . he seems to have flourished in . _boschini_, p. . the epitaph recorded in the _guida dello zanetti_, p. , dates his decease in , aged . iii. . ---- claudio, a veronese, d. , aged . _cav. carlo ridolfi._ ii. , iii. . ridolfo, di, (ghirlandaio,) michele, a florentine, living in . _vasari._ i. . ---- piero, di, a florentine, painted in . _moreni._ i. . rimerici, gio., first of the known painters of rimini, living in . _fantuzzi._ v. . riminaldi, orazio, a pisan, b. , d. . _morrona._ i. . ---- girolamo, brother of orazio, survived him. _morrona._ i. . rimino, da, bartolommeo, _see_ coda. ---- gio., lived about . _ms._ his notices, up to . _oretti, mem._ v. . ---- lattanzio, _see_ della marca. _ib._ rinaldi, santi, a florentine, called il tromba, scholar of francesco furini. _baldinucci._ i. . ripanda, giacomo, a bolognese, flourished about . _see malvasia._ v. . riposo, _see_ ficherelli. ristoro and sisto, dominican friars, architects, were employed in . i. . ritratti, da', santino, _see_ vandi. rivarola, _see_ chenda. rivello, galeazzo, cristoforo, another galeazzo and giuseppe. _zaist._ iv. . ---- _see also_ moretto cristoforo. riverditi, marcantonio, di alessandria della paglia, d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . riviera, franc., a frenchman, d. at leghorn about the middle of the eighteenth century. i. . rivola, giuseppe, a milanese, b. . _ms._ iv. . rizzi, stefano, master of romanino. _guida di brescia._ iii. . rizzo, marco luciano, a venetian, living in . _zanetti._ iii. . _see also_ s. croce. rò, _see_ rothenamer. robatto, gio. stefano, b. in savona, , d. . _ratti._ v. . robert, nicolas, a frenchman, living in . _ms._ v. . robertelli, aurelio, painted in savona, . _guida di genova._ v. . robetta, an engraver, who signed himself also, r. b. t. a. i. . robusti,--so named by _ridolfi_,--jacopo, called il tintoretto, a venetian, b. , d. . iii. . ---- domenico, his son, commonly called domenico tintoretto, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- marietta, daughter of domenico, b. , d. aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . rocca, ant. his notices from to . _ms._ v. . ---- giacomo, a roman, d. old in the pontificate of clement viii. _baglione._ ii. . ---- michele, flourished towards the beginning of the eighteenth century. _pascoli._ tom. ii. p. ., ii. . roccadirame, angiolillo, a scholar of zingaro. _dominici._ ii. . rocchetti, marcantonio, called figurino, flourished in the sixteenth century, v. . roderigo, gio. bernardino, a sicilian, called il pittor santo, d. . _dominici._ ii. . ---- luigi, his uncle, d. young. _dominici._ more correctly called rodriquez di messina. _hakert._ ii. , . ---- alonzo, brother of luigi, b. , d. . _hakert._ ii. . roelas, de las, paolo, of seville, a canon, scholar of titian, d. , aged . _conca._ this epoch disputed. iii. . roli, antonio, a bolognese, scholar of colonna. _crespi._ b. , d. on th july, . _oretti, mem._ v. . romanelli, gio. francesco, of viterbo, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. , . ---- urbano, his son, d. young, ii. . romani, il, da reggio, a painter of the seventeenth century. _tiraboschi._ iv. . romanino, or rumano girol., a brescian, d. in advanced age. _ridolfi._ before the year . _vasari._ iii. . romano, domenico, living in . _vasari._ i. . ---- giulio, _see_ pippi. ---- luzio, _see the letter_ l. ---- virgilio, a scholar of peruzzi. _della valle._ i. . romolo, _see_ cincinnato. roncalli, cav. cristofano delle pomarance, d. , aged . _baglione._ i. , ii. , , v. . roncelli, d. giuseppe, a bergamese, d. , aged . _tassi._ iii. . roncho, de, michele, a milanese, painted in . _tassi._ iv. . rondani, francesco maria, of parma, d. before . _affò._ iv. . rondinello, niccolo, da ravenna, flourished about , d. aged . _vasari._ v. . rondinosi, zaccaria, a pisan, painted in , d. about . _morrona._ i. . rondolino, _see_ terenzi. ronzelli, fabio, a bergamese, painted in . _tassi._ iii. . ---- pietro, perhaps father of the preceding. _tassi._ his works from to . _pasta._ _ib._ roos, _see_ rosa. rosa, cristoforo, a brescian. _vasari._ d. . _ridolfi._ iii. , . ---- stefano, his brother, painted in . _zamboni._ _ib._ rosa, pietro, son of cristoforo, d. young in . _ridolfi._ more correctly in . _zamboni._ iii. . ---- da tivoli, so called from his long residence there; or filippo roos, b. at frankfort in , d. . _guarienti._ ii. . ---- franc., a genoese painter of the seventeenth century. _zanetti._ iii. , v. . ---- giovanni, d'anversa, b. , d. at genoa in . _soprani._ ii. , v. . ---- salvatore, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _passeri._ i. , ii. , , iii. . ---- sigismondo, a scholar of giuseppe chiari. _guida di roma._ ii. . ---- di, aniella, or annella, a neapolitan, d. , aged about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- francesco, called also pacicco, or pacecco, a neapolitan, b. . _dominici._ ii. . _see also_ badalocchi. rosaliba, antonello, a messinese, painted in . _hakert._ ii. . roselli, niccolo, a ferrarese, painted in . _baruffaldi._ v. . rosi, zanobi, a florentine, living in . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- giovanni, a florentine, about the same period, i. . rosignoli, jacopo, of leghorn. his epitaph is dated in . _della valle._ i. , v. . rositi, gio. batista, da forli, painted in . _ms._ v. . rosselli, cosimo, a florentine, living in . _bottari._ i. . ---- matteo, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . rossetti, paolo, a centese, d. old in . _baglione._ ii. . ---- cesare, a roman, b. in the pontificate of urban viii. _baglione._ ii. . ---- gio. paolo, di volterra, living in . _vasari._ i. . ---- or fiaminghini, _see_ rovere. rossi, d. angelo, of the district of genoa, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . ---- giovanni and niccolo, of flanders, i. . rossi, aniello, a neapolitan, d. , aged about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- antonio, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- carlantonio, a milanese, d. , aged about . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- enea, a bolognese, pupil of the caracci. _malvasia._ v. . ---- francesco, _see_ de' salviati. ---- gabriele, a bolognese, master of franc. ferrari. _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- gio. batista, a veronese, called il gobbino, scholar of orbetto. _pozzo._ iii. . ---- gio. batista, da rovigo, scholar of padovanino, b. about , living in . _guida di rovigo._ iii. . ---- girolamo, a brescian, supposed pupil of rama. _guida di brescia._ iii. . ---- another girolamo, a bolognese, pupil of flaminio torre. _malvasia._ v. . ---- lorenzo, a florentine, d. . _orlandi._ i. . ---- muzio, (and by mistake nunzio) a neapolitan, flourished about . d. aged . _dominici._ or rather b. , d. . _crespi._ _la certosa di bologna_, p. . ii. . ---- niccolo maria, a neapolitan, d. , aged . _dominici._ ii. . ---- pasqualino, da vicenza, b. , living about . _orlandi._ ii. , iii. . ---- or rossis angelo, a florentine, b. . _guarienti._ i. . ---- antonio, di cadore, supposed to belong to the school of jacopo bellini. _ms._ iii. . rosso, il, a florentine, b. . _vasari._ i. . ---- il, of pavia, flourished in the seventeenth century. _orlandi._iv. . ---- il, a venetian, _see_ bianchi. rotari, conte pietro, a veronese, b. , d. . _oretti, da vita ms._ iii. , v. . rothenamer, gio. di monaco, b. . _sandrart._ in the _guida di venezia_ of _zanetti_, he is called rò and rotamer, as he is also named by _ridolfi_. iii. . rovere, or rossetti, gio. mauro, called il fiamminghino, a milanese, d. . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- gio. batista and marco, his brothers, d. about . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- della, gio. batista, of turin, painted in . _n. guida di torino._ v. . ---- girolamo, _ib._ roverio, _see_ genovesini. rovigo, d'urbino, flourished about . _avvocato passeri._ ii. . rubbiani, felice, a modenese, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . rubens, peter paul, b. at antwerp in , d. there in . _bellori._ ii. . rubini, b. a piedmontese, painted in trevigi about . _federici._ v. . ruggieri, da bruggia, lived about . _ciriaco_; in _colucci_. drew his own portrait in . _morelli notizia_, p. . i. . iii. . ---- antonio, a florentine, pupil of vannini. _baldinucci._ i. . ---- antonio maria, a milanese painter of the eighteenth century, iv. . ---- gio. batista, and gio. batista del gessi, a bolognese, d. in the pontificate of urban viii., aged . _baglione._ ii. , v. . ---- ercole, brother of gio. batista, or ercolino del gessi, or ercolino da bologna. _malvasia._ v. . ---- girolamo, b. at vicenza in , d. at verona about . _pozzo._ iii. . ---- ruggiero, a bolognese assistant of primaticcio. _vasari._ v. . ruoppoli, gio. batista, a neapolitan, d. about . _dominici._ ii. . ruschi, or rusca, franc., a roman, flourished about the middle of the seventeenth century. _zanetti._ iii. . russi, de, gio., of mantua, flourished about . _volta._ iv. . russo, gio. pietro, of capua, d. . _dominici._ ii. . rustici, cristoforo, son of rustico. _della valle._ i. . ---- vincenzio, another supposed son, i. , . ---- francesco, a son of cristoforo, called il rustichino, d. young in . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- gabriele, a scholar of frate. _vasari._ i. . rustico, il, a sienese, scholar of razzi. _della valle._ i. . ruta, clemente, of parma, d. old in . _affò._ or b. , d. . _oretti, mem._ iv. . ruviale, francesco, called il polidorino, a spaniard, d. about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- spagnuolo, an assistant of vasari about . _vasari._ i. . s. sabbatini, or andrea da salerno, b. about , d. about . _dominici._ ii. , . ---- lorenzo, called also lorenzino da bologna, d. . _malvasia._ i. , ii. , v. *. sabbioneta, _see_ pesenti. sabinese, il, _see_ generoli. sacchi, andrea, a roman, b. , d. . _passeri._ but his epitaph gives his age sixty-three years, four months. _stato della ch. lateran._ ii. . ---- p. giuseppe, a minor conventual, his son. _guida di roma._ ii. . ---- carlo, di pavia, d. old in . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- pierfrancesco, a pavese. his notices at milan about . _lomazzo._ at genoa from to . _soprani._ i must notice that the long career of this artist leads me to suspect there must be some error in the date of his notices, or that the name of pierfrancesco pavese belonged to two different artists. v. . ---- a pavese family of musaicisti, or mosaic workers. _guida di milano_ of . i. . sacchi, n., di casale, contemporary with moncalvo. _della valle._ v. . ---- ant., di como, d. . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- gaspero, da imola. his altar-piece in the sacristy of castel s. pietro at imola, with the name, and year ; and at bologna in s. francesco in tavola, . _oretti, mem._ v. . sacco, scipione, a supposed scholar of raffaello. _scannelli_, and _guarienti_. he painted . _oretti, mem._ ii. , v. . sagrestani, gio. camillo, a florentine, b. , d. . _r. gall. of florence._ i. . saiter, or seiter, cav. daniello, a viennese, b. , d. , aged . _orlandi._ ii. , iii. , v. . salai, or salaino andrea, a milanese, scholar of vinci. _vasari._ i. , iv. . salerno, da, _see_ sabbatini. salimbeni, arcangelo, a sienese, painted in . _della valle._ i. . ---- cav. ventura, his son, called il cav. bevilacqua, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , v. . salincorno, da, mirabello, perhaps cavalori, a scholar of ridolfo ghirlandaio, living in . _vasari._ i. . salini, cav. tommaso, b. about , at rome, d. . _baglione._ ii. . salis, carlo, a veronese, b. . _oretti notizie._ d. . _letter. pittor._, tom. v. iii. . salmeggia, enea, a bergamese, called il talpino, d. old in . _tassi._ iii. . ---- francesco, his son, painted in . _tassi._ _ib._ ---- chiara, his daughter, painted in . _tassi._ _ib._ saltarello, luca, b. at genoa in , d. young at rome. _soprani._ v. . salvestrini, bartolommeo, a florentine, d. in . _baldinucci._ i. . salvetti, franc., a florentine, pupil of gabbiani. _serie de' più illustri pittori._ i. . salvi, tarquinio, da sassoferrato, painted in . _ms._ ii. . ---- gio. batista, his son, called il sassoferrato, b. , d. . _ms._ harms and others, by mistake, suppose him to have lived in the sixteenth century. ii. . salviati, de', francesco rossi, called cecchino de' salviati, a florentine, b. , d. . _vasari._ i. , ii. . ---- del, giuseppe, _see_ porta. salvolini, _see_ episcopio. salvucci, mattio, of perugia, b. about , d. about . _pascoli._ ii. . samacchini, orazio, a bolognese, (and somachino, _lomazzo_; and by mistake fumaccini, _vasari_) d. , aged . _malvasia._ ii. , iv. , v. . samengo, ambrogio, a genoese, scholar of gio. andrea ferrari. _soprani._ v. . sammartino, marco, a neapolitan, living in . _guida di rimino._ or a venetian. _melchiori_, _guarienti_. he seems to be the same as the sanmarchi of malvasia. v. . san bernardo, di, _see_ minzocchi. ---- daniello, di, _see_ pellegrino. ---- friano, da, _see_ manzuoli. ---- gallo, da, bastiano, called aristotele, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. , . ---- gimignano, da, vincenzio, d. a few years subsequent to . _vasari._ ii. . ---- ginesio, da, in the picenum, fabio di gentile, domenico balestrieri, stefano folchetti, painters of the fifteenth century. _colucci._ ii. . ---- giorgio, di, eusebio, of perugia, b. about , d. about . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- giovanni, da, ercole, _see_ de maria. ---- giovanni, da, in the florentine state, gio. mannozzi, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- gio. garzia, his son, i. . ---- giovanni, da, oliviero, a ferrarese, lived about . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- severino, da, lorenzo, and his brother, lived in . _ms._ ii. . sandrino, tommaso, a brescian, d. , aged . _orlandi._ more correctly in . _zamboni._ iii. . sandro, di, jacopo, a florentine, assistant of bonarruoti. _vasari._ i. . sanfelice, ferdinando, a neapolitan, scholar of solimene. _floren. dic._ ii. . sanmarchi, _see_ sammartino. sansone, _see_ marchesi. sansovino, jacopo, a florentine, or jacopo tatta, a scholar of andrea cantucci, da san savino; who, as well as his scholar, was called sansovino; d. , aged . _borghini._ iii. . santa croce, francesco rizzo, da s. croce in the bergamasco. his notices from to . _tassi._ (even to , _federici_.) iii. . ---- girolamo, da s. croce in the bergamasco, as rizzo. his works from to . _tassi._ iii. , . ---- pietro paolo, painted in . _guida di padova._ iii. . santafede, francesco, a neapolitan, scholar of salerno. _dominici._ ii. . ---- fabrizio, his son, b. about , d. . _dominici._ _ib._ santagostini, giacomo antonio, a milanese, d. , aged about . _orlandi._ iv. . ---- agostino, his son, living in . _nuova guida di milano._ _ib._ ---- giacinto, another son of giacomo antonio. _orlandi._ _ib._ santarelli, gaetano, a noble of pescia, and scholar of ottav. dandini, d. young. _ms._ i. . santelli, felice, a roman, competed with _baglione_. _guida di roma._ ii. . santi, antonio, di rimino, d. young at venice in . _guida di rimino._ v. . ---- domenico, a bolognese, called il mengazzino, d. , aged . _orlandi._ v. . santi, bartol., a lucchese, and theatrical painter of the eighteenth century. _ms._ i. . santini, the elder, and the younger, of arezzo, in the seventeenth century. _ms._ i. . santo, dal, girolamo, _see_ da padova. sanzio, or di santi, giovanni, of urbino, father of raffaello, living in . _lett. pitt._ i. del tom. i. d. before . _ms._ ii. , . ---- galeazzo, antonio, vincenzio, and giulio, ancestors of raffaello. _bottari._ ii. . ---- batista di piero. _lazzari._ _ib._ ---- raffaello, di urbino, b. , d. . _vasari._ i. , ii. , , and frequently throughout the entire work. saracino, or saraceni, carlo, called, from his birth-place, carlo veneziano, b. . _orlandi._ d. aged about . _baglione._ ii. , iii. . sarti, antonio, da jesi, flourished about . _colucci_, tom. x. ii. . ---- ercole, called il muto di ficarolo, b. . _cittadella._ v. . sarto, del, andrea vannucchi, a florentine, b. , d. . _vasari._ i. , _et seq._ sarzana, _see_ fiasella. sarzetti, angiolo, a riminese, living in . _guida di rimino._ v. . sassi, gio. batista, a milanese, living in . _orlandi._ iv. . sassoferrato, _see_ salvi. savoldo, girol., a brescian, flourished in . _orlandi._ called also gio. girolamo bresciano. _morelli notizia_, p. . iii. . savolini, cristoforo, da cesena, living in . _malvasia._ v. . savona, di, il prete, _see_ guidoboni. savonanzi, emilio, a bolognese, b. , d. aged . _orlandi._ v. . savorelli, sebastiano, of forli, a scholar of cignani. _guarienti._ v. . scacciani, camillo, da pesaro, called carbone, lived towards the end of the eighteenth century. _ms._ ii. . scacciati, andrea, a florentine, b. , d. in the eighteenth century. _orlandi._ i. . scaglia, girolamo, da lucca, called il parmigianino, painted at pisa in . _morrona._ i. , ii. . scaiario, antonio, called also da ponte and bassano, from his birth-place, d. . _verci._ iii. . scalabrini, marcantonio, a veronese, flourished in . _pozzo._ iii. . scalabrino, lo, a sienese, pupil of razzi. _della valle._ i. . perhaps a pistoiese. _ib._ scaligero, bartolommeo, a paduan, scholar of alessandro varotari. _zanetti._ iii. . ---- lucia, his niece, still young in . _boschini._ iii. . scalvati, antonio, a bolognese, d. in the pontificate of gregory xv., aged . _baglione._ ii. , . scaminossi, raffaello, di borgo s. sepolcro, a scholar of raffaelle del colle. _orlandi._ i have also heard him called _scaminassi_. i. . scannabecchi, _see_ dalmasio, _see_ muratori. scannavini, maurelio, a ferrarese, d. , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . scaramuccia, gio. antonio, of perugia, b. , d. . _pascoli._ ii. , , iv. . ---- luigi, his son, scholar of guido, b. , d. . _pascoli._ a scholar also of guercino. _malvasia._ ii. . ---- scarsella, sigismondo, or mondino, a ferrarese, d. , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- ippolito, his son, called lo scarsellino, b. , d. . _baruffaldi._ _ib._ schedone, now more commonly schidone, bartolommeo, da modena, d. young in . _tiraboschi._ iv. , . schianteschi, domenico, di borgo s. sepolcro, flourished the beginning of the eighteenth century. _ms._ i. . schiavone, andrea, da sebenico, b. , d. aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- gregorio, a fellow-pupil of mantegna. _ridolfi_; who by mistake calls him girolamo. iii. . ---- luca, lived about . _lomazzo._ iv. . schioppi, _see_ alabardi. schivenoglia, _see_ rainieri. schizzone, living in . _vasari._ ii. . sciacca, tommaso, di mazzara, d. , aged . _pitture di lendinara._ ii. . sciameroni, _see_ furini. sciarpelloni, _see_ di credi. scilla, or silla, agostino, a messinese, b. , d. . _hakert._ an academician of st. luke in rome, . _orlandi._ ii. , , , v. . ---- giacinto, his brother, d. ; and saverio, his son. _hakert._ ii. . sciorina, dello, lorenzo, a florentine, living in . _vasari._ i. . scipione, jacopo, of bergamo, his notices, from to . _tassi._ iii. , . sclavo, luca, a cremonese, lived soon after . _zaist._ iv. . scolari, gioseffo, a vicentese, living in . _orlandi._ iii. . scor, called gio. paolo tedesco, an academician of st. luke in . _orlandi._ ii. . ---- egidio, his brother. _taia._ _ib._ scorza, sinibaldo, b. at voltaggio in the genovese, , d. . _soprani._ v. . scorzini, pietro, a lucchese, painter of theatres. _ms._ i. . scotto, stefano, a milanese, master of gaudenzio. _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- felice, his work of . _ms._ _ib._ scuarz, cristoforo, a german. _ridolfi._ d. . _baldinucci._ iii. . scutellari, andrea, di viadana, in the cremonese, painted in . _zaist._ iv. . ---- francesco, a painter of the sixteenth century. _ib._ sebastiani, lazzaro, a venetian, scholar of carpaccio. _ridolfi._ iii. . sebeto, da verona. _vasari._ painted about . _guida di padova._ iii. . most probably it is a name resulting from a mistake of vasari. _ib._ seccante, sebastiano, an udinese. his works to the year . _renaldis._ iii. . ---- giacomo, his brother, painted in . sebastiano, a younger son of giacomo; his works from to . seccante de' seccanti, painted in . _renaldis._ iii. . secchi, gio. batista, called il caravaggio, painted in . _borsieri_, iv. . in the _pitture d'italia_, vol. i. p. , he is called caravaggino, and an inscription is cited:--_jo. bapt. sicc. de caravag._ secchiari, giulio, a modenese, d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . segala, gio., a venetian, d. , aged . _zanetti._ iii. . seiter, daniele, a scholar of loth. iii. . sellitto, carlo, a neapolitan, scholar of annibal caracci. _dominici._ ii. . semenza, or sementi, giacomo, a bolognese, b. , d. young. _baglione_ and _malvasia_. v. . semini, michele, a scholar of maratta. _vita del cav. maratta._ ii. . semino, and more commonly semini, antonio, a genoese, b. about , painted in . _soprani._ v. , . ---- andrea, his son, d. , aged . _soprani._ _ib._ ---- ottavio, another son, d. . _soprani._ _ib._ semitecolo, niccolo, a venetian, painted in . _zanetti._ iii. . semolei, _see_ franco. semplice, (fra.), _see_ da verona. serafini, de', serafino, da modena, painted in and . _tiraboschi._ iv. . serano, _see_ cerano. serenari, ab. gaspero, of palermo, a scholar of cav. conca. _ms._ ii. . serlio, sebastiano, a bolognese, painted at pesaro in and ; or rather, he resided there. _guida di pesaro._ d. at fontainebleau, old in . _histor. dic._ v. . sermei, cav. cesare, di orvieto, d. about , aged . _orlandi._ ii. . sermolei, _see_ franco. sermoneta, da, _see_ siciolante. serodine, gio., di ascona, in lombardy, d. young in the pontificate of urban viii. ii. . serra, cristoforo, da cesena, living in . _malvasia._ v. . servi, de', constantino a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , . sesto, da, cesare, or cesare milanese, d. towards ; and cesare magni, by some supposed the same cesare da sesto who still painted in . _bianconi._ _guida di milano con note ms._ iv. , . sestri, da, _see_ travi. setti, cecchino, a modenese, painted in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- de', ercole, a modenese; his notices from to . _tiraboschi._ iv. . sguazzella, lo, andrea, a scholar of sarto. _vasari._ i. . sguazzino, lo, di città di castello, living about . _ms._ ii. . siciolante, girolamo, called from his birth-place sermoneta, living in , as appears from an inscription placed to his son. (_gallet. i. rom._ tom. ii.) d. in the pontificate of gregory xiii. _baglione._ ii. , , . siena, da, agnolo and agostino, florentine sculptors in . _della valle._ i. . ---- ansano, or sano, di pietro. his notices from to . _della valle._ i. . ---- da, berna, for bernardo, d. young about . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- duccio, guiduccio, di boninsegna. his notices from to . _della valle._ i. . ---- francesco, a scholar of peruzzi. _vasari._ i. . ---- francesco, ant., his work of . _ms._ i. . ---- francesco, di giorgio, an architect and painter. _della valle._ i. , . ---- georgio and gio., called gianella, scholars of mecherino. _della valle._ i. . ---- giovanni, di paolo, father of matteo. _della valle._ i. , . siena, guido, his work of . _della valle._ i. , . ---- matteo, di, gio., his works from to . _della valle._ i. , ii. . ---- another matteo, or matteino, d. in the pontificate of sixtus v., aged . _baglione._ i. , ii. . ---- da, maestro mino, or minuccio, to be distinguished from fr. mino da turrita. i. . ---- michelangiolo da siena, or da lucca, _see_ anselmi. ---- segna, or boninsegna, painted in . _della valle._ i. . ---- ugolino, d. old in . _della valle._ i. , . ---- simone, _see_ memmi. marco, _see_ da pino. baldassare, _see_ peruzzi. ---- other painters less celebrated, or scholars of those masters. i. , , , . sighizzi, andrea, a bolognese, living in . _malvasia._ v. , . sigismondi, pietro, a lucchese. _orlandi._ i. . signorelli, luca, da cortona, b. about , d. . _vasari._ i. . ---- francesco, his nephew. notices of him until about . _bottari._ i. . signorini, guido, a bolognese, cousin of guido reni, d. about . _orlandi._ v. . ---- another of the same name and country, a scholar of cignani. _crespi._ _ib._ silvestro, don, a florentine, a monk of camaldoli, d. about . _vasari._ i. . silvio, gio., a venetian, his altar-piece of . _ms._ iii. . simazoto, martino, or da capanigo, living in . _ms._ v. . simone, maestro, a neapolitan, d. . _dominici._ ii. . ---- di, antonio, a neapolitan, and an artist of this age. _dominici._ ii. . ---- francesco, a neapolitan, flourished in , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . simonelli, giuseppe, a neapolitan, scholar of giordano, d. about , aged . _dominici._ ii. . simonetti, _see_ magatta. simonini, francesco, of parma, b. , living in . _guida di rovigo._ iv. . sirani, gio. andrea, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi_ and _oretti, mem._ v. . ---- elisabetta, his daughter, b. , d. aged . _malvasia._ or d. th august, , and interred at s. domenico. _oretti, memor._ v. . ---- anna and barbara, also his daughters. _crespi._ _ib._ ---- female pupils of elisabetta. v. , . smargiasso, lo, _see_ ciafferi. sobleo, _see_ desubleo. soderini, mauro, a florentine, painted in . _lett. pitt._, vol. ii. i. . sodoma, il, _see_ razzi. ---- del, giomo, or girolamo, a sienese. i. . soggi, niccolo, a florentine, d. old in the pontificate of julius iii. _vasari._ i. . sogliani, giannantonio, a florentine, d. aged . _vasari._ painted at pisa about . _morrona._ i. . soiaro, _see_ gatti. solari, or del gobbo, andrea, a milanese, flourished about . _vasari._ iv. . solario, anton., called lo zingaro, (the gipsy,) da civita, in abruzzo, b. about , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . sole, dal, antonio, a bolognese, called il monchino da' paesi, d. . _crespi._ or rather in , aged . _oretti, from the registry of la maddalena._ v. . ---- gio. gioseffo, his son, b. , d. . _zanotti._ v. . soleri, giorgio, di alessandria, d. . _ms._ v. . ---- raffaello, angiolo, his son. _ms._ v. . solfarolo, il, or gruembroech, a painter of the seventeenth century. v. . solimene, commonly so called, but in his epitaph, solimena, cav. francesco, called l'abate ciccio, b. at nocera de' pagani, . _dominici._ d. at naples in . _r. gall. of flor._ ii. . sons, (as he thus signs himself,) or soens, gio., da molduch, was aged in . _guida di piacenza._ living in . _affò._ iv. . soprani, raffaello, a genoese, b. , d. . _cavanna, in his life of this artist._ v. . sordo, di, sestri, _see_ travi. ---- d'urbino, _see_ viviani. ---- del, gio., called mone da pisa, an artist of the seventeenth century. _morrona._ i. . soriani, carlo, painted at pavia in the seventeenth century. _pitture d'italia._ iv. . ---- niccolo, perhaps a cremonese, d. . _baruffaldi._ v. . sorri, pietro, b. in the sienese, , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , v. . sottino, gaetano, a sicilian. _guida di roma._ ii. . sozzi, olivio, di catania, and francesco. _ms._ _ib._ spada, lionello, a bolognese, d. , aged . _malvasia._ iv. , v. . spadarino, _see_ galli. spadaro, micco, _see_ gargiuolo. spaggiari, gio., of reggio, d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- pellegrino, his son, d. in france, . _tiraboschi._ _ib._ spagna, lo, or lo spagnuolo, giovanni, flourished until . _baldinucci._ or longer. ii. . spagnoletto, lo, _see_ ribera. spagnuolo, lo, _see_ uroom, _see_ crespi. spera, clemente, painted at milan in company of lissandrino. _ratti._ iv. . speranza and veruzio, of vicenza, scholars of mantegna. _vasari._ iii. . ---- gio. batista, a roman, d. young in . _baglione._ ii. . v. . spilimbergo, di, irene, a supposed pupil of titian. she died some time before . _vasari._ iii. . spineda, ascanio, of trevigi, b. . _p. federici._ living in . _ridolfi._ iii. . spinello, aretino, b. , d. . _bottari._ i. . spinelli, parri, (for gasparri,) his son, living in . _bottari._ i. , . ---- forzore, another son, a worker in niello. _vasari._ i. . spirito, monsieur, living in the seventeenth century. _see pitture d'italia._ v. . spisano, vincenzo, called also pisanelli, and lo spisanelli di orta in the milanese, d. at bologna in , aged . _malvasia._ v. . spoletti, pierlorenzo, b. at finale in the genovese in , d. . _ratti._ v. . spolverini, ilario, di parma, d. , aged . _guida di piacenza._ iv. . spranger, bartolommeo, of flanders, b. , d. old. _orlandi._ iv. . squarcione, francesco, di padova, d. , aged . _orlandi._ some by mistake call him jacopo; supposed by _guarienti_ to be a different person from francesco. iii. , v. . stanzioni, cav. massimo, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ ii. . starnina, gherardo, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . stefaneschi, p. gio. batista, a monk of monte senario, b. at ronta in the florentine state, , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . stefani, de', tommaso, a neapolitan, b. . _descriz. di napoli._ ii. . stefano, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. , . ---- di, niccolo, da belluno, flourished about . _ms._ iii. . ---- vincenzio, a veronese, flourished in the fifteenth century. _pozzo._ iii. . stefanone, a neapolitan, d. old about . _dominici._ ii. . stella, fermo, a milanese, employed in . _ms._ iv. . ---- giacomo, a brescian, d. in the pontificate of urban viii., aged . _baglione._ _bardon_ asserts he died in , aged ; and that he came from lyons. ii. , iii. . stendardo, _see_ van bloemen. stern, ignazio, b. in bavaria about , d. . _gall. imp._ ii. . storali, gio. and pisanelli, loren., bolognese, pupils of baglione. v. . storer, or stora, cristoforo, di costanza, d. in milan, , aged . _orlandi._ iv. . storto, ippolito, a cremonese, scholar of antonio campi. _zaist._ iv. . strada, vespasiano, a roman, d. under paul v., aged . _baglione._ ii. . stradano, giovanni, di bruges, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . stresi, pietro martire, a milanese, d. . _ms._ iv. . stringa, francesco, a modenese, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ or born in . _cart. oretti._ iv. . stroifi, don ermanno, a paduan, founder of the congregation of s. filippo neri at venice; d. there in , aged . _flaminio corner, churches of venice_, vol. iii. p. . iii. . strozzi, zanobi, a florentine, b. , living in . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- or strozza bernardo, called il cappuccino, or also il prete, a genoese, b. , d. . _soprani._ v. . suardi, _see_ bramantino. subissati, sempronio, of urbino, a scholar of carlo maratta, d. in spain. _lazzari._ ii. . subleyras, pietro, b. at gilles, , d. . _memorie delle belle arti_, vol. ii. or b. at usès, and d. aged . _bardon._ ii. . subtermans, giusto, d'anversa, b. , d. . _r. gall. of florence._ i. . suppa, andrea, a messinese, d. , aged . _hakert._ ii. . surchi, _see_ dielai. sustris, is the surname of federigo di lamberto, called also del padovano, _see_ del padovano. t. tacconi, innocenzio, a bolognese, scholar of annibal, d. young. _baglione._ v. . tafi, andrea, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . tagliasacchi, gio. batista, di borgo s. donnino, d. . _guida di piacenza._ iv. . talami, orazio, of reggio, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . talpino, _see_ salmeggia. tamburini, gio. maria, a bolognese, scholar of guido, d. old. _guida di bologna._ v. . tancredi, filippo, a messinese, b. , d. at palermo, . _hakert._ ii. . tandino, di bevagna, living in . _orsini risposta_, &c. ii. . tanteri, valerio, and other copyists of cristoforo allori, i. . tanzi, antonio, di alagna, in the novarese, d. , aged almost . _co. durando._ iv. . ---- gio. melchiorre, his brother, _ib._ taraboti, caterina, living in . _boschini._ iii. . taraschi, giulio, a modenese, painted in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- two brothers of the preceding, iv. . taricco, sebastiano, b. at cherasco in the piedmontese in , d. . _della valle._ v. . tarillio, gio. batista, a milanese, his work of . _ms._ iv. . taruffi, emilio, a bolognese, b. , assassinated in . _crespi._ v. . tassi, agostino, of perugia, b. , d. aged . _passeri. pref._ xix. i. , ii. , v. . tassinari, gio. batista, a pavese, his works of and . _pitture d'italia._ iv. . tassone, carlo, a cremonese, flourished about , d. aged . _zaist._ iv. . tassoni, giuseppe, a roman, d. , aged . _dominici._ ii. . tatta, _see_ sansovino. tavarone, lazzaro, a genoese, b. , d. . _soprani._ v. . tavella, carlo antonio, a genoese, b. at milan in , d. at genoa in . _ratti._ v. . ---- angiola, his daughter, d. , aged . _ratti._ v. . tedesco, emanuello, a scholar of titian. _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- gio. paolo, _see_ scor, _see also_ lamberto. ---- del, jacopo, a florentine, scholar of domenico del ghirlandaio, i. . temperello, il, _see_ caselli. tempesta, il, _see_ mulier. tempesti, (in the _lett. pittor._ and in other books _tempesta_, and in _lottini_ called _tempestino_;) antonio, a florentine, d. , aged . _baglione._ i. , ii. , . tempestino, a roman, flourished about . _pascoli._ ii. . ---- or tempesti, domenico, a florentine, perhaps called also _dei marchis_, b. , living in . _orlandi._ i. . teniers, david, of antwerp, called il bassano, d. . _sandrart._ ii. , iii. . teodoro, a mantuan, _see_ ghigi. ---- monsieur, _see_ hembreker. teofane, of constantinople, lived in the thirteenth century. _baruffaldi._ v. . teoscopoli, _see_ delle greche. terenzi, terenzio, called il rondolino, a pesarese; called also terenzio d'urbino; d. in the pontificate of paul v. _baglione._ ii. . terzi, cristoforo, a bolognese, d. . _guida di bologna._ v. . ---- francesco, a bergamese, d. old at rome about . _tassi._ iii. . tesauro, bernardo, a neapolitan, flourished from to , or near it. _dominici._ ii. . ---- filippo, a neapolitan, b. about , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- raimo, epifanio, a neapolitan; his works from to . _dominici._ ii. . tesi, mauro, of the state of modena, d. at bologna in , aged . _crespi._ v. . tesio, il, of turino, a scholar of mengs. _ms._ v. . testa, pietro, a lucchese, called il lucchesino, b. , d. . _passeri._ i. . testorino, brandolin, a brescian, lived perhaps in the fourteenth century. _see morelli notizia._ iii. . tiarini, alesandro, a bolognese, b. , d. . _malvasia._ v. . tibaldi, or pellegrino di tibaldo de' pellegrini, called pellegrino da bologna, b. , d. . _life of tibaldi, written by gio. pietro zanotti._ v. . ---- domenico, his brother, b. , d. . _guida di bologna._ or d. , aged , as stated in p. f. flaminio da parma, who gives his epitaph in the _memorie storiche_, &c. parma, . _oretti, memor._ v. . tiepolo, gio. bat., a venetian, d. , aged . _zanetti._ or d. . _conca._ iii. . tinelli, cav. tiberio, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ iii. . tinti, gio. batista, of parma, painted in . _affò._ iv. , . tintore, del, cassiano, francesco and simone, of lucca, flourished towards the end of the seventeenth century. _ms._ i. . tintorello, jacopo, of vicenza, flourished in the fifteenth century. _guida di vicenza._ iii. . tintoretto, _see_ robusti. tio, francesco, a fabrianese, painted in . _colucci._ ii. . tisio, _see_ da garofolo. tito, di, or titi, santi, da borgo s. sepolcro, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- tiberio, son of santi, long survived his father. _baldinucci._ i. . tiziano, _see_ tizianello, _see_ vecellio. tiziano, di, _see_ dante. tognone, or antonio, of vicenza, a scholar of zelotti, d. young. _ridolfi._ iii. . tolentino, di, marcantonio, a painter of the sixteenth century. _colucci._ ii. . tolmezzo, di, domenico, of udine, painted in . _renaldis._ iii. . tommasi, tommaso, di pietra santa, a scholar of the melani. _ms._ i. . tommaso, di, stefano, _see_ giottino. tonduzzi, giulio, da faenza, painted in . _orlandi._ at s. bernardino di faenza is one of his pictures with the name and year . _oretti, mem._ v. . tonelli, giuseppe, a florentine, lived in . _orlandi._ painted from the year . _descrip. de la gallerie r. de flor._, p. . he was sent to study at bologna under aldovrandi. _oretti, mem._ i. . tonno, a calabrese, who killed polidoro. _hakert._ ii. . torbido, francesco, called il moro, a veronese, scholar of giorgione. _vasari._ iii. . torelli, maestro, or tonelli, pupil of coreggio. _ratti._ iv. . ---- cesare, a roman, painter and mosaic worker, d. in the pontificate of paul v. _baglione._ ii. . ---- felice, a veronese, b. . _zanotti._ d. . _crespi._ or b. , by biancolini, d. th june, , as i learn from _oretti_. v. . ---- lucia, by birth casalini, a bolognese, the wife of felice, b. , d. . _crespi._ _ib._ toresani, andrea, a brescian, an artist of the eighteenth century. _guarienti._ d. aged about . _carbone presso l'oretti_, in . _ms._ iii. . tornioli, niccolo, a sienese, living in . _lett. pittoriche_, tom. i. i. . torre, bartolommeo and teofilo aretini, the second pupil of the former, flourished in . _orlandi._ i. . ---- flaminio, a bolognese, called degli ancinelli, d. young in . _orlandi._ v. . ---- della, gio. batista, originally of the polesine, d. . _baruffaldi._ he was established at ferrara. v. . torre, gio. paolo, a roman, scholar of muziano. _baglione._ ii. . torregiani, bartolommeo, d. young shortly after . _passeri._ ii. . torri, written also torre and torrigli, pierantonio, a bolognese, living in . _malvasia._ v. . torricelli, _see_ buonfanti. tortelli, gioseffo, a brescian, b. , living in the time of averoldi, or perhaps in . _orlandi._ iii. . tortiroli, gio. batista, a cremonese, b. , d. aged . _zaist._ the date of his birth should be placed earlier, as he painted well in . see _colucci_, who cites one of his works with the name and ancient date in vol. xix. iv. . tossicani, gio. aretino, a scholar of giottino. i. . tozzo, del, gio., a sienese, flourished towards the year . _della valle._ i. . traballesi, bartol., a florentine, assistant of vasari. _descrip. de la gall. r. de flor._ i. . ---- francesco, painted at rome in the pontificate of gregory xiii. _baglione._ _ib._ traini, francesco, a florentine, scholar of andrea orcagna. _vasari._ i. . trasi, lodovico, of ascoli, b. , d. . _guida di ascoli._ ii. . travi, antonio, da sestri, in the genovese, called il sordo di sestri, d. , aged . _soprani._ v. . trevilio, da, in the milanese, bernardo, or bernardino zenale, d. . _ms._ iv. . trevigi, da, dario, flourished about , as we read in the _city guide_, and not . iii. . ---- antonio, his paintings in and . _p. federici._ iii. . ---- giorgio, living in . _rossetti._ _ib._ ---- girolamo, his paintings from to . _p. federici_, who surnames him aviano. iii. . ---- girolamo, the younger, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ and supposed of the pennacchi family. _federici._ iii. . trevisani, angelo, a venetian, was living in . _guarienti._ iii. . ---- francesco, di trevigi, b. , d. . _r. gall. of flor._ ii. , iii. . trezzo, da, giacomo, a mosaic worker in _pietre dure_. of the milanese school, d. . _ms._ i. . tricomi, bartolommeo, a messinese, scholar of domenichino. _hakert._ ii. . triva, antonio, da reggio, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. , v. . ---- flaminia, his sister, living in . _boschini._ _ib._ trivellini and bernardoni, bassanese, scholars of volpato. the first inscribes the date of on a picture at castelfranco. _federici._ iii. . trogli, giulio, called il paradosso, a bolognese, living in . _malvasia._ d. , aged . _guida di bologna._ v. . tromba, _see_ rinaldi. trompetta, _see_ da pesaro. troppa, cav. girolamo, supposed pupil of maratta. _ms._ ii. . trotti, cav. gio. batista, a cremonese, called il malosso, b. in . _zaist._ living in . _zamboni_, p. . his pietà at the chapel of s. gio. nova in cremona, with date of . _oretti, mem._ iv. . ---- euclide, his nephew. _zaist._ iv. . troy, gio. francesco, b. at paris, , d. . _abregé de la vie_, &c. vol. iv. ii. . tuccari, gio., a messinese, b. , d. in the plague of . _hakert._ ii. . tuncotto, giorgio, living in . _co. durando._ v. . tura, cosimo, called cosmè da ferrara, d. , aged . _baruffaldi._ v. . turchi, alessandro, called l'orbetto, a veronese, painted at rome in . _catalogo vianelli._ d. there in , aged . _pozzo._ b. , d. . _passeri._ ii. , iii. . turco, cesare, d'ischitella, b. about , d. about . _dominici._ ii. . turestio, francesco, a venetian mosaic worker, painted in . _zanetti._ iii. . turrita, da, in the sienese, f. mino, or giacomo, d. about . _guida di roma._ his mosaic work at s. m. maggiore, which, according to oretti, bears the date of , seems to have been retouched. i. , , . turini, gio., da siena, lived about . _vasari._ i. . v. vaccarini, bartol., da ferrara, lived about . _baruffaldi._ v. . vaccaro, andrea, a neapolitan, b. , d. . _dominici._ ii. . the andrea vaccari, a genoese, or roman, mentioned by _guarienti_, appears to me one of his usual mistakes. vacche, dalle, f. vincenzo, a veronese, an olivetan monk. _notiz. morell._ iii. . vaga, del, or de' ceri, perino, or pierino bonaccorsi, a florentine, d. , aged . _vasari._ or aged . _oretti_, from the inscrip. in the rotonda. i. , ii. , , , v. . vagnucci, franc., di assisi, flourished the beginning of the sixteenth century. _ms._ ii. . vaiano, orazio, called, from his birth-place, il fiorentino, painted at milan about . _ms._ iv. . valentin, monsieur pietro, called by baglione valentino, a frenchman, native of briè, near paris, d. , aged . _bardon._ ii. . valentina, di, jacopo, da serravalle; his painting of . _ms._ iii. . valeriani, p. giuseppe, dell'aquila, d. in the pontificate of clement viii. _baglione._ ii. . ---- domenico and giuseppe, romans, directed by marco ricci. _zanetti._ iii. . valesio, gio. luigi, a bolognese, d. in his prime under the pontificate of urban viii. _baglione._ v. . valle, da, in the milanese, or valli, gio., painted about . _lomazzo._ iv. . valle, carlo, his brother, iv. . _morigia_, p. ; called, as it seems, carlo milanese. iv. . van bloemen, commonly van blomen, gio. francesco, called orizzonte, academician of st. luke in , d. . _ms._ ii. . ---- pietro, called monsieur stendardo, brother of orizzonte. _catalogo colonna._ ii. . vandervert, of flanders, a pupil of claude loraine. in the _catalogo colonna_ he is named enrico wandervert. ii. . vandi, sante, a bolognese, d. at loreto, , aged . _crespi._ v. . vandych, and vandyck, antonio, b. at antwerp, , d. at london, . _bellori._ ii. , iv. , v. . ---- daniele, a frenchman, painted in . _zanetti._ iii. . vanetti, marco, da loreto, pupil of cignani. _life of cav. cignani._ ii. . van eych, or abeyk, giovanni, di maaseych, called de bruges, or da bruggia, and by facio, who wrote his eulogy, _jo. gallicus_, b. , d. . _gall. imp._ i. , ii. , iii. . vanloo, giambatista, of aix, d. , aged . _serie degli uomini più illustri in pittura_, &c. vol. xii. or aged . _bardon_, tom. ii. ii. , v. . ---- carlo, his brother and pupil, _ib._ vanni, cav. francesco, a sienese, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ or . _mariett. descriz._ i. . ---- cav. michelangiolo, his son, living in . _della valle._ i. , . ---- cav. raffaello, brother of the preceding, academician of st. luke in . _orlandi._ he was aged in . _della valle._ i. , . ---- gio. batista, a florentine; according to others a pisan; but in the epitaph called _civis flor._ (_moreni_, tom. iv.) b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . vanno, del, (scholars of cav. vanni the elder) gio. antonio and gio. francesco. _guida di roma._ ii. . vanno, di, andrea, a sienese, his works from to . _della valle._ i. . ---- nello, a pisan, a painter of the fourteenth century. _morrona._ i. . ---- other vanni, pisans, i. , . vannini, ottavio, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. . vannucchi, _see_ sarto. vannucci, _see_ pietro perugino. vante, a florentine, (signed himself also attavante) living in . _vasari_, and _lett. pittor._, tom. iii. i. . vanvitelli, or vanvitel, gaspare, called dagli occhiali, b. at utrecht, , d. at rome in . _dizionario istorico._ ii. . ---- luigi, his son, ii. . vaprio, costantino, a milanese, painted about . _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- agostino, his painting of . _ms._ _ib._ varnetam, francesco, b. at hamburgh, , d. . _pascoli._ ii. . varotari, dario, a veronese, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- alessandro, his son, called, from his birth-place, il padovanino, d. , aged . _orlandi._ iii. . ---- chiara, his sister, living in . _borghini._ iii. . ---- dario, the younger, son of alessandro, living in . _borghini._ iii. . vasari, giorgio, of arezzo, cav., b. , d. . _bottari._ i. , ii. , v. . ---- another giorgio, and lazzaro, his ancestors, i. . vasconio, giuseppe, a roman, academician of st. luke in . _orlandi._ ii. . vaselli, or vasello alessandro, a scholar of brandi. _orlandi_ and _guida di roma_. ii. . vassallo, antonmaria, a genoese, scholar of malò. _soprani._ v. . vassilacchi, antonio, called aliense da milo, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ iii. . vaymer, gio. enrico, a genoese, b. , d. . _ratti._ v. . uberti, pietro, a son of domenico, a venetian, flourished about . _guida di venezia dello zanetti._ iii. . ubertini, baccio, a florentine, scholar of pietro perugino. _vasari._ i. , . ---- francesco, his brother, called il bachiacca, lived to the year . _baldinucci._ i. . ---- antonio, another brother, a worker on tapestry and embroidery. _vasari._ i. , iv. . uccello, paolo, a florentine, d. , aged . _bottari._ i. . udine, da, girolamo, painted an altar-piece at cividale in . _renaldis._ iii. . ---- da, giovanni nanni, or ricamatore, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ but more likely b. , d. . _renaldis._ note, that in the _carte antiche_ of _udine_, also signed by giovanni, there is found only the family name _ricamatore_; and perhaps _nanni_ and _nani_, which in some places in italy stand for giovanni, has by historians been taken for his surname. i. , ii. , , iii. , . ---- da martino, _see_ pellegrino. vecchi, de', giovanni, di borgo s. sepolcro, d. , aged . _baglione._ i. , ii. . vecchia, pietro, a venetian, b. , d. aged . _orlandi_ and _melchiori_. or towards the close of the seventeenth century. _zanetti._ in the _guida di rovigo_ it is stated he was of the muttoni family. iii. . vecchietta, as he signs himself, lorenzo, di pietro, a sienese, d. , aged . _vasari._ i. . vecchio, il, di s. bernardo, _see_ minzocchi, _see also_ civerchio. vecellio, tiziano, da cadore, cav., d. , aged . _ridolfi._ ii. , iii. , iv. , , v. ., and throughout the work. ---- orazio, his son, d. in his prime, . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- francesco, brother of titian, painted in . _ms._ _ib._ ---- marco, a nephew of titian, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ _ib._ ---- tizianello, son of marco, living in . _ridolfi._ iii. . ---- of another branch, cesare, son of ettore, d. towards . _renaldis._ iii. . ---- fabrizio, brother of cesare, d. in . _renaldis._ iii. . ---- tommaso, a kinsman also of titian, d. . _renaldis._ iii. . veglia, marco and piero, venetians, their paintings of and . _zanetti._ iii. . velasquez, diego, ii. . veli, benedetto, a florentine painter of the seventeenth century. _ms._ i. . vellani, franc., a modenese, d. , aged . _tiraboschi._ iv. . velletri, da, andrea, painted in . _ms._ ii. . ---- lello, who signs himself _lellus de velletro pinsit_. _orsini risposta._ ii. . veltroni, stefano, da monte s. savino, living in . _vasari._ i. . venanzi, gio., by some called francesco, a pesarese, living about . _guida di pesaro._ in the _oretti mss._ is cited his s. onofrio at the carmine di pesaro, where he read _ant. venantius pisauriensis_, ; d. on the nd october, , aged . _oretti, notiz._ v. . venezia, da, lorenzo, painted in . _zanetti._ and in . _quadreria ercolani._ iii. , v. . ---- jacometto, painted in . _notiz. morelli._ iii. . ---- maestro giovanni, living in . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- niccolo, flourished in the time of perino del vaga, iv. . ---- maestro paolo, his notices of and . _morelli._ iii. . ---- jacopo and gio., his sons. _ib._ ---- (da,) fra santo, a cappuchin, painted about . _melchiore._ iii. . veneziano, agostino, an engraver and pupil of marcantonio. _vasari._ i. . veneziano, antonio, a venetian by birth, according to _vasari_. a florentine, as stated by others; d. aged , about . _baldinucci._ i. , iii. . ---- another antonio, a venetian, flourished about . i. . ---- carlo, _see_ saracini. ---- domenico, d. aged . _vasari._ about . _orlandi._ i. , ii. . ---- or, as _vasari_ writes, viniziano, sebastiano, _see_ del piombo. venier, pietro, an udinese, d. at an advanced age in . _renaldis._ iii. . venturini, gaspero, a ferrarese, painted in . _baruffaldi._ v. . ---- angelo, a venetian, scholar of balestra. _guida di venez._ iii. . venusti, marcello, a mantuan, d. in the pontificate of gregory xiii. _baglione._ i. , ii. . veracini, agostino, a florentine, pupil of bastian ricci. _ms._ d. . _oretti, memor._ i. . veralli, filippo, a bolognese, painted in . _malvasia._ v. . vercellesi, sebastiano, da reggio, living in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . vercelli, da, f. pietro, painted about . _della valle._ iv. . verdizzotti, gio. mario, a venetian, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . verhuik, cornelio, di rotterdam, b. , living in . _orlandi._ v. . vermiglio, giuseppe, a turinese, living in . _ms._ v. . vernet, joseph, a scholar of manglard, b. at avignon in . academician of st. luke, , d. at paris in . _ms._ ii. . vernici, gio. batista, scholar of the caracci. _malvasia._ d. at fossombrone, th march, . _oretti, memor._ v. . vernigo, girol., a veronese, called girolamo da' paesi, d. . _pozzo._ iii. . verona, da, batista, _see_ zelotti. verona, da, f. gio., an olivetan monk, d. , aged . _pozzo._ iii. . ---- jacopo, painted in . _guida di padova._ iii. . ---- p. massimo, a cappuchin, d. at venice, aged , in . _melchiori._ iii. . ---- f. semplice, a cappuchin, d. at an advanced age in . _ib._ ---- stefano, called also stefano da zevio (_piacenza_), flourished about . _vasari._ i. , iii. . ---- stefano, di, vincenzio da verona, perhaps a son of the preceding. _vasari._ _ib._ ---- maffei, a veronese, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ iii. . veronese, claudio, _see_ ridolfi, paolo, _see_ caliari. ---- another paolo veronese, an embroiderer, flourished about . _vasari._ iv. . verocchio, del, andrea, a florentine, b. , d. . _baldinucci._ i. , . ---- tommaso, a florentine, assistant of vasari, i. . veruzio, _vasari_, probably francesco verlo, called in vicenza, his country perhaps, verluzo or verluccio, living in . _p. faccioli._ iii. . verzelli, tiburzio, da recanati, d. about . _ms._ ii. . vetraro, il, _see_ bembo. uggione, or uglone, or da oggione, marco, a milanese, in the registry called marco da ogionno, (a district of the milanese,) d. . _ms._ iv. . viadana, da, andrea, a scholar of bernardino campi. _lamo._ iv. . viani, antonmaria, a cremonese, called il vianino, living in . _zaist._ iv. . ---- giovanni, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . ---- domenico, his son, b. , d. at pistoia in . _zanotti._ _ib._ vicentini, antonio, a venetian, d. , aged . _ms._ iii. . vicentino, francesco, a milanese, flourished in the sixteenth century. _lomazzo._ iv. . ---- andrea, a venetian, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ a date to be corrected on the authority of a document edited by p. federici, in which, while painting at trevigi in , he is termed m. andrea micheli visentino. _federici._ iii. . vicentino, marco, his son. _zanetti._ iii. . vicinelli, odoardo, a scholar of morandi. _pascoli._ d. , aged . _galletti inscrip. rom._, tom. ii. ii. . vicino, a pisan, flourished about . _da morrona._ i. . vicolungo, di vercelli, lived in the seventeenth century. _ms._ iv. . vighi, giacomo, da medicina, (in the bolognese,) lived at turin about . _orlandi._ v. . vignali, jacopo, b. in the casentino, , d. . _r. gall. of flor._ i. . vignerio, jacopo, a messinese, painted in . _hakert._ ii. . vignola, da, girolamo, a modenese painter of the sixteenth century. _tiraboschi._ iv. . ---- giacomo, _see_ barocci. vigri, b. caterina, or b. caterina da bologna, b. there (her father a ferrarese,) in , d. . _piacenza._ v. . vimercati, carlo, a milanese, latuada calls him donelli, by others called il vimercati, d. , aged about . _orlandi._ iv. . vinci, da, lionardo, b. , d. . _amoretti memor. storiche._ i. , iv. , and often throughout the work. ---- gaudenzio, a novarese. his altar-piece with his name and the year . _ms._ iv. . vini, sebastiano, a veronese, flourished in the sixteenth century. _ms._ i. . viola, domenico, a neapolitan, d. old about . _dominici._ ii. . ---- gio. batista, a bolognese, d. , aged . _malvasia._ ii. , v. . visacci, so called in the _pitture di pesaro_, or antonio cimatore di urbino, called il visacci, a scholar of barocci. _lazzari._ ii. . visentini, _see_ vicentini. visino, il, a scholar of albertinelli. _vasari._ d. in hungary about . _ms._ i. . vitali, alessandro, di urbino, d. , aged . _lazzari._ ii. . ---- candido, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . vite, antonio, a pistoiese, living in . _vasari._ i. . ---- or della vite, timoteo, da urbino, d. , aged . _vasari._ ii. . ---- pietro, da urbino, his brother. _ms._ perhaps the priest of urbino mentioned by baldinucci in the decennale, iii. sec. . ii. . viterbo, da, f. mariotto, painted in . _della valle._ ii. . ---- tarquinio, d. in the pontificate of paul v. _baglione._ ii. . vito, nicola, a neapolitan, scholar of zingaro. ii. . vitrulio, a name inscribed on several pictures at venice. this painter seems to have lived in the time of bonifazio, and to have been his competitor. _see guida di venezia._ iii. . vivarini, antonio, da murano. _zanetti._ his notices up to . _guida di padova._ iii. . ---- bartolommeo, his brother and companion, painted in . _zanetti._ or . _n. guida di venezia._ iii. . ---- giovanni, supposed of the same family. _zanetti._ _see_ gio. tedesco. iii. . ---- luigi, supposed the elder, flourished in . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- luigi, supposed the younger, in the _notizia_ called _zuanluisi da muran_, painted in . _zanetti._ iii. . viviani, ottavio, a brescian, a scholar of sandrino. _orlandi._ ii. , iii. . ---- antonio, called il sordo d'urbino, (others say of ancona,) d. in the pontificate of paul v. _baglione._ ii. . ---- lodovico, di urbino, flourished . _guida di urbino._ ii. . ---- il, _see_ codagora. ulivelli, cosimo, a florentine, b. , d. . _r. gall. of flor._ i. . voglar, carlo, b. at maestricht in , d. at rome in . _pascoli._ ii. . volpati, gio. batista, di bassano, a scholar of novelli. _ms._ b. , d. . _guida di bassano._ iii. . volpi, stefano, a sienese, perhaps a scholar of casolani. _see il pecci_, p. . i. . volterra, da, or volterrano, _see_ ricciarelli and franceschini. voltolino, andrea, a veronese, d. , aged . _pozzo._ iii. . voltri, da, in the genovese, niccolò, painted in . _soprani._ v. . volvino, author of the _palliotto d'oro_, gold pallium or mantle, at milan in the tenth century. iv. . vos, de, martino, of antwerp, d. at advanced age in . _sandrart._ iii. . vovet, simon, of paris, d. , aged . _lacombe._ or b. , d. . _abrégé_, tom. iv. or d. , aged . _bardon_, tom. ii. ii. , v. . urbani, michelangiolo, a cortonese, a painter upon glass, living in . _lett. pitt._, tom. iii. i. . urbanis, giulio, di s. daniello, painted in . _ms._ iii. . urbano, pietro, a pistoiese, a scholar of bonarruoti. _vasari._ i. . urbinelli, b. at urbino, lived in the seventeenth century. _guida di urbino._ ii. . urbini, or urbino, carlo, da crema, made his will in . _tibald. di vicenza._ iii. , iv. . urbino, di, crocchia, a scholar of raffaello. _baldinucci._ ii. . ---- gio. and francesco, lived about . _conca._ ii. . ---- il prete, _see_ della vite. ---- raffaello, _see_ sanzio. terenzio, _see_ terenzi. uroom, enrico, called enrico di spagna, and, as appears, also enrico delle marine, b. at haarlem in . _sandrart._ ii. . w. waals, godfrey, a german, scholar of tassi. _soprani._ v. . wael, cornelius, of antwerp, painted at genoa in . _soprani._ v. . wallint, francesco, called monsieur studio. _ms._ ii. . ---- juniore, his son. _ib._ z. zaccagna, turpino, a cortonese, living in . _bottari._ i. . zacchetti, bernardino, a modenese, living in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . zacchia, paolo, called il vecchio, of lucca, painted in . _ms._ i. . ---- il giovane, the younger; he is called lorenzo di ferro zacchia. _ms._ lived in the sixteenth century. _ib._ zaccolini, p. matteo, a theatine monk of cesena, d. , aged about . _baglione._ ii. , v. . _see_ the second index for his manuscript treatises. ii. . zaganelli, _see_ da cotignola. zagnani, anton maria, a bolognese, living in . _crespi._ v. . zago, santo, a venetian, scholar of titian. _ridolfi._ iii. . zais, giuseppe, a venetian, d. old about . _ms._ iii. . zaist, gio. batista, a cremonese, b. , d. . _panni._ iv. . zamboni, matteo, a bolognese, scholar of cignani, d. young. _crespi._ v. . zambono, michele, a venetian mosaic worker, flourished about . _zanetti._ iii. . zampezzo, gio. batista, da cittadella, in the paduan district, d. , aged . _melchiori._ iii. . zampieri, domenichino, a bolognese, d. , aged . _bellori._ _preface_, xxxiv. ii. , . v. . zanata, gioseffo, a milanese, living in . _orlandi._ iv. . zanchi, antonio, da este, b. . _zanetti._ d. . _melchiori._ iii. . ---- filippo and francesco, of bergamo. their notices from to . _tassi._ iii. . zanella, francesco, a paduan. his notices until . _guida di padova._ iii. . zanetti, co. antonio maria, _quondam_ girolamo, a venetian, thus called to distinguish him from _antonio maria zanetti, quondam alessandro_, mentioned in the index that follows:--the first was eminent for engraving on various sorts of wood, in . _lett. pitt._, tom ii. p. . he was in advanced age in . _lett. pitt._, tom. v. p. . pref. x. the other d. rd november, , aged . zanimberti, or zaniberti, filippo, a brescian, b. , d. . _ridolfi._ iii. , . zanna, gio. a roman, called il pizzica, painted with tarquinio da viterbo. _baglione._ ii. . zannichelli, prospero, of reggio, b. , d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . zanobrio, di ca, _see_ carlevaris. zanotti cavazzoni, gio. pietro, a bolognese, b. , d. . _crespi._ v. . zappi, another surname of lavinia fontana, v. . zarato, _see_ luzzo. zei, b. at città s. sepolcro, a supposed scholar of cortona. _ms._ i. . zelotti, batista, a veronese, d. aged . _ridolfi._ about . _pozzo._ iii. , . zenale, _see_ da trevilio. zevio, da, in the veronese, alticherio, or altichieri; _in a ms. document of the noble house of dondi orologio_, aldighieri; living in . iii. . ---- stefano, _see_ da verona. zifrondi, or cifrondi, antonio, b. in the territory of bergamo, , d. . _tassi._ iii. . zinani, francesco, of reggio, flourished in . _tiraboschi._ iv. . zingaro, lo, _see_ solario. zoboli, jacopo, a modenese, d. . _tiraboschi._ iv. . zocchi, giuseppe, of the florentine territory, d. , aged . _ms._ i. . zola, or zolla, giuseppe, di brescia, d. , aged . _crespi nelle giunte al baruffaldi._ v. . zompini, gaetano, a venetian, d. , aged . _ms._ iii. . zoppo, marco, da bologna. his work of . _ms._ and of , in the colonna façade. _oretti, memor._ iii. , , v. . zoppo, paolo, a brescian, d. about . _ridolfi._ or . _ms._ iii. . ---- rocco, a florentine, scholar of pietro perugino. _vasari._ i. . ---- lo, di gangi, living in the eighteenth century. _ms._ ii. . ---- di genova, _see_ micone. ---- di lugano, _see_ discepoli. ---- di vicenza, _see_ de'pieri. zuannino, _see_ da capugnano. zuccari, federigo, flourished in the sixteenth century, iv. . zuccaro, (so named in his epitaph, and the books of federigo,) in _vasari_ and elsewhere, zuccheri, or zuccari, taddeo. he was born at s. angelo in vado, , d. . _vasari._ ii. , , . ---- federigo, his brother, painted about . _vasari._ aged . _bottari in his addenda to the notes._ d. , _bellori, in his life of caravaggio._ ii. , iii. , v. . ---- ottaviano, their father. ii. . zuccati, sebastiano, di trevigi, living about . _zanetti._ father federici assigns to this family a different country, namely, ponte, a place in the valteline. iii. , . ---- valerio and francesco, his sons, lived in . _zanetti._ iii. . ---- arminio, son of valerio, flourished about . _zanetti._ iii. . zuccherelli, francesco, b. in the florentine state about , d. . _ms._ i. , iii. . zucchi, or della zucca, jacopo, a florentine, b. about . _vasari._ d. in the pontificate of sixtus v. _baglione._ i. . ---- francesco, his brother. _baglione._ _ib._ zucco, francesco, a bergamese, d. . _tassi._ iii. . zugni, francesco, a brescian, d. , aged . _ridolfi._ more correctly d. . _zamboni_, p. . iii. . zupelli, or cappellini, gio. batista, of cremona, flourished at the close of the fifteenth century. _zaist._ iv. . second index. _historical and critical publications cited in this work._ a. abbecedari--historical dictionaries--their authors, editions, and opinion on them, preface, xx. affò, p. ireneo, m. o., _il parmigiano servitore di piazza_, or _account of the paintings of parma_. parma, , vo. iv. , _et seq._ (throughout the whole school of parma). ---- the same. _life of francesco mazzola, called il parmigianino._ parma, , to. iv. , . ---- the same. _treatise upon a chamber painted by coreggio in the monastery of benedictine nuns at s. paolo in parma._ parma, , vo. iv. , _et seq._ albani, francesco. his opinions upon painting. _see malvasia._ _felsina pittrice_, vol. ii. p. ; and _bellori_, in his _lives_, p. , second edition, i. . iv. . v. , . alberti, romano. _origin and progress of the academy of design._ pavia, , to. ii. . algarotti, count francesco. _essay on painting._ leghorn, , vo. it is cited in the _preface_, pp. ii. and xxxii.; and in vol. iii. , . iv. , , . v. , and other places. ---- the same. _letters._ leghorn, , vo. iv. , . v. , , . allegranza, p. m. giuseppe. d. o. d. p. _explanation of, and reflections upon, some sacred monuments at milan._ milan, , to. iv. . ---- the same. _opusc. eruditi._ cremona, . _ib._ altan, count federigo. _memoirs of the life of pomponio amalteo._ they are inserted in vol. xlviii. of the _opuscoli calogeriani_. iii. . altan. the same. _treatise on the vicissitudes of painting in friuli._ it is inserted in the _new collection_ of the _opuscoli scientifici e filologici_. venice, vol. xxiii. iii. . amoretti. _observations on the designs of lionardo da vinci._ milan, . iv. . ---- carlo. _historical account of the life, studies, and works of lionardo da vinci._ milan, , vo. iv. . _anecdotes des beaux arts._ paris, , , vols. vo. ii. . argensville, (d') ant. joseph. _abridg. of the lives of the most celebrated painters._ paris, , vols. vo. pref. v. and xxvi.; and vol. i. , , iii. , iv. . armenini, gio. batista. _on the true precepts of painting, in three books._ ravenna, , to. iv. , v. , . _art of vision, according to the principles of sulzer and of mengs, applied to the fine arts._ venice, , vo. pref. xxxvi. averoldi. _see guida di brescia._ azara (d') cav. giuseppe niccola. _memoirs of mengs_; and _observations_ on the treatise of mengs, bearing title, _reflections on the beautiful_. ii. , , . azzolini, ugurgieri, p. isidoro. _le pompe sanesi._ pistoia, , to. i. , , iv. . b. baglione, cav. giovanni. _lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects, from the pontificate of gregory xiii. in , to the time of pope urban viii. in ._ naples, , to. ii. . it is cited in the roman school, the florentine, andothers. corrected, i. . opinion on the work, ii. . baldeschi, ab. _state of the lateran church in the year ._ rome, , to. there is annexed a _view of the remarkable objects in the said church by crescimbeni_. baldinucci, filippo. _account of the professors of design, from the time of cimabue._ six volumes, to. printed at florence between and , and after the author's death, from to : his posthumous works completed by his son. i. . cited throughout the work. accusations by various foreigners, i. , , v. . exculpated, i. , . his mistakes, i. , , , , , , , , ii. , , , , iv. , , v. , . baldinucci. the same, _with various dissertations, notes, and additions, by giuseppe piacenza, an architect of turin_. turin, vols. to. and . i. , , ii. , v. , . ---- the same, _with notes by manni_, vols. vo. florence, from the year to . corrected, i. . ---- the same. _opuscoli_ contained in vol. of the before-mentioned edition. _preface_, xxviii. i. , . barbaro, monsig. daniello. _the practice of perspective._ venice, , fol. iii. . bardon, dandre. _traité de peinture, &c._ paris, , vols. mo. ii. . barocci, giacomo, _see_ danti. barri, giacomo. _picturesque tour in italy._ venice, . iii. , iv. . bartoli, francesco. _account of the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of italy._ vols. venice, vo, , , cited in vol. iv. p. , in the milanese school and that of piedmont. corrected, v. . ---- the same. _see guida di rovigo._ bartolini, cav. and cortinovis, p. baruffaldi, girolamo. _lives of the most celebrated painters and sculptors of ferrara._ they are cited by guarienti as already edited at ferrara; but there only exist _mss._ with the additions of the can. luigi crespi, respecting the professors of ferrara and lower romagna, in the hands of the cav. jacopo morelli and the cav. lazara. v. , _et seq._ bellori, giampietro. _lives of the modern painters, sculptors, and architects._ rome, and , to. with the addition of the life of the cav. luca giordano. cited in the _preface_, xxxviii. i. , ii. , , and other places throughout the work and index. opinion upon this author, ii. . ---- the same. other _ms._ lives, supposed to be lost, but by some asserted to exist. _see_ de murr, _bibliothèque de peinture_, vol. i. p. . v. . ---- the same. _life of the cav. carlo maratta._ rome, , to. ii. . ---- the same. _description of the figures painted by raffaello d'urbino in the vatican palace_; where it is inquired also whether raffaello _enlarged and improved his manner by viewing the works of michelangiolo_. edit. . rome, , folio. ii. , , . bertoli, canon. giandomenico. _sacred and profane antiquities of aquileia._ venice, , folio. the d vol. of this work is in _ms._ tom. i. p. . iv. . bettinelli, ab. saverio. _revival in italy of studies, arts, and manners, after the year _, vols. vo. bassano, , . i. . ---- the same. of _mantuan letters and arts_, in two discourses. mantua, , to. iv. , . bevilacqua, ippolito. _memoirs of the life of the painter gio. bettino cignaroli._ verona, , vo. iii. . bianconi. _see guida_ of milan and of bologna. ---- the same. _letter on a miniature of simon da siena_, in second vol. of sienese letters, by p. della valle, i. . bibiena, da, ferdinando galli. _directions for young students of civil architecture._ bologna, , vo. the same, with new additions, , vo. vols. ed. of parma was in . v. . boni, ab. mauro. _on the painting of a banner of the fraternity of s. maria di castello, and on other works executed in friuli by gio. da udine._ udine, , vo. iii. . ---- cav. onofrio. _eulogy on the cav. pompeo batoni._ rome, , vo. ii. . borghini, raffaello. _il riposo._ florence, , vo.; and again with annotations, , to. cited, _preface_, xxxii. i. , _et seq._ borsieri, girolamo. _see morigia._ milan, , vo. boschini, marco. _la carta del navegar pittoresco._ venice, , to. cited often in book i. of volume iii. noticed, p. . the plan of this work, iii. . his verses, v. . boschini. _see guida_ of venice and of vicenza. bottari, monsig. gio. _notes to the lives of vasari._ the edition made use of is that commenced at leghorn, and continued at florence in seven volumes, vo. from to . cited in _pref._ xxxiii. and often throughout the work. its scope and merit, i. . not approved, i. , , , , , , , ii. , , iv. , , , , , v. . ---- the same. _notes to the letters on painting._ _pref._ xx. i. , . ---- the same. _dialogues on the fine arts._ lucca, , vo. ii. . brandolese, pietro. _testimonianze intorno alla patavinità di andrea mantegna._ padua, , vo. iii. . ---- _doubts as to the existence of the painter giovanni vivarino da murano, newly confirmed, and refutation of a pretended authority to support it._ padua, , vo. iii. . bugati, dottor gaetano. _historical and critical notices of the reliques and worship of s. celso martire._ milan, , to. iv. . bure, guillaume françois de, _bibliographie instructive_, vol. viii. vo. paris, , . i. . c. cambrucci. _history ms. of feltre._ iii. . campi, cav. ant. _le cronache di cremona_, , fol.; and again at milan, , to. iv. , , , . carducci, vincenzio. _de las excelencias de la pintura._ _baldinucci_; or a _dialogue on painting, its definition, origin, and essence._ madrid, , to. i. . carrari, vincenzo. _oration and verses by several hands on the death of luca longhi._ ravenna, , to. iv. . castiglione, fr. sabba. _recollections, or directions._ venice, , to. iv. . _catalogue of the existing pictures and paintings in the casa colonna._ rome, , vo. ii. , and in the index. _catalogue of the pictures, drawings, and books, which treat of the art of design, from the gallery of the late count algarotti, in venice, drawn up by the architect antonio selva_, vo. iii. , v. . ---- ercolani. _verses and prose written on a series of excellent paintings in possession of signor marco filippo ercolani, prince of the empire._ a work of the painter jacopo alessandro calvi. bologna, , to. iii. , and often in vol. v. ---- _of pictures now in possession of d. gio. dottor vianelli, canon of the cathedral of chioggia_. venice, , to. v. , , and in the index i. _diary of the years and , written by rosalba carriera; illustrated and published by the same vianelli._ venice, , to. v. . cavazzone, francesco. _corona di grazie, favori, o miracoli della gloriosa vergine maria, fatti in bologna, dove si tratta delle sue sante e miracolose immagini cavate dal suo naturale._ _ms._ with date . _example of the noble art of design, &c._ _ms._ with date of . they are recorded by crespi in his _felsina_, p. . v. , . caylus, bachiliere, cochin the younger, writers upon painting in caustic, v. . cellini, benvenuto. _two treatises: one respecting the eight principal parts of the goldsmith's art; the other on matters connected with that of sculpture, &c._ florence, , to. i. , , iv. , . ---- the same. _life of benvenuto cellini, written by himself._ cologne, without date (which is naples, . see note on the works of cocchi, who wrote the preface). i. , . cennini, andrea. _treatise on painting._ _ms._ i. . christ, jo. frederic. _dictionnaire des monogrammes, lettres initiales, &c. translated from the german, with additions._ paris, , vo. i. . cignaroli, giambettino, a veronese. _series of veronese painters inserted in vol. iii. of the cronaca dello zagata; and ms. notes to the work of pozzo on the veronese painters_. iii. . cittadella, cesare. _historical catalogue of the painters and sculptors of ferrara._ ferrara, , vol. iv. vo. v. , _et seq._ civalli, p. provincial of the conventuali _visita triennale_, inserted in vol. xxv. of the _antichità picene_. iii. , v. . cochin, charles nicholas. _voyage d'italie, &c._ paris, , vols. vo. lausanne, , vols. mo. opinion on this work, pref. xxxvi. cited, v. , and elsewhere. colucci, ab. giuseppe. _antichità picene._ fermo, vols. fol. . ii. , , and elsewhere. combe, la, mr. _portable dictionary of the fine arts._ paris, , , vo. vols. ii. pref. xxi. corrected, iii. . comolli, ab. _inedited life of raffaello d'urbino, illustrated with notes._ rome, , to. d ed. ii. , . conca, d. antonio. _descrizione odeporica della spagna, &c._ vols. parma, , _et seq._ vo. i. , and in the index. condivi, ascanio. _life of michelangiolo bonarruoti._ rome, , to. i. , _et seq._ ---- the same book, _with annotations by antonfrancesco gori and by mariette_. folio, florence, . i. , . cortona, da, _see_ ottonelli. cozzando, lionardo. _abstract of the history of brescia._ brescia, , to. iii. . crespi, can. luigi. _felsina pittrice; or lives of the bolognese painters, not described by malvasia._ rome, , to. v. , and often in that book. clamours against that work, v. . ---- dialogues in defence of the same work, v. . ---- the same. _notes and additions to the lives of baruffaldi._ _opera, ms._ v. . cited often in the ferrarese school. corrected, v. . ---- the same. _letters on painting._ pref. xxix. ii. , , v. , . ---- the same. _anticritical dissertation upon two readings by manni, as to the opinion that st. luke practised painting._ faenza, , vo. ii. . ---- the same. _the certosa of bologna described, with its paintings._ bologna, , vo. ii. , v. . crispolti, ciatti, alessi, writers on matters appertaining to perugia, ii. . cumberland, richard. _anecdotes of eminent painters in spain, &c._ ii. , . d. danti, p. ignazio, a dominican. _rules of practical perspective, by giacomo barocci, called il vignola, with the commentaries of the preceding_. rome, , folio. v. . dati, carlo. _lives of the ancient painters._ florence, , to. pref. xxxviii. i. , iv. . _description, historical, of the monastery of monte casino._ naples, , to. ii. . ---- _of the certosa di bologna_. _see crespi._ ---- _of the royal temple and monastery of s. m. nuova di monreale_, folio. i. . ---- _of cartoons designed by carlo cignani, and of pictures painted by sebastian ricci, with a compendium of the lives of two professors_. venice, , to. in the index. ---- of monte oliveto maggiore: o sia _lettera sopra l'archicenobio di m. d. m., by giulio perini_. florence, , vo. i. , . ---- of the convent of assisi. _angeli francisci mariæ conventus assisiensis historia._ _montefalisc._, , folio. i. , ii. . dictionaries of painting, their authors, editions, and opinions on them. pref. xx. _dictionary, new historical, &c._, vols. vo. bassano, . in my citations from this very laborious work, i might always give the name of the ab. francesco carrara, who, to the illustrious names before mentioned in several dictionaries, added in this work more than five thousand, for the most part of italian literati or professors of the fine arts. he having also adduced many anecdotes respecting them, i have availed myself of several in this edition. _see_ index i. dolce, lodovico, _dialogue on painting._ venice, , vo. i. , ii. . dominici, de', bernardo. _lives of the neapolitan painters, sculptors, and architects._ naples, , , , vols. to. writers from whom he collected them, ii. . cited in the last mentioned volume, through the whole fourth book, iv. . opinion on the work, ii. . durando, di villa, count felice. _a discourse read on the th of april, , with notes._ it is annexed to the rules of the r. academy of turin, _ib._ , folio. v. , and other places in the last book. e. _eulogies of illustrious tuscans._ vols. vo. lucca, , _et seq._ i. . f. faccioli. _museum lapid. vicentinum._ vicentiæ, , vols. to. iii. , and in the index. facius, barthol. _de viris illustribus_; a work written in , published by mehus, at florence, , to. iii. . fantuzzi, count marco. _monuments of the middle ages at ravenna._ venice, , _et seq._, vols. to. v. , . ---- _accounts of the canon gio. andrea cazzarini of pesaro, a distinguished painter and man of letters._ venice, , vo. _see_ index i. federici, f. domenico maria, de' predicatori. _account of works of design at trevigi._ venice, , vols. to. ii. , iii. , , and often in the venetian school. cited, iii. . felibien, j. f. _entretiens sur les vies et les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres, anciens et modernes._ paris, and , vols. to. pref. xxxvii. i. , v. . francesconi. _conjecture that a letter attributed to baldassar castiglione belongs to raffaello d'urbino._ florence, , vo. ii. . franchi, antonio. _the theory of painting, &c._ lucca, , vo. i. . fresnoy, caroli alphonsi. _de arte graphica liber._ paris, , vo. translated into several languages, and explained with notes by mr. de piles, and by other writers. _see_ de murr, p. . preface, xxxii. iii. , and other places. g. gallery, electoral, of dresden. _catalogue des tableaux de la galerie electorate à dresde._ dresden, , vo. iv. , , and elsewhere in vol. iii. and iv. ---- imperial. _catalogue des tableaux de la galerie imper. et roy. de vienne, &c., by chretien de mechel._ basle, , vo. ii. , and other parts of the work. ---- _royal florentine._ sometimes indicated in the first index, by the initial letters _r. g._ various descriptions of it are pointed out in vol. i. p. . use made of the french work of , vo., printed at arezzo, which contains the dates also of the more recent painters, in the manner observed in the florentine museum, i. . or they are added to their portraits in the two chambers dedicated to the painters. this ed. is cited through the whole work; corrected, i. , v. . ---- of modena, _see guida di modena_. ---- royal, of paris. _reissant. explication des tableaux de la galerie et des salons de versailles._ paris, , vo. the descriptions of fontainebleau, of the louvre, and of other places mentioned through the work, are contained in _de murr bibliothèque de peinture_, p. , i. , ii. , , iii. , iv. , v. , . gallerati, francesco. _account of the works of painters, both native and foreign, publicly exhibited in the city of milan, with some notice of the sculptors and architects._ first part. milan, , vo. _see_ index i. galletti, aloiysii. _inscriptions venetæ romæ extantes._ romæ, , to. _see_ index i. ---- _inscriptiones romanæ._ romæ, , to. vols. _see_ index i. gallo. _annals of messina_, ii. . gamba, bartolommeo. _observations on the edition of ptolemy's geography, executed at bologna, with date of m.cccc.lxii._ vo. bassano, . i. . garcia, dell'huerta, ab. pietro. _commentari della pittura encaustica del pennello._ madrid, . ii. . gemalde, &c. _collection of the r. imperial gallery. italian school._ vienna, . it is the work of sig. giuseppe rosa, director of the same, written in german. vo. i. , ii. , . gigli, and other writers on the painters of siena, i. , . girupeno, _see_ scaramuccia. giulini, count giorgio. _memoirs relating to the history, government, and description of the city of milan, &c._ milan, , to. vols. i. . goltzius, ubertus. _vita lamberti lombardi pictoris celeberrimi._ brugis, fland. , vo. iii. . gori, ant. francisci. _thesaurus veterum dypticorum, &c._ florentiæ, , folio, vols. it is cited for the age of finiguerra. i. . ----_see_ condivi. guides _of various cities, or districts, cited under this general term, which here follow under their respective titles_. arezzo. _guida, ms._, written in , and pointed out to me by the learned ansaldi. i. . ascoli. _description of the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of the famous city of ascoli, by baldassare orsini_; concluding with _historical notices of the professors of ascoli_. perugia, , vo. ii. , and often in the third book. ----_in perspective, by tullio lazzari_. ascoli, , vo. i. . bassano. its _guida_ is inserted in the work of verci. bergamo. _the remarkable paintings of bergamo, collected by the dott. andrea pasta._ bergamo, , to. iii. , . bologna. _bologna perlustrata di ant. masini._ _ib._ , to. v. , , _et seq._ ----_pictures, sculpture, and architecture of the city of bologna and its suburbs, with mention of their authors, accompanied by historical notes of each. corrected and improved by ab. carlo bianconi._ _ib._ , mo. v. , and often under the name of _guida di bologna_. brescia. _select paintings of brescia, by gio. ant. averoldo._ _ib._ , to. v. , _et seq._ ---- _the pictures and sculpture of brescia_, (_by gio. batista carboni_. _guida di rovigo_, p. .) _ib._ , vo. iii. . cento. _the pictures of cento, and the abridged lives of various engravers and painters of the city_, by orazio camillo righetti dandini. ferrara, , vo. v. . cremona. _exact account of the paintings, &c. compiled by anton maria panni._ cremona, , vo. v. . fabriano. _paintings of the churches of fabriano_, transcribed from a _ms._ of the archives at st. niccolo, the famous collegiate church of that city. ii. , , , iii. . fano. _catalogue of the pictures preserved in the church of the padri dell'oratorio of fano, under title of s. pietro in valle._ _ib._ , mo. ii. . ferrara. _paintings and sculpture of the city of ferrara, by cesare barotti._ _ib._ , vo. v. , . ---- _guide for strangers through the city of ferrara, by the dott. antonio frizzi._ ferrara, , vo. v. , and wherever _guida di ferrara_ is mentioned. florence. _beauties of the city of florence, by francesco bocchi, augmented by gio. cinelli._ _ib._ , vo. i. . ---- _guide for strangers, containing a methodical account of rare and beautiful paintings in the city of florence._ _ib._ mo. i. . genoa. _account of the most beautiful specimens of painting, sculpture, and architecture, belonging to genoa, by the cav. giuseppe ratti._ _ib._ , vo. vol. iii. _et seq._ ---- _territories of the genoese coasts. description of the paintings, sculpture, and architecture, round the coasts of genoa_, by the same, , vo. v. . lendinara. _on the genius of the lendinarese for painting, and on some valuable pictures of lendinara. letter of pietro brandolese._ padua, , vo. cited in the index. leghorn. cav. pandolfo titi. _description of the most rare objects at present to be met with in the city of leghorn._ it is inserted in the _guide of pisa_, written by the same author. i. . loreto. _account of the s. casa, &c._ ancona, , vo. ii. . lucca. _the stranger's companion in lucca, by vincenzio marchio._ _ib._ , vo. i. . ---- _sacred diary of the churches of lucca; augmented by monsig. domenico mansi, archbishop of that city._ i. , v. . mantua. _description of the paintings, sculpture, and architecture, contained in the city of mantua and its vicinity, by gio. cadioli._ _ib._ , vo. iv. , . in pointing out the pictures i have not invariably adhered to it. milan. _immortality and honour of the pencil; or a description of the paintings of milan, by agostino santagostini._ ( ). iv. , v. . ---- torre carlo. _portrait of milan._ _ib._ , to. i. , iii. , iv. . ---- _new guide, &c.; with the description of the certosa of pavia and of s. gio. batista di monza._ milan, , mo. iv. . it is always cited with the date of the year; where this is wanting the following _guide_ has been made use of. ---- _new guide of milan, for the lovers of the fine arts, by the ab. carlo bianconi._ _ib._ , mo. i. , iv. , , and often throughout the milanese school. ---- the same, with manuscript corrections and additions, by the same author. iii. , and in index i. modena. _the paintings and sculpture of modena, drawn up by the dott. gian filiberto pagani._ _ib._ , vo. there is inserted the _description of the ducal gallery_; printed also separately in , vo. iv. . montalboddo. _description of the paintings and sculpture of the city of montalboddo, in the march of ancona; and historical notices of the same city, by agostino rossi._ _see_ colucci. _antichità picene_, tom. xxxviii. murano, _see_ moschini, &c. napoli. _strangers' guide for the r. city of naples, by the ab. pompeo sarnelli._ _ib._ , vo. iv. . ---- _account of the beautiful, the antique, and the curious, &c., by the cav. celano._ iv. . ---- _new guide for strangers, &c., by antonio parrino, augmented by his son niccolo._ naples, , mo. ii. . ---- _brief description of naples and its vicinity, by the advocate giuseppe galanti._ _ib._ , vo. and in index i. padua. _description of the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of padua, with some observations, &c., by gio. batista rossetti._ _ib._ , mo. iii. , , , . ---- the same, _newly described, by pietro brandolese, with brief notices respecting the artists mentioned in the work_. , vo. iii. , and wherever _guida di padova_ is mentioned. parma. _guide and exact notice for foreigners of the most valuable paintings in many churches of the city, formerly drawn up by clementi ruta, revised, &c._ milan, . iv. . ---- _il parmigiano servitor di piazza, &c._ _see_ affò. perugia. _paintings and sculpture of the city of perugia, by gio. francesco morelli._ _ib._, , mo. ii. . ---- _guide for the stranger through the noble city of perugia, by baldassare orsini._ _ib._ , vo. ii. , . ---- _description of the church of s. francesco, of the p. p. minori conventuali of perugia._ _ib._ , vo. ii. . pesaro. _catalogue of the paintings preserved in the churches of pesaro, by antonio becci._ _ib._ , vo. there is annexed an account of the pesarese professors, written about . ii. , v. , . pescia. _description of the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of the city and suburbs of pescia, in tuscany, by innocenzio ansaldi._ bologna, , vo. it was published by the canon crespi; but the author assured me that the typography was extremely incorrect. ii. . ---- _catalogue of the best paintings, &c., of the valdinievole._ it is inserted in the history of pescia of p. o. b. it was drawn up by the same author. _ib._ piacenza. _the public paintings of piacenza, by count proposto carlo carasi_. _ib._ , vo. some very useful annotations are annexed. iv. . pisa. _guide for the dilettante tourist, in painting, sculpture, and architecture, for the city of pisa; drawn up by the cav. pandolfo titi, &c._ lucca, , vo. i. . ---- _pisa illustrata, &c._, _see_ da morrona. ravenna. _researches in ravenna, by girolamo fabri._ bologna, , vo. v. . ---- _the stranger directed through the city of ravenna and its suburbs, by the ab. francesco beltrami._ _ib._ , vo. v. , and other parts of the same book. rimino. _paintings of the churches of rimino, described by sig. carlo francesco marcheselli, with new additions by gio. batista costa._ _ib._ , vo. v. . rome. _description of the paintings, sculpture, and architecture, publicly exhibited in rome; a work commenced by the ab. filippo titi of città di castello, with the addition of whatever new has since been done, up to the present year._ rome, , vo. i. , and throughout the roman school. corrected, i. . rovigo. _the paintings, sculpture, and architecture of the city of rovigo, with indexes and illustrations, by francesco bartoli._ venice, , vo. iii. , and other parts of the work. siena. _abstract of the most remarkable objects in the city of siena, for the use of foreigners, revised and augmented by cav. gio. antonio pecci._ siena, and , mo. i. , , . trevigi. _description of the most celebrated paintings of the city, published by d. ambrogio rigamonti._ _ib._ . iii. . turin. _new guide through the city, by onorato derossi._ _ib._ , mo. v. . venice. _the rich mines of painting; compendious information respecting the paintings of venice, by boschini._ _ib._ , mo. iii. , . _description of the public paintings of the city of venice and the adjacent islands; or revival of the rich mines of marco boschini._ venice, , vo. i have made use of this edition, now very rare, in pointing out the pictures of venice. it was written by antonio zannetti, _quondam_ alessandro. _verona illustrated, an abridgment for the use of foreigners._ , vols. vo. iii. . vicenza. _picturesque jewels of the city of vicenza, by marco boschini._ venice, , mo. iii. . _description of the architecture, paintings, and sculpture of vicenza, with some observations, edited by francesco vendramini mosca, with the learned reflections of a person of quality_, namely count eneas arnaldi. vicenza, , vols. vo. iii. , . vienna. _freddy. description of the city, suburbs, and vicinity of vienna, in three parts, with annotations, classical and historical._ vienna, , vols. vo. cited in index i. volterra. _ab. antonfilippo giachi. historical essay on the ancient and modern state of volterra._ siena, vols. , , to. _see_ tom. , p. . _altar-pieces of the churches_, i. , , , v. and in index i. urbino. _pictures exhibited in public_, a ms. work displaying great industry, by arcangeli; there communicated to me by the worthy author; with many anecdotes of the school of barocci. it is cited in the first index. guidalotti, franchini gioseffo. _life of domenico m. viani, a painter._ bologna, , vo. v. . h. hakert, filippo. _memoirs of the messinese painters, written by sig. gaetano grano._ naples, , to. ii. . ---- the same. _letter on the use of the various kinds of varnish_; and answers to it. iv. . harms, antoine frederic. _tables historiques et chronologiques des plus fameux peintres, anciens et modernes._ brunswick, , fol. with additions. _see_ de murr, _bibliothèque de peinture_, p. . iii. , and in index i. heinecken, d', baron. _idée générale d'une collection complète d'estampes._ vienna, , vo. i. . huber, m. and c. c. h. rost. _manuel des amateurs de l'art._ zurich, , _et seq._, vols. vo., iv. . hugford, ignazio. _life of anton domenico gabbiani._ florence, , folio. i. . j. _junius franciscus, de picturâ veterum._ roterodami, , vols. fol. preface, xxxvii. l. lami, gio. _dissertation on the italian painters and sculptors who flourished between and ._ it is inserted in the treatise of vinci. _see the letter_ v. i. . ---- the same. _deliciæ eruditorum._ florentiæ, and , vols. vo. cited in tom. ii. . ---- the same. _interpretations of tuscan antiquities, particularly of the city of florence._ _ib._ , vo. in index i. lamo, alessandro. _discourse respecting sculpture and painting, in which are considered the life and works of bernardino campo._ cremona, , to. iv. , , , , . ---- pietro, author of a _ms. upon the paintings of bologna_, cited in the _guide_ of the city, and of which a copy is in possession of the cav. lazara. v. . lancilotto. _cronaca modenese, ms._ iv. . lastri, ab. _l'etruria pittrice._ florence, and , vols. fol. i. , , . latuada, serviliano. _description of milan._ _ib._ and , vols. vo. i. , iv. . lazzari, arcip. d. andrea. _historical dictionary of illustrious professors of the fine arts in the city of urbino._ _see_ colucci. tom. xxxi. ii. . lazzarini, canon. gio. andrea. _dissertation on painting, and notes_, inserted in the _guida_ of pesaro. preface, xxxii. v. , , . leist, lessing, bar. di budberg raspe, dott. aglietti, writers on painting in oil, i. , _et seq._ _lettere pittoriche_; or a _collection of letters on painting, sculpture, and architecture_. rome, vols. to. from to . they are cited in the _preface_, x. and through the work. lioni, ottavio. _lives of the most celebrated painters of the seventeenth century, with their portraits; to which is added the life of carlo maratti._ rome, , to. ii. . lomazzo, gio. paolo. _treatise on the art of painting, &c._ milan, , to. merit of the work, i. , , iv. . often cited in the milanese school, and throughout the work. noticed, iv. , . ---- the same. _idea of the temple of painting, &c._ milan, , to. in bologna, without date of year, in vo. why it is also called _theatre of painting_, iv. . cited, i. , , and in several books of the work. ---- the same. _grotteschi, or verses divided into seven books._ milan, , to. iv. . longhi, alessandro. _compendium of the lives of the most celebrated venetian historical painters in the present century, with their portraits taken from the life._ venice, , folio. iii. , _et seq._ lorgna, cav., torri cav. astorri gio. maria, fabro giovanni. _treatises respecting the punic wax, and upon painting in caustic._ v. . m. maffei, march. scipione. _verona illustrata._ _ib._ , vols. fol. i. , , and elsewhere. ---- extract from this work. _see guida di verona._ malvasia, co. canon. cesare. _felsina pittrice._ bologna, vols. to. . merit of this work, v. . cited, i. , v. , and often in the bolognese school, and throughout the index. corrected by the author in some rather severe remarks, v. . not approved in some points, iv. , v. , , , . manni, domenico maria. _concerning the true painter luca santo, and the period when he flourished._ florence, , to. ii. . manni. the same. _on the error still persisted in of attributing pictures to the holy evangelist._ florence, , to. ii. . ---- the same. _lives of some artists inserted in the collection of the calogerà_, tom. and ; and in the _opuscoli milanesi_. i. . _see also article_ baldinucci. mariette, mr. _letters on painting._ i. , , , iv. , and in other parts. _see also_ condivi. ---- the same. _description of prints engraved after the pictures in the collection of mr. boyer d'aguilles, with an abridged character of each painter._ paris, fol. in index i. marino. _gallery of the cav. marino._ the edition cited is that without date of place or year, in mo. ii. , v. . ---- the same. _letters._ venice, , mo. iv. , v. . mariotti, annibale. _lettere pittoriche perugine._ perugia, , vo. ii. , and other parts of the roman school. mazzolari, d. ilario. _le reali grandezze dell'escuriale di spagna._ bologna, , to. v. , *, . mecatti, giuseppe maria. _historical notices respecting the chapter-house of s. maria novella, belonging to the dominican monks, commonly called il cappellone degli spagnuoli._ florence, , to. i. . meerman, gerardi. _origines typographicæ._ hagæ commitum, , tom. to. cited, i. , and other parts of the same section. melchiori, natale. _lives of the venetian painters_, _ms._ iii. , , and other places in the last epochs of the school. the autograph is in the possession of the signori burchielati at trevigi, and a copy in that of the cav. lazara. _memoirs for the fine arts._ rome, from the year to , vols. to. ii. , and in other parts of the roman school. _see_ de rossi. mengs, cav. anton raffaello. _opere diverse_, vols. two editions are cited: that of parma, , vols. to. commonly that of bassano, , vols. vo. of the roman, in to. and in vo. merit of these works, ii. . cited, _preface_, ix. and vol. i. , , , iii. , , iv. , v. , , , and other parts of the work. milizia. _memoirs of ancient and modern architects._ parma, , vols. vo.; and with new additions at bassano, , vols. vo. i. . _see also_ art of vision. montani, gioseffo. his _ms. lives._ v. . morelli, cav. d. jacopo, keeper of the r. library at s. mark's in venice. _account of works of design during the first half of the sixteenth century, then existing at padua, cremona, milan, pavia, bergamo, crema, and venice._ anonymous. bassano, , vo. iii. , and often in the cities pointed out. moreni, ab. domenico. _historical notices of places adjacent to florence_, tom. vo. florence, , , , , , . i. , and in index i. morigia, paolo. _on the milanese nobility, with the additions of borsieri._ milan, , vo. iv. , and in index i. morrona, da, alessandro. _pisa illustrata nelle arti del disegno_, from to , vols. vo. i. , , and often in the first book of the same volume. moschini, p. g. a. somasco. _account of the island of murano._ venice, , vo. iii. . n. niceronus, jo. franc. _thaumaturgus opticus perfectissimæ prospectivæ._ romæ, , fol. ii. . o. _orations in praise of the fine arts_; by cav. puccini. florence, , vo. and ed. , vo. i. . by ab magnani. parma, , to. v. . by tagliazucchi, turin, , vo. v. . by monsig. carrara. rome, , to. i. . oretti, marcello. he was a bolognese, who travelled through italy, and collected materials for a history of painting--consulted archives, sepulchral monuments, oral traditions, national annals, and the age of the artists. his volumes were placed in the library of prince filippo ercolani, who purchased them from his successors, and very kindly gave me the use of them for this work. the cav. gio. de lazara, of padua, assisted by sig. pietro brandolese, of lendinara, drew several inedited notices from these volumes, in addition to the number before extracted. they are added to this edition under two different heads, namely, _oretti carteggio_ and _oretti memorie_, or the initials of these words. under the first are comprehended notices of different artists, communicated in letters to sig. oretti, or to others, which he procured. under the second are the notices collected by himself from the places he passed through, in particular at bologna, from authentic documents and registers, monuments, &c. he is frequently noticed throughout index i. orlandi, p. pellegrino. _dictionary of painting._ bologna, , to. the author's letter preceding the work is dated , to which period we refer the artists he therein mentions as living. opinion of this work, _pref._ xiv. xx. cited throughout the work. its errors, i. , , iii. , , , , , iv. , , , v. , , , , , , , . ---- the same. _corrected and enlarged by pietro guarienti._ venice, to. . estimate of this book, _pref._ xiv. xx. cited throughout the work, and in the index of artists. corrected, i. , iv. , , , v. , , , and in index i. ---- the same, at florence, , vols. to. wanting in the addenda of guarienti, but with others by modern artists, _pref._ xx. cited in index i. orsini, baldassare. _reply to the letters on painting, by annibal mariotti._ perugia, , vo. ii. . ---- the same. _see guida di ascoli._ ottonelli, p. giandomenico, and pietro da cortona. _trattato della pittura e scultura, uso e abuso loro, composto da un teologo e da un pittore._ florence, , to. i. . p. pagave, d. venanzio. _notes and additions inserted in the sienese edition of vasari_, vols. , , and . cited, iv. , and elsewhere in the milanese school, iv. . paggi, gio. batista. _observations on the dignity of painting._ _see lett. pittor._, tom. vii. p. . v. . paggi. the same. _definition, or division of the art of painting._ fol. edited in . v. . palomino, velasco, d. antonio. _las vidas de los pintores e statuarios eminentes españoles._ londres, , vo. praised, and sometimes corrected, i. , ii. , , iii. , v. . ---- his great work. madrid, , vols. to. ii. . panni, _see_ zaist. panzer, giorgii wolfangii. _annales typographici ab artis inventæ origine ad annum_ md. nuremburgh, , _et seq._ vols. to. i. . papillon, jean bapt. _traité historique et pratique de la gravure en bois._ paris, , vols. vo. i. . pascoli, lione. _lives of modern painters, sculptors, and architects._ rome, , . vols. to. opinions on this author, _pref._ iii. corrected, ii. , , v. . cited, i. , ii. , , _et seq._ ---- the same. _lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects of perugia._ rome, , to. ii. , and other parts of the roman school. passeri, gio. batista. _lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects who were employed at rome, now deceased, from the year to ._ rome, , to. merit of this book, ii. . cited, ii. , , and elsewhere in the same volume. ---- advocate, gio. batista. _history of paintings on earthenware executed at pesaro and the adjacent places._ it is inserted in the opuscoli del calogerà. new collection of p. mandelli, tom. cited, ii. , and in the index. patina. _caroli patini filia icones celebrium pictorum, earumque descriptio._ patavii, , fol. iii. . pelli, bencivenni giuseppe. _historical essay on the r. gallery of florence._ florence, , vols. vo. i. , . piacenza, _see_ baldinucci. piles, de, roger. _idée de peintre parfait._ paris, , vo. ii. . _see also_ fresnoy. pino, paolo. _dialogue on venetian painting._ venice, , mo. iii. . pio, niccolo. _lives of painters. ms._ i. . plinii _historiæ naturalis libri_ xxxvii. _à joanne harduino illustr. parisiis_, , vols. fol. the thirty-fifth book is cited, which describes the ancient painters. _preface_, xxxvi. i. , ii. , , iv. , , v. , and elsewhere. pozzo, p. andrea, a jesuit. _on perspective._ rome, and , vols. fol. ii. . ---- dal, commendator, bartolommeo. _the lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects of verona._ verona, , to. i. , iii. , , and other places in the venetian school. publications, periodical. _roman anthology._ i. , , ii, , and in index i. ---- _memoirs of the fine arts._ _see_ de rossi. ---- _pisan journal._ i. , , v. . ---- _venetian journal._ i. , . ---- _journal of trevoux._ v. . ---- _novelle letterarie of florence._ i. , , _et seq._ ---- _esprit des journaux._ i. . ---- _zibaldone cremasco del ronna._ iv. , and in index i. puccini, cav. tommaso. _critical examination of a work on painting by daniel webb._ florence, , vo. v. . r. ranghiasci, ab. sebastiano. _catalogue of the eugubine professors in the arts of design._ it is inserted in the fourth volume of the sienese edition of vasari. ii. . ranza. _on the antiquities of the chiesa maggiore of s. maria di vercelli._ _ib._ , to. i. . ratti, cav. carlo giuseppe. _genuine historical notices respecting the life and works of the celebrated painter antonio allegri da coreggio._ finale, , vo. cited, iv. , and often in the school of parma. ---- the same. _lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects of genoa._ _see_ soprani. _see also guida di genova._ ---- the same. _life of the cav. raffaello mengs_, . ii. . ---- defence of the same; or a _letter to a friend, which contains an account of cav. carlo giuseppe ratti._ without date of place or year. _pref._ xxxvi. ii. , , , v. . renaldis, de, co. canon. girolamo. _historical essay on the paintings of friuli._ udine, , vo. and , to. iii. , and other places in the venetian school. _reply to the critical reflections upon the different schools of painting of m. argens._ (by the march. ridolfino venuti) lucca, , vo. ii. . requeno, ab. d. vincenzo. _essays on the restoration of the ancient art of the greek and roman painters._ venice, , vo.; with additions, at parma, , vols. vo. ii. , v. , . resta, p. sebastiano, _prete dell'oratorio._ _portable gallery_; _ms. in the ambrosian collection_, iv. , , , _et seq._ ---- the same. _letters on painting._ ii. , iv. . his credulity, ii. . reynolds, sir joshua. _discourses on the arts of design._ florence, , mo. iii. , . richa, giuseppe, of the comp. of jesus. _historical account of the florentine churches, &c._ tom. to. . i. . richardson. _treatise on painting and sculpture._ amsterdam, , vols. vo. pref. viii. xxvi. xxxii. and i. , , . ridolfi, cav. carlo. _the wonders of the art; or lives of the illustrious painters of venice and of the state._ venice, , vols. to. merit of the work, iii. . cited in the first epochs of the venetian school, and throughout the index. not approved, iii. , , , , , iv. . rosa, giuseppe, _see imperial gallery_. rosa, salvatore. _his satires._ amsterdam, , vo. i. . ii. . roscoe, william. _life of lorenzo de' medici, translated from the english._ pisa, , vols. vo. iii. . rossi, de, gio. gherardo. _articles on painting, in the memoirs of the fine arts._ ii. , . ---- the same. _flights, poetical and pictorial._ parma, , vo. ii. . rossi. the same. _life of antonio cavallucci._ venice, , vo. ii. . s. sandrart, joachimi. _academia artis pictoriæ._ nuremburgh, , folio. noticed, i. . cited, iii. , and in index i. sansovino, francesco. _venice described._ , to. iii. . ---- the same book. edition augmented by giustiniano martinioni. venice, , to. iii. . santos, (de los,) francisco. _description del monasterio de s. lorenzo de l'escorial._ madrid, , folio, v. . scannelli, francesco. _the microcosm of painting._ cesena, , to. cited, i. , iv. , , , , , , v. , , . scaramuccia, luigi. (he calls himself girupeno, that is, perugino.) _the refinement of italian art._ pavia, , to. iv. , . _series of illustrious characters in painting, sculpture, and architecture, with their eulogies and portraits._ florence, vols. to. concluded in . i. , , , _et seq._ serlio, sebastiano. _general rules of architecture._ venice, , , folio. i. , , ii. , v. . signorelli. _vicende della coltura delle due sicilie._ naples, , vols. vo., and supplementary vols. vo. . ii. . i have not had an opportunity of consulting this excellent work, from which i might have derived information for the history of the neapolitan school. soprani, raffaello. _lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects of genoa._ , to. a posthumous work. the author continued it up to the year , that of the decease of torre. i have made use of the second edition, corrected and enlarged, with annotations of the cav. ratti, genoa, , to. annexed to it is the continuation of the work, by the same ratti, which forms the second volume, , to. merit of these writers, v. , . cited through the whole of the genoese school. _state of the lateran church in the year ._ _see_ baldeschi. superbi, p. agostino. _account of illustrious men in the city of ferrara, &c._ _ib._ , to. v. . t. taia, agostino. _description of the apostolic vatican palace._ rome, , vo. i. , ii. , _et seq._ tassi, co. francesco maria. _lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects of bergamo._ bergamo, , vols. to. with additions by ferd. caccia, and notes of co. giacomo carrara. iii. , often alluded to in the bergamese school. temanza. _lives of the venetian architects._ venice, , to. cited in index i. tempesti, dott. _academical discourse on the literary history of pisa._ pisa, . i. . ---- _eulogy of giunta pisano._ it is inserted among the _historical memoirs of several illustrious pisans._ pisa, , vols. to. i. . terzi ... _chronicle of castel delle ripe, and of the district of durante_, (now urbania) written about . _see_ colucci. tom. theophilus _monachus de omni scientiâ artis pingendi_. _ms._ edited only in part. i. , , iii. , iv. . tiraboschi, cav. _history of italian literature._ the modenese edition is cited, with additions, from to , vols. to. also the venetian edition in vo. is cited; subjoining the words _ven. ed._ _preface_, xvii. i. , , _et seq._ ---- the same. _notices of modenese artists_ inserted in the _biblioteca modenese_, tom. vi. vols. to. modena, , _et seq._ they were printed also separately, modena, , to. they are cited in vol. iv. , , and through the whole school of modena; oftener in that of parma and elsewhere. torri, co. luigi. _observations concerning the punic war._ verona, , vo. v. . trogli, giulio. _rules for the practice of the art of perspective._ bologna, , fol. v. . v. valle, della, p. m. guglielmo, m. c. _lettere senesi._ venice, vols. to. afterwards at rome from to . their merit, i. . cited throughout the sienese school. not approved in some points, i. , . ---- the same. _corrections and additions to vasari._ inserted in the sienese edition, from to , vols. vo. opinion upon them, i. . cited, v. , and elsewhere. not approved, i. , ii. , iv. . ---- the same. _index of the artists employed in the cathedral of orvieto_; extracted from the _history of that cathedral_; by the same author. rome, , to. with plates, fol. it is inserted in the second volume of vasari, _sienese edition_. cited, i. , ii. , and other parts of book iii. ---- the same. _discourse recited in arcadia, the th day of march, ._ it is inserted in the giornale de' letterati pisani, vol. liii. p. . i. . vannetti, count clementino. _anecdotes respecting the painter gasparantonio baroni cavalcabò di sacco._ verona, , vo. in index i. varchi, benedetto. _funeral oration on the obsequies of mich. buonaroti._ florence, , to. i. . vasari. _lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors, and architects._ florence, , vols. vo. i. . ---- _and newly corrected and augmented by the author, with the addition of those living and deceased from the year to ._ florence, , vols. to. subsequent editions. i. . vasari is cited in every book from the last florentine edition, with notes. history and merit of this work, i. . its author accused of injustice to several artists, i. , , , , , , , ii. , , , , , , iii. , , , , , , , , , iv. , , , , , , v. , , , , , . exculpated in some of the pages cited, and i. , , , , ii. , iv. , v. , and elsewhere. corrected in his nomenclature, or in the epochs, i. , , , , , , ii. , , , , , , iii. , , , , , , , , , iv. , , , , v. , , , , , , . vasari. _manuscript notes_ on the lives of the painters, written by federigo zuccaro. _see_ zuccaro. ---- _notes_ by one of the caracci, supposed to be agostino. i. . _see also bottari and della valle._ ---- the same. _introduction to the three arts of design._ it is prefixed to the first volume. i. , , iv. . ---- the same. _opuscoli._ i. , , . vedriani, lodovico. _lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects of modena._ modena, , to. iv. , , . venuti, _see_ risposta. verci, gio. batista. _anecdotes respecting the lives and works of the painters, sculptors, and engravers of bassano._ venice, , vo. iii. , . vernazza of fresnoy, barone giuseppe. _eulogy of gio. molinari._ turin, , vo. _national anecdotes relating to the arts of design._ _ib._ , vo. v. , , , . verri, count ... _history of milan._ milan, , vol. to. i. . vignola, _see_ danti. vinci, gio. bat. _historical eulogy on the celebrated painter antonio cavallucci._ rome, , vo. ---- lionardo. _treatise on painting, with the eulogy of the ab. fontani._ florence, , to. i. , iv. . ---- another eulogy of the dottore durazzini, in vol. iii. of illustrious tuscans. i. . ---- the same. _mss._ placed in the ambrosian library, and _observations_ on them by the ab. amoretti. iv. . visconti. _museo pio clementino._ rome, , _et seq._ vols. fol. ii. . volpati, gio. batista. _la verità pittoresca._ _ms._ in the possession of count giuseppe remondini. iii. . volta, camillo leopoldo, prefect of the museum, and member of the academy of mantua. _notices of mantuan professors._ they are inserted in the _mantuan diary_ for , . iv. . w. walpole, horace. _anecdotes of painting in england._ , vols. to. i. . winkelman, gio. _history of the arts of design among the ancients._ i have cited the roman edit. with notes by the sig. avv. fea. rome, , , vols. to. ii. , . ---- _gemme del barone stochs_, to. i. . z. zaccolini, p. matteo, a theatine. _treatises on perspective._ _ms._ ii. , , v. . zaist, gio. batista. _historical notices of the painters, sculptors, and architects of cremona; with a supplement and life of the author written by anton maria panni._ cremona, , vols. to. cited, iv. , and throughout the school of cremona. zamboni, baldassare. _account of the most celebrated public buildings in the city of brescia._ _ib._ , fol. in index i. zannelli, ippolito. _life of the great painter carlo cignani._ bologna, , to. v. . zannetti, antonio maria (_see letter z, in index i._). _on venetian painting, and the public works of the venetian masters._ five books, venice, , vo. its merit, preface, x. and iii. . cited in the pages which follow, throughout the first book of the same volume. corrected, iii. , , , . zani, d. pietro. _materials for the history of the origin and progress of engraving in copper and on wood._ parma, , vo. i. . zanotti, zampietro. _history of the clementine academy of bologna._ _ib._ , vols. to. praised in vol. v. , . cited throughout the fourth epoch of the bolognese school. ---- the same. _directions for the progress of youth in painting._ bologna, , vo. v. . ---- the same. _description and illustration of the pictures of pellegrino, tibaldi, and niccolo abbati, in the institute of bologna._ venice, , folio, v. . ---- the same. _preface to the lives of baruffaldi._ _ms._ v. . zuccaro, cav. federigo. _idea of painters, sculptors, and architects._ turin, , folio. it is found inserted also in the sixth vol. of _lett. pittor._ ii. . ---- the same. _opuscoli_, edited in mantua, , to., and in bologna, , to. _ib._ ---- the same. _manuscript annotations on the lives of vasari._ _see_ bottari, tom. v. of the foregoing _lives_, p. . i. , ii. , . * * * * * *.* the _mss._ cited in the index of artists are pointed out in the work, where the names of the correspondents are given, who have favoured me with information respecting native or foreign painters. others, either professors or connoisseurs, from whom i have received any account, either oral or written, are noticed in the preface. i have also availed myself of their intelligence in the nomenclature and epochs of artists. third index _of some of the most important matters contained in the work._ a. academy, florentine, i. , . roman, ii. , . of foreigners in rome, ii. , . of perugia, ii. . of naples, ii. . venetian, iii. . veronese, iii. . mantuan, iv. . modenese, iv. . of parma, iv. . of vinci, at milan, iv. . another in the same city, . another, . bolognese, of the caracci, v. . continued, . another, called the clementine, . ferrarese, v. . genoese, . of turin, v. . it is a mistake to suppose academies injurious to the art, i. . age, golden, of painting confined to few years, ii. . ends with the caracci, v. . that of some schools earlier, some later, iii. . ---- brazen, owing to the rarity of great artists, iii. , . whether latterly a better age is approaching, ii. , iv. , . anatomy; cultivated by artists of the fifteenth century, i. , iv. . excellence of michelangiolo in this line, i. . carried to affectation by some of his disciples, i. . ancient painters. their methods, i. , . their religious societies, i. ; and civil, i. , ii. , v. . more correct in their small proportions than in their large, i. . animals, artists who excelled in painting of, i. , - , ii. , , , , iii. , , iv. , , , v. , , , , , . arts, of valesio, with which he surpassed annibal caracci in good fortune, v. . of other painters, to add to their reputation, v. . b. _bambocciate._ a kind of painting not unknown to the ancients, iv. . promoted by laer, ii. ; and by others, _ib._ v. , , , . bassirilievi. their use in painting since the fifteenth century, i. , ii. . artists who thus distinguished themselves, i. , ii. , v. , . battle-pieces of giulio romano, ii. . of borgognone and his school, i. , ii. . of others, iii. , iv. , , v. . beau-ideal. how studied by raffaello, ii. , . how by the mannerists, ii. . how by guido reni, v. . bolognese artists. did not derive the principles of painting from florence, only its improvement, v. . shewed the best method of imitation, v. . pre-eminent in the art during two centuries, v. . borromei. benefactors of the fine arts at milan, iv. . c. caricatures, i. , ii. , iii. , iv. , v. . chambers of raffaello, of pietro da cortona, &c. _see their names._ characters of the italian schools. _see the first or second epoch of each._ cherubs, boys, genii, by whom well drawn, i. , ii. , , iii. , , iv. , , v. , , , , , . chiaroscuro. improved at florence, i. . brought to perfection in the time of vinci and of giorgione, iii. , iv. . what in caravaggio, ii. . what in guercino, v. . chiariscuri, preparations for colouring them, i. , ii. . ---- of pietre commesse, or mosaic, i. . colouring of the venetians, iii. , . of raffaello and of the other painters. _see their names._ altered, ii. , iii. , v. . column of trajan designed, ii. . studied by giulio campi, iv. . by cortona, i. . composition. crowded in the early times, i. . maxim of poussin, ii. . of the caracci, v. . of cortona, i. . of the venetians, iii. . of titian, iii. . copies. retouched by the masters, i. , , ii. , , iii. , v. , and elsewhere. excellent copies, i. , iii. , , , v. , , . rules to distinguish copies from originals, pref. xxviii. copies of excellent pictures made in italy, and transferred into foreign royal collections. _see_ bonavita bianchi. costume. neglected by many venetian painters, iii. . it is often treated of in the characters of the schools and of artists. counsel of learned men listened to by the best painters. by vinci, iv. , . by raffaello, ii. . by poussin, ii. . by coreggio, iv. . by titian, v. . by annibal caracci, v. , . by the old ferrarese, v. . by castello, v. . crystals. well represented, ii. . paintings in them, i. . cupolas. _see_ gaudenzio ferrari, coreggio, zuccari, reni, zampieri, lanfranco, cignani, de matteis. d. death, accelerated by violent passions, iii. , iv. , and in other places. by defamation, v. . design, superior to colouring, but less lucrative, i. . various practical processes in designing from life, ii. , , v. , . diligence, a necessary quality in artists, iii. . commended in barocci, ii. ; in titian, iii. ; in coreggio, iv. ; in cignani, v. ; and in others, , , &c. very remarkable in lionardo da vinci, iv. ; and in ercole grandi, v. . particularly requisite in beginners, iv. , v. . ought not to be carried too far, v. , , . abuse of this maxim, iii. . drapery, mantles, style of folding. taste of the ancients, i. , ii. . improved greatly by the venetians, iii. ; and by the lombards, iv. . frate contributed much towards its perfection, i. . others praised in this respect, ii. , , iii. , v. , , , , . e. emulation, youthful, i. , ii. , iii. , v. , , , . how exemplified between pasinelli and cignani, v. . want of it injurious to the younger palma, iii. , ; and perhaps to raffaello, ii. . encaustic, ii. , v. . engraving on wood, i. . on several kinds, and with different colours, pref. xii. iv. . on copper, i. . envy. always accompanies merit, ii. . its arts, _ib._ and . accused of poisoning its rivals, i. , ii. , v. , , . enabled to triumph for a time, v. , . never succeeds in blinding the public, ii. , . noble artists answer it only with meritorious works, i. , v. , the most bitter reply it can receive, i. . epitaphs of painters too extravagant, i. , , iv. , v. . such as are only just, i. , v. , . epochs. some, though apparently certain, are yet fallacious, iii. . expression. the soul of painting, ii. , _et seq._ diligence requisite to succeed in it, _ib._ and , v. , . eyes. painted with admirable effect by camillo boccaccino, iv. . f. ferrara. boasted classic imitators of each classic style, v. . florence. contributed more than any other city to the revival of the fine arts, i. , ii. . at what time in particular it shone as a new athens, i. . its school of painting celebrated of old for its design, i. . boasts a series of great masters, and of styles wholly national, i. . flower-painters, and of fruits, i. , ii. , , , iii. , iv. , , , v. , , . foreign painters. disliked by the natives, i. , , ii. . when judiciously invited to italian cities, they have advanced their taste, or at least their decoration, i. , iii. , iv. , , v. , , , _et seq._ fore-shortening. melozzo discovered and enlarged this kind of painting, v. . improved by mantegna, iii. , iv. . perfected by coreggio, and by others, i. , v. , . raffaello left examples of it in architecture, ii. . _see also_ perspective. fortune. the merit of artists not to be estimated by it, i. , . g. genoa. its splendor of paintings, both in private and public, v. . gilding in paintings much used by the ancients, i. . abandoned by degrees, i. . used by raffaello, ii. . up to the time of cav. d'arpino, ii. . goldsmith's art the origin of engraving in copper, i. . grace. the gift of some painters, i. , . ii. , iv. . affected by others, iv. , , . grandeur of manner, in what it consists, ii. . greeks, ancient. by whom postponed to michelangiolo, i. . of early times, not wholly uncultivated in painting, i. . by them some of our earliest painters were instructed, i. , , iii. , v. , . grotesques. origin of, ii. . professors, i. , , ii. , , iii. , iv. , v. , , , , . h. haste, when excessive, blamed, i. , ii. , , iii. , , v. . how corrected in annibal caracci, v. . heads of men, by raffaello, ii. . of youths, by guido, in various manners, v. , , _et seq._ of old men, ii. , , v. , . of saints, i. , ii. , . history of painting. plan laid down by others, pref. viii. that of the author of this work, and on what model, _ib._ it conveys clearer views of events than _lives_ or dictionaries of painters, owing to its connected narratives, pref. iv. alluded to in the motto, _series juncturaque pollet_, pref. xvii. i. illusions, in paintings, well represented. in men, ii. , iii. , v. , . in animals, ii. , iii. , iv. , , , v. . imitation. methods properly observed in this by the caracci, v. . by guido, v. . by others, iii. , iv. , and in every school. other methods not to be defended, i. , iii. , iv. , v. . imitators. often confounded with the disciples of the best painters, pref. xix. ii. . inlaid work, iii. . italy. never in want of painters, i. . its celebrity in this art, pref. xvii. rich in great artists little known even there, iv. , . other examples in almost every school. l. landscapes. various styles, i. , ii. . titian opened the true path, iii. . how much this art is indebted to annibal caracci, v. , , . to poussin, ii. . three celebrated landscape painters, ii. . others in each school. _see the close of their epochs._ libraries decorated. the vatican, ii. . venetian, of st. mark's, iii. , , v. . paduan, of the university, iii. . bolognese, of the padri scopetini, v. . of the padri olivetani, v. . royal, of turin, v. . licentious figures. caused much remorse in agostino caracci, v. . gave the appellation of libertine to cav. liberi, iii. . light. its effects admirably exhibited by some artists, ii. , , , , iii. , . loggia of baffaello, ii. . continued, . m. mannerists, or sectarists, i. , ii. , iii. , iv. , , v. . masters, their various methods, i. , ii. , iv. , v. , , , . liberality in teaching, i. , ii. . jealous of their disciples' talents, i. , , ii. , , iii. , , v. , . skill in directing them best, i. , iv. , v. , , , . maxims of great masters carried to too great lengths by their schools, ii. , iv. , v. , . mediocrity, artists of, not to be wholly excluded from a history of the arts, pref. xii. not however to be minutely studied, i. , , and often throughout the work. miniaturists. masters of the oldest painters, i. , , ii. , iii. , v. , . miniatures, i. , , , , , iii. , iv. , v. , , . of giulio clovio, iv. . misfortunes and passions sometimes occasion decline in the art, ii. , v. , , . modena. inventions made by this school, iv. . monuments, ancient. origin of the best design in italy, i. , iii. . studied by great painters, i. , ii. , , , iii. , , iv. , v. , , , , . mosaic-workers, i. , . the art improved by them at venice, iii. . perfected at rome, ii. . n. naples. antiquity and talent of this school. ii. . native places of painters often contested, and why. _see_ anselmi, d'alessi, amalteo, ardente, diana mantovana, jacopo da bologna, lotto, menabuoi, &c. naturalists, without taste, ii. , _et seq._ iii. . of some choice, i. , , iii. , v. , , , . niello, or niellatori, i. . nobles who assisted students of the fine arts, when deserving, i. , iii. , v. . nuptials, aldobrandine, observed by poussin for composition. ii. . o. objects of pictoric history, pref. xvi. oil, commencement of painting in, i. , ii. , iii. . opinions on the same painter different, pref. xxxiv. the historian ought to collect the most authentic and popular, _ib._ painters ought to be estimated by their mature labours, conducted with most care, i. ; as these may be almost termed their second editions, v. . more accurately estimated where they painted most, pref. xxxiii. ornamental work of grand palaces, all directed by a single artist, i. , ii. , iv. , , v. . p. painting on different kinds of marble, i. , , with the secret of staining them with colours, i. . another invention of f. sebastiano del piombo, iii. . painting on dressed leather, ii. , on earthen vases, ii. , on glass, i. . perspective well understood by the ancients, iii. , . particularly cultivated by the lombards, iv. . excellent professors of it. _ib._, and tom. i. , , , , ii. , , iii. , , . its revival at bologna, v. , , _et seq._ _see also the end of last epoch of the same school, as well as in other schools._ _pietre dure_, works in _commesso_, or variegated stone, more particularly conducted at florence, and sometimes with the minuteness of the mosaic worker, i. . plagues in italy proved injurious to painting, ii. , iii. , v. . play obscured many excellent qualities of guido, v. . caused the death of schedone, iv. . pleasure renders artists less correct, ii. , v. . portraits, very excellent, ii. , , iii. . celebrated portrait painters of the venetian school; _see_ titian, contarino, morone, tinelli, ghislandi. others of every school, at the close of their respective epochs. q. quadratura, _see_ perspective. quattrocentisti. artists of the fourteenth century, their dry but exact design, i. . they professed various arts at once. simple in their composition, iii. , v. , and elsewhere. question respecting the superior dignity of painting and sculpture, i. . r. removing of paintings from walls to canvass, v. . revival of painting in italy. its origin, i. . restoration of ancient paintings, when cautiously conducted, highly useful, ii. , iii. . recommended by bonarruoti and by the caracci, at bologna and florence, v. . school for such art at venice, iii. . not successfully applied to the supper of vinci, at milan, iv. ; to various venetian pictures, by bombelli, iii. , and elsewhere. method discovered at siena, i. . rome, dignifies the ideas brought by foreign artists from other parts, ii. . character of the school, ii. . circumstances which there assisted the progress of the art, ii. . s. saloon, royal, in the vatican, ii. . others at rome, i. , ii. , , . of the pitti, at florence, i. . of the palazzo vecchio, i. , . of the ducal palace at venice, iii. , , &c. in genoa, v. . scagliola, works in, i. , iv. . sea views, painters of, i. , ii. , , , iii. , v. . slowness of artists, remarked in ricciarelli, ii. . punished in laureti, ii. . proverbial with some, i. , , v. . injurious, , , . corrected in agostino caracci, v. . _see also_ diligence. selection of style to be made according to the genius and disposition of the artist, i. , , . surnames of painters, confounded and altered, _see_ lamberto, da leccio, sanmartino, &c. derived by masters from their native place, and sometimes from that of their residence. _see_ orsi, lotto, &c. murati, ii. , iii. . statues, of bonarruoti, i. , . of verrocchio, i. . where it may be observed, that the horse of venice, which was cast by him, and did not succeed, was newly cast by alessandro leopardo, a venetian. _temanza._ modelled by vinci, _ib._; by raffaello, ii. . symbolical representations of living personages, borrowed from the history of illustrious ancients, i. , ii. . t. tastes in painting, laudable, though different, i. . a certain taste not to be hastily changed at an advanced age, i. , , , v. , , and elsewhere. tapestries, i. , , ii. , , v. , . tenebrosi. a sect of painters in venice, iii. , and in bologna, v. . partly occasioned by the bad priming colours, used also elsewhere, i. , iii. , v. ; and the models of caravaggio badly imitated, iv. . theatres. artists distinguished for decorating them, i. , . iv. . u. unity of history, neglected by raffaello, ii. ; by coreggio, iv. . _see also_ v. , . urbino, ill provided with aids and conveniences for the art in the time of raffaello, ii. . v. variety, not studied by pietro perugino, nor by bassano, ii. , iii. . neglected by taddeo zuccari, ii. ; and by the mannerists, ii. , iii. , v. , . varnish, _see_ restoration of ancient paintings. virgin, holy. ancient images of, i. , , ii. , , iv. , v. . some painters celebrated for their madonnas, i. , , ii. , , , , , iii. , , , , iv. , , , v. , , , , , , , , . w. wax, used by the ancients in painting, i. . works, connected with painting, considered by historians of the art, pref. xii. written on painting, criticised by algarotti, pref. xi. the end. j. m'creery, tooks court, chancery-lane, london. critical opinions on lanzi's history of painting in italy, translated by thomas roscoe. from the edinburgh review. "when we consider the number of painters, the great quantity of historical matter, the numerous anecdotes, the solid and sensible criticism, and the vast mass of valuable information, and especially the astonishing variety of original and striking ideas, that are expressed in a brief, terse style, in six volumes, we are surprised at the comprehensive shortness of this highly estimable work. we are delighted to find much of the ancient simplicity in the elegant and classical style of these golden pages, from which, more than from any other book, and perhaps as much as it can be derived from books, we are able to attain an idea of the wonderful genius of the italians for the fine arts. it is well adapted to form the taste correctly; and is a faithful guide to travellers, many of whom, having examined the works upon which lanzi delivers his opinion, with his review in their hands, have bestowed upon him this expressive, strong, and hearty panegyric, 'he is a fine fellow.' "mr. roscoe deserves and will receive the thanks of all lovers of the fine arts, for his valuable contribution towards the advancement of objects which they have much at heart, and which may be considered of high importance. he has here afforded his countrymen another opportunity to acquire some knowledge of the fine arts, and of their history, which assists the mind in reflecting upon the productions of the great masters; teaches us to admire them upon sound principles, and redoubles the pleasure of contemplating them; and so shews the truth of the ancient saying, that the most wise are the most happy. this knowledge, moreover, forms, in the present day, a necessary part of polite education." from the literary gazette. "lanzi's history of painting has long and justly enjoyed the highest reputation upon the continent. from to the present time, (during which period a considerable number of editions have appeared) it has increased in fame, and widened its circle, as a work of great original talent on the general subject of the fine arts, and one of much authority for reference. altogether, the arts owe a debt of the deepest gratitude to the man, with whom mr. roscoe has, by this excellent translation, put it in the power of every english reader to become familiarly acquainted. and we will say, that in so doing he has enabled them to enjoy a very great pleasure. unlike the majority of works upon science or art, lanzi has contrived to render his work at once full of interesting information and agreeable incident. there is nothing dry about the narrative; but, on the contrary, it seems to us that no one who ever admired a fine picture, can turn over a page of this publication without being attracted to proceed, and without feeling an increase of appetite grow with what it feeds on. in truth, we are ourselves so delighted with the history, that we do not exaggerate our opinion of its merits, when we transcribe as our own the panegyric of the cavalier boni, already alluded to. (_see lit. gat. no. ._) it is, however, difficult to convey a just idea of a work composed upon so enlarged and complete a scale; which embraces a period of about six centuries, and fourteen italian schools, but treated with such rapidity and precision, as to form in itself a compendium of whatever we meet with in so many volumes of guides, catalogues, descriptions of churches and palaces, and in so many lives of artists, throughout the whole of italy." from the monthly review. "this narrative, which exhibits the traces of the utmost diligence and the most scrupulous regard to accuracy, is interspersed with critical views, so philosophical, so eloquent, and so just, as to convince us of the thorough competence of the abbe lanzi for the task which he has undertaken. the extent of his general erudition appears abundantly throughout his work. to vast and varied acquirements, he united uncommon powers of intellect, together with an enthusiastic love for the beauties of the art, to the study of which he devoted himself from an early period of life;--with what success, is attested by the favourable reception of his labours. completeness and impartiality as to its details, are not the only merits of this work. to the connoisseur it will form a guide to facilitate his acquaintance with the peculiar styles, and their varieties, of the great masters; a species of knowledge which it is difficult to convey, although of the greatest importance to possess. nor is the utility of this work to be overlooked, in disseminating amongst all classes a just taste for, and sound opinions upon, the arts. to pretend that, in the foregoing notice, we have furnished anything like an indication of the multitude of interesting details contained in these volumes, would be as offensive to truth, as it would be unjust to the author of as singular a monument of labour and diligence as modern literature can boast of. neither do we attempt to insinuate that we have been able to suggest any adequate notions of the admirable tact and skill shewn in his arrangement, in which, without excluding any topics necessary to the purposes of his history, the abbe lanzi disposes of every personage and event in the rank that is due to their relative importance. and if we have been deficient in these respects, we feel that we have still more failed in giving a proper idea of the accurate and discriminating mind of the critic, or of the perfectly judicial impartiality of his opinions; and when we compare our imperfect analysis of his work with our own impressions of the author, we are sensible how little we have been able to transfer to our pages any portion of those lineaments of taste, graceful propriety, and eloquence of language, or of that spirit of regulated enthusiasm, which are diffused through the 'history of painting in italy.' with respect to the merits of the translator, the most obvious one is that of having given to british literature a work of the very highest value, at no inconsiderable sacrifice of time and trouble. his version, in general, has all the force and precision of style which belong to the original." from the foreign quarterly review. "luigi lanzi was a learned churchman, a skilful antiquarian, a lover of painting and sculpture, a sensible critic, something of a poet, and in all those matters remarkably diligent and enthusiastic. he travelled, he examined, he collected, he studied, and he wrote; and early acquired the reputation of a candid judge of art, and a sagacious antiquarian. his admirable work has been recently translated into english by mr. thomas roscoe, a gentleman whose varied knowledge in foreign literature entitles him to much respect. his name is sufficiently known to the public, not to need any great recommendation at our hands; but we must indeed say, that the translator has conferred a great benefit on that portion of his readers who are not professed italian scholars. the work of lanzi is full of difficulties, even to italians themselves, on account of the terms of art with which almost every page is full: it thus very much redounds to the credit of mr. roscoe, to have produced so excellent and faithful a translation, and written wherewithal with great elegance of diction. of this our readers cannot fail to be at once convinced, when we inform them that he was materially assisted by his own respectable father; by mr. w. h. ottley; by dr. traill; and by signor panizzi, at present resident at liverpool, one of the profoundest scholars and best of italian critics." transcriber's notes: the prior five volumes of this series are identified in the indexes with lower case roman letters. at the time of posting, these volumes can be found in the project gutenberg collection as follows: i--http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ ii--http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ iii--http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ iv--http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ v--http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/ although we verify the correctness of these urls at the time of posting, they may not work, for various reasons, for various people, at various times. in the first index, names beginning with "i" and "j" are alphabetized as though the i and j are the same letter, so that ja... entries appear before ib... and jo... after in.... names beginning with "u" and "v" are treated in the same manner. some dates of birth and death cited by the author are at variance from those reported by subsequent sources. dates that are clearly typographical errors were adjusted, as listed below. otherwise, dates were left as printed, even though the given dates lead to illogical results (e.g., see entries for stephano and alessandro magnasco). some page numbers in the indexes are not in numerical order and may not correspond to the item indexed. the numbers were not changed. several entries omit the volume number associated with the listed page numbers. volume of this set of books had two extra pages, identified as * and *, inserted following pages and . in the version of that volume at www.gutenberg.org, these two pages are identified as a and a. references within this volume to those two pages were printed as * and *. punctuation was standardized. "ib." was changed to "ib." for consistency within the text. a bindery note at the bottom of the first page of "critical opinions" indicates that the reviews following "the end" should have been published at the beginning of volume . other changes: first index: date of birth for barbalunga (antonio ricci) from to . date of birth for g. b. calandra from to . entry for cimatori: 'visacei' to 'visacci.' 'galti' to 'gatti' dates of notices for lorenzo lotto from to . removed duplicate 'd.' from entry for jacopo marieschi. date of death for tammaso salini from to . date of death for tommaso sandrino from to . 'costantino' to 'constantino' (de' servi). second index: 'where-ever' to 'wherever' under guides for ferrara. section symbol to the word 'section' under entry for meerman. third index: 'punic wax' to 'punic war' under entry for luigi torri. page number from to , under listing for animals, volume ii. 'respectacle' to 'respectable' in text of foreign quarterly review. the history of painting in italy. vol. i. the history of painting in italy, from the period of the revival of the fine arts to the end of the eighteenth century: translated from the original italian of the abate luigi lanzi. by thomas roscoe. _in six volumes._ vol. i. containing the schools of florence and siena. london: printed for w. simpkin and r. marshall, stationers'-hall court, ludgate street. . j. m'creery, tooks court, chancery lane, london. advertisement. after the very copious and excellent remarks upon the objects of the present history contained in the author's preface, the translator feels that it would be useless on his part to add any further explanation. it would not be right, however, to close these volumes without some acknowledgment of the valuable assistance he has received. amongst others, he is particularly indebted to dr. traill, of liverpool, who after proceeding to some length with a translation of this work, kindly placed what he had completed in the hands of the translator, with liberty to make such use of it as might be deemed advantageous to the present undertaking. to mr. w. y. ottley, who also contemplated, and in part executed, a version of the same author, the translator has to express his obligations for several explanations of terms of art, which the intimacy of that gentleman with the fine arts, in all their branches, peculiarly qualifies him to impart.[ ] similar acknowledgments are due to an enlightened and learned foreigner, mr. panizzi, of liverpool, for his kind explanation of various obscure phrases and doubtful passages. notwithstanding the anxious desire and unremitting endeavours of the translator to render this work, in all instances, as accurate as the nature of the subject, and the numerous difficulties he had to surmount would allow, yet, in dismissing it from his hands, he cannot repress the feeling that he must throw himself upon the indulgence of the public to excuse such errors as may be discoverable in the text. he trusts, however, that where it may be found incorrect, it will for the most part be in those passages where doubtful terms of art lay in his way, intelligible only to the initiated, and which perhaps many of the countrymen of lanzi themselves might not be able very readily to explain. [footnote : the following are among the valuable works which have been given to the public by mr. ottley:--the italian school of design, being a series of fac-similes of original drawings, &c.--an inquiry into the history of engraving.--the stafford gallery.--a series of plates engraved after the paintings and sculptures of the most eminent masters of the early florentine school, during the th, th, and th centuries. this work forms a complete illustration of the first volume of lanzi.--a catalogue of the national gallery.--fac-similes of specimens of early masters, &c.] contents of the first volume. page _advertisement_ iii _preface by the author_ i _biographical notice by the translator_ xli history of painting in lower italy. book i. florentine school. epoch i. _origin of the revival of painting_--_association and methods of the old painters_--_series of tuscan artists before the time of cimabue and giotto._ sect. i. _florentine painters who lived after giotto to the end of the fifteenth century._ sect. ii. _origin and progress of engraving on copper and wood._ sect. iii. epoch ii. _vinci, bonarruoti, and other celebrated artists, form the most flourishing era of this school_ epoch iii. _the imitators of michelangiolo_ epoch iv. _cigoli and his associates improve the style of painting_ epoch v. _pietro da cortona and his followers_ book ii. sienese school. epoch i. _the old masters_ epoch ii. _foreign painters at siena_--_origin and progress of the modern style in that city_ epoch iii. _the art having declined through the disasters of the state, is revived by the labours of salimbeni and his sons_ preface. when detached or individual histories become so numerous that they can neither be easily collected nor perused, the public interest requires a writer capable of arranging and embodying them in the form of a general historical narrative; not, indeed, by a minute detail of their whole contents, but by selecting from each that which appears most interesting and instructive. hence it mostly happens, that the diffuse compositions of earlier ages are found to give place to compendiums, and to succinct history. if this desire has prevailed in former times, it has been, and now is, more especially the characteristic of our own. we live in an age highly favourable, in one sense at least, to the cultivation of intellect: the boundaries of science are now extended beyond what our forefathers could have hoped, much less foreseen; and we become anxious only to discover the readiest methods of obtaining a competent knowledge, at least, of several sciences, since it is impossible to acquire them all. on the other hand, the ages preceding ours, since the revival of learning, being more occupied about words than things, and admiring certain objects that now seem trivial to the generality of readers, have produced historical compositions, the separate nature of which demands combination, no less than their prolixity requires abridgment. if these observations are applicable to other branches of history, they are especially so to the history of painting. its materials are found ready prepared, scattered through numerous memoirs of artists of every school which, from time to time, have been given to the public: and additional articles are supplied by dictionaries of art, letters on painting, guides to several cities, catalogues of various collections, and by many tracts relating to different artists, which have been published in italy. but these accounts, independent of want of connexion, are not useful to the generality of readers. who, indeed, could form a just idea of painting in italy by perusing the works of certain historians of latter ages, and some even of our own time, which abound in invectives, and in attempts to exalt favourite masters above the artists of all other schools; and which confer eulogies indiscriminately upon professors of first, second, or third-rate merit?[ ] how few are there who feel interested in knowing all that is said of artists with so much verbosity by vasari, pascoli, or baldinucci; their low jests, their amours, their private affairs, and their eccentricities? what do we learn by being informed of the jealousies of the florentine artists, the quarrels of the roman, or the boasts of the bolognian schools? who can endure the verbal accuracy with which their wills and testaments are recorded, even to the subscription of the notary, as if the author had been drawing up a legal document; or the descriptions of their stature and physiognomy, more minute than the ancients afford us of alexander or augustus?[ ] not that i object to the introduction of such particulars in the lives of the great luminaries of art: in a raffaello or a caracci minute circumstances derive interest from the subject; but how intolerable do they become in the life of an ordinary individual, where the principal incidents are but little interesting? suetonius has not written the lives of his cæsars and his grammarians in the same manner: the former he has rendered familiar to the reader; the latter are merely noticed and passed over. the tastes of individuals, however, are different, and some people delight in minutiæ, as it regards both the present and the past; and since it may be of utility to those who may hereafter be inclined to give a very full and perfect history of every thing relating to italian painting, let us view with indulgence those who have employed themselves in compiling lives so copious, and let those who have time to spare, beguile it with their perusal. at the same time, due regard should be paid to that very respectable class of readers, who, in a history of painting, would rather contemplate the artist than the man; and who are less solicitous to become acquainted with the character of a single painter, whose solitary and insulated history cannot prove instructive, than with the genius, the method, the invention, and the style of a great number of artists, with their characteristics, their merits, and their rank, the result of which is a history of the whole art. to this object there is no one whom i know who has hitherto dedicated his pen, although it seems to be recommended no less by the passion indulged by princes for the fine arts, than by the general diffusion of a knowledge of them among all ranks. the habit of travelling, rendered more familiar to private persons by the example of many great sovereigns, the traffic in pictures, now become a branch of commerce important to italy, and the philosophic genius of this age, which shuns prolixity in every study, and requires systematic arrangement, are additional incentives to the task. it is true that very pleasing and instructive biographical sketches of the most celebrated painters have been published by m. d'argenville, in france; and various epitomes have since appeared, in which the style of painting alone is discussed.[ ] but without taking into account the corruptions of the names of our countrymen in which their authors have indulged, or their omission of celebrated italians, while they record less eminent artists of other countries, no work of this sort, and still less any dictionary, can afford us a systematic history of painting: none of these exhibit those pictures, if we may be allowed the expression, in which we may, at a glance, trace the progress and series of events; none of them exhibit the principal masters of the art in a sufficiently conspicuous point of view, while inferior artists are reduced to their proper size and station: far less can we discover in them those epochs and revolutions of the art, which the judicious reader most anxiously desires to know, as the source from which he may trace the causes that have contributed to its revival or its decline; or from which he may be enabled to recollect the series, and the arrangement of the facts narrated. the history of painting has a strong analogy to literary, to civil, and to sacred history; it too requires, from time to time, the aid of certain beacons, some particular distinction in regard to places, times, or events, that may serve to divide it into epochs, and mark its successive stages. deprive it of these, and it degenerates, like other history, into a chaos of names more calculated to load the memory than to inform the understanding. to supply this hitherto neglected branch of italian history, to contribute to the advancement of the art, and to facilitate the study of the different styles in painting, were the three objects i proposed to myself when i began the work which i am now about to lay before the indulgent reader. my intention was to form a compendious history of all our schools, in two volumes; adopting, with little variation, pliny's division of the country into upper and lower italy. it was my design to comprehend in the first volume the schools of lower italy; because in it the reviving arts came earlier to maturity; and in the second to include the schools of upper italy, which were more tardy in attaining to celebrity. the first part of my work appeared at florence in : the second i was obliged to defer to another opportunity, and the succeeding years have so shaken my constitution, that i have scarcely been able to bring it to a conclusion, even with the assistance of many amanuenses and correctors of the press.[ ] one advantage, however, has been derived from this delay; and that is, a knowledge of the opinion of the public, a tribunal from which no writer can appeal; and i have been thus enabled to prepare a new edition conformable to its decision.[ ] i have understood through various channels, that an additional number of names and of notices were necessary to afford satisfaction to the public; and this i have accomplished, without abandoning my plan of a compendious history. nor does the florentine edition on this account become useless: it will even be preferred by many to that published at bassano; the inhabitants, for instance, of lower italy will be pleased to possess a work on their most illustrious painters, without concerning themselves about accounts of other places. to a new work, then, so much more extensive than the former, i prefix a preface almost entirely new. the plan is not wholly my own, nor altogether that of others. richardson[ ] suggested that some historian should collect the scattered remarks on art, especially on painting, and should point out its progress and decline through successive ages. he has not even omitted to give us a sketch, which he brought down to the time of giordano. mengs[ ] accomplished the task more perfectly in the form of a letter, where he judiciously distinguished all the periods of the art, and has thus laid the foundations of a more enlarged history. were i to follow their example, the chief masters of every school would be considered together, and we should be under the necessity of passing from one country to another, according as painting acquired a new lustre from their talents, or was debased by a wrong use of the great example of those artists. this method might be easily pursued, if the subject were to be treated in a general point of view, such as pliny has considered and transmitted it to posterity; but it is not equally adapted to the arrangement of a history so fully particular as italy seems to require. besides the styles introduced by the most celebrated painters, such infinite diversities of a mixed character, often united with originality of manner, have arisen in every school, that we cannot easily reduce them to any particular standard: and the same artists at different periods, and in different pictures, have adopted styles so various, that at one time they appear imitators of titian, at another of raffaello, or of correggio. we cannot, therefore, adopt the method of the naturalist, who having arranged the vegetable kingdom, for example, in classes more or less numerous, according to the systems of tournefort or of linnæus, can easily reduce a plant, wherever it may happen to grow, to a particular class, adding a name and description, at once precise, characteristic, and permanent. in a complete history it is necessary to distinguish each style from every other: nor do i know any more eligible method of performing this task, than by composing a separate history of each school. in this i follow winckelmann, the best historian of ancient art in design, who specified as many different schools as the nations that produced them. a similar plan seems to me to have been pursued by rollin, in his history of nations, who has thus been enabled to record a prodigious mass of names and events within the compass of a few volumes, in the clearest order. the method i follow in treating of each school is analogous to that prescribed to himself by sig. antonio maria zanetti,[ ] in his _pittura veneziana_, a work of its kind highly instructive, and well arranged. what he has done, in speaking of his own, i have attempted in the other schools of italy. i accordingly omit the names of living painters, and do not notice every picture of deceased artists, as it would interrupt the connexion of the narrative, and would render the work too voluminous, but content myself with commending some of their best productions. i first give a general character of each school; i then distinguish it into three, four, or more epochs, according as its style underwent changes with the change of taste, in the same way that the eras of civil history are deduced from revolutions in governments, or other remarkable events. a few celebrated painters, who have swayed the public taste, and given a new tone to the art, are placed at the head of each epoch; and their style is particularly described, because the general and characteristic taste of the age has been formed upon their models. their immediate pupils, and other disciples of the school, follow their great masters; and without a repetition of the general character, reference is made to what each has borrowed, altered, or added to the style of the founder of the school, or at most such character is cursorily noticed. this method, though not susceptible of a strict chronological order, is, on account of the connexion of ideas, much better adapted to a history of art than an alphabetic arrangement, which too frequently interrupts the notices of schools and eras; or than the method pursued in annals, by which we are often compelled to make mention of the scholar before the master, should he survive the former; or that of separate lives, which introduces much repetition, by obliging the writer to bestow praises on the pupil for the same style which he also commends in the master, and to notice in each individual that which was the general character of the age in which he lived. for the sake of perspicuity, i have generally separated from historical painters artists in inferior branches, such as painters of portraits, of landscape, of animals, of flowers and of fruit, of sea-pieces, of perspectives, of drolls, and all who merit a place in such classes. i have also taken notice of some arts which are analogous to painting, and though they differ from it in the materials employed, or the manner of using them, may still be included in the art; for example, engraving of prints, inlaid and mosaic work, and embroidering tapestry. vasari, lomazzo, and several other writers on the fine arts, have mentioned them; and i have followed their example; contenting myself with noticing, in each of those arts, only what has appeared most worthy of being recorded. each might be the subject of a separate work; and some of them have long had their own peculiar historians, and in particular the art of engraving. by this method, in which i may boast such great examples, i am not without hopes of affording satisfaction to my readers. i am, however, more apprehensive in regard to my selection of artists; the number of whom, whatsoever method is adopted, may to some appear by far too limited, and to others too greatly extended. but criticism will not so readily apply to the names of the most illustrious artists, whom i have included, nor to those of very inferior character, whom i trust i have omitted; except a few that have some claim to be mentioned, from their connexion with celebrated masters.[ ] the accusation then of having noticed some, and omitted others, will apply to me only on account of artists of a middle class, that can be neither well reckoned among the senate, the equestrian order, nor vulgar herd of painters; they constitute the class of mediocrity. the adjustment of limits is a frequent cause of legal contention; and the subject of art now under discussion, may be considered like a dispute concerning boundaries. it may often admit of doubt whether a particular artist approaches more nearly to the class of merit or of insignificance; which is, in other words, whether he should or should not obtain a place in a history of the art. under such uncertainty, which i have several times encountered, i have more usually inclined to the side of lenity than of severity; especially when the artist has been noticed with a degree of commendation by former authors. we ought to bow to public opinion, which rarely blames us for noticing mediocrity, but frequently for passing it over in silence. books on painting abound with complaints against orlandi and guarienti, for their omissions of certain artists. still more frequently are authors censured, when the guide to a city points out some altar-piece by a native artist, who is not named in our dictionaries of painting. the describers of collections repeat similar complaints in regard to every painting bearing the signature of an artist whose name appears in no work of art. collectors of prints do the same when they discover the name of some designer, of whom history is silent, affixed to an engraving. thus, were we to consult the opinion of the public, the majority would be inclined to recommend copiousness, rather than to express satisfaction at a more discriminating selection of names. almost all artists and amateurs belonging to every city, would be desirous that i should commemorate as many of their second rate painters as possible; and our selection, therefore, in this respect, nearly resembles the exercise of justice, which is generally applauded as long as it visits only the dwellings of others, but is cried down by each individual when it knocks at his own door. thus a writer who is bound to observe impartiality towards every city, can scarcely shew great severity to artists of mediocrity in any. this too is not without reason; for to pass mediocrity in silence may be the study of a good orator, but not the office of a good historian. cicero himself, in his treatise _de claris oratoribus_, has given a place to less eloquent orators, and it may be observed that, after this example, the literary history of every people does not merely include its most classic writers, and those who approached nearest to them; but it adds short and concise accounts of authors less celebrated; and in the iliad, which is a history of the heroic age, there are a few eminent leaders, many valiant soldiers, and a prodigious crowd of others, whom the poet has transiently noticed. in our case, it is still more incumbent on the historian to give mediocrity a place along with the eminent and most excellent. many books describe that class in terms so vague, and sometimes so discordant, that to form a proper estimate of their claims, we must introduce them among superior artists, as a sort of performers in third-rate parts. such, however, i am not solicitous to exhibit very minutely, more especially when treating of painters in fresco, and generally of other artists, whose works are now unknown in collections, or add more to the bulk than the ornament of a gallery. thus also in point of number, my work has maintained the character of a compendium: but if any of my readers, adopting the rigid maxim of bellori, that, in the fine arts, as in poetry, mediocrity is not to be tolerated,[ ] should disdain the middle class of artists, he must look for the heads of schools, and for the most eminent painters: to these he may dedicate his attention, and turn his regard from the others like one, "cui altra cura stringa e morda che quella di colui che gli è davante."[ ] having described my plan, let us next consider the three objects originally proposed, of which the first was to present italy with a history that may prove important to her fame. this delightful country is already indebted to tiraboschi for a history of her literature, but she is still in want of a history of her arts. the history of painting, an art in which she is confessedly without a rival, i propose to supply, or at least to facilitate the attempt. in some departments of literature, and of the fine arts, we are equalled, or even surpassed by foreigners; and in others the palm is yet doubtful: but in painting, universal consent now yields the triumph to italian genius, and foreigners are the more esteemed in proportion to their approach towards us. it is time then, for the honour of italy, to collect in one point of view, those observations on her painting, scattered through upwards of a hundred volumes, and to embody them in what horace terms _series et junctura_; without which the work cannot be pronounced a history. i will not conceal, that the author of the "history of italian literature" above mentioned, frequently animated me to this undertaking, as a sequel to his own work. he also wished me to subjoin other anecdotes to those already published, and to substitute more authentic documents for the inaccuracies abounding in our dictionaries of painting. i have attended to both these objects. the reader will here find various schools never hitherto illustrated, and an entire school, that of ferrara, now first described from the manuscripts of baruffaldi and of crespi; and in other schools he will often observe names of fresh artists, which i have either collected from ancient mss.[ ] and the correspondence of my learned friends, or deciphered on old paintings. although such pictures are confined to cabinets, it cannot prove useless to extend a more intimate acquaintance with their authors. the reader will also meet with many new observations on the origin of painting, and on its diffusion in italy, formerly a fruitful subject of debate and contention; and likewise here and there with some original reflections on the masters, to whom various disciples may be traced; a branch of history, the most uncertain of any. old writers of respectability often mention raffaello, correggio, or some other celebrated artist, as the master of a painter, without any better foundation than a similarity of style; just as the credulous heathens imagined one hero to be the son of hercules, because he was strong; another of mercury, because he was ingenious; a third of neptune, because he had performed several long voyages. errors like these are easily corrected when they are accompanied by some inadvertency in the writer; as for instance, where he has not been aware that the age of the disciple does not correspond with that of his supposed master. occasionally, however, their detection is attended with more difficulty; and in particular when the artist, whose reputation is wholly founded upon that of his master, represented himself in foreign parts, as the disciple of men of celebrity, whom he scarcely knew by sight. of this we have an example in agostino tassi, and more recently in certain _soidisant_ disciples of mengs; to whom it scarcely appears that he ever so much as said, "_gentlemen, how do you do_?" finally, the reader will find some less obvious notices relating to the name, the country, and the age of different artists. the deficiency of our dictionaries in interesting names, together with their inaccuracy, are common subjects of complaint. i can excuse the compilers of these works; i know how easily we may be misled in regard to names which have been often gathered from vulgar report, or even from authors who differ in point of orthography, some giving opposite readings of the same name. but it is quite necessary that such mistakes should once for all be cleared up. the index of this work will form a new dictionary of painters, certainly more copious, and perhaps more accurate than usual, although it might be still further improved, especially by consulting archives and manuscripts.[ ] the second object which i had in view was to advance the interests of the art as much as lay in my power. it was of old observed that examples have a more powerful influence on the arts than any precepts can possess; and this is particularly true in respect to painting. whoever writes history upon the model of the learned ancients, ought not only to narrate events, but to investigate their secret sources and their causes. now these will be here developed, tracing the progress of painting as it advanced or declined in each school; and these causes being invariable, point out the means of its improvement, by shewing what ought to be pursued and what avoided. such observations are not of importance to the artist alone, but have a reference also to other individuals. in the roman school, during its second epoch, i perceive that the progress of the arts invariably depends on certain principles universally adopted in that age, according to which artists worked, and the public decided. a general history, by pointing out the best maxims of art, may contribute considerably to make them known and regarded; and hence artists can execute, and others approve or direct, on principles no longer uncertain and questionable, nor deduced from the manner of a particular school, but founded on maxims unerring and established, and strengthened by the uniform practice of all schools and all ages. we may add, that in a history so diversified, numerous examples occur suited to the genius of different students, who have often to lament their want of success from this circumstance alone, that they had neglected to follow the path in which nature had destined them to tread. on the influence of examples i shall add no more: should any one be desirous also of precepts under every school, he will find them given, not indeed by me, but by those who have written more ably on the art, and whom i have diligently consulted with regard to different masters, as i shall hereafter mention. my third object was to facilitate an acquaintance with the various styles of painting. the artist or amateur indeed, who has studied the manner of all ages and of every school, on meeting with a picture can very readily assign it, if not to a particular master, at least to a certain style, much as antiquarians, from a consideration of the paper and the characters, are enabled to assign a manuscript to a particular era; or as critics conjecture the age and place in which an anonymous author flourished, from his phraseology. with similar lights we proceed to investigate the school and era of artists; and by a diligent examination of prints, drawings, and other relics belonging to the period, we at length determine the real author. much of the uncertainty, with regard to pictures, arises from a similitude between the style of different masters: these i collect together under one head, and remark in what one differs from the other. ambiguity often arises from comparing different works of the same painter, when the style of some of them does not seem to accord with his general manner, nor with the great reputation he may have acquired. on account of such uncertainty, i usually point out the master of each artist, because all at the outset imitate the example offered by their teachers; and i, moreover, note the style formed, and adhered to by each, or abandoned for another manner; i sometimes mark the age in which he lived, and his greater or less assiduity in his profession. by an attentive consideration of such circumstances, we may avoid pronouncing a picture spurious, which may have been painted in old age, or negligently executed. who, for instance, would receive as genuine all the pictures of guido, were it not known that he sometimes affected the style of caracci, of calvart, or of caravaggio; and at other times pursued a manner of his own, in which, however, he was often very unequal, as he is known to have painted three or four different pieces in a single day? who would suppose that the works of giordano were the production of the same artist, if it were not known that he aspired to diversify his style, by adopting the manner of various ancient artists? these are indeed well known facts, but how many are there yet unnoted that are not unworthy of being related, if we wish to avoid falling into error? such will be found noticed in my work, among other anecdotes of the various masters, and the different styles. i am aware that to become critically acquainted with the diversity of styles is not the ultimate object to which the travels and the eager solicitude of the connoisseur aspire. his object is to make himself familiar with the handling of the most celebrated masters, and to distinguish copies from originals. happy should i be, could i promise to accomplish so much! even they might consider themselves fortunate, who dedicate their lives to such pursuits, were they enabled to discover any short, general, and certain rules for infallibly determining this delicate point! many rely much upon history for the truth. but how frequently does it happen that the authority of an historian is cited in favour of a family picture, or an altar-piece, the original of which having been disposed of by some of the predecessors, and a copy substituted in its place, the latter is supposed to be a genuine painting! others seem to lay great stress on the importance of places, and hesitate to raise doubts respecting any specimen they find contained in royal and select galleries, assuming that they really belong to the artists referred to in the gallery descriptions and catalogues. but here too they are liable to mistake; inasmuch as many private individuals, as well as princes, unable to purchase ancient pictures at any price, contented themselves with such copies of their imitators as approached nearest to the old masters. some indeed were made by professors purposely despatched by princes in search of them; as in the instance of rodolph i., who employed giuseppe enzo, a celebrated copyist. (see boschini, p. , and orlandi, on gioseffo ains di berna.) external proofs, therefore, are insufficient, without adding a knowledge of different manners. the acquisition of such discrimination is the fruit only of long experience, and deep reflection on the style of each master: and i shall endeavour to point out the manner in which it may be obtained.[ ] to judge of a master we must attend to his design, and this is to be acquired from his drawings, from his pictures, or, at least, from accurate engravings after them. a good connoisseur in prints is more than half way advanced in the art of judging pictures; and he who aims at this must study engravings with unremitting assiduity. it is thus his eye becomes familiarized to the artist's method of delineating and foreshortening the figure, to the air of his heads and the casting of his draperies; to that action, that peculiarity of conception, of disposing, and of contrasting, which are habitual to his character. thus is he, as it were, introduced to the different families of youths, of children, of women, of old men, and of individuals in the vigour of life, which each artist has adopted as his own, and has usually exhibited in his pictures. we cannot be too well versed in such matters, so minute or almost insensible are the distinctions between the imitators of one master, (such as michelangiolo, for example,) who have perhaps studied the same cartoon, or the same statues, and, as it were, learned to write after the same model. more originality is generally to be discovered in colouring, a branch of the art formed by a painter rather on his own judgment, than by instruction. the amateur can never attain experience in this branch who has not studied many pictures by the same master; who has not observed his selection of colours, his method of separating, of uniting, and of subduing them; what are his local tints, and what the general tone that harmonizes the colours he employs. this tint, however clear and silvery in guido and his followers, bright and golden in titiano and his school, and thus of the rest, has still as many modifications as there are masters in the art. the same remark extends to middle tints and to chiaroscuro, in which each artist employs a peculiar method. these are qualities which catch the eye at a distance, yet they will not always enable the critic to decide with certainty; whether, for instance, a certain picture is the production of vinci, or luini, who imitated him closely; whether another be an original picture by barocci, or an exact copy from the hand of vanni. in such cases judges of art approach closer to the picture with a determination to examine it with the same care and accuracy as are employed in a judicial question, upon the recognition of hand-writing. fortunately for society, nature has granted to every individual a peculiar character in this respect, which it is not easy to counterfeit, nor to mistake for any other person's writing. the hand, habituated to move in a peculiar manner, always retains it: in old age the characters may be more slowly traced, may become more negligent or more heavy; but the form of the letters remains the same. so it is in painting. every artist not only retains this peculiarity, but one is distinguished by a full charged pencil; another by a dry but neat finish; the work of one exhibits blended tints, that of another distinct touches; and each has his own manner of laying on the colours:[ ] but even in regard to what is common to so many, each has a peculiar handling and direction of the pencil, a marking of his lines more or less waved, more or less free, and more or less studied, by which those truly skilled from long experience are enabled, after a due consideration of all circumstances, to decide who was the real author. such judges do not fear a copyist, however excellent. he will, perhaps, keep pace with his model for a certain time, but not always; he may sometimes shew a free, but commonly a timid, servile, and meagre pencil; he will not be long able, with a free hand, to keep his own style concealed under the manner of another, more especially in regard to less important points, such as the penciling of the hair, and in the fore- and back-grounds of the picture.[ ] certain observations on the canvas and the priming ground may sometimes assist inquiry; and hence some have endeavoured to attain greater certainty by a chemical analysis of the colours. diligence is ever laudable when exerted on a point so nice as ascertaining the hand-work of a celebrated master. it may prevent our paying ten guineas for what may not be worth two; or placing in a choice collection pictures that will not do it credit; while to the curious it affords scientific views, instead of creating prejudices that often engender errors. that mistakes should happen is not surprising. a true connoisseur is still more rare than a good artist. his skill is the result of only indirect application; it is acquired amidst other pursuits, and divides the attention with other objects; the means of attaining it fall to the lot of few; and still fewer practise it successfully. among the number of the last i do not reckon myself. by this work i pretend not, i repeat it, to form an accomplished connoisseur in painting: my object is to facilitate and expedite the acquisition of such knowledge. the history of painting is the basis of connoisseurship; by combining it, i supersede the necessity of referring to many books; by abbreviating it i save the time and labour of the student; and by arranging it in a proper manner on every occasion, i present him with the subject ready prepared and developed before him. it remains, in the last place, that i should give some account of myself; of the criticisms that i, who am not an artist, have ventured to pass upon each painter: and, indeed, if the professors of the art had as much leisure and experience in writing as they have ability, every author might resign to them the field. the propriety of technical terms, the abilities of artists, and the selection of specimens of art, are usually better understood, even by an indifferent artist, than by the learned connoisseur: but since those occupied in painting have not sufficient leisure to write, others, assisted by them, may be permitted to undertake the office.[ ] by the mutual assistance which the painter has afforded to the man of letters, and the man of letters to the artist, the history of painting has been greatly advanced. the merits of the best painters are already so ably discussed that a modern historian can treat the subject advantageously. the criticisms i most regard are those that come directly from professors of the art. we meet with few from the pen of raphael, of titian, of poussin, and of other great masters; such as exist, however, i regard as most precious, and deserving the most careful preservation; for, in general, those who can best perform can likewise judge the best. vasari, lomazzo, passeri, ridolfi, boschini, zanotti, and crespi, require, perhaps, to be narrowly watched in some passages where they allowed themselves to be surprised by a spirit of party: but, on the whole, they have an undoubted right to dictate to us, because they were themselves painters. bellori, baldinucci, count malvasia, count tassi, and similar writers, hold an inferior rank; but are not wholly destitute of authority: for though mere _dilettanti_, they have collected both the opinions of professors and of the public. this will at present suffice, with regard to the historians of the art: we shall notice each of them particularly under the school which he has described. in pronouncing a criticism upon each artist i have adopted the plan of baillet, the author of a voluminous history of works on taste, where he does not so frequently give his own opinion as that of others. accordingly, i have collected the various remarks of connoisseurs, which were scattered through the pages of history; but i have not always cited my authorities, lest i should add too much to the dimensions of my book;[ ] nor have i regarded their opinion when they seemed to me to have been influenced by prejudice. i have availed myself of the observations of some approved critics, like borghini, fresnoy, richardson, bottari, algarotti, lazzarini, and mengs; with others who have rather criticised our painters than written their lives. i have also respected the opinions of living critics, by consulting different professors in italy: to them i have submitted my manuscript; i have followed their advice, especially when it related to design, or any other department of painting, in which artists are almost the only adequate judges. i have conversed with many connoisseurs, who, in some points, are not less skilful than the professors of the art, and are even consulted by artists with advantage; as, for instance, on the suitableness of the subject, on the propriety of the invention and the expression, on the imitation of the antique, on the truth of the colouring. nor have i failed to study the greatest part of the best productions of the schools of italy; and to inform myself in the different cities what rank their least known painters hold among their connoisseurs; persuaded, as i am, that the most accurate opinion of any artist is formed where the greatest number of his works are to be seen, and where he is most frequently spoken of by his fellow citizens and by strangers. in this way, also, i have been enabled to do justice to the merits of several artists who had been passed over, either because the historian of their school had never beheld their productions, or had merely met with some early and trivial specimens in one city, being unacquainted with the more perfect and mature specimens they had produced elsewhere. notwithstanding my diligence i do not presume to offer this as a work to which much might not be added. it has never happened that a history, embracing so many objects, is at once produced perfect; though it may gradually be rendered so. the history earliest in point of time, becomes, in the end, the least in authority; and its greatest merit is in having paved the way to more finished performances. perfection is still less to be expected in a compendium. the reader is here presented with the names of many artists and authors; but many others might have been admitted, whom want of leisure or opportunity, but not of respect, has obliged us to omit. here he will find a variety of opinions; but to these many others might have been added. there is no man, of whom all think alike. baillet, just before mentioned, is a proof of this, with regard to writers on literary subjects; and he who thinks the task worthy of his pains might demonstrate it much more fully with respect to different painters. each judges by principles peculiar to himself: bonarruoti stigmatized as drivelling, pietro perugino and francia, both luminaries of the art; guido, if we may credit history, was disapproved of by cortona; caravaggio by zucchero; guercino by guido; and, what seems more extraordinary, domenichino by most of the artists who flourished at rome, when he painted his finest pictures.[ ] had these artists written of their rivals they either would have condemned them, or spoken less favourably of them than unprejudiced individuals. hence it is that connoisseurs will frequently be found to approach nearer the truth, in forming their estimate, than artists; the former adopt the impartial feelings of the public, while the latter allow themselves to be influenced by motives of envy or of prejudice. innumerable similar disputes are still maintained concerning several artists, who, like different kinds of aliment, are found to be disagreeable or grateful to different palates. to hold the happy mean, exempted from all party spirit, is as impossible as to reconcile the opinions of mankind, which are as multifarious as are the individuals of the species. amid such discrepancy of opinion i have judged it expedient to avoid the most controverted points; in others, to subscribe to the decision of the majority; to allow to each his particular opinion;[ ] but not, if possible, to disappoint the reader, desirous of learning what is most authentic and generally received. ancient writers appear to have pursued this plan when treating of the professors of any art, in which they themselves were mere amateurs; nor could it arise from any other circumstance that cicero, pliny, and quintilian, express themselves upon the greek artists in the same manner. their opinions coincide, because that of the public was unanimous. i am aware that it is difficult to obtain the opinion of the public concerning the more modern artists, but it is not difficult with regard to those on whom much has been already written. i am also aware that public opinion accords not at all times with truth, because "it often happens to incline to the wrong side of the question." this, however, is a rare occurrence in the fine arts,[ ] nor does it militate against an historian who aims more at fidelity of narrative, and impartiality of public opinion, than the discussion of the relative merit or correctness of tastes. my work is divided into six volumes; and i commence by treating in the two first volumes of that part of italy, which, through the genius of da vinci, michelangiolo, and raffaello, became first conspicuous, and first exhibited a decided character in painting. those artists were the ornaments of the florentine and roman schools, from which i proceed to two others, the sienese and neapolitan. about the same time giorgione, tiziano, and coreggio, began to flourish in italy; three artists, who as much advanced the art of colouring, as the former improved design; and of these luminaries of upper italy i treat in the third and fourth volumes; since the number of the names of artists, and the many additions to this new impression, have induced me to devote two volumes to their merits. then follows the school of bologna, in which the attempt was made to unite the excellences of all the other schools: this commences the fifth volume; and on account of proximity it is succeeded by that of ferrara, and upper and lower romagna. the school of genoa, which was late in acquiring celebrity, succeeds, and we conclude with that of piedmont, which, though it cannot boast so long a succession of artists as those of the other states, has merits sufficient to entitle it to a place in a history of painting. thus the five most celebrated schools will be treated of in the order in which they arose; in like manner as the ancient writers on painting began with the asiatic school, which was followed by the grecian, and this last was subdivided into the attic and sicyonian; to which in process of time succeeded the roman school.[ ] the sixth and last volume contains an ample index to the whole, quite indispensable to render the work more extensively useful, and to give it its full advantage. in assigning artists to any school i have paid more regard to other circumstances than the place of their nativity; to their education, their style, their place of residence in particular, and the instruction of their pupils: circumstances, indeed, which are sometimes found so blended and confused, that several cities may contend for one painter, as they are said to have done for homer. in such cases i do not pretend to decide; the object of my labours being only to trace the vicissitudes of the art in various places, and to point out those artists who have exercised an influence over them; not to determine disputes, unpleasant in themselves, and wholly foreign to my undertaking. [footnote : see algarotti, _saggio sopra la pittura_, in the chapter _della critica necessaria al pittore_.] [footnote : for this fault, which the greeks used to call _acribia_, pascoli has been sharply reproved. he has, in fact, informed us which among the several artists could boast a becoming and proportionate nose, which had it short or long, aquiline or snubbed, very sharp or very hollow. he most generally observes that such an artist was neither tall nor large of stature, neither handsome nor plain in his physiognomy; and who would have thought it worth his while to inquire about it? the sole utility that can possibly attend such inquiries is, the chance of detecting some impostor, who might attempt to palm upon us for a genuine portrait the likeness of some other individual. engravings, however, are the best security against similar impositions.] [footnote : in the magasin encyclopédique of paris, (an. viii. tom. iv. p. ), there is a work in two volumes, edited in the german language at gottingen, announced as well as commended. the first volume is dated , the second , from the pen of note the learned sig. florillo, the title of which we insert in the second index. it consists of a history of painting upon the plan of the present one; but there is some variation in the order of the schools.] [footnote : it was finished in the year , and it is now given, with various additions and corrections throughout. many churches, galleries, and pictures, are here mentioned which are no longer in existence; but this does not interfere with its truth, inasmuch as the title of the work is confined to the before mentioned year. numerous friends have lent me their assistance in the completion of this edition, and in particular the cavalier gio. de' lazara, a gentleman of padua, who possesses a rich collection, both in books and mss., and displays the utmost liberality in affording others the use of them. to this merit, in regard to the present work, he has likewise added that of revising and correcting it through the press, a favour which i could not have more highly estimated from any other hand, deeply versed as he is in the history of the fine arts.] [footnote : "ut enim pictores, et qui signa faciunt, et vero etiam poetæ suum quisque opus à vulgo considerari vult, ut si quid reprehensum sit à pluribus id corrigatur ... sic aliorum judicio permulta nobis et facienda et non facienda, et mutanda et corrigenda sunt." cicero de officiis, ii. c. .] [footnote : treatise on painting, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : opere, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : a learned venetian, skilled in the practice of design and of painting. he must not be confounded with antonio maria zanetti, an eminent engraver, who revived the art of taking prints from wooden blocks with more than one colour, which was invented by ugo da carpi, but afterwards lost. he also wrote works, serviceable to the fine arts; and several of his letters may be seen in the second volume of _lettere pittoriche_. they are subscribed _antonio maria zanetti, q. erasmo_; but this is an error of the editor: it ought to be _q. girolamo_, to distinguish him from the other, who was called _del q. alessandro_. this mistake was detected by the accurate vianelli, in his diario della carriera, p. .] [footnote : an amateur, who happens to be unacquainted with the fact, that there were various artists of the same name, as the vecelli, bassani, and caracci, will never become properly acquainted with these families of painters; neither will he be competent to judge of certain pictures, which only attract the regard of the vulgar, because they truly boast the reputation of a great name.] [footnote : i do not admit this principle. horace laid it down for the art of poetry alone, because it is a faculty that perishes when it ceases to give delight. architecture, on the other hand, confers vast utility when it does not please, by presenting us with habitations; and painting, and sculpture, by preserving the features of men, and illustrious actions. besides, let us recollect, that horace denounces the production of inferior verses, because there is not space enough for them; "non concessere columnæ," but it is not so with paintings of mediocrity. in any country petrarch, ariosto, and tasso, may be read, and he who has never read a poor poet, will write better than if he had read a hundred. but it is not every one who can boast either in the houses or temples of his country, of possessing the works of good artists; and for purposes of worship or of ornament, the less excellent ones may suffice; wherefore these also produce some advantage.] [footnote : like one who thinks of some other person than he that is before him.] [footnote : for the improvement of my latest edition, i am greatly indebted to the prince filippo ercolani, who, having purchased from the heirs of signor marcello oretti fifty-two manuscript volumes, which that indefatigable amateur, in the course of his studies, journeys, and observations, had compiled respecting the professors of the fine arts, their eras, and their labours, allowed materials to be drawn from them for various notes, by the sig. lazara, who superintended the edition. to the devoted attachment of these gentlemen to the fine arts, the public are indebted for much information, either wholly new, or hitherto little known.] [footnote : vasari, from whom several epochs are taken, is full of errors in dates, as may be every where perceived. see bottari's note on tom. ii. p. . the same observation applies generally to other authors, as bottari remarks in a note on _lettere pittoriche_, tom. iv. p. . a similar objection is made to the dictionary of p. orlandi in another letter, tom. ii. p. , where it is termed "a useful work, but so full of errors, that one can derive no benefit from it without possessing the books there quoted." after three editions of this work, a fourth was printed in venice, in , corrected and enlarged by guarienti, "but enough still remains to be done after his additions, even to increase it twofold." bottari, lett. pitt. tom. iii. p. . see also crespi _vite de' pittori bolognesi_, p. . no one, who has not perused this book, would believe how often he defaces orlandi in presuming to correct him; multiplying artists for every little difference with which authors wrote the name of the same man. thus pier antonio torre, and antonio torri, are with him two different men. many of the articles, however, added by him, relating to artists unknown to p. orlandi, are useful; so that this second dictionary ought to be consulted with caution, not altogether rejected. the last edition, printed at florence, in two volumes, contains the names of many painters, either lately dead, or still living, and often of very inferior merit, and on this account is little noticed in my history. this dictionary, moreover, affords little satisfaction to the reader concerning the old masters, unless he possess a work printed at florence in twelve volumes, entitled _serie degli uomini più illustri in pittura_, to which the articles in it often refer. the dizionario portatile, by mr. la combe, is also a book of reference, not very valuable to those who look for exact information. we give a single instance of his inaccuracy in regard to the elder palma; but our emendations have been chiefly directed towards the writers of italy, from whom foreigners have, or ought to have borrowed, in writing respecting our artists.] [footnote : see mr. richardson's _treatise on painting_, tom. ii. p. ; and m. d'argenville's _abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres_, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : "some made use of pure colours, without blending one with the other; a practice well understood in the age of titiano: others, as coreggio, adopted a method totally opposite: he laid on his admirable colours in such a manner, that they appear as if they had been breathed without effort on the canvas; so soft and so clear, without harshness of outline, and so relieved, that he seems the rival of nature. the elder palma and lorenzo lotto coloured freshly, and finished their pictures as highly as giovanni bellini; but they have loaded and overwhelmed them with outline and softness in the style of titiano and giorgione. some others, as tintoretto, to a purity of colour not inferior to the artists above mentioned, have added a boldness as grand as it is astonishing;" &c. baldinucci, lett. pittor. tom. ii. lett. .] [footnote : see baldinucci in _lett. pittor._ tom. ii. lett. , and one by crespi, tom. iv. lett. .] [footnote : we must recollect that "de pictore, sculptore, fusore, judicare nisi artifex non potest," (plin. jun. i. epist. ); which must be understood of certain refinements of the art that may escape the eye of the most learned connoisseur. but have we any need of a painter to whisper in our ear whether the features of a figure are handsome or ugly, its colouring false or natural, whether it has harmony and expression, or whether its composition be in the roman or venetian taste? and where it is really expedient to have the opinion of an artist, which we therefore report as we have either read it or heard it, will that opinion have less authority in my pages than on his own tongue?] [footnote : abundance of quotations, and descriptions of the minutest particulars from rarer works is a characteristic of the present day, to which i think i have sufficiently conformed in my second index. but in a history expressly composed to instruct and please, i have judged it right not to interrupt the thread of the narrative too frequently with different authorities. the works from which i draw my account of each artist are indicated in the body of the history and in the first index: to make continual allusion to them might please a few, but would prove very disagreeable to many.] [footnote : pietro da cortona told falconieri that when the celebrated picture of s. girolamo della carità was exhibited, "it was so abused by all the eminent painters, of whom many then flourished, that he himself joined in its condemnation, in order to save his credit." see falconieri, lett. pittor. tom. ii. lett. . he continues: "is not the tribune of the church of s. andrea della valle, ornamented by domenichino, among the finest specimens of painting in fresco? and yet they talked of sending masons with hammers to knock it down after he had displayed it. when domenichino afterwards passed through the church, he stopped with his scholars to view it; and, shrugging up his shoulders, observed, 'after all, i do not think the picture so badly executed.'"] [footnote : the most singular and novel opinions concerning our painters are contained in the volumes published by m. cochin, who is confuted in the _guides_ to the cities of padua and parma, and is often convicted of erroneous statements in matter of fact. he is reproved, with regard to bologna, by crespi, in lett. pittor. tom. vii.; and for what he has said of genoa, by ratti, in the lives of the painters of that city. commencing with his preface, they point out the grossest errors in cochin. it is there also observed that his work was disapproved of by watellet, by clerisseau, and other french connoisseurs then living: nor do i believe it would have pleased filibien, de piles, and such masters of the critical art. italy also, at a later period, has produced a book, which aims at overturning the received opinions on subjects connected with the fine arts. it is entitled _arte di vedere secondo i principii di sulzer e di mengs_. the author, who in certain periodical works at rome, was called the modern diogenes, has been honoured with various confutations. (see _lettera in difesa del cav. ratti_, p. .) authors like these launch their extravagant opinions, for the purpose of attracting the gaze of the world; but men of letters, if they cannot pass them over in silence, ought not to be very anxious to gratify their wishes--"opinionum commenta delet dies." _cicero._] [footnote : of apelles himself pliny observes, "vulgum diligentiorem judicem quam se præferens." examine also carlo dati in _vite de' pittori antichi_, p. , where he proves, by authority and examples, that judgment, in the imitative arts, is not confined to the learned. see also junius, _de pictura veterum_, lib. i. cap. .] [footnote : see mons. agucchi, in a fragment preserved by bellori, in _vite de' pittori, scultori, e architetti moderni_, p. .] biographical notice.[ ] luigi lanzi was born in the year , at monte dell' olmo, in the diocese of fermo, of an ancient family, which is said to have enjoyed some of the chief honours of the municipality to which it belonged. his father was a physician, and also a man of letters: his mother, a truly excellent and pious woman, was allied to the family of the firmani. how deeply sensible the subject of this memoir was of the advantages he derived, in common with many illustrious characters, from early maternal precepts and direction, he has shewn in a beautiful latin elegy to her memory, which appeared in his work, entitled _inscriptionum et carminum_. possessed of a naturally lively and penetrating turn of mind, he began early to investigate the merits of the great writers of his own country; alike in poetry, in history, and in art. his poetical taste was formed on the models of petrarch and of dante, and he was accustomed, while yet a child, to repeat their finest passages to his father, an enthusiastic admirer of italy's old poets, who took pride in cultivating the same fervour in the mind of his son, a fervour of which in more northern climates, we can form little idea. his imitations of these early poets, whose spirit he first imbibed at the fountain head, before he grew familiar with the corrupt and tasteless compositions of succeeding eras, are said to have frequently been so bold and striking, as to deceive the paternal eye. to these, too, he was perhaps mainly indebted for that energy of feeling, and solidity of judgment, as well as that richness of illustration and allusion, which confer attractions upon his most serious and elaborate works. he was no less intimate with the best political and literary historians at an early age; with machiavelli, davila, and guicciardini; with muratori and tiraboschi; whose respective compositions he was destined to rival in the world of art. lanzi's first studies were pursued in the jesuits' college at fermo, where an italian canzone, written in praise of the beata vergine, is said to have acquired for him, as a youth of great promise, the highest degree of regard. under the care of his spiritual instructor, father raimondo cunich, lanzi likewise became deeply versed in all the excellences of classical literature, not as a vain parade of words and syllables; for along with the technical skill of the scholar, he imbibed the spirit of the ancient writers. in his succeeding philosophical and mathematical studies he was assisted by father boscovich, one of the first mathematicians of his day. thus to a keen and fertile intellect, animated by enthusiasm for true poetry and the beauties of art, was added that regular classical and scientific learning, inducing a love of order and of truth, capable of applying the clear logic derived from euclid to advantage, in subjects of a less tangible and demonstrative nature. the value of such preliminary acquirements to the examination of antiquarian and scientific remains, which can only be conducted on uncertain data and a calculation of possibilities, as in ancient specimens of art, can bear no question; and of this truth lanzi was fully aware. to feel rightly, to reason clearly, to decide upon probabilities, to distinguish degrees, resemblances, and differences, comparing and weighing the whole with persevering accuracy; these were among the essentials which lanzi conceived requisite to prepare a writer upon works of art. these qualities, too, will be found finely relieved and elevated by frequent and appropriate passages of eloquent feeling; flowing from that sincere veneration for his subject, and that love which may be termed the religion of the art to which he became so early attached. how intimately such a spirit is connected with the best triumphs of the art of painting, is seen in the angelic faces of da vinci, of raffaello, and coreggio; and the same enthusiasm must have been felt by a true critic, such as lanzi. far, however, from impeding him in the acquisition of his stores of antiquarian knowledge, and in his scientific arrangements, his enthusiasm conferred upon him only an incredible degree of diligence and despatch. he was at once enabled to decipher the age and character, to arrange in its proper class, and to give the most exact description of every object of art which passed under his review. lanzi thus came admirably prepared to his great task, one of the most complete models of sound historical composition, of which the modern age can boast. it was written in the full maturity of his powers; no hasty or isolated undertaking, it followed a series of other excellent treatises, all connected with some branches of the subject, and furnishing materials for his grand design. circumstances further contributed to promote his views. shortly after the dissolution of the order of jesuits, to which he belonged, he was recommended by his friend fabroni, prior of the church of s. lorenzo, to the grand duke leopold of florence, who, in , appointed him to the care of his cabinet of medals and gems, in the gallery of florence. this gave rise to one of his first publications, entitled, _a description of the florentine gallery_, which he sent in to the same friend, angiolo fabroni, then general provveditore of the studio at pisa, and who conducted the celebrated literary journal of that place, in which lanzi's description appeared. his next dissertation, still more enriched with antiquarian illustration and research, was his essay on the _ancient italian dialects_, which contains a curious account of old etruscan monuments, and the ducal collection of classical vases and urns. this was followed by his _preliminary notices respecting the sculpture of the ancients, and their various styles_, put forth in the year , in which he pursues the same plan which he subsequently perfected in the history before us, of allotting to each style its respective epochs, to each epoch its peculiar characters, these last being exemplified by their leading professors, most celebrated in history. he farther adduces examples of his system as he proceeds, from the various cabinets of the royal museum, which he explains to the reader as a part of his chief design in illustrating them. he enters largely into the origin and character of the etruscan school, and examines very fully the criticisms, both on ancient and italian art, by winckelmann and mengs. from the period of these publications, the grand duke, entertaining a high opinion of lanzi's judgment, was in the habit of consulting him before he ventured to add any new specimens to his cabinet of antiquities. he was also entrusted with a fresh arrangement of some new cabinets belonging to the gallery, which together with the latter, he finally completed, on a system which it is said never fails to awaken the admiration of all scientific visitors at florence. during this task, his attention had been particularly directed to the interpretation of the monuments and etruscan inscriptions contained in the ducal gallery, which, together with the ancient tuscan, the umbrian, and other obsolete dialects, soon grew familiar to him, and led to the composition of his celebrated _essay upon the tuscan tongue_. for the purpose of more complete research and illustration, he obtained permission from the duke to visit rome, in order to consult the museums, and prepare the way for his essay, which he published there in ; a work of immense erudition and research. it was here lanzi first appeared as the most profound antiquarian of modern italy, by his successful explanation of some ancient etruscan inscriptions and remains of art, which had baffled the skill of a number of his most distinguished countrymen. upon presenting it to the grand duke, after his return from rome, lanzi was immediately appointed his head antiquary and director of the florentine gallery; while the city of gubbio raised him to the rank of their first patrician order, on account of his successful elucidation of the famous eugubine tables. in one of his _dissertations upon a small tuscan urn_, he triumphantly refuted some charges which had been invidiously advanced against him, and defended his principles of antiquarian illustration by retorting the charge of fallacy upon his adversaries. in the year , lanzi, at the request of the gonfaloniere and priors of monte dell'olino, published an inquiry into the _condition and site of pausula, an ancient city of piceno_; said to be written with surprising ingenuity, yet with equal fairness; uninfluenced by any prejudices arising from national partiality, or from the nature of the commission with which he had been honoured. this was speedily followed by a much more important undertaking, connected with the prosecution of his great design, which it would appear he had already for some time entertained. during the period of his travels through italy in pursuit of antiquities, he had carefully collected materials for a general history of painting, which was meant to comprize, in a compendious form, whatever should be found scattered throughout the numerous authors who had written upon the art. these materials, as well as the work itself, had gradually grown upon his hands, as might be expected from a man so long accustomed to method, to criticism, to perspicuity; in short, to every quality requisite in the philosophical treatment of a great subject. the artists and literati of italy, then, were not a little surprised at the appearance of the first portion of the _storia pittorica_, comprehending _lower italy; or the florentine, sienese, roman, and neapolitan schools, reduced to a compendious and methodical form_, _adapted to facilitate a knowledge of professors and of their styles, for the lovers of the art_. it was dedicated to the grand duchess louisa maria of bourbon, in a style, observes the cav. bossi, "which recalls to mind the letters of pliny to trajan, composed with mingled dignity and respect; with genuine feeling, and with true, not imaginary, commendations." _elogio_, p. . but the unfeigned pleasure and admiration expressed in the world of literature and art, on being presented with the pictorial history of lower italy, was almost equalled by its disappointment at the delay experienced with regard to the appearance of the second part; and which it was feared would never see the light. lanzi's state of health had, some time subsequent to , been very precarious; and he suffered severely from a distressing complaint,[ ] which frequently interrupted his travels in which he was then engaged, collecting further materials for his history of painting in upper italy. while thus employed, on his return from genoa in december, , he experienced a first attack of apoplexy, as he was passing the mountains of massa and carrara. after his recovery, and return to florence, he was advised in the ensuing spring to visit the baths of albano, which being situated near bassano, afforded him an opportunity of superintending the publication of his history, in the remondini press, and on a more extensive scale than he had at first contemplated. he likewise obtained permission from the grand duke leopold to absent himself, during some time, from his charge at florence, in september, . the first portion of his labours he conceived to be too scanty in point of names and notices to satisfy public taste, so that upon completing the latter part upon a more full and extensive scale, he gave a new edition of that already published, very considerably altered and augmented. to these improvements he invariably contributed, both in notes and text, at every subsequent edition, a number of which appeared in the course of a few years, until the work attained a degree of completeness and correctness seldom bestowed upon labours of such incredible difficulty and extent. the last which received the correction and additions of the author was published at bassano, in the year . that a work upon such a scale was a great desideratum, no less to italy than to the general world of art, would appear evident from the character of the various histories and accounts of painting which had preceded it. they are rather valuable as records, than as real criticism or history; as annals of particular characters and productions derived from contemporary observation, than as sound and enlightened views, and a dispassionate estimate of individual merits. full of errors, idle prejudices, and discussions foreign to the subject, a large portion of their pages is taken up in vapid conceits, personal accusations, and puerile reasoning, destitute of method. the work of lanzi, on the other hand, as it is well remarked by the cav. boni, observes throughout the precept of the _serie et junctura_ of horace. it brings into full light the leading professors of the art, exhibits at due distance those of the second class, and only glances at mediocrity and inferiority of character, insomuch as to fill up the great pictoric canvas with its just lights and shades. the true causes of the decline and revival of the art at certain epochs are pointed out, with those that contribute to preserve the fine arts in their happiest lustre; in which, recourse to examples more than to precepts is strongly recommended. the best rules are unfolded for facilitating the study of different manners, some of which are known to bear a resemblance, though by different hands, and others are opposed to each other, although adopted by the same artist; a species of knowledge highly useful at a period when the best productions are eagerly sought after at a high rate. it is a history, in short, worthy of being placed at the side of that on the literature of italy by tiraboschi, who having touched upon the fine arts at the outset of his labours, often urged his ancient friend and colleague to dilate upon a subject in every way so flattering to the genius of italy; to italy which, however rivalled by other nations in science and in literature, stands triumphant and alone in its creative mind of art. it is, however, difficult to convey a just idea of a work composed upon so enlarged and complete a scale; which embraces a period of about six centuries, and fourteen italian schools, but treated with such rapidity and precision, as to form in itself a compendium of whatever we meet with in so many volumes of guides, catalogues, descriptions of churches and palaces, and in so many lives of artists throughout the whole of italy. (pp. - .) it is known that richardson expressed a wish that some historian would collect these scattered accounts relating to the art of painting, at the same time noting down its progress and decline in every age, a desideratum which mengs in part supplied in one of his letters, briefly marking down all the respective eras. upon this plan, as far as regarded venetian painting, zanetti had partially proceeded; but the general survey, in its perfect form, of the whole of the other schools, was destined to be completed by the genius of lanzi. here he first gives the general character of each, distinguishing its particular epochs, according to the alterations in taste which it underwent. a few artists of distinguished reputation, whose influence gave a new impulse and new laws to the art, stand at the head of each era, which they may be said to have produced, with a full description of their style. to these great masters, their respective pupils are annexed, with the progress of their school, referring to such as may have more or less added to, or altered the manner of their prototype. for the sake of greater perspicuity, the painters of history are kept distinct from the artists in inferior branches; among whom are classed portrait and landscape painters, those of animals, of flowers, of fruits, &c. nor are such as bear an affinity to the art, like engraving, inlaying, mosaic work, and embroidery, wholly excluded. being doubtful whether he should make mention of those artists who belong neither to the senatorial, the equestrian, nor the popular order of the pictorial republic, and have no public representation, such as the names of mediocrity; lanzi finally decided to introduce them among their superiors, like third-rate actors, whose figures may just be seen, in order to preserve the entireness of the story. to this he was farther induced by the general appearance of their names in the various dictionaries, guides, and descriptions of cities and of galleries; and by the example of homer, cicero, and most great writers; homer himself commemorating, along with the wise and brave also the less valiant--the fools and the cowards. (_elogio_, pp. , , .) after having resided during a considerable period at bassano, occupied in the superintendence of the first edition of his great work, lanzi found himself compelled to retire to udine, in , from the more immediate scene of war; a war which subsequently involved other cities of italy in its career. from udine he shortly returned to florence, where he again resumed his former avocations in the ducal gallery, about the period of the commencement of the bourbon government. lanzi's next literary undertaking was three dissertations upon _ancient painted vases, commonly called etruscan_; and he subsequently published a very excellent and pleasing work, entitled, _aloisii lanzii inscriptionum et carminum libri tres_: works which obtained for him the favourable notice of the bourbon court. nor was he less distinguished by that of the new french dynasty, which shortly obtained the ascendancy throughout all italy, as well as at florence, and by which lanzi was appointed president of the cruscan academy. among lanzi's latest productions may be classed his edition and translations of hesiod; entitled _i lavori, e le giornate di esiodo ascreo opera con l. codici riscontrata, emendata la versione latina, aggiuntavi l'italiana in terze rime con annotazioni_. in this he had been engaged as far back as the year , and it had been then announced in a beautiful edition of hesiod, translated into latin by count zamagua. the list will here close with his _opere sacre_, sacred treatises, produced on a variety of occasions, and on a variety of spiritual subjects. one of these was upon the holy sacrament, entitled, _il divoto del ss. sacramento istruito nella pratica_ _di tal devozione_. in truth, lanzi was a good christian, and may be ranked in the number of that great and honoured band of christian philosophers, who like newton, locke, and paley, have triumphantly opposed the whole strength of their mighty intellect, and vast reach of their reasoning powers to the specious and witty, but less powerful and argumentative genius of gibbon, of hume, and of voltaire. nor was the conviction of these great truths in the mind of lanzi the result of sickness and misfortunes, or sombre reflections in the decline of life. great as was the reputation he had acquired by his valuable labours, he was often known sincerely to declare, among his private friends, that he would willingly renounce all kind of literary honours for the pleasure of being assured, that his sacred works had in any degree promoted the cause of christianity. shortly after the last edition of the history now before us, which he had personally superintended, though at a very advanced age, in the year , at bassano, lanzi's health began rapidly to decline, and he prepared with perfect composure to meet the termination of his earthly career. he had already attained his seventy-eighth year; but his mind preserved its usual tone and vigour, though he could with difficulty pace his apartment. he wrote letters, and even pursued his beloved studies on the day of his decease, which took place on sunday, the th of march, , occasioned by a fresh attack of apoplexy. for this he had long been prepared, and only the preceding evening had taken an affectionate leave of his friends and domestics, thanking the cav. boni for his kindness in continuing so long to mount his staircase to visit an old man. [footnote : it may be proper to observe, that the materials of the biographical sketch here offered to the public, are extracted from an extremely pleasing and popular tribute to the memory of lanzi, of very general repute in italy, from the pen of his intimate friend and associate, the cavalier bossi, himself a man of singular merit and acquirements, whose _elogio_ upon his distinguished countryman has deservedly been added to the recent editions of his invaluable history.] [footnote : repeated attacks of strangury which often threatened his life, unless he obtained instant relief.] history of painting in lower italy. book i. florentine school. epoch i. _origin of the revival of painting_--_association and methods of the old painters_--_series of tuscan artists before the time of cimabue and giotto._ sect. i. that there were painters in italy, even during the rude ages, is attested not only by historians,[ ] but by several pictures which have escaped the ravages of time; rome retains several ancient specimens.[ ] passing over her cemeteries, which have handed down to us a number of christian monuments, part in specimens of painted glass, scattered through our museums, and part in those of parietal histories, or walled mosaic, it will be sufficient to adduce two vast works, unrivalled by any others, that i know of, in italy. the first is the series of the popes, which in order to prove the succession of the papal chair, from the prince of the apostles down to the time of st. leo, this last holy pontiff caused to be painted; a work of the fifth century, which was subsequently continued until our own times. the second is the decoration of the whole church of san urbano, where there are several evangelical acts represented on the walls, along with some histories of the titular saint and st. cecilia, a production which, partaking in nothing either of the greek lineaments or style of drapery, may be attributed more justly to an italian pencil, which has subscribed the date of .[ ] many more might be pointed out, existing in different cities; as for instance the picture at pesara, of the patron saints of the city, illustrated by the celebrated annibale olivieri, which is earlier than the year ; those in the vaults of the cathedral at aquileja,[ ] the picture at santa maria primerana at fiesole, which seems the work of that or the succeeding age;[ ] and the picture at orvieto which was formerly known by the name of s. maria prisca, but is now generally called s. brizio.[ ] i say nothing of the figures of the virgin formerly ascribed to st. luke, and now supposed to be the production of the eleventh or twelfth century, as i shall have to treat of them at the opening of the third book. the painters of those times were, however, of little repute; they produced no illustrious scholars, no work worthy of marking an era. the art had gradually degenerated into a kind of mechanism, which, after the models afforded by the greek workers in mosaic employed in the church of st. mark, at venice,[ ] invariably exhibited the same legends, in which nature appeared distorted rather than represented. it was not till after the middle of the thirteenth century that any thing better was attempted; and the improvement of sculpture was the first step towards the formation of a new style. the honour of this is due to the tuscans; a nation that from very remote antiquity disseminated the benign light of art and learning throughout italy; but it more especially belongs to the people of pisa. they taught artists how to shake off the trammels of the modern greeks, and to adopt the ancients for their models. barbarism had not only overwhelmed the arts, but even the maxims necessary for their re-establishment. italy was not destitute of fine specimens of grecian and roman sculpture; but she had long been without an artist who could appreciate their value, much less attempt to imitate them. little else was executed in those dark ages but some rude pieces of sculpture, such as what remains in the cathedral of modena, in san donato at arezzo, in the primaziale at pisa,[ ] and in some other churches where specimens are preserved on the doors or in the interior. niccola pisano was the first who discovered and pursued the true path. there were, and still are, some ancient sarcophagi in pisa, especially that which inclosed the body of beatrice, mother of the countess matilda, who died in the eleventh century. a chase, supposed to represent that of hippolytus, is sculptured on it in basso relievo, which must be the production of a good school; being a subject which has been often delineated by the ancients on many urns still extant at rome.[ ] this was the model which niccola selected, from this he formed a style which participated of the antique, especially in the heads and the casting of the drapery; and when exhibited in different italian cities "it inspired artists with a laudable emulation to apply to sculpture more assiduously than they had before done," as we are informed by vasari. niccola did not attain to what he aspired. the compositions are sometimes crowded, the figures are often badly designed, and shew more diligence than expression. his name, however, will always mark an era in the history of design, because he first led artists into the true path by the introduction of a better standard. reform in any branch of study invariably depends on some rule, which, promulgated and adopted by the schools, gradually produces a general revolution in opinion, and opens a new field to the exertions of a succeeding age. about , he sculptured at bologna the urn of san domenico, and from this, as a remarkable event, he was named "_niccola of the urn_." he afterwards executed in a much superior style, the last judgment, for the cathedral of orvieto, and the pulpit in the church of san giovanni, at pisa; works that demonstrate to the world that design, invention, and composition, received from him a new existence. he was succeeded by arnolfo florentino, his scholar, the sculptor of the tomb of boniface viii. in san pietro at rome; and by his son giovanni, who executed the monuments of urban iv. and of benedict ix. in perugia. he afterwards completed the great altar of san donato, at arezzo, the cost of which was thirty thousand gold florins; besides many other works which remain in naples and in several cities of tuscany. andrea pisano was his associate, and probably also his disciple in perugia, who, after establishing himself in florence, ornamented with statues the cathedral and the church of san giovanni in that city; and in twenty-two years finished the great gate of bronze "to which we are indebted for all that is excellent, difficult, or beautiful in the other two, which are the workmanship of succeeding artists." he was, in fact, the founder of that great school that successively produced orcagna, donatello, and the celebrated ghiberti, who fabricated those gates for the same church, which michelagnolo pronounced worthy to form the entrance of paradise. after andrea, we may notice giovanni balducci, of pisa, whose era, country, and style, all lead us to suppose him one of the same school. he was an excellent artist, and was employed by castruccio, lord of lucca, and by azzone visconti, prince of milan; where he flourished, and left, among other monuments of his art, the tomb of san pietro martire, at s. eustorgio, which is so highly praised by torre, by lattuada, and by various other learned illustrators of milanese antiquities.[ ] two eminent artists, natives of siena, proceeded from the school of gio. pisano, namely, the two brothers, agnolo and agostino, who are greatly commended by vasari as improvers of the art. whoever has seen the sepulchre of guido, bishop of arezzo, which is decorated with an infinity of statues and basso-relievos, representing passages of his life, will not only find reason to admire in them the design, which was the work of giotto, but the execution of the sculpture. the brothers also executed many of their own designs in orvieto, in siena, and in lombardy, where they brought up several pupils, who for a long period pursued their manner, and diffused it over italy. to the improvement of sculpture succeeded that of mosaic, through the efforts of another tuscan, belonging to the order of minor friars, named fra jacopo, or fra mino da turrita, from a place in the territory of siena. it is not known whether he was instructed in his art by the romans or by the greek workers in mosaic,[ ] but it is well ascertained that he very far surpassed them. on examining what remains of his works in santa maria maggiore at rome, one can hardly be persuaded that it is the production of so rude an age, did not history constrain us to believe it. it appears probable that he took the ancients for his models, and deduced his rules from the more chaste specimens of mosaic, still remaining in several of the roman churches, the design of which is less crude, the attitudes less forced, and the composition more skilful, than were exhibited by the greeks who ornamented the church of san marco, at venice. mino surpassed them in every thing. from , when he executed, however feebly, the mosaic of the tribune of the church of san giovanni, at florence, he was considered at the head of the living artists in mosaic.[ ] he merited this praise much more by his works at rome, and it appears that he long maintained his reputation. vasari has not been sufficiently just to the fame of turrita, in noticing him only casually in the life of tafi, but the verses he recites, and the commissions he mentions, demonstrate how greatly turrita was esteemed by his contemporaries. it is maintained that he was also a painter, but this is a mistake which will be cleared up in the sienese school, and both there and elsewhere i shall question the authority of any author who either greatly commends or underrates him. from a deficiency of _specimens_, like those above recorded, painting long remained in a more rude state than mosaic, and was very far behind sculpture. but we must not imagine, that at the birth of cimabue, in , the race of artists was entirely extinct, as erroneously asserted by vasari: this must be deemed an exaggeration, for he himself has recounted several sculptors, architects, and painters then living; and the general scope of his less cautious expressions, against which so many writers have inveighed, and still continue to declaim, favours this opinion. i shall be constrained to advert, in almost every book, to their accusations, and to produce the names of the artists who then lived. i shall commence with those who then flourished in tuscany. the city of pisa, at this time, had not only painters, but a school for each of the fine arts[ ]. the distinguished signor morrona, who has illustrated the pisan antiquities, deduces its origin immediately from greece. the pisans, already very powerful by sea and land, having resolved in to erect the vast fabric of their cathedral, had drawn thither artists in miniature, and other painters, at the same time with buschetto the architect, and these men educated pupils for the city. the greeks at that time were but ill qualified to instruct, for they knew little. their first pupils in pisa seem to have been a few anonymous artists, some of whose miniatures and rude paintings are still in existence. a parchment, containing the _exultet_, as usually sung on sabbato santo, is in the cathedral, and we may here and there observe, painted on it, figures in miniature, with plants and animals: it is a relique of the early part of the twelfth century, yet a specimen of art not altogether barbarous. there are likewise some other paintings of that century in the same cathedral, containing figures of our lady, with the holy infant on her right arm: they are rude, but the progress of the same school may be traced from them to the time of giunta. this artist lately received a fine eulogium, among other illustrious pisans, from signor tempesta, and he was fully entitled to it from the more early historians. his country possesses none of his undoubted pictures, except a crucifixion with his name, which is believed to be among his earliest productions, a print from which may be found in the third volume of _pisa illustrata_. he executed better pictures in assisi, where he was invited to paint by frat' elia di cortona, superior of the minori, about the year . from thence we are furnished with notices of his education, which is thus described by p. angeli, the historian of that cathedral: "juncta pisanus ruditer à græcis instructus, primus ex italis, artem apprehendit circa an. sal. ." in the church of the angioli there is a better preserved work of the same master; it is a crucifixion, painted on a wooden cross; on the lateral edges and upper surface of which our lady is represented, with two other half-length figures, and underneath the remains of an inscription are legible, which having copied on the spot, i do not hesitate to publish with its deficiencies now supplied: _iv_nta pisanus _ivn_tini me _fecit_. i supply _juntini_, because signor da morrona asserts,[ ] that about this time, a _giunta da giuntino_ is mentioned in the records of pisa, whom by the aid of the _assisi_ inscription, i conjecture to be the painter we have now under notice. the figures are considerably less than life; the design is dry, the fingers excessively long, but these are _vitia non hominum sed temporum_; in short, this piece shews a knowledge of the naked figure, an expression of pain in the heads, and a disposition of the drapery, greatly superior to the efforts of the greeks, his contemporaries. the handling of his colours is strong, although the flesh inclines to that of bronze; the local tints are judiciously varied, the chiaroscuro even shews some art, and the whole is not inferior, except in the proportions, to crucifixions with similar half figures usually ascribed to cimabue. he painted at assisi another crucifixion, which is now lost, to which may be added, a portrait of frat' elia, with this inscription, "_f. helias fecit fieri. jesu christe pie miserere precantis heliæ. juncta pisanus me pinxit, an. d. . indit. ix._" the inscription has been preserved by p. wadingo in his annals of the franciscan order for that year, and the historian describes the crucifixion as _affabre pictum_. the fresco works of giunta were executed in the great church of the franciscans, and according to vasari he was there assisted by certain greeks. some busts and history pieces still remain in the gallery and the contiguous chapels, among which is the crucifixion of san pietro, noticed in the _etruria pittrice_. some believe that those paintings have been here and there injudiciously retouched, and this may serve to excuse the drawing, which may have been altered in many places, but the feebleness of the colouring cannot be denied. when they are compared with what cimabue executed there about forty years afterwards, it seems that giunta was not sufficiently forcible in this species of painting; perhaps he might have improved, but he is not mentioned after ; and it is conjectured that he died while yet a young man, at a distance from his native country. i am induced to believe so from observing, that giunta di giuntino is noticed in the records of pisa, in the early part of that century, but not afterwards; and that cimabue was sent for to paint the altar-piece and portrait of san francesco of pisa, about the year , before he went to assisi. it is more likely that giunta would have executed this, had he returned home from that city, where he had seen and perhaps painted the portrait of the holy father.[ ] from this school the art is believed to have spread in these early times over all tuscany, although it must not be forgotten that there were miniature painters there as well as in the other parts of italy, who, transferring their art from small to large works, like franco of bologna, betook themselves, and incited others to painting on walls and on panel. whatever we may choose to believe, siena, at this period, could boast her guido, who painted from the year , but not entirely in the manner of the greeks, as we shall find under the sienese school. lucca possessed in one bonaventura berlingieri. a san francesco painted by him still exists in the castle of guiglia, not far from modena, which is described as a work of great merit for that age.[ ] there lived another artist about the year , known by his production of a crucifixion which he left at san cerbone, a short distance from the city with this inscription; "_deodatus filius orlandi de luca me pinxit_, a. d. ." margaritone of arezzo was a disciple and imitator of the greeks, and by all accounts he must have been born several years before cimabue. he painted on canvas, and if we may credit vasari, made the first discovery of a method of rendering his pictures more durable, and less liable to cracking. he extended canvas on the panel, laying it down with a strong glue, made of shreds of parchment, and covered the whole with a ground of gypsum, before he began to paint. he formed diadems and other ornaments of plaster, giving them relief from gilding and burnishing them. some of his crucifixions remain in arezzo, and one of them is in the church of the holy cross at florence, near another by cimabue; both are in the old manner, and not so different in point of merit, but that margaritone, however rude, may be pronounced as well entitled as cimabue to the name of painter. while the neighbouring cities had made approaches towards the new style, florence, if we are to credit vasari and his followers, was without a painter; but subsequent to the year some greek painters were invited to florence by the rulers of the city, for the express purpose of restoring the art of painting in florence, where it was rather wholly lost than degenerated. to this assertion i have to oppose the learned dissertation of doctor lami, which i have just commended. lami observes, that mention is made in the archives of the chapters of one bartolommeo who painted in , and that the picture of the annunciation of our lady, which is held in the highest veneration in the church of the servi, was painted about that period. it is retouched in some parts of the drapery; it possesses, however, much originality, and for that age is respectably executed. when i prepared my first edition i had no knowledge of the work of lami, which was not then published, and hence was unable to proceed further than to refute the opinion of those who ascribed this sacred figure to cavallini, a pupil of giotto. i reflected that the style of cavallini appeared considerably more modern in his other works which i had examined at assisi, and at florence; yet, various artists whom i consulted, and among others signor pacini, who had copied the annunciation, disputed with me this diversity of style. i further adduced the form of the characters written there in a book, _ecce virgo concipiet, &c._ which resemble those of the thirteenth century; nor have they that profusion of lines which distinguishes the german, commonly denominated the gothic character, which cavallini and other pupils of giotto always employed. i rejoice that the opinion of lami confirms my conjecture, and stamps its authenticity; and it seems to me highly probable that the bartolommeo, whom he indicates, is the individual to whom the memorandums of the servi ascribe the production of their annunciation about the year . the same religious fraternity preserve, among their ancient paintings, a magdalen, which appears from the design and inscription, a work of the thirteenth century; and we might instance several coeval pictures that still exist in their chapter house, and in other parts of the city.[ ] having inserted these notices of ancient painters, and some others, which will be found scattered throughout the work, i turn to vasari, and to the accusations laid to his charge. he is defended by monsignor bottari in a note at the conclusion of the life of margaritone, taken from baldinucci. he affirms, from his own observation, "that though each city had some painters, they were all as contemptible and barbarous as margaritone, who, if compared to cimabue, is unworthy of the name of painter." the examples already cited do not permit me to assent to this proposition; even bottari himself will scarcely allow me to do so, as he observes, in another note on the life of cimabue, "that he was the first who abandoned the manner of the greeks, or at least who avoided it more completely than any other artist." but if others, such as guido, bonaventura, and giunta, had freed themselves from it before his time, why are they not recorded as the first, in point of time, by vasari? did not their example open the new path to cimabue? did they not afford a ray of light to reviving art? were they not in painting what the two guidos were in poetry, who, however much surpassed by dante, are entitled to the first place in a history of our poets? vasari would therefore have acted better had he followed the example of pliny, who commences with the rude designers, ardices of corinth, and telephanes of sicyon; he then minutely narrates the invention of cleophantes the corinthian, who coloured his designs with burnt earth; next, that of eumarus the athenian, who first represented the distinction of age and sex. then comes that of cimon of cleonæ, who first expressed the various attitudes of the head, and aimed at representing the truth, even in the joints of the fingers and the folds of the garments. thus, the merits of each city, and every artist, appear in ancient history; and it seems to me just, that the same should be done, as far as possible, in modern history. these observations may, at present, suffice in regard to a subject that has been made a source of complaint and dispute among many writers. nevertheless it cannot be denied that there is no city to which painting is more indebted than to florence, nor any name more proper to mark an epoch, whatever may be the opinion of padre della valle,[ ] than that of cimabue. the artists whom i have before mentioned had few followers; their schools, with the exception of that of siena, languished, and were either gradually dispersed, or united themselves to that of florence. this school in a short time eclipsed every other, and has continued to flourish in a proud succession of artists, uninterrupted even down to our own days. let us then trace it from its commencement. giovanni cimabue, descended from illustrious ancestors,[ ] was both an architect and a painter. that he was the pupil of giunta is conjectured in our times, only because the greeks were less skilful than the italians. it ought to be a previous question, whether the supposed scholar and master ever resided in the same place, which it would seem, after the observations before adduced, can scarcely be admitted.[ ] it appears from history, that he learnt the art from some greeks who were invited to florence, and painted in s. maria novella, according to vasari. it is an error to assert that they painted in the chapel of the gondi, which was built a century after, together with the church; it was certainly in another chapel, under the church, where those greek paintings were covered with plaister, and their place supplied by others, the work of a painter of the thirteenth century.[ ] not long since a part of the new plaister fell down, and some of the very rude figures of those greek painters became again visible. it is probable that cimabue imitated them in early life, and perhaps at that time painted the s. francesco and the little legends which surround it in the church of s. croce. but, if i mistake not, it is doubtful who painted this picture; at least it neither has the manner nor the colouring of the works of cimabue, even when young. i may refer to the s. cecilia, with the implements of her martyrdom, in the church dedicated to that saint, and which was afterwards removed to that of san stefano, a picture greatly superior to that of s. francesco. however this may be, like other italians of his age, giovanni got the better of his greek education, which seems to have consisted in one artist copying another without ever adding any thing to the practice of his master. he consulted nature, he corrected in part the rectilinear forms of his design, he gave expression to the heads, he folded the drapery, and he grouped the figures with much greater art than the greeks. his talent did not consist in the graceful. his madonnas have no beauty, his angels in the same piece have all the same forms. wild as the age in which he lived, he succeeded admirably in heads full of character, especially in those of old men, impressing an indescribable degree of bold sublimity, which the moderns have not been able greatly to surpass. vast and inventive in conception, he executed large compositions, and expressed them in grand proportions. his two great altar-pieces of the madonna, at florence, the one in the church of the dominicans, the other in that of the trinity, with the grand figures of the prophets, do not give so good an idea of his style as his fresco paintings in the church of assisi, where he appears truly magnificent for the age in which he lived. in these histories of the old and new testament, such as remain, he appears an ennius, who, amid the rudeness of roman epic poetry, gave flashes of genius not displeasing to a virgil. vasari speaks of him with admiration for the vigour of his colouring, and justly so of the pictures in the ceiling. they are still in a good state of preservation, and although some of the figures of christ, and of the virgin in particular, retain much of the greek manner, others representing the evangelists, and doctors instructing the monks of the franciscan order, from their chairs, exhibit an originality of conception and arrangement that does not appear in contemporary works. the colouring is bold, the proportions are gigantic even in the distance, and not badly preserved; in short, painting may there be said to have almost advanced beyond what the mosaic worker at first attempted to do. the whole of these, indeed, are steps in the progress of the human intellect not to be recounted in one history, and form beyond question the distinguishing excellence of the florentine artist, when put into competition with either the pisans or the sienese. nor do i perceive how, after the authority of vasari, who assigns the work of the ceiling to cimabue, confirmed by the tradition of five centuries, p. della valle is justified at this day, in ascribing that painting to giotto, a painter of a milder genius. if he was induced to prefer other artists to cimabue, because they gave the eyes less fierceness, and the nose a finer shape, these circumstances appear to me too insignificant to degrade cimabue from that rank which he enjoys in impartial history.[ ] he has moreover asserted, that cimabue neither promoted nor injured the florentine school by his productions, a harsh judgment, in the opinion of those who have perused so many old writers belonging to the city who have celebrated his merits, and of those who have studied the works of the florentine artists before his time, and seen how greatly cimabue surpasses them. if cimabue was the michelangiolo of that age, giotto was the raffaello. painting, in his hands, became so elegant, that none of his school, nor of any other, till the time of masaccio, surpassed, or even equalled him, at least in gracefulness of manner. giotto was born in the country, and was bred a shepherd; but he was likewise born a painter; and continually exercised his genius in delineating some object or other around him. a sheep which he had drawn on a flat stone, after nature, attracted the notice of cimabue, who by chance passed that way: he demanded leave of his father to take him to florence, that he might afford him instruction; confident, that in him, he was about to raise up a new ornament to the art. giotto commenced by imitating his master, but quickly surpassed him. an annunciation, in the possession of the fathers of badia, is one of his earliest works. the style is somewhat dry, but shews a grace and diligence, that announced the improvement we afterwards discern. through him symmetry became more chaste, design more pleasing, and colouring softer than before. the meagre hands, the sharp pointed feet, and staring eyes, remnants of the grecian manner, all acquired more correctness under him. it is not possible to assign the cause of this transition, as we are able to do in the case of later painters; but it is reasonable to conclude that it was not wholly produced, even by the almost divine genius of this artist, unaided by adventitious circumstances. there is no necessity for sending him, as some have done, to be instructed at pisa; his history does not warrant it, and an historian is not a diviner. much less ought we to refer him to the school of f. jacopo da turrita, and give him memmi and lorenzetti for fellow pupils, who are not known to have been in rome when f. jacopo was distinguished for his best manner. but p. della valle thinks he discovers in giotto's first painting, the style and composition of giunta, (preface to vasari, p. ,) and in the pictures of giotto at s. croce, in florence, which "_he has meditated upon a hundred times_," he recognizes f. jacopo, and finds "_reason for opining_" that he was the master of giotto. (vide tom. ii. p. .) when a person becomes attached to a system, he often sees and opines what no one else can possibly see or opine. in the same manner baldinucci wished to refer to the school of giotto, one duccio da siena, vital di bologna, and many others, as will be noticed; and he too argues upon a resemblance of style, which, to say truth, neither i nor any one i know can perceive. if i cannot then agree with baldinucci, can i value his imitator? and more particularly as it is no question here of vitale, or any other artist of mediocrity, almost unknown to history, but of giotto himself. is it likely, with a genius such as his, and born in an age not wholly barbarous, with the advantages enjoyed under cimabue, especially in point of colouring, that he would take giunta for his model, or listen to the instruction of fra mino, in order to excel his master. besides, what advantage can be obtained from thus disturbing the order of chronology, violating history, and rejecting the tradition of giotto's native school, in order to account for his new style? it is most probable that, as the great michelangiolo, by modelling and studying the antique, quickly surpassed in painting his master, ghirlandaio, the same occurred with regard to giotto. it is at least known that he was also a sculptor, and that his models were preserved till the time of lorenzo ghiberti. nor was he without good examples. there were specimens of antique sculpture at florence, which may be yet seen near the cathedral, (not to mention those which he afterwards saw at rome); and their merit, then already established by the practice of niccola and giovanni of pisa, could not be unknown to giotto, to whom nature had granted such a taste for the exquisite and the beautiful. when one contemplates some of his heads of men; some of his forms, proportioned far beyond the littleness of his contemporaries; his taste in flowing, natural, and becoming drapery; some of his attitudes after the manner of the antique, breathing grace and tranquillity, it is scarce possible to doubt that he derived no small advantage from ancient sculpture. his very defects discover this. a good writer (the author of the guide of bologna) remarks in him a style which partakes of statuary, contrary to the practice of contemporary foreign artists; a circumstance very common, as we shall observe, under the roman school, to those painters who designed from statues. i shall be told that he probably derived assistance from the sculpture of the two pisani; especially as baldinucci has discovered a strong resemblance between his style and that of giovanni, and some others also have noticed the circular compositions, the proportions and casting of the drapery which one perceives in the basso-relievos of the early pisan school. i would not deny that he also availed himself of them; but it was perhaps in the manner that raffaello profited by michelangiolo, whose example taught him to imitate the antique. nor let it be objected to me that the dryness of the design, the artifice of concealing the feet by long garments, the inaccuracy of the extremities, and similar defects, betray rather a pisan than an attic origin. this only proves, that when he became the founder of a style, he did not aim at giving it the perfection of which it was susceptible, and which it could hardly be expected to obtain amid the numerous avocations in which he appears to have been engaged; in short, i cannot persuade myself, that without the imitation of the antique, he could in so short a time have made such a progress, as to have been admired even by bonarruoti himself.[ ] the first histories of the patriarch s. francesco, at assisi, near the paintings of his master, shew how greatly he excelled him. as his work advanced he became more correct; and towards the conclusion, he already manifested a design more varied in the countenances, and improved in the extremities; the features are more animated, the attitudes more ingenious, and the landscape more natural. to one who examines them with attention, the composition appears the most surprising; a branch of the art, in which he seems not only to surpass himself, but even sometimes appears unrivalled. in many historical pictures, he often aimed at ornamenting with buildings, which he painted of a red, or azure, or a yellow, the colours employed in staining houses, or of a dazzling white, in imitation of parian marble. one of his best pictures in this work is that of a thirsty person, to the expression of which scarcely any thing could be added by the animating pencil of raffaello d'urbino himself. with similar skill he painted in the inferior church, and this is perhaps the best performance which has reached our times, though specimens remain in ravenna, in padua, in rome, in florence, and in pisa. it is assuredly the most spirited of all, for he has there, with the most poetical images, depicted the saint shunning vice, and a follower of virtue; it is my opinion that he here gave the first example of symbolical painting, so familiar to his best followers. his inventions, which, according to the custom of the age, were employed in scripture history, are repeated by him in nearly the same style in several places; and are generally most pleasing when the proportions of the figures are the least. his small pictures of the acts of st. peter and st. paul, with some representations of our saviour, and of various saints, in the sacristy of the vatican, appear most elegant and highly finished miniatures; as likewise are some others in the church of the holy cross at florence, taken from scriptural history, or from the life of st. francis. the real art of portrait painting commenced with him; to whom we are indebted for correct likenesses of dante, of brunetto latini, and of corso donati. it was indeed before attempted, but, according to vasari, no one had succeeded. he also improved the art of working in mosaic; a piece wrought by him in the navicella, or ship of st. peter, may be seen in the portico of that cathedral; but it has been so much repaired, that now the design is wholly different, and appears the work of another artist. it is believed that the art of miniature painting, so much prized in that age for the ornamenting of missals, received great improvement from him.[ ] architecture undoubtedly did; the admirable belfry of the cathedral of florence is the work of giotto. after collecting all the notices he could of the scholars of cimabue and giotto, baldinucci endeavours to make us believe that all the benefits which accrued to painting, sculpture, and architecture in italy, and even throughout the world, came directly or indirectly from florence. the following is the manner in which he expresses himself in his first pages, with the proofs which he adduces. "during my researches, i have ascertained beyond all doubt the truth of an opinion i always considered as indisputable, and which is not controverted by respectable ancient historians; that these arts in the first place were restored by cimabue and giotto, and afterwards diffused over the world by their disciples; and i conceived the idea of making it evident by the help of a tree, which at a glance might shew their progress from the earliest to the present times." he published the first small part of this tree, just as i exhibit it to the reader; and promised in each succeeding volume to give another part, that would establish the connexion with the principal root (cimabue), or with the branches derived from it; a promise from which he adroitly delivered himself; therefore we are without any more than these few branches that follow: cimabue. _____________________________________________________ | | | | | | arnolfo, | | | | oderigi, | gaddo. tafi, giotto, ugolino. | | | | franco f. ristoro, | | bolognese, f. sisto, fra mino, gio. pisano a miniature and a worker a sculptor painter. f. giovanni, in and architects. mosaic. architect. but with all his pains he has not satisfied the public expectation, as is observed by signor piacenza, who published the splendid turin edition of baldinucci as far as the life of franciabigio, accompanied with very useful notes and dissertations.[ ] it is alleged, that to make this tree fair and flourishing, he has inserted in it branches dexterously stolen from his neighbours, who have not failed to reclaim their property. i rejoice to write in an age when the opinions of baldinucci have few followers even in florence. the excellent work entitled "_etruria pittrice_," composed and applauded in that city in proportion as it is free from the prejudice of former times, proves this sufficiently. following in like manner the light of history and of reason, unswayed by party spirit, i shall in the first place observe, that among all the scholars of cimabue, i do not find any named by vasari, but giotto and arnolfo di lapo, concerning whom it is certain that the historian was in error. lapo and arnolfo are the names of two different sculptors, _disciples_ of niccolò pisano, who, being already versed in the art, assisted him in to adorn with history pieces the pulpit of the cathedral at siena, an authentic document of which remains in the archives of the work.[ ] thus this branch of the tree belongs to pisa, unless cimabue have a claim to it, by contributing in some degree to the instruction of arnolfo in the principles of architecture. andrea tafi was the pupil of apollonius, a greek artist, and assisted him in the church of st. john, in some pieces of mosaic, from scriptural history, which, according to vasari, are without invention and without design; but he improved as he proceeded, for the last part of the work was less despicable than the beginning. cimabue is not named in these works, nor in what tafi afterwards executed without assistance; and as he was old when cimabue began to teach, i cannot conceive how he can be reckoned the scholar of the latter, or a branch from that root. gaddo gaddi, says vasari, was contemporary with cimabue, and was his intimate friend, as well as that of tafi; through their friendship he received hints for his improvement in mosaic. at first he followed the manner of the greeks, mingled with that of cimabue. after long working in this manner, he went to rome, and there improved his style, while employed on the façade of s. maria maggiore, by his own genius, assisted in my opinion by imitating the ancient workers in mosaic. he also painted some altar-pieces, and i saw at florence one of his crucifixions, of a square figure, and very respectable workmanship. this circumstance induces me to consider gaddo, in some measure, among the imitators of cimabue, but not one of his pupils; for it appears to me unjust, should a contemporary communicate with an artist either as a friend, or for the sake of advice on the art, to set him immediately down as a branch from that stock. vasari relates of ugolino senese, that he was a tenacious follower of the greek style, and inclined more to imitate cimabue than giotto. he does not on this account, indeed, expressly say, that he had been his scholar; he rather hints that he had other instructors at siena, for which reason it will be better to consider him under that school, there being no reason to doubt that he belonged to it. in that of bologna we should also class oderigo, who, as a miniature painter, was more likely to employ some other master than a painter in fresco like cimabue. in the mean time it is useful to reflect, that were the method of baldinucci to be pursued, nothing authentic would remain in a history of painting; and the schools of the early masters would increase beyond all limits, were the scholars of each master to be confounded with his friends, acquaintances, and contemporaries, who paid attention to his maxims. it is still more strange to peruse the account of the connexion between the first and secondary branches of the tree, or if one may use the expression, between the children and grandchildren of cimabue. there is nothing natural in their succession, and the labour is wholly useless which derives the professors of every fine art, of whatever country, past, present, and to come, from one individual. f. ristoro and f. sisto were eminent architects, who rebuilt the grand bridges of the carraja and the holy trinity, about , when cimabue was twenty-four years of age. baldinucci writes of both, that they were, perhaps, disciples or imitators of arnolfo, from the state of their works. but how comes he to found on a _perhaps_, what he, a little before, had vaunted as a _clear demonstration_? and then, on what does this _perhaps_ rest? is it not more probable that arnolfo, and cimabue himself, imitated them? that fra mino da turrita should appear in his tree as a scholar of tafi, and as posterior to cimabue, is no less absurd. in , a date omitted by baldinucci, mino wrought in mosaic at florence, fifteen years before cimabue was born. in his old age he commenced a similar work in the cathedral of pisa, "in the same style in which he had executed his other labours," says vasari, who adds, that tafi and gaddi (both his inferiors in age and reputation) assisted him. the work was "little more than begun," from which we may infer that they were not long associated. it seems to me extraordinary how baldinucci could assert, "it appears that vasari imagined that mino was the pupil of andrea tafi," which is contrary to fact: instead of the "_clear demonstration_," which he promised, he has amused us with "_it appears_," which is evident only to himself. at length, wishing to make us believe that giovanni pisano the sculptor is a _pupil_ of giotto the painter, he again turns to vasari, from whom he brings evidence that giovanni, having completed his work in the cathedral of arezzo, and being then established at orvieto, came to florence to examine the architecture of s. maria del fiore, and to become acquainted with giotto: he further notices two pieces which he executed at florence, the one a madonna between two little angels, over the gate of the cathedral; the other a small baptism of st. john; this happened in . here baldinucci hazards a reflection, that "if one compares the other works of this artist with the above mentioned figure of the virgin mary ... we may recognize in it such improvement ... and so much of the manner of giotto, that there cannot remain a doubt but he is to be reckoned a disciple of this master, both in respect of his imitation of him, and his observance of his precepts, _which he followed during so many years in the exercise of the profession_." every attentive reader will discover here not a clear demonstration of the assumption, but a mass of difficulties. he compares this to the other figures made by pisano at florence, before he was acquainted with giotto; and yet this was the first which he there executed. he wishes to make giovanni, already sixty years of age, an imitator of giotto, then twenty-one, when it is much more probable that giotto would follow him, the best sculptor of the age. there is no foundation for the supposed instruction which giovanni received from giotto, who, shortly after, departed for rome; where, after some other works, he executed the mosaic of the _boat_ in . in short, the whole question of preceptorship rests on no better authority than a single figure. how great are the inconsistencies in this account, and how absurd the explanations and repetitions which are offered! what further shall we say? is it not lamentable thus to see so many old and honoured artists compelled, in spite of history, to become pupils to masters so much younger and less celebrated than themselves? i know that various writers have censured baldinucci as an historian of doubtful fidelity, artful in concealing or misrepresenting facts, captious in expounding the opinions of vasari, and more intent on captivating than instructing his readers. i am not ignorant that his system was controverted even in his own country, as appears from his work published there, entitled _delle veglie_; and that signor marmi, a learned florentine, strongly suspected his fair dealing, of which we shall adduce a proof under the sienese school. nevertheless i take into account that he wrote in an age less informed in regard to the history of painting, and that he defended an opinion then much more common in italy than at present. he had promised cardinal leopoldo de' medici to demonstrate it incontrovertibly for the honour of his country, and of the house of medici, and had received advice and assistance from him in order to encourage him to defend it, and to refute the contrary opinion. under the necessity of answering malvasia,[ ] a severe writer against vasari, and of proving his assertion, that the people of bologna, no less than those of siena, of pisa, and other places, had learned the art from the florentines, he formed a false system, the absurdity of which he did not immediately perceive; but he at last discovered it, as signor piacenza observes, and succeeded in escaping from its trammels. the most ingenious builders of systems have subjected themselves very frequently to the same disadvantage, and the history of literature abounds with similar instances. having examined this sophism, i cannot subscribe to the opinion of baldinucci; but shall comprise my own opinion in two propositions:--the first is, that the improvement of painting is not due to florence alone. it has been remarked, that the career of human genius, in the progress of the fine arts, is the same in every country. when the man is dissatisfied with what the child learned, he gradually passes from the ruder elements to what is less so, and from thence, to diligence and precision; he afterwards advances to the grand, and the select, and at length attains facility of execution. such was the progress of sculpture among the grecians, and such has been that of painting in our own country. when correggio advanced from laborious minuteness to grandeur, it was not necessary for him to know that such was the progress of raffaello, or, at any rate, to have witnessed it: in like manner, nothing more was wanting to the painters of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, than to learn that hitherto they had pursued a wrong path; this was sufficient to guide them into a better path, and it was not then untried; for sculpture had already improved design. we have, in fact, seen the pisani, and their scholars, preceding the florentines; and, as their precursors, diffusing a new system of design over italy. it would be injustice to overlook them in the improvement of painting, in which design is of such importance; or to suppose that they did not signally contribute to its improvement. but if italy be indebted solely to cimabue and giotto for its progress, all the good artists should have come from florence. and yet, in the cathedral of orvieto (to instance the finest work, perhaps, of that age), we find, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, many artists from various other places, who would not have been called to ornament such a building, had they not previously enjoyed the reputation of able masters.[ ] add to this, if we are to derive all painters from those two masters, every style of painting should resemble that of their florentine disciples. but on examining the old paintings of siena, of venice, of bologna, and of parma, they are found to be dissimilar in idea, in choice of colouring, and in taste of composition. all, then, are not derived from florence. my second proposition is, that no people then excelled in, nor contributed, by example, so much to the progress of art as the florentines. rival cities may boast artists of merit, even in the first era of painting; their writers may deny the fame of giotto and his disciples; but truth is more powerful than declamation. giotto was the father of the new method of painting, as boccaccio was called the father of the new species of prose composition. after the time of the latter, any subject could be elegantly treated of in prose; after the former, painting could express all subjects with propriety. a simon da siena, a stefano da firenze, a pietro laurati, added charms to the art; but they and others owe to giotto the transition from the old to a new manner. he essayed it in tuscany, and while yet a young man, greatly improved it, to the general admiration of all classes. he did not leave assisi until called to rome by boniface viii., nor did he take up his residence at avignon, until invited to france by clement v. before going there, he was induced to stop at padua, and on returning some years after, he again resided at the same place. at that time many parts of italy were under a republican form of government; but abounded in potent families, that bore sway in various quarters, and which, while adorning their country, aimed at its subjugation. giotto, beyond every other, was in universal request, both at home and abroad. the polentani of ravenna, the malatesti of rimino, the estensi of ferrara, the visconti of milan, the scala of verona, castruccio of lucca, and also robert, king of naples, sought to engage him with eagerness, and for some period retained him in their service. milan, urbino, arezzo, and bologna, were desirous to possess his works; and pisa, that, in her _campo santo_, afforded an opportunity for the choicest artists of tuscany to vie with one another,[ ] as of old they contended at corinth, and in delphi,[ ] obtained from him those historic paintings from the life of job, which are greatly admired, though they are amongst his early productions. when giotto was no more, similar applause was bestowed on his disciples: cities contended for the honour of inviting them, and they were even more highly estimated than the native artists themselves. we shall find cavallini and capanna in the roman school; in that of bologna the two faentini, pace, and ottaviano, with guglielmo da forli; menabuoi at padua; memmi, who was either a scholar or assistant of giotto, at avignon; and we shall find traces of the successors of the same school throughout all italy. this work will indicate the names of some of them; it will point out the style of others; without including the great number who, in every province, have been withdrawn from our view, for the purpose of replacing old pictures with others in the new manner. giotto thus became the model for students during the whole of the fourteenth century, as was raffaello in the sixteenth, and the caracci in the subsequent century: nor can i find a fourth manner that has been so generally received in italy as that of those three schools. there have been some who, from the inspiration of their own genius, had adopted a new manner, but they were little known or admired beyond the precincts of their own country. of the florentines alone can it be asserted, that they diffused the modern style from one extremity of italy to the other: in the restoration of painting, though not all, yet the chief praise belongs to them; and this forms my second proposition. i proceed more willingly to the sequel of my work, having escaped from that part of it in which, amid the contradictory sentiments of authors, i have often suspended my pen, mindful of the maxim, _historia nihil falsi audeat dicere, nihil veri non audeat_. resuming the subject of florence, after the death of her great artist in , i find painters had there prodigiously multiplied, as i shall presently, from undoubted testimony, proceed to prove. not long afterwards, that is, in , the painters associated themselves into a religious fraternity, which they denominated the society of st. luke, first established in s. maria nuova, but afterwards in s. maria novella. this was not the first that had arisen in italy, as baldinucci affirms: in there was a company of painters previously established at venice, of which st. luke was the patron, the laws of which, it is believed, are still preserved in the church of st. sophia.[ ] but neither this, the florentine, nor that of bologna, can be called academies for design; they were only the results of christian devotion, a sort of school, such as formerly existed, and still exist in many of the arts. they did not consist of painters alone; these always possessed the most elevated rank; but in the same place were assembled artists "in metal and in wood, whose works partook, more or less, of design;" as is related by baldinucci, in describing the florentine association. in that of venice were comprehended basket-makers, gilders, and the lowest daubers; in that of bologna were included even saddlers, and scabbard-makers; who were only divided from the painters by means of lawsuits and decisions. that unrefined age did not as yet acknowledge the dignity of painting; it denominated those artists master workmen, whom we now call professors of the art, and it called shops what we name studies. i have often doubted, whether the progress of the arts was so rapid among us as in greece, because, there, painting, either from the beginning or a very early era, was considered as a liberal art: with us its dignity was much longer in being acknowledged. he who desires to discover the origin of those associations, will find it in the works composed of different arts then most in use, of which i shall treat somewhat fully, for the sake of illustrating the history. a little above i mentioned basket-makers: at that time, all kinds of furniture, such as cupboards, benches, and chests, were wrought by mechanics, and then painted, especially when intended as the furniture of new married women. many ancient cabinet pictures have been cut out of such pieces of furniture, and, by this means, preserved to later ages. as for images on altars, through the whole of the fourteenth century, they were not formed, as at present, on a separate piece from the surrounding ornaments. there were made little altars, or dittici,[ ] in many parts of italy, called _ancone_; they first shaped the wood, and laboriously ornamented it with carving. the design was conformed to the teutonic, or, as it is called, the gothic architecture, seen in the façades of churches built in that age. the whole work was a load of minuteness, consisting of little tabernacles, pyramids, and niches; and various doors and windows, with semi-circular and pointed arches, were represented on the surface of the panel; a style very characteristic of that period. i have sometimes there observed, in the middle, little statues in mezzo-relievo.[ ] most frequently the painter designed these figures or busts of saints: sometimes there were also prepared various sorts of little forms, or moulds--formelle--in which to represent histories. often there was a step added to the little altar, where, in several compartments, were likewise exhibited histories of our saviour, of the virgin, and of the martyrs, either real or feigned.[ ] sometimes various compartments were prepared, in which their lives were represented. the carvers in wood were so vain of their craft, that they often inscribed their own names before that of the painter.[ ] even pictures for rooms were fashioned by the carvers into triangular and square forms, which they surrounded with heavy borders, with rude foliage, lace, or arabesque ornaments around them. in that age, pictures were rarely committed to canvass alone, though some such are to be seen at florence, and more among the venetians and people of bologna; but panels were most frequently employed. the borders often inclosed portions of canvass, not unfrequently of parchment, and sometimes of leather, which, in all probability, were prepared by those who usually wrought in such materials; and this is the reason why such artists, and even in some instances saddlers, were sometimes associated with painters. history informs us that shields for war, or the tournament, and also various equestrian accoutrements, as the saddles and trappings of horses, were ornamented with painting, a custom which was retained till the time of francia, as vasari mentions in his life; hence, armourers and saddlers became associated with painters. among them in like manner might be included those who prepared walls for painting in fresco, and who covered them with a reddish ground, which not unfrequently is still discovered in the flaws. on this colour the figures were designed, and such walls were the cartoons of the old masters. the stucco workers also assisted them in those relieved ornaments we see in fresco paintings. i believe they used moulds in those works, which seem nothing else than globules, flowerets, and little stars, formed with a stamp, such as we see on gilt plaister, on leather, on board, and on playing-cards. on whatever substance they painted, some gold was usually added; with it they ornamented the ground of their pictures, the glories of their saints, their garments, and fringes. although painters themselves were skilled in such labours, it appears that they sought the assistance of gilders, and therefore gilders were classed with painters, and like them inscribed works with their names. this was the practice of cini and saracini, just before recorded, and particularly of a native of ferrara, who, in the pictures of the vivarini, at venice, subscribes his name before theirs. (_see zanetti, pittura ven._ p. .) and in the cathedral of ceneda, below an incoronation of the virgin, in which the artist did not care to exhibit himself to posterity, the engraver, already noticed, left the following inscription, which signor lorenzo giustiniani, a venetian patrician of great taste and cultivation of mind, has very politely communicated to me; " , a di . frever christofalo da ferara intajo." towards the end of the fourteenth century, when the gothic style was disappearing from architecture, the design of the carvers improved, and they began to erect over altars oblong panels, divided by partitions, which were fashioned into pilasters, or small columns, and often between these last feigned gates or windows, so that the ancona or altar bore some resemblance to the façade of a palace or a church; over them was placed a frieze, and above the frieze was a place like a stage with some figures. the saints were placed below, and their histories were painted in the compartments; and often there appeared their histories painted upon some little form, or upon the steps. the partitions were gradually removed, the proportions of the figures enlarged, and the saints were disposed in a single piece around the throne of our lord, not so erect as formerly, after the manner of statues, but in different actions and positions, a custom which prevailed even in the sixteenth century. the practice of gilding grounds declined towards the end of the fifteenth century, but it was increased on the garments, and fringes were never so deep as at that period. about the close of that century gold was more sparingly employed, and it was almost wholly abandoned in the following. no little benefit would be conferred upon the art by any one who would undertake to point out with accuracy what were the colours, gums, and other mixtures employed by the greeks. they were undoubtedly in possession of the best methods transmitted to them by a tradition, which though in some measure corrupted, was confessedly derived from their ancestors. even subsequent to the invention of oils, their colouring is in some degree deserving of our admiration. in the medicean museum there is a madonna, subscribed with the following latin inscription, _andreas rico de candia pinxit_, the forms of which are stupid, the folds inelegant, and the composition coarse; but with all this, the colour is so fresh, vivid, and brilliant, that there is no modern work that would not lose by a comparison; indeed, the colouring is so extremely strong and firm, that when tried with the iron, it does not liquefy, but rather scales off, and breaks in minute portions. the frescos, likewise, of the earliest greek and italian painters, are surprisingly strong, and more particularly in upper than in lower italy. there are some figures of saints upon the pilasters of the church of san niccolo, at trevigi, quite remarkable for their durability, an account of which is given in the first volume of padre federici, (p. ). i have understood from professors that such a degree of _consistency_ must have been produced by a certain portion of wax, which was employed at that period, as will be explained in the subsequent chapter, on the subject of painting in oil. it must, however, be admitted, that we are very little advanced in these inquiries into the ancient methods of preparing colour. were they once satisfactorily explored, it would prove highly useful in the restoration of ancient pictures, nor superfluous in regard to the adoption of that firm, fused, and lucid colouring, which we shall have occasion to commend in various lombard and venetian pictures, and more especially in those of coreggio. these observations will not be useless to the connoisseur, who doubts the age of a picture on which there are no characters. where there are letters he may proceed with still greater certainty. the letters vulgarly called gothic, began to be used after the year , in some places more early than in others; and characters were loaded with a superfluity of lines, through the whole of the fourteenth, until about the middle of the fifteenth century, when the use of the roman alphabet was revived. what forms were adopted by artists in subscribing their names, will be more conveniently explained in the course of a few pages further. i have judged it proper to give here a sort of paleology of painting; because inattention to this has been, and still is, a fruitful source of error. the reader, however, may observe, that though the rules here proposed, afford some light to resolve doubtful points, they are not to be considered as infallible and universal, and he may further recollect, that in matters of antiquity nothing is more dangerous and ridiculous, than to form general rules, which a single example may be sufficient to overthrow. [footnote : see tiraboschi, _storia della litterat. italiana_, towards the end of tom. iv. see also the dissertation of lami on the italian painters and sculptors who flourished from the year to ; in the supplement to vinci's _trattato della pittura_, printed at florence in ; and see moreni, p. iv. p. .] [footnote : see the oration of mon. francesco carrara _delle lodi delle belle arti_, roma, , to. with the accompanying notes, in which the two bianchini, marangoni, and bottari, their illustrators, are cited.] [footnote : pointed out to me by sig. d'agincourt, a gentleman deeply versed in antiquities of this sort.] [footnote : there were similar remains in the choir, the design of which i have seen. they were covered over in . among other curiosities was the portrait of the patriarch popone, of the emperor conrad, and his son henry; the design, action, and characters, like the mosaics at rome; executed about the year . see bartoli, _antichità di aquileja_, p. ; and altan, _del vario stato_, &c. p. .] [footnote : the figure of our lady is retouched; but two miniatures attached to it, are better preserved; the one represents a man, the other a woman: and their drapery is in the costume of that period. the figures are reversed in the engraving of them, which is published.] [footnote : see p. della valle in the preface to vasari, p. .] [footnote : a few pictures by superior greek artists, remain, which are very good. of this number is a madonna, with a greek inscription, at the church of s. maria in cosmedin at rome. there is also one at camerino said to have come from smyrna; and i know of no greek picture in italy better executed or better preserved.] [footnote : the lateral gate of bronze is of very rude workmanship, as described by the canon martini, in his account of that temple, p. ; and by sig. da morrona, it is with much probability ascribed to the hand of bonanno pisano. from vasari's life of arnalfo, we learn that the same sculptor also executed the great gate of the primaziale at pisa, in bronze, about the year , subsequently destroyed by fire. that of santa maria nuova at monreale, is likewise his. it is described by p. del giudice, in his account of that church, and bears the name of bonanno pisano, with the date . it is as rudely executed as the preceding one at pisa, as i am assured by the cavalier puccini, accurately versed in every branch of the fine arts. if we wish to estimate the merit of niccola pisano, we have only to compare these two gates with the specimens which he gave us only a few years afterwards.] [footnote : several specimens of similar productions also remain in sicily, particularly at mazzerra and girganti. at palermo, the tomb of the empress constance ii. who died in the year , is decorated with an antique sculpture in basso relievo, representing a chase, which is conjectured to represent that of Æneas and dido, and which is well engraved. see the work entitled, "i regali sepolchri del duomo di palermo riconosciuti e illustrati. nap. ." another specimen of this sort is said to be in the collection of mr. blundell, at ince.] [footnote : in the new guide to milan, sig. abate bianconi observes, "that these are beautiful works, and that nothing superior is to be seen in any work of that age. vasari, by omitting this very eminent pisan, and not mentioning these works, although he was according to his own account at milan, has given reason to believe, that he was not over anxious in his researches." p. . see also giulini and verri, as quoted by sig. da morrona in tom. i. pp. , .] [footnote : the mosaic school subsisted at rome as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries. (see musant. fax chronol. pp. , .) in this the family of the cosmati acquired great excellence. adeodato di cosimo cosmati employed himself in the church of st. maria maggiore, in , (guide to rome); and several of the same name exercised their talents in the cathedral of orvieto. (see valle catalogo.) the whole of these are preferred to the greek mosaic workers, who were at the same period engaged in decorating st. mark's at venice. (see valle's preface to vasari, p. .)] [footnote : _sancti francisci frater fuit hoc operatus jacobus in tali præ cunctis arte probatus_, is the inscription on the mosaic.] [footnote : see _pisa illustrata_ of signor da morrona, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : in the sacristy of the angioli is preserved the most ancient portrait of san francesco that is extant. it is painted on the panel which served as the saint's couch until the period of his decease, as we learn from the inscription. it is there supposed to be the work of some greek artist anterior to giunta.] [footnote : see signor ab. bettinelli, _risorgimento d' italia negli studii, nelle arti, ne' costumi dopo il mille_, p. .] [footnote : to this list of early painters might perhaps be added the name of francesco benani, by whom there is a whole length figure of st. jerome holding a crucifix in his hand. it possesses all the characteristics attributed by lanzi to this early age. near the bottom of the picture is a label, inscribed, franciscus benanus, filius petri ablada. the size of the picture is feet by feet , on panel, covered with gypsum. the vehicle of the colours is probably prepared from eggs, which were usually employed for that purpose before the invention of painting in oil, and to which an absorbent ground of lime or gypsum seems to have been indispensable. it is surprising how well the early pictures executed in this style have preserved their colouring to the present day.] [footnote : this writer has thrown much light upon the history of our early painters, from which i have derived and shall continue to derive, much benefit; but in the heat of dispute, he has frequently depreciated cimabue in a way which i cannot approve. for instance, vasari having said, that "he contributed greatly to the perfection of the art," della valle asserts, that "he did it neither good nor harm;" and that having closely examined the pictures of cimabue, "he has found in them a ruder style than appears in those of giunta pisano, of guido da siena, of jacopo da turrita, &c." (tom. i. p. .) of the two last i shall speak elsewhere. with respect to the first, the writer contradicts himself four pages after; when, commenting on another passage of the historian relating to certain pictures of cimabue, executed in assisi in the inferior church of s. francesco, he says, that "he there, in his opinion, surpassed giunta pisano." it is to be remembered that this was his first work, or amongst the first that cimabue painted in assisi. when he went thither, therefore, he was a better artist than giunta. how, then, when he worked in the superior church, in assisi, and in so many other places, did he become so bad a painter, and more uncouth than giunta himself?] [footnote : see baldinucci, tom. i. p. , florentine edition, , where it is said that the cimabuoi were also called _gualtieri_.] [footnote : but see baldinucci in _veglia_, p. .] [footnote : we read, in the preface to the sienese edition of vasari's lives, (p. ) as follows: "to giunta and to the other artists of pisa, as heads of the school, was given the principal direction of adorning the franciscan church; and cimabue and giotto are known to have been either disciples or assistants in their school, in which they produced several important works. giunta had the direction of his assistant as long as he resided there, which may have been even subsequent to . but how are we to suppose that he could have been at assisi so long as to permit cimabue (who was born in , and went to assisi about ) to assist, to receive instructions from, and to succeed him? such a supposition is still more untenable as regards giotto, who was invited to assisi many years afterwards." (vasari.)] [footnote : to the testimonies in favor of cimabue, may be added one of no little weight, from the manuscript given to the public a few years since, by the abbate morelli. we there find that cimabue painted in padua, in the church del carmine, which was afterwards burnt; but that a head of s. giovanni, by him, being rescued from the flames, was inserted in a frame, and preserved in the house of alessandro capella. would a painter, who had done neither good nor harm to the florentine school, and to the art, have been invited to padua? would the remains of his works have been held in such esteem? would he have been so highly valued, after so great a lapse of time, by vasari, to whose arts he seems to wish to ascribe the reputation of cimabue. other proofs of this reputation may be seen in the defence of vasari, in the present book, third epoch. the writer of history ought completely to divest himself of the love of system and party spirit.] [footnote : vasari, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : a book is mentioned by baldinucci ornamented by giotto with miniatures, with histories from the old testament, and presented to the vestry of st. peter, by cardinal stefaneschi; of this he neither adduces any proof, nor can i find any record. from the evidence, rather, of an existing necrology, where, among the presents made by stefaneschi to the cathedral, the pictures and the mosaic by giotto are noticed without any other work of this artist, the gift of the book is very doubtful. see sig. ab, cancellieri _de secretariis veteris basilicæ vaticanæ_, p. , and . some miniatures of the martyrdom and miracles of st. george, in another book, are ascribed to him; but i am uncertain whether there is any ancient document for this; and they might, possibly, be the work of simone da siena, who is often confounded with him.] [footnote : see his first volume, pp. and ; and also p. della valle in the preface to vasari, p. ; also signor da morrona in his pisa illustrata, p. ; besides many other authors.] [footnote : d. valle's preface to vasari, p. .] [footnote : we may observe, that malvasia is the champion, not only of bologna, but of italy, and of all europe. at page , volume first, he has quoted a passage from filibien, which proves that design always maintained itself in france, even in rude ages, and that at the time of cimabue it was there equally respectable as in italy.] [footnote : a catalogue of them is given in p. della valle, in his history of that church, and is republished in the sienese edition of vasari, at the end of the second volume.] [footnote : this place, which will ever do high honour to the magnificence of the pisans, would be an inestimable museum, if the pictures there, executed by giotto, by memmi, by stefano florentino, by buffalmacco, by antonio veneziano, by the two orcagni, by spinello aretino, and by laurati, had been carefully preserved; but the greatest number having been injured by dampness, were repaired, but with considerable judgment, within the century.] [footnote : plin. xxxv. .] [footnote : zanet. p. .] [footnote : it was a very ancient practice of christian worship to place the silver, or ivory dittici, upon the altars during the service of the mass, and when the sacred ceremony was over, they were folded up in the manner of a book, and taken elsewhere. the same figure was retained, even in the introduction of the largest altar pieces, which likewise consisted of two wings, and were portable. this custom, of which i have seen few remnants in italy, has been long preserved in the greek church. at length, by degrees, artists began to paint upon one whole panel. (_see buonarroti vetri antichi_, p. , &c.)] [footnote : in torrello, one of the venetian isles, there is an ancient image of st. hadrian, which is tolerably carved, and around it the history of the saint is depicted: the style is feeble, but not grecian.] [footnote : i notice this peculiarity, because the histories, either painted or engraved, belonging to those early times, are apt to perplex us; nor can they be cleared up without having recourse to books of fiction, which were, in those less civilized periods, believed. in the acts of our saviour, and of the virgin, it may be useful to consult gio. alberto fabrizio, in the collection entitled "_codex apocr. novi testamenti_;" in the acts of the apostles and martyrs, it is not so much their real history, as the legends, either manifestly false or suspected, as recounted by the bollandisti, that will throw light upon the subject.] [footnote : see vasari in the life of spinello aretino: "simone cini, a florentine, carved it, it was gilt by gabriello saracini, and spinello di luca of arezzo, painted it in the year ." a similar signature may be seen in pittura veneziana, page .] florentine school. epoch i. _florentine painters who lived after giotto to the end of the fifteenth century._ sect. ii. it is worthy of remark, that vasari, in the life of jacopo di casentino, quotes the manuscript records of the society of st. luke, afterwards printed by baldinucci, and mentions fourteen painters who were formerly its captains, counsellors, or chamberlains; yet he takes no notice of them in his _lives_, and of but very few of the great number named in that manuscript. the same selection was employed by baldinucci, in whose veglia we are informed that many painters flourished about , the names of whom he has refused to insert in his anecdotes. it clearly appears from his writings that he omitted about a hundred, all belonging to that age.[ ] it is therefore incorrect to say, that those two historians have commemorated many artists of mediocrity, merely because they were natives of florence, an accusation alleged against them by foreigners. the artists of their country whom they have transmitted to posterity, are not less worthy of record than those ancient ones of venice, of bologna, and of lombardy, whom we are accustomed to praise in their respective schools. among this number i include buffalmacco, the wit whose jests, as recorded in boccaccio and sacchetti, render him more celebrated than his pictures. his real name was buonamico di cristofano. he had been the scholar of tafi, but by living long in the time of giotto, he had an opportunity of correcting his own style. he displayed a most lively fancy, "and when he chose to exert himself (which rarely happened) was not inferior to any of his contemporaries."[ ] it is unfortunate that his best works, which were in the abbey and in ognisanti, have perished, and there only remain some less carefully executed at arezzo and at pisa. the best preserved are in the campo santo; viz. the creation of the world, in which there is a figure of the deity, five cubits high, sustaining the mighty frame of the heavens and the elements, and three other historical pictures of adam, of his children, and of noah. a crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of the redeemer, may be seen at the same place. good symmetry is not to be looked for in them; he knew but little of design, and he drew his figures by other rules than the roundness and facility seen in the disciples of giotto. his heads are deficient in beauty and variety. the pious women near the cross all have the same mean and vulgar features, in which the mouths are opened even to deformity. some of the heads of the men, especially that of cain, possess, however, a physiognomical expression which arrests the eye of the spectator. the air of nature too in the action, as in the man, who, full of horror, flies from mount calvary, is highly praiseworthy. his draperies are greatly varied, are distinguished by the difference of stuffs and linings, and are laboriously ornamented with flowers and with fringes. before he was employed in the campo santo, he painted in the church of st. paul, ripa d'arno, where he was associated with one bruno di giovanni, formerly his fellow student, and believed to be the painter of a st. ursula in a piece which still exists in the commenda. unable to attain the expression of buffalmacco, he tried to atone for the defect by the aid of sentences proceeding from the mouths of his figures, which expressed what their features and attitudes were incapable of explaining, a practice in which he was preceded by cimabue, and followed by the eccentric orcagna and several others. this bruno, together with nello di dino, was associated with buffalmacco in the jests contrived for the simple calandrino. they all owe their fame to boccaccio, who introduces them in the eighth day of his decamerone; and a similar favour was conferred by sacchetti on a bartolo gioggi, a house-painter, whom he introduced into his one hundred and seventieth tale. giovanni da ponte, the scholar of buffalmacco, had some merit, but he was not at all solicitous to increase it by his diligence. some remains of his pictures exist on the walls of the church of st. francis, at arezzo. i believe that bernardo orcagna, who rivalled the fame of buffalmacco, proceeded from some old school. he was the son of one cione, a sculptor, and his brother jacopo was of the same profession: but the other brother, andrea, surpassed them all; and in himself so far united the attainments of the three sister arts, that he was by some reckoned second only to giotto. he is known among architects for having introduced the circular arch instead of the acute, as may be seen in the gallery of the lanzi, which he built and ornamented with sculpture. bernardo taught him the principles of painting. they who have represented him as the pupil of angiol gaddi, do not appear attentive to dates. in the strozzi chapel in the church of s. maria novella, he and bernardo painted paradise, and over against it the infernal regions; and in the campo santo of pisa, death and the judgment were executed by andrea, and hell by bernardo. the two brothers imitated dante in the novel representations which they executed at those places; and that style was more happily repeated by andrea in the church of santa croce, where he inserted portraits of his enemies among the damned, and of his friends among the blessed spirits. these pictures are the prototypes of similar pictures preserved in s. petronio, at bologna, in the cathedral of tolentino, in the badia del sesto, at friuli,[ ] and some other places, in which hell is distinguished by abysses and a variety of torments, after the manner of dante. several pictures by andrea remain, and his name is still on that in the strozzi chapel, which is full of figures and of episodes. on the whole, he discovers fertility of imagination, diligence, and spirit, equal to any of his contemporaries. in composition he was less judicious, in attitudes less exact, than the followers of giotto; and he yields to them in drawing and in colouring. the same school produced marinotto, a nephew of andrea, and a tommaso di marco, whom i pass over, as well as others of little note, no longer known by existing works. bernardo nello di gio. falconi of pisa merits consideration. he executed many pictures in that cathedral, and is supposed to be the same with that nello di vanni, who, with other pisan artists, painted in the campo santo in the fourteenth century. francesco traini, a florentine, is known as much superior to his master, by a large picture which is in the church of s. catherine of pisa, in which he has represented st. thomas aquinas in his own form, and also in his beatification. he stands in the middle of the picture, under the redeemer, who sheds a glory on the evangelists and him; and from them the rays are scattered on a crowd of listeners, composed of clergy, doctors, bishops, cardinals, and popes. arius and other innovators are at the feet of the saint, as if vanquished by his doctrine; and near him appear plato and aristotle, with their volumes open, a circumstance not to be commended in such a subject. this work exhibits no skill in grouping, no knowledge of relief, and it abounds in attitudes which are either too tame, or too constrained; and yet it pleases by a marked expression in the countenances, an air of the antique in the draperies, and a certain novelty in the composition. let us now pass on to the followers of giotto. the scholars of giotto have fallen into an error common to the followers of all illustrious men; in despairing to surpass, they have only aspired to imitate him with facility. on this account the art did not advance so quickly as it might otherwise have done, among the florentine and other artists of the fourteenth century, who flourished after giotto. in the several cities above mentioned, giotto invariably appears superior when seen in the vicinity of such painters as cavallini, or gaddi; and whoever is acquainted with his style, stands in no need of a prolix account of that of his followers, which, with a general resemblance to him, is less grand and less agreeable. stefano fiorentino alone is a superior genius in the opinion of vasari, according to whose account he greatly excelled giotto in every department of painting. he was the son of catherine, a daughter of giotto, and possessed a genius for penetrating into the difficulties of the art, and an insuperable desire of conquering them. he first introduced foreshortenings into painting, and if in this he did not attain his object, he greatly improved the perspective of buildings, the attitudes, and the variety and expression of the heads. according to landino he was called the _ape of nature_, an eulogy of a rude age; since such animals, in imitating the works of man, always debase them: but stefano endeavoured to equal and to embellish those of nature. the most celebrated of his pictures which were in the _ara coeli_ at rome, in the church of s. spirito at florence, and in other places, have all perished. as far as i know, his country does not possess one of his undoubted pictures; unless we mention as such, that of the saviour in the campo santo of pisa, which, indeed, is in a greater manner than the works of this master, but it has been retouched. a _pietà_, by his son and disciple tommaso, as is believed by some, exists in s. remigi at florence, which strongly partakes of the manner of giotto; like his frescos at assisi. he deserved the name of giottino, given him by his fellow citizens, who used to say that the soul of giotto had transmigrated, and animated him. baldinucci alleges that there was another of the same name, who should not be confounded with him, and quotes the following inscription from a picture in the villa tolomei, "dipinse tommaso di stefano fortunatino de' gucci tolomei." but cinelli, the strenuous opponent of baldinucci, attributes it, perhaps justly, to giottino. this artist left behind him one lippo, sufficiently commended by vasari, but who rather seems to have been an imitator than a scholar. giovanni tossicani of arezzo, was a disciple of giottino, employed in pisa and over all tuscany. he painted the st. philip and st. james, which still remain on the baptismal font in arezzo, and were repaired by vasari while a young man, who acknowledges that he learned much from this work, injured as it was. with him perished the best branch of the stock of giotto. taddeo gaddi may be considered as the giulio romano of giotto, his most intimate and highly favoured pupil. vasari, who saw his frescos and easel pictures at florence, in good preservation, prefers him to his master, in colouring and in delicacy; but the lapse of time at this day forbids our deciding this point, although several of his pictures remain, especially in the church of santa croce, which are scriptural histories, much in the manner of giotto. he discovered more originality in the chapter house of the spagnuoli, where he worked in competition with memmi.[ ] he painted some of the acts of the redeemer on the ceiling, and the descent of the holy spirit in the refectory, which is among the finest specimens of art in the fourteenth century. on one of the walls he painted the sciences, and under each some one of its celebrated professors; and demonstrated his excellence in this species of allegorical painting, which approaches so nearly to poetry. the brilliance and clearness of his tints are chiefly conspicuous in that chapter house. the royal gallery contains the taking down of christ, the work of his hands, which was formerly at orsanmichele, and by some ascribed to buffalmacco, merely because it was unascertained. taddeo flourished beyond the term assigned him by vasari, and outlived most of those already named. this may be collected from franco sacchetti, a contemporary writer, who relates in his th tale, that andrea orcagna proposed as a question, "who was the greatest master, setting giotto out of the question?" some answered cimabue, others stefano, some bernardo, and some buffalmacco. taddeo gaddi, who was in the company, said, "truly these were very able painters, but the art is decaying every day, &c." he is mentioned up to , and he might possibly survive several years. he left at his death several disciples, who became eminent teachers of painting in florence, and other places. d. lorenzo camaldolese is mentioned with honour. he instructed pupils in the art; and several old pictures by him and his scholars are in the monastery of the angeli. at that time the fraternity of camaldulites furnished some miniature painters, one of whom, named d. silvestro, ornamented missals, which still exist, and are amongst the best that italy possesses. the most favoured pupils of taddeo were giovanni da milano, whom i shall notice in the school of lombardy, and jacopo di casentino, who also will find a place there, together with his imitators. to these two he recommended on his death-bed his two sons and disciples: giovanni, who died prematurely, with a reputation for genius; and angiolo, who being then very young, most needed a protector. the latter died, according to vasari, at years of age; in , according to the date of baldinucci. he did not improve the art in proportion to his abilities, but contented himself with imitating giotto and his father, in which he was astonishingly successful. the church of s. pancrazio possessed one picture by him, containing several saints, and some histories from the gospel, which may still be seen in the monastery, divided into several pieces, and coloured in a taste superior to what was then usual. there is another in the same style in the sacristy of the conventual friars, by whom he was employed in the choir of the church, to paint in fresco the story of the recovery of the cross, and its transportation in the time of heraclius; a work inferior to the others, because much larger, and to him somewhat new. he afterwards lived at venice, as a merchant rather than as a painter; and baldinucci, who seizes every opportunity of supporting his hypothesis, says, that if he was not the founder of that school, he, at least, improved it. but i shall demonstrate, in the proper place, that the venetian school was advancing to a modern style, before angiolo could have taught in that place; and in the many old pictures i saw at venice, i was unable to recal to mind the delicate style of angiolo. the venetians owe to him the education of stefano da verona, whom i shall consider in the second volume; and he gave the florentines cennino cennini, praised by vasari as a colourist, of whom as a writer i shall soon make mention. in the school of angiolo gaddi we may reckon antonio veneziano, concerning whom vasari and baldinucci disagree. the former makes him a venetian, "who came to florence to learn painting of agnolo gaddi:" the latter, a systematic writer, as we have seen, asserts that he was born in florence, and that he obtained the surname of veneziano, from his residence and many labours in venice, on the authority of certain memoirs in the strozzi library, which were, perhaps, doubted by himself; for had they been of high authority, he would not have omitted to proclaim their antiquity. however this may be, each of them is a little inconsistent with himself. as they assert that antonio died of the plague in , or, according to the correction of their annotators, in , at the age of , it follows that he was born many years before gaddi, whose disciple, therefore, we cannot easily suppose him. it is likewise rendered doubtful by his design in the legends of s. ranieri,[ ] which remain in the campo santo of pisa, where there is a certain facility, care, and caprice in the composition, that savour of another school. vasari, moreover, notices a method of painting in fresco, without ever re-touching it when dry, that would seem to have been introduced from other parts, different from what was employed by the tuscan artists, his competitors, whose paintings, in the time of the historian, were not in as good a state of preservation as those of antonio. in the same place he deposited his portrait, which the describers of the ducal gallery at florence pretend still to find in the chamber of celebrated artists. this portrait is, however, painted in a manner so modern, that i cannot believe it the work of a painter so ancient. on this occasion i must observe that there was another antonio veneziano, whom this picture probably represents, and who, about the year , painted, at osimo, a picture of st. francis, in the manner of that age, and inscribed it with his name. i learned this from the accomplished sig. cav. aqua, who added, that this name had been erased, and that of pietro perugino inserted, who certainly gains no very great honour by such substitution. we learn from history[ ] that antonio educated in paolo uccello, a great artist in perspective; and in gherardo starnina, a master in the gay style, of whom there are yet some remnants, in a chapel of the church of santa croce. they are among the last efforts of the school of giotto, which succeeding artists abandoned, to adopt a better manner. one exception occurs in antonio vite, who executed some works in the old style, in pistoia, his native city, and in pisa. i may here observe, that starnina and dello fiorentino shortly after introduced the new italian manner in the court of spain, and returned to florence with honour and with affluence. the first remained to enjoy them in his native country, until the time of his death: the latter returned back to increase them; and, according to vasari, he left no public work in florence, except an historic design of isaac, in green earth, in a cloister of the church of s. maria novella: perhaps he ought to have said, that he left various works, for several are there visible, all in the same taste, and so rude, as to induce us to reckon him rather a follower of buffalmacco than of giotto. but he excelled in small pieces; and there was none then living who could more elegantly ornament cabinets, coffers, the backs of couches, or other household furniture, with subjects from history and fable. among the disciples of taddeo gaddi i have named jacopo del casentino, of whom there are some remains in the church of orsanmichele. jacopo taught spinello aretino, a man of a most lively fancy, as may be gathered from some of his pictures in arezzo, no less than from his life. he painted also at florence, and was one of those who had the honour of ornamenting the campo santo of pisa with historical paintings. his pictures of the martyrs s. petito and s. epiro, are noticed by vasari as his best performances. he was, however, inferior to his competitors by the meanness of his design, and the style of his colouring, in which green and black are predominant, without being sufficiently relieved by other colours. the fall of the angels still remains in s. angelo at arezzo, in which lucifer is represented so terrible, that it afterwards haunted the dreams of the artist, and, deranging both his mind and body, hastened his death. bernardo daddi was his scholar; a man less known in his own country than at florence, where he executed a picture, seen on the gate of san giorgio (see moreni, lib. v. p. .); as was also parri, the son of spinello, who modernised his style somewhat on the manner of masolino. the latter excelled in the art of colouring, but he was barbarous in the drawing of his figures, which he made extravagantly long and bending, in order, as he was used to say, to give them greater spirit. one may see some remains of them at arezzo in s. domenico, and other places. lorenzo di bicci of florence, another scholar of spinello, was the vasari of his time, for the multiplicity, celerity, and easy self-complacency, shewn in his labours. the first cloister of the church of s. croce retains several specimens, consisting of the legends of s. francis; and there is an assumption on the front, in which he was assisted by donatello, while still a young man. perhaps his best work is the fresco, ornamenting the sanctuary of s. maria nuova, built by martin v. about the year . his son neri is reckoned among the last followers of giotto. he lived but a short time; he left, in s. romolo, a picture which would not have disgraced his father, and which is certainly more carefully executed than was usual with the latter. during the fourteenth century, sculpture was cultivated at pisa by as many artists as painting was at florence; but pisa was not on that account destitute of painters worthy of being recorded. vasari mentions one vicino, who finished the mosaic begun by turrita, assisted by tafi and gaddi, and adds, that he was also a painter. sig. da morrona says, that he retained the old style of his school; which was the case with many others, as appears from several old madonnas upon panels, both of anonymous and of ascertained painters. of this sort is that in the old church of tripalle, and that at s. matthew's in pisa. on the first is this inscription, _nerus nellus de pisa me pinxit_, : on the second we read, _jacopo di nicola dipintore detto gera mi dipinse_. the mode of expression is derived from the m'epoiêse of the greeks; to which the old pisans closely adhered in their paintings, their sculptures, and their bronzes.[ ] like the other italians they at length reformed their style, and there, as well as at florence and siena, families of painters arose, in which the fathers were excelled by their sons, and they by their children. thus, from vanni, who flourished in , sprung turino di vanni, who flourished about , and nello di vanni, who painted in the campo santo, whose son bernardo was the disciple of orcagna, and furnished many pictures for the palace of the primate. there was also in that city one andrea di lippo, who is noticed in the _academical discourse on the literary history of pisa_, in the year ; the same, i believe, with that andrea da pisa, mentioned among the artists that ornamented the cathedral of orvieto in . a work by one giovanni di niccolo remains in the monastery of s. martha, and, perhaps, he painted the fine trittico of the zelada museum at rome, which represents our saviour with s. stephen, s. agatha, and other saints, and which has this inscription, _jo. de pisis pinxit_. this is a picture of great labour, by some ascribed to gio. balducci; which, if it was ascertained, would confer honour on that great man, as a professor of the three sister arts. towards the end of the century the power of the pisans declined, rather from civil discord than from other misfortunes; till at length the city fell into the hands of the florentines in , and lay for a long time prostrate and humbled, deprived, not only of her artists, but almost of her citizens; and fully glutted the ancient hatred of her hostile neighbours. she at length rose again, not, indeed, to command, but to more dignified subjection. the spirit of the florentines in the mean time increasing with their power, they became chiefly solicitous to suit the magnificence of their capital to the grandeur of the state. cosmo, at once the father of his country and of men of genius, gave stability to public affairs. lorenzo the magnificent, and others of the house of medici, followed, whose hereditary taste for literature and the fine arts is celebrated in a multitude of books, and most copiously in the histories written by three eminent authors, monsignor fabroni, the signor ab. galluzzi, and mr. roscoe. their house was at once a lyceum for philosophers, an arcadia for poets, and an academy for artists. dello, paolo, masaccio, the two peselli, both the lippi, benozzo, sandro, the ghirlandai, enjoyed the perpetual patronage of this family, and as constantly rendered it whatever honour they could bestow. their pictures are full of portraits, according to the custom of the times, and continually presented to the people the likenesses of the medici, and often represented them with regal ornaments in their pictures of the epiphany, as if gradually to prepare the people to behold the sceptre and royal robe securely established in that house. the good taste of the medici was seconded by that of other citizens, who were then distributed into various corporations, according to their place of residence and profession, each of which strove with reciprocal emulation to decorate their houses and their churches. besides the desire of public ornament, they were animated by religion, which, in what relates to divine worship, is so widely spread, not only among the great, but also among the lower orders of people, that those have a difficulty in believing who have not beheld it. their cathedral, a vast fabric, was already reared for the ceremonies of religion, and here and there some other churches arose; these and the more ancient, in emulation of each other, they adorned with paintings, a luxury unknown to their ancestors, and less common in the other cities of italy. this disposition gave rise, after the conclusion of the century, to that prodigious number of painters already mentioned; and hence sprang, in the century we now treat of, that crowd of artists in marble, bronze, and silver, who transferred pre-eminence in sculpture, the ancient inheritance of the pisans, to the people of florence. the florentines were desirous of ornamenting the new cathedral and baptistery, the church of orsanmichele, and other sacred places, with statues and basso-relievos. these brought forward donatello, brunelleschi, ghiberti, filarete, rossellini, pollajuoli, and verrocchio, and produced those noble works in marble, in bronze, and in silver, which sometimes appear to have attained the perfection of the art, and to have rivalled the ancients. the rising generation was instructed in design by those celebrated men, and the universality of the principles they taught, made the transition from one art to another easy. the same individuals were often statuaries, founders in bronze, in gold, lapidaries, painters, or architects, talents that appear enviable to this age, in which an artist with difficulty acquires a competent knowledge in a single art. such was the course of instruction at florence in the studies, and such the subsequent encouragement without, from which it will not appear wonderful to the reader that this city was the foremost to attain the perfection of the art. but let us trace the steps by which it advanced in florence, and in the rest of italy. the followers of giotto had now carried painting beyond the period of its infancy, but it continued to give proofs of its infant faculties, especially in chiaroscuro, and still more in perspective. figures sometimes appeared as if falling or slipping from the canvass; buildings had not a true point of view; and the art of foreshortening was yet very rude. stefano fiorentino perceived rather than removed the difficulty; others for the most part sought either to avoid or to compensate for the deficiency. pietro della francesca, whom we have elsewhere noticed, appears to have been the first who revived the grecian practice of rendering geometry subservient to the painter. he is celebrated by pascoli,[ ] and by authors of greater note, as the father of perspective. brunelleschi was the first florentine who saw the method of bringing it to perfection, "which consisted in drawing it in outline by the help of intersections;"[ ] and in this manner he drew the square of st. john, and other places, with true diminution and with receding points. he was imitated in mosaic by benedetto da maiano, and in painting by masaccio, to both of whom he was master. about the same period paolo uccello, having studied under gio. manetti, a celebrated mathematician, applied to it with assiduity; and even so dedicated himself to the pursuit, that in labouring to excel in this, he never acquired celebrity in the other branches of painting. he delighted in it far beyond his other studies, and used to say that perspective was the most pleasant of all; so true is it that novelty is a great source of enjoyment. he executed no work that did not reflect some new light on that art, whether it consisted of edifices and colonnades, in which a great space was represented in a small compass, or of figures foreshortened with a skill unknown to the followers of giotto. some of his historic pictures of adam, and of noah, in which he indulged in his favourite taste for the novel and whimsical, remain in the cloisters of s. maria novella; and there are also landscapes with trees and animals so well executed, that he might be called the bassano of the first age. he particularly delighted to have birds in his house, from which he drew, and from thence he obtained his surname of uccello. in the cathedral there is a gigantic portrait of gio. aguto on horseback, painted by paolo in green earth. this was, perhaps, the first attempt made in painting, which achieved a great deal without appearing too daring. he produced other specimens at padua, where he delineated some figures of giants with green earth in the house of the vitali. he was chiefly employed in ornamenting furniture for private individuals; the triumphs of petrarch in the royal gallery, painted on small cabinets are supposed by some good judges to be his. masolino da panicale cultivated the art of chiaroscuro. i believe he derived advantage from having long dedicated his attention to modelling and sculpture, a practice which renders relief easy to the painter, beyond what is generally conceived. ghiberti had been his master in this branch, who at this time was unrivalled in design, in composition, and in giving animation to his figures. colouring, which he yet wanted, was taught him by starnina, and in this also he became a very celebrated master. thus uniting in himself the excellences of two schools, he produced a new style, not indeed exempt from dryness, nor wholly faultless; but grand, determined, and harmonious, beyond any former example. the chapel of st. peter al carmine, is a remaining monument of this artist. he there painted the evangelists, and some acts of the saint, as his vocation to the apostleship, the tempest, the denying of christ, the miracle performed at porta speciosa, and the preaching. he was prevented by death from representing other acts of st. peter, as for instance, the tribute paid to cæsar, baptism conferred on the multitude, the healing of the sick, which several years afterwards were painted by his scholar maso di s. giovanni, a youth who obtained the surname of masaccio, from trusting to a precarious subsistence, and living, as it was said, by chance, while deeply engrossed with the studies of his profession. this artist was a genius calculated to mark an era in painting; and mengs has assigned him the highest place among those who explored its untried recesses. vasari informs us that "what was executed before his time might be called paintings, but that his pictures seem to live, they are so true and natural;" and in another place adds, that "no master of that age so nearly approached the moderns." he had formed the principles of his art on the works of ghiberti and donatello; perspective he acquired from brunelleschi, and on going to rome it cannot be doubted that he improved by the study of ancient sculpture. he there met with two senior artists, gentile da fabriano, and vittore pisanello, upon whom high encomiums, as the first painter of his time, may be seen in maffei and elsewhere.[ ] they who write thus had either not seen any of the paintings of masaccio, or at most only his early productions; such as the s. anna in the church of s. ambrose in florence, or the chapel of s. catherine in s. clement's at rome, in which, while still young, he executed some pictures of the passion of christ, and legends of s. anna, to which may be added a ceiling containing the evangelists, which are all that now remain free from retouching. this work is excellent for that time, but some doubt whether it ought to be ascribed to him; and it is inferior to his painting in the carmine, of which we may say with pliny, _jam perfecta sunt omnia_. the positions and foreshortenings of the figures are diversified and complete beyond those practised by paolo uccello. the air of the heads, says mengs, is in the style of raffaello; the expression is so managed that the mind seems no less forcibly depicted than the body. the anatomy of the figure is marked with truth and judgment. that figure, so highly extolled in the baptism of s. peter, which appears shivering with cold, marks, as it were, an era in the art. the garments, divested of minuteness, present a few easy folds. the colouring is true, properly varied, delicate, and surprisingly harmonious; the relief is in the grandest style. this chapel was not finished by him. he died in , not without suspicion of poison, and left it still deficient in several pictures, which, after many years were supplied by the younger lippi. it became the school of all the best florentine artists whom we shall have occasion to notice in this and the succeeding epoch, of pietro perugino, and even of raffaello; and it is a curious circumstance, that in the course of many years, in a city fruitful in genius, ever bent on the promotion of the art, no one in following the footsteps of masaccio attained that eminence which he acquired without a director. time has defaced other works of his hand at florence, equally commended, and especially the sanctuary of the church del carmine, of which there is a drawing in the possession of the learned p. lettor fontana barnabita in pavia. the royal gallery has very few of his works. the portrait of a young man, that seems to breathe, and is estimated at a high price, is in the pitti collection. after masaccio, two monks distinguished themselves in the florentine school. the first was a dominican friar named f. giovanni da fiesole, or b. giovanni angelico. his first employment was that of ornamenting books with miniatures, an art he learned from an elder brother, who executed miniatures and other paintings. it is said that he studied in the chapel of masaccio, but it is not easy to credit this when we consider their ages. their style too betrays a different origin. the works of the friar discover some traces of the manner of giotto, in the posture of the figures and the compensation for deficiencies in the art, not to mention the drapery which is often folded in long tube-like forms, and the exquisite diligence in minute particulars common to miniature painters. nor did he depart much from this method in the greatest part of his works, which chiefly consist of scripture pieces of our saviour, or the virgin, in cabinet pictures not unfrequently to be met with in florence. the royal gallery possesses several; the most brilliant and highly finished of which, is the birth of john the baptist. the glory,[ ] which is in the church of s. mary magdalen de' pazzi, from its great size, is among his rarest productions; and it also ranks with the most beautiful. his chief excellence consists in the beauty that adorns the countenances of his saints and angels; and he is truly the guido of the age, for the sweetness of his colours, which, though in water, he diluted and blended in a manner which almost reaches perfection. he was also esteemed one of the best of his age in works executed in fresco; and he was employed in the decoration of the cathedral of orvieto, as well as the palace of the vatican itself, where he painted a chapel--a work much commended by a number of writers. vasari enumerates gentile da fabriano among his disciples, but the dates render this impossible; and says the same of zanobi strozzi, a man of noble origin, of whom i do not know that any certain picture exists in a public collection: i only know that, treading in the steps of his master, he surpassed the reputation of a mere amateur. benozzo gozzoli, another of his disciples, and an imitator of masaccio, raised himself far above the majority of his contemporaries. in a few points he even surpassed his model, as in the stupendous size of his edifices, in the amenity of his landscapes, and in the brilliancy of his fancy, truly lively, agreeable, and picturesque. in the riccardi palace, once a royal residence, there is a chapel in good preservation, where he executed a glory, a nativity, and an epiphany. he there painted with a profusion of gold and of drapery, unexampled, perhaps, in fresco; and with an adherence to nature that exhibits an image of that age in the portraits, the garments, the accoutrements of the horses, and in the most minute particulars. he long resided at pisa, and died there, where he ought to be studied; for his compositions in that place are better than those at florence, and he was there also more sparing in the use of gold. the portrait of s. thomas aquinas is highly spoken of by vasari and richardson; but they especially notice the pictures from scripture history, with which he ornamented a whole wing of the campo santo, "a most prodigious work, sufficient to appal a legion of painters;"[ ] and he finished it within two years. here he displayed a talent for composition, an imitation of nature, a variety in the countenances and attitudes, a colouring juicy, lively, and clear, and an expression of the passions that places him next to masaccio. i can scarcely believe that he painted the whole. in the ebriety of noah, in the tower of babel, and in some other pictures, we discern an attempt at surprising, not to be seen in some others, where figures sometimes occur that seem dry and laboured; defects which i am disposed rather to attribute to his coadjutors. near this great work a monument is erected to his memory by a grateful city, in the public name, with an epitaph that commends him as a painter. time itself, as if conscious of his merit, has respected this work beyond any other in the campo santo. the other monk was filippo lippi, a carmelite, a genius of a different stamp from b. giovanni. he received his instruction, not from masaccio, as vasari would have it, but from his works. his assiduity in copying him, makes him sometimes appear a second masaccio, especially in small histories. some of his choicest are in the sacristy of the church of s. spirito. in that place, in the church of s. ambrose, and elsewhere, his pictures represent the virgin surrounded by angels, with full and handsome countenances, distinguished by a colouring and a gracefulness peculiarly his own. he delighted in drapery like the neat folds of a surplice; his tints were very clear but delicate, and often subdued by a purple hue not common to other painters. he introduced gigantic proportions in his large frescos in the parish church of prato; where his pictures of s. stephen and the baptist were, in the opinion of vasari, his capital performances. his forsaking the convent, his slavery in barbary, his works at naples, at padua, and elsewhere, his death, hastened by poison, administered by the relations of a young lady who had borne him a natural child, likewise named filippo lippi, are recorded by vasari. p. della valle is of opinion that he never _professed_ any order, but in the register of carmine, his death is noticed in the year , and he is there denominated fra filippo. he died at spoleti when he had nearly completed his large picture for the cathedral. lorenzo the magnificent requested his ashes from the townsmen, but was refused; on which he caused a handsome monument to be erected for him, with an inscription by angelo poliziano; a circumstance i mention, to demonstrate the respect paid to the art at that period. f. diamante da prato, the scholar of lippi, and his assistant in his last work, imitated him well; as likewise did francesco pesello, a florentine of the same school; his son pesellino, a short lived artist, followed him with still greater success. the epiphany of francesco, described by vasari, in which there is a portrait of donato acciaiuoli, is in the royal gallery. the grado, painted by his son for the apartments of the novices of s. croce, is there still: on this last are the histories of s. cosma and s. damian, of s. anthony, and s. francis, denominated by the historian most wonderful productions, and, perhaps, this is not too much to say when we recollect the period. about this time other able artists flourished at florence, who were obscured by greater names. of this number was berto linaiuolo, whose pictures in private houses were, for a long time, held in great repute. they were even ordered by the king of hungary, and procured him great fame in that kingdom. alessio baldovinetti, of noble extraction, was a painter particularly diligent and minute, a good worker in mosaic, and the master of ghirlandaio. in his picture of the nativity in the porch of the nunziata, and in his other works, the design, rather than the colouring, may now be said to remain; for the tints have vanished, from a defect in their composition. to them we may add verrocchio, a celebrated statuary, a good designer, and a painter for amusement rather than by profession. while he painted the baptism of christ at s. salvi, his scholar, l. da vinci, then a youth, finished an angel, in a manner superior to the figures of his master, who, indignant at his own inferiority to a boy, never more handled the pencil. baldinucci imagines that andrea del castagno, a name infamous in history, was a scholar of masaccio: he was rather his imitator, in attitude, relief, and casting of the drapery, than in grace and colouring. he lived at the time that the secret of painting in oil (discovered by john van eych, or john of bruges, about ),[ ] was known in italy, not only by report, but by experience of the advantages of this method. our artists, admiring the harmony, delicacy, and brilliance, which colours received from this discovery, sighed to possess the secret. for this purpose, one antonello da messina, who had studied at rome, travelled to flanders, and having learned the secret, according to vasari, from the inventor, went to venice, where he communicated it to a friend named domenico. after having practised much in his own country, at loreto,[ ] and other parts of the ecclesiastical states, domenico came to florence. there he became the general favourite, and on that account was envied by castagna, whose dissembled friendship won him to impart the secret, and rewarded him by an atrocious assassination, which he perpetrated, in order that there might be none living to rival him in the art. the assassin was sufficiently skilful to conceal his crime, owing to which a number of innocent persons soon fell under suspicion, which did not induce the real criminal to avow the atrocious deed, until he lay upon his death-bed, when he disclosed his guilt and did justice to the innocence of others. he had the reputation of being the first artist of his time, for vigour, for design, and for perspective, having perfected the art of foreshortening. his finest works have perished: one of his pictures remains at s. lucia de' magnuoli, and also some of his historic pieces, executed with great diligence. there is also a crucifixion, painted on a wall in the monastery of the angeli. many writers have appeared who deny the above mentioned statement of vasari, and maintain that the art of painting in oil was known long before. it is pretended that it existed in the time of the romans, an opinion that is adopted by sig. ranza, in regard to a picture _said to be of s. helena_, consisting of a quilting of different pieces of silk stitched together, exhibiting a picture of the virgin saint with the infant. the heads and hands are coloured in oils; the drapery is shaded with the needle, and in a great measure with the pencil. it is preserved in vercelli, and from the tradition of its citizens reported by mabillon (diar. ital. cap. ), it is said to be the work of s. helena, mother of constantine; that is, the patches of silk were sewed by her, and the gilding and painting added to it by her painter, as is conjectured by ranza. he was not aware that the practice of drawing the infant christ in the lap of the virgin (as we notice in the preface to the roman school), was posterior to the fourth century; and that other particulars related by him of the picture cannot belong to the age of constantine; for instance, the hooded mantle of our lady. from such signs we ought rather to conclude that it is either not an oil painting, or that the figure, at whatever period executed, has been retouched in the same way as that of the nunziata at florence, or of the santa maria primerana at fiesole; the former of which in the drapery, and the latter in the lineaments, are not the same now as in their ancient state. others, without ascending to the first ages of the church, have asserted that oil painting was known out of italy, at least as early as the eleventh century. as a proof of this, they adduce a manuscript of the monk teofilo or ruggiero, no later back than that period, which bears title, "de omni scientiâ artis pingendi," where there is a receipt for the preparation and use of oil from flax.[ ] lessing gave an account of this manuscript in the year , in a treatise published at brunswick, where he filled the office of librarian to the prince. morelli, also, in the codici naniani (cod. ); and more at length raspe, in his critical "dissertation on oil painting," published in the english language at london, in which he enumerated the existing copies in various libraries, and gave a great part of the manuscript, entered into an examination of the subject. lastly, teofilo's treatise is inserted by christiano leist, in lessing's collection, "zur geschichte unde litteratur." brusw. . the dottore aglietti, in his giornale veneto, december, , likewise adds his opinion; while the learned abbate morelli, in his "notizia," which is often cited by me in the emendation and illustration of this edition, throws the greatest light upon the present question, agitated by so many, and, we may add, "rem acu tetigit." he, then, will be found to concede to giovanni, whom he calls gianes da brugia, the boast of this great discovery, agreeing with vasari, though in a different sense from that in which the latter writer views it. for he does not reply to his opponents, that the art of painting, as taught by teofilo, might have gone into disuse, and was only revived by giovanni; whence vasari ventured to commend him as an original inventor; in the same manner as tiraboschi replied, who followed the roman anthologists (st. lett. t. vi. p. ). neither does he bring forward the defence advanced by the baron de budberg in the apology of gio. da bruges,[ ] to the purport that teofilo taught the art of painting in oil, only upon a ground, without figures, and without ornaments: because teofilo, in chap. , whose words we have given in the note, likewise taught this art. into what, then, does the long-boasted invention of giovanni resolve itself? nothing more than this: according to the ancient practice, a fresh colour was never added to the panel until the first covering had been dried in the sun: a mode, as teofilo confesses, infinitely tedious: "quod in imaginibus diuturnum et tædiosum nimis est;" (cap. ); to which i may add, that the colours in this way could never perfectly harmonize. van eych saw this difficulty, and he became more truly sensible of it, from the circumstance of having exposed one of his paintings to the sun, in order to harden, when the excess of heat split the panel. being at that period sufficiently skilled both in philosophical and philological inquiries, he began to speculate on the manner of applying oils, and of their acquiring a proper consistency without the aid of the sun. "by uniting it with other mixtures he next produced a varnish, which, dried, was water proof, and gave a clearness and brilliancy, while it added to the harmony of his colours." such are the words of vasari; and thus, in a very few words, we may arrive at a satisfactory solution of the question. before the time of van eych, some sort of method of painting in oil was known, but so extremely tedious and imperfect, as to be scarcely applicable to the production of figure pieces. it was practised beyond the alps, but is not known to have been in use in italy. giovanni carried the first discovery to its completion; he perfected the art, which was afterwards diffused over all europe, and introduced into italy, by means of antonio, or antonello da messina. here again we are met by another class of objectors, who enter the lists against van eych, against antonello, and more decidedly against vasari, not with arguments from books, but in the strength of pictorial skill, and chemical experiments. malvasia, upon the authority of tiarini, maintains, that lippo dalmasio painted in oil; the neapolitans, relying upon marco da siena, and other men of skill, assert the same of their artists in the thirteenth century; while a few have pretended that some of the pictures[ ] produced in the fourteenth century, to be seen at siena and modena, in particular that from the hand of tommaso da modena, belonging to the imperial cabinet, and described by me in the native school of that artist, are also coloured in oil; because, after being exposed to water, and analyzed, the colours discovered their elements, and were pronounced oil. in spite, however, of so much skill, and so many experiments, i cannot see that vasari has yet been detected in an error. it would not be difficult to oppose other experiments and opinions, that might throw light upon the question. to begin with tuscany:--an analysis of several tuscan paintings was made at pisa by the very able chemist bianchi; and though apparently coloured in oil, the most lucid parts were found to give out particles of wax; a material employed in the _encausti_, and not forgotten by the greeks, who instructed giunta and his contemporaries. it would appear that they applied it as a varnish, to act as a covering and protection from humidity, as well as to give a lucid hue and polish to the colours. it has been observed, that the proportion of wax employed greatly decreased during the fourteenth century; and after the year fell into disuse, and was succeeded by a vehicle, that carries no gloss. but in these experiments oil was never elicited, if we except a few drops of essential oil, which the learned professor conjectures was employed at that early period to dissolve the wax made use of in painting. besides this material, certain gums, and yolks of eggs, which easily deceive the eye of the less skilful, were also used, and very nearly resemble those pictures that display a scanty portion of oil, as is observed by zanetti, in his account of venetian painting (p. ); and the analysis of tommaso da modena's picture has tended to confirm his opinion. this information i owe to the late count durazzo, who, in , assured me, when at venice, that he had himself beheld, at vienna, the process of analyzing such pictures, by very skilful hands, at the command, and in the presence of prince kaunitz; and that it was the unanimous opinion of those professors, that no traces of oil were to be found. the colours consisted of the finest gums, mixed with the yolk and white of eggs, a fact that afforded just ground for a like conclusion in regard to similar works by the ancients. i fully appreciate, likewise, the opinion of piacenza upon the celebrated picture of colantonio; this i reserve, however, together with some further reflections of my own, for the school of naples. i shall here merely inform the reader, that, in regard to the chemical experiments employed on these paintings, sig. da morrona[ ] observes, that old pictures are often believed to be in a state of purity, when they have been retouched with oil colours at a subsequent period: the use of wax, and of essential oils, or of some such old methods, may frequently give rise to doubt, as i shall soon shew. having removed the objections brought against the opinion of vasari, i must add a few words in regard to a passage where he seems to have forgotten what he had said in the life of angiol gaddi, but which will in fact throw further light upon the question. he is giving an account of the paintings and writings of andrea cennini, a scholar of angelo. this person, in , that is, long before the arrival of domenico, composed a work on painting, which is preserved in ms. in the library of s. lorenzo. he there treated, says vasari, of grinding colours with oil, for making red, blue, and green grounds; and various new methods and sizes for gilding, but not figures. baldinucci examined the same manuscript, and found these words in the th chapter:--"i wish to teach thee how to paint in oil on walls, or on panel, as practised by many germans;" and on consulting the manuscript, i find, after that passage, "and by the same method on iron and on marble; but i shall first treat of painting on walls." in the succeeding chapters he says, that this must be accomplished "by boiling linseed oil." this appears not to accord with the assertion of vasari, that john of bruges, after many experiments, "discovered that linseed oil and nut oil were the most drying. when boiled with his other ingredients they formed the varnish so long sought after by him and all other painters." on weighing the evidence, we should, in my opinion, take three circumstances into consideration: the first is, that vasari does not deny that oil was employed in painting; since he affirms that it was long a desideratum, and consequently had been often attempted; but that alone is perfect which, "when dry, resists water; which brightens the colours, makes them clear, and perfectly unites them." . the oil of cennini might not be of this sort, either because it was not boiled with the ingredients of van eych, or because it was intended only for coarse work; a circumstance rendered probable by the fact, that though he painted the virgin, with several saints, in the hospital of bonifazio, at florence, "in a good style of colouring," yet he never excited the admiration nor the envy of artists. . the above remarks forbid us to give implicit confidence to every relation that is given of ancient oil pictures; but we are not blindly to reject all accounts of imperfect attempts of that nature. after this digression we return to our narrative. the painters that remain to be noticed, approach the golden age of the art, of which their works in some degree participate, notwithstanding the dryness of their design, and the general want of harmony in their colouring. the vehicle of their colours was commonly water, very rarely oil. they flourished in the time of sixtus iv., who, having erected the magnificent chapel that retains his name, invited them from florence. their names are botticelli, ghirlandaio, rosselli, luca da cortona, and d. bartolommeo d'arezzo; whom i shall here introduce, together with their followers. manni, the historian of some of these artists,[ ] conjectures that this work was executed about the year . they were desired to pourtray the history of moses on one part of the chapel, and that of christ on the other: thus the old law was confronted by the new, the shade by the light, and the type by the person typified. the pontiff was unskilled in the fine arts, but covetous of the glory they confer on the name and actions of princes. to superintend the work, he made choice of sandro filipepi, from his first master, a goldsmith, surnamed botticelli, and the pupil of f. filippo; a celebrated artist at that time, and distinguished by his pictures containing a great number of small figures in which he strongly resembled andrea mantegna; though his heads were less beautiful. vasari says, that his little picture of the calumny of apelles, is as fine a production as possible, and he pronounces the assumption, painted for the church of s. pier maggiore, to be so excellent, that it ought to silence envy. the former is in the royal gallery, the latter in a private house. what he painted in the sistine chapel, however, surpasses all his other works. here we scarcely recognize sandro of florence. the temptation of christ, embellished with a magnificent temple, and a crowd of devotees in the vestibule; moses assisting the daughters of jethro against the midianite shepherds, in which there is great richness of drapery, coloured in a new manner; and other subjects, treated with vigour and originality, exhibit him in this place greatly superior to his usual manner. the same observation applies to the painters we are about to notice: such were the effects produced by their emulation; by the sight of a city that is calculated to enlarge the ideas of those who visit it, and by the judgment of a public that is scarcely to be satisfied by what is above mediocrity, because its eye is habituated to what is wonderful. history does not point out the portion of this work that was performed by filippino lippi; the son, as we have already observed, of f. filippo. it is however highly probable that he assisted; because he was his father's pupil from a very early age, and because the taste of lippi, that delighted in portraying the usages of antiquity in his pictures, appears to have been formed while he was still young, and engaged in his studies at rome. in the life which cellini has written of himself, he tells us that he had seen several books of antiquities drawn by lippi; and vasari gives him credit for being the first who decorated modern paintings by the introduction of grotesques, trophies, armour, vases, edifices and drapery, copied from the models of antiquity; but this i cannot confirm, because it was before attempted by squarcione. it is true that he excelled in those ornaments, in his landscape and in minute particulars. the s. bernard of the abbey, the magi of the royal museum, and the two frescos in s. maria novella; the one the history of s. john, the other of s. philip, the apostles, please more perhaps by these accessaries of the art than by the countenances, which, indeed, have not the beauty and grace of the elder lippi. they are faithful portraits, but shew no discrimination. he was invited to rome to ornament a chapel of the minerva, in which there is an assumption by his hand, and some histories of thomas aquinas, amongst which the disputation is the best. in this chapel he shews great improvement in his heads, but was nevertheless surpassed in this respect by his pupil raffaellino del garbo, who painted a choir of angels on the ceiling, that would alone suffice to justify the name by which he was distinguished. in monte oliveto at florence, there is a resurrection by raffaellino, where the figures are small, but so graceful withal, so correct in attitude, and so finely coloured, that we can scarcely rank him inferior to any master of that age. there is mention made by the learned moreni, in the concluding part of his "memorie istoriche," (p. ) of another of his beautiful altar-pieces, still in existence at s. salvi, with the grado entire. some early pictures are in a similar state; but becoming the father of a numerous family, he gradually degenerated in his style, and died in poverty and obscurity. the second whom i have mentioned among the artists in the sistine chapel, is domenico corradi, surnamed del ghirlandaio, from the profession of his father.[ ] he was a painter, an excellent worker in mosaic, and even contributed to the improvement of these arts. he painted in the sistine chapel the resurrection of christ, which has perished; and the call of s. peter and s. andrew, which still remains. he is that ghirlandaio, in whose school, or on whose manner, not only ridolfo del ghirlandaio, his son, but also bonarruoti, and the best artists of the succeeding era, formed their style. he possessed clearness and purity of outline, correctness of form, and variety of ideas, together with facility and uncommon diligence; he was the first florentine, who, by means of true perspective, attained a happy method of grouping, and depth of composition.[ ] he was among the first to reject the deep golden fringes to the drapery, that the old masters introduced; who, unable to render their figures beautiful, endeavoured, at least, to make them gaudy. some of his pictures, however, yet remain, moderately illuminated with gold; as for instance, the epiphany in the church of the innocents at florence. it is a fine work, as is also his chapel in the holy trinity, with the actions of s. francis, and his nativity, in the sacristy of that church. his most celebrated work is the choir of s. maria novella, on one side of which he designed the history of john the baptist, on the other that of our lady, and on another part the murder of the innocents, so much commended by vasari. it contains a vast many portraits of literary men, and noble citizens, and almost every head is from the life; but they are dignified, and judiciously selected. the hands and feet of the figures, however, do not correspond, and attention to this circumstance is the peculiar merit of andrea del sarto, who seems to have carried the manner of ghirlandaio to perfection. many works of the latter are scattered over italy, in rome, in rimini, and at pisa, at the eremitani di pietra santa, and the camaldolesi of volterra; where besides the paintings in the refectory, there is in the church a figure of s. romualdo, carved by diana of mantua. the pictures of this master should not be confounded with those of his scholars, as happens in many instances. thus the holy families painted by his brothers or his scholars, frequently pass for his; but they are very far from meriting the praise we have justly bestowed on him. davide, one of his brothers, became very eminent in mosaic; another, benedetto, painted more in france than in italy; bastiano mainardi, their brother-in-law, was rather the assistant of domenico, than a painter of originality. baldino bandinelli, niccolo cieco, jacopo del tedesco, and jacopo indaco, are little known; except that the last is recorded as having assisted with pinturicchio, at rome, and was the brother of francesco, better known as a painter at montepulciano than in florence. cosimo rosselli, whose noble family has produced several other artists, also wrought in the sistine chapel. few of his works remain in public places in his own country, besides the miracle of the sacrament in the church of s. ambrose, a fresco picture, full of portraits; in which we discover variety, character, and truth. vasari praises his labours at rome, less than those of his fellow artists. being unable to rival his competitors in design, he loaded his pictures with brilliant colours and gilded ornaments, which, though it was at that time condemned by an improving taste, yet pleased the pontiff, who commended and rewarded him beyond all the other artists. perhaps his best work there, is christ preaching on the mount, in which the landscape is said to be the work of pier di cosimo, a painter likewise more remarkable for his colouring than his design; as is evident from a picture in the church of the innocents, and his perseus in the royal gallery. they are both, however, celebrated in history; the one as the master of del porta, the other of andrea del sarto. no other florentine was employed to paint in the sistine chapel; but piero and antonio pollaiuoli, who were both statuaries and painters, came there not long afterwards and wrought in bronze the tomb of sixtus iv. some of their paintings may yet be seen in the church of s. miniato, without the walls of florence, and the altar-piece was transferred to the royal museum. we may there trace the school of castagno, the master of piero, in the harsh features, coloured in a strong and juicy manner. antonio, the scholar of piero, became one of the best painters of that age. in the chapel of the marchesi pucci, at the church of st. sebastiano de' servi, there is a martyrdom of the saint by him, which is one of the best pictures of the fifteenth century i have ever seen. the colouring is not in the best style; but the composition rises above the age in which he lived, and the drawing of the naked figure shews what attention he had bestowed on anatomy. he was the first italian painter who dissected bodies in order to learn the true situations of the tendons and muscles. both the pollaiuoli died at rome, where their tomb is to be seen in s. piero in vincoli, ornamented with a picture, which, according to some, typifies a soul in purgatory, and the efficacy of indulgences to deliver it; but whether it is by them, or of their school, i am unable to determine. the two following artists were brought to the sistine chapel from the florentine territory, the painters of which i shall now consider after those of the capital. luca signorelli, the kinsman of vasari of arezzo, and the disciple of piero della francesca, was a spirited and expressive painter, and one of the first tuscan artists who designed figures with a true knowledge of anatomy, though somewhat dryly. the cathedral of orvieto evinces this; and those naked figures which even michelangiolo has not disdained to imitate. although in most of his works we do not discover a proper choice of form, nor a sufficient harmony of colouring in some of them, especially in the communion of the apostles, painted for the jesuits in his native city, there is beauty, grace, and tints approaching to modern excellence. he painted in urbino, at volterra, florence, and many other cities. in the sistine chapel he painted the journey of moses with sefora, and the promulgation of the old law, paintings full of incident, and superior in composition to the confused style of that age. vasari and taia have assigned him the first place in this great assemblage of artists; to me he seems at least to have equalled the best of them, and to have improved on his usual style. he had two countrymen of noble families for pupils; tommaso bernabei, who followed him closely, and has left some works in s. m. del calcinaio, and turpino zaccagna, whose style was different, as appears from a picture painted for the church of s. agatha in cantalena near cortona, in . don bartolommeo della gatta executed none of his own designs in the sistine chapel; he lent assistance to signorelli and to perugino. he had been educated in the monastery of the angeli, at florence, rather as a painter of miniatures than of history. on being appointed abbot of s. clement, in arezzo, he exercised both; and was also skilled in music and in architecture. there is of his works only a s. jerome, executed in the chapel of the cathedral, as we find from a ms. guide to the city, and which was transferred into the sacristy in . the abbot instructed domenico pecori and matteo lappoli, two gentlemen of arezzo, who improved themselves in the art on other models, especially the first, as is evident from a picture in the parish church, in which the virgin receives under her mantle the people of arezzo, who are recommended to her protection by their patron saints. in it are heads in the style of francia, good architecture, judicious composition, and a moderate use of gold. two miniature painters, according to vasari, learned much from the precepts, or rather from the example of the abbot. these were girolamo, also named by ridolfi, as a pupil of the paduan school, at the same time with lancilao; and vante, or as he subscribed himself, attavante fiorentino. two of his letters are inserted in the third volume of the lettere pittoriche; and it may be collected from vasari and tiraboschi,[ ] that vante ornamented with miniatures many books for matthias, king of hungary, which afterwards remained in the medicean and estensean libraries. the learned sig. ab. morelli, who has the direction of the library of s. mark at venice, shewed me one in that place. it is a work of marziano capella, where the subject is poetically expressed by the painter. the assembly of the gods, the emblems of the arts and sciences, the grotesque ornaments here and there set off with little portraits, discover in vante a genius that admirably seconded the ideas of the author. the design resembles the best works of botticelli; the colouring is gay, lively, and brilliant; the excellence of the work ought to confer on the artist greater celebrity than he enjoys. in the life of d. bartolommeo, vasari, or his printers, have confounded attavante with gherardo, the miniature painter, who at the same time was a worker in mosaic, an engraver in the style of albert durer, and a painter; of him there are some remains in each of these arts; but they were certainly different individuals, as is demonstrated by sig. piacenza. having a little before named pietro perugino, who long taught in tuscany, we may here mention the pupils who retained his manner. these were rocco zoppo, whose madonnas remain in many private houses in florence, i believe, to this day, and are in the manner of pietro; baccio ubertini, a great colourist, and on that account willingly adopted as an assistant of his master; francesco, the brother of baccio, surnamed bacchiacca, known at s. lorenzo by the martyrdom of s. arcadius, executed in small figures, in which, as well as in the grotesque, he was very eminent, and nearly approached the modern style. to these artists who lived in florence, their native country, we may add niccolo soggi, likewise a florentine, but who, to shun the concourse of more able painters, fixed his residence in arezzo, where he had sufficient employment. his accuracy, his studious habits, and his high finish, may be there contemplated in the christ in the manger, in the church of madonna delle lagrime, and in many other places in the city and its environs. it would have been fortunate had he possessed more genius, but this gift of nature, which, to use the words of a poet,[ ] confers immortality on books, and i would add pictures, was not granted to soggi. vasari has given this character of a diligent, but meagre, and frigid painter, also to gerino da pistoia, in which place one of his pictures, now in the royal gallery, was painted for the monks of s. pier maggiore; several others are in the city of s. sepulcro, and some even in rome, where he assisted pinturicchio. with the two preceding, i class montevarchi, a painter so named from his own country, beyond which he is almost unknown. among these artists, though they were scholars of pietro, we find imitators of the florentines of the fourteenth century. i omit the name of bastiano da s. gallo, who continued with him only a short time, and left him on account of the aversion he had conceived to the dryness of his style. in the florentine history, by varchi (book ), we find mention of a vittorio di buonaccorso ghiberti, who on occasion of the siege of florence by the family of the medici, in , painted the figure of the pontiff, clement vii. on the façade of the principal chamber of the medici, in the last act of hanging from the gallows. but neither of this, nor of any other production from so infamous a hand, do there remain any traces in florence, at least that i have been able to discover, from which to judge either of the manner or the master of vittorio. i close the catalogue of old tuscan painters with an illustrious native of lucca, named the elder zacchia, who was educated at florence, though not invariably adhering to the taste of that ancient school, either in design, which was his chief excellence, or in an outline somewhat harsh and cutting, which was his greatest defect. he obtained the name of the elder, to distinguish him from another zacchia, who, on the other hand, shewed more softness of contour, and more strength of colouring, but in design, and in every other respect, was held in less estimation. i know only of one picture by the latter artist, which is in the chapel of the magistrates; but several altar-pieces by the former, are to be seen in the churches of lucca, and among them an assumption in that of s. augustine; a picture displaying much study and elegance, and among his last works, as i am led to believe by its bearing the date . one of his madonnas, surrounded by saints, formerly in the parish church of s. stefano, is now in the house of sig. march. jacopo sardini, which is enriched by other paintings, by a valuable collection of drawings, and still more by the presence of its learned possessor, to whom i am indebted for many notices interspersed throughout this work. such was the state of the art in tuscany, about the beginning of the sixteenth century. much was then attained, because nature began to be imitated, especially in the heads, to which the artists imparted a vivacity, that even at this day is surprising. on viewing the figures and portraits of those times, they actually appear to look at, and to desire to enter into conversation with the beholder. it still remained, however, to give ideal beauty to the figure, fulness to design, and harmony to colouring, a true method to aerial perspective, variety to composition, and freedom to the pencil, which on the whole was still timid. every circumstance conspired to this melioration of the art in florence as well as in other places. the taste for magnificent edifices had revived throughout italy. many of the finest churches, many public edifices, and ducal palaces, which still remain at milan, mantua, and venice, in urbino, rimini, pesaro, and ferrara, were executed about this period; not to mention those buildings in florence and in rome, where magnificence contended with elegance. it became necessary to ornament them, and this produced that noble emulation among artists, that grand fermentation of ideas, which invariably advances the progress of art. the study of poetry, so analogous to that of painting, had increased to a degree which conferred on the whole age the epithet of _golden_; a name which it certainly did not merit on the score of more severe studies. the design of the artists of that period, though something dry, was yet pure and correct, and afforded the best instruction to the succeeding age. it is very justly observed, that scholars can more easily give a certain fulness to the meagre outline of their models, than curtail the superfluity of a heavy contour. on this account, some professors of the art are inclined to believe, that it would be much more advantageous to habituate students in the beginning, to the precision characteristic of the fifteenth century, than to the exuberance introduced in after-times. such circumstances produced the happiest era that distinguishes the annals of painting. the schools of italy, owing to mutual imitation, before that period strongly resembled each other; but having then attained maturity, each began to display a marked and peculiar character. that of the florentine school i shall describe in the next epoch; but i first propose to treat of several other arts analogous to that of painting, and in particular of engraving upon copper, the discovery of which is ascribed to florence. to this the art is indebted for an accession of new aids; the work of an artist, before confined to a single spot, was diffused through the world, and gratified the eyes of thousands. [footnote : "the number of artists of whom, by consulting old authors, i can collect nothing more than the time they lived, their name and occupation, and their death, (i speak of those who lived about the year ,) amounts in the city of florence alone to nearly a hundred, without including those who have been discovered and noticed by some of our antiquarians; and exclusive of those we find mentioned in the old book of the society of painters." (see baldinucci in notizie del gioggi.) the florentine painters of this age, whose names have been produced by the canon moreni from the records of the diplomatic archive, may be seen in part the fourth of his _notizie istoriche_, p. . others have been collected and communicated to me by the abbate vincenzo follini, librarian to the magliabecchi collection, extracted from various mss. of the same, besides those from the _novelle litterarie_ of florence, from the _delizie de' letter._ of the p. ildefonso, c. s. and from the _viaggi_ of targioni; works which will always be found to supply the brevity of the present history.] [footnote : vasari.] [footnote : they are believed to be anterior to the year by the historian of the art of painting at friuli; but to this i cannot agree. the pictures bear a very great resemblance to the designs of orcagna; or rather to the poetry of dante, who, in the year above mentioned, feigns to have had his vision, and described it in the years immediately succeeding. in confirmation of this opinion, it must be remarked that the style is florentine, and induces us to suppose that a painter of that school must have been there. see _lettera postuma del p. cortinovis sopra le antichità di sesto_, published in the _giornale veneto_, (or _memorie per servire all' istoria letter. e civile_) semestre ii. p. . of the year . it was reprinted at udine in , in octavo, with some excellent notes by the cav. antonio bartolini, who has distinguished himself by other productions connected with bibliography and the fine arts.] [footnote : vide giuseppe maria mecatti, who has given an exact description of it.] [footnote : vasari is by no means so bitter against the venetian school as it is wished to make him appear. in regard to these pictures he declares, "that they are universally admitted, with justice, to be the best which were produced among many excellent masters, at different times, in that place." they are, therefore, preferred by him to the whole of the florentine and siennese paintings there exhibited; and his opinion is authorized by that of p. della valle, who frequently differs from him. if it could be proved from history, as it may be reasonably conjectured, that antonio was a painter when he came from venice, and did not commence his art at florence, he would merit the reputation of being the greatest artist of that school known to us; as well as of having conferred some benefit upon that of florence, from the venetian school. but this point is very doubtful.] [footnote : we cannot reconcile it to dates that paolo uccello was one of his scholars, having been born after the death of antonio, if, indeed, there be not some error in regard to the chronology either of the master or of his pupil. starnina might have been his pupil, as he is said to have been born in ; and, therefore, in , he might possibly be one of his school. yet it appears that antonio had then renounced the easel. in his epitaph we find written: annis qui fueram pictor juvenilibus, artis me medicæ reliquo tempore coepit amor, &c. (see vasari ed. senese, tom. ii. p. .)] [footnote : the old painters varied the manner of their superscriptions, even in the following ages, according to the taste of the greeks. _sebastianus venetus pingebat a._ ; is written upon a st. agatha in the palazzo pitti; and this corresponds to the epoiei, _faciebat_; by which the greek sculptors wished to convey, that such work was not intended to exhibit their last effort; so that they were at liberty to improve it when they pleased. the subscription of opus belli is obvious, and similar ones, drawn from the ergon, (for example,) lusippou which we see in maffei. i recount in my fifth book as singular, the epigraph _sumus rogerii manus_; it is, however, derived from the greeks, who, for instance, sometimes wrote cheir. ambrosiou. monachou, as i read in a fabrianese church called della carità, where there is a picture of the general judgment; the figures very small, and highly finished, upon a large tablet; with, i think, more figures than are seen in the paradise of tintoretto. cheir bitore, was written by vittor carpaccio, under his portrait cited in the index. i omit other forms better known. that adopted at trevigi, _hieronymus tarvisio_, is very erudite; and it is imitated from the military _latercoli_, in which, with the same view, the soldier and his country are named. in short, where the words _fecit_ or _pinxit_ are not used, the best plan was that of giving the proper name in the genitive case at the foot of the picture, as the engravers of greek gems were wont to do in inscriptions, as aulou dioskoridou, &c.] [footnote : pascoli, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : vasari.] [footnote : verona illustrata, tom. iii. p. .] [footnote : gloria is a name given in italy to a representation of the celestial regions.] [footnote : vasari.] [footnote : in the dictionary of guarienti, in the article, gio. abeyk, appears an account of a picture of this artist, existing in the gallery at dresden, bearing date ; a time, says the writer, when he enjoyed his highest reputation, by painting in his second manner, in oil. it represents the virgin in a majestic seat with the divine infant, who is seen very gracefully receiving an apple from st. anne, seated on a couch of straw. the young st. john is seen assisting, and also st. joseph, whose countenance represents the portrait of the painter himself. the introduction of arms shews that the picture must have been executed for some distinguished person. it is in high preservation, and is pronounced by guarienti the miracle of painting, from its display of extreme diligence, even in the minute furniture, and particularly because the chamber in which the scene is represented, the couch, the window, the pavement, executed _a punto alto_, together with the whole action, are conducted with the most exact rules of perspective.] [footnote : in he was in great credit at perugia. (see mariotti, lett. perug. p. .)] [footnote : lib. i. c. . accipe semen lini, et exsicca illud in sartagine super ignem sine aqua, &c. brustolato says, it should be pounded, and again subjected to the fire in water, then put into a press between cloths, and the oil extracted. he continues: cum hoc oleo tere minium sive cenobrium super lapidem sine aqua, et cum pincello linies super ostia vel tabulas quas rubricare volueris, et ad solem siccabis, deinde iterum linies et siccabis. and in chap. , he says,--accipe colores quos imponere volueris, terens eos diligenter, oleo lini sine aqua; et fac mixturas vultuum ac vestimentorum sicut superius aqua feceras, et bestias, sive aves, aut folia, variabis suis coloribus prout libuerit.] [footnote : gottingen, . see esprit des journaux, ottobre, .] [footnote : raspe (_lib. cit._). della valle (_ann. al vasari_, tom. iii. p. ). tiraboschi (_st. lett._ tom. vi. p. ). vernazza (_giorn. pisano_, tom. xciv. p. ), cited by morelli (_notizia_, p. ). more recently is added the authority of p. federici domenicano. it is absurd to suppose that tommaso da modena, or, according to him, da trevigi, carried the discovery from this city into germany, from whence it was subsequently communicated to flanders.] [footnote : pisa illustrata, p. , et seq.] [footnote : see opuscoli del calogerà, tom. xlv.] [footnote : this person invented and fabricated an ornament called ghirlanda or garland, worn on the heads of the florentine children.] [footnote : mengs, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : tom. vi. p. .] [footnote : _victurus genium debet habere liber._ martial.] florentine school. epoch i. _origin and progress of engraving on copper and wood._ section iii. the subject of which i propose here to treat, ought to be more carefully examined than any other portion of this work. the age in which i write is, we know, by many called the age of brass, inasmuch as it has been less productive of great names and great pictoric works, than the preceding; yet i believe we might better denominate it such from the number of engravings, which have recently been carried to a high degree of excellence. the number of their connoisseurs has increased beyond calculation; new collections every where appear, and the prices have proportionably advanced, while treatises upon the art are rapidly multiplied. it has become a part of liberal knowledge to discern the name and hand of a master, as well as to specify the most beautiful works of each engraver. thus, during the decline of painting, the art of engraving on copper has risen in estimation; modern artists in some points equal or surpass the more ancient; their reputation, their remuneration, and the quick process of their labours, attract the regard of many men of genius born to adorn the arts, who to the loss of painting, devote their attention to the graver. the origin of this art is to be sought for in that of cutting on wood, just as in printing, the use of wooden types led to the adoption of metal. the period of the first invention of wood engraving is unknown; the french and the germans tracing it to that of playing-cards, which the former affirm were first used in france in the time of charles v.; while the latter maintain they were in use much earlier in germany, or before the year .[ ] both these opinions were first attacked by papillon, in his "treatise upon cutting in wood," where he claims the merit of the discovery for italy, and finds the most ancient traces of the art about the year , at ravenna. his account of it is republished in the preface to the fifth volume of vasari, printed at siena; but it is mixed up with so many assertions, to which it is difficult to give credit, that i must decline considering it at all. the cav. tiraboschi is a far more plausible and judicious advocate in favour of italy.[ ] on the subject of cards, he brings forward a ms. by sandro di pippozzo di sandro, entitled _trattato del governo della famiglia_. it was written in , and has been cited by the authors of the della cruscan dictionary, who quote, among other passages, the following words: "if you will play for money, or thus, or at cards, you shall provide them," &c. we may hence infer, that playing-cards were known with us earlier than elsewhere, so that if the invention of stamping upon wood was derived from them, we have a just title to the discovery. in all probability, however, it does not date its origin so early; the oldest playing-cards were doubtless the work of the pen, and coloured by the old illuminators, first practised in france, and not wholly extinct in italy at the time of filippo maria visconti, duke of milan.[ ] the first indication we meet with of printed play-cards, is in a public decree issued at venice in ; where it says that "the art and trade of cards and printed figures, that is carried on at venice," was on the decline, "owing to the great increase of playing-cards with coloured figures stamped," which were introduced from abroad; and that such importation should be prohibited for the future. sig. zanetti, to whom we are indebted for this information,[ ] is of opinion, that they were in use long before ; because the art is seen to have first flourished there, afterwards to have fallen into disuse, and again revived, owing to the protection afforded it by the state. these vicissitudes, that suppose the lapse of many years, will carry us back at least to the commencement of the fifteenth century. to this period, it appears, we ought to refer those ancient specimens of play-cards, which were collected for the cabinet of count giacomo durazzo, formerly imperial ambassador at venice, and are now to be seen in that of the marquis girolamo, his nephew. they are of larger dimensions than those now in use, and are of a very strong texture, not unlike that of the paper made of cotton, found in the ancient manuscripts. the figures are exhibited on a gold ground in the manner before described;[ ] there are three kings, two queens, and two knaves, one on horseback; and each has a club, or sword, or money. i could perceive no trace of suits, either because they had not then come into use, or more probably because so limited a number of cards can convey no complete idea of the whole game. the design approaches very nearly to that of jacobello del fiore; to the best judges the workmanship appears the effect of printing, the colours being given by perforations in the die. i know of no other more ancient specimen of its kind. in the meanwhile printing of books being introduced into italy, it was quickly followed by the practice of ornamenting them with figures in wood. the germans had afforded examples of cutting sacred images in this material,[ ] and the same was done in regard to some of the initial letters during the early progress of typography, a discovery which was extended at rome, in a book published in , and at verona in another, with the date of . the former contains the meditations of card. turrecremata, with figures also cut in wood, and afterwards coloured: the latter bears the title of _roberti valturii opus de re militari_, and it is adorned with a number of figures, or drawings of machines, fortifications, and assaults; a very rare work, in the possession of count giuseppe remondini, along with many other specimens of the earliest period, collected for his private library, where i saw it. it is worth remarking, that the book of turrecremata was printed by ulderico han, that of valturio by gio. da verona, and that in this last the wood-cuts are ascribed to matteo pasti, the friend of valturio, and a good painter for those times.[ ] after this first progress the art of wood engraving continued gradually to advance, and was cultivated by many distinguished men, such as albert durer in germany; in italy by mecherino di siena, by domenico delle greche, by domenico campagnola, and by others down to ugo da carpi, who marks a new epoch in this art, by an invention, of which we shall speak in the school of modena. if it be the progress of the human mind to advance from the more easy to more difficult discoveries, we may venture to suppose that the art of engraving on wood led to that of engraving on copper; and so, to a certain extent, it probably did. vasari, however, who wrote the history of tuscan professors, rather than of painting itself, refers its origin to works in _niello_, or inlaid modelling work, a very ancient art, much in use, more especially at florence, during the fifteenth century; though it was quite neglected in the following, in spite of the efforts of cellini to support it. it was applied to household furniture, silver ornaments, and sacred vessels, such as holy cups and vases, to missals and other devotional books, and to reliquaries; as well as to profane purposes, as adorning the hilts of swords, table utensils, and many kinds of female ornaments. in some kinds of ebony desks and escrutoires it was held in great request, for its little silver statues, and modelled plates, representing figures, histories, and flowers. in the cathedral of pistoia there still remains a large silver palliotto, adorned in places with plates, on which are figured images in niello, and little scripture histories. the method was to cut with the chisel upon the silver whatever history, portrait, or flowers, was required,[ ] and afterwards to fill up the hollow part of the engraving with a mixture of silver and lead, which, from its dark colour, was called, by the ancients, _nigellum_, which our countrymen curtailed into niello; a substance which, being incorporated with the silver, produced the effect of shadow, contrasted with its clearness, and gave to the entire work the appearance of a chiaroscuro in silver. there were many excellent _niellatori_, or inlayers, who cast models with this substance, such as forzore, brother to parri spinelli of arezzo, caradosso and arcioni of milan;[ ] and three florentines, who rivalled each other at s. giovanni, matteo dei, antonio del pollaiuolo, and maso finiguerra; specimens of whose _paci_, cut with wonderful accuracy, acquired for them the highest reputation. we are to attribute to maso, says vasari, "the beginning of engraving upon copper," an art, which for the sake of greater perspicuity, i shall distinguish into three different states; the first of which will be found as follows. finiguerra was in the habit of never filling the little hollows or cuts prepared in the silver plate until he had first made proof of his work. "for this purpose, as in taking a cast, he impressed them with earth, upon the top of which having thrown a quantity of liquid sulphur, they became imprinted, and filled with smoke; which, with the aid of oil, gave him the effect of the work in silver. he also produced the same with moistened paper, and with the same tint or ink, pressing it sufficiently hard with a round roller, with a smooth surface throughout. this gave them not only the effect of being printed, but that of having been designed with ink."[ ] so far we quote vasari in the preface to his life of marc antonio. he adds, that in this plan finiguerra was followed by baldini, a florentine goldsmith; next to whom he mentions botticelli; and he might have added the name of pollaiuolo. finally, he concludes that the invention was communicated from florence to mantegna at rome, and to martino, called de clef, in flanders. these proofs, the first of their kind, made by finiguerra, have, for the most part, perished. some, which are attributed to him, in possession of the fathers of camaldoli, are not ascertained to be his.[ ] we are assured, however, that the sulphur of the pace[ ] cut for s. giovanni in , upon which he represented the assumption of our lady, in a variety of minute figures, is from his hand. it was formerly in the museum of the proposto gori, who gave a description of it in his dittici (a treatise upon a peculiar kind of altar-pieces, tom. iii. p. ), and it is now in the durazzo cabinet, with a memorandum in gori's own hand, in which he declares that he had compared it with the original.[ ] of the proofs made on paper none are ascertained to exist, with the exception of that of the assumption recognized by the ab. zani, in the national collection at paris. it was made known by him in the year ; and to this i may add the epiphany, in an inferior style, but more exactly finished, which i found in the possession of the senator martelli, besides a duplicate belonging to s. e. seratti. it appears from its style, the work of finiguerra, and to have been executed before the assumption. it is doubtful whether specimens exist in the ducal gallery, a question which i leave to the solution of abler pens than mine. we have in the durazzo collection, the proofs or models of many silversmiths, whose names are unknown; and for many more we are indebted to sig. antonio armanno, an excellent connoisseur in prints, to whom i shall have occasion to recur more than once. following the ideas thrown out by vasari in the passage cited, he concluded that these impressions might happen to have been confounded _with pen designs_, owing to the resemblance between them; he therefore sought for them in collections of designs, and, having recognized them, purchased them for count giacomo, his patron. many of these were met with in the ancient gadi gallery at florence; the work of artificers much inferior to finiguerra, at least if we except two specimens not unworthy even of his hand. to these a number of others were afterwards added from different schools of italy. sometimes we may gather their origin from the design; sometimes with more certainty from inscriptions, and other unequivocal signs of the period. for instance, we read the following words in a presepio,[ ] engraved in reversed characters: "dominus philippus stancharius fieri fecit;" where the family which is named, along with other circumstances, shew it to have been executed at bologna. one small print represents a woman turning towards a cat; and on it is written, also in reverse, "_va in la caneva_;" in another we read _mantengave dio_; both which are either lombard or venetian, if we may judge from the dialect. from all this we have a right to conclude that vasari's words, which ascribe to finiguerra the practice of proving his works before he inserted the niello, are not to be limited to him only, or to his school. on the contrary, it appears that caradosso, as well as all the best italian artificers, considered it as no small portion of their art, and that they only attained correctness in the process of inlaying and modelling by dint of such proofs, and not by mere chance. nor does vasari's silence militate against this. he repeatedly complains, in different parts of his work, that he could not obtain sufficiently full and satisfactory information regarding the venetian and lombard schools; and if he confesses his ignorance of so many things pertaining to their schools of painting, it is not surprising that he should know less of their engraving. the proofs, therefore, of the _niellatori_ on paper are to be found in all parts of italy, and they may be particularly known from the position of the letters, which being written on the original models in the ordinary way, appear in the impression like the eastern characters, from right to left; and in like manner the other part of the impression is seen in reverse; as for instance, a saint is seen standing on the left hand, who, from his dignity, ought to have occupied the right, and the actors all write, play music, and do every thing with the left hand. there are other signs which serve to distinguish them; because, having been pressed by hand, or with a roller, they leave no mark or furrows in the outlines; nor are we to look for that delicacy and precision in the lines that appear in impressions from under the press. they are moreover characterized by their colour, which merely consisted of lamp black and of oil, or of some other very slight tint; though both this and the preceding are dubious signs, as we shall shew. it is conjectured that proofs of a similar[ ] nature were made by silver carvers, in regard to their graphic labours, and to others in which the _niello_ was not employed. at all events they preserved them in their studies, and in those of their pupils, to whom they afforded a model; and in this way several have been handed down to our own times. from these early efforts, the art gradually advanced, as it appears to me, until it attained what i call the second state of the impression. when the pleasing effect of these proofs was seen, the idea was struck out, of forming works in the same delicate and finished taste, and for this purpose to make use of the same means as had been until then adopted for impressions in wood. we might thus observe, that in the workshop of the goldsmith was prepared the art of chalcography, and the first labours were executed upon silver, upon tin, or, as heineken observes, upon some composition less hard than copper. we may remark, that such was the practice of the italians, before they cut their subjects in copper; but whatever material the first goldsmiths might adopt, it was not difficult for them to substitute for the shadow they produced by the _niello_, the shadow of the cut itself, and to execute the subject on the reverse, in order to receive the impression right. from that time, they proceeded gradually to refine the art. both the roller and the press which they had then in use were very imperfect, and, to improve the impression, they first enclosed the plate in a frame of wood, with four small nails to prevent its slipping; upon this they placed the paper, and over it a small moist linen cloth, which was then pressed down with force. hence, in the first old impressions, we may plainly trace on the reverse the marks of the linen, for which felt was next substituted, which leaves no trace behind it.[ ] they next made trial of various tints; and gave the preference to a light azure or blue, with which the chief part of the old prints are coloured.[ ] the same method was adopted in forming the fifty cards, which are commonly called the game of mantegna. i saw them, for the first time, in possession of his excellency the marchese manfredini, major-domo to the duke of tuscany, whose cabinet is filled with many of the choicest prints. another copy i found in possession of the ab. boni, and a third formerly belonging to the duke of cassano, was afterwards transferred to the very valuable collection made by the senator prior seratti. there is also a copy of this game on a large scale, with some alterations (as, for instance, la fede bears a large instead of a small cross, as in the original), and is of a much later date. a second copy, not so very rare, with a number of variations, is in existence; and in this the first card bears the venetian lion as ensign, with the two letters c. and e. united. the card of the doge is inscribed the _doxe_; and elsewhere we read in the same way, _artixan_, _famejo_, and other words in the venetian idiom, which proves that the author of so large and fine a work must have belonged to the city of venice or to the state. the design displays much of mantegna, and of the paduan school; though the cut is not ascertained to be that of andrea, or of any other known master of that age. a careful but timid hand is discernible, betraying traces of a copyist of another's designs, rather than of an original invention. time only may possibly clear up this doubt. proceeding from cards to books, we are made acquainted with the first attempts at ornamenting them with cuts in metal. the most celebrated of these consist of the _monte santo di dio_, and the _commedia of dante_, both printed at florence, and the two editions of ptolemy's geography, at rome and bologna; to which we may add the geography of berlinghieri, printed at florence; all the three accompanied with tables. the authors of these engravings are not well known; except so far as we learn from vasari, that botticelli was one who acquired the most reputation. he represented the _inferno, and took the impression_; and the two histories, executed by gio. de lamagna in his dante, display all the design and composition of sandro, so as to leave no doubt of their being his.[ ] other prints are likewise found pasted in a few of the copies of the same edition, amounting, more or less, to the number of nineteen; and their manner is more coarse and mean,[ ] as we are informed by the cav. gaburri, who collected them for his cabinet. they must have been executed by some inferior hand, and with the knowledge of the printer, who had left blank spaces in parts of the work intended to receive the engravings, not yet completed on the publication of the work. of a similar cast were other anonymous engravers of that period, nor is there any name, except those of sandro and of pollaiuolo, truly distinguished in the art among the florentines. in upper italy, besides mantegna, bartolommeo montagna, his pupil, from vicenza, (to whom some add montagna his brother,) and marcello figolino, their fellow citizen, were both well known. figolino is asserted to have been the same artist as one _robetta_, or rather one who subscribes himself so, or r. b. t. a.; yet he ought not to be separated from the florentine school, to which vasari refers him, which the character of his design confirms. the names of nicoletto da modena, f. gio. maria da brescia, a carmelite monk, and of his brother gio. antonio, have also survived; as well as giulio and domenico campagnola of padua. there are not a few anonymous productions which only announce that they were executed in the venetian or lombard manner. for such artificers as were in the habit of taking impressions from the roller, either wholly omitted names, or only affixed that of the designer, or merely gave their own initials, which are now either doubtful, or no longer understood. for instance, they would write m. f., which vasari interprets into _marc-antonio francia_, while others read _marcello figolino_, and a third party, _maso finiguerra_; this last quite erroneously, as, after the most minute researches, made by the very able cavaliere gaburri, throughout florence, there is no engraving of that artist to be found.[ ] in the durazzo collection, after twelve plates, which are supposed to be proofs of the silver engravers, printed in reverse, we find several others of the first impressions taken with the roller, and appearing to the right; but not unlike the proofs in the mechanical part of the impression, and in regard to the uncertainty of their artists. for this, and other information on the subject, i am indebted to the kindness of the ab. boni, who having enjoyed the familiar acquaintance of count giacomo, is now engaged in preparing a full account of his fine collection. the last state of engraving on copper i consider to be that in which the press and the printing ink being now discovered, the art began to approach nearer perfection; and it was then it became first separated from the goldsmith's art, like the full grown offspring, received pupils, and opened its studio apart. it is difficult to fix the precise epoch when it attained this degree of perfection in italy. the same artificers who had employed the roller, were some of them living, to avail themselves of the press, such as nicoletto da modena, gio. antonio da brescia, and mantegna himself, of whose prints there exist, as it were, two editions; the one with the roller, exhibiting faint tints, the other in good ink, and from the press. then the engravers first becoming jealous lest others should appropriate their reputation, affixed their own names more frequently to their works; beginning with their initials, and finally attaching the full name. the germans held out the earliest examples, which our countrymen imitated; with one who surpassed all his predecessors, the celebrated marc antonio raimondi, or del francia. he was a native of bologna, and was instructed in the art of working in niello by francesco francia, in which he acquired singular skill. proceeding next to engravings upon metal, he began with engraving some of the productions of his master. at first he imitated mantegna, then albert durer, and subsequently perfected himself in design under raffaello d'urbino. this last afforded him further assistance; he even permitted his own grinder of colours, baviera, to manage the press, in order that marc antonio might devote himself wholly to engraving raffaello's designs, to which we owe the number we meet with in different collections. he pursued the same plan with the works of antiquity, as well as those of a few moderns, of bonarruoti, of giulio romano, and of bandinelli, besides several others, of which he was both the designer and engraver. sometimes he omitted every kind of mark, and every letter; sometimes he adopted the little tablet of mantegna, either with letters or without. in some engravings of the passion he counterfeited both the hand and the mark of albert durer: and not unfrequently he gave the initial letters of his own and of raffaello's name, and that of michel angiolo fiorentino upon those he engraved after bonarruoti. he was assisted by his two pupils, agostin veneziano and marco ravignano, who succeeded him in the series of engravings from raffaello; which led vasari to observe, in his life of marc antonio, that, "between agostino and marco nearly all raffaello's designs and paintings had been engraved." these two executed works conjointly; till at length they parted, and each affixed to his productions the two initial letters of his name and country. it was thus the art of engraving in the studio of raffaello, and by means of marc antonio, and of his school, rose to a high degree of perfection, not many years after its first commencement. since that period no artist has appeared capable of treating it with more knowledge of design, and with more precision of lines and contour; though in other points it has acquired much from the hand of parmigianino, who engraved in aqua-fortis,[ ] from agostino caracci, and from different foreigners of the last century, among whom we may notice edelink, masson, audran, drevet, and, in the present age, several, both italians and strangers, of whom, in this place, we must refrain from speaking. i may be permitted, in this place, to enter into a brief investigation of the long contested question of engraving upon copper, whether its discovery is to be attributed to germany or to italy; and if to italy, whether to florence or to some other place. much has been written upon the subject, both by natives and foreigners, but, if i mistake not, it has scarcely been treated with that accuracy which is necessary for the attainment of truth. that it is quite requisite to divide this branch of art into three several states or stages, i trust i have already sufficiently shewn. in following up this division we shall have a better chance of ascertaining what portion of merit ought to be awarded to each country. vasari, together with cellini, in his "treatise upon the goldsmith's art," as well as most other writers, are inclined to refer its commencement to florence, and to the artist finiguerra. doubts have since arisen; while so recent an author as bottari, himself a florentine, mentions it as a circumstance not yet ascertained. the epoch of maso was altered through mistake, by manni, who speaks of his decease as happening previous to .[ ] this has been corrected by reference to the authentic books of the _arte de' mercanti_, in which the _pace_ already cited is mentioned as being paid for in the year . about the same time, antonio pollaiuolo, still a youth, as we learn from vasari, in his life, was the rival of finiguerra in the church of s. giovanni; and as maso had at that period already acquired great celebrity, we may conclude that he was of a mature age, and experienced in the art. we have further a right to suppose, with gaburri and tiraboschi, that having then taken proofs "of all the subjects which he had engraved on silver," he had observed this custom from the year , and perhaps earlier; and we thus discover the elements of chalcography in florence, satisfactorily deduced from history.[ ] for neither with the aid of history, monuments, nor reasoning, am i enabled to discover an epoch equally remote belonging to any other country; as we shall shew, in the first place, in regard to germany. it possesses no annals so far back as that period. the credulity of sandrart[ ] led him to question the truth of this, by referring to a small print of uncertain origin, on which he believed he could read the date , and upon another that of . at this period, however, when the authority of sandrart is of small account, no less from his frequent contradictions than his partiality, which has rendered him suspected even by his own countrymen, we may receive his two engravings as false coin, not valuable enough to purchase the credit of the discovery from us. those two distinguished writers, meerman,[ ] and the baron heineken,[ ] were equally bent upon refuting him. they do not pretend to trace any earlier engraver in germany than martin schön, called by others bonmartino, and by vasari, martino di anversa,[ ] who died in . some are of opinion that he had two brothers, who assisted him, but who are unknown; and not long after appear the names of israel meckeln,[ ] van bockold, michael wolgemuth, master to albert durer, with many others who approached the sixteenth century. it is contended, however, that engraving on copper was known in germany anterior to these; as there exist specimens by doubtful hands, which _have the appearance_ of being much earlier. meerman, on the authority of christ,[ ] adduces one with the initials c. e. and the date , besides two described by bar. heineken, dated , the first of which is signed _f_. _s_, the second _b x s_, and both the artists unknown. he declares that he had never seen older engravings that bore a name, (p. ,) and observes that their manner resembles that of schön, only coarser, which leads him to suspect that the authors must have been his masters, (p. ). but whoever was schön's master, heineken concludes he must have flourished more than ten years earlier than his time, so as to bring it back to , when the art of engraving by the burin was undoubtedly practised in germany, (p. ). and as if this appeared too little to be granted, he adds, about four pages further on, "that he was _tempted_ to place the epoch of its discovery at least towards the year ." the cause is well pleaded, but it is not carried. let us try to confront reasons with reasons. the italians have the testimony of history in their favour; the germans have it against them. the former, without any attempt at exaggeration, proceed as far back as , and even farther;[ ] the latter, by dint of conjecture, reach as far as , and are only _tempted_ to anticipate it by ten years date. the italians commence the art with maso, not from his master; the germans are not content to date from schön, but from his master, an advantage they either deny to italy, and thus fail to draw an equal comparison; or if they concede the master, we still anticipate by ten years their origin of chalcography. the italians, again, confirm the truth of their history by a number of authentic documents, proofs in niello, first impressions, and the progress of the art from its earliest stages to maturity. the germans supply their historic deficiency by monuments, in part proved to be false, in part doubtful, and which are easily convicted of insufficiency for the proposed object. because who can assure us that the prints of or , are not the production of the brothers or the disciples of schön, since heineken himself confesses that they were possibly the work of some contemporary artists, his inferiors? do we not find in italy that the followers of botticelli are inferior to him, and appear to be of earlier date? moreover, who can assure us that schön was instructed by a master of his own nation; when all his engravings that have been hitherto produced, appear already perfect in their kind;[ ] nor do we find mentioned in germany either proofs in niello, or first essays in metals of a softer temper? the fact therefore, most probably is, what has invariably obtained credit,--that the invention was communicated from italy to germany, and as a matter not at all difficult to the goldsmiths, was speedily practised there with success; i might even add, was greatly improved. for both the press and printer's ink being well known there, artists were enabled to add to the mechanic part of the art, improvements with which italy was unacquainted; i will produce an example of what i mean, that cannot fail to convince. printing of books was discovered in germany: history and monuments alike confirm it, which are to be traced gradually from tabular prints to moveable types, still of wood, and from these to characters of metal. in such state was the invention brought to italy, where, without passing through these intermediate degrees, books were printed not only in moveable characters of metal, but with tables cut in copper, thus adding to the art a degree of perfection which it wanted. heineken objects that the germans at that period had very little correspondence with the cities of italy, with the exception of venice, (p. ). to this i answer that our universities of pisa and bologna, besides several others, were much frequented by young men from germany, at that period; and that for the convenience both of strangers and of natives, a dictionary of the german language was printed at venice, in , and in , at bologna; a circumstance sufficient of itself to prove that there was no little communication between the two nations. there are, besides, so many other reasons to believe that a great degree of intercourse subsisted, more particularly between germany and florence,[ ] during the period we treat of; that we ought not to be at all surprised at the arts belonging to the one being communicated to the other. hitherto i have pleaded, as far as lay in my power, the cause of my country; though without having been able, i fear, to bring the question to a close. some time, it is possible, that those earliest essays and proofs of the art, which have hitherto eluded research, may be discovered: it is possible that some one of their writers, who are at once so truly learned and so numerous, may improve upon the hint thrown out by heineken (p. ), that the germans and the italians, without any kind of corresponding knowledge on the subject, struck out simultaneous discoveries of the modern art. however this may chance to be, it is my part to write from the information and authorities which i have before me. it remains to be seen whether, on the exclusion of germany, there is any other part of italy that may have anticipated the discovery of finiguerra at florence. some of his opponents have ventured to question his title on the strength of metallic impressions of seals, which are met with on italian parchments from the earliest periods. this shews only that the art advanced during several ages on the verge of this invention; but it does not prove that the very origin of the discovery is to be sought for in seals; otherwise we should be bound to commence the history of modern typography from the seals of earthen-ware, with which our museums abound. no one will contend that certain immemorial and undigested elements that lay for many ages neglected and unformed, ought to have a place in the history of art; and this we are now treating on, ought not to date its commencement beyond the period when silversmiths' shops had been established, where, in fact, it took its origin and grew to maturity. we must then compare the proofs remaining to us of their labours, and see whether such proofs were in use at any other place, before the time of finiguerra. i might observe that there are two threads, as it were, which may serve as a clue to this labyrinth, until we may somewhere or by some means ascertain the actual date; and these two are the character and the design. the character in all the proofs i have examined, is not at all (as we commonly call it) of a gothic description; it is round and roman, according to the observation before made (at p. ), and does not lead us farther back than the year . the design is more suspicious: in the durazzo collection i have seen proofs of nielli with more coarse designs than are displayed in the works of maso, but they are perhaps not the offspring of the florentine school. i shall not here attempt to anticipate the judgment of those who may engage to illustrate these ancient remains; nor that of the public, in regard to the engravings correctly taken from them, which must pronounce their definitive sentence. if i mistake not, however, true connoisseurs will be cautious how they pass a final opinion. it will not be difficult for them to discern a bolognese from a florentine artist, in modern painting, after it is seen that each school formed its own peculiar character both in colouring and in design; but in regard to proofs of nielli,[ ] to distinguish school from school, will not be so easy a task. for though it may be ascertained, for instance, that such a proof came from bologna; can we pronounce from the fact of its being coarser and rawer than the designs of finiguerra, that it is so far more ancient? maso and the florentines, after the time of masaccio, had already softened their style towards the year ; but can we assert the same of the other schools of italy? besides, is it certain that the silversmiths, from whose hands proceeded the proofs, sought out the best designers;[ ] and did not copy, for instance, the bolognese, the design of a pietà by jacopo avanzi, or the venetians, a madonna by jacobello del fiore? the more dry, coarse, and clumsy specimens therefore, cannot easily be adduced against finiguerra as a proof of greater antiquity; otherwise we should run into the whimsical sophistry of scalza, who affirmed that the baronci were the most ancient men in florence, and in the whole world, because they were the ugliest.[ ] we must therefore permit maso to rest quietly in possession of the discovery, until further and more ancient proofs are adduced, than are to be found in his cards and his zolfi. in my account of the second state of engraving, i shall not make mention of the german masters, in regard to whom i have not dates that may be thought sufficient; i shall confine my attention to those of italy. i shall compare the testimony of vasari and lomazzo; one of whom supposes the art to have originated in upper, the other in lower italy. in his life of marc antonio, vasari observes, that finiguerra "was followed by baccio baldini, a florentine goldsmith, who being little skilled in design, every thing he executed was after designs and inventions of sandro botticello. as soon as andrea mantegna learned this circumstance at rome, he first began to turn his attention to the engraving of his own works." now in the life of sandro he makes particular mention of the time when he applied himself to the art, which was at the period he had completed his labours in the sistine chapel. returning directly after to florence, "he began to comment upon dante, he drew the inferno, and engraved it, which occupying a large portion of his time, was the occasion of much trouble and inconvenience in his future life." botticelli is here considered an engraver from about , at the age of thirty-seven years; and baldini, who executed every thing from the designs of sandro, also practised the art. at the same period flourished antonio pollaiuolo, who acquired a higher reputation than either of the last. few of his impressions remain, but among these is the celebrated battle of the naked soldiers, approaching nearest in point of power to the bold style of michelangiolo. the epoch of these productions is to be placed about , because having acquired great celebrity by them, he was invited to rome towards the close of , to raise the monument of sixtus iv., who died in that year. according to vasari, mantegna having decorated the chapel of innocent viii. at rome, about ,[ ] from that or the preceding year is intitled to the name of engraver, computing it from about his sixtieth year. he flourished more than sixteen years after this period; during which is it to be believed that he produced that amazing number of engravings,[ ] amounting to more than fifty, of which about thirty appear to be genuine specimens, on so grand a scale, so rich in figures, so finely studied and mantegnesque in every part; that he executed these when he was already old, new to the art, an art fatiguing to the eye and the chest even of young artists; that he pursued it amidst his latest occupations in mantua, which we shall, in their place, describe, and that he produced such grand results within sixteen or seventeen years. either vasari must have mistaken the dates, or wished to impose upon our credulity by his authority. lomazzo leads us to draw a very different conclusion, when in his treatise (p. ) he adds this short eulogy to the name and merits of mantegna, "a skilful painter, and the first engraver of prints in italy;" but wherein he does not mention him as an inventor, meaning only to ascribe to him the merit of introducing the second state of the art at least in italy; because he believed that it had already arisen in germany. such authority as this is worth our attention. i shall have occasion in the course of my narrative to combat some of lomazzo's assertions; but i shall also feel bound to concur with him frequently in the epochs illustrated by him. he was born about twenty-five years subsequent to vasari; he had more erudition, was a better critic, and on the affairs of lombardy in particular, was enabled to correct him, and to supply his deficiencies. i am not surprised, then, that meerman (p. ) should suppose andrea to have been already an engraver before the time of baldini and botticelli; i could have wished only that he had better observed the order of the epochs, and not postponed the praise due to him until the pontificate of innocent viii. in fact, it is not easy to ascertain the exact time when mantegna first directed his attention to the art of engraving. it decidedly appears that he commenced at padua; for the very confidence he displays in every plate, shews that he could be no novice; nor is it credible that his noviciate began only in old age. i suspect he received the rudiments of the art from niccolo, a distinguished goldsmith, as he gave his portrait, together with that of squarcione, in a history piece of s. cristoforo, at the eremitani in padua; each most probably being a tribute of respect to his former master. it is true that we meet with no specimens of his hand at that, or even a later period of his early life; though we ought to recollect that he never affixed any dates to his works. so that it is impossible to say that none of them were the production of his earlier years, however equal and beautiful they appear in regard to their style; inasmuch as in his paintings we are enabled to detect little difference between his history of s. cristoforo, painted in the flower of youth, and his altar-piece at s. andrea of mantua, which is considered one of his last labours. a specimen of his engraving with a date, is believed, however, by some, to be contained in a book of pietro d'abano; intitled "tractatus de venenis," published in mantua, , "in cujus paginâ prima littera initialis aeri incisa exhibetur, quæ integram columnæ latitudinem occupat. patet hinc artem chalcographicam jam anno extitisse." thus far writes the learned panzer,[ ] but whether he ever saw the work that exists in folio, and of seven pages, i am not certain.[ ] a quarto edition was likewise edited in mantua, , and a copy is there preserved in the public library, but without any plates. it is certain, however, that about this period copper engraving was practised, not only in mantua, where mantegna resided, but also in bologna. the geography of ptolemy, printed in bologna by domenico de lapis, with the apparently incorrect date of , is in the possession of the corsini at rome, and of the foscarini at venice.[ ] it contains twenty-six geographical tables, engraved very coarsely, yet so greatly admired by the printer, that he applauds this new discovery, and compares it to the invention of printing, which not long before had appeared in germany. we give his words as they are quoted from the latin without being refuted, by meerman, at p. : "accedit mirifica imprimendi tales tabulas ratio, cujus inventoris laus nihil illorum laude inferior, qui primi litterarum imprimendarum artem pepererunt, in admirationem sui studiosissimum quemque facillime convertere potest." the same writer, however, along with other learned men, contends that the date ought to be corrected, chiefly on the authority of the catalogue of the correctors of the work, among whom we find filippo beroaldo, who, in , was no more than nine years of age. hence meerman infers, that we ought to read ; audifredi and others, ; neither of which opinions i can agree with. for the work of ptolemy being published at rome, accompanied by twenty-seven elegant charts in , what presumption, or rather folly, in the publisher of the bolognese edition, to think of applauding its beauty, after the appearance of one so incomparably superior! i am therefore compelled to refer the former to an earlier period than the last mentioned year. besides, i ought to inform the reader, that the engraving of twenty-six geographical plates, full of lines, distances, and references, must have been a long and difficult task, particularly during the infancy of the art, sufficient to occupy several years; as we are certain that three or four were devoted to the same purpose at rome by more modern engravers, far more expert. we are therefore bound to antedate the epoch of the bolognese engraving several years before the publication of the book, which belongs perhaps to the year .[ ] i shall not, however, set myself up as an umpire in this dispute; anxiously expecting, as i do, an excellent treatise from the pen of sig. bartolommeo gamba; which i feel assured will not fail to gratify the public.[ ] in regard to bologna, therefore, i shall only seek to prove that the progress of the goldsmith's art to that of engraving upon metal, was more rapid than it has been supposed. heineken himself observes, in describing the ptolemy, that it is evident, from the traces of the zigzag, which the goldsmiths are in the habit of putting on the silver plates, the work is the production of one belonging to that art. the earliest works that can be pointed out with certainty at florence, are the three elegant engravings of the monte santo di dio, published in ; and the two in the two cantos of dante, ; one of which, as if a third engraving, was repeated in the same book; while all of them seem to have been drawn from the roller, the art of inserting the plates in the letter-press being then unknown. we have yet to notice the thirty-seven geographical charts, in whatever way executed, affixed to the book of berlinghieri, which was printed about the same period, without any date. these also contain several heads with the names _aquilo_, _africus_, &c., but they are all of youthful appearance, and tolerable in point of design; whereas the same heads in bologna are of different ages, with long beards and caps, and in a coarser manner. the three before mentioned works appeared from the press of niccolo tedesco, or niccolo di lorenzo de lamagna, the first who printed books at florence with copper plates. the last and most complete state of engraving upon copper, comes next under our notice. for this improvement, it appears to me, we are as much indebted to germany as for the art of printing books. the press there first discovered for typography, opened the way for that applied to copper plates. the mechanical construction to be sure was different, in the former the impression being drawn from cast letters which rise outwards; in the latter from plates cut hollow within by the artist's graver. a kind of ink was at the same time adopted, of a stronger and less fuliginous colour, than had been used for engravings in wood; but as it is termed by meerman (p. ), "singulare ac tenuius." the same author fixes the date of this improvement in the art at about ; and most probably he meant to deduce it from the earliest copper engravings which appeared in germany. of this i cannot venture to speak, not having seen the two specimens cited by heineken, and the others that bear a date; nor is it at all connected with our present history of italian art, as far as regards engraving. we gather from it, that such improvement was brought to us from germany by the same corrado sweyneym, who prepared the beautiful edition of ptolemy at rome. we learn from the anonymous preface prefixed, that corrado devoted three years to the task, and left it incomplete; and it was continued by arnold buckinck, and published by him, as i already observed, in . the tables are engraved with a surprising degree of elegance, and are taken from the press, as meerman, adopting the opinion of raidelio, and of such bibliographers as have described it, has clearly shewn, (p. ). it is conjectured that corrado commenced his labours about , a fact ascertained no less from the testimony of calderino, the corrector of the work, than from the tables, impressions of which were taken in .[ ] some are of opinion that the engraving was from the hand of corrado, although the author of the preface simply observes, "animum ad hanc doctrinam capessendam applicuit (that is, to geography) subinde matematicis adhibitis viris quemadmodum tabulis æneis imprimerentur edocuit,[ ] triennioque in hâc curâ consumpto diem obiit." and it seems very probable, that as he employed italians in the correction of the text, he was also assisted by some one of the same nation in the engravings. it strikes me, likewise, that botticelli was attracted by this novel art at rome, since on his return about the year , he began to engrave copper plates with all the ardour that vasari has described, and was in fact the first who represented full figures and histories in the new art. perhaps the cause of his impressions being less perfect than others, arose from his ignorance of the method of printing upon a single page, both the plates and the characters; as well as from the want of the press, and that improved plan derived from the office of the german printers. but from whatever cause, it is certain, that our engravers long continued to labour under this imperfection in the art, as i have already recounted. in the time of marc antonio, who rose into notice soon after the year , the art, in its perfect state, had been introduced into italy, insomuch that he was enabled to rival albert durer and luca d'ollanda, equalling them in the mechanism of the art, and surpassing them in point of design. it is from this triumvirate of genius that the more finished age of engraving takes its date; and nearly at the same period we behold the most improved era in the art of painting. the completion of the new art soon diffused good models of design through every school, which led the way to the new epoch. following the steps of durer, the imitators of nature learned to design more correctly; while they composed, if not with much taste, at least with great variety and fertility, examples of which appear in the venetian artists of the time. others of a more studied character, formed upon the model of raffaello and of the best italian masters, exhibited by marc antonio, applied with more diligence to compose with order, and to attain elegance of design; as we shall further see in the progress of this history of painting, which after such necessary interruption, we prepare once more to resume. [footnote : see baron d'heineken's "idéé générale d'une collection," &c. p. . see likewise the same work, p. , in order to give us a proper distrust of the work of papillon. sig. huber agrees with heineken: see his "manuel," &c. p. .] [footnote : _storia letter_, tom. vi. p, .] [footnote : muratori, rerum ital. scriptores, vol. xx. vita phil. m. visconti, chap. lxi.] [footnote : lettere pittoriche, tom. v. p. .] [footnote : vide ante, p. .] [footnote : in the ancient monastery of certosa, at buxheim, there remains a figure of s. cristoforo in the act of passing the river, with jesus upon his shoulders; and there is added that of a hermit lighting the way with a lantern in his hand. it bears the date . a number of other devout images are seen in the celebrated library at wolfenbuttel, and others in germany, stamped upon wood in a manner similar to that of playing-cards. huber, manuel, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : see maffei, _verona illustrata_, part iii. col. , and part ii. col. , .] [footnote : there was collected for the ducal gallery in , a silver _pace_ that had been made for the company of s. paolo, and sold upon the suppression of that pious foundation. it represents the saint's conversion, with many tolerably executed figures, from an unknown hand, though less old and valuable than that of maso. he had ornamented it with niello; but in order to ascertain the workmanship, it was taken to pieces some years since, and the plate examined in the state it came from under the tools of the silversmith. the cuts were found not at all deep, resembling those of our engravers upon sheets of copper, upon the model of which the silver plate, being provided with the ink, was put into the press, and from it were taken as many, perhaps, as twenty fine proofs. one of these is in the collection of the senator bali martelli; and upon this a foreign connoisseur wrote that it was the work of doni, i know not on what authority, unless, from an error of memory, the name doni was inserted instead of dei.] [footnote : ambrogio leone mentions both, _de nobilitate rerum_, cap. , and he particularly praises, for his skill in working niello, the second, who is so little known in the history of the arts. see morelli, notizia, p. .] [footnote : vasari, who is difficult to understand, at least by many, on account of his brevity, touches upon the different processes used by maso, which are these: when he had cut the plate, he next proceeded to take a print of it, before he inlaid it with niello, upon very fine earth; and from the cut being to the right hand, and hollow, the proof consequently came out on the left, shewing the little earthen cast in relief. upon this last he threw the liquid sulphur, from which he obtained a second proof, which, of course, appeared to the right, and took from the relief a hollow form. he then laid the ink (lamp black or printer's ink) upon the sulphur, in such a way as to fill up the hollows on the more indented cuts, intended to produce the shadow; and next, by degrees, he scraped away from the ground (of the sulphur) what was meant to produce the light. and this is also the plan pursued in engraving on copper. the final work was to polish it with oil, in order to give the sulphur the bright appearance of silver.] [footnote : they are to be seen in a little portable altar; and are most probably the proofs of some niello worker of the time; who had executed those histories in silver to ornament some similar little altar, or the place in which sacred relics were laid. before introducing the niello, he had cast proofs of his work in these zolfi (sulphurs), which were subsequently inlaid with great symmetry and taste in the altar-piece. they consist of various forms and sizes, and are adapted to the architecture of the little altar, and to its various parts. many of them have now perished, though several are yet in existence, the smallest of which chiefly represent histories from scripture, and the largest of them the acts of the evangelists, to the number of fourteen, and about one-sixth of a braccio (an arm, two-thirds of a yard) in height.] [footnote : pace, a sort of sacred vessel borne in procession by the priests; literally, it means peace.] [footnote : in this edition i ought to mention another zolfo (a sulphur cast) of the same pace of s. giovanni, in possession of his excellency the senator prior seratti. this, when compared with the model, corresponds line for line; there is a full display of the very difficult character of maso's heads, and what is still more decisive, is, that it is cut, or indented, an effect that must have been produced according to the manner already described. the zolfo durazzo, as appears from the impression, does not correspond so well; some of the flowers and ornaments of drapery are wanting; it is not equally finished, and it seems smooth on the surface. this does not derogate from its genuineness, for as several proofs were taken of the same _pace_, which was cut by degrees, if we find less completeness in the durazzo proof, it is only an indication of its having been taken before the rest. and if the impressions of the cuts are not so plainly traced as in the other, i do not, therefore, conjecture that they do not exist. the zolfi of the fathers of camaldoli already cited, seem as if they were printed, and smooth. a fragment breaking off, highly polished on the surface, the cuts were then discovered, even to the minutest lines, as many professors, even the most experienced in the art of printing, to their surprise, have witnessed; and they conjectured that the ocular illusion might arise, st, from the fineness of cut made with the style, or possibly with the graver, which was diminished in proportion as it passed from the sheet to the earthen mould, and from this to the zolfo; d, from the density of the ink, when hardened between the cuts or hollows of the zolfo; d, from a coat of bluish colour laid on the work, of which there remain traces, and from that which time produces both in paintings and on cards. i have not a doubt, that, if the experiment were tried on the durazzo zolfo, the result would appear exactly the same. the extrinsic proofs of its origin, also adduced by gori, together with the aspect of the monument, which is fresh in my memory, do not authorize me to suspect the existence of a fraud.] [footnote : christ in the manger.] [footnote : heineken gives a general nomenclature of the works of these silver carvers. idéé, &c. p. ]. [footnote : i must remark, that some copper of the earliest age may have been preserved and made use of after the introduction of felt and of the press. in this case there will remain no impression of the linen cloth, but the print will be poor and faint.] [footnote : in the prints of dante, and other florentine books, a yellowish colour prevails; and we may observe stains of oil and blots at the extremities. a pale ash colour was also used for wood prints by the germans, and meerman remarks that it was employed to counterfeit the colour of designs.] [footnote : see lettere pittoriche, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : ibid. p. . i should add, that the twenty others are now known, obtained for the riccardi library at florence.] [footnote : lettere pittoriche, tom. ii. p. . it is ascertained that maso flourished less recently; and the dante prints, inferior to those of botticelli, were ascribed to him only on account of their coarseness, as we gather from gaburri.] [footnote : it is denied that he was the inventor of this mode of engraving by many learned germans, who give the merit of it to wolgemuth. meerman, l. c. p. .] [footnote : notes to baldinucci, tom. iv. p. .] [footnote : it was observed, at p. , that the epiphany of maso is anterior to the work of the assumption. the progress from the minute and careful, to the free and great style, is very gradual. the present work contains many examples of this, even in the loftiest geniuses, in coreggio, and in raffaello himself.] [footnote : a sample of his ignorance appears in what he wrote of demone; not well understanding pliny, he did not believe demone to be the fabulous genius of athens; but set him down as a painter of mortal flesh and blood, and gave his portrait with those of zeuxis, apelles, and other ancient painters.] [footnote : origines typographicæ, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : idéé générale d'une collection complète d'estampes, pp. , , where he gives his opinion on sandrart's work. see also dictionnaire des artistes, vol. ii. p. .] [footnote : he says that his cipher was m. c. which p. orlandi reads martinus de clef, or clivensis augustanus. but he was not from anversa; but was, according to meerman, calembaco-suevus colmariæ, whence we may explain the cipher to mean martinus colmariensis. in many of his prints it is m. s.] [footnote : called by lomazzo "israel metro tedesco, painter and inventor of the art of engraving cards in copper, master of bonmartino," in which i think we ought rather to follow the learned natives already cited, than our own countryman.] [footnote : diction. des monogram. p. .] [footnote : see tiraboschi, st. lett. tom. vi. p. .] [footnote : the prints of schön, even such as represent works in gold and silver, are executed with admirable knowledge and delicacy. huber, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : the florentine merchants, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially such as advanced money upon interest, abounded in germany; insomuch that part of a town was called _borgo fiorentino_. this i learn from dottore gennari, a paduan gentleman, not long since lost to the republic of letters. the number of german princes who coined money in florence, may be gathered from the work of orsini, and other writers, upon our modern coinage.] [footnote : the direction given by the ab. zani for similar specimens is this: "the engravings of the venetian school, generally speaking, are of a delicate, soft, and full design; the figures are large, few, and very beautiful in the extremities. those of the florentines are engraved in a stronger manner, and are less soft and round; sometimes even harsh; the figures are small, pretty numerous, with the extremities less highly finished." materiali, p. .] [footnote : cellini, in his preface to his treatise upon the art of working in gold, asserts that maso himself copied from the designs of pollaiuolo, which has been completely refuted by the ab. zani. materiali, p. .] [footnote : boccaccio, decamerone, giorn. vi. nov. .] [footnote : see taia, description of the vatican palace, p. ]. [footnote : forty of these i find cited, and i am informed of some others not yet edited. the ab. zani (p. ) assures us "that the genuine impressions which are now acknowledged to be from the hand of mantegna, do not amount to twenty; and nearly all of them are executed with few figures." such an assertion appears no less singular to me than to others on whose judgment i could rely, whom i have consulted. how can we admit its accuracy, when confronted with the account of mantegna's fellow citizen and contemporary scardeone, who collected his works, and who expressly declares, as cited by the ab. zani, "that mantegna engraved roman triumphs, bacchanalian festivals, and marine deities: also the descent of christ from the cross, and the burial," engravings exhibiting a variety of figures, and in number more than a dozen. after this enumeration the historian adds, "et alia permulta," and many others. to confute this excellent testimony, the ab. zani refers only to the words of the same scardeone, who thus continues: "those plates are possessed by few, and held in the highest esteem; nine of them, however, belong to me, all of them different." this writer therefore, in spite of his expression "et alia permulta," confesses that he had only nine specimens from the hand of his fellow citizen. yes, i reply, he confesses his scanty portion, but admits the superior number that exists in various cabinets, and what reason have we for believing the first assertion and not the second? for my part, i give credit to the historian; and if any one doubt, from a diversity of style between the plates, that there is any exaggeration in his statement, i should not hence conclude that they are from different hands, but executed by the same hand, the works of the artist's early life being inferior to his last. for what artist ever devoted himself to a new branch, and did not contrive to cultivate and improve it? it is sufficient that the taste be not wholly opposite.] [footnote : panzer, ann. typogr. tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : the catalogue of the libreria heideggeriana is cited as the first source; but after fresh research, nothing certain has been discovered. volta conjectures that this edition _de venenis_ was not a separate book, but a part of the conciliatore of pietro d'abano, printed in folio at mantua, .] [footnote : this splendid copy has been transferred from the biblioteca foscarini, into the choice selection of old prints and books illustrated by the ab. mauro boni.] [footnote : see de bure, bibliographie instructive, histoire, tom. i. p. . from the tenor of this opinion, which i shall not examine, we are authorized in adding to the inscription, anno mcccclxii another x, omitted by inadvertency, if not purposely; instances of which are to be found in the dates of books belonging to the fifteenth century. in , beroaldo was already a great scholar, and in he opened his academy.] [footnote : this little work, whose title will be found in the second index, is now published, and has been well received by scholars on account of its learning and bibliographical research. the author approves the supposition that we ought to read . we wish him leisure to produce more such works as this, which, like those of manuzi, at once combine the character of the elegant typographer and the erudite scholar.] [footnote : maffei, verona illustrata, p. ii. col. .] [footnote : that is, in rome, where he also taught the art of printing books, as we are informed in the same preface. this last is wholly devoted to roman matters, and it would be vain to look in it for the general history of typography and engraving in italy. it appears then, that sweyneym instructed the artists of rome in the best manner of printing from copper plates with the press; though others may have taught the art of printing them more rudely and in softer metal at bologna.] florentine school. epoch ii. _vinci, bonarruoti, and other celebrated artists, form the most flourishing era of this school._ nations have their virtues and their vices; and it is the duty of the historian to give them credit for the one, and to confess the other. thus it is with the schools of painting; no one of which is so perfect as to leave us nothing more to desire; no one so faulty that it has not much in it to commend. the florentine school (i do not speak of its greatest masters, but of the general practice of the others) had no great merit in colouring, from which mengs was induced to denominate it a melancholy school; nor did it excel in its drapery, from which arose the saying, that the drapery of figures appeared to be fashioned with economy in florence. it did not shine in power of relief, a study not generally cultivated till the last century, nor did it exhibit much beauty, because, long destitute of fine grecian statues, florence was late in possessing the venus: and only through the attention of the grand duke leopold, has been enriched by the apollo, the group of niobe, and other choice specimens. from these circumstances this school aimed only at a fidelity of representation that resembles the works of those who copied exactly from nature, and in general made a judicious selection of its objects. it could not boast of superior grouping in the composition of a picture, and it was more inclined to erase a superfluous figure, than to add one unnecessarily to the rest. in grace, in design, and in historic accuracy, it excels most other schools; chiefly resulting from the great learning that always adorned this city, and invariably gave a bias to the erudition of her artists. design forms the peculiar excellence of this school, and its hereditary patrimony, to which the national characteristic of minute correctness has greatly contributed; and it may justly be observed, that this people has excelled others no less in the symmetrical delineation of the figure, than in purity of idiom. it may also boast of having produced a great many excellent painters in fresco; an art so superior to that of painting in oil, that bonarruoti looked on the latter as mere sport, when compared with the former, as it necessarily requires great dexterity, and the talent of executing well and with rapidity, very difficult attainments in any profession. this school had but few engravers on copper, from which circumstance, though abounding in historians,[ ] and rich in paintings, it has not a sufficient number of prints to make it known in proportion to its merit; a defect which the _etruria pittrice_ has in some measure supplied. finally, the reader may indulge in this very just reflection, that the florentine school first taught the method of proceeding scientifically, and according to general rules. some other schools have originated in an attentive consideration of natural effects; by mechanically imitating, if we may be allowed the expression, the external appearances of objects. but vinci and bonarruoti, the two great luminaries of this school, like true philosophers pointed out the immutable objects and established laws of nature, thence deducing rules which their successors, both at home and abroad, have followed with great benefit to the art. the former has left a treatise on painting, and the public were induced to look for the publication of the precepts of the latter, which have however never yet been produced;[ ] and we obtain some idea of his maxims only from vasari, and other writers. about this time also flourished fra bartolommeo, andrea del sarto, rosso, the young ghirlandaio, and other artists, whom we shall name in the sequel of this grand epoch, which unfortunately was of short duration. towards the middle of the sixteenth century, when michelangiolo, who survived the other great artists, was still living, a less auspicious era began; but we must proceed with this epoch. lionardo da vinci, so called from a castle in lower valdarno, was the natural son of one pietro, notary to the florentine republic, and was born in .[ ] he was endowed by nature with a genius uncommonly elevated and penetrating, eager after discovery, and diligent in the pursuit; not only in what related to the three arts dependant on design, but in mathematics, in mechanics, in hydrostatics, in music, in poetry, and also in the accomplishments of horsemanship, fencing, and dancing. he was so perfect in all these, that when he performed any one, the beholder was ready to imagine that it must have been his sole study. to such vigour of intellect he joined an elegance of features and of manners, that graced the virtues of his mind. he was affable with strangers, with citizens, with private individuals, and with princes, among whom he long lived on a footing of familiarity and friendship. on this account, says vasari, it cost him no effort always to behave and to live like a man of high birth. verrocchio taught him painting; and as we have said, while still a youth, he surpassed his master. he retained traces of his early education through his whole life. like verrocchio, he designed more readily than he painted; he assiduously cultivated mathematics; in his design and in his countenances, he prized elegance and vivacity of expression, more than dignity and fulness of contour; he was very careful in drawing his horses, and in representing the skirmishes of soldiers; and was more solicitous to improve the art than to multiply his pictures. he was an excellent statuary, as is demonstrated by his s. tommaso in orsanmichele at florence, and by the horse in the church of s. john and s. paul at venice. vinci not only modelled in a superior manner the three statues cast in bronze by rustici, for the church of s. john at florence, and the colossal horse at milan, but assisted by this art, he gave that perfect relief and roundness, in which painting was then wanting. he likewise imparted to it symmetry, grace, and spirit; and these and his other merits gave him the title of the father of modern painting,[ ] though some of his works, as was observed by mariette, participate, in some degree, in the meanness of the old school. he had two styles, the one abounded in shadow, which gives admirable brilliancy to the contrasting lights; the other was more quiet, and managed by means of middle tints. in each style, the grace of his design, the expression of the mental affections, and the delicacy of his pencil, are unrivalled. every thing is lively in his paintings, the foreground, the landscape, the adventitious ornaments of necklaces, flowers, and architecture; but this gaiety is more apparent in the heads. in these he purposely repeats the same idea, and gives them a smile which delights the mind of a spectator. he did not, however, consider his pictures as complete, but from a singular timidity,[ ] often left them imperfect, as i shall more fully state under the milanese school. there he will appear with the dignity of a consummate master, and a portion of his fame must at present suffice for his native school. the life of lionardo may be divided into four periods, the first of which includes the time he remained at florence, while still a young man. to this era may be referred, not only the medusa of the royal gallery, and the few pieces mentioned by vasari; but some others also, less powerful in the shadows, and less diversified in the folds of the drapery, and which present some heads more delicate than select, and apparently derived from the school of verrocchio. such is the magdalen of the pitti palace at florence, and that of the aldobrandini palace at rome; some madonnas and holy families which are in several collections, as in the giustiniani and borghese galleries; and some heads of the redeemer and of the baptist, which are to be seen in various places; although it is often reasonable to suspend our judgment in regard to the genuineness of such pieces, on account of the great number of lionardo's imitators. the child, laid in a bed richly ornamented, enveloped in its clothes, and adorned with a necklace, which is in the house of his excellency the gonfaloniere of bologna, is of a different class, and of undoubted originality. after this first period, lionardo was brought to milan by lodovico sforza, "whom he highly gratified by his performance on the lyre; a curious and new instrument, almost entirely of silver," which lionardo carried with him, and had constructed with his own hands. all the musicians there assembled were vanquished, and the whole city being struck with admiration of his extemporaneous poetry, and his eloquence, he was retained by the prince, and remained there till , engaged in abstruse studies, and in mechanical and hydrostatical labours for the service of the state. during this time he painted little, except the celebrated last supper; but by superintending an academy of the fine arts, he left a degree of refinement in milan, which was so productive of illustrious pupils, that this period may be reckoned the most glorious era of his life. after the misfortunes of lodovico sforza, he returned to florence, where having remained thirteen years, he went to rome at the time his patron leo x. ascended the papal chair; but his stay there was short. some of his best works at florence may be referred to this period; among which number we may reckon the celebrated portrait of mona lisa, which was the labour of four years, and yet was left unfinished; the cartoon of s. anna, prepared for a picture in the church of the servi, which was never executed in colours; the cartoon of the battle of niccolo piccinino, intended to dispute the palm of excellence with michelangiolo in the council chamber at florence,[ ] but like the other, never executed by vinci, after failing in an attempt to paint it in a new method in oil on the wall. he probably employed another method in painting the madonna with the child in her arms, in the monastery of s. onofrio, of rome, a picture in the style of raffaello, but which is now peeling off the walls in many places. there are some other fine pieces, which if we may be allowed to hazard a conjecture, might be with propriety assigned to this period, in which lionardo, having attained his highest skill, and unoccupied by other pursuits, painted in his best manner. such is the specimen that was preserved at mantua, but which was stolen, and concealed during the sack of the city; after many vicissitudes, however, it was sold for a high price to the imperial court of russia. the subject is a holy family; in the back-ground is seen a woman of a very beautiful and majestic countenance standing in an upright position. it bears the cipher of lionardo, consisting of a d interlaced with an l and a v, as it is seen in the picture of the signori sanvitali, at parma. the consigliere pagave, who left a memorandum of it in his mss. was the first to observe and to recognise it, upon its being brought to milan in , where it was also kept concealed. the same judicious critic in painting has conjectured that this production was executed in rome, for one of the princesses of mantua, or rather for the sister-in-law of leo x.; inasmuch as it displayed a decided emulation of raphael's manner, at that time highly extolled in rome. such a conjecture might receive support from his picture of a madonna, which ornaments san onofrio, also in the raphael manner; and in order that this picture, and that of mantua just mentioned, might not be confounded by posterity with the works of raffaello, lionardo, according to signor pagave, took care to affix the cipher of his name. indeed, this is not at all improbable: both writers and painters are impelled by their natural genius to adopt a peculiar style; and whoever will compare the portraits that remain, expressive of the elevated, touching, penetrating, and beautiful spirit, incessantly bent upon acquiring something still more exquisite in art, which inspired these two prodigies, will find little difficulty in believing that both produced works, which owing to a similarity of natural taste, selection and admiration of the same object, might be mistaken for specimens of the same hand. of this number is his own portrait, at an age which corresponds with this period, in the ducal gallery, a head that surpasses every other in that room for energy of expression; also another head, which is in a different cabinet, and is called a portrait of raffaello; together with the half-length figure of a young nun so much commended by bottari, and which he points out as one of the greatest treasures in the splendid mansion of the marchese niccolini. in the same rank we may include the much admired specimens in the possession of some of the noble families at rome; as the picture of christ disputing in the temple, and the supposed portrait of queen giovanna, ornamented with fine architecture, in the doria palace; the vanity and modesty in the barberini palace, the tints of which no pencil has been able to imitate; the madonna of the albani palace, that appears to be requesting the lily which the infant jesus holds in his hand, while he draws back, as if unwilling to part with it; a picture of exquisite grace, and preferred by mengs to every other painting contained in that fine collection. it would, however, be presumptuous to assign a date to every picture of an artist who became early a distinguished painter, and who frequently discontinued a work before it was completed. when this celebrated artist had attained his sixty-third year, he appears to have renounced the art for ever. francis i. who saw his last supper at milan, about the year , attempted to saw it from the wall, that it might be transported to france; and not succeeding in his project, was desirous of possessing the artist, though now an old man. he invited vinci to his court, and the artist felt little regret at leaving florence, where, since his return, he found in the young bonarruoti a rival that had already contended with him, and was even employed in preference to vinci both in florence and in rome; because the former gave them works, if we may credit vasari, while the latter amused them with words.[ ] it is known that they had a quarrel; and lionardo consulting his repose, which their emulation embittered, passed over into france, where, before he had employed his pencil, he expired in the arms of francis i., in the year . though his style is highly worthy of imitation, it was less followed in florence than in milan; nor is this surprising. vinci left at florence no picture in public; he there taught no pupil; and it appears that he retained salai, whom i shall notice among the milanese artists, in the station of a dependant, during his residence at florence. in florence we meet with pictures in the possession of private individuals, that seem the work of vinci; and sometimes the dealers extol them as his, gravely adding that they cost a large sum. such pieces are probably the productions of salai, or of other imitators of lionardo, who availed themselves of his cartoons, his drawings, or his few paintings. we are informed that lorenzo di credi, whose family name was sciarpelloni, made use of them more than any other florentine. educated, as well as vinci, in the school of verrocchio, he followed rules nearly similar; he was patient, and aimed at the same object; but he approached less closely to the softness of the moderns. he copied, with such precision, a picture by lionardo, which was sent to spain, that the copy was not distinguishable from the original. private houses contain many of his circular holy families, of which the invention and gracefulness remind us of lionardo. i possess one which represents the virgin sitting with christ in her arms, and at her side the young s. john, to whom she turns as if to lay hold of him, at which the child seems timid, and draws back: it is in a lovely manner; but the style is not well suited to such a subject. some of credi's pictures, which bottari did not meet with in public places, are now exhibited; as the magdalen with s. nicholas and s. julian, adduced by vasari as an example of a picturesque and highly finished style. his christ in the manger may be also seen at s. chiara; and it is one of his finest pictures, for the beauty of the faces, the vigour of expression, the finish of the back-ground, and the good colouring of the whole. both in this, and in his other original pictures, we may discern some imitation of vinci, and of pietro perugino, another friend of credi: he possesses, however, some originality, which his scholar, giovanni antonio sogliani, successfully imitated and improved. this artist lived twenty-four years with lorenzo; and in imitation of his model was contented to paint less than his contemporaries, that he might do it better. he likewise attempted to imitate porta; but his natural disposition led him rather to follow the simple grace of his instructor, than the sublimity of this master. few of this school can compare with him for the natural appearance he gave the naked as well as the clothed figure, or for the conception of "handsome, good-natured, sweet, and graceful features."[ ] like lionardo, he possessed the rare talent of representing images of virtue by the faces of his saints, and of vice by those of his wicked characters. this is exemplified in his cain and abel, in the cathedral of pisa, where he has introduced a landscape, that of itself would do honour to any painter. with equal felicity in the figure and the back-ground, he painted the crucifixion of s. arcadius, which was brought from another church to that of s. lorenzo at florence, where it still remains. he entered into competition with perino del vaga, with mecherino, and andrea del sarto, at pisa, where he was noted for his dilatoriness, but admired for that happy simplicity and elegance which he always preserved. some have praised a few of his pictures as inclining to the manner of raffaello, a commendation also bestowed on luini, and other followers of lionardo. he had pupils who afterwards followed other masters: but a zanobi di poggino, who painted many pictures for florence, which are now unknown, appears to have had no other master. one of the best imitators of vinci, almost equal to luini himself, may be recognized in the sacristy of s. stephen, at bologna, in which there is a s. john in the desert, with the inscription _jul. flor._ if this be read _julius florentinus_, the artist is unknown; but perhaps we should read _julianus_, and ascribe it to bugiardini. we are informed by vasari that he was at bologna, and that he painted a madonna between two saints, for the church of s. francis; where it still is, and approaches the style of lionardo fully as much as any other manner. both pictures, on comparing the style, seem the work of the same artist; and to this artist also belongs a nativity, in the cloister of the canons of s. salvatore; and various pictures that may be found in some private houses with a similar epigraph. if we embrace the opinion of vasari, we must consider giuliano as a feeble painter, but uncommonly careful, and consequently slow. we should rather suppose him the imitator of any other artist than of vinci; for he is described as the fellow student of bonarruoti, the assistant of albertinelli, and the colourist of some works of fra bartolommeo. one can readily perceive that vasari was wrong, as in many other instances, in his slight estimation of this artist, on which account he has not paid a due attention to his works or to his style. he has represented this man as amiable in disposition, as a picture of contented poverty, as also an unbounded admirer of his madonnas, and very profuse in his own commendations; qualities which rendered him highly amusing even to michelangiolo. intent on amusing his reader with the character of the man, he has not perhaps sufficiently rated the merits of the artist. this is proved by the little respect with which he mentions the martyrdom of s. catherine in s. maria novella, which bottari has called "a work worthy of admiration," not only for the figures of the soldiers, which, as giuliano found himself unequal to the performance, were outlined with charcoal by michelangiolo, and afterwards painted by giuliano; but for the other parts of the story. the truth seems to be, that he had not much invention, and did not adhere to one style; but now and then borrowed a thought; as in the nativity already noticed, where one may recognize the style of fra bartolommeo. on considering each figure separately, he appears on the whole happy in his imitations, especially in bologna, where the s. john is held in the highest esteem. in florence he painted many madonnas and holy families, which, with the aid of the bolognese pictures, may perhaps be recognized as his by their clearness, the masculine and somewhat heavy proportions, and the mouths sometimes expressive of melancholy; although the subject did not properly call for it. one of these is to be seen in the collection of the noble family orlandini. michelangiolo bonarruoti, of whom memoirs were published by two of his disciples while he was still living,[ ] was born twenty-three years after lionardo da vinci. like him he was endowed with a ready wit, and consummate eloquence. his bon mots rival those of the grecian painters, which are recorded by dati, and he is even esteemed the most witty and lively of his race. he possessed not the polish and elegance of vinci, but his genius was more vast and daring. hence he attained the three sister arts in an eminent degree, and has left specimens in painting, sculpture, and architecture, sufficient to immortalize three different artists. like vinci he gave proofs of talent in his boyish years, that compelled his master to confess his own inferiority. this master was domenico ghirlandaio, who sent his own brother benedetto to paint in france, from jealousy of his preeminence; and, perhaps, fearing the wonderful powers of bonarruoti, turned his attention to sculpture. lorenzo the magnificent, desirous of encouraging the statuary art, which was on the decline in his country, had collected in his gardens, adjacent to the monastery of s. mark, many antique marbles; and committing the care of them to bertoldo, a scholar of donatello, he requested of ghirlandaio some young man to be there educated as a sculptor; and this artist sent him michelangiolo. this transaction was disliked by his father, lodovico, in whose mind the art appeared degrading to his high birth; but he had no reason to repent it. on obtaining his object, lorenzo not only added to the fortune of lodovico, but retained michelangiolo in his house, rather as a relation than a dependant, placing him at the same table with his own sons, with poliziano, and other learned men who then graced his residence. during the four years that he remained there he laid the foundation of all his acquirements; he especially studied poetry, and thus was enabled to rival vinci in his sonnets, and to relish dante, a bard of a sublimity beyond the reach of vulgar souls.[ ] bonarruoti studied design in the chapel of masaccio, he copied the antiques in the garden of lorenzo, and attended to anatomy, a science, to which he is said to have dedicated twelve years, with great injury to his health, and which determined his style, his practice, and his glory.[ ] to this study he owed that style from which he obtained the name of the dante of the art. as this poet made choice of materials very difficult to be reduced to verse, and from an abstruse subject extracted the praise of sublimity and grandeur, in like manner michelangiolo explored the untrodden path of design, and in pursuing it, displayed powers of execution at once scientific and magnificent. in his works, man assumes that form which, according to quintilian,[ ] zeuxis delighted to represent; nervous, muscular, and robust: his foreshortenings, and his attitudes are most daring; his expression full of vivacity and energy. the poet and the painter have other points of resemblance; a display of knowledge, from which dante appears sometimes to critics, a declaimer rather than a poet, bonarruoti, an anatomist rather than a painter; a neglect of elegance, from which the first often, and, if we subscribe to the opinions of the caracci and of mengs, the second sometimes, degenerated into harshness.[ ] on points like these, which depend wholly on taste, i shall not decide, but content myself with warning the reader that such comparisons should not be pushed too far: for this poet, from his desire of surmounting difficulties in conception and versification, has sometimes so deviated from the usual path, that he cannot always be proposed as a model for imitation: but every design of michelangiolo, every sketch, as well as his more finished works, may be regarded as a model in art; if in dante we trace marks of labour, in michelangiolo every thing exhibits nature and facility.[ ] it was one of his observations, that the compasses ought to lie in the eyes; a principle apparently drawn from diodorus siculus, where he asserts that the egyptians had the rules of measurement in their hands; the greeks in their eyes.[ ] nor is such eulogy inapplicable to our artist; who, whether he handled his pen, his chisel, or a piece of charcoal, even in sport, still displayed infallible skill in every part of his design. bonarruoti was extolled to the skies by ariosto for his painting, as well as for his sculpture;[ ] but condivi and others prefer his chisel to his pencil; and he undoubtedly exercised it more professedly and with greater reputation. his moses on the tomb of julius ii. in the church of s. pietro in vincoli, his christ in the minerva, his piety in s. pietro vaticano, and the statues in the church of s. lorenzo at florence, and in the ducal palaces, must be acknowledged to be the finest specimens of sculpture, in themselves forming schools of the revived art. i will not extol them so highly as vasari does the colossal david, placed near the palazzo vecchio, when he says "that it bore away the palm from every statue, modern or ancient, either grecian or roman;" nor shall i follow his annotator, bottari, in whose judgment bonarruoti has greatly surpassed the greeks, who are not so successful in statues larger than the life. i have heard competent judges remark, that we do an injury to the grecian masters, not only by preferring any modern to them, but even by comparing them; but my pen ought not to wander too far from the canvass and from colouring. the few remaining drawings of michelangiolo demonstrate how little he painted. conscious of his superiority in sculpture, he seems to have dreaded appearing as a second or a third-rate painter. the majority of his compositions that have reached our time, like those of vinci, are mere outlines; and therefore, though many cabinets are rich in his drawings, none can boast the possession of his paintings. the cartoon of the battle of pisa, prepared for a competition with vinci in the saloon of the public palace at florence, is said to have been a wonderful production in this species of art. mariette supposes, in the letter above quoted, that the example of vinci paved the way for this great undertaking, which he confesses surpassed the original. michelangiolo did not rest satisfied with representing the florentines cased in armour, and mingling with their enemies; but choosing the moment of the attack upon their van, while bathing in the river arno, he seized the opportunity of representing many naked figures, as they rushed to arms from the water; by which he was enabled to introduce a prodigious variety of foreshortenings, attitudes the most energetic, in a word, the highest perfection of his peculiar excellences. cellini observes in the thirteenth chapter of his life, that when michelangiolo "painted the chapel of pope julius, he reached not half that dignity;" and vasari adds, that "all the artists who studied and designed after this cartoon, became eminent;" among these he reckons the best florentine artists of the second epoch, from the time of frate, and to them he joined raffaello d'urbino. this is a point of critical disquisition not yet sufficiently cleared up, though much has been written both for and against the opinion of vasari. i am not of the number of those who suppose that the labours of bonarruoti had no influence on the style of raffaello, because it appears dissimilar. it would seem to me an act of injustice to this divine genius, to imagine that profiting as he did by the finest productions of the art, he neglected those sources of information. i therefore firmly believe, that raffaello likewise studied michelangiolo, which he himself appears to acknowledge, as i shall afterwards relate. i cannot, however, grant to vasari that he saw this cartoon on his first short visit to florence.[ ] this cartoon has perished, and report accuses baccio bandinelli of tearing it in pieces, either that others might not derive advantage from viewing it, or because from partiality to vinci, and hatred to bonarruoti, he wished to remove a subject of comparison, that might exalt the reputation of the latter above that of lionardo. this circumstance is not authenticated, nor are we much interested in the supposed criminal, who though eminent as a designer and a sculptor, painted a very few pieces, that may almost all be reduced to an ebriety of noah, and the imprisonment of the fathers of the church. baccio soon renounced the pencil, and michelangiolo appears to have done the same, for he was called to rome by julius ii. as a sculptor, and when the pope, about , asked him to paint the ceiling of the chapel, he declined it, and wished to transfer the commission to raffaello. he was, however, constrained to undertake it, and, unaccustomed to work in fresco, he invited some of the best painters in this branch from florence,[ ] that they might assist, or rather that they might instruct him. when he had acquired what he deemed necessary, he effaced their labours entirely, and set about the work without an assistant. when the task was about half finished, he exhibited it for a little time to the public. he then applied himself to the other part, but proceeding more slowly than the impatience of the pontiff could endure, he was compelled by threats to use quicker despatch, and without assistance finished the greater part, then incomplete, in twenty months. i have said that he was unaided, for such was the delicacy of his taste, that no artist could please him; and as in sculpture, every piercer, file, and chisel, which he used, was the work of his own hands, so in painting, "he prepared his own colours, and did not commit the mixing and other necessary manipulations to mechanics or to boys."[ ] here may be seen those grand and finely varied figures of the prophets and the sybils, the style of which is pronounced by lomazzo, an impartial judge, because an artist of a different school, "to be the finest in the world."[ ] there, indeed, the dignity of the aspects, the solemn majesty of the eyes, a certain wild and uncommon casting of the drapery, and the attitudes, whether representing rest or motion, announce an order of beings who hold converse with the deity, and whose mouths utter what he inspires. amid this display of genius, the figure most admired by vasari is that of isaiah, "who, absorbed in meditation, places his right hand in a book, to denote where he had been reading; and with his left elbow on the book, and his cheek resting on that hand, he turns round his head, without moving the rest of his body, on being called by one of the children that are behind him; a figure which, if attentively studied, might fully teach the precepts of a master." no less science is displayed in his pictures of the creation of the world, of the deluge, of judith, and in the other compartments of that vast ceiling. all is varied and fanciful in the garments, the foreshortenings, and the attitudes: all is novel in the composition and the designs. he that contemplates the pictures of sandro and his associates on the walls, and then, raising his eyes to the ceiling, beholds michelangiolo "soaring like an eagle above them all," can hardly believe that a man, not exercised in painting, in what may be considered as his first essay, should so nearly approach the greatest masters of antiquity, and thus open a new career to modern artists. in the succeeding pontificates, michelangiolo, always occupied in sculpture and architecture, almost wholly abandoned painting, till he was induced by paul iii. to resume the pencil. clement vii. had conceived the design of employing him in the sistine chapel on two other grand historical pictures; the fall of the angels, over the gate, and the last judgment, in the opposite façade, over the altar. michelangiolo had composed designs for the last judgment, and paul iii. being aware of this, commanded, or rather entreated him, to commence the work; for he went to the house of michelangiolo, accompanied by ten cardinals, an honour, except in this instance, unknown in the annals of the art. on the suggestion of f. sebastiano del piombo, he was desirous that the picture should be painted in oil; but this he could not procure, for michelangiolo replied, that he would not undertake it except in fresco, and that oil painting was employment only fit for women, or idlers of mean capacity. he caused the plaister prepared by frate to be thrown down, and substituting a rough-cast suited to his purpose, he completed the work in eight years, and exhibited it in . if in the ceiling of the chapel he could not fully satisfy himself, and was unable to retouch it as he wished to do after it was dry, in this immense painting he had an opportunity of fulfilling his intentions, and of demonstrating to the full the powers of his genius. he peopled this space, and disposed innumerable figures awakened by the sound of the last trumpet; bands of angels and of devils, of elected and condemned souls: some of them rising from the tomb, others standing on the earth; some flying to the regions of bliss, while others are dragged down to punishment. bottari observes[ ] that there have been some who affected to depreciate this picture, on comparing it with the works of other artists, by remarking how much he might have added to the expression, to the colouring, or to the beauty of the contours: but lomazzo, felibien,[ ] and several others, have not failed on that account to acknowledge him supreme in that peculiar branch of the profession, at which he aimed in all his works, and especially in this of his last judgment. the subject itself appeared rather created than selected by him. to a genius so comprehensive, and so skilled in drawing the human figure, no subject could be better adapted than the resurrection; to an artist who delighted in the awful, no story more suitable than the day of supernal terrors. he saw raffaello pre-eminent in every other department of the art: he foresaw that in this alone could he expect to be triumphant; and, perhaps, he indulged the hope also that posterity would adjudge the palm to him who excelled all others in the most arduous walk of art. vasari, his confidant, and the participator of his thoughts, seems to hint at something of this sort in two passages in his life of michelangiolo.[ ] he informs us, "that applying himself to the human figure, the great object of art, he neglected the attractions of colouring, all sporting of the pencil, and fantastic novelty:" and again, "neither landscapes, trees, nor houses, are to be seen in it, and we even look in vain for some degree of variety and ornament, which are never attempted, probably because he disdained to submit his towering genius to such objects." i cannot suppose in michelangiolo such arrogance, nor such negligence of his own improvement in an art which embraces every object in nature, that he would limit himself to the naked figure, which is a single branch, and to one only character, his own sublime and awful manner. i rather imagine, that discovering his strength in this style, he did not attempt any other. there he proceeded as in his peculiar province, and, what one cannot wholly commend, he observed no limits, and wished for no control. this last judgment was filled with such a profusion of nudity, that it was in great danger of being destroyed: from a regard to the decency of the sanctuary, paul iv. proposed to white-wash it, and was hardly appeased with the correction of its most glaring indelicacies, by some drapery introduced here and there by daniel da volterra, on whom the facetious romans, from this circumstance, conferred the nick-name of the _breeches-maker_.[ ] other corrections have been proposed in it by different critics, both with regard to the costume and the conception. the artist has been censured for confounding sacred with profane history; for introducing the angels of revelation with the stygian ferryman; christ sitting in judgment, and minos, who assigns his proper station to each of the damned. to this profanity he added satire, by pourtraying in minos the features of a master of the ceremonies, who, in the hearing of the pope, had pronounced this picture more suitable for a bagnio than a church;[ ] but bonarruoti did not set the example in such composition. scannelli has expressed a wish that there had been greater variety in the proportion, and muscularity according to the diversity of age;[ ] although, by an evident anachronism, this criticism is attributed to vinci, who died in . albani, as quoted by malvasia,[ ] says, that "had michelangiolo contemplated raffaello, he might have learned to dispose the crowd that surround the judgment-seat of christ in a superior manner;" but here i am uncertain whether he blames the composition or the perspective.[ ] i can discover, however, an anachronism in his imagining the last judgment an earlier work than it really is by many years; as if it had been executed before raffaello came to rome. i find that albani rendered justice to the merit of michelangiolo; he reckoned not three great masters in painting only, as is now commonly done; but he added a fourth, and thought that bonarruoti surpassed raffaello, tiziano, and coreggio, "in form and in grandeur."[ ] we may here observe, that when michelangiolo was so inclined, he could obtain distinction for those endowments in which the others excelled. it is a vulgar error to suppose that he had no idea of grace and beauty; the eve of the sistine chapel turns to thank her maker, on her creation, with an attitude so fine and lovely, that it would do honour to the school of raffaello. annibale caracci admired this, and many other naked figures in this grand ceiling, so highly, that he proposed them to himself as models in the art, and according to bellori,[ ] preferred them to those of the last judgment, that appeared to him too anatomical. in chiaroscuro michelangiolo had not the skill and delicacy of coreggio; but the paintings of the vatican have a force and relief much commended by renfesthein, an eminent connoisseur, who, on passing from the sistine chapel to the farnesian gallery, remarked how greatly in this respect the caracci themselves were eclipsed by bonarruoti. dolce speaks less favourably of his colouring,[ ] for this author was captivated by tiziano and the venetian school: no one, however, can deny that the colouring of michelangiolo in this chapel is admirably adapted to the design,[ ] and the same, also, would have been the case with his two pictures in the pauline chapel, the crucifixion of s. peter and the conversion of s. paul, but they have sustained great injury from time. none of his paintings are to be seen in public, except in those two chapels; and those described as his in collections, are almost all the works of other hands. during his residence at florence he painted an exquisite leda for alphonso, duke of ferrara, to whom however it was not sold. michelangiolo, offended at the manner in which it was demanded by one of the courtiers of that prince, refused to let him have it: but made a present of it to his pupil, antonio mini, who carried it to france. vasari describes it as "a grand picture, painted in distemper, that seemed as if breathed on the canvass;" and mariette affirms, in his notes on condivi, that he saw the picture in a damaged state, and that it appeared as if michelangiolo had there forgot his usual style, and "approached the tone of tiziano." this expression inclines one to suspect that he is describing a copy taken in oil by some able painter; especially as d'argenville informs us that this painting was burnt in the reign of louis xiii. it is said there is also one of his pictures, representing the virgin and the divine infant, in an upright position, standing near the cradle upon a rock, a figure drawn of the size of nature, formerly in possession of the noble house of mocci (mozzi) at florence; and afterwards transferred to the cathedral of burgos, where it still remains.[ ] michelangiolo executed likewise a circular holy family, with some naked figures in the distance, for agnol doni. it is now in the tribune of the florentine gallery, in a high state of preservation. it is praised by richardson and some others for the vigour of its tints, and is painted in distemper. placed among the works of the greatest masters of every school that vie with each other in this theatre of art, it appears the most scientific, but the least pleasing picture: its author seems the most powerful designer, but the feeblest colourist among them all. in it aerial perspective is neglected, inasmuch as the figures are not indistinct in proportion to their diminution, a fault not uncommon in that age. i cannot so readily decide whether his style appears in certain pictures that are described as his in several collections in florence, rome, and bologna, as well as in the catalogue of the imperial gallery at vienna, and in the royal collections in spain, that represent the subjects of the crucifixion,[ ] the pietà,[ ] the infant jesus asleep, and the prayer in the garden. they resemble the design of michelangiolo, but their execution betrays another pencil. this is rendered probable by the silence of vasari; their high finish seems incredible in an artist, who, even in sculpture, very rarely attempted it; and our scepticism is confirmed by the opinion of mengs, and other competent judges, whom i have consulted to elucidate this point. some of them, in which the distribution of the tints was perhaps originally made under his inspection, resemble his style. these may have been copied by fiamminghi, as the tints of some of them indicate, or by other italian artists of the various schools, since they differ so much in their mode of colouring. some copies may be the work of the scholars of michelangiolo, though vasari informs us they were all but feeble artists. he gives us the names of those who dwelt in his house; pietro urbano of pistoia, a man of genius, but very indolent; antonio mini of florence, and ascanio condivi da ripatransone, both eager in their profession, but of little talent, and therefore the authors of no work worthy of record. the people of ferrara include their countryman filippi in this school, an artist unknown to vasari, but worthy of notice. lomazzi mentions marco da pino as one of the number. to these palomino adds castelli of bergamo, (whose master, while he was in rome, is not noticed by any of our writers) and gaspar bacerra, of andalusia, a celebrated spanish painter. we may likewise add alonzo berrugese, who is reckoned by vasari only among those that studied the cartoon of michelangiolo, at florence, with francia, and other strangers, who were not among his disciples. in the history of spanish painting, there is mentioned by all the writers a roman, of the name of matteo perez d'alessio, or d'alessi. they recount that he lived many years at seville, and produced many works there, among which his s. cristoforo, in the cathedral, which cost , crowns, is by far the grandest. they add, that luigi vargas, a very able disciple of perino del vaga, having returned from rome, alessi was glad to leave the field open to him, and to return into italy; where preziado finds him. indeed he rather finds him at rome, and at the sistine chapel, where two histories, painted "opposite to the last judgment of his master," are ascribed to him; these however are the production of matteo da leccio, who aimed at imitating michelangiolo and salviati; but he is only despised by taia, and by every one who has a grain of sense. he executed this work in the time of gregory xiii.; and neither he nor the supposititious alessio,[ ] an imaginary name, had any connexion with michelangiolo. the rest we refer to the note, in order to proceed without delay to names which may boast a better title to such a connexion. many other figures and historic compositions were designed by michelangiolo, and painted at rome by f. sebastiano del piombo, an excellent colourist of the venetian school. the pietà in the church of s. francis of viterbo,[ ] the flagellation, and transfiguration, with some other pieces at s. pietro in montorio, are of this number. two annunciations, designed by bonarruoti, were coloured for altar-pieces by marcello venusti of mantua, a scholar of perino, who adopted the style of michelangiolo, without apparent affectation. the one was put up in the church of s. giovanni laterano, the other in the della pace. he is said to have painted also some cabinet pictures after designs of bonarruoti; as the limbo,[ ] in the colonna palace; the christ going to mount calvary, and some other pieces in the borghese; also the celebrated copy of the last judgment, which he painted for cardinal farnese, that still exists in naples. although a good designer, and the author of many pieces described by baglione, he obtained greater celebrity by clothing the inventions of michelangiolo in exquisite beauty, especially in small pictures, of which, vasari says, he executed a great many. this writer, and orlandi following him, have erroneously named him raffaello, not marcello. batista franco coloured the rape of ganymede, after a design of bonarruoti, which was also done by the artist who painted the small picture which d'argenville describes in france; and another on a larger scale, to be seen at rome in the possession of the colonna family: it was also painted in oil by giulio clovio. pontormo employed himself in a similar manner at florence, on the design of venus and cupid; and on the cartoon of christ appearing to mary magdalen, a work which was re-executed by him for città di castello, bonarruoti having said, that none could perform it better. francesco salviati painted another of his designs, and bugiardini, as we have already noticed, executed some figures designed by him. such is the information transmitted to us by vasari; and he would have been justly reprehensible if he had written with such minuteness on the drawings of michelangiolo, and of those employed to finish them, and had neglected to inform us as to those pieces which michelangiolo himself executed. hence it is not easy to avoid scepticism on the genuineness of the annunciation, the flagellation, or any other oil painting ascribed to bonarruoti by bottari, d'argenville, or the describers of collections. we have noticed his aversion to this method of painting. we are informed that during his lifetime he employed others in this branch; and we know that after his death artists availed themselves of his designs; as sabbatini did in a pietà for the sacristy of the church of s. peter, a work copied by some other artist for the madonna de' monti, and some others made known to us by baglione. can we then hesitate as to the originality of any picture, if we give credit to the oil paintings of michelangiolo? the portraits of bonarruoti ascribed to his own hand, are also, in my opinion, supposititious. vasari knew of no likeness of him except the figure cast in bronze by ricciarelli, and two portraits, the one painted by bugiardini, the other by jacopo del conte. from these are derived the very old and well known portraits, preserved in the ducal gallery, in the collection of the capitol, in the caprara palace at bologna, and that in the possession of cardinal zelada at rome. franco, marco da siena, tibaldi, and other foreign artists, who have imitated michelangiolo, shall be noticed under their respective schools. the florentine school abounded in them, and these we shall consider all together in the succeeding epoch. i shall here only notice two, who lived on intimate habits with him, who executed works under his own eye, and for a long time received directions from his own lips; circumstances which cannot be said of vasari, of salviati, nor of any other able artist of his school. one of these was francesco granacci of florence, characterized by vasari as an excellent artist, who derived much of his merit from his early intimacy with michelangiolo. he was the fellow student of the latter, under domenico ghirlandaio, and also in the garden of lorenzo; and from his precepts, and by studying his cartoon, he enlarged his own manner, and approached near the modern style. after the death of his master, he remained with the brothers of that artist, to complete some of the works of the deceased, and was employed in painting some holy families, and cabinet pictures, in distemper, which might easily pass under another name, as they resemble the best productions of that school. in his new style he never entirely abandoned the simplicity of the old manner; but there is a specimen in the church of s. jacopo without-the-walls, more studied in design, and more determined in the colouring. in this picture s. zanobi and s. francis appear near our lady under a lofty canopy; a subject then familiar in every school. his style seems more matured in an assumption which was in s. pier maggiore, a church now suppressed: here he inserted, between two other figures, a s. thomas, wholly in the manner of michelangiolo. few other considerable paintings can be ascribed to this artist, who was left in easy circumstances by his father, and painted rather as a commendable amusement than from necessity. ricciarelli, usually known in history by the name of daniele di volterra, enjoys a greater name, and is generally described as the most successful follower of michelangiolo. educated in siena, according to report, by peruzzi and razzi, he became the assistant of perino del vaga, and acquired an astonishing talent for imitating bonarruoti, who greatly esteemed him, appointed him his substitute in the labours of the vatican, brought him into notice, and assisted and enriched him with designs. it is known that michelangiolo was often with daniele when he painted in the farnese palace, and it is said that bonarruoti, during his absence, "o vero o falso che la fama suoni," mounted the scaffold, and sketched with charcoal a colossal head that is still seen there. volterra let it remain, that posterity might judge of the powers of bonarruoti, who without pre-meditation and in mere jest, had finished a work in such proportion, and so perfect. nor did daniele execute, without the assistance of michelangiolo, the wonderful descent from the cross in the trinità de' monti, which, together with the transfiguration by raffaello, and the s. girolamo of domenichino, may be reckoned among the finest paintings in rome.[ ] we seem to behold the mournful spectacle, and the redeemer sinking with the natural relaxation of a dead body in descending: the pious men engaged in various offices, and thrown in different and contrasted attitudes, appear assiduously occupied with the sacred remains which they seem to venerate; the mother of jesus having fainted between the sorrowing women, the beloved disciple extends his arms and bends over her. there is a truth in the naked figures that seems perfect nature; a colouring in the faces and the whole piece that suits the subject, and is more determined than delicate; a relief, a harmony, and, in a word, a skill that might do honour to the hand of michelangiolo himself, had the picture been inscribed with his name. to this the artist, i believe, alluded, when he painted bonarruoti with a mirror near it; as if in this picture he might behold a reflection of himself. volterra painted some other crucifixions in the orsini chapel, where he was employed for seven years; but they are inferior to that described above. he employed his pupils in another chapel of that church, (michele alberti, according to the guide to rome, and gio. paolo rossetti,) and supplied them with designs; one of which he himself executed in a picture, with figures of a moderate size. the subject is the murder of the innocents, and it is now deposited in the tribune of the royal gallery of florence; an honour that speaks more for it than my eulogy. the grand duke leopold purchased it at a high price from a church in volterra, where there is now no other public specimen of this master. the ricciarelli family possess a fine elijah, as an inheritance and memorial of this great man; and a beautiful fresco remains in a study in the house of the dottor mazzoni, relating to which we may refer the reader to the excellent historiographer of volterra, (tom. i. p. ). there was a youth of florence, named baccio della porta, because his study was near a gate of that city; but having become a dominican, he obtained that of fra bartolommeo di s. marco, from the convent where he resided, or, more shortly, that of frate. whilst he studied under rosselli, he became enamoured of the grand _chiaro-scuro_ of vinci, and emulated him assiduously. we read that his friend albertinelli studied modelling, and copied ancient basso-relievos, from a desire of obtaining correctness in his shadows; and we may conjecture the same of baccio, although vasari is silent on this head. the prince has a nativity and circumcision of christ in his early manner; most graceful little pictures, resembling miniatures. about this period he also painted his own portrait in the lay habit, a full-length figure, most skilfully inclosed in a small space, and now in the splendid collection of the signori montecatini at lucca. he entered the cloister in , at the age of thirty-one, and for four years never handled the pencil. the execution of savonarola, whom he knew and respected, preyed upon his mind; and, like botticelli and credi, he gave up the art. when he again resumed it, he seems to have advanced daily in improvement, during the last thirteen or fourteen years of his life; so that his earlier productions, though very beautiful, are inferior to his last. his improvement was accelerated by raffaello, who came to florence to pursue his studies in , contracted a friendship for him, and was at the same time his scholar in colouring, and his master in perspective.[ ] having gone to rome some years after, to see the works of bonarruoti and raffaello, if i am not deceived, he greatly elevated his style; but his manner was at all times more conformable to that of his friend than of his fellow citizen, uniting dignity with grace in his heads and in his general design. the picture in the pitti palace is a proof of this, which pietro da cortona imagined to be the work of raffaello, though frate had painted it before he went to rome. in that place he appeared with diminished lustre, says the historian, in the presence of those two great luminaries of the art, and speedily returned to florence; a circumstance which also happened to andrea del sarto, to rosso, and to other truly eminent masters, whose modesty was equal to the confidence of innumerable artists of mediocrity, who frequently enjoyed at rome much ill placed patronage. frate left there two figures of the chief apostles, that are preserved in the quirinal palace; the s. peter, which was not finished, had its last touches from the hand of raffaello. one of his pictures is also in the vatican palace, where it was deposited by pius vi., with many other choice paintings. a holy family exists in the corsini collection by the same hand, and is perhaps his finest and most graceful performance. his most finished productions are in tuscany, which boasts various altar-pieces, and all of them very valuable. their composition is in the usual style of the age, which may be observed in the production of every school, not even excepting raffaello, and which continued in the florentine until the time of pontormo; viz. a madonna seated, with an infant jesus, and accompanied by saints. but in this hackneyed subject, frate distinguished himself by grand architecture, by magnificent flights of steps, and by the skilful grouping of his saints and cherubims. he introduces them, one while seated in concert, another time poised on their wings to minister to their king and queen; of whom some support the drapery, others have charge of the pavilion, a rich and happily conceived ornament, which he readily connected with such thrones, even in cabinet pictures. he departed from this mode of composition in a picture that he left at s. romano of lucca, called madonna della misericordia, who sits in an attitude full of grace, amid a crowd of devotees, shielding them with her mantle from the wrath of heaven. his rivals occasioned the production of two more altar-pieces: according to the example of other eminent men, he answered their sneers by his classic performances; a retort the most galling to the invidious. they had stigmatized him as unequal to large proportions; and he filled a large piece with a single figure of s. mark, which is admired as a prodigy of art in the ducal gallery, and is described by a learned foreigner as a grecian statue transformed into a picture. he was accused of being ignorant of the anatomy of the human figure; and to refute this calumny he introduced a naked s. sebastian in another picture, which was so perfect in drawing and in colouring, that "it received the unbounded applause of artists;" but becoming too much the admiration of the female devotees of that church, it was first removed by the fathers into a private room, and was afterwards sold, and sent into france. to sum up all, he knew how to excel at pleasure, in every department of painting. his design is most chaste, and his youthful faces are more full and fleshy than was usual with raffaello; and according to algarotti, they are but little elevated above the standard of ordinary men, and approach to vulgarity. his tints at one period abounded with shadows produced by lamp black or ivory black, which impairs the value of some of his pictures; but he gradually acquired a better manner, and, as we have related, was able to instruct raffaello. in firmness and clearness he yields not to the best of the school of lombardy. he was the inventor of a new method of casting draperies; having taught the use of the wooden figure, with moveable joints, that serves admirably for the study of the folds of drapery. none of his school painted them more varied and natural, with more breadth, or better adapted to the limbs. his works are to be seen in several private collections in florence; but they are rare beyond the precincts of that city: they are there eagerly sought after by foreigners, but are very rarely to be sold. one of his madonnas was procured within these few years by his excellency the major-domo of the ducal household, whose collection may be reckoned another florentine gallery in miniature, consisting of about thirty pictures of the best masters of different schools. the fathers of s. mark have a considerable number of his paintings in their private chapel, and among these is a s. vincenzo, said by bottari to resemble a work of tiziano or giorgione. his best and rarest performances are in the possession of the prince, in whose collection the last work of fra bartolommeo remains, a large picture in chiaroscuro, representing the patron saints of the city surrounding the virgin mary. the gonfalonier soderini intended this piece for the hall of the council of state; but it was left only as a design at the death of its author, in , like the projected works of vinci and bonarruoti. it would seem as if some fatality attended the decoration of this building, which ought to have employed the pencil of the greatest native artists. among this number frate must undoubtedly be included; and richardson remarks, that had he possessed the happy combinations of raffaello, he, perhaps, would not have been second to that master.[ ] the last mentioned production, though imperfect, is looked upon as a model in the art. the method of this artist was first to draw the figure naked, then to drape it, and to form a chiaroscuro, sometimes in oils, that marked the distribution of the light and shadow, which constituted his great study, and the soul of his pictures. this large picture demonstrates such preparatives; and it has as high a value in painting, as the antique plaster models have in sculpture, in which winckelmann discovers the stamp of genius and compass of design better than in sculptured marbles. mariotto albertinelli, the fellow student and friend of baccio, the sharer of his labours and his concerns, emulated his first style, and approaches to his second in some of his works; but they may be compared to two streams springing from the same source; the one to become a brook, the other a mighty river. some pictures in florence are supposed to be their joint performances; and the marquis acciaiuoli possesses a picture of the assumption, in the upper part of which are the apostles, by baccio, and the lower is deemed the work of mariotto. he is somewhat dry in several of his pictures, as in the s. silvestro, in monte cavallo at rome; where he also painted a s. domenick, and a s. catharine of siena, near the throne of the virgin mary. he should likewise be known at florence. he executed two pictures for the church of s. giuliano, remarkable for the force of colouring, and the many imitations of the style of frate. the best of all and the nearest to his model is the visitation, transferred from the congregazione de' preti to the ducal gallery, and even to its most honoured place, the tribune. albertinelli obtained great credit by his two pupils, franciabigio and innocenzio da imola, of whom i shall speak in the proper place as ornaments of their school. i find visino praised beyond them both: he painted but little in florence, and that in private; but he was much employed in hungary. benedetto cianfanini, gabriele rustici, and cecchin del frate, who inherited his master's name, were the scholars of fra bartolommeo in his best time; but they are no longer known by any undoubted works. fra paolo da pistoia, his colleague, who was honoured in his own country with a medal, which i have seen, with those of many eminent men of pistoia, in the possession of the sign. dottor visoni, obtained the richest inheritance in all the studies of baccio; and from his designs this artist painted many pictures at pistoia, one of which may be seen in the parochial church of s. paul, over the great altar. those designs were afterwards carried to florence, and in the time of vasari there was a collection of them at the dominican convent of s. catharine, in the hands of sister plautella nelli. the noble family of this lady possesses a crucifixion painted by her, in which there is a multitude of small figures most highly finished. she seems on the whole a good imitation of frate; but she also followed other styles, as may be seen in her convent. a descent from the cross is there shewn, said to be the design of andrea del sarto, but the execution is by her; and likewise an epiphany, entirely her own, in which the landscape would do honour to the modern, but the figures savour of the old school. andrea vannucchi, called andrea del sarto, from the occupation of his father, is commended by vasari as the first artist of this school, "for being the most faultless painter of the florentines, for perfectly understanding the principles of chiaroscuro, for representing the indistinctness of objects in shadow, and for painting with a sweetness truly natural: he, moreover, taught how to give a perfect union to frescos, and in a great measure obviated the necessity of retouching them when dry, a circumstance which gives all his works the appearance of having been finished in one day." he is censured by baldinucci, as barren in invention; and undoubtedly he wanted that elevation of conception, which constitutes the epic in painting as well as in poetry. deficient in this talent, andrea is said to have been modest, elegant, and endued with sensibility; and it appears that he impressed this character on nature wherever he employed his pencil. the portico of the nunziata, transformed by him into a gallery of inestimable value, is the fittest place to judge of this. those chaste outlines that procured him the surname of _andrea the faultless_, those conceptions of graceful countenances, whose smiles remind us of the simplicity and grace of correggio,[ ] that appropriate architecture, those draperies, adapted to every condition, and cast with ease, those popular expressions of curiosity, of astonishment, of confidence, of compassion, and of joy, that never transgress the bounds of decorum, which are understood at first sight, and gently affect the mind without agitating it, are charms that are more readily felt than expressed. he who feels what tubules is in poetry, may conceive what andrea is in painting. this artist demonstrates the ascendancy of native genius over precept. when a boy he was put under the tuition of giovanni barile, a good carver in wood, employed on the ceilings and doors of the vatican, after the designs of raffaello, but a painter of no celebrity. while still a youth, he was consigned to pier di cosimo, a practical colourist, but by no means skilled in drawing or in composition: hence the taste of andrea in these arts was formed on the cartoons of vinci and bonarruoti; and, as many circumstances indicate, on the frescos of masaccio and of ghirlandaio, in which the subjects were more suited to his mild disposition. he went to rome, but i know not in what year; that he was there, appears not to me to admit of dispute, as in the case of correggio. i do not argue this from his style approaching near to that of raffaello, as it appeared also to lomazzo and other writers, though with less of ideal beauty. raffaello and andrea had studied the same originals at florence; and nature might have given them corresponding ideas for the selection of the beautiful. i ground my opinion entirely on vasari. he informs us, that andrea was at rome, that seeing the works of the scholars of raffaello, timidity induced him to despair of equalling them, and to return speedily to florence. if we credit so many other stories of the pusillanimity of andrea, why should we reject this? or what faith shall we give to vasari, if he was erroneous in a circumstance relating to one who was his master, and which was written in florence soon after the death of andrea, while his scholars, his friends, and even his wife, were still living, an assertion, too, uncontradicted in the second edition, in which vasari retracted so much of what he had affirmed in the first? his improvement and his progress from one perfection in art to another was thus not sudden, as has happened to some other artists; but was gradually acquired during many years residence at florence. there, "by reflecting on what he had seen, he attained such eminence that his works have been esteemed, and admired, and even more imitated after his death, than in his lifetime:" so says the historian. this implies that he improved at rome; chiefly, however, by his own genius, which led him, as it were, by the hand, from one step to another, as may be observed in the compagnia dello scalzo, and in the convent of the servi, where some of his pictures, executed at different periods, are to be seen. at the scalzo, he painted some stories from the life of s. john in chiaroscuro, the cartoons for which are in the rinuccini palace: in this work we may notice some palpable imitations, and even some figures borrowed from albert durer. we may trace his early style in the baptism of christ; his subsequent progress, in some other pictures, as in the visitation, painted some years after; and his greatest excellence and broadest manner in others, especially in the birth of the baptist. in like manner, the pictures from the life of s. filippo benizi, in the lesser cloister of the servi, are very beautiful productions, though they are among the first efforts of andrea's genius. the epiphany of our saviour, and the birth of the virgin in the same place, are more finished works; but his finest piece is that holy family in repose, which is usually called _madonna del sacco_, from the sack of grain on which s. joseph leans, than which few pictures are more celebrated in the history of the art. it has frequently been engraved; but after two centuries and a half, it has at length employed an engraver worthy of it in morghen, who has recently executed it, and also a similar composition after raffaello. both prints are in the best collections; and to those who have not seen either rome or florence, andrea appears rather a rival than an inferior to the prince of painters. on examining this picture narrowly, it affords endless scope for observation: it is finished as if intended for a cabinet; every hair is distinguished, every middle tint is lowered with consummate art, every outline marked with admirable variety and grace: and amid all this diligence a facility is conspicuous, that makes the whole appear natural and unconstrained. in the ducal palace at poggio a caiano, there is a fresco picture of cæsar, seated in a hall, ornamented with statues, on a lofty seat, to whom a great variety of exotic birds and wild animals are presented as the tribute of his victories; a work of itself sufficient to mark andrea as a painter eminent in perspective, in a knowledge of the antique, and in every excellence of painting. the order for ornamenting that palace came from leo x.; and andrea, who had there to contend with franciabigio and pontormo, exerted all his energy to please that encourager of art, and to surpass his competitors. the other artists seem to have been discouraged, and did not proceed: some years after alessandro allori put a finishing hand to the hall. the royal palace possesses a treasure in the oil pictures of andrea. independent of the s. francis, the assumption, and other pictures, collected by the family of the medici, the grand duke leopold purchased a very fine _pietà_ from the nuns of lugo, and placed it in the tribune as an honour to the school. the introduction of s. peter and s. paul in that piece, contrary to historical facts, is not the error of the painter who represented them so admirably, but of those who commissioned the picture. critics have remarked a slight defect in the dead christ, which they think sustains itself more, and has a greater fulness of the veins, than is suitable to a dead body: but this is immaterial in a picture the other parts of which are designed, coloured, and composed, so as to excite astonishment. a last supper, if it were not confined to the cloisters of the monastery of s. salvi, would, perhaps, be equally admired. the soldiers who besieged florence in , and destroyed the suburbs of the city, undoubtedly admired it: after demolishing the belfry, the church, and part of the monastery, they were astonished on beholding this last supper, and had not resolution to destroy it; imitating that demetrius who, at the siege of rhodes, is said to have respected nothing but a picture by protegenes.[ ] andrea painted a great deal; and on this account is well known beyond the limits of his own country. perhaps his best performance in the hands of strangers is a picture translated to a palace in genoa from the church of the domenicans of sarzana, who possess several others, very beautiful. it is composed in the manner of f. bartolommeo; and besides the saints distributed around the virgin, or on the steps, four of whom are standing and two on their knees, there are two large figures in the foreground that seem to start from the lower part of the picture, and are seen as high as the knee. i am aware that this disposition of the figures displeases the critics; yet it gives variety in the position of so many figures, and introduces a great distance between the nearest and most remote, by which the space seems augmented, and every figure produces effect. the best collections are not deficient in his holy families. the marquis rinuccini, at florence, possesses two; and some of the illustrious romans have even a greater number; but all different, except that the features of the virgin, which andrea usually copied from his wife, have always some resemblance. many others may be seen in rome and in florence, and not a few in lombardy, besides those noticed in the catalogues of foreign nations. so much genius merited success: and yet if one was to write a book on the misfortunes of painters, as has already been done on those of authors, nothing would awaken more compassion than the lot of andrea. the poverty of correggio is exaggerated, or perhaps untrue; the misery of domenichino had a termination; the caracci were ill rewarded, but lived in easy circumstances. andrea, from his marriage with lucrezia del fede until his death, was almost always pressed with griefs. in his first edition, vasari says, that he was despised by his friends, and abandoned by his employers, from the time of his marriage with this woman; that, the slave of her will, he left his father and mother to starve; that through her arrogance and violence none of the scholars of andrea could continue long with him; and this must have happened to vasari himself. in the second edition he omitted this censure, either because he repented of it, or was appeased; but did not, however, conceal that she was a perpetual source of misfortune to her husband. he there repeated that andrea was invited to the french court by francis i. where, caressed and rewarded, he might have excited the envy of every artist; but influenced by the womanish complaints of lucrezia, he returned to florence; and remained in his own country, in violation of his faith solemnly pledged to that monarch. he afterwards repented and was anxious to regain his former situation; but his efforts were ineffectual. he dragged out a miserable existence, amid jealousy and domestic wretchedness, until, infected with the plague, and abandoned by his wife and every other individual, he died, in , in the forty-second year of his age, and had a very mean funeral. the two who approximated most nearly to the style of andrea were marco antonio francia bigi, as he is named by baldinucci, called also franciabigio, or francia, as vasari denominates him, and pontormo. francia was the scholar of albertinelli for a few months, and then appears to have formed himself on the best models of the school; and few are commended so highly by vasari for a knowledge of anatomy, for perspective, for the daily habit of drawing the naked figure, and the exquisite finish of all his performances. one of his annunciations was formerly in s. pier maggiore; the figures were small and highly finished, accompanied by good architecture, but not without a certain degree of dryness. andrea, his friend, and the associate of his studies, helped him to a more elevated style. from a companion francia became his enthusiastic follower; but, inferior in talents, he never attained the art of representing such sweetness of disposition, affection so true, and grace so natural. a semicircular piece of his, representing the marriage of the virgin, may be seen near the works of andrea, in the cloister of the nunziata, where we recognize him as a painter who sought to attain by labour what the other accomplished by genius. this work was never completed. some of the monks having uncovered it before it was finished, the artist was so offended that he struck the work some blows with a hammer, in order to deface it; and though they prevented his accomplishing this, he never after could be prevailed on to complete it, and no other dared to undertake the task. he was a competitor with andrea also in the scalzo, where he executed two histories that are not much eclipsed by the pictures in their vicinity. he imitated his friend likewise at poggio a caiano, in a picture of the return of cicero from exile: a work of merit, though never finished. it is the great glory of his pencil, that it was so often employed in contending with andrea, in whom it awakened emulation and industry, from the fear of being surpassed. jacopo carrucci, called pontormo, from the place of his nativity, was a man of rare genius, whose early productions obtained the admiration of raffaello and michelangiolo. he got a few lessons from vinci, and was afterwards under the care of albertinelli, and pier di cosimo, but he finally became the pupil of andrea. he excited the jealousy of this master, was induced by unhandsome treatment to withdraw from his school, and afterwards became not only the imitator of andrea, but his rival in many undertakings. the visitation in the cloister of the servi, the picture of several saints at s. michelino, the two pictures of the history of joseph, represented in minute figures, in an apartment of the ducal gallery, shew that he trod without difficulty in the footsteps of his master, and that congeniality of talent led him into a similar path. i use the term similar; for he is not a copyist, like those who borrow heads or whole figures, but invariably retains a peculiar originality. i saw one of his holy families in the possession of the marquis cerbone pucci, along with others by baccio, by rosso, and andrea: the picture by pontormo vied with them all; but yet was sufficiently characteristic. he had a certain singularity of disposition, and readily abandoned one style to try a better; but he was often unsuccessful; as likewise happened to nappi, of milan; to sacchi, of rome; and to every other artist who has made this attempt, at an age too far advanced for a change of manner. the carthusian monastery at florence has some of his works, from which connoisseurs have inferred the three styles attributed to him. the first is correct in design, vigorous in colouring, and approaches the manner of andrea. in the second the drawing is good, but the colouring somewhat languid; and this style became the model for bronzino and the artists of the succeeding epoch. the third is a close imitation of albert durer, not only in the composition but in the heads and draperies; a manner certainly unworthy of so promising an outset. it is difficult to find specimens of pontormo in this style, except some histories of the passion, which he servilely copied from the prints of albert durer, for the cloister of that monastery, where he trifled away several years. we might perhaps notice a fourth manner, if the deluge and last judgment, on which he spent eleven years at s. lorenzo, had still existed: but this his last performance, with the tacit consent of every artist, was whitewashed. here he attempted to imitate michelangiolo, and like him to afford a model of the anatomical style, which at this time began to be extolled at florence above every other: but he taught us a different lesson, and only succeeded in demonstrating that an old man ought not to become the votary of fashion. andrea pursued the custom of raffaello and other artists of that age, in conducting his works with the assistance of painters experienced in his style, whether they were friends or scholars; a remark not useless to those who may trace in his pictures the labours of another pencil. it is known that he gave pontormo some pieces to finish, and that he retained one jacone, and a domenico puligo; two individuals who possessed a natural turn for painting, ready and willing to try every species of imitation, and more desirous of recreation than of fame. the façade of the buondelmonte palace, at s. trinità, by the former, was highly extolled. it was in chiaroscuro; the drawing, in which department he excelled, was very beautiful, and the whole conducted in the manner of andrea. he also executed some oil pictures at cortona, which are much commended by vasari. domenico puligo was less skilled in design than in colouring: his tints were sweet, harmonious, and clear, but he apparently aimed at covering the outline, to relieve him from the necessity of perfect accuracy. by this mark he is sometimes recognized in madonnas and in cabinet pictures, (his usual occupation) which having been perhaps designed by andrea, at first sight pass for the work of that master. domenico conti was likewise very intimate with andrea, was his scholar and the heir to his drawings; and that great artist was honoured with a tomb and epitaph designed by conti, in the vicinity of his own immortal works in the nunziata. excepting this circumstance, vasari notices nothing praiseworthy in conti, and therefore i shall take no more notice of him. he gives a more favourable opinion of pierfrancesco di jacopo di sandro, on account of his three pictures in the church of s. spirito. he makes honourable mention of two other artists, who lived long in france, viz. nannoccio and andrea squazzella, who always retained a similarity to the style of andrea del sarto. it is not our present business to notice those who abandoned it; for in this work it is my wish to keep sight rather of the different styles than of the masters. the fine copies that so often pass for originals, in florence and other places, are chiefly the work of the above mentioned artists; nor does it seem credible that andrea copied so closely his own inventions, and reduced them with his own hand from the great scale to small dimensions. i have seen one of his holy families, in which s. elizabeth appears, in ten or twelve collections; and other pictures in three or four private houses. i found the s. lorenzo surrounded by other saints, at the pitti palace, in the albani gallery; the visitation, in the giustiniani palace; the birth of our lady, in the convent of the servi, in the possession of sig. pirri, at rome: all these are beautiful little pictures, all on small panels, all of the old school, and all believed the work of andrea. it seems to me not improbable that the best of these were at least painted in his studio, and retouched by him, a practice adopted by tiziano, and even by raffaello. rosso, who contended in the cloisters of the nunziata, with the best masters, and who appears in his assumption to have aimed at a work not so much superior in beauty as in size to the productions of the other artists, is among the greatest painters of his school. endowed with a creative fancy, he disdained to follow any of his countrymen or strangers; and indeed one recognizes much originality in his style: his heads are more spirited, his head dresses and ornaments are more tasteful, his colouring more lively, his distribution of light and shade broader, and his pencilling more firm and free, than had been hitherto seen in florence. he appears in short to have introduced into that school a peculiar spirit, that would have been unexceptionable, had it not been mingled with something of extravagance. thus, in the transfiguration at città di castello, instead of the apostles he introduced a band of gypsies at the bottom of the picture. his picture in the pitti palace, however, is far removed from any such fault. it exhibits various saints, grouped in so excellent a manner, that the chiaroscuro of one figure contributes to the relief of another; and it has such beautiful contrasts of colour and of light, such energy of drawing and of attitude, that it arrests attention by its originality. he likewise painted for the state: an unfinished descent from the cross may be seen in the oratory of s. carlo, in volterra; and another in the church of s. chiara at città s. sepolcro; in the cathedral of which there are many old pictures. its great merit consists in the principal group, and that twilight, or almost nocturnal tint, that gives a tone to the whole piece, sombre, true, and worthy of any flemish artist. the works of this painter are very scarce in italy; for he went to france into the employment of francis i. during his best time, and superintended the ornamental painting and plaster work then going on at fontainebleau. whilst engaged in this work, he unhappily put an end to his existence by poison; and in the enlargement of the building many of his works were defaced by primaticcio, who was a rival, but not a follower, as is pretended by cellini.[ ] thirteen pictures, dedicated to the fame and actions of francis i. have escaped, and are described by abbé guget, in his memoir on the royal academy of france.[ ] among these is the remarkable one of ignorance banished by that monarch; a picture that has been three different times engraved. he was assisted in those works by several artists, amongst whom were three florentine painters, domenico del barbieri, bartolommeo miniati, and luca penni, the brother of that gianfrancesco, called il fattore in the school of raffaello. ridolfo di domenico ghirlandaio lost his father in his infancy; but was so well initiated in the art, first by his paternal uncle davide, and afterwards by frate, that when raffaello d'urbino came to florence, he became his admirer and his friend. on his departure from that city he left with him a madonna, intended for siena, that it might be completed by him; and having soon after gone to rome, he invited him to assist in the decorations of the vatican. ridolfo declined this, unfortunately for his own name, which might thus have rivalled that of giulio romano. he undoubtedly possessed a facility, elegance, and vivacity of manner, to enable him to follow closely the style of his friend. that he was ambitious of imitating him, may be inferred from the pictures in his early manner, preserved in the church of s. jacopo di ripoli, and s. girolamo, that bear some resemblance to the manner of perugino, like the early productions of raffaello. his taste is displayed to more advantage in two pictures, filled with many moderate sized figures, which were transferred from the academy of design to the royal gallery. they represent two stories of s. zenobi, and perhaps approach nearer to the two pictures by pinturicchio, in the cathedral of siena, that were painted under the direction, and partly by the assistance of raffaello, than to any other model; with this exception, that they retain more traces of the old school. we may remark, in the pictures of ridolfo, some figures strikingly like those of raffaello; and in the whole there appears a composition, an expression, and skill in improving nature to the standard of ideal beauty, apparently proceeding from principles conformable to the maxims of that great master. that he did not afterwards perfect them, is to be attributed to his not having seen the best productions of his friend, and to his study of the art having been retarded by his commercial pursuits. on modernizing his manner, and by this means obtaining reputation, he aimed at nothing further; and continued to study painting rather as an amusement, than as a profession. he assembled round him artists of every description, and disdained not to impart advice to painters of ensigns, of furniture, or of scenes; still less to those who executed pictures for cabinets or churches. many such who flourished about the middle of the sixteenth century, are mentioned in history either as his pupils, or his companions. the following is a brief catalogue of them. michele di ridolfo assumed his name; because, on passing from the schools of credi and sogliani into that of ridolfo, he was treated not so much as a companion as a son, till the death of ghirlandaio. they painted many pictures conjointly, which always pass under their name; and of this number is the s. anne of città di castello; an exquisite picture, both for elegance of design, and a peculiar fulness of colouring. michele was particularly eminent in this department, which he diligently studied in his own works, and employed in his fresco pictures over several of the gates of the city; and he was selected by vasari as the companion of his labours. mariano da pescia must have been much esteemed by ridolfo; for when this master painted the frescos in the state chapel of the old palace, a work which gained him high honour, he wished the smaller pieces to be painted by mariano. there is a holy family in that place, in a firm but agreeable style: it is the only remaining production of this artist, who died young. he was of the gratiadei family; a piece of information for which, with various others, i am indebted to the politeness of his fellow citizen sig. innocenzio ansaldi, an able writer, both in poetry and prose, in whatever relates to the art. carlo portelli da loro in valdarno, proceeded from the same school. he painted much in the city, and sometimes with little harmony: yet the testimony of vasari, and the picture of s. romulus, which remains at the santa, demonstrate his ability as an artist. of antonio del ceraiuolo, little remains to commemorate the painter but the name. mirabello da salincorno, who was employed on the funeral obsequies of bonarruoti, devoted himself to cabinet pictures; and an annunciation, with his name, and the date of , is said to be in the hands of the baldovinetti family. it would be tiresome to follow vasari, who, in several passages of his history, mentions artists now sunk into oblivion, that might have found a place here. i close the list with two illustrious names, perino del vaga, already noticed, but afterwards to be more frequently mentioned; and toto del nunziata, reckoned by the english the best of the italian artists, who, in that century visited their island; though almost unknown among us.[ ] he was the son of an obscure artist, but obtained celebrity; and perino himself had not a more formidable rival in the school of ridolfo. this glorious epoch was not deficient in good landscape painters; although the art of landscape painting without figures was not yet in great repute. vasari highly praises in this line one antonio di donnino mazzieri, a scholar of franciabigio, a bold designer, and a man of great invention in representing horses, and in landscape. the grotesque came into fashion through the efforts of morto da feltro, and giovanni da udine. both artists were settled at florence, and there painted; especially the second, who decorated the palace of the medicean family, and the chapel in the church of s. lorenzo. andrea, called di cosimo, because he was the scholar of rosselli, learnt this art from morto,[ ] and he obtained the surname of feltrini, or perhaps feltrino, from his best known master. he exercised the invention not only on walls but on furniture, on banners and festive decorations: abounding in fancy, he was the leader of a taste originating with him, and much imitated in florence. his ornaments were more copious and rich than those of the ancients; were united in a different manner, and his figures were admirably adapted to them. mariotto and raffaello mettidoro were his associates; but no artist was more employed than he in designing foliage for brocades on cloth, or in ornamental painting. pier di cosimo, and bachiacca, or bachicca, were very eminent in the grotesque; of whom, with others who began the study about the end of the first epoch, i have already treated, among the old masters: but none of them modernized more than the latter, who was usually employed on small subjects, particularly on the furniture of private houses, and on small pictures, many of which were sent to england. about the time of his decease he was employed by the duke cosmo. he drew most elegant small historical designs for tapestry and beds, which were executed by his brother antonio, an embroiderer whom varchi commends; and by gio. rossi, and niccolo fiamminghi, who introduced the art of tapestry weaving into florence.[ ] his best work was a cabinet, which he ornamented divinely, says vasari, with flowers and birds in oil colours. perspective was not cultivated in italy during the th century, except so far as subservient to historical painting, and in this department the venetian and lombard masters were no less eminent than those of florence or of rome. after this period, artists began to represent arches, colonnades, porticos, and every other kind of architecture, in pictures appropriated to such subjects, to the great ornament of the theatres, and of religious and convivial festivities. one of the first who devoted himself to this study was bastiano di sangallo, the nephew of giuliano, and of antonio, and the brother of another antonio, all of whom were eminent in architecture. he got the surname of aristotile, from his disquisitions on anatomy, or on perspective, accompanied by a certain philosophic authority and ingenuity. he acquired the principles of his art from pietro perugino, but he soon abandoned his school, to adopt a more modern style. he exercised himself for several years in painting figures; he copied some subjects after his friends michelangiolo and raffaello; and aided by the advice of andrea and ridolfo, he produced not a few madonnas and other pictures of his own composition: but not possessing invention in an eminent degree he latterly dedicated his attention wholly to perspective, in which he was initiated by bramante; and exercised it during this epoch, when florence abounded with grand funeral obsequies, and public festivities. of these, the most memorable were those instituted on the election of leo x. in , and on his visit to florence in . he had in his train michelangiolo, raffaello, and other professors of the art, to deliberate concerning the façade of the church of s. lorenzo, and other works which he meditated. his court added pomp to every spectacle; and florence became, as it were, a new city. arches were erected in the streets by granacci and rosso; temples or new façades were designed by antonio da san gallo, and jacopo sansovino; chiaroscuros were prepared by andrea del sarto; grotesques by feltrino; basso-relievos, statues, and colossal figures, by sansovino above mentioned, by rustici, and bandinelli; ghirlandaio, pontormo, franciabigio, and ubertini, adorned with exquisite taste the residence of the pontiff. i say nothing of the meaner artists, although in another age even these would not have been classed with the vulgar herd, but have obtained distinction: i shall content myself with observing that this emulation of genius, this display of the fine arts, in short this auspicious period, sufficed to confer on florence the lasting appellation of another athens; on leo the name of another pericles or augustus. spectacles of this sort became afterwards more common to the citizens; for the medici, on commencing their domination over a people whom they feared, affected popularity, like the roman cæsars, by promoting public hilarity. hence, not only on extraordinary occasions, such as the elevation of clement vii. to the papal chair, of alexander, and of cosmo to the chief magistracy of their country, on the marriage of the latter, on that of giuliano and of lorenzo de' medici, and on the arrival of charles v.; not only on such occasions, but frequently at other times, they instituted tournaments, masquerades, and representations, of which the decorations were magnificent, such as cars, robes, and scenery. in this improved state of every thing conducive to exquisite embellishment, industry became excited, and the number of painters and ornamental artists increased. aristotile, to return to him, was always much employed; his perspectives were in great request in public places; his scenes in the theatre: the populace, unaccustomed to those ocular deceptions, were astonished; and it seemed to them as if they could ascend the steps, enter the edifices, and approach the balconies and windows in the pictures. the long life of aristotile, coeval with the best epoch of painting, permitted him to serve the ruling family and his country, until his old age, when salviati and bronzino began to be preferred to him. he died in . while the city of florence acquired so much glory by the genius of her artists, the other parts of the state afforded materials for future history, chiefly through the assistance of the roman school. this happened more especially after , when the sack of rome dispersed the school of raffaello and its young branches. giulio romano trained benedetto pagni at pescia, who ought to be noticed among the assistants of his master at mantua. if we credit some late writers, his native place possesses many of his works: but i acquiesce in the opinion of sig. ansaldi, in refusing to admit any of them as genuine, except the façade of the habitation of the pagni family, now injured by time, and the picture of the marriage of cana in the collegiate church, which is not his best production. pistoia is indebted to gio. francesco penni, or perhaps to fattore, for a respectable scholar: this was lionardo, an artist much employed in naples and in rome, where he was named il pistoia. i find him surnamed malatesta by some, guelfo by others; but i suspect that his true family name is to be collected from an inscription on an annunciation in the little chapel of the canons of lucca, which runs thus, _leonardus gratia pistoriensis_. i am indebted to sig. t. f. bernardi above mentioned for this fact: and the picture is worthy of a descendant of raffaello. i do not know that there is a single trace of lionardo remaining in his native place: at the village of guidi, in the diocese of pistoia, one of his pictures is to be seen in the church of s. peter, where the titular, and three other saints, stand around the throne of the virgin.[ ] sebastiano vini came from verona, in i know not what year of the th century, and was enrolled among the citizens of pistoia. his reputation and his pictures did honour to the country that adopted him. he left many works both in oil and fresco; but his most extraordinary production was in the suppressed church of s. desiderio. the façade over the great altar was storied with the crucifixion of the ten thousand martyrs, a work abounding in figures and invention. i have noticed the younger zacchia of lucca, who belongs to this epoch, in the preceding one, that i might not separate the father and the son. i am unable to find any other artists sufficiently worthy of record in this district of tuscany. on the opposite side of it we may turn our eyes to cortona, and notice two good artists. the one was francesco signorelli, the nephew of luca, who, though unnoticed by vasari, shows himself a painter worthy of praise, by a circular picture of the patron saints of the city, which was executed for the council hall, in ; after which period he lived at least forty years. the other was tommaso paparello, or papacello, both which names are given him by vasari, when writing of his two masters, caporali and giulio romano. he assisted them both, but i can discover no trace of any work wholly his own. borgo, afterwards named città san sepolcro, could then boast its raffaello, commonly called raffaellino dal colle, born at a small place a few miles from borgo. he is reckoned among the disciples of raffaello; but rather belongs to the school of giulio, whose pupil, dependant, or assistant in his labours at rome, and in the _te_ at mantua, he is considered by vasari. it is singular that he did not write a separate life of this artist; but assigns him scanty praise in a few scattered anecdotes. his merit is but little known to the public, as he painted for the most part in his native place, or the neighbouring cities; and i am able to add to the catalogue of his pictures from having seen them. he has two pictures at città san sepolcro, his only works specified by vasari. one represents the resurrection of our saviour, who, full of majesty, regards the soldiers around the sepulchre with an air of displeasure, which fills them with terror. this very spirited picture is in the church of s. rocco, and is repeated in the cathedral. the other, which is in the osservanti of s. francis, represents the assumption of the virgin; a piece agreeable both in colouring and design, but its value is diminished by a figure i am unable to explain, drawn at one side of it by another hand. the same subject is treated in the church of the conventual friars, at città di castello, where great beauty is joined to the highest possible finish, but it loses something of its effect by standing opposite to a fine picture by vasari, which throws it strongly into the shade. an entombing of christ by raffaellino, is in the servi; a very beautiful picture, but the colouring is less firm; and there is another of his works at s. angelo with s. michael, and s. sebastian, who humbly presents an arrow, a type of his martyrdom, to the infant jesus and the virgin. in this the composition is simple but graceful in every part. a picture of our lady, with s. sebastian, s. rocco, and a canonized bishop, painted in a similar style, is to be seen in the church of s. francis of cagli; in it the figures and the landscape much resemble the manner of raffaello. his apostles in the sacristy of the cathedral of urbino are noble figures, draped in a grand style, in small oblong pictures, firmly coloured. the olivet monks of gubbio have in one of their chapels a nativity by raffaellino, and two pieces from the history of s. benedict, painted in fresco, in which he was, i believe, assisted by his scholars. the former is certainly superior to the two last, although he has introduced in them real portraits, finely conceived architecture, and added a figure of virtue in the upper part, that seems a sister of the sybils of raffaello. he also painted, in the castle of perugia, and in the _imperiale_ of pesaro, a villa of the duke of urbino, to whom he afforded more satisfaction than the two dossi. after having assisted raffaello and giulio, he disdained not to paint after the designs of less eminent artists. on the arrival of charles v. at florence, in , he assisted vasari, who was one of the decorators; and he painted cartoons after the designs of bronzino, for the tapestry of cosmo i.; after which period i do not find him mentioned. another instance of his diffidence is the following: on the arrival of rosso at san sepolcro, raffaellino, out of respect to that artist, gave up to him an order for a picture which he was to have executed; a rare instance among painters, who are in the habit of using kindly those artists only, who come merely to see a city, and immediately leave it. he kept a school at san sepolcro, whence proceeded gherardi, vecchi, and other artists, some of whom, perhaps, surpassed him in genius; but they did not equal him in grace, nor in high finish. about this time many artists flourished in arezzo, but of these two only are praised by vasari, who is not sparing in his commendations of the florentines, as i have remarked, but deals them scantily to his own townsmen. giovanni antonio, the son of matteo lappoli, was the scholar of pontormo, and the friend of perino and of rosso, with whom he lived in tuscany, and whose style he emulated in rome. he was more employed in painting for private houses than for churches. guglielmo, surnamed da marcilla, by vasari, a foreigner by birth, became a citizen of arezzo from inclination and long residence; he was dear to the citizens, who afforded him the means of enjoying life, and grateful to the city, where he left most beautiful monuments of his genius. he had been a dominican in his own country; he became a secular priest on arriving in italy, and at arezzo he was called the prior. he was an excellent painter on glass, and on this account, was brought to rome by one claude, a frenchman, to execute windows for julius ii.; but he also employed himself in fresco. he studied design in italy, and so improved in that art, that his works at rome seem designs of the fourteenth century, while the aretine ones appear the work of a modern. he painted some ceilings and arches in the cathedral, with scriptural subjects in fresco. in design he followed michelangiolo, as nearly as he could; but his colouring was not firm. his paintings on glass are quite in a different style; there, to very good drawing, and uncommon expression, he joined tints that partake of the emerald, the ruby, and of oriental sapphire, and which, when illuminated by the sun, exhibit all the brilliance of the rainbow. in arezzo, there are so many windows of this glass at the cathedral, at s. francis, and at many other churches, that they might excite the envy of much larger cities. they are so finely wrought with subjects from the new testament, and other scriptural histories, that they seem to have reached the perfection of the art. the vocation of s. matthew, in a window of the cathedral, is highly praised by vasari; it exhibits "perspectives of temples and flights of steps, figures so finely composed, landscapes so well executed, that one can hardly imagine they were glass, but something sent down from heaven for the delight of mankind." this place and period remind me, that before i pass on to another epoch, i ought to say a few words concerning the invention of painting on glass, which was anciently likewise styled mosaic, because it was composed of pieces of different coloured glass, connected by lead, which represented the shadows. we may observe glass windows that emulate well composed pictures on canvass or on panel; and this art is treated of by vasari in the thirty-second chapter of the introduction to his work. from the preface to the treatise _de omni scientiâ artis pingendi_, by theophilus the monk, i find that france was celebrated for this art beyond any other country;[ ] and there the art seems to have been invariably cultivated, and brought by degrees to perfection. from the earliest ages of the revival of painting, the italians wrought windows with different coloured glasses, as is remarked by p. angeli in his description of the churches of assisi, where the most ancient specimens are to be seen. in the church likewise of the franciscan friars at venice, we find that one _frater theotonius_, a german, worked in tapestry and glass windows, and was imitated by one marco, a painter, who lived in the year .[ ] it may also be observed, that such windows over the altars supplied the place of sacred paintings in churches; christian congregations, in lifting up their eyes, there sought the resemblance of what "they hoped some time to behold in the celestial paradise: che ancor lassù nel ciel vedere spera," and they often addressed their supplications to those images. in the fifteenth century lorenzo ghiberti, a man eminent in various arts, still further improved this, and ornamented the oval windows of the façade of the church of s. francis, and of the cathedral of florence with coloured glass. in a similar manner he finished all the oval apertures in the cupola of the cathedral, except that of the assumption, executed by donatello. the glass was manufactured at florence, for which purpose one domenico livi, a native of gambassi, in the principality of volterra, who had learnt and practised the art at lubec, was invited to that place, as is proved by baldinucci in his correction of vasari.[ ] from this school apparently came goro, and bernardo di francesco, with that train of ingesuati, whose workmanship, exhibited at s. lorenzo and elsewhere, has been much commended by the florentine historians. (see moreni, part vi. p. .) this art afterwards flourished at arezzo, where it was introduced by parri spinelli, a scholar of ghiberti. about the same time flourished in perugia p. d. francesco, a monk of cassino, not merely a painter in glass, but a master in that city; and some conjecture that vannucci profited by his school, though a comparison of dates does not much favour such a supposition. this art also flourished in venice, about , where one window was executed after the design of bartolommeo vivarini, in the church of s. john and s. paul, and another was erected at murano; but the art of painting glass could not be unknown at this last place, where it originated. it is true, that in process of time the florentine and venetian glass appeared to be not sufficiently transparent for such purposes; and that a preference was given to that of france and of england, the clearness and transparency of which was better adapted for receiving the colours, without too much obscuring the light. it had this other advantage, that the colours were burnt in the glass, in the manner described by vasari, instead of being laid on with gums or other vehicles; hence they had greater brilliancy, and were more capable of resisting the injuries of time. this was a flemish, or rather a french invention, and the italians unquestionably received it from france. bramante invited from that country the two artists above mentioned, who, besides the windows of the vatican palace, that were wrought with colours burnt into the glass, and destroyed in the sack of rome, in the time of clement vii. ornamented two in the church of s. maria del popolo, with those scriptural histories that yet remain perfectly brilliant in colour, after the lapse of three centuries. soon after this claude died at rome. william survived him many years, and from that time continued to reside in arezzo. he there was engaged in the service of the capital, where one of his painted glass windows is preserved in the capponi chapel, at the church of s. felicità; and he taught the art to pastorino of siena, who exercised it very skilfully in the state saloon of the vatican, after the designs of vaga, and in the cathedral of siena. this artist is reckoned the best scholar of his master. maso porro, michelagnolo urbani, both natives of cortona, and batista borro of arezzo, were trained in the same school, and were afterwards employed in tuscany and elsewhere. in ornamenting the old palace, vasari availed himself of the assistance of two flemish artists, walter and george, who wrought after his designs. celebrated equal to any artist is valerio profondavalle of louvain, who settled at milan after the middle of the sixteenth century, a man of fertile invention, and a pleasing colourist in fresco painting, but chiefly eminent in painting on glass, as we are informed by lomazzo. orlandi celebrates gerardo ornerio frisio, and his windows executed about , in the church of s. peter at bologna. this art afterwards declined, when custom, the arbiter of arts, by excluding it from palaces and churches, caused it gradually to be forgotten. another method of painting on glass, or rather on crystal, was much in fashion in the last century, and was employed for ornamenting mirrors, caskets, and other furniture of the chambers of the great. maratta and his contemporaries on crystal for such works in the same style that they employed in painting on canvass; and above all giordano, who taught it to several pupils. among these, the best was carlo garofalo, who was invited to the court of charles ii. of spain, to practise this species of painting,[ ] the era of which does not embrace a great number of years. [footnote : although vasari, borghini, and baldinucci, have also treated of other schools, they have chiefly illustrated that of florence, with which they were best acquainted. to them succeeded the respectable authors of the _florentine museum_, and of the _series of the most celebrated painters_, containing choice anecdotes of those masters, which are now republished, and accompanied by a print from the work of each painter, in the _etruria pittrice_ of the learned sig. ab. lastri. other anecdotes are to be found in the work of p. richa _on the churches of florence_, and in sig. cambiagi's _guide_ to that city. pisa too, has its _guide_ by the cav. titi; to which has succeeded the much larger work of sig. da morrona, above noticed. siena has one by sig. pecci, volterra another by ab. giachi, and pescia and valdinievole by the ab. ansaldi. sig. francesco bernardi, an excellent connoisseur in the fine arts, prepared a guide to lucca after marchiò; it remains inedited since his death, together with his anecdotes of the painters, sculptors, and architects of his native country. meanwhile the _diario_ of mons. mansi affords considerable information.] [footnote : condivi promised to publish them, but this was never performed. see bottari's notes on the life of michelangiolo, p. , in florent. edit. .] [footnote : see the fine eulogy on him by sig. durazzini, among his panegyrics on illustrious tuscans, where he corrects vasari, his annotators and others, who have fixed the birth of lionardo before this year. tom. iii. n. .] [footnote : see sig. piacenza, in his edition of baldinucci, t. ii. p. . he has dedicated a long appendix to vinci, in which he has collected all the anecdotes scattered through vasari, lomazzo, borghini, mariette, and other modern authors.] [footnote : "leonardo seems to have trembled whenever he sat down to paint, and therefore never finished any of the pictures he began; for by meditation on the perfection of art, he perceived faults in what to others appeared admirable." lomazzo, _idea del tempio della pittura_, page .] [footnote : both have perished, after serving as models to the best painters of that age, and even to andrea del sarto. see what has been written by vasari, and by m. mariette, in the long letter concerning vinci, which is inserted in tom. ii. of _lett. pittoriche_.] [footnote : it was on account of the same procrastinating disposition that leo x. withdrew the patronage he had conferred on him, and which he was accustomed to bestow upon all men of genius.] [footnote : vasari.] [footnote : vasari, who published a life of him in , and enlarged it in another edition; and ascanio condivi da ripatransone, who printed one in , ten years before the death of bonarruoti.] [footnote : he was very partial to this poet; whose flights of fancy he embodied in pen-drawings in a book, which, unfortunately for the art, has perished; and to whose memory he wished to sculpture a magnificent monument, as appears from a petition to leo x. in it the medicean academy requests the bones of the divine poet; and among the subscribers we read the name of michelangiolo, and also his offer. _gori illustraz. alla vita del condivi_, p. .] [footnote : he projected a tract on "all the movements of the human body, on its external appearances, and on the bones, with an ingenious theory, the fruit of his long study." condivi, p. .] [footnote : "zeuxis plus membris corporis dedit, id amplius et augustius ratus; atque ut existimant homerum secutus, cui validissima quæque forma etiam in foeminis placet." inst. orat. lib. xii. c. .] [footnote : none however of these great men presumed to despise michelangiolo so much, as to compare the picture of christ, in the minerva, to an executioner; like the author of the _arte di vedere_. mengs, whom he rather flatters than follows, would have disdained to use this and similar expressions; but it is the office of adulators not merely to approve the opinion of the object flattered, but greatly to exaggerate it. juvenal, with his peculiar penetration into the vices of mankind, thus describes one of the race. (see satire iii. v. .) ----"rides? majore cachinno concutitur; flet si lacrymam conspexit amici, nee dolet: igniculum brumæ si tempore poscas accipit endromidem; si dixeris: æstuo, sudat." ] [footnote : bottari confesses "that he shews somewhat of mannerism, but concealed with such skill that it is not perceptible;" an art which very few of his imitators possess.] [footnote : see winckelmann in his "gems of baron stochs," where he records and comments upon the text of the historian, p. .] [footnote : "duo dossi e quel che a par sculpe e colora michel più che mortal angiol divino." orl. fur. cant. xxxiii. . ] [footnote : raffaello came to florence towards the end of . (_lett. pitt._ tom. i. p. .) in this year michelangiolo was called to rome, and left his cartoon imperfect. having afterwards fled from rome, through dread of julius ii., he completed it in three months, in the year . compare the brief of julius, in which he recals michelangiolo (_lett. pitt._ tom. iii. p. ), with the relation of vasari (tom. vi. ed. fiorent. p. ). during the time that michelangiolo laboured at this work, "he was unwilling to shew it to any person (p. ); and when it was finished it was carried to the hall of the pope," and was there studied (p. ). raffaello had then returned to florence, and this work might open the way to his new style, which, as a learned englishman expresses it, is intermediate between that of michelangiolo and of perugino.] [footnote : he chose the companions of those who had painted in the sistine, jacopo di sandro (botticelli), agnolo di donnino, a great friend of rosselli, and the elder indaco, a pupil of ghirlandaio, who were but feeble artists. bugiardini, gianacci and aristotile di s. gallo, of whom we shall take further notice in the proper place, were there also.] [footnote : varchio, in his funeral oration, p. .] [footnote : _idea del tempio della pittura_, p. . ed. bologn.] [footnote : tom. vi. p. .] [footnote : see _entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellens peintres_, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : see pp. , .] [footnote : lett. pitt. tom. iii. lett. . rosa, sat. iii. p. .] [footnote : salvator rosa in his third satire, p. , narrates the rebuke which the prelate gave michelangiolo for his indecency in painting the saints themselves without garments.] [footnote : microscosmo, p. .] [footnote : tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : he is also blamed for this part of the perspective by others. (see p. m. della valle in the "prosa recitata in arcadia," , p. , of the giorn. pis. tom, liii.)] [footnote : malv. tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : vite de' pittori, &c. p. .] [footnote : dialogo sopra la pittura.] [footnote : _idea del tempio della pittura_, p. .] [footnote : conca, descriz. odeporica della spagna, tom. i. page .] [footnote : the ignorant believe that michelangiolo "nailed a man to a cross and left him there to expire, in order to paint from the life a figure of our saviour on the cross." see dati, in his notes of the life of parrhasius, who is said to have committed a similar homicide. this story of the latter is probably a fable, and undoubtedly it is so of michelangiolo. the crucifixions of this artist are often repeated, sometimes with a single figure, sometimes with our lady and s. john; at other times with two angels, who collect the blood. bottari mentions several of these pictures in different galleries. to these we may add the picture of the caprara palace, and those in the possession of monsignor bonfigliuoli and of sigg. biancani in bologna. sig. co. chiappini of piacenza has a very good one, and there is another in the church of the college of ravenna.] [footnote : a name given by the italians to pictures of a dead christ on the knees of his mother.] [footnote : bottari, in his _notes_ to the letter of preziado, doubts whether this supposed scholar of michelangiolo be galeazzo alessi, remarking at the same time that this last was rather an architect than a painter. i am inclined to think that the matteo in question may have been the foregoing matteo da _lecce_, or da leccio, and that owing to one of those errors, which clerche in his "arte critica," calls _ex auditu_, his name in spain became d'alessi, or d'alessio, the letters _c_ and _s_ in many countries being made use of reciprocally. besides, this _leccese_, of whom we write in the fourth volume, flourished in the time of vargas, went to spain, affected the style of michelangiolo, and never settled himself in any place from his desire of seeing the world. memoirs of him appear to have been collected in spain, by pacheco, who lived in (conca, iii. ), who in his account, at this distance of time, must have been guided by vulgar report; a bad authority for names, particularly those of foreigners, as was noticed in the preface. that he should further be called roman instead of italian, in a foreign country, and that he should there adopt the name of perez, not having assumed any surname in rome, can scarcely appear strange to the reader, and the more so as he is described as an adventurer--a species of persons who subsist upon tricks and frauds.] [footnote : sebastiano painted it again for the osservanti of viterbo; and there is a similar one described in the carthusian monastery, at naples, which is painted in oil, and is supposed to be the work of bonarruoti.] [footnote : limbo, among theologians of the roman church, is the place where the souls of just men, who died before the coming of our saviour, and of unbaptized children, are supposed to reside.] [footnote : this noble fresco was ruined during the revolutionary tumults at rome.--tr.] [footnote : that raffaello was at this time well versed in perspective it is unreasonable to doubt, as bottari has done: he proceeded from the school of perugino, who was very eminent in that science; and he left a good specimen at siena, where he remained some time before he came to florence.] [footnote : vol. iii. p. .] [footnote : this is conspicuous in a s. raffaello with tobias, which was transferred from the royal gallery of florence to the imperial gallery of vienna.--see rosa scuola italiana, p. .] [footnote : plin. hist. nat. lib. xxxv. cap .] [footnote : "any excellence he possessed was stolen from the admirable manner of our florentine painter, rosso; a man truly of wonderful genius." cellini, in his life, as quoted by baldinucci, tom. v. p. . he who writes thus of the ablest pupil of giulio romano, either was unacquainted with his works in bologna, and in mantua, executed before he knew rosso, or blinded by party rage, was incapable of appreciating them.] [footnote : page .] [footnote : about the time when michele taught, there resided in spain one tommaso fiorentino; one of whose portraits is mentioned by the sig. ab. conca, (tom. i. p. ,) belonging to the royal palace at madrid. in the ducal palace of alva, there are also galleries of grotesques, where we read the name of tommaso fiorentino, the author, to which is added (tom. ii. p. ) "the name of this professor of the art is quite new to me; in his grotesques we meet with the exact style of the sons of bergamasco, &c." i hardly know how the name can appear new to the ab. conca, when he had already mentioned it elsewhere; nor how the composition of an artist, who painted in , could resemble that of others who were still young in the year , in which their father died.] [footnote : vasari, in his life of morto, says, that he came to florence in order to improve his skill in figures, in which he was deficient, by studying the models of vinci and of michelangiolo. in despair, however, he returned to his grotesques. now i shall elsewhere produce an unedited document shewing his ability in figure painting, which i should not have occasion to do if the beautiful portrait of morto, in the royal gallery at florence, was, as is conjectured, by his hand. but i am inclined to think that it is the likeness of an unknown person, who, as i have seen in other portraits, caused himself to be drawn with a finger pointing to a death's head, in order to remind him of his mortality, but in this picture the head has been capriciously interpreted as a symbol of the name of morto, and the painting given as the portrait and work of feltrese; of whom vasari gives a very different one.] [footnote : they wrought from the designs of pontormo, and still more those of bronzino. they also wrought for the duke of ferrara after the designs of giulio romano, published by gio. battista mantuano, among his prints.] [footnote : a similar composition is to be seen in an altar-piece in the cathedral of volterra. it is inscribed, _opus leonardi pistoriens. an. _. this, however, ought not to be passed over on account of an historical doubt started by the cavalier tolomei, whether there flourished, at the same period, two lionardi da pistoja; thus insinuating they were of different families. and this would appear to be the case. the painter of the piece in volterra was not grazia, at naples, probably, surnamed guelfo; since his master penni, if we are to believe vasari, was in that year, , still the scholar and assistant of raffaello; nor does it seem probable that he educated a pupil of so much merit. the leonardo, therefore, who painted in volterra, must have been some other of more proficiency.] [footnote : "hic invenies quidquid diversorum colorum generibus et mixturis habet græcia ... quidquid in fenestrarum varietate pretiosa diligit francia."] [footnote : zanetti, nuova raccolta delle monete e zecche d'italia, (tom. iv. p. ). in this work we meet with a long latin document, which makes mention of a brother of marco, named paolo, also a painter; qui habet in cartâ designatam mortem s. francisci, et virginis gloriose, sicut picte sunt ad modum theutonicum in pano (i. e. panno) ad locum minorum in tarvisio.] [footnote : tom. iii. p. .] [footnote : bellori vite de' pittori, &c. page .] florentine school. epoch iii. _the imitators of michelangiolo bonarruoti._ after the time of the five great masters above mentioned, the florentines were so rich in fine specimens of art that they had no occasion to apply to foreign schools for improvement. they had only to select the best specimens from the works of native artists; as, for instance, grandeur from michelangiolo, grace from andrea, and spirit from rossi; they could learn colouring and casting of draperies from porta, and chiaroscuro from vinci. they appear, however, to have assiduously applied to design, but to have paid little attention to the other branches of painting. even in that branch they imagined that every thing was to be found in bonarruoti; and imitated him alone. their choice was influenced by the celebrity,[ ] the success, and very long life of this artist, who, having survived all his eminent fellow citizens, naturally recommended to employment the followers of his maxims, and the adherents of his manner; hence it has been observed by some, that raffaello lived too short a time for the progress of the fine arts, michelangiolo too long. but artists ought to keep in mind the opinion, or rather prophecy of bonarruoti--that his style would be productive of inept artists, which has invariably been the character of those who have imitated him without judgment. their study and constant practice has been to design from his statues: for the cartoon on which so many eminent men formed their style, had already perished; and his paintings were not to be seen in florence but in rome. they transferred into their compositions that statue-like rigidity, that strength of limb, and those markings of the origin and insertion of muscles, that severity of countenance, and those positions of the hands and figures, which characterized his sublimely awful style; but without comprehending the principles of this extraordinary man, without thoroughly understanding the play of the softer parts of the human figure, either by inserting them in wrong situations, or by representing, in the same manner, those in action and at rest; those of a slender stripling, and of the full-grown man. contented with what they imagined grandeur of style, they neglected all the rest. in some of their pictures we may observe a multitude of figures arranged one above the other, with a total disregard of their relative situations; features that express no passion, and half naked figures that do nothing, except pompously exhibit, like the entellus of virgil, _magna ossa lacertosque_. instead of the beautiful azure and green formerly employed, they substituted a languid yellowish hue; the full body of colour gave place to superficial tints; and, above all, the bold relief, so much studied till the time of andrea, went wholly into disuse. in several passages baldinucci confesses this decline, which, however, scarcely extended to two or three generations, and seems to have commenced about . during this unfortunate era the florentines did not degenerate as much as some other schools. the churches are full of pictures of this era, which, if they are not to be admired like those of the preceding, are, at least, respectable. whoever sees the church of s. croce, s. maria novella, and other places, where the best artists of this era painted, will undoubtedly find more to praise than to condemn. few of them were eminent as colourists, but many in design; few were entirely free from the mannerism above noticed; many, however, by progressive improvement, at length attained gracefulness. we shall proceed to consider them, chiefly following the steps of vincenzio borghini, their contemporary; the author of _il reposo_, a dialogue worthy of perusal, both for the matter and the style. we shall commence with vasari, who not only belongs to this epoch, but has ever been charged with being one of the chief authors of the decline of the art.[ ] giorgio vasari, of arezzo, was descended from a family attached to the fine arts; being the great grandson of lazzaro, who was the intimate friend of pietro della francesca, and the imitator of his paintings; the nephew of another giorgio, who, in modelling vases in plaster, revived the forms of the antique, in their basso-relievos, and their brilliant colours; specimens of whose art exist in the royal gallery at florence. michelangiolo, andrea, and some other masters, instructed him in design; guglielmo da marcilla, called the prior, and rosso, initiated him in painting: but he chiefly studied at rome, whither he was brought by ippolito, cardinal de' medici, the person to whom he owed his success; for by his means giorgio was introduced to this family that loaded him with riches and with honour. after having designed all the works of his first master, and of raffaello, at rome, and likewise much after other schools and antique marbles, he formed a style in which we may recognise traces of his studies; but his predilection for bonarruoti is apparent. after acquiring skill in painting figures, he became one of the most excellent architects of the age; and united in himself the various branches which were known to perino, giulio, and their scholars, who followed the example of raffaello. he could unaided direct the construction of a grand fabric, adorn it with figures, with grotesques, with landscapes, with stuccos, with gilding, and whatever else was required to ornament it in a princely style. by this means he began to be known in italy; and was employed as a painter in several places, and even in rome. he was much employed in the hermitage of the camaldules, and in several monasteries of the olivets. in their monastery at rimino he executed a picture of the magi, and various frescos for the church; in that at bologna three pieces from sacred history, with some ornaments in the refectory; but still more in that at naples, where he not only reduced the refectory to the rules of true architecture, but splendidly adorned it with stuccos and pictures of every description. assisted by many young men he spent a year in this work; and, as he himself says, was the first who gave an idea of the modern style to that city. some of his pictures are to be seen in the classe di ravenna, in the church of s. peter at perugia, at bosco, near alessandria, in venice, at pisa, in florence, and at rome, where the largest part of them are in various places of the vatican, and in the hall of the chancery. these pictures are historical frescos of the life of paul iii. undertaken at the desire of cardinal farnese; with whom originated the idea of writing the lives of the painters, afterwards published at florence. brought into notice by these works, honoured by the esteem and friendship of bonarruoti, and recommended by his multifarious abilities, he was invited to the court of cosmo i. he went there with his family in ; at which time the artists above alluded to were either dead or very old, and, therefore, he had little to fear from competitors. he superintended the magnificent works executed by that prince; among which it would be wrong not to distinguish the edifice for the public offices, which is esteemed among the finest in italy; and the old palace, with its several sub-divisions, which were all painted and decorated by vasari and his pupils for the use of government. in one part of it, each chamber bears the name of some distinguished member of the family, and represents his exploits. this is one of his best works; and here the chamber of clement vii. is chiefly conspicuous, on the ceiling of which he represented the pontiff in the act of crowning charles v., and all around disposed the emblems of his virtues, his victories, and his most remarkable exploits. in this work the magnificence of the prince is rivalled by the judgment and taste of the artist. the reader may find notices of his other works, which are either in churches or in private houses, and of his temporary decorations for funerals or festivals, by consulting his life written by himself down to , and the continuation of it to , the year of giorgio's decease. it remains for us to discuss the merits of this artist, who has been praised by some and condemned by other authors that have treated of the fine arts, especially in italy. i shall consider him first as a painter, and next as a writer. had all his works perished but some of those in the old palace, the conception, in s. apostolo at florence, which borghini commends as his finest production, the decollation of s. john, in the church of the baptist at rome, which is adorned by exquisite perspective, the feast of ahasuerus, in the possession of the benedictines at arezzo, some of his portraits, which bottari scruples not to compare with those of giorgione, and some of his other pictures that demonstrate his ability, his reputation would have been much greater than it is. but he aimed at too much; and for the most part preferred expedition to accuracy. hence, though a good designer, his figures are not always correct; and his painting often appears languid, from his meagre and superficial colouring.[ ] the habit of careless execution is usually the companion of some maxim that may serve to excuse it to others, as well as to our own self-love: vasari has recommended in his writings the acquirement of compendious methods,[ ] and "the expedition of practice;" in other words, to make use of former exercises and studies in painting. this method is highly advantageous to the artist, because it increases his profits; but is prejudicial to the art, which thus degenerates into mannerism, or, in other words, departs from nature: vasari fell into this error in many of his works, especially in his hasty productions, or where he borrowed the hand of others; apologies which he frequently offers to the readers of his "lives." he was principally induced, i believe, to offer such apologies for his practice, from the strictures on his paintings contained in the hall of the chancery, which were finished in a hundred days, according to their author, in order to please the cardinal: but he ought then rather to have excused himself to farnese, and to have requested him to employ some other artist, than to make his apology to posterity, and to intreat us to excuse his faults. he ought to have listened to the admonitions of his friends; among whom caro did not fail to remind him of the injury his reputation might sustain by such hasty productions.[ ] as he long superintended the decorations of the capital, ordered by cosmo i. and prince d. francesco, and was assisted in them by many young men, baldinucci affirms that he chiefly contributed to that dry manner which prevailed in florence.[ ] this opinion is probably not erroneous; for the example of a painter employed by the court was sufficient to seduce the rising generation from pristine diligence, to a more careless manner. after all, the florentines who assisted him were chiefly the scholars of bronzino, and, except two or three, they did not adopt the style of vasari: some others also may have done so for a little time. francesco morandini, called poppi, from his native place, was his disciple and imitator; and in his picture of the conception, at s. michelino, in the superior one of the visitation, at s. nicholas, and in his many other works, he appears a follower of giorgio; except that he was more minute, and attended more to gay and cheerful composition. giovanni stradano fiammingo, for ten years a dependant of vasari, adopted his colouring, but imitated the design of salviati; with whom and also with daniele di volterra he had lived in rome. there is a christ on the cross, by him, at the serviti, which is preferred to any other he painted at florence, where he executed many designs for tapestry, and many prints. he had a fertile invention; he is praised by vasari as highly as any other artist then in the service of the court, and is considered by borghini among the eminent masters. vasari after him retained jacopo zucchi, whose works exhibit none of the carelessness of giorgio. he sometimes imitated him; but his style is better and more refined. he lived long at rome, under the protection of ferdinando, cardinal de' medici, in whose house, and more especially in the rucellai palace, he painted in fresco with incredible diligence. his picture of the birth of the baptist, in s. giovanni decollato, is esteemed the best in that church; and in this piece he appears more a follower of andrea, than of any other master. he usually introduced real portraits of distinguished characters and men of letters in his compositions, and he shewed a peculiar grace in the figures of children and of young people. baglioni praises both this artist and his brother francesco, who was a good artist in mosaic, and an excellent painter of fruit and flowers. in considering giorgio as a writer, i shall not consume much time; having so frequently to notice him in the course of my work. he wrote precepts of art and lives of the painters, as is well known; and he added to them some dissertations on his own occupations,[ ] and his pictures.[ ] he entered on this work at the instigation of cardinal farnese, as well as of monsig. giovio; and he was encouraged in it by caro, molza, tolomei, and other literary men belonging to that court. his first intention was to collect anecdotes of artists, to be extended by giovio. they wished him to commence with cimabue; with which, perhaps, he ought not to have complied; but this circumstance diminishes the fault of vasari in passing over the older masters in silence, and raises the glory of cimabue far above all his contemporaries. when it was discovered that vasari could write well,[ ] and was capable of extending the anecdotes in even more appropriate language than giovio himself, the whole task devolved on him; but in order to render the work more worthy of the public, he had the assistance afforded him of men of letters. in , on finishing the book, he went to rimino; and whilst he was employed in painting for the fraternity of olivets, father d. gio. matteo faetani, abbot of the monastery, corrected his work and caused it to be wholly transcribed; about the end of that year it was sent to caro for perusal. he signified his approbation of it, "as written in a fine style, and with great care;"[ ] except that in some passages a less artificial style was desirable. after being corrected in this respect, it was printed in two volumes by torrentino, at florence, in the year ; in this edition he received considerable aid from father d. miniato pitti, then an olivetine friar.[ ] vasari complained that "many things were there inserted he knew not how, and were altered without his knowledge or consent;"[ ] but i cannot agree with bottari,[ ] that these alterations were made by pitti or any other monk. if vasari could not discover their author, we are much less likely to find him out; and there is some ground for believing that vasari had offended many persons by certain invidious anecdotes, and thus endeavoured to excuse himself as well as he could. who can believe that the many things cancelled in the second edition, which seems almost a new work, were all liberties taken by other persons, "he did not know how" and not mistakes, at least for the most part, made by himself? in whatever way it happened, he had an opportunity of correcting his lives, of augmenting them, and again printing them, accompanied by portraits of the artists. after publication of the first edition he had availed himself of the manuscripts of ghiberti, of domenico ghirlandaio, of raffaello d'urbino; and had himself collected a number of anecdotes in his different journeys through italy. he undertook a new tour in , to prepare for the new edition, as he informs us in the life of benvenuto garofolo; he again examined the works of different masters, and obtained new information from his friends, some of whom he mentions by name, when treating of the artists of forli and verona. he would have been still more full of anecdote in his lives, had his success corresponded with his diligence. on this account, in the beginning and at the end of the life of carpaccio, he laments that "he was not able to obtain every particular of many artists;" nor to possess their portraits; and he "entreats us to accept what he is able to offer, although he cannot give all he might desire." he republished his lives in , and affirmed in the dedication to cosmo i. that "as for himself he wished for nothing more in them." the new edition issued from the press of the giunti; of the additions, consisting of fine observations upon philosophy and christian morality, which cannot be ascribed to giorgio, part was supplied by borghini, and still more by father d. silvano razzi, a camalduline monk, as bottari conjectures in his preface,[ ] but it does not follow that they assisted in correcting the work. it is full of errors; sometimes in the grammatical construction, often in the names, and frequently in the dates; and though it was reprinted at bologna, in ; at rome, with the notes and corrections of bottari, in ; in leghorn and florence, in , with fresh notes and additions by the same; and lastly, in siena, with those of p. della valle; it still remains not so much a judicious selection of facts, as a mass of chronological emendations, some of which shall be noticed in the sequel.[ ] this, if i am not deceived, is the objection that can be most frequently, and almost continually urged against the work. the other strictures to be met with in authors are, for the most part, exaggerations of writers, offended at vasari for his silence or his criticisms, on the works of the artists of their country. there is nothing so flattering to the vanity of an author, as defending the character of his native place, and of those citizens who have rendered her illustrious. in whatever manner he writes, all his countrymen, who are all the world to him, think him in the right; and in the coffeehouses he frequents, in the shops of the booksellers, and in all public places, they hail him as the public advocate. hence we need not be surprised that such an author writes as if his country had appointed him her champion, assumes a spirit of hostility, and then the transition is easy from a just defence to an injurious attack. from such causes some writers appear to me actuated by unbecoming enmity to vasari. the passages of the first edition, cancelled in the second, have been quoted against him; he has incurred odium for some deformed portraits, as if he was accountable for the defects of nature; his most innocent expressions have been tortured into a sinister meaning; his enemies would have us believe that, intending to exalt his darling florentines, he neglected the other italian artists, as if, in order to do justice to these, he had not travelled and sought for information, although often in vain, as i before mentioned. the historians of all the other schools have used him as the commentators of virgil treated servius; all have abused him, and all have availed themselves of his labours. for if all the information collected by vasari concerning the old masters of the venetian, bolognese, and lombard schools be taken away, how imperfect does their history remain? in my opinion, therefore, he deserves our best thanks for what he has done, and much forbearance for what he has omitted. if his judgment appears less accurate on some artists of a different school, he ought not, on that account, to be taxed with malignity and envy, as is well observed by lomazzo. he has protested that he has done his best to adhere to truth, or to what he believed to be true,[ ] and it is sufficient to read him without prejudice to give him credit for such justification. he seems a man who writes as he thinks. thus, he bestows commendations upon baldinelli and upon zuccaro, his enemies,[ ] as well as upon his friends: he distributes censure and praise with an equal hand to tuscan and other artists. if he discovers painters of little merit in other schools, he finds them also in that of florence; if he relates the jealousies of foreign artists, he does not conceal those of the florentines, of which he speaks with a playful freedom in the life of donatello, in his own, and more especially in that of pietro perugino. his partial criticisms therefore on certain artists arose less from his nationality, than from other causes. it is certain that he saw but little of some masters; his opinion of others was formed upon incorrect information; and he could not attain the same certainty that we now boast, on what related to a number of artists then living, who, as usually happens, were then more censured than admired. some allowance too should be made for his other avocations; by the multiplicity of which he doubtless wrote as he painted, with the expedition of his mode of practice. a proof of this is afforded by the repetitions that occur, as we have before observed, in successive passages, and the contradictory characters he sometimes gives of the same picture, pronouncing it good in one sentence, and in another allowing it scarcely the praise of mediocrity. this was particularly the case in regard to razzi, towards whom he seems to have entertained ill will; arising, however, more from the bad reputation of the man than from prejudice against the school of the artist. for the incorrectness of such censures, in which he, however, was sincere, i blame his maxims of art, and the age in which he lived. he reckoned bonarruoti the greatest painter that had ever existed;[ ] and exalted him above the ancient greeks,[ ] and, from his practice, held a bold and vigorous design as the summit of perfection in painting; compared to which, beauty and colouring were nothing.[ ] from such fundamental principles proceeded some of his obnoxious criticisms on bassano, tiziano, and on raffaello himself. but is this the effect of his malignity, or of his education? does it not happen in philosophy as in painting, that every one gives a decided preference to those of his own sect. has not petrarca generalized the observation, when he asks, ----"or che è questo che ognun del suo saper par che si appaghi?" we may, then, forgive in vasari what appeared to this philosophic poet a weakness of human nature; and may observe on a few passages in his work what was applied to tacitus; that we condemn his principles, but admire his history. such, i believe, was the opinion of lomazzo, who though not wholly satisfied with the opinions of vasari, not only excused but defended him;[ ] and in this he acted properly. vasari is, moreover, the father of the history of painting, and has transmitted to us its most precious materials. educated in the most auspicious era of the art, he has in some measure perpetuated the influence of the golden age. in perusing his lives, i fancy myself listening to the individuals of whom he has collected the traditions and the precepts. it was thus, think i, that raffaello and andrea imparted these facts to their scholars; thus spoke bonarruoti; the friends of giorgio heard this from vinci and porta, and in this manner must have related it to him. i am delighted with the facts, and also with the luminous, simple, and natural manner in which they are expressed, interwoven with the technical terms that originated in florence, and worthy of every writer whose subject is the fine arts. finally, should i discover in him any prejudice of education, or, if you will, arising from self-love, it seems to me unjust on account of such a fault, to forget his many services, and to declare hostilities against him for such blemishes. another service vasari conferred on the fine arts yet remains to be noticed, and that is the establishment of the academy of design in florence, about the year , principally through his exertions. the society of s. luke there existed from the fourteenth century, but it had fallen into decay, and was almost extinct, when f. gio. angiolo montorsoli servita, a celebrated statuary, conceived the design of reviving it. he communicated his idea to giorgio, who so effectually recommended it to cosmo i., that, shortly after, it arose with new vigour, and became at the same time a charitable institution and an academy of the fine arts. the prince wished to be considered its head, and d. vincenzio borghini was appointed his representative in transacting his ordinary business, which situation was afterwards filled by cav. gaddi, by baccio valori, and successively by some of the most accomplished gentlemen of the city; an arrangement maintained by the sovereigns down to the present day. the chapter house of the nunziata, "decorated with the sculpture and pictures of the best masters" of the age, was granted to this college of artists for a hall, as we are informed by valori.[ ] another place was assigned for their meetings, and they have frequently experienced the liberality of succeeding princes. their rules were drawn up by the restorers of this institution, of whom vasari was one. he wrote concerning it to michelangiolo,[ ] and asserted that every member of this academy "was indebted to him for what he knew;" and indeed this academy in all its branches partakes strongly of his style. a similar doctrine, as we have observed, already prevailed at florence; but it would have been better that every one followed the master whom his genius pointed out. in the choice of a style nature ought to direct, not to follow; every one should make his election according to his talents. it is true that the error of the florentines is common to other nations; and has given rise to an opinion, that academies have had a baneful influence on the arts; since they have only tended to constrain all to follow the same path; and hence italy is found fruitful in adherents to systems, but barren in true painters. to me the institution of academies has always appeared highly useful, when conducted on the plan of that of the caracci, of which we shall treat under their school. in the mean time i return to the florentine school. the contemporaries of vasari were salviati and jacopo del conte, both of whom lived also with andrea del sarto, and bronzino, the scholar of pontormo. like giorgio, their genius led them to an imitation of michelangiolo. francesco de' rossi, called salviati, from the surname of his patron, was the fellow student of vasari, under andrea del sarto and baccio bandinelli. the last mentioned artist was an excellent sculptor, who usually taught design to students in painting, an art which, like verrocchio, he sometimes practised for amusement. while at rome, salviati, contracting an intimate friendship with giorgio, pursued the same studies, and adopted the same fundamental principles of the art. he finally became a painter more correct, more elevated, and more spirited than his companion, and vasari classes him among the best artists then in rome. there he was employed in the palace of his patron, in the farnese and riccio palaces, in the chancery, in the church of s. gio. decollato, and in various other places, where he filled extensive walls with historical frescos, an employment which was his chief delight. his invention was very fertile, his compositions varied, his architecture grand; he is one of the few who have united celerity of execution with scientific design, in which he was deeply versed, although occasionally somewhat extravagant. his best production now in florence is the battle and triumph of furius camillus, in the saloon of the old palace, a work full of spirit, that appears from the representations of armour, draperies, and roman customs, conducted by an able antiquary. there is also in the church of santa croce, a descent from the cross; to him a familiar subject, which he repeated at the panfili palace at rome, and in the _corpus domini_ at venice; and it may be seen in some private collections, in which his holy families and portraits are not rare. the octagonal picture of psyche, in the possession of the grimani family, is highly celebrated, and giorgio pronounces it the "finest picture in all venice." his remark would have been less invidious, had he said it was the most scientific in design; but who can concede to him that it appeared a paragon in that city? the features of psyche have nothing uncommon; and the whole, though well composed, and adorned with a beautiful landscape, and an elegant little temple, cannot be compared to the charming compositions of tiziano, or of paolo veronese, in which we sometimes behold, as dante would express it, "the whole creation smile." the design of salviati was better than his colouring; and on this account he did not meet with success at venice; on his going to france he was but little employed, and is now less sought after and esteemed than tiziano or paolo. in ornamental arts such as poetry and painting, it would seem that mankind are more easily contented with a mediocrity in knowledge, than with mediocrity in the art of pleasing. it was very correctly observed by salvator rosa, when requested to give his opinion upon the relative merits of design and colouring, that he had been able to meet with many santi di tito in the shops of the suburbs, at a very low price, but that he had never seen there a single specimen of bassano. salviati was the best artist of this epoch, and if he was little employed at florence, according to vasari, it arose partly from the envy of malevolent persons, partly from his own turbulent, restless, and haughty demeanour. he trained up, however, some artists who belong to this school. francesco del prato, an eminent goldsmith, and an excellent artist in the inlaying of metals, when advanced in life, imbibed the love of painting from salviati, and became his pupil. having a good idea of design, he was soon able to execute cabinet pictures; two of which, the plague of serpents and the limbo, are pronounced most beautiful by vasari. it is not improbable that some of the minor pictures ascribed to salviati may be the work of this artist, who is as little named as if he had never existed. bernardo buontalenti, a man of rare and universal genius, was instructed in miniature painting by clovio, and had salviati, vasari, and bronzino, for his masters in the other branches of painting. he was so successful that his works were in request by francis i., by the emperor, and the king of spain. his portrait is in the royal gallery, besides which little in florence can be ascribed to him with certainty, for he dedicated his time chiefly to architecture and to hydrostatics. ruviale spagnuolo, domenico romano, and porta della garfagnana, belong to the school of salviati. we shall notice the last among the venetians, among whom he lived. in the treatise of lomazzo, romolo fiorentino is assigned to the same school; the individual conjectured by p. orlandi to be the romolo cincinnato, a florentine painter, employed by philip ii. of spain. he is very honourably mentioned by palomino, together with his sons and pupils, diego and francesco, both eminent artists favoured by philip iv. and pope urban viii. by whom they were knighted. jacopino del conte, who is also noticed in the _abecedario pittorico_, under the name of jacopo del conte, and considered not as the same individual, but as two distinct artists, was little employed in florence, but in great request in rome. he was eminent as a portrait painter to all the popes and the principal nobility of rome, from the time of paul iii. to that of clement viii., in whose pontificate he died. his ability in composition may be discovered in the frescos in s. gio. decollato, and especially in the picture of the deposition in that place, a work which is reckoned among his finest productions. there the competition of his most distinguished countrymen stimulated his exertions for distinction. he was an imitator of michelangiolo, but in a manner so free, and a colouring so different, that it seems the production of another school. scipione gaetano, whom we shall consider in the third book of our history, was his scholar. of domenico beceri, a respectable pupil of puligo, and of some others of little note, i have nothing further to add. angiolo bronzino was another friend of vasari, nearly of the same age, and was enumerated among the more eminent artists, from the grace of his countenances, and the agreeableness of his compositions. he is likewise esteemed as a poet. his poems were printed along with those of berni; and some of his letters on painting are preserved in the collection of bottari.[ ] although the scholar and follower of pontormo, he also recals michelangiolo to our recollection. his frescos in the old palace are praised, adorning a chapel, on the walls of which he represented the fall of manna, and the scourge of the serpents, histories full of power and spirit; although the paintings on the ceiling do not correspond with them, being deficient in the line of perspective. some of his altar-pieces are to be seen in the churches of florence, several of them feebly executed, with figures of angels, whose beauty appears too soft and effeminate. there are many, on the other hand, extremely beautiful, such as his pietà at s. maria nuova, and likewise his limbo at santa croce, in an altar belonging to the noble family of riccasoli. this picture is better suited for an academy of design, from the naked figure, than for a church; but the painter was too much attached to michelangiolo to avoid imitating him even in this error. this picture has been lately very well repaired. many of his portraits are in italian collections of paintings, which are praiseworthy for their truth and spirit; but their character is frequently diminished by the colour of the flesh, which sometimes partakes of a leaden hue, at other times appears of a dead white, on which the red appears like rouge. but a yellowish tint is the predominant colour in his pictures, and his greatest fault is a want of relief. the succeeding artists, who are chiefly florentines, are named by vasari in the obsequies of bonarruoti, in the memoirs of the academicians, written about the year , and in several other places. their works are scattered over the city, and many of them are to be found in the cloister of s. maria novella. if these semicircular pictures had not been retouched and altered, this place would be, with regard to this epoch, what the cloister of the olivetines in bologna is to that of the caracci; an era, indeed, more auspicious for the art, but not more interesting in an historical point of view. another collection, of which i have spoken in my description of the tenth cabinet of the royal gallery, is better preserved, and indeed is quite perfect. it now occupies another apartment. it consists of thirty-four fabulous and historical pictures, painted on the panels of a writing desk for prince francesco,[ ] by various artists of this epoch. vasari, to whom the work was entrusted, there represented andromeda delivered by perseus, and procured the assistance of the academicians, who thus emulated each other, and strove to recommend themselves to the court. most of them have put their names to their work;[ ] and, if the defects common to that age, or peculiar to the individual, are here and there visible in the work, it demonstrates that the light of painting was not yet extinguished in florence. nevertheless, i advise him who examines this collection, to suspend his judgment on the merits of those artists until he has considered their other productions in their own country or at rome, where some of them have a place in the choicest collections. they may be divided in several schools: we shall begin with that of angiolo. alessandro allori, the nephew and pupil of bronzino, whose surname he sometimes inscribed on his pictures, is reckoned inferior to his uncle. wholly intent upon anatomy, of which he gave fine examples in the tribune of the servi, and on which he composed a treatise for the use of painters, he did not sufficiently attend to the other branches of the art. some of his pictures in rome, representing horses, are beautiful; and his sacrifice of isaac, in the royal museum, is coloured almost in the flemish style. his power of expression is manifested by his picture of the woman taken in adultery in the church of the holy spirit. he was expert in portrait painting; but he abused this talent by introducing portraits in the modern costume in ancient histories, a fault not uncommon in that age. on the whole his genius appears to have been equal to every branch of painting; but it was unequally exercised, and consequently unequally expanded. he painted much for foreigners, and enjoyed the esteem of the ducal family, who employed him to finish the pictures at poggio a caiano, begun by andrea del sarto, franciabigio, and pontormo, and by them left more or less imperfect. opposite to these pictures he painted, from his own invention, the gardens of the hesperides, the feast of syphax, and titus flaminius dissuading the etolians from the achæan league; all which historical subjects, as well as those of cæsar and cicero, were chosen as symbols of similar events in the lives of cosmo and lorenzo de' medici. such was the manner of thinking in that age; and moderns personified in ancient heroes obtained a less direct, but higher honour from the art. giovanni bizzelli, a disciple of alessandro, of middling talents, painted in s. gio. decollato, at rome, and in some florentine churches. cristofano, a son of alessandro, became eminent; but he is to be considered hereafter. santi titi, of città san sepolcro, a scholar of bronzino and cellini, studied long at rome, whence he returned, with a style full of science and of grace. his beautiful is without much of the ideal; but his countenances exhibit a certain fulness, an appearance of freshness and of health, that is surpassed by none of those who took nature for their model. design was his characteristic excellence; and for this he was commended by his imitator, salvator rosa. in expression he has few superiors in other schools, and none in his own. his ornaments are judicious; and having practised architecture with applause, he introduced perspectives, that gave a dignity and charm to his compositions. he is esteemed the best painter of this epoch, and belongs to it rather from the time in which he lived than his style; if we except his colouring, which was too feeble, and without much relief. borghini, at once his critic and apologist, remarks that even in this department he was not deficient, when he chose to exert himself; and he seems to have studied it in the feast of emmaus, in the church of the holy cross at florence, in the resurrection of lazarus, in the cathedral of volterra, and in a picture at città di castello, in which he represents the faithful receiving the holy spirit from the hands of the apostles; a painting that may be viewed with pleasure, even after the three by raffaello which adorn that city. among his numerous pupils in design, we may reckon his son tiberio; but this artist attended less to the pursuits of his father, than to painting small portraits in vermilion, in which he had singular merit; these were readily received into the collection formed by cardinal leopold, which now forms a single cabinet in the royal museum. two other florentines are worthy of notice, viz. agostino ciampelli, who flourished in rome under clement viii.; and lodovico buti, who remained at florence. they resemble twins by the similarity between them; less scientific, less inventive, and less able in composition, than titi, they possessed fine ideas, were correct in design, and cheerful in their colouring, beyond the usage of the florentine school; but they were somewhat crude, and at times profuse in the use of red tints not sufficiently harmonized. frescos by the first may be seen in the sacristy at rome, and the chapel of s. andrea al gesù, and an oil painting of the crucifixion at s. prassede, in his best manner. a visitation, with its two companions, at s. stephen of pescia, may be reckoned among his choicest works; to which the vicinity of tiarini does little injury. the second may be recognised by a picture of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, abounding in figures, which is in the royal gallery. baccio ciarpi, a pupil of the same school, is celebrated as the master of berrettini, and deserves to be commended for his diligence and correctness. he was thought worthy of being employed at la concezione at rome, a most splendid gallery, painted by the greatest artists of that age. a portrait of one andrea boscoli, his pupil and imitator, remains in the royal museum of florence, and many of his paintings with horses are dispersed through the city. he travelled into different parts, leaving various specimens of his art in different countries, at s. ginesio, at fabriano, and other places in the district of piceno. his largest work is a s. john the baptist in the attitude of prayer, at the teresiani of rimino; a picture that shews invention, but it was unknown to baldinucci, who compiled anecdotes of this artist. constantino de' servi is conjectured by baldinucci to be a scholar of titi. he is well known to have been originally his imitator, and having gone into germany, there adopted the style of pourbus. in foreign countries he seems to have painted few portraits, a branch in which he had greater merit than employment. his celebrity was greater as a master architect and engraver of gems, as we shall notice in a subsequent epoch. in closing the account of the school of santi, it may be proper to observe, that his example reclaimed a great proportion of the succeeding generation, and inclined artists to mitigate the severity of the style of michelangiolo, by introducing more grace in the contours, and a better taste in the heads. batista naldini holds the third rank among the scholars of bronzino. he was first the pupil of pontormo, afterwards of bronzino, and having resided some time at rome, he was chosen by vasari as the companion of his labours in the old palace, and retained by him about fourteen years. the historian makes honourable mention of naldini, even when a young man, and denominates him a painter skilful and vigorous, expeditious and indefatigable. naldini obtained similar praise in rome from baglione, especially for the chapel of john the baptist, at trinità de' monti, which he painted with the history of the saint. he painted many pictures in his native city, some of which, as the taking down from the cross, and the purification of the virgin, are commended by borghini for the colouring and the design, for the disposition, the perspective, and the attitudes. the defects observable in most of his pictures are, that the knees are rather too much swollen, the eyes too open, and marked with a certain fierceness, by which he may be generally recognized; his colouring is also characteristic, and those changeable hues in which he delighted more than any other artist of the age. he taught according to the method then pursued by most masters, which was to employ his scholars in designing after the chalk drawings of michelangiolo, and to give them his own finished pictures to copy; for, like bees, artists were exceedingly anxious to work in secret, and ready to wound all who overlooked them. baldinucci has recorded several instances of this peculiarity. from these circumstances the fault of the scholars of naldini was stiffness, the common failing of that age; they had little of that free touch and taste in colouring which he possessed, but yet they deserve to be recorded. giovanni balducci, called also cosci, from the surname of his maternal uncle, was long his assistant. his last supper in the cathedral, the finding of the cross at the crocetta, his historical compositions in the cloister of the domecans at florence, and in s. prassede at rome, prove his genius to have been more refined than that of his master. to second the latter, he now and then, perhaps, went beyond his province, and to some, his attitudes at times appear affected. he resided and died at naples, and he is deservedly praised by the historians of that city. cosimo gamberucci appears to have aimed at a totally different object. on examining a great part of his works, we may say of him, as was observed of the ancient artist, that he has not sacrificed to the graces. he seems finally to have improved, for he has left some fine pictures, worthy of the following epoch. peter healing the lame in s. pier maggiore, a picture in the style of the caracci, is the work of his hand. the servitian monks have a good picture by him in their public hall; and his holy families and cabinet pictures of a high class are to be met with in the city. the cav. francesco currado had a still better opportunity of improvement, for he lived ninety-one years, constantly employed in painting and in teaching. one of his best pictures is on the altar of s. saverio, in the church of s. giovannino. he was very eminent in small figures, and in this style he painted the history of the magdalen, and especially the martyrdom of s. tecla, of the royal gallery, which are works of his best time. in the same school we may include valerio marucelli, and cosimo daddi, both artists of some merit; the second is memorable for his celebrated pupil volterrano, in whose native place he married, and two of his altar-pieces still remain there. giovanni maria butteri, and lorenzo dello sciorina, were two other scholars of bronzino, and assisted vasari in the above mentioned pictures on the escrutoire, and in his preparations for festivals. the first imitated vasari, his master, and titi; but at all times his colouring was inharmonious; the second has little to boast of beyond his design. both are honourably mentioned among the academicians; as is also stefano pieri, who assisted vasari in the cupola of the metropolitan church. the sacrifice of isaac, of the pitti palace, is ascribed to him, and it is the best of his works executed at rome, which are censured as hard and dry by baglione. cristofano dell'altissimo, whose talent lay in portrait painting, may be added to these. giovio had formed the celebrated collection of portraits of illustrious men, which is still preserved at como, though now divided between the two families of the conti giovio, one of which possesses the portraits of learned men, the other those of warriors. from this collection, which the prelate styled his museum, that still existing at mondragone was copied, and also the collection now in the florentine gallery, by the labours of cristofano, who was sent for that purpose to como by cosmo i. he copied the features of those celebrated men, but attended little to other circumstances; whence it happens that the giovian collection exhibits many very dissimilar manners, the medicean one alone; but the features of the originals are very faithfully expressed. michele di ridolfo del ghirlandaio instructed many artists in this epoch. from his school, proceeded girolamo macchietti, or g. del crocifissaio, the assistant of vasari for six years, who afterwards studied for two years at rome, though already an adept in the art. his example merits imitation, for that school speaks more to the eye than the ear; and he who there employs his eyes judiciously, cannot fail to reap the advantage. after his return to florence he finished a few valuable pictures with care and assiduity, among which may be noticed an epiphany for the chapel of the marquis della stufa, at s. lorenzo, and a martyrdom of s. lorenzo s. maria novella, which is greatly praised by lomazzo. borghini also, after commending the beauty, the expression, and the picture in general, scarcely found any thing to censure. it is certainly among the most striking pictures in that church. macchietti also went to spain, and was not a little employed at naples and at benevento, where he is said to have painted his best pictures. in the dizionario storico of the professors of the fine arts at urbino (colucci tom. xxxi.) i find mention that girolamo macchietti produced some battle-pieces for the hall of the albani at s. giovanni; but i see no reason why he should be admitted to a place among native artists belonging to that city, or to the state of urbino. vasari mentions andrea del minga, then a youth, as contemporary with macchietti; yet he is reckoned by orlandi and bottari, the fellow student of michelangiolo. he was among the last pupils of ridolfo del ghirlandaio, when the school was chiefly under the direction of michele; and hence he rather followed the latter than the former. his own works are by no means among the most excellent. in the prayer in the garden, which remains in the church of the holy cross, he rivals any of his contemporaries; and hence it is alleged, that he was assisted in this picture by three of his friends. francesco traballesi, mentioned by baglione as the painter of some historical frescos in the greek church at rome, was a pupil of michele, but lived too short a time to do him honour. the fable of danaë, on the writing desk, is the work of his brother bartolommeo. about this time lived bernardino barbatelli, surnamed poccetti, an artist omitted by vasari in the school of michele, and in the catalogue of the academicians; because at that period he painted only grotesques and fronts of buildings, in which, though he had arrived at great eminence, he had not the reputation he afterwards attained in rome as an architect, from assiduously studying the works of raffaello, and of other great masters. he subsequently returned to his native place, not only a pleasing and graceful figurist, but rich and learned in his compositions; hence he was enabled to adorn his historical subjects with beautiful landscapes, with sea-views, with fruit, and flowers, not to mention the magnificence of his draperies, and tapestries, which he imitated to admiration. very few of his pictures on panel or on canvass, but many of his frescos, remain in almost every corner of florence; nor does he yield to many italian masters in this art. pietro da cortona used to express his astonishment that he was in his time less esteemed than he merited; and mengs never came to florence without going to study him, and diligently searching after his most forgotten frescos. he often painted with careless haste, like a class of poets whose minds are imbued with parnassian fury and fine imagery, and who recite verses with little preparation, and with little trouble. he is, however, always to be admired, always shews facility and freedom, with that resolute and firm pencil which never makes an erroneous touch; a circumstance from which he has been denominated the paul of his school. he often studied and made great preparation for his works, and corrected his outline as one would do in miniature painting. whoever wishes to estimate the powers of this artist should examine the miracle of the drowned restored to life in the cloister of the santissima nunziata, a picture reckoned by some connoisseurs among the best in the city. his fresco works are to be met with nearly throughout all tuscany, and his circular pictures in the cloister of the servi at pistoja, are greatly commended. maso manzuoli, or m. di s. friano, a scholar of pierfrancesco di jacopo and of portelli, is esteemed equal to naldini and allori by vasari. nor will this appear strange to any one who beholds his visitation, which, for many years, decorated s. pier maggiore, and was afterwards carried to rome, where it was deposited in the gallery of the vatican. it was painted when he was about thirty years of age; and, in the opinion of the historian, it abounds with beauty and grace in the figures, in the draperies, in the architecture, and in every other circumstance. this is his finest work, and is even among the best of that age. in his other pictures at s. trinità, in the ducal gallery, and elsewhere, he is something dry; and may be compared to some writers who, though they offend not against grammar, are not entitled to the praise of eloquence. alessandro fei, or a. del barbiere, was his companion, and partly his scholar. this artist, who painted in private, received his first instruction in the school of ghirlandaio, and of piero francia. he had a bold and fertile genius, adapted to large historical frescos, in which he introduced fine architecture and grotesques. in his pictures he attended more to design and expression than to colouring; except in some pieces, supposed to be his last productions, and executed after the reformation of the art by cigoli. his picture of the flagellation in s. croce is highly approved by borghini. baldinucci admires him, especially in small historical subjects, such as, amongst the pieces on the writing desk, are the daniel at the feast of belshazzar, and that of the goldsmith's art. federigo zuccaro may be reckoned among the instructors of the artists of this epoch; for whilst employed in painting the cupola of the cathedral, where vasari had only finished a few figures at his death, he taught painting to bartolommeo carducci, who became an architect and statuary under amannati, and an artificer in stucco under another master. carducci acquired distinction by those talents in the court of his catholic majesty, where he was introduced by zuccaro; and where he established himself and his younger brother and pupil, vincenzio. both are mentioned by palomino among the eminent artists who painted in the court of spain. both must be well known there; especially the latter, who lived but little at florence, and who painted more pictures when in the service of philip iii. and philip iv. than any of his predecessors or successors. he printed a dialogue in the spanish tongue, _de las excelencias de la pintura_, from which baldinucci has quoted some passages in the account of this artist. of some of the artists mentioned by vasari as his assistants in the decoration of the palace, in the preparations for the marriage of prince francesco, in the funeral obsequies of bonarruoti, or in the collection of pictures on the writing desk, the masters are unknown; and the knowledge would be of little consequence. such artists are domenico benci, and tommaso del verrocchio, whom he names in his third volume at page , and federigo di lamberto, a fleming, called f. del padovano, whom he had a little before noticed as a new citizen of florence, and as a considerable ornament to the academy. omitted by vasari, but inscribed on the writing desk, we find the names of niccolo betti, who painted the story of cæsar; of vittor casini, who there represented the forge of vulcan; of mirabello cavalori, who pourtrayed lavinia sacrificing, and also the emblems of the art of weaving; of jacopo coppi, who there painted the family of darius, and the invention of gunpowder. i suspect that they were all scholars of michele; and vasari has more than once thus generally noticed them. perhaps cavalori is the salincorno mentioned in another place, and coppi is believed to be that jacopo di meglio, who is more severely treated by borghini than any other in the church of the holy cross; and not without reason; for his _ecce homo_ in that place has all the defects of this epoch. whether coppi is to be identified with this person or not, he cannot be equally reprehended for his pictures on the writing desk; and in s. salvator at bologna, he produced a picture of the redeemer crucified by the jews, that might vie with the best pictures in that city previous to the time of the caracci, and is yet one of those most full of subject and most carefully studied. he imitated vasari in colouring, and in propriety of invention, in variety of figures, and in diligence in every part, i have seen no picture of vasari by which it is surpassed. it bears the date of , together with his name. there is an account of two of his frescos in the guida di roma; one of which, very copious in subject, is placed in the tribune of s. pietro in vincoli. to the same period belongs the name of piero di ridolfo, by whom there is a large altar-piece, consisting of the ascension, and bearing the date ; it is supposed that he took his name from the last of the ghirlandai, in whose service he may have been during his early life. whoever may be desirous of adding to the list of names, will find a great number in a letter of borghini to the prince d. francesco (lett. pittor. tom. i. p. ), in which he suggests a plan for the preparations of the prince's nuptials, as well as the artists best qualified to conduct them. the names, however, i here give would be more than amply sufficient, were it not my wish to illustrate vasari by every means in my power. after considering the artists of florence, on turning to the rest of tuscany, we find in many places other associates of giorgio, who, perhaps, had as many assistants in painting as bricklayers in architecture. stefano veltroni, of monte sansavino, his cousin, was a man of slow parts, but very respectable in the art. he assisted vasari in the vineyard of pope julius; or rather he superintended the grotesque works in that place; and followed his cousin to naples, to bologna, and to florence. i know not whether orazio porta, likewise a native of sansavino, and alessandro fortori of arezzo, ever left tuscany; they appear to have painted chiefly in their native city and its vicinity. bastiano flori and fra salvatore foschi, both natives of arezzo, were employed in the roman chancery, along with bagnacavallo, and the spaniards ruviale and bizzerra. andrea aretino, the scholar of daniello, lived at a later period, or at least until .[ ] about this time città san sepolcro was a seminary for painters, who were either wholly or chiefly educated by raffaellino; and from this place vasari invited not only the master, but several of the scholars to assist him in his labours. he was greatly assisted by cristoforo gherardi, surnamed doceno, whose life he has written. this artist was his right hand, if we may be allowed the expression, in almost every place where he was much employed. gherardi followed his designs with a freedom resulting from a genius pliant, copious, and natural, adapted to ornamental works. such was his talent for managing fresco colours, that vasari pronounces himself his inferior: but the grotesques of the vitelli palace, which are wholly his own, shew him not to have been more vigorous in his colouring. the oil picture of the visitation in the church of s. domenico, at città di castello, is entirely his own; but vasari does not mention it. the upper part of the picture of s. maria del popolo, at perugia, is likewise his; and is no less elegant and graceful, than the lower part, which is the work of lattanzio della marca, is firm and vigorous. doceno died in his native place in ; and cosmo i. honoured his tomb with a bust of marble, and an epitaph, in which he is said to be _pingendi arte præstantissimus_, and vasari, who had approved of his labours in the old palace, is called _hujus artis facile princeps_. it is written in the name of all the tuscan painters,[ ] and is alone sufficient to demonstrate the state of this school, and the taste of cosmo. after this specimen, it is not surprising that the prince neglected to have his portrait painted by tiziano, whom he would esteem little in comparison to his own vasari. it is a true observation that virtues are not hereditary, or, as it is expressed by the poet, they rarely spring up again in the branches. leo x. was the patron of the arts, and he knew how to appreciate them; but cosmo encouraged, without possessing taste to discriminate. the three cungi (or congi, as some will have it) are also claimed by san sepolcro. gio. batista was the servant of vasari for seven years; lionardo is described to us as an eminent designer, in the life of perino, and in that of zuccaro is said to have been a painter employed in the pontifical palace about , along with his countryman durante del nero. for a knowledge of the third brother, francesco, i am indebted to my learned friend sig. annibale lancisi; and i have since received more particular information from sig. giachi, who gives an account of an altar-piece of s. sebastiano, in the cathedral at volterra, together with the receipt for its purchase money in , where he is called _francesco di leonardo cugni da borgo_. at rome we cannot judge properly of their style, but it may be discovered in their own country, in the church of s. rocco, at the convent of the osservanti, and in other places. their compositions display great simplicity, their ideas are chiefly drawn from nature, and they attended sufficiently to colouring. raffaele scaminossi, a scholar of raffaellino, painted in a similar but somewhat more lively manner. i learn nothing of giovanni paolo del borgo, except that he was the assistant of vasari in his very hasty labours in the chancery, about . he cannot be the gio. de' vecchi who painted so much in rome, as we are informed by baglione; and who chiefly excelled at caprarola, when contending with taddeo zuccaro, and in the church of s. lorenzo in damaso, in the various histories of the martyr. he appears to have arrived at a later period, as did the three alberti, who were of a family in san sepolcro, abounding in painters. they went to study at rome, and easily formed themselves on the style common to artists in the time of gregory xiii. there they took up their abode, and there died, after having executed many works, especially in fresco, in that city, and also some memorials of their art in their native country. the cathedral contains a nativity by durante, a subject which he handled better in the vallicella of rome, and which is, perhaps, his best performance in that city: in others he is often languid, both in design and colouring, and appears rather a laborious artist than a man of genius. cherubino, the reputed son of michele, and the assistant of daniel di volterra,[ ] was a celebrated engraver on copper, and from this art he derived great assistance in design. although late in applying to painting, he obtained a name in those times. his proportions were light and spirited; his choirs of angels were agreeable and original; his penciling and whole composition were dexterous and spontaneous. such is the character of his trinity in the cathedral of borgo, in which place there remains the façade of a palace, well conceived, ornamented with arms, genii, and other fanciful devices. he painted the ceiling of the chapel of minerva in rome with various ornaments and figures, on a golden ground; in that city, however, he generally assisted his younger brother giovanni, who introduced a new era in perspective; not only by his works, existing in the houses of private individuals at san sepolcro, and other cities, but by the fresco perspectives which he executed at rome. he claims admiration in the sacristy of the church of s. gio. laterano, where he imitated the salient and receding angles of architecture; and still more in the grand clementine salon, the most prodigious and exquisite work in perspective then existing. baglione highly commends the s. clement and other figures with which it is ornamented; and remarks that they are admirably foreshortened, and are superior to those of cherubino, who was not so eminent in perspectives. baglione mentions a francesco, the son of durante, who died at rome. i am uncertain whether he is the pierfrancesco to whom we attribute the ascension, in the church of s. bartholomew at borgo, with some pictures of no great merit in the church of s. john, and in other places. history mentions also donato, girolamo, cosimo, and alessandro alberti, of whom i can collect nothing further. the writers of prato exalt their countryman, domenico giuntalocchio, pupil to soggi, in whose life vasari mentions domenico more as an engineer than a painter. he describes him as a correct portrait painter, but so extremely tardy in his works in fresco, that he became tiresome to the aretini, with whom he for some time dwelt. i cannot point out any genuine picture from his hand; but his memory is still fresh in the minds of his fellow citizens, because, instead of leaving his native place ornamented with his pictures, he left , crowns as a fund to be appropriated to the education of young artists. after the death of daniel, his scholar and relation giovanni paolo rossetti, retired to volterra, and, as is attested by vasari, executed works of great merit in this his native place; among which we may reckon the deposto, in the church of s. dalmatius. at a short distance from the city is a place which gave name to niccolò dalle pomarance, of the family of circignani. vasari describes him as a young man of ability. he neglects to inform us who was his master; but he appears to have been titi, whom he assisted in the great salon of the belvidere palace. he grew old in rome, where he left numerous specimens of the labours of his pencil, which he employed with freedom, and at a good price. he shewed himself greatly superior to the artists of this period, in some of his works, as in the cupola of s. pudenziana. cavalier roncalli was a native of the same place; there are pictures by them both at pomarance; where there are also some by antonio circignani, the son of the former, an able artist, though little known. all three will again be treated of in the third book. pistoia possessed at the same time two scholars of ricciarelli; biagio da cutigliano, noticed by vasari,[ ] and p. biagio betti teatino, a miniature painter, sculptor, and historical painter of merit, whom baglione represents as constantly employed in the service of the church and convent to which he belonged. leghorn gave birth to jacopo rosignoli, pupil of an unknown master, who lived in piedmont, where his works must be sought. baccio lomi, whose style much resembles that of zuccaro, remained at pisa: he owes much of his skill and of his reputation to his two nephews, as we shall afterwards relate. though unknown beyond the limits of his native country, he must not be passed over in silence. the assumption, in the residence of the canons, and some of his other pictures, participate of the hardness of the age, but exhibit very good design and colouring. paolo guidotti distinguished himself in the neighbouring state of lucca, as a painter of genius and of spirit, no less than a man of letters, and well grounded in anatomical knowledge; but his taste was not polished and refined. he came to rome in the distracted times of gregory and sixtus, and lived there during the pontificate of paul v., who created him a knight, and conservator of rome: he further permitted him to assume the additional name of borghese, the family name of the pontiff. many of his paintings in fresco are preserved at rome, in the vatican library, in the apostolic chamber, and in several churches: the artists with whom he was associated, prove that he was reputed a good artist. several of his pictures are in his native place; and there is a large piece representing the republic, in the palace. girolamo massei pursued a similar track, only confining himself to the art of painting. baglione, who gave an account of him, introduces him into rome as an artist, already much commended for his accuracy; to which taia adds, that he was both a good designer and colourist; so much so as to lead us to distinguish him from the crowd of gregorian and sixtine practitioners, in the same way that he was chosen by p. danti to ornament the chambers of the vatican; of which more hereafter. he returned to his native place in his old age, not to employ himself anew, but to die in tranquillity among his friends. benedetto brandimarte, of lucca, is mentioned by orlandi. i saw a decollation of s. john by this artist in the church of s. peter, at genoa, which was but a miserable performance; a single production, however, is not sufficient to decide the character of an artist. the name of a pietro ferabosco is mentioned only by the continuator of orlandi; he is supposed to have been a native of lucca, though he is referred to the academy of rome, where he probably pursued his first studies; i say _probably_, because the excellence of his colouring in the titian manner, would lead me rather to include him among the venetian artists. there are three of his half-length figures, together with his name, and the date of , reported as being in the possession of a gentleman in portugal; where he resided, most likely, a longer period than in italy. we have already noticed some tuscans who acquired distinction in the inferior branches of painting; such as veltroni, constantino de' servi, zucchi, and alberti: antonio tempesti, of florence, a scholar both of titi and stradano, was among the first to acquire a celebrated name in italy for landscapes and for battles. he practised engraving on copper, prepared cartoons for tapestry, and gave scope to his genius in the most fanciful inventions in grotesque and ornamental work. he surpassed his master in spirit, and was inferior to none, not even to the venetians. in a letter on painting by the marquis giustiniani,[ ] he is adduced as an example of great spirit in design, a gift conferred by nature, and not to be acquired by art. he attempted few things on a large scale, and was not so successful as in small pictures. the marquis niccolini, the order of the nunziata, and several florentine families, possess some of his battles painted on alabaster, in which he appears the precursor of borgognone, who is said to have studied him attentively. he most frequently painted in fresco, as at caprarola, in the este villa at tivoli, and in many parts of rome, from the time of gregory xiii. most of the historical pictures in the vatican gallery are the work of his hands; the figures are a palm and a half high, and display astonishing variety and spirit, accompanied by beautiful architecture and landscapes, with every species of decoration. he is not, however, very correct; and his tints are sometimes too much inclined to a brownish hue; but all such faults are pardonable in him, as being occasioned by that pictoric fury which inspired him, that fancy which hurried him from earth, and conducted him through novel and sublime regions, unattempted by the vulgar herd of artists. [footnote : "all painters seem to worship him as their great master, prince, and god of design." it is thus monsig. claudio tolomei writes in a letter to apollonio filareto, towards the end of the fifth book. such is the opinion of the artists of the leonine age, whatever may be the judgment passed in the age of pius vi.] [footnote : baldinucci, tom. ix. p. .] [footnote : he executed a picture of s. sigismund for the church of s. lorenzo, at the desire of the noble family of martelli, which delighted the duke cosmo. this picture ought to be removed from the altar, for the tints are fading.] [footnote : we learn from pliny, that filosseno eretrio, celeritatem præceptoris (nicomachi) secutus breviores etiamnum quasdam picturæ vias, et compendiarias invenit. (lib. xxxv. cap. .) we perceive, however, from the context, that his pictures were no less perfect on that account; and i believe that those compendious means were more particularly connected with the mechanism of the art.] [footnote : see lettere pittoriche, tom. ii. let. .] [footnote : bald. tom. ix. p. .] [footnote : see his "description of the preparations for the marriage of the prince d. francesco, of tuscany." it is inserted in volume xi. of the ed. of siena, which we frequently allude to.] [footnote : "treatises by the cav. giorgio vasari, painter and architect of arezzo, upon the designs painted by him at florence, in the palace of their serene highnesses, &c.; together with the design of the painting commenced by him in the cupola." it is a posthumous work, supplied by his nephew giorgio vasari, who published it in at florence. it was republished at arezzo in , in to.] [footnote : he had been well imbued with literature at arezzo, and, when a youth at florence, "he spent two hours every day along with ippolito and alessandro de' medici, under their master pierio." vasari nella vita del salviati.] [footnote : see lett. pittoriche, tom. iii. lett. .] [footnote : bottari adduces an authentic document of this in his preface, page .] [footnote : in the dedicatory letter to cosmo i., prefixed to second edit.] [footnote : see lett. pittor. tom. iii. let. .] [footnote : it is founded also on vasari's remark, in his life of frate: "_there is likewise a portrait by f. gio. da fiesole, whose life we have given, which is in the part of the beati_;" which cannot, observes bottari, apply to any other except d. silvano razzi, author of the "vite dei s. s. e beati toscani;" among which is found that of b. giovanni. but this indication would be little; or at least it is not all. the document which clearly reveals the fact, has been pointed out to me by the polite attention of sig. luigi de poirot, secretary to the royal finances; and this is in the "vite de' ss. e bb. dell' ordine de' frati predicatori di serafino razzi domenicano," published after the death of vasari, in florence, . in these, treating of works in the fine arts in s. domenico at bologna, he adds; "we cannot give a particular account of these histories, but whoever is desirous of it may consult the whole, in the lives of the painters, sculptors, and architects, written, _for the most part_, by d. silvano razzi, my brother, for the cav. giorgio vasari of arezzo, his very intimate friend." after such information, we must suppose that vasari, having communicated his materials to this monk, received from him a great number of lives, that boast such elegant prefaces and fine reflections; but that he here and there retouched them; adding things either from haste or inadvertency, not well connected with the context, or repeated elsewhere. and in this way we may account for the many inconsistencies to be met with in a number of lives, very finely written, but containing passages that do not appear to come from the same pen, and frequently make the author contradict himself.] [footnote : it is to be observed that bottari wrote principally to mark the changes that the works described by vasari had undergone during years. in regard to the emendations pointed out by us, he declares in the preface, that he could not undertake them for want of time, health, books, and most of all, inclination. however, we are indebted for not a few to him, and also to p. guglielmo, though not equally so in every school. both are writers of merit; the former by his citations from printed works, the second for his information of mss. and unedited authors.] [footnote : tom. vii. p. .] [footnote : vide taia _descrizione del palazzo vaticano_, p. . zuccaro did not so readily pardon vasari, whose work he noted with severity: as did also one of the three caracci. lett. pittor. tom. iv. lett. .] [footnote : tom. viii. p. .] [footnote : p. .] [footnote : tom. viii. p. .] [footnote : "although i do not deny, that he shews himself a little too much the partizan, he ought not to be defrauded of his due praise, as is attempted by the ignorant and invidious; for the completion of such an elegant and finished history must have cost him great study and research, and demanded much ingenuity and discrimination." idea del tempio, &c. cap. iv.] [footnote : lett. pittor. tom. i. p. .] [footnote : lett. pittor. tom. iii. p. .] [footnote : he examines the question, then keenly contested, whether sculpture or painting was the most noble art. he decides in favour of his own profession: and there are some other letters in that volume on the opposite side of the question worthy of perusal. bonarruoti, on being asked this question by varchi, was unwilling to give a decision. (see tom. i. p. , and p. .) after bonarruoti's decease the contest was renewed, and prose and verse compositions appeared on both sides. lasca wrote in favour of painting, while cellini defended sculpture. (see notes to the rime of lasca, p. .) lomazzo is well worthy of notice in his treatise, lib. ii. p. , in which he gives a ms. of lionardo, drawn up at the request of lodovico sforza, where he prefers painting to the sister art.] [footnote : for an account of this writing desk, which was made during the life of cosmo i., see baldinucci, tom. x. p. and .] [footnote : we there may read allori, titi, buti, naldini, cosci, macchietti, minga, butteri, sciorini, sanfriano, fei, betti, casini, coppi, and cavalori; besides vasari, stradano, and poppi, already noticed.] [footnote : baglione, in the life of p. biagio betti.] [footnote : pictores hetrusci.] [footnote : vasari calls him michele fiorentino, and the painter of the slaughter of the innocents, which we have noticed at page . orlandi makes him the father of cherubino, an assertion which is not contradicted by bottari. i follow baglione, the contemporary of cherubino, who says that he was the son of alberto alberti, an eminent engraver on copper.] [footnote : vasari writes the name _da carigliano_, in which he has been followed by other writers on the art, including myself, until i was informed by sig. ansaldi that it ought really to be written _cutigliano_, taken from a considerable territory in the pistoiese.] [footnote : tom. vi. p. .] florentine school. epoch iv. _cigoli and his associates improve the style of painting._ whilst the florentines regarded michelangiolo and his imitators as their models, they experienced the fate of the poets of the fifteenth century, who fixed their eyes on petrarca and his followers alone; they contracted a strong similarity of style, and differed from each other only according to their individual talents and genius. as we have above remarked, they began to exhibit some diversity after the age of titi; but they were still languid colourists, and required to be impelled into another career. about the period had at length arrived, when they began to abandon the manner of their countrymen for that of foreign artists; and then, as we shall have occasion to shew in treating of this epoch, the florentine styles became firm and varied. this revolution originated with two young artists, lodovico cigoli and gregorio pagani. we learn from baldinucci, that, attracted by the celebrity of barocci, and a picture which he had recently sent from urbino to arezzo, which is now in the royal gallery at florence, they went together to see it; they examined it attentively, and were so captivated with the style, that they immediately renounced the manner of their master. passignano followed their steps, continues baldinucci, and cigoli, in his company, took a second journey as far as perugia, when barocci had completed his celebrated deposition from the cross; but here the historian fell into a chronological error, inasmuch as bellori, the accurate writer of barocci's life, describes his picture at perugia as anterior to that at arezzo by several years. in whatever way the mistake ought to be cleared up, it is certain that passignano promoted the views of cigoli. their example turned the rising generation from the old manner to a more vigorous style. this was more especially the case with empoli, with cav. curradi, and some of those above mentioned, who were followed by cristofano allori, and rosselli, artists that transmitted the new method to their new disciples. they did not, however, imitate barocci so much as correggio, who was the model of barocci. unable to visit lombardy, they studied the few copies of his pictures, and still fewer originals, that were to be met with in florence, in order to acquire his management of chiaroscuro, a branch of the art then neglected in florence, and even at rome. to this end they began to model in clay and wax; they wrought in plaster; they studied attentively the effects of light and shade; they paid less attention to practical rules, and more to nature. hence arose a new style which, in my opinion, is among the best hitherto attempted in italy; corrected upon the model of the florentine school; soft and well relieved on that of lombardy. if their forms had approached to grecian elegance, if their expression had been more refined, the improvement of painting, which about this time took place in italy, should have been ascribed no less to florence than to bologna. some favourable circumstances assisted the progress of the florentine school; among these we may mention a succession of princes friendly to the art;[ ] the readiness with which the celebrated galileo imparted to artists his discoveries, and the laws of perspective; the travels of several florentine masters to venice, and through lombardy; and the long residence of foreign artists, eminent as colourists, at the court of florence. but it was chiefly owing to ligozzi, who studied under the venetian masters, then considered as the best in italy, and who animated the old florentine style with greater spirit and brilliancy than it had hitherto displayed. after noticing the good style of that period, we must not omit to mention one less praiseworthy; a sombre manner, which usurped the place of the other, and at this day renders many pictures of that period of little or no value. some ascribe the fault to the method of mixing the colours, which was everywhere changed; and hence it is not peculiar to the florentines, but is found diffused over italy. it was partly owing likewise to the rage for chiaroscuro carried to excess. it is the characteristic of every school of long standing to carry to an erroneous excess the fundamental maxims of its master: this we have remarked in the preceding epoch, this we shall find exemplified in every period of painting, and this, if it were consistent with our present undertaking, we might demonstrate to have happened in literature; for a good rule extravagantly pursued leads to the corruption of taste. we shall now direct our attention to the fourth epoch, in which, omitting the two older authorities, vasari and borghini, we shall chiefly follow baldinucci, who was acquainted with the artists we are now to consider, or with their successors.[ ] lodovico cardi da cigoli, the scholar of santi di tito, first awakened his countrymen to a nobler style, as we have already observed. the additional observation of baldinucci, that he perhaps surpassed all his contemporaries, and that few or none derived such benefit as he did, from the study of correggio, will not readily be granted by those who are conversant with schedone, the caracci, or even barocci, when they chose to imitate the manner of that great master. from the pictures that have reached our time, cigoli appears to have acquired a fine effect of light and shade from correggio; to have united this to a scientific design, to a judicious perspective, the rules of which were previously taught him by buontalenti, and to a vivacity of colouring superior to his countrymen, among whom he unquestionably holds a high rank. his works, however, exhibit not that contrast of colouring, that mellowness and clearness, that grace in foreshortenings and features, that characterize the ornament of the lombard school. in short he was the inventor of a style always beautiful, but not always equal; especially if we compare his early works with his pictures executed after his visit to rome. his general colouring savours of the school of lombardy, his draperies sometimes resemble those of paolo veronese, and he often rivals the bold style of guercino. independent of the great number of his pictures in the royal gallery, and many in the possession of the noble family of pecori, there are a few in some private houses in florence. the following are his most esteemed pictures: the trinity, in s. croce; the s. alberto, in s. maria maggiore; the martyrdom of st. stephen, in the nunnery of monte domini, which pietro da cortona considers one of the finest pictures in florence. of the same class is the picture which he placed in the church of the conventualists at cortona, in which s. anthony is represented in the act of converting an unbeliever, by a miracle of a mule that is seen kneeling before the holy sacrament: in this piece he aspired at surpassing any work of art in that highly decorated city. in the vatican he painted s. peter healing the lame, a wonderful production, which, among the pictures in rome, was reckoned by sacchi next in excellence to the transfiguration by raffaello, and the s. girolamo by domenichino. the florentine school may well be proud of this opinion, pronounced as it was by a profound connoisseur, by no means usually lavish of his commendations. this masterpiece, which obtained him the honour of knighthood, is, however, utterly ruined by the dampness of the church, and the ignorance of one who undertook to repair it: but his frescos in the church of s. maria maggiore at rome still remain; and there, by some error in perspective, he appears inferior to himself;[ ] nor was he permitted to retouch them, notwithstanding that he employed both interest and entreaties to that effect. fortune, in some degree, persecuted this great artist; for had those frescos perished, and that oil painting remained to our times, cigoli would have enjoyed a higher fame, and baldinucci obtained more credit. andrea comodi and giovanni bilivert, nearly approached cigoli; aurelio lomi followed at a greater distance. of the latter, i shall speak among the pisan artists, a few pages further on; and of two romans, belonging to the same school, in the third book. comodi, the associate rather than the scholar of cigoli, is almost unknown at florence; but there are many of his copies after celebrated masters, which often pass for originals, both in that city and at rome. this was his peculiar talent; in this he was unrivalled; and it employed his best years. he produced, however, several original works that are highly valuable for the design, the exquisite finish, and the strong body of colouring they display. in these we may trace the friend of cigoli, and the copyist of raffaello. they are chiefly madonnas, and are greatly admired for the disposition of the fingers, which are somewhat spread out, for the graceful slender neck, and a certain virgin air peculiarly his own. the corsini family at rome possess a very fine one. some of his fresco pictures remain in the church of s. vitale, in that city; and there is a picture of the titular saint in s. carlo a' catinari, which appears dark and cloudy; an uncommon circumstance with so good a colourist. gio. bilivert is a name which we in vain look for in orlandi, who has transformed him into two painters, one of whom he calls antonio biliverti, and the other, in imitation of baglione, whose knowledge of him was inaccurate, gio. ballinert; both florentines, and pupils of cigoli. like the preceding artist, bilivert is not always equal to himself. he finished some pictures that had been left imperfect by cigoli, to whose design and colouring he endeavoured to unite the expression of titi, and a more avowed and frequent imitation of the ornaments of paolo veronese. bilivert is not sufficiently choice in heads; but he abounds in expression, as may be seen at s. gaetano and s. marco, where there are many of his historical pictures, particularly the raising of the cross, esteemed one of his best performances. those pieces which he engaged to execute, and in which he never appears able to satisfy himself, are repeated by his scholars: sometimes inscribed with the initials of his name, especially when he himself retouched them; at other times they are without an epigraph. none of his productions are so worthy of being copied as joseph with potiphar's wife; which arrests the eye of every spectator in the ducal gallery. many copies of it are to be found in florence; it may be seen in foreign collections, in the barberini palace at rome, in the obizzo collection at cattaio, and in several other places. the ornamented style of bilivert had many imitators, whose works, in galleries and in private houses, would pass for those of venetian artists, had they greater spirit and a better colouring. bartolommeo salvestrini is at their head; but he was cut off in his prime, by the plague of , so disastrous to italy and the art. orazio fidani, an assiduous artist, and skilled in the style of his master, painted much at florence; where his tobias, that was finished for the fraternity of scala, but is now removed, is especially commended. francesco bianchi buonavita was engaged in few public works. he was chiefly employed in copying ancient pictures, which the court presented to foreign princes, and in furnishing cabinets with little historical pieces, that were at that time in great request in countries beyond the alps. they were painted on jasper, agate, lapis lazzuli, and other hard stones; the spots in which assisted in forming the shadows of the pictures. agostino melissi contributed much to the tapestry of the ducal family, by furnishing cartoons from the works of andrea del sarto, and also some of his own invention. he likewise possessed a genius for oil painting; in which branch his s. peter at the gate of pilate, which he painted for the noble family of gaburri, is particularly praised by baldinucci. francesco montelatici, by some supposed a pisan, by others a florentine, and surnamed cecco bravo, from his quarrelsome disposition, abandoned the style of bilivert, or at least mixed it with that of passignano. he was a fanciful and spirited designer, and not a bad colourist. a fine painting of s. niccolo vescovo, by this artist, is to be seen at the church of s. simone; but his works are rare in churches, for he was chiefly employed in painting for private, and sometimes for royal collections. he died painter to the court of inspruck. giovanni maria morandi remained but a little time with bilivert, and on going to rome, adopted the style of that school. gregorio pagani was the son of francesco, who died young; but was highly esteemed by his countrymen. he had studied the works of polidoro and of michelangiolo, at rome, and executed admirable imitations of them for private gentlemen in florence. gregorio himself could scarcely distinguish them. he received the rudiments of his art from titi, but was initiated in a better style by cigoli. strangers praised him as a second cigoli, whilst his country possessed at the carmine the picture of the finding of the cross, which has been engraved; but when the painting, with the church, was consumed by fire, no great work of his remained in public, except a few of his frescos; one of which, though somewhat injured by time, is an ornament to the cloister of s. maria novella. he is rarely to be met with in florentine collections, as he chiefly painted for foreigners. of his school i here say nothing: it only produced one eminent pupil; but this one was so conspicuous that he may be said to form a new era, as we shall find in the sequel. another associate of cigoli was domenico da passignano, the scholar of naldini and of federigo zuccaro, whom he resembles most, from his long residence at venice; where he likewise married. he became so decided an admirer of the merits of this school, that he was accustomed to say that he who had not seen venice, ought not to boast that he was a painter. this circumstance sufficiently accounts for his style, which is not the most profound, nor the most correct; but it exhibits contrivance, is vast, rich in architecture and in drapery, resembling more the manner of paolo veronese, than that of the florentine school. sometimes he resembles tintoretto in his attitudes, and in that oily colouring which ought to have been avoided; and through which many works of both artists have perished. this has been the fate of his crucifixion of st. peter, which he executed for the great church in rome, under paul v. and of the presentation of m. v. which he also painted at the same place under urban viii. several pictures, however, remain in some italian cities, that were begun by his scholars and finished by him, with a degree of care that hands him down to posterity as a great artist. a dead christ, in the chapel of mongradone, at frascati, is in this style; as are an entombing of christ, in the borghese palace, at rome; a christ bearing the cross, in the college of s. giovannino, and some other works of his at florence. passignano, his native place, possesses what is perhaps his most perfect work, in the font of the church of the fathers of vallombrosa. he there painted a glory, that proclaims him an excellent artist, and worthy of a place with his pupils, lodovico caracci, the founder of the bolognese school, and tirani, one of its great ornaments. his tuscan pupils did not attain equal celebrity. sorri of siena, whom we reserve for that school, is the one best known in italy; having painted with applause in several of her cities. here we must consider those artists connected with florence. fabrizio boschi is a spirited painter, whose characteristic excellence appears to consist in novelty of composition, united to a precision superior to the generality of his school. a s. bonaventura in the act of celebrating mass, in all saints' church at florence, is much praised: and, perhaps, his two historical frescos of cosmo ii. which he painted in the palace of cardinal gio. carlo de' medici, in emulation of rosselli, are superior to any of his other works. ottavio vannini became eminent in colouring and was very attentive to every other branch of painting; but he was sometimes poor and cold; and although good in each part of his pictures, was not happy in the whole. cesare dandini, a disciple of several schools, imitated passignano in design, in brilliancy, and also in the perishable nature of his colours: he was diligent in other things, and very assiduous. his best picture is a s. carlo, surrounded by other saints, in the church of ancona: the composition is fine, and the whole in good preservation. many works of this artist, and of vannini, decorate collections. nicodemo ferrucci, the favourite pupil of passignano, and the companion of his labours at rome, possessed much of the boldness and spirit of his master. by his example he was led to affix a good price to his pictures, mostly frescos executed at florence, fiesole, and for the state. he died young at fontebuoni; but many of his works, too good to be here omitted, still remain in rome; one of the most esteemed of which is found at s. gio. de' fiorentini, besides two histories of maria s. s. which, if i mistake not, have suffered from being retouched. cristofano allori was at perpetual variance with alessandro, his father and preceptor, on account of his attachment to the novel maxims of the three masters we have just commended. in the opinion of many he is the greatest painter of this epoch. when the excellence he attained, during a long life, is considered, he appears to me in some degree, the cantarini of his school. they resembled each other in the beauty, grace, and exquisite finish of their figures; with this difference, that the beauty of cantarini partakes more of the ideal, and that the flesh tints of allori are more happy. this circumstance is the more surprising, inasmuch as he knew nothing of the caracci, nor of guido; but supplied all by a nice discrimination, and an unwearied perseverance; for it was his custom never to lift his pencil from the canvass until his hand had obeyed the dictates of his fancy. from this method, and from vicious habits that often seduced him from his labours, his pictures are extremely rare, and he himself is little known. the s. julian of the pitti palace is the grandest effort of his genius; and if it is not among the finest pictures in this magnificent collection, it undoubtedly claims the highest rank in the second class. his picture of beato manetto, in the church of the servi, a small piece, but excellent in its kind, is reckoned the next in merit. many young men were sent to be instructed by him in the art of painting; but few of them remained long: most of them were disgusted at the dissipation of the master, and the insolence of some of their fellow students. he formed some landscape painters, whom we shall notice under their class; and also some copyists, whose labours may boast of hues and retouching, the work of his hand. of this class were valerio tanteri,[ ] f. bruno certosino, and lorenzo cerrini. these, and other artists of this school, continued the giovian series of the later race of illustrious men, by transmitting to us many of their portraits, to which he also lent his hand. to them we owe numerous duplicates of his most celebrated pictures, which are scattered through florence, and over all italy; more especially of that judith, so beautifully and magnificently attired, which is a portrait of his mistress; while her mother appears in the character of abra, and the head of holofernes is that of the painter, who permitted his beard to grow a considerable time for this purpose. zanobi rosi lived to a later period, and finished some pieces that were left imperfect by the death of cristofano; but he never obtained the praise of invention. the name of giovanni batista vanni is superior to any other scholar of the school of allori. the pisans claim him as their countryman; baldinucci assigns him to florence. after taking lessons from empoli and other masters, he attended allori for six years; and whilst he imitated this master admirably in colouring, and rivalled him in design, he also imbibed his lessons of intemperance. had he conducted himself with more propriety, and adhered more to fixed principles, the genius he possessed might have raised him to more celebrity. he visited the best schools of italy, and copied on the spot, or at least designed, the choicest productions of each. many praise some of his copies of tiziano, of correggio, and of paolo veronese: from the works of the two last he likewise made etchings. notwithstanding such studies his colouring degenerated, and he became so much a mannerist, that he has not left behind him a truly classical work. the s. lorenzo in the church of s. simone, which is reckoned the masterpiece of vanni, has nothing uncommon, except it be that the light of the fire invests the spectators, and gives the picture novelty and surprising harmony. jacopo da empoli, a scholar of friano, retains in most of his works the stamp of his early education; but he adopted a second manner which is not deficient in fulness of design, nor in elegance of colouring. such is his s. ivo, which, among painters of great name in a cabinet of the ducal gallery, surprises most strangers more than the other pictures. he executed other works on similar principles, from which we might infer that he belongs to an era favourable to the art. painters cannot, like authors, amend the first on a second edition of the same subject: their second editions, by which they should be judged, pass as other pictures superior to their first performances. two of jacopo's pictures in fresco are commended by moreni (tom. ii. p. ), one belonging to the certosa, the other to the monastery of boldrone; both which prove the extent of his ability in this branch of the art; but after the period of his fall from the scaffolding in the certosa, he abandoned this method and devoted himself wholly to painting in oil. empoli gave all the beauty and fine effect of large works to those pleasing pictures he painted for private individuals, and in this style he was very successful. this artist taught vanni the principles of painting; but his greatest pupil was felice ficherelli; a man of the most indolent disposition, lazy in every occupation, and, as if afraid of disturbing his tongue, usually silent unless when asked a question: hence he was named felice riposo by the florentines. he executed few pictures; but what proceeded from his studio may be held up as an example of industry in the art; simple, natural, and studied, without appearing to be so. there is a picture of s. anthony by him in s. maria nuova, where he seems to have been directed by his intimate friend cristofano, whose work it strongly resembles. he is rare in collections; but always makes a good figure there by his graceful design, his full body of colouring, and his softness. the adam and eve driven out of paradise, in the gallery of the rinuccini palace, is worthy such a collection. he copied pietro perugino, andrea del sarto, and some other masters so well, that his work might pass for the originals; and to this employment we may chiefly attribute the exquisite finish of his pictures. to this period we may assign some other artists, who, from whatever cause, are, perhaps, less commended by historians than they deserve. of this number is giovanni martinelli, of whom there is a capital work in the conventualists of pescia, viz. the miracle of s. anthony, a subject mentioned a little above, as having been also executed by cigoli. his feast of belshazzar, in the ducal gallery at florence, and his guardian angel at s. lucia de' bardi, are pictures of note, but inferior to that at pescia. of the same class also is michel cinganelli, a scholar of poccetti, who was employed in the metropolitan church of pisa, where he ornamented the corbels of the cupola, and strove to emulate the best tuscan artists of his age in an historical picture of joshua. such is palladino, mentioned in the guide of florence in reference to a s. giovanni decollato; a work deserving notice, for its freedom from the beaten track of his school. he seems to have studied the lombard more than native artists, and to have been acquainted with baroccio. i saw his altar-piece at s. jacopo a' corbolini. i suspect that this artist is the same as filippo paladini, pointed out by hackert, born and educated at florence, and who resided in foreign parts. he was compelled to fly from milan on account of some disturbance, and took refuge in rome, where he was received by prince colonna, and being pursued he went to sicily, and resided at mazzarino, an estate belonging to the colonna family. there, as well as at syracuse, palermo, catania, and elsewhere, he left works that display much elegance and fine colouring, but not free from mannerism, the fault also of the picture above cited at florence. benedetto veli painted in the cathedral of pistoia an ascension of christ, placed at the entrance to the presbytery, upon an immense scale. it is the companion to one of the pentecost by gregorio pagani, which sufficiently proves that it has no common merit. there lived some other painters about this time, of whom tuscany, as far as i know, retains no trace; but they are recognized in other schools: thus vaiano is recognized in the milanese, and mazzoni in the venetian schools, where we shall give some account of them. last among the great masters of this period i place matteo rosselli, a scholar of pagani and of passignano, as likewise of several old masters, under whom he studied assiduously at rome and at florence. he became so distinguished a painter that he was invited to the court of the duke of modena, and was retained by cosmo ii. grand duke of tuscany, in his own service. in painting, however, he had many equals; but very few in the art of teaching, for which he was adapted by a facility of communicating instruction, a total want of envy, and a judicious method of discovering the talents of each pupil, and of directing his progress: hence his school, like that of the caracci, produced as many different styles as he had pupils. his placid genius was not fitted for the conception of novel and daring compositions, nor for pursuing them with the steadiness that characterizes the painter of elevated fancy. his merit lies in correctness in the imitation of nature; in which, however, he is not always select; and there is a peculiar harmony and repose in the whole, by which his pictures (though they are generally in a sombre tone) please, even when compared with works of the most lively and brilliant colouring. he excels in dignity of character; some of the heads of his apostles, to be seen in collections, so strongly resemble the works of the caracci, that connoisseurs are sometimes deceived. at times he strove to rival cigoli: as in his nativity of our saviour at s. gaetano, which is thought to be his masterpiece, and in the crucifixion of s. andrew in all saints church, which has been engraved at florence. his fresco paintings are greatly admired: so well do his labours, on the principles of the past age, preserve their freshness and brilliancy. the cloister of the nunziata has many of his semicircular pieces; and that representing alexander iv. confirming the order of the servi, appeared a grand work to passignano and cortona. he ornamented a ceiling in the royal villa of poggio imperiale with some histories of the medicean family. the chamber where this painting was placed was ordered to be demolished in the time of the grand duke peter leopold; but so highly was rosselli esteemed that the ceiling was preserved, and transferred to another apartment. his chief praise, however, arises from his preserving that fatherly regard for pupils, which quintilian thinks the first requisite in a master: hence he became the head of a respectable family of painters whom we shall now consider. giovanni da s. giovanni (this is the name of his native place; his family name was manozzi), could boast of being one of the best fresco painters that italy ever possessed. gifted by nature with a fervid and bold genius, a lively and fertile imagination, celerity and freedom of hand, he painted so much in the dominions of the church, and even in rome, especially in the church of the four saints, so much in tuscany, in florence, and even the pitti palace,[ ] we can scarcely believe that he began to study at the age of eighteen, and died when only forty-eight years old. his style is very far from the solid manner of his master; he carried the celebrated maxim of horace "_all is allowable_" to excess; and in many of his works he preferred whim to art. amid choirs of angels he introduced the singular novelty of female angels; if we may ascribe this to him, and not to the cavalier d'arpino or alessandro allori, as some are inclined to do. but whatever exertions he made (if we may so express it) to discredit himself, he did not succeed. his spirit is greatly superior to the conceits of other artists; and his performances at florence, in which he bridled his eccentricities, prove that he knew more than he was ambitious to shew. among these we may notice his flight into egypt in the royal academy, some semicircular pieces in the church of all saints, the expulsion of the sciences from greece, of the pitti palace, in which the blind homer appears groping his way with great nature, as he is exiled from his native land. it is related of pietro di cortona, that on seeing some one of the works of giovanni, which did him no credit, he did not therefore condemn him; but, pointing to the piece, only observed, "giovanni painted that when he was already conscious of being a great man." his pictures on panel and on canvass are less admired, nor are they always exempt from crudity. he had a son called gio. garzia, who produced several fresco works at pistoia, tolerably well executed. baldassare franceschini, surnamed volterrano, from the place of his nativity, and also the younger volterrano, to distinguish him from ricciarelli, seemed to have been formed by nature to adorn cupolas, temples, and magnificent halls, a style of work in which he is more conspicuous than in painting cabinet pictures. the cupola and nave of the niccolini chapel, in the church of the holy cross, is his happiest effort in this way; and surprises even an admirer of lanfranco. that of the nunziata is most beautiful; and we must not omit the ceiling of a chapel in s. maria maggiore, where elias appears so admirably foreshortened, that it calls to mind the s. rocco of tintoretto, by the optical illusion occasioned by it. his talents excited the envy of giovanni da s. giovanni, who having engaged him as his assistant in the decoration of the pitti palace, speedily dismissed him. his spirit is tempered by judgment and propriety; his tuscan design is varied and ennobled by an imitation of other schools; to visit which, he was sent to travel for some months by his noble patrons of the house of niccolini. he derived great advantages from studying the schools of parma and of bologna. he knew pietro di cortona, and adopted some of his principles, which was a thing not uncommon among the artists of this epoch. volterrano painted a great many frescos in florence, one in the palazzo del bufalo at rome, and some at volterra, that are noticed by baldinucci. the praise bestowed on him by the historian appears rather scanty than extravagant to those who duly consider the propriety of his inventions, the correctness of his design, qualities so rare in this class of artists, his knowledge of the perspective, of foreshortening figures in ceilings,[ ] the spirit of his attitudes, the clearness of his graduated, well balanced, and properly united colours, and the pleasing and quiet harmony of the whole. the same talents are proportionally evident in his oil pictures, as may be observed in his s. filippo benizi, in the nunziata of florence; in his s. john the evangelist, a noble figure which he painted along with other saints in s. chiara at volterra; his s. carlo administering the communion to those sick of the plague, in the nunziata of pescia, and some of his other paintings that are well finished, which was not the case with all his works. the same observations apply to his cabinet pictures, which abound in the ducal palace, and in the houses of the nobility of volterra, especially in those of the families of maffei and sermolli. cosimo ulivelli is also a good historical painter; and his style is sometimes mistaken for that of his master by less skilful judges; but a good connoisseur discovers in him forms less elegant, a colouring less strong and clear, a character approaching to mannerism and to meagreness. we ought to form an opinion from the works of his best period, such as his semicircular pieces in the cloister of the carmine. antonio franchi, a native of lucca, who lived at florence, is reckoned by many inferior to ulivelli; but he is generally more judicious, if i do not mistake, and more diligent. his s. joseph of calassanzio, in the church of the fathers of scolopi, is a picture of good effect, and is commended also for the design. another of his fine works is in the parish church of caporgnano, in the state of lucca; it represents christ delivering the keys to s. peter, and i am informed by an experienced artist that it is the most esteemed of his productions; many more of which may be found in the account of his life, published at florence, by bartolozzi. he was painter to the court, by which he was much employed, as well as by private individuals. he was a moderate follower of cortona. he wrote a useful tract on the _theory of painting_, in which he combated the prejudices of the age, and enforced the necessity of proceeding on general principles. it was printed in ; and afterwards defended by the author against certain criticisms made on it. giuseppe and margherita, his two sons, have met with some commendation, and i am told there is a fine altar-piece by the former, which adorns the parish church at borgo buggiano. it is retouched, however, by his father, who honourably makes mention of the fact. i repeat, honourably; because many fathers are known to have aided their sons with a view of obtaining for them a reputation beyond their deserts. michelangiolo palloni da campi, a pupil of volterrano, is well known in florence by a good copy of the furius camillus, of salviati, in the old palace; which was placed by the side of the original. he resided long, and was much employed in poland. an eminent pupil of baldassare, named benedetto orsi, was omitted by baldinucci. a fine picture of s. john the evangelist, in the church of s. stephen, at pescia, his native place, is attributed to him. he also painted the works of mercy, for the religious fraternity of nobles. these oil paintings were shewn to strangers among the curiosities of that city; but they were dispersed on the suppression of the order. there still exists a large circular picture which he produced at pistoia for s. maria del letto, enumerated by good judges among the finest works of volterrano, until an authentic document discovered the real author. last in this list i have to mention arrighi, the fellow citizen of franceschini, and his favourite pupil. he has nothing remaining in public, in which his master cannot boast a great share.[ ] after franceschini, who may be considered the lanfranco of the rosselli, or rather florentine school, we proceed to francesco furini, who is its guido and its albano. foreigners recognized him as such: hence he was invited to venice, for the express purpose of painting a thetis, as a companion to an europa by guido reni. he had seen the works of masters of this class at rome, and appears to have aspired at rivalling, rather than at imitating them. his ideas certainly do not seem borrowed from them, nor from any other artists. he spent a long time in meditating on his subject, and was accustomed to consider his picture completed when he had finished his studies for it; so little time and trouble did it cost him to embody his ideas in colours. having been ordained a priest about his fortieth year, and becoming curate of s. ansano in mugello, he executed some pictures truly valuable, both on account of the rarity of his works and their excellence, for the neighbouring town of s. lorenzo. above all, we may notice with admiration a s. francis receiving the stigmata, and a conception of the blessed virgin, in which, elevated above mortality, she appears soaring and resplendent. but his great name in italy arose from his cabinet pictures, which are rare out of florence, and in florence are highly esteemed, though considerable numbers of them remain there. his hylas carried away by the nymphs, which he painted for the family of galli, and in which he introduced noble figures that are grandly varied, is highly celebrated; not to mention the three graces of the strozzi palace, and the many historical pieces and half-length figures dispersed through the city that are unnoticed in his life. they chiefly consist of nymphs, or of magdalens, no less naked than the nymphs; for furini was a very expert painter of delicate flesh, but not one of the most modest. furini must have had a great number either of pupils or imitators, as his pictures for private houses before mentioned, which were copied, are of frequent occurrence in florence. they are often of a dusky hue, through the defect of their ground, and simone pignone is made, often erroneously so, their most common author. he was francesco's best pupil; very delicate in the colours of his fleshes, as we may judge from the altar-piece of b. bernardo tolomei, at monte oliveto, where the virgin and the infant are coloured very beautifully in the flesh, if not handsome in their features. his picture of st. louis, king of france, at s. felicità, is still more celebrated. it was much commended by giordano, and the artist received five hundred crowns for its execution. in the first volume of lettere pittoriche we are informed, that maratta only esteemed gabbiani and pignone among all the florentine painters of his time. he was also praised by bellini in the work entitled _bucchereide_, where he coins a new term for pignone, (a liberty extremely common among our jocose poets,) i know not how far susceptible of imitation in another tongue: "_È l'arcipittorissimo de' buoni_." lorenzo lippi, like his friend salvator rosa, divided his hours between poetry and painting. his malmantile racquistato,[ ] which is a model of tuscan purity of language,[ ] is a work less read perhaps, but more elegant than the satires of salvator; and is sprinkled with those graceful florentine idioms that are regarded as the attic salt of italy. in looking for a prototype among the artists of his own school, guided by similarity of genius, he made choice of santi di tito. a delineator of the passions sufficiently accorded with the genius of the poet, and a painter of the choicest design was highly congenial to so elegant a writer. he, however, added to his style a greater force of colouring; and in drapery he followed the practice of some lombard masters and of baroccio, in modelling the folds in paper, a practice of which their works retain some traces. the delicacy of pencil, the clearness, harmony, and to sum up all, the good taste, pervading his pictures, demonstrate that he had a feeling of natural beauty superior to most of his contemporaries. his master admired him, and said, with a liberality not always to be found among history painters, "lorenzo, thou art more knowing than i." his pictures are not very rare at florence, although he resided far from it for many years, for he was painter to the court of inspruck. a crucifixion, among his best performances, is in the ducal gallery. the noble family of arrighi possesses a s. saverio recovering from the claws of a crab, the crucifix which he had dropped into the sea. baldinucci and the author of _the series of the most illustrious painters_ have spoken very highly of his triumph of david, painted for the hall of angiol gaddi, who wished him to represent his eldest son as the son of jesse, and his other sixteen children as the youths and virgins, that with songs and timbrels greet the victor, and hail the deliverance of israel. in this celebrated piece, the artist was enabled to give full scope to his talent for portrait painting, and to the style approaching to nature, which he loved, without troubling himself about studied and artful embellishments. it was his maxim to write poetry as he spoke, and to paint what he observed. mario balassi perfected himself under passignano, and after the choicest examples of the roman and other schools. he was an excellent copyist of the old masters, and a painter of invention above mediocrity. some of his small historical pictures, and a few pieces representing eatables, are to be met with in private houses; and, above all, there are many of his half-length figures finely coloured and relieved. in his old age he changed his manner, and retouched as many of the works of his youth as he could lay his hands on; but in striving to improve, he only injured them. francesco boschi, the nephew and scholar of rosselli, was an excellent portrait painter. in the cloister of all saints, where his uncle fabrizio also painted, there are some of his portraits that seem absolutely alive, and are executed in fresco so admirably, that they clearly shew the school from which he proceeded. he finished some pieces in oil, that were left imperfect by the death of rosselli, and painted others entirely his own, the subjects of which were chiefly religious, where the countenances are strikingly expressive of probity and sanctity. as he grew older he assumed the ecclesiastical habit, and sustained its dignity by his exemplary conduct, the account of which baldinucci has extended at some length. during twenty-four years in which he lived a priest, he did not resign his pencil; but he employed it less frequently, and generally less successfully, than in his youth. his elder brother alfonso promised much, and even attained a great deal, though cut off in early life. the style of jacopo vignali has some resemblance to that of guercino, but less in the forms than in the dark shadows and the grounds. he is amongst those scholars of rosselli who are seldom mentioned, although he painted more than any of the rest for the prince and the state. he often is weak, especially in attitude; often, however, he appears praiseworthy, as in the two pictures at s. simone, and in the s. liborio, which is possessed by the missionaries. he is most conspicuous in fresco painting, with which he ornamented the chapel of the bonarruoti. he painted good historical pictures in the palaces of many of the nobility, and he even boasts noble pupils, none of whom did so much honour to his memory as carlo dolci. dolci holds the same rank in the florentine, that sassoferrato holds in the roman school. both, though destitute of great powers of invention, obtained great reputation for madonnas and similar small subjects, which have now become extremely valuable; for the wealthy, desirous of possessing pictures, at once estimable and religious, to hang up in their oratories, have brought those two masters into great request, notwithstanding that they operated on very different principles. carlo is not so celebrated for beauty, (for he was like his master, a mere _naturalist_,) as for the exquisite pains with which he finished every thing, and the genuine expression of certain affecting emotions; such as the patient suffering of christ, or of the virgin mary; the penitential compunction of a saint, or the holy confidence of a martyr devoting himself as a victim for the living god. the colouring and general tone of his pictures accord with the idea of the passion; nothing is turgid or bold; all is modesty, repose, and placid harmony. in him we may retrace the manner of rosselli brought to perfection, as we sometimes can view the features of the grandsire in his descendants. a few of his larger works still remain, such as the s. antonio, in the royal museum; the conception of our lady, in the possession of the marquis rinuccini; also a very few of his subjects from profane story, a few of his portraits, and the celebrated figure of poetry in the palace of prince corsini. his small pictures, for each of which he usually received crowns, are very numerous; and were frequently repeated by himself or by his pupils, alessandro lomi and bartolommeo mancini; and often by agnese dolci, his daughter, a good artist and follower of the style of her father; but not his equal. his two madonnas in the cabinet of the grand duke, and his martyrdom of s. andrew, in the possession of the marquis gerini, have been often copied. of onorio marinari, the cousin and scholar of carlo, but few pictures remain at florence, either in private or in public. after imitating his master, (which usually is the first exercise of students in the art, and often, from dissimilarity of genius, is their great bane,) he formed another style, by yielding to the bent of his natural powers; which was more grand, had more of the ideal, and deeper shadows; and of this several specimens remain in the churches of s. maria maggiore, and s. simone. this artist died young, very unfortunately for the school to which he belonged. about the period we have been describing, some foreign artists resided at florence for a considerable time, to the no small advantage of the native painters, as we have already observed. paggi came there in the reign of the grand duke francis i., remained there twenty years, and left some works behind him. about the same time salvator rosa, albani, borgognone, colonna, mitelli, and many more, either invited by the princes from abroad, or coming there of their own accord, were retained by them for the decoration of the palace and the city. we shall consider them particularly under the schools of the countries where they were born, or in which they taught; but here we shall give a place to jacopo ligozzi, whom the florentine school may claim on account of his residence, his employment, and his scholars. he had studied at verona under paolo veronese, according to baldinucci; but under gio. francesco carrotto, according to the emendation of maffei, without reflecting that this artist died when jacopo was scarcely three years old. some foreign writers make him the son of gio. ermanno, the painter; a circumstance unknown to cav. del pozzo, the townsman and historian of them both. ferdinand ii. appointed him painter to the court, and superintendant of the gallery. this was very honourable, when conferred by such a prince on him, in preference to many eminent florentines. ligozzi executed some works at rome, and introduced at florence a freedom of pencil, an art in composition, a taste for the ornamental, and a grace and gaiety, till then rare in that city. his design was sufficiently correct, and uniformly improved while he remained in tuscany. as to his colouring, although it was not that of paolo, it was not deficient in truth and vigour. his seventeen semicircular pictures in the cloisters of all saints, are valued at florence; especially the interview between s. francis and s. domenick, the founders of the order. on this picture he wrote, _to the confusion of our friends_, meaning the envious and malignant. this is his masterpiece in fresco. he painted more frequently in oil colours in several churches. the s. raymond in the act of reanimating a child, in s. maria novella, is a picture full of art; and there is another in the same style at the scalzi of imola, representing the four crowned saints. the martyrdom of s. dorothea, i do not hesitate to call a wonderful picture; in which we recognize a follower of paolo, and which is in possession of the conventual friars of pescia. the scaffold, the executioner, the prefect on horseback who is ordering him to strike, the great crowd of spectators variously affected, and all the apparatus of a public punishment, strike and astonish equally the connoisseur and the unskilled in painting; the holy martyr especially interests us, who, on her knees, with a placid composure, willingly resigns her life, and is about to receive from angels the eternal crown purchased with her blood. in other performances he shews more simplicity, as in the s. diego at all saints, or in the angels at the p. p. scolopi; but he is an artist who always pleases, and who shews that he felt what he painted. ligozzi painted much for private individuals. in his very small pictures, a style in which he was expert, he finished as highly as if they were miniatures. several of his works were published by agostino caracci, and other engravers. none of his florentine pupils is esteemed equal to donato mascagni, for such was his real name, which may be seen subscribed to two scriptural pieces, in possession of sig. ab. giachi, at volterra. having entered the order of servi, he assumed the name of fra arsenio; and several of his works painted after that period are to be seen in florence, executed in a manner not very full and soft, but diligent; of which there are several other specimens in his miracles of the nunziata, which are engraved and illustrated in the little work of padre lottini. what does him greatest honour is the picture preserved in the library of the monastery of vallombrosa. it represents the donation of the state of ferrara to the holy seat, by the countess matilda, as is believed by some, or rather the distribution of some privileges by her to the order of vallombrosa, and is a picture full of subject, and the chief glory of this master. in casting our eyes over other cities of tuscany, we find some painters very capable of decorating houses and altars. francesco morosini, surnamed montepulciano, may be recognized in the church of s. stephen, of florence, where he painted a conversion of s. paul, in the manner of his master fidani. arezzo produced the two santini. of one of them, there named the elder, several pictures were pointed out to me by the accomplished cav. giudici; among which was a s. catherine, in possession of the conventual friars: it savours of the florentine manner during this epoch; except that the use of changing tints is more frequent. bartolommeo and teofilo torre, of arezzo, are noticed as fresco painters by orlandi, who mentions halls, and even whole houses, being ornamented by the latter with historical pieces; which, if deficient in design, he praises for their colouring. francesco brini left a good picture of the immaculate conception, at volterra: of his country and school i am ignorant. i do not know the master of pompeo caccia; it is certain that he called himself a native of rome, perhaps because it is easy to substitute the capital, so well known, for places in the state of less notoriety. in rome, however, i do not find any traces of him. i find, indeed, that he left several pictures at pistoja; among which is the presentation (at the selesiane) of jesus in the temple, to which is affixed the date . alessandro bardelli was a native of pescia; in his style we find traces of his preceptor curradi and of guercino. he was a good painter, and executed the ornamental border for the portrait of s. francis, painted by margaritone, for his church in pescia: he represented around it the virtues of the saint, and a choir of angels above. i am doubtful whether we should include alessio gimignani, one of a family of artists in pistoia, to be recorded in the fifth epoch, among the pupils of ligozzi, but he was undoubtedly his follower. about this period two schools arose, highly deserving of notice, those of pisa and of lucca. the pisan school recognizes as its founder, aurelio lomi, first a scholar of bronzino, and afterwards of cigoli. his very correct performances, in the cathedral of pisa, are executed after both masters; but when compared to cigoli he is more minute, and has much less softness. his aim appears to be to surprise the multitude by an agreeable colouring, and a magnificence of draperies and ornaments. this style pleased at florence, in rome, and more especially at genoa, where he was preferred to sorri, many years established and in good repute. his works in that city are very full of subject; as his s. anthony, belonging to the franciscans, and his last judgment, in s. maria of carignano; pictures which surprise by an air of novelty: the first is graceful, rich, but modest in the tints; the second terrible, and the colours more vivid than those he employed on any other occasion. a s. jerome, in the campo santo, is less glowing, but it is esteemed by the pisans his capital work; at the bottom of this piece he put his initials and the date . he most probably taught the principles of the art to his brother, orazio lomi; who was called gentileschi, from the surname of an uncle. gentileschi formed his style, however, on the finest examples in rome, assisted by his friend agostino tassi. tassi was an eminent ornamental landscape painter, and gentileschi executed appropriate figures to his inventions in the loggia rospigliosi, in the saloon of the quirinal palace, and in other places. he also painted some smaller pictures in rome, particularly at the pace, from which we cannot ascertain his merit, either because they were performances of his unripe years, or because they have become black from age. he had not then attained the beautiful colouring, nor the lombard-like manner of managing the shadows, which we observe in many of his cabinet pictures. a fine specimen, representing s. cecilia with s. valerian, is in the borghesi palace. the choicest adorn the royal palace of turin, and some houses in genoa. in the collection of his excellency cardinal cambiasi, there is a david standing over the dead goliath; so relieved, and with tints so vivid and so well contrasted, that it gives the idea of a style entirely new. he was esteemed by vandyck, and inserted by him in his series of portraits of one hundred illustrious men. when already old he went to the english court, where he died at the age of eighty-four. artemisia, his daughter and disciple, followed her father into that island; but she passed her best years in italy. she was respected for her talents, and celebrated for the elegance of her manners and appearance. she is noticed both by italian and foreign writers, and by walpole among the latter, in his _anecdotes of painting in england_. she lived long at naples, married there a pier antonio schiattesi; and was there assisted and improved in the art by guido reni, studied the works of domenichino, and was not unskilled in other approved styles. she shews variety of style in her few remaining historical pictures. some of them are at naples and pozzuolo, and there are two in florence inscribed with her name; one in the ducal gallery, and the other in possession of my noble and learned friend sig. averardo de' medici; the former representing judith slaying holofernes, is a picture of a strong colouring, of a tone and perspicuity that inspires awe; the latter, a susanna and the elders, is a painting that pleases by the scene, the elegance of the principal figure, and the drapery of the others. artemisia, however, was more celebrated for her portraits, which are of singular merit; they spread her fame over all europe, and in them she surpassed her father. orazio riminaldi was a scholar of the elder lomi in pisa, and of the younger in rome, but imitated neither of them; from the beginning he gave himself up to the guidance of manfredi, in the manner of caravaggio, and afterwards became a follower of domenico zampieri, to rival whom he seems intended by nature. from the time that the art of painting revived in pisa, that city had not perhaps so eminent a painter, nor have many better been born on the banks of the arno, a soil so propitious to the arts. grand in contour and in drapery, after the manner of the caracci, pleasing and agreeable in his carnations, full, free, and delicate in the management of his pencil, he would have been faultless, had not the wretched style of engraving raised prejudices against him. excessive fatigue, or, as others will have it, the plague of , snatched him in early life from his country; for the fame of which alone he seems to have lived to maturity. he there ornamented many altars with fine pictures, one of which representing the martyrdom of s. cecilia, was afterwards placed in the pitti palace. in the choir of the cathedral there are two of his scriptural pieces, that form a perfect study for any one who wishes to become acquainted with this epoch. the judgment of the master of the works was conspicuous in engaging riminaldi to paint the cupola, even before he had finished the above pictures, and in making choice of him in preference to any other artist. the assumption of the virgin mary, which he painted in oil, is one of the best conceived and most perfect works that tuscany had ever beheld, and it was the last labour of orazio. his brother girolamo completed it feebly, by introducing some figures that were wanting, and the family received , crowns as its price. girolamo is rarely to be met with in pisan collections, and still more rarely in other places. he was, however, well known in his day, having been invited to naples to ornament the chapel of s. gennaro, and to the court of paris by the queen. from among many pisan artists of this period recorded by sig. da morrona, or sig. tempesti, we shall select some of the most considerable. ercole bezzicaluva is worthy of notice, both for his engravings and his picture representing various saints in the choir of st. stephen's at pisa. so likewise is gio. del sordo, otherwise called mone da pisa; but his colouring seems superior to his invention. zaccaria rondinosi, i believe, of the florentine school, was more skilled in ornamental than in any other branch of painting. he repaired the pictures in the campo santo, and on that account was honoured by the citizens with a tomb there, and near it an inscription on the marble. i know not whether any picture of arcangela paladini, an excellent embroiderer, except her own portrait, has reached our times. it was hung in the ducal gallery among the portraits of illustrious painters: to be deposited in such a place, and to remain there from , is an unequivocal proof of its merit; since it is the custom of the place not lightly to refuse the portraits of tolerably good painters, but to keep them there as if only lodgers, and then send them to some villa of the prince, when new guests arrive, to take a place in the cabinets which are named _de' pittori_. gio. stefano marucelli, both an engineer and a painter, was not born in pisa, but he may be reckoned a pisan from his long residence and attachment to the place. having come from umbria into tuscany, according to the tradition of the pisans, he became a pupil of boscoli, and remaining at pisa, he contended with the celebrated artists whom we have noticed as employed from time to time in ornamenting the tribune of the cathedral. the abraham entertaining the three angels is a work of his, commended for felicity of invention, and beauty of colouring. in the church of s. nicolas at pisa, there remains a memorial of domenico bongi of pietrasanta, who was a follower of perino del vaga. he flourished in . the series of the principal artists of lucca commences with paol biancucci, the best scholar of guido reni, whose grace and full power of colour he has imitated in many of his works. he sometimes so strongly resembles sassoferrato as to be mistaken for him. the purgatory which he painted at suffragio, the picture representing various saints which he left at the church of s. francis, two in possession of the noble family of boccella, and many others scattered over the city, are of such merit, that malvasia should have noticed him among the pupils of guido, which he has not done. he has also omitted pietro ricchi of lucca, who went to bologna from the school of passignano. it is true that the preceptorship of guido is in this instance doubtful, though baldinucci and orlandi both assert it: for boschini, who was his intimate friend, says not a word upon the matter, merely observing that ricchi regretted he had not studied in venice. it is certain he frequently imitated the forms of guido; but in colouring and design adhered to the manner of passignano; he also imbibed the principles of the venetian school, as we shall relate in the proper place. two of his pictures are preserved at the church of s. francis in lucca, and some others remain in private hands; small remains of a genius very fertile in invention, and of a hand most rapid and almost indefatigable in execution. he painted in several cities of france, in the milanese, and still more in the venetian states, where he died at udine, in the ms. guide to which place he is often named. pietro paolini long lived and taught at lucca; he was a pupil of the roman school, as history informs us; but to judge from his works one would pronounce him of the venetian. in rome he frequented the study of angelo caroselli, who was by education a follower of caravaggio, but exceedingly expert in copying and imitating every style. under him paolini acquired a manner that shews good drawing, broad shadows, and firm touches, compared by some to the style of titian, and by others to that of pordenone: one also remarks in his works undoubted imitations of veronese. the martyrdom of s. andrew, that exists at s. michele, and the grand picture, sixteen cubits long, preserved in the library of s. frediano, would be sufficient to immortalize a painter. in this he represented the pontiff s. gregory, entertaining some pilgrims; it is a magnificent picture, ornamented in the style of veronese, with plate and architectural perspective, full of figures, and possessing a variety, harmony, and beauty, that have induced many poets to extol it as a wonderful production. his cabinet pictures of conversations and rural festivals, which are not rare at lucca, are exquisite. two, of the massacre of valdestain, belonging to the orsetti family, were especially commended by baldinucci. the historian remarks that he had a particular talent for such tragic themes, and in general for the energetic; he admires him less in the delicate, and even accuses him of marking the action of his female figures too strongly. that he could however be very pleasing when he inclined, we are led to believe from his large work in the church of the trinity; which he is said to have conducted in this graceful style, to demonstrate that he was not inferior to his rival biancucci. it is uncertain whether pietro testa, called at rome il lucchesino, was his disciple; but it appears highly probable, when his age is compared with that of paolini, that he learnt from the latter the principles of the art, which he had undoubtedly acquired in lucca before he came to rome. he there had several masters, and was chiefly under pietro da cortona, from whose school he was expelled, because he treated the maxims of the master with contempt. he then put himself under domenichino, on whose principles, says passeri, he gloried to rely; but his style, in his own despite, at times approaches nearly to that of cortona. he has also some resemblance to his friend poussin, both in his figures (which at one time he made too slender), in his landscapes, and in his study of the antique, of which he was deeply enamoured; having applied himself to designing the finest specimens in architecture and in sculpture that rome afforded. in this branch he is excellent. the death of b. angelo, placed in s. martino a' monti, a picture of great force, is the only piece before the public. testa is more frequently recognized in galleries: there is a joseph sold to the ishmaelites by him in the capitol; a murder of the innocents, in the spada palace; but there are not many of his pictures elsewhere; for he engraved more than he painted.[ ] he left some oil paintings at lucca, one in a feeble style at s. romano, several at s. paolino, in the buonvisi gallery, and in other places, in his best manner. two of his works in fresco remain there; viz. the allegorical picture of liberty in the senate house, and the small very elegant cupola of the oratory in the lippi palace. he settled at rome, where he lived unhappily, and either from despair, or some affront, drowned himself in the tiber. his fate may teach young artists of genius not to overrate their own talents, nor to despise those of others. by these failings, testa alienated the minds of his contemporaries, so that neither in reputation nor in employment was he so successful as many others; and his perpetual complaints occasioned doubts even of his sanity. omitting some scholars of paolini less addicted to his manner, we shall notice the three brothers, cassiano, francesco, and simone del tintore. i find nothing recorded of the first that exalts him above mediocrity; and when one meets with an indifferent picture of the school of paolini, it is ascribed to cassiano, or some such pupil; or sometimes to the dotage of paolini, when he produced sketches rather than paintings. francesco is recognized as an able artist in the visitation, in the apartments of his excellency the gonfaloniere; and in some pieces in the motroni collection. simone was expert in depicting birds, fruit, and other objects in the inferior walks of the art, to which, as i usually do at the end of each epoch, i shall here devote a few pages. and to pursue this pleasing branch of painting, i may observe that angiol gori and bartolommeo bimbi of florence, distinguished themselves in fruit, and more especially in flowers: the second was the scholar of the first in this line, and of lippi in figures. lippi himself induced andrea scacciati to abandon figures for fruit and flowers, and animals, in which department he succeeded well, and sent many pictures into foreign countries. bimbi was the mario of his school. he instructed fortini, whom we shall notice by and by along with moro, a painter of flowers and animals. all these gave place to lopez of naples, who visited florence in his journeys through italy, and shall be afterwards mentioned. the art of painting landscapes, and their introduction into collections, began during this epoch: the first style that became fashionable at florence was that of adriano fiammingo: but cristofano allori excelled all by the neat and firm touch of his pencil, and by the exquisite figures which he introduced into his landscapes. guasparre falgani surpassed him in the number of such subjects: he was initiated in the art by valerio marucelli, and imitated by giovanni rosi, and benedetto boschi, the brother and fellow student of francesco. the landscapes of this age have often their greens changed into black; and are reckoned of the old school by baldinucci. the new style was introduced into florence by filippo d'angeli, or philip the neapolitan, who was long retained at the court of cosmo ii; but chiefly by salvator rosa. this artist was brought to florence by cardinal gio. carlo, and remained there for seven years; where in the capacity of painter, poet, and author of comedies, he was constantly applauded for his fine genius, and his society courted by men of learning; with whom, in every department of letters, the country then abounded. he formed no pupils at that place, but many young men there became his copyists and imitators; as taddeo baldini, lorenzo martelli, and many others. antonio giusti, a pupil of cesare dandini, was particularly skilled in this art; but he likewise practised every other branch of painting; and orlandi has described him as an universal painter. signor da morrona notices the poli, two brothers, who executed many pleasing landscapes, which are known in the collections of florence and of pisa. passing from landscape to sea-views, i do not find any tuscan who in this respect equalled pietro ciafferi, otherwise called lo smargiasso,[ ] and recorded among the pisan artists. it is said that he resided long at leghorn, a place well suited to his genius. he there decorated façades of houses with disembarkations and naval enterprizes; and of such subjects, ports, sea-coasts, and ships, he composed oil paintings, that are usually highly finished, and ornamented with small figures, well designed and fancifully draped. he likewise succeeded greatly in architectural views. leghorn and pisa are rich in his easel pictures; and one in possession of sig. decano zucchetti of this place bears the name of the artist and the date . perspective was much cultivated at florence about this period; and the bolognese had carried it to a degree of excellence, that will claim attention in the proper place. lessons in it were given by giulio parigi, an excellent architect; and afterwards by baccio del bianco, who became engineer to his catholic majesty philip iv. their theoretic views were seconded by the example of colonna, who came to florence in , along with mitelli, a native of that place, and remained six years in the service of the court. after this period florence produced many painters of cabinet pieces, and in the ornamental line, or rather a new school of painting was founded by jacomo chiavistelli, a painter of sound and more chaste taste than was common in that age. one may form an idea of him in several churches, and in many saloons in the city; as for instance, in that of the cerretani palace, which is among his most elegant works. he likewise painted for cabinets, where his perspective pieces are frequently to be met with. orlandi notices his most considerable pupils, rinaldo botti, and his cousin lorenzo del moro,[ ] benedetto fortini, and giuseppe tonelli, who also studied at bologna. to these may be added, angiol gori, giuseppe masini, and others who assisted him about , in painting the corridore of the ducal gallery, which is not their best performance. i find in the anecdotes of mondina and alboresi, edited by malvasia, that antonio ruggieri contended with them in florence: he was, i believe, a scholar of vannini, and a s. andrew by him exists in the church of s. michele, in berteldi, now commonly called s. gaetano. nor were these the only artists capable of introducing figures into their perspective pieces; but a great many of the painters in fresco were, if we may say so, ambidexter, for each could paint perspectives and figures at the same time. portrait painting, the school of the best artists who aspire to fidelity of representation, was greatly promoted by passignano, who instructed filippo furini, surnamed sciameroni, the father of the celebrated francesco. he also taught the art to domenico and valore casini, two brothers celebrated by baldinucci: valore was remarkable for a free pencil, and was a faithful copyist of every lineament. the capital is filled with his portraits. cristofano allori painted portraits, both on commission and for exercising his hand in the delineation of the most beautiful forms. his portraits on canvass are reckoned valuable, even when the subjects are not known: this is the case with that in possession of the senator orlandini; and some on small pieces of copper, in the grand medicean collection. cerrini, among his disciples, followed his steps; he is, i think, also admitted into that museum. giovanni batista stefaneschi, a monk of monte senario, a scholar of comodi, and an excellent miniature painter, was conspicuous among the painters of portraits and copyists. justus subtermans, a native of antwerp, who was educated by william de vos, was also greatly admired. having fixed his residence at florence, in the time of cosmo ii., he was retained by the court to the end of the reign of cosmo iii.; and went to other princes in germany and italy, who were ambitious of having a specimen of a portrait painter, esteemed little inferior to vandyck. he was much esteemed by the latter, who requested his portrait, prefacing his request by sending him his own. peter paul rubens likewise honoured him, and presented him with one of his own historical pictures, regarding him as an honour to their country. subtermans painted all the living members of the medicean family, in a variety of attitudes; and when ferdinand ii. ascended the throne, while still a young man, subtermans executed a stupendous picture, wholly composed of portraits. he represented in it the ceremony of swearing allegiance to the new sovereign; and pourtrayed him not only with his mother and grandmother, but the senators and nobility who were present. this picture was very large: it has been engraved on copper and still remains in the gallery. the artist had a neatness and elegance of pencil that appeared extraordinary even in the school to which he belonged; and possessed moreover a peculiar talent of ennobling every countenance without injuring the likeness. it was his practice to study the peculiar and characteristic air of the person, and to impart it to his work; so that when he would sometimes conceal the face of a portrait, the bystanders could with certainty tell whom it represented, from the disposition of the hands and the figure. jacopo borgognone remained long in florence, and was highly respected by prince matthias; whose military achievements in germany and in italy, and the places where they happened, he represented to the life, as an historian would have described them. this artist's battle-pieces are not rare in florence; but i do not know that he had any pupils in that place. the person who promoted most the imitation of jacopo, and whose works are everywhere, was pandolfo reschi, of danzig, who was one of his best scholars; eminent in landscape in the style of salvator rosa, and in architectural subjects. in the hands of dr. viligiardi, i saw a picture by him, with a view of the pitti palace, and the additions to it then wanting; but which were afterwards supplied by the austrian princes, to the great ornament of the royal residence. those additions were from a design of giacinta marmi; but the whole picture was the work of pandolfo. he enlivened it with figures, and excites surprise by the whole, excepting the distribution of the light and shadow, in which he is not so happy. one santi rinaldi, surnamed il tromba,[ ] a painter of battle-pieces and of landscapes, formed himself under furini: he was contemporary with pandolfo; but is less known in florence. baccio del bianco, having become a good designer and tolerable painter in the school of bilivert, went into germany with pieroni, the imperial architect and engineer, from whom he learnt perspective. he afterwards taught it with applause in florence, as we have said; and did not omit to exercise his pencil, especially in fresco. naturally facetious, he became distinguished by his burlesques, which, for the most part, were only designed with the pen. he coloured some small oil pictures of much force, which were portraits in the style of the caracci, and sometimes painted freaks of scaramouches, and similar abortions of nature. gio. batista brazze, called il bigio,[ ] a scholar of empoli, employed his genius in another branch of the capricious style: it consisted of what appeared human figures when seen at a distance, but a nearer approach shewed them to be composed of different sorts of fruit, or machines, artfully arranged. baldinucci reckons him the inventor of this art; but to me it appears, that prior examples may be found in the milanese school, in which i treat of them fully at the end of the second epoch. lastly, mosaic work in hard stone owes its rise in florence to this epoch; and after gradually improving during two centuries, is now everywhere known as a work of this capital, and almost exclusively its own. in a letter of teofilo gallaccini,[ ] we read that this species of mosaic "had been invented in florence, in the time of ferdinand i.;" an assertion which is not true. before that period it flourished in lombardy. the carthusian monastery of pavia had in its pay a family of the name of sacchi; which has existed there to our own times, and has filled the great church with this kind of mosaic. there are specimens of it in milan of very ancient date. in that place giacomo da trezzo, who executed the tabernacle for the church of the escurial, which is esteemed the most beautiful and magnificent in christendom,[ ] received his instruction. about the time of cosmo i., florence herself witnessed the rudiments of this art in a "small picture composed of gems" which she possessed, as is recorded by vasari.[ ] a similar one was executed for francis i., from a design of vasari, by bernardino di porfirio of leccio, (a district of the florentine state) "composed of oriental alabaster, and large slabs of jasper, heliotrope, cornelian, lapis lazzuli, agate, and other stones and gems, which they estimate at , crowns." but pictures so wrought in large pieces, were not of that perfect kind of mosaic that contained a vast variety of colours and middle tints. such are executed in every shade of colour, from the natural stains of the stone itself; and the tints are lowered, heightened, and managed, so as almost to rival painting. for this purpose, every species of hard stone is collected and sawed; innumerable colours are thence selected, graduating from the deepest to the lightest shade, which are kept ready for use. this art was in request at milan; where, on account of the vicinity of alpine countries abounding in every species of hard stone, it arrived at great perfection. francesco i. meditating the erection of the magnificent chapel for the sepulture of the royal family, in the church of s. lorenzo, and the ornamenting it with urns and altars wrought in hard stone, invited giovanni bianchi from that city to his court, in the year , and committed the works in mosaic to his direction. soon after ferdinando ascended the throne, and the new art gained ground under him; it was promoted by constantino de' servi, and afterwards by other artists, who progressively improved it. the tables, cabinets, and coffers, small landscapes, and architectural pieces which were there executed, and sent as presents to princes, are dispersed over europe. in one cabinet of the ducal gallery there is an exquisite octagonal table, the round central piece of which was designed by poccetti, and the ornamental border by ligozzi. jacopo autelli executed the work, on which, with numerous assistants, he was employed for sixteen years, and finished it in . in the cabinet of cameos and engraved gems, there are figures in mezzo-relievo, and entire little statues in hard stone, fabricated by the same company of artists; not to mention what is in the pitti palace and the church of s. lorenzo. a similar company still exists, under the direction of the signori siries, and abounding in subordinate artists, which is supported with royal magnificence by the prince, for whom it is constantly employed. [footnote : the new style began in the reign of francesco i., who was greatly skilled in design, which he had learnt of buontalenti. he was succeeded by ferdinando i., cosmo ii., ferdinando ii., all of them celebrated for their magnificent works in ornamenting the city and the palace: cardinals gio. carlo and leopoldo de' medici also flourished there, both of them patrons of the arts; and the latter is recorded in history for his knowledge of them, and the splendid collection which he formed. we may add to these prince mattia, and others of that family.] [footnote : he was born in , and died in , leaving materials for the completion of the work, which were afterwards arranged by saverio, his son, a gentleman of the law, who put the finishing hand to the whole. piacenza. ristretto della vita di filippo baldinucci, p. xvi.] [footnote : in this branch of the art, indeed, he was not so greatly skilled; and the cav. titi, after commending his assumption, which is exhibited in the entablature of the cathedral at leghorn, adds, that not having been conducted according to the rules of foreshortening, some exceptions may be made to it.] [footnote : there is a visitation by this artist, and inscribed with his name, in the church of s. anthony of pisa, which he executed in a weak style in .] [footnote : in the great saloon he has poetically represented the protection afforded to literature by lorenzo de' medici. with some licences peculiar to that age, and usual with him, the composition and the figures are very beautiful; and there is an imitation of basso-relievo in his painting, that would deceive the most skilful, and tempt them to believe it absolutely raised from the wall. this work, left imperfect by him, was completed by pagani, by montelatici, and by furini, with some semicircular pieces.] [footnote : this is expressed by the italians by "il possesso del sotto in su." tr.] [footnote : see tom. ii. of signor giachi, p. .] [footnote : the ragged cloak recovered.] [footnote : it was published with notes by dr. paolo minucci, and was reprinted with other illustrations of sig. antonio biscioni.] [footnote : passeri, a great admirer of his tints, pronounces him a master of invention; and, treating of his engravings, says, "such vigour of conception, such novelty, and such variety, were never the gift of any other artist. he is a poet in all his historic pieces, his composition is full of fancy; this, however, is not equally commended by all, who look for the simple action without other accessaries."] [footnote : the bully.] [footnote : botti is pronounced a famous fresco painter by magalotti, in _lett. pitt._ tom. v. p. . there are various mechanical works of lorenzo. he painted the whole ceiling of the church of the domenicans at fiesole, which was considered by conca among the respectable productions of his age.] [footnote : the trumpet.] [footnote : the swarthy.] [footnote : lett. pitt. tom. i. p. .] [footnote : the ab. conca, tom. ii. p. , writes of this artist, that with this and similar works he acquired so much reputation in madrid, that the name of a principal street in which he lived was borrowed from his; from the time of philip ii. it has been called _jacome trezzo_.] [footnote : tom. viii. p. .] florentine school. epoch v. _pietro da cortona and his followers._ after the middle of the seventeenth century, the florentine school, and also that of rome, underwent a remarkable revolution, occasioned by the vast number of the followers of pietro da cortona. sects in painting have the same fate as sects in philosophy: one succeeds another; and the new principles are propagated more or less rapidly, according to the degree of opposition they have to encounter where they happen to be diffused. the manner of cortona met with considerable opposition in rome, as we shall find in the proper place. he was invited to florence by ferdinand ii. about the year , to ornament some of the apartments of the pitti palace; and this work, in which he spent several years, has appeared to connoisseurs the most beautiful he ever performed. he was directed in this work by michelangiolo bonarruoti the younger, a literary man of great judgment; and cortona appears also to display learning in the execution. in one apartment he painted the four ages of the world, which the poets of all nations have described in imitation of hesiod; five other chambers were dedicated to five fabulous deities, from whom they were named the chamber of minerva, of apollo, of mars, of jupiter, and of mercury. he united the mythology of each with history. thus, for instance, in the chamber of apollo, he represents this patron of the fine arts on the ceiling in the act of receiving the young hercules, who is introduced by minerva, that he may be instructed; and on the walls he painted alexander reading the works of homer, augustus listening to virgil, and other similar stories, which are fully described by passeri in his life of cortona. the great work was finished by ciro ferri; for after cortona had begun the chamber of mercury, on some disgust, which is variously related, he secretly withdrew from court, returned to rome, and always declined when repeatedly invited to revisit florence. there, however, he had laid the foundations of a new school. baldinucci remarks on the style of pietro, that it was no sooner seen at florence, than praised by the best judges.[ ] the predilection of cosmo iii. contributed to bring it into credit; this prince pensioned ciro ferri in rome, that he might instruct the tuscans who came there to study. at that time there was no artist of that country who did not, more or less, imitate this style. we shall now describe it, and trace it to its origin. pietro berrettini, a native of cortona, the scholar of comodi in tuscany, and of ciarpi at rome, is mentioned also among the writers on the art.[ ] he acquired his knowledge of design by copying antique basso-relievos, and the chiaroscuros of polidoro, a man who appears inspired by the soul of an ancient. pietro chose trajan's column as his favourite study; and from it he may have drawn his heavy proportions, and the appearance of strength and robustness, that characterize even his female forms and his children: in their eyes, noses, and lips, he surpasses the medium standard; and their hands and feet are certainly not remarkable for their light elegance. but in contrast, or the art of opposing group to group, figure to figure, and part to part, in which he was distinguished, he appears to have followed lanfranco, and partly to have formed it from the bacchanalian vases, which are particularly mentioned in his life by passeri. his taste may probably have been drawn, in some measure, from the venetian school; since having gone to study there, and then returned to rome, he destroyed what he had previously done, and executed his works anew in the barberini palace, according to the account of boschini, his great admirer. generally speaking, he finishes nothing highly but what was intended to be most conspicuous; he avoids strong shadows, is fond of middle tints, prefers the less brilliant grounds, colours without affectation, and is reckoned the inventor and chief artist of a style, which, in the opinion of mengs, combines facility with taste. he employed it in pictures of all sizes with applause; but in painting of furniture, and still more on ceilings, in cupolas, and recesses, he carried it to a pitch of beauty which will never fail to procure him panegyrists and imitators. the judicious division of his historical compositions, which derives aid from the architecture, that skilful gradation by which he represents the immensity of aerial space beyond the clouds, his knowledge in the art of foreshortening what is seen from below, that play of light seemingly celestial, that symmetrical disposition of his figures, are circumstances which enchant the eye and fascinate the soul. it is true that this manner does not always satisfy the mind; for intent on gratifying the eye, it introduces useless figures, in order that the composition may not be deficient in the usual fulness; and for the sake of contrast, figures in the performance of the gentlest actions, are painted as if the artist was representing them in a tournament or a battle. gifted by nature with facility of genius, and no less judgment, berrettini either avoided this extravagance, as in his stupendous conversion of s. paul, or did not carry it to that absurdity, which in our times has marked his followers, from the usual tendency of all schools to overcharge the characteristic of their master. hence the facility of this style has degenerated into negligence and its taste into affectation; until its chief adherents begin as at present to abandon it, and to adopt a superior manner. but not to wander from the florentine school, we must confess that this epoch has been the least productive of eminent painters. pietro had some pupils at that place, who did him equal honour with the romanelli and the ferri at rome. i shall first mention a foreigner, who having established himself at florence, may be reckoned of that school. livio mehus, a native of flanders, came into tuscany from milan, where he had received some instruction in the art from another fleming, named charles, was taken under the protection of prince matthias, and recommended to berrettini, who gave him lessons for a little time both in florence and at rome. by copying the antique he became a good designer, and he studied colouring at venice and in lombardy. he retained little of the manner of cortona besides the composition. he imitated the venetians less in colouring, than in the light and firm touches of his pencil. his tints are modest, his attitudes lively, his shadows most beautiful, and his inventions ingenious. he painted few altar pieces, but many cabinet pictures, for he was pensioned by the prince, and employed by noble families, in whose houses his works are often to be met with. the historical picture of the repose of bacchus and ariadne, which he painted for marquis gerini, in emulation of ciro ferri, is very highly praised. ferri conceived some jealousy of him, when he painted the cupola of the pace at florence; where he appears to approach the lombard school, and even to surpass cortona.[ ] he was imitated by a lorenzo rossi, previously a scholar of pier dandini, who, according to p. orlandi, executed some elegant small pictures. vincenzio dandini went from the school of his brother cesare into that of cortona, or rather into the roman school, where he copied, as well as he could, with unwearied assiduity, the finest specimens in painting, sculpture, and architecture. on this foundation, aided by practice in anatomy, at the academy for the naked figure, which still flourished at florence, he became superior to his brother in design and in softness of colouring: he also finished more highly than cesare, was more studious in his drapery, and in the other branches of the art. in all saints there is a conception of the virgin, and three other pictures by his hand. he was employed in the ducal villas: in that of poggio imperiale he painted a beautifully foreshortened figure of aurora, attended by the hours, in a recess he had erected; and at petraia painted in oil the sacrifice of niobe. in him the pupil of cortona is very manifest. a similar style, but degenerated both in execution and in manner, is discoverable in pietro, his son and scholar. this artist was superior to all the other dandini; and by more extensive travels he obtained a greater knowledge of foreign painters: it would have been well if he had not attempted to surpass them also in his emoluments. from avarice he undertook too many works, and contented himself with a certain mediocrity in study; for which he, in some measure compensated by a freedom of pencil that is always admirable. where well paid, he demonstrated his abilities; as in the cupola of s. mary magdalen; in several frescos in the ducal palace at florence, in the royal villas, and in the copious historical picture of the taking of jerusalem, which he painted in the public palace at pisa. he also painted some altar-pieces worthy of himself; as the s. francis in s. maria maggiore or the beato piccolomini in the attitude of saying mass, in possession of the servi; a beautiful picture, full of spirited attitudes. his son, ottaviano, appears his follower in some semicircular pictures in the cloister of s. spirito, in a piece representing various saints in the church of s. lorenzo; and wherever he was employed. one of his grandest works may be seen in s. mary magdalen at pescia, the ceiling of which he painted in fresco. the dandini family had many scholars, who, with their descendants, have kept alive the school of cortona, even to our own days. this school was not eminent; it requires but little examination, or prolixity of description. it has produced some good artists; but few of them are above mediocrity; a fault less to be attributed to their genius, than the times. the more modern style was esteemed the best: the last master seemed to discover new maxims in painting, and abolished the old: and thus artists of little celebrity gave birth to others more minute and mannered, resembling their prototype in maxims, but inferior in reputation. about this time it became fashionable to paint with a certain degree of careless ease, or _sprezzatura_, as it is styled by some; and giordano and some venetians are applauded for this manner. several florentine artists tried to imitate them, and have produced works that resemble sketches: this species of mannerism is not uncommon in other schools. it is unnecessary to be particular, but only to observe generally that such artists are as rare in choice collections of pictures, as andrea del sarto or cigoli: the latter are there scarce, because they painted with great care; the former class because they painted with very little. in the work entitled _series of the most celebrated painters_, we find antonio riccianti, michele noferi, and some others whose names are merely mentioned as scholars of vincenzio; and gabbiani is the only one particularly praised. in like manner, among the pupils of pietro dandini we find the names of gio. cinqui, whose portrait is in the ducal gallery, antonio puglieschi, of florence, who studied under ciro, and valerio baldassari of pescia; but there is a particular eulogy bestowed on fratinelli, whom we shall notice hereafter. i find also that p. alberigo carlini, a minorite monk of pescia, was the pupil of ottaviano, and attended conca at rome. he painted some good pictures, chiefly in the church of his order at pietrasanta. to his we may also add the name of santarelli, a patrician of the same country, and who died at rome. the most celebrated pupil of the dandini was anton domenico gabbiani, not long ago mentioned; before he was the pupil of vincenzio, he had lessons from subtermans, and finished his education at rome under ciro ferri, and at venice by studying the best masters. we must not give credit to pascoli, who has represented him as a mean artist.[ ] gabbiani ranks amongst the best designers of his age; a collection of his drawings is in the possession of sig. pacini, which was often inspected and commended by mengs for the facility and elegance he there discovered. many of his designs were engraved and published in his life by ignatius hugford. his colouring sometimes borders on the languid, but is generally good: he is correct and natural, especially in fleshy tints; juicy, and tempered by a pleasing harmony. the greatest fault in the style of this artist is in his draperies, which, though correct, and studied with his usual diligence, always exhibit a degree of heaviness in the execution, are too confined, and sometimes are not quite true in the colouring. his merit is very great in light subjects: in the pitti, and other palaces of some of the nobility of florence, his dances of genii and groups of boys are to be met with, and yield little to those of baciccio. one of the finest is in the house of the orlandini family; and the marquis of riccardi has specimens among the mirrors placed in his collection. his largest and most celebrated work in fresco is the vast cupola of cestello, which he did not wholly finish. his oil pictures are esteemed precious even in the ducal gallery. several of his works of unequal merit are preserved in churches; but his s. philip, in possession of the fathers dell' oratorio, justifies the assertion of redi, that, except maratta, there was then no painter in rome that could eclipse him.[ ] the catalogue of his scholars is extensive; but some of them, as happens to every master, may be also claimed by other preceptors. benedetto luti was an honour to gabbiani and to florence. having formed himself in this school, he went to rome, in hopes of receiving the instructions of ciro ferri; but the death of that master intervening, he was guided by his own genius, and the monuments of art existing in that city. the style he there formed may be considered a compound of various imitations, select in the forms, pleasing and bright in colouring, shewing art in the distribution of light and shade, and as harmonious to the eye as is the orator to the ear, who enchants an audience by his well turned periods; the delightful fascination is felt, but the source of it cannot be assigned. in that metropolis we shall find him master of the new style; but in tuscany we cannot point out many of his pictures besides those in the ducal palace: private collections are rich only in his crayon pieces, which are likewise well known out of italy. there is one of his large pictures on canvass at pisa, the subject of which is the vestment of s. ranieri; and it is the most admired among the larger paintings of the cathedral. luti sent it to gabbiani for his correction before it was exposed to the public; a circumstance highly honourable to the modesty of the scholar and the abilities of the master.[ ] his portrait is in the ducal gallery; and the more rigid critics, on looking at it, have been known to say, "behold the last painter of his school." tommaso redi was a pupil of the same master; and is noticed in the _lettere pittoriche_, as a good composer of historical pictures, and is also praised for design, colouring, and spirit. from the school of gabbiani he went under the tuition of maratta and balestra, both artists respectable for their style, and declared enemies to the innovations which have occupied and debased our schools for so long a period. redi also visited the most celebrated schools, but for the sole purpose of studying the old masters, and of making copies of their works, some of which, with a few pieces of his own invention, remain in his family. in the eulogy of anton domenico we find honourable mention made of his nephew, gaetano gabbiani; of francesco salvetti, his intimate friend; of gio. antonio pucci, a painter and a poet; of giuseppe baldini, whose promising career was cut short by death, and of ranieri del pace, a native of pisa, who afterwards yielding to the torrent of fashion, became a complete mannerist. ignatius hugford, born in florence, but whose father was a native of england,[ ] was admirably skilled in recognizing the hands of different masters, and likewise painted in a good manner a picture of s. raphael at s. felicità, and some other pieces, which were mostly small, and have been admitted into the royal museum. the feeble paintings in possession of the vallombrosani at forli, and some of the same stamp at florence, are likewise by this artist. alessandro gherardini, a rival of gabbiani, and in the opinion of many, his superior in genius as a painter, had wonderful facility in counterfeiting different styles. he would have equalled any of his contemporaries, had he always painted in the style of his crucifixion of our lord in candeli, in which he calls to mind a happy imitation of different schools. it is a work studied in every part, especially in the general tone, which artfully expresses the darkness of that hour. a history piece of alexander the great, in casa orlandini, with figures of half-length, and executed with great industry, is also held in high esteem; but he aimed at painting pictures of every degree of merit. one of his pupils, no less fertile in talent, and named sebastiano galeotti, is rather remembered than known at florence. he left his native place when young, travelled about a long time without any fixed residence, and has left specimens behind him in many parts of upper italy. he at length settled at genoa, where we shall again notice him. the ducal gallery contains portraits both of the master and of the scholar, by the side of those of gabbiani and redi. other considerable painters of this epoch have obtained a similar honour; among whom we may mention agostino veracini, a scholar of sebastian ricci, francesco conti, a disciple of maratta, and lapi, a follower of giordano; each of these has successfully imitated his guide.[ ] the s. apollonia of the first, painted for the church of that name; various madonnas of the second, in the hands of private gentlemen; and the transfiguration of the last, in the ducal gallery, are calculated to do them honour, and even to shed a lustre on some of their less refined productions. some others now dead have been equally honoured by a portrait, of whom i have not discovered any other work. of this number are vincenzio bacherelli, gio. francesco bagnoli, anton sebastiano bettini, gio. casini, niccolo nannetti, and others, who are mentioned in the _museo fiorentino_. giovanni camillo sagrestani, a scholar of giusti, was esteemed at florence, even during the lifetime of gabbiani and gherardini. to study different masters, he visited the best schools of italy, and for some time attended the school of cav. cignani, whose manner he copied rather than emulated. one of his holy families is in the madonna de' ricci, the beauty of which has more of an ideal cast, and the colouring is more florid, than is usual with his contemporaries of this school. one of the first judges in florence assured me that this painting was the work of sagrestani, although others ascribe it to his scholar, matteo bonechi. bonechi had excellent parts, but not an equal knowledge of the art, in which he is reported to have been instructed by a species of dictation; for he practised under the eye, and was directed by the voice of his master. he thus became one of those practical artists who make up for the poverty of their design by their spirit and their colouring. there are some of his pictures that in any collection would be particularly calculated to attract the eye. among his works in fresco, the picture at cestello, where he finished what was begun by gabbiani, is worthy of record; and also that in the capponi palace near the nunziata, where he continued the work of marinari. about this time cignani died in bologna, and gio. gioseffo del sole, denominated the modern guido, enjoyed the highest reputation. florence employed three of his eminent pupils; one of the two soderini, meucci, and ferretti, who although called da imola, was born and lived in florence. mauro soderini enjoyed the reputation of a good designer, and aimed at beauty and effect in his pictures. the death of s. joseph in the cathedral is said to be by his hand, though it is in fact by ferretti; the child revived by s. zanobi, in the church of s. stephen, is really his. vincenzio meucci was chiefly employed in works of perspective, which he executed in many parts of tuscany, and even in the cupola of the royal chapel in s. lorenzo. if there was any one who could dispute with him pre-eminence in fresco painting, it was his fellow disciple, giovanni domenico ferretti, whose works may be seen in florence, in several other parts of tuscany, and at bologna; from which he appears to have surpassed meucci in fancy and in spirit, and especially at the philippini at pistoia, where his performance in the cupola is highly praised. in fresco works they were both excellent; but in oil paintings they often were too hasty, an error into which all fresco painters, not excepting the most esteemed, have fallen. hence ferretti, although he painted the martyrdom of s. bartolommeo, for the church dedicated to that saint at pisa, in an excellent style, did not give equal satisfaction by his history of s. guido, in the archiepiscopal church. several of the works of meucci are dispersed through the various churches in florence; and in a chapel of the nunziata, where he painted the recess, he coloured a madonna, which is allowed to be one of his most diligent and best finished pictures. he was there rivalled by giuseppe grisoni, a scholar of redi; and it is reported that vexation at this circumstance shortened his days. grisoni had travelled more than he in visiting the schools of italy, had even gone to england, and had acquired great skill in figures, and still more in landscape. he therefore was induced to add landscape not only to historical, but also to portrait painting; as in the instance of a portrait of himself that is one of the most respectable in the second chamber of painters. he added it also to the s. barbara, painted in competition with meucci; and it is a picture which does honour to the school in form, relief, and taste of colouring. he likewise painted other pieces on the same plan, in which, however, he did not succeed so well. meucci and grisoni cannot be reckoned italian artists of the same rank with luti; but if all are to be estimated by the times in which they flourished, each was eminent in his day. i had noticed them briefly in my first edition, and some painters have informed me, that with them i ought to have mentioned giuseppe zocchi, who was a painter of note, and should not have been omitted even in a compendium of the history of the art. i now correct my error, and produce what information the noble family of gerini, under whose protection he was received when a boy, and who, after his elementary studies at florence, sent him to rome, to bologna, and other parts of lombardy, for his instruction in the different schools, have supplied me. i may be allowed to add, that the florentine nobility have always been most liberal in this way; and there are not a few living artists who owe their education in the fine arts to the bounty of some noble family: such clients are an ornament to a nobleman, and are not to be numbered among his servants. zocchi had a genius fertile in invention, pliant in imitation, and judicious in selection; and hence at the conclusion of such a course of study, he was able to compose large works with skill, and to colour beautifully. he painted four pretty large frescos in the villa serristori, beyond the gate of s. nicholas, some apartments in the rinuccini palace, and one in the gerini gallery; and these are believed to be his best works of this sort. in smaller pieces he was still greater; as in his oil picture of the festivities at siena, on the arrival of the emperor francis i., a work very true in the perspective, and graceful in the multitude of figures which he there inserted. it is deposited in the splendid sansedonii collection of pictures at siena, where the entertainment given to the grand duke peter leopold may also be seen: with this object in view the painter went to siena, where he caught the epidemic disorder that raged there in , and soon after died at florence. on turning to the other parts of tuscany, we find them from the beginning of the eighteenth century full of the followers of cortona; san sepolcro boasted one zei, of whom i find no further account than that of his painting an altar-piece representing the souls in purgatory, for the cathedral of that place, a work extremely well coloured, and conducted in the maxims of the school, though the countenances are of a common cast; and if we except the liberating angel, of poor expression. among this sect we cannot include gio. batista mercati, one of the latest painters of that city, not unknown at rome, and much noted in his native place, where he painted either at a more mature time of life, or with greater pains. two of his historical frescos, representing our lady, are in s. chiara; and at s. lorenzo there is a picture of the titular with other saints; in both there is an air apparently drawn from the school of the caracci, especially in the breadth of the drapery, which is well cast, and skilfully varied. in the guides to venice and to rome, several of his works are mentioned, and in that of leghorn, the only picture in the cathedral esteemed worthy of notice is that of the five saints, painted by mercati with great care. orlandi notices tommaso lancisi, a scholar of scaminossi, and two of his brothers, and adds, that painting was an hereditary honour in this family. one only of the countrymen of berrettini is known to me as his follower; his name is adriano palladino; he is mentioned by orlandi, which is the only trace of him that i have discovered; i never saw any of his works, nor heard them mentioned by any one. arezzo abounds with pictures in the manner of cortona. salvi castellucci, the scholar of pietro, either at florence or at rome, was a great imitator of his style, and painted with expedition, according to the practice of the school. he executed many good pieces in the cathedral, and other churches, besides numerous cabinet pictures that are in private houses, which are estimable for the facility and good taste of their colouring. one of his frescos, representing our lady surrounded by the patron saints of the city, is in the public palace; but he is greater in oil painting. he had a son, on whom he bestowed the name of pietro, probably in honour of his master. he also was a follower of cortona, but never equalled his father. pistoia, however, had two gimignani, the father giacinto, and lodovico, his son, of whom it is still disputed which was the most eminent. from the school of poussin, giacinto entered that of berrettini; and as he approached nearer his first master in design and composition, so in colouring and in taste for architecture he came nearest to the second. he moreover took the lead in works of fresco. here he rivalled camassei and maratta, at the baptistery of s. gio. laterano, where he painted the histories of constantine, besides leaving other specimens in different parts of rome, in the niccolini palace at florence, and other places. in some pictures he also emulated guercino, as for instance in the leander in the ducal gallery, which was long considered as a guercino. though lodovico was the scholar of giacinto, he is not so correct in design, but was superior to his father in all the faculties that excite pleasing emotions; his ideas are more beautiful, his tints more lovely, his attitudes more spirited, and his harmony more agreeable. it would appear either that the style of his maternal uncle orbetto, had attracted his attention, or that bernini, the director of his studies, had led him into this path. he obtained great applause for his works in fresco, and those he executed at rome in the church of the virgins are studied by artists for the attitudes, the clouds, and the grace of the wings with which his angels were furnished. he chiefly resided at rome, which possesses several of his paintings for churches, and a far greater number for halls and private rooms; being moreover much employed in these for foreign countries. two histories of s. john by the hand of giacinto, are in the church dedicated to that saint at pistoia; and there was also a s. rocco in the cathedral, which was esteemed excellent. lodovico executed a beautiful picture for the church of the capuchins, now converted into a parish church. after the death of both, lazzaro baldi still remained, another great ornament of the school of cortona, and of pistoia, his native place. he may be there recognised in two pictures, the annunciation in the church of s. francis, and the repose in egypt in that of the madonna della umiltà. this latter place is a most majestic octagonal temple, executed by ventura vitoni of pistoia, the great pupil of bramante, and surmounted by a cupola, which is reckoned among the noblest in italy. baldi finally established his abode in rome; where he was much employed, as well as in other parts of the states of the church. one of the most studied pictures he ever painted is at s. camerino, and represents s. peter receiving the pontifical power. a still more recent artist is gio. domenico piastrini, a scholar of luti, who in the porch of madonna della umiltà, filled two large spaces with pictures, illustrative of the history of this church, and who rivalled the best followers of maratta, in s. maria in via lata, at rome. it is not foreign to this period to notice gio. batista cipriani, who was born in florence, but descended from a family of pistoia;[ ] especially as he left specimens of his pencil in the neighbourhood of the places we have just mentioned. two of his altar-pieces were in the abbey of s. michael-on-the-sea; one of s. thesaurus, the other of s. gregory vii. which are valuable, as cipriani painted but little. his excellence lay in design, which he acquired from the collection of the studies of gabbiani, before mentioned. having afterwards gone to london, he was much employed by the celebrated bartolozzi, who has immortalized the painter by engraving his inventions. we might augment our catalogue with the two giusti and michele paoli, a pistoian of the school of crespi; but they did not attain maturity, if we depend on the information afforded by the continuator of _felsina pittrice_.[ ] of those within the florentine territory, the pisans, and of those beyond it, the artists of lucca, yet remain to be considered. camillo gabrieli, a scholar of ciro, was the first who transplanted the style of cortona into pisa; and in this manner executed a good oil painting at the convent of the carmelites, and also several for private individuals; in this kind of painting he was more happy than in fresco. in this line, however, his memory is honoured in his native place, both for his works in the grand saloon of the alliata palace, and in the apartments of other noblemen's houses; and likewise on account of his pupils, the two melani, who have contributed much to his reputation. we shall notice francesco among the professors of architectural design: giuseppe his brother, and a knight of the golden spur, became no common artist in figures, and was worthy of painting in the cathedral a large oil picture of the death of s. ranieri. although this piece ranks in the scale of mediocrity in this sanctuary of the arts, it does honour to its author; the invention is good, the perspective is regular, and exhibits no marks of carelessness, as is so often the case. but his place is among the painters in fresco; in which department he ornamented with figures the architectural works of his brother; and has shewn himself tenacious of the manner of cortona, both in what is commendable in it, as the perspective, colouring, and harmony; and also where it is less praiseworthy, as in the heaviness and imperfect finish of the figures. with a similar instance we shall commence the series of artists of lucca: the two brothers, ippolito and giovanni marracci, obtained equal applause in very different branches of the art; the former was a painter of architecture, the latter of figures; and of him only we shall here speak. although little known beyond lucca, he is reckoned among the eminent scholars and most successful imitators of pietro da cortona; and merits this name, either when he painted in fresco, as in the cupola of s. ignatius, at s. giovanni; or when he wrought in oil, as he did in several pictures in the possession of the brotherhood of s. lorenzo, in the collegiate church of s. michael, and in other places. with equal success two other artists, natives of lucca, who had been educated in his school, became imitators, for a period, of pier cortona. these were giovanni coli and filippo gherardi, who were trained in the school of their native place, and resembled each other no less in style than in disposition; so that though they usually painted in the same piece, all their joint labours appear the work of a single artist. they afterwards adopted a manner that participates of the venetian and lombard schools; and in this style they painted the vast ceiling of the library of s. giorgio maggiore at venice. rome possesses some of their stupendous works in the church of the lucchesi, and in the magnificent colonna gallery. the most celebrated picture with which they ornamented their native place was the fresco of the tribune of the church of s. martin, and next to it that in s. matthew's, which they decorated with three oil pictures. after the death of coli, his companion resided and continued to paint in lucca: the whole cloister of the carmelite monastery was painted by him alone. the manner of cortona was likewise adhered to by gio. batista brugieri, a scholar of baldi and of maratta, who was in his day highly applauded for his works in the chapel of the sacrament, at the servi, and his other productions in public. p. stefano cassiani, from the fraternity to which he belonged, surnamed il certosino, or the carthusian, painted in fresco the cupola of his church, and two large histories of our lady, besides other reputable works in the style of cortona, at the certosa of pisa, of siena, and elsewhere. girolamo scaglia, a disciple of paulini and of gio. marracci, is surnamed parmegianino. in architecture he imitated berrettini, as is remarked by sig. da morrona;[ ] in his shadows he followed paulini, and sometimes approached ricchi: as a painter his effect was superior to his design; or as it was observed by the cav. titi, (p. ) on beholding his picture of the presentation, painted at pisa, it exhibits extreme industry and very little taste. gio. domenico campiglia was reckoned among the best designers in rome; and of him the engravers of antiquities particularly availed themselves. he was not without merit as a painter; and in florence, where he executed some pictures, his portrait has a place among those of eminent artists. a picture painted by pietro sigismondi, of lucca, for the great altar of s. nicholas in arcione at rome, is honourably mentioned by titi: i know not whether any of his works remain in his native place; and the same is the case with massei and with pini, who will be considered in another school. i shall close this series with two other artists; and had the age produced many like them, italian painting would not have declined so much as it has done during the eighteenth century. giovanni domenico lombardi lived not, like his pupil, cav. batoni, within the enlightening precincts of rome, but in merit he was at least equal to batoni. he formed his style on the works of paulini, and improved it by studying the finest colourists at venice, and also by paying attention to the school of bologna. the genius of this artist, his taste, his grand and resolute tone, appear in several of his pictures, executed in his best time, and with real pains. such are his two pieces on the sides of the choir of the olivetani, which represent their founder, s. bernard, administering relief to the citizens infected with the plague. there are two others in a chapel of s. romano, which are painted with a magic force approaching to the best manner of guercino; and one of them, in the opinion of the most rigid critics, seems the work of that artist himself. he should always have painted thus; and never have prostituted his pencil to manufacture pieces at all prices. batoni, who will be noticed in our third book among the roman masters, supported better his own dignity and that of the art. he adhered in a great measure to the maxims of this school, a circumstance which did not altogether please his first master, who on examining some of his early performances, remarked, that they required a greater covering of dirt, for they appear to him too trimly neat. one who has not an opportunity of examining his capital works, may satisfy himself in lucca, either in the church of the olivetine fathers, where he painted the martyrdom of s. bartolommeo; or in that of s. catharine of siena, where she is represented receiving the mystic wounds of the crucifixion. i shall not here mention many artists in the inferior walks of the art. the example of cortona influenced none in this class, except a few ornamental painters, and some artists who accompanied their figures by landscapes. the painters of landscapes, flowers, and the like, continued to follow their original models. chiavistelli, for instance, has been followed by various artists in fresco of this age, who besides executing figures, have exercised, as before remarked, other branches of painting. pure architectural and ornamental painting in a good taste are, however, distinct arts; and to attain excellence in them requires all the faculties of man. angiol rossi, of florence, applied himself to it, as i believe, in bologna; and assiduously practised it at venice, as we are informed by guarienti. two artists of lucca, pietro scorzini and bartolommeo santi, received their education at bologna, and were the favourite decorators of many theatres. francesco melani, of pisa, adhered strongly to cortona. as learned in perspective as his brother was in figures, his style was so similar, that no architectural painter was so well suited to accompany the figures of the other. this will be allowed by all who view the ceiling in the church of s. matthew at pisa, which is their finest work, or their paintings in siena, and at other places, where they were employed together. they educated a pupil worthy of them, in tommaso tommasi, of pietra santa, a man of vast conception, who succeeded in pisa to the commissions bestowed upon his masters, and produced very pleasing specimens of his powers in the nave of the church of s. giovanni. ippolito marracci, of lucca, the scholar of metelli, appears a successful rival of his master, either when he painted by himself, as in the rotonda, at lucca, or when associated with his brother, as was generally the case. domenico schianteschi, a disciple of bibieni, lived in san sepolcro; his perspectives in that city are to be seen in the houses of many of the nobility, and are much esteemed. florence has boasted professed portrait painters, even to the present time; among whom gaetano piattoli is particularly extolled. he was pupil to a french artist, francesco riviera, who had resided and died at leghorn, and was very much prized in collections for the excellence of his conversazioni and turkish ballets. he is well known too, in other countries; for he was employed to take portraits of the foreign nobility who visited florence. the portrait of himself, which he painted for the ducal gallery, indicates the style of the rest. an illustrious female artist emanated from the school of gabbiani, although assisted in her studies by other masters, and this was giovanna fratellini, who was not without invention, and was most expert in portrait painting. she executed in oil, in crayons, in miniature, and in enamel, various portraits of the family of cosmo iii. and of other princes, to paint whom she was sent by her sovereign to several cities of italy. that which she painted of herself, is in the ducal gallery: in it she has blended the employment of the artist with the affection of a mother. she is represented in the act of taking a likeness of lorenzo, her only son and pupil, who died in the flower of his age. it is painted in crayons, an art in which she may be called the rosalba of her time. domenico tempesti, or tempestino, is rather included among engravers than painters; though he was instructed by volterrano in florence, in the latter art, and exercised it with credit both in landscape and portrait. he is mentioned by vianelli in the catalogue of his pictures. it would appear that he was the same domenico de marchis, called tempestino, whom orlandi casually notices in the article of girolamo odam, whom domenico had initiated in the elements of landscape painting. orlandi gives also a separate article, under the head of domenico tempesti, in which his voyages through europe, and his long residence at rome, are dwelt upon. many landscapes, chiefly rural views, painted by paolo anesi, are dispersed through florence, and there are also many of them in rome. francesco zuccherelli, a native of pitigliano, born in the year , was his scholar. on going to rome, he resided there a long time, and first entered the school of morandi, and afterwards of pietro nelli. his first intention was to study figures, but by one of those circumstances which discover the natural predilection, he applied himself to painting landscape; and pursued it in a manner that united strength and sweetness; and has been highly extolled not only in italy, but over all europe. his figures also were elegant, and these he was sometimes employed to introduce in the landscapes and architectural pieces of other artists. his principal field in italy was venice, where he was settled, until the celebrated smith made him known in england, and invited him to that island, in which he remained many years, exercising his pencil for the court, and for the most considerable collections of pictures. he enjoyed the particular esteem of count algarotti; in the possession of whose heirs are two landscapes by tesi, with figures by zuccherelli: of the first artist i shall again speak in the school of bologna. algarotti was commissioned by the court of dresden to procure the works of the best modern painters, and suggested to zuccherelli subjects for two pictures, in which he succeeded admirably, and was employed to repeat them for the king of prussia. in his old age he returned to rome, and was employed there, at venice and in florence, where he died in . these anecdotes of zuccherelli i obtained along with many others from the sig. avvocato lessi, a gentleman deeply versed in the fine arts. the name of this artist brings to a fair conclusion the series of florentine painters, which has been continued for little less than six centuries, in an uninterrupted succession of native artists, without the intervention of one foreign master in this school, at least one so eminent as to mark an era. with the exception of the last years, in which art was on the decline throughout italy, the florentine school, with all its merit, and that is undoubtedly very great, owes its progress to native genius. it was not unacquainted with foreign artists, but from them it disdained to borrow; and its masters never adopted any other style on which they did not engraft a peculiarity and originality of manner. i might write much in praise of masters now living,[ ] but i propose not to enter on their merits, and shall leave them wholly to the judgment of posterity. in other arts i indulge a greater latitude, but not frequently. i may add with truth, that during the course of six centuries, the artists of florence have been fortunate in a government most auspicious to the fine arts. the last princes however of the medicean family had shewn more inclination than activity in patronizing them; and the reign of the emperor francis i., though generally distinguished for enterprize,[ ] was nevertheless that of an absent sovereign. the accession of the grand duke peter leopold to supreme power in tuscany, in , marked a new era in the history of the arts. the palace and royal villas were repaired and embellished; and amid the succession of undertakings that attracted the best artists, painting was continually promoted. the improvement of the ducal gallery was most opportune for it; and afforded new commissions to painters, and new specimens of the art: for the prince ordered all the inferior pieces to be removed from the collection, and their place to be supplied by vast numbers of choice pictures. fine specimens of antique marbles were likewise added: to him florence owes the niobe of praxiteles,[ ] the apollo, and other statues; the basso-relievos, and busts of the cæsars, which complete the grand series in the corridore: the cabinets of the gallery were then only twelve in number, and they contained a confused assemblage of paintings, statues, bronzes, and drawings, antiquities and modern productions. he reduced this chaos to order; he separated the different kinds, assigned separate apartments to each, made new purchases of what was before wanting, and increased the number of cabinets to twenty-one. this great work, one branch of which he was pleased to commit to my charge,[ ] was worthy of record. i laid it before the public, in , in a memoir, which was inserted also in the forty-seventh volume of the journal of pisa. whoever compares this book with the description of the gallery, published in , by bianchi, will clearly perceive that leopold was rather a second founder than a restorer of that emporium of the fine arts: so different is the arrangement, so remarkable are the additions to the building, to its ornaments, and to the articles it contains.[ ] i have been diffuse in my description of the antiquities which appeared to me deserving of more particular elucidation; of the pictures i merely indicated the artist and the subject. since that period, other descriptions of the gallery, by very able writers, have been given to the public, in which my nomenclature and expositions of the antiquities have been adopted; but a fuller and better catalogue of the paintings is given on the plan of that of the imperial cabinet of vienna, and similar works. ferdinand iii. who now for five years has promoted the welfare of tuscany, succeeded no less to the throne of his august father, than to the protection of the fine arts. the new buildings already completed, as the right wing of the pitti palace, or now begun, as the vestibule of the laurentian library, which is to be finished upon a design of michelangiolo, are matters foreign to my subject. not so, however, are the additions made by the prince to the gallery and the academy of design. to the first he has added a vast number of prints and pictures of those schools in which it was formerly deficient; and the gallery is increased by a collection of venetian and another of french masters, which are separately arranged in two cabinets.[ ] the academy, since , had been as it were created anew by his father; had obtained a new and magnificent edifice, new masters, and new regulations, circumstances already well known over europe, and here unnecessary to be repeated. this institution, which required improvement in some particulars, has been at length completed, and its apartments and its splendour augmented by the son; seconded by the superintendence of those accomplished connoisseurs, the marchese gerini, the prior rucellai, and the senator alessandri. to the artists in every branch of the fine arts which were before in florence, he has recently added the engraver sig. morghen, an ornament to the city and the state. the obligations of the fine arts to ferdinand iii., are eloquently stated by sig. cav. puccini, a nobleman of pistoia, and superintendant of the ducal gallery, in an oration on the arts, pronounced not long ago in this academy, of which he is the respected secretary, and since published, accompanied by engravings.[ ] [footnote : life of matteo rosselli, in tom. x. p. .] [footnote : tiraboschi, storia della lett. ital. (tom. viii. p. .) ed. ven. "pietro berrettini, in addition to the letters pointed out by mazzucchelli (scritt. ital. tom. ii. p. ,) wrote also along with p. giandomenico ottonelli da fanano, a jesuit, a 'treatise upon painting and sculpture, their use and abuse; composed by a painter and a theologian.'" this work is become very rare.] [footnote : lett. pitt. tom. i. p. .] [footnote : in the life of luti. see lett. pitt. tom. i. p. .] [footnote : lett. pitt. tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : see lett. pitt. tom. ii. lett. .] [footnote : he was brother to henry hugford, a monk of vallombrosa, to whom we owe, in a great measure, the progress of working in _scagliola_, which was afterwards successfully practised in florence by lamberti gori, his pupil; and at this day by the signor pietro stoppioni, who receives numerous commissions. although the portraits, and in general the figures, of a variety of colours, are very pleasing, yet the _dicromi_, or yellow figures upon a black ground, attract most notice, copied from ancient vases formerly called etruscan, and these copies either form separate pictures, or are inserted for ornament in tablets. the tragic poet alfieri caused his epitaph to be inscribed on one of these small tables covered with scagliola work. being found after his death, it quickly spread abroad, but was not inscribed on his tomb. upon another of these he had written the epitaph of a great personage, whom he wished to be interred near him; and the two little tablets united together folded one upon another in the way of a _dittico_ or small altar, or of a book, on the side of which was written _alfieri liber novissimus_. in this way others write, on tablets of scagliola, fine precepts from scripture, a philosophy that comes from and leads to heaven, intended to be placed in private sanctuaries, to aid meditation in sight of the crucifix. the silver tablets i have seen for the same purpose are more valuable, but less artificial.] [footnote : in his larger works (such as the altar-pieces at the missionari and at the monastero nuovo,) it would appear that conti aimed at approaching the style of trevisani.] [footnote : see _saggio istorico della r. galleria de firenze_, tom. ii. p. . this work, valuable for its learning and authenticity, is written by sig. giuseppe bencivenni (formerly pelli) a gentleman of florence, and formerly director of the ducal gallery, who is also known by his other literary labours, on the lives of the most eminent painters, by the life of dante, and by the learned dissertation on coins, appended to the lives of the followers of cortona. he arranged the collection of modern coins, that of engravings and of drawings, and the paintings of the ducal gallery; of these, and also of the gems and medals, he has there left manuscript catalogues.] [footnote : see that work at p. .] [footnote : tom iii. p. .] [footnote : it was necessary to confine myself thus in the preceding edition. in the present we may give free scope to our commendation of tommaso gherardini, a florentine, and pupil to meucci; and who, having completed his studies in the schools of venice and bologna, succeeded admirably in basso-relievo and chiaroscuro. he decorated a large hall in the medicean gallery in fresco, and painted likewise much in oil for the imperial gallery of vienna, for german and english gentlemen, and various countries that have ornamented their collections. he shewed, at least for his age, no less skill in fresco histories, which are seen in many florentine palaces and villas. the best of these are such as he executed in mature age, or at his own suggestion; like his _parnaso in toscana_, placed in the casa martelli, one of his patrons from his early years; besides others in the noble houses of ricciardi and ambra. he died in ; the senator martelli, on the decease of the archbishop his uncle, and that of his father, continued his patronage to the artist, and considers him as one who has reflected the greatest degree of credit on his house. the clients of that family, from the time of donatello, have been numerous, a taste for the fine arts being hereditary in the family. the master of the academy, pietro pedroni, ought not to be here omitted; an oil painter of merit, whose four pictures, executed subsequent to his studies at parma and rome, are an ornament to his native place. owing to ill health, he produced little during his residence at florence, which, added to other disappointments, induced him, always the best resource, to travel. if not a rare painter, he was at least an able master: profound in theory, and eloquent in conveying his knowledge to his pupils, of whom history will treat in the ensuing age. their success, their affection and esteem for pedroni, is the best eulogy on him which i can transmit to posterity.] [footnote : see _il saggio istorico_ of sig. pelli, towards the conclusion.] [footnote : see _le notizie su la scoltura degli antichi e i vari suoi stili_, p. . this short tract, illustrative of many marbles in the ducal gallery, is inserted in the third volume of _saggio di lingua etrusca_. it was intended as a preface to a full description of the museum, which was then in the press, but it was suspended in consequence of the numerous changes and additions made in that place.] [footnote : it was the cabinet of antiquities, not then arranged. in each class i have noticed the additions of leopold. to the busts of the cæsars i was able to add about forty, some of which had been purchased, and others removed from the royal palaces and villas. see the description above quoted, p. . the collection of heads of philosophers and illustrious men was almost all new. i give an account of it in p. . the series of busts of the medicean family was completed at the same time, and latin inscriptions were added, which are to be found in various descriptions of the gallery, with some errors, that are not to be attributed to me, but to the printers; and this remark applies to other royal epitaphs, as published in many books. the cabinet of antique bronzes is described in p. . for the collection of antique earthenware, see p. ; of greek and latin inscriptions on stones, see p. . for the hetruscan and carved cinerary urns, see p. . this cabinet i also endeavoured to illustrate in _saggio di lingua etrusca_, &c. published at rome, in . for the cabinet of antique medals, arranged by the celebrated sig. ab. eckell, see p. ; the others, arranged by sig. pelli, are mentioned a little before.] [footnote : after the departure of the prince, his bust in marble was erected, and beneath it the following inscription, of which he was pleased to approve: petrvs. leopoldvs. francisci. avg. f. avstriacvs. m. d. e. ad. vrbis. svae. decvs. et. ad. incrementvm. artivm. optimarvm mvsevm. medicevm operibvs. ampliatis. copisqve. avctis ordinandvm. et. splendidiore. cvltv. exornandvm. cvravit anno. m.dcc.lxxxix. ] [footnote : he employed in this work the highly esteemed sig. cav. puccini, from whom i understand, that almost a third of the pictures now in the gallery were placed there by the munificence of ferdinand. sig. puccini has arranged them in a manner so symmetrical and instructive as to form a model for all other collections.] [footnote : in lodovico i. began his reign in tuscany. dying shortly after, he was succeeded by the infant carlo i., under the regency of the queen-mother maria louisa. from this period the arts have experienced new patronage and encouragement. the very copious and select salvetti library has been appropriated for the use of the academy; a noble example to all parts of italy, possessing similar institutions. a new improvement also here made, is the reunion in one place of masters in scagliola, and mosaic work, gems, and the restoring of pictures, an occupation recently introduced; and in place of a master, who formerly presided, a director, with greater authority and emolument, has been appointed. sig. pietro benvenuti, whom i dare not venture to commend as he deserves, for he is still living, was selected for this charge. the addition of casts also by our new rulers is of great utility, in particular those from the works of the celebrated canova, who has been requested to produce a new statue of venus, on the model of the medicean, lost to us by the chance of war. the honour conferred by the queen regent upon the arts, deserves likewise a place in history; who, in the meeting of the academy, held in , sig. alessandri being president, distributed rewards to the young students, and encouraged them to do well. it was upon this occasion that the same cavaliere puccini, secretary to the institution, delivered another excellent discourse, intended to prove that the pursuit of the fine arts forms one of the most expeditious and least perilous paths to human glory;--a discourse that, equally for the credit of the writer and of the fine arts, was given to the world at florence, in the year . book ii. sienese school. epoch i. _the old masters._ the sienese is the lively school of a lively people; and is so agreeable in the selection of the colours and the air of the heads, that foreigners are captivated, and sometimes even prefer it to the florentine. but this gaiety of style forms not the only reason of this preference; there is another, which few have attended to, and none have ever brought forward. the choicest productions of the painters of siena are all in the churches of that place; and he who wishes to become acquainted with the school, after having seen these, need not be very solicitous to visit the private collections, which are numerous and well filled. in florence it is otherwise: no picture of vinci, of bonarruoti, of rosso, is to be seen in public; none of the finest productions of andrea, or of frate, and few of any other master who has best supported the credit of the school: many of the churches abound in pictures of the third and fifth epochs; which are certainly respectable, but do not excite astonishment like the works of the razzi, the vanni, and other first rate artists, every where to be met with in siena. they are, moreover, two different schools, and ought not to be confounded together in any work of art; possessing, for a long period of time, different governments, other heads of schools, other styles; and not affected by the same changes. a comparison between the two schools is drawn by p. della valle,[ ] whom we have mentioned, and shall afterwards mention with respect; and his opinion appears to be, that the florentine is most philosophical, the sienese the most poetical. he remarks on this head, that the school of siena, from its very beginning, displays a peculiar talent for invention; animating with lively and novel images the stories it represents; filling them with allegory, and forming them into spirited and well constructed poetic compositions. this originates in the elevated and fervid genius of the people, that no less aids the painter, whose poetry is addressed to the eye, than the bard who yields it to the ear. in the latter, and also in extemporary poets, the city abounds, and still maintains in public estimation, those laurels, which, after petrarca and tasso, her perfetti won in the capital. he likewise observes that those artists particularly attended to expression. nor was this difficult, in a city so adverse to dissimulation as siena, whose natural disposition and education have adapted the tongue and countenance to express the emotions of the heart. this vivacity of genius has perhaps prevented their attaining perfection in design, which is not the great attribute of those masters, as it is reckoned of the florentines. to sum up all, the character of the school of siena is not so original as that of some others; and we shall find, during its best period, that some of its artists distinctly imitated the style of other painters. with regard to the number of its artists, siena has been prolific in the proportion of its population; its artists were numerous while it had many citizens; but on the decrease of the latter, its professors of the fine arts also diminished, until every trace of a school was lost. the accounts of the early painters of siena are rather confused during the three first centuries by the plurality of the guidi, the mini, the lippi, the vanni (abbreviations of giacomo, filippo, giovanni), and such sort of proper names as are used without a surname: hence it is not sufficient to peruse only such accounts; we must reflect on them and compare them. they are scattered in many histories of the city, especially in ugurgieri, who was pleased to entitle his work _le pompe sanesi_; in the diary of girolamo gigli; and in several works of the indefatigable cav. gio. pecci, whom we have before noticed. many manuscripts, rich in anecdotes of painting, still remain in the libraries: of this number are the histories of sigismondo tizio, of castiglione, who lived at siena from to ; _the cathedral of siena_, minutely described by alfonzo landi; the _treatise on old_ _paintings_ of giulio mancini; and some _memoirs_ of uberto benvoglienti, whom muratori denominates _diligentissimus rerum suæ patriæ investigator_. from these, and other sources,[ ] p. della valle has drawn what is contained in the lettere sanesi, and repeated in the notes on vasari concerning the school of siena. by the work of della valle it has acquired a celebrity to which it has long been entitled. i take him for my guide in the documents and anecdotes which he has given to the public;[ ] in the older authorities i follow vasari and baldinucci in many circumstances, but dissent from them in others: and hostile to error, and anxious for the truth, i shall pursue the same plan with regard to the historians of the school of siena. i shall omit many names of old masters, of whom no works now remain, and here and there shall add a few modern artists who have come to my knowledge, by the examination of pictures, or by the perusal of books. the origin of the sienese school is deduced either from the crusades in the east, whence some grecian painter has been brought to siena; or from pisa, which, as we have seen, had its first artists from greece. on such a question every one may judge for himself: to me the data necessary for resolving it appear to be wanting. i know that italy was never destitute of painters, and artists who wrought in miniature; that from such, without any grecian aid, or example, some italian schools took their origin. siena must have had them in the twelfth century. the _ordo officiorum senensis ecclesiæ_ which is preserved in the library of the academy at florence, was written in the beginning of the thirteenth century, and exhibits initial letters, surrounded with illuminations of little stories and ornaments of animals. they are painted in vermilion, in a very hard and meagre style; but they are valuable on account of their era, , in which they were executed by oderico canonico of siena.[ ] similar books were ornamented by the same painter in the parchment of the leaves, and painted on the covers without;[ ] and afford a proof that thus the art of ornamenting with miniatures might lead to large compositions. all, however, more or less, savour of the greek design; either because the italians were originally disciples of the greeks, dispersed over italy, or because they regarded the grecian masters as models, and ventured not to attempt much beyond them. the most ancient pictures in the city, the madonna _of the graces_, the madonna of tressa, the madonna of bethlehem, a s. peter in the church dedicated to that saint, and a s. john the baptist, surrounded by many small historical representations at s. petronilla, are believed to be older than ; but it is by no means clear that they are the works of italians, though often believed such from their initial characters, plaister, and design. on the two last the names of the saints near the figures are in latin characters; a circumstance, however, which does not prove an italian painter. on the mosaic works at venice, on the madonna of camerino, brought from smyrna,[ ] and on other pictures executed by the greeks for italian cities, ignorant of their language, they wrote, or got others to write, inscriptions in latin; and they did the same on statues.[ ] the method of painting on gilt plaister, which we observe in some old pictures, decidedly italian, is no argument; for i have several times observed a similar practice in what was unquestionably the work of a greek artist. the drawing of the features in those pictures, the grimness of the aspect, and the composition of the stories, all accord with the productions of the greeks. they may, therefore, have been painted by greek artists, or by a scholar, or, at least, by an imitator of the greeks. who, then, can determine whence the artist came, whether he was a restorer of painting, and whether he executed those paintings at siena, or sent them from some other place? this is certain, that painting quickly established itself at siena, sent out roots, and rapidly multiplied its blossoms. the series of painters known by name commences with guido, or guidone, already noticed in the beginning of this volume. he flourished before cimabue of florence saw the light; and seems to have been at the same time an illuminator of manuscripts and a painter. the writers of siena have declaimed against vasari and baldinucci for omitting this artist; notices of whom could not have escaped the former, who was many times at siena; nor the latter, who was made acquainted with them before the publication of his _decennali_. cav. marmi, a learned and celebrated florentine, thus notices the omission in one of his letters.[ ] "baldinucci laboured to make us credit the restoration of painting by cimabue and giotto; and to give stability to his hypothesis, it is probable that he omitted to make any mention of the painters who, independent of the two just named, departed from the raw and feeble manner of the greeks." and guido certainly left it not a little behind, in his picture of the virgin, now hung up in the malevolti chapel in the church of s. domenico. on it he has thus inscribed his name and the date: _me guido de senis diebus depinxit amenis quem christus lenis nullis velit agere poenis_. an. . and this example was often followed by the masters of this school, to the great benefit of the history of painting. the countenance of the virgin is lovely, and participates not in the stern aspect that is characteristic of the greeks; we may discover some trace of a new style in the drapery. the madonnas of cimabue which are at florence, the one in the church of the trinity, the other in s. maria novella, are not, however, inferior. in them we may discern the improvement of the art; a more vivid colouring, flesh tints more true; a more natural attitude of the head of the infant, while the accompaniments of the throne, and of the glory of angels, proclaim a superior style. on this subject i make two remarks, in which i widely dissent from the opinion of the author of the sienese letters, without committing any breach of our long established friendship. the one is, that to prove guido superior to cimabue, he frequently compares the madonna of s. domenico, which is the only one of his pictures which he mentions,[ ] with the paintings of cimabue, which are numerous, and full of subject; and without setting any value on the colouring, the fertility of invention, and the various other qualities in which the florentine surpassed the artist of siena, he dwells on certain little particulars, in which it appears that guido was superior. an artist of whom it is not known that he ever attempted any picture but madonnas, might become more or less perfect in this subject; but painting is not so much indebted to him, as to one who has carried it to the higher walks of the art; a merit which marco of siena, a writer not inclined to favour the florentines, denies not to cimabue, as we shall find in the fourth book. the other circumstance alluded to is, that when he mentions a picture which does honour to the fame of cimabue, he attempts to discredit its history, and the tradition; as i have already observed with regard to the two large pictures in the church of assisi, and am now under the necessity of remarking with regard to the two madonnas at florence above mentioned. he "strongly suspects"[ ] them to be the work of mino da turrita, since mosaic, in which mino was expert, is there represented by a skilful hand; and cimabue was not dexterous in that art; as if a painter could not represent buildings without being an architect, or garments without knowing how to cut them out, or drapery without being versed in the art of weaving. he even doubts whether giotto visited france, for, had this been the case, he, and not simone da siena, would have painted the portrait of laura, as if history did not inform us that giotto visited that country about , long before the period when petrarca first became enamoured of that beauty. he has introduced some other speculations, which he would not have admitted, had he not been betrayed into it, almost involuntarily, by a system which has some probable foundation, but is carried to an extravagant length. i should have been silent on this subject; but when writing of these artists it became me to recollect that the _unicuique suum_ was no less the duty of the historian than the judge. the authors of chronicles require correction on the era of this painter. the most undoubted picture of guido is that bearing the date , for the other in the church of s. bernardino, dated , is ascribed to him without sufficient evidence. it is hardly probable that he who was so eminent in a new art in , was still alive in , as is affirmed by some,[ ] on the faith of a sum of money paid to one guido, a painter. the celebrated guido must then have been at least years of age: it is more probable that he was dead, and the name applied to another guido, without any danger of a mistake. it is generally believed that the elder guido instructed f. mino, or giacomino da turrita, the celebrated artist in mosaic, of whom we have spoken in the first book. on the era of mino also much has been written without sufficient authority. baldinucci says he died about ; and omits to mention in his life that he was employed in ; although this date is legible on the mosaic of mino in the church of s. giovanni at florence, in letters a cubit in length.[ ] this circumstance has likewise escaped the historians of siena, some of whom have prolonged his life to the year , on the authority of payment made to minuccio, a painter; and others have extended it to about , on account of the tomb of boniface viii. which is said to be the work of turrita. the utmost period that can be granted them is about : for titi observes, in his _description of the paintings in rome_, that mino finished the mosaic of s. maria maggiore in , and died, after beginning another in s. giovanni laterano, which was completed by gaddo gaddi in . this renders it extremely doubtful that f. mino was taught painting by guido, that he imparted it not only to giotto, whom, for other reasons, we have excluded from his school (p. ) but to the sienese artists, memmi and lorenzetti,[ ] and even that he was a painter; all which is founded on the following memorandum, under the year , in a manuscript in the library of siena: "paid on the twelfth day of august, nineteen lire to master mino, the painter, who painted the virgin mary, and other ss. in the council room of the public palace, the balance, &c." he who is here denominated _maestro_ mino, not fra mino; who is sometimes called minuccio, a diminutive not fitted for an old monk; and appears to have been employed in siena when fra mino was at rome, is another artist. thus we discover another eminent painter of the name of mino, or minuccio, who seems to be in reality the author of the picture of , above alluded to, which remained in the council hall even within my memory, and of others, down to . he there represented the virgin and child, surrounded by angels, and under a canopy, supported by apostles and the patron saints of the city. the size of the figures, the invention and the distribution of the work, are surprising for that age; of the other qualities one cannot speak with certainty; for it was repaired in by simone da siena, and there are beauties in the features and the drapery that can be ascribed only to the restorer. the mistake thus occasioned by the same name being cleared up, the system of the learned author of the lettere sanesi, is in part confirmed, and in part falls to the ground. he is right in refusing to giotto certain sienese pupils, referred to him only from traces of a more modern style; for we here discover an artist who made some advances towards the new manner even previous to giotto, who, in , was only thirteen years of age. now this mino, and duccio, of whom we shall soon treat, might certainly have formed pupils able to compete with the school of giotto, and even in length of years to surpass giotto himself. there is no reason, however, to prefer the sienese painters to cimabue, on the strength of this painting, as the author in question has so often done. comparison ought to be employed between painter and painter, between contemporary and contemporary. f. mino, to whom this single picture was attributed, is now shewn to have been merely a mosaic worker: mino or minuccio began to be known when cimabue was fifty years of age; and is the author of a single work, not so free from retouches, nor so large as that of assisi, already described. the comparison then is not just. every school thinks itself sufficiently honoured when it can produce two or three painters of the thirteenth century: the school of siena is peculiarly rich in them, and these are recorded in the twenty-fifth letter _on the disciples of guido_. as usual i shall omit the names of those least entitled to recollection. i will not affirm that all of them proceeded from the school of guido; for in a city where the fine arts flourished so rapidly, masters unknown to us may have been produced. much less will i ascribe artists of other cities to this school. in the manuscripts of mancini, one bonaventura da lucca is mentioned, who is the berlingieri already mentioned.[ ] i neither assign him to guido nor to giunta. who can tell whether lucca had not also in those early times an original school, now unknown to us? setting aside uncertain points therefore, we can only assert, that after the middle of the century, siena abounded in painters, more, perhaps, than any other city of italy; and the causes of this are as follows. the cathedral was begun several years before, in a style of magnificence suited to the lordly views of the citizens. it was not a work to be completed in a short time: hence it was frequently interrupted, and a long period had elapsed before it was finished. during this time many architects (_magistri lapidum_) and sculptors either were invited from other places, or were reared up in the city; and in they formed a corporate body, and required particular laws.[ ] although nothing is ascertained with regard to their mode of study, it is natural to suppose that the study of sculpture contributed to the advancement of painting, a sister art. the celebrated battle of monte aperto, in which the people of siena defeated the florentines, happened in . this victory produced an era of peace and opulence to the city, and encouraged both in public and in private the arts depending on luxury. the victory was ascribed to the interference of the blessed virgin mary, to whom the city was consecrated; the adoration of her votaries increased, and her images were multiplied in the streets, and in all other places; and thence painting obtained fresh encouragement, and new followers. ugolino da siena should be referred to this era; he died decrepid in , and consequently might have been born before . we cannot agree with vasari, who insinuates that he was the scholar of cimabue; nor with baldinucci, who ingrafts him on his _tree_; nor yet with others who assert that he was the pupil of guido; for the latter must have been dead when ugolino was very young. that he was educated in siena, seems to me highly probable, from the number of masters then in that city, and because the colouring of his madonna of orsanmichele at florence is in the style of the old school of siena; less strong and less true than that of cimabue and the florentines. this fact appears to me of importance, for it depends on the mechanism of the art, which was different in different schools. design at that early period savoured more or less of the greeks; and in this respect ugolino adhered to them too closely. "he painted pictures and chapels over all italy," says vasari; and if i am not mistaken he came to florence after his travels, and at length died at siena. duccio di boninsegna is another master of this age, of whom i shall speak in another place, as the inventor of a new species of painting. tizio says he was the pupil of segna, an artist now almost unknown in siena. he must, however, have enjoyed great celebrity in his day among his countrymen; for tizio informs us that he painted a picture at arezzo, containing a figure which he pronounces excellent and highly esteemed. he has transmitted to us the following remarkable testimony concerning duccio: "_ducius_ senensis inter ejusdem opificii artifices eâ tempestate primarius; ex cujus officinâ veluti ex equo trojano pictores egregii prodierunt." the _eâ tempestate_ refers to , when giotto was at avignon; and when duccio was employed on the picture that still exists in the opera-house, which was completed in three years, and almost forms an era in the art. it was large enough to have formed a picture for the great altar of the metropolitan church for which it was intended. on the side facing the people he painted large figures of the virgin, and of various saints; on that fronting the choir he represented scriptural subjects, in many compartments, in which he introduced a vast number of figures a palm in length. pius ii. relates in his annals of siena, which were never published, that it cost , florins; others raise it to , ; but not so much on account of the workmanship as the profusion of gold and ultramarine. the style is generally thought to approach the greek manner; the work, however, is the most copious in figures, and among the best executed productions of that age. duccio was employed in many parts of tuscany, and in the church of the trinity at florence he painted an annunciation which, in the opinion of baldinucci, "leaves no doubt that he was a scholar of giotto, or of his disciples." but this will not be granted or believed by those who have seen it; for both the colouring and the style are totally dissimilar. chronology, too, opposes the conclusion; unless we introduce here also a confusion, arising from artists with similar names: duccio painted from ,[ ] and died about .[ ] the history becomes more complete, when we arrive at the celebrated simone memmi, or simone di martino,[ ] the painter of laura, and the friend of petrarca, who has celebrated him in two sonnets that will hand him down to the latest posterity. the poet has also eulogized him in his letters, where he thus speaks: "duos ego novi pictores egregios ... joctum florentinum civem, cujus inter modernos fama ingens est, et simonem senensem;" which is not, however, comparing him to giotto, to whom he pays a double compliment, but it is giving memmi the next rank. in such a convenient place the poet would not, in my opinion, have omitted _jocti discipulum_, had he been acquainted with such a circumstance: but he appears to have no knowledge of it; and this renders it doubtful whether simone was the pupil of giotto at rome, notwithstanding the assertion of vasari, who adds that the latter was then engaged in the mosaic of the _navicella_. the writers of siena contradict him with good reason; for in simone was only fourteen years of age.[ ] they reckon him the scholar of their mino, and certainly he derived much from the large fresco before noticed: but as he retouched it himself we cannot put much faith on the resemblance. his colouring is more vivid than that of the followers of giotto, and in floridness it seems a prelude to baroccio. but if he was not the scholar of giotto, he may have assisted him in some of his works, or, perhaps, studied him closely, as many eminent painters have often done with the best masters. this may account for his imitating giotto so admirably in s. peter's at rome; a merit which procured him an invitation to the papal court at avignon, where he died. the picture of the vatican has perished; but some of his other works still exist in italy; and they are not so numerous at siena as in pisa and florence. in the campo santo of pisa we find various actions of s. ranieri, and the celebrated assumption of the virgin, amid a choir of angels, who seem actually floating in the air, and celebrating the triumph. memmi was excellent in this species of composition, as i believe, from the numerous pictures of this subject which he painted at siena, where there is one at the church of s. john, which is more copious but not more beautiful than that at pisa. some of his larger works may be seen in the chapter house of the spanish friars at florence; several histories of christ, of s. domenico, and of s. peter martyr; and there the order of the preaching friars are poetically represented as engaged in the service of the church, in rejecting innovators, and in luring souls to paradise. vasari, to whom the inventions of memmi appear "not those of a master of that age, but of a most excellent modern artist," especially praises the last: and, indeed, it might be supposed that it was suggested by petrarch, did not a comparison of dates refute such an idea. the picture was painted in , and simone went not to france till ; what is said about the portrait of laura in the chapterhouse is a mere fable. taddeo gaddi, an undoubted pupil of the improved and dignified school of giotto, was there his competitor; and as far surpassed memmi in the qualities of that school, as he was excelled by the latter in spirit, in variety of the heads and attitudes, in fancy of the draperies, and in originality of composition. simone paved the way to more complex pictures, and extended them over a whole façade, so as to be taken in at one glance of the eye; whereas giotto used to divide a large surface into many compartments, in each of which he painted an historical picture. although i do not usually dwell on miniature painting, i cannot resist mentioning one which is to be seen in the ambrosian library at milan, which appears to me a singular production. in that place, there is a manuscript of virgil, with the commentary of servius, which formerly belonged to petrarca. in the frontispiece is a miniature that is reasonably conjectured to have been suggested to simone by the poet, who has subjoined the following verses: _mantua virgilium qui talia carmina finxit,_ _sena tulit simonem digito qui talia pinxit._ the artist has represented virgil sitting in the attitude of writing, and with his eyes raised to heaven, invoking the favour of the muses. Æneas is before him in the garb and with the demeanour of a warrior, and, pointing with his sword, intimates the subject of the Æneid. the bucolics are represented by a shepherd, and the georgics by a husbandman; both of whom are on a lower foreground of the piece, and appear listening to the strain. servius, in the mean time, appears drawing aside a veil of great delicacy and transparency, to intimate that his readings unveil what would otherwise have remained obscure and doubtful to the reader of that divine poet. an account of this picture is contained in a letter of the secretary ab. carlo bianconi,[ ] where the author praises the originality of the idea, the colouring and harmony of the picture, the propriety and variety in the costume according with the subject. he also remarks a little rudeness in the design, more of truth than of beauty in the heads, and the largeness of the hands; that usually, indeed, were the characteristics of every school at this period. simone had a relation named lippo memmi, whom he himself instructed in the art. although he was not equal in genius to simone, he succeeded admirably in imitating his manner, and, aided by his designs, produced pictures that might have passed for the work of the former, had he not inscribed them with his name. when he wrought without such assistance there is a manifest mediocrity in his invention and design; but he is still a good colourist. a picture executed by them both is preserved in s. ansano di castelvecchio of siena.[ ] in ancona, assisi, and other places, pictures existed that were begun by the former, and finished by the latter. there is a picture wholly the work of lippo in siena; and the author of the description of pisa records one at the church of s. paul in that place, which is not without merit. in my first edition, implicitly following the writers of chronicles, i mentioned a cecco di martino as the brother of simone. but on considering that he flourished about , and that there was a less celebrated simon martino, in siena, about , mentioned by cittadini, i do not judge it right to follow their authority. an artist named lorenzo, and familiarly lorenzetto, was the father of another family of painters: he had a son named ambrogio, who is surnamed lorenzetti by historians. a large picture by this artist, on which he subscribes himself _ambrosius laurentii_, is to be seen in the public palace, and may be designated a poem of moral precepts. the vices of a bad government are there represented under different aspects, and with appropriate symbols; accompanied by verses explanatory of their nature and consequences. the virtues, too, are there personified with suitable emblems: and the whole is adapted to form governors and politicians for the republic, animated by the spirit of genuine patriotism alone. had there been a greater variety in the countenances of the figures, and a superior arrangement in the piece, it would have been little inferior to the finest pictures in the campo santo of pisa. siena possesses many of his frescos and large pictures; but they are not so surprising as his smaller works, in which he appears as the forerunner of b. angelico, whom we have commended in another place. i have observed nothing similar in his contemporaries; and it possesses a nationality of character that prevents his being confounded with the followers of giotto: the ideas, the colouring, and the draperies, are wholly different. in a similar taste is a picture in the possession of sig. abate ciaccheri, librarian to the university of siena, where ambrogio painted some very original works, in which he very far surpassed the orcagni. his style was admired in florence; where, to please his friends, who were desirous of seeing a specimen of his art, he painted several pieces from the life of s. nicholas, in the church of s. proculus, that were afterwards transferred to the abbey. another son of lorenzo was called pietro, and, in conjunction with his brother, painted the presentation, and nuptials of our lady, in the hospital of siena, on which the following inscription was legible: _hoc opus fecit petrus laurentii et ambrosius ejus frater, _. the inscription is preserved by cav. pecci, who in , when the painting was destroyed, transcribed it most opportunely for correcting vasari, who had read _petrus laurati_ instead of _laurentii_ in another inscription; from which he concluded this artist not to be the brother of ambrogio; and from some similarity between his style and that of giotto, had concluded that he was the disciple of the latter: but it is highly improbable that with such a father and such a brother, pietro would have gone from home for instruction. vasari gives, however, a most favourable opinion of this illustrious sienese, which may suffice to vindicate his impartiality. he says of one of his pictures, "that it was executed with a better design and in a superior manner to any thing that tuscany had then seen;" and in another place he asserts, that pietro "became a better master than either cimabue or giotto." what could he have said further? might it have been asserted that he was, if not the disciple of giotto, at least his fellow student in the school of f. mino? (vasari, tom. ii. p. . ed. sen.) but granting that giotto was not his master, how are we to believe him his fellow student? the first pictures of giotto are traced to ; those of pietro to . and where, when, or to whom did f. mino teach painting? pietro's historical picture of the fathers dell' eremo remains in the campo santo of pisa, where, in conformity with ecclesiastical history, he has painted the various discipline of those recluses. this picture, if i am not mistaken, is richer in ideas, more original, and better conceived than any one in that place. in the ducal gallery there is a copy of this picture, if not a duplicate by the artist himself: the taste of the colouring certainly belongs not to the florentine, but to the sienese school, of that period. after painting had attained so high a degree of excellence in siena, it was liable to decline, both from the usual lot of the most auspicious eras, to which an age of servile imitation, and of hurried execution, generally succeeds, and also from the terrible plague which, in , desolated italy and europe; sweeping off distinguished masters and pupils in every school. siena, however, did not lose her lorenzetti, who constituted her ornament for several years; but if her population at one time equalled , , it was afterwards greatly diminished. she could, however, still vie in the number of her artists with florence itself. this clearly appears from _the statutes of the painters of siena_,[ ] published by p. della valle, in his first volume, letter sixteen. they are drawn up with the characteristic simplicity, clearness, and precision of the thirteenth century; and are a very admirable body of regulations for the due propriety and direction of artists, and for the honour of the art. we can discern that this society consisted of cultivated and well educated persons; and it does not excite astonishment to find that, democratic in government as siena then was, the highest magistrates of the republic were sometimes elected from among the professors of the art. they formed a body-corporate; not merely a fraternity, nor an academy of design; and received their charter, not from the bishop but from the city, or the republic in . some have conjectured that those statutes are as old as the preceding century; and that they were translated into italian from the latin about : for tizio informs us that, in this year, "statuta maternâ linguâ edita sunt ad ambiguitates tollendas." but tizio must have meant the statutes concerning wool, and others then existing; and those of the artists may have been framed at a subsequent period. indeed, the manner in which they are drawn up, without a reference to preceding ordinances, indicates a first edition. if there were statutes published in the vulgar tongue in , why was the sanction of the law deferred for years? or why are the new not distinguished from the old, as is usual in similar codes? in the code to which i refer, the names of a great number of artists are inscribed, who lived after and at the beginning of the next century. with the exception of a few who merit some consideration i shall pass them over in silence as i did in the florentine school. i find among them andrea di guido,[ ] jacomo di frate mino, and galgano di maestro minuccio; and i bring these forward to confirm what i have before observed, that painters of the same name have introduced confusion into the history of this school. i also find there n. tedesco, vannino da perugia, lazzaro da orvieto, niccolò da norcia, antonio da pistoia, and other foreign artists: thence i infer that siena, like a university for painting, had furnished masters to various cities of italy, and other countries. we here meet with some painters of whom there still remains some trace in history, or in the inscriptions on pictures. martino di bartolommeo is the artist who, in , painted the translation of the body of s. crescentius at the cathedral, and of whom a still better picture remains at s. antonio abate. his family name brings to mind bartolommeo bolonghino, or bolgarino, mentioned by vasari as the best pupil of pietro laurati, and the painter of some excellent pictures in siena, and other parts of italy. he was a man of rank, and obtained the honour of the magistracy. andrea di vanni is undoubtedly the painter of the s. sebastian in the convent of s. martin, and of the madonna surrounded by saints in that of s. francis; an artist not unknown beyond the limits of his native country, especially in naples, where he painted before . he was likewise employed in public embassies, and, like another rubens, was a magistrate, and ambassador of the republic to the pope: and was honored by s. catherine of siena, who, in one of her letters, gives him some excellent advice on the subject of government. about the year flourished berna, (i. e. bernardo) da siena, of whom vasari says, that "he was the first who painted animals correctly;" and at the same time allows him no common merit in the human figure, especially in what regards expression. one of his frescos remains in the parish church of arezzo, more praiseworthy on account of the extremities, in which he was superior to many of that age, than for the drapery or the colouring, in which many artists surpassed him. he died in the prime of life, about the year , at s. gimignano, after having made considerable progress in a copious work, consisting of some subjects from sacred history, that still remains in that parish church. the work was continued with a superior colouring, but with a less pure design, by giovanni d'asciano, who is his reputed scholar. the whole still exists, and thirteen of the pictures, or perhaps more, are the work of the scholar who exercised his art at florence, under the protection of the medicean family, much respected by his fellow artists. as those two painters lived long abroad, i find no mention of them in the catalogue just quoted. there is a well executed altar-piece in venice, with the name _bernardinus de senis_. some of his pictures have been discovered in the diocese of siena, by the archbishop zondadari, who has formed a good collection of ancient pictures of the sienese school. in these pictures berna appears to be a pretty good colourist, a talent which he does not display in his frescos. luca di tomè, another scholar of berna, noticed by vasari, is there mentioned. one of his holy families remains at s. quirico, in the convent of the capuchins, and bears the date of . it has not sufficient softness, but in other respects is very reputable. in the beginning of the fifteenth century, not only individual painters, but whole families of artists had multiplied, in which the art for a long series of years descended from father to son. this circumstance contributed greatly to the progress of painting: for the master, who is likewise the father, teaches without any feeling of jealousy, and generally aims at forming a pupil superior to himself. the family of the fredi, or the bartoli, became celebrated beyond all the rest. the reputation of taddeo, who began to be distinguished in the fourteenth century, rose very high. in the records he is styled _thaddæus magistri bartholi magistri fredi_,[ ] from his father[ ] and grandfather, artists of some name. by him, "as the best master of the age," says vasari, the chapel of the public palace was painted, where some historical pieces representing our lady, are yet to be seen; and in he ornamented the adjoining hall. besides some pictures from sacred history, he there formed, as it were, a gallery of illustrious men, chiefly republicans; and for the edification of the citizens, added some latin and italian verses; a mode of instruction very liberally employed in this school. the chief merit of the work lies in the dignity and originality of its invention, which was afterwards imitated in part by pietro perugino, in the hall of the exchange, at perugia. the portraits are ideal; they are dressed in the costume of siena, even when they represent romans and grecians, and their attitudes are not happy. his pictures at pisa and in volterra, mentioned by vasari, still exist; and that of the arena in padua, in the tribune of the church, is well preserved. in it we discover practical skill, little variety, and less grace in the heads, feeble tints, and imitations of giotto, that lose their value on a comparison with the original. some of his small pictures do him greater honour; and in them an imitation of ambrogio, his great prototype, is conspicuous, and also the subdued but agreeable colouring of this school; which, like all the others in italy, excelled about this period more in small than in large proportions. the manner of taddeo was first pursued and afterwards meliorated, and greatly aggrandized by domenico bartoli, his nephew and disciple. foreign connoisseurs behold with delight the various fresco pictures which he painted in the pilgrim's ward of the hospital, representing the circumstances of its foundation, and the exercises of christian charity bestowed upon the sick, the dying, and the indigent. on comparing these, one with another, the artist displays considerable improvement, and a greater freedom than usual from the old dryness: his design and perspective are better, his compositions more scientific; without taking into account the richness and variety of ideas, which he has in common with the artists of this school. from those pictures raffaello and pinturicchio, while painting at siena, took many of their notions of national costume, and, perhaps, of some other particulars: for it is characteristic of great minds to derive advantage even from examples not above mediocrity. thus the art was gradually advancing in the republic, when new opportunities were afforded for producing works on a grand scale; occasions in which genius is developed and invigorated. siena gave pius ii. to the chair of s. peter, who, to the most ardent love of his country, united a taste for magnificence; and during his residence in the city, it was embellished with architecture, and every kind of ornament. he would have been still more profuse, had he not, disgusted with the ingratitude of the people, turned his attention and beneficence to rome. among other advantages he conferred on the state of siena, was that of adding to its territory the city of corsignano, his native place; which from him was afterwards called pienza. the new city received from him another form, and new edifices, among which was the cathedral. it was erected in , and for its decoration he invited the best artists of siena, ansano and lorenzo di pietro, giovanni di paolo, and matteo his son. their style was laborious and minute; the universal character of that age: for the manner of painting was introduced and transferred from one country into another, without our being able to discover where it originated; but in the arts depending on design, as we have before remarked, when the path is once opened, the natural genius of each school will regulate its further progress. these four artists are mentioned in the catalogue of sienese artists; and ansano, or sano, at one time enjoyed the highest reputation. about he had painted the beautiful fresco which still remains over the roman gate; and which represents the coronation of the virgin: it is much in the style of simone, and in some respects it surpasses him. a picture by this artist of inferior merit remains in the church of pienza. lorenzo di pietro, surnamed il vecchietta, was eminent in sculpture and in casting in bronze; and he is noticed by vasari. he was less successful in painting, and offends by hardness, as far as we can determine from the small remains of him in siena, for there are none existing at pienza. a picture of his, with the date , was lately added to the medicean gallery. giovanni di paolo makes a good figure in pienza; and a still better in a descent from the cross, painted four years afterwards in the osservanza of siena; in which the defects of the age are counterbalanced by qualities, at that time by no means common, displaying a considerable knowledge of the naked figure. matteo di giovanni was then young, but surpassed them all in the extent of his genius. this is the matteo denominated by some the masaccio of this school, although there is a great distance between him and the florentine masaccio. the new style of matteo begins to be recognized in one of his two pictures in the cathedral. he afterwards improved it in his works in the church of s. domenico, at siena, in madonna della neve, and in some other churches; and it was he who first excited the neapolitan school to attempt a less antiquated style. having learnt the process of painting in oil, he imparted sufficient softness to his figures; and from his intimacy with francesco di giorgio, a celebrated architect,[ ] he imbibed a good taste in buildings, and diversified them very ingeniously with alto and basso-relievos. he foreshortened level objects well; he cast draperies with more of nature, and with less frippery than was common in that age; if he imparted little beauty to the features, he attained, at least, variety of expression; and was sufficiently attentive in marking the muscles and veins in his figures. he did not always aim at novelty and display in his invention; on the contrary, after painting a murder of the innocents, which was his best composition,[ ] he often repeated it in siena, and in naples, but always with improvements: his most studious picture on this subject is that at the servi of siena, painted in , which must have been near the close of his life. he was accustomed to introduce into his pictures some episode, unconnected with the principal story, in small figures, a style in which he excelled. the noble house of sozzini and some other families in siena, possess several of his small pictures. as an artist, he is inferior to bellini, to francia, or vannucci; but surpasses many others. another eminent sienese, who flourished in the first ages of oil painting, is made known to us by ciriaco anconitano,[ ] who was acquainted with him in , at the court of leonello, marquis of este. this artist was named angelo parrasio: he painted the nine muses in the palace of belfiore, near ferrara, in imitation of the manner of giovanni and ruggieri da bruggia. [footnote : see lettere sanesi, tom. ii. let. , addressed to the author of this work.] [footnote : see _lett. sen._ tom. ii. p. , et sequent.] [footnote : in regard to these documents the public is much indebted to the abate ciaccheri, the learned librarian of the city, who employed himself for many years in collecting them; but his eyes failing him, it became necessary that others should publish them: the excellent historian has frequently made mention of him.] [footnote : the work was published by trombelli, at bologna, in . _della valle_, tom. i. p. . what he adds, that this very oderico may be the oderigi da gubbio, noticed by dante in the xith canto of his purgatorio, ought not to be admitted. dante might, for the sake of rhyme, change oderico into oderigi; but he has said, in the middle of the verse, that the celebrated miniature painter was a native of gubbio. moreover, the latter, who died about , could not have painted in .] [footnote : see della valle, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : this is an annunciation, with the following verse: _virgo parit christum velut angelus intimat ipso._ the error in the last word stands on the picture.] [footnote : hard by the cathedral of that city there are two lions, on one of which, in a mixture of greek and latin characters, is written, m_a_h_ister_ th_exde fevit_ (fecit) & _fevit fieri ambos istos_. ] [footnote : see lettere sanesi, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : p. .] [footnote : see lett. sen. tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : _vigintiquinque christi cum mille ducentis_, &c. vide piacenza, tom. i. p. . baldinucci was extremely diligent in his research of epochs; but he took care not to mention this, inasmuch as it overturned his system.] [footnote : history only gives him some assistants in mosaic; at pisa tafi and gaddo gaddi; at rome, in s. maria maggiore, a franciscan monk, who there executed a portrait of himself, and inscribed his name, that is now illegible, and his native place, which was camerino. one f. giacomo da camerino painted in the cathedral of orvieto in , and it is probable that this is the same artist.] [footnote : see ante, p. .] [footnote : see lett. sen. p. .] [footnote : lett. sen. tom. i. p. .] [footnote : ibid. tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : martino was the father of simone; memmo or guglielmo his father-in-law; and in the inscriptions on his pictures he sometimes assumes the one name, and sometimes the other. _benvoglienti._] [footnote : i conjecture this on the authority of vasari, who says, that he died in , at the age of . in the genuine books at s. domenico, of siena, we find this sentence "magister simon martini pictor mortuus est in curiâ; cujus exequias fecimus ... ." since vasari approaches so near the truth in the time of the painter's death, we may reasonably credit him also in his age. mancini says he was born about ; which gives occasion for p. della valle to mention simone as a contemporary, and a competitor of giotto at rome. i cannot agree with him on this date, and the information drawn by him from books belonging to the sienese hospital, that simone was in siena in , only a few months before his death, at the court of the pope at avignon, strengthens my opinion. i cannot believe that an old man of seventy-four would transfer his residence from siena to avignon. if we credit vasari the difficulty vanishes, inasmuch as simone, being then scarcely sixty, might be equal to undertake so long a journey.] [footnote : see lett. senesi, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : there is on it _a. d. , simon martini et lippus memmi de senis me pinxerunt_. it is now in the ducal gallery at florence. it may be remarked on the chronology of this painter, that where we find not memmi but only lippo or filippo, it does not always seem intended for him. thus the m. filippo, who received a sum of money in , and that lippo, who, in , is said to be the assistant of another artist, (lett. sen. tom. ii. p. ), most probably are not to be identified with memmi. he was younger than his relation, and according to vasari, survived him years.] [footnote : _statuti dell' arte de' pittori senesi._] [footnote : this guido da siena is, perhaps, the one mentioned by sacchetti in his eighty-fourth tale, and of whom there remains a picture in the church of s. antonio, painted in . _baldinucci._] [footnote : manfredi.] [footnote : in the parish church of s. gimignano is an historical fresco of this artist, dated , and in that of s. agostino, a painting in a much better style, according to vasari, executed in , which date p. della valle gives as .] [footnote : he was a good sculptor; and, according to the custom of the time of uniting the three sister arts, he also practised painting, but not with great success. i have not seen any of his pictures but a nativity, in which he chiefly appears emulous of mantegna. it is in the possession of sig. abate ciaccheri, whose collection will greatly assist any one desirous of becoming acquainted with this school.] [footnote : an engraving of it is in the third volume of lettere sanesi.] [footnote : in the fragment of a letter, quoted by sig. abate colucci in antichità picene, tom. xv. p. . "cujus nempe inclytæ artis et eximii artificum ingenii egregium equidem imitatorem angelum parrasium senensem, recens picturæ in latio specimen vidimus," &c.] sienese school. epoch ii. _foreign painters at siena. the origin and progress of the modern style in that city._ before this era we have met with no strangers who had taught painting, or had changed the manner of this school. the art had there existed for three centuries, always, or almost always,[ ] under the guidance of native painters; and it had even been provided by the statutes of the art, that no foreigner might be encouraged to practise it at siena. in one chapter it is enacted, that "any stranger, wishing to be employed, shall pay a florin;" and elsewhere, that "he may receive a just and sufficient recompense to the extent of twenty-five livres." the provision was subtle: on the one hand they did not, with a marked inhospitality, positively exclude strangers; but, on the other, they deprived them of any chance of rivalling the artists of the city in employment at siena. hence it came to pass, according to p. della valle, that no pictures of other schools, but those of a late period, are to be found there. but this circumstance, though favourable to the artist, was, in no small degree, detrimental to the art: for the school of siena, by admitting strangers, would have swelled the list of her great masters; and she might have kept pace with other schools; but this she neglected, and, after having vied with the florentine school in painting, and even surpassed it for some years, towards the close of the fifteenth century siena could not, perhaps, boast of a better artist than capanna, who executed some façades from the designs of others;[ ] or than andrea del brescianino, who, in conjunction with one of his brothers, is said to have painted some pictures, with which i am unacquainted, in the church of the olivetine friars. they have been more commended by historians than bernardino fungai, an artist whose style was modernized, but dry,[ ] than neroccio, or any other sienese painter of that period; but they could not be compared to the best masters of italy. the nobility perceived the decline of the native school, and the necessity of supporting it by the accession of foreign artists; they wished for such assistance, to the dissatisfaction, probably, of the populace, every where apt to contend that the provender of the land should rather feed the native beast of burden than the foreign steed. the florentine style of painting found its way to rome; but ancient rivalry and political jealousy prevented its introduction into siena. perugia seemed a less objectionable ally; and from that place, first bonfigli, and afterwards his scholar pietro perugino, who executed two pictures at siena, were invited; and at length several scholars also of the latter were called, who long remained in the service of two celebrated natives of siena. the one was cardinal francesco piccolomini, who soon after became pius iii. for the purpose of decorating the sacristy of the cathedral, and the chapel of his family, with various pictures from the life of pius ii. he invited pinturicchio to siena, and this artist carried along with him other scholars of perugino, and even raffaello himself, who is reported to have designed either wholly, or in a great measure, those historical pictures. the other was pandolfo petrucci, who, for some time, usurped the government of the republic: eagerly desirous of embellishing the palace and some churches, he availed himself of signorelli, and of genga,[ ] and recalled pinturicchio. this passed at the beginning of the sixteenth century; for the sacristy was completed in ; the return of pinturicchio took place in ; and, after a short interval, it appears that genga, the scholar of perugino, and signorelli, came to siena. from that period, the sienese school began to assume the modern style; and design, a full tone of colouring, and perspective, all attained perfection in a few years. had siena produced a family equal to the medicean in taste, power, and a disposition to encourage the fine arts, what might it not have attained! siena about this time could boast of four men of talents admirably adapted to produce a great revolution in the art, and these were pacchiarotto, razzi, mecherino, and peruzzi, all of whom (with the exception of razzi), baldinucci, for some reason unknown to me, has derived from the school of raffaello. the works of raffaello, then a young man, and of other foreign artists, far from repressing their spirit, awakened in them an honourable emulation. whoever compares the pictures of matteo with their works, would conclude that many years had intervened; yet they were all living at the death of matteo. we now come to the bright era of the school of siena; and to the consideration of its most eminent masters. jacopo pacchiarotto[ ] followed the manner of pietro more closely than any of them, although he was not his scholar, and, perhaps, had not been out of siena before . in that year there happened an insurrection of the people against the government of that city, in which he was a ringleader, and would have suffered an ignominious death, had he not been saved by the osservantine fathers, who concealed him for some time within a tomb. from thence he secretly withdrew to france, where he assisted rosso, and is supposed to have died. siena possesses several of his cabinet pictures and altar-pieces, in the style of perugino; especially a very beautiful one in the church of s. christopher. in his frescos, in the church of s. catherine and of s. bernardino, where he emulated the ablest artists of siena, he appears great in composition. the most admired is the copious picture representing the visit of the virgin, s. catherine, to the body of s. agnes of montepulciano: the others are executed in a similar taste. he unquestionably appears to have studied raffaello with the greatest care; and there are heads and whole figures so lively, and with such a grace in the features, that, to some connoisseurs, they seem to possess the ideal beauty of that great artist. nevertheless, pacchiarotto is almost unknown beyond the limits of his native place, for he is only incidentally mentioned by vasari; and his works have passed under the name of perugino, or of his school. giannantonio razzi, surnamed il sodoma, undoubtedly enjoyed the citizenship of siena; but it is disputed whether he was born at vergelle, a sienese village, or at vercelli, in piedmont. vasari expressly states, that he was invited to siena by some of the noble family of spannocchi, and that he was a native of vercelli; in which opinion he is supported by tizio, giovio, mancini, and all who wrote before ugurgieri. i am confirmed in it by observing his carnations, his style of chiaroscuro, and other peculiarities of the old school of milan, and of giovenone, who flourished at vercelli in the early years of razzi; and of this style there appears to me traces in the works of gio. antonio; especially in those he executed shortly after he had left his master. i have not observed the historical pictures of s. benedict, which he painted at monte oliveto about , and are so ably described by sig. giulio perini, secretary to the academy of florence. i have seen those he executed at rome in the pontificate of julius ii. he painted several in the vatican, that were defaced, because they did not satisfy the pope. raffaello substituted other pictures, but spared the grotesques. razzi afterwards executed some pictures from the life of alexander the great, in the chigi, now the farnese palace. the nuptials of roxana, and the suppliant family of darius, are the best of them. they do not exhibit the facility, grace, and dignified heads, that characterize the style of vinci; but they shew much of his chiaroscuro, which was then greatly followed by the lombards: perspective, their hereditary attribute, is there conspicuous; they abound in gay images, in little cupids with their arrows, and a pomp that is captivating. his works in siena, the fruit of his studies in rome, and of his mature age, are still superior. the epiphany, in the church of s. augustino, appeared wholly in the style of vinci to an eminent foreign connoisseur, who mentioned it to me with rapture. the flagellation of christ, in the cloister of s. francis, is preferred to the figures of michelangiolo by those who are reckoned judges of the art: their unanimous opinion seems to be that razzi never produced a finer picture. some think as highly of his s. sebastian, now in the ducal gallery, which is supposed to have been copied from an antique torso. the swoon of s. catherine of siena, which he painted in fresco in a chapel of s. domenico, is a picture in the manner of raffaello. peruzzi greatly admired it, and affirmed that he had never seen a swoon so naturally represented. the air and varied expression in the heads of his picture, however, are not borrowed from any artist, and on this account he seems to have extorted the applause even of vasari. his models, as was usual with the other artists of this school, were selected from among the sienese, whose heads possess a great degree of innate gaiety, openness, and spirit. he painted frequently in a hurried manner, without any preparatory study; especially in his old age, when reduced to poverty at siena, he sought for employment at pisa, at volterra, and at lucca: but in all his pictures i discover traces of an able artist, who, though careless of excellence, never painted badly. vasari, the great enemy of his fame, who generally styles him mattaccio,[ ] has ascribed to chance, to fortune, or to fancy, whatever he performed well; as if his usual style had been that of a bad painter. here vasari betrays a want of memory; for he confessed in the life of mecherino, that razzi "possessed the grand principle of design;" in another passage he has praised the brilliant colouring he brought with him out of lombardy; and before noticing the works of his old age, he has often pronounced the others beautiful, or sometimes _most_ beautiful and wonderful: hence it may be said of him, _modo ait, modo negat_. guided by public estimation, giovio has written of razzi in a different manner, when speaking of the death of raffaello, he subjoins: "plures pari pene gloriâ certantes artem exceperunt, et in his sodomas vercellensis."[ ] he who objects to the testimony of this eminent scholar, will receive that of a celebrated painter: annibale caracci, passing through siena, said, "razzi appears a very eminent master of the greatest taste, and (speaking of his best works at siena) few such pictures are to be seen."[ ] during the many years that giannantonio lived at siena, he must have educated many pupils. a few of them only are noticed by mancini in one of his fragments;[ ] and these are rustico, the father of cristofano, an excellent painter of grotesques, with which he filled siena; scalabrino, a man of genius, and a poet;[ ] and michelangiolo anselmi, or michelangiol da siena, a painter claimed by several places. we shall consider him in the school of parma, as he left no work in siena, except a fresco in the church of fonte giusta, a production of his youth, and not worthy of so great a name. a scholar of razzi, then his assistant, and finally his son-in-law, was bartolommeo neroni, otherwise called maestro riccio, who after the death of the four great pillars of the school of siena, supported its reputation for many years, and probably educated one of its restorers. he may be recognized at the osservanti, in a crucifixion with three saints standing around, and people in the distance. but his masterpiece was a descent from the cross, much in the manner of razzi, at the derelitte. some of his other pictures yet remain in the city, in which he sometimes appears to mingle the style of his father-in-law, with a certain resemblance to the manner of vasari, in the distribution of his tints. he is known to have been very excellent in perspective, and particularly so in painting scenery; a specimen of which was engraved by andreani. he was also greatly skilled in architecture, and had a pension from the magistrates of lucca for his assistance in their public works. some books include among his disciples anselmi, who was rather his kinsman; and arcangiolo salimbeni, who finished some of his works after his death, and on this account only has been supposed his scholar. from him we shall commence a new epoch in this school. domenico beccafumi derived the surname of mecherino from a citizen of siena, who, having remarked him when a shepherd boy designing something on a stone, augured favourably of his genius; and obtaining the consent of his father, brought him to the city, and according to gigli, recommended him to capanna as a scholar. he there employed himself in copying the designs of eminent artists, and in imitating the pictures of pietro perugino, whose manner he at first adopted; nor did he ever wholly get rid of it; and his works in the cathedral of pisa exhibit a dryness, though they are the productions of his maturer years.[ ] having gone to rome in the pontificate of julius ii., a new scene was opened to him in the specimens of ancient sculpture, of which he was a most sedulous designer, and in the pictures in which michelangiolo and raffaello had assayed their skill. after two years he returned home, and there continuing his close attention to design, he found himself strong enough to contend with razzi; and, if we may credit vasari, even to surpass him. he had acquired skill in perspective, and was fertile in invention as a painter. in siena, mecherino is ranked after razzi; and the many places where they vied with each other, facilitates the comparison to those who are disposed to make it. at first he humoured his placid disposition by painting in a sweet style; at that time he made choice of beautiful airs for his heads; and very frequently inserted the portrait of his mistress in his pictures. in this style is his fine picture at the church of the olivetines of s. benedict; in which he has represented the titular saint, with s. jerome, and the virgin s. catherine, and where he has added some circumstances of her life in small figures. the last annotator on vasari prefers this work to many other pictures of mecherino, and laments, that, captivated by the energy of bonarruoti, he had deviated from his original manner. and, indeed, when he aspired to more vigour he frequently appears coarse in his proportions, negligent in his extremities, and harsh in his heads. this defect so increased in his old age that his heads of that period appeared without beauty even to vasari. his mode of colouring is not the most true; for it was mannered with a reddish hue, which is, however, fascinating and cheerful to the eye; it is neat, clear, and of such a body that it remains on walls at this day, in the highest preservation. a few of his works remain in genoa, where he painted the palace of prince doria; they are not numerous at pisa; but they abound in his native place, both in public and in private. his merit was greater in distemper than in oil colouring; and his historical frescos do him greater honour than his other paintings. his skill was great in distributing them to suit the place, and in adapting them to the architecture; he ornamented them with grotesque decorations in such a manner that he required not the aid of gilt stucco, or other gaudy trappings. these inventions have such felicity, that a single glance recals the story to the memory of one acquainted with its circumstances. he treats his subject copiously, with dignity, and with perfect nature: he imparts grandeur to it by his architectural views, and elegance by introducing the usages of antiquity. he peculiarly delighted in the more recondite principles of the art, which were then less generally employed; as peculiar reflections of fires and other lights; difficult foreshortenings, especially as applied to ceilings, which were then very rare in lower italy. vasari has minutely described his figure of justice; the feet of which are in dark shadow, gradually diminishing to the shoulders, which are invested with a most brilliant celestial light: "nor is it possible," says he, "to imagine, much less to find, a more beautiful figure ... amongst all that ever were painted to appear foreshortened when viewed from below." according to this verdict, mecherino deserves the appellation of the coreggio of lower italy, in this very difficult branch of painting; for no modern artist had attempted so much before his time. the above mentioned figure is painted on the vaulted ceiling of the consistory of the government; and the artist has arranged below it various oval and square pictures, each representing some memorable exploit of a republican hero. he pursued the same idea in an apartment in the mansion now in possession of the bindi family, which p. della valle reckons his masterpiece. the figures resemble those in the _logge_ of raffaello: they are better coloured than those in the consistory, and being smaller are, on that account, better designed: for the style of mecherino resembles a liquor which retains its qualities when shut up in a phial, but evaporates and is dissipated when poured into a larger vessel. this circumstance, however, was common to many others: his peculiarity consists in what he communicated to vasari; that, "out of the atmosphere of siena, he imagined he could not paint successfully;" an effect, according to p. guglielmo, of the climate; which would be a happy secret for peopling it with painters. perhaps it is to be explained by the greater degree of quiet and tranquillity that he enjoyed at home, in the society of his friends, among a people ready to encourage him by praise, not to chill him by reproach, and surrounded by all the spectacles and the lively genius of his country; objects eagerly desired by the natives of siena, but not easily found in other places. the style of mecherino, now described, expired with him: for his pupil, giorgio da siena, became a painter of grotesques, and imitated gio. da udine, both in his own country and at rome: giannella, or gio. da siena, turned his attention from painting to architecture; and marco da pino, surnamed also da siena, united a variety of styles. baglione, and the historians of siena, say, that he was there educated by beccafumi, and baldinucci adds, likewise by peruzzi: p. della valle, from his brilliant colouring, denies him to them, and assigns him to razzi. all, however, are agreed that he obtained his knowledge principally from rome, where he first painted from the cartoons of ricciarelli or of perino; and if we may credit lomazzo, was also instructed by bonarruoti. we cannot readily find any florentine capable of following the precepts of michelangiolo, without ostentation; but he acquired the principles without the affectation of displaying his knowledge. his manner is grand, select, and full of elegance: it is adduced by lomazzo as a perfect model for the human figure, and for the just distribution of the light according to the distance of objects; a department of the art in which he shares the glory with vinci, tintoretto, and baroccio. he painted little in siena except a picture, with which i am not acquainted, in the mansion of the francesconi family; and few of his works are to be seen at rome, with the exception of a pietà, in an altar of araceli, and some frescos in the church del gonfalone. naples was his field; and there he will again appear as a master and historian of that school. if conjecture were allowable in assigning masters to painters of the old schools, i should be inclined to reckon daniele di volterra rather the scholar of mecherino, than of razzi or peruzzi. we know for certain that he studied at siena in early life, when those three artists kept an open academy. peruzzi was wholly a follower of raffaello; razzi disliked the florentine style; and beccafumi alone aspired to be esteemed a faithful imitator of bonarruoti: by regarding him, therefore, as the master of daniele, we can best account for the already noticed predilection of the latter for the style of michelangiolo. no artist was capable of initiating him better in the art of casting in bronze than mecherino; or afford him more frequent examples of that strong opposition of bright and sombre colours that appears in some works of daniele. yet i will not depart from the more correct rule which forbids us in such doubtful points to depart readily from history: for each painter was always free to choose his style; he might be directed in one path by his master, and drawn a different way by his own genius, or by accidental circumstances. baldassare peruzzi is one of the numerous individuals whose merit must not be measured by their good fortune. born in indigent circumstances in the diocese of volterra, but within the territory of siena, and of a sienese father,[ ] he was nurtured amid difficulties, and through life was the perpetual sport of misfortune. reckoned inferior to his rivals, because he was as modest and timid as they were arrogant and impudent; despoiled of his whole property in the sack of rome; constrained to exist on a mere pittance at siena, at bologna, or at rome,[ ] he died when he began to be known, not without suspicion of being poisoned, and with the affliction of leaving a wife and six children almost beggars. his death demonstrated to the world better than his life the greatness of his genius; and the justness of his epitaph, in which he is compared to the ancients, is allowed by posterity. general consent ranks him among the best architects of his age; and he would also have been classed with the greatest painters, had he coloured as well as he designed, and had always been equal to himself; a thing he could not command during a life so chequered and wretched. after peruzzi had received the elements of the art in his native place from an unknown master, he went to rome for the completion of his studies, in the time of alexander vi. he knew, admired, and imitated raffaello (of whom some suppose him a pupil), especially his holy families.[ ] he approached him nearly in some works in fresco; such as the judgment of paris in the castle of belcaro, which is deemed his best performance, and the celebrated sybil foretelling the birth of christ to augustus, in the fonte giusta, of siena, which is admired as one of the finest pictures in that city. he imparted to it such a divine enthusiasm, that raffaello himself never surpassed him in treating this subject; nor guido, nor guercino, of whom so many sybils are exhibited. in great compositions, such as the presentation in the pace at rome,[ ] he designs well, gives a faithful representation of the passions, and embellishes the subject by appropriate edifices. his oil paintings are very rare; those representing the magi, which are shewn in many collections at florence, parma, and bologna, are copies from one of his chiaroscuros, which was afterwards coloured by girolamo da trevigi, as we are informed by vasari. i was told at bologna, that the picture of girolamo was lost at sea, and that the picture which the rizzardi family of that place possess, is a copy by cesi. his small altar-pieces are uncommonly scarce likewise: and i am unable to point out any of them but one, which contains three half-length figures of the virgin, the baptist, and s. jerome, and is at torre babbiana, eighteen miles from siena. what i have here related would have added to the glory of any other artist; but is little to the merit of baldassare. the genius of this man was not limited to the production of excellent cabinet pictures and frescos. i have already said he was an architect; or, as lomazzo has expressed it, a universal architect: and in this profession, the fruit of his assiduous study of ancient edifices, he ranks among the foremost, and is even preferred to bramante. the encomiums bestowed on him by the most celebrated writers on architecture are mentioned in the third volume of the sienese letters.[ ] no one, however, has done him greater honour than his scholar serlio, who declares in the introduction to his fourth book, that, whatever merit his work possesses, is not due to himself, but to baldassare da siena, of whose manuscripts he became the heir, and the plagiarist, if we are to credit giulio piccolomini,[ ] and his other townsmen. the declaration above stated absolves serlio from this imputation, unless it is insisted that he ought to have affixed the name of baldassare to every anecdote that he learnt or took from those manuscripts; a thing which it would be unreasonable to demand. he has, indeed, frequently mentioned him, and commended him for a sound taste, for facility, and elegance, both in designing edifices, and in ornamenting them. to say the truth, his peculiar merit lies in giving a pleasing effect to his works; and i have not observed any idea of his which in some way does not exhibit the stamp of a lively imagination. this character is apparent in the portico of the massimi at rome, the great altar of the metropolitan church of siena, and the large gateway of the sacrati palace at ferrara, which is so finely ornamented that it is named among the rarities of that city, and, in its kind, even of italy. but what chiefly establishes his reputation as a man of excellent and various genius, is the farnese palace, which is "executed with such exquisite grace that it appears created by enchantment, rather than built by human hands."[ ] he was eminently skilled in ornamenting façades; in painting so as to represent real architecture, and basso-relievos of sacrifices, bacchanalian scenes, and battles, which "serve to maintain the buildings sound and in good order, while they improve their appearance," according to serlio.[ ] he left fine specimens of this art at siena and in rome, where he was followed by polidoro, who carried it to the summit of perfection. peruzzi practised it at the farnese palace in those pictures in green earth, with which he covered the outside, and still more in the internal decorations. not to mention f. sebastiano, raffaello himself was employed in the same place: and in one apartment, finished without assistance, the celebrated galatea. baldassare painted the ceiling and the corbels with some fables of perseus, and other heroes: the style is light, spirited, and resembles that of raffaello, but is unequal to that of his model. though inferior in figures he was not behind in some other branches. his imitation of stucco ornaments appears so relieved that even titian was deceived by it, and found it necessary to change his point of view before he could be convinced of his error. a similar ocular deception is produced by the hall where a colonnade is represented, the intercolumniations of which make it appear much larger than it really is. this work induced pietro aretino to say, that the palace "contained no picture more perfect in its kind."[ ] and if the scenes which he painted for the plays, represented in the apostolical palace for the amusement of leo x. had survived to our days, the perspective paintings of peruzzi would have obtained greater fame than the calandra of card. da bibbiena; and it would have been said of him, as of the ancient, that he discovered a new art, and brought it to perfection. the observation of vasari, lomazzo, and other old writers, that peruzzi was not to be surpassed in perspective, has been recently confirmed by sig. milizia in the memoirs of architects. in this art he appears to me to have given the first and most classic examples. when i have occasion hereafter to notice celebrated perspectives in rome, in venice, or bologna, we must recollect, that if others surpassed him in the vastness of their works, they never did so in their perfection. maestro riccio is praised in siena as second to him in perspective, and was his scholar for some time; but afterwards he imitated the figures of his father-in-law. the merit of baldassare in grotesque is better seen at siena than in rome. this sort of painting, always the offspring of a whimsical fancy, was congenial to mecherino and to razzi; and both practised it with success. the latter seemed born to conceive and to execute it with unpremeditated facility; he painted in this style in the vatican, and obtained the approbation of raffaello, who was unwilling to cancel his grotesques as he did his historical compositions: he also executed some at monte oliveto that are highly facetious, and may be called an image of his own brain. cristoforo rustici and giorgio da siena obtained great fame in this style; but none of them equalled peruzzi. this artist, graceful in all his works, was most elegant in grotesque; and amid the freedom that a subject wholly capricious inspires, he preserved an art which lomazzo has studied, in order to comprehend its principles. he employs every species of idea; satyrs, masks, children, animals, monsters, edifices, trees, flowers, vases, candelabra, lamps, armour, and thunderbolts; but in their arrangement, in the actions represented, and in every other circumstance, he bridled his caprice by his judgment. he distorts and connects those images with a surprising symmetry, and adapts them as devices emblematic of the stories which they surround. this man, living in the brightest period of modern art, is in short, one of the individuals most interesting in its history. he had many pupils in architecture, but few in painting: among the latter are a francesco senese, and a virgilio romano, who are commended by vasari for their frescos, and to whom grotesques, of uncertain origin, are sometimes attributed in siena. somewhat later, but certainly before the complete revival of the art at siena, i am disposed to class a fresco painter, whom baglione and titi call matteo da siena; but who is named matteino in his native place, that he may not be confounded with the matteo of the fourteenth century. he lived at rome in the time of niccolò circignani, in whose pictures, and in those of artists of the same class, he inserted perspectives and landscapes. the efforts of his pencil may be seen at s. stefano rotondo, in thirty-two historical pictures of martyrs painted by circignani, which have been engraved by cavalieri. many of his landscapes are in the vatican gallery, which are beautiful, although in the old style. at the age of fifty-five he died at rome, where he was established in the pontificate of sixtus v. these circumstances make it appear to me unlikely, that he had painted in the casino of siena, about , or in the lucarini palace, along with rustichino: the first period i consider too early, and the latter too late. i shall now give some account of the chiaroscuros executed in mosaic, which owe their perfection to the school of siena, during the epoch of which we are about to finish our account. i have already mentioned the erection of the magnificent cathedral of siena, a work of many years; and may now add, that though it was grand in all its parts, nothing shewed such originality, or was so generally admired as the pavement around the great altar, all storied with subjects taken from the new testament, of which the figures were surrounded by appropriate ornaments, which served to vary and divide the immense ground of the painting. a succession of artists always labouring to improve this work, carried it in a few years to an astonishing pitch of excellence. the nature of the stone quarries in the sienese territory, afforded also facilities to the art which could not be so easily attained in other places. it originated like other arts from small and rude beginnings. duccio commenced this ornamented pavement. the part which he executed is constructed of stones, in which the limbs and contours of the figures are scooped out: it is a dry but not ungraceful production of the thirteenth century. the young woman in the choir who kneels with her arms leaning on a cross, and, as an inscription informs us, implores the mercy of the lord, is the work of duccio: it probably represents christian piety; and certainly both the attitude and the countenance are expressive of what she asks. those who continued the pavement immediately after duccio, are not so well known. we read of an urbano da cortona, and an antonio federighi, who designed and executed the two sybils; the rest was in like manner the work of artists of little note. they all, however, improved the art in some degree, cutting the figures with the chisel, and filling up what was removed by the iron, with pitch or some black composition; and this was a rude sort of chiaroscuro. to them succeeded matteo di giovanni, who, from an attentive consideration of what his predecessors had done, fell on a method of surpassing them. he remarked a vein of the marble in the drapery of a figure of david, which formed a very natural fold, and by the contrast of the colours made the knee and leg appear in relief: in like manner he discovered in a figure of solomon a shade of colour in the marble, well suited to produce effect. he then selected marbles of different colours; and joining them after the manner of an inlaying with stained wood, produced a work that was entitled to the name of a marble chiaroscuro. in this manner he executed without assistance a slaughter of the innocents, a composition which he frequently repeated, as we before remarked. he thus opened the path for beccafumi's histories, who wrought in a superior style a large part of that pavement, which his exertions, says vasari, rendered "the most beautiful, the largest, and most magnificent that was ever executed." this work employed his leisure hours till he attained to old age; and though painting interrupted his labours, he did not abandon it until his death, and hence, some of the historical compositions were completed by other hands, as is supposed from his cartoons. he executed the sacrifice of isaac, in figures as large as life; and moses striking the rock, with a crowd of hebrews rushing to catch the water, and slake their thirst; besides several other subjects, which are described by vasari; and more minutely by landi.[ ] i shall subjoin a few observations on the mechanism of the art. the first attempt of beccafumi was to compose a picture of inlaid wood, which was long preserved in the studio of vanni, and afterwards was in the possession of the counts of the delci family. he represented the conversion of s. paul in this piece, by employing wood of the colours only that were necessary to produce a chiaroscuro. after this model he selected white marble for the light parts of his figures, and the very purest for the catching lights; grey marble for the middle tints, black for the shadows, and for the darkest lines he sometimes employed a black stucco. he cut the pieces of these marbles, which are all indigenous, and inlaid them so nicely that the joinings are not easily discernible. this has induced some to believe that white marble is alone employed in this pavement, and that the middle tints and shadows are formed by certain very penetrating colours, capable of softening the marble and of colouring it throughout. we learn from a letter of gallaccini, that this idea was adopted by some natives of siena, and it appears from another of mariette, that this great connoisseur was impressed with it, and gained over bottari to his opinion.[ ] inspection overturns this supposition, for we may discover the seams between the different colours; and this circumstance induces the author of the sienese letters and the best informed persons, to disbelieve the artificial colouring of the marble. the truth is, the secret of colouring marble was not then known, but was afterwards discovered in siena by michelangiolo vanni, who has transmitted the memory of his invention to posterity.[ ] he erected a monument for his father, cav. francesco, with columns, ornaments, festoons, and figures of children; accompanied by a genealogy of the family, which were all designed on a white slab, and every part carefully and appropriately coloured, so as to resemble mosaic of different marbles. it is supposed that the colours were imparted to the marble by some mineral essences to impregnate it, because they penetrated a considerable way. he entitles himself the inventor of this art, in the monumental inscription. a secret of this nature was known to niccolò tornioli, of siena, about the year ; and this artist is said to have painted a veronica in that manner, the marble of which he caused to be sawed, and the same picture was found on each side of the section.[ ] he was probably a scholar of vanni; and the latter seems anxious by the inscription that he should not claim the honour of the invention. the connexion of the subject has led me to notice these two artists in this place. their true place is in the third epoch of the sienese school, to which i shall immediately proceed. [footnote : baldinucci, in his life of antonio veneziano, contends that this artist resided, during some time, at siena; but the silence of the city historians as to such a fact, leads us to doubt the truth of his assertion.] [footnote : vasari calls him "a pretty good master" in the life of d. bartolommeo: from the note of bottari on this passage we collect that he flourished about . gigli makes him the master of beccafumi.] [footnote : there is a coronation of the virgin by him at fonte giusta, and a picture, representing various saints, at carmine, dated .] [footnote : see _lett. sanesi_, tom. iii. p. , where the inscription of signorelli on his pictures in the petrucci palace is quoted, and vasari is corrected.] [footnote : he is thus named by baldinucci; but vasari, in his life of razzi, mentions a girolamo del pacchia, a rival of razzi himself; and this person appears to be pacchiarotto. he also mentions giomo, or girolamo del sodoma, who died young; and whom both orlandi and bottari have confounded with pacchiarotto; when we ought rather to believe that he was a pupil of razzi, and died while he was yet young.] [footnote : mattaccio signifies a buffoon. tr.] [footnote : in p. della valle, in the supplement to the life of razzi, see vasari, edit. of siena, p. . in the following page there is a chronological error. he agrees with baldinucci that razzi was born in , and says that his picture of s. francis was executed in , that is, when the artist was about eleven years of age.] [footnote : see also perini, in his _lettera su l' archicenobio di monte oliveto_, p. , where he defends razzi from the charge of indecorum made by vasari, on a view of the grotesques and fancy subjects which he painted in that place.] [footnote : tom. iii. p. .] [footnote : i am in doubt as to his native place. the name of one _scalobrinus pistoriensis_, a painter of merit, and belonging to the same age, is found inscribed at the church of s. francesco, without the tuscan gate, where he left seven specimens of altar-pieces. _memorie per le belle arti_, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : see sig. da morrona, tom. i. p. . mecherino there painted the evangelists, and some historical pieces from the life of moses: razzi executed in the same place a descent from the cross, and an abraham offering his son, which are among his last, and not his best works.] [footnote : the sienese historians prove this in opposition to vasari, who makes him by descent a florentine. see lett. sen. tom. iii. p. .] [footnote : for his labours in the cathedral of siena he had thirty crowns a year; as the architect of s. peter's, two hundred and fifty. he derived little advantage from private commissions, for people generally took advantage of his modesty, in either not paying him at all, or rewarding him scantily.] [footnote : i saw one in the possession of cav. cavaceppi in rome, of which this great connoisseur used to say, that it might pass for a raffaello, if it had been as like in colouring as in every thing else. the sergardi family at siena have another, and a holy family, by razzi, as its companion. these are reckoned among their first performances, and are believed to have been painted in competition with each other. in that of peruzzi one recognizes, even at that time, that elegance of design which he delighted afterwards to exhibit in his figures, especially in the chigi, now called the farnese palace.] [footnote : it is a fresco, and, though retouched, surprises at once by the novelty and expression of the figures. a. caracci designed it for one of his studies.] [footnote : lett. vii.] [footnote : siena illustre.] [footnote : the expression in the original is: "condotto con quella bella grazia che si vede-non murato, ma veramente nato." _vasari._] [footnote : p. .] [footnote : serlio, . c.] [footnote : _lettere senesi_, tom. iii. lett. . see also lett. . page , where there are many observations on the design of mecherino, and on the execution committed to the martini, brothers, and eminent sculptors of that period. for the prints from their works by andreani and gabuggiani, see the notes of bottari on the life of mecherino, p. .] [footnote : see lett. pittoriche, tom. i. p. , and tom. iv. p. . see also notes on vasari, tom. iv. p. . ed. fiorentin.] [footnote : he inscribed the monument, "francisco vannio ... michael angelus ... novæ hujus in petrâ pingendi artis inventor et raphael ... filii parenti optimo m. p. a. .] [footnote : see the note of bottari on gallaccini's letter. tom. i. p. .] sienese school. epoch iii. _the art having declined in siena through the disasters of the state, is revived by the labours of salimbeni and his sons._ we have related the progress and best works of the sienese school from the beginning, to about the middle of the sixteenth century; but we have not yet considered a circumstance that adds greatly to the merit of the artists and works of that period. if we search into the history of that half century, we shall find that all italy groaned under the pressure of public calamities; but siena, to a greater degree, and for a longer period than any other place, endured an accumulation of the most terrible evils. famine, pestilence, and a suspension of commercial intercourse, afflicted other states, but here they seem to have exhausted their rage: civil commotions and external enemies agitated other states, but here, during a period of many years, they allowed not a moment of tranquillity. the republic of siena, strong in the valour of her citizens, was feeble in every thing besides; and hence it resembled a gulph, where tempests are more frequent and more violent than on the ocean. the usurpation of the petrucci, the dissensions between the nobles and the people, and jealousy of foreign powers, who sought her subjugation, kept siena in constant alarm, and often incited to arms and to bloodshed. the remedy which they now expected in the protection of the emperor, at another time from france, only served to aggravate internal commotion and foreign aggression. amid this perpetual agitation, i know not whether most to admire the genius of the people, ever directed to the decoration of their houses and public edifices, or the spirit of the artists, who could summon all the powers of their minds to such efforts: this i know, that similar instances are rare in other countries. the year at length arrived, when cosmo i. deprived the sienese of their long defended liberty. to any enemy but the florentines they would have submitted with less reluctance; and on this account our astonishment is lessened on finding that, on this occasion, two thirds of the inhabitants abandoned their native soil, refusing to live subject to enemies so abhorred. at this time, and in the disasters above alluded to, the city lost many able artists, and also several families, from whom eminent artists were descended, and whose sienese origin is confirmed by history. baglione says of camillo mariani, that he was born at vicenza, and that his father was a native of siena, who had expatriated himself on account of the wars; and he praises the cabinet pictures of this artist, who died at rome with the reputation of an excellent sculptor. i likewise find at bologna an agostino marcucci, of siena, who is wholly unknown in that place, probably because he was the son of an emigrant. he was a disciple of the caracci, till a schism arose in that school, which we shall notice in its proper place, when he ranged himself with the foremost adherents of facini, the leader of the party, and they had the boldness to set up a new academy in opposition to that of the caracci. he continued to reside in bologna, and to teach to the time of his death, and is reckoned by malvasia among "the first men" of that age. of his scholars malvasia mentions only ruggieri, and he only notices one of his pictures at the concezione;[ ] to which several others, however, are added in the new guide. siena, in the mean time, began to breathe from her misfortunes, and to be reconciled to the new government, which, through the prudence of cosmo, appeared rather a reformation in the old, than a new domination. no long time elapsed before the void left in the city by the artists who had emigrated was filled up by others. rustico had remained there, as well as his superior, riccio, who painted the celebrated scene, already noticed, on the coming of cosmo. siena also possessed tozzo and bigio, whom lancillotti reckons "among the most famous painters," i believe, in small figures; and it is not easy to distinguish between those two artists, who had an extraordinary similarity of style. arcangiolo salimbeni, who is expressly said by baldinucci to be a "scholar of federigo zuccari," may have received the rudiments of the art from one of them. perhaps, as the historian goes on to say, during his residence at rome he might contract an intimate friendship with zuccari; but the style of salimbeni discovers very opposite principles from those of that master; and notwithstanding all researches, no one has succeeded in finding pictures of his that bear indications of that school. he loved precision more than fulness of design; and we may even observe in him an attachment to the manner of pietro perugino, as was observed by della valle with regard to a crucifixion attended by six saints, in the parish church of lusignano. in his other pictures at siena, especially in the s. peter-martyr, in possession of the dominicans, he appears wholly modern;[ ] but diligent, and free from the defects which we often observe in federigo, who may be considered as a professed mannerist of that period. it was the good fortune of the sienese school, that riccio was succeeded by this artist, who, if he had not a lofty genius, possessed, at least, the judgment to avoid the faults of his contemporaries. hence, amid the degeneracy of the neighbouring schools this remained uncontaminated, or but slightly infected; and the new disciples it sent forth contributed to the improvement of the art in italy. they were not so much attached to home as mecherino; they painted equally well beyond the territory of siena; they visited very distant cities, and in them all left specimens of their art, both in public and in private, which are still preserved. after receiving the first instruction from salimbeni, or some less known artist, each chose his own guide. we shall here proceed with their history. after receiving the rudiments of the art at siena, pietro sorri went to florence, under passignano, and became his son-in-law, and the associate of his labours in that place and in venice. he emulated the style of passignano, which partook, as we have observed, of the florentine and the venetian: he succeeded so well, that their works bear a perfect resemblance, and are held in equal estimation. he painted less expeditiously than his father-in-law; but his colouring was more durable, and, if i mistake not, his design more graceful. the convent of s. sebastian, which was ornamented by a competition of the best sienese artists of this epoch, has one of his pictures, which are rather uncommon in siena; for his best years were spent in other places. he was much at florence: and afterwards visited many other tuscan cities; and there is scarcely any considerable place among them which cannot boast the efforts of his easy and graceful pencil; but particularly pisa, the cathedral of which could not but attract such an artist. he there represented the consecration of that church on one large canvas, and, on another, christ disputing with the doctors, which is inscribed with his name: and never did he approach nearer to the excellence of paul veronese in architecture and other accompaniments. he was employed in the carthusian monastery of pavia, and also in genoa, where we shall find him as a preceptor in that school. casolani took his surname from casole, the little town from which his family removed to siena. in the ducal gallery of florence there is a portrait of a lady with three men, in the same piece, which is said to represent lucrezia piccolomini, with her three sons, alessandro casolani, francesco vanni, and ventura salimbeni, whom she bore to different husbands, in the course of a few years. this makes alessandro the stepson of arcangiolo salimbeni, and the uterine brother of ventura and of vanni. i cannot find this story in any author, except in niccolò pio, a roman writer of no authority, whose manuscript, containing notices of two hundred and fifty artists, which was drawn up about , is preserved in the vatican library.[ ] the old writers of siena have taken no notice of so remarkable an event, and we cannot, therefore, give credit to pio, a stranger, and a modern author. the relation then in which alessandro stands to arcangiolo is that of scholar; but he learnt more from cav. roncalli in siena and in rome. he remained long in the latter city: he designed the finest works it contained, and obtained some idea of different styles. this knowledge was increased by a journey which he made some years afterwards to pavia, where he painted in the carthusian monastery, and in other places. his manner is prodigiously varied. it exhibits traces of the best style of roncalli, a good design, sobriety of composition, a modesty of colouring, and tranquil harmony. he seems also to have aimed at originality, for he was continually altering his style, mingling it with the graces of various artists, and sometimes striking out into a novel path. he possessed promptness of genius and of execution: he was quick in committing his ideas to the canvas; and when dissatisfied with his work, he often chose to cancel the whole, rather than to correct a part. although unacquainted with ideal beauty, he was esteemed by guido, who may be considered as the father of modern painters, and who said of him "this truly is a painter." whoever would see his best work, may examine the martyrdom of s. bartholomew, at the carmine of siena. it is a picture of considerable size, with great variety in the figures and in the expression, and altogether excites surprise. we are told that when roncalli examined it, he at length exclaimed, that the art of that period was comprised in that picture. but the short life of casolani prevented him attaining the excellence which this specimen promised. his works are in various cities of tuscany, and also in naples, genoa, and fermo, in the metropolitan church of which there is a picture of s. louis of france, that is numbered among the choice paintings in that city. a good many of his works in siena shew traces of, and even whole figures by other hands; having been finished by vanni, and ventura salimbeni, or by other artists, either of his own or of different schools. ilario casolani, his son, by a daughter of rustici, finished the assumption for the church of s. francis; and afterwards went to rome, where he was "noticed by cav. pomaranci, out of respect to his father," says mancini, as of a thing he knew, and adds, that pomaranci had good hopes of him. baglione and pio called him cristoforo, a name he, perhaps, received along with several others at baptism; and which probably the sienese artist thought more becoming at rome than ilario, since he is named cristoforo, by roncalli. under pomaranci he became a proficient in his style in fresco, and imitated it particularly at madonna de' monti, in some pictures from the history of the virgin, and in an ascension on the ceiling; the best work, perhaps, produced in the short course of his life. titi uniformly names him cristoforo consolano; but a consideration of the anecdotes of mancini and baglione leads us to convert it into casolano. a resurrection of lazarus, begun by alessandro for the church of s. francis, was finished by vincenzio rustici; who was probably his scholar and his kinsman, and who is the least celebrated among this family of painters. one of his pictures, intended for santuccio, was finished by sebastiano folli. the frescos of this artist are more numerous at siena than his oil pictures: the ornamental parts of them are superior to his figures, in which he inclined to mannerism; his compartments are beautiful, his architecture finely conducted, his imitations of stucco deceive the eye, and he was expert in foreshortening what was to be seen from below. in he painted the frescos of s. sebastian, in competition with various artists, and in this trial of skill he only yields to rutilio manetti. in the guide of the cav. pecci i find mention made of designs of casolani, executed in fresco by stefano volpi, whose name not unfrequently occurs in that work, and who was probably a scholar of that excellent artist. cav. ventura, the son of a. salimbeni, is reckoned the third scholar of that master, though his lessons from arcangiolo must have been but few. the young man left his home early, and journeying through the cities of lombardy, he studied the works of correggio and others, whose taste began to be applauded in tuscany. he went to rome in the pontificate of sixtus v. and raised a very favourable opinion of his genius, which, giving himself up to dissipation, he did not afterwards fulfil. in that city he left many frescos that are praised by baglione, among which, the abraham entertaining the angels, in a chapel of the gesù, appears, on the whole, the work of a consummate painter. it has something lively and graceful in the colouring and the countenances, which he always retained: it also shews attention to design and chiaroscuro, which, in a great measure, he afterwards neglected in his paintings. in conjunction with vanni he executed some ceilings, and, perhaps, derived advantage from observing this painter, though his junior by eight years. in many of his works he undoubtedly resembles him in his imitation of baroccio, and hardly yields to him in grace of contour, in expression, and in delicacy and clearness of colouring. he is admired in the church of s. quirico, and in that of s. domenick: in the one is his appearance of the angel at the sepulchre; in the other a crucifixion, with various saints around, which are superior to the generality of his works. in several other places in siena there are others of great merit, especially where he painted in the vicinity of the works of the best masters of his school. he likewise executed some beautiful historical pieces when he vied with poccetti, in the cloister of the servi at florence, and in the cathedral of pisa, where he was surrounded by such great painters. his marriage of the virgin, in the cathedral of foligno, his s. gregory, in the church of s. peter at perugia, his works in lucca, in pavia, and in various cities of italy, justify the remark of baglione, that salimbeni was impatient of remaining long in any one place. in genoa, however, his stay was not so short. the beautiful chamber in the adorno palace, and other works which he there executed, are still in existence, while many others have perished. he went to genoa at the same time with agostino tassi, who served him for an ornamental and landscape painter, and, perhaps, it was through him that ottavio ghissoni, of siena, came to that place; an artist, if i am not mistaken, forgotten in the annals of his own country; in fresco he was more lively than correct. he studied at rome under cherubino alberti; but his country, his style, and the time of his arrival at genoa, afford ground to suspect that he had also received the lessons of salimbeni. soprani gives ventura the surname of bevilacqua, which is rather an addition to his name granted him by cardinal bevilacqua when he knighted him in perugia. cav. francesco vanni, in the opinion of many, is the best painter of this school; and is reckoned one of the restorers of italian painting in the sixteenth century. the early instruction of his genius is to be assigned with greater probability to his brother than to his stepfather. at sixteen years of age he went to rome, for the purpose of designing after raffaello and the best masters. he was for some time under the tuition of gio. de' vecchi, whose style he introduced into his native country. there are specimens of him in many churches, and it is related that they were not relished by his fellow citizens; a circumstance which might occasion him uneasiness at the time, but soon after afforded him a lasting source of satisfaction. it induced him to examine the pictures of lombardy, as his brother had done: and having remained in parma to design some of them, he afterwards went to bologna, where he was assiduously occupied. ugurgieri writes that he was at that place in , at which time he was twelve years old: this i believe to be incorrect; for it was unknown to mancini, who was acquainted with vanni. malvasia repeats it on the authority of ugurgieri; but he can discover nothing further of vanni, at bologna, than his being there after he had arrived at manhood, and designing in the academy of facini and mirandola, to which he was probably introduced by his countryman marcucci. he left some works at bologna, in the style of the caracci, if he is the painter of a madonna, which was shewn me as a vanni, in a cabinet of the zambeccari collection. his flight into egypt, painted for the church of s. quirico, in siena, bears also undoubted marks of the bolognese school. although he attempted other styles, he was not like casolani an adherent to none. vanni attached himself to the elegant and florid manner of barocci, in which he was eminently successful. of this, the humiliation of simon the sorcerer, which he painted on a stone slab for the church of s. peter at rome, affords a proof; a picture which, though recently cleaned with little judgment, is still an object of admiration. both the design and colouring are in the manner of barocci; and it is prepared with a due regard to the humidity of that church; nor has it been found necessary to remove it, as has happened to other pictures. he also painted in siena, and in other italian cities, where he has approached the manner of barocci more closely than viviani, or any other pupil of that artist. his marriage of s. catherine, with a numerous group of angels, at the refugio, is much praised in siena: as is the madonna, surrounded by saints, painted for the church of monna agnese; and the s. raymond walking on the sea, in the possession of the domenican fathers, which is supposed by some to be his best picture in siena, where his works are very numerous. among the finest pictures in the cathedral of pisa, is the dispute about the sacrament, painted in emulation of his brother ventura, who had surpassed his usual style in the altar-piece of the angels. at the umiltà of pistoia, in the convent of the camaldules of fabriano, and in that of the capuchins of s. quirico, are some of his most exquisite works; and they are so numerous in other places, that i do not imagine a full catalogue of them has ever been made out. he is generally a follower of barocci, as we have observed; and amateurs, deceived principally by his colouring, and the heads of his boys, which appear cast in the mould of barocci, frequently confound the latter with vanni: but one, well acquainted with federigo, observes in him more grandeur of design, and greater freedom in the touches of the pencil. the pictures which vanni executed negligently, or at low prices (of which there are several at siena), can hardly be recognized as his. by the example and lessons of vanni, the honour of painting was long supported at siena. he taught many pupils, who did not, however, rigidly adopt his style; but, as is usually the case, imitated the master most recently in vogue, or, in other words, followed the fashion of the time. we shall begin with his two sons, to whom he had given the names most celebrated in the art. michelangiolo, the eldest, we have mentioned with applause, as the inventor of staining marble: but he did not attain much celebrity except in this art. i know not whether he ever was out of siena, and there we find few of his paintings, except a s. catherine in the act of praying with the redeemer, which was painted for the olivetine monks. raffaele, the second, left an orphan at the age of thirteen, was recommended to antonio caracci, and in that school, according to mancini, made such progress as even to surpass his father; but this is not the opinion of posterity. all allow that he possessed grandeur of design, and a fine taste in shadows and in colouring, with some resemblance to cortona, who, in his day, drew after him even his contemporaries. the birth of the virgin mary, in the pace at rome, and several of his other pictures, have no small portion of the ideas and contrasts of the followers of cortona. he lived long in rome, and on that account is frequently mentioned by titi. tuscany is not deficient in his works. at the church of s. catherine, at pisa, there is a picture of the titular saint; florence possesses the pictures of the riccardi saloon; and at the church of s. george, in siena, is his procession of our saviour to calvary. these are esteemed among his finest productions; and the last is characterized as his masterpiece. both brothers had the honour of knighthood; but it was more worthily bestowed on the second than on the first. contemporary with the cav. raffaello, as well as his assistant at s. maria della pace at rome, and in several places at siena, we find the name of bernardino mei. i am unacquainted with that of his master; and p. della valle, who saw several of his works, sometimes compares him to the caracci, at others to paul veronese, and to guercino, much as the eclectic philosophers adopt or change the maxims of the different schools. he commends him for the airs of his heads, and, as one of his best productions, alludes to a fresco in the casa bandinelli, with an aurora in a ceiling, and with several other elegant figures and designs. francesco di cristofano rustici, called rustichino, is better known in siena than those just mentioned. he obtained the name of rustichino, either because he was the last of a family that had produced three painters before him, or because he died in the outset of life. this circumstance, perhaps, has contributed to his reputation. all his remaining works are beautiful, which seldom happens to artists who live to a great age, and who abate in diligence as they advance in reputation and in years. he is a graceful follower of caravaggio; and particularly excels in confined or candle lights, much in the style of gherardo della notte; but he is perhaps more select. the dying magdalen, in possession of the grand duke of tuscany, and the s. sebastian, cured by s. irene, which belongs to prince borghese, in rome, are in this style. but it was not the only one in which rustichino painted. he had visited rome, and had studied the works of the caracci and of guido, of which traces may be discovered in several of his works; but, at the same time, all of them possess a certain originality, and something peculiarly his own. the best of all his pictures at siena is an annunciation, in provenzano, before which the virgin, s. catherine, prays, surrounded by a multitude of angels. if rustichino pleases in other works, in this he enchants us. he began a work on the history of the city in the public palace, in which his father, whose figures were not equal to his decorations, was also employed, and it was finished by other artists. rutilio manetti, or, as pecci writes it, mannetti, followed caravaggio with less discrimination, but with greater force in the shadows. his pictures at siena are easily recognized by invariably partaking of a certain sombre hue, which deranges the due balance and participation of light and shade. the same objection lies against many of his contemporaries of every school. the method of purifying colours, and of composing vehicles,[ ] had degenerated; and the injury sustained from this defect was not observed in the pictures: the artist only looked to the grand effect, to which the age so much aspired. manetti united an improved design to ideas above the common order, and beautiful architecture; and hence, at times, he approaches rather to guercino than to caravaggio. in the cathedral of siena is his elijah under the juniper tree, in which the historian of that church commends the force of the colouring, which is juicy and natural. many of his works remain in the carthusian monastery of florence, and in several churches of siena, the most admired of which is the repose of the holy family, in s. peter's of castelvecchio. in private collections, where pictures are better preserved than in churches, we find very beautiful madonnas by this artist; and there is a most exquisite lucretia in the possession of the bandinelli family. he sometimes departed from his usual manner, as in the triumph of david, in the ducal gallery, in which the shadows are not so dark, and the tone of the whole is more lively. mention is made in the _lettere pittoriche_,[ ] of bernardino capitelli, a scholar of manetti, and an etcher: and in the third volume there is casual mention of one domenico manetti, probably of the same family, but not to be mistaken for the great individual of the same name. he appears rather to have employed himself in ornamenting private collections, and painted a baptism of constantine for the casa magnoni, that has been much commended. astolfo petrazzi, as well as vanni, was a pupil of the younger salimbeni and of sorri; and seems, more than any other, to have adhered to the manner of his master. he frequently aims at pleasing the eye, and not unfrequently chooses his models from the schools of upper italy. a marriage-feast of cana, by his hand, in a private house, brings paolo strongly to our recollection. his communion of s. jerome, in the possession of the augustine friars, partakes, perhaps, too strongly of the manner of the caracci. this picture, which he painted at rome, was much admired at siena, and was the origin of his great employment in that city, where his pictures are always decorated with most pleasing choirs of angels. his cabinet pictures were also lively; witness the four seasons at volte, a seat of the noble family of chigi. he kept an open academy for painting in his house, which was much frequented by natives of siena, and honoured by the attendance of borgognone, who stopt some months with astolfo before he went to rome. hence, many of this artist's early battle-pieces and landscapes are to be met with at siena: the house of sig. decano giovanelli, a literary ornament of that city, abounded with them. i find some other painters of this school who are known beyond the state of siena. antiveduto grammatica, an eminent painter, of sienese extraction, was known at rome, where he was president of the academy of s. luke. it is true that he was deprived of that office for attempting to substitute one of his own copies for a s. luke, by raffaello, which he had sold to a gentleman. he had a peculiar talent in the art of copying, especially heads, and, on this account, he was a good portrait painter. although we are not certain that he had any master but one domenico perugino, a painter of little wooden scenes,[ ] he obtained applause in large compositions. there is an annunciation by grammatica of a most brilliant colouring, in the hospital of the incurables; and several of his other pictures, in different churches. he died at rome in . two other artists, unknown in their native place, are made known to me by their signatures. on a last supper, in the convent of the angioli, below assisi, i discovered _franciscus antonius senensis_, , or thereabouts. the style has enough of baroccio to lead me to suspect that he was the scholar of vanni, or of salimbeni: nor must he be reckoned the meanest of that school, for he was master of expression in a degree superior to mediocrity. the figure of the departing judas is the image of desperate resolve, and would be much better had he not given it the feet of a bat; a grotesque conceit. in the same neighbourhood, at the church of foligno, i read, beneath a holy family, the name of _marcantonio grecchi_, and the date . the style is solid, expressive, and correct; more resembling tiarini di bologna than any master of siena. niccolo tornioli, lately mentioned, painted in the church of s. paul, at bologna, in various cities of italy: in siena he left, perhaps, no picture in public but the vocation of s. matthew, still remaining in the custom-house. towards the close of the century, painting was practised at siena chiefly by foreigners. annibale mazzuoli, a fresco painter of rapid execution but of little merit, was most employed: he afterwards went to rome, and is the last name inserted in the eulogies of pio. painting, however, came again into repute at siena, about , when its credit was restored by cav. giuseppe nasini, a scholar of ciro ferri. nasini possessed the qualities for which i have commended many of his nation, a fervid genius, a fertile imagination, and a poetic vein; but his poetry was of the species that prevailed in italy during his younger days, a composition unrestrained by fixed rules. to this spirit we not unfrequently discover some analogy in his paintings, in which we could desire to find more order, a more choice design, and colouring less vulgar. he always shews, however, a taste for allegory, great command of pencil, and an imposing air on the whole; and the observation of redi, that "he stuns the beholder," is not without some foundation.[ ] this remark was made when nasini had finished the cupola of the chapel of s. anthony, in the church of the apostles at rome; in which chapel there is a picture by luti. he afterwards entered into a competition with luti, and the first artists then in rome, in the large prophets of the lateran cathedral. his masterpiece is supposed to be the s. leonard, in madonna del pianto, at foligno, the ceiling of which he painted with good frescos. siena contains some of his finest productions of every kind; above all, the pictures of the novissimi, intended for the pitti palace, but transferred from it to the church of the conventuals of siena. it contains a great number of figures neither so select nor so well arranged as to arrest the eye of the spectator; but he who would contemptuously overlook it, let him say how many painters then in italy could have produced such a picture. giuseppe brought up two pupils in his house. he had a brother named antonio, who was a priest, whose likeness is among the eminent portrait painters in the gallery at florence. cav. apollonio nasini, the son of giuseppe, was inferior to his father in the profession; yet assisted him in his greatest works, and held an honourable rank among his contemporaries. gioseffo pinacci, of siena, a disciple of mehus in figures, and of borgognone in battle-pieces, lived in the time of nasini. he was a good painter of portraits, and made a considerable fortune, first at the court of carpio, viceroy of naples, and afterwards in the service of the grand duke ferdinand, at florence, where several of his works remain. but his chief merit consisted in a knowledge of the pencilling of the old masters. nicolo franchini distinguished himself rather by restoring the work of other hands than by his own productions, and thus furnished pecci with much convenient information for his city guide; "by his skill," says the cavaliere, "in restoring injured specimens to their original beauty, without applying to them a fresh pencil, and in supplying the faded colours with others taken from paintings of less value, he entitled himself, in fact, to the praise of a new discovery." we shall here conclude the school of siena; and shall add in its praise, that if it did not produce painters of the very highest class, it at least boasts many artists, eminent when we consider their era, and few inferior, or not above mediocrity.[ ] it indeed appears, that either a genius for painting is natural to that people, or that none of them have embraced the art who were not capable of prosecuting it successfully. [footnote : see malvasia, tom. i. p. ; and tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : it has his name and the year , which date must be false. the widow of arcangiolo married again, and bore francesco vanni in . consequently the latter could not be the scholar of arcangiolo, though such an idea is very prevalent; and he could give lessons only for a short time to his son, ventura, or to sorri, and casolani, if the period of their birth is true.] [footnote : see letter in vol. v. of _lett. pittor._, in which there is a catalogue of those painters.] [footnote : the idea that the brilliant colouring of the venetian school was owing to the use of a peculiar vehicle for the colours, or a certain varnish, has been long entertained by artists and connoisseurs; and the opinion has been sanctioned by great names: yet it is highly probable that the great secret of the venetian painters consisted not in vehicles nor in varnishes, but in employing mineral colours, and in laying them on the canvas as little mixed as possible. no colour derived from the vegetable kingdom will stand well when mixed with oil, and our best colours are composed of metallic oxides, or earthy bodies highly charged with those oxides. when colours are much mixed on the palette they become invariably muddy, and to him who aims at brilliancy of colouring no maxim is of greater consequence than _to keep his palette as clean as possible_. the use of transparent colours in the shadows is another great cause of brilliancy, and this cannot be obtained by the use of mixed colours. it is produced by what is called glazing, or laying transparent colours one over another. in nothing is the effect of glazing, in giving transparency, more obvious, than in the astonishing clearness of the skies and water in the works of the best dutch artists. that the magical effect of kuyp's pictures is thus produced, i had an opportunity of knowing, from the blunder of a picture-cleaner, who thought he had made a great discovery when he found the _rhine_ of a deep blue in a picture by this master; from which, along with the varnish, he had removed a thin coating of yellow, with which the blue was glazed over, to produce the beautiful greenish hue of the water. (_note by_ dr. traile.)] [footnote : tom. i.] [footnote : his name alone survives in perugia; though it is believed that one of his pictures remains in the church of s. angelo magno, at ascoli, where the figure of s. giovanni is ascribed by lazzeri, in his _ascoli in prospettiva_, to one giandomenico da perugia, and the landscape to gio. francesco da bologna, that is to say, to grimaldi. the figure is in the guercino taste, according to the opinion of sig. orsini; but i cannot conceive how he or the sig. mariotti (p. ) should not have remarked that it must be the production of giandomenico cerrini, of perugia, contemporary with grimaldi and guercino, and not of that domenico, the painter of wooden scenes, who lived about an age anterior to them.] [footnote : lett. pittoriche, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : a few of the names that obtained least celebrity in siena are pointed out by p. m. della valle in the third volume of the lettere senesi, (p. ,) among which are found crescienzio gamberelli nasinesco, deifobo burbarini, a poor artist, aurelio martelli, called il mutolo, gio. batista ramacciotti, a priest and connoisseur in painting; and the same may be said of bernardino fungai, and of the noble marcello loli, of galgano perpignano, with others of like merit, either omitted or slightly mentioned by sig. pecci. p. della valle excuses himself from the task of treating of them in favor of happier writers, but as we do not pretend to aspire to that felicity, we shall leave others to avail themselves of the father's liberality.] end of vol. i. j. m'creery, tooks court, chancery-lane, london. transcriber's notes: archaic punctuation and spelling of words, names, titles, and places, were not changed. minor punctuation errors were corrected. inconsistent hyphenation was standardized. footnotes were moved to the end of each chapter. a chapter heading was added to florentine school, epoch i, section iii, for consistency with remaining chapters. in the original, footnote contains an oversized letter 'i' in the word 'copisqve,' to represent a double 'i' of the word 'copiisqve.' in the phrase 'signed _f_. _s_', the figure ' ' is rotated degrees in the original text. the following changes were made for consistency within the text. 'basso rilievos' and 'bassorilievos' to 'basso-relievos' 'mezzo-rilievo' and 'mezzorilievo' to 'mezzo-relievo' 'pieta' to 'pietà' 'trinita' to 'trinità' 'winckelman' to 'winckelmann' 'zannetti' to 'zanetti' other changes: page reference for epoch v in the table of contents corrected from to . ' ' to ' ' based on another copy of the book and the sequence of events in the text. ...in the year , lanzi,... 'christian' to 'christian' ...lanzi was a good christian,... 'teofilos's' to 'teofilo's' ...teofilo's treatise is inserted... 'lamp blank' to 'lamp black' ...the ink (lamp black or printer's... 'desart' to 'desert' ...s. john in the desert... 'croud' to 'crowd' ...and a crowd of devotees... 'cotemporaries' to 'contemporaries' ...and his contemporaries painted... 'pysche' to 'psyche' ...the features of psyche have nothing... 'groupes' to 'groups' ...groups of boys... a practical treatise on composition, light and shade, and colour. printed by william wilcockson, rolls buildings, fetter lane. [illustration] the use of a box of colours, in a practical demonstration on composition, light and shade, and colour. illustrated by plain and coloured examples. by harry willson, author of fugitive sketches in rome, venice, etc. london: published by tilt and bogue, fleet street, for the proprietor, charles smith, , marylebone street, piccadilly. m.dccc.xlii. entered at stationers' hall. preface. between those works on art which are too costly, or too old to be useful now,--those, which are too comprehensive or prolix--and those, which teach nothing,--it was suggested to the author, that an investigation and simple arrangement of the principles on which he has hitherto successfully taught, with useful results, would form a _practical_ treatise, calculated to abridge the labours and shorten the road of the student, by its available suggestions. contents. page prefatory remarks;--composition, applied to painting of angular composition of the circular form in composition light and shade--its application to painting on colour of the three primitive colours on general nature on rules on copying on the light and shade of colour; and reflexes harmony and contrast effect, accident, relief, and keeping dexterity and affectation of backgrounds on water-colour of tints reference to the plates on colour description of the plates composition. 'genius is the power of making efforts.' erroneous opinions, once formed, seldom fail to affect the taste of a man's character through his whole life. it is, therefore, of the utmost necessity that his conduct be rightly directed. 'art will not descend to us, we must be made to reach and aspire to it.' 'the great art to learn much,' says locke, 'is to undertake a little at a time.' and dr. johnson has very forcibly observed--'that all the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of _perseverance_: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united by canals. if a man were to compare the effect of a single stroke with a pickaxe, or of one impression of a spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed with the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties; and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings. 'it is, therefore, of the utmost importance, that those who have any intention of deviating from the beaten roads of life, and of acquiring a reputation superior to names hourly swept away by time, among the refuse of fame, should add to their reason and spirit the power of _persisting_ in their purposes; acquire the art of sapping what they cannot batter; and the habit of vanquishing obstinate resistance by obstinate attacks.' to the many, of different ages, of different pursuits, of different degrees of advancement, who may take up this work, it will be difficult to address myself, as the mind requires instruction adapted to its growth; but i trust to being enabled to protect industry from being misapplied. to such as desire to shorten the path to excellence, and to whom rules appear as the 'fetters of genius,' from mere impatience of labour, if their studies be not well _directed_, they will, just in proportion to their industry, deviate from that right way, to which, after all their exertions, they will have to return at last. it will be time enough to destroy the bridge when we have attained the shore. to render our efforts effectual, they must be well directed; and the student will ultimately triumph over those rules which before restrained him. begin wrong, and you are no sooner under sail, than under water! when a difficulty presents itself, attack it as though you meant to overcome it, and the chances are you succeed. do not fancy that you have, or that you want, that illusion, _inspiration_; but remember art is to be acquired by human means; that the mind is to be expanded by study; and that examples of industry abound to show the way to eminence and distinction. 'he must of necessity,' says sir joshua reynolds, 'be an imitator of the works of other painters. this appears humiliating, but is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, on any other terms. for, if we did not make use of the advantages our predecessors afford us, the art would be always to begin, and consequently remain always in an infant state.' and we shall no longer require to use the thoughts of others when we have become able to think for ourselves: 'genius is the child of imitation.' there are no excellencies out of the reach of the _rules_ of art--nothing that close observation of the leading merits of others, nothing that indefatigable industry cannot acquire. refinement in the practice of _rules_ brings all under its dominion; and, 'as the art advances, its powers will be still more and more fixed by rules;' and, 'unsubstantial as these rules may seem, and difficult as it may be to convey them in writing, they are still seen and _felt_ in the mind of the artist, and he works from them with as much certainty as if they were embodied upon paper. and that it is by being conversant with the inventions of others that we learn to _invent_. the mind becomes as powerfully affected as if it had itself produced what it admires.' an habitual intercourse, to the end of our lives, with good and great examples, will invest our own inventions with their splendid qualities; and if we do not imitate others, we shall soon be found imitating ourselves, 'and repeating what we have before often repeated; while he who has treasured the most materials, has the greatest means of invention.' it by no means appears to me impossible to overtake what we admire and imitate--or even to pass it. he 'has only had the advantage of starting before you,' while pointing the way has shortened our own labour. life must henceforth become longer; because we now, more than ever, gain time by the experience of others: we pass on from that to our own, until every thing in nature, judiciously directed, becomes subservient to the principles and purposes of art. again, 'i very much doubt,' says sir joshua, 'whether a habit of drawing correctly what we _see_ will not give a proportionable power of drawing correctly what we imagine.' but practice must always be founded on good theory; for mere correctness of drawing is, perhaps, nearly allied to mechanical; blending it with the imaginative alone, in composition, constitutes its pretensions to genius; but confidence in the one produces boldness in the other. 'all rules arise from the passions and affections of the mind, and to which they are all referrible. art effects its purposes by their means.' 'years,' says a modern author, 'are often spent in acquiring wealth, which eventually cannot be enjoyed for want of those stores of the mind, that should have been laid up in youth, as the best solace of declining age. the most moderate power of making a sketch from nature would have been a valuable attainment, when leisure and opportunity threw them among scenes they could but half enjoy in consequence.' besides, true taste does every thing in the best way at the least expense, while the want of it often appears in unmeaning decoration at a vast outlay. 'a man of polite imagination,' says addison, 'feels greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows than another does in the possession of them: it gives him a kind of property in every thing he sees; so that he looks on the world, as it were, in another light.' when a painter walks out, he receives at every glance impressions that would entirely escape others, upon sensibilities refined by habits of observation the art of seeing things as they appear is the art of acquiring a knowledge of drawing them. indefinite observation and defective memory are improved in the utmost degree by this faculty of seeing things well defined. besides, most sciences are capable of receiving great assistance from drawing. the road is familiar to the practised painter, whose many stages he has passed through so often, and he seldom thinks of revisiting the earlier tracks of it when he has set up his study at the farther end; therefore, it behoves us to come back, and lead the pupil through those early stages of it, until we welcome him at the end, and he becomes as familiar with the way as ourselves. the lowest steps of a ladder are as _useful_ as the highest. composition, in drawing, is the art of disposing ideas, either from hints taken from nature, or from our own minds; of arranging them, with a view to subsequently dividing them into light and shade; and arraying them with judicious colour. it is the art of graphically telling a story, and should be so contrived, that the principal objects we would impress the minds of others with, should hold that just place in a picture, in relation to the minor or auxiliary parts, that may at once impress the mind, and convey our object to the view of the spectator. to compose well, it will be necessary for the student to diligently consult the compositions of others; zealously enquiring where the _best_ are to be found, among the numerous instances that exist both in pictures and prints, that he may carefully avoid those that would mislead him in his research, and attain his object by consulting only those that have merited the approval of the best judges, and have come down to posterity as the best examples for his imitation. by adhering to this plan, it will readily become such matter of habit with him, that a comparatively short interval of time will force upon him the conviction that he is in the right path to future success. it were useless to add how many have began, and how many have failed, for want of this precaution at setting out. a splendid and fascinating effect, or a beautiful display of colour, or something or other that the artist has dexterously contrived to invest his work with, is generally the cause to which this failure is ascribable; while in the end, our own sympathies with a composition, correct in its management, appeal to the feelings and judgment at once. in the first place, _much_ knowledge of perspective is not necessary to the student: the leading principles are all that are required, at setting out. as he goes on, it will be time enough to extend his enquiries. secondly, a _good manner_ of drawing the _parts_, or objects represented in a picture, with accuracy. thirdly, reference to the best compositions of others will enable him to compare and combine them. fourthly, to render some subservient to others, by a skilful distribution of light and shade. exercise the memory on various parts of objects, till you draw them well: the means of _connecting_ them will gradually occur, until the whole is united. the constant practice of this method will lessen the difficulty at every step, until it becomes a habit of the mind, and is rendered as easy to grasp a _whole_ scene, as before it was the parts. the fleeting nature of effects of cloud or sunshine passing before us, leave no time to meditate them; therefore, to impress the memory with them is the only resource left. the single glance of an eye has been found sufficient to catch the passing expression of character, and fix it on the memory, when that memory has been strengthened and matured by repeated efforts: so evanescent are the features of things and forms that pass us by, that observation--discriminative observation--assisted by habits of memory, alone can fix them in our ideas: no single expression of the human countenance remains long enough to paint it by any other means. when the memory has been thus exercised, the slightest hint will be sufficient to fire it. this may account for the expression, 'that artists see things where nobody else can find them!' it is an _improved perception_ that catches resemblances from almost ideal forms. the most general forms of nature are the most beautiful. an enlarged comprehension sees the whole object _at once_, without minute attention to details, by which it obtains the ruling characteristics, and imitates it by short and dexterous methods. 'science soon discovers the shortest and surest way to effect its own purpose;'--by an exact _adequate_ expression, and _no more_, adjusts the whole. the laziness of highly finishing the parts, has been justly called the 'laborious effects of idleness:' excessive _labour_ in the detail, is always pernicious to the general effect, frittering it away; and, while you deceive yourself that you are acquiring art, your pursuit will end in mechanics, in default of more extended views--the _art of seeing_ nature! to copy well, or even tolerably, is all that most amateurs ever arrive at: to draw from nature, originally, seems placed out of the reach of all, but those who devote a great part of their existence to it; and yet, to copy nature, is a goal that all would reach if they could! try it, and behold the miserable production that is the result! without a previous devotion to its laws. instead of for ever copying, it will be found of more importance to be continually exercising the _memory_. 'a _mere_ imitator or copyist,' says dagley, 'dare not lose sight of his model, lest he should lose himself!' in sketching from nature, always survey the object at _every point_ the nature of the ground will permit, as it prevents the disappointment arising from having completed your work, and afterwards seeing it from a point that would have given you greater advantages. whenever a pencil or pen is at hand, practice continually the perpendicular, horizontal, and diagonal lines; then strike circles out, or any other flowing lines, which practice will eventually give that flow to the hand which is understood by freedom. when power is acquired over these, _their combinations form drawing_, in all its picturesque varieties. it is in the power of all to attain these forms and essential parts of drawing, with the same, or more facility, than the forms of writing are acquired. 'no object you can place in your picture, can possess its proper value, unless it is in its proper place;--out of that place, it can only create disorder.' the size of a figure, or any other object, should denote the distance at which it is situated: so should the colour of it retire in the _same_ proportion. the eye should be distant from the picture twice the length of it. the most natural point of sight, is the level of a man's eye, standing up; which should be the line of the horizon, or where the sky meets it. all mountains should rise above that line. if a figure be placed on the bottom line of the picture, it should be the natural size, and all others diminish as they recede, in an exact proportion to their distance, care being taken that they never have the appearance of going up steps; all buildings, trees, &c., being governed by the same rule. thus the second figure or object, being the same distance from the first as the first is from the eye, presuming them both to be of the same size in nature, the second will appear _half_ the size of the first; and, if the third be removed the same distance from the second, it will appear _two-thirds_ less; and so on they will diminish in equal proportion. at twice the distance, it will diminish _three-fourths_; and at one-third more, it will lose _five-sixths_; and so retire progressively, never varying the point of sight. one eye only should be open, in order to reduce all objects to one point of sight; the objects immediately in front, receiving alone the highest finish, that all may appear to have ground to stand on. if you look at nature with both eyes, you will never obtain the same relief upon a flat superfice. the horizontal line should never be placed at _half_ the height of the picture, but always above or below it. in drawing a room, or the nave of a church, place the centre of it on one _side_, and never in the middle; and nearer the _bottom_ than the top. observe the same rule with the figures. one side should be in light, while the other is in shadow. the heads or parts of figures on the shadowed side should catch the light; while, to balance the mass, the dark groups should be placed on the light side. (_see plate , fig. ._) so, in drawing any single object, always place it sufficiently on _one side_, to procure a greater space above it, than beneath; and more repose on _one_ side than the _other_. this principle should never be lost sight of, for even in portraits it has a bad effect. to produce pictorial effect, in composing landscape, the lines should be of unequal length, forming acute and obtuse angles. neither should they be vertical or horizontal with the sides or bottom of the square, but always diagonal, the distant horizon and lower streaks of the bases of the clouds excepted, which should be contrasted, by the upper parts of the clouds being round. broken banks and spreading roots of trees will effect this. an exception, in buildings and architecture, something reverses this rule, from the lines being perpendicular and horizontal, in which case, the shadows must be diagonal. when a wall, for instance, is _straight_, a wheel, or circular object is generally placed against it, to reverse the lines by apposition.' 'objects, whether they consist of lights, shadows, or figures, must be disposed in large _masses_ and groups, properly varied and contrasted, that, to a certain quantity of action, a proportioned space of plain ground is required; that light is to be supported by sufficient shadow, and that a certain quantity of cold colours is necessary to give value and lustre to the warm.' observation of the best pictures will convey those proportions to the mind, much better than the most profound demonstration, 'that the eye may not be distracted by a multiplicity of objects of equal magnitude.' grouping, in composition, involves in its arrangement, a combination of the parts, so that they form an agreeable and well-defined whole, in which it is essential sometimes to employ the strongest contrasts; on the other hand, if the forms be too much scattered, they will distort the harmonious combination that is the greatest beauty of art. all accessories may be included in the principal group, so that they contribute to the general breadth. _opposition_ to regular forms is essential; this opposition is called relief. (_see art. light and shade._) we may derive hints in composition from almost every sort of combination. variety and intricacy have many excellencies, when managed with skill, as they exert the imagination of the beholder. 'simplicity,' says sir joshua reynolds, 'when so very inartificial as to seem to _evade_ the difficulties of art, is a very suspicious virtue.' simplicity might often better deserve the name of penury. 'i do not, however, wish to degrade simplicity from the high estimation in which it has been ever justly held. it is our barrier against that great enemy to truth and nature, affectation! which is ever clinging to the pencil, and ready to drop in and poison every thing it touches.' perseverance, in laborious application to acquire correctness, should always be preferred to a splendid negligence of manner. [illustration: composition plate i. c. hullmandel's patent] the frequent practice of covering down, veiling, or concealing an object or figure, because they cannot draw it, and doing that so inexpertly as not to escape detection, is frequently observable in the works of modern artists; such as clothes, baskets, &c., thrown across a horse, to conceal its deformity; unnecessary or affected drapery over a figure; a cow, half buried in weeds and dock-leaves, that its shapeless legs may not be seen, &c., with many other artifices to evade difficulties: to such he says, 'if difficulties overcome make a great part of the merit of art, difficulties evaded can deserve but little commendation.' it is by no means an object with me, neither has this work pretension to the form of a regular treatise (too often prolix and abstruse in their investigations), but i would endeavour to bring together such useful hints as occur to me in its progress, as _practically_ useful, without confining myself to the regularity or connexion of a lengthened dissertation, and seeking only to accomplish the end by explaining the means of contending with difficulties where they are likely to occur. of angular composition. that the angular form is one of the best adapted to composition, at least in landscape, is indisputable; the diagonal line dividing the whole into two halves, gives the largest space for the distribution of light and shade, as well as extent for the design. when the whole composition is placed on one side, a single object--but stronger in colour than the rest--placed at the opposite side, will generally be found sufficient to balance all on the other, however complicated or extensive in its details it may be. (_plate , fig. ._) more _repose_ and softness is obtained by uniting the composition with the darker shadows of the clouds, than by opposition. on the other hand, an harmonious and agreeable whole is often achieved by bringing the line of the clouds in an opposing angle to the line of the landscape, the principal figures being then mostly placed at the opposite side of the mass of the composition. the first plan embraces an advantageous union of the parts with the greatest breadth that can perhaps be obtained, while the other frequently produces a dexterous effect by the opposition of colour. a long stretching swamp, a bog, or line of sandy waste, marshes, a broken heath, the distant sea or sand-bank, with nothing but its straight horizon, are the sweetest morsels to good painters; for when nature has done nothing, they must do all; and, with these difficulties to contend with, it is something surprising to see the most broad and beautiful productions result from so barren materials by investing them with the all-controlling powers of chiaroscuro, by a careful inspection of their natural colours, the forms of their lights and shadows, and above all, the shapes and masses of the passing clouds; but variety and simplicity should ever be their leading principle, and grandeur is sure to be the result. matter, seemingly incapable of form; wide extents of pathless and unbroken sterility, of nakedness and desolation, will become beautiful and masterly arrangements on these conditions: the torn, and ragged, and scattered fragments of the clouds in their wild and rushing fury over the sea, with its inexhaustible changes and endless variety of colour, are the objects painters often choose, from their very seeming nothingness, to invest with the _beau ideal_ of art. the extremes of simplicity in composition, should not be attempted by tyros; the long-practiced and master hand alone can accomplish that, which in others, would appear affectation. the most powerful impressions are produced by the simplest construction. the chief interest confined to a very small portion of the work, and the larger space left in so much repose as will give value to, and dignify the subject, that should at once meet the eye and engage our energies; investing their accessories with their due portion of interest; taking care that the expression of the principal action of the picture is agreeably supported by their subordinate quality; that the object desired is obtained, to the exclusion of all others, and that its episodes be in character. in the arrangement of figures, mr. burnet, in his hints on composition, says, 'the heads and hands, the seats of action and expression, are often referred to each other for the completion of form or extension of light, beyond which a strong point is required, as a link of communication between the figures and the background. by making this point the strongest of a secondary group of objects, either from its size, lights, or darks, the eye is carried into the most remote circumstances, which become a part of the whole, from the principal group being made to depend upon such point for the completion of its form, the extension of the light, or the repetition of colour.' thus, in vandyke we often see the luminous points of his picture referring to each other in the form of a _losenge_, composed of the heads and hands, the collar, ruffs, the hilt of a sword, &c., while all the other parts are absorbed in dark or half shade, and making the form of his composition complete, but differing something in their force and attraction: strong light and dark coming in cutting contrast at a single point, places the subordinate lights and darks in their proper situations; at the same time, these points should always be characteristic of meaning to the composition. (_plate , figs. , ._) nothing will teach you to compose a picture like sketching, however slightly, the different groups you encounter in walking about; never be without a little book for this purpose, as the merest draught will, when you are composing, apply itself to your picture better than any thing that may be suggested. i have invariably found this the best resource. take first the exact outline, shape, and position of the figure, and afterwards the expression of what he is doing, carefully noticing the shadowed parts, and dividing them boldly from the light; the half-tints may be blended with comparative ease; therefore make as few lines as possible, never encumbering them. that part of the figure which is foreshortened will have the greater number of folds, while that which is not, will come out plain and bold. such memoranda will always have a look of reality over every other means of obtaining it. it is not unfrequently the case that, in the progress of a work, a number of circumstances, partly the result of thought, partly of accident, may occur; therefore, entire reliance on the first sketch is not always to be depended on; at the same time, the various improvements that suggest themselves, do not always interfere with the carrying out our first conceptions, and still securing the same treatment with which we commenced. a repetition of forms can only be diverted by opposing lines being brought in somewhat strong contrast against them; and, if possible, between their recurrence. (_plate , fig. ._) in copying, draw various lines across the original, and the same on the paper the copy is to be made on. begin with the centre, and draw towards the sides; the objects represented will be neither too large nor too small by this means. i have said, that variety and intricacy have many charms. in passing over our embellished lands, with all the advantages our country affords in landscape objects, we cannot but observe this infinite variety in the english oak, the birch, the ash, the abele; the magnificent white poplar, with its large and beautiful leaves; the beech, the elm, the stately horse-chestnut, &c.; their great diversity of foliage and bark; their distinct peculiarities of colour and form; the oriental plane, the hazel, sycamore, the maple; especially where the landscape-gardener was never heard of, when the universal and monotonous green of summer gives place to the glowing hues of october and _november_, the best months of all, from the large portion of pearly grey that pervades all nature at that time, and from which are brought out, as from a background of the softest neutrals, the umbrageous, rich, bitumen-looking browns, deep crimsons, reds, and golden colours of the leaves, &c. of the circular form in composition. circular composition is another of the best forms, and most easily adapted for the arrangement of light and shade; as it generally possesses receding hollows for the reception of the shadows, and graduated projections for the lights to rest on. (_plate. , fig. ._) taste is the discriminating power of selecting good from bad; and this is attainable by enquiry: there is neither instability nor uncertainty in its rules; so long as you have the good sense to place all 'inspiration' out of the question! nothing is so pernicious as that illusion of the mind. grace, in my opinion, consists of lines flowing, more or less, into the ellipsis--free of constraint and affectation. raphael, for instance, was all grace; parmegiano degenerated into _affectation_. in pictorial economy, the repetition of the same lines, and often of the same forms, assist and support each other; as necessarily as repetition of colours in painting. this extension of the same thing is frequently indispensable, both in preventing the individuality of form, and, when well broken up by opposing lines, adding materially to the seeming negligence and irregularity that carries with it so great a charm. (_plate , fig. ._) the luminous spots or lights in a picture, frequently explain the _form_ of its composition. in this repetition of lines and forms, the ground may be made to run one way, the line of buildings another, the figures another, the horizon another, the forms of the trees a different one, and the shapes of the clouds may describe another: all these may have their repeats; yet will they all seem to form and tend, though apparently all irregularity, to an agreeable arrangement we sometimes see in nature, and an harmonious whole, however intricate, without confusion. the investigation of the means pursued by salvator rosa will explain this fascinating system. (_plate , figs. _ and _ ._) in contemplating the best regulated works of art, either in pictures or prints, by always being careful to ascertain the _forms_ by which their effects are produced, is one of the best means of arriving at this object ourselves. even a few memoranda of the ground plans, as an architect would say, or the form of the line on which the bases stand, will be found useful in enabling us to do this. (_plate , fig. ._) the eye must be all observation, and the mind all reflection; and it can scarcely fail to become influenced by the advantages to be derived from this practice. it is to the almost thinking sensibility, subtleness, and feeling of the beautifully and wonderfully constructed human _hand_, that every thing done with _it_, so far outstrips all _mechanical_ means of imitating it! it is with this _solely_ and alone, that _fine art_ is, ever was, and ever will be, identified. 'the cleverness and sensibility of the hand,' says a beautiful and masterly writer in the quarterly review, 'is quite as essential as inventive genius.' speaking of our showy and elaborate park-gates at hyde park corner, 'what men call the police station--in the language of the gods, the triumphal arch!' and, comparing it with the bronze net-work and foliage of verrochio, 'which seems to grow and spring like _living_ vegetation,' he says, 'these are capital _brummagem_, and nothing more.' 'grasped by the man, the tool becomes a part of himself; the hammer is pervaded by the _vitality_ of the _hand_. but in the work produced by the _machinery_ of the founder there can be nothing of all this _life_! what does it give you? correct, stiff _patterns_, all on the surface. whatever is reproduced in form or colour by _mechanical_ means, is _moulded_--in short, is perpetually branded by mediocrity--_brummagem art_! and, like the music ground by the barrel-organ, you never hear the _soul_ of the performer--the expression and feeling, qualities, without which, harmony palls upon the ear.' 'even in engraving, the best judges all declare that, so far from benefiting art, the harm it has done has been incalculable, substituting a general system of _plagiarism_ in place of _invention_.' 'what will not be the result of the means of multiplying the metallic basis, and fixing the fleeting sunbeam, which are now opening upon us by means of chemical science? steam-engine and furnace, the steel plate, the roller, the press, the _daguerreotype_, the voltaic battery and the lens, are the antagonist principles of _art_; and so long as they are permitted to rule, so long must art be prevented from ever taking root again in the affections of mankind. it may continue to afford enjoyment to those who are severed in spirit from the multitude; but the masses will be quite easy without it.' 'whilst we triumph in the "results of machinery," we must not repine if one of those results be the paralysis of the imaginative faculties of the human mind.' of all the application of mechanical means to effect the purposes of art, their contrast, with the operations of the hand, is as the stiffness and weight of death, compared with life, freedom, and vitality. light and shade. ----shadows, to-night, have struck more terror to the soul of richard than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers armed in proof. the inexhaustible and unceasingly varying beauties of art begin to develope themselves most when the study of light and shade commences; and the student is amply recompensed for the time he has devoted to obtaining a knowledge of correctness in outline. it is now that he sees nature with other and improved vision--with clearer conceptions of her character--in her sunny and joyous revellings, as in her vast and awful sublimity. drawing gives form; colour, its visible quality; and light and shade, its solidity. if the necessary form of a figure, or any other object, be not agreeable to the eye, its whole appearance may be so _altered_ by a skilful management of its light and shade, as to become at once the contrary by judicious arrangement. in arranging the light and shade of a sketch i intend to paint, i usually take a piece of grey, or neutral paper, place the highest light at some point of sufficient interest (for the high light in a picture always seems to say, 'come and look at me, to see what i am about!') and gradually lead it away, diffusing its rays, as it were, into the half light, or the half shade, and so on, until it is wholly lost in the darkest point; then, with white paint, or chalk, proceed to mark all the _immaterial_ lights, on parts of the figures, or other objects, as they occur in the design, as conductors of the more luminous one, into the shade, as repeats, to prevent its singleness of appearance, gradating until they are carried out of the work; like light 'collected to a focus by a lens, and emitting rays,' as in _plate _. the judgment being principally exerted in judiciously placing the repeats, one, or more, of these lesser lights must, of necessity, be of the _same colour_ as the principal. sudden transitions, by producing _too much effect_, the lights being _too_ light, and the darks too dark, produce a hard, dry, a staring, and a vulgar appearance, for want of neutralizing their qualities, and bringing the parts more in _union_ with each other. this overwrought manner is principally the cause of that common look so identified with the modern french school, the effect of too much relief. on the other hand, nothing but flatness and _insipidity_ is the result of too softly _blending_ and uniting the light with the shadow, and the parts with one another, without that distinction and solidity constituting the arrangement that should bring the near and the remote together, in the treatment of the intermediate relations. light should be so skilfully woven into the shadow, as not to prejudice, but _assist_ its depth by its intrusion; this is of most essential consequence. it is not necessary that the light should come in at one side of the picture, nor pass out at the other, as has been asserted. it is, perhaps, better to attach ourselves to no particular theory: few theorists are good painters; their works, in general, bear a contradictory proportion to the opinions set forth in their speculations. sketching light and shade from nature (with a single colour, or a stump), teaches us to profit by every circumstance, natural or accidental. and these sketches, studied at home, teach us, in turn, at once to _compose_, and to extend the sphere of our observation;--it carries us to the doctrine of probable possibilities; and invests the meanest subject with attraction; the most infinite variety becomes simplicity upon these terms. the light and shade of a picture should never bear the _same_ proportions; it should, in all instances, differ materially in quantity; a repetition of forms should always bear a different proportion in size, the one having a decided superiority over the other, or, the inevitable consequences will be, confusion. unconnected lights and shadows, that are too much defined, will have a _bald_, a chequered, or draught-board appearance. in sketching from nature, i usually commence by rubbing in the _effect first_, and adding the details, or features of the scene, _afterwards_; mostly beginning with the centre, or else the point of sight, and working outwards, and upwards, and downwards, to the sides of the picture. but this can only come of extensive practice, or, at least, a power of grasping the _whole_ at once. i have said that the first and principal part of art is composition, or placing things together appropriately; the situation, motion, and expression of the figures; their shapes, and lights, and shadows, according. a perfect outline is of most consequence, and can only be acquired by study. next to this, the situation, colour, and quantity of shadows; these being infinite, may be variously managed. at the same time, it requires much more observation and study to _shade_ a picture, than to merely draw the lines of it. no fixed rule can be given for this; but, after having got the outline free and flowing, endeavour, by various trials, on other bits of paper, to leave the _masses_ of shadow and light _broad_, so as to convey an appearance of _space_ and extent. in the infinite gradations of shade, and the blending of them, nature has no determined law. objects out of doors, which receive the general light of the sky, and where the surrounding air gives light on _all_ sides, will look altogether different from the same objects drawn and shaded in a room, which would give dark shadows where in nature there are none. (_plate , fig. ._) without shadows, the forms of things would be unrevealed. at different times of the day, objects will give shadows quite different in size and form, corresponding with the course of the sun. the difference of your own shadow exemplifies this, as well as the variation of the shadows in your room. direct your attention to the difference of the shadows thrown by candle-light; this luminary being _smaller_ than the object placed against it, would make a figure, cut from a card, two or three inches high, give a shadow on the wall the size of life. place any object in the sun, and turn it round to the north, south, east, and west, at different periods; and, observing the difference of shapes in the shadows, will be found excellent practice. placed in certain directions, the form of every thing may be inferred from its shadow. the shadow of a person arriving, on an open door, will, if the sun is behind him, distinguish to the inmate the comer's identity. shadow is most articulate and defined when the light is brightest, by reason of the _contrast_ formed by the light; and will always, under these circumstances, appear much stronger than it is; though it is not so strong, in reality, as shadow in cloudy weather, from its being more equalized with the light. shadow is only, more or less, by _comparison_ with the brightness of the light. this is best explained by making a room dark by _degrees_, and holding up some object against the light as it _diminishes_, until it is quite dark. the light of the sun always reflects a shadow _equal_ to the object which it projects on a parallel plane. the sun being larger than the body illumined, throws a shadow less than that body. on the contrary, the light of a candle, being less than the object reflected, produces the contrary effect, the shadow _increasing_ as it retires, not in parallels, but in _rays_, thrown by the light. the figure and shape of a shadow is strictly defined by the form of the object producing it; as light occasions the existence of shadow. an excellent and well-turned remark is made by some writer on the subject, who says, 'it must be observed, that there are _two_ points to be made use of: one of them, the foot of the light, which is always taken on the plane the object is placed upon; the other, the luminous body, the rule being common to the sun, torch, &c. with this difference, that the sun's shadow is projected in parallels, and that of the torch in _rays_, from the centre, as before mentioned. but as all objects on earth are so small in comparison of the sun, the diminution of their shadows is imperceptible to the eye, which sees them all _equal_, neither broader nor narrower than the object that forms them. on this account, all the shadows made by the sun are made in parallels.' 'to find the shadow of any object whatever opposed to the sun, a line must be drawn from the top of the luminary, perpendicular to the plane where the foot of the luminary is to be taken; and from this, an occult line, to be drawn through one of the angles of the plane of the object; and another, from the sun to the same angle. the intersection of the two lines will express how far the shadow is to go. all the other lines must be drawn parallel hereto.' the next thing to be considered is, an _appropriate_ effect of light or shadow, to be given to the scene, or object, treated. calmness and serenity are the result of _horizontal_ lights, or shadows; while the contrary is the effect of oblique, or abrupt and irregular; such as are seen in the stormy effects of salvator rosa, &c. the sky and clouds are often resorted to for _effect_, when the landscape does not admit of sufficient. again, less imposition thrown into the sky, will repose the landscape, when it happens to be invested with sufficient interest of itself. extending the repose of a work,--by throwing into the general mass of shadow a number of objects that may appear of the least consequence to the development of its story, and bringing those which should be most prominent boldly forth into the light, by projecting their forms from the hollows of the shadows, that may appear to teem with a multitude of mysterious forms, while the cutting edges and sharp lights of those projections come out in sunshine, depending solely on their vigorous _division_,--is one of the greatest difficulties in composition, and is principally rendered so by the necessity of adapting its sympathies to the subject we would place before the beholder--by its agreeable disposition and management; at the same time preserving the utmost singleness of intention and simplicity, by avoiding confusion, and supporting its breadth by the shapes of the masses of one and of the other. a very small portion of the light, striking some object placed in the shadow, will carry the light into it; while some point or figure, enveloped in shade or dark local colour, will be sufficient to convey the obscure parts into the luminous, and preserve the balance of the whole. (_plate , fig. ._) the most complicated outline may by this means be reduced to the broadest effect of light and shade. and simple and palpable as this principle may seem, it may be pursued until the artist is enabled to _conceal_ entirely the art by which it is effected; until he feels that which he could not perhaps explain, but may paint in a language that all may read. sir joshua reynolds speaks of 'that breadth of light and shadow,--that art and management of uniting light to light, and shadow to shadow, so as to make the object rise out of the ground in the plenitude of effect.' outline is _cold_ and determined in its appearance, and would seem so though drawn with vermilion; and, from its being defined, carries away all idea of space and extent with it. the greater the absence of outline, the greater will be the breadth. where there is a necessity for much outline, large masses of it must be collected into broad portions of the shadows and lights, which should be well diversified in their forms. (_plate ._) where light _joins_ darkness, the light and dark are most intense at their _junction_, arising from affinity of contrast. it is not necessary to enter into the phenomena of vision to prove the existence of any thing that will be found in this work, its details being drawn from every-day observation. light and shade should always, i think, partake of the character of the subject: a _fête champetre_ should not be enveloped in the gloom of shadowy obscurity, any more than a storm piece should be clothed in the glories of sunshine. when the composition consists of a number of objects, the best way is to single out those that should most attract, by giving them the highest quality of the light; while whole portions may be disposed of by connecting them in broad masses of the secondary light, and further uniting them with the trees, buildings, or any other objects that occur, to extend its quantity; while the masses of shadow are formed by the union of other several parts, the light mingling with and intersecting the shade, until the whole present an harmonious _breadth_. but to achieve this, so that the parts take agreeable forms--sustaining and supporting, and giving value to each other--is perhaps the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of the arduous arrangement of light and shade. (_plate , fig. ._) if we require a large space for repose, by getting the light at one or other side of the picture, the light should of necessity possess some striking quality, to compensate so great a sacrifice of space; while a multitude of less important objects may find a mysterious locality in the reposing mass. (_plate , figs. , ._) in some of rembrandt's etchings, a very small but brilliant point of light is carried through the composition, by the softest gradations, into the intense depth of shadow, by striking the tops only of the figures, parts of architecture, &c., until completely lost. the principal light must never be placed in the centre, but either on one side or other. a single mass of light will have the greatest force when brought in immediate contact with a dark background: so will a dark object tell with equal power when opposed to the strongest light. so a figure, clothed in black and white, and placed on one side of the foreground, will focus _all the other_ lights and shadows, which will immediately keep their places in the picture--so they be less in strength. in proportion to the number of forms in the composition, this rule may be equally applied to a group, if it agree in its outline, and does not disturb the masses on which it depends for repose. if the picture be generally light, or the greater part in half tint, a single object or point of dark will be often found sufficient to key the whole,--placed at the opposing angle on the side opposite the darkest part. the outline of an object we would bring most forward should come out _cutting_ and strong from its surrounding shadow, while the other masses will retire in proportion to the absence of the opposition of _density_ employed in preventing their approach. it may not be impossible that these few words convey the impression of what we mostly intend. the small and immaterial lights, catching the edges of objects carried into the shadow, are of the greatest usefulness in giving depth and intensity to it, while they assist the work by carrying the communicating medium through it. carrying the shadow across the _middle_ of the subject is attended with many advantages; among which are, bringing the foreground into extreme vigour; furnishing ourselves with greater facilities in getting away the background; and more readily obtaining distance and repose by blending the horizon with the clouds; while the figures are brought up in cutting relief against it. (_plate ._) a mass of landscape in middle tint--such as a broken common, fields, clumps of foliage, &c.--sweeping across the picture at a third, or little more, its height from the bottom, with a bold tree or group printing its dark form on the lightest part of the sky, and lifting itself from a bright sunny bank laid on the bottom edge of the design, carried on by a dark object or two, with cutting lights and intense shadows in the weeds, stones, &c., of the foreground to support it, the clouds graduating upwards from the horizon and mingling with the middle space at the opposite side of the principal group, seems to have been a favourite arrangement with gaspar poussan, cuyp, and many of the dutch, as at present it is with turner, and many of the modern,--offering great advantages from the numerous scenes in nature for ever opening to our view through the broad masses of shadow, flung from the passing clouds across the country, and possessing every variety of tint, sobered and covered down by the extent and transparency of the shadows, while the brilliant lights come out with all the vigorous warmth the sun invests them with. a walk into the fields, or across a heath, can scarcely be taken, when the clouds are floating along, without an effect corresponding with this being seen. a part of the principal group will sometimes be in light while the rest is in deep shadow, or may appear so from the different colours of the trees; in which case, it will blend more gently with the sky, and more intensely focus the depth of shadow, if the lighter colour be interposed between it and the sky, losing a little of its force, but gaining harmony and union, together with the advantage of carrying the warm colour of the foreground up into the foliage, and extending it more gradually through the clouds. _three_ lights, differing in strength--the _centre_ one the strongest--and placed at different angles, has universally been found an agreeable arrangement. this mode may be always pursued with a certain degree of success. the etchings and drawings after this manner are very numerous,--perhaps from its easy management. as our senses are carried through the varieties of a tale, so the eye _must_ be diverted from any _particular_ object in a picture, by judiciously absorbing or bringing into notice the accessories necessary to complete the composition, without disturbing it, or prejudicing the principal. an harmonious intimacy with all the parts, and the _means_ of that intimacy rendered as imperceptible as possible, will absorb hardness in the masses, and give distinctness and articulation to that which should predominate in acute solidity, all disjointed and unconnected appearances being carefully guarded against. different arrangements of the same subject will be found the best means of exemplifying this. the shadow of a cloud may accidentally be thrown over the greatest distance, while a sunbeam may suddenly illumine the middle space or foreground: the distance then would be the darkest part of the picture. or a gleam of light may rest upon the distant mountains, while the middle space and foreground may be in shadow; then the case would be reversed, the greatest spread of light occupying the farthest distance. even this arrangement has succeeded with some. the highest defined light will be that which comes boldest off the darkest part of the ground. all others will decrease in proportion, as they mingle with the ground. and, as the aforesaid light is pure, so the darks will appear darker than they are. (_plates , ._) that part of a body in light will be the brightest that is nearest to the luminary. in the theory of light, it often happens there are double and treble reflexes, which must be stronger than single ones, and the shadows of course proportionally faint. (_plate ._) in proportion as reflected lights are thrown upon a darker or lighter ground, will their appearance be more or less brilliant. we deduce from this, that all those reflexes, that brighten up and play so harmoniously among the obscurity of shadows, must be in proportion to the strength of the light that occasions them. (_plate ._) the light made to graduate too softly, by means of the half-tint, into the shadow, unless some part be boldly and cuttingly opposed to the other, will have a tame and insipid appearance, however sharp and forcible other portions of the work may be. (_plates , ._) '_fulness_ of effect is produced by melting and losing the shadows in a ground still darker than those shadows: whereas _relief_ is produced by opposing and separating the ground from the figure; either by light, or shadow, or colour.' (_plate , fig. ._) any thing intercepting the line of light upon an object, will render its shadows soft, and its lights beautifully blended. accidental shadows are those occasioned by objects interposed between the light and the surface reflected on. natural shadows, those which the light connects with every opaque body. (_plate , consists of natural and accidental shadows._) the outline of the shadow should partake of the forms, at its edges, of the character of the surface receiving, as well as the one giving it. in many, otherwise, excellent pictures of claude's, the sun is placed at, or near the point of sight: so that all the shadows, running from that point, almost mechanically carry the eye into the picture. whatever of good may proceed from this arrangement, its purpose is too easily detected; and it has an artificial effect. da vinci says, 'the appearance of _motion_ is lessened, according to the distance, in the same proportion as objects diminish in size.' open the side of a book against the light, and observe the gradations of shadow on the leaf. if you turn half a sheet of paper up against the light (in the manner of the book), it will explain, by its shadows on the parallel part, the phenomena of half or demi-tint. in any body that has many indentures, there will be many shadows and their grades: that body will have a greenish hue over its superfice, where the light falls on it. to keep the colour of that light pure, in this instance, requires great management; as the markings of the masses of foliage, &c., receiving the light. and yet, without these markings, or as it were carrying the shadow into the light, it would look _bald_. as this is done cleverly, so it will have the effect of subduing the harshness of the lights; which not being in compact masses, lose their force. i often rumple a piece of paper, to observe the infinite variety of its shadows. and place a ball against the light, on a white surface, and observe its gradations. so, if you roll up a sheet of white paper, and lay it on a white surface, against the light, or make it stand up, it will describe the gradations of a column. it is a very excellent method to keep a solid square, a solid sphere, a cylinder or tube, a cone (make a paper one), a cup, &c., by you, and place them in various directions in the light, making various memoranda of their lights, shadows, and reflexes, in one colour. by this means, light and shade will soon become familiar, and the task get easier at every trial. a piece of white paper _folded several ways_, and laid on a table against the light, will reveal all the different degrees of shade. then, observe the highest light and the deepest shade, with their gradations. observe, in a room with one window, having chairs, tables, sofas, &c. in it, where and how their shadows fall. this will assuredly lead the mind into the mysteries of light and shade, which must end in knowledge. at the very least, the power to see things as they are! to render bodies in sunshine, the shadows must be dark, and marked strongly and _distinctly_, and the lights extended and broad. so, _in-door_ objects have equally strong shadows, with the lights and shades _distinctly_ divided and precise. all should, as a peremptory rule, receive the light from above. the light should come in from a sufficient height to give a shadow on the ground the same length as the object is high. if any projection occurs on a plain on which a shadow is thrown, the shadow takes the _form_ of the projection, as it _passes_ it; but, if it ends _upon it_, the shadow will be shaped by the _object_ that flung it, still qualified by the section of the projection. the rough surfaces of many things would describe the same in a lesser degree. light objects, as they retire, become darker; and dark ones, lighter; but light ones are seen at a greater distance than dark. the darkest opposing object brought up against the most retiring, should not extend itself to the edges of the picture, but let the half tints creep in, to bring the light down with more effect--diffusing it more extensively. the shadow on the ground on which it is thrown, should be darker than the object projecting it; and, if the object be round, a reflected light will be found on the edge where it joins the shadow, as in a column. i placed a chair in the shade, and the sun's _reflection_ threw a _shadow_ from it! the light of every body is qualified by the ground that surrounds it. breadth is acquired by blending the light parts of the figures with the light of the ground; and the same rule will apply to the shadows. when the ground of the picture is mostly dark, the lights, in my opinion, should take some one or other good decided _form_ in composition, in their developement, as their meaning is only to be explained by themselves. (_plate ._) if a single light or luminous mass be surrounded on all sides by a dark ground, one or more of its edges should be strong and cutting; and if a dark centre be placed on a light ground, if the same management be not observed, it will look like a hole. leonardo says 'the ground which surrounds the figures in any painting, ought to be _darker_ than the light part of those figures, and lighter than the shadowed part.' great beauty is obtained by laying the shadowed part of an object against a darker ground; the light receiving increased brightness from this arrangement, and the softness of the shadow on the light side being nearly imperceptible, gives great relief and beauty. this mode is much resorted to in the management of portraits, while it equally applies to landscape. most _repose_ is obtained by placing a light group or object on the light side of the picture, and dark objects on the dark side, as no interference of the one or the other then occurs to disturb the masses; but the effect will be less than when carried the one into the other, and the difficulty of uniting the two parts become greater. in some of the best works of ostade, and many of the dutch school, a dark figure or group is brought out from a darker background, with great brilliance, and even force, when the colour of the one is cold, and the other warm. corregio's management of light and shade placed him in the highest sphere of this department of the art. an object or figure, having a dark and a light side, the dark side being opposed to the light part of the ground, and the light side coming off the darker part, will have great effect. when a dark body terminates on a light ground, it will detach itself. if a round object, it will not carry its light to the extremity of its outline, but finish in a half shade, darker than the ground. a large mass of light in the middle of the picture, surrounded by shadow, is a rule; and, when reversed, has an equally imposing effect. (_plate , fig. ._) the largest division of the light and the dark parts of a picture, so they differ in quantity, will of necessity produce the greatest breadth; but the extent and magnitude of that breadth will be entirely qualified by the judicious management employed in producing a union between them. one greatly approved method of producing this effect is, by bringing the light up to a brilliant focus, and absorbing the shadows into the darkest obscurity; while the larger portion of the work is pervaded by the half light and the half dark, as well as their shadows by strong local colour; while those in the shadow should come out sharp and distinct. the vigour of the light will dissolve all chance of influence in the half tints; while the extreme depth of the shadow, carried perhaps to a little excess, will gather up and absorb all the subordinate shadows. (_plate , figs. and ._) marking, with a stump and bit of black lead, when we are abroad, the principal points, in sketching from nature; and noticing in what manner those points refer to, and assist each other; tracing their effects, and ascertaining the laws that bring them harmoniously, or by contrast, together, is the best method to be pursued for the arrangement of our own ideas in composing. sketches so obtained, should be preserved as models to exercise the invention by. a more distinct idea of light and shade is best obtained by the use of one colour only, as many only tend to perplex the eye, and divert the attention from the great object that should be distinctly kept in view. in laying on the tints (of one colour only), the method to be pursued is as follows:--mix the separate shades in separate saucers, three, four, or five, as may be required; keep the board you have previously strained the paper on inclined at moderate elevation, that the colour may flow freely; lay in the sky first; the farthest distance next; then all those masses of shadow which principally influence the division and interest of the picture; working downwards to the foreground from the middle distance, using a large brush, filled with colour, to produce clearness and transparency. then proceed to delicately touch upon the lights, in order to blend them with the shadows, that they may not appear too abrupt, as well as to break down their asperity, and prevent the work looking bald. now a darker shade than any should be mixed up, to put in the markings of the foliage and foreground, rocks, or whatever the composition may consist of. lay the whole on with freedom and boldness; and, if any parts require strength, they may be lightly floated over again, when quite dry. do not disturb the surface of the paper more than can be avoided; and endeavour to keep all the tints _even_, or flat, in the first instance, without attention to the details. always mind to take up enough of the colour at once to cover down the space intended, without sweeping it contrary ways. thick rough paper is the best. the power of making large masses of flat tints, commonly comes of great practice; it is, therefore, necessary that this difficulty is conquered, before attempting to blend them. the use of that important thing, in the hands of an artist, the sponge, must be taught and seen to be understood. the most forcible arrangement in the composition of light and shade is, where it is spread and diffused, until reaching the strongest point; which point, opposed immediately to the most retiring part, and clothed in strong colour, will have the effect of balancing and combining the most complicated forms, that, but for this method, had been all confusion. if a sketch be too outliny, it will want solidity; if too much filled in, it will be heavy. do not let the lights be too scattered, or too equal, lest the struggle for precedence be observed. when clouds are interposed between the sun and the object, the shadows will be soft, and their terminations almost imperceptible. [illustration: light and shade plate c. hullmandel's patent.] [illustration: light and shade plate ] [illustration: light and shade plate ] [illustration: light and shade plate .] [illustration: light and shade plate .] in conclusion, the concentration, the diffusion, or the contrast of light and shade, is best understood from a few blots made from the pictures of those great masters, who strike us as having excelled most in this department of the art, carefully preserving their arrangements, and applying them to our own compositions, until we feel and think like them. and a very little practice, in pursuing this method, will place the student in as quick a habit of effecting it, as of writing down his thoughts, together with the immeasurable advantage of snatching from nature her faultless effects of chiaroscuro--let them be as fleeting as they may--and the lights and shades of _our own minds_ will influence the effect they have on the minds of others. is there not practical wisdom in commencing every day with the steady effort to make as much of it as if it were to be our whole existence? if we have duties to perform, in themselves severe and laborious, we may enquire if there be not some way by which to invest them with pleasant associations? how many men find their pleasure in what would be the positive horror and torment of the indolent, whose inefficient and shrinking spirit recoils from these tasks as insupportable burdens? in exact proportion as you have cultivated your taste and education in this, as in all other things, will be your happiness and enjoyment in your productions. in a work of this nature, tautology is not altogether unavoidable, as that which occurs in one division of it, equally applies to another. i shall revert to the subject of light and shade again, under the head of its application to colour. on colour. colour, perhaps, is one of the most expressive languages we possess--the easiest understood by all. 'style in painting,' says sir joshua reynolds, 'is, the same as in writing, a power over materials, whether words or colours, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed. 'when an opportunity offers, _paint_ your studies, instead of drawing them. this will give you such a facility in using colours, that in time they will arrange themselves under the pencil. 'if painting comprises both drawing and colouring, and if, by a short struggle of resolute industry, the same expedition is attainable in painting as in drawing on paper, i cannot see what objection can justly be made to the practice, or why that should be done in parts which may be done altogether. 'of all branches of the art, colouring is the least mechanical.' we cannot measure colour by lines as we can drawing. art is not a thing merely to be admired, and with which the spectator has nothing to do, however much he may suppose it: he has perhaps, unconsciously, as much to do with it as it may have to do with him. a man, wholly regardless of art, will remember having seen a picture twenty years ago, when shown him again: its influence on his memory, his taste, or his passions, could alone effect this. 'colouring,' says mr. burnet, 'must either add to, or diminish the effect of any work upon the imagination; it must add to it by increasing, or diminish it by destroying the deception.' and he farther quotes this passage from addison: 'we cannot, indeed, have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entrance through the sight; but we have the power of retaining, altering, and compounding those images, which we have once received, into all the varieties of picture and vision that are most agreeable to the imagination.' 'we can form no idea of colouring beyond what has an existence in nature. from this source all our materials must be drawn.' and again:--'the artist must never forget that the mind is composed of ideas received from early impressions, from perceptions frequently occurring, and from reflections founded on such perceptions. painting can reach the mind only through the medium of the eye, which must be gratified sufficiently to interest it in the communication.' there should always exist a corresponding feeling between the subject and the manner of treating it. the student should at least make himself acquainted with the leading principles of every variety of art; because, 'that which would be applicable to one style, would, in some measure, be destructive to another.' it matters nothing how _low_ the branch or particular walk he has chosen; for it will acquire quite another accent from his acquaintance with the higher, whose powers of fascination will in time imperceptibly infuse something of their own dignity into his works. something of this infusion has come down from the greatness, the grandeur, and severity of the roman and florentine schools, through all varieties they have passed, to the modern. to reach this, however, the mind must habituate itself to become quite 'disdainful of vulgar criticism,' before it can well feel a congenial sympathy with these high latitudes, as well as having to unlearn much it has acquired. there are many excellencies in painting not at all compatible with each other, and that should never occur together--not even to gratify that fastidious disposition that is dissatisfied with every thing short of perfection: lightness would seem to want solidity, while precision will have dryness and hardness. the excellencies of others frequently corrupt ourselves: just as one coat, however well made, will not adapt itself to two persons, any more than their talents will blend with and lessen our defects. there is no particular style or branch of art, that the student may be in pursuit of, that does not possess some excellence or other--that is not alone, or at all, perhaps, to be found in the great manner of the roman or florentine schools of colour: in composition, breadth and arrangement (particularly of light and shade), and masterly treatment of colour, the flemish and dutch, as will our own school, furnish sufficient instances. light and shade, colour, novelty, variety, contrast, and even simplicity, all become defects in their excess!--the spirit of the rules by which they are regulated is to be more observed than their literal sense. it will generally be found sufficient to preserve this spirit of their laws alone, to which our ideas may be proportioned and accommodated. colour, in my opinion, is as useful in composition as lines: a few colours, scientifically woven together, will form agreeable composition of themselves. warm and cold colours, with their gradations and contrasts, lights and shadows with theirs, agreeing with and opposing each other, all struggling together (but that struggle _unseen_--the art _concealed_!) to the accomplishment of one object--the sweetness of harmony and union of the whole to one end. of the three primitive colours. the three primitive colours are the basis of a perfect system, and may be reduced, in order of degradation, into perfect black. their communion comprehends all other colours; and their effects, under the influence of light and shade, make pictures. yellow is the light; red, the medium; and blue, darkness;--colours of themselves, that cannot be produced by the mixture of any other. hayter says, in his compendium: 'secondly--yellow, red, and blue contain the sole properties of producing all other colours whatsoever, as to colour, by mixtures arising entirely among themselves, without the aid of a fourth. 'thirdly--because, by mixing proper portions of the three primitives together, black is obtained, providing for every possible degree of shadow. 'fourthly--and every practical degree of light is obtained by diluting any of the colours, as above producible; or, in oil painting, by the mixture of white paint. 'fifthly--all transient or prismatic effects can be imitated with such coloured materials as are of the three primitive colours, but only in the same degree of comparison as white bears to light. 'sixthly--there are no other materials, in which colour is found, that are possessed of any of the foregoing perfections. yellow. yellow and red make orange, orange. orange and green make olive, olive. red. yellow and blue make green, green. orange and purple make brown, brown. blue. red and blue make purple, purple. green and purple make slate, slate. 'these nine colours are all that are distinguished by integral names. 'thus it will be seen, that yellow, red, and blue produce--first, orange, green, and purple; and these produce olive, brown, and slate, making nine. 'yellow, red, and blue, make black. 'and this is the compendium and whole of the system of the degradation of colours into black, or perfect darkness. 'warm effect is produced by 'white, yellow, orange, red, purple, indigo, black. 'cold effect is produced by 'black, indigo, blue, green, yellow, pale yellow, white.' * * * * * the three primitive colours, by the _endless_ varieties of their solvents, regulate, more or less, the whole economy of a picture; and the abundant stores of nature are faithfully imitated by their agency. thus, the primitives being red, blue, and yellow, the colours produced by their combination are purple, orange, and green; these, in their turn, may be extended to every tint that exists. the junction of the three primitives absorb _all_, and form neutral tint, which, by the addition of quantity, produces black. all the contrasts are rendered from the same. and here it may not be out of place to remark how men will devote themselves to many idle pursuits that return them nothing, while a little study of the noble theory of colour would enable them, without pushing the matter far, to bring to their firesides reminiscences of their travels, or, otherwise, spots endeared by circumstances, together with a thousand other agreeable associations. they would learn in time to look at nature through the medium of art, and find a delightful interest in it they never anticipated; while every hour so spent would more and more exercise and mature the judgment. a knowledge of the natural chalks, or colours of black, white, and red, is indispensably necessary. so, a perfect acquaintance with the three primitives, blue, red, and yellow, is of equal consequence; that blue and yellow are brought together by red; and that all mixtures are the scientific result of the union of these three, no _two_ of which will produce the _third_. the result of the mixture of any _two_ gives the _contrast_ to the absent _one_:--as red and blue, producing purple, is the opposite to yellow; blue and yellow make green, the contrast to red; red and yellow, producing orange, contrasts blue; the three, blended together, gives us black: neutral tint is the result of the same mixture. a perfect knowledge of mixing tints, from this scale, will produce all the _compounds_ necessary to art, and their admixtures may be varied _ad infinitum_. the neutral tint mentioned may be so varied, as to act in perfect union as the _shadow_ to any one of the colours composing it. the modes or systems of obtaining these results of colour, as practised by the greatest schools, are exceedingly different. sir joshua reynolds says: 'they may be reduced to three. the first may be called the roman manner, where the colours are of a full and strong body, such as are found in the transfiguration. the next is that harmony which is produced by what the ancients called the corruption of colours, by mixing and breaking them till there is a general union in the whole: this may be called the bolognian style. the last manner belongs properly to the ornamental style, which we call the venetian, being first practised at venice; but it is perhaps better learned from rubens. here the brightest colours possible are admitted with the two extremes of warm and cold, and those reconciled by being dispersed over the picture, till the whole appears like a bunch of flowers. 'as it is from the dutch school the art of breaking colour may be learned, so we may recommend here an attention to the works of watteau, for excellence in the florid style of painting. 'to all these manners there are some _general_ rules, that never must be neglected. first, that the same colour which makes the largest mass be _diffused_, and appear to revive in different parts of the picture; for a single colour will make a spot or blot. even the dispersed flesh-colour, which the faces and hands occasion, requires a principal mass, which is best produced by a naked figure. but where the subject will not allow of this, a drapery, approaching to flesh colour, will answer the purpose; as in the transfiguration, where a woman is clothed in drapery of this colour, which makes a principal to all the heads and hands of the picture. and for the sake of harmony, the colours, however distinguished in their light, should be nearly of the _same_ simple unity in their shadows; and to give the utmost force, strength, and solidity to the work, some part of the picture should be as _light_, and some as _dark_ as possible. these two extremes are, then, to be _harmonized_ and reconciled to each other. pure black, in these instances, is opposed to the contrary extreme of brightness. 'if to these different manners we add one more, that in which a _silvery grey_, or pearly tint, is predominant, i believe every kind of harmony that can be produced by colours will be comprehended. to see this style in perfection we must again have recourse to the dutch school, particularly to the works of the younger vandervelde, and the younger teniers, whose pictures are valued by connoisseurs in proportion as they possess this excellence of a silver tint. 'which of these different styles ought to be preferred, so as to meet every man's ideas, would be difficult to determine, from the predilection which every man has to the mode which is practised by the school in which _he_ has been educated; but, if any pre-eminence is to be given, it must be to that manner which stands in the highest estimation with mankind in general, and that is the venetian style, or rather the manner of titian, which simply considered as producing an effect of colours, will certainly eclipse, with its splendour, whatever is brought in competition with it.' in landscape painting, the routine of placing one colour by the side of another according to any known or understood systems, is not so imperative as when applied to historical painting, and where the manner and effect of any particular school is to be produced. to institute a comparison between all who have excelled in colouring, would be useless here, differing so entirely. but of _tone_:--the rich, and the mellow, and the silvery grey, are cared most for, as regards this expression. it involves all colours in its meaning, as well as the depth and power of the light and shade, when divested of colour. it is frequently produced after the picture is painted, by glazing or toning over it until the required depth and expression of colour is obtained, and mostly adding richness, splendour and variety. in water colour it is highly and essentially prized. a beautiful quality of tone is obtained from drawing on grey or coloured paper, with black, white, and red chalks, the colour of the paper supplying the middle tint, (which should always pervade the largest space). it is likewise an admirable principle to adopt in water colour, as it qualifies the whole appearance of the work, and the student will proceed with greater certainty. of the situations in which a colour appears most beautiful, leonardo says, 'black is the most so in the shade; white, in the strongest light; blue and green in the half tint; yellow and red in the principal light; gold in the reflexes, and lake in the half tint:' and 'the lighter a colour is in its nature, the more so it will appear when removed to some distance; but with dark colours it is quite the reverse.' some colours are rather unsociable, and, not mixing well with others, are best used by themselves, producing the required tint by glazing one over the other. when any transparent colour is laid over an opaque one, or another of its own quality, it produces a mixture different to either of those that compose it; as lake over blue gives purple; yellow on blue produces green, and so on. in many cases this is a superior method to that of mixing them at once to the colour desired. white is the receiver of all colours; black of none. any single colour appears most beautiful and brilliant when near the same colour, but not having so much density in it. observe how colours are blended or contrasted in the plumage of birds, the wings of butterflies, &c. the shifting, blending, and comparing a number of coloured cards, has always been found a useful and amusing way of instructing children in a knowledge of colours. different coloured pieces of glass held up against a landscape, will serve to show, through their medium, the varieties of hot and cold effects. certain colours impart value to others, principally by contrast; thus, the brilliant and rich glow of an autumnal evening is rendered most intense when the dark brown and neutral masses of foliage are brought up against it: it is only to their relative situations that they owe their power. that part of a white object which is nearest to a dark one, will appear the whitest, and the less so as it is removed from it. the same occurs by a dark one. all colours will appear most perfect in themselves when contrasted with their _opposites_--a green against red; blue against yellow; black against white, &c. where one colour terminates on another, that is its contrast, there will be greater strength exhibited at the junction than in the middle. great darkness is only obtained by the opposition of bright light, and bright light by contrasting it with density of shadow. colours should recede in proportion to the _size_ of objects, as they retire from the eye. too frequent a repetition of the same colour will produce monotony; so will too much contrast. contrasts in colouring must be used with great caution, or the absence of all keeping will be the result. at the same time, the beauty of a colour is only fully developed by being placed by the side of its opposite, or the one from which it is farthest removed. if the blacks in a picture are kept firm and decided, they _clear up_ the general effect, and give _lightness_ and buoyancy to the whole work. a colour is often left single, and standing by itself, in some principal object; in which case, it is so contrived, by its density, or some other quality, to bring together and harmonize all the rest. if colours are not placed in _harmony_ with each other, they must be in contact with such as give them value; as red against a cold, or green against a warm colour. in short, the grand principle, in all its constituent parts, simply amounts to this. the strongest darks, brought in contact with the strongest lights, increase their brilliance, by giving to the lights the utmost force and clearness they can receive. _richness_ of colouring can only be adopted when the general tone of the picture is sufficiently _dark_ to support it. all colours retire in proportion to their negative or neutral character; and as they develope themselves, gradually approaching to their brightest point, so they reach the prominent parts of the foreground. rich, warm, and deep shadows, will support the strongest colours; and if the browns are kept cool, the greys and cold colours retain their purity better. the colours that _unite_ the hot and cold parts of a picture require the nicest judgment: thus, white and black may be brought together by grey, (grey being _made of_ white and black); blue and red, by the interposition of purple, (purple being formed of blue and red.) the larger the mass employed of neutral and _obscure_ colours, the greater will be the force and illumination in the _clear_ ones, which, being in their natures most attractive, should always be employed in parts intended to create the greatest sensation. on general nature. the magic of art does not consist in an exact resemblance of an object:--'an exact resemblance,' says sir joshua, 'may be even disagreeable. the effect of figures in wax-work, for instance, is disgusting to the eye accomplished to judge of fine art, yet it approaches reality. we are pleased, on the contrary, by seeing ends accomplished by seemingly inadequate means; but to express distances on a plain surface, softness by hard bodies, and particular colouring by materials which are not singly of that colour, produces that magic which is the prize and triumph of art. the power of a few well-chosen strokes, which supersede labour by judgment and direction, produce a complete impression of all that the _mind_ demands in an object; we are charmed with such an unexpected happiness of execution, and begin to be tired with superfluous diligence, which, in vain solicits an appetite already satiated.' we do not desire those who look on our pictures to suppose them real men and women, or that they are real landscapes; but to admire the art through the _means_ by which it is performed. i have always observed the most exact imitations of nature to be peculiarly within the sphere of the illiterate and uninformed; and the more debased and vulgar the mind, the more will it admire such productions. on the other hand, fine art has its own peculiar modes of imitating nature and of deviating from it, for the attainment of its own purpose--'nature to advantage dressed:' the great end of art is to make an impression on the imagination and the feelings. the imitation of nature frequently does this; sometimes it fails, and sometimes else succeeds. 'i think, therefore,' says sir joshua, 'the true test of all art is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.' of the contracted ideas of high-finishers, i think excessive labour is excessive weakness, and vigour can never come from such a source: making every brick of a house appear, has nothing to do with the harmony of the architecture; nothing is so monotonous as these detail and 'bit painters;' their works, taken collectively, are universally effectless and good for nothing; it is, at best, overwrought ingenuity--not art. the combinations must be generalized; some object in the foreground may partake of this quality of finish, but if other parts of the composition be not proportionably slighted, there will be a want of general harmony. no separate part should possess any preponderance sufficient to absorb the interest of the rest. an analogous combination will alone invest the whole with the charm it conveys collectively, and infinite labour is saved. the high excellencies of painting belong invariably to harmonious combinations. we frequently observe in the best works, the great effect produced by slightness, which, by a sort of magic, at a distance, assumes complete forms: this is scarcely ever the effect of chance or accident, however it may be made to appear so, but the result of deep and matured study, and a steady attention to the _general_ effect, produced, perhaps, by a few happy scratches, and is 'more laborious to the mind than the highest finishing would be,' accomplishing the purpose intended by a seemingly intuitive perception of what was required, and communicating a lively and vigorous impression to the minds of others by the energies of their own. extreme labour seldom fails to produce heaviness, while that fascinating lightness of effect is universally occasioned by the absence of it. the slightest and most undetermined manner of treatment often succeeds in producing the best _general_ effect, which effect is as often wholly defeated in the attempt at _finishing_ and blending the colours and details. some morsel or other is beautifully preserved, but the _whole_ is lost. the _general_ effect of the stars is all order--all repose; but the _means_ by which this effect is produced is nowhere to be traced! 'the highest style has the least common nature in it:' 'good sense is not always _common_ sense.' 'we may depart from nature for a greater advantage. nature is frequently narrow and confined in her principles, and must as frequently be departed from. pictures should be painted to give pleasure, and every object which stands in the way of that pleasure _must_ be removed!' rubens thought the eye should be satisfied above all other considerations; he, therefore, painted his reflects stronger than nature would warrant; thereby producing harmony from contrast and variety. reynolds, speaking of claude lorraine, says, 'claude lorraine was convinced that taking nature as he found it seldom produced beauty: his pictures are a composition of the various draughts which he had previously made from various beautiful scenes and prospects.' the harmony proceeding from contrast and variety of colour is more conspicuous in the landscapes of rubens, and the gorgeous colouring of the landscapes of titian, than in claude--'departing from nature for a greater advantage!' as in the moonlights of vanderneer, the pictures of cuyp and both, and our own glorious wilson, gainsborough, &c. in choosing from among these great manners, we must lean on the observation of reynolds, when he says, 'an artist is obliged for ever to hold the balance in his hand, by which he must decide the value of different qualities; that when some fault must be committed, he may choose the least.' there is, beyond all doubt, a grandeur in _general_ ideas, that the narrow conceptions of _individual_ nature can never attain to. any subject, however mean or degraded in itself, but painted on a great principle, will acquire splendour and dignity from association. 'look at nature! nature is the true school of art!' is the universal cry of the vulgar and uneducated. but before their perception is capable of _even seeing nature_, as it is spread out before them, they will have much to acquire of _art_: for although nature is before their eyes, to them it is a closed book! this is no new position, for, says sir joshua, 'if our judgment is to be directed by narrow, vulgar, untaught, or rather ill-taught reason, we must prefer a portrait by denner, or any other high finisher, to those of titian or vandyck; and a landscape by vanderheyden to those of titian or rubens; for they are certainly more _exact_ representations of nature. if we suppose a view of nature represented with all the truth of the camera obscura, and the same scene represented by a great artist, how _little and mean_ will the one appear in comparison of the other, when no superiority is supposed from the choice of the subject.' and again,--'amongst the painters, and writers on painting, there is one maxim universally admitted and continually inculcated. imitate nature is the invariable rule; but i know none who have explained in _what manner_ this rule is to be understood: the consequence of which is, that every one takes it in the most obvious sense, that objects are represented naturally when they have such relief that they seem _real_. it may appear strange perhaps to hear this rule disputed; but it must be considered that, if the excellence of a painter consisted only in this kind of imitation, painting must lose its rank, and be no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister to poetry--this imitation being merely _mechanical_, in which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best! for the painter of genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding has no part;--and what pretence has the art to claim kindred with poetry, but its powers over the imagination? to this power the painter of genius directs _his_ aim; in this sense _he studies nature_, and often arrives at the end, even by being unnatural, in the confined sense of the word. the grand style of painting requires this minute attention to be carefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the style of poetry from that of history. poetical ornaments destroy that air of truth and plainness which ought to characterize history; but the very being of poetry consists in departing from this _plain narration_, and adopting every ornament that will warm the imagination. 'the italian attends only to the invariable--the great and general ideas which are fixed and inherent in _universal_ nature; the dutch, on the contrary, to _literal_ truth, and a minute exactness in the detail, as i may say, of nature _modified_ by accident. the attention to these petty peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness, so much admired in the dutch pictures, which, if we suppose to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order, that ought to give place to a beauty of a superior kind, since one cannot be obtained but by departing from the other.' with the most practised hands, in painting from nature on the spot, the _hue and character of the artist_ will frequently pervade all his efforts to paint nothing but what _he sees_ spread out before him; and his system, prevailing even to this extent, has this advantage, that accustomed as he is to consider nature _generally_, his performance may resemble nature _more at another time_ than that one he painted it at! as nature seldom looks the _same_ two hours together. the simple music of a bird may as well be compared to the most refined compositions of the italian school, that requires the most industrious efforts to reach: both originate in nature, but the latter is 'nature to advantage dressed.' nature, the best source we can go to for instruction, is '_always at hand_!'--'but nature herself is not to be too closely copied. there are excellencies in the art of painting beyond what is commonly called the imitation of nature. a mere copyer of nature can never produce any thing great; for the works of nature are full of disproportion.' it is the _beau ideal_ of the mind alone that reaches this great end. it is _comparing_ our observations _on_ nature, that enables us to acquire this ideal perfection. it is to skill in _selection_, and the separating her beauties from her defects, that qualifies us to reach this grand acquisition, which cannot be reduced to practical principles; but, by being enabled to discover those defects, we learn the art of supplying her wants. 'correcting nature by herself--her imperfect state by her more perfect,'--'and nature denies her instructions to none who desire to become her pupils.' young people, and even men and women, who make respectable, and often very excellent _copies_ from the works of others, frequently show me their 'sketches from nature;'--oh, if nature could see them--for, to say they are in general perfectly frightful, is to use the gentlest expression. i invariably trace, in these productions, their _individuality_ is the cause of their unsuccess; and the incapacity to _even see nature generally_, which must be necessary before they can paint her so. thus to abstract as it were her beauties, and to form _one general idea_ of them, in that abstract, is to enlarge the sphere of our understandings, and invest our works with that intellectual grandeur which _alone_ lifts them above the efforts of common minds, by the nobleness of conception, and a higher degree of excellence: while the student may be assured that his reputation will become permanent and universal, from this system of contemplating nature in the abstract, and ennoble all he undertakes. his picture will have a mental effect over all that is mechanical. dr. johnson has most ably explained the hypothesis, so much urged by his friend, of the necessity of _generalizing_ our ideas of nature, when he says, 'it is not to examine the individual, but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances: he does not number the streaks of the tulip, nor describe the different shades of the forest; he is to exhibit in his portraits of nature such permanent and striking features, as recall the original to _every_ mind; and must neglect the minuter discriminations, which are alike obvious to vigilance and carelessness.' the idleness of laborious _finish_, opposed to the overwhelming majesty of _breadth_, cannot be better explained. on rules. rules are not principles: polite learning is only a more specious ignorance: it may do something to make a connoisseur, but will never make a practical painter; while a little knowledge of _principles_ will go farther to make a connoisseur! a foreign _philosopher_ says, 'a thinking man is a depraved animal.' both rules and principles are the healthy results of thought, notwithstanding.--condensation and simplification--shorter methods, and conclusive deductions, are among the results obtained from them. 'there are rules for the conduct of the artist, which are fixed and invariable. the arts would lie open for ever to caprice and casualty, if those who are to judge of their excellencies had no settled principles by which they are to regulate their decisions, and their merits or defects were to be determined by unguided fancy;' which, in the end, would deprive art of its existence. reynolds says, 'whatever is done well is done by some certain rule, otherwise it could not be repeated.' rules, pursued beyond their _intention_, become the fetters of the mind: among architects for instance--whose very profession should be a matter of light and shade--i have never known, nor heard of one in my life, who ever obtained even the veriest mediocrity in painting, however otherwise talented. this can only be attributable to their adherence to the rigidity of their rules in their details, beyond their _general_ intention. much should oftentimes be conceded to the suggestions of strong inclination in an ingenious and intelligent mind, whose impulses are irresistible, and which any peculiar method would only clog and fetter, by thwarting its particular turn--which, after all succeeds best its own way; and arrives at the same end by its own impulses. rules apply more properly to such as are not invested with these powers: or, with the same incentives, have not the strength. on copying. a system of copying, or rather borrowing from the works of others, some _point_, 'from which the imagination may rise and take flight,' is a manner commonly pursued by our best painters. this method is that of really making it our own, by judicious efforts, without the risk of the imputation of plagiarism, which i shall endeavour to make appear. by the contemplation of what is good in others, 'a sense of the higher excellencies of art will by degrees dawn on the imagination; at every review that sense will become more and more assured, and the artist will then find no difficulty in fixing in his own mind the principles by which the impression is produced; which he will feel and practice, though they are perhaps too delicate and refined to be conveyed to the mind by any other means.' sir joshua, speaking of the great examples of art, says, 'these are the materials on which genius is to work, and without which the strongest intellect may be fruitlessly or deviously employed. by studying these authentic models, that idea of excellence which is the result of the accumulated experience of past ages, may be at once acquired; and the tardy and obstructed progress of our predecessors may teach us a shorter and easier way. the student perceives at one glance the principles which many artists have spent their whole lives in ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect, is spared the painful investigation by which they came to be known and fixed.' the greatest painters are continually making such memoranda as may be called copying, either from the works of antiquity, or those of their cotemporaries. beginning with nothing, we _must_ borrow until we can pay the debt. 'the sagacious imitator does not content himself with merely remarking what distinguishes the different manner or genius of each master; he enters into the contrivance in the composition, how the masses of lights are disposed, the means by which the effect is produced, how artfully some parts are lost in the ground, others boldly relieved, and how all these are mutually altered and interchanged, according to the reason and scheme of the work. he admires not the harmony of colouring alone, but examines by what artifice one colour is a foil to its neighbour; he looks close into the tints, examines of what colours they are composed, till he has formed clear and distinct ideas, and has learnt to see in what harmony and good colouring consists. what is learned in this manner from the works of others becomes really our own, sinks deep, and is never forgotten. 'if the excellence of a picture consists in its general effect, it would be proper to make slight sketches of the machinery and general management of the work. those sketches should be kept always by you for the regulation of your style. instead of copying the touches of those great masters, copy only their conceptions. instead of treading in their footsteps, endeavour only to keep the same road. labour to invent on their general principles and way of thinking. possess yourself with their spirit: and work yourself into a belief that your picture is to be seen and criticised by them, when completed. even an attempt of this kind will rouse your powers.' again--'but as mere enthusiasm will carry you but a little way, what i propose is, that you should enter into a kind of competition, by painting a similar subject, and making a companion to any picture that you consider as a model; place them together and compare them carefully, and you will detect the deficiencies in your own more sensibly than by any other means of instruction. the true principles of painting will mingle with your thoughts, which will be certain and definitive, and sink deep into the mind. this method of comparing your own efforts with those of some great master, is indeed a severe and mortifying task; to go voluntarily to a tribunal where he knows his vanity must be humbled, and all self-approbation must vanish, requires not only great resolution, but great humility! but it is attended with this alleviating circumstance, which abundantly compensates for the mortification of present disappointment, every discovery he makes, every acquisition to knowledge he attains, seems to proceed from his _own_ sagacity, and thus he acquires confidence in himself, sufficient to keep up the resolution of perseverance. and we prefer those instructions which we have given to ourselves, from our affection to the instructor.' the perception of errors shortens the road to truth. 'cease to follow any master when he ceases to excel.' avoid that narrowness and poverty of conception which attends a bigoted admiration of a single master! we will suppose 'those perfections which lie scattered among various masters, are now united in one general idea, which is henceforth to regulate his taste and enlarge his imagination, extending his capacity to more general instructions, he must now consider the _art_ itself as his master. at all times, and in all places, he should be employed in laying up materials for the exercise of his art, to be combined and varied as occasion may require; seeking only to know and combine excellence, wherever it is to be found, into one idea of perfection; and employing the most subtle disquisition to discriminate perfections that are incompatible with each other. the habitual dignity which long converse with the _greatest minds_ has imparted to him, will display itself in all his attempts, and he will stand among his instructors, not as an imitator, but a rival. the more extensive your acquaintance is with the works of those who have excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention; and, what will appear still more like a paradox, the more original will be your conceptions.' again:--'by the devotion with which many study a particular master, they acquire a habit of thinking the same way; therefore, let his faults always be your best instructors.' the firm, correct and determined pencil of many of the dutch masters, cannot be too strongly recommended for imitation. i speak of the mechanism of painting: the expression, force and energy they gave to their works, from the decision of touch and handling, which enabled them to give that look of nature and freshness of reality to their studies, that forms so great an excellence in their performances. the study of ostade, teniers, and many others of that school, cannot fail to enrich our own works with variety of invention, and 'those who have not looked out for themselves in this manner from time to time, have not only ceased to advance and improve, but have invariably gone backward, from being left without resources;' and having gathered nothing, have nothing to work upon--from an inability to infuse into their own works what they have neglected to learn from the contemplation of the works of others. it places you under the guidance of your own judgment and discretion by comparison with the best efforts of others; it enables you 'to criticise, compare, and rank their works in your own estimation, as they approach to, or recede from, the standard of perfection which you have formed in your own mind--but which those masters themselves have taught you to make, and which you will cease to make with correctness when you cease to study them. it is their excellencies which have taught you their defects, and you will, henceforth, be your own teacher.' be cautious against the 'imaginary powers of native genius, and sufficiency in yourself, which seldom fails to produce either a vain confidence or a sluggish despair, both equally fatal to all proficiency. 'study, therefore, the great masters for ever: study nature attentively, but always with those masters in your company; consider them as models which you are to imitate, and, at the same time, as _rivals_ with whom you are to contend;' and you will insensibly come to feel and reason like them, and find taste imperceptibly formed in _your own mind_. by the industry of the hand you will acquire good manner, but it is to the industry of the mind you will be indebted for any solid reputation. 'he who does not know others, knows himself very imperfectly.' _wrongly directed_ industry is a dangerous delusion. too much copying will, on the other hand, greatly tend to impair our mental exertions, render them servile and mechanical, and confine, at the most, our aspirings to a very limited sphere, while it is utterly at variance in establishing any claim of our own to originality or distinction. studying the _genius_ of a fine work of art, its _general_ forms, its combinations, its chiaroscuro, its colour and effect; and with all these on our minds, going home and making a companion to it, is a noble and lofty aim, frequently attended with entire success. this excellent practice, diligently persevered in, at length brings our sympathies into a corresponding train of ideas with those we would emulate; and if we cannot reach them in their various excellencies, so we succeed in lighting our torch at those glorious beams of old, our advances are at least entitled to that respect they universally meet with. an abject imitation is of all things that i should avoid. but that _reading of_, and conversing with a picture, that almost places us under a delusion, during the time we are under its influence; that associating our feelings and ideas--that blending of our aspirations with the master mind that thought and wrought so well, is the surest hemisphere in which we can hope to think and paint like them. the student's perceptions become annealed by the influence of the charm that invests him: he aspires to a higher latitude of excellence: he beholds before him the ripest fruit on the topmost palm, and he knows the principles and the laws by which he _can_ reach it, and _does_ reach it, by the agency of, and the gradual developement of the simple rules he commenced with. it often happens, and it is my opinion, that a careless scribbler, who dashes at everything, stands quite as good a chance of becoming original, as the most careful copyist ever will; after the very first attempts, too much precision stands sadly in the way of boldness, freedom and dexterity. after being enabled to draw with some degree of accuracy, _mannerism_ will invariably be the result of the extreme care so universally recommended by most writers on the subject; and hence that excess of it we daily observe; for it requires but a very common-place observer, on entering an exhibition, to point to a picture and name the painter at the same moment: presuming he had ever seen a work by the same artist before. reynolds says of copying, 'i consider general copying as a delusive kind of industry; the student falls into the dangerous habit of imitating, without selecting, and of labouring without any determinate object; as it requires no effort of the mind, he sleeps over his work, and those powers of invention and composition which ought particularly to be called out, and put in action, lie torpid and lose their energy for want of exercise. how incapable those are of producing anything of their own who have spent much of their time in making finished copies, is well known to all who are conversant with our art.' on the light and shade of colour: and reflexes. colour is called in aid of light and shade, to dress and ornament it; but not to distort and disfigure it. extending either the light or shadow by means of _colour_, is perhaps one of the best ways of combining both. breadth of light and shade may involve _many_ colours in its arrangement, so they are divided into imposing masses; variety of colour is often necessary to explain the localities of a work; and, that they may not appear confused, light colours should be sociable with light colours; and dark ones with others of equal density: their repetitions invading each other throughout the chain. great _intimacy_ of union, in the colour of the lights, will likewise produce breadth; so as to make a large and connected mass appear, at a little distance, as one graduated light. colours may stand either for colours or shadows; so that they be of sufficient density, and sufficiently opposed to light ones. but, if you do not depend on the colour of the picture for effect of light and shade, _much less_ intensity of colours will be sufficient. the _strongest_ colours are sometimes most successfully employed in uniting the light with the shade. in the conduct of light, i conceive the objects which receive its influence, should, of all things, as much as possible, partake of the colour of that light, as seeming more like an extension of it, and looking more natural:--thus, in a church, all the parts receiving the light from a painted glass window, would partake of its varieties of colour. the rising and setting of the sun turns all to gold, by the same alchymy, while it acts as an uniting link in carrying the colour through the picture: these, in their turn, throw their radiating reflects in a thousand other directions, keeping up and sustaining the communicative principle of the whole--imparted by the primitive cause and its agency. the colouring of a picture should always be in _harmony_ with its light and shade. the lights will require to be overcharged with colour, if the shadows are too heavy and loaded; on their transparency depends the beauty of both. the shadows must be _darker_ than the shadowed sides of the objects which project them; for the reason explained in the article on light and shade. the masses of light should be of warm colours, yellow or red, supported by blue or grey in the shadows; a very small proportion of which will generally be found sufficient. the _real_ colour of an object is only seen in the light. all shadows should partake, more or less, of the colour of the light. that shadow will appear the darkest that is surrounded by the brightest light. the nearer a colour is to the eye, the purer it will appear; arraying itself as it retires, with the colour of the air interposed between it; consequently, the purest colours should only occur in foregrounds,--where the shadows, for the same reason, would likewise be darkest. the colour of a light will be stopped at the part where any reflex reaches it. we see mountains covered with snow, at sunset, from the effulgence of its rays, make the horizon appear all on fire. distant mountains appear more deeply blue, according to the extent of the azure of the air interposed between them and the eye. all masses in the distance partake, more or less, of this quality. 'the vapours mixing with the air, in the lower region near the earth, render it thick, and apt to reflect the sun's rays on all sides, while the air above remains dark; and because light (white) and darkness (black) mixed together, compose the azure that becomes the colour of the sky--which is lighter or darker, in proportion as the air is more or less mixed with damp vapours.' shadows produced by the redness of the setting sun, will be blue; from the reflexes of that part of the air not illumined by its rays. if the sun is overcast, the lights will be general; so will the shadows. if the sunbeams burst out, and strike the objects in a landscape, the shadows will then be dark in _proportion_ to the lights. the brilliant edges of the clouds all assist the general illumination; and all objects in the light, will participate of _their_ colour from reflexion. on the contrary, those parts not included in the range of rays, remain the colour of the _air_. the air partakes less of the azure of the sky as it approaches the horizon, being more remote from the sun than that part of it above our heads, which receives a larger portion of its rays. the horizon will be light, while, in ascending to the meridian, it becomes, from this cause, deeper and bluer. so the nature of all colours diminish in proportion as density of air is interposed between them and the eye. reflected colours, thrown from, and upon, equal angles, will be the strongest: the most distinct, being produced by the shortest ray. no reflected colour will have the brilliance of a direct one. for, if a reflected light from a blue object be thrown on a yellow one, the result would be green:--green being composed of blue and yellow. this circumstance refers to most mixtures. it only happens to those colours which are on a _level_ with the eye, that their gradation is in proportion to their distance. as to those of elevation, they are influenced by the quality of the air they are seen through. colours, whose nearest approach is to black, as they retire into distance, partake most of the azure of the air:--and those colours most dissimilar to black, preserve their proper colour as they recede. the golden lights on distant mountains or fields will best explain this. 'the green, therefore, of the fields will change sooner into blue, than yellow or white, which will preserve their natural colour at a greater distance than that, or even red.' 'it may happen that a colour does not alter, though placed at different distances, when the thickness of the air and the distance are in the same inverse proportion.' _masses_ of shadow carry the strongest part of their colour to the greatest distance; as when trees appear thick together, accumulating the shadow on each other, they become darker by multiplying those shadows. 'the darker a mountain is in itself,' says leonardo, 'the bluer it will appear at a great distance. the highest part will be the darkest, being more woody; because woods cover a great many shrubs and other plants, which never receive the light. near the tops of those mountains, where the air is thinner and purer, the darkness of the woods will make it appear of a deeper azure than at the bottom, where the air is thicker.' 'in general, all objects that are darker or lighter than the air are discoloured by distance, which changes their quality, so that the lighter appears darker, and the darker lighter.' colours are more or less _entirely_ lost at a great distance from the eye, according to the purity or density of the air through which they are revealed, or as they are more or less elevated from the earth, merging as they retire into a general grey, occasioned by the quantity of the intervening air. in countries where the air is thin, colours are discernible at great distances, but still tinged with the colour of that air. the _darkest_ colours, in distance, will be most of all impregnated with the colour of the air. so will the _strongest_ real or accidental shadows. colours and outline are best defined on objects placed _out_ of the strong light of the sun, and its reflexes. in sunshine, both are operated on by refraction, which occasions that chaotic indistinctness so painful for the eye to dwell on long together. every body, on which light falls, reflects a part of it back again. any thing red, held before a looking-glass, gives back a portion of its own colour with great vividness; as a glass would throw the sun's ray on a wall. the real colour of polished surfaces are lost in the colour of the light that falls on them. this likewise applies to all metals. all smooth or shining surfaces repel the light they receive, throwing their reflexes on any thing opposed to them. polished surfaces, as in plate or armour, do not show their real colours. the reflected colours of the sun or air that shines on them confuse their own. rough surfaces, on the contrary, retain their natural colours most. suppose the sun to equally illumine two sides of a street, as it passes its centre, and on one side is a red house, and opposite to it a white one, the white one would be impinged with the reflection from the action of the light on the red one: thus, all proximity of colours affect each other, in the light, in the manner of reflexes, declining as they recede. the reflected lights in folds of silk draperies illustrate this phenomenon best. compare the shadows thrown on different colours with each other, by placing a number of coloured materials in a dark place, the colours of shadows being regulated by the objects giving and receiving them. examine well the colours in the shadows of flowers; they present the most excellent combinations. all colours, as at night, may be lost in that of the general shadow, presuming it dark enough to destroy all reflexes. colours reflected on by their _opposites_ will become neutralized; as green against red, purple against yellow, &c. the shadows on all objects partake of the colour of the light, or are qualified by other lights throwing their reflects into them. the lightness or darkness of shadows are entirely regulated by the colour of the objects on which they fall. an object painted in a light colour will be more or less light, according to the strength of its shadow, from the consequences attending opposition. so a light figure, laid upon a light background, but differing in colour--as a warm object on a grey sky--assists, in the greatest degree, the preservation of the breadth. opposition of colour is, perhaps, of most use under these circumstances. colours on the figures or parts brought into notice by opposition may be sometimes applied with sufficient _depth_ and intensity as to advantageously take the place of _shadows_ or darks. light and shade may be produced by the influence of _colours alone_, judiciously applied; the reds and yellows supporting the lights, while the blues, greys, and cold colours form the retiring portions, or such as would otherwise be in shadow. suppose a picture, composed of one part shade and the other light--the light being warm, and the shadow composed of cold colours--a red or warm-coloured figure laid against the shadowed side, and a blue one brought out from the light, would, in addition to possessing the greatest force of colour, have a spirited and imposing effect. but the _contrary_ treatment would possess the greatest breadth and repose;--a dark figure laid on the mass of shadow (a point of which, being darker than the rest, would gather it together), and a light one on the light, having a point still higher in colour than the ground. rich, deep, and warm shadows are required to support strong coloured lights. so, strong colours are equally useful in focussing the shadows, or in giving them variety. that beautiful diffusion of _æriel_ and fluctuating _pearly_ reflections, that play equally over the surfaces of the strongest colours, shadows, and lights, in the tenderest hues and forms, and with which all nature appears invested, should engage our deepest attention and enquiry, as their properties so softly blend and break down the harshness and influence of positive colour, and the asperity of opposing tints, by tempering them with their airy and luminous sweetness. if the general harmony or _hue_ of a picture is warm, the deepest shadows should be warm also; while the _strongest_ colour, being brought into the middle space, will serve to connect both the light and the shadow. indian red, in most instances, should be the mixing medium, using cold colours _sparingly_, and _only_ where they are wanted as a _foil_; as the greens of trees are set off from the rich brown shadows, producing a splendid effect, and bringing the hot and cold colours into harmony. colours, forming the middle tint and shadows, should always be warm; though the light may be cold, the effect will be beautiful. warm shadows will support the _strongest_ colours. i generally observe that titian, rubens, and the best colourists, use their reds in the shadows, at once to support and give them brilliance;--for when it happens that the shadows of a picture are wholly made up of warm colours, the effect is sure to be splendid, though the lights are cold;--considering red, perhaps, too _strong_ a colour to interfere with the _light_, at the risk of destroying its breadth. their manner was often that of deepening the colour as it lost or absorbed itself in the background. every object receiving the light of the sun, receives likewise the _general_ light, producing _two_ shadows, the darkest one being occasioned by the sun. when the horizon is tinged with red by the rays of the setting sun, the distant shadows, being blue or azure, mingling with the red, produces purple. the air between the earth and the sun, when it rises or sets, invests all objects with a degree of obscurity, which is whiter on the earth than towards the zenith. when the vapours descend to the earth at sunset, all objects that the sun's rays do not reach become confused and dark; but those that are tinged with its light will appear of the colour of that light, and distinctly marked in their outlines, though surrounded by obscurity. the magnificence of the setting sun, gilding with its rays the slopes of mountains and tops of forests, towns, villages, and waters, while all below is lost in deep brown, grey, and purple masses, has ever been a favourite subject with painters of all schools. the inferior or lower parts of all objects, when the air is thickest on the earth, will appear farther from the eye than the tops. in looking down from an eminence on a street or town when the air is thick, the tops of the buildings will be darker, more distinct and articulate than the objects placed at the bottom, which, being filled with air, the tops come off it (as a ground) with more decision. when the sun is veiled by clouds, in a landscape, the trees receiving a general light, the darkest parts will be the lowest. although the trees and fields may be of the same colour, the trees will always seem darker than the fields, from their quantity of shadow, notwithstanding every blade of grass has _its_ shadow. the tops of all mountains will be more clearly defined than their bases, becoming more and more so as they rise into the thinner and purer regions of the air; and, as they still rise to their highest summits, the more they develope their form and colours. all buildings will appear darker at the top than the bottom, from the lower parts being surrounded with thicker air of a lighter colour. buildings, or other objects, seen through a fog, only develope those sides which are reflected on by the sun; the other parts remain the colour of the fog. beautiful combinations of silvery grey and golden reflections, on foliage, windows, boats, water, &c. may be made under these circumstances. as the outline becomes confused or lost, so the objects seen through it acquire magnitude. the fog and the object being both near the eye, its density will occasion the object to appear at a great distance. objects of all sorts, seen through rain, have an indistinct and undetermined outline, sometimes becoming greatly confused. if the observer is placed _between_ the sun and a cloud of dust or smoke, they will appear dark. if they are seen between the sun and the eye, they will be light and transparent. this equally applies to the effects produced by fog. some artists represent water very dark or very light. it can neither be darker nor lighter than the surrounding objects which occasion its shadows. if water is muddy or thick, the shadows of a bridge or boat would be projected _on_ it, as it would be on the ground. but if, on the contrary, the water is clear and transparent, all reflections are formed in it, as they would be in a looking-glass, and no lateral shadows occur. how much _bluer_ the sea appears from on board ship than it does from the shore; because, _at sea_, the blue of the waves is reflected on the eye. all objects in the distance, which are near a river or water, will appear less distinct than those that are remote from it. all distances should have their outlines confused and unfinished, while foreground objects should be bold and determined. objects appear most remote that are divested of their outline, as in turner's pictures--giving the idea of space and largeness. of the beauty of reflexes, da vinci says: 'if you mean the proximity of one colour should give beauty to another that terminates near it, observe the rays of the sun in the composition of the rainbow, the colours of which are generated by the falling rain, when each drop in its descent takes every colour of the bow.' displaying the various colours that compose either the light or the shade, or lights and darks, that are to stand as such, into _large_ and subtly interwoven portions,--the blending and the opposition of hot and cold colours, and of light with dark, together with strict attention to their strength and relations (for the most discordant and opposite properties will produce harmony, under certain circumstances and arrangement), so that the _masses_ of light and shade, and the _breadth_ of the whole, are not disturbed,--are the leading circumstances that should engage the anxious attention. harmony and contrast. harmony, as in nature, is the agreeable _accordance_ of the various colours that form the _parts_ of a scene into a _whole_; divested, in their dispersion, of their harshness by the everywhere surrounding atmosphere: this may be tested by holding a piece of silk, the _exact colour_ of the grass at our feet, up against a field, when the field will become _grey_ in comparison. the exact degree of strength, or of tone, greatly tend to reconcile the harmony of a picture. harmony consists more in the power of bringing colours together, than in the mere arrangement of the colours themselves. burnet, in his excellent treatise, says--'when a picture is composed of the two _extremes_ of hot and cold, we are certain of having employed the whole strength of the palette; and, if judiciously used to assist the chiaroscuro, an harmonious union will be kept up between these opposite qualities, more forcible and splendid than by the _intervention of middle tint_;' but immediately after he adds--'in producing variety and contrast, we ought never to lose sight of that imperceptible harmony arising from the union of two colours in producing a _third_, composed of both. whether this be founded on any law existing in optics, or is merely the result of that sympathy which one colour has to another in producing harmony, we know not.' any colour _too often_ repeated, will destroy its value in proportion to its repetition; but a continuation of the same colour carried with tact through the picture, from the highest light to the deepest shade, and strongly relieved by some colour of a different nature, produces the beautiful effect so admired in the dutch and flemish sketches of vandyke and others; arising from the rich brown gradations, brought up to a 'high pitch' of red or yellow, or yellowish white, and subdued by a little cool grey, merging into blue or green. strong colours are generally more usefully applied in supporting the general whole, than by being employed on the more prominent parts of it. they are equally useful in focussing the shadows, or in giving them variety. if the mixture of many colours be unharmonious and disturbed, perplexity and confusion will be the result. when the general character of a picture is of a cool grey, its influence upon the eye is of a very agreeable description, from its tender and soft transitions; but its spirit is roused into energy at once by the introduction of a warm colour; increasing, by its opposition of character, the harmony of the whole. a red cloak on a figure crossing a field will explain this. in du fresney i find we 'are not to let two hostile colours meet without a medium to unite them.' notwithstanding which, we see the contrary practised with the greatest success;--blue brought against red, for instance, the value of each increasing as they antipathize. the hot and cold colours--the balancing power produced by their combinations--the arrangement that gives to every object its _place_ and value, are the principal circumstances that should engage the attention, when contemplating the works of the best colourists, or on gazing at a scene in nature. if the colouring of a picture is _too_ harmonious, it will want solidity. effect, accident, relief, and keeping. in effect, the means are widely different indeed which lead to the same result! rembrandt, with his concentrated light and wide diffusion of shade--rubens, and his school, with his splendid extension of light and of colour--vandyke, with the dutch and flemish painters--titian--all arrive at the same end, although by the most opposite means. some aim at a particular effect; others at a general one, proceeding from different combinations, and different views and ideas. all effects should be consistent with the subject treated. the effect will be more or less bad as the parts which are to constitute it are more or less scattered or diffused. masses of light, supported and brought out by masses of shadow, are the surest means of producing it. effect is procured by the strongest opposition, and sometimes by the reverse. arrangement and expression is, in historical composition, much the same thing that effect is in landscape-painting. on the other hand, particular effects mostly arise from circumstance. sudden and startling effects are not unfrequently produced by a piece of charcoal on brown or grey paper; beautiful ones by the simple operation of the black lead pencil or stump, until we trace it up to the whole range of the palette, in the most splendid and magnificent efforts of colour. every part of a picture should occasion pleasure in detail! if we are fascinated with the colour of the highest or prevailing light, the most anxious care should be exercised that its influence does not destroy our admiration of the others: to avoid this prejudice, the principal light, or colour of it, should not be so influential as to prevent the eye being gently led away from it, by the repetition of a softer grade of its own, to others of a less imposing quality: that _must_ of necessity be there, to give value to, and influence the importance of the principal. effect consists in either lights and shadows, or _colours_, so massed and blended in their arrangement, as to produce breadth. the greatest power of effect is often produced from the most simple materials. all the force of the palette, and all the strength of the master, is not unfrequently called into action by no other materials than a straight horizon meeting the sky, supported by an undulating line or two; and exemplifying the most scientific manoeuvres in the management of breadth, and in diversity of colour, on which the eye loves to dwell, and repose from the fatigue occasioned by a repetition of forms. a dark object, placed against the most retiring or lightest part of the picture, while it acquires all the startling effect to be derived from great force, and is a resource so much adopted by the greatest landscape-painters, often, in my opinion, destroys the whole keeping of the work. bringing such strong objects up against the sun, was the great vice of claude; cuyp and both managed it better, but certainly not always with success. keeping is a term in art which implies that every object and colour should be in its place;--the object, its exact space to stand on, and the colours in strict harmony and accordance; each possessing the exact _strength_ which belongs to its situation in the picture. relief, and occasionally chiaro-scuro, which, by its arrangement of light and shade, describes the necessary forms that are to be revealed: this may likewise be effected by light and dark _colours_ alone, or by opposition of colours and sharp contrasts. the highest point or mass of the light, from which the gradations radiate, should be kept very pure, allowing as little of the shade tint to insinuate itself as possible. if the lights of a picture are _few_, it will mainly contribute to its breadth and repose:--if _many_, or _scattered_, the result will be confusion. i say, to keep the leading mass of light pure and _clean_, should employ our deepest attention. when the attention is to be fixed to a particular object, the degree of power given to the accessories will alone establish its degree of consequence: but it must not be wholly insulated; those accessories, being the medium of its own importance, must contribute all to assist it to its place, without weakening its force or imparing its character; as the middle tints find their value and clearness only by the strength of the lights, and the depths of the darks. pictures, painted in a 'light key,' possess many advantages:-- great breadth of effect is produced by placing the principal mass of shadow on, or rather immediately under, the horizon; graduating upwards into the clouds, and downwards, in a long angle, to a broad light on the base line; on which a figure or any other object, however small, but darker than the rest, being placed, will produce an effect that has become extremely popular of late. this is equally applicable to landscape or sea pieces; and was a favourite arrangement of a. vandervelde. when the picture is mostly made up of half tint, his manner was to throw all the power of the palette into his figures; bringing them out strong, dark, and cutting on the foreground; and, in the retiring groups, diminishing the force as little as possible; keeping the shadows flat, and a little weaker in colour. this management produces one of the most powerful daylight effects, though not so ærial; but the sacrifice of the last is as nothing to the want of the former. atmospheric effect is scarcely missed when the whole is on so light a key, as the quantity of half tint employed renders it. most of the dutch landscape painters seem universally agreed on this arrangement, as having that beautiful contrast of force and softness we so often see in coast scenes, and leaving so large a space as two-thirds of the picture for the luminous forms of the clouds. broken heaths, road scenes, corn-fields, boats on the water, with their forcible and deep shadows, fishermen on the sands, all readily adapt themselves to this manner; which, likewise, from the light tone that pervades the whole, requires the strongest opposition and contrast of colour--so that the colours be carried well through the picture; that is, if the ground be warm, a figure in blue placed in the foreground may be carried out by being repeated in the blue of the water, and so into parts of the sky, &c. and, on the other hand, if the ground be cool grey, as in a river scene, the boats may be yellow, and the figures red, carried up and diffused into the warm lights of the sky, or striking on the sandy shore and distant buildings, and even reaching the birds in the air--all will help to convey the colours through the work. in working out this system, let the lights be bright, and their shadows strong and forcible, keeping the middle tints tender, airy, and delicate. a few trials on this plan will soon convince the student of the beauty and real look of daylight it has over many others. in examining the works of cuyp, when the picture is painted on a light key, he is sure to make use of very strong colour, to clear up and give vigour to the whole, in his figures; serving, at the same time, to invest the general mass with air, breadth, and extent. rembrandt thought it of more consequence to paint light, than the objects seen by it. 'titian's great care was to express the general colour, to preserve the masses of light and shade, and to give, by opposition, the idea of that solidity which is inseparable from natural objects. when these are preserved, though the work should possess no other merit, it will have, in a proper place, its complete effect; but where any of these are wanting, however minutely laboured the picture may be in detail, the whole will have a false, and even an unfinished appearance, at whatever distance, or in whatever light it can be shown. it is in vain to attend to the variations of tints, if in that attention, the general _hue_ is lost, or to finish ever so minutely the parts, if the masses are not observed, or the _whole_ not well put together. and those who will examine into the artifice, will find it to consist in the power of _generalizing_, and the shortness and simplicity of the means employed;' and in fixed principles, our general ideas predominating over our individual. rubens, in his splendid manner, involved all the schools--roman, dutch, and venetian! yet, with all this magnificence and variety, possessed repose. accident.--accident often comes in aid of invention. in nature, all objects by daylight are equally illumined; the painter has, therefore, always found it necessary to avail himself of accident, whenever it may occur: shadows, in particular, reflected upon one object by another; large floating masses of light or shade thrown across a mountain, a flat country, or an open sea, by the passing clouds as they sail by; flashes and streaks of light, as they struggle from between them, &c., are all adapted to work out the general effect. where the _forms_ of a composition are _insufficient_, this is the usual resource, these accessories generally supplying grandeur and elevation to the scene. all catching lights should be laid hold of with equal tenacity. the clearing off of a shower is particularly favourable to this useful auxiliary. dexterity and affectation. a contemptible species of affectation in the form of a _dashing dexterity_--used, in most instances, to confuse and mystify bad drawing, conceal ignorance of principles, and all the higher excellencies a painter should have studied and brought to aid his work--has been so widely diffused of late, that a notice of this splashing attainment may not be out of place in a work of this kind. i have heard of 'snatching a grace beyond the reach of art,' but could never comprehend its meaning. it is 'natural to be more captivated with what is brilliant than with what is solid, and to prefer splendid negligence to painful and humiliating exactness.' mere novelty and peculiarity, having no other merits, when it ceases to be new, it ceases to have value. that which is solely addressed to the _eye_, is certainly inferior to that which is addressed to the imagination. if too much indulgence is given to peculiarity, _mannerism_ will be sure to be the result! 'a facility in composing, a lively and masterly handling, are captivating qualities to young minds: they endeavour to imitate these dazzling excellencies, and, after much time spent in the frivolous pursuit, find, when too late, the difficulty of retreat; and there is scarce an instance of return to scrupulous labour, after the mind has been deceived by this fallacious mastery. by this useless industry, whilst boys, they have arrived at their _utmost perfection_; they have taken the shadow for the substance; and make the mechanical felicity the chief excellence of the art, whilst it is one of the most dangerous sources of corruption. they wish to find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain the reward of eminence by other means than those, which the indispensable rules of art have prescribed. but whatever the force of genius may be, there is no _easy_ method of becoming a good painter.' there is no mechanism in painting; for those, who by a clever handling, possess this quality to the greatest perfection, are rarely found to excel in the higher realities of art. it is to the _whole_--the absolute and entire impression--the disposition of pictorial matter and auxiliaries, that imply ability and power in their treatment. do not let the love of novelty induce you to leave the beaten path of excellence; for all endeavours to surprise and please by that which is uncommon or new, will be attended with defeat; a matter, oftener the result of idleness and caprice, than the striking effect of a mind well-regulated and devoted to study. style, manner, handling, are for the most part matters of tact, distinguishing one painter from another, quite as much as one man's manners are known from another's. where the inferior and subordinate pursuit of skill in _handling_ or execution is aimed at, it tends universally to form a _mannerist_; and this is the greatest evil of our time. instead of elevating the mind to the quality of the _whole_, it degenerates into an abject and curious species of imitation of the parts, or of some one thing in particular the artist feels he can do cleverly; sacrificing to this 'industrious idleness,' correctness of drawing, character, expression, and elevation of style. in a word, it is mechanics, and not art! grandeur, sublimity, simplicity, all fly from this one evil. style comprehends the whole of a picture, in all its mysterious or simple workings--its moral character--its elevation, or its degeneracy. decision, spirit, and freedom of execution and expertness of handling, opposed to feeble uncertainty, have great charms, in common with all excellencies; yet, so delusive is this species of fascination, that it becomes imperious to be guarded against it. the _end_ must not be sacrificed to the means! of backgrounds. 'one of the principal and most important parts of painting, is the nature and quality of backgrounds;' from which any round or solid body is to detach itself; and this may be so contrived that both may be of the same colour; 'because the convex sides of solid bodies do not receive the light in the same manner as the ground does, being lighter or darker than the ground.' different colours, or degrees of light in the background, can alone separate the object from it. they will become more detached as they differ from the colour of the object to be relieved. the greatest relief is acquired by a ground of a _neutral_, or undetermined colour. but the object that is to stand out from it, depends wholly on its light and shade for relief. according to the ground which surround colours, they will appear different to their natures. flesh will look palest on a red ground: and a pale colour, redder on a yellow ground: and so on, always deriving their character from the surrounding one. if any object in a composition does not sufficiently assert its place, instead of heightening the colour of it, it is generally more advisable, as the case may be, to subdue the power of its background. the outlines of figures should be sketched with either the shadow-colour, or the colour of the ground, on which they are laid; strengthening them according to their situations. a very useful resource, in painting, is often to look at your picture in a looking-glass, whose reflection is a _copy_ of the picture; and the picture, being a _copy_ from nature, a kind of analogy is established: they are both on even superfices, and both give the idea of something _beyond_ their superfices. in viewing your picture in this manner, keep one eye shut: seeing from both eyes surround the objects too much. looking at your picture through the medium of a glass, blackened on one side, will, in divesting it of colour, show only its light and shade. this is a capital way of ascertaining if the latter is right. in painting, it is a good plan to leave _all you can_ to the imagination! it is _flattering_ to the beholder; it gives him latitude for the exertion of his own mind; and _he_ will supply, better than _you_, what you wanted, entirely to his own satisfaction--and, of course, to yours: deprive him of this, and you seldom fail to imbue him with apathy. _his_ imagination assumes characters and forms of its own; you have set it painting: he _finishes_ your picture, and is happy, because he has had something to do with it; and he will not quarrel with you, lest he should blame himself. painting should possess 'brilliancy without gaudiness, solidity without harshness, truth without familiarity, and sweetness without insipidity; all conjoined in the greatest breadth of colour.' if a work possess the known and admitted excellencies of painting, although in the smallest and most moderate degree, it will have the peculiar appearance of _looking well_, which the want of them would quite invest with another character. the _faults_ of a great mind, capable of the greatest beauties, will never appear to have a vulgar origin. it is just possible a picture may possess no defects, nor any beauties; but he who thinks entirely for himself, will give to his work an appearance of originality; he will be consistent with _himself!_ even faults will appear with some lustre in those to whom they are quite natural. in conclusion, jealously endeavour to ascertain if any thing has been admitted, or omitted, that, consistent with these rules, may prejudice the general harmony of the work in the _ensemble_. if i have made use of any contradictory observations, it was because i was impressed with the usefulness of their application to the principle described; in which matter i may take shelter under the noblest authorities of the italian, english, or french, who have written on art. i likewise trust i have said nothing the student will have to unlearn. in a word, the grandest, the most exalted principle requires no more _time_ to become master of than the lowest and the worst! and, 'as no school ever excelled the dutch--combining in itself all the excellencies of the italian--painters should go to the dutch and flemish schools to learn the art of painting, as they would go to a grammar-school to learn languages.'--'a close examination of their works will give us that experience of the principles on which they wrought, in a _very_ short space of time, which cost them ages to ascertain. 'the frequent allusions which every one, who treats of any art, is obliged to make to others, in order to illustrate and confirm his principles, sufficiently show their near connexion and inseparable relation.' however, 'the great business of study is to form a mind, adapted and adequate to all times, and to all occasions; to which all nature is then laid open.' 'the _highest_ point of art is to _conceal_ itself: and the very praises we lavish on works that are 'true to nature,' only prove the perfection of art.' i have taken up the art as i found it in the practice of the most approved methods: nor have i attempted to support any paradoxes for the sake of novelty. theories herein investigated, and many rules here laid down, many loose and scattered suggestions and successful results, that 'pass current from one to another,' i have endeavoured to place in the readiest manner before the student, that they may become immediately available to his purpose, or occasionally refresh his memory, without caring whence they may be derived. even in the collecting of disjointed materials, a structure is formed every way calculated to abridge his labours and shorten the road, however carelessly thrown together; and will, in all probability, stimulate him to further investigation. improve every hour, and the mind will become variously enriched by systematic study: it will look through nature with a discriminating power, even to her minutest productions, but with a refinement of taste and skill of selection that will reject all that is unworthy. when small pretension finds a welcome, it usually arises from ignorance in those who patronize. these persons, in their turn, generally pay the penalty their errors or conceit bring upon them. the author of this work teaches upon the principles therein demonstrated. on water-colour. as the object of this work was, in the first intention, initiatory, i shall conclude it by addressing a few words to the student in water-colour painting;--the more especially as water colour embraces so many advantages, and as there is no elevated rank in art that it does not involve in its capabilities. after soaking and laying the paper,--an operation that must be _seen_ to be learned,--and assuming you have proceeded to the colouring, it will be essential that you use two palettes, or tiles; set one with the colours required separately, not allowing them to run together; then take sufficient colour up in the brush from each, and mix the tints on another, kept a little wet that they may mix well together;--cleaning this tile, as occasion may require, to make fresh tints on. in the management of the greys, allowing the colours to run into one another, will produce many accidental and useful tints. when too much colour has got on the paper, dip a thick short-haired brush in clean water, and wash into the paper with it, with sufficient force to blend them more, and remove the superfluous colour. if this method be not found sufficient, take a sponge, with very little clean water in it, and pass it lightly over, which will remove all hard edges, and greatly assist the atmospheric effect:--if this too much generalizes the colours, supply the sharp markings, as may be required, with a fine pointed sable, in their positive colours. this method is not only the quickest way of bringing a drawing into a finished state, but adds materially to its transparency and solidity; and may be done at any period of the work. a good master of the sponge will make several drawings, while one may be done with the brush alone. the colour will remove most easily when the surface of the drawing is previously wetted; taking great care, by keeping the sponge very clean, that none of the green tints float into the sky. one colour laid over another, to produce the required tint, is in most cases better than mixing the tint at once, as it tends more to procure that 'internal light' so desirable in water-colour painting--taking care the under colour is dry before the other is floated over it; and always allowing for the density of the colour beneath qualifying the hue of the one laid over it. thus, blue laid upon yellow, produces green; green over red, grey; and so on. the slightest quantity of prepared ox-gall will make the colours wash free from grease; triflingly reducing the brilliancy, but fixing the wash more permanently. _flatness_ of tint is a matter of great consequence, and of equal difficulty; and is considered a great excellence, as the clearness and beauty of the gradations mainly depend on it. all mechanical means to produce it will betray themselves;--regulated by any such principle, a blue sky would become a tea-tray! nature distinctly rejects all that is mechanical: skill alone will enable the student to overcome this difficulty, in addition to observing its process by a professor. meditate well the mixture before applying it; then dash it on with the greatest decision,--always at once, and not backwards and forwards, and the greatest clearness will be the result. the greater the diversity of colour, from the transparency of most colours in water, so much more will be its resemblance to nature. wiping out the lights, such as the foliage of trees, or any other forms required, is performed by first wetting the part or form to be taken out, with the brush--applied as it would be in painting--and, after the gloss on the water has subsided, with a clean piece of cotton rag or the pocket handkerchief, folded on the fore finger, the colour intended to be removed must be whisked out with some smart degree of force: and in the event of the light not coming out clean and sharp enough (from perhaps being too dry), the application of the india-rubber to the part will effect it. the colours intended are then laid over the parts so wiped out. of tints. making good tints has ever been a matter of extreme difficulty, great perseverance, and too often entire loss of time; and, in the event of success occasionally attending the student's exertions, it is a thousand to one he never gets them twice alike; for that which is done by _accident_ cannot be repeated. the very difficulty attending them, from want of knowledge of those colours that blend well and harmonize in their natures, and the many requisite to charge the memory with, renders them so easily forgotten, that few but professors ever achieve the object sought. to obviate this,--to save the student's time, that he may devote the more to the attainment of his pursuit,--that he may be enabled to tint a drawing in half an hour, when he would have spent three in making a good tint or two (presuming his capability to do it at all),--induced the author of this work, at a considerable outlay of time and expense, to form a box of tints, in permanent cakes, ready at once for use, and all the necessary purposes of landscape or other painting, and for sketching from nature without inconvenience or difficulty. as water-colour painting has experienced so much revolution of late, arising from its extensive capabilities,--the best drawings, or rather water-colour paintings, being produced by the balance of opaque and transparent colours,--those tints and mixtures that are found most useful in oil-painting, and most wanting in water, has engaged his particular attention. he has confided the making them solely to mr. charles smith, of marylebone-street, piccadilly. the tints are expressed on the cakes in numbers, which have reference to the coloured plates. in addition to which the following colours are those mostly used:-- indigo; to which may be added cobalt and french blue. indian red. venetian red. purple lake. madder lake. vermilion. burnt sienna. raw sienna. yellow ochre. gamboge, brown pink. raw umber. vandyke brown. ivory black. reference to the plates on colour. _plate ._--the sky is laid with tint no. ;--the walls and foreground are covered down with no. , varied here and there with burnt sienna;--the tiles and roof with no. ;--tints , and are mixed together, varied and floated over for the cool greys;--the figure, indigo and no. ; vermilion, ochre and burnt sienna. the greens are composed of indigo, gamboge and burnt sienna, with brown pink. the gallery is tint no. , floated over vandyke brown. cobalt and vandyke brown in the hollows. _plate ._--the sky is done with no. , and thin cobalt floated over: the horizon with no. , varied with venetian red: the orange brought down into the trees, and worked together with gamboge; the shadowed parts of which are put in with no. --repeated in the bases of the clouds. no. is worked into the cool greys of the middle space. the greens are varied with indigo, burnt sienna, gamboge and brown pink;--the brightest lights with yellow ochre: foreground with no. . _plate ._--the sky french blue and madder-lake;--distance with no. , heightened here and there with ochre;--middle space worked in with and --the greys with no. . cobalt in the hollows; warmed, in parts, with no. . boats done with no. , strengthened with vandyke brown;--the water slightly washed with no. , varied with the same and indigo;--steps and railing with nos. and . _plate ._--the sky is washed with indigo and madder-lake, kept grey towards the horizon;--the distant buildings with nos. , ;--no. is mixed with burnt sienna for the greys of the trees: the greens are composed of indigo, burnt sienna, raw sienna, venetian red, and gamboge;--the gravel with no. , a little burnt sienna, and white;--the shadows with no. ;--figures with positive colours;--foreground slightly washed with no. , varied with no. ;--the pedestal with no. , varied at the base with nos. and . _plate ._--the sky, indigo and madder lake: the clouds varied with nos. and , and floated over with cobalt: the warm lights with yellow ochre and burnt sienna;--horizon with cobalt and indigo;--the sands with no. , shaded with and ;--the mill with no. , lightly floated over with no. , and touched in parts with no. ;--the foreground brought down with brown pink;--the mill, on the left, painted _into_ with vandyke brown, indian-red, and no. ; the lights with no. , and roof with no. ; the sail, indian red and vandyke brown; figures, cobalt and vermilion, subdued with no. . _plate ._--the walls and pavement floated down with no. , and toned over with no. ;--the architectural markings with no. and cobalt, with a little no. in the darkest parts, to give them point;--hollows of the arches with no. , and no. worked in;--the window is all laid in with positive colours, brought down on the figures, which are subdued with no. ;--the altar, banners, priests' robes, books, &c., with chrome and white: their shadows with no. ;--the curtain with vandyke brown, venetian red, and burnt sienna. and here i cannot but express how much the arts and the public are indebted to the highly inventive genius of mr. hullmandel, for his numerous inventions and improvements in lithography; having, in a few years, by the most determined perseverance, industry, and singleness of purpose, brought the first hard, dry, and uncertain drawing on stone, through all its various improvements, until the introduction of the now well-known printing of the tint with modified lights; to which we are indebted for the many beautiful productions that have appeared of late; and thence to the extraordinary invention, now dawning on us, of making a _painting_ on stone, from which an impression is procured that may scarcely be articulated from a sepia drawing: enabling _painters_ to multiply their sketches _ad infinitum_, instead of being confined, as before, to the merely practiced pencil draughtsman. the plates of this work are indebted to his invention. description of the plates. after what has been said already, a lengthened description of the plates would be unnecessary. _plate _--has been described in reference to the article on composition; as plates and have, in the one on light and shade. _plate ._--the porch of chartres cathedral, has been referred to under the inquiry into accidental shadows. _plate ._--the temple of jupiter tonans, and the forum of nerva, have been noticed in like manner: as has likewise plate , an ancient wine-store in the rhætian alps. _plate ._--here are the extremes of hot and cold. the strongest colours are placed in the darks, from which they derive all the power of the palette, while the point is preserved by the figure in red. a warm light, surrounded by warm tints, has the greatest brilliancy when ably supported by the intervention of a cold one. the cool grey centre is repeated in the hollow of the door, the lower part of the figure, and carried out by the blue of the sky; while the warm colours are dispersed and diffused on the wooden gallery, the walls, the ground, and gathered up by the rich red of the woman's gown and the warm brown of the figure behind; the dark colour of which, being laid on the dark background, helps the woman into her forward position;--the warm colour, projected by the red gown, is again carried up by the cap and brown of the figure behind into the balcony, tiles, &c., until, after mingling in every possible way with the cool greys, it escapes by the walls; spreading its influence every where, and investing the greens of the vine and the foreground with its character. the high light on the wall is repeated on the linen, carried across by the figure in the gallery, and brought down by the figure and flowers in the foreground. the general tone of the work is warm;--the blues, greys and greens are used as a foil to give value to the warm colours, the shadows and middle tints: the greys are glazed warm, to preserve the richness of the general effect throughout. the reds and blues are combined of colours possessing the properties of each. the quantity of warm and cold colours are to be principally observed--the union of one part with another--preservation of the breadth, and the general harmony. _plate ._--a view in belgium.--the disturbed and heavy clouds sweeping across the country are kept of a low, subdued, but warm grey; intersecting the distant trees, and invading the middle space, until it is found among the greens of the foliage and grass of the foreground; the stones, the chalky road, &c., ending in the darks of the figures. the warm lights are scattered over the tops of the trees and sunny browns of the middle space and foreground, repeated in the lower part of the sky, and brought forward in the foliage and grass on the left; while the reds are gathered up in the branches and stems of the trees, and brought to a point in the figure on the right:--the white of the chalky road is carried into their trunks, the rock, and up into the clouds by the birds. the breadth is divided into two wedge-shaped forms, carried at an angle across the work, and up into the bank and trees on the left; opposed by the long stretching line of the horizon and round forms of the clouds and foliage,--balanced by the mass of rock on the other side. the harsh opposition of the cutting-lines of the foreground serves to attract the eye, while it reposes the distance. _plate ._--in this example, the darkest dark being of a warm brown, is brought up, by contrast, against the half dark in the distance, which is of a cold grey: it is then carried up into the dark markings of the houses, the roofs at the sides, and repeated on the right; brought down by the scaffolding over the steps, and woven throughout into the cool greys of the half shade, occupying nearly two-thirds of the subject, and carried, by the reflections of the boats, into the grey of the water and the blue of the sky;--the density of the barge, deepened by positive colour, clearing up all the half tints. the highest light, near the centre, is gradated along the distant buildings, and repeated in the warm red and yellow lights, catching at different intervals on the houses, until lost in the water. _plate ._--st. james's park and the horse guards.--this view was taken from the side of the column, looking from the steps towards the treasury. the two great masses, thrown at the boldest angle across the picture, the opposing lines broken up and varied by the round forms of the trees, and cutting it nearly in half, are divided between the bustle of the middle distance and the repose of the sky, the steps, the terraces, and the base of the column;--the colours employed in one division are made to invade the province of the other, until all are _placed_ by the bright red of the soldier's dress and darker markings of the figures in the foreground, repeated here and there as uniting links, and carried through by the figures in the distance; while the communicating principle is sustained between the reds, blues and yellows, by the colour of the sky and distant buildings being composed of all three. _plate ._--mills on a sea coast.--the large and varied portion of shadow, principally thrown into the wild uproar of the scudding clouds, is gathered together, and focussed by the strong and positive colour in the mill on the left, the stranded vessel, the horizon, the figures and dark markings in the foreground; and brought gradually down by the half shade into the cliff, the cottage, and the principal mill; and again carried up, by the agency of its primitive cause, to the highest parts of the clouds. the highest light is gathered up on the wall of the cottage, repeated in the accidental light on the retiring mill, the horizon, the figures on the sands, the birds in the air, &c., until it comes down to the chalky rocks and stones, mingling with the weedy greens of the foreground; the blues are carried down by the figures, and on which the reds are centred, and repeated in the unities of the tiles, collecting its force in the retiring mill, and insinuating itself into the distant figures, the sail and flag of the vessel, until lost in the warm colours of the clouds. the middle tints are kept much of the same strength to sustain the breadth, while the dark line of the horizon is graduated upwards and downwards for the same purpose. the shadow on the steps in the cliff is brought up against the light on the cottage to give it point; and the quantity of half shade that pervades the work is gathered up by the depths of the darks. this effect was observed at cayeux, in normandy. _plate ._--the chancel of a flemish church.--in this instance a number of positive, harmonizing and opposing colours, are thrown together and collected in the middle space; diffused, and carried out, by the intimacy of the union of their attributes, in the figures, the altar, the banners, &c., forming a cone of colour surrounded and reposed by warm grey. the greys are lost and found among the browns, insinuating themselves into the recesses and tracery on the walls, and every where influencing the warm colours. the figures, in red and blue, are placed in the gallery to disturb the form of the cone: while the highest light of the window intersects the deepest dark, which is repeated in the hollow of the porch, cutting the arch at the side. [illustration: plate ] [illustration: pl. viii] [illustration: plate ] [illustration: pl. x.] [illustration: pl xi] harry willson's general landscape tints. no. .--for foregrounds, and many parts of landscape; architecture; sands; roads, banks, lights of buildings (distant or near), shoal-water, corn-fields:--generally useful from its low brownish hue. no. .--for many of the above purposes; and, being deeper in tone, adapted for shadows to no. . no. .--darker parts of foregrounds, banks, broken earth, waves, bark, timber, rocks, coasts, &c., useful in buildings and architecture. may be beautifully and usefully varied with white. no. .--lights of mountains, rocks, trees, distant masses of foliage, figures and animals in light, autumnal tints in warm skies and sunsets;--applicable to most purposes of warm light, and to vary greens with. no. .--for almost every part of landscape or buildings; rich lights of earth in sunshine; interiors, drapery;--applicable to numerous purposes, near or distant, and to mix with and vary other colours. no. .--for skies in cloudy weather, and shadows of clouds;--various pearly greys are produced by its mixture with blues and lake. mixed with burnt sienna, it produces different degrees of warm browns. no. .--for shadows to mountains, distant clumps of foliage, drapery, &c., for mixing with general shadows: renders many beautiful tints by blending it with lakes blues and browns, especially with burnt sienna. no. .--used alone, in rocks, bark of trees, and many useful purposes; assumes a variety of browns when mixed with burnt sienna; and different greys, when added to the blues. no. .--useful in clouds, warm shadows, earth, mould;--mixed with cobalt, makes a good tint to vary other greys. no. .--for skies in fine weather, and to vary shadows of distant hills, and otherwise useful in subduing retiring parts of drawings. charles smith's, late smith & warner's, =superior improved moist water colours,= suitable for sketching from nature, which retain their moisture for a length of time, freely and readily give their full force without the usual delay attending the cake colours; they dry instantly on paper, and are free from mildew or cracking. =c. smith's water colours, finely prepared in cakes.= £. _s._ _d._ ultramarine burnt carmine carmine gall stone smalt purple madder pink madder intense blue intense brown french blue lemon yellow cobalt sepia ---- warm scarlet lake crimson lake purple lake brown madder indian yellow white, warranted permanent =c. smith's permanent moist white,= so celebrated for its permanency and harmless nature, being quite free from lead; useful as lights upon tinted paper, without ever losing its brilliancy of colour. all the following one shilling per cake. gamboge yellow ochre roman ochre yellow lake king's yellow italian pink pale chrome deep chrome orange chrome raw sienna burnt sienna brown pink red lead vermilion light red venetian red indian red dragon's blood antwerp blue prussian blue indigo verditer raw umber indian lake cappah brown burnt umber vandyke brown bistre cologne earth byrne's brown neutral tint payne's grey british ink ivory black blue black lamp black sap green prussian green emerald green verdigris olive green hooker's greens varley's orange ---- dark green ---- warm green ---- warm grey ---- purple grey ---- neutral tint *** the above colours kept in powder, bladders, and crude state. =willson's practical landscape tints.= c. smith, being of opinion that a set of practical landscape tints were required, apart from the above positive colours, engaged the services of the author of this work to assist in forming them, which is intended to accompany his instructions for their use, already printed. _see page ._ they are now ready, and can be had by themselves, in a box, price _s._; or, with sixteen other general colours added, inclusive of french blue, pink madder, cobalt, &c., £ : _s._ , marylebone street, piccadilly, the end of the quadrant, regent street, london. =water colour, fitted up in boxes, etc.= £. _s._ _d._ mahogany slide box, with colours and brushes ---- ditto ---- ditto ---- ditto mahogany lock box, with colours, brushes, &c. ---- colours, drawer, &c. ---- ditto ---- ditto mahogany lock box, with colours, slab, glass, &c. ---- colours, drawer, &c. ---- ditto ---- ditto mahogany best box, with colours, glass slab, &c. ---- ditto ---- ditto mahogany best box, with colours, chalks, &c. ---- ditto ---- ditto rosewood best box, with colours, brushes, &c. ---- colours, chalk, &c. ---- ditto ---- ditto inlaid rose and satin wood boxes, colours, &c. ---- ditto ---- ditto mahogany miniature desk, with colours, brushes, &c. portable ditto, extra colours boxes and cabinets fitted up with every requisite for painting in oil and water, from £ _s._ to mahogany boxes, fitted up with oil, powder and body colours mahogany boxes of liquid colours, for velvet and poonah painting mahogany boxes, with slab and indian ink mahogany and tin boxes, with chalks &c., complete tin boxes fitted up with moist colours, &c. =superior hair pencils and brushes,= made of the finest sable hair, camel's hair, &c., by the most perfect english and french artists. the largest possessing the fine elastic points of the smallest, and with the advantage of containing a much greater quantity of colour. red and brown sable hair pencils camel hair and fitch ditto sable and camel hair pencils for miniature painting sable and camel hair writers french hog and goat hair tools, round and flat sable, fitch, and camel hair tools, round and flat badger tools, for blending, &c. badger, fitch, hog, and camel hair brushes, round and flat, for varnishing a variety of french sable, camel hair, and other brushes water colour softeners ivory cases, to protect the points of hair pencils large hair pencils, for washing in clouds, &c. proutonian sables, the largest ever made. =c. smith's indelible coloured inks,= rembrandt's and prout's favourite tints for pen sketching, &c. sketches made in these inks can be made drawings, coloured over at any time without fear of disturbing the original sketch; particularly adapted for prout's architectural subjects, such as the elaborate work of churches, cathedrals, and buildings of venice, &c. =c. smith's pure cumberland lead pencils,= equal to any made. f for general use ff bold sketching hb middle shade b shading bb black shading bbb extra shading hhhh finest lines hhh engineering hh architecture h fine outline common pencils for schools, pocket-book pencils, various. also, mordan's, brookman and langdon's, and dobbs's pencils. , marylebone street, piccadilly, the end of the quadrant, regent street, london. =solid sketch books.= with compressed leaves, made of thin and thick white, drab, yellow, and grey drawing papers, forming a solid packet of thirty or forty leaves, each of which can be easily separated from the others by the introduction of a pen-knife underneath. =wove and cartridge drawing papers.= demy by medium -- royal -- super royal -- imperial -- colombier -- atlas -- double elephant -- antiquarian -- extra antiquarian -- emperor, the largest size paper, inches by inches. rough, extra-thick, tinted, and hot pressed papers, drawing cartridge papers, for architects, &c., crayon, tinted, london and bristol boards, english and french tracing papers, to in. by in. =harding's new drawing paper,= made pure and perfectly free from any chemical agency that will tend to fade the colours or alter their tint. recommended to those who paint with body colours, &c. =c. smith's materials for sketching in water colours.= compressed paper, in packets sketching books of all kinds sketching folios and portfolios albums and scrap books sketching books, with boxes attached sketching desks for the neck parlour's patent sketching instrument and camera lucidas and obscuras desks, with colours, &c., for ditto stands and tables for ditto camp and other seats for sketching japanned tin boxes, with moist colours, cups, bottles, &c., for sketching fixed sketching inks and reed pens ditto, in cases for travelling, &c. drawing and sketching boards liquid sepia, for drawing leather cases, for colours, brushes, &c. creta lævis crayons, or different colours that work dry or with water portable cases, containing a seat, book, box, &c. for sketching artists' umbrellas, to shade the sun seat and table combined, for sketching india rubber water bottles india ink of the finest quality, warranted genuine =c. smith's superior new drawing boards,= for straining thick or thin drawing paper more efficiently, and much more easily, without pasting or cutting; also fitted up with colours, brushes, saucers, &c. =c. smith's materials for sketching and painting in oil colours.= prepared paper and millboards, for sketching from nature, &c. prepared panels and cloths, and tickens on or off frames tin boxes for oil colours, &c. portable ditto for sketching oil colours in cakes and bottles (see wilson's letter) tin oil cups, and cups for washing brushes steel, ivory, and horn palette knives mahogany and satin wood palettes bladder colours, powder colours, and raw colours rack, folding, and upright easels desk and table easels nut, poppy, linseed, and drying oils mastic, copal, and spirit varnishes turpentine gold size, asphaltum and m'guelph glass, stone, and earthen slabs and mullers maul or rest sticks charcoal and pipe clay bladder colour nobs oil box and easel combined c. smith's new invented telescope portable cane easels, extremely light, for sketching compressed oil papers for sketches , marylebone street, piccadilly, the end of the quadrant, regent street, london. =new camera obscuras.= for sketching, so contrived, that any person with a slight knowledge of drawing can use them without difficulty, straining the sight, or previous practice. the images, being reflected on paper, require nothing more than tracing their outlines. =miscellaneous materials.= mathematical instruments dividers and compasses tee squares and triangles flat, parallel and stationer's rulers tracers, erasing and pen knives drawing pins and indian glue crow quills and pens deal and mahogany clamped boards boxes of juvenile colours, &c. conte's black, white, and red chalks vancouver's cement for mending china black lead powder, and crayons for stumping best italian black, white, and red chalks, in crayons and pencils lithographic and french chalks cabinet saucers in cases indian rubber and sponge black lead, in cakes, for mezzotinting indelible marking ink, for linen ox gall, in pots and liquid gold and silver, in shells, saucers, and leaves gold, silver, copper, and green bronzes ivories for miniature painting gum water for ditto, &c. leather, paper, and cork stamps improved holders and portcrayons harding's silver crayon holders oriental tinting paper white and coloured tissue paper sponge pencils =c. smith's new invented water-colour cream.= a m'guelph, or medium, for using with water-colours, either transparent or semi-opaque, for obtaining opaque masses of colour or glazing. drying slower than water, and not so fluid, enables the touch to be preserved where required without hard ridges. soft swiss and french crayons harding's lithographic drawing books sketches, tinted paper, &c. fixing liquid for chalk drawings, &c. varley's and hayter's perspectives cooper's studies of cattle modelling tools leather and paper pencil cases finest quality indian ink best clear vellum ink stones and saucers slabs, tiles, and palettes in great variety ivory and other pencil racks glass frames for tracing graining combs photogenic materials patterns for irregular lines fixing liquid for chalk drawings, &c. new perspective parallel rulers prout's hints on light, shadow, &c. ---- figures for landscapes, &c. merimeé's oil painting cawse's ditto howard's sketcher's manual ---- on colour laporte's studies of trees a great variety of juvenile lithographic drawing books of landscapes, animals, and the human figure, and other popular works on drawing and painting. =shade's drawing and perspective models.= for the practice of young students in obtaining a knowledge of the first rudiments of perspective drawing, light and shade, &c. with numerous illustrations explanatory of the infinite variety of useful drawing studies they are capable of forming together. to be had complete in boxes, price _s._ _d._ and £ _s._ a variety of miniature models of churches, cottages, castles, &c. &c.; lent out for the use of early in-door landscape students, as a substitute for nature. wholesale, retail, and for exportation. _october, ._ , marylebone street, piccadilly, the end of the quadrant, regent street, london. j. d. harding's works, published by tilt and bogue. harding's drawing book, . sketches in sepia and chalk, partly original and partly selected. six nos. s. d. each; half morocco, s. sketches at home and abroad, containing more than sixty views, tinted in imitation of the original drawings. imperial folio, half-bound morocco, £ . s. *** this splendid work has been entirely drawn on stone by mr. harding _himself_, and printed under his immediate inspection. the resemblance to the original sketches is complete, and each subject may be considered as a _bonâ fide_ and first-rate drawing. elementary art: the use of the lead-pencil advocated and explained. new edition. imperial to. cloth, price £ . s. *** the object of this work is to teach the young student and the amateur, by the practical use of the simplest (but most valuable) instrument in art--_the lead-pencil_--how they may study nature and acquire art with the certainty of eventual success, and also to furnish them with assistance to which they may continually refer in the absence of their master. the work is illustrated by twenty-eight lithographic drawings by mr. harding, and he has followed as nearly as possible the course which his experience in actual instruction has suggested to him. harding's drawing book, . each number of this work contains four studies, including in the whole a great variety of subjects. the whole are printed on india paper, price s. each part; or s. neatly half-bound. harding's drawing book, . a series of advanced studies, printed in mr. harding's new tinted style. imperial to. six nos. s. each; or, neatly half-bound morocco, s. harding's portfolio. twenty-four highly-finished sketches, tinted in exact imitation of the original drawings. half-morocco, price s.; or, coloured, s. d. harding's early drawing book, consisting entirely of elementary studies for beginners. six nos. s. d. each; or, bound in cloth, s. d. new and popular drawing-books, published by tilt and bogue. prout's microcosm; or artist's sketch-book of groups of figures, shipping, and other picturesque objects. by samuel prout, f.s.a. printed in tints. imperial to. six nos. s. each, or, neatly bound, s. prout's elementary drawing book of landscapes, buildings, &c. six nos. s. d.; cloth, s. d. sketch book of shipping and craft. by w. m. grundy. in progressive studies. six nos. s. d.; cloth, s. d. andrew's progressive drawing book of flowers. six nos. coloured, s. d.; cloth, very neat, s. barraud's studies of animals. lithographed by fairland. six nos. large to. s.; or coloured, s. julien's studies of heads. selected or drawn from nature. six nos. s,; cloth, s. worsley's little drawing book. easy studies in landscapes, houses, &c. fourteen nos. d.; or two vols, cloth, s. each. zeitter's studies of animals and rustic groups. six. nos. s.; cloth, s. d. the little sketch book. very easy studies in landscapes, figures, &c. by g. childs. new and improved edition, fourteen nos. d.; or in vols, cloth, s. each. fairland's juvenile artist. figures, landscapes, and shipping. eight nos. s.; or cloth, s. cooper's studies of animals. eight nos. s.; or s. bound. lessons in flower painting. drawn and coloured after nature, by james andrews. six nos. s. d.; cloth gilt, s. fairland's drawing book of the human figure. in a series of progressive studies. twelve nos. s.; or vols, cloth, s. each. child's elementary drawing book. studies from nature, in progressive lessons. eight nos. d.; cloth, s. d. harley's landscape drawing book. six nos. s.; cloth, s. d. phillips' familiar life. etchings of figures, groups, &c. three nos. s. d. * * * * * transcriber's notes: obvious punctuation errors repaired. text uses both "development" and "developement." contents, " " changed to " " (of backgrounds ) page , "park-corner" changed to "park corner" (park-gates at hyde park corner) page , "invole" changed to "involve" (light and shade may involve) page , "jupitor" changed to "jupiter" (temple of jupiter tonans) _artist-biographies._ dÜrer. boston: houghton, osgood, and company. the riverside press, cambridge. . copyright. by james r. osgood & co. . franklin press: rand, avery, and company, boston. artist-biographies. publishers' announcement. the growth of a popular interest in art and its history has been very rapid during the last decade of american life, and is still in progress. this interest is especially directed towards the lives of artists themselves; and a general demand exists for a uniform series of biographies of those most eminent, which shall possess the qualities of reliability, compactness, and cheapness. to answer this demand the present series has been projected. the publishers have intrusted its preparation to mr. m. f. sweetser, whose qualities of thoroughness in research and fidelity in statement have been proved in other fields of authorship. it is believed that by the omission of much critical and discursive matter commonly found in art biographies, an account of an artist's life may be presented, which is at once truthful and attractive, within the limits prescribed for these volumes. the series will be published at the rate of one or two volumes each month, at cents each volume, and will contain the lives of the most famous artists of mediæval and modern times. it will include the lives of many of the following:-- raphael, claude, van dyck, michael angelo, poussin, gainsborough, leonardo da vinci, delacroix, reynolds, titian, delaroche, wilkie, tintoretto, greuze, lawrence, paul veronese, dürer, landseer, guido, rubens, turner, murillo, rembrandt, west, velasquez, holbein, copley, salvator rosa, teniers, allston. preface. this little volume presents an account of the life of one of the noblest and most versatile artists of germany, with a passing glance at the activities of northern europe at the era of the reformation. the weird and wonderful paintings of dürer are herein concisely described, as well as the most famous and characteristic of his engravings and carvings; and his quaint literary works are enumerated. it has also been thought advisable to devote considerable space to details about nuremberg, the scene of the artist's greatest labors; and to reproduce numerous extracts from his fascinating venetian letters and lowland journals. the modern theory as to dürer's wife and his home has been accepted in this work, after a long and careful examination of the arguments on both sides. it is pleasant thus to be able to aid in the rehabilitation of the much-slandered agnes, and to have an oppressive cloud of sorrow removed from the memory of the great painter. the chief authorities used in the preparation of this new memoir are the recent works of dr. thausing and mr. w. b. scott, with the series of articles now current in "the portfolio," written by professor colvin. mrs. heaton's biography has also been studied with care; and other details have been gathered from modern works of travel and art-criticism, as well as from "the art journal," "la gazette des beaux arts," and other periodicals of a similar character. m. f. sweetser. contents. chapter i. - . page the activities of nuremberg.--the dürer family.--early years of albert.--his studies with wohlgemuth.--the _wander-jahre_ chapter ii. - . dürer marries agnes frey.--her character.--early engravings. --portraits.--"the apocalypse."--death of dürer's father. --drawings chapter iii. - . the journey to venice.--bellini's friendship.--letters to pirkheimer.--"the feast of rose garlands."--bologna.--"adam and eve."--"the coronation of the virgin" chapter iv. - . dürer's house.--his poetry.--sculptures.--the great and little passions.--life of the virgin.--plagiarists.--works for the emperor maximilian chapter v. - . st. jerome.--the melencolia.--death of dürer's mother.--raphael. --etchings.--maximilian's arch.--visit to augsburg chapter vi. - . dürer's tour in the netherlands.--his journal.--cologne.--feasts at antwerp and brussels.--procession of notre dame.--the confirmatia.--zealand journey.--ghent.--martin luther chapter vii. - . nuremberg's reformation.--the little masters.--glass-painting. --architecture.--letter to the city council.--"art of mensuration." --portraits.--melanchthon chapter viii. - . "the four apostles."--dürer's later literary works.--four books of proportion.--last sickness and death.--agnes dürer.--dürer described by a friend albert dÜrer. chapter i. the activities of nuremberg.--the dürer family.--early years of albert.--his studies with wohlgemuth.--the _wander-jahre._ the free imperial city of nuremberg, in the heart of franconia, was one of the chief centres of the active life of the middle ages, and shared with augsburg the great trans-continental traffic between venice and the levant and northern europe. its municipal liberties were jealously guarded by venerable guilds and by eminent magistrates drawn from the families of the merchant-princes, forming a government somewhat similar to the venetian council. the profits of a commercial prosperity second only to that of the italian ports had greatly enriched the thrifty burghers, aided by the busy manufacturing establishments which made the city "the birmingham of the middle ages." public and private munificence exerted itself in the erection and adornment of new and splendid buildings; and the preparation of works of art and utility was stimulated on all sides. it was the era of the discovery of america, the revival of classic learning, and the growth of free thought in matters pertaining to religion. so far had the inventions of the artisans contributed to the comfort of the people, that pope pius ii. said that "a nuremberg citizen is better lodged than the king of scots;" and so widely were they exported to foreign realms, that the proud proverb arose that "nuremberg's hand goes through every land." nuremberg still stands, a vast mediæval relic, in the midst of the whirl and activity of modern germany, rich and thriving, but almost unchanged in its antique beauty. the narrow streets in which dürer walked are flanked, as then, by quaint gable-roofed houses, timber-fronted, with mullioned windows and arching portals. in the faded and venerable palaces of the fifteenth century live the descendants of the old patrician families, cherishing the memories and archives of the past; and the stately gothic churches are still rich in religious architecture, and in angular old byzantine pictures and delicate german carvings. on the hill the castle rears its ponderous ramparts, which have stood for immemorial ages; and the high towers along the city walls have not yet bowed their brave crests to the spirit of the century of boulevards and railroads. with two essentials of civilization, paper and printing-presses, nuremberg supplied herself at an early day. the first paper-mill in germany was established here in ; and its workmen were obliged to take an oath never to make paper for themselves, nor to reveal the process of manufacture. they went out on a strike when the mill was enlarged, but the authorities imprisoned them until they became docile once more. koberger's printing-house contained twenty-four presses, and employed over a hundred men, printing not only bibles and breviaries, but also chronicles, homilies, poems, and scientific works. as the aldine press attracted many authors and scholars to venice, so koberger's teeming press led several german literati to settle at nuremberg. for the four first years of dürer's life, the wonderful mathematician and astronomer regiomontanus dwelt here, and had no less than twenty-one books printed by koberger. his numerous inventions and instruments awakened the deepest interest in the nuremberg craftsmen, and stimulated a fruitful spirit of inquiry for many years. the clockmakers of nuremberg were famous for their ingenious productions. watches were invented here in the year , and were long known as "nuremberg eggs." the modern composition of brass was formed by erasmus ebner; wire-drawing machinery also was a nuremberg device; the air-gun was invented by hobsinger; the clarionet, by denner; and the church-organs made here were the best in germany. there were also many expert metal-workers and braziers; and fifty master-goldsmiths dwelt in the town, making elegant and highly artistic works, images, seals, and medals, which were famous throughout europe. the most exquisite flowers and insects, and other delicate objects, were reproduced in filagree silver; and the first maiolica works in northern europe were also founded here. isolated, like the ducal cities of italy, from the desolating wars of the great powers of europe, and like them also growing rapidly in wealth and cultivation, nuremberg afforded a secure refuge for art and its children. in dürer's day the great churches of st. sebald, st. lawrence, and our lady were finished; peter vischer executed the exquisite and unrivalled bronze shrine of st. sebald; and adam kraft completed the fairy-like sacrament-house, sixty feet high, and "delicate as a tree covered with hoar-frost." intimate with these two renowned artificers was lindenast, "the red smith," who worked skilfully in beaten copper; and their studies were conducted in company with vischer's five sons, who, with their wives and children, all dwelt happily at their father's house. vischer lived till a year after dürer's death, but there is no intimation that the two artists ever met. another eminent craftsman was the unruly veit stoss, the marvellous wood-carver, many of whose works remain to this day; and there was also hans beheim, the sculptor, "an honorable, pious, and god-fearing man;" and bullman, who "was very learned in astronomy, and was the first to set the theoria planetarum in motion by clockwork;" and he who made the great alarm-bell, which was inscribed, "i am called the mass and the fire bell: hans glockengeiser cast me: i sound to god's service and honor." what shall we say also of hartmann, dürer's pupil, who invented the measuring-rod; schoner, the maker of terrestrial globes; donner, who improved screw machinery; and all the skilful gun-makers, joiners, carpet-workers, and silk-embroiderers? there was also the burgher martin behaim, the inventor of the terrestrial globe, who anticipated columbus by sailing eastward across the pacific ocean, passing through the straits of magellan and discovering brazil, as early as . in germany, as in italy, the studio of the artist, full of pure and lofty ideals, had hardly yet evolved itself from the workshop of the picture-manufacturer. nuremberg's chief artists at this time were michael wohlgemuth, dürer's master; lucas kornelisz, also called ludwig krug, who, though a most skilful engraver, was sometimes forced to adopt the profession of a cook in order to support himself; and matthias zagel, who was expert in both painting and engraving. still another was the venetian jacopo de' barbari, or jacob walch, "the master of the caduceus," a dexterous engraver and designer, whom dürer alludes to in his venetian and netherland writings. the art of engraving had been invented early in the fifteenth century, and was developing rapidly and richly toward perfection. the day of versatile artists had arrived, when men combined the fine and industrial arts in one life, and devoted themselves to making masterpieces in each department. the northern nations, unaided by classic models and traditions, were developing a new and indigenous æsthetic life, slow of growth, but bound to succeed in the long run. the literary society of dürer's epoch at nuremberg was grouped in the _sodalitas literaria rhenana_, under the learned conrad celtes, who published a book of latin comedies, pure in latinity and lax in morals, which he mischievously attributed to the abbess roswitha. pirkheimer and the monk chelidonius also belonged to this sodality. other contemporary literati of the city were cochläus, luther's satirical opponent; the hebraist osiander; venatorius, who united the discordant professions of poetry and mathematics; the provost pfinzing, for whose poem of _tewrdannkh_, dürer's pupil schäuffelein made illustrations; baumgärtner, melanchthon's friend; veit dietrich, the reformer; and joachim camerarius, the latinist. but the most illustrious of nuremberg's authors at that time was the cobbler-poet, hans sachs, a radical in politics and religion, who scourged the priests and the capitalists of his day in songs and satires which were sung and recited by the workmen of all germany. he himself tells us that he wrote , master-songs, comedies and tragedies, devotional and love songs, and , fables, tales, and miscellaneous poems; and others say that his songs helped the reformation as much as luther's preaching. thus the activities of mechanics, art, and literature pressed forward with equal fervor in the quaint old franconian city, while albert dürer's life was passing on. "abroad and far off still mightier things were doing; copernicus was writing in his observatory, vasco di gama was on the southern seas." "i, albrecht dürer the younger, have sought out from among my father's papers these particulars of him, where he came from, and how he lived and died holily. god rest his soul! amen." in this manner the pious artist begins an interesting family history, in which it is stated that the dürers were originally from the romantic little hungarian hamlet of eytas, where they were engaged in herding cattle and horses. anthony dürer removed to the neighboring town of jula, where he learned the goldsmith's art, which he taught to his son albrecht, or albert, while his other sons were devoted to mechanical employments and the priesthood. albert was not content to stay in sequestered jula, and, wandering over germany and the low countries, at last came to nuremberg, where he settled in , in the service of the goldsmith hieronymus haller. this worthy haller and his wife kunigund, the daughter of oellinger of weissenberg, at that time had an infant daughter; and as she grew up albert endeared himself to her to such purpose that, in , when barbara had become "a fair and handy maiden of fifteen," he married her, being forty years old himself. during the next twenty-four years she bore him eighteen children, seven daughters and eleven sons, of whose births, names, and godparents the father made careful descriptions. three only, albert, andreas, and hans, arrived at years of maturity. it may well be believed that the poor master-goldsmith was forced to work hard and struggle incessantly to support such a great family; and his portrait shows that the hand-to-mouth existence of so many years had told heavily and left its imprint on his weary and careworn face. yet he had certain sources of peace and gentleness in his life, and never sank into moroseness or selfishness. let us quote the tender and reverent words of his son: "my father's life was passed in great struggles and in continuous hard work. with my dear mother bearing so many children, he never could become rich, as he had nothing but what his hands brought him. he had thus many troubles, trials, and adverse circumstances. but yet from every one who knew him he received praise, because he led an honorable christian life, and was patient, giving all men consideration, and thanking god. he indulged himself in few pleasures, spoke little, shunned society, and was in truth a god-fearing man. my dear father took great pains with his children, bringing them up to the honor of god. he made us know what was agreeable to others as well as to our maker, so that we might become good neighbors; and every day he talked to us of these things, the love of god and the conduct of life." albert dürer was the third child of albert the elder and barbara hallerin, and was born on the morning of the st of may, . the house in which the dürers then lived was a part of the great pile of buildings owned and in part occupied by the wealthy pirkheimer family, and was called the _pirkheimer hinterhaus_. it fronted on the winkler strasse of nuremberg, and was an ambitious home for a craftsman like albert. the presence of antonius koberger, the famous book-printer, as godfather to the new-born child, shows also that the dürers occupied an honorable position in the city. the pirkheimers were then prominent among the patrician families of southern germany, renowned for antiquity, enormously wealthy through successful commerce, and honored by important offices in the state. the infant willibald pirkheimer was of about the same age as the young albert dürer; and the two became close companions in all their childish sports, despite the difference in the rank of their families. when the goldsmith's family moved to another house, at the foot of the castle-hill, five years later, the warm intimacy between the children continued unchanged. the instruction of albert in the rudiments of learning was begun at an early age, probably in the parochial school of st. sebald, and was conducted after the singular manner of the schools of that day, when printed books were too costly to be intrusted to children. he lived comfortably in his father's house, and daily received the wise admonitions and moral teachings of the elder albert. his friendship for willibald enabled him to learn certain elements of the higher studies into which the young patrician was led by his tutors; and his visits to the pirkheimer mansion opened views of higher culture and more refined modes of life. albert was enamoured with art from his earliest years, and spent many of his leisure hours in making sketches and rude drawings, which he gave to his schoolmates and friends. the imhoff collection had a drawing of three heads, done in his eleventh year; the posonyi collection claimed to possess a madonna of his fifteenth year; and the british museum has a chalk-drawing of a woman holding a bird in her hand, whose first owner wrote on it, "this was drawn for me by albert dürer before he became a painter." the most interesting of these early works is in the albertina at vienna, and bears the inscription: "this i have drawn from myself from the looking-glass, in the year , when i was still a child.--albert dÜrer." it shows a handsome and pensive boy-face, oval in shape, with large and tender eyes, filled with solemnity and vague melancholy; long hair cut straight across the forehead, and falling over the shoulders; and full and pouting lips. it is faulty in design, but shows a considerable knowledge of drawing, and a strong faculty for portraiture. the certain sadness of expression tells that the schoolboy had already become acquainted with grief, probably from the straitened circumstances of his family, and the melancholy deaths of so many brothers and sisters. the great mystery of sorrow was full early thrown across the path of the solemn artist. this portrait was always retained by dürer as a memorial of his childhood. he says of his father, "for me, i think, he had a particular affection; and, as he saw me diligent in learning, he sent me to school. when i had learned to write and read, he took me home again, with the intention of teaching me the goldsmith's work. in this i began to do tolerably well." he was taken into the goldsmith's workshop in his thirteenth year, and remained there two years, receiving instruction which was not without value in his future life, in showing him the elements of the arts of modelling and design. the accuracy and delicacy of his later plastic works show how well he apprehended these ideas, and how far he acquired sureness of expression. the elder albert was a skilful master-workman, highly esteemed in his profession, and had received several important commissions. it is said that the young apprentice executed under his care a beautiful piece of silver-work representing the seven agonies of christ. "but my love was towards painting, much more than towards the goldsmith's craft. when at last i told my father of my inclination, he was not well pleased, thinking of the time i had been under him as lost if i turned painter. but he left me to have my will; and in the year , on st. andrew's day, he settled me apprentice with michael wohlgemuth, to serve him for three years. in that time god gave me diligence to learn well, in spite of the pains i had to suffer from the other young men." thus dürer describes his change in life, and the embarkation on his true vocation, as well as the reluctance of the elder albert to allow his noble and beloved boy to pass out from his desolated household into other scenes, and away from his companionship. wohlgemuth was one of the early religious painters who stood at the transition-point between the school of cologne and that of the van eycks, or between the old pietistic traditions of byzantine art and the new ideas of the art of the northern reformation. the conventionalisms of the rhenish and franconian paintings were being exchanged for a fresher originality and a truer realism; and the pictures of this time curiously blended the old and the new. wohlgemuth seems to have considered art as a money-getting trade rather than a high vocation, and his workroom was more a shop than a studio. he turned out countless madonnas and other religious subjects for churches and chance purchasers, and also painted chests and carved and colored images of the saints, many of which were executed by his apprentices. a few of his works, however, were done with great care and delicacy, and show a worthy degree of sweetness and simplicity. evidently the young pupil gained little besides a technical knowledge of painting from this master,--the mechanical processes, the modes of mixing and applying colors, the chemistry of pigments, and a certain facility in using them. it was well that the influences about him were not powerful enough to warp his pure and original genius into servile imitations of decadent methods. his hands were taught dexterity; and his mind was left to pursue its own lofty course, and use them as its skilful allies in the new conquests of art. wood-engraving was also carried on in wohlgemuth's studio, and it is probable that dürer here learned the rudiments of this branch of art, which he afterwards carried to so high a perfection. some writers maintain that his earliest works in this line were done for the famous "nuremberg chronicle," which was published in by wohlgemuth and pleydenwurf. the three years which were spent in wohlgemuth's studio were probably devoted to apprentice-work on compositions designed by the master, who was then about fifty years old, and at the summit of his fame. but few of dürer's drawings now existing date from this epoch, one of which represents a group of horsemen, and another the three swiss leaders, fürst, melchthal, and staufacher. the beautiful portrait of dürer's father, which is now at florence, was executed by the young artist in , probably to carry with him as a souvenir of home. mündler says, "for beauty and delicacy of modelling, this portrait has scarcely been surpassed afterwards by the master, perhaps not equalled." it was claimed by certain old biographers that the eminent martin schongauer of colmar was dürer's first master; but this is now contested, although it is evident that his pictures had a powerful effect on the youth. schongauer was the greatest artist and engraver that germany had as yet produced, and exerted a profound influence on the art of the rhineland. he renewed the fantastic conceits and grotesque vagaries which the papal artists of cologne had suppressed as heathenish, and prepared the way for, or perhaps even suggested, the weird elements of dürer's conceptions. at the same time he passed back of his netherland art-education, and studied a mystic benignity and dreamy spirituality suggestive of the umbrian painters, with whose chief, the great perugino, martin was acquainted. herein dürer's works were in strong contrast with schongauer's, and showed the new spirit that was stirring in the world. next to schongauer, the great italian artist mantegna exercised the strongest influence upon dürer, who studied his bold and austere engravings with earnest admiration, showing his traits in many subsequent works. probably he met the famous mantuan painter during the _wander-jahre_, in italy; and at the close of his venetian journey he was about to pay a visit of homage to him, when he heard of his death. during his three years of study we have seen that the delicate and sensitive youth suffered much from the reckless rudeness and jeering insults of his companions, rough hand-workers who doubtless failed to understand the poignancy of the torments which they inflicted on the sad-eyed son of genius. but his home was near at hand, and the tender care of his parents, always beloved. how often he must have wandered through the familiar streets of nuremberg, with his dreamy artist-face and flowing hair, and studied the gothic palaces, the fountains adorned with statuary, and the rich treasures of art in the great churches! beyond the tall-towered town, danger lurked on every road; but inside the gray walls was peace and safety, and no free lances nor marauding men-at-arms could check the aspiring flight of the youth's bright imagination. "and when the three years were out, my father sent me away. i remained abroad four years, when he recalled me; and, as i had left just after easter in , i returned home in just after whitsuntide." thus albert describes the close of his _lehr-jahre_, or labor-years, and the entrance upon his _wander-jahre_, or travel-years. according to a german custom, still prevalent in a modified degree, the youth was obliged to travel for a long period, and study and practise his trade or profession in other cities, before settling for life as a master-workman. unfortunately all that dürer records as to these eventful four years is given in the sentences above; and we can only theorize as to the places which he visited, and his studies of the older art-treasures of europe. some authors believe that a part of the _wander-jahre_ was spent in italy, and dr. thausing, dürer's latest and best biographer, clearly proves this theory by a close study of his notes and sketches. others claim with equal positiveness, and less capability of proof, that they were devoted to the low countries. it is certain that he abode at colmar in , where he was honorably received by gaspar, paul, and louis, the three brothers of martin schongauer. the great martin had died some years before; but many of his best paintings were preserved at colmar, and were carefully studied by dürer. at a later day he wandered through the rhineland to basle, and spent his last year at strasbourg. his portraits of his master and mistress in the latter city were dated in , and pertained to the imhoff collection. his portrait painted by himself in was procured at rome by the hofrath beireis, and described by goethe. it shows a bright and vigorous face, full of youthful earnestness and joy, rich, harmonious, and finely executed, though thinly colored. he is attired in a blue-gray cloak with yellow strings, an embroidered shirt whose sleeves are bound with peach-colored ribbons, and a purple cap; and holds a piece of the blue flower called _manns-treue_, or man's-faith. chapter ii. dürer marries agnes frey.--her character.--early engravings. --portraits.--"the apocalypse."--death of dürer's father.--drawings. "and when my _wander-jahre_ was over, hans frey treated with my father, and gave me his daughter, by name the _jungfrau_ agnes, with a dowry of guldens. our wedding was held on the monday before st. margaret's day (in july), in the year ." this dry statement of the most important event of the artist's life illustrates the ancient german custom of betrothal, where the bond of wedlock was considered as a matter-of-fact copartnership, with inalienable rights and duties, devoid of sentiment or romance. since the relatives of the contracting parties were closely affected by such transactions, they usually managed the negotiations themselves; and the young people, thus thrown by their parents at each other's heads, were expected to, and usually did, accept the situation with submissiveness and prudent obedience. in this case it appears that the first overtures came from the family of the lady; and perhaps the order for albert to return from his wanderings was issued for this reason. hans frey was a burgher with large possessions in nuremberg and the adjacent country; and his daughter was a very beautiful maiden. her future husband does not appear to have seen her until the betrothal was made. most of dürer's biographers have dwelt at great length on the malign influence which agnes exercised upon his life, representing her as a jealous virago, imbittering the existence of the noble artist. but dr. thausing, in his new and exhaustive history of dürer's life, vindicates the lady from this evil charge; and his position is carefully reviewed and sustained by eugéne müntz. he points out the fact that the long story of agnes's uncongeniality rests solely on pirkheimer's letter, and then shows that that ponderous burgher had reasons for personal hostility to her. the unbroken silence which dürer preserves as to home-troubles, throughout his numerous letters and journals, is held as proof against the charges; and none of his intimate friends and contemporaries (save pirkheimer) allude to his domestic trials, though they wrote so much about him. the accusation of avarice on her part is combated by several facts, among which is the cardinal one of her self-sacrificing generosity to the dürer family after her husband's death, and the remarkable record of her transferring to the endowment of the protestant university of wittenberg the thousand florins which albert had placed in the hands of the rath for her support. pirkheimer's acrimonious letter (see p. ) gives her credit at least for virtue and piety; and perhaps we may regard her aversion to the doughty writer as a point in her favor. it is a singular and unexplained fact, that although dürer was accustomed to sketch every one about him, yet no portrait of his wife is certainly known to exist, though several of his sketches are so called, without any foundation or proof. what adds to the strangeness of this omission is the fact that all accounts represent agnes dürer as a very handsome woman. probably the newly married couple dwelt at the house of the elder dürer during the first years of their union. in albert was admitted to the guild of painters, submitting a pen-drawing of orpheus and the bacchantes as his test of ability; and at about the same time he drew the "bacchanal" and "the battle of the tritons," which are now at vienna. herein he showed the contemporary classical tendency of art, which he so soon outgrew. about this same time he designed a frontispiece for the latin poem which dr. ulsen had written about the pestilence which was devastating nuremberg, showing a ghastly and repulsive man covered with plague-boils. the portrait of dürer's father, in oil-colors, which is now at frankfort, was also executed during this year. dürer's first copper-plate engraving dates from , and represents four naked women, under a globe bearing the initials of "_o gott hilf_," or "o god, help," while human bones strew the floor, and a flaming devil appears in the background. during the next three years the master made twenty copper-plate engravings. the composition of "st. jerome's penance" shows the noble old ascetic kneeling alone in a rocky wilderness, beating his naked breast with a stone, and gazing at a crucifix, while the symbolical lion lies beside him. "the penance of st. john chrysostom" depicts the long-bearded saint expiating his guilt in seducing and slaying the princess by crawling about on all-fours like a beast. she is seen at the mouth of a rocky cave, nursing her child. "the prodigal son" is another tender and exquisitely finished copper-plate engraving, in which the yearning and prayerful prodigal, bearing the face of dürer, is kneeling on bare knees by the trough at which a drove of swine are feeding. in the background is a group of substantial german farm-buildings, with unconcerned domestic animals and fowls. "the rape of amymone" shows a gloomy triton carrying off a very ugly woman from the midst of her bathing danaide sisters. "the dream" portrays an obese german soundly sleeping by a great stove, with a foolish-faced naked venus and a winged cupid standing by his side, and a little demon blowing in his ear. "the love offer" is made by an ugly old man to a pretty maiden, whose waist is encircled by his arm, while her hand is greedily outstretched to receive the money which he offers. another early engraving on copper shows a wild and naked man holding an unspeakably ugly woman, who is endeavoring to tear herself from his arms. still others delineate justice sitting on a lion, "the little fortune" standing naked on a globe, and the monstrous hog of franconia. it was chiefly through his engravings that dürer became and remains known to the world; and by the same mode of expression he boldly showed forth the doubts and despairs, yearnings and conflicts, not only of his own pure and sorrowful soul, but also of europe, quivering in the throes of the reformation. the artists of italy, when the age of faith was ended, turned to the empty splendors and symmetries of paganism; but their german brothers faced the new problems more sternly, and strove for the life of the future. under dürer's hard and homely german scenes, there seem to be double meanings and unfathomable fancies, usually alluding to sorrow, sin, and death, and showing forth the vanity of all things earthly. in sharp contrast with these profound allegories are the humorous grotesqueness and luxuriant fancifulness which appear in others of the artist's engravings, fantastic, uncouth, and quaint. he frequently yielded to the temptation to introduce strange animals and unearthly monsters into his pictures, even those of the most sacred subjects; and his so-called "virgin with the animals" is surrounded by scores of birds, insects, and quadrupeds of various kinds. it is interesting to hear of the rarity of the early impressions of dürer's engravings, and the avidity with which they are sought and the keenness with which they are analyzed by collectors. in many cases the copies of these engravings are as good as the originals, and can be distinguished only by the most trifling peculiarities. the water-marks of the paper on which they are printed form a certain indication of their period. before his venetian journey dürer used paper bearing the water-mark of the bull's head; and, after his return from the netherlands, paper bearing a little pitcher; while the middle period had several peculiar symbols. a fine impression of the copper-plate engraving of "st. jerome" recently brought over $ ; and the passion in copper sold in for $ . "the portfolio" for contains a long series of articles by prof. sidney colvin on "albert dürer: his teachers, his rivals, and his scholars," treating exhaustively of his relations as an engraver to other contemporary masters,--schongauer, israhel van meckenen, mantegna, boldini and the florentines, jacopo de' barbari (jacob walch), marc antonio, lucas van leyden, and certain other excellent but nameless artists. vasari says, "the power and boldness of albert increasing with time, and as he perceived his works to obtain increasing estimation, he now executed engravings on copper, which amazed all who beheld them." three centuries later von schlegel wrote, "when i turn to look at the numberless sketches and copper-plate designs of the present day, dürer appears to me like the originator of a new and noble system of thought, burning with the zeal of a first pure inspiration, and eager to diffuse his deeply conceived and probably true and great ideas." in dürer painted the excellent portrait of his father, which the rath of nuremberg presented to charles i. of england, and which is now at sion house, the seat of the earl of northumberland. it shows a man aged yet strong, with grave and anxious eyes, compressed lips, and an earnest expression. another similar portrait of the same date is in the munich pinakothek. he also executed two portraits of the pretty patrician damsel, catherine fürleger; one as a loose-haired magdalen (which is now in london), and the other as a german lady (now at frankfort). in dürer painted a handsome portrait of himself, with curly hair and beard, and a rich holiday costume. his expression is that of a man who appreciates and delights in his own value, and is thoroughly self-complacent. this picture was presented by nuremberg to king charles i. of england; and, in the dispersion of his gallery during the commonwealth, it was bought by the grand duke of tuscany. it is now in the uffizi gallery, though mündler calls this florentine picture a copy of a nobler original which is in the madrid gallery. during this year dürer published his first great series of woodcuts, representing the apocalypse of st. john, in fifteen pictures full of terrible impressiveness and the naturalistic quaintness of early german faith. the boldness of the youth who thus took for his theme the marvellous mysteries of patmos was warranted in the grand weirdness and perennial fascination of the resulting compositions. this series of rich and skilful engravings marked a new era in the history of wood-engraving, and the entrance of a noble artistic spirit into a realm which had previously been occupied by rude monkish cuts of saints and miracles. jackson calls these representations of the apocalypse "much superior to all wood-engravings that had previously appeared, both in design and execution." the series was brought out simultaneously in german and latin editions, and was published by the author himself. it met with a great success, and was soon duplicated in new pirated editions. it has of late years become a contested point as to whether dürer really engraved his woodcuts with his own hands, or whether he only drew the designs on the wood, and left their mechanical execution to practical workmen. it is only within the present century that a theory to the latter effect has been advanced and supported by powerful arguments and first-class authorities. the german scholars bartsch and von eye, and the historians of engraving jackson and chatto, concur in denying dürer's use of the graver. but there is a strong and well-supported belief that many of the engravings attributed to him were actually done by his hand, and that during the earlier part of his career he was largely engaged in this way. the exquisite wood-carvings which are undoubtedly his work show that he was not devoid of the manual dexterity needful for these plates; and it is also certain that the mediæval artists did not hold themselves above mechanical labors, since even raphael and titian were among the _peintres-graveurs_. dürer's efforts greatly elevated the art of wood-engraving in germany, and this improvement was directly conducive to its growth in popularity. a large number of skilful engravers were developed by the new demand; and in his later years dürer doubtless found enough expert assistants, and was enabled to devote his time to more noble achievements. he used the art to multiply and disseminate his rich ideas, which thus found a more ready expression than that of painting. heller attributes one hundred and seventy-four wood-engravings to him; and many more, of varying claims to authenticity, are enumerated by other writers. twenty-six were made before . the finest and the only perfect collection of dürer's woodcuts is owned by herr cornill d'orville of frankfort-on-the-main. in dürer painted the noble portrait of himself which is now at munich, and is the favorite of all lovers of the great artist. it shows a high and intellectual forehead, and tender and loving eyes, with long curling hair which falls far down on his shoulders. in many respects it bears the closest resemblance to the traditional pictures of christ, with its sad and solemn beauty, and large sympathetic eyes, and has the same effeminate full lips and streaming ringlets. during the next five years dürer was in some measure compensated for the trials of his home by the cheerful companionship of his old friend pirkheimer, who had recently returned from service with the emperor's army in the tyrolese wars. at his hospitable mansion the artist met many eminent scholars, reformers, and literati, and broadened his knowledge of the world, while receiving worthy homage for his genius and his personal accomplishments. baumgärtner, volkamer, harsdorfer, and other patricians of the city, were his near friends; and the augustine prior, eucharius karl, and the brilliant lazarus spengler, the secretary of nuremberg, were also intimate with both dürer and pirkheimer. during the next twenty years the harassed artist often sought refuge among these gatherings of choice spirits, when weary of his continuous labors of ambition. dürer pathetically narrates the death of his venerable father, in words as vivid as one of his pictures, and full of quaint tenderness: "soon he clearly saw death before him, and with great patience waited to go, recommending my mother to me, and a godly life to all of us. he received the sacraments, and died a true christian, on the eve of st. matthew (sept. ), at midnight, in .... the old nurse helped him to rise, and put the close cap upon his head again, which had become wet by the heavy sweat. he wanted something to drink; and she gave him rhine wine, of which he tasted some, and then wished to lie down again. he thanked her for her aid, but no sooner lay back upon his pillows than his last agony began. then the old woman trimmed the lamp, and set herself to read aloud st. bernard's dying song; but she only reached the third verse, and behold his soul had gone. god be good to him! amen. then the little maid, when she saw that he was dying, ran quickly up to my chamber, and waked me. i went down fast, but he was gone; and i grieved much that i had not been found worthy to be beside him at his end." at this time albert took home his brother hans, who was then twelve years old, to learn the art of painting in his studio; and his other young brother, andreas, the goldsmith's apprentice, now set forth upon his _wander-jahre_. within two years his mother, the widowed barbara, had exhausted her scanty means; and she also was taken into dürer's home, and lovingly cared for by her son. in dürer's frail constitution yielded to an attack of illness. a drawing of christ crowned with thorns, now in the british museum, bears his inscription: "i drew this face in my sickness, ." in the same year he executed a copper-plate engraving of a skull emblazoned on an escutcheon, which is crowned by a winged helmet, and supported by a weird woman, over whose shoulder a satyr's face is peering. a contemporary copper-plate shows the virgin nursing the infant jesus. the painting of this same subject, bearing the date of , is now in the vienna belvedere, portraying an unlovely german mother and a very earthly baby. the celebrated "green passion" was executed in , and is a series of twelve drawings on green paper, illustrating the sufferings of christ. some critics prefer this set, for delicacy and power, to either of the three engraved passions. the theory is advanced that these exquisite drawings were made for the emperor, or some other magnate, who wished to possess a unique copy. the green passion is now in the vienna albertina, the great collection of drawings made by the archduke albert of sachsen-teschen, which includes of dürer's sketches, designs, travel-notes, studies of costume and architecture, &c. over authentic sketches and drawings by dürer are now preserved in europe, and are of great interest as showing the freedom and firmness of the great master's first conceptions, and the gradual evolution of his ultimate ideas. they are drawn on papers of various colors and different preparations, with pen, pencil, crayon, charcoal, silver point, tempera, or water-colors. some are highly finished, and others are only rapid jottings or bare outlines. the richest of the ancient collections was that of hans imhoff of nuremberg, who married pirkheimer's daughter felicitas, and in due time added his father-in-law's dürer-drawings to his own collection. his son willibald further enriched the family art-treasures by many of the master's drawings which he bought from andreas dürer, and by inheriting the pictures of barbara pirkheimer. he solemnly enjoined in his will that this great collection should never be alienated, but should descend through the imhoff family as an honored possession. his widow, however, speedily offered to sell the entire series to the emperor rudolph, and it was soon broken up and dispersed. the earl of arundel secured a great number of dürer's drawings here, and carried them to england. in arundel bought a large folio containing nearly of these sketches, which was bequeathed to the british museum in by sir hans sloane. the museum has now one of the best existing collections of these works, some of which are of rare interest and value, especially the highly finished water-colors and pen-drawings. the interesting sketch-books used by dürer on his journeys to venice and to the netherlands remained forgotten in the archives of a noble nuremberg family until within less than a century, when the family became extinct, and its property was dispersed. they were then acquired by the venerable antiquary baron von derschau, who sold them to nagler and heller. nagler's share was afterwards acquired by the berlin museum; and heller's was bequeathed to the library of bamberg. in pirkheimer's wife crescentia died in childbirth, after only two years of married life. her husband bore witness that she had never caused him any trouble, except by her death; and engaged dürer to make a picture of her death-bed. this work was beautifully executed in water-colors, and depicts the expiring woman on a great bedstead, surrounded by many persons, among whom are pirkheimer and his sister charitas, the abbess, with the augustinian prior. the exquisite copper-plate engraving of "the nativity" dates from this year, and shows the virgin adoring the new-born jesus, in the shelter of a humble german house among massive ancient ruins, while joseph is drawing water from the well, and an old shepherd approaches the child on his knees. the "adam and eve" was also done on copper this year, with the parents of all mankind, surrounded by animals, and standing near the tree of knowledge, from which the serpent is delivering the fatal apple to eve. in the same year dürer painted a carefully wrought "adoration of the kings," for the elector frederick the wise of saxony. it was afterwards presented by christian ii. to the emperor rudolph, and is now in the uffizi, at florence, which contains more pictures by dürer than any other gallery outside of germany. here also is the controverted picture of "calvary," dated , displaying on one small canvas all the scenes of the passion, with an astonishing number of figures finished in miniature. "the satyr's family" is an engraving on copper, showing the goat-footed father cheerily playing on a pipe, to the evident amusement of his human wife and child. "the great horse" and "the little horse" are similar productions of this period, in which the commentators vainly strive to find some recondite meaning. sixteen engravings on copper were made between and . dürer has been called "the chaucer of painting," by reason of the marvellous quaintness of his conceptions; and ruskin speaks of him as "intense in trifles, gloomily minute." his details, minute as they were, received the most careful study, and were all thought out before the pictures were begun, so that he neither erased nor altered his lines, nor made preliminary sketches. he was essentially a thinker who drew, rather than a drawer who thought. chapter iii. the journey to venice.--bellini's friendship.--letters to pirkheimer.--"the feast of rose garlands."--bologna.--"adam and eve."--"the coronation of the virgin." late in dürer made a journey to venice, probably with a view to recover his health, enlarge his circle of friends and patrons, and study the famous venetian paintings. he was worn down by continuous hard work, and weary of the dull uneventfulness of his life, and hailed an opportunity to rest in sunny italy. he borrowed money from pirkheimer for his journey, and left a small sum for family expenses during his absence. between nuremberg and her rich southern rival there was a large commerce, with a weekly post; and many german merchants and artists were then residing in venice. dürer rode down on horseback; and suffered an attack of illness at stein, near laibach, where he rewarded the artist who had nursed him by painting a picture on the wall of his house. on arriving at venice, the master was cordially received, and highly honored by the chief artists and literati of the city. the heads of venetian art at that time were giovanni bellini and carpaccio, both of whom were advanced in years; and giorgione and titian, who were not mentioned by our traveller, though they were both at work for the fondaco de' tedeschi at the same time as himself. during his residence in venice he wrote nine long letters to "the honorable and wise herr willibald pirkheimer, burgher of nuremberg," which were walled up in the imhoff mansion during the thirty years' war, and discovered at a later age. much of these letters is taken up with details about pirkheimer's commissions for precious stones and books, or with badinage about the burgher's private life, with frequent allusions to the support of the dürers at home. of greater interest are the accounts of the writer's successes in art, and the friends whom he met in venetian society. the letters were embellished with rude caricatures and grotesques, matching the broad humor of the jovial allusions in the text. either pirkheimer was a man of most riotous life, or dürer was a bold and pertinacious jester, unwearying in mock-earnest reproofs. these letters were sealed with the dürer crest, composed of a pair of open doors above three steps on a shield, which was a punning allusion to the name dürer, or thürer, _thür_ being the german word for _door_. in the second letter he says,-- "i wish you were in venice. there are many fine fellows among the painters, who get more and more friendly with me; it holds one's heart up. well-brought-up folks, good lute-players, skilled pipers, and many noble and excellent people, are in the company, all wishing me very well, and being very friendly. on the other hand, here are the falsest, most lying, thievish villains in the whole world, appearing to the unwary the pleasantest possible fellows. i laugh to myself when they try it with me: the fact is, they know their rascality is public, though one says nothing. i have many good friends among the italians, who warn me not to eat or drink with their painters; for many of them are my enemies, and copy my picture in the church, and others of mine wherever they meet with them; and yet, notwithstanding this, they abuse my works, and say that they are not according to ancient art, and therefore not good. but gian bellini has praised me highly before several gentlemen, and he wishes to have something of my painting. he came himself, and asked me to do something for him, saying that he would pay me well for it; and all the people here tell me what a good man he is, so that i also am greatly inclined to him." these sentences show the artist's pleasure at the kindly way in which the italians received him, and also reveal the danger in which he stood of being poisoned by jealous rivals. another ambiguous sentence has given rise to the belief that dürer had visited venice eleven years previously, during his _wander-jahre_. camerarius says that bellini was so amazed and delighted at the exquisite fineness of dürer's painting, especially of hair, that he begged him to give him the brush with which he had done such delicate work. the nuremberger offered him any or all of his brushes, but bellini asked again for the one with which he had painted the hair; upon which dürer took one of his common brushes, and painted a long tress of woman's hair. bellini reported that he would not have believed such marvellous work possible, if he had not seen it himself. the third letter describes the adventures of the inexpert artist in securing certain sapphires, amethysts, and emeralds for his "dear herr pirkheimer," and complains that the money earned by painting was all swallowed up by living expenses. the jealous venetian painters had also forced him, by process of law, to pay money to their art-schools. his brother hans was now sixteen years old, and had become a source of responsibility, for dürer adds: "with regard to my brother, tell my mother to speak to wohlgemuth, and see whether he wants him, or will give him work till i return, or to others, so that he may help himself. i would willingly have brought him with me to venice, which would have been useful to him and to me, and also on account of his learning the language; but my mother was afraid that the heavens would fall upon him and upon me too. i pray you, have an eye to him yourself: he is lost with the women-folk. speak to the boy as you well know how to do, and bid him behave well and learn diligently until i return, and not be a burden to the mother; for i cannot do every thing, although i will do my best." in the fourth letter he speaks of having traded his pictures for jewels, and sends greetings to his friend baumgärtner, saying also: "know that by the grace of god i am well, and that i am working diligently.... i wish that it suited you to be here. i know you would find the time pass quickly, for there are many agreeable people here, very good amateurs; and i have sometimes such a press of strangers to visit me, that i am obliged to hide myself; and all the gentlemen wish me well, but very few of the painters." the fifth letter opens with a long complimentary flourish in a barbarous mixture of italian and spanish, and then chaffs pirkheimer unmercifully for his increasing intrigues. it also thanks pirkheimer for trying to placate agnes frey, who is evidently much disappointed because her husband lingers so long at venice. the prior eucharius is besought to pray that dürer might be delivered from the new and terrible "french disease," then fatally prevalent in italy. mention is made of andreas, the goldsmith, dürer's brother, meeting him at venice, and borrowing money to relieve his distress. the next letter starts off with quaint mock-deference, and alludes to the splendid venetian soldiery, and their contempt of the emperor. farther on are unintelligible allusions, and passages too vulgar for translation. he says that the doge and patriarch had visited his studio to inspect the new picture, and that he had effectually silenced the artists who claimed that he was only good at engraving, and could not use colors. soon afterwards he writes about the completion of his great painting of the rose garlands; and says, "there is no better picture of the virgin mary in the land, because all the artists praise it, as well as the nobility. they say they have never seen a more sublime, a more charming painting." he adds that he had declined orders to the amount of over , ducats, in order to return home, and was then engaged in finishing a few portraits. the last letter congratulates pirkheimer on his political successes, but expresses a fear lest "so great a man will never go about the streets again talking with the poor painter dürer,--with a poltroon of a painter." in response to pirkheimer's threat of making love to his wife if he remained away longer, he said that if such was done, he might keep agnes until her death. he also tells how he had been attending a dancing-school, but could not learn the art, and retired in disgust after two lessons. the picture which dürer painted for the fondaco de' tedeschi was until recently supposed to be a "st. bartholomew;" but it is now believed that it was the renowned "feast of rose garlands," which is now at the bohemian monastery of strahow. he worked hard on this picture for seven months, and was proud of its beauty and popularity. the emperor rudolph ii. bought it from the church in which it was set up, and had it carried on men's shoulders all the way from venice to prague, to avoid the dangers attending other modes of conveyance. when joseph ii. sold his pictures, in , this one was bought by the abbey of strahow, and remained buried in oblivion for three-quarters of a century. the picture shows the virgin sitting under a canopy and a star-strewn crown held by flying cherubs, with the graceful child in her lap. she is placing a crown of roses on the head of the emperor maximilian, while jesus places another on the head of the pope; and a monk on one side is similarly honored by st. dominic, the founder of the feast of the rose garlands. a multitude of kneeling men and women on either side are being crowned with roses by merry little child-angels, flying through the air; while on the extreme right, dürer and pirkheimer are seen standing by a tree. pirkheimer and agnes had both been urging the master to return; but he seemed reluctant to exchange the radiance of italy for the quietness of his home-circle, and mournfully exclaims, "oh, how i shall freeze after this sunshine! here i am a gentleman, at home only a parasite!" a brilliant career was open before him at venice, whose government offered him a pension of ducats; but his sense of duty compelled him to return to germany, though in bitterness of spirit. before turning northward he rode to bologna, "because some one there will teach me the secret art of perspective" (francesco francia); and met christopher scheurl, who greatly admired him. a year later raphael also came to bologna, and saw some works left there by dürer, from which arose an intimate correspondence and exchanges of pictures between the artists. the master had been invited to visit the venerable mantegna, at mantua; but that nestor of north-italian art died before the plan was carried out. dürer afterwards told camerarius that this death "caused him more grief than any mischance that had befallen him during his life." art-critics agree in rejoicing that dürer conquered the temptations which were held out to him from the gorgeous italian city, and returned to his plain life in the cold north. he escaped the danger of sacrificing his individualism to the glowing and sensuous venetian school of art, and preserved the quaintness and vigor of his own gothic inspirations for the joy of future ages. the marine backgrounds in many of dürer's later pictures are referred by ruskin to the artist's pleasant memories of venice, "where he received the rarest of all rewards granted to a good workman; and, for once in his life, was understood." other and wilder landscapes in his woodcuts were reminiscences of the pastoral regions of the franconian switzerland. the personal history of dürer between and was barren of details, but evidently full of earnest work, as existing pictures bear witness. it was the golden period of his art-life, abounding in productiveness. his workshop was the seat of the chief art-school in nuremberg, and contained many excellent young painters and engravers, to whom the master delivered his wise axioms and earnest thoughts in rich profusion. during this period, also, he probably executed certain of his best works in carving, which are hereinafter described. dr. thausing denies that dürer used the chisel of the sculptor to any extent, and refuses to accept the genuineness of the carvings which the earlier biographers have attributed to him. scott is of the opinion that in most cases these rich and delicate works were executed by other persons, either from his drawings or under his inspection. on his return from venice, dürer painted life-sized nude figures of adam and eve, representing them with the fatal apple in their hands, at the moment of the fall. they are well designed in outline, but possess a certain anatomical hardness, lacking in grace and mobility. they were greatly admired by the nurembergers, in whose rath-haus they were placed; but were at length presented to the emperor rudolph ii. he replaced them with copies, which napoleon, in , supposed to be dürer's original works, and removed to paris. he afterwards presented them to the town of mayence, where they are still exhibited as dürer's. the true originals passed into spain, where they were first redeemed from oblivion by passavant, about the year . a copy of the adam and eve, which was executed in dürer's studio and under his care, is now at the pitti palace. in the spring of dürer met at the house of his brother-in-law jacob frey, the rich frankfort merchant jacob heller, who commissioned him to paint an altar-piece. he was delayed by a prolonged attack of fever in the summer, and by the closing works on the elector's picture. between and (inclusive) dürer made forty-eight engravings and etchings, and over a hundred woodcuts, bespeaking an iron diligence and a remarkable power of application. the rapid sale of these works in frequent new editions gave a large income to their author, and placed him in a comfortable position among the burghers of nuremberg. the religious excitement then prevailing throughout europe, on the eve of the reformation, increased the demand for his engravings of the virgin, the saints, and the great passion series. in dürer finished the painting of "the martyrdom of the ten thousand christians," to which he professed to have given all his time for a year. it was ordered by frederick of saxony, the patron of lucas cranach, who had seen the master's woodcut of the same subject, and desired it reproduced in an oil-painting. it is a painful and unpleasant scene, full of brutality and horror; and the picture is devoid of unity, though conspicuous for clear and brilliant coloring. dürer and pirkheimer stand in the middle of the foreground. on the completion of this work the master wrote to heller, "no one shall persuade me to work according to what i am paid." he then began heller's altar-piece, under unnecessary exhortation "to paint his picture well," and made a great number of careful studies for the new composition. when fairly under way, he demanded florins for his work instead of the florins of the contract-price, which drew an angry answer from the frugal merchant, with accusations of dishonesty. the artist rejoined sharply, dwelling upon the great cost of the colors and the length of the task, yet offering to carry out his contract in order to save his good faith. throughout the next year heller stimulated the painter to hasten his work, until dürer became angry, and threw up the commission. he was soon induced to resume it, and completed the picture in the summer of , upon which the delighted merchant paid him gladly, and sent handsome presents to his wife and brother. dürer wrote to heller, "it will last fresh and clean for five hundred years, for it is not done as ordinary paintings are.... but no one shall ever again persuade me to undertake a painting with so much work in it. herr jorg tauss offered himself to pay me florins for a virgin in a landscape, but i declined positively, for i should become a beggar by this means. henceforward i will stick to my engraving; and, if i had done so before, i should be richer by a thousand florins than i am to-day." the picture which caused so much argument and toil was "the coronation of the virgin," which was set up over the bronze monument of the heller family in the dominican church at frankfort. its exquisite delicacy of execution attracted great crowds to the church, and quickly enriched the monastery. singularly enough, the most famous part of the picture was the sole of the foot of one of the kneeling apostles, which was esteemed such a marvellous work that great sums were offered to have it cut out of the canvas. the emperor rudolph ii. offered the immense amount of , florins for the painting, in vain; but in it passed into the possession of maximilian of bavaria, and was destroyed in the burning of the palace at munich, sixty years later. so the renowned picture, which dürer said gave him "more joy and satisfaction than any other he ever undertook," passed away, leaving no engraving or other memorial, save a copy by paul juvenal. this excellent reproduction is now at nuremberg, and is provided with the original wings, beautifully painted by dürer, showing on one the portrait of jacob heller and the death of st. james, and on the other heller's wife, and the martyrdom of st. catherine. in the burgher schiltkrot and the pious copper-smith matthäus landäuer founded the house of the twelve brothers, an alms-house for poor old men of nuremberg; and eight years later, landäuer ordered dürer to paint an altar-piece of "the adoration of the trinity," for its chapel. much of the master's time for the next two years was devoted to this great work. chapter iv. dürer's house.--his poetry.--sculptures.--the great and little passions.--life of the virgin.--plagiarists.--works for the emperor maximilian. some time after his marriage with agnes frey, dürer moved into the new house near the thiergärtner gate, which had perhaps been bought with the dowry of his bride. here he labored until his death, and executed his most famous works. it is a spacious house, with a lower story of stone, wide portals, a paved interior court, and pleasant upper rooms between thick half-timber walls, whose mullioned windows look out on lines of quaint gothic buildings and towers, and on the broad paved square at the foot of the zisselgasse (now albrecht-dürer-strasse). just across the square was the so-called "pilate's house," whose owner, martin koetzel, had made two pilgrimages to the holy land, and brought back measurements of the dolorous way. the artist's house is now carefully preserved as public property, and contains the gallery of the dürer art-union. in , on the third centennial of his death, the people erected a bronze statue of the master, designed by rauch, on the square before the house. in - dürer derived pleasure and furnished much amusement to his friends from verse-making, in which he suffered a worse failure even than raphael had done. it seems that pirkheimer ridiculed a long-drawn couplet which he had made, upon which the master composed a neat bit of proverbial philosophy, of which the following is a translation:-- "strive earnestly with all thy might, that god should give thee wisdom's light; he doth his wisdom truly prove, whom neither death nor riches move; and he shall also be called wise, who joy and sorrow both defies; he who bears both honor and shame, he well deserves the wise man's name; who knows himself, and evil shuns, in wisdom's path he surely runs; who 'gainst his foe doth vengeance cherish, in hell-flame cloth his wisdom perish; who strives against the devil's might, the lord will help him in the fight; who keeps his heart forever pure, he of wisdom's crown is sure; and who loves god with all his heart, chooses the wise and better part." but pirkheimer was not more pleased with this; and the witty secretary spengler sent dürer a satirical poem, applying the moral of the fable of the shoemaker who criticised a picture by apelles. he answered this in a song of sixty lines, closing with,-- "therefore i will still make rhymes, though my friend may laugh at times: so the painter with hairy beard says to the writer who mocked and jeered." " , this have i made on good and bad friends." thus the master prefaces a platitudinous poem of thirty lines; which was soon followed by "the teacher," of sixty lines. later in the year he wrote the long passion-song, which was appended to the print of _christus am kreuz_. it is composed of eight sections, of ten lines each, and is full of quaint mediæval tenderness and reverence, and the intense prayerfulness of the old german faith. the sections are named matins, the first, third, sixth, and ninth hours, vespers, compline, and let us pray, the latter of which is redolent with earnest devotion:-- "o almighty lord and god, who the martyr's press hast trod; jesus, the only god, the son, who all this to thyself hast done, keep it before us to-day and to-morrow, give us continual rue and sorrow; wash me clean, and make me well, i pray thee, like a soul from hell. lord, thou hast overcome: look down; let us at last to share the crown." the marvellous high-relief of "the birth of st. john the baptist" as executed in , and shows dürer's remarkable powers as a sculptor. it is cut in a block of cream-colored lithographic stone, - / × - / inches in size, and is full of rich and minute pictorial details. elizabeth is rising in bed, aided by two attendants; and the old nurse brings the infant to zacharias, who writes its name on a tablet, while two men are entering at the doorway. the room is furnished with the usual utensils and properties of a german bedroom. this wonderful and well-preserved work of art was bought in the netherlands about eighty years ago, for $ , , and is now in the british museum. the companion-piece, "st. john the baptist preaching in the wilderness," is now in the brunswick museum, and is carved with a similar rich effect. this museum also contains a carving in wood, representing the "ecce homo." space would fail to tell of the many beautiful little pieces of sculpture which dürer executed in ivory, boxwood, and stone, or of the numerous excellently designed medals ascribed to him. chief among these was the exquisite "birth of christ," and the altar of agate, formerly at vienna; adam and eve, in wood, at gotha; reliefs of the birth and the agony of christ, in ivory; the four evangelists, in boxwood, lately at baireuth; several carvings on ivory, of religious scenes, at munich; a woman with padlocked mouth, sitting in the stocks, cut in soapstone; a delicate relief of the flight into egypt; busts of the duke and duchess of burgundy; and the love-fountain, now at dresden, with figures of six persons drinking the water. the famous painting of "the adoration of the trinity" was finished in , and represents god the father holding up his crucified son for the worship of an immense congregation of saints, while overhead is the mystic dove, surrounded by a circle of winged cherubs' heads. the kneeling multitude includes princes, prelates, warriors, burghers, and peasants, equally accepting the athanasian dogma. on the left is a great group of female saints, led by the sweet and stately virgin mary; and on the right are the kneeling prophets and apostles, moses with the tables of the law, and david with his harp. on the broad terrestrial landscape, far below, dürer stands alone, by a tall tablet bearing the latin inscription of his name and the date of the picture. the whole scene is full of light and splendor, delicate beauty of angels, and exquisite minuteness of finish. a century later the rath of nuremberg removed this picture from the sepulchral chapel of its founder, and presented it to the emperor rudolph ii. it is now one of the gems of the vienna belvedere. about this time the master's brother andreas, the goldsmith, returned to nuremberg after his long wanderings, and eased the evident anxiety of his family by settling respectably in life. hans was still in his brother's studio, where he learned his art so well that he afterwards became court-painter to the king of poland. in dürer published a third edition of the engravings of the apocalypse, with a warning to piratical engravers that the emperor had forbidden the sale of copies or impressions other than those of the author, within the empire, under heavy penalties to transgressors. to the same year belong three of the master's greatest works in engraving on wood. "the great passion" contains twelve folio woodcuts, unequal in their execution, and probably made by different workmen of varying abilities. the vignette is an "ecce homo;" and the other subjects are, the last supper, christ at gethsemane, his betrayal, the scourging, the mockery, christ bearing the cross, the crucifixion, the descent into hell, the maries mourning over christ's body, the entombment, and the resurrection. these powerful delineations of the agony of our lord are characterized by rare originality of conception, pathos, and grandeur. they were furnished with latin verses by the monk chelidonius, and bore the imperial warning against imitation. four large editions were printed from these cuts, and numerous copies, especially in italy, where the emperor's edict was inoperative. "the little passion" was a term applied by dürer himself to distinguish his series of thirty-seven designs from the larger pictures of "the great passion." it is the best-known of the master's engravings; and has been published in two editions at nuremberg, a third at venice in , and a fourth at london in . the blocks are now in the british museum, and show plainly that they were not engraved by dürer. this great pictorial scene of the fall and redemption of man begins with the sin of adam and eve, and their expulsion from eden, and follows with thirty-three compositions from the life and passion of christ, ending with the descent of the holy ghost and the last judgment. its title was _figuræ passionis domini nostri jesu christi_; and it was furnished with a set of the latin verses of chelidonius. the third of dürer's great works in wood-engraving was "the life of the virgin," with explanatory latin verses by the benedictine chelidonius. this was published in , and contains twenty pictures, full of realistic plainness and domestic homeliness, yet displaying marvellous skill and power of invention. to the same year belong the master's engravings of the trinity, st. christopher, st. gregory's mass, st. jerome, st. francis receiving the stigmata, the holy family with the guitar, herodias and the head of john the baptist, and the adoration of the magi; and the copper-plates of the crucifixion and the virgin with the pear. dürer was much afflicted by the boldness of many imitators, who plagiarized his engravings without stint, and flooded the market with pictures from his designs. his rights were protected but poorly by the edicts of the emperor and the city of nuremberg; and a swarm of parasitical copyists reproduced every fresh design as soon as it was published. marc antonio raimondi, the great italian engraver who worked so many years with raphael, was the most dangerous of these plagiarists, and reproduced "the little passion" and "the life of the virgin" in a most exquisite manner, close after their publication. vasari says, "it happened that at this time certain flemings came to venice with a great many prints, engraved both in wood and copper by albert dürer, which being seen by marc antonio in the square of st. mark, he was so much astonished by their style of execution, and the skill displayed by albert, that he laid out on those prints almost all the money he had brought with him from bologna, and amongst other things purchased 'the passion of jesus christ,' engraved on thirty-six wooden blocks.... marc antonio therefore, having considered how much honor as well as advantage might be acquired by one who should devote himself to that art in italy, resolved to attend to it with the greatest diligence, and immediately began to copy these engravings of albert, studying their mode of hatching, and every thing else in the prints he had purchased, which from their novelty as well as beauty, were in such repute that every one desired to possess them." it appears that marc antonio was afterwards enjoined from using dürer's monogram on his copies of the nuremberger's engravings, either by imperial diplomatic representations to the italian courts, or else as the result of a visit which some claim that dürer made to italy for that purpose. many of the copies of marc antonio were rather idealized adaptations than exact reproductions of the german's designs, but were furnished with the forged monogram a. d., and sold for dürer's works. sixty-nine of our artist's engravings were copied by the skilful italian, profoundly influencing southern art by the manual dexterity of the north. this wholesale piracy was carried on between and , and before marc antonio passed under raphael's overmastering influence. in later years the rath of nuremberg warned the booksellers of the city against selling false copies of dürer's engravings, and sent letters to the authorities of augsburg, leipsic, frankfort, strasbourg, and antwerp, asking them to put a stop to such sales within their jurisdictions. his works have been copied by more than three hundred artists, the best of whom were solis, rota, the hopfers, wierx, vischer, schön, and kraus. in dürer made most of the plates for "the passion in copper," a series of sixteen engravings on copper, which was begun in and finished in . these plates show the terrible scenes of the last griefs of the saviour, surrounded with uncouth german men and women, buildings and landscapes, yet permeated with mysterious reverence and solemn simplicity. the series was never published in book form, with descriptive text, but the engravings were put forth singly as soon as completed. the prints of "christ bound" and "st. jerome" were published this same year. in dürer was first employed by the emperor maximilian, who was not only a patron of the arts but also an artist himself, and munificently employed the best painters of germany, though his treasury was usually but poorly filled. science and literature also occupied much of his attention; and, while his realm was engaged in perpetual wars, he kept up a careful correspondence on profound themes with many of the foremost thinkers of his day. the records of his intercourse with dürer are most meagre, though during the seven years of their connection they must have had many interviews, especially while the imperial portrait was being made. melanchthon tells a pretty story, which he heard from dürer himself. one day the artist was finishing a sketch for the emperor, who, while waiting, attempted to make a drawing himself with one of the charcoal-crayons; but the charcoal kept breaking away, and he complained that he could accomplish nothing with it. dürer then took it from his hand, saying, "this is my sceptre, your majesty;" and afterwards taught the sovereign how to use it. the story which is told of so many geniuses who have risen from low estate is applied also to this one: the emperor once declared to a noble who had proudly declined to perform some trivial service for the artist, "out of seven ploughboys i can, if i please, make seven lords, but out of seven lords i cannot make one dürer." tradition states that the emperor ennobled dürer, and gave him a coat-of-arms. possibly this was the crest used in his later years, consisting of three shields on a blue field, above which is a closed helmet supporting the armless bust and head of a winged negro! the idea of the immense woodcut of the triumphal arch of maximilian was conceived after , either by the emperor or by the poet-laureate stabius; and dürer was chosen to put it into execution. the history of the deeds of maximilian, with his ancestry and family alliances, was to be displayed in the form of a pictorial triumphal arch, "after the manner of those erected in honor of the roman emperors." the master demanded payment in advance, and received an order from the emperor to the rath of nuremberg to hold "his and the empire's true and faithful albert dürer exempt from all the town taxes and rates, in consideration of our esteem for his skill in art." but he surrendered this immunity, in deference to the wishes of the rath; and maximilian granted him an annual pension of florins ($ ), which was paid, however, somewhat reluctantly. "the knight, death, and the devil," is the most celebrated of dürer's engravings, and dates from . it shows a panoplied knight riding through a rocky defile, with white-bearded death advancing alongside and holding up an hour-glass, and the loathsome satan pursuing hard after and clutching at the undismayed knight. the numerous commentators on this picture variously interpret its meaning, some saying that the knight is an evil-doer, intent on wicked purposes, whom death warns to repentance, while satan rushes to seize him; others, and the most, that he is the christian man, fearless among the menaces of death and hell, and steadily advancing in spite of the horrible apparitions. others claim that the knight represents franz von sickingen, a turbulent hero of the reformation; or philip ring, the nuremberg herald, who was confronted by the devil on one of his night-rides; or dürer himself, beset by temptations and fears; or stephen baumgärtner, the master's friend, whose portrait bears a resemblance to the knight's face. still another interpretation is given in the romance of "sintram and his companions," which was suggested by this engraving, as we are told by its author, la motte fouqué. kugler says: "i believe i do not exaggerate when i particularize this print as the most important work which the fantastic spirit of german art has ever produced." it was made in dürer's blooming time, and the plate is a wonderful specimen of delicate and exquisite execution. it has frequently been copied, in many forms. "the little crucifixion" is one of the most exquisitely finished of dürer's engravings on copper, and is a small round picture, about one inch in diameter, which was made for an ornament on the pommel of the emperor's sword. it contains seven figures, full of clearness and individuality, and engraved with marvellous skill. there are, fortunately, several very beautiful copies of this print. other copper-plates of were "the judgment of paris," and the small round "st. jerome." the famous baumgärtner altar-piece was painted for the patrician family of that name, as a votive picture, in thanksgiving for the safe return of its knightly members from the swiss campaigns. nuremberg unwillingly surrendered it to maximilian of bavaria, and it is now in the munich pinakothek. it consists of a central picture of "the nativity," of no special merit, with two wings, the first of which shows stephen baumgärtner, a meagre-faced and resolute knight, in the character of st. george, while the other portrays the plain-mannered and practical lucas baumgärtner, in the garb of st. eustachius. these excellent portrait-figures are clad in armor, and stand by the sides of their horses. the "vision of st. eustachius" was executed on copper-plate, and is one of dürer's most delicate and beautiful works. it shows the huntsman eustachius as a strong and earnest german mystic, kneeling before the miraculous crucifix set in the stag's forehead, which has appeared to convict him of his sins, and to stimulate in him that faith by which he led a new life of prayer and praise, and won a martyr's crown. his solemn-faced horse seems to realize that a miracle is taking place; and in the foreground are five delicately drawn hounds. on the steep hill in the rear a noble and picturesque mediæval castle rears its battlemented towers above long lines of cliffs. tradition says that the face of eustachius is a portrait of the emperor maximilian. when the emperor rudolph secured the original plate of the engraving, he had it richly gilded. "the great fortune," or "the nemesis," is a copper-plate showing a repulsively ugly naked woman, with wings, holding a rich chalice and a bridle, while on the earth below is a beautiful mountain village between two confluent rivers. sandrart says that this is the hungarian village of eytas, where dürer's father was born; but there is no proof of this theory. "the coat-of-arms with the cock" is a fine copper-plate, with some obscure allegorical significance, representing, perhaps, vigilance by the cock which stands on a closed helmet, and faith by the rampant lion on the shield below. chapter v. st. jerome.--the melencolia.--death of dürer's mother.--raphael. --etchings.--maximilian's arch.--visit to augsburg. the copper-plate engraving of "st. jerome in his chamber" was executed in , and is one of dürer's three greatest works, a marvel of brilliancy and beauty, full of accurate detail and minute perfection. the saint has a grand and venerable head, firmly outlined against a white halo, and is sitting in a cheerful monastic room, lighted by the sun streaming through two large arched windows, while he writes at his desk, translating the scriptures. in the foreground the lion of st. jerome is drowsing, alongside a fat watch-dog; a huge pumpkin hangs from one of the oaken beams overhead; and patristic tomes and convenient german utensils are scattered about the room. "the virgin on the crescent moon" was a copper-plate executed also in , showing the graceful and charming mary, treated with an idealism which almost suggests raphael. this is one of the best of the seventeen mary-pictures (_marien-bilder_) which dürer executed in copper. other copper-plates of represented sts. paul and thomas, the bagpipe-player, and a dancing rustic and his wife. "the melencolia" is the most weirdly fascinating of dürer's works, and the most mysterious and variously interpreted. it represents a woman, goddess, or devil, fully clad, and bearing keys and a purse at her girdle, her head wreathed with spleenwort, and great wings springing from her shoulders; the while she gazes intently, and with unutterable melancholy, into a magic crystal globe before her. on one side a drowsy cupid is trying to write, near a ladder which rises from unseen depths to unimagined heights; and on the wall are the balanced scales, the astrological table of figures, the hour-glass running low, and the silent bell. the floor is strewn with scientific and necromantic instruments, and a great cube of strange form lies beyond. the prevailing gloom of the picture is but dimly lighted by a lurid and solitary comet, whose rays shimmer along an expanse of black ocean, and are reflected from a firm-arched rainbow above. across the alternately black and blazing sky flies a horrible bat-winged creature, bearing a scroll inscribed with the word melencolia, before the blank negations symbolized by the disastrous portent of the comet and the joyous sign of the rainbow. under the guise of this mystic black-browed woman the artist probably typifies the profound sorrow of the human soul, checked by divine limitations from attaining a full knowledge of the secrets of nature or the wisdom of heaven. the discarded implements of natural and occult science are alike useless; and nought remains but gloomy introspection and a consciousness of insufficiency. dürer describes his mother's death with mournful tenderness and touching simplicity, saying: "now you must know that in the year , on a tuesday in cross-week, my poor unhappy mother, whom i had taken under my charge two years after my father's death, because she was then quite poor, and who had lived with me for nine years, was taken deathly sick on one morning early, so that we had to break open her room; for we knew not, as she could not get up, what to do. so we bore her down into a room, and she had the sacraments in both kinds administered to her, for every one thought that she was going to die, for she had been failing in health ever since my father's death. and her custom was to go often to church; and she always punished me when i did not act rightly, and she always took great care to keep me and my brothers from sin; and, whether i went in or out, her constant word was, 'in the name of christ;' and with great diligence she constantly gave us holy exhortations, and had great care over our souls. and her good works, and the loving compassion that she showed to every one, i can never sufficiently set forth to her praise. this my good mother bore and brought up eighteen children; she has often had the pestilence and many other dangerous and remarkable illnesses; has suffered great poverty, scoffing, disparagement, spiteful words, fears, and great reverses: yet she has never been revengeful. a year after the day on which she was first taken ill ... my pious mother departed in a christian manner, with all sacraments, absolved by papal power from pain and sin. she gave me her blessing, and desired for me god's peace, and that i should keep myself from evil. and she desired also st. john's blessing, which she had, and she said she was not afraid to come before god. but she died hard; and i perceived that she saw something terrible, for she kept hold of the holy water, and did not speak for a long time. i saw also how death came, and gave her two great blows on the heart; and how she shut her eyes and mouth, and departed in great sorrow. i prayed for her, and had such great grief for her that i can never express. god be gracious to her! her greatest joy was always to speak of god, and to do all to his honor and glory. and she was sixty-three years old when she died, and i buried her honorably according to my means. god the lord grant that i also make a blessed end, and that god with his heavenly hosts, and my father, mother, and friend, be present at my end, and that the almighty god grant us eternal life! amen. and in her death she looked still more lovely than she was in her life." in the prince of italian painters and the noblest of german artists exchanged pleasant civilities by correspondence, accompanied by specimens of their labors. dürer sent to raphael his own portrait, which was afterwards inherited and dearly prized by giulio romano. raphael returned several of his own studies and drawings, one of which, showing two naked men drawn in red crayon, is now preserved in the albertina at vienna. it still bears dürer's inscription: "raphael of urbino, who is so highly esteemed by the pope, has drawn this study from the nude, and has sent it to albert dürer at nuremberg, in order to show him his hand." the invention of the art of etching has been generally attributed to dürer, though it now seems that he merely improved and perfected the process. there are but few etchings in existence which can certainly be ascribed to him; and the chief of these, an "ecce homo" and "christ in the garden," date from . the iron plate of the latter was found two centuries later, in a blacksmith's shop, where it was about to be made into horse-shoes. a third etching represents a frightfully homely woman being carried off by a man on a unicorn, a wild and incomprehensible composition, calculated to awaken an uncomfortable impression in the beholder. some of the etchings were on iron, and others on pewter; but none were on copper, which was afterwards universally used. the corrosive nitrous acid acted inefficiently on the metals which he employed, and so his etchings fall short of excellence. in jorg vierling uttered disgraceful libels and threats against dürer, and finally attacked him in the street. he was imprisoned by the authorities; but the kind-hearted artist interceded for him, and he was released, after being bound over to keep the peace. in the same year dürer wrote to herr kress to see if the laureate stabius had done any thing about his delayed pension; saying also, "but if herr stabius has done nothing in my matter, or my desire was too difficult for him to attain, then i pray of you to be my favorable lord to his majesty.... point out to his majesty that i have served his majesty for three years, that i have suffered loss myself from doing so, and that if i had not used my utmost diligence his ornamental work would never have been finished in such a manner; therefore i pray his majesty to reward me with the guilders." in september an imperial decree was issued, giving dürer his promised pension of $ a year out of the tax due from nuremberg to the emperor. this annuity was paid to the artist until his death, with one short intermission. dürer executed for the emperor a series of most fantastic and grotesque pen-drawings, on the borders of his prayer-book, now in the munich town-library. alongside the solemn sentences of the breviary are whimsical monkeys and pigs, indians and men-at-arms, satyrs and foxes, screeching devils and saints, hens and prophets, martyrs and german crones, mingled in a weird wonderland, and not inappropriate according to mediæval ideas of taste. "the great column" is another quaint and inexplicable engraving, which dürer did for the emperor in , and is composed of four blocks - / feet high. it shows two naked angels holding a large turnip, from which springs a tall column with two horrible female monsters at the base, and a horned satyr at the top, holding long garlands. the marvellous "triumphal arch of maximilian" is composed of ninety-two blocks, forming an immense woodcut ten and a half feet high and nine feet wide. it shows three great towers, under which are the three gates of praise, nobility, and honor and power, with the six chained harpies of temptation, and two vigilant archdukes in armor, and figures holding garlands and crowns. the great genealogical tree rises above the figures that represent france, sycambria, and troy, and bears portrait-like half-figures of the twenty-six christian princes from whom maximilian claimed descent, with pictures of himself and his family. there are also twenty-four minutely delicate cuts, showing the most remarkable events in the emperor's life, accompanied with rugged explanatory rhymes by the poet-laureate. dr. von eye says that "the extent and difficulty of the task appear to have called forth the powers of the artist to their highest exercise. in no work of dürer's do we find more beautiful drawing than there is here. each single piece might be taken out and prized as an independent work of art." the master drew these very elaborate and intricate designs between and ; and the enormous work of engraving them was devolved upon hieronymus rösch of nuremberg. during its progress the emperor frequently visited rösch's house in the fraüengässlein; and it became a town saying, that "the emperor still drives often to petticoat lane." on one of his visits, a number of the artist's pet cats ran into his presence; whence, it is said, arose the proverb, "a cat may look at a king." in dürer painted a fine portrait of wohlgemuth, now at munich, showing a wrinkled old face lit up by bright eyes, and inscribed, "this portrait has albert dürer painted after his master michael wohlgemuth, in the year , when he was years old; and he lived until the year , when he died, on st. andrew's day, early, before the sun had risen." about the same period he designed and partly executed the pietà, which is now in the st. maurice gallery at nuremberg; and carved a virgin and child standing on the crescent moon, similar to the one which he had engraved three years before. in dürer also painted the scene of the death-bed of the empress mary of burgundy, under the title of "the death of the virgin," and on the order of von zlatko, the bishop of vienna. the emperor maximilian, philip of spain, bishop zlatko, and other notables, were shown around the couch. this large and important work was in the sale of the fries collection in , but cannot now be found, although there is a rumor that it is on the altar of a rural church near st. wolfgang's lake, in upper austria. in dürer visited augsburg, during the session of the diet of the empire, and not only sold many of his engravings, but made a number of new sketches and portraits. his most important work on this journey was a portrait of the emperor, who gave an order on the town of nuremberg to pay guldens "to the emperor's and the empire's dear and faithful albert dürer." on this picture the master inscribed, "this is the emperor maximilian, whom i, albert dürer, drew at augsburg, in his little room high up in the imperial residence, in the year , on the monday after st. john the baptist." about the same time the master painted the unpleasant picture of "the suicide of lucretia," now at munich, showing an ill-formed nude woman of life size, said to have been copied from agnes frey. the portrait of the witty and learned lazarus spengler dates from the same year. when maximilian died, the rath of nuremberg refused to continue the pension which he had granted to dürer, though the artist addressed its members as "provident, honorable, wise, gracious, and dear lords," and enumerated his services to the dead emperor. he also vainly demanded the payment of the imperial order for florins, "to be paid to him as if to maximilian himself, out of the town taxes due to the emperor on st. martin's day," though he offered to leave his house in pledge, so that the town might lose nothing if the new emperor refused to acknowledge the validity of the claim. at the time of the death of maximilian the great woodcut of "the triumphal arch" was unfinished, and the blocks remained in the hands of the engraver. dürer and rösch published a large round cut containing twenty-one of the historical scenes, as a memorial of the late sovereign, and this singular production speedily went through four editions. a few trial-impressions of the whole arch had been struck off before the emperor's death, two of which are now at copenhagen, one in the british museum, and one at stockholm. in the first edition of the entire arch was printed at vienna, at the request of the archduke ferdinand, and another edition was issued by bartsch in . in dürer published an excellent wood-engraving of the late emperor maximilian, with inscriptions recording his titles and the date of his death. it showed a pleasant face, full of strength and character. among the painted portraits of maximilian which are attributed to the master, the best is in the vienna belvedere; and another was in the late northwick collection, in england. a beautiful portrait in water-colors is in the library of the erlangen university. in dürer also prepared an exquisitely finished copper-plate engraving of "st. anthony," showing the meditative hermit before a background of a quaint mediæval city, very like nuremberg, abounding in irregular gable-roofs and tall castle-towers. several admirable copies of this work have been made. chapter vi. dürer's tour in the netherlands.--his journal.--cologne.--feasts at antwerp and brussels.--procession of notre dame.--the _confirmatia_. --zealand journey.--ghent.--martin luther. dürer's famous tour to the netherlands began in the summer of , and continued until late in . his main object appears to have been to secure from charles v. a confirmation of the pension which the emperor maximilian had granted him, since the rath of nuremberg had refused to deliver any further sums until he could obtain such a ratification. possibly he also hoped to obtain the position of court-painter, to which titian was afterwards appointed. several biographers say that dürer made the journey in order to get a respite from his wife's tirades; but this is unlikely, since he took her and her maid susanna with him. the archduchess margaret, daughter of the late emperor maximilian and aunt of charles v., was at brussels, acting as regent of the netherlands; and dürer made strong but ineffectual attempts to secure her good graces. dürer's journal of his tour is a combination of cash account, itinerary, memoranda, and notebook, and would fill about fifty of these pages. it is usually barren of reflections, opinions, or prolonged descriptions; and is but a terse and business-like record of facts and expenses, rich only in its revelations of mediæval flemish hospitality and municipal customs, and certain personal habits of the writer. the greatest impression seems to have been made upon the traveller by the enormous wealth of the low countries, and the adjective "costly" continually recurs. the new-found treasures of america were then pouring a stream of gold into the flemish cities, and manufactures and commerce were in full prosperity. the devastating storm of alva's spanish infantry had not yet swept over the doomed but heroic netherlands; and her great cities basked in peace, prosperity, and wealth. "on the thursday after whitsuntide, i, albert dürer, at my own cost and responsibility, set out with my wife from nuremberg for the netherlands.... i went on to bamberg, where i gave the bishop a picture of the virgin, 'the life of the virgin,' an apocalypse, and other engravings of the value of a florin. he invited me to dinner, and gave me an exemption from customs, and three letters of recommendation." he hired a carriage to take him to frankfort for eight florins of gold, and received a parting stirrup-cup from meister benedict, and the painter hans wolfgang katzheimer. he gives the names of the forty-three villages through which he passed along the route by würzburg and carlstadt to frankfort, with his expenditures for food and for gifts to servants; and tells how the bishop's letter freed him from paying tolls. at frankfort he was cheaply entertained by jacob heller, for whom he had painted "the coronation of the virgin." from thence he descended by boat to mayence, where he received many gifts and attentions. in the river-passages hence to cologne, he was forced to haul in shore and arrange his tolls at ehrenfels, bacharach, caub, st. goar, and boppart. at cologne he was entertained by his cousin nicholas dürer, who had learned the goldsmith's trade in the shop of albert's father, and was now settled in business. the master made presents to him and his wife. the barefooted monks gave dürer a feast at their monastery; and jerome fugger presented him with wine. the journey was soon resumed; and the master passed through fourteen villages, and at last reached antwerp, where he was feasted by the factor of the illustrious fugger family. jobst planckfelt was dürer's host while he remained in the city, and showed him the burgomaster's palace and other sights of antwerp, besides introducing him to quentin matsys and other eminent flemish artists. "on st. oswald's day, the painters invited me to their hall, with my wife and maid; and every thing there was of silver and other costly ornamentation, and extremely costly viands. there were also all their wives there; and when i was conducted to the table all the people stood up on each side, as if i had been a great lord. there were amongst them also many persons of distinction, who all bowed low, and in the most humble manner testified their pleasure at seeing me, and they said they would do all in their power to give me pleasure. and, as i sat at table, there came in the messenger of the rath of antwerp, who presented me with four tankards of wine in the name of the magistrates; and he said that they desired to honor me with this, and that i should have their good-will.... and for a long time we were very merry together until quite late in the night; then they accompanied us home with torches in the most honorable manner, and they begged us to accept their good-will, and said they would do whatever i desired that might be of assistance to me. then i thanked them, and went to bed." he next speaks of making portraits of his friend the portuguese consul, his host planckfelt, and the musician felix hungersberg; and keeps account of his sales of paintings and engravings, on the same pages which record his junketings with various notable men. he dined with one of the imhoffs and with meister joachim patenir, the landscape-painter, with whom he had certain professional transactions. he soon became intimately acquainted with the three genoese brothers, tomasin, vincent, and gerhartus florianus, with whom he dined many times, and for whom he drew several portraits. he also met the great scholar and half-way reformer, erasmus, who gave him several pleasing presents. "our lady's church at antwerp is so immensely big, that many masses may be sung in it at one time without interfering with each other; and it has altars and rich foundations, and the best musicians that it is possible to have. the church has many devout services, and stone work, and particularly a beautiful tower. and i have also been to the rich abbey of st. michael, which has the costly stone seat in its choir. and at antwerp they spare no cost about such things, for there is money enough there." he made portraits of nicholas kratzer, then professor of astronomy at oxford university; hans plaffroth; and tomasin's daughter; and gave several score of his engravings to the portuguese consul and to his compatriot ruderigo, who had sent a large quantity of sweetmeats to the artist, and a green parrot to his wife. something of diplomatic tact is shown in dürer's making presents to meister gillgen, the emperor's door-keeper, and to meister conrad, the sculptor of the archduchess margaret. he seems to have been preparing to seek an invitation to court. in september dürer and tomasin journeyed to mechlin, where they invited meister conrad and one of his artist-friends to a supper. the next day they passed through vilvorde, and came to brussels. here the master was introduced to a new and splendid society and a city rich in works of art. he speaks of dining with "my lord of brussels," the imperial councillor bannisius, and the ambassadors of nuremberg; and bernard van orley, formerly a pupil of raphael and now court-painter to the regent margaret, invited him to a feast at which he met the regent's treasurer, the royal court-master, and the town-treasurer of brussels. he also visited the margrave of anspach and baireuth, with a letter of introduction from the bishop of bamberg; and drew portraits of meister conrad, bernard van orley, and several others. the regent margaret received him "with especial kindness," and promised to use her influence for his advancement at the imperial court. he presented copies of the passion to her and her treasurer, and many other engravings to other eminent persons in the city. "and i have seen king charles's house at brussels, with its fountains, labyrinth, and park. it gave me the greatest pleasure; and a more delightful thing, and more like a paradise, i have never before seen.... at brussels there is a very big and costly town-hall, built of hewn stone, with a splendid transparent tower. i have seen in the golden hall the four painted matters which the great meister rudier [roger van der weyden] has done.... i have also been into the nassau-house, which is built in such a costly style and so beautifully ornamented. and i saw the two beautiful large rooms and all the costly things in the house everywhere, and also the great bed in which fifty men might lie; and i have also seen the big stone which fell in a thunderstorm in the field close to the count of nassau. this house is very high, and there is a fine view from it, and it is much to be admired; and i do not think in all germany there is any thing like it.... also i have seen the thing which has been brought to the king from the new golden land [mexico], a sun of gold a fathom broad, and a silver moon just as big. likewise two rooms full of armor; likewise all kinds of arms, harness, and wonderful missiles, very strange clothing, bed-gear and all kinds of the most wonderful things for man's use, that are as beautiful to behold as they are wonderful. these things are all so costly, that they have been valued at , gulden. and i have never in all the days of my life seen any thing that has so much rejoiced my heart as these things. for i have seen among them wonderfully artistic things, and i have wondered at the subtle _ingenia_ of men in foreign lands." while at brussels dürer was the guest of conrad the sculptor, and ebner the nuremberg ambassador. he returned at length to antwerp, where his portuguese friends sent him several maiolica bowls and some calcutta feathers, and his host gave also certain indian and turkish curiosities. the jovial dinners with planckfelt and tomasin were again begun, and were supplemented by feasts with the von rogendorffs and fugger's agent. the master gave away hundreds of his engravings here, either to his friends or to influential courtiers; and all these details he faithfully records. he seems to have been an indefatigable investigator and collector of curiosities, imported trinkets, and china. with childlike delight he narrates the brilliant spectacles around him. "i have seen, on the sunday after the assumption of our blessed lady, the great procession from our lady's church at antwerp, when the whole town was assembled, artisans and people of rank, every one dressed in the most costly manner according to its station. every class and every guild had its badge by which it might be recognized; large and costly tapers were also borne by some of them. there were also long silver trumpets of the old frankish fashion. there were also many german pipers and drummers, who piped and drummed their loudest. also i saw in the street, marching in a line in regular order, with certain distances between, the goldsmiths, painters, stonemasons, embroiderers, sculptors, joiners, carpenters, sailors, fishmongers, ... and all kinds of artisans who are useful in producing the necessaries of life. in the same way there were the shopkeepers and merchants and their clerks. after these came the marksmen with firelocks, bows, and cross-bows, some on horseback and some on foot. after that came the city guards; and at last a mighty and beautiful throng of different nations and religious orders, superbly costumed, and each distinguished from the other, very piously. i remarked in this procession a troop of widows who lived by their labor. they all had white linen cloths covering their heads, and reaching down to their feet, very seemly to behold. behind them i saw many brave persons, and the canons of our lady's church, with all the clergy and bursars, where twenty persons bore our lady with the lord jesus ornamented in the most costly manner to the glory of the lord god. in this procession there were many very pleasant things, and it was very richly arranged. there were brought along many wagons, with moving ships, and other things. then followed the prophets, all in order; the new testament, showing the salutation of the angel, the three holy kings on their camels, and other rare wonders very beautifully arranged.... at the last came a great dragon led by st. margaret and her maidens, who were very pretty; also st. george, with his squire, a very handsome courlander. also a great many boys and girls, dressed in the most costly and ornamental manner, according to the fashion of different countries, rode in this troop, and represented so many saints. this procession from beginning to end was more than two hours passing by our house; and there were so many things that i could never write them all down even in a book, and so i leave it alone." raphael died during this year, and dürer made strenuous efforts to secure some of his drawings or other remains. he met tommaso vincidore of bologna, a pupil of the great master, and gave him an entire set of his best engravings for an antique gold ring, and another set to be sent to rome in exchange for some of raphael's sketches. he also gave a complete set of his engravings to the regent margaret, and made for her two careful drawings on parchment. vincidore painted his portrait, to be sent to rome; and it was engraved by adrian stock, showing his glorious eyes and long flowing hair, together with a short dense beard overshadowed by a massive moustache, curled back at the points. later in the autumn dürer journeyed to aix-la-chapelle, where he attended the splendid ceremonies of the coronation of the emperor charles v. at aix he saw the famous columns brought from rome by charlemagne, the arm of kaiser henry, the chemise and girdle of the virgin mary, and other relics. his wife was back at antwerp; and so the reckless artist chronicles his outlays for drinking, gaming, and other reprehensible expenses. after being entertained for three weeks at the nuremberg embassy, dürer went to cologne, where he remained a fortnight, distributing his engravings with generous hand, visiting the churches and their pictures, and buying all manner of odd things. early in november, by the aid of the nuremberg ambassadors, he obtained from the emperor his _confirmatia_, "with great trouble and labor." this coveted document, which formed one of the main objects of his journey to the north, confirmed him in the pension which maximilian had granted him, and made him painter to the emperor. from cologne he returned with all speed down the river to antwerp, being entertained at bois-le-duc, "a pretty town, which has an extraordinarily beautiful church," by the painter arnold de ber and the goldsmiths, "who showed me very much honor." on arriving at antwerp, he resumes his accounts of the sales and gifts of his engravings, and the enumeration of his domestic expenses. soon afterward he heard of a monstrous whale being thrown up on the zealand coast, and posted off in december to see it, taking a vessel from bergen-op-zoom, of whose well-built houses and great markets he speaks. "we sailed before sunset by a village, and saw only the points of the roofs projecting out of the water; and we sailed for the island of wohlfärtig [walcheren], and for the little town of sunge in another adjacent island. there were seven islands; and ernig, where i passed the night, is the largest. from thence we went to middleburg, where i saw in the abbey the great picture that johann de abus [mabuse] had done. the drawing is not so good as the painting. after that we came to fahr, where ships from all lands unload: it is a fine town. but at armuyden a great danger befell me; for just as we were going to land, and our ropes were thrown out, there came a large ship alongside of us, and i was about to land, but there was such a press that i let every one land before me, so that nobody but i, georg kotzler, two old women, and the skipper with one small boy, were left in the ship. and when i and the above-named persons were on board, and could not get on shore, then the heavy cable broke, and a strong wind came on, which drove our ship powerfully before it. then we all cried loudly for help, but no one ventured to give it; and the wind beat us out again to sea.... then there was great anxiety and fear; for the wind was very great, and not more than six persons on board. but i spoke to the skipper, and told him to take heart, and put his trust in god, and consider what there was to be done. then he said he thought, if we could manage to hoist the little sail, he would try whether we could not get on. so with great difficulty, and working all together, we got it half way up, and sailed on again; and when those on the land saw this, and how we were able to help ourselves, they came and gave us assistance, so that we got safely to land. middleburg is a good town, and has a very beautiful town-house with a costly tower. and there are also many things there of old art. there is an exceedingly costly and beautiful seat in the abbey, and a costly stone aisle, and a pretty parish church. and in other respects also the town is very rich in subjects for sketches. zealand is pretty and marvellous to see, on account of the water, which is higher than the land." the tide had carried off the stranded whale; and so dürer returned to antwerp, staying a few days at bergen. soon afterwards he gave von rafensburg three books of fine engravings in return for five snail-shells, nine medals, four arrows, two pieces of white coral, two dried fish, and a scale of a large fish. improvident collector of curiosities! how did the matronly agnes endure such tradings? many dinners with the genoese tomasin are then recorded, and fresh collations with new friends, in the hearty and hospitable spirit of the easy-living netherlanders. he repaid the quaint presents of his admirers with many copies of his engravings, and occasionally made some money in the practice of his profession. "on shrove tuesday early the goldsmiths invited me and my wife to dinner. there were many distinguished people assembled, and we had an extremely costly meal, and they did me exceeding much honor; and in the evening the senior magistrate of the town invited me, and gave me a costly meal, and showed me much honor. and there came in many strange masks." he then records his exchanges of engravings for such singular returns as satin, candied citron, ivory salt-cellars from calcutta, sea-shells, monk's electuary, sweetmeats in profusion, porcelains, an ivory pipe, coral, boxing-gloves, a shield, lace, fishes' fins, sandal-wood, &c. the portuguese ambassador invited him to a rich carnival feast, where there were "many very costly masks;" and the learned petrus Ægidius entertained him and erasmus of rotterdam together. he climbed up the cathedral tower, and "saw over the whole town from it, which was very agreeable." many of the curiosities which he had acquired were sent as presents to pirkheimer, the imhoffs, the holzschuhers, and other noble friends in nuremberg. arion, the ex-pensionary of antwerp, gave him a feast, and presented him with patenir's painting of "lot and his daughters." soon after easter, dürer made another pleasant tour in the netherlands, attended by the painter jan plos, passing by "the rich abbey of pol," and "the great long village of kahlb," to "the splendid and beautiful town" of bruges. plos and the goldsmith marx each gave him costly feasts, and showed him the emperor's palace, the archery court, and many paintings by roger van der weyden, hubert and jan van eyck, and hugo van der goes, together with an alabaster madonna by michael angelo. "we came at last to the painters' chapel, where there are many good things. after that they prepared a banquet for me. and from thence i went with them to their guild, where many honorable folk, goldsmiths, painters, and merchants, were assembled; and they made me sup with them, and did me great honor. and the rath gave me twelve measures of wine; and the whole assembly, more than sixty persons, accompanied me home with torches. "and when i arrived at ghent, the chief of the painters met me, and he brought with him all the principal painters of the town; and they showed me great honor, and received me in very splendid style, and they assured me of their good-will and service; and i supped that evening with them. on wednesday early they took me to st. john's tower, from which i saw over all the great and wonderful town. after that i saw johann's picture [van eyck's 'adoration of the spotless lamb']. it is a very rich and grandly conceived painting; and particularly eve, the virgin mary, and god the father, are excellent.... ghent is a beautiful and wonderful town, and four great waters flow through it. and i have besides seen many other very strange things at ghent, and the painters with their chief have never left me; and i have eaten morning and night with them, and they have paid for every thing, and have been very friendly with me." the master soon returned to antwerp, in distress. "in the third week after easter a hot fever attacked me, with great faintness, discomfort, and headache. and when i was in zealand, some time back, a wonderful illness came upon me, which i had never heard of any one having before; and this illness i have still." this low fever never quite left him, and was the cause of many doctor's bills thereafter. soon afterward he made a portrait of the landscape-painter joachim patenir; and "on the sunday before cross-week, meister joachim invited me to his wedding, and they all showed me much respect; and i saw two very pretty plays there, particularly the first, which was very pious and clerical." dürer seems to have had strong protestant sympathies, though it is claimed that he died in the faith of rome. his journal in contains the following significant sentences about martin luther: "he was a man enlightened by the holy ghost, and a follower of the true christian faith.... he has suffered much for christ's truth, and because he has rebuked the unchristian papacy which strives against the freedom of christ with its heavy burdens of human laws; and for this we are robbed of the price of our blood and sweat, that it may be expended shamefully by idle, lascivious people, whilst thirsty and sick men perish of hunger.... lord jesus christ, call together again the sheep of thy fold, of whom part are still to be found amongst the indians, muscovites, russians, and greeks, who through the burdens and avarice of the papacy have been separated from us. never were any people so horribly burdened with ordinances as us poor people by the romish see; we who, redeemed by thy blood, ought to be free christians. "o god, is luther dead? who will henceforth explain to us so clearly the holy gospel? o all pious christian men, bewail with me this god-inspired man, and pray to god to send us another enlightened teacher! o erasmus of rotterdam, where dost thou remain? behold how the unjust tyranny of this world's might and the powers of darkness prevail! hear, thou knight of christ; ride forth in the name of the lord, defend the truth, attain the martyr's crown; thou art already an old manikin, and i have heard thee say that thou gavest thyself only two years longer in which thou wilt still be fit for work. employ these well, then, in the cause of the gospel and the true christian faith." more junketings, gamings, collecting of outlandish things, visits to religious and civic pageants, new sketches and paintings, doctor's bills and monk's fees, minutely recorded. "meister gerhard, the illuminator, has a daughter of eighteen years, called susanna; and she has illuminated a plate, a saviour, for which i gave a florin. it is a great wonder that a woman should do so well!... i have again and again done sketches and many other things in the service of different persons, and for the most part of my work i have received nothing at all." after corpus christi day, dürer sent off several bales of his acquisitions to nuremberg, by the wagoner cunz mez. he and his wife then went to mechlin; "and the painters and sculptors entertained me at my inn, and showed me great honor; and i went to popenreuther's house, the cannon-founder, and found many wonderful things there. i have also seen the lady margaret [the archduchess and regent], and carried the portrait of the emperor, which i intended to present to her; but she took such a displeasure therein, i brought it away with me again. and on the friday she showed me all her beautiful things, and amongst them i saw forty small pictures in oil, pure and good: i have never seen finer miniatures. and then i saw other good things of johann's [van eyck] and jacob walch's. i begged my lady to give me meister jacob's little book, but she said she had promised it to her painter." dürer seems to have been treated with scant courtesy by the archduchess, and soon returned to antwerp. here he was entertained by the eminent lucas van leyden, for whom he made a portrait, and received one of himself in return. the stately nuremberger and the diminutive artist of leyden were much astonished at each other's personal appearance, but had a warm mutual respect and esteem. dürer next struck up a warm friendship with certain of the augustine monks, and dined often at their cloister. in addition to the _bric-à-brac_ which he still continued to collect, he now began to buy precious stones, in which he was badly swindled by a frenchman, and dolefully wrote, "i am a fool at a bargain." he was now about to return home, and naturally found it necessary, after having bought such a museum of oddities and curiosities, to borrow enough money to take him to nuremberg. his friend alexander imhoff lent him gold florins, receiving dürer's note in return. in some bitterness of spirit he wrote: "in all my transactions in the netherlands, with people both of high and low degree, and in all my doings, expenses, sales, and other trafficking, i have always had the disadvantage; and particularly the lady margaret, for all i have given her and done for her, has given me nothing in return." on the eve of dürer's departure, the king of denmark, christian ii., came to antwerp, and not only had the master draw his portrait, but also invited him to a dinner. he then went to brussels, on business for his new royal patron, and was present at the pompous reception and banquet with which the emperor and the archduchess margaret received the danish king. soon afterwards the king invited dürer to the feast which he gave to the emperor and archduchess; and then had his portrait painted in oil-colors, paying thirty florins for it. after a sojourn of eight days in brussels, the master and his wife went south to cologne, spending four long days on the road; and soon afterwards prolonged their journey to nuremberg. the municipality of antwerp had offered him a house and a liberal pension, to remain in that city; but he declined these, being content with his prospects and his noble friends in franconia. chapter vii. nuremberg's reformation.--the little masters.--glass-painting. --architecture.--letter to the city council.--"art of mensuration." --portraits.--melanchthon. what a commotion must dürer's return have caused in nuremberg, with his commission as court-painter, and his bales and crates of rarities from america and india and all europe! the presents which he had brought for so many of his friends must have given the liveliest delight, and afforded amusement for months to the sodalitas literaria and the rath-elders. in the mean time the purifying storm of the reformation was sweeping over germany, and the people were in times of great doubt and perplexity. nuremberg was the first of the free cities of the empire to pronounce herself protestant, though the change was effected with so much order and moderation that no iconoclastic fury was allowed to dilapidate its churches and convents. pirkheimer and spengler were excommunicated by the pope, though their calm conservatism had curbed the fanatical fury of the puritans, and saved the catholic art-treasures of the franconian capital. it is a significant fact that dürer, during the last six years of his life, made no more madonnas, and but one holy family. the era of mariolatry had passed, so far as nuremberg was concerned. yet, during the year of his return from the netherlands, he made two engravings of st. christopher bearing the holy child safely above the floods and through the storms, as if to indicate that christianity would be carried through all its disasters by an unfailing strength. during the remaining six years of his life dürer's art-works were limited to a few portraits and engravings, and the great pictures of the four apostles. much of his time was devoted to the publication of the fruits of his long experience, in several literary treatises, most of which are now lost. his broken health would not allow of continuous work, as the inroads of insidious disease slowly wasted his strength and ate away his vitality. the little masters were a group of artists who were formed in the studio or under the influence of dürer, shining as a bright constellation of genius in the twilight of german art. among these were the bavarian altdorfer, who combined in his brilliant paintings and engravings both fantasy and romanticism; the westphalian aldegrever, a laborious painter and a prolific engraver; barthel beham, who afterwards studied with and counterfeited the works of marc antonio in italy; hans sebald beham, who illustrated lewd fables and prayer books with equal skill and relish, and was finally driven from nuremberg; jacob binck of cologne, a neat and accurate draughtsman, who removed to rome, and engraved raphael's works under the supervision of marc antonio; george pensz, who also studied under the great italian engraver, and executed fine prints, besides several paintings. other assistants and pupils of dürer, of whom little but their names are now remembered, were hans brosamer of fulda, and hans springinklee. hans von culmbach was a careful follower, who surpassed his master in love of nature and her warm and harmonious colors. the tucher altar-piece in st. sebald's church was his master-picture. contemporary with the nuremberg painter, matthew grunewald was doing excellent work at aschaffenburg, in northern franconia. among the german artists of his time, he was surpassed only by dürer and holbein. the diet of the empire was held at nuremberg in , and the rath-haus was repainted and decorated for its sessions. dürer was paid florins for his share in this work, although it is not known what it was. the best of the paintings were executed by his pupil, george pensz, and it is probable that the master furnished some of the designs. although our artist held a pension from the emperor as his court-painter, his services seem to have never been called into requisition. charles spent but little time at nuremberg, and while yet in his youth had no care for seeing himself portrayed on canvas. it was after the master's death that the emperor first met titian, and retained him as court-painter. in dürer published at his own cost the first edition of the triumphal car of kaiser maximilian, a woodcut whose labored and ponderous allegorical idea was conceived by pirkheimer, designed in detail by dürer, and engraved by rösch on eight blocks, forming a picture - / feet long by - / feet high. the emperor is shown seated in a chariot, surrounded by female figures representing the abstract virtues, while the leaders of the twelve horses, and even the wheels and reins, have magniloquent latin names. maximilian was greatly interested in this work, but died before its completion. the first edition was accompanied by explanatory german text, and the second by latin descriptions. the large woodcut of ulrich varnbühler, whom dürer calls his "single friend," is one of the master's best works, and was printed over with three blocks, to produce a chiaroscuro. a little later, he made two copper-plates of the cardinal archbishop albert of magdeburg and mayence. in , while under the influence of the art-schools of the lower rhine, the master painted the pictures of sts. joachim and joseph and st. simeon and bishop lazarus, small figures on a gold ground. dürer's family relation records that, "my dear mother-in-law took ill on sunday, aug. , ; and on sept. , at nine of the night, she died piously. and in , on the feast of the presentation, early in the morning, died my father-in-law, hans frey. he had been ill for six years, and had his share of troubles in his time." they were buried in st. john's cemetery, in the same lot where the remains of their illustrious son-in-law were afterwards laid. it is said that dürer largely occupied himself with glass-painting, during the earlier part of his career; and he probably designed much for the workers in stained glass then in upper germany and the low countries. lacroix says that he produced twenty windows for the temple church at paris; and holt attributes to him the church-windows at fairford, near cirencester. as an architect albert executed but few works, and only a slight record remains to our day. he made two plans for the archduchess margaret, and another for the house of her physician. heideloff has proved that the gallery of the gessert house at nuremberg was built by dürer, in a strange combination of geometric and renaissance forms. pirkheimer's portrait was engraved in , showing a gross and heavy face, obese to the last degree, and verifying in its physiognomy the probability that the playful innuendoes in dürer's venetian letters were well grounded. it is not easy to see how such a spirit, learned in all the sciences of the age, and in close communion with erasmus, melanchthon, and ulrich von hutten, could have worn such a drooping mask of flesh. in the same year, dürer published an engraved portrait of frederick the wise, elector of saxony, the supporter of luther and the political leader of the reformation. the head is admirably drawn and full of character, with firmness plainly indicated by strongly compressed lips. the following letter to the council of nuremberg was written in the year :-- "provident, honorable, wise, and most favorable lords,--by my works and with the help of god, i have acquired , florins of the rhine, and i would now willingly lay them by for my support. although i know that it is not the custom with your wisdoms to pay high interest, and that you have refused to give one florin in twenty; yet i am moved by my necessity, by the particularly favorable regard which your wisdoms have ever shown towards me, and also by the following causes, to beg this thing of your honors. your wisdoms know that i have always been obedient, willing, and diligent in all things done for your wisdoms, and for the common state, and for other persons of the rath, and that the state has always had my help, art, and work, whenever they were needed, and that without payment rather than for money; for i can write with truth, that, during the thirty years that i have had a house in this town, i have not had guldens' worth of work from it, and what i have had has been poor and mean, and i have not gained the fifth part for it that it was worth; but all that i have earned, which god knows has only been by hard toil, has been from princes, lords, and other foreign persons. also i have expended all my earnings from foreigners in this town. also your honors doubtless know that, on account of the many works i had done for him, the late emperor maximilian, of praiseworthy memory, out of his own imperial liberality granted me an exemption from the rates and taxes of this town, which, however, i voluntarily gave up, when i was spoken to about it by the elders of the rath, in order to show honor to my lords, and to maintain their favor and uphold their customs and justice. "nineteen years ago the doge of venice wrote to me, offering me ducats a year if i would live in that city. more lately the rath of antwerp, while i remained in the low countries, also made me an offer, florins of philippe a year, and a fair mansion to live in. in both places all that i did for the government would have been paid over and above the pension. all of which, out of my love for my honorable and wise lords, for this town, and for my fatherland, i refused, and chose rather to live simply, near your wisdoms, than to be rich and great in any other place. it is therefore my dutiful request to your lordships, that you will take all these things into your favorable consideration, and accept these thousand florins (which i could easily lay out with other worthy people both here and elsewhere, but which i would rather know were in the hands of your wisdoms), and grant me a yearly interest upon them of fifty florins, so that i and my wife, who are daily growing old, weak, and incapable, may have a moderate provision against want. and i will ever do my utmost to deserve your noble wisdoms' favor and approbation, as heretofore." this touching letter shows the poverty of dürer's savings, and his sad feeling that he had lived as a prophet without honor in his own country. it produced the desired effect, and brought him five per cent on his little capital, though after his death the council hastened to reduce it to four per cent. dürer's wide study and remarkable versatility, rivalling that of leonardo da vinci, found further expression in literary work. camerarius states that he wrote a hundred and fifty different treatises, showing a marked proficiency in several of the sciences. his first work was entitled "instruction in the art of mensuration," &c., and was published in for the use of young painters. it is composed of four books, treating of the practical use of geometrical instruments, and the drawing of volutes, roman letters, and winding stairs; and is illustrated by numerous woodcuts. the fourth book elucidates the idea of perspective, and contains pictures of an instrument devised by the author, "which will be found particularly useful to persons who are not sure of drawing correctly." this was not the only invention of dürer's; for there still exists a small model of a gun-carriage in wood and iron, made by him, and exhibiting certain improvements which he had designed and advocated. "the art of mensuration" was a successful book, and passed through one latin and three german editions. the finest of dürer's works in portraiture was executed in , and represents the grand old jerome holzschuher, one of the chief rulers of the city, with all the strength and keenness of his heroic nature lighting up the canvas. enormous sums have been offered for this work; but it is still faithfully preserved in nuremberg, and retains its original rich and vivid coloring. another fine portrait, "like an antique bust," now in the vienna belvedere, shows johann kleeberger, the generous and charitable man who was known abroad as "the good german." still another portrait of this year was that of the burgomaster jacob müffel, a well-modelled and carefully executed likeness of one of the master's best friends. two very famous engravings of this date portray erasmus of rotterdam and philip melanchthon. erasmus is represented as a venerable scholar, sitting at a desk, with a pen in his hand and a soft cap on his head; and the engraving is remarkable for its admirable execution and strong character. still, the old philosopher was not pleased with it, and sent to sir thomas more his portrait by holbein, which, he said, "is much more like me than the one by the famous albert dürer." when erasmus first saw the picture he said, "oh! if i still resemble that erasmus, i may look out for getting married," as if it gave him too young an appearance. in the wise and noble-hearted melanchthon came to nuremberg to establish a protestant latin school, and formed a close intimacy with the master, whose tender and dreamy spirit was so like his own. during their constant intercourse, the artist became strengthened and comforted in the mild and pure doctrines of the true reformation, and was quietly yet strongly influenced to abandon even the forms of catholicism which still remained. dürer published a fine engraving of this friend of his last years on earth, showing delicately-chiselled features, with large and tender eyes and a lofty forehead. melanchthon wrote that in one of his frequent conversations with dürer, the artist explained the great change which his methods had undergone, saying, "in his youth he was fond of a florid style and great combination of colors, and that in looking at his own work he was always delighted to find this diversity of coloring in any of his pictures; but afterwards in his mature years he began to look more entirely to nature, and tried to see her in her simplest form. then he found that this simplicity was the true perfection of art; and, not attaining this, he did not care for his works as formerly, but often sighed when he looked at his pictures and thought of his incapacity." chapter viii. "the four apostles."--dürer's later literary works.--four books of proportion.--last sickness and death.--agnes dürer.--dürer described by a friend. schlegel says that "albert dürer may be called the shakespeare of painting;" and it is doubtless true that he filled out the narrow capabilities of early german art with a full measure of deep and earnest thought and powerful originality. the equal homage which was offered to him at venice and antwerp, the two art-antipodes, shows how highly he was regarded in his own day. his earlier works were executed in the crude and angular methods of wohlgemuth and his contemporaries; and most of the pictures now attributed to him, often incorrectly, are of this character. but in his later works he swung clear of these trammelling archaisms, and produced brilliant and memorable compositions. "the four apostles," now in the munich pinakothek, were dürer's last and noblest works, and fairly justify pirkheimer's assurance, that if he had lived longer the master would have done "many more wonderful, strange, and artistic things." they are full of grand thought and clear insight, free from exaggeration or conventionalism, perfect in execution and harmonious simplicity, and so distinct in individuality that it has been generally believed that the four temperaments are here impersonated. on one panel are sts. john and peter, in life-size, the former deeply meditating, with the scriptures in his hand, and the latter bending forward and earnestly reading the holy book. the other panel shows the stately st. paul, robed in white, standing before the ardent and impassioned st. mark. kugler calls these panels "the first complete work of art produced by protestantism;" and the truth and simplicity of the paintings prefigured the return of a pure and incorrupt faith. late in , dürer sent these pictures to the rath of nuremberg, with the following letter: "provident, honorable, wise, dear lords,--i have been for some time past minded to present your wisdoms with something of my unworthy painting as a remembrance; but i have been obliged to give this up on account of the defects of my poor work, for i knew that i should not have been well able to maintain the same before your wisdoms. during this past time, however, i have painted a picture, and bestowed more diligence upon it than upon any other painting; therefore i esteem no one worthier than your wisdoms to keep it as a remembrance; on which account i present the same to you herewith, begging you with humble diligence to accept my little present graciously and favorably, and to be and remain my favorable and dear lords, as i have always hitherto found you. this, with the utmost humility, i will sedulously endeavor to merit from your wisdoms." the rath eagerly accepted this noble gift, and hung the two panels in the rath-haus, sending also a handsome present of money to dürer and his wife. a century afterwards maximilian of bavaria saw and coveted the pictures, and used bribery and threats alike to secure them. in he accomplished his purpose; and the rath, fearful of his wrath and dreading his power, sent the panels to munich. the woodcut portrait of dürer, dated , shows the worn face of a man of fifty-six years, whose life has been stormy and sometimes unhappy. it is much less beautiful than the earlier pictures, for his long flowing hair and beard have both been cut short, perhaps on account of sickness, or in deference to the new puritan ideas. the face is delicate and melancholy, and seems to rest under the shadow of approaching death, which is to be met with a calm and simple faith. his second book, entitled "some instruction in the fortification of cities, castles, and towns," appeared in , and was dedicated to ferdinand i., and adorned with several woodcuts. in this the artist showed the same familiarity with the principles of defensive works as his great contemporaries leonardo da vinci and michael angelo had done. much attention is paid to the proper sheltering of heavy artillery from hostile shot; and the plans of the towers and bastions about nuremberg, which were built after dürer's death, were suggested in this work. a large contemporary woodcut by the master shows the siege of a city, with cannon playing from the bastions, and the garrison making a sortie against the enemy. the celebrated "four books of human proportion" was dürer's greatest literary work, and was completed about this time, having been begun in . its preparation was suggested by pirkheimer, to whom it was dedicated, and who published it after the author's death, with a long latin elegy on him. great labor was bestowed on this work, and many of the original sketches and notes are still preserved. the first and second books show the correct proportions of the human body and its members, according to scale, dividing the body into seven parts, each of which has the same measurement as the head, and then considering it in eighths. the proportions of children are also treated of; and the dogma is formulated, that the woman should be one-eighteenth shorter than the man. the third book is devoted to transposing or changing these proportions, and contains examples of distorted and unsymmetrical figures; and the fourth book treats of foreshortening, and shows the human body in motion. in his preface he says: "let no one think that i am presumptuous enough to imagine that i have written a wonderful book, or seek to raise myself above others. this be far from me! for i know well that but small and mediocre understanding and art can be found in the following work." the high appreciation in which this book was held appears from the fact that it passed through several german editions, besides three latin, two italian, two french, portuguese, dutch, and english editions. most of the original ms. is now in the british museum. among dürer's other works were treatises on civic architecture, music, the art of fencing, landscape-painting, colors, painting, and the proportions of the horse. but the year was nearly barren of new art-works; for the master's hand was losing its power, and his busy brain had grown weary. his constitution was slowly yielding before the fatal advances of a wasting disease, possibly the low fever which he had contracted in zealand, or it may have been an affection of the lungs. in the latter days he made a memorandum: "regarding the belongings i have amassed by my own handiwork, i have not had a great chance to become rich, and have had plenty of losses; having lent without being repaid, and my work-people have not reckoned with me; also my agent at rome died, after using up my property. half of this loss was thirteen years ago, and i have blamed myself for losses contracted at venice. still we have good house-furnishing, clothing, costly things as earthenware [maiolica], professional fittings-up, bed-furnishings, chests, and cabinets; and my stock of colors is worth guldens." the last design of the master was a drawing on gray paper, showing christ on the cross. when this was all completed except the face of the divine sufferer, the artist was summoned by death, and ascended to behold in glory the features which he had so often portrayed under the thorns. a violent attack of his chronic disease prostrated him so far that he was unable to rally; and after a brief illness he passed gently away, on the th of april, . it was the anniversary of the day on which raphael died, eight years before. his friends were startled and grief-stricken at his sudden death, which came so unexpectedly that even pirkheimer was absent from the city. it was long supposed that he died of the plague, on the evidence of a portrait-drawing of himself, showing him pointing to a discolored plague-spot on his side, and inscribed, "where my fingers point, there i suffer." it was said that this sketch was for the information of his doctor, who dared not visit the pestilence-stricken sick-chamber. but this hypothesis is no longer considered tenable. the remains of the master were buried in the lot of his father-in-law, hans frey, at the cemetery of st. john, beyond the walls; and his monument bore pirkheimer's simple epitaph: "me. al. du. quicquid alberti dureri mortale fuit, sub hoc conditur tumulo. emigravit viii idus aprilis, mdxxviii. a.d." on easter sunday, , the third centenary of his death, a great procession of artists and scholars from all parts of germany moved in solemn state from nuremberg to the grave of dürer, where they sang hymns. in the valley of the pegnitz, where across broad meadowlands rise the blue franconian mountains, nuremberg the ancient stands. quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng. memories of the middle ages, when the emperors rough and bold had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; and thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, that their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime. in the courtyard of the castle, bound with many an iron band, stands the mighty linden planted by queen cunigunde's hand; on the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days sat the poet melchior singing kaiser maximilian's praise. everywhere i see around me rise the wondrous world of art, fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart; and above cathedral doorways, saints and bishops carved in stone, by a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. in the church of sainted sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, and in bronze the twelve apostles guard from age to age their trust: in the church of sainted lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. here, when art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, lived and labored albrecht dürer, the evangelist of art; hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the better land. _emigravit_ is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies: dead he is not, but departed, for the artist never dies. longfellow. pirkheimer wrote to ulrich, "although i have been often tried by the death of those who were dear to me, i think i have never until now experienced such sorrow as the loss of our dearest and best dürer has caused me. and truly not without cause; for, of all men who were not bound to me by ties of blood, i loved and esteemed him the most, on account of his countless merits and rare integrity. as i know, my dear ulrich, that you share my sorrow, i do not hesitate to allow it free course in your presence, so that we may consecrate together a just tribute of tears to our dear friend. he has gone from us, our albert! let us weep, my dear ulrich, over the inexorable fate, the miserable lot of man, and the unfeeling cruelty of death. a noble man is snatched away, whilst so many others, worthless and incapable men, enjoy unclouded happiness, and have their years prolonged beyond the ordinary term of man's life." pirkheimer died two years after dürer's death, and was buried near him. during his last days, and therefore so long after his friend's decease that the first violence of his emotions had fully subsided, and his mind had become calm, he wrote to herr tschertte of vienna, and gave the following arraignment of the widow dürer: "truly i lost in albert the best friend i ever had in the world, and nothing grieves me so much as to think that he died such an unhappy death; for after the providence of god i can ascribe it to no one but his wife, who so gnawed at his heart, and worried him to such a degree, that he departed from this world sooner than he would otherwise have done. he was dried up like a bundle of straw, and never dared to be in good spirits, or to go out into society. for this bad woman was always anxious, although really she had no cause to be; and she urged him on day and night, and forced him to hard work only for this,--that he might earn money, and leave it to her when he died. for she always feared ruin, as she does still, notwithstanding that albert has left her property worth about six thousand gulden. but nothing ever satisfied her; and in short she alone was the cause of his death. i have often myself expostulated with her about her suspicious, blameworthy conduct, and have warned her, and told her beforehand what the end of it would be; but i have never met with any thing but ingratitude. for whoever was a friend of her husband's, and wished him well, to him she was an enemy; which troubled albert to the highest degree, and brought him at last to his grave. i have not seen her since his death: she will have nothing to do with me, although i have been helpful to her in many things; but one cannot trust her. she is always suspicious of anybody who contradicts her, or does not take her part in all things, and is immediately an enemy. therefore i would much rather she should keep away from me. she and her sister are not loose characters, but, as i do not doubt, honorable, pious, and very god-fearing women; but one would rather have to do with a light woman who behaved in a friendly manner, than with such a nagging, suspicious, scolding, pious woman, with whom a man can have no peace day or night. we must, however, leave the matter to god, who will be gracious and merciful to our good albert, for he lived a pious and upright man, and died in a very christian and blessed manner; therefore we need not fear his salvation. god grant us grace, that we may happily follow him when our time comes!" it is said that raphael, after studying dürer's engravings, exclaimed, "of a truth this man would have surpassed us all if he had had the masterpieces of art constantly before his eyes as we have." even so at the present day is it seen, that if dürer had studied classic art, and imbibed its principles, he might have added a rare beauty to the weird ugliness and solemnity of his designs, and substituted the sweet graces for the grim walkyrie. yet in that case the world would have lost the fascinations of the sad and profound nuremberg pictures, with their terrific realism and fantastic richness. italy did not disdain to borrow the ideas of the transalpine artist; and even raphael took the design of his famous picture of "the entombment" (_lo spasimo_) from dürer's picture in "the great passion." titian borrowed from his "life of the virgin" the figure of an old woman, which he introduced in his "presentation in the temple." the florentine pontormo copied a whole landscape from one of dürer's paintings; and andrea del sarto received many direct suggestions from his works. "it is very surprising in regard to that man, that in a rude and barbarous age he was the first of the germans who not only arrived at an exact imitation of nature, but has likewise left no second; being so absolute a master of it in all its parts,--in etching, engraving, statuary, architecture, optics, symmetry, and the rest,--that he had no equal except michael angelo buonarotti, his contemporary and rival; and he left behind him such works as were too much for the life of one man."--john andreas. in the preface to his latin translation of "the four books of human proportion," the rector camerarius says: "nature gave our albert a form remarkable for proportion and height, and well suited to the beautiful spirit which it held therein; so that in his case she was not unmindful of the harmony which hippocrates loves to dwell upon, whereby she assigns a grotesque body to the grotesquely-spirited ape, while she enshrines the noble soul in a befitting temple. he had a graceful hand, brilliant eyes, a nose well-formed, such as the greeks call [greek: tetragônon], the neck a little long, chest full, stomach flat, hips well-knit, and legs straight. as to his fingers, you would have said that you never saw any thing more graceful. such, moreover, was the charm of his language, that listeners were always sorry when he had finished speaking. "he did not devote himself to the study of literature, though he was in a great measure master of what it conveys, especially of natural science and mathematics. he was well acquainted with the principal facts of these sciences, and could apply them as well as set them forth in words: witness his treatises on geometry, in which there is nothing to be desired that i can find, at least so far as he has undertaken to treat the subject.... but nature had especially designed him for painting, which study he embraced with all his might, and was never tired of considering the works and methods of celebrated painters, and learning from them all that commended itself to him.... if he had a fault it was this: that he worked with too untiring industry, and practised a degree of severity towards himself that he often carried beyond bounds." a list of albert dÜrer's chief paintings now in existence, with the dates of their execution, and their present locations. _the interrogation-mark is annexed to the titles of certain paintings which two or more critics regard as of doubtful authenticity._ germany. nuremberg.--_germanic museum,_--emperor maximilian; burgomaster holzschuher, . _st. maurice gallery,_--pietà; ecce homo. _rath-haus_,--emperor sigismund(?); charlemagne(?). munich pinakothek.--baumgärtner altar-piece, ; suicide of lucretia, ; albert dürer, ; oswald krell, ; michael wohlgemuth, ; albert dürer the elder, ; the nativity; sts. paul and mark, ; sts. peter and john, ; a knight in armor(?); sts. joachim and joseph, ; st. simeon and bishop lazarus, ; death of the virgin; a young man, ; pietà(?); mater dolorosa. dresden museum.--christ bearing the cross; the crucifixion; a hare; lucas van leyden; madonna and saints (?). cologne.--_museum,_--drummer and piper; madonna (?). _church of sta. maria im capitol,_--death of the virgin. frankfort.--_municipal gallery,_--two portraits. _städel institute,_--catherine fürleger; albert dürer the elder. cassel.--_friedrich museum,_--the passion. _bellevue,_--erasmus of rotterdam. pommersfelden.--jacob müffel. lustschena (baron speck).--a young lady. aschaffenburg.--albert dürer. augsburg.--two masques. several others in the castle of stolzenfels. austria. vienna.--_belvedere,_--emperor maximilian, ; martyrdom of the ten thousand christians, ; madonna, ; adoration of the magi, ; madonna, ; adoration of the holy trinity, ; madonna; young man, ; johann kleeberger, ; and others not definitely authenticated. _the albertina,_--emperor maximilian, green passion, and drawings. _czernin palace,_--portrait. the old ambraser, lichtenstein, and von lamberg collections included four portraits and two religious pictures. _st. wolfgang's church,_ upper austria,--death of the virgin. pesth.--christ on the cross. prague.--_strahow abbey,_--the feast of rose garlands. northern europe. st. petersburg.--_hermitage palace,_--christ led to calvary; christ bearing the cross; the elector of saxony. _hague museum._--two portraits. _beloeil_ (prince de ligne),--two pictures. _basle museum_ (switzerland).--two pictures. _coire cathedral,_--christ bearing the cross. italy. florence.--_uffizi gallery,_--adoration of the magi, ; madonna, ; dürer's father, ; apostle philip, ; st. james the great, ; albert dürer, ; ecce homo (?); nativity (?); pietà (?). _pitti palace,_--adam and eve (replica). rome.--_barberini palace,_--christ among the doctors, . _borghese palace,_--louis vi. of bavaria; pirkheimer, ; and five pictures of dubious authenticity. _corsini palace,_--a hare; cardinal albert of brandenburg. _doria palace,_--st. eustace (?); ecce homo (?). _sciarra-colonna palace,_--death of the virgin. milan.--_casa trivulzi,_--ecce homo, . _ambrosiana,_--coronation of the virgin, . _bergamo academy,_--christ bearing the cross. _brescia gallery,_--drawings. venice.--_manfrini palace,_--adoration of the shepherds; holy family. naples.--_santangelo,_--garland-bearer, . _museum,_--nativity, . _villafranca palace,_--christ on the cross. spain. madrid.--_museum,_--albert dürer, ; dürer's father; adam and eve. _marquis of salamanca,_--altar-piece, a passion scene. france. _besançon museum._--christ on the cross. _lyons,_--madonna and child giving roses to maximilian (?). great britain. _national gallery,_--a senator, . _stafford house,_ death of the virgin. _hampton-court palace,_--young man, ; st. jerome (?). _buckingham palace,_--virgin and child. _rev. j. f. russell, --crucifixion; christ's farewell to mary (?). _thirlestaine house,_--maximilian. _kensington palace,_--young man. _new battle house,_--madonna and angels. _belvoir castle,_--portrait. _sion house,_--dürer's father. _mr. wynn ellis, london,_--catherine fürleger; virgin and child. _fitzwilliam museum, cambridge,_ --annunciation (?). _windsor castle,_--pirkheimer. _bath house,_--man in armor. _howard castle,_--vulcan; adam and eve; abraham and isaac. _the latest of the lists of dürer's paintings, compiled by mr. w. b. scott in , enumerates the following collections, long since dispersed, with the dates when they were cataloged: pictures at aix, in ; at anspach, ; at augsburg, ; at bamberg, ; at banz, ; at berlin, ; at blankenberg, ; at bologna, ; at breslau, ; at brussels, . many of these cannot now be located, the collections having been broken up._ a list of dÜrer's wood engravings. _bible subjects._--cain killing abel; samson slaying the lion; adoration of the magi, ; the last supper, ; the mount of olives; pilate showing christ to the jews; the sudarium; ecce homo; the crucifixion, ; the crucifixion, ; calvary; the crucifixion; christ on the cross, with angels; the trinity, ; the holy family, ; the holy family with a guitar, ; the holy family, ; the holy family in a chamber; the virgin with the swaddled child; the virgin crowned by angels, ; the holy family with three rabbits. _saints._--st. arnolf, bishop; st. christopher, ; st. christopher with the birds; st. christopher, ; st. colman of scotland, ; st. francis receiving the stigmata; st. george; the mass of st. gregory, ; st. jerome in a chamber, ; st. jerome in the grotto, ; the little st. jerome; the beheading of st. john the baptist; the head of st. john brought to herod, ; st. sebald; the penitent; elias and the raven; sts. john and jerome; sts. nicholas, udalricus, and erasmus; sts. stephen, gregory, and lawrence; the eight austrian saints; the martyrdom of ten thousand christians; the beheading of st. catherine; st. mary magdalen. _portraits._--the emperor maximilian, ; the emperor; ulrich varnbühler, ; albert dürer, . _heraldic subjects._--the beham arms; the dürer arms, ; the ebner-furer arms, ; the kressen arms; the shield of nuremberg; the shield with three lions' heads; the shield with a wild man and two dogs; the scheurl-zuiglin arms; the stabius arms; the staiber arms. _miscellaneous subjects._--the judgment of paris; hercules; the rider; the bath; the embrace; the learner, ; death and the soldier, ; the besieged city, ; the rhinoceros, ; the triumphal chariot of maximilian, ; the great column, ; a man sketching; two men sketching a lute; a man sketching a woman; a man sketching an urn; hemispherium australe; imagines coeli septentrionalis; imagines coeli meridionalis; the pirkheimer title-border; six ornamental designs; two title-borders. _the great passion_ ( cuts; ).--ecce homo; the last supper; the agony in the garden; the seizing of christ; the flagellation; the mocking; bearing the cross; the crucifixion; christ in hades; the wailing maries; the entombment; the resurrection. _the little passion_ ( cuts; ).--ecce homo; adam and eve; the expulsion from eden; the annunciation; the nativity; the entry into jerusalem; the cleansing of the temple; christ's farewell to his mother; the last supper; the washing of the feet; the agony in the garden; the kiss of judas; christ before annas; caiaphas rends his clothes; the mocking; christ and pilate; christ before herod; the scourging; the crowning with thorns; christ shown to the jews; pilate washing his hands; bearing the cross; the veronica; nailing christ to the cross; the crucifixion; descent into hell; the descent from the cross; the weeping maries; the entombment; the resurrection; christ in glory appearing to his mother; appearing to mary magdalen; at emmaus; the unbelief of st. thomas; the ascension; the descent of the holy ghost; the last judgment. _the life of the virgin_ ( designs; ).--the virgin and child; joachim's offering rejected; the angel appears to joachim; joachim meeting anna; the birth of mary; the virgin's presentation at the temple; the betrothal of mary and joseph; the annunciation; the visitation of st. elizabeth; the nativity; the circumcision; the purification of mary; the flight into egypt; the repose in egypt; christ teaching in the temple; christ's farewell to his mother; the death of the virgin; the assumption; the virgin and child with seven saints. _the apocalypse of st. john_ ( designs; ).--the virgin and child appearing to st. john; his attempted martyrdom; the seven golden candlesticks and the seven stars; the throne of god with the four-and-twenty elders and the beasts; the descent of the four horses; the martyrs clothed in white and the stars falling; the four angels holding the winds, and the sealing of the elect; the seven angel trumpeters and the glorified host of saints; the four angels slaying the third part of men; john is made to eat the book; the woman clothed with the sun, and the seven-headed dragon; michael and his angels fighting the great dragon; the worship of the seven-headed dragon; the lamb in zion; the woman of babylon sitting on the beast; the binding of satan for a thousand years. there are other wood-engravings described in the catalogue attached to scott's "life of dürer," and ranked as "doubtful." many of these are held to be authentic by one or more of the three critical authorities on dürer's works,--heller, bartsch, and passavant. other connoisseurs, however, ascribe them to different engravers of the early german schools, mostly to pupils and colleagues of dürer. engravings on copper. _bible-subjects._--adam and eve, ; the nativity, ; the passion on copper ( designs), - ; crucifixion, , ; little crucifixion, ; christ showing his five wounds; angel with the sudarium, ; two angels with the sudarium, ; the prodigal son, ; the virgin and anna; mary on the crescent moon, no date; mary on the crescent moon, ; mary with a crown of stars, ; mary with the starry crown and sceptre, ; mary crowned by an angel, ; mary crowned by two angels, ; the nursing mary, ; the nursing mary, ; mary with the swaddled child, ; mary under a tree, ; mary by the well, ; mary with the pear, ; mary with the monkey, no date; the holy family with the butterfly, early work. _saints._--st. philip; st. bartholomew, ; st. thomas, ; st. simon, ; st. paul, ; st. anthony, ; st. christopher, ; st. christopher, second design; st. john chrysostom; st. eustace, no date; st. george; equestrian st. george, ; st. jerome, ; st. jerome praying; the same, smaller, ; st. sebastian; st. sebastian bound to a pillar. _miscellaneous._--the judgment of paris, ; apollo and diana; the rape of amymone; jealousy; the satyr's family, ; justice; the little fortune; the great fortune; melencolia, ; the dream; the four naked women, ; the witch; three cupids; gentleman and lady walking; the love offer; the wild man seizing a woman, early work; the bagpiper, ; the dancing rustics, ; the peasant and his wife; peasant going to market; three peasants; the cook and the housekeeper; the turk and his wife; the standard-bearer; the six soldiers; the little courier; the equestrian lady; the great white horse, ; the small white horse, ; the knight, death, and the devil, ; the monster pig; the coat-of-arms with the cock, ; the coat-of-arms and death's head, . _portraits._--the cardinal-archbishop albert of mayence, , ; larger portrait of the same; frederick the wise, elector of saxony, ; erasmus of rotterdam, ; philip melanchthon, ; willibald pirkheimer, . _etchings._--christ with bound hands, ; ecce homo, ; christ on the mount of olives, ; the holy family; st. jerome; pluto and proserpine; the bath; the cannon. index. _adam and eve,_ , . _adoration of the kings,_ . _adoration of the trinity,_ , . aix-la-chapelle, . aldegrever, . altdorfer, . antwerp, , , , . -- cathedral, , . architectural works, . art of mensuration, . augsburg, . bamberg, , . basle, . baumgärtner, , , , , . behaim, martin, . beham, . beheim, hans, . bellini, giovanni, , . bergen-op-zoom, , . bernard van orley, . binck, . _birth of st. john,_ . bois-le-duc, . bruges, . brussels, . bullman, . _calvary,_ . camerarius, , . carvings, , . celtes, conrad, . chelidonius, , , . coat-of-arms, , . colmar, , . cologne, , , . colvin, sidney, . confirmatia, the, . _coronation of the virgin,_ . danger at sea, . death of parents, , . _death of the virgin,_ . delayed pensions, , . denmark's king, . drawings, . dürer, albert, the elder, , , , . -- agnes, , , , . -- andreas, , , , . -- anthony, . -- barbara, , , . -- hans, , , . -- nicholas, . dürer's house, . -- marriage, . -- poetry, . -- portraits, , , , , . early drawings, . engravings, , . erasmus, , , , . etchings, . eytas, , . fever, the, . flemish feasts, , , . flemish wealth, . fortifications, treatise on, . _four apostles, the,_ . francia, . frey family, , . ghent, . glass-painting, . _great column, the,_ . _great passion, the,_ . _green passion, the,_ . grunewald, . haller family, . heller, jacob, , , . _holzschuher,_ . human proportions, . imhoff collection, the, . inventions, . karl, eucharius, , . _knight, death, etc.,_ . koberger, , . kornelisz, . kraft, . landäuer, . letters to the rath, , . _life of the virgin,_ . lindenast, . literary work, . _little crucifixion, the,_ . little masters, . _little passion, the,_ . mantegna, , . marc antonio, . margaret, archduchess, , , , . martin luther, . _martyrdom, the,_ . maximilian, emperor, , , , , , . mechlin, , . melanchthon, , . _melencolia, the,_ . middleburg, , . netherland journey, . nuremberg, , , . _passion, the great,_ . -- _the green,_ . -- _the little,_ . -- _song,_ . -- _in copper,_ . patenir, , . pensz, george, , . perugino, . piratical engravers, , . pirkheimer, , , , , , , , , , , , , . prayer-book, max's, . procession, the, . raphael, , , , . regiomontanus, . _rose-garlands, feast of,_ , . ruskin quoted, , . sachs, hans, . _st. anthony,_ . _st. eustachius,_ . _st. jerome,_ . schongauer, . silver-work, . sketch-books, . spengler, , , , . stein, . stoss, veit, . strasbourg, . teacher, the (poem), . tomasin, , , . _triumphal arch,_ , , . _triumphal car,_ . van leyden, lucas, . vasari quoted, . venetian journey, . venice, , , . vincidore, . vischer, peter, . von culmbach, . walch, jacob, , . wander-jahre, the, , . water-marks, . wohlgemuth, , , , . woodcuts, . zealand, journey to, . transcriber's note: minor changes have been made to correct typesetters' errors; otherwise every effort has been made to remain true to the author's words and intent. transcriber's notes: the original spelling and minor inconsistencies in the spelling and formatting have been retained. unusual and alternative spellings have been retained as they appear on the original publication. hyphenated words have been standardized. contractions in the stylized latin script on page have been expanded and included in curly brackets {} by the transcriber: "jahes" has been shown as "jah{ann}es" and "scpsi" as "sc{ri}psi". minor typographical changes are listed at the bottom of this text. * * * * * * * * library edition the complete works of john ruskin modern painters volume ii--of truth and theoretic faculties volume iii--of many things national library association new york chicago modern painters. vol. iii., containing part iv., of many things. table of contents. part iv. of many things. page chapter i.--of the received opinions touching the "grand style" " ii.--of realization " iii.--of the real nature of greatness of style " iv.--of the false ideal:--first, religious " v.--of the false ideal:--secondly, profane " vi.--of the true ideal:--first, purist " vii.--of the true ideal:--secondly, naturalist " viii.--of the true ideal:--thirdly, grotesque " ix.--of finish " x.--of the use of pictures " xi.--of the novelty of landscape " xii.--of the pathetic fallacy " xiii.--of classical landscape " xiv.--of mediæval landscape:--first, the fields " xv.--of mediæval landscape:--secondly, the rocks " xvi.--of modern landscape " xvii.--the moral of landscape " xviii.--of the teachers of turner appendix. i.--claude's tree-drawing ii.--german philosophy iii.--plagiarism list of plates to vol. iii. drawn by engraved by frontispiece. lake, land, _the author_ j. c. armytage. and cloud. facing plate page . true and false griffins _the author_ r. p. cuff . drawing of tree-bark _various_ j. h. le keux . strength of old pine _the author_ j. h. le keux . ramification according _claude_ j. h. le keux to claude . good and bad _turner and j. cousen tree-drawing constable_ . foreground leafage _the author_ j. c. armytage . botany of the thirteenth _missal-painters_ henry shaw century . the growth of leaves _the author_ r. p. cuff . botany of the fourteenth _missal-painters_ cuff; h. swan century . geology of the middle _leonardo, etc._ r. p. cuff ages . latest purism _raphael_ j. c. armytage . the shores of wharfe _j. w. m. turner_ the author . first mountain-naturalism _masaccio_ j. h. le keux . the lombard apennine _the author_ thos. lupton . st. george of the seaweed _the author_ thos. lupton . early naturalism _titian_ j. c. armytage . advanced naturalism _tintoret_ j. c. armytage preface. as this preface is nearly all about myself, no one need take the trouble of reading it, unless he happens to be desirous of knowing-- what i, at least, am bound to state,--the circumstances which have caused the long delay of the work, as well as the alterations which will be noticed in its form. the first and second volumes were written to check, as far as i could, the attacks upon turner which prevented the public from honoring his genius, at the time when his power was greatest. the check was partially given, but too late; turner was seized by painful illness not long after the second volume appeared; his works, towards the close of the year , showed a conclusive failure of power; and i saw that nothing remained for me to write, but his epitaph. the critics had done their proper and appointed work; they had embittered, more than those who did not know turner intimately could have believed possible, the closing years of his life; and had blinded the world in general (as it appears ordained by fate that the world always _shall_ be blinded) to the presence of a great spirit among them, till the hour of its departure. with them, and their successful work, i had nothing more to do; the account of gain and loss, of gifts and gratitude, between turner and his countrymen, was for ever closed. _he_ could only be left to his quiet death at chelsea,--the sun upon his face; _they_ to dispose a length of funeral through ludgate, and bury, with threefold honor, his body in st. paul's, his pictures at charing cross, and his purposes in chancery. but with respect to the illustration and preservation of those of his works which remained unburied, i felt that much might yet be done, if i could at all succeed in proving that these works had some nobleness in them, and were worth preservation. i pursued my task, therefore, as i had at first proposed, with this only difference in method,--that instead of writing in continued haste, such as i had been forced into at first by the urgency of the occasion, i set myself to do the work as well as i could, and to collect materials for the complete examination of the canons of art received among us. i have now given ten years of my life to the single purpose of enabling myself to judge rightly of art, and spent them in labor as earnest and continuous as men usually undertake to gain position, or accumulate fortune. it is true, that the public still call me an "amateur;" nor have i ever been able to persuade them that it was possible to work steadily and hard with any other motive than that of gaining bread, or to give up a fixed number of hours every day to the furtherance of an object unconnected with personal interests. i have, however, given up so much of life to this object; earnestly desiring to ascertain, and be able to teach, the truth respecting art; and also knowing that this truth was, by time and labor, definitely ascertainable. it is an idea too frequently entertained, by persons who are not much interested in art, that there are no laws of right or wrong concerning it; and that the best art is that which pleases most widely. hence the constant allegation of "dogmatism" against any one who states unhesitatingly either preference or principle, respecting pictures. there are, however, laws of truth and right in painting, just as fixed as those of harmony in music, or of affinity in chemistry. those laws are perfectly ascertainable by labor, and ascertainable no other way. it is as ridiculous for any one to speak positively about painting who has not given a great part of his life to its study, as it would be for a person who had never studied chemistry to give a lecture on affinities of elements; but it is also as ridiculous for a person to speak hesitatingly about laws of painting who has conscientiously given his time to their ascertainment, as it would be for mr. faraday to announce in a dubious manner that iron had an affinity for oxygen, and to put the question to the vote of his audience whether it had or not. of course there are many things, in all stages of knowledge, which cannot be dogmatically stated; and it will be found, by any candid reader, either of what i have before written, or of this book, that in many cases, i am _not_ dogmatic. the phrase, "i think so," or, "it seems so to me," will be met with continually; and i pray the reader to believe that i use such expression always in seriousness, never as matter of form. it may perhaps be thought that, considering the not very elaborate structure of the following volumes, they might have been finished sooner. but it will be found, on reflection, that the ranges of inquiry engaged in demanded, even for their slight investigation, time and pains which are quite unrepresented in the result. it often required a week or two's hard walking to determine some geological problem, now dismissed in an unnoticed sentence; and it constantly needed examination and thought, prolonged during many days in the picture gallery, to form opinions which the reader may suppose to be dictated by caprice, and will hear only to dispute. a more serious disadvantage, resulting from the necessary breadth of subject, was the chance of making mistakes in minor and accessory points. for the labor of a critic who sincerely desires to be just, extends into more fields than it is possible for any single hand to furrow straightly. he has to take _some_ note of many physical sciences; of optics, geometry, geology, botany, and anatomy; he must acquaint himself with the works of all great artists, and with the temper and history of the times in which they lived; he must be a fair metaphysician, and a careful observer of the phenomena of natural scenery. it is not possible to extend the range of work thus widely, without running the chance of occasionally making mistakes; and if i carefully guarded against that chance, i should be compelled both to shorten my powers of usefulness in many directions, and to lose much time over what work i undertook. all that i can secure, therefore, is rightness in main points and main tendencies; for it is perfectly possible to protect oneself against small errors, and yet to make great and final error in the sum of work: on the other hand, it is equally possible to fall into many small errors, and yet be right in tendency all the while, and entirely right in the end. in this respect, some men may be compared to careful travellers, who neither stumble at stones, nor slip in sloughs, but have, from the beginning of their journey to its close, chosen the wrong road; and others to those who, however slipping or stumbling at the wayside, have yet their eyes fixed on the true gate and goal (stumbling, perhaps, even the more because they have), and will not fail of reaching them. such are assuredly the safer guides: he who follows them may avoid their slips, and be their companion in attainment. although, therefore, it is not possible but that, in the discussion of so many subjects as are necessarily introduced in the following pages, here and there a chance should arise of minor mistake or misconception, the reader need not be disturbed by the detection of any such. he will find always that they do not affect the matter mainly in hand. i refer especially in these remarks to the chapters on classical and mediæval landscape. it is certain, that in many respects, the views there stated must be inaccurate or incomplete; for how should it be otherwise when the subject is one whose proper discussion would require knowledge of the entire history of two great ages of the world? but i am well assured that the suggestions in those chapters are useful; and that even if, after farther study of the subject, the reader should find cause to differ with me in this or the other speciality, he will yet thank me for helping him to a certain length in the investigation, and confess, perhaps, that he could not at last have been right, if i had not first ventured to be wrong. and of one thing he may be certified, that any error i fall into will not be in an illogical deduction: i may mistake the meaning of a symbol, or the angle of a rock-cleavage, but not draw an inconsequent conclusion. i state this, because it has often been said that i am not logical, by persons who do not so much as know what logic means. next to imagination, the power of perceiving logical relation is one of the rarest among men; certainly, of those with whom i have conversed, i have found always ten who had deep feeling, quick wit, or extended knowledge, for one who could set down a syllogism without a flaw; and for ten who could set down a syllogism, only one who could _entirely_ understand that a square has four sides. even as i am sending these sheets to press, a work is put into my hand, written to prove (i would, from the depth of my heart, it could prove) that there was no ground for what i said in the stones of venice respecting the logical probability of the continuity of evil. it seems learned, temperate, thoughtful, everything in feeling and aim that a book should be, and yet it begins with this sentence: "the question cited in our preface, 'why not infinite good out of infinite evil?' must be taken to imply--for it else can have no weight,--that in order to the production of infinite good, the existence of infinite evil is indispensable." so, if i had said that there was no reason why honey should not be sucked out of a rock, and oil out of a flinty rock, the writer would have told me this sentence must be taken to imply--for it else could have no weight,--that in order to the production of honey, the existence of rocks is indispensable. no less intense and marvellous are the logical errors into which our best writers are continually falling, owing to the notion that laws of logic will help them better than common sense. whereas any man who can reason at all, does it instinctively, and takes leaps over intermediate syllogisms by the score, yet never misses his footing at the end of the leap; but he who cannot instinctively argue, might as well, with the gout in both feet, try to follow a chamois hunter by the help of crutches, as to follow, by the help of syllogism, a person who has the right use of his reason. i should not, however, have thought it necessary to allude to this common charge against my writings, but that it happens to confirm some views i have long entertained, and which the reader will find glanced at in their proper place, respecting the necessity of a more _practically_ logical education for our youth. of other various charges i need take no note, because they are always answered the one by the other. the complaint made against me to-day for being narrow and exclusive, is met to-morrow by indignation that i should admire schools whose characters cannot be reconciled; and the assertion of one critic, that i am always contradicting myself, is balanced by the vexation of another, at my ten years' obstinacies in error. i once intended the illustrations to these volumes to be more numerous and elaborate, but the art of photography now enables any reader to obtain as many memoranda of the facts of nature as he needs; and, in the course of my ten years' pause, i have formed plans for the representation of some of the works of turner on their own scale; so that it would have been quite useless to spend time in reducing drawings to the size of this page, which were afterwards to be engraved of their own size.[ ] i have therefore here only given illustrations enough to enable the reader, who has not access to the works of turner, to understand the principles laid down in the text, and apply them to such art as may be within his reach. and i owe sincere thanks to the various engravers who have worked with me, for the zeal and care with which they have carried out the requirements in each case, and overcome difficulties of a nature often widely differing from those involved by their habitual practice. i would not make invidious distinction, where all have done well; but may perhaps be permitted to point, as examples of what i mean, to the rd and th plates in this volume (the th being left unlettered in order not to injure the effect of its ground), in which mr. le keux and mr. armytage have exactly facsimiled, in line engraving, drawings of mine made on a grey ground touched with white, and have given even the _loaded_ look of the body color. the power of thus imitating actual touches of color with pure lines will be, i believe, of great future importance in rendering turner's work on a large scale. as for the merit or demerit of these or other drawings of my own, which i am obliged now for the sake of illustration often to engrave, i believe i could speak of it impartially, and should unreluctantly do so; but i leave, as most readers will think i ought, such judgment to them, merely begging them to remember that there are two general principles to be kept in mind in examining the drawings of any writer on art: the first, that they ought at least to show such ordinary skill in draughtsmanship, as to prove that the writer knows _what_ the good qualities of drawing _are_; the second, that they are never to be expected to equal, in either execution or conception, the work of accomplished artists,--for the simple reason, that in order to do _any_thing thoroughly well, the whole mind, and the whole available time, must be given to that single art. it is probable, for reasons which will be noted in the following pages, that the critical and executive faculties are in great part independent of each other; so that it is nearly as great an absurdity to require of any critic that he should equal in execution even the work which he condemns, as to require of the audience which hisses a piece of vocal music that they should instantly chant it in truer harmony themselves. but whether this be true or not (it is at least untrue to this extent, that a certain power of drawing is _indispensable_ to the critic of art), and supposing that the executive and critical powers always exist in some correspondent degree in the same person, still they cannot be cultivated to the same extent. the attention required for the development of a theory is necessarily withdrawn from the design of a drawing, and the time devoted to the realization of a form is lost to the solution of a problem. choice _must_ at last be made between one and the other power, as the principal aim of life; and if the painter should find it necessary sometimes to explain one of his pictures in words, or the writer to illustrate his meaning with a drawing, the skill of the one need not be doubted because his logic is feeble, nor the sense of the other because his pencil is listless. as, however, it is sometimes alleged by the opponents of my principles, that i have never _done_ _any_thing, it is proper that the reader should know exactly the amount of work for which i am answerable in these illustrations. when an example is given from any of the works of turner, it is either etched by myself from the original drawing, or engraved from a drawing of mine, translating turner's work out of color into black and white, as for instance, the frontispiece to the fourth volume. when a plate is inscribed as "_after_" such and such a master, i have always myself made the drawing, in black and white, from the original picture; as, for instance, plate , in this volume. if it has been made from a previously existing engraving, it is inscribed with the name of the first engraver at the left-hand lowest corner; as, for instance, plate , in vol. iv. outline etchings are either by my own hand on the steel, as plate , here, and , , in vol. iv.; or copies from my pen drawings, etched by mr. boys, with a fidelity for which i sincerely thank him; one, plate , vol. iv., is both drawn and etched by mr. boys from an old engraving. most of the other illustrations are engraved from my own studies from nature. the colored plate ( , in this volume) is from a drawing executed with great skill by my assistant, mr. j. j. laing, from mss. in the british museum; and the lithography of it has been kindly superintended by mr. henry shaw, whose renderings of mediæval ornaments stand, as far as i know, quite unrivalled in modern art. the two woodcuts of mediæval design, figs. and , are also from drawings by mr. laing, admirably cut by miss byfield. i use this word "admirably," not with reference to mere delicacy of execution, which can usually be had for money, but to the perfect fidelity of facsimile, which is in general _not_ to be had for money, and by which miss byfield has saved me all trouble with respect to the numerous woodcuts in the fourth volume; first, by her excellent renderings of various portions of albert durer's woodcuts; and, secondly, by reproducing, to their last dot or scratch, my own pen diagrams, drawn in general so roughly that few wood-engravers would have condescended to cut them with care, and yet always involving some points in which care was indispensable. one or two changes have been permitted in the arrangement of the book, which make the text in these volumes not altogether a symmetrical continuation of that in former ones. thus, i thought it better to put the numbers of paragraphs always at the left-hand side of the page; and as the summaries, in small type, appeared to me for the most part cumbrous and useless, i have banished them, except where there were complicated divisions of subject which it seemed convenient to indicate at the margin. i am not sorry thus to carry out my own principle of the sacrifice of architectural or constructive symmetry to practical service. the plates are, in a somewhat unusual way, numbered consecutively through the two volumes, as i intend them to be also through the fifth. this plan saves much trouble in references. i have only to express, in conclusion, my regret that it has been impossible to finish the work within the limits first proposed. having, of late, found my designs always requiring enlargement in process of execution, i will take care, in future, to set no limits whatsoever to any good intentions. in the present instance i trust the reader will pardon me, as the later efforts of our schools of art have necessarily introduced many new topics of discussion. and so i wish him heartily a happy new year. denmark hill, jan. . [ ] i should be very grateful to the proprietors of pictures or drawings by turner, if they would send me lists of the works in their possession; as i am desirous of forming a systematic catalogue of all his works. [illustration: lake, land, and cloud. (near como.)] modern painters. part iv. of many things. chapter i. of the received opinions touching the "grand style." § . in taking up the clue of an inquiry, now intermitted for nearly ten years, it may be well to do as a traveller would, who had to recommence an interrupted journey in a guideless country; and, ascending, as it were, some little hill beside our road, note how far we have already advanced, and what pleasantest ways we may choose for farther progress. i endeavored, in the beginning of the first volume, to divide the sources of pleasure open to us in art into certain groups, which might conveniently be studied in succession. after some preliminary discussion, it was concluded (part i. chap. iii. § ), that these groups were, in the main, three; consisting, first, of the pleasures taken in perceiving simple resemblance to nature (ideas of truth); secondly, of the pleasures taken in the beauty of the things chosen to be painted (ideas of beauty); and, lastly, of pleasures taken in the meanings and relations of these things (ideas of relation). the first volume, treating of the ideas of truth, was chiefly occupied with an inquiry into the various success with which different artists had represented the facts of nature,--an inquiry necessarily conducted very imperfectly, owing to the want of pictorial illustration. the second volume nearly opened the inquiry into the nature of ideas of beauty and relation, by analysing (as far as i was able to do so) the two faculties of the human mind which mainly seized such ideas; namely, the contemplative and imaginative faculties. it remains for us to examine the various success of artists, especially of the great landscape-painter whose works have been throughout our principal subject, in addressing these faculties of the human mind, and to consider who among them has conveyed the noblest ideas of beauty, and touched the deepest sources of thought. § . i do not intend, however, now to pursue the inquiry in a method so laboriously systematic; for the subject may, it seems to me, be more usefully treated by pursuing the different questions which rise out of it just as they occur to us, without too great scrupulousness in marking connections, or insisting on sequences. much time is wasted by human beings, in general, on establishment of systems; and it often takes more labor to master the intricacies of an artificial connection, than to remember the separate facts which are so carefully connected. i suspect that system-makers, in general, are not of much more use, each in his own domain, than, in that of pomona, the old women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more convenient portableness of the same. to cultivate well, and choose well, your cherries, is of some importance; but if they can be had in their own wild way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is a better connection for them than any other; and, if they cannot, then, so that they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a practical disposition, not much difference whether he gets them by handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick. i purpose, therefore, henceforward to trouble myself little with sticks or twine, but to arrange my chapters with a view to convenient reference, rather than to any careful division of subjects, and to follow out, in any by-ways that may open, on right hand or left, whatever question it seems useful at any moment to settle. § . and, in the outset, i find myself met by one which i ought to have touched upon before--one of especial interest in the present state of the arts. i have said that the art is greatest which includes the greatest ideas; but i have not endeavored to define the nature of this greatness in the ideas themselves. we speak of great truths, of great beauties, great thoughts. what is it which makes one truth greater than another, one thought greater than another? this question is, i repeat, of peculiar importance at the present time; for, during a period now of some hundred and fifty years, all writers on art who have pretended to eminence, have insisted much on a supposed distinction between what they call the great and the low schools; using the terms "high art," "great or ideal style," and other such, as descriptive of a certain noble manner of painting, which it was desirable that all students of art should be early led to reverence and adopt; and characterising as "vulgar," or "low," or "realist," another manner of painting and conceiving, which it was equally necessary that all students should be taught to avoid. but lately this established teaching, never very intelligible, has been gravely called in question. the advocates and self-supposed practisers of "high art" are beginning to be looked upon with doubt, and their peculiar phraseology to be treated with even a certain degree of ridicule. and other forms of art are partly developed among us, which do not pretend to be high, but rather to be strong, healthy, and humble. this matter of "highness" in art, therefore deserves our most careful consideration. has it been, or is it, a true highness, a true princeliness, or only a show of it, consisting in courtly manners and robes of state? is it rocky height or cloudy height, adamant or vapor, on which the sun of praise so long has risen and set? it will be well at once to consider this. § . and first, let us get, as quickly as may be, at the exact meaning with which the advocates of "high art" use that somewhat obscure and figurative term. i do not know that the principles in question are anywhere more distinctly expressed than in two papers in the idler, written by sir joshua reynolds, of course under the immediate sanction of johnson; and which may thus be considered as the utterance of the views then held upon the subject by the artists of chief skill, and critics of most sense, arranged in a form so brief and clear, as to admit of their being brought before the public for a morning's entertainment. i cannot, therefore, it seems to me, do better than quote these two letters, or at least the important parts of them, examining the exact meaning of each passage as it occurs. there are, in all, in the idler three letters on painting, nos. , , and ; of these, the first is directed only against the impertinences of pretended connoisseurs, and is as notable for its faithfulness, as for its wit, in the description of the several modes of criticism in an artificial and ignorant state of society; it is only, therefore, in the two last papers that we find the expression of the doctrines which it is our business to examine. no. (saturday, oct. th, ) begins, after a short preamble, with the following passage:-- "amongst the painters, and the writers on painting, there is one maxim universally admitted and continually inculcated. imitate nature is the invariable rule; but i know none who have explained in what manner this rule is to be understood; the sequence of which is, that every one takes it in the most obvious sense, that objects are represented naturally when they have such relief that they seem real. it may appear strange, perhaps, to hear this sense of the rule disputed; but it must be considered, that, if the excellency of a painter consisted only in this kind of imitation, painting must lose its rank, and be no longer considered as a liberal art, and sister to poetry, this imitation being nearly mechanical, in which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best; for the painter of genius cannot stoop to drudgery, in which the understanding has no part; and what pretence has the art to claim kindred with poetry but by its power over the imagination? to this power the painter of genius directs him; in this sense he studies nature, and often arrives at his end, even by being unnatural in the confined sense of the word." "the grand style of painting requires this minute attention to be carefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the style of poetry from that of history. (poetical ornaments destroy that air of truth and plainness which ought to characterise history; but the very being of poetry consists in departing from this plain narrative, and adopting every ornament that will warm the imagination.[ ]) to desire to see the excellencies of each style united--to mingle the dutch with the italian school, is to join contrarieties, which cannot subsist together, and which destroy the efficacy of each other." § . we find, first, from this interesting passage, that the writer considers the dutch and italian masters as severally representative of the low and high schools; next, that he considers the dutch painters as excelling in a mechanical imitation, "in which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best;" and, thirdly, that he considers the italian painters as excelling in a style which corresponds to that of imaginative poetry in literature, and which has an exclusive right to be called the grand style. i wish that it were in my power entirely to concur with the writer, and to enforce this opinion thus distinctly stated. i have never been a zealous partisan of the dutch school, and should rejoice in claiming reynolds's authority for the assertion, that their manner was one "in which the slowest intellect was always sure to succeed best." but before his authority can be so claimed, we must observe exactly the meaning of the assertion itself, and separate it from the company of some others not perhaps so admissible. first, i say, we must observe reynolds's exact meaning, for (though the assertion may at first appear singular) a man who uses accurate language is always more liable to misinterpretation than one who is careless in his expressions. we may assume that the latter means very nearly what we at first suppose him to mean, for words which have been uttered without thought may be received without examination. but when a writer or speaker may be fairly supposed to have considered his expressions carefully, and, after having revolved a number of terms in his mind, to have chosen the one which _exactly_ means the thing he intends to say, we may be assured that what costs him time to select, will require from us time to understand, and that we shall do him wrong, unless we pause to reflect how the word which he has actually employed differs from other words which it seems he _might_ have employed. it thus constantly happens that persons themselves unaccustomed to think clearly, or speak correctly, misunderstand a logical and careful writer, and are actually in more danger of being misled by language which is measured and precise, than by that which is loose and inaccurate. § . now, in the instance before us, a person not accustomed to good writing might very rashly conclude, that when reynolds spoke of the dutch school as one "in which the slowest intellect was sure to succeed best," he meant to say that every successful dutch painter was a fool. we have no right to take his assertion in that sense. he says, the _slowest_ intellect. we have no right to assume that he meant the _weakest_. for it is true, that in order to succeed in the dutch style, a man has need of qualities of mind eminently deliberate and sustained. he must be possessed of patience rather than of power; and must feel no weariness in contemplating the expression of a single thought for several months together. as opposed to the changeful energies of the imagination, these mental characters may be properly spoken of as under the general term--slowness of intellect. but it by no means follows that they are necessarily those of weak or foolish men. we observe however, farther, that the imitation which reynolds supposes to be characteristic of the dutch school is that which gives to objects such relief that they seem real, and that he then speaks of this art of realistic imitation as corresponding to _history_ in literature. § . reynolds, therefore, seems to class these dull works of the dutch school under a general head, to which they are not commonly referred--that of _historical_ painting; while he speaks of the works of the italian school not as historical, but as _poetical_ painting. his next sentence will farther manifest his meaning. "the italian attends only to the invariable, the great and general ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal nature; the dutch, on the contrary, to literal truth and minute exactness in the detail, as i may say, of nature modified by accident. the attention to these petty peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness so much admired in the dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a beauty, is certainly of a lower order, which ought to give place to a beauty of a superior kind, since one cannot be obtained but by departing from the other. "if my opinion was asked concerning the works of michael angelo, whether they would receive any advantage from possessing this mechanical merit, i should not scruple to say, they would not only receive no advantage, but would lose, in a great measure, the effect which they now have on every mind susceptible of great and noble ideas. his works may be said to be all genius and soul; and why should they be loaded with heavy matter, which can only counteract his purpose by retarding the progress of the imagination?" examining carefully this and the preceding passage, we find the author's unmistakable meaning to be, that dutch painting is _history_; attending to literal truth and "minute exactness in the details of nature modified by accident." that italian painting is _poetry_, attending only to the invariable; and that works which attend only to the invariable are full of genius and soul; but that literal truth and exact detail are "heavy matter which retards the progress of the imagination." § . this being then indisputably what reynolds means to tell us, let us think a little whether he is in all respects right. and first, as he compares his two kinds of painting to history and poetry, let us see how poetry and history themselves differ, in their use of _variable_ and _invariable_ details. i am writing at a window which commands a view of the head of the lake of geneva; and as i look up from my paper, to consider this point, i see, beyond it, a blue breadth of softly moving water, and the outline of the mountains above chillon, bathed in morning mist. the first verses which naturally come into my mind are-- "a thousand feet in depth below the massy waters meet and flow; so far the fathom line was sent from chillon's snow-white battlement." let us see in what manner this poetical statement is distinguished from a historical one. it is distinguished from a truly historical statement, first, in being simply false. the water under the castle of chillon is not a thousand feet deep, nor anything like it.[ ] herein, certainly, these lines fulfil reynolds's first requirement in poetry, "that it should be inattentive to literal truth and minute exactness in detail." in order, however, to make our comparison more closely in other points, let us assume that what is stated is indeed a fact, and that it was to be recorded, first historically, and then poetically. historically stating it, then, we should say: "the lake was sounded from the walls of the castle of chillon, and found to be a thousand feet deep." now, if reynolds be right in his idea of the difference between history and poetry, we shall find that byron leaves out of this statement certain _un_necessary details, and retains only the invariable,--that is to say, the points which the lake of geneva and castle of chillon have in common with all other lakes and castles. let us hear, therefore. "a thousand feet in depth below." "below?" here is, at all events, a word added (instead of anything being taken away); invariable, certainly in the case of lakes, but not absolutely necessary. "the massy waters meet and flow." "massy!" why massy? because deep water is heavy. the word is a good word, but it is assuredly an added detail, and expresses a character, not which the lake of geneva has in common with all other lakes, but which it has in distinction from those which are narrow or shallow. § . "meet and flow." why meet and flow? partly to make up a rhyme; partly to tell us that the waters are forceful as well as massy, and changeful as well as deep. observe, a farther addition of details, and of details more or less peculiar to the spot, or, according to reynolds's definition, of "heavy matter, retarding the progress of the imagination." "so far the fathom line was sent." why fathom line? all lines for sounding are not fathom lines. if the lake was ever sounded from chillon, it was probably sounded in metres, not fathoms. this is an addition of another particular detail, in which the only compliance with reynolds's requirement is, that there is some chance of its being an inaccurate one. "from chillon's snow-white battlement." why snow-white? because castle battlements are not usually snow-white. this is another added detail, and a detail quite peculiar to chillon, and therefore exactly the most striking word in the whole passage. "battlement!" why battlement? because all walls have not battlements, and the addition of the term marks the castle to be not merely a prison, but a fortress. this is a curious result. instead of finding, as we expected, the poetry distinguished from the history by the omission of details, we find it consist entirely in the _addition_ of details; and instead of being characterized by regard only of the invariable, we find its whole power to consist in the clear expression of what is singular and particular! § . the reader may pursue the investigation for himself in other instances. he will find in every case that a poetical is distinguished from a merely historical statement, not by being more vague, but more specific, and it might, therefore, at first appear that our author's comparison should be simply reversed, and that the dutch school should be called poetical, and the italian historical. but the term poetical does not appear very applicable to the generality of dutch painting; and a little reflection will show us, that if the italians represent only the invariable, they cannot be properly compared even to historians. for that which is incapable of change has no history, and records which state only the invariable need not be written, and could not be read. § . it is evident, therefore, that our author has entangled himself in some grave fallacy, by introducing this idea of invariableness as forming a distinction between poetical and historical art. what the fallacy is, we shall discover as we proceed; but as an invading army should not leave an untaken fortress in its rear, we must not go on with our inquiry into the views of reynolds until we have settled satisfactorily the question already suggested to us, in what the essence of poetical treatment really consists. for though, as we have seen, it certainly involves the addition of specific details, it cannot be simply that addition which turns the history into poetry. for it is perfectly possible to add any number of details to a historical statement, and to make it more prosaic with every added word. as, for instance, "the lake was sounded out of a flat-bottomed boat, near the crab tree at the corner of the kitchen-garden, and was found to be a thousand feet nine inches deep, with a muddy bottom." it thus appears that it is not the multiplication of details which constitutes poetry; nor their subtraction which constitutes history; but that there must be something either in the nature of the details themselves, or the method of using them, which invests them with poetical power or historical propriety. § . it seems to me, and may seem to the reader, strange that we should need to ask the question, "what is poetry?" here is a word we have been using all our lives, and, i suppose, with a very distinct idea attached to it; and when i am now called upon to give a definition of this idea, i find myself at a pause. what is more singular, i do not at present recollect hearing the question often asked, though surely it is a very natural one; and i never recollect hearing it answered, or even attempted to be answered. in general, people shelter themselves under metaphors, and while we hear poetry described as an utterance of the soul, an effusion of divinity, or voice of nature, or in other terms equally elevated and obscure, we never attain anything like a definite explanation of the character which actually distinguishes it from prose. § . i come, after some embarrassment, to the conclusion, that poetry is "the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions." i mean, by the noble emotions, those four principal sacred passions--love, veneration, admiration, and joy (this latter especially, if unselfish); and their opposites--hatred, indignation (or scorn), horror, and grief,--this last, when unselfish, becoming compassion. these passions in their various combinations constitute what is called "poetical feeling," when they are felt on noble grounds, that is, on great and true grounds. indignation, for instance, is a poetical feeling, if excited by serious injury; but it is not a poetical feeling if entertained on being cheated out of a small sum of money. it is very possible the manner of the cheat may have been such as to justify considerable indignation; but the feeling is nevertheless not poetical unless the grounds of it be large as well as just. in like manner, energetic admiration may be excited in certain minds by a display of fireworks, or a street of handsome shops; but the feeling is not poetical, because the grounds of it are false, and therefore ignoble. there is in reality nothing to deserve admiration either in the firing of packets of gunpowder, or in the display of the stocks of ware-houses. but admiration excited by the budding of a flower is a poetical feeling, because it is impossible that this manifestation of spiritual power and vital beauty can ever be enough admired. § . farther, it is necessary to the existence of poetry that the grounds of these feelings should be _furnished by the imagination_. poetical feeling, that is to say, mere noble emotion, is not poetry. it is happily inherent in all human nature deserving the name, and is found often to be purest in the least sophisticated. but the power of assembling, by the _help of the imagination_, such images as will excite these feelings, is the power of the poet or literally of the "maker."[ ] now this power of exciting the emotions depends of course on the richness of the imagination, and on its choice of those images which, in combination, will be most effective, or, for the particular work to be done, most fit. and it is altogether impossible for a writer not endowed with invention to conceive what tools a true poet will make use of, or in what way he will apply them, or what unexpected results he will bring out by them; so that it is vain to say that the details of poetry ought to possess, or ever do possess, any _definite_ character. generally speaking, poetry runs into finer and more delicate details than prose; but the details are not poetical because they are more delicate, but because they are employed so as to bring out an affecting result. for instance, no one but a true poet would have thought of exciting our pity for a bereaved father by describing his way of locking the door of his house: "perhaps to himself, at that moment he said, the key i must take, for my ellen is dead; but of this in my ears not a word did he speak, and he went to the chase with a tear on his cheek." in like manner, in painting, it is altogether impossible to say beforehand what details a great painter may make poetical by his use of them to excite noble emotions: and we shall, therefore, find presently that a painting is to be classed in the great or inferior schools, not according to the kind of details which it represents, but according to the uses for which it employs them. § . it is only farther to be noticed, that infinite confusion has been introduced into this subject by the careless and illogical custom of opposing painting to poetry, instead of regarding poetry as consisting in a noble use, whether of colors or words. painting is properly to be opposed to _speaking_ or _writing_, but not to _poetry_. both painting and speaking are methods of expression. poetry is the employment of either for the noblest purposes. § . this question being thus far determined, we may proceed with our paper in the idler. "it is very difficult to determine the exact degree of enthusiasm that the arts of painting and poetry may admit. there may, perhaps, be too great indulgence as well as too great a restraint of imagination; if the one produces incoherent monsters, the other produces what is full as bad, lifeless insipidity. an intimate knowledge of the passions, and good sense, but not common sense, must at last determine its limits. it has been thought, and i believe with reason, that michael angelo sometimes transgressed those limits; and, i think, i have seen figures of him of which it was very difficult to determine whether they were in the highest degree sublime or extremely ridiculous. such faults may be said to be the ebullitions of genius; but at least he had this merit, that he never was insipid, and whatever passion his works may excite, they will always escape contempt. "what i have had under consideration is the sublimest style, particularly that of michael angelo, the homer of painting. other kinds may admit of this naturalness, which of the lowest kind is the chief merit; but in painting, as in poetry, the highest style has the least of common nature." from this passage we gather three important indications of the supposed nature of the great style. that it is the work of men in a state of enthusiasm. that it is like the writing of homer; and that it has as little as possible of "common nature" in it. § . first, it is produced by men in a state of enthusiasm. that is, by men who feel _strongly_ and _nobly_; for we do not call a strong feeling of envy, jealousy, or ambition, enthusiasm. that is, therefore, by men who feel poetically. this much we may admit, i think, with perfect safety. great art is produced by men who feel acutely and nobly; and it is in some sort an expression of this personal feeling. we can easily conceive that there may be a sufficiently marked distinction between such art, and that which is produced by men who do not feel at all, but who reproduce, though ever so accurately, yet coldly, like human mirrors, the scenes which pass before their eyes. § . secondly, great art is like the writing of homer, and this chiefly because it has little of "common nature" in it. we are not clearly informed what is meant by common nature in this passage. homer seems to describe a great deal of what is common;--cookery, for instance, very carefully in all its processes. i suppose the passage in the iliad which, on the whole, has excited most admiration, is that which describes a wife's sorrow at parting from her husband, and a child's fright at its father's helmet; and i hope, at least, the former feeling may be considered "common nature." but the true greatness of homer's style is, doubtless, held by our author to consist in his imaginations of things not only uncommon but impossible (such as spirits in brazen armor, or monsters with heads of men and bodies of beasts), and in his occasional delineations of the human character and form in their utmost, or heroic, strength and beauty. we gather then on the whole, that a painter in the great style must be enthusiastic, or full of emotion, and must paint the human form in its utmost strength and beauty, and perhaps certain impossible forms besides, liable by persons not in an equally enthusiastic state of mind to be looked upon as in some degree absurd. this i presume to be reynolds's meaning, and to be all that he intends us to gather from his comparison of the great style with the writings of homer. but if that comparison be a just one in all respects, surely two other corollaries ought to be drawn from it, namely,--first, that these heroic or impossible images are to be mingled with others very unheroic and very possible; and, secondly, that in the representation of the heroic or impossible forms, the greatest care must be taken in _finishing the details_, so that a painter must not be satisfied with painting well the countenance and the body of his hero, but ought to spend the greatest part of his time (as homer the greatest number of verses) in elaborating the sculptured pattern on his shield. § . let us, however, proceed with our paper. "one may very safely recommend a little more enthusiasm to the modern painters; too much is certainly not the vice of the present age. the italians seem to have been continually declining in this respect, from the time of michael angelo to that of carlo maratti, and from thence to the very bathos of insipidity to which they are now sunk, so that there is no need of remarking, that where i mentioned the italian painters in opposition to the dutch, i mean not the moderns, but the heads of the old roman and bolognian schools; nor did i mean to include, in my idea of an italian painter, the venetian school, _which may be said to be the dutch part of the italian genius_. i have only to add a word of advice to the painters, that, however excellent they may be in painting naturally, they would not flatter themselves very much upon it; and to the connoisseurs, that when they see a cat or a fiddle painted so finely, that, as the phrase is, it looks as if you could take it up, they would not for that reason immediately compare the painter to raffaelle and michael angelo." in this passage there are four points chiefly to be remarked. the first, that in the year , the italian painters were, in our author's opinion, sunk in the very bathos of insipidity. the second, that the venetian painters, i.e. titian, tintoret, and veronese, are, in our author's opinion, to be classed with the dutch; that is to say, are painters in a style "in which the slowest intellect is always sure to succeed best." thirdly, that painting naturally is not a difficult thing, nor one on which a painter should pride himself. and, finally, that connoisseurs, seeing a cat or a fiddle successfully painted, ought not therefore immediately to compare the painter to raphael or michael angelo. yet raphael painted fiddles very carefully in the foreground of his st. cecilia,--so carefully, that they quite look as if they might be taken up. so carefully, that i never yet looked at the picture without wishing that somebody _would_ take them up, and out of the way. and i am under a very strong persuasion that raphael did not think painting "naturally" an easy thing. it will be well to examine into this point a little; and for the present, with the reader's permission, we will pass over the first two statements in this passage (touching the character of italian art in , and of venetian art in general), and immediately examine some of the evidence existing as to the real dignity of "natural" painting--that is to say, of painting carried to the point at which it reaches a deceptive appearance of reality. [ ] i have put this sentence in a parenthesis, because it is inconsistent with the rest of the statement, and with the general teaching of the paper; since that which "attends only to the invariable" cannot certainly adopt "every ornament that will warm the imagination." [ ] "mm. mallet et pictet, se trouvant sur le lac auprès du château de chillon, le août, , plongèrent à la profondeur de pieds de un thermomètre," &c.--saussure, _voyages dans les alpes_, chap. ii. § . it appears from the next paragraph, that the thermometer was "au fond du lac." [ ] take, for instance, the beautiful stanza in the "affliction of margaret:" "i look for ghosts, but none will force their way to me. 'tis falsely said that ever there was intercourse between the living and the dead; for, surely then, i should have sight of him i wait for, day and night, with love and longing infinite." this we call poetry, because it is invented _or made_ by the writer, entering into the mind of a supposed person. next, take an instance of the actual feeling truly experienced and simply expressed by a real person. "nothing surprised me more than a woman of argentière, whose cottage i went into to ask for milk, as i came down from the glacier of argentière, in the month of march, . an epidemic dysentery had prevailed in the village, and, a few months before, had taken away from her, her father, her husband, and her brothers, so that she was left alone, with three children in the cradle. her face had something noble in it, and its expression bore the seal of a calm and profound sorrow. after having given me milk, she asked me whence i came, and what i came there to do, so early in the year. when she knew that i was of geneva, she said to me, 'she could not believe that all protestants were lost souls; that there were many honest people among us, and that god was too good and too great to condemn all without distinction.' then, after a moment of reflection, she added, in shaking her head, 'but, that which is very strange, is that of so many who have gone away, none have ever returned. i,' she added, with an expression of grief, 'who have so mourned my husband and my brothers, who have never ceased to think of them, who every night conjure them with beseechings to tell me where they are, and in what state they are! ah, surely, if they lived anywhere, they would not leave me thus! but, perhaps,' she added, 'i am not worthy of this kindness, perhaps the pure and innocent spirits of these children,' and she looked at the cradle, 'may have their presence, and the joy which is denied to _me_.'"--saussure, _voyages dans les alpes_, chap. xxiv. this we do not call poetry, merely because it is not invented, but the true utterance of a real person. chapter ii. of realization. § . in the outset of this inquiry, the reader must thoroughly understand that we are not now considering _what_ is to be painted, but _how far_ it is to be painted. not whether raphael does right in representing angels playing upon violins, or whether veronese does right in allowing cats and monkeys to join the company of kings: but whether, supposing the subjects rightly chosen, they ought on the canvas to look like real angels with real violins, and substantial cats looking at veritable kings; or only like imaginary angels with soundless violins, ideal cats, and unsubstantial kings. now, from the first moment when painting began to be a subject of literary inquiry and general criticism, i cannot remember any writer, not professedly artistical, who has not, more or less, in one part of his book or another, countenanced the idea that the great end of art is to produce a deceptive resemblance of reality. it may be, indeed, that we shall find the writers, through many pages, explaining principles of ideal beauty, and professing great delight in the evidences of imagination. but whenever a picture is to be definitely described,--whenever the writer desires to convey to others some impression of an extraordinary excellence, all praise is wound up with some such statements as these: "it was so exquisitely painted that you expected the figures to move and speak; you approached the flowers to enjoy their smell, and stretched your hand towards the fruit which had fallen from the branches. you shrunk back lest the sword of the warrior should indeed descend, and turned away your head that you might not witness the agonies of the expiring martyr!" § . in a large number of instances, language such as this will be found to be merely a clumsy effort to convey to others a sense of the admiration, of which the writer does not understand the real cause in himself. a person is attracted to a picture by the beauty of its color, interested by the liveliness of its story, and touched by certain countenances or details which remind him of friends whom he loved, for scenes in which he delighted. he naturally supposes that what gives him so much pleasure must be a notable example of the painter's skill; but he is ashamed to confess, or perhaps does not know, that he is so much a child as to be fond of bright colors and amusing incidents; and he is quite unconscious of the associations which have so secret and inevitable a power over his heart. he casts about for the cause of his delight, and can discover no other than that he thought the picture like reality. § . in another, perhaps a still larger number of cases, such language will be found to be that of simple ignorance--the ignorance of persons whose position in life compels them to speak of art, without having any real enjoyment of it. it is inexcusably required from people of the world, that they should see merit in claudes and titians; and the only merit which many persons can either see or conceive in them is, that they must be "like nature." § . in other cases, the deceptive power of the art is really felt to be a source of interest and amusement. this is the case with a large number of the collectors of dutch pictures. they enjoy seeing what is flat made to look round, exactly as a child enjoys a trick of legerdemain; they rejoice in flies which the spectator vainly attempts to brush away, and in dew which he endeavors to dry by putting the picture in the sun. they take it for the greatest compliment to their treasures that they should be mistaken for windows; and think the parting of abraham and hagar adequately represented, if hagar seems to be really crying. it is against critics and connoisseurs of this latter stamp (of whom, in the year , the juries of art were for the most part composed) that the essay of reynolds, which we have been examining, was justly directed. but reynolds had not sufficiently considered that neither the men of this class, nor of the two other classes above described, constitute the entire body of those who praise art for its realization; and that the holding of this apparently shallow and vulgar opinion cannot, in all cases, be attributed to the want either of penetration, sincerity, or sense. the collectors of gerard dows and hobbimas may be passed by with a smile; and the affectations of walpole and simplicities of vasari dismissed with contempt or with compassion. but very different men from these have held precisely the same language; and, one amongst the rest, whose authority is absolutely, and in all points, overwhelming. § . there was probably never a period in which the influence of art over the minds of men seemed to depend less on its merely _imitative_ power, than the close of the thirteenth century. no painting or sculpture at that time reached more than a rude resemblance of reality. its despised perspective, imperfect chiaroscuro, and unrestrained flights of fantastic imagination, separated the artist's work from nature by an interval which there was no attempt to disguise, and little to diminish. and yet, at this very period, the greatest poet of that, or perhaps of any other age, and the attached friend of its greatest painter, who must over and over again have held full and free conversation with him respecting the objects of his art, speaks in the following terms of painting, supposed to be carried to its highest perfection:-- "qual di pennel fu maestro, e di stile che ritraesse l' ombre, e i tratti, ch' ivi mirar farieno uno ingegno sottile. morti li morti, e i vivi parean vivi: non vide me' di me, chi vide il vero, quant' io calcai, fin che chinato givi." dante, _purgatorio_, canto xii. . 'what master of the pencil, or the style, had traced the shades and lines that might have made the subtlest workman wonder? _dead, the dead, the living seemed alive; with clearer view his eye beheld not, who beheld the truth._ than mine what i did tread on, while i went, low bending.' carey. dante has here clearly no other idea of the highest art than that it should bring back, as in a mirror or vision, the aspect of things passed or absent. the scenes of which he speaks are, on the pavement, for ever represented by angelic power, so that the souls which traverse this circle of the rock may see them, as if the years of the world had been rolled back, and they again stood beside the actors in the moment of action. nor do i think that dante's authority is absolutely necessary to compel us to admit that such art as this _might_ indeed be the highest possible. whatever delight we may have been in the habit of taking in pictures, if it were but truly offered to us, to remove at our will the canvas from the frame, and in lieu of it to behold, fixed for ever, the image of some of those mighty scenes which it has been our way to make mere themes for the artist's fancy; if, for instance, we could again behold the magdalene receiving her pardon at christ's feet, or the disciples sitting with him at the table of emmaus; and this not feebly nor fancifully, but as if some silver mirror, that had leaned against the wall of the chamber, had been miraculously commanded to retain for ever the colors that had flashed upon it for an instant,--would we not part with our picture--titian's or veronese's though it might be? § . yes, the reader answers, in the instance of such scenes as these, but not if the scene represented were uninteresting. not, indeed, if it were utterly vulgar or painful; but we are not yet certain that the art which represents what is vulgar or painful is itself of much value; and with respect to the art whose aim is beauty, even of an inferior order, it seems that dante's idea of its perfection has still much evidence in its favor. for among persons of native good sense, and courage enough to speak their minds, we shall often find a considerable degree of doubt as to the use of art, in consequence of their habitual comparison of it with reality. "what is the use, to me, of the painted landscape?" they will ask: "i see more beautiful and perfect landscapes every day of my life in my forenoon walk." "what is the use, to me, of the painted effigy of hero or beauty? i can see a stamp of higher heroism, and light of purer beauty, on the faces around me, utterly inexpressible by the highest human skill." now, it is evident that to persons of this temper the only valuable pictures would indeed be _mirrors_, reflecting permanently the images of the things in which they took delight, and of the faces that they loved. "nay," but the reader interrupts, (if he is of the idealist school) "i deny that more beautiful things are to be seen in nature than in art; on the contrary, everything in nature is faulty, and art represents nature as perfected." be it so. must, therefore, this perfected nature be imperfectly represented? is it absolutely required of the painter, who has conceived perfection, that he should so paint it as to look only like a picture? or is not dante's view of the matter right even here, and would it not be well that the perfect conception of pallas should be so given as to look like pallas herself, rather than merely like the picture of pallas? § . it is not easy for us to answer this question rightly, owing to the difficulty of imagining any art which should reach the perfection supposed. our actual powers of imitation are so feeble that wherever deception is attempted, a subject of a comparatively low or confined order must be chosen. i do not enter at present into the inquiry how far the powers of imitation extend; but assuredly up to the present period they have been so limited that it is hardly possible for us to conceive a deceptive art embracing a high range of subject. but let the reader make the effort, and consider seriously what he would give at any moment to have the power of arresting the fairest scenes, those which so often rise before him only to vanish; to stay the cloud in its fading, the leaf in its trembling, and the shadows in their changing; to bid the fitful foam be fixed upon the river, and the ripples be everlasting upon the lake; and then to bear away with him no darkened or feeble sun-stain (though even that is beautiful), but a counterfeit which should seem no counterfeit--the true and perfect image of life indeed. or rather (for the full majesty of such a power is not thus sufficiently expressed) let him consider that it would be in effect nothing else than a capacity of transporting himself at any moment into any scene--a gift as great as can be possessed by a disembodied spirit': and suppose, also, this necromancy embracing not only the present but the past, and enabling us seemingly to enter into the very bodily presence of men long since gathered to the dust; to behold them in act as they lived, but--with greater privilege than ever was granted to the companions of those transient acts of life,--to see them fastened at our will in the gesture and expression of an instant, and stayed, on the eve of some great deed, in immortality of burning purpose. conceive, so far as it is possible, such power as this, and then say whether the art which conferred it is to be spoken lightly of, or whether we should not rather reverence, as half divine, a gift which would go so far as to raise us into the rank, and invest us with the felicities, of angels? yet such would imitative art be in its perfection. not by any means an easy thing, as reynolds supposes it. far from being easy, it is so utterly beyond all human power that we have difficulty even in conceiving its nature or results--the best art we as yet possess comes so far short of it. § . but we must not rashly come to the conclusion that such art would, indeed, be the highest possible. there is much to be considered hereafter on the other side; the only conclusion we are as yet warranted in forming is, that reynolds had no right to speak lightly or contemptuously of imitative art; that in fact, when he did so, he had not conceived its entire nature, but was thinking of some vulgar conditions of it, which were the only ones known to him, and that, therefore, his whole endeavor to explain the difference between great and mean art has been disappointed; that he has involved himself in a crowd of theories, whose issue he had not foreseen, and committed himself to conclusions which he never intended. there is an instinctive consciousness in his own mind of the difference between high and low art; but he is utterly incapable of explaining it, and every effort which he makes to do so involves him in unexpected fallacy and absurdity. it is _not_ true that poetry does not concern herself with minute details. it is _not_ true that high art seeks only the invariable. it is _not_ true that imitative art is an easy thing. it is _not_ true that the faithful rendering of nature is an employment in which "the slowest intellect is likely to succeed best." all these successive assertions are utterly false and untenable, while the plain truth, a truth lying at the very door, has all the while escaped him,--that which was incidentally stated in the preceding chapter,--namely, that the difference between great and mean art lies, not in definable methods of handling, or styles of representation, or choices of subjects, but wholly in the nobleness of the end to which the effort of the painter is addressed. we cannot say that a painter is great because he paints boldly, or paints delicately; because he generalizes or particularizes; because he loves detail, or because he disdains it. he is great if, by any of these means, he has laid open noble truths, or aroused noble emotions. it does not matter whether he paint the petal of a rose, or the chasms of a precipice, so that love and admiration attend him as he labors, and wait for ever upon his work. it does not matter whether he toil for months upon a few inches of his canvas, or cover a palace front with color in a day, so only that it be with a solemn purpose that he has filled his heart with patience, or urged his hand to haste. and it does not matter whether he seek for his subjects among peasants or nobles, among the heroic or the simple, in courts or in fields, so only that he behold all things with a thirst for beauty, and a hatred of meanness and vice. there are, indeed, certain methods of representation which are usually adopted by the most active minds, and certain characters of subject usually delighted in by the noblest hearts; but it is quite possible, quite easy, to adopt the manner of painting without sharing the activity of mind, and to imitate the choice of subject without possessing the nobility of spirit; while, on the other hand, it is altogether impossible to foretell on what strange objects the strength of a great man will sometimes be concentrated, or by what strange means he will sometimes express himself. so that true criticism of art never can consist in the mere application of rules; it can be just only when it is founded on quick sympathy with the innumerable instincts and changeful efforts of human nature, chastened and guided by unchanging love of all things that god has created to be beautiful, and pronounced to be good. chapter iii. of the real nature of greatness of style. § . i doubt not that the reader was ill-satisfied with the conclusion arrived at in the last chapter. that "great art" is art which represents what is beautiful and good, may not seem a very profound discovery; and the main question may be thought to have been all the time lost sight of, namely, "what is beautiful, and what is good?" no; those are not the main, at least not the first questions; on the contrary, our subject becomes at once opened and simplified as soon as we have left those the _only_ questions. for observe, our present task, according to our old plan, is merely to investigate the relative degrees of the _beautiful_ in the art of different masters; and it is an encouragement to be convinced, first of all, that what is lovely will also be great, and what is pleasing, noble. nor is the conclusion so much a matter of course as it at first appears, for, surprising as the statement may seem, all the confusion into which reynolds has plunged both himself and his readers, in the essay we have been examining, results primarily from a doubt in his own mind _as to the existence of beauty at all_. in the next paper i alluded to, no. (which needs not, however, to be examined at so great length), he calmly attributes the whole influence of beauty to custom, saying, that "he has no doubt, if we were more used to deformity than to beauty, deformity would then lose the idea now annexed to it, and take that of beauty; as if the whole world shall agree that yes and no should change their meanings. yes would then deny, and no would affirm!" § . the world does, indeed, succeed--oftener than is, perhaps, altogether well for the world--in making yes mean no, and no mean yes.[ ] but the world has never succeeded, nor ever will, in making itself delight in black clouds more than in blue sky, or love the dark earth better than the rose that grows from it. happily for mankind, beauty and ugliness are as positive in their nature as physical pain and pleasure, as light and darkness, or as life and death; and, though they may be denied or misunderstood in many fantastic ways, the most subtle reasoner will at last find that color and sweetness are still attractive to him, and that no logic will enable him to think the rainbow sombre, or the violet scentless. but the theory that beauty was merely a result of custom was very common in johnson's time. goldsmith has, i think, expressed it with more force and wit than any other writer, in various passages of the citizen of the world. and it was, indeed, a curious retribution of the folly of the world of art, which for some three centuries had given itself recklessly to the pursuit of beauty, that at last it should be led to deny the very existence of what it had so morbidly and passionately sought. it was as if a child should leave its home to pursue the rainbow, and then, breathless and hopeless, declare that it did not exist. nor is the lesson less useful which may be gained in observing the adoption of such a theory by reynolds himself. it shows how completely an artist may be unconscious of the principles of his own work, and how he may be led by instinct to _do_ all that is right, while he is misled by false logic to _say_ all that is wrong. for nearly every word that reynolds wrote was contrary to his own practice; he seems to have been born to teach all error by his precept, and all excellence by his example; he enforced with his lips generalization and idealism, while with his pencil he was tracing the patterns of the dresses of the belles of his day; he exhorted his pupils to attend only to the invariable, while he himself was occupied in distinguishing every variation of womanly temper; and he denied the existence of the beautiful, at the same instant that he arrested it as it passed, and perpetuated it for ever. § . but we must not quit the subject here. however inconsistently or dimly expressed, there is, indeed, some truth in that commonly accepted distinction between high and low art. that a thing should be beautiful is not enough; there is, as we said in the outset, a higher and lower range of beauty, and some ground for separating into various and unequal ranks painters who have, nevertheless, each in his several way, represented something that was beautiful or good. nor, if we would, can we get rid of this conviction. we have at all times some instinctive sense that the function of one painter is greater than that of another, even supposing each equally successful in his own way; and we feel that, if it were possible to conquer prejudice, and do away with the iniquities of personal feeling, and the insufficiencies of limited knowledge, we should all agree in this estimate, and be able to place each painter in his right rank, measuring them by a true scale of nobleness. we feel that the men in the higher classes of the scale would be, in the full sense of the word, great--men whom one would give much to see the faces of but for an instant; and that those in the lower classes of the scale (though none were admitted but who had true merit of some kind) would be very small men, not greatly exciting either reverence or curiosity. and with this fixed instinct in our minds, we permit our teachers daily to exhort their pupils to the cultivation of "great art"--neither they nor we having any very clear notion as to what the greatness consists in: but sometimes inclining to think it must depend on the space of the canvas, and that art on a scale of feet by is something spiritually separated from that on a scale of feet by ;--sometimes holding it to consist in painting the nude body, rather than the body decently clothed;--sometimes being convinced that it is connected with the study of past history, and that the art is only great which represents what the painter never saw, and about which he knows nothing;-and sometimes being firmly persuaded that it consists in generally finding fault with, and endeavoring to mend, whatsoever the divine wisdom has made. all which various errors, having yet some motes and atoms of truth in the make of each of them, deserve some attentive analysis, for they come under that general law,--that "the corruption of the best is the worst." there are not _worse_ errors going than these four; and yet the truth they contain, and the instinct which urges many to preach them, are at the root of all healthy growth in art. we ruin one young painter after another by telling him to follow great art, without knowing, ourselves, what greatness is; and yet the feeling that it verily _is_ something, and that there are depths and breadths, shallows and narrows, in the matter, is all that we have to look to, if we would ever make our art serviceable to ourselves or others. to follow art for the sake of being a great man, and therefore to cast about continually for some means of achieving position or attracting admiration, is the surest way of ending in total extinction. and yet it is only by honest reverence for art itself, and by great self-respect in the practice of it, that it can be rescued from dilettantism, raised to approved honorableness, and brought to the proper work it has to accomplish in the service of man. § . let us therefore look into the facts of the thing, not with any metaphysical, or otherwise vain and troublesome effort at acuteness, but in a plain way; for the facts themselves are plain enough, and may be plainly stated, only the difficulty is that out of these facts, right and left, the different forms of misapprehension branch into grievous complexity, and branch so far and wide, that if once we try to follow them, they will lead us quite from our mark into other separate, though not less interesting discussions. the best way will be, therefore, i think, to sketch out at once in this chapter, the different characters which really constitute "greatness" of style, and to indicate the principal directions of the outbranching misapprehensions of them; then, in the succeeding chapters, to take up in succession those which need more talk about them, and follow out at leisure whatever inquiries they may suggest. § . i. choice of noble subject.--greatness of style consists, then: first, in the habitual choice of subjects of thought which involve wide interests and profound passions, as opposed to those which involve narrow interests and slight passions. the style is greater or less in exact proportion to the nobleness of the interests and passions involved in the subject. the habitual choice of sacred subjects, such as the nativity, transfiguration, crucifixion (if the choice be sincere), implies that the painter has a natural disposition to dwell on the highest thoughts of which humanity is capable; it constitutes him so far forth a painter of the highest order, as, for instance, leonardo, in his painting of the last supper: he who delights in representing the acts or meditations of great men, as, for instance, raphael painting the school of athens, is, so far forth, a painter of the second order: he who represents the passions and events of ordinary life, of the third. and in this ordinary life, he who represents deep thoughts and sorrows, as, for instance, hunt, in his claudio and isabella, and such other works, is of the highest rank in his sphere; and he who represents the slight malignities and passions of the drawingroom, as, for instance, leslie, of the second rank: he who represents the sports of boys or simplicities of clowns, as webster or teniers, of the third rank; and he who represents brutalities and vices (for delight in them, and not for rebuke of them), of no rank at all, or rather of a negative rank, holding a certain order in the abyss. § . the reader will, i hope, understand how much importance is to be attached to the sentence in the first parenthesis, "if the choice be sincere;" for choice of subject is, of course, only available as a criterion of the rank of the painter, when it is made from the heart. indeed, in the lower orders of painting, the choice is always made from such heart as the painter has; for his selection of the brawls of peasants or sports of children can, of course, proceed only from the fact that he has more sympathy with such brawls or pastimes than with nobler subjects. but the choice of the higher kind of subjects is often insincere; and may, therefore, afford no real criterion of the painter's rank. the greater number of men who have lately painted religious or heroic subjects have done so in mere ambition, because they had been taught that it was a good thing to be a "high art" painter; and the fact is that, in nine cases out of ten, the so-called historical or "high-art" painter is a person infinitely inferior to the painter of flowers or still life. he is, in modern times, nearly always a man who has great vanity without pictorial capacity, and differs from the landscape or fruit painter merely in misunderstanding and over-estimating his own powers. he mistakes his vanity for inspiration, his ambition for greatness of soul, and takes pleasure in what he calls "the ideal," merely because he has neither humility nor capacity enough to comprehend the real. § . but also observe, it is not enough even that the choice be sincere. it must also be wise. it happens very often that a man of weak intellect, sincerely desiring to do what is good and useful, will devote himself to high art subjects because he thinks them the only ones on which time and toil can be usefully spent, or, sometimes, because they are really the only ones he has pleasure in contemplating. but not having intellect enough to enter into the minds of truly great men, or to imagine great events as they really happened, he cannot become a great painter; he degrades the subjects he intended to honor, and his work is more utterly thrown away, and his rank as an artist in reality lower, than if he had devoted himself to the imitation of the simplest objects of natural history. the works of overbeck are a most notable instance of this form of error. § . it must also be remembered, that in nearly all the great periods of art the choice of subject has not been left to the painter. his employer,--abbot, baron, or monarch,--determined for him whether he should earn his bread by making cloisters bright with choirs of saints, painting coats of arms on leaves of romances, or decorating presence-chambers with complimentary mythology; and his own personal feelings are ascertainable only by watching, in the themes assigned to him, what are the points in which he seems to take most pleasure. thus, in the prolonged ranges of varied subjects with which benozzo gozzoli decorated the cloisters of pisa, it is easy to see that love of simple domestic incident, sweet landscape, and glittering ornament, prevails slightly over the solemn elements of religious feeling, which, nevertheless, the spirit of the age instilled into him in such measure as to form a very lovely and noble mind, though still one of the second order. in the work of orcagna, an intense solemnity and energy in the sublimest groups of his figures, fading away as he touches inferior subjects, indicates that his home was among the archangels, and his rank among the first of the sons of men: while correggio, in the sidelong grace, artificial smiles, and purple languors of his saints, indicates the inferior instinct which would have guided his choice in quite other directions, had it not been for the fashion of the age, and the need of the day. § . it will follow, of course, from the above considerations, that the choice which characterises the school of high art is seen as much in the treatment of a subject as in its selection, and that the expression of the thoughts of the persons represented will always be the first thing considered by the painter who worthily enters that highest school. for the artist who sincerely chooses the noblest subject will also choose chiefly to represent what makes that subject noble, namely, the various heroism or other noble emotions of the persons represented. if, instead of this, the artist seeks only to make his picture agreeable by the composition of its masses and colors, or by any other merely pictorial merit, as fine drawing of limbs, it is evident, not only that any other subject would have answered his purpose as well, but that he is unfit to approach the subject he has chosen, because he cannot enter into its deepest meaning, and therefore cannot in reality have chosen it for that meaning. nevertheless, while the expression is always to be the first thing considered, all other merits must be added to the utmost of the painter's power: for until he can both color and draw beautifully he has no business to consider himself a painter at all, far less to attempt the noblest subjects of painting; and, when he has once possessed himself of these powers, he will naturally and fitly employ them to deepen and perfect the impression made by the sentiment of his subject. the perfect unison of expression, as the painter's main purpose, with the full and natural exertion of his pictorial power in the details of the work, is found only in the old pre-raphaelite periods, and in the modern pre-raphaelite school. in the works of giotto, angelico, orcagna, john bellini, and one or two more, these two conditions of high art are entirely fulfilled, so far as the knowledge of those days enabled them to be fulfilled; and in the modern pre-raphaelite school they are fulfilled nearly to the uttermost. hunt's light of the world is, i believe, the most perfect instance of expressional purpose with technical power, which the world has yet produced. § . now in the post raphaelite period of ancient art, and in the spurious high art of modern times, two broad forms of error divide the schools; the one consisting in (a) the superseding of expression by technical excellence, and the other in (b) the superseding of technical excellence by expression. (a). superseding expression by technical excellence.--this takes place most frankly, and therefore most innocently, in the work of the venetians. they very nearly ignore expression altogether, directing their aim exclusively to the rendering of external truths of color and form. paul veronese will make the magdalene wash the feet of christ with a countenance as absolutely unmoved as that of any ordinary servant bringing a ewer to her master, and will introduce the supper at emmaus as a background to the portraits of two children playing with a dog. of the wrongness or rightness of such a proceeding we shall reason in another place; at present we have to note it merely as displacing the venetian work from the highest or expressional rank of art. but the error is generally made in a more subtle and dangerous way. the artist deceives himself into the idea that he is doing all he can to elevate his subject by treating it under rules of art, introducing into it accurate science, and collecting for it the beauties of (so-called) ideal form; whereas he may, in reality, be all the while sacrificing his subject to his own vanity or pleasure, and losing truth, nobleness, and impressiveness for the sake of delightful lines or creditable pedantries. § . (b). superseding technical excellence by expression.--this is usually done under the influence of another kind of vanity. the artist desires that men should think he has an elevated soul, affects to despise the ordinary excellence of art, contemplates with separated egotism the course of his own imaginations or sensations, and refuses to look at the real facts round about him, in order that he may adore at leisure the shadow of himself. he lives in an element of what he calls tender emotions and lofty aspirations; which are, in fact, nothing more than very ordinary weaknesses or instincts, contemplated through a mist of pride. a large range of modern german art comes under this head. a more interesting and respectable form of this error is fallen into by some truly earnest men, who, finding their powers not adequate to the attainment of great artistical excellence, but adequate to rendering, up to a certain point, the expression of the human countenance, devote themselves to that object alone, abandoning effort in other directions, and executing the accessaries of their pictures feebly or carelessly. with these are associated another group of philosophical painters, who suppose the artistical merits of other parts _adverse_ to the expression, as drawing the spectator's attention away from it, and who paint in grey color, and imperfect light and shade, by way of enforcing the purity of their conceptions. both these classes of conscientious but narrow-minded artists labor under the same grievous mistake of imagining that wilful fallacy can ever be either pardonable or helpful. they forget that color, if used at all, must be either true or false, and that what _they_ call chastity, dignity, and reserve, is, to the eye of any person accustomed to nature, pure, bold, and impertinent falsehood. it does not, in the eyes of any soundly minded man, exalt the expression of a female face that the cheeks should be painted of the color of clay, nor does it in the least enhance his reverence for a saint to find the scenery around him deprived, by his presence, of sunshine. it is an important consolation, however, to reflect that no artist ever fell into any of these last three errors (under head b.) who had really the capacity of becoming a great painter. no man ever despised color who could produce it; and the error of these sentimentalists and philosophers is not so much in the choice of their manner of painting, as in supposing themselves capable of painting at all. some of them might have made efficient sculptors, but the greater number had their mission in some other sphere than that of art, and would have found, in works of practical charity, better employment for their gentleness and sentimentalism, than in denying to human beauty its color, and to natural scenery its light; in depriving heaven of its blue, and earth of its bloom, valor of its glow, and modesty of its blush. § . ii. love of beauty.--the second characteristic of the great school of art is, that it introduces in the conception of its subject as much beauty as is possible, consistently with truth.[ ] for instance, in any subject consisting of a number of figures, it will make as many of those figures beautiful as the faithful representation of humanity will admit. it will not deny the facts of ugliness or decrepitude, or relative inferiority and superiority of feature as necessarily manifested in a crowd, but it will, so far as it is in its power, seek for and dwell upon the fairest forms, and in all things insist on the beauty that is in them, not on the ugliness. in this respect, schools of art become higher in exact proportion to the degree in which they apprehend and love the beautiful. thus, angelico, intensely loving all spiritual beauty, will be of the highest rank; and paul veronese and correggio, intensely loving physical and corporeal beauty, of the second rank; and albert durer, rubens, and in general the northern artists, apparently insensible to beauty, and caring only for truth, whether shapely or not, of the third rank; and teniers and salvator, caravaggio, and other such worshippers of the depraved, of no rank, or, as we said before, of a certain order in the abyss. § . the corruption of the schools of high art, so far as this particular quality is concerned, consists in the sacrifice of truth to beauty. great art dwells on all that is beautiful; but false art omits or changes all that is ugly. great art accepts nature as she is, but directs the eyes and thoughts to what is most perfect in her; false art saves itself the trouble of direction by removing or altering whatever it thinks objectionable. the evil results of which proceeding are twofold. [sidenote: § . evil first,--that we lose the true _force_ of beauty.] first. that beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light. a white canvas cannot produce an effect of sunshine; the painter must darken it in some places before he can make it look luminous in others; nor can an uninterrupted succession of beauty produce the true effect of beauty; it must be foiled by inferiority before its own power can be developed. nature has for the most part mingled her inferior and nobler elements as she mingles sunshine with shade, giving due use and influence to both, and the painter who chooses to remove the shadow, perishes in the burning desert he has created. the truly high and beautiful art of angelico is continually refreshed and strengthened by his frank portraiture of the most ordinary features of his brother monks, and of the recorded peculiarities of ungainly sanctity; but the modern german and raphaelesque schools lose all honor and nobleness in barber-like admiration of handsome faces, and have, in fact, no real faith except in straight noses and curled hair. paul veronese opposes the dwarf to the soldier, and the negress to the queen; shakspere places caliban beside miranda, and autolycus beside perdita; but the vulgar idealist withdraws his beauty to the safety of the saloon, and his innocence to the seclusion of the cloister; he pretends that he does this in delicacy of choice and purity of sentiment, while in truth he has neither courage to front the monster, nor wit enough to furnish the knave. [sidenote: § . evil second,--we lose the true _quantity_ of beauty.] it is only by the habit of representing faithfully all things, that we can truly learn what is beautiful and what is not. the ugliest objects contain some element of beauty; and in all, it is an element peculiar to themselves, which cannot be separated from their ugliness, but must either be enjoyed together with it, or not at all. the more a painter accepts nature as he finds it, the more unexpected beauty he discovers in what he at first despised; but once let him arrogate the right of rejection, and he will gradually contract his circle of enjoyment, until what he supposed to be nobleness of selection ends in narrowness of perception. dwelling perpetually upon one class of ideas, his art becomes at once monstrous and morbid; until at last he cannot faithfully represent even what he chooses to retain; his discrimination contracts into darkness, and his fastidiousness fades into fatuity. high art, therefore, consists neither in altering, nor in improving nature; but in seeking throughout nature for "whatsoever things are lovely, and whatsoever things are pure;" in loving these, in displaying to the utmost of the painter's power such loveliness as is in them, and directing the thoughts of others to them by winning art, or gentle emphasis. of the degree in which this can be done, and in which it may be permitted to gather together, without falsifying, the finest forms or thoughts, so as to create a sort of perfect vision, we shall have to speak hereafter: at present, it is enough to remember that art (_cæteris paribus_) is great in exact proportion to the love of beauty shown by the painter, provided that love of beauty forfeit no atom of truth. § . iii. sincerity.--the next[ ] characteristic of great art is that it includes the largest possible quantity of truth in the most perfect possible harmony. if it were possible for art to give all the truths of nature, it ought to do it. but this is not possible. choice must always be made of some facts which _can_ be represented, from among others which must be passed by in silence, or even, in some respects, misrepresented. the inferior artist chooses unimportant and scattered truths; the great artist chooses the most necessary first, and afterwards the most consistent with these, so as to obtain the greatest possible and most harmonious _sum_. for instance, rembrandt always chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the most illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. in order to obtain this, in most cases, not very important truth, he sacrifices the light and color of five sixths of his picture; and the expression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of shape or tint. but he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expression is dependent upon it, with magnificent skill and subtlety. veronese, on the contrary, chooses to represent the great relations of visible things to each other, to the heaven above, and to the earth beneath them. he holds it more important to show how a figure stands relieved from delicate air, or marble wall; how as a red, or purple, or white figure, it separates itself, in clear discernibility, from things not red, nor purple, nor white; how infinite daylight shines round it; how innumerable veils of faint shadow invest it; how its blackness and darkness are, in the excess of their nature, just as limited and local as its intensity of light: all this, i say, he feels to be more important than showing merely the exact _measure_ of the spark of sunshine that gleams on a dagger-hilt, or glows on a jewel. all this, moreover, he feels to be harmonious,--capable of being joined in one great system of spacious truth. and with inevitable watchfulness, inestimable subtlety, he unites all this in tenderest balance, noting in each hair's-breadth of color, not merely what its rightness or wrongness is in itself, but what its relation is to every other on his canvas; restraining, for truth's sake, his exhaustless energy, reining back, for truth's sake, his fiery strength; veiling, before truth, the vanity of brightness; penetrating, for truth, the discouragement of gloom; ruling his restless invention with a rod of iron; pardoning no error, no thoughtlessness, no forgetfulness; and subduing all his powers, impulses, and imaginations, to the arbitrament of a merciless justice, and the obedience of an incorruptible verity. [sidenote: § . corollary st: great art is generally distinct.] i give this instance with respect to color and shade; but, in the whole field of art, the difference between the great and inferior artists is of the same kind, and may be determined at once by the question, which of them conveys the largest sum of truth? it follows from this principle, that in general all _great_ drawing is _distinct_ drawing; for truths which are rendered indistinctly might, for the most part, as well not be rendered at all. there are, indeed, certain facts of mystery, and facts of indistinctness, in all objects, which must have their proper place in the general harmony, and the reader will presently find me, when we come to that part of our investigation, telling him that all good drawing must in some sort be _in_distinct. we may, however, understand this apparent contradiction, by reflecting that the highest knowledge always involves a more advanced perception of the fields of the unknown; and, therefore, it may most truly be said, that to know anything well involves a profound sensation of ignorance, while yet it is equally true that good and noble knowledge is distinguished from vain and useless knowledge chiefly by its clearness and distinctness, and by the vigorous consciousness of what is known and what is not. so in art. the best drawing involves a wonderful perception and expression of indistinctness; and yet all noble drawing is separated from the ignoble by its distinctness, by its fine expression and firm assertion of _something_; whereas the bad drawing, without either firmness or fineness, expresses and asserts _nothing_. the first thing, therefore, to be looked for as a sign of noble art, is a clear consciousness of what is drawn and what is not; the bold statement, and frank confession--"_this_ i know," "_that_ i know not;" and, generally speaking, all haste, slurring, obscurity, indecision, are signs of low art, and all calmness, distinctness, luminousness, and positiveness, of high art. [sidenote: § . corollary d: great art is generally large in masses and in scale.] it follows, secondly, from this principle, that as the great painter is always attending to the sum and harmony of his truths rather than to one or the other of any group, a quality of grasp is visible in his work, like the power of a great reasoner over his subject, or a great poet over his conception, manifesting itself very often in missing out certain details or less truths (which, though good in themselves, he finds are in the way of others), and in a sweeping manner of getting the beginnings and ends of things shown at once, and the squares and depths rather than the surfaces: hence, on the whole, a habit of looking at large masses rather than small ones; and even a physical largeness of handling, and love of working, if possible, on a large scale; and various other qualities, more or less imperfectly expressed by such technical terms as breadth, massing, unity, boldness, &c., all of which are, indeed, great qualities when they mean breadth of truth, weight of truth, unity of truth, and courageous assertion of truth; but which have all their correlative errors and mockeries, almost universally mistaken for them,--the breadth which has no contents, the weight which has no value, the unity which plots deception, and the boldness which faces out fallacy. § . and it is to be noted especially respecting largeness of scale, that though for the most part it is characteristic of the more powerful masters, they having both more invention wherewith to fill space (as ghirlandajo wished that he might paint all the walls of florence), and, often, an impetuosity of mind which makes them like free play for hand and arm (besides that they usually desire to paint everything in the foreground of their picture of the natural size), yet, as this largeness of scale involves the placing of the picture at a considerable distance from the eye, and this distance involves the loss of many delicate details, and especially of the subtle lines of expression in features, it follows that the masters of refined detail and human expression are apt to prefer a small scale to work upon; so that the chief masterpieces of expression which the world possesses are small pictures by angelico, in which the figures are rarely more than six or seven inches high; in the best works of raphael and leonardo the figures are almost always less than life, and the best works of turner do not exceed the size of inches by . [sidenote: § . corollary d: great art is always delicate.] as its greatness depends on the sum of truth, and this sum of truth can always be increased by delicacy of handling, it follows that all great art must have this delicacy to the utmost possible degree. this rule is infallible and inflexible. all coarse work is the sign of low art. only, it is to be remembered, that coarseness must be estimated by the distance from the eye; it being necessary to consult this distance, when great, by laying on touches which appear coarse when seen near; but which, so far from being coarse, are, in reality, more delicate in a master's work than the finest close handling, for they involve a calculation of result, and are laid on with a subtlety of sense precisely correspondent to that with which a good archer draws his bow; the spectator seeing in the action nothing but the strain of the strong arm, while there is, in reality, in the finger and eye, an ineffably delicate estimate of distance, and touch on the arrow plume. and, indeed, this delicacy is generally quite perceptible to those who know what the truth is, for strokes by tintoret or paul veronese, which were done in an instant, and look to an ignorant spectator merely like a violent dash of loaded color, (and are, as such, imitated by blundering artists,) are, in fact, modulated by the brush and finger to that degree of delicacy that no single grain of the color could be taken from the touch without injury; and little golden particles of it, not the size of a gnat's head, have important share and function in the balances of light in a picture perhaps fifty feet long. nearly _every_ other rule applicable to art has some exception but this. this has absolutely none. all great art is delicate art, and all coarse art is bad art. nay, even to a certain extent, all _bold_ art is bad art; for boldness is not the proper word to apply to the courage and swiftness of a great master, based on knowledge, and coupled with fear and love. there is as much difference between the boldness of the true and the false masters, as there is between the courage of a pure woman and the shamelessness of a lost one. § . iv. invention.--the last characteristic of great art is that it must be inventive, that is, be produced by the imagination. in this respect, it must precisely fulfil the definition already given of poetry; and not only present grounds for noble emotion, but furnish these grounds by _imaginative power_. hence there is at once a great bar fixed between the two schools of lower and higher art. the lower merely copies what is set before it, whether in portrait, landscape, or still-life; the higher either entirely imagines its subject, or arranges the materials presented to it, so as to manifest the imaginative power in all the three phases which have been already explained in the second volume. and this was the truth which was confusedly present in reynolds's mind when he spoke, as above quoted, of the difference between historical and poetical painting. _every relation of the plain facts which the painter saw_ is proper _historical_ painting.[ ] if those facts are unimportant (as that he saw a gambler quarrel with another gambler, or a sot enjoying himself with another sot), then the history is trivial; if the facts are important (as that he saw such and such a great man look thus, or act thus, at such a time), then the history is noble: in each case perfect truth of narrative being supposed, otherwise the whole thing is worthless, being neither history nor poetry, but plain falsehood. and farther, as greater or less elegance and precision are manifested in the relation or painting of the incidents, the merit of the work varies; so that, what with difference of subject, and what with difference of treatment, historical painting falls or rises in changeful eminence, from dutch trivialities to a velasquez portrait, just as historical talking or writing varies in eminence, from an old woman's story-telling up to herodotus. besides which, certain operations of the imagination come into play inevitably, here and there, so as to touch the history with some light of poetry, that is, with some light shot forth of the narrator's mind, or brought out by the way he has put the accidents together; and wherever the imagination has thus had anything to do with the matter at all (and it must be somewhat cold work where it has not), then, the confines of the lower and higher schools touching each other, the work is colored by both; but there is no reason why, therefore, we should in the least confuse the historical and poetical characters, any more than that we should confuse blue with crimson, because they may overlap each other, and produce purple. § . now, historical or simply narrative art is very precious in its proper place and way, but it is never _great_ art until the poetical or imaginative power touches it; and in proportion to the stronger manifestation of this power, it becomes greater and greater, while the highest art is purely imaginative, all its materials being wrought into their form by invention; and it differs, therefore, from the simple historical painting, exactly as wordsworth's stanza, above quoted, differs from saussure's plain narrative of the parallel fact; and the imaginative painter differs from the historical painter in the manner that wordsworth differs from saussure. § . farther, imaginative art always _includes_ historical art; so that, strictly speaking, according to the analogy above used, we meet with the pure blue, and with the crimson ruling the blue and changing it into kingly purple, but not with the pure crimson: for all imagination must deal with the knowledge it has before accumulated; it never produces anything but by combination or contemplation. creation, in the full sense, is impossible to it. and the mode in which the historical faculties are included by it is often quite simple, and easily seen. thus, in hunt's great poetical picture of the light of the world, the whole thought and arrangement of the picture being imaginative, the several details of it are wrought out with simple portraiture; the ivy, the jewels, the creeping plants, and the moonlight being calmly studied or remembered from the things themselves. but of all these special ways in which the invention works with plain facts, we shall have to treat farther afterwards. § . and now, finally, since this poetical power includes the historical, if we glance back to the other qualities required in great art, and put all together, we find that the sum of them is simply the sum of all the powers of man. for as ( ) the choice of the high subject involves all conditions of right moral choice, and as ( ) the love of beauty involves all conditions of right admiration, and as ( ) the grasp of truth involves all strength of sense, evenness of judgment, and honesty of purpose, and as ( ) the poetical power involves all swiftness of invention, and accuracy of historical memory, the sum of all these powers is the sum of the human soul. hence we see why the word "great" is used of this art. it is literally great. it compasses and calls forth the entire human spirit, whereas any other kind of art, being more or less small or narrow, compasses and calls forth only _part_ of the human spirit. hence the idea of its magnitude is a literal and just one, the art being simply less or greater in proportion to the number of faculties it exercises and addresses.[ ] and this is the ultimate meaning of the definition i gave of it long ago, as containing the "greatest number of the greatest ideas." § . such, then, being the characters required in order to constitute high art, if the reader will think over them a little, and over the various ways in which they may be falsely assumed, he will easily perceive how spacious and dangerous a field of discussion they open to the ambitious critic, and of error to the ambitious artist; he will see how difficult it must be, either to distinguish what is truly great art from the mockeries of it, or to rank the real artists in any thing like a progressive system of greater and less. for it will have been observed that the various qualities which form greatness are partly inconsistent with each other (as some virtues are, docility and firmness for instance), and partly independent of each other; and the fact is, that artists differ not more by mere capacity, than by the component _elements_ of their capacity, each possessing in very different proportions the several attributes of greatness; so that, classed by one kind of merit, as, for instance, purity of expression, angelico will stand highest; classed by another, sincerity of manner, veronese will stand highest; classed by another, love of beauty, leonardo will stand highest; and so on; hence arise continual disputes and misunderstandings among those who think that high art must always be one and the same, and that great artists ought to unite all great attributes in an equal degree. § . in one of the exquisitely finished tales of marmontel, a company of critics are received at dinner by the hero of the story, an old gentleman, somewhat vain of his _acquired_ taste, and his niece, by whose incorrigible _natural_ taste, he is seriously disturbed and tormented. during the entertainment, "on parcourut tous les genres de littérature, et pour donner plus d'essor a l'érudition et à la critique, on mit sur le tapis cette question toute neuve, sçavoir, lequel méritoit le préference de corneille ou de racine. l'on disoit même là-dessus les plus belles choses du monde, lorsque la petite nièce, qui n'avoit pas dit un mot, s'avisa de demander naïvement lequel des deux fruits, de l'orange ou de la pêche, avoit le gout les plus exquis et méritoit le plus d'éloges. son oncle rougit de sa simplicité, et les convives baissèrent tous les yeux sans daigner répondre à cette bêtise. ma nièce, dit fintac, a votre âge, il faut sçavoir écouter, et se taire." i cannot close this chapter with shorter or better advice to the reader, than merely, whenever he hears discussions about the relative merits of great masters, to remember the young lady's question. it is, indeed, true that there _is_ a relative merit, that a peach is nobler than a hawthorn berry, and still more a hawthorn berry than a bead of the nightshade; but in each rank of fruits, as in each rank of masters, one is endowed with one virtue, and another with another; their glory is their dissimilarity, and they who propose to themselves in the training of an artist that he should unite the coloring of tintoret, the finish of albert durer, and the tenderness of correggio, are no wiser than a horticulturist would be, who made it the object of his labor to produce a fruit which should unite in itself the lusciousness of the grape, the crispness of the nut, and the fragrance of the pine. § . and from these considerations one most important practical corollary is to be deduced, with the good help of mademoiselle's agathe's simile, namely, that the greatness or smallness of a man is, in the most conclusive sense, determined for him at his birth, as strictly as it is determined for a fruit whether it is to be a currant or an apricot. education, favorable circumstances, resolution, and industry can do much; in a certain sense they do _everything_; that is to say, they determine whether the poor apricot shall fall in the form of a green bead, blighted by an east wind, shall be trodden under foot, or whether it shall expand into tender pride, and sweet brightness of golden velvet. but apricot out of currant,--great man out of small,--did never yet art or effort make; and, in a general way, men have their excellence nearly fixed for them when they are born; a little cramped and frost-bitten on one side, a little sun-burnt and fortune-spotted on the other, they reach, between good and evil chances, such size and taste as generally belong to the men of their calibre, and the small in their serviceable bunches, the great in their golden isolation, have, these no cause for regret, nor those for disdain. § . therefore it is, that every system of teaching is false which holds forth "great art" as in any wise to be taught to students, or even to be aimed at by them. great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it is preeminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men; so that the only wholesome teaching is that which simply endeavors to fix those characters of nobleness in the pupil's mind, of which it seems easily susceptible; and without holding out to him, as a possible or even probable result, that he should ever paint like titian, or carve like michael angelo, enforces upon him the manifest possibility, and assured duty, of endeavoring to draw in a manner at least honest and intelligible; and cultivates in him those general charities of heart, sincerities of thought, and graces of habit which are likely to lead him, throughout life, to prefer openness to affectation, realities to shadows, and beauty to corruption. [ ] del "nò," per lì danar, vi "sì" far ita. [ ] as here, for the first time, i am obliged to use the terms truth and beauty in a kind of opposition, i must therefore stop for a moment to state clearly the relation of these two qualities of art; and to protest against the vulgar and foolish habit of confusing truth and beauty with each other. people with shallow powers of thought, desiring to flatter themselves with the sensation of having attained profundity, are continually doing the most serious mischief by introducing confusion into plain matters, and then valuing themselves on being confounded. nothing is more common than to hear people who desire to be thought philosophical, declare that "beauty is truth," and "truth is beauty." i would most earnestly beg every sensible person who hears such an assertion made, to nip the germinating philosopher in his ambiguous bud; and beg him, if he really believes his own assertion, never thenceforward to use two words for the same thing. the fact is, truth and beauty are entirely distinct, though often related, things. one is a property of statements, the other of objects. the statement that "two and two make four" is true, but it is neither beautiful nor ugly, for it is invisible; a rose is lovely, but it is neither true nor false, for it is silent. that which shows nothing cannot be fair, and that which asserts nothing cannot be false. even the ordinary use of the words false and true as applied to artificial and real things, is inaccurate. an artificial rose is not a "false" rose, it is not a rose at all. the falseness is in the person who states, or induces the belief, that it is a rose. now, therefore, in things concerning art, the words true and false are only to be rightly used while the picture is considered as a statement of facts. the painter asserts that this which he has painted is the form of a dog, a man, or a tree. if it be _not_ the form of a dog, a man, or a tree, the painter's statement is false; and therefore we justly speak of a false line, or false color; not that any line or color can in themselves be false, but they become so when they convey a statement that they resemble something which they do _not_ resemble. but the beauty of the lines or colors is wholly independent of any such statement. they may be beautiful lines, though quite inaccurate, and ugly lines though quite faithful. a picture may be frightfully ugly, which represents with fidelity some base circumstance of daily life; and a painted window may be exquisitely beautiful, which represents men with eagles' faces, and dogs with blue heads and crimson tails (though, by the way, this is not in the strict sense _false_ art, as we shall see hereafter, inasmuch as it means no assertion that men ever _had_ eagles' faces). if this were not so, it would be impossible to sacrifice truth to beauty; for to attain the one would always be to attain the other. but, unfortunately, this sacrifice is exceedingly possible, and it is chiefly this which characterizes the false schools of high art, so far as high art consists in the pursuit of beauty. for although truth and beauty are independent of each other, it does not follow that we are at liberty to pursue whichever we please. they are indeed separable, but it is wrong to separate them; they are to be sought together in the order of their worthiness; that is to say, truth first, and beauty afterwards. high art differs from low art in possessing an excess of beauty in addition to its truth, not in possessing an excess of beauty inconsistent with truth. [ ] i name them in order of _in_creasing not decreasing importance. [ ] compare my edinburgh lectures, lecture iv. p. , et seq. ( nd edition) [ ] compare stones of venice, vol. iii. chap. iv. § , and § . chapter iv. of the false ideal:--first, religious. § . having now gained some general notion of the meaning of "great art," we may, without risk of confusing ourselves, take up the questions suggested incidentally in the preceding chapter, and pursue them at leisure. of these, two principal ones are closely connected with each other, to wit, that put in the th paragraph--how may beauty be sought in defiance of truth? and that in the rd paragraph--how does the imagination show itself in dealing with truth? these two, therefore, which are, besides, the most important of all, and, if well answered, will answer many others inclusively, we shall find it most convenient to deal with at once. § . the pursuit, by the imagination, of beautiful and strange thoughts or subjects, to the exclusion of painful or common ones, is called among us, in these modern days, the pursuit of "_the ideal_;" nor does any subject deserve more attentive examination than the manner in which this pursuit is entered upon by the modern mind. the reader must pardon me for making in the outset one or two statements which may appear to him somewhat wide of the matter, but which, (if he admits their truth,) he will, i think, presently perceive to reach to the root of it. namely, that men's proper business in this world falls mainly into three divisions: first, to know themselves, and the existing state of the things they have to do with. secondly, to be happy in themselves, and in the existing state of things. thirdly, to mend themselves, and the existing state of things, as far as either are marred or mendable. these, i say, are the three plain divisions of proper human business on this earth. for these three, the following are usually substituted and adopted by human creatures: first, to be totally ignorant of themselves, and the existing state of things. secondly, to be miserable in themselves, and in the existing state of things. thirdly, to let themselves, and the existing state of things, alone (at least in the way of correction). § . the dispositions which induce us to manage, thus wisely, the affairs of this life seem to be: first, a fear of disagreeable facts, and conscious shrinking from clearness of light, which keep us from examining ourselves, and increase gradually into a species of instinctive terror at all truth, and love of glosses, veils, and decorative lies of every sort. secondly, a general readiness to take delight in anything past, future, far off, or somewhere else, rather than in things now, near, and here; leading us gradually to place our pleasure principally in the exercise of the imagination, and to build all our satisfaction on things as they are _not_. which power being one not accorded to the lower animals, and having indeed, when disciplined, a very noble use, we pride ourselves upon it, whether disciplined or not, and pass our lives complacently, in substantial discontent, and visionary satisfaction. § . now _nearly_ all artistical and poetical seeking after the ideal is only one branch of this base habit--the abuse of the imagination, in allowing it to find its whole delight in the impossible and untrue; while the faithful pursuit of the ideal is an honest use of the imagination, giving full power and presence to the possible and true. it is the difference between these two uses of it which we have to examine. § . and, first, consider what are the legitimate uses of the imagination, that is to say, of the power of perceiving, or conceiving with the mind, things which cannot be perceived by the senses. its first and noblest use is, to enable us to bring sensibly to our sight the things which are recorded as belonging to our future state, or as invisibly surrounding us in this. it is given us, that we may imagine the cloud of witnesses in heaven and earth, and see, as if they were now present, the souls of the righteous waiting for us; that we may conceive the great army of the inhabitants of heaven, and discover among them those whom we most desire to be with for ever; that we may be able to vision forth the ministry of angels beside us, and see the chariots of fire on the mountains that gird us round; but above all, to call up the scenes and facts in which we are commanded to believe, and be present, as if in the body, at every recorded event of the history of the redeemer. its second and ordinary use is to empower us to traverse the scenes of all other history, and force the facts to become again visible, so as to make upon us the same impression which they would have made if we had witnessed them; and in the minor necessities of life, to enable us, out of any present good, to gather the utmost measure of enjoyment by investing it with happy associations, and, in any present evil, to lighten it, by summoning back the images of other hours; and, also, to give to all mental truths some visible type in allegory, simile, or personification, which shall more deeply enforce them; and, finally, when the mind is utterly outwearied, to refresh it with such innocent play as shall be most in harmony with the suggestive voices of natural things, permitting it to possess living companionship instead of silent beauty, and create for itself fairies in the grass and naiads in the wave. § . these being the uses of imagination, its abuses are either in creating, for mere pleasure, false images, where it is its _duty_ to create true ones; or in turning what was intended for the mere refreshment of the heart into its daily food, and changing the innocent pastimes of an hour into the guilty occupation of a life. let us examine the principal forms of this misuse, one by one. § . first, then, the imagination is chiefly warped and dishonored by being allowed to create false images, where it is its duty to create true ones. and this most dangerously in matters of religion. for a long time, when art was in its infancy, it remained unexposed to this danger, because it could not, with any power, realize or create _any_ thing. it consisted merely in simple outlines and pleasant colors; which were understood to be nothing more than signs of the thing thought of, a sort of pictorial letter for it, no more pretending to represent it than the written characters of its name. such art excited the imagination, while it pleased the eye. but it _asserted_ nothing, for it could realize nothing. the reader glanced at it as a glittering symbol, and went on to form truer images for himself. this act of the mind may be still seen in daily operation in children, as they look at brightly colored pictures in their story-books. such pictures neither deceive them nor satisfy them; they only set their own inventive powers to work in the directions required. § . but as soon as art obtained the power of realization, it obtained also that of _assertion_. as fast as the painter advanced in skill he gained also in credibility, and that which he perfectly represented was perfectly believed, or could be disbelieved only by an actual effort of the beholder to escape from the fascinating deception. what had been faintly declared, might be painlessly denied; but it was difficult to discredit things forcibly alleged; and representations, which had been innocent in discrepancy, became guilty in consistency. § . for instance, when in the thirteenth century, the nativity was habitually represented by such a symbol as that on the next page, fig. , there was not the smallest possibility that such a picture could disturb, in the mind of the reader of the new testament, the simple meaning of the words "wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger." that this manger was typified by a trefoiled arch[ ] would no more prevent his distinct understanding of the narrative, than the grotesque heads introduced above it would interfere with his firm comprehension of the words "ox" or "ass;" while if there were anything in the action of the principal figures suggestive of real feeling, that suggestion he would accept, together with the general pleasantness of the lines and colors in the decorative letter; but without having his faith in the unrepresented and actual scene obscured for a moment. but it was far otherwise, when francia or perugino, with exquisite power of representing the human form, and high knowledge of the mysteries of art, devoted all their skill to the delineation of an impossible scene; and painted, for their subjects of the nativity, a beautiful and queenly lady, her dress embroidered with gold, and with a crown of jewels upon her hair, kneeling, on a floor of inlaid and precious marble, before a crowned child, laid under a portico of lombardic[ ] architecture; with a sweet, verdurous, and vivid landscape in the distance, full of winding rivers, village spires, and baronial towers.[ ] it is quite true that the frank absurdity of the thought prevented its being received as a deliberate contradiction of the truths of scripture; but it is no less certain, that the continual presentment to the mind of this beautiful and fully realized imagery more and more chilled its power of apprehending the real truth; and that when pictures of this description met the eye in every corner of every chapel, it was physically impossible to dwell distinctly upon facts the direct reverse of those represented. the word "virgin" or "madonna," instead of calling up the vision of a simple jewish girl, bearing the calamities of poverty, and the dishonors of inferior station, summoned instantly the idea of a graceful princess, crowned with gems, and surrounded by obsequious ministry of kings and saints. the fallacy which was presented to the imagination was indeed discredited, but also the fact which was _not_ presented to the imagination was forgotten; all true grounds of faith were gradually undermined, and the beholder was either enticed into mere luxury of fanciful enjoyment, believing nothing; or left, in his confusion of mind, the prey of vain tales and traditions; while in his best feelings he was unconsciously subject to the power of the fallacious picture, and with no sense of the real cause of his error, bowed himself, in prayer or adoration, to the lovely lady on her golden throne, when he would never have dreamed of doing so to the jewish girl in her outcast poverty, or, in her simple household, to the carpenter's wife. [illustration: fig. .] § . but a shadow of increasing darkness fell upon the human mind as art proceeded to still more perfect realization. these fantasies of the earlier painters, though they darkened faith, never hardened _feeling_; on the contrary, the frankness of their unlikelihood proceeded mainly from the endeavor on the part of the painter to express, not the actual fact, but the enthusiastic state of his own feelings about the fact; he covers the virgin's dress with gold, not with any idea of representing the virgin as she ever was, or ever will be seen, but with a burning desire to show what his love and reverence would think fittest for her. he erects for the stable a lombardic portico, not because he supposes the lombardi to have built stables in palestine in the days of tiberius, but to show that the manger in which christ was laid is, in his eyes, nobler than the greatest architecture in the world. he fills his landscape with church spires and silver streams, not because he supposes that either were in sight of bethlehem, but to remind the beholder of the peaceful course and succeeding power of christianity. and, regarded with due sympathy and clear understanding of these thoughts of the artist, such pictures remain most impressive and touching, even to this day. i shall refer to them in future, in general terms, as the pictures of the "angelican ideal"--angelico being the central master of the school. § . it was far otherwise in the next step of the realistic progress. the greater his powers became, the more the mind of the painter was absorbed in their attainment, and complacent in their display. the early arts of laying on bright colors smoothly, of burnishing golden ornaments, or tracing, leaf by leaf, the outlines of flowers, were not so difficult as that they should materially occupy the thoughts of the artist, or furnish foundation for his conceit; he learned these rudiments of his work without pain, and employed them without pride, his spirit being left free to express, so far as it was capable of them, the reaches of higher thought. but when accurate shade, and subtle color, and perfect anatomy, and complicated perspective, became necessary to the work, the artist's whole energy was employed in learning the laws of these, and his whole pleasure consisted in exhibiting them. his life was devoted, not to the objects of art, but to the cunning of it; and the sciences of composition and light and shade were pursued as if there were abstract good in them;--as if, like astronomy or mathematics, they were ends in themselves, irrespective of anything to be effected by them. and without perception, on the part of any one, of the abyss to which all were hastening, a fatal change of aim took place throughout the whole world of art. in early times _art was employed for the display of religious facts_; now, _religious facts were employed for the display of art_. the transition, though imperceptible, was consummate; it involved the entire destiny of painting. it was passing from the paths of life to the paths of death. § . and this change was all the more fatal, because at first veiled by an appearance of greater dignity and sincerity than were possessed by the older art. one of the earliest results of the new knowledge was the putting away the greater part of the _unlikelihoods_ and fineries of the ancient pictures, and an apparently closer following of nature and probability. all the fantasy which i have just been blaming as disturbant of the simplicity of faith, was first subdued,--then despised and cast aside. the appearances of nature were more closely followed in everything; and the crowned queen-virgin of perugino sank into a simple italian mother in raphael's madonna of the chair. § . was not this, then, a healthy change? no. it _would_ have been healthy if it had been effected with a pure motive, and the new truths would have been precious if they had been sought for truth's sake. but they were not sought for truth's sake, but for pride's; and truth which is sought for display may be just as harmful as truth which is spoken in malice. the glittering childishness of the old art was rejected, not because it was false, but because it was easy; and, still more, because the painter had no longer any religious passion to express. he could think of the madonna now very calmly, with no desire to pour out the treasures of earth at her feet, or crown her brows with the golden shafts of heaven. he could think of her as an available subject for the display of transparent shadows, skilful tints, and scientific foreshortenings,--as a fair woman, forming, if well painted, a pleasant piece of furniture for the corner of a boudoir, and best imagined by combination of the beauties of the prettiest contadinas. he could think of her, in her last maternal agony, with academical discrimination; sketch in first her skeleton, invest her, in serene science, with the muscles of misery and the fibres of sorrow; then cast the grace of antique drapery over the nakedness of her desolation, and fulfil, with studious lustre of tears and delicately painted pallor, the perfect type of the "mater dolorosa." § . it was thus that raphael thought of the madonna.[ ] now observe, when the subject was thus scientifically completed, it became necessary, as we have just said, to the full display of all the power of the artist, that it should in many respects be more faithfully imagined than it had been hitherto, "keeping," "expression," "historical unity," and such other requirements, were enforced on the painter, in the same tone, and with the same purpose, as the purity of his oil and the accuracy of his perspective. he was told that the figure of christ should be "dignified," those of the apostles "expressive," that of the virgin "modest," and those of children "innocent." all this was perfectly true; and in obedience to such directions, the painter proceeded to manufacture certain arrangements of apostolic sublimity, virginal mildness, and infantine innocence, which, being free from the quaint imperfection and contradictoriness of the early art, were looked upon by the european public as true things, and trustworthy representations of the events of religious history. the pictures of francia and bellini had been received as pleasant visions. but the cartoons of raphael were received as representations of historical fact. § . now, neither they, nor any other work of the period, were representations either of historical or possible fact. they were, in the strictest sense of the word, "compositions"--cold arrangements of propriety and agreeableness, according to academical formulas; the painter never in any case making the slightest effort to conceive the thing as it must have happened, but only to gather together graceful lines and beautiful faces, in such compliance with commonplace ideas of the subject as might obtain for the whole an "epic unity," or some such other form of scholastic perfectness. § . take a very important instance. i suppose there is no event in the whole life of christ to which, in hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious thirst to knew the close facts of it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling upon every syllable of its recorded narrative, than christ's showing himself to his disciples at the lake of galilee. there is something preeminently open, natural, full fronting our disbelief in this manifestation. the others, recorded after the resurrection, were sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied agitation of heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw. but the agitation was now over. they had gone back to their daily work, thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed from the literal rope and drag. "simon peter saith unto them, 'i go a fishing,' they say unto him, 'we also go with thee,'" true words enough, and having far echo beyond those galilean hills. that night they caught nothing; but when the morning came, in the clear light of it, behold a figure stood on the shore. they were not thinking of anything but their fruitless hauls. they had no guess who it was. it asked them simply if they had caught anything. they said no. and it tells them to cast yet again. and john shades his eyes from the morning sun with his hand, to look who it is; and though the glinting of the sea, too, dazzles him, he makes out who it is, at last; and poor simon, not to be outrun this time, tightens, his fisher's coat about him, and dashes in, over the nets. one would have liked to see him swim those hundred yards, and stagger to his knees on the beach. well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way as men in general do get, in this world, to its true shore, much impeded by that wonderful "dragging the net with fishes;" but they get there--seven of them in all;--first the denier, and then the slowest believer, and then the quickest believer, and then the two throne-seekers, and two more, we know not who. they sit down on the shore face to face with him, and eat their broiled fish as he bids. and then, to peter, all dripping still, shivering, and amazed, staring at christ in the sun, on the other side of the coal fire,--thinking a little, perhaps, of what happened by another coal fire, when it was colder, and having had no word once changed with him by his master since that look of his,--to him, so amazed, comes the question, "simon, lovest thou me?" try to feel that a little, and think of it till it is true to you; and then, take up that infinite monstrosity and hypocrisy--raphael's cartoon of the charge to peter. note, first, the bold fallacy--the putting _all_ the apostles there, a mere lie to serve the papal heresy of the petric supremacy, by putting them all in the background while peter receives the charge, and making them all witnesses to it. note the handsomely curled hair and neatly tied sandals of the men who had been out all night in the sea-mists and on the slimy decks. note their convenient dresses for going a-fishing, with trains that lie a yard along the ground, and goodly fringes,--all made to match, an apostolic fishing costume.[ ] note how peter especially (whose chief glory was in his wet coat _girt_ about him and naked limbs) is enveloped in folds and fringes, so as to kneel and hold his keys with grace. no fire of coals at all, nor lonely mountain shore, but a pleasant italian landscape, full of villas and churches, and a flock of sheep to be pointed at; and the whole group of apostles, not round christ, as they would have been naturally, but straggling away in a line, that they may all be shown. the simple truth is, that the moment we look at the picture we feel our belief of the whole thing taken away. there is, visibly, no possibility of that group ever having existed, in any place, or on any occasion. it is all a mere mythic absurdity, and faded concoction of fringes, muscular arms, and curly heads of greek philosophers. § . now, the evil consequences of the acceptance of this kind of religious idealism for true, were instant and manifold. so far as it was received and trusted in by thoughtful persons, it only served to chill all the conceptions of sacred history which they might otherwise have obtained. whatever they could have fancied for themselves about the wild, strange, infinitely stern, infinitely tender, infinitely varied veracities of the life of christ, was blotted out by the vapid fineries of raphael; the rough galilean pilot, the orderly custom receiver, and all the questioning wonder and fire of uneducated apostleship, were obscured under an antique mask of philosophical faces and long robes. the feeble, subtle, suffering, ceaseless energy and humiliation of st. paul were confused with an idea of a meditative hercules leaning on a sweeping sword;[ ] and the mighty presences of moses and elias were softened by introductions of delicate grace, adopted from dancing nymphs and rising auroras,[ ] now, no vigorously minded religious person could possibly receive pleasure or help from such art as this; and the necessary result was the instant rejection of it by the healthy religion of the world. raphael ministered, with applause, to the impious luxury of the vatican, but was trampled under foot at once by every believing and advancing christian of his own and subsequent times; and thenceforward pure christianity and "high art" took separate roads, and fared on, as best they might, independently of each other. § . but although calvin, and knox, and luther, and their flocks, with all the hardest-headed and truest-hearted faithful left in christendom, thus spurned away the spurious art, and all art with it, (not without harm to themselves, such as a man must needs sustain in cutting off a decayed limb[ ]) certain conditions of weaker christianity suffered the false system to retain influence over them; and to this day, the clear and tasteless poison of the art of raphael infects with sleep of infidelity the hearts of millions of christians. it is the first cause of all that pre-eminent _dulness_ which characterizes what protestants call sacred art; a dulness not merely baneful in making religion distasteful to the young, but in sickening, as we have seen, all vital belief of religion in the old. a dim sense of impossibility attaches itself always to the graceful emptiness of the representation; we feel instinctively that the painted christ and painted apostle are not beings that ever did or could exist; and this fatal sense of fair fabulousness, and well-composed impossibility, steals gradually from the picture into the history, until we find ourselves reading st. mark or st. luke with the same admiring, but uninterested, incredulity, with which we contemplate raphael. § . on a certain class of minds, however, these raphaelesque and other sacred paintings of high order, have had, of late years, another kind of influence, much resembling that which they had at first on the most pious romanists. they are used to excite certain conditions of religious dream or reverie; being again, as in earliest times, regarded not as representations of fact, but as expressions of sentiment respecting the fact. in this way the best of them have unquestionably much purifying and enchanting power; and they are helpful opponents to sinful passion and weakness of every kind. a fit of unjust anger, petty malice, unreasonable vexation, or dark passion, cannot certainly, in a mind of ordinary sensibility, hold its own in the presence of a good engraving from any work of angelico, memling, or perugino. but i nevertheless believe, that he who trusts much to such helps will find them fail him at his need; and that the dependence, in any great degree, on the presence or power of a picture, indicates a wonderfully feeble sense of the presence and power of god. i do not think that any man, who is thoroughly certain that christ is in the room, will care what sort of pictures of christ he has on its walls; and, in the plurality of cases, the delight taken in art of this kind is, in reality, nothing more than a form of graceful indulgence of those sensibilities which the habits of a disciplined life restrain in other directions. such art is, in a word, the opera and drama of the monk. sometimes it is worse than this, and the love of it is the mask under which a general thirst for morbid excitement will pass itself for religion. the young lady who rises in the middle of the day, jaded by her last night's ball, and utterly incapable of any simple or wholesome religious exercise, can still gaze into the dark eyes of the madonna di san sisto, or dream over the whiteness of an ivory crucifix, and returns to the course of her daily life in full persuasion that her morning's feverishness has atoned for her evening's folly. and all the while, the art which possesses these very doubtful advantages is acting for undoubtful detriment, in the various ways above examined, on the inmost fastnesses of faith; it is throwing subtle endearments round foolish traditions, confusing sweet fancies with sound doctrines, obscuring real events with unlikely semblances, and enforcing false assertions with pleasant circumstantiality, until, to the usual, and assuredly sufficient, difficulties standing in the way of belief, its votaries have added a habit of sentimentally changing what they know to be true, and of dearly loving what they confess to be false. § . has there, then (the reader asks emphatically), been _no_ true religious ideal? has religious art never been of any service to mankind? i fear, on the whole, not. of true religious ideal, representing events historically recorded, with solemn effort at a sincere and unartificial conception, there exist, as yet, hardly any examples. nearly all good religious pictures fall into one or other branch of the false ideal already examined, either into the angelican (passionate ideal) or the raphaelesque (philosophical ideal). but there is one true form of religious art, nevertheless, in the pictures of the passionate ideal which represent imaginary beings of another world. since it is evidently right that we should try to imagine the glories of the next world, and as this imagination must be, in each separate mind, more or less different, and unconfined by any laws of material fact, the passionate ideal has not only full scope here, but it becomes our duty to urge its powers to its utmost, so that every condition of beautiful form and color may be employed to invest these scenes with greater delightfulness (the whole being, of course, received as an assertion of possibility, not of absolute fact). all the paradises imagined by the religious painters--the choirs of glorified saints, angels, and spiritual powers, when painted with full belief in this possibility of their existence, are true ideals; and so far from our having dwelt on these too much, i believe, rather, we have not trusted them enough, nor accepted them enough, as possible statements of most precious truth. nothing but unmixed good can accrue to any mind from the contemplation of orcagna's last judgment or his triumph of death, of angelico's last judgment and paradise, or any of the scenes laid in heaven by the other faithful religious masters; and the more they are considered, not as works of art, but as real visions of real things, more or less imperfectly set down, the more good will be got by dwelling upon them. the same is true of all representations of christ as a living presence among us now, as in hunt's light of the world. § . for the rest, there is a reality of conception in some of the works of benozzo gozzoli, ghirlandajo, and giotto, which approaches to a true ideal, even of recorded facts. but the examination of the various degrees in which sacred art has reached its proper power is not to our present purpose; still less, to investigate the infinitely difficult question of its past operation on the christian mind. i hope to prosecute my inquiry into this subject in another work; it being enough here to mark the forms of ideal error, without historically tracing their extent, and to state generally that my impression is, up to the present moment, that the best religious art has been _hitherto_ rather a fruit, and attendant sign, of sincere christianity than a promoter of or help to it. more, i think, has always been done for god by few words than many pictures, and more by few acts than many words. § . i must not, however, quit the subject without insisting on the chief practical consequence of what we have observed, namely, that sacred art, so far from being exhausted, has yet to attain the development of its highest branches; and the task, or privilege, yet remains for mankind, to produce an art which shall be at once entirely skilful and entirely _sincere_. all the histories of the bible are, in my judgment, yet waiting to be painted. moses has never been painted; elijah never; david never (except as a mere ruddy stripling); deborah never; gideon never; isaiah never. what single example does the reader remember of painting which suggested so much as the faintest shadow of these people, or of their deeds? strong men in armor, or aged men with flowing beards, he _may_ remember, who, when he looked at his louvre or uffizii catalogue, he found were intended to stand for david or for moses. but does he suppose that, if these pictures had suggested to him the feeblest image of the presence of such men, he would have passed on, as he assuredly did, to the next picture,--representing, doubtless, diana and actaeon, or cupid and the graces, or a gambling quarrel in a pothouse,--with no sense of pain, or surprise? let him meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately that what i say is true, and that religious art, at once complete and sincere, never yet has existed. § . it will exist: nay, i believe the era of its birth has come, and that those bright turnerian imageries, which the european public declared to be "dotage," and those calm pre-raphaelite studies which, in like manner, it pronounced "puerility," form the first foundation that has been ever laid for true sacred art. of this we shall presently reason farther. but, be it as it may, if we would cherish the hope that sacred art may, indeed, arise for _us_, two separate cautions are to be addressed to the two opposed classes of religionists whose influence will chiefly retard that hope's accomplishment. the group calling themselves evangelical ought no longer to render their religion an offence to men of the world by associating it only with the most vulgar forms of art. it is not necessary that they should admit either music or painting into religious service; but, if they admit either the one or the other, let it not be bad music nor bad painting: it is certainly in nowise more for christ's honor that his praise should be sung discordantly, or his miracles painted discreditably, than that his word should be preached ungrammatically. some evangelicals, however, seem to take a morbid pride in the triple degradation.[ ] § . the opposite class of men, whose natural instincts lead them to mingle the refinements of art with all the offices and practices of religion, are to be warned, on the contrary, how they mistake their enjoyments for their duties, or confound poetry with faith. i admit that it is impossible for one man to judge another in this matter, and that it can never be said with certainty how far what seems frivolity may be force, and what seems the indulgence of the heart may be, indeed, its dedication. i am ready to believe that metastasio, expiring in a canzonet, may have died better than if his prayer had been in unmeasured syllables.[ ] but, for the most part, it is assuredly much to be feared lest we mistake a surrender to the charms of art for one to the service of god; and, in the art which we permit, lest we substitute sentiment for sense, grace for utility. and for us all there is in this matter even a deeper danger than that of indulgence. there is the danger of artistical pharisaism. of all the forms of pride and vanity, as there are none more subtle, so i believe there are none more sinful, than those which are manifested by the pharisees of art. to be proud of birth, of place, of wit, of bodily beauty, is comparatively innocent, just because such pride is more natural, and more easily detected. but to be proud of our sanctities; to pour contempt upon our fellows, because, forsooth, we like to look at madonnas in bowers of roses, better than at plain pictures of plain things; and to make this religious art of ours the expression of our own perpetual self-complacency,--congratulating ourselves, day by day, on our purities, proprieties, elevations, and inspirations, as above the reach of common mortals,--this i believe to be one of the wickedest and foolishest forms of human egotism; and, truly, i had rather, with great, thoughtless, humble paul veronese, make the supper at emmaus a background for two children playing with a dog (as, god knows, men do usually put it in the background to everything, if not out of sight altogether), than join that school of modern germanism which wears its pieties for decoration as women wear their diamonds, and flaunts the dry fleeces of its phylacteries between its dust and the dew of heaven. [ ] the curious inequality of this little trefoil is not a mistake; it is faithfully copied by the draughtsman from the ms. perhaps the actual date of the illumination may be a year or two past the thirteenth century, i.e., -- : but it is quite characteristic of the thirteenth century treatment in the figures. [ ] lombardic, i.e. in the style of pietro and tullio lombardo, in the fifteenth century (not _lombard_). [ ] all this, it will be observed, is that seeking for beauty at the cost of truth which we have generally noted in the last chapter. [ ] this is one form of the sacrifice of expression to technical merit, generally noted at the end of the th paragraph of the last chapter. [ ] i suppose raphael intended a reference to numbers xv. ; but if he did, the _blue_ riband, or "vitta," as it is in the vulgate, should have been on the borders too. [ ] in the st. cecilia of bologna. [ ] in the transfiguration. do but try to believe that moses and elias are really there talking with christ. moses in the loveliest heart and midst of the land which once it had been denied him to behold,--elijah treading the earth again, from which he had been swept to heaven in fire; both now with a mightier message than ever they had given in life,--mightier, in closing their own mission,--mightier, in speaking to christ "of his decease, which he should accomplish at jerusalem." they, men of like passions once with us, appointed to speak to the redeemer of his death. and, then, look at raphael's kicking gracefulnesses. [ ] luther had no dislike of religious art on principle. even the stove in his chamber was wrought with sacred subjects. see mrs. stowe's sunny memories. [ ] i do not know anything more humiliating to a man of common sense, than to open what is called an "illustrated bible" of modern days. see, for instance, the plates in brown's bible (octavo: edinburgh, ), a standard evangelical edition. our habit of reducing the psalms to doggerel before we will condescend to sing them, is a parallel abuse. it is marvellous to think that human creatures with tongues and souls should refuse to chant the verse: "before ephraim, benjamin, and manasseh, stir up thy strength, and come and help us;" preferring this:-- "behold, how benjamin expects, with ephraim and manasseh joined, in their deliverance, the effects of thy resistless strength to find!" [ ] "en , âgé de quatre-vingt-deux ans, au moment de recevoir le viatique, il rassembla ses forces, et chanta, à son créateur: 'eterno genitor io t' offro il proprio figlio che in pegno del tuo amor si vuole a me donar. a lui rivolgi il ciglio, mira chi t' offro; e poi, niega, signor, se puoi, niega di perdonar.'"-- --de stendhal, _via de metastasio_. chapter v. of the false ideal:--secondly, profane. § . such having been the effects of the pursuit of ideal beauty on the religious mind of europe, we might be tempted next to consider in what way the same movement affected the art which concerned itself with profane subject, and, through that art, the whole temper of modern civilization. i shall, however, merely glance at this question. it is a very painful and a very wide one. its discussion cannot come properly within the limits, or even within the aim, of a work like this; it ought to be made the subject of a separate essay, and that essay should be written by some one who had passed less of his life than i have among the mountains, and more of it among men. but one or two points may be suggested for the reader to reflect upon at his leisure. § . i said just now that we might be tempted to consider how this pursuit of the ideal _affected_ profane art. strictly speaking, it brought that art into existence. as long as men sought for truth first, and beauty secondarily, they cared chiefly, of course, for the _chief_ truth, and all art was instinctively religious. but as soon as they sought for beauty first, and truth secondarily, they were punished by losing sight of spiritual truth altogether, and the profane (properly so called) schools of art were instantly developed. the perfect human beauty, which, to a large part of the community, was by far the most interesting feature in the work of the rising school, might indeed be in some degree consistent with the agony of madonnas, and the repentance of magdalenes; but could not be exhibited in fulness, when the subjects, however irreverently treated, nevertheless demanded some decency in the artist, and some gravity in the spectator. the newly acquired powers of rounding limbs, and tinting lips, had too little scope in the sanctities even of the softest womanhood; and the newly acquired conceptions of the nobility of nakedness could in no wise be expressed beneath the robes of the prelate or the sackcloth of the recluse. but the source from which these ideas had been received afforded also full field for their expression; the heathen mythology, which had furnished the examples of these heights of art, might again become the subject of the inspirations it had kindled;--with the additional advantage that it could now be delighted in, without being believed; that its errors might be indulged, unrepressed by its awe; and those of its deities whose function was temptation might be worshipped, in scorn of those whose hands were charged with chastisement. so, at least, men dreamed in their foolishness,--to find, as the ages wore on, that the returning apollo bore not only his lyre, but his arrows; and that at the instant of cytherea's resurrection to the sunshine, persephone had reascended her throne in the deep. § . little thinking this, they gave themselves up fearlessly to the chase of the new delight, and exhausted themselves in the pursuit of an ideal now doubly false. formerly, though they attempted to reach an unnatural beauty, it was yet in representing historical facts and real persons; _now_ they sought for the same unnatural beauty in representing tales which they knew to be fictitious, and personages who they knew had never existed. such a state of things had never before been found in any nation. every people till then had painted the acts of their kings, the triumphs of their armies, the beauty of their race, or the glory of their gods. they showed the things they had seen or done; the beings they truly loved or faithfully adored. but the ideal art of modern europe was the shadow of a shadow; and with mechanism substituted for perception, and bodily beauty for spiritual life, it set itself to represent men it had never seen, customs it had never practised, and gods in whom it had never believed. § . such art could of course have no help from the virtues, nor claim on the energies of men. it necessarily rooted itself in their vices and their idleness; and of their vices principally in two, pride and sensuality. to the pride, was attached eminently the art of architecture; to the sensuality, those of painting and sculpture. of the fall of architecture, as resultant from the formalist pride of its patrons and designers, i have spoken elsewhere. the sensualist ideal, as seen in painting and sculpture, remains to be examined here. but one interesting circumstance is to be observed with respect to the manner of the separation of these arts. pride, being wholly a vice, and in every phase inexcusable, wholly betrayed and destroyed the art which was founded on it. but passion, having some root and use in healthy nature, and only becoming guilty in excess, did not altogether destroy the art founded upon it. the architecture of palladio is wholly virtueless and despicable. not so the venus of titian, nor the antiope of correggio. § . we find, then, at the close of the sixteenth century, the arts of painting and sculpture wholly devoted to entertain the indolent and satiate the luxurious. to effect these noble ends, they took a thousand different forms; painting, however, of course being the most complying, aiming sometimes at mere amusement by deception in landscapes, or minute imitation of natural objects; sometimes giving more piquant excitement in battle-pieces full of slaughter, or revels deep in drunkenness; sometimes entering upon serious subjects, for the sake of grotesque fiends and picturesque infernos, or that it might introduce pretty children as cherubs, and handsome women as magdalenes and maries of egypt, or portraits of patrons in the character of the more decorous saints: but more frequently, for direct flatteries of this kind, recurring to pagan mythology, and painting frail ladies as goddesses or graces, and foolish kings in radiant apotheosis; while, for the earthly delight of the persons whom it honored as divine, it ransacked the records of luscious fable, and brought back, in fullest depth of dye and flame of fancy, the impurest dreams of the un-christian ages. § . meanwhile, the art of sculpture, less capable of ministering to mere amusement, was more or less reserved for the affectations of taste; and the study of the classical statues introduced various ideas on the subjects of "purity," "chastity," and "dignity," such as it was possible for people to entertain who were themselves impure, luxurious, and ridiculous. it is a matter of extreme difficulty to explain the exact character of this modern sculpturesque ideal; but its relation to the true ideal may be best understood by considering it as in exact parallelism with the relation of the word "taste" to the word "love." wherever the word "taste" is used with respect to matters of art, it indicates either that the thing spoken of belongs to some inferior class of objects, or that the person speaking has a false conception of its nature. for, consider the exact sense in which a work of art is said to be "in good or bad taste." it does not mean that it is true, or false; that it is beautiful, or ugly; but that it does or does not comply either with the laws of choice, which are enforced by certain modes of life; or the habits of mind produced by a particular sort of education. it does not mean merely fashionable, that is, complying with a momentary caprice of the upper classes; but it means agreeing with the habitual sense which the most refined education, common to those upper classes at the period, gives to their whole mind. now, therefore, so far as that education does indeed tend to make the senses delicate, and the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased with quiet instead of gaudy color, and with graceful instead of coarse form; and, by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern quickly what is fine from what is common;--so far, acquired taste is an honorable faculty, and it is true praise of anything to say it is "in good taste." but so far as this higher education has a tendency to narrow the sympathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest of all beautiful things by familiarity, until even what is best can hardly please, and what is brightest hardly entertain;--so far as it fosters pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in anything, not on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in which it indicates some greatness of their own (as people build marble porticos, and inlay marble floors, not so much because they like the colors of marble, or find it pleasant to the foot, as because such porches and floors are costly, and separated in all human eyes from plain entrances of stone and timber);--so far as it leads people to prefer gracefulness of dress, manner, and aspect, to value of substance and heart, liking a well said thing better than a true thing, and a well trained manner better than a sincere one, and a delicately formed face better than a good-natured one, and in all other ways and things setting custom and semblance above everlasting truth;--so far, finally, as it induces a sense of inherent distinction between class and class, and causes everything to be more or less despised which has no social rank, so that the affection, pleasure, or grief of a clown are looked upon as of no interest compared with the affection and grief of a well-bred man;--just so far, in all these several ways, the feeling induced by what is called a "liberal education" is utterly adverse to the understanding of noble art; and the name which is given to the feeling,--taste, goût, gusto,--in all languages, indicates the baseness of it, for it implies that art gives only a kind of pleasure analogous to that derived from eating by the palate. § . modern education, not in art only, but in all other things referable to the same standard, has invariably given taste in this bad sense; it has given fastidiousness of choice without judgment, superciliousness of manner without dignity, refinement of habit without purity, grace of expression without sincerity, and desire of loveliness without love; and the modern "ideal" of high art is a curious mingling of the gracefulness and reserve of the drawingroom with a certain measure of classical sensuality. of this last element, and the singular artifices by which vice succeeds in combining it with what appears to be pure and severe, it would take us long to reason fully; i would rather leave the reader to follow out for himself the consideration of the influence, in this direction, of statues, bronzes, and paintings, as at present employed by the upper circles of london, and (especially) paris; and this not so much in the works which are really fine, as in the multiplied coarse copies of them; taking the widest range, from dannaeker's ariadne down to the amorous shepherd and shepherdess in china on the drawingroom time-piece, rigidly questioning, in each case, how far the charm of the art does indeed depend on some appeal to the inferior passions. let it be considered, for instance, exactly how far the value of a picture of a girl's head by greuze would be lowered in the market, if the dress, which now leaves the bosom bare, were raised to the neck; and how far, in the commonest lithograph of some utterly popular subject,--for instance, the teaching of uncle tom by eva,--the sentiment which is supposed to be excited by the exhibition of christianity in youth is complicated with that which depends upon eva's having a dainty foot and a well-made satin slipper;--and then, having completely determined for himself how far the element exists, consider farther, whether, when art is thus frequent (for frequent he will assuredly find it to be) in its appeal to the lower passions, it is likely to attain the highest order of merit, or be judged by the truest standards of judgment. for, of all the causes which have combined, in modern times, to lower the rank of art, i believe this to be one of the most fatal; while, reciprocally, it may be questioned how far society suffers, in its turn, from the influences possessed over it by the arts it has degraded. it seems to me a subject of the very deepest interest to determine what has been the effect upon the european nations of the great change by which art became again capable of ministering delicately to the lower passions, as it had in the worst days of rome; how far, indeed, in all ages, the fall of nations may be attributed to art's arriving at this particular stage among them. i do not mean that, in any of its stages, it is incapable of being employed for evil, but that assuredly an egyptian, spartan, or norman was unexposed to the kind of temptation which is continually offered by the delicate painting and sculpture of modern days; and, although the diseased imagination might complete the imperfect image of beauty from the colored image on the wall,[ ] or the most revolting thoughts be suggested by the mocking barbarism of the gothic sculpture, their hard outline and rude execution were free from all the subtle treachery which now fills the flushed canvas and the rounded marble. § . i cannot, however, pursue this inquiry here. for our present purpose it is enough to note that the feeling, in itself so debased, branches upwards into that of which, while no one has cause to be ashamed, no one, on the other hand, has cause to be proud, namely, the admiration of physical beauty in the human form, as distinguished from expression of character. every one can easily appreciate the merit of regular features and well-formed limbs, but it requires some attention, sympathy, and sense, to detect the charm of passing expression, or life-disciplined character. the beauty of the apollo belvidere, or venus de medicis, is perfectly palpable to any shallow fine lady or fine gentleman, though they would have perceived none in the face of an old weather-beaten st. peter, or a grey-haired "grandmother lois." the knowledge that long study is necessary to produce these regular types of the human form renders the facile admiration matter of eager self-complacency; the shallow spectator, delighted that he can really, and without hypocrisy, admire what required much thought to produce, supposes himself endowed with the highest critical faculties, and easily lets himself be carried into rhapsodies about the "ideal," which, when all is said, if they be accurately examined, will be found literally to mean nothing more than that the figure has got handsome calves to its legs, and a straight nose. § . that they do mean, in reality, nothing more than this may be easily ascertained by watching the taste of the same persons in other things. the fashionable lady who will write five or six pages in her diary respecting the effect upon her mind of such and such an "ideal" in marble, will have her drawing room table covered with books of beauty, in which the engravings represent the human form in every possible aspect of distortion and affectation; and the connoisseur who, in the morning, pretends to the most exquisite taste in the antique, will be seen, in the evening, in his opera-stall, applauding the least graceful gestures of the least modest figurante. § . but even this vulgar pursuit of physical beauty (vulgar in the profoundest sense, for there is no vulgarity like the vulgarity of education) would be less contemptible if it really succeeded in its object; but, like all pursuits carried to inordinate length, it defeats itself. physical beauty _is_ a noble thing when it is seen in perfectness; but the manner in which the moderns pursue their ideal prevents their ever really seeing what they are always seeking; for, requiring that all forms should be regular and faultless, they permit, or even compel, their painters and sculptors to work chiefly by rule, altering their models to fit their preconceived notions of what is right. when such artists look at a face, they do not give it the attention necessary to discern what beauty is already in its peculiar features; but only to see how best it may be altered into something for which they have themselves laid down the laws. nature never unveils her beauty to such a gaze. she keeps whatever she has done best, close sealed, until it is regarded with reverence. to the painter who honors her, she will open a revelation in the face of a street mendicant; but in the work of the painter who alters her, she will make portia become ignoble and perdita graceless. § . nor is the effect less for evil on the mind of the general observer. the lover of ideal beauty, with all his conceptions narrowed by rule, never looks carefully enough upon the features which do not come under his law (or any others), to discern the inner beauty in them. the strange intricacies about the lines of the lips, and marvellous shadows and watch-fires of the eye, and wavering traceries of the eyelash, and infinite modulations of the brow, wherein high humanity is embodied, are all invisible to him. he finds himself driven back at last, with all his idealism, to the lionne of the ball-room, whom youth and passion can as easily distinguish as his utmost critical science; whereas, the observer who has accustomed himself to take human faces as god made them, will often find as much beauty on a village green as in the proudest room of state, and as much in the free seats of a church aisle, as in all the sacred paintings of the vatican or the pitti. § . then, farther, the habit of disdaining ordinary truth, and seeking to alter it so as to fit the fancy of the beholder, gradually infects the mind in all its other operation; so that it begins to propose to itself an ideal in history, an ideal in general narration, an ideal in portraiture and description, and in every thing else where truth may be painful or uninteresting; with the necessary result of more or less weakness, wickedness, and uselessness in all that is done or said, with the desire of concealing this painful truth. and, finally, even when truth is not intentionally concealed, the pursuer of idealism will pass his days in false and useless trains of thought, pluming himself, all the while, upon his superiority therein to the rest of mankind. a modern german, without either invention or sense, seeing a rapid in a river, will immediately devote the remainder of the day to the composition of dialogues between amorous water nymphs and unhappy mariners; while the man of true invention, power, and sense will, instead, set himself to consider whether the rocks in the river could have their points knocked off, or the boats upon it be made with stronger bottoms. § . of this final baseness of the false ideal, its miserable waste of time, strength, and available intellect of man, by turning, as i have said above, innocence of pastime into seriousness of occupation, it is, of course, hardly possible to sketch out even so much as the leading manifestations. the vain and haughty projects of youth for future life; the giddy reveries of insatiable self exaltation; the discontented dreams of what might have been or should be, instead of the thankful understanding of what is; the casting about for sources of interest in senseless fiction, instead of the real human histories of the people round us; the prolongation from age to age of romantic historical deceptions instead of sifted truth; the pleasures taken in fanciful portraits of rural or romantic life in poetry and on the stage, without the smallest effort to rescue the living rural population of the world from its ignorance or misery; the excitement of the feelings by labored imagination of spirits, fairies, monsters, and demons, issuing in total blindness of heart and sight to the true presences of beneficent or destructive spiritual powers around us; in fine, the constant abandonment of all the straightforward paths of sense and duty, for fear of losing some of the enticement of ghostly joys, or trampling somewhat "sopra lor vanità, che par persona;" all these various forms of false idealism have so entangled the modern mind, often called, i suppose ironically, practical, that truly i believe there never yet was idolatry of stock or staff so utterly unholy as this our idolatry of shadows; nor can i think that, of those who burnt incense under oaks, and poplars, and elms, because "the shadow thereof was good," it could in any wise be more justly or sternly declared than of us--"the wind hath bound them up in her wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices."[ ] [ ] ezek. xxiii. . [ ] hosea, chap. iv. , , and . chapter vi. of the true ideal:--first, purist. § . having thus glanced at the principal modes in which the imagination works for evil, we must rapidly note also the principal directions in which its operation is admissible, even in changing or strangely combining what is brought within its sphere. for hitherto we have spoken as if every change wilfully wrought by the imagination was an error; apparently implying that its only proper work was to summon up the memories of past events, and the anticipations of future ones, under aspects which would bear the sternest tests of historical investigation, or abstract reasoning. and in general this is, indeed, its noblest work. nevertheless, it has also permissible functions peculiarly its own, and certain rights of feigning, and adorning, and fancifully arranging, inalienable from its nature. everything that is natural is, within certain limits, right; and we must take care not, in over-severity, to deprive ourselves of any refreshing or animating power ordained to be in us for our help. § . (a). it was noted in speaking above of the angelican or passionate ideal, that there was a certain virtue in it dependent on the expression of its loving enthusiasm. (chap. iv. § .) (b). in speaking of the pursuit of beauty as one of the characteristics of the highest art, it was also said that there were certain ways of showing this beauty by gathering together, without altering, the finest forms, and marking them by gentle emphasis. (chap. iii. § .) (c). and in speaking of the true uses of imagination it was said, that we might be allowed to create for ourselves, in innocent play, fairies and naiads, and other such fictitious creatures. (chap. iv. § .) now this loving enthusiasm, which seeks for a beauty fit to be the object of eternal love; this inventive skill, which kindly displays what exists around us in the world; and this playful energy of thought which delights in various conditions of the impossible, are three forms of idealism more or less connected with the three tendencies of the artistical mind which i had occasion to explain in the chapter on the nature of gothic, in the stones of venice. it was there pointed out, that, the things around us containing mixed good and evil, certain men chose the good and left the evil (thence properly called purists); others received both good and evil together (thence properly called naturalists); and others had a tendency to choose the evil and leave the good, whom, for convenience' sake, i termed sensualists. i do not mean to say that painters of fairies and naiads must belong to this last and lowest class, or habitually choose the evil and leave the good; but there is, nevertheless, a strange connection between the reinless play of the imagination, and a sense of the presence of evil, which is usually more or less developed in those creations of the imagination to which we properly attach the word _grotesque_. for this reason, we shall find it convenient to arrange what we have to note respecting true idealism under the three heads-- a. purist idealism. b. naturalist idealism. c. grotesque idealism. § . a. purist idealism.--it results from the unwillingness of men whose dispositions are more than ordinarily tender and holy, to contemplate the various forms of definite evil which necessarily occur in the daily aspects of the world around them. they shrink from them as from pollution, and endeavor to create for themselves an imaginary state, in which pain and imperfection either do not exist, or exist in some edgeless and enfeebled condition. as, however, pain and imperfection are, by eternal laws, bound up with existence, so far as it is visible to us, the endeavor to cast them away invariably indicates a comparative childishness of mind, and produces a childish form of art. in general, the effort is most successful when it is most naïve, and when the ignorance of the draughtsman is in some frank proportion to his innocence. for instance, one of the modes of treatment, the most conducive to this ideal expression, is simply drawing everything without shadows, as if the sun were everywhere at once. this, in the present state of our knowledge, we could not do with grace, because we could not do it without fear or shame. but an artist of the thirteenth century did it with no disturbance of conscience,--knowing no better, or rather, in some sense, we might say, knowing no worse. it is, however, evident, at first thought, that all representations of nature without evil must either be ideals of a future world, or be false ideals, if they are understood to be representations of facts. they can only be classed among the branches of the true ideal, in so far as they are understood to be nothing more than expressions of the painter's personal affections or hopes. § . let us take one or two instances in order clearly to explain our meaning. the life of angelico was almost entirely spent in the endeavor to imagine the beings belonging to another world. by purity of life, habitual elevation of thought, and natural sweetness of disposition, he was enabled to express the sacred affections upon the human countenance as no one ever did before or since. in order to effect clearer distinction between heavenly beings and those of this world, he represents the former as clothed in draperies of the purest color, crowned with glories of burnished gold, and entirely shadowless. with exquisite choice of gesture, and disposition of folds of drapery, this mode of treatment gives perhaps the best idea of spiritual beings which the human mind is capable of forming. it is, therefore, a true ideal;[ ] but the mode in which it is arrived at (being so far mechanical and contradictory of the appearances of nature) necessarily precludes those who practise it from being complete masters of their art. it is always childish, but beautiful in its childishness. § . the works of our own stothard are examples of the operation of another mind, singular in gentleness and purity, upon mere worldly subject. it seems as if stothard could not conceive wickedness, coarseness, or baseness; every one of his figures looks as if it had been copied from some creature who had never harbored an unkind thought, or permitted itself in an ignoble action. with this immense love of mental purity is joined, in stothard, a love of mere physical smoothness and softness, so that he lived in a universe of soft grass and stainless fountains, tender trees, and stones at which no foot could stumble. all this is very beautiful, and may sometimes urge us to an endeavor to make the world itself more like the conception of the painter. at least, in the midst of its malice, misery, and baseness, it is often a relief to glance at the graceful shadows, and take, for momentary companionship, creatures full only of love, gladness, and honor. but the perfect truth will at last vindicate itself against the partial truth; the help which we can gain from the unsubstantial vision will be only like that which we may sometimes receive, in weariness, from the scent of a flower or the passing of a breeze. for all firm aid and steady use, we must look to harder realities; and, as far as the painter himself is regarded, we can only receive such work as the sign of an amiable imbecility. it is indeed ideal; but ideal as a fair dream is in the dawn of morning, before the faculties are astir. the apparent completeness of grace can never be attained without much definite falsification as well as omission; stones, over which we cannot stumble, must be ill-drawn stones; trees, which are all gentleness and softness, cannot be trees of wood; nor companies without evil in them, companies of flesh and blood. the habit of falsification (with whatever aim) begins always in dulness and ends always in incapacity; nothing can be more pitiable than any endeavor by stothard to express facts beyond his own sphere of soft pathos or graceful mirth, and nothing more unwise than the aim at a similar ideality by any painter who has power to render a sincerer truth. § . i remember another interesting example of ideality on this same root, but belonging to another branch of it, in the works of a young german painter, which i saw some time ago in a london drawingroom. he had been travelling in italy, and had brought home a portfolio of sketches remarkable alike for their fidelity and purity. every one was a laborious and accurate study of some particular spot. every cottage, every cliff, every tree, at the site chosen, had been drawn; and drawn with palpable sincerity of portraiture, and yet in such a spirit that it was impossible to conceive that any sin or misery had ever entered into one of the scenes he had represented; and the volcanic horrors of radicofani, the pestilent gloom of the pontines, and the boundless despondency of the campagna became under his hand, only various appearances of paradise. it was very interesting to observe the minute emendations or omissions by which this was effected. to set the tiles the slightest degree more in order upon a cottage roof; to insist upon the vine-leaves at the window, and let the shadow which fell from them naturally conceal the rent in the wall; to draw all the flowers in the foreground, and miss the weeds; to draw all the folds of the white clouds, and miss those of the black ones; to mark the graceful branches of the trees, and, in one way or another, beguile the eye from those which were ungainly; to give every peasant-girl whose face was visible the expression of an angel, and every one whose back was turned the bearing of a princess; finally, to give a general look of light, clear organization, and serene vitality to every feature in the landscape;--such were his artifices, and such his delights. it was impossible not to sympathize deeply with the spirit of such a painter; and it was just cause for gratitude to be permitted to travel, as it were, through italy with such a friend. but his work had, nevertheless, its stern limitations and marks of everlasting inferiority. always soothing and pathetic, it could never be sublime, never perfectly nor entrancingly beautiful; for the narrow spirit of correction could not cast itself fully into any scene; the calm cheerfulness which shrank from the shadow of the cypress, and the distortion of the olive, could not enter into the brightness of the sky that they pierced, nor the softness of the bloom that they bore: for every sorrow that his heart turned from, he lost a consolation; for every fear which he dared not confront, he lost a portion of his hardiness; the unsceptred sweep of the storm-clouds, the fair freedom of glancing shower and flickering sunbeam, sank into sweet rectitudes and decent formalisms; and, before eyes that refused to be dazzled or darkened, the hours of sunset wreathed their rays unheeded, and the mists of the apennines spread their blue veils in vain. § . to this inherent shortcoming and narrowness of reach the farther defect was added, that this work gave no useful representation of the state of facts in the country which it pretended to contemplate. it was not only wanting in all the higher elements of beauty, but wholly unavailable for instruction of any kind beyond that which exists in pleasurableness of pure emotion. and considering what cost of labor was devoted to the series of drawings, it could not but be matter for grave blame, as well as for partial contempt, that a man of amiable feeling and considerable intellectual power should thus expend his life in the declaration of his own petty pieties and pleasant reveries, leaving the burden of human sorrow unwitnessed; and the power of god's judgments unconfessed; and, while poor italy lay wounded and moaning at his feet, pass by, in priestly calm, lest the whiteness of his decent vesture should be spotted with unhallowed blood. § . of several other forms of purism i shall have to speak hereafter, more especially of that exhibited in the landscapes of the early religious painters; but these examples are enough, for the present, to show the general principle that the purest ideal, though in some measure true, in so far as it springs from the true longings of an earnest mind, is yet necessarily in many things deficient or blamable, and _always_ an indication of some degree of weakness in the mind pursuing it. but, on the other hand, it is to be noted that entire scorn of this purist ideal is the sign of a far greater weakness. multitudes of petty artists, incapable of any noble sensation whatever, but acquainted, in a dim way, with the technicalities of the schools, mock at the art whose depths they cannot fathom, and whose motives they cannot comprehend, but of which they can easily detect the imperfections, and deride the simplicities. thus poor fumigatory fuseli, with an art composed of the tinsel of the stage and the panics of the nursery, speaks contemptuously of the name of angelico as "dearer to sanctity than to art." and a large portion of the resistance to the noble pre-raphaelite movement of our own days has been offered by men who suppose the entire function of the artist in this world to consist in laying on color with a large brush, and surrounding dashes of flake white with bituminous brown; men whose entire capacities of brain, soul, and sympathy, applied industriously to the end of their lives, would not enable them, at last, to paint so much as one of the leaves of the nettles at the bottom of hunt's picture of the light of the world.[ ] § . it is finally to be remembered, therefore, that purism is always noble when it is _instinctive_. it is not the greatest thing that can be done, but it is probably the greatest thing that the man who does it can do, provided it comes from his heart. true, it is a sign of weakness, but it is not in our choice whether we will be weak or strong; and there is a certain strength which can only be made perfect in weakness. if he is working in humility, fear of evil, desire of beauty, and sincere purity of purpose and thought, he will produce good and helpful things; but he must be much on his guard against supposing himself to be greater than his fellows, because he has shut himself into this calm and cloistered sphere. his only safety lies in knowing himself to be, on the contrary, _less_ than his fellows, and in always striving, so far as he can find it in his heart, to extend his delicate narrowness towards the great naturalist ideal. the whole group of modern german purists have lost themselves, because they founded their work not on humility, nor on religion, but on small self-conceit. incapable of understanding the great venetians, or any other masters of true imaginative power, and having fed what mind they had with weak poetry and false philosophy, they thought themselves the best and greatest of artistic mankind, and expected to found a new school of painting in pious plagiarism and delicate pride. it is difficult at first to decide which is the more worthless, the spiritual affectation of the petty german, or the composition and chiaroscuro of the petty englishman; on the whole, however, the latter have lightest weight, for the pseudo-religious painter must, at all events, pass much of his time in meditation upon solemn subjects, and in examining venerable models; and may sometimes even cast a little useful reflected light, or touch the heart with a pleasant echo. [ ] as noted above in chap. iv § . [ ] not that the pre-raphaelite is a purist movement, it is stern naturalist; but its unfortunate opposers, who neither know what nature is, nor what purism is, have mistaken the simple nature for morbid purism, and therefore cried out against it. chapter vii. of the true ideal:--secondly, naturalist. § . we now enter on the consideration of that central and highest branch of ideal art which concerns itself simply with things as they are, and accepts, in all of them, alike the evil and the good. the question is, therefore, how the art which represents things simply as they are, can be called ideal at all. how does it meet that requirement stated in chap. iii. § , as imperative on all great art, that it shall be inventive, and a product of the imagination? it meets it preeminently by that power of arrangement which i have endeavored, at great length and with great pains, to define accurately in the chapter on imagination associative in the second volume. that is to say, accepting the weaknesses, faults, and wrongnesses in all things that it sees, it so places and harmonizes them that they form a noble whole, in which the imperfection of each several part is not only harmless, but absolutely essential, and yet in which whatever is good in each several part shall be completely displayed. § . this operation of true idealism holds, from the least things to the greatest. for instance, in the arrangement of the smallest masses of color, the false idealist, or even the purist, depends upon perfecting each separate hue, and raises them all, as far as he can, into costly brilliancy; but the naturalist takes the coarsest and feeblest colors of the things around him, and so interweaves and opposes them that they become more lovely than if they had all been bright. so in the treatment of the human form. the naturalist will take it as he finds it; but, with such examples as his picture may rationally admit of more or less exalted beauty, he will associate inferior forms, so as not only to set off those which are most beautiful, but to bring out clearly what good there is in the inferior forms themselves; finally using such measure of absolute evil as there is commonly in nature, both for teaching and for contrast. in tintoret's adoration of the magi, the madonna is not an enthroned queen, but a fair girl, full of simplicity and almost childish sweetness. to her are opposed (as magi) two of the noblest and most thoughtful of the venetian senators in extreme old age,--the utmost manly dignity, in its decline, being set beside the utmost feminine simplicity, in its dawn. the steep foreheads and refined features of the nobles are, again, opposed to the head of a negro servant, and of an indian, both, however, noble of their kind. on the other side of the picture, the delicacy of the madonna is farther enhanced by contrast with a largely made farm-servant, leaning on a basket. all these figures are in repose: outside, the troop of the attendants of the magi is seen coming up at the gallop. § . i bring forward this picture, observe, not as an example of the ideal in conception of religious subject, but of the general ideal treatment of the human form; in which the peculiarity is, that the beauty of each figure is displayed to the utmost, while yet, taken separately the madonna is an unaltered portrait of a venetian girl, the magi are unaltered venetian senators, and the figure with the basket, an unaltered market-woman of mestre. and the greater the master of the ideal, the more perfectly true in _portraiture_ will his individual figures be always found, the more subtle and bold his arts of harmony and contrast. this is a universal principle, common to all great art. consider, in shakspere, how prince henry is opposed to falstaff, falstaff to shallow, titania to bottom, cordelia to regan, imogen to cloten, and so on; while all the meaner idealists disdain the naturalism, and are shocked at the contrasts. the fact is, a man who can see truth at all, sees it wholly, and neither desires nor dares to mutilate it. § . it is evident that _within_ this faithful idealism, and as one branch of it only, will arrange itself the representation of the human form and mind in perfection, when this perfection is rationally to be supposed or introduced,--that is to say, in the highest personages of the story. the careless habit of confining the term "ideal" to such representations, and not understanding the imperfect ones to be _equally_ ideal in their place, has greatly added to the embarrassment and multiplied the errors of artists.[ ] thersites is just as ideal as achilles, and alecto as helen; and, what is more, all the nobleness of the beautiful ideal depends upon its being just as probable and natural as the ugly one, and having in itself, occasionally or partially, both faults and familiarities. if the next painter who desires to illustrate the character of homer's achilles, would represent him cutting pork chops for ulysses,[ ] he would enable the public to understand the homeric ideal better than they have done for several centuries. for it is to be kept in mind that the _naturalist ideal_ has always in it, to the full, the power expressed by those two words. it is naturalist, because studied from nature, and ideal, because it is mentally arranged in a certain manner. achilles must be represented cutting pork chops, because that was one of the things which the nature of achilles involved his doing: he could not be shown wholly as achilles, if he were not shown doing that. but he shall do it at such time and place as homer chooses. § . now, therefore, observe the main conclusions which follow from these two conditions, attached always to art of this kind. first, it is to be taken straight from nature; it is to be the plain narration of something the painter or writer saw. herein is the chief practical difference between the higher and lower artists; a difference which i feel more and more every day that i give to the study of art. all the great men see what they paint before they paint it,--see it in a perfectly passive manner,--cannot help seeing it if they would; whether in their mind's eye, or in bodily fact, does not matter; very often the mental vision is, i believe, in men of imagination, clearer than the bodily one; but vision it is, of one kind or another,--the whole scene, character, or incident passing before them as in second sight, whether they will or no, and requiring them to paint it as they see it; they not daring, under the might of its presence, to alter[ ] one jot or tittle of it as they write it down or paint it down; it being to them in its own kind and degree always a true vision or apocalypse, and invariably accompanied in their hearts by a feeling correspondent to the words,--"write the things _which thou hast seen_, and the things which _are_." and the whole power, whether of painter or poet, to describe rightly what we call an ideal thing, depends upon its being thus, to him, not an ideal, but a _real_ thing. no man ever did or ever will work well, but either from actual sight or sight of faith; and all that we call ideal in greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent. the heroes of phidias are simply representations of such noble human persons as he every day saw, and the gods of phidias simply representations of such noble divine persons as he thoroughly believed to exist, and did in mental vision truly behold. hence i said in the second preface to the seven lamps of architecture: "all great art represents something that it sees or believes in; nothing unseen or uncredited." § . and just because it is always something that it sees or believes in, there is the peculiar character above noted, almost unmistakable, in all high and true ideals, of having been as it were studied from the life, and involving pieces of sudden familiarity, and close _specific_ painting which never would have been admitted or even thought of, had not the painter drawn either from the bodily life or from the life of faith. for instance, dante's centaur, chiron, dividing his beard with his arrow before he can speak, is a thing that no mortal would ever have thought of, if he had not actually seen the centaur do it. they might have composed handsome bodies of men and horses in all possible ways, through a whole life of pseudo-idealism, and yet never dreamed of any such thing. but the real living centaur actually trotted across dante's brain, and he saw him do it. § . and on account of this reality it is, that the great idealists venture into all kinds of what, to the pseudo-idealists, are "vulgarities." nay, _venturing_ is the wrong word; the great men have no choice in the matter; they do not know or care whether the things they describe are vulgarities or not. they _saw_ them: they are the facts of the case. if they had merely composed what they describe, they would have had it at their will to refuse this circumstance or add that. but they did not compose it. it came to them ready fashioned; they were too much impressed by it to think what was vulgar or not vulgar in it. it might be a very wrong thing in a centaur to have so much beard; but so it was. and, therefore, among the various ready tests of true greatness there is not any more certain than this daring reference to, or use of, mean and little things--mean and little, that is, to mean and little minds; but, when used by the great men, evidently part of the noble whole which is authoritatively present before them. thus, in the highest poetry, as partly above noted in the first chapter, there is no word so familiar but a great man will bring good out of it, or rather, it will bring good to him, and answer some end for which no other word would have done equally well. § . a common person, for instance, would be mightily puzzled to apply the word "whelp" to any one with a view of flattering him. there is a certain freshness and energy in the term, which gives it agreeableness; but it seems difficult, at first hearing, to use it complimentarily. if the person spoken of be a prince, the difficulty seems increased; and when, farther, he is at one and the same moment to be called a "whelp" and contemplated as a hero, it seems that a common idealist might well be brought to a pause. but hear shakspere do it:-- "invoke his warlike spirit, and your great uncle's, edward the black prince, who on the french ground play'd a tragedy, making defeat on the full power of france, while his most mighty father on a hill stood smiling, to behold his lion's whelp forage in blood of french nobility." so a common idealist would have been rather alarmed at the thought of introducing the name of a street in paris--straw street--rue de fouarre--into the midst of a description of the highest heavens. not so dante,-- "beyond, thou mayst the flaming lustre scan of isidore, of bede, and that richart who was in contemplation more than man. and he, from whom thy looks returning are to me, a spirit was, that in austere deep musings often thought death kept too far. that is the light eternal of sigier, who while in rue de fouarre his days he wore, has argued hateful truths in haughtiest ear." cayley. what did it matter to dante, up in heaven there, whether the mob below thought him vulgar or not! sigier _had_ read in straw street; that was the fact, and he had to say so, and there an end. § . there is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and _real_ vulgarity of mind or defective education than the want of power to understand the universality of the ideal truth; the absence of sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in them so much of divine, that nothing is small to them, and nothing large; but with equal and unoffended vision they take in the sum of the world,--straw street and the seventh heavens,--in the same instant. a certain portion of this divine spirit is visible even in the lower examples of all the true men; it is, indeed, perhaps, the clearest test of their belonging to the true and great group, that they are continually touching what to the multitude appear vulgarities. the higher a man stands, the more the word "vulgar" becomes unintelligible to him. vulgar? what, that poor farmer's girl of william hunt's, bred in the stable, putting on her sunday gown, and pinning her best cap out of the green and red pin-cushion! not so; she may be straight on the road to those high heavens, and may shine hereafter as one of the stars in the firmament for ever. nay, even that lady in the satin bodice with her arm laid over a balustrade to show it, and her eyes turned up to heaven to show them; and the sportsman waving his rifle for the terror of beasts, and displaying his perfect dress for the delight of men, are kept, by the very misery and vanity of them, in the thoughts of a great painter, at a sorrowful level, somewhat above vulgarity. it is only when the minor painter takes them on his easel, that they become things for the universe to be ashamed of. we may dismiss this matter of vulgarity in plain and few words, at least as far as regards art. there is never vulgarity in a _whole_ truth, however commonplace. it may be unimportant or painful. it cannot be vulgar. vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation. § . "well, but," (at this point the reader asks doubtfully,) "if then your great central idealist is to show all truth, low as well as lovely, receiving it in this passive way, what becomes of all your principles of selection, and of setting in the right place, which you were talking about up to the end of your fourth paragraph? how is homer to enforce upon achilles the cutting of the pork chops 'only at such time as homer chooses,' if homer is to have _no_ choice, but merely to see the thing done, and sing it as he sees it?" why, the choice, as well as the vision, is _manifested_ to homer. the vision comes to him in its chosen order. chosen _for_ him, not _by_ him, but yet full of visible and exquisite choice, just as a sweet and perfect dream will come to a sweet and perfect person, so that, in some sense, they may be said to have chosen their dream, or composed it; and yet they could not help dreaming it so, and in no other wise. thus, exactly thus, in all results of true inventive power, the whole harmony of the thing done seems as if it had been wrought by the most exquisite rules. but to him who did it, it presented itself so, and his will, and knowledge, and personality, for the moment went for nothing; he became simply a scribe, and wrote what he heard and saw. and all efforts to do things of a similar kind by rule or by thought, and all efforts to mend or rearrange the first order of the vision, are not inventive; on the contrary, they ignore and deny invention. if any man, seeing certain forms laid on the canvas, does by his reasoning power determine that certain changes wrought in them would mend or enforce them, that is not only uninventive, but contrary to invention, which must be the involuntary occurrence of certain forms or fancies to the mind in the order they are to be portrayed. thus the knowing of rules and the exertion of judgment have a tendency to check and confuse the fancy in its flow; so that it will follow, that, in exact proportion as a master knows anything about rules of right and wrong, he is likely to be uninventive; and in exact proportion as he holds higher rank and has nobler inventive power, he will know less of rules; not despising them, but simply feeling that between him and them there is nothing in common,--that dreams cannot be ruled--that as they come, so they must be caught, and they cannot be caught in any other shape than that they come in; and that he might as well attempt to rule a rainbow into rectitude, or cut notches in a moth's wings to hold it by, as in any wise attempt to modify, by rule, the forms of the involuntary vision. § . and this, which by reason we have thus anticipated, is in reality universally so. there is no exception. the great men never know how or why they do things. they have no rules; cannot comprehend the nature of rules;--do not, usually, even know, in what they do, what is best or what is worst: to them it is all the same; something they cannot help saying or doing,--one piece of it as good as another, and none of it (it seems to _them_) worth much. the moment any man begins to talk about rules, in whatsoever art, you may know him for a second-rate man; and, if he talks about them _much_, he is a third-rate, or not an artist at all. to _this_ rule there is no exception in any art; but it is perhaps better to be illustrated in the art of music than in that of painting. i fell by chance the other day upon a work of de stendhal's, "vies de haydn, de mozart, et de metastase," fuller of common sense than any book i ever read on the arts; though i see, by the slight references made occasionally to painting, that the author's knowledge therein is warped and limited by the elements of general teaching in the schools around him; and i have not yet, therefore, looked at what he has separately written on painting. but one or two passages out of this book on music are closely to our present purpose. "counterpoint is related to mathematics: a fool, with patience, becomes a respectable savant in that; but for the part of genius, melody, it has no rules. no art is so utterly deprived of precepts for the production of the beautiful. so much the better for it and for us. cimarosa, when first at prague his air was executed, pria che spunti in ciel l'aurora, never heard the pedants say to him, 'your air is fine, because you have followed such and such a rule established by pergolese in such an one of his airs; but it would be finer still if you had conformed yourself to such another rule from which galluppi never deviated.'" yes: "so much the better for it, and for us;" but i trust the time will soon come when melody in painting will be understood, no less than in music, and when people will find that, there also, the great melodists have no rules, and cannot have any, and that there are in this, as in sound, "no precepts for the production of the beautiful." § . again. "behold, my friend, an example of that simple way of answering which embarrasses much. one asked him (haydn) the _reason_ for a harmony--for a passage's being assigned to one instrument rather than another; but all he ever answered was, 'i have done it, because it does well.'" farther on, de stendhal relates an anecdote of haydn; i believe one well known, but so much to our purpose that i repeat it. haydn had agreed to give some lessons in counterpoint to an english nobleman. "'for our first lesson,' said the pupil, already learned in the art--drawing at the same time a quatuor of haydn's from his pocket, 'for our first lesson may we examine this quatuor; and will you tell me the reasons of certain modulations, which i cannot entirely approve because they are contrary to the principles?' haydn, a little surprised, declared himself ready to answer. the nobleman began; and at the very first measures found matter for objection. haydn, _who invented habitually_, and who was the contrary of a pedant, found himself much embarrassed, and answered always, 'i have done that because it has a good effect. i have put that passage there because it does well.' the englishman, who judged that these answers proved nothing, recommenced his proofs, and demonstrated to him, by very good reasons, that his quatuor was good for nothing. 'but, my lord, arrange this quatuor then to your fancy,--play it so, and you will see which of the two ways is the best.' 'but why is yours the best which is contrary to the rules?' 'because it is the pleasantest.' the nobleman replied. haydn at last lost patience, and said, 'i see, my lord, it is you who have the goodness to give lessons to me, and truly i am forced to confess to you that i do not deserve the honor.' the partizan of the rules departed, still astonished that in following the rules to the letter one cannot infallibly produce a 'matrimonio segreto.'" this anecdote, whether in all points true or not, is in its tendency most instructive, except only in that it makes _one_ false inference or admission, namely, that a good composition can be _contrary_ to the rules. it may be contrary to certain principles, supposed in ignorance to be general; but every great composition is in perfect harmony with all true rules, and involves thousands too delicate for ear, or eye, or thought, to trace; still it is possible to reason, with infinite pleasure and profit, about these principles, when the thing is once done; only, all our reasoning will not enable any one to do another thing like it, because all reasoning falls infinitely short of the divine instinct. thus we may reason wisely over the way a bee builds its comb, and be profited by finding out certain things about the angles of it. but the bee knows nothing about those matters. it builds its comb in a far more inevitable way. and, from a bee to paul veronese, all master-workers work with this awful, this inspired unconsciousness. § . i said just now that there was no exception to _this_ law, that the great men never knew how or why they did things. it is, of course, only with caution that such a broad statement should be made; but i have seen much of different kinds of artists, and i have always found the knowledge of, and attention to, rules so _accurately_ in the inverse ratio to the power of the painter, that i have myself no doubt that the law is constant, and that men's smallness may be trigonometrically estimated by the attention which, in their work, they pay to principles, especially principles of composition. the general way in which the great men speak is of "_trying_ to do" this or that, just as a child would tell of something he had seen and could not utter. thus, in speaking of the drawing of which i have given an etching farther on (a scene on the st. gothard[ ]), turner asked if i had been to see "that litter of stones which i _endeavored_ to represent;" and william hunt, when i asked him one day as he was painting, why he put on such and such a color, answered, "i don't know; i am just _aiming_ at it;" and turner, and he, and all the other men i have known who could paint, always spoke and speak in the same way; not in any selfish restraint of their knowledge, but in pure simplicity. while all the men whom i know, who _cannot_ paint, are ready with admirable reasons for everything they have done; and can show, in the most conclusive way, that turner is wrong, and how he might be improved. § . and this is the reason for the somewhat singular, but very palpable truth that the chinese, and indians, and other semi-civilized nations, can color better than we do, and that an indian shawl or chinese vase are still, in invention of color, inimitable by us. it is their glorious ignorance of all rules that does it; the pure and true instincts have play, and do their work,--instincts so subtle, that the least warping or compression breaks or blunts them; and the moment we begin teaching people any rules about color, and make them do this or that, we crush the instinct generally for ever. hence, hitherto, it has been an actual necessity, in order to obtain power of coloring, that a nation should be half-savage: everybody could color in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but we were ruled and legalized into grey in the fifteenth;--only a little salt simplicity of their sea natures at venice still keeping their precious, shellfishy purpleness and power; and now that is gone; and nobody can color anywhere, except the hindoos and chinese; but that need not be so, and will not be so long; for, in a little while, people will find out their mistake, and give up talking about rules of color, and then everybody will color again, as easily as they now talk. § . such, then, being the generally passive or instinctive character of right invention, it may be asked how these unmanageable instincts are to be rendered practically serviceable in historical or poetical painting,--especially historical, in which given facts are to be represented. simply by the sense and self-control of the whole man; not by control of the particular fancy or vision. he who habituates himself, in his daily life, to seek for the stern facts in whatever he hears or sees, will have these facts again brought before him by the involuntary imaginative power in their noblest associations; and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies, will have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him in his dreams. thus if, in reading history for the purpose of painting from it, the painter severely seeks for the accurate circumstances of every event; as, for instance, determining the exact spot of ground on which his hero fell, the way he must have been looking at the moment, the height the sun was at (by the hour of the day), and the way in which the light must have fallen upon his face, the actual number and individuality of the persons by him at the moment, and such other veritable details, ascertaining and dwelling upon them without the slightest care for any desirableness or poetic propriety in them, but for their own truth's sake; then these truths will afterwards rise up and form the body of his imaginative vision, perfected and united as his inspiration may teach. but if, in reading the history, he does not regard these facts, but thinks only how it might all most prettily, and properly, and impressively have happened, then there is nothing but prettiness and propriety to form the body of his future imagination, and his whole ideal becomes false. so, in the higher or expressive part of the work, the whole virtue of it depends on his being able to quit his own personality, and enter successively into the hearts and thoughts of each person; and in all this he is still passive: in gathering the truth he is passive, not determining what the truth to be gathered shall be; and in the after vision he is passive, not determining, but as his dreams will have it, what the truth to be represented shall be; only according to his own nobleness is his power of entering into the hearts of noble persons, and the general character of his dream of them.[ ] § . it follows from all this, evidently, that a great idealist never can be egotistic. the whole of his power depends upon his losing sight and feeling of his own existence, and becoming a mere witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of visions,--always passive in sight, passive in utterance,--lamenting continually that he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he has seen. not by any means a proud state for a man to be in. but the man who has no invention is always setting things in order, and putting the world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming himself on his doings as supreme in all ways. § . there is still the question open, what are the principal directions in which this ideal faculty is to exercise itself most usefully for mankind? this question, however, is not to the purpose of our present work, which respects landscape-painting only; it must be one of those left open to the reader's thoughts, and for future inquiry in another place. one or two essential points i briefly notice. in chap. iv. § . it was said, that one of the first functions of imagination was traversing the scenes of history, and forcing the facts to become again visible. but there is so little of such force in written history, that it is no marvel there should be none hitherto in painting. there does not exist, as far as i know, in the world a single example of a good historical picture (that is to say, of one which, allowing for necessary dimness in art as compared with nature, yet answers nearly the same ends in our minds as the sight of the real event would have answered); the reason being, the universal endeavor to get _effects_ instead of facts, already shown as the root of false idealism. true historical ideal, founded on sense, correctness of knowledge, and purpose of usefulness, does not yet exist; the production of it is a task which the closing nineteenth century may propose to itself. § . another point is to be observed. i do not, as the reader may have lately perceived, insist on the distinction between historical and poetical painting, because, as noted in the nd paragraph of the third chapter, all great painting must be both. nevertheless, a certain distinction must generally exist between men who, like horace vernet, david, or domenico tintoret, would employ themselves in painting, more or less graphically, the outward verities of passing events--battles, councils, &c.--of their day (who, supposing them to work worthily of their mission, would become, properly so called, historical or narrative painters); and men who sought, in scenes of perhaps less outward importance, "noble grounds for noble emotion;"--who would be, in a certain separate sense, _poetical_ painters, some of them taking for subjects events which had actually happened, and others themes from the poets; or, better still, becoming poets themselves in the entire sense, and inventing the story as they painted it. painting seems to me only just to be beginning, in this sense also, to take its proper position beside literature, and the pictures of the "awakening conscience," "huguenot," and such others, to be the first fruits of its new effort. § . finally, as far as i can observe, it is a constant law that the greatest men, whether poets or historians, live entirely in their own age, and that the greatest fruits of their work are gathered out of their own age. dante paints italy in the thirteenth century; chaucer, england in the fourteenth; masaccio, florence in the fifteenth; tintoret, venice in the sixteenth;--all of them utterly regardless of anachronism and minor error of every kind, but getting always vital truth out of the vital present. § . if it be said that shakspere wrote perfect historical plays on subjects belonging to the preceding centuries, i answer, that they _are_ perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries in them, but a life which all men recognise for the human life of all time; and this it is, not because shakspere sought to give universal truth, but because, painting honestly and completely from the men about him, he painted that human nature which is, indeed, constant enough,--a rogue in the fifteenth century being, _at heart_, what a rogue is in the nineteenth and was in the twelfth; and an honest or a knightly man being, in like manner, very similar to other such at any other time. and the work of these great idealists is, therefore, always universal; not because it is _not portrait_, but because it is _complete_ portrait down to the heart, which is the same in all ages: and the work of the mean idealists is _not_ universal, not because it is portrait, but because it is _half_ portrait,--of the outside, the manners and the dress, not of the heart. thus tintoret and shakspere paint, both of them, simply venetian and english nature as they saw it in their time, down to the root; and it does for _all_ time; but as for any care to cast themselves into the particular ways and tones of thought, or custom, of past time in their historical work, you will find it in neither of them, nor in any other perfectly great man that i know of. § . if there had been no vital truth in their present, it is hard to say what these men could have done. i suppose, primarily, they would not have existed; that they, and the matter they have to treat of, are given together, and that the strength of the nation and its historians correlatively rise and fall--herodotus springing out of the dust of marathon. it is also hard to say how far our better general acquaintance with minor details of past history may make us able to turn the shadow on the imaginative dial backwards, and naturally to live, and even live strongly if we choose, in past periods; but this main truth will always be unshaken, that the only historical painting deserving the name is portraiture of our own living men and our own passing times,[ ] and that all efforts to summon up the events of bygone periods, though often useful and touching, must come under an inferior class of poetical painting; nor will it, i believe, ever be much followed as their main work by the strongest men, but only by the weaker and comparatively sentimental (rather than imaginative) groups. this marvellous first half of the nineteenth century has in this matter, as in nearly all others, been making a double blunder. it has, under the name of improvement, done all it could to efface the records which departed ages have left of themselves, while it has declared the forgery of false records of these same ages to be the great work of its historical painters! i trust that in a few years more we shall come somewhat to our senses in the matter, and begin to perceive that our duty is to preserve what the past has had to say for itself, and to say for ourselves also what shall be true for the future. let us strive, with just veneration for that future, first to do what is worthy to be spoken, and then to speak it faithfully; and, with veneration for the past, recognize that it is indeed in the power of love to preserve the monument, but not of incantation to raise the dead. [ ] the word "ideal" is used in this limited sense in the chapter on generic beauty in the second volume, but under protest. see § in that chapter. [ ] ii. ix. . [ ] "and yet you have just said it shall be at such time and place as homer chooses. is not this _altering_?" no; wait a little, and read on. [ ] see plate xxi. in chap. iii. vol. iv. [ ] the reader should, of course, refer for further details on this subject to the chapters on imagination in vol. ii., of which i am only glancing now at the practical results. [ ] see edinburgh lectures, p. . chapter viii. of the true ideal: thirdly, grotesque. § . i have already, in the stones of venice, had occasion to analyze, as far as i was able, the noble nature and power of grotesque conception; i am not sorry occasionally to refer the reader to that work, the fact being that it and this are parts of one whole, divided merely as i had occasion to follow out one or other of its branches; for i have always considered architecture as an essential part of landscape; and i think the study of its best styles and real meaning one of the necessary functions of the landscape-painter; as, in like manner, the architect cannot be a master-workman until all his designs are guided by understanding of the wilder beauty of pure nature. but, be this as it may, the discussion of the grotesque element belonged most properly to the essay on architecture, in which that element must always find its fullest development. § . the grotesque is in that chapter[ ] divided principally into three kinds: (a). art arising from healthful but irrational play of the imagination in times of rest. (b). art arising from irregular and accidental contemplation of terrible things; or evil in general. (c). art arising from the confusion of the imagination by the presence of truths which it cannot wholly grasp. it is the central form of this art, arising from contemplation of evil, which forms the link of connection between it and the sensualist ideals, as pointed out above in the second paragraph of the sixth chapter, the fact being that the imagination, when at play, is curiously like bad children, and likes to play with fire; in its entirely serious moods it dwells by preference on beautiful and sacred images, but in its mocking or playful moods it is apt to jest, sometimes bitterly, with undercurrent of sternest pathos, sometimes waywardly, sometimes slightly and wickedly, with death and sin; hence an enormous mass of grotesque art, some most noble and useful, as holbein's dance of death, and albert durer's knight and death,[ ] going down gradually through various conditions of less and less seriousness into an art whose only end is that of mere excitement, or amusement by terror, like a child making mouths at another, more or less redeemed by the degree of wit or fancy in the grimace it makes, as in the demons of teniers and such others; and, lower still, in the demonology of the stage. § . the form arising from an entirely healthful and open play of the imagination, as in shakspere's ariel and titania, and in scott's white lady, is comparatively rare. it hardly ever is free from some slight taint of the inclination to evil; still more rarely is it, when so free, natural to the mind; for the moment we begin to contemplate sinless beauty we are apt to get serious; and moral fairy tales, and such other innocent work, are hardly ever truly, that is to say, naturally imaginative; but for the most part laborious inductions and compositions. the moment any real vitality enters them, they are nearly sure to become satirical, or slightly gloomy, and so connect themselves with the evil-enjoying branch. § . the third form of the grotesque is a thoroughly noble one. it is that which arises out of the use or fancy of tangible signs to set forth an otherwise less expressible truth; including nearly the whole range of symbolical and allegorical art and poetry. its nobleness has been sufficiently insisted upon in the place before referred to. (chapter on grotesque renaissance, §§ lxiii. lxiv. &c.) of its practical use, especially in painting, deeply despised among us, because grossly misunderstood, a few words must be added here. a fine grotesque is the expression, in a moment, by a series of symbols thrown together in bold and fearless connection, of truths which it would have taken a long time to express in any verbal way, and of which the connection is left for the beholder to work out for himself; the gaps, left or overleaped by the haste of the imagination, forming the grotesque character. § . for instance, spenser desires to tell us, ( .) that envy is the most untamable and unappeasable of the passions, not to be soothed by any kindness; ( .) that with continual labor it invents evil thoughts out of its own heart; ( .) that even in this, its power of doing harm is partly hindered by the decaying and corrupting nature of the evil it lives in; ( .) that it looks every way, and that whatever it sees is altered and discolored by its own nature; ( .) which discoloring, however, is to it a veil, or disgraceful dress, in the sight of others; ( .) and that it never is free from the most bitter suffering, ( .) which cramps all its acts and movements, enfolding and crushing it while it torments. all this it has required a somewhat long and languid sentence for me to say in unsymbolical terms,--not, by the way, that they _are_ unsymbolical altogether, for i have been forced, whether i would or not, to use _some_ figurative words; but even with this help the sentence is long and tiresome, and does not with any vigor represent the truth. it would take some prolonged enforcement of each sentence to make it felt, in ordinary ways of talking. but spenser puts it all into a grotesque, and it is done shortly and at once, so that we feel it fully, and see it, and never forget it. i have numbered above the statements which had to be made. i now number them with the same numbers, as they occur in the several pieces of the grotesque:-- "and next to him malicious envy rode ( .) upon a ravenous wolfe, and ( . .) still did chaw between his cankred[ ] teeth a venemous tode that all the poison ran about his jaw. ( . .) all in a kirtle of discolourd say he clothed was, y-paynted full of eies; ( .) and in his bosome secretly there lay an hatefull snake, the which his tail uptyes ( .) in many folds, and mortall sting implyes." there is the whole thing in nine lines; or, rather, in one image, which will hardly occupy any room at all on the mind's shelves, but can be lifted out, whole, whenever we want it. all noble grotesques are concentrations of this kind, and the noblest convey truths which nothing else could convey; and not only so, but convey them, in minor cases with a delightfulness,--in the higher instances with an awfulness,--which no mere utterance of the symbolised truth would have possessed, but which belongs to the effort of the mind to unweave the riddle, or to the sense it has of there being an infinite power and meaning in the thing seen, beyond all that is apparent therein, giving the highest sublimity even to the most trivial object so presented and so contemplated. "'jeremiah, what seest thou?' 'i see a seething pot, and the face thereof is toward the north, 'out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.'" and thus in all ages and among all nations, grotesque idealism has been the element through which the most appalling and eventful truth has been wisely conveyed, from the most sublime words of true revelation, to the [greek: "all' hot' an hêmionos basileus,"] &c., of the oracles, and the more or less doubtful teaching of dreams; and so down to ordinary poetry. no element of imagination has a wider range, a more magnificent use, or so colossal a grasp of sacred truth. § . how, then, is this noble power best to be employed in the art of painting? we hear it not unfrequently asserted that symbolism or personification should not be introduced in painting at all. such assertions are in their grounds unintelligible, and in their substance absurd. whatever is in words described as visible, may with all logical fitness[ ] be rendered so by colors, and not only is this a legitimate branch of ideal art, but i believe there is hardly any other so widely useful and instructive; and i heartily wish that every great allegory which the poets ever invented were powerfully put on canvas, and easily accessible by all men, and that our artists were perpetually exciting themselves to invent more. and as far as authority bears on the question, the simple fact is that allegorical painting has been the delight of the greatest men and of the wisest multitudes, from the beginning of art, and will be till art expires. orcagua's triumph of death; simon memmi's frescoes in the spanish chapel; giotto's principal works at assisi, and partly at the arena; michael angelo's two best statues, the night and day; albert durer's noble melancholy, and hundreds more of his best works; a full third, i should think, of the works of tintoret and veronese, and nearly as large a portion of those of raphael and rubens, are entirely symbolical or personifiant; and, except in the case of the last-named painter, are always among the most interesting works the painters executed. the greater and more thoughtful the artists, the more they delight in symbolism, and the more fearlessly they employ it. dead symbolism, second-hand symbolism, pointless symbolism, are indeed objectionable enough; but so are most other things that are dead, second-hand, and pointless. it is also true that both symbolism and personification are somewhat more apt than most things to have their edges taken off by too much handling; and what with our modern fames, justices, and various metaphorical ideals, largely used for signs and other such purposes, there is some excuse for our not well knowing what the real power of personification is. but that power is gigantic and inexhaustible, and ever to be grasped with peculiar joy by the painter, because it permits him to introduce picturesque elements and flights of fancy into his work, which otherwise would be utterly inadmissible; to bring the wild beasts of the desert into the room of state, fill the air with inhabitants as well as the earth, and render the least (visibly) interesting incidents themes for the most thrilling drama. even tintoret might sometimes have been hard put to it, when he had to fill a large panel in the ducal palace with the portrait of a nowise interesting doge, unless he had been able to lay a winged lion beside him, ten feet long from the nose to the tail, asleep upon the turkey carpet; and rubens could certainly have made his flatteries of mary of medicis palatable to no one but herself, without the help of rosy-cheeked goddesses of abundance, and seven-headed hydras of rebellion. § . for observe, not only does the introduction of these imaginary beings permit greater fantasticism of _incident_, but also infinite fantasticism of _treatment_; and, i believe, so far from the pursuit of the false ideal having in any wise exhausted the realms of fantastic imagination, those realms have hardly yet been entered, and that a universe of noble dream-land lies before us, yet to be conquered. for, hitherto, when fantastic creatures have been introduced, either the masters have been so realistic in temper that they made the spirits as substantial as their figures of flesh and blood,--as rubens, and, for the most part, tintoret; or else they have been weak and unpractised in realization, and have painted transparent or cloudy spirits because they had no power of painting grand ones. but if a really great painter, thoroughly capable of giving substantial truth, and master of the elements of pictorial effect which have been developed by modern art, would solemnly, and yet fearlessly, cast his fancy free in the spiritual world, and faithfully follow out such masters of that world as dante and spenser, there seems no limit to the splendor of thought which painting might express. consider, for instance, how the ordinary personifications of charity oscillate between the mere nurse of many children, of reynolds, and the somewhat painfully conceived figure with flames issuing from the heart, of giotto; and how much more significance might be given to the representation of love, by amplifying with tenderness the thought of dante, "tanta rossa, che a pena fora dentro al foco nota,"[ ] that is to say, by representing the loveliness of her face and form as all flushed with glow of crimson light, and, as she descended through heaven, all its clouds colored by her presence as they are by sunset. in the hands of a feeble painter, such an attempt would end in mere caricature; but suppose it taken up by correggio, adding to his power of flesh-painting the (not inconsistent) feeling of angelico in design, and a portion of turner's knowledge of the clouds. there is nothing impossible in such a conjunction as this. correggio, trained in another school, might have even himself shown some such extent of grasp; and in turner's picture of the dragon of the hesperides, jason, vignette to voyage of columbus ("slowly along the evening sky they went"), and such others, as well as in many of the works of watts and rosetti, is already visible, as i trust, the dawn of a new era of art, in a true unison of the grotesque with the realistic power. § . there is, however, unquestionably, a severe limit, in the case of all inferior masters, to the degree in which they may venture to realize grotesque conception, and partly, also, a limit in the nature of the thing itself, there being many grotesque ideas which may be with safety suggested dimly by words or slight lines, but which will hardly bear being painted into perfect definiteness. it is very difficult, in reasoning on this matter, to divest ourselves of the prejudices which have been forced upon us by the base grotesque of men like bronzino, who, having no true imagination, are apt, more than others, to try by startling realism to enforce the monstrosity that has no terror in itself. but it is nevertheless true, that, unless in the hands of the very greatest men, the grotesque seems better to be expressed merely in line, or light and shade, or mere abstract color, so as to mark it for a thought rather than a substantial fact. even if albert durer had perfectly painted his knight and death, i question if we should feel it so great a thought as we do in the dark engraving. blake, perfectly powerful in the etched grotesque of the book of job, fails always more or less as soon as he adds color; not merely for want of power (his eye for color being naturally good), but because his subjects seem, in a sort, insusceptible of completion; and the two inexpressibly noble and pathetic woodcut grotesques of alfred rethel's, death the avenger, and death the friend, could not, i think, but with disadvantage, be advanced into pictorial color. and what is thus doubtfully true of the pathetic grotesque, is assuredly and always true of the jesting grotesque. so far as it expresses any transient flash of wit or satire, the less labor of line, or color, given to its expression the better; elaborate jesting being always intensely painful. § . for these several reasons, it seems not only permissible, but even desirable, that the art by which the grotesque is expressed should be more or less imperfect, and this seems a most beneficial ordinance as respects the human race in general. for the grotesque being not only a most forceful instrument of teaching, but a most natural manner of expression, springing as it does at once from any tendency to playfulness in minds highly comprehensive of truth; and being also one of the readiest ways in which such satire or wit as may be possessed by men of any inferior rank of mind can be for perpetuity expressed, it becomes on all grounds desirable that what is suggested in times of play should be rightly sayable without toil; and what occurs to men of inferior power or knowledge, sayable without any high degree of skill. hence it is an infinite good to mankind when there is full acceptance of the grotesque, slightly sketched or expressed; and, if field for such expression be frankly granted, an enormous mass of intellectual power is turned to everlasting use, which, in this present century of ours, evaporates in street gibing or vain revelling; all the good wit and satire expiring in daily talk, (like foam on wine,) which in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had a permitted and useful expression in the arts of sculpture and illumination, like foam fixed into chalcedony. it is with a view (not the least important among many others bearing upon art) to the reopening of this great field of human intelligence, long entirely closed, that i am striving to introduce gothic architecture into daily domestic use; and to revive the art of illumination, properly so called; not the art of miniature-painting in books, or on vellum, which has ridiculously been confused with it; but of making _writing_, simple writing, beautiful to the eye, by investing it with the great chord of perfect color, blue, purple, scarlet, white, and gold, and in that chord of color, permitting the continual play of the fancy of the writer in every species of grotesque imagination, carefully excluding shadow; the distinctive difference between illumination and painting proper, being, that illumination admits _no_ shadows, but only gradations of pure color. and it is in this respect that illumination is specially fitted for grotesque expression; for, when i used the term "_pictorial_ color," just now, in speaking of the completion of the grotesque of death the avenger, i meant to distinguish such color from the abstract, shadeless hues which are eminently fitted for grotesque thought. the requirement, respecting the slighter grotesque, is only that it shall be _incompletely_ expressed. it may have light and shade without color (as in etching and sculpture), or color without light and shade (illumination), but must not, except in the hands of the greatest masters, have both. and for some conditions of the playful grotesque, the abstract color is a much more delightful element of expression than the abstract light and shade. § . such being the manifold and precious uses of the true grotesque, it only remains for us to note carefully how it is to be distinguished from the false and vicious grotesque which results from idleness, instead of noble rest; from malice, instead of the solemn contemplation of necessary evil; and from general degradation of the human spirit, instead of its subjection, or confusion, by thoughts too high for it. it is easy for the reader to conceive how different the fruits of two such different states of mind _must_ be; and yet how like in many respects, and apt to be mistaken, one for the other;--how the jest which springs from mere fatuity, and vacant want of penetration or purpose, is everlastingly, infinitely, separated from, and yet may sometimes be mistaken for, the bright, playful, fond, far-sighted jest of plato, or the bitter, purposeful, sorrowing jest of aristophanes; how, again, the horror which springs from guilty love of foulness and sin, may be often mistaken for the inevitable horror which a great mind must sometimes feel in the full and penetrative sense of their presence;--how, finally, the vague and foolish inconsistencies of undisciplined dream or reverie may be mistaken for the compelled inconsistencies of thoughts too great to be well sustained, or clearly uttered. it is easy, i say, to understand what a difference there must indeed be between these; and yet how difficult it may be always to define it, or lay down laws for the discovery of it, except by the just instinct of minds set habitually in all things to discern right from wrong. § . nevertheless, one good and characteristic instance may be of service in marking the leading directions in which the contrast is discernible. on the opposite page, plate i., i have put, beside each other, a piece of true grotesque, from the lombard-gothic, and of false grotesque from classical (roman) architecture. they are both griffins; the one on the left carries on his back one of the main pillars of the porch of the cathedral of verona; the one on the right is on the frieze of the temple of antoninus and faustina at rome, much celebrated by renaissance and bad modern architects. in some respects, however, this classical griffin deserves its reputation. it is exceedingly fine in lines of composition, and, i believe (i have not examined the original closely), very exquisite in execution. for these reasons, it is all the better for our purpose. i do not want to compare the worst false grotesque with the best true, but rather, on the contrary, the best false with the simplest true, in order to see how the delicately wrought lie fails in the presence of the rough truth; for rough truth in the present case it is, the lombard sculpture being altogether untoward and imperfect in execution.[ ] § . "well, but," the reader says, "what do you mean by calling _either_ of them true? there never were such beasts in the world as either of these?" no, never: but the difference is, that the lombard workman did really see a griffin in his imagination, and carved it from the life, meaning to declare to all ages that he had verily seen with his immortal eyes such a griffin as that; but the classical workman never saw a griffin at all, nor anything else; but put the whole thing together by line and rule. § . "how do you know that?" very easily. look at the two, and think over them. you know a griffin is a beast composed of lion and eagle. the classical workman set himself to fit these together in the most ornamental way possible. he accordingly carves a sufficiently satisfactory lion's body, then attaches very gracefully cut wings to the sides: then, because he cannot get the eagle's head on the broad lion's shoulders, fits the two together by something like a horse's neck (some griffins being wholly composed of a horse and eagle), then, finding the horse's neck look weak and unformidable, he strengthens it by a series of bosses, like vertebrae, in front, and by a series of spiny cusps, instead of a mane, on the ridge; next, not to lose the whole leonine character about the neck, he gives a remnant of the lion's beard, turned into a sort of griffin's whisker, and nicely curled and pointed; then an eye, probably meant to look grand and abstracted, and therefore neither lion's nor eagle's; and, finally, an eagle's beak, very sufficiently studied from a real one. the whole head being, it seems to him, still somewhat wanting in weight and power, he brings forward the right wing behind it, so as to enclose it with a broad line. this is the finest thing in the composition, and very masterly, both in thought, and in choice of the exactly right point where the lines of wing and beak should intersect (and it may be noticed in passing, that all men, who can compose at all, have this habit of encompassing or governing broken lines with broad ones, wherever it is possible, of which we shall see many instances hereafter). the whole griffin, thus gracefully composed, being, nevertheless, when all is done, a very composed griffin, is set to very quiet work, and raising his left foot, to balance his right wing, sets it on the tendril of a flower so lightly as not even to bend it down, though, in order to reach it, his left leg is made half as long again as his right. § . we may be pretty sure, if the carver had ever seen a griffin, he would have reported of him as doing something else than _that_ with his feet. let us see what the lombardic workman saw him doing. remember, first, the griffin, though part lion and part eagle, has the united _power of both_. he is not merely a bit of lion and a bit of eagle, but whole lion, incorporate with whole eagle. so when we really see one, we may be quite sure we shall not find him wanting in anything necessary to the might either of beast or bird. well, among things essential to the might of a lion, perhaps, on the whole, the most essential are his _teeth_. he could get on pretty well even without his claws, usually striking his prey down with a blow, woundless; but he could by no means get on without his teeth. accordingly, we see that the real or lombardic griffin has the carnivorous teeth bare to the root, and the peculiar hanging of the jaw at the back, which marks the flexible and gaping mouth of the devouring tribes. again; among things essential to the might of an eagle, next to his wings (which are of course prominent in both examples), are his _claws_. it is no use his being able to tear anything with his beak, if he cannot first hold it in his claws; he has comparatively no leonine power of striking with his feet, but a magnificent power of grip with them. accordingly, we see that the real griffin, while his feet are heavy enough to strike like a lion's, has them also extended far enough to give them the eagle's grip with the back claw; and has, moreover, some of the bird-like wrinkled skin over the whole foot, marking this binding power the more; and that he has besides verily got something to hold with his feet, other than a flower, of which more presently. § . now observe, the lombardic workman did not do all this because he had thought it out, as you and i are doing together; he never thought a bit about it. he simply saw the beast; saw it as plainly as you see the writing on this page, and of course could not be wrong in anything he told us of it. well, what more does he tell us? another thing, remember, essential to an eagle is that it should fly _fast_. it is no use its having wings at all if it is to be impeded in the use of them. now it would be difficult to impede him more thoroughly than by giving him two cocked ears to catch the wind. look, again, at the two beasts. you see the false griffin _has_ them so set, and, consequently, as he flew, there would be a continual humming of the wind on each side of his head, and he would have an infallible earache when he got home. but the real griffin has his ears flat to his head, and all the hair of them blown back, even to a point, by his fast flying, and the aperture is downwards, that he may hear anything going on upon the earth, where his prey is. in the false griffin the aperture is upwards. § . well, what more? as he is made up of the natures of lion and eagle, we may be very certain that a real griffin is, on the whole, fond of eating, and that his throat will look as if he occasionally took rather large pieces, besides being flexible enough to let him bend and stretch his head in every direction as he flies. look, again, at the two beasts. you see the false one has got those bosses upon his neck like vertebrae, which must be infinitely in his way when he is swallowing, and which are evidently inseparable, so that he cannot _stretch_ his neck any more than a horse. but the real griffin is all loose about the neck, evidently being able to make it almost as much longer as he likes; to stretch and bend it anywhere, and swallow anything, besides having some of the grand strength of the bull's dewlap in it when at rest. § . what more? having both lion and eagle in him, it is probable that the real griffin will have an infinite look of repose as well as power of activity. one of the notablest things about a lion is his magnificent _indolence_, his look of utter disdain of trouble when there is no occasion for it; as, also, one of the notablest things about an eagle is his look of inevitable vigilance, even when quietest. look, again, at the two beasts. you see the false griffin is quite sleepy and dead in the eye, thus contradicting his eagle's nature, but is putting himself to a great deal of unnecessary trouble with his paws, holding one in a most painful position merely to touch a flower, and bearing the whole weight of his body on the other, thus contradicting his lion's nature. but the real griffin is primarily, with his eagle's nature, wide awake; evidently quite ready for whatever may happen; and with his lion's nature, laid all his length on his belly, prone and ponderous; his two paws as simply put out before him as a drowsy puppy's on a drawingroom hearth-rug; not but that he has got something to do with them, worthy of such paws; but he takes not one whit more trouble about it than is absolutely necessary. he has merely got a poisonous winged dragon to hold, and for such a little matter as that, he may as well do it lying down and at his ease, looking out at the same time for any other piece of work in his way. he takes the dragon by the middle, one paw under the wing, another above, gathers him up into a knot, puts two or three of his claws well into his back, crashing through the scales of it and wrinkling all the flesh up from the wound, flattens him down against the ground, and so lets him do what he likes. the dragon tries to bite him, but can only bring his head round far enough to get hold of his own wing, which he bites in agony instead; flapping the griffin's dewlap with it, and wriggling his tail up against the griffin's throat; the griffin being, as to these minor proceedings, entirely indifferent, sure that the dragon's body cannot drag itself one hair's breadth off those ghastly claws, and that its head can do no harm but to itself. § . now observe how in all this, through every separate part and action of the creature, the imagination is _always_ right. it evidently _cannot_ err; it meets every one of our requirements respecting the griffin as simply as if it were gathering up the bones of the real creature out of some ancient rock. it does not itself know or care, any more than the peasant laboring with his spade and axe, what is wanted to meet our theories or fancies. it knows simply what is there, and brings out the positive creature, errorless, unquestionable. so it is throughout art, and in all that the imagination does; if anything be wrong it is not the imagination's fault, but some inferior faculty's, which would have its foolish say in the matter, and meddled with the imagination, and said, the bones ought to be put together tail first, or upside down. § . this, however, we need not be amazed at, because the very essence of the imagination is already defined to be the seeing to the heart; and it is not therefore wonderful that it should never err; but it is wonderful, on the other hand, how the composing legalism does _nothing else_ than err. one would have thought that, by mere chance, in this or the other element of griffin, the griffin-composer might have struck out a truth; that he might have had the luck to set the ears back, or to give some grasp to the claw. but, no; from beginning to end it is evidently impossible for him to be anything but wrong; his whole soul is instinct with lies; no veracity can come within hail of him; to him, all regions of right and life are for ever closed. § . and another notable point is, that while the imagination receives truth in this simple way, it is all the while receiving statutes of composition also, far more noble than those for the sake of which the truth was lost by the legalist. the ornamental lines in the classical griffin appear at first finer than in the other; but they only appear so because they are more commonplace and more palpable. the subtlety of the sweeping and rolling curves in the real griffin, the way they waver and change and fold, down the neck, and along the wing, and in and out among the serpent coils, is incomparably grander, merely as grouping of ornamental line, than anything in the other; nor is it fine as ornamental only, but as massively useful, giving weight of stone enough to answer the entire purpose of pedestal sculpture. note, especially, the insertion of the three plumes of the dragon's broken wing in the outer angle, just under the large coil of his body; this filling of the gap being one of the necessities, not of the pedestal block merely, but a means of getting mass and breadth, which all composers desire more or less, but which they seldom so perfectly accomplish. so that taking the truth first, the honest imagination gains everything; it has its griffinism, and grace, and usefulness, all at once: but the false composer, caring for nothing but himself and his rules, loses everything,--griffinism, grace, and all. § . i believe the reader will now sufficiently see how the terms "true" and "false" are in the most accurate sense attachable to the opposite branches of what might appear at first, in both cases, the merest wildness of inconsistent reverie. but they are even to be attached, in a deeper sense than that in which we have hitherto used them, to these two compositions. for the imagination hardly ever works in this intense way, unencumbered by the inferior faculties, unless it be under the influence of some solemn purpose or sentiment. and to all the falseness and all the verity of these two ideal creatures this farther falsehood and verity have yet to be added, that the classical griffin has, at least in this place, no other intent than that of covering a level surface with entertaining form; but the lombardic griffin is a profound expression of the most passionate symbolism. under its eagle's wings are two wheels,[ ] which mark it as connected, in the mind of him who wrought it, with the living creatures of the vision of ezekiel: "when they went, the wheels went by them, and whithersoever the spirit was to go, they went, and the wheels were lifted up over against them, for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels." thus signed, the winged shape becomes at once one of the acknowledged symbols of the divine power; and, in its unity of lion and eagle, the workman of the middle ages always means to set forth the unity of the human and divine natures,[ ] in this unity it bears up the pillars of the church, set for ever as the corner stone. and the faithful and true imagination beholds it, in this unity, with everlasting vigilance and calm omnipotence, restrain the seed of the serpent crushed upon the earth; leaving the head of it free, only for a time, that it may inflict in its fury profounder destruction upon itself,--in this also full of deep meaning. the divine power does not slay the evil creature. it wounds and restrains it only. its final and _deadly_ wound is inflicted by itself. [illustration: . true and false griffins. mediæval. classical.] [ ] on the grotesque renaissance, vol. iii. [ ] see appendix i. vol. iv. "modern grotesque." [ ] cankred--because he cannot then bite hard. [ ] though, perhaps, only in a subordinate degree. see farther on, § . [ ] "so red, that in the midst of the fire she could hardly have been seen." [ ] if there be any inaccuracy in the right-hand griffin, i am sorry, but am not answerable for it, as the plate has been faithfully reduced from a large french lithograph, the best i could find. the other is from a sketch of my own. [ ] at the extremities of the wings,--not seen in the plate. [ ] compare the purgatorio, canto xxix. &c. chapter ix. of finish. § . i am afraid the reader must be, by this time, almost tired of hearing about truth. but i cannot help this; the more i have examined the various forms of art, and exercised myself in receiving their differently intended impressions, the more i have found this truthfulness a final test, the only test of lasting power; and, although our concern in this part of our inquiry is, professedly, with the beauty which blossoms out of truth, still i find myself compelled always to gather it by the stalk, not by the petals. i cannot hold the beauty, nor be sure of it for a moment, but by feeling for that strong stem. we have, in the preceding chapters, glanced through the various operations of the imaginative power of man; with this almost painfully monotonous result, that its greatness and honor were always simply in proportion to the quantity of truth it grasped. and now the question, left undetermined some hundred pages back (chap. ii. § ), recurs to us in a simpler form than it could before. how far is this true imagination to be truly represented? how far should the perfect conception of pallas be so given as to look like pallas herself, rather than like the picture of pallas? § . a question, this, at present of notable interest, and demanding instant attention. for it seemed to us, in reasoning about dante's views of art, that he was, or might be, right in desiring realistic completeness; and yet, in what we have just seen of the grotesque ideal, it seemed there was a certain desirableness in incompleteness. and the schools of art in europe are, at this moment, set in two hostile ranks,--not nobly hostile, but spitefully and scornfully, having for one of the main grounds of their dispute the apparently simple question, how far a picture may be carried forward in detail, or how soon it may be considered as finished. i propose, therefore, in the present chapter, to examine, as thoroughly as i can, the real signification of this word, finish, as applied to art, and to see if in this, as in other matters, our almost tiresome test is not the only right one; whether there be not a _fallacious_ finish and a _faithful_ finish, and whether the dispute, which seems to be only about completion and incompletion, has not therefore, at the bottom of it, the old and deep grounds of fallacy and fidelity. § . observe, first, there are two great and separate senses in which we call a thing finished, or well finished. one, which refers to the mere neatness and completeness of the actual work, as we speak of a well-finished knife-handle or ivory toy (as opposed to ill-cut ones); and, secondly, a sense which refers to the effect produced by the thing done, as we call a picture well-finished if it is so full in its details, as to produce the effect of reality on the spectator. and, in england, we seem at present to value highly the first sort of finish which belongs to work_manship_, in our manufactures and general doings of any kind, but to despise totally the impressive finish which belongs to the _work_; and therefore we like smooth ivories better than rough ones,--but careless scrawls or daubs better than the most complete paintings. now, i believe that we exactly reverse the fitness of judgment in this matter, and that we ought, on the contrary, to despise the finish of work_manship_, which is done for vanity's sake, and to love the finish of _work_, which is done for truth's sake,--that we ought, in a word, to finish our ivory toys more roughly, and our pictures more delicately. let us think over this matter. § . perhaps one of the most remarkable points of difference between the english and continental nations is in the degree of finish given to their ordinary work. it is enough to cross from dover to calais to feel this difference; and to travel farther only increases the sense of it. english windows for the most part fit their sashes, and their woodwork is neatly planed and smoothed; french windows are larger, heavier, and framed with wood that looks as if it had been cut to its shape with a hatchet; they have curious and cumbrous fastenings, and can only be forced asunder or together by some ingenuity and effort, and even then not properly. so with everything else--french, italian, and german, and, as far as i know, continental. foreign drawers do not slide as well as ours: foreign knives do not cut so well; foreign wheels do not turn so well, and we commonly plume ourselves much upon this, believing that generally the english people do their work better and more thoroughly, or as they say, "turn it out of their hands in better style," than foreigners. i do not know how far this is really the case. there may be a flimsy neatness, as well as a substantial roughness; it does not necessarily follow that the window which shuts easiest will last the longest, or that the harness which glitters the most is assuredly made of the toughest leather. i am afraid, that if this peculiar character of finish in our workmanship ever arose from a greater heartiness and thoroughness in our ways of doing things, it does so only now in the case of our best manufacturers; and that a great deal of the work done in england, however good in appearance, is but treacherous and rotten in substance. still, i think that there is really in the english mind, for the most part, a stronger desire to do things as well as they can be done, and less inclination to put up with inferiorities or insufficiencies, than in general characterise the temper of foreigners. there is in this conclusion no ground for national vanity; for though the desire to do things as well as they can be done at first appears like a virtue, it is certainly not so in all its forms. on the contrary, it proceeds in nine cases out of ten more from vanity than conscientiousness; and that, moreover, often a weak vanity. i suppose that as much finish is displayed in the fittings of the private carriages of our young rich men as in any other department of english manufacture; and that our st. james's street cabs, dogcarts, and liveries are singularly perfect in their way. but the feeling with which this perfection is insisted upon (however desirable as a sign of energy of purpose) is not in itself a peculiarly amiable or noble feeling; neither is it an ignoble disposition which would induce a country gentleman to put up with certain deficiencies in the appearance of his country-made carriage. it is true that such philosophy may degenerate into negligence, and that much thought and long discussion would be needed before we could determine satisfactorily the limiting lines between virtuous contentment and faultful carelessness; but at all events we have no right at once to pronounce ourselves the wisest people because we like to do all things in the best way. there are many little things which to do admirably is to waste both time and cost; and the real question is not so much whether we have done a given thing as well as possible, as whether we have turned a given quantity of labor to the best account. § . now, so far from the labor's being turned to good account which is given to our english "finishing," i believe it to be usually destructive of the best powers of our workmen's minds. for it is evident, in the first place, that there is almost always a useful and a useless finish; the hammering and welding which are necessary to produce a sword plate of the best quality, are useful finishing; the polishing of its surface, useless.[ ] in nearly all work this distinction will, more or less, take place between substantial finish and apparent finish, or what may be briefly characterized as "make" and "polish." and so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "make," i have nothing to say against it. even the vanity which displays itself in giving strength to our work is rather a virtue than a vice. but so far as finish is bestowed for purposes of "polish," there is much to be said against it; this first, and very strongly, that the qualities aimed at in common finishing, namely, smoothness, delicacy, or fineness, _cannot_ in reality _exist_, in a degree worth admiring, in anything done by human hands. our best finishing is but coarse and blundering work after all we may smooth, and soften, and sharpen till we are sick at heart; but take a good magnifying glass to our miracle of skill, and the invisible edge is a jagged saw, and the silky thread a rugged cable, and the soft surface a granite desert. let all the ingenuity and all the art of the human race be brought to bear upon the attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. god alone can finish; and the more intelligent the human mind becomes, the more the infiniteness of interval is felt between human and divine work in this respect. so then it is not a little absurd to weary ourselves in struggling towards a point which we never can reach, and to exhaust our strength in vain endeavors to produce qualities which exist inimitably and inexhaustibly in the commonest things around us. § . but more than this: the fact is that in multitudes of instances, instead of gaining greater fineness of finish by our work, we are only destroying the fine finish of nature, and substituting coarseness and imperfection. for instance, when a rock of any kind has lain for some time exposed to the weather, nature finishes it in her own way; first, she takes wonderful pains about its forms, sculpturing it into exquisite variety of dint and dimple, and rounding or hollowing it into contours, which for fineness no human hand can follow; then she colors it; and every one of her touches of color, instead of being a powder mixed with oil, is a minute forest of living trees, glorious in strength and beauty, and concealing wonders of structure, which in all probability are mysteries even to the eyes of angels. man comes and digs up this finished and marvellous piece of work, which in his ignorance he calls a "rough stone." he proceeds to finish it in _his_ fashion, that is, to split it in two, rend it into ragged blocks, and, finally, to chisel its surface into a large number of lumps and knobs, all equally shapeless, colorless, deathful, and frightful.[ ] and the block, thus disfigured, he calls "finished," and proceeds to build therewith, and thinks himself great, forsooth, and an intelligent animal. whereas, all that he has really done is, to destroy with utter ravage a piece of divine art, which, under the laws appointed by the deity to regulate his work in this world, it must take good twenty years to produce the like of again. this he has destroyed, and has himself given in its place a piece of work which needs no more intelligence to do than a pholas has, or a worm, or the spirit which throughout the world has authority over rending, rottenness, and decay. i do not say that stone must not be cut; it needs to be cut for certain uses; only i say that the cutting it is not "finishing," but _un_finishing it; and that so far as the mere fact of chiselling goes, the stone is ruined by the human touch. it is with it as with the stones of the jewish altar: "if thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it." in like manner a tree is a finished thing. but a plank, though ever so polished, is not. we need stones and planks, as we need food; but we no more bestow an additional admirableness upon stone in hewing it, or upon a tree in sawing it, than upon an animal in killing it. § . well, but it will be said, there is certainly a kind of finish in stone-cutting, and in every other art, which is meritorious, and which consists in smoothing and refining as much as possible. yes, assuredly there is a meritorious finish. first, as it has just been said, that which fits a thing for its uses,--as a stone to lie well in its place, or the cog of an engine wheel to play well on another; and, secondly, a finish belonging properly to the arts; but _that_ finish does not consist in smoothing or polishing, but in the _completeness of the expression of ideas_. for in painting, there is precisely the same difference between the ends proposed in finishing that there is in manufacture. some artists finish for the finish' sake; dot their pictures all over, as in some kinds of miniature-painting (when a wash of color would have produced as good an effect); or polish their pictures all over, making the execution so delicate that the touch of the brush cannot be seen, for the sake of the smoothness merely, and of the credit they may thus get for great labor; which kind of execution, seen in great perfection in many works of the dutch school, and in those of carlo dolce, is that polished "language" against which i have spoken at length in various portions of the first volume; nor is it possible to speak of it with too great severity or contempt, where it has been made an ultimate end. but other artists finish for the impression's sake, not to show their skill, nor to produce a smooth piece of work, but that they may, with each stroke, render clearer the expression of knowledge. and this sort of finish is not, properly speaking, so much _completing_ the picture as _adding_ to it. it is not that what is painted is more delicately done, but that infinitely _more_ is painted. this finish is always noble, and, like all other noblest things, hardly ever understood or appreciated. i must here endeavor, more especially with respect to the state of quarrel between the schools of living painters, to illustrate it thoroughly. § . in sketching the outline, suppose of the trunk of a tree, as in plate . (opposite) fig. ., it matters comparatively little whether the outline be given with a bold, or delicate line, so long as it is _outline only_. the work is not more "finished" in one case than in the other; it is only prepared for being seen at a greater or less distance. the real refinement or finish of the line depends, not on its thinness, but on its truly following the contours of the tree, which it conventionally represents; conventionally, i say, because there is no such line round the tree, in reality; and it is set down not as an _imit_ation, but a _limit_ation of the form. but if we are to add shade to it as in fig. ., the outline must instantly be made proportionally delicate, not for the sake of delicacy as such, but because the outline will now, in many parts, stand not for limitation of form merely, but for a portion of the _shadow_ within that form. now, as a limitation it was true, but as a shadow it would be false, for there is no line of black shadow at the edge of the stem. it must, therefore, be made so delicate as not to detach itself from the rest of the shadow where shadow exists, and only to be seen in the light where limitation is still necessary. observe, then, the "finish" of fig. . as compared with fig. . consists, not in its greater delicacy, but in the addition of a truth (shadow), a removal, in a great degree, of a conventionalism (outline). all true finish consists in one or other of these things. now, therefore, if we are to "finish" farther we must _know_ more or _see_ more about the tree. and as the plurality of persons who draw trees know nothing of them, and will not look at them, it results necessarily that the effort to finish is not only vain, but unfinishes--does mischief. in the lower part of the plate, figs. , , , and . are facsimiles of pieces of line engraving, meant to represent trunks of trees; . and . are the commonly accredited types of tree-drawing among engravers in the eighteenth century; . and . are quite modern; . is from a large and important plate by boydell, from claude's molten calf, dated ; . by boydell in , from rubens's waggoner; . from a bombastic engraving, published about twenty years ago by meulemeester of brussels, from raphael's moses at the burning bush; and . from the foreground of miller's modern italy, after turner.[ ] [illustration: . drawing of tree-stems.] all these represent, as far as the engraving goes, simply _nothing_. they are not "finished" in any sense but this,--that the paper has been covered with lines. . is the best, because, in the original work of rubens, the lines of the boughs, and their manner of insertion in the trunk, have been so strongly marked, that no engraving could quite efface them; and, inasmuch as it represents these facts in the boughs, that piece of engraving is more finished than the other examples, while its own networked texture is still false and absurd; for there is no texture of this knitted-stocking-like description on boughs; and if there were, it would not be seen in the shadow, but in the light. miller's is spirited, and looks lustrous, but has no resemblance to the original bough of turner's, which is pale, and does not glitter. the netherlands work is, on the whole, the worst; because, in its ridiculous double lines, it adds affectation and conceit to its incapacity. but in all these cases the engravers have worked in total ignorance both of what is meant by "drawing," and of the form of a tree, covering their paper with certain lines, which they have been taught to plough in copper, as a husbandman ploughs in clay. § . in the next three examples we have instances of endeavors at finish by the hands of artists themselves, marking three stages of knowledge or insight, and three relative stages of finish. fig. . is claude's (liber veritatis, no. ., facsimile by boydell). it still displays an appalling ignorance of the forms of trees, but yet is, in mode of execution, better--that is, more finished--than the engravings, because not _altogether_ mechanical, and showing some dim, far-away, blundering memory of a few facts in stems, such as their variations of texture and roundness, and bits of young shoots of leaves. . is salvator's, facsimiled from part of his original etching of the finding of oedipus. it displays considerable power of handling--not mechanical, but free and firm, and is just so much more finished than any of the others as it displays more intelligence about the way in which boughs gather themselves out of the stem, and about the varying character of their curves. finally, fig. . is good work. it is the root of the apple-tree in albert durer's adam and eve, and fairly represents the wrinkles of the bark, the smooth portions emergent beneath, and the general anatomy of growth. all the lines used conduce to the representation of these facts; and the work is therefore highly finished. it still, however, leaves out, as not to be represented by such kind of lines, the more delicate gradations of light and shade. i shall now "finish" a little farther, in the next plate ( .), the mere _insertion of the two boughs_ outlined in fig. . i do this simply by adding assertions of more facts. first, i say that the whole trunk is dark, as compared with the distant sky. secondly, i say that it is rounded by gradations of shadow, in the various forms shown. and, lastly, i say that (this being a bit of old pine stripped by storm of its bark) the wood is fissured in certain directions, showing its grain, or _muscle_, seen in complicated contortions at the insertion of the arm and elsewhere. § . now this piece of work, though yet far from complete (we will better it presently), is yet more finished than any of the others, not because it is more delicate or more skilful, but simply because it tells more truth, and admits fewer fallacies. that which conveys most information, with least inaccuracy, is always the highest finish; and the question whether we prefer art so finished, to art unfinished, is not one of taste at all. it is simply a question whether we like to know much or little; to see accurately or see falsely; and those whose _taste_ in art (if they choose so to call it) leads them to like blindness better than sight, and fallacy better than fact, would do well to set themselves to some other pursuit than that of art. § . in the above plate we have examined chiefly the grain and surface of the boughs; we have not yet noticed the finish of their curvature. if the reader will look back to the no. . (plate .), which, in this respect, is the worst of all the set, he will immediately observe the exemplification it gives of claude's principal theory about trees; namely, that the boughs always parted from each other, two at a time, in the manner of the prongs of an ill-made table-fork. it may, perhaps, not be at once believed that this is indeed claude's theory respecting tree-structure, without some farther examples of his practice. i have, therefore, assembled on the next page, plate ., some of the most characteristic passages of ramification in the liber veritatis; the plates themselves are sufficiently cheap (as they should be) and accessible to nearly every one, so that the accuracy of the facsimiles may be easily tested. i have given in appendix i. the numbers of the plates from which the examples are taken, and it will be found that they have been rather improved than libelled, only omitting, of course, the surrounding leafage, in order to show accurately the branch-outlines, with which alone we are at present concerned. and it would be difficult to bring together a series more totally futile and foolish, more singularly wrong (as the false griffin was), every way at once; they are stiff, and yet have no strength; curved, and yet have no flexibility; monotonous, and yet disorderly; unnatural, and yet uninventive. they are, in fact, of that commonest kind of tree bough which a child or beginner first draws experimentally; nay, i am well assured, that if this set of branches had been drawn by a schoolboy, "out of his own head," his master would hardly have cared to show them as signs of any promise in him. [illustration: . strength of old pine.] [illustration: . ramification, according to claude.] § . "well, but do not the trunks of trees fork, and fork mostly into two arms at a time?" [illustration: fig. .] yes; but under as stern anatomical law as the limbs of an animal; and those hooked junctions in plate . are just as accurately representative of the branching of wood as this (fig. .) is of a neck and shoulders. we should object to such a representation of shoulders, because we have some interest in, and knowledge of, human form; we do not object to claude's trees, because we have no interest in, nor knowledge of, trees. and if it be still alleged that such work is nevertheless enough to give any one an "idea" of a tree, i answer that it never gave, nor ever will give, an idea of a tree to any one who loves trees; and that, moreover, no idea, whatever its pleasantness, is of the smallest value, which is not founded on simple facts. what pleasantness may be in _wrong_ ideas we do not here inquire; the only question for us has always been, and must always be, what are the facts? § . and assuredly those boughs of claude's are not facts: and every one of their contours is, in the worst sense, unfinished, without even the expectation or faint hope of possible refinement ever coming into them. i do not mean to enter here into the discussion of the characters of ramification; that must be in our separate inquiry into tree-structure generally; but i will merely give one piece of turner's tree-drawing as an example of what finished work really is, even in outline. in plate . opposite, fig. . is the contour (stripped, like claude's, of its foliage) of one of the distant tree-stems in the drawing of bolton abbey. in order to show its perfectness better by contrast with bad work (as we have had, i imagine, enough of claude), i will take a bit of constable; fig. . is the principal tree out of the engraving of the lock on the stour (leslie's life of constable). it differs from the claude outlines merely in being the kind of work which is produced by an uninventive person dashing about idly, with a brush, instead of drawing determinately wrong, with a pen: on the one hand worse than claude's, in being lazier; on the other a little better in being more free, but, as representative of tree-form, of course still wholly barbarous. it is worth while to turn back to the description of the uninventive painter at work on a tree (vol. ii. chapter on imaginative association, § ), for this trunk of constable's is curiously illustrative of it. one can almost see him, first bending it to the right; then, having gone long enough to the right, turning to the left; then, having gone long enough to the left, away to the right again; then dividing it; and "because there is another tree in the picture with two long branches (in this case there really is), he knows that this ought to have three or four, which must undulate or go backwards and forwards," &c., &c. § . then study the bit of turner work: note first its quietness, unattractiveness, apparent carelessness whether you look at it or not; next note the subtle curvatures within the narrowest limits, and, when it branches, the unexpected, out of the way things it does, just what nobody could have thought of its doing; shooting out like a letter y, with a nearly straight branch, and then correcting its stiffness with a zigzag behind, so that the boughs, ugly individually, are beautiful in unison. (in what i have hereafter to say about trees, i shall need to dwell much on this character of _unexpectedness_. a bough is never drawn rightly if it is not wayward, so that although, as just now said, quiet at first, not caring to be looked at, the moment it is looked at, it seems bent on astonishing you, and doing the last things you expect it to do.) but our present purpose is only to note the _finish_ of the turner _curves_, which, though they seem straight and stiff at first, are, when you look long, seen to be all tremulous, perpetually wavering along every edge into endless melody of change. this is finish in line, in exactly the same sense that a fine melody is finished in the association of its notes. [illustration: . good and bad tree-drawing.] § . and now, farther, let us take a little bit of the turnerian tree in light and shade. i said above i would better the drawing of that pine trunk, which, though it has incipient shade, and muscular action, has no texture, nor local color. now, i take about an inch and a half of turner's ash trunks (one of the nearer ones) in this same drawing of bolton abbey (fig. . plate .), and _this_ i cannot better; this is perfectly finished; it is not possible to add more truth to it on that scale. texture of bark, anatomy of muscle beneath, reflected lights in recessed hollows, stains of dark moss, and flickering shadows from the foliage above, all are there, as clearly as the human hand can mark them. i place a bit of trunk by constable (fig. .),[ ] from another plate in leslie's life of him (a dell in helmingham park, suffolk), for the sake of the same comparison in shade that we have above in contour. you see constable does not know whether he is drawing moss or shadow: those dark touches in the middle are confused in his mind between the dark stains on the trunk and its dark side; there is no anatomy, no cast shadow, nothing but idle sweeps of the brush, vaguely circular. the thing is much darker than turner's, but it is not, therefore, finished; it is only blackened. and "to blacken" is indeed the proper word for all attempts at finish without knowledge. all true finish is _added fact_; and turner's word for finishing a picture was always this significant one, "carry forward." but labor without added knowledge can only blacken or stain a picture, it cannot finish it. § . and this is especially to be remembered as we pass from comparatively large and distant objects, such as this single trunk, to the more divided and nearer features of foreground. some degree of ignorance may be hidden, in completing what is far away; but there is no concealment possible in close work, and darkening instead of finishing becomes then the engraver's only possible resource. it has always been a wonderful thing to me to hear people talk of making foregrounds "vigorous," "marked," "forcible," and so on. if you will lie down on your breast on the next bank you come to (which is bringing it _close_ enough, i should think, to give it all the force it is capable of), you will see, in the cluster of leaves and grass close to your face, something as delicate as this, which i have actually so drawn, on the opposite page, a mystery of soft shadow in the depths of the grass, with indefinite forms of leaves, which you cannot trace or count, within it, and out of that, the nearer leaves coming in every subtle gradation of tender light and flickering form, quite beyond all delicacy of pencilling to follow; and yet you will rise up from that bank (certainly not making it appear coarser by drawing a little back from it), and profess to represent it by a few blots of "forcible" foreground color. "well, but i cannot draw every leaf that i see on the bank." no, for as we saw, at the beginning of this chapter, that no human work could be finished so as to express the _delicacy_ of nature, so neither can it be finished so as to express the _redundance_ of nature. accept that necessity; but do not deny it; do not call your work finished, when you have, in engraving, substituted a confusion of coarse black scratches, or in water-color a few edgy blots, for ineffable organic beauty. follow that beauty as far as you can, remembering that just as far as you see, know, and represent it, just so far your work is finished; as far as you fall short of it, your work is _un_finished; and as far as you substitute any other thing for it, your work is spoiled. [illustration: . foreground leafage.] § . how far turner followed it, is not easily shown; for his finish is so delicate as to be nearly uncopiable. i have just said it was not possible to finish that ash trunk of his, farther, on such a scale.[ ] by using a magnifying-glass, and giving the same help to the spectator, it might perhaps be possible to add and exhibit a few more details; but even as it is, i cannot by line engraving express all that there is in that piece of tree-trunk, on the same scale. i _have_ therefore magnified the upper part of it in fig . (plate .), so that the reader may better see the beautiful lines of curvature into which even its slightest shades and spots are cast. every quarter of an inch in turner's drawings will bear magnifying in the same way; much of the finer work in them can hardly be traced, except by the keenest sight, until it is magnified. in his painting of ivy bridge,[ ] the veins are drawn on the wings of a butterfly, not above three lines in diameter; and in one of his smaller drawings of scarborough, in my own possession, the muscle-shells on the beach are rounded, and some shown as shut, some as open, though none are as large as one of the letters of this type; and yet this is the man who was thought to belong to the "dashing" school, literally because most people had not patience or delicacy of sight enough to trace his endless detail. § . "suppose it was so," perhaps the reader replies; "still i do not like detail so delicate that it can hardly be seen." then you like nothing in nature (for you will find she always carries her detail too far to be traced). this point, however, we shall examine hereafter; it is not the question now whether we _like_ finish or not; our only inquiry here is, what finish _means_; and i trust the reader is beginning to be satisfied that it does indeed mean nothing but consummate and accumulated truth, and that our old monotonous test must still serve us here as elsewhere. and it will become us to consider seriously why (if indeed it be so) we dislike this kind of finish--dislike an accumulation of truth. for assuredly all authority is against us, and _no truly great man can be named in the arts--but it is that of one who finished to his utmost_. take leonardo, michael angelo, and raphael for a triad, to begin with. _they_ all completed their detail with such subtlety of touch and gradation, that, in a careful drawing by any of the three, you cannot see where the pencil ceased to touch the paper; the stroke of it is so tender, that, when you look close to the drawing you can see nothing; you only see the effect of it a little way back! thus tender in execution,--and so complete in detail, that leonardo must needs draw _every several vein in the little agates_ and pebbles of the gravel under the feet of the st. anne in the louvre. take a quartett after the triad--titian, tintoret, bellini, and veronese. examine the vine-leaves of the bacchus and ariadne, (titian's) in the national gallery; examine the borage blossoms, painted petal by petal, though lying loose on the table, in titian's supper at emmaus, in the louvre, or the snail-shells on the ground in his entombment;[ ] examine the separately designed patterns on every drapery of veronese, in his marriage in cana; go to venice and see how tintoret paints the strips of black bark on the birch trunk that sustains the platform in his adoration of the magi: how bellini fills the rents of his ruined walls with the most exquisite clusters of the erba della madonna.[ ] you will find them all in a tale. take a quintett after the quartett--francia, angelico, durer, hemling, perugino,--and still the witness is one, still the same striving in all to such utmost perfection as their knowledge and hand could reach. who shall gainsay these men? above all, who shall gainsay them when they and nature say precisely the same thing? for where does nature pause in _her_ finishing--that finishing which consists not in the smoothing of surface, but the filling of space, and the multiplication of life and thought? who shall gainsay them? i, for one, dare not; but accept their teaching, with nature's, in all humbleness. "but is there, then, no good in any work which does not pretend to perfectness? is there no saving clause from this terrible requirement of completion? and if there be none, what is the meaning of all you have said elsewhere about rudeness as the glory of gothic work, and, even a few pages back, about the danger of finishing, for our modern workmen?" indeed there are many saving clauses, and there is much good in imperfect work. but we had better cast the consideration of these drawbacks and exceptions into another chapter, and close this one, without obscuring, in any wise, our broad conclusion that "finishing" means in art simply "telling more truth;" and that whatever we have in any sort begun wisely, it is good to finish thoroughly. [ ] "with his yemen sword for aid; ornament it carried none, but the notches on the blade." [ ] see the base of the new army and navy clubhouse. [ ] i take this example from miller, because, on the whole, he is the best engraver of turner whom we have. [ ] fig. . is not, however, so _lustrous_ as constable's; i cannot help this, having given the original plate to my good friend mr. cousen, with strict charge to facsimile it faithfully: but the figure is all the fairer, as a representation of constable's art, for those mezzotints in leslie's life of him have many qualities of drawing which are quite wanting in constable's blots of color. the comparison shall be made elaborately, between picture and picture, in the section on vegetation. [ ] it is of the exact size of the original, the whole drawing being about - / inches by in. [ ] an oil painting (about ft. by ft. in.), and very broad in its masses. in the possession of e. bicknell, esq. [ ] these snail-shells are very notable, occurring as they do in, perhaps, the very grandest and broadest of all titian's compositions. [ ] linaria cymbalaria, the ivy-leaved toadflax of english gardens. chapter x. of the use of pictures. § . i am afraid this will be a difficult chapter; one of drawbacks, qualifications, and exceptions. but the more i see of useful truths, the more i find that, like human beings, they are eminently biped; and, although, as far as apprehended by human intelligence, they are usually seen in a crane-like posture, standing on one leg, whenever they are to be stated so as to maintain themselves against all attack it is quite necessary they should stand on two, and have their complete balance on opposite fulcra. § . i doubt not that one objection, with which as well as with another we may begin, has struck the reader very forcibly, after comparing the illustrations above given from turner, constable, and claude. he will wonder how it was that turner, finishing in this exquisite way, and giving truths by the thousand, where other painters gave only one or two, yet, of all painters, seemed to obtain least acknowledgeable resemblance to nature, so that the world cried out upon him for a madman, at the moment when he was giving exactly the highest and most consummate truth that had ever been seen in landscape. and he will wonder why still there seems reason for this outcry. still, after what analysis and proof of his being right have as yet been given, the reader may perhaps be saying to himself: "all this reasoning is of no use to me. turner does _not_ give me the idea of nature; i do not feel before one of his pictures as i should in the real scene. constable takes me out into the shower, and claude into the sun; and de wint makes me feel as if i were walking in the fields; but turner keeps me in the house, and i know always that i am looking at a picture." i might answer to this; well, what else _should_ he do? if you want to feel as if you were in a shower, cannot you go and get wet without help from constable? if you want to feel as if you were walking in the fields, cannot you go and walk in them without help from de wint? but if you want to sit in your room and look at a beautiful picture, why should you blame the artist for giving you one? this _was_ the answer actually made to me by various journalists, when first i showed that turner was truer than other painters: "nay," said they, "we do not want truth, we want something else than truth; we would not have nature, but something better than nature." § . i do not mean to accept that answer, although it seems at this moment to make for me: i have never accepted it. as i raise my eyes from the paper, to think over the curious mingling in it, of direct error, and far away truth, i see upon the room-walls, first, turner's drawing of the chain of the alps from the superga above turin; then a study of a block of gneiss at chamouni, with the purple aiguilles-rouges behind it; another, of the towers of the swiss fribourg, with a cluster of pine forest behind them; then another turner, isola bella, with the blue opening of the st. gothard in the distance; and then a fair bit of thirteenth century illumination, depicting, at the top of the page, the salutation; and beneath, the painter who painted it, sitting in his little convent cell, with a legend above him to this effect-- "ego jah{ann}es sc{ri}psi hunc librum." i, john, wrote this book. none of these things are bad pieces of art; and yet,--if it were offered to me to have, instead of them, so many windows, out of which i should see, first, the real chain of the alps from the superga; then the real block of gneiss, and aiguilles-rouges; then the real towers of fribourg, and pine forest; the real isola bella; and, finally, the true mary and elizabeth; and beneath them, the actual old monk at work in his cell,--i would very unhesitatingly change my five pictures for the five windows; and so, i apprehend, would most people, not, it seems to me, unwisely. "well, then," the reader goes on to question me, "the more closely the picture resembles such a window the better it must be?" yes. "then if turner does not give me the impression of such a window, that is of nature, there must be something wrong in turner?" yes. "and if constable and de wint give me the impression of such a window, there must be something right in constable and de wint?" yes. "and something more right than in turner?" no. "will you explain yourself?" i _have_ explained myself, long ago, and that fully; perhaps too fully for the simple sum of the explanation to be remembered. if the reader will glance back to, and in the present state of our inquiry, reconsider in the first volume, part i. sec. i. chap. v., and part ii. sec. _i._ chap. vii., he will find our present difficulties anticipated. there are some truths, easily obtained, which give a deceptive resemblance to nature; others only to be obtained with difficulty, which cause no deception, but give inner and deep resemblance. these two classes of truths cannot be obtained together; choice must be made between them. the bad painter gives the cheap deceptive resemblance. the good painter gives the precious non-deceptive resemblance. constable perceives in a landscape that the grass is wet, the meadows flat, and the boughs shady; that is to say, about as much as, i suppose, might in general be apprehended, between them, by an intelligent fawn and a skylark. turner perceives at a glance the whole sum of visible truth open to human intelligence. so berghem perceives nothing in a figure, beyond the flashes of light on the folds of its dress; but michael angelo perceives every flash of thought that is passing through its spirit; and constable and berghem may imitate windows; turner and michael angelo can by no means imitate windows. but turner and michael angelo are nevertheless the best. § . "well but," the reader persists, "you admitted just now that because turner did not get his work to look like a window there was something wrong in him." i did so; if he were quite right he would have _all_ truth, low as well as high; that is, he would be nature and not turner; but that is impossible to man. there is much that is wrong in him; much that is infinitely wrong in all human effort. but, nevertheless, in some an infinity of betterness above other human effort. "well, but you said you would change your turners for windows, why not, therefore, for constables?" nay, i did not say that i would change them for windows _merely_, but for windows which commanded the chain of the alps and isola bella. that is to say, for all the truth that there is in turner, and all the truth besides which is not in him; but i would not change them for constables, to have a small piece of truth which is not in turner, and none of the mighty truth which there is. § . thus far, then, though the subject is one requiring somewhat lengthy explanation, it involves no real difficulty. there is not the slightest inconsistency in the mode in which throughout this work i have desired the relative merits of painters to be judged. i have always said, he who is closest to nature is best. all rules are useless, all genius is useless, all labor is useless, if you do not give facts; the more facts you give the greater you are; and there is no fact so unimportant as to be prudently despised, if it be possible to represent it. nor, but that i have long known the truth of herbert's lines, "some men are full of themselves, and answer their own notion," would it have been without intense surprise that i heard querulous readers asking, "how it was possible" that i could praise pre-raphaelitism and turner also. for, from the beginning of this book to this page of it, i have never praised turner highly for any other cause than that he _gave facts_ more _delicately_, more pre-raphaelitically, than other men. careless readers, who dashed at the descriptions and missed the arguments, took up their own conceptions of the cause of my liking turner, and said to themselves: "turner cannot draw, turner is generalizing, vague, visionary; and the pre-raphaelites are hard and distinct. how can any one like both?"[ ] but _i_ never said that turner could not draw. _i_ never said that he was vague or visionary. what _i_ said was, that nobody had ever drawn so well: that nobody was so certain, so _un_-visionary; that nobody had ever given so many hard and downright facts. glance back to the first volume, and note the expressions now. "he is the only painter who ever drew a mountain or a stone;[ ] the only painter who can draw the stem of a tree; the only painter who has ever drawn the sky, previous artists having only drawn it typically or partially, but he absolutely and universally." note how he is praised in his rock drawing for "not selecting a pretty or interesting morsel here or there, but giving the whole truth, with all the relations of its parts."[ ] observe how the _great virtue_ of the landscape of cima da conegliano and the early sacred painters is said to be giving "entire, exquisite, humble, realization--a strawberry-plant in the foreground with a blossom, _and a berry just set_, _and one half ripe, and one ripe_, all patiently and innocently painted from the _real thing, and_ _therefore most divine_." then re-read the following paragraph (§ .), carefully, and note its conclusion, that the thoroughly great men are those who have done everything thoroughly, and who have never despised anything, however small, of god's making; with the instance given of wordsworth's daisy casting its shadow on a stone; and the following sentence, "our painters must come to this before they have done their duty." and yet, when our painters _did_ come to this, did do their duty, and did paint the daisy with its shadow (this passage having been written years before pre-raphaelitism was thought of), people wondered how i could possibly like what was neither more nor less than the precise fulfilment of my own most earnest exhortations and highest hopes. § . thus far, then, all i have been saying is absolutely consistent, and tending to one simple end. turner is praised for his truth and finish; that truth of which i am beginning to give examples. pre-raphaelitism is praised for its truth and finish; and the whole duty inculcated upon the artist is that of being in all respects as like nature as possible. and yet this is not all i have to do. there is more than this to be inculcated upon the student, more than this to be admitted or established before the foundations of just judgment can be laid. for, observe, although i believe any sensible person would exchange his pictures, however good, for windows, he would not feel, and ought not to feel, that the arrangement was _entirely_ gainful to him. he would feel it was an exchange of a less good of one kind, for a greater of another kind, but that it was definitely _exchange_, not pure gain, not merely getting more truth instead of less. the picture would be a serious loss; something gone which the actual landscape could never restore, though it might give something better in its place, as age may give to the heart something better than its youthful delusion, but cannot give again the sweetness of that delusion. § . what is this in the picture which is precious to us, and yet is not natural? hitherto our arguments have tended, on the whole, somewhat to the depreciation of art; and the reader may every now and then, so far as he has been convinced by them, have been inclined to say, "why not give up this whole science of mockery at once, since its only virtue is in representing facts, and it cannot, at best, represent them completely, besides being liable to all manner of shortcomings and dishonesties,--why not keep to the facts, to real fields, and hills, and men, and let this dangerous painting alone?" no, it would not be well to do this. painting has its peculiar virtues, not only consistent with but even resulting from, its shortcomings and weaknesses. let us see what these virtues are. § . i must ask permission, as i have sometimes done before, to begin apparently a long way from the point. not long ago, as i was leaving one of the towns of switzerland early in the morning, i saw in the clouds behind the houses an alp which i did not know, a grander alp than any i knew, nobler than the schreckhorn or the mönch; terminated, as it seemed, on one side by a precipice of almost unimaginable height; on the other, sloping away for leagues in one field of lustrous ice, clear and fair and blue, flashing here and there into silver under the morning sun. for a moment i received a sensation of as much sublimity as any natural object could possibly excite; the next moment, i saw that my unknown alp was the glass roof of one of the workshops of the town, rising above its nearer houses, and rendered aerial and indistinct by some pure blue wood smoke which rose from intervening chimneys. it is evident, that so far as the mere delight of the eye was concerned, the glass roof was here equal, or at least equal for a moment, to the alp. whether the power of the object over the heart was to be small or great, depended altogether upon what it was understood for, upon its being taken possession of and apprehended in its full nature, either as a granite mountain or a group of panes of glass; and thus, always, the real majesty of the appearance of the thing to us, depends upon the degree in which we ourselves possess the power of understanding it,--that penetrating, possession taking power of the imagination, which has been long ago defined[ ] as the very life of the man, considered as a _seeing_ creature. for though the casement had indeed been an alp, there are many persons on whose minds it would have produced no more effect than the glass roof. it would have been to them a glittering object of a certain apparent length and breadth, and whether of glass or ice, whether twenty feet in length, or twenty leagues, would have made no difference to them; or, rather, would not have been in any wise conceived or considered by them. examine the nature of your own emotion (if you feel it) at the sight of the alp, and you find all the brightness of that emotion hanging, like dew on gossamer, on a curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. first, you have a vague idea of its size, coupled with wonder at the work of the great builder of its walls and foundations, then an apprehension of its eternity, a pathetic sense of its perpetualness, and your own transientness, as of the grass upon its sides; then, and in this very sadness, a sense of strange companionship with past generations in seeing what they saw. they did not see the clouds that are floating over your head; nor the cottage wall on the other side of the field; nor the road by which you are travelling. but they saw _that_. the wall of granite in the heavens was the same to them as to you. they have ceased to look upon it; you will soon cease to look also, and the granite wall will be for others. then, mingled with these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the gifts and glories of the alps, the fancying forth of all the fountains that well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are born out of its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind between its cliffs, and all the châlets that gleam among its clouds, and happy farmsteads couched upon its pastures; while together with the thoughts of these, rise strange sympathies with all the unknown of human life, and happiness, and death, signified by that narrow white flame of the everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. these images, and far more than these, lie at the root of the emotion which you feel at the sight of the alp. you may not trace them in your heart, for there is a great deal more in your heart, of evil and good, than you ever can trace; but they stir you and quicken you for all that. assuredly, so far as you feel more at beholding the snowy mountain than any other object of the same sweet silvery grey, these are the kind of images which cause you to do so; and, observe, these are nothing more than a greater apprehension of the _facts_ of the thing. we call the power "imagination," because it imagines or conceives; but it is only noble imagination if it imagines or conceives _the truth_. and, according to the degree of knowledge possessed, and of sensibility to the pathetic or impressive character of the things known, will be the degree of this imaginative delight. § . but the main point to be noted at present is, that if the imagination can be excited to this its peculiar work, it matters comparatively little what it is excited by. if the smoke had not cleared partially away, the glass roof might have pleased me as well as an alp, until i had quite lost sight of it; and if, in a picture, the imagination can be once caught, and, without absolute affront from some glaring fallacy, set to work in its own field, the imperfection of the historical details themselves is, to the spectator's enjoyment, of small consequence. hence it is, that poets and men of strong feeling in general, are apt to be among the very worst judges of painting. the slightest hint is enough for them. tell them that a white stroke means a ship, and a black stain, a thunderstorm, and they will be perfectly satisfied with both, and immediately proceed to remember all that they ever felt about ships and thunderstorms, attributing the whole current and fulness of their own feelings to the painter's work; while probably, if the picture be really good, and full of stern fact, the poet, or man of feeling, will find some of its fact _in his way_, out of the particular course of his own thoughts,--be offended at it, take to criticising and wondering at it, detect, at last, some imperfection in it,--such as must be inherent in all human work,--and so finally quarrel with, and reject the whole thing. thus, wordsworth writes many sonnets to sir george beaumont and haydon, none to sir joshua or to turner. § . hence also the error into which many superficial artists fall, in speaking of "addressing the imagination" as the only end of art. it is quite true that the imagination must be addressed; but it may be very sufficiently addressed by the stain left by an ink-bottle thrown at the wall. the thrower has little credit, though an imaginative observer may find, perhaps, more to amuse him in the erratic nigrescence than in many a labored picture. and thus, in a slovenly or ill-finished picture, it is no credit to the artist that he has "addressed the imagination;" nor is the success of such an appeal any criterion whatever of the merit of the work. the duty of an artist is not only to address and awaken, but to _guide_ the imagination; and there is no safe guidance but that of simple concurrence with fact. it is no matter that the picture takes the fancy of a. or b., that c. writes sonnets to it, and d. feels it to be divine. this is still the only question for the artist, or for us:--"is it a fact? are things really so? is the picture an alp among pictures, full, firm, eternal; or only a glass house, frail, hollow, contemptible, demolishable; calling, at all honest hands, for detection and demolition?" § . hence it is also that so much grievous difficulty stands in the way of obtaining _real opinion_ about pictures at all. tell any man, of the slightest imaginative power, that such and such a picture is good, and means this or that: tell him, for instance, that a claude is good, and that it means trees, and grass, and water; and forthwith, whatever faith, virtue, humility, and imagination there are in the man, rise up to help claude, and to declare that indeed it is all "excellent good, i'faith;" and whatever in the course of his life he has felt of pleasure in trees and grass, he will begin to reflect upon and enjoy anew, supposing all the while it is the picture he is enjoying. hence, when once a painter's reputation is accredited, it must be a stubborn kind of person indeed whom he will not please, or seem to please; for all the vain and weak people pretend to be pleased with him, for their own credit's sake, and all the humble and imaginative people seriously and honestly fancy they _are_ pleased with him, deriving indeed, very certainly, delight from his work, but a delight which, if they were kept in the same temper, they would equally derive (and, indeed, constantly do derive) from the grossest daub that can be manufactured in imitation by the pawnbroker. is, therefore, the pawnbroker's imitation as good as the original? not so. there is the certain test of goodness and badness, which i am always striving to get people to use. as long as they are satisfied if they find their feelings pleasantly stirred and their fancy gaily occupied, so long there is for them no good, no bad. anything may please, or anything displease, them; and their entire manner of thought and talking about art is mockery, and all their judgments are laborious injustices. but let them, in the teeth of their pleasure or displeasure, simply put the calm question,--is it so? is that the way a stone is shaped, the way a cloud is wreathed, the way a leaf is veined? and they are safe. they will do no more injustice to themselves nor to other men; they will learn to whose guidance they may trust their imagination, and from whom they must for ever withhold its reins. § . "well, but why have you dragged in this poor spectator's imagination at all, if you have nothing more to say for it than this; if you are merely going to abuse it, and go back to your tiresome facts?" nay; i am not going to abuse it. on the contrary, i have to assert, in a temper profoundly venerant of it, that though we must not suppose everything is right when this is aroused, we may be sure that something is wrong when this is _not_ aroused. the something wrong may be in the spectator or in the picture; and if the picture be demonstrably in accordance with truth, the odds are, that it is in the spectator; but there is wrong somewhere; for the work of the picture is indeed eminently to get at this imaginative power in the beholder, and all its facts are of no use whatever if it does not. no matter how much truth it tells if the hearer be asleep. its first work is to wake him, then to teach him. § . now, observe, while, as it penetrates into the nature of things, the imagination is preeminently a beholder of things _as_ they _are_, it is, in its creative function, an eminent beholder of things _when_ and _where_ they are not; a seer, that is, in the prophetic sense, calling "the things that are not as though they were," and for ever delighting to dwell on that which is not tangibly present. and its great function being the calling forth, or back, that which is not visible to bodily sense, it has of course been made to take delight in the fulfilment of its proper function, and preeminently to enjoy, and spend its energy, on things past and future, or out of sight, rather than things present, or in sight. so that if the imagination is to be called to take delight in any object, it will not be always well, if we can help it, to put the _real_ object there, before it. the imagination would on the whole rather have it _not_ there;--the reality and substance are rather in the imagination's way; it would think a good deal more of the thing if it could not see it. hence, that strange and sometimes fatal charm, which there is in all things as long as we wait for them, and the moment we have lost them; but which fades while we possess them;--that sweet bloom of all that is far away, which perishes under our touch. yet the feeling of this is not a weakness; it is one of the most glorious gifts of the human mind, making the whole infinite future, and imperishable past, a richer inheritance, if faithfully inherited, than the changeful, frail, fleeting present; it is also one of the many witnesses in us to the truth that these present and tangible things are not meant to satisfy us. the instinct becomes a weakness only when it is weakly indulged, and when the faculty which was intended by god to give back to us what we have lost, and gild for us what is to come, is so perverted as only to darken what we possess. but, perverted or pure, the instinct itself is everlasting, and the substantial presence even of the things which we love the best, will inevitably and for ever be found wanting in _one_ strange and tender charm, which belonged to the dreams of them. § . another character of the imagination is equally constant, and, to our present inquiry, of yet greater importance. it is eminently a _weariable_ faculty, eminently delicate, and incapable of bearing fatigue; so that if we give it too many objects at a time to employ itself upon, or very grand ones for a long time together, it fails under the effort, becomes jaded, exactly as the limbs do by bodily fatigue, and incapable of answering any farther appeal till it has had rest. and this is the real nature of the weariness which is so often felt in travelling, from seeing too much. it is not that the monotony and number of the beautiful things seen have made them valueless, but that the imaginative power has been overtaxed; and, instead of letting it rest, the traveller, wondering to find himself dull, and incapable of admiration, seeks for something more admirable, excites, and torments, and drags the poor fainting imagination up by the shoulders: "look at this, and look at that, and this more wonderful still!"--until the imaginative faculty faints utterly away, beyond all farther torment or pleasure, dead for many a day to come; and the despairing prodigal takes to horse-racing in the campagna, good now for nothing else than that; whereas, if the imagination had only been laid down on the grass, among simple things, and left quiet for a little while, it would have come to itself gradually, recovered its strength and color, and soon been fit for work again. so that, whenever the imagination is tired, it is necessary to find for it something, not _more_ admirable but _less_ admirable; such as in that weak state it can deal with; then give it peace, and it will recover. § . i well recollect the walk on which i first found out this; it was on the winding road from sallenche, sloping up the hills towards st. gervais, one cloudless sunday afternoon. the road circles softly between bits of rocky bank and mounded pasture; little cottages and chapels gleaming out from among the trees at every turn. behind me, some leagues in length, rose the jagged range of the mountains of the réposoir; on the other side of the valley, the mass of the aiguille de varens, heaving its seven thousand feet of cliff into the air at a single effort, its gentle gift of waterfall, the nant d'arpenaz, like a pillar of cloud at its feet; mont blanc and all its aiguilles, one silver flame, in front of me; marvellous blocks of mossy granite and dark glades of pine around me; but i could enjoy nothing, and could not for a long while make out what was the matter with me, until at last i discovered that if i confined myself to one thing,--and that a little thing,--a tuft of moss, or a single crag at the top of the varens, or a wreath or two of foam at the bottom of the nant d'arpenaz, i began to enjoy it directly, because then i had mind enough to put into the thing, and the enjoyment arose from the quantity of the imaginative energy i could bring to bear upon it; but when i looked at or thought of all together, moss, stones, varens, nant d'arpenaz, and mont blanc, i had not mind enough to give to all, and none were of any value. the conclusion which would have been formed, upon this, by a german philosopher, would have been that the mont blanc _was_ of no value; that he and his imagination only were of value; that the mont blanc, in fact, except so far as he was able to look at it, could not be considered as having any existence. but the only conclusion which occurred to me as reasonable under the circumstances (i have seen no ground for altering it since) was, that i was an exceedingly small creature, much tired, and, at the moment, not a little stupid, for whom a blade of grass, or a wreath of foam, was quite food enough and to spare, and that if i tried to take any more, i should make myself ill. whereupon, associating myself fraternally with some ants, who were deeply interested in the conveyance of some small sticks over the road, and rather, as i think they generally are, in too great a hurry about it, i returned home in a little while with great contentment, thinking how well it was ordered that, as mont blanc and his pine forests could not be everywhere, nor all the world come to see them, the human mind, on the whole, should enjoy itself most surely in an ant-like manner, and be happy and busy with the bits of stick and grains of crystal that fall in its way to be handled, in daily duty. § . it follows evidently from the first of these characters of the imagination, its dislike of substance and presence, that a picture has in some measure even an advantage with us in not being real. the imagination rejoices in having something to do, springs up with all its willing power, flattered and happy; and ready with its fairest colors and most tender pencilling, to prove itself worthy of the trust, and exalt into sweet supremacy the shadow that has been confided to its fondness. and thus, so far from its being at all an object to the painter to make his work look real, he ought to dread such a consummation as the loss of one of its most precious claims upon the heart. so far from striving to convince the beholder that what he sees is substance, his mind should be to what he paints as the fire to the body on the pile, burning away the ashes, leaving the unconquerable shade--an immortal dream. so certain is this, that the slightest local success in giving the deceptive appearance of reality--the imitation, for instance, of the texture of a bit of wood, with its grain in relief--will instantly destroy the charm of a whole picture; the imagination feels itself insulted and injured, and passes by with cold contempt; nay, however beautiful the whole scene may be, as of late in much of our highly wrought painting for the stage, the mere fact of its being deceptively real is enough to make us tire of it; we may be surprised and pleased for a moment, but the imagination will not on those terms be persuaded to give any of its help, and, in a quarter of an hour, we wish the scene would change. § . "well, but then, what becomes of all these long dogmatic chapters of yours about giving nothing but the truth, and as much truth as possible?" the chapters are all quite right. "nothing but the truth," i say still. "as much truth as possible," i say still. but truth so presented, that it will need the help of the imagination to make it real. between the painter and the beholder, each doing his proper part, the reality should be sustained; and after the beholding imagination has come forward and done its best, then, with its help, and in the full action of it, the beholder should be able to say, i feel as if i were at the real place, or seeing the real incident. but not without that help. § . farther, in consequence of that other character of the imagination, fatiguableness, it is a great advantage to the picture that it need not present too much at once, and that what it does present may be so chosen and ordered as not only to be more easily seized, but to give the imagination rest, and, as it were, places to lie down and stretch its limbs in; kindly vacancies, beguiling it back into action, with pleasant and cautious sequence of incident; all jarring thoughts being excluded, all vain redundance denied, and all just and sweet transition permitted. and thus it is that, for the most part, imperfect sketches, engravings, outlines, rude sculptures, and other forms of abstraction, possess a charm which the most finished picture frequently wants. for not only does the finished picture excite the imagination less, but, like nature itself, it _taxes_ it more. none of it can be enjoyed till the imagination is brought to bear upon it; and the details of the completed picture are so numerous, that it needs greater strength and willingness in the beholder to follow them all out; the redundance, perhaps, being not too great for the mind of a careful observer, but too great for a casual or careless observer. so that although the perfection of art will always consist in the utmost _acceptable_ completion, yet, as every added idea will increase the difficulty of apprehension, and every added touch advance the dangerous realism which makes the imagination languid, the difference between a noble and ignoble painter is in nothing more sharply defined than in this,--that the first wishes to put into his work as much truth as possible, and yet to keep it looking _un_-real; the second wishes to get through his work lazily, with as little truth as possible, and yet to make it look real; and, so far as they add color to their abstract sketch, the first realizes for the sake of the color, and the second colors for the sake of the realization.[ ] § . and then, lastly, it is another infinite advantage possessed by the picture, that in these various differences from reality it becomes the expression of the power and intelligence of a companionable human soul. in all this choice, arrangement, penetrative sight, and kindly guidance, we recognize a supernatural operation, and perceive, not merely the landscape or incident as in a mirror, but, besides, the presence of what, after all, may perhaps be the most wonderful piece of divine work in the whole matter--the great human spirit through which it is manifested to us. so that, although with respect to many important scenes, it might, as we saw above, be one of the most precious gifts that could be given us to see them with _our own eyes_, yet also in many things it is more desirable to be permitted to see them with the eyes of others; and although, to the small, conceited, and affected painter displaying his narrow knowledge and tiny dexterities, our only word may be, "stand aside from between that nature and me," yet to the great imaginative painter--greater a million times in every faculty of soul than we--our word may wisely be, "come between this nature and me--this nature which is too great and too wonderful for me; temper it for me, interpret it to me; let me see with your eyes, and hear with your ears, and have help and strength from your great spirit." all the noblest pictures have this character. they are true or inspired ideals, seen in a moment to _be_ ideal; that is to say, the result of all the highest powers of the imagination, engaged in the discovery and apprehension of the purest truths, and having so arranged them as best to show their preciousness and exalt their clearness. they are always orderly, always one, ruled by one great purpose throughout, in the fulfilment of which every atom of the detail is called to help, and would be missed if removed; this peculiar oneness being the result, not of obedience to any teachable law, but of the magnificence of tone in the perfect mind, which accepts only what is good for its great purposes, rejects whatever is foreign or redundant, and instinctively and instantaneously ranges whatever it accepts, in sublime subordination and helpful brotherhood. § . then, this being the greatest art, the lowest art is the mimicry of it,--the subordination of nothing to nothing; the elaborate arrangement of sightlessness and emptiness; the order which has no object; the unity which has no life, and the law which has no love; the light which has nothing to illumine, and shadow which has nothing to relieve.[ ] § . and then, between these two, comes the wholesome, happy, and noble--though not noblest--art of simple transcript from nature; into which, so far as our modern pre-raphaelitism falls, it will indeed do sacred service in ridding us of the old fallacies and componencies, but cannot itself rise above the level of simple and happy usefulness. so far as it is to be great, it must add,--and so far as it _is_ great, has already added,--the great imaginative element to all its faithfulness in transcript. and for this reason, i said in the close of my edinburgh lectures, that pre-raphaelitism, as long as it confined itself to the simple copying of nature, could not take the character of the highest class of art. but it has already, almost unconsciously, supplied the defect, and taken that character, in all its best results; and, so far as it ought, hereafter, it will assuredly do so, as soon as it is permitted to maintain itself in any other position than that of stern antagonism to the composition teachers around it. i say "so far as it ought," because, as already noticed in that same place, we have enough, and to spare, of noble _inventful_ pictures; so many have we, that we let them moulder away on the walls and roofs of italy without one regretful thought about them. but of simple transcripts from nature, till now we have had none; even van eyck and albert durer having been strongly filled with the spirit of grotesque idealism; so that the pre-raphaelites have, to the letter, fulfilled steele's description of the author, who "determined to write in an entirely new manner, and describe things exactly as they took place." § . we have now, i believe, in some sort answered most of the questions which were suggested to us during our statement of the nature of great art. i could recapitulate the answers; but perhaps the reader is already sufficiently wearied of the recurrence of the terms "ideal," "nature," "imagination," "invention," and will hardly care to see them again interchanged among each other, in the formalities of a summary. what difficulties may yet occur to him will, i think, disappear as he either re-reads the passages which suggested them, or follows out the consideration of the subject for himself:--this very simple, but very precious, conclusion being continually remembered by him as the sum of all; that greatness in art (as assuredly in all other things, but more distinctly in this than in most of them,) is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but _the expression of the mind of a god-made great man_; that teach, or preach, or labor as you will, everlasting difference is set between one man's capacity and another's; and that this god-given supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time as another. what you can manufacture, or communicate, you can lower the price of, but this mental supremacy is incommunicable; you will never multiply its quantity, nor lower its price; and nearly the best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the discovery of this; learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamonds from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds out of our own charcoal. and for this god-made supremacy, i generally have used, and shall continue to use, the word inspiration, not carelessly nor lightly, but in all logical calmness and perfect reverence. we english have many false ideas about reverence: we should be shocked, for instance, to see a market-woman come into church with a basket of eggs on her arm: we think it more reverent to lock her out till sunday; and to surround the church with respectability of iron railings, and defend it with pacing inhabitation of beadles. i believe this to be _ir_reverence; and that it is more truly reverent, when the market-woman, hot and hurried, at six in the morning, her head much confused with calculations of the probable price of eggs, can nevertheless get within church porch, and church aisle, and church chancel, lay the basket down on the very steps of the altar, and receive thereat so much of help and hope as may serve her for the day's work. in like manner we are solemnly, but i think not wisely, shocked at any one who comes hurriedly into church, in any figurative way, with his basket on his arm; and perhaps, so long as we feel it so, it is better to keep the basket out. but, as for this one commodity of high mental supremacy, it cannot be kept out, for the very fountain of it is in the church wall, and there is no other right word for it but this of inspiration; a word, indeed, often ridiculously perverted, and irreverently used of fledgling poets and pompous orators--no one being offended then, and yet cavilled at when quietly used of the spirit that it is in a truly great man; cavilled at, chiefly, it seems to me, because we expect to know inspiration by the look of it. let a man have shaggy hair, dark eyes, a rolling voice, plenty of animal energy, and a facility of rhyming or sentencing, and--improvisatore or sentimentalist--we call him "inspired" willingly enough; but let him be a rough, quiet worker, not proclaiming himself melodiously in any wise, but familiar with us, unpretending, and letting all his littlenesses and feeblenesses be seen, unhindered,--wearing an ill-cut coat withal, and, though he be such a man as is only sent upon the earth once in five hundred years, for some special human teaching, it is irreverent to call him "inspired." but, be it irreverent or not, this word i must always use; and the rest of what work i have here before me, is simply to prove the truth of it, with respect to the one among these mighty spirits whom we have just lost; who divided his hearers, as many an inspired speaker has done before now, into two great sects--a large and a narrow; these searching the nature-scripture calmly, "whether those things were so," and those standing haughtily on their mars hill, asking, "what will this babbler say?" [ ] people of any sense, however, confined themselves to wonder. i think it was only in the art journal of september st, , that any writer had the meanness to charge me with insincerity. "the pictures of turner and the works of the pre-raphaelites are the very antipodes of each other; it is, therefore, impossible that one and the same individual can with any _show of sincerity_ [note, by the way, the art-union has no idea that _real_ sincerity is a thing existent or possible at all. all that it expects or hopes of human nature is, that it should have _show_ of sincerity,] stand forth as the thick and thin [i perceive the writer intends to teach me english, as well as honesty,] eulogist of both. with a certain knowledge of art, such as may be possessed by the author of english painters, [note, farther, that the eminent critic does not so much as know the title of the book he is criticising,] it is not difficult to praise any bad or mediocre picture that may be qualified with extravagance or mysticism. this author owes the public a heavy debt of explanation, which a lifetime spent in ingenious reconciliations would not suffice to discharge. a fervent admiration of certain pictures by turner, and, at the same time, of some of the severest productions of the pre-raphaelites, presents an insuperable problem to persons whose taste in art is regulated by definite principles." [ ] part ii. sec. i. chap. vii. § . [ ] part ii. sec. iv. chap. iv. § ., and part ii. sec. i. chap. vii. § . the whole of the preface to the second edition is written to maintain this one point of specific detail against the advocates of generalization. [ ] vol. ii. chapter on penetrative imagination. [ ] several other points connected with this subject have already been noticed in the last chapter of the stones of venice, § . &c. [ ] "though my pictures should have nothing else, they shall have chiaroscuro."--constable (in leslie's life of him). it is singular to reflect what that fatal chiaroscuro has done in art, in the full extent of its influence. it has been not only shadow, but shadow of death: passing over the face of the ancient art, as death itself might over a fair human countenance; whispering, as it reduced it to the white projections and lightless orbits of the skull, "thy face shall have nothing else, but it shall have chiaroscuro." chapter xi. of the novelty of landscape. § . having now obtained, i trust, clear ideas, up to a certain point, of what is generally right and wrong in all art, both in conception and in workmanship, we have to apply these laws of right to the particular branch of art which is the subject of our present inquiry, namely, landscape-painting. respecting which, after the various meditations into which we have been led on the high duties and ideals of art, it may not improbably occur to us first to ask,--whether it be worth inquiring about at all. that question, perhaps the reader thinks, should have been asked and answered before i had written, or he read, two volumes and a half about it. so i _had_ answered it, in my own mind; but it seems time now to give the grounds for this answer. if, indeed, the reader has never suspected that landscape-painting was anything but good, right, and healthy work, i should be sorry to put any doubt of its being so into his mind; but if, as seems to me more likely, he, living in this busy and perhaps somewhat calamitous age, has some suspicion that landscape-painting is but an idle and empty business, not worth all our long talk about it, then, perhaps, he will be pleased to have such suspicion done away, before troubling himself farther with these disquisitions. § . i should rather be glad, than otherwise, that he _had_ formed some suspicion on this matter. if he has at all admitted the truth of anything hitherto said respecting great art, and its choices of subject, it seems to me he ought, by this time, to be questioning with himself whether road-side weeds, old cottages, broken stones, and such other materials, be worthy matters for grave men to busy themselves in the imitation of. and i should like him to probe this doubt to the deep of it, and bring all his misgivings out to the broad light, that we may see how we are to deal with them, or ascertain if indeed they are too well founded to be dealt with. § . and to this end i would ask him now to imagine himself entering, for the first time in his life, the room of the old water-color society; and to suppose that he has entered it, not for the sake of a quiet examination of the paintings one by one, but in order to seize such ideas as it may generally suggest respecting the state and meaning of modern as compared with elder, art. i suppose him, of course, that he may be capable of such a comparison, to be in some degree familiar with the different forms in which art has developed itself within the periods historically known to us; but never, till that moment, to have seen any completely modern work. so prepared, and so unprepared, he would, as his ideas began to arrange themselves, be first struck by the number of paintings representing blue mountains, clear lakes, and ruined castles or cathedrals, and he would say to himself: "there is something strange in the mind of these modern people! nobody ever cared about blue mountains before, or tried to paint the broken stones of old walls." and the more he considered the subject, the more he would feel the peculiarity; and, as he thought over the art of greeks and romans, he would still repeat, with increasing certainty of conviction: "mountains! i remember none. the greeks did not seem, as artists, to know that such things were in the world. they carved, or variously represented, men, and horses, and beasts, and birds, and all kinds of living creatures,--yes, even down to cuttle-fish; and trees, in a sort of way; but not so much as the outline of a mountain; and as for lakes, they merely showed they knew the difference between salt and fresh water by the fish they put into each." then he would pass on to mediæval art: and still he would be obliged to repeat: "mountains! i remember none. some careless and jagged arrangements of blue spires or spikes on the horizon, and, here and there, an attempt at representing an overhanging rock with a hole through it; but merely in order to divide the light behind some human figure. lakes! no, nothing of the kind,--only blue bays of sea put in to fill up the background when the painter could not think of anything else. broken-down buildings! no; for the most part very complete and well-appointed buildings, if any; and never buildings at all, but to give place or explanation to some circumstance of human conduct." and then he would look up again to the modern pictures, observing, with an increasing astonishment, that here the human interest had, in many cases, altogether disappeared. that mountains, instead of being used only as a blue ground for the relief of the heads of saints, were themselves the exclusive subjects of reverent contemplation; that their ravines, and peaks, and forests, were all painted with an appearance of as much enthusiasm as had formerly been devoted to the dimple of beauty, or the frowns of asceticism; and that all the living interest which was still supposed necessary to the scene, might be supplied by a traveller in a slouched hat, a beggar in a scarlet cloak, or, in default of these, even by a heron or a wild duck. and if he could entirely divest himself of his own modern habits of thought, and regard the subjects in question with the feelings of a knight or monk of the middle ages, it might be a question whether those feelings would not rapidly verge towards contempt. "what!" he might perhaps mutter to himself, "here are human beings spending the whole of their lives in making pictures of bits of stone and runlets of water, withered sticks and flying frogs, and actually not a picture of the gods or the heroes! none of the saints or the martyrs! none of the angels and demons! none of councils or battles, or any other single thing worth the thought of a man! trees and clouds indeed! as if i should not see as many trees as i cared to see, and more, in the first half of my day's journey to-morrow, or as if it mattered to any man whether the sky were clear or cloudy, so long as his armor did not get too hot in the sun!" § . there can be no question that this would have been somewhat the tone of thought with which either a lacedæmonian, a soldier of rome in her strength, or a knight of the thirteenth century, would have been apt to regard these particular forms of our present art. nor can there be any question that, in many respects, their judgment would have been just. it is true that the indignation of the spartan or roman would have been equally excited against any appearance of luxurious industry; but the mediæval knight would, to the full, have admitted the nobleness of art; only he would have had it employed in decorating his church or his prayer-book, nor in imitating moors and clouds. and the feelings of all the three would have agreed in this,--that their main ground of offence must have been the want of _seriousness_ and _purpose_ in what they saw. they would all have admitted the nobleness of whatever conduced to the honor of the gods, or the power of the nation; but they would not have understood how the skill of human life could be wisely spent in that which did no honor either to jupiter or to the virgin; and which in no wise tended, apparently, either to the accumulation of wealth, the excitement of patriotism, or the advancement of morality. § . and exactly so far forth their judgment would be just, as the landscape-painting could indeed be shown, for others as well as for them, to be art of this nugatory kind; and so far forth unjust, as that painting could be shown to depend upon, or cultivate, certain sensibilities which neither the greek nor mediæval knight possessed, and which have resulted from some extraordinary change in human nature since their time. we have no right to assume, without very accurate examination of it, that this change has been an ennobling one. the simple fact, that we are, in some strange way, different from all the great races that have existed before us, cannot at once be received as the proof of our own greatness; nor can it be granted, without any question, that we have a legitimate subject of complacency in being under the influence of feelings, with which neither miltiades nor the black prince, neither homer nor dante, neither socrates nor st. francis, could for an instant have sympathized. § . whether, however, this fact be one to excite our pride or not, it is assuredly one to excite our deepest interest. the fact itself is certain. for nearly six thousand years the energies of man have pursued certain beaten paths, manifesting some constancy of feeling throughout all that period, and involving some fellowship at heart, among the various nations who by turns succeeded or surpassed each other in the several aims of art or policy. so that, for these thousands of years, the whole human race might be to some extent described in general terms. man was a creature separated from all others by his instinctive sense of an existence superior to his own, invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a god more strongly in proportion to his own perfectness of mind and body; and making enormous and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some persuasion of the immediate presence or approval of the divinity. so that, on the whole, the best things he did were done as in the presence, or for the honor, of his gods; and, whether in statues, to help him to imagine them, or temples raised to their honor, or acts of self-sacrifice done in the hope of their love, he brought whatever was best and skilfullest in him into their service, and lived in a perpetual subjection to their unseen power. also, he was always anxious to know something definite about them; and his chief books, songs, and pictures were filled with legends about them, or especially devoted to illustration of their lives and nature. § . next to these gods he was always anxious to know something about his human ancestors; fond of exalting the memory, and telling or painting the history of old rulers and benefactors; yet full of an enthusiastic confidence in himself, as having in many ways advanced beyond the best efforts of past time; and eager to record his own doings for future fame. he was a creature eminently warlike, placing his principal pride in dominion; eminently beautiful, and having great delight in his own beauty: setting forth this beauty by every species of invention in dress, and rendering his arms and accoutrements superbly decorative of his form. he took, however, very little interest in anything but what belonged to humanity; caring in no wise for the external world, except as it influenced his own destiny; honoring the lightning because it could strike him, the sea because it could drown him, the fountains because they gave him drink, and the grass because it yielded him seed; but utterly incapable of feeling any special happiness in the love of such things, or any earnest emotion about them, considered as separate from man; therefore giving no time to the study of them;--knowing little of herbs, except only which were hurtful, and which healing; of stones, only which would glitter brightest in a crown, or last the longest in a wall; of the wild beasts, which were best for food, and which the stoutest quarry for the hunter;--thus spending only on the lower creatures and inanimate things his waste energy, his dullest thoughts, his most languid emotions, and reserving all his acuter intellect for researches into his own nature and that of the gods; all his strength of will for the acquirement of political or moral power; all his sense of beauty for things immediately connected with his own person and life; and all his deep affections for domestic or divine companionship. such, in broad light and brief terms, was man for five thousand years. such he is no longer. let us consider what he is now, comparing the descriptions clause by clause. § . i. he _was_ invariably sensible of the existence of gods, and went about all his speculations or works holding this as an acknowledged fact, making his best efforts in their service. _now_ he is capable of going through life with hardly any positive idea on this subject,--doubting, fearing, suspecting, analyzing,--doing everything, in fact, _but_ believing; hardly ever getting quite up to that point which hitherto was wont to be the starting point for all generations. and human work has accordingly hardly any reference to spiritual beings, but is done either from a patriotic or personal interest,--either to benefit mankind, or reach some selfish end, not (i speak of human work in the broad sense) to please the gods. ii. he _was_ a beautiful creature, setting forth this beauty by all means in his power, and depending upon it for much of his authority over his fellows. so that the ruddy cheek of david, and the ivory skin of atrides, and the towering presence of saul, and the blue eyes of coeur de lion, were among the chief reasons why they should be kings; and it was one of the aims of all education, and of all dress, to make the presence of the human form stately and lovely. _now_ it has become the task of grave philosophy partly to depreciate or conceal this bodily beauty; and even by those who esteem it in their hearts, it is not made one of the great ends of education: man has become, upon the whole, an ugly animal, and is not ashamed of his ugliness. iii. he _was_ eminently warlike. he is _now_ gradually becoming more and more ashamed of all the arts and aims of battle. so that the desire of dominion, which was once frankly confessed or boasted of as a heroic passion, is now sternly reprobated or cunningly disclaimed. iv. he _used_ to take no interest in anything but what immediately concerned himself. _now_, he has deep interest in the abstract natures of things, inquires as eagerly into the laws which regulate the economy of the material world, as into those of his own being, and manifests a passionate admiration of inanimate objects, closely resembling, in its elevation and tenderness, the affection which he bears to those living souls with which he is brought into the nearest fellowship. § . it is this last change only which is to be the subject of our present inquiry; but it cannot be doubted that it is closely connected with all the others, and that we can only thoroughly understand its nature by considering it in this connection. for, regarded by itself, we might, perhaps, too rashly assume it to be a natural consequence of the progress of the race. there appears to be a diminution of selfishness in it, and a more extended and heartfelt desire of understanding the manner of god's working; and this the more, because one of the permanent characters of this change is a greater accuracy in the statement of external facts. when the eyes of men were fixed first upon themselves, and upon nature solely and secondarily as bearing upon their interests, it was of less consequence to them what the ultimate laws of nature were, than what their immediate effects were upon human beings. hence they could rest satisfied with phenomena instead of principles, and accepted without scrutiny every fable which seemed sufficiently or gracefully to account for those phenomena. but so far as the eyes of men are now withdrawn from themselves, and turned upon the inanimate things about them, the results cease to be of importance, and the laws become essential. § . in these respects, it might easily appear to us that this change was assuredly one of steady and natural advance. but when we contemplate the others above noted, of which it is clearly one of the branches or consequences, we may suspect ourselves of over-rashness in our self-congratulation, and admit the necessity of a scrupulous analysis both of the feeling itself and of its tendencies. of course a complete analysis, or anything like it, would involve a treatise on the whole history of the world. i shall merely endeavor to note some of the leading and more interesting circumstances bearing on the subject, and to show sufficient practical ground for the conclusion, that landscape painting is indeed a noble and useful art, though one not long known by man. i shall therefore examine, as best i can, the effect of landscape, st, on the classical mind; ndly, on the mediæval mind; and lastly, on the modern mind. but there is one point of some interest respecting the effect of it on _any_ mind, which must be settled first, and this i will endeavor to do in the next chapter. chapter xii. of the pathetic fallacy. § . german dulness and english affectation, have of late much multiplied among us the use of two of the most objectionable words that were ever coined by the troublesomeness of metaphysicians, --namely, "objective" and "subjective." no words can be more exquisitely, and in all points, useless; and i merely speak of them that i may, at once and for ever, get them out of my way and out of my reader's. but to get that done, they must be explained. the word "blue," say certain philosophers, means the sensation of color which the human eye receives in looking at the open sky, or at a bell gentian. now, say they farther, as this sensation can only be felt when the eye is turned to the object, and as, therefore, no such sensation is produced by the object when nobody looks at it, therefore the thing, when it is not looked at, is not blue; and thus (say they) there are many qualities of things which depend as much on something else as on themselves. to be sweet, a thing must have a taster; it is only sweet while it is being tasted, and if the tongue had not the capacity of taste, then the sugar would not have the quality of sweetness. and then they agree that the qualities of things which thus depend upon our perception of them, and upon our human nature as affected by them, shall be called subjective; and the qualities of things which they always have, irrespective of any other nature, as roundness or squareness, shall be called objective. from these ingenious views the step is very easy to a farther opinion, that it does not much matter what things are in themselves, but only what they are to us; and that the only real truth of them is their appearance to, or effect upon, us. from which position, with a hearty desire for mystification, and much egotism, selfishness, shallowness, and impertinence, a philosopher may easily go so far as to believe, and say, that everything in the world depends upon his seeing or thinking of it, and that nothing, therefore, exists, but what he sees or thinks of. § . now, to get rid of all these ambiguities and troublesome words at once, be it observed that the word "blue" does _not_ mean the _sensation_ caused by a gentian on the human eye; but it means the _power_ of producing that sensation; and this power is always there, in the thing, whether we are there to experience it or not, and would remain there though there were not left a man on the face of the earth. precisely in the same way gunpowder has a power of exploding. it will not explode if you put no match to it. but it has always the power of so exploding, and is therefore called an explosive compound, which it very positively and assuredly is, whatever philosophy may say to the contrary. in like manner, a gentian does not produce the sensation of blueness if you don't look at it. but it has always the power of doing so; its particles being everlastingly so arranged by its maker. and, therefore, the gentian and the sky are always verily blue, whatever philosophy may say to the contrary; and if you do not see them blue when you look at them, it is not their fault but yours.[ ] § . hence i would say to these philosophers: if, instead of using the sonorous phrase, "it is objectively so," you will use the plain old phrase, "it _is_ so;" and if instead of the sonorous phrase, "it is subjectively so," you will say, in plain old english, "it does so," or "it seems so to me;" you will, on the whole, be more intelligible to your fellow-creatures: and besides, if you find that a thing which generally "does so" to other people (as a gentian looks blue to most men) does _not_ so to you, on any particular occasion, you will not fall into the impertinence of saying that the thing is not so, or did not so, but you will say simply (what you will be all the better for speedily finding out) that something is the matter with you. if you find that you cannot explode the gunpowder, you will not declare that all gunpowder is subjective, and all explosion imaginary, but you will simply suspect and declare yourself to be an ill-made match. which, on the whole, though there may be a distant chance of a mistake about it, is, nevertheless, the wisest conclusion you can come to until farther experiment.[ ] § . now, therefore, putting these tiresome and absurd words quite out of our way, we may go on at our ease to examine the point in question,--namely, the difference between the ordinary, proper, and true appearances of things to us; and the extraordinary, or false appearances, when we are under the influence of emotion, or contemplative fancy;[ ] false appearances, i say, as being entirely unconnected with any real power or character in the object, and only imputed to it by us. for instance-- "the spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mould naked and shivering, with his cup of gold."[ ] this is very beautiful and yet very untrue. the crocus is not a spendthrift, but a hardy plant; its yellow is not gold, but saffron. how is it that we enjoy so much the having it put into our heads that it is anything else than a plain crocus? it is an important question. for, throughout our past reasonings about art, we have always found that nothing could be good or useful, or ultimately pleasurable, which was untrue. but here is something pleasurable in written poetry which is nevertheless _un_true. and what is more, if we think over our favorite poetry, we shall find it full of this kind of fallacy, and that we like it all the more for being so. § . it will appear also, on consideration of the matter, that this fallacy is of two principal kinds. either, as in this case of the crocus, it is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real expectation that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused by an excited state of the feelings, making us, for the time, more or less irrational. of the cheating of the fancy we shall have to speak presently; but, in this chapter, i want to examine the nature of the other error, that which the mind admits, when affected strongly by emotion. thus, for instance, in alton locke,-- "they rowed her in across the rolling foam-- the cruel, crawling foam." the foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. the state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a living creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. all violent feelings have the same effect. they produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which i would generally characterize as the "pathetic fallacy." § . now we are in the habit of considering this fallacy as eminently a character of poetical description, and the temper of mind in which we allow it, as one eminently poetical, because passionate. but, i believe, if we look well into the matter, that we shall find the greatest poets do not often admit this kind of falseness,--that it is only the second order of poets who much delight in it.[ ] thus, when dante describes the spirits falling from the bank of acheron "as dead leaves flutter from a bough," he gives the most perfect image possible of their utter lightness, feebleness, passiveness, and scattering agony of despair, without, however, for an instant losing his own clear perception that _these_ are souls, and _those_ are leaves: he makes no confusion of one with the other. but when coleridge speaks of "the one red leaf, the last of its clan, that dances as often as dance it can," he has a morbid, that is to say, a so far false, idea about the leaf: he fancies a life in it, and will, which there are not; confuses its powerlessness with choice, its fading death with merriment, and the wind that shakes it with music. here, however, there is some beauty, even in the morbid passage; but take an instance in homer and pope. without the knowledge of ulysses, elpenor, his youngest follower, has fallen from an upper chamber in the circean palace, and has been left dead, unmissed by his leader, or companions, in the haste of their departure. they cross the sea to the cimmerian land; and ulysses summons the shades from tartarus. the first which appears is that of the lost elpenor. ulysses, amazed, and in exactly the spirit of bitter and terrified lightness which is seen in hamlet,[ ] addresses the spirit with the simple, startled words:-- "elpenor? how camest thou under the shadowy darkness? hast thou come faster on foot than i in my black ship?" which pope renders thus:-- "o, say, what angry power elpenor led to glide in shades, and wander with the dead? how could thy soul, by realms and seas disjoined, outfly the nimble sail, and leave the lagging wind?" i sincerely hope the reader finds no pleasure here, either in the nimbleness of the sail, or the laziness of the wind! and yet how is it that these conceits are so painful now, when they have been pleasant to us in the other instances? § . for a very simple reason. they are not a _pathetic_ fallacy at all, for they are put into the mouth of the wrong passion--a passion which never could possibly have spoken them--agonized curiosity. ulysses wants to know the facts of the matter; and the very last thing his mind could do at the moment would be to pause, or suggest in any wise what was _not_ a fact. the delay in the first three lines, and conceit in the last, jar upon us instantly, like the most frightful discord in music. no poet of true imaginative power could possibly have written the passage. it is worth while comparing the way a similar question is put by the exquisite sincerity of keats:-- "he wept, and his bright tears went trickling down the golden bow he held. thus, with half-shut, suffused eyes, he stood; while from beneath some cumb'rous boughs hard by, with solemn step, an awful goddess came. and there was purport in her looks for him, which he with eager guess began to read: perplexed the while, melodiously he said, '_how cam'st thou over the unfooted sea?_'" therefore, we see that the spirit of truth must guide us in some sort, even in our enjoyment of fallacy. coleridge's fallacy has no discord in it, but pope's has set our teeth on edge. without farther questioning, i will endeavor to state the main bearings of this matter. § . the temperament which admits the pathetic fallacy, is, as i said above, that of a mind and body in some sort too weak to deal fully with what is before them or upon them; borne away, or over-clouded, or over-dazzled by emotion; and it is a more or less noble state, according to the force of the emotion which has induced it. for it is no credit to a man that he is not morbid or inaccurate in his perceptions, when he has no strength of feeling to warp them; and it is in general a sign of higher capacity and stand in the ranks of being, that the emotions should be strong enough to vanquish, partly, the intellect, and make it believe what they choose. but it is still a grander condition when the intellect also rises, till it is strong enough to assert its rule against, or together with, the utmost efforts of the passions; and the whole man stands in an iron glow, white hot, perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating; even if he melts, losing none of his weight. so, then, we have the three ranks: the man who perceives rightly, because he does not feel, and to whom the primrose is very accurately the primrose, because he does not love it. then, secondly, the man who perceives wrongly, because he feels, and to whom the primrose is anything else than a primrose: a star, or a sun, or a fairy's shield, or a forsaken maiden. and then, lastly, there is the man who perceives rightly in spite of his feelings, and to whom the primrose is for ever nothing else than itself--a little flower, apprehended in the very plain and leafy fact of it, whatever and how many soever the associations and passions may be, that crowd around it. and, in general, these three classes may be rated in comparative order, as the men who are not poets at all, and the poets of the second order, and the poets of the first; only however great a man may be, there are always some subjects which _ought_ to throw him off his balance; some, by which his poor human capacity of thought should be conquered, and brought into the inaccurate and vague state of perception, so that the language of the highest inspiration becomes broken, obscure, and wild in metaphor, resembling that of the weaker man, overborne by weaker things. § . and thus, in full, there are four classes: the men who feel nothing, and therefore see truly; the men who feel strongly, think weakly, and see untruly (second order of poets); the men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order of poets); and the men who, strong as human creatures can be, are yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them. this last is the usual condition of prophetic inspiration. § . i separate these classes, in order that their character may be clearly understood; but of course they are united each to the other by imperceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the influences to which it is subjected, passes at different times into the various states. still, the difference between the great and less man is, on the whole, chiefly in this point of _alterability_. that is to say, the one knows too much, and perceives and feels too much of the past and future, and of all things beside and around that which immediately affects him, to be in any wise shaken by it. his mind is made up; his thoughts have an accustomed current; his ways are steadfast; it is not this or that new sight which will at once unbalance him. he is tender to impression at the surface, like a rock with deep moss upon it; but there is too much mass of him to be moved. the smaller man, with the same degree of sensibility, is at once carried off his feet; he wants to do something he did not want to do before; he views all the universe in a new light through his tears; he is gay or enthusiastic, melancholy or passionate, as things come and go to him. therefore the high creative poet might even be thought, to a great extent, impassive (as shallow people think dante stern), receiving indeed all feelings to the full, but having a great centre of reflection and knowledge in which he stands serene, and watches the feeling, as it were, from far off. dante, in his most intense moods, has entire command of himself, and can look around calmly, at all moments, for the image or the word that will best tell what he sees to the upper or lower world. but keats and tennyson, and the poets of the second order, are generally themselves subdued by the feelings under which they write, or, at least, write as choosing to be so, and therefore admit certain expressions and modes of thought which are in some sort diseased or false. § . now so long as we see that the _feeling_ is true, we pardon, or are even pleased by, the confessed fallacy of sight which it induces: we are pleased, for instance, with those lines of kingsley's, above quoted, not because they fallaciously describe foam, but because they faithfully describe sorrow. but the moment the mind of the speaker becomes cold, that moment every such expression becomes untrue, as being for ever untrue in the external facts. and there is no greater baseness in literature than the habit of using these metaphorical expressions in cool blood. an inspired writer, in full impetuosity of passion, may speak wisely and truly of "raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame;" but it is only the basest writer who cannot speak of the sea without talking of "raging waves," "remorseless floods," "ravenous billows," &c.; and it is one of the signs of the highest power in a writer to check all such habits of thought, and to keep his eyes fixed firmly on the _pure fact_, out of which if any feeling comes to him or his reader, he knows it must be a true one. to keep to the waves, i forget who it is who represents a man in despair, desiring that his body may be cast into the sea, "_whose changing mound, and foam that passed away_, might mock the eye that questioned where i lay." observe, there is not a single false, or even overcharged, expression. "mound" of the sea wave is perfectly simple and true; "changing" is as familiar as may be; "foam that passed away," strictly literal; and the whole line descriptive of the reality with a degree of accuracy which i know not any other verse, in the range of poetry, that altogether equals. for most people have not a distinct idea of the clumsiness and massiveness of a large wave. the word "wave" is used too generally of ripples and breakers, and bendings in light drapery or grass: it does not by itself convey a perfect image. but the word "mound" is heavy, large, dark, definite; there is no mistaking the kind of wave meant, nor missing the sight of it. then the term "changing" has a peculiar force also. most people think of waves as rising and falling. but if they look at the sea carefully, they will perceive that the waves do not rise and fall. they change. change both place and form, but they do not fall; one wave goes on, and on, and still on; now lower, now higher, now tossing its mane like a horse, now building itself together like a wall, now shaking, now steady, but still the same wave, till at last it seems struck by something, and changes, one knows not how,--becomes another wave. the close of the line insists on this image, and paints it still more perfectly,--"foam that passed away." not merely melting, disappearing, but passing on, out of sight, on the career of the wave. then, having put the absolute ocean fact as far as he may before our eyes, the poet leaves us to feel about it as we may, and to trace for ourselves the opposite fact,--the image of the green mounds that do not change, and the white and written stones that do not pass away; and thence to follow out also the associated images of the calm life with the quiet grave, and the despairing life with the fading foam:-- "let no man move his bones." "as for samaria, her king is cut off like the foam upon the water." but nothing of this is actually told or pointed out, and the expressions, as they stand, are perfectly severe and accurate, utterly uninfluenced by the firmly governed emotion of the writer. even the word "mock" is hardly an exception, as it may stand merely for "deceive" or "defeat," without implying any impersonation of the waves. § . it may be well, perhaps, to give one or two more instances to show the peculiar dignity possessed by all passages which thus limit their expression to the pure fact, and leave the hearer to gather what he can from it. here is a notable one from the iliad. helen, looking from the scæan gate of troy over the grecian host, and telling priam the names of its captains, says at last:-- "i see all the other dark-eyed greeks; but two i cannot see,--castor and pollux,--whom one mother bore with me. have they not followed from fair lacedæmon, or have they indeed come in their sea-wandering ships, but now will not enter into the battle of men, fearing the shame and the scorn that is in me?" then homer:-- "so she spoke. but them, already, the life-giving earth possessed, there in lacedæmon, in the dear fatherland." note, here, the high poetical truth carried to the extreme. the poet has to speak of the earth in sadness, but he will not let that sadness affect or change his thoughts of it. no; though castor and pollux be dead, yet the earth is our mother still, fruitful, life-giving. these are the facts of the thing. i see nothing else than these. make what you will of them. § . take another very notable instance from casimir de la vigne's terrible ballad, "la toilette de constance." i must quote a few lines out of it here and there, to enable the reader who has not the book by him, to understand its close. "vite, anna, vite; au miroir plus vite, anna. l'heure s'avance, et je vais au bal ce soir chez l'ambassadeur de france. y pensez vous, ils sont fanés, ces noeuds, ils sont d'hier, mon dieu, comme tout passe! que du réseau qui retient mes cheveux les glands d'azur retombent avec grâce. plus haut! plus bas! vous ne comprenez rien! que sur mon front ce saphir étincelle: vous me piquez, mal-adroite. ah, c'est bien, bien,--chère anna! je t'aime, je suis belle. celui qu'en vain je voudrais oublier (anna, ma robe) il y sera, j'espère. (ah, fi, profane, est-ce là mon collier? quoi! ces grains d'or bénits par le saint père!) il y sera; dieu, s'il pressait ma main en y pensant, à peine je respire; père anselmo doit m'entendre demain, comment ferai-je, anna, pour tout lui dire? vite un coup d'oeil au miroir, le dernier.----j'ai l'assurance qu'on va m'adorer ce soir chez l'ambassadeur de france. près du foyer, constance s'admirait. dieu! sur sa robe il vole une étincelle! au feu. courez; quand l'espoir l'enivrait tout perdre ainsi! quoi! mourir,--et si belle! l'horrible feu ronge avec volupté ses bras, son sein, et l'entoure, et s'élève, et sans pitie dévore sa beauté, ses dixhuit ans, hélas, et son doux rêve! adieu, bal, plaisir, amour! on disait, pauvre constance! et on dansait, jusqu'au jour, chez l'ambassadeur de france." yes, that is the fact of it. right or wrong, the poet does not say. what you may think about it, he does not know. he has nothing to do with that. there lie the ashes of the dead girl in her chamber. there they danced, till the morning, at the ambassador's of france. make what you will of it. if the reader will look through the ballad, of which i have quoted only about the third part, he will find that there is not, from beginning to end of it, a single poetical (so called) expression, except in one stanza. the girl speaks as simple prose as may be; there is not a word she would not have actually used as she was dressing. the poet stands by, impassive as a statue, recording her words just as they come. at last the doom seizes her, and in the very presence of death, for an instant, his own emotions conquer him. he records no longer the facts only, but the facts as they seem to him. the fire gnaws with _voluptuousness--without pity_. it is soon past. the fate is fixed for ever; and he retires into his pale and crystalline atmosphere of truth. he closes all with the calm veracity, "they said, 'poor constance!'" § . now in this there is the exact type of the consummate poetical temperament. for, be it clearly and constantly remembered, that the greatness of a poet depends upon the two faculties, acuteness of feeling, and command of it. a poet is great, first in proportion to the strength of his passion, and then, that strength being granted, in proportion to his government of it; there being, however, always a point beyond which it would be inhuman and monstrous if he pushed this government, and, therefore, a point at which all feverish and wild fancy becomes just and true. thus the destruction of the kingdom of assyria cannot be contemplated firmly by a prophet of israel. the fact is too great, too wonderful. it overthrows him, dashes him into a confused element of dreams. all the world is, to his stunned thought, full of strange voices. "yea, the fir-trees rejoice at thee, and the cedars of lebanon, saying, 'since thou art gone down to the grave, no feller is come up against us.'" so, still more, the thought of the presence of deity cannot be borne without this great astonishment. "the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the fields shall clap their hands." § . but by how much this feeling is noble when it is justified by the strength of its cause, by so much it is ignoble when there is not cause enough for it; and beyond all other ignobleness is the mere affectation of it, in hardness of heart. simply bad writing may almost always, as above noticed, be known by its adoption of these fanciful metaphorical expressions, as a sort of current coin; yet there is even a worse, at least a more harmful, condition of writing than this, in which such expressions are not ignorantly and feelinglessly caught up, but, by some master, skilful in handling, yet insincere, deliberately wrought out with chill and studied fancy; as if we should try to make an old lava stream look red-hot again, by covering it with dead leaves, or white-hot, with hoar-frost. when young is lost in veneration, as he dwells on the character of a truly good and holy man, he permits himself for a moment to be overborne by the feeling so far as to exclaim-- "where shall i find him? angels, tell me where. you know him; he is near you; point him out. shall i see glories beaming from his brow, or trace his footsteps by the rising flowers?" this emotion has a worthy cause, and is thus true and right. but now hear the cold-hearted pope say to a shepherd girl-- "where'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade! trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade; your praise the birds shall chant in every grove, and winds shall waft it to the powers above. but would you sing, and rival orpheus' strain, the wondering forests soon should dance again; the moving mountains hear the powerful call, and headlong streams hang, listening, in their fall." this is not, nor could it for a moment be mistaken for, the language of passion. it is simple falsehood, uttered by hypocrisy; definite absurdity, rooted in affectation, and coldly asserted in the teeth of nature and fact. passion will indeed go far in deceiving itself; but it must be a strong passion, not the simple wish of a lover to tempt his mistress to sing. compare a very closely parallel passage in wordsworth, in which the lover has lost his mistress: "three years had barbara in her grave been laid, when thus his moan he made:-- 'oh, move, thou cottage, from behind yon oak, or let the ancient tree uprooted lie, that in some other way yon smoke may mount into the sky. if still behind yon pine-tree's ragged bough, headlong, the waterfall must come, oh, let it, then, be dumb-- be anything, sweet stream, but that which thou art now.'" here is a cottage to be moved, if not a mountain, and a waterfall to be silent, if it is not to hang listening; but with what different relation to the mind that contemplates them! here, in the extremity of its agony, the soul cries out wildly for relief, which at the same moment it partly knows to be impossible, but partly believes possible, in a vague impression that a miracle _might_ be wrought to give relief even to a less sore distress,--that nature is kind, and god is kind, and that grief is strong; it knows not well what _is_ possible to such grief. to silence a stream, to move a cottage wall,--one might think it could do as much as that! § . i believe these instances are enough to illustrate the main point i insist upon respecting the pathetic fallacy,--that so far as it _is_ a fallacy, it is always the sign of a morbid state of mind, and comparatively of a weak one. even in the most inspired prophet it is a sign of the incapacity of his human sight or thought to bear what has been revealed to it. in ordinary poetry, if it is found in the thoughts of the poet himself, it is at once a sign of his belonging to the inferior school; if in the thoughts of the characters imagined by him, it is right or wrong according to the genuineness of the emotion from which it springs; always, however, implying necessarily _some_ degree of weakness in the character. take two most exquisite instances from master hands. the jessy of shenstone, and the ellen of wordsworth, have both been betrayed and deserted. jessy, in the course of her most touching complaint, says: "if through the garden's flowery tribes i stray, where bloom the jasmines that could once allure, 'hope not to find delight in us,' they say, 'for we are spotless, jessy; we are pure.'" compare with this some of the words of ellen: "'ah, why,' said ellen, sighing to herself, 'why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge, and nature, that is kind in woman's breast, and reason, that in man is wise and good, and fear of him who is a righteous judge,-- why do not these prevail for human life, to keep two hearts together, that began their springtime with one love, and that have need of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet to grant, or be received; while that poor bird-- o, come and hear him! thou who hast to me been faithless, hear him;--though a lowly creature, one of god's simple children, that yet know not the universal parent, _how_ he sings! as if he wished the firmament of heaven should listen, and give back to him the voice of his triumphant constancy and love. the proclamation that he makes, how far his darkness doth transcend our fickle light.'" the perfection of both these passages, as far as regards truth and tenderness of imagination in the two poets, is quite insuperable. but, of the two characters imagined, jessy is weaker than ellen, exactly in so far as something appears to her to be in nature which is not. the flowers do not really reproach her. god meant them to comfort her, not to taunt her; they would do so if she saw them rightly. ellen, on the other hand, is quite above the slightest erring emotion. there is not the barest film of fallacy in all her thoughts. she reasons as calmly as if she did not feel. and, although the singing of the bird suggests to her the idea of its desiring to be heard in heaven, she does not for an instant admit any veracity in the thought. "as if," she says,--"i know he means nothing of the kind; but it does verily seem as if." the reader will find, by examining the rest of the poem, that ellen's character is throughout consistent in this clear though passionate strength. it then being, i hope, now made clear to the reader in all respects that the pathetic fallacy is powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is fallacious, and, therefore, that the dominion of truth is entire, over this, as over every other natural and just state of the human mind, we may go on to the subject for the dealing with which this prefatory inquiry became necessary; and why necessary, we shall see forthwith.[ ] [ ] it is quite true, that in all qualities involving sensation, there may be a doubt whether different people receive the same sensation from the same thing (compare part ii. sec. i. chap. v. § .); but, though this makes such facts not distinctly explicable, it does not alter the facts themselves. i derive a certain sensation, which i call sweetness, from sugar. that is a fact. another person feels a sensation, which _he_ also calls sweetness, from sugar. that is also a fact. the sugar's power to produce these two sensations, which we suppose to be, and which are, in all probability, very nearly the same in both of us, and, on the whole, in the human race, is its sweetness. [ ] in fact (for i may as well, for once, meet our german friends in their own style), all that has been subjected to us on this subject seems object to this great objection; that the subjection of all things (subject to no exceptions) to senses which are, in us, both subject and abject, and objects of perpetual contempt, cannot but make it our ultimate object to subject ourselves to the senses, and to remove whatever objections existed to such subjection. so that, finally, that which is the subject of examination or object of attention, uniting thus in itself the characters of subness and obness (so that, that which has no obness in it should be called sub-subjective, or a sub-subject, and that which has no subness in it should be called upper or ober-objective, or an ob-object); and we also, who suppose ourselves the objects of every arrangement, and are certainly the subjects of every sensual impression, thus uniting in ourselves, in an obverse or adverse manner, the characters of obness and subness, must both become metaphysically dejected or rejected, nothing remaining in _us_ objective, but subjectivity, and the very objectivity of the object being lost in the abyss of this subjectivity of the human. there is, however, some meaning in the above sentence, if the reader cares to make it out; but in a pure german sentence of the highest style there is often none whatever. see appendix ii. "german philosophy." [ ] contemplative, in the sense explained in part iii. sec. ii. chap. iv. [ ] holmes (oliver wendell), quoted by miss mitford in her recollections of a literary life. [ ] i admit two orders of poets, but no third; and by these two orders i mean the creative (shakspere, homer, dante), and reflective or perceptive (wordsworth, keats, tennyson). but both of these must be _first_-rate in their range, though their range is different; and with poetry second-rate in _quality_ no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. there is quite enough of the best,--much more than we can ever read or enjoy in the length of a life; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any person to encumber us with inferior work. i have no patience with apologies made by young pseudo-poets, "that they believe there is _some_ good in what they have written: that they hope to do better in time," etc. _some_ good! if there is not _all_ good, there is no good. if they ever hope to do better, why do they trouble us now? let them rather courageously burn all they have done, and wait for the better days. there are few men, ordinarily educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and afterwards polish it so as to be presentable. but men of sense know better than so to waste their time; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to fumble among them after him. nay, more than this; all inferior poetry is an injury to the good, inasmuch as it takes away the freshness of rhymes, blunders upon and gives a wretched commonalty to good thoughts; and, in general, adds to the weight of human weariness in a most woful and culpable manner. there are few thoughts likely to come across ordinary men, which have not already been expressed by greater men in the best possible way; and it is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world. [ ] "well said, old mole! can'st work i' the ground so fast?" [ ] i cannot quit this subject without giving two more instances, both exquisite, of the pathetic fallacy, which i have just come upon, in maude: "for a great speculation had fail'd; and ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair; and out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, and the _flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air_." "there has fallen a splendid tear from the passion-flower at the gate. _the red rose cries, 'she is near, she is near!'_ _and the white rose weeps, 'she is late.'_ _the larkspur listens, 'i hear, i hear!'_ _and the lily whispers, 'i wait.'_" chapter xiii. of classical landscape. § . my reason for asking the reader to give so much of his time to the examination of the pathetic fallacy was, that, whether in literature or in art, he will find it eminently characteristic of the modern mind; and in the landscape, whether of literature or art, he will also find the modern painter endeavoring to express something which he, as a living creature, imagines in the lifeless object, while the classical and mediæval painters were content with expressing the unimaginary and actual qualities of the object itself. it will be observed that, according to the principle stated long ago, i use the words painter and poet quite indifferently, including in our inquiry the landscape of literature, as well as that of painting; and this the more because the spirit of classical landscape has hardly been expressed in any other way than by words. § . taking, therefore, this wide field, it is surely a very notable circumstance, to begin with, that this pathetic fallacy is eminently characteristic of modern painting. for instance, keats, describing a wave, breaking, out at sea, says of it-- "down whose green back the short-lived foam, all hoar, bursts gradual, with a wayward indolence." that is quite perfect, as an example of the modern manner. the idea of the peculiar action with which foam rolls down a long, large wave could not have been given by any other words so well as by this "wayward indolence." but homer would never have written, never thought of, such words. he could not by any possibility have lost sight of the great fact that the wave, from the beginning to the end of it, do what it might, was still nothing else than salt water; and that salt water could not be either wayward or indolent. he will call the waves "over-roofed," "full-charged," "monstrous," "compact-black," "dark-clear," "violet-colored," "wine-colored," and so on. but every one of these epithets is descriptive of pure physical nature. "over-roofed" is the term he invariably uses of anything--rock, house, or wave--that nods over at the brow; the other terms need no explanation; they are as accurate and intense in truth as words can be, but they never show the slightest feeling of anything animated in the ocean. black or clear, monstrous or violet-colored, cold salt water it is always, and nothing but that. § . "well, but the modern writer, by his admission of the tinge of fallacy, has given an idea of something in the action of the wave which homer could not, and surely, therefore, has made a step in advance? also there appears to be a degree of sympathy and feeling in the one writer, which there is not in the other; and as it has been received for a first principle that writers are great in proportion to the intensity of their feelings, and homer seems to have no feelings about the sea but that it is black and deep, surely in this respect also the modern writer is the greater?" stay a moment. homer _had_ some feeling about the sea; a faith in the animation of it much stronger than keats's. but all this sense of something living in it, he separates in his mind into a great abstract image of a sea power. he never says the waves rage, or the waves are idle. but he says there is somewhat in, and greater than, the waves, which rages, and is idle, and _that_ he calls a god. § . i do not think we ever enough endeavor to enter into what a greek's real notion of a god was. we are so accustomed to the modern mockeries of the classical religion, so accustomed to hear and see the greek gods introduced as living personages, or invoked for help, by men who believe neither in them nor in any other gods, that we seem to have infected the greek ages themselves with the breath, and dimmed them with the shade, of our hypocrisy; and are apt to think that homer, as we know that pope, was merely an ingenious fabulist; nay, more than this, that all the nations of past time were ingenious fabulists also, to whom the universe was a lyrical drama, and by whom whatsoever was said about it was merely a witty allegory, or a graceful lie, of which the entire upshot and consummation was a pretty statue in the middle of the court, or at the end of the garden. this, at least, is one of our forms of opinion about greek faith; not, indeed, possible altogether to any man of honesty or ordinary powers of thought; but still so venomously inherent in the modern philosophy that all the pure lightning of carlyle cannot as yet quite burn it out of any of us. and then, side by side with this mere infidel folly, stands the bitter short-sightedness of puritanism, holding the classical god to be either simply an idol,--a block of stone ignorantly, though sincerely, worshipped,--or else an actual diabolic or betraying power, usurping the place of god. § . both these puritanical estimates of greek deity are of course to some extent true. the corruption of classical worship is barren idolatry; and that corruption was deepened, and variously directed to their own purposes, by the evil angels. but this was neither the whole, nor the principal part, of pagan worship. pallas was not, in the pure greek mind, merely a powerful piece of ivory in a temple at athens; neither was the choice of leonidas between the alternatives granted him by the oracle, of personal death, or ruin to his country, altogether a work of the devil's prompting. § . what, then, was actually the greek god? in what way were these two ideas of human form, and divine power, credibly associated in the ancient heart, so as to become a subject of true faith, irrespective equally of fable, allegory, superstitious trust in stone, and demoniacal influence? it seems to me that the greek had exactly the same instinctive feeling about the elements that we have ourselves; that to homer, as much as to casimir de la vigne, fire seemed ravenous and pitiless; to homer, as much as to keats, the sea-wave appeared wayward or idle, or whatever else it may be to the poetical passion. but then the greek reasoned upon this sensation, saying to himself: "i can light the fire, and put it out; i can dry this water up, or drink it. it cannot be the fire or the water that rages, or that is wayward. but it must be something _in_ this fire and _in_ the water, which i cannot destroy by extinguishing the one, or evaporating the other, any more than i destroy myself by cutting off my finger; _i_ was _in_ my finger,--something of me at least was; i had a power over it, and felt pain in it, though i am still as much myself when it is gone. so there may be a power in the water which is not water, but to which the water is as a body;--which can strike with it, move in it, suffer in it, yet not be destroyed in it. this something, this great water spirit, i must not confuse with the waves, which are only its body. _they_ may flow hither and thither, increase or diminish. _that_ must be indivisible--imperishable--a god. so of fire also; those rays which i can stop, and in the midst of which i cast a shadow, cannot be divine, nor greater than i. they cannot feel, but there may be something in them that feels,--a glorious intelligence, as much nobler and more swift than mine, as these rays, which are its body, are nobler and swifter than my flesh;--the spirit of all light, and truth, and melody, and revolving hours." § . it was easy to conceive, farther, that such spirits should be able to assume at will a human form, in order to hold intercourse with men, or to perform any act for which their proper body, whether fire, earth, or air, was unfitted. and it would have been to place them beneath, instead of above, humanity, if, assuming the form of man, they could not also have tasted his pleasures. hence the easy step to the more or less material ideas of deities, which are apt at first to shock us, but which are indeed only dishonorable so far as they represent the gods as false and unholy. it is not the materialism, but the vice, which degrades the conception; for the materialism itself is never positive or complete. there is always some sense of exaltation in the spiritual and immortal body; and of a power proceeding from the visible form through all the infinity of the element ruled by the particular god. the precise nature of the idea is well seen in the passage of the iliad which describes the river scamander defending the trojans against achilles. in order to remonstrate with the hero, the god assumes a human form, which nevertheless is in some way or other instantly recognized by achilles as that of the river-god: it is addressed at once as a river, not as a man; and its voice is the voice of a river, "out of the deep whirlpools."[ ] achilles refuses to obey its commands; and from the human form it returns instantly into its natural or divine one, and endeavors to overwhelm him with waves. vulcan defends achilles, and sends fire against the river, which suffers in its water-body, till it is able to bear no more. at last even the "nerve of the river," or "strength of the river" (note the expression), feels the fire, and this "strength of the river" addresses vulcan in supplications for respite. there is in this precisely the idea of a vital part of the river-body, which acted and felt, and which, if the fire reached it, was death, just as would be the case if it touched a vital part of the human body. throughout the passage the manner of conception is perfectly clear and consistent; and if, in other places, the exact connection between the ruling spirit and the thing ruled is not so manifest, it is only because it is almost impossible for the human mind to dwell long upon such subjects without falling into inconsistencies, and gradually slackening its effort to grasp the entire truth; until the more spiritual part of it slips from its hold, and only the human form of the god is left, to be conceived and described as subject to all the errors of humanity. but i do not believe that the idea ever weakens itself down to mere allegory. when pallas is said to attack and strike down mars, it does not mean merely that wisdom at that moment prevailed against wrath. it means that there are indeed two great spirits, one entrusted to guide the human soul to wisdom and chastity, the other to kindle wrath and prompt to battle. it means that these two spirits, on the spot where, and at the moment when, a great contest was to be decided between all that they each governed in man, then and there assumed human form, and human weapons, and did verily and materially strike at each other, until the spirit of wrath was crushed. and when diana is said to hunt with her nymphs in the woods, it does not mean merely as wordsworth puts it, that the poet or shepherd saw the moon and stars glancing between the branches of the trees, and wished to say so figuratively. it means that there is a living spirit, to which the light of the moon is a body; which takes delight in glancing between the clouds and following the wild beasts as they wander through the night; and that this spirit sometimes assumes a perfect human form, and in this form, with real arrows, pursues and slays the wild beasts, which with its mere arrows of moonlight it could not slay; retaining, nevertheless, all the while, its power, and being in the moonlight, and in all else that it rules. § . there is not the smallest inconsistency or unspirituality in this conception. if there were, it would attach equally to the appearance of the angels to jacob, abraham, joshua, or manoah. in all those instances the highest authority which governs our own faith requires us to conceive divine power clothed with a human form (a form so real that it is recognized for superhuman only by its "doing wondrously"), and retaining, nevertheless, sovereignty and omnipresence in all the world. this is precisely, as i understand it, the heathen idea of a god; and it is impossible to comprehend any single part of the greek mind until we grasp this faithfully, not endeavoring to explain it away in any wise, but accepting, with frank decision and definition, the tangible existence of its deities;--blue-eyed--white-fleshed--human-hearted,--capable at their choice of meeting man absolutely in his own nature--feasting with him--talking with him--fighting with him, eye to eye, or breast to breast, as mars with diomed; or else, dealing with him in a more retired spirituality, as apollo sending the plague upon the greeks, when his quiver rattles at his shoulders as he moves, and yet the darts sent forth of it strike not as arrows, but as plague; or, finally, retiring completely into the material universe which they properly inhabit, and dealing with man through that, as scamander with achilles through his waves. § . nor is there anything whatever in the various actions recorded of the gods, however apparently ignoble, to indicate weakness of belief in them. very frequently things which appear to us ignoble are merely the simplicities of a pure and truthful age. when juno beats diana about the ears with her own quiver, for instance, we start at first, as if homer could not have believed that they were both real goddesses. but what should juno have done? killed diana with a look? nay, she neither wished to do so, nor could she have done so, by the very faith of diana's goddess-ship. diana is as immortal as herself. frowned diana into submission? but diana has come expressly to try conclusions with her, and will by no means be frowned into submission. wounded her with a celestial lance? that sounds more poetical, but it is in reality partly more savage, and partly more absurd, than homer. more savage, for it makes juno more cruel, therefore less divine; and more absurd, for it only seems elevated in tone, because we use the word "celestial," which means nothing. what sort of a thing is a "celestial" lance? not a wooden one. of what then? of moonbeams, or clouds, or mist. well, therefore, diana's arrows were of mist too; and her quiver, and herself, and juno, with her lance, and all, vanish into mist. why not have said at once, if that is all you mean, that two mists met, and one drove the other back? that would have been rational and intelligible, but not to talk of celestial lances. homer had no such misty fancy; he believed the two goddesses were there in true bodies, with true weapons, on the true earth; and still i ask, what should juno have done? not beaten diana? no; for it is un-lady-like. un-english-lady-like, yes; but by no means un-greek-lady-like, nor even un-natural-lady-like. if a modern lady does _not_ beat her servant or her rival about the ears, it is oftener because she is too weak, or too proud, than because she is of purer mind than homer's juno. she will not strike them; but she will overwork the one or slander the other without pity; and homer would not have thought that one whit more goddess-like than striking them with her open hand. § . if, however, the reader likes to suppose that while the two goddesses in personal presence thus fought with arrow and quiver, there was also a broader and vaster contest supposed by homer between the elements they ruled; and that the goddess of the heavens, as she struck the goddess of the moon on the flushing cheek, was at the same instant exercising omnipresent power in the heavens themselves, and gathering clouds, with which, filled with the moon's own arrows or beams, she was encumbering and concealing the moon; he is welcome to this out-carrying of the idea, provided that he does not pretend to make it an interpretation instead of a mere extension, nor think to explain away my real, running, beautiful beaten diana, into a moon behind clouds.[ ] § . it is only farther to be noted, that the greek conception of godhead, as it was much more real than we usually suppose, so it was much more bold and familiar than to a modern mind would be possible. i shall have something more to observe, in a little while, of the danger of our modern habit of endeavoring to raise ourselves to something like comprehension of the truth of divinity, instead of simply believing the words in which the deity reveals himself to us. the greek erred rather on the other side, making hardly any effort to conceive divine mind as above the human; and no more shrinking from frank intercourse with a divine being, or dreading its immediate presence, than that of the simplest of mortals. thus atrides, enraged at his sword's breaking in his hand upon the helmet of paris, after he had expressly invoked the assistance of jupiter, exclaims aloud, as he would to a king who had betrayed him, "jove, father, there is not another god more evil-minded than thou!" and helen, provoked at paris's defeat, and oppressed with pouting shame both for him and for herself, when venus appears at her side, and would lead her back to the delivered paris, impatiently tells the goddess to "go and take care of paris herself." § . the modern mind is naturally, but vulgarly and unjustly, shocked by this kind of familiarity. rightly understood, it is not so much a sign of misunderstanding of the divine nature as of good understanding of the human. the greek lived, in all things, a healthy, and, in a certain degree, a perfect life. he had no morbid or sickly feeling of any kind. he was accustomed to face death without the slightest shrinking, to undergo all kinds of bodily hardship without complaint, and to do what he supposed right and honorable, in most cases, as a matter of course. confident of his own immortality, and of the power of abstract justice, he expected to be dealt with in the next world as was right, and left the matter much in his gods' hands; but being thus immortal, and finding in his own soul something which it seemed quite as difficult to master, as to rule the elements, he did not feel that it was an appalling superiority in those gods to have bodies of water, or fire, instead of flesh, and to have various work to do among the clouds and waves, out of his human way; or sometimes, even, in a sort of service to himself. was not the nourishment of herbs and flowers a kind of ministering to his wants? were not the gods in some sort his husbandmen, and spirit-servants? their mere strength or omnipresence did not seem to him a distinction absolutely terrific. it might be the nature of one being to be in two places at once, and of another to be only in one; but that did not seem of itself to infer any absolute lordliness of one nature above the other, any more than an insect must be a nobler creature than a man, because it can see on four sides of its head, and the man only in front. they could kill him or torture him, it was true; but even that not unjustly, or not for ever. there was a fate, and a divine justice, greater than they; so that if they did wrong, and he right, he might fight it out with them, and have the better of them at last. in a general way, they were wiser, stronger, and better than he; and to ask counsel of them, to obey them, to sacrifice to them, to thank them for all good, this was well; but to be utterly downcast before them, or not to tell them his mind in plain greek if they seemed to him to be conducting themselves in an ungodly manner,--this would not be well. § . such being their general idea of the gods, we can now easily understand the habitual tone of their feelings towards what was beautiful in nature. with us, observe, the idea of the divinity is apt to get separated from the life of nature; and imagining our god upon a cloudy throne, far above the earth, and not in the flowers or waters, we approach those visible things with a theory that they are dead, governed by physical laws, and so forth. but coming to them, we find the theory fail; that they are not dead; that, say what we choose about them, the instinctive sense of their being alive is too strong for us; and in scorn of all physical law, the wilful fountain sings, and the kindly flowers rejoice. and then, puzzled, and yet happy; pleased, and yet ashamed of being so; accepting sympathy from nature, which we do not believe it gives, and giving sympathy to nature, which we do not believe it receives,--mixing, besides, all manner of purposeful play and conceit with these involuntary fellowships,--we fall necessarily into the curious web of hesitating sentiment, pathetic fallacy, and wandering fancy, which form a great part of our modern view of nature. but the greek never removed his god out of nature at all; never attempted for a moment to contradict his instinctive sense that god was everywhere. "the tree _is_ glad," said he, "i know it is; i can cut it down; no matter, there was a nymph in it. the water _does_ sing," said he; "i can dry it up; but no matter, there was a naiad in it." but in thus clearly defining his belief, observe, he threw it entirely into a human form, and gave his faith to nothing but the image of his own humanity. what sympathy and fellowship he had, were always for the spirit _in_ the stream, not for the stream; always for the dryad _in_ the wood, not for the wood. content with this human sympathy, he approached the actual waves and woody fibres with no sympathy at all. the spirit that ruled them, he received as a plain fact. them, also, ruled and material, he received as plain facts; they, without their spirit, were dead enough. a rose was good for scent, and a stream for sound and coolness; for the rest, one was no more than leaves, the other no more than water; he could not make anything else of them; and the divine power, which was involved in their existence, having been all distilled away by him into an independent flora or thetis, the poor leaves or waves were left, in mere cold corporealness, to make the most of their being discernibly red and soft, clear and wet, and unacknowledged in any other power whatsoever. § . then, observe farther, the greeks lived in the midst of the most beautiful nature, and were as familiar with blue sea, clear air, and sweet outlines of mountain, as we are with brick walls, black smoke, and level fields. this perfect familiarity rendered all such scenes of natural beauty unexciting, if not indifferent, to them, by lulling and overwearying the imagination as far as it was concerned with such things; but there was another kind of beauty which they found it required effort to obtain, and which, when thoroughly obtained, seemed more glorious than any of this wild loveliness--the beauty of the human countenance and form. this, they perceived, could only be reached by continual exercise of virtue; and it was in heaven's sight, and theirs, all the more beautiful because it needed this self-denial to obtain it. so they set themselves to reach this, and having gained it, gave it their principal thoughts, and set it off with beautiful dress as best they might. but making this their object, they were obliged to pass their lives in simple exercise and disciplined employments. living wholesomely, giving themselves no fever fits, either by fasting or over-eating, constantly in the open air, and full of animal spirit and physical power, they became incapable of every morbid condition of mental emotion. unhappy love, disappointed ambition, spiritual despondency, or any other disturbing sensation, had little power over the well-braced nerves, and healthy flow of the blood; and what bitterness might yet fasten on them was soon boxed or raced out of a boy, and spun or woven out of a girl, or danced out of both. they had indeed their sorrows, true and deep, but still, more like children's sorrows than ours, whether bursting into open cry of pain, or hid with shuddering under the veil, still passing over the soul as clouds do over heaven, not sullying it, not mingling with it;--darkening it perhaps long or utterly, but still not becoming one with it, and for the most part passing away in dashing rain of tears, and leaving the man unchanged; in nowise affecting, as our sorrow does, the whole tone of his thought and imagination thenceforward. how far our melancholy may be deeper and wider than theirs, in its roots and view, and therefore nobler, we shall consider presently; but at all events, they had the advantage of us in being entirety free from all those dim and feverish sensations which result from unhealthy state of the body. i believe that a large amount of the dreamy and sentimental sadness, tendency to reverie, and general patheticalness of modern life results merely from derangement of stomach; holding to the greek life the same relation that the feverish night of an adult does to a child's sleep. § . farther. the human beauty, which, whether in its bodily being or in imagined divinity, had become, for the reasons we have seen, the principal object of culture and sympathy to these greeks, was, in its perfection, eminently orderly, symmetrical, and tender. hence, contemplating it constantly in this state, they could not but feel a proportionate fear of all that was disorderly, unbalanced, and rugged. having trained their stoutest soldiers into a strength so delicate and lovely, that their white flesh, with their blood upon it, should look like ivory stained with purple;[ ] and having always around them, in the motion and majesty of this beauty, enough for the full employment of their imagination, they shrank with dread or hatred from all the ruggedness of lower nature,--from the wrinkled forest bark, the jagged hill-crest, and irregular, inorganic storm of sky; looking to these for the most part as adverse powers, and taking pleasure only in such portions of the lower world as were at once conducive to the rest and health of the human frame, and in harmony with the laws of its gentler beauty. § . thus, as far as i recollect, without a single exception, every homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove. this ideal is very interestingly marked, as intended for a perfect one, in the fifth book of the odyssey; when mercury himself stops for a moment, though on a message, to look at a landscape "which even an immortal might be gladdened to behold." this landscape consists of a cave covered with a running vine, all blooming into grapes, and surrounded by a grove of alder, poplar, and sweet-smelling cypress. four fountains of white (foaming) water, springing _in succession_ (mark the orderliness), and close to one another, flow away in different directions, through a meadow full of violets and parsley (parsley, to mark its moisture, being elsewhere called "marsh-nourished," and associated with the lotus);[ ] the air is perfumed not only by these violets and by the sweet cypress, but by calypso's fire of finely chopped cedar wood, which sends a smoke as of incense, through the island; calypso herself is singing; and finally, upon the trees are resting, or roosting, owls, hawks, and "long-tongued sea-crows." whether these last are considered as a part of the ideal landscape, as marine singing-birds, i know not; but the approval of mercury appears to be elicited chiefly by the fountains and violet meadow. § . now the notable things in this description are, first, the evident subservience of the whole landscape to human comfort, to the foot, the taste, or the smell; and, secondly, that throughout the passage there is not a single figurative word expressive of the things being in any wise other than plain grass, fruit or flower. i have used the term "spring" of the fountains, because, without doubt, homer means that they sprang forth brightly, having their source at the foot of the rocks (as copious fountains nearly always have); but homer does not say "spring," he says simply flow, and uses only one word for "growing softly," or "richly," of the tall trees, the vine, and the violets. there is, however, some expression of sympathy with the sea-birds; he speaks of them in precisely the same terms, as in other places of naval nations, saying they "have care of the works of the sea." § . if we glance through the references to pleasant landscape which occur in other parts of the odyssey, we shall always be struck by this quiet subjection of their every feature to human service, and by the excessive similarity in the scenes. perhaps the spot intended, after this, to be most perfect, may be the garden of alcinous, where the principal ideas are, still more definitely, order, symmetry, and fruitfulness; the beds being duly ranged between rows of vines, which, as well as the pear, apple, and fig-trees, bear fruit continually, some grapes being yet sour, while others are getting black; there are plenty of "_orderly_ square beds of herbs," chiefly leeks, and two fountains, one running through the garden, and one under the pavement of the palace to a reservoir for the citizens. ulysses, pausing to contemplate this scene, is described nearly in the same terms as mercury pausing to contemplate the wilder meadow; and it is interesting to observe, that, in spite of all homer's love of symmetry, the god's admiration is excited by the free fountains, wild violets, and wandering vine; but the mortal's, by the vines in rows, the leeks in beds, and the fountains in pipes. ulysses has, however, one touching reason for loving vines in rows. his father had given him fifty rows for himself, when he was a boy, with corn between them (just as it now grows in italy). proving his identity afterwards to his father, whom he finds at work in his garden, "with thick gloves on, to keep his hands from the thorns," he reminds him of these fifty rows of vines, and of the "thirteen pear-trees and ten apple-trees" which he had given him; and laertes faints upon his neck. § . if ulysses had not been so much of a gardener, it might have been received as a sign of considerable feeling for landscape beauty, that, intending to pay the very highest possible compliment to the princess nausicaa (and having indeed, the moment before, gravely asked her whether she was a goddess or not), he says that he feels, at seeing her, exactly as he did when he saw the young palm-tree growing at apollo's shrine at delos. but i think the taste for trim hedges and upright trunks has its usual influence over him here also, and that he merely means to tell the princess that she is delightfully tall and straight. § . the princess is, however, pleased by his address, and tells him to wait outside the town, till she can speak to her father about him. the spot to which she directs him is another ideal piece of landscape, composed of a "beautiful grove of aspen poplars, a fountain, and a meadow," near the road-side; in fact, as nearly as possible such a scene as meets the eye of the traveller every instant on the much-despised lines of road through lowland france; for instance, on the railway between arras and amiens;--scenes, to my mind, quite exquisite in the various grouping and grace of their innumerable poplar avenues, casting sweet, tremulous shadows over their level meadows and labyrinthine streams. we know that the princess means aspen poplars, because soon afterwards we find her fifty maid-servants at the palace, all spinning, and in perpetual motion, compared to the "leaves of the tall poplar;" and it is with exquisite feeling that it is made afterwards[ ] the chief tree in the groves of proserpine; its light and quivering leafage having exactly the melancholy expression of fragility, faintness, and inconstancy which the ancients attributed to the disembodied spirit.[ ] the likeness to the poplars by the streams of amiens is more marked still in the iliad, where the young simois, struck by ajax, falls to the earth "like an aspen that has grown in an irrigated meadow, smooth-trunked, the soft shoots springing from its top, which some coach-making man has cut down with his keen iron, that he may fit a wheel of it to a fair chariot, and it lies parching by the side of the stream." it is sufficiently notable that homer, living in mountainous and rocky countries, dwells thus delightedly on all the _flat_ bits; and so i think invariably the inhabitants of mountain countries do, but the inhabitants of the plains do not, in any similar way, dwell delightedly on mountains. the dutch painters are perfectly contented with their flat fields and pollards: rubens, though he had seen the alps, usually composes his landscapes of a hayfield or two, plenty of pollards and willows, a distant spire, a dutch house with a moat about it, a windmill, and a ditch. the flemish sacred painters are the only ones who introduce mountains in the distance, as we shall see presently; but rather in a formal way than with any appearance of enjoyment. so shakspere never speaks of mountains with the slightest joy, but only of lowland flowers, flat fields, and warwickshire streams. and if we talk to the mountaineer, he will usually characterize his own country to us as a "pays affreux," or in some equivalent, perhaps even more violent, german term: but the lowland peasant does not think his country frightful; he either will have no ideas beyond it, or about it; or will think it a very perfect country, and be apt to regard any deviation from its general principle of flatness with extreme disfavor; as the lincolnshire farmer in alton locke: "i'll shaw 'ee some'at like a field o' beans, i wool--none o' this here darned ups and downs o' hills, to shake a body's victuals out of his inwards--all so vlat as a barn door, for vorty mile on end--there's the country to live in!" i do not say whether this be altogether right (though certainly not wholly wrong), but it seems to me that there must be in the simple freshness and fruitfulness of level land, in its pale upright trees, and gentle lapse of silent streams, enough for the satisfaction of the human mind in general; and i so far agree with homer, that if i had to educate an artist to the full perception of the meaning of the word "gracefulness" in landscape, i should send him neither to italy nor to greece, but simply to those poplar groves between arras and amiens. § . but to return more definitely to our homeric landscape. when it is perfect, we have, as in the above instances, the foliage and meadows together; when imperfect, it is always either the foliage or the meadow; preëminently the meadow, or arable field. thus, meadows of asphodel are prepared for the happier dead; and even orion, a hunter among the mountains in his lifetime, pursues the ghosts of beasts in these asphodel meadows after death.[ ] so the sirens sing in a meadow; and throughout the odyssey there is a general tendency to the depreciation of poor ithaca, because it is rocky, and only fit for goats, and has "no meadows;" for which reason telemachus refuses atrides's present of horses, congratulating the spartan king at the same time on ruling over a plain which has "plenty of lotus in it, and rushes," with corn and barley. note this constant dwelling on the marsh plants, or, at least, those which grow in flat and well-irrigated land, or beside streams: when scamander, for instance, is restrained by vulcan, homer says, very sorrowfully, that "all his lotus, and reeds, and rushes were burnt;" and thus ulysses, after being shipwrecked and nearly drowned, and beaten about the sea for many days and nights, on raft and mast, at last getting ashore at the mouth of a large river, casts himself down first upon its _rushes_, and then, in thankfulness, kisses the "corn-giving land," as most opposed, in his heart, to the fruitless and devouring sea.[ ] § . in this same passage, also, we find some peculiar expressions of the delight which the greeks had in trees, for, when ulysses first comes in sight of land, which gladdens him, "as the reviving of a father from his sickness gladdens his children," it is not merely the sight of the land itself which gives him such pleasure, but of the "land and _wood_." homer never throws away any words, at least in such a place as this; and what in another poet would have been merely the filling up of the deficient line with an otherwise useless word, is in him the expression of the general greek sense, that land of any kind was in nowise grateful or acceptable till there was _wood_ upon it (or corn; but the corn, in the flats, could not be seen so far as the black masses of forest on the hill sides), and that, as in being rushy and corn-giving, the low land, so in being woody, the high land, was most grateful to the mind of the man who for days and nights had been wearied on the engulphing sea. and this general idea of wood and corn, as the types of the fatness of the whole earth, is beautifully marked in another place of the odyssey,[ ] where the sailors in a desert island, having no flour or corn to offer as a meat offering with their sacrifices, take the leaves of the trees, and scatter them over the burnt offering instead. § . but still, every expression of the pleasure which ulysses has in this landing and resting, contains uninterruptedly the reference to the utility and sensible pleasantness of all things, not to their beauty. after his first grateful kiss given to the corn-growing land, he considers immediately how he is to pass the night: for some minutes hesitating whether it will be best to expose himself to the misty chill from the river, or run the risk of wild beasts in the wood. he decides for the wood, and finds in it a bower formed by a sweet and a wild olive tree, interlacing their branches, or--perhaps more accurately translating homer's intensely graphic expression--"changing their branches with each other" (it is very curious how often, in an entanglement of wood, one supposes the branches to belong to the wrong trees), and forming a roof penetrated by neither rain, sun, nor wind. under this bower ulysses collects the "_vain_ (or _frustrate_) outpouring of the dead leaves"--another exquisite expression, used elsewhere of useless grief or shedding of tears;--and, having got enough together, makes his bed of them, and goes to sleep, having covered himself up with them, "as embers are covered up with ashes." nothing can possibly be more intensely possessive of the _facts_ than this whole passage; the sense of utter deadness and emptiness, and frustrate fall in the leaves; of dormant life in the human body,--the fire, and heroism, and strength of it, lulled under the dead brown heap, as embers under ashes, and the knitting of interchanged and close strength of living boughs above. but there is not the smallest apparent sense of there being _beauty_ elsewhere than in the human being. the wreathed wood is admired simply as being a perfect roof for it; the fallen leaves only as being a perfect bed for it; and there is literally no more excitement of emotion in homer, as he describes them, nor does he expect us to be more excited or touched by hearing about them, than if he had been telling us how the chamber-maid at the bull aired the four-poster, and put on two extra blankets. § . now, exactly this same contemplation of subservience to human use makes the greek take some pleasure in _rocks_, when they assume one particular form, but one only--that of a _cave_. they are evidently quite frightful things to him under any other condition, and most of all if they are rough and jagged; but if smooth, looking "sculptured," like the sides of a ship, and forming a cave or shelter for him, he begins to think them endurable. hence, associating the ideas of rich and sheltering wood, sea, becalmed and made useful as a port by projecting promontories of rock, and smoothed caves or grottoes in the rocks themselves, we get the pleasantest idea which the greek could form of a landscape, next to a marsh with poplars in it; not, indeed, if possible, ever to be without these last: thus, in commending the cyclops' country as one possessed of every perfection, homer first says: "they have soft _marshy_ meadows near the sea, and good, rich, crumbling, ploughing-land, giving fine deep crops, and vines always giving fruit;" then, "a port so quiet, that they have no need of cables in it; and at the head of the port, a beautiful clear spring just _under a cave_, and _aspen poplars all round it_."[ ] § . this, it will be seen, is very nearly homer's usual "ideal;" but, going into the middle of the island, ulysses comes on a rougher and less agreeable bit, though still fulfilling certain required conditions of endurableness; a "cave shaded with laurels," which, having no poplars about it, is, however, meant to be somewhat frightful, and only fit to be inhabited by a cyclops. so in the country of the læstrygons, homer, preparing his reader gradually for something very disagreeable, represents the rocks as bare and "exposed to the sun;" only with some smooth and slippery roads over them, by which the trucks bring down wood from the higher hills. any one familiar with swiss slopes of hills must remember how often he has descended, sometimes faster than was altogether intentional, by these same slippery woodman's track roads. and thus, in general, whenever the landscape is intended to be lovely, it verges towards the ploughed land and poplars; or, at worst, to _woody_ rocks; but, if intended to be painful, the rocks are bare and "sharp." this last epithet, constantly used by homer for mountains, does not altogether correspond, in greek, to the english term, nor is it intended merely to characterize the sharp mountain summits; for it never would be applied simply to the edge or point of a sword, but signifies rather "harsh," "bitter," or "painful," being applied habitually to fate, death, and in od. ii. . to a halter; and, as expressive of general objectionableness and unpleasantness, to all high, dangerous, or peaked mountains, as the maleian promontory (a much dreaded one), the crest of parnassus, the tereian mountain, and a grim or untoward, though, by keeping off the force of the sea, protective, rock at the mouth of the jardanus; as well as habitually to inaccessible or impregnable fortresses built on heights. § . in all this i cannot too strongly mark the utter absence of any trace of the feeling for what we call the picturesque, and the constant dwelling of the writer's mind on what was available, pleasant, or useful; his ideas respecting all landscape being not uncharacteristically summed, finally, by pallas herself; when, meeting ulysses, who after his long wandering does not recognize his own country, and meaning to describe it as politely and soothingly as possible, she says:[ ]--"this ithaca of ours is, indeed, a rough country enough, and not good for driving in; but, still, things might be worse: it has plenty of corn, and good wine, and _always rain_, and soft nourishing dew; and it has good feeding for goats and oxen, and all manner of wood, and springs fit to drink at all the year round." we shall see presently how the blundering, pseudo-picturesque, pseudo-classical minds of claude and the renaissance landscape painters, wholly missing homer's practical common sense, and equally incapable of feeling the quiet natural grace and sweetness of his asphodel meadows, tender aspen poplars, or running vines,--fastened on his _ports_ and _caves_, as the only available features of his scenery; and appointed the type of "classical landscape" thenceforward to consist in a bay of insipid sea, and a rock with a hole through it.[ ] § . it may indeed be thought that i am assuming too hastily that this was the general view of the greeks respecting landscape, because it was homer's. but i believe the true mind of a nation, at any period, is always best ascertainable by examining that of its greatest men; and that simpler and truer results will be attainable for us by simply comparing homer, dante, and walter scott, than by attempting (what my limits must have rendered absurdly inadequate, and in which, also, both my time and knowledge must have failed me) an analysis of the landscape in the range of contemporary literature. all that i can do, is to state the general impression which has been made upon me by my desultory reading, and to mark accurately the grounds for this impression, in the works of the greatest men. now it is quite true that in others of the greeks, especially in Æschylus and aristophanes, there is infinitely more of modern feeling, of pathetic fallacy, love of picturesque or beautiful form, and other such elements, than there is in homer; but then these appear to me just the parts of them which were not greek, the elements of their minds by which (as one division of the human race always must be with subsequent ones) they are connected with the mediævals and moderns. and without doubt, in his influence over future mankind, homer is eminently the greek of greeks; if i were to associate any one with him it would be herodotus, and i believe all i have said of the homeric landscape will be found equally true of the herodotean, as assuredly it will be of the platonic; the contempt, which plato sometimes expresses by the mouth of socrates, for the country in general, except so far as it is shady, and has cicadas and running streams to make pleasant noises in it, being almost ludicrous. but homer is the great type, and the more notable one because of his influence on virgil, and, through him, on dante, and all the after ages: and in like manner, if we can get the abstract of mediæval landscape out of dante, it will serve us as well as if we had read all the songs of the troubadours, and help us to the farther changes in derivative temper, down to all modern time. § . i think, therefore, the reader may safely accept the conclusions about greek landscape which i have got for him out of homer; and in these he will certainly perceive something very different from the usual imaginations we form of greek feelings. we think of the greeks as poetical, ideal, imaginative, in the way that a modern poet or novelist is; supposing that their thoughts about their mythology and world were as visionary and artificial as ours are: but i think the passages i have quoted show that it was not so, although it may be difficult for us to apprehend the strange minglings in them of the elements of faith, which, in our days, have been blended with other parts of human nature in a totally different guise. perhaps the greek mind may be best imagined by taking, as its groundwork, that of a good, conscientious, but illiterate, scotch presbyterian border farmer of a century or two back, having perfect faith in the bodily appearances of satan and his imps; and in all kelpies, brownies, and fairies. substitute for the indignant terrors in this man's mind, a general persuasion of the _divinity_, more or less beneficent, yet faultful, of all these beings; that is to say, take away his belief in the demoniacal malignity of the fallen spiritual world, and lower, in the same degree, his conceptions of the angelical, retaining for him the same firm faith in both; keep his ideas about flowers and beautiful scenery much as they are,--his delight in regular ploughed land and meadows, and a neat garden (only with rows of gooseberry bushes instead of vines,) being, in all probability, about accurately representative of the feelings of ulysses; then, let the military spirit that is in him, glowing against the border forager, or the foe of old flodden and chevy-chase, be made more principal, with a higher sense of nobleness in soldiership, not as a careless excitement, but a knightly duty; and increased by high cultivation of every personal quality, not of mere shaggy strength, but graceful strength, aided by a softer climate, and educated in all proper harmony of sight and sound: finally, instead of an informed christian, suppose him to have only the patriarchal jewish knowledge of the deity, and even this obscured by tradition, but still thoroughly solemn and faithful, requiring his continual service as a priest of burnt sacrifice and meat offering; and i think we shall get a pretty close approximation to the vital being of a true old greek; some slight difference still existing in a feeling which the scotch farmer would have of a pleasantness in blue hills and running streams, wholly wanting in the greek mind; and perhaps also some difference of views on the subjects of truth and honesty. but the main points, the easy, athletic, strongly logical and argumentative, yet fanciful and credulous, characters of mind, would be very similar in both; and the most serious change in the substance of the stuff among the modifications above suggested as necessary to turn the scot into the greek, is that effect of softer climate and surrounding luxury, inducing the practice of various forms of polished art,--the more polished, because the practical and realistic tendency of the hellenic mind (if my interpretation of it be right) would quite prevent it from taking pleasure in any irregularities of form, or imitations of the weeds and wildnesses of that mountain nature with which it thought itself born to contend. in its utmost refinement of work, it sought eminently for orderliness; carried the principle of the leeks in squares, and fountains in pipes, perfectly out in its streets and temples; formalized whatever decoration it put into its minor architectural mouldings, and reserved its whole heart and power to represent the action of living men, or gods, though not unconscious meanwhile, of "the simple, the sincere delight; the habitual scene of hill and dale the rural herds, the vernal gale; the tangled vetches' purple bloom; the fragrance of the bean's perfume,-- theirs, theirs alone, who cultivate the soil, and drink the cup of thirst, and eat the bread of toil." [ ] compare lay of the last minstrel, canto i. stanza ., and canto v. stanza . in the first instance, the river-spirit is accurately the homeric god, only homer would have believed in it,--scott did not; at least not altogether. [ ] compare the exquisite lines of longfellow on the sunset in the golden legend:-- "the day is done, and slowly from the scene the stooping sun upgathers his spent shafts, and puts them back into his golden quiver." [ ] iliad iv. . [ ] iliad ii. . [ ] odyssey, x. . [ ] compare the passage in dante referred to above, chap. xii. § . [ ] odyssey, xi. . xxiv. . the couch of ceres, with homer's usual faithfulness, is made of a _ploughed_ field, v. . [ ] odyssey, v. . [ ] odyssey, xii. . [ ] odyssey, ix. . &c. hence milton's "from haunted spring, and dale, edged with poplar pale." [ ] odyssey, xiii. . &c. [ ] educated, as we shall see hereafter, first in this school, turner gave the hackneyed composition a strange power and freshness, in his glaucus and scylla. chapter xiv. of mediÆval landscape:--first, the fields. § . in our examination of the spirit of classical landscape, we were obliged to confine ourselves to what is left to us in written description. some interesting results might indeed have been obtained by examining the egyptian and ninevite landscape sculpture, but in nowise conclusive enough to be worth the pains of the inquiry; for the landscape of sculpture is necessarily confined in range, and usually inexpressive of the complete feelings of the workman, being introduced rather to explain the place and circumstances of events, than for its own sake. in the middle ages, however, the case is widely different. we have written landscape, sculptured landscape, and painted landscape, all bearing united testimony to the tone of the national mind in almost every remarkable locality of europe. § . that testimony, taken in its breadth, is very curiously conclusive. it marks the mediæval mind as agreeing altogether with the ancients, in holding that flat land, brooks, and groves of aspens, compose the pleasant places of the earth, and that rocks and mountains are, for inhabitation, altogether to be reprobated and detested; but as disagreeing with the classical mind totally in this other most important respect, that the pleasant flat land is never a ploughed field, nor a rich lotus meadow good for pasture, but _garden_ ground covered with flowers, and divided by fragrant hedges, with a castle in the middle of it. the aspens are delighted in, not because they are good for "coach-making men" to make cart-wheels of, but because they are shady and graceful; and the fruit-trees, covered with delicious fruit, especially apple and orange, occupy still more important positions in the scenery. singing-birds--not "sea-crows," but nightingales[ ]--perch on every bough; and the ideal occupation of mankind is not to cultivate either the garden or the meadow, but to gather roses and eat oranges in the one, and ride out hawking over the other. finally, mountain scenery, though considered as disagreeable for general inhabitation, is always introduced as being proper to meditate in, or to encourage communion with higher beings; and in the ideal landscape of daily life, mountains are considered agreeable things enough, so that they be far enough away. in this great change there are three vital points to be noticed. [sidenote: § . three essential characters: . pride in idleness.] the first, the disdain of agricultural pursuits by the nobility; a fatal change, and one gradually bringing about the ruin of that nobility. it is expressed in the mediæval landscape by the eminently pleasurable and horticultural character of everything; by the fences, hedges, castle walls, and masses of useless, but lovely flowers, especially roses. the knights and ladies are represented always as singing, or making love, in these pleasant places. the idea of setting an old knight, like laertes (whatever his state of fallen fortune), "with thick gloves on to keep his hands from the thorns," to prune a row of vines, would have been regarded as the most monstrous violation of the decencies of life; and a senator, once detected in the home employments of cincinnatus, could, i suppose, thenceforward hardly have appeared in society. [sidenote: § . . poetical observance of nature.] the second vital point is the evidence of a more sentimental enjoyment of external nature. a greek, wishing really to enjoy himself, shut himself into a beautiful atrium, with an excellent dinner, and a society of philosophical or musical friends. but a mediæval knight went into his pleasance, to gather roses and hear the birds sing; or rode out hunting or hawking. his evening feast, though riotous enough sometimes, was not the height of his day's enjoyment; and if the attractions of the world are to be shown typically to him, as opposed to the horrors of death, they are never represented by a full feast in a chamber, but by a delicate dessert in an orange grove, with musicians under the trees; or a ride on a may morning, hawk on fist. this change is evidently a healthy, and a very interesting one. [sidenote: § . . disturbed conscience.] the third vital point is the marked sense that this hawking and apple-eating are not altogether right; that there is something else to be done in the world than that; and that the mountains, as opposed to the pleasant garden-ground, are places where that other something may best be learned;--which is evidently a piece of infinite and new respect for the mountains, and another healthy change in the tone of the human heart. let us glance at the signs and various results of these changes, one by one. [sidenote: § . derivative characters: . love of flowers.] the two first named, evil and good as they are, are very closely connected. the more poetical delight in external nature proceeds just from the fact that it is no longer looked upon with the eye of the farmer; and in proportion as the herbs and flowers cease to be regarded as useful, they are felt to be charming. leeks are not now the most important objects in the garden, but lilies and roses; the herbage which a greek would have looked at only with a view to the number of horses it would feed, is regarded by the mediæval knight as a green carpet for fair feet to dance upon, and the beauty of its softness and color is proportionally felt by him; while the brook, which the greek rejoiced to dismiss into a reservoir under the palace threshold, would be, by the mediæval, distributed into pleasant pools, or forced into fountains; and regarded alternately as a mirror for fair faces, and a witchery to ensnare the sunbeams and the rainbow. [sidenote: § . . less definite gratitude to god.] and this change of feeling involves two others, very important. when the flowers and grass were regarded as means of life, and therefore (as the thoughtful laborer of the soil must always regard them) with the reverence due to those gifts of god which were most necessary to his existence; although their own beauty was less felt, their proceeding from the divine hand was more seriously acknowledged, and the herb yielding seed, and fruit-tree yielding fruit, though in themselves less admired, were yet solemnly connected in the heart with the reverence of ceres, pomona, or pan. but when the sense of these necessary uses was more or less lost, among the upper classes, by the delegation of the art of husbandry to the hands of the peasant, the flower and fruit, whose bloom or richness thus became a mere source of pleasure, were regarded with less solemn sense of the divine gift in them; and were converted rather into toys than treasures, chance gifts for gaiety, rather than promised rewards of labor; so that while the greek could hardly have trodden the formal furrow, or plucked the clusters from the trellised vine, without reverent thoughts of the deities of field and leaf, who gave the seed to fructify, and the bloom to darken, the mediæval knight plucked the violet to wreathe in his lady's hair, or strewed the idle rose on the turf at her feet, with little sense of anything in the nature that gave them, but a frail, accidental, involuntary exuberance; while also the jewish sacrificial system being now done away, as well as the pagan mythology, and, with it, the whole conception of meat offering or firstfruits offering, the chiefest seriousness of all the thoughts connected with the gifts of nature faded from the minds of the classes of men concerned with art and literature; while the peasant, reduced to serf level, was incapable of imaginative thought, owing to his want of general cultivation. but on the other hand, exactly in proportion as the idea of definite spiritual presence in material nature was lost, the mysterious sense of _unaccountable_ life in the things themselves would be increased, and the mind would instantly be laid open to all those currents of fallacious, but pensive and pathetic sympathy, which we have seen to be characteristic of modern times. [sidenote: § . gloom caused by enforced solitude.] farther: a singular difference would necessarily result from the far greater loneliness of baronial life, deprived as it was of all interest in agricultural pursuits. the palace of a greek leader in early times might have gardens, fields, and farms around it, but was sure to be near some busy city or sea-port: in later times, the city itself became the principal dwelling-place, and the country was visited only to see how the farm went on, or traversed in a line of march. far other was the life of the mediæval baron, nested on his solitary jut of crag; entering into cities only occasionally for some grave political or warrior's purpose, and, for the most part, passing the years of his life in lion-like isolation; the village inhabited by his retainers straggling indeed about the slopes of the rocks at his feet, but his own dwelling standing gloomily apart, between them and the uncompanionable clouds, commanding, from sunset to sunrise, the flowing flame of some calm unvoyaged river, and the endless undulation of the untraversable hills. how different must the thoughts about nature have been, of the noble who lived among the bright marble porticos of the greek groups of temple or palace,--in the midst of a plain covered with corn and olives, and by the shore of a sparkling and freighted sea,--from those of the master of some mountain promontory in the green recesses of northern europe, watching night by night, from amongst his heaps of storm-broken stone, rounded into towers, the lightning of the lonely sea flash round the sands of harlech, or the mists changing their shapes forever, among the changeless pines, that fringe the crests of jura. [sidenote: § . and frequent pilgrimage.] nor was it without similar effect on the minds of men that their journeyings and pilgrimages became more frequent than those of the greek, the extent of ground traversed in the course of them larger, and the mode of travel more companionless. to the greek, a voyage to egypt, or the hellespont, was the subject of lasting fame and fable, and the forests of the danube and the rocks of sicily closed for him the gates of the intelligible world. what parts of that narrow world he crossed were crossed with fleets or armies; the camp always populous on the plain, and the ships drawn in cautious symmetry around the shore. but to the mediæval knight, from scottish moor to syrian sand, the world was one great exercise ground, or field of adventure; the staunch pacing of his charger penetrated the pathlessness of outmost forest, and sustained the sultriness of the most secret desert. frequently alone,--or, if accompanied, for the most part only by retainers of lower rank, incapable of entering into complete sympathy with any of his thoughts,--he must have been compelled often to enter into dim companionship with the silent nature around him, and must assuredly sometimes have talked to the wayside flowers of his love, and to the fading clouds of his ambition. [sidenote: . dread of mountains.] § . but, on the other hand, the idea of retirement from the world for the sake of self-mortification, of combat with demons, or communion with angels, and with their king,--authoritatively commended as it was to all men by the continual practice of christ himself,--gave to all mountain solitude at once a sanctity and a terror, in the mediæval mind, which were altogether different from anything that it had possessed in the un-christian periods. on the one side, there was an idea of sanctity attached to rocky wilderness, because it had always been among hills that the deity had manifested himself most intimately to men, and to the hills that his saints had nearly always retired for meditation, for especial communion with him, and to prepare for death. men acquainted with the history of moses, alone at horeb, or with israel at sinai,--of elijah by the brook cherith, and in the horeb cave; of the deaths of moses and aaron on hor and nebo; of the preparation of jephthah's daughter for her death among the judea mountains; of the continual retirement of christ himself to the mountains for prayer, his temptation in the desert of the dead sea, his sermon on the hills of capernaum, his transfiguration on the crest of tabor, and his evening and morning walks over olivet for the four or five days preceding his crucifixion,--were not likely to look with irreverent or unloving eyes upon the blue hills that girded their golden horizon, or drew upon them the mysterious clouds out of the height of the darker heaven. but with this impression of their greater sanctity was involved also that of a peculiar terror. in all this,--their haunting by the memories of prophets, the presences of angels, and the everlasting thoughts and words of the redeemer,--the mountain ranges seemed separated from the active world, and only to be fitly approached by hearts which were condemnatory of it. just in so much as it appeared necessary for the noblest men to retire to the hill-recesses before their missions could be accomplished or their spirits perfected, in so far did the daily world seem by comparison to be pronounced profane and dangerous; and to those who loved that world, and its work, the mountains were thus voiceful with perpetual rebuke, and necessarily contemplated with a kind of pain and fear, such as a man engrossed by vanity feels at being by some accident forced to hear a startling sermon, or to assist at a funeral service. every association of this kind was deepened by the practice and the precept of the time; and thousands of hearts, which might otherwise have felt that there was loveliness in the wild landscape, shrank from it in dread, because they knew that the monk retired to it for penance, and the hermit for contemplation. the horror which the greek had felt for hills only when they were uninhabitable and barren, attached itself now to many of the sweetest spots of earth; the feeling was conquered by political interests, but never by admiration; military ambition seized the frontier rock, or maintained itself in the unassailable pass; but it was only for their punishment, or in their despair, that men consented to tread the crocused slopes of the chartreuse, or the soft glades and dewy pastures of vallombrosa. § . in all these modifications of temper and principle there appears much which tends to passionate, affectionate, or awe-struck observance of the features of natural scenery, closely resembling, in all but this superstitious dread of mountains, our feelings at the present day. but _one_ character which the mediævals had in common with the ancients, and that exactly the most eminent character in both, opposed itself steadily to all the feelings we have hitherto been examining,--the admiration, namely, and constant watchfulness, of human beauty. exercised in nearly the same manner as the greeks, from their youth upwards, their countenances were cast even in a higher mould; for, although somewhat less regular in feature, and affected by minglings of northern bluntness and stolidity of general expression, together with greater thinness of lip and shaggy formlessness of brow, these less sculpturesque features were, nevertheless, touched with a seriousness and refinement proceeding first from the modes of thought inculcated by the christian religion, and secondly from their more romantic and various life. hence a degree of personal beauty, both male and female, was attained in the middle ages, with which classical periods could show nothing for a moment comparable; and this beauty was set forth by the most perfect splendor, united with grace, in dress, which the human race have hitherto invented. the strength of their art-genius was directed in great part to this object; and their best workmen and most brilliant fanciers were employed in wreathing the mail or embroidering the robe. the exquisite arts of enamelling and chasing metal enabled them to make the armor as radiant and delicate as the plumage of a tropical bird; and the most various and vivid imaginations were displayed in the alternations of color, and fiery freaks of form, on shield and crest; so that of all the beautiful things which the eyes of men could fall upon, in the world about them, the most beautiful must have been a young knight riding out in morning sunshine, and in faithful hope. "his broad, clear brow in sunlight glowed; on burnished hooves his war-horse trode; from underneath his helmet flowed his coal-black curls, as on he rode. all in the blue, unclouded weather, thick jewelled shone the saddle leather; the helmet and the helmet feather burned like one burning flame together; and the gemmy bridle glittered free, like to some branch of stars we see hung in the golden galaxy." [sidenote: § . . care for human beauty.] now, the effect of this superb presence of human beauty on men in general was, exactly as it had been in greek times, first, to turn their thoughts and glances in great part away from all other beauty but that, and to make the grass of the field take to them always more or less the aspect of a carpet to dance upon, a lawn to tilt upon, or a serviceable crop of hay; and, secondly, in what attention they paid to this lower nature, to make them dwell exclusively on what was graceful, symmetrical, and bright in color. all that was rugged, rough, dark, wild, unterminated, they rejected at once, as the domain of "salvage men" and monstrous giants: all that they admired was tender, bright, balanced, enclosed, symmetrical--only symmetrical in the noble and free sense: for what we moderns call "symmetry," or "balance," differs as much from mediæval symmetry as the poise of a grocer's scales, or the balance of an egyptian mummy with its hands tied to its sides, does from the balance of a knight on his horse, striking with the battle-axe, at the gallop; the mummy's balance looking wonderfully perfect, and yet sure to be one-sided if you weigh the dust of it,--the knight's balance swaying and changing like the wind, and yet as true and accurate as the laws of life. [sidenote: § . . symmetrical government of design.] and this love of symmetry was still farther enhanced by the peculiar duties required of art at the time; for, in order to fit a flower or leaf for inlaying in armor, or showing clearly in glass, it was absolutely necessary to take away its complexity, and reduce it to the condition of a disciplined and orderly pattern; and this the more, because, for all military purposes, the device, whatever it was, had to be distinctly intelligible at extreme distance. that it should be a good imitation of nature, when seen near, was of no moment; but it was of highest moment that when first the knight's banner flashed in the sun at the turn of the mountain road, or rose, torn and bloody, through the drift of the battle dust, it should still be discernible what the bearing was. "at length, the freshening western blast aside the shroud of battle cast; and first the ridge of mingled spears above the brightening cloud appears; and in the smoke the pennons flew, as in the storm the white sea-mew; then marked they, dashing broad and far the broken billows of the war. wide raged the battle on the plain; spears shook, and falchions flashed amain, fell england's arrow-flight like rain; crests rose, and stooped, and rose again, wild and disorderly. amidst the scene of tumult, high, _they saw lord marmion's falcon fly, and stainless tunstall's banner white, and edmund howard's lion bright._" it was needed, not merely that they should see it was a falcon, but lord marmion's falcon; not only a lion, but the howard's lion. hence, to the one imperative end of _intelligibility_, every minor resemblance to nature was sacrificed, and above all, the _curved_, which are chiefly the confusing lines; so that the straight, elongated back, doubly elongated tail, projected and separate claws, and other rectilinear unnaturalnesses of form, became the means by which the leopard was, in midst of the mist and storm of battle, distinguished from the dog, or the lion from the wolf; the most admirable fierceness and vitality being, in spite of these necessary changes (so often shallowly sneered at by the modern workman), obtained by the old designer. farther, it was necessary to the brilliant harmony of color, and clear setting forth of everything, that all confusing shadows, all dim and doubtful lines should be rejected: hence at once an utter denial of natural appearances by the great body of workmen; and a calm rest in a practice of representation which would make either boar or lion blue, scarlet, or golden, according to the device of the knight, or the need of such and such a color in that place of the pattern; and which wholly denied that any substance ever cast a shadow, or was affected by any kind of obscurity. [sidenote: § . . therefore, inaccurate rendering of nature.] all this was in its way, and for its end, absolutely right, admirable, and delightful; and those who despise it, laugh at it, or derive no pleasure from it, are utterly ignorant of the highest principles of art, and are mere tyros and beginners in the practice of color. but, admirable though it might be, one necessary result of it was a farther withdrawal of the observation of men from the refined and subtle beauty of nature; so that the workman who first was led to think _lightly_ of natural beauty, as being subservient to human, was next led to think _inaccurately_ of natural beauty, because he had continually to alter and simplify it for his practical purposes. § . now, assembling all these different sources of the peculiar mediæval feeling towards nature in one view, we have: st. love of the garden instead of love of the farm, leading to a sentimental contemplation of nature, instead of a practical and agricultural one. (§§ . . .) nd. loss of sense of actual divine presence, leading to fancies of fallacious animation, in herbs, flowers, clouds, &c. (§ .) rd. perpetual, and more or less undisturbed, companionship with wild nature. (§§ . .) th. apprehension of demoniacal and angelic presence among mountains, leading to a reverent dread of them. (§ .) th. principalness of delight in human beauty, leading to comparative contempt of natural objects. (§ .) th. consequent love of order, light, intelligibility, and symmetry, leading to dislike of the wildness, darkness, and mystery of nature. (§ .) th. inaccuracy of observance of nature, induced by the habitual practice of change on its forms. (§ .) from these mingled elements, we should necessarily expect to find resulting, as the characteristic of mediæval landscape art, compared with greek, a far higher sentiment about it, and affection for it, more or less subdued by still greater respect for the loveliness of man, and therefore subordinated entirely to human interests; mingled with curious traces of terror, piety, or superstition, and cramped by various formalisms,--some wise and necessary, some feeble, and some exhibiting needless ignorance and inaccuracy. under these lights, let us examine the facts. § . the landscape of the middle ages is represented in a central manner by the illuminations of the mss. of romances, executed about the middle of the fifteenth century. on one side of these stands the earlier landscape work, more or less treated as simple decoration; on the other, the later landscape work, becoming more or less affected with modern ideas and modes of imitation. these central fifteenth century landscapes are almost invariably composed of a grove or two of tall trees, a winding river, and a castle, or a garden: the peculiar feature of both these last being _trimness_; the artist always dwelling especially on the fences; wreathing the espaliers indeed prettily with sweet-briar, and putting pots of orange-trees on the tops of the walls, but taking great care that there shall be no loose bricks in the one, nor broken stakes in the other,--the trouble and ceaseless warfare of the times having rendered security one of the first elements of pleasantness, and making it impossible for any artist to conceive paradise but as surrounded by a moat, or to distinguish the road to it better than by its narrow wicket gate, and watchful porter. § . one of these landscapes is thus described by macaulay: "we have an exact square, enclosed by the rivers pison, gihon, hiddekel, and euphrates, each with a convenient bridge in the centre; rectangular beds of flowers; a long canal neatly bricked and railed in; the tree of knowledge, clipped like one of the limes behind the tuileries, standing in the centre of the grand alley; the snake turned round it, the man on the right hand, the woman on the left, and the beasts drawn up in an exact circle round them." all this is perfectly true; and seems in the description very curiously foolish. the only curious folly, however, in the matter is the exquisite _naïveté_ of the historian, in supposing that the quaint landscape indicates in the understanding of the painter so marvellous an inferiority to his own; whereas, it is altogether his own wit that is at fault, in not comprehending that nations, whose youth had been decimated among the sands and serpents of syria, knew probably nearly as much about eastern scenery as youths trained in the schools of the modern royal academy; and that this curious symmetry was entirely symbolic, only more or less modified by the various instincts which i have traced above. mr. macaulay is evidently quite unaware that the serpent with the human head, and body twisted round the tree, was the universally accepted symbol of the evil angel, from the dawn of art up to michael angelo; that the greatest sacred artists invariably place the man on the one side of the tree, the woman on the other, in order to denote the enthroned and balanced dominion about to fall by temptation; that the beasts are ranged (when they _are_ so, though this is much more seldom the case,) in a circle round them, expressly to mark that they were then not wild, but obedient, intelligent, and orderly beasts; and that the four rivers are trenched and enclosed on the four sides, to mark that the waters which now wander in waste, and destroy in fury, had then for their principal office to "water the garden" of god. the description is, however, sufficiently apposite and interesting, as bearing upon what i have noted respecting the eminent _fence_-loving spirit of the mediævals. § . together with this peculiar formality, we find an infinite delight in drawing pleasant flowers, always articulating and outlining them completely; the sky is always blue, having only a few delicate white clouds in it, and in the distance are blue mountains, very far away, if the landscape is to be simply delightful; but brought near, and divided into quaint overhanging rocks, if it is intended to be meditative, or a place of saintly seclusion. but the whole of it always,--flowers, castles, brooks, clouds, and rocks,--subordinate to the human figures in the foreground, and painted for no other end than that of explaining their adventures and occupations. [illustration: . botany of th century. (apple-tree and cyclamen)] § . before the idea of landscape had been thus far developed, the representations of it had been purely typical; the objects which had to be shown in order to explain the scene of the event, being firmly outlined, usually on a pure golden or chequered color background, not on sky. the change from the golden background, (characteristic of the finest thirteenth century work) and the colored chequer (which in like manner belongs to the finest fourteenth) to the blue sky, gradated to the horizon, takes place early in the fifteenth century, and is the _crisis_ of change in the spirit of mediæval art. strictly speaking, we might divide the art of christian times into two great masses--symbolic and imitative;--the symbolic, reaching from the earliest periods down to the close of the fourteenth century, and the imitative from that close to the present time; and, then, the most important circumstance indicative of the culminating point, or turn of tide, would be this of the change from chequered background to sky background. the uppermost figure in plate . opposite, representing the tree of knowledge, taken from a somewhat late thirteenth century hebrew manuscript (additional , ) in the british museum, will at once illustrate mr. macaulay's "serpent turned round the tree," and the mode of introducing the chequer background, will enable the reader better to understand the peculiar feeling of the period, which no more intended the formal walls or streams for an imitative representation of the garden of eden, than these chequers for an imitation of sky. § . the moment the sky is introduced (and it is curious how perfectly it is done _at once_, many manuscripts presenting, in alternate pages, chequered backgrounds, and deep blue skies exquisitely gradated to the horizon)--the moment, i say, the sky is introduced, the spirit of art becomes for evermore changed, and thenceforward it gradually proposes imitation more and more as an end, until it reaches the turnerian landscape. this broad division into two schools would therefore be the most true and accurate we could employ, but not the most convenient. for the great mediæval art lies in a cluster about the culminating point, including symbolism on one side, and imitation on the other, and extending like a radiant cloud upon the mountain peak of ages, partly down both sides of it, from the year to ; the brightest part of the cloud leaning a little backwards, and poising itself between and . and therefore the most convenient arrangement is into romanesque and barbaric art, up to ,--mediæval art, to ,--and modern art, from downwards. but it is only in the earlier or symbolic mediæval art, reaching up to the close of the fourteenth century, that the peculiar modification of natural forms for decorative purposes is seen in its perfection, with all its beauty, and all its necessary shortcomings; the minds of men being accurately balanced between that honor for the superior human form which they shared with the greek ages, and the sentimental love of nature which was peculiar to their own. the expression of the two feelings will be found to vary according to the material and place of the art; in painting, the conventional forms are more adopted, in order to obtain definition, and brilliancy of color, while in sculpture the life of nature is often rendered with a love and faithfulness which put modern art to shame. and in this earnest contemplation of the natural facts, united with an endeavor to simplify, for clear expression, the results of that contemplation, the ornamental artists arrived at two abstract conclusions about form, which are highly curious and interesting. § . they saw, first, that a leaf might always be considered as a sudden expansion of the stem that bore it; an uncontrollable expression of delight, on the part of the twig, that spring had come, shown in a fountain-like expatiation of its tender green heart into the air. they saw that in this violent proclamation of its delight and liberty, whereas the twig had, until that moment, a disposition only to grow quietly forwards, it expressed its satisfaction and extreme pleasure in sunshine by springing out to right and left. let _a b_, fig. . plate ., be the twig growing forward in the direction from _a_ to _b_. it reaches the point _b_, and then--spring coming,--not being able to contain itself, it bursts out in every direction, even springing backwards at first for joy; but as this backward direction is contrary to its own proper fate and nature, it cannot go on so long, and the length of each rib into which it separates is proportioned accurately to the degree in which the proceedings of that rib are in harmony with the natural destiny of the plant. thus the rib _c_, entirely contradictory, by the direction of his life and energy, of the general intentions to the tree, is but a short-lived rib; _d_, not quite so opposite to his fate, lives longer; _e_, accommodating himself still more to the spirit of progress, attains a greater length still; and the largest rib of all is the one who has not yielded at all to the erratic disposition of the others when spring came, but, feeling quite as happy about the spring as they did, nevertheless took no holiday, minded his business, and grew straightforward. [illustration: . the growth of leaves.] § . fig. . in the same plate, which shows the disposition of the ribs in the leaf of an american plane, exemplifies the principle very accurately; it is indeed more notably seen in this than in most leaves, because the ribs at the base have evidently had a little fraternal quarrel about their spring holiday; and the more gaily-minded ones, getting together into trios on each side, have rather pooh-poohed and laughed at the seventh brother in the middle, who wanted to go on regularly, and attend to his work. nevertheless, though thus starting quite by himself in life, this seventh brother, quietly pushing on in the right direction, lives longest, and makes the largest fortune, and the triple partnerships on the right and left meet with a very minor prosperity. § . now if we inclose fig. . in plate . with two curves passing through the extremities of the ribs, we get fig. ., the central type of all leaves. only this type is modified of course in a thousand ways by the life of the plant. if it be marsh or aquatic, instead of springing out in twigs, it is almost certain to expand in soft currents, as the liberated stream does at its mouth into the ocean, fig. . (alisma plantago); if it be meant for one of the crowned and lovely trees of the earth, it will separate into stars, and each ray of the leaf will form a ray of light in the crown, fig. . (horsechestnut); and if it be a commonplace tree, rather prudent and practical than imaginative, it will not expand all at once, but throw out the ribs every now and then along the central rib, like a merchant taking his occasional and restricted holiday, fig. . (elm). § . now in the bud, where all these proceedings on the leaf's part are first imagined, the young leaf is generally (always?) doubled up in embryo, so as to present the profile of the half-leaves, as fig. ., only in exquisite complexity of arrangement; fig. ., for instance, is the profile of the leaf-bud of a rose. hence the general arrangement of line represented by fig. . (in which the lower line is slightly curved to express the bending life in the spine) is everlastingly typical of the expanding powers of joyful vegetative youth; and it is of all simple forms the most exquisitely delightful to the human mind. it presents itself in a thousand different proportions and variations in the buds and profiles of leaves; those being always the loveliest in which, either by accidental perspective of position, or inherent character in the tree, it is most frequently presented to the eye. the branch of bramble, for instance, fig. . at the bottom of plate ., owes its chief beauty to the perpetual recurrence of this typical form; and we shall find presently the enormous importance of it, even in mountain ranges, though, in these, _falling_ force takes the place of _vital_ force. [illustration: fig. .] § . this abstract conclusion the great thirteenth century artists were the first to arrive at; and whereas, before their time, ornament had been constantly refined into intricate and subdivided symmetries, they were content with this simple form as the termination of its most important features. fig. ., which is a scroll out of a psalter executed in the latter half of the thirteenth century, is a sufficient example of a practice at that time absolutely universal. [illustration: . botany of the th century. from the prayer-book of yolande of navarre.] § . the second great discovery of the middle ages in floral ornament, was that, in order completely to express the law of subordination among the leaf-ribs, two ribs were necessary, _and no more_, on each side of the leaf, forming a series of three with the central one, because proportion is between three terms at least. [illustration: fig. .] that is to say, when they had only three ribs altogether, as _a_, fig. ., no _law_ of relation was discernible between the ribs, or the leaflets they bore; but by the addition of a third on each side as at _b_, proportion instantly was expressible, whether arithmetical or geometrical, or of any other kind. hence the adoption of forms more or less approximating to that at _c_ (young ivy), or _d_ (wild geranium), as the favorite elements of their floral ornament, those leaves being in their disposition of masses, the simplest which can express a perfect law of proportion, just as the outline fig. . plate . is the simplest which can express a perfect law of growth. plate . opposite gives, in rude outline, the arrangement of the border of one of the pages of a missal in my own possession, executed for the countess yolande of flanders,[ ] in the latter half of the fourteenth century, and furnishing, in exhaustless variety, the most graceful examples i have ever seen of the favorite decoration at the period, commonly now known as the "ivy leaf" pattern. § . in thus reducing these two everlasting laws of beauty to their simplest possible exponents, the mediæval workmen were the first to discern and establish the principles of decorative art to the end of time, nor of decorative art merely, but of mass arrangement in general. for the members of any great composition, arranged about a centre, are always reducible to the law of the ivy leaf, the best cathedral entrances having five porches corresponding in proportional purpose to its five lobes (three being an imperfect, and seven a superfluous number); while the loveliest groups of lines attainable in any pictorial composition are always based on the section of the leaf-bud, fig. . plate ., or on the relation of its ribs to the convex curve enclosing them. § . these discoveries of ultimate truth are, i believe, never made philosophically, but instinctively; so that wherever we find a high abstract result of the kind, we may be almost sure it has been the work of the penetrative imagination, acting under the influence of strong affection. accordingly, when we enter on our botanical inquiries, i shall have occasion to show with what tender and loving fidelity to nature the masters of the thirteenth century always traced the leading lines of their decorations, either in missal-painting or sculpture, and how totally in this respect their methods of subduing, for the sake of distinctness, the natural forms they loved so dearly, differ from the iron formalisms to which the greeks, careless of all that was not completely divine or completely human, reduced the thorn of the acanthus, and softness of the lily. nevertheless, in all this perfect and loving decorative art, we have hardly any careful references to other landscape features than herbs and flowers; mountains, water, and clouds are introduced so rudely, that the representations of them can never be received for anything else than letters or signs. thus the _sign_ of clouds, in the thirteenth century, is an undulating band, usually in painting, of blue edged with white, in sculpture, wrought so as to resemble very nearly the folds of a curtain closely tied, and understood for clouds only by its position, as surrounding angels or saints in heaven, opening to souls ascending at the last judgment, or forming canopies over the saviour or the virgin. water is represented by zigzag lines, nearly resembling those employed for clouds, but distinguished, in sculpture, by having fish in it; in painting, both by fish and a more continuous blue or green color. and when these unvaried symbols are associated under the influence of that love of firm fence, moat, and every other means of definition which we have seen to be one of the prevailing characteristics of the mediæval mind, it is not possible for us to conceive, through the rigidity of the signs employed, what were the real feelings of the workman or spectator about the natural landscape. we see that the thing carved or painted is not intended in any wise to imitate the truth, or convey to us the feelings which the workman had in contemplating the truth. he has got a way of talking about it so definite and cold, and tells us with his chisel so calmly that the knight had a castle to attack, or the saint a river to cross dryshod, without making the smallest effort to describe pictorially either castle or river, that we are left wholly at fault as to the nature of the emotion with which he contemplated the real objects. but that emotion, as the intermediate step between the feelings of the grecian and the modern, it must be our aim to ascertain as clearly as possible; and, therefore, finding it not at this period completely expressed in visible art, we must, as we did with the greeks, take up the written landscape instead, and examine this mediæval sentiment as we find it embodied in the poem of dante. § . the thing that must first strike us in this respect, as we turn our thoughts to the poem, is, unquestionably, the _formality_ of its landscape. milton's effort, in all that he tells us of his inferno, is to make it indefinite; dante's, to make it _definite_. both, indeed, describe it as entered through gates; but, within the gate, all is wild and fenceless with milton, having indeed its four rivers,--the last vestige of the mediæval tradition,--but rivers which flow through a waste of mountain and moorland, and by "many a frozen, many a fiery alp." but dante's inferno is accurately separated into circles drawn with well-pointed compasses; mapped and properly surveyed in every direction, trenched in a thoroughly good style of engineering from depth to depth, and divided in the "_accurate_ middle" (dritto mezzo) of its deepest abyss, into a concentric series of ten moats and embankments, like those about a castle, with bridges from each embankment to the next; precisely in the manner of those bridges over hiddekel and euphrates, which mr. macaulay thinks so innocently designed, apparently not aware that he is also laughing at dante. these larger fosses are of rock, and the bridges also; but as he goes further into detail, dante tells us of various minor fosses and embankments, in which he anxiously points out to us not only the formality, but the neatness and perfectness, of the stonework. for instance, in describing the river phlegethon, he tells us that it was "paved with stone at the bottom, and at the sides, and _over the edges of the sides_," just as the water is at the baths of bulicame; and for fear we should think this embankment at all _larger_ than it really was, dante adds, carefully, that it was made just like the embankments of ghent or bruges against the sea, or those in lombardy which bank the brenta, only "not so high, nor so wide," as any of these. and besides the trenches, we have two well-built castles; one like ecbatana, with seven circuits of wall (and surrounded by a fair stream), wherein the great poets and sages of antiquity live; and another, a great fortified city with walls of iron, red-hot, and a deep fosse round it, and full of "grave citizens,"--the city of dis. § . now, whether this be in what we moderns call "good taste," or not, i do not mean just now to inquire--dante having nothing to do with taste, but with the facts of what he had seen; only, so far as the imaginative faculty of the two poets is concerned, note that milton's vagueness is not the sign of imagination, but of its absence, so far as it is significative in the matter. for it does not follow, because milton did not map out his inferno as dante did, that he _could_ not have done so if he had chosen; only, it was the easier and less imaginative process to leave it vague than to define it. imagination is always the seeing and asserting faculty; that which obscures or conceals may be judgment, or feeling, but not invention. the invention, whether good or bad, is in the accurate engineering, not in the fog and uncertainty. § . when we pass with dante from the inferno to purgatory, we have indeed more light and air, but no more liberty; being now confined on various ledges cut into a mountain side, with a precipice on one hand and a vertical wall on the other; and, lest here also we should make any mistake about magnitudes, we are told that the ledges were eighteen feet wide,[ ] and that the ascent from one to the other was by steps, made like those which go up from florence to the church of san minieto.[ ] lastly, though in the paradise there is perfect freedom and infinity of space, though for trenches we have planets, and for cornices constellations, yet there is more cadence, procession, and order among the redeemed souls than any others; they fly, so as to describe letters and sentences in the air, and rest in circles, like rainbows, or determinate figures, as of a cross and an eagle; in which certain of the more glorified natures are so arranged as to form the eye of the bird, while those most highly blessed are arranged with their white crowds in leaflets, so as to form the image of a white rose in the midst of heaven. § . thus, throughout the poem, i conceive that the first striking character of its scenery is intense definition; precisely the reflection of that definiteness which we have already traced in pictorial art. but the second point which seems noteworthy is, that the flat ground and embanked trenches are reserved for the inferno; and that the entire territory of the purgatory is a mountain, thus marking the sense of that purifying and perfecting influence in mountains which we saw the mediæval mind was so ready to suggest. the same general idea is indicated at the very commencement of the poem, in which dante is overwhelmed by fear and sorrow in passing through a dark forest, but revives on seeing the sun touch the top of a hill, afterwards called by virgil "the pleasant mount--the cause and source of all delight." § . while, however, we find this greater honor paid to mountains, i think we may perceive a much greater dread and dislike of woods. we saw that homer seemed to attach a pleasant idea, for the most part, to forests; regarding them as sources of wealth and places of shelter; and we find constantly an idea of sacredness attached to them, as being haunted especially by the gods; so that even the wood which surrounds the house of circe is spoken of as a sacred thicket, or rather, as a sacred glade, or labyrinth of glades (of the particular word used i shall have more to say presently); and so the wood is sought as a kindly shelter by ulysses, in spite of its wild beasts; and evidently regarded with great affection by sophocles, for, in a passage which is always regarded by readers of greek tragedy with peculiar pleasure, the aged and blind oedipus, brought to rest in "the sweetest resting-place" in all the neighborhood of athens, has the spot described to him as haunted perpetually by nightingales, which sing "in the green glades and in the dark ivy, and in the thousand-fruited, sunless, and windless thickets of the god" (bacchus); the idea of the complete shelter from wind and sun being here, as with ulysses, the uppermost one. after this come the usual staples of landscape,--narcissus, crocus, plenty of rain, olive trees; and last, and the greatest boast of all,--"it is a good country for horses, and conveniently by the sea;" but the prominence and pleasantness of the thick wood in the thoughts of the writer are very notable; whereas to dante the idea of a forest is exceedingly repulsive, so that, as just noticed, in the opening of his poem, he cannot express a general despair about life more strongly than by saying he was lost in a wood so savage and terrible, that "even to think or speak of it is distress,--it was so bitter,--it was something next door to death;" and one of the saddest scenes in all the inferno is in a forest, of which the trees are haunted by lost souls; while (with only one exception,) whenever the country is to be beautiful, we find ourselves coming out into open air and open meadows. it is quite true that this is partly a characteristic, not merely of dante, or of mediæval writers, but of _southern_ writers; for the simple reason that the forest, being with them higher upon the hills, and more out of the way than in the north was generally a type of lonely and savage places; while in england, the "greenwood," coming up to the very walls of the towns, it was possible to be "merry in the good greenwood," in a sense which an italian could not have understood. hence chaucer, spenser, and shakspere send their favorites perpetually to the woods for pleasure or meditation; and trust their tender canace, or rosalind, or helena, or silvia, or belphoebe, where dante would have sent no one but a condemned spirit. nevertheless, there is always traceable in the mediæval mind a dread of thick foliage, which was not present to that of a greek; so that, even in the north, we have our sorrowful "children in the wood," and black huntsmen of the hartz forests, and such other wood terrors; the principal reason for the difference being that a greek, being by no means given to travelling, regarded his woods as so much valuable property; and if he ever went into them for pleasure expected to meet one or two gods in the course of his walk, but no banditti; while a mediæval, much more of a solitary traveller, and expecting to meet with no gods in the thickets, but only with thieves, or a hostile ambush, or a bear, besides a great deal of troublesome ground for his horse, and a very serious chance, next to a certainty, of losing his way, naturally kept in the open ground as long as he could, and regarded the forests, in general, with anything but an eye of favor. § . these, i think, are the principal points which must strike us, when we first broadly think of the poem as compared with classical work. let us now go a little more into detail. as homer gave us an ideal landscape, which even a god might have been pleased to behold, so dante gives us, fortunately, an ideal landscape, which is specially intended for the terrestrial paradise. and it will doubtless be with some surprise, after our reflections above on the general tone of dante's feelings, that we find ourselves here first entering a _forest_, and that even a _thick_ forest. but there is a peculiar meaning in this. with any other poet than dante, it might have been regarded as a wanton inconsistency. not so with him: by glancing back to the two lines which explain the nature of paradise, we shall see what he means by it. virgil tells him, as he enters it, "henceforward, take thine own pleasure for guide; thou art beyond the steep ways, and beyond all art;"--meaning, that the perfectly purified and noble human creature, having no pleasure but in right, is past all effort, and past all _rule_. art has no existence for such a being. hence, the first aim of dante, in his landscape imagery, is to show evidence of this perfect liberty, and of the purity and sinlessness of the new nature, converting pathless ways into happy ones. so that all those fences and formalisms which had been needed for him in imperfection, are removed in this paradise; and even the pathlessness of the wood, the most dreadful thing possible to him in his days of sin and shortcoming, is now a joy to him in his days of purity. and as the fencelessness and thicket of sin led to the fettered and fearful order of eternal punishment, so the fencelessness and thicket of the free virtue lead to the loving and constellated order of eternal happiness. § . this forest, then, is very like that of colonos in several respects--in its peace and sweetness, and number of birds; it differs from it only in letting a light breeze through it, being therefore somewhat thinner than the greek wood; the tender lines which tell of the voices of the birds mingling with the wind, and of the leaves all turning one way before it, have been more or less copied by every poet since dante's time. they are, so far as i know, the sweetest passage of wood description which exists in literature. before, however, dante has gone far in this wood,--that is to say, only so far as to have lost sight of the place where he entered it, or rather, i suppose, of the light under the boughs of the outside trees, and it must have been a very thin wood indeed if he did not do this in some quarter of a mile's walk,--he comes to a little river, three paces over, which bends the blades of grass to the left, with a meadow on the other side of it; and in this meadow "a lady, graced with solitude, who went singing, and setting flower by flower apart, by which the path she walked on was besprent. 'ah, lady beautiful, that basking art in beams of love, if i may trust thy face, which useth to bear witness of the heart, let liking come on thee,' said i, 'to trace thy path a little closer to the shore, where i may reap the hearing of thy lays. thou mindest me, how proserpine of yore appeared in such a place, what time her mother lost her, and she the spring, for evermore.' as, pointing downwards and to one another her feet, a lady bendeth in the dance, and barely setteth one before the other, thus, on the scarlet and the saffron glance of flowers, with motion maidenlike she bent (her modest eyelids drooping and askance); and there she gave my wishes their content, approaching, so that her sweet melodies arrived upon mine ear with what they meant. when first she came amongst the blades, that rise, already wetted, from the goodly river, she graced me by the lifting of her eyes." (cayley.) § . i have given this passage at length, because, for our purposes, it is by much the most important, not only in dante, but in the whole circle of poetry. this lady, observe, stands on the opposite side of the little stream, which, presently, she explains to dante is lethe, having power to cause forgetfulness of all evil, and she stands just among the bent blades of grass at its edge. she is first seen gathering flower from flower, then "passing continually the multitudinous flowers through her hands," smiling at the same time so brightly, that her first address to dante is to prevent him from wondering at her, saying, "if he will remember the verse of the ninety-second psalm, beginning. 'delectasti,' he will know why she is so happy." and turning to the verse of the psalm, we find it written, "thou, lord, hast made me glad _through thy works_. i will triumph _in the works of thy hands_;" or, in the very words in which dante would read it,-- "quia delectasti me, domine, in factura tua, et in operibus manuum tuarum exultabo." § . now we could not for an instant have had any difficulty in understanding this, but that, some way farther on in the poem, this lady is called matilda, and it is with reason supposed by the commentators to be the great countess matilda of the eleventh century; notable equally for her ceaseless activity, her brilliant political genius, her perfect piety, and her deep reverence for the see of rome. this countess matilda is therefore dante's guide in the terrestrial paradise, as beatrice is afterwards in the celestial; each of them having a spiritual and symbolic character in their glorified state, yet retaining their definite personality. the question is, then, what is the symbolic character of the countess matilda, as the guiding spirit of the terrestrial paradise? before dante had entered this paradise he had rested on a step of shelving rock, and as he watched the stars he slept, and dreamed, and thus tells us what he saw:-- "a lady, young and beautiful, i dreamed, was passing o'er a lea; and, as she came, methought i saw her ever and anon bending to cull the flowers; and thus she sang: 'know ye, whoever of my name would ask, that i am leah; for my brow to weave a garland, these fair hands unwearied ply; to please me at the crystal mirror, here i deck me. but my sister rachel, she before her glass abides the livelong day, her radiant eyes beholding, charmed no less than i with this delightful task. her joy in contemplation, as in labor mine.'" this vision of rachel and leah has been always, and with unquestionable truth, received as a type of the active and contemplative life, and as an introduction to the two divisions of the paradise which dante is about to enter. therefore the unwearied spirit of the countess matilda is understood to represent the active life, which forms the felicity of earth; and the spirit of beatrice the contemplative life, which forms the felicity of heaven. this interpretation appears at first straightforward and certain; but it has missed count of exactly the most important fact in the two passages which we have to explain. observe: leah gathers the flowers to decorate _herself_, and delights in _her own_ labor. rachel sits silent, contemplating herself, and delights in _her own_ image. these are the types of the unglorified active and contemplative powers of man. but beatrice and matilda are the same powers, glorified. and how are they glorified? leah took delight in her own labor; but matilda--"in operibus _manuum tuarum_"--_in god's labor_: rachel in the sight of her own face; beatrice in the sight of _god's face_. § . and thus, when afterwards dante sees beatrice on her throne, and prays her that, when he himself shall die, she would receive him with kindness, beatrice merely looks down for an instant, and answers with a single smile, then "towards the eternal fountain turns." therefore it is evident that dante distinguishes in both cases, not between earth and heaven, but between perfect and imperfect happiness, whether in earth or heaven. the active life which has only the service of man for its end, and therefore gathers flowers, with leah, for its own decoration, is indeed happy, but not perfectly so; it has only the happiness of the dream, belonging essentially to the dream of human life, and passing away with it. but the active life which labors for the more and more discovery of god's work, is perfectly happy, and is the life of the terrestrial paradise, being a true foretaste of heaven, and beginning in earth, as heaven's vestibule. so also the contemplative life which is concerned with human feeling and thought and beauty--the life which is in earthly poetry and imagery of noble earthly emotion--is happy, but it is the happiness of the dream; the contemplative life which has god's person and love in christ for its object, has the happiness of eternity. but because this higher happiness is also begun here on earth, beatrice descends to earth; and when revealed to dante first, he sees the image of the twofold personality of christ reflected in her _eyes_; as the flowers, which are, to the mediæval heart, the chief work of god, are for ever passing through matilda's _hands_. § . now, therefore, we see that dante, as the great prophetic exponent of the heart of the middle ages, has, by the lips of the spirit of matilda, declared the mediæval faith,--that all perfect active life was "the expression of man's delight _in god's work_;" and that all their political and warlike energy, as fully shown in the mortal life of matilda, was yet inferior and impure,--the energy of the dream,--compared with that which on the opposite bank of lethe stood "choosing flower from flower." and what joy and peace there were in this work is marked by matilda's being the person who draws dante through the stream of lethe, so as to make him forget all sin, and all sorrow: throwing her arms round him, she plunges his head under the waves of it; then draws him through, crying to him, "_hold me, hold me_" (tiemmi, tiemmi), and so presents him, thus bathed, free from all painful memory, at the feet of the spirit of the more heavenly contemplation. § . the reader will, i think, now see, with sufficient distinctness, why i called this passage the most important, for our present purposes, in the whole circle of poetry. for it contains the first great confession of the discovery by the human race (i mean as a matter of experience, not of revelation), that their happiness was not in themselves, and that their labor was not to have their own service as its chief end. it embodies in a few syllables the _sealing_ difference between the greek and the mediæval, in that the former sought the flower and herb for his own uses, the latter for god's honor; the former, primarily and on principle, contemplated his own beauty and the workings of his own mind, and the latter, primarily and on principle, contemplated christ's beauty and the workings of the mind of christ. § . i will not at present follow up this subject any farther; it being enough that we have thus got to the root of it, and have a great declaration of the central mediæval purpose, whereto we may return for solution of all future questions. i would only, therefore, desire the reader now to compare the stones of venice, vol. i. chap. xx. §§ . .; the seven lamps of architecture, chap. iv. § .; and the second volume of this work, chap. ii. §§ . ., and chap. iii. § .; that he may, in these several places, observe how gradually our conclusions are knitting themselves together as we are able to determine more and more of the successive questions that come before us: and, finally, to compare the two interesting passages in wordsworth, which, without any memory of dante, nevertheless, as if by some special ordaining, describe in matters of modern life exactly the soothing or felicitous powers of the two active spirits of dante--leah and matilda, excursion, book v. line . to ., and book vi. line . to . § . having thus received from dante this great lesson, as to the spirit in which mediæval landscape is to be understood, what else we have to note respecting it, as seen in his poem, will be comparatively straightforward and easy. and first, we have to observe the place occupied in his mind by _color_. it has already been shown, in the stones of venice, vol. ii. chap. v. §§ -- , that color is the most _sacred_ element of all visible things. hence, as the mediæval mind contemplated them first for their sacredness, we should, beforehand, expect that the first thing it would seize would be the color; and that we should find its expressions and renderings of color infinitely more loving and accurate than among the greeks. § . accordingly, the greek sense of color seems to have been so comparatively dim and uncertain, that it is almost impossible to ascertain what the real idea was which they attached to any word alluding to hue: and above all, color, though pleasant to their eyes, as to those of all human beings, seems never to have been impressive to their feelings. they liked purple, on the whole, the best; but there was no sense of cheerfulness or pleasantness in one color, and gloom in another, such as the mediævals had. for instance, when achilles goes, in great anger and sorrow, to complain to thetis of the scorn done him by agamemnon, the sea appears to him "wine-colored." one might think this meant that the sea looked dark and reddish-purple to him, in a kind of sympathy with his anger. but we turn to the passage of sophocles, which has been above quoted--a passage peculiarly intended to express peace and rest--and we find that the birds sing among "wine-colored" ivy. the uncertainty of conception of the hue itself, and entire absence of expressive character in the word, could hardly be more clearly manifested. § . again: i said the greek liked purple, as a general source of enjoyment, better than any other color. so he did, and so all healthy persons who have eye for color, and are unprejudiced about it, do; and will to the end of time, for a reason presently to be noted. but so far was this instinctive preference for purple from giving, in the greek mind, any consistently cheerful or sacred association to the color, that homer constantly calls death "purple death." § . again: in the passage of sophocles, so often spoken of, i said there was some difficulty respecting a word often translated "thickets." i believe, myself, it means glades; literally, "going places" in the woods,--that is to say, places where, either naturally or by force, the trees separate, so as to give some accessible avenue. now, sophocles tells us the birds sang in these "_green_ going places;" and we take up the expression gratefully, thinking the old greek perceived and enjoyed, as we do, the sweet fall of the eminently _green_ light through the leaves when they are a little thinner than in the heart of the wood. but we turn to the tragedy of ajax, and are much shaken in our conclusion about the meaning of the word, when we are told that the body of ajax is to lie unburied, and be eaten by sea-birds on the "_green_ sand." the formation, geologically distinguished by that title, was certainly not known to sophocles; and the only conclusion which, it seems to me, we can come to under the circumstances,--assuming ariel's[ ] authority as to the color of pretty sand, and the ancient mariner's (or, rather, his hearer's[ ]) as to the color of ugly sand, to be conclusive,--is that sophocles really did not know green from yellow or brown. § . now, without going out of the terrestrial paradise, in which dante last left us, we shall be able at once to compare with this greek incertitude the precision of the mediæval eye for color. some three arrowflights further up into the wood we come to a tall tree, which is at first barren, but, after some little time, visibly opens into flowers, of a color "less than that of roses, but more than that of violets." it certainly would not be possible, in words, to come nearer to the _definition_ of the exact hue which dante meant--that of the apple-blossom. had he employed any simple color-phrase, as a "pale pink," or "violet-pink," or any other such combined expression, he still could not have completely got at the delicacy of the hue; he might perhaps have indicated its kind, but not its tenderness; but by taking the rose-leaf as the type of the delicate red, and then enfeebling this with the violet grey, he gets, as closely as language can carry him, to the complete rendering of the vision, though it is evidently felt by him to be in its perfect beauty ineffable; and rightly so felt, for of all lovely things which grace the spring time in our fair temperate zone, i am not sure but this blossoming of the apple-tree is the fairest. at all events, i find it associated in my mind with four other kinds of color, certainly principal among the gifts of the northern earth, namely: st. bell gentians growing close together, mixed with lilies of the valley, on the jura pastures. nd. alpine roses with dew upon them, under low rays of morning sunshine, touching the tops of the flowers. rd. bell heather in mass, in full light, at sunset. th. white narcissus (red-centred) in mass, on the vevay pastures, in sunshine, after rain. and i know not where in the group to place the wreaths of apple-blossoms, in the vevay orchards, with the far-off blue of the lake of geneva seen between the flowers. a greek, however, would have regarded this blossom simply with the eyes of a devonshire farmer, as bearing on the probable price of cider, and would have called it red, cerulean, purple, white, hyacinthine, or generally "aglaos," agreeable, as happened to suit his verse. § . again: we have seen how fond the greek was of composing his paradises of rather damp grass; but that in this fondness for grass there was always an undercurrent of consideration for his horses; and the characters in it which pleased him most were its depth and freshness; not its color. now, if we remember carefully the general expressions, respecting grass, used in modern literature, i think nearly the commonest that occurs to us will be that of "enamelled" turf or sward. this phrase is usually employed by our pseudo-poets, like all their other phrases, without knowing what it means, because it has been used by other writers before them, and because they do not know what else to say of grass. if we were to ask them what enamel was, they could not tell us; and if we asked why grass was like enamel, they could not tell us. the expression _has_ a meaning, however, and one peculiarly characteristic of mediæval and modern temper. § . the first instance i know of its right use, though very probably it had been so employed before, is in dante. the righteous spirits of the pre-christian ages are seen by him, though in the inferno, yet in a place open, luminous, and high, walking upon the "green enamel." i am very sure that dante did not use this phrase as we use it. he knew well what enamel was; and his readers, in order to understand him thoroughly, must remember what it is,--a vitreous paste, dissolved in water, mixed with metallic oxides, to give it the opacity and the color required, spread in a moist state on metal, and afterwards hardened by fire, so as never to change. and dante means, in using this metaphor of the grass of the inferno, to mark that it is laid as a tempering and cooling substance over the dark, metallic, gloomy ground; but yet so hardened by the fire, that it is not any more fresh or living grass, but a smooth, silent, lifeless bed of eternal green. and we know how _hard_ dante's idea of it was; because afterwards, in what is perhaps the most awful passage of the whole inferno, when the three furies rise at the top of the burning tower, and catching sight of dante, and not being able to get at him, shriek wildly for the gorgon to come up too, that they may turn him into stone,--the word _stone_ is not hard enough for them. stone might crumble away after it was made, or something with life might grow upon it; no, it shall not be stone; they will make enamel of him; nothing can grow out of that; it is dead for ever.[ ] "venga medusa, si lo farem di _smalto_." § . now, almost in the opening of the purgatory, as there at the entrance of the inferno, we find a company of great ones resting in a grassy place. but the idea of the grass now is very different. the word now used is not "enamel," but "herb," and instead of being merely green, it is covered with flowers of many colors. with the usual mediæval accuracy, dante insists on telling us precisely what these colors were, and how bright; which he does by naming the actual pigments used in illumination,--"gold, and fine silver, and cochineal, and white lead, and indian wood, serene and lucid, and fresh emerald, just broken, would have been excelled, as less is by greater, by the flowers and grass of the place." it is evident that the "emerald" here means the emerald green of the illuminators; for a fresh emerald is no brighter than one which is not fresh, and dante was not one to throw away his words thus. observe, then, we have here the idea of the growth, life, and variegation of the "green herb," as opposed to the smalto of the inferno; but the colors of the variegation are illustrated and defined by the reference to actual pigments; and, observe, because the other colors are rather bright, the blue ground (indian wood, indigo?) is sober; lucid, but serene; and presently two angels enter, who are dressed in green drapery, but of a paler green than the grass, which dante marks, by telling us that it was "the green of leaves just budded." § . in all this, i wish the reader to observe two things: first, the general carefulness of the poet in defining color, distinguishing it precisely as a painter would (opposed to the greek carelessness about it); and, secondly, his regarding the grass for its greenness and variegation, rather than, as a greek would have done, for its depth and freshness. this greenness or brightness, and variegation, are taken up by later and modern poets, as the things intended to be chiefly expressed by the word "enamelled;" and, gradually, the term is taken to indicate any kind of bright and interchangeable coloring; there being always this much of propriety about it, when used of greensward, that such sward is indeed, like enamel, a coat of bright color on a comparatively dark ground; and is thus a sort of natural jewelry and painter's work, different from loose and large vegetation. the word is often awkwardly and falsely used, by the later poets, of all kinds of growth and color; as by milton of the flowers of paradise showing themselves over its wall; but it retains, nevertheless, through all its jaded inanity, some half-unconscious vestige of the old sense, even to the present day. § . there are, it seems to me, several important deductions to be made from these facts. the greek, we have seen, delighted in the grass for its usefulness; the mediæval, as also we moderns, for its color and beauty. but both dwell on it as the _first_ element of the lovely landscape; we saw its use in homer, we see also that dante thinks the righteous spirits of the heathen enough comforted in hades by having even the _image_ of green grass put beneath their feet; the happy resting-place in purgatory has no other delight than its grass and flowers; and, finally, in the terrestrial paradise, the feet of matilda pause where the lethe stream first bends the blades of grass. consider a little what a depth there is in this great instinct of the human race. gather a single blade of grass, and examine for a minute, quietly, its narrow sword-shaped strip of fluted green. nothing, as it seems there, of notable goodness or beauty. a very little strength, and a very little tallness, and a few delicate long lines meeting in a point,--not a perfect point neither, but blunt and unfinished, by no means a creditable or apparently much cared for example of nature's workmanship; made, as it seems, only to be trodden on to-day, and to-morrow to be cast into the oven; and a little pale and hollow stalk, feeble and flaccid, leading down to the dull brown fibres of roots. and yet, think of it well, and judge whether of all the gorgeous flowers that beam in summer air, and of all strong and goodly trees, pleasant to the eyes and good for food,--stately palm and pine, strong ash and oak, scented citron, burdened vine,--there be any by man so deeply loved, by god so highly graced, as that narrow point of feeble green. it seems to me not to have been without a peculiar significance, that our lord, when about to work the miracle which, of all that he showed, appears to have been felt by the multitude as the most impressive,--the miracle of the loaves,--commanded the people to sit down by companies "upon the green grass." he was about to feed them with the principal produce of earth and the sea, the simplest representations of the food of mankind. he gave them the seed of the herb; he bade them sit down upon the herb itself, which was as great a gift, in its fitness for their joy and rest, as its perfect fruit, for their sustenance; thus, in this single order and act, when rightly understood, indicating for evermore how the creator had entrusted the comfort, consolation, and sustenance of man, to the simplest and most despised of all the leafy families of the earth. and well does it fulfil its mission. consider what we owe merely to the meadow grass, to the covering of the dark ground by that glorious enamel, by the companies of those soft, and countless, and peaceful spears. the fields! follow but forth for a little time the thoughts of all that we ought to recognise in those words. all spring and summer is in them,--the walks by silent, scented paths,--the rests in noon-day heat,--the joy of herds and flocks,--the power of all shepherd life and meditation,--the life of sunlight upon the world, falling in emerald streaks, and falling in soft blue shadows, where else it would have struck upon the dark mould, or scorching dust,--pastures beside the pacing brooks,--soft banks and knolls of lowly hills,--thymy slopes of down overlooked by the blue line of lifted sea,--crisp lawns all dim with early dew, or smooth in evening warmth of barred sunshine, dinted by happy feet, and softening in their fall the sound of loving voices: all these are summed in those simple words; and these are not all. we may not measure to the full the depth of this heavenly gift, in our own land; though still, as we think of it longer, the infinite of that meadow sweetness, shakspere's peculiar joy, would open on us more and more, yet we have it but in part. go out, in the spring time, among the meadows that slope from the shores of the swiss lakes to the roots of their lower mountains. there, mingled with the taller gentians and the white narcissus, the grass grows deep and free; and as you follow the winding mountain paths, beneath arching boughs all veiled and dim with blossom,--paths that for ever droop and rise over the green banks and mounds sweeping down in scented undulation, steep to the blue water, studded here and there with new mown heaps, filling all the air with fainter sweetness,--look up towards the higher hills, where the waves of everlasting green roll silently into their long inlets among the shadows of the pines; and we may, perhaps, at last know the meaning of those quiet words of the th psalm, "he maketh grass to grow upon the mountains." § . there are also several lessons symbolically connected with this subject, which we must not allow to escape us. observe, the peculiar characters of the grass, which adapt it especially for the service of man, are its apparent _humility_, and _cheerfulness_. its humility, in that it seems created only for lowest service,--appointed to be trodden on, and fed upon. its cheerfulness, in that it seems to exult under all kinds of violence and suffering. you roll it, and it is stronger the next day; you mow it, and it multiplies its shoots, as if it were grateful; you tread upon it, and it only sends up richer perfume. spring comes, and it rejoices with all the earth,--glowing with variegated flame of flowers,--waving in soft depth of fruitful strength. winter comes, and though it will not mock its fellow plants by growing then, it will not pine and mourn, and turn colorless or leafless as they. it is always green; and is only the brighter and gayer for the hoar-frost. § . now, these two characters--of humility, and joy under trial--are exactly those which most definitely distinguish the christian from the pagan spirit. whatever virtue the pagan possessed was rooted in pride, and fruited with sorrow. it began in the elevation of his own nature; it ended but in the "verde smalto"--the hopeless green--of the elysian fields. but the christian virtue is rooted in self-debasement, and strengthened under suffering by gladness of hope. and remembering this, it is curious to observe how utterly without gladness the greek heart appears to be in watching the flowering grass, and what strange discords of expression arise sometimes in consequence. there is one, recurring once or twice in homer, which has always pained me. he says, "the greek army was on the fields, as thick as flowers in the spring." it might be so; but flowers in spring time are not the image by which dante would have numbered soldiers on their path of battle. dante could not have thought of the flowering of the grass but as associated with happiness. there is a still deeper significance in the passage quoted, a little while ago, from homer, describing ulysses casting himself down on the _rushes_ and the corn-giving land at the river shore,--the rushes and corn being to him only good for rest and sustenance,--when we compare it with that in which dante tells us he was ordered to descend to the shore of the lake as he entered purgatory, to gather a _rush_, and gird himself with it, it being to him the emblem not only of rest, but of humility under chastisement, the rush (or reed) being the only plant which can grow there;--"no plant which bears leaves, or hardens its bark, can live on that shore, because it does not yield to the chastisement of its waves." it cannot but strike the reader singularly how deep and harmonious a significance runs through all these words of dante--how every syllable of them, the more we penetrate it, becomes a seed of farther thought! for, follow up this image of the girding with the reed, under trial, and see to whose feet it will lead us. as the grass of the earth, thought of as the herb yielding seed, leads us to the place where our lord commanded the multitude to sit down by companies upon the green grass; so the grass of the waters, thought of as sustaining itself among the waters of affliction, leads us to the place where a stem of it was put into our lord's hand for his sceptre; and in the crown of thorns, and the rod of reed, was foreshown the everlasting truth of the christian ages--that all glory was to be begun in suffering, and all power in humility. assembling the images we have traced, and adding the simplest of all, from isaiah xl. ., we find, the grass and flowers are types, in their passing, of the passing of human life, and, in their excellence, of the excellence of human life; and this in a twofold way; first, by their beneficence, and then, by their endurance:--the grass of the earth, in giving the seed of corn, and in its beauty under tread of foot and stroke of scythe; and the grass of the waters, in giving its freshness for our rest, and in its bending before the wave.[ ] but understood in the broad human and divine sense, the "_herb_ yielding seed" (as opposed to the fruit-tree yielding fruit) includes a third family of plants, and fulfils a third office to the human race. it includes the great family of the lints and flaxes, and fulfils thus the _three_ offices of giving food, raiment, and rest. follow out this fulfilment; consider the association of the linen garment and the linen embroidery, with the priestly office, and the furniture of the tabernacle: and consider how the rush has been, in all time, the first natural carpet thrown under the human foot. then next observe the three virtues definitely set forth by the three families of plants; not arbitrarily or fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked for us by scriptural words: st. cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass for food and beauty.--"consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." nd. humility; in the grass for rest.--"a bruised reed shall he not break." rd. love; in the grass for clothing (because of its swift kindling),--"the smoking flax shall he not quench." and then, finally, observe the confirmation of these last two images in, i suppose, the most important prophecy, relating to the future state of the christian church, which occurs in the old testament, namely, that contained in the closing chapters of ezekiel. the measures of the temple of god are to be taken; and because it is only by charity and humility that those measures ever can be taken, the angel has "a line of _flax_ in his hand, and a measuring _reed_." the use of the line was to measure the land, and of the reed to take the dimensions of the buildings; so the buildings of the church, or its labors, are to be measured by _humility_, and its territory or land, by _love_. the limits of the church have, indeed, in later days, been measured, to the world's sorrow, by another kind of flaxen line, burning with the fire of unholy zeal, not with that of christian charity; and perhaps the best lesson which we can finally take to ourselves, in leaving these sweet fields of the mediæval landscape, is the memory that, in spite of all the fettered habits of thought of his age, this great dante, this inspired exponent of what lay deepest at the heart of the early church, placed his terrestrial paradise where there had ceased to be fence or division, and where the grass of the earth was bowed down, in unity of direction, only by the soft waves that bore with them the forgetfulness of evil. [ ] the peculiar dislike felt by the mediævals for the _sea_, is so interesting a subject of inquiry, that i have reserved it for separate discussion in another work, in present preparation, "harbors of england." [ ] married to philip, younger son of the king of navarre, in . she died in . [ ] "three times the length of a human body."--purg. x. . [ ] purg. xii. . [ ] "come unto these _yellow_ sands." [ ] "and thou art long, and lank, and _brown_, as is the ribbed sea sand." [ ] compare parallel passage, making dante hard or changeless in good purg. viii. . [ ] so also in isa. xxxv. ., the prevalence of righteousness and peace over all evil is thus foretold: "in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be _grass_, with _reeds_ and _rushes_." chapter xv. of mediÆval landscape:--secondly, the rocks. § . i closed the last chapter, not because our subject was exhausted, but to give the reader breathing time, and because i supposed he would hardly care to turn back suddenly from the subjects of thought last suggested, to the less pregnant matters of inquiry connected with mediæval landscape. nor was the pause mistimed even as respects the order of our subjects; for hitherto we have been arrested chiefly by the beauty of the pastures and fields, and have followed the mediæval mind in its fond regard of leaf and flower. but now we have some hard hill-climbing to do; and the remainder of our investigation must be carried on, for the most part, on hands and knees, so that it is not ill done of us first to take breath. § . it will be remembered that in the last chapter, § ., we supposed it probable that there would be considerable inaccuracies in the mediæval mode of regarding nature. hitherto, however, we have found none; but, on the contrary, intense accuracy, precision, and affection. the reason of this is, that all floral and foliaged beauty might be perfectly represented, as far as its form went, in the sculpture and ornamental painting of the period; hence the attention of men was thoroughly awakened to that beauty. but as mountains and clouds and large features of natural scenery could not be accurately represented, we must be prepared to find them not so carefully contemplated,--more carefully, indeed, than by the greeks, but still in no wise as the things themselves deserve. § . it was besides noticed that mountains, though regarded with reverence by the mediæval, were also the subjects of a certain dislike and dread. and we have seen already that in fact the place of the soul's purification, though a mountain, is yet by dante subdued, whenever there is any pleasantness to be found upon it, from all mountainous character into grassy recesses, or slopes to rushy shore; and, in his general conception of it, resembles much more a castle mound, surrounded by terraced walks,--in the manner, for instance, of one of turner's favorite scenes, the bank under richmond castle (yorkshire); or, still more, one of the hill slopes divided by terraces, above the rhine, in which the picturesqueness of the ground has been reduced to the form best calculated for the growing of costly wine, than any scene to which we moderns should naturally attach the term "mountainous." on the other hand, although the inferno is just as accurately measured and divided as the purgatory, it is nevertheless cleft into rocky chasms which possess something of true mountain nature--nature which we moderns of the north should most of us seek with delight, but which, to the great florentine, appeared adapted only for the punishment of lost spirits, and which, on the mind of nearly all his countrymen, would to this day produce a very closely correspondent effect; so that their graceful language, dying away on the north side of the alps, gives its departing accents to proclaim its detestation of hardness and ruggedness; and is heard for the last time, as it bestows on the noblest defile in all the grisons, if not in all the alpine chain, the name of the "_evil_ way"--"la via mala." § . this "evil way," though much deeper and more sublime, corresponds closely in general character to dante's "evil-pits," just as the banks of richmond do to his mountain of purgatory; and it is notable that turner has been led to illustrate, with his whole strength, the character of both; having founded, as it seems to me, his early dreams of mountain form altogether on the sweet banks of the yorkshire streams, and rooted his hardier thoughts of it in the rugged clefts of the via mala. § . nor of the via mala only: a correspondent defile on the st. gothard,--so terrible in one part of it, that it can, indeed, suggest no ideas but those of horror to minds either of northern or southern temper, and whose wild bridge, cast from rock to rock over a chasm as utterly hopeless and escapeless as any into which dante gazed from the arches of malebolge, has been, therefore, ascribed both by northern and southern lips to the master-building of the great spirit of evil--supplied to turner the element of his most terrible thoughts in mountain vision, even to the close of his life. the noblest plate in the series of the liber studiorum,[ ] one engraved by his own hand, is of that bridge; the last mountain journey he ever took was up the defile; and a rocky bank and arch, in the last mountain drawing which he ever executed with his perfect power, are remembrances of the path by which he had traversed in his youth this malebolge of the st. gothard. § . it is therefore with peculiar interest, as bearing on our own proper subject, that we must examine dante's conception of the rocks of the eighth circle. and first, as to general tone of color: from what we have seen of the love of the mediæval for bright and variegated color, we might guess that his chief cause of dislike to rocks would be, in italy, their comparative colorlessness. with hardly an exception, the range of the apennines is composed of a stone of which some special account is given hereafter in the chapters on materials of mountains, and of which one peculiarity, there noticed, is its monotony of hue. our slates and granites are often of very lovely colors; but the apennine limestone is so grey and toneless, that i know not any mountain district so utterly melancholy as those which are composed of this rock, when unwooded. now, as far as i can discover from the internal evidence in his poem, nearly all dante's mountain wanderings had been upon this ground. he had journeyed once or twice among the alps, indeed, but seems to have been impressed chiefly by the road from garda to trent, and that along the corniche, both of which are either upon those limestones, or a dark serpentine, which shows hardly any color till it is polished. it is not ascertainable that he had ever seen rocky scenery of the finely colored kind, aided by the alpine mosses: i do not know the fall at forli (inferno, xvi. .), but every other scene to which he alludes is among these apennine limestones; and when he wishes to give the idea of enormous mountain size, he names tabernicch and pietra-pana,--the one clearly chosen only for the sake of the last syllable of its name, in order to make a sound as of cracking ice, with the two sequent rhymes of the stanza,--and the other is an apennine near lucca. § . his idea, therefore, of rock color, founded on these experiences, is that of a dull or ashen grey, more or less stained by the brown of iron ochre, precisely as the apennine limestones nearly always are; the grey being peculiarly cold and disagreeable. as we go down the very hill which stretches out from pietra-pana towards lucca, the stones laid by the road-side to mend it are of this ashen grey, with efflorescences of manganese and iron in the fissures. the whole of malebolge is made of this rock, "all wrought in stone of iron-colored grain."[ ] perhaps the iron color may be meant to predominate in evil-pits; but the definite grey limestone color is stated higher up, the river styx flowing at the base of "malignant _grey_ cliffs"[ ] (the word malignant being given to the iron-colored malebolge also); and the same whitish-grey idea is given again definitely in describing the robe of the purgatorial or penance angel, which is "of the color of ashes, or earth dug dry." ashes necessarily mean _wood_-ashes in an italian mind, so that we get the tone very pale; and there can be no doubt whatever about the hue meant, because it is constantly seen on the sunny sides of the italian hills, produced by the scorching of the ground, a dusty and lifeless whitish grey, utterly painful and oppressive; and i have no doubt that this color, assumed eminently also by limestone crags in the sun, is the quality which homer means to express by a term he applies often to bare rocks, and which is usually translated "craggy," or "rocky." now homer is indeed quite capable of talking of "rocky rocks," just as he talks sometimes of "wet water;" but i think he means more by this word: it sounds as if it were derived from another, meaning "meal," or "flour," and i have little doubt it means "mealy white;" the greek limestones being for the most part brighter in effect than the apennine ones. § . and the fact is, that the great and pre-eminent fault of southern, as compared with northern scenery, is this rock-whiteness, which gives to distant mountain ranges, lighted by the sun, sometimes a faint and monotonous glow, hardly detaching itself from the whiter parts of the sky, and sometimes a speckled confusion of white light with blue shadow, breaking up the whole mass of the hills, and making them look near and small; the whiteness being still distinct at the distance of twenty or twenty-five miles. the inferiority and meagreness of such effects of hill, compared with the massive purple and blue of our own heaps of crags and morass, or the solemn grass-green and pine-purples of the alps, have always struck me most painfully; and they have rendered it impossible for any poet or painter studying in the south, to enter with joy into hill scenery. imagine the difference to walter scott, if instead of the single lovely color which, named by itself alone, was enough to describe his hills,-- "their southern rapine to renew, far in the distant cheviot's _blue_,"-- a dusty whiteness had been the image that first associated itself with a hill range, and he had been obliged, instead of "blue" cheviots, to say, "barley-meal-colored" cheviots. § . but although this would cause a somewhat painful shock even to a modern mind, it would be as nothing when compared with the pain occasioned by absence of color to a mediæval one. we have been trained, by our ingenious principles of renaissance architecture, to think that meal-color and ash-color are the properest colors of all; and that the most aristocratic harmonies are to be deduced out of grey mortar and creamy stucco. any of our modern classical architects would delightedly "face" a heathery hill with roman cement; and any italian sacristan would, but for the cost of it, at once whitewash the cheviots. but the mediævals had not arrived at these abstract principles of taste. they liked fresco better than whitewash; and, on the whole, thought that nature was in the right in painting her flowers yellow, pink, and blue;--not grey. accordingly, this absence of color from rocks, as compared with meadows and trees, was in their eyes an unredeemable defect; nor did it matter to them whether its place was supplied by the grey neutral tint, or the iron-colored stain; for both colors, grey and brown, were, to them, hues of distress, despair, and mortification, hence adopted always for the dresses of monks; only the word "brown" bore, in their color vocabulary, a still gloomier sense than with us. i was for some time embarrassed by dante's use of it with respect to dark skies and water. thus, in describing a simple twilight--not a hades twilight, but an ordinarily fair evening--(inf. ii. .) he says, the "brown" air took the animals of earth away from their fatigues;--the waves under charon's boat are "brown" (inf. iii. .); and lethe, which is perfectly clear and yet dark, as with oblivion, is "bruna-bruna," "brown, _exceeding_ brown." now, clearly in all these cases no _warmth_ is meant to be mingled in the color. dante had never seen one of our bog-streams, with its porter-colored foam; and there can be no doubt that, in calling lethe brown, he means that it was dark slate grey, inclining to black; as, for instance, our clear cumberland lakes, which, looked straight down upon where they are deep, seem to be lakes of ink. i am sure this is the color he means; because no clear stream or lake on the continent ever looks brown, but blue or green; and dante, by merely taking away the pleasant color, would get at once to this idea of grave clear grey. so, when he was talking of twilight, his eye for color was far too good to let him call it _brown_ in our sense. twilight is not brown, but purple, golden, or dark grey; and this last was what dante meant. farther, i find that this negation of color is always the means by which dante subdues his tones. thus the fatal inscription on the hades gate is written in "obscure color," and the air which torments the passionate spirits is "aer nero" _black_ air (inf. v. .), called presently afterwards (line .) malignant air, just as the grey cliffs are called malignant cliffs. § . i was not, therefore, at a loss to find out what dante meant by the word; but i was at a loss to account for his not, as it seemed, acknowledging the existence of the color of _brown_ at all; for if he called dark neutral tint "brown," it remained a question what term he would use for things of the color of burnt umber. but, one day, just when i was puzzling myself about this, i happened to be sitting by one of our best living modern colorists, watching him at his work, when he said, suddenly, and by mere accident, after we had been talking of other things, "do you know i have found that there is no _brown_ in nature? what we call brown is always a variety either of orange or purple. it never can be represented by umber, unless altered by contrast." § . it is curious how far the significance of this remark extends, how exquisitely it illustrates and confirms the mediæval sense of hue;--how far, on the other hand, it cuts into the heart of the old umber idolatries of sir george beaumont and his colleagues, the "where do you put your _brown_ tree" system; the code of cremona-violin- colored foregrounds, of brown varnish and asphaltum; and all the old night-owl science, which, like young's pencil of sorrow, "in melancholy dipped, _embrowns_ the whole." nay, i do young an injustice by associating his words with the asphalt schools; for his eye for color was true, and like dante's; and i doubt not that he means dark grey, as byron purple-grey in that night piece in the siege of corinth, beginning "'tis midnight; on the mountains _brown_ the cold, round moon looks deeply down;" and, by the way, byron's best piece of evening color farther certifies the hues of dante's twilight,--it "dies like the dolphin, when it gasps away-- the last still loveliest; till 'tis gone, and all is _grey_." § . let not, however, the reader confuse the use of brown, as an expression of a natural tint, with its use as a means of _getting other tints_. brown is often an admirable ground, just because it is the only tint which is _not_ to be in the finished picture, and because it is the best basis of many silver greys and purples, utterly opposite to it in their nature. but there is infinite difference between laying a brown ground as a representation of shadow,--and as a base for light; and also an infinite difference between using brown shadows, associated with colored lights--always the characteristic of false schools of color--and using brown as a warm neutral tint for general study. i shall have to pursue this subject farther hereafter, in noticing how brown is used by great colorists in their studies, not as color, but as the pleasantest negation of color, possessing more transparency than black, and having more pleasant and sunlike warmth. hence turner, in his early studies, used blue for distant neutral tint, and brown for foreground neutral tint; while, as he advanced in color science, he gradually introduced, in the place of brown, strange purples, altogether peculiar to himself, founded, apparently, on indian red and vermilion, and passing into various tones of russet and orange.[ ] but, in the meantime, we must go back to dante and his mountains. § . we find, then, that his general type of rock color was meant, whether pale or dark, to be a colorless grey--the most melancholy hue which he supposed to exist in nature (hence the synonym for it, subsisting even till late times, in mediæval appellatives of dress, "_sad_-colored")--with some rusty stain from iron; or perhaps the "color ferrigno" of the inferno does not involve even so much of orange, but ought to be translated "iron grey." this being his idea of the color of rocks, we have next to observe his conception of their substance. and i believe it will be found that the character on which he fixes first in them is _frangibility_ --breakableness to bits, as opposed to wood, which can be sawn or rent, but not shattered with a hammer, and to metal, which is tough and malleable. thus, at the top of the abyss of the seventh circle, appointed for the "violent," or souls who had done evil by force, we are told, first, that the edge of it was composed of "great broken stones in a circle;" then, that the place was "alpine;" and, becoming hereupon attentive, in order to hear what an alpine place is like, we find that it was "like the place beyond trent, where the rock, either by earthquake, or failure of support, has broken down to the plain, so that it gives any one at the top some means of getting down to the bottom." this is not a very elevated or enthusiastic description of an alpine scene; and it is far from mended by the following verses, in which we are told that dante "began to go down by this great _unloading_ of stones," and that they moved often under his feet by reason of the new weight. the fact is that dante, by many expressions throughout the poem, shows himself to have been a notably bad climber; and being fond of sitting in the sun, looking at his fair baptistery, or walking in a dignified manner on flat pavement in a long robe, it puts him seriously out of his way when he has to take to his hands and knees, or look to his feet; so that the first strong impression made upon him by any alpine scene whatever, is, clearly, that it is bad walking. when he is in a fright and hurry, and has a very steep place to go down, virgil has to carry him altogether, and is obliged to encourage him, again and again, when they have a steep slope to go up,--the first ascent of the purgatorial mountain. the similes by which he illustrates the steepness of that ascent are all taken from the riviera of genoa, now traversed by a good carriage road under the name of the corniche; but as this road did not exist in dante's time, and the steep precipices and promontories were then probably traversed by footpaths, which, as they necessarily passed in many places over crumbling and slippery limestone, were doubtless not a little dangerous, and as in the manner they commanded the bays of sea below, and lay exposed to the full blaze of the south-eastern sun, they corresponded precisely to the situation of the path by which he ascends above the purgatorial sea, the image could not possibly have been taken from a better source for the fully conveying his idea to the reader: nor, by the way, is there reason to discredit, in _this_ place, his powers of climbing; for, with his usual accuracy, he has taken the angle of the path for us, saying it was considerably more than forty-five. now a continuous mountain slope of forty-five degrees is already quite unsafe either for ascent or descent, except by zigzag paths; and a greater slope than this could not be climbed, straightforward, but by help of crevices or jags in the rock, and great physical exertion besides. § . throughout these passages, however, dante's thoughts are clearly fixed altogether on the question of mere accessibility or inaccessibility. he does not show the smallest interest in the rocks, except as things to be conquered; and his description of their appearance is utterly meagre, involving no other epithets than "erto" (steep or upright), inf. xix. ., purg. iii. . &c.; "sconcio" (monstrous), inf. xix. .; "stagliata" (cut), inf. xvii. .; "maligno" (malignant), inf. vii. ; "duro" (hard), xx. .; with "large" and "broken" (rotto) in various places. no idea of roundness, massiveness, or pleasant form of any kind appears for a moment to enter his mind; and the different names which are given to the rocks in various places seem merely to refer to variations in size: thus a "rocco" is a part of a "scoglio," inf. xx. . and xxvi. .; a "scheggio" (xxi. . and xxvi. .) is a less fragment yet; a "petrone," or "sasso," is a large stone or boulder (purg. iv. . .), and "pietra," a less stone,--both of these last terms, especially "sasso," being used for any large mountainous mass, as in purg. xxi. .; and the vagueness of the word "monte" itself, like that of the french "montagne," applicable either to a hill on a post-road requiring the drag to be put on,--or to the mont blanc, marks a peculiar carelessness in both nations, at the time of the formation of their languages, as to the sublimity of the higher hills; so that the effect produced on an english ear by the word "mountain," signifying always a mass of a certain large size, cannot be conveyed either in french or italian. § . in all these modes of regarding rocks we find (rocks being in themselves, as we shall see presently, by no means monstrous or frightful things) exactly that inaccuracy in the mediæval mind which we had been led to expect, in its bearings on things contrary to the spirit of that symmetrical and perfect humanity which had formed its ideal; and it is very curious to observe how closely in the terms he uses, and the feelings they indicate, dante here agrees with homer. for the word stagliata (cut) corresponds very nearly to a favorite term of homer's respecting rocks "sculptured," used by him also of ships' sides; and the frescoes and illuminations of the middle ages enable us to ascertain exactly what this idea of "cut" rock was. § . in plate . i have assembled some examples, which will give the reader a sufficient knowledge of mediæval rock-drawing, by men whose names are known. they are chiefly taken from engravings, with which the reader has it in his power to compare them,[ ] and if, therefore, any injustice is done to the original paintings the fault is not mine; but the general impression conveyed is quite accurate, and it would not have been worth while, where work is so deficient in first conception, to lose time in insuring accuracy of facsimile. some of the crags may be taller here, or broader there, than in the original paintings; but the character of the work is perfectly preserved, and that is all with which we are at present concerned. [illustration: . geology of the middle ages.] figs. . and . are by ghirlandajo; . by filippo pesellino; . by leonardo da vinci; and . by andrea del castagno. all these are indeed workmen of a much later period than dante, but the system of rock-drawing remains entirely unchanged from giotto's time to ghirlandajo's;--is then altered only by an introduction of stratification indicative of a little closer observance of nature, and so remains until titian's time. fig . is exactly representative of one of giotto's rocks, though actually by ghirlandajo; and fig. . is rather less skilful than giotto's ordinary work. both these figures indicate precisely what homer and dante meant by "cut" rocks. they had observed the concave smoothness of certain rock fractures as eminently distinctive of rock from earth, and use the term "cut" or "sculptured" to distinguish the smooth surface from the knotty or sandy one, having observed nothing more respecting its real contours than is represented in figs. . and ., which look as if they had been hewn out with an adze. lorenzo ghiberti preserves the same type, even in his finest work. fig. ., from an interesting sixteenth century ms. in the british museum (cotton, augustus, a. .), is characteristic of the best later illuminators' work; and fig. ., from ghirlandajo, is pretty illustrative of dante's idea of terraces on the purgatorial mountain. it is the road by which the magi descend in his picture of their adoration, in the academy of florence. of the other examples i shall have more to say in the chapter on precipices; meanwhile we have to return to the landscape of the poem. § . inaccurate as this conception of rock was, it seems to have been the only one which, in mediæval art had place as representative of mountain scenery. to dante, mountains are inconceivable except as great broken stones or crags; all their broad contours and undulations seem to have escaped his eye. it is, indeed, with his usual undertone of symbolic meaning that he describes the great broken stones, and the fall of the shattered mountain, as the entrance to the circle appointed for the punishment of the violent; meaning that the violent and cruel, notwithstanding all their iron hardness of heart, have no true strength, but, either by earthquake, or want of support, fall at last into desolate ruin, naked, loose, and shaking under the tread. but in no part of the poem do we find allusion to mountains in any other than a stern light; nor the slightest evidence that dante cared to look at them. from that hill of san miniato, whose steps he knew so well, the eye commands, at the farther extremity of the val d'arno, the whole purple range of the mountains of carrara, peaked and mighty, seen always against the sunset light in silent outline, the chief forms that rule the scene as twilight fades away. by this vision dante seems to have been wholly unmoved, and, but for lucan's mention of aruns at luna, would seemingly not have spoken of the carrara hills in the whole course of his poem: when he does allude to them, he speaks of their white marble, and their command of stars and sea, but has evidently no regard for the hills themselves. there is not a single phrase or syllable throughout the poem which indicates such a regard. ugolino, in his dream, seemed to himself to be in the mountains, "by cause of which the pisan cannot see lucca;" and it is impossible to look up from pisa to that hoary slope without remembering the awe that there is in the passage; nevertheless, it was as a hunting-ground only that he remembered those hills. adam of brescia, tormented with eternal thirst, remembers the hills of romena, but only for the sake of their sweet waters: "the rills that glitter down the grassy slopes of casentino, making fresh and soft the banks whereby they glide to arno's stream, stand ever in my view." and, whenever hills are spoken of as having any influence on character, the repugnance to them is still manifest; they are always causes of rudeness or cruelty: "but that ungrateful and malignant race, who in old times came down from fesole, _ay, and still smack of their rough mountain flint_, will, for thy good deeds, show thee enmity. take heed thou cleanse thee of their ways." so again-- "as one _mountain-bred_, rugged, and clownish, if some city's walls he chance to enter, round him stares agape." § . finally, although the carrara mountains are named as having command of the stars and sea, the _alps_ are never specially mentioned but in bad weather, or snow. on the sand of the circle of the blasphemers-- "fell slowly wafting down dilated flakes of fire, as flakes of snow on alpine summit, when the wind is hushed." so the paduans have to defend their town and castles against inundation, "ere the genial warmth be felt, on chiarentana's top." the clouds of anger, in purgatory, can only be figured to the reader who has "on an alpine height been ta'en by cloud, through which thou sawest no better than the mole doth through opacous membrane." and in approaching the second branch of lethe, the seven ladies pause,-- "arriving at the verge of a dim umbrage hoar, such as is seen beneath green leaves and gloomy branches oft to overbrow a bleak and alpine cliff." § . truly, it is unfair of dante, that when he is going to use snow for a lovely image, and speak of it as melting away under heavenly sunshine, he must needs put it on the apennines, not on the alps: "as snow that lies amidst the living rafters, on the back of italy, congealed, when drifted high and closely piled by rough sclavonian blasts, breathe but the land whereon no shadow falls, and straightway melting, it distils away, like a fire-washed taper; thus was i, without a sigh, or tear, consumed in heart." the reader will thank me for reminding him, though out of its proper order, of the exquisite passage of scott which we have to compare with this: "as snow upon the mountain's breast slides from the rock that gave it rest, sweet ellen glided from her stay, and at the monarch's feet she lay." examine the context of this last passage, and its beauty is quite beyond praise; but note the northern love of rocks in the very first words i have to quote from scott, "the rocks that gave it rest." dante could not have thought of his "cut rocks" as giving rest even to snow. he must put it on the pine branches, if it is to be at peace. § . there is only one more point to be noticed in the dantesque landscape; namely, the feeling entertained by the poet towards the sky. and the love of mountains is so closely connected with the love of clouds, the sublimity of both depending much on their association, that having found dante regardless of the carrara mountains as seen from san miniato, we may well expect to find him equally regardless of the clouds in which the sun sank behind them. accordingly, we find that his only pleasure in the sky depends on its "white clearness,"--that turning into "bianca aspette di celestro" which is so peculiarly characteristic of fine days in italy. his pieces of pure pale light are always exquisite. in the dawn on the purgatorial mountain, first, in its pale white, he sees the "tremola della marina"--trembling of the sea; then it becomes vermilion; and at last, near sunrise, orange. these are precisely the changes of a calm and perfect dawn. the scenery of paradise begins with "day added to day," the light of the sun so flooding the heavens, that "never rain nor river made lake so wide;" and throughout the paradise all the beauty depends on spheres of light, or stars, never on clouds. but the pit of the inferno is at first sight obscure, deep, and so _cloudy_ that at its bottom nothing could be seen. when dante and virgil reach the marsh in which the souls of those who have been angry and sad in their lives are for ever plunged, they find it covered with thick fog; and the condemned souls say to them,-- "we once were sad, in the _sweet air, made gladsome by the sun_. now in these murky settlings are we sad." even the angel crossing the marsh to help them is annoyed by this bitter marsh smoke, "fummo acerbo," and continually sweeps it with his hand from before his face. anger, on the purgatorial mountain, is in like manner imaged, because of its blindness and wildness, by the alpine clouds. as they emerge from its mist they see the white light radiated through the fading folds of it; and, except this appointed cloud, no other can touch the mountain of purification. "tempest none, shower, hail, or snow, hoar-frost, or dewy moistness, higher falls, than that brief scale of threefold steps. thick clouds, nor scudding rack, are ever seen, swift glance ne'er lightens, nor thaumantian iris gleams." dwell for a little while on this intense love of dante for light,--taught, as he is at last by beatrice, to gaze on the sun itself like an eagle,--and endeavor to enter into his equally intense detestation of all mist, rack of cloud, or dimness of rain; and then consider with what kind of temper he would have regarded a landscape of copley fielding's or passed a day in the highlands. he has, in fact, assigned to the souls of the gluttonous no other punishment in the inferno than perpetuity of highland weather: "showers ceaseless, accursed, heavy and cold, unchanged for ever, both in kind and in degree,-- large hail, discolored water, sleety flaw, through the dim midnight air streamed down amain." § . however, in this immitigable dislike of clouds, dante goes somewhat beyond the general temper of his age. for although the calm sky was alone loved, and storm and rain were dreaded by all men, yet the white horizontal clouds of serene summer were regarded with great affection by all early painters, and considered as one of the accompaniments of the manifestation of spiritual power; sometimes, for theological reasons which we shall soon have to examine, being received, even without any other sign, as the types of blessing or divine acceptance: and in almost every representation of the heavenly paradise, these level clouds are set by the early painters for its floor, or for thrones of its angels; whereas dante retains steadily, through circle after circle, his cloudless thought, and concludes his painting of heaven, as he began it upon the purgatorial mountain, with the image of shadowless morning: "i raised my eyes, and as at morn is seen the horizon's eastern quarter to excel, so likewise, that pacific oriflamb glowed in the midmost, and toward every part, with like gradation paled away its flame." but the best way of regarding this feeling of dante's is as the ultimate and most intense expression of the love of light, color, and clearness, which, as we saw above, distinguished the mediæval from the greek on one side, and, as we shall presently see, distinguished him from the modern on the other. for it is evident that precisely in the degree in which the greek was agriculturally inclined, in that degree the sight of clouds would become to him more acceptable than to the mediæval knight, who only looked for the fine afternoons in which he might gather the flowers in his garden, and in no wise shared or imagined the previous anxieties of his gardener. thus, when we find ulysses comforted about ithaca, by being told it had "plenty of rain," and the maids of colonos boasting of their country for the same reason, we may be sure that they had some regard for clouds; and accordingly, except aristophanes, of whom more presently, all the greek poets speak fondly of the clouds, and consider them the fitting resting-places of the gods; including in their idea of clouds not merely the thin clear cirrus, but the rolling and changing volume of the thundercloud; nor even these only, but also the dusty whirlwind cloud of the earth, as in that noble chapter of herodotus which tells us of the cloud, full of mystic voices, that rose out of the dust of eleusis, and went down to salamis. clouds and rain were of course regarded with a like gratitude by the eastern and southern nations--jews and egyptians; and it is only among the northern mediævals, with whom fine weather was rarely so prolonged as to occasion painful drought, or dangerous famine, and over whom the clouds broke coldly and fiercely when they came, that the love of serene light assumes its intense character, and the fear of tempest is gloomiest; so that the powers of the clouds which to the greek foretold his conquest at salamis, and with whom he fought in alliance, side by side with their lightnings, under the crest of parnassus, seemed, in the heart of the middle ages, to be only under the dominion of the spirit of evil. i have reserved, for our last example of the landscape of dante, the passage in which this conviction is expressed; a passage not less notable for its close description of what the writer feared and disliked, than for the ineffable tenderness, in which dante is always raised as much above all other poets, as in softness the rose above all other flowers. it is the spirit of buonconte da montefeltro who speaks: "then said another: 'ah, so may thy wish, that takes thee o'er the mountain, be fulfilled, as thou shalt graciously give aid to mine! of montefeltro i; buonconte i: giovanna, nor none else, have care for me; sorrowing with these i therefore go.' i thus: from campaldino's field what force or chance drew thee, that ne'er thy sepulchre was known?' 'oh!' answered he, 'at casentino's foot a stream there courseth, named archiano, sprung in apennine, above the hermit's seat. e'en where its name is cancelled, there came i, pierced in the throat, fleeing away on foot, and bloodying the plain. here sight and speech failed me; and finishing with mary's name, i fell, and tenantless my flesh remained. ... _that evil will, which in his intellect still follows evil, came;_ ... the valley, soon as day was spent, _he covered o'er with cloud_. from pratomagno to the mountain range, and stretched the sky above; so that the air, impregnate, changed to water. fell the rain; and to the fosses came all that the land contained not; and as mightiest streams are wont. to the great river, with such headlong sweep, rushed, that nought stayed its course. my stiffened frame, laid at his mouth, the fell archiano found, and dashed it into arno; from my breast loosening the cross, that of myself i made when overcome with pain. he hurled me on, along the banks and bottom of his course; then in his muddy spoils encircling wrapt.'" observe, buonconte, as he dies, crosses his arms over his breast, pressing them together, partly in his pain, partly in prayer. his body thus lies by the river shore, as on a sepulchral monument, the arms folded into a cross. the rage of the river, under the influence of the evil demon, _unlooses this cross_, dashing the body supinely away, and rolling it over and over by bank and bottom. nothing can be truer to the action of a stream in fury than these lines. and how desolate is it all! the lonely flight,--the grisly wound, "pierced in the throat,"--the death, without help or pity,--only the name of mary on the lips,-and the cross folded over the heart. then the rage of the demon and the river,--the noteless grave,--and, at last, even she who had been most trusted forgetting him,-- "giovanna, none else have care for me." there is, i feel assured, nothing else like it in all the range of poetry; a faint and harsh echo of it, only, exists in one scottish ballad, "the twa corbies." here, then, i think, we may close our inquiry into the nature of the mediæval landscape; not but that many details yet require to be worked out; but these will be best observed by recurrence to them, for comparison with similar details in modern landscape,--our principal purpose, the getting at the governing tones and temper of conception, being, i believe, now sufficiently accomplished. and i think that our subject may be best pursued by immediately turning from the mediæval to the perfectly modern landscape; for although i have much to say respecting the transitional state of mind exhibited in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, i believe the transitions may be more easily explained after we have got clear sight of the extremes; and that by getting perfect and separate hold of the three great phases of art,--greek, mediæval, and modern,--we shall be enabled to trace, with least chance of error, those curious vacillations which brought us to the modern temper while vainly endeavoring to resuscitate the greek. i propose, therefore, in the next chapter, to examine the spirit of modern landscape, as seen generally in modern painting, and especially in the poetry of scott. [ ] it is an unpublished plate. i know only two impressions of it. [ ] (cayley.) "tutto di pietra, e di color ferrigno"--inf. xviii. . [ ] "maligne piagge grige."--inf. vii. . [ ] it is in these subtle purples that even the more elaborate passages of the earlier drawings are worked; as, for instance, the highland streams, spoken of in pre-raphaelitism. also, turner could, by opposition, get what color he liked out of a brown. i have seen cases in which he had made it stand for the purest _rose_ light. [ ] the references are in appendix i. chapter xvi. of modern landscape. § . we turn our eyes, therefore, as boldly and as quickly as may be, from these serene fields and skies of mediæval art, to the most characteristic examples of modern landscape. and, i believe, the first thing that will strike us, or that ought to strike us, is their _cloudiness_. out of perfect light and motionless air, we find ourselves on a sudden brought under sombre skies, and into drifting wind; and, with fickle sunbeams flashing in our face, or utterly drenched with sweep of rain, we are reduced to track the changes of the shadows on the grass, or watch the rents of twilight through angry cloud. and we find that whereas all the pleasure of the mediæval was in _stability_, _definiteness_, and _luminousness_, we are expected to rejoice in darkness, and triumph in mutability; to lay the foundation of happiness in things which momentarily change or fade; and to expect the utmost satisfaction and instruction from what is impossible to arrest, and difficult to comprehend. § . we find, however, together with this general delight in breeze and darkness, much attention to the real form of clouds, and careful drawing of effects of mist: so that the appearance of objects, as seen through it, becomes a subject of science with us: and the faithful representation of that appearance is made of primal importance, under the name of aerial perspective. the aspects of sunset and sunrise, with all their attendant phenomena of cloud and mist, are watchfully delineated; and in ordinary daylight landscape, the sky is considered of so much importance, that a principal mass of foliage, or a whole foreground, is unhesitatingly thrown into shade merely to bring out the form of a white cloud. so that, if a general and characteristic name were needed for modern landscape art, none better could be invented than "the service of clouds." § . and this name would, unfortunately, be characteristic of our art in more ways than one. in the last chapter, i said that all the greeks spoke kindly about the clouds, except aristophanes; and he, i am sorry to say (since his report is so unfavorable), is the only greek who had studied them attentively. he tells us, first, that they are "great goddesses to idle men;" then, that they are "mistresses of disputings, and logic, and monstrosities, and noisy chattering;" declares that whoso believes in their divinity must first disbelieve in jupiter, and place supreme power in the hands of an unknown god "whirlwind;" and, finally, he displays their influence over the mind of one of their disciples, in his sudden desire "to speak ingeniously concerning smoke." there is, i fear, an infinite truth in this aristophanic judgment applied to our modern cloud-worship. assuredly, much of the love of mystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our metaphysics, must come under that definition so long ago given by the great greek, "speaking ingeniously concerning smoke." and much of the instinct, which, partially developed in painting, may be now seen throughout every mode of exertion of mind,--the easily encouraged doubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and delight in the changing and the marvellous, as opposed to the old quiet serenity of social custom and religious faith,--is again deeply defined in those few words, the "dethroning of jupiter," the "coronation of the whirlwind." § . nor of whirlwind merely, but also of darkness or ignorance respecting all stable facts. that darkening of the foreground to bring out the white cloud, is, in one aspect of it, a type of the subjection of all plain and positive fact, to what is uncertain and unintelligible. and as we examine farther into the matter, we shall be struck by another great difference between the old and modern landscape, namely, that in the old no one ever thought of drawing anything but as well _as he could_. that might not be _well_, as we have seen in the case of rocks; but it was as well as he _could_, and always distinctly. leaf, or stone, or animal, or man, it was equally drawn with care and clearness, and its essential characters shown. if it was an oak tree, the acorns were drawn; if a flint pebble, its veins were drawn; if an arm of the sea, its fish were drawn; if a group of figures, their faces and dresses were drawn--to the very last subtlety of expression and end of thread that could be got into the space, far off or near. but now our ingenuity is all "concerning smoke." nothing is truly drawn but that; all else is vague, slight, imperfect; got with as little pains as possible. you examine your closest foreground, and find no leaves; your largest oak, and find no acorns; your human figure, and find a spot of red paint instead of a face; and in all this, again and again, the aristophanic words come true, and the clouds seem to be "great goddesses to idle men." § . the next thing that will strike us, after this love of clouds, is the love of liberty. whereas the mediæval was always shutting himself into castles, and behind fosses, and drawing brickwork neatly, and beds of flowers primly, our painters delight in getting to the open fields and moors; abhor all hedges and moats; never paint anything but free-growing trees, and rivers gliding "at their own sweet will;" eschew formality down to the smallest detail; break and displace the brickwork which the mediæval would have carefully cemented; leave unpruned the thickets he would have delicately trimmed; and, carrying the love of liberty even to license, and the love of wildness even to ruin, take pleasure at last in every aspect of age and desolation which emancipates the objects of nature from the government of men;--on the castle wall displacing its tapestry with ivy, and spreading, through the garden, the bramble for the rose. § . connected with this love of liberty we find a singular manifestation of love of mountains, and see our painters traversing the wildest places of the globe in order to obtain subjects with craggy foregrounds and purple distances. some few of them remain content with pollards and flat land; but these are always men of third-rate order; and the leading masters, while they do not reject the beauty of the low grounds, reserve their highest powers to paint alpine peaks or italian promontories. and it is eminently noticeable, also, that this pleasure in the mountains is never mingled with fear, or tempered by a spirit of meditation, as with the mediæval; but it is always free and fearless, brightly exhilarating, and wholly unreflective; so that the painter feels that his mountain foreground may be more consistently animated by a sportsman than a hermit; and our modern society in general goes to the mountains, not to fast, but to feast, and leaves their glaciers covered with chicken-bones and egg-shells. § . connected with this want of any sense of solemnity in mountain scenery, is a general profanity of temper in regarding all the rest of nature; that is to say, a total absence of faith in the presence of any deity therein. whereas the mediæval never painted a cloud, but with the purpose of placing an angel in it; and a greek never entered a wood without expecting to meet a god in it; _we_ should think the appearance of an angel in the cloud wholly unnatural, and should be seriously surprised by meeting a god anywhere. our chief ideas about the wood are connected with poaching. we have no belief that the clouds contain more than so many inches of rain or hail, and from our ponds and ditches expect nothing more divine than ducks and watercresses. § . finally: connected with this profanity of temper is a strong tendency to deny the sacred element of color, and make our boast in blackness. for though occasionally glaring, or violent, modern color is on the whole eminently sombre, tending continually to grey or brown, and by many of our best painters consistently falsified, with a confessed pride in what they call chaste or subdued tints; so that, whereas a mediæval paints his sky bright blue, and his foreground bright green, gilds the towers of his castles, and clothes his figures with purple and white, we paint our sky grey, our foreground black, and our foliage brown, and think that enough is sacrificed to the sun in admitting the dangerous brightness of a scarlet cloak or a blue jacket. § . these, i believe, are the principal points which would strike us instantly, if we were to be brought suddenly into an exhibition of modern landscapes out of a room filled with mediæval work. it is evident that there are both evil and good in this change; but how much evil, or how much good, we can only estimate by considering, as in the former divisions of our inquiry, what are the real roots of the habits of mind which have caused them. [sidenote: distinctive characters of the modern mind:] and first, it is evident that the title "dark ages," given to the mediæval centuries, is, respecting art, wholly inapplicable. they were, on the contrary, the bright ages; ours are the dark ones. i do not mean metaphysically, but literally. they were the ages of gold: ours are the ages of umber. [sidenote: . despondency arising from faithlessness.] this is partly mere mistake in us; we build brown brick walls, and wear brown coats, because we have been blunderingly taught to do so, and go on doing so mechanically. there is, however, also some cause for the change in our own tempers. on the whole, these are much _sadder_ ages than the early ones; not sadder in a noble and deep way, but in a dim, wearied way,--the way of ennui, and jaded intellect, and uncomfortableness of soul and body. the middle ages had their wars and agonies, but also intense delights. their gold was dashed with blood; but ours is sprinkled with dust. their life was interwoven with white and purple; ours is one seamless stuff of brown. not that we are without apparent festivity, but festivity more or less forced, mistaken, embittered, incomplete--not of the heart. how wonderfully, since shakspere's time, have we lost the power of laughing at bad jests! the very finish of our wit belies our gaiety. § . the profoundest reason of this darkness of heart is, i believe, our want of faith. there never yet was a generation of men (savage or civilized) who, taken as a body, so wofully fulfilled the words, "having no hope, and without god in the world," as the present civilized european race. a red indian or otaheitan savage has more sense of a divine existence round him, or government over him, than the plurality of refined londoners and parisians; and those among us who may in some sense be said to believe, are divided almost without exception into two broad classes, romanist and puritan; who, but for the interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would, either of them, reduce the other sect as speedily as possible to ashes; the romanist having always done so whenever he could, from the beginning of their separation, and the puritan at this time holding himself in complacent expectation of the destruction of rome by volcanic fire. such division as this between persons nominally of one religion, that is to say, believing in the same god, and the same revelation, cannot but become a stumbling-block of the gravest kind to all thoughtful and far-sighted men,--a stumbling-block which they can only surmount under the most favorable circumstances of early education. hence, nearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands. most of our scientific men are in this last class; our popular authors either set themselves definitely against all religious form, pleading for simple truth and benevolence (thackeray, dickens), or give themselves up to bitter and fruitless statement of facts (de balzac), or surface-painting (scott), or careless blasphemy, sad or smiling (byron, beranger). our earnest poets, and deepest thinkers, are doubtful and indignant (tennyson, carlyle); one or two, anchored, indeed, but anxious, or weeping (wordsworth, mrs. browning); and of these two, the first is not so sure of his anchor, but that now and then it drags with him, even to make him cry out,-- "great god, i had rather be a pagan suckled in some creed outworn: so might i, standing on this pleasant lea, have glimpses that would make me less forlorn." in politics, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or affectation. over german religious pictures the inscription, "see how pious i am," can be read at a glance by any clear-sighted person. over french and english religious pictures, the inscription, "see how impious i am," is equally legible. all sincere and modest art is, among us, profane.[ ] [sidenote: § . . levity from the same cause.] this faithlessness operates among us according to our tempers, producing either sadness or levity, and being the ultimate root alike of our discontents and of our wantonnesses. it is marvellous how full of contradiction it makes us; we are first dull, and seek for wild and lonely places because we have no heart for the garden; presently we recover our spirits, and build an assembly room among the mountains, because we have no reverence for the desert. i do not know if there be game on sinai, but i am always expecting to hear of some one's shooting over it. § . there is, however, another, and a more innocent root of our delight in wild scenery. [sidenote: . reactionary love of inanimate beauty.] all the renaissance principles of art tended, as i have before often explained, to the setting beauty above truth, and seeking for it always at the expense of truth. and the proper punishment of such pursuit--the punishment which all the laws of the universe rendered inevitable--was, that those who thus pursued beauty should wholly lose sight of beauty. all the thinkers of the age, as we saw previously, declared that it did not exist. the age seconded their efforts, and banished beauty, so far as human effort could succeed in doing so, from the face of the earth, and the form of man. to powder the hair, to patch the cheek, to hoop the body, to buckle the foot, were all part and parcel of the same system which reduced streets to brick walls, and pictures to brown stains. one desert of ugliness was extended before the eyes of mankind; and their pursuit of the beautiful, so recklessly continued, received unexpected consummation in high-heeled shoes and periwigs,--gower street, and gaspar poussin. § . reaction from this state was inevitable, if any true life was left in the races of mankind; and, accordingly, though still forced, by rule and fashion, to the producing and wearing all that is ugly, men steal out, half-ashamed of themselves for doing so, to the fields and mountains; and, finding among these the color, and liberty, and variety, and power, which are for ever grateful to them, delight in these to an extent never before known; rejoice in all the wildest shattering of the mountain side, as an opposition to gower street; gaze in a rapt manner at sunsets and sunrises, to see there the blue, and gold, and purple, which glow for them no longer on knight's armor or temple porch; and gather with care out of the fields, into their blotted herbaria, the flowers which the five orders of architecture have banished from their doors and casements. [sidenote: § . . disdain of beauty in man.] the absence of care for personal beauty, which is another great characteristic of the age, adds to this feeling in a twofold way: first, by turning all reverent thoughts away from human nature; and making us think of men as ridiculous or ugly creatures, getting through the world as well as they can, and spoiling it in doing so; not ruling it in a kingly way and crowning all its loveliness. in the middle ages hardly anything but vice could be caricatured, because virtue was always visibly and personally noble; now virtue itself is apt to inhabit such poor human bodies, that no aspect of it is invulnerable to jest; and for all fairness we have to seek to the flowers, for all sublimity, to the hills. the same want of care operates, in another way, by lowering the standard of health, increasing the susceptibility to nervous or sentimental impressions, and thus adding to the other powers of nature over us whatever charm may be felt in her fostering the melancholy fancies of brooding idleness. [sidenote: § . . romantic imagination of the past.] it is not, however, only to existing inanimate nature that our want of beauty in person and dress has driven us. the imagination of it, as it was seen in our ancestors, haunts us continually; and while we yield to the present fashions, or act in accordance with the dullest modern principles of economy and utility, we look fondly back to the manners of the ages of chivalry, and delight in painting, to the fancy, the fashions we pretend to despise, and the splendors we think it wise to abandon. the furniture and personages of our romance are sought, when the writer desires to please most easily, in the centuries which we profess to have surpassed in everything; the art which takes us into the present times is considered as both daring and degraded; and while the weakest words please us, and are regarded as poetry, which recall the manners of our forefathers, or of strangers, it is only as familiar and vulgar that we accept the description of our own. in this we are wholly different from all the races that preceded us. all other nations have regarded their ancestors with reverence as saints or heroes; but have nevertheless thought their own deeds and ways of life the fitting subjects for their arts of painting or of verse. we, on the contrary, regard our ancestors as foolish and wicked, but yet find our chief artistic pleasures in descriptions of their ways of life. the greeks and mediævals honored, but did not imitate, their forefathers; we imitate, but do not honor. [sidenote: § . . interest in science.] [sidenote: . fear of war.] with this romantic love of beauty, forced to seek in history, and in external nature, the satisfaction it cannot find in ordinary life, we mingle a more rational passion, the due and just result of newly awakened powers of attention. whatever may first lead us to the scrutiny of natural objects, that scrutiny never fails of its reward. unquestionably they are intended to be regarded by us with both reverence and delight; and every hour we give to them renders their beauty more apparent, and their interest more engrossing. natural science--which can hardly be considered to have existed before modern times--rendering our knowledge fruitful in accumulation and exquisite in accuracy, has acted for good or evil, according to the temper of the mind which received it; and though it has hardened the faithlessness of the dull and proud, has shown new grounds for reverence to hearts which were thoughtful and humble. the neglect of the art of war, while it has somewhat weakened and deformed the body,[ ] has given us leisure and opportunity for studies to which, before, time and space were equally wanting; lives which once were early wasted on the battle field are now passed usefully in the study; nations which exhausted themselves in annual warfare now dispute with each other the discovery of new planets; and the serene philosopher dissects the plants, and analyzes the dust, of lands which were of old only traversed by the knight in hasty march, or by the borderer in heedless rapine. § . the elements of progress and decline being thus strangely mingled in the modern mind, we might beforehand anticipate that one of the notable characters of our art would be its inconsistency; that efforts would be made in every direction, and arrested by every conceivable cause and manner of failure; that in all we did, it would become next to impossible to distinguish accurately the grounds for praise or for regret; that all previous canons of practice and methods of thought would be gradually overthrown, and criticism continually defied by successes which no one had expected, and sentiments which no one could define. § . accordingly, while, in our inquiries into greek and mediæval art, i was able to describe, in general terms, what all men did or felt, i find now many characters in many men; some, it seems to me, founded on the inferior and evanescent principles of modernism, on its recklessness, impatience, or faithlessness; others founded on its science, its new affection for nature, its love of openness and liberty. and among all these characters, good or evil, i see that some, remaining to us from old or transitional periods, do not properly belong to us, and will soon fade away; and others, though not yet distinctly developed, are yet properly our own, and likely to grow forward into greater strength. for instance: our reprobation of bright color is, i think, for the most part, mere affectation, and must soon be done away with. vulgarity, dulness, or impiety, will indeed always express themselves through art in brown and grey, as in rembrandt, caravaggio, and salvator; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or impious; nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so in any wise. our greatest men, whether sad or gay, still delight, like the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. the coloring of scott and byron is full and pure; that of keats and tennyson rich even to excess. our practical failures in coloring are merely the necessary consequences of our prolonged want of practice during the periods of renaissance affectation and ignorance; and the only durable difference between old and modern coloring, is the acceptance of certain hues, by the modern, which please him by expressing that melancholy peculiar to his more reflective or sentimental character, and the greater variety of them necessary to express his greater science. § . again: if we ever become wise enough to dress consistently and gracefully, to make health a principal object in education, and to render our streets beautiful with art, the external charm of past history will in great measure disappear. there is no essential reason, because we live after the fatal seventeenth century, that we should never again be able to confess interest in sculpture, or see brightness in embroidery; nor, because now we choose to make the night deadly with our pleasures, and the day with our labors, prolonging the dance till dawn, and the toil to twilight, that we should never again learn how rightly to employ the sacred trusts of strength, beauty, and time. whatever external charm attaches itself to the past, would then be seen in proper subordination to the brightness of present life; and the elements of romance would exist, in the earlier ages, only in the attraction which must generally belong to whatever is unfamiliar; in the reverence which a noble nation always pays to its ancestors; and in the enchanted light which races, like individuals, must perceive in looking back to the days of their childhood. § . again: the peculiar levity with which natural scenery is regarded by a large number of modern minds cannot be considered as entirely characteristic of the age, inasmuch as it never can belong to its greatest intellects. men of any high mental power must be serious, whether in ancient or modern days: a certain degree of reverence for fair scenery is found in all our great writers without exception,--even the one who has made us laugh oftenest, taking us to the valley of chamouni, and to the sea beach, there to give peace after suffering, and change revenge into pity.[ ] it is only the dull, the uneducated, or the worldly, whom it is painful to meet on the hill sides; and levity, as a ruling character, cannot be ascribed to the whole nation, but only to its holiday-making apprentices, and its house of commons. § . we need not, therefore, expect to find any single poet or painter representing the entire group of powers, weaknesses, and inconsistent instincts which govern or confuse our modern life. but we may expect that in the man who seems to be given by providence as the type of the age (as homer and dante were given, as the types of classical and mediæval mind), we shall find whatever is fruitful and substantial to be completely present, together with those of our weaknesses, which are indeed nationally characteristic, and compatible with general greatness of mind; just as the weak love of fences, and dislike of mountains, were found compatible with dante's greatness in other respects. § . farther: as the admiration of mankind is found, in our times, to have in great part passed from men to mountains, and from human emotion to natural phenomena, we may anticipate that the great strength of art will also be warped in this direction; with this notable result for us, that whereas the greatest painters or painter of classical and mediæval periods, being wholly devoted to the representation of humanity, furnished us with but little to examine in landscape, the greatest painters or painter of modern times will in all probability be devoted to landscape principally; and farther, because in representing human emotion words surpass painting, but in representing natural scenery painting surpasses words, we may anticipate also that the painter and poet (for convenience' sake i here use the words in opposition) will somewhat change their relations of rank in illustrating the mind of the age; that the painter will become of more importance, the poet of less; and that the relations between the men who are the types and firstfruits of the age in word and work,--namely, scott and turner,--will be, in many curious respects, different from those between homer and phidias, or dante and giotto. it is this relation which we have now to examine. § . and, first, i think it probable that many readers may be surprised at my calling scott the great representative of the mind of the age in literature. those who can perceive the intense penetrative depth of wordsworth, and the exquisite finish and melodious power of tennyson, may be offended at my placing in higher rank that poetry of careless glance, and reckless rhyme, in which scott poured out the fancies of his youth; and those who are familiar with the subtle analysis of the french novelists, or who have in any wise submitted themselves to the influence of german philosophy, may be equally indignant at my ascribing a principality to scott among the literary men of europe, in an age which has produced de balzac and goethe. so also in painting, those who are acquainted with the sentimental efforts made at present by the german religious and historical schools, and with the disciplined power and learning of the french, will think it beyond all explanation absurd to call a painter of light water-color landscapes, eighteen inches by twelve, the first representative of the arts of the age. i can only crave the reader's patience, and his due consideration of the following reasons for my doing so, together with those advanced in the farther course of the work. § . i believe the first test of a truly great man is his humility. i do not mean, by humility, doubt of his own power, or hesitation in speaking of his opinions; but a right understanding of the relation between what _he_ can do and say, and the rest of the world's sayings and doings. all great men not only know their business, but usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them; only, they do not think much of themselves on that account. arnolfo knows he can build a good dome at florence; albert durer writes calmly to one who had found fault with his work, "it cannot be better done;" sir isaac newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else;--only they do not expect their fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them; they have a curious under-sense of powerlessness, feeling that the greatness is not _in_ them, but _through_ them; that they could not do or be anything else than god-made them. and they see something divine and god-made in every other man they meet, and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful. § . now, i find among the men of the present age, as far as i know them, this character in scott and turner preeminently; i am not sure if it is not in them alone. i do not find scott talking about the dignity of literature, nor turner about the dignity of painting. they do their work, feeling that they cannot well help it; the story must be told, and the effect put down; and if people like it, well and good; and if not, the world will not be much the worse. i believe a very different impression of their estimate of themselves and their doings will be received by any one who reads the conversations of wordsworth or goethe. the _slightest_ manifestation of jealousy or self-complacency is enough to mark a second-rate character of the intellect; and i fear that especially in goethe, such manifestations are neither few nor slight. § . connected with this general humility is the total absence of affectation in these men,--that is to say, of any assumption of manner or behavior in their work, in order to attract attention. not but that they are mannerists both. scott's verse is strongly mannered, and turner's oil painting; but the manner of it is necessitated by the feelings of the men, entirely natural to both, never exaggerated for the sake of show. i hardly know any other literary or pictorial work of the day which is not in some degree affected. i am afraid wordsworth was often affected in his simplicity, and de balzac in his finish. many fine french writers are affected in their reserve, and full of stage tricks in placing of sentences. it is lucky if in german writers we ever find so much as a sentence without affectation. i know no painters without it, except one or two pre-raphaelites (chiefly holman hunt), and some simple water-color painters, as william hunt, william turner of oxford, and the late george robson; but these last have no invention, and therefore by our fourth canon, chap. iii. sec. ., are excluded from the first rank of artists; and of the pre-raphaelites there is here no question, as they in no wise represent the modern school. § . again: another very important, though not infallible, test of greatness is, as we have often said, the appearance of ease with which the thing is done. it may be that, as with dante and leonardo, the finish given to the work effaces the evidence of ease; but where the ease is manifest, as in scott, turner, and tintoret; and the thing done is very noble, it is a strong reason for placing the men above those who confessedly work with great pains. scott writing his chapter or two before breakfast--not retouching, turner finishing a whole drawing in a forenoon before he goes out to shoot (providing always the chapter and drawing be good), are instantly to be set above men who confessedly have spent the day over the work, and think the hours well spent if it has been a little mended between sunrise and sunset. indeed, it is no use for men to think to appear great by working fast, dashing, and scrawling; the thing they do must be good and great, cost what time it may; but if it _be_ so, and they have honestly and unaffectedly done it with _no effort_, it is probably a greater and better thing than the result of the hardest efforts of others. § . then, as touching the kind of work done by these two men, the more i think of it i find this conclusion more impressed upon me,--that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to _see_ something, and tell what it _saw_ in a plain way. hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. to see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion,--all in one. therefore, finding the world of literature more or less divided into thinkers and seers, i believe we shall find also that the seers are wholly the greater race of the two. a true thinker, who has practical purpose in his thinking, and is sincere, as plato, or carlyle, or helps, becomes in some sort a seer, and must be always of infinite use in his generation; but an affected thinker, who supposes his thinking of any other importance than as it tends to work, is about the vainest kind of person that can be found in the occupied classes. nay, i believe that metaphysicians and philosophers are, on the whole, the greatest troubles the world has got to deal with; and that while a tyrant or bad man is of some use in teaching people submission or indignation, and a thoroughly idle man is only harmful in setting an idle example, and communicating to other lazy people his own lazy misunderstandings, busy metaphysicians are always entangling _good_ and _active_ people, and weaving cobwebs among the finest wheels of the world's business; and are as much as possible, by all prudent persons, to be brushed out of their way, like spiders, and the meshed weed that has got into the cambridgeshire canals, and other such impediments to barges and business. and if we thus clear the metaphysical element out of modern literature, we shall find its bulk amazingly diminished, and the claims of the remaining writers, or of those whom we have thinned by this abstraction of their straw stuffing, much more easily adjusted.[ ] § . again: the mass of sentimental literature, concerned with the analysis and description of emotion, headed by the poetry of byron, is altogether of lower rank than the literature which merely describes what it saw. the true seer always feels as intensely as any one else; but he does not much describe his feelings. he tells you whom he met, and what they said; leaves you to make out, from that, what they feel, and what he feels, but goes into little detail. and, generally speaking, pathetic writing and careful explanation of passion are quite easy, compared with this plain recording of what people said or did, or with the right invention of what they are likely to say and do; for this reason, that to invent a story, or admirably and thoroughly tell any part of a story, it is necessary to grasp the entire mind of every personage concerned in it, and know precisely how they would be affected by what happens; which to do requires a colossal intellect; but to describe a separate emotion delicately, it is only needed that one should feel it oneself; and thousands of people are capable of feeling this or that noble emotion, for one who is able to enter into all the feelings of somebody sitting on the other side of the table. even, therefore, when this sentimental literature is first rate, as in passages of byron, tennyson, and keats, it ought not to be ranked so high as the creative; and though perfection, even in narrow fields, is perhaps as rare as in the wider, and it may be as long before we have another in memoriam as another guy mannering, i unhesitatingly receive as a greater manifestation of power the right invention of a few sentences spoken by pleydell and mannering across their supper-table, than the most tender and passionate melodies of the self-examining verse. § . having, therefore, cast metaphysical writers out of our way, and sentimental writers into the second rank, i do not think scott's supremacy among those who remain will any more be doubtful; nor would it, perhaps, have been doubtful before, had it not been encumbered by innumerable faults and weaknesses. but it is preeminently in these faults and weaknesses that scott is representative of the mind of his age: and because he is the greatest man born amongst us, and intended for the enduring type of us, all our principal faults must be laid on his shoulders, and he must bear down the dark marks to the latest ages; while the smaller men, who have some special work to do, perhaps not so much belonging to this age as leading out of it to the next, are often kept providentially quit of the encumbrances which they had not strength to sustain, and are much smoother and pleasanter to look at, in their way; only that is a smaller way. § . thus, the most startling fault of the age being its faithlessness, it is necessary that its greatest man should be faithless. nothing is more notable or sorrowful in scott's mind than its incapacity of steady belief in anything. he cannot even resolve hardily to believe in a ghost, or a water-spirit; always explains them away in an apologetic manner, not believing, all the while, even his own explanation. he never can clearly ascertain whether there is anything behind the arras but rats; never draws sword, and thrusts at it for life or death; but goes on looking at it timidly, and saying, "it must be the wind." he is educated a presbyterian, and remains one, because it is the most sensible thing he can do if he is to live in edinburgh; but he thinks romanism more picturesque, and profaneness more gentlemanly: does not see that anything affects human life but love, courage, and destiny; which are, indeed, not matters of faith at all, but of sight. any gods but those are very misty in outline to him; and when the love is laid ghastly in poor charlotte's coffin; and the courage is no more of use,--the pen having fallen from between the fingers; and destiny is sealing the scroll,--the god-light is dim in the tears that fall on it. he is in all this the epitome of his epoch. § . again: as another notable weakness of the age is its habit of looking back, in a romantic and passionate idleness, to the past ages, not understanding them all the while, nor really desiring to understand them, so scott gives up nearly the half of his intellectual power to a fond, yet purposeless, dreaming over the past, and spends half his literary labors in endeavors to revive it, not in reality, but on the stage of fiction; endeavors which were the best of the kind that modernism made, but still successful only so far as scott put, under the old armor, the everlasting human nature which he knew; and totally unsuccessful, so far as concerned the painting of the armor itself, which he knew _not_. the excellence of scott's work is precisely in proportion to the degree in which it is sketched from present nature. his familiar life is inimitable; his quiet scenes of introductory conversation, as the beginning of rob roy and redgauntlet, and all his living scotch characters, mean or noble, from andrew fairservice to jeanie deans, are simply right, and can never be bettered. but his romance and antiquarianism, his knighthood and monkery, are all false, and he knows them to be false; does not care to make them earnest; enjoys them for their strangeness, but laughs at his own antiquarianism, all through his own third novel,--with exquisite modesty indeed, but with total misunderstanding of the function of an antiquary. he does not see how anything is to be got out of the past but confusion, old iron on drawingroom chairs, and serious inconvenience to dr. heavysterne. § . again: more than any age that had preceded it, ours had been ignorant of the meaning of the word "art." it had not a single fixed principle, and what unfixed principles it worked upon were all wrong. it was necessary that scott should know nothing of art. he neither cared for painting nor sculpture, and was totally incapable of forming a judgment about them. he had some confused love of gothic architecture, because it was dark, picturesque, old, and like nature; but could not tell the worst from the best, and built for himself perhaps the most incongruous and ugly pile that gentlemanly modernism ever designed; marking, in the most curious and subtle way, that mingling of reverence with irreverence which is so striking in the age; he reverences melrose, yet casts one of its piscinas, puts a modern steel grate into it, and makes it his fireplace. like all pure moderns, he supposes the gothic barbarous, notwithstanding his love of it; admires, in an equally ignorant way, totally opposite styles; is delighted with the new town of edinburgh; mistakes its dulness for purity of taste, and actually compares it, in its deathful formality of street, as contrasted with the rudeness of the old town, to britomart taking off her armor. § . again: as in reverence and irreverence, so in levity and melancholy, we saw that the spirit of the age was strangely interwoven. therefore, also, it is necessary that scott should be light, careless, unearnest, and yet eminently sorrowful. throughout all his work there is no evidence of any purpose but to while away the hour. his life had no other object than the pleasure of the instant, and the establishing of a family name. all his thoughts were, in their outcome and end, less than nothing, and vanity. and yet, of all poetry that i know, none is so sorrowful as scott's. other great masters are pathetic in a resolute and predetermined way, when they choose; but, in their own minds, are evidently stern, or hopeful, or serene; never really melancholy. even byron is rather sulky and desperate than melancholy; keats is sad because he is sickly; shelley because he is impious; but scott is inherently and consistently sad. around all his power, and brightness, and enjoyment of eye and heart, the far-away Æolian knell is for ever sounding; there is not one of those loving or laughing glances of his but it is brighter for the film of tears; his mind is like one of his own hill rivers,--it is white, and flashes in the sun fairly, careless, as it seems, and hasty in its going, but "far beneath, where slow they creep from pool to eddy, dark and deep, where alders moist, and willows weep, you hear her streams repine." life begins to pass from him very early; and while homer sings cheerfully in his blindness, and dante retains his courage, and rejoices in hope of paradise, through all his exile, scott, yet hardly past his youth, lies pensive in the sweet sunshine and among the harvest of his native hills. "blackford, on whose uncultured breast, among the broom, and thorn, and whin, a truant boy, i sought the nest, or listed as i lay at rest, while rose on breezes thin the murmur of the city crowd, and, from his steeple jangling loud, st. giles's mingling din! now, from the summit to the plain, waves all the hill with yellow grain; and on the landscape as i look, nought do i see unchanged remain, save the rude cliffs and chiming brook; to me they make a heavy moan of early friendships past and gone." § . such, then, being the weaknesses which it was necessary that scott should share with his age, in order that he might sufficiently represent it, and such the grounds for supposing him, in spite of all these weaknesses, the greatest literary man whom that age produced, let us glance at the principal points in which his view of landscape differs from that of the mediævals. i shall not endeavor now, as i did with homer and dante, to give a complete analysis of all the feelings which appear to be traceable in scott's allusions to landscape scenery,--for this would require a volume,--but only to indicate the main points of differing character between his temper and dante's. then we will examine in detail, not the landscape of literature, but that of painting, which must, of course, be equally, or even in a higher degree, characteristic of the age. § . and, first, observe scott's habit of looking at nature neither as dead, or merely material, in the way that homer regards it, nor as altered by his own feelings, in the way that keats and tennyson regard it, but as having an animation and pathos of _its own_, wholly irrespective of human presence or passion,--an animation which scott loves and sympathizes with, as he would with a fellow creature, forgetting himself altogether, and subduing his own humanity before what seems to him the power of the landscape. "yon lonely thorn,--would he could tell the changes of his parent dell, since he, so grey and stubborn now, waved in each breeze a sapling bough! would he could tell, how deep the shade a thousand mingled branches made, how broad the shadows of the oak, how clung the rowan to the rock, and through the foliage showed his head, with narrow leaves and berries red!" scott does not dwell on the grey stubbornness of the thorn, because he himself is at that moment disposed to be dull, or stubborn; neither on the cheerful peeping forth of the rowan, because he himself is that moment cheerful or curious: but he perceives them both with the kind of interest that he would take in an old man, or a climbing boy; forgetting himself, in sympathy with either age or youth. "and from the grassy slope he sees the greta flow to meet the tees, where issuing from her darksome bed, she caught the morning's eastern red, and through the softening vale below rolled her bright waves in rosy glow, all blushing to her bridal bed, like some shy maid, in convent bred; while linnet, lark, and blackbird gay sing forth her nuptial roundelay." is scott, or are the persons of his story, gay at this moment? far from it. neither scott nor risingham are happy, but the greta is; and all scott's sympathy is ready for the greta, on the instant. § . observe, therefore, this is not _pathetic_ fallacy; for there is no passion in _scott_ which alters nature. it is not the lover's passion, making him think the larkspurs are listening for his lady's foot; it is not the miser's passion, making him think that dead leaves are falling coins; but it is an inherent and continual habit of thought, which scott shares with the moderns in general, being, in fact, nothing else than the instinctive sense which men must have of the divine presence, not formed into distinct belief. in the greek it created, as we saw, the faithfully believed gods of the elements: in dante and the mediævals, it formed the faithfully believed angelic presence; in the modern, it creates no perfect form, does not apprehend distinctly any divine being or operation; but only a dim, slightly credited animation in the natural object, accompanied with great interest and affection for it. this feeling is quite universal with us, only varying in depth according to the greatness of the heart that holds it; and in scott, being more than usually intense, and accompanied with infinite affection and quickness of sympathy, it enables him to conquer all tendencies to the pathetic fallacy, and, instead of making nature anywise subordinate to himself, he makes himself subordinate to _her_--follows her lead simply--does not venture to bring his own cares and thoughts into her pure and quiet presence--paints her in her simple and universal truth, adding no result of momentary passion or fancy, and appears, therefore, at first shallower than other poets, being in reality wider and healthier. "what am i?" he says continually, "that i should trouble this sincere nature with my thoughts. i happen to be feverish and depressed, and i could see a great many sad and strange things in those waves and flowers; but i have no business to see such things. gay greta! sweet harebells! _you_ are not sad nor strange to most people; you are but bright water and blue blossoms; you shall not be anything else to me, except that i cannot help thinking you are a little alive,--no one can help thinking that." and thus, as nature is bright, serene, or gloomy, scott takes her temper, and paints her as she is; nothing of himself being ever intruded, except that far-away eolian tone, of which he is unconscious; and sometimes a stray syllable or two, like that about blackford hill, distinctly stating personal feeling, but all the more modestly for that distinctness and for the clear consciousness that it is not the chiming brook, nor the cornfields, that are sad, but only the boy that rests by them; so returning on the instant to reflect, in all honesty, the image of nature as she is meant by all to be received; nor that in fine words, but in the first that come; nor with comment of far-fetched thoughts, but with easy thoughts, such as all sensible men ought to have in such places, only spoken sweetly; and evidently also with an undercurrent of more profound reflection, which here and there murmurs for a moment, and which i think, if we choose, we may continually pierce down to, and drink deeply from, but which scott leaves us to seek, or shun, at our pleasure. § . and in consequence of this unselfishness and humility, scott's enjoyment of nature is incomparably greater than that of any other poet i know. all the rest carry their cares to her, and begin maundering in her ears about their own affairs. tennyson goes out on a furzy common, and sees it is calm autumn sunshine, but it gives him no pleasure. he only remembers that it is "dead calm in that noble breast which heaves but with the heaving deep." he sees a thundercloud in the evening, and _would_ have "doted and pored" on it, but cannot, for fear it should bring the ship bad weather. keats drinks the beauty of nature violently; but has no more real sympathy with her than he has with a bottle of claret. his palate is fine; but he "bursts joy's grape against it," gets nothing but misery, and a bitter taste of dregs out of his desperate draught. byron and shelley are nearly the same, only with less truth of perception, and even more troublesome selfishness. wordsworth is more like scott, and understands how to be happy, but yet cannot altogether rid himself of the sense that he is a philosopher, and ought always to be saying something wise. he has also a vague notion that nature would not be able to get on well without wordsworth; and finds a considerable part of his pleasure in looking at himself as well as at her. but with scott the love is entirely humble and unselfish. "i, scott, am nothing, and less than nothing; but these crags, and heaths, and clouds, how great they are, how lovely, how for ever to be beloved, only for their own silent, thoughtless sake!" § . this pure passion for nature in its abstract being, is still increased in its intensity by the two elements above taken notice of,--the love of antiquity, and the love of color and beautiful form, mortified in our streets, and seeking for food in the wilderness and the ruin: both feelings, observe, instinctive in scott from his childhood, as everything that makes a man great is always. "and well the lonely infant knew recesses where the wallflower grew, and honeysuckle loved to crawl up the long crag and ruined wall. i deemed such nooks the sweetest shade the sun in all its round surveyed." not that these could have been instinctive in a child in the middle ages. the sentiments of a people increase or diminish in intensity from generation to generation,--every disposition of the parents affecting the frame of the mind in their offspring: the soldier's child is born to be yet more a soldier, and the politician's to be still more a politician; even the slightest colors of sentiment and affection are transmitted to the heirs of life; and the crowning expression of the mind of a people is given when some infant of highest capacity, and sealed with the impress of this national character, is born where providential circumstances permit the full development of the powers it has received straight from heaven, and the passions which it has inherited from its fathers. § . this love of ancientness, and that of natural beauty, associate themselves also in scott with the love of liberty, which was indeed at the root even of all his jacobite tendencies in politics. for, putting aside certain predilections about landed property, and family name, and "gentlemanliness" in the club sense of the word,--respecting which i do not now inquire whether they were weak or wise,--the main element which makes scott like cavaliers better than puritans is, that he thinks the former _free_ and _masterful_ as well as loyal; and the latter _formal_ and _slavish_. he is loyal, not so much in respect for law, as in unselfish love for the king; and his sympathy is quite as ready for any active borderer who breaks the law, or fights the king, in what scott thinks a generous way, as for the king himself. rebellion of a rough, free, and bold kind he is always delighted by; he only objects to rebellion on principle and in form: bare-headed and open-throated treason he will abet to any extent, but shrinks from it in a peaked hat and starched collar: nay, politically, he only delights in kingship itself, because he looks upon it as the head and centre of liberty; and thinks that, keeping hold of a king's hand, one may get rid of the cramps and fences of law; and that the people may be governed by the whistle, as a highland clan on the open hill-side, instead of being shut up into hurdled folds or hedged fields, as sheep or cattle left masterless. § . and thus nature becomes dear to scott in a threefold way: dear to him, first, as containing those remains or memories of the past, which he cannot find in cities, and giving hope of prætorian mound or knight's grave, in every green slope and shade of its desolate places;--dear, secondly, in its moorland liberty, which has for him just as high a charm as the fenced garden had for the mediæval: "for i was wayward, bold, and wild, a self-willed imp--a grandame's child; but, half a plague, and half a jest, was still endured, beloved, caressed. for me, thus nurtured, dost thou ask the classic poet's well-conned task? nay, erskine, nay. on the wild hill let the wild heathbell flourish still; cherish the tulip, prune the vine; but freely let the woodbine twine, and leave untrimmed the eglantine;" --and dear to him, finally, in that perfect beauty, denied alike in cities and in men, for which every modern heart had begun at last to thirst, and scott's, in its freshness and power, of all men's, most earnestly. § . and in this love of beauty, observe, that (as i said we might except) the love of _color_ is a leading element, his healthy mind being incapable of losing, under any modern false teaching, its joy in brilliancy of hue. though not so subtle a colorist as dante, which, under the circumstances of the age, he could not be, he depends quite as much upon color for his power or pleasure. and, in general, if he does not mean to say much about things, the _one_ character which he will give is color, using it with the most perfect mastery and faithfulness, up to the point of possible modern perception. for instance, if he has a sea-storm to paint in a single line, he does not, as a feebler poet would probably have done, use any expression about the temper or form of the waves; does not call them angry or mountainous. he is content to strike them out with two dashes of tintoret's favorite colors: "_the blackening wave edged with white_; to inch and rock the seamews fly." there is no form in this. nay, the main virtue of it is, that it gets rid of all form. the dark raging of the sea--what form has that? but out of the cloud of its darkness those lightning flashes of the foam, coming at their terrible intervals--you need no more. again: where he has to describe tents mingled among oaks, he says nothing about the form of either tent or tree, but only gives the two strokes of color: "thousand pavilions, _white as snow_, _chequered_ the borough moor below, oft giving way, where still there stood some relics of the old oak wood, that darkly huge did intervene, _and tamed the glaring white with green_." again: of tents at flodden: "next morn the baron climbed the tower, to view, afar, the scottish power, encamped on flodden edge. the white pavilions made a show, like remnants of the winter snow, along the dusky ridge." again: of trees mingled with dark rocks: "until, where teith's young waters roll betwixt him and a wooded knoll, that graced the _sable_ strath with _green_, the chapel of st. bride was seen." again: there is hardly any form, only smoke and color, in his celebrated description of edinburgh: "the wandering eye could o'er it go, and mark the distant city glow with gloomy splendor red; for on the smoke-wreaths, huge and slow, that round her sable turrets flow, the morning beams were shed, and tinged them with a lustre proud, like that which streaks a thundercloud. such dusky grandeur clothed the height, where the huge castle holds its state, and all the steep slope down, whose ridgy back heaves to the sky, piled deep and massy, close and high, mine own romantic town! but northward far with purer blaze, on ochil mountains fell the rays, and as each heathy top they kissed, it gleamed a purple amethyst. yonder the shores of fife you saw; here preston bay and berwick law: and, broad between them rolled, the gallant frith the eye might note, whose islands on its bosom float, like emeralds chased in gold." i do not like to spoil a fine passage by italicizing it; but observe, the only hints at form, given throughout, are in the somewhat vague words, "ridgy," "massy," "close," and "high;" the whole being still more obscured by modern mystery, in its most tangible form of smoke. but the _colors_ are all definite; note the rainbow band of them--gloomy or dusky red, sable (pure black), amethyst (pure purple), green, and gold--a noble chord throughout; and then, moved doubtless less by the smoky than the amethystine part of the group, "fitz eustace' heart felt closely pent, the spur he to his charger lent, and raised his bridle hand. and making demivolte in air, cried, 'where's the coward would not dare to fight for such a laud?'" i need not multiply examples: the reader can easily trace for himself, through verse familiar to us all, the force of these color instincts. i will therefore add only two passages, not so completely known by heart as most of the poems in which they occur. "'twas silence all. he laid him down where purple heath profusely strown, and throatwort, with its azure bell, and moss and thyme his cushion swell. there, spent with toil, he listless eyed the course of greta's playful tide; beneath her banks, now eddying dun, now brightly gleaming to the sun, as, dancing over rock and stone, in yellow light her currents shone, matching in hue the favorite gem of albin's mountain diadem. then tired to watch the current play, he turned his weary eyes away to where the bank opposing showed its huge square cliffs through shaggy wood. one, prominent above the rest, reared to the sun its pale grey breast; around its broken summit grew the hazel rude, and sable yew; a thousand varied lichens dyed its waste and weather-beaten side; and round its rugged basis lay, by time or thunder rent away, fragments, that, from its frontlet torn, were mantled now by verdant thorn." § . note, first, what an exquisite chord of color is given in the succession of this passage. it begins with purple and blue; then passes to gold, or cairngorm color (topaz color); then to _pale grey_, through which the yellow passes into black; and the black, through broken dyes of lichen, into green. note, secondly,--what is indeed so manifest throughout scott's landscape as hardly to need pointing out,--the love of rocks, and true understanding of their colors and characters, opposed as it is in every conceivable way to dante's hatred and misunderstanding of them. i have already traced, in various places, most of the causes of this great difference: namely, first, the ruggedness of northern temper (compare § . of the chapter on the nature of gothic in the stones of venice); then the really greater beauty of the northern rocks, as noted when we were speaking of the apennine limestone; then the need of finding beauty among them, if it were to be found anywhere,--no well-arranged colors being any more to be seen in dress, but only in rock lichens; and, finally, the love of irregularity, liberty, and power, springing up in glorious opposition to laws of prosody, fashion, and the five orders. § . the other passage i have to quote is still more interesting; because it has _no form_ in it _at all_ except in one word (chalice), but wholly composes its imagery either of color, or of that delicate half-believed life which we have seen to be so important an element in modern landscape. "the summer dawn's reflected hue _to purple changed loch katrine blue_; mildly and soft the western breeze just kissed the lake; just stirred the trees; _and the pleased lake, like maiden coy_, _trembled, but dimpled not, for joy_; the mountain-shadows on her breast were neither broken nor at rest; in bright uncertainty they lie, like future joys to fancy's eye. the water-lily to the light her chalice reared of silver bright: the doe awoke, and to the lawn, begemmed with dew-drops, led her fawn; the grey mist left the mountain side; the torrent showed its glistening pride; invisible in flëcked sky, the lark sent down her revelry; the blackbird and the speckled thrush good-morrow gave from brake and bush; in answer cooed the cushat dove her notes of peace, and rest, and love." two more considerations are, however, suggested by the above passage. the first, that the love of natural history, excited by the continual attention now given to all wild landscape, heightens reciprocally the interest of that landscape, and becomes an important element in scott's description, leading him to finish, down to the minutest speckling of breast, and slightest shade of attributed emotion, the portraiture of birds and animals; in strange opposition to homer's slightly named "sea-crows, who have care of the works of the sea," and dante's singing-birds, of undefined species. compare carefully a passage, too long to be quoted,--the nd and rd stanzas of canto vi. of rokeby. § . the second, and the last point i have to note, is scott's habit of drawing a slight _moral_ from every scene, just enough to excuse to his conscience his want of definite religious feeling; and that this slight moral is almost always melancholy. here he has stopped short without entirely expressing it-- "the mountain shadows ... ... lie like future joys to fancy's eye." his completed thought would be, that those future joys, like the mountain shadows, were never to be attained. it occurs fully uttered in many other places. he seems to have been constantly rebuking his own worldly pride and vanity, but never purposefully: "the foam-globes on her eddies ride, thick as the schemes of human pride that down life's current drive amain, as frail, as frothy, and as vain." "foxglove, and nightshade, side by side, emblems of punishment and pride." "her dark eye flashed; she paused and sighed;-- 'ah, what have i to do with pride!'" and hear the thought he gathers from the sunset (noting first the turnerian color,--as usual, its principal element): "the sultry summer day is done. the western hills have hid the sun, but mountain peak and village spire retain reflection of his fire. old barnard's towers are purple still, to those that gaze from toller hill; distant and high the tower of bowes like steel upon the anvil glows; and stanmore's ridge, behind that lay, rich with the spoils of parting day, in crimson and in gold arrayed, streaks yet awhile the closing shade; then slow resigns to darkening heaven the tints which brighter hours had given thus, aged men, full loth and slow, the vanities of life forego, and count their youthful follies o'er till memory lends her light no more." that is, as far as i remember, one of the most finished pieces of sunset he has given; and it has a woful moral; yet one which, with scott, is inseparable from the scene. hark, again: "'twere sweet to mark the setting day on bourhope's lonely top decay; and, as it faint and feeble died on the broad lake and mountain's side, to say, 'thus pleasures fade away; youth, talents, beauty, thus decay, and leave us dark, forlorn, and grey.'" and again, hear bertram: "mine be the eve of tropic sun: with disk like battle target red, he rushes to his burning bed, dyes the wide wave with bloody light, then sinks at once; and all is night." in all places of this kind, where a passing thought is suggested by some external scene, that thought is at once a slight and sad one. scott's deeper moral sense is marked in the _conduct_ of his stories, and in casual reflections or exclamations arising out of their plot, and therefore sincerely uttered; as that of marmion: "oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!" but the reflections which are founded, not on events, but on scenes, are, for the most part, shallow, partly insincere, and, as far as sincere, sorrowful. this habit of ineffective dreaming and moralizing over passing scenes, of which the earliest type i know is given in jaques, is, as aforesaid, usually the satisfaction made to our modern consciences for the want of a sincere acknowledgment of god in nature: and shakspere has marked it as the characteristic of a mind "compact of jars" (act ii. sc. vii., as you like it). that description attaches but too accurately to all the moods which we have traced in the moderns generally, and in scott as the first representative of them; and the question now is, what this love of landscape, so composed, is likely to lead us to, and what use can be made of it. we began our investigation, it will be remembered, in order to determine whether landscape-painting was worth studying or not. we have now reviewed the three principal phases of temper in the civilized human race, and we find that landscape has been mostly disregarded by great men, or cast into a second place, until now; and that now it seems dear to us, partly in consequence of our faults, and partly owing to accidental circumstances, soon, in all likelihood, to pass away: and there seems great room for question still, whether our love of it is a permanent and healthy feeling, or only a healthy crisis in a generally diseased state of mind. if the former, society will for ever hereafter be affected by its results; and turner, the first great landscape painter, must take a place in the history of nations corresponding in art accurately to that of bacon in philosophy;--bacon having first opened the study of the laws of material nature, when, formerly, men had thought only of the laws of human mind; and turner having first opened the study of the aspect of material nature, when, before, men had thought only of the aspect of the human form. whether, therefore, the love of landscape be trivial and transient, or important and permanent, it now becomes necessary to consider. we have, i think, data enough before us for the solution of the question, and we will enter upon it, accordingly, in the following chapter. [ ] pre-raphaelitism, of course, excepted, which is a new phase of art, in no wise considered in this chapter. blake was sincere, but full of wild creeds, and somewhat diseased in brain. [ ] of course this is only meant of the modern citizen or country gentleman, as compared with a citizen of sparta or old florence. i leave it to others to say whether the "neglect of the _art_ of war" may or may not, in a yet more fatal sense, be predicated of the english nation. war, _without_ art, we seem, with god's help, able still to wage nobly. [ ] see david copperfield, chap. lv. and lviii. [ ] observe, i do not speak thus of metaphysics because i have no pleasure in them. when i speak contemptuously of philology, it may be answered me, that i am a bad scholar; but i cannot be so answered touching metaphysics, for every one conversant with such subjects may see that i have strong inclination that way, which would, indeed, have led me far astray long ago, if i had not learned also some use of my hands, eyes, and feet. chapter xvii. the moral of landscape. § . supposing then the preceding conclusions correct, respecting the grounds and component _elements_ of the pleasure which the moderns take in landscape, we have here to consider what are the probable or usual _effects_ of this pleasure. is it a safe or a seductive one? may we wisely boast of it, and unhesitatingly indulge it? or is it rather a sentiment to be despised when it is slight, and condemned when it is intense; a feeling which disinclines us to labor, and confuses us in thought; a joy only to the inactive and the visionary, incompatible with the duties of life, and the accuracies of reflection? § . it seems to me that, as matters stand at present, there is considerable ground for the latter opinion. we saw, in the preceding chapter, that our love of nature had been partly forced upon us by mistakes in our social economy, and led to no distinct issues of action or thought. and when we look to scott--the man who feels it most deeply--for some explanation of its effect upon him, we find a curious tone of apology (as if for involuntary folly) running through his confessions of such sentiment, and a still more curious inability to define, beyond a certain point, the character of this emotion. he has lost the company of his friends among the hills, and turns to these last for comfort. he says, "there is a pleasure in the pain" consisting in such thoughts "as oft awake by lone st. mary's silent lake;" but, when we look for some definition of these thoughts, all that we are told is, that they compose "a mingled sentiment of resignation and content!"[ ] a sentiment which, i suppose, many people can attain to on the loss of their friends, without the help of lakes or mountains; while wordsworth definitely and positively affirms that _thought_ has nothing whatever to do with the matter, and that though, in his youth, the cataract and wood "haunted him like a passion," it was without the help of any "remoter charm, by thought supplied." § . there is not, however, any question, but that both scott and wordsworth are here mistaken in their analysis of their feelings. their delight, so far from being without thought, is more than half made up of thought, but of thought in so curiously languid and neutralized a condition that they cannot trace it. the thoughts are beaten to a powder so small that they know not what they are; they know only that in such a state they are not good for much, and disdain to call them thoughts. but the way in which thought, even thus broken, acts in producing the delight will be understood by glancing back to §§ . and . of the tenth chapter, in which we observed the power of the imagination in exalting any visible object, by gathering round it, in farther vision, all the facts properly connected with it; this being, as it were, a spiritual or second sight, multiplying the power of enjoyment according to the fulness of the vision. for, indeed, although in all lovely nature there is, first, an excellent degree of simple beauty, addressed to the eye alone, yet often what impresses us most will form but a very small portion of that visible beauty. that beauty may, for instance, be composed of lovely flowers and glittering streams, and blue sky, and white clouds; and yet the thing that impresses us most, and which we should be sorriest to lose, may be a thin grey film on the extreme horizon, not so large, in the space of the scene it occupies, as a piece of gossamer on a near at hand bush, nor in any wise prettier to the eye than the gossamer; but, because the gossamer is known by us for a little bit of spider's work, and the other grey film is known to mean a mountain ten thousand feet high, inhabited by a race of noble mountaineers, we are solemnly impressed by the aspect of it; and yet, all the while the thoughts and knowledge which cause us to receive this impression are so obscure that we are not conscious of them; we think we are only enjoying the visible scene; and the very men whose minds are fullest of such thoughts absolutely deny, as we have just heard, that they owe their pleasure to anything but the eye, or that the pleasure consists in anything else than "tranquillity." § . and observe, farther, that this comparative dimness and untraceableness of the thoughts which are the sources of our admiration, is not a _fault_ in the thoughts, at such a time. it is, on the contrary, a necessary condition of their subordination to the pleasure of sight. if the thoughts were more distinct we should not _see_ so well; and beginning definitely to think, we must comparatively cease to see. in the instance just supposed, as long as we look at the film of mountain or alp, with only an obscure consciousness of its being the source of mighty rivers, that consciousness adds to our sense of its sublimity; and if we have ever seen the rhine or the rhone near their mouths, our knowledge, so long as it is only obscurely suggested, adds to our admiration of the alp; but once let the idea define itself,--once let us begin to consider seriously _what_ rivers flow from that mountain, to trace their course, and to recall determinately our memories of their distant aspects,--and we cease to behold the alp; or, if we still behold it, it is only as a point in a map which we are painfully designing, or as a subordinate object which we strive to thrust aside, in order to make room for our remembrances of avignon or rotterdam. again: so long as our idea of the multitudes who inhabit the ravines at its foot remains indistinct, that idea comes to the aid of all the other associations which increase our delight. but let it once arrest us, and entice us to follow out some clear course of thought respecting the causes of the prosperity or misfortune of the alpine villagers, and the snowy peak again ceases to be visible, or holds its place only as a white spot upon the retina, while we pursue our meditations upon the religion or the political economy of the mountaineers. § . it is thus evident that a curiously balanced condition of the powers of mind is necessary to induce full admiration of any natural scene. let those powers be themselves inert, and the mind vacant of knowledge, and destitute of sensibility, and the external object becomes little more to us than it is to birds or insects; we fall into the temper of the clown. on the other hand, let the reasoning powers be shrewd in excess, the knowledge vast, or sensibility intense, and it will go hard but that the visible object will suggest so much that it shall be soon itself forgotten, or become, at the utmost, merely a kind of key-note to the course of purposeful thought. newton, probably, did not perceive whether the apple which suggested his meditations on gravity was withered or rosy; nor could howard be affected by the picturesqueness of the architecture which held the sufferers it was his occupation to relieve. § . this wandering away in thought from the thing seen to the business of life, is not, however, peculiar to men of the highest reasoning powers, or most active benevolence. it takes place more or less in nearly all persons of average mental endowment. they see and love what is beautiful, but forget their admiration of it in following some train of thought which it suggested, and which is of more personal interest to them. suppose that three or four persons come in sight of a group of pine-trees, not having seen pines for some time. one, perhaps an engineer, is struck by the manner in which their roots hold the ground, and sets himself to examine their fibres, in a few minutes retaining little more consciousness of the beauty of the trees than if he were a rope-maker untwisting the strands of a cable: to another, the sight of the trees calls up some happy association, and presently he forgets them, and pursues the memories they summoned: a third is struck by certain groupings of their colors, useful to him as an artist, which he proceeds immediately to note mechanically for future use, with as little feeling as a cook setting down the constituents of a newly discovered dish; and a fourth, impressed by the wild coiling of boughs and roots, will begin to change them in his fancy into dragons and monsters, and lose his grasp of the scene in fantastic metamorphosis: while, in the mind of the man who has most the power of contemplating the thing itself, all these perceptions and trains of idea are partially present, not distinctly, but in a mingled and perfect harmony. he will not see the colors of the tree so well as the artist, nor its fibres so well as the engineer; he will not altogether share the emotion of the sentimentalist, nor the trance of the idealist; but fancy, and feeling, and perception, and imagination, will all obscurely meet and balance themselves in him, and he will see the pine-trees somewhat in this manner: "worthier still of note are those fraternal four of borrowdale, joined in one solemn and capacious grove; huge trunks! and each particular trunk a growth of intertwisted fibres serpentine up-coiling, and inveterately convolved; nor uniformed with phantasy, and looks that threaten the profane; a pillared shade, upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, by sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged perennially,--beneath whose sable roof of boughs, as if for festal purpose, decked with unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes may meet at noontide; fear and trembling hope, silence and foresight; death the skeleton, and time the shadow; there to celebrate, as in a natural temple scattered o'er with altars undisturbed of mossy stone, united worship." § . the power, therefore, of thus fully _perceiving_ any natural object depends on our being able to group and fasten all our fancies about it as a centre, making a garland of thoughts for it, in which each separate thought is subdued and shortened of its own strength, in order to fit it for harmony with others; the intensity of our enjoyment of the object depending, first, on its own beauty, and then on the richness of the garland. and men who have this habit of clustering and harmonizing their thoughts are a little too apt to look scornfully upon the harder workers who tear the bouquet to pieces to examine the stems. this was the chief narrowness of wordsworth's mind; he could not understand that to break a rock with a hammer in search of crystal may sometimes be an act not disgraceful to human nature, and that to dissect a flower may sometimes be as proper as to dream over it; whereas all experience goes to teach us, that among men of average intellect the most useful members of society are the dissectors, not the dreamers. it is not that they love nature or beauty less, but that they love result, effect, and progress more; and when we glance broadly along the starry crowd of benefactors to the human race, and guides of human thought, we shall find that this dreaming love of natural beauty--or at least its expression--has been more or less checked by them all, and subordinated either to hard work or watching of _human_ nature. thus in all the classical and mediæval periods, it was, as we have seen, subordinate to agriculture, war, and religion; and in the modern period, in which it has become far more powerful, observe in what persons it is chiefly manifested. ( .) it is subordinate in ( .) it is intense in bacon. mrs. radclyffe. milton. st. pierre. johnson. shenstone. richardson. byron. goldsmith. shelley. young. keats. newton. burns. howard. eugene sue. fenelon. george sand. pascal. dumas. § . i have purposely omitted the names of wordsworth, tennyson, and scott, in the second list, because, glancing at the two columns as they now stand, we may, i think, draw some useful conclusions from the high honorableness and dignity of the names on one side, and the comparative slightness of those on the other,--conclusions which may help us to a better understanding of scott and tennyson themselves. glancing, i say, down those columns in their present form, we shall at once perceive that the intense love of nature is, in modern times, characteristic of persons not of the first order of intellect, but of brilliant imagination, quick sympathy, and undefined religious principle, suffering also usually under strong and ill-governed passions: while in the same individual it will be found to vary at different periods, being, for the most part, strongest in youth, and associated with force of emotion, and with indefinite and feeble powers of thought; also, throughout life, perhaps developing itself most at times when the mind is slightly unhinged by love, grief, or some other of the passions. § . but, on the other hand, while these feelings of delight in natural objects cannot be construed into signs of the highest mental powers, or purest moral principles, we see that they are assuredly indicative of minds above the usual standard of power, and endowed with sensibilities of great preciousness to humanity; so that those who find themselves entirely destitute of them, must make this want a subject of humiliation, not of pride. the apathy which cannot perceive beauty is very different from the stern energy which disdains it; and the coldness of heart which receives no emotion from external nature, is not to be confounded with the wisdom of purpose which represses emotion in action. in the case of most men, it is neither acuteness of the reason, nor breadth of humanity, which shields them from the impressions of natural scenery, but rather low anxieties, vain discontents, and mean pleasures; and for one who is blinded to the works of god by profound abstraction or lofty purpose, tens of thousands have their eyes sealed by vulgar selfishness, and their intelligence crushed by impious care. observe, then: we have, among mankind in general, the three orders of being;--the lowest, sordid and selfish, which neither sees nor feels; the second, noble and sympathetic, but which sees and feels without concluding or acting; the third and highest, which loses sight in resolution, and feeling in work.[ ] thus, even in scott and wordsworth themselves, the love of nature is more or less associated with their weaknesses. scott shows it most in the cruder compositions of his youth, his perfect powers of mind being displayed only in dialogues with which description has nothing whatever to do. wordsworth's distinctive work was a war with pomp and pretence, and a display of the majesty of simple feelings and humble hearts, together with high reflective truth in his analysis of the courses of politics and ways of men; without these, his love of nature would have been comparatively worthless. § . "if this be so, it is not well to encourage the observance of landscape, any more than other ways of dreamily and ineffectually spending time?" stay a moment. we have hitherto observed this love of natural beauty only as it distinguishes one man from another, not as it acts for good or evil on those minds to which it necessarily belongs. it may, on the whole, distinguish weaker men from stronger men, and yet in those weaker men may be of some notable use. it may distinguish byron from st. bernard, and shelley from sir isaac newton, and yet may, perhaps, be the best thing that byron and shelley possess--a saving element in them; just as a rush may be distinguished from an oak by its bending, and yet the bending may be the saving element in the rush, and an admirable gift in its place and way. so that, although st. bernard journeys all day by the lake of geneva, and asks at evening "where it is," and byron learns by it "to love earth only for its earthly sake,"[ ] it does not follow that byron, hating men, was the worse for loving the earth, nor that st. bernard, loving men, was the better or wiser for being blind to it. and this will become still more manifest if we examine somewhat farther into the nature of this instinct, as characteristic especially of youth. § . we saw above that wordsworth described the feeling as independent of thought, and, in the particular place then quoted, he _therefore_ speaks of it depreciatingly. but in other places he does not speak of it depreciatingly, but seems to think the absence of thought involves a certain nobleness: "in such high hour of visitation from the living god _thought_ was not." and he refers to the intense delight which he himself felt, and which he supposes other men feel, in nature, during their thoughtless youth, as an intimation of their immortality, and a joy which indicates their having come fresh from the hand of god. now, if wordsworth be right in supposing this feeling to be in some degree common to all men, and most vivid in youth, we may question if it can be _entirely_ explained as i have now tried to explain it. for if it entirely depended on multitudes of ideas, clustering about a beautiful object, it might seem that the youth could not feel it so strongly as the man, because the man knows more, and must have more ideas to make the garland of. still less can we suppose the pleasure to be of that melancholy and languid kind, which scott defines as "resignation" and "content;" boys being not distinguished for either of those characters, but for eager effort and delightsome discontent. if wordsworth is at all right in this matter, therefore, there must surely be some other element in the feeling not yet detected. § . now, in a question of this subtle kind, relating to a period of life when self-examination is rare, and expression imperfect, it becomes exceedingly difficult to trace, with any certainty, the movements of the minds of others, nor always easy to remember those of our own. i cannot, from observation, form any decided opinion as to the extent in which this strange delight in nature influences the hearts of young persons in general; and, in stating what has passed in my own mind, i do not mean to draw any positive conclusion as to the nature of the feeling in other children; but the inquiry is clearly one in which personal experience is the only safe ground to go upon, though a narrow one; and i will make no excuse for talking about myself with reference to this subject, because, though there is much egotism in the world, it is often the last thing a man thinks of doing,--and, though there is much work to be done in the world, it is often the best thing a man can do,--to tell the exact truth about the movements of his own mind; and there is this farther reason, that, whatever other faculties i may or may not possess, this gift of taking pleasure in landscape i assuredly possess in a greater degree than most men; it having been the ruling passion of my life, and the reason for the choice of its field of labor. § . the first thing which i remember as an event in life, was being taken by my nurse to the brow of friar's crag on derwentwater; the intense joy, mingled with awe, that i had in looking through the hollows in the mossy roots, over the crag, into the dark lake, has associated itself more or less with all twining roots of trees ever since. two other things i remember, as, in a sort, beginnings of life;--crossing shapfells (being let out of the chaise to run up the hills), and going through glenfarg, near kinross, in a winter's morning, when the rocks where hung with icicles; these being culminating points in an early life of more travelling than is usually indulged to a child. in such journeyings, whenever they brought me near hills, and in all mountain ground and scenery, i had a pleasure, as early as i can remember, and continuing till i was eighteen or twenty, infinitely greater than any which has been since possible to me in anything; comparable for intensity only to the joy of a lover in being near a noble and kind mistress, but no more explicable or definable than that feeling of love itself. only thus much i can remember, respecting it, which is important to our present subject. § . first: it was never independent of associated thought. almost as soon as i could see or hear, i had got reading enough to give me associations with all kinds of scenery; and mountains, in particular, were always partly confused with those of my favorite book, scott's monastery; so that glenfarg and all other glens were more or less enchanted to me, filled with forms of hesitating creed about christie of the clint hill, and the monk eustace; and with a general presence of white lady everywhere. i also generally knew, or was told by my father and mother, such simple facts of history as were necessary to give more definite and justifiable association to other scenes which chiefly interested me, such as the ruins of lochleven and kenilworth; and thus my pleasure in mountains or ruins was never, even in earliest childhood, free from a certain awe and melancholy, and general sense of the meaning of death, though in its principal influence, entirely exhilarating and gladdening. § . secondly: it was partly dependent on contrast with a very simple and unamused mode of general life; i was born in london, and accustomed, for two or three years, to no other prospect than that of the brick walls over the way; had no brothers, nor sisters, nor companions; and though i could always make myself happy in a quiet way, the beauty of the mountains had an additional charm of change and adventure which a country-bred child would not have felt. § . thirdly: there was no definite religious feeling mingled with it. i partly believed in ghosts and fairies; but supposed that angels belonged entirely to the mosaic dispensation, and cannot remember any single thought or feeling connected with them. i believed that god was in heaven, and could hear me and see me; but this gave me neither pleasure nor pain, and i seldom thought of it at all. i never thought of nature as god's work, but as a separate fact or existence. § . fourthly: it was entirely unaccompanied by powers of reflection or invention. every fancy that i had about nature was put into my head by some book; and i never reflected about anything till i grew older; and then, the more i reflected, the less nature was precious to me: i could then make myself happy, by thinking, in the dark, or in the dullest scenery; and the beautiful scenery became less essential to my pleasure. § . fifthly: it was, according to its strength, inconsistent with every evil feeling, with spite, anger, covetousness, discontent, and every other hateful passion; but would associate itself deeply with every just and noble sorrow, joy, or affection. it had not, however, always the power to repress what was inconsistent with it; and, though only after stout contention, might at last be crushed by what it had partly repressed. and as it only acted by setting one impulse against another, though it had much power in moulding the character, it had hardly any in strengthening it; it formed temperament, but never instilled principle; it kept me generally good-humored and kindly, but could not teach me perseverance or self-denial: what firmness or principle i had was quite independent of it; and it came itself nearly as often in the form of a temptation as of a safeguard, leading me to ramble over hills when i should have been learning lessons, and lose days in reveries which i might have spent in doing kindnesses. § . lastly: although there was no definite religious sentiment mingled with it, there was a continual perception of sanctity in the whole of nature, from the slightest thing to the vastest:--an instinctive awe, mixed with delight; an indefinable thrill, such as we sometimes imagine to indicate the presence of a disembodied spirit. i could only feel this perfectly when i was alone; and then it would often make me shiver from head to foot with the joy and fear of it, when after being some time away from the hills, i first got to the shore of a mountain river, where the brown water circled among the pebbles, or when i saw the first swell of distant land against the sunset, or the first low broken wall, covered with mountain moss. i cannot in the least _describe_ the feeling; but i do not think this is my fault, nor that of the english language, for, i am afraid, no feeling _is_ describable. if we had to explain even the sense of bodily hunger to a person who had never felt it, we should be hard put to it for words; and this joy in nature seemed to me to come of a sort of heart-hunger, satisfied with the presence of a great and holy spirit. these feelings remained in their full intensity till i was eighteen or twenty, and then, as the reflective and practical power increased, and the "cares of this world" gained upon me, faded gradually away, in the manner described by wordsworth in his intimations of immortality. § . i cannot, of course, tell how far i am justified in supposing that these sensations may be reasoned upon as common to children in general. in the same degree they are not of course common, otherwise children would be, most of them, very different from what they are in their choice of pleasures. but, as far as such feelings exist, i apprehend they are more or less similar in their nature and influence; only producing different characters according to the elements with which they are mingled. thus, a very religious child may give up many pleasures to which its instincts lead it, for the sake of irksome duties; and an inventive child would mingle its love of nature with watchfulness of human sayings and doings: but i believe the feelings i have endeavored to describe are the pure landscape-instinct; and the likelihoods of good or evil resulting from them may be reasoned upon as generally indicating the usefulness or danger of the modern love and study of landscape. § . and, first, observe that the charm of romantic association (§ .) can be felt only by the modern european child. it rises eminently out of the contrast of the beautiful past with the frightful and monotonous present; and it depends for its force on the existence of ruins and traditions, on the remains of architecture, the traces of battlefields, and the precursorship of eventful history. the instinct to which it appeals can hardly be felt in america, and every day that either beautifies our present architecture and dress, or overthrows a stone of mediæval monument, contributes to weaken it in europe. of its influence on the mind of turner and prout, and the permanent results which, through them, it is likely to effect, i shall have to speak presently. § . again: the influence of surprise in producing the delight, is to be noted as a suspicious or evanescent element in it. observe, my pleasure was chiefly (§ .) when i _first_ got into beautiful scenery, out of london. the enormous influence of novelty--the way in which it quickens observation, sharpens sensation, and exalts sentiment--is not half enough taken note of by us, and is to me a very sorrowful matter. i think that what wordsworth speaks of as a glory in the child, because it has come fresh from god's hands, is in reality nothing more than the freshness of all things to its newly opened sight. i find that by keeping long away from hills, i can in great part still restore the old childish feeling about them; and the more i live and work among them, the more it vanishes. § . this evil is evidently common to all minds; wordsworth himself mourning over it in the same poem: "custom hangs upon us, with a weight heavy as frost, and deep almost as life." and if we grow impatient under it, and seek to recover the mental energy by more quickly repeated and brighter novelty, it is all over with our enjoyment. there is no cure for this evil, any more than for the weariness of the imagination already described, but in patience and rest: if we try to obtain perpetual change, change itself will become monotonous; and then we are reduced to that old despair, "if water chokes, what will you drink after it?" and the two points of practical wisdom in this matter are, first, to be content with as little novelty as possible at a time; and, secondly, to preserve, as much as possible in the world, the sources of novelty. § . i say, first, to be content with as little change as possible. if the attention is awake, and the feelings in proper train, a turn of a country road, with a cottage beside it, which we have not seen before, is as much as we need for refreshment; if we hurry past it, and take two cottages at a time, it is already too much: hence, to any person who has all his senses about him, a quiet walk along not more than ten or twelve miles of road a day, is the most amusing of all travelling; and all travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity. going by railroad i do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely "being sent" to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel; the next step to it would of course be telegraphic transport, of which, however, i suppose it has been truly said by octave feuillet, "_il y aurait des gens assez bêtes_ pour trouver ça amusant."[ ] if we walk more than ten or twelve miles, it breaks up the day too much; leaving no time for stopping at the stream sides or shady banks, or for any work at the end of the day; besides that the last few miles are apt to be done in a hurry, and may then be considered as lost ground. but if, advancing thus slowly, after some days we approach any more interesting scenery, every yard of the changeful ground becomes precious and piquant; and the continual increase of hope, and of surrounding beauty, affords one of the most exquisite enjoyments possible to the healthy mind; besides that real knowledge is acquired of whatever it is the object of travelling to learn, and a certain sublimity given to all places, so attained, by the true sense of the spaces of earth that separate them. a man who really loves travelling would as soon consent to pack a day of such happiness into an hour of railroad, as one who loved eating would agree, if it were possible, to concentrate his dinner into a pill. § . and, secondly, i say that it is wisdom to preserve as much as possible the innocent _sources_ of novelty;--not definite inferiorities of one place to another, if such can be done away; but differences of manners and customs, of language and architecture. the greatest effort ought especially to be made by all wise and far-sighted persons, in the present crisis of civilization, to enforce the distinction between wholesome reform, and heartless abandonment of ancestral custom; between kindly fellowship of nation with nation, and ape-like adoption, by one, of the habits of another. it is ludicrously awful to see the luxurious inhabitants of london and paris rushing over the continent (as they say, to _see_ it), and transposing every place, as far as lies in their power, instantly into a likeness of regent street and the rue de la paix, which they need not certainly have come so far to see. of this evil i shall have more to say hereafter; meantime i return to our main subject. § . the next character we have to note in the landscape-instinct (and on this much stress is to be laid), is its total inconsistency with all evil passion; its absolute contrariety (whether in the contest it were crushed or not) to all care, hatred, envy, anxiety, and moroseness. a feeling of this kind is assuredly not one to be lightly repressed, or treated with contempt. but how, if it be so, the reader asks, can it be characteristic of passionate and unprincipled men, like byron, shelley, and such others, and not characteristic of the noblest and most highly principled men? first, because it is itself a passion, and therefore likely to be characteristic of passionate men. secondly, because it is (§ ) wholly a separate thing from moral principle, and may or may not be joined to strength of will, or rectitude of purpose[ ]; only, this much is always observable in the men whom it characterizes, that, whatever their faults or failings, they always understand and love noble qualities of character; they can conceive (if not certain phases of piety), at all events, self-devotion of the highest kind; they delight in all that is good, gracious, and noble; and though warped often to take delight also in what is dark or degraded, that delight is mixed with bitter self-reproach; or else is wanton, careless, or affected, while their delight in noble things is constant and sincere. § . look back to the two lists given above, § . i have not lately read anything by mrs. radclyffe or george sand, and cannot, therefore, take instances from them; keats hardly introduced human character into his work; but glance over the others, and note the general tone of their conceptions. take st. pierre's virginia, byron's myrrha, angiolina, and marina, and eugene sue's fleur de marie; and out of the other lists you will only be able to find pamela, clementina, and, i suppose, clarissa,[ ] to put beside them; and these will not more than match myrrha and marina; leaving fleur de marie and virginia rivalless. then meditate a little, with all justice and mercy, over the two groups of names; and i think you will, at last, feel that there is a pathos and tenderness of heart among the lovers of nature in the second list, of which it is nearly impossible to estimate either the value or the danger; that the sterner consistency of the men in the first may, in great part, have arisen only from the, to them, most merciful, appointment of having had religious teaching or disciplined education in their youth; while their want of love for nature, whether that love be originally absent, or artificially repressed, is to none of them an advantage. johnson's indolence, goldsmith's improvidence, young's worldliness, milton's severity, and bacon's servility, might all have been less, if they could in any wise have sympathized with byron's lonely joy in a jura storm,[ ] or with shelley's interest in floating paper boats down the serchio. § . and then observe, farther, as i kept the names of wordsworth and scott out of the second list, i withdrew, also, certain names from the first; and for this reason, that in all the men who are named in that list, there is evidently _some_ degree of love for nature, which may have been originally of more power than we suppose, and may have had an infinitely hallowing and protective influence upon them. but there also lived certain men of high intellect in that age who had _no_ love of nature whatever. they do not appear ever to have received the smallest sensation of ocular delight from any natural scene, but would have lived happily all their lives in drawingrooms or studies. and, therefore, in these men we shall be able to determine, with the greatest chance of accuracy, what the real influence of natural beauty is, and what the character of a mind destitute of its love. take, as conspicuous instances, le sage and smollett, and you will find, in meditating over their works, that they are utterly incapable of conceiving a human soul as endowed with any nobleness whatever; their heroes are simply beasts endowed with some degree of human intellect;--cunning, false, passionate, reckless, ungrateful, and abominable, incapable of noble joy, of noble sorrow, of any spiritual perception or hope. i said, "beasts with human intellect;" but neither gil blas nor roderick random reach, morally, anything near the level of dogs; while the delight which the writers themselves feel in mere filth and pain, with an unmitigated foulness and cruelty of heart, is just as manifest in every sentence as the distress and indignation which with pain and injustice are seen by shelley and byron. § . distinguished from these men by _some_ evidence of love for nature, yet an evidence much less clear than that for any of those named even in the first list, stand cervantes, pope, and molière. it is not easy to say how much the character of these last depended on their epoch and education; but it is noticeable that the first two agree thus far in temper with le sage and smollett,--that they delight in dwelling upon vice, misfortune, or folly, as subjects of amusement; while yet they are distinguished from le sage and smollett by capacity of conceiving nobleness of character, only in a humiliating and hopeless way; the one representing all chivalry as insanity, the other placing the wisdom of man in a serene and sneering reconciliation of good with evil. of molière i think very differently. living in the blindest period of the world's history, in the most luxurious city, and the most corrupted court, of the time, he yet manifests through all his writings an exquisite natural wisdom; a capacity for the most simple enjoyment; a high sense of all nobleness, honor, and purity, variously marked throughout his slighter work, but distinctly made the theme of his two perfect plays--the tartuffe and misanthrope; and in all that he says of art or science he has an unerring instinct for what is useful and sincere, and uses his whole power to defend it, with as keen a hatred of everything affected and vain. and, singular as it may seem, the first definite lesson read to europe, in that school of simplicity of which wordsworth was the supposed originator among the mountains of cumberland, was, in fact, given in the midst of the court of louis xiv., and by molière. the little canzonet "j'aime mieux ma mie," is, i believe, the first wordsworthian poem brought forward on philosophical principles to oppose the schools of art and affectation. § . i do not know if, by a careful analysis, i could point out any evidences of a capacity for the love of natural scenery in molière stealing forth through the slightness of his pastorals; but, if not, we must simply set him aside as exceptional, as a man uniting wordsworth's philosophy with le sage's wit, turned by circumstances from the observance of natural beauty to that of human frailty. and thus putting him aside for the moment, i think we cannot doubt of our main conclusion, that, though the absence of the love of nature is not an assured condemnation, its presence is an invariable sign of goodness of heart and justness of moral _perception_, though by no means of moral _practice_; that in proportion to the degree in which it is felt, will _probably_ be the degree in which all nobleness and beauty of character will also be felt; that when it is originally absent from any mind, that mind is in many other respects hard, worldly, and degraded; that where, having been originally present, it is repressed by art or education, that repression appears to have been detrimental to the person suffering it; and that wherever the feeling exists, it acts for good on the character to which it belongs, though, as it may often belong to characters weak in other respects, it may carelessly be mistaken for a source of evil in them. § . and having arrived at this conclusion by a review of facts, which i hope it will be admitted, whether accurate or not, has at least been candid, these farther considerations may confirm our belief in its truth. observe: the whole force of education, until very lately, has been directed in every possible way to the destruction of the love of nature. the only knowledge which has been considered essential among us is that of words, and, next after it, of the abstract sciences; while every liking shown by children for simple natural history has been either violently checked, (if it took an inconvenient form for the housemaids,) or else scrupulously limited to hours of play: so that it has really been impossible for any child earnestly to study the works of god but against its conscience; and the love of nature has become inherently the characteristic of truants and idlers. while also the art of drawing, which is of more real importance to the human race than that of writing (because people can hardly draw anything without being of some use both to themselves and others, and can hardly write anything without wasting their own time and that of others),--this art of drawing, i say, which on plain and stern system should be taught to every child, just as writing is,--has been so neglected and abused, that there is not one man in a thousand, even of its professed teachers, who knows its first principles: and thus it needs much ill-fortune or obstinacy--much neglect on the part of his teachers, or rebellion on his own--before a boy can get leave to use his eyes or his fingers; so that those who _can_ use them are for the most part neglected or rebellious lads--runaways and bad scholars--passionate, erratic, self-willed, and restive against all forms of education; while your well-behaved and amiable scholars are disciplined into blindness and palsy of half their faculties. wherein there is at once a notable ground for what difference we have observed between the lovers of nature and its despisers; between the somewhat immoral and unrespectable watchfulness of the one, and the moral and respectable blindness of the other. § . one more argument remains, and that, i believe, an unanswerable one. as, by the accident of education, the love of nature has been, among us, associated with _wilfulness_, so, by the accident of time, it has been associated with _faithlessness_. i traced, above, the peculiar mode in which this faithlessness was indicated; but i never intended to imply, therefore, that it was an invariable concomitant of the love. because it happens that, by various concurrent operations of evil, we have been led, according to those words of the greek poet already quoted, "to dethrone the gods, and crown the whirlwind," it is no reason that we should forget there was once a time when "the lord answered job _out of_ the whirlwind." and if we now take final and full view of the matter, we shall find that the love of nature, wherever it has existed, has been a faithful and sacred element of human feeling; that is to say, supposing all circumstances otherwise the same with respect to two individuals, the one who loves nature most will be _always_ found to have more _faith in god_ than the other. it is intensely difficult, owing to the confusing and counter influences which always mingle in the data of the problem, to make this abstraction fairly; but so far as we can do it, so far, i boldly assert, the result is constantly the same: the nature-worship will be found to bring with it such a sense of the presence and power of a great spirit as no mere reasoning can either induce or controvert; and where that nature-worship is innocently pursued,--i.e. with due respect to other claims on time, feeling, and exertion, and associated with the higher principles of religion,--it becomes the channel of certain sacred truths, which by no other means can be conveyed. § . this is not a statement which any investigation is needed to prove. it comes to us at once from the highest of all authority. the greater number of the words which are recorded in scripture, as directly spoken to men by the lips of the deity, are either simple revelations of his law, or special threatenings, commands, and promises relating to special events. but two passages of god's speaking, one in the old and one in the new testament, possess, it seems to me, a different character from any of the rest, having been uttered, the one to effect the last necessary change in the mind of a man whose piety was in other respects perfect; and the other, as the first statement to all men of the principles of christianity by christ himself--i mean the th to st chapters of the book of job, and the sermon on the mount. now the first of these passages is, from beginning to end, nothing else than a direction of the mind which was to be perfected to humble observance of the works of god in nature. and the other consists only in the inculcation of _three_ things: st, right conduct; nd, looking for eternal life; rd, trusting god, through watchfulness of his dealings with his creation: and the entire contents of the book of job, and of the sermon on the mount, will be found resolvable simply into these three requirements from all men,--that they should act rightly, hope for heaven, and watch god's wonders and work in the earth; the right conduct being always summed up under the three heads of _justice_, _mercy_, and _truth_, and no mention of any doctrinal point whatsoever occurring in either piece of divine teaching. § . as far as i can judge of the ways of men, it seems to me that the simplest and most necessary truths are always the last believed; and i suppose that well-meaning people in general would rather regulate their conduct and creed by almost any other portion of scripture whatsoever, than by that sermon on the mount, which contains the things that christ thought it first necessary for all men to understand. nevertheless, i believe the time will soon come for the full force of these two passages of scripture to be accepted. instead of supposing the love of nature necessarily connected with the faithlessness of the age, i believe it is connected properly with the benevolence and liberty of the age; that it is precisely the most healthy element which distinctively belongs to us; and that out of it, cultivated no longer in levity or ignorance, but in earnestness and as a duty, results will spring of an importance at present inconceivable; and lights arise, which, for the first time in man's history, will reveal to him the true nature of his life, the true field for his energies, and the true relations between him and his maker. § . i will not endeavor here to trace the various modes in which these results are likely to be effected, for this would involve an essay on education, on the uses of natural history, and the probable future destiny of nations. somewhat on these subjects i have spoken in other places; and i hope to find time, and proper place, to say more. but one or two observations maybe made merely to suggest the directions in which the reader may follow out the subject for himself. the great mechanical impulses of the age, of which most of us are so proud, are a mere passing fever, half-speculative, half-childish. people will discover at last that royal roads to anything can no more be laid in iron than they can in dust; that there are, in fact, no royal roads to anywhere worth going to; that if there were, it would that instant cease to be worth going to,--i mean so far as the things to be obtained are in any way estimable in terms of _price_. for there are two classes of precious things in the world: those that god gives us for nothing--sun, air, and life (both mortal life and immortal); and the secondarily precious things which he gives us for a price: these secondarily precious things, worldly wine and milk, can only be bought for definite money; they never can be cheapened. no cheating nor bargaining will ever get a single thing out of nature's "establishment" at half-price. do we want to be strong?--we must work. to be hungry?--we must starve. to be happy?--we must be kind. to be wise?--we must look and think. no changing of place at a hundred miles an hour, nor making of stuffs a thousand yards a minute, will make us one whit stronger, happier, or wiser. there was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast. and they will at last, and soon too, find out that their grand inventions for conquering (as they think) space and time, do, in reality, conquer nothing; for space and time are, in their own essence, unconquerable, and besides did not want any sort of conquering; they wanted _using_. a fool always wants to shorten space and time: a wise man wants to lengthen both. a fool wants to kill space and kill time: a wise man, first to gain them, then to animate them. your railroad, when you come to understand it, is only a device for making the world smaller: and as for being able to talk from place to place, that is, indeed, well and convenient; but suppose you have, originally, nothing to say.[ ] we shall be obliged at last to confess, what we should long ago have known, that the really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. it does a bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for his glory is not at all in going, but in being. § . "well; but railroads and telegraphs are so useful for communicating knowledge to savage nations." yes, if you have any to give them. if you know nothing _but_ railroads, and can communicate nothing but aqueous vapor and gunpowder,--what then? but if you have any other thing than those to give, then the railroad is of use only because it communicates that other thing and the question is--what that other thing may be. is it religion? i believe if we had really wanted to communicate that, we could have done it in less than years, without steam. most of the good religious communication that i remember has been done on foot; and it cannot be easily done faster than at foot pace. is it science? but what science--of motion, meat, and medicine? well; when you have moved your savage, and dressed your savage, fed him with white bread, and shown him how to set a limb,--what next? follow out that question. suppose every obstacle overcome; give your savage every advantage of civilization to the full: suppose that you have put the red indian in tight shoes; taught the chinese how to make wedgwood's ware, and to paint it with colors that will rub off; and persuaded all hindoo women that it is more pious to torment their husbands into graves than to burn themselves at the burial,--what next? gradually, thinking on from point to point, we shall come to perceive that all true happiness and nobleness are near us, and yet neglected by us; and that till we have learned how to be happy and noble, we have not much to tell, even to red indians. the delights of horse-racing and hunting, of assemblies in the night instead of the day, of costly and wearisome music, of costly and burdensome dress, of chagrined contention for place or power, or wealth, or the eyes of the multitude; and all the endless occupation without purpose, and idleness without rest, of our vulgar world, are not, it seems to me, enjoyments we need be ambitious to communicate. and all real and wholesome enjoyments possible to man have been just as possible to him, since first he was made of the earth, as they are now; and they are possible to him chiefly in peace. to watch the corn grow, and the blossoms set; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray,--these are the things that make men happy; they have always had the power of doing these, they never _will_ have power to do more. the world's prosperity or adversity depends upon our knowing and teaching these few things: but upon iron, or glass, or electricity, or steam, in no wise. § . and i am utopian and enthusiastic enough to believe, that the time will come when the world will discover this. it has now made its experiments in every possible direction but the right one; and it seems that it must, at last, try the right one, in a mathematical necessity. it has tried fighting, and preaching, and fasting, buying and selling, pomp and parsimony, pride and humiliation,--every possible manner of existence in which it could conjecture there was any happiness or dignity; and all the while, as it bought, sold, and fought, and fasted, and wearied itself with policies, and ambitions, and self-denials, god had placed its real happiness in the keeping of the little mosses of the wayside, and of the clouds of the firmament. now and then a weary king, or a tormented slave, found out where the true kingdoms of the world were, and possessed himself, in a furrow or two of garden ground, of a truly infinite dominion. but the world would not believe their report, and went on trampling down the mosses, and forgetting the clouds, and seeking happiness in its own way, until, at last, blundering and late, came natural science; and in natural science not only the observation of things, but the finding out of new uses for them. of course the world, having a choice left to it, went wrong as usual, and thought that these mere material uses were to be the sources of its happiness. it got the clouds packed into iron cylinders, and made it carry its wise self at their own cloud pace. it got weavable fibres out of the mosses, and made clothes for itself, cheap and fine,--here was happiness at last. to go as fast as the clouds, and manufacture everything out of anything,--here was paradise, indeed! § . and now, when, in a little while, it is unparadised again, if there were any other mistake that the world could make, it would of course make it. but i see not that there is any other; and, standing fairly at its wits' end, having found that going fast, when it is used to it, is no more paradisiacal than going slow; and that all the prints and cottons in manchester cannot make it comfortable in its mind, i do verily believe it will come, finally, to understand that god paints the clouds and shapes the moss-fibres, that men may be happy in seeing him at his work, and that in resting quietly beside him, and watching his working, and--according to the power he has communicated to ourselves, and the guidance he grants,--in carrying out his purposes of peace and charity among all his creatures, are the only real happinesses that ever were, or will be, possible to mankind. § . how far art is capable of helping us in such happiness we hardly yet know; but i hope to be able, in the subsequent parts of this work, to give some data for arriving at a conclusion in the matter. enough has been advanced to relieve the reader from any lurking suspicion of unworthiness in our subject, and to induce him to take interest in the mind and work of the great painter who has headed the landscape school among us. what farther considerations may, within any reasonable limits, be put before him, respecting the effect of natural scenery on the human heart, i will introduce in their proper places either as we examine, under turner's guidance, the different classes of scenery, or at the close of the whole work; and therefore i have only one point more to notice here, namely, the exact relation between landscape-painting and natural science, properly so-called. § . for it may be thought that i have rashly assumed that the scriptural authorities above quoted apply to that partly superficial view of nature which is taken by the landscape-painter, instead of to the accurate view taken by the man of science. so far from there being rashness in such an assumption, the whole language, both of the book of job and the sermon on the mount, gives precisely the view of nature which is taken by the uninvestigating affection of a humble, but powerful mind. there is no dissection of muscles or counting of elements, but the boldest and broadest glance at the apparent facts, and the most magnificent metaphor in expressing them. "his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. in his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned into joy before him." and in the often repeated, never obeyed, command, "consider the lilies of the field," observe there is precisely the delicate attribution of life which we have seen to be the characteristic of the modern view of landscape,--"they toil not," there is no science, or hint of science; no counting of petals, nor display of provisions for sustenance: nothing but the expression of sympathy, at once the most childish, and the most profound,--"they toil not." § . and we see in this, therefore, that the instinct which leads us thus to attribute life to the lowest forms of organic nature, does not necessarily spring from faithlessness, nor the deducing a moral out of them from an irregular and languid conscientiousness. in this, as in almost all things connected with moral discipline, the same results may follow from contrary causes; and as there are a good and evil contentment, a good and evil discontent, a good and evil care, fear, ambition, and so on, there are also good and evil forms of this sympathy with nature, and disposition to moralize over it.[ ] in general, active men, of strong sense and stern principle, do not care to see anything in a leaf, but vegetable tissue, and are so well convinced of useful moral truth, that it does not strike them as a new or notable thing when they find it in any way symbolized by material nature; hence there is a strong presumption, when first we perceive a tendency in any one to regard trees as living, and enunciate moral aphorisms over every pebble they stumble against, that such tendency proceeds from a morbid temperament, like shelley's, or an inconsistent one, like jaques's. but when the active life is nobly fulfilled, and the mind is then raised beyond it into clear and calm beholding of the world around us, the same tendency again manifests itself in the most sacred way: the simplest forms of nature are strangely animated by the sense of the divine presence; the trees and flowers seem all, in a sort, children of god; and we ourselves, their fellows, made out of the same dust, and greater than they only in having a greater portion of the divine power exerted on our frame, and all the common uses and palpably visible forms of things, become subordinate in our minds to their inner glory,--to the mysterious voices in which they talk to us about god, and the changeful and typical aspects by which they witness to us of holy truth, and fill us with obedient, joyful, and thankful emotion. § . it is in raising us from the first state of inactive reverie to the second of useful thought, that scientific pursuits are to be chiefly praised. but in restraining us at this second stage, and checking the impulses towards higher contemplation, they are to be feared or blamed. they may in certain minds be consistent with such contemplation; but only by an effort: in their nature they are always adverse to it, having a tendency to chill and subdue the feelings, and to resolve all things into atoms and numbers. for most men, an ignorant enjoyment is better than an informed one; it is better to conceive the sky as a blue dome than a dark cavity, and the cloud as a golden throne than a sleety mist. i much question whether any one who knows optics, however religious he may be, can feel in equal degree the pleasure or reverence which an unlettered peasant may feel at the sight of a rainbow. and it is mercifully thus ordained, since the law of life, for a finite being, with respect to the works of an infinite one, must be always an infinite ignorance. we cannot fathom the mystery of a single flower, nor is it intended that we should; but that the pursuit of science should constantly be stayed by the love of beauty, and accuracy of knowledge by tenderness of emotion. § . nor is it even just to speak of the love of beauty as in all respects unscientific; for there is a science of the aspects of things as well as of their nature; and it is as much a fact to be noted in their constitution, that they produce such and such an effect upon the eye or heart (as, for instance, that minor scales of sound cause melancholy), as that they are made up of certain atoms or vibrations of matter. it is as the master of this science of _aspects_, that i said, some time ago, turner must eventually be named always with bacon, the master of the science of _essence_. as the first poet who has, in all their range, understood the grounds of noble emotion which exist in landscape, his future influence will be of a still more subtle and important character. the rest of this work will therefore be dedicated to the explanation of the principles on which he composed, and of the aspects of nature which he was the first to discern. [ ] marmion, introduction to canto ii. [ ] the investigation of this subject becomes, therefore, difficult beyond all other parts of our inquiry, since precisely the same sentiments may arise in different minds from totally opposite causes; and the extreme of frivolity may sometimes for a moment desire the same things as the extreme of moral power and dignity. in the following extract from "marriage," the sentiment expressed by lady juliana (the ineffably foolish and frivolous heroine of the story) is as nearly as possible what dante would have felt, under the same circumstances: "the air was soft and genial; not a cloud stained the bright azure of the heavens; and the sun shone out in all his splendor, shedding life and beauty even over the desolate heath-clad hills of glenfern. but, after they had journeyed a few miles, suddenly emerging from the valley, a scene of matchless beauty burst at once upon the eye. before them lay the dark blue waters of lochmarlie, reflecting, as in a mirror, every surrounding object, and bearing on its placid, transparent bosom a fleet of herring-boats, the drapery of whose black, suspended nets contrasted, with picturesque effect, the white sails of the larger vessels, which were vainly spread to catch a breeze. all around, rocks, meadows, woods, and hills mingled in wild and lovely irregularity. "not a breath was stirring, not a sound was heard, save the rushing of a waterfall, the tinkling of some silver rivulet, or the calm rippling of the tranquil lake; now and then, at intervals, the fisherman's gaelic ditty, chanted as he lay stretched on the sand in some sunny nook; or the shrill, distant sound of childish glee. how delicious to the feeling heart to behold so fair a scene of unsophisticated nature, and to listen to her voice alone, breathing the accents of innocence and joy! but none of the party who now gazed on it had minds capable of being touched with the emotions it was calculated to inspire. "henry, indeed, was rapturous in his expressions of admiration; but he concluded his panegyrics by wondering his brother did not keep a cutter, and resolving to pass a night on board one of the herring-boats, that he might eat the fish in perfection. "lady juliana thought it might be very pretty, if, instead of those frightful rocks and shabby cottages, there could be villas, and gardens, and lawns, and conservatories, and summer-houses, and statues. "miss bella observed, if it was hers she would cut down the woods, and level the hills, and have races." [ ] childe harold, canto iii. st. . [ ] scènes et proverbes. la crise; (scène en calèche, hors paris.) [ ] compare the characters of fleur de marie and rigolette, in the mystères de paris. i know no other instance in which the two tempers are so exquisitely delineated and opposed. read carefully the beautiful pastoral, in the eighth chapter of the first part, where fleur de marie is first taken into the fields under montmartre, and compare it with the sixth of the second part, its accurately traced companion sketch, noting carefully rigolette's "non, _je déteste la campagne_." she does not, however, dislike flowers or birds: "cette caisse de bois, que rigolette appellait le jardin de ses oiseaux, était remplie de terre recouverte de mousse, pendant l'hiver. elle travaillait auprès de la fenêtre ouverte, à-demi-voilée par un verdoyant rideau de pois de senteur roses, de capucines oranges, de volubilis bleus et blancs." [ ] i have not read clarissa. [ ] it might be thought that young _could_ have sympathized with it. he would have made better use of it, but he would not have had the same delight in it. he turns his solitude to good account; but this is because, to him, solitude is sorrow, and his real enjoyment would have been of amiable society, and a place at court. [ ] "the light-outspeeding telegraph bears nothing on its beam." emerson. see appendix iii., plagiarism. [ ] compare what is said before in various places of good and bad finish, good and bad mystery, &c. if a man were disposed to system-making, he could easily throw together a counter-system to aristotle's, showing that in all things there were two extremes which exactly resembled each other, but of which one was bad, the other good; and a mean, resembling neither, but better than the one, and worse than the other. chapter xviii. of the teachers of turner. § . the first step to the understanding either the mind or position of a great man ought, i think, to be an inquiry into the elements of his early instruction, and the mode in which he was affected by the circumstances of surrounding life. in making this inquiry, with respect to turner, we shall be necessarily led to take note of the causes which had brought landscape-painting into the state in which he found it; and, therefore, of those transitions of style which, it will be remembered, we overleaped (hoping for a future opportunity of examining them) at the close of the fifteenth chapter. § . and first, i said, it will be remembered, some way back, that the relations between scott and turner would probably be found to differ very curiously from those between dante and giotto. they differ primarily in this,--that dante and giotto, living in a consistent age, were subjected to one and the same influence, and maybe reasoned about almost in similar terms. but scott and turner, living in an inconsistent age, became subjected to inconsistent influences; and are at once distinguished by notable contrarieties, requiring separate examination in each. § . of these, the chief was that scott, having had the blessing of a totally neglected education, was able early to follow most of his noble instincts; but turner, having suffered under the instruction of the royal academy, had to pass nearly thirty years of his life in recovering from its consequences;[ ] this permanent result following for both,--that scott never was led into any fault foreign to his nature, but spoke what was in him, in rugged or idle simplicity; erring only where it was natural to err, and failing only where it was impossible to succeed. but turner, from the beginning, was led into constrained and unnatural error; diligently debarred from every ordinary help to success. the one thing which the academy _ought_ to have taught him (namely, the simple and safe use of oil color), it never taught him; but it carefully repressed his perceptions of truth, his capacities of invention, and his tendencies of choice. for him it was impossible to do right but in the spirit of defiance; and the first condition of his progress in learning, was the power to forget. § . one most important distinction in their feelings throughout life was necessitated by this difference in early training. scott gathered what little knowledge of architecture he possessed, in wanderings among the rocky walls of crichtoun, lochleven, and linlithgow, and among the delicate pillars of holyrood, roslin, and melrose. turner acquired his knowledge of architecture at the desk, from academical elevations of the parthenon and st. paul's; and spent a large portion of his early years in taking views of gentlemen's seats, temples of the muses, and other productions of modern taste and imagination; being at the same time directed exclusively to classical sources for information as to the proper subjects of art. hence, while scott was at once directed to the history of his native land, and to the gothic fields of imagination; and his mind was fed in a consistent, natural, and felicitous way from his youth up, poor turner for a long time knew no inspiration but that of twickenham; no sublimity but that of virginia water. all the history and poetry presented to him at the age when the mind receives its dearest associations, were those of the gods and nations of long ago; and his models of sentiment and style were the worst and last wrecks of the renaissance affectations. § . therefore (though utterly free from affectation), his early works are full of an _enforced_ artificialness, and of things ill-done and ill-conceived, because foreign to his own instincts; and, throughout life, whatever he did, because he thought he _ought_ to do it, was wrong; all that he planned on any principle, or in supposed obedience to canons of taste, was false and abortive: he only did right when he ceased to reflect; was powerful only when he made no effort, and successful only when he had taken no aim. § . and it is one of the most interesting things connected with the study of his art, to watch the way in which his own strength of english instinct breaks gradually through fetter and formalism; how from egerian wells he steals away to yorkshire streamlets; how from homeric rocks, with laurels at the top and caves in the bottom, he climbs, at last, to alpine precipices fringed with pine, and fortified with the slopes of their own ruins; and how from temples of jupiter and gardens of the hesperides, a spirit in his feet guides him, at last, to the lonely arches of whitby, and bleak sands of holy isle. § . as, however, is the case with almost all inevitable evil, in its effect on great minds, a certain good rose even out of this warped education; namely, his power of more completely expressing all the tendencies of his epoch, and sympathizing with many feelings and many scenes which must otherwise have been entirely profitless to him. scott's mind was just as large and full of sympathy as turner's; but having been permitted always to take his own choice among sources of enjoyment, scott was entirely incapable of entering into the spirit of any classical scene. he was strictly a goth and a scot, and his sphere of sensation may be almost exactly limited by the growth of heather. but turner had been forced to pay early attention to whatever of good and right there was even in things naturally distasteful to him. the charm of early association had been cast around much that to other men would have been tame: while making drawings of flower-gardens and palladian mansions, he had been taught sympathy with whatever grace or refinement the garden or mansion could display, and to the close of life could enjoy the delicacy of trellis and parterre, as well as the wildness of the wood and the moorland; and watch the staying of the silver fountain at its appointed height in the sky, with an interest as earnest, if not as intense, as that with which he followed the crash of the alpine cataract into its clouds of wayward rage. § . the distinct losses to be weighed against this gain are, first, the waste of time during youth in painting subjects of no interest whatsoever,--parks, villas, and ugly architecture in general: secondly, the devotion of its utmost strength in later years to meaningless classical compositions, such as the fall and rise of carthage, bay of baiæ, daphne and leucippus, and such others, which, with infinite accumulation of material, are yet utterly heartless and emotionless, dead to the very root of thought, and incapable of producing wholesome or useful effect on any human mind, except only as exhibitions of technical skill and graceful arrangement: and, lastly, his incapacity, to the close of life, of entering heartily into the spirit of any elevated architecture; for those palladian and classical buildings which he had been taught that it was right to admire, being wholly devoid of interest, and in their own formality and barrenness quite unmanageable, he was obliged to make them manageable in his pictures by disguising them, and to use all kinds of playing shadows and glittering lights to obscure their ugly details; and as in their best state such buildings are white and colorless, he associated the idea of whiteness with perfect architecture generally, and was confused and puzzled when he found it grey. hence he never got thoroughly into the feeling of gothic; its darkness and complexity embarrassed him; he was very apt to whiten by way of idealizing it, and to cast aside its details in order to get breadth of delicate light. in venice, and the towns of italy generally, he fastened on the wrong buildings, and used those which he chose merely as kind of white clouds, to set off his brilliant groups of boats, or burning spaces of lagoon. in various other minor ways, which we shall trace in their proper place, his classical education hindered or hurt him; but i feel it very difficult to say how far the loss was balanced by the general grasp it gave his mind; nor am i able to conceive what would have been the result, if his aims had been made at once narrower and more natural, and he had been led in his youth to delight in gothic legends instead of classical mythology; and, instead of the porticos of the parthenon, had studied in the aisles of notre dame. § . it is still more difficult to conjecture whether he gathered most good or evil from the pictorial art which surrounded him in his youth. what that art was, and how the european schools had arrived at it, it now becomes necessary briefly to inquire. it will be remembered that, in the th chapter, we left our mediæval landscape (§ .) in a state of severe formality, and perfect subordination to the interest of figure subject. i will now rapidly trace the mode and progress of its emancipation. § . the formalized conception of scenery remained little altered until the time of raphael, being only better executed as the knowledge of art advanced; that is to say, though the trees were still stiff, and often set one on each side of the principal figures, their color and relief on the sky were exquisitely imitated, and all groups of near leaves and flowers drawn with the most tender care, and studious botanical accuracy. the better the subjects were painted, however, the more logically absurd they became: a background wrought in chinese confusion of towers and rivers, was in early times passed over carelessly, and forgiven for the sake of its pleasant color; but it appealed somewhat too far to imaginative indulgence when ghirlandajo drew an exquisite perspective view of venice and her lagoons behind an adoration of the magi;[ ] and the impossibly small boats which might be pardoned in a mere illumination, representing the miraculous draught of fishes, became, whatever may be said to the contrary, inexcusably absurd in raphael's fully realized landscape; so as at once to destroy the credibility of every circumstance of the event. § . a certain charm, however, attached itself to many forms of this landscape, owing to their very unnaturalness, as i have endeavored to explain already in the last chapter of the second volume, §§ . to .; noting, however, there, that it was in no wise to be made a subject of imitation; a conclusion which i have since seen more and more ground for holding finally. the longer i think over the subject, the more i perceive that the pleasure we take in such unnatural landscapes is intimately connected with our habit of regarding the new testament as a beautiful poem, instead of a statement of plain facts. he who believes thoroughly that the events are true will expect, and ought to expect, real olive copse behind real madonna, and no sentimental absurdities in either. [illustration: . latest purism.] § . nor am i at all sure how far the delight which we take (when i say _we_, i mean, in general, lovers of old sacred art) in such quaint landscape, arises from its peculiar _falsehood_, and how far from its peculiar _truth_. for as it falls into certain errors more boldly, so, also, what truth it states, it states more firmly than subsequent work. no engravings, that i know, render the backgrounds of sacred pictures with sufficient care to enable the reader to judge of this matter unless before the works themselves. i have, therefore, engraved, on the opposite page, a bit of the background of raphael's holy family, in the tribune of the uffizii, at florence. i copied the trees leaf for leaf, and the rest of the work with the best care i could; the engraver, mr. armytage, has admirably rendered the delicate atmosphere which partly veils the distance. now i do not know how far it is necessary to such pleasure as we receive from this landscape, that the trees should be both so straight and formal in stem, and should have branches no thicker than threads; or that the outlines of the distant hills should approximate so closely to those on any ordinary wedgewood's china pattern. i know that, on the contrary, a great part of the pleasure arises from the sweet expression of air and sunshine; from the traceable resemblance of the city and tower to florence and fesole; from the fact that, though the boughs are too thin, the lines of ramification are true and beautiful; and from the expression of continually varied form in the clusters of leafage. and although all lovers of sacred art would shrink in horror from the idea of substituting for such a landscape a bit of cuyp or rubens, i do not think that the horror they feel is because cuyp and rubens's landscape is _truer_, but because it is _coarser_ and more vulgar in associated idea than raphael's; and i think it possible that the true forms of hills, and true thicknesses of boughs, might be tenderly stolen into this background of raphael's without giving offence to any one. § . take a somewhat more definite instance. the rock in fig. ., at the side, is one put by ghirlandajo into the background of his baptism of christ. i have no doubt ghirlandajo's own rocks and trees are better, in several respects, than those here represented, since i have copied them from one of lasinio's execrable engravings; still, the harsh outline, and generally stiff and uninventful blankness of the design are true enough, and characteristic of all rock-painting of the period. in the plate below i have etched[ ] the outline of a fragment of one of turner's cliffs, out of his drawing of bolton abbey; and it does not seem to me that, supposing them properly introduced in the composition, the substitution of the soft natural lines for the hard unnatural ones would make ghirlandajo's background one whit less sacred. [illustration: fig. .] § . but be this as it may, the fact is, as ill luck would have it, that profanity of feeling, and skill in art, increased together; so that we do not find the backgrounds rightly painted till the figures become irreligious and feelingless; and hence we associate necessarily the perfect landscape with want of feeling. the first great innovator was either masaccio or filippino lippi: their works are so confused together in the chapel of the carmine, that i know not to whom i may attribute,--or whether, without being immediately quarrelled with, and contradicted, i may attribute to anybody,--the landscape background of the fresco of the tribute money. but that background, with one or two other fragments in the same chapel, is far in advance of all other work i have seen of the period, in expression of the rounded contours and large slopes of hills, and the association of their summits with the clouds. the opposite engraving will give some better idea of its character than can be gained from the outlines commonly published; though the dark spaces, which in the original are deep blue, come necessarily somewhat too harshly on the eye when translated into light and shade. i shall have occasion to speak with greater speciality of this background in examining the forms of hills; meantime, it is only as an isolated work that it can be named in the history of pictorial progress, for masaccio died too young to carry out his purposes; and the men around him were too ignorant of landscape to understand or take advantage of the little he had done. raphael, though he borrowed from him in the human figure, never seems to have been influenced by his landscape, and retains either, as in plate ., the upright formalities of perugino; or, by way of being natural, expands his distances into flattish flakes of hill, nearly formless, as in the backgrounds of the charge to peter and draught of fishes; and thenceforward the tuscan and roman schools grew more and more artificial, and lost themselves finally under round-headed niches and corinthian porticos. [illustration: . the shores of wharfe.] [illustration: . first mountain naturalism.] [illustration: . the lombard apennine.] [illustration: . st. george of the seaweed.] § . it needed, therefore, the air of the northern mountains and of the sea to brace the hearts of men to the development of the true landscape schools. i sketched by chance one evening the line of the apennines from the ramparts of parma, and i have put the rough note of it, and the sky that was over it, in plate ., and next to this (plate .) a moment of sunset, behind the euganean hills at venice. i shall have occasion to refer to both hereafter; but they have some interest here as types of the kind of scenes which were daily set before the eyes of correggio and titian, and of the sweet free spaces of sky through which rose and fell, to them, the colored rays of the morning and evening. § . and they are connected, also, with the forms of landscape adopted by the lombardic masters, in a very curious way. we noticed that the flemings, educated entirely in flat land, seemed to be always contented with the scenery it supplied; and we should naturally have expected that titian and correggio, living in the midst of the levels of the lagoons, and of the plain of lombardy, would also have expressed, in their backgrounds, some pleasure in such level scenery, associated, of course, with the sublimity of the far-away apennine, euganean, or alp. but not a whit. the plains of mulberry and maize, of sea and shoal, by which they were surrounded, never occur in their backgrounds but in cases of necessity; and both of them, in all their important landscapes, bury themselves in wild wood; correggio delighting to relieve with green darkness of oak and ivy the golden hair and snowy flesh of his figures; and titian, whenever the choice of a scene was in his power, retiring to the narrow glens and forests of cadore. § . of the vegetation introduced by both, i shall have to speak at length in the course of the chapters on foliage; meantime, i give in plate . one of titian's slightest bits of background, from one of the frescoes in the little chapel behind st. antonio, at padua, which may be compared more conveniently than any of his more elaborate landscapes with the purist work from raphael. for in both these examples the trees are equally slender and delicate, only the formality of mediæval art is, by titian, entirely abandoned, and the old conception of the aspen grove and meadow done away with for ever. we are now far from cities: the painter takes true delight in the desert; the trees grow wild and free; the sky also has lost its peace, and is writhed into folds of motion, closely impendent upon earth, and somewhat threatening, through its solemn light. § . although, however, this example is characteristic of titian in its wildness, it is not so in its _looseness_. it is only in the distant backgrounds of the slightest work, or when he is in a hurry, that titian is vague: in all his near and studied work he completes every detail with scrupulous care. the next plate, ., a background of tintoret's, from his picture of the entombment at parma, is more entirely characteristic of the venetians. some mistakes made in the reduction of my drawing during the course of engraving have cramped the curves of the boughs and leaves, of which i will give the true outline farther on; meantime the subject, which is that described in § . of the chapter on penetrative imagination, vol. ii., will just as well answer the purpose of exemplifying the venetian love of gloom and wildness, united with perfect definition of detail. every leaf and separate blade of grass is drawn; but observe how the blades of grass are broken, how completely the aim at expression of faultlessness and felicity has been withdrawn, as contrary to the laws of the existent world. [illustration: . early naturalism.] [illustration: . advanced naturalism.] § . from this great venetian school of landscape turner received much important teaching,--almost the only healthy teaching which he owed to preceding art. the designs of the liber studiorum are founded first on nature, but in many cases modified by _forced_ imitation of claude, and _fond_ imitation of titian. all the worst and feeblest studies in the book--as the pastoral with the nymph playing the tambourine, that with the long bridge seen through trees, and with the flock of goats on the walled road--owe the principal part of their imbecilities to claude; another group (solway moss, peat bog, lauffenbourg, &c.) is taken with hardly any modification by pictorial influence, straight from nature; and the finest works in the book--the grande chartreuse, rizpah, jason, cephalus, and one or two more--are strongly under the influence of titian. § . the venetian school of landscape expired with tintoret, in the year ; and the sixteenth century closed, like a grave, over the great art of the world. there is _no_ entirely sincere or great art in the seventeenth century. rubens and rembrandt are its two greatest men, both deeply stained by the errors and affectations of their age. the influence of the venetians hardly extended to them; the tower of the titianesque art fell southwards; and on the dust of its ruins grew various art-weeds, such as domenichino and the carraccis. their landscape, which may in few words be accurately defined as "scum of titian," possesses no single merit, nor any ground for the forgiveness of demerit; they are to be named only as a link through which the venetian influence came dimly down to claude and salvator. § . salvator possessed real genius, but was crushed by misery in his youth, and by fashionable society in his age. he had vigorous animal life, and considerable invention, but no depth either of thought or perception. he took some hints directly from nature, and expressed some conditions of the grotesque of terror with original power; but his baseness of thought, and bluntness of sight, were unconquerable; and his works possess no value whatsoever for any person versed in the walks of noble art. they had little, if any, influence on turner; if any, it was in blinding him for some time to the grace of tree trunks, and making him tear them too much into splinters. § . not so claude, who may be considered as turner's principal master. claude's capacities were of the most limited kind; but he had tenderness of perception, and sincerity of purpose, and he effected a revolution in art. this revolution consisted mainly in setting the sun in heaven.[ ] till claude's time no one had seriously thought of painting the sun but conventionally; that is to say, as a red or yellow star, (often) with a face in it, under which type it was constantly represented in illumination; else it was kept out of the picture, or introduced in fragmentary distances, breaking through clouds with almost definite rays. perhaps the honor of having first tried to represent the real effect of the sun in landscape belongs to bonifazio, in his pictures of the camps of israel.[ ] rubens followed in a kind of bravado, sometimes making the rays issue from anything but the orb of the sun;--here, for instance, fig. ., is an outline of the position of the sun (at _s_) with respect to his own rays, in a sunset behind a tournament in the louvre: and various interesting effects of sunlight issuing from the conventional face-filled orb occur in contemporary missal-painting; for instance, very richly in the harleian ms. brit. mus. . but all this was merely indicative of the tendency to transition which may always be traced in any age before the man comes who is to _accomplish_ the transition. claude took up the new idea seriously, made the sun his subject, and painted the effects of misty shadows cast by his rays over the landscape, and other delicate aerial transitions, as no one had ever done before, and, in some respects, as no one has done in oil color since. § . "but, how, if this were so, could his capacities be of the meanest order?" because doing _one_ thing well, or better than others have done it, does not necessarily imply large capacity. capacity means breadth of glance, understanding of the relations of things, and invention, and these are rare and precious; but there are very few men who have not done _something_, in the course of their lives, better than other people. i could point out many engravers, draughtsmen, and artists, who have each a particular merit in their manner, or particular field of perception, that nobody else has, or ever had. but this does not make them great men, it only indicates a small special capacity of some kind: and all the smaller if the gift be very peculiar and single; for a great man never so limits himself to one thing, as that we shall be able to say, "that's all he can do." if claude had been a great man he would not have been so steadfastly set on painting effects of sun; he would have looked at all nature, and at all art, and would have painted sun effects somewhat worse, and nature universally much better. [illustration: fig. .] § . such as he was, however, his discovery of the way to make pictures look warm was very delightful to the shallow connoisseurs of the age. not that they cared for sunshine; but they liked seeing jugglery. they could not feel titian's noble color, nor veronese's noble composition; but they thought it highly amusing to see the sun brought into a picture: and claude's works were bought and delighted in by vulgar people then, for their real-looking suns, as pictures are now by vulgar people for having real timepieces in their church towers. § . but when turner arose, with an earnest desire to paint the whole of nature, he found that the existence of the sun was an important fact, and by no means an easily manageable one. _he_ loved sunshine for its own sake; but he could not at first paint it. most things else, he would more or less manage without much technical difficulty; but the burning orb and the golden haze could not, somehow, be got out of the oil paint. naturally he went to claude, who really had got them out of oil paint; approached him with great reverence, as having done that which seemed to turner most difficult of all technical matters, and he became his faithful disciple. how much he learned from him of manipulation, i cannot tell; but one thing is certain, that he never quite equalled him in that particular forte of his. i imagine that claude's way of laying on oil color was so methodical that it could not possibly be imitated by a man whose mechanism was interfered with by hundreds of thoughts and aims totally different from claude's; and, besides, i suppose that certain useful principles in the management of paint, of which our schools are now wholly ignorant, had come down as far as claude, from the venetians. turner at last gave up the attempt, and adopted a manipulation of his own, which indeed effected certain objects attainable in no other way, but which still was in many respects unsatisfactory, dangerous, and deeply to be regretted. § . but meantime his mind had been strongly warped by claude's futilities of conception. it was impossible to dwell on such works for any length of time without being grievously harmed by them; and the style of turner's compositions was for ever afterwards weakened or corrupted. for, truly, it is almost beyond belief into what depth of absurdity claude plunges continually in his most admired designs. for instance; undertaking to paint moses at the burning bush, he represents a graceful landscape with a city, a river, and a bridge, and plenty of tall trees, and the sea, and numbers of people going about their business and pleasure in every direction; and the bush burning quietly upon a bank in the corner; rather in the dark, and not to be seen without close inspection. it would take some pages of close writing to point out, one by one, the inanities of heart, soul, and brain which such a conception involves; the ineffable ignorance of the nature of the event, and of the scene of it; the incapacity of conceiving anything even _in_ ignorance, which should be impressive; the dim, stupid, serene, leguminous enjoyment of his sunny afternoon--burn the bushes as much as they liked--these i leave the reader to think over at his leisure, either before the picture in lord ellesmere's gallery, or the sketch of it in the liber veritatis. but all these kinds of fallacy sprung more or less out of the vices of the time in which claude lived; his own peculiar character reaches beyond these, to an incapacity of understanding the _main point_ in anything he had to represent, down to the minutest detail, which is quite unequalled, as far as i know, in human nugatoriness. for instance; here, in fig. ., is the head, with half the body, of eneas drawing his bow, from no. . of the liber veritatis. observe, the string is too long by half; for if the bow were unbent, it would be two feet longer than the whole bow. then the arrow is too long by half, has too heavy a head by half; and finally, it actually is _under_ the bow-hand, instead of above it. of the ideal and heroic refinement of the head and drapery i will say nothing; but look only at the wretched archery, and consider if it would be possible for any child to draw the thing with less understanding, or to make more mistakes in the given compass.[ ] [illustration: fig. .] § . and yet, exquisite as is claude's instinct for blunder, he has not strength of mind enough to blunder in a wholly original manner, but he must needs falter out of his way to pick up other people's puerilities, and be absurd at second-hand. i have been obliged to laugh a little--though i hope reverently--at ghirlandajo's landscapes, which yet we saw had a certain charm of quaintness in them when contrasted with his grand figures; but could any one have believed that claude, with all the noble landscapes of titian set before him, and all nature round about him, should yet go back to ghirlandajo for types of form. yet such is the case. i said that the venetian influence came dimly down to claude; but the old florentine influence came clearly. the claudesque landscape is not, as so commonly supposed, an idealized abstract of the nature about rome. it is an ultimate condition of the florentine conventional landscape, more or less softened by reference to nature. fig. ., from no. . of the liber veritatis, is sufficiently characteristic of claude's rock-drawing; and compared with fig. . (p. ), will show exactly the kind of modification he made on old and received types. we shall see other instances of it hereafter. [illustration: fig. .] imagine this kind of reproduction of whatever other people had done worst, and this kind of misunderstanding of all that he saw himself in nature, carried out in claude's trees, rocks, ships--in everything that he touched,--and then consider what kind of school this work was for a young and reverent disciple. as i said, turner never recovered the effects of it; his compositions were always mannered, lifeless, and even foolish; and he only did noble things when the immediate presence of nature had overpowered the reminiscences of his master. § . of the influence of gaspar and nicolo poussin on turner, there is hardly anything to be said, nor much respecting that which they had on landscape generally. nicolo poussin had noble powers of design, and might have been a thoroughly great painter had he been trained in venice; but his roman education kept him tame; his trenchant severity was contrary to the tendencies of the age, and had few imitators compared to the dashing of salvator, and the mist of claude. those few imitators adopted his manner without possessing either his science or invention; and the italian school of landscape soon expired. reminiscences of him occur sometimes in turner's compositions of sculptured stones for foreground; and the beautiful triumph of flora, in the louvre, probably first showed turner the use of definite flower, or blossom-painting, in landscape. i doubt if he took anything from gaspar; whatever he might have learned from him respecting masses of foliage and golden distances, could have been learned better, and, i believe, _was_ learned, from titian. § . meantime, a lower, but more living school had developed itself in the north; cuyp had painted sunshine as truly as claude, gilding with it a more homely, but far more honestly conceived landscape; and the effects of light of de hooghe and rembrandt presented examples of treatment to which southern art could show no parallel. turner evidently studied these with the greatest care, and with great benefit in every way; especially this, that they neutralized the idealisms of claude, and showed the young painter what power might be in plain truth, even of the most familiar kind. he painted several pictures in imitation of these masters; and those in which he tried to rival cuyp are healthy and noble works, being, in fact, just what most of cuyp's own pictures are--faithful studies of dutch boats in calm weather, on smooth water. de hooghe was too precise, and rembrandt too dark, to be successfully or affectionately followed by him; but he evidently learned much from both. § . finally, he painted many pictures in the manner of vandevelde (who was the accepted authority of his time in sea painting), and received much injury from him. to the close of his life, turner always painted the sea too grey, and too opaque, in consequence of his early study of vandevelde. he never seemed to perceive color so truly in the sea as he saw it elsewhere. but he soon discovered the poorness of vandevelde's forms of waves, and raised their meanly divided surfaces into massive surge, effecting rapidly other changes, of which more in another place. such was the art to which turner, in early years, devoted his most earnest thoughts. more or less respectful contemplation of reynolds, loutherbourg, wilson, gainsborough, morland, and wilkie, was incidentally mingled with his graver study; and he maintained a questioning watchfulness of even the smallest successes of his brother artists of the modern landscape school. it remains for us only to note the position of that living school when turner, helped or misled, as the case may be, by the study of the older artists, began to consider what remained for him to do, or design. § . the dead schools of landscape, composed of the works we have just been examining, were broadly divisible into northern and southern: the dutch schools, more or less natural, but vulgar; the italian, more or less elevated, but absurd. there was a certain foolish elegance in claude, and a dull dignity in gaspar; but then their work resembled nothing that ever existed in the world. on the contrary, a canal or cattle piece of cuyp's had many veracities about it; but they were, at best, truths of the ditch and dairy. the grace of nature, or her gloom, her tender and sacred seclusions, or her reach of power and wrath, had never been painted; nor had _anything_ been painted yet in true _love_ of it; for both dutch and italians agreed in this, that they always painted for the _picture's_ sake, to show how well they could imitate sunshine, arrange masses, or articulate straws,--never because they loved the scene, or wanted to carry away some memory of it. and thus, all that landscape of the old masters is to be considered merely as a struggle of expiring skill to discover some new direction in which to display itself. there was no love of nature in the age; only a desire for something new. therefore those schools expired at last, leaving the chasm of nearly utter emptiness between them and the true moderns, out of which chasm the new school rises, not engrafted on that old one, but, from the very base of all things, beginning with mere washes of indian ink, touched upon with yellow and brown; and gradually feeling its way to color. but this infant school differed inherently from that ancienter one, in that its motive was love. however feeble its efforts might be, they were _for the sake of the nature_, not of the picture, and therefore, having this germ of true life, it grew and throve. robson did not paint purple hills because he wanted to show how he could lay on purple; but because he truly loved their dark peaks. fielding did not paint downs to show how dexterously he could sponge out mists; but because he loved downs. this modern school, therefore, became the only true school of landscape which had yet existed; the artificial claude and gaspar work may be cast aside out of our way,--as i have said in my edinburgh lectures, under the general title of "pastoralism,"--and from the last landscape of tintoret, if we look for _life_, we must pass at once to the first of turner. § . what help turner received from this or that companion of his youth is of no importance to any one now. of course every great man is always being helped by everybody,[ ] for his gift is to get good out of all things and all persons; and also there were two men associated with him in early study, who showed high promise in the same field, cousen and girtin (especially the former), and there is no saying what these men might have done had they lived; there might, perhaps, have been a struggle between one or other of them and turner, as between giorgione and titian. but they lived not; and turner is the only great man whom the school has yet produced,--quite great enough, as we shall see, for all that needed to be done. to him, therefore, we now finally turn, as the sole object of our inquiry. i shall first reinforce, with such additions as they need, those statements of his general principles which i made in the first volume, but could not then demonstrate fully, for want of time to prepare pictorial illustration; and then proceed to examine, piece by piece, his representations of the facts of nature, comparing them, as it may seem expedient, with what had been accomplished by others. * * * * * i cannot close this volume without alluding briefly to a subject of different interest from any that have occupied us in its pages. for it may, perhaps, seem to a general reader heartless and vain to enter zealously into questions about our arts and pleasures in a time of so great public anxiety as this. but he will find, if he looks back to the sixth paragraph of the opening chapter of the last volume, some statement of feelings, which, as they made me despondent in a time of apparent national prosperity, now cheer me in one which, though of stern trial, i will not be so much a coward as to call one of adversity. and i derive this encouragement first from the belief that the war itself, with all its bitterness, is, in the present state of the european nations, productive of more good than evil; and, secondly, because i have more confidence than others generally entertain, in the justice of its cause. i say, first, because i believe the war is at present productive of good more than of evil. i will not argue this hardly and coldly, as i might, by tracing in past history some of the abundant evidence that nations have always reached their highest virtue, and wrought their most accomplished works, in times of straitening and battle; as, on the other hand, no nation ever yet enjoyed a protracted and triumphant peace without receiving in its own bosom ineradicable seeds of future decline. i will not so argue this matter; but i will appeal at once to the testimony of those whom the war has cost the dearest. i know what would be told me, by those who have suffered nothing; whose domestic happiness has been unbroken; whose daily comfort undisturbed; whose experience of calamity consists, at its utmost, in the incertitude of a speculation, the dearness of a luxury, or the increase of demands upon their fortune which they could meet fourfold without inconvenience. from these, i can well believe, be they prudent economists, or careless pleasure-seekers, the cry for peace will rise alike vociferously, whether in street or senate. but i ask _their_ witness, to whom the war has changed the aspect of the earth, and imagery of heaven, whose hopes it has cut off like a spider's web, whose treasure it has placed, in a moment, under the seals of clay. those who can never more see sunrise, nor watch the climbing light gild the eastern clouds, without thinking what graves it has gilded, first, far down behind the dark earth-line,--who never more shall see the crocus bloom in spring, without thinking what dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of balaclava. ask _their_ witness, and see if they will not reply that it is well with them, and with theirs; that they would have it no otherwise; would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of love and life, nor take again the purple of their blood out of the cross on the breastplate of england. ask them: and though they should answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon their lips into the sound of the old seyton war-cry--"set on." and this not for pride--not because the names of their lost ones will be recorded to all time, as of those who held the breach and kept the gate of europe against the north, as the spartans did against the east; and lay down in the place they had to guard, with the like home message, "oh, stranger, go and tell the english that we are lying here, having obeyed their words;"--not for this, but because, also, they have felt that the spirit which has discerned them for eminence in sorrow--the helmed and sworded skeleton that rakes with its white fingers the sands of the black sea beach into grave-heap after grave-heap, washed by everlasting surf of tears--has been to them an angel of other things than agony; that they have learned, with those hollow, undeceivable eyes of his, to see all the earth by the sunlight of deathbeds;--no inch-high stage for foolish griefs and feigned pleasures; no dream, neither, as its dull moralists told them;--_any_thing but that: a place of true, marvellous, inextricable sorrow and power; a question-chamber of trial by rack and fire, irrevocable decision recording continually; and no sleep, nor folding of hands, among the demon-questioners; none among the angel-watchers, none among the men who stand or fall beside those hosts of god. they know now the strength of sacrifice, and that its flames can illumine as well as consume; they are bound by new fidelities to all that they have saved,--by new love to all for whom they have suffered; every affection which seemed to sink with those dim life-stains into the dust, has been delegated, by those who need it no more, to the cause for which they have expired; and every mouldering arm, which will never more embrace the beloved ones, has bequeathed to them its strength and its faithfulness. for the cause of this quarrel is no dim, half-avoidable involution of mean interests and errors, as some would have us believe. there never was a great war caused by such things. there never can be. the historian may trace it, with ingenious trifling, to a courtier's jest or a woman's glance; but he does not ask--(and it is the sum of questions)--how the warring nations had come to found their destinies on the course of the sneer, or the smile. if they have so based them, it is time for them to learn, through suffering, how to build on other foundations--for great, accumulated, and most righteous cause, their foot slides in due time; and against the torpor, or the turpitude, of their myriads, there is loosed the haste of the devouring sword and the thirsty arrow. but if they have set their fortunes on other than such ground, then the war must be owing to some deep conviction or passion in their own hearts,--a conviction which, in resistless flow, or reckless ebb, or consistent stay, is the ultimate arbiter of battle, disgrace, or conquest. wherever there is war, there _must_ be injustice on one side or the other, or on both. there have been wars which were little more than trials of strength between friendly nations, and in which the injustice was not to each other, but to the god who gave them life. but in a malignant war of these present ages there is injustice of ignobler kind, at once to god and man, which _must_ be stemmed for both their sakes. it may, indeed, be so involved with national prejudices, or ignorances, that neither of the contending nations can conceive it as attaching to their cause; nay, the constitution of their governments, and the clumsy crookedness of their political dealings with each other, may be such as to prevent either of them from knowing the actual cause for which they have gone to war. assuredly this is, in a great degree, the state of things with _us_; for i noticed that there never came news by telegraph of the explosion of a powder-barrel, or of the loss of thirty men by a sortie, but the parliament lost confidence immediately in the justice of the war; reopened the question whether we ever should have engaged in it, and remained in a doubtful and repentant state of mind until one of the enemy's powder-barrels blew up also; upon which they were immediately satisfied again that the war was a wise and necessary one. how far, therefore, the calamity may have been brought upon us by men whose political principles shoot annually like the leaves, and change color at every autumn frost:--how loudly the blood that has been poured out round the walls of that city, up to the horse-bridles, may now be crying from the ground against men who did not know, when they first bade shed it, exactly what war was, or what blood was, or what life was, or truth, or what anything else was upon the earth; and whose tone of opinions touching the destinies of mankind depended entirely upon whether they were sitting on the right or left side of the house of commons;--this, i repeat, i know not, nor (in all solemnity i say it) do i care to know. for if it be so, and the english nation could at the present period of its history be betrayed into a war such as this by the slipping of a wrong word into a protocol, or bewitched into unexpected battle under the budding hallucinations of its sapling senators, truly it is time for us to bear the penalty of our baseness, and learn, as the sleepless steel glares close upon us, how to choose our governors more wisely, and our ways more warily. for that which brings swift punishment in war, must have brought slow ruin in peace; and those who have now laid down their lives for england, have doubly saved her; they have humbled at once her enemies and herself; and have done less for her, in the conquest they achieve, than in the sorrow that they claim. but it is not altogether thus: we have not been cast into this war by mere political misapprehensions, or popular ignorances. it is quite possible that neither we nor our rulers may clearly understand the nature of the conflict; and that we may be dealing blows in the dark, confusedly, and as a soldier suddenly awakened from slumber by an unknown adversary. but i believe the struggle was inevitable, and that the sooner it came, the more easily it was to be met, and the more nobly concluded. france and england are both of them, from shore to shore, in a state of intense progression, change, and experimental life. they are each of them beginning to examine, more distinctly than ever nations did yet in the history of the world, the dangerous question respecting the rights of governed, and the responsibilities of governing, bodies; not, as heretofore; foaming over them in red frenzy, with intervals of fetter and straw crown, but in health, quietness, and daylight, with the help of a good queen and a great emperor; and to determine them in a way which, by just so much as it is more effective and rational, is likely to produce more permanent results than ever before on the policy of neighboring states, and to force, gradually, the discussion of similar questions into their places of silence. to force it,--for true liberty, like true religion, is always aggressive or persecuted; but the attack is _generally_ made upon it by the nation which is to be crushed,--by persian on athenian, tuscan on roman, austrian on swiss; or, as now, by russia upon us and our allies: her attack appointed, it seems to me, for confirmation of all our greatness, trial of our strength, purging and punishment of our futilities, and establishment for ever, in our hands, of the leadership in the political progress of the world. whether this its providential purpose be accomplished, must depend on its enabling france and england to love one another, and teaching these, the two noblest foes that ever stood breast to breast among the nations, first to decipher the law of international charities; first to discern that races, like individuals, can only reach their true strength, dignity, or joy, in seeking each the welfare, and exulting each in the glory, of the other. it is strange how far we still seem from fully perceiving this. we know that two men, cast on a desert island, could not thrive in dispeace; we can understand that four, or twelve, might still find their account in unity; but that a multitude should thrive otherwise than by the contentions of its classes, or _two_ multitudes hold themselves in anywise bound by brotherly law to serve, support, rebuke, rejoice in one another, this seems still as far beyond our conception, as the clearest of commandments, "let no man seek his own, but every man another's wealth," is beyond our habitual practice. yet, if once we comprehend that precept in its breadth, and feel that what we now call jealousy for our country's honor, is, so far as it tends to other countries' _dis_honor, merely one of the worst, because most complacent and self-gratulatory, forms of irreligion,--a newly breathed strength will, with the newly interpreted patriotism, animate and sanctify the efforts of men. learning, unchecked by envy, will be accepted more frankly, throned more firmly, guided more swiftly; charity, unchilled by fear, will dispose the laws of each state without reluctance to advantage its neighbor by justice to itself; and admiration, unwarped by prejudice, possess itself continually of new treasure in the arts and the thoughts of the stranger. if france and england fail of this, if again petty jealousies or selfish interests prevail to unknit their hands from the armored grasp, then, indeed, their faithful children will have fallen in vain; there will be a sound as of renewed lamentation along those euxine waves, and a shaking among the bones that bleach by the mounds of sebastopol. but if they fail not of this,--if we, in our love of our queens and kings, remember how france gave to the cause of early civilization, first the greatest, then the holiest, of monarchs;[ ] and france, in her love of liberty, remembers how _we_ first raised the standard of commonwealth, trusted to the grasp of one good and strong hand, witnessed for by victory; and so join in perpetual compact of our different strengths, to contend for justice, mercy, and truth throughout the world,--who dares say that one soldier has died in vain? the scarlet of the blood that has sealed this covenant will be poured along the clouds of a new aurora, glorious in that eastern heaven; for every sob of wreck-fed breaker round those pontic precipices, the floods shall clap their hands between the guarded mounts of the prince-angel; and the spirits of those lost multitudes, crowned with the olive and rose among the laurel, shall haunt, satisfied, the willowy brooks and peaceful vales of england, and glide, triumphant, by the poplar groves and sunned coteaux of seine. [ ] the education here spoken of is, of course, that bearing on the main work of life. in other respects, turner's education was more neglected than scott's, and that not beneficently. see the close of the third of my edinburgh lectures. [ ] the picture is in the uffizii of florence. [ ] this etching is prepared for receiving mezzotint in the next volume; it is therefore much heavier in line, especially in the water, than i should have made it, if intended to be complete as it is. [ ] compare vol. i. part ii. sec. i. chap. vii. i repeat here some things that were then said; but it is necessary now to review them in connection with turner's education, as well as for the sake of enforcing them by illustration. [ ] now in the old library of venice. [ ] my old friend blackwood complains bitterly, in his last number, of my having given this illustration at one of my late lectures, saying, that i "have a disagreeable knack of finding out the joints in my opponent's armor," and that "i never fight for love." i never do. i fight for truth, earnestly, and in no wise for jest; and against all lies, earnestly, and in no wise for love. they complain that "a noble adversary is not in mr. ruskin's way." no; a noble adversary never was, never will be. with all that is noble i have been, and shall be, in perpetual peace, with all that is ignoble and false everlastingly at war. and as for these scotch _bourgeois gentilshommes_ with their "tu n'as pas la patience que je pare," let them look to their fence. but truly, if they will tell me where claude's strong points are, i will strike there, and be thankful. [ ] his first drawing master was, i believe, that mr. lowe, whose daughters, now aged and poor, have, it seems to me, some claim on public regard, being connected distantly with the memory of johnson, and closely with that of turner. [ ] charlemagne and st. louis. appendix. i. claude's tree-drawing. the reader may not improbably hear it said, by persons who are incapable of maintaining an honest argument, and therefore incapable of understanding or believing the honesty of an adversary, that i have caricatured, or unfairly chosen, the examples i give of the masters i depreciate. it is evident, in the first place, that i could not, if i were even cunningly disposed, adopt a worse policy than in so doing; for the discovery of caricature or falsity in my representations, would not only invalidate the immediate statement, but the whole book; and invalidate it in the most fatal way, by showing that all i had ever said about "truth" was hypocrisy, and that in my own affairs i expected to prevail by help of lies. nevertheless it necessarily happens, that in endeavors to facsimile any work whatsoever, bad or good, some changes are induced from the exact aspect of the original. these changes are, of course, sometimes harmful, sometimes advantageous; the bad thing generally gains; the good thing _always_ loses: so that i am continually tormented by finding, in my plates of contrasts, the virtue and vice i exactly wanted to talk about, eliminated from _both_ examples. in some cases, however, the bad thing will lose also, and then i must either cancel the plate, or increase the cost of the work by preparing another (at a similar risk), or run the chance of incurring the charge of dishonest representation. i desire, therefore, very earnestly, and once for all, to have it understood that whatever i say in the text, bearing on questions of comparison, refers _always_ to the _original_ works; and that, if the reader has it in his power, i would far rather he should look at those works than at my plates of them; i only give the plates for his immediate help and convenience: and i mention this, with respect to my plate of claude's ramification, because, if i have such a thing as a prejudice at all, (and, although i do not myself think i have, people certainly say so,) it is against claude; and i might, therefore, be sooner suspected of some malice in this plate than in others. but i simply gave the original engravings from the liber veritatis to mr. le keux, earnestly requesting that the portions selected might be faithfully copied; and i think he is much to be thanked for so carefully and successfully accomplishing the task. the figures are from the following plates:-- no. . part of the central tree in no. . of the liber veritatis. . from the largest tree " . . bushes at root of tree " . . tree on the left " . . tree on the left " . . tree on the left " . . principal tree " . . tree on the right " . if, in fact, any change be effected in the examples in this plate, it is for the better; for, thus detached, they all look like small boughs, in which the faults are of little consequence; in the original works they are seen to be intended for large trunks of trees, and the errors are therefore pronounced on a much larger scale. the plate of mediæval rocks ( .) has been executed with much less attention in transcript, because the points there to be illustrated were quite indisputable, and the instances were needed merely to show the _kind_ of _thing_ spoken of, not the skill of particular masters. the example from leonardo was, however, somewhat carefully treated. mr. cuff copied it accurately from the only engraving of the picture which i believe exists, and with which, therefore, i suppose the world is generally content. that engraving, however, in no respect seems to me to give the look of the light behind leonardo's rocks; so i afterwards darkened the rocks, and put some light into the sky and lily; and the effect is certainly more like that of the picture than it is in the same portion of the old engraving. of the other masters represented in the plates of this volume, the noblest, tintoret, has assuredly suffered the most (plate .); first, in my too hasty drawing from the original, picture; and, secondly, through some accidental errors of outline which occurred in the reduction to the size of the page; lastly, and chiefly, in the withdrawal of the heads of the four figures underneath, in the shadow, on which the composition entirely depends. this last evil is unavoidable. it is quite impossible to make _extracts_ from the great masters without partly spoiling every separated feature; the very essence of a noble composition being, that none should bear separation from the rest. the plate from raphael ( ) is, i think, on the whole, satisfactory. it cost me much pains, as i had to facsimile the irregular form of every leaf; each being, in the original picture, executed with a somewhat wayward pencil-stroke of vivid brown on the clear sky. of the other plates it would be tedious to speak in detail. generally, it will be found that i have taken most pains to do justice to the masters of whom i have to speak depreciatingly; and that, if there be calumny at all, it is always of turner, rather than of claude. the reader might, however, perhaps suspect me of ill-will towards constable, owing to my continually introducing him for depreciatory comparison. so far from this being the case, i had, as will be seen in various passages of the first volume, considerable respect for the feeling with which he worked; but i was compelled to do harsh justice upon him now, because mr. leslie, in his unadvised and unfortunate _réchauffé_ of the fallacious art-maxims of the last century, has suffered his personal regard for constable so far to prevail over his judgment as to bring him forward as a great artist, comparable in some kind with turner. as constable's reputation was, even before this, most mischievous, in giving countenance to the blotting and blundering of modernism, i saw myself obliged, though unwillingly, to carry the suggested comparison thoroughly out. ii. german philosophy. the reader must have noticed that i never speak of german art, or german philosophy, but in depreciation. this, however, is not because i cannot feel, or would not acknowledge, the value and power, within certain limits, of both; but because i also feel that the immediate tendency of the english mind is to rate them too highly; and, therefore, it becomes a necessary task, at present, to mark what evil and weakness there are in them, rather than what good. i also am brought continually into collision with certain extravagances of the german mind, by my own steady pursuit of naturalism as opposed to idealism; and, therefore, i become unfortunately cognizant of the evil, rather than of the good; which evil, so far as i feel it, i am bound to declare. and it is not to the point to protest, as the chevalier bunsen and other german writers have done, against the expression of opinions respecting their philosophy by persons who have not profoundly or carefully studied it; for the very resolution to study any system of metaphysics profoundly, must be based, in any prudent man's mind, on some preconceived opinion of its worthiness to be studied; which opinion of german metaphysics the naturalistic english cannot be led to form. this is not to be murmured against,--it is in the simple necessity of things. men who have other business on their hands must be content to choose what philosophy they have occasion for, by the sample; and when, glancing into the second volume of "hippolytus," we find the chevalier bunsen himself talking of a "finite realization of the infinite" (a phrase considerably less rational than "a black realization of white"), and of a triad composed of god, man, and humanity[ ] (which is a parallel thing to talking of a triad composed of man, dog, and canineness), knowing those expressions to be pure, definite, and highly finished nonsense, we do not in general trouble ourselves to look any farther. some one will perhaps answer that if one always judged thus by the sample,--as, for instance, if one judged of turner's pictures by the head of a figure cut out of one of them,--very precious things might often be despised. not, i think, often. if any one went to turner, expecting to learn figure-drawing from him, the sample of his figure-drawing would accurately and justly inform him that he had come to the wrong master. but if he came to be taught landscape, the smallest fragment of turner's work would justly exemplify his power. it may sometimes unluckily happen that, in such short trial, we strike upon an accidentally failing part of the thing to be tried, and then we may be unjust; but there is, nevertheless, in multitudes of cases, no other way of judging or acting; and the necessity of occasionally being unjust is a law of life,--like that of sometimes stumbling, or being sick. it will not do to walk at snail's pace all our lives for fear of stumbling, nor to spend years in the investigation of everything which, by specimen, we must condemn. he who seizes all that he plainly discerns to be valuable, and never is unjust but when he honestly cannot help it, will soon be enviable in his possessions, and venerable in his equity. nor can i think that the risk of loss is great in the matter under discussion. i have often been told that any one who will read kant, strauss, and the rest of the german metaphysicians and divines, resolutely through, and give his whole strength to the study of them, will, after ten or twelve years' labor, discover that there is very little harm in them; and this i can well believe; but i believe also that the ten or twelve years may be better spent; and that any man who honestly wants philosophy not for show, but for _use_, and knowing the proverbs of solomon, can, by way of commentary, afford to buy, in convenient editions, plato, bacon, wordsworth, carlyle, and helps, will find that he has got as much as will be sufficient for him and his household during life, and of as good quality as need be. it is also often declared necessary to study the german controversialists, because the grounds of religion "must be inquired into." i am sorry to hear they have not been inquired into yet; but if it be so, there are two ways of pursuing that inquiry: one for scholarly men, who have leisure on their hands, by reading all that they have time to read, for and against, and arming themselves at all points for controversy with all persons; the other,--a shorter and simpler way,--for busy and practical men, who want merely to find out how to live and die. now for the learned and leisurely men i am not writing; they know what and how to read better than i can tell them. for simple and busy men, concerned much with art, which is eminently a practical matter, and fatigues the eyes, so as to render much reading inexpedient, i _am_ writing; and such men i do, to the utmost of my power, dissuade from meddling with german books; not because i fear inquiry into the grounds of religion, but because the only inquiry which is _possible_ to them must be conducted in a totally different way. they have been brought up as christians, and doubt if they should remain christians. they cannot ascertain, by investigation, if the bible be true; but _if it be_, and christ ever existed, and was god, then, certainly, the sermon which he has permitted for years to stand recorded as first of all his own teaching in the new testament, must be true. let them take that sermon and give it fair practical trial: act out every verse of it, with no quibbling or explaining away, except the reduction of such _evidently_ metaphorical expressions as "cut off thy foot," "pluck the beam out of thine eye," to their effectively practical sense. let them act out, or obey, every verse literally for a whole year, so far as they can,--a year being little enough time to give to an inquiry into religion; and if, at the end of the year, they are not satisfied, and still need to prosecute the inquiry, let them try the german system if they choose. iii. plagiarism. some time after i had written the concluding chapter of this work, the interesting and powerful poems of emerson were brought under my notice by one of the members of my class at the working men's college. there is much in some of these poems so like parts of the chapter in question, even in turn of expression, that though i do not usually care to justify myself from the charge of plagiarism, i felt that a few words were necessary in this instance. i do not, as aforesaid, justify myself, in general, because i know there is internal evidence in my work of its originality, if people care to examine it; and if they do not, or have not skill enough to know genuine from borrowed work, my simple assertion would not convince them, especially as the charge of plagiarism is hardly ever made but by plagiarists, and persons of the unhappy class who do not believe in honesty but on evidence. nevertheless, as my work is so much out of doors, and among pictures, that i have time to read few modern books, and am therefore in more danger than most people of repeating, as if it were new, what others have said, it may be well to note, once for all, that any such apparent plagiarism results in fact from my writings being more original than i wish them to be, from my having worked out my whole subject in unavoidable, but to myself hurtful, ignorance of the labors of others. on the other hand, i should be very sorry if i had _not_ been continually taught and influenced by the writers whom i love; and am quite unable to say to what extent my thoughts have been guided by wordsworth, carlyle, and helps; to whom (with dante and george herbert, in olden time) i owe more than to any other writers;--most of all, perhaps, to carlyle, whom i read so constantly, that, without wilfully setting myself to imitate him, i find myself perpetually falling into his modes of expression, and saying many things in a "quite other," and, i hope, stronger, way, than i should have adopted some years ago; as also there are things which i hope are said more clearly and simply than before, owing to the influence upon me of the beautiful _quiet_ english of helps. it would be both foolish and wrong to struggle to cast off influences of this kind; for they consist mainly in a real and healthy help;--the master, in writing as in painting, showing certain methods of language which it would be ridiculous, and even affected, not to employ, when once shown; just as it would have been ridiculous in bonifacio to refuse to employ titian's way of laying on color, if he felt it the best, because he had not himself discovered it. there is all the difference in the world between this receiving of guidance, or allowing of influence, and wilful imitation, much more, plagiarism; nay, the guidance may even innocently reach into local tones of thought, and must do so to some extent; so that i find carlyle's stronger thinking coloring mine continually; and should be very sorry if i did not; otherwise i should have read him to little purpose. but what i have of my own is still all there, and, i believe, better brought out, by far, than it would have been otherwise. thus, if we glance over the wit and satire of the popular writers of the day, we shall find that the _manner_ of it, so far as it is distinctive, is always owing to dickens; and that out of his first exquisite ironies branched innumerable other forms of wit, varying with the disposition of the writers; original in the matter and substance of them, yet never to have been expressed as they now are, but for dickens. many people will suppose that for several ideas in the chapters on landscape i was indebted to humboldt's kosmos, and howitt's rural scenery. i am indebted to mr. howitt's book for much pleasure, but for no suggestion, as it was not put into my hands till the chapters in question were in type. i wish it had been; as i should have been glad to have taken farther note on the landscape of theocritus, on which mr. howitt dwells with just delight. other parts of the book will be found very suggestive and helpful to the reader who cares to pursue the subject. of humboldt's kosmos i heard much talk when it first came out, and looked through it cursorily; but thinking it contained no material (connected with my subject)[ ] which i had not already possessed myself of, i have never since referred to the work. i may be mistaken in my estimate of it, but certainly owe it absolutely nothing. it is also often said that i borrow from pugin. i glanced at pugin's contrasts once, in the oxford architectural reading-room, during an idle forenoon. his "remarks on articles in the rambler" were brought under my notice by some of the reviews. i never read a word of any other of his works, not feeling, from the style of his architecture, the smallest interest in his opinions. i have so often spoken, in the preceding pages, of holman hunt's picture of the light of the world, that i may as well, in this place, glance at the envious charge against it, of being plagiarized from a german print. it is indeed true that there was a painting of the subject before; and there were, of course, no paintings of the nativity before raphael's time, nor of the last supper before leonardo's, else those masters could have laid no claim to originality. but what was still more singular (the verse to be illustrated being, "behold, i stand at the door and knock"), the principal figure in the antecedent picture was knocking at a door, knocked with its right hand, and had its face turned to the spectator! nay, it was even robed in a long robe, down to its feet. all these circumstances were the same in mr. hunt's picture; and as the chances evidently were a hundred to one that if he had not been helped to the ideas by the german artist, he would have represented the figure as _not_ knocking at any door, as turning its back to the spectator, and as dressed in a short robe, the plagiarism was considered as demonstrated. of course no defence is possible in such a case. all i can say is, that i shall be sincerely grateful to any unconscientious persons who will adapt a few more german prints in the same manner. finally, touching plagiarism in general, it is to be remembered that all men who have sense and feeling are being continually helped: they are taught by every person whom they meet, and enriched by everything that falls in their way. the greatest is he who has been oftenest aided; and, if the attainments of all human minds could be traced to their real sources, it would be found that the world had been laid most under contribution by the men of most original power, and that every day of their existence deepened their debt to their race, while it enlarged their gifts to it. the labor devoted to trace the origin of any thought, or any invention, will usually issue in the blank conclusion that there is nothing new under the sun; yet nothing that is truly great can ever be altogether borrowed; and he is commonly the wisest, and is always the happiest, who receives simply, and without envious question, whatever good is offered him, with thanks to its immediate giver. [ ] i am truly sorry to have introduced such words in an apparently irreverent way. but it would be a guilty reverence which prevented us from exposing fallacy, precisely where fallacy was most dangerous, and shrank from unveiling an error, just because that error existed in parlance respecting the most solemn subjects to which it could possibly be attached. [ ] see the fourth volume. * * * * * * * * transcriber's notes (continued from top of text): typographical changes to the original work are as follows: minor punctuation changes have been made without annotation. pg paus/pause: matilda pause where ... pg charater/character: the character of this ... pg cloads/clouds: clouds of rage ... gainsborough by max rothschild "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. corot. sidney allnutt. delacroix. paul g. konody. _others in preparation._ plate i.--mrs. siddons. (frontispiece) this famous portrait of mrs. siddons was painted in . it is one of the chief ornaments in the national gallery, london. it represents the celebrated actress in her twenty-ninth year. the picture was purchased in from a relative of mrs. siddons. [illustration: plate i.--mrs. siddons.] gainsborough by max rothschild illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. painting in england before gainsborough ii. gainsborough's early life--ipswich and bath iii. gainsborough's life in london--last years and death iv. gainsborough's works list of illustrations plate i. mrs. siddons frontispiece at the national gallery, london page ii. ralph schomberg, m.d. at the national gallery, london iii. queen charlotte at the south kensington museum iv. "the blue boy" at grosvenor house v. the hon. mrs. graham at the national gallery of scotland, edinburgh vi. the duchess of devonshire in the collection of earl spencer, k.g. vii. mrs. robinson--"perdita" at the wallace collection viii. miss haverfield at the wallace collection [illustration] i painting in england before gainsborough the british school of painting was, compared with those of the other nations of western europe, the latest to develop. in italy, spain, france, the netherlands, germany, and even scandinavia painting and sculpture flourished as early as the gothic age, and in most of these countries the renaissance produced a host of craftsmen whose works still endure among the most superb creations of artistic genius. it is now inexact to say that there was no _primitive_ period in british art; the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, so resplendent on the continent with pictures and statues reflecting the character, the aspirations, the temperament of the respective peoples that produced them, produced works of art also in these islands. there are ample records of pictures having been painted in england, both religious subjects and portraits, at a very early age, as far back even as the reign of henry iii.; of such remote productions little has been preserved, but there are still extant a few specimens, from the thirteenth century onwards, as well as portraits of henry vi., henry vii., and effigies of princes and earls, which cause us to mourn the loss of a large number of paintings; they are at times grotesque and so thoroughly bad as to be a quite negligible quantity as works of art, though no doubt historically interesting. plate ii.--ralph schomberg, m.d. this canvas can be seen in the national gallery, and represents a member of the family of field-marshal duke schomberg, who was killed in at the battle of the boyne. it is painted in the fashion of the time, a full figure in the open air, and is a very fine example of gainsborough's work. [illustration: plate ii.--ralph schomberg, m.d.] it may be stated for our purposes that until the reign of henry viii. the art of painting was non-existent in england. this luxurious and liberal monarch it was who first gave any real and discerning encouragement to art, and the year must ever be memorable as the one in which was laid the foundation-stone of british art. in that year the earl of arundel returned from a journey on the continent; he was accompanied by a young man of powerful build, "with a swarthy sensual face, a neck like a bull, and an eye unlikely to endure contradiction." this was hans holbein, who was then thirty years of age, and whose fame had already been spread far and wide by the eloquent praises of erasmus. whether the monarch appreciated the depth and subtlety of the painter's genius better than did his own fellow-citizens of basle, or whether his attitude towards him was prompted by a sense of vanity and ostentation is a question of little moment; the fact remains that he succeeded by his favour and a pension of two hundred florins in fixing the painter at the english court, and thus rendered an incomparable service to his country's art. with the exception of a few lengthy excursions abroad, holbein lived continuously in england for twenty-eight years, until his death of the plague in . the art of holbein, with all his genius, with all his success and popularity at court, does not seem to have taken root in england. the soil was not congenial, and when the plant withered no off-shoots remained behind; he formed no school in this country, had no pupils capable of carrying on his work, and continuing his tradition. with his death, the first short chapter in the history of art in great britain closes like a book, and for a time it looks as though the seeds sown by henry viii. were destined never to bear fruit. but one notable result had been attained; painting had gained a place in popular estimation, and succeeding sovereigns followed henry's example in attracting to england talented artists from over seas. thus antonio moro came for a brief period to the court of mary; lucas de heere, zucchero, and van somer to that of queen elizabeth. during this reign, for the first time, distinction is obtained by two artists of british birth, the miniature painters hilliard and oliver, but they again leave no very important followers (with the exception of the younger oliver), and their isolated merit had no share in the formation of a native school. with the accession of charles the first art began to take a much more important position in the life of the nation. charles was a man of considerable taste and refined discernment; no longer content with attracting artists to his court, he began to collect fine works purchased in other countries, his example being followed by his brother prince henry, by the earl of arundel and others among his courtiers; thus the works of the great italians found their way into england. the walls of the royal palaces blazoned with the handiwork of raphael and leonardo da vinci, correggio and veronese, titian and tintoretto; from the netherlands came pictures by rembrandt and rubens, and the influx thus started was destined to continue until england became the greatest artistic store-house in the world. the greatest artistic event of the reign of charles i.--the most far-reaching, indeed, in the whole history of art in this country--was the coming of van dyck in , for to his influence is directly due the birth and development of our native school of painting culminating in the golden period of the following century. van dyck was thirty-three years of age when he came to england; his talent was at its highest point of perfection; he was almost immediately attached to the court among the royal painters, and his success was rapid and unequalled. the king and queen and their children sat to him again and again; there was no courtier or noble lady but wished her portrait to be painted by the fashionable and fascinating artist, and the habit of portrait-painting became so firmly established that neither the revolution, nor the puritan régime, which followed the death of charles i., were able to eradicate it. van dyck's commissions were so numerous that it became impossible for him to execute the whole of them with his own hand; van dyck, as his master rubens had done in antwerp, filled his studio with assistants and pupils whom he trained, and who frequently painted the more unimportant portions of his portraits, such as draperies and background. in this manner a considerable number of men received tuition of the utmost value, and, though many of them were foreigners, drawn to london by the reports of successful brothers of the brush, a school was at last founded which was destined to develop into the glorious english school of painting of the eighteenth century. the rule of the protector arrested for a moment this development, but the impulse given was too strong to be permanently stopped, and with the restoration portrait-painting flourished again with increasing vigour. the men who attained success were still foreigners for the most part, and contented themselves with being weaker reflections of van dyck. sitters demanded portraits in the manner of the master, and no painter had the strength of character to stray from a close and often slavish imitation. the best of them, like lely and kneller, both dutchmen, painted some good portraits but entirely devoid of originality. there arose, however, about this period a painter, british born, whose strong personality refused to bow down and worship the popular idol, while fully realising his merits. hogarth dared to look at nature with his own eyes instead of through van dyck's spectacles, and despite opposition insisted on painting things and people as he saw them. he refused to give his models the flattery to which they were accustomed, and his portraits were accordingly not so popular as his conversation pieces. but he had broken the spell: he had proved that it was possible to be a good painter without copying van dyck to the letter; and although his realism was not imitated by his successors he secured for them that measure of independence without which no art can attain to greatness. such is, briefly, a statement of the history of painting in this country until the middle of the eighteenth century. the remarkable fact appears that until this comparatively late period there is no native school worthy of the name. but about this time there is a complete change, and there arises simultaneously a whole group of men who form a genuinely national school of the greatest brilliancy. british genius asserts itself at last, and for the first time, as a distinct and independent entity, acknowledging its indebtedness to the great masters of the world, but insisting upon its own personal view and temperament. these men accept the lessons of van dyck, of rembrandt, of raphael, and of titian; but they say to these noble ancestors: "you are great masters, but nature is also a great mistress." it is not surprising, then, that side by side with portrait-painting, several will turn their attention to landscape, a branch of painting which hitherto had been completely neglected in this country, and in this branch also they will attain no small measure of success. plate iii.--queen charlotte gainsborough painted many portraits of george the third's consort. the bust here reproduced is in the victoria and albert museum. it is a replica, somewhat less brilliant in colour, of the picture at windsor castle. [illustration: plate iii.--queen charlotte] of all the artists of this golden epoch, which produced such men as reynolds and raeburn, romney, hoppner, lawrence, and turner, the most brilliant and the most versatile was undoubtedly thomas gainsborough. ii gainsborough's early life--ipswich and bath thomas gainsborough was born at sudbury in suffolk in may ; he was thus four years younger than reynolds, thirteen years younger than wilson. he came from a respectable family of old standing and in comfortable circumstances. his father, john gainsborough, was a clothier by trade, and of his mother little is known save that she was a gentle and kind woman, very indulgent to her children. they had four daughters and five sons, of whom thomas was the youngest. thomas was far from diligent at school; he filled his copy-books with sketches, and was not loth to play the truant in order to get into the woods and meadows, where he would sit drawing trees, flowers, or cattle. a story is even told of his having forged his father's name to a note asking the schoolmaster to "give tom a holiday." when his father saw the forged note he exclaimed, "the boy will come to be hanged!" but when he was shown the sketches which his son had made during his hours of stolen liberty he changed his verdict to "the boy will be a genius!" whatever there may be of truth in this pretty story, a genius tom turned out to be, and he certainly showed the most remarkable talent when quite a boy. there is a picture by him, painted many years later, the history of which shows that even at this early age he was capable of drawing a man's head rapidly and with great fidelity to the model. the picture is called "tom peartree's portrait," and is a reminiscence of an incident in the painter's childhood. he was sitting one day in his father's garden, concealed by bushes, sketching an old pear tree, when he caught sight of the head of a peasant looking over the wall at the ripe fruit. the expression of eager cupidity in the man's face amused the boy, who included it in his sketch; he afterwards showed it to his father, who recognised the peasant and was able, much to the latter's confusion, to tax him with the intention of stealing his pears. such anecdotes serve to show the artist's extraordinary facility with his pencil even as a child, when he had as yet had no training or tuition of any kind. the same valuable quality is evidenced in the works of his maturity, by the marvellous freedom of his technique, and the brilliancy of his brushwork. his father showed no opposition to his obvious vocation, and at the age of fourteen sent him to london to study painting. it is uncertain whether he went direct to the studio of hayman, or whether he worked first for a while with gravelot. hayman was a portrait-painter of ability, a companion and to some extent an imitator of hogarth; with him young gainsborough learned the rudiments of his art, the use of brush and colours, and the principles of composition; but hayman could teach him little more, and after staying with him four years he returned to sudbury. it was not long after his return home that he got married, an event which is amusingly related by cunningham: "it happened, in one of his pictorial excursions amongst the woods of suffolk, that he sat down to make a sketch of some fine trees, with sheep reposing below, and some wood-doves roosting above, when a young woman entered unexpectedly upon the scene, and was at once admitted into the landscape and the feelings of the artist. the name of this young lady was margaret burr; she was of scottish extraction and in her sixteenth year, and to the charms of good sense and good looks she added a clear annuity of two hundred pounds. these are matters which no writer of romance would overlook, and were accordingly felt by a young, an ardent, and susceptible man: nor must i omit to tell that country rumour conferred other attractions--she was said to be the natural daughter of one of our exiled princes; nor was she when a wife and a mother desirous of having this circumstance forgotten. on an occasion of household festivity, when her husband was high in fame, she vindicated some little ostentation in her dress by whispering to her niece, now mrs. lane, 'i have some right to this; for you know, my love, i am a prince's daughter.' prince's daughter or not she was wooed and won by gainsborough, and made him a kind, a prudent, and a submissive wife. the courtship was short. the young pair left sudbury, leased a small house at a rent of six pounds a year in ipswich, and making themselves happy in mutual love, conceived they were settled for life." it was at ipswich, and not long after his arrival there, that gainsborough made the acquaintance of philip thicknesse, then governor of landguard fort, a man who was to exercise considerable influence upon the artist's life, and to whom we owe much information concerning him. thicknesse, although he afterwards quarrelled with the painter, and slandered him in a venomous pamphlet, was at first a highly useful friend and not ungenerous patron. upon his commission gainsborough painted what was probably his first important landscape; it was a view of landguard fort, with figures and sheep in the foreground, and the sea, with the estuary of the stour, in the distance. this picture was unfortunately destroyed through being hung upon a wall built with mortar mixed with sea water; but we have an excellent engraving of it by major, and this shows the original to have been a very fine composition. as remuneration thicknesse gave the artist thirty guineas, and lent him a violin upon which gainsborough soon acquired considerable proficiency. he retained through life the taste for music of which we find in this incident the first evidence; indeed he seems to have been at least as proud of his achievements in this direction as he was of the creations of his magic brush. through the protection of thicknesse gainsborough had at this time no lack of commissions for both landscapes and portraits. of the latter, the most important is that of admiral vernon in the national portrait gallery, in which the red coat is painted with extreme care. to this period belongs the miss hippisley, in the collection of sir edward tennant, and also the heads of his two daughters in the forster collection at south kensington museum. plate iv.--the blue boy this world-famous picture, which belongs to the duke of westminster, at grosvenor house, is a portrait of jonathan buttall--the son of a wealthy ironmonger who lived in london at the corner of king street and greek street, soho--in "van dyck" costume. probably painted at bath about . [illustration: plate iv.--the blue boy] most of gainsborough's biographers have treated thicknesse with but scant justice. no doubt he was a self-satisfied and overbearing man, who had the failing of wishing to manage the lives of those who came into contact with him, and who was equally prompt to take offence, and to offend in retaliation those who would not be led by his dictatorial advice. but in the case of gainsborough, he certainly rendered him the most inappreciable services, and in the quarrel that followed the artist was probably almost as much to blame as the patron. be that as it may, it was on thicknesse's initiative, and on his initiative alone, that gainsborough removed from ipswich to bath in the year . the importance of this move cannot be overrated, and posterity, no less than the painter himself, owes to philip thicknesse a considerable debt of gratitude for having been instrumental in bringing it to pass. the horizon at ipswich was strictly limited; and although no doubt gainsborough's genius was inborn, he would probably, had he remained in suffolk, never have developed into the superb painter who must ever be one of the most dazzling stars of the artistic universe. we shall have occasion later to return to this change of scene and to its influence on gainsborough's life-work. it was thicknesse then who persuaded gainsborough to leave ipswich and to settle at bath. much to the terror of frugal mrs. gainsborough, the painter, still acting on his patron's guidance, took a house in the circus at the annual rental of £ . thicknesse had many friends at bath, and to them he warmly recommended his protégé. whether it was through the influence of thicknesse, or by the sole force of the artist's own genius, success was soon forthcoming and sitters flocked to his studio. his previous charge of five guineas for a half-length portrait was almost immediately raised to eight, and before very long his patrons became so numerous that he was able to demand no less than forty guineas for a half-length, and one hundred guineas for a full-length, very high prices for those days. during his stay at bath gainsborough devoted much of his time and energy to music; he acquired many musical instruments of various kinds, and tried his hand at all of them. the viol da gamba was apparently his favourite, and in one of his letters to his friend jackson of exeter he mentions that he possesses five of these instruments. he heard giardini, the then unrivalled violinist, and had no rest till he purchased the very instrument that the italian played on, "but," says jackson, "seemed much surprised that the music remained with giardini." in the same way he acquired abel's viol da gamba; having heard fischer, he bought a hautboy, then suddenly developed enthusiasm for the harp, and thus passing from instrument to instrument he never had the perseverance to play any one of them with any degree of perfection. in this connection jackson relates an amusing anecdote of one of his most extravagant acquisitions: "upon seeing a theorbo in a picture of van dyck's he concluded (perhaps because it was finely painted) that the theorbo must be a fine instrument. he recollected to have heard of a german professor, and ascending _per varios gradus_ to his garret, found him there at dinner upon a roasted apple, and smoking a pipe. 'i am come,' says he, 'to buy your lute. come, name your price, and here is your money.' 'i cannot shell my lude!' 'no; not for a guinea or two, but by g-- you must sell it.' 'my lude ish wert much monnay! it ish wert ten guineas.' 'that it is. see, here is the money!' 'well, if i musht; but you will not take it away yourself!' 'yes, yes. good-bye----' (after he had gone down he came up again.) 'i have done but half my errand. what is your lute worth if i have not your book?' 'whad poog, maishter cainsporough?' 'why, the book of airs you have composed for the lute.' 'ah, py cot, i can never part wit my poog!' plate v.--the hon. mrs. graham this portrait of the hon. mary graham (second daughter of charles, ninth lord cathcart) is in the national gallery of scotland. another portrait of the same lady shown in the dress of a housemaid, standing in a doorway with a broom, is supposed to be a rejected design for this picture, and is in the collection of the earl of carlisle. her husband afterwards became lord lynedoch. this picture was painted in - , was locked up in a london store for fifty years, but fortunately recovered. [illustration: plate v.--the hon. mrs. graham] 'pooh! you can make another at any time. this is the book i mean' (putting it in his pocket). 'ah, py cot, i cannot!' 'come, come; here's another ten guineas for your book. so, once more good-day t'ye.' (descends again; and again comes up.) 'but what use is your book to me if i don't understand it? and your lute--you may take it again if you won't teach me to play on it. come home with me and give me my first lesson.' 'i will come to-morrow.' 'you must come now.' 'i musht tress myshelf.' 'for what? you are the best figure i have seen to-day.' 'i musht be shave.' 'i honour your beard!' 'i musht bud on my wick.' 'd--n your wig! your cap and beard become you. do you think if van dyck was to paint you he'd let you be shaved?' "in this way he frittered away his musical talents, and though possessed of ear, taste, and genius, he never had application enough to learn his notes. he seemed to take the first step, the second was, of course, out of his reach, and the summit became unattainable." gainsborough made many friends in bath; mention has already been made of william jackson of exeter, with whom he was in constant correspondence, and many of the letters that passed between them are still in existence. he became friendly with david garrick, whose portrait he painted several times, and another actor with whom he was on very intimate terms was john henderson. he remained at bath sixteen years, and it was probably his quarrel with thicknesse which induced him to migrate once more in . the true circumstances of his breaking with his earliest patron are not easy to unravel; as is usual in such cases there are two sides to the story, and the truth probably lies somewhere between the two. one fact stands out clearly, namely, that there never was any considerable friendship between thicknesse and mrs. gainsborough; each was probably jealous of the other's ascendency over the artist, and the governor in his account of their differences makes her appear as the instigator of gainsborough's behaviour towards himself, and lays practically all the responsibility at her door. it seems that shortly after the gainsboroughs settled in bath a full-length portrait of miss ford, who afterwards became thicknesse's second wife, was painted and presented to that gentleman. all the trouble arose through his desire to possess his own portrait as a companion to that of his wife. we have already seen what a mania gainsborough had for the viol da gamba; mrs. thicknesse had a very fine instrument, "made in the year , of exquisite workmanship and mellifluous tone, and which was certainly worth a hundred guineas." this instrument gainsborough coveted, and many a time he offered that price for it. "one night," thicknesse relates, "we asked him and his family to supper with us, after which mrs. thicknesse, putting the instrument before him, desired he would play one of his best lessons upon it; this, i say, was after supper, for till poor gainsborough had got a little borrowed courage (such was his natural modesty), he could neither play nor sing! he then played, and charmingly too, one of his dear friend abel's lessons, and mrs. thicknesse told him he deserved the instrument for his reward, and desired his acceptance of it, but said, 'at your leisure give me my husband's picture to hang by the side of my own.'" gainsborough was transported with delight and readily agreed. the very next day he began the portrait, finished the head, put in a newfoundland dog at the sitter's feet, and roughly sketched in the remainder of the picture. there, however, he stopped, and never touched it again; requests, prayers, and remonstrances were in vain, and one day in a fit of temper gainsborough sent back the viol da gamba to mrs. thicknesse, and shortly afterwards also sent the unfinished picture just as it was. at this thicknesse was of course much offended. "every time," he says, "i went into the room where that scarecrow hung it gave me so painful a sensation that i protest it often turned me sick, and in one of those sick fits i desired mrs. thicknesse would return the picture to mr. gainsborough. this she consented to do, provided i would permit her to send with it a card, expressing her sentiments at the same time, to which i am sorry to say i too hastily consented. in that card she bid him take his brush, and first rub out the countenance of the truest and warmest friend he ever had, and so done, then blot him for ever from his memory." such is thicknesse's own story of the quarrel, but according to allan cunningham, gainsborough did actually, without her husband's knowledge, give mrs. thicknesse a hundred guineas for the viol da gamba, and then did not consider it incumbent upon him to pay twice over by painting the portrait. this is, however, hardly a plausible tale and the probabilities are that thicknesse's version is nearer the truth. however that may be the long friendship between the artist and his protector came to an end, and gainsborough having taken a dislike to bath removed to london. iii gainsborough's life in london--last years and death gainsborough was forty-seven years of age when he came to settle definitely in london; his genius had reached the highest point of its development. this new change of scene, great and important though it was, cannot be looked upon as being by any means so risky an experiment as his move from ipswich to bath. he had by this time a firmly established connection, and it must not be forgotten that in those days bath was a highly fashionable watering-place, bearing to london very much the same relation as the french riviera does at the present time. everybody who was anybody socially in the capital was a more or less frequent visitor to bath, and gainsborough during his stay there had ample opportunities to make acquaintances which were bound to stand him in good stead when he came to london. thicknesse, however, even after their quarrel, could not refrain from sending him forth once more under his particular patronage; he wrote to lord bateman, a peer of little influence or importance, asking him "for both our sakes to give him countenance and make him known, that being all which is necessary." this sort of thing was probably quite superfluous, for gainsborough was by this time fully capable of holding his own even in london. still it remains on record that lord bateman did do his best for him, and himself acquired several of his pictures. on their first arrival in london the gainsboroughs took quarters north of the oxford road; a more central and more fashionable neighbourhood was, however, necessary to the painter, and he very soon removed to schomberg house in pall mall. this house, which was built by the duke of schomberg towards the end of the seventeenth century, was at this time the property of the eccentric and mediocre painter john astley, a fellow pupil with reynolds under hudson. from astley gainsborough rented a third of the house at £ a year, showing that he had from the first no anxiety as to his success in the metropolis. an interesting circumstance in relation to this house is that some seven years later another portion of it was occupied by the quack dr. graham, who installed there his temple of health. in some of the strange and not very legitimate ceremonies carried on in this "temple," the part of goddess of health was played by none other than emma lyon or hart, who was destined to become so famous as the lovely lady hamilton. gainsborough must have met her, and although we have no actual portrait from his hand of this wonderfully beautiful creature, it is suggested by sir walter armstrong that she may have sat for the picture of "musidora" in the national gallery, one of the very rare attempts at the nude which gainsborough is known to have made. plate vi.--the duchess of devonshire (in the collection of earl spencer, k.g.) this delightful painting, one of the gems of the althorp collection, is considered to be one of the master's greatest achievements in full-length portraits. [illustration: plate vi.--the duchess of devonshire] in london gainsborough came into personal contact with sir joshua reynolds, probably for the first time, although from a note of walpole in his catalogue of the royal academy of it would appear that they had been in touch with one another some years previously, walpole's words being: "gainsborough and dance, having disagreed with sir joshua reynolds, did not send any pictures to this exhibition." when the academy was founded in gainsborough was one of the original members, and to the first four exhibitions he sent from bath seventeen portraits and fifteen landscapes. then for four years, no doubt on account of the disagreement mentioned by walpole, he exhibited nothing until , when his name reappears in the catalogue with portraits of the duke and duchess of cumberland. the vogue of gainsborough was now at its height, and a long series of portraits of royal personages began to occupy his easel. it was one of these which, a few years later, led to his final quarrel with the royal academy. to the exhibition of he had sent eight portraits and portrait groups, including one of the three "eldest princesses." he sent the frames only in the first instance, but kept back that of the princesses, the king and queen having expressed a wish to view the picture before it was sent to the academy. there was then a rule of the exhibition, one which is still in force, that full-length portraits could not be hung on the line, and by some misapprehension, it must have been thought by the hanging committee that this was a full-length group. gainsborough must have heard of the place which had been assigned to it, and he sent the following curt note to somerset house, where the royal academy exhibitions were then held:-- "_mr. gainsborough presents his compliments to the gentlemen appointed to hang the pictures at the royal academy, and begs leave to_ hint _to them that if the royal family, which he has sent for this exhibition (being smaller than three-quarters), are hung above the line along with full-lengths, he never more, whilst he breathes, will send another picture to the exhibition._ _this he swears by god._ _saturday morn._" this letter did not have the desired effect, so gainsborough withdrew his pictures and never exhibited again. it would appear that such a quarrel, obviously the result of a misunderstanding, could easily have been adjusted by the president, had he felt inclined to interfere; but sir joshua evidently preferred to let matters take their course, and so the break became permanent. there never was any great sympathy between the two men, although their mutual admiration for each other's work was considerable. their characters were essentially different, and although they frequently shared the same sitters, and had some friends in common, they lived in a social atmosphere entirely distinct. on the other hand they never were enemies, nor had any serious personal quarrel; at one time it even seemed as though they might be drawn into friendship, and gainsborough started painting the president's portrait; this, however, shared the fate of thicknesse's years before and got no further than the first sitting. their relations were such, however, that gainsborough was able to call reynolds to his death-bed, although they had probably had no intercourse for years. the pathetic story of gainsborough's last illness is best told in the words of allan cunningham: "though gainsborough was not partial to the society of literary men, he seems to have been acquainted with johnson and with burke, and he lived on terms of great affection with richard brinsley sheridan. he was also a welcome visitor at the table of sir george beaumont, a gentleman of graceful manners, who lived in old english dignity, and was, besides, a lover of literature and a painter of landscape. the latter loved to relate a curious anecdote of gainsborough, which marks the unequal spirit of the man, and shows that he was the slave of wayward impulses which he could neither repress nor command. sir george beaumont, sheridan, and gainsborough had dined together, and the latter was more than usually pleasant and witty. the meeting was so much to their mutual satisfaction that they agreed to have another day's happiness, and accordingly an early day was named when they should dine again together. they met, but a cloud had descended upon the spirit of gainsborough, and he sat silent with a look of fixed melancholy, which no wit could dissipate. at length he took sheridan by the hand, led him out of the room, and said, "now, don't laugh, but listen. i shall die soon--i know it--i feel it. i have less time to live than my looks infer; but for this i care not. what oppresses my mind is this: i have many acquaintances and few friends; and as i wish to have one worthy man to accompany me to the grave, i am desirous of bespeaking you. will you come; aye or no?" sheridan could scarcely repress a smile as he made the required promise; the looks of gainsborough cleared up like the sunshine of one of his own landscapes; throughout the rest of the evening his wit flowed and his humour ran over, and the minutes, like those of the poet, winged their way with pleasure. about a year after the promise obtained from sheridan to attend his funeral he went to hear the impeachment of warren hastings, and, sitting with his back to an open window, suddenly felt something inconceivably cold touch his neck above the shirt collar. it was accompanied with stiffness and pain. on returning home he mentioned what he felt to his wife and his niece, and on looking they saw a mark about the size of a shilling, which was harder to the touch than the surrounding skin, and which he said still felt cold. the application of flannel did not remove it, and the artist becoming alarmed, consulted one after the other the most eminent surgeons of london--john hunter himself the last. they all declared there was no danger; but there was that presentiment upon gainsborough from which none perhaps escape. he laid his hand repeatedly on his neck and said to his sister, who had hastened to london to see him, "if this be a cancer, i am a dead man." and a cancer it proved to be. when this cruel disease fairly discovered itself, it was found to be inextricably interwoven with the threads of life, and he prepared himself for death with cheerfulness and perfect composure. he desired to be buried near his friend kirby in kew churchyard, and that his name only should be cut on his grave-stone. he sent for reynolds, and peace was made between them. gainsborough exclaimed to sir joshua: "we are all going to heaven, and van dyck is of the company," and immediately expired--august nd, , in the sixty-first year of his age. sheridan and the president attended him to the grave. plate vii.--mrs. robinson--"perdita" (at the wallace collection) this portrait of the beautiful actress is one of gainsborough's finest masterpieces. the lightness, dexterity, and transparency of the pigment is almost unrivalled, not only in this artist's work, but in any picture of the eighteenth century. it hangs in the wallace collection at hertford house; a smaller sketch of the same subject is at windsor castle. [illustration: plate vii.--mrs. robinson--"perdita"] gainsborough left two daughters, whose portraits he painted several times. the elder one, margaret, did not marry; while the younger, mary, was secretly wedded in to her father's friend, johann christian fischer, the hautboy player. this marriage caused gainsborough much trouble; he foresaw that the musician's irritability and eccentric behaviour on many occasions could not conduce to the happiness of his daughter; however, to quote his own letter to his sister, mrs. gibbon, "as it was too late for me to alter anything without being the cause of total unhappiness on both sides, my _consent_, which was a mere compliment to affect to ask, i needs must give." the father's foreboding was only too fully justified; the union turned out very unhappy from the first, and within a year or so husband and wife separated. both sisters were mentally deficient, and their aberrations increased with age to the point of total derangement. mary, soon after her marriage, became subject to wild hallucinations, "perhaps the most reasonable" (as fulcher puts it) being that the prince of wales was pursuing her with his love. after her mother's death she went to live with her sister, whose mental condition was even worse than her own; they would receive no visitors who did not belong to the nobility, so that many who wished to gain admittance to the house were obliged to assume titles which they did not possess. margaret died about , and mary a year or two later; before her death she insisted on presenting to the king the portrait of fischer, painted by her father at bath about forty years before; this portrait is now in the royal collection. of gainsborough's personality and character much has no doubt been gathered from the preceding pages. his physical appearance is familiar from his own portraits of himself, and from that which zoffany painted of him. he was handsome, tall and strong, with large features and a broad if not very high forehead; the small eyes are quick and observant, the mouth sensitive and rather undecided. in the choice of his friends he attached little importance to breeding and none to social position; he was generous and open-handed to all, with money to his relations and often indiscriminately with his works to friends or mere acquaintances: on one occasion he gave his picture of the "boy at the stile" to colonel hamilton (equally well known at the time as an amateur violinist and a gentleman pugilist) for having played him a solo on the violin; to wiltshire, the carrier who took his pictures from bath to london, and who refused to take payment in money from the artist, he presented many valuable landscapes. intellectually he was extremely gifted; although his education in his youth was much neglected his letters show him to have been by no means ignorant or uncultivated. they also bear the impress of his spontaneous wit and keen humour; of this quality there is evidence in numerous anecdotes. an old man of the labouring class, named fowler, used to sit to him at bath; on the studio mantelpiece stood a child's skull, the gift of a medical friend. "fowler, without moving his position, continually peered at it askance, with inquisitive eye. 'ah! master fowler,' said the painter, 'that is a mighty curiosity.' 'what might it be, sir, if i may make so bold?' 'a whale's eye,' was the grave reply. 'no, no, never say so, muster gainsborough. sir, it is a little child's skull!' 'you have hit it,' said the wag. 'why, fowler, you're a witch! but what will you say when i tell you it is the skull of julius cæsar when he was a little boy!' 'laws!' cried fowler, 'what a phenomenon!'" gainsborough's temper was very hasty, quite opposed to the patient courtliness of reynolds. when a certain peer or alderman, posing, with boundless self-satisfaction, for his portrait, begged the artist not to overlook the dimple in his chin, "damn the dimple in your chin, i will paint neither the one nor the other!" was the uncompromising rejoinder. these stories, unimportant as they are, serve to give an insight into the man's character; but whatever his personal faults and qualities may or may not have been it is with his works that posterity is chiefly concerned, and by them and them alone that gainsborough must be judged. iv gainsborough's works the works of gainsborough may be divided into three chronological groups, just as his life was divided between three distinct localities. but whereas there is a definite and fundamental difference between the pictures painted at ipswich and those of the remainder of his life, there is not to any similar extent a determined demarkation between his productions at bath and those of his last and most glorious years in london. it has been seen that gainsborough used palette and brush from at least the age of fourteen, when he went to london to study with hayman. but the productions of this very early period are extremely difficult to identify. the national gallery of ireland possesses two drawings in pencil, portraits of a man and a woman, on each of which appears the signature _tho: gainsborough fecit - _. these, the earliest extant attempts of gainsborough in portraiture are hard and laboured in execution, but the heads are well-modelled and full of character; they must have been done in london before his return to his native sudbury. a similar hardness and elaborate care and attention to detail characterises the early landscapes painted in suffolk. the only pictures of the old masters to which the young artist could have had access at this period were landscapes of dutch painters such as ruysdael, hobbema, and wynants. their influence is obvious in his own early productions, especially that of wynants; the most important work of this character is the large landscape belonging to mr. j. d. cobbold of ipswich; it is an elaborate composition, semi-classical in style, with conventional hills in the distance, and a carefully put in group of cattle and figures in the foreground. this is the sort of thing that thicknesse must have found in the painter's studio upon his first visit, together with the portrait of admiral vernon (now in the national portrait gallery), and others which the governor describes as "truly drawn, perfectly like, but stiffly painted and worse coloured." the "landguard fort" was commissioned by thicknesse shortly after the artist's marriage and removal to ipswich, and must therefore have been painted between and ; it thus establishes an important landmark in the painter's early years, and although the original is unfortunately lost, it is possible from the engraving of it, which still exists, to approximately date other early landscapes of gainsborough. to about the same time probably belongs the "view in suffolk" of the irish national gallery, while the "cornard wood" in the national gallery, somewhat more free in execution, is slightly later. of the portraits of this period very few can be traced, and it is probable that no large number were painted. the "admiral vernon" has already been mentioned and also the "miss hippisley" (sir edward tennant's collection), and the heads of the artist's daughters at south kensington. there are also in existence two half-length ovals of mr. robert edgar and miss katherine edgar, the latter probably one of the best examples of gainsborough's later years in suffolk. they all show the same characteristic tightness, and a lack of that marvellous freedom for which his later works are so remarkable. plate viii.--miss haverfield (at the wallace collection) portraits of children by gainsborough are not frequent, although he introduced country boys and lasses into his landscapes with the greatest success. this example in the wallace collection possesses a charm which makes one regret that his youthful sitters were not more numerous. [illustration: plate viii.--miss haverfield] almost directly after his settlement at bath the artist's manner changed very appreciably. this was probably due chiefly to the fact that he was able in the neighbourhood of bath to see and study the works of great masters of the past, and notably the great family group by van dyck at wilton house. he no doubt also had access to the fine array of works by rubens then hanging at blenheim and unfortunately now dispersed. the paintings of these masters seem to have disclosed to gainsborough the possibilities of his materials, and from this moment his artistic development is rapid and decided, much more rapid than is generally believed. most people imagine that all his best works date from the years of his life in london after , and that the pictures of his bath period, previous to that year, are comparatively much inferior. this is quite a mistake, for many of his most famous works were in fact painted at bath and his genius had reached its full maturity long before he settled in pall mall. the fine half-length of miss linley and her brother, belonging to lord sackville at knole, lord burton's "lady sussex and lady barbara yelverton," the large equestrian portrait of general honywood, several portraits of garrick, such landscapes as those belonging to lord tweedmouth, lord bateman, and mr. lionel phillipps were all painted at bath, as was probably also the immortal "blue boy" itself. one of the first of gainsborough's sitters after his arrival at bath was mr. robert craggs nugent, afterwards viscount clare and earl nugent, whose full-length portrait was the first picture ever sent by the artist to a public exhibition. it was shown at the spring garden exhibition of the society of artists of great britain in and now belongs to sir george nugent. in the following year a picture entered in the society's catalogue as "a whole-length portrait of a gentleman with a gun," has been identified as the picture, now at althorp, of william poyntz, brother of georgiana, the first countess spencer, herself the mother of that more famous georgiana, duchess of devonshire. both the mother and the daughter were painted about the same time, the latter as a little girl of five or six years of age. these two pictures of the usual half-length size are also at althorp. year by year gainsborough continued sending portraits and landscapes to the society's exhibitions, the huge canvas of general honywood on horseback hanging there in ; the next year came, among others, the full-length portrait of garrick leaning against a bust of shakespeare, painted for the town hall, stratford-on-avon, where it still hangs. in the royal academy opened its first exhibition; gainsborough was represented by four pictures, including a whole-length portrait of isabella, lady molyneux, afterwards countess of sefton, and another of george pitt, first lord rivers. in we find six pictures and a book of drawings, in the following year five full-lengths and two landscapes, and in no less than fourteen pictures, four of which were portraits, and ten "drawings in imitation of oil-painting;" these latter, of which a few exist, are curious productions drawn in water-colour on thick coarse paper laid down on canvas and then varnished; the process is not a very happy one, and the artist's fancy for it does not appear to have been lasting. for the four following years gainsborough's name is absent from the academy catalogues from the cause already mentioned of a disagreement with reynolds as recorded by walpole. but during this time gainsborough no doubt continued to turn out "heads" in great numbers, and not a few full-lengths, to say nothing of landscapes of varying size and importance. several of these half-lengths are in the national portrait gallery and the national gallery, while a considerable number are to be found in private collections. sir walter armstrong, in his monumental work on gainsborough,[ ] puts forward very forcibly the theory that the famous "blue boy" at grosvenor house was painted about the year at bath and not in in london, as has been generally supposed. it is impossible to reproduce here his closely reasoned arguments, but his conclusion is most probably correct that the "blue boy" is a masterpiece of gainsborough's "bath period." it is a portrait of a certain jonathan buttall, a very wealthy ironmonger who lived at the corner of king street and greek street, soho. he is represented at full-length, standing in a landscape, in a rich blue "van dyck" costume, holding a large hat with a white feather in his right hand. the history of the picture and the manner of its coming into the possession of the duke of westminster are uncertain; it may have been sold together with the effects of jonathan buttall, senior, after the death of his widow in , when all his property was disposed of by public auction. it seems to have belonged to hoppner, who died in , and who probably is the author of the very good copy of the "blue boy" which is now in america, and has sometimes been looked upon as a replica from the master's own hand. to this same period in the artist's career probably belongs another and almost equally famous picture which hangs on the same walls as the "blue boy." the duke of westminster's "cottage door," one of the finest of gainsborough's landscapes or pastoral scenes, appears to have been a product of the last years spent at bath, together with the great "watering place" at the national gallery; the "rustic children" belonging to lord carnarvon and of which a small version is also in the national collection; mr. g. l. basset's "cottage girl," and many other landscapes of equal or lesser importance. it is therefore fair to surmise that had gainsborough never made his last move from bath to london the world's stock of artistic treasures would in all probability not have been very much the poorer. that he did afterwards create works of greater beauty was presumably not the effect of his settlement in the metropolis, but merely of the continuance of the natural development of his genius; to the very end of his career he continued to profit by the lessons of greater experience; his touch constantly grew more free, more feathery, his pigment more transparent, his insight into character more rapid and more sure. the increased elegance and heightened refinement of his later portraits may or may not be due to a closer touch with the court and its immediate surroundings; but, from what has gone before, it is clear that it is a delusion to speak deprecatingly of a "gainsborough of the bath period." it is by no means easy to assign dates to most of the pictures painted by gainsborough in london. the academy catalogues provide but slight assistance; for one thing portraits were almost invariably unnamed in those days and can only be identified in most cases by the help of contemporary criticism or correspondence; besides, as we have seen, gainsborough's first reappearance at the official exhibition took place in with the portraits of the duke and duchess of cumberland, and his final quarrel with the institution was only a few years later. but the beautiful women and men of fashion who sat to him were legion. portraits such as that of "mrs. robinson" in the wallace collection, "mrs. siddons" in the national gallery, "the hon. mrs. graham" in the scottish national gallery are too well known and too easily accessible to need description. many, however, of his greatest works are hidden away from the general public in private collections, and only reveal themselves now and again when their owners consent to lend them to an exhibition. among these is lord rothschild's "the morning walk," which may perhaps be looked upon as gainsborough's most perfect masterpiece. it is a portrait group of squire hallett and his wife walking in a landscape with a white pomeranian dog. as in many of the master's finest achievements the colour-scheme is of the soberest description; like the "lady mulgrave" or lord normanton's marvellous "lady mendip" it is almost a monochrome. yet, by a sort of magic, such pictures as these give the impression of a superb melody of colour; every touch conduces to a most perfect harmony, and the effect is obtained by a method so personal, so entirely new to his time, that reynolds, speaking of him in one of his discourses, was able to say that "his handling, the manner of leaving the colours, ... had very much the appearance of the work of an artist who had never learned from others the usual and regular practice belonging to his art." and indeed a survey of gainsborough's life-work leads one to agree with the words of sir joshua, but in a wider sense than the president intended them to apply. gainsborough owed little or nothing to the great masters of painting who came before him, and less to any of his contemporaries. his teachers were nature and his own sympathy with his subject. nowhere in the work of his maturity is there to be found any trace of imitation of the dutch or of the italian masters. he did not pose his models _à la_ van dyck, nor did he borrow his palette from titian; he is the most english of english artists as he is the greatest glory of english art. "he is an immortal painter," says ruskin, "and his excellence is based on principles of art long acknowledged and facts of nature universally apparent." [footnote : pages , .] the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh * * * * * transcriber's notes paragraphs were rejoined on either side of the plates; therefore, some sentences will be found on a different page number than the original book. the description of the painting, originally preceding the illustration by a page, is displayed above the painting, while the caption added below the painting contains only the plate number and title for reference purposes. double, single, and mismatched quotation marks were preserved from the original book. transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. masterpieces in colour edited by - - t. leman hare burne-jones - * * * * * "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. corot. sidney allnutt. _others in preparation_. * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--the depths of the sea. frontispiece (in the possession of r. h. benson, esq.) apart from its technical beauty and its charm of design, this picture has a special interest as the only contribution which the artist ever made to the exhibitions of the royal academy. it was shown at burlington house in , and was painted purposely, during the months that intervened between his election as an associate in the summer of and the opening of the exhibition. in the treatment of the subject there is a touch of slightly grim humour, unusual in the art of burne-jones, a humour which finds expression particularly in the face of the mermaid, who drags a human being to her cave at the bottom of the sea without thinking or caring that her sport means death to him.] burne-jones by a. lys baldry illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. the depths of the sea frontispiece in the possession of r. h. benson, esq. page ii. sidonia von bork in the possession of w. graham robertson, esq. iii. sponsa di libano walker art gallery, liverpool iv. sibylla delphica manchester art gallery v. the mill south kensington museum vi. king cophetua and the beggar maid the tate gallery vii. danae (the tower of brass) glasgow corporation art gallery viii. the enchantments of nimue south kensington museum [illustration: drawing of burne-jones] the place which should be assigned to sir edward burne-jones in the history of modern art is by no means easy to define, for his work with its unusual qualities of intention and achievement does not lend itself readily to classification. at the outset of his career he might with some justice have been numbered with the pre-raphaelites, because the first influences to which he responded were those which directed the pre-raphaelite movement, and because in his earliest productions he showed that these influences had counted for much in the shaping of his æsthetic inclinations. but as he developed he made plainer and more convincing the assertion of his individuality, he ceased to be simply a follower of a movement, and evolved for himself a system of æsthetic practice which was personal both in aim and in manner of expression. that in formulating this system he borrowed much from early italian art, that he based himself upon certain remote masters, with whose primitive methods he was deeply in sympathy, can scarcely be denied; but in this reference to the past he did not show the blind readiness to imitate which is the vice of the copyist; he altered and adapted, varied this principle and modified that detail, until he had with the material he collected built up a quite complete superstructure, which was italian only in its foundation. and in this process of building up he was guided surely enough by a right instinct for decorative propriety, an instinct which was partly innate, partly the outcome of associations by which he was largely affected throughout his life. if his personality had been less strong, or his æsthetic preference less defined, these associations might easily have cramped his imagination and narrowed him into the repetition of a set formula; but his intelligence was so keen and his conviction concerning his artistic mission was so clear, that he was able to overcome all the obstacles by which he might have been turned from his right course. his career, thanks to the consistency with which he worked, became a record of continuous effort to realise an ideal that lacked neither nobility nor intellectual variety. [illustration: plate ii.--sidonia von bork (in the possession of w. graham robertson, esq.) as an early picture, painted while burne-jones was still under the influence of rossetti, "sidonia von bork" illustrates characteristically a particular phase of the artist's practice; one of much importance in the evolution of his art. "sidonia von bork" was one of the characters in a romance called "sidonia the sorceress," which was written by a swiss clergyman. the book was a favourite of rossetti's, so that evidently burne-jones was influenced by his master both in his choice and in his treatment of a subject from its pages. a reprint of the story was issued by william morris from the kelmscott press.] it is probable that some of his consistency, and a very large part of his artistic conviction, came from the manner of his preparation for the profession in which he attained such exceptional success. unlike most artists he did not begin by acquiring a knowledge of the mechanism of painting, and did not proceed to apply trained technical skill in experiments intended to determine the direction in which he might practise profitably in after life. in his case the process was reversed, for his direction was settled before he had learned even the rudiments of pictorial practice, and the time which other men would have given to experiment he devoted to seeking how he would best realise the ideas that were finally formed in his mind. tentative work, to test the popular point of view, he never produced; he began straight away with what he knew to be his right material, and the only difference which is to be noticed between his first and his last paintings is a difference in technical facility. the uncertainties of handling in his earlier pictures disappeared in those which he painted in later life, but of mental uncertainty no trace is at any time to be discovered. yet the curious fact must be noted that this artist, with his strong personality, his great gifts, and his absorbing devotion to a splendid ideal, chose his profession by a kind of afterthought--almost by accident. there is no record in his case of a boyhood spent in struggles against a fate which seemed to forbid him all satisfaction of his dearest aspirations; there is not even evidence that he had any artistic aspirations at all. he grew up, practically to manhood, before he discovered that he had either the wish or the capacity to attempt any form of æsthetic expression, and his powers lay completely dormant through all those youthful years which have been to most other artists a time of longing after the apparently unattainable and of striving to follow the promptings of nature and temperament. this strange torpidity of the artistic side of his intelligence was, no doubt, due to the surroundings among which he passed his childhood. he was born on august , , at birmingham, where there was in those days little enough to foster a love of art, and in the respectable but dull atmosphere of a middle-class home he had no chance of any awakening. his mental activity, however, was shown in the zest with which he threw himself into the study of the classics during the seven or eight years that he spent at king edward's school. he gained at that time a very thorough knowledge of the classic writings in general and of classic mythology in particular, which was amplified in after life by constant reading; and he acquired a student-like habit of research into the learning of the past which served him well when the time came for him to picture the fancies that were forming in his mind. but at first the purpose of his education was to fit him for the walk of life which his father wished him to follow. he was, it was decided, to enter the church, and in , having won a scholarship at exeter college, he went up to oxford ready and willing enough to work for success in the profession which seemed so well suited to him. he had at that time no feeling that his real vocation lay in quite another direction, or that there was any different way in which his studious mind might be exercised. the idea of taking orders was not uncongenial to him, and he began his oxford life in no spirit of rebellion against the career which had been mapped out by his elders. at oxford, however, came his awakening. he found himself in contact there with quite a new phase of existence, in an atmosphere which was made doubly impressive by its unlikeness to any that he had previously known, and among surroundings which by their novelty had a great power to stimulate his imagination. under such conditions the expansion of his mind was unusually rapid, and the arousing of his dormant æsthetic instincts followed immediately. this latter development of a side of his nature, of which previously he could have been, at best, only dimly conscious, was greatly assisted by his friendship with a remarkable man who had entered exeter college on the same day that he did, and who had come to oxford with the same intention of eventually taking holy orders. this man, william morris, was destined to play a most important part in british art activities, and by his militant æstheticism to bring about many momentous changes in the public taste; and the chance which brought him and edward burne-jones together, when they were both at the most impressionable period of life, was especially fortunate. the association between the two undergraduates quickly became one of the closest intimacy. they had mentally much in common, and in them both was a strain of enthusiasm and poetic fantasy which was an inheritance from a celtic ancestry--they were both welshmen by descent--and by which their whole attitude to modern existence was determined. morris had, perhaps, the more vehement personality and the greater share of the fighting instinct, while burne-jones was more of a dreamer and readier to occupy himself with abstract fancies; but these small differences of temperament made their friendship the more mutually valuable, and helped appreciably to increase the influence which the one had on the other. at any rate, these days at oxford saw the beginning of a kind of mental partnership which gave ultimately to the world a great artist and a brilliant leader of a wide art movement which has since done much to alter the whole spirit of domestic decoration in this country. a more immediate effect of the intimacy between morris and burne-jones was, however, the weakening of the intention which had brought them to the university. the more they dreamed and talked the further their idea of finding a career in the church receded, and the stronger grew the desire which both of them felt for the pursuit of some form of art. while they were thus hesitating over their plans for the future, burne-jones received a sort of revelation which fixed finally his half-formed intention to become a painter. he saw by chance some works by rossetti, an illustration to a poem by william allingham and a water-colour, "dante's celebration of beatrice's birthday," and these, with some notable pre-raphaelite pictures, like holman hunt's "light of the world" and "the christian priest escaping from the druids," which were then at oxford, gave him a veritable inspiration. for rossetti in particular he conceived immediately a passionate adoration, and to sit at the feet of such a master seemed to him the noblest aim in life. from that moment, indeed, his fate was decided, though some little time had yet to elapse before his dreams could be realised and his plans could be put into working shape. [illustration: plate iii.--sponsa di libano (walker art gallery, liverpool) the first idea for the "sponsa di libano" was embodied in one of a series of pencil designs from the "song of solomon," which were prepared by burne-jones in . this picture, the only one out of the series which he actually completed pictorially, was exhibited at the new gallery in . the motive of the composition is explained in the text which the original drawing illustrated: "awake, o north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden that the spices thereof may flow out." in the treatment of the subject the artist's poetic fancy and sense of decorative arrangement are particularly well displayed.] for the abandonment of all the ideas which had brought him to the university was no small matter and not to be lightly undertaken. he had to think of the disappointment at home which such action on his part would cause, and he had also to consider what would be his own position while he was preparing himself for a profession of which he had not so far had the smallest practical experience. so, with little heart in his work, he went on reading for his degree until the winter of , when he came up to london with the intention of seeing in the flesh the man whom he had hitherto worshipped afar off. he was introduced to rossetti at the house of mr. vernon lushington, and by the kindly painter, who discerned the promise in the young man's tentative drawings, he was given the heartiest encouragement. a little later he laid before rossetti all his hopes and fears, his doubts whether or not he would be right in leaving oxford with the purpose which had taken him there still unfulfilled, and his desire to devote himself irrevocably to the artistic calling; and instead of suggestions of such compromises as prudence might have dictated, he received advice to lose no time in entering upon the career for which he was plainly destined by nature and inclination. rossetti's interest in his young admirer was no momentary matter; he backed up the advice he had offered by taking him as a pupil and by aiding him in many ways to gain a footing in the art world. when burne-jones, having at last shaken the dust of oxford off his feet, settled in london early in , he found rossetti quite ready to supervise his education and to lead him to that fuller knowledge of art practice which he so sorely lacked. the method of education adopted departed very definitely from accustomed lines; it did not involve attendance at any art school, and it imposed no prolonged course of drawing from antique figures or of painting still-life studies from groups of ill-assorted objects. on the contrary, the pupil was encouraged to begin at what would be considered by academic teachers the wrong end of things--to struggle, all unversed as he was in technicalities, with the difficulties of creative effort. rossetti's studio was thrown open to him so that he might watch the progress of the pictures which were on the easel, and a number of the master's drawings and studies were lent to him to help him in his work at home; but what training he received was more in the nature of sympathetic guidance in his attempts at self-expression than of formal direction along the lines of a recognised school system. its good effects were shown in the manner of the young man's development and in the rapid growth of his individuality; its bad effects in the persistence of defects of draughtsmanship and brushwork, which were overcome at last by his extraordinary industry and dogged determination to master all the difficulties of his craft. to his care and advice concerning his pupil's manner of working rossetti added consideration for his financial position. burne-jones, with but slender resources and with little chance as yet of earning the means of support, was having a somewhat hard struggle, which rossetti did his best to relieve by introducing him to friends who would interest themselves in him, and by helping him to get such work as he was capable of carrying out. one important commission was obtained about the end of , and this commission deserves special mention because it gave burne-jones his first experience in a branch of design in which he was destined to become an acknowledged master. messrs. powell, the glass-makers, who were making great efforts to improve the quality of stained glass, had applied to rossetti for a design for a window. he declined to undertake this work, and recommended his pupil instead; and burne-jones accordingly prepared a design which was not only accepted by the firm but enthusiastically approved by ruskin, who was, so rossetti declared in a letter written at the time, "driven wild with joy" by the merit and quality of the work. this cartoon was followed during the next three or four years by several others drawn for the same firm. much that is important in the record of the painter's life is to be assigned to this short period between the beginning of and the end of . in addition to his designs for stained glass, he produced a large number of pen-and-ink and water-colour drawings, and made his first experiments in oil-painting; and he took part in the decoration of the library of the oxford union, an ambitious scheme entered into by rossetti at the suggestion of mr. woodward, the architect of the building, and carried out, despite many unexpected difficulties, by rossetti himself and a band of enthusiastic young artists. these decorations, which unfortunately fell into a condition of hopeless decay soon after they were completed, took some six months to execute, and he was engaged upon his share of the work until the early part of . in the autumn of that year he paid his first visit to italy and studied those early italian masters with whom, as his after work proved, he was so deeply and intelligently in sympathy. this visit, indeed, brought about a marked change in his artistic outlook and helped to lead him away from the gothic tendencies which he had first shown--probably as a result of his association with morris--into a far more pronounced inclination for the italian manner of design. he was married in the summer of to miss georgina macdonald, about a month after rossetti's marriage to miss siddal; and in taking this step he certainly showed that he had confidence in his professional prospects, a confidence which was justified by the position he had already made for himself. [illustration: plate iv.--sibylla delphica (manchester art gallery) in this painting of the delphic oracle burne-jones made no attempt to reconstruct archæologically an incident from classic times. the symbolism of the subject appealed to him rather than its possibilities of being represented realistically, and he treated it in a manner entirely personal, with strength and decision, but with exquisite tenderness of poetic sentiment as well. the picture has a certain intensity of feeling that is especially convincing, and its fine draughtsmanship, splendid colour, and well-considered suggestion of movement make it technically of very great importance.] the year must be particularly noted because it marks the commencement of an undertaking with which burne-jones was closely associated for the rest of his life. william morris, who had also left oxford in without waiting to take his degree, had gone for rather less than a year into the office of george edmund street, the well-known architect, with some idea of adopting that profession; and then, becoming quickly disillusioned, had after some experiments in painting settled down for a while to literary work. in he married and went to live in a house which had been built for him at bexley heath; and it is said that the difficulty he experienced in getting, for the fitting up of this house, things which would please his fastidious taste and gratify his intense love of beauty, induced him to consider whether he could not actively intervene in the much-needed reformation of the decorative arts. at any rate, less than two years after his marriage, he was busy with the details of a scheme which was ambitious enough to satisfy even his love of big things and in which there were endless possibilities. this scheme took definite form towards the end of , when the firm of morris, marshall, faulkner, and co. was started in red lion square. burne-jones, naturally enough, was an active sympathiser with the plans of william morris, and he showed his sympathy in the most practical manner by putting his talents as a designer at the disposal of the firm. from that time onwards he produced in ever-increasing numbers designs for all kinds of decorative work, stained glass, tapestries, embroideries, book illustration, &c., in which his amazing fertility of imagination and exquisite powers of expression had the fullest scope. the sum total of the work, for which he was responsible during the period of nearly forty years over which his intimate connection with the morris business extended, was almost incredibly large, and proves convincingly the strenuousness of his lifelong effort. for it must be remembered that this mass of decorative work did not by any means represent the whole of his achievement, but was, in fact, brought into existence in the intervals of his not less remarkable activity as a picture painter. the number of his finished pictures in different mediums was about two hundred, and his cartoons for stained glass alone make a list of a thousand or more; when to these are added his designs for other purposes, his sketches and studies, and the rough notes by which he gave the first visible shape to the mental images which he proposed to put later on into a completed form, the result arrived at is simply bewildering. only by the most unremitting industry could he have done so much, and only a man with an abnormally prolific imagination and extraordinary powers of invention could have kept up as he did the high standard of his art. [illustration: plate v.--the mill (south kensington museum) this picture is one of those on which burne-jones worked at intervals for several years. commenced in , and taken up and set aside time after time, it was not exhibited until , when it appeared at the grosvenor gallery. it is an example, and a very attractive one, of the daintier side of the artist's practice, a decorative composition planned with masterly restraint and with a wholly sympathetic understanding of the charm of pure and unforced sentiment. it has both grace and distinction.] the pictorial work of burne-jones during the earlier 'sixties marked well the manner in which he was finding his way to the full avowal of his artistic creed. at first he was, as might have been expected, frankly inclined to imitate rossetti, and to follow closely in methods and sentiment the master whom he worshipped and from whom he had received such invaluable assistance. but gradually this influence waned, as increasing confidence in his own powers enabled him to assert more clearly his individual view of his æsthetic responsibilities, and as the widening of his experience opened up to him fresh aspects of the artistic problems with which he had to deal. his development was, no doubt, much assisted by a second visit which he paid to italy in the spring of , a visit in which he had as his companion ruskin, with whom he was by then on terms of intimacy. he stayed first at milan and then went on to venice, where he remained for some while making copies of tintoretto and other masters for ruskin, and studying for his own instruction and enjoyment the works of the earlier masters generally and of carpaccio particularly. during these earlier years he confined himself almost entirely to working in water-colours, though by his way of using the medium he gained technical results which had more the strength and richness of oils than the delicate transparency of water-colour. the few essays he made in oil-painting at this time were not pictures for exhibition purposes but pure decorations, like the panels for a painted coffer designed by william morris, and a triptych, with the "annunciation" as the central panel, and the "adoration of the magi" on the wings, which was commissioned by mr. bodley for st. paul's church at brighton. definite recognition of the position he had gained among the younger water-colourists came at the beginning of , when he was elected, with fred walker, an associate of the royal society of painters in water colours. he was advanced to full membership of the society in , but resigned in because a foolish accusation of impropriety was brought against one of the compositions he exhibited. he returned, however, in and remained a member till his death. by the paintings he showed in the gallery of the "old society" he much increased his reputation among discriminating art lovers as an artist of no ordinary importance. people who had known nothing of his work before found something so new in manner and so distinctive in purpose in the achievements of this creator of poetic fantasies that he was given more attention than usually comes to a man who sets before the public things of an unaccustomed type. that he amply deserved this attention cannot be questioned, for already he had acquired sufficient command over the technicalities of water-colour to enable him to put into a quite convincing form fancies which needed particular delicacy of interpretation. of course, he had still very much to learn--no one knew better than he did how necessary was strenuous labour to overcome his deficiencies as a craftsman--but his deep sincerity gave character and meaning to his paintings, and the poetic beauty of his pictorial inventions fully excused what defects there were in his executive methods. indeed, to this early period can be assigned several of the works on which his reputation rests most securely to-day--his "fair rosamond," for instance, his first painting of "the annunciation," a subject which he treated more than once, and his exquisite picture of "the merciful knight," in which there was no trace left of rossetti's direction, but instead a clear expression of a quite personal view of art. no better proof could have been given of the strength of his character than was afforded by the rapidity with which he found his own way, and by the completeness of his emancipation from the influence of a man who was both his master and his friend--an influence which plainly dominated him when he painted his earliest water-colours of "clara von bork" and "sidonia von bork," both of which were entirely in rossetti's manner. but in the three or four years which intervened between the production of these two little pictures and the completion of the far more ambitious composition, "the merciful knight," he had learned the secret of his own powers, and he had found how unnecessary it was for him to lean for support upon any one else. with this knowledge of himself, and with this consciousness of his capacity to take an independent position in the art world, came an increase of his activity as a painter. his water-colours became more numerous and more important, and he began to paint in oils several large pictures which he worked at with characteristic patience, setting them aside often for quite considerable periods and returning to them every now and again as opportunity offered. his manner of working, indeed, showed plainly the fertility of his mind; new ideas occurred to him in rapid succession, and his habit was to put them into a first rough shape on paper or canvas and to leave them to be carried to completion by slow stages with often long intervals between. one result of his method was that he frequently repeated the same subject with variations in treatment that were the outcome of some fresh consideration of the motive--each repetition, however, was an independent conception, not a mere reproduction of what he had done before. but there was another result which must be noted, because it has to be taken into account in any attempt to make a chronological list of his paintings or to define the character of his art at different periods--the works he exhibited were not put before the public in anything like the order of their production. sometimes a picture which had been painted only a few months before was shown with one which had been for years in his studio awaiting some comparatively small additions to bring it to absolute completeness; sometimes all the things he exhibited in a particular year were new works; sometimes old ones which had been taken up and put aside over and over again. consequently, it is useless to try to classify his productions exactly, and it is hopeless to base any theories about his development as an artist upon the sequence of his public appearances. all that can be said is that his evolution was steady and progressive, and that his apparent reversions now and again to his earlier manner were due not to any halting in his conviction but simply to the fact that some piece of work which had been lying by, possibly for years, had at last been finished and exhibited. practically the only periods which can be recognised in his art are the comparatively brief one when he was definitely under rossetti's influence, and the far longer one when he was working out his own destiny unassisted. a certain inclination towards rossetti's colour feeling he retained for some while after he had freed himself of the technical mannerisms which he derived from his master, and for nearly twenty years traces of this colour sympathy can be detected, but for the rest of his career he was as individual in his management of colour as he was in design or in the sentiment of his work. [illustration: plate vi.--king cophetua and the beggar maid (the tate gallery) the old story of the king who succumbed to the charms of a simple beggar maid has inspired many artists, but none have rivalled burne-jones in appreciation of the artistic possibilities of the subject. his picture on its appearance at the grosvenor gallery in set the seal on his reputation, and put an end to whatever doubts remained then in the public mind as to his right to serious consideration. it is in many ways the finest of all his works, the most ambitious and the most exacting in the technical problems presented, and it is certainly the most notable in accomplishment.] this point needs to be elaborated for the sake of clearing up any misapprehensions which might arise from his more or less erratic way of exhibiting his work. as an example, when he exhibited for the first time in in the gallery of the royal society of painters in water colours, he showed the "fair rosamond," painted in , with the "annunciation" and "the merciful knight," both of which belong to ; but in he sent "a knight and a lady," finished just before the exhibition opened, "green summer," painted in , and "the enchantments of nimue," which was one of the things he produced in while he was still frankly and unreservedly an imitator of rossetti. such an inversion in the order in which his works were set before the public might cause some perplexity to students of his art if they did not realise what was his custom in this matter. he exhibited in the gallery of the royal water colour society in a painting, "the wine of circe," which was not only the most important work he had produced up to that time but is also to be counted as one of the most admirable of all his performances; and he showed there in two other notable works, "love disguised as reason" and "phyllis and demophoon." it was over this last painting that the dispute arose which led to his resignation of his membership of the society; and one of the results of this dispute was that for a space of seven years hardly any of his pictures were seen in public. indeed, the only things he exhibited during this period were a couple of water-colours, "the garden of the hesperides" and "love among the ruins," which appeared at the dudley gallery in . both were important additions to the list of his achievements, and the "love among the ruins" especially was a painting of exquisite beauty and significance. he repeated this subject in oil some twenty years later, because the original water-colour had been damaged somewhat seriously, and was not, as he considered, capable of repair. the opening of the grosvenor gallery in gave him his first great opportunity of setting before the mass of art lovers his claims to special attention. hitherto he had counted in the minds of a few men of taste and sound judgment as an artist of remarkable gifts who promised before long to take high rank in his profession, but by the larger public interested in art matters he was practically undiscovered. that he would have won his way step by step to the position he deserved cannot be doubted; if there had been no break in his activity as an exhibiting painter his successive contributions to the royal water colour gallery could not have failed to make him widely known. but his reappearance at the grosvenor gallery was so dramatic, and so convincing in its proof of the amazing development of his powers, that he leaped at one bound into the place among the greatest of his artistic contemporaries, which he was able to hold for the rest of his life without the possibility of dispute. for he had not been idle during this seven years of abstention from exhibitions; the period had been rather one of strenuous activity and unceasing production. it saw the completion of several important canvases on which he had laboured long and earnestly, and it saw the commencement of many others which were in later years to be added to the list of his more memorable achievements. in some ways, indeed, it was a fortunate break; it saved him from the need to strive year by year to get pictures finished for specific exhibitions, and it allowed him time for calm reflection about the schemes he desired to work out. it freed him, too, from the temptation--one to which all artists are exposed--to modify the character of his art so that his pictures might be sufficiently effective in the incongruous atmosphere of the ordinary public gallery. he was able to form his style and develop his individuality in the manner he thought best; and then at last to come before the public fully matured and with his æsthetic purpose absolutely defined. when the first fruits of this long spell of assiduous effort were seen at the grosvenor gallery, burne-jones became instantly a power in the art world. the judgment of the few connoisseurs who had hailed "the wine of circe" and "love among the ruins" as works of the utmost significance, and as revelations of real genius, received wide endorsement; and though some people who were out of sympathy with the spirit of his art were quite ready to attack what they did not understand, their voices were scarcely heard amid the general chorus of approval. indeed, for such pictures as "the days of creation," "the mirror of venus," and "the beguiling of merlin," exhibited in ; "laus veneris," "chant d'amour," and "pan and psyche," which with some others were shown in ; the series of four subjects from the story of "pygmalion and the image," and the magnificent "annunciation," in ; and that exquisite composition, "the golden stairs," which was his sole contribution to the grosvenor gallery in , nothing but enthusiastic approval was to be expected from all sincere art lovers; to carp at work so noble in conception and so personal in manner implied an entire want of artistic discretion. there were two exhibitions at the grosvenor gallery in . in the summer one burne-jones was not represented, but the winter show included a number of his studies and decorative drawings, among them the large circular panel, "dies domini," a water-colour of rare beauty which can be reckoned as one of the most admirable of his designs. in , however, he showed "the mill," "the tree of forgiveness," "the feast of peleus," and several smaller paintings; and in that splendid piece of symbolism, "the wheel of fortune," and "the hours." the following year is memorable for the appearance of the important canvas, "king cophetua and the beggar maid," and the less ambitious but even more fascinating "wood nymph," in both of which the artist touched quite his highest level of achievement, and gave the most ample proof of the maturity of his powers. [illustration: plate vii.--danae (the tower of brass) (glasgow corporation art gallery) like the "sibylla delphica" this canvas shows how burne-jones was accustomed to treat subjects from the classic myths in the mediæval spirit to which he inclined by habit and association. in his illustration of a subject from the story of danae, where she stands watching in wonder the building of the tower of brass which was to be her prison, he has looked at greek tradition in a way that was partly his own and partly a reflection of william morris; but the result is none the less persuasive because it does not conform to the greek convention.] his election as an associate of the royal academy came in . that he coveted this particular distinction can scarcely be said; indeed, he was at first unwilling to accept it, and it was only in response to a personal request from leighton that he finally decided to take his place in the ranks of the associates. but he exhibited a picture at burlington house in , "the depths of the sea," and then, feeling that his work was unsuited for the academy galleries, he sent nothing else there, and in resigned his associateship. his contributions to the grosvenor gallery in were "the morning of the resurrection," "sibylla delphica," and "flamma vestalis"; and in "the baleful head," "the garden of pan," and some other canvases. after this year he ceased to exhibit at the grosvenor gallery, as he was one of the chief members of the group of artists who supported mr. comyns carr and mr. c. e. hallé in the founding of the new gallery, and he sent there nearly all the works he produced during the rest of his life. the most important exceptions were the magnificent "briar rose" series of pictures, which were shown in by messrs. agnew at their gallery in bond street, and "the bath of venus," which went straight from the artist's studio to the glasgow institute in . the first exhibition at the new gallery was opened in , and it included several of his oil-paintings, among them "the tower of brass," an enlarged repetition of an earlier picture, and two canvases, "the rock of doom" and "the doom fulfilled," from the "story of perseus" series, to which also belonged "the baleful head," shown in the previous year. to the succeeding shows there he sent much besides that can be taken as representing his soundest convictions. there were the large water-colour, "the star of bethlehem," and the "sponsa di libano," in ; "the pilgrim at the gate of idleness" and "the heart of the rose" in ; "vespertina quies" and the oil version of "love among the ruins" in ; "the wedding of psyche" in ; "aurora" and "the dream of launcelot at the chapel of the san graal" in ; "the pilgrim of love" in ; and "the prioress' tale" and "st. george" in . in all of these his consistent pursuit of definite ideals, his love of poetic fantasy, and his admirable perception of the decorative possibilities of the subjects he selected are as evident as in any of his earlier works; as years went on he relaxed neither his steadfastness of purpose nor his sincerity of method. to the last he remained unspoiled by success and unaffected by the popularity which came to him in such ample measure--it may be safely said that with his temperament and his artistic creed he would have continued on the course he had marked out for himself even if the effect of his persistence had been to rouse the bitterest opposition of the public, and he was as little inclined to trade on his success as he would have been to tout for attention if his efforts had been ignored. there was no waning of his powers as his career drew towards its close. it was not his fate to be compelled by failing vitality to be content with achievements that lacked the force and freshness by which the work of his vigorous maturity was distinguished, for he died before advancing years had begun in any way to dull his faculties. only a few weeks after the opening of the exhibition at the new gallery he was seized with a sudden illness, which had a fatal termination on the morning of june . really robust health he had never enjoyed, and on several occasions serious breakdowns had hampered his activity; but his devotion to his art was so sincere, and his determination so strong, that these interruptions did not perceptibly affect the continuity of his work. towards the end of his life, however, he suffered from an affection of the heart, and the demands which he made upon his strength helped, no doubt, to exhaust his vitality. at the time of his death he was striving to complete one of the most important and ambitious pictures he ever planned--"arthur in avalon," a vast canvas which, even in its unfinished condition, must be reckoned as an amazing performance, and worthy of a distinguished place in the record of modern art. one of the most interesting things in the life-story of edward burne-jones is the manner of his advance, within some twenty years only, from a position of obscurity to one of exceptional authority in the british school. the young student, who in had just discovered his vocation and was beginning to feel his way under the guidance of rossetti, had become in one of the most discussed of british artists, and had with dramatic suddenness entered into the company of the greatest of the nineteenth-century painters. with no effort on his part to attract attention, without having recourse to any of those devices by which in the ordinary way popularity is won, he secured, practically at the first time of asking, all that other men have had to strive for laboriously through a long period of probation. although the few things he exhibited while he was a member of the royal water colour society were sufficient to rouse in the few real judges a deep interest in his future achievement, it was the singular merit of his contributions to the first exhibition at grosvenor gallery that made him instantly famous. the wider public realised then, and realised most forcibly, that he was an artist to be reckoned with, and that his work, whether people liked it or not, could by no means be ignored. [illustration: plate viii.--the enchantments of nimue (south kensington museum) painted, like the "sidonia von bork," while burne-jones was still under the influence of rossetti, "the enchantments of nimue" is interesting as an example of his earliest methods. it was finished in , but it was not exhibited until , when it was hung in the gallery of the royal society of painters in water colours; it was bought for the south kensington museum in . the painting shows how nimue "caused merlin to pass under a heaving-stone into a grave" by the power of her enchantments.] from that time onwards there was for him no looking back. the twenty years of preparation, which were spent mainly in ceaseless seeking after completer knowledge and in careful study of the practical details of his profession, were followed by another twenty years of strenuous production, in which he worked out more and more effectively the ideas formed in his extraordinarily active mind. in the series of his paintings there is a very perceptible advance year by year in technical facility, but to suggest that they show also a growth of imaginative power would scarcely be correct, because there seems to have been no moment in his career when he did not possess in fullest measure the faculty of poetic invention and the capacity to put his mental images into an exquisite and persuasive shape. what he acquired as a result of his exhaustive study was a closer agreement between mind and hand, the skill to convey to others what he himself felt. but he had no need to labour to make his intelligence more keen or his fancies more varied; nature had endowed him with a temperament perfectly adapted for every demand which he could make upon it in the pursuit of his art. that he did not at first secure the unanimous approval of art lovers is scarcely surprising. the markedly individual artist who cares nothing for popular favour and is more anxious to satisfy his own conscience than to gather round him possible clients is never likely to become a favourite offhand. burne-jones by the brilliancy of his ability silenced all opposition long before his death, and gained over the bulk of the doubters who questioned his right to the admiration he received when he first began to exhibit at the grosvenor gallery. but for some while the unusual character of his art caused it to be much misunderstood by people who had not taken the trouble to analyse his intentions. he was accused of affectation, of deliberate imitation of the early italians; he was attacked for his indifference to realism and for his decorative preferences. even the genuineness of his poetic feeling was suspected, and his love of symbolism was ridiculed as the aberration of a warped mind. much of this misconception was cleared away by the collected exhibition of his works which was held at the new gallery in the winter of - , for this show, by bringing together the best of his productions and by summing up all phases of his practice, proved emphatically that he had been as sincere and logical in his aims as he had been consistent in his expression. it was no longer possible to attack him out of mere prejudice; the verdict given fifteen years before on his art by those who understood him best was seen to be just. when a second collection was shown at the new gallery--a memorial exhibition arranged in , a few months after his death--few people remained who were prepared to dispute his mastery. it is fortunate that justice should have been done to him by his contemporaries and that there should have been really so little delay in the wider acknowledgment of his claims. if appreciation had been withheld from him while he lived, if it had been his fate to secure only a posthumous reputation, there would have been some diminution of his influence, and his art would have lost some of its authority. but as a right estimate of his position was arrived at during his lifetime, when he was at the height of his activity as an exponent of an exceptionally intelligent æsthetic creed, he was able to make his beliefs effective in bringing about the conversion of a large section of the public to a truer understanding of the value of decorative qualities in pictorial art. he proved emphatically that decoration does not imply, as is popularly supposed, the abandonment of the characteristics which make a picture interesting; he showed that a subject can be legitimately treated so that it engages fully the sympathies of the average man, and yet can be kept from any descent into obviousness or commonplace conventionality. the painted story in his hands was no trivial anecdote; it was a motive by means of which he conveyed not only moral lessons but artistic truths as well, something didactically valuable but at the same time capable of appealing to the senses with exquisite daintiness and charm. indeed, he can best be summed up as a teacher who clothed the lessons of life with noble beauty and with dignity that was commanding without being forbidding. there was human sympathy in everything he painted--a tender, gentle sentiment which escaped entirely the taint of sentimentality and which, tinged as it always was with a kind of quiet sadness, never became morbid or unwholesome. he was too truly a poet to dwell upon the ugly side of existence, just as he was too sincerely a decorator to insist unnecessarily upon common realities. that he searched deeply into facts is made clear by the mass of preparatory work he produced to guide him in his paintings, by the enormous array of drawings and studies which he executed to satisfy the demand he made upon himself for exactness and accuracy in the building up of his designs. but in his studies, as in his pictures, the intention to express a personal feeling is never absent. he selected, modified, re-arranged as his temperament suggested; he omitted unimportant things and amplified those which were of dominant interest; he sought for what was helpful to his artistic purpose and passed by what would have seemed in wrong relation, consistently keeping in view the lesson which he desired to teach. it can be frankly admitted that a certain mannerism resulted from his way of working, but this mannerism was by no means the dull formality into which many artists descend when they substitute a convention for inspiration; it was rather a revelation of his personality and of that belief in the rightness of his own judgment which counts for so much in the development of the really strong man. except for the short time in which he was influenced by rossetti, his life was spent in illustrating an entirely independent view of artistic responsibilities; and it would be difficult now to question this independence with the wonderful series of his paintings available to prove how earnestly and how seriously he strove to realise his ideals in art. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's note: italic text is denoted by _underscores_. obvious punctuation errors and typos repaired. footnotes moved to end of relevant chapters. index of illustrations adjusted to match html version. two un-indexed illustrations, 'whistler's grave in chiswick cemetery adjoining chiswick churchyard' and 'monument in whistler's memory at the united states military academy at west point', added to the "list of illustrations". in the original book the illustrations are indexed as "facing page nnn". these have been changed to refer to the nearest page. the life of james mcneill whistler [illustration: portrait of the artist _fr._ (by himself)] the life of james mcneill whistler by e. r. and j. pennell new and revised edition the sixth _illustrated_ philadelphia j. b. lippincott company london: william heinemann _printed in great britain_ preface to the sixth edition the fifth edition of our book was exhausted before war was declared, and not until peace was declared was it thought by the publishers advisable to issue this sixth edition, which has been revised and brought up to date, and contains new material and new illustrations. all the while we have been collecting and verifying documents, and all the while we have received suggestions, facts, and inquiries. the book has been published in french, but for the war it would have been long since translated into other languages. during these years of needless, senseless, useless horrors, the name and fame of whistler have steadily grown. his works have served as propaganda--what a comment!--even the portrait of his mother has been used as a poster by the british, and his own portrait has obtained the glory of appearing as a tribute to the power of advertising. all the while, endless stories, most of them garbled from this book, when not invented, have gone from end to end of the world. exhibitions of his paintings and prints and of documents relating to him have been held. galleries and private collectors have acquired what little of his work was left to acquire. even the national gallery of great britain has accepted three of his pictures from the late arthur studd though whistler had distinctly said that he did not wish to be represented in any english gallery. dealers have found in his art inexhaustible attraction and asset for shows. mr. freer's collection in the national museum, washington, is about to open. our collection is being installed in the library of congress, also in washington--though it was damaged by unpardonable and undiscoverable carelessness in transit, caused by this cursed war. washington must soon be visited to see whistler as madrid is to see velasquez. all the while, too, the financial appreciation of whistler--the standard by which art and everything is judged to-day--has vastly increased, the _mrs. leyland_ and _lady meux_ selling for more hundreds of thousands than he asked hundreds of dollars for. his etchings and lithographs have so improved in value in the collector's estimation that persons whom whistler did everything to help in forming their collections have considered them too valuable to keep, and so have parted with them at an enormous rise over even his "posthumous prices." what would he have thought of all this, he who so carefully selected the prints "kindly lent their owners?" whistler, fortunately, has escaped the indignity of commercial popularity, but he has come into his own; his name and his fame are world-wide, he is with the immortals; we said so in the beginning, and time has proved us right. there have been no books of importance issued about him of late years, though contemporary authors who spurned him during his life now claim his acquaintance and add a paragraph or a page, mostly from our book, as a bait to sell their own. miss philip delays, or awaits the lapse of twenty years, before issuing the letters. when she does print them--if properly edited--they will be a great addition to the knowledge of whistler. mr. freer announces also a life which is to supersede or expose us, or whistler. still they tarry, but anything they may issue will add to the success and, we trust, the completeness of the authorized _life of whistler_. we should be grateful for any further information, suggestions, or corrections to that end from any of our readers. we wish to thank, for the permission to reproduce paintings and drawings, to consult letters and documents, mrs. a. j. cassatt, mr. mitchell kennerley, mr. roland knvedler, messrs. keppel and company, mr. george j. c. grasberger, mr. a. e. gallatin, mr. r. c. frick, mr. west, colonel hughes, mr. e. g. kennedy, the metropolitan museum of new york, the maryland institute, the librarian of congress, dr. putnam, and dr. koch, mr. roberts, and miss wright, also of the library of congress. joseph pennell elizabeth robins pennell washington, _july , _ publisher's note to the fifth edition mr. and mrs. pennell's authorised _life of james mcneill whistler_ appeared in two volumes in october , and has had to be reprinted in that form three times since then. its sale even in that comparatively expensive form has been an unexpectedly large one, proving without doubt that interest in whistler's life is alive and growing. during the three years since its first publication much new material has come into the hands of the authors, and a complete revision of the book has therefore become necessary. the present volume is, to all intents and purposes, a new one. many of the older illustrations in the earlier editions have been superseded by new ones, a number of which are reproduced for the first time. for the new material included in this edition the authors and the publisher are indebted to friends and numerous sympathetic correspondents, and they wish to express their indebtedness especially to mr. john w. beatty, director of the carnegie institute in pittsburgh; mr. e. d. brooks; mr. clifford gore chambers; mr. e. t. cook; mr. leon dabo; mr. frederick dielmann; messrs. dowdeswell; m. théodore duret; mr. a. j. eddy; mrs. wickham flower; right hon. jonathan hogg; mr. h. s. hubbell; mr. will h. low; mr. burton mansfield; judge parry; mr. h. reinhardt; mr. h. s. ridings; mr. albert rouiller; miss alice rouiller; mr. william scott; m. ströhlen; mr. ross turner; mr. c. f. g. turner; mr. c. howard walker; mr. j. h. wrenn. contents page chapter i. the whistler family. the years eighteen thirty-four to eighteen forty-three _whistler's ancestors--his parents--birth--early years_ chapter ii. in russia. the years eighteen forty-three to eighteen forty-nine _life in russia--schooldays--begins his art studies in the imperial academy of fine arts--death of major whistler-- return to america_ chapter iii. schooldays in pomfret. the years eighteen forty-nine to eighteen fifty-one _the pomfret school and schoolmates--early drawings_ chapter iv. west point. the years eighteen fifty-one to eighteen fifty-four _whistler as cadet in the u.s. military academy-- his studies--failure--stories told of him--his estimate of west point_ chapter v. the coast survey. the years eighteen fifty-four and eighteen fifty-five _life in washington--obtains position as draughtsman in the u.s. coast and geodetic survey--first plates--resignation-- starts for paris_ chapter vi. student days in the latin quarter. the years eighteen fifty-five to eighteen fifty-nine _arrival in paris--enters as student at gleyre's--his fellow students--adventures--journey to alsace_ chapter vii. working days in the latin quarter. the years eighteen fifty-five to eighteen fifty-nine continued _his studies--work at the louvre--visit to art treasures exhibition at manchester--etchings--paintings--rejection at the salon and exhibition in bonvin's studio_ chapter viii. the beginnings in london. the years eighteen fifty-nine to eighteen sixty-three _in london with the hadens--first appearance at royal academy--kindness to french fellow students--shares studio with du maurier--gaieties--mr. arthur severn's reminiscences --work on the river--jo--etchings published by mr. edmund thomas_ chapter ix. the beginnings in london. the years eighteen fifty-nine to eighteen sixty-three continued _paintings and exhibitions--the music room--visits to mr. and mrs. edwin edwards--summer in brittany--"the white girl" --berners street gallery--baudelaire on his etchings-- illustrations--salon des refuses--first gold medal_ chapter x. chelsea days. the years eighteen sixty-three to eighteen sixty-six _settles with his mother at no. lindsey row, chelsea-- the greaves family--the limerston street studio and mr. j. e. christie--rossetti--the tudor house circle, swinburne, meredith, frederick sandys, howell--"blue and white"-- w. m. rossetti's reminiscences_ chapter xi. chelsea days. the years eighteen sixty-three to eighteen sixty-four continued _the japanese pictures--"the princesse du pays de la porcelaine"--japanese influence--"the little white girl" --fantin's "hommage à delacroix"--"the toast"--arrival in london of dr. whistler--at trouville with courbet-- journey to valparaiso_ chapter xii. chelsea days continued. the years eighteen sixty-six to eighteen seventy-two _return to london--removal to no. lindsey row--the house and its decorations--the exhibition in paris-- affair at the burlington fine arts club--"symphony in white, no. iii." the first picture exhibited as a symphony--theories --development--discouragement--mr. fred jameson's reminiscences--decoration--hamerton's "etching and etchers" --etchings and dry-points--exhibitions--rejection at the royal academy--first exhibition of picture as a nocturne-- relations to the royal academy_ chapter xiii. nocturnes. the years eighteen seventy-two to eighteen seventy-eight _nocturnes--extent of debt to japanese--methods and materials--subjects--origin of title--his explanation in "the gentle art"_ chapter xiv. portraits. the years eighteen seventy-one to eighteen seventy-four _"the mother"--"carlyle"--"miss alexander"-mr. and mrs. leyland--mrs. louis huth--show of his own work in pall mall--indignation roused by his titles_ chapter xv. the open door. the year eighteen seventy-four and after _whistler's gaiety and hospitality--his amusement in society--his dinners and sunday breakfasts--reminiscences of his entertainments--his talk--clubs--restaurants-- the theatre_ chapter xvi. the peacock room. the years eighteen seventy-four to eighteen seventy-seven _work at exhibitions and in the studio--portrait of irving --"rosa corder"--"the fur jacket"--"connie gilchrist"-- the peacock room--mr. leyland's house in prince's gate-- its decoration--whistler's scheme for the dining-room and its development--the work finished--quarrel with leyland_ chapter xvii. the grosvenor gallery. the years eighteen seventy-seven and eighteen seventy-eight _sir coutt lindsay's new gallery--first exhibition at the grosvenor--whistler's contributions--ruskin's criticism of "the falling rocket" in "fors clavigera"--whistler sues him for libel--etchings--lithographs--drawings of blue and white for sir henry thompson's catalogue-- caricatures--sends a second time to the grosvenor_ chapter xviii. the white house. the year eighteen seventy-eight _paris universal exhibition of --harmony in yellow and gold--whistler as decorator--lady archibald campbell's appreciation--plan for opening an atelier for students-- no. lindsey row given up--e. w. godwin builds the white house for him--his mother's health--she leaves him for hastings--money difficulties--mezzotints of the "carlyle" and "rosa corder"_ chapter xix. the trial. the year eighteen seventy-eight _whistler's reasons for the action against ruskin--his position and ruskin's compared--refusal of artists to support whistler--trial in the exchequer chamber, westminster-- verdict--the general criticism--mr. t. armstrong and mr. arthur severn on the trial--collection to pay ruskin's expenses--failure to raise one for whistler-- "whistler v. ruskin"_ chapter xx. bankruptcy. the years eighteen seventy-eight and eighteen seventy-nine _whistler again at the grosvenor--his critics--his financial embarrassments--his manner of meeting them--declared bankrupt --"the gold scab"--commission from the fine art society for the venetian etchings--starts for venice--the sale of the white house--sale of blue and white, pictures, prints, &c., at sotheby's_ chapter xxi. venice. the years eighteen seventy-nine and eighteen-eighty _whistler's arrival in venice--first impressions-- disappointments and difficulties--his friends in venice and their memories of him--duveneck and his "boys"--whistler's hard work--his lodgings and restaurants--the cafés--stories told of him--reminiscences of mr. harper pennington and mr. ralph curtis_ chapter xxii. venice. the years eighteen seventy-nine and eighteen eighty continued _his work in venice--pastels and his methods--etchings-- printing--japanese method of drawing--water-colours and paintings_ chapter xxiii. back in london. the years eighteen eighty and eighteen eighty-one _return to london and sudden appearance at fine art society's-- prints venice plates--exhibition of "the twelve" at the fine art society's--exhibition of venice pastels--decoration of gallery-- bewilderment of critics and public--death of his mother--"the piper papers"--the portrait of his mother exhibited in philadelphia--etchings begin to be shown in america_ chapter xxiv. the joy of life. the years eighteen eighty-one to eighteen eighty-four _takes a studio at no. tite street--his "joyousness"-- letters to the press--his "amazing" costumes--portrait of lady meux--his other sitters--mrs. marzetti's account of the painting of "the blue girl"--lady archibald campbell's reminiscences of the sittings for her portrait--portrait of m. duret--"the paddon papers"--second exhibition of venice etchings at the fine art society's--excitement it created-- the "carlyle" at edinburgh--proposal to buy it for scottish national portrait gallery--comes to nothing--whistler involved in a church congress_ chapter xxv. among friends. the years eighteen eighty-one to eighteen eighty-seven _joseph pennell meets whistler--first impressions--the "sarasate"--sir seymour haden_ chapter xxvi. among friends. the years eighteen eighty-one to eighteen eighty-seven continued _whistler's friends in tite street--sir rennell rodd's reminiscences--oscar wilde--reasons for the friendship and for its short duration--the followers--their devotion and their absurdities--mr. harper pennington's reminiscences of whistler in london_ chapter xxvii. the studio in the fulham road. the years eighteen eighty-five to eighteen eighty-seven _whistler moves to the fulham road--description of the new studio--pictures in progress--mr. william m. chase, his portrait and his reminiscences--plans to visit america_ chapter xxviii. the "ten o'clock." the years eighteen eighty-four to eighteen eighty-eight _whistler writes the "ten o'clock"--proposes to publish it as article--then to deliver it as lecture in ireland--exhibition of his work in dublin--arranges with mrs. d'oyly carte for lecture in london--the "ten o'clock" given at prince's hall-- the audience--the critics--analysis of the "ten o'clock"--its delivery in other places--its publication--swinburne's criticism_ chapter xxix. the british artists. the rise. the years eighteen eighty-four to eighteen eighty-six _approached by the british artists--elected a member of the society--his position as artist at this period and the position of the society--reasons for the invitation and his acceptance-- his interest in the society--his contributions to its exhibitions--the graham sale--publication of twenty-six etchings by dowdeswell's--exhibition of notes, harmonies, nocturnes, at dowdeswell's--elected president of the british artists_ chapter xxx. the british artists. the fall. the years eighteen eighty-six to eighteen eighty-eight _whistler as president--his decoration of the gallery and hanging of pictures--indignation by members--visit of the prince of wales--growing dissatisfaction in the society--jubilee of queen victoria--whistler's congratulatory address--british artists made a royal society--dissatisfaction becomes open warfare--the crisis--wyke bayliss elected president-- whistler's resignation_ chapter xxxi. marriage. the year eighteen eighty-eight _whistler's wedding--reception at the tower house--his wife-- his devotion--influence of marriage_ chapter xxxii. the work of the years eighteen eighty to eighteen ninety-two _water-colours--etchings, belgian and dutch--exhibition of dutch etchings--lithographs_ chapter xxxiii. honours. exhibitions. new interests. the years eighteen eighty-nine to eighteen ninety-one _honours from paris, munich, and amsterdam--dinner to whistler --paris universal exhibition of --exhibition of whistler's work in queen square--moves to no. cheyne walk--m. harry's impressions of the house--portrait of the comte de montesquiou --w. e. henley and "national observer"--new friends_ chapter xxxiv. "the gentle art." the year eighteen ninety _whistler collects his letters and writings--work begun by mr. sheridan ford--mr. j. mclure hamilton's account--action at antwerp to suppress ford's edition--mr. heinemann publishes "the gentle art" for whistler--summary of the book--period of unimportant quarrels_ chapter xxxv. the turn of the tide. the years eighteen ninety-one and eighteen ninety-two _the "carlyle" bought by the glasgow corporation--"the mother" bought for the luxembourg--the exhibition at the goupil gallery --mr. d. croal thomson's account--success of the exhibition-- the catalogue--commissions--demand for his pictures--mr. h. s. theobald's reminiscences--whistler's indignation at sale of early pictures by old friends--invited to show in chicago exhibition--not known at r.a.--decorations for boston public library_ chapter xxxvi. paris. the years eighteen ninety-two and eighteen ninety-three _whistler goes to paris to live--joseph pennell with him there in and --lithographs--colour work--studio in rue notre-dame-des-champs--apartment in the rue du bac--etchings printed--afternoons in the garden--day at fontainebleau-- wills signed--mr. e. g. kennedy's portrait--rioting in the latin quarter_ chapter xxxvii. paris continued. the years eighteen ninety-three and eighteen ninety-four _whistler's friends in paris--mr. macmonnies', mr. walter gay's, and mr. alexander harrison's reminiscences-- mr. a. j. eddy's portrait--portraits of women begun_ chapter xxxviii. trials and griefs. the years eighteen ninety-four to eighteen ninety-six _du maurier's "trilby"--apology--mrs. whistler's illness-- the eden trial--whistler challenges george moore--in lyme regis and london--portraits in lithography--mr. s. r. crockett's account of the sittings for his portrait--mrs. whistler's death--new will_ chapter xxxix. alone. the year eighteen ninety-six _work and little journeys--mr. e. g. kennedy's reminiscences-- evenings with whistler--visit to the national gallery-- whistler goes to live with mr. heinemann at whitehall court-- mr. henry savage landor--mr. edmund heinemann--eden affair-- last meeting with sir seymour haden--christmas at bournemouth_ chapter xl. the lithograph case. the years eighteen ninety-six and eighteen ninety-seven _mr. walter sickert's article in "saturday review"--joseph pennell sues him for libel--whistler the principal witness-- in the witness-box under cross-examination--verdict-- whistler's pleasure_ chapter xli. the end of the eden case. the years eighteen ninety-seven to eighteen ninety-nine _m. boldini's portrait of whistler--in london--visits to hampton--journey to dieppe--the eden case in the cour de cassation--whistler's triumph--"the baronet and the butterfly" --the whistler syndicate: company of the butterfly_ chapter xlii. between london and paris. the years eighteen ninety-seven to nineteen hundred _illness in paris--fever of work--portrait of mr. george vanderbilt--other portraits and models--pictures of children-- nudes--pastels--spanish war--journey to italy--"best man" at mr. heinemann's wedding--impressions of rome--mr. kerr-lawson's account of his stay in florence--winter in paris--loneliness-- meetings with old student friends--dr. whistler's death--dinner at mr. heinemann's--mr. arthur symon's impressions of whistler_ chapter xliii. the international. the years eighteen ninety-seven to nineteen hundred and three _the international society of sculptors, painters, and gravers-- whistler elected first president--activity of his interest-- first exhibition at knightsbridge--second exhibition-- difficulties--third exhibition at the royal institute-- exhibitions on the continent and in america--whistler's presidency ends only with death_ chapter xliv. the acadÉmie carmen. the years eighteen ninety-eight to nineteen hundred and one _school opened in the passage stanislas, paris--whistler and mr. frederick macmonnies propose to visit it--history of the school written, at whistler's request, by mrs. clifford addams --her account--his methods--his advice--his palette-- misunderstandings--mrs. addam apprenticed to whistler--men's class discontinued--third year begins with woman's class alone --school closed--mr. clifford addams made an apprentice-- mr. macmonnies' account--comparison with other art schools_ chapter xlv. the beginning of the end. the year nineteen hundred _whistler authorises j. and e. r. pennell to write his life and mr. heinemann to publish it--whistler gives his reminiscences--photographing began in studio--paris universal exhibition--interest in the boer war--the "island" and the "islanders"--the pekin massacre and blue pots--domberg--visit to ireland--sir walter armstrong's reminiscences of whistler in dublin--irritation with critics of his pictures in paris-- increasing ill-health in the autumn--serious illness--starts for the south_ chapter xlvi. in search of health. the years nineteen hundred and one and nineteen hundred and two _tangier--algiers--marseilles--ajaccio--winter in corsica-- visit from mr. heinemann--dominoes--rests for the first time-- return to london in the spring--work in the summer--illness in the autumn--bath--no. cheyne walk--annoyances--journey to holland--dangerous illness in the hague--mr. g. sauter's account of his last visit to franz hals at haarlem_ chapter xlvii. the end. the years nineteen hundred and two and nineteen hundred and three _return to no. cheyne walk--illness--gradual decline--work-- portraits--prints--exhibition of silver--degree of ll.d. from glasgow university--st. louis exposition--worries--last weeks-- death--funeral--grave_ appendix index list of illustrations _g., after an etching, refers to the grolier club catalogue of whistler's etchings, _ _w., after a lithograph, refers to mr. t. r. way's catalogue of whistler's lithographs, _ page portrait of the artist (_by himself_) (_oil_) _frontispiece_ in the george mcculloch collection portrait of whistler as a boy (_by sir william boxall_) (_oil_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art the two brothers (_miniature_) lent by miss emma palmer; formerly in the possession of mrs. george d. stanton and miss emma w. palmer bibi lalouette (_etching. g. _) street at saverne (_etching. g. _) from the "french set" la mÈre gÉrard (_oil_) in the possession of william heinemann head of an old man smoking (_oil_) in the musée du luxembourg portrait of whistler (_etching. g. _) sketches of the journey to alsace (_pen drawings_) portrait of whistler in the big hat (_oil_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art drouet (_etching. g. _) at the piano (_oil_) in the possession of edmund davis, esq. wapping (_oil_) in the possession of mrs. hutton the thames in ice, the twenty-fifth of december (_oil_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art rotherhithe (_etching. g. _) from the "sixteen etchings" the music room--harmony in green and rose (_oil_) in the possession of colonel f. hecker annie haden (_dry-point. g. _) the white girl--symphony in white, no. i. (_oil_) in the possession of j. h. whittemore, esq. jo (_dry-point. g. _) the blue wave (_oil_) in the possession of a. a. pope, esq. the forge (_dry-point. g. _) from the "sixteen etchings" the morning before the massacre of st. bartholomew (_wood-engraving from "once a week," vol vii. p. _) the last of old westminster (_oil_) in the possession of a. a. pope, esq. portrait of whistler (_by himself_) (_chalk drawing_) formerly in the possession of thomas way, esq. weary (_dry-point. g. _) study in chalk for the same formerly in the possession of b. b. macgeorge, esq. the lange leizen of the six marks--purple and rose (_oil_) in the j. g. johnson collection, philadelphia the balcony--harmony in flesh-colour and green (_oil_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art la princesse du pays de la porcelaine--rose and silver (_oil_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art variations in violet and green (_oil_) in the possession of sir charles mclaren, bart. the little white girl--symphony in white, no. ii. (_oil_) in the national gallery, london portrait of dr. whistler (_oil_) in the possession of burton mansfield, esq. valparaiso bay--nocturne: blue and gold (_oil_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art symphony in white, no. iii. (_oil_) in the possession of edmund davis, esq. whistler's table palette (_photograph_) in the possession of mrs. newmarch sea beach with figures (_study for the six projects_) (_pastel_) the three figures--pink and grey (_oil_) in the possession of alfred chapman, esq. nocturne--blue and green (_oil_) in the national gallery, london nocturne--blue and silver (_oil_) in the possession of the executors of mrs. f. r. leyland the mother--arrangement in grey and black (_oil_) in the musée du luxembourg portrait of thomas carlyle--arrangement in grey and black, no ii. (_oil_) in the corporation art gallery, glasgow portrait of cicely henrietta, miss alexander--harmony in grey and green (_oil_) in the national gallery, london portrait of f. r. leyland--arrangement in black (_oil_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art portrait of mrs. f. r. leyland--symphony in flesh-colour and pink (_oil_) in the possession of h. c. finck, esq. portrait of miss leyland (_pastel_) in the possession of the executors of mrs. f. r. leyland portrait of mrs. louis huth--arrangement in black, no. ii. (_oil_) in the possession of the executors of the family fanny leyland (_study for the etching. g. _) (_pencil sketch_) formerly in the possession of j. h. wrenn, esq. whistler in his studio (_oil_) in the chicago art institute maud standing (_etching. g. _) portrait of sir henry irving as philip ii. of spain--arrangement in black, no. iii. (_oil_) in the metropolitan museum, new york portrait of sir henry cole (_oil_) (_destroyed_) from a photograph lent by pickford r. waller, esq. portrait of miss rosa corder--arrangement in black and brown (_oil_) in the possession of h. c. finck, esq. the peacock room (_photograph_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art drawing in wash for "a catalogue of blue and white nankin porcelain, forming the collection of sir henry thompson." london: ellis and white. in the possession of pickford r. waller, esq. study (_lithotint. w. _) from a print lent by t. r. way, esq. tall bridge (_lithograph. w. _) from a print lent by t. r. way, esq. nocturne (_lithotint. w. _) from "notes" published by goupil from a print lent by t. r. way, esq. old battersea bridge--nocturne in blue and gold (_oil_) in the national gallery of british art, tate gallery the falling rocket--nocturne in black and gold (_oil_) in the possession of mrs. s. untermeyer the bridge (_etching. g. _) from the "second venice set" by the permission of messrs. dowdeswell the doorway (_etching. g. _) from the "first venice set" by the permission of the fine art society the beggars (_etching. g. _) from the "first venice set" by permission of the fine art society the rialto (_etching. g. _) from the "second venice set" by the permission of messrs. dowdeswell portraits of maud (_oil_) (_destroyed_) from photographs lent by pickford r. waller, esq. jubilee memorial from the society of british artists to queen victoria, (_illumination_) in the royal collection at windsor portrait of lady meux--harmony in pink and grey (_oil_) in the possession of h. c. finck, esq. the salute, venice (_water-colour_) in the possession of b. b. macgeorge, esq. the yellow buskin--arrangement in black (_oil_) in the wilstach collection, memorial hall, philadelphia portrait of m. thÉodore duret--arrangement in flesh-colour and pink (_oil_) in the metropolitan museum, new york portrait of pablo sarasate--arrangement in black (_oil_) in the carnegie institute, pittsburgh portrait of lady colin campbell--harmony in white and ivory (_oil_) (_destroyed_) from a photograph lent by pickford r. waller, esq. annabel lee (_pastel_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art the convalescent (_water-colour_) in the possession of dr. j. w. macintyre portrait of miss kinsella--the iris, rose and green (_oil_) in the possession of miss kinsella whistler at his printing press in the studio, rue notre-dame-des-champs, paris from a photograph by m. dornac illustration to little johannes portrait of a lady (_drawings on wood_) in the pennell collection, library of congress, washington water-colour landscape loaned by mrs. mortimer menpes the master smith of lyme regis (_oil_) in the boston museum of fine arts the smith, passage du dragon (_lithograph. w. _) portrait of mrs. a. j. cassatt the beach (_water-colour_) in the possession of mrs. knowles shop window at dieppe (_water-colour_) the thames (_lithotint. w. _) firelight--joseph pennell, no. i. (_lithograph. w. _) from "lithography and lithographers" by the permission of t. fisher unwin, esq. study in brown (_oil_) in the possession of the baroness de meyer study of the nude (_pen drawing_) in the possession of william heinemann, esq. the little blue bonnet--blue and coral (_oil_) formerly in the possession of wm. heinemann, esq. rose and gold--little lady sophie of soho (_oil_) in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art model with flowers (_pastel_) in the possession of j. p. heseltine, esq. girl with a red feather (_oil_) in the possession of the executors of j. staats forbes a freshening breeze (_oil_) in the possession of j. s. ure, esq. lillie in our alley--brown and gold (_oil_) in the possession of j. j. cowan, esq. the sea, pourville (_oil_) in the possession of a. a. hannay, esq. the coast of brittany--alone with the tide (_oil_) formerly in the possession of ross winans, esq. the fur jacket--arrangement in black and brown (_oil_) _picture in progress:_ from a photograph lent by pickford r. waller, esq. _completed picture:_ in the worcester museum, massachusetts portrait of mrs. walter sickert in the possession of mrs. cobden-sanderson portrait of miss woakes in the possession of messrs. knvedler and co. the chelsea girl portrait of e. s. kennedy in the metropolitan museum, new york gallery at the london memorial exhibition gallery at the boston memorial exhibition whistler's grave in chiswick cemetery adjoining chiswick churchyard monument in whistler's memory at the united states military academy at west point chapter i: the whistler family. the years eighteen thirty-four to eighteen forty-three. james abbott mcneill whistler was born on july , , at lowell, massachusetts, in the united states of america. whistler, in the witness-box during the suit he brought against ruskin in , gave st. petersburg as his birthplace--or the reporters did--and he never denied it. baltimore was given by m. théodore duret in the _gazette des beaux-arts_ (april ), and m. duret's mistake, since corrected by him, has been many times repeated. the late mrs. livermore, who knew whistler as a child at lowell, asked him why he did not contradict this. his answer was: "if any one likes to think i was born in baltimore, why should i deny it? it is of no consequence to me!" on entering west point he stated that massachusetts was his place of birth. but, as a rule, he met any one indiscreet enough to question him on the subject as he did the american who came up to him one evening in the carlton hotel, london, and by way of introduction said, "you know, mr. whistler, we were both born at lowell, and at very much the same time. there is only the difference of a year--you are sixty-seven and i am sixty-eight." "and i told him," said whistler, from whom we had the story the next day, "'very charming! and so you are sixty-eight and were born at lowell! most interesting, no doubt, and as you please! but i shall be born when and where i want, and i do not choose to be born at lowell, and i refuse to be sixty-seven!'" whistler was christened at st. anne's church, lowell, november , . "baptized, james abbott, infant son of george washington and anna mathilda whistler: sponsors, the parents. signed, t. edson"; so it is recorded in the church register. he was named after james abbott, of detroit, who had married his father's elder sister, sarah whistler. mcneill (his mother's name) was added shortly after he entered west point. abbott he always kept for legal and official documents. but, eventually, he dropped it for other purposes, "j. a. m." pleasing him no better than "j. a. w.," and he signed himself "james mcneill whistler" or "j. m. n. whistler." the rev. rose fuller whistler, in his _annals of an english family_ ( ), says that john le wistler de westhannye ( - ) was the founder of the family. most of the whistlers lived in goring, whitchurch, or oxford, and are buried in many a church and churchyard of the thames valley. brasses and tablets to the memory of several are in the church of st. mary at goring: one to "hugh whistler, the son of master john whistler of goring, who departed this life the day of januarie anno dominie being aged years"--an amazing statement, but there it is in the parish church durable as brass can make it, and it would have delighted whistler. the solemn antiquary, however, has decided that the is only a badly cut . this remarkable ancestor figures as a family ghost at gatehampton, where he is said to have been buried with his money, and there he still walks, guarding the treasure he lived so many years to gather. the position of the whistlers entitled them to a coat of arms, described in the harleian mss., no. , and thus in _gwillim's heraldry_: "gules, five mascles, in bend between two talbots passant argent"; and the motto "forward." the men were mostly soldiers and parsons. a few made names for themselves. the shield of gabriel whistler, of combe, sussex, is one of six in king's college chapel, cambridge. anthony whistler, poet, friend of shenstone, belonged to the whitchurch family. dr. daniel whistler ( - ), of the essex branch, was a fellow of merton, an original fellow of the royal society, a member and afterwards president of the college of physicians, friend of evelyn and pepys. evelyn often met him in "select companie" at supper, and once "din'd at dr. whistler's at the physicians colledge," and found him not only learned but "the most facetious man in nature," the legitimate ancestor of whistler. pepys, who also dined and supped with him many times, pronounced him "good company and a very ingenious man." he fell under a cloud with the officials of the college of physicians, and his portrait has been consigned to a back stairway of the hall in pall mall. in the seventeenth century ralph whistler, of the salters' company, london, was one of the colonisers of ulster, and francis whistler was a settler of virginia. when whistler saw the name "francis whistler, gentleman," in the _genesis of the united states_, he said to us, "there is an ancestor, with the hall-mark f.f.v. [first families of virginia], who tickles my american snobbery, and washes out the taint of lowell." the american whistlers are descended from john whistler of the irish branch. in his youth he ran away and enlisted. sir kensington whistler, an english cousin, was an officer in the same regiment, and objected to having a relative in the ranks. john whistler, therefore, was transferred to another regiment starting for the american colonies. he arrived in time to surrender at saratoga with burgoyne. he went back to england, received his discharge, eloped with anna, daughter of sir edward bishop or bischopp, and, returning to america, settled at hagerstown, maryland. he again enlisted, this time in the united states army. he rose to the brevet rank of major and served in the war of against great britain. he was stationed at fort dearborn, which he helped to build, and fort wayne. according to mr. a. j. eddy (_recollections and impressions of whistler_), whistler once said to a visitor from chicago: "chicago, dear me, what a wonderful place! i really ought to visit it some day; for, you know, my grandfather founded the city, and my uncle was the last commander of fort dearborn!" in , upon the reduction of the army, major john whistler was retired. he died in , at bellefontaine, missouri. of his fifteen children, three sons are remembered as soldiers, and three daughters married army officers. george washington, the most distinguished son, was the father of james abbott mcneill whistler. george washington whistler was born on may , , at fort wayne. he was educated mostly at newport, kentucky; and from kentucky, when a little over fourteen, he received his appointment to the military academy, west point, where he is remembered for his gaiety. mr. george l. vose, his biographer, and others tell stories that might have been told of his son. one is of some breach of discipline, for which he was made to bestride a gun on the campus. as he sat there he saw, coming towards him, the miss swift he was before long to marry. out came his handkerchief, and, leaning over the gun, he set to work cleaning it so carefully that he was "honoured, not disgraced," in her eyes. he was number one in drawing, and his playing on the flute won him the nickname "pipes." he graduated on july , . he was appointed second lieutenant in the first artillery, and, in , first lieutenant in the second artillery. he served on topographical duty, and for a few months he was assistant professor at the academy. there was not much fighting for american officers of his generation. but railroads were being built, and so few were the civil engineers that west point graduates were allowed by government to work for private corporations, and he was employed on the baltimore and ohio railroad, the baltimore and susquehanna, and the paterson and hudson river. for the baltimore and ohio he went to england in to examine the railway system. he was building the line from stonington to providence, when, in , he resigned from the army with the rank of major, to carry on his profession as a civil engineer. in the meanwhile major whistler had married twice. his first wife was mary swift, daughter of dr. foster swift, of the united states army. she left three children: george, who became a well known civil engineer; joseph, who died in youth; and deborah, lady haden. his second wife was anna mathilda mcneill, daughter of dr. charles donald mcneill, of wilmington, north carolina, and sister of william gibbs mcneill, a west point classmate and an associate in major whistler's engineering work. the mcneills were descended from the mcneills of skye. their chief, donald, emigrated with sixty of his clan to north carolina in , and bought land on cape fear river. charles donald mcneill was his grandson and was twice married; his second wife, martha kingsley, was the mother of anna mathilda mcneill, who became mrs. george washington whistler. the mcneills were related by marriage to the fairfaxes and other virginia families, and whistler, on his mother's side, was the southerner he loved to call himself. in major whistler accepted the post of engineer of locks and canals at lowell, and to this town he brought his family. there, in the paul moody house on worthen street, james mcneill whistler was born, and the house is now a whistler memorial museum. two years later the second son, william gibbs mcneill, was born. in major whistler moved to stonington, connecticut, and miss emma w. palmer and mrs. dr. stanton, his wife's nieces, still remember his "pleasant house on main street." it is said that he had a chaise fitted with car wheels in which he and his family drove every sunday on the tracks to church at westerly; also that a locomotive named whistler was in use on the road until recently. he was consulted in regard to many new lines, among them the western railroad of massachusetts, for which he was consulting engineer from to . in he was made chief engineer, and he removed to springfield, massachusetts, where he lived in the ethan chapin homestead on chestnut street, north of edward street. a third son, kirk booth, born at stonington in , died at springfield in , and here a fourth son, charles donald, was born in . in nicholas i. of russia sent a commission, under colonel melnikoff, round europe and america to find the best method and the best man to build a railroad from st. petersburg to moscow, and they chose the american, george washington whistler. the honour was great and the salary large, , dollars a year. he accepted, and started for russia in midsummer , leaving his family at stonington. the life of a child, for the first nine years or so, is not of much interest to any save his parents. an idea can be formed of whistler's early training. his father was a west point man, with all that is fine in the west point tradition. mrs. whistler, described as "one of the saints upon earth," was as strict as a puritan. dr. whistler--willie--often told his wife of the dread with which he and jimmie looked forward to saturday afternoon, with its overhauling of clothes, emptying of pockets, washing of heads, putting away of toys, and preparation for sunday, when the bible was the only book they read. of the facts of his childhood there are few to record. mrs. livermore remembered his baby beauty, so great that her father used to say "it was enough to make sir joshua reynolds come out of his grave and paint jemmie asleep." in his younger years he was called jimmie, jemmie, jamie, james, and jim, and we use these names as we have found them in the letters written to us and the books quoted. mrs. livermore dwelt on the child's beautiful hands, "which belong to so many of the whistlers." when she returned to lowell in from the manor school at york, england, mrs. whistler's son, willie, had just been born: "as soon as mrs. whistler was strong enough, she sent for me to go and see her boy, and i did see her and her baby in bed! and then i asked, 'where is jemmie, of whom i have heard so much?' she replied, 'he was in the room a short time since, and i think he must be here still.' so i went softly about the room till i saw a very small form prostrate and at full length on the shelf under the dressing-table, and i took hold of an arm and a leg and placed him on my knee, and then said, 'what were you doing, dear, under the table?' 'i'se drawrin',' and in one very beautiful little hand he held the paper, in the other the pencil." the pencil drawings which we have seen, owned by mrs. livermore, are curiously firm and strong for a child of four. chapter ii: in russia. the years eighteen forty-three to eighteen forty-nine. in , when whistler was nine years old, major whistler sent for his wife and children. mrs. whistler sailed from boston in the _arcadia_, august , , taking with her deborah and the three boys, james, william, and charles. george whistler, major whistler's eldest son, and her "good maid mary" went with them. the story of their journey and their life in russia is recorded in mrs. whistler's journal. they arrived at liverpool on the th of the same month. mrs. whistler's two half-sisters, mrs. william winstanley and miss alicia mcneill, lived at preston, and there they stayed a fortnight. then, after a few days in london, they sailed for hamburg. there was no railroad from hamburg, so they drove by carriage to lübeck, by stage to travemünde, where they took the steamer _alexandra_ for st. petersburg, and george whistler left them. between travemünde and cronstadt, charles, the youngest child, fell ill of seasickness and died within a day. there was just time to bury him at cronstadt--temporarily; he was afterwards buried at stonington--and his death saddened the meeting between major whistler and his wife and children. mrs. whistler objected to hotels and to boarding, and a house was found in the galernaya. she did her best to make it not only a comfortable, but an american home, for major whistler's attachment to his native land, she said, was so strong as to be almost a religious sentiment. their food was american, american holidays were kept in american fashion. many of their friends were americans. major whistler was nominally consulting engineer to colonel melnikoff, but actually in charge of the construction and equipment of the line, and as the material was supplied by the firm of winans of baltimore, mr. winans and his partners, messrs. harrison and eastwick, of philadelphia, were in russia with their families. mrs. whistler's strictness did not mean opposition to pleasure. yet at times she became afraid that her boys were not "keeping to the straight and narrow way." there were evenings of illuminations that put off bedtime; there were afternoons of skating and coasting; christmas gaieties, with christmas dinners of roast turkey and pumpkin pie; visits to american friends; parties at home, when the two boys "behaved like gentlemen, and their father commended them upon it"; there were presents of guns from the father, returning from long absences on the road; there were dancing lessons, which jemmie would have done anything rather than miss. whistler as a boy was exactly what those who knew him as a man would expect; gay and bright, absorbed in his work when that work was art, brave and fearless, selfish if selfishness is another name for ambition, considerate and kindly, above all to his mother. the boy, like the man, was delightful to those who understood him; "startling," "alarming," to those who did not. mrs. whistler's journal soon becomes extremely interesting: _march _ ( ). "i must not omit recording our visiting the gastinnoi to-day in anticipation of palm sunday. our two boys were most excited, jemmie's animation roused the wonder of many, for even in crowds here such decorum and gravity prevails that it must be surprising when there is any ebullition of joy." _april _ ( ). "jemmie is confined to his bed with a mustard plaster on his throat; he has been very poorly since the thawing season commenced, soon becoming overheated, takes cold; when he complained of pain first in his shoulder, then in his side, my fears of a return of last year's attack made me tremble, and when i gaze upon his pale face sleeping, contrasted to willie's round cheeks, my heart is full; our dear james said to me the other day, so touchingly, 'oh, i am sorry the emperor ever asked father to come to russia, but if i had the boys here, i should not feel so impatient to get back to stonington,' yet i cannot think the climate here affects his health; willie never was as stout in his native land, and james looks better than when we brought him here. at eight o'clock i am often at my reading or sewing without a candle, and i cannot persuade james to put up his drawing and go to bed while it is light." the journal explains that whistler as a boy suffered from severe rheumatic attacks that added to the weakness of his heart, the eventual cause of his death. major and mrs. whistler rented a country-house on the peterhoff road in the spring of . there is an account of a day at tsarskoé seló, when colonel todd, american minister to russia, showed them the palace: _may _ ( ). "rode to the station, and took the cars upon the only railroad in russia, which took us the twenty versts to the pretty town. it would be ungenerous in me to remark how inferior the railroad, cars, &c., seemed to us americans. the boys were delighted with it all. jemmie wished he could stay to examine the fine pictures and know who painted them, but as i returned through the grounds i asked him if he should wish to be a grand duke and own it all for playgrounds: he decided there could be no freedom with a footman at his heels." _july _ ( ). "... i went with willie to do some shopping in the nevski. he is rather less excitable than jemmie, and therefore more tractable. they each can make their wants known in russ., but i prefer this gentlest of my dear boys to go with me. we had hardly reached home when a tremendous shower came up, and jemmie and a friend, who had been out in a boat on a canal at the end of our avenue, got well drenched. just as we were seated at tea, a carriage drove up and mr. miller entered, introducing sir william allen, the great scotch artist, of whom we have heard lately, who has come to st. petersburg to revive on canvas some of the most striking events from the life of peter the great. they had been to the monastery to listen to the chanting at vespers in the greek chapel. mr. miller congratulated his companion on being in the nick of time for our excellent home-made bread and fresh butter, but, above all, the refreshment of a good cup of tea. his chat then turned upon the subject of sir william allen's painting of peter the great teaching the mujiks to make ships. this made jemmie's eyes express so much interest that his love for art was discovered, and sir william must needs see his attempts. when my boys had said good night, the great artist remarked to me, 'your little boy has uncommon genius, but do not urge him beyond his inclination.' i told him his gift had only been cultivated as an amusement, and that i was obliged to interfere, or his application would confine him more than we approved." of these attempts there remain few examples. one is the portrait of his aunt alicia mcneill, who visited them in russia in , sent to mrs. palmer at stonington, with the inscription: "james to aunt kate." in a letter to mrs. livermore, written in french, when he was ten or eleven, "he enclosed some pretty pen-and-ink drawings, each on a separate bit of paper, and each surrounded by a frame of his own designing." he told us he could remember wonderful things he had done during the years in russia. once, he said, when on a holiday in london with his father, he was not well, and was given a hot foot-bath, and he could never forget how he sat looking at his foot, and then got paper and colours and set to work to make a study of it, "and in russia," he added, "i was always doing that sort of thing." _july _ ( ). "i have given my boys holiday to celebrate the independence of their country.... this morning jemmie began relating anecdotes from the life of charles xii. of sweden, and rather upbraided me that i could not let him do as that monarch had done at seven years old--manage a horse! i should have been at a loss how to afford my boys a holiday, with a military parade to-day, but there was an encampment of cadets, about two estates off, and they went with colonel t.'s sons to see them." _july _ ( ). "a poem selected by my darling jamie and put under my plate at the breakfast-table, as a surprise on his tenth birthday. i shall copy it, that he may be reminded of his happy childhood when perhaps his grateful mother is not with him." _august _ ( ). "... jemmie is writing a note to his swedish tutor on his birthday. jemmie loves him sincerely and gratefully. i suppose his partiality to this swede makes him espouse his country's cause and admire the qualities of charles xii. so greatly to the prejudice of peter the great. he has been quite enthusiastic while reading the life of this king of sweden, this summer, and too willing to excuse his errors." _august _ ( ). "i wish i could describe the gardens at peterhoff where we were invited to drive to-day. the fountains are, perhaps, the finest in the world. the water descends in sheets over steps, all the heathen deities presiding. jemmie was delighted with the figure of samson tearing open the jaws of the lion, from which ascends a _jet d'eau_ one hundred feet.... there are some fine pictures, but peter's own paintings of the feathered race ought to be most highly prized, though our jemmie was so saucy as to laugh at them." _august _ ( ). "i avail myself of col. todd's invitation to visit tsarskoé seló to-day with aunt alicia, deborah, and the two dear boys, who are always so delighted at these little excursions.... my little jemmie's heart was made sad by discovering swords which had been taken in the battle between peter and charles xii., for he knew, from their rich hilts set in pearls and precious stones, that they must have belonged to noble swedes. 'oh!' he exclaimed, 'i'd rather have one of these than all the other things in the armoury! how beautiful they are!'... i was somewhat annoyed that col. todd had deemed it necessary to have a dinner party for us. "... the colonel proposed the emperor's health in champagne, which not even the russian general, who declined wine, could refuse, and even i put my glass to my lips, which so encouraged my little boys that they presented their glasses to be filled, and, forgetting at their little side-table the guests at ours, called out aloud, _'santé à l'empereur!'_ the captain clapped his hands with delight, and afterwards addressed them in french. all at the table laughed and called the boys '_bons sujets_.'" they were at st. petersburg again in september, preparing their christmas gifts for america. whistler, sending one to his cousin amos palmer, wrote in an outburst of patriotism that "the english were going to america to be licked by the yankees": it was at the time of the disagreement over oregon territory. in another letter he gives the fourth of july as his birthday. _ash wednesday_ ( ). "i avail myself of this lenten season to have my boys every morning before breakfast recite a verse from the psalms, and i, who wish to encourage them, am ready with my response. how very thankful i shall be when the weather moderates so that jemmie's long imprisonment may end, and willie have his dear brother with him in the skating grounds and ice-hills. here comes my good boy jemmie now, with his history in hand to read to me, as he does every afternoon, as we fear they may lose their own language in other tongues, and thus i gain a half-hour's enjoyment by hearing them read daily." _april _ ( ). "our boys have left the breakfast table before eight o'clock to trundle their new hoops on the quai with their governess, and have brought home such bright red cheeks and buoyant spirits to enter the schoolroom with and to gladden my eyes. jemmie began his course of drawing lessons at the academy of fine arts just on the opposite side of the neva, exactly fronting my bedroom window. he is entered at the second room. there are two higher, and he fears he shall not reach them, because the officer who is still to continue his private lesson at home is a pupil himself in the highest, and jemmie looks up to him with all the reverence an artist merits. he seems greatly to enjoy going to his class, and yesterday had to go by the bridge on account of the ice, and felt very important when he told me he had to give the isvóshtclók fifteen copecks silver instead of ten." in the archives of the imperial academy of science there is a "list of scholars of the imperial academy of fine arts," and in this and the "class journal of the inspector" for james whistler is entered as "belonging to the drawing class, heads from nature." in he was on march examined and passed as first in his class, the number being twenty-eight. from to professors vistelious and voivov were the masters of the life class. on may ( ) there was a review of troops in st. petersburg, and the whistlers saw it from a window in the prince of oldenburg's palace. "jemmie's eagerness to attain all his desires for information and his fearlessness often makes him offend, and it makes him appear less amiable than he really is. the officers, however, seemed to find amusement in his remarks in french or english as they accosted him. they were soon informed of his military ardour, and that he hoped to serve his country. england? no, indeed! russia, then? no, no; america, of course!" _may _ ( ). "the boys are in the schoolroom now, reading the roman history in french to m. lamartine, promising themselves the pleasure of reviewing the pictures at the academy of fine arts at noon, which they have enjoyed almost every day this week. it is the triennial exhibition, and we like them to become familiar with the subjects of the modern artists, and to james especially it is the greatest treat we could offer. i went last wednesday with whistler and was highly gratified. i should like to take some of the russian scenes so faithfully portrayed to show in my native land. my james had described a boy's portrait said to be _his_ likeness, and although the eyes were black and the curls darker, we found it so like him that his father said he would be glad to buy it, but its frame would only correspond with the furniture of a palace. the boy is taken in a white shirt with crimped frill, open at the throat; it is half-length, and no other garment could show off the glow of the brunette complexion so finely." _may _ ( ). "yesterday the empress was welcomed back to st. petersburg. last night the illumination which my boys had been eagerly expecting took place. when at . they came in, jamie expressed such an eager desire that i would allow him to be my escort just to take a peep at the nevski that i could not deny him. the effect of the light from vasili ostrow was very beautiful, and as we drove along the quai, the flowers and decorations of large mansions were, i thought, even more tasteful. we had to fall into a line of carriages in the isaac square to enter that broadway, and just then a shout from the populace announced to us that the empress was passing. i was terrified lest the poles of their carriage should run into our backs, or that some horses might take fright or bite us, we were so close, but jamie laughed heartily and aloud at my timidity. he behaved like a man. with one arm he guarded me, and with the other kept the animals at a proper distance; and, i must confess, brilliant as the spectacle was, _my_ great pleasure was derived from the conduct of my dear and manly boy." [illustration: portrait of whistler as a boy by sir william boxall in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art (_see page _)] [illustration: the two brothers. miniature lent by miss emma palmer formerly in the possession of mrs. george d. stanton and miss emma w. palmer artist unknown (_see page _)] _july _ ( ). "my two boys found much amusement in propelling themselves on the drawbridge to and from the fancy island in the pond at mrs. g.'s, where we went to spend the day; they find it such a treat to be in the country, and just run wild, chasing butterflies and picking the wild flowers so abundant. but nothing gave them so much pleasure as their th july, spent with their little american friends at alexandrovsky, the eastwicks; the fireworks, percussion caps, muskets, horseback riding, &c., made them think it the most delightful place in russia. in some way james caught cold, and his throat was so inflamed that leeches were applied, and he has been in consequence confined to his room.... we spend our mornings in reading, drawing, &c. then the boys take their row with good john across the neva, to the morning bath, and in the cool of the afternoon a drive to the island, or a range in the summer gardens, or a row on the river." _july _ ( ). "last wednesday they had another long day in the country, and got themselves into much mischief. they had at last broken the ropes of the drawbridge, by which it was drawn to and from the island, and there were my wild boys prisoners on it. i thought it best for them to remain so, as they were so unruly, but the good-natured dominie was pressed into their service, and swimming to their rescue, ere i could interfere; jemmie was so drenched by his efforts that dear mrs. r. took him away to her room to coax him to lie down awhile and to rub him dry, lest his sore throat return to tell a tale of disobedience. "... on thursday there was another grand celebration of the birthday of the grand duchess olga. i gladly gave mary permission to take the boys in our carriage.... they were gone so long that i grew anxious about them, but finally they arrived very tired, and poor mary said she never wanted to go in such a crowd again. james had protected her as well as he was able, but she was glad to get home safely. the boys, however, enjoyed it immensely, as they saw all the imperial family within arm's length, as they alighted from their pony chaises to enter the new palace.... we were invited to go to the new palace, and went immediately to the apartment occupied by his lamented daughter. on one side is the lovely picture painted by buloff, so like her in life and health, though taken after death, as representing her spirit passing upwards to the palace above the blue sky. she wears her imperial robes, with a crown on her head; at the back of the crown is a halo of glory--the stars surround her as she passes through them. no wonder james should have thought this picture the most interesting of all the works of art around us." in the autumn of major whistler "placed the boys, as boarders, at m. jourdan's school. my dear boys almost daily exchange _billet-doux_ with mother, since their absence of a week at a time from home. james reported everything 'first-rate,' even to brown bread and salt for breakfast, and greens for dinner, and both forbore to speak of homesickness, and welcome, indeed, were they on their first saturday at home, when they opened the front door and called 'mother, mother!' as they rushed in all in a glow, and they looked almost handsome in their new round black cloth caps, set to one side of their cropped heads, and the tight school uniform of grey trousers and black jacket makes them appear taller and straighter; jamie found the new suit too tight for his drawing lesson, so he sacrificed vanity to comfort, and was not diverted from his two hours' drawing by the other boys' frolics, which argues well for his determination to improve, as he promised his father. how i enjoyed having them back and listening to all their chat about their school--they seemed to enjoy their nice home tea. when it came time for them to go back, willie broke down and told me all he had suffered from homesickness, and when i talked to my more manly james, i unfortunately said, 'you do not know what he feels.' then jamie's wounded love melted him into tears, as he said, 'oh! mother, you think i don't miss being away from home!' he brushed away the shower with the back of his hand as if he was afraid of being seen weeping. dear boys, may they never miss me as i miss them!" shortly after this, mrs. whistler's youngest son, john bouttatz, born in the summer of , died. _november _ ( ). "jamie was kept in until night last saturday, and made to write a given portion of french over twenty-five times as a punishment for stopping to talk to a classmate after their recitation, instead of marching back to his seat according to order--poor fellow, it was rather severe when he had looked only for rewards during the week; as he had not had one mark of disapprobation in all that time, and was so much elated by his number of good balls for perfect recitations that he forgot disobedience of orders is a capital offence under military discipline. he lost his drawing lesson, and made us all unhappy at home. we tried to keep his dinner hot, but his appetite had forsaken him, although only having eaten a penny roll since breakfast--he dashed the tears of vexation from his eyes at losing his drawing lesson, but his cheerfulness was soon restored and we had our usual pleasant evening." _january _ ( ). "it is three weeks this afternoon since the dear boys came home from school to spend the russian christmas and holidays, and it seems not probable that they shall return again to m. jourdan's this winter. james was drooping from the close confinement, and for two days was confined to his bed. then willie was taken. they are quite recovered now, and skate almost daily on the neva, and jamie often crosses on the ice to the academy of fine arts to spend an hour or two." _january _ ( ). "jamie was taken ill with a rheumatic attack soon after this, and i have had my hands full, for he has suffered much with pain and weariness, but he is gradually convalescing, and to-day he was able to walk across the floor; he has been allowed to amuse himself with his pencil, while i read to him; he has not taken a dose of medicine during the attack, but great care was necessary in his diet." _february _ ( ). "never shall i cease to record with deep gratitude dear jamie's unmurmuring submission these last six weeks. he still cannot wear jacket or trousers, as the blistering still continues on his chest. what a blessing is such a contented temper as his, so grateful for every kindness, and rarely complains. he is now enjoying a huge volume of hogarth's engravings, so famous in the gallery of artists. we put the immense book on the bed, and draw the great easy-chair close up, so that he can feast upon it without fatigue. he said, while so engaged yesterday, 'oh, how i wish i were well; i want so to show these engravings to my drawing-master; it is not everyone who has a chance of seeing hogarth's own engravings of his originals,' and then added, in his own happy way, 'and if i had not been ill, mother, perhaps no one would have thought of showing them to me.'" from this time until his death, whistler maintained that hogarth was the greatest english artist, and never lost an opportunity of saying so. his long illness in is therefore memorable as the beginning of his love of hogarth and also as a proof of his early appreciation of great art. curiously, in his mother's diary there is no mention of the hermitage, nor in his talks with us did he ever refer to it and to the pictures there by velasquez, the artist he later grew to admire so enormously. _march _ ( ). "after many postponements, the emperor finally inspected the railroad ... and many of the court were invited. the day after his visit ... the court held a _levée_, my husband was invited; when he arrived was summoned to a private audience in an inner apartment; the emperor met him with marked kindness, kissed him on each side his face, and hung an ornament suspended by a scarlet ribbon around his neck, saying the emperor thus conferred upon him the order of st. anne. whistler, as such honours are new to republicans, was somewhat abashed, but when he returned with the court to the large circle in the outer room, he was congratulated by the officers generally." it is said that when major whistler was asked to wear the russian uniform he refused. the decoration he could not decline. whistler told us that the emperor was most impressed with the way his father met every difficulty. when major whistler asked the czar how the line should be built, showing him the map of the country between st. petersburg and moscow, the czar, as everybody now knows, took a ruler, drew a straight line from one city to the other, and the railroad follows that ruled line. but everybody does not know that when the rolling stock was ready it was found to have been made of a different gauge from the rails. the people who supplied it demanded to be paid. major whistler not only refused, but burnt it, and took the responsibility. mrs. whistler and the three children spent the summer of in england, where major whistler joined them. they visited their relations, and before their return deborah was married. she had met seymour haden, a young surgeon, while staying with friends, the chapmans, at preston. _october _ ( ). "deborah's wedding day. bright and pleasant. james the only groomsman, and very proud of the honour." the next summer ( ) mrs. whistler went back to england. jamie had had another of his bad attacks of rheumatic fever, cholera broke out in st. petersburg; "at its very name," she wrote, "my heart failed me." on july she left for london with her boys. jamie was better, and anxious to make a portrait of a young hindu aboard. _july _ ( ). "_shanklin, isle of wight._ this is willie's twelfth birthday and has been devoted to his pleasure; poor jamie was envious that he could not bathe with us in the beautiful summer sea, for the doctors think the bracing air as much as he can bear; we three had a seaside ramble and then returned to rest at our cottage. i plied the needle, while my boys amused themselves, willie in making wax flowers and jemmie in drawing." _monday_ [_no date_]. "this day being especially fine, mrs. p. took the boys on a pedestrian excursion along the shore to culver cliffs. in the hope that jamie might finish his sketch of cook's castle, we started the next day after an early dinner, taking a donkey with us for fear of fatigue for james or deborah.... we availed ourselves of a lovely bright morning to take a drive, said to be the most charming in england, along the south coast of the isle as far as 'black gang chine,' where we alighted at the inn. jamie flew off like a sea-fowl, his sketch-book in hand, and when i finally found him, he was seated on the red sandy beach, down, down, down, where it was with difficulty willie and i followed him. he was attempting the sketch of the waterfall and cavern up the side of the precipice; he came back later, glowing with the exercise of climbing, with sketch-book in hand, and laughing at being 'jacky last,' as we were all assembled for our drive back." james did not return with mrs. whistler. it was feared his health would not stand another russian winter. he stayed with the hadens at sloane street, and studied with a clergyman who had one other pupil. it was then that boxall, commissioned by major whistler, painted his portrait, "when he was fourteen years old," mrs. thynne, his niece, says. mr. alan s. cole, c.b., recalls that "whistler, as early as , was staying with the hadens in sloane street, and went to one or two children's parties given by the old dilkes. to these also went my elder sisters and miss thackeray and so met jimmy. seymour haden was our family doctor--with whose family ours was intimate--very much on account of the early relations between my father, his brothers, and seymour haden, dating from schooldays at christ's hospital." major whistler, through the summer of , continued his work, though cholera raged. in november he was attacked. he recovered, but his health was shaken; he overtaxed his strength, and on april , , he died: the immediate cause heart trouble, which his son inherited. he had been employed or consulted also in the building of the iron roof of the riding house at st. petersburg and the iron bridge over the neva, in the improvement of the dvina at archangel, and the fortifications, the arsenal, and the docks at cronstadt. he was buried in evergreen cemetery, stonington, with three of his sons, and a monument was erected to his memory by his fellow officers in greenwood cemetery, brooklyn. the emperor suggested, whistler told us, that the boys should be educated in the school for court pages. but mrs. whistler determined to take them home, and the emperor sent her in his state barge to the baltic. she went to the hadens, where she found james grown tall and strong. in london they forgot for a moment their sorrow in their visit to the royal academy ( ), in trafalgar square, where boxall's portrait of james was exhibited. a short visit to preston followed, the two boys carried off by "kind aunt alicia" to edinburgh and glasgow, and then they met in liverpool. economy made mrs. whistler hesitate between steamer and sailing-packet, but, by the advice of george whistler, she took the steamer _america_, july , , for new york, where they arrived on august , at once going by boat to stonington. chapter iii: schooldays in pomfret. the years eighteen forty-nine to eighteen fifty-one. "the boys were brought up like little princes until their father's death, which changed everything," miss emma w. palmer writes us. major whistler's salary was large, so were his expenses; we have never heard there was a pension. he left his family comparatively poor--fifteen hundred dollars a year. mrs. whistler would have preferred to stay at stonington, but for her two sons' sake she went to pomfret, connecticut, where there was a good school, christ church hall. the principal was rev. dr. roswell park, a west point engineer before he became parson and school teacher. at pomfret mrs. whistler made herself a home. she could only afford part of an old farmhouse, and she felt keenly the discomfort for her boys. yet she kept up the old discipline. on christmas day she wrote to her mother that they had been busy all morning bringing in wood and listing draughty doors, though she allowed them to lighten their task by hanging up evergreens and to sweeten it with "stuart's candy." after a snowstorm, they had, like other boys, to shovel paths, and all the while they had to study. "jimmie was still an excitable spirit with little perseverance," she wrote; however, she would not faint but labour, and "i urged them on daily, and could see already their exertions to overcome habits of indolence." the bible was read and the two boys were made to recite a verse every morning before breakfast. miss palmer, their schoolmate, during the winter of , remembers that mrs. whistler "was very strict with them," and describes whistler at this period as "tall and slight, with a pensive, delicate face, shaded by soft brown curls, one lock of which fell over his forehead.... he had a somewhat foreign appearance and manner, which, aided by his natural abilities, made him very charming even at that age.... he was one of the sweetest, loveliest boys i ever met, and was a great favourite." the deepest impression he left at pomfret was as a draughtsman. he made caricatures and illustrations to the books he read, portraits of his friends, and landscapes. many of his sketches have been preserved. the late mrs. louise chandler moulton, also one of his schoolmates, describes him as "a man as fascinating as he was great, with a charm which from the very beginning everyone who knew him recognised." whistler told us that he used to walk to school with her, carrying her books and basket, and she wrote us: "he was very attentive and kind; full of fun in those days. the master of the school--rev. dr. roswell park--was one of the stiffest and most precise of clergymen, and dressed the part. one day whistler came to school with a high, stiff collar and a tie precisely copied from dr. park's. of course, the schoolroom was full of suppressed laughter. the reverend gentleman was very angry, but he could hardly take open notice of an offence of that sort. so he bottled up his wrath, but when jimmy--as we used to call him in those schooldays--gave him some trifling cause of offence, the rev. dr. went for him with a ferrule. the school was in two divisions--the girls sitting on one side of the large hall, and the boys on the other. jimmy, pursued by the dr. and the ferrule, went round back of the girls' row, and threw himself down on the floor, and the dr. followed him and whacked him, more, i think, to jimmy's amusement than to his discomfort." mrs. moulton had further recollections of the maps he drew, which "were at once the pride and the envy of all the rest of us--they were so perfect, so delicate, so exquisitely dainty in workmanship." the work done at pomfret by whistler which we have seen does not strike us as remarkable. it has its historic importance, but shows no greater evidence of genius than the early work of any great artist. chapter iv: west point. the years eighteen fifty-one to eighteen fifty-four. though whistler's mother was proud of his drawing, she did not see in art a career for him. she thought he had inherited a profession more distinguished. many whistlers and mcneills had been soldiers. west point had made of them men--americans. west point must do the same for him. through the influence of george whistler with daniel webster, he was appointed cadet at large by president fillmore, and on july , , after two years at pomfret school, within ten days of his seventeenth birthday, he entered the united states military academy, west point, where colonel robert e. lee was commandant. whistler was not made for the army any more than giotto for tuscan pastures, or corot for a paris bonnet shop. it was inevitable that he should fail. yet his three years at west point were an experience he would not have missed. [illustration: bibi lalouette etching. g. (_see page _)] [illustration: street at saverne etching. g. (_see page _)] the record sent to us from west point by colonel c. w. larned is: "he entered july , , under the name of james a. whistler; aged sixteen years and eleven months. he was appointed at large.... at the end of his second year, in , he was absent with leave on account of ill-health. on june , , he was discharged from the academy for deficiency in chemistry. at that time he stood at the head of his class in drawing and no. in philosophy, the total number in the class being ." the professor of drawing was robert w. weir. mr. j. alden weir, his son, remembers, "as a boy, my father showing me his work, which at that time hung in what was known as the gallery of the drawing academy. there were about ten works by him framed. from the start he showed evidences of a talent which later proved to be unique in those fine and rare qualities hard to be understood by the majority." brigadier-general alexander s. webb, one of whistler's classmates, says: "in the art class one day, while whistler was busy over an india-ink drawing of a french peasant girl, weir walked, as usual, from desk to desk, examining the pupils' work. after looking over whistler's shoulder he stepped back to his own desk, filled his brush with india-ink [general webb says he can see him now, rubbing the colour on the slab], and approached whistler with a view of correcting some of the lines in the latter's drawing. when whistler saw him coming, he raised his hands as if to ward off the strokes of his brush, and called out, 'oh, don't, sir, don't! you'll spoil it!'" mr. william m. chase told the story to whistler and asked if there was any truth in it. "well, you know he would have!" said whistler. colonel larned writes us: "i have here two drawings made by whistler in his course of instruction in drawing, one of which is a water-colour copy of a coloured print, without special merit, and much touched up by professor weir, as was his wont; another, a pen-and-ink copy also of a colour print, quite brilliant and masterful in execution, which i presented to the officers' mess. the colour sketch bears the ear-marks all over it of weir's retouching. it was his habit to touch up all water-colours of the cadets for the examination exhibition, and i don't believe whistler at that time had any such facility in colour work as is indicated in this drawing. with my knowledge of my predecessor's practice, which we instructors follow to the best of our ability, i have always been suspicious of its integrity. at the same time whistler was head in drawing, and it may be that weir forbore in his case. the pen-and-ink, however, must have been his own interpretation of a colour lithograph, and shows such facility that it makes me hesitate. "whistler did another water-colour of a monk seated at a table by a window writing. this is also a copy of an old print which was used by weir through successive classes. i think it was ---- who saw the thing and wrote a lot of tommy-rot and hi-falutin about it and whistler's satiric genius, and his introduction in the monk's face of that of his room-mate, assuming it to have been an original production. as a matter of fact i have copies of the same thing by cadets in the gallery, all touched up by weir, and i fancy about as good as whistler's." of these west point drawings, copies probably of lithographs by nash or haghe, only the pen drawing gives any promise. the water-colour is worthless. the pen drawing has in it the beginning of the handling of his etchings. five drawings, four of _an hour in the life of a cadet_ in pen-and-ink, and one of _an encampment_ in wash, have lately been found at west point. the cadet drawings are far the best of his early work that we have seen. the _century magazine_ published (march ) a lithograph, called _the song of the graduates_, said to be by whistler. it is evident, however, that if whistler did make the sketch, it was re-drawn by a professional lithographer at sarony's, who printed it. the _century_ also published (september ) a wood-engraving of some class function for which he is given the credit as draughtsman and engraver. but the work is that of a professional wood-engraver and could not have been done by whistler at any period of his life. the attribution of these published prints to him is altogether unjustified. of his other studies there is little to record. this is colonel larned's account of his failure in chemistry: "whistler said: 'had silicon been a gas, i would have been a major-general.' he was called up for examination in chemistry ... and given silicon to discuss. he began: 'i am required to discuss the subject of silicon. silicon is a gas.' 'that will do, mr. whistler,' and he retired quickly to private life." according to colonel larned, whistler then appealed to general lee, but lee answered, "i can only regret that one so capable of doing well should so have neglected himself, and must suffer the penalty." another story is of an examination in history. "what!" said his examiner, "you do not know the date of the battle of buena vista? suppose you were to go out to dinner, and the company began to talk of the mexican war, and you, a west point man, were asked the date of the battle, what would you do?" "do," said whistler, "why, i should refuse to associate with people who could talk of such things at dinner!" whistler's horsemanship was little better. it was not unusual, general webb says, for him at cavalry drill to go sliding over his horse's head. then major sackett, the commander, would call out: "mr. whistler, aren't you a little ahead of the squad?" whistler said to us major sackett's remark was: "mr. whistler, i am pleased to see you for once at the head of your class!" "but i did it gracefully," he insisted. there are traditions of his fall when trotting in his first mounted drill, and the astonishment of the dragoon who ran to carry him off to hospital, when he rose unhurt with the complaint that he didn't "see how any man could keep a horse for amusement." once whistler had to ride a horse called "quaker." "dragoon, what horse is this?" "'quaker,'" said the soldier "well, he's no friend!" said whistler. his observance of the regulations was often as bad as his horsemanship, and his excuses worse. general ruggles, a classmate, tells of the discovery of a pair of boots which were against the regulations, and of his writing a long explanation, winding up with the argument that, as this demerit added but a little to the whole number, "what boots it?" general langdon writes us: "the widow of a colonel thompson occupied a set of officer's quarters at the 'point,' and, to eke out her pension, was allowed to take ten or twelve cadets to board. very soon after his admission to the academy whistler discovered that the fare of the cadets was not of his taste, and he applied for permission to take his meals at mrs. thompson's. now, though her house was in the row of officers' quarters and the nearest to the cadet barracks, it was 'off cadet limits,' except for the boarders at meals. one evening, long after supper, whistler was discovered by mrs. thompson, leaning over her fence, talking with her pretty french maid. mrs. thompson inquired his business there. whistler replied: 'i am looking for my cat!' it was well known that cadets were not allowed to keep cats, dogs, or other beasts. the old lady nearly had a fit. as soon as she could recover she gasped out: 'young man, go 'way!' and sent her pretty maid indoors. of course, whistler took no more meals at mrs. thompson's, but in the mess hall, where the fare in those days was far from inviting." whistler told sir rennell rodd another story: "the cadets were out early one morning, engaged in surveying. it was cold and raw, and jimmy, finding a line of deep ditch through which he could make a retiring movement, got back into college and his warm quarters unperceived. by accident a roll-call was held that morning. cadet whistler not being present, a report was drawn up and his name was sent to the commanding officer as absent from parade without the knowledge or permission of his instructor. the report was shown him, and he said to the instructor: 'have i your permission to speak?' 'speak on, cadet whistler.' 'you have reported me, sir, for being absent from parade without the knowledge or permission of my instructor. well, now, if i was absent without your knowledge or permission, how did you know i was absent?' they got into terms after that, and the incident closed." the stories of whistler at west point might be multiplied. many have been published. the few we tell show that at the military academy, as everywhere, he left his mark. we have a stronger proof in the letters written to us by officers who were his fellow cadets. it is half a century since they and whistler were together, and, with one exception, they never saw him in later years, yet their memory of him is fresh. general d. mcn. gregg and general c. b. comstock, his classmates, general loomis l. langdon, general henry l. abbott, general oliver otis howard, general g. w. c. lee, in the class before his, have sent us their recollections. these distinguished officers agree in their affection and their appreciation of him. he was "a vivacious and likeable little fellow," general comstock says, and we get a picture of him, short and slight, not over military in his bearing, somewhat foreign in appearance, near-sighted, and with thick, black curls that won him the name of "curly." others remember his wit, his pranks, his fondness for cooking and the excellence of his dishes; his excursions "after taps," for buckwheat cakes and oysters or ice-cream and soda-water to joe's, and, for heavier fare, to benny haven's a mile away, a serious offence; they remember his indifference to discipline, and the number of his demerits, which they excuse as "not indicating any moral obliquity," but due to such harmless faults as "lates," "absences," "clothing out of order"; most of all, they remember his drawings--his caricatures of the cadets, the board of visitors, the masters, his sketches scribbled over his text-books, his illustrations to dickens, dumas, victor hugo. general langdon recalls a picture that he and whistler painted together. whistler gave these drawings away, and many have been preserved. even the cover of a geometry book, on which he sketched and noted bets with general webb, was kept by his room-mate, frederick l. childs--_les enfants_ whistler called him. [illustration: la mÈre gÉrard oil in the possession of william heinemann, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: head of an old man smoking oil in the musée du luxembourg (_see page _)] whistler looked back to west point with equal affection. he failed, but west point was the basis of his code of conduct. as a "west point man" he met every emergency, and his bearing, his carriage, showed the influence of those days when he liked to look back to himself "very dandy in grey." for the discipline, the tradition, the tone of the academy he never lost his respect. he knew what it could do in making men of boys. "from the moment we came," he said to us, "we were united states officers, not schoolboys, not college students. we were ruled, not by little school or college rules, but by our honour, by our deference to the unwritten law of tradition." he resented the least innovation that threatened the hold of this tradition over the cadets. "to take a cadet into court was destruction to the _morale_ of west point; it was such a disgrace to offend against the unwritten laws that the offender's career was ruined." in the most trivial matters he deplored deviation from the old standard. that was the reason of his indignation when he heard that cadets were playing football, and, worse, playing against college teams; to put themselves on the level of students "was beneath the dignity of officers of the united states." during our war with spain, and the boers' struggle in south africa, there was not an event, not a rumour, that he did not refer to west point and its code. the spanish war, though, "no doubt, we should never have gone into it, was the most wonderful, the most beautiful war since louis xiv. never in modern times has there been such a war; it was conducted on correct west point principles, with the most perfect courtesy and dignity on both sides, and the greatest chivalry." when he came back to london from corsica in , and was telling us of the people and the way they clung to old custom and ceremonial, he said that he had found "the roman tradition almost as fine as the west point tradition," and this was a concession. we never knew him to show the least desire to return to lowell or stonington, to pomfret or washington, but he said, "if i ever make the journey to america, i will go straight to baltimore, then to west point, and then sail for england again." one evening we asked him to meet an officer just from west point. his interest could not have been keener, had he left the academy the day before. he wanted to know about everything--the buildings, the life, the discipline. he deplored every innovation, always, above all, football: west point to him was in danger when cadets could stoop to dispute "with college students for a dirty ball kicked round a muddy field." this was the shadow thrown over his pleasure when he heard of the pride the academy took in claiming him, of his reputation there, of his drawings hanging in places of honour. it was the military side of the academy, however, that stirred him to enthusiasm. his face fell when, asking the officer, who, like major whistler, was in the artillery, "professor of tactics, i suppose?" the officer answered, "no, of french." he showed his affection for the military academy by sending to the library a copy of _whistler_ v. _ruskin: art and art critics_, with autograph notes and on the title-page the inscription: "from an old cadet whose pride it is to remember his west point days." this is signed with the butterfly, and newspaper cuttings about the trial are pasted at the end of the book. the authorities at west point have honoured him by placing a memorial tablet, one of st. gaudens' last works, in the library of the academy, and at the suggestion of the late major zalinski, a number of american artists have given a series of works to the academy in his honour. in this collection whistler alone is not represented, we believe. but it needs more than respect and love for the military academy to make a soldier, and whistler, like poe before him, was an alien at west point. it was no question of the number of his demerits, or of his ignorance of chemistry and history; he had something else to do in life. chapter v: the coast survey. the years eighteen fifty-four and eighteen fifty-five. when whistler left west point in he had not only to face the disappointment of his mother, but to find another career. the plan now was to apprentice him to mr. winans, in the locomotive works at baltimore. mr. frederick b. miles writes us: "it was in that i first met whistler in baltimore, after he left west point, at the house of thomas winans, who had returned from russia. i was apprenticed to the loco. works of old mr. ross winans, thomas winans' father. his elder brother, george whistler, was a friend of my family; had been superintendent of the new york and new haven railroad, and had married miss julia winans, sister of thomas winans, then came into the loco. works as partner and superintendent. i was in the drawing-room under him. "whistler was staying with tom winans or his brother, george whistler. they were perplexed at his 'flightiness'--wanted him to enter the loco. works. his younger brother william was an apprentice along with me. but jem never really worked. he spent much of his several short stays and two long ones in baltimore loitering about the drawing-office and shops, and at my drawing-desk in tom winans' house. we all had boards with paper, carefully stretched, which jem would cover with sketches, to our great disgust, obliging us to stretch fresh ones, but we loved him all the same. he would also ruin all our best pencils, sketching not only on the paper, but also on the smoothly finished wooden backs of the drawing-boards, which, i think, he preferred to the paper side. we kept some of the sketches for a long time. i had a beauty--a cavalier in a dungeon cell, with one small window high up. in all his work at that time he was very rembrandtesque, but, of course, only amateurish. nevertheless he was studying and working out effects." whistler saw enough of the locomotive works to know that he did not want to be an apprentice, and it was not long before he left baltimore for washington. to us he spoke as if he had gone to washington straight from west point. he was with us on the evening of september , , after the news had come from the transvaal of president kruger's flight, and our talking of it led him back to west point, and so to the story of his days in the service of the government. he followed the boer war with intense interest: "the boers are as fine as the southerners--their fighting would be no discredit to west point," and he was indignant with us for looking upon kruger's flight as diplomatically a blunder. "diplomatically it was right, you know, the one thing kruger should have done, just as, in that other amazing campaign, flight had been the one thing for jefferson davis, a southern gentleman who had the code. i shall always remember the courtesy shown me by jefferson davis, through whom i got my appointment in the coast survey. "it was after my little difference with the professor of chemistry at west point. the professor would not agree with me that silicon was a gas, but declared it was a metal; and as we could come to no agreement in the matter, it was suggested--all in the most courteous and correct west point way--that perhaps i had better leave the academy. well, you know, it was not a moment for the return of the prodigal to his family or for any slaying of fatted calves. i had to work, and i went to washington. there i called at once on jefferson davis, who was secretary of war--a west point man like myself. he was most charming, and i--well, from my russian cradle, i had an idea of things, and the interview was in every way correct, conducted on both sides with the utmost dignity and elegance. i explained my unfortunate difference with the professor of chemistry--represented that the question was one of no vital importance, while on all really important questions i had carried off more than the necessary marks. my explanation made, i suggested that i should be reinstated at west point, in which case, as far as i was concerned, silicon should remain a metal. the secretary, courteous to the end, promised to consider the matter, and named a day for a second interview. "before i went back to the secretary of war, i called on the secretary of the navy, also a southerner, james c. dobbin, of south carolina, suggesting that i should have an appointment in the navy. the secretary objected that i was too young. in the confidence of youth, i said age should be no objection; i 'could be entered at the naval academy, and the three years at west point could count at annapolis.' the secretary was interested, for he, too, had a sense of things. he regretted, with gravity, the impossibility. but something impressed him; for, later, he reserved one of six appointments he had to make in the marines and offered it to me. in the meantime, i had returned to the secretary of war, who had decided that it was impossible to meet my wishes in the matter of west point; west point discipline had to be observed, and if one cadet were reinstated, a dozen others who had tumbled out after me would have to be reinstated too. but if i would call on captain benham, of the coast survey, a post might be waiting for me there." captain benham was a friend of his father, and whistler was engaged in the drawing division of the united states coast and geodetic survey, at the salary of a dollar and a half a day. this appointment he received on november , , six months after he had left west point. there was nothing to appeal to him in the routine of the office. what he had to do he did, but with no enthusiasm. "i was apt to be late, i was so busy socially. i lived in a small room, but it was amazing how i was asked and went everywhere--to balls, to the legations, to all that was going on. labouchere, an _attaché_ at the british legation, has never ceased to talk of me, so gay, and, when i had not a dress suit, pinning up the tails of my frock-coat, and turning it into a dress-coat for the occasion. shocking!" mr. labouchere has told this story in a letter to us: "i did know whistler very well in america about fifty years ago. but he was then a young man at washington, who--if i remember rightly--had not been able to pass his examination at west point and had given no indication of his future fame. he was rather hard up, i take it, for i remember that he pinned back the skirt of a frock-coat to make it pass as a dress-coat at evening parties. washington was then a small place compared with what it is now, where everybody--so to say--knew everybody, and the social parties were of a simple character. this is really all that i remember of whistler at that time, except that he was thought witty and paradoxically amusing!" but long before something in his dress drew attention to him. though he was never seen in the high-standing collar and silk hat of the time, some remember him in a scotch cap and a plaid shawl thrown over his shoulder, then the fashion; others recall a slouch hat and cloak, his coat, unbuttoned, showing his waistcoat; while traditions of his social charm come from every side. adjutant-general breck is responsible for the story of whistler having invited the russian minister--others say the _chargé d'affaires_--edward de stoeckl, to dine with him, carrying the minister off in his own carriage, doing the marketing by the way, and cooking the dinner before his guest in the room where he lived. and it has been said that never was the minister entertained by so brilliant a host while in washington. mr. john ross key, a fellow draughtsman in the coast survey, says that this room was in a house in thirteenth street, near pennsylvania avenue, and that whistler usually dined in a restaurant close by, kept by a mr. and mrs. a. gautier. according to the late a. lindenkohl, another fellow draughtsman, whistler also lived for a while in a house at the north-east corner of e. and twelfth streets, a two-storey brick building which has lately been pulled down. he occupied a plainly but comfortably furnished room, for which he paid ten dollars a month. the office records show that he worked six and one-half days in january, and five and three-fourths in february. he usually arrived late, but, he would say, it was not his fault. "i was not too late; the office opened too early." lindenkohl described an effort to reform him: "captain benham took occasion to tell me that he felt great interest in the young man, not only on account of his talents, but also on account of his father, and he told me that he would be highly pleased if i could induce whistler to be more regular in his attendance. 'call at his lodgings on your way to the office,' he said, 'and see if you can't bring him along.' "accordingly, one morning, i called at whistler's lodgings at half-past eight. no doubt he felt somewhat astonished, but received me with the greatest _bonhomie_ invited me to make myself at home, and promised to make all possible haste to comply with my wishes. nevertheless he proceeded with the greatest deliberation to rise from his couch and put himself into shape for the street and prepare his breakfast, which consisted of a cup of strong coffee brewed in a steam-tight french machine, then a novelty, and also insisted upon treating me with a cup. we made no extra haste on our way to the office, which we reached about half-past ten--an hour and a half after time. i did not repeat the experiment." lindenkohl said that whistler spoke of paris with enthusiasm, that he sketched sometimes from the office windows, and made studies of people, taking the greatest interest in the arrangement and folds of their clothes. whistler showed him "several examples done with the brush in sepia, in old french or spanish styles," whatever this may mean. mr. key describes whistler as "painfully near-sighted," and always sketching, even on the walls as he went downstairs. though in washington only a few months, he left the impression of his indifference to work except in the one form in which work interested him--his art. if nothing else were known of this period, it would be memorable for the technical instruction he received in the coast survey. his work was the drawing and etching of government topographical plans and maps, which have to be made with the utmost accuracy and sharpness of line. his training, therefore, was in the hardest and most perfect school of etching in the world, a fact never until now pointed out. the work was dull, mechanical, and he sometimes relieved the dullness by filling empty spaces on the plates with sketches. captain benham told him plainly, whistler said, that he was not there to spoil government coppers, and ordered all the designs to be immediately erased. this was whistler's account to us. but mr. key, in his _recollections of whistler_, published in the _century magazine_ (april ), says that these sketches were confined to the experimental plate given to whistler, as to all beginners, and he adds that he watched whistler through the process of preparing and etching it. only two plates have been as yet, or probably ever will be, found in the office that can be attributed, wholly or in part, to whistler: the _coast survey, no. _, and _coast survey, no. _, _anacapa island_, first described in the _catalogue of the whistler memorial exhibition_ in london, . the _coast survey, no. _, is a plate giving two parallel views, one above the other, of the coast-line of a rocky shore, the lower showing a small town in a deep bay with, below them both to the extreme left, a profile map. whistler was unable to confine himself to the government requirements. in the lower design, chimneys are gaily smoking, and on the upper part of the plate several figures, obviously reminiscent of prints and drawings, are sketched: an old peasant woman; a man in a tall italian hat, or, mr. key says, whistler himself as a spanish hidalgo; another in a sicilian bonnet; a mother and child in an oval, meant for mrs. partington and ike, as mr. key remembers; a battered french soldier; a bearded monk in a cowl. the drawing is schoolboy-like, though it shows certain observation, but the biting is remarkable. the little figures are bitten as well and in the same way as _la vieille aux loques_, etched three or four years afterwards; to look at them is to know that whistler was a consummate etcher technically before he left the coast survey. there is no advance in the biting of the french series. so astonishing is this mastery that, if the technique in some of the french plates were not similar, one would be tempted to doubt whether whistler etched those little figures in washington, especially as the plate is unsigned. the plate escaped by chance. mr. key, to whom it was given to clean off and use again, asked to keep it, and it was sold to him for the price of old copper. it is still in existence. the second plate, _anacapa island_, is signed with several names. whistler etched the view of the eastern extremity of the island, for many lines on the rocky shore resemble the work in the french series, and also the two flights of birds which, though they enliven the design, have no topographical value. this plate was finished and published in the report of the superintendent of the coast survey, . there is said to be a third plate, a chart of the delaware river, but we have never seen it and can find out nothing about it. one other record of whistler at the coast survey remains, but of a different kind. he liked to tell the story. captain benham used to come and look through the small magnifying glass each draughtsman in this department had to work with. one day, whistler etched a little devil on the glass, and captain benham looked through it at the plate. whistler described himself to us, lying full length on a sort of mattress or trestle, so as not to touch the copper. but he saw captain benham give a jump. the captain said nothing. he pocketed the glass, and that was all whistler heard of it until many years afterwards, when, one day, an old gentleman appeared at his studio in paris, and by way of introduction took from his watch-chain a tiny magnifying glass, and asked whistler to look through it--"and," he said, "well--we recognised each other perfectly." captain benham is dead, but his son, major h. h. benham, writes us: "i have heard my father tell the story. he was very fond of whistler, and thought most highly of his great ability--or rather genius, i should say." genius like whistler's served him as little at the coast survey as at west point. he resigned in february . his brother, george whistler, and mr. winans tried again to make him enter the locomotive works in baltimore. he was twenty-one, old enough to insist upon what he wanted; and what he wanted was to study art. already at st. petersburg his ability had struck his mother's friends. at pomfret and west point he owed to his drawing whatever distinction he had attained. and there had been things done outside of school and academy and office work, he told us--"portraits of my cousin annie denny and of tom winans, and many paintings at stonington that stonington people remembered so well they looked me up in paris afterwards. indeed, all the while, ever since my russian days, there had been always the thought of art, and when at last i told the family that i was going to paris, they said nothing. there was no difficulty. they just got me a ticket. i was to have three hundred and fifty dollars (seventy pounds) a year, and my stepbrother, george whistler, who was one of my guardians, sent it to me after that every quarter." chapter vi: student days in the latin quarter. the years eighteen fifty-five to eighteen fifty-nine. whistler arrived in paris in the summer of . there he fell among friends. the american legation was open to the son of major whistler. it was the year of the first international exhibition, and sir henry cole, the british commissioner, the thackerays, and the hadens were there. lady ritchie (miss thackeray) writes: "i wish i had a great deal more to tell you about whistler. i always enjoyed talking to him when we were both hobbledehoys at paris; he used to ask me to dance, and rather to my disappointment perhaps, for, much as i liked talking to him, i preferred dancing, we used to stand out while the rest of the party polkaed and waltzed by there was a certain definite authority in the things he said, even as a boy. i can't remember what they were, but i somehow realised that what he said mattered. when i heard afterwards of his fanciful freaks and quirks, i could not fit them in with my impression of the wise young oracle of my own age." george whistler wanted him to go to the ecole des beaux-arts, but there is no record of his having been admitted. he went instead to the studio gleyre inherited from delaroche and handed on to gérôme, which drew to it all the students who did not crowd to couture and ary scheffer. it was not extraordinary, as some have said, that whistler should have gone there; it would have been extraordinary had he stayed away. he arrived in paris when courbet, slighted at the international, was defying convention with his first show and his first "manifesto," and many of the younger men were throwing over romanticism for realism. whistler found himself more in sympathy with the followers of courbet than with gleyre's pupils, and he became so intimate with the group, among whom were fantin and degas, who studied under lecocq de boisbaudran, that it is sometimes thought he must have worked in that school. but on his arrival in paris the young american had heard neither of lecocq de boisbaudran nor courbet, and gleyre was the popular teacher. fantin-latour and m. duret both have said that they seldom heard whistler speak of gleyre's. when we asked him about it, he only recalled the dignified principles upon which it was conducted. there was not even the case of the _nouveau_ "if a man was a decent fellow, and would sing his song, and take a little chaff, he had no trouble." whistler could remember only one disagreeable incident, in connection, not with a _nouveau_, but an unpopular student who had been there some time and put on airs. one morning, whistler told us, he came to the studio late, "and there were all the students working away very hard, the unpopular one among them, and there, at the end of the room, on the model's stand was an enormous catafalque, the unpopular one's name on it in big letters. and no one said a word. but that killed him. he was never again seen in the place." gleyre was by no means colourless as a teacher. he is remembered as the successor of david and the classicists, but he held theories disquieting to academic minds. he taught that before a picture was begun the colours should be arranged on the palette: in this way, he said, difficulties were overcome, for attention could be given solely to the drawing and modelling on canvas in colour. he taught also that ivory-black is the base of tone. upon this preparation of the palette and this base of black--upon black, "the universal harmoniser"--whistler founded his practice as painter, and as teacher when he visited the pupils of the _académie carmen_.[ ] as he has told us over and over again, his practice of a lifetime was derived from what he learned in the schools, and the master's methods he never abandoned. he only developed methods, misunderstood by those british prophets who have said he had but enough knowledge for his own needs. whistler spoke often to us of the men he met at gleyre's: poynter, du maurier, lamont, joseph rowley. leighton, in , was studying at couture's, developing his theory that "the best dodge is to be a devil of a clever fellow," and mrs. barrington says he made whistler's acquaintance at the time and admired whistler's etchings. but whistler never recalled leighton among his fellow students, though he spoke often with affection of thomas armstrong, who worked at ary scheffer's, and aleco ionides, not an art student but studying, no one seemed to know what or where. this is the group in du maurier's novel of paris student life, _trilby_. it is regrettable that du maurier cherished his petty spite against whistler for twenty-five years and then printed it, and so wrecked what whistler imagined a genuine friendship. lamont, "the laird," rowley, the "taffy," aleco ionides, "the greek," and thomas armstrong are dead. sir edward j. poynter remains, and also mr. luke ionides, who was then often in paris. he has given us his impressions of whistler at the time: "i first knew jimmie whistler in the month of august . my younger brother was with a tutor, and had made friends with jimmie. he was just twenty-one years old, full of life and go, always ready for fun, good-natured and good-tempered. he wore a peculiar straw hat, slightly on the side of his head--it had a low crown and a broad brim." whistler etched himself in this hat, which startled even artists and students, and became a legend in the latin quarter. mr. rowley wrote us: "it was in - that i knew whistler, and a most amusing and eccentric fellow he was, with his long, black, thick, curly hair, and large felt hat with a broad black ribbon round it. i remember on the wall of the _atelier_ was a representation of him, i believe done by du maurier, a sketch of him, then a fainter one, and then merely a note of interrogation--very clever it was and very like the original. in those days he did not work hard, and i have a faint recollection of seeing a head painted by him in deep rembrandtish tones which was thought very good indeed. he was always smoking cigarettes, which he made himself, and his droll sayings caused us no end of fun. i don't think he stayed long in any rooms. one day he told us he had taken a new one, and he was fitting it up _peu à peu_ and he had already got a _tabouret_ and a chair. he told me tales of being invited to a reception at the american minister's, but, as he had no dress suit to go in, he had to borrow poynter's, who fitted him out, all except his boots. so he waited until the guests at the hotel had retired, when he went round the corridors, found what he wanted, and left them at the door on his return. it was more his manner and the clever way he told the tale that amused us.... i have his first twelve etchings, which he did in . i never saw him after i left paris that year. he was never a friend of mine, and it was only occasionally he came to see us at the _atelier_ in notre-dame-des-champs." whistler was intimate for awhile with sir edward j. poynter, who scarcely seems to have understood him. to poynter whistler was the "idle apprentice." in his speech at the first royal academy banquet (april , ) after whistler's death, poynter said: "thrown very intimately in whistler's company in early days, i knew him well when he was a student in paris--that is, if he could be called a student, who, to my knowledge, during the two or three years when i was associated with him, devoted hardly as many weeks to study. his genius, however, found its way in spite of an excess of the natural indolence of disposition and love of pleasure of which a certain share has been the hereditary attribute of the art student." and this bit of insolence was the final tribute to his memory paid by british official art. "whistler was never wholly one of us," armstrong told us. whistler laughed at the englishmen and their ways, above all at the boxing and sparring matches in their studios; "he could not see why they didn't hire the _concierges_ to do their fighting for them." but he understood the french, and they understood him. he could speak their language, he knew murger by heart before he came to paris, and there got to know him personally. mr. ionides says that once, on the _rive gauche_, they met murger, and whistler introduced him. whistler delighted in the humour and picturesqueness of it, and was always quoting murger. the englishmen at gleyre's were puzzled by him and his "no shirt friends" as he called one group of students. every now and then they palled, even on him, and he would then tell the englishmen that he "must give up the 'no shirt' set and begin to live cleanly." the end came when, during an absence from paris, he lent them his room, luxurious from the student standpoint, with a tin bath and blue china. the "no shirt friends" could not change their habits with their surroundings. they made grogs in the bath; they never washed a plate, but when one side was dirty, ate off the other, and whistler had not bargained to make his room the background for a new chapter in the _vie de bohèm_. but this was later, after his adventures with them had been the gossip of the quarter, and had confirmed the diligent english in their impressions of his idleness. among the french he made friends: aubert, the first man he knew in paris, a clerk in the crédit fonder; fantin; legros; becquet, a musician; henri martin, son of the historian; drouet, the sculptor; henry oulevey and ernest delannoy, painters. from fantin we have notes made just before his death. legros prefers to remember nothing, the friendship in his case ending many years ago. drouet and oulevey have told us almost as much as whistler did of those days. when oulevey first knew him, whistler lived in a little hotel in the rue st. sulpice; then he moved to no. rue bourbon-le-château, near st. germain-des-prés; and then to no. rue campagne-première, where drouet had a studio. when remittances ran out, he climbed six flights and shared a garret with delannoy, the ernest of the stories whistler liked best to tell. mr. miles writes us that he came to paris in may , with letters from whistler's family and a draft for him: "at the beaux-arts he was not to be found, but i got his address. he had gone from that. i was in despair, but went to the luxembourg, hoping to find some trace of him. in looking at a picture, i backed into an easel, heard a muttered damn behind me--and there was whistler painting busily. he took me to his quarters in a little back street, up ten flights of stairs--a tiny room with a brick floor, a cot bed, a chair on which were a basin and pitcher--and that was all! we sat on the cot and talked as cheerfully as if in a palace--and he got the draft. 'now,' said he, 'i shall move downstairs, and begin all over again--furnish my room comfortably. you see, i have just eaten my washstand and borrowed a little, hoping the draft would arrive. have been living for some time on my wardrobe. you are just in time; don't know what i should have done, but it often happens this way! i first eat a wardrobe, and then move upstairs a flight or two, but seldom get so high as this before the draft comes!' how true this is i can't say, but it sounds probable and very like whistler at that age--he was then about twenty-three or just twenty-four at most--may . then whistler showed me paris: i met some of his painter friends. i remember only lambert (french) and poynter (english)--now a great swell. whistler didn't care much for poynter at that time, but was witty and amusing, as usual. he dined with me at the best restaurant in paris, which he had not done for a long time, and dined me, the next day, at a little _crémerie_ to show what his usual fare had been, and, indeed, usually was when the time was approaching for the arrival of his allowance." the restaurant to which whistler and his friends usually went was lalouette's, famous for a wonderful burgundy at one franc the bottle, _le cachet vert_, ordered on great occasions, and more famous now for _bibi lalouette_, the subject of the etching, the child of the _patron_. lalouette, like siron at barbizon, understood artists, and gave credit. whistler, when he left paris, owed lalouette three thousand francs, every _sou_ of which was paid, though it took a long time. today, unfortunately, such debts are not always discharged, and the charming system of other days exists no longer. they also dined at madame bachimont's in the place de la sorbonne, a _crémerie_, where whistler once gave a dinner to the american consul, and invited "_canichon_," the daughter of the house, and bought her a new hat for the occasion--a tremendous sensation through the quarter. drouet did not think that whistler worked much. "he was every evening at the students' balls, and never got up until eleven or twelve in the morning, so where was the time for work?" oulevey cannot remember his doing much at gleyre's, or in the luxembourg, or at the louvre, but he was always drawing the people and the scenes of the quarter. in the memory of both his work is overshadowed by his gaiety and his wit, his _blague_, his charm: "_tout à fait un homme à part_," is oulevey's phrase, with "_un coeur de femme et une volonté d'homme_." anything might be expected of him, and drouet added that he was quick to resent an insult, always "_un petit rageur_." george boughton, of a younger generation, when he came to the quarter, found that all stories of larks were put down to whistler. mr. luke ionides writes: "he was a great favourite among us all, and also among the _grisettes_ we used to meet at the gardens where dancing went on. i remember one especially--they called her the _tigresse_. she seemed madly in love with jimmie and would not allow any other woman to talk to him when she was present. she sat to him several times with her curly hair down her back. she had a good voice, and i often thought she had suggested trilby to du maurier." she was the model for _fumette_, eloise, a little _modiste_, who knew musset by heart and recited his verses to whistler, and who one day in a rage tore up, not his etchings as mr. wedmore says, as often, wrongly, but his drawings. whistler was living in the rue st. sulpice, and the day he came home and found the pieces piled high on the table he wept. another figure was _la mère gérard_. she was old and almost blind, was said to have written verse, and so come down in the world. she sold violets and matches at the gate of the luxembourg. she was very paintable as she sat huddled up on the steps, and he got her to pose for him many times. she said she had a tapeworm, and if in the studio he asked her what she would eat or drink, her answer was, "_du lait: il aimé ça!_" they used to chaff him about her in the quarter. once, lalouette invited all his clients to spend a day in the country, and whistler accepted on condition that he could bring _la mère gérard_. she arrived, got up in style, sat at his side in the carriage in which they all drove off, and grew livelier as the day went on. he painted her in the afternoon: the portrait a success, he promised it to her, but first took it back to the studio to finish. then he fell ill and was sent to england. when he returned and saw the portrait again, he thought it too good for _la mère gérard_. he made a copy for the old lady, who saw the difference and was furious. not long after he was walking past the luxembourg with lamont. the old woman, huddled on the steps, did not look up: "_eh bien, madame gérard, comment ça va?_" lamont asked. "_assez bien, monsieur, assez bien._" "_it votre petit américain?_" to which she replied, not looking up, "_lui? on dit qu'il a craqué! encore une espèce de canaille de moins!_" and whistler laughed, and she knew him, as so many were to know him, by that laugh all his life. for ages after, in the quarter, he was called "_espèce de canaille_." and this is where du maurier got the story which he tells in _trilby_--as he got all _trilby_, in fact. another character in the quarter of whom whistler never tired of telling us was the count de montezuma, the delightful, inimitable, impossible, incredible montezuma, not a student, not a painter, but one after whistler's heart. he never had a _sou_, but always cheek enough to see him through. whistler told us of him: "this is the sort of thing he would do, and with an air--amazing! he started one day for charenton on the steamboat, his pockets, as usual, empty, and he was there for as long as he could stay. the boat broke down, a _sergent de ville_ came on board and ordered everybody off except the captain and his family, who happened to be with him. the montezuma paid no attention. with arms crossed, he walked up and down, looking at no one. they waited, but he walked on, up and down, up and down, looking at no one. the _sergent de ville_ repeated, '_tout le monde à terre!_' the montezuma gave no sign. '_et vous?_' the _sergent de ville_ asked at last. '_je suis de la famille!_' said the montezuma. opposite, staring at him, stood the captain with his wife and children. 'you see,' said the _sergent de ville_, 'the captain does not know you, he says you are not of the family. you must go.' '_moi,_' and the montezuma drew himself up proudly, '_moi! je suis le bâtard!_'" [illustration: portrait of whistler etching. g. (_see page _)] [illustration: sketches of the journey to alsace pen drawings (_see page _)] though he was frequently hard up, whistler's income seemed princely to students who lived on nothing. when there was money in his pockets, mr. ionides says, he spent it royally on others. when his pockets were empty, he managed to refill them in a way that still amazes oulevey, who told us of the night when, after the _café_ where they had squandered their last _sous_ on kirsch had closed, he and lambert and whistler adjourned to the halles for supper, ordered the best, and ate it. then he and lambert stayed in the restaurant as hostages, while whistler, at dawn, went off to find the money. he was back when they awoke, with three or four hundred francs in his pocket. he had been to see an american friend, he said, a painter: "and do you know, he had the bad manners to abuse the situation; he insisted on my looking at his pictures!" there were times when everybody failed, even mr. lucas, george whistler's friend, who was living in paris and often came to his rescue. one summer day he pawned his coat when he was penniless and wanted an iced drink in a _buvette_ across the way from his rooms in rue bourbon-le-château. "what would you?" he said. "it is warm!" and for the next two or three days he went in shirt-sleeves. from mr. ionides we have heard how whistler and ernest delannoy carried their straw mattresses to the nearest _mont-de-piété_, stumbling up three flights of stairs under them, and were refused an advance by the man at the window. "_c'est bien_," said ernest with his grandest air. "_c'est bien. j'enverrai un commissionnaire!_" and they dropped the mattresses and walked out with difficulty, to go bedless home. then there was a bootmaker to whom whistler owed money, and who appeared with his bill, refusing to move unless he was paid. whistler was courtesy itself, and, regretting his momentary embarrassment, begged the bootmaker to accept an engraving of garibaldi, which he ventured to admire. the bootmaker was so charmed that he spoke no more of his bill, but took another order on the spot, and made new shoes into the bargain. many of the things told of whistler he used to tell us of ernest or the others. ernest he said it was, though some say it was whistler, who had a commission to copy in the louvre, but no canvas, paints, or brushes, and not a _sou_ to buy them with. however, he went to the gallery in the morning, the first to arrive, and his businesslike air disarmed the _gardien_ as he picked out an easel, a clean canvas, a palette, a brush or two, and a stick of charcoal. he wrote his name in large letters on the back of the canvas, and, when the others began to drop in, was too busy to see anything but his work. presently there was a row. what! an easel missing, a canvas gone, brushes not to be found! the _gardien_ bustled round. everybody talked at once. ernest looked up in a fury--shameful! why should he be disturbed? what was it all about, anyhow? when he heard what had happened no one was louder. it had come to a pretty pass in the louvre when you couldn't leave your belongings overnight without having them stolen! things at last quieted down. ernest finished his charcoal sketch, but his palette was bare. he stretched, jumped down from his high stool, strolled about, stopped to criticise here, to praise there, until he saw the colours he needed. the copy of the man who owned them ravished him. astonishing! he stepped back to see it better. he advanced to look at the original, he grew excited, he gesticulated. the man, who had never been noticed before, grew excited too. ernest talked the faster, gesticulated the more, until down came his thumb on the white or the blue or the red he wanted, and, with another sweep of his arm, a lump of it was on his palette. farther on another supply offered. in the end, his palette well set, he went back to his easel, painting his copy. in some way he had supplied himself most plentifully with "turps," so that several times the picture was in danger of running off his canvas. at last it was finished and shown to his patron, who refused to have it. whistler succeeded in selling it for ernest to a dealer; and, "do you know," he said, "i saw the picture years afterwards, and i think it was rather better than the original!" oulevey's version is that whistler helped himself to a box of colours, and, when discovered by its owner, was all innocence and surprise and apology: why, he supposed, of course, the boxes of colour were there for the benefit of students. on another occasion, when ernest, according to whistler, had finished a large copy of veronese's _marriage feast at cana_, he and a friend, carrying it between them, started out to find a buyer. they crossed the seine and offered it for five hundred francs to the big dealers on the right bank. then they offered it for two hundred and fifty to the little dealers on the left. then they went back and offered it for one hundred and twenty-five. then they came across and offered it for seventy-five. and back again for twenty-five, and over once more for ten. and they were crossing still again, to try to get rid of it for five, when, on the pont des arts, an idea: they lifted it; "_un_," they said with a great swing, "_deux, trois, v'lan!_" and over it went into the river. there was a cry from the crowd, a rush to their side of the bridge, _sergents de ville_ came running, omnibuses and cabs stopped on both banks, boats pushed out. it was an immense success, and they went home enchanted. ernest was whistler's companion in the most wonderful adventure of all, the journey to alsace when most of the french set of etchings were made. mr. luke ionides thinks it was in . fantin, who did not meet whistler until , remembered him just back from a journey to the rhine, coming to the _café molière_, and showing the etchings made on the way. the french set was published in november of that year, and if whistler returned late in the autumn, the series could scarcely have appeared so soon. however, more important than the date is the fact that on his journey the _liverdun_, the _street at saverne_, and _the kitchen_ were etched. he had made somehow two hundred and fifty francs, and he and ernest started out for nancy and strasburg. mr. leon dabo tells us that his father was a fellow student of whistler's at gleyre's and lived at saverne, in alsace, and that it was to see him whistler went there. and from mr. dabo we have the story of excursions that whistler and ernest made with his father and several friends: one to the ruins of the castle near the village of dabo, where it is said their signatures may still be seen on a rock of brown sandstone; another to gross geroldseck, and the sketches whistler made there were afterwards presented to the saverne museum. it may be that a third excursion was to pfalzburg, the birthplace of erckmann and chatrian, whom whistler knew and possibly then met for the first time. on the way back, at cologne, one morning, whistler and ernest woke up to find their money gone. "what is to be done?" asked ernest. "order breakfast," said whistler, which they did. there was no american consul in the town, and after breakfast he wrote to everybody who might help him: to a fellow student he had asked to forward letters from paris, to seymour haden in london, to amsterdam, where he thought letters might have been sent by mistake. then they settled down to wait. every day they would go to the post-office for letters, every day the official would say, "_nichts! nichts!_" until they got known to the town--whistler with his long hair, ernest with his brown hollands and straw hat fearfully out of season. the boys of the town would follow to the post-office, where, before they were at the door, the official was shaking his head and saying "_nichts! nichts!_" and all the crowd would yell, "_nichts! nichts!_" at last, to escape attention, they spent their days sitting on the ramparts. at the end of a fortnight whistler took his knapsack, put his plates in it, and carried it to the landlord, herr schmitz, whose daughter, little gretchen he had etched--probably the plate called _gretchen at heidelberg_. he said he was penniless, but here were his copper-plates in his knapsack upon which he would set his seal. what was to be done with copper-plates? the landlord asked. they were to be kept with the greatest care as the work of a distinguished artist, whistler answered, and when he was back in paris, he would send the money to pay his bill, and then the landlord would send him the knapsack. herr schmitz hesitated, while whistler and ernest were in despair over the necessity of trusting masterpieces to him. the bargain was struck after much talk. the landlord gave them a last breakfast. lina, the maid, slipped her last groschen into whistler's hand, and the two set out to walk from cologne to paris with paper and pencils for baggage. whistler used to say that, had they been less young, they could have seen only the terror of that tramp. a portrait was the price of every plate of soup, every egg, every glass of milk on the road. the children who hooted them had to be drawn before a bit of bread was given to them. they slept in straw. and they walked until whistler's light shoes got rid of most of their soles and bits of their uppers, and ernest's hollands grew seedier and seedier. but they were young enough to laugh, and one day whistler, seeing ernest tramping ahead solemnly through the mud, the rain dripping from his straw hat, his linen coat a rag, shrieked with laughter as he limped. "_que voulez-vous?_" ernest said mournfully, "_les saisons m'ont toujours devancé_!" but it was the time of the autumn fairs, and, joining a lady who played the violin and a gentleman who played the harp, they gave entertainments in every village, beating a big drum, announcing themselves as distinguished artists from paris, offering to draw portraits, five francs the full length, three francs the half-length. at times they beat the big drum in vain, and whistler was reduced to charging five sous apiece for his portraits, but he did his best, he said, and there was not a drawing to be ashamed of. [illustration: portrait of whistler in the big hat oil in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art (_see page _)] [illustration: drouet etching. g. (_see page _)] at last they came to aix, where there was an american consul who knew major whistler, and advanced fifty francs to his son. at liège, poor, shivering, ragged ernest got twenty from the french consul, and the rest of the journey was made in comfort. on his return, whistler's first appearance at the _café molière_ was a triumph. they had thought him dead, and here he was, _le petit américain_! and what _blague_, what calling for coffee _pour le petit whistler, pour notre petit américain_! and what songs! "_car il n'est pas mort, larifla! fla! fla! non, c'est qu'il dort. pour le réveiller, trinquons nos verres! pour le réveiller, trinquons encore!_" that herr schmitz was paid and delivered up the plates the prints are the proof. some years after whistler went back to cologne with his mother. in the evening he slipped away to the old, little hotel, where the landlord and the landlord's daughter, grown up, recognised him and rejoiced. these stories, and hundreds like them, still float about the quarter, told not only by whistler, but by _les vieux_, who shake their heads over the present degeneracy of students and the tameness of student life--stories of the clay model of the heroic statue of géricault, left, for want of money, swathed in rags, and sprinkled every morning until at last even the rags had to be sold, and then, when they were taken off, géricault had sprouted with mushrooms that paid for a feast in the quarter and enough clay to finish the statue: stories of a painter, in his empty studio, hiring a piano by the month that the landlord might see it carried upstairs and get a new idea of his tenant's assets; stories of the monkey tied to a string, let loose in other people's larders, then pulled back, clasping loaves of bread and bottles of wine to its bosom; stories of students, with bedclothes pawned, sleeping in chests of drawers to keep warm; stories of courbet's _baigneuse_ in wonderful highland costume at the students' balls; stories of practical jokes at the louvre. it was the day of practical jokes, _les charges_: and courbet, whom they worshipped, was the biggest _blageur_ of them all, eventually signing his death-warrant with that last terrible _charge_, the fall of the column vendôme, which paris never forgave. in this atmosphere, whistler's spirit, so alarming to his mother, found stimulus, and it is not to be wondered if his gaiety struck everyone in paris as in st. petersburg and pomfret, west point and washington. [footnote : see chapter xliv.] chapter vii: working days in the latin quarter. the years eighteen fifty-five to eighteen fifty-nine continued. the stories cannot be left out of whistler's life as a student, for they lived in his memory. the english students brought back the impression that he was an idler, the french thought so too, and the english believe to-day that he was an idler always. and yet he worked in paris as much as he played. his convictions, his preferences, his prejudices, were formed during those years. his admiration for poe, a west point man, was strengthened by the hold poe had taken of french men of letters. his disdain of nature, his contempt for anecdote in art as a concession to the ignorant public, his translation of the subjects of painting into musical terms, and much else charged against him as deliberate pose, can be traced to baudelaire. it is incomprehensible how he found time to read while a student, and yet he knew the literature of the day. with artists and their movements he was more familiar. he mastered all that gleyre could teach on the one hand, courbet on the other. he came under the influence of lecocq de boisbaudran, who was occupied with the study of values, effects of night, and training of memory. it is absurd for anyone to say that whistler idled away his four full years in paris. the younger men in their rebellion against official art were not so foolish as to disdain the old masters. they went to the louvre to learn how to use their eyes and their hands. there they copied the pictures, and there they met each other. to whistler the frenchmen were more sympathetic than the english, and he joined them at the louvre. respect for the great traditions of art always was his standard: "what is not worthy of the louvre is not art," he said. rembrandt, hals, and velasquez were the masters by whom he was influenced. there are only a few pictures by velasquez in the louvre, and whistler's early appreciation of him has been a puzzle to some, who, to account for it, have credited him with a journey when a student to madrid. but that journey was not made in the fifties or ever, though he planned it more than once. a great deal could be learned about velasquez without going to spain. whistler knew the london galleries, and in he visited the art treasures exhibition at manchester, taking henri martin with him. there was a difficulty about the money for their railway fares, and he suggested to t. armstrong that he might borrow it from a friend of the family who was manager of the north-western. "but have you paid him the three hundred francs he has already lent you?" armstrong asked. "why, no," whistler answered; "ought that to make any difference?" and he consulted the friend as to whether it would not be the right thing to ask for another loan. from this friend, or somebody, he managed to get the money, and miss emily chapman finds in her diaries, which she has consulted for us, that on september , , rose, her sister, "went to darwen and found whistler and henri martin staying at earnsdale" with another sister, mrs. potter; "a merry evening," the note finishes. fourteen fine examples of velasquez were in the manchester exhibition, lent from private collections in england, among them the _venus_, _admiral pulido pareja_, _duke olivarez on horseback_, _don balthazar in the tennis court_, some of them now in the british national gallery. whistler once described himself to us as "a surprising youth, suddenly appearing in the group of french students from no one knew where, with my _mère gérard_ and the _piano picture_ [_at the piano_] for introduction, and making friends with fantin and legros, who had already arrived, and courbet, whom they were all raving about, and who was very kind to me." the _piano picture_ was painted toward the end of his student years in paris, the _mère gérard_ a little earlier, so that this agrees with fantin's notes. in , fantin says, "i was copying the _marriage feast at cana_ in the louvre when i saw passing one day a strange creature--_personnage étrange, le whistler en chapeau bizarre_, who, amiable and charming, stopped to talk, and the talk was the beginning of our friendship, strengthened that evening at the _café molière_." carolus duran writes us, from the académie de france in rome, that he and whistler met as students in paris; after that he lost sight of whistler until the days of the new _salon_, but, though there were a few meetings then, his memories are altogether of the student years. bracquemond has recalled for us that he was making the preliminary drawing for his etching after holbein's _erasmus_ in the louvre when he first saw whistler. their meetings were cordial, but never led to intimacy. with legros whistler's friendship did become intimate, and the two, with fantin, formed at that date what whistler called their "society of three." fantin was somewhat older, and had been studying much longer, and had, among students, a reputation for wide and sound knowledge: "a learned painter," armstrong says. m. bénédite thinks that the friendship was useful to fantin, but of the greatest importance to whistler, on whose art in its development it had a marked influence. mr. luke ionides, on the other hand, insists that "even in those early days, whistler's influence was very much felt. he had decided views, which were always listened to with respect and regard by many older artists, who seemed to recognise his genius." the truth probably is that whistler and fantin influenced each other. they worked in sympathy, and the understanding between them was complete. they not only studied in the louvre, but joined the group at bonvin's studio to work from the model under courbet. with courbet, we come to an influence which cannot be doubted, much as whistler regretted it as time went on. oulevey remembers whistler calling on courbet once, and saying enthusiastically as he left the house, "_c'est un grand homme!_" and for several years his pictures showed how strong this influence was. m. duret even sees in courbet's "manifestoes" forerunners of whistler's letters at a later date to the papers. courbet, whatever mad pranks he might play with the _bourgeois_, was seriousness itself in his art, and the men who studied under him learned to be serious, whistler most of all. the proof of whistler's industry is in his work--in his pictures and prints, which are amazing in quality and quantity for the student who, sir edward poynter believes, worked in two or three years only as many weeks. it would be nearer the truth to say that he never stopped working. everything that interested him he made use of. the women he danced with at night were his models by day: fumette, who, as she crouches, her hair loose on her shoulders, in that early etching, looks the _tigresse_ who tore up his drawings in a passion; and finette, the dancer in a famous quadrille, who, when she came to london, was announced as "_madame finette in the cancan, the national dance of france_." his friends had to pose for him: drouet, in the plate, done, he told us, in two sittings, one of two and a half hours, the other of an hour and a half; axenfeld, the brother of a famous physician; becquet, the sculptor-musician, "the greatest man who ever lived" to his friends, to the world unknown; astruc, painter, sculptor, poet, editor of _l'artiste_, of whom his wife said that he was the first man since the renaissance who combined all the arts, but who is only remembered in whistler's print; delâtre, the printer; riault, the engraver. bibi valentin was the son of another engraver. and there is the amusing pencil sketch of fantin in bed on a winter day, working away in his overcoat, muffler, and top hat, trying to keep warm: one kept among a hundred lost. the streets where whistler wandered, the restaurants where he dined, became his studios. at the house near the rue dauphine he etched bibi lalouette. his _soupe à trois sous_ was done in a _cabaret_ kept by martin, whose portrait is in the print at the extreme left, and who was famous in the quarter for having won the cross of the legion of honour at an earlier age than any man ever decorated, and then promptly losing it. mr. ralph thomas says: "while whistler was etching this, at twelve o'clock at night, a _gendarme_ came up to him and wanted to know what he was doing. whistler gave him the plate upside down, but officialism could make nothing of it." there is hardly one of these etchings that is not a record of his daily life and of the people among whom he lived, though to make it such a record was the last thing he was thinking of. whistler's first set of etchings was published in november . the prints were not the first he made after leaving washington. on the rare _au sixième_, supposed to be unique, haden, to whom it had belonged, wrote, "probably the first of whistler's etchings," but then haden wrote these things on others, and knew little about them. a portrait of himself, another of his niece _annie haden_, the _dutchman holding the glass_, are as early, if not earlier. there were twelve plates, some done in paris, some during the journey to the rhine, some in london. there was also an etched title with his portrait, for which ernest, putting on the big hat, sat. etched above is "_douze eaux fortes d'après nature par james whistler_," and to one side, "_imp. delâtre, rue st. jacques, , paris, nov. _." whistler dedicated the set to _mon vieil ami seymour haden_, and issued and sold it himself for two guineas. delâtre printed the plates, and, standing at his side, drouet said, whistler learned the art. delâtre's shop was the room described by the de goncourts, with the two windows looking on a bare garden, the star wheel, the man in grey blouse pulling it, the old noisy clock in the corner, the sleeping dog, the children peeping in at the door; the room where they waited for their first proof with the emotion they thought nothing else could give. drouet said that whistler never printed at this time. but oulevey remembers a little press in the rue campagne-première, and whistler pulling the proofs for those who came to buy them. he was already hunting for old paper, loitering at the boxes along the _quais_, tearing out fly-leaves from old books. passages in many plates of the series, especially in _la mère gérard_ and _la marchande de moutarde_, are, as we have said, like his work in _the coast survey, no. _. for the only time, and as a result of his training at washington, his handling threatened to become mannered. but in the _street at saverne_ he overcame his mannerism, while in others, not in the series but done during these years, the _drouet_, _soupe à trois sous_, _bibi lalouette_, he had perfected his early style of drawing, biting, and dry-point. we never asked him how the french plates were bitten, but, no doubt, it was in the traditional way by biting all over and stopping out. they were drawn directly from nature, as can be seen in his portraits of places which are reversed in the prints. so far as we know, he scarcely ever made a preliminary sketch. we can recall none of his etchings at any period that might have been done from memory or sketches, except the _street at saverne_, the venetian _nocturnes_, the _nocturne_, _dance house_, amsterdam, _weary_, and _fanny leyland_ portraits. his first commissions in paris were, he told us, copies made in the louvre. they were for captain williams, a stonington man, familiarly known as "stonington bill," whose portrait he had painted before leaving home. "stonington bill" must have liked it, for when he came to paris shortly afterwards he gave whistler a commission to paint as many copies at the louvre as he chose for twenty-five dollars apiece. whistler said he copied a snow scene with a horse and soldier standing by and another at its feet, and never afterwards could remember who was the painter; the busy picture detective may run it to ground for the edification of posterity. there was a st. luke with a halo and draperies; a woman holding up a child towards a barred window beyond which, seen dimly, was the face of a man; and an inundation, no doubt _the deluge_ or _the wreck_. he was sure he must have made something interesting out of them, he knew there were wonderful things even then--the beginnings of harmonies and of purple schemes--he supposed it must have been intuitive. another stonington man commissioned him to paint ingres' _andromeda_ chained to the rock--probably the _angelina_ of ingres which he and tissot are said to have copied side by side, though a copy of an _andromeda_ by him has been shown in new york, and other alleged copies are now turning up. all, he said, might be still at stonington, and shown there as marvellous things by whistler. to these may be added the _diana_ by boucher in the london memorial exhibition, owned by mr. louis winans, and the group of cavaliers after velasquez, the one copy fantin remembered his doing. a study of a nun was sent to the london exhibition, but not shown, with the name "wisler" on the back of the canvas, not a bad study of drapery, which may have been, despite the name, another of his copies or done in a sketch class. the first original picture in paris was, he assured us, the _mère gérard_, in white cap, holding a flower, which he gave to swinburne. there is another painting of her, we believe, and from drouet we heard of a third, which has vanished. whistler painted a number of portraits; some it would probably be impossible to trace, a few are well known. one--a difficult piece of work, he said--was of his father, after a lithograph sent him for the purpose by his brother george, and he began another of henry harrison, whom he had known in russia. a third was of himself in his big hat. two were studies of models: the _tête de paysanne_, a woman in a white cap, younger than the _mère gérard_, and the _head of an old man smoking_, a pedlar of crockery whom whistler came across one day in the halles, a full face with large brown hat, for long the property of drouet and left by him to the louvre. but the finest is _at the piano_, _the piano picture_ as whistler called it. it is the portrait of his sister and his niece, the "wonderful little annie" of the etchings, now mrs. charles thynne, who gave him many sittings, and to whom, in return, he gave his pencil sketches made on the journey to alsace. mr. gallatin, in _portraits of whistler_, and m. duret, in the second edition of _whistler_, have reproduced an oil portrait entitled _whistler smoking_, which was bought from a french family in . the most cursory glance at even the reproduction is enough to show that the portrait is devoid of merit, while the statement that it was hidden from to would require considerable further proof. the whole thing is but a clumsy attempt to imitate the _whistler in the big hat_, as well as the etching of the same subject. every part of it is stolen from some other work, down to the hand or handkerchief, just indicated, which is taken from the portrait of his mother. it is true that the signature is on the painting, but this no longer proves anything, as a signature is the easiest part of a work of art to forge. the portraits "smell of the louvre." the method is acquired from close study of the old masters. "rembrandtish" is the usual criticism passed on these early canvases, with their paint laid thickly on and their heavy shadows. indeed, it is evident that his own portrait, _whistler in the big hat_, was suggested by rembrandt's _young man_ in the louvre. to his choice of subjects, in his pictures as in his etchings, he brought the realism of courbet, painting people as he saw them, and not in clothes borrowed from the classical and mediæval wardrobes of the fashionable studio. yet there is the personal note: whistler does not efface himself in his devotion to the masters. this is felt in the way a head or a figure is placed on the canvas. the arrangement of the pictures on the wall and the mouldings of the dado in _at the piano_, the harmonious balance of the black and white in the dresses of the mother and the little girl, show the sense of design, of pattern, which he brought to perfection in the _mother_, _carlyle_, and _miss alexander_. there was nothing like it in the painting of the other young men, of degas, fantin, legros, ribot, manet; nothing like it in the work of the older man, their leader, when painting _l'enterrement à ornans_ and _bonjour, monsieur courbet_. m. duret says that whistler's fellow students, who had immediately recognised his etchings, now accepted his paintings, which confirms whistler's statement to us. [illustration: at the piano oil in the possession of edmund davis, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: wapping oil in the possession of mrs. hutton (_see page _)] _at the piano_ was sent to the _salon_ of with two etchings the titles of which are not given. the etchings were hung, the picture was rejected. it may have been because of what was personal in it; strong personality in the young usually fares that way at official hands. fantin's story is: "one day whistler brought back from london the _piano picture_, representing his sister and niece. he was refused with legros, ribot, and myself at the _salon_. bonvin, whom i knew, interested himself in our rejected pictures, and exhibited them in his studio, and invited his friends, of whom courbet was one, to see them. i recall very well that courbet was struck with whistler's picture." two portraits by fantin, some studies of still life by ribot, and legros' portrait of his father, which had also been rejected, were shown. the rejection was a scandal. the injustice was flagrant, the exhibitors at bonvin's found themselves famous, and whistler's picture impressed many artists besides courbet. with its exhibition whistler ceased to be the student, though he was a student all his life; it was only in his last years that he felt he was "beginning to understand," he often said to us. chapter viii: the beginnings in london. the years eighteen fifty-nine to eighteen sixty-three. it was now that whistler began his endless journeys between paris and london. at first he stayed with his sister, lady haden, at sloane street, sometimes bringing with him henri martin or legros. in he invited fantin, promising him glory and fortune. in his notes fantin wrote: "whistler talked about me at this moment to his brother-in-law, seymour haden, who urged me to come to london; he had also talked about me to boxall. i should like it known that it was whistler who introduced me to england." fantin arrived in time for them to go to the academy, then still in the east end of the national gallery. whistler exhibited for the first time, and _two etchings from nature_--a perplexing title, for all his etchings were "from nature"--were hung in the little octagon room, or "dark cell," reserved for black-and-white. "_les souvenirs les plus vifs que j'ai conservés de ce temps à londres_," fantin wrote "_étaient notre admiration pour l'exposition des tableaux de millais à l'academy_." millais showed _the vale of rest_, and the two young men, fresh from paris studios, recognised in his work the realism which, though conceived and expressed so differently, was the aim of the pre-raphaelites as of courbet. seymour haden, who had already etched some of his finest plates, was kind to his visitors. he not only ordered copies from fantin--amongst them one of the many fantin made of veronese's _marriage feast at cana_--but he bought the pictures of legros, who was "at one moment in so deplorable a condition," whistler said to us, "that it needed god or a lesser person to pull him out of it. and so i brought him over to london, and for a while he worked in my studio. he had, before coming, sold a church interior to haden, who liked it, though he found the floor out of perspective. one day he took it to the room upstairs where he did his etchings, and turned the key. when it reappeared the floor was in perspective according to haden. a gorgeous frame was bought, and the picture was hung conspicuously in the drawing-room." whistler thought haden restive when he heard that legros was coming, but nothing was said. the first day legros was impressed; he had been accustomed to seeing himself in cheap frames, if in any frame at all. but gradually he looked inside the frame, and haden's work dawned upon him. that he could not stand. what was he to do? he asked whistler. "run off with it," whistler suggested. "we got it down, called a four-wheeler, and carried it away to the studio--our own little _kopje_," for whistler told us the story in the days of the boer war. haden discovered his loss as soon as he got home, and in a rage hurried after them to the studio. but when he saw it on an easel, legros repainting the perspective according to his idea, well, there was nothing to say. where the studio was we do not know. haden even endured ernest, who had not yet caught up with the seasons, and who went about in terror of the butler, taking his daily walks in slippers rather than expose his boots to the servants, and enchanting whistler by asking "_mais, mon cher, qu'est-ce que c'est que cette espèce de cataracte de niagara?_" when haden turned on the shower-bath in the morning. fantin was almost as dismayed by the luxury at the hadens'. "what lunches!" he wrote home, "what roast beef and sherry! and what dinners--always champagne!" and if he was distressed by the street organs grinding out the _miséréré_ of verdi, he could console himself by listening to lady haden's brilliant playing on the piano, until _paradisiaque_ was the adjective he found to describe his life there to his parents. whistler fell in at once with the english students whom he had known in paris: poynter, armstrong, luke and aleco ionides. du maurier came back from antwerp in , and for several months he and whistler lived together in newman street. armstrong remembers their studio, with a rope like a clothes-line stretched across it and, floating from it, a bit of brocade no bigger than a handkerchief, which was their curtain to shut off the corner used as a bedroom. there was hardly ever a chair to sit on, and often with the brocade a towel hung from the line: their decoration and drapery. du maurier's first _punch_ drawing--in a volume full of crinolines and leech (vol. xxxix., october , )--shows the two, shabby, smoking, calling at a photographer's to be met with an indignant, "no smoking here, sirs!" followed by a severe, "please to remember, gentlemen, that this is not a common hartist's studio!" the figure at the door, with curly hair, top hat, glass in his eye, hands behind his back smoking a cigarette, is whistler. probably it was then also that du maurier made a little drawing, in mr. howard mansfield's collection, of whistler, charles keene, and himself, with their autographs below; whistler again with a glass in his eye. "nearly always, on sunday, he used to come to our house," mr. ionides tells us, and there was no more delightful house in london. alexander ionides, the father, was a wealthy merchant with a talent for gathering about him all the interesting people in town or passing through, artists, musicians, actors, authors. mr. luke ionides says that whistler came to their evenings and played in their private theatricals, and there remains a programme designed by du maurier with a drawing of himself, whistler, and aleco ionides at the top, while luke ionides and his sister, mrs. coronio, stand below with the list of _dramatis personæ_ between. and whistler also took part in their masquerades and fancy-dress balls, once mystifying everybody by appearing in two different costumes in the course of the evening and winding up as a sweep. he never lost his joy in the memory of alma-tadema, on another of these occasions, as an "ancient roman" in toga and eye-glasses, crowned with flowers: "amazing," whistler said, "with his bare feet and romano-greek st. john's wooden eye!" mr. arthur severn writes us: "my first recollection of whistler was at his brother-in-law's, seymour haden (he and du maurier were looking over some _liber studiorum_ engravings), and then at arthur lewis' parties on campden hill, charming gatherings of talented men of all kinds, with plenty of listeners and sympathisers to applaud. the moray minstrels used to sing, conducted by john foster, and when they were resting anyone who could do anything was put up. du maurier with harold sower would sing a duet, _les deux aveugles_; grossmith half killed us with laughter (it was at these parties he first came out). stacy marks was a great attraction, but towards the end of the evening, when we were all in accord, there were yells for whistler, the eccentric whistler! he was seized and stood up on a high stool, where he assumed the most irresistibly comic look, put his glass in his eye, and surveyed the multitude, who only yelled the more. when silence reigned he would begin to sing in the most curious way, suiting the action to the words with his small, thin, sensitive hands. his songs were in _argot_ french, imitations of what he had heard in low _cabarets_ on the seine when he was at work there. what whistler and marks did was so entirely themselves and nobody else, so original or quaint, that they were certainly the favourites." "breezy, buoyant and debonair, sunny and affectionate," he seemed to george boughton, who could not remember the time when "whistler's sayings and doings did not fill the artistic air," nor when he failed to give a personal touch, a "something distinct" to his appearance. his "cool suit of linen duck and his jaunty straw hat" were conspicuous in london, where personality of dress was more startling than in paris. boughton refers to a flying trip to paris at this period, when he was "flush of money and lovely in attire." others recall meeting him, armed with two umbrellas, a white and a black, his practical preparation for all weathers. val prinsep speaks of the pink silk handkerchief stuck in his waistcoat, but this must have been later. "a brisk little man, conspicuous from his swarthy complexion, his gleaming eye-glass, and his shock of curly black hair, amid which shone his celebrated white lock," is val prinsep's description of him in the fifties. but the white lock is not seen in any contemporary painting or etching. it was first introduced, as far as we can discover, in his portrait owned by the late mr. mcculloch--the portrait a few years ago was in detroit--and in the etching _whistler with the white lock_, , though there may be earlier work showing it. we never asked him about it, and his family, friends, and contemporaries, whom we have asked, cannot explain it. some say that it was a birthmark, others that he dyed all his hair save the one lock. but he did not dye his hair. du maurier, according to dr. williamson, attributed it to a wound, either by bullet or sword-cut, received at valparaiso: the wound was sewn up, the white lock appeared almost immediately. mr. theodore roussel tells a somewhat similar story. but we think if this were so, whistler would have told us of it. in an exhibition of oil paintings and pastels by whistler held in the metropolitan museum, new york, in march , a painting was shown entitled _sketch of mr. whistler_. it was lent by mr. charles l. freer and was sold to him by an art dealer. we are by no means certain that it is genuine, though we have only seen the reproduction, the frontispiece of the catalogue. j. recently went to detroit, but in mr. freer's absence he was not allowed to see the painting. if it is genuine, it is most likely a study by whistler of the chinese dress in which he posed for fantin. in freer's sketch the white lock appears. though it could easily have been added later, its presence to us seems proof that the picture is most probably not genuine, and certainly is not contemporary, because in fantin's head of whistler from the _toast_, in _hommage à delacroix_, and whistler's own portraits of that time the white lock is not shown. many, seeing him for the first time, mistook the white lock for a floating feather. he used to call it the _mèche de silas_, and it amused him to explain that the devil caught those whom he would preserve by a lock of hair which turned white. whatever its origin, whistler cherished it with greatest care. whistler had stumbled upon a period in england when, though painters prospered, art was at a low ebb. pre-raphaelitism was on the wane. a few interesting young men were at work: charles keene, boyd houghton, albert moore; fred walker and george mason. but academicians were at the high tide of mid-victorian success and sentiment. they puzzled whistler no less than he puzzled them. "well, you know, it was this way. when i came to london i was received graciously by the painters. then there was coldness, and i could not understand. artists locked themselves up in their studios--opened the doors only on the chain; if they met each other in the street they barely spoke. models went round with an air of mystery. when i asked one where she had been posing, she said, 'to frith and watts and tadema.' 'golly! what a crew!' i said. 'and that's just what they says when i told 'em i was a-posing to you!' then i found out the mystery; it was the moment of painting the royal academy picture. each man was afraid his subject might be stolen. it was the era of the subject. and, at last, on varnishing day, there was the subject in all its glory--wonderful! the british subject! like a flash the inspiration came--the inventor! and in the academy there you saw him: the familiar model--the soldier or the italian--and there he sat, hands on knees, head bent, brows knit, eyes staring; in a corner, angels and cogwheels and things; close to him his wife, cold, ragged, the baby in her arms; he had failed! the story was told; it was clear as day--amazing! the british subject! what." into this riot of subject, to the academy of , _at the piano_ was sent, with five prints: _monsieur astruc, rédacteur du journal_ _'l'artiste,'_ portrait, and three of the thames set. whistler had given _at the piano_, the portrait of his sister and niece, to seymour haden, "in a way," he said: "well, you know, it was hanging there, but i had no particular satisfaction in that. haden just then was playing the authority on art, and he could never look at it without pointing out its faults and telling me it never would get into the academy--that was certain." however, at the academy it was accepted, whistler's first picture in an english exhibition. the _salon_ was not held then every year, and he could not hope to repeat his success in paris. but in london _at the piano_ was as much talked about as at bonvin's. it was bought by john phillip, the academician (no relation to the family into which whistler afterwards married). phillip had just returned from spain with, "well, you know, spanish notions about things, and he asked who had painted the picture, and they told him a youth no one knew about, who had appeared from no one knew where. phillip looked up my address in the catalogue and wrote to me at once to say he would like to buy it, and what was its price? i answered in a letter which, i am sure, must have been very beautiful. i said that, in my youth and inexperience, i did not know about these things, and i would leave to him the question of price. phillip sent me thirty pounds; when the picture was last sold, to edmund davis, it brought two thousand eight hundred!" thackeray, lady ritchie tells us, "went to see the picture of annie haden standing by the piano, and admired it beyond words, and stood looking at it with real delight and appreciation." it was the only thing george boughton brought vividly away in his memories of the academy. the critics could not ignore it. "it at once made an impression," mr. w. m. rossetti wrote. as "an eccentric, uncouth, smudgy, phantom-like picture of a lady at a pianoforte, with a ghostly-looking child in a white frock looking on," it struck the _daily telegraph_. but the _athenæum_, having discovered the "admirable etchings" in the octagon room, managed to see in the "_piano picture_, despite a recklessly bold manner and sketchiness of the wildest and roughest kind, a genuine feeling for colour and a splendid power of composition and design, which evince a just appreciation of nature very rare among artists. if the observer will look for a little while at this singular production, he will perceive that it 'opens out' just as a stereoscopic view will--an excellent quality due to the artist's feeling for atmosphere and judicious gradation of light." we quote these criticisms because the general idea is that whistler waited long for notice. he was always noticed, praised or blamed, never ignored, after . whistler went back to paris late in that year. december is the date of his _isle de la cité_, etched from the galerie d'apollon in the louvre, with notre dame in the distance and the seine and its bridges between. it was his only attempt to rival méryon, and he succeeded badly. the fact that he gave it up when half done shows that he thought so and was too big an artist to be an imitator, especially of a "little man like méryon." besides, he was much less in paris now, for, though he preferred life there, he found his subjects in london, which he soon made his home, as it continued to be, except for a few intervals, until his death. it was not the people he cared for, nor the customs. he was drawn by the beauty that no one had felt with the same intensity and understanding. he went to work on the river. in these first years he dated his prints and pictures, as he seldom did later, and is bitten on many of the thames plates. he saw the river as no one had seen it before, in its grime and glitter, with its forest of shipping, its endless procession of barges, its grim warehouses, its huge docks, its little water-side inns. and as he saw it so he rendered it, as no one ever had before--as it is. it was left to the american youth to do for london what rembrandt had done for amsterdam. there were eleven plates on the thames during this year. to make them he wandered from greenwich to westminster; they included _black lion wharf_, _tyzac_, _whiteley and co._, which he never excelled at any period; and in each the warehouses or bridges, the docks or ships, are worked out with a mass and marvel of detail. the pre-raphaelites were not so faithful to nature, so minute in their rendering. the series was a wonderful achievement for the young man of twenty-five never known to work by his english fellow students, a wonderful achievement for an artist of any age. [illustration: the thames in ice oil in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art (_see page _)] [illustration: rotherhithe etching. g. (_see page _)] those who thought he idled in paris were as sure of his application in london. "on the thames he worked tremendously," armstrong said, "not caring then to have people about or to let anyone see too much of his methods." he stayed for months at wapping to be near his subjects, though not cutting himself off entirely from his friends. sir edward poynter, mr. ionides, m. legros, du maurier visited him. mr. ionides recalls long drives down by the tower and the london docks to get to the place, as out of the way now as then. he says whistler lived in a little inn, rather rough, frequented by skippers and bargees, close to wapping steamboat pier. but there is no doubt that much of his work was done from cherry gardens, on the other side of the river. unfortunately it was not until after his death that we looked into this matter. at any rate, if he lived at wapping, he worked a great deal at cherry gardens, also often from boats and barges, he told us, and this one can see in the prints. sometimes he would get stranded in the mud, and at others cut off by the tide. "when his friends came," armstrong wrote us, "they dined at an _ordinary_ there used to be. people who had business at the wharves in the neighbourhood dined there, and jimmie's descriptions of the company were always humorous." mr. ionides drove down once for a dinner-party whistler gave at his inn: "the landlord and several bargee guests were invited. du maurier was there also, and after dinner we had songs and sentiments. jimmie proposed the landlord's health; he felt flattered, but we were in fits of laughter. the landlord was very jealous of his wife, who was rather inclined to flirt with jimmie, and the whole speech was chaff of a soothing kind that he never suspected." another and more frequent visitor to wapping was serjeant thomas, one of those patrons who recognise the young artist and appear when recognition is most needed. he bought drawings and prints from holman hunt and legros when they were scarcely known, and he helped millais through difficult days. whistler had issued his french set of etchings in london in : _twelve etchings from nature by james abbott whistler, london_. _published by j. a. whistler, at no. sloane street_ (haden's house). the price, as in paris, for _artist's proofs on india, two guineas_. serjeant thomas saw the prints, got to know whistler, and arranged to publish them, and also the thames etchings which he sold separately at old bond street, where he had opened a shop with his son, edmund thomas, as manager. mr. percy thomas, a younger son, has told us that, as a little fellow, he often went with his father by boat to wapping, and that his father and brother posed for two of the figures--the third is whistler--in _the little pool_, used as an invitation card. he has also told us that much of the printing was done at old bond street, where the family lived in the upper part of the house. a press was in one of the small rooms, and whistler would come in the evening, when he happened to be in town, to bite and prove his plates. sometimes he would not get to work until half-past ten or eleven. in those days he put his plate in a deep bath of acid, keeping to the technical methods of the coast survey, though it is said that the coast survey plates were banked up with wax and the acid poured over them. this is supposed to have been the method of rembrandt. serjeant thomas, in his son's words, was "great for port wine," and he would fill a glass for whistler, and whistler would place the glass by the bath, and then work a little on the plate and then stop to sip the port, and he would say, "excellent! very good indeed!" and they never knew whether he meant the wine or the work. and the charm of his manner and his courtesy made it delightful to do anything for him. serjeant thomas brought delâtre from paris, the only man, he thought, who could print whistler's etchings as the artist would have printed them himself. "nobody," ralph thomas wrote, "has ever printed mr. whistler's etchings with success except himself and m. delâtre," and to-day many people are of the same opinion. whistler's relations with the firm were pleasant while they lasted. but they did not last long. edmund thomas cared less for art than the law, and in the shop he would sit at his desk reading his law books, never looking up nor leaving them, unless someone asked the price of a print or drawing. a successful business is not run on those lines, and in a few years he gave up art for the law, to his great advantage. chapter ix: the beginnings in london. the years eighteen fifty-nine to eighteen sixty-three continued. whistler, in , devoted more time to painting on the river and less to etching, though the _rotherhithe_ belongs to this year. one picture he described in a letter to fantin. "_chut! n'en parle pas à courbet_" was his warning, as if afraid to trust so good a subject to anyone. it was to be a masterpiece, he had painted it three times, and he sent a sketch which m. duret reproduced in his _whistler_. m. duret, unable to trace the picture, thought he might never have carried it beyond the sketch. but it was finished: the _wapping_ shown in the academy of , a proof how long whistler kept his pictures before exhibiting them. in he sent it to the paris exhibition. it was bought by mr. thomas winans, taken to baltimore, where it has remained. whistler wanted to exhibit it at goupil's in , but could not get it. never seen in europe since , it has been forgotten. it was painted from an inn, probably the angel on the water-side at cherry gardens which exists to-day, one of a row of old houses with overhanging balconies. in the foreground, in a shadowy corner of the inn balcony, is a sailor for whom a workman from greaves' boat-building yard, chelsea, sat; next, m. legros; and on the other side of m. legros, with her back turned to the river, the girl with copper-coloured hair, jo, the model for _the white girl_ and _the little white girl_. on the river are the little square-rigged ships that still anchor there; on the opposite side is the long line of wapping warehouses, which give the name. artists feared jo's slightly open bodice would prevent the picture being hung in the royal academy. but whistler insisted, if it was rejected on that account, he would open the bodice more and more every year until he was elected and hung it himself. he painted _the thames in ice_ this year ( ) from the same inn. it was called, when first exhibited, _the twenty-fifth of december, , on the thames_. for an idle apprentice it was a strange way of spending christmas. whistler told us that haden bought it for ten pounds--ample pay, haden said: three pounds for each of the three days he spent painting it, and a pound over. to whistler the pay seemed anything but ample. "you know, my sister was in the house, and women have their ideas about things, and i did what she wanted, to please her!" two other pictures of are the portrait of mr. luke ionides and _the music room_. in both the influence of courbet is evident. the portrait, painted in the newman street studio, has the heavy handling of _the piano_, though much more brilliant. but the other picture is a tremendous advance. fantin could not have been more conscientious in rendering the life about him as he found it than whistler in _the music room_; only, the room in the london house, with its gay chintz curtains, has none of the sombre simplicity of the interior where fantin's sisters sit. fantin's home had an austerity he made beautiful; the haden's house had colour--_harmony in green and rose_ was whistler's later title for the picture. he emphasised the gaiety by introducing a strong black note in the standing figure, miss boot, while the cool light from the window falls on "wonderful little annie," in the same white frock she wears in _the piano picture_. mrs. thynne (annie haden) says: "i was very young when _the music room_ was painted, and beyond the fact of not minding sitting, in spite of the interminable length of time, i do not know that i can say more. it was a distinctly amusing time for me. he was always so delightful and enjoyed the 'no lessons' as much as i did. one day in _the morning call_ (the first name of _the music room_) i did get tired without knowing it, and suddenly dissolved into tears, whereupon he was full of the most tender remorse, and rushed out and bought me a lovely russia leather writing set, which i am using at this very moment! the actual music-room still exists in sloane street, though the present owners have enlarged it, and the date of the picture must have been ' or ' , after his return from paris. it was then he gave me the pencil sketches i lent to the london memorial exhibition. i had kept them in an album he had also brought me from paris, with my name in gold stamped outside, of which i was very proud. we were always good friends, and i have nothing all through those early days but the most delightful remembrance of him." this picture is described under three titles: _the morning call_, _the music room_, and _harmony in green and rose, the music room_; the present confusion in whistler's titles is usually the result of his own vagueness. it became the property of mrs. réveillon, george whistler's daughter, and was carried off to st. petersburg, never to return to london until the exhibition at the goupil gallery in . it has become the fashion to say that whistler had not mastered his trade and could not use oil paint. these early pictures are technically as accomplished as the work of any of his contemporaries. he never was taught, few artists are, the elements of his trade, and some of his paintings have suffered. _the music room_ and _the thames in ice_, so far as we can remember, are wonderfully fresh. they were painted more directly, more thinly, than the _wapping_, in which the paint is thickly piled, as in the _piano picture_, which has cracked, no doubt the result of his working over it probably on a bad ground. of two pictures painted at the same period, the _wapping_ is badly cracked, and the _thames in ice_ is in perfect condition. but this is due to his want of knowledge of the chemical properties of paints and mediums. later, he gave great attention to these matters. he kept the _wapping_ four years before he showed it. though started down the river in , it contains a portrait of greaves' man, whom he did not see for two or three years after. walter greaves stated, or allowed to be stated, in a preface to the catalogue of his exhibition in may , that he met whistler in the late fifties when whistler lived in chelsea and made the thames series of etchings. but the statement was proved to be inaccurate, and the preface was withdrawn. we have quoted greaves on several occasions, but, before doing so, we have verified every statement of importance he made to us, and we first met him some few years ago when his memory was clearer and more reliable, and when he possessed letters from whistler which we have seen. mr. thynne stood in for the beautiful dry-point _annie haden_, in big crinoline and soup-plate hat, the print whistler told mr. e. g. kennedy he would choose by which to be remembered. it was the year also of the portraits of axenfeld, riault, and "mr. mann." in there were more plates on the upper as well as the lower thames. two of the plates of were published as illustrations by the junior etching club in _passages from modern english poets_, and whistler proved the plates at the press of day and son, and met the lad he called "the best professional printer in england," frederick goulding. whistler told us that he worked about three weeks on each of the thames plates. he therefore must have spent on dated plates alone thirty-six weeks in , leaving but fourteen weeks for other work and for play. some of them are much less elaborate than the _drouet_, which, drouet said, was done in five hours, so that it seems difficult to reconcile the two statements. but it was about the _black lion wharf_, one of the fullest of detail, that we asked whistler. we had many discussions with him about them. whistler maintained that they were youthful performances, and j. as strongly maintained that that had nothing to do with the matter; that he never surpassed the wonderful drawing and composition and biting. he insisted that his later work in venice and in holland was a great development, a great advance, and his final answer was: "well, you like them more than i do!" but there is no doubt that the thames plates, notably the _black lion wharf_, have, for artistic rendering of inartistic subjects and for perfect biting, never been approached. another thing that astonished j. was that he could see such detail and put it on a copper-plate. "h'm," was whistler's comment, "that's what they all say." whistler got to know the upper thames when he stayed with mr. and mrs. edwin edwards at sunbury. edwards figures in his dry-point _encamping_ with m. w. ridley, who was whistler's first pupil, and traer, haden's assistant, not "freer," as he has long masqueraded in mr. wedmore's catalogue. ridley also is in _the storm_ and _the guitar-player_. to these visits we owe an etching of _whistler at moulsey_, by edwards. whistler introduced fantin, who, in a note for , refers to the "_jolies journées chez edwards à sunbury_." mrs. edwards wrote us shortly before her death: "whistler often came to see me, turning up always when least expected, perhaps driving down in a hansom cab from london. at that time there was no railway at sunbury; hampton court three miles distant. he might send a line to be met by boat at hampton court. he was always very eccentric." doubtless the driving down was an eccentricity. but whistler knew he might see some "foolish sunset," or a nocturne, on the way. "we had a large boat with waterproof cover," mrs. edwards added; "my husband and friends several times went up the river and slept in the boat. whistler went once," when he did the plate _encamping_ and possibly _sketching_ and _the punt_, and in mrs. edwards' words, "got rheumatism." it had been his trouble since st. petersburg. he could not risk exposure. whistler, though not settled in london, sent work regularly to the academy, where it was an unfailing shock to the critics. he showed his _mère gérard_ in . the _athenæum_ described the picture as "a fine, powerful-toned, and eminently characteristic study." the _daily telegraph_ thought it "far fitter hung over the stove in the studio than exhibited at the royal academy, though it is replete with evidence of genius and study. if mr. whistler would leave off using mud and clay on his palette and paint cleanly, like a gentleman, we should be happy to bestow any amount of praise on him, for he has all the elements of a great artist in his composition. but we must protest against his soiled and miry ways." it seemed a good, serious study of an old woman and nothing more, when we saw it in the london memorial exhibition, and the appallingly low level of the academy alone can explain the attention it attracted. whistler was in france in the summer of , painting _the coast of brittany_, or _alone with the tide_, which might have been signed by courbet--an arrangement in brown under a cloudy sky, a stretch of sand at low tide in the foreground, water-washed rocks against which a peasant girl sleeps, a deep blue sea beyond. it was "a beautiful thing," whistler said years afterwards. at perros guirec he made his splendid dry-point _the forge_. another print of this year is the rare dry-point of jo, who, for awhile, appeared in whistler's work as often as saskia in rembrandt's. she was irish. her father has been described to us as a sort of captain costigan, and jo--joanna heffernan, mrs. abbott--as a woman of next to no education, but of keen intelligence, who, before she had ceased to sit to whistler, knew more about painting than many painters, had become well read, and had great charm. her value to whistler as a model was enormous, and she was an important element in his life during the first london years. she was with him in france in - , going to paris in the winter to give him sittings for the big _white girl_, which he painted in a studio in the boulevard des batignolles hung all in white. there courbet met her, and, looking at the copper-coloured hair, saw beauty in the beautiful. he painted her, though perhaps not that winter, as _la belle irlandaise_, and as _jo, femme d'irlande_. whistler's study of jo, _note blanche_, lent by mrs. sickert to the paris memorial exhibition, was doubtless done in , for the technique is like courbet's. drouet remembered breakfasts in the studio which whistler cooked. he fell ill before the end of the winter. miss chapman says he was poisoned by the white lead used in the picture. her brother, a doctor, recommended a journey to the pyrenees. at guéthary whistler was nearly drowned when bathing. he wrote to fantin: "it was sunset, the sea was very rough, i was caught in the huge waves, swallowing gallons of salt water. i swam and i swam, and the more i swam the less near i came to the shore. ah! my dear fantin, to feel my efforts useless and to know people were looking on saying, 'but the _monsieur_ amuses himself, he must be strong!' i cry, i scream in despair--i disappear three, four times. at last they understand. a brave railroad man rushes to me, and is rolled over twice on the sands. my model hears the call, arrives at a gallop, jumps in the sea like a newfoundland, manages to catch me by the foot, and the two pull me out."[ ] at biarritz he painted _the blue wave_, a great sea rolling in and breaking on the shore under a fine sky, but quite unlike the _coast of brittany_. whistler painted few pictures in which the composition, the arrangement, is more obvious. it is an extraordinary piece of work. it has lately been said that he painted this picture after he had seen courbet's _vague_, now in the louvre. but the _vague_ was not shown until . if there was any influence, it was all the other way. at fuenterrabia whistler was in spain, for the only time; "spaniards from the _opéra-comique_ in the street, men in _bérets_ and red blouses, children like little turks." he wanted to go farther, to madrid, and he urged fantin to join him. together they would look at _the lances_ and _the spinners_ as together they had studied at the louvre. in another letter he promised to describe velasquez to fantin, to bring back photographs. such "glorious painting" should be copied. "_ah! mon cher, comme il a du travailler_," he winds up in his enthusiasm. but the journey ended at fuenterrabia. fantin could not join him. madrid was put off for another spring, for ever, though the journey was for ever being planned anew. [illustration: the music room harmony in green and rose oil in the possession of colonel f. hecker (_see page _)] [illustration: annie haden dry-point. g. (_see page _)] whistler sent _the white girl_ to the academy of , with _the twenty-fifth of december, , on the thames_; _alone with the tide_; and one etching, _rotherithe_. _the white girl_ was rejected. the two other pictures and the print were accepted, hung, and praised. the _athenæum_ compared the _rotherithe_ to rembrandt. whistler could scarcely be mentioned as an etcher without this comparison; since rembrandt his were "the most striking and original" etchings, everyone then said, mr. w. m. rossetti being among the first in england to say it boldly. _alone with the tide_ was approved as "perfectly expressed," and _the twenty-fifth of december_ as "broad and vigorous, though perhaps vigour was pushed over the bounds of coarseness to become mere dash." other work he showed elsewhere was praised. _the punt_ and _sketching_, published in _passages from modern english poets_, were singled out for admiration. _thames warehouses_ and _black lion wharf_ won him recognition as "the most admirable etcher of the present day," at south kensington museum, where in an international exhibition was held. whistler had no pictures, but the collection of modern continental art was one of the finest ever seen in england. in nothing had whistler been so completely himself as in _the white girl_, and it failed to please. the artist is born to pick and choose, and group with science, the elements in nature that the result may be beautiful, he wrote in _the ten o'clock_, and _the white girl_ was his first attempt to conform to a principle no one ever put so clearly into words. it was an attempt, we know now, comparing the painting to the symphonies and harmonies that came after. but at the time it was disquieting in its defiance of modern conventions. it was without subject according to victorian standards, and the bold massing of white upon white was more bewildering than the minute detail of the pre-raphaelites. this summer ( ) the berners street gallery was opened, "with the avowed purpose of placing before the public the works of young artists who may not have access to the ordinary galleries." maclise, egg, frith, cooper, poynter forced their way in. but the manager had the courage to exhibit _the white girl_, stating in the catalogue that the royal academy had refused it. the _athenæum_ was independent enough to say that it was the most prominent picture in the collection, though not the most perfect, for, "able as this bizarre production shows mr. whistler to be, we are certain that in a very few years he will recognize the reasonableness of its rejection. it is one of the most incomplete paintings we ever met with. a woman in a quaint morning dress of white, with her hair about her shoulders, stands alone in the background of nothing in particular. but for the rich vigour of the textures, we might conceive this to be some old portrait by zucchero, or a pupil of his, practising in a provincial town. the face is well done, but it is not that of mr. wilkie collins' _woman in white_." the criticism brought from whistler his first letter to the press, published in the _athenæum_, july : " sloane street. july , . "may i beg to correct an erroneous impression likely to be confirmed in your last number? the proprietors of the berners street gallery have, without my sanction, called my picture '_the woman in white_.' i had no intention whatever of illustrating mr. wilkie collins' novel; it so happens, indeed, that i have never read it. my painting simply represents a girl dressed in white, standing in front of a white curtain.--i am, &c., james whistler." the critics were spared the sting of his wit, but they disapproved strongly enough for him to tell his friends that _the white girl_ enjoyed a _succès d'exécration_. a different success awaited his thames etchings in paris, where they were shown in a dealer's gallery. baudelaire saw them and understood, as he was the first to understand the work of manet, poe, wagner, and many others. he wrote: "_tout récemment, un jeune artiste américain, m. whistler, exposait à la galerie martinet une série d'eaux fortes, subtiles, éveillées comme l'improvisation et l'inspiration, représentant les bords de la tamise; merveilleux fouillis d'agrés, de vergues, de cordages; chaos de brumes, de fourneaux et de fumées tire-bouchonnées; poésie profonde et compliquée d'une vaste capitale._" according to mr. w. m. rossetti, whistler soon moved to queen's road, chelsea: "i fancy that the houses in queen's road have been much altered since whistler was there in - . they were then low (say two-storeyed), quite old-fashioned houses, of a cosy, homely character, with small forecourts. i have a kind of idea that whistler's house was no. , but this is quite uncertain to me.[ ] as my brother and i were much in that neighbourhood, to and fro, prior to settling down in no. cheyne walk, we came into contact with whistler, who every now and then accompanied us on our jaunts. i forget how it was exactly that we got introduced to him; possibly by mr. algernon swinburne, who was also to be an inmate of no. . either (as i think) before meeting whistler or just about the time we met him, we had seen one or two of his paintings. _at the piano_ must have been one, and we most heartily admired him, and discerned unmistakably that he was destined for renown." the friendship may have led to whistler's interest in black-and-white, for in england it was rossetti and the pre-raphaelite brotherhood who revolutionised illustration and proved it a dignified and serious form of art. the more brilliant of the younger men were working for the illustrated magazines, and whistler found a place among them. he made six drawings in . four appeared in _once a week_: _the morning before the massacre of st. bartholomew_, _count burckhardt_, _the major's daughter_, _the relief fund in lancashire_, intended to be used as an illustration to the reprint of an address by tennyson on the subject of the famine in lancashire, but never written because of his illness. to this fund we believe whistler contributed a drawing. the two other illustrations, for _the first sermon_, were published in _good words_. they were drawn on wood in pencil, pen and wash, are full of character, and, in the use of line, are like his etchings. they were engraved by the dalziel brothers and joseph swain, and from mr. strahan, the publisher of _once a week_, we have these additional facts: "they were arranged for by edward dalziel, and i cannot say how he came to know the artist or his work, as mr. whistler was young then, and, as far as i know, had not contributed to any magazine. the average price we paid to artists was nine pounds, and we reckoned that the same amount had to be paid for engravings. as a matter of fact, the sum paid to mr. whistler was nine pounds for each drawing." we showed whistler once _the morning before the massacre of st. bartholomew_. "well, now, not bad, you know--not bad even then!" and he followed, with his expressive little finger, the flowing line, pointing to the hand lost in the draperies. this and _the major's daughter_ were the two he preferred, and when j. was preparing _the history of modern illustration_ whistler picked them out as "very pretty ones" that should be reproduced, though, if but a single example of his work could be used, he wished _the morning before the massacre_ to be selected, for it was "as delicate as an etching, and altogether characteristic and personal." _count burckhardt_ he did not care for, insisting that he would rather not be represented if this were to be the only example in the book. "it was never a favourite," he added. the four drawings of _once a week_ were reprinted in thornbury's _legendary ballads_, . thornbury implied that the drawings were made for the book, and thought that "the startling drawings by mr. whistler prove his singular power of hand, strong artistic feeling, and daring manner." our copy belonged to george augustus sala. on the margin of _the morning before the massacre_ he wrote: "jemmy whistler.--clever, sketchy, and incomplete, like everything he has done. a loaf of excellent, fine flour, but slack-baked." so sala believed in , and it is typical of the time. another important work of was _the last of old westminster_. mr. arthur severn knows more about it than anyone, as his account to us explains: "on my return from rome to join my brother in his rooms in manchester buildings, on the thames at westminster bridge (where the new scotland yard now is), i found whistler beginning his picture of westminster bridge. my brother had given him permission to use our sitting-room, with its bow-windows looking over the river and towards the bridge. he was always courteous and pleasant in manner, and it was interesting to see him at work. the bridge was in perspective, still surrounded with piles, for it had only just been finished. it was the piles with their rich colour and delightful confusion that took his fancy, not the bridge, which hardly showed. he would look steadily at a pile for some time, then mix up the colour, then, holding his brush quite at the end, with no mahlstick, make a downward stroke and the pile was done. i remember his looking very carefully at a hansom cab that had pulled up for some purpose on the bridge, and in a few strokes he got the look of it perfectly. he was long over the picture, sometimes coming only once a week, and we got rather tired of it. one day some friends came to see it. he stood it against a table in an upright position for them to see; it suddenly fell on its face, to my brother's disgust, as he had just got a new carpet. luckily whistler's sky was pretty dry, and i don't think the picture got any damage, and the artist was most good-natured about my brother's anxiety lest the carpet should have suffered." _the last of old westminster_ was ready for the academy of , to which it was sent with six prints: _weary_, _old westminster bridge_, _hungerford bridge_, _monsieur becquet_, _the forge_, _the pool_. the dignity of composition in the picture and the vigour of handling impressed all who saw it in the london memorial exhibition, though they had to regret its shocking condition, cracked from end to end. it failed to impress academicians in , and was badly hung, as were the prints, reproductive work being then, as now, preferred to original etching. _the white girl_, after its berners street success, was sent by whistler to the _salon_. he took it to paris, to fantin's studio, there having it unrolled and framed. it is hard to say why the strongest work of the strongest young men was rejected from the _salon_ of . fantin, legros, manet, bracquemond, jongkind, harpignies, cazin, jean-paul laurens, vollon, whistler were refused. it was a scandal; was nothing to it. the town was in an uproar that reached the ears of the emperor. martinet, the dealer, offered to show the rejected pictures in his gallery. but before this was arranged, napoleon iii ordered that a _salon des refusés_ should be held in the same building as the official _salon_, the _palais de l'industrie_. the decree was published in the _moniteur_ for april , . the notice was issued by the _directeur-général_ of the imperial museums, and the exhibition opened on may . the success was as great as the scandal. the exhibition was the talk of the town, it was caricatured as the _exposition des comiques_, and parodied as the _club des refusés_ at the _variétés_; everyone rushed to the galleries. the rooms were crowded by artists, because, in the midst of much no doubt weak and foolish, the best work of the day was shown; by the public, because of the stir the affair made. the public laughed with the idea that it was a duty to laugh, and because the critics said that never was _succès pour rire_ better deserved. zola described in _l'oeuvre_ the gaiety and cruelty of the crowd, convulsed and hysterical in front of _la dame en blanc_. hamerton wrote in the _fine arts quarterly_: "the hangers must have thought her particularly ugly, for they have given her a sort of place of honour, before an opening through which all pass, so that nobody misses her. i watched several parties, to see the impression _the woman in white_ made on them. they all stopped instantly, struck with amazement. this for two or three seconds, then they always looked at each other and laughed. here, for once, i have the happiness to be quite of the popular way of thinking." on the other hand, fernand desnoyers, who wrote a pamphlet on the _salon des refusés_, thought that whistler was "_le plus spirite des peintres_," and the painting the most original that had passed before the jury of the _salon_, altogether remarkable, at once simple and fantastic, the portrait of a spirit, a medium, though of a beauty so peculiar that the public did not know whether to think it beautiful or ugly. paul mantz considered it the most important picture in the exhibition, full of knowledge and strange charm, and his article in the _gazette des beaux-arts_ is the more interesting because he described the picture as a _symphonie du blanc_ some years before whistler called it so, and pointed out that it carried on french tradition, for, a hundred years earlier, painters had shown in the _salon_ studies of white upon white. the picture hardly explained the sensation of its first appearance when we saw it with _miss alexander_, the _mother_, _carlyle_, _the fur jacket_, and _irving_ in the london memorial exhibition. but it seemed revolutionary enough in the sixties, to become the _clou_ of the _salon des refusés_, though nothing was further from whistler's intention. it eclipsed manet's _déjeuner sur l'herbe_, then called _le bain_. whistler was in amsterdam with legros, looking at rembrandt with delight, at van der helst with disappointment, etching _amsterdam from the tolhuis_, no doubt hunting for old paper and adding to his collection of blue and white, when the news came of the reception of his picture in paris, and he wrote to fantin that he longed to be there and in the movement. it was a satisfaction that the picture, slighted in london, should be honoured in paris. he was all impatience to know what was said in the _café de bade_, the _café_ of manet, and by the critics. to add to his triumph in paris, official honours were coming to him in holland and england. some of his etchings were in an exhibition at the hague, though he said he did not know how they got there, and he was given one of three gold medals awarded to foreigners--his first medal. though atrociously hung at the academy, his prints were honoured at the british museum, where twelve were bought for the print room this year. the excitement did not keep him from work, to which, as he wrote to fantin, wandering was a drawback. he felt the need of his studio, of "the familiar all about him." the "familiar" he loved best was in london, and when he returned he began to look for a house of his own. it was fortunate for him that his mother was in england. at the beginning of the civil war, in which whistler took the keenest interest as a patriot and a "west point man," she had been in richmond with her son william, serving as surgeon in the confederate army, had run the blockade, and come to join her other children in london. whistler no longer made the hadens' house his home. the relations of the brothers-in-law had become strained, both being of strong character. haden had had much to put up with, while whistler, the artist, resented the criticism of haden, the surgeon. one story we have from whistler explains the situation, and though he never gave a date, it can be told here. haden was the schoolmaster whistler found him when they first met; one's older relatives have a way of forgetting one can grow up. once, when whistler had done something more enormous than ever in haden's eyes, he was summoned to the workroom upstairs, and lectured until he refused to listen to another word. he started down the four flights of stairs, with haden close behind still lecturing. at last the front door was reached. and then: "oh, dear," said whistler, "i've left my hat upstairs, and now we have got to go all through this again!" as there was no further question of whistler living with the hadens, it was decided that he and his mother should live together, and some of his most delightful years were those that followed. [footnote : see duret's _whistler_.] [footnote : not only have the houses been much altered, but the name of the street has changed, and queen's road is now royal hospital road. the present no. corresponds to mr. rossetti's description, but we think it more likely--and he does too--that whistler lived in one of the little brick cottages of paradise row. in any case, we doubt if he had more than rooms or lodgings. he gave us to understand that the house he took shortly after, in lindsey row, was his first in london.] chapter x: chelsea days. the years eighteen sixty-three to eighteen sixty-six. whistler's first house in london was no. lindsey row, chelsea, now cheyne walk. it adjoins the old palace of lord lindsey, which still stands, the original building divided into several houses, stuccoed and modernised, much of its stateliness gone, though the spacious stairway and part of the panelling have been preserved. whistler's was a three-storey house, with a garden in front, humble compared with the palaces academicians were building. "all these artists complain of nothing but the too great prosperity of the profession in these days," hamerton wrote to his wife; "they tell me an artist's life is a princely one now." but whistler lived his own life, and from his windows he could paint what he wanted. only the road separated the house from the river; opposite was battersea church and a group of factory chimneys; old battersea bridge stretched across, and at night he could see the lights of cremorne. at the end of the row the boat-builder greaves lived. he had worked in chelsea for years. he had rowed turner about on the river, and his two sons were to row whistler. one of the sons, mr. walter greaves, has told us that mrs. booth, a big, hard, coarse scotchwoman, was always with turner when he came for a boat. turner would ask greaves what kind of a day it was going to be, and if greaves answered "fine," he would get greaves to row them across to battersea church, or to the fields, now battersea park. if greaves was doubtful turner would say: "well, mrs. booth, we won't go far," and afterwards for the sons--boys at the time--turner in their memory was overshadowed by her. they had also known martin, the painter of big scriptural _machines_, whose house was in the middle of the row. it had a balcony, and on fine moonlight nights, or nights of dramatic skies, greaves or one of the sons would knock him up, and keep on knocking until they saw the old man in his nightcap on the balcony, where he would get to work and sketch the sky until daylight. greaves remembered, too, brunel, who built the _great eastern_, living at the end of the row. of other associations, dating a couple of centuries before, the little moravian graveyard at the back was a reminder, for lindsey palace was one of the first refuges of zinzendorf and the brotherhood. a hundred years or so later mrs. gaskell was born there. the row, indeed, was a place of history. but whistler was to make it more famous. [illustration: the white girl symphony in white. no. i oil in the possession of j. h. whittemore, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: jo dry-point. g. (_see page _)] the two greaves, walter and harry, painted, and whistler let them work with and for him. we have often heard him speak of them as his pupils. from them he learned to row. "he taught us to paint, and we taught him the waterman's jerk," mr. walter greaves says. whistler would start with them in the twilight, albert moore sometimes his companion, and they would stay on the river for hours, often all night, lingering in the lights of cremorne, drifting into the shadows of the bridge. or else he was up with the dawn, throwing pebbles at their windows to wake them and make them come and pull him up or down stream. at night, on the river and at cremorne, he was never without brown paper and black and white chalk, with which he made his notes for the nocturnes and the seemingly simple, but really complicated, firework pictures. in the gardens it was easy to put down what he wanted under the lamps. on the river he had to trust to his memory, only noting the reflections in white chalk. walter greaves, in his exhibition of , made the statement, or allowed it to be made, that before he and his brother knew whistler, they were "painting pictures of the thames and cremorne gardens, both day and night effects." this statement mr. greaves was unable to substantiate by dates and facts, and as other dates and facts given in his catalogue were wrong, little reliance can be placed upon it. he and his brother were whistler's pupils, and they worked for whistler for many years, helping him, at any rate until after the peacock room. whistler naturally wished to control his pupils in their work as any other master would, as he controlled and directed the work of mr. and mrs. clifford addams, his last pupils. he also did his best to prevent mr. walter greaves and his brother from appropriating his subjects, which letters from whistler to greaves prove was exactly what they were doing. they were to carry on his tradition, and this included his methods and even at times his colours which they used, while whistler as undoubtedly worked on their canvases and plates as he worked on those of other pupils at later dates. but the statement that he refused to allow them to exhibit is untrue, for on the few occasions when we are able to find that greaves did exhibit, it was because whistler, in his generosity, got the pictures hung. in his recent exhibition greaves showed a painting called _passing under old battersea bridge_, signed and dated , and he stated that he had exhibited it in the international exhibition at south kensington of that year. no other picture we have seen by him has any such date or signature on it, and his statement that it was in the international exhibition of has been proved false. it is now admitted that he did not show until . there are two distinct qualities of work in the picture which must be the work either of two people or of two periods. the piers of the bridge are hard and tight, the background resembles whistler's work of years later, for neither whistler nor greaves had painted a nocturne in that manner at the time. nevertheless, these misstatements of greaves were used by critics all over the world to belittle whistler. at one time, master and pupils attended a life class held in the evening by m. barthe, a frenchman, in limerston street, not far from the row. mr. j. e. christie was another student, and from him we have the following account: "whistler was not a regular attender, but came occasionally, and always accompanied by two young men--brothers--greaves by name. they simply adored whistler, and were not unlike him in appearance, owing to an unconscious imitation of his dress and manner. it was amusing to watch the movements of the trio when they came into the studio (always late). the curtain that hung in front of the door would suddenly be pulled back by one of the greaves, and a trim, prim little man, with a bright, merry eye, would step in with 'good evening,' cheerfully said to the whole studio. after a second's survey, while taking off his gloves, he would hand his hat to the other brother, who hung it up carefully as if it were a sacred thing, then he would wipe his brow and moustache with a spotless handkerchief, then in the most careful way he arranged his materials, and sat down. then, having imitated in a general way the preliminaries, the two greaves sat down on either side of him. there was a sort of tacit understanding that his and their studies should not be subjected to our rude gaze. i, however, saw, with the tail of my eye, as it were, that whistler made small drawings on brown paper with coloured chalks, that the figure (always a female figure) would be about four inches long, that the drawing was bold and fine, and not slavishly like the model. the comical part was that his satellites didn't draw from the model at all, that i saw, but sat looking at whistler's drawing and copying that as far as they could. he never entered into the conversation, which was unceasing, but occasionally rolled a cigarette and had a few whiffs, the greaves brothers always requiring their whiffs at the same time. the trio packed up, and left before the others always." sometimes in the evening whistler, with his mother, would go to the greaves' house after dinner, and work there. often he sent in dessert, that they might enjoy and talk over it together. then he would bring out his brown paper and chalks and make studies of the family and of himself, or sketches of pictures he had seen, working until midnight and after. in those days he never went to bed until he had drawn a portrait of himself, he told us. many of the portraits are in existence. the sister was an accomplished musician, and whistler delighted in music, though he was not critical, for he was known to call the passing hurdy-gurdy into his front garden, and have it ground under his windows. occasionally the brothers played so that whistler might dance. he was always full of drolleries and fun. he would imitate a man sawing, or two men fighting at the door so cleverly that mrs. greaves never ceased to be astonished when he walked into the room alone and unhur. he delighted in american mechanical toys, and his house was full of japanese dolls. one great doll, dressed like a man, he would take with him not only to the greaves', but to dinners at little holland house, where the prinseps then lived, and to other houses, where he put it through amazing performances. dante gabriel rossetti was, by this time, settled in tudor house (now queen's house), not far from lindsey row, and swinburne and george meredith were living with him. mr. w. m. rossetti came for two or three nights every week, and frederick sandys, charles augustus howell, william bell scott, and, several years later, mr. theodore watts-dunton were constant visitors. for rossetti whistler had a genuine affection, and, in his early enthusiasm, wrote of him as "_une grand artiste_" to fantin. but later his enthusiasm did not blind him. "a charming fellow, the only white man in all that crowd of painters," he assured us; "not an artist, you know, but charming and a gentleman." mr. watts-dunton says that rossetti got tired of whistler after awhile, and considered him a brainless fellow, who had no more than a malicious quick wit at the expense of others, and no genuine philosophy or humour. but whistler never realised any change in rossetti's feelings towards him. it was inevitable that whistler and rossetti should disagree in matters of art. whistler asked rossetti why he did not frame his sonnets. rossetti thought that the "new french school," in which whistler had been trained, was "simply putrescence and decomposition." it is said that rossetti influenced whistler. whistler influenced him as much. they influenced each other in the choice of models, in a certain luxuriance of type and the manner of presenting it, an influence which was superficial and transitory. upon many other subjects they agreed. rossetti shared whistler's delight in drollery and his love of the fantastic. no one understood better than whistler why rossetti filled his house and garden with strange beasts. it was from whistler we heard of the peacock and the gazelle, who fought until the peacock was left standing desolate, with his tail strewed upon the ground. from whistler, too, we had the story of the bull of bashan, bought at cremorne, and tied to a stake in the garden, and rossetti would come every day and talk to him, until once the bull got so excited that he pulled up the stake and made for rossetti, who went tearing round and round a tree, a little fat person with coat-tails flying, finally, by a supreme effort, rushing up the garden steps just in time to slam the door in the bull's face. rossetti called his man and ordered him to tie up the bull, but the man, who had looked out for the menagerie, who had gone about the house with peacocks and other creatures under his arms, who had rescued armadilloes from irate neighbours, who had captured monkeys from the tops of chimneys, struck when it came to tying up a bull of bashan on the rampage, and gave a month's warning. from whistler also we first had the story of the wombat, bought at jamrach's by rossetti for its name. whistler was dining at tudor house, and the wombat was brought on the table with coffee and cigars, while meredith talked brilliantly, and swinburne read aloud passages from the _leaves of grass_. but meredith was witty as well as brilliant, and the special target of his wit was rossetti, who, as he had invited two or three of his patrons, did not appreciate the jest. the evening ended less amiably than it began, and no one thought of the wombat until late, and then it had disappeared. it was searched for high and low. days passed, weeks passed, months passed, and there was no wombat. it was regretted, forgotten. long afterwards rossetti, who was not much of a smoker, got out the box of cigars he had not touched since that dinner. he opened it. not a cigar was left, but there was the skeleton of the wombat. whistler and rossetti also agreed about many of the group who met at tudor house, though eventually whistler felt what appeared to him the disloyalty of swinburne and burne-jones. he was never, at any time, so intimate with burne-jones as with swinburne, who often came to the house in lindsey row, not only for whistler's sake, but out of affection for whistler's mother. miss chapman tells us that swinburne was once taken ill there suddenly, and mrs. whistler nursed him till he was well. miss chapman also remembers swinburne sitting at mrs. whistler's feet, and saying to her: "mrs. whistler, what has happened? it used to be algernon!" mrs. whistler, who had accepted whistler's friends and their ways, said quietly, "you have not been to see us for a long while, you know. if you come as you did, it will be algernon again." and he came, and the friendship lasted until the eighties, when he published the article in the _fortnightly review_ which whistler could not forgive. meredith wrote us of these chelsea days: "i knew whistler and never had a dissension with him, though merry bouts between us were frequent. when i went to live in the country, we rarely met. he came down to stay with me once. he was a lively companion, never going out of his way to take offence, but with the springs in him prompt for the challenge. his tales of his student life in paris, and of one ernest, with whom he set forth on a holiday journey with next to nothing in his purse, were _impayable_." quarrels and distrust never made whistler deny the charm of charles augustus howell, remembered for the part he played in the lives of some of the most distinguished people of his generation. who he was, where he came from, nobody knew. he was supposed to be associated with high, but nameless, personages in portugal, and sent by them on a secret mission to england: he was said to have been involved in the orsini conspiracy, and obliged to fly for his life across the channel. according to mr. e. t. cook, he was descended from boabdil il chico, though rossetti called him "the cheeky." mr. cook says that in his youth, as he used to tell, he had supported his family by diving for treasure, and had lived in morocco as the sheik of a tribe. but ford madox brown described him as the münchausen of the pre-raphaelite circle. the unquestionable fact is that he was a man of great personal charm and unusual business capacity. mr. w. m. rossetti has written of him: "as a salesman--with his open manner, winning address, and his exhaustless gift of amusing talk, not innocent of high colouring and of actual _blague_--howell was unsurpassable." he was secretary to ruskin; he was rossetti's man of affairs; he became whistler's, though on a less definite basis. he appears in published reminiscences as the magnificent prototype of the author's agent. his talk was one of his recommendations to both rossetti and whistler. rossetti rejoiced in howell's "niagara of lies," and immortalised them: "_there's a portuguese person called howell, who lays on his lies with a trowel; when i goggle my eyes, and start with surprise, 'tis at the monstrous big lies told by howell._" whistler described him as "the wonderful man, the genius, the gil blas-robinson crusoe hero out of his proper time, the creature of top-boots and plumes, splendidly flamboyant, the real hero of the picaresque novel, forced by modern conditions into other adventures, and along other roads." whistler gave howell credit for more than picturesqueness. he had the instinct for beautiful things, whistler said: "he knew them and made himself indispensable by knowing them. he was of the greatest service to rossetti; he helped watts to sell his pictures and raise his prices; he acted as artistic adviser to mr. howard, lord carlisle. he had the gift of intimacy; he was at once a friend, on closest terms of confidence. he introduced everybody to everybody else, he entangled everybody with everybody else, and it was easier to get involved with howell than to get rid of him." many years passed before there was any wish on whistler's part to get rid of him. he was soon as frequent a visitor at lindsey row as at tudor house. for a time he lived at putney, and whistler used to take his morning pull up the river to breakfast with him. of none of the rossetti group did whistler so often talk to us as of howell, telling us his adventures--adventures in pursuit of old furniture and china until he was known to, and loved and hated by, every pawnbroker in london, and seemed to spend all his time with rare and beautiful things; adventures with creditors and bailiffs: once his collection of blue pots saved by a device only howell could have invented, forty blue pots carried off in forty four-wheelers to the law-courts, where he was complimented by the judge and awarded heavy damages by the jury; adventures as vestryman, giving teas to hundreds of schoolchildren; adventures at selsea bill, where three cottages were turned into a house for himself and he swaggered in the village as a great personage, finding an occupation in stripping the copper from an old wreck that had been there for years and possibly selling it to etchers; adventures ending eventually in _the paddon papers_, of which there will be something to say when the date of their publication is reached. frederick sandys' work never interested whistler, but sandys the man was a delight to him, though the two lost sight of each other for many years. sandys was usually without a penny in his pocket, but he faced the situation with calm and swagger. accidents never separated him from his white waistcoat, though he might have to carry it himself to the laundry, or get his model, "the little girl" he called her, to carry it for him. you were always meeting them with the brown-paper parcel, whistler said, and at the nearest friend's house he would stop for five minutes and emerge from it splendid in a clean waistcoat. in money matters he reckoned like a rothschild. it was always, "huh! five hundred," that he wanted. late one afternoon, as whistler was going into rossetti's, he met sandys coming out unusually depressed. he stopped whistler: "do, do try and reason with gabriel, huh! he is most thoughtless. he says i must go to america, and i must have five hundred, huh, and go! but, if i could go, huh, i could stay!" once whistler, sandys, and rossetti are said to have gone to winchelsea with w. g. wills, irving, and alfred calmour, from whom the story comes. whistler and rossetti wanted to see a beautiful old house. a grumpy old man lived in it, but irving warned them that he would probably ask them all to dinner. rossetti said they must refuse, he hated dining with strangers; whistler was sure the wine would be bad, sandys as certain they would be bored by infernal chatter. but they went to the house. whistler knocked. the servant opened. whistler asked him to tell his master that "mr. whistler and mr. rossetti and mr. irving wish to see the place." a rough voice was heard: "shut the door, roger, i don't want these damned show people stealing my silver." whistler and rossetti were furious, and thought they should demand an apology. "he thinks we are confounded actors," whistler said. "my dear james, he's never heard of _you_!" was irving's comment. the only drawback to the story is that we doubt if whistler knew irving until after he had ceased to see anything of rossetti and sandys. whistler got to know other friends of rossetti's, and he drifted to ford madox brown's, in fitzroy square: "once in a long while i would take my gaiety, my sunniness, to madox brown's receptions. and there were always the most wonderful people--the blinds, swinburne, anarchists, poets and musicians, all kinds and sorts, and, in an inner room, rossetti and mrs. morris sitting side by side in state, being worshipped, and, fluttering round them, howell with a broad red ribbon across his shirt-front, a portuguese decoration hereditary in the family." according to his grandson, mr. ford madox hueffer, ford madox brown thought so much of whistler's work that once, knowing whistler wanted money, he sent round among his friends a circular praising whistler's etchings and urging their purchase. whistler shared rossetti's interest in the spiritual manifestations that, for several years, agitated the circle at tudor house. he told us once of the strange things that happened when he went to _séances_ at rossetti's with jo, and also when he and jo tried the same things in his studio, and a cousin from the south, long dead, talked to him and told him much that no one else could have known. he believed, but he gave up the _séances_ when they threatened to become engrossing, for he felt that he would be obliged to sacrifice to them the work he had to do in the world. [illustration: the blue wave oil in the possession of a. a. pope, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: the forge dry-point. g. (_see page _)] the chief bond between whistler and rossetti was their love for blue and white and japanese prints. whistler was in paris in , when bracquemond "discovered" japan in a little volume of hokusai used for packing china, and rescued by delâtre, the printer. it passed into the hands of laveille, the engraver, and from him bracquemond obtained it. after that, bracquemond had the book always by him; and when in madame desoye, who, with her husband, had lived in japan, opened a shop under the arcades of the rue de rivoli, the enthusiasm spread to manet, fantin, tissot, jacquemart and solon, baudelaire and the de goncourts. rossetti was supposed to have made it the fashion. but the fashion in paris began before rossetti owned his first blue pot or his first colour-print. whistler brought the knowledge and the love of the art to london. "it was he who invented blue and white in london," mr. murray marks assured us, and mr. w. m. rossetti was as certain that his brother was inspired by whistler, who bought not only blue and white, but sketch-books, colour-prints, lacquers, kakemonos, embroideries, screens. "in his house in chelsea, facing battersea bridge," mr. severn writes, "he had lovely blue and white, chinese and japanese." the only decorations, except the harmony of colour, were the prints on the walls, a flight of japanese fans in one place, in another shelves of blue and white. people, copying him, stuck up fans anywhere, and hung plates from wires. whistler's fans were arranged for colour and line. his decorations bewildered people even more than the work of the new firm of morris, marshall, faulkner and co. the victorian artist covered his walls with tapestry, filled his studio with costly things, and made the public measure beauty by price, a fact overlooked by whistler, but never by morris. rossetti joined in the hunt for blue and white. henry treffy dunn, in his _recollections of rossetti_, whose assistant he was, writes that rossetti and whistler "each tried to outwit the other in picking up the choicest pieces of blue to be met with"; that both were for ever hunting for "long elizas," a name in which mr. w. m. rossetti thought "possibly a witticism of whistler's may be detected." howell rushed in and met with the most astounding experiences and adventures. a little shop in the strand was one of their favourite haunts, another was near london bridge where a japanese print was given away with a pound of tea. farmer and rogers had an oriental warehouse in regent street. the manager, mr. lazenby liberty, afterwards opened one on the other side of the street, and here, too, whistler went, introduced to mr. liberty by rossetti. mr. liberty rendered him many a service, and visited him to the last. mr. murray marks imported blue and white, and he has told us how the fever spread from whistler and rossetti to the ever-anxious collector. rossetti asked mr. marks if he knew anything about blue and white. mr. marks said yes; he could get rossetti a shipload if he chose. mr. marks often ran over to holland, where blue and white was common and cheap, and he picked up a lot, offering it to rossetti for fifty pounds. rossetti happened to be hard up and could not afford it. but he came with mr. huth, who bought as much as rossetti could not take, and the rage for it began in england, sir henry thompson, among others, commencing to collect. the rivalry between whistler and rossetti lasted for several years, until rossetti, ill and broken, hardly saw his friends, and until mr. marks, in the early seventies, bought back from whistler and rossetti all he had sold them. chapter xi: chelsea days. the years eighteen sixty-three to eighteen sixty-six continued. in whistler's correspondence with fantin between and , published in part by m. bénédite in the _gazette des beaux-arts_ ( ), it can be seen that he was outgrowing the influence of courbet, and that his reaction against realism was bitter. in his revolt he deliberately built up subjects that had nothing to do with life as he knew it, and he borrowed the motives from japan. it was in the studio at no. lindsey row--no huge, gorgeous, tapestry-hung, _bric-à-brac_ crowded hall, but a little second storey, or english first floor, back room--that the japanese pictures were painted. the method was a development of his earlier work. the difference was in the subjects. he did not conceal his "machinery." _the lange leizen_, _the gold screen_, _the balcony_, the _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_ were endeavours to render a beauty he had discovered which was unknown in western life. there was no attempt at the "learning" of tadema or the "morality" of holman hunt. whistler's models were not japanese. the lady of _the lange leizen_ sits on a chair as she never would have sat in the land from which her costume came, and the pots and trays and flowers around her are in a profusion never seen in the houses of tokio or canton. in _the gold screen_ pose and arrangement are equally inappropriate. the _princesse_, in her trailing robes, is as little japanese. when he left the studio and took his canvas to the front of the house and painted _the balcony_, though he clothed the english models in eastern dress and gave them eastern instruments to play upon, and placed them before japanese screens and anglo-japanese railings, their background was the thames with the chimneys of battersea. we have heard of a chinese bamboo rack he used for these railings, though some remember it as a studio property made from his design. nothing save the beauty of the detail mattered to whistler. it was not the real japan he wanted to paint, but his idea of it, just as rembrandt painted his idea of the holy land. the titles he afterwards found for these pictures are _purple and rose_, _caprice in purple and gold_, _harmony in flesh colour and green_, _rose and silver_. harmony was what he sought, though no dutchman surpassed their delicacy of detail, truth of texture, intricacy of pattern. and yet we are conscious in them of artificial structure as in none of his other work; the models do not live in their japanese draperies; eastern detail is out of place on the banks of the thames; the device is too obvious. the _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_ is the portrait of miss christine spartali, daughter of the greek consul-general in london, whom whistler met at ionides', and to whose dinners and parties he often went. there were two daughters, christine (countess edmond de cahen) and marie (mrs. w. j. stillman), both beautiful. whistler and rossetti were struck by their beauty, and whistler asked the younger sister, christine, to sit to him. mrs. stillman, who always accompanied her, has told us the story of the picture. before they came to the studio whistler had his scheme prepared. the japanese robe was ready, the rug and screen were in place, and he posed her at once. there are a number of small studies and sketches in oil and pastel that show he knew what he wanted. she sat twice a week during the winter of - . at first the work went quickly, then it began to drag. whistler often rubbed it out just as she thought it finished, and day after day she returned to find that everything was to be done over again. the parents got tired, but not the two girls. mrs. stillman remembers that whistler partly closed the shutters so as to shut out the direct light; that her sister stood at one end of the room, the canvas beside her; that whistler would look at the picture from a distance, then dash at it, give one stroke, then dash away again. as a rule, they arrived about half-past ten or a quarter to eleven; he painted steadily, forgetting everything else, and it was often long after two before they lunched. when lunch was served, it was brought into the studio, placed on a low table, and they sat on stools. there were no such lunches anywhere. mrs. whistler provided american dishes, strange in london; among other things, raw tomatoes, a surprise to the greek girls, who had never eaten tomatoes except over-cooked as the greeks liked them, and canned apricots and cream, which they had never eaten at all. one _menu_ was roast pheasants, followed by tomato salad, and the apricots and cream, usually with champagne. one cannot wonder that there were occasional deficits in the bank account at lindsey row. but it was not only the things to eat and drink that made the hour a delight. whistler, silent when he worked, was gay at lunch. perhaps better than his charm, mrs. stillman remembers his devotion to his mother, who was calm and dignified, with something of the sweet peacefulness of the friends. after lunch work was renewed, and it was four and later before they were released. the sittings went on until the sitter fell ill. whistler was pitiless with his models. the head in the _princesse_ gave him most trouble. he kept miss spartali standing while he worked at it, never letting her rest; she must keep the entire pose, and she would not admit her fatigue as long as she could help it. during her illness a model stood for the gown, and when she was getting better he came one day and made a pencil drawing of her head, though what became of it mrs. stillman never knew. there were a few sittings after this, and at last the picture was finished. the two girls wanted their father to buy it, but mr. spartali did not like it. he objected to it as a portrait of his daughter. appreciation of art was not among the virtues of the london greeks. alexander ionides and his sons were almost alone in preferring a good thing. rossetti, glad to be of service, tried to sell the picture. whistler agreed to take a hundred pounds, and rossetti placed the canvas in his studio, where it would be seen by a collector who was coming to look at his work. the collector came, saw the _princesse_, liked it, wanted it. there was one objection: whistler's signature in big letters across the canvas. if whistler would change the signature he would take the picture. rossetti, enchanted, hurried to tell whistler. whistler was indignant. the request showed what manner of man the patron was, one in whose possession he did not care to have any work of his. however, rossetti sold the _princesse_ to another collector, who died shortly afterwards, and then it was bought by frederick leyland, and so led to the decoration of the peacock room. it is possible that this objection helped whistler to realise the inharmonious effect of a large signature on a picture. it is sure that, about this time, he began to arrange his initials somewhat after the japanese fashion. they were first interlaced in an oblong or circular frame like the signatures of japanese artists. he signed his name to the earliest pictures, even to some of the japanese. but with the nocturnes and the large portraits the butterfly appeared, made from working the letters j. m. w. into a design, which became more fantastic until it evolved into the butterfly in silhouette, and continued in various forms. in the _carlyle_ the butterfly is enclosed in a round frame, like a cut-out silhouette, behind the figure, and repeats the prints on the wall. in the _miss alexander_ it is in a large semicircle and is far more distinctly a butterfly. then it grew like a stencil, though in no sense was it one, as may be seen in m. duret's portrait, where the butterfly is made simply in silhouette, on the background, by a few touches of the rose of the opera cloak and the fan. it was introduced as a note of colour, as important in the picture as any other detail, and at times it was put in almost at the first painting to judge the effect, scraped out with the whole thing, put in again somewhere else, this repeated until he got it right. we have seen many an unfinished picture with a wonderfully finished butterfly, because it was just where whistler wanted it. the same development can be traced in his etchings, in which it began to appear as a bit of decoration. he originally signed the prints, and signed the plates with his name and date bitten in. but later the prints were signed with the butterfly, followed by "_imp_," while the butterfly alone was etched on the copper or drawn on the stone. then he added the butterfly to his signature to letters and his dedication on prints. and the butterfly found its way to his invitation cards, and at last his correspondence, public and private, was usually signed with the butterfly alone. this was elaborated ingeniously in the _gentle art of making enemies_, the butterfly not only decorating, but punctuating the paragraphs. rumour says that whistler went so far as to sign his cheques with the butterfly, and that once, having signed a cheque for thirty-two francs in this manner, the man to whom it was paid demanded a more conventional signature. whistler, provoked by the suggestion of doubt, wrote his name, knowing the bank would not then accept it, and was more provoked when he found the rare autograph had been sold within a day for eleven hundred and fifty francs. but rumour is probably wrong: on all the formal letters and documents we have seen, his name, and not the butterfly, is used. on the frames of early pictures japanese patterns were painted in red or blue on the flat gold, and a butterfly placed on them, in relation to the picture. he designed the frames, and they were carried out by the greaves, who also copied his designs at streatham town hall, which they decorated thirty years later. shortly before his death, a few were done by his stepson, e. godwin. the _sarasate_, in pittsburg, is an excellent example, and so is the _battersea bridge_ at the tate gallery. whistler applied a similar scheme to his etchings, water-colours, and pastels, reddish or bluish lines, and at times the butterfly, appearing on the white or gold of their frames. certain people want to make out that whistler got the idea from rossetti. it might as well be said that rossetti got it from the beginning of the world. there is nothing new in the idea. artists always have decorated special frames for special pictures, and whistler only carried on tradition when he designed frames in harmony with his work and varied them according to the pictures for which they were used. in after years he gave up almost entirely these painted frames, and for his paintings substituted a simple gold frame, with parallel reeded lines, now universally known as "the whistler frame." for his etchings and lithographs he chose a plain white frame in two planes. his canvases and his panels were always of the same sizes; consequently they always fitted his frames. and in his studio, as in few, if any others, frequently there might be half a hundred canvases with their faces to the wall, and only half a dozen frames. but they all fitted, and whistler never showed his work unframed. this was the outcome of japanese influence, and of his knowledge of the way the japanese display their art. his deference to japanese convention went so far that he put a branch of a tree or a reed into the foreground of his seas and rivers as decoration, in early work, with no reference to the picture, sometimes the only japanese suggestion in the design. _the lange leizen--of the six marks_ went to the academy of , with _wapping_. the critic of the _athenæum_, to whom the japanese subject seemed "quaint" and the drawing "preposterously incorrect," could not deny the "superb colouring" and the "beautiful harmonies," nor fail to see in wapping an "incomparable view of the lower pool of london." "never before was that familiar scene so triumphantly well painted," mr. w. m. rossetti wrote. whistler did not send to the _salon_ of , in which fantin showed his now famous _hommage à delacroix_, who had died in . whistler was among the several admirers whom fantin painted round the portrait of the dead master. whistler wanted fantin to find a place for rossetti, who would be proud to pose, and fantin was willing, but rossetti could not get to paris. there was also talk of including swinburne. unfortunately for both, they were left out of one of the most celebrated portrait groups of modern times, now in the moreau-nélaton collection in the louvre. the distinguished artists and men of letters were there nominally out of respect to delacroix, but really to enable fantin to justify his belief in the beauty of life as it is, and his protest against the classical dictionary and studio properties. most of them were, or have since become, famous: whistler, manet, legros, bracquemond, fantin, baudelaire, duranty, champfleury, cordier, de balleroy. fantin painted them in the costume of the time, as rembrandt and hals and van der helst, from whom he is said to have taken the idea, painted the regents and archers of seventeenth-century holland. fantin's white shirt is the one concession to picturesqueness, and the one relief to the severity of detail are the flowers held by whistler, a lithe, erect, youthful figure, with fine, keen face and abundant hair. that the young american should be the centre of the group was a distinction. when rossetti saw the picture, he wrote to his brother that it had "a great deal of very able painting in parts, but it is a great slovenly scrawl after all, like the rest of this incredible new school." whistler was already working out of the artificial scheme of the japanese pictures into a phase in which he was more himself than he had ever been. the next year, , he sent to the academy the most complete, the most perfect picture he ever painted, _the little white girl_, which will always be recognised as one of the few great pictures of the world. it was dated , and there are reproductions showing the date. but about he painted it out. he had been working on the picture, he told us, and "did not see the use of those great figures sprawling there." jo was the model. now, there was no masquerading in foreign finery. whistler painted her as he must often have seen her, in her simple white gown, leaning against the mantel, her beautiful face reflected in the mirror. the room was not littered with his purchases from the little shops in the strand and the rue de rivoli. japan is in the detail of blue and white on the mantel; the girl holds a japanese fan; a spray of azalea trails across her dress. but these were part of whistler's house, part of the reality he had created for himself, and he made them no more beautiful than the mantel, the grate, the reflection in the mirror. there was no building up, he painted what he saw. and there was in the handling an advance. the paint is thinner on the canvas, the brush flows more freely. swinburne saw the picture and wrote _before the mirror: verses under a picture_. the poem was printed on gold paper, pasted on the frame, which has disappeared, but we have a contemporary photograph showing the arrangement, and two verses were inserted in the academy catalogue as sub-title. what swinburne thought of the picture may be read in a letter he wrote to ruskin in the summer of (_library edition of the works of ruskin_), in which he says that many, especially dante rossetti, told him his verses were better than the painting, and that whistler ranked them far above it. but a closer examination of the picture only convinced him of its greater beauty, and he would stand up for whistler against whistler and everybody else. [illustration: the morning before the massacre of st. bartholomew wood-engraving by j. swain from "once a week," vol. vii, p. (_see page _)] [illustration: the last of old westminster oil in the possession of a. a. pope, esq (_see page _).] swinburne's poem and praise could not make _the little white girl_ at the academy better understood than _the white girl_ had been in berners street. the rare few could appreciate its "charm" and "exquisiteness" with mr. w. m. rossetti, who found that it was "crucially tested by its proximity to the flashing white in mr. millais' _esther_," but that it stood the test, "retorting delicious harmony for daring force, and would shame any other contrast." but the general opinion was the other way. the _athenæum_ distinguished itself by regretting that whistler should make the "most 'bizarre' of bipeds" out of the women he painted. there was praise for two other pictures. "subtle beauty of colour" and "almost mystical delicacy of tone" were discovered in _the gold screen_, and "colour such as painters love" in the _old battersea bridge_, afterwards _brown and silver_. this is the beautiful battersea, with the touch of red in the roofs of the opposite shore, the link between the early paintings on the river and the nocturnes that were to follow. _the scarf_, a picture we do not recognise, attracted less attention, and whistler, the year before, declared "one of the most original artists of the day" was now dismissed as one who "might be called half a great artist." stranger than this was the change in the attitude of the french critics. in they overwhelmed him with praise. two years later they had hardly a good word for him. levi legrange, forgotten as he merits, wrote the criticism of the royal academy of for the _gazette des beaux-arts_, and all he could see in _the little white girl_ was a weak repetition of _the white girl_, a wearisome variation of the theme of white; really, he said, it was quite witty of the academicians, who could have refused it and the two japanese pictures, to give them good places and so deliver them to judgment. and then he praised horsley and prinsep, leslie and landseer. the _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_, in the _salon_, made no more favourable impression. it seemed a study of costume to paul mantz, who, in the _gazette des beaux-arts_, decided to forget it and remember merely the mysterious seduction of _the white girl_ of two years before. its eccentricity was only possible if taken in small doses like the hom[oe]opathist's pills, according to the incredible jules claretie, who, in the same article in _l'artiste_, laughed at manet's _olympia_. for more than twenty years whistler was hated in france. in this _salon_, , fantin showed his _hommage à la vérité--le toast_, the second of his two large groups including whistler's portrait. in it he strayed so far from the real as to introduce an allegorical figure of truth, and to allow whistler to array himself in a gorgeous chinese robe. "_pense à la robe, superbe à faire, et donne la moi!_" whistler urged from london, and fantin yielded. "_je l'ai encore revu dans l'atelier en , il me posa dans un tableau aujourd'hui détruit, 'le toast,' où il était costumé d'une robe japonaise_," is fantin's story of it in the notes to us, but whistler, writing at the time, speaks of the costume as chinese. he brought it to paris for the sittings. fantin was quick to regret his concessions. an allegorical figure could not be made real, the whole thing was absurd. when he got the canvas back he destroyed it, all but the portraits of whistler, vollon, and himself. whistler's is now in the freer collection. in the spring of whistler was joined in london by his younger brother. dr. whistler had distinguished himself in the confederate army as a surgeon and by bravery in the field. he had served in richmond hospitals and in libby prison; he had been assistant-surgeon at drewry's bluff, and in , when grant made his move against richmond, he had been assigned to orr's rifles, a celebrated south carolina regiment. in the early winter of a few months' furlough was given him, and he was entrusted by the confederate government with important despatches to england. sherman's advance prevented his running the blockade from charleston, nor was there any passing through the lines from wilmington by sea. he was obliged to go north through maryland, which meant making his way round grant's lines. the difficulties and dangers were endless. he had to get rid of his confederate uniform, and in the state of confederate finance the most modest suit of clothes cost fourteen hundred dollars; for a seat in a waggon he had to pay five hundred. the trains were crowded with officials and soldiers, and he could get a ride in them only by stealth. the roads were abominable, for driving or riding or walking. often he was alone, and his one companion toward the north was a fellow soldier who had lost a leg at antietam and was trying to get to philadelphia for repairs to an artificial one. stanton's expedition filled the country near the rappahannock with snares and pitfalls; to cross chesapeake bay was to take one's life in one's hand; and north of the bay were the enrolling officers of the union in search of conscripts. however, philadelphia was at last reached and a ticket for new york bought at the railroad depot, where two sentries, with bayonets fixed, guarded the ticket-office, and might, for all dr. whistler knew, have seen him in libby prison. in new york he took passage on the _city of manchester_, and from liverpool he hurried to london. one week later came the news of the fall of richmond and the confederacy. the furlough was over. there was no going back. it was probably about this time, from the costume and the technical resemblance to mr. luke ionides' portrait, that whistler painted a head of dr. whistler--_portrait of my brother_--now owned by mr. burton mansfield, though it should and might have been in the national gallery in washington. early in september , whistler's mother was suffering from trouble with her eyes, and went with her two sons to coblentz to consult an oculist, and this gave whistler the chance to revisit some of the scenes of the french set of etchings. after that he spent a month or two at trouville, where he was joined by courbet. whistler's work shows how far he had drifted away, though the two were always friends. in _sea and rain_, done at trouville, there is not a suggestion of courbet. but we have seen a sea by courbet, owned by m. duret, that whistler might have signed. jo was there too. the sea-pieces he had begun, including _courbet on the shore_, promised great things, he wrote to mr. luke ionides, and as the autumn went on the place was more quiet for work, and the seas and skies more wonderful. he did not get back to london until november. a few months later, early in , he sailed for valparaiso. this journey to valparaiso is the most unaccountable adventure in his sometimes unaccountable career. various reasons for it have been given: health, a quarrel, restlessness, a whim. but we tell the story as he told it to us: "it was a moment when many of the adventurers the war had made of many southerners were knocking about london hunting for something to do, and, i hardly knew how, but the something resolved itself into an expedition to go and help the chilians and, i cannot say why, the peruvians, too. anyhow, there were south americans to be helped against the spaniards. some of these people came to me, as a west point man, and asked me to join--and it was all done in an afternoon. i was off at once in a steamer from southampton to panama. we crossed the isthmus, and it was all very awful--earthquakes and things--and i vowed, once i got home, that nothing would ever bring me back again. "i found myself in valparaiso and in santiago, and i called on the president, or whoever the person then in authority was. after that came the bombardment. there was the beautiful bay with its curving shores, the town of valparaiso on one side, on the other the long line of hills. and there, just at the entrance of the bay, was the spanish fleet, and, in between, the english fleet, and the french fleet, and the american fleet, and the russian fleet, and all the other fleets. and when the morning came, with great circles and sweeps, they sailed out into the open sea, until the spanish fleet alone remained. it drew up right in front of the town, and bang went a shell, and the bombardment began. the chilians didn't pretend to defend themselves. the people all got out of the way, and i and the officials, rode to the opposite hills, where we could look on. the spaniards conducted the performance in the most gentlemanly fashion; they just set fire to a few of the houses, and once, with some sense of fun, sent a shell whizzing over toward our hills. and then i knew what a panic was. i and the officials turned and rode as hard as we could, anyhow, anywhere. the riding was splendid, and i, as a west point man, was head of the procession. by noon the performance was over. the spanish fleet sailed again into position, the other fleets sailed in, sailors landed to help put out the fires, and i and the officials rode back into valparaiso. all the little girls of the town had turned out, waiting for us, and as we rode in called us 'cowards!' the _henriquetta_, the ship fitted up in london, did not appear till long after, and then we breakfasted, and that was the end of it." mr. theodore roussel says whistler told him that, on another occasion, he got on one of the defending gunboats and had his baptism of fire amid a rain of shot and shell, and that then, as we have said, the white lock appeared, a fact which, fine as it is, whistler omitted from his story to us. he made good use of his time in valparaiso, and painted the three pictures of the harbour which are known and two others which have disappeared. these he gave to the steward or the purser of the ship to bring home, and the purser kept them. once they were seen in his house in london by someone who recognised whistler's work. "why, they must be by whistler!" he said. "who's whistler?" asked the purser. "an artist," said the other. "oh, no," said the purser, "they were painted by a gentleman." the purser started back for south america, and took them with him. "and then a tidal wave met the ship and swept off the purser, the cabin, and the whistlers." but we believe that one of these pictures is now in the united states. the voyage back was vaguer than the voyage out. from this vagueness looms one figure: the marquis de marmalade, a black man from hayti, who made himself obnoxious to whistler, apparently by his colour and his swagger. one day whistler kicked him across the deck to the top of the companion way, and there sat a lady who proved an obstacle for the moment. but whistler just picked up the marquis de marmalade, dropped him on the step below her, and finished kicking him downstairs. after that whistler spent the rest of the journey, not exactly in irons, but chiefly in his cabin. the final adventure of the journey was in london. whistler never told us, but everybody else says that when he got out of the train at euston, or waterloo, someone besides his friends was waiting: whether the captain of the ship, or relations of the marquis de marmalade, or an old enemy makes little difference. somebody got a thrashing, and this was the end to the most unaccountable episode in whistler's life. chapter xii: chelsea days continued. the years eighteen sixty-six to eighteen seventy-two. it was late in when whistler returned from valparaiso. soon after he moved into no. ,[ ] at the east end of lindsey row, now no. cheyne walk. it was a three-storey house with an attic, part of the old palace remodelled, and, like no. , it looked on the river. here he lived longer than anywhere else; here he painted the nocturnes and the great portraits; here he gave his sunday breakfasts. he had a house-warming on february ( ), when the two rossettis dined with him, and mr. w. m. rossetti wrote in his diary: "there are some fine old fixtures, such as doors, fireplaces, and whistler has got up the rooms with many delightful japanesisms. saw for the first time his pagoda cabinet. he has two or three sea-pieces new to me: one, on which he particularly lays stress, larger than the others, a very grey unbroken sea [probably _sea and rain_], also a clever vivacious portrait of himself begun." no doubt this is the portrait in round hat, with paint-brushes in his hand. mr. greaves says that the dining-room at no. was blue, with a darker blue dado and doors, and purple japanese fans tacked on the walls and ceiling; other friends remember "a fluttering of purple fans." one evening miss chapman was dining, and whistler, wanting her to see the view up the river from the other end of the bridge, told her he would show her something "as lovely as a fan!" the studio, again the second-storey back room, was grey, with black dado and doors; from the _mother_ and the _carlyle_ one knows that japanese hangings and his prints were on the walls; and in it was the big screen he painted for leyland but kept for himself, with battersea bridge across the top, chelsea church beyond, and a great gold moon in the deep blue sky. the stairs were covered with dutch metal. he slept in a huge chinese bed. beautiful silver was on his table. he ate off blue and white. "suppose one of these plates was smashed?" miss chapman asked whistler once. "why, then, you know," he said, "we might as well all take hands and go throw ourselves into the thames!" the beauty of the decoration, as at no. , was its simplicity. rossetti's house was a museum, an antiquity shop, in comparison. the simplicity seemed the more bewildering because it was the growth, not of weeks, but of years. the drawing-room was not painted until the day of whistler's first dinner-party. in the morning he sent for the brothers greaves to help him. "it will never be dry in time!" they feared. "what matter?" said whistler, "it will be beautiful!" "we three worked like mad," is mr. walter greaves' account, and by evening the walls were flushed with flesh-colour, pale yellow, and white spread over doors and woodwork, and we have heard gowns and coats too were touched with flesh-colour and yellow before the evening was at an end. one sunday morning whistler, after he had taken his mother to chelsea church, as he always did, again sent for his pupils and painted a great ship with spreading sails in each of the two panels at the end of the hall; the ships are said to be still on the wall covered up. his mother was not so pleased when, on her return, she saw the blue and white harmony, for she would have had him put away his brushes on sunday as once she put away his toys. but she had many other trials and revelations: coming into the studio one day, she found the parlour-maid posing for "the all-over!" the ships were in place long before the dado of hall and stairway was covered with gold and sprinkled with rose and white chrysanthemum petals. miss alexander (mrs. spring-rice) saw whistler at work upon it when she came to sit, and he had lived six years at no. . whistler's houses were never completely decorated and furnished; they had a look as if he had just moved in or was just moving out. but what was decorated was beautiful. whistler sent to the exhibitions of , in london and paris. he began the year by showing at the french gallery, in january, one of the paintings of valparaiso: _crépuscule in flesh colour and green_. it is the long picture of valparaiso harbour in the early evening, ships moored with partly furled sails; the first painting of twilight, and one of the first paintings carried out in the liquid manner of the nocturnes. there were critics to call it a poem "in colour," though whistler had not taught them to look for the "painter's poetry" in his work. the upright valparaiso, a perfect nocturne, was done at the same time, , but not exhibited until later, and there is an unfinished version of the same subject. in the _salon_ of , where it had been rejected eight years before, _at the piano_ was accepted, and also _the thames in ice--sur la tamise: l'hiver_. it was the year of the french universal exhibition. m. duret writes that probably mr. george lucas spoke of whistler to mr. avery, the united states art commissioner at the exhibition. the result was that a number of his etchings and four pictures were hung: _the white girl_, _wapping or on the thames_, _old battersea bridge_, _twilight on the ocean_, the title then of the _crépuscule in flesh colour and green_. the hudson river school dominated american art, and whistler's paintings had to compete with the big _machines_ of church and bierstadt. tuckerman, in his _book of the artists_, quotes an unnamed american critic who, in , found that whistler's etchings differed from his paintings in meriting the attention they attracted, but he could see in the _marines_ only "blurred, foggy imperfections," and in _the white girl_ only "a powerful female with red hair, and a vacant stare in her soulless eyes. she is standing on a wolfskin hearthrug, for what reason is unrecorded. the picture evidently means vastly more than it expresses--albeit expressing too much. notwithstanding an obvious want of purpose, there is some boldness in the handling, and singularity in the glare of the colours which cannot fail to divert the eye and weary it." americans were not treated with respect by the hanging committee. their work was put in corridors and dark corners, and whistler suffered. french critics, enthusiastic over his pictures four years earlier, were now no more appreciative than the american. paul mantz was distressed by the "strange white apparition" upon which, at the _salon des refusés_, he had lavished his praise. burty thought that either time exaggerated the defects of the prints or else critical eyes had lost their indulgence, for the etchings were photographic and had a dryness and minuteness due to the early training of "mr. whystler." both wrote in the _gazette des beaux-arts_. mr. avery, however, had the sense to appreciate the etchings, and it was probably at this time he commenced his great collection, now in the new york public library. whistler and his brother, the doctor, went to paris in april. there they heard of the sudden death of traer, seymour haden's assistant, and a member of the british jury, on which haden also served. whistler liked traer, and the circumstances of his death and burial led to a misunderstanding between the two brothers and the brother-in-law. the three met. the dispute was short and sharp; the result, a summons for the brothers to appear before a _juge de paix_. whistler had been in the same court a few days earlier. a workman had dropped plaster on him as he passed through a narrow street in the latin quarter, and he had met the offence in the only way possible according to his code. whistler sent for the american minister, and the magistrate apologised. when he appeared again, "_connu!_" said the judge, and there was no apology, but a fine. haden said he fell through a plate-glass window, whistler that he knocked him through. haden maintained that both brothers were against him, whistler that he demolished haden single-handed. it happened just when london gossip got hold of the story of the marquis de marmalade and whistler's return from valparaiso. dr. moncure conway, in his _reminiscences_, recalls a dinner given by dante rossetti to w. j. stillman, in the winter of , when "whistler (a confederate) related with satisfaction his fisticuff with a yankee [really the black marquis] on shipboard, william rossetti remarked: 'i must say, whistler, that your conduct was scandalous.' (stillman and myself were silent.) dante gabriel promptly wrote: '_there's a combative artist named whistler who is, like his own hog-hairs, a bristler: a tube of white lead and a punch on the head offer varied attractions to whistler.'_" it was at this time, too, that whistler had a difference with legros, to which no reference would be made had it not also become a legend. friends tried to reconcile them and succeeded badly. the rumours spread, and whistler began to be talked of as quarrelsome. haden, when he got back to london, resigned his post as honorary surgeon to south kensington museum, printed a pamphlet to explain, and threatened to resign from the burlington fine arts club, of which both he and whistler were members, unless whistler was expelled. the burlington club wrote to whistler that if he did not resign they would have to consider his expulsion. both the rossettis considered this very improper, and when whistler's expulsion was voted by eighteen against eight, william michael rossetti handed in his resignation at once and dante rossetti sent in his two or three days later. whistler's manner of resenting injury had a great deal to do with the way he was later treated in england. he explained his code to a friend: "if a man gives you the lie to your face, why, naturally you hit him." people who did not know him became afraid of him, and this fear grew and was the reason of the reputation that clung to him for years and clings to his memory. before whistler's pictures went to the royal academy, mr. w. m. rossetti saw them: "_march _ ( ). to see whistler's pictures for the r.a. to the r.a. he means to send _symphony in white, no. iii._ (heretofore named _the two little white girls_), and a thames picture; possibly also one of the four sea pictures; and i rather recommend him to select the largest of these, which he regards with predilection, of a grey sea and a very grey sky." _battersea_ was the thames picture; _sea and rain_, painted while whistler and courbet worked together at trouville, the sea picture; and _the two little white girls_ was sent under its new name, _symphony in white, no. iii._--the first time one of his pictures was catalogued as a symphony, his first use of a title borrowed from musical terms to explain his pictorial intention. baudelaire had given the hint in prose, gautier had written _symphonies_ in verse, murger's bohemians had composed a _symphonie sur l'influence de bleu dans les arts_. in paul mantz had described _the white girl_ as a "symphony in white." there can be no doubt that from these things whistler got the idea. it was the third variation of white upon white. the difference was in the thin liquid paint. the critic of the _athenæum_ had the sense to thank the "painter who endeavours by any means to show people what he really aims at." but he was almost alone. burty, in noticing the academy of for the _gazette des beaux-arts_, thought the academy's hanging whistler at all a fine piece of irony, and regretted the painter's failure to fulfil his early promise. hamerton, in the _saturday review_, june , , represented the feeling of the insulted, solemn, bewildered islanders: "there are many dainty varieties of tint, but it is not precisely a symphony in white. one lady has a yellowish dress and brown hair and a bit of blue ribbon; the other has a red fan, and there are flowers and green leaves. there is a girl in white on a white sofa, but even this girl has reddish hair; and, of course, there is the flesh-colour of the complexions." whistler answered in a letter, not printed, however, until it appeared in the _art journal_ (april ): "_bon dieu!_ did this wise person expect white hair and chalked faces? and does he then, in his astounding consequence, believe that a symphony in f contains no other note, but shall be a continued repetition of f f f?... fool!" whistler knew that to carry on tradition was the artist's business. rembrandt, hals, velasquez, claude, canaletto, guardi, hogarth, courbet, the japanese, in turn influenced him. some see, at this period, the influence of albert moore, which, if it existed, was as ephemeral and superficial as rossetti's. it could be argued with more truth that whistler influenced albert moore, who, in at least two pictures, _harmony of orange and pale yellow_, _variation of blue and gold_, borrowed whistler's titles. whistler also knew that the end of all study of the masters should be to evolve something personal, and, in the endeavour to develop his personality, he was passing through experiments and working through difficulties. all this is in his letters to fantin. a fourth _symphony in white_ was started: the _three figures_. in the _two girls_, he wrote to fantin, the harmony was repeated in line and in colour, and he sent a sketch of it. he exulted in the rhythm of line; he despaired because he could not get it right. the picture was scraped out and rubbed down, then repainted, and with each fresh difficulty he deplored the mistakes of his early training. mr. eddy writes that whistler used to call ingres the "_bourgeois_ greek." this we never heard him say, nor is there any such want of respect in his letters to fantin, for there he expresses regret that he "did not study under ingres," whose work he may have liked moderately, "but from whom i would have learned to draw": which was absurd modesty, for he drew better than ingres, if not so academically, as his etchings prove. he never execrated courbet and denounced _ce damné réalisme_ so violently as in the autumn of . this was not quite fair, for realism had brought courbet to the conclusions which whistler, unaided, was now reaching: that knowledge of art, ancient and modern, has no end save the development of individuality, and that the artist is to go to nature for inspiration, but to take from her only life and beauty. whistler, in his impatience, recalled realism as practised by the young enthusiasts gathered about courbet, and denied that courbet influenced him. "_ca ne pouvait pas être autrement, parce que je suis très personnel, et que j'ai été riche en qualités qu'il n'avait pas et qui me suffisaient._" the cry of nature had appealed to his vanity, whistler said, and so he had mocked at tradition, and in his early work had copied nature with the self-confidence of "_l'écolier débauché_." if at one moment he boasted that the race was for fantin and himself, because in art, as at the derby, "_c'est le pur sang qui gagné_," the next he chafed over the time he had lost before discovering that art is not the exact reproduction of nature, but its interpretation, and that the artist must seek his motives in nature and weave from them a pattern on his canvas. he praised fantin's flowers because he saw in them this pattern. passages in the letters are the basis of _the ten o'clock_. his definition of the relation of drawing to colour--"_son amant, mais aussi son maître_"--suggests the later definition of the relation of the artist to nature: "her son in that he loves her, her master in that he knows her." whistler used the same ideas in his talk, in his letters, in his pamphlets, perfecting it. it was the period of transition. those who saw him know how hard he worked, and how he was discouraged. for a while he lived with mr. frederick jameson. he never spoke to us of this interval away from lindsey row. mr. jameson says it was or ; most likely the winter of - , when mrs. whistler went home to visit her family, left poor by the war. mr. jameson lived at great russell street, bloomsbury, in rooms that had first been burne-jones', and afterwards poynter's. mr. jameson writes us: "the seven months whistler and i lived together were unproductive and uneventful. he was working at some japanese pictures, one of which, quite unfinished, was hung at the london memorial exhibition. i have seen large portions of it apparently finished, but they never satisfied him, and were shaved down to the bed-rock mercilessly. the man, as i knew him, was so different from the descriptions and presentations i have read of him that i would like to speak of the other side of his character. it is impossible to conceive of a more unfailingly courteous, considerate, and delightful companion than whistler, as i found him. we lived in great intimacy, and the studio was always open to me, whatever he was doing. we had all our meals together, except when elsewhere engaged, and i never heard a complaint of anything in our simple household arrangements from him. any little failure was treated as a joke. his courtesy to servants and models was particularly charming; indeed, i can't conceive of his quarrelling with anyone without real provocation. his talk about his own work revealed a very different man to me from the self-satisfied man he is usually believed to have been. he knew his powers, of course, but he was painfully aware of his defects--in drawing, for instance. i can remember with verbal accuracy some very striking talks we had on the subject. to my judgment he was the most absolutely truthful man about himself that i ever met. i never knew him to hide an opinion or a thought, nor to try to excuse an action." [illustration: portrait of whistler by himself chalk drawing formerly in the possession of thomas way, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: dry-point. g. study in chalk formerly in the possession of b. b. macgeorge, esq. weary (_see page _)] the picture mr. jameson refers to was called _three figures, pink and grey_,[ ] in the london memorial exhibition. it alone was carried out of the _six_ or _eight schemes_ or _projects_ in which whistler was trying to combine japanese and classical motives, expressing a beauty of form and design that haunted him, and was perhaps best realised in some of the pastel studies. he never ceased to make these studies. there are pastels, chalk drawings, and etchings in which the separate figures of the _projects_ may be found, studies for the series; one was worked out as a fan, another like a cameo. the second version of the _three figures_, enlarged from a smaller design, whistler explained to mr. alan s. cole, was an arrangement he wanted to paint, and he then drew, with a sweep of the brush, the back of the stooping figure to show what he meant. w. m. rossetti most likely referred to it when he wrote in his diary for july , : "whistler is doing on a largish scale for leyland the subject of women with flowers, and has made coloured sketches of four or five other subjects of the like class, very promising in point of conception of colour and arrangement." the _projects_ were his first scheme of decoration for leyland. the canvases are about the same size. they are painted with liquid colour, the canvas often showing through. the handling in all save the _venus_, shown in the paris memorial exhibition and worked on in his later years, is more direct than anything he ever did. they have the same relation to his pictures as the sketches of rubens and tiepolo to their decorations. the _venus_ is a single figure, the rest are groups arranged against a balustrade, round a vase of flowers, or on the sands by the sea. their floating draperies give the scheme of colour. the experience gained in making these designs was of immense use in the nocturnes, for the technique is the same, and the same treatment is in the pile of drapery of the _miss alexander_. he did not give up until much later this method of painting. the complete series had never been seen publicly before the paris memorial exhibition. they belong to mr. freer. during all his life, till he was given a commission for a panel in the boston public library, whistler hoped to have the chance to execute a great decorative scheme. when the central gallery at the victoria and albert museum was being decorated, sir henry cole asked him to design one of the mosaic panels. for this, in the winter of , he made a pastel, a richly robed figure carrying a japanese umbrella. the scheme was in blue, purple, and gold, and a pastel study for it was shown at the london memorial exhibition as _design for a mosaic_. he spoke of it at the time as _the gold girl_. the design was to be enlarged and put on canvas by the brothers greaves. sir henry cole offered him a studio in the museum when he was ready to begin his cartoon. "you know, sir henry cole always liked me, and i told him he ought to provide me with a fine studio--it would be an honour to me--and to the museum!" but models broke down, the fog settled over london, he wanted to get through his academy picture, he was called to paris. whether the cartoon was finished, or whether it was found out of keeping with the _machines_ of royal academicians in the central gallery, is not known. but the decoration was never done. hamerton's _etching and etchers_ was published in . shortly before, he wrote to whistler: "i wonder whether you would object to lend me a set of proofs for a few weeks. as the book is already advanced i should be glad of an early reply. my opinion of your work is, on the whole, so favourable that your reputation could only gain by your affording me the opportunity of speaking of your work at length." whistler took no notice of the request at the time, but printed it years afterwards as the _unanswered letter_ in _the gentle art_. hamerton, unused to being ignored by artists, expressed his astonishment in his book: "i have been told that, if application is made by letter to mr. whistler for a set of his etchings, he may, perhaps, if he chooses to answer the letter, do the applicant the favour to let him have a copy for about the price of a good horse." his praise was never without qualification. he saw in whistler a strikingly imperfect artist, self-concentrated, without range or poetical feeling, whose work was rarely affecting, and most of these remarks were reprinted by whistler with the _unanswered letter_ as _inconsequences_. in the end whistler let hamerton have a plate, _billingsgate_, in its third state, published in the _portfolio_ (january ), and, two years after, in the third edition of _etching and etchers_ ( ). hamerton, patronising in his estimate of whistler's work, exaggerated in his comments on whistler's prices. success never induced whistler deliberately to increase the price of his etchings by making them rare, in the fashion of the young men of to-day. it was different with his dry-points, the number of impressions being limited. mr. percy thomas says that whistler would throw them on the floor at lindsey row and consider them. "i think for this we must say five guineas, and for this six, and for this i must say--ten!" but mr. thomas remembers only one attempt to create a price. he had been sent from bond street to lindsey row with prints for whistler to sign, and the next day he returned for them. whistler and mrs. whistler were sitting together, silent and sad, and whistler hurried from the studio without a word. "but what is it? what has happened?" mr. thomas asked, and mrs. whistler explained that whistler had thrown the prints into the fire, thinking it would be a good thing to make them rare, and had been miserable since. if he destroyed work he was sure to regret it. "_j'ai tant pleuré après_," as he wrote to fantin. another incident remembered by mr. thomas would have altered hamerton's idea of whistler's business methods. edmund thomas had gone to the studio and offered a sum for all the prints in it. whistler accepted the offer, mr. thomas drew a cheque, and carried off the prints. a couple of hours later a messenger appeared with a bundle of proofs. whistler had come upon them, and sent word that, according to the bargain, they belonged to mr. thomas. towards the end of the sixties, or beginning of the seventies, mr. murray marks tried to start a fine art company with alexander ionides, rossetti, burne-jones, and morris to deal in pictures, prints, blue and white, and decorative work. they were to sell watts', burne-jones', and rossetti's pictures, and whistler's etchings, possibly his paintings. ionides, who was to advance two or three thousand pounds, bought the sixteen plates by whistler now known as the thames set, and the prints from them. the sum paid was three hundred pounds. a secretary was engaged for the company, but that was the end of it. the plates became the absolute property of ionides. he had a hundred sets printed; he gave one set to each of his children; the others were taken over by messrs. ellis and green, and published in as _sixteen etchings of scenes on the thames_, price twelve guineas. later, the plates came into the possession of the fine art society, who sold the prints unsigned as a set in a portfolio for fourteen guineas, or, singly, from half a guinea to two guineas and a half. finally mr. keppel, of new york, bought the coppers, had the steel facing removed, for they had been steeled, goulding printed a number from each, and some good prints were obtained. the plates were then destroyed. official recognition of whistler, the etcher, continued. the british museum bought his prints and only stopped when, some years ago, it was discovered that the work of living artists could not be purchased for the print room. the ignorance of this regulation was of value to the museum, where there are now one hundred and nine etchings by whistler. at the victoria and albert museum, south kensington, there are sixty-one prints, besides several issued in various publications and a second thames set in the ionides collection. for several years the late sir richard r. holmes purchased prints for windsor castle library, about one hundred and forty in all. he wrote us: "it is difficult to say when, or how, i first began collecting whistler's etchings. i had a few, and then i met several while i was looking after other things at thibaudeau's, and, gradually, i found i had so many that i thought it best to make the collection as complete as i could, and got a number from whistler himself." [illustration: the lange leizen of the six marks purple and rose oil in the john g. johnson collection, philadelphia (_see page _)] [illustration: harmony in flesh-colour and green the balcony oil in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art (_see page _)] often sir richard went to the studio; often whistler sent to windsor prints he thought should be there. the venetian series was bought. finally, after sir richard's retirement, they were sold "to improve the collection" at what was supposed the height of the "whistler boom," and after they had been praised in the memorial exhibitions of london and paris. as king edward vii. on his visit to the london memorial exhibition expressed surprise at the few he looked at, it is certain that his majesty was unaware that the collection was at windsor. even the portfolio, presented by whistler to queen victoria with his autograph letter asking her acceptance, was first lost, and, when found, sold in , the few prints in princess victoria's apartments only being kept. the disposal of the etchings was so badly managed that the jubilee series brought more, when re-sold a few weeks after the king parted with them, than his majesty got for the whole collection. during whistler's lifetime important collections of his etchings were acquired also by the museums of dresden, venice, and melbourne, and the new york public library. the success of whistler's plates during the following years is a contrast to the fate of his pictures, which for a long period were neglected. he had nothing in the academy of . mr. jameson has told us of his despair because the _three girls_ was not finished in time, and of their wandering together about town, in and out of galleries and museums, until at last, before velasquez in the national gallery, whistler took heart again. and he delighted in the admiration of swinburne in _notes on some pictures of _. the paintings which had not been submitted "to the loose and slippery judgment of an academy," but had been seen by swinburne in the studio and seemed to him "to have grown as a flower grows," were evidently the _projects_. a special quality of whistler's genius, swinburne said, is "a freshness and fullness of the loveliest life of things, with a high, clear power upon them which seems to educe a picture as the sun does a blossom or a fruit." in the academy moved to burlington house, and there in whistler showed _the balcony_. from to he did not show in the _salon_. whistler, like rossetti, was never without his public, though many years passed before he received rossetti's rewards. he could rely on the ionides, leathart, frederick leyland, huth, alexander, rawlinson, anderson rose, jameson, chapman, potter. but, unlike rossetti, he wanted to show his work and receive for it rewards. as far back as fantin wrote to edwin edwards of whistler's perseverance, his determination to get into the _salon_, a phase of his character fantin said he had not known. whistler's absence from exhibitions was not his fault. it was his hatred of rejection and fear of being badly hung that drove him from them. the tyranny of the academy was no new thing. the opening of the exhibition was every year the occasion of scandal and of protest against an institution that rejected and still rejects distinguished artists. one gallery after another took up the outsiders. after the berners street gallery came the dudley, which, in , added to its show of water-colours a show of oils; in , the corinthian gallery in argyll street; in , the select supplementary exhibition in bond street--these last two poor affairs more apt to justify than expose the academy. dealers came to the rescue: the french gallery in pall mall, and the society of french artists, where durand-ruel brought his collection in , and, under the management of m. charles deschamps, gave exhibitions until . in the french gallery and with m. deschamps whistler showed many times. he contributed often to the dudley from , and there the next year, , exhibited for the first time a _nocturne_. his use of titles to explain his intention was now so well established that in , when _the white girl_ and the _princesse_ were in the international exhibition at south kensington, they were catalogued as _symphony in white, no. ._, and _variations in flesh colour, blue, and grey_, later changed to _grey and rose_; and he supplied the explanation, printed in the "programme of reception." they were "the complete results of harmonies obtained by employing the infinite tones and variations of a limited number of colours." his portrait of his mother was sent to the academy of --_arrangement in grey and black: portrait of the painter's mother_. it was refused. madox brown wrote to george rae: "i hear that whistler has had the portrait of his mother turned out. if so, it is a shame, because i saw the picture, and know it to be good and beautiful, though, i suppose, not to the taste of messrs. ansdell and dobson." sir william boxall threatened to resign from the council if the portrait was not hung, for he would not have it said that a committee to which he belonged had rejected it. similar threats have been heard in recent years, and the rejected work has stayed out, and the academicians have stayed in. boxall would not yield, and the picture was hung, not well, yet not out of sight; groups, it is said, were always gathered before it to laugh. still, there it was, the last picture by whistler at the academy, where nothing of his was again seen, save one etching in : _putney bridge_, published by the fine art society and probably sent by them. the whole affair made talk. but is interesting, above all, as the year when whistler first exhibited a portrait as an _arrangement_ and an impression of night as a _nocturne_. as it was the last year he showed a picture in the academy, it may be as well to complete here our account of his relations with this institution. it is said that he put his name down, or allowed it to be put down, for election. he was never elected. other americans were, for the royal academy is so broad in its constitution that an artist need not be an englishman, need not be resident in great britain, need not have shown on its walls to become a member or honorary member. but though during all these years and until the day of his death whistler would have accepted election, we have never heard that he obtained a single vote. george boughton, an american artist and a member of the royal academy, explained the academic attitude when he said that if whistler had "behaved himself" he would have been president. even this concession boughton qualified: "now, if anyone knowing whistler and me should go about thinking me serious in imagining that he would make a good president--even of an east end boxing club--such persons live in dense error." the only comment to make is that boughton did not understand whistler, and, in company with the academy, had not the least artistic sense, or even business appreciation in this matter. whistler would have accepted election for one reason only--because of the official rank it would have given him in england. other americans hustled to get it; he expected it as an honour which he deserved. he knew himself to be more distinguished than any member of the royal academy. though recognition was withheld during his lifetime, several academicians attempted to secure for the academy a posthumous glory by endeavouring to get together an exhibition of his works the winter after his death. it would, indeed, have been irony if the academy had, in return for its neglect of whistler, got the _kudos_ and cash as their reward. another instance of what americans call "graft" is in the absence from the chantrey collection of a picture by whistler, and the presence of the work of the academicians who administer the fund. the trustees, although they have bought their own work, paying as much as one thousand pounds to sir edward j. poynter, three thousand to sir hubert von herkomer, three thousand and fifty to lord leighton, two thousand to sir j. e. millais, bart., over two thousand to mr. frank dicksee, two thousand to sir w. q. orchardson, two thousand to vicat cole, who are or were members of the council of the academy, never even offered the sixty pounds for which they might have bought whistler's _nocturne in blue and gold: old battersea bridge_, since purchased for two thousand by public subscription and given to the tate gallery. is it any wonder that whistler, disgusted with such conduct, especially on the part of his fellow countrymen, members of the academy, and others, who might have elected him, left as his only written request relative to his pictures we have seen, the wish that none should ever find a place in any english gallery? death did not spare him academical jealousy. not content with ignoring him during his lifetime, officially insulting his memory after his death, sir edward poynter, then director, when he hung _old battersea bridge_ in the national gallery, affixed to it, or allowed to be affixed, a label on which whistler's name was misspelt, whistler described as of the british school, the title of the picture incorrectly given, while whistler's decorated frame was hung upside down. the picture has since, by the irony of fate, been placed in the gallery of modern british art! [footnote : he never lived at no. , as walter greaves has wrongly stated.] [footnote : see chapter xxxv.] chapter xiii: nocturnes. the years eighteen seventy-two to eighteen seventy-eight. whistler was the first to paint the night. the blue mystery that veils the world from dusk to dawn is in the colour-prints of hiroshige. but the wood-block cannot give the depth of darkness, the method makes a convention of colour. hiroshige saw and felt the beauty and invented a scheme by which to suggest it on the block, but he could not render the night as whistler rendered it on canvas. though colour-prints suggested the nocturnes, they were only the suggestion. whistler never copied japanese technique. but japanese composition impressed him--the arrangement, the pattern, and at times the detail. the high or low horizon, the line of a bridge over a river, the spray of foliage in the foreground, the golden curve of a falling rocket, the placing of a figure on the shore, the signature in the oblong panel, show how much he learned. he abandoned the japanese convention in a few years, but he never gave up, he developed rather, what he always spoke of as the japanese method of drawing.[ ] he translated japanese art--translate is the word--though he said that he "carried on tradition." his idea was not to go to the japanese as greater than himself, but to learn what he could from them and make another work of art; a work founded on tradition no less than theirs, and yet as western as theirs was eastern. [illustration: la princesse du pays de la porcelaine rose and silver oil in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art (_see page _)] [illustration: variations in violet and green oil in the possession of sir charles mclaren, bart. showing frame designed by whistler plaque inscribed whistler at bottom not by artist (_see page _)] night, beautiful everywhere from valparaiso to venice, is never more beautiful than in london. first he painted the thames in the grey day, but, as time went on, he painted it in the blue night. only those who have lived by the river for years, as we have, can realise the truth as well as the beauty of the nocturnes. he still, like courbet, "loved things for what they were," but he chose the exquisite, the poetic. the foolishness of nature never appealed to him. but courbet was no more a realist than whistler if realism means truth. the long nights on the river were followed by long days in the studio. in the end he gave up making notes. it was impossible for him to work in colour at night, and he had to trust to his memory. in his portraits and his pictures done by day he had a model. but looking at colour and arrangement by night, and retaining the memory until the next morning simply means a longer interval between observation and execution. and, carrying on the tradition of the japanese and the method of drawing from memory advocated by lecoq de boisbaudran, and practised by many of his most distinguished contemporaries in france, whistler developed his powers of observation. even then, as he said, to retain the memory of the subject required as hard training as a football player goes through. his method was to go out at night, and all his pupils or followers agree in this, stand before his subject and look at it, then turn his back on it and repeat to whoever was with him the arrangement, the scheme of colour, and as much of the detail as he wanted. the listener corrected errors when they occurred, and, after whistler had looked long enough, he went to bed with nothing in his head but his subject. the next morning, as he told his apprentice, mrs. clifford addams, if he could see upon the untouched canvas the completed picture, he painted it; if not, he passed another night in looking at the subject. however, it was not two nights' observation alone, but the knowledge of a lifetime that enabled him to paint the nocturnes. this power to see a finished picture on a bare canvas is possessed by all great artists. but the greater the artist the more he sees and the better he presents it. whistler said "nature put him out," because the arrangement as he found it put him out; nature is never right. few painters have understood the art of selection, and here hiroshige and the other japanese were of use. he went to nature for the motive, to the japanese for the design. this was why he said nature was at once his master and his servant. the nocturnes looked so simple to a public trained by ruskin to believe that signs of labour are the chief merits in a picture, that they seemed unfinished--just knocked off. yet his letters to fantin are full of regret for his slowness: "_je suis si lent.... les choses ne vont pas vite.... je produis peu parceque j'efface tout!_" no one knew the hard work that produced the simplicity. in no other paintings was whistler as successful in following his own precepts and concealing traces of toil. one touch less and nothing would be left; one touch more and the spell would be broken, and night stripped of mystery. to give the silhouette of bridge or building against the sky; the lines of light trailing through the water or leading to infinite distance; the boats, ghosts fading into the ghostly river; the fall of rockets through shadowy air--to give all these things, and yet to keep them shrouded in the transparency of darkness was the problem he set himself in the nocturnes painted in the little second-storey back room at chelsea. it was the night he saw and studied at cremorne, darker, more mysterious for the sudden flare of the fireworks, for the glow in which little figures danced, for the hint of draperies passing in and out of the shadows--night that toned the tawdry gardens and their vulgar crowd into beauty. now everyone can see, and "night is like a whistler," for whistler compelled people to look at his pictures, until it has become impossible to look at night without seeing the nocturnes. he painted the impression that night made on him, and the great artist, like the great author, moves people until they think they see things as he does. even in that ever-quoted passage from _the ten o'clock_, he does not pretend to see nature as people see her or as nature seems to be; his concern is with the impression that nature at night made on him, and in this he was an impressionist. the brothers greaves bought his materials and prepared his canvas and colours. "i know all these things because i passed days and weeks in the place standing by him," walter greaves has said to us. whistler remade his brushes, heating them over a candle, melting the glue and pushing the hair into the shape he wanted. greaves says that the colours were mixed with linseed oil and turpentine. whistler told us that he used a medium composed of copal, mastic, and turpentine. the colours were arranged upon a palette, a large oblong board some two feet by three, with the butterfly inlaid in one corner and sunken boxes for brushes and tubes round the edges. this palette was laid upon a table. he had at various periods two or three; and at least one stand, with many tiny drawers, upon which the palette fitted. at the top of the palette the pure colours were placed, though, more frequently, there were no pure colours at all. large quantities of different tones of the prevailing colour in the picture to be painted were mixed, and so much of the medium was used that he called it "sauce." greaves says that the nocturnes were mostly painted on a very absorbent canvas, sometimes on panels, sometimes on bare brown holland, sized. for the blue nocturnes, the canvas was covered with a red ground, or the panel was of mahogany, which the pupils got from their boat-building yard, the red forcing up the blues laid on it. others were done on a warm black, and for the fireworks there was a lead ground. or, if the night was grey, then, whistler said, "the sky is grey, and the water is grey, and, therefore, the canvas must be grey." only once within greaves' memory was the ground white. the ground for his nocturnes, like the paper for his pastels, was chosen of the prevailing tone of the picture he wanted to paint or of a colour which would give him that tone, not to save work, but to avoid fatiguing the canvas. when whistler had arranged his colour-scheme on the palette, the canvas, which the pupils prepared, was stood on an easel, but so much "sauce" was used that frequently it had to be thrown flat on the floor to keep the whole thing from running off. he washed the liquid colour on, lightening and darkening the tones as he worked. in the nocturnes, the sky and water are rendered with great sweeps of the brush of exactly the right tone. how many times he made and wiped out that sweeping tone is another matter. when it was right, there it stayed. with his life's knowledge of both the effects he wanted to paint and the way to paint them, at times, as he admits himself, he completed a nocturne in a day. in some he got his effect at once, in others it came only after endless failures. if the tones were right, he took them off his palette and kept them until the next day, in saucers, or gallipots, under water, so that he might carry on his work in the same way with the same tones. mrs. anna lea merritt tells us that when she lived in cheyne walk, she remembers "seeing the nocturnes set out along the garden wall to bake in the sun." some were laid aside to dry slowly in the studio, some were put in the garden or on the roof to dry quickly. sometimes they dried out like body-colour in the most unexpected fashion. it was a time of tireless research. he had to invent everything, though he profited by the technical training he had gained in painting the _six projects_. whistler first called his paintings of night moonlights. nocturne was mr. leyland's suggestion, as we have heard from mrs. leyland, and her son-in-law, val prinsep, stated in the _art journal_ (august ), that whistler wrote to leyland: "i can't thank you too much for the name nocturne as the title for my moonlights. you have no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics, and consequent pleasure to me; besides it is really so charming, and does so poetically say all i want to say and _no more_ than i wish." whether to mystify, or because he saw something new in his pictures, whistler repeatedly changed their titles, especially of the nocturnes, and repeatedly exhibited different pictures with the same title. it is true, as mr. bernard sickert writes: "such alterations made by the artist himself stultify the whole idea, and prove that the analogy with music does not hold consistently. any musician would tell us that we could not change the title of symphony in c minor to sonata in g major without making it an absurdity." that he should either not have realised this fact, or else have disregarded it deliberately, is the more extraordinary because every nocturne represents a different effect rendered in a different fashion. although he altered his titles, nothing offended him more than when others tampered with them or stole them. the painting of the nocturnes continued for many years, and in many places. but the greater number were painted when he lived at lindsey row, most from his windows, and few took him beyond battersea and westminster. he resented it when people suggested literary titles for them, and he put his resentment into words that "make history" in _the red rag_, one of the most interesting documents in _the gentle art_, published originally in the _world_ (may , ): "my picture of a _harmony in grey and gold_ is an illustration of my meaning--a snow scene with a single black figure and a lighted tavern. i care nothing for the past, present, or future of the black figure, placed there because the black was wanted at that spot. all that i know is that my combination of grey and gold is the basis of the picture. now this is precisely what my friends cannot grasp. they say, 'why not call it "trotty veck," and sell it for a round harmony of golden guineas?'" lord redesdale told us that it was he who suggested this title, gaily. whistler assured another of his friends that he had only to write "father, dear father, come home with me now" on the painting for it to become the "picture of the year." subject, sentiment, meaning were for him in the night itself--the night in its loveliness and mystery. there is no doubt that he carried tradition further and made greater advance in the nocturnes than in any of his paintings. the subjects are the simplest--factories, bridges, boats and barges, shops, gardens--but in his hands they became things of beauty that will live for ever. the nocturnes are not all moonlights; we remember only a few in which the moon appears, some are illumined only by flickering lamplight. they are not invariably pictures of night, but at times of dawn or of twilight. nocturnes, however, is the name whistler chose for all, and by it they will always be known. [footnote : see chapter xxii.] chapter xiv: portraits. the years eighteen seventy-one to eighteen seventy-four. while whistler was painting the nocturnes, he was working on the large portraits. the _mother_ was the first. we cannot say when he began it. he wrote of it to fantin, promising to send a photograph, in , but it was not shown until . how many were the sittings, how often the work was scraped down or wiped out, no one will ever know. we have some interesting technical details from walter greaves. the portrait was painted on the back of a canvas, as j. saw when it was sent to the london memorial exhibition, as otto bacher saw when the picture was in whistler's studio in : "i noticed that it was painted on the back of a canvas, on the face of which was the portrait of a child. my remark, 'why, you have painted your mother on the back of a canvas!' received simply the reply: 'isn't that a good surface?'" there was scarcely any paint used, greaves says, the canvas being simply rubbed over to get the dress, and, as at first the dado had been painted across the canvas, it shows through the skirt. harper pennington says that the canvas, being absorbent, was stained all through from the painting on the face. but this does not alter greaves' statement. that wonderful handkerchief in the tired old hands, greaves describes as "nothing but a bit of white and oil." what whistler wanted was to place upon canvas a beautiful arrangement, a beautiful pattern, of colour and line. no painter since hals and velasquez thought so much of placing his figure on the canvas inside the frame. no painter since velasquez understood so well the value of restrained line and restrained colour. the long, vertical and horizontal lines in the background, the footstool, the matting, the brushwork on the wall, add quietness to the portrait, tranquillity to the pose that could be kept for ever; a contrast to the frenzied squirms preferred by his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors. hamerton thought he must have found this pose, or the hint for it, in the agrippina at the capitol in rome, or in canova's statue of napoleon's mother at chatsworth. if whistler found it anywhere, except in his own studio, it could only have been at haarlem, where franz hals' old ladies sit together with the same serenity and are painted in much the same scheme. whistler had been to holland and seen the beautiful group, and he was haunted by it. whistler wrote to fantin that if the _mother_ marked any progress, it was in the science of colour. what he wanted people to see in it, he explained in _the red rag_: "take the picture of my mother, exhibited at the royal academy as an _arrangement in grey and black_. now that is what it is. to me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?" and yet swinburne was not alone in realising its "intense pathos of significance and tender depth of expression," while to a few whistler gave a glimpse of the other side, as to mr. harper pennington: "did i ever tell you of an occasion when whistler let me see him with the paint off--with his brave mask down? once standing by me in his studio--tite street--we were looking at the _mother_. i said some string of words about the beauty of the face and figure, and for some moments jimmy looked and looked, but he said nothing. his hand was playing with that tuft upon his nether lip. it was, perhaps, two minutes before he spoke. 'yes,' very slowly, and very softly--'yes, one does like to make one's mummy just as nice as possible!'" whistler told us that madame venturi, a friend of carlyle's, determined that he too should be painted. "i used to go often to madame venturi's--i met mazzini there, and mazzini was most charming--and madame venturi often visited me, and one day she brought carlyle. the _mother_ was there, and carlyle saw it, and seemed to feel in it a certain fitness of things, as madame venturi meant he should--he liked the simplicity of it, the old lady sitting with her hands in her lap--and he said he would be painted. and he came one morning soon, and he sat down, and i had the canvas ready and the brushes and palette, and carlyle said: 'and now, mon, fire away!' that wasn't my idea how work should be done. carlyle realised it, for he added: 'if ye're fighting battles or painting pictures, the only thing to do is to fire away!' one day he told me of others who had painted his portrait. 'there was mr. watts, a mon of note. and i went to his studio, and there was much meestification, and screens were drawn round the easel, and curtains were drawn, and i was not allowed to see anything. and then, at last, the screens were put aside and there i was. and i looked. and mr. watts, a great mon, he said to me, "how do you like it?" and then i turned to mr. watts, and i said, "mon, i would have ye know i am in the hobit of wurin' clean lunen!"'" carlyle told people that he sat there talking and talking, and that whistler went on working and working and paid no attention to him whatever. whistler found carlyle a delightful person, and carlyle found him a workman. and it has been said that they used to take walks together, but of this we have no record. before the portrait was finished, whistler had begun to paint miss alexander, and another story is of a meeting at the door between the old man coming out and the little girl going in. "who is that?" he asked the maid. "miss alexander, who is sitting to mr. whistler." carlyle shook his head. "puir lassie! puir lassie!" mrs. leyland, at whose portrait also whistler was working, remembered that carlyle grumbled a good deal. whistler, in the end, had, it is said, to get phil morris to sit for the coat. walter greaves' memories are of impatience in the studio, especially when carlyle saw whistler working with small brushes, so that whistler either worked with big brushes or pretended to. william allingham wrote of the sittings in his diary: "carlyle tells me he is sitting to whistler. if c. makes signs of changing his position, w. screams out in an agonised tone: 'for god's sake, don't move!' c. afterwards said that all w.'s anxiety seemed to be to get the coat painted to ideal perfection; the face went for little. he had begun by asking two or three sittings, but managed to get a great many. at last c. flatly rebelled. he used to define w. as the most absurd creature on the face of the earth." around this portrait many legends are gathering. mr. f. ernest jackson has told us that a few years ago, one evening in hyde park, he was seated on a bench sketching, and an old man came up to him and, seeing he was an artist, asked if he knew whistler. then the old man said that his father had posed for the picture. whether this was carlyle revisiting the haunts of his walks or a pure invention we do not know. another tale is that whistler never painted the picture, which is the work of an anonymous academician, done as a bet that he could do a whistler--it is a pity the academician never did any more. if carlyle liked the portrait of the _mother_, he must have liked his own. there is the same quiet balance, the same careful spacing. take away either the circular print or the butterfly in its circle, and the repose is gone. but with such care has every detail been arranged, one never thinks of the balance, the arabesque, the pattern. it is done, and all traces of the thought and the work are gone. one sees only the result whistler meant should be seen. it has been criticised for showing a want of invention. but if the background and the arrangement are somewhat the same as in the _mother_, it was because he was deliberately carrying out the same scheme. it was his _arrangement in grey and black, no. ii_. in the london memorial exhibition it hung opposite the _mother_, and as they were seen together, the pose and colour and design belonged as inevitably to the nervous old man as to the old lady in her beautiful tranquillity. whistler is also said to have made a study of carlyle's head, owned by mr. burton mansfield, and there is a small study of the pose on the back of a canvas, once owned by greaves. the _harmony in grey and green; portrait of miss alexander_, a commission from mr. w. c. alexander, was painted at the same time, and proves how little whistler's invention was at fault. there was no repetition. the little girl, in her white and green frock, holding at her side her grey feathered hat, butterflies hovering about her, the weariness of the pose expressed in the pouting red lips, as she stands by the grey wall with its long lines of black, is as familiar as velasquez' infantas. less known is whistler's care in every detail to make it a masterpiece. he, or his mother, gave mrs. alexander directions as to the quality of the muslin for the gown, where it was to be bought, the width of the frills, the ruffles at the neck, the ribbon bows, the way the gown was to be laundried. and only after repeatedly seeing and studying the picture, does one learn his care in weaving the colour through the design. he called the portrait _harmony in grey and green_, but the colours which bind the arrangement together, which play all through it, are green and gold. so wonderfully are these colours used like threads in tapestry that one does not see them, one feels the result. as always, there was the great simple design; the pose of velasquez, the decoration of japan, worked out in his own way. the gold runs along the top of the dado; tiny gold buckles fasten the rosettes of the shoes; there is a gold pin in the hair; the gold of the daisies is repeated in the butterflies which flutter above the head; a note of gold is in the pile of drapery, and the floor has a suggestion of gold in the matting. green plays the same note. the green sash is carried down by the green feather of the hat, lost in the shadow, which is filled with green and gold. and the green of the daisies is repeated in the green of the drapery. it is not until one has gone all over the picture that these things become evident. the shoes look perfectly black, and so does the dado, and yet there is no pure black anywhere. the whole is bound together by this grey, green, black, and gold scheme running through the composition. it is a perfect harmony. and so subtle is it, that only the result is evident, never the means by which it was obtained. the story of the sittings we have from miss cicely alexander (mrs. spring-rice): "my father wanted him to paint us all, i believe, beginning with the eldest (my sister, whom he afterwards began to paint, but whose portrait was never finished). but after coming down to see us, he wrote and said he would like to begin with 'the light arrangement,' meaning me, as my sister was dark. so i was the first victim, and i'm afraid i rather considered that i was a victim all through the sittings, or rather standings, for he never let me change my position, and i believe i sometimes used to stand for hours at a time. i know i used to get very tired and cross, and often finished the days in tears. this was especially when he had promised to release me at a given time to go to a dancing-class, but when the time came i was still standing, and the minutes slipped away, and he was quite absorbed and had quite forgotten all about his promise, and never noticed the tears; he used to stand a good way from his canvas, and then dart at it and then dart back, and he often turned round to look in a looking-glass that hung over the mantelpiece at his back--i suppose, to see the reflection of his painting. although he was rather inhuman about letting me stand on for hours and hours, as it seemed to me at the time, he was most kind in other ways. if a blessed black fog came up from the river, and i was allowed to get down, he never made any objection to my poking about among his paints, and i even put charcoal eyes to some of his sketches of portraits done in coloured chalks on brown paper, and he also constantly promised to paint my doll, but this promise was never kept. i was painted at the little house in chelsea, and at the time he was decorating the staircase; it was to have a dado of gold, and it was all done in gold-leaf, and laid on by himself, i believe; he had numberless little books of gold-leaf lying about, and any that weren't exactly of the old-gold shade he wanted, he gave to me. "mrs. whistler was living then, and used to preside at delightful american luncheons, but i don't remember that she ever came into the studio--a servant used to be sent to tell him lunch was ready, and then he went on again as before. he painted, and despair filled my soul, and i believe it was generally teatime before we went to those lunches, at which we had hot biscuits and tinned peaches, and other unwholesome things, and i believe the biscuits came out of a little oven in the chimney, though i can't quite think how that could have been. the studio was at the back of the house, and the drawing-room looked over the river, and we seldom went into it, but i remember that he had matting on the floor, and a large japanese basin with water and goldfish in it. i never met mr. carlyle in the studio, although he was being painted at the same time, but he shook hands with me at the private view at the grosvenor gallery, where the two portraits were exhibited for the first time. [this must have been at whistler's own exhibition in .] i didn't appreciate that honour at the time, any more than i appreciated being painted by mr. whistler, and i'm afraid all my memories only show that i was a very grumbling disagreeable little girl. of course, i was too young to appreciate mr. whistler himself, though afterwards we were very good friends when i grew older, and when he used to come to my father's house and make at once for the portrait with his eye-glass up." it is said that tears were not only the little girl's, but whistler's, and that there were seventy sittings before he finished. mrs. spring-rice writes nothing about the number of times the picture was rubbed out and recommenced. he was beginning to put in the entire scheme at once, but on such large canvases this was difficult. walter greaves says that the picture was painted on an absorbent canvas, and on a distemper ground. there is also a study for the head. whistler was as minute in his directions for the portrait of miss may alexander. he recommended to mrs. alexander a milliner who sold wonderful "picture hats"; he suggested that he should paint the portrait in the house at campden hill, so that he could see the effect of the picture in the drawing-room where it was to hang. but it remains a sketch of a girl in riding-habit, drawing on her gloves, at her side a pot of flowers, the one detail carried out. he made a number of other sketches in oils, chalk, pen and ink, of the children, and there is a study for miss may's head also. but only the _arrangement in grey and green_ was finished. frederick leyland, the wealthy shipowner, who had met whistler as early as , about this time commissioned whistler to paint his four children, mrs. leyland, and himself. leyland had not yet bought his london house, but often came up to town, and whistler made long visits at speke hall, leyland's place near liverpool. mrs. whistler spent months there. the record of his visits is in the etchings and dry-points of _speke hall_ and _speke shore_, _shipping at liverpool_, _the dam wood_, and the portraits in many mediums. speke hall, whistler said, put him in better mood for work. the house was not far from the sea, where he found much to do. but the beach was flat, at low tide the sea ran away from him, and at high tide the skies were wrong or the wind blew, and when the sea failed he turned to the portraits. the big canvases travelled with him, backward and forward, from speke hall to london, and the sittings were continued in both places. they all sat to him. the children hated posing as much as they delighted in the painter. the son, after three sittings, refused to sit again, which is to be regretted, for the pastel of him, lounging in a chair, with big hat pushed back and long legs stretched out, is full of boyhood. there are pastels of the three little girls, sketches in pen and ink and pencil, one among the few studies for etchings, and the dry-points. of florence leyland, a large, full-length oil was started, the first of his _blue girls_ in which he wished to paint blue on blue as he had painted white on white. another portrait of her was never finished and, we believe, never exhibited until it was purchased, in , for the brooklyn museum. the full-length of leyland was the only one completed. of this there is a small oil study. [illustration: symphony in white. no. ii the little white girl oil in the national gallery, london showing the original frame with early butterflies and swinburne's verses on it. photograph loaned by w. h. low, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: portrait of dr. whistler oil in the possession of burton mansfield, esq. (_see page _)] whistler painted leyland standing, in evening dress, with the ruffled shirt he always wore, against a dark background, the first arrangement of black on black. leyland was good about standing, we know from mrs. leyland, but he had not much time, and few portraits gave whistler more trouble. leyland told val prinsep that whistler nearly cried over the drawing of the legs. greaves says that "he got into an awful mess over it," painted it out again and again, and finally had in a model to pose for it nude. it was finished in the winter of . in the portrait of leyland he began to suppress the background, to put the figures into the atmosphere in which they stood, without accessories. the problem was the atmospheric envelope, to make the figures stand in this atmosphere, as far within their frames as he stood from them when he painted, a problem at which he worked as long as he lived. mrs. leyland had more leisure than her husband, and the sittings amused her. she had sat to rossetti, she was to sit to others. she was beautiful, with wonderful red hair. whistler made a dry-point of her, _the velvet gown_, and in black velvet she wanted to be painted. but he preferred a dress in harmony with her hair, and designed rose draperies falling in sweeping curves, and he placed her against a rose-flushed wall with a spray of rose almond blossoms at her side. in no other portrait did he attempt a scheme of colour at once so sumptuous and so delicate. the pose was natural to her, she said, though he made a number of pastel schemes before he painted it. her back is turned, her arms fall loosely, her hands clasped behind her, her head in profile. mrs. leyland remembered days when, at the end of the pose, the portrait looked as if it needed only a few hours' work. but in the morning she would find it rubbed out and all the work to be done again. notwithstanding the innumerable sittings, one of whistler's models, maud franklin, whom he so often etched and painted, was called in to pose for the gown. whistler knew what he wanted, and nothing else would satisfy him. it must be beautiful to be worthy of the weariness it caused her, he told mrs. leyland, and he was trying for the little more that meant perfection. the portrait was never finished, and yet it could not be lovelier. it was a problem, not of luminous dark, but of luminous light, and the accessories have not been suppressed. the matting on the floor, the dado, and the spray of almond blossoms are more elaborately carried out than the detail of any other portrait. what worried him, and probably prevented the picture being finished, were the hands, almost untouched. it was not that he could not draw hands, for they are beautifully drawn sometimes, notably in the etchings. but he rarely painted them well. he nearly always left them to the last, and some of his later pictures were unfinished because he could not get the hands right. in the _sarasate_, _the little white girl_, the _symphony in white, no. iii._, the hands are beautifully painted. some one has said that an artist is known by his painting of hands. these three pictures prove that whistler could paint hands, but it is as true that he did not paint them when he could help it. the portrait of mrs. louis huth was not only begun but finished during these years. it is holbein-like in its dignity, its sobriety, the flat modelling, the exquisite rendering of the lace at the throat and the wrists. mrs. huth wears the black velvet mrs. leyland wanted to wear, and the background is black of wonderful, luminous, intense depth. she, too, stands with her back turned, and her head in profile. in this portrait, as in the full-length leyland, whistler carried out his method of putting in the whole subject at once. the background was as much a part of the design as the figure. if anything went wrong anywhere the whole had to come out and be started again. it was a difficult problem, but the theory taught by gleyre, and developed in the nocturnes, was perfected in the portraits of _frederick leyland_ and _mrs. huth_. mrs. leyland sometimes met mrs. huth as they came and went, and this fixes the date of the portrait. mrs. huth was not strong, and whistler exhausted the strongest who posed for him. almost daily, during one summer, he kept her standing for three hours without rest. at last she rebelled. watts, she said, who had painted her had not treated her in that way. "and still, you know, you come to me!" was whistler's comment. he had some mercy, however, and at times a model stood for her dress. after the academy of opened with nothing of his in it, whistler took matters into his own hands, and, like courbet in , and manet in , organised a show of his own--his first "one man" show. the gallery was at no. pall mall, and the collection included these large portraits, a few nocturnes, one or two earlier paintings, and one or two of the _projects_. thirteen in all. there were fifty etchings. the walls were grey, the exhibits were well spaced, there were palms and flowers, blue pots and bronzes. he designed the card of invitation, the simple card he always used, and his mother and greaves wrote the names and addresses, "all making butterflies as hard as we could," walter greaves says, rushing out and posting the cards until the letter-boxes of chelsea were in a state of congestion. the private view was on june . the catalogue is vague. the exhibition was a shock to london. the decorations seemed an indiscretion, for no one before had suggested to people, whose standard was the academy, that a show of pictures might be beautiful. the work scandalised a generation blinded by the yearly academic bazaar; they could not see the beauty of flat modelling and flesh low in tone, they preferred the "foolish sunset" to the poetry of night. but the pictures could have been forgiven more easily than the titles. from the moment he exhibited them as _arrangements_ and _nocturnes_, his reputation for eccentricity was established. he wrote in _the gentle art_: "i know that many good people think my nomenclature funny and myself 'eccentric'. yes, 'eccentric' is the adjective they find for me. the vast majority of english folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.... as music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour." well received at first, his position in public favour had of late hung in the balance. the exhibition weighed in the scales against him, and for almost twenty years to come, ridicule was his portion. the _athenæum_ and the _saturday review_ ignored the show. the _pall mall_ saw in it more intellect than imagination. here and there was a polite murmur of "noble conception" and "velasquez touch." of all that was said whistler singled out for notice then, and preservation afterwards, the comments of a forgotten journal, the _hour_. it has been wondered why he noticed papers of small importance. when he answered the critics and kept the correspondence, it was "to make history," he said, and he selected what he thought important, though it might come from an unimportant source. the _hour_ suggested that the best work was not of recent date; whistler wrote to remove "the melancholy impression"; and notice and letter "make history," for it was about this time that english critics, following the lead of the french, were beginning to say that he did not fulfil his early promise, and it is recorded in _the gentle art_. the pictures of this period that remain may seem few in number. but others were completed or in progress, and disappeared before they were exhibited or seen outside the studio. we have reason to believe, however, that some have been recently discovered and eventually will not be lost to the world. chapter xv: the open door. the year eighteen seventy-four and after. "whistler laughed all his troubles away," it has been said. when the academy rejected him, and the critics sneered at his pictures hung in other galleries, and the public took the critics seriously, he laughed the louder, and felt the more. english ears shrank from his laugh--"his strident peacock laugh," sir sidney colvin called it. "he was a man who could never bear to be alone," mr. percy thomas remembers. "the door in lindsey row was always open," and whistler liked to think that his friends' doors were open to him. lord redesdale, who came to live in the row in , said that whistler was always running in and out. through his own open door strange people drifted. if they amused him he forgave them however they presumed, and they usually did presume. there was a man who, he told us, came to dine one evening, and, asking to stay overnight, remained three years: "well, you know, there he was; and that was the way he had always lived--the prince of parasites! he was a genius, a musician, the first of the 'Æsthetes,' before the silly name was invented. he hadn't anything to do; he didn't do anything but decorate the dinner-table, arrange the flowers, and then play the piano and talk. he hadn't any enthusiasm; that's why he was so restful. he was always ready to go to cremorne with me. at moments my mother objected to such a loafer about the house. and i would say to her, 'well, but, my dear mummy, who else is there to whom we could say, "play," and he would play, and "stop playing," and he would stop right away!' then i was ill. he couldn't be trusted with a message to the doctor or the druggist, and he was only in the way. but he had the good sense to see it, and to suggest it was time to be going; so he left for somebody else! it never occurred to him there was any reason he shouldn't live like that." we have heard of many others. one, to whom whistler entrusted the money for the weekly bills, gave lunches to his friends and sent flowers and chocolates right and left, while whistler's debt multiplied. artists and art students came in through the open door to see and to learn, and were welcomed. if they came to loaf and to play, they paid for it. they ran errands, posted letters, sat in the corner, interviewed greater bores than themselves. they had to give up their time, and then the end came, and out they went. one story in chelsea is of barthe, who not only taught art but sold tapestry. whistler bought a number of things from him. "but vill he pay, zis vistlaire, vill he pay?" barthe asked, and at last one evening he went to lindsey row. a cab was at the door. the maid said whistler was not in, but barthe heard his voice and pushed past, and said afterwards: "upstairs, i find him, before a little picture painting, and behind him ze bruzzers greaves holding candle. and vistlaire he say, 'you ze very man i vant; hold a candle!' and i hold a candle. and vistlaire he paint, and he paint, and zen he take ze picture, and he go downstair, and he get in ze cab, and he drive off, and we hold ze candle, and i see him no more. _mon dieu, il est terrible, ce vistlaire!_" but he was paid the next day. few men depended more on companionship than whistler, and to few was the companionship women alone can give more essential. all his life he retained his _coeur de femme_, and most of his friends were women. for years, until her health broke down, his mother was with him. many wondered, with val prinsep, who thought whistler "always acting a part," whether "behind the _poseur_, there was not quite a different whistler. those who saw him with his mother were conscious of the fact that the irrepressible jimmy was very human. no one could have been a better son, or more attentive to his mother's wishes. sometimes old mrs. whistler, who was a stern presbyterian in her religion, must have been very trying to her son. yet jimmy, though he used to give a queer smile when he mentioned them, never in any way complained of the old lady's strict sabbatarian notions, to which he bowed without remonstrance." the models drifting in and out of the open door were mostly women. he liked to have them with him, and felt it necessary to see them about the studio, for, as he watched their movements, they would take the pose he wanted, or suggest a group, an arrangement. an admirable example is the _whistler in his studio_, done in the first house in lindsey row. it was a beautiful study, he wrote to fantin, for a big picture like the _hommage à delacroix_, with fantin, albert moore, and himself, the "white girl" on a couch, and _la japonaise_ walking about, grouped together in his studio: all that would shock the academicians. the colour was to be dainty; he in pale grey, jo in white, _la japonaise_ in flesh-colour, albert moore and fantin to give the black note. the canvas was to be ten feet by six. if he ever did more than the study of the two girls and himself, it has disappeared. the painting was owned by mr. douglas freshfield, and now belongs to the chicago art institute, and is as dainty as whistler described it. he holds the small palette he sometimes used with raised edges to keep the liquid colour from running off, he wears the long-sleeved white waistcoat in which he worked, and he painted from the reflection in the mirror, for his brush is in his left hand. the two women most likely are the two models for _symphony in white, no. iii._, who have stopped posing. another version of this studio interior is in the city of dublin art gallery, but whistler repudiated it. mr. gallatin says that sir hugh lane, who presented the picture to the dublin gallery, gave it a very different record, holding that it was well known in chelsea, that whistler liked it, and eventually painted for mr. freshfield the version now in the chicago art institute. the truth of the matter, however, is that not only did whistler repudiate the dublin picture, but, when it was shown as the original in the whistler memorial exhibition in london, mr. freshfield demanded that this description be at once withdrawn or he would remove the picture and sue the international society, who organised the exhibition, for false statements and damages. sir hugh lane did not produce during his lifetime one scrap of proof in corroboration of statements denied by whistler, nor has any proof been produced since his death. another reason to doubt lane's description is that whistler never copied one of his pictures, and the dublin gallery's version is a slavish copy, save in the colour scheme. whistler never painted it. there is nothing else of the kind so complete as _whistler in his studio_, but there are innumerable studies of figures, reading or sewing, not posing, though the minute he started to draw them they had to pose. everybody who was with him, and somebody always was, had to sit and be painted, etched, or drawn. refugees from france in drifted through the open door, artists whose work was stopped by the commune and who came to england to take it up again. there were dalou, professor lantéri, and tissot who, at lindsey row, found the inspiration for his pictures on the river. fantin stayed in paris, but later told stories of the siege which whistler repeated to us. he asked fantin what he did. "me?" replied fantin, "i hid in the cellar. _je suis poltron, moi._" one of fantin's many letters to edwin edwards shows whistler's hold over those who were drawn to him for a better reason than curiosity. it was long since fantin had heard from whistler, for whom, however, he wrote, his affection was that of a man for a mistress still loved despite the trouble she might give. he did not understand women, they frightened him, "_mais au fond, tout au fond, je sens que si j'étais aimé, je serais l'esclave le plus soumis et serais peut-être capable de toutes les plus grandes folies. je sens que c'est la même chose pour whistler: s'il savait comme il pourrait avoir un ami dévoué et aimant en moi. malgré tout, il est séduisant._" and yet they saw less of each other as the years went on, perhaps because fantin became more of a hermit, while whistler's door opened wider. journalists and critics hurried to lindsey row once they knew the door was open. mr. walter greaves, who sometimes showed the studio, remembers doing the honours for tom taylor. whistler told mr. sidney starr that, while the _miss alexander_ was in the studio, tom taylor came: "there were other visitors. taylor said, 'ah, yes, um,' then remarked that the upright line in the panelling of the wall was wrong, and the picture would be better without it, adding, 'of course, it's a matter of taste.' to which whistler replied, 'i thought that perhaps for once you were going to get away without having said anything foolish; but remember, so that you may not make the mistake again, it's not a matter of taste at all, it is a matter of knowledge. good-bye.'" journalists and critics filled columns with praise of forgotten masterpieces by unknown academicians, but seldom spared space for the work in whistler's studio. their gossip after the visit was about the man, not his pictures. poets, the younger literary men, came in through the open door. mr. edmund gosse, introduced by mr. w. m. rossetti, has described to us his impressions of the bare room with little in it but the easel, and of the small, alert, nervous man with keen eyes and beautiful hands who sat before it, looking at his canvas, never moving but looking steadily for twenty minutes or half an hour, perhaps, and then, of a sudden, dashing at it, giving it one touch, and saying, "there, well, i think that will do for to-day!" an astonishing experience to one used to tapestried studios and painters more industrious with their hands than their brains. the fashionable world, royalty, crowded through the open door. lindsey row was lined with the carriages of mayfair and belgravia. whistler was the fashion, if his pictures were not, and he could say nothing, he could do nothing, that did not go the rounds of drawing-rooms and dinner-tables. "ha, ha! i have no private life!" he told a man who threatened him with exposure. and, from this time onward, he never had. he knew what his popularity meant. it was among the numbers who gathered about him because he was the fashion, that he could not afford to have friends. if the frequent use of the name "jimmie" by people in speaking and writing of him implies a friendliness on his part with every tom, dick, and harry, nothing could be further from the fact. his friends, who were his contemporaries, called him "jimmie," but rarely to his face, and the rest who did once had not the courage to a second time. we remember a foolish youth who, meeting him at our table, addressed him in free and easy fashion as "whistler." he said nothing. he only looked, but the youth did not forget the mr. after that. whistler was the last man to allow familiarity or to make friends. he understood how to keep at a distance those he did not know or did not want to know. [illustration: nocturne blue and gold, valparaiso bay oil in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art (_see page _)] [illustration: symphony in white. no. iii oil in the possession of edmund davis, esq. (_see page _)] it was thought that he could not live without fighting, that to him "battle was the spice of life." but he never fought until fighting was forced upon him. there were no fights, just as there was no mystery, at first. every man was a friend until he proved himself an enemy. whistler's temper was violent. few who ever saw him roused can forget the fire of his eyes, the fury of his face, the sting of his tongue. he was terrible then, and lost all control of himself. but there was always good cause for his rage, and once the storm had passed he laughed this, as all his other troubles, away and when the fighting began enjoyed it. he liked a fight, roared over it. lord redesdale told us whistler would come to him in the morning at breakfast, or in the evening after dinner, to read the latest correspondence, discovering the dullness of the enemy. whistler delighted in society, finding in it the change most men find in sport or travel. he hated anything that stopped his work. hunting and fishing were an abomination. we never heard of his attempting to shoot, except once at the leylands', when, he said: "i rather fancied i shot part of a hare, for i thought i saw the fluff of its fur flying. i knew i hit a dog, for i saw the keeper taking out the shot!" his solicitor, mr. william webb, tried once to teach him to ride a bicycle. "learn it? no," he said to us. "why, i fell right off--but i fell in a rose-bush!" motoring offended him and he abused j. for taking it up. but people amused him, and he enjoyed the "parade of life." this is the explanation of the dandyism that has shocked more than one of his critics. whistler was never content with half-measures. he would not have played the social game at all had he not been able to play it well, and if taking infinite pains with his appearance means dandyism, then he was a dandy. the very word pleased him, and he used it often, in american fashion, to express perfection or charm or beauty. never was any man more particular about his person and his dress. he was as careful of his hair as a woman, though there was no need of the curling-tongs with which he has been reproached; the difficulty was to restrain his curls and keep them in order. the white lock gave just the right touch. however fashion changed, he always wore the moustache and little imperial which other west point men of his generation retained through life. even his thick bushy eyebrows were trained, and they added to the humorous or sardonic expression of the deep blue eyes from which many shrank. his beautiful hands and nails were beautifully kept. in his dress was always something a little different from that of other men. his clothes were speckless, faultless, fitting irreproachably. he preferred pumps to boots, short sack-coats to tailed coats. his linen was of the finest, and a little butterfly was embroidered on his handkerchief; and his near-sightedness was a reason for the monocle of which he knew how to make such good use. he was long at his toilet, minute in every detail. before entering a drawing-room we have seen him pause to adjust his curls and his cravat. so it was with everything. there was dandyism in his delicate handwriting, and the same care went to the arrangement of his cards of invitation and his letters; he would consider even the placing of his signature on a receipt. and he devoted no less attention to his breakfasts and dinners that made the talk of the town. he respected the art of cookery--the "family bible" he called the cook-book; he ate little, but that little had to be perfect both in cooking and serving. from the beginning at lindsey row he gave these breakfasts and dinners. mr. luke ionides remembers calling one afternoon when "jimmy was busy putting things straight; he asked me if i had any money. i told him i had twelve shillings. he said that was enough. we went out together, and he bought three chairs at two-and-sixpence each, and three bottles of claret at eighteenpence each, and three sticks of sealing-wax of different colours at twopence each. on our return he sealed the top of each bottle with a different coloured wax. he then told me he expected a possible buyer to dinner, and two other friends. when we had taken our seats at the table, he very solemnly told the maid to go down and bring up a bottle of wine, one of those with the red seal. the maid could hardly suppress a grin, but i alone saw it. then, after the meat, he told her to fetch a bottle with the blue seal; and with dessert the one with the yellow seal was brought, and all were drunk in perfect innocence and delight. he sold his picture, and said he was sure the sealing-wax had done it." all his life he invented wines and was continually making "finds." we remember his discovery of a wonderful croûte mallard at the café royal, and an equally wonderful pouilly supplied by his french barber, who had been one of napoleon iii.'s generals or maximilian's _aides-de-camp_. another thing at the café royal besides the _menu_ was the n on the wine-glasses, which were said to have come from the tuileries in , but, no matter how many have been broken, it is still there. though he liked good wine, he drank as little as he ate. one of the innumerable stories often repeated may give a different idea. after a dinner in somebody's new house he slipped on the stairs and fell. as he was helped up, he was asked if he had hurt himself. "no," he said, "but it's all the fault of the damned teetotal architect." those who dined with him, or with whom he dined, knew that he was one of the most abstemious of men. on the other hand, it was astonishing how quickly some things went to his head. in later days when j. would stop with him at frascati's, on the way home from the studio, the talk grew gayer, the "ha! ha!" louder with the first sip of his absinthe. we have the story of his first dinner-party from mr. walter greaves, whose workman was sent to madame venturi's to borrow, and came back hung about with, pots and kettles and pans, and from mrs. leyland, who lent her butler and at the last moment, with her sister, put up muslin curtains at the windows. guests remember whistler's alarm when a near-sighted young lady in white mistook the japanese bath, filled with water-lilies, for a divan, and tried to sit on the goldfish; and leyland's disgust when grisi's daughter, whom he took in to dinner, would talk to him not of music, but of ouida's novels. everyone found the _menu_ "a little eccentric, but excellent." the earliest _menu_ we have seen is one, in mr. walter dowdeswell's possession, of a dinner in the eighties, as simple as it is characteristic of whistler, and we give it: _potage potiron_; _soles frites_; _boeuf à la mode_; _chapon au cresson_; _salade laitue_; _marmalade de pommes_; _omelette au fromage_. mr. alan s. cole's diary is the record of dinners in the seventies, of the company, and the talk: "_november _ ( ). dined with jimmy; tissot, a. moore, and captain crabb. lovely blue and white china, and capital small dinner. general conversation and ideas on art unfettered by principles. lovely japanese lacquer. "_december _ ( ). dined with jimmy; cyril flower, tissot, story. talked balzac--_père goriot--cousine bette--cousin pons--jeune homme de province à paris--illusions perdues_. "_january _ ( ). with my father and mother to dine at whistler's. mrs. montiori, mrs. stansfield, and gee there. my father on the innate desire or ambition of some men to be creators, either physical or mental. whistler considered art had reached a climax with japanese and velasquez. he had to admit natural instinct and influence, and the ceaseless changing in all things. "_march _ ( ). dined with jimmy. miss franklin there. great conversation of spiritualism, in which j. believes. we tried to get raps, but were unsuccessful, except in getting noises from sticky fingers on the table. "_march _ ( ). round to whistler's to dine. mrs. leyland and mrs. galsworthy and others. "_september _ ( ). dined with w. eldon there. hot discussion about napoleon (_napoléon le petit_, by hugo). the commune, with which j. sympathised [some fellow-feeling for courbet, the reason perhaps]. spiritualism. "_december _ ( ). to dine with j.--the doctor. goldfish in bowl. japanese trays--storks and birds. he read out two or three stories by bret harte: _luck of roaring camp_, _the outcasts of poker flat_, _tennessee's partner_. chatted as to doing illustration for a catalogue for mitford, and as to his japanese woman, and a decorated room for the museum. "_february _ ( ). to whistler's. mark twain's haunting jingle in the tramcar: 'punch, brothers, punch with care; punch in the presence of the passenjaire!' "_march _ ( ). dined with whistler, young mills and lang, who writes. he seemed shocked by much that was said by jimmy and eldon." whistler delighted not only in mark twain's, but in all jingles. he had an endless stock and recited them in the most unexpected places and at the most inappropriate moments. he went to the trouble to write down for us the lines of the _woodchuck_: "_how much wood would the woodchuck chuck if the woodchuck could chuck wood? why! just as much as the woodchuck would if the woodchuck could chuck wood!_" and as we read them in the familiar writing, we wonder why they never seemed foolish, but quite right, as he chanted them. in the haden correspondence, published in _the gentle art_, a new version of peter piper may be found. he loved to quote the _danbury news_ man and the _detroit free press_. he never lost his joy in american humour, and because there is something of the same spirit in rossetti's limericks he never tired of repeating them, especially the two beginning: "_there is an old person named scott who thinks he can paint and cannot,_" and "_there is an old painter called sandys who suffers from one of his glands._" whistler invented sunday breakfasts. the day was unusual in london and also the hour--twelve instead of nine. "nothing exactly like them has ever been in the world. they were as much himself as his work," george boughton wrote. whistler arranged the table, seeing that everything placed on it was beautiful: the blue and white, the silver, the linen, the japanese bowl of goldfish or the vase of flowers in the centre. if his resources failed, he borrowed from lord redesdale, or, after his brother was married, from mrs. william whistler, whose japanese lacquer was his admiration. he prepared the _menu_, partly american, partly french, and wholly bewildering to joint-loving britons. his description of the british breakfasts he was asked to were amazing: "beef, the people or the rats had been gnawing, beer, and cheese rinds, salad without dressing and tarts without taste. quite british!" his buckwheat cakes are not forgotten. he would make them himself, if the party were informal, and he never spoke again to one man who ventured to dislike them. sometimes eighteen or twenty sat down to breakfast, more often half that number. all were people whistler wanted to meet, people who talked, people who painted, people who wrote, people who bought, people who were distinguished, people who were royal, people who were friends. from mr. cole we have notes of the company and talk at some of the breakfasts: "_june _ ( ). to breakfast at j.'s. f. dicey, young potter, and huth there. he showed some studies from figures--light and elegant--to be finished. "_june _ ( ). to whistler's for breakfast. much talk about _comédie-française_ and sarah bernhardt. "_july _ ( ). breakfast at w.'s. lord houghton, oscar wilde, mrs. singleton, mrs. moncrieff, mrs. gerald potter, lady archie campbell, the storys, theodore watts, and some others. mrs. moncrieff sang well afterwards. lord houghton asked me about my father's memoirs. margie [mrs. cole] sat by him." the breakfasts remain "charming" in mrs. moncrieff's memory. and "charming" is lady colin campbell's word. lady wolseley writes us that she remembers "a flight of fans fastened up on the walls, and also that the table had a large flat blue china bowl, or dish, with goldfish and nasturtiums in it." mrs. alan s. cole recalls a single tall lily springing from the bowl; though invited for twelve, it was wiser, she adds, not to arrive much before two, for to get there earlier was often to hear whistler splashing in his bath somewhere close to the drawing-room. this was mr. w. j. rawlinson's experience once. he had been asked for twelve, and got there a few minutes before as for breakfast in paris. several guests had come, others followed, a dozen perhaps; one was lord wolseley. for whistler they waited--and they waited and they waited. at about half-past one they heard a splashing behind the folding-doors. there was a moment of indignation. then howell hurried in, beaming on them. "it's all right, it's all right!" he said, "jimmie won't be long now; he is just having his bath!" howell talked and they waited, and two struck before whistler appeared, smiling, gracious, all in white, for it was hot, and they went down to breakfast. as soon as he came in he was so fascinating that the waiting was forgotten. we have heard but of one person who did not like the breakfasts, an artist who went one morning, and his story was that he drove down to chelsea from st. john's wood, and found whistler alone, and they went into the dining-room, and there was an egg on toast for whistler and another egg on toast for himself, and that was all. then whistler wanted to show him pictures, but he was furious, and he said, "no, whistler, i have paid three shillings and sixpence for a cab to come here, and i have eaten one egg, and i will look at no pictures!" sir rennell rodd writes us of the breakfasts at tite street, "with the inevitable buckwheat cakes, and green corn, and brilliant talk. one i remember particularly, for we happened to be thirteen. there were two miss c.'s, the younger of whom died within a week of the breakfast; and an elderly gentleman, whose name i forget, who was there, when he heard of it at his club, said, 'god bless my soul!' had a stroke, and died too." j. was once only at a chelsea breakfast, in , at tite street, when mr. menpes was present. but we often breakfasted in paris at the rue du bac, and in london at the fitzroy street studio. it made no difference who was there, who sat beside you, whistler dominated everybody and everything in his own as in every house he visited. though short and small--a man of diminutive stature the usual description--his was the commanding presence. when he talked everyone listened. at his table he had a delightful way of waiting upon his guests. he would go round with a bottle of burgundy in its cradle, talking all the while, emphasising every point with a dramatic pause just before or just after filling a glass. we remember one sunday in paris in --mr. and mrs. edwin a. abbey and dr. d. s. maccoll the other guests--when he told how he hung the pictures at the annual liverpool exhibition in : "you know the academy baby by the dozen had been sent in, and i got them all in my gallery; and in the centre, at one end, i placed the birth of the baby--splendid; and opposite, the baby with the mustard-pot, and opposite that the baby with the puppy; and in the centre, on one side, the baby ill, doctor holding its pulse, mother weeping. on the other by the door, the baby dead, the baby's funeral, baby from the cradle to the grave, baby in heaven, babies of all kinds and shapes all along the line; not crowded, you know, hung with proper respect for the baby. and on varnishing day, in came the artists, each making for his own baby. amazing! his baby on the line. nothing could be better! and they all shook my hand, and thanked me, and went to look--at the other men's babies. and then they saw babies in front of them, babies behind them, babies to right of them, babies to left of them. and then, you know, their faces fell; they didn't seem to like it--and--well--ha! ha!--they never asked me to hang the pictures again at liverpool! what!" as he told it he was on his feet, pouring out the burgundy, minutes sometimes to fill a glass. there were minutes between one guest and the next; he seemed never to be in his chair; it was fully two hours before the story and breakfast came to an end together. but though no one else had a chance to talk, no one was bored. it was the same wherever he went if the people were sympathetic. if they were not, he could be as glum as anybody, especially if he was expected to "show off"; or, he could go fast asleep. in sympathetic houses he not only led the talk, he controlled it. there is a legend that he and mark twain met for the first time at a dinner, when they simultaneously asked their hostess who that noisy fellow was? for there was noise, there was gaiety, and everybody was carried away by it, even the servants. whistler was an artist in his use of words and phrases, making them as much a part of his personality as the white lock and the eye-glass. his sudden "what," his familiar "well, you know," his eloquent "h'm! h'm!" were placed as carefully as the butterfly on his card of invitation, the blue and white on his table. no man was ever so eloquent with his hands, he could tell a whole story with his fingers, long, thin, sensitive--"alive to the tips, like the fingers of a mesmerist," mr. arthur symons writes of them. no man ever put so much into words as he into the pause for the laugh, into the laugh itself, the loud, sharp "ha, ha!" and into the deliberate adjusting of his eye-glass. so much was in his manner that it is almost impossible to give an idea of his talk to those who never heard it. we have listened to him with wonder and delight, and afterwards tried to repeat what he said, to find it fall flat and lifeless without the play of his expressive hands, without the malice or the music of his laugh. this is why the stories of him in print often make people marvel at the reputation they have brought him. not that the talk was not good; it was. his wit was quick, spontaneous. "providence is very good to me sometimes," was his answer when we asked him how he found the telling word. he has been compared to degas, who, it is said, led up the talk to a witticism prepared beforehand; whistler's wit met like a flash the challenge he could not have anticipated. he loved a good story, made the most of it, treated it with a delicacy, a humour that was irresistible. he could be fantastic, malicious, audacious, serious, everything but dull or gross. he shrank from grossness. no one, not his worst enemies, can recall a story from him with a touch or taint of it. the ugly, the unclean revolted him. we have heard of sundays when whistler sketched the people who were there, hanging the sketches in his drawing-room. one sunday he made the dry-point of lord (then sir garnet) wolseley. lord wolseley himself has forgotten it: "i fear, beyond the recollection of an agreeable luncheon at his house at chelsea, i have no reminiscence," he wrote to us. and lady wolseley thinks "lord wolseley may have gone to him for sittings early, and have breakfasted with him. i have a vague impression." but howell was summoned that sunday from putney to amuse the sitter and prevent his hurrying off, and he put the date in his diary: "_november _ ( ). went to whistler's, met sir garnet wolseley. whistler etched him; got two first proofs, second one touched, _s._ met pellegrini and godwin." whistler went everywhere, and knew everybody, though he did not allow everybody to know him. when somebody said to him, "the prince of wales says he knows you," whistler's answer was, "that's only his side." he lived at a rate that would have killed most men, and at an expense in details that was fabulous. "i never dined alone for years," he said. if no one was coming to him, if no one had invited him, he dined at a club. he was a familiar figure, at different periods, in the arts, chelsea, and hogarth clubs, the arundel, the beaufort grill club, or, for supper, at the beefsteak club. many of his letters, for a period, were dated from "the fielding." he was once put up at the savile, he told us, but heard no more about it; and at the savage, but that, he said, "is a club to belong to, never to go to." at the reform, had he thought of it, he lost all chance of election one night when his laugh woke up the old gentleman whose snores were equally loud in the reading-room. an amusing proof of the number of his clubs is mr. alden weir's story of passing through london and being asked to dine by whistler, who suggested first one club, then another, and drove him about to half a dozen or more, at each getting out of the cab alone and coming back to say nobody of any account was there, or the dinner was not good, or some other excuse; and, at last, with an apology, driving him home to chelsea, where a large party waited and an excellent dinner was served, and mr. weir was the one guest not in evening dress, for whistler kept the party waiting still longer while he changed. in the lindsey row days whistler sometimes dined in a cheap french restaurant, "good of its kind," with albert moore and homer martin, a man he delighted in. many artists dined there, he said, and would sit and talk until late. "but then, you know, the sort of englishman who is entirely outside all these things, and likes to think he is 'in it,' began to come too, and that ruined it." to pagani's, in great portland street, a tiny place then, he went with pelligrini and others. he was often at the café royal in the eighties with oscar wilde; towards the end, mr. heinemann, mr. e. g. kennedy, and we were apt to be with him, when, if he ordered the dinner, _poulet en casserole_ was the principal dish, and sweet champagne the wine. never shall we forget a dinner there, in , to mr. freer, who had just bought a picture. we and mr. heinemann were the other guests. much as whistler wished to be amiable to mr. freer, he was tired, and, somehow, the dinner was not right, and there were scenes in our corner behind the screen. mr. freer felt it necessary to entertain the party, which he did by talking pictures like a new critic, and japanese prints like a cultured school-ma'am. whistler slept loudly and we tried to be attentive, until at length, at some psychological moment in hiroshige's life or in mr. freer's collection, whistler snored such a tremendous snore that he woke himself up, crying: "good heavens! who is snoring?" whistler had the faculty of being late when invited to dinner. one official evening, he arrived an hour after the time. "we are so hungry, mr. whistler!" said his host. "what a good sign!" was his answer. at times he felt "like a little devil," and he told us of one of these occasions: "i arrived. in the middle of the drawing-room table was the new _fortnightly review_, wet from the press; in it an article on méryon by wedmore, and there was wedmore--the distinguished guest. i felt the excitement over the great man, and the great things he had been doing. wedmore took the hostess in to dinner; i was on her other side, seeing things, bent on making the most of them. and i talked of critics, of wedmore, as though i did not know who sat opposite. and i was nudged, my foot kicked under the table. but i talked. and whenever the conversation turned on méryon, or wedmore's article, or other serious things, i told another story, and i laughed--ha ha!--and they couldn't help it, they all laughed with me, and wedmore was forgotten, and i was the hero of the evening. and wedmore has never forgiven me." whistler went a great deal to the theatre in the seventies and eighties, and was always at first nights. occasionally he acted in amateur theatricals. in he played in _under the umbrella_, at the albert hall, and was elated by a paragraph on his performance in the _daily news_. he showed himself at private views and at the ceremonies society approves. to see and to be seen was part of the social game, and the world, meeting him everywhere, mistook him for the butterfly for which he seemed to pose. chapter xvi: the peacock room. the years eighteen seventy-four to eighteen seventy-seven. for a year after the exhibition in pall mall, whistler did not show any paintings. artists said his pictures were not serious because not finished. whistler retorted that theirs "might be finished, but--well--they never had been begun." such remarks were not favoured by hanging committees. probably royal academicians were honest, though malicious. lord redesdale remembered one whose work is forgotten, who used to say that whistler was losing his eyesight, that he could not see there was no paint on his canvas. mr. g. a. holmes told us that a few artists in chelsea, though they disliked him personally, thought him a man with new ideas who threw new light on art; henry moore said to mr. holmes that whistler put more atmosphere into his pictures than any man living. but academicians, as a rule, were afraid of him and whistler would tell mr. holmes: "well, you know, they want to treat me like a sheet of note-paper, and crumple me up!" his prints were hung in exhibitions, many lent by anderson rose to the liverpool art club in october , and a few months afterwards to the hartley institution at southampton. shortly before the liverpool show opened, mr. ralph thomas issued the first catalogue of whistler's etchings: _a catalogue of the etchings and dry-points of james abbott macneil whistler, london, privately printed by john russell smith, of soho square_. of the fifty copies printed, only twenty-five were for sale, so that it became at once rare. mr. percy thomas etched whistler's portrait of himself with his brushes as frontispiece. mr. ralph thomas described the plates, and as he had been with whistler when many were made and printed, he was far better qualified than any of his successors. it is much to be regretted that wedmore did not follow thomas's excellent beginning. in , whistler exhibited pictures in the few galleries that would hang him. in october he sent to the winter exhibition at the dudley gallery a _nocturne in blue and gold, no. iii._, which is impossible to identify, and _nocturne in black and gold--the falling rocket_, which ruskin presently identified beyond possibility of doubt: the impression of fireworks in the gardens of cremorne. but at the dudley it created no sensation. f. g. stephens, in the _athenæum_, was almost alone in its praise. a month later, november , _chelsea reach--harmony in grey_, and many studies of figures on brown paper were at the winter exhibition of the society of french artists, and three nocturnes in the spring exhibition ( ) of the same society. thus whistler managed without the royal academy. [illustration: sea beach with figures study for the six projects pastel (_see page _)] [illustration: whistler's table palette (_see page _)] [illustration: the three figures pink and grey oil in the possession of alfred chapman, esq. (_see page _)] when irving appeared as philip ii. in , whistler was struck with the tall, slim, romantic figure in silvery greys and blacks, and got him to pose. mr. bernhard sickert thinks it extraordinary that whistler failed to suggest irving's character. we think it more extraordinary for mr. sickert to forget that whistler was painting irving made up as philip ii. and not as henry irving. mr. cole saw the picture on may , , and found whistler "quite madly enthusiastic about his power of painting such full-lengths in two sittings or so." the reproduction in m. duret's _whistler_ differs in so many details from the picture to-day, that at first we wondered if two portraits were painted. m. duret tells us that his reproduction is from a photograph lent him by george lucas. probably, m. duret writes, the photograph was taken while whistler was painting the picture, which afterwards he must have altered. on comparing the photograph carefully with the picture, we do not believe there were two portraits, but there were many changes. in the photograph the cloak is thrown back over the actor's right shoulder, showing his arm. in the exhibited picture his arm is hidden by the cloak, and his hand, which before seems to have been thrust into his doublet, rests upon the collar of an order. the trunks, apparently, were much altered, especially the right, and the legs are far better drawn, the left foot entirely repainted. though whistler was acquiring more certainty in putting in these big portraits at once, he was becoming more exacting, and he made repeated changes. when the _irving_ was hung at the grosvenor gallery, mrs. stillman remembers that three different outlines of the figure were visible. the portrait was not a commission. it is said that irving refused the small price whistler asked for it, but later, seeing his legs sticking out from under a pile of canvases in a wardour street shop, recognised them and bought the picture for ten guineas. mr. bram stoker writes that, at the time of the bankruptcy, whistler sold it to irving "for either twenty or forty pounds--i forget which." the facts are that whistler sold the _irving_ to howell, for "ten pounds and a sealskin coat," howell recorded in his diary, and that from him it passed into the hands of mr. graves, the printseller in pall mall, who sold it to irving for one hundred pounds. after irving's death, it came up for sale at christie's, and fetched five thousand pounds, becoming the property of mr. thomas, of philadelphia. on the death of mr. thomas it was purchased for the metropolitan museum in new york. a portrait of sir henry cole was begun this spring. mr. alan s. cole, in his diary (may , ), speaks of "a strong commencement upon a nearly life-size portrait of my father. looking at it reflected in a glass, and how the figure stood within the frame." this was never finished. whistler's executrix says it was burned. lord redesdale told us of a beautiful full-length of his wife in chinese blue silk whistler called fair, his word then for everything he liked. with two or three more sittings and a little work, it would have been finished. but it was a difficult moment, men were in possession at no. lindsey row, and he slashed the canvas. the debt was small, thirty pounds or so, and the price agreed upon for the portrait was two hundred guineas. lord redesdale would gladly have settled the matter, but whistler said nothing. a portrait started of lord redesdale, in van dyck costume, and several nocturnes were torn off stretchers and slashed. _the fur jacket_, _rosa corder_, _connie gilchrist with the skipping rope--the gold girl_, _effie deans_, were being painted. _the fur jacket, arrangement in black and brown_ his final name for it, is the portrait of maud, miss franklin, who now becomes more important in his life and in his art. it is of great dignity. the dress is put in with a full, sweeping brush in long flowing lines, classic in the fall of the folds; the pale, beautiful face looks out like a flower from the depth of the background. in many portraits whistler was rebuked for sacrificing the face to the design; here the interest is concentrated on the face, and that is why the shadowy figure has been criticised as a mere ghost, a mere rub-in of colour, on the canvas. that he carried the work as far as he thought it should be carried is certain when it is contrasted with _rosa corder_, also an _arrangement in black and brown_, in which the jacket, the feathered hat in her hand, the trailing skirt, the face in severe profile, are more solidly modelled. m. blanche has stated that whistler, in cheyne walk, saw miss rosa corder in her brown dress pass a door painted black, and was struck with the scheme of colour. this may be true, for, as we have shown, chance often suggested the effect or arrangement. _connie gilchrist--the gold girl_, a popular dancer at the gaiety, attracted whistler by her stage dress, which revealed her slight girlish form in its delicate youthful beauty. he posed her in the studio as he had seen her on the stage, skipping. but the movement which told on the stage by its simplicity its spontaneity, became in the picture artificial. the figure has the elegance of the little pastels, it is placed with the distinction of the _miss alexander_, but the suspended action gives the sense of incompleteness. a long line swept down the back of the figure proves he meant to change it. the above was written before the painting was bought by george a. hearn and presented to the metropolitan museum of new york. whistler for years had been endeavouring to get possession of it in order to destroy it. it had been seized at his bankruptcy, and for long was the property of henry labouchere. that whistler was dissatisfied is shown by that long black line from the girl's head to her heels. after it had hung for some time in the metropolitan museum the line was removed, and what is left of the picture whistler wanted to destroy can now be seen on the walls. always the pictures he was painting were in his mind. he memorised them as he did the nocturnes, and over and over, instead of telling what he was painting, he would make, to show those he knew would understand, pen or wash sketches of the work he was engaged on, leaving the sketches, many of which exist, with his friends. there are records of the kind of most of these portraits. no portraits were shown in , for other work engrossed him. it was the year of the peacock room. we do not know how he got the idea of the peacock as a motive for decoration, or where he obtained his knowledge of it. but the scheme was first proposed to mr. w. c. alexander for his house on campden hill, and whistler put down a few notes in pen and ink. the work went no further, and he arranged, instead, a harmony in white for the drawing-room, replaced afterwards by eastern tapestries. then leyland bought his house in prince's gate. leyland's ambition was to live the life of an ancient venetian merchant in modern london, and he began to remodel the interior and fill it with beautiful things. he bought the gilded staircase from northumberland house, which was being pulled down. he commissioned whistler to suggest the colour in the hall, and paint the detail of blossom and leaf on the panels of the dado. "to leyland's house to see whistler's colouring of hall--very delicate cocoa colour and gold--successful," mr. cole wrote, march . leyland covered the walls of drawing- and reception-rooms with pictures. he had work by filippo lippi, botticelli, crivelli. he owned rossetti's _blessed damosel_ and _lady lilith_, millais' _eve of st. agnes_, ford madox brown's _chaucer at king edward's court_, windus' _burd helen_, burne-jones' _mirror of venus_ and _wine of circe_. he bought legros, watts, and albert moore. whistler's _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_ was his, and he hung it in the dining-room amidst his splendid collection of blue and white china. norman shaw was making the alterations to the house, and another architect, jeckyll, was suggested by mr. murray marks to decorate the dining-room and arrange the blue and white. some say that originally morris and burne-jones were to do the dining-room, but that when whistler stepped in they vanished. jeckyll put up shelves to hold the china, and whistler designed the sideboard. the _princesse_ was placed over the mantel, and space left at the opposite end of the room for another painting by whistler, who wished the _three figures, pink and grey_ to face the _princesse_. the walls were hung with norwich leather. the shelves were divided by perpendicular lines endlessly repeated, and the panelled ceiling, with its pendant lamps, was heavy. whistler maintained that the red border of the rug and the red flowers in the centre of each panel of the leather killed the delicate tones of his picture. leyland agreed. the red border was cut off the rug, and whistler gilded, or painted, the flowers on the leather with yellow and gold. the result was horrible; the yellow paint and gilding "swore" at the yellow tone of the leather. something else must be done, and again leyland agreed. the something else developed into the scheme of decoration first submitted to mr. alexander: the peacock room. he told us one evening, when talking of it: "well, you know, i just painted as i went on, without design or sketch--it grew as i painted. and towards the end i reached such a point of perfection--putting in every touch with such freedom--that when i came round to the corner where i had started, why, i had to paint part of it over again, or the difference would have been too marked. and the harmony in blue and gold developing, you know, i forgot everything in my joy in it!" he had planned a journey to venice, and new series of etchings there and in france and holland. the journey was postponed. at the end of the season, the leylands went to speke hall. whistler remained at prince's gate. town emptied, he was still there, spending his days on ladders and scaffolding, or lying in a hammock painting. his two pupils helped him: "we laid on the gold," mr. walter greaves says, and there were times when the three were found with their hair and faces covered with it. whistler's description of this whirlwind of work was "the show's afire," an expression he used for years when things were going. he was up before six, at prince's gate an hour or so after, at noon jumping into a hansom and driving home to lunch, then hurrying back to his work. at night he was fit for nothing but bed, "so full were my eyes of sleep and peacock feathers," he told us. he thought only of the beauty growing in his hands. autumn came. lionel robinson and sir thomas sutherland, with whom he was to have gone to venice, started without him. he could not drop the work at prince's gate. [illustration: nocturne blue and green oil in the national gallery, london (_see page _)] [illustration: nocturne blue and silver oil in the possession of the executors of mrs. f. r. leyland (_see page _)] a record of his progress is in the short notes of mr. cole's diary: "_september _ ( ). whistler dined. most entertaining with his brilliant description of his successful decorations at leyland's. "_september ._ to see peacock room. peacock feather devices--blues and golds--extremely new and original. "_october ._ to see room which is developing. the dado and panels greatly help it. met poynter, who spoke highly of whistler's decoration. "_october ._ again to see room with moody. he did not like the varnished surface and blocky manner of laying on the gold. "_october ._ to peacock room. mitford (lord redesdale) came. "_november ._ the blue over the brown (leather) background is most admirable in effect, and the ornament in gold on blue fine. w. quite mad with excitement. "_november ._ with prince teck to see whistler and the room. left p. t. with jimmy. "_november ._ golden peacocks promise to be superb. "_december ._ peacocks superb. "_december ._ article in _morning post_ on peacock room. "_december ._ whistler in a state over article in _morning post_. leyland much perturbed as i heard. "_december ._ whistler now thinking of cutting off the pendant ceiling lamps in peacock room. "_december ._ my father and probyn to see room. jimmy much disgusted at my father's telling him that, in taking so much pains over his work, and in the minuteness of his etched work, he really was like mulready, who was equally scrupulous." lord redesdale told us that, returning from scotland, he went to prince's gate. whistler was on top of a ladder, looking like a little imp--a gnome. "but what are you doing?" "i am doing the loveliest thing you ever saw!" "but what of the beautiful old spanish leather? and leyland? have you consulted him?" "why should i? i am doing the most beautiful thing that ever has been done, you know, the most beautiful room!" everybody wanted to see it. whistler held a succession of receptions at prince's gate. he was flattered when the princess louise and the marquis of westminster came, he wrote to his mother at hastings, for they set the fashion, kept up the talk in london. boughton said in his _reminiscences_: "he often asked me round to the peacock room, and i see him still up on high, lying on his back often, working in 'gold on blue' and 'blue on gold' over the whole expanse of the ceiling, and, as far as i could see, he let no hand touch it but his own." mrs. stillman, however, remembers the two pupils working while she drank tea with whistler. lady ritchie let us have her impressions of a visit: "long, long after the paris days, mr. whistler danced when i would rather have talked. some one, i cannot remember who, it was probably one of mr. cole's family, told me one day when i was walking up prince's gate that he was decorating a house by which we were passing, and asked me if i should like to go in. we found ourselves--it was like a dream--in a beautiful peacock room, full of lovely lights and tints, and romantic, dazzling effects. james whistler, in a painter's smock, stood at one end of the room at work. seeing us, he laid down his brushes, and greeted us warmly, and i talked of old paris days to him. 'i used to ask you to dance,' he said, 'but you liked talking best.' to which i answered, 'no, indeed, i liked dancing best,' and suddenly i found myself whirling half-way down the room." jeckyll came, and his visit was tragic. when he saw what had been done to his work, he hurried home, gilded his floor, and forgot his grief in a mad-house. whistler received the critics on february , . a leaflet, for distribution, was written, it is said, by whistler, though the wording does not suggest it, and printed by thomas way. it explains that, with the peacocks as motive, two patterns, derived from the eyes and the breast feathers, were invented and repeated throughout, sometimes one alone, sometimes both in combination; along the dado, blue on gold, over the walls, gold on blue, while the arrangement was completed by the birds, painted in their splendour, in blue on the gold shutters, in gold on the blue space opposite the chimney-place. "called and found whistler elated with the praises of the press of the peacock room," is mr. cole's note on the th of the month. even then it was not finished. on march , mr. cole was "late at prince's gate with whistler, consoling him. he trying to finish the peacocks on shutters. with him till a.m., and walked home." whistler made no change in the architectural construction of the room. it was far from beautiful, with its perpendicular lines, its heavy ceiling, its hanging lamps, and its spaces so broken up that only on the wall opposite the _princesse_ and on the shutters could he carry out his design in its full splendour and stateliness, and give gorgeousness of form as well as colour; only there could he paint the peacocks that were his motive, so that it is by artificial light, with the shutters closed, that the room is seen in completeness. he could do no more than adapt in marvellous fashion the eye of the peacock, the throat and breast feathers to the broken surfaces. but in spite of drawbacks, the peacock room is the "noble work" he called it to his mother, the one perfect mural decoration of modern times. it was his first chance, and it is a lasting reproach to his contemporaries that there was no one to offer him another until too late. whistler, who in his pictures avoided literary themes, resorted to symbolism in his gold peacocks on the wall facing the _princesse_. one, standing amid flying feathers and gold, clutches in his claws a pile of coins; the other spreads his wings in angry but triumphant defiance: "the rich peacock and the poor peacock," whistler said, symbolising the relations between patron and artist. leyland had been away from prince's gate for months. he had seen his beautiful leather disappear beneath whistler's blue and gold. he had heard of receptions and press views to which no invitations had been issued by him or to him, and he was annoyed at having his private house turned into a public gallery. the crisis came when whistler, thinking himself justified by months of work, asked two thousand guineas for the decoration of the room. leyland, who had sanctioned only the retouching of the leather, could restrain himself no longer. like many generous men, he had a strict, if narrow, sense of justice. the original understanding was that whistler should receive five hundred guineas. this grew to a thousand as the scheme developed. but when, at the end, whistler demanded two thousand, and there was no contract, leyland sent whistler one thousand pounds, not even guineas. to whistler this was an insult. he felt he had been treated not as an artist, but as a tradesman. he never forgave leyland, though, at one moment, leyland was prepared to pay the whole sum if whistler would leave the house. whistler refused, preferring to make leyland a gift of the decoration than not finish the panel of the peacocks, and he told mr. cole: "you know, there leyland will sit at dinner, his back to the _princesse_, and always before him the apotheosis of _l'art et l'argent_!" and this was what happened. leyland knew that, in return for the loss of his leather and his irritation with whistler, he had been given something beautiful, and he kept the dining-room as whistler left it, toning down not a flying feather, not a piece of gold in that triumphant caricature. until the colour fades from the panel, the world cannot forget the quarrel. whistler never forgot it, and his resentment against leyland never lessened. it may be that he was over-sensitive, certainly he put himself in the wrong by his conduct to leyland. but he could no more help his manner of avenging what he thought an insult, than the meek man can refrain from turning the other cheek to the chastiser. it will ever be to leyland's credit that he left the work alone. a few years ago the room was removed from the house in prince's gate, bought by messrs. brown and phillips, sold by them to messrs. obach, who exhibited it in their bond street gallery, and it was then purchased by mr. charles l. freer and taken to detroit. as he owns the _princesse_, the peacock room is probably once again just as it was when whistler finished it. chapter xvii: the grosvenor gallery. the years eighteen seventy-seven and eighteen seventy-eight. many exhibitions had been organised in opposition to the royal academy, but on too small a scale to contend against that rich and powerful institution. sir coutts lindsay, the founder of the grosvenor gallery, brought to it money, a talent for organisation, and a determination to show the best work in the right way. nothing could have been more in accord with whistler's ideas. he dropped in to smoke with mr. cole on the evening of march , , "in great excitement over sir coutts lindsay's gallery for pictures--very select exhibition, which he carried to an extreme by saying that it might be opened with only one picture worthy of being shown that season." sir coutts lindsay proposed to exhibit no pictures save those he invited, and he might have succeeded had he ignored the academy, and made the grosvenor as distinct from it as the international society of sculptors, painters and gravers was under whistler's presidency. he had the daring to invite whistler, rossetti, burne-jones, holman hunt, walter crane, watts; but the weakness to include millais, alma-tadema, poynter, richmond, leighton. "to those whose work he wanted, he gave little dinners," mr. hallé has told us, and a very strange lot some of them seemed to sir coutts probably, to his butler certainly. one evening the butler could endure it no longer, and he came into the drawing-room and whispered: "there's a gent downstairs says 'e 'as come to dinner, wot's forgot 'is necktie and stuck a fevver in his 'air," for at this period whistler, mr. hallé says, never wore a necktie when in evening dress. the white lock bewildered others. mrs. leyland remembered his going to her box at the opera once, where the attendant leaned over and said: "beg your pardon, sir, but there's a white feather in your hair, just on top!" at first, burne-jones and the followers of the pre-raphaelites were most in evidence at sir coutts lindsay's exhibitions, and the "greenery-yallery, grosvenor gallery" element prevailed. but the grosvenor, by the time its traditions were taken over by the new gallery, was little more than an overflow from the academy. shortly before the first exhibition in , whistler's brother, the doctor, was married to miss helen ionides, a cousin of aleco and luke ionides. the wedding (april , ) was at st. george's, hanover square, and the greek church, london wall. it brought to whistler a good friend for the troubled years that were to come, and mrs. whistler's house in wimpole street was for long a home to him. the first grosvenor was a loan exhibition, and opened in may . whistler sent _nocturne in black and gold--the falling rocket_ shown at the dudley; _harmony in amber and black_, the first title of _the fur jacket; arrangement in brown_; irving as philip ii. of spain, with the title _arrangement in black, no. iii_. from mrs. leyland came _nocturne in blue and silver_; from mr. w. graham another _nocturne in blue and silver_--changed later by whistler to _blue and gold, old battersea bridge_, now at the tate gallery; from the hon. mrs. percy wyndham, _nocturne in blue and gold_, at westminster. the _carlyle_ was included, but it arrived too late to be catalogued. boehm lent his bust of whistler in terra-cotta, done in , considered at the time a good portrait. whistler's work was also seen in a frieze, described by mr. walter crane: "whistler designed the frieze--the phases of the moon on the coved ceiling of the west gallery which has disappeared since its conversion into the Æolian hall, with stars on a subdued blue ground, the moon and stars being brought out in silver, the frieze being divided into panels by the supports of the glass roof. the 'phases' were sufficiently separated from each other." we have heard of this decoration from no one else. probably it was overshadowed by the crimson silk damask and green velvet hangings, the gilded pilasters and furniture, the monumental chimneypiece, of which complaints were heard from every side. the sumptuousness of the background was disastrous to the pictures. whistler's suffered less than others, but were not liked the more on that account. before the private view (april , ), sir coutts lindsay had expressed his disappointment in the _irving_ and the nocturnes. at the private view the crowd gathered in front of alma-tadema, burne-jones, millais, leighton, poynter, richmond. the critics sneered at whistler, or patronised him. the _athenæum_ grudged meagre lines to this "whimsical, if capable, artist and his vagaries." the _times_ smiled with condescension at "mr. whistler's compartment, musical with strange nocturnes," wondered how irving enjoyed "being reduced to a mere arrangement," and deplored the theory that, in practice, covered "an entire absence of details, even details generally considered so important to a full-length portrait as arms and legs. in fact, mr. whistler's full-length arrangements suggest to us a choice between materialised spirits and figures in a london fog." but no criticism was so insolent as the notice of the grosvenor which ruskin delivered from his circulating pulpit, _fors clavigera_ (july , ). ruskin, though social subjects engrossed him, was still the art critic powerful to the public, to himself infallible. he had made the pre-raphaelites, he set to work to unmake whistler. already he was attacked by the mental malady, the "morbid excitement" in mr. collingwood's words, that obscured the last years of his life; he had been very ill in the winter of . nothing else could pardon his malice and insolence. he reserved his chief abuse for whistler's _falling rocket at cremorne_, with the sudden burst of fire and shower of gold and detail disappearing in the illimitable darkness of night. that fireworks in a place of entertainment could have in them the elements of beauty was a truth ruskin could not grasp, and with this wonderful canvas before him, he remained blind to the splendour of the subject and the mastery of the painter: "i have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." boughton, in his _reminiscences_, tells that whistler first chanced upon this criticism when they were alone together in the smoking-room of the arts club. "it is the most debased style of criticism i have had thrown at me yet," whistler said. "sounds rather like libel," boughton suggested. "well--that i shall try to find out!" whistler replied. till now, his answer to abuse of his work had been the lash of his wit. but if critics had tried him by their stupidity, never, before ruskin, had they outraged him by their venom. the insult appeared in a widely read print; he sought redress in the most public fashion possible in england, and sued ruskin for libel. the immediate result was that he found it harder to sell his pictures. to buy his nocturnes was to be ridiculed, mr. rawlinson, one of the few who risked it, assures us. whistler laughed away the new anxiety, and devoted more time to black-and-white. he had hoped to go to venice, but the preparations for the trial kept him in london. and now howell made himself as useful to whistler as he had been to rossetti: "well, you, know, it happened one summer evening, in those old days when there was real summer, i was sitting looking out of the window in lindsey row, and there was howell passing, and rosa corder was with him. and i called to them and they came in, and howell said: 'why, you have etched many plates, haven't you? you must get them out, you must print them, you must let me see to them--there's gold waiting. and you have a press!' and so i had, in a room upstairs, only it was rusty, it hadn't been used for so long. but howell wouldn't listen to an objection. he said he would fix up the press, he would pull it. and there was no escape. and the next morning, there we all were, rosa corder, too, and howell was pulling at the wheel, and there were basins of water, and paper being damped, and prints being dried, and then howell was grinding more ink, and, with the plates under my fingers, i felt all the old love of it come back. in the afternoon howell would go and see graves, the printseller, and there were orders flying about, and cheques--it was all amazing, you know! howell profited, of course. but he was so superb. one evening we had left a pile of eleven prints just pulled, and the next morning only five were there. 'it's very strange,' howell said, 'we must have a search. no one could have taken them but me, and that, you know, is impossible!'" there is a record of this period in the etching, _lady at a window_, with rosa corder, or maud, by the garret window, looking at a print, the press behind her. it was a period of what he called his "fiendish slavery to the press." there were new plates. in _st. james's street_ was reproduced by lithography in the "season number" of _vanity fair_. the _athenæum_ objected to it because it was "not done as leech or hogarth would have done it." the _world_ mistook the reproduction for the original, and so invited from whistler one of the letters following each other fast: "atlas has the wisdom of ages, and need not grieve himself with mere matters of art." _adam and eve--old chelsea_ has a special interest, for it marks the transition from his early manner in the thames set to the later handling in the venetian. a plate was made from the _irving as philip of spain_, the only portrait whistler reproduced on copper, and it was not a success. his plates of jo and maud were never from pictures, though often studies for pictures he proposed to paint. the dry-point of his _mother_ has no relation to the portrait. he was bored to death with copying himself, he would say, and, twenty years afterwards, when he undertook a lithograph of his _montesquiou_ and failed, he said that "it was impossible to produce the same masterpiece twice over," that "the inspiration would not come," that when he was not working at a new thing from nature he was not applying himself, "it was as difficult as for a hen to lay the same egg twice." in he made his first experiments in lithography. his attention had been called to it by mr. thomas way, who did more than any other man to revive the art in england. lithography, appropriated by commerce, was almost forgotten as a means of artistic expression. in france, it was given over for cheaper and quicker methods of illustration; in england it was overweighted by the ponderous performances of haghe and nash, hedged about by trade unions, and reduced to the perfection of commonplace. lithographers here and there preserved its best traditions and regretted the degradation. mr. thomas way determined to interest artists again in a medium that had yielded such splendid results. he prepared stones for them, explained processes, and would not hear of difficulties. some artists experimented, but lithography did not pay while the anecdote in paint fetched a fortune. mr. way appealed to whistler, who tried the stone, grasped its possibilities, and was delighted. in his first five lithographs he did things never attempted before and found the medium adapted to him. he made nine this year on the stone, though his later work was mostly done on lithographic paper. he proposed to publish this first series as _art notes_, but there was no demand, and the plan fell through. _the toilet_ and the _broad bridge_ were printed in _piccadilly_ ( ), edited by mr. watts-dunton, and they had hardly appeared when the magazine came to an end. neither whistler nor lithography then meant success for any enterprise. in , the _catalogue of blue and white nankin porcelain forming the collection of sir henry thompson_ was published. mr. murray marks and mr. w. c. alexander own delicate little designs of blue and white by whistler for mr. marks, but never used. they were a good preparation for the drawings which, in collaboration with sir henry thompson, he made to illustrate the catalogue. some are in brown, some in blue, reproduced by the autotype company. nineteen of the twenty-six are by whistler, simple and direct, the modelling in the drawing by the brush as the japanese would have given it. as a rule there are neither shadows nor attempts at relief. the series is a refutation of the assertion that he could not draw. whenever he attempted drawing of this sort, or etchings like _the wine glass_, he eclipsed jacquemart and all his contemporaries. worried, anxious, the libel case hanging over him, his debts increasing, the general distrust in his work growing, whistler, nevertheless, gave to the catalogue his usual care. we have seen another set of the drawings, which differ slightly from those reproduced, and with which, evidently, he was not satisfied. the book was edited by mr. murray marks, and issued by messrs. ellis and white, of new bond street, in may, and mr. marks exhibited the drawings and the porcelain, with the book, in his shop, oxford street. the show was not a success, the book was a loss, though only two hundred and twenty copies were printed. now it is almost impossible to get. of personal notice, whistler had more than enough. he was caricatured this year in _the grasshopper_ at the gaiety--it was in the days of edward terry and nellie farren. a large full-length, thought by many more a portrait than a caricature, was painted by carlo pellegrini, an italian artist who lived in england and, under the names of "singe" and "ape," contributed to _vanity fair_ caricatures which, unlike the characterless, artless scrawls of his more popular amateur successors, were works of art and, therefore, appreciated by whistler. the painting shows whistler in evening dress, no necktie, and a gold chain to his monocle; and in a scene parodying the studios and artists of the day, it was pushed in on an easel, some say by pellegrini, with the announcement, "here is the inventor of black-and-white!" it was a failure, and no wonder. it was impossible to see the point. the painting now belongs to mr. john w. simpson of new york. whistler was also caricatured in _vanity fair_ by "spy," leslie ward, then rapidly rivalling "ape" in popularity, and to be so caricatured was, in london, to achieve notoriety. to the second grosvenor in he sent, in defiance to ruskin, another series of nocturnes, harmonies, and arrangements. among them was the _arrangement in white and black, no. i._, the large, full-length portrait of miss maud franklin, that sometimes figures in catalogues and articles as _l'américaine_. we believe it was never shown in england again. it passed in the early eighties into the collection of dr. linde, at lübeck, where it remained until , was then sold through paris dealers to an american, and remains one of the least known of whistler's large full-lengths. we saw it in the spring of at m. duret's apartment in the rue vignon. it is the only portrait, except the _connie gilchrist_ and the _yellow buskin_, in which whistler attempted to give movement to the figure. miss franklin wears a white gown in the ugly fashion of the late seventies, and walks forward, one hand on her hip, the other holding up her skirt. but she fails to fulfil whistler's precept that the figure must keep within the frame. she seems walking out of the depths of the background, breaking through the envelope of atmosphere. the problem was difficult, an unusual one for whistler, and, interesting as is the result, the portrait hardly ranks with the greatest. when shown in , it did not help to reconcile the critics. the _athenæum_ said: "mr. whistler is in great force. last year some of his life-size portraits were without feet; here we have a curiously shaped young lady, ostentatiously showing her foot, which is a pretty large one." it was a "vaporous full-length" in the opinion of the _times_, babbling nonsense about the nocturnes and glad to turn from whistler's "diet of fog to the broad table of substantial landscape spread for us by cecil g. lawson." whistler contributed a drawing of the _arrangement in white and black_ to blackburn's _grosvenor notes_, an illustrated catalogue published for the first time in . for many years whistler made these little sketches in pen and ink after his pictures for illustrated catalogues, and for papers that illustrated notices of the exhibitions, an aid to the identification of works where the titles fail. chapter xviii: the white house. the year eighteen seventy-eight. in the paris universal exhibition of , whistler's only exhibit was the section of a room that may have been his design for mr. alexander, or more likely was his decoration for the white house which e. w. godwin, the architect, was building for him in tite street, chelsea. he called it a _harmony in yellow and gold_, and others spoke of it as the _primrose room_. it seems to have been simply a room painted in gold and yellow, the peacock pattern again used, but this time in gold on yellow and yellow on gold. there was simple furniture in yellow of a darker tone than the walls, also a chimneypiece which, twelve years or so afterwards, was found by mr. pickford waller in a second-hand furniture shop and bought. the stove was taken out; two panels, with a pattern suggested for the dado, were turned into doors, and the chimneypiece is now a cabinet with whistler's decorations almost untouched. a few years ago messrs. obach had in their possession a set of glass panels for a door from the house of anderson rose, stated to be by whistler, but there is no evidence of whistler's work in them. recently a set of empire chairs were shown in new york said to have been decorated by whistler for wickham flower, and so described at christie's where they were sold, but messrs. christie do not guarantee the articles in their sales. to those who know whistler's work there was no trace of it in the chairs, and we have it on mrs. flower's authority that the decorations were by henry treffy dunn. mr. sheridan ford, in the suppressed edition of _the gentle art_, writes that, at sir thomas sutherland's request, whistler designed a scheme of decoration for his house, but that its "startling novelty caused such evident anxiety," whistler carried it no further. some houses he did decorate later on--those of mrs. william whistler, mr. william heinemann, senor sarasate, mrs. walter sickert, mrs. d'oyly carte, mr. menpes. but the decoration was simply the colour-scheme. whistler mixed the colour, which was usually put on by house-painters. he frequently suggested the furniture, but of design, as in the peacock room, there was nothing, not even in any of his own houses after the white house. to one friend, thinking of decorating, who asked his advice, his answer was, "well, first burn all your furniture." often he gave elaborate directions as to what colours should be used and how they were to be applied. mrs. d'oyly carte wrote us: [illustration: the mother arrangement in grey and black oil in the musée du luxembourg (_see page _)] [illustration: portrait of thomas carlyle arrangement in grey and black. no. ii oil in the corporation art gallery, glasgow (_see page _)] "it would not be quite correct to say that mr. whistler designed the decorations of my house, because it is one of the old adam houses in adelphi terrace, and it contained the original adam ceiling in the drawing-room and a number of the old adam mantelpieces, which mr. whistler much admired, as he did also some of the cornices, doors and other things. what he did do was to design a colour-scheme for the house, and he mixed the colours for distempering the walls in each case, leaving only the painters to _apply_ them. in this way he got the exact shade he wanted, which made all the difference, as i think the difficulty in getting any painting satisfactorily done is that painters simply have their stock shades which they show you to choose from, and none of them seem to be the kind of shades that mr. whistler managed to achieve by the mixing of his ingredients. he distempered the whole of the staircase light pink; the dining-room a different and deeper shade; the library he made one of those yellows he had in his drawing-room at the vale, a sort of primrose which seemed as if the sun was shining, however dark the day, and he painted the woodwork with it green, but not like the ordinary painters' green at all. he followed the same scheme in the other rooms. his idea was to make the house gay and delicate in colour." when he left no. lindsey row he suggested the colour arrangement throughout the house for the new tenants, mr. and mrs. sydney morse, got his man cossens to do the distempering, and, mrs. morse writes us, "was so afraid that we should do it wrongly that he personally superintended the work and mixed the colour himself, though in consequence of this a whole wash for the dining-room was spoilt, as he forgot to stir it up at the right moment. there was great discussion about gold size." to decoration whistler applied his scientific method of painting, and on his walls, as in his pictures, black was often the basis. colour for him was as much decoration as pattern was for william morris, and in the use of flat colour for wall decoration whistler has triumphed. his theory of interior decoration, though people do not realise it, has been universally adopted, even his use of distemper, in which he was only carrying on the beautiful tradition of whitewashing walls. not only can this simple scheme be made more appropriate as a background than morris' hangings and stencillings, but it has the virtue of utility and cheapness, which morris for ever preached but never practised. in the painting of pictures, the idea of the pre-raphaelites was decoration--that is, convention. their decoration was either wilfully or ignorantly founded on the realism of the middle ages. the great decorators of italy were the realists of their day, their realism, except in the case of the greatest, piero della francesca, is now regarded as convention, and it is the pre-raphaelites who stirred up these dead bones. in france, puvis de chavannes developed italian methods, adapting them to modern subjects and modern wants, retaining the convention of flatness and simplicity. whistler believed that a portrait or a nocturne should be as decorative as a conventional design; that, by the arrangement of his subjects, and by their colour, they should be made decorative, and not by conventional setting and conventional lines. he also believed that walls should be in flat tones and not covered with pattern. pictures then placed upon them were shown properly and did not struggle with the pattern. lady archibald campbell writes us a few lines proving that he could make people understand his aims when they were willing to learn from him: "the fundamental principles of decorative art with which whistler impressed me, related to the necessity of applying scientific methods to the treatment of all decorative work; that to produce harmonious effects in line and colour grouping, the whole plan or scheme should have to be thoroughly thought out so as to be _finished_ before it was practically begun. i think he proved his saying to be true, that the fundamental principles of decorative art, as in all art, are based on laws as exact as those of the known sciences. he concluded that what the knowledge of a fundamental base has done for music, a similarly demonstrative method must do for painting. the musical vocabulary which he used to distinguish his creations always struck me as singularly appropriate, though he had no knowledge of music." before the ruskin case came into court, the idea of opening an _atelier_ for students occurred to whistler, and it was because the painting-room at no. lindsey row was too small that he asked godwin to build the house, ever since known as the white house, in tite street. up to this time he had never had a studio in chelsea. his pictures had been painted in rooms without a top-light, partly, no doubt, that he might paint his sitters under natural conditions. even in his later studios of the rue notre-dame des champs in paris, and fitzroy street in london, shades and screens were drawn so that the light might come in as from an ordinary window. he was trying to put the figure into the atmosphere that surrounded it, not to cut it out of this atmosphere. but he needed more space for the _atelier_, which promised success. among artists, there were always a few who believed in whistler. duranty only expressed the prevailing feeling when, in the _gazette des beaux-arts_ ( ), he referred to whistler's influence on british painters represented in the universal exhibition. the white house, low, three-storeyed, simple in ornament, is modest compared to many houses in tite street. it has been much changed, but the general plan survives. when it was built, it shared the fate, of everything associated with whistler. the white brick of the walls, the green slate of the roof, the stone facings, the blue door and woodwork were as "eccentric" and "fantastic" as whistler himself to art-critical journalists. to architectural papers they were the cause of debate and calling of names. to the metropolitan board of works the simplicity of design was suspiciously plain, and mouldings in specified places were insisted upon in return for the licence to build. discussion followed discussion, because the studio was the most important feature of the interior and placed at the top of the house, because windows and doors were made where they were wanted "and not with baker street regularity," because godwin and whistler liked the lovely effect of the green tiles with the white walls. harry quilter, who bought the house in and altered it, probably ruined the colour-scheme which whistler had arranged, and the interior decoration, if it was ever carried out, does not now exist. whistler's tenancy of the lindsey row house came to an end on june ( ), but he could not leave it in time for the new tenants. he did not get out of the studio until october. it was surprising that he moved at all. the moment was one of debts and difficulties. he was alone. his mother was ill at hastings, he had just broken his engagement with leyland's sister-in-law,[ ] and he had quarrelled with leyland. the criticism of the last few years told severely upon the sale of his pictures--upon himself. howell, who had "started cheques and orders flying about" and attended to business details, kept a diary during part of and all of . to look through it is to share whistler's indignation that so great an artist should be reduced to such shifts. in kensington and st. john's wood palaces, academicians could not turn pictures out fast enough for the competing crowd; whistler was often compelled to borrow a few shillings. there are legends of his taking a hansom and driving to find somebody to lend him half a crown to pay for it, and before he had found anybody and could get rid of the cab the fare had mounted to half a guinea. howell's diary shows that he had to raise money before he could lend it to whistler. sometimes larger sums than he could manage were arranged by anderson rose, whistler's patron and solicitor. as "ill and worried," howell describes whistler on one of the visits to mr. rose, and there was every reason he should be. a mr. blott figures in other transactions. whistler's letters to him have been sold and published, and it would be useless to ignore their relations. money for the white house had to be obtained. to mr. blott he gave his _carlyle_ as security for a hundred and fifty pounds, agreeing to pay interest, offering other pictures as security if a sum of four hundred could be advanced. cheques were protested, writs were threatened. the pictures he could not sell went wandering about as hostages. the _mother_ for awhile was with mrs. noseda, the strand printseller. we have heard that she would have sold it for a hundred pounds. mr. rawlinson, who saw it either there or at mr. graves', has told us that nobody could have bought it under such circumstances, after having seen it in whistler's bedroom, where it had hung and been shown by him with reverence. when whistler heard that mrs. noseda was offering the picture for this price, he is said to have gone at once to remonstrate, and by his vehemence to have made her ill. one man who helped him through these troubled times was henry graves, head of the firm in pall mall. graves, introduced to whistler by howell, agreed to engrave the portrait of carlyle in mezzotint, and howell bought the copyright of the engraving from whistler for eighty pounds and six proofs. w. josey was commissioned to make the plate. three hundred signed proofs of a first state were to be printed. the plate would not stand so large an edition; it was steel-faced and, as the steel-facing of mezzotint was not possible, turned out a failure. the attempt to remove the steel ruined the ground, and josey had to be called in to go over it again. in the first state, the floor was perfectly smooth, but, the steel-facing taken off, a spot appeared in the plate which never could be got out and remained there through the edition. after every seventy proofs printed, josey had to work on the plate and bring it back, as well as he could, to its original condition. whistler did not like the first proofs and offered to show the printers how to do them. mr. a. graves went with him to holdgate's, the printer, in london street. whistler brought his own ink, put on an apron, inked the plate as he would an etched one, while the whole shop looked on. when the plate, wiped and ready, was put through the press, it came out a shadow, the ink being far too weak. whistler did not try a second time. mr. graves preserved the proof, writing on it that whistler pulled it, and sold it for three guineas, to whom he does not remember. eventually whistler was satisfied, for howell, on december , , gave whistler what he calls his first proof, and the diary says: "whistler and the doctor were delighted." it is also recorded in the diary that one of whistler's six proofs was sold to lord beaconsfield. [illustration: portrait of cicely henrietta, miss alexander harmony in grey and green in the national gallery, london (_see page _)] [illustration: portrait of f. r. leyland arrangement in black oil in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art (_see page _)] the print of the _carlyle_ was very successful. at howell's suggestion, graves agreed to give whistler a thousand pounds for a portrait of disraeli, and the copyright: a plate to be made from it also. mr. alan s. cole says whistler went to see disraeli: "_september _ ( ). called on j., who told me of his interview with lord beaconsfield as to painting a portrait of him. he had been down at hughenden--saw the old gentleman, who, however, declined." whistler's version was: "everything was most wonderful. we were the two artists together--recognising each other at a glance! 'if i sit to any one, it will be to you, mr. whistler,' were disraeli's last words as he left me at the gate. and then he sat to millais!" this scheme falling through, graves commissioned josey to engrave the _mother_, and afterwards the _rosa corder_, painted as a commission from howell. whistler told us he offered the portrait as a present to howell, who declined and insisted on paying a hundred guineas for it, the amount entered in howell's diary as paid to whistler on september , . it was sold to r. a. canfield in for two thousand pounds, and now belongs to mr. henry c. frick. though these mezzotints were successful when published, collectors thought as little of them as they did at the time of those of a century earlier, and for years proofs signed by both artist and engraver could be picked up for less than the published price. after the two pictures had been engraved by josey, howell deposited in the same way three of the nocturnes with graves: _the falling rocket_, _the fire wheel_, _old battersea bridge--blue and gold_, and also _the fur jacket_. these pictures were not engraved. whistler had not a minute to spare from legal troubles and impatient creditors. "poor j. turned up depressed--very hard up, and fearful of getting old," mr. cole wrote in his diary for october , . whistler had reason for depression. it was now that howell's diary records his purchase of the _irving_ for ten pounds and a sealskin coat. there is nothing more tragic in the story of rembrandt's bankruptcy. [footnote : mrs. leyland told us of this engagement. we know nothing more about it.] chapter xix: the trial. the year eighteen seventy-eight. the action whistler _v._ ruskin, was heard on november - , . john ruskin, leader of taste, critic of art, prophet, and propounder of the gospel of "the beautiful," led not only a devout following, but that enormous public which believes blindly in britons. whistler knew that either he or ruskin must settle the question whether an artist may paint what he wants in his own way, though this may not be understood by the patron, the critic, the academy, or the real british judge, the man in the street; whether the artist should rule or be ruled. the case was, whistler said, "between the brush and the pen." his motives were ignored, the proceedings made a jest, and the verdict treated as a farce. few could, or do, realise that he was in earnest, that the trial was a defence of his principles, and the verdict a justification of his belief. at the time whistler was to the british public a charlatan, a mountebank. ruskin was to the people a preacher, the professor of art. whistler denied the right of ruskin, master of english literature, populariser of pictures, to declare himself infallible, as he did, his head turned by his success in defence of the pre-raphaelites and booming of turner. as to his discoveries, turner was a full r.a. and carpaccio had been accepted for centuries before he "discovered" them. ruskin did but popularise carpaccio, and buy and sell turner. so good a friend of ruskin's as w. m. rossetti said that he was "substantially wrong in the whistler matter," that his mind broke down at times, and that his mental troubles began in . his conceit and his vanity can be explained in no other way. unfortunately he lived in the only country where his arrogant pretensions would then have been countenanced, though, owing to the present acceptance of england and everything english, he has become something of a fetish abroad, now that he is exposed and discredited at home. he was rich, he was a university man, he contributed long letters to the _times_. he was a typical new british patron of the arts, for to him the financial side of connoisseurship was of the greatest importance--"two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint." moreover, he was a master of english; therefore he could commit any absurdity. as whistler said, political economists considered him a great art critic, and artists looked upon him as a great political economist. sometimes we have wondered if there was not another reason for ruskin's venom. he never appreciated the great artists of the world, save certain italians recognised long before. his estimate of velasquez and rembrandt, and his comparison between turner and constable, prove how little his now unheeded sermons were ever worth. while he failed to comprehend charles keene, he went into ecstasies over kate greenaway. he loved stacy marks and hated snyders. whistler, knowing this, may have laughed. mr. collingwood wrote that, long before the trial, whistler "had made overtures to the great critic through mr. swinburne, the poet; but he had not been taken seriously." it is certain ruskin was not taken seriously by the great artist. swinburne suggested a meeting in a letter of august , , to which we have referred (published in the _library edition of the works of john ruskin_), but in such words that we gather there must have been some sort of misunderstanding already between whistler and ruskin. swinburne wanted to take ruskin to the studio and represented whistler as desirous of meeting him. it is likely that whistler, knowing ruskin's power in the press, was willing to be written about by him, and also that ruskin cherished whatever reason for dislike he had for whistler. anderson rose prepared the case, and we know the pains and trouble whistler took over it. judge parry has shown us letters to his father which prove this. whistler warned rose there was no use in making him out a popular painter; better show the jury that the academy and academicians were against him. he thought, at first, that the artists would be on his side and would unite with him to drive the false prophet out of the temple. but ruskin the critic was to them more powerful than whistler the painter, and when the time came they sneaked away, all except albert moore. besides, there was the hope that the yankee would lose. whistler told us "they hoped they could drive me out of the country, or kill me! and if i hadn't had the constitution of a government mule, they would!" charles keene, whom whistler considered the greatest english artist since hogarth, could write on november , : "whistler's case against ruskin comes off, i believe, on monday. he wants to subpoena me as a witness as to whether he is (as ruskin says) an impostor or not. i told him i should be glad to record my opinion, but begged him to do without me if he could. they say it will most likely be settled on the point of law without going into evidence, but if the evidence is adduced, it will be the greatest lark that has been known for a long time in the courts." keene did not dare to stand up for whistler and for art, and the bitterness is in those last words--"a lark!" in the exchequer division at westminster the action for libel, in which "mr. james abbott mcneill whistler, _an_ artist, seeks to recover damages against mr. john ruskin, _the_ well-known author and art critic," came up before baron huddleston and a special jury. our account is compiled chiefly from the reports published in the _times_ and the _daily news_, november and , , from _the gentle art_, and from what whistler, mr. rossetti, armstrong, mr. graves, and others who were present have told us. according to lady burne-jones, ruskin had been delighted at the prospect of the trial: "it's nuts and nectar to me, the notion of having to answer for myself in court, and the whole thing will enable me to assert some principles of art economy which i've never got into the public's head by writing: but may get sent over all the world vividly in a newspaper report or two. meanwhile _i've_ heard nothing of the matter yet, and am only afraid the fellow will be better advised." nuts and nectar turned to gall and vinegar. in the early winter of rumours of his ill-health reached the papers. lady burne-jones adds that, when the action was brought, "although he had quite recovered from his illness, he was not allowed to appear"--a curious sort of recovery. but he was well enough on the morning of the th to write to charles eliot norton that "to-day i believe the comic whistler lawsuit is to be decided." the court was crowded. mr. serjeant parry and mr. petheram were counsel for the plaintiff, and the attorney-general (sir john holker) and mr. bowen for the defendant. mr. serjeant parry opened the case for whistler, "who has followed the profession of an artist for many years, while mr. ruskin is a gentleman well known to all of us, and holding perhaps the highest position in europe or america as an art critic. some of his works are destined to immortality, and it is the more surprising, therefore, that a gentleman holding such a position could traduce another in a way that would lead that other to come into a court of law to ask for damages. the jury, after hearing the case, will come to the conclusion that a great injustice has been done. mr. whistler, in the united states, has earned a reputation as a painter and an artist. he is not merely a painter, but has likewise distinguished himself in the capacity of etcher, achieving considerable honours in that department of art. he has been an unwearied worker in his profession, always desiring to succeed, and if he had formed an erroneous opinion, he should not have been treated with contempt and ridicule. mr. ruskin edits a publication called _fors clavigera_, that has a large circulation among artists and art patrons. in the july number of appeared a criticism of the pictures in the grosvenor, containing the paragraph which is the defamatory matter complained of. sir coutts lindsay is described as an amateur, both in art and shopkeeping, who must take up one business or the other. mannerisms and errors are pointed out in the work of burne-jones, but whatever their extent, his pictures 'are never affected or indolent. the work is natural to the painter, however strange to us, wrought with the utmost conscience and care, however far, to his or our desire the result may seem to be incomplete. scarcely so much can be said for any other pictures of the modern schools. their eccentricities are almost always in some degree forced, and their imperfections gratuitously, if not impertinently, indulged. for mr. whistler's own sake, no less than for the protection of the purchaser sir coutts lindsay ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approaches the aspect of wilful imposture. i have seen and heard much of cockney impudence before now, but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.' mr. ruskin pleaded that the alleged libel was privileged as being a fair and _bona fide_ criticism upon a painting which the plaintiff had exposed to public view. but the terms in which mr. ruskin has spoken of the plaintiff are unfair and ungentlemanly, and are calculated to do, and have done him, considerable injury, and it will be for the jury to say what damages the plaintiff is entitled to." whistler was the first witness. he said: "i studied in paris with du maurier, poynter, armstrong. i was awarded a gold medal at the hague.... my etchings are in the british museum and windsor castle collections. i exhibited eight pictures at the grosvenor gallery in the summer of . no pictures were exhibited there save on invitation. i was invited by sir coutts lindsay to exhibit. the first was a _nocturne in black and gold--the falling rocket_. the second, a _nocturne in blue and silver_ [since called _blue and gold--old battersea bridge_]. the third, a _nocturne in blue and gold_, belonging to the hon. mrs. percy wyndham. the fourth, a _nocturne in blue and silver_, belonging to mrs. leyland. the fifth, an _arrangement in black--irving as philip ii. of spain_. the sixth, a _harmony in amber and black_. the seventh, an _arrangement in brown_. in addition to these, there was a portrait of mr. carlyle. that portrait was painted from sittings mr. carlyle gave me. it has since been engraved, and the artist's proofs were all subscribed for. the nocturnes, all but two, were sold before they went to the grosvenor gallery. one of them was sold to the hon. percy wyndham for two hundred guineas--the one in _blue and gold_. one i sent to mr. graham in lieu of a former commission, the amount of which was a hundred and fifty guineas. a third one, _blue and silver_, i presented to mrs. leyland. the one that was for sale was in _black and gold--the falling rocket_." curiously, the only one for sale was pounced on by ruskin. the coxcomb was trying to get two hundred guineas, and the british commercial critic spotted it. asked whether, since the publication of the criticism, he had sold a nocturne, whistler answered: "not by any means at the same price as before." the portraits of irving and carlyle were produced in court, and he is said to have described the _irving_ as "a large impression--a sketch; it was not intended as a finished picture." we do not believe he said anything of the sort. he was then asked for his definition of a nocturne: "i have perhaps, meant rather to indicate an artistic interest alone in the work, divesting the picture from any outside sort of interest which might have been otherwise attached to it. it is an arrangement of line, form, and colour first, and i make use of any incident of it which shall bring about a symmetrical result. among my works are some night pieces; and i have chosen the word nocturne because it generalises and simplifies the whole set of them." _the falling rocket_, though it is difficult here to follow the case, was evidently produced at this point upside down; whistler describing it as a night piece, said it represented the fireworks at cremorne. _attorney-general_: "not a view of cremorne?" _whistler_: "if it were called a view of cremorne, it would certainly bring about nothing but disappointment on the part of the beholders. (laughter.) it is an artistic arrangement." _attorney-general_: "why do you call mr. irving an _arrangement in black_?" (laughter.) the judge interposed, though in jest, for there was more laughter, and explained that the picture, not mr. irving, was the _arrangement_. _whistler_: "all these works are impressions of my own. i make them my study. i suppose them to appeal to none but those who may understand the technical matter." and he added that it would be possible to see the pictures in westminster palace hotel close by, where he had placed them for the purpose. _attorney-general_: "i suppose you are willing to admit that your pictures exhibit some eccentricities. you have been told that over and over again?" _whistler_: "yes, very often." (laughter.) _attorney-general_: "you send them to the gallery to invite the admiration of the public?" _whistler_: "that would be such vast absurdity on my part that i don't think i could." (laughter.) _attorney-general_: "can you tell me how long it took you to knock off that nocturne?" _whistler_: "i beg your pardon?" (laughter.) _attorney-general_: "i am afraid that i am using a term that applies rather perhaps to my own work...." _whistler_: ... "let us say then, how long did i take to 'knock off'--i think that is it--to knock off that nocturne; well, as well as i remember, about a day.... i may have still put a few more touches to it the next day if the painting were not dry. i had better say, then, that i was two days at work on it." _attorney-general_: "the labour of two days, then, is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?" _whistler_: "no; i ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime." _attorney-general_: "you don't approve of criticism?" _whistler_: "i should not disapprove in any way of technical criticism by a man whose life is passed in the practice of the science which he criticises; but for the opinion of a man whose life is not so passed, i would have as little regard as you would if he expressed an opinion on law." _attorney-general_: "you expect to be criticised?" _whistler_: "yes, certainly; and i do not expect to be affected by it until it comes to be a case of this kind." the nocturne, the _blue and silver_, was then produced. _whistler_: "it represents battersea bridge by moonlight." _the judge_: "is this part of the picture at the top old battersea bridge? are those figures on the top of the bridge intended for people?" _whistler_: "they are just what you like." _the judge_: "that is a barge beneath?" _whistler_: "yes, i am very much flattered at your seeing that. the picture is simply a representation of moonlight. my whole scheme was only to bring about a certain harmony of colour." _the judge_: "how long did it take you to paint that picture?" [illustration: portrait of mrs. f. r. leyland symphony in flesh-colour and pink oil in the possession of h. c. finch, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: portrait of miss leyland pastel in the possession of the executors of mrs. f. r. leyland (_see page _) _whistler_: "i completed the work in one day, after having arranged the idea in my mind."[ ] "the court adjourned, and the jury went to see the pictures at the westminster palace hotel. when, on their return, the _nocturne in black and gold--the falling rocket_, was produced, the attorney-general asked: "how long did it take you to paint that?" _whistler_: "one whole day and part of another." _attorney-general_: "what is the peculiar beauty of that picture?" _whistler_: "it would be impossible for me to explain to you, i am afraid, although i dare say i could to a sympathetic ear." _attorney-general_: "do you not think that anybody looking at the picture might fairly come to the conclusion that it had no particular beauty?" _whistler_: "i have strong evidence that mr. ruskin did come to that conclusion." _attorney-general_: "do you think it fair that mr. ruskin should come to that conclusion?" _whistler_: "what might be fair to mr. ruskin, i cannot answer. no artist of culture would come to that conclusion." _attorney-general_: "do you offer that picture to the public as one of particular beauty, fairly worth two hundred guineas?" _whistler_: "i offer it as a work that i have conscientiously executed and that i think worth the money. i would hold my reputation upon this, as i would upon any of my other works." mr. w. m. rossetti was the next witness. he was ruskin's friend as well as whistler's, and the position was not pleasant. but, he has written us, he was "compelled to act, willy-nilly, in opposition to ruskin's interest in the action." _rossetti_: "i consider the _blue and silver_ an artistic and beautiful representation of a pale but bright moonlight. i admire mr. whistler's pictures, but not without exception. i appreciate the meaning of the titles. the _falling rocket_ is not one of the pictures i admire." _attorney-general_: "is it a gem?" (laughter.) _rossetti_: "no." _attorney-general_: "is it an exquisite painting?" _rossetti_: "no." _attorney-general_: "is it very beautiful?" _rossetti_: "no." _attorney-general_: "is it a work of art?" _rossetti_: "yes, it is." _attorney-general_: "is it worth two hundred guineas?" _rossetti_: "yes." albert moore said that whistler's pictures were beautiful, and that no other painter could have succeeded in doing them. the _black and gold_ he looked upon as simply marvellous, the most consummate art. asked if there was eccentricity in the picture, he said he should call it originality. w. g. wills testified to the knowledge shown in the pictures; they were the works of a man of genius. mr. algernon graves was in court to give evidence to the popularity of the _carlyle_. as the picture was not catalogued when exhibited at the grosvenor, baron huddleston ruled that there was no proof of its having been exhibited in , and he was not called. these were the only witnesses for whistler, though we have seen a letter he wrote to anderson rose suggesting haweis, who had preached "a poem of praise" about the peacock room, and prince teck, who might be asked to swear that he "thought it a great piece of art." we have also seen the draft of a letter to tissot upon whose aid he relied. the attorney-general submitted there was no case. but baron huddleston could not deny that the criticism held whistler's work up to ridicule and contempt; that so far it was libellous, and must, therefore, go to the jury. it was for the attorney-general to prove it fair and honest criticism. the attorney-general's address to the jury began with praise of ruskin, it went on with ridicule of the testimony for the plaintiff, it finished with contempt for whistler and his work. "the nocturnes were not worthy the name of great works of art. he had that morning looked into the dictionary for the meaning of coxcomb, and found that the word carried the old idea of the licensed jester who had a cap on his head with a cock's comb in it. if that were the true definition, mr. whistler should not complain, because his pictures were capital jests which had afforded much amusement to the public. he said, without fear of contradiction, that if mr. whistler founded his reputation on the pictures he had shown in the grosvenor gallery, the _nocturne in black and gold_, the _nocturne in blue and silver_, his _arrangement of irving in black_, his representation of the _ladies in brown_, and his _symphonies in grey and yellow_, he was a mere pretender to the art of painting." in ruskin's absence, burne-jones was the first witness called for the defence. lady burne-jones says, in her _memorials of edward burne-jones_, that on november , ruskin had written to him: "i gave your name to the blessed lawyer, as chief of men to whom they might refer for anything which, in their wisdom, they can't discern unaided concerning me." she adds that for her husband: "few positions could have been more annoying or difficult for the paragraph containing the sentence in question--one of ruskin's severest condemnations--was practically a comparison between mr. whistler's work and edward's own. but the subject covered so much wider ground than any personality that edward was finally able to put this thought aside, and did with calmness what he had undertaken to do, namely--endorse ruskin's criticism that good workmanship was essential to a good picture." walter crane stated in his _reminiscences_ that he met burne-jones at dinner at leyland's not long before the trial; and that then burne-jones would not see whistler's merit as an artist. "he seemed to think there was only one _right_ way of painting.... under the circumstances he could hardly afford to allow any credit to whistler." in court burne-jones temporised. he admitted whistler's art, but regretted the want of finish in whistler's pictures; so strengthening the impression of the laziness, levity, or looseness of whistler. in his "deliberate judgment" mrs. leyland's _blue and silver_ was a work of art, but a very incomplete one. "it did not show the finish of a complete work of art," yet "it is masterly. neither in composition, detail, nor form has the picture any quality whatever, but in colour it has a very fine quality.... _blue and silver--old, battersea bridge_, in colour is even better than the other. it is more formless, it is bewildering in form. as to composition and detail, there is none whatever. it has no finish. i do not think mr. whistler intended it to be regarded as a finished picture." _mr. bowen_: "now, take the _nocturne in black and gold--the falling rocket_, is that, in your opinion, a work of art?" _burne-jones_: "no, i cannot say that it is. it is only one of a thousand failures that artists have made in their efforts to paint night." _mr. bowen_: "is that picture in your judgment worth two hundred guineas?" _burne-jones_: "no, i cannot say it is, seeing how much careful work men do for much less. mr. whistler gave infinite promise at first, but i do not think he has fulfilled it. i think he has evaded the great difficulty of painting, and has not tested his powers by carrying it out. the difficulties in painting increase daily as the work progresses, and that is the reason why so many of us fail. we are none of us perfect. the danger is this, that if unfinished pictures become common, we shall arrive at a stage of mere manufacture and the art of the country will be degraded." mr. frith, r.a., was next called. truly, ruskin found himself with strange supporters. frith was chosen, we have been told, because ruskin wanted some one who could not be thought biased in his favour. _mr. bowen_: "are the pictures works of art?" _frith_: "i should say not." _mr. bowen_: "is the _nocturne in blue and gold_ a serious work of art?" _frith_: "not to me. it is not worth, in my opinion, two hundred guineas. _old battersea bridge_ does not convey the impression of moonlight to me in the slightest degree. the colour does not represent any more than you could get from a bit of wallpaper or silk." in cross-examination he contradicted himself, and said that he thought mr. whistler had "very great power as an artist." ruskin's final supporter was tom taylor, critic of the _times_. no, he said, the _nocturne in black and gold_ was not a good picture, and, to prove it, he read his own criticism in the _times_, and his assertion there that the nocturnes were worth doing because they were the only things that whistler could do. a portrait by titian was then shown, in order to explain burne-jones' idea of finish, and the jury, mistaking it for a whistler, would have none of it. mr. bowen, in summing up the case, said that all that ruskin had done was to express an opinion on whistler's pictures--an opinion to which he adhered. this was about all he could say except, in conclusion, to appeal to the jury. there was no defence. mr. serjeant parry, in his reply, pointed out that they had not dared to ask if whistler deserved to be stigmatised as a wilful impostor, and that even if ruskin had not been well enough to attend the court "he might have been examined before a commission. his decree has gone forth that whistler's pictures were worthless. he has not supported that by evidence. he has not condescended to give reasons for the view he has taken, he has treated us with contempt, as he treated whistler. he has said: 'i, mr. ruskin, seated on my throne of art, say what i please and expect all the world to agree with me.' mr. ruskin is a great writer, but not as a man; as a man he has degraded himself. his tone in writing the article is personal and malicious. mr. ruskin's criticism of mr. whistler's pictures is almost exclusively in the nature of a personal attack, a pretended criticism of art which is really a criticism upon the man himself, and calculated to injure him. it was written recklessly, and for the purpose of holding him up to ridicule and contempt. mr. ruskin has gone out of his way to attack mr. whistler personally, and must answer for the consequences of having written a damnatory attack upon the painter. this is what is called pungent criticism, stinging criticism, but it is defamatory, and i hope the jury will mark their disapproval by their verdict." the judge pointed out that "there are certain words by mr. ruskin, about which i should think no one would entertain a doubt: those words amount to a libel. the critic should confine himself to criticism and not make it a veil for personal censure or for showing his power. the question for the jury is, did mr. whistler's ideas of art justify the language used by mr. ruskin? and the further question is whether the insult offered--if insult there has been--is of such a gross character as to call for substantial damages? whether it is a case for merely contemptuous damages to the extent of a farthing, or something of that sort, indicating that it is one which ought never to have been brought into court, and in which no pecuniary damage has been sustained; or whether the case is one which calls for damages in some small sum as indicating the opinion of the jury that the offender has gone beyond the strict letter of the law." after an hour's deliberation, the jury gave their verdict for the plaintiff--damages one farthing. the judge emphasised his contempt by giving judgment for whistler without costs; that is, both sides had to pay. it is said that whistler wore the farthing on his watch-chain. we never saw it, we never knew him to wear a watch-chain. but he made a drawing of the farthing for _the gentle art_. "the whole thing was a hateful affair," burne-jones wrote to rossetti, and many agreed with him, though for other reasons. the _times_, the _spectator_, and the _portfolio_ pronounced the verdict satisfactory to neither party, virtually a censure upon both. mr. graves, who watched the trial without the responsibility he was disposed to meet, says: "i have always felt that, had the plaintiff's counsel impressed upon the jury that mr. ruskin had mentioned the price asked for the picture, a matter that has always been outside the critic's province, as well as criticising them as works of art, the result to mr. whistler would have been more in his favour. mr. tom taylor was never asked whether he had ever criticised the price as well as the quality." armstrong has told us of the suppression of important letters: "a little while before the trial i met whistler one evening at the arts club, and he told me of his hopes of a favourable result. my sympathies were entirely on his side. he assured me that he had evidence, which i believe could not fail to be effective, in the shape of letters from leighton, p.r.a.; burton, director of the national gallery; and poynter, r.a., then director for art at s.k., speaking highly of the moonlight pictures. these letters seemed to me most important, for they were from people in official positions, whose good words would have weighed with the british jurymen. nothing was said about these letters in the newspaper reports, and i asked jimmie the reason for this omission of the strongest evidence on his side. he told me that the writers of the letters had objected to their being put in, and so he had refrained from using them, and without the personal testimony of the writers they would not have been accepted as evidence in court. after the trial i saw holker and asked him if he had been helping to smirch any more poor artists. he replied that he was bound to do the best he could for his client. i told him he would never have allowed the exhibition of the pictures in court if he had been whistler's counsel, and he asked: 'why didn't jimmie have me?' i explained that i had recommended his being retained, but it was objected that his fee would be too heavy, and he said, 'i'd have done it for nothing for jimmie.' i was very sorry that mr. ruskin was not punished." arthur severn wrote us that, at the ruskin trial, he "was on the opposite side, although my sympathies were rather with whistler, whose _nocturne in black and gold_ i knew to be carefully painted. whenever we met he was most courteous, understanding my position. during the trial one of the nocturnes were handed across the court over the people's heads, so that whistler might verify it as his work. on its way, an old gentleman with a bald head got a tap from the frame, then the picture showed signs of falling out of its frame, and when serjeant parry turned to whistler and said 'is that your work, mr. whistler?' the artist, putting his eye-glass up and with his slight american twang, said, 'well, it was, but if it goes on much longer in that way, i don't think it will be.' and when ruskin's titian was shown, 'oh, come, we've had enough of those whistlers,' said a juryman. i thought whistler looked anxious whilst the jury was away. another trial came on so as not to waste time. the court was dark, and candles had to be brought in--it seemed to be about some rope, and huge coils were on the solicitors' table. a stupid clerk was being examined. nothing intelligent could be got out of him, and at last mr. day, one of the counsel (afterwards the judge), said, 'give him the rope's end,' which produced great laughter in court, in which whistler heartily joined. then, suddenly, a hush fell; the jury returned a verdict for whistler, damages one farthing." there was a report of an application for a new trial. a desire was expressed that friends of artist and critic might adjust the dispute. but whistler made no application, called for no arbitration. he accepted his farthing damages. the british public rallied to their prophet, and got up a subscription for the rich man. it was managed by the fine art society. the account was opened at the union bank of london in the names of burne-jones, f. s. ellis, and mr. marcus b. huish, and by december a subscription list was published, amounting already to one hundred and fifty-one pounds, five shillings and sixpence, headed by burne-jones, five guineas. the costs were estimated at three hundred and eighty-five pounds, and mr. e. t. cook says that eventually they were paid by his friends. according to w. m. rossetti, "whistler wrote to anderson rose, saying it would be at least equally appropriate for a band of subscribers to pay his costs; and, he added, 'and in the event of a subscription i would willingly contribute my own mite.'" mr. j. p. heseltine started a fund for whistler, and a list was opened at the office of _l'art_, new bond street. but nothing came of it, except that whistler sent one of his pastels to mr. heseltine. for whistler, the poor man, the costs were not paid, and he went through the bankruptcy court. letters flowed into the papers. there were interviews. witticisms went the rounds. whistler is reported to have said, "well, you know, i don't go so far as to burne-jones, but really somebody ought to burn jones' pictures!" a few journalists did not forget that whistler was an artist, a few people were sympathetic, a few congratulations were received at the white house. if whistler was disappointed he kept it to himself. he would have liked better to get his costs and damages, he said. but the verdict was a moral triumph. he had gone into court not for damages but to vindicate his position, and, therefore, that of artists. whistler explained this position in _whistler_ v. _ruskin--art and art critics_ (december ), the first of his series of pamphlets in brown-paper covers. it was printed by spottiswoode, though his idea was to have it lithographed by way, and published by chatto and windus. he dedicated it to albert moore. it is a protest against the folly of the pen in venturing to criticise the brush. literature is left to the literary man, science to the scientist, why then should art be at the mercy of "the one who was never in it," but whose boast it is that he is doing good to art. the critics "are all 'doing good'--yes, they all do good to art. poor art! what a sad state the slut is in, and these gentlemen shall help her." ruskin resigned the slade professorship. he wrote to dean liddell from brantwood (november , ) that the result of the whistler trial left him no option. "i cannot hold a chair from which i have no power of expressing judgment without being taxed for it by british law." unless he continued to be the pope and the prophet he believed himself, he could not go on. he could not stand criticism, and he collapsed when his criticism was questioned. the trial, he wrote, made his professorship a farce. whistler suggested that ruskin might fill a chair of ethics instead. "_il faut vivre_," was the cry of the art critic but whistler said, "_je n'en vois pas la nécessité_." whistler won. the trial was a triumph. but he had to pay heavily for his victory. [illustration: portrait of mrs. louis huth arrangement in black. no. ii oil in the possession of the executors of the family (_see page _)] [illustration: fanny leyland study for the etching. g. pencil sketch formerly in the possession of j. h. wren, esq. (_see page _)] [footnote : this picture then belonged to mr. graham, and some years after at his sale at christie's was received with hisses. it was purchased by mr. robert h. c. harrison for sixty pounds, and at the close of the london whistler memorial exhibition was sold for two thousand guineas to the national arts collection fund, by whom it was presented to the nation. it now hangs in the national gallery. see chapter xxix.] chapter xx: bankruptcy. the years eighteen seventy-eight and eighteen seventy-nine. whistler's financial affairs were in hopeless confusion. the builder's estimate for the white house was largely exceeded, the cost of the trial had to be paid for, the _atelier_ waited for pupils, and the debts brought from lindsey row were many. he wrote to his mother at hastings of his economies and his hopes to pay his debts, but he did not know the meaning of economy. there is a legend of a grocer who had let a bill for tomatoes and fruit run up to six hundred pounds, and when, after the trial, he insisted on settlement, whistler said: "how--what--why--why, of course, you have sent these things--most excellent things--and they have been eaten, you know, by most excellent people. think what a splendid advertisement. and sometimes, you know, the tomatoes are not quite up to the mark, the fruit, you know, not quite fresh. and if you go into these unseemly discussions about the bill--well, you know, i shall have to go into discussions about all this--and think how it would hurt your reputation with all these extraordinary people. i think the best thing is not to refer to the past--i'll let it go, and in the future we'll have a weekly account--wiser, you know." the grocer left without his money, but was offered in payment two nocturnes, one the upright valparaiso. another story of the same grocer is that he arrived with his account as a grand piano was being carried in. whistler said he was so busy he couldn't attend to the matter just then, and the grocer thought if grand pianos were being bought, it must be all right. to a dealer in rugs whistler would have given three nocturnes in payment, but the dealer refused and spent the rest of his life regretting it. it was nothing unusual for bailiffs to be in possession, or for bills to cover the walls. the first time this happened, whistler said to the people whom he invited to dine that they might know his house by the bills on it. when someone complained that creditors kept him walking up and down all night, whistler was amused: "dear me! do as i do! leave the walking up and down to the creditors!" of the bailiffs he made a new feature at his breakfasts. mrs. lynedoch moncrieff has told us of a sunday when two or three men waited with whistler's servant, john, and she said to whistler: "i am glad to see you've grown so wealthy." "ha, ha! bailiffs! you know, i had to put them to some use!" mr. rossetti and his wife once found the same "liveried attendants." "'your servants seem to be extremely attentive, mr. whistler, and anxious to please you,' one of the guests said. 'oh yes,' was his answer, 'i assure you they wouldn't leave me.'" others remember a sunday when the furniture was numbered for a sale. when breakfast was announced by a bailiff, whistler said: "they are wonderful fellows. you will see how excellently they wait at table, and to-morrow, you know, if you want, you can see them sell the chairs you sit on every bit as well. amazing." mrs. edwin edwards wrote us that when three men were in possession, he treated them while his friends carted away his pictures out of the back door. others say that the bailiffs, multiplied to seven, were invited into the garden, and given beer with a little something in it. no sooner had they tasted than down went their heads on the table round which they sat. people dining with whistler that evening were taken into the garden to see the seven sleepers of ephesus: "stick pins in them, shout in their ears--see--you can't wake them!" all evening it rained and it rained, and it thundered, and it lightened, and it hailed. all night they slept. morning came and they slept. but at the hour when he had given them their glass the day before, they all woke up and asked for more. one of the bailiffs at the end of a week, demanded his money. whistler said: "if i could afford to keep you i would do without you." "but what is to become of my wife and family if i don't get my wages, sir?" "ha ha! you must ask those who sent you here to answer that question." "really, mr. whistler, sir, i need the money." "oh ho! have a man in yourself." whistler said "it was kind of them to see to such tedious affairs." one he asked: "and how long will you be 'the man in possession?'" "that, mr. whistler, sir, depends on your paying mr. ----'s bill. "awkward for me, but perhaps more for you! i hope you won't mind it, though, you know, i fear your stay with me will be a lengthy one. however, you will find it not entirely unprofitable, for you will see and hear much that may be useful to you." when things got more desperate, bills covered the front of the house, announcing the sale. whistler, begging the bailiffs to be at home, went one night to dine. it was stormy, and, returning late, he found that the rain had washed the bills loose and they were flapping in the wind. he woke up the bailiffs, made them get a ladder, and paste every bill down again. he had allowed them to cover his house with their posters, but, so long as he lived in it, no man should sleep with it in a slovenly condition. early in may , whistler was declared bankrupt. his liabilities were four thousand six hundred and forty-one pounds, nine shillings and three pence, and his assets, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-four pounds, nine shillings and four pence. in his long overcoat, longer than ever, swinging his cane lengthening in defiance, his hat set jauntily on his curls, he appeared in the city: "ha ha! well, you know, here i am in the city! amazing! you know, on the way, i dropped in to see george lewis, being in the neighbourhood, and, you know, ha ha, he gave me a paper for you to sign!" it was a petition in bankruptcy. the creditors met at the inns of court hotel in june. sir thomas sutherland was in the chair, and leyland, the chief creditor, and various chelsea tradesmen attended. the only novelty in the proceedings was a speech by whistler on plutocrats, men with millions, and what he thought of them, and it was with difficulty he was called to order. a committee of examiners was appointed, composed of leyland, howell, and thomas way. leyland was not let off by whistler. as michael angelo, painting the walls of the sistine chapel, plunged the critic who had offended him into hell, so whistler immortalised the man by whom he thought himself wronged. he painted three pictures. the first was _the loves of the lobsters--an arrangement in rats_, the most prominent lobster in the shirt-frills of leyland. "whom the gods wish to make ridiculous, they furnish with a frill!" he said, and the saying was repeated until it reached leyland, as he meant it should. the second was _mount ararat_, noah's ark on a hill, with little figures all in frills. the third was the _gold scab--eruption in frilthy lucre_, a creature, breaking out in scabs of golden sovereigns, wearing the frill, seated on the white house playing the piano. the hideousness of the figure is more appalling because of the colour, the design. a malicious joke begun in anger, mr. arthur symons has described it, from which "beauty exudes like the scent of a poisonous flower." years after, when it was exhibited at the goupil gallery, one of the serious new critics regretted that whistler allowed himself to be influenced by beardsley. these caricatures alone were in the studio when leyland and the committee made the inventory. augustus hare wrote (may , ) of a visit in the meantime: "this morning i went with a very large party to whistler's studio. we were invited to see the pictures, but there was only one there, _the loves of the lobsters_. it was supposed to represent niagara, and looked as if the artist had upset the inkstand, and left providence to work out its own results. in the midst of the black chaos were two lobsters curveting opposite each other, and looking as if they were done with red sealing-wax. 'i wonder you did not paint the lobsters making love before they were boiled,' aptly observed a lady visitor. 'oh, i never thought of that,' said whistler. it was a joke, i suppose. the little man, with his plume of white hair ('the whistler tuft' he calls it) waving on his forehead, frisked about the room, looking most strange and uncanny, and rather diverted himself over our disappointment in coming so far and finding nothing to see. people admire like sheep his pictures in the grosvenor gallery, following each other's lead because it is the fashion." worried as he was, whistler sent to the grosvenor of the _portrait of miss rosa corder_, _portrait of miss connie gilchrist_, _the pacific_, _nocturne in blue and gold_, six etchings, two studies in chalk, and three pastels. his etching, _old putney bridge_, was at the royal academy. the critics talked the usual nonsense, and have since repented it. mr. (now sir) frederick wedmore distinguished himself by an article: _mr. whistler's theories and mr. whistler's art_, in the _nineteenth century_ (august ), and afterwards reprinted in _four masters of etching_ ( ). he could appreciate whistler's work as little as he could understand _art and art critics_, and from its wit was--and is--still smarting. whistler he placed as: "long ago an artist of high promise. now he is an artist often of agreeable, though sometimes of incomplete and seemingly wayward performance.... that only the artist should write on art by continued reiteration may convince the middle-class public that has little of the instinct of art. but, sirs, not so easily can you dispense with the services of diderot and ruskin." wedmore had apparently never heard of cennini and dürer, vasari and cellini, da vinci and reynolds and fromentin, who remain, while diderot and ruskin and wedmore himself are discredited or forgotten. he regretted that whistler's "painted work is somewhat apt to be dependent on the innocent error that confuses the beginning with the end." he condemned the _portrait of henry irving_ as a "murky caricature of velasquez," the _carlyle_ as "a doleful canvas." the nocturnes were "encouraging sketches," with "an effect of harmonious decoration, so that a dozen or so of them on the upper panels of a lofty chamber would afford even to the wallpapers of william morris a welcome and justifiable alternative.... they suffer cruelly when placed against work not, of course, of petty and mechanical finish, but of patient achievement. but they have a merit of their own, and i do not wish to understate it." whistler had "never mastered the subtleties of accurate form"; "the interest of life--the interest of humanity" had little occupied him, _but_ wedmore hoped that the career, begun with promise, "might not close in work too obstinately faithful to eccentric error." by his etchings his name might "aspire to live," though, "for his fame, mr. whistler has etched too much, or at least has published too much," though there is "commonness and vulgarity" in the figures in many prints, though he "lacked the art, the patience, or the will to continue" others. "the future will forget his disastrous failures, to which in the present has somehow been accorded, through the activity of friendship, or the activity of enmity, a publicity rarely bestowed upon failures at all." in the same month and year, august , an american, mr. w. c. brownell, published in _scribner's monthly_ an article on _whistler in painting and etching_. he treated whistler and his work with a seriousness in "significant" contrast to wedmore's clumsy flippancy. this was the first intelligent american article in whistler's support, and it was illustrated by wood-engravings of his paintings and prints. amidst the torrent of abuse, it came when whistler most needed it. but it was not taken seriously, and much was made of mr. brownell's slip in describing the dry-point _jo_ as a portrait of whistler's brother. whistler, left homeless by his bankruptcy, revived the plan for the journey to venice, and a series of etchings there. he suggested it to ernest g. brown, messrs. seeley's representative when the _billingsgate_ was published in the _portfolio_, and now with the fine art society who, at his persuasion, had brought out four of the london plates this year: _free-trade wharf_, _old battersea bridge_, _old putney bridge_, and _the little putney, no. _. they liked the new scheme so well that they gave whistler a commission for twelve plates in venice to be delivered in three months' time. one hundred proofs of each were to be printed, and he was to receive, we believe, twelve hundred pounds. by september ( ), whistler apparently in great spirits, though "everything was to be sold up," was "arranging his route to venice" says mr. cole. from the receiver he had permission to destroy unfinished work. copperplates were scratched and pictures smeared with glue, stripped off their stretchers and rolled up. then he packed his trunk, wrote over his front door: "except the lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. e. w. godwin, f.s.a., built this one," and started for venice. the white house was sold on september , , to mr. harry quilter, who paid for it two thousand seven hundred pounds in money at the time, and later in whistler's jeers. the public laughed at the furniture and effects, "at which even a broker's man would turn up his nose. if ever the seamy side of a fashionable artist's existence was shown, it was during that auction in chelsea.... truly, if ruskin had wished to have his revenge, he might have enjoyed it at the white house, when his prosecutor's specially built-to-order abode was characterised as a disgrace to the neighbourhood by philistinic spectators, and its contents supplied material for the rude jokes of hebrew brokers and the special correspondent of the _echo_." "two wooden spoons, a rusty knife handle and two empty oil tins," was one of the lots. rolls of canvases were carried off for a few shillings. out of them came a _valparaiso_, a _cremorne gardens_, the portrait of sir henry cole, a _white girl_ and a _blue girl_, the portrait of miss florence leyland, in such a condition that nothing now remains but the two blue pots of flowers on either side. the _cremorne gardens_, a few years after whistler's death, was sold by t. r. way for twelve hundred pounds to mr. a. h. hannay. then an effort was made to sell it, through london dealers, for almost four times the price to the melbourne gallery, where there were no whistlers and where, therefore, those who had whistler's interests at heart thought it would not represent him worthily. later on the painting was sold to the metropolitan museum, new york. it was first cleaned by t. r. way, and when we saw it and had it photographed for the earlier edition of this book, it contained portraits of both leyland and whistler. it has since been cleaned again and the portraits have completely disappeared. whether the metropolitan is responsible for the vandalism we do not know. but we do know that it is this way history is wiped from the face of the earth by the restorer. thomas way, at the sale, bought _the lobsters_ and _mount ararat_. other pictures went astray or disappeared temporarily, for a few intelligent people were at the sale. whistler wrote to mrs. william whistler from venice begging her to trace and find them, which she was unable to do. but they are turning up now. whistler's china, prints, and a few pictures were reserved for a sale at sotheby's, on thursday, february , . the title-page of the catalogue is: "_in liquidation. by order of the trustees of j. a. mcn. whistler. catalogue of the decorative porcelain, cabinets, paintings and other works of art of j. a. mcn. whistler. received from the white house, fulham, comprising numerous pieces of blue and white china; the painting in oil of_ connie gilchrist, dancing with a skipping-rope, _styled_ a girl in gold, _by whistler; a satirical painting of a gentleman, styled_ the creditor, _by whistler. crayon drawings and etchings, cabinets, and miscellaneous articles_." when leyland learned that the _gold scab--the creditor_, was in the sale he did his best to have it removed. dealers and amateurs were there: way, oscar wilde, huish, the fine art society, dowdeswell, lord redesdale, deschamps, wickham flower, and howell were purchasers. howell secured the japanese screen, the background of the _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_. the japanese bath fell to mr. jarvis. _the creditor_ was bought by messrs. dowdeswell for twelve guineas, vanished, turned up in the king's road, chelsea, years later, and was purchased by mr. g. p. jacomb-hood for ten pounds, and is now in the collection of mrs. spreckles in san francisco. it is one of the documents mr. freer should have--and could have had--as he should have the _whistler_ with the brushes, the _mrs. leyland_, the _dr. whistler_, and others which would add enormously to the historic value as well as artistic completeness of his collection. _connie gilchrist_ was sold to mr. wilkinson for fifty guineas. whistler's bust by boehm was bought by way for six guineas. a crayon sketch, catalogued as a portrait of sarah bernhardt, was knocked down for five guineas to oscar wilde, who asked her to sign it, which she did, writing that it was very like her. it might have been handed down as her portrait, had it not appeared at oscar wilde's sale, and found its way back to whistler, who declared that madame bernhardt never sat to him. the sale at sotheby's realised three hundred and twenty-eight pounds, nineteen shillings. chapter xxi: venice. the years eighteen seventy-nine and eighteen eighty. for years whistler wanted to go to venice. when he got there he found it a difficult place to work in. it was cold, and he felt the cold. it is almost impossible to hold a copper-plate or a needle with numbed fingers, and venice in ice made him long for london in fog. he would gladly have exchanged the square of st. mark's for piccadilly, a gondola for a hansom. even ruskin says this. affairs in london worried him. he wrote for news of the vanished pictures. he knew that his letters had got into second-hand bookshops--even letters to his mother. he was ill and the doctor was far away. venice he thought beautiful, most beautiful after rain when, he wrote his mother, the colour and reflections were gorgeous. the venetian masters interested him. at the scuola di san rocco he is remembered climbing up for a closer look at the tintorettos. veronese and titian were great swells; canaletto and guardi, great masters. he went to st. mark's for mass at christmas, though he wrote that the ceiling of the peacock room was more splendid than the dome. but, as he told fantin years before, it was a waste of time to search for new subjects, and all subjects were new to him in venice. countess rucellai (miss edith bronson) writes that "he used to say venice was an impossible place to sit down and sketch, 'there was something still better round the corner.'" mr. henry woods says: "he wandered for motives, but no matter how much he wandered, and appeared to loaf, when he found a subject he worked with a determination that no cold and cheerlessness could daunt. i remember his energy--and suffering--when doing those beautiful pastels, nearly all done during the coldest winter i have known in venice, and mostly towards evening when the cold was bitterest! he soon found out the beautiful quality of colour there is here before sunset in winter. he had a strong constitution. he was only unwell once with a bad cold." the fine art society asked him to make twelve plates in three months. the plates were not started for weeks, and the fine art society demanded what he was doing. the answer was at first silence and then a request for more money. the fine art society began to doubt and whistler was furious. then reports came that he was doing enormous plates they had not ordered. howell and others said that whistler would never come back, and academicians laughed at the idea of the society getting either plates or their money from such a "charlatan." with each new suggestion of doubt, whistler's fury grew. "amazing their letters and mine, but, perhaps, not for the public." the delay was his care. even frank duveneck, most procrastinating of mortals, made his venetian etchings, and otto bacher changed his style and did his venetian plates, before whistler found his subjects. it amused him to tell the american consul that idleness is the virtue of the artist, but it was a virtue he denied himself. it was "the same old story" he wrote his mother, "i am at my work the first thing at dawn and the last thing at night." he could not stand the venetian crowd, and he worked as much as possible out of windows. he did little from gondola or sandolo. to the tourist, a gondola is a thing of joy; to the worker, it is a terrible, unstable studio, and even in the old days it cost a hundred francs a month, but then, the gondolier was your slave. he mostly left the monuments of venice, as of london, alone. in london he preferred battersea and wapping to westminster and st. paul's; in venice little canals and _calli_, doorways and gardens, beggars and bridges made a stronger appeal to him than churches and palaces. he deliberately avoided the motives of guardi and canaletto. to reproduce the masterpieces of the masters is, he said, an impertinence, and he found for himself "a venice in venice." whistler, mr. howard walker tells us, took a room in the palazzo rezzonico, where he would paint the sunset and then swear at the sun for setting. we know of no work done from the palace, though _the palaces_ which he etched are on the opposite side of the grand canal. mr. ross turner remembers that he found whistler in a small house with a small garden in front near the frari, no doubt "the quarters" of which otto bacher speaks, and mr. turner remembers, too, that canvases were hanging on the wall, and a large one, with a big gondolier sketched on it, stood by the door. he was living then in the rio san barnaba, and there maud came to join him. she could tell the whole story, but she will not. bacher says whistler wore a "large, wide-brimmed, soft, brown hat tilted far back, suggesting a brown halo. it was a background for his curly black hair and singular white lock.... a dark sack-coat almost covered an extremely low turned-down collar, while a narrow black ribbon did service as a tie, the long, pennant-like ends of which, flapping about, now and then hit his single eye-glass." bacher describes him in evening dress without a tie, and mr. forbes recalls his coming without one to the bronson's, and bronson saying it was sad to see artists so poor that they could not afford a necktie. bacher also quotes whistler as always substituting "whistler" for "i" in his talk, which we never knew him to do and it seems little like him. several of duveneck's pupils followed on from florence in , and they lived in the casa jankovitz, the house that juts out squarely at the lower end of the riva degli schiavoni, all venice in front of it. whistler was enchanted with the place when he went to see them, and moved there. he had one room, the windows looking over the lagoon, and from them the etchings and pastels of the riva and the lagoon were made. many things are told of this room, of plates bitten on the top of the bureau, the acid running down, and the scramble to save his shirts in the drawers beneath. other stories are of the printing-press on which canaletto's plates may have been pulled and many of duveneck's and bacher's were; the press which used to work up to a certain point and then go with such a rush that it had to be stopped, for fear the bed would come out on the floor. there was a large colony of foreign artists and art lovers and a club, english in name, really cosmopolitan, in venice, where whistler met rico, wolkoff, van haanen, tito, blaas, if he had not already met them on the piazza. alexander, rolshoven, de camp, and bacher were with duveneck. harper pennington came in the autumn, and scott, ross turner, blum, woods, bunney, jobbins, and logsdail were amongst the other men he knew. the american consul grist, and the vice-consul graham, were persons of importance, and the united states consulate a meeting-place. mrs. bronson lived in casa alvisi, the brownings and the curtises had houses in venice, and with all three families whistler became intimate. londoners turned up. harry quilter told of one encounter: "in the spring of i spent a few weeks in venice. i had been drawing for about five days, in one of the back canals, a specially beautiful doorway, when one morning i heard a sort of war-whoop, and there was whistler, in a gondola, close by, shouting out as nearly as i can remember: 'hi, hi! what! what! here, i say, you've got my doorway!' 'your doorway? confound your doorway!' i replied. 'it's my doorway, i've been here for the last week.' 'i don't care a straw, i found it out first. i got that grating put up.' 'very much obliged to you, i'm sure; it's very nice. it was very good of you.' and so for a few minutes we wrangled, but seeing that the canal was very narrow, and that there was no room for two gondolas to be moored in front of the chosen spot, mine being already tied up exactly opposite, i asked him if he would not come and work in my gondola. he did so, and, i am bound to say, turned the tables on me cleverly. for, pretending not to know who i was, he described me to myself, and recounted the iniquities of the art critic of the _times_, one ''arry quilter.'" everybody says whistler was penniless in venice, always borrowing, why, we do not know, unless the money went to pay for things in london. but there were dinners and sunday breakfasts. many were given in a little open-air _trattoria_, near the via garibaldi. the panada, the noisiest of noisy restaurants, was one of his haunts, and there was another opposite the old post-office. the food, "nothing but fowl," he wrote, tired him so that he surprised himself by spending a fortune on tea, and carrying home strange pieces of fat, which he tried to fry into resemblance of the slices of bacon served by mrs. cossens, his chelsea housekeeper. mr. scott says: "if whistler could not lay a table, he knew how to turn out tasty little dishes over a spirit-lamp; and it was not long before the inevitable sunday breakfasts were instituted in that little room. _polenta à l' américaine_, which he had induced the landlady to prepare under his direction, we used to eat with such sort of treacle, alias golden syrup, as could be obtained. fish was cheaper and more plentiful then than now in the water city, and the lanky serving-women could fry with the best of the famous ciozzotte. the 'thin red wine' of the country, in large flasks at about sixpence a quart, was plentiful, and these simple things, with the accompanying 'flow of soul' made a feast for the gods. there was no room for many guests at one time, but henry woods, ruben, w. graham, butler, and roussoff were often with us." days were spent on the lido, and, doubtless he went to chioggia, murano, burano, and torcello. these little journeys were more costly and difficult then than now, and there are no plates except of the _lido_ and the _murano glass-furnace_, and no pastels except one or two on the lido. whistler loved the nights at the never-closed clubs in the piazza, florian's and the quadri, or the orientale on the riva, where the coffee was just as good and two _centessimi_ cheaper. around these nights endless legends are growing, and like all the legends, they are such a part of whistler they cannot be ignored. no one delighted in them more than he, no one ever told them so well. they became the favourite yarns of duveneck's boys, to which we listened many an evening when we came to venice four years later. it was then we first heard of wolkoff, or roussoff as he is known in bond street, and his boast that he could make pastels like whistler's and the americans' bet of a champagne dinner that he couldn't, and the evening in the casa jankovitz, when rico, duveneck, curtis, bacher, woods, and van haanen recognised wolkoff's work and every time one of his pastels was produced cried: "take it away!" the russian said to whistler after dinner: "you know, you scratch a russian, and you find a tartar!" "ha ha!" said whistler, "i've scratched an artist and found an ama-tartah!" another story was of the tiny glass figure, or maybe a little black baby from the shrine of st. anthony at padua, dropped into whistler's glass of water at the _café_, where it looked like a little devil bobbing up and down, so that whistler, when he saw it, thought something was wrong with his eyes, and sipped the water and shook the glass, and the more he sipped and shook the more the little devil danced, and finally he upset the glass over everybody, and the little demon fell in his lap. and there was another of the night when a _barca_, with a transparency showing nocturnes and a band playing "yankee-doodle," moved up and down the grand canal and along the riva, never stopping until it was greeted with a loud "ha ha!" from the darkness. and we heard of the day when whistler, seeing bunney on a scaffold struggling with st. mark's, his life-work for ruskin, fastened a card, "i am totally blind," to his coat-tail. and we were told of the hot noon when whistler, leaning out of his window, discovering a bowl of goldfish below on the window-ledge of his landlady, against whom he had a grudge, let down a fishing-line, caught the fish, fried them, dropped them back into the bowl, and watched the return of their owner, who was sure her fish had been fried by the sun. and the story of blum and whistler, without a _schei_, crossing the academy bridge, blum sticking in his eye a little watch with a split second-hand that went round so fast the keeper thought he had the evil eye, and they got over without paying; or of the boys' farewell _fête_ to whistler in august when it was rumoured he was going, and in a coal barge, which bacher transforms into a "fairy-like floating bower festooned with the wealth of autumn," a feast of melons and salads and chianti was spread and eaten as they drifted up the grand canal with the tide, the lights of their lanterns bringing everyone to stare, until the rain drove them under the rialto, where they spent the rest of the night, and then whistler didn't go after all. when whistler left they say he asked the authors of these adventures up to his room and showed them a number of prints, and said, "now, you boys have been very good to me all this time and i want to do something for you," and he turned over his prints carefully, and said, "i have thought it out," and he took one, a spoiled one, and he counted their heads, and he cut it into as many pieces as there were people, and presented a fragment to each, and as they marched downstairs all they heard was "ha ha!" these, and hundreds like them, are the legends you hear on the piazza. two friends of the venetian days, mr. harper pennington and mr. ralph curtis, have sent us their impressions. mr. harper pennington writes us: "he gave me many lessons there in venice. he would hook his arm in mine and take me off to look at some nocturne that he was studying or memorising, and then he would show me how he went about to paint it--in the daytime. he let me--invited me, indeed, to stand at his elbow as he set down in colour some effect he loved from the natural things in front of us. what became of many such--small canvases, all of them--i do not know. _the st. george nocturne_, canfield has. who owns _the façade of san marco_?[ ] "there was an upright sunset, too, looking from my little terrace on the riva degli schiavoni over towards san giorgio, and others that i saw him work on in ." mr. curtis gives us other details: "shortly before his return to england with some of the etchings and the pastels, he gave his friends a tea-dinner. as seeing the best of his venetian work was the real feast, the hour for the _hors d'oeuvre_, consisting of sardines, hard-boiled eggs, fruit, cigarettes, and excellent coffee prepared by the ever-admirable maud, was arranged for six o'clock. effective pauses succeeded the presentation of each masterpiece. during these _entr'actes_ whistler amused his guests with witty conjectures as to the verdict of the grave critics in london on 'these things.' one of his favourite types for sarcasm used to be the eminently respectable londoner who is '_always_ called at . , closed-shaved at a quarter to , and in the city at .' 'what will he make of _this_? serve him right too! ha ha!' "whistler was a constant and ever-welcome guest at casa alvisi, the hospitable house of mrs. bronson, whom he often called _santa cattarina seconda_. during happy years, from lunch till long past bedtime, her house was the open rendezvous for the rich and poor, the famous and the famished, _les rois en exil_ and the heirs-presumptive to the thrones of fame. whistler there had his place, and he held the floor. one night a curious contrast was the great and genial robert browning commenting on the projected form of a famous 'jimmy letter' to the _world_. "very late, on hot _scirocco_ nights, long after the concert crowd had dispersed, one little knot of men might often been seen in the deserted piazza, sipping refreshment in front of florian's. you might be sure that was whistler in white duck, praising france, abusing england, and thoroughly enjoying italy. he was telling how he had seen painting in paris revolutionised by innovators of powerful handling: manet, courbet, vollon, regnault, carolus duran. he felt far more enthusiasm for the then recently resuscitated popularity of velasquez and hals. "the _ars celare artem_ of terborgh and vermeer always delighted him--the mysterious technique, the discreet distinction of execution, the 'one skin all over it,' of the minor masters of holland was one of his eloquent themes. to whistler it was a treat when a frenchman arrived in venice. if he could not like his paint, he certainly enjoyed his language. french seemed to give him extra exhilaration. from beginning to end he owed much to the french for first recognising what he had learned from japan." [footnote : mr. j. j. cowan was for some years the owner, and he sold it to the french gallery.] chapter xxii: venice. the years eighteen seventy-nine and eighteen eighty continued. nothing in whistler's life is more astonishing than the praise and blame raised by the venetian pastels on their exhibition in london. artists fought over them. to some, they were original, they gave the character of venice; to others, they were cheap, anybody could do them. both were wrong, as both always were. "anybody" cannot do them; he had been making pastels: the subject, not the method, was new. had some of the combatants visited the academy at venice, they might have discovered his inspiration in the drawings of the old masters, where he had found it years before at the louvre. he was only carrying on tradition. whistler used coloured paper for the pastels because it gave him, without any work, the foundation of his colour-scheme in the simplest manner, and because he could work straight away on it, and not ruin the surface and tire himself getting the tone. bacher describes him in his gondola laden with pastels. but his materials were so few that he could wander on foot in the narrow streets, the best way to work as everyone who has worked in venice knows. for it is difficult to find again a place, and impossible to see again the effect, that fascinated you. he carried only a little portfolio or drawing-board, some sheets of tinted paper, black chalk, half a dozen pastels, and varnished or silver-coated paper to cover the drawing when finished. once he found what he wanted, he made a sketch in black chalk and then with pastel hinted the colour of the walls, the shutters, the spots of the women's dresses, putting in the colour as in mosaic or stained glass between the black lines, never painting, but noting the right touch in the right place, keeping the colour pure. it looked so easy, "only the doing it was the difficulty," he would say. when he finished the drawings he showed them. mr. scott recalls that "the latest pastels used to be brought out for inspection. whistler would always show his sketches in his own way or not at all. in the absence of a proper easel and a proper light, they were usually laid on the floor." [illustration: whistler in his studio oil in the chicago art institute (_see page _)] [illustration: maud standing etching. g. (_see page _)] the "painter fellows" were startled by their brilliancy, whistler told his mother, and he thought rather well of them himself. the pastels have been praised with the inconsequence characteristic of so much praise of his work. the drawing often is either not good in itself or so slight as to be of little importance. the beauty is in the suggestion of colour or the arrangement of line. though he passed the spring, summer, winter, and part of two autumns in the city there is no attempt, save in a few sunsets, to give atmospheric effect, or the season, or the time of year. what he saw that pastel would do, what he made it do, was to record certain lines and to suggest certain colours. critics and artists, having never studied pastel, were unaware of what had been done with it. the revival did not come for some years after whistler showed his venetian series, when there was a "boom" all over the world, and pastel societies were started, most of which have since collapsed. the "boom" in etching commenced years before whistler went to venice. there were standards: whistler had already accomplished great things, after a formula laid down by dürer, rembrandt, and hollar. therefore, when he made etchings which struck the uncritical, and even those who cared, as something new, the uncritical were shocked because their preconceived notions were upset, and those who cared were astonished. the difference between the venetian and the london plates was so great that the two series might be attributed to two men. this was due partly to the difference between london and venice seen by an artist sensitive to the character of places, but more to the difference of technique between the earlier and the later plates. not so many years ago, talking to him about this subject, we said that the venetian plates seemed to be done in a new way. it so happened that the _adam and eve--old chelsea_ and _the traghetto_ were, as they are now, hanging almost side by side on our walls. in five minutes he proved that one was the outgrowth of the other, and that there was a natural development from the beginning of his work. until the london memorial exhibition it was impossible to trace this, because the prints had never been hung together chronologically, not even at the grolier club, in new york, where, for want of space, two separate shows were made. before whistler exhibited his venetian plates most people knew nothing but the french set and the thames set. the intermediate stages had not been followed, and the venetian plates seemed a new thing. but the difference between them and the thames series is one of development. whistler always spoke of the _black lion wharf_ as boyish, though it is impossible to conceive of anything of its kind more complete. his estimate has been accepted by many. mr. bernhard sickert, in writing of it, thinks it misleading to say that every tile, every beam has been drawn. "these details are merely filled in with a certain number of strokes of a certain shape, accepted as indicating the materials of which they are constructed." when an etching is in pure line and owes little to the printer, as in this case, it is the wonderful arrangement of lines, the wonderful lines themselves, which make you feel that everything, every beam and every tile, has been drawn; that every detail actually has been drawn we did not suppose anybody would be so absurd as to imagine. the character of the lines gives you this impression, which is exactly what the artist wanted, and this is what proved whistler an impressionist. another critic has said that whistler exhausted all his blacks on the houses. he did nothing of the sort. he concentrated them there, and did not take away from the interest of the wharf he was drawing by an equal elaboration in the boats, the barges, and the figures. as he learned more he gave up his literal, definite method. instead of drawing the panes of a window in firm outline, he suggested them by drawing the shadows and the reflected lights with short strokes, and scarcely any outline. in the london plates he got the effect on his buildings by different bitings. in venice he suggested the shadows. in both, the figures in movement are nearly the same, but there is a great advance in the drawing in the venice plates, where they give the feeling of life. in the _millbank_ and the _lagoon_, the subjects, or the dominating lines in the subjects, are the same, a series of posts carrying the eye from the foreground to the extreme distance, but their treatment in the venetian plate, as well as the drawing of the figures, is more expressive. simplicity of expression has never been carried further. probably the finest plate, in its simplicity and directness, is _the bridge_. whistler now obtained the quality of richness by suggesting detail, and also by printing. in _the traghetto_ there is the same scheme as in _the miser_ and _the kitchen_, but the venice plate is more painter-like. without taking away from the etched line he has given a fullness of tone which makes the background of _the burgomaster six_ weak in comparison. and he knew this. he was doing his own printing for the first time to any extent. there were a hundred prints of the first venice set. all were not pulled by him, and the difference between his printing and goulding's, done after his death, is unmistakable. in the hand of any professional printer plates like _the traghetto_ and _the beggars_ would be a mass of scratches, though scratches of interest to the artist; it required whistler's printing to bring out what he wanted. and it is the more surprising that he could print in venice, so primitive was the press. bacher had a portable press, but most was done on the old press. whistler protested against the professional printer, his pot of treacle and his couches of ink. but no great artist ever carried the printing of etchings so far or made such use of printer's ink as he did in these plates. without the wash of ink, they would be ghosts, and he was justified in printing as he wanted to get what he wished. and he used ink in all sorts of ways on the same plate, he tried endless experiments with ever-varying results, even to cover up the weak lines of an indifferent design, as in _nocturne--palaces_, prized highly by collectors, but one of his poorest venice plates. it, and _the garden_, _nocturne--shipping_, and one or two besides are by no means equal to the others in line, though some of his prints of these are superb. but there are no such perfect plates in the world as _the beggars_, _the traghetto_, the two _rivas_, _the bridge_, and _rialto_. while printing whistler continually worked on his plates, and instead of there being--as the authorities say--half a dozen states there are a hundred; only the authorities cannot see. a curious fact about _the traghetto_ is that there were two plates. he was displeased with the first and etched it again. bacher writes that _the traghetto_ "troubled him very much." he pulled one fine proof and then overworked the plate so that he had to make a second. he got copper of the same size and thickness made by the venetian from whom they had their plates. when this was ready, the first plate was inked with white paint instead of black ink. this was placed on the second varnished plate, and they were then run through the press. the result was "a replica in white upon the black etching ground." bacher says that on the new plate whistler worked for days and weeks with the first proof before him, that he might find and etch only the original lines. when the second was printed whistler placed the two proofs side by side and minutely compared them. and he was pleased, for the examination ended in the one song he allowed himself in venice: "_we don't want to fight, but, by jingo! if we do, we've got the ships, we've got the men, and got the money too-oo-oo!_" the early proofs of others plates were unsatisfactory. each proof was a trial, and, as each was pulled, he worked upon the plate, not generally taking out large slabs or putting in new passages to make a new state of it, but strengthening lines or lightening them, giving richness to a shadow or modelling to a little figure. it would be impossible, if the hundred proofs of each of these venetian plates were not shown together, to say how much he did or what he did to each, but the first proof is quite different from the last and no two are alike. some of them, from ghosts, became solid facts. [illustration: portrait of sir henry irving as philip ii of spain arrangement in black. no. iii oil in the metropolitan museum, new york (_see page _)] [illustration: portrait of sir henry cole oil (destroyed) from a photograph lent by pickford r. waller, esq. (_see page _)] in his venice etchings whistler also developed what he called the japanese method of drawing, bacher calls his secret, and mr. menpes the secret of drawing. whistler always spoke frankly about it to us, from the first time j. saw him etching, and he followed the same method in his lithographs. in etching or lithography it is difficult to make corrections, the surface of the plate or the stone should not be disturbed, it is not easy, by the ordinary manner in which drawing is taught, to put a complicated design on the plate without elaborate spacing, tracing, or a preliminary sketch. frequently, when the design is half made in the usual fashion, the artist finds that the point of greatest interest, the subject of his picture, will not come on the plate where he wants it. the japanese always seem to get the design in their colour-prints in the right place, and yet their technique adds to the difficulty of changing or altering a design, especially in their wood blocks. but whether this is because they have the method of drawing whistler attributed to them, whether he got his idea from their completed prints or evolved it, we do not know. we do know that the idea was his long before he painted the japanese pictures. you can see the beginning of it in the _isle de la cité_. the system, scientific as all his systems were, is to select the exact spot on the canvas, the lithographic stone, the copper plate, or the piece of paper, where the focus of interest is to be, and to draw this part of the subject first. it might be near the side of a plate, though he insisted that the composition should be placed well within the frame or on the plate, contrary as such treatment is to japanese methods and his early practice. in the early paintings, sprays of flowers or branches of trees run into the picture to give the impression that it is carried beyond the frame, as the japanese do. but his theory, perfected before the venetian period and adhered to as long as he lived, was that everything should be well within the frame or plate mark, as far within as the subject was from him. having selected the point of interest, he drew that, and drew it completely, and there, on his canvas, plate, or stone, was a picture. it might be a distant view of palaces or shipping beneath a bridge; in london, a shop window; in paris, a dark doorway; in portraits, the sitter's head. once he put it down, he drew in the objects next in importance, all the while carrying out the work completely and making one harmonious whole. the result was that the picture was finished--"finished from the beginning"--and there was on the plate, paper, or stone a space which he could fill with less important details or leave as he chose. with his painting it was a different problem. when the subject was arranged, it grew together all over, at the same time. in some of the earlier pictures, _old battersea bridge_ for example, a piece of canvas seems to have been added, though he maintained that the artist should confine himself to the size of the canvas he selected, and not get over his blunders, as many do, by adding to or taking from the canvas. all this requires the greatest care in just what whistler considered most important, the placing of the subject. working in this manner, always with the completed picture in his mind, he could return again, add further work if he thought it was needed, knowing he had his subject drawn. it sounds simple, so simple that one day, when he had been explaining it to mr. e. a. walton, and the latter said, "but there is no secret!" whistler's answer was, "yes, the secret is in doing it." it is just this, "in doing it," that the excellence of his work lies. as a matter of fact the difficulty is restraint in drawing the heart of a subject, while in painting still more restraint is necessary, the restraint imposed by colour and the medium. besides etchings and pastels whistler made water-colours in venice, but as they were never shown together it is impossible to say how many. there were also a few oils. the most important is _nocturne, blue and gold, st. mark's_. bacher speaks of one from the windows of the casa jankovitz, "the salute and a great deal of sky and water, with the buildings very small," and of a scene at night from a _café_ near the royal gardens. then there is the upright sunset from the riva referred to by mr. pennington, and two others painted from mr. ross turner's terrace, one looking down the riva to san biagio, the other up to san marco, both full of little figures, and with boats and a suggestion of the lagoon, in the background; studies left hanging in sunlight after he had done one day's work until he came to do the next. mr. forbes recalls a _nocturne of the giudecca_, with shipping, on a panel, which whistler gave to jobbins, who, as he told us, thought so little of it that he painted a sketch on the back and then sold it to forbes, who still has it. canfield was said to have another of s. giorgio. doubtless there are more, but we know of none that were exhibited. chapter xxiii: back in london. the years eighteen eighty and eighteen eighty-one. at the end of november whistler was back in london. "years of battle," m. duret calls the period that followed, and whistler was ready to fight. he arrived when the fine art society had a show of "twelve great etchers," a press was in the gallery, goulding was printing, etching was upon the town. "well, you know, i was just home; nobody had seen me, and i drove up in a hansom. nobody expected me. in one hand i held my long cane; with the other i led by a ribbon a beautiful little white pomeranian dog; it too had turned up suddenly. as i walked in i spoke to no one, but putting up my glass i looked at the prints on the wall. 'dear me! dear me!' i said, 'still the same old sad work! dear me!' and haden was there, talking hard to brown, and laying down the law, and as he said 'rembrandt,' i said 'ha ha!' and he vanished, and then----!" he was without house or studio, and stopped in wimpole street with his brother until he took lodgings in langham street and then in alderney street. (the record of this is in the etching published in the _gazette des beaux-arts_, april .) he set to work printing the plates, for few had been pulled in venice. the fine art society moved goulding's press upstairs and friends came to see him, and here mr. mortimer menpes says he first met whistler, and, dropping poynter, south kensington, and his ambition, threw himself at the feet of "the master" and called himself pupil. it was not an ideal workshop, and the fine art society took two rooms for whistler in air street, regent street, on the first floor, with a bow window under the colonnade, now the piccadilly hotel: the window from which he etched the plate of the quadrant. t. way and his son came to air street to help whistler print. the press was in the front room, and t. r. way made a sketch of it in colour, his father damping paper, whistler inking a plate, the press between them: an interesting document. the work was interrupted by excitement. one day whistler placed on the heater a bottle of acid tightly stopped up. the stopper blew out, steaming acid fumes filled the room, and they ran for their lives. another time, they took caustic potash, or something as deadly, to get the dried ink out of the lines of the plates, and they dropped the bottle on the floor, and there was not much left of the carpet. why anything was left of the floor or of them is a mystery. then, mr. menpes says: "whistler drifted into a room in my house, which i had fitted up with printing materials, and it was in this little printing-room of mine that most of the series of venetian etchings were printed." the edition of a hundred sets was, however, not completed during whistler's lifetime. it was only after his death that goulding finished the work. the first series of twelve venetian plates was shown in december at the fine art society's. the _twelve_ were selected from the forty plates whistler brought back. the critics could see nothing in them. they were dismissed as "another crop of whistler's little jokes." one after another the people's authorities repeated the attorney-general's decision that whistler was amusing, and burne-jones' regret that he had not fulfilled his early promise, and whistler collected the criticisms for future use. brown, of the fine art society, took to new york a set of the proofs. whistler spent a sunday pulling them. but the etchings were no more appreciated in new york than in london. only eight sets were ordered. in the meanwhile whistler was preparing his exhibition of pastels. mr. cole notes in his diary: "_january _ ( ). jimmy called, as self-reliant and sure as ever, full of confidence in the superlative merit of his pastels, which we are to go and see." this exhibition also was held at the fine art society's. whistler designed the frames; he wrote the catalogue, which had the brown paper cover, but not quite the form eventually adopted, and it was printed by way; he decorated the gallery, an arrangement in gold and brown, which was enjoyed as another of his little jokes by the critics. godwin was one of the few who admitted the beauty, and his description in the _british architect_ (february ) is on record: "first, a low skirting of yellow gold, then a high dado of dull yellow-green cloth, then a moulding of green gold, and then a frieze and ceiling of pale reddish brown. the frames are arranged on the line; but here and there one is placed over another. most of the frames and mounts are of rich yellow gold, but a dozen out of the fifty-three are in green gold, dotted about with a view of decoration, and eminently successful in attaining it." on the evening of the press view mr. cole says: "_january _ ( ). whistler turned up for dinner very full of his private view to-morrow. later on, we concocted a letter inviting prince teck to come to it. his last draft was all right, but he would insist on beginning it 'prince,' although i assured him 'sir' was the usual way of addressing him in a letter." the private view (january ) was a crush, bond street blocked with carriages, the sidewalk crowded; nothing like it was ever known at the fine art society's. millais, showing forgotten _machines_ in the adjoining room, was one of the first to see the pastels. "magnificent, fine; very cheeky, but fine!" he bellowed, and afterwards said so to whistler, who was pleased. the crowd did not know what to say, and, had they known, would have been afraid to say it. for whistler was there, his laugh louder, shriller than ever. he let no one forget the trial. an admirer asked the price of a pastel: "sixty guineas! that's enormous!" whistler heard, though he was not meant to; he heard everything. "ha ha! enormous! why, not at all! i can assure you it took me quite half an hour to do it!" people laughed at whistler's work, because they thought they were expected to. because he was the gayest man they refused to see that he was the most serious artist. when they laughed at his art, it hurt; when they laughed at him, they suffered; and he had his revenge in mystifying them: "well, you know, they thought it was an amiability to me for them to be amused. one day, when i was on my way to the fine art society's, while the show was going on, i met sir and lady ---- face to face, at the door, as they were coming out. both looked very much bored, but they couldn't escape me. so the old man grasped my hand and chuckled, 'we have just been looking at your things, and have been so much amused!' he had an idea that the drawings on the wall were drolleries of some sort, though he could not understand why, and that it was his duty to be amused. i laughed with him. i always did with people of that kind, and then they said i was not serious." the critics, too, laughed, but there was venom in their laughter. they liked to take themselves, if they couldn't take whistler, seriously, and they hated work they could not understand. the pastels were sensational, whistler was clever with a sort of transatlantic impudence. they objected to the brown paper, to the technique, to the frames, to the decorations, to the subjects; they became unexpectedly concerned for the past glory of venice. godwin, again, was an exception "no one who has listened, as the writer of these notes has, to whistler's descriptions of the open-arcaded, winding staircase that lifts its tall stem far into the blue sky, or of the façades, yet unrestored, that speak of the power of the venetian architect, can doubt that he who can so remember and describe has failed to admire. it is by reason of the strength of this admiration and appreciation that he holds back in reverence, and exercises this reticence of the pencil, the needle, and the brush." a number of people showed their belief in the pastels by buying them, and the exhibition was a success financially. the prices ranged from twenty to sixty guineas, the total receipts amounted to eighteen hundred pounds. bacher quotes a letter written to him just after the show opened signed "maud whistler": "the best of it is, all the pastels are selling. four hundred pounds' worth the first day; now over a thousand pounds' worth are sold." before the show closed, at the end of january, whistler was summoned to hastings. his mother had been there since her illness of - , from which she never entirely recovered, though there were intervals between the attacks when her family had no cause for anxiety. but her death was sudden. those who refused to see in whistler any other good quality could not deny his devotion to his mother; those to whom he revealed the tenderness under the defiant masque with which he faced the world knew what his love for her meant to him. she had lived with him whenever it was possible. his visits and letters to hastings had been frequent. he never forgot her birthday. he told her of all his success, all his hopes, and made as light as he could of his debts and disappointments. but in the miserable week before the funeral at hastings he was full of remorse; he should have been kinder and more considerate, he said; he had not written often enough from venice. dr. whistler was with him part of the time, and the doctor's wife the rest. in the afternoons they wandered on the windy cliffs above the town, and there was one drear afternoon when he broke down: "it would have been better had i been a parson as she wanted!" yet he had nothing to reproach himself with. the days in chelsea were for her as happy as for him, and she whose pride had been in his first childish promise at st. petersburg lived to see the development of his powers. she is buried at hastings. it was fortunate that when he got back to town there were events to distract his thoughts. the society of painter-etchers opened their first exhibition in april at the hanover gallery. american artists who were just starting etching and had never shown prints in london were invited. frank duveneck sent a series of venetian proofs. this was the occasion of "the storm in an æsthetic teapot," which, had not whistler thought it important as "history," would be forgotten. we quote, as he did, from _the cuckoo_ (april , ): "some etchings, exceedingly like mr. whistler's in manner, but signed 'frank duveneck,' were sent to the painter-etchers' exhibition from venice. the painter-etchers appear to have suspected for a moment that the works were really mr. whistler's, and, not desiring to be the victims of an easy hoax on the part of that gentleman, three of their members--dr seymour haden, dr. hamilton, and legros--went to the fine art society's gallery in bond street, and asked one of the assistants there to show them some of mr. whistler's venetian plates. from this assistant they learned that mr. whistler was under an arrangement to exhibit and sell his venetian etchings only at the fine art society's gallery." whistler heard of this. he called on mr. cole, "highly incensed with haden and legros conspiring to make out he was breaking his contract with the fine art society," and went at once to the hanover gallery, mr. menpes with him. the three members fortunately were not there. then haden wrote to the fine art society that they had found out about mr. duveneck and said they were delighted with his etchings, and expressed regret. but it is incredible that haden and legros should have mistaken the work of duveneck for that of whistler. the story was published by whistler in _the piker papers_. with its interest a little dulled by time, the correspondence may be read in _the gentle art_. whistler had not forgotten the pictures left with graves in pall mall. by degrees he bought them back. when mr. algernon graves consulted his father about letting whistler have the pictures upon which the full amount was not paid, after whistler had repaid a hundred pounds for three, the father said, "let him take the whole lot, and don't be a fool; the pictures aren't worth twenty-five pounds apiece." the _rosa corder_ was sold at christie's with howell's effects, mr. algernon graves agreeing that, if it brought more than howell's debt to the firm, howell's executors could have the balance. the father maintained the picture wouldn't fetch ten pounds, but it brought more than the amount of their bill, some hundred and thirty pounds. the _irving_ was sold to sir henry for a hundred pounds--at irving's sale it was bought by mr. thomas of philadelphia for five thousand guineas--and the _miss franklin_ went to messrs. dowdeswell. whistler continued to pay his bills regularly as they came due, to graves' astonishment; there was only one exception, and then whistler came to ask to have the payment postponed, and this was not settled until long after the pictures were in whistler's possession. when whistler paid the final instalment graves expressed his surprise. but whistler said: "you have been a very good friend to me; in fact, you have been my banker. you have acted honourably to me in the whole matter. i meant to pay, and i have done so." these business details and his exhibitions left whistler no time in for the _salon_, where he had nothing, or for the grosvenor, to which he sent only _miss alexander_. in the autumn, borrowing the _mother_ from graves, he lent it to the academy in philadelphia, the arrangements being made by mrs. anna lea merritt, and this is her account: [illustration: portrait of miss rosa corder arrangement in black and brown oil in the possession of h. c. finch, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: the peacock room photograph of the room at prince's gate, showing the _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_ in place (_see page _)] "in the autumn of i was asked by the pennsylvania academy of fine arts to receive pictures by american artists, and have them forwarded for exhibition, and especially they entreated me to persuade mr. whistler to send a picture. he had never been represented in any american exhibition. i obtained a chance when meeting him at a dinner of pressing the subject more vigorously than i could have done by writing, and he promised to send his mother's portrait. it was collected in due course and deposited in my studio, then in the avenue. mr. whistler came immediately after, and as the canvas was breaking away from the stretcher, he directed the packing agents, who were skilful frame-makers, to restrain it, and then left me. as soon as the canvas was made tight, spots of crushed varnish appeared on the surface. the varnish, in fact, broke or crumbled and i feared the canvas might have broken. i flew down the street, overtook him, and brought him back, dreading that he would blame us and even that some injury had been done. to my surprise, he took the misfortune with perfect composure and kindness, and stippled the spots with some solvent varnish that soon restored the even surface. and there was never a word of suggestion that we had done any harm. of course, i knew the fault was not in anything that had been done, and it was by his own order, but from all i had heard about him i trembled. the greatest difficulty in connection with that exhibition was to persuade him to journey to the american consulate in st. helen's place and make his affidavit for the invoice. it had to be done by himself; and it was not pleasant, as we know, to waste a day, the very middle of the day, in this dull declaration of american citizen sojourning in england. after the cases were ready for shipment there was still delay to get his task accomplished, and i think the pennsylvania academy hardly guess how much persuading it took. what a pity they did not secure the beautiful picture for his own country! now that it hangs in the luxembourg, they envy it." the _mother_ was exhibited at the pennsylvania academy in , and, on the suggestion of mr. alden weir, at the society of american artists in new york in , and it could have been bought for a thousand dollars. although nobody wanted it, it made him known in his own country as a painter. he was elected a member of the society of american artists that year. at this time, owing to the visit of seymour haden to the united states, american artists became interested in etching, and societies were formed and exhibitions held all over the country. there was a show in the boston museum in . another, the first of a series, was given by the new york etching club in . and the philadelphia society of etchers organised in the same year an international exhibition at the academy of fine arts. articles in _scribner's_ on whistler and haden and american etchers added to the interest. messrs. cassell and others issued portfolios of prints, and every painter became an etcher. the result was a boom, then a slump, out of which whistler and haden almost alone emerged, for the reason that their work was not done to please the public or the publishers. we remember the excitement made by haden's lectures which prepared america for whistler, whose prints were in both the new york and philadelphia exhibitions. mr. james l. claghorn, almost the only philadelphian who then cared for etchings, had already many whistlers. mr. avery, in new york, had some years before begun his collection and secured for it many of the rarest proofs, and he was followed by mr. howard mansfield, who later on interested mr. charles l. freer. but in america more had been heard of whistler's eccentricities than his work. it could no longer remain unknown, once his etchings and the portrait of the _mother_ were seen and _the white girl_ was lent to the metropolitan museum in new york, where it hung for some time. and the young men who had been with him in venice, coming back, spread his fame at home, and when americans got to know his work they became the keenest to possess it. even at this time avery owned the _whistler in the big hat_, mr. whittemore _the white girl_, and mrs. hutton the _wapping_. that an american artist's works should be bought at all by americans at that date was extraordinary. tadema, bouguereau, meyer von bremen were the standard, soon, however, to be exchanged for whistler, the impressionists, and the dutch and barbizon schools. chapter xxiv: the joy of life. the years eighteen eighty-one to eighteen eighty-four. on may , , mr. cole "met jimmie, who is taking a new studio in tite street, where he is going to paint all the fashionables; views of crowds competing for sittings; carriages along the streets." it was no. , close to the white house. whistler decorated it in yellow: one "felt in it as if standing inside an egg," howell said. he again picked up blue and white, and old silver; he again gave sunday breakfasts, and they again became the talk of the town and he the fashion. if the town was determined to talk, whistler was willing it should. he was never so malicious, never so extravagant, never so joyous. he wrapped himself "in a species of misunderstanding." he filled the papers with letters. london echoed with his laugh. his white lock stood up defiantly above his curls; his cane lengthened; a series of collars sprang from his long overcoat; his hat had a curlier brim, a lower tilt over his eyes; he invented amazing costumes: "in great form, with a new fawn-coloured long-skirted frock-coat, and extraordinary long cane," mr. cole found him one summer day in . he was known to pay calls with the long bamboo stick in his hand and pink bows on his shoes. he allowed no break in the gossip. the carriages brought crowds, but not sitters. few would sit to him before the trial; after it there were fewer. in the seventies it needed courage to be painted by whistler; now it was to risk notoriety and ridicule. lady meux was the first to give him a commission. two of his three large full-lengths of her are amongst his most distinguished portraits. she was handsome, of a luxuriant type, her full-blown beauty a contrast to the elusive loveliness of maud in the _fur jacket_, or mrs. leyland, or mrs. huth. whistler found appropriate harmonies. one was an _arrangement in white and black_. there is a sumptuousness in the velvet gown and the long cloak he never surpassed, and the firm modelling of the face, neck, and arms gives to the regal figure more solidity than he ever got before. whistler was pleased with it, spoke of it as his "beautiful black lady," and lady meux was so well pleased that she posed a second time. in this, the _harmony in flesh colour and pink_, afterwards changed to _pink and grey_, she wears a round hat low over her face, and a pink bodice and skirt, and stands against a pink background, and the ugly fashion of the day cannot conceal the beauty. the third portrait, as far as we can find out, was never finished. mr. walter dowdeswell has a pen-and-ink drawing of it. she wears a fur cap, a sable coat, and carries a muff. for this, it is said, after differences, a maid posed and whistler painted her face over the lady's. mr. harper pennington says: "the only time i saw jimmy stumped for a reply was at a sitting of lady meux (for the portrait in sables). for some reason jimmy became nervous, exasperated, and impertinent. touched by something he had said, her ladyship turned softly towards him and remarked, quite softly, 'see here, jimmy whistler! you keep a civil tongue in that head of yours, or i will have in some one to _finish_ those portraits you have made of me!' with the faintest emphasis on 'finish.' jimmy fairly danced with rage. he came up to lady meux, his long brush tightly grasped, and actually quivering in his hand, held tight against his side. he stammered, spluttered, and finally gasped out, 'how dare you? how dare you?' but that, after all, was _not_ an answer, was it? lady meux did not sit again. jimmy never spoke of the incident afterwards, and i was sorry to have witnessed it." at the time of the london memorial exhibition lady meux offered the committee the two portraits in her possession on condition that the third should be returned to her. this the committee were unable to do, and it was not until her will was published after her death, in january , in which she bequeathed the missing picture and the correspondence relating to it to the national gallery, that any more was heard about it. then a statement appeared in a new york paper that the portrait was in the collection of mr. freer, and miss birnie philip stated in the _times_ that whistler had destroyed the picture which, according to lady meux in her will, "was ordered and paid for by her husband, but it had never come into his possession nor could it be found." sir henry cole posed for a second portrait and whistler got back from mr. way the first, discovered in one of the rolls of canvases he bought at the sale. mr. cole saw the second portrait in the studio: "_february _ ( ). found his commencement of my father, good but slight, full length, evening clothes, long dark cloak thrown back, red ribbon of bath." "_april _ ( ). in spite of his illness, my father to whistler's, who fretted him by not painting; my father thought that jimmy had merely touched the light on his shoes, and nothing else, although he stood and sat for over an hour and a half." this was the last sitting. the next day sir henry cole died suddenly: a distinguished official lost to england, a friend lost to whistler. eldon, an artist much with whistler at the time, was in the studio on the th, and recalled afterwards that sir henry cole's last words on leaving were, "death waits for no man!" whistler meant to go on with the portrait. on may mr. cole went again to tite street: "after a long delay, jimmy showed me his painting of my father, which j. can make into a very good thing." it is said not to have been finished, but we possess a photograph of it which shows no want of finish. this also, mr. cole was informed, whistler destroyed. neither was a full-length of eldon finished: a fine thing, to judge from the photograph we have seen. it also has vanished, though a small half-length, sent to the london memorial exhibition, but not hung--it may be a copy--is now in new york. during the next few years other portraits were begun, and of several we have photographs which it is not possible to identify. an _arrangement in yellow_ was of mrs. langtry. for a new version of his scheme of "blue upon blue" miss maud waller posed. mrs. marzetti, her sister, who went with her to the studio, writes: "the sittings commenced in the early part of . we went two or three times, and then whistler painted the face out, as it was not to his liking, although most people thought it excellent. in those days maud was very beautiful. the picture was started on a canvas that already had a figure on it, and it was turned upside down, and the _blue girl's_ head painted in between the legs. the dress was made by mme. alias, the theatrical costumier, to whistler's design, and i believe cost a good deal. in the end the picture was finished from another model (i do not know who), and was hung in one of whistler's exhibitions in bond street [_notes, harmonies, nocturnes_, may , at dowdeswell's]: it is no. in the catalogue, and called _scherzo in blue--the blue girl_. this was the same exhibition in which he hung the picture he gave me, and which in the end i never got (no. , _bravura in brown_). i should have treasured it for two reasons: whistler's painting, and also that it was a portrait of mr. ridley. the picture of maud was to have been at the grosvenor gallery, but was not finished. however, it was sent in for the private view, and taken away again the same night or next morning. we used thoroughly to enjoy our visits to the studio--that is to say, i did, because i sat and looked on. i can't say whether maud enjoyed them as much; probably not, as we used to get down there about eleven o'clock, have lunch, and stay all the afternoon, most of which time she was standing. "i cannot remember all the callers we used to see there, as there were so many, but some of the more frequent visitors i remember well. there was one man who was always there, all day long, and we just hated him; i don't know why, as he seemed very harmless. he was whistler's shadow. i don't know who he was, but have an idea that he used to write a bit. i think he was very poor, and that whistler pretty well kept him. i heard some few years ago that he died in a lunatic asylum. oscar wilde was a frequent visitor, also walter sickert. whistler used to say, 'nice boy, walter!' he was very fond of him then. others i remember were two brothers named story, frank miles (who had a studio just opposite whistler's)--renée rodd as whistler used to call him--major templar, lady archie campbell, and mrs. hungerford. whistler was just finishing the portrait of lady meux, and i stood for him one day for about five minutes. it was a full-length portrait in black evening dress, with a big white cloak over the shoulders. "whistler was a most entertaining companion; he was very fond of telling us edgar allan poe's stories, and also of reciting _the lost lenore_, which he said was his favourite poem. he dined with us several times in lyall street; he was always late for dinner, sometimes half an hour, and i think on more than one occasion was sound asleep at the table before the end of the dinner. "whistler's usual breakfast, which he often had after we arrived at the studio, was two eggs in a tumbler, beaten up with pepper, salt, and vinegar, bread and coffee.... "whistler stood yards away from the picture with his brush, and would move it as though he were painting; he would then jump across the room, and put a dab of paint on the canvas; he also used to wet his finger and gently rub portions of his picture. i have often seen him take a sponge with soap and water and wash the blue girl's face (on the canvas, i mean)." lady archibald campbell, also posing for whistler, said: "he was a great friend of ours. i think i sat to him during a year or so, off and on, for a great many studies in different costumes and poses. his first idea was to paint me in court dress. the dress was black velvet, the train was silver satin with the argyll arms embroidered in appliqué in their proper colours. he made a sketch of me in the dress. the fatigue of standing with the train was too great, and he abandoned the idea. in all these studies he called my attention to his method of placing his subject well within the frame, explaining that a portrait must be more than a portrait, must be of value decoratively. he never patched up defects, but, if dissatisfied with any portion of his work, covered the canvas afresh with his first impression freshly recorded. the first impression thrown on the canvas he often put away, often destroyed. among others, he made in oils an impression of me as orlando, in the forest scene of _as you like it_, at coombe. he considered this successful. a picture he called _the grey lady_ was a harmony in silver greys. i remember thinking it a masterpiece of drawing, giving the impression of movement. i was descending a stair, the canvas was of a great height, and the general effect striking. it was almost completed when my absence from town prevented a continuance of the sittings. when i returned he asked to make a study of me in the dress in which i called upon him. this is the picture which he exhibited under the name of _the brodequin jaune_, or _the yellow buskin_. as far as i remember it was painted in a few sittings. when i saw him shortly before his death i asked after _the grey lady_. he laughed and said he had destroyed her." mr. walter sickert has recorded a number of interesting details about these pictures, though his statements are vague. he says that the canvases had a grey ground "made with black and white mixed with turpentine," and that whistler used a medium of oil and turpentine, and "covered thinly the whole canvas with his prepared tones, using house-painters' brushes for the surfaces, and drawing lines with round hogshair brushes nearly a yard long.... his object was to cover the whole canvas at one painting--either the first or the hundredth." lady archibald asked him if he was going to touch up her portrait at the last sitting. whistler said, "not touch it up, give it another beautiful skin." mr. sickert also very aptly suggests the reason why some of the portraits were never completed. whistler did them all over, again and again, till they were "finished--or wrecked, as often happened, from the sitter getting tired, or growing up, or growing old." almost the only new fact in mr. frank rutter's _whistler_ is given him by mr. sickert, who says he remembers once whistler standing on a chair with a candle at the end of a sitting from lady archibald campbell, looking at his work, but undecided whether he should take it out or leave it. they started to dinner, and in the street he decided, saying, "you go back. i shall only be nervous and begin to doubt again. go back and take it all out." this, mr. sickert says he did, with a rag and benzoline. m. duret suggests that the ridicule of her friends had an effect on lady archibald campbell, or perhaps her beauty made her critical; anyhow, she suggested changes to whistler, who, though he seldom accepted suggestions from his sitters, did his best to meet her, until it seemed as if, to please her, he must repaint the picture, and he was discouraged. we have heard of a scene outside the studio: lady archibald in a hansom on the point of driving away never to return; m. duret springing on the step and representing the loss to the world of the masterpiece, and arguing so well that she came back, and _the yellow buskin_ was saved from the fate of _the grey lady_ and _the lady in court dress_. some think the portrait that was finished is whistler's greatest. it has distinction and character. it is another _arrangement in black_ in which critics could then discover but dinginess and dirt. one wit described it as a portrait of a lady pursuing the last train through the smoke of the underground. people have learned to see, or at least to think they should see, beauty, and to-day they hardly dare deny it is a masterpiece. whistler called it first the _portrait of lady archibald campbell_, but afterwards _the yellow buskin_, the title in the wilstach collection, philadelphia, where it now hangs. mr. walter sickert tells an amusing story of whistler's way sometimes of meeting the suggestions of sitters: "i remember an occasion when whistler, yielding to persuasion, allowed himself to introduce, step by step, certain modifications in the scheme of a portrait that he was painting. as time went on he saw his own conception overlaid with an image that he had never intended. at last he stopped and put his brushes slowly down. taking off his spectacles, he said, 'very well, that will do. this is your portrait. we will put it aside and finish it another day.' 'now, if you please,' he added, dragging out a new grey canvas, 'we will begin mine.'" m. duret posed to whistler at the same time as lady archibald campbell. when she could not come whistler would telegraph him, and day by day he watched the progress of her portrait while his was growing. business brought m. duret to london. he had always been much with artists in paris, had been intimate with courbet, was still with fantin, manet, and bracquemond. he recognised the genius of men at whom the world scoffed, and it was he who by an article in the _gazette des beaux-arts_ (april ) made the french realise their mistake of years, and again give whistler the place so long denied him. [illustration: drawing in wash for a catalogue of blue and white nankin porcelain in the possession of pickford r. waller, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: study lithotint. w. from a print lent by t. r. way, esq. (_see page _)] one evening in , after a private view, whistler and duret were talking over the pictures they had seen, and in discussing the portrait of the president of some society, whistler declared that red robes of office were not in character with modern heads, and that a man should be painted in the costume of his time, and he asked duret to pose to him that he might show what could be done with evening dress, the despair of painters. the experiment was not so original as duret seemed to think. leyland was painted in this way ten years before, when whistler proved the truth of baudelaire's assertion that the great colourist can get colour from a black coat, a white shirt, against a dark background. sir henry cole also posed in evening dress. whistler did not rely entirely upon so simple a scheme in his portrait of duret, who has a pink domino over his arm, a red fan in his hand. his portrait is called _arrangement in flesh colour and black_. m. duret describes whistler at work. he marked slightly with chalk the place for the figure on the canvas, and began at once to put it in, in colour; at the end of the first sitting the scheme was there. this was the method that delighted whistler. the difficulty with him was not to begin a portrait, but to finish it. the painting was brought almost to completion, rubbed out, begun again, and repainted ten times. duret saw that it was a question not only of drawing, but of colour, of tone, and understood whistler's theory that to bring the whole into harmony and preserve it the whole must be repainted as a whole, if there was any repainting to be done. there are finer portraits, but not many that show so well whistler's meaning when he said that colour is "the arrangement of colour." the rose of the domino, the fan, and the flesh is so managed that the cold grey of the background seems to be flushed with rose. duret, when he showed the picture, took a sheet of paper, cut a hole in it, and placed it against the background, to prove that the grey, when surrounded by white, is pure and cold without a touch of rose, and that whistler got his effect by his knowledge of the relation of colour and his mastery of tone. the _lady meux--black and white_ went to the _salon_ of , catalogued as _portrait de m. harry--men_, to the confusion of commentators. the _harmony in flesh colour and pink_ was shown at the grosvenor with _nocturne in blue and silver_, _scherzo in blue--the blue girl_, _nocturne in black and gold--southampton water_, _harmony in black and red_, _note in black and opal--jersey_, _blue and brown--san brelade's bay_. the _times_ was unable to decide whether whistler was making fun of them or whether something was wrong with his eyes. the _pall mall_ regretted that "if the _lady meux_ was full of fine and subtle qualities of drawing, the _scherzo in blue_ [miss waller] was the sketch of a scarecrow in a blue dress without form and void. it is very difficult to believe that mr. whistler is not openly laughing at us when he holds up before us such a piece as this. his counterpart in paris, the eccentric m. manet, has at least more sincerity than to exhibit his work in such an imperfect condition." but whistler now had defenders. an "art student" wrote the next day to the _pall mall_ to point out that "at the private, and therefore, presumably, the press, view, _the blue girl_ was seen in an unfinished state, having been sent there merely to take up its space on the wall. it was removed immediately, and has been since finished. had the critic seen it since he would hardly have called it without form and void. the want of artistic sincerity is certainly the last charge that can be brought against a man who has followed his artistic intention with such admirable and unswerving singleness of purpose." from this time onward whistler no longer fought his battles alone. eighteen eighty-two was the year of _the paddon papers_. mr. cole noted in his diary: "_september ._ to jimmy's. he lent me proof of his paddon and howell correspondence. amusing, but too personal for general interest." we agree with mr. cole. there were complications of no importance with howell, in which paddon, a diamond merchant, figured, and complications over a chinese cabinet which mr. morse bought from whistler when he moved from no. lindsey row. for long mr. morse had only the lower part, while howell kept the top. whistler, who thought nothing concerning him trivial, published this correspondence in a pamphlet, called _the paddon papers: the owl and the cabinet_, interesting now only because it is rare and because it was the end of all relations between himself and howell. in the early winter of whistler gave the second exhibition of his venetian etchings at the fine art society's. the prints, fifty-one in number, included several london subjects. he decorated the gallery in white and yellow. the wall was white with yellow hangings, the floor was covered with pale yellow matting and the couches with pale yellow serge. the cane-bottomed chairs were painted yellow. there were yellow flowers in yellow pots, a white and yellow livery for the attendant, and white and yellow butterflies for his friends. at the private view whistler wore yellow socks just showing above his shoes, and the assistants wore yellow neckties. he prepared the catalogue; the brown paper cover, form, and size now established. he printed after each number a quotation from the critics of the past, and on the title-page, "out of their own mouths shall ye judge them." a friend who looked over the proofs for him writes us: "we came to 'there is merit in them, and i do not wish to understand it.' [a quotation from the article in the _nineteenth century_ which sir frederick wedmore must wish could be forgotten.] jimmy yelled with joy, and thanked the printer for his intelligent misreading of _understate_. 'i think we will let that stand as it is,' he said. i was amused at the private view to see him discussing the question with wedmore, who, naturally, did not think it quite fair." before the show opened it was, whistler told us, "well, you know, a source of constant anxiety to everybody and of fun to me. on the ladder, when i was hanging the prints, i could hear whispers: no one would be able to see the etchings! and then i would laugh, 'dear me, of course not! that's all right. in an exhibition of etchings the etchings are the last things people come to see!' and then there was the private view, and i had my box of wonderful little butterflies, and i distributed them only among the select few, so that, naturally, everybody was eager to be decorated. and when the crowd was greatest royalty appeared, quite unprecedented at a private view, and the crowd was hustled into another room while the prince and princess of wales went round the gallery, looking at everything, the prince chuckling over the catalogue. 'i say, mr. whistler, what is this?' he asked when he came to the _nocturne--palaces_. 'i am afraid you are very malicious, mr. whistler,' the princess said." those who received the little butterflies thought them charming. mrs. marzetti writes us: "i have a few treasures which i guard most jealously; one is the golden butterfly that he made us wear at the private view of his exhibition in bond street, in the original little card box in which he sent them (three i think) to mother, with a message written on the lid, and signed with his butterfly." the public laughed. they thought the butterflies added to the screaming farce, the foppery of the whole thing. the attendant in yellow and white livery was called the poached egg. the catalogue was worse. poor wedmore and the others could hardly like to have their blunders and blindness immortalised. most of them made the best of it by refusing to see in him anything but the jester. his humour was compared to mark twain's, and he to barnum, and the show was "excruciatingly agreeable." some honestly thought his work rubbish, and found his last little joke dull without being cheap. their ridicule has become ridiculous. as for whistler's etchings, the price of the series of _twelve_, as of the _twenty-six_ issued a year or so later in which many of these prints were published, was fifty guineas; on may , , the single print _nocturne--palaces_ sold in paris for one hundred and sixty-eight guineas, and we have been offered two hundred pounds for our _traghetto_. the etchings were also shown in decorated rooms in boston and philadelphia. for the exhibitions of he had no new work, but sent two earlier nocturnes to the grosvenor and to the _salon_ the _mother_, and was awarded a third-class medal, the only recompense he ever received at the _salon_. in the winter of - he worked a great deal out of doors, spending many weeks at st. ives, cornwall. he took no interest in landscape; "there were too many trees in the country," he said. but he loved the sea, from the days of _the blue wave_ at biarritz and _the shores of brittany_ until one of the last summers when he painted at domburg, in holland. the cornish sketches were sent to his show of _notes, harmonies, nocturnes_, at dowdeswell's gallery in may , the first exhibition in which he included many water-colours. the medium had been difficult to him; now he was its master. he used it to record subjects as characteristic of london as the subject of his pastels were of venice. there were also studies and sketches in holland, for he was always running about again. the interest of the catalogue was in the preface, _l'envoie_ he called it, and was so laughed at not only for the place he gave it, but for the spelling, that he searched the dictionaries, and then declared, we cannot say with what authority, that _envoie_ means some sort of snake. "ha ha! that's it! venom!" he said. the _envoie_, without his explanation, is interesting, for it consists of the _propositions no. _, which have become famous: that a picture is finished when all traces of the means that produced it have disappeared; that industry in art is a necessity, not a virtue; that the work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the brow; that the masterpiece should appear as the flower of the painter, perfect in its bud as in its bloom. he decorated the gallery: delicate rose on the walls, white dado, white chairs, and pale azaleas in rose-flushed jars. the butterfly, tinted in rose, was on the card of invitation. the _arrangement in flesh colour and grey_ was as little appreciated as the _yellow and white_ in ; to the critics it was a new affectation. there were signs of appreciation when, in , whistler sent the _carlyle_ to the loan exhibition of scottish national portraits at edinburgh, where it created an impression. there had been attempts to sell the picture. m. duret tried to interest an irish collector, who, however, did not dare to buy it. it was offered to mr. scharfe, director of the british national portrait gallery, who not only refused to consider the offer, but laughed at the idea that "such work should pass for painting." the first endeavour to secure it for a national collection came from george r. halkett, who urged its purchase for the scottish national gallery in the _scotsman_ (october , ). he was supported by mr. william hole in a letter published the following day. unfortunately, the subscription paper disclaimed approval of whistler's art and theories on the part of subscribers. whistler, indignant, telegraphed to edinburgh: "the price of the _carlyle_ has advanced to one thousand guineas. dinna ye hear the bagpipes?" the price he had asked was four hundred, and this ended the negotiations. why about this time whistler should have become involved in a church congress in the lake country, unless he was coming from or going to scotland, we never have been able to explain. he told us about it years later, and he seemed no less amazed than we. j. was just about to start for the lakes, and whistler was reminded of his excursion there. we give the note made at the time: "_sunday_, _september_ ( ). whistler dined, and agnes repplier--not a successful combination. the dinner dragged until e. j. sullivan happened to come in, and whistler woke up, and, all of a sudden, we hardly know how, he was plunged into the midst of the lake country and a church congress, travelling third class with the clergy and their families, eating jam and strange meals with quantities of tea, and visiting the rev. mr. green in his prison, shut up by his bishop for burning candles, and altogether the hero and important person he would never be on coming out. an amazing story, but what whistler was doing in the lakes with the clergy he did not appear to know; the story was enough." the only result of the expedition was the etching done in cumberland, and his impression of the unpicturesqueness of the lakes: the mountains "were all little round hills with little round trees out of a noah's ark." what he thought of great mountain forms we do not know for, save on the trip to valparaiso and going to italy, he never saw them. yet the lines of the coast in the _crépuscule_ show that he could render mountains. but, as he said, the mountains of cumberland are only little round hills. at the end of his life he saw the mountains of corsica, gibraltar, and tangier, but there is no record. chapter xxv: among friends. the years eighteen eighty-one to eighteen eighty-seven. it was in the summer of that j. met whistler. up to this time we have had to rely upon what whistler and those who knew him have told us. henceforward we write from our own knowledge. this is j.'s story of the meeting: "i first saw whistler july , . i had been asked by mr. gilder, editor of the _century magazine_, to make the illustrations for a series of articles on _old chelsea_ by dr. b. e. martin, and mr. drake, the art editor, suggested that if i could get whistler to etch, draw, or paint something in chelsea for the _century_, the _century_ would be very glad to have it. his water-colours and pastels were being shown at dowdeswell's--_notes_, _harmonies_, _nocturnes_--and there his address was given me: no. tite street. "the house did not strike me, i only remember the man and his work. i knocked, the door was slightly opened, and i handed in my letter from mr. gilder. i was left in the street. then the door was opened wide, and whistler asked me in. he was all in white, his waistcoat had long sleeves, and every minute it seemed as if he must begin to juggle with glasses. for to be honest, my first impression was of a bar-keeper strayed from a philadelphia saloon into a chelsea studio. never had i seen such thick, black, curling hair. but in the midst was the white lock, and keen, brilliant eyes flashed at me from under the thick, bushy eyebrows. "at the end of the hall into which he took me was a shadowy passage, then some steps, a light room beyond, and on an easel the portrait of a little man with a violin, the _sarasate_, that had never been seen outside the studio. whistler stopped me in the passage and asked me what i thought of the picture. i cannot recall his words. i was too overwhelmed by the dignity of the portrait to remember what he said. "later on he brought out _the falling rocket_. 'well now, what do you think of that? what is it?' "i said fireworks, and i supposed one of the cremorne pictures. "'oh, you do, do you? isn't it amazing? bring tots, idiots, imbeciles, blind men, children, anything but the islander, and they know; even you, who stole the name of my _little venice_.' "this referred to an etching of mine which had been published under the title of _little venice_. why whistler did not resent this always or let it interfere with our friendship later, i do not know, for mr. keppel has told me he felt bitterly about it at the time. "whistler also showed me some of his pastels. and he talked, and i forget completely what he said until, finally, i suggested why i had come, for i did not think there was any greater honour than to see one's work in the pages of the _century_. there was some excuse delightfully made. then he called to someone who appeared from a corner. and whistler said to him, 'here's a chance for you. but you will do these things.' and that was my introduction to mr. mortimer menpes. "this was not what i had bargained for, and i said promptly, 'mr. whistler, i came here to ask you to let us have some drawings of chelsea. if you cannot, why, i'll do them myself.' "'stay and lunch,' whistler said, and there was lunch, a wonderful curry, in a bright dining-room--a yellow and blue room. later on he took me down to the embankment, and, though it seemed so little like him, showed me the carlyle statue and turner's house. he pointed out his own houses in lindsey row, and told me of a photographer who had reproduced all his pictures and photographed old chelsea. i remember, too, asking whistler about the thames plates, and his telling me they were all done on the spot. and then he drove me in a cab to piccadilly, and asked me to come and see him again. "the next sunday i went with mr. stephen parrish to haden's, in hertford street. we were taken to the top storey, where haden was working on the mezzotint of the _breaking up of the agamemnon_. i asked him--i must have almost paralysed him--what he thought of whistler, and he told me that if ever he had to sell either his collection of whistlers or of rembrandts, the rembrandts should go first. he told that story often--and later they both went.--downstairs, in a sort of conservatory at the back of the dining-room, was a printing press. lady haden joined us at lunch. so also did mr. hopkinson smith, resurrecting vast numbers of american 'chestnuts.' i can recall that both parrish and i found him in the way, and i can also recall his getting us into such a state that, as we came down a street leading into piccadilly, parrish vented his irritation on one of the public goats which in those days acted both as scavengers and police for london. as the goat put down his head to defend himself, parrish put up his umbrella, and the goat fled into the open door of a club. what happened after that we did not wait to see. "i saw whistler only once again that summer. he was in charing cross station, in front of the bookstall. he wore a black frock-coat, white trousers, patent leather shoes, top hat, and he was carrying, the only time i ever saw it, the long cane. i did not want to speak to him, and i liked his looks less than when i first met him. "early in the autumn of we went to italy, and it was several years after our return before i got really to know him, and to understand that his appearance was to him merely a part of the 'joke of life.'" [illustration: tall bridge lithograph. w. from a print lent by t. r. way, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: nocturne lithotint. w. from a print lent by t. r. way, esq. (_see page _)] chapter xxvi: among friends. the years eighteen eighty-one to eighteen eighty-seven continued. whistler said he could not afford to keep a friend, but he was never without many. a photograph taken in his studio in shows him the centre of a group, of whom the others are julian and waldo story, sons of w. w. story; frank miles, a painter from whom great things were expected; and the hon. frederick lawless, a sculptor. in the background is a little statuette everybody wanted to know the merit of, explained one day by whistler, "well, you know--why, you can take it up and--well, you can set it down!" mr. lawless writes us that whistler modelled the little figure, though we never heard that he modelled anything, and professor lantéri says he never worked in the round. mr. pennington suggests that the statuette was by mr. waldo story, but mr. lawless says: "when whistler lived in his london studio he often modelled graceful statuettes, and one day he put up one on a vase, asking me to photograph it. i said he must stand beside it. he said, 'but we must make a group and all be photographed,' and that i was to call out to his servant when to take the lid off the camera, and when to put it back. i then developed the negative in his studio." mr. francis james, often at tite street, has many memories, specially of one summer evening when coquelin _aîné_ and a large party came to supper and whistler kept them until dawn and then took them to see the sun rise over the thames, a play few had ever performed in. for two or three years no one was more with whistler than sir rennell rodd. he writes us: "it was in ' , ' that i saw most of him. frank miles, waldo and julian story, walter sickert, harper pennington, and, at one time, oscar wilde, were constantly there. jimmy, unlike many artists, liked a _camarade_ about the place while he was working, and talked and laughed and raced about all the time, putting in the touches delicately, after matured thought, with long brushes. there was a poor fellow who had been a designer for minton--but his head had given way and he was already quite mad--used to be there day after day for months and draw innumerable sketches on scraps of brown paper, cartridge boards, anything--often full of talent, but always mad. well, jimmy humoured him and made his last weeks of liberty happy. eventually he had to be removed to an asylum, and died raving mad. i used to help whistler often in printing his etchings. it was very laborious work. he would manipulate a plate for hours with the ball of the thumb and the flat of the palm to get just the right superficial ink left on it, while i damped the paper, which came out of old folio volumes, the first and last sheets, with a fairly stiff brush. and often, for a whole morning's work, only one or two prints were achieved which satisfied his critical eye, and the rest would be destroyed. there was a venetian one which gave him infinite trouble in the printing. "he was the kindest of men, though he was handy with his cane. in any financial transaction he was scrupulously honourable, though he never had much money at his disposal. "we had great fun over the many correspondences and the catalogues elaborated in those days in tite street.... he was demoniacal in controversy, and the spirit of elfin mischief was developed in him to the point of genius.... pellegrini was much at whistler's in those days, and in a way the influence of whistler was fatal to him. his admiration was unbounded and he abandoned his art, in which, as jimmy used to say, 'he had taught all the others what none of them had been able to learn,' and took to trying to paint portraits in whistler's manner without any success. "one of the few modern painters i have ever heard him praise was albert moore, and i am not sure that was not to some extent due to a personal liking for the man. it always struck me his literary judgments, if he ever happened to express any, were extraordinarily sound and brilliant in summing up the merits or demerits of a writer. "he had an extraordinary power of putting a man in his place. i remember a breakfast which waldo story gave at dieudonné's. everyone there had painted a picture, or written a book, or in some way outraged the philistine, with the exception of one young gentleman, whose _raison d'être_ there was not so apparent as were the height of his collars and the glory of his attire. he nevertheless ventured to lay down the law on certain matters which seemed beyond his province, and even went so far as to combat some dictum of the master's, who, readjusting his eye-glass, looked pleasantly at him, and said, 'and whose son are you?'" for two or three years oscar wilde was so much with whistler that everyone who went to the studio found him there, just as everyone who went into society saw them together. wilde had come up from oxford not long before the ruskin trial, with a reputation as a brilliant undergraduate, winner of the newdigate prize, and he now posed as the apostle of "beauty." many a reputation is lost between oxford and london, but his was strengthened. oscar's witty sayings were repeated and his youth seemed to excuse his pose. whistler impressed him. at oxford wilde had followed ruskin, and broken stones on the road which was to lead the young to art; he had read with pater, he had accepted the teaching of morris and burne-jones, and their master rossetti. but ruskin was impossible to follow, pater was a recluse, rossetti's health was broken, the prehistoric fabians, morris and burne-jones, were the foci of a little group of their own. when wilde came to london whistler was the focus of the world. whistler was sought out, wilde tried to play up. in tite street blue and white was used, not as a symbol of faith, but every day; flowers bloomed, not as a pledge of "culture," but for their colour and form; beauty was accepted as no discovery, but as the aim of art since the first artist drew a line and saw that it was beautiful. whistler knew all this. wilde fumbled with it. whistler was flattered by wilde. he was looked upon as the world's jester when wilde fawned upon him. other young men gathered about whistler had name and reputation to make. but wilde's name was in every man's mouth; he glittered with the glory of the work he was to do. he was the most promising poet of his generation and he was amusing. there was a charm in his personality. we remember when we met him on his lecture tour in america, and hardly knew whether the magnificence on the platform where, in velvet knickerbockers, he faced with calmness rows of college boys each bearing a lily, and stood with composure their collective emotion as he sipped a glass of water, was more wonderful than his gaiety when we talked with him afterwards. it has been said that he gave the best of himself in his talk. if whistler liked always to have a companion, his pleasure was increased when he found someone as brilliant. wilde spent hours in the studio, he came to whistler's sunday breakfasts, he assisted at whistler's private views. whistler went with him everywhere. there were few functions at which they were not present. at receptions the company divided into two groups, one round whistler, the other round wilde. it was the fashion to compare them. to the world that ran after them, that thought itself honoured, or notorious, by their presence, they seemed inseparable. the trouble began when whistler discovered how small was wilde's knowledge of art; he could never endure anybody in the studio who did not understand. whistler wrote of wilde as a man "with no more sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat." _the gentle art_ shows that whistler was furious with wilde's borrowing from him. that wilde took his good where he found it is neither more nor less than what has always been done--what whistler did. but the genius, from the good thus taken, evolves something of his own. wilde was content to shine personally and let the great things expected of him wait. when it was a question of wit, there was no one to whom wilde could go except whistler. it is all expressed in the old story: "i wish i had said that, whistler." "you will, oscar, you will." in matters of art wilde had everything to learn from whistler, who, though ever generous, resented wilde's preaching in the provinces the truths which he had taught for years. this is all in _the gentle art_. "oscar" had "the courage of the opinions ... of others!" and again: "oscar went forth as my st. john, but, forgetting that humility should be his chief characteristic and unable to withstand the unaccustomed respect with which his utterances were received, he not only trifled with my shoe, but bolted with the latchet!" mr. cole, in , noted in his diary that whistler "was strong on oscar wilde's notions of art which he derived from him (jimmy)." mr. herbert vivian tells the story of a dinner given by whistler after wilde had been lecturing: "'now, oscar, tell us what you said to them,' whistler kept insisting, and wilde had to repeat all the phrases, while whistler rose and made solemn bows, with his hand across his breast, in mock acceptance of his guests' applause.... the cruel part of the plagiarism lay in the fact that, when whistler published his _ten o'clock_, many people thought it had all been taken from wilde's lecture." whistler grew more and more exasperated by the use wilde made of him. their intimacy was closest in the early eighties when whistler was bewildering the world deliberately; wilde copied him clumsily. the world, that did not know them, mistook one for the other and thought whistler as much an æsthete as wilde. when _patience_ was produced, and when it was revived a few years ago, bunthorne, who was wilde, appeared with whistler's black curls and white lock, moustache, tuft, eye-glass, and laughed with whistler's "ha ha!" whistler, seeing wilde in a polish cap and "green overcoat befrogged and wonderfully befurred," desired him to "restore those things to nathan's, and never again let me find you masquerading the streets of my chelsea in the combined costumes of kossuth and mr. mantalini!" to be in danger of losing his pose before the world was bad enough, but to be mistaken for another man who rendered him ridiculous was worse. no one has summed up the position better than the _times_ in a notice of wilde's _collected works_: "with a mind not a jot less keen than whistler's, he had none of the conviction, the high faith, for which whistler found it worth while to defy the crowd. wilde had poses to attract the crowd. and the difference was this, that while whistler was a prophet who liked to play pierrot, wilde grew into a pierrot who liked to play the prophet." if whistler ever played pierrot, it was with a purpose. where art was concerned he was serious. wilde was serious about nothing. his two topics were "self and art," and his interest in both was part of his bid for notoriety. he might jest about himself, but flippancy, if art was his subject, was to whistler a crime. the only way he showed his resentment was by refusing to take wilde seriously about anything. even when wilde was married, he was not allowed to forget, for whistler telegraphed to the church, "fear i may not be able to reach you in time for the ceremony. don't wait." later, in paris, he called wilde "oscar, _bourgeois malgré lui_," a witticism none could appreciate better than the parisians. as soon as he began to make a jest of wilde he ended the companionship to which, while it lasted, london society owed much gaiety. the relation between whistler and artists now coming to the studio was less that of friends than of master and followers, as they called themselves. he was forty-six when he returned from venice, and there were few men of the new generation who shared none of the doubts of his contemporaries, but believed in him. the devotion of this group became infatuation. they were ready to do anything for him. families became estranged and engagements were broken off because of him. they fought his battles; ran his errands, spied out the land for him; published his letters, and read them to everybody. they formed a court about him. they exaggerated everything, even their devotion, and became caricatures of him, as excessive in imitation as in devotion. he denied the right of any, save the artist, to speak authoritatively of art; they started a club to train the classes--princes, prime ministers, patrons, ambassadors, members of parliament--to blind faith in master and followers. whistler mixed masses of colours on the palette, keeping them under water in saucers. the followers mixed theirs in vegetable dishes and kept them in milk-cans, labelled floor, face, hair, lips. he had a table-palette; they adopted it, but added hooks to hang their cans of paint on. he used his paint very liquid--the "sauce" of the nocturnes; they used such quantities of medium that as much went on the floor as on the canvas, and, before a picture was blocked in, they were wading in liquid masterpieces. many of his brushes were large; they worked with whitewash brushes. they copied his personal peculiarities. one evening at a dinner when he wore a white waistcoat and all the buttons, because of the laundress, came out, a follower, seeing it buttonless, hurried from the room, and returned with his bulging, sure that he was in the movement. whistler accepted their devotion, and, finding them willing to squander their time, monopolised it. there was plenty for everybody to do in the studio. if they complained that he took advantage of them, he proved to them that the fault was theirs. mr. menpes writes: "we seldom asked whistler questions about his work.... if we had, he would have been sure to say, 'pshaw! you must be occupied with the master, not with yourselves. there is plenty to be done.' if there was not, whistler would always make a task for you--a picture to be taken into dowdeswells', or a copper plate to have a ground put on." no one respected the work of others more than whistler. but if others did not respect it themselves and made him a present of their time he did not refuse. if he allowed the followers to accompany him in his little journeys, it was because they were so eager. when he went with walter sickert and mortimer menpes to st. ives, in the winter of - , they were up at six o'clock because it pleased him; they dared not eat till he rang the bell. they prepared his panels, mixed his colours, cleaned his brushes, taking a day off for fishing if whistler chose, abjuring sentiment if he objected. whistler saw the humour in their attitude and was the more exacting. the followers were not allowed their own opinions. once, when walter sickert ventured to praise leighton's _harvest moon_ at the manchester art treasures exhibition, whistler, hearing of it, telegraphed: "the harvest moon rises over hampstead [where sickert lived], and the cocks of chelsea crow." the followers, however, knew that if they were of use to whistler, he was of infinitely more use to them, and that submission to his rule and exposure to his wit were a small price to pay. mr. sickert tells another story. he and whistler were once printing etchings together, when the former dropped a copper plate. "how like you!" said whistler. five minutes afterwards the improbable happened. whistler, who was never clumsy, dropped one himself. there was a pause. "how unlike me!" was his remark. mr. menpes, who, in _whistler as i knew him_, makes more of the follies than the privileges of the followers, cannot ignore their debt. they worked for him not only in the studio, but in the street, hunting with him for little shops, corners and models, painting at his side, walking home with him after dinner or supper at the club, learning from him to observe and memorise the night. to them he was full of kindliness, when to the world he often seemed insolent and audacious, and after his death--even before--some denied him. later whistler said that the followers were there in the studio; yes, but they never painted there; they were kept well in the background. american artists, in london or passing through, began to make their way to the studio. otto bacher records in whistler's friendliness, the pictures in the studio, their dinners together. in mr. john w. alexander came, commissioned by the _century_ to make a drawing of him for a series of portraits. whistler posed for a little while, though unwillingly, and criticised the drawing so severely that mr. alexander tore it up. after that, he says, whistler posed like a lamb. mr. harper pennington has written for us his reminiscences of those years: "... whistler was more than kind to me. through him came everything. he introduced me right and left, and called me 'pupil'; took me about to picture shows and pointed out the good and bad. i remember my astonishment the first occasion of his giving unstinted praise to modern work, on which he seldom lavished positives. it was at the royal academy before one of those interiors of orchardson's. well, he stood in front of the canvas, his hat almost on his nose, his 'tuft' sticking straight out as it did when he would catch his nether lip between his teeth, and, presently, a long forefinger went out and circled round a bit of yellow drapery, 'it would have been nice to have painted that,' he said, as if he thought aloud. "another day we rushed to the national gallery--'just to get the taste out of our mouths,' he said--after a couple of hours' wandering in the royal academy wilderness of hardy annual horrors. whistler went at once to almost _smell_ the canalettos, while i went across the gallery, attracted by the _marriage à la mode_. it was my first sight of them. up to that day i had supposed that what i was told and had read of hogarth was the truth--the silly rubbish about his being _only_ a caricaturist, so that when confronted with those marvels of technical quality, i fairly gasped for breath, and then hurried over to where whistler had his nose against the largest canaletto, seized his arm, and said hurriedly, 'come over here.' 'what's the matter?' said he, turning round. 'why! hogarth! he was a great painter!' 'sh--sh!' said he (pretending he was afraid that someone would overhear us). 'sh--sh! yes, i _know_ it, ... _but don't you tell 'em_!' later, hogarth was thoroughly discussed and his qualities pointed out with that incisive manner which one had to be familiar with to understand. "whistler was reasonable enough and preferred a joke to a battle any day. often he came to me in the king's road, breathing vengeance against this or that person, but when he went away it was _invariably_ with a _fin sourire_ and one of his little notes. his clairvoyance in the matter of two notes to leighton was made manifest at my writing-table. the p.r.a. wrote a lame explanation to whistler's first query as to why he had not been invited to the academy _soirée_, as president of the r.s.b.a., _ex-officio_, or as whistler. he came into my room one morning early--before i, sluggard, was awake!--and read to me an outline of a note he meant to write, and then wrote it with grace of diction and dainty composition, and the pretty balanced butterfly for signature. when that was done, he turned to me (i was dressing then) and said: 'now, har-r-rpur-r-r.' (he liked to burr those r's in 'down-east' fashion.) 'now, har-r-rpur-r-r, i know leighton, he will _fumble_ this. he will answer so-and-so' (describing the answer leighton actually sent), 'and then i've got him!' he chuckled, wrote another note--the retort to leighton's unwritten answer to whistler's not yet posted first note--which he read to me. that retort was sent almost verbatim, only one slight change made necessary by a turn of phrase in leighton's weak apology! that _was_ 'amazing.' his anger soon burnt out--the jest _would_ come--and the whole thing boiled itself down in the _world_, or a line to 'labby.'" [illustration: nocturne in blue and gold old battersea bridge oil in the national gallery of british art, tate gallery (_see page _)] [illustration: the falling rocket nocturne in black and gold oil in the possession of mrs. s. untermeyer (_see page _)] chapter xxvii: the studio in the fulham road. the years eighteen eighty-five to eighteen eighty-seven. in whistler moved from tite street to fulham road. a shabby gate opened on a shabby lane leading to studios, one of which was his. here lady archibald campbell's and m. duret's portraits were finished. whistler was living at the time with maud in a little house close by, since pulled down, which he called the "pink palace," having painted it himself. he was again hard up, and m. duret, coming to dinner, would buy a good part of it on the way down and arrive, his pockets bulging with bottles and fruit and cake. before long whistler left the "pink palace" for the vale, chelsea--"an amazing place, you might be in the heart of the country, and there, two steps away, is the king's road." it was the first house on the right beyond the iron gates, now demolished. but the whole place has gone. in the _court and society review_ (july , ) mr. malcolm c. salaman described the fulham road studio and the work in progress: "the whitewashed walls, the wooden rafters, which partly form a loft for the stowing away of canvases, the vast space unencumbered by furniture, and the large table-palette, all give the appearance of the working place.... mr. whistler is not so feeble as to aim at theatrical effects in his costume. in the black clothes of ordinary wear, straight from the street, he stands at his easel. to those accustomed to studios the completeness of the arrangement ... in accordance with the scheme of the picture that is in progress is striking, as striking indeed as the personality of the artist. his whole body seems instinct with energy and enthusiasm, his face lit up with flashes of quick and strong thought, as that of a man who sees with his brains as well as with his eyes.... "a word, by the way, about mr. whistler's palette. as i saw it the other day, the colours were arranged almost with the appearance of a picture. in the centre was white and on one side were the various reds leading up to black, while on the other side were the yellows leading up to blue.... "and now a few words about some of the pictures which the master had almost ready for exhibition: a full-length figure of a girl in out-door black dress, with a fur cape and a hat trimmed with flowers. she stands against a dark background, and she _lives_ in her frame. a full-length portrait of mr. walter sickert, a favourite pupil of mr. whistler's and one of his cleverest disciples. he is in evening dress, and stands against a dark wall. this is a picture that velasquez himself would have delighted in. [it has vanished.] a full-length portrait of a man with a spanish-looking head, painted in a manner that is surely of the greatest. [perhaps the portrait of chase or of eldon; both have disappeared.]... a superb portrait of mrs. godwin will rank among mr. whistler's _chefs d'oeuvre_. the lady stands in an ample red cloak over a black dress, against red draperies, and in her bonnet is a red plume. her hands rest on her hips, and her attitude is singularly vivacious. this picture has been painted in artificial light, as has also another of a lady seated in a graceful attitude, with one hand leaning over the back of a chair, while the other holds a fan. she wears a white evening dress, and is seen against a light background. [a picture we cannot identify.] besides these mr. whistler showed me sketches of various groups of several girls on the seashore ... [_the six projects_] and a sketch of _venus_, lovely in colour and design, the nude figure standing close to the sea, with delicate gauze draperies lightly lifted by the breeze. the studio is full of canvases and pictures in more or less advanced stages, and on one of the walls hang a number of pastel studies of nude and partially draped female figures. a portrait-sketch in black chalk of mr. whistler by m. rajon also hangs on the wall." the _further proposition_, which was quoted by mr. salaman, can be read in _the gentle art_. it is whistler's statement that a figure should keep well within the frame, and that flesh should be painted according to the light in which it is seen: the answer to the objection often made to his portraits because the "flesh was low in tone." a year later it was reprinted in the _art journal_ (april ) by mr. walter dowdeswell, whose article was the first appreciation of whistler in an important english magazine. whistler, knowing the value of what he wrote, meant that his writings should be preserved, and he gave to mr. dowdeswell for publication the reply which he had made twenty years earlier to hamerton's criticism of the _symphony in white, no. iii._, but which was not then printed because the _saturday review_, where the criticism appeared, did not publish correspondence. mr. dowdeswell, describing the studio, adds a few details omitted by mr. salaman: "the _soupçon_ of yellow in the rugs and matting; a table covered with old nankin china; a crowd of canvases at the further end, and, pinned upon the wall on the right, a number of exquisite little notes of colour, and drawings of figures from life, in pastels, on brown paper." mr. e. j. horniman, who had a studio near by, tells us that he often saw on the roof of the omnibus stable, just behind it, pictures put out to dry. many who visited the studio were surprised to find whistler working in white. he sometimes wore a white jacket; sometimes took off his coat and waistcoat. he was as fastidious with his work as with his dress. he could not endure a slovenly palette, or brushes and colours in disorder, though the palette had a raised edge to keep the colour off his sleeve. unfortunately, after his wife's death he ruined the two portraits of himself in the white painting jacket, which he never exhibited, by changing the white jacket to a black coat. other reminiscences of fulham road we have from william m. chase, who came to london in , with a suggestion that he and whistler should paint each other; also, that whistler should go back to america and open a school. "well, you know, that anyway will be all right, colonel," as whistler called chase. "of course, everybody will receive me; tug-boats will come down the bay; it will be perfect!" he thought so seriously of going, that he hesitated to send to the london galleries work he would want for america. the two portraits were begun. whistler painted a full-length of chase, in frock-coat and top-hat, a cane held jauntily across his legs. as he wrote afterwards, in a letter included in _the gentle art_, "i, who was charming, made him beautiful on canvas, the masher of the avenues." whistler was delighted with what he had done: "look at this, colonel! look at this; did you ever see anything finer?" "it's meek or modest, they'll have to put on your tombstone!" "say 'and' not 'or'--meek and modest! h'm!--well, you know, splendid, chase!" chase remembers an evening when they were to dine out, and whistler had to go home to dress, and it was almost the hour before he ventured to remind him. then whistler was astonished: "what, chase, you can think of dinner and time when we are doing such beautiful things? stay where you are, and they will be glad to see me whenever i come." everybody who has been with him in the studio knows how difficult it was for him to stop when he was absorbed in his work. mr. pennington says: "whistler's habit of painting long after the hour when anybody could distinguish gradations of light and colour was the cause of much unnecessary repainting and many disappointments, for after leaving a canvas that seemed exquisite in the dusk of the falling night, he would return to it in the glare of the next morning and find unexpected effects that had been concealed by the twilight. whistler never learned to hold his hand when daylight waned. the fascination of _seeming_ to have caught the values led him far into the deceiving shades of night with often disastrous results." whistler's portrait of chase has vanished with many another. chase painted whistler also in frock-coat, without a hat, holding the long cane, against a yellow wall, and his portrait remains. chase intended stopping a short time in london as he passed on to madrid. but he found whistler so delightful that his visit to spain was put off. he has told many incidents of these months spent with whistler in a lecture delivered in the united states, and in an article in the _century_. a lecturer, no doubt, must adapt himself to his audience, and chase has dwelt principally on whistler, the man--whistler, the dandy; whistler, the fantastic, designing, for the tour in america, a white hansom with yellow reins and a white and yellow livery for the nigger driver; whistler, the traveller. they went together to belgium and holland. they stopped at antwerp and saw the international exhibition. whistler said to us once that he could never be ill-natured, only wicked, and this was one of the occasions when he was wicked. in the gallery he refused to look at any pictures except those that told stories, asking chase if the mouse would really scare the cat or the baby swallow the mustard-pot. the first interest he showed was in the work of alfred stevens. before it he stood long; at last, with his little finger pointing to a passage in the small canvas, "h'm, colonel! you know one would not mind having painted that!" chase grew nervous as they approached the wall devoted to bastien-lepage, whom he admired, and he decided to leave whistler. but whistler would not hear of it. "i'll say only one word, chase," he promised. then they came to the bastiens, "h'm, h'm, colonel, the one word--school!" on the journey from antwerp to amsterdam two germans were in the train: "well, you know, colonel, if the almighty ever made a mistake it was when he created the german!" whistler said at the end of a few minutes. chase told him that if he could speak german he might understand their interesting talk. whistler answered in fluent german and talked nothing else, until, at haarlem, chase could endure it no longer and left. whistler leaned out of the window as the train started, "think it over, chase, and to-morrow morning you will come on to amsterdam, and you'll tell me that i'm right about the germans!" one incident not told in print by chase is that while in london he was the owner of the _mother_. an american had given him money to buy pictures, and when he found that the _mother_ was to be had from mr. graves for one hundred pounds he bought it, but first was referred to whistler by mr. graves. whistler, delighted to learn that he could control the pictures deposited with the pall mall firm, agreed to everything, but the agreement, was settled the day before starting for antwerp, and when chase got the money from his bankers and hurried to the graves gallery it was closed, and he gave the cheque to whistler. the picture was his, but only during the time of whistler's absence from london, for on his return whistler could not bear to part with it and promptly sent the cheque back to chase--or it may be that the trip with chase helped him to change his mind. all this is characteristic, but it would be interesting to hear less of his play and more of his work from chase, who gives only a glimpse of whistler the artist, and then in lighter moods. he tells of one occasion when an american wanted to buy some etchings, and they were to lunch with him in the city to arrange the matter. taking a hansom, late of course, they passed a grocer's where whistler stopped the driver: "well, chase, what do you think? if i get him to move the box of oranges? what?" and then, still later, they drove on. another time, chase expressed surprise at whistler's refusing to deliver a picture to the lady who had bought it. but whistler explained: "you know, chase, the people don't really want anything beautiful. they fill a room by chance with beautiful things, and some little trumpery something over the mantelpiece gives the whole damned show away. and if they pay a hundred pounds or so for a picture, they think it belongs to them. well--why--it should only be theirs for a while; hung on their walls that they may rejoice in it and then returned." once, it is said, a lady drove up to the studio and told him: "i have bought one of your pictures, it is beautiful, but as it is always at exhibitions i never see it. but i'm told you have it." "dear lady," said whistler, "you have been misinformed, it is not here." and she drove away. later he found it: "h'm, she was right about one thing, it is beautiful. but because she's paid hundreds of pounds for it, she thinks she ought to have it all the time. she's lucky if she gets it now and then." it must be admitted that it is not easy from any standpoint to write of whistler during the years that followed his return from venice. the decade between and is the fullest of his full life. it was during these ten years that he opened his "one man" shows amidst jeers, and closed them with success. it was during these ten years that he conquered society, though society never realised it. it was during these ten years that, to make himself known, he became in the streets of london the observed of all observers, developing extraordinary costumes, attracting to himself the attention he wanted to attract. it was during these ten years that he began to wrap himself in mystery, as degas said of him, and then go off and get photographed, when, as degas also said, he acted as if he had no genius: but mystery and pose were part of the armour he put on to protect himself from, and draw to himself, a foolish public. it was during these ten years that he invented the followers--and got rid of them; that he flitted from house to house, from studio to studio, and through england, france, belgium, and holland, until it is impossible to keep pace with him; that he captured the press, though it is still unconscious of its capture; that he concentrated the interest of england, of the whole world upon him, with one object in view--that is, to make england, the whole world, look at his work. for, as he said, if he had not made people look at it they never would have done so. they never understood it, they hated it. they do not understand it to-day, and they hate it the more because he has succeeded and they have failed in their endeavours to ignore or ruin him. even now that it is too late, they are crawling from their graves and spitting at him, flinging mud at his memory. in these crowded years two events stand out with special prominence, his _ten o'clock_ and his invasion of the british artists. one states definitely his views on art; the other shows as definitely the position he had attained among artists. chapter xxviii: the ten o'clock. the years eighteen eighty-four to eighteen eighty-eight. into _the ten o'clock_ whistler put all he had learned of art, all he knew to be unchangeable and everlasting. mr. w. c. alexander has told us that when he listened to _the ten o'clock_ at prince's hall, nothing in it was new to him; he had heard it for years from whistler over the dinner-table. the only new thing was whistler's determination to say in public what he had said in private. he was busy with this in the autumn and winter of - . he would come at strange hours and read a page to mr. cole, in whose diary, from october until february, note follows note of his visits: "_october _ ( ). whistler to dine. we passed the evening writing out his views on ruskin, art, etc. "_october ._ jimmy to dinner, continuing notes as to himself and art. "_october ._ writing out whistler's notes for him. "_october ._ jimmy to dine. writing notes as to his opinions on art matters, and discussing whether to offer them for publication to _english illustrated magazine_ edited by comyns carr, or to whom?" mr. g. a. holmes, in his chelsea house, was often roused by the sharp ring and double-knock, followed by whistler with a page or paragraph for his approval. mr. menpes writes that "scores of times--i might almost say hundreds of times--he paced up and down the embankment at night, repeating to me sentences from the marvellous lecture." a marvellous story. during a few days' illness at his brother's in wimpole street, where, when ill, he went, mrs. whistler recalled him sitting, propped up by pillows, reading passages to the doctor and herself. his plan for an article in the _english illustrated magazine_ came to nothing. in november lord powerscourt, mr. ludovici says in the _art journal_ (july ), invited whistler to ireland to distribute prizes at an art school and speak to the students, and nothing was more appropriate than the notes he had written down. mr. cole records: "_november _ ( ). whistler called and told us how he was invited to ireland, where he was sending some of his works, and would lecture in dublin." the invitation came from the dublin sketching club, which held its exhibitions in leinster hall. three other americans--sargent, julian story, and ralph curtis--were invited. no such collection of whistler's work had been seen out of london. mr. booth pearsall, the honorary secretary, sends us this account: "he was exceedingly generous to a club of strangers, lending them twenty-five of his works. this collection included the _mother_, _lady meux_, _carlyle_, a number of nocturnes, and other oils, water-colours, and pastels. the pictures had to be hung together in a group. as i was so interested in them, with mr. whistler's permission, i had them photographed. he never asked for rights or commission, but, in the most gracious, generous way, gave us the permission to use the negatives as we liked. the exhibition was hardly opened before the critical music began, and in the papers and in conversation, a regular tempest arose that was highly diverting to mr. whistler. he begged me to send him everything said about the exhibition, and his letters show he quite enjoyed all the ferment. the whole of dublin was convulsed, and many went to molesworth street to see the exhibition who rarely went to see anything of the kind. then a terrible convulsion took place in the club: a group of members we had admitted, who photographed, got together, and drew up resolutions, that never again should such pictures be exhibited. none of these men could even paint. the talent of the club replied by having mr. whistler elected as hon. member, and it was carried, despite intense resistance. i took an active part in all this. it was with a view to helping mr. whistler that i did my best to have his _ten o'clock_ given in dublin. he was at first disposed to come over, but other matters prevented, and the matter dropped. during the time of the exhibition, i tried my utmost to sell the pictures, and an offer was made by a friend to purchase the _mother_ and the _carlyle_, which seemed to promise well, but ultimately stopped. i did induce the friend to purchase _piccadilly_, which had been no. , _nocturne in grey and gold--piccadilly_ (water-colour), in his exhibition in bond street that may [dowdeswell's]. he was very much pleased indeed, and sent the right hon. jonathan hogg, p.c., a receipt, greatly to mr. hogg's amusement, for an impression was rife that he never did attend to business. i know from friends, who knew mr. whistler, how much pleased he was, not only with the purchase of his pictures, but with the commotion that the exhibition caused." whistler did not give up the idea of a lecture. archibald forbes heard him read, was impressed, and introduced him to mrs. d'oyly carte. she had managed a lecture tour for forbes, now she agreed to arrange an evening for whistler. she told us of his attention to detail. "the idea was absolutely his," she wrote us, "and all i did was to see to the business arrangements. you can imagine how enthusiastic he was over it all, and how he made one enthusiastic too." she was about to produce _the mikado_, and, sure that he would find her in her office at the savoy theatre, he would appear there every evening to talk things over, or would send mr. walter sickert with a message. whistler delighted in her office, a tiny room lit by a lamp on her desk, making strange effects, but his only records of his many visits are in the etchings, _savoy scaffolding_ and _miss lenoir_, mrs. d'oyly carte's name before her marriage. prince's hall was taken. whistler suggested the hour. people were not to rush to him from dinner as to the theatre; therefore ten was as early as one could expect them, and the hour gave the name--_the ten o'clock_. he designed the ticket, he had it enlarged into a poster, he chose the offices where tickets should be sold. there was a rehearsal at prince's hall on february ( ), mrs. d'oyly carte and some of the followers sitting in front to tell him if his voice carried. whistler had his lecture by heart, his delivery was excellent, he needed no coaching, only an occasional warning to raise his voice. it was because he feared his voice would not carry that he gave his nightly rehearsals on the embankment, mr. menpes says. [illustration: _m^r. whistler's_ "_ten o'clock._" _prince's hall, piccadilly._ _on the evening of feb. ._ _carriages at ._ _tickets can be obtained at all the libraries._] on february , , the hall was crowded. reporters expressed the general feeling when they wondered whether "the eccentric artist was going to sketch, to pose, to sing, or to rhapsodise," and were frankly astonished when the "amiable eccentric" chose to appear simply as "a jaunty, unabashed, composed, and self-satisfied gentleman, armed with an opera hat and an eye-glass." others were amazed to see him "attired in faultless evening dress." the followers compared the figure in black against the black background to the _sarasate_, and they recall his hat carefully placed on the table and the long cane as carefully stood against the wall. oscar wilde called him "a miniature mephistopheles mocking the majority." the unprejudiced saw the dignity of his presence and felt the truth and beauty of his words. mrs. anna lea merritt writes us: "it is always a delight to remember that actually once mr. whistler was really shy. those who had the pleasure of hearing the first _ten o'clock_ remember that when he came before his puzzled and distinguished audience there were a few minutes of very palpable stage-fright." he had notes, but he seldom referred to them. he held his audience from the first, and mrs. d'oyly carte recalled the hush in the hall when he came to his description of london transfigured, a fairyland in the night. "i went to laugh and i stayed to praise," is the late lewis f. day's account to us, and others were generous enough to make the same admission. whistler forced his audience to listen because he spoke with conviction. _the ten o'clock_ was the statement of truths which his contemporaries were doing their best to forget. when we read it to-day, our surprise is that things so obvious needed saying. yet the need exists to-day more than ever. almost every one of whistler's propositions and statements has been traduced or ignored by critics, who are incapable of leading thought or are dealers in disguise, and painters compare their puny selves and petty financial scrapes to whistler's magnificent efforts and complete success in his battles for art and his reputation. to this lecture we owe the most interesting profession of artistic faith ever made by an artist. at the time it was given there was a reaction, outside the academy, against the anecdote and sentiment of victorian art. ruskin through his books, the pre-raphaelites through their pictures, had spread the doctrine that art was a question of ethics and industry. pater preached that it belonged to the past, william morris taught that it sprang from the people and to the people must return. strange, sad-coloured creatures clad themselves in strange, sad-coloured garments and admired each other. many besides oscar wilde profitably peddled in the provinces what they prigged or picked up; artists proclaimed the political importance of art; parsons discovered in it a new salvation. "art was upon the town," as whistler said. but ethics and business, fashion and socialism had captured it. _the ten o'clock_ was a protest against the crimes committed in the name of art, against the belief that art belonged to the past or concerned the people, that its object was to teach or to elevate. "art and joy go together," he said, the world's masters were never reformers, never missionaries, but, content with their surroundings, found beauty everywhere. there was no great past, no mean present, for art, no drawing of lines between the marbles of the greek and the fans and broideries of japan. there was no artistic period, no art-loving people. art happened, and, in a few eloquent words, he told the history of its happening and the coming of the cheap and tawdry, when the taste of the tradesman supplanted the science of the artist, and the multitude rejoiced. art is a science--the science by which the artist picks and chooses and groups the elements contained in nature, that beauty may result. for "nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong." he has been so frequently misunderstood that it may be well to emphasise the meaning of these two assertions, the rock upon which his faith was founded. art happens because the artist may happen anywhere at any time; art is a science not because painters maintain that it is concerned with laws of light or chemistry of colours or scientific problems, but because it is exact in its methods and in its results. the artist can leave no more to chance than the chemist or the botanist or the biologist. knowledge may and does increase and develop, but the laws of art are unalterable. because art is a science the critic who is not an artist speaks without authority and would prize a picture as a "hieroglyph or symbol of story," or for anything save the painter's poetry which is the reason for its existence, "the amazing invention that shall have put form and colour into such perfect harmony, that exquisiteness is the result." the conditions of art are degraded by these "middlemen," the critics, and by the foolish who would go back because the thumb of the mountebank jerked the other way. he laughed at the pretence of the state as fosterer of art--art that roams as she will, from the builders of the parthenon to the opium-eaters of nankin, from the master at madrid to hokusai at the foot of fusiyama. his denial of an artistic period or an art-loving people was his defence of art against those who would bound it by dates and confine it within topographical limits. he meant, not that a certain period might not produce artists and people to appreciate them, but that art is independent of time and place, "seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times, as did her high priest, rembrandt, when he saw picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the jews' quarter of amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not greeks. [illustration: the bridge etching. g. by permission of messrs. dowdeswell (_see page _)] [illustration: the doorway etching. g. by permission of the fine art society (_see page _)] "as did tintoret and paul veronese, among the venetians, while not halting to change the brocaded silks for the classic draperies of athens. "as did, at the court of philip, velasquez, whose infantas, clad in inæsthetic hoops, are, as works of art, of the same quality as the elgin marbles." as did, he might have added, whistler, during the reign of victoria, in his portraits and nocturnes which have carried on the art of the world. his argument was clear and his facts, misunderstood, are becoming the _clichés_ of this generation. critics, photographers, even royal academicians have appropriated the truths of _the ten o'clock_, for strange things are happening to the memory of the idle apprentice. he made his points wittily; he chose his words and rounded his sentences with the feeling for the beautiful that ruled his painting. _the ten o'clock_ has passed into literature. those sunday wrestlings with scripture in lowell, that getting of the psalms by heart at stonington developed a style the literary artist may envy. this style in _art and art critics_ had its roughness. he pruned and chastened it in his letters to the papers, devoting infinite thought and trouble to them, for he, more than most men, believed that whatever he had to do was worth doing with all his might. he would write and rewrite them, and drive editors mad by coming at the busiest hour to correct the proof, working over it an hour or more, and then returning to change a word or a comma, while press and printers waited, and he got so excited once he forgot his eye-glass--and the editor stole it, and, of course, later lost it. in his correspondence he was as scrupulous, and we have known him make a rough draft of a letter to his bootmaker in paris, and ask us to dictate it to him while he wrote his fair copy, as a final touch addressing it to m. ----, _maître bottier_. in _the ten o'clock_ he brought his style to perfection. his philosophy, based on the eternal truths of art, was expressed with the beauty that endures for all time. the critics treated whistler's lecture as they treated his exhibitions. the _daily news_ was almost alone in owning that its quality was a surprise. the _times_ had the country with it when it said that "the audience, hoping for an hour's amusement from the eccentric genius of the artist, were not disappointed." "the eccentric freak of an amiable, humorous, and accomplished gentleman," was the _daily telegraph's_ opinion. oscar wilde, in the _pall mall gazette_, was shocked that an artist should talk of art, and was unwilling to accept the fact that only a painter is a judge of painting. this was natural, for as an authority on art wilde had made himself ridiculous. nor could he assent to much that whistler said, for, as a lecturer, he had been a perambulating advertisement for the æsthetic movement, against which _the ten o'clock_ was a protest. but he was more generous than other critics in acknowledging the beauty of the lecture and the earnestness of the lecturer, though he could not finish his notice without one parting shot at the man whose target he had often been: "that he is indeed one of the very greatest masters of painting is my opinion. and i may add that, in this opinion, mr. whistler himself entirely concurs." this was not the sort of thing whistler could pass over. his answer led to a correspondence which made another chapter in _the gentle art_. whistler repeated _the ten o'clock_ several times; early in march before the british artists, and later in the same month (the th) before the university art society at cambridge, where he spent the night with sir sidney colvin, who writes us, "beyond the mere fact that whistler dined with me in hall and had some chat there with prince edward--an amiable youth who was a little scared at the idea of having to talk art (of which he was blankly ignorant) but whom whistler soon put at his ease; i have no precise recollection of what passed." what a pity! on april he gave his lecture at oxford. mr. sidney starr "went down with whistler and his brother, 'doctor willie,' to the mitre. the lecture hall was small, with primitive benches, and the audience was small. the lecture was delivered impressively, but lacking the original emphasis and sparkle. whistler hated to do anything twice over, and this was the fourth time." the fifth time was about the same date, at the royal academy students' club in golden square, an unexplained accident, and the sixth at the fine art society's. dr. moncure conway wrote us a year before his death that he heard _the ten o'clock_ at lady jeune's, but lady jeune does not recollect it. whistler we are sure would have remembered and recorded it. there was a suggestion, which came to nothing, of taking it on an american tour and to paris. it was heard twice more in london, once at the grosvenor gallery in february . val prinsep recalled whistler's "pressing invitation" for him and leighton to attend: "during the time he was president of the british artists, he and the other heads of art sometimes were asked to dine by our president (leighton). 'rather late to ask _me_, don't you think?' whistler remarked. after dinner, he pressed leighton and me to come to his lecture, which was to be delivered a few days after. 'what's the use of me coming?' leighton said sadly. 'you know i should not agree with what you said, my dear whistler!' 'oh,' cried whistler, 'come all the same; nobody takes me seriously, don't you know!'" it was heard for the last time three years later ( ) at the chelsea arts club, which had just started and proposed to hold lectures and discussions; it now gives fancy-dress balls and boxing matches. before the club found a home it was suggested that the first of these meetings should be at the cadogan pier hotel, and whistler was invited to read _the ten o'clock_, but his answer was, "no, gentlemen, let us go to no beer hotel," and _the ten o'clock_ was put off until the clubhouse in the king's road was opened. _the ten o'clock_, originally set up by mr. way, was published by messrs. chatto and windus in the spring of . it had much the same reception when it was printed as when it was delivered. the only criticism whistler took seriously was an article by swinburne in the _fortnightly review_ for june . swinburne objected to whistler's praise of japanese art, to his rigid line between art and literature, to his incursion as "brilliant amateur" into the region of letters, to his denial of the possibility of an artistic period or an art-loving people, and to much else besides. all this might have passed, but swinburne went further. he questioned the seriousness of whistler. he twisted whistler's meaning to suit his weighty humour, and then, in a surprising vein of insolence, re-echoed the popular verdict. the witty tongue must be thrust into the smiling cheek, he thought, when whistler wrote, "art and joy go together," which meant, according to swinburne, that tragic art is not art at all. "'arter that, let's have a glass of wine,' said a famous countryman of mr. whistler's, on the memorable occasion when he was impelled to address his friend mr. brick in the immortal words, 'keep cool, jefferson, don't bust.' the admonition may not improbably be required by the majority of readers who come suddenly and unawares upon this transcendent and pyramidal pleasantry. the laughing muse of the lecturer, '_quam focus circumvolat_,' must have glanced round in expectation of the general appeal, 'after that, let us take breath.' and having done so, they must have remembered that they were not in a serious world; that they were in the fairyland of fans, in the paradise of pipkins, in the limbo of blue china, screens, pots, plates, jars, joss-houses, and all the fortuitous frippery of fusiyama." this is quoted as an example of swinburnian humour. the rest of the article is offensive and ridiculous--the brilliant poet but ponderous prose writer trying to be funny--with references to the "jester of genius," to the "tumbler or clown," to the "gospel of the grin." it was this that hurt--that swinburne, the poet, "also misunderstood," could laugh with the crowd at the "eccentricity" and levity of whistler. swinburne's criticism was easy to answer, and was answered in two of the comments printed, with extracts from the article, in _the gentle art_. "that tragic art is not art at all" is, whistler wrote, swinburne's "own inconsequence," and this _reflection_ appears on the opposite margin: "is not, then, the funeral hymn a gladness to the singer, if the verse be beautiful? "certainly the funeral monument, to be worthy the nation's sorrow buried beneath it, must first be a joy to the sculptor who designed it. "the bard's reasoning is of the people. the tragedy is _theirs_. as one of them the _man_ may weep--yet will the artist rejoice, for to him is not 'a thing of beauty a joy for ever'?" to the _world_ whistler wrote the letter called "freeing a last friend" in _the gentle art_. it is short, the sting in the concluding paragraph: "thank you, my dear! i have lost a _confrère_; but then, i have gained an acquaintance--one algernon swinburne--'outsider'--putney." the letter was sent to swinburne before it appeared in the _world_. we have been told that it was received at putney one sunday morning when mr. watts-dunton was to breakfast with whistler. suspecting that the letter might not be friendly, mr. watts-dunton took it, unopened, with him to chelsea and begged whistler to withdraw it. whistler refused. mr. watts-dunton left the house without breakfasting, and the same day the letter was delivered to swinburne, who, after reading it, pale with rage, swore that never again would he speak to whistler. as a result, mr. watts-dunton, we believe, was at pains to avoid whistler, fearful of a rupture with him. mr. meredith had discovered years before that the springs in whistler were prompt for the challenge, and it cannot be denied that he had reason to see a challenge in swinburne's article. how much it hurt he did not conceal in _the gentle art_, where the extracts from swinburne are followed immediately by _et tu, brute_, and there is nothing more dignified, almost pathetic, in the volume: "... cannot the man who wrote _atalanta_, and the _ballads beautiful_--can he not be content to spend his life with _his_ work, which should be his love, and has for him no misleading doubt and darkness, that he should so stray about blindly in his brother's flower beds and bruise himself!... "who are you deserting your muse, that you should insult my goddess with familiarity, and the manners of approach common to the reasoners in the market-place? 'hearken to me,' you cry, 'and i will point out how this man, who has passed his life in her worship, is a tumbler and a clown of the booths, how he who has produced that which i fain must acknowledge, is a jester in the ring!' "do we not speak the same language? are we strangers, then, or, in our father's house are there so many mansions that you lose your way, my brother, and cannot recognise your kin?... "you have been misled, you have mistaken the pale demeanour and joined hands for an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual earnestness. for you, these are the serious ones, and, for them, you others are the serious matter. their joke is their work. for me--why should i refuse myself the grim joy of this grotesque tragedy--and, with them now, you are all my joke!" and swinburne, in pitiful spite, we have been told, burned whistler's letters, and tried to sell _la mère gérard_ which whistler had given him. later, mr. watts-dunton is said to have stated that whistler asked swinburne to write the article, and also that he tried to make peace between them. chapter xxix: the british artists. the rise. the years eighteen eighty-four to eighteen eighty-six. in the autumn of , whistler joined the society of british artists. years later, when a british artist was dining with us, whistler came in. "a delightful evening," he said, towards midnight, the british artist having gone, "but what was it for the british artist sitting there, face to face with his late president?" and then, he told us how he became connected with the society: "well, you know, one day at my studio in chelsea, a deputation arrived--ayerst ingram and one or two others. and there they were--and i received them charmingly, of course--and they represented to me that the british artists' was an old and distinguished society, possibly as old as the academy, and maybe older, and they had come to ask me if i would do them the honour of becoming a member. it was only right i should know that the society's fortunes were at a low ebb, but they wished to put new life into it. i felt the ceremony of the occasion. whatever the society was at the moment, it had a past, and they were there with all official authority to pay me a compliment. i accepted the offer with appropriate courtesy. as always, i understood the ceremonial of the occasion--and then, almost as soon as i was made a member i was elected president." in the summer of sir alfred east, president of the british artists, and the council, with the courtesy whistler would have approved, gave us permission to consult the minute-books. the first mention of whistler is in the minutes of the half-yearly general meeting, november , , held at the suffolk street galleries, when it was proposed "that mr. whistler be invited to join the society as a member. a discussion took place concerning the law of electing mr. whistler by ballot, when it was proposed by mr. bayliss, seconded by mr. cauty, that the law relating to the election of members be suspended." this was carried, and the _times_ (december , ) said: "artistic society was startled by the news that this most wayward, most un-english of painters had found a home among the men of suffolk street, of all people in the world." whistler had never belonged to any society in england, and had never been asked, though we believe he was a freemason; at any rate he had a pair of sleeve buttons with masonic emblems--apparently--on them. he was fifty, an age when most men have "arrived" officially, if they "arrive" at all. up to this moment he had stood apart from every school and group and movement in the country. he was as much a foreigner as when he came, a quarter of a century before, from paris. he was a puzzle to the people, more american than english in appearance, manners, and standards. his short, slight figure, dark colouring and abundant curls, his vivacity of gesture, his american accent, his gaiety, his sense of honour, his quick resentment of an insult, were foreign and, therefore, to be suspected, and his personality increased the suspicion with which his art was regarded. recent writers have analysed his work and pointed out where it is american, french, japanese. but to his contemporaries it did not matter what these tendencies were, the result was not english. his art, in its aims and methods, was different from theirs, to them he seemed in deliberate opposition, ruled by caprice, straining after novelty and notoriety. when whistler came to england, art was the academy, an academy that had strangled the traditions of art and set up sentiment and anecdote. wilkie explained the ideal of the nineteenth-century academician when he said that "to know the taste of the public--to learn what will best please the employer--is, to an artist, the most valuable of all knowledge"; and the royal academy has only carried on the canny tradition. the classic machines of leighton, tadema, and poynter appealed to the artless scholar; the idylls of millais, marcus stone, and leslie to the artless sentimentalist. watts preached sermons for the artless serious, stacy marks raised a laugh in the artless humorist, herbert and long edified the artless pious. every taste was catered to. everybody could understand, and art had never been so popular in england. the academy became a social power. as art was the last thing looked for on the walls, so the artist was the last thing looked for in the academician. the situation is summed up in whistler's reply to a group of ladies who were praising leighton: "he is such a wonderful musician! such a gallant colonel! such a brilliant orator! such a dignified president! such a charming host! such an amazing linguist!" they chorused. "h'm, paints, too, don't he, among his other accomplishments?" said whistler. it was an extraordinary state of affairs. "art," was little more than an excuse for intrigues and trivialities. men who were thought daring in rebellion and leaders of secessions did not improve matters. the pre-raphaelites were absorbed in subject, though it was of another kind, and though they paid greater attention to technique and preached, as reformers always have, a return to nature. their insistence upon detail and finish, instead of opening their eyes, closed them more hopelessly by making it a duty to see nothing save unimportant facts, and to copy these like a machine. the exception, alfred stevens, who neither stooped to the taste of public or patron, nor confused the artist with the missionary, was as complete a pariah as whistler, and he died unknown and unrecognised. [illustration: the beggars etching. g. by permission of the fine art society (_see page _)] [illustration: the rialto etching. g. by permission of messrs. dowdeswell (_see page _)] the position in france was different. french officialism respected tradition. the art of the academic painters might be frigid, conventional, dull, but it was never petty and trivial, never strove to please by escape from drawing and colour. gleyre, ary scheffer, couture were the masters whistler found in paris. their successors--gérôme, jean-paul laurens, bouguereau, bonnat--did not altogether throw their dignity as artists to the winds of popularity, or sacrifice it to social ambition. the rebels in france were not actuated by moral or literary motives, but broke away from conservatism. rebellion sent holman hunt to palestine, rossetti to mediævalism, burne-jones to legend; it kept courbet at home, for the true was the beautiful and truth was to be found in the life and the people about him. moreover, the painter was to see these things through, not a microscope, but his eyes. no man who looks upon a broad landscape can count the blades of grass in a field, or the leaves of ivy on a wall, or the stars in the heavens; the eye can take in only the whole, enveloped in atmosphere, bathed in light, shrouded in darkness, all things keeping their places in their planes. while in england the artist was searching the scriptures and the encyclopædia for subject, in france he was training his eye to see things as they are and his hand to render them. this preoccupation with nature, and the study of tone, gave artists new pictorial and technical problems, and subject counted for nothing except as an aid to their right solution. it is curious to contrast the work of the men in france and england of the same generation as whistler. fantin-latour grouped his friends about the portrait of delacroix, leighton rearranged a procession of early florentines carrying the madonna of cimabue through his idea of the streets. manet noted the play of light and colour in the bull-rings of spain, tadema rebuilt on his canvas what he thought were the arenas of ancient rome. degas chose his models among the washerwomen and ballet-girls of modern paris, rossetti borrowing his subjects from dante. whistler, from his first picture, was as preoccupied with the beauty in the "familiar" as his french fellow students. what might have happened had he remained in france, it is idle to discuss. coming to england he developed in his own way, and this was a way with which english painters had no sympathy. he was so isolated that nothing has been more difficult for the historian of modern art than to place, to classify him. some authorities have included him among the realists. his work eventually differed from that of courbet and courbet's disciples, but he was always as much a realist as they in his preference for the world in which he lived, and in his study of the relations of the things he found in it. he never wavered, except when he painted the japanese pictures, and then he was not led astray by anecdote or sentiment, but by the beauty that had drifted from japan into his house and studio. london, dirty, gloomy, despised by most artists, with its little shops and taverns in the fog-bound streets; the thames, with its ugly warehouses and gaunt factories in the mist-laden night; the crinolines of the sixties; the clinging, tight draperies of the seventies, became beautiful as he saw them. he made no effort to reform nature, only reserving his right to select the elements that were beautiful and could be brought together, as notes in music, to create harmony, putting into practice his teaching of _the ten o'clock_. he sought colour, mass, not detail. the pre-raphaelites wanted to leave out less than a camera, he wanted to put in no more than came within his vision. he turned his back on history and archæology, and filled his canvas with beauty of line and form. and he struggled to perfect his technical methods, to make of them a perfect medium by which to express this beauty, to reconcile what he could see in nature with what his brush could render. the pre-raphaelites laboured over their canvas, inch by inch; he painted his whole picture at once that unity might result. the academicians lost their way in literary labyrinths; he lingered on the river, learning its secrets, he watched the movement, the pose of people about him. the modern exhibition forced most painters into violent colour and exaggerated action, he made no concession, though he was ready to submit his pictures to the same tests as theirs. it was inevitable that his english contemporaries could make nothing of him and his work. the academician saw but emptiness in his paintings. to the pre-raphaelites they were slovenly and superficial. holman hunt said of him that he knew where to leave off, and was careful in the avoidance of difficulties; millais thought him "a great power of mischief among young men, a man who had never learnt the grammar of his art." the critics took their cue from the painters, the more willingly because art criticism then meant analysis of the subject of a picture, and there was no subject in whistler's work to analyse. yet he never objected to subject. it was only the blind critics and the blind painters of the day who said he did, and their stupidity is still aped. the great pictures for him were velasquez's _meniñas_ franz hals' _family_, tintoretto's _milky way_: the greatest subject-pictures in the world. all he objected to was the cheap drivel or sentiment of the painter whose mind or whose audience never rose above mummie's darling or the mustard pot, the real british school trampled on by hogarth. the public, following their leaders, were convinced that whistler's work was empty, slight, trivial, an insult to their intelligence, unless they took it as a jest. nothing explains the popular conception of him better than the readiness to see eccentricity even in methods which he, "heir to all the ages," had inherited. his long-handled brushes and his manner of placing sitter and canvas were eccentric, though they had been gainsborough's a century before. to say that a picture was finished from the beginning was no less eccentric, though it was baudelaire's axiom that the author foresees the last line of his work when he writes the first. it is easier to make than to lose the reputation for eccentricity, fatal to success in a land of conservatism. whistler saw the englishmen who had studied in paris with him laden with honours; poynter a prosperous painter, leighton a perfect president, du maurier the popular idol of _punch_, armstrong a state functionary at south kensington, while he remained, officially, on the outside, at fifty less honoured than at twenty-five, because, it was said, that he had not realised the promise of his youth. in one respect his position had changed. his contemporaries did not alter their opinion, but younger artists accepted him and his teaching unquestioningly for a time. though doubted and mistrusted, he had never been without influence. to look over old reviews and notices of exhibitions is to find references to the effect of his example. in the _art journal_ (june ), sir walter armstrong traced the growing influence of french on english art to the paris universal exhibition of and to whistler. but artists of the new generation went further than the admission of his influence; with the enthusiasm of youth, they proclaimed his greatness. he was their master--the one master in england. after his return from venice, when his fortunes were at their lowest and the public held him in most contempt, this enthusiasm began to make itself heard and felt in the studios and the schools. the british artists, uncertain of their future, took desperate remedies. the society was old, with distinguished chapters in its history. it was formed by one of the first groups who realised the necessity for an association in self-defence against the monopoly of the academy. it dated back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. with the old water colour society, it was considered only second in rank to the academy. its gallery was in suffolk street, near enough to the academy to profit by any overflow of visitors, until the academy moved from trafalgar square to piccadilly. the old water colour society was more independent, because it is devoted to a branch of art never acknowledged by the academy, though every academician tries to sneak in. but the british artists suffered from this removal, and found a formidable rival in the grosvenor gallery. in whistler, with his following, they seemed to see the man to drag them from the mire into which they had sunk. the older members hesitated--afraid of whistler, afraid of the academy, afraid of themselves. but the younger members carried the day. whistler worked hard for the society from his election till his resignation. he attended his first meeting on december , , and interested himself immediately in the affairs of the society, though, according to mr. ludovici, this was the last thing the society expected of him. he promptly invited his president and fellow members to breakfast in tite street, and, as promptly, was put on a committee for a smoking concert, a dull and ponderous function. he sent to the winter exhibition ( - ) two pictures, _arrangement in black, no. ii._, the portrait of mrs. louis huth, not exhibited in london since , and a water-colour, _a little red note, dordrecht_; in the summer exhibition ( ) he showed the _sarasate_ for the first time. mr. cole wrote in his diary: "_october th_ ( ). m. and i went to tea with whistler to see his fine full-length of sarasate, the violinist, for next year's academy." but whatever his original intention may have been, the _sarasate_ went to suffolk street with several small notes and harmonies. if, in electing him, the british artists hoped to attract attention to their exhibition, they were not disappointed. "the eccentric mr. whistler has gone to a neglected little gallery, the british artists, which he will probably bring into fashion," mr. (now sir) claude phillips wrote in the _gazette des beaux-arts_ (july ), and this is what happened. the distinction of the _sarasate_ could not be denied. but in his other work he was pronounced "vastly amusing," the _pall mall gazette_ seizing this occasion to remind him of "dr. oliver wendell holmes' virtuous determination never to be as funny as he could. it is so bad for the young." soon whistler proposed that sunday receptions should be given in the gallery, and that medals should be awarded. he got mr. menpes in as a water-colourist, thus establishing distinct sections in the society, a scheme he carried out in the international society of sculptors, painters, and gravers, and he suggested that photographs of pictures shown should be sold in the gallery, an idea copied all over the world. for the winter exhibition of - he had another interesting group, including the _portrait of mrs. cassatt_ and a _note in green and violet_. the _mrs. cassatt_ has not been exhibited in england since, and is one of the least known of his portraits. mr. cassatt, who was among the few believers in whistler at this period, came from paris to london in april , especially to have it painted, and was with mrs. cassatt during the sittings at tite street. she has vivid memories of the brilliant talk between the two men. it is amusing that whistler, after having told them the story of _the peacock room_, should have himself arranged for them to see it, and that then they heard leyland's story. mrs. cassatt wanted to be painted in an evening gown. mr. cassatt preferred her riding habit. "the very thing," said whistler, and so in her riding habit and tall hat she stands on the canvas. perhaps it was because of her disappointment that she could not see a likeness in the portrait. whistler realised this, but, he told her, "after all, it's a whistler." mr. cassatt, punctilious in these matters, paid whistler for the painting before he returned to america. two years passed, and still no portrait. whistler had probably kept it back for the british artists. mr. cassatt at last wrote. they had their reward for the delay. a letter of apologies came from whistler and was followed by a case, with not only the portrait in it, but _the chelsea girl_, a painting as little known, and now reproduced for the first time as far as we have record. at the british artists the _note in green and violet_, a small pastel of a nude, created a far greater sensation than the portrait. about a month before the show opened, the late j. c. horsley, r.a., had read, during a church congress, a paper no one would have given a thought to had not whistler immortalised it. horsley said: "if those who talk and write so glibly as to the desirability of artists devoting themselves to the representation of the naked human form, only knew a tithe of the degradation enacted before the model is sufficiently hardened to her shameful calling, they would for ever hold their tongues and pens in supporting the practice. is not clothedness a distinct type and feature of our christian faith? all art representations of nakedness are out of harmony with it." whistler answered with "one of the little things that providence sometimes sent him": "_horsley soit qui mal y pense_," he wrote on a label, and fastened it to the _note in green and violet_. the british artists were alarmed, for to enter suffolk street was not to abandon hope of the academy. the label was removed, not before it had been seen. the critic of the _pall mall_ referred to it as whistler's "indignant protest against the idea that there is any immorality in the nude." whistler, who knew when ridicule served better than indignation, wrote: "art certainly requires no 'indignant protest' against the unseemliness of senility. _horsley soit qui mal y pense_ is meanwhile a sweet sentiment--why more--and why 'morality'?" but the critic could not understand, and he was discovered one day "walking in pall mall with the nude on his arm." the revenue of the society had been rapidly decreasing, a deficit of five hundred pounds had to be faced. to meet it whistler proposed that the luncheon to the press be discontinued. it was an almost general custom then to feast the critics at press views of picture exhibitions. but in few was the cloth more lavishly spread than at the british artists', in few were boxes of cigars and whiskies-and-sodas placed so conveniently. the younger critics resented it, the old ones lived for it. press day, the dreariest in the year at the royal academy, was the most delightful at the british artists', they said. mr. sidney starr tells a story of one, when whistler had not hung his picture, but only the frame: "telegrams were sent imploring the placing of the canvas. but the only answer that came was, 'the press have ye always with you; feed my lambs.' a smoking-concert followed during the exhibition. at this, one critic said to the master, 'your picture is not up to your mark, it is not good this time.' 'you should not say it isn't good; you should say you don't like it, and then, you know, you're perfectly safe; now come and have something you do like, have some whisky,' said whistler." [illustration: portraits of maud oil (destroyed) from photographs lent by pickford r. waller, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: jubilee memorial illumination in the royal collection at windsor castle (_see page _)] in the place of the luncheon, whistler suggested a sunday breakfast when members should pay for themselves and their guests. but members were horrified; his motion was lost. in april , mr. william graham's collection came up for auction at christie's. the sale brought to it the buyers and admirers of rossetti, burne-jones, holman hunt, many of whose pictures graham had bought. whistler's _nocturne in blue and silver (blue and gold), old battersea bridge_ belonged to him. when it appeared "there was a slight attempt at an ironical cheer, which being mistaken for serious applause, was instantly suppressed by an angry hiss all round," and it was sold for sixty pounds to mr. r. h. c. harrison. whistler acknowledged through the _observer_ (april , ), "the distinguished, though i fear unconscious, compliment so publicly paid." such recognition rarely, he said, came to the painter during his lifetime, and to his friends he spoke of it as an unheard-of success, the first time such a thing had happened. the hisses in their ears, the british artists were dismayed by his one contribution to the summer exhibition of . this was a _harmony in blue and gold_, a full-length of a girl in draperies of blue and green, leaning against a railing and holding a parasol, an arrangement, like the _six projects_, uniting classic design with japanese detail. the draperies were transparent, and to defy horsley and the british matron was no part of the british artists' policy. they were doubtless the more shocked when they read the comments in the press. the most amusing revelation of british prudery, worth preserving as typical, appeared in the _court and society review_ (june , ) in a letter, signed "a country collector," protesting against the praise of mr. malcolm salaman, who was the art critic of that paper: "i am invited to gaze at an unfinished, rubbishy sketch of a young woman, who, if she is not naked, ought to be, for she would then be more decent.... the figure is more naked than nude: the colour what there is of it, is distinctly unpleasant. for my part, sir, i will not believe in mr. whistler; my daughters have commanded me to admire him--i will _not_ admire him. how they can quietly stare at the ill-painted, sooty-faced young woman in 'blue and gold' passes me. but things are altered now, and my girls gaze with critical calmness and carefully balanced _pince-nez_ on that which would have sent their grandmothers shrieking from the gallery." and whistler, he declared, was a "poseur" and the picture "a colossal piece of pyramidal impudence." whistler was not represented at the grosvenor, and at the _salon_ only by the _sarasate_, which went afterwards to the "xx" club in brussels. his show in was at messrs. dowdeswell's gallery. they exhibited and published for him the _set of twenty-six etchings_, twenty-one of the plates done in venice, the other five in england, the price fifty guineas. with the prints he issued the often-quoted _propositions_, the first series; the laws, as he defined them, of etching. he said that in etching, as in every other art, the space covered should be in proportion to the means used for covering it, and that the delicacy of the needle demands the smallness of the plate; that the "remarque," then in vogue, emanated from the amateur; that there should be no margin to receive a "remarque"; and that the habit of margin also came from the outsider. for a few years these _propositions_ were accepted by artists. at the present time they are ignored or defied, and the bigger the plate the better pleased is the etcher and his public. later in the year, in may, messrs. dowdeswell arranged in their gallery a second series of _notes--harmonies--nocturnes_. a few were in oil, a few in pencil, but the larger number were pastels and water-colours. they were studies of the nude, impressions of the sea at dieppe and dover, st. ives and trouville, the little shops of london and paris, the skies and canals of holland. whistler decorated the room in brown and gold, choosing the brown paper for the walls, designing the mouldings of the dado. mr. walter dowdeswell has the sketch of the scheme in raw umber, yellow ochre, raw sienna, and white; he has also preserved the brown-and-yellow hangings, and the yellow velarium. on the cover for the mantelpiece, the butterfly, placed to one side, is without a sting. "where is the sting?" mr. dowdeswell asked. "that," whistler said, "is in my waistcoat pocket. i am keeping it for the critics." the exhibition was received with mingled praise and blame, and it would not have been a success financially had not mr. h. s. theobald, k.c., purchased all that earlier buyers left on messrs. dowdeswell's hands. in the following summer mr. burr refused to stand again for the presidency, and at a general meeting (june , ), whistler was elected. the excitement was intense. whistler alone was calm and unmoved. mr. ingram, a scrutineer, remembers coming for whistler's vote and being so excited that whistler tried to reassure him: "never mind, never mind, you've done your best!" the meeting adjourned to the hogarth club for supper. "_j'y suis, j'y reste_," whistler wired his brother. the comic papers were full of caricatures, the serious papers of astonishment. he was hailed as "president whistler" by his friends, and denounced by members of the society as an artist with no claim to be called british. younger painters rushed to his support, and one french critic, marcel roland, prophesied that, "_l'oeuvre de whistler ne quittera son atelier que pour aller tout droit s'ennuyer à jamais sur les murs des grandes salles du louvre. la place est marquée entre paul véronèse et vélasquez._" it was suggested by mr. malcolm salaman that "all the rising young painters to whom we must look for the future of british art will flock to the standard of mr.--why not sir james--whistler, rather than to that of sir frederick leighton"--a prophecy fulfilled in the early days of the international, while the question as to whether whistler would have accepted a knighthood has lately been discussed. he would doubtlessly, could he have done so without losing his american citizenship, but he would not have sold his citizenship for it. honorary rank and british orders could have been conferred upon him, as they are often upon foreign politicians, social nonentities, or useful financiers without loss of their citizenship. but in british orders, as lord melbourne said of the garter, "there is no damn question of merit about it." whistler intended going to america in the fall, but the journey was postponed. he wrote to the _world_ (october , ), "this is no time for hesitation--one cannot continually disappoint a continent," and he settled down to the task of directing the fortunes of a society which looked to him for help, its members divided among themselves in their confidence in him as president. chapter xxx: the british artists. the fall. the years eighteen eighty-six to eighteen eighty-eight. according to the constitution of the british artists the president, though elected in june, does not take office until december. whistler presided for the first time on december , , and from that day he was supported devotedly by one faction and opposed fiercely by the other. for the winter exhibition ( - ) he decorated the galleries with the same care as his own shows. he put up a velarium, he covered the walls with muslin. the muslin gave out, leaving a bare space under the ceiling. "but what matter?" he said, "the battens are well placed, they make good lines," and they became part of the decoration. he would allow no crowding, the walls were to be the background of good pictures well spaced, well arranged. he urged the virtue of rejection. mr. starr says, "he was oblivious to every interest but the quality of the work shown." he told mr. menpes, one of the hanging committee, "if you are uncertain for a moment, say 'out.' we want clean spaces round our pictures. we want them to be seen. the british artists' must cease to be a shop." this was resented. the modern exhibition is a shop, and as long as most painters have their way a shop it will remain. he exhibited _nocturne in brown and gold_ (afterwards _blue and gold_), _st. mark's, venice_--he told the members on varnishing day that it was his best; _harmony in red: lamplight_, mrs. godwin, and _harmony in white and ivory_, lady colin campbell, a beautiful portrait of a beautiful woman, one of many that have disappeared. it was not finished when whistler sent it in, an excuse for dissatisfied members to propose its removal. the question was not put to the meeting when the matter came up, but a proposition to define the rights of the president and the president-elect was carried. one of whistler's first acts was to offer to loan the society five hundred pounds to pay its debts. mr. starr describes him, "during this time of fluctuating finances, pawning his large gold _salon_ medal one day, lending five hundred pounds to the british artists the next. he often found 'a long face and a short account at the bank,' he said one day." he did everything he could to increase the prestige of the society. all that was charming was to be encouraged, all that was tedious was to be done away with. he got distinguished artists to join: charles keene, alfred stevens, and the more promising younger men. he allowed several to call themselves in the catalogue "pupils of whistler," and to make drawings of the gallery and his pictures for the illustrated papers. the sketches of _sarasate_ in the _pall mall's pictures of _, and of _harmony in blue and gold_, and his exhibition at dowdeswell's gallery in _pictures of _ are by him. but after this mr. theodore roussel, mr. walter sickert, mr. sidney starr made the drawings for reproduction. he gave the art union, organised by the society, a plate, _the fish shop--busy chelsea_, one year, and another, a painting done at st. ives. in the march meeting ( ) he proposed a limit of size for exhibits, he contributed twenty pounds towards a scheme of decoration, and he presented four velvet curtains for the doorways in the large room. there is a drawing, showing curtains and velarium, by mr. roussel in the _pall mall's pictures of _. whistler's early _nocturne in blue and gold, valparaiso bay_; _nocturne in black and gold, the gardens_ (cremorne); _harmony in grey, chelsea in ice_, were hung, and with them his latest, _arrangement in violet and pink, portrait of mrs. walter sickert_. this is the first of the two portraits he painted of mrs. sickert, and from her we learned that it was destroyed. most of the members regarded the president's innovations as an interference with their rights. he might pay their debts, that was one thing; it was another to make their gallery beautiful by chucking their pictures. their resentment increased on the occasion of a visit from the prince of wales. whistler stayed late the day before to finish the decoration. when the members came, doors and dados were painted yellow. whistler, with whom great fault was found, refused to have anything further to do with the decorations, though they were unfinished. there was fright carried that evening to a smoking-concert at the hogarth club, where everybody was talking of the arrangement in yellow. he was telegraphed for. "so discreet of you all at the hogarth" was his answer, and he did not appear until it was time to meet the prince, though in the meantime members tried to tone down the yellow. whistler told us: "i went downstairs to meet the prince. as we were walking up, i a little in front with the princess, the prince, who always liked to be well informed in these matters, asked what the society was--was it an old institution? what was its history? 'sir, it has none, its history dates from to-day!' i said." but the old members say that when the prince went downstairs with one of them his remark was: "who is that funny little man we have been talking to?" the dissatisfaction was brought before a meeting, when a proposition was made and passed "that the experiment of hanging pictures in an isolated manner be discontinued," and that, in future, enough works be accepted to cover the vacant space above and below the line--in fact, that the gallery be hung as before. it is said that some members made an estimate of the amount of wall-space left bare, and calculated the loss in pounds, shillings and pence. we saw this exhibition, though we did not see whistler. we remember the quiet, well-spaced walls, and the portrait of mrs. sickert, also works by dannat and william stott. it should not be forgotten that the british artists' was arranged and hung by whistler years before there was any idea of artistic hanging in german secessions--we believe, before there were any secessions. whistler had applied to his own shows the same method of spacing and hanging, and decorating the walls with an appropriate colour-scheme. it had occurred to no one before him that beautiful things should be shown beautifully, and it is not too much to say that the attention given to-day to the artistic arrangement of picture exhibitions is due entirely to whistler. the resurrection of the velarium, designed, made, and hung after his scheme, has revolutionised the lighting of picture galleries, though in very few is his scheme intelligently followed. was queen victoria's jubilee, and every society of artists prepared addresses to her majesty; whistler could not permit his society to appear less ceremoniously loyal. his account to us was: "well, you know, i found that the academy and the institute and the rest of them were preparing addresses to the queen, and so i went to work too, and i prepared a most wonderful address. instead of the illuminated performances for such occasions, i took a dozen folio sheets of my old dutch paper. i had them bound by zaehnsdorf. first came the beautiful binding in yellow morocco and the inscription to her majesty, every word just in the right place--most wonderful. you opened it, and on the first page you found a beautiful little drawing of the royal arms that i made myself; the second page, an etching of windsor, as though 'there's where you live!' on the third page the address began. i made decorations all round the text in water-colour, at the top the towers of windsor, down one side a great battleship plunging through the waves, and below, the sun that never sets on the british empire--what? the following pages were not decorated, just the most wonderful address, explaining the age and dignity of the society, its devotion to her glorious, gracious majesty, and suggesting the honour it would be if this could be recognised by a title that would show the society to belong specially to her. then, the last page; you turned, and there was a little etching of my house at chelsea--'and now, here's where i live!' and then you closed it, and at the back of the cover was the butterfly. this was all done and well on its way and not a word was said to the society, when the committee wrote and asked me if i would come to a meeting as they wished to consult me. it was about an address to her majesty--all the other societies were sending them--and they thought they should too. i asked what they proposed spending--they were aghast when i suggested that the guinea they mentioned might not meet a twentieth of the cost. but, all the time, my beautiful address was on its way to windsor, and finally came the queen's acknowledgment and command that the society should be called royal--i carried this to a meeting and it was stormy. one member got up and protested against one thing and another, and declared his intention of resigning. 'you had better make a note of it, mr. secretary,' i said. and then i got up with great solemnity, and i announced the honour conferred upon them by her gracious majesty, and they jumped up and they rushed towards me with outstretched hands. but i waved them all off, and i continued with the ceremonial to which they objected. for the ceremonial was one of their grievances. they were accustomed to meet in shirt-sleeves--free-and-easy fashion which i would not stand. nor would i consent to what was the rule and tradition of the society. i would not, when i spoke, step down from the chair and stand up in the body of the meeting, but i remained always where i was. but, the meeting over, then i sent for champagne." whistler, as president of the british artists, was invited to the jubilee ceremonies in westminster abbey, and in mr. lorimer's painting he may be seen on one side of the triforium, leighton on the other. _jubilee in the abbey_, an etching, gives his impressions. he was asked also to the state garden-party at buckingham palace, and to the naval review off spithead, when he made the _naval review_ series of plates and at least one water-colour in a day. naturally, when the royal academy neglected to invite him to their _soirée_, though hitherto they had always invited the president of the british artists, he resented it as an insult not only to himself, but to the society. "it really was a pretty little recognition of my own personality beneath the cloak of office," he wrote in an often-quoted letter to leighton, then president of the royal academy. the year before, mr. ayerst ingram had proposed that the society should give a show of the president's work to precede their summer exhibition of . this had met with so many objections that though the motion was not withdrawn as whistler wanted, it was dropped. after the new honours were obtained by him for the society, and while he was travelling in belgium and holland, an effort was made to revive the scheme. mr. ingram did what he could. mr. walter dowdeswell acted as honorary secretary, guarantors were found, owners of pictures were written to. february and march was the time appointed, but whistler doubted the sincerity of the society and would not risk anything less than an "absolute triumph of perfection" for an undertaking made in the name of the british artists or his own. to him no success was worse than failure. at the end of september nothing definite had been arranged, and whistler told mr. ingram that his "solitary evidence of active interest could hardly bring about a result sufficient to excuse such an eleventh-hour effort." he was right. the opposition in the society was strong, and many members were in open warfare with their president. they refused to support him in his proposition that no member of the society should be, or should remain, a member of any other society, and when he followed this with the proposition that no member of the royal society of british artists who was a member of any other society should serve on the selecting or hanging committee, they again defeated him. nor did they persuade him to reconsider the formal withdrawal, on november , of his permission to show his works. he sent, however, several water-colours and the twelve etchings of the _naval review_ to the winter exhibition ( - ), and four lithographs from the _art notes_ published that autumn by the goupils. they were described in the _magazine of art_ (december ) as mere lead pencil "notes reproduced in marvellous _facsimile_," which gave whistler his chance for a courteous reminder in the _world_ to "the bewildered one." the critic might inquire, he said; "the safe and well-conducted one informs himself." within the society he had once more to contend against the opposition to his hanging and spacing, and a fresh grievance was that space was filled with the work of monet, as yet hardly known in england. one of the older members, when he looked at whistler's _red note_, declared, "if he can do that, i'll forgive him--he can do anything." but few could forgive so easily. they objected that "whistler would have his way, and didn't mind if he made enemies in getting it," and they began to whisper that in the matter of the memorial he had been dictatorial. the situation is best described in the words of mr. holmes to us: "with a little more of disraeli and a little less of oliver cromwell, whistler would have triumphed." the crisis came in april , before the summer exhibition. it was suggested that the council communicate with the president as to the removal of temporary decorations which he had designed and they had paid for. one decoration the society did not object to was a velarium, since it meant no loss of wall-space, and when whistler removed this they ordered a new one. whistler, through his secretary, explained to the committee that the velarium was his patent--"a patent taken out by the greeks and romans" is mr. ingram's comment. whistler got out an injunction; when the committee, with their order for the velarium, hurried to hampton's shop, his secretary was at their heels in a hansom with the injunction; the secretary arrived with them at liberty's, but somehow they managed, in the end, to evade him. a velarium was made and put up, and they proceeded to get rid of their president. at a meeting on may a letter, signed by eight members whose names do not appear in the minutes, was read, asking president whistler to call a meeting to request mr. james a. mcneill whistler to resign his membership in the society, and he called the meeting and signed the minutes. the president made a speech, in which he claimed that his action in the matter of the velarium was not inimical to the welfare of the society, but the speech was not recorded. he permitted no one to speak in opposition, and the subject was dropped. at the special meeting called by him the same month there was an exhaustive discussion. whistler declared his position. his opponents presented an array of lawyer's letters, which they said showed that whistler had threatened injunctions, had greatly impeded the executive in the decoration of the galleries, and had influenced many distinguished people to keep away from the private view. a vote was taken for his expulsion, though mr. ingram proposed a vote of censure in its place. whistler refused at first to put the motion to expel himself, but finally was compelled to do so. there were eighteen votes for, nineteen against it, and nine members did not vote. the votes, whistler said, when he addressed the meeting after the ballot, showed that the society approved of his action. mr. francis james at once proposed a vote of censure on those who had signed the letter, but this was not carried. on june , at the annual election, when a whip had been sent round to all members, wyke bayliss was elected president, and whistler resigned from the society, congratulating the members on the election: "now, at last, you must be satisfied. you can no longer say you have the right man in the wrong place!" mr. starr recalls his saying: "now i understand the feelings of all those who, since the world began, have tried to save their fellow men." the minority resigned, as mr. menpes, foreseeing the inevitable, had a month earlier, which led to whistler's comment on "the early rat who leaves the sinking ship." all who had joined the society with him left it with him, and he said "the artists came out and the british remained." mr. menpes describes a supper of the artists after the meeting at the hogarth club. he says he was taken back into favour, and joined the party. "what are you going to do with them all?" he asked. "lose them," said whistler. but he did not lose them all. one or two stayed by him to the end. [illustration: portrait of lady meux harmony in pink and grey oil in the possession of h. c. finch, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: the salute, venice water-colour in the possession of b. b. macgeorge, esq. (_see page _)] whistler, according to the constitution, held office till december, and till december he retained his post. during this time there were meetings. at one he addressed bayliss as baily--to his disgust--but, on this occasion at least, bayliss had an idea and replied, "yes, mr. whistle!" at a meeting on november whistler made a statement of his relations with the society, and his objects and aims concerning it, only referred to in the minutes, and he gave up the chair to wyke bayliss. he had been president two years, a member four. after november , , his name appears in the official records only twice: first on january , , in connection with a dispute over the notice board outside the gallery, and then on july , , when wyke bayliss stated "that, acting on the feeling that it would be the wish of the society, he had ordered a wreath to be sent in the name of the society on the occasion of the funeral of mr. whistler." the newspapers were not so shy of the president as the minute-books. the difference between whistler and the society found the publicity which he could never escape. he said to the men who resigned with him, "come and make history for posterity," and, as usual, he saw that the record was accurate. he had hardly left the society when the notice board, with the butterfly and the lion which he had painted, was altered; he immediately wrote a letter to state the fact in the _pall mall gazette_. reporters and interviewers gave the british artists' reasons for their late president's resignation and his successor's qualifications for the post. whistler lost no time in explaining his position and giving his estimate of the new president. it cannot be said too often that his letters to the press, criticised as trivial and undignified, were written deliberately that "history might be made." many pages of _the gentle art_ are filled with his relations with the british artists. the gaiety of his letters was mistaken for flippancy, because the more solemn and ponderous the "enemies" became, the more "joyous" he grew in disposing of them. he did not spare the british artists. the _pall mall_ undertook to describe the disaster of the "whistlerian policy" in suffolk street by statistics and to extol the strength of wyke bayliss: "the sales of the society during the year were under five thousand pounds; , under six thousand; , under seven thousand; , under eight thousand; (the first year of mr. whistler's rule), they fell to under four thousand; , under three thousand; , under two thousand; and the present year, , under one thousand.... the new president ... is ... the hero of three bond street 'one-man exhibitions,' a board-school chairman, a lecturer, champion chess-player of surrey, a member of the rochester diocesan council, a shakespearean student, a fellow of the society of cyclists, a fellow of the society of antiquarians, and public orator of noviomagus." whistler's answer, serious in intention, gay in wording, pointed out "the, for once, not unamusing 'fact' that the disastrous and simple painter whistler only took in hand the reins of government at least a year after the former driver had been pitched from his box and half the money-bags had been already lost! from eight thousand to four thousand at one fatal swoop! and the beginning of the end had set in!... 'four thousand pounds!' down it went; three thousand pounds, two thousand pounds--the figures are wyke's--and this season, the ignominious 'one thousand pounds or under' is none of my booking! and when last i saw the mad machine it was still cycling down the hill." whistler was disappointed, though he did not show it. he was seldom invited to join anything, nor did he rush to accept the rare invitation. he would take no part in the art congress started in the eighties, despite an effort to entangle him; he would do no more than "bestow his benison" upon the movement in to organise a national art exhibition, led by walter crane, holman hunt, and george clausen. but to the british artists he had given his time and energy during four years, he had dragged the society out of the slough in which it was floundering and made its exhibitions the most distinguished and most talked-about in london. wyke bayliss, who never understood him, wrote: "whistler's purpose was to make the british artists a small, esoteric set; mine was to make it a great guild of the working artists of this country." whistler said: "i wanted to make the british artists an art centre; they wanted to remain a shop." wyke bayliss and his successor were knighted, as presidents of royal societies usually are; whistler, who obtained the title and charter of the society, was ignored. ten years later, as president of the international society of sculptors, painters, and gravers, he not only recommended, but carried out his schemes and theories: the decoration of the galleries, the refusal of bad work no matter who sent it, the proper hanging of the pictures accepted, the making of the exhibitions into artistic events, the interesting of the public in them, the insistence that each artist should only support his own society's exhibitions and should belong to no other society. he was dictatorial, but without a dictator nothing can be done, and at the british artists each british artist wanted to lead. his presidency began in mistrust and ended in discord. for whistler it had an advantage, especially abroad, where artists began to regard him with deference. chapter xxxi: marriage. the year eighteen eighty-eight. "i don't marry," whistler said, "though i tolerate those who do." but before he left the british artists' he did marry. his wife was beatrix godwin, widow of e. w. godwin, the architect of the white house and for years whistler's champion in the press. godwin died on october , , and whistler married on august , . mrs. whistler was the daughter of john birnie philip, remembered as one of the sculptors who worked on the awful albert memorial. she was large, so that whistler was dwarfed beside her, dark and handsome, more foreign in appearance, but not in person, than english. whistler delighted in a tradition that there was gipsy blood in her family. she had studied art in paris and with him, and he was proud of her as a pupil. her work included several decorative designs, and a series of etchings made to illustrate the english edition of van eeden's _little johannes_. only a few of the plates were finished, and of these some proofs were shown in the first exhibition of the international society and in the paris memorial exhibition, while mr. heinemann had the intention of publishing a series of illustrations which she and whistler drew on the wood. mr. labouchere held himself responsible for the marriage, and told the story in _truth_ (july , ): "i believe that i am responsible for his marriage to the widow of mr. godwin, the architect. she was a remarkably pretty woman and very agreeable, and both she and he were thorough bohemians. i was dining with them and some others one evening at earl's court. they were obviously greatly attracted to each other, and in a vague sort of way they thought of marrying. so i took the matter in hand to bring things to a practical point. 'jemmy,' i said, 'will you marry mrs. godwin?' 'certainly,' he replied. 'mrs. godwin,' i said, 'will you marry jemmy?' 'certainly,' she replied. 'when?' i asked. 'oh, some day,' said whistler. 'that won't do,' i said, 'we must have a date.' so they both agreed that i should choose the day, what church to come to for the ceremony, provide the clergyman, and give the bride away. i fixed an early date, and got the then chaplain of the house of commons [the rev. mr. byng] to perform the ceremony. it took place a few days later. "after the ceremony was over, we adjourned to whistler's studio, where he had prepared a banquet. the banquet was on the table, but there were no chairs. so we sat on packing-cases. the happy pair, when i left, had not quite decided whether they would go that evening to paris or remain in the studio. how unpractical they were was shown when i happened to meet the bride the day before the marriage in the street: "'don't forget to-morrow,' i said. 'no,' she replied, 'i am just going to buy my trousseau.' 'a little late for that, is it not?' i asked. 'no,' she answered, 'for i am only going to buy a new toothbrush and a new sponge, as one ought to have new ones when one marries.'" the wedding took place at st. mary abbott's, kensington, in the presence of dr. and mrs. whistler, one of mrs. godwin's sisters, mrs. whibley, and three or four others. mr. labouchere gave the bride away and mr. jopling-rowe was best man. whistler had recently left fulham road and the vale, with its memories of maud, for the tower house, tite street, and the suddenness of his marriage gave no time to put things in order. there were not only packing-cases in the dining-room--usually one of the first rooms furnished in every house he moved into--but the household was in most respects unprepared for the reception of a bride. the wedding breakfast was ordered from the café royal, and the bride's sister hurriedly got a wedding cake from buszard's. the rest of the summer and autumn was spent in france, part of the time in boulogne. mr. and mrs. cole, on "_august _ ( ). met jimmy and his wife on the sands: they came up with us to rue de la paix, down to bathe. jimmy sketching on sands; the w.'s turned up after lunch. with jimmy to the iron and rag _marché_ near boulevard prince albert [no doubt in search of old paper as well as of subjects]. he sketched (water-colours) a dingy shop. later we dined with them at the casino. pleasant _parti à quatre_. jimmy in excellent form. leaving to-morrow." from boulogne they went to touraine, stopping at chartres, most of the time lost to their friends, as they intended to be lost. it was whistler's first holiday. he was taking it lazily, he wrote to mrs. william whistler, in straw hat and white shoes, rejoicing in the grapes and melons, getting the pleasure out of it that france always gave him. but he got more than pleasure. he brought back to london about thirty plates of tours and loches and bourges, and settled down in london to wind up his connection with the british artists'. whistler was devoted to his wife, who henceforth occupied a far more prominent position in his life than could have been imagined. indeed his life was entirely changed by his marriage. he went less into society and had less time for his art. during months he was a wanderer, and while he wandered his painting stopped. not that mrs. whistler was indifferent to art. she was sympathetic. he liked to have her in the studio; when she could not come he brought the pictures he was painting home for her to see. he consulted her in his difficulties, she shared his troubles, she rejoiced in his triumphs. but it cannot be denied that the period of great schemes came to an end with his marriage. although later he painted exquisite pictures, there are no canvases like the _mother_ and _carlyle_, the _sarasate_ and _the yellow buskin_. this was no doubt the result partly of his pleasure in his new domestic conditions, partly of circumstances that prevented him from remaining long enough in one place for continuous work to be possible. an artist must give himself entirely to his work, or else have a very different temperament from whistler's. after a year or so in london and two or three happy years in paris which mrs. whistler said she did not deserve, her health necessitated wandering again. commissions at last came, but mrs. whistler's illness left him no chance to carry them out. he said to us one day: "now, they want these things; why didn't they want them twenty years ago, when i wanted to do them, and could have done them? and they were just as good twenty years ago as they are now." few large portraits begun during these years were completed. and after his wife's death he struggled in vain to return to the old conditions of continuous effort to which the world owes his greatest masterpieces. it is true that his work never deteriorated till the last, that, as he said, he brought it ever nearer to the perfection which alone could satisfy him. he never produced anything finer in their way than _the master smith_ and _the little rose of lyme regis_, painted towards the end of his married life, or the series of children's heads of his latest years. but these were planned on a smaller scale and required less physical effort than the large full-lengths and the decorative designs he longed to execute, but was never able to finish, sometimes not even to begin. whistler, with advancing years, became more sure of himself, more the master, but circumstances forced him to find his pleasure and exercise his knowledge in smaller work. chapter xxxii: the work of the years eighteen eighty to eighteen ninety-two. these years were full, for though few large paintings were completed, there were many small oils, water-colours, pastels, etchings, and lithographs. whistler, going and coming in england or on the continent, had trunks and bags with compartments for his colours, plates, and lithographic materials. it is impossible to say, he did not know, the exact number of small works he produced during this period. he had used water-colour since his school-days, but, until he went to venice, not to any extent. some of the venetian drawings show that he was then scarcely master of it. but the results he finally got, both in figure and landscape, were admirable. he touched perfection in many a little angry sea at dieppe, or note in holland, or impression of paris. as not many are dated it may never be known when this mastery was reached. he probably would not have been sure of the dates. we have gone through drawers of the cabinet in his studio with him, when he expressed the utmost surprise on finding certain things that he had forgotten, and was unable to say when they were painted or drawn. he suffered from this confusion and realised the importance of making a complete list of his works, with their dates and there were various projects and commencements. after several attempts he found it took too much time. we know that he asked mr. freer to trace his pictures in america and mr. d. croal thomson to do the same in england. miss birnie philip finally swore in the law courts that what he wanted was for us to prepare a complete catalogue. between and he made ninety plates in england. they begin with _regent's quadrant_. then follow little shops in chelsea, gray's inn, westminster, the wild west (earl's court), whitechapel, sandwich, the jubilee, and many figure subjects. there is also the _swan and iris_, the copy of an unfinished picture by cecil lawson for mr. edmund gosse's _memoir_ of the painter ( ), another unsuccessful attempt at reproduction. it was the only plate, since those published by the junior etching club, made as an illustration _billingsgate_ was issued in the _portfolio_ ( ) and hamerton's _etching and etchers_ ( ), _alderney street_ in the _gazette des beaux-arts_ ( ), _la marchande de moutarde_ in _english etchings_ ( ), but these were etched with no idea of their publication in magazine or book. the english plates are simple in subject, and they have been therefore dismissed as unimportant by unimportant people. but many are delightfully composed and full of observation. whistler carrying the small plates about with him, sketched on copper, with the knowledge of a lifetime, the subjects he found as other artists sketch on paper. three etchings were made at the wild west probably in an afternoon; one at westminster abbey during the jubilee service of ; and ten to thirteen of the jubilee naval review in a day--plates that prove triumphantly his power of giving his impressions with a few lines of his etching-needle. in the autumn of he went to belgium with dr. and mrs. william whistler, stopping at brussels, ostend, and bruges. in brussels he etched the hôtel de ville, the guildhalls, the little shops and streets and courts, intending to issue the prints as a set. m. octave maus, who knew him, says "he was enchanted with the picturesque and disreputable quarter of _les marolles_ in the old town. he was frequently to be met in the alleys which pour a squalid populace into the old high street, engaged in scratching on the copper his impressions of the swarming life around him. when the inquisitive throng pressed him too hard, the artist merely pointed his graver at the arm, or neck, or cheek of one of the intruders. the threatening weapon, with his sharp spiteful laugh, put them at once to flight." sometimes dr. and mrs. whistler found him, safe out of the way of the crowd, in the bandstand of the grande place, where several of the plates were made. these are another development in technique. with the fewest, the most delicate, lines he expressed the most complicated and the most picturesque architecture. the plates were probably bitten with little stopping-out, and they are printed with a sharpness that shows their wonderful drawing. m. duret has said to us that in them whistler gives "_les os de l'architecture_." a very few proofs were pulled. the set was never issued. the etchings described as in touraine are those done on his wedding journey and at other times. they also have never been published as a set. as in belgium, great architecture suggested his subjects, and his treatment shows that if, as a rule, he refrained from rendering architecture, it was from no desire to evade difficulties, as ignorant critics suppose. the line is more vital and the biting more powerful than in the belgian plates. the year after his marriage ( ) he etched seventeen plates in and around dordrecht and amsterdam, including _nocturne--dance house_, _the embroidered curtain_, _the balcony_, _zaandam_, in which he surpassed rembrandt in rembrandt's subject. his success is the more surprising because scarcely anywhere does the artist sketch under such difficulties as in holland. the little dutch boys are the worst in the world, and the grown people as bad. in amsterdam, the women in the houses on one of the canals, where whistler worked in a boat, emptied buckets of water out of the windows above him. he dodged in time, but had to call on the police, and, he told us, the next interruption was a big row above, and "i looked up, dodging the filthy pails, to see the women vanishing backward being carried off to wherever they carry people in holland. after that, i had no more trouble, but i always had a policeman whenever i had a boat." [illustration: the yellow buskin arrangement in black oil in the wilstach collection, memorial hall, philadelphia (_see page _)] [illustration: portrait of m. thÉodore duret arrangement in flesh-colour and pink oil in the metropolitan museum, new york (_see page _)] in the dutch plates he returned to the methods perfected at venice in _the traghetto_ and _the beggars_. after he brought them back to london he was interviewed on the subject in the _pall mall gazette_ (march , ), and is reported to have said: "first you see me at work on the thames. now, there you see the crude and hard detail of the beginner. so far, so good. there, you see, all is sacrificed to exactitude of outline. presently and almost unconsciously i begin to criticise myself and to feel the craving of the artist for form and colour. the result was the second stage, which my enemies call inchoate and i call impressionism. the third state i have shown you. in that i have endeavoured to combine stages one and two. you have the elaboration of the first stage and the quality of the second." though we hesitate to accept the words as his, this is an interesting statement and a suggestive description. in some of the dutch plates there is more detail than in the venetian, and yet form is expressed not by the detail of the thames series but by line. no etcher had got such fullness of colour without a mass of cross-hatching that takes away from the freshness. it is interesting to contrast his distant views of the town of amsterdam and the windmills of zaandam with rembrandt's etchings of the same subjects, and to note the greater feeling of space and distance that whistler gives. the work is more elaborate and delicate than in previous plates, so delicate sometimes that it seems under-bitten. but his method necessitated this. he drew with such minuteness that hardly any of the ground, the varnish, was left on the plates, and when he bit them, he could only bite slightly to prevent the modelling from being lost. he never had been so successful in applying his scientific theories to etching, and rarely more satisfied with the results. his first idea was to publish the prints in a set, through the fine art society, but the fine art society were so foolish as to refuse. a few were bought at once for the south kensington and windsor collections, and several were shown in the spring of at mr. dunthorne's gallery. about this time we returned to london, and j. commenced to write occasionally in the london press, succeeding mr. george bernard shaw as art critic on the _star_. this is his impression, written when he saw them (april ): "i stepped in at dunthorne's the other afternoon to have a look at the etchings of amsterdam by mr. whistler. there are only eight of them, i think, but they are eight of the most exquisite renderings by the most independent man of the century. with two exceptions they are only studies of very undesirable lodgings and tenements on canal banks, old crumbling brick houses reflected in sluggish canals, balconies with figures leaning over them, clothes hanging in decorative lines, a marvellously graceful figure carelessly standing in the great water-door of an overhanging house, every figure filled with life and movement, and all its character expressed in half a dozen lines. the same houses, or others, at night, their windows illuminated and casting long trailing reflections in the water, seemed to be singularly unsuccessful, the plate being apparently underbitten or played out. at any rate that was the impression produced on me. [we know now and have explained the reason for this.] another there was, of a stretch of country looking across a canal, windmills beyond drawn as no one since rembrandt could have done it, and in his plate the greatest of modern etchers has pitted himself against the greatest of the ancients, and has come through only too successfully for rembrandt. there are three or four others, i understand, not yet published, but this certainly is the gem so far. the last is a great drawbridge, with a suggestion of trees and houses, figures and boats, and a tower in the distance, done, i believe, from a canal in amsterdam. this is the fourth distinct series of etchings which mr. whistler has in the last thirty or thirty-five years given the world: the early miscellaneous french and english plates; the thames series, valued by artists more than by collectors, though even to the latter they are worth more than their weight in gold; the venetian plates; and now these; and between while, portraits as full of character as rembrandt's, studies of london and brussels, and i know not what else besides have come from his ever busy needle. had mr. whistler never put brush to canvas, he has done enough in these plates to be able to say that he will not altogether die." that was j.'s opinion then, and he has not had to change it. during whistler made a large number of lithographs, excellently catalogued by t. r. way, who printed most of them and was, consequently, qualified for the task. three, _the winged hat_, _the tyresmith_, and _maunder's fish shop, chelsea_, were published this year in the short-lived occasional weekly _the whirlwind_, edited by herbert vivian and stuart erskine "in the legitimist cause" and to their own great amusement. drawings by sidney starr after three of whistler's pictures appeared, and the editors boasted in their own pages within a few weeks that the lithographs, issued for a penny, could be had only for five shillings. five guineas would now be nearer the price. another lithograph, _chelsea rags_, came out in the january number ( ) of the _albemarle_, a monthly edited by hubert crackanthorpe and w. h. wilkins, one of those gay experiments in periodical literature no longer made in this sad land. the four were called _songs on stone_, the later title for a proposed portfolio of lithographs in colour which mr. heinemann announced but never issued. chapter xxxiii: honours. exhibitions. new interests. the years eighteen eighty-nine to eighteen ninety-one. official recognition of whistler in england was followed by official honours abroad. while president of the british artists he was asked for the first time to show in the international exhibition at munich ( ). he sent _the yellow buskin_ and was awarded a second-class medal. the best comment was whistler's letter of acknowledgment to the secretary, whom he prayed to convey to the committee his "sentiments of tempered and respectable joy" and "complete appreciation of the second-hand compliment." but soon after he was elected an honorary member of the bavarian royal academy, and, a year later, was given a first-class medal and the cross of st. michael. in he was made chevalier of the legion of honour and received a first-class medal at the paris universal exhibition. another gold medal was awarded to him at amsterdam, where he was showing the _mother_, _the fur jacket_, and _effie deans--arrangement in yellow and grey_. we have heard that israels and mesdag, who were little in sympathy with whistler, objected to giving him a medal, but james maris insisted. the year before mr. e. j. van wisselingh had bought from messrs. dowdeswell _effie deans_, which he had seen in the edinburgh international exhibition of , though it was skied. he sold it within a short time to baron van lynden, of the hague, then making his collection, bequeathed by the baroness van lynden in to the rijks museum at amsterdam. the picture is almost the only one to which whistler gave a literary title, except the pastel _annabel lee_. _effie deans_ is apparently a portrait of maud, and it belongs to the period of _the fur jacket_ and _rosa corder_. the butterfly was added later. the painting was not signed when bought by baron van lynden, who, hearing from van wisselingh that whistler was in holland, asked him to sign it. whistler not only did so, but we believe then added the quotation from the _heart of midlothian_ written at the bottom of the canvas: "she sunk her head upon her hand and remained seemingly unconscious as a statue," the only inscription on any of his paintings that we have seen. walter sickert says that it was added by some one else, but as whistler saw the picture in and made no objection to it, mr. sickert's statement scarcely seems correct. few things pleased whistler more than the honours from amsterdam, munich, and paris. to celebrate the bavarian medal and decoration his friends gave him a dinner at the criterion, may , . mr. e. m. underdown, q.c., was in the chair, and mr. w. c. symons hon. secretary. two royal academicians, sir w. q. orchardson and mr. alfred gilbert, were present, and also sir coutts lindsay, stuart wortley, edmund yates--atlas, who never failed him--and many others. whistler was moved, and not ashamed to show it. stuart wortley, in a speech, said that whistler had influenced every artist in england; orchardson described him as "a true artist"; and this time atlas spoke, not only with the weight of the _world_ on his shoulders, but with praise and affection. whistler began his speech with a laugh at this "age of rapid results when remedies insist upon their diseases." but his voice is said to have been full of emotion before the end: "you must feel that, for me, it is no easy task to reply under conditions of which i have so little habit. we are all even too conscious that mine has hitherto, i fear, been the gentle answer that sometimes turneth not away wrath.... it has before now been borne in upon me that in surroundings of antagonism i may have wrapped myself for protection in a species of misunderstanding, as that other traveller drew closer about him the folds of his cloak the more bitterly the winds and the storm assailed him on his way. but, as with him, when the sun shone upon him in his path, his cloak fell from his shoulders, so i, in the warm glow of your friendship, throw from me all former disguise, and, making no further attempt to hide my true feeling, disclose to you my deep emotion at such unwonted testimony of affection and faith." this was the only public testimonial he ever received in england, and one of the few public functions at which he assisted. he seldom attended public dinners, those solemn feasts of funeral baked meats by which "the islander soothes his conscience and purchases public approval." we remember that he did not appear at the first dinner of the society of authors, where his place was beside ours--a dinner given to american authors, at which lowell presided. j. recalls an artists' dinner at which whistler was seated on one side of the chairman and charles keene on the other. some brilliant person had placed sir frederick wedmore next to whistler, who had more fun at the dinner than the critic. he rarely was seen in the city, and rarely was asked in paris. as an outsider, he was never invited to the academy. even little private functions, like the johnson club, to which j. has taken him, he did not care for. it is so easy to be bored, so difficult to be amused, on such occasions. he preferred not to run the risk. of gentle answers that turn not away wrath there were plenty in . at the universal exhibition in paris, whistler, an american, naturally proposed to show with americans. _the yellow buskin_ and _the balcony_ were the pictures he selected; he sent twenty-seven etchings, knowing that, in a big exhibition, a few prints make no effect. the official acknowledgment was a printed notice from general rush c. hawkins, "cavalry officer," commissioner for the american art department: "sir,--ten of your exhibits have not received the approval of the jury. will you kindly remove them?" whistler's answer was an immediate journey to paris, a call on general hawkins, the withdrawal of all his prints and pictures, to the general's embarrassment. whistler wrote afterwards to the _new york herald_, paris edition: "had i been properly advised that the room was less than the demand for place, i would, of course, have instantly begged the gentlemen of the jury to choose, from among the number, what etchings they pleased." twenty-seven etchings, unless specially invited, were rather a large number to send to any exhibition. he had been already asked to contribute to the british section, and to it he now took the two pictures and ten prints. though general hawkins' action is as incomprehensible as his appointment to such a post, whistler made a mistake. there is no doubt that, had his seventeen accepted prints remained in the american section, he would have had a much better show than in the english, where only ten were hung and where, for etching, seymour haden, and not whistler, was awarded a _grand prix_. "whistler's grievance" got into the papers, and the letters and interviews remain in _the gentle art_. if in he identified himself with the british, it was due solely to the discourtesy, as he considered it, of his countrymen. there was no denial of his nationality, and, though later always invited to show in the british section of international exhibitions, he always refused when there was an american section. in the new gallery took over the played-out traditions of the grosvenor, but whistler did not follow to regent street. his _carlyle_, several drawings, and many etchings went to the glasgow international exhibition that year, and he was well represented at the first show of the pastel society at the grosvenor. he was more in sympathy with the new english art club than any other group of artists. it was then youthful and enthusiastic, most of the younger men of promise or talent belonged, and it might have accomplished great things had its founders been faithful to their original ambition. whistler was never a member, but he sent a _white note_ and the etching of the _grande place, brussels_, to the exhibition in , and _rose and red_, a pastel, in , when he was elected by the votes of the exhibitors to the jury. to the infinite loss of the club he never showed again. in the same year ( ), at the institute of the fine arts at glasgow, the _mother_ strengthened the impression made by the _carlyle_ the year before; there was a show of his work in may at the college of working women in queen square, london; and _the grey lady_ was included in an exhibition at the art institution, chicago, in the fall. the show at queen square was remarkable. it is said to have been "organised by mr. walter sickert, by permission of miss goold (head of the college), and opened by lord halsbury." there had not been such a representative collection of his work since his exhibition of . the _mother_, _carlyle_, _rosa corder_, _irving_ were there, many pastels and water-colours, and many etchings of all periods from the thames series to the last in touraine and belgium. we have never seen a catalogue. we remember how it impressed us when we came to the fine queen anne house in the quiet, out-of-the-way square, how indignant we were to find nobody but a solitary man and a young lady at the desk, and how urgently we wrote in the _star_ that, "if there were as many as half a dozen people who cared for good work, they should go at once to see this exhibition of the man who has done more to influence artists than any modern." there is a legend of whistler's coming one day, taking a picture from the wall and walking away with it, despite the protest of the attendant and the principal of the college, wishing, so the legend goes, to carry out the theory he was soon to assert that pictures were only "kindly lent their owners." but the story of his making off with it across the square, followed by the college staff screaming "stop thief!" and being nearly run in by a policeman, is a poor invention. his desire, however, to keep his pictures in his possession, his hope that those who bought them would not dispose of them, was growing, and his disgust when they were sold, especially at increased prices, was expressed in his answer to some one who said, "staats forbes tells me that that picture of yours he has will be the last picture he will ever part with." "h'm," said whistler, who had had later news, "it is the last picture he has." in march whistler moved to no. cheyne walk, an old house with a garden at the back, farther down the embankment, close to rossetti's tudor house. it was panelled from the street door to the top. a cool scheme of blue and white decorated the dining-room, where there was one perfect painting over the mantel, and, mr. francis james has told us, the _six projects_ hung for a while on the walls. the drawing-room on the first floor was turned into a studio, there was a bedroom above, but the rest of the house was empty and bare. from m. gérard harry we have an explanation of this bareness: "i remember a striking remark of whistler's at a garden-party in his chelsea house. as he caught me observing some incompletely furnished rooms and questioning within myself whether he had occupied the house more than a fortnight or so: 'you see,' he said, with his short laugh, 'i do not care for definitely settling down anywhere. where there is no more space for improvement, or dreaming about improvement, where mystery is in perfect shape, it is _finis_--the end--death. there is no hope, nor outlook left.' i do not vouch for the words, but that was certainly the sense of a remark which struck me as offering a key to much of whistler's philosophy, and to one aspect of his original art." on september , , mr. cole, calling at cheyne walk, "found him painting some excellent portraits--very strong and fine." what all these were it is difficult to say, though one was the well-known _harmony in black and gold--comte robert de montesquiou-fezensac_, whistler's fourth portrait of a man in evening dress. another may have been the second portrait never finished, which montesquiou described to edmond de goncourt, who made a note of it in his _journal_ (july , ): "montesquiou tells me that whistler is now doing two portraits of him: one is in evening dress, with a fur cloak over his arm, the other in a great grey cloak with a high collar, and, just suggested, a necktie of a mauve not to be put into words, though his eyes express the colour of it. and montesquiou is most interesting to listen to as he explains the method of painting of whistler, to whom he gave seventeen sittings during the month spent in london. the first sketch-in of his subject is with whistler a fury, a passion: one or two hours of this wild fever and the subject emerges complete in its envelope. then sittings, long sittings, when, most of the time, the brush is brought close to the canvas but does not touch it, is thrown away, and another taken, and sometimes in three hours not more than fifty touches are given to the canvas, every touch, according to whistler, lifting a veil from the sketch. "oh, sittings! when it seemed to montesquiou that whistler, by that intentness of observation, was draining from him his life, something of his individuality, and, in the end, he was so exhausted that he felt as if all his being was shrinking away, but happily he discovered a certain _vin de coca_ that restored him after those terrible sittings." j. went only once to no. cheyne walk. then it was to consult whistler concerning sir hubert von herkomer's publication of photogravures of pen-drawings in _an idyl_, and description of them as etchings. whistler received j. in the white-panelled dining-room, where he was breakfasting on an egg. sickert came in and was at once sent out--with a letter. whistler felt the seriousness of the offence, and he lent his support to w. e. henley's _national observer_, in which the affair was exposed and in which also the queen was called upon to remove herkomer from his post as slade professor at the university of oxford. from this time j. saw whistler oftener, meeting him in clubs, in galleries, in friends' houses, occasionally at solferino's, the little restaurant in rupert street which was for several years the meeting-place, a club really, for the staff of the _national observer_. nobody who ever lunched there on press day at the academy, or the new english art club, or the new gallery is likely to forget the talk round the table in the corner. never have we heard r. a. m.--"bob"--stevenson more brilliant, more paradoxical, more inspiriting than at these midday gatherings. whistler's first encounter with henley's paper, then edited in edinburgh, was a sharp skirmish which, though he afterwards became friendly with henley, he never forgot nor forgave. henley was publishing a series of articles called _modern men_, among whom he included whistler, "the yankee with the methods of barnum." the policy of the _national observer_ was to fight, everybody, everything, and it fought with spirit. but it had no patience with the battles of others. of whistler the artist it approved, but not of whistler the writer of letters, whom it pronounced rowdy and unpleasant. "malvolio-macaire" was its name for him. at last, in noticing sheridan ford's _gentle art_, of which we shall presently have more to say, it continued in the same strain, and a copy of the paper containing the review, "with proud mark, in the blue pencil of office," was sent to whistler. he answered with a laugh at "the thick thumb of your editorial refinement" pointed "in deprecation of my choice rowdyism." two things came of the letter--one amusing, the other a better understanding. whistler's answer finished with a "regret that the ridiculous 'romeike' has not hitherto sent me your agreeable literature." romeike objected; he had sent eight hundred and seven clippings to whistler: he demanded an apology. whistler gave it without hesitation: he had never thought of romeike as a person, and he wrote, "if it be not actionable permit me to say that you really are delightful!!" no one could appreciate the wit, the fun of it all better than henley, and he was the more eager to meet whistler. his account of the meeting, when it came about, was coloured by the enthusiasm that made henley the stimulating person he was. "and we met," he would say, throwing back his great head and laughing with joy, though he gave no details of the meeting. henley managed to find "the earnest of romance" in everything that happened to him. "and there we were--whistler and i--together!" he would repeat, as if it were the most dramatic situation that could be imagined. the bond between them was their love of the thames. henley was the first to sing the beauty of the river that whistler was the first to paint, and when he wrote the verses (_no. xiii._ in _rhymes and rhythms_) that give the feeling, the magical charm of the nocturnes, he dedicated them to whistler. big and splendid as a viking, exuberant, emphatic, henley was not the type physically to interest whistler. the sketch of him (made in ) is one of whistler's least satisfactory lithographs, and only six impressions were pulled. but their relations were cordial, and when the _national observer_ was transferred to london and henley returned with it, whistler sometimes came to the dinners of the staff at solferino's. henley had gathered about him the younger literary men and journalists: rudyard kipling, "bob" stevenson, j. m. barrie, marriott watson, g. s. street, vernon blackburn, fitzmaurice kelly, arthur morrison, charles whibley, kenneth grahame, george w. steevens. after mr. astor bought the _pall mall gazette_ its staff was largely recruited from the _national observer_, and mr. henry cust, the editor, and mr. ivan-muller, the assistant editor, joined the group in the room upstairs. when dinner was over and henley was thundering at his end of the table, the rest listening, whistler sometimes dropped in, and the contrast between him and henley added to the gaiety of the evening: henley, the "burly" of stevenson's essay on _talk and talkers_, "who would roar you down ... bury his face in his hands ... undergo passions of revolt and agony"; whistler, who would find the telling word, let fly the shaft of wit that his eloquent hands emphasised with delicate, graceful gesture. his "ha ha!" rose above henley's boisterous intolerance. when "bob" stevenson was there--"spring-heel'd jack"--the entertainment was complete. but each of the three talked his best when he held the floor, and we have known whistler more brilliant when dining alone with us. from solferino's, at a late hour when henley, as always in his lameness, had been helped to his cab, whistler and j. would retire with "bob" stevenson and a little group to the savile, where everything under heaven was discussed by them, professor walter raleigh, reginald blomfield, and charles furse frequently joining them, and they rarely left until the club was closed. whistler would, in his turn, be seen to his cab on his way home, and a smaller group would listen to "bob" between piccadilly and westminster bridge, waiting for him to catch the first morning train to kew. whistler seldom left without some parting shot which his friends remembered, though he was apparently unconscious of the effects of these bewildering little sayings as he returned to his house in cheyne walk. there he was often followed by his new friends and often visited by the few "artists" he had not cared to lose, especially mr. francis james and mr. theodore roussel. a few followers continued to flutter at his heels. portraits of some of those who came to cheyne walk are in the lithograph of _the garden_: mr. walter sickert, mr. sidney starr, mr. and mrs. brandon thomas. mr. walter sickert had married miss ellen cobden, and she was a constant visitor. so also were henry harland, later editor of the _yellow book_, and mrs. harland; wolcot balestier, the enterprising youth who set out to corner the literature of the world, and who, with mr. s. s. mcclure, was bent on syndicating everybody, including whistler; miss carrie balestier, now mrs. rudyard kipling; an american journalist called haxton, with a stammer that whistler adored to the point of borrowing it on occasions, though he never could manage the last stage when words that refused to be spoken had to be spelled. another was andré raffalovitch, a russian youth and poet, whose receptions brought together many amusing as well as fantastic elements of london society. but the most intimate friend he made at this period was mr. william heinemann, and this brings us to the great event of , the publication of _the gentle art of making enemies_. chapter xxxiv: "the gentle art." the year eighteen ninety. for years whistler's letters to the papers puzzled the people. george moore laboured to account for them in _modern painting_ by an elaborate theory of physical feebleness, and george moore has been taken seriously in the provinces and america. one glimpse of whistler at the printing-press, sleeves rolled up showing two strong arms, and the theory and the theorist would have been knocked out. the letters were not an eccentricity; they were not a weakness. from the first, written to the _athenæum_ in , they had one aim, "to make history." buried in the papers, they were lost; if the history were to be made they must be collected. they were collected and edited as _the gentle art of making enemies as pleasingly exemplified in many instances, wherein the serious ones of this earth, carefully exasperated, have been prettily spurred on to unseemliness and indiscretion, while overcome by an undue sense of right_. the book, born of years of fighting, was ushered into the world by a fight. the work of collecting and arranging the letters was undertaken by mr. sheridan ford, an american journalist in london. whistler said that ford only helped him. ford said that the idea was his, that he, with whistler's approval, was collecting and editing the letters for a publication of his own. we give ford's story and that of one who followed it at the time, mr. j. mclure hamilton, and this we are better pleased to do because whistler misunderstood mr. hamilton's part in the matter, and credited him with a malice and enmity that few men could be so incapable of as he. whistler would never consent to meet him and could not understand why we should not agree in his view of mr. hamilton as "a dangerous person." by accident they did meet in our flat. whistler was dining with us, mr. and mrs. hamilton called in the evening. other people were there, and they simply ignored one another; chance had blundered in its choice of the moment for the meeting. we think whistler would have felt the unfairness of his judgment of mr. hamilton's conduct could he have read mr. hamilton's version which he has sent us: "in the spring of i met mr. and mrs. sheridan ford. sheridan ford was writing for the _new york herald_, and mrs. sheridan ford had been interesting picture-dealers in the work of swan, clausen, melville, and others. ford had a very strong taste for art, and seemed to be opposed to all forms of trickery, and was engaged on a series of articles which appeared in the _new york herald_, london edition, upon whistler and his work. he was also the author of _art, a commodity_, a pamphlet widely read both in england and america. he came to me one day, and told me of an idea that he thought could be carried out with advantage to himself and whistler. he suggested that the letters which whistler had been publishing from time to time in the press should be published in book form. the title was to be _the gentle art of making enemies_, and was, i understood, ford's. whistler and he had talked the matter over, and it was agreed between them that ford should collect the letters, edit them with remarks of his own, and publish the book for his own profit. "the work went on for some months, and occasionally ford would bring me letters that he had unearthed from the newspaper files at the british museum to read. i was not acquainted with whistler, but from what ford told me i understood that whistler was as much interested in the progress of the book as ford. the latter seemed to be looking forward with great eagerness to the production of a book which could not fail to amuse the art world. "one morning ford came to me at alpha house in great distress. he brought with him a letter from whistler requesting him to discontinue the making of the book, and containing a cheque for ten pounds in payment for the trouble that he had had in collecting the materials. the book at that time was almost complete, and the preface written. after a prolonged talk with him upon all the bearings of the case, i concluded that whistler's change of mind had been determined by the discovery that there would be too much credit and profit lost to him if he allowed ford to bring out the work, and that probably mrs. whistler had suggested to whistler that it would be a great gain to him if he were to issue the letters himself. ford asked me what i would advise him to do. i replied that i personally would not go on with the book, but that if he were careful to omit _all copyright matter_ he would be perfectly justified in continuing, after having, of course, returned the cheque to whistler. i have no doubt that ford asked the advice of others, for soon he brought me the advance proofs to read, and i spent a great deal of time going over them, sometimes suggesting alterations and improvements. a note from ford reached me telling me that the book was finished, and asking my permission to dedicate it to me. i wrote, in reply, that i did not wish the work dedicated to me. ford found a good publisher who was willing to undertake the publication of the work, and, as far as i could see, everything was going on satisfactorily, when one morning ford called to see me and told me that whistler had discovered the printer and had threatened to proceed against him if he did not immediately destroy the sheets, and he (whistler) found and seized the first sewn-up copy (or leaves) with my name on the dedication page, in spite of the refusal i had given. [the dedication was as follows: "dedicated to john mclure hamilton, a great painter and a charming comrade. in memory of many pleasant days." the proposed title was _the gentle art of making enemies. j. mcneill whistler as the unattached writer. with some whistler stories old and new. edited by sheridan ford. brentano's. london, paris, new york, washington, chicago, _. both dedication and title we have seen in ford's handwriting.] "this brought at once a letter from whistler to me, in which he abruptly accused me of assisting ford in wronging him. i replied in a few words denying his allegations. at this interview ford's manner was strange, and for several weeks after he was confined to his house, a natural consequence of seeing all his hopes shattered. he had foreseen in the successful production of _the gentle art of making enemies_ the opening of a happy and profitable career in letters. after his recovery mr. and mrs. ford went away, pursued by the relentless activity of whistler. in the end, the so-called 'pirated edition,' paper-bound, appeared in mechlin or some other continental city and was more or less clandestinely offered for sale in england. whistler's handsome volume appeared almost simultaneously. "while these incidents were progressing, i was asked to dine at the hogarth club, and it had evidently been prearranged that i should meet whistler after dinner in the smoking-room. this was my first introduction to the great master. we talked art and commonplace, but he never touched upon the subject of the book, and as i was quite sure the meeting had been arranged in order that he might discuss with me ford's conduct, i could not understand his silence. our next meeting was at a _conversazione_ held at the grosvenor galleries, when we both freely discussed together the whole question before melville, who was displeased at the attitude i took with whistler. i frankly told him that i thought he had done ford a great wrong in withdrawing the editorship of the book which rightly belonged to him." sheridan ford, persisting that whistler had conferred on him the right to publish the collection, announced the simultaneous publication of his book in england and america. the english publishers, messrs. field and tuer, of the leadenhall press, supposed that ford was acting for whistler when he brought them the ms., which at that time is said to have been called _the correspondence of james mcneill whistler_. the text was set up and cast, the type distributed; they were ready to print when they discovered their mistake. "we then sent for the person in question," they wrote to messrs. lewis and lewis, whistler's solicitors, "and told him that until he obtained mr. whistler's sanction, we declined to proceed further with the work." sheridan ford went to antwerp, and had the book printed there. sir george lewis followed and seized the edition at the printers on the day of publication, when vans for its distribution were at their door. the two thousand copies were carried off by the _procureur du roi_. the matter came before the belgian courts in october , m. edmond picard and _maître_ maeterlinck, cousin of maeterlinck the poet, appearing for whistler. m. harry, of the _indépendance belge_, described whistler in the witness-box, with the eyes of a mephistopheles flashing and sparkling under the thick eyebrows, his manner easy and gay, his french fluent and perfect. he was asked his religion and hesitated. the judge, thinking to help him, suggested, "a protestant, perhaps?" his answer was a little shrug, as much as to say, "i am quite willing. you should know. as you choose!" he was asked his age--even the belgian reporter respected his objection to having any. judgment was given for him. sheridan ford was sentenced to a fine of five hundred francs or three months' imprisonment; to three thousand francs damages or three months more; to the confiscation of the two thousand copies, and to costs. after the trial whistler was taken to the cellars of the palais de justice, and shown the confiscated copies, stored there with other fraudulent goods, by the law of belgium destined to perish in dampness and gloom. the affair has not been forgotten in belgium--nor has whistler. one impression has been written for us by m. edmond picard, the distinguished senator, his advocate: "_en me demandant de parler de l'illustre et regretté whistler, vous ne désirez certes pas que j'ajoute mon lot à la riche pyramide d'admiration et d'éloges définitivement érigée à sa gloire._ "_il ne peut s'agir, dans votre pensée que de ce que je pourrais ajouter de spécial et de pittoresque à la biographie du grand artiste._ "_si j'ai beaucoup vu et aimé ses oeuvres, je n'ai qu'entrevu son originale personne._ "_voici deux traits intéressants qui s'y rapportent._ "_il y a quelques années il s'inquiéta d'une contrefaçon qu'un étranger habitant anvers avait perpétré en belgique de son curieux livre, 'l'art charmant de se faire des ennemis.' je le vis un jour entrer dans mon cabinet et il me dit avec un sourire sarcastique, 'je souhaiterais que vous fussiez mon avocat dans cette petite affaire parcequ'on m'a dit que vous pratiquez aussi bien que moi l'art charmant de se faire des ennemis.'_ "_le procès fut gagné à anvers avec la collaboration de mon confrère, m. maeterlinck, parent du poète qui honore tant notre pays. on célébra chez lui cette victoire. quand whistler, héros de la fête, arriva dans l'hospitalière maison, il s'attardait dans l'antichambre. la bonne qui l'avait reçu vint, avec quelque effarement, dire en flamand au salon où l'on attendait, 'madame, c'est un acteur; il se coiffe devant le miroir, il se pommade, il se met du fard et de la poudre!' après un assez long intervalle, whistler parut, courtois, correct, ciré, cosmétiqué, pimpant comme le papillon que rappêle son nom et qu'il mit en signature sur quelques-uns des billets qu'il écrivit alors à ses conseils._ "_et voilà tout ce que je puis vous offrir._ "_j'ai demandé à m. maeterlinck les documents qu'il pouvait avoir conservés de cet épisode judiciaire. ses recherches ont été vaines. alors que d'innombrables pièces insignifiantes ont été conservées, le hasard qui se permet tout à fait disparaître ces précieuses épaves._"[ ] the "extraordinary piratical plot," as whistler called it in _the gentle art_, did not end in antwerp. sheridan ford took the book to paris, where it was issued by delabrosse et cie, , though it is said by mr. don c. seitz to have been printed in ghent; in antwerp, mr. ford recently told an interviewer--this edition we have seen; while other copies, with the imprint of frederick stokes and brother, were sent to the united states. sir george lewis suppressed the paris edition and prevented the importation of the book into england, and messrs. stokes cabled to london that their name was used without their permission. the balance of the edition is stated to have been destroyed by fire. copies through the post reached england, sent to newspapers for review and to individuals supposed to be interested, among whom we were included. in june a so-called "second edition" from paris was received by some papers. mr. seitz says that hardly any copies are in existence. sheridan ford says that nine thousand were sold. but that was the last heard of it, and sheridan ford's book was killed. judging from the facts, whistler treated ford badly, but sheridan ford acted in defiance of whistler, and in the paris edition published an article so vile that papers refused to print it. three versions are given as to the cause of the quarrel. the first is that mrs. whistler interfered and told whistler to take the work over himself; the second is sheridan ford's statement that whistler wished m. duret to prepare the book; and the third is the suggestion of mr. seitz that the difference arose over the insertion of a letter of oscar wilde's. as this letter was printed in whistler's edition, mr. seitz's conclusions are of little value and his assertions differ from sheridan ford's contemporary tale. whistler's version, published by sheridan ford in the letter dated august , , is: "i think, for many reasons, we would do well to postpone the immediate consideration of the proposed publication for a while. at this moment i find myself curiously interested in certain paintings, the production of which might appropriately be made anterior to mere literature." we have heard that he was urged to come to this decision by mr. theodore roussel, who told him he ought to prepare the book, pay sheridan ford, and get rid of him. whistler obtained possession of sheridan ford's work, or rather of his letters collected by sheridan ford, arranged them, commented on them, and published them in his own fashion. sheridan ford's book is undistinguished; whistler's contains on every page evidence of his care in carrying out his ideas of book decoration. whistler, who was delighted with mr. william heinemann's artistic instinct, sympathy, enthusiasm, and quick appreciation of his intention, gave him the book to publish. from the day their agreement was signed the publisher entered into the matter with all his heart. whistler's fights were his fights, whistler's victories his victories. whistler was flattered by his understanding of things and came daily almost to take out his "publisher, philosopher, and friend," as he described mr. heinemann, to breakfast at the savoy. he would arrive at eleven, when the business man had hardly got into the swing of his morning's work. was it not preposterous that there should be other books to be prepared, other matters to be thought of, while this great work of art was being born? the savoy balcony overlooking the embankment was, at so early an hour, deserted, and there they could discuss, change, and arrange every detail without interruption. hours were spent often over a single butterfly, and usually whistler's pockets were full of gay and fantastic entomological drawings. whistler was constantly at the ballantyne press, where the book was printed. he chose the type, he spaced the text, he placed the butterflies, each of which he designed to convey a meaning. they danced, laughed, mocked, stung, defied, triumphed, drooped wings over the farthing damages, spread them to fly across the channel, and expressed every word and every thought. he designed the title-page; a design contrary to established rules, but with the charm, the balance, the harmony, the touch of personality he gave to everything, and since copied and prostituted by foolish imitators who had no conception of its purpose. mr. maccall, of the ballantyne press, has told us of his interest and has a proof of it in a collection of butterflies and proof sheets covered with whistler's corrections. here, too, as everywhere by those he worked with, he is remembered with affection, and the printers were delighted to profit by his suggestions. the cover was in brown, with a yellow back. the title, though attributed to sheridan ford, can be traced to whistler's speech at the criterion dinner and the gentle answer that turneth not away wrath. the dedication is: "to the rare few, who, early in life, have rid themselves of the friendship of the many, these pathetic papers are inscribed." the book was published in june and has gone through eight editions, messrs. john m. lowell and co., and then messrs. putnam's sons, issuing it in america. it met the fate of all his works. the press received it with the usual smile at mr. whistler's eccentricities, and here and there a word of praise and appreciation said with more courage than of old. to the multitude of readers it was a jest; to a saving remnant it was serious, to none more serious than to whistler, who knew it would live with the writings of cellini, dürer and reynolds. _the gentle art_ is an artistic autobiography. whistler gave the sub-title _auto-biographical_ to one section--he might have given it to the whole. he had a way, half-laughing, half-serious, of calling it his bible. "well, you know, you have only to look and there it all is in the bible," or "i am afraid you do not know the bible as you should," he often said to us in answer to some question about his work or his life. the trial, the pamphlets, _the ten o'clock_, the _propositions_, the letters, the catalogues take their place and appear in their proper sequence, not as disconnected, inconsequent little squibs and the elaborate bids for notoriety they were supposed to be. the book, which may be read for its wit, is really his manifesto. he included also the criticisms and comments that had provoked him into print, for his object was to expose the stupidity and ridicule he was obliged to face, so that his method of defence should be understood. to read the book is to wonder the more that there should have been necessity for defence, so simple and right is his theory, so sincere and reverent his attitude. we have spoken of most of the different subjects in it as they appeared. the collection intensifies the effect each made individually. everything he wrote had the same end: to show that "art should be independent of all clap-trap; should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. all these have no kind of concern with it, and that is why i insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.'" it was for the "knowledge of a lifetime" his work was to be valued, he told the attorney-general in court. in this paragraph, and in this answer, you have the key to _the gentle art_. fault may be found with arguments; facts and methods may be challenged. but analysis, description, technical statement, and explanation are so many proofs of his belief in the independence of art and of his surrender to that untiring devotion which the "goddess" demands of her disciples. it would seem impossible that his statement of simple truths should have been suspected, were it not remembered that art in england depended mostly on "clap-trap" when whistler wrote, and that his manner of meeting suspicion was intended to mystify. he took care that his book should be the expression not only of his belief but of his conception of art. stupidity in critics and public hurt him as much as insincerity in artists, and when confronted with it he was pitiless. dullness, too, he could not stand. he met it with "joyousness": to be "joyous" was his philosophy of life and art, "where all is fair," and this philosophy to the multitude was an enigma. his letters to the press are apt to be dismissed as shrill, cheap, thin, not worthy a great artist, still unworthier of his endeavour to immortalise them. it is true that he might have omitted some things from _the gentle art_, though the names and ridicule he found for the "enemies" will stick to them for ever. but whistler thought "history" would be half made if he did not leave on record both the provocation he received and his gaiety of retaliation. when the battle was won and recognition came he wrote to atlas from paris: "we 'collect' no more." _messieurs les ennemis_ had no longer to fear for their "scalps." oftener than not the wit is cruel in its sting. we have quoted the "f f f ... fool" letter. there are others more bitter, because gayer on the surface, to tom taylor, for instance that final disposing of him: "why, my dear old tom, i never _was_ serious with you even when you were among us. indeed, i killed you quite, as who should say without seriousness, 'a rat! a rat!' you know, rather cursorily." whistler had the power of expressing himself in words which is rare with artists. he could write, he had style. literature, no less than art, was to him a "dainty goddess." he worked out his shortest letter as carefully as a portrait or a nocturne, until all trace of labour in it had disappeared. people, awed by the spectacle of ruskin wallowing amid the many volumes of _modern painters_ without succeeding in the end in saying what he wanted, could not believe that whistler was saying anything that mattered when he said in a few pages what he wanted with no sign of labour. in his notes to _truth_ and the _world_, as in _the ten o'clock_, he reveals his knowledge of the scriptures, while his use of french which displeased his critics, his odd references, his unexpected quotations, are placed with the same unerring instinct as the butterfly on his canvas. he chose the right word, he made the division of paragraphs effective, punctuation was with him an art. it is difficult to give examples, because there are so many. _the ten o'clock_ is full of passages that show him at his best, none finer than the often-quoted description of london "when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil." the _propositions_ and _the red rag_ are as complete, as simple and direct as his prints. the book, as an exposition of his beliefs and doctrines, ranks with reynolds' _lectures_; as a chronicle of an artist's adventures, it is as personal and characteristic as the _memoirs of cellini_. we have been criticised for devoting so much space to whistler's wit and his writings, but as a wit and writer whistler will live. he was a many-sided man, not a lop-sided painter. the period of the preparation and publication of _the gentle art_ was one of unimportant quarrels. in each case there was provocation. of two or three so much was made at the time that they cannot be ignored. one, in , was with mr. menpes, who, making no secret of it, has recorded its various stages until the last, when the follower adopted the master's decorations and arrangements in his own house. his _home of taste_ was paragraphed in the papers, and whistler held him up to the world's ridicule as "the kangaroo of his country, born with a pocket and putting everything into it." the affair came to a crisis not long after the _times_ parnell disclosures, and whistler wrote to him: "you will blow your brains out, of course. pigott has shown you what to do under the circumstances, and you know your way to spain. good-bye." once afterwards, at a public dinner, whistler saw mr. menpes come into the room on mr. justin mccarthy's arm: "ha ha! mccarthy," he laughed as they passed him. "ha ha! you should be careful. you know, damien died." in augustus moore, brother of george, was added to the list of "enemies." the cause was an offensive reference to godwin, mrs. whistler's first husband, in _the hawk_, an insignificant sheet moore edited. whistler, knowing that he would find him at any first-night, went to drury lane for the autumn production, _a million of money_, and in the foyer hit moore with a cane across the face, crying, "hawk! hawk!" there was a scrimmage, and whistler, as the man who attacked, was requested to leave the house. the whole thing was the outcome of a sense of honour, a feeling of chivalry, which is not now understood in england, though it would have been found magnificent in the days of duels. the comic papers made great fun of the episode, and the serious ones lamented the want of dignity it showed. no one understood whistler's loyalty and his devotion to the woman he had married. [footnote : see appendix at end of volume.] chapter xxxv: the turn of the tide. the years eighteen ninety-one and eighteen ninety-two. the world owed him a living, whistler said, but it was not until that the world began to pay the debt with the purchase of the _carlyle_ for glasgow and the _mother_ for the luxembourg. while the _carlyle_ was at the glasgow institute in , mr. e. a. walton and sir james guthrie made up their minds to try to keep it for the city. since the attempt to secure it for edinburgh, the glasgow school had become a power, and as they proclaimed themselves followers of whistler, it was only right they should do everything to retain the picture in glasgow. a petition was presented to the glasgow corporation, signed by a long list of names of influential people, which greatly pleased whistler, for they included gilbert, orchardson, millais, walton, guthrie, and many others. the price asked by whistler was a thousand guineas, and a deputation from the corporation came to call on him in london. whistler told us: "i received them, well, you know, charmingly, of course. and one who spoke for the rest asked me if i did not think i was putting a large price on the picture--one thousand guineas. and i said, 'yes, perhaps, if you will have it so!' and he said that it seemed to the council excessive; why, the figure was not even life-size.' and i agreed. 'but, you know,' i said, 'few men are life-size.' and that was all. it was an official occasion, and i respected it. then they asked me to think over the matter until the next day, and they would come again. and they came. and they said, 'have you thought of the thousand guineas and what we said about it, mr. whistler?' and i said, 'why, gentlemen, why--well, you know, how could i think of anything but the pleasure of seeing you again?' and, naturally, being gentlemen, they understood, and they gave me a cheque for the thousand guineas." what whistler meant by "life-size" he has explained. "no man alive is life-size except the recruit who is being measured as he enters the regiment, and then the only man who sees him life-size is the sergeant who measures him, and all that he sees of him is the end of his nose; when he is able to see his toes, the man ceases to be life-size." before the _carlyle_ went to glasgow whistler wished to show it in london, where, except in queen square, it had not been seen since the grosvenor exhibition of , and it was exhibited at the goupil gallery. mr. d. croal thomson, then director of the gallery, saw that the tide was turning, and suggested offering the _mother_ to the luxembourg. in paris there was a sluggish sort of curiosity and the beginning of a sort of appreciation. during the last ten years whistler had shown at the _salon_ his _lady meux_, the _mother_, _carlyle_, _miss alexander_, _the yellow buskin_, _m. duret_, _sarasate_, and in his _rosa corder_ was in the new _salon_; but save for the third-class medal awarded the _mother_ in his pictures received no official recognition, and while several scarcely known americans were made full members of the _société nationale des beaux-arts_ he was at first simply an associate. many of his smaller works had been seen at different times in the petit gallery. at mr. croal thomson's suggestion the _mother_ was sent to messrs. boussod valadon in paris, and subscriptions for the purchase were opened. before any amount worth mentioning was subscribed the french government, on the initiative of m. georges clémenceau and by the advice of m. roger marx, bought it for the nation. m. bourgeois, the minister of fine arts, had some doubt as to the possibility of offering for so fine a masterpiece the small price that the nation could afford. but whistler set him at ease on this point, writing to him that it was for the _mother_, of all his pictures, he would prefer so "solemn a consecration," and that he was proud of the honour france had shown him. the price paid was four thousand francs. whistler told mr. cole, november , , that his pleasure was in the fact of "his painting of his mother being 'unprecedentedly' chosen by the minister of beaux-arts for the luxembourg," and france that same year bestowed upon him an honour he valued higher than almost any he ever received, by making him officer of the legion of honour. but the choice was not unprecedented, pictures of other american artists having already been purchased, while the honour had already been bestowed upon american artists now forgotten. the event was celebrated by a reception at the chelsea arts club on the evening of december , . whistler was presented with a parchment of greetings signed by a hundred members as "a record of their high appreciation of the distinguished honour that has come to him by the placing of his mother's portrait in the national collection of france." whistler said in reply that he was gratified by this token from his brother artists: "it is right at such a time of peace, after the struggle, to bury the hatchet--in the side of the enemy--and leave it there. the congratulations usher in the beginning of my career, for an artist's career always begins to-morrow." he promised to remain for long one of the chelsea artists, a promise chelsea artists showed no desire to keep him to. he was a member of the club until he went to paris. when, later, mr. (now sir john) lavery proposed him as an honorary member, there was not enough enthusiasm to carry the motion. and when, still later, it was further proposed that the chelsea arts club should officially recognise the whistler memorial they refused, and the comment of one man was, "what had an english club to do with a memorial by a frenchman to a yankee in london?" early in mr. croal thomson arranged with whistler for an exhibition of _nocturnes, marines, and chevalet pieces_ to be held at the goupil gallery in london, or, as whistler called it, his "heroic kick in bond street." mr. croal thomson says his first idea was to show the portraits only. but he soon found that whistler wanted to include all the paintings and was going to take the matter in hand, and that he was "only like the fly on the wheel" once the machinery was set in motion. one reason of the success of the exhibition, which surprised not only mr. croal thomson but all london, was whistler's care when selecting his pictures to secure variety. the collection was a magnificent refutation of everything that the critics had been saying about him for years. they dismissed his pictures as sketches, and he confronted them with _the blue waves_, _brown and silver--old battersea bridge_, _the music room_, which had not been seen in london since the early sixties. they objected to his want of finish and slovenliness in detail, and his answer was the japanese pictures, full of an elaboration the pre-raphaelites never equalled, and finished with an exquisiteness of surface they never attempted. he was told he could not draw, and he produced a group of his finest portraits. he was assured he had no poetic feeling, no imagination, and he displayed the nocturnes, with the factories and chimneys transformed into a fairyland in the night. he was as careful in arranging the manner in which the pictures should be presented. his letters to mr. croal thomson from paris, where he spent the greater part of , were minute in his directions for cleaning and varnishing the paintings, and putting them into new frames of his design. indeed, the correspondence on the subject, which we have seen, is a miracle of thoughtfulness, energy, and method. mr. croal thomson tells us: "mr. whistler laboured almost night and day: he wrote letters to every one of the owners of his works in oil asking loans of the pictures. some, like mr. alexander and all the ionides connection, acceded at once, but others made delays, and even to the end several owners declined to lend. on the whole, however, the artist was well supported by his early patrons, and the result was a gathering together of the most complete collection of mr. whistler's best works--forty-three pictures in all. "the arrangement of the pictures was entirely mr. whistler's, for although he wished several young artists to come to the gallery the evening the works were to be hung, through some mischance they did not arrive, and i was therefore alone with mr. whistler and received a great lesson in the art of arranging a collection." in the face of so complete a series, in such perfect condition, and so well hung, criticism was silenced. we remember the press view, and the dismay of the older critics who hoped for another "crop of little jokes," and the triumph of the younger critics who knew that whistler had won. the papers, daily, weekly, and monthly, almost unanimously admitted that the old game of ridicule was played out and praised the exhibition without reserve. the rest, headed by sir frederick wedmore, have since been trying to swallow themselves. mr. croal thomson recalls that: "mr. whistler was not present at the private view. he knew that many people would expect to see him and talk enthusiastic nonsense, and he rightly decided he was better away, and i was left to receive the visitors. some hundreds of cards of invitation were issued, and it seemed as if every recipient had accepted. crowds thronged the galleries all day, and it is impossible to describe the excitement. i do not know how it fared with the artist and his wife during the day, but about five o'clock in the evening mr. and mrs. whistler came in, though they would not enter the exhibition; they remained in a curtained-off portion of the gallery near the entrance. one or two of their most intimate friends were informed by me of the presence of the painter, and a small reception was held, for a little while, but, of course, by that time the battle was won, and there were only congratulations to be rendered to the master." j. was taken into the little curtained-off room, and later there was a triumphal procession to the arts club. whistler declared that even academicians had been seen prowling about the place lost in admiration, that it needed only to send a season ticket to ruskin to make the situation perfect, and that, "well, you know, they were always pearls i cast before them, and the people were always--well, the same people." it is said whistler first intended to print the catalogue without comment or quotation from the press, but the chance to expose the critics was too good, and previous critical verdicts were placed under the titles of the pictures. two hundred and fifty copies were printed by thomas way, and in a letter to way's manager, mr. morgan, he calls the catalogue "perfect." but he also points out that there are errors, and insists that by no accident or disaster shall any of the first printed batch of two hundred and fifty copies get about, and he further says that he proposes to come to the printing office and destroy them. we know of only four copies, one our own--now in the library of congress--of this unbound first edition that have been preserved. the other editions, five in all, are in the usual brown paper covers. as an instance of his care, mr. william marchant, then with goupils', remembers his spending an afternoon over the arrangement of the few words on the cover. in the second edition the word "by" disappeared from the title-page and "kindly lent their owners" was printed. this was not intentional on whistler's part, for we possess a letter in which he asks that it may be put back at once, and also that the "moral" at the end of the catalogue, "modern _british_ (!) art will now be represented in the national gallery of the luxembourg by one of the finest paintings due to the brush of an _english artist_ (!)," should be credited not to him, but to the _illustrated london news_. before the edition was exhausted the "kindly lent their owners" had become famous, though it did not appear in subsequent editions. but it reappeared when the catalogue was reprinted in _the gentle art_. the extracts he quoted were cruel, but the critics had been cruel. the sub-title, "_the voice of a people_" explains his object in publishing them. the catalogue ended with the quotation from the _chronique des beaux-arts_: "_au musée du luxembourg, vient d'être placé de m. whistler, le splendide portrait de mme. whistler mère, une oeuvre destinée à l'éternité des admirations, une oeuvre sur laquelle la consécration des siècles semble avoir mis la patine d'un rembrandt, d'un titien, où d'un vélasquez._" this, in later editions, was followed by the "moral" duly credited to the _illustrated london news_. before the show closed the pictures were photographed, and twenty-four were afterwards published in a portfolio called _nocturnes, marines, and chevalet pieces_, by messrs. goupil. whistler designed the cover in brown. there were a hundred sets, each photograph signed by him, published at six guineas, and two hundred unsigned at four guineas. an immediate result of the exhibition was that sitters came. one of the first was the duke of marlborough, who gave him a commission for a portrait and asked him and mrs. whistler to blenheim for the autumn. whistler wrote the duke one of his "charming letters," then heard of his sudden death, and said: "now i shall never know whether my letter killed him, or whether he died before he got it. well, they all want to be painted because of these pictures, but why wouldn't they be painted years ago when i wanted to paint them, and could have painted them just as well?" and he was besieged by americans, whistler said, who were determined "to pour california into his lap," a determination to which he had no objection. his "pockets should always be full, or my golden eggs are addled." he thought it would be "amazing fun" to be rich. once, driving with mr. starr, he said: "starr, i have not dined, as you know, so you need not think i say this in any but a cold and careful spirit: it is better to live on bread and cheese and paint beautiful things than to live like dives and paint pot-boilers. but a painter really should not have to worry about 'various,' you know. poverty may induce industry, but it does not produce the fine flower of painting. the test is not poverty, it's money. give a painter money and see what he'll do; if he does not paint his work is well lost to the world. if i had had, say, three thousand pounds a year, what beautiful things i could have done." [illustration: portrait of pablo sarasate arrangement in black oil in the carnegie institute, pittsburgh (_see page _)] [illustration: portrait of lady colin campbell harmony in white and ivory oil (destroyed) from a photograph lent by pickford r. waller, esq. (_see page _)] no one could know better than mr. croal thomson how complete was this success: "i do not think i am exaggerating when i say that the exhibition marked a revolution in the public feeling towards whistler. his artistic powers were hitherto disputed on every hand, but when it was possible for lovers of art to see for themselves what the painter had accomplished the whole position was changed. i will be pardoned, i hope, in stating that whereas up to that time the pictures of mr. whistler commanded only a small sum of money, after the exhibition a great number of connoisseurs desired to acquire his works, and therefore their money value immediately increased. "in the goupil collection all the pictures were contributed by private owners, and none were offered for sale. i may say in passing that, as a matter of fact, the crowds of visitors were so great that no transaction of any serious kind was carried through in the gallery between the hanging of the pictures and their dispersal--that is, for nearly five weeks there was practically no record of business. "but the exhibition altered all this, and it is revealing no secrets to say that within a year after the exhibition was closed i had aided in the transfer of more than one-half of the pictures from their first owners. mr. whistler, to whom i always referred before concluding any transaction, came to the conclusion that there was hardly a holder of his pictures in england but who would sell when tempted by a large price. it may be that these owners had become affected by the continual misunderstanding and abuse of mr. whistler's works, and that when they were offered double or three times the sum for which they had their pictures insured they thought they had better take advantage of the enthusiasm of the moment. they did not realise that this enthusiasm would continue to enlarge, and that what seemed to them as original purchasers of the pictures to be a great price is only about one-fourth of their present money value. "it was the artist's wish that a similar exhibition should be held in paris, but the project fell through, and from more recent experience it would appear as if the london public, sometimes so severely scoffed at by mr. whistler, was really more appreciative than the parisian public, and, therefore, perhaps after all more intelligent." whistler sold _the falling rocket_ for eight hundred guineas, and wished that ruskin could know that it had been valued at "four pots of paint." the leyland sale, may , , brought the _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_ and smaller works into the auction-room, and, though the _princesse_ fetched only four hundred and twenty guineas, this was four times as much as whistler received. what would he have said to the five thousand mr. freer paid for it within a year of his death? the sixty or eighty pounds mr. leathart paid whistler for the _lange leizen_ increased to six or eight hundred when he sold it. mr. ionides had bought _sea and rain_ for twenty or thirty pounds, and now asked three hundred. fifty pounds, the price of the _blue wave_ when mr. gerald potter had it from whistler, multiplied to a thousand when it was his turn to dispose of it. fourteen hundred pounds was given by arthur studd for _the little white girl_ and a nocturne, the two having cost mr. potter about one hundred and eighty pounds, and we have been told that arthur studd was recently offered six thousand pounds for _the little white girl_ alone. whistler resented it when he found that fortunes were being made "at his expense" by so-called friends, and he complained that they were turning his reputation into pounds, shillings, and pence, travelling over europe and holiday-making on the profits. the previous sentence was written when our book first appeared. during and , there has been a fabulous increase in the selling price of whistler's work. we do not know what amount was paid by mr. frick for the _lady meux_, the _rosa corder_, and the _mrs. leyland_ which he recently purchased. some of the reports of prices are greatly exaggerated, no doubt. a few owners of whistlers do appreciate them. but nearly all collectors in the united states regard art as they do stocks. they buy for a rise, and appreciate only the monetary value of the works they possess. one of the most striking cases is that of mr. howard mansfield, whom whistler, during many years, furnished with some of his most interesting prints, aided and directed in their collection, hoping, of course, that they would be left to a museum. but mr. mansfield sold his collection for an enormous price, altogether out of proportion to what whistler received. surprising statements have been circulated about the sale of pictures. the announcement of the price recently paid for the _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_ is as incorrect as the title given to the painting, which is simply a small slight sketch and different version of the important subject owned by mr. freer. the bigger the lie, the more impressive is such a statement concerning the prices asked and obtained--the merit of the work is of secondary importance. this is a fair specimen of american commercial art criticism. whistler, after the trade in his work began, suggested that a work of art, when sold, should still remain the artist's property; that it was only "lent its owner." it was now his frequent demand to owners and condition to purchasers that his pictures should be available for exhibition when and where and as often as he pleased. this is illustrated in the following letter which mr. h. s. theobald, k.c., writes us: "... about i began to get such of his etchings as i could, and somewhere early in the eighties i became the fortunate possessor of some thirty or forty drawings and pastels through the dowdeswells. whistler became aware of my ownership of these, and they sometimes brought him to my house, which was then in westbourne square. the pictures, owing to stress of space, hung mostly on the staircase, and whistler would stand in rapt admiration before them, with occasional ejaculations of 'how lovely,' 'how divine,' and so on. on one of these occasions he asked my wife if she had had her portrait taken. 'but of course not,' he added, 'as i have not painted you.' "my intercourse with the master was limited to occasions when he wanted to borrow the pictures. his manner of proceeding was somewhat abrupt. some morning a person would appear in a four-wheel cab and present whistler's card, on which was written, 'please let bearer have fourteen of my pictures.' sometimes, but not often, there was a preliminary warning from whistler himself. but though the pictures went easily, it was a labour of hercules to retrieve them. once when i went to fetch them at his studio by appointment, after a previous effort, also by appointment, which was not kept, i found the studio locked, but after a search among the neighbours i got the key, and then i found some two or three hundred pictures stacked round the room buried in the dust of ages. whistler loved his pictures but he certainly took no care of them. on that occasion i remember i took away by mistake in exchange for one of my pictures, a nocturne that did not belong to me, though it was very like one of mine. you can imagine the master's winged words when he found this out. i could only cry _mea culpa_ and bow my head before the storm. it was the risk to which i feared the pictures were exposed which made me harden my heart." whistler was as anxious to keep his pictures out of exhibitions when for some reason he did not care to have them shown. the large _three girls_ (_three figures, pink and grey_, in the london memorial exhibition) was at messrs. dowdeswell's in the summer of . he had before this tried to get possession of it in order that he might destroy it, and he had offered to paint the portrait of the owner and his wife in exchange. his offer was refused, and while the picture was at messrs. dowdeswell's, he wrote a letter to the _pall mall gazette_ (july , ), to explain that it was a painting "thrown aside for destruction." an impudent answer from a critic led to a more explicit statement of his views on the subject: "all along have i carefully destroyed plates, torn up proofs and burned canvases that the truth of the quoted word shall prevail, and that the future collector shall be spared the mortification of cataloguing his pet mistakes. to destroy, is to remain." when this picture, with a number of studies for it, was sent to the london memorial exhibition, it was found very interesting and it was hung, and we think it fortunate that it was not destroyed. but had the committee known it was the picture he wished destroyed it never would have been exhibited by the international society. in the summer of , whistler was invited by the duke of argyll to contribute to the british section at the world's columbian exposition to be held in chicago the following year, and the picture mentioned for the purpose was the _carlyle_. the portrait had been skied in a corner the previous winter at the victorian exhibition in the new gallery, of which mr. j. w. beck was secretary, as he was now of the fine arts committee for chicago. whistler wrote to mr. beck, sending his "distinguished consideration to the duke and the president" (leighton) with the assurance "that i have an undefined sense of something ominously flattering occurring, but that no previous desire on his part ever to deal with work of mine has prepared me with the proper form of acknowledgment. no, no, mr. beck! once hung, twice shy!" when the letter was sent to the papers and printers made "sky" of the "shy" whistler was enchanted. mr. smalley told the story of the invitation in the _times_, after whistler's death, under the impression that he had been invited to show at burlington house. that whistler never was invited to show anything there we know, and we have the further testimony of sir fred eaton, secretary of the academy, that "no such proposal as mr. smalley speaks of was ever made to mr. whistler, and it is difficult to understand on what grounds he made such a statement." it is an amusing coincidence that this would seem to be confirmed by the fate of a letter addressed to whistler, "the academy, england," which, after having gone to the newspaper of that name, was next sent to burlington house, and, finally, reached whistler with "not known at the r.a.," written on the cover. here was one of the little incidents that whistler called "the droll things of this pleasant life," and he sent the cover for reproduction to the _daily mail_ with the reflection: "in these days of doubtful frequentation it is my rare good fortune to be able to send you an unsolicited official and final certificate of character." whistler did not depend upon the british section at the chicago exposition. americans made up for the official blunders of . professor halsey c. ives, chief of the art department, wrote letters that whistler found most courteous, and everything was done to secure his pictures and prints. he was splendidly represented by the _yellow buskin_, the _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_, _the fur jacket_, among paintings, and by etchings of every period. the medal given him was the first official honour from his native land, where never before had so representative a collection of his work been seen. towards the end of the appreciation of america was expressed in another form. the new boston library was being built, and messrs. mckim, meade, and white were the architects. it was determined that the interior should be decorated by the most distinguished american artists. mr. sargent and mr. abbey were commissioned to do part of the work, and they joined with mr. mckim and st. gaudens in trying to induce whistler to undertake the large panel at the top of the stairs. he made notes and suggestions for the design, which, he told us, was to be a great peacock ten feet high; but the work was put off, and, in the end, nothing came of the first opportunity given him for mural decoration since the peacock room. chapter xxxvi: paris. the years eighteen ninety-two and eighteen ninety-three. whistler went to live in paris again in . moving from london was a complicated affair, and, during several months, he and mrs. whistler and his sister-in-law, mrs. whibley, were continually running backward and forward, before they settled in the rue du bac. we saw him whenever he came to london and whenever we were in paris, and, as we were there often, we saw much of him. a group of artists and art critics, whose appreciation of whistler had not waited for the turning of the tide, were in the habit of going together to paris for the opening of the _salon_. in , r. a. m. stevenson, aubrey beardsley, henry harland, d. s. mccoll, charles w. furse, alexander and robert ross, among others, were with us, and to all it was a pleasure to find whistler triumphing as he had triumphed earlier in the spring in london. his pictures at the champ-de-mars were the most talked about and the most distinguished in an unusually good _salon_. many came straight from the goupil exhibition. whistler called it "a stupendous success all along the line," and said that, coming after the goupil "heroic kick," it made everything complete and perfect. he was pleased also with the fact that he was elected a full _sociétaire_, and this year a member of the jury. in the autumn, j., returning to paris after a long summer in the south of france, found whistler in the hôtel du bon lafontaine, a house, whistler said, full of bishops, cardinals, and _monsignori_, and altogether most correct, to which he had moved from the foyot, inhabited by senators, after a bomb had exploded in the kitchen window. j. says: "he was not too comfortably established, in one or two small rooms. he was full of the apartment in the rue de bac, which i was taken to see, though there was nothing to see but workmen and packing-boxes. in the midst of the moving, he was working, and one day i found him in his bedroom with mallarmé, whose portrait in lithography he was drawing, and there was scarcely room for three. this portrait is the frontispiece to mallarmé's _vers et prose_. "it was the first time i had ever seen whistler working on a lithograph. he had great trouble with this portrait, which he did more than once, not altogether because, as m. duret says, he could not get the head right, but because he was trying experiments with paper. he was thoroughly dissatisfied with the mechanical grained paper which he had used for the _albermarle_ and the _whirlwind_ prints, and he was then afraid of trusting to the post the paper that way was sending him. he had found at belfont's or lemercier's some thin textureless transfer paper, thin as tissue paper, which delighted him, though it was difficult to work on. when he was doing the mallarmé, he put the paper down on a roughish book cover. he liked the grain the cover gave him, for it was not mechanical, and, when the grain seemed to repeat itself, he would shift the drawing, and thus get a new surface. i do not know whether he used this thin paper to any extent, but he said he found it delightful, if difficult, to work on. he used that afternoon a tiny bit of lithographic chalk, holding it in his fingers, and not in a crayon-holder as lithographers do. "the next day, he took me to the printers, belfont's and lemercier's, where he introduced me to m. duchâtel and m. marty, who was preparing _l'estampe originale_, devoting himself to the revival of artistic lithography in france. as i remember, the talk was technical, when not of the wonders of the apartment in the rue du bac--where 'peace threatens to take up her abode in the garden of our pretty pavilion,' mr. starr quotes whistler as saying--and the studio in the rue notre-dame-des-champs, which i did not see until later on. he was also planning his colour lithographs, and he explained to me his methods, though very few colour-prints were made until the next year. he also told me what he thought of printing etchings in colour--that it was abominable, vulgar, and stupid. good black or brown ink, on good old paper, had been good enough for rembrandt, it was good enough for him, and it ought to be good enough in the future for the few people who care about etching. to-day, when the world is swamped with the childish print in colour and the preposterous big copper plate, it may be well to remember whistler's words. his reason for rejecting the etching in colour is as simple and rational as his reason for making the lithograph in colour. lithography is a method of surface printing; the colour, rolled on to the surface of the stone, is merely rubbed on to, and scraped off on, the paper. in etching or engraving, the colour is first hammered into the engraved plate with a dabber and then forced out by excessive pressure, fatal to any but the strongest or purest of blacks and browns; and colours, whether printed from one plate or a dozen, must have the freshness, the quality, squeezed out of them." he was back in london at the end of december ( ) eating his christmas dinner with his future brother-in-law. he stayed only a few days, but long enough to arrange to show _lady meux: white and black_ in the first exhibition of the portrait painters at the grafton gallery, early in , and a number of his venice etchings with the destroyed plates at the fine art society's. "we were again in paris for the _salon_ of , and found whistler living in the rue du bac. beardsley, maccoll, and 'bob' stevenson were with us. maccoll and i went to see whistler in the new studio. it was at the top of one of the highest buildings in the rue notre-dame-des-champs, no. . as the _concierge_ said, in directing visitors, '_on ne peut pas aller plus loin que m. vistlaire!_' the climb always seemed to me endless, and must have done much harm to whistler's weak heart, though benches were placed on some of the landings where, if he had time, he could rest. when we got to the sixth storey maccoll knocked. there was a rapid movement across the floor, and the door was opened a little. whistler held his palette and brushes between himself and us, and there were excuses of models and work. but maccoll felt the brushes, and they were dry, and so we got in. "the studio was a big, bare room, the biggest studio whistler ever had. a simple tone of rose on the walls, a lounge, a few chairs, a whitewood cabinet for the little drawings and prints and pastels; the blue screen with the river, chelsea church, and the gold moon; two or three easels, nothing on them; rows and rows of canvases on the floor with their faces to the wall; in the further corner a printing press--rather a printing shop--with inks and papers on shelves; a little gallery above, a room or two opening off; a model's dressing-room under it, and in front, when you turned, the great studio window, with all paris toward the pantheon over the luxembourg gardens. there was another little room or entrance-hall at the top of the stairs, and opposite another, a kitchen. on the front was a balcony with flowers. [illustration: annabel lee pastel in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art (_see page _)] [illustration: the convalescent water-colour in the possession of dr. j. w. macintyre (_see page _)] "carmen, his model, was there, and while he showed us some of his work she got breakfast, and we stayed a good part of the day. mrs. whistler came up later. i think she breakfasted with us. i have no recollection of what he talked about. but i am sure it was of what they had been saying in london, of what they were saying in paris, of what he was doing. that is what it always was. we were all asked to lunch the following sunday at the house. "the apartment, no. rue du bac, was on the right-hand side, just before you reached the _bon marché_, going up the street, from the river. you went through a big _porte cochère_ by the _concierge's_ box, down a long, covered tunnel, then between high walls, until you came to a courtyard with several doors, a bit of an old frieze in one place and a drinking-fountain. whistler's door was painted blue, with a brass knocker. i do not suppose that then there was another like it in paris. inside was a little landing with three or four steps down to the floor a few feet lower than the courtyard. this room contained nothing, or almost nothing, but some trunks (which, as in his other houses, gave the appearance of his having just moved in, or being just about to start on a journey) and a settee, always covered with a profusion of hats and coats. opposite the entrance a big door opened into a spacious room, decorated in simple, flat tones of blue, with white doors and windows, furnished with a few empire chairs and a couch, a grand piano, and a table which, like the blue matting-covered floor, was littered with newspapers. once in a while there was a picture of his on the wall. for some time, the _venus_ hung or stood about. there were doors to the right and left, and on the far side, a glass door opened on a large garden, a real bit of country in paris. it stretched away in dense undergrowth to several huge trees. later, over the door, there was a trellis designed by mrs. whistler, and there were flowers everywhere. 'in his roses he buried his troubles,' mr. wuerpel writes of the garden, and there were many birds, among them, at one time, an awful mocking-bird, at another a white parrot which finally escaped, and, in a temper, climbed up a tree where no one could get it, and starved itself to death to whistler's grief. at the bottom of the garden were seats. the dining-room was to the right of the drawing-room. it was equally simple in blue, only there was blue and white china in a cupboard and a big dining-table, round which were more empire chairs and in the centre a large, low blue and white porcelain stand, on it big bowls of flowers, over it, hanging from the ceiling, a huge japanese something like a birdcage. "from paris, in may, i went down to caen and coutances, coming back a few weeks later. beardsley was still in paris, or had returned, and we were both stopping at the hôtel de portugal et de l'univers, then known to every art student. wagner was being played at the opera, almost for the first time. paris was disturbed, there were demonstrations against wagner, really against germany. we went, beardsley wild about wagner and doing, i think, the drawing of _the wagnerites_. he had come over to get backgrounds in the rose arbours and the dense alleys of the luxembourg gardens, where whistler had made his lithographs. coming away from the opera, we went across to the café de la paix at midnight. the first person we saw was whistler. he was with some people, but they left soon, and we joined him. beardsley also left almost at once, but not before whistler had asked us to come the next sunday afternoon to the rue du bac. then, for the first time, i learned what he thought of 'æstheticism' and decadence.' "'why do you get mixed up with such things? look at him! he's just like his drawings, he's all hairs and peacock's plumes--hairs on his head, hairs on his fingers' ends, hairs in his ears, hairs on his toes. and what shoes he wears--hairs growing out of them!' "i said, 'why did you ask him to the rue du bac?' 'oh--well--well--well!' and then it was late, or early, and the last thing was, 'well, you'll come and bring him too.' "years later, in buckingham street, whistler met beardsley, and got to like not only him, as everybody did, but his work. one night when whistler was with us, beardsley turned up, as always when he went to see anyone, with his portfolio of his latest work under his arm. this time it held the illustrations for _the rape of the lock_, which he had just made. whistler, who always saw everything that was being done, had seen the _yellow book_, started in , and he disliked it as much as he then disliked beardsley, who was the art editor; he had also seen the illustrations to _salomé_, disliking them too, probably because of oscar wilde; he knew many of the other drawings, one of which, whether intentionally or unintentionally, was more or less a reminiscence of mrs. whistler, and he no doubt knew that beardsley had made a caricature of him which a follower carefully left in a cab. when beardsley opened the portfolio and began to show us _the rape of the lock_, whistler looked at them first indifferently, then with interest, then with delight. and then he said slowly, 'aubrey, i have made a very great mistake--you are a very great artist.' and the boy burst out crying. all whistler could say, when he could say anything, was 'i mean it--i mean it--i mean it!' "on the following sunday beardsley and i went to the rue du bac, beardsley in a little straw hat like whistler's. whistler was in the garden and there were many americans, and arsène alexandre and mallarmé, some people from the british embassy, and presently mr. jacomb hood came, bringing an honourable amateur, who asked the whistlers, beardsley, and myself to dinner at one of the _cafés_ in the champs-elysees. as we left the rue du bac, whistler whispered to me, 'those hairs--hairs everywhere!' i said to him, 'but you were very nice and, of course, you'll come to dinner.' and, of course, he did not. "i was working in paris, making drawings and etchings of notre-dame. i was in one of the high old houses of lodgings and studios, with cabmen's _cafés_ and restaurants under them, on the quai des grands augustins. i had gone there because of the view of the cathedral. most of the time i was at work up among the devils of notre-dame, using one of the towers as a studio by permission of the government and the cardinal-archbishop. one morning--it was in june--i heard the puffing and groaning of someone climbing slowly the endless winding staircase, and the next thing i saw was whistler's head on the stairs. when he got his breath and i had got over my astonishment, i began to ask why he had come, or he began to explain the reason. he had learned where i was staying, and he said he had been to the hotel, which, was, well! i think it reminded him of his days _au sixième_, for that was the floor i was on. he left a note written on the _buvette_ paper, in which he said, 'jolly the place seems to be!' after he had climbed up to my rooms, the _patron_ told him where he possibly would find me, and then the people at the foot of the tower said i was up above. "he told me why he had come up. he was working on a series of etchings of paris. some were just begun, others ready to bite, but a number ought to be printed, and would i help him? i was pleased, and i said i would. i took him about among the strange creatures that haunt the place, introduced him to the old keeper with his grisly tales of suicides and of sticking to the tower through the commune, even when the church was on fire, and showed him the awful bell that, at noon, suddenly crashed in our ears, the uncanny cat that perched on crockets and gargoyles, tried to catch sparrows with nothing below her, and made from one parapet to another flying cuts over space when visitors came up. but he did not like it, and was not happy until we were seated in the back room of a restaurant across the street. he talked about the printing, saying that i could help him, and he could teach me. "next morning i was at the rue du bac at nine. after i had waited for what seemed hours, and had breakfasted with him and mrs. whistler and we had a cigarette in the garden, where there was an american rocking-chair for him--well, after this it was too late to go to the studio. he brought out some of the plates which he had been working on--the plates of little shops in the near streets--and we looked at them, and that was all. so it went on the next day, and the next, until on the third or fourth things came to a head, and i told him that charming as this life was, either we must print or i must go back to my drawing. in five minutes we were in a cab on our way to the studio. he understood that, much as i admired his work and appreciated him, i could not afford to pay for this appreciation and admiration with my time. from the moment this was plain between us, there was no interruption to our friendship for the rest of his life. "we set to work. he peeled down to his undershirt with short sleeves, and i saw in his muscles one reason why he was never tired. he put on an apron. the plates, only slightly heated, if heated at all, were inked and wiped, sometimes with his hand, at others with a rag, till nearly clean, though a good tone was left. he painted the proofs on the plate with his hand. i got the paper ready on the press and pulled the proof, he inking and i pulling all the afternoon. as each proof came off the press, he looked at it, not satisfied, for they were all weak, and saying 'we'll keep it as the first proof and it will be worth something some day.' then he put the prints between sheets of blotting-paper, and that night or the next, after dinner, trimmed them with scissors and put them back between the folded sheets of blotting-paper which were thrown on the table and on the floor. between the sheets the proofs dried naturally and were not squashed flat. "the printing went on for several days, he getting more and more dissatisfied, until i found an old man, lamour, at the top of an old house in the rue de la harpe, who could reground the plates. but whistler did not rebite them and never touched them until long after in england. "a number of plates had not been bitten and one hot sunday afternoon he brought them into the garden at the rue du bac. a chair was placed under the trees and on it a wash-basin into which each plate was put. instead of pouring the diluted acid all over the plate in the usual fashion drops were taken from the bottle on a feather, and the plate painted with acid. the acid was coaxed, or rather used as one would use water-colour, dragged and washed about. depth and strength were got by leaving a drop of acid on the lines where they were needed. there was a little stopping-out of passages where greater delicacy was required; when there was any, the stopping-out varnish was thinned with turpentine, and whistler, with a camel's-hair brush, painted over the parts that did not need further biting. to me, it was a revelation. sometimes he drew on the plate. instead of the huge crowbar used by most etchers he worked with a perfectly balanced, beautifully designed little needle three or four inches long, made for him by an instrument-maker in paris. he always carried several in a little silver box. the ground on all the plates was bad and came off, and the proofs he pulled afterwards in the studio were not at all what he wanted. these were almost the last plates he etched. "he was not painting very much, few people came to the studio, and he went out little. no one was in the rue du bac but mrs. whistler for a while, and there were complications with the servants and others--how people who kept such hours, or no hours, could keep servants would have been a mystery had not servants worshipped him. almost daily the _petit bleu_ asking me to dinner would come to me. or whistler would appear in the morning, if i had not been to him the day before. in those early june days i seldom met anyone at the house and we never dressed for dinner, possibly because i had no dress clothes with me; he would insist on my coming, telling me not to mind the stains or the inkspots! one evening in the garden with them i found a little man, a thorough englishman in big spectacles, with a curious sniff, who was holding a hose and watering the plants. he was introduced to me as mr. webb, whistler's solicitor, though in the process we came near being drenched by the wobbling hose. it was that evening i first heard the chant of the missionary brothers from over the great wall. a bell sounded, and as the notes died away a wailing chant arose, went on for a little, then died away as mysteriously as it came. always, when it did come, it hushed us. at dinner we should be cosy and jolly, whistler had said in asking me, and we were, and it was arranged that we should go the next day to fontainebleau. "they called for me at the hotel in the morning. we drove to the lyons station, whistler, his wife, mr. webb, and i. and whistler had the little paint-box which always went with him, though on these occasions it was the rarest thing that he ever did anything, and we got to fountainebleau. we lunched in a garden. we didn't go to the palace, but drove to barbizon, stopping at siron's, through the forest. i don't think the views or the trees interested him at all. he was quiet all the way, but no sooner were we back than we must hunt for 'old things': 'here was a palace and great people had lived here, there might be silver, there might be blue and white, though really, now, you know, you can find better blue and white, and cheaper silver, under the noses of the britons in wardour street than anywhere.' we did not find any blue and white, or silver. but there were three folio volumes of old paper, containing a collection of dried leaves, which we bought and shared, and they were to him more valuable than the palace and the millet studio, which we never saw. "it was late when we got back. the servants had gone to bed, and marguery's and the places where he liked to dine were shut. so we bought what we could in the near shops and sat down in the rue du bac to eat the supper we had collected. after we had finished i witnessed his and mrs. whistler's wills, which mr. webb had brought with him from london, and for this the long day had been a preparation. "if i did not always accept whistler's invitations he would reproach me as an awful disappointment and a bad man. if i did not go to the dinner, to which i was bidden at an hour's notice, he would tell me afterwards of the much cool drink and encouraging refreshment he had prepared for me. he always asked me to bring my friends. mr. j. fulleylove had come over to 'do' paris and i took him to the rue du bac; '_les pleins d'amour_,' whistler called him and mrs. fulleylove, whose eyes he was always praising. they were working at st. denis and so was i, and one day whistler and mrs. whistler came in the primitive steam tram that starts from the madeleine to see the place. we lunched--badly--and he was bored with the church, though he had brought lithograph paper and colours to make a sketch of it. "one sunday mr. e. g. kennedy posed in the garden for his portrait on a small canvas or panel, and all the world was kept out. i had never before seen whistler paint. he worked away all afternoon, hissing to himself, which, mrs. whistler said, he did only when things were going well. if kennedy shifted--there were no rests--whistler would scream, and he worked on and on, and the sun went down, and kennedy stood and whistler painted, and the monks began their chant, and darkness was coming on. the hissing stopped, a paint-rag came out, and, with one fierce dash, it was all rubbed off. 'oh, well,' was all he said. kennedy was limbered up and we went to dinner. "after that, almost every night we dined together through that lovely june, either with him in the rue du bac, or he came with kennedy or me to marguery's or la pérouse--once to st. germain--or somewhere that was delightful. "the summer was famous in paris for the 'sarah brown students' revolution,' the row that grew out of the _quat'z arts_ ball. whistler did not take the slightest interest in the demonstrations, in fact, did not believe they were taking place, though i used to bring him reports of the doings which culminated on july , my birthday, when he was to have given me a dinner at marguery's. i told him the streets of the quarter were barricaded and full of soldiers, but though he ridiculed the whole affair, he decided to dine at home and to put off by telegram the dinner he had ordered. i went round to the boulevard st. germain to send the wire and found it barred with soldiers and police, and the entire boulevard, as far as one could see, littered with hats and caps, sticks and umbrellas. there had been a cavalry charge and this was the result. we dined merrily, but kennedy and i left early. there was a great deal of rioting through the night, but that was the end of it. "mrs. whistler had not been well, and they suddenly made up their minds to go to brittany, or normandy, or somewhere on the coast. it was not altogether a successful journey. nature had gone back on him, he wrote me, probably because of his exposure of her 'foolish sunsets'; the weather was for tourists, the sea for goldfish in a bowl--the studio was better than staring at a sea of tin. and the terrible things they had eaten in brittany made them ill. but the lithographs at vitré were made, also the _yellow house, lannion_, and the _red house, paimpol_--his first elaborate essays in colour. "only a few impressions of the _yellow house_ were ever pulled owing to some accident to the stone. one of these i wanted to buy. whistler heard of it 'well, you know, very flattering, but altogether absurd,' he told me, and the print came with an inscription and the butterfly." chapter xxxvii: paris continued. the years eighteen ninety-three and eighteen ninety-four. after this summer, we both saw still more of whistler whenever we were in paris. at the rue du bac we were struck by the few french artists at his sunday afternoons and the predominance of americans and english. it seemed to us that french artists might have been more cordial and the french nation more sensible of the fact that a distinguished foreign artist had come to france. during his life at least one or two americans, one a rich amateur, were made commanders of the legion of honour, while he remained an officer. others were made foreign members of the academy of fine arts, but this, the highest honour for artists in france, was never offered to him, nor was he elected to international juries. with a few french and foreign artists his relations were friendly: boldini, helleu, puvis de chavannes, rodin, alfred stevens, aman-jean; but the greater number were content to express their appreciation at a distance. mrs. whistler spoke little french, and few french artists speak any english. the men whom whistler saw most were not painters. viélé-griffin, octave mirbeau, arsène alexandre, the comte de montesquiou, rodenbach came to the rue du bac. old friends, drouet and duret, were sometimes there, though not often--his intimacy with them and oulevey was not really renewed until after mrs. whistler's death. but of all who came, none endeared himself so much to whistler as stéphane mallarmé, poet, critic, friend, admirer. once, at whistler's suggestion, he visited us in london, and, looking from our windows to the thames, declared he could understand whistler better. official people strayed in from the embassies, mostly english. american authors and american collectors appeared on sundays. mr. howells, once or twice, came with his son and his daughter, of whom whistler made a lithograph. journalists, english and american, wandered in. and english and american artists came, or tried to come, in crowds. the younger men of the glasgow school, james guthrie and john lavery, were welcomed. then there were the americans living in paris: walter gay, alexander harrison, frederick macmonnies, edmund h. wuerpel, john w. alexander, humphreys johnston, while sargent and abbey rarely missed an opportunity of calling at the rue du bac. whistler was hardly less cordial to students. milcendeau has told us how he took his work--and his courage--with him and went to whistler, but, reaching the door, stood trembling at the thought of meeting the master and showing his drawings. as soon as whistler saw the drawings his manner was so charming--as if they were just two artists together--that fear was forgotten, and whistler proved his interest by inviting milcendeau to send the drawings to the international. whistler met american and english students not only at home, but at the american art association in montparnasse, then a bit of old paris--a little white house with green shutters, which the street had long since left on a lower level, and at the back a garden where, under the great trees, the cloth was laid in summer; just the house to please whistler. he sometimes went to the club's dinners and celebrations. at one dinner on washington's birthday, after professional professors and popular politicians had delivered themselves, he was finally and rather patronisingly asked to speak by the president, who was either an ambassador or a dry-goods storekeeper, the usual patron of american art and supporter of american art institutions. whistler said: "now, as to teaching. in england it is all a matter of taste, but in france at least they tell you which end of the brush to stick in your mouth." mr. macmonnies remembers another evening: "a millionaire friend of whistler's and mine spoke to me of giving a dinner to the american artists in paris, or rather to whistler, and inviting the paris american artists. i dissuaded him, by saying they all hated one another and would pass the evening more cheerfully by sticking forks into one another under the table if they could. better to invite all the young fry--the american students. he gladly went into it. you can imagine the wild joy of the small fry, who had, of course, never met whistler. some got foolishly drunk, others got bloated with freshness, but they all had a rare time, and whistler, who sat at the head, more than any, and he was delightfully funny. the millionaire was enchanted, and also a distinguished american painter, who sat opposite to whistler and who was much respected by the youth. at one pause whistler said, 'i went to the louvre this morning'--pause, all the youths' faces wide open, expecting pearls of wisdom and points--'and i was amazed'--pause; everybody open-eared--'to see the amazing way they keep the floors waxed!'" there is a story that one day at lunch-time he went into the courtyard of the _ecole des beaux-arts_ and walked slowly round, only to be followed in a few minutes by a single line of students, each carrying a mahlstick as he carried his cane, and as many as had them wearing two _sous_ pieces for eye-glasses. he stopped and looked at the statues he wanted to see and they stopped and looked, and they followed him, until the circuit of the court was made, when they bowed each other out, and it was not till long after that they learned who he was. american students, if not so filled with their own sense of humour, are said to have mobbed him on one occasion when he went to a _crémerie_, upsetting tables and chairs to see him. mr. walter gay, who was much with whistler during these years, gives us his impressions: "i first knew whistler in the winter of ' , when he was established in paris, with the recently married mrs. whistler, in his apartment of the rue du bac. the marriage was a happy one; she appreciated fully his talent, he adored her, and when she died a few years later was crushed at her loss. in spite of the great influence exercised by whistler on contemporary art, he was never lionised in paris as he had been in london; paris is not a place for lions, there are already too many local celebrities. perhaps one of the reasons why the french artists held aloof from whistler was mrs. whistler's very british attitude towards the nation. once at a dinner of french artists given at our house in honour of whistler, mrs. whistler expressed the most gallophobe sentiments, complaining loudly of the inhospitality of the french towards her husband. although sixty years when i knew him, he had the enthusiasm and energy of early years. his handsome grey-blue eyes sparkled with the fire of youth--they were young eyes in an old face. i think it strange that no one ever seems to emphasise his singular beauty. not only were his features finely cut, but the symmetry of his figure, hands, and feet, retained until late in life, was remarkable; in youth he must have been a pocket apollo. his conversational powers were extraordinary--he had a celtic richness of vocabulary.... he was supersensitive to criticism. those who were either indifferent or antipathetic to him, his imagination instantly transformed into hidden enemies. that weakness of the artistic temperament, _la folie de la persécution_, was deeply rooted in his nature.... "no one can realise, who has not watched whistler paint, the agony his work gave him. i have seen him after a day's struggle with a picture, when things did not go, completely collapse as from an illness. his drawing cost him infinite trouble. i have known him work two weeks on a hand, and then give it up discouraged.... my last interview with whistler took place in the spring of , in london, about two months before his death. hearing that he was far from well, i went to see him, and found that the rumour was only too well grounded. i spent the afternoon with him; he was singularly gentle and affectionate, and clung to me pathetically as though he too realised that it was to be our last meeting in this world. "whatever his detractors may charge against him, it seems to me that whistler's faults and weaknesses sprang from an unbalanced mentality; he was a _déséquilibré_, the common defect of great painters. the unusual combination of artistic genius, literary gifts, and social attractions which made up whistler's personality was unique; there was never anybody like him. and there is another quality of his which must not be forgotten in the summing up of his character; underneath all his vagaries and eccentricities one felt that indefinable yet unmistakable being--a gentleman." mr. alexander harrison shows a different side of whistler: "my meetings with him were frequent and friendly. on one occasion, in a moment of excitement, i had the audacity to tell him that i felt he ought to have acted differently _vis-à-vis_ a jury of reception. his eyes flamed like a rattlesnake's and i apologised, but insisted, and then dodged a _little_. i afterwards realised that my naïve frankness had not lowered me in his esteem, as to the last he was nice to me, having understood that my admiration for his work was no greater than my affectionate regard for him. i have never known a man of more sincere and genuine impulse in ordinary human relations." now that whistler was established for life, as he hoped, in a fine studio, he was making up for the first unsettled years after his marriage. he began a number of large portraits in the rue notre-dame-des-champs. in , mr. a. j. eddy, known, we believe, to fame and chicago as "the man whistler painted," asked whistler to paint his portrait. he could stay in paris only a few weeks, and whistler liked his american frankness in saying that his portrait must be done by a certain date, and, though unaccustomed to be tied to time, whistler agreed. his description of mr. eddy was, "well, you know, he is the only man who ever did get a picture out of me on time, while i worked and he waited!" mr. eddy writes of a sitter, no doubt himself, who was with whistler "every day for nearly six weeks and never heard him utter an impatient word; on the contrary, he was all kindness." and mr. eddy describes whistler painting on in the twilight until it was impossible to distinguish between the living man and the figure on the canvas. he recalls the memory of those "glorious" days spent in the studio, of the pleasant hour at noon when painter and sitter breakfasted there together, of the long sittings, and the dinner after at the rue du bac, or in one of the little restaurants where no parisian was more at home than whistler. but steadily as the work went on, the picture was not sent to chicago until the following year. mr. j. j. cowan, whose portrait dates from this time, tells us that for _the grey man_, a small full-length, he gave sixty sittings, averaging each three to four hours. he, like whistler, was not in a hurry, but, unlike whistler, he eventually got tired, and a model was called in and posed in mr. cowan's clothes. the last sittings were in london, three years after. even then whistler wrote mr. cowan that the head needed just the one touch, with the sitter there, so that perfection might be assured. another portrait was of dr. davenport of paris. the portraits of women were more numerous, and they promised to be as fine as those done in the seventies and eighties. the work was interrupted by the tragedy of whistler's last years, and the more important were never completed. for one, miss charlotte williams, of baltimore, sat, but the painting disappeared, and only the rare lithograph of her remains. another lost portrait was a large full-length of miss peck, of chicago, now mrs. w. r. farquhar, which we saw in many stages, and at last, as it seemed to us, finished. she was painted standing, in evening dress, with her long white, green-lined cloak thrown back a little, as he had painted lady meux. it was full of the charm of youth, and the colour was a harmony in silver and green. miss kinsella, a third american girl who posed in the rue notre-dame-des-champs, and in fitzroy street, secured her portrait after whistler's death. we remember it in the fitzroy street studio, when it was so perfect that one more day's work would ruin it. in no other did he ever paint flesh with such perfection. face and neck had the golden tone of titian, with a subtlety of modelling beyond the venetian's powers, for in his later years it was to surpass the venetians he was trying. one day when e. went to the studio he had just scraped down neck and bust, for no reason except that he could not get the hand to come right with the rest. it was to be lovelier than ever, he said. it was never repainted. it remains but a shadow of its loveliness. when m. rodin saw it at the london memorial exhibition, he praised neck and bust to j. as "a beautiful suggestion of lace," so beautiful in tone and modelling it still is. that posing for whistler was difficult we know from these ladies and many of his other sitters, as well as from our experience. over and over, when he wanted to work on their portraits, he would telegraph to the last address he happened to have, though sometimes the telegrams did not reach them till weeks after in some distant part of the world. the fact that his sitters were not always waiting for him not only upset him temporarily, but sometimes stopped the subject altogether. one incident in connection with the portrait of miss kinsella amused him. she holds an iris in her hand. a real flower was got, but the flower would fade, and irises were not easy to obtain. so he went to liberty's to get some stuff of the purple-violet tone he wanted out of which to make a flower. he explained what he needed to the shopman, who solemnly informed him that messrs. liberty only kept "art colours." portraits of mrs. charles whibley were in progress about the same time: _l'andalouse, mother of pearl and silver_, the unfinished _tulip, rose and gold_, and _red and black, the fan_. two others of this period are of mrs. walter sickert, _green and violet_, the second for which she sat, and lady eden, _brown and gold_. he was also painting his own portrait in the white jacket, which was changed into a black coat after mrs. whistler's death, and a full-length in a long brown overcoat shown in and not since. the large canvases had to be left when he shut up the studio, but he could carry his little portfolio of lithographic paper and box of chalks everywhere, and during those two or three years he developed the art of lithography as no one had before, he and fantin-latour being the two chief factors in the revival of lithography in the nineties. he was determined, he said, to make "a roaring success of it." in the streets and at home he was constantly at work, and the result is the series of lithographs of the shops and gardens and galleries of paris and many portraits. his interest in technique was tireless. he experimented on transfer-paper and on stone. he hunted old paper as strenuous people hunt lions. drawings and proofs were for ever in the post between paris and london, where the ways were transferring and printing for him, and friends were for ever bringing paper from london or carrying drawings tremblingly back from paris. he was deep in experiments with colour, and a few of the lithographs for _songs on stone_, already announced by mr. heinemann, were at last ready. they were proved in paris by belfont, but his shop closed in , printer and stones vanished, and this was the end of the proposed publication. since whistler's death mysterious prints in black-and-white from the key stones have turned up in germany, but only a few prints in colour remain, no two alike, trials in colour. he had looked for great things: "you know, i mean them to wipe up the place before i get done," he said, and their loss was a severe disappointment. other lithographs, made then or later, were published in the _studio_, the _art journal_, _l'estampe originale_, _l'imagier_, the _pagenat_, and one in our _lithography and lithographers_. he never wanted to keep his work, no matter in what medium, from the public. with commissions and experiments keeping him busy in paris, whistler was, as he wrote to us in london, working from morning to night, and in a condition for it he wouldn't change for anything. he was compelled to change it only too soon. chapter xxxviii: trials and griefs. the years eighteen ninety-four to eighteen ninety-six. in interruptions came, some slight, but one so serious that life and work were never the same again. a tedious annoyance was caused by du maurier's _trilby_ in _harper's magazine_. du maurier represented the english students at carrel's (gleyre's) as veritable crichtons, while whistler, under the name of joe sibley, was ridiculed. du maurier's drawings left no doubt as to the identity, for in one whistler wears the _chapeau bizarre_ over his curls. another shows him running away from a studio fight, and the text is more offensive. joe sibley is "'the idle apprentice,' the king of bohemia, _le roi des truands_, to whom everything was forgiven, as to françois villon, _à cause de ses gentillesses_.... always in debt ... vain, witty, and a most exquisite and original artist ... with an unimpeachable moral tone.... also eccentric in his attire ... the most irresistible friend in the world as long as his friendship lasted, but that was not for ever.... his enmity would take the simple and straightforward form of trying to punch his ex-friend's head; and when the ex-friend was too big he would get some new friend to help him.... his bark was worse than his bite ... he was better with his tongue than his fists.... but when he met another joker he would just collapse like a pricked bladder. he is now perched on such a topping pinnacle (of fame and notoriety combined) that people can stare at him from two hemispheres at once." du maurier had posed as a friend for years, and in the _pall mall gazette_ whistler protested against the insult. du maurier, to an interviewer, expressed surprise; he thought the description of joe sibley would recall the good times in paris, and he pretended to be amazed that whistler did not agree. he claimed that he was one of whistler's victims, and quoted sheridan ford's pirated edition of _the gentle art_: "it was rather droll. listen: 'mr. du maurier and mr. wilde happening to meet in the rooms where mr. whistler was holding his first exhibition of venice etchings, the latter brought the two face to face, and, taking each by the arm, inquired, "i say, which one of you two invented the other, eh?"' the obvious retort to that, on my part, would have been that, if he did not take care, i would invent _him_, but he had slipped away before either of us could get a word out.... i did what i did in a playful spirit of retaliation for this little jibe about me in his book." the editor of _harper's_ had not understood the offensive nature of the passages. whistler called his attention to them, and an apology was published in the magazine (january ), the number was suppressed, and du maurier was compelled to omit them, and to change joe sibley to bald anthony in the book. whistler, when the changes were submitted to him, was satisfied. but he said: "well, you know, what would have happened to the new thackeray if i hadn't been willing? but i was gracious, and i gave my approval to the sudden appearance in the story of an anthony, tall and stout and slightly bald. the dangerous resemblance was gone. and i wired--well, you know, ha ha!--i wired to them over in america compliments and complete approval of author's new and obscure friend, bald anthony!" _trilby_ was burlesqued at the gaiety, and whistler was dragged in as _the stranger_. his hat, overcoat, eye-glass, curls, and cane were copied, but no one paid the slightest attention, and _the stranger_ vanished after the first night. sometimes whistler found insult where none was intended, as in the case of a _bibliography_ compiled in for the _library bulletin_ of the university of the state of new york--all the copies burnt, we hear, in the fire at the state capitol, albany. it was an appreciation, but it contained inaccuracies and quoted as authorities critics he objected to, and he was more vexed by it than there was need. another annoyance was an anonymous article in _mcclure's magazine_; _whistler, painter and comedian_ (september ). he demanded an apology and the suppression of the article, and both were granted. and so it went on to the end; he was continually coming upon references to himself, disfigured by misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and malice. [illustration: portrait of miss kinsella the iris, rose and green oil in the possession of miss kinsella (_see page _)] [illustration: whistler at his printing press in the studio, rue notre-dame-des-champs from a photograph by m. dornac (_see page _)] these worries occupied his time and tried his temper. but he was overwhelmed late in by a trouble infinitely more tragic. his wife was taken ill with the terrible disease, cancer. they came to london to consult the doctors in december. first they stayed at long's hotel in bond street, mrs. whistler surrounded by her numerous sisters, the two paris servants, louise and constant, in attendance; then mrs. whistler was under a doctor's care in holles street, and whistler stopped with his brother in wimpole street. those who loved him would like to forget his misery during the weeks and months that followed. work was going on somehow; not painting, that waited in paris, but lithography--several portraits of lady haden, a drawing in wellington street, and others. but he told mr. way afterwards that he wanted them all destroyed; he should not have worked when his heart was not in it: "it was madness on my part." he brought proofs to show us. almost every afternoon he would take j. to way's, where the lithographs were being transferred to the stone and printed. he would lunch or dine with us, keeping up his brave front, though we knew what was in his heart. he had not been in his "palatial residence" two years before it was closed, and the canvases were left untouched in the "stupendous studio." new honours and new successes came: in the temple gold medal from the pennsylvania academy, in a gold medal from antwerp, and innumerable commissions. it was just as fortune smiled that the blow fell. the eden trial, which struck many as an unnecessary and almost farcical episode in his life, distracted him during these tragic months. his work ceased for weeks at a time, and he devoted himself to the case. his journeys to paris were frequent and his correspondence enormous. the case was fought out in the courts of france. it arose out of the uncertainty as to the price which sir william eden should pay for his wife's portrait. he was introduced to whistler by mr. george moore, to whom whistler had mentioned one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds for a sketch in water-colour or pastel. whistler became interested in his sitter and made a small full-length oil, for which he would have asked a far larger sum. his irritation can be understood when sir william eden attempted to make him accept as "a valentine"--for it was paid on february --one hundred pounds in a sealed envelope. whistler felt that the amount should have been left to him to decide. he refused to give up the picture, he cashed the cheque, and he did not return the money until legal proceedings were taken by the baronet. before the case came into court he wiped out the head. even his friends thought that whistler made a grave mistake and prejudiced his case when he cashed the cheque, instead of throwing it after the baronet, who, on his hasty retreat from the studio, whistler said, protested and threatened all the way down the six flights, while he from the top urged the baronet not to expose his nationality by so unseemly a noise in a public place. whistler went to paris for the trial before the civil tribunal on march , . his advocates were maître ratier, by whose side he sat in court, and maître beurdeley, a collector of his etchings. sir william eden failed to appear. whistler was ordered to deliver the portrait as painted, a penalty to be imposed in case of delay; to refund twenty-five hundred francs, his lowest price; to pay in addition one thousand francs damages. the judge stated that he was in honour bound not to deface the portrait after he had completed it, and that an artist must carry out his contract. to whistler the judgment was unjust; he appealed in the cour de cassation, and the matter dragged on until after mrs. whistler's death. in england "an artist" (j.) tried to raise a fund to pay the expenses of the trial, in order "to show in some practical form artists' appreciation for the genius of james mcneill whistler." his appeal was responded to by only one other artist, mr. frederick macmonnies, and was as unsuccessful as the subscription started after the ruskin trial in . mr. george moore had been the go-between when the portrait was commissioned, sir william eden's ally in the legal business, and a conspicuous figure in the newspaper muddle. after the trial whistler wrote moore a scathing letter. moore's answer was to taunt whistler with old age. this was published in the _pall mall gazette_ and reprinted in french papers. whistler was in france and he sent moore a challenge. whistler's seconds were m. octave mirbeau and m. viélé-griffin. their challenge remained unanswered, but after several days moore relieved his feelings to a reporter. london looked upon the challenge as whistler's crowning joke. it was no joke to moore, who was sufficiently conversant with french manners to know how his conduct would be received in paris. whistler's seconds sent a _procès verbal_ to the press, stating that they had waited eight days for an answer, and not having received one, they considered their mission terminated. thus before the world whistler kept up the game, though in the rue du bac life was a tragedy. mrs. whistler had returned more ill than ever. miss ethel philip was married from the house early in the summer to mr. charles whibley, and her sister, miss rosalind birnie philip, took her place. after the trial whistler went back to work. he sent _the little white girl_ to the international exhibition at venice; he exhibited the second portrait of mrs. sickert at the glasgow institute; he chose six lithographs for the centenary exhibition in paris. a head of carmen, his model, was ready for the portrait painters in london. when in the late summer he returned to england, and, with mrs. whistler, settled at the red lion hotel, lyme regis, he arranged a show of his lithographs in london. the society of illustrators, of which he was vice-president, was preparing an anthology, _the london garland_, edited by w. e. henley, illustrated by members, and published by messrs. macmillan. j. asked him to contribute an illustration to a sonnet of henley's. but he had to abandon this plan and allow a nocturne to be reproduced. he made several lithographs at lyme regis: glowing forges, dark stables with horses an animal painter would envy, the smith, and the landlord. "absolute failures, some," he told us sadly; "others, well, you know, not bad!" two of the pictures painted at lyme regis are masterpieces: _the little rose of lyme regis_ and _the master smith_. in these he solved the problem of carrying on his work as he wished until it was finished. there also he painted the only large landscape we know of: the white houses of the town, the hill-side with trees beyond. while he was still in dorset a prize was awarded him at venice. several prizes in money were given in different sections to artists of different nationalities. whistler was awarded two thousand five hundred francs by the city of murano, the seventh on the list. he knew the "enemies," foresaw the prattle there would be of the seventh-hand compliment, and forestalled it by explaining in the press how the prizes had been awarded, his being equal to the first. the exhibition of his lithographs was held at the fine art society's in december . seventy were shown, mostly of the work of the last few years, and j. wrote an introduction to the catalogue, the only time he asked anybody to "introduce" him. there were no decorations in the gallery, nor was the catalogue in brown paper, save twenty-five copies, but the prints were in his frames. english artists became interested in lithography because they were asked to contribute to the centenary exhibition in paris, and, at the call of leighton, they tried their hands at it, more or less unsuccessfully. the contrast was great between their work shown at mr. dunthorne's gallery and whistler's, whose prints alone are destined to live. whistler derived little pleasure from his triumph. the winter was spent moving from place to place. his plans were made to go to new york to consult an american specialist, forgetting as well as he could "the vast far-offness" of america. but he stayed in london, first at garlant's hotel, then in apartments in half-moon street, later at the de vere gardens hotel, and then at the savoy. work of one sort or another marked these moves: the lithograph of _kensington gardens_ from the de vere hotel; at the savoy most pathetic drawings of his wife, _the siesta_ and _by the balcony_, and the thames from the hotel windows. he had during the first months no studio in london. he worked for a while in mr. walter sickert's; mr. sargent lent his early in , when there was talk of a lithograph of cecil rhodes and a portrait of mr. a. j. pollitt, of whom he made a lithograph, though the painting, begun later in fitzroy street, was destroyed. he interested himself in the experiments of others. in the winter of j. was asked by the _daily chronicle_ to edit the illustration of a series of articles on london in support of the progressive county council. it was an event of importance to illustrators, process-men, and printers: the first effort in england for the artistic illustration of a daily paper. the _daily graphic_ was illustrated, but its draughtsmen were trained to adapt their drawings to the printer. the scheme now was to oblige the printer to adapt himself to the illustrator. every illustrator of note in london contributed. burne-jones' frontispiece to william morris' _news from nowhere_ was enlarged and printed successfully. j. asked whistler to let him try the experiment of enlarging one of the thames etchings. whistler was interested. _black lion wharf_ was selected and printed in the _daily chronicle_, february , , the very day of the month, washington's birthday, when, ten years later, the london memorial exhibition opened. with its publication the success of the series was complete, not politically, for the twenty-four drawings were said to have lost the progressives twenty-five seats. the etching stood the enlarging superbly. j. made the proprietors pay for the print, the first time whistler was paid for the use of one of his works not made as an illustration. whistler came to us almost daily. late one afternoon he brought his transfer-paper, and made a lithograph of j. as he sprawled comfortably, and uncomfortably had to keep the pose, in an easy-chair before the fire. whistler made four portraits in succession of j. and one of e., each in an afternoon. he drew on as the light faded, and the portrait of e. was done while the firelight flickered on her face and on his paper. then he told us he had taken a studio in fitzroy street to paint a large full-length of j. in a russian cloak--_the russian schube_--which he thought the pennsylvania academy of fine arts might like to have. but j. was called away, mrs. whistler grew rapidly worse, the scheme was dropped never to be taken up again. on other afternoons he and j. would go to way's, where the savoy drawings were put on the stone. the lithotint of _the thames_ was done on a stone sent to the hotel. drawings made in paris, lyme regis, london were transferred and gone all over with chalk, stump, scraper. he worked in a little room adjoining mr. way's office, the walls of which were covered with pastels and water-colours by him and c. e. holloway. there he drew the portraits of mr. thomas way in the firelight, never stopping until dark, when mr. way would bring out some rare old liqueur, and there was a rest before he hurried back to the savoy. his nights were spent sitting up by his wife. he slept a little in the morning and usually came to us in the afternoon, at times so exhausted that we feared more for him than for her. the studio at no. fitzroy street was a huge place at the back of the house, one flight up, reached by a ramshackle glass-roofed passage. the portrait of mr. pollitt was started and one of mr. robert barr's daughter, which has disappeared. mr. cowan sat again, and another was begun of mr. s. r. crockett, who describes the sittings: "i don't think he liked me at first. someone had told him i was a philistine of askelon.... he told me lots about his early times in london and paris, but all in fragments, just as the thing occurred to him. like an idiot, i took no notes. lots, too, about carlyle and his sittings, as likely to interest a scot. he had got on unexpectedly well with true thomas, chiefly by letting him do the talking, and never opening his mouth, except when carlyle wanted him to talk. carlyle asked him about paris, and was unexpectedly interested in the _cafés_, and so forth. whistler told him the names of some--riche, anglais, véfour, and foyot and lavenue on the south side. carlyle seemed to be mentally taking notes. then he suddenly raised his head and demanded, 'can a man get a chop there?' "concerning my own sittings, he was very particular that i should always be in good form--'trampling' as he said--otherwise he would tell me to go away and play.... mr. fisher unwin had arranged for a lithograph, but whistler said he would make a picture like a postage stamp, and next year all the exhibitions would be busy as anthills with similar 'postage stamp' portraits. 'some folk think life-size means six foot by three; i'll show them!' he said more than once. i wanted to shell out as he went on, and once, being flush (new book or something), i said i had fifty pounds which was annoying me, and i wished he would take it. he was very sweet about it, and said he understood. money burnt a hole in his pocket, too, but he could not take any money, as he might never finish the work. any day his brush might drop, and he could not do another stroke. "it was a bad omen! his wife grew worse. he sent me word not to come. she died, and i never saw him after. i wish you could tell me what became of that picture. he called it _the grey man_." this is another example of whistler's repetition of titles. mr. cowan's portrait, painted the same year, was _the grey man_ too. of mr. crockett's, whistler said to us that crockett was delighted with it as far as it had gone, and he was rather pleased with it himself. he painted several of these small full-lengths, which were to show the fallacy of the life-size theory and of the belief that the importance of a portrait depends on the size of the canvas. kennedy, after the portrait destroyed in paris, stood for a second, now in the metropolitan museum; mr. arnold hannay for another; c. e. holloway for _the philosopher_, which whistler considered particularly successful. in the spring whistler moved his wife from the savoy to st. jude's cottage, hampstead heath, rented from canon and mrs. barnett. after this he began to give up hope. it was a sad day when for the first time he admitted, "we are very, very bad." and we understood that the end was near the afternoon when he, the most fastidious, appeared wearing one black and one brown shoe, and explaining that he had a corn. but, indeed, many times it seemed as if in his despair he did not know what he was doing. the last day mr. sydney pawling met him walking, running across the heath, looking at nothing, seeing no one. mr. pawling, alarmed, stopped him. "don't speak! don't speak! it is terrible!" he said, and was gone. that was the end. mrs whistler died on may and was buried at chiswick on the th. we have heard that the funeral was arranged for the th, but whistler, objecting to the date, postponed it a day, and mrs. whistler was buried on her birthday. he never would do anything on the th if he could help it. we were abroad, but the first sunday after e.'s return he came and asked her to go with him to the national gallery. there he showed her the pictures "trixie" loved, standing long before tintoretto's _milky way_, her favourite. there was no talk about pictures--canaletto was barely looked at--there was no talk about anything, and the tragedy that could not be forgotten was never referred to. but m. paul renouard was in the gallery and came to whistler with the word of comfort, from which he shrank. during the first few months after mrs. whistler's death, in the shock of his sorrow and loss, whistler made her sister, miss rosalind birnie philip, his ward, and drew up a new will appointing her his heiress and executrix; eventually cancelling his former bequests, and leaving everything to her absolutely. chapter xxxix: alone. the year eighteen ninety-six. whistler stayed a short time at hampstead with his sisters-in-law, and then went to mr. heinemann at whitehall court, where he remained, on and off, for two or three years, spending only the periods of mr. heinemann's absence at garlant's hotel or in paris. he was with us day after day. little notes came from the studio to ask if we would be in and alone in the evening, and, if so, he would dine with us. at first he would not join us if we expected anyone. he liked to sit and talk, he said, but he could not meet other people. he saw few outside the studio, except mr. heinemann, mr. kennedy, and ourselves. we went to the studio, and often he and j. sketched together in the streets. for these sketching expeditions whistler prepared beforehand the colours he wanted to use, and if the day turned out too grey or too radiant for his scheme nothing was done. the chosen colours were mixed, and little tubes, filled with them, were carried in his small paint-box, which held also the tiny palette with the pure colours arranged on it, his brushes, and two or three small panels. many studies were made. the most important was of st. john's, westminster. he loved the quiet corner, now destroyed, and he went there many times. he worked away, his top hat jammed down on his nose, sitting on a three-legged stool, his paint-box on his knee, the panel in it, beginning at once in colour on the panel, usually finishing the sketch in one afternoon, though he took two over the church. the painting was simply done, commencing with the point of interest, the masses put in bigly, the details worked into them. just as in the studio, five minutes after he had begun he became so absorbed in his work that he forgot everything else until it grew too dark to see. when ladies would come and recognise him, he stopped, got up, and spoke to them, always charmingly. [illustration: illustration to little johannes portrait drawings on wood in the pennell collection, library of congress, washington (_see page _)] [illustration: water-colour landscape loaned by mrs. mortimer menpes] he made little journeys during the summer, one to rochester and canterbury, with mrs. whibley and miss birnie philip. but, disgusted with the inns and the food, he came back after a day or so. another was with mr. kennedy, who writes us: "it was agreed that whistler and myself should go to france. neither of us had any idea _where_ we were going except to havre. we arrived in the early morning, and after he got shaved and had coffee, we took the boat to honfleur, which, as you know, has a tidal service. 'do you know where we are going?' i said to him. 'no, i don't,' said he. 'well,' said i, 'there is a white-whiskered, respectable-looking old gentleman; perhaps he knows the lay of the ground. tip him a stave.' "so whistler asked him about the hotels in honfleur. there were two--the cheval blanc on the quay, and the ferme de st. siméon on the outskirts. the cheval was so dirty that i got the only cab, and, piling the luggage on it ourselves, drove off to the farm. fortunately, there were two vacant rooms, and we stayed there a week. the cooking was excellent, and, of course, _madame_ knew who _monsieur vistlaire_ was. whistler used to kick up a row every night with me about the 'ridiculous british' to divert his mind, i imagine, and sometimes my retorts were so sharp that i said to myself, 'all is over between us now.' but he used to bob up serenely in the morning, as if nothing had happened, and after _déjeuner_ he would take his small box of colours and paint in the large church. i used to stroll about the town and look in occasionally to see that he came to no harm. it was here that he said he was going over to rome some day, and when i said, 'don't forget to let me know, so that i may be on hand to see you wandering up the aisle in sackcloth and ashes, with a candle in each hand, or scrubbing the floor!' he said, in a tone of horrified astonishment, 'good god! o'k.,[ ] is it possible? why, i thought they would make me a hell of a swell of an abbot, or something like that.' "it was amusing to see him manoeuvre to get near the big kitchen fire, overcoat on. he was a true american in his liking for heat, and the way he would sidle into the kitchen, which opened on out-of-doors, all the time mildly flattering _madame_, was very characteristic. we went to trouville one day on the diligence, and had a capital _déjeuner_ at the café de paris, before which whistler said, 'we must do this _en prince_, o'k.!' 'all right, your highness, i'm with you!' afterwards, on the beach, he went to sleep on a chair, leaning back against a bath-house, his straw hat tipped on his nose. it was funny, but sleep after luncheon was a necessity to him. coming back to london, in the harbour of southampton, after listening to the usual unwearying talk against the british, i said, 'oh, be reasonable!' 'why should i?' said he." the ferme de st. siméon has been called the cradle of impressionism. it was here that boudin lived and most of the impressionists came, and round about they found their subjects. later on whistler spent a few days at calais in the meurice, sterne's hotel, where he was miserable. then he tried to find j. at whitby, where they missed each other, and where he said the glitter of the windows made the town look like the crystal palace. whistler recovered slowly, and journeys helped him less than work in the studio, where, by degrees, he returned to the schemes so sadly interrupted. we remember his coming to us with mr. kennedy one sunday afternoon, bringing up our three flights of stairs _the master smith_ to show it to us once again before it went to america. mr. kennedy had captured it, fearful of a touch being added. it was placed on one chair, whistler, on another facing it, wretched at the thought of parting with it. it was always a wrench to let a picture go. after a while he did not mind meeting a few people. a man he liked to see was timothy cole. there was a great scheme that he should make a series of drawings on wood and cole engrave them. cole brought the blocks prepared for him to draw on. but that is the last we or cole heard about it, though we saw the blocks frequently at fitzroy street. mr. cole says: "i did not speak to him more than once after i had given him the wood blocks. i did not think it prudent to press him about the matter, fearing he might get disgusted and give it up.... the blocks were the size of the _century_ page." cole gave whistler some of his prints, and they pleased whistler very much, though he rarely cared to own the pictures and prints of other artists. once when an etcher gave him a not very wonderful proof, he tore it up, saying, "i do not collect etchings, i make them! i do not collect the works of my contemporaries!" with the exception of his portrait by boxall we never saw a scrap of anyone else's work about his studio or his house, save the forgery someone sent him which he kept and hung for a while. another side to mr. cole was his endless practical jokes. he used to do extraordinary things, to whistler's amusement. on one point only they were not in sympathy: mr. cole's theories of diet. one evening at dinner cole told us that he and his family were living chiefly on rhubarb tops, they have such a "foody" taste, his son thought. "dear me, poor fellow," said whistler, "it sounds as if once, long long ago, he had really eaten, and still has a dim memory of what food is!" "and spinach," cole added, "it's fine. we eat it raw, it's wonderful the things it does for you!" "but what does it do for you?" whistler asked, and cole began a dissertation on the juices of the stomach. "well, you know," whistler told him, "when you begin to talk about the stomach and its juices, it's time to stop dining." after that, cole managed to dismiss his theories and dine like other people when with us. professor john van dyke was in london that fall, and whistler was willing to come to meet him. a long darn in a tablecloth afterwards bore witness to the animation of one of those dinners--whistler's knife brought down sharply on the table to emphasise his argument. the subject was _las meniñas_, which he had never seen, which everyone else had seen. velasquez painted the picture just as you see it, he maintained; no one agreed. perspectives and plans were drawn on the unfortunate cloth, chairs were pushed back, the situation grew critical. whistler was forced to yield slowly, when, of a sudden, his eyes fell on van dyke's feet in long, pointed shoes, then the american fashion, their points carried to a degree of fineness no english bootmaker could rival. "my god, van dyke, where did you get your shoes?" whistler asked. we could not go on fighting after that; defeat was avoided. though whistler had never been to madrid, it seemed as if he had seen the pictures, so familiar was he with them, and though he was at times not right about them, his interest was endless. we remember "bob" stevenson telling him, to his great delight, how, one summer day with j. in the long gallery of the prado where _las meniñas_ then hung, an old peasant dressed in faded blue-green came and sat down on the green bench in front, and straightway he became part of the picture, so true was its atmosphere. there are legends of whistler's descent into a _casa des huespedes_ in madrid with sargent and j., but j. never was there and sargent denies it. it is another legend. whistler could get more from a glance at a photograph than most painters from six months' copying. another evening claude was the subject--claude compared to turner. whistler could never see the master englishman adored in turner; not because of ruskin, for mr. walter greaves told us that years before the ruskin trial whistler "reviled turner." mr. cole in was engraving turners in the national gallery, and whistler insisted on their inferiority to the claudes, so amazingly demonstrated in trafalgar square, where turner invited the comparison disastrous to him. the argument grew heated, and whistler adjourned it until the next morning, when he arranged to meet cole and j. in the gallery. whistler compared the work of the two artists hanging side by side, as turner wished: "well, you know, you have only to look. claude is the artist who knows there is no painting the sun itself, and so he chooses the moment after the sun has set, or has hid behind a cloud, and its light fills the sky, and that light he suggests as no other painter ever could. but turner must paint nothing less than the sun, and he sticks on a blob of paint--let us be thankful that it isn't a red wafer, as in some of his other pictures--and there isn't any illusion whatever, and the englishman lifts up his head in ecstatic conceit with the english painter, who alone has dared to do what no artist would ever be fool enough to attempt! and look at the architecture. claude could draw a classical building as it is; turner must invent, imagine architecture as no architect could design it, and no builder could put it up, and as it never would stand up--the old amateur!" they went on to the canalettos and guardis whistler could not weary of--to canaletto's big red church and the tiny rotunda at vauxhall with the little figures, from which hogarth learned so much. whistler always acknowledged guardi's influence, though it had not led him in venice to paint pictures like guardi or canaletto either. and he never tired of pointing out that great artists like guardi and canaletto and velasquez, who were born and worked in the south, did not try to paint sunlight, but kept their work grey and low in tone. that day at the national gallery, before he could finish explaining the similarity between his work and guardi's, the talk came to an end, for half the copyists in the room had left their easels. he stopped. he could not talk to an audience which he was not sure was sympathetic. sure of sympathy, he would talk for ever in praise of the luminosity of claude, the certainty of canaletto, the wonderful tone of guardi, the character and colour of hogarth. another italian about whom he was enthusiastic was michael angelo caravaggio, admiring his things in the louvre. whistler maintained that the exact knowledge, the science, of the old masters was the reason of their greatness. the modern painter has a few tricks, a few fads; these give out, and nothing is left. knowledge is inexhaustible. tintoretto did not find his way until he was forty. titian was painting in as masterly a manner in his last year as in his youth. and speaking of the cleverness--a term he hated--of the modern man, he said: [illustration: the master smith of lyme regis oil in the boston museum of fine arts (_see page _)] [illustration: the smith passage du dragon lithograph. w. (_see page _)] "think of the finish, the delicacy, the elegance, the repose of a little terborgh, vermeer, metsu. these were masters who could paint interiors, chandeliers, and all the rest; and what a difference between them and the clever little interiors now!" in the autumn whistler established miss birnie philip and her mother in the rue du bac and returned to mr. heinemann's flat at whitehall court, making it so much his home that before long he was laughingly alluding to "my guest heinemann." it is not likely that the two would ever have parted had not mr. heinemann married and even then whistler stayed with him as long as his health remained good, dependent on the friendship formed late in life with a man many years younger. when mr. heinemann was away he complained that london was duller and blacker than ever. whistler shrank from condolence in his great grief or from a revival of the memories of those terrible weeks. his host was careful or we would invite whistler to us if anybody was expected at whitehall court. after three or four years mr. heinemann's married life ended abruptly, and whistler at once suggested that they should go back to the old way. mr. heinemann took another flat in whitehall court with this idea. but before the plan could be realised whistler died. in the autumn of mr. henry savage landor, back from japan and korea, also stayed with mr. heinemann; "a rare fellow, full of real affection," whistler said of him. they sat up for hours together night after night. whistler slept badly, and mr. landor can do with less sleep than most people. there was a skull in the drawing-room that mr. landor tells us whistler sketched over and over again, while they talked till morning. when they drew the curtains it was day; then whistler dressed, breakfasted, and went to the studio. he brought us stories of mr. landor; the way in which he would start for the ends of the earth as if to stroll in piccadilly, "leaving the costume of travel to the briton crossing the channel"; or, in light shoes, "outwalk the stoutest-shod gillie over scotch moors." then whistler brought us mr. landor, with whom our friendship dates from the morning when, at whistler's request, he sat japanese fashion on the floor in front of our fire, a rug wrapped round him for kimono, and devoured imaginary rice with pencils for chopsticks. when mr. landor had his horrible experiences in thibet and the story of his tortures was telegraphed to europe, whistler was the first to send him a cable rejoicing at his escape. whistler also took a fancy while in whitehall court to mr. heinemann's brother edmund who was, whistler said, "something in the city," who saw to one or two investments for him, and whom he christened the "napoleon of finance" and described as "sitting in a tangled web of telegraphs and telephones." he never had invested money before, and it was with pride that he deposited at the bank his scrip and collected his dividends. to end a discussion about the city mr. edmund heinemann once said to him, "you ain't on the stock exchange!" "well," said whistler, "you just thank your stars, eddy, i ain't, because if i was there wouldn't be much room for you! what!" evening after evening he would linger in the studio until he could see no longer; keeping dinner waiting at whitehall court, so that no time could ever be fixed. arriving, he would mix cocktails, an art in which he excelled and must have learned in the days when he stayed away from the coast survey. if it did not suit him to dine at whitehall court he would write or wire to say he could dine with us if we liked; or that he had amazing things to tell us; should he come? or that he was sure we were both wanting to see him; or heinemann's servant, payne, would announce his coming; or he would drive straight from the studio, reaching us sometimes before the notes he had sent, or with the wires unsent in his pocket; almost the only time we have known him willingly not to dress for dinner. on rare occasions he came in after we had dined, demanded the _fortune du pot_ of our small establishment, and was content no matter how meagre that fortune might prove, though if it included "a piece of american cake," or anything sweet, he was better pleased. he grumbled only over our sunday supper, which was cold in english fashion, out of deference to bowen, our old english servant. then he would bring constant, his valet, model, and cook, to make an onion soup or an omelette. constant was succeeded by a little belgian called marie, who was supposed to look after the studio, and who, when he stayed at garlant's and we dined with him there, would be summoned to dress the salad and make the coffee. it was not long after this that, by the doctor's advice, he gave up coffee and stopped smoking too. few men ever ate less than whistler, but few were more fastidious about what they did eat. he made the best of our english cooking while it lasted, but he was glad when bowen was replaced by louise and then augustine, who were french and who could make the soups, salads, and dishes he liked, and who did not hesitate to scold him when he was late and ruined the dinner. these meetings must have been pleasant to whistler as to us; there were weeks when he came every evening. on his arrival he might be silent, but after his nap he would begin talking, and his talk was as good on the last evening with us as on the first. we shall always regret that we made no notes of what he said, though the charm of his talk would have eluded a shorthand reporter. much can never be forgotten. in "surroundings of antagonism" he wrapped this talk as well as himself in "a species of misunderstanding" and deliberately mystified, bewildered, and aggravated the company. but when disguise was not necessary, and he talked at his ease, he impressed everyone with his sanity of judgment, breadth of interest, and keenness of intellect. his reading was extensive, though we never ceased to wonder when he found time for it, save during sleepless nights. his talk abounded in quotations, especially from the bible, that "splendid mine of invective," he described it. his diversity of knowledge was as unexpected as his extensive reading, and we felt that he knew things intuitively, just as by some uncanny faculty he heard everything said about him. when he chose he held the floor and was then at his best. "i am not arguing with you, i am telling you," he would say, and he would lose his temper, which was violent as ever, but he was friendlier than before when it was over. he liked to hear the last gossip, and reproached us if we had none for him. more than once he told e. her discretion amounted positively to indiscretion; he was sure she had a cupboard full of skeletons, and some day, when she was pulling the strings of one carefully to put it back in place, the whole lot would come rattling down about her ears. and so, the shadow of sorrow in the background, the evenings went by that winter in the little dining-room which had been etty's studio where the huge edinburgh pictures were painted. the eden affair was still dragging on, and whistler was disgusted to find english artists as afraid to support him as at the ruskin trial. one day in bond street he met a follower, just returned to town, arm-on-arm with "the baronet." the follower at once left a card at fitzroy street. whistler wrote "judas iscariot" on it and sent it back to him. a few weeks later the new english art club hung sir william eden's work, and with it, he said, "their shame, upon their walls." he complimented them, much to their discomfort, on their appetite for "toad." to clear the air, which had become sultry in the art clubs and studios, we invited professor fred brown and dr. d. s. maccoll to meet him one evening at dinner, and discuss things. professor brown had another engagement. dr. maccoll came, and whistler, who did not mind how hard a man fought if he fought at all, continued on terms with him. but the new english art club he never forgave. a show of j.'s lithographs of granada and the alhambra was arranged at the fine art society's during december , and for the catalogue whistler wrote an introductory note, and another for a show of phil may's drawings in the same gallery. he designed the cover for mr. charles whibley's _book of scoundrels_, and also two covers for novels by miss elizabeth robins, _below the salt_, for which he drew a silver ship, and _the open question_, for which he devised shields; all three books published by mr. heinemann. the design for the _book of scoundrels_ was a gallows, drawn in thin lines, with rope and noose attached. henley, to whom it was shown, asked whether the gallows should not have been drawn with a support. whistler's comment was: "well, you know, that's the usual sort of gallows, but this one will do. it will hang all of us. just like henley's selfishness to want a strong one!" an allusion to henley's size. [illustration: portrait of mrs. a. j. cassatt (_see page _)] [illustration: the beach water-colour in the possession of mrs. knowles (_see page _)] [illustration: shop window at dieppe water-colour (_see page _)] during the winter whistler met sir seymour haden for the last time at a dinner given by the society of illustrators (of which both were vice-presidents) to mr. alfred parsons, on his election to the royal academy. it was whistler's first appearance in public since his wife's death, and as we had persuaded him to go, never anticipating any such meeting, we were annoyed to think that we had exposed him to the unpleasantness of it, or haden either, for we had had no part in their quarrels. however, as soon as whistler saw haden he woke up and began to enjoy himself. his laugh carried far. haden heard it, and may have seen the three monocles on the dinner-table. he looked toward the laugh, dropped his spoon in his soup-plate, and left. later whistler was called upon to make a speech and could not get out of it. but it was an anti-climax. the event of the dinner was over. at christmas he went with mr. and mrs. t. fisher unwin and ourselves to bournemouth, where our hotel was an old-fashioned inn, selected from the guide-book because it was the nearest to the sea. we breakfasted in our rooms, we met at lunch to order dinner, and the rest of the day whistler insisted must be spent getting an appetite for it--wandering on the cliffs, he with his little paint-box. but the sea was on the wrong side, the wind blew the wrong way, he could do nothing. some days we took long drives. one damp, cold, cheerless afternoon we stopped at a small inn in poole. the landlady, watching whistler sip his hot whisky and water, was convinced he was somebody, but was unable to place him. "and who do you suppose i am?" whistler asked at last. "i can't exactly say, sir, but i should fancy you was from the 'alls!" aubrey beardsley was then at boscombe, a further stage in his brave fight with death, and we went to see him. but the sight of the suffering of others was too cruel a reminder to whistler, and he shrank from going to beardsley. dinner was the event of the day, and it would have proved a disaster had whistler not seen humour in being expected to eat it, so little was it what he thought a dinner should be. on christmas day he was melancholy and stared at the turkey and bread sauce, the sodden potatoes and soaked greens: "to think of my beautiful room in the rue du bac, and the rest of them there, eating their christmas dinner, having up my wonderful old pouilly from my cellar." but we had something else to talk about. in the _saturday review_ of that week, december , there was an article, signed walter sickert, that was of interest to us all. [footnote : whistler never lost his fancy for inventing names for his friends, and o'k. was the one he found for mr. kennedy, rarely calling him by any other either in conversation or correspondence.] chapter xl: the lithograph case. the years eighteen ninety-six and eighteen ninety-seven. mr. sickert's article was ostensibly inspired by the show of j.'s lithographs of granada at the fine art society's, which whistler had introduced. whistler understood it to be an attack upon himself, as well as upon j., whose lithographs alone it pretended to deal with. as a rule, whistler's lithographs were made on lithographic paper and transferred to the stone. the article argued that to pass off drawings made on paper as lithographs was as misleading to "the purchaser on the vital point of commercial value" as to sell photogravures for etchings, which, when sir hubert herkomer had done so, led to a protest from j. and whistler, and also from mr. sickert, whose condemnation had been strong. the article, therefore, was written either ignorantly or maliciously, for no such distinction in lithography has ever been made. transfer-paper is as old as senefelder, the inventor of lithography, who looked upon it as the most important part of his invention. the comment amounted to a charge of dishonesty, and an apology was demanded by j. the apology was refused by mr. frank harris, editor of the _saturday review_, and consequently messrs. lewis and lewis brought an action for libel against writer and editor. the action stood in j.'s name, and whistler was the principal witness. in the hope that the matter might be settled by an apology and without appeal to the law, mr. heinemann arranged a meeting between the editor of the _saturday review_ and whistler, but nothing came of it. people who knew nothing of lithography got involved in the case, and our friend harold frederic, for one, entangled himself with the enemy. others were found to know a great deal whom we never suspected of knowing anything, and through whistler we discovered that mr. alfred gilbert started life as a lithographer, was indignant with the _saturday review_, and only too willing to offer his help to us. meetings followed on sunday evenings in the huge maida vale house where mr. gilbert was trying to revive mediæval relations between master and workman and live the life of a craftsman with pupils and assistants, a brave experiment which ended in failure. the case was fixed for april , the most inconvenient time of the year for the artist who exhibits. whistler was working on the portrait of miss kinsella, and he had promised three pictures to the _salon: green and violet_, _rose and gold_, and a nocturne. m. helleu, who was in london, catalogued and measured them, reserving space on the wall. only a few days were left before sending in and the work would never be done in time. whistler was in despair. it was then, too, he learned that c. e. holloway, a distinguished artist whom the world never knew, was ill in his studio near by. holloway was anything but a successful man, and whistler was shocked to find him in bed, lacking every comfort. he provided doctors, nurses, medicine, and food, and looked after the dying man's family. he spent afternoons in holloway's tiny bedroom. all this took up time and made it difficult to get his pictures ready for the _salon_. he called one morning on his way to the studio to tell us of the death of holloway. he was going to the funeral, and suggested a fund to purchase some of the pictures and give the proceeds to the family. he was nervous and worried, the _salon_ clamouring for his work on the one hand, the trial claiming him on the other. people, he complained, did not seem to understand the importance of his time. things were amazing in the studio, and he was expected to leave them just to go into court. no, he wouldn't, that was the end of it. the pictures must be finished. j. said to him: "the case is as much yours as mine, and you must come. your reputation is involved. there will be an end to your lithography if we lose. you must fight." whistler liked one the better for the contradiction he was supposed unable to bear, and he answered: "well, you know, but really--why, of course, joseph, it's all right. i'm coming; of course, we'll fight it through together. i never meant not to. that's all right." and to e., who went with him to the "temple of pomona" in the strand, to order flowers for holloway, he kept saying: "you know, really, joseph mustn't talk like that! of course, it's all right. of course, i never meant not to come. you must tell him it's all right. i never back out!" his work stopped. his pictures did not go to paris. he stood by us. the case was tried in the king's bench division on april , before mr. justice mathew. we were represented by sir edward clarke, q.c., and mr. eldon bankes. whistler arrived early. in the great hall he met the counsel for the other side, mr. bigham, an acquaintance, and, leaning on his arm, entered the court, "capturing the enemy's counsel on the way," he said, as he sat down between us and sir george lewis. the counsel are now both judges. j., in the witness-box, pointed out that he had made lithographs both on paper and on stone; that there was no difference between them, an historical fact which he was able to prove; that for the defendants to deny that a lithograph made on paper was as much a lithograph as a lithograph made on stone showed that they knew nothing about the subject, or else were acting out of malice. whistler was called next. he said his grievance was the accusation that he pursued the same evil practice. he was asked by mr. bigham if he was very angry with mr. sickert, and he replied he might not be angry with mr. sickert, but he was disgusted that "distinguished people like mr. pennell and myself are attacked by an absolutely unknown authority (mr. sickert), an insignificant and irresponsible person." "then," said mr. bigham, "mr. sickert is an insignificant and irresponsible person who can do no harm?" whistler answered: "even a fool can do harm, and if any harm is done to mr. pennell it is done to me. this is a question for all artists." and he added that mr. sickert's "pretended compliments and flatteries were a most impertinent piece of insolence, tainted with a certain obsequious approach." further asked if this was his action, he said: "i am afraid if mr. pennell had not taken these proceedings, i should." "you are working together then?" "no, we are on the same side." "are you bearing any part of the costs?" "no, but i am quite willing." sir edward clarke then interposed and asked if there was any foundation for that question. "only the lightness and delicacy of the counsel's suggestion." [illustration: the thames lithotint. w. (_see page _)] [illustration: firelight. joseph pennell. no. lithograph. w. by permission of t. fisher unwin, esq. (_see page _)] at the end of the cross-examination whistler adjusted his eye-glass, put his hat on the rail of the witness-box, slowly pulled off one glove after the other. he turned to the judge and said: "and now, my lord, may i tell you why we are all here?" "no, mr. whistler," said his lordship; "we are all here because we cannot help it." whistler left the box. what he meant to say no one will ever know. we asked him later. he shook his head. the moment for saying it had passed. sir sidney colvin, keeper of the print room of the british museum; mr. strange, of the art library, south kensington; mr. way and mr. goulding, professional lithographic printers; and mr. alfred gilbert were our witnesses. mr. bigham said that the case was a storm in a teacup blown up by whistler, and that the article could do no harm to anybody. mr. sickert protested that he was familiar with all the processes of lithography; that the plaintiff's lithographs were not lithographs, but, as a matter of fact, mere transfers. he had submitted the article to another paper, which refused it before it was accepted by the _saturday review_. he had been under the impression that the plaintiff would like a newspaper correspondence. he was actuated by a pedantic purism. cross-examined by sir edward clarke, he had to admit by implication that he intended to charge the plaintiff with dishonest practices, and that he had caught mr. pennell, the purist, tripping. he had to admit that the only lithograph he ever published was made in the same way, and he had called it, or allowed it to be called, a lithograph. mr. sickert's witnesses scarcely helped him. mr. c. h. shannon's testimony was more favourable to us than to him. mr. rothenstein testified that all the lithographs he had published were done exactly as whistler and j. had done theirs, and as he came out of the box fell into his hat. mr. george moore solemnly proclaimed that he knew nothing about lithographs, but that he knew degas. "what's degas?" roared the judge, thinking some new process was being sprung on him, and mr. moore vanished. the editor of the _saturday review_ acknowledged that he had published an illustrated supplement full of lithographs done on transfer-paper and advertised by him as lithographs; that he had not known what was in mr. sickert's article until it appeared. the judge, in summing up, said that a critic might express a most disparaging opinion on an artist's work and might refer to him in the most disagreeable terms, but he must not attribute to the artist discreditable conduct, unless he could prove that his charge was true. if the jury thought the criticism merely sharp and exaggerated, they would find a verdict for the defendant, but if not--that is, if it was more than this--they should consider to what damages the plaintiff was entitled. the verdict was for the plaintiff--damages fifty pounds, not a high estimate of the value of artistic morality on the part of the british jury, but at least, in so far as it carried costs, higher than the estimate put upon whistler's work in the ruskin trial. so convinced were the other side of a verdict in their favour that a rumour reached us of a luncheon ordered beforehand at the savoy, on the second day, by the editor of the _saturday review_ to celebrate our defeat. we waited to be sure. then we carried off whistler, mr. reginald poole, who had conducted the case for us, and mr. jonathan sturges to the café royal for our breakfast. whistler was jubilant, and nothing pleased him more than the deference of the foreman of the jury, who waylaid him to shake hands at the close of the trial. and since then no incautious british artists or critics have dared to tamper with senefelder's definition of lithography. chapter xli: the end of the eden case. the years eighteen ninety-seven to eighteen ninety-nine. after our triumph whistler went to paris and boldini painted his portrait, shown in the international exhibition of . it was done in a very few sittings. mr. kennedy, who went with whistler, says that boldini worked rapidly, that whistler got tired of doing what he had made other people do all his life--pose--and took naps. during one of these boldini made a dry-point on a zinc plate. whistler did not like it, nor did he like any better helleu's done at the same time. of the painting whistler said to us, "they say that looks like me, but i hope i don't look like that!" it is, however, a presentment of him in his worst mood, and mr. kennedy remembers that he was in his worst mood all the while. it is the whistler whom the world knew and feared. when whistler came back to london, in may or june, he went to garlant's hotel, where kennedy was staying. mr. kennedy's relations with whistler commenced by his selling whistler's prints and pictures in new york, and then developed into an intimate friendship, which continued until almost the end of whistler's life. kennedy was one of whistler's champions in america, devoted and loyal, though the friendship ended rather abruptly through a regrettable misunderstanding. after whistler's death, kennedy was mainly responsible for the grolier club exhibition and catalogue. this summer whistler went to hampton, where mr. heinemann had taken a cottage. whistler never liked the country, but, he said, "i suppose now we'll have to fish for the little gudgeon together from a chair, with painted corks, like the other britons." he took part in the fun. he went to regattas, picnicked, and was rowed and punted about. at hampton he met mr. william nicholson, whom mr. heinemann had asked down with the idea of his adding a portrait of whistler to the series that began with his woodcut of queen victoria in the _new review_. later mr. nicholson, in the fitzroy street studio, made a study of whistler in evening dress, recalling the _sarasate_, and it appeared in the _review_. it was the summer of queen victoria's diamond jubilee. whistler could not come to us from garlant's without passing through streets hung with tawdry wreaths and draggled festoons; trafalgar square buried in platforms, seats, and advertisements, nelson on his column peering above. the decorations were an unfailing amusement to him, an excuse for an estimate of "the island and the islander," and the talk about the british, an annoyance, we are afraid, to some of his friends and more of his enemies. one evening he sketched for us his impression of the square, with nelson "boarded at last." "you see," he said, "england expects every englishman to be ridiculous," and the sketch appeared in the _daily chronicle_. he again went to the naval review, and this time saw it from mr. george vanderbilt's yacht. no etchings were made, though we believe he did a water-colour or pastel. instead, he wrote some of his saddest letters, yet he said with a gleam of glee: "it was wonderful, just like spain, just like velasquez at some great function, for there was philip," whom mr. vanderbilt resembled, as the portrait proved till he changed and ruined it. "there was the queen, mrs. vanderbilt; there was i, the court painter, and, why, even the dwarfs," as he described appropriately two well-known americans on board. in july we proposed to cycle across france to switzerland, and the night before we started whistler, m. boldini, and mr. kennedy dined with us to say good-bye. boldini was leaving london the next day, and by the end of the evening whistler made up his mind to come as far as dieppe, and as he would never, if he could help it, go alone, he decided that mr. kennedy must come too. next morning we all arrived at the station save whistler. even his baggage came, but not till we were reduced almost to nervous collapse, not till the train was starting, did he saunter unmoved--his straw hat over his eyes--down the platform, followed humbly by the pompous station-master and amazed porters, looking for our carriage. no sooner had we started than he was in the best of spirits and enjoyed every minute of the journey, most when on the boat he found a camp of enemies also on the way to dieppe, to his delight and their discomfort. at dieppe we had to get our bicycles through the customs, the others took a cab, and when we reached the hotel we were received regally and given a whole suite, boldini having hinted to the _patron_ we were royalty travelling incognito, they in attendance. almost at once whistler got out his little colour-box and started for a shop front in a narrow street he knew. but first he had to find another kind of shop where he could buy a rosette of the legion of honour, for his had been lost or forgotten, and he would have thought it wanting in respect to appear without it in france. the shopkeeper, to whom he explained, said, "all right, _monsieur_, here is the rosette, but i have heard that story before." whistler was furious, but in the end had to laugh. his dread of illness was again shown, for beardsley, dying, was in the town, and without knowing it we passed his window and beardsley saw us. when afterwards we called, whistler refused to come, and it was well he did. beardsley, however, was not the only person in dieppe whistler would not meet. we had only our cycling costumes, we were staying at the hôtel royal. when he came down to dinner, very late of course, he was correct in evening dress, the rosette in place, and we thought there was a suggestion of hesitation, but it was only a suggestion. he gave his arm to e., who was in short cycling skirt, j. in knickerbockers, and as we went into the dining-room he turned to her, and, to a question that had never been asked, answered clearly, "_mais oui, princesse_," and after that he had all the attention he wanted. every tourist stared, and we were escorted to our seats by the _patron_, and for the rest of the evening, when he was not talking to the _princesse_, he was giving good advice to the head waiter. the evening and the night were diversified periodically by boldini's practical jokes, which did not keep whistler from being down early in the morning to see us off. "well, you know, can't i hold something?" he offered, as e. mounted her bicycle, and as he watched us wheel along the sea-front, he told mr. kennedy, "after all, o'k., ... there's something in it!" we asked mr. kennedy to pay our bill, and m. boldini had some trouble with his. the result was that when whistler and kennedy counted up their joint funds, they found they had just about enough money to get back to london, and they left. in the autumn whistler was in paris, the eden case in the cour de cassation being fixed for november . it was heard before président périvier, maître beurdeley for the second time defending whistler. mr. heinemann came from london, and was with him in court. judgment was given on december . the affair had been talked about, and the court was crowded. the judgment went as entirely in whistler's favour as, in the lower court, it had gone against him. he was to keep the picture, on condition that he made it unrecognisable as a portrait of lady eden, which had been done; sir william eden was to have the hundred guineas back, which already had been returned and per cent. interest; whistler was to pay one thousand francs damages with interest and the cost of the first trial, and "the baronet" to pay the costs of appeal. mr. macmonnies, who also was with whistler in court, remembers that "it was decided by the judges that the picture should be produced when needed. mr. whistler whispered in my ear, 'macmonnies, take the picture and get out with it.' as we sat under the judges' noses, and the court-room was packed with admirers and enemies and court officials, i made a distinct spot as i walked down the aisle with _the_ picture under my arm. and whistler showed his admirable generalship in the case, as not one of the _gendarmes_ could stop me. so all anybody could do was to watch it disappear out of the door." whistler said to us that the _procureur de la république_ was splendid; that the whole affair was a public recognition of his position; that the trial made history, established a precedent, proving the right of the artist to his own work; that a new clause had been added to the _code napoléon_; that he had "wiped up the floor" with "the baronet" before all paris, his intention from the first. he wished it to be known that in the law of france he would go down with napoleon: "well, you know, take my word for it, joseph, the first duty of a good general when he has won his battle is to say so, otherwise the people, always dull--the briton especially--fail to understand, and it is an unsettled point in history for ever. victory is not complete until the wounded are looked after and the dead counted." the trial over, he wanted immediately to make a beautiful little book of it, and he began to arrange the report with his "reflections" for publication. during many months proofs of _the baronet and the butterfly_ filled his pockets. as he had read pages of _the ten o'clock_ to mr. alan s. cole, so he read pages of _the baronet and the butterfly_ to us, and sometimes to the council of the international after the meetings, a mistake, for there were members who had not the intelligence to understand it or him. his care was no less than with _the gentle art_. every note, every butterfly, was thought out and placed properly. "beautiful, you know. isn't it beautiful?" he would say, when a page or a paragraph pleased him, and nothing pleased him more than the butterfly following the "reflection" on page . there he quotes george moore: "i undertook a journey to paris in the depth of winter, had two shocking passages across the channel _and spent twenty-five pounds_. all this worry is the commission i received for my trouble in the matter." whistler's "reflection" was: "why, damme, sir! he must have had a valentine himself--the sea-saddened expert." this was followed by the butterfly, "splendid--actually rolling back with laughter, you know!" a new feature was the toad printed over the dedication: "to those _confrères_ across the channel who, refraining from intrusive demonstration, with a pluck and delicacy all their own 'sat tight' during the struggle, these decrees of the judges are affectionately dedicated." below, a butterfly bows and sends its sting to england. the tiny toad is the only realistic drawing in his books, and to make it realistic he needed a model. he thought of applying at the zoological gardens, was promised one by mr. wimbush, a painter in the same house, and finally his stepson, mr. e. godwin, found one. he put the toad in a paper box, forgot all about it, and was shocked when he heard it was dead. "you know, they say i starved it. well, it must have caught a fly or two, and i thought toads lived in stone or amber--or something--for hundreds of years--don't you know the stories? perhaps it was because i hadn't the amber!" _the baronet and the butterfly_ was published in paris by henry may, may , . whistler objected to the date, but on the th it appeared, and the result justified his superstition. it did not attract much attention. when we saw him in paris that month he seemed to think the fault was with the critics who were keeping up the played-out business of "misunderstanding and misrepresentation." but the interest in the eden trial had never been as great as he fancied, and the report is dull reading, because there were no witnesses and so no cross-examination which would in england have given him the opportunity of "scalping" his victim. the ruskin trial in _the gentle art_ is full of whistler's answers in court; _the baronet and the butterfly_ is made up of the speeches of advocates and judges. in the marginal notes, the dedication, the argument, he is brilliant and witty, and the butterfly as gay as ever. there is no whistler in the speeches, that is the trouble. the book was one of many schemes that occupied him during these years. the international society of sculptors, painters, and gravers was organised, and the _atelier carmen_ in paris was planned, both so important that their history is reserved for other chapters. a venture from which he hoped great things was his endeavour to dispense with the middleman in art. hitherto he had been glad to trust his affairs to dealers. "i will lay the golden eggs, you will supply the incubator," he told one, whose version of the arrangement was that when the incubator was ready whistler would not give up the golden eggs. he could not reconcile himself to the large sums gained by buying and selling his work since . over the sale of old work he had no control; the sale of new he determined to keep in his hands. he would be his own agent, set up his own shop, form a trust in whistlers. we think it was in he first spoke to us about it, delighted, sure he was to succeed financially at last. in rumours were spread of a "whistler syndicate." in advertisements of the "company of the butterfly" appeared in the _athenæum_--the company composed, as far as we knew, of james mcneill whistler. two rooms were taken on the first floor at no. hinde street, manchester square, close to the wallace gallery. they were charming. a few prints were hung. a picture or two stood on easels. to go to whistler in the studio for his work was one thing; it was quite another to go to a shop run by no one knew who, half the time shut, and deserted when open. we doubt if anything was ever sold there, we never saw a visitor in the place. soon the rooms were turned over to mr. heinemann for a show of mr. nicholson's colour-prints, and after that no more was heard of the "company of the butterfly." there was another reason for starting it. so many people came to the studio for so many reasons that he had to keep them out, and his idea was that those who wanted to buy pictures should go to the "company of the butterfly," and buy them there without interrupting him. but no shop could dispose of the constant visits from the curious, from photographers asking for his portrait, journalists begging for an interview, literary people anxious to make articles or books about him. they would write to arrange a certain hour and appear without waiting for a reply. one, who had written to say he was coming with a letter of introduction, on his arrival found the door fastened and heard whistler whistling inside, and that was all the indignant visitor heard or saw of him. there is a story of an american collector who, calling one day when not wanted, and after wasting much time, asked: "how much for the whole lot, mr. whistler?" "five millions." "what?" "my posthumous prices!" [illustration: study in brown oil in the possession of the baroness de meyer (_see page _)] [illustration: study of the nude pen drawing in the possession of william heinemann, esq. (_see page _)] and there are stories of whistler's ways of meeting the hordes who tried to force themselves into the studio. mr. eddy tells one: "an acquaintance had brought, without invitation, a friend, 'a distinguished and clever woman,' to the studio in the rue notre-dame-des-champs. they reached the door, both out of breath from their long climb. 'ah, my dear whistler,' drawled c----, 'i have taken the liberty of bringing lady d---- to see you. i knew you would be delighted.' 'delighted, i'm sure! quite beyond expression, but'--mysteriously, and holding the door so as to bar their entrance--'my dear lady d----, i would never forgive our friend for bringing you up six flights of stairs on so hot a day to visit a studio at one of these--eh--pagan moments when'--and he glanced furtively behind him, and still further closed the door--'it is absolutely impossible for a lady to be received. upon my soul, i should never forgive him.' and whistler bowed them down from the top of the six flights and returned to the portrait of a very sedate old gentleman who had taken advantage of the interruption to break for a moment the rigour of his pose." the "company of the butterfly" never relieved him of the visitors who were more eager to see him than his work. but this he did not discover until he had devoted to the venture far more time than he had to spare during the crowded years of its existence. chapter xlii: between london and paris. the years eighteen ninety-seven to nineteen hundred. after his marriage whistler was unfortunate in his choice of apartments and studios. the studio in the rue notre-dame-des-champs, on the sixth floor, was the worst for a man with a weak heart to climb to; the apartment in the rue du bac, low and damp, was as bad for a man who caught cold easily. he was constantly ill during the winter of - , which he passed mostly in paris. influenza kept him in bed in november, from january to march he was dull and listless as never before, save in venice after the _scirocco_; he said, "i am so tired--i who am never tired!" whistler's heart, always weak, began to trouble him. he had been ill before, but, nervous as he was about his health, he never realised his condition. we have known him, when too ill to work, get up out of bed in order to accomplish something important. a few years before, confined with quinsy to his brother's house, forced to write what he wished to say on a slate, when someone he did not want to see was announced, he forgot that he could not talk and yelled, "send him away!" we have known, too, an invitation to dinner from a certain rich american to rout him out of bed and to cure him temporarily. it was this endeavour never to be ill, never to give in, that was one of the causes of his final breakdown. illness suggested death, and no man ever shrank more from the thought or mention of death than whistler. there was in life so much for him to do, so little time in which to do it. he would tell his brother it was useless for doctors to know so much if they had not discovered the elixir of life. "why not try to find it?" he asked the doctor. "isn't it in the heart of the unknown? it must be there." in the studio he worked harder than ever. illness made him foresee that his time was short, and he was goaded by the thought of the things to finish. when he was in london we were distressed by his fatigue at the end of the day, but he said he was like the old cart-horse that could keep going as long as it was in traces, but must drop the minute it was free. while he was in paris, his letters were full of the "amazing things" going on in the rue notre-dame-des-champs. he said: "really, you know, i could almost laugh at the extraordinary progress i am making, and the lovely things i am inventing--work beyond anything i have ever done before." he was only beginning to know and to understand, he told us. all that had gone before was experimental. there were new portraits. in he had begun one of mr. george vanderbilt--"the modern philip"--a full-length in riding habit, whip in hand, standing against a dark background. the canvas was sent from paris to london, just as whistler and vanderbilt happened to be in one place or the other. not one of his portraits of men interested whistler so much; certainly not one was finer when we first saw it in london, but it was a wreck in the paris memorial exhibition of . like others of this period, it had been worked over. he painted mrs. vanderbilt, _ivory and gold_, shown in the _salon_ of , one of the first of the several ovals he was now doing. carmen, his model, sat. portraits started a year or so later were of his brother-in-law, mr. birnie philip, and of mr. elwell, an american painter whom he had known for some time. in may , in the rue notre-dame-des-champs, he showed us the full-length of himself in long overcoat, called _gold and brown_ in the paris universal exhibition of and, as we have said, never seen afterward. we own a pen-drawing he made of it. it was far from successful, and before he finished it miss marian draughn, an american, began to pose for him--his "coon girl" he called her. she was sent to him by gibson and phil may. he painted many children. he loved children. ernest g. brown remembered whistler's thoughtfulness and consideration when his daughter sat for _pretty nelly brown_, one of the most beautiful of the series. we have the same story from mr. croal thomson, of whose daughter, _little evelyn_, whistler made a lithograph. when he went to her father's house at highgate, evelyn would run to meet him with outstretched hands, her face lifted to be kissed, and while he worked the other children would come and look on. mr. alan s. cole has told us that once whistler found his three little daughters decorating the drawing-room and hanging up a big welcome in flowers for their mother, who was to return. he forgot what he had come for and helped, as eager and excited as they, and stayed until mrs. cole arrived. he was walking from the paris studio one day with mrs. clifford addams and saw some children playing; he made her stop, "i must look at the babbies," he said, "you know, i love the babbies!" later, during his last illness, he liked to have mrs. addams' own little girl, diane, in the studio. and there are portraits of brandon thomas' baby and _master stephen manuel_ that show his pleasure in painting his small sitters. the children of the street adored him; the children of chelsea and fitzroy street, who were used to artists, knew him well. there was one he was for ever telling us about, of five or six, who frightened while she fascinated him. "i likes whusky," she confided one day when she was posing, "and i likes scoatch best!" she described her christmas at home: "father 'e was drunk, mother was drunk, sister was drunk, i was drunk, and we made the cat drunk, too!" a still younger child gave him sittings, a baby of not more than three, the model for many of the pastels. she and her mother were resting one afternoon, whistler watching her every movement. "really," he said, "you are a beautiful little thing!" she looked up at him, "yes, i is, whistler," she lisped. and there is the old story: "where did you come from, mr. whistler?" "i came from on high, my dear." "h'm, never should have thought it," said the child; "shows how we can deceive ourselves." but his popularity with children did not help him one sunday afternoon, the only time it is possible to sketch with comfort in the city, when he went with j. to make a study of clerkenwell church tower, which was about to be restored. they drove to the church, but the light was bad and the colour not right, so they wandered off to cloth fair--until a little while ago the most perfect, really the only, bit of old london. though whistler had worked there many times, this afternoon the children did not approve of him. after a short encounter in which they, as always, got the better, whistler and j. retired to another cab, followed by any refuse that came handy. but the children he painted, _the little rose of lyme regis_, _the little lady sophie of soho_, _lillie in our alley_, the small italian waifs and strays, were his friends, and no painter ever gave the grace and feeling of childhood, or of girlhood as in _miss woakes_, more sympathetically. he was as absorbed in a series of nudes. few of his paintings towards the end satisfied him so entirely as the small _phryne the superb, builder of temples_, which he sent to the international in and to the _salon_ in . the first time he showed it to us he asked: "would she be more superb--more truly the builder of temples--had i painted her what is called life-size by the foolish critics who bring out their foot-rule? is it a question of feet and inches when you look at her?" [illustration: blue and coral the little blue bonnet oil formerly in the possession of wm. heinemann, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: rose and gold little lady sophie of soho oil in the charles l. freer collection, national gallery of american art (_see page _)] he intended to paint an eve, an odalisque, a bathsheba, and a danaë, the designs to be enlarged on canvas by his apprentices, mr. and mrs. clifford addams, but this was never done. suggestions were in the pastels of figures, for which he found the perfect model in london. when not in the studio, he kept sketching her from memory, and he was in despair when she married and went to some remote colony, but before she went he gave her some beautiful silver. these pastels are many and perfect. they are drawings on brown paper--studies or impressions of the model in infinite poses. in some she stands with her filmy draperies floating about her or falling in long, straight folds to her feet; in others she lies upon a couch, indolent and lovely; she dances across the paper, she bends over a great bowl, she sits with her slim legs crossed and a cup of tea in her hand, she holds a fan or a flower; but whatever she may be doing or however she may rest, she is but another expression of the beauty that haunted whistler, the beauty that was the inspiration of the _harmonies in white_ and the _six projects_. many poses are suggested in lithographs, etchings, and water-colours; none show greater tenderness than when she returned with her child. he put his own tenderness into the encircling hands of the mother holding the baby on her knee, he found the most rhythmic lines when, standing, she balanced herself to clasp the child the more closely to her. nothing could be slighter than the means by which the effect is produced, the figures drawn in black upon the brown paper, the colour--blue, or rose, or violet--suggested in the gauzy draperies or the cap or handkerchief knotted about the curls. but they have the exquisiteness of tanagra figures and are as complete. all this work was done with feverish concern about mediums and materials and methods he usually sat now as he worked, and he wore spectacles, sometimes two pairs, one over the other. he was never so thoughtful in the preparation of his colours and his canvas. at last the knowledge was coming to him, he said again and again. and he was never more successful in obtaining the unity and harmony he had always sought, in hiding the labour by which it was obtained, and in giving to his painting the beauty of surface he prized so highly. because in painting he tried to carry on the same subject, the same tradition, superficial critics accused him of repeating himself, or mistook his later for earlier works, like the critic of the _times_ who, in writing of his pictures at the international society's exhibition of , referred to "old works ... among which _the little blue bonnet_ is the least known," a remark whistler printed in the _édition de luxe_ of the catalogue, with the explanation that the painting had come "fresh from the easel to its first exhibition," and that therefore "the 'plain man' is, once more, profoundly right, and we see again the advantage of memory over mere artistic instinct in the critic." the small portraits and marines of the nineties are as fine as anything he ever did. the fact that for all these pictures he used frames of the same size and the same design helped--unintentionally on his part--to confuse critics accustomed to the flamboyant vulgarity, utter inappropriateness, and complete indifference to scale in the frames of most painters. but then there are not half a dozen painters in a generation who have the faintest idea of decoration. whistler, puvis de chavannes, and john la farge are almost the only decorators whose names may be mentioned among moderns. though some of whistler's portraits are more elaborate, not one is more powerful or more masterly as a study of character, and therefore more individual, than _the master smith of lyme regis_. when it is contrasted with _the little rose_, the embodiment of simple, sweet, healthy childhood, and _the little lady sophie of soho_ and _lillie in our alley_, the sickly atmosphere of the slums reflected in their strange beauty, and these again with the exuberant colour and life of _carmen_, there can be no question of the variety in whistler's later work, though a certain manner, that might have grown into mannerism, became more marked. there was a similarity in the general design. most were heads and half-lengths, and, except in the finest, nose, eyes, and mouth were alike in character, and hands were badly drawn and clumsily put in. the colour was beautiful and he exulted in it, but at the very last he must have known as well as anybody that his power of work was leaving him. whistler spent the summer of chiefly in london, going first to mr. heinemann's at whitehall court, then to garlant's hotel. the delightful evenings of the year before began again for us, and there was a fresh interest for him in the war between the united states and spain. "it was a wonderful and beautiful war," he thought, "the spaniards were gentlemen," and his pockets were filled with newspaper clippings to prove it. if we pointed out a blunder on the part of our soldiers, if we gave chance a share in our victories, he was furious: "why say if any but spaniards had been at the top of san juan, we never would have got there? why question the _if_? the facts are all that count. no fight could be more beautifully managed. i am telling you! i, a west point man, know. what if cervera did get whipped? what if he was pulled up from the sea looking like a wad of cotton that had been soaked in an ink-bottle? what of it? didn't the whole united states navy, headed by the admirals, receive him as the commander of the spanish fleet should be received?" he was going out more and seeing more people. but his interest in society was less, and evidently he preferred the quiet of the evenings with us. chance encounters in our flat were often an entertainment. one we recall most vividly was with frederick sandys, whom he had not met for thirty years. sandys was with us in the late afternoon when whistler knocked his exaggerated postman's knock that could not be mistaken, followed by the resounding peal of the bell. they gave each other a chilly recognition and sat down. sandys was agitated, but there was no escape. whistler looked like boldini's portrait, but soon they began to talk, and they talked till the early hours of the morning as if they were back at rossetti's, sandys in the white waistcoat with gold buttons, but bent with age, whistler straight and erect, but wrinkled and grey. he returned to paris late in the autumn, settling there for the winter. except for his attacks of illness, there was but one interruption to his work. mr. heinemann was married at porto d'anzio in february , and whistler went to italy as best man. this was his only visit to rome. he was disappointed. to us he described the city as "a bit of an old ruin alongside of a railway station where i saw mrs. potter palmer." and he added: "rome was awful--a hard sky all the time, a glaring sun and a strong wind. after i left the railway station, there were big buildings more like whiteley's than anything i expected in the eternal city. st. peter's was fine, with its great yellow walls, the interior too big, perhaps, but you had only got to go inside to know where wren got his ideas--how he, well, you know, robbed peter's to build paul's! and i liked the vatican, the swiss guards, great big fellows, lolling about, as in dumas; they made you think of d'artagnan, aramis, and the others. and michael angelo? a tremendous fellow, yes; the frescoes in the sistine chapel, interesting as pictures, but with all the legs and arms of the figures sprawling everywhere, i could not see the decoration. there can be no decoration without repose; a tremendous fellow, but not so much in the david and other things i was shown in rome and florence as in that one unfinished picture at the national gallery. there is often elegance in the _loggie_ of raphael, but the big frescoes of the _stanze_ did not interest me." velasquez's portrait of _innocent x._ in the doria palace he, apparently, did not see. during the journey to porto d'anzio, princess ----, one of the wedding guests, who heard vaguely that whistler was an artist, inquired of him: "_monsieur fait de la peinture, n'est-ce pas?_" "_oui, princesse._" "_on me l'avait dit. moi aussi, j'en fais, monsieur._" "_charmant, princesse, nous sommes des collègues._" on the way back from rome whistler stopped at florence, and of his stay there mr. j. kerr-lawson wrote us the account: "the mcneill has been here and just gone--we had him lightly on our hands all day yesterday. "we didn't 'do' florence, for there was a fierce glaring sun and a horrible _tramontana_ raging, so we spent the best of the morning trying to write a letter in the rococo manner to the syndic of murano quite unsuccessfully. [this was after the awards in the venice international exhibition.] "after luncheon i took him down to the uffizi. we seemed to be the only people rash enough to brave the awful wind, for we saw no one in the gallery but a frozen _guardia_. he--poor fellow--was brushed aside by a magnificent and truly awe-inspiring gesture as we approached that battered and begrimed portrait in which velasquez still looks out upon the world which he has mastered with an expression of superbly arrogant scorn in the portrait gallery. "it was a dramatic moment--the flat-brimmed _chapeau de haut forme_ came off with a grand sweep and was deposited on a stool, and then the master, standing back about six feet from the picture and drawing himself up to much more than his own full natural height, with his left hand upon his breast and the right thrust out magisterially, exclaimed, '_quelle allure!_' then you should have seen him. after the solemn act of homage, when he had resumed his hat, we relaxed considerably over the lesser immortals of this crazy and incongruous valhalla--what an ill-assorted company! how did they all get together? liotard, the swiss, jostles michael angelo, giuseppe macpherson rubs shoulders with titian, herkomer hangs beside ingres, and poynter is a pendant to sir joshua. there are the greatest and the least, the noblest and the meanest brought together by the capricious folly of succeeding directors and harmonised by that touch of vanity that makes the whole world kin. "one wonders whom they will ask next. certainly not whistler. they knew quite well he was here, but not the slightest notice was taken of him. _en revanche_, every now and then some vulgar mediocrity passes this way, and then the foolish florentines are lavish with their laurels." whistler had not been long dead when j. received an inspired letter from florence asking him if he could obtain whistler's portrait for the uffizi. his answer was that had they appreciated whistler they might have asked him while he was alive, but as they had not had the sense or the courage to do so, they had better apply to his executrix. as yet there is no portrait of whistler in the uffizi. after absences from his studio whistler discovered again that pictures and prints were disappearing. it worried him, and he tried to trace and recover them. we have little doubt that, at times, whistler lost prints through his carelessness. we know that once his method of drying his etchings between sheets of blotting paper thrown on the floor was disastrous. one morning an artist came to see us bringing a number of beautiful proofs of the second venice set, in sheets of blotting paper as he had bought them from an old rag and paper man in red lion passage, who thought they could be no good because the margins were cut down and so sold them for a shilling apiece. the artist admitted that he did not care for them, and we offered him half-a-crown. "oh," he said, "as you are willing to give that, now i shall find out what they are really worth." he got sixty pounds for them, but several of the prints separately have since sold for much more. accidents like this would account for some of the things whistler thought were stolen. a few works that had disappeared were recovered during his lifetime. but shortly after his death there was a sale at the hôtel drouot in which missing paintings, drawings, plates, prints, and even letters were dispersed. only those who were near him can realise how much this troubled and annoyed him during his last years. at the same time he began to suffer from another of the evils of success. pictures, somewhat resembling his and attributed to him appeared at auctions, and others were sent to him for identification or signature by persons who had purchased them. if he knew beforehand that one of these fakes was coming up in the auction-room, he would send and try to stop the sale, or, if submitted to him, he would not give it back. neither expedient met with marked success. at present there is a factory of whistlers in full operation, while oils and water-colours and drawings ascribed to him without the slightest reason have been openly sold at auction, despite the protests made against such swindles. whistler could not stay long from london, and the early summer of saw him back at garlant's and visiting mr. heinemann at weybridge. he was in town for the sequel to the eden affair. he heard that, on july , there was to be a sale of sir william eden's pictures at christie's. he went to it and came to us afterwards. "really, it has been beautiful. i know you will enjoy it. it occurred to me in the morning--the baronet's sale to-day--h'm--the butterfly should see how things are going! and i went home, and i changed my morning dress, my dandy straw hat, and then, very correct and elegant, i sauntered down king street into christie's. at the top of the stairway someone spoke to me. 'well, you know, my dear friend,' i said, 'i do not know who you are, but you shall have the honour of taking me in.' and on his arm i walked into the big room. the auctioneer was crying, 'going! going! thirty shillings! going!' 'ha ha!' i laughed--not loudly, not boisterously, it was very delicately, very neatly done. but the room was electrified. some of the henchmen were there; they grow rigid, afraid to move afraid to glance my way out of the corners of their eyes. 'twenty shillings! going!' the auctioneer would cry. 'ha ha!' i would laugh, and things went for nothing and the henchman trembled. louis fagan came across the room to speak to me--fagan, representing the british museum, as it were, was quite the most distinguished man there. and now, having seen how things were, i took fagan's arm. 'you,' i said, 'may have the honour of taking me out.'" he dined with us the next evening and found mr. harry wilson, whose brother-in-law, mr. sydney morse, was the friend upon whose arm whistler had entered the auction-room. mr. wilson was full of the story, and confirmed the "electric shock" when whistler appeared. he ran over to holland once during the summer. part of the time he was at pourville, near dieppe, where he had taken a house for miss birnie philip and her mother. the sea was on the right side at dieppe, of which he never tired; at madame lefèvre's restaurant he could get as good a breakfast as in paris; and many small marines, oils, and water-colours were done before bad weather drove him away. though it is not always easy to identify the place or the time to which his small marines belong, for they cover a number of years, probably more were made at dieppe than anywhere else. when he did not care to work from the shore there were boatmen who would take him out beyond the breakers, where he could get the effect he wished at the height above the water that suited him. he used to be seen calmly painting away in a dancing row-boat, the boatman holding it as steadily as he could. there is as much of the bigness of the ocean in these little paintings, which show usually only the grey or blue or green, but ever recurring, swell of the wave, or a quiet sea with two or three sails on the horizon, as in any big marines that ever were painted. he explained his method to his apprentice, mrs. addams. when the wave broke and the surf made a beautiful line of white, he painted this at once, then all that completed the beauty of the breaking wave, then the boat passing, and then, having got the movement and the beauty that goes almost as soon as it comes, he put in the shore or the horizon. in paris, during the winter of - , he took two small rooms at the hôtel chatham, where the last three years he had often stayed, afraid to risk the dampness of the rue du bac. but they were inner rooms with no light and scarcely any ventilation, though most swell and more expensive, unless, perhaps, the lady who used to come to massage him was included. he had fewer friends in paris than in london, and he was often lonely. he would go to see drouet and say, "_tu sais, je suis ennuyé._" and drouet, to amuse him, would get up little dinners, at which all who were left of the old group of students met again. one was given in honour of becquet, whom whistler had etched almost half a century before. a wreath of laurels was prepared. during dinner drouet said he had met many great men, but, _pour la morale_, none greater than becquet, who was moved to tears, and the laurel wreath was offered to him by whistler, and becquet fairly broke down; he "would hang it on the walls of his studio, always to have it before him," he said. once drouet took whistler to the fair at neuilly, made him ride in a merry-go-round. whistler lost his hat, dropped his eye-glass. "what would london journalists say if they could see me now?" he asked. they generally dined at beaujé's, in the passage des panoramas, to which drouet and other artists, literary men, and barristers went. whistler renewed his intimacy with oulevey, whom he had barely seen since the early paris days. madame oulevey's memories are, above all, of whistler's dining with them in the passage des favorites at the other end of the rue vaugirard, when he wore his pumps and, a storm coming up and not a cab to be found in their quarter, and they had to keep him for hours. his pumps left an impression on drouet, too, who was sure it was because whistler wore them by day and could not walk in them that he was so often seen driving through the streets in a cab. and he seemed so tired then, drouet said, half the time lying back, fast asleep. fantin, the most intimate of his early associates, he met but once and then by chance. in february news came of the death of his brother, doctor whistler. alexander harrison writes us: "i chanced to call upon him half an hour after he had received the news and, with a quivering voice and tears in his eyes, he told me that he considered me a friend and told me his sad loss and asked me to dine with him." the two brothers had been devoted since boyhood, and whistler felt the doctor's death acutely. it made him the more ready to rejoin his friends in london, and two months later found him staying with mr. heinemann, who had moved from whitehall court to norfolk street. there e. dined to meet him the evening after his arrival. mr. arthur symons gives, in his _studies in seven arts_, his impression of the dinner, and of whistler: "i never saw anyone so feverishly alive as this little old man, with his bright withered cheeks, over which a skin was drawn tightly, his darting eyes, under their prickly bushes of eyebrow, his fantastically creased black and white curls of hair, his bitter and subtle mouth, and, above all, his exquisite hands, never at rest." [illustration: model, with flowers pastel in the possession of j. p. heseltine, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: girl, with a red feather oil in the possession of the executors of j. staats forbes (_see page _)] to us the idea of his age was never present. he seemed the youngest wherever he was. but to those who saw him for the first time it was evident that he was growing old. and he had been before the public for so long that people got an exaggerated idea of his age. mr. symons continues: "some person officially connected with art was there, an urbane sentimentalist; and after every official platitude there was a sharp crackle from whistler's corner, and it was as if a rattlesnake had leapt suddenly out." when the "urbane sentimentalist" remarked that "there never was such a thing as an art-loving people, an artistic period," whistler said: "dear me! it's very flattering to find that i have made you see at last. but really, you know, i shall have to copyright my little things after this!" when someone objected to the good manners of the french, because they were all on the surface, whistler suggested, "well, you know, a very good place to have them." chapter xliii: the international. the years eighteen ninety-seven to nineteen hundred and three. that artists should hold exhibitions of international art was whistler's idea. he had always hoped for a gallery where he could show his work in his own way with the work of men in sympathy with him. often, and years before, he talked to us of this. it mattered little to him where the gallery should be, in new york or london, paris or berlin: the exhibition should not be local or national, but an art congress for the artists of the world. this was his aim. the men whom he wished to have associated with him lived mostly in london, where now the greater part of his time was spent, and london seemed the place for the first exhibition. he and mr. e. a. walton tried to lease the grosvenor gallery, and when they failed they turned to the grafton. but again there were difficulties, and nothing definite was done until , when a young journalist, who was painting, mr. francis howard, conceived the idea of promoting a company to hold an exhibition at prince's skating club, knightsbridge. as the artists were to incur no financial responsibilities and to have complete artistic control, whistler consented to co-operate. the first meeting, the minutes record, was on december , , and john lavery, e. a. walton, g. sauter, and francis howard were present. whistler, who had been consulted, at first agreed that members of the royal academy and other artistic bodies should be admitted, and at the second meeting, february , , mr. alfred gilbert, r.a., took the chair. a circular, unsigned and undated, was then issued calling attention to a proposed exhibition of international art, and on it appeared the names of james mcneill whistler, alfred gilbert, frederick sandys, john lavery, james guthrie, arthur melville, charles w. furse, charles ricketts, c. hazlewood shannon, e. a. walton, joseph farquharson, maurice greiffenhagen, will rothenstein, g. sauter, francis howard. it stated, with a clumsiness whistler could hardly have passed had he seen the circular beforehand, that the object of the society was the much-needed "organisation in london of exhibitions of the finest art of the time ... the non-recognition of nationality in art, and the hanging and placing of works irrespective of such consideration.... the exhibitions, filling as they will an unoccupied place in the cosmopolitan ground of international art, will not be in opposition to existing institutions." an executive council appointed itself, and on february , , whistler was unanimously elected chairman. the most distinguished artists of every nationality were invited to join an honorary council. the executive, to which j., on whistler's nomination, was elected in march, was to have entire charge of the affairs of the exhibition. there were to be no ordinary members, but only honorary members by invitation. jealousies and preferences immediately crept in. mr. gilbert resigned, which was much to be regretted, and several other english members withdrew from the council, which speedily became as international as the name of the society, the international society of sculptors, painters, and gravers, into which it formed itself two months later (april ), when officers were elected, and whistler, proposed by mr. lavery and seconded by mr. j. j. shannon, was chosen president, mr. lavery vice-president, and mr. francis howard, honorary secretary. the international was the second society of artists over which whistler presided. only ten years had passed since his resignation from the british artists, but the change in his position before the world was great. the british artists, an old and decrepit body, had chosen him as president in the hope that his "notoriety" and his following of young men would bring the advertisement they needed; the international, a young, vigorous organisation, elected him because they knew that no other artist could give them such distinction and distinguished foreign artists such assurance that their work would be hung in a country where previously, through fear of competition and insular prejudice, it had been rejected. in the eighties whistler was mistrusted; in the nineties he was acknowledged as one of the great artists of the century. the change in his position was not greater than his influence on contemporary art. this influence had been pointed out by the few for some years past. but the last decade had strengthened it until it could no longer be denied. the younger generation had accepted him in the meanwhile, admitted their debt to him, and proclaimed it openly in their work. the new english art club abjured subject and sentiment for the "painter's poetry" wherever it might lurk, whether in the london bus transformed by the london atmosphere, or in the _lion-comique_, transfigured on the music-hall stage; though, as whistler once said, the new english art club was "only a raft," while the international was to be a "battleship" of which he would take command. the glasgow school accepted his teaching and then copied his technique, in some cases pushing imitation to folly. but still, all that was healthiest and best in the art of the country came from these two groups, and members of both had made an international reputation before the international was founded. even in the academy anecdote had lost for an interval its pre-eminence, and it looked as if academicians might begin to understand that the painter's sole object need not be to tell a story. besides, there were two artists, r. a. m. stevenson and j., writing upon art, and they taught young men to have faith in whistler, and the "new criticism was born," and d. s. maccoll was the name of the first and only child. nor was whistler's influence confined to england. from the early eighties, when the jury was becoming more representative at the old _salon_, the pictures he sent to it had been hung. from the early nineties the new _salon_ gave them prominence. other recent influences in france had waxed and waned. the realism of bastien-lepage, which sank into photography with painters of less accomplishment, and the square brush-mark were already _vieux jeu_. impressionism had swamped itself in chemical problems, and the technique of the impressionists had been degraded to the exaggerations and absurdities of the _rose-croix_, to be swamped in turn by the latest fad of all. whistler brought with him technical sanity, a feeling for beauty and reverence for tradition, and he, who had been called the most eccentric of _poseurs_ in paint, led the way back to dignity and reticence in art, from which he had never swerved. his example was revealed in the work of artists of every nationality, either by frank imitation or else by their attitude towards nature or the reserve of their technique. because of this universal recognition, he was best qualified for the presidency of an international society of artists. the honour was paid him by no official body. officially, to the last, he was destined to go without due recognition. in france he was an ordinary _sociétaire_ of the _société nationale des beaux-arts_. the national academy of design in america was as indifferent to him as the royal academy in england. his membership in the academies of dresden, munich, rome, and scotland was a compliment--a compliment he could and did appreciate--but it carried no responsibilities and required no active work, and almost all these honours came after the international was started. but the new society, if not official, included on its executive the strongest outsiders in great britain, and had the support of the most distinguished men of his profession throughout the world. their choice of him was an acknowledgment of his supremacy as artist and an expression of confidence in him as leader, and he took no less pleasure in their tribute than trouble not to disappoint their expectations. his experience with the british artists was a help in constituting the society. the sole authority rested with the executive council, the members of which elected themselves and could not be got rid of except by their voluntary resignation or expulsion. theoretically the idea was magnificent, if the narrowest and most autocratic. "napoleon and i do these things," whistler said, and suffolk street had taught him that an intelligent autocrat is the best leader possible. his policy, if autocratic, was broad. in most societies painting held a monopoly, but, in his, sculpture and "graving" should have equal importance. all his rules were far-seeing and practical, and the decline of the society since his death is due to the disregard of them: a disregard which his associates still on the council who are true to his memory cannot prevent--or forget. the first exhibition was opened in may . the skating rink at knightsbridge was divided into three large and two small galleries. whistler's scheme of decoration was adopted, and the hanging was more perfect than any up to that time even on the continent. the president's velarium, without question of patent, was used, and he designed the seal for the society and the cover of the catalogue. the artistic success of the show could not be questioned. no such collection of modern art had been seen in london, a proof that whistler was as broad as the painters and the populace were sure he was narrow. the "why drag in velasquez?" story is often quoted by the ignorant and the foolish and the stupid. in this exhibition he dragged in everyone of eminence, for, though the ignorant and the foolish and the stupid may never understand, the "why drag in velasquez?" was uttered only for their benefit. whistler showed a group of early pictures: _at the piano_, _la princesse du pays de la porcelaine_, _rosa corder_, with later works: _the philosopher_, _the little blue bonnet_, his own half-length portrait in a white jacket, _brown and gold_. the sculpture was as interesting as the painting. there were drawings and engravings. besides, his idea was to have special exhibitions, and aubrey beardsley, who had just died, was honoured. before the show was over delegates were sent, and communications received, from paris and venice asking for an exchange of exhibitions. whistler came from paris for the opening, a quiet affair as the endeavour to obtain the presence of the prince of wales failed, and he lunched with the council on the opening day and attended one or two sunday afternoon receptions. he agreed that a fine illustrated catalogue should be published by mr. heinemann, with _the little blue bonnet_, in photogravure, as frontispiece. if the first exhibition was a complete artistic success it proved a complete financial failure. but luckily the society had no pecuniary responsibility. whistler knew it is impossible for a man to serve actively in two rival societies; he had said so to the british artists; and he determined that members of the council of the international who were members of other societies must leave the society, or, if not, he would. his decision was precipitated by a new election to the council. he was in paris, and the fact that two members of the council, lavery and j., left london at an hour's notice for the rue du bac to arrange matters with him shows how anxious he was for the welfare of his society. they arrived early in the morning. whistler was not up, but sent word that they must breakfast with him in the studio. during breakfast he talked of everything but the society; after breakfast he made them listen to a fourth of july spread-eagle oration squeaked out of a primitive gramophone that somebody had given him and that he loved; and it was not until twenty minutes before they had to start back that he referred to the council. then he had all his plans ready, and he stated what he proposed to do, and what he wanted done, what must be done--we might add, what was done. and not only at every crisis, but in every detail, he directed the management of the society, and he demanded that every report, every project should be submitted to him. he expected the deference due to him as president, and in return he gave his unswerving support. even during his last illness nothing was done without his knowledge and approval. the second international exhibition, or "art congress," was held at knightsbridge from may to july . the president came over when the hanging was finished. it was arranged this year that a special show of his etchings should be made, and a small room was decorated and called the white room. as whistler was in paris, he asked j. and mrs. whibley to go to the studio and select the prints. j. chose a number that had not been seen before, principally from the _naval review series_. whistler, for some reason, resented the selection when he saw the prints on the walls. the committee were in consternation and sent for j. whistler said to him: "now look what you have done!" "but what have i done? have i done you any harm?" and that was the end of it. his objection may have been because he feared, as we remember his saying of these prints another time, that they were "beyond the understanding of the abomination outside." but his fury lasted only for the moment, and he and lavery and j. passed a good part of the night at work in the gallery on the catalogue. whistler received on the opening day, and in the evening the first of the round table council dinners was held at the café royal, sir james guthrie presiding. in an admirable speech he expressed not only the delight of the council at being able to enlist the sympathy and aid of whistler, but their love and appreciation for the man and his work. the sympathy then existing between the president and most of the council was genuine, and he appreciated it as much as they did. after dinner a few of the council went with him to sir john lavery's, where he was staying, and there he read _the baronet and the butterfly_, which had just appeared in paris. this, because of absence or ill-health, was the only council dinner he went to, though for a time there was one every year, and at several rodin presided. to the second exhibition the president sent several small canvases recently finished. again the infallible critics discussed them as promising works of the past, and were made to eat their words, and again in the catalogue whistler quoted the _times_, and to its opinion of to-day of "... the vanished hand which drew the _symphony in white_ and _miss alexander_" compared its opinion "of the moment" of those two pictures, when the _miss alexander_ suggested a sketch left "before the colours were dry in a room where the chimney-sweeps were at work," and was "uncompromisingly vulgar." "other times, other lines!" was whistler's comment. three illustrated catalogues were published by messrs. w. h. ward and company. whistler's _chelsea rags_ and _trouville_ were both included in the ordinary editions, and the _little lady sophie of soho_ and _lillie in our alley_ were added to the _édition de luxe_. the catalogues until , when even whistler's _format_ was discarded, are the most interesting issued by any society. the second exhibition was less of a success financially than the first, and the society of artists came near being involved in the crash which overtook the financing company. to avoid complications whistler insisted that the society should have an honorary solicitor and treasurer, and mr. william webb was appointed. in the first and second exhibitions the art of the world was represented as it never had been before in england,[ ] as it never has been since. in both, attempts to attract the public with music and receptions and entertainments were made, but whistler objected to music, saying that the two arts should be kept separate, that people who came to hear the music could not see the pictures, and people who came to see the pictures would not want to hear the music. there were misunderstandings with the proprietor and the promoters, the former wishing to see some of his friends represented, and the latter to see some of their money back, and the outlook was gloomy. whistler wrote a memorable letter in which he said that he, as commander, proposed to repel pirates and sink their craft, and they never openly got aboard, though a few stowaways did creep in. no show was held in , the paris universal exhibition taking up the members' energy, and not until the autumn of was the third exhibition opened at the galleries of the royal institute in piccadilly. there had been official and other changes. professor sauter had been made honorary secretary, _pro tem._, and the society, which up till now had consisted of the council only, admitted associates, and with their election the international character began to wane, for, out of thirty-two associates elected, twenty-eight were resident in great britain. this exhibition was the first to be financially successful. the president sent seven small paintings and pastels. _phryne the superb_ was reproduced in the catalogue, as well as _gold and orange--the neighbours_, and _green and silver--the great sea_. professor sauter devoted himself to furthering the international idea of the president, and under his secretaryship the society held exhibitions of its english members' work in budapest, munich, and afterwards in philadelphia, pittsburgh, chicago, and st. louis. on june , , professor sauter was relieved temporarily of the secretaryship and j. took his place. within a few weeks it was his sad duty to call a meeting to announce to the society the loss they had sustained by the death of their president. the council determined to follow the traditions of whistler and to honour his memory. not only were the american exhibitions held, but the society organised a show of british art in dusseldorf, and made arrangements for a memorial exhibition of the president's works in london. in the autumn of m. rodin accepted the presidency, and the fourth exhibition, the first held in the new gallery, was opened in january , in which the late president was represented by the _symphony in white, no. iii._, lent by mr. edmund davis; _rose and gold--the tulip_, lent by miss birnie philip; _valparaiso_, lent by mr. graham robertson; _symphony in grey--battersea_, lent by mrs. armitage; and _study for a fan_, lent by mr. c. h. shannon. [illustration: a freshening breeze oil in the possession of j. s. ure, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: lillie in our alley brown and gold oil in the possession of j. j. cowan, esq. (_see page _)] in the most important and successful show in the career of the international society of sculptors, painters, and gravers was given; the memorial exhibition of the works of james mcneill whistler. for complete success it lacked only the co-operation of whistler's executrix, which the council originally understood was promised, but which was ultimately withheld. still, it was the most complete exhibition of his works ever given, superior from every point of view to the small show at the scottish academy the previous year, in many respects to the boston show of the same year, and to the paris memorial exhibition, , which was disappointing. as can be seen from the elaborate catalogue, more especially the beautifully illustrated _édition de luxe_ published by mr. heinemann, the exhibition at the new gallery contained nearly all the principal oil-paintings, the largest collection of etchings ever shown together, all but one or two of the lithographs, and many of the pastels, water-colours, and drawings. [footnote : sir henry cole, in the early sixties, had five international shows at south kensington.] chapter xliv: the acadÉmie carmen. the years eighteen ninety-eight to nineteen hundred and one. in the autumn of a circular issued in paris created a sensation in the studios. whistler was going to open a school, the _académie whistler_. the announcement was made by his model, madame carmen rossi. whistler at once wrote from whitehall court, where he was staying (october , ), to the papers "to correct an erroneous statement, or rather to modify an exaggeration, that an otherwise _bona fide_ prospectus is circulating in paris. an _atelier_ is to be opened in the passage stanislas, and, in company with my friend, the distinguished sculptor, mr. macmonnies, i have promised to attend its classes. the _patronne_ has issued a document in which this new arcadia is described as the _académie whistler_ and further qualified as the anglo-american school. i would like it to be understood that, having hitherto abstained from all plot of instruction, this is no sudden assertion in the _ville lumière_ of my own. nor could i be in any way responsible for the proposed mysterious irruption in paris of whatever anglo-american portends. 'american,' i take it, is synonymous with modesty, and 'anglo,' in art, i am unable to grasp at all, otherwise than as suggestive of complete innocence and the blank of burlington house. i purpose only, then, to visit, as harmlessly as may be, in turn with mr. macmonnies, the new academy which has my best wishes, and, if no other good come of it, at least to rigorously carry out my promise of never appearing anywhere else." whistler had nothing to do with the financial management, everything with the system of teaching, and he said that he proposed to offer the students his knowledge of a lifetime. it may be, as we have heard, that he had been asked, with macmonnies, to criticise the work of ary renan's or luc-olivier merson's students, and that this gave him the idea of visiting a school under his own direction. the passage stanislas is a small street running off the rue notre-dame-des-champs; no. , a house of two storeys and a courtyard or garden at the back which was afterwards covered with glass. over the front door the sign _académie whistler_ did appear, but only for a short time. the glazed courtyard became a studio, and there was another above to which a fine old staircase led. the house had been built, or adapted, as a studio, and, except that the walls were distempered, no change was made. the rooms were fitted up with school furniture; for this, we believe, whistler advanced the money. within a few days a vast number of pupils had put their names down, deserting the other _ateliers_ of paris. some left the english schools, and still others came from germany and america. whistler was delighted, telling us that students were coming in squads, that the passage was crowded, and that owners of carriages struggled with _rapins_ and prize-winners to get in. miss inez bate (mrs. clifford addams), who was among the earliest to put down her name, who remained in the school till the end and who became whistler's apprentice, has not only told us the story of the _académie carmen_, but has given us her record of it and of whistler's methods of teaching, written at his request and partially corrected by him. it is the record of his "knowledge of a lifetime," for he taught in the school the truths he had been years formulating, and is of the greatest importance, as valuable a document as the treatise of cennino cennini. in the future mrs. addams' statement, revised by whistler, will live. he insisted on seriousness. the _académie carmen_ was not to be like other schools; instead of singing, there was to be no talking; smoking was not allowed; the walls were not to be decorated with charcoal; studio cackle was forbidden; if people wanted these things, they could go back from whence they came. he was to be received as a master visiting his pupils, not as a good fellow in his shirt-sleeves. for the first weeks things did not go very well. carmen was not used to her post, the students were not used to such a master, and whistler was not used to them. a _massier_ was appointed, and the men and women who had been working together were separated and two classes formed. within a short time mrs. addams was chosen _massière_, a position she held until the school closed. she writes: "the _académie_ began its somewhat disturbed career in the fall of . a letter was received from mr. whistler announcing that he would shortly appear, and, on the day appointed, the _académie carmen_ had the honour of receiving him for the first time. he proceeded to look at the various studies, most carefully noting under whose teaching and in what school each student's former studies had been pursued. "most kindly something was said to each, and to one student who offered apology for his drawing, mr. whistler said simply, 'it is unnecessary--i really come to learn--feeling you are all much cleverer than i.' "mr. whistler, before he left, expressed to the _patronne_ his wish that there should be separate _ateliers_ for the ladies and gentlemen and that the present habit of both working together should be immediately discontinued. "his second visit was spent in consideration of the more advanced students. one, whose study suffered from the introduction of an unbeautiful object in the background, because it happened to be there, was told that, 'one's study, even the most unpretentious, is always one's picture, and must be, in form and arrangement, a perfect harmony from the beginning.' with this unheard-of advice, mr. whistler turned to the students, whose work he had been inspecting and intimated that they might begin to paint, and so really learn to draw, telling them that the true understanding of drawing the figure comes by having learned to appreciate the subtle modellings by the use of the infinite gradation that paint makes possible. "on his third visit he turned to one student and picked up her palette, pointing out that being the instrument on which the painter plays his harmony, it must be beautiful always, as the tenderly-cared-for violin of the great musician. "he suggested that it would be a pleasure to show them his way of painting, and if this student could, without too much difficulty, clean her palette, he would endeavour to show them 'the easiest way of getting into difficulties.' "and it was then that mr. whistler's palette was given. his whole system lies in the complete mastery of the palette--on the palette the work must be done before transferring one note on to the canvas. "he recommended the small oval palettes as being easy to hold. white was placed at the top edge in the centre, in generous quantity, and to the left came in succession yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw umber, cobalt, and mineral blue; while to right, vermilion, venetian red, indian red, and black. sometimes the burnt sienna would be placed between the venetian and indian red, but generally the former placing of colours was insisted upon. "a mass of colour, giving the fairest tone of the flesh, would then be mixed and laid in the centre of the palette near the top, and a broad band of black curving downward from this mass of light flesh-note to the bottom, gave the greatest depth possible in any shadow, and so, between the prepared light and the black, the colour was spread, and mingled with any of the various pure colours necessary to obtain the desired changes of note, until there appeared on the palette a tone-picture of the figure that was to be painted, and at the same time a preparation for the background was made on the left in equally careful manner. "many brushes were used, each one containing a full quantity of every dominant note, so that when the palette presented as near a reproduction of the model and background as the worker could obtain, the colour could be put down with a generous flowing brush. "mr. whistler said, 'i do not interfere with your individuality. i place in your hands a sure means of expressing it, if you can learn to understand, and if you have your own sight still.' each student prepared his or her palette, in some the mass of light would exceed the dark, in others the reverse would be the case. mr. whistler made no comments on these conditions of the students' palettes: 'i do not teach art; i teach the scientific application of paint and brushes.' his one insistence was that no painting on the canvas should be begun until the student felt he could go no further on the palette; the various and harmonious notes were to represent, as nearly as he could see, the model and background that he was to paint. "mr. whistler would often refrain from looking at the students' canvas, but would carefully examine the palette, saying that there he could see the progress being made, and that it was really much more important for it to present a beautiful appearance, than for the canvas to be fine and the palette inharmonious. he said, 'if you cannot manage your palette, how are you going to manage your canvas?' "these statements sounded like heresy to the majority of the students, and they refused to believe the reason and purpose of such teaching, and as they had never before received even a hint to consider the palette of primary importance, they insisted in believing that this was but a peculiarity of mr. whistler's manner of working, and that, to adopt it, would be with fatal results! "the careful attempts to follow the subtle modellings of flesh placed in a quiet, simple light, and therefore extremely grey and intricate in its change of form, brought about necessarily, in the commencement of each student's endeavour, a rather low-toned result. one student said to mr. whistler that she did not wish to paint in such low tones, but wanted to keep her colour pure and brilliant; he answered, 'then keep it in the tubes, it is your only chance at first.' "they were taught to look upon the model as a sculptor would, using the paint as a modeller does his clay; to create on the canvas a statue, using the brush as a sculptor his chisel, following carefully each change of note, which means 'form'; it being preferable that the figure should be presented in a simple manner, without an attempt to obtain a thousand changes of colour that are there in reality, and make it, first of all, _really and truly exist in its proper atmosphere_, than that it should present a brightly coloured image, pleasing to the eye, but without solidity and non-existent on any real plane. this, it will be seen, was the reason of mr. whistler's repeated and insistent commands to give the background the most complete attention, believing that by it alone the figure had a reason to exist. "mr. whistler would often paint for the students. "once he modelled a figure, standing in the full, clear light of the _atelier_, against a dull, rose-coloured wall. after spending almost an hour upon the palette, he put down with swift, sure touches, the notes of which his brushes were already generously filled, so subtle that those standing close to the canvas saw apparently no difference in each successive note as it was put down, but those standing at the proper distance away noticed the general turn of the body appear, and the faint subtle modellings take their place, and finally, when the last delicate touch of light was laid on, the figure was seen to exist in its proper atmosphere and at its proper distance within the canvas, modelled, as mr. whistler said, 'in painter's clay,' and ready to be taken up the next day and carried yet further in delicacy, and the next day further still, and so on until the end. "and he insisted that it was as important to train the eye as the hand, that long accustoming oneself to seeing crude notes in nature, spots of red, blue, and yellow in flesh where they are not, had harmed the eye, and the training to readjust the real, quiet, subtle note of nature required long and patient study. 'to find the true note is the difficulty; it is comparatively easy to employ it when found.' "he once said that had he been given at the commencement of his artistic career what he was then offering, his work would have been different. but he found in his youth no absolute definite facts, and he 'fell in a pit and floundered,' and from this he desired to save whom he could. 'all is so simple,' he would say, 'it is based on proved scientific facts; follow this teaching and you _must_ learn to paint; not necessarily learn art, but, at least, absolutely learn to paint what you see.' "he also demanded the student to abandon all former methods of teaching, unless in harmony with his own, and to approach the science as taught by himself in a simple and trustful manner. "the students, used to having any little sketch praised, and finding such efforts remained unnoticed by mr. whistler, while an intelligent and careful, though to their eyes stupid, attempt to model in simple form and colour would receive approbation, grew irritated, and the majority left for a more congenial atmosphere. "it was pointed out that a child, in the simple innocence of infancy, painting the red coat of the toy soldier red indeed, is in reality nearer the great truth than the most accomplished trickster with his clever brushwork and brilliant manipulation of many colours. "'distrust everything you have done without understanding it. it is not sufficient to achieve a fine piece of painting. you must know _how_ you did it, that the next time you can do it again, and never have to suffer from that disastrous state of the clever artist, whose friends say to him, what a charming piece of painting, do not touch it again, and, although he knows it is incomplete, yet he dare not but comply, _because he knows he might never get the same clever effect again_. "'remember which of the colours you most employed, how you managed the turning of the shadow into the light, and if you do not remember scrape out your work and do it all over again, for one _fact_ is worth a thousand misty imaginings. you must be able to do every part equally well, for the greatness of a work of art lies in the perfect harmony of the whole, not in the fine painting of one or more details.' "it was many months before a student produced a canvas which showed a grasp of the science he had so patiently been explaining. mr. whistler delighted in this, and had the canvas placed on an easel and in a frame that he might more clearly point out to the other students the reason of its merit; it showed primarily an understanding of the two great principles; first, it represented a figure _inside_ the frame and surrounded by the atmosphere of the studio, and secondly, it was created of one piece of flesh, simply but firmly painted and free from mark of brush. as the weeks went on, and the progress in this student's work continued, mr. whistler finally handed over to her [mrs. addams] the surveillance of the new-comers and the task of explaining to them the first principles of his manner. "the _académie_ had the distinction of causing the rumour that something was being taught there, something definite and absolute. "a large number of students who had been in the _académie_ for a short time and left, returned, dissatisfied with other schools, that they might once more satisfy themselves that nothing was to be learned there after all. "mr. whistler allowed this to continue for some time, but finally, the fatigue of such constant changes caused him to issue an order that the _académie carmen_ should be tried but once. "the students in the men's life-class were constantly changing. on christmas day, mr. whistler invited them to visit him in his _atelier_ and showed them many of his own canvases in various stages of completeness; explaining how certain results had been obtained, and how certain notes had been blended, and assuring them that he used the science he was teaching them, only that each student would arrange it according to his own needs as time went on, begging them not to hesitate to ask him any question that they wished, or to point out anything they failed to understand. there was an increased enthusiasm for a few weeks, but gradually the old spirit of misunderstanding and mistrust returned, and the men's class again contained but few students. "another disappointment to them was that mr. whistler explained when they showed him pictures they had painted with a hope to exploit as pupils of the master in the yearly _salon_, that this was impossible, that their complete understanding of the great principles and the fitting execution of their application could not be a matter of a few months' study, and he told them he was like a chemist who put drugs into bottles, and he certainly should not send those bottles out in his name unless he was quite satisfied with, and sure of, the contents. "the last week of the first year arrived, and mr. whistler spent the whole of each morning at the _académie_. the supervision of one student's work was so satisfactory that he communicated with her, after the closing of the _académie_, to announce that he desired to enter into an apprenticeship with her, for a term of five years, as he considered it would take fully that time to teach her the whole of his science and make of her a finished craftsman; with her artistic development he never for a moment pretended to interfere--'that,' he said, 'is or is not superb--it was determined at birth, but i can teach you _how to paint_.' "so, on the th of july ( ), the deed of apprenticeship [with mrs. addams] was signed and legally witnessed, and she 'bound herself to her master to learn the art and craft of a painter, faithfully to serve after the manner of an apprentice for the full term of five years, his secrets keep and his lawful commands obey, she shall do no damage to his goods nor suffer it to be done by others, nor waste his goods, nor lend them unlawfully, nor do any act whereby he might sustain loss, nor sell to other painters nor exhibit during her apprenticeship nor absent herself from her said master's service unlawfully, but in all things as a faithful apprentice shall behave herself towards her said master and others during the said term.... and the said master, on his side, undertakes to teach and instruct her, or cause her to be taught and instructed. but if she commit any breach of these covenants he may immediately discharge her.' "into the hands of his apprentice--also now the _massière_--mr. whistler gave the opening of the school the second year, sending all instructions to her from pourville, where he was staying. "each new candidate for admission should submit an example of his or her work to the _massière_, and so prevent the introduction into the _académie_ of, first, those who were at present incompetent to place a figure in fair drawing upon the canvas; and secondly, those whose instruction in an adverse manner of painting had gone so far that their work would cause dissension and argument in the _académie_. unfortunately, this order was not well received by some, though the majority were willing to accede to any desire on the part of mr. whistler. "a number absolutely refused to suffer any rule, and preferred to distrust what they could not understand, and the talk among the students of the _quartier_ was now in disparagement of the _académie_. "compositions were never done in the school. it was so much more important to learn to paint and draw, for, as mr. whistler said, 'if ever you saw anything really perfectly beautiful, suppose you could not draw and paint!'--'the faculty for compositions is part of the artist, he has it, or he has it not--he cannot acquire it by study--he will only learn to adjust the composition of others, and, at the same time, he uses his faculty in every figure he draws, every line he makes, while in the large sense, composition may be dormant from childhood until maturity, and there it will be found in all its fresh vigour, waiting for the craftsman to use the mysterious quality in his adjustment of his perfect drawings to fit their spaces.' "the third and last year ( ) of the _académie carmen_ was marked at its commencement by the failure to open a men's life-class. mr. whistler had suffered so greatly during the preceding years from their inability to comprehend his principles and also from the short time the students remained in the school, that at the latter part of the season he often refused to criticise in the men's class at all. he would call sometimes on sunday mornings and take out and place upon easels the various studies that had been done by the men the previous week, and often he would declare that nothing interested him among them and that he should not criticise that week, that he could not face the fatigue of the 'blankness' of the _atelier_. "the _académie_ was opened in october by a woman's life-class which was well attended. the school had been moved to an old building in the boulevard montparnasse, but shortly after mr. whistler was taken very ill and he was forced to leave england on a long voyage. he wrote a letter to the students that never reached them, then, from corsica, another, with his best wishes for the new century, and his explanation of the doctor's abrupt orders. the _académie_ was kept open by the apprentice until the end of march ( ), but the faith of the students seemed unable to bear further trials, and after great discontent at mr. whistler's continued absence and a gradual dwindling away of the students until there were but one or two left, the apprentice wrote of this to mr. whistler." whistler wrote from ajaccio a formal letter of dismissal to the few students left, kissing the tips of their rosy fingers, bidding them godspeed and stating the case that history might be made. the reading of the letter by the _massière_ in the _atelier_ closed the school, and an experiment to which whistler brought enthusiasm, only to meet from the average student the distrust the average artist had shown him all his life. one of the last things he did before the close was to make an apprentice also of mr. clifford addams, the one man who remained faithful. and in his case, too, a deed of apprenticeship was drawn up and signed. the story of the _académie_ is carried on in the following letter from mr. frederick macmonnies, concerning his connection with it: "... i had always heard so much about his being impossible, but the more i saw of him the more i realised that anyone who could quarrel with him must be written down an ass. "an instance of his rare straightforwardness and frankness in friendship occurred in the carmen school. he used to come up to my studio just before breakfast, and we would go off to lavenue's or the café du cardinal. "one morning he said he had a great affair on hand. carmen was going to open the school and he had agreed to teach, a thing he had always said was shocking, useless, and encouragement of incapables. he suggested i help him out with teaching the sculptor pupils and the drawing, so i gladly agreed. "all the schools in paris were deserted immediately, and the funny little studios of carmen's place were packed with all kinds of boys and girls, mostly americans, who had tried all styles of teaching. "mr. whistler, having a full sense of a picturesque _grande entrée_, did not appear until the school was in full swing about a week after the opening, and until the pupils had passed the palpitating stage and were in a dazed state of expectancy and half collapsed into nervous prostration. the various samples of such awaiting him represented the methods of almost every teacher in paris. "he arrived, gloves and cane in hand, and enjoyed every minute of his stay, daintily and gaily touching very weighty matters. a few days after his arrival i went to the school and found the entire crew painting as black as a hat--delicate, rose-coloured pearly models translated into mulattoes, a most astonishing transformation. as time went on the blackness increased. finally, one day, i suggested to one of the young women who was particularly dreary, to tone her study up. she informed me she saw it so. i took her palette and keyed the figure into something like the delicate and brilliant colouring, much to her disgust. when i had finished, she informed me, 'mr. whistler told me to paint it that way.' i told her she had misunderstood, that he had never meant her to paint untrue. several criticisms among the men of the same sort of thing, and i left. "of course, all this was carried to whistler, and a few days later after breakfast, over his coffee, he waved his cigarette towards me and said, 'now, my dear macmonnies, i like you--and i am going to talk to you the way your mother does (he used to play whist in paris with my mother, and they made a most amusing combination). now, you see, i have always believed there has been something radically wrong with all this teaching that has been going on in paris all these years in julian's and the rest. i decided years ago the principle was false. they give the young things men's food when they require pap. my idea is to give them three or four colours--let them learn to model and paint the form and line first until they are strong enough to use others. if they become so, well and good; if not, let them sink out of sight.' i suggested the doubt that their eyes might in this way be trained to see wrong. no, he did not agree with that. anyway, i apologised, and said i was a presuming and meddlesome ass, and if i had known he was running his school on a system, i would have remained silent. if you could have seen the charming manner, the frank kindness and friendly spirit with which he undertook to remonstrate, you would understand how much i admired his generous spirit. "few men under the circumstances (i being very much his junior) would not have made a great row and got upon their high horses, and we would have quit enemies. "later, i found that the sculptor pupils did not arrive in droves to be taught by me, and the drawing criticisms unnecessary, as the school had become a tonal modelling school and my criticisms superfluous. i proposed to mr. whistler that i was _de trop_, and that it could only be properly done by him. he agreed and i left. "m. rodin (or his friends) wished to take my place, but mr. whistler, i heard, said he could not under any circumstances have anyone replace macmonnies, as it might occasion comment unfavourable to me. now i consider that one of the rarest of friendly actions, as i knew he would not have objected to rodin otherwise. "a canny, croaking friend of mine, who hated whistler and never lost an opportunity of misquoting and belittling him, dropped in at my house a few nights after my resignation from the school, quite full up with croaks of delight that we had fallen out, as he supposed, and that the row he had long predicted had finally come. i laughed it off, and after dinner a familiar knock, and who should be ushered in but mr. whistler, asking my mother to play another game of whist. "a rather amusing thing occurred in my studio. "a rich and spread-eagle young american got into a tussle of wits with whistler--neither had met before (whistler, however, knew and liked his brother)--on the advantage of foreign study and life abroad. [illustration: the coast of brittany alone with the tide oil formerly in the possession of ross winans, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: the sea, pourville oil in the possession of a. a. hannay, esq. (_see page _)] [illustration: the fur jacket arrangement in black and brown oil (picture in progress) from a photograph lent by pickford r. waller, esq. (completed picture) in the worcester museum, massachusetts (_see page _)] i cannot remember all the distinguished and amusing arguments or the delightful appreciation of the french people of whistler, or of the rather boring and rather brutal jabbing of the young man. at any rate, whistler defended himself admirably, always keeping his temper, which the young man wished him to lose in order to trip him up. i saw that whistler was bored and tried to separate them, but it had gone too far. finally, whistler held out his hand and with his charming quizzical smile said, 'good-bye, oh, ah, i am so glad to have met you--on account of your brother!' "the year before whistler died, in december, i went to america on a short trip. i hadn't been home for a number of years. whistler had always said he would go back with me some time, so i telegraphed him at bath to induce him to come with me. he replied by telegram, 'merry xmas, _bon voyage_, but i fear you will have to face your country without me.'" to anyone familiar with art schools whistler's idea appeared revolutionary, but he knew that he was carrying on the tradition of gleyre. art schools are now conducted on such different principles that a comparison may be useful. usually the student is not taught to do anything. the master puts him at drawing, telling him, after the drawing is finished, where it is wrong. the student starts again and drops into worse blunders because he has not been told how to avoid the first. if he improves, it is by accident, or his own intelligence, more than by teaching. at length, when the pupil has learned enough drawing to avoid the mistakes of the beginner, and to make it difficult for the master to detect his faults, he is put at painting, and the problem becomes twice as difficult for the student. in drawing, each school has some fixed method of working, nowhere more fixed than at the royal academy, which leads to nothing--or paris. in painting, the professor corrects mistakes in colour, in tone, in value, which is easier than to correct drawing, and the student becomes more confused than ever, for he is in colour less likely than in drawing to tumble unaided on the right thing. as to the use of colours, the mixing of colours, the arrangement of the palette, the handling of tools--these are never taught in modern schools. the result is that the new-comer imitates the older students--the favourites--and shuffles along somehow. any attempt on the part of the master to impress his character on the students would be resented by most of them, and any attempt at individuality on their part would be resented by the master, for the official art school, like the official technical school, is the resort of the incompetent. the royal academy goes so far as to change the visitors in its painting schools--that is, the teachers--every month, and the confusion to the student handed on from mr. sargent to sir hubert von herkomer and then to sir lawrence alma-tadema can hardly be imagined. for this sort of art school whistler had no toleration--its product is the amateur or academician. when he was asked, "then you would do away with all the art schools?" whistler answered, "not at all, they are harmless, and it is just as well when the genius appears that he should find the fire alight and the room warm, an easel close at hand and the model sitting, but i have no doubt he'll alter the pose!" whistler would have liked to practise the methods of the old masters. he would have taught the students from the beginning, from the grinding and mixing of the colours. he believed that students should work with him as apprentices worked with their masters in earlier times. artists then taught the student to work as they did. how much individuality, save the master's, is shown in rubens' canvases, mostly done by his pupils? so long as van dyck remained with rubens he worked in rubens' manner, learning his trade. when he felt strong enough to say what he wanted to say in his own way as an accomplished craftsman, he left the school and set up for himself. raphael was trained in perugino's studio, helped his master, and, when he had learned all he could there, opened one of his own. and this is the way whistler wished his students to work with him. the misfortune is that he made the experiment when it was too late to profit by the skill of the pupils whom he wished to train to be of use to him. he knew that it would take at least five years for students to learn to use the tools he put in their hands, and the fact that, at the end of three years, when the school closed, a few of his pupils could paint well enough for their painting to be mistaken for his shows how right he was. if, after five years, they could see for themselves the beauty that was around them, they would by that time have been taught how to paint it in their own way, for what he could do was to teach them to translate their vision on to canvas. mr. starr says that whistler "told me to paint things exactly as i saw them. 'young men think they should paint like this or that painter. be quite simple, no fussy foolishness, you know, and don't try to be what they call strong. when a picture smells of paint,' he said slowly, 'it's what they call strong.'" had his health been maintained, had he not been discouraged because students mostly came to him with the desire to do work which looked easy, great results would have been accomplished. his regret was that students did not begin with him. mrs. addams has told us of the great success of one, miss prince, who had never been in an art school. she had nothing to unlearn. she understood, and, at the end of a year, had made more progress than any. there were exceptions among the more advanced, men who to-day are well-known artists and who, looking back, admit how much they learned. frederick frieseke, henry s. hubbell, and c. harry white passed through the school. one of the few frenchmen was simon bussy, who describes whistler as _très distingué, très fin, très autoritaire_, though not so stimulating a master as gustave moreau, under whom he had been studying. but the greater number of students, elementary or advanced, thought that whistler was going to teach them, by some short cut, to arrive at distinction. when they found that, though the system was different, they had to go through the same drudgery as in any school, they were dissatisfied and left. moreover, the strict discipline and the separation of the sexes were unpopular. nor could they understand whistler. many of his sayings remembered by them explain their bewilderment. one day, whistler, going into the class, found three new pupils. to these he said: "where have you studied?" "with chase." "couldn't have done better!" "and where have you studied?" "with bonnat." "you couldn't have done better!" "where have you studied?" "i have never studied anywhere, mr. whistler." "i am sure you could not have done better!" to the young lady who told him that she was painting what she saw, he answered, "the shock will come when you see what you paint!" to the man who was smoking, he said, "really, you had better stop painting, for you might get interested in your work, and your pipe would go out!" of a superior amateur he inquired, "have you been through college? i suppose you shoot? fish, of course? go in for football, no doubt? yes? well, then i can let you off for painting." we asked whistler how much truth there was in these stories. his answer was: "well, you know, the one thing i cannot be responsible for in my daily life is the daily story about me." but he admitted they were, in the main, true. he added one incident we have heard from no one else that explains a peculiarity to which we have referred. in venice, he said, he got into the habit, as he worked on his plates, of blowing away the little powder raised by the needle ploughing through the varnish to the copper, and, unconsciously, he kept on blowing when painting or drawing. once, after he had painted before the students and had left the studio, there was heard in the silence a sound of blowing. then another student began blowing away as he worked, and so they went on. "well," they said, "already we have _la manière_, and that is much." whistler heard of it and broke himself of the habit. one day he saw on the wall in the men's studio, written in charcoal: "_i bought a palette just like his, his colours and his brush. the devil of it is, you see, i did not buy his touch._" whistler's methods and manner confused the average students who came, but his faith in his system was as great as the students' unbelief. he suggested that his criticisms of their work should be recorded on a gramophone. he thought of opening another class in london. the only time e. saw the _académie_, towards the beginning of the second year, the whole place was full of life and go. in the end, the want of confidence in him, his illness, and his absence broke up the school. but he sowed seed which will bring forth a thousandfold. for, just as his theory of art is now recognised as he stated it in _the ten o'clock_, so will his practice, proved by his work and teaching, be accepted in the future. chapter xlv: the beginning of the end. the year nineteen hundred. in the spring of an event of great importance in our relations with whistler occurred. towards the end of may he asked us to write his life. now that his fame was established, a great deal, indeed far too much, was written about him. unauthorised publications appeared or were in preparation, and it was evident that more would follow. whistler shrank from being written about by people not in sympathy with him or incapable of understanding him. he was, and is, to many critics and commentators a riddle or an affront. mistakes were made, facts were distorted. mr. heinemann suggested, first that he should write his autobiography, then that his biography should be written with his authority by someone in whom he had confidence. mr. heinemann thought of henley, but whistler objected. mr. charles whibley was proposed by mr. heinemann, but again whistler objected. it was after this that either mr. heinemann or whistler mentioned the name of joseph pennell. we had been abroad for a few days, and returned to london on may to find a letter from mr. heinemann telling j. of this "magnificent opportunity." no one could appreciate more fully the honour as well as the responsibility. j. saw whistler at once, and said, "you are the modern cellini and you should write it yourself." whistler had neither the time nor patience, but he promised to contribute what he could to j.'s book. we knew that while staying at whitehall court he had written two, or perhaps more, autobiographical chapters at mr. heinemann's suggestion. miss birnie philip, after the first edition of our _life_ was published, though we had proved our authority in the english law courts, wrote to the _times_ (november , ) that whistler "stated his objections to biographers in a fragment written in of what was intended to be the story of his life. the following passages will make his opinions clear: "'determined that no mendacious scamp shall tell the foolish truths about me when centuries have gone by, and anxiety no longer pulls at the pen of the "pupil" who would sell the soul of his master, i now proceed to take the wind out of such speculator by immediately furnishing myself the fiction of my own biography, which shall remain, and is the story of my life.... "'curiously, too, i find no grief in noting the closing of more than one middle-aged eye that i had before now caught turned warily upon me with a view to future foolscap improved from slight intimacy.... "'how tiresome, indeed, are the griswolds of this world, and how offensive. pinning their unimportant names on the linen of the great as they return the intercepted wash, they go down to posterity with their impudent bill, and posterity accepts and remembers them as the unrequited benefactors of ungrateful genius!'" this, according to miss birnie philip, was written in . whistler added to the record, mr. heinemann says, while living with him at whitehall court. but whistler soon found the task beyond him, and so, changing his mind on the subject, asked j. to write the story of his life and his work in . almost immediately it was arranged that e. should collaborate and that we should do the book together. whistler promised to help us in every way and, when in the mood, to tell us what he could about himself and his life, with the understanding that we were to take notes. he was not a man from whom dates and facts could be forced. his method was not unlike that of dr. johnson, who, when boswell asked for biographical details, said, "they'll come out by degrees as we talk together." whistler had to talk in his own fashion, or not at all; we were to listen, no matter where we met or under what conditions. it was also agreed that there were to be two volumes, one devoted to his life, the other to his work, and that photographs should be taken of the pictures in his studio to illustrate the volumes. whistler's pictures were being carried off only too quickly, and whatever we needed for illustration, or as a record, would have to be photographed at once. the duty of making the notes fell to e., and, from that time until his death, she kept an account of our meetings with him. he was true to his promise. we were often in the studio, and he spent evening after evening with us. sometimes we dined with him at garlant's hotel or at the café royal, sometimes we met at mr. heinemann's, but usually he dined with us in buckingham street, coming so frequently that he said to us one june evening: "well, you know, you will feel about me as i did in the old days about the man i could never ask to dinner because he was always there! i couldn't ask him to sit down, because there he always was, already in his chair!" once he told e. to write to j., who was out of town, that he was living on our staircase. during those evenings he gave us many facts and much material used in previous chapters. he began by telling us of the years at home, his student days in paris, his coming to chelsea, and, though dates were not his strong point, we soon had a consecutive story of that early period. every evening made us wish more than ever that he could have written instead of talking, for we soon discovered the difficulty of rendering his talk. he used to reproach j. with "talking shorthand," but no one was a greater master of the art than himself. and so much of its meaning was in the pause, the gesture, the punctuating hands, the laugh, the adjusting of the eye-glass, the quick look from the keen blue eyes flashing under the bushy eyebrows. the impression left with us from the close intercourse of this summer was of his wonderful vitality, his inexhaustible youth. as yet illness had not sapped his energy. he was sixty-six, but only the greyness of the ever-abundant hair, the wrinkles, the loose throat suggested age. he held himself as erect, he took the world as gaily, his interests were as fresh as if he were beginning life. some saw a sign of feebleness in the nap after dinner, but this was a habit of long standing, and after ten minutes, or less, he was awake, revived for the talk that went on until midnight and later. whistler wished us to have the photographing in the studio begun without delay. our first meeting, after the preliminaries were settled, was on june , ; on the th the photographer and his assistant were in fitzroy street with j. to superintend. it took long to select the things which should be done first, mr. gray, the photographer, picking out those which he thought would come best, whistler preferring others that gray feared might not come at all, though the idea was that, in the end, everything in the studio should be photographed. whistler found himself shoved in a corner, barricaded behind two or three big cameras, and he could scarcely stir. he grew impatient, he insisted that he must work. as the light was not good for the photographer, some canvases were moved out in the hall, some were put on the roof, but the best place was discovered to be mr. wimbush's studio in the same building. whistler went with j. through the little cabinets where pastels and prints were kept, and decided that a certain number must be worked on, but that the others could be photographed. then they lunched together with miss birnie philip, gray photographing all the while, and then whistler's patience was exhausted and everybody was turned out until the next day, when gray came again. and the next day, and many next days, j. would go to fitzroy street and whistler would say, "now you must wait," and he would wait in the little ante-room with marie, and whistler would talk away through the open door until j. was brought into the studio to see the finishing-touches added to the day's work. this explains the beginning of our difficulties and the reason why our progress was not rapid. we have spoken of the fever of work that had taken hold of whistler. he dreaded to lose a second. he was rarely willing to leave the studio during the day or, if he did, it was to work somewhere else, as when he went to sir frank short's and, as he told us the same evening, pulled nineteen prints before lunch, and all the joy in it came back, but he did not return in the afternoon, because, "well, you know, my consideration for others quite equals my own energy." for himself he had no consideration, and his work seldom stopped. we remember one late afternoon during the summer, when he had asked us to come to the studio, finding tea on the table and whistler at his easel. "we must have tea at once or it will get cold," he said, and went on painting. ten minutes later he said again, "we must have tea," and again went on painting. and the tea waited for a half-hour before he could lay down his brushes, and then it was to place the canvas in a frame and look at it for another ten minutes. when an invited interruption was to him a hindrance, he could not but find mr. gray, with his huge apparatus, a nuisance. a good many photographs, however, were made at fitzroy street, and whistler helped to get permission for pictures to be photographed wherever the photographing did not interfere with his work. in england, america, and on the continent many pictures which had not been reproduced, and to which access could be obtained, were photographed. nothing interested whistler more this year than the universal exhibition in paris, and he and mr. john m. cauldwell, the american commissioner, understood each other after a first encounter. mr. cauldwell, coming to paris to arrange the exhibition, with little time at his disposal and a great deal to do, wrote to ask whistler to call on a certain day "at . sharp." whistler's answer was that, though appreciating the honour of the invitation, he regretted his inability to meet mr. cauldwell, as he never had been able and never should be able to be anywhere "at . sharp," and it looked as if the unfortunate experience of might be repeated. but when whistler met mr. cauldwell, when he found how much deference was shown him, when he saw the decoration and arrangement of the american galleries, he was more than willing to be represented in the american section. he sent _l'andalouse_, the portrait of mrs. whibley, _brown and gold_, the full-length of himself, and, at the committee's request, _the little white girl_, never before seen in paris. he brought together also a fine group of etchings, and when he learned that he was awarded a _grand prix_ for painting and another for engraving, he was gratified and did not hesitate to show it. the years of waiting for the official compliment did not lessen his pleasure when it came. rossetti retired from the battle at an early stage, but whistler fought to the end and gloried in his victory. he was dining at mr. heinemann's when he received the news, and they drank his health and crowned him with flowers, and he enjoyed it as fully as the _fêtes_ of his early paris days. j. was awarded a gold medal for engraving, and we suggested that the occasion was one for general celebration, which was complete when timothy cole, another gold medallist, appeared unexpectedly as we were sitting down to dinner. mr. kennedy was one of the party, and miss birnie philip came with whistler, and the little dinner was the ceremony he knew how to make of reunions of the kind. he was pleased when he heard that his medals were voted unanimously and read out the first with applause. a story in connection with the awards, told over our table some months later by john lambert returning from paris, amused him vastly. though it was agreed that the first medals should not be announced until all the others were awarded, the news leaked out and got into the papers. at the next meeting of the jury, carolus-duran, always gorgeous, was more resplendent than ever in a flowered waistcoat. he took the chair, and at once, with his eye on the american jurors, said that there had been indiscretion. alexander harrison was up like a shot: "_a propos des indiscrétions, messieurs, regardez le gilet de carolus!_" during this time whistler was paying not only for his rooms at the hôtel chatham in paris, but for one at garlant's hotel, in addition to the apartment in the rue du bac where miss birnie philip and her mother lived the greater part of the year, for the studios in the rue notre-dame-des-champs and fitzroy street, and lastly, for the "company of the butterfly" in hinde street. it was no light burden, though he had a light way of referring to his "collection of _châteaux_ and _pieds-à-terre_." his pockets were as full as he had wanted them, but he could not get used to their not being empty. once, afraid he could not meet one of his many bills for rent, he asked a friend to verify his bank account, with the result that six thousand pounds were found to be lying idle. whistler, as a "west point man," followed the boer war with the same interest he had shown in the spanish war. it was a "beautiful war" on the part of the boers, for whom he had unbounded admiration. from paris, through the winter, he sent us, week by week, caran d'ache's cartoons in the _figaro_. in london he cut from the papers despatches and leaders that reported the bravery of the boers and the blunders of the british, and carried them with him wherever he went. his comments did not amuse the "islanders," whom, however, he knew how to soothe after exasperating them almost beyond endurance. one evening j. walked back with him to garlant's, and they were having their whisky-and-soda in the landlady's room while whistler gave his version of the news of the day, which he thought particularly psychological. then suddenly, when it seemed as if the landlady could not stand it an instant longer, he turned and said in his most charming manner, "well, you know, you would have made a very good boer yourself, madam." as he said it, it became the most amiable of compliments, and the evening was finished over a dish of choice peaches which she hoped would please him. another evening, the boers were on the point of kindling a fatal war between himself and a good friend, when a bang of his fist on the table brought down a picture from the wall of our dining-room, and in the crash of glass the boers were forgotten. no one who met him during the years of the war can dissociate him from this talk, and not to refer to it would be to give a poor idea of him. if he had a sympathetic audience, he went over and over the incidents of the struggle; the wonder of the despatches; lord roberts' explanation that all would have gone well with the suffolks on a certain occasion if they had not had a panic. mrs. kruger receiving the british army while the boers retired, supplied with all they wanted, though they went on capturing the british soldiers wholesale; general buller's announcement that he had made the enemy respect his rear. when he was told of despatches stating that buller, on one occasion, had retired without losing a man, or a flag, or a cannon, he added, "yes, or a minute." he repeated the answer of a man at a lecture, who, when the lecturer declared that the cream of the british army had gone to south africa, called out, "whipped cream." the blunderings and the surrenderings gave whistler malicious joy, and he declared that as soon as the british soldier found he was no longer in a majority of ten to one, he threw up the sponge or dropped the gun. he recalled bismarck's saying that south africa would prove the grave of the british empire, and also that the day would come when the blundering of the british army would surprise the world, and he quoted "a sort of professional prophet" who predicted a july that would bring destruction to the british: "what has july in store for the island?" he would ask. there was no question of his interest in the boers, but neither could there be that this interest was coloured by prejudice. he never forgot his "years of battle" in england, when, alone, he met the blunderings, mistakes, and misunderstandings of the army of artists, critics, and the public. in his old age, as in his youth, he loved london for its beauty. his friends were there, nowhere else was life so congenial, and not even paris could keep him long from london. but it was his boast that he was an american citizen, that on his father's side he was irish, a highlander on his mother's, and that there was not a drop of anglo-saxon blood in his veins. he had no affection for the people who persisted in their abuse and ridicule until, confronted by the goupil exhibition of , they were compelled--however grudgingly--to give him his due. this was one reason why he expressed the wish that none of his pictures should form part of an english national collection, or remain in england, and emphasised the fact that his sitters at the end were american or scotch. he conquered, but the conquest did not make him accept the old enemies as new friends. in the position of the boers he no doubt fancied a parallel with his own when, alone, they defied the english, who, on the battlefield as in the appreciation of art, blundered and misunderstood. whistler's ingenuity in seeing only what he wanted to see and in making that conform to his theories was extraordinary. he could not be beaten because, for him, right on the other side did not exist. he came nearest to it one evening when discussing the war, not with an englishman, but with an american and an officer into the bargain, whom he met in our rooms, and who said that there was always blundering at the opening of a campaign, as at santiago, where two divisions of the united states army were drawn up so that, if they had fired, they must have shot each other down. it was a shock, but whistler rallied, offered no comment, and was careful afterwards to avoid such dangerous ground. prejudice coloured all his talk of the english, whose characteristics to him were as humorous as his were incomprehensible to them. it was astonishing to hear him seize upon a weak point, play with it, elaborate it fantastically, and then make it tell. the "enemies" suffered from his wit as he from their density. his artistic sense served him in satire as in everything else. one favourite subject was the much-vaunted english cleanliness. he evolved an elaborate theory: "paris is full of baths and always has been; you can see them, beautiful louis xv. and louis xvi. baths on the seine; in london, until a few years ago, there were none except in argyll street, to which britons came with a furtive air, afraid of being caught. and the french, having the habit of the bath, think and say nothing of it, while the british--well, they're so astonished now they have learned to bathe, they can't talk of anything but their tub." the bath club he described as "the latest incarnation of the british discovery of water." his ingenious answer was ready when british virtue was extolled. he repeated to us a conversation at this time with madame sarah grand. she said it was delightful to be back in england after five or six weeks in france, where she had not seen any men, except two, and they were germans, whom she could have embraced in welcome. a frenchman never would forget that women are women. she liked to meet men as comrades, without thought of sex. whistler told her: "you are to be congratulated, madam--certainly, the englishwoman succeeds, as no other could, in obliging men to forget her sex." a few days after, he reported another "happy" answer. he was with three englishmen and a german. one of the englishmen said, "the trouble is, we english are too honest; we have always been stupidly honest." whistler turned to the german: "you see, it is now historically acknowledged that whenever there has been honesty in this country, there has been stupidity." his ingenuity increased with the consternation it caused, and the "islander" figured more and more in his talk. the excitement in china this summer interested him little less than affairs in south africa. he was indignant, not with the chinese for the alleged massacres at pekin, but with americans and europeans for considering the massacres an outrage that called for redress. after all, the chinese had their way of doing things, and it was better to lose whole armies of europeans than to harm the smallest of beautiful things in that great wonderful country. he said to us one day: "here are these people thousands of years older in civilisation than us, with a religion thousands of years older than ours, and our missionaries go out there and tell them who god is. it is simply preposterous, you know, that for what europe and america consider a question of honour one blue pot should be risked." another evening when he said this to a larger audience, one of the party asked him if art did not always mark the decadence of a country. "well, you know," said whistler, "a good many countries manage to go to the dogs without it." the month of july in london was unusually hot, and for the first time we heard whistler complain of the heat, in which, as a rule, he revelled, though he dressed for it at dinner in white duck trousers and waistcoat with his dinner-jacket, and in the street exchanged his silk hat for a wide-brimmed soft grey felt, or a "dandy" straw. he was restless, anxious to stay in his studio, but, for the sake of miss birnie philip and her mother, anxious to go to the country or by the sea. looking from our windows, he would say that, with the river there and the embankment gardens gay with music and people, we were in no need to leave town, and we were sure he envied us. one day he went to amersham, near london, with the idea of staying there and painting two landscapes somebody wanted. mr. wimbush took him. "you know, really, i can't say that, towards twilight, it is not pretty in a curious way, but not really pretty after all--it's all country, and the country is detestable." eventually he took a house at sutton, near dublin, persuaded mrs. and miss birnie philip to go there, and then promptly left with mr. elwell for holland. he told mr. sidney starr once that only one landscape interested him, the landscape of london. but he made an exception of holland. when he was reminded that there is no country there, he said to us: "that's just why i like it--no great, full-blown, shapeless trees as in england, but everything neat and trim, and the trunks of the trees painted white, and the cows wear quilts, and it is all arranged and charming. and look at the skies! they talk about the blue skies of italy; the skies of italy are not blue, they are black. you do not see blue skies except in holland and here, where you get great white clouds, and then the spaces between are blue! and in holland there is atmosphere, and that means mystery. there is mystery here, too, and the people don't want it. what they like is when the east wind blows, when you can look across the river and count the wires in the canary bird's cage on the other side." he stayed a week at domburg, a small seashore village near middelburg. with its little red roofs nestling among the sand-dunes and its wide beach under the skies he loved, he thought it enchanting, and made a few water-colours which he showed us afterwards in the studio. the place, he said, was not yet exploited, and at madame elout's he found good wine and a dordrecht banker who talked of the boers and assured him they were all right, the dutch would see to that. a visit to ireland followed. he went full of expectations, for as the descendant of the irish whistlers he called himself an irishman. we have a note of his stay there from the late sir william armstrong, director of the national gallery of ireland: "he took a house, 'craigie' the name of it, at sutton, six miles from dublin, on the spit of sand which connects the hill of howth with the mainland (as the neutral ground unites 'gib.' with spain) on the north side of dublin bay. there he excited the curiosity of the natives by at once papering up the windows on the north side of the house, for half their height, with brown paper. he came to dinner with me one night, stipulating that he should be allowed to depart at . , as he was such an early goer to bed. we dined accordingly at , and his jehu, with the only closed fly the northern half of county dublin could supply, was punctually at the door at the hour named. there he had to wait for three hours, for it was not until . that the delightful flow of whistler's eloquence came to an end, and that he extracted himself from the deep arm-chair which had been his pulpit for four hours and a half. his talk had been great, and we had confined ourselves to little exclamatory appreciations and gazes of rapt adoration! i spent an hour or two with him in the irish national gallery. i found him there lying on the handrail before a sketch of hogarth (george ii. and his family) and declaring it was the most beautiful picture in the world. the only other remark on any particular picture which i can now recall is his saying of my own portrait by walter osborne, 'it has a _skin_, it has a _skin_!' he soon grew tired of sutton and ireland, and when i called at craigie a few days after the dinner he had flown. he did not forget to send a graceful word to my wife, signed with his name and butterfly." he did little work during his visit. the house was on the wrong side of the bay, the weather was wretched, but chester, on the way home, was "charming and full of possibilities." in september the frequent meetings were continued. the talk drifting here and there, touched upon many subjects belonging to no particular period, but characteristic of his moods and memories. thus, one evening, when mr. w. b. blaikie was with us and the talk turned to scotland, whistler told stories of carlyle. allingham, he said, was for a time by way of being carlyle's boswell and was always at his heels. they were walking in the embankment gardens at chelsea, when carlyle stopped suddenly: "have a care, mon, have a care, for ye have a tur-r-ruble faculty for developing into a bore!" carlyle had been reading about michael angelo with some idea of writing his life or an essay, but it was michael angelo, the engineer, who interested him. another day, walking with allingham, they passed south kensington museum. "you had better go in," allingham said. "why, mon, only fools go in there." allingham explained that he would find sculpture by michael angelo, and he should know something of the artist's work before writing his life. "no," said carlyle, "we need only glance at that." whistler's talk of howell and tudor house overflowed with anecdotes of the adventurer, for whom he retained a tender regret, and the group gathered about rossetti. he accounted for howell's downfall by a last stroke of inventiveness when he procured rare, priceless black pots for a patron who later discovered rows of the same pots in an oxford street shop. whistler had a special liking for the story of rossetti dining at lindsey row, at the height of the blue and white craze, and becoming so excited when his fish was served on a plate he had never seen before that he forgot the fish and turned it over, fish and all, to look at the mark on the back. another memory was of a dinner at mr. ionides', with rossetti a pagan, sir richard burton a mohammedan, lady burton a catholic. they fell into a hot argument over religion, but whistler said nothing. lady burton, who was in a state of exaltation, could not stand his silence: "and what are you, mr. whistler?" "i, madam," he answered, "why, i am an amateur!" he spent many evenings drawing upon his memory of the "droll" and "joyous" things of the past. but the past brought him back with redoubled interest to the present, in which so much waited to be done. in october we began to notice a change, and we knew that when he worried there was cause. he was called to paris once or twice about the school and his "_châteaux_ and _pieds-à-terre_." after one of these journeys he was laid up with a severe cold at mr. heinemann's. in november he was in bed for many days at garlant's. he had other worries. british critics conspired either to ignore his success at the paris exhibition, or account for it sneeringly or lyingly. he was irritated when he read an article on the exhibition, signed d. s. m., in the _saturday review_ devoted altogether, he told us, to manet and fantin, with only a passing reference to himself: "manet did very good work, of course, but then manet was always _l'écolier_--the student with a certain sense of things in paint, and that is all!--he never understood that art is a positive science, one step in it leading to another. he painted, you know, in _la manière noire_, the dark pictures that look very well when you come to them at durand-ruel's, after wandering through rooms of screaming blues and violets and greens, but he was so little in earnest that midway in his career he took to the blues and violets and greens himself. you know, it is the trouble with so many; they paint in one way--brilliant colour, say--they see something, like ribot, and, dear me, they think, we had better try to do this too, and they do and, well, really, you know, in the end they do nothing for themselves!" [illustration: portrait of mrs. walter sickert in the possession of mrs. cobden-sanderson] [illustration: portrait of miss woakes in the possession of messrs. knvedler & co. (_see page _)] he was furious with the critic who stated that his medal was awarded for _the little white girl_. the statement was offensive because, he said, "the critics are always passing over recent work for early masterpieces, though all are masterpieces; there is no better, no worse; the work has always gone on, it has grown, not changed, and the pictures i am painting now are full of qualities they cannot understand to-day any better than they understood _the little white girl_ at the time it was painted." this was an argument he often used. a few evenings after, he told a man, who suggested that millet's later work was not so good because he was married and had to make both ends meet, "you're wrong. an artist's work is never better, never worse; it must be always good, in the end as in the beginning, if he is an artist, if it is in him to do anything at all. he would not be influenced by the chance of a wife or anything of that kind. he is always the artist." he was annoyed because critics could not see a truth which to him was simple and obvious. his annoyance culminated when the _magazine of art_ not only said the _grand prix_ was awarded for _the little white girl_, but protested against the award, because the picture was painted before the ten years' limit imposed by the french authorities, a protest printed in other papers. whistler could not bear this in silence, for it looked like an effort to deprive him of his first high award from a paris exhibition. the attack was disgraceful. whistler's two other pictures were his most recent, and, as we have said, _the little white girl_ was specially invited. as soon as he was well enough, he came to us several times, with mr. william webb, his solicitor, to talk the affair over. as a result, an apology was demanded, and made. this belittling of certain pictures in favour of others, with its inevitable inference, offended him, in the end as in the beginning. mr. sargent writes us an instance of his manner of carrying off the offence before the world. somebody brought him a commission for a painting, stipulating that it should be "a serious work." whistler's answer was that he "could not break with the traditions of a lifetime." another worry he should have been spared was a dispute with one of the tenants at the rue du bac, a trivial matter which, in his nervous state, loomed large and made him unnecessarily miserable. the carpets of the lady on the floor above him were shaken out of her windows into his garden, and it could not be stopped. he tried the law, but was told he must have disinterested witnesses outside the family. if he engaged a detective, a month might pass before she would do it again. but it chanced that, while beating a carpet, it fell into his garden, and his servants refused to give it up. the lady went to law and his lawyer advised him to return the carpet. it depressed him hopelessly, and as he had long ceased to live in the rue du bac, we could not understand why he should have heard of so petty a domestic squabble. ill and worried as he was, our work at intervals came to a standstill. when he felt better and stronger the talks went on, but at moments he seemed almost to fear that the book would prove an obituary. once he said to us that we "wanted to make an old master of me before my time," and we had too much respect and affection for him to add to his worries by our importunity. with the late autumn his weakness developed into serious illness. by the middle of november he was extremely anxious about himself, for his cough would not go. the doctor's diagnosis, he said, was "lowered in tone: probably the result of living in the midst of english pictures." a sea journey was advised, and tangier suggested for the winter. when he was with us he could not conceal his anxiety. if he sneezed, he hurried away. he fell asleep before dinner was over; sometimes he could hardly keep awake through the evening. once or twice he seemed to be more than asleep, when there was nothing to do but to rouse him, which was not easy, and we were extremely frightened until we could, and, indeed, until j. got him back to garlant's. he would never trust himself to the night air until augustine had mixed him a hot "grog." tangier did not appeal to him, and he asked j. to go with him to gibraltar, stay a while at malaga, and then come back by madrid to see at last the pictures he had always wanted to see. he was hurt when j.'s work made it impossible for him to leave london. in december whistler gave up the struggle to brave the london winter, and decided to sail for gibraltar, on the way to tangier and algiers, with mr. birnie philip, his brother-in-law, to take care of him. sir thomas sutherland, chairman of the p. & o. company, arranged for every comfort on the voyage. but, as usual, there were complications at the last moment--as usual, the fearful trouble of getting off from his studio. everybody was pressed into his service and kept busy, all the waiters in the hotel were in attendance. the day before he was to start he discovered that his etching plates needed to be regrounded and he sent them to j., who agreed to do what he could at such short notice, but warned him that there was not time to ground the plates properly and that very likely they would be spoiled. whistler sent for them in the evening and, instead of leaving them out to dry until the morning, wrapped them up and packed them among the linen in his trunk. it was extraordinary that a man so careful about his work should always have wanted somebody else to ground his plates or prepare his canvases, or do something as important, that he should have done for himself, and that oftener than not he should have wanted it, as on this occasion, at the last moment. however, with the help of his friends and the waiters and his family, he was got ready in time, and on december he started for the south. chapter xlvi: in search of health. the years nineteen hundred and one and nineteen hundred and two. as soon as whistler got away from london he was unhappy. at tangier the wind was icy, at algiers it rained, and everywhere when it was clear the sky was "hard" and the sea was "black." snow was falling at marseilles, and he was kept in his room for a couple of weeks, so ill he had to send for a doctor, and he was only comforted when he found the doctor delightful. corsica was recommended and, as "napoleon's island," attracted whistler. when he was well enough mr. birnie philip left him, and he sailed alone for ajaccio. here he stayed at the hôtel schweizerhof. the weather at first was abominable, so cold and the wind so treacherous that he could not work out of doors, and he felt his loneliness acutely. fortunately he made a friend of the curator of the museum, and mr. heinemann joined him for a time. they loitered about together in the quaint little town, went to see the house where napoleon was born--"a great experience"--spent many rainy hours in the _café_ where mr. heinemann taught him to play dominoes, a resource not only then but the rest of his life. they played for the price of their coffee, and whistler cheated with a brilliancy that made him easily a winner, but that horrified a german who sometimes took a hand, though the _naïveté_ of whistler's "system" could not have deceived a child. he was by no means idle, and he brought back a series of exquisite pen and pencil drawings begun at tangier. a few water-colours were made, and when the weather gave him a chance he worked on his copper-plates. he bit one or two that j. had grounded in london, and the ground came off. he did not know how, or did not have the courage to prevent it. we can only wonder again that a man who made such wonderful plates did not know what to do, or did not dare do it, in difficulties of this sort, preferring to rely upon somebody else. he had drawn on some of the other plates before he began to bite any of them, and he may have done more than have as yet been seen. in mr. howard mansfield's and the grolier catalogues only one plate in corsica is recorded, in both called _the bohemians_. but as j. grounded ten or a dozen for whistler, and as he spoke to us of more than once bitten, it is probable that the plates exist. "all my dainty work lost," he wrote to us from corsica, and it looked as if the shadow had fallen upon our friendship. but he understood, and the shadow passed as quickly as it came. there were other schemes. one day, after his return, he told mr. clifford addams that he had seen a great black-bearded shepherd, on a horse, carrying a long pole, coming down a hill-side, of whom he wanted to make a large equestrian portrait. but he never started it. he felt he was not able. the closing of the school in paris occupied and worried him, and he was arranging for a show of pastels and prints at the luxembourg. one pleasure, of which he wrote to us, came from "new honours" in dresden, where he was awarded a gold medal and elected "unanimously to the _académie royale des beaux-arts_." he was more tired than he admitted in his letters, dwelling little on his fatigue, and insisting that the doctor in marseilles found nothing was the matter with him. but he was never strong after the autumn of , and earlier than this the doctor in london warned his friends that he was failing. he was more hopeful because at ajaccio he said he had discovered what was the matter with him: "at first, though i got through little, i never went out without a sketch-book or an etching-plate. i was always meaning to work, always thinking i must. then the curator offered me the use of his studio. the first day i was there he watched me, but said nothing until the afternoon. then--'but, mr. whistler, i have looked at you, i have been watching. you are all nerves, you do nothing. you try to, but you cannot settle down to it. what you need is rest--to do nothing--not to try to do anything.' and all of a sudden, you know, it struck me that i had never rested, that i never had done nothing, that it was the one thing i needed. and i put myself down to doing nothing--amazing, you know. no more sketch-books, no more plates. i just sat in the sun and slept. i was cured. you know, joseph must sit in the sun and sleep. write and tell him so." he was sufficiently recovered to take his old joy in the "islanders," into the midst of whom he fell on the p. & o. steamer coming back from marseilles: "nobody but english on board, and, after months of not seeing them, really they were amazing: there they all were at dinner, you know--the women in low gowns, the men in dinner jackets. they might look a trifle green, they might suddenly run when the ship rolled--but what matter? there they were--men in dinner jackets, stewards behind their chairs in dinner jackets--and so all's right with the country! and, do you know, it made the whole business clear to me down there in south africa. at home every englishman does his duty--appears in his dinner jacket at the dinner hour--and so, what difference what the boers are doing? all is well with england! you know, you might just as well dress to ride in an omnibus!" whistler returned from corsica at the beginning of may in excellent spirits. he came to us on the day of his arrival. we give one small incident that followed because it shows the simplicity he was careful to conceal from the world he liked to mystify. j. was in italy and e., that afternoon, on her way back from the continent. at our door he met our french maid, augustine, starting for charing cross, and he walked with her to the station, where she was to meet e., while she gave him the news. her account was that everybody stared, which was not surprising. he, always a conspicuous figure, was the more so in his long brown overcoat and round felt hat, _en voyage_, while she wore a big white apron and was _en cheveux_. moreover, their conversation was animated. she invited him to dinner, promising him dishes which she knew would tempt him, and he accepted. he appeared a little before eight. "positively shocking and no possible excuse for it," he said, "but, well, here i am!" work was taken up in the studio, our talks were resumed, his interest in the boer war grew, the heat he had not found in the south was supplied by london in june and july, and from the heat he gained strength. he came and went, as of old, between garlant's hotel and buckingham street, until he declared that the cabbies in the strand knew him as well as the cabbies in chelsea. it had ever been his boast that he was known to almost every cabman in london, as, indeed, he was. the tales of his encounters with them were numerous, for, if lavish in big things, he could sometimes be "narrow" in small, and his drives occasionally ended in differences. the only time we knew the cabby to score was one day this year, when j. was walking from the studio with him. "kibby, kibby," whistler cried to a passing cab, not seeing the "fare" inside. the cabman drew up, looked down at him, looked him over, and said, "where did yer buy yer 'at? go, get yer 'air cut!" and drove off at a gallop. whistler, safe inside an omnibus, laughed at the adventure. but the summer was full of adventures. another afternoon he and j. were walking in the strand when a well-known english artist stopped him with, "why, my dear old jimmie, how are you? i haven't seen you or spoken to you for twenty years!" whistler turned slowly to j. and said, "joseph, do you know this person?" and the person fled. "h'm," said whistler, "hasn't spoken to me for twenty years--guess it will be another twenty before he dares again." we were abroad a great part of the summer of , and when we got back his weakness had returned with the cold and the damp and the fog. he had realised the uselessness of keeping up his apartment and studio in paris, the state of his health making it impossible for him to live in the one or to climb to the other, and business in connection with closing them took him to paris in october. towards the beginning of the month he was ill in bed at garlant's hotel, and towards the end at mr. heinemann's in norfolk street. when well enough to go out he was afraid to come to us in the evening: "buckingham street at night, you know, a dangerous, if fascinating place!" he would not dine where he could not sleep, he said, "_j'y dîne, j'y dort_," and in our small flat he knew there was no corner for him. early in november he moved to tallant's hotel, north audley street, and there he was very ill and more alarmed than ever. "this time i am very much bowled over, unable to think," he told e. when she went to see him, and, though he laughed, he was depressed by his landlady's recommendation of his room as the one where lord ---- died. "i tried to make her understand," he said, "that what i wanted was a room to live in." he looked the worse because in illness, as in health, he had the faculty of inventing extraordinary costumes. e. remembers him there, after he was able to get up, in black trousers, a white silk night-shirt flowing loose, and a short black coat. illness made whistler more of a wanderer, and for months he was denied the rest he knew he needed. from tallant's, in november, he went to mrs. birnie philip's in tite street, chelsea. here he never asked his friends, and we saw less of him. the first week in december he left london for bath, where he took rooms in one of the big crescents, and where he thought he could work. there were shops in which to hunt for "old silver and things," in a vague way people seemed to know him, and, on the whole, bath pleased him. he lost few excuses, however, for coming to london, and was in town almost all of january. on some days he was surprisingly well. he went to the old masters exhibition at the royal academy especially to see the kingston lacy _las meniñas_, and he told us the same day: "it is full of things only velasquez could have done--the heads a little weak perhaps--but so much, or everything, that no one else could have painted like that. and up in a strange place they call the diploma gallery i saw the spanish phillip's copy of las meniñas, full of atmosphere really, and dim understanding." ochtervelt's _lady standing at a spinet_ interested him, suggesting a favourite theme: "the dutchmen knew how to paint--they had respect for the surface of a picture; the modern painter has no respect for anything but his own cleverness, and he is sometimes so clever that his work is like that of a bad boy, and i'm not sure that he ought not to be taken out and whipped for it. cleverness!--well, cleverness has nothing to do with art; there can be the same sort of cleverness in painting as that of the popular officer who cuts an orange into fancy shapes after dinner." he was severe on contemporary artists who forgot the standard of the louvre, the only standard he recognised. of conder he said, "_il est trop joli pour être beau!_" and of a follower of rodin, "he makes a landscape out of a man." when he saw watts' _hope_ his comment was, "the hope that maketh the heart sick." watts he always called "_ce faux titien_." "except in england, would anything short of perfection in art be praised?" he said. "why approve the tolerable picture any more than the tolerable egg?" a sitter dissatisfied with his portrait told whistler it was not good. "do you call it a good piece of art?" he asked. "well," said whistler, "do you call yourself a good piece of nature?" one day a man rushed into a hat store and, as whistler was hatless, being fitted, bellowed, "i say, this hat don't fit." "your coat don't, either," whistler answered. one or two evenings he risked the night air to come to us and his talk was as gay and brilliant--reminiscent, critical, "wicked," as the mood took him, and at times serious. we remember his earnestness when he recalled the _séances_ and spiritual manifestations at rossetti's, in which he believed. he could not understand the people who pretended to doubt the existence of another world and the hereafter. his faith was strong, though vague when there was question of analysing it. probably he never tried to reduce it to dogma and doctrine, and, in that sense, he was "the amateur" he described himself in jest. if his inclination turned to any special creed it was to catholicism. "the beauty of ritual is with the catholics," he said. but his work left him no time to study these problems, and his belief perhaps was stimulated by the mystery in which it was lost. he would have been more amused and interested than anybody could he have foreseen the messages to be received from him by an artist, and the book to be written by him for an author, and the portrait to be made by him for a medium, after his death. on other days london apparently was tiring him and he dozed off and on through his visits. he expended much energy in sending some old pieces of silver to the doctor at marseilles and the curator at ajaccio, who had been kind to him. he was full of these little courtesies and never forgot kindness, just as he never failed to show it to those who appealed to him, whether it was to find a publisher for an unsuccessful illustrator, or a gallery for an unsuccessful painter, or even, as we know happened once, to support a morphomaniac for months. a shorter visit to town was made solely to attend a meeting of the international society because his presence was particularly desired. this was one of the occasions that proved the sincerity and activity of his devotion to the society and its affairs. it is a satisfaction that this devotion was appreciated and that the loyalty of the council was not shaken during his lifetime. in march whistler came back to tite street, but, as we have said, he asked no one while he stayed with "the ladies," his name for his mother- and sisters-in-law. there was one almost clandestine meeting with professor sauter, whistler's desire to hear about the boers, to whom he "never referred, of course, in the presence of the ladies," becoming too strong to be endured, and he could rely upon sauter for sympathy and the latest news. it was an interval of mystery in the studio. no one was invited, few were admitted, nothing was heard of the work being done. whistler liked to keep up an effect of mystery in his movements, but we have never known him to carry it so far as during the first month or so after his return from bath. at last j. was summoned. whistler would not let him come further than the ante-room, talking to him through the open door or the thin partition, but presently, probably forgetting, called him into the studio and went on painting, and he forgot the mystery. whistler felt he had little strength and devoted that little to his work. but, even in ill-health, he could not live without people about him, and he soon fell back into his old ways. miss birnie philip was now almost always in the studio with him. in april he showed us the portrait of mr. richard a. canfield, whose acquaintance he made at this time, unfortunately, for he introduced mr. canfield to "the ladies," and the introduction resulted in the loss of one of his friends. miss birnie philip was sitting to him, he was working on the portrait of miss kinsella, the _venus_, and the little heads, and he was adding to the series of pastels. he was bothered about the show of his prints and pastels which m. bénédite wished to make at the luxembourg, and he was anxious to hand over the details to j., who could not see to them as he was away constantly this year. whistler looked forward to the show because of the official character it would have, though after recent purchases of pictures for the luxembourg he said, "you know, really, i told bénédite, if this goes on i am afraid i must take my 'mummy' from his hotel." he was worried also about a show at the caxton club in chicago, where it was proposed to reproduce his etchings without his permission. but when the club found he objected the matter dropped. to avoid further wandering, for which he was no longer equal, he took a house in chelsea, where he had lived almost thirty years: he had been absent hardly more than ten. mrs. and miss birnie philip went to live with him. the house, not many doors west of old chelsea church, was no. cheyne walk, built by mr. c. r. ashbee, and it stood on the site of a fish-shop of which whistler had made a lithograph. there was a spacious studio at the back in which, in his words, he returned to his "old scheme of grey." its drawbacks were that it was on a lower level than the street, reached by a descent of two or three steps from the entrance hall, and that the rest of the house was sacrificed to it. two flights of stairs led up to the drawing-room where, in glass cases running round the room, he placed his blue-and-white. the dining-room was on this floor, but another flight of stairs had to be climbed to get to the bedrooms in the garrets. almost all the windows opening upon the river were placed so high, and filled with such small panes, that little could be seen from them of the beauty of the thames and its banks so dear to whistler. the street door was of beaten copper and the house was full of decorative touches, which, he said, "make me wonder what i am doing here anyhow--the whole, you know, a successful example of the disastrous effect of art upon the british middle classes." into this house he moved in april. he reserved his energy for his work and went out scarcely at all. he did not dare risk the dinner given in may by london artists to rodin, who, however, breakfasted with him a day or two after. we mention a detail that shows how sensitive whistler was on certain subjects. m. lantéri and mr. tweed came with rodin, and this is whistler's account to us later on the same day: "it was all very charming. rodin distinguished in every way--the breakfast very elegant--but--well, you know, you will understand. before they came, naturally, i put my work out of sight, canvases up against the wall with their backs turned. and you know, never once, not even after breakfast, did rodin ask to see anything, not that i wanted to show anything to rodin, i needn't tell you--but in a man so distinguished it seemed a want of--well, of what west point would have demanded under the circumstances." no doubt rodin thought, from the careful manner in which work was put out of sight, that he was not expected to refer to it. his opinion of whistler we know, for he wrote it to us: "_whistler était un peintre dont le dessin avait beaucoup de profondeurs, et celles-ci furent préparées par de bonnes études, car il a dû étudier assidument._ "_il sentait la forme, non seulement comme le font les bons peintres mais de la manière des bons sculpteurs. il avait un sentiment extrêmement fin, qui a fait croire à quelques-uns que sa base n'était pas forte, mais elle était, au contraire, et forte et sûre._ "_il comprenait admirablement l'atmosphère, et un de ses tableaux qui m'a le plus vivement impressionné, 'la tamise (barrage) à chelsea,' est merveilleux au point de vue de la profondeur de l'espace. le paysage en somme n'a rien; il n'y a que cette grande étendue d'atmosphère, rendue avec un art consommé._ "_l'oeuvre de whistler ne perdra jamais par le temps; elle gagnera; car une de ses forces est l'énergie, une autre la délicatesse; mais la principale est l'étude du dessin._"[ ] his visits to us were on sundays, when he came for noonday breakfast, alone or with miss birnie philip. if possible, we had people he liked or was interested in to meet him. one sunday the late mrs. sarah whitman, of boston, and miss tuckerman were of the party, and whistler, though he arrived tired and listless, recovered his animation before breakfast was over, and, for the new audience, described again the house in which he was so astonished to find himself, and again summed up the boer campaign. once he braved the night and dined, june --the last time he dined at our table--and was so wonderful we forgot how ill he was. we asked mr. and mrs. harrison morris and professor sauter, and mr. morris brought a message from general wheeler, then in london and delighted to have news of whistler, whom he remembered so well in the class above him at west point. to be remembered by a distinguished west point man was charming, but whistler would not hear of general wheeler being in the class below him; it was the class above; for whistler did not choose to be older than anybody. we have spoken of his prejudices. he gave that evening an instance of one of the strongest. something was said of the negro; he refused to see "any good in the nigger, he did not like the nigger," and that was the end of it. but mr. morris argued that it depended on the nigger; some he would be glad to invite to his house and to dinner. "well, you know," said whistler, "i should say that depends not on the nigger, but on the season of the year!" this reminds us of his argument another evening with mrs. t. fisher unwin. but the negro had never had a chance, mrs. unwin protested. "never had a chance!" said whistler, "why, there, you know, there they all were starting out equal--the white man, the yellow man, the brown man, the red man, the black man--what better chance could the black man have? if he got left, well, it's because he couldn't keep up in the race." [illustration: the chelsea girl (_see page _)] [illustration: portrait of e. g. kennedy in the metropolitan museum, new york (_see page _)] on these last visits there was another subject he could not keep long out of his thoughts and his talk. he had not been many days in his new house before building was begun by mr. ashbee on a vacant lot next door. "it is knock, knock, knock all day," whistler said, and his resentment was unbounded. in his nervous state the perpetual irritation, the feeling that advantage had been taken of him and that he had not been informed of the nuisance beforehand, put him into a rage. mr. ashbee has written us that whistler knew a building was to be put up. those who took the house may have known, but whistler told us he did not until the work began. excitement, above all, the doctor said, must be avoided as it was bad for his heart. there was no mistaking the effect of this endless annoyance. he hoped for legal redress, and he referred the matter to mr. webb. but the knocking continued. on june e. dined with him at cheyne walk, the one other guest mr. freer, recently arrived from detroit, and it seemed to her as if whistler was fast losing the good done by the winter's rest and quiet. mrs. and miss birnie philip were uneasy, and it came as no surprise to hear a few days later that he had left the house in search of repose and distraction in holland, with mr. freer as his companion. it was too late. at the hague, where he stayed in the hôtel des indes, he was dangerously ill, at death's door. mr. freer remained as long as he could, and miss birnie philip and mrs. whibley hurried to take care of him. the period was critical. there was no suggestion of it in the first public sign he gave of convalescence. a stupid reporter telegraphed from the hague that the trouble with whistler "was old age, and it would take him a long time to get over it." the _morning post_ published an article that whistler thought had been prepared in anticipation of death, which, sparing him for the time, spared also the old wit. he wrote to beg that the "ready wreath and quick biography might be put back into their pigeon-hole for later use"; in reference to the writer's description of him he apologised for "continuing to wear my own hair and eyebrows after distinguished _confrères_ and eminent persons have long ceased the habit"; and those who read the letter could not imagine that, a few days previously, his letter-writing seemed at an end. it contained his last word about swinburne, and in it the bitterness with which he wrote _et tu, brute!_ in _the gentle art_ had disappeared. the _morning post_ stated that swinburne's verses inspired _the little white girl_. whistler explained that the lines "were only written in my studio after the picture was painted. and the writing of them was a rare and graceful tribute from the poet to the painter--a noble recognition of work by the production of a nobler one." after mr. freer had gone, mr. heinemann, at whistler's urgent appeal, joined him in the hague, a fortunate circumstance, as two charming spinster cousins, the misses norman, were able to find for the patient comforts out of reach of a stranger. they took rooms for him near the hôtel des indes, suggested a nurse, prepared dishes for him, and interested the hague artists in his presence. mesdag, israels, and van 's gravesande were attentive. afterwards, van 's gravesande wrote: "_je l'ai beaucoup aimé. whistler, malgré tout son quarrelling avec tout le monde, c'était un 'très bon garçon' tout à fait charmant entre camarades. j'ai passé quelques jours avec lui, il y déjà une vingtaine d'années, à dordrecht nous y avons fait des croquis, des promenades sur l'eau, etc. etc. j'en garde toujours un excellent souvenir. on ne peut pas s'imaginer un compagnon plus gentil que lui, enjoué, aimable, sans aucune prétention, enthousiaste, et avec cela travailleur comme pas un._" whistler enjoyed the society of his doctor--"the court doctor, quite the most distinguished in holland." mr. clifford addams came for a while from dieppe, and in september e. went to holland. whistler was so much better that he made the short journey from the hague to amsterdam, where she was staying, to ask her to go with him to the rijks museum and look at the _effie deans_, which he had not seen in the gallery, and the rembrandts. it is not easy for her to forgive the chance that took her away from the hotel before the telegram announcing his visit was delivered. she heard of him afterwards at müller's book-shop, where he had been in search of old paper, for which they said his demand in amsterdam had been so great and constant that dealers placed a fabulous price upon it. e. the next day went to the hague, where she found him in rooms that in the last hours of packing looked bare and comfortless, for he had decided to start at once for london. he had promised to lunch with his doctor, so that she saw only enough of him to realise how frail and depressed and irritable illness had left him. his sisters-in-law told her that the doctor said he could keep well only by the greatest care and constant watchfulness, that he must not be excited, that he must not walk up many stairs. professor sauter was more fortunate than e., and we have his notes of whistler at the hague when, with the first cheerful days of his recovery, his interest in life seemed to revive: "realising the difficulty of conveying my vivid impressions, i have hesitated for so long to give you an account of our experiences with whistler during the last days of august and the beginning of september , in holland, soon after the severe illness which he suffered. "a letter which i received in the beginning of august was sufficient proof that he was convalescent, and that he had regained his interest in many affairs, and that he was enjoying the hague and the hôtel des indes, but also that he was longing for the society of friends from london. towards the end of august our journey to belgium and holland brought us to the hague, and of course our first visit was to him. "it was indeed a pleasure to hear his gay voice, after he had received our card, calling down from the top of the stairs,'are you there? just wait a bit--i will be down in a moment.' in a few minutes his thin, delicately dressed figure appeared, in his face delight, gay as a schoolboy released from school and determined to have an outing. "he had then removed to apartments a few doors from the hotel, but to the latter he invited us to lunch. with intense appreciation whistler spoke of the attention and consideration shown to him by the hotel people during his illness. all was sun, like the beautiful sunny warm august day, and as if to give proof of his statements about the cooking, management, and everything in the hotel, he ordered lunch with great care. "he was full of gaiety, and his amusement over the obituary and his own reply to it was convincing enough that neither his spirit nor his memory had suffered. "after lunch, whistler insisted on taking us for a drive to show us the 'charming surroundings' of the hague and the bosch. we drove also to scheveningen. he was full of admiration and love for the hague. "on the way to scheveningen the real state of his health became alarmingly evident. he looked very ill and fell asleep in the carriage, but to my suggestion to drive home and have a rest he would not listen. "it was a glorious afternoon, and the calm sea with the little white breakers, the sand with hundreds of figures moving on it, and children playing in gay dresses, made a wonderful picture to enjoy in his company. "about p.m. we brought him to his rooms after arranging to visit the mauritshuis together next day. "about . next morning we met in the gallery, and wandered from room to room. he was all alive and bright again, and there he showed particular interest in and affection for rembrandt's _father_, and spoke of it as a fine example of the mental development of the artist, which, he said, should be continuous from work to work up to the end. "i mentioned that we were going to the vieux doelen to lunch to meet general de wet; his interest in this announcement was intense, and i had to promise to tell him all about it in the afternoon. "on coming to the two portraits by franz hals he examined the work with undisguised delight, but the full disclosure of feeling towards the master of haarlem was reserved to us for the next day. "on my saying, 'we are going to haarlem to-morrow,' whistler promptly replied, 'oh, i might come along with you.' "in his delicate state of health this reply was startling indeed, and realising the responsibility of allowing him to undertake even the small journey away from his rooms and doctor, i replied, 'but we are leaving by an early train.' 'oh, then i might follow later on,' he finished. "thus we parted, he to his rooms, we to the vieux doelen. "about p.m. i went round to give him an account of my meeting with de wet, which aroused the greatest curiosity, and many questions i had to face. "when i asked him whether he had seen the generals, he said, 'you see, i just drove round and left my cards on their excellencies.' "but still the journey of haarlem occupied his mind, and before i left him it came out: 'well, you are going to haarlem early to-morrow? perhaps i will see you there.' "i certainly would never have dreamt for a moment that he would carry out what i took for passing fancy, and intense was my astonishment when next day about noon at the haarlem gallery i saw whistler in the doorway, smilingly looking towards me, saying, 'ah, i just wanted to see what you are doing.' "from this moment until we took the train at the haarlem station back to the hague a nature revealed itself in its force and subtlety, its worship for the real and its humility before the great, combining the experience of age with the enthusiasm of youth. "hardly could i get whistler away for a small lunch. "we wandered along the line from the early _st. george's shooting guild_ of down to the old women of . "certainly no collection would give stronger support to whistler's theory that a master grows in his art, from picture to picture, till the end, than that at haarlem. "we went through the life with hals the people portrayed on the canvases, his relations with, and attitude towards, his sitters; he entered in his mind into the studio to examine the canvas before the picture was started and the sitters arrived, how hals placed the men in the canvas in the positions appropriate to their ranks, how he divined the character, from the responsible colonel down to the youthful dandy lieutenant, and how he revelled in the colours of their garments! "as time went on whistler's enthusiasm increased, and even the distance between the railing and the picture was too great for this intimate discourse. all of a sudden, he crept under the railing close up to the picture, but lo! this pleasure could not last for long. "the attendant arrived and gave him in unmistakable words to understand that this was not the place from which to view the pictures. "and whistler crawled obediently back from his position, but not discouraged, saying, 'wait--we will stay after they are gone,' pointing to the other visitors. "matters were soon arranged with the courteous little chief attendant down in the hall, who, pointing to the signature in the visitors' book, asked, '_is dat de groote schilder?_' (is that the great painter?) and on my confirming it, pressed his hands together, bent a little on one side, opened his eyes and mouth wide, and exclaimed under his breath, 'ach!' he was a rare little man. "we were soon free from fellow visitors and watchful attendants, and no more restrictions were in the way for whistler's outburst of enthusiasm. "we were indeed alone with franz hals. "now nothing could keep him away from the canvases; particularly the groups of old men and women got their full share of appreciation. "he went under the railing again, turning round towards me, saying, 'now, _do_ get me a chair.' and after it was pushed under the railing, he went on, '_and now, do_ help me on the top of it.' from that moment there was no holding him back. he went absolutely into raptures over the old women, admiring everything; his exclamation of joy came out now at the top of his voice, now in the most tender, almost caressing whisper: 'look at it--just look; look at the beautiful colour--the flesh--look at the white--that black--look how those ribbons are put in. oh, what a swell he was--can you see it all?--and the character--how he realised it.' moving with his hand so near the picture as if he wanted to caress it in every detail, he screamed with joy: 'oh, i must touch it--just for the fun of it,' and he moved tenderly with his fingers over the face of one of the old women. "there was the real whistler--the man, the artist, the painter--there was no 'why drag in velasquez?' spirit--but the spirit of a youth, full of ardour, full of plans, on the threshold of his work, oblivious of the achievements of a lifetime. "he went on to analyse the picture in its detail. "'you see, _she_ is a grand person'--pointing to the centre figure--'she wears a fine collar, and look at her two little black bows--she is the treasurer--she is the secretary--she keeps the records'--pointing at each in turn with his finger. "with a fierce look in his eye, as though he would repulse an attack on hals, and in contemptuous tone, he burst out, 'they say he was a drunkard, a coarse fellow; don't you believe it--they are the coarse fellows. just imagine a drunkard doing these beautiful things!' "'just look how tenderly this mouth is put in--you must see the portrait of himself and his wife at the rijks museum. he was a swagger fellow. he was a cavalier--see the fine clothes he wears. that is a fine portrait, and his lady--she is charming, she is lovely.' in time, however, the excitement proved too much for him in his weak state, and it was high time to take him away into the fresh air. he appeared exhausted, and i feared a collapse after such emotions. "during my absence in looking for a carriage he went on talking to mrs. sauter. 'this is what i would like to do, of course, you know, in my own way'--meaning the continual progress of his work to the last. 'oh, i would have done anything for my art.' it was a great relief to have him safely seated in the carriage with us. "once there he soon regained his spirits, and, as we had expected to meet mrs. pennell at the gallery, but looked in vain for her, we now drove from hotel to hotel in search of her, and on this expedition a truly whistlerian incident happened. stopping before one of the hotels, he requested to see the proprietor, who appeared immediately at the side of the carriage, a tall, solemn-looking gentleman, with a long reddish beard, bowing courteously, but the gentleman could give no information about mrs. pennell's arrival at his hotel. after minute inquiries about the place, whistler turned to him, asking, '_monsieur_, what hotel would you recommend in haarlem if you would recommend any?' to which he promptly and seriously replied, '_monsieur_, if i would recommend an hotel in haarlem i would recommend my own.' 'thank you, _monsieur_, thank you,' responded whistler, touching his hat, bowing slightly. and we drove on soon, to arrive at the hotel where we intended to take tea, and rest. "soon we were happily settled on our return journey, in a special compartment, which he was, in his chivalrous consideration towards ladies, most anxious to reserve, as he put it, 'to make mrs. sauter comfortable--she is tired.' "with it, a day full of emotions, amusement, and anxieties came to an end--and, as it proved to whistler, the last pilgrimage to franz hals. "it needed no persuasion to keep whistler at home after so fatiguing a day. "but on our return to the hotel late the next afternoon we were told that he had called three times, and finally left a note asking us to come round in the morning and also to bring him news of mrs. pennell. "monday was a fête day for holland--the queen's birthday, and the town gay with flags and orange streamers and happy holiday crowds. "i went round early to keep him company and bring him the news he wished for. "we sat at his window overlooking merry-go-rounds, little toy and sweet stalls, and throngs of little children in their loyal smart frocks. "'what a pretty sight! if i only had my water-colours here i could do a nice little picture,' he remarked. "dr. bisschop had kindly arranged to take us and mr. bruckmann to the gallery of mesdag, and whistler accepted an invitation to join us. "there the canalettos were of chief interest to him. lunch at a _café_, another visit to the mauritshuis, and tea at his rooms brought our stay to an end." [footnote : see appendix at end of volume.] chapter xlvii: the end. the years nineteen hundred and two and nineteen hundred and three. whistler came back to no. cheyne walk, to the noise of building, to the bedroom at the top of the house--to the conditions against which the doctor's warning was emphatic. when e. saw him about the middle of september on her return--j. was still away--he had been again ill and was confined to his room. on her next visit, within a few days, he was in bed, but he had moved downstairs to a small room adjoining the studio, intended, no doubt, for a model's dressing-room. in one way it was an improvement, for there were no stairs and his studio was close at hand whenever he had strength for work, but the only window looked upon the street, and the clatter of children and traffic was added to the builders' knocking. except in this house, we never saw him after his return from the hague. at times, in the winter and spring, he was able to go out in a carriage, but the three flights of stairs to our flat rose between him and us, an insurmountable barrier. therefore there were seldom the old long intimate talks, for he was not often alone in the studio. miss birnie philip was usually with him, sometimes sitting apart with her knitting, and only rarely drawn into the conversation. mrs. whibley was frequently there, and before "the ladies" there were reservations, for with many things they were not to be "troubled." this involved a restraint in himself and a sensation of oppression in his visitors. then there was a coming and going of models, visits from his doctors, his solicitor, his barber, and many other people who helped to distract him. his friends were devoted, encouraged by him and knowing he welcomed anyone from the world without; mr. luke ionides, oldest of all, mrs. whistler, mr. walton, who lived next door, professor sauter, sir john lavery, mr. and mrs. addams, his apprentices, arthur studd, his near neighbour, drifted in and out almost daily. he was bored when alone and unable to work, though he had of recent years developed an extraordinary passion for reading. but, as a matter of fact, he was hardly ever lonely, for he was surrounded as he liked in his studio, and yet he felt his condition and grew restless, so that his wish to rejoin mr. heinemann in "housekeeping" seemed natural. whistler had intervals when his energy returned, and he worked and hoped. we knew on seeing him when he was not so well, for his costume of invalid remained original. he clung to a fur-lined overcoat worn into shabbiness. in his younger years he had objected to a dressing-gown as an unmanly concession; apparently he had not outgrown the objection, and on his bad days this shabby worn-out overcoat was its substitute. nor did the studio seem the most comfortable place for a man so ill as he was. it was bare, with little furniture, as his studios always were, and he had not used it enough to give it the air of a workshop. the whole house showed that illness was reigning there. the hall had a more unfinished, more unsettled look than the entrance at the rue du bac, and it was sometimes strewn with the trays and odds and ends of the sickroom. papers and books lay on the floor of the drawing-room, in contrast to the blue-and-white in the cases. a litter of things at times covered the sideboard in the dining-room. everywhere you felt the cheerlessness of a house which is not lived in. when we saw whistler in his big, shabby overcoat shuffling about the huge studio, he struck us as so old, so feeble and fragile that we could imagine no sadder or more tragic figure. it was the more tragic because he had always been such a dandy, a word he would have been the first to use in reference to himself. we recall his horror once when he heard a story that represented him as untidy and slovenly. "i!" he said, "i, when if i had only an old rag to cover me i would wear it with such neatness and propriety and the utmost distinction!" but no one would have suspected the dandy in this forlorn little old man, wrapped in a worn overcoat, hardly able to walk. on his bad days there was not much walking about, and he lay stretched on an easy chair, talking little, barely listening, and dozing. his nights were often sleepless--he had lost the habit of sleep, he told us, and as the day went on he became so drowsy that it seemed as if nothing could rouse him from what was more like death than sleep. sometimes, sitting by the table where tea was served, he would drop his forehead on the edge of the table, fall asleep, and remain motionless for an hour and more. a pretty little cat, brown and gold and white, that lived in the studio, was often curled up on his lap, sleeping too. his devotion to her was something to remember, and we have seen him get up, when probably he would not have stirred for any human being, just to empty the stale milk from her saucer and fill it up with fresh. a message was sent to e., one day, to announce the birth of her first kittens, that also made the studio their home and became a source of mild distraction to the invalid. on his good days he liked to play dominoes after tea and he cheated with his accustomed tricks. he often kept j. for a game and sometimes for dinner with himself and miss birnie philip in the studio, the climb to the dining-room out of the question. there were times when he would say he never could get back to work again, but others when he managed to work with not only the old vigour, but the old mastery. he had an irish model, miss dorothy seton, whose red hair was remarkably beautiful and whose face whistler thought as remarkable, for it reminded him of hogarth's _shrimp girl_. one afternoon j. found him painting her, her red hair hanging over her shoulders and an apple in her hand, the picture to which the title _daughter of eve_ was eventually given. he was walking up and down the studio in delight, looking almost strong, and he seized j. by the arm in the old fashion and walked him up and down too. "well, joseph, how long do you think it took me to paint that, now?" and not for weeks had he shown such animation as when he added, "it was done in a couple of hours this very morning." so far as we know, it was the last important picture he painted, and it was, as j. then saw it, the finest thing of his latest period. he must have painted on it again, for at the paris memorial exhibition the bloom of its beauty had faded. now and then he worked on a portrait of miss birnie philip, and he was anxious to continue the portrait, started a year or so before, of mrs. heinemann, which needed only a few more sittings, but, to the world's loss, these could not be arranged. he saw to cleaning the _rosa corder_, which mr. canfield, who was back in london and buying pictures, drawings, and prints in the studio, bought this winter for two thousand pounds from mr. graham robertson. the story of this purchase was the only amusing thing we ever heard mr. canfield say: "offered the young fellow a thousand pounds--wouldn't hear of it. offered him two--jumped at it. why, the darned fool, if he had held on he could have had five!" whistler telegraphed for us to come and look at _rosa corder_ for the last time in england, "to make your _adieux_ to her before her departure for america." when e.--j. again away--arrived at the studio, he was better than since his return from the hague. he had slept eight hours and a half the night before, and he rejoiced in not being sleepy. he wiped the canvas here and there tenderly with a silk handkerchief and kept turning round to ask triumphantly, "isn't she beautiful?" mr. canfield was sitting again for his portrait, and was always welcome, not merely as a sitter, but as a friend. he seemed to have hypnotised whistler, whom we heard say that canfield was the only man who had never made a mistake in the studio. we could not help regretting this because of canfield's notorious reputation in new york, and the unpleasant things said of whistler's tolerance of the man. whistler had been warned, but had sacrificed a friendship of years in his indignation at "a breath of scandal" against anyone whom he had introduced to "the ladies." in the early part of we received numerous letters and telegrams from correspondents of american papers in london re-echoing the question in the new york dailies, "is whistler painting gambler canfield?" the fact that canfield was much desired at home made the new york papers of the yellowest sort, like the british respectable ones, eager for details, and all sorts and conditions of male and female reporters haunted our stairs. they were a terrible nuisance, and we remember in particular the youth who came with the usual question, "is whistler painting the gambler?" and who, on j.'s reply that he had better go and ask the painter, said "but they tell me whistler would either horsewhip me or kick me out of the house. what do you think?" j.'s answer was that he had better go and see. whistler's condition rendered any remark which might excite him dangerous, and everybody hesitated to suggest that canfield was a very public character to include in one's private circle. canfield's visits did not cease, and the fact that reconciled us to his presence was that it resulted in one of whistler's masterpieces. the portrait, _his reverence_, ranked then with _the master smith of lyme regis_. but this was our estimate when we saw the picture in whistler's studio. later it was simply ruined, for he worked on it too. whistler often saw dealers who came for his prints. on two memorable afternoons mr. david kennedy brought the large macgeorge collection of whistler's etchings, which he had purchased in glasgow, for whistler to look over, and, in some cases, we believe, to sign them. he went through as many as he could, commenting on their state and their preservation. there were some he had not seen for years, and mr. ionides, who was present on one of the afternoons, seemed to know more about them than whistler. he soon tired, and was not to be revived by the bottle of american cocktails which mr. kennedy, to his complete approval, also brought. several times we found him going through the accumulation of "charming things" from the studio in the rue notre-dame-des-champs. many he did not think so charming were, we understand, destroyed by him. so miss birnie philip maintains, and mr. lavery told us that he was calling at cheyne walk one afternoon when whistler said he had been burning things. we are unable to state if a reliable list was made of what was destroyed and what was kept. some days whistler read us parts of his earlier correspondence--the "wonderful letters" to the fine art society during the venetian period. and once, tired though he was, he insisted on reading to e. just once more his letter to a dealer, who had threatened him with a writ and whom he warned of the appearance he would make, "with one hand presenting a sir joshua to the nation, with the other serving a writ on whistler. well indeed is it that the right hand knows not always what the left hand doeth." in november he sent the _little cardinal_, which had been at the _salon_ the previous summer, to the portrait painters' exhibition. several critics spoke of it as a work already seen, giving the impression, he thought, that it dated back many years. he wrote to the _standard_ to contradict this impression, wedmore again having blundered. we called to see him on the afternoon the letter was written, and he was in great glee. he said: "the letter is one of my best. i described wedmore as podsnap--an inspiration, isn't it? with the discovery of podsnap in art criticism i almost feel the thump of newton's apple on my head, and this i have said. heinemann promises to take it himself to the editor of the _standard_, and really the whole thing has such a flavour of intrigue that i do believe it has made me well again!" he planned to publish the criticism, his letter, the answers, and his final comments in a brown-covered pamphlet, a scheme begun but, owing to his feeble health, never carried out. to an exhibition of old silver at the fine art society's he lent many of his finest pieces and insisted upon their being shown together in a case apart, and arranged according to his instructions. his silver, like everything belonging to him, was a proof of his exquisite taste and faultless judgment. it was chosen, not for historic interest, nor for rarity, but for elegance of form and simplicity of ornament. the other collections in the exhibition were set out on red velvet; his, with which he sent some of his blue-and-white china, was placed on his simple white table linen marked with the butterfly. after we had been to the exhibition, he asked us for every detail: "how did the white, the beautiful napkins look? didn't the slight hint of blue in the japanese stand and the few perfect plates tell? didn't the other cases seem vulgar in comparison? and didn't the simplicity of my silver, evidently for use and cared for, make the rest look like museum specimens?" [illustration: gallery at the london memorial exhibition] [illustration: gallery at the boston memorial exhibition] [illustration: whistler's grave in chiswick cemetery adjoining chiswick churchyard] [illustration: monument in whistler's memory at the united states military academy at west point] he examined the catalogue, found fault with it because the mcneill, of which he was so proud, was misspelt, and he could not understand why there were comparatively fewer entries and shorter descriptions of his case than of others where history supplied an elaborate text. notwithstanding his state, he forgot none of the old courtesies. when, in november, sir james guthrie was elected to the presidency of the royal scottish academy, he telegraphed his congratulations, and was repaid by his pleasure when guthrie, still a member of the council of the international, telegraphed back, "warmest thanks, my president." on new year's day ( ) we received the card of good wishes it was his custom to send to his friends--a visiting-card with greetings written by himself and signed with the butterfly. though he could not go to the meetings of the international, the business done at each had to be immediately reported, and when the annual dinner was given he considered every detail, even to the point of revising the _menu_ and sending special directions for the salad. he had great pleasure in the degree of ll.d. conferred upon him by glasgow university, at the suggestion of sir james guthrie and professor walter raleigh. dr. d. s. maccoll, at their request, we believe, and after consulting j., approached him first to make sure that the honour would be accepted. there was a gleam of the old "wickedness" when dr. maccoll called. whistler appointed a sunday, asking him to lunch, but when he arrived at the appointed hour he was sent upstairs to the unused drawing-room and supplied with _reynolds'_, a radical sheet adored by whistler because of its wholesale abuse of the "islander." and whistler said: "when at last he was summoned to the studio, i told him it was the paper that of course he always wanted to read at the club, but was ashamed to be seen with! and all through lunch i had nothing to say of art--i talked of nothing except west point." however, when maccoll had a chance to explain why he came, whistler expressed his pleasure in receiving the degree. we recall his pains with his letter of acknowledgment after the official announcement came in march, his concern for the correct word and the well-turned phrase, his anxiety that there should be no mistake in the principal's title and honorary initials. it illustrates his care for detail if we add that, before writing the address, he sent a note, submitting it, next door, to mr. and mrs. walton, who were scotch, he said, and would know. another pleasure came from the deference shown him by the art department of the universal exposition of at st. louis. early in professor halsey c. ives, chief of the art department, was in london, and went with j. to call on whistler and to ask him to serve as chairman of the committee, of which sargent, abbey, and j. were members, for the selection of work by american artists in england. the invitation was a formal recognition of whistler's position, and he accepted, though he did not live to occupy the post. these months were not without worries. news of books about him, in preparation or recently published, annoyed him, as he had hoped to prevent such enterprises by giving us his authority for the work to which his illness was a serious interruption. we called one afternoon when he was worrying himself into a fever over the latest attempt of which he had heard, and was unable to think or talk of anything except the insolence of people who undertook to write about him and prepare a biography without consulting him and his wishes. as he talked he complained of pains in his back, and his restlessness was distressing to see. another afternoon, he was, on the contrary, chuckling over mr. elbert hubbard's _whistler_ in the _little journeys_ series. he read us passages: "really with this book i can be amused--i have to laugh. i don't know how many people have taken my name in print, and, you know, usually i am furious. but the intimate tone of this is something quite new. what would my dear mummy--don't you know, as you see her with her folded hands at the luxembourg--have said to this story of my father's courtship? and our stay in russia--our arrival in london--why, the account of my mother and me coming to chelsea and finding lodgings makes you almost see us--wanderers--bundles at the end of long sticks over our shoulders--arriving footsore and weary at the hour of sunset. amazing!--it would be worth while, you know, to describe, not the book, but the effect on me reading it." he was looking desperately ill the day he told us that montesquiou had sold his portrait, and he was not consoled by the fact that mr. canfield was the purchaser, so that it would remain, for the present at least, in america. he was the more hurt because montesquiou was a friend and, "as you know, the descendant of a long distinguished line of french noblemen." there were unnecessary worries. mr. freer sent some of whistler's pictures to the winter exhibition at the pennsylvania academy of fine arts in philadelphia. the jury awarded him the academy's gold medal of honour, and, to assure to the pictures the place of greatest distinction where they would look best, hung them before anything was installed, building up a screen for them in the most important room, and beginning the numbers in the catalogue with them. for some reason mr. freer did not approve of the hanging and seems to have misunderstood the motives for it. the secretary, mr. harrison morris, could make no change. as the incident was reported to whistler he fancied a slight in the arrangement which was meant to do him honour. a similar incident occurred in the spring exhibition of the society of american artists in new york, where, also, mr. freer objected to the place chosen for whistler's work. whistler, as a result, was disturbed by the idea that american artists were treating him with indifference or contempt, though this was at the time when their acceptance of him as master was complete and their eagerness to proclaim it great. whistler went so far as to say that he never wished work of his to hang again in the pennsylvania academy, and in regard to the new york exhibition he wrote protesting to the new york papers. the agitation and excitement did him no good, and in his weakness such small worries were magnified into grave troubles. it is the more to be regretted because, on all sides, in america he was honoured. the fault was mr. freer's inability to understand artistic matters. mr. will h. low and other artists tried as well as they could to explain things to whistler, but mr. freer succeeded in prejudicing him to the day of his death against the pennsylvania academy, which had done more than any other american art institution to show its appreciation. americans may have been slow in acknowledging him officially, but that was because they knew little of his work. they began to make amends long before his death, and their eagerness to possess his work may be contrasted to the indifference in england or in germany, where it is said a whistler was bought for berlin by dr. bode for two thousand pounds, but was returned to the dealers by the emperor's command. the _sarasate_ had been purchased for the carnegie institute in pittsburgh in november , the first picture, mr. beattie, the director, tells us, bought for the gallery, and we believe the first whistler bought for any american gallery. it is prized as one of the most important works in the collection, and, though it cost the institute five thousand dollars, was insured for thirty thousand when it went to the rome exhibition in the spring of . we were sorry when last in pittsburgh to see that it is cracking. _the yellow buskin_ was in the wilstach collection, philadelphia, and _the master smith_ and _the little rose of lyme regis_ in the boston museum of fine arts before , and hardly an american collector of note was not seeking to include whistlers in his collection. now the chicago institute has _southampton water_ and the metropolitan in new york has the _irving_, _connie gilchrist_, _cremorne gardens_, and several important studies, and has purchased from m. duret his own large portrait and been presented by mr. e. g. kennedy with his small one. m. duret parted with his because he felt he was growing old. he had had many offers from private collectors, but he wished to know the painting was safe in a museum. two great masters had painted him, manet and whistler, he said to us shortly after the sale, and both portraits are now in public galleries. _the fur jacket_ is at worcester, and in the brooklyn institute is the very unfinished and unsatisfactory commencement of _florence leyland_. the _lange leizen_ is in the johnson collection, philadelphia. the avery collection of etchings is in the new york public library, and charles l. freer has donated to the national gallery at washington his entire collection, the largest in the world, while we have given our collection of whistleriana to the library of congress; the best possible refutation to the nonsense talked about want of appreciation by many self-styled critics, several of whom have been imported into america and england since whistler's death. whistler's health varied so during the winter that we were often encouraged to hope. but with the spring hope lessened with every visit. to consult our notes is to realise, more fully than at the time, how surely the end was approaching. the afternoons of sleep increased with the increasing weakness of his heart. he could not shake off the influenza cold which was dragging him down, and he lived in constant fear of infection from others if anybody even sneezed in his presence. "i can't risk any more microbes--i've about enough of my own." at times his cough was so bad that he was afraid to talk, and he would write what he wanted to say; it was his tonsils, he explained. there were visits when, from the moment we came until we left, he worried, first because the windows were open, then because they were shut, and his impatience if the doctor's visit was delayed would have exhausted a stronger man. j. dined with him on may , when there was a rekindling of gaiety. he showed the portrait of mr. canfield; he played dominoes for hours; at dinner, when a gooseberry tart was served, he apologised for the "island." but after this there was no more gaiety for us to record. a few days later j. went abroad for several weeks, and mr. heinemann sailed for america. when he said good-bye to whistler he was entrusted with innumerable commissions. he was to find out the truth concerning the treatment of whistler's pictures in philadelphia and new york, to discover who his new unauthorised biographers were, what artists and literary people were saying, what dealers were doing, and, when he returned, then they would "keep house together again." this was the moment when mr. heinemann took another flat, with the identical arrangements of the first, in whitehall court, so that they could go back to the old life. but before he returned the end had come. fortunately, while mr. heinemann and j. were away, mr. freer arrived in london on his annual visit, and he was free to devote himself to whistler, whom he drove out whenever whistler had the strength. but this was not for long, and with her visit to him on july e. gave up hope. he was in bed, but hearing that she was there, he sent for her. there was a vague look in his eyes, as if the old fires were burnt out. he seemed in a stupor and spoke only twice with difficulty. miss birnie philip referred to his want of appetite and the turtle soup ordered by the doctor, which they got from the correct place in the city. "shocking! shocking!" whistler broke in slowly, and then after a minute or two, "you know, now we are all in the city!" miss birnie philip wanted to give tea to e., who, seeing how ill he was, thought it wiser not to stay, and after some ten minutes said good-bye. "no wonder," whistler murmured, "you go from a house where they don't give you anything to eat." e.'s next visit was on the th. the doctor had been with him, he was up, dressed, and had been out for a drive. but he looked worse, his eyes vaguer, giving the impression of a man in a stupor. he said not a word until she was leaving, and then his one remark was, "you are looking very nice." reports of his feebleness were brought to us by many, among others by m. duret. in july he came to london, and was deeply moved by the condition in which he found whistler, who, he thought, wanted to say things when alone in the studio with him, but the day of his first visit could not utter a word. and after a second visit, after an hour with whistler, who again struggled to talk and could not, duret felt it was the last time he would see whistler. it was, and in his sorrow he could but recall the days together gone for ever. on the th e. called again, and again whistler was dressed and in the studio, and there were pictures on the easels. he seemed better, though his face was sunken and in his eyes was that terrible vagueness. now he talked, and a touch of gallantry was in his greeting, "i wish i felt as well as you look." he asked about henley, the news of whose death had come a day or two before. he watched the little mother cat as she ran about the studio. there was a return of vigour in his voice when miss birnie philip brought him a cup of chicken broth and he cried, "take the damned thing away," and his old charm was in the apology that followed, but, he said, if he ate every half-hour or so as the doctor wanted, how could he be expected to have an appetite for dinner? he dozed a little, but woke up quickly with a show of interest in everything, and when, on the arrival of mr. lavery, e. got up to go, fearing that more than one visitor would tire him, he asked, "but why do you go so soon?" and these were the last words he ever spoke to her. when j. returned to town, on friday the th, he immediately started for chelsea, but met mr. t. r. way, who had been lunching with mr. freer at the carlton, and from whom he learnt that whistler and mr. freer were to go for a drive. there was no drive that afternoon--no drive ever again. the illness had been long, the end was swift. whistler was dying before mr. freer reached the house. on thursday he had seemed much better, had gone for a drive, and was so well at dinner that mrs. whibley told him laughingly he would soon again be dressing to dine. but after lunch on friday she was called hurriedly to the studio, where miss birnie philip was already. they realised the seriousness of the attack. the doctor was sent for, but the need for him had passed. the papers during the next few days showed how whistler's fame had grown. we saw another side which the public could not see--the affection in which he was held by those who knew him intimately. many came to us at once: m. duret, who had lost the last of his old comrades--first manet, then zola, and now whistler, with whom the best hours of his life were spent; mr. kennedy, whose business relations with whistler had developed into warm friendship; sir john lavery, professor sauter, mr. harry wilson, their one thought to express their love and reverence for their president. other artists followed, others wrote, and our sorrow for the friend was tempered by knowing how deep and widespread was the regret for the master. mr. heinemann returned from new york too late to see whistler again, and both he and j. were spared the sad memory of whistler with the life faded from his face, the light gone from his eyes. the funeral took place on wednesday, july . the service was held in old chelsea church, to which he had so often walked with his mother from lindsey row. there was a comparatively small attendance. the members of his own family who came were his sister-in-law, mrs. william whistler, and his nieces, mrs. thynne and mrs. réveillon. the society with which, in his last years, he had identified his interests was represented by the council: professor sauter, mr. harry wilson, mr. francis howard, mr. ludovici, mr. stirling lee, mr. neven du mont, mr. e. a. walton, and j. here and there were friends, mr. alan s. cole, mr. heinemann, mrs. edwin a. abbey, dr. chalmers mitchell, mr. w. c. alexander, mr. clifford addams, mr. jonathan sturgis; and here and there academicians, sir lawrence alma-tadema and sir alfred east. but whistler, who valued official recognition, was given none. no one from the american embassy paid the last tribute of respect to the most distinguished american citizen who ever lived in london. no one from the french embassy attended the funeral of the officer of the legion of honour. no one from the german embassy joined in the last rites of the member of two german royal academies and the knight of the order of st. michael of bavarit. nor was anyone present from the italian embassy, though whistler was commander of the crown of italy and member of the academy of st. luke. the only body officially represented besides the international was the royal scottish academy. the police came to restrain the crowd, but there was no crowd. the coffin was carried the short distance from the house to the church along the shores of the river he made his own. it was covered with a purple pall, upon which lay a wreath of gold laurel leaves sent by his society. the pall-bearers were m. théodore duret, sir james guthrie, sir john lavery, edwin a. abbey, george vanderbilt, and mr. charles l. freer. the little funeral procession that walked with the coffin from the house to the church included miss birnie philip, mrs. charles whibley, their sisters, brother, and nephews, mr. william webb, and arthur studd, but none of his own family, none of the group with whom he had been most intimate in his last years. after the burial service was read, the procession re-formed, and the family, the council of the international, and a few friends went to the graveyard at chiswick. it was a grey, stormy summer day, and as the clergyman said the last prayers, and the coffin was lowered, the thick london atmosphere wrapped the green enclosure in the magic and mystery that whistler was the first to see and to reveal. the grave was made by the side of his wife under a wall covered with clematis. a tomb designed by his stepson, e. godwin, now covers the little plot of ground where whistler, the greatest artist and most striking personality of the nineteenth century, lies at rest in a remote corner of the london he loved, not far from the house, and nearer the grave, of hogarth, who had been to him the greatest english master from the days of his boyhood in st. petersburg. [illustration] the end of the life of james abbott mcneill whistler. his name and his fame will live for ever. joseph pennell. elizabeth robins pennell printed at the complete press appendix page , line .--"when you ask me to say something about the illustrious and lamented whistler, you do not, of course, want me to add my contribution to the rich pyramid of admiration and praise that has already been raised to his glory. "what you must, of course, be thinking of, is anything special and picturesque that i may be able to add to your biography of the great artist. "well as i knew and loved his works, i had but a passing glimpse of his person. "here are two interesting traits connected with it. "some few years ago, he was very much disturbed about a piracy committed in belgium by a foreigner living at antwerp, of his curious book, _the gentle art of making enemies_. one day he appeared in my study, and said to me with a sarcastic smile: 'i should like you to be my counsel in this little affair, because i have been told that you, like myself, practice the gentle art of making enemies.' "the case was won at antwerp with the collaboration of my _confrère_, m. maeterlinck, a relative of the poet who is such an honour to our country. the victory was celebrated at his house. when whistler, the hero of the festivity, arrived at this hospitable abode, he was a long time in the ante-room. the maid who had let him in came, very much amazed, to the drawing-room where we were awaiting him, and said in flemish: 'madame, there is an actor in the ante-room; he is doing his hair before the looking-glass, he is putting on pomade, painting and powdering his face.' after a long interval, whistler appeared, courteous, correct, waxed and anointed, resplendent as the butterfly which his name recalls, and with which he signed some of the notes he used to write to his counsel. "this is all i can offer you. "i have asked m. maeterlinck for any documents connected with this episode he might have. all his researches have been in vain. although so many insignificant papers have been preserved, fate the perverse has allowed these precious fragments to disappear." * * * * * page , line .--"whistler was a painter whose drawing had great depth, and this was prepared for by good studies, for he must have studied assiduously. "his feeling for form was not only that of a good painter, it was that of a sculptor. he had an extraordinary delicacy of sentiment, which made some people think that his basis was not very strong, whereas it was, on the contrary, both strong and firm. "he understood atmosphere most admirably, and one of his pictures which made a very deep impression on me, _the thames at chelsea_, is a marvel of depth and space. the landscape in itself is nothing; there is merely this great extent of atmosphere, rendered with consummate art. "whistler's art will lose nothing by the lapse of time; it will gain; for one of its qualities is energy, another is delicacy; but the greatest of all is its mastery of drawing." index abbey, e. a., , , , , , abbey, mrs., , abbot, gen. h. l., abbott, jas., académie carmen, , - académie royale des beaux-arts, _adam and eve, old chelsea_, , adam houses, adelphi, - addams, clifford, , , , , , addams, mrs. (miss inez bate), , , , , , - , "_albemarle, the_," , _alderney street_, alexander, cicely h. (mrs. spring-rice), , - _portrait of (grey and green)_, , , , - , , , , , alexander, john w., , , alexander, may, _portrait of_, , alexander, w. c., , , , , , , alexander, mrs. w. c., , alexandre, arsène, , allen, sir william, - allingham, w., , alma-tadema, sir lawrence, , , , , , , _alone with the tide._ see _coast of brittany_ aman-jean, e., _américaine, l'_, - , american art association, paris, american artists, society of, , _amsterdam from the tolhuis_, , amsterdam, rijks museum, , , _anacapa island_, _andalouse, l'_ (_see_ mrs. c. whibley), , angel inn, cherry gardens, angelo, michael, , the sistine chapel, _annabel lee_, _ararat, mount_, , argyll, duke of, armitage, mrs., armstrong, thomas, - , , , , - , , armstrong, sir w., , _"art and art critics_," _whistler v. ruskin_, , , , art institute, chicago, _"art journal,"_ , , , , , _art, l'_, _"art notes,"_ , art union, _"artiste, l',"_ , artists, society of, arts club, , , ashbee, c. r., , astor, w. w., astruc, z., _portrait of_, _"athenæum, the,"_ , , - , , , , , , , , , _au sixième_, aubert, m., augustine (mme. bertin), , authors, society of, autotype company, the, avery, s. p., , , , axenfeld, m., _portrait of_, bacher, otto h., , , , , , , , , , , , _balcony, by the_, _balcony, the (flesh-colour and green)_, , , , , , balestier, wolcott, balleroy, de, baltimore, , , bankes, eldon, barbizon, excursion to, barnett, canon and mrs., "_baronet and the butterfly, the_," , _barr, miss, portrait of_, barr, robert, barrie, j. m., barrington, mrs., barthe, m., , bastien-lepage, j., , bath club, _battersea (symphony)_, , _battersea bridge, old_, , , (_blue and silver_, later _blue and gold_), , , , , , - , , (_brown and silver_), , baudelaire, , , , , , , bavarian royal academy, bayliss, sir wyke, , - beardsley, a., , , , , , , , beatty, j. w., beck, j. w., becquet, m., , , _portrait of_, _beggars, the_, , belfont, m., , bénédite, l., , , benham, capt., , - benham, major h. h., - berners street gallery, , bernhardt, sarah, , beurdeley, maître, , _bibi lalouette_, , , bierstadt, a., bigham, mr. justice, - _billingsgate_, , , bisschop, dr., blaas, e. de, _black lion wharf_, , , , , blackburn, vernon, blaikie, w. b., blanche, j. e., blenheim, blind, mr. and mrs., blomfield, r. e., blott, mr., _blue and gold_ (westminster), , _blue girl_, , , . _see_ florence leyland; _also_ waller _blue wave, the_, , , blum, r., , bode, dr., boehm, sir j. e., , boer war, boisbaudran, lecocq de, , , boldini, j., , , , bonnat, l. j. f., , bonvin, f. s., , , "_book of the artists_," "_book of scoundrels_," boot, miss, booth, mrs., boston museum of fine arts, , public library, , botticelli, boucher's _diana_, copy of, boudin, e., boughton, g. h., , , , , , , bouguereau, a. w., , boussod valadon, messrs., bourgeois, l., bowen, lord justice, - boxall, sir wm., , , , , bracquemond, f., , , , , breck, adjt.-gen., bremen, meyer von, _bridge, the_, , "_british architect, the_," british artists' exhibition, , british artists, the royal society of, , , - , british museum, , , , "_broad bridge, the_," bronson, h., bronson, mrs., , bronson, miss e. (countess rucellai), brooklyn museum, , brown, ernest g., , , brown, prof. fred., brown, ford madox, , , , , , brownell, w. c., browning, robert, , bruckmann, w. l., brunel, buller, sir redvers, buloff, bunney, r., , _burckhardt, count_, , _burgomaster six, the_, burlington fine arts club, burne-jones, sir e., , , , , , , , , , , , , burne-jones, lady, - , burr, john, burton, director of national gallery, burton, sir r., burton, lady, burty, p., , bussy, simon, butler, mr., butterfly, the, - , , , , , , , , , company of the, - , byng, rev. mr., _café de bode_, _café molière_, , cahen, countess edmond de, calmour, alfred, cambridge university art society, campbell, lady archibald, , - , - , _portrait of._ see _yellow buskin_ campbell, lady colin, _portrait of_ (_ivory and white_), canaletto, , - , , , , canfield, r. a., , , , - , , _portrait of_, caravaggio, carlisle, earl of, carlyle, thomas, , - , , , , _portrait of_ (_black and grey_), , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , - , _carmen_, carmen rossi, madame, , , , - , carnegie institute, pittsburgh, carr, j. comyns, carte, mrs. d'oyly, - , - _cassatt, mrs., portrait of_, cassell, cauldwell, j. e., cauty, h. h., cazin, c., cellini, , cennino, , centenary exhibition of lithography, , "_century magazine_," , , , champfleury, chantrey collection, - chapman, alfred, chapman, miss emily, , , , , chase, william m., , , - , _portrait of_, chelsea arts club, , , _chelsea girl_, _chelsea in ice_ (_harmony in grey_), _chelsea rags_, , _chelsea reach_ (_harmony in grey_), cheyne walk, houses in, , , , , , , chicago exhibition, - chicago institute, , childs, f. l. t., christie, j. e., _chronique des beaux-arts_, church, f. e., cimabue, claghorn collection, the, claretie, jules, clarke, sir edward, - claude, , , clausen, george, , clémenceau, georges, clerkenwell church, _coast of brittany, the_, - , _coast survey, nos. i. and ii._, - , , cole, alan s., , , - , , , - , - , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , cole, mrs. a. s., , , cole, sir henry, , , , , , , _note_ _portrait of_, cole, timothy, - , cole, vicat, collingwood, w. g., , collins, wilkie, colvin, sir sidney, , , comstock, gen. c. b., conder, charles, conway, dr. moncure, , cook, e. t., , cooper, t. s., coquelin ainé, corder, miss rosa, _portrait of_ (_arrangement in black and brown_), , , , , , , , , , , cordier, coronio, mrs., courbet, g., , , , , , , , , - , , , , - , , , , _courbet on the shore_, "_court and society review, the_," - , couture, t., , , cowan, j. j., _portrait of_ (_grey man_), - , crabb, capt., crackenthorpe, hubert, crane, walter, - , , _creditor, the_ (see _gold scab_), _cremorne gardens_, - , , _crépuscule_ (_flesh-colour and green_), , - , crivelli, crockett, s. r., _portrait of_ (_grey man_), "_cuckoo, the_," curtis, ralph, , - , cust, henry, dabo, léon, d'ache, caran, "_daily chronicle, the_," , , "_daily graphic, the_," "_daily mail, the_," "_daily news, the_," , , "_daily telegraph, the_," , , dalou, j., dalziel brothers, _dam wood, the_, "_danbury news_," _dance house, the_, , dannat, w. t., darwen, _daughter of eve, a_, davenport, dr., david, , davis, edmund, , davis, jefferson, day, mr. justice, day, lewis f., degas, h. g. e., , , , , delabrosse, delacroix, e., , _hommage à_, delannoy, ernest, , - , , delaroche, paul, delâtre, a., , , , _deluge_, denny, annie, deschamps, charles, , _design for a mosaic_ (_gold girl_), desnoyers, fernand, desoye, mme., "_detroit free press_," dicey, f., dicksee, frank, dilkes, the, disraeli (lord beaconsfield), dobbin, james c., doria palace, _dordrecht--a little red note_, dowdeswell, messrs., , , , , dowdeswell, walter, , , , , , drake, a. w., draughn, miss marian, dresden museum, drouet, c., , , , , , , , , , , _portrait of_, , du maurier, g., , , , , , , , , , , - dublin modern art gallery, - dublin sketching club exhibition, - duchâtel, e., dudley gallery, , dunn, henry treffy, , dunthorne's gallery, , duran, carolus, , , durand-ruel, , duranty, , dürer, duret, théodore, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , _portrait of_ (_flesh-colour and black_), , - , _dutchman holding the glass, the_, duveneck, frank, - , , earnsdale, east, sir a., , eastwick, messrs. harrison and, , eaton, sir f., eddy, a. j., , , _portrait of_, - eden case, - , , - eden, sir w., , , eden, lady, _portrait of_ (_brown and gold_), , edinburgh exhibition, edward, king, - edwards, edwin, , , , edwards, mrs., , , eeden, f. van, _effie deans_, , , egg, a. l., eldon, w., , , ellis, f. s., eloise, elwell, mr., _portrait of_, _embroidered curtain, the_, _encamping_, _encampment, an_, "_english etchings_," "_english illustrated magazine, the_," erskine, the hon. stuart, _estampe originale, l'_, "_etching and etchers_," , , _etchings from nature, two_, fagan, l., _falling rocket, the_ (_nocturne in black and gold_), , , , , , , , , , , _fan, study for a_, _fan, the_ (_red and black_), fantin-latour, , , , , , - , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , farge, john la, farquharson, j., farren, nellie, _figaro_, fillmore, president, "_fine arts quarterly, the_," fine art society, , , , , - , - , - , , , , - _finette_, _fire wheel, the_, "_first sermon, the_," _fish shop, the--busy chelsea_, , , _flesh-colour and grey_, flower, c., flower, wickham, , mrs. wickham, followers, the, - , , forbes, archibald, forbes, c. s., , ford, sheridan, , , - mrs. sheridan, - _forge, the_, , "_fors clavigera_," "_fortnightly review, the_," , , - foster, john, "_four masters of etching_," francesca, piero della, franklin, miss maud, , , , , , , , , , , , _etching_, _portrait of_ (_arrangement in black and white, no. _), - , frederick, harold, _free trade wharf_, freer, c. l., , , , , , , , , , , , , - , french artists, society of, , french gallery, the, , _french set of etchings, the_, - , - , , french universal exhibition, freshfield, d., - frick, frieseke, frederick, frith, w. p., , , fromentin, eugène, fulleylove, j., fulleylove, mr., _fumette_, , _fur jacket, the_ (_black and brown, brown, amber and black_), , , , , , , furse, c. w., , , gallatin, _whistler_, , galsworthy, mrs., _garden, the_, , _gardens, the_ (cremorne), gaskell, mrs., gautier, mr. and mrs., gautier, théophile, gay, w., , - "_gazette des beaux-arts_," , , , , , , , , , gee, h., "_gentle art of making enemies, the_," , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , - , , , , , - gérard, mère, - , , , , , gérome, j. l., , - gibson, c. d., gilbert, a., , , - , _gilchrist, miss connie, portrait_ (_gold girl_), , , , , gilder, r. w., , _giudecca_ (_nocturne_), glasgow corporation, glasgow exhibition, glasgow institute of fine arts, glasgow university, gleyre, - , , , , , , godwin, e. w., , , , , , , , , godwin, e. (junior), , , godwin, mrs. beatrix (later mrs. j. mcn. whistler), , , - , - , , , , - , , , - death of, - _portrait of_ (_harmony in red: lamplight_), _gold and orange_, _gold girl_, _gold scab, the_, , _gold screen, the_ (_purple and gold_), , goncourt, edmond de, , , goncourts, the de, "_good words_," goold, miss, gosse, edmund, , goulding, frederick, , , , , , goupil gallery, , , , , - grafton gallery, , graham, william, , , , , grahame, kenneth, grand, mrs. sarah, _grande place, brussels_, grant, general, u.s., graves, algernon, , , henry, , , , , , , , - gravesande, s. van's, gray, w. e., _great sea, the_ (_green and silver_), greaves, walter and harry, - , - , , - , , , , , , , , , , green, rev. mr., _green and violet_, - , greenaway, kate, gregg, gen. d. mcn., greiffenhagen, m., _gretchen at heidelberg_, _grey and gold_, _grey lady_, - _grey man, the_, , grisi, grist, mr., grolier club, exhibition, gross geroldseck, grossmith, g., grosvenor gallery, , , - , - , , , , , , , , , "_grosvenor notes_," guardi, , , _guitar player, the_, guthrie, sir james, , , , , , haanen, e. van, , haarlem gallery, , - haden, annie, _dry-point_, _etching_, haden, lady, , , , , , , , , haden, sir f. seymour, - , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , haghe, louis, , hague, the, - exhibition, halkett, g. r., hallé, c. e., hals, franz, , , , , , , - halsbury, lord, hamerton, p. g., , , , - , , hamilton, dr., hamilton, j. mclure, - hannay, a. a., _portrait of_, hannay, a. h., hanover gallery exhibition, , hare, augustus, harland, h., , mrs., "_harper's magazine_," - harpignies, h., harris, f., harrison, alex., , , , harrison, henry, harrison, r. h. c., , harry, gérard, , harte, bret, hartley institution, southampton, haweis, rev. h. r., "_hawk, the_," hawkins, gen. rush c., - haxton, mr., _head of old man smoking_, hearn, g., heffernan, joanna, _see_ jo heinemann, e., - heinemann, w., , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , heinemann, mrs., _portrait of_, helleu, p., , , helst, van der, , henley, w. e., - , , , , herbert, j. r., herkomer, sir h. von, , , , heseltine, j. p., hiroshige, , , _his reverence_, "_history of modern illustration_," hogarth, - , , , - , , , , hogarth club, , , , , hogg, hon. j., hokusai, holbein, holdgate, mr., hole, w., holker, sir john, , , , , , holloway, c. e., , , holmes, g. a., , , holmes, sir r. r., _hommage à delacroix_, _hommage à la vérité_ (_see_ fantin), horniman, e. j., horsley, j. c., , - houghton, a. b., , _hour in the life of a cadet, an_, "_hour, the_," howard, f., - , howard, gen. o. o., howell, c. a., , - , , , , , , - , - , , , , , , howells, w. d., hubbard, elbert, hubbell, henry s., huddleston, baron, , hueffer, ford madox, huish, m. b., , hungerford, mrs., _hungerford bridge_, , hunt, w. holman, , , , , huth, louis, , , huth, mrs., , _portrait of_, , hutton, mrs., _idyl, an_, "_illustrated london news_," illustrators, society of, , _imagier, l'_, "_indépendance belge_," ingram, w. ayerst, , , , ingres, , , international society of sculptors, painters, and gravers, , , , , - , , , exhibitions, , , , , - ionides, the, - aleco, , , , alexander, , - , helen (_see_ mrs. william whistler), luke, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , _portrait of_, _iris_, the (_see_ miss kinsella), - irving, sir henry _portrait of_ (_arrangement in black_), , , - , , , , , , , , , _isle de la cité_, , israels, j., , iwan-muller, e. b., ives, prof. h. c., , jackson, f. ernest, jacomb-hood, g. p., , jacquemart, j., , james, f., , , , jameson, f., - , japanese art, - , , , , - , - jarvis, lewis, jekyll, , _jersey_, jeune, lady (lady st. helier), jobbins, mr., , "jo" (mrs. joanna abbott), , - , , , , _portrait of_, - , johnson club, johnson, dr., johnston, humphrey, jongkind, j. b., jopling-rowe, mrs., josey, r., - jourdan, m., , _jubilee in the abbey_, junior etching club, , keene, c., , , - , , kelly, f., kennedy, david, kennedy, e. g., , , - , - , - , , , _kensington gardens_, keppel, f., , kerr-lawson, j., key, j. ross, - kingsley, martha, kinsella, miss, _portrait of the iris_ (_rose and green_), , , - kingston-lacy collection, kipling, mrs., kipling, r., _kitchen, the_, kruger, president, - mrs., labouchere, h., , , - _lady at a window_, _lagoon, the_, lagrange, l., lalouette, lamartine, m., lambert, john, , , lamont, t. r., , lamour, landor, a. h. savage, - landseer, sir e., lane, sir hugh, - lang, a., langdon, gen. l. l., - _lange leizen_ (_purple and rose_), , , , langtry, mrs., _portrait of_, _lannion, the yellow house_, lantéri, prof. e., , , larned, col., - _last of old westminster, the_, , laurens, j. p., , laveille, a., lavery, j., - , , - , - , , , - lawless, hon. f., lawson, c., , leathart, j., , lee, col. r. e., , lee, gen., lee, t. stirling, leech, j., , "_legendary ballads_," legion of honour, legros, a., , , , , , , , , , , , , , leighton, lord, , , , , , - , , - , , , , lemercier, _lenoir, miss_, leslie, c. r., , _l'estampe originale_, lewis, arthur, lewis, sir g., , , - leyland, f. r., , , , , , , , , , - , , , , , _portrait of_, leyland, mrs., , , - , , - , - , _note_, , _portraits of_, - , _fanny leyland_, leyland, florence, _portrait of_ (_blue girl_), , , , liberty, l., liddell, dean, _lido, the_, _lillie in our alley_, , , linde, dr., lindenkohl, a., - lindsay, sir coutts, - , - , lindsey palace, lindsey row, houses in, , , , , - , - lippi, filippo, "_lithography and lithographers_," lithography case, - lithography, revival of, - _little blue bonnet_, , _little cardinal_, _little evelyn_, "_little journeys_," _little lady sophie of soho_, , , _little pool, the_, _little putney, the_, _little red note: dordrecht_, _little rose of lyme regis, the_, , , , , _little venice_, _little white girl, the_ (_symphony in white, no. ii._), , - , , , , , , verses on, _liverdun_, livermore, mrs., , - , liverpool art club exhibition, , , _lobsters, the loves of the_, - , logsdail, w., "_london garland_," london memorial exhibition, , , , , , , , , , , , , , - , , , long, e., "long elizas," lorimer, j. h., louise, princess, louvre, the, - , , , , , , lovell, john m., low, will h., lowell, , , , , , lucas, g., , , ludovici, a., , , luxembourg, , , , lynden, baron van, baroness van, maccall, c. h., maccoll, d. s., , , , , , macgeorge collection, the, maclise, d., macmillan, messrs., macmonnies, f., , , , , - , - maeterlinck, m., - , - "_magazine of art, the_," , _major's daughter, the_, , mallarmé, s., - , , _portrait of_, manchester art treasures exhibition, , manet, e., , , , , , , , , , , , mann, mr., _portrait of_, mansfield, burton, , mansfield, howard, , , , mantz, p., , , , _manuel, master stephen_, _marchande de moutarde, la_, , marchant, william, maris, j. m., marks, murray, , , , , marks, stacy, , marlborough, duke of, marmalade, marquis de, , marriott-watson, h. b., martin, j., martin, b. e., martin, henri, , , martin, homer, martinet, marty, p., marx, roger, marzetti, mrs., - , - mason, george, _master smith, the_, , , , , , mathew, justice, mauritshuis, the, - , maus, o., mccarthy, j., mcclure, s. s., "_mcclure's magazine_," mcculloch, g., mckim, mcneill, alicia, , , , charles donald, donald, martha, william g., may, henry, phil, , mazzini, _mèche de silas_, melbourne, lord, melbourne museum, melnikoff, col., , melville, a., , , menpes, m., , , , , , , , - , , , , , , _mère gérard, la_, - , , , etching, meredith, g., - , merritt, mrs., , , méryon, c., , mesdag, h. w., , , metsu, meux, lady, , - , , , _portrait of_ (_flesh-colour and pink_), , - , _portrait of_ (_black and white_), , - , _portrait in sables_, milcendeau, charles, miles, frank, , miles, f. b., , - millais, sir j. e., , , , , , , , , , , , _millbank_, millet, minton, mirbeau, o., , _miser, the_, mitchell, dr. chalmers, "_modern men_," "_modern painting_," moncrieff, mrs., , monet, c., _moniteur_, mont, neven du, montesquiou, comte de, , , _portrait of_, , montezuma, montiori, mrs., moody, mr., moore, albert, , , , , , , , , , , moore, augustus, moore, george, , - , , moore, henry, moreau, gustave, moreau-nélaton collection, morgan, mr., _morning before the massacre of st. bartholomew, the_, , "_morning post, the_," , morris, harrison s., , mrs., morris, phil, morris, w., , , , , , , , morrison, a., morse, s., , , morse, mrs., _mother, the_ (_arrangement in grey and black, no. i._) (_see_ mrs. whistler), , , , , , , , , , - , , - , , , , - dry-point, moulton, mrs., - mulready, w., munich international exhibition, murano, , _murano glass furnace_, murger, , _music room, the_ (_green and rose_), - , nash, j., , national academy of design, national art exhibition, , national art collections fund, _note_ national gallery, the, , , , _note_, , , national portrait gallery, "_national (scots) observer, the_," - _naval review set_, , , _neighbours, the_ (_gold and orange_), new english art club, , , new gallery, , , , "_new review_," new york etching club, "_new york herald_," , new york metropolitan museum, , , , , new york public library, , "_new york state library bulletin_," nicholson, w., , "_nineteenth century, the_," , norman, the misses, northumberland house, norton, c. e., noseda, mrs., _note blanche_, obach, messrs., , "_observer_," ochtervelt, _old chelsea_, dr. martin, - _old putney bridge_, _old westminster bridge_, olga, grand duchess, "_once a week_," orchardson, sir w. q., , , , osborne, walter, oulevey, h., , , , , , , , _pacific, the_, "_paddon papers, the_," , pagani, "_pageant, the_," painter-etchers, the royal society of, _palaces, nocturne_, , - pall mall, exhibition at, - , "_pall mall gazette_," , , , - , , , , , , "_pall mall pictures_," palmer, amos, palmer, miss, - , , palmer, mrs. potter, paris, centenary exhibition, , paris, memorial exhibition, , - , paris, universal exhibitions, , , , , , park, rev. roswell, - parrish, s., parry, mr. sergeant (now judge), - parsons, alfred, "_passages from modern english poets_," pastel society, pater, w., , pawling, s. s., payne, _peacock room, the_, , , - , , , , pearsall, booth, peck, miss, _portrait of_, pellegrini, c., , , pennell, (j.), , - , , , , - , - , , - , , - , , , , - , , , - , - , , - , , - , - , - pennell, mrs. (e.), , , , , , , - , - , - , - , - pennington, harper, , , , , , , , pennsylvania academy, - , , pepys, samuel, périvier, president, perugino, petheram, mr., - petit gallery, pfalzburg, philadelphia society of etchers, philip, john birnie, philip, mrs. birnie, , , , philip, r. birnie, , _portrait of_, philip, miss r. birnie, , , , , , , , , , - , , - , - , , , phillip, john, phillips, sir claude, _philosopher, the_ (_see_ holloway), , _phryne the superb_, , _piano picture, the_ (_at the piano_), , , , , - , , , , , , picard, e., , "_piccadilly_," _piccadilly_ (_grey and gold_), "_piker papers, the_," poe, e. a., , pollitt, a. j., _portrait of_, , pomfret, - _pool, the_, poole, r. w., "_portfolio, the_," , , , portrait painters' exhibition, , potter, g., , , potter, mrs., , , powerscourt, lord, poynter, sir e. j., , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , _pretty nelly brown_, prince, miss, prince's hall, , , prince's skating club, _princesse du pays de la porcelaine, la_, , , , , , , , , , - , , prinsep, val, , , , , , , probyn, sir dighton, "_propositions no. _," "_proposition, a further_," "_propositions_," , , "_punch_," , _punt, the_, , putnam, messrs., _putney bridge_, , , puvis de chavannes, , , _quat'z arts_ ball, quilter, h., , , - rae, george, raffalovitch, a., rajon, p., raleigh, sir w., , raphael, , ratier, maître, rawlinson, w. j., , , , realism, influence of courbet, - _red house, paimpol_, _red note_, _red rag_, _rédacteur du journal "l'artiste,"_ - redesdale, lord, , , , , , , - , , , _portrait of_, - redesdale, lady, _regent's quadrant_, regnault, h., _relief fund in lancashire_, rembrandt, , , , , , , , , , - , . , - , , - renouard, p., renan, ary, repplier, agnes, réveillon, mrs., , reynolds, sir j., , , , , , rhodes, cecil, riault, m., _portrait of_, _rialto_, ribot, t., , , richmond, , ricketts, c., rico, m., , ridley, m. w., _portrait of_, rijks museum, ritchie, lady, , , , , _riva_, roberts, earl, robertson, g., , robins, miss e., robinson, lionel, rodd, sir r., , , , rodenbach, g., rodin, a., , , , , , , roland, marcel, rolshoven, j., romeike, rose, a., , , , , , , _rose and red_, ross, alexander, robert, rossetti, d. g., - , - , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , rossetti, w. m., , , , - , , , , - , , , , , , , , - , , rothenstein, w., , _rotherhithe_, , roussel, t., , , , , roussoff, p., rowley. j., - royal academy, , , , , , , , , , , - , - , , , royal academy, students' club, royal scottish academy, - ruben, mr., rubens, rucellai, countess. _see_ miss e. bronson ruggles, gen., ruskin, john, , , , , - , , - , , , , , ruskin libel action, - _russian schube, the_, rutter, frank, sackett, major, st. gaudens, a., _st. george_, _st. james's street_, _st. john's, westminster_, st. louis exhibition, _st. mark's_ (_blue and gold_), , , , st. mary abbots', whistler married in, st. peter's, rome, st. petersburg, - st. petersburg academy of fine arts, , hermitage, the, sala, george augustus, salaman, m., - , , _salon_, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , _salon des refusés_, - , sandys, f., , , , , sarah brown students' revolution, paris, sarasate, p., _portrait of_, , , , , , , , , sargent, j. s., , , , , - , , sarony, "_saturday review_," , , , , , - , sauter, g., , , , , sauter, mrs., savage club, saverne museum, savile club, , _savoy scaffolding_, _scarf, the_, scharfe, sir g., scheffer, a., , , schmitz, herr, - scottish national portraits exhibition, "_scotsman_," scott, w., - , scott, w. b., "_scribner's magazine_," , _sea and rain_, , , secessions, german, seeley and co., seitz, don c., _seton, miss, portrait of_ (see _daughter of eve_), severn, a., , , , shannon, c. h., , , shannon, j. j., shaw, g. b. shaw, norman, _shipping--nocturne_, _shipping at liverpool_, short, sir f., sickert, b., , , sickert, w., - , , , , , , , , , , - _portrait of_, sickert, mrs. w., , , _portrait of_, i. (_violet and pink_), ; ii. (_green and violet_), , , _siesta, the_, simpson, j. w., singleton, mrs., _six projects_, - , , , , , see _venus_ and _three figures_ _sixteen etchings of scenes on the thames_, _sketching_, , slade professorship, smalley, g. w., smith, f. hopkinson, smith, john russell, snyders, société nationale des beaux-arts, "society of three," solferino, - solon, l., _song of the graduates_, "_songs on stone_," , sotheby, messrs., _soupe à trois sous_, , _southampton water_, , south kensington (victoria and albert) museum, , , , , south kensington museum international exhibitions, sower, h., spartali, mr., - spartali, christine (countess edmond de cahen), - _portrait of._ see _princesse du pays de la porcelaine_ "_spectator, the_," _speke hall_, _speke shore_, spreckles, mrs., "_standard, the_," stansfield, mrs., stanton, general, stanton, mrs. dr., - "_star, the_," , starr, s., , , , , , , , , , , steevens, g. w., stephens, f. s., stevens, alfred (belgian), , , stevens, alfred (english), , stevenson, r. a. m., - , , , stillman, w. j., stillman, mrs. (marie spartali), - , , stoeckl, baron de, stoker, bram, stokes, messrs. frederick, stone, marcus, stonington, , , , , _storm, the_, story, j., , , , - , story, w., , , , - stott, w., of oldham, strahan, w., strange, e. f., _street at saverne_, , , street, g. s., studd, a., , , "_studies of seven arts_," "_studio_," the, sturges, j., , sullivan, e. j., sutherland, sir thomas, , , , swain, j., _swan and iris_, swift, dr. foster, swift, mary, - swinburne, a. c., , , , , , , , , , , , , - , symons, a., , , symons, w. c., tate gallery, the, , , taylor, tom, , , , teck, prince of, , , templar, major, "_ten o'clock, the_," , , , , - , , , tennyson, alfred, terborg, , terry, edward, _tête de paysanne_, thackeray, w. m., thackeray, miss, _thames at chelsea_, _thames, the_, _thames in ice, the_, , , , _thames set of etchings, the_, , - , , , , , - _thames warehouses_, theobald, h. s., , thibaudeau, a. w., thomas, brandon, , thomas, edmund, , , thomas, percy, , , , thomas, ralph, , , thomas, sergeant, - thompson, sir h., , _catalogue of blue and white nankin porcelain_, thomson, d. croal, , , - , thornbury, w., _three figures, pink and grey_ (_three girls_) (see _six projects_), - , , , thynne, mrs. (annie haden), , , - , tiepolo, "_times, the_," , , - , - , , , , , , , , , tintoretto, , , , , tissot, j. j., , , , , tite street, houses in, , , , - , , titian, , , , , tito, e., todd, col., , , _toilet, the_, traer, mr., , _traghetto, the_, - , , "_trilby_," , - , - _trouville_, "_truth_," , tuckerman, h. t., tuckerman, miss, tudor house, , , , , _tulip, the_ (_rose and gold_), , turner, j. m. w., , , , turner, ross, , , twain, mark, , tweed, j., _twelve_, the, - _twelve etchings from nature_, twenty club, brussels, exhibition, _twenty-fifth on the thames_, _twilight on the ocean_ (see _valparaiso_), _two little white girls_ (_symphony in white, no. iii._), , , , , , _tyre smith, the_, _tyzac, whiteley and co._, uffizi, the, - underdown, e. m., united states military academy, universal exhibition, , unwin, t. f., , , unwin, mrs., valentin, bibi, valparaiso, journey to, - valparaiso, paintings of, , , _valparaiso bay_, vanderbilt, g., , _portrait of_, vanderbilt, mrs., _portrait of_ (_ivory and gold_), van dyck, van dyke, j. c., "_vanity fair_," , vasari, velarium, the, , - velasquez, , , , , , , , , , , , , - , , _velvet gown, the_ (_see_ mrs. leyland), , venice, - , - _venice etchings_, , , - , - , , - , , , venice international exhibition, venice museum, venturi, mme., , _venus_ (see _six projects_), , - , , , vermeer, , veronese, , , victoria and albert museum. _see_ south kensington victoria, queen, jubilee addresses, - _vieille aux loques, la_, viélé-griffin, f., , vinci, leonardo da, vistelious, prof., vivian, h., , voivov, prof., vollon, a., , , vose, g. l., wagner, , wales, prince and princess, , - walker, f., walker, howard, waller, miss maud, _portrait of_ (_blue girl_), , waller, pickford r., walton, e. a., , , , , , walton, mrs., _wapping_, , , , , ward, h. h. and co., ward, leslie, washington, , water colour society, watts, g. i., , , , , , , , , , watts-dunton, t., , , , , - way, t. and t. r., - , , , , , - , , , , , , , , , , _weary_, , , webb, gen., , webb, w., , , , , , webster, d., wedmore, f., , , - , , - , , , weir, j. a., , - , weir, r. w., - westminster abbey, jubilee ceremonies, _westminster bridge, old_, westminster, marquis of, _westminster, the last of old_, west point, , , , - , - , , - wheeler, gen., whibley, c, , , , whibley, mrs. (ethel birnie philip), , , , , , , , , , "_whirlwind, the_," , whistler, mrs. anna m. (_née_ mcneill), - , , , , , , , , , , , , ; death, anne (_née_ bishop), anthony, charles d., , daniel, deborah (_see_ lady haden) francis, - gabriel, george, , , , , , , george washington, , - , , , ; death, ; portrait of, hugh, james abbott mcneill; birth, ; christening, ; journey to russia, ; early portraits, , ; severe illness, - ; return to america, ; west point, - ; coast survey, - ; arrival in paris, ; journey to alsace, ; london, ; journey to valparaiso, - ; ruskin trial, - ; journey to venice, ; joins british artists, - ; resigns, ; marriage, - ; the eden case, - , - ; international society of sculptors, painters, and gravers, - ; the académie carmen, - ; journey to rome, ; journey to corsica, - ; death, - _portraits of_ himself, , --_w. with hat_, --_w. with the white lock_, --_w. in his studio_, --(_brown and gold_), , _portrait of_, by boldini, ; by boxall, , , ; by chase, - ; by fantin, ; by nicholson, ; by rajon, _bust of_, by boehm, , "_whistler as i knew him_," , , , "_whistler frame_," the, - whistler, john, master john, major john, , joseph, julia (_née_ winans), kensington, whistler, kirk booth, mary (_née_ swift), - ralph, rose fuller, sarah, dr. william, - , , , , , , , , ; death, ; _portrait of_, mrs. william (_see_ miss helen ionides), , , , , , - , , , _white girl, the_ (_symphony in white, no. i._), , , , , , , , , , , white house, the, , , - , - , - _white note_, a, white, c. harry, _whiteley and co._, whitman, mrs. sarah, whittmore, wilde, oscar, , , , , - , , , , , wilkie, sir david, wilkins, w. h., wilkinson, mr., williams, capt., williams, charlotte, _portrait of_, williamson, dr. g. c., wills, w. g., , wilson, h., , wilstach collection, , wimbush, w. l., , , winans, louis, winans, ross, winans, thomas, , , windsor castle collection, , , windus, w. l., _wine glass, the_, _winged hat, the_, winstanley, w., wisselingh, e. j. van, wistler de westhannye, john le, woakes, miss, _portrait of_, wolkoff, , wolseley, lord, _portrait of_, wolseley, lady, , wombat, story of the, - woods, h., , , "_world, the_," , , , , , , working women's college, queen's square exhibition, world's columbian exhibition, - wortley, stuart, _wreck, the_, wuerpel, e. h., , wyndham, hon. p., wyndham, hon. mrs. p., , yates, e. ("atlas"), , "_yellow book, the_," _yellow buskin, the_, , , , , , , , _yellow house, lannion_, the, zaandam, - zaehmsdorf, messrs., zalinski, major, zola, e., , zucchero, printed at the complete press west norwood, london, s.e. masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare watteau - "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. corot. sidney allnutt. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--a pastoral. frontispiece (in the louvre, paris) the attribution to watteau of this pretty pastoral has been questioned. it is thus described in the louvre catalogue, "at the foot of a knoll, a shepherdess, with a yellow dress and a red bodice, sits turning to the left, to listen to a shepherd, seen from the back, wearing pink breeches and a violet vest, who plays on the flute; on the right a sheep and a dog. landscape in the background."] watteau by c. lewis hind illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page prologue i. his life ii. his art iii. his place in art: predecessors and influence iv. his critics and admirers epilogue list of illustrations plate i. a pastoral frontispiece in the louvre, paris page ii. the ball under a colonnade in the dulwich gallery iii. l'indifférent in the louvre, paris iv. the embarkment for cythera in the louvre, paris v. jupiter and antiope in the louvre, paris vi. the fountain in the wallace collection vii. fête champêtre in the national gallery of scotland viii. the music lesson in the wallace collection [illustration] prologue the apparition of watteau in france in the early eighteenth century may be likened to the apparition of giotto in italy in the early fourteenth. each was a genius; each broke away from the herd; each gave to the world a new vision; each inspired a school. but there the resemblance ends. giotto's art was christian, watteau's pagan; or, in other words, giotto lived in an age when the aim of art was to teach religion, watteau--well, his pictures were designed to delight. giotto sought to remind men of christianity, to bring them humbly to their knees with representations (marvellously fresh in those days when art was still groping in the byzantine twilight) of the life of the founder of christianity, all its pathos, pity, and promise. watteau gave joy and exhiliration to a generation temporally dull and morose, chilled by the academical art of the period, and apparently content with it. watteau appeared: the little world about him looked at his pictures and, what a change! "paris dressed, posed, picnicked, and conversed à la watteau." poor watteau! he gave, he gives joy, but he was sad, discontented, distrustful of himself and others. sometimes nature makes a great effort and unites genius to the sane mind and the sane body, as in a titian, a leonardo, a shakespeare, a goethe; more often she breathes genius into a fugitive and precarious shell, as in a keats, a francis thompson, a watteau, and ironically, or perhaps blessedly, gives them the phthisical temperament so that they crowd youth, adolescence, and age into a burst of hectic performances before they depart. [illustration: plate ii.--the ball under a colonnade (in the dulwich gallery) this picture has suffered somewhat from time. but how delightful it is still; how gracious and debonair are the two dancing figures; how fascinating the colour in the woman's green striped rose skirt, and in the man's blue butterfly dress. there are seventy-three figures in this small canvas ft. - / ins. by ft. / ins.] in the following pages the life and art of watteau are considered, also the curious effect of that life and art upon his biographers, also, frightening word! his technique, his marvellous technique, which is a veritable tonic to painters, who know the almost intolerable difficulties of expression. his life? why, it could be told in a page. his art? it is all stated in any one of his significant pictures. he belonged to that class of unfortunates who are never at rest in this world. life to him was a wandering to find home. always beyond the hills, any place where he did not happen to be at the moment, gleamed the spires of the city of happiness and contentment, beckoning, waiting, rising against the sky like the towers of new jerusalem in taddeo di bartoli's "death of the virgin." he fled from the boredom of his home in valenciennes, yet he died longing to return. watteau revealed his temperament, on the wing as it were, in his masterpiece "the embarkment for cythera." these ethereal and butterfly pilgrims of love should be happy enough in their enchanted garden on the border of the azure sea, but no! they are preparing lackadaisically to depart, to be wafted in the ship with the rose-coloured sail to the island of cythera, the abode of venus, whom they worship for the joy of worship, without any desire of possession. on those lovely shores they will find no continuing city. watteau knows that. oh! but he was a cynic was this watteau whose palette was a rainbow, and whose vision was like the flash of a kingfisher's wing in sunlight. do you remember his "fête champêtre" at dresden, with the little exquisite figure of a woman seated on the ground turning away from the spectator? oh, her bright hair, and the dress--i am a man; but what a dress! what skill and knowledge in the drawing and painting of it! this little lady is essentially watteau, who loved pretty clothes and budding figures, and whose drawing was as dainty as the frocks he composed; yet i do not think she is the real watteau. cast your eye to the left of the picture where stands an elderly, disdainful dandy. you meet this looker-on again and again in watteau's pictures; he is in the fête champêtre and yet not of it; he knows how little all this affectation of gaiety really signifies; how transient is this commerce with joy, and yet he lingers there because in watteau's world there is naught else to do. yet he himself was always doing--a great worker. he knew, like zola, that work is the anodyne for the "malady of the infinite" or of self, whichever you like to call it; but he had no wish to teach. he used his art to escape from the world to a dream-realm, where the sun always shines and where monday morning never comes. what was he like, this "exquisite little master," restless, changeable, obstinate, irritable, and misanthropic, whose influence on art has been so great? in his portrait of himself engraved by boucher, the slight, nervous figure, alert, on the point of a petulant outbreak, looks a genius, but a man "gey ill to live with." i have a keener if a sadder vision of him in a portrait drawn by himself, "frightfully thin, almost deathlike." it is called "watteau laughing." frightfully thin, almost deathlike, himself drawn by himself--laughing. that is watteau. i his life it should be an easy task to state the salient facts in the life of a world-renowned painter who lived but thirty-seven years, and who died in ; but until the discovery by the brothers de goncourt, in a second-hand book-shop, of the life of watteau, written by his friend the comte de caylus and read by him before the french academy in , our knowledge had to be gleaned mainly from the notes to catalogues of his collected works. the little flemish town of valenciennes was ceded to france in --seven years before a son was born to jean philippe watteau and his wife michelle lardenoise. this son was baptized on the th of october and given the names of jean antoine. jean philippe, his father, was a tiler, desirous no doubt that his son should succeed him in his own sensible occupation; but discovering jean antoine's predilection for covering everything he could find with drawings, grotesque and otherwise, of the strolling players and mountebanks that passed through the little town, he submitted to fate and placed him with the official painter of the municipality, named gerin. under him watteau painted "la vraie gaieté," his first important attempt at a picture. this was followed by "le retour de guingette," and then his master died. the year was , the age of watteau seventeen. it may be said that with gerin's death watteau's boyhood died. his father, seeing little return for his expenditure, refused to continue to pay for instruction. life at home became unbearable to the sensitive youth to whom his calling was as the call of the sea to the sailor-born. if there was so much of interest in valenciennes for a painter, what might not the capital offer of spectacular delights? so one morning antoine left home and walked to paris, where he found work with métayer, a scene-painter; but métayer's patronage soon ceased, and watteau found himself alone in paris. now began his period of penury and the making of the master; also probably, through hunger and cold, the engendering of the disease, consumption, which was to force his genius to its rapid development and from which he was to die. paris, the marvellous paris of his dreams, was beautiful, but without heart. watteau strolled by her river's bank, crept for shelter into the great church of notre-dame, wandered out again, and at last found work of a kind that would at least keep him from starvation. on the pont notre-dame there were shops, exposing daubs, painted by the dozen, for sale. necessity compelled and watteau sought and obtained employment at one of these picture manufactories. he proved himself a facile workman, and soon his task became so easy that he could paint from memory the head of st. nicolas, which it was his duty to repeat over and over again. the other journeymen artists painted skies, draperies, heads, hands, saints, angels, to each a set task, and the payment was proportionate to their skill. watteau's remuneration for the week's work amounted to three livres--a little more than three francs--and a daily bowl of soup! a less determined youth than this weakling might have succumbed or renounced his ambitions, but watteau worked and waited patiently until he could extricate himself from these uncongenial surroundings. the future painter of dainty and luxurious visions of wealth and breeding was ambitious, if miserable. he forgot to be hungry, because his hours of leisure from the tyranny of the picture manufactory were filled with the joy of drawing incessantly everything that passed before his eyes, from the turn of a head to the flutter of a tempestuous petticoat. a bowl of soup for dinner is an excellent aid to work, and this period no doubt intensified watteau's love of work and of nature. the lifeless things he had to copy at the manufactory sent him into the realms of the real, and his great gift of "seeing" was storing up for him innumerable observations which were to be the structure of his future fancies. one lucky day watteau met claude gillot, the decorative painter, who on seeing his drawings invited him to live in his house and become his pupil and assistant. so ended his period of absolute want; henceforward watteau began to find himself, even as disease had already found and marked him. claude gillot's influence upon the formation of watteau's taste and talent must not be underrated. he was a man of much ability, quite unlike the cold and formal painters of his time. his was a gay art: the mythology of lovers and nymphs, and the light life of the italian comedy--pantaloon, columbine, and pierrot--"strange motley--coloured family, clothed in sunshine and silken striped." gillot is certainly one of watteau's earliest inspirers: his revolt against convention (even if revolt be too strong a word) influenced watteau to the end of his life. with this happy _rencontre_ began the serious development of watteau's art. life, no longer sordid, became luxurious in thought and application. supersensitive, the artist mind of the pupil touched and extracted the taste of his master, improved upon it, and strengthened its own tendency for all that was dainty, elegant, and whimsical. gillot's was a good influence; a capable craftsman, he gave freely, but the jealous side of his nature soon recognised in his intuitive pupil not only an adaptation of his own methods, but also an improvement upon them. in watteau, no doubt, he saw his own faults, but he also saw his own virtues made finer and rarer. whatever the reason, over-much similarity of temperament, professional jealousy, or irritability on gillot's side; ingratitude, sensitiveness, fickleness, or a sense of superiority on watteau's, this mutually helpful friendship of five years ended abruptly. we may never know the cause of the quarrel, but we do know that watteau, although he always warmly praised gillot's work and admitted his personal indebtedness, refused to be questioned in regard to their disagreement, and was silent about it even to his most intimate friends. curious to relate, gillot ceased to paint when watteau left him, and became an etcher and engraver. watteau certainly dated the knowledge of his own talent from his association with gillot, his first real master. [illustration: plate iii.--l'indiffÉrent (in the louvre, paris) through watteau's dream-world trips "l'indifférent," rainbow-hued, mercurial, his indifference assumed, not troubling to conceal the sad thoughtfulness that lurks in his expression. who can describe watteau's colour or his fashion of trickling on the paint? the technique of "l'indifférent" is marvellous.] claude audran, to whom he went in at the age of twenty-four (taking his friends pater and lancret with him), was keeper or rather doorkeeper of the luxembourg palace, and a painter of the ornamental decorations then in vogue. garlands and arabesques were his speciality. he taught his system of decoration to watteau, who, sensitive to every artistic sensation, gleaned perhaps from audran the sense of rhythmic line and made it one of his own chief characteristics. living in the luxembourg palace he had access to the pictures; he studied them, especially the works of rubens. restlessly he would roam the gardens of the palace, enchanted and inspired by the figures wandering down the paths and grouping themselves under the great trees. watteau, dallying in the gardens, remembering the theatrical methods of métayer, the subjects of gillot, the flexibility and fancy of audran, the daring of the great rubens, began to develop into an original. gradually, too, he grew restless, feeling that he was not wholly free to paint his dreams. a vague nostalgia persuaded his artistic temperament that it was his home he wanted to see--valenciennes and his people. be that as it may, this was the reason he gave for leaving audran, who had always been kind and appreciative; although the wily painter of garlands and arabesques tried to dissuade his _protégé_ from painting pictures, fearing to lose so able an assistant in his own ornamental work. before parting from audran, watteau made his first real essay in his second manner, a picture of "the departure of the troops," a reminiscence of the life at valenciennes. this work he sold to the dealer sirois for sixty livres, and with the money he started for home, despite audran's protests. valenciennes at that time was gay with soldiers and _dames galantes_ and watteau painted several military pictures--groups marked with truth, yet full of grace; he also filled his sketch-books with incomparable drawings. but he could not long resist the call of paris. valenciennes seemed to have grown smaller, less interesting. the painter fretted in the narrow sphere of the provincial town; once again his wayward feet were set towards the capital. he arrived in paris in , and before long persuaded himself that he would like to visit rome. with this end in view he competed for the _prix de rome_, but succeeded only in obtaining second prize. soon recovering from the disappointment, he painted a companion picture to the work he had sold to sirois for sixty livres, but for the companion he asked and obtained two hundred and sixty livres. these two pictures he borrowed from sirois and hung in a room, where he knew they would be seen by the academicians as they passed from one apartment to another. the painter de la fosse, impressed by their colour and quality, paused and asked the name of the author. he was informed that they were the work of a young and unknown man who craved intercession with the king for a "pension" in order that he might study in italy. de la fosse sent for watteau, whom he found modest, shy, and deprecatory of his work. watteau stated his desire to study abroad. he was told--the episode in these days seems hardly credible--to his astonishment and joy, that there was no need for him to study with any one; that he was already master; that he would honour the academy if he would consent to become a member, and that he had only to present himself to be enrolled. this he did and was duly elected, the inauguration fee in consideration of his circumstances being reduced to one hundred livres. and so in , at the age of twenty-eight, the poor unknown, who failed to win the first prize in the _prix de rome_, was made free of the academy, was given the new title of _peintre des fêtes galantes_, and became, almost in a bound, famous. ill and moody, he worked incessantly at his drawings and the pictures which were making it possible for him eventually to produce his masterpiece, "the embarkment for cythera." always dissatisfied with his work, he did not ratify his election to the academy by sending in his diploma picture until . the patience of the academy being exhausted, he was reminded of the rule that each newly elected member must present a picture. in a brilliant dash he finished "the embarkment for cythera," which was accepted on august , , as his _pièce de reception_. no longer was there poverty to contend with. success followed success. the academy had set its seal upon him. everybody wanted watteaus. in , the year before he sent in his _pièce de reception_, he had gone to live with m. de crozat, whose beautiful house in the rue richelieu and his country mansion at montmorency were filled with works of the old masters, drawings and paintings. we are told that crozat possessed four hundred pictures of the venetian and flemish schools, thousands of drawings, of which two hundred and twenty-nine were by rubens, one hundred and twenty-nine by van dyck, one hundred and six by veronese, and one hundred and thirteen by titian. in these luxurious houses of his admiring friend and patron, watteau might have lived with delight and profit. the park of the country house at montmorency became the background which inspired his pastorals, the perfection of his art; this perfection the study of the old masters aided somewhat, no doubt, but watteau was now master himself, and in knowing them confronted his peers. here too, for the first time, he met his models as an equal--untrammelled. this man of "medium height and insignificant appearance," whose eyes showed "neither talent nor liveliness," was on familiar and friendly terms with the company gathered at m. de crozat's house--ladies of fashion, from whom in old days he tried to steal for his note-book a line of neck, a turn of wrist, furtively and hastily, asked nothing better than to be party to his pictures in gardens gay with mondaines, male and female. he observed and painted. we can almost hear the frou-frou of their garments in his pictures. m. de julienne, another patron, was full of enthusiasm and eager to possess his works; it was for him that watteau painted the replica, carried farther and more finished, of the "embarkment for cythera," which is now at potsdam. all the world smiled upon watteau, but the world's favours only made the more capricious and melancholy this incurable brooder over the unattainable. loving no woman as he loved his art, he longed for tenderness, yet was afraid of it. cold, shy, fastidious, reserved, ill, he shunned society now that it sought him, and drugged himself with work as a refuge from ennui and from nostalgia for no earthly country. he left m. de crozat's house, independence being more vital to him than luxury, and found a companion in nicolas vleughels, whom he had met at m. de julienne's. the two lived together until . once more the desire for solitude assailed him. m. de julienne, who seems always to have been his devoted friend, admonished the ailing painter and begged him to be more careful about his material welfare, as indeed all his other friends did, to whom he retorted, "at the worst there is the hospital; no one is refused there!" his friends advised him to travel. of all places he chose london, and arrived on these shores in , finding lodgings at greenwich. in london his physician, dr. mead, presented him to the king, for whom he painted four pictures, which are now at buckingham palace. his health showed no improvement, and the english climate aggravated his illness. in a letter to gersaint he wrote of "_le mauvais air qui regne à londres à cause de la vapeur du charbon de terre dont on fait usage_." dr. mead, aware no doubt that his condition was hopeless, advised him to return to paris. this he did, and settled in the house of gersaint, son-in-law to sirois, for whom he painted the delightful picture called "gersaint's sign,"--"just to limber up his fingers," as he expressed it. restlessness again seized him. he believed that he would recover in the country. his friend the abbé haranger asked m. le fèvre to find him accommodation in a house at nogent, and thither he went in . but the end was near, and watteau, realising it, proceeded to set his house in order and to make amends for his shortcomings of friendship and of temper, the importance of which the dying man magnified. he sent for his townsman and pupil, pater, asked forgiveness for having in the past retarded his advancement through fear of rivalry, and made ample amends by giving pater daily instruction and revealing to him his intimate knowledge of his craft. pater said, after watteau's death, that this was "the only fruitful teaching he had ever received." his townsman no doubt brought back to the dying painter thoughts of home. ever hopeful, like all consumptives, he was sure that a change of air would cure him! [illustration: plate iv.--the embarkment for cythera (in the louvre, paris) in watteau finished, after a long delay, his _pièce de reception_ for the academy, the famous first study for "the embarkment for cythera." this picture was painted in seven days, and elaborated, but hardly improved, in the potsdam version. behold these ethereal and butterfly pilgrims of love preparing lackadaisically to be wafted in the ship with the rose-coloured sail to the abode of venus. on those lovely shores they will find no continuing city. watteau knows that.] he instructed gersaint to sell everything, and to make preparations for the journey home. he made the journey home, but not to valenciennes. he died suddenly in gersaint's arms on july , . he was artist to the end. "take away that crucifix," he said to the priest; "it pains me. how could an artist dare to treat my master so shockingly." it is said that one of the last remarks of this sensitive, ill-balanced, disease-stricken man of genius was to beg the abbé haranger to forgive him for having used his face and figure for his picture of "gilles." so at the age of thirty-seven he escaped finally from reality--that reality which his art had always avoided so delightfully and so convincingly. ii his art watteau's art appeals to everybody, and fascinates all who study it attentively. the lovely decorative pictures tell their own story; and for those who require more than a story in a picture, there is his craftsmanship, his originality, his personality; the delight of comparing one alluring achievement with another, and the interest in noting the inferiority of his followers--lancret, pater, and the rest--who annexed his manner but who could not annex the flame of his genius. visit the dulwich gallery, study and enjoy watteau's "ball under a colonnade," then go to hertford house and examine pater's copy of watteau's "ball." the fire of genius and glory of colour are gone. it is as stolid as paul potter's "bull." i have an especial affection for "the ball under a colonnade" at dulwich; for until the regal gift of hertford house to the nation, with its nine watteaus, this little "ball under a colonnade," and in a lesser degree its companion picture at dulwich, a "fête champêtre," were my first wanderings in the lyric land of watteau. the national gallery which, before the present director came into office, treated the french school with an indifference that almost amounted to disdain, does not possess a single watteau. edinburgh, glasgow, and cambridge own examples of varying merit, and there is one in that treasure-house of rare and strange things, sir john soane's museum in lincoln's inn fields. it is probable that the nation possesses yet another example. "a watteau in the jones' collection" was the surprising heading of an article in a recent number of the _burlington magazine_ by mr. claude phillips, who claims that the little watteau-like picture called "the swing" in the jones' collection at south kensington is a veritable watteau. germany is rich in watteaus, with ten at potsdam and five in berlin. france, which should be the richest, is poorer in number and importance than either germany or england, although there are ten examples in the louvre, including the original "embarkment for cythera," "l'indifférent," and "jupiter and antiope." [illustration: plate v.--jupiter and antiope (in the louvre, paris) "jupiter and antiope" suggests titian and rubens filtered through watteau. this nude studied from life, not painted from his drawings, is more laboured than his other pictures, but the loss of spontaneity in the colour is compensated by the truth and beauty of the abandon of the beautiful limbs in repose. brown jupiter, blonde venus--no attenuation of the truth here--lights loaded, browns rich with pearly reflections on the fair skin.] let us return for a moment to "the ball under a colonnade" at dulwich, which from its own inherent charm and from its position in that quiet and reposeful gallery may fitly serve as an introduction to the art of watteau. take a chair--they permit it at dulwich--and seat yourself before it. the picture has suffered, alas! somewhat from time, which has almost obliterated the fairy-like fountain. but how charming the picture is still; how gracious and debonair are the two dancing figures; how fascinating the broken colour in the woman's green-striped, rose skirt and in the man's blue butterfly dress. there are seventy-three figures in the small canvas, ft. - / in. by ft. / in. you can almost hear the musicians playing, the fall of water from the fading fountain, the rustle of leaves, and the ripple of laughter. think of the painters, dead and gone, who have loved this "ball under a colonnade." constable was one of them. he was not afraid to praise a picture when he liked it. listen to this--constable's criticism of a copy that leslie had made of watteau's "ball." he asked constable what he thought of the copy, and the great man answered:-- "your copy looks colder than the original, which seems as if painted in honey--so mellow, so tender, so soft, and so delicious; so i trust yours will be; but be satisfied if you but touch the hem of his garment, for this inscrutable and exquisite thing would vulgarise even rubens and paul veronese." the amount of work done by watteau, accused by his friend de caylus of idleness, was enormous. a chronological list is almost impossible, because many of his works are lost or were destroyed during the revolution. watteau painted anything and everything, during his connection with gillot and audran, from pictures to powder-boxes, never considering that his art was too high and lofty for the embellishment of any object suitable for painting upon. his work may be divided into three classes: first manner--italian comedy and decorative work; second--military scenes; third and finest manner--the pastorals. as a boy he produced some military pictures, and he reverted to them while with audran. it is difficult to place chronologically any given subject, for while we may arbitrarily classify a picture as belonging to one period or another, his italian comedy scenes, belonging to the first period, persisted to the end. with the exception of his boyish endeavours, inspired by teniers before he visited paris, his first manner was almost entirely decorative, and included paintings on screens, coach panels, and furniture. the military pictures belong to a short period dating from his success in selling them to sirois and their approval by the academy. they are few in number--thirteen only were engraved. the year was the beginning of his recognition and the end of poverty. between this date and he produced his marvellous nudes. of all watteau's pictures the nudes seem undoubtedly to have been painted from nature and not from drawings. they are too true to life, too well observed. all his other pictures, even the greatest of his pastorals, have the air of being imagined. his drawings were his documents, and these, like the nudes, were of course made direct from nature. the fantasy of his pictures is founded on fact, but it is fantasy which sees only what it wishes to see--the rhythmic line, the rainbow colour, the happy melancholy. the year was big with significance to watteau; he awoke in his own land--dream-land of his pastorals. then he began to live, and there were before him but five short years of life. he never again left this land of fantasy--except when, on his return from london, he painted "gersaint's sign," that model of modishness and grace, painted in eight mornings, representing gersaint's shop where _élégantes_ buy masterpieces from shop-keepers as elegant as themselves. this picture, which is now in the possession of the german emperor, has for some mysterious reason been divided into two portions. in , as i have related, he finished after a long delay his _pièce de reception_ for the academy, the famous first study for the "embarkment for cythera." what can be said of this picture, or of the more finished replica at potsdam, that has not already been said a score of times? it is referred to and described in the prologue to this book as one of his significant pictures. it moves in a rhythm of life, of love, of colour; rose reds, golden yellows, faint purples, greys of every gamut, meeting and melting--one perfect whole, and over all is a lingering regret of "i know not what." this picture was painted in seven days, and elaborated, but hardly improved, in the potsdam version. turn from this consummate work to his early "la vraie gaieté," inspired by teniers, which in essence is the same picture as "the ball under a colonnade" at dulwich, and even the "amusements champêtres" and the "champs elysées" at hertford house. the clothes are changed, the handling has become lighter and more accomplished--that is all. the observer, that saturnine, detached, cynical figure, who appears in so many of watteau's pictures, is already present in "la vraie gaieté." 'this solitary figure is, as i have already said, the symbol of watteau himself, ever aloof, ever contemptuous, even when sharing in the scenic world of watteau, where life, if not really true, is certainly not false. his people are lotus-eaters, who are come to a land where it is always afternoon, where "the charmed sunset lingered low adown in the red west ... and many a winding vale and meadow, set with slender galingale." a mild melancholy possesses the inhabitants of this dream-world, for they are happy and yet a little sad, musing on what can never be. through this dream-world "l'indifférent" trips lightly, typical of watteau, rainbow-hued, mercurial, his indifference assumed, not troubling to conceal the sad thoughtfulness that lurks in his expression. we do not believe in his snapping fingers and his jaunty air. what colour are his beautiful garments? rosy white, greeny white, lavendar white with rose red knots, and rose red mantle lined with bluebell blue, white frills falling over the sensitive hands, his butterfly decorations rustling as he passes--"l'indifférent." the technique of the picture, in its modern chromatic use of colour, is marvellous. the hues of the rainbow meander through it all. who can describe watteau's colour or his fashion of trickling on the paint, as fascinating in its way as the method of frans hals, whose seduction is "the way he paints," not what he paints? hals, the great master of character, frank, open, plebeian, is akin in technique to watteau. what æsthetic joy these masters of technique give us as we study the manipulation of their paint. hals flicks on his ruffles frankly, joyously--brutally. watteau, seemingly just for joy in the colour, trickles--there is no other word for it--one luscious colour over another, like liquid jewels embedded in gold. one may stand for hours at hertford house in front of any of his pictures and quite forget the subject in delight of the workmanship. consider "the music lesson." in colour it is rose and white. the man's garments are neither rose, nor white, nor yellow, and yet they are all three. the rose of the woman's rosette repeats the carmines of her complexion. the composition is charming. the movement, pose, and costume of the players is the same as the musicians in the "musical party," also at hertford house. delightful too in "gilles and his family." gilles is dressed in thin, white, supple satin, lined with rose and striped with faint blue, and his white mantle is lined with blue. the dark bias of the guitar binds the group of people together, all of whom it touches or crosses. a seated woman nurses a little black and white dog, while a child nestles up to her, peeping beneath the guitar; the faces are more alert and smiling than usual, and the picture, although less pearly than "the music lesson," is not less beautiful in colour. "jupiter and antiope" at the louvre suggests titian and rubens filtered through watteau. this nude studied from life, not painted from his drawings, is more laboured than his other pictures, but the loss of spontaneity in the colour is compensated by the truth and beauty of the abandon of the beautiful limbs in repose. brown jupiter, blonde venus--no attenuation of the truth here--lights loaded, browns rich, with pearly reflections on the fair skin. the attribution of the delightful "pastoral" at the louvre, although generally accepted, has been questioned. the elegant little lady shepherdess is in rose red, a red that seems to belong only to velazquez and to watteau; she sits watching, not the flock of one sheep and one wondering dog, no! she is listening to the arcadian shepherd playing his flute. very watteau-like is the landscape. turn from these little works to the larger pictures, such as "the return from the chase," painted for his patron m. de julienne towards the end of his life--a marvel of rhythmic line and tone; and to "les amusements champêtres"--a bouquet of colour like no other colour, old rose, old blue, silvery yellow, prune purple, all partaking one of the other. in the distance people are sitting and standing and dancing in colours unrivalled. so we may pass through the whole range of his production finding constantly some new surprise of colour, some new mastery in the weaving of his webs. call watteau, if you like, a painter of the frivolous side of life, but you must also call him one of the few originals whose pictures vivify because they stimulate, and because they excite interest in his method which marked a new epoch in art. "we consider watteau," says his countryman, m. camille mauclair, "the most original and most representative master of french art; watteau, delacroix, and monet are the three beacons of that art." [illustration: plate vi.--the fountain (in the wallace collection) one of his smaller pictures, - / ins. high by - / wide, called also "la cascade." it attracts attention by reason of the somewhat theatrical way in which the dainty silhouette of the figures is set against the opening between the trees. but how charming are these figures bathed in light and mirrored in the pool that ripples at their feet.] iii his place in art: predecessors and influence if i were asked what new thing watteau gave to the world, i would answer that he humanised the art of his country and century, and drew men from pomposity to his own intimate and dream-like reality under the symbols of gallantry and masquerade. he was also the pioneer of impressionism, the discoverer of the decomposition of tones, and the link, to quote m. mauclair, that connects ruysdael and claude lorrain with turner, monticelli, and claude monet. the eighteenth century in france which he inaugurated is a sunlit garden full of flowers compared to a cold court in some prison palace, to which the seventeenth century of academic imitation of the lesser italians may be likened. correct, pompous, lifeless, le brun, le sueur, and his other forerunners, have left us little but a sense of boredom, a warning how not to paint, and the assurance that, unless a school is founded on a personal study of nature, that school dies with its founder. the decadence of italian art is said to date from raphael. certain it is that bombastic art dates from the greatest artist--michelangelo. the father of the chromo is correggio. watteau, a "little master," as some are pleased to call him, has had an influence on art that persists to-day, an influence intimate and human. certainly he made life more beautiful. departing for cythera with watteau's dames and gallants means more to us of intelligence in art than acres of classic pictures of gods, temples and heroes untouched by the warmth of personality and incisiveness of observation. we are fatigued and unconvinced in the rooms at the louvre devoted to le sueur's series of pictures depicting the life of st. bruno. we are glad before the little earnest portraits of corneille, clouet, and fouquet hanging in the next room. the love of beauty and the simple religion of the primitives is transferred to us. we feel it to be true that "nothing can wash the balm from an anointed king," in looking at the portrait of charles i., king, dandy, and gentleman, touched as it is with van dyck's great gift of personal vision; but le sueur and le brun say nothing, except perhaps to make us grudge the wall space their pictures occupy. watteau is the lure that led france back to nature; his real-unreal pleasances are the gardens where grew the flowers (slips from older stock, if you will) called modern movement, impressionism, and pointillism. "the embarkment for cythera" has been called the first impressionist picture. once again through watteau the natural art of the north prevailed over the art of the south as in the time of the burgundian franco-flemish renaissance. watteau is true successor to his masters teniers and rubens. teniers' subjects may be said to persist to the end of his short but full artistic life, and his _fêtes galantes_, those perfect expressions of his matured art, are teniers' subjects made his own; but the uncouth flemish peasants become graceful dames and gallants. teniers' boors rollick through the day and night boisterously, leaving nothing for to-morrow, unless it be a headache. watteau's dames and gallants are touched with happy melancholy. their light malady of heartache for unattained desires is obviously more beautiful pictorially than the headaches of hilarious boors. your true artist has delicate _antennæ_ and is sensitive to everything that he sees and feels; but when he retires within himself, the memory of all that he felt, of warmth or cold, fine or unfine, returns to him. the influence of many men watteau felt. i place them in the order of their influence--teniers, rubens, gillot, audran, titian, and veronese. the example of each taught him something, but the artist in him selected ingredients of their genius and combined them into a new and original one--his own. the wholesome influence of rubens on painters has been enormous. he did not make imitators, but he inspired many great men to "get the look of their own eyes," not the look of his; robust, normal, and generous of nature, the contagion of his truth is so immediate that all who come in contact with it must look at nature unblinkingly, and receive a fresh impulse from his bravery. velazquez was a better painter after he had talked and worked on the hillside above the escorial with rubens; van dyck was his pupil, and watteau is of his artistic progeny. the feminine taste of velazquez, van dyck, and watteau was made more virile by contact with rubens, whose taste many of us may condemn, and whose influence for good we are so apt to overlook. from titian watteau borrowed warmth, and from veronese coolness of colour; gillot, the decorative painter, showed him his own inherent power; audran, too, helped him, and the luxembourg gardens and gallery aided his artistic development. no doubt the great artist might be shut in a cell, and still his genius would bring forth its work unnourished by influence or propinquity to other talents; it might even show a rarer quality. but ninety-nine in a hundred derive from their forebears, and it is interesting to follow the career of a great man, to pursue the influences that formed him, and to see in the end how his individuality asserted itself. it were churlish in any student and lover of watteau not to know and acknowledge the happy effect upon him of the masters he admired. watteau was of flemish origin, for valenciennes, where he was born, became french only seven years before his birth. conquest cannot in seven years change the characteristics of a people. watteau's art is consequently distinctly flemish, but modified by french taste; he became an artistic composite of flemish technical sanity and french intelligence and fervour. he was an exotic that shot up in the forcing-house of his exacting genius, extracting vitality from rubens the fertiliser, inspiration from teniers, colour from titian and veronese, and encouragement from gillot and audran. genius is a great gift lent by nature to the few; but nature is inexorable in demanding the return of the fruits of the gift, as if man were but a casket for its safe keeping; when the end comes he must have proved his worth as custodian, be the time long, as in the case of a da vinci or a michaelangelo, or short, as in the case of a raphael or a watteau. the shorter the time given for the justification of the gift the stronger often is the capacity for effort, so that the sum total of the achievement of the short life often seems to exceed that of the long life. michaelangelo lived to be very old. when this "greatest artist" died he left his work unfinished. raphael died young, but his achievement was prodigious. watteau's short sad life of illness and discontent produced more than twelve hundred items. watteau began his artistic career influenced in technique by the _petits toucheurs_, the sympathetic little masters of the netherlands to whom he was kin (m. de julienne calls him in his catalogue "_peintre flamand de l'academie royale_"). soon the big touch of rubens intrudes and the technique broadens; next titian obsesses him, and the shadows under the trees in the luxembourg gardens as he watches grow warmer to the watcher, and colour begins to glow; veronese intervenes, and cooler tones are apparent--and these three great masters of breadth and truth, of warmth and temperament, of chill stateliness, combine in the mind's eye of watteau. the pleasant places in the gardens of the luxembourg are peopled with ladies and gallants and "little ladies" and "little gallants," and, as he walks and watches, teniers' subjects flit across his vision, and the forms of rubens' rosy and ample matrons. how would titian have painted yonder dark woman of the warm colour and deep red hair walking down the glade? the leaves on the trees rustle in the summer air. light flickers on silken frocks, cold reflections on green. something whispers to his discontent "paint the scene as you see it," draw the lady sitting on the grass, her back toward you, in the shot silk frock of bronze and green, and the other standing near, tall and elegant, in rose and yellow. what colour is it? "the colour of a sun-browned wood-nymph's thigh." and her hands behind her back. what hands! "hands must be better painted than heads, being more difficult." beyond in the gardens fountains and little children play; tall trees throw shadows on beauty pouting, the indifferent lover tip-toes away, not so indifferent as he would have the pouting one believe. there is movement toward the gates of the palace gardens; children run tripping over tiny dogs led by lute string ribbons; soldiers and music. watteau finds himself, not wholly perhaps, but the formative period has passed. the artist is made; is himself, gives himself. no longer will the classicists prevail; no longer will art be cold and eclectic. the youth from valenciennes will call paris back to nature, and through a temperament will show the world familiar things, will let his imagination play, taking his good where he finds it, but resolving it into something that is his own. he will see with his own eyes. he will paint pictures as he pleases. [illustration: plate vii.--fÊte champÊtre (in the national gallery of scotland, edinburgh) bleak edinburgh is rich in the possession of this picture of dreamy colour. the hour is sunset; the place is where you will, but the title, "fête champêtre," suits the scene of dalliance quite as well as any other name; a similar picture at dresden is called by m. mauclair "the terrace party." you perceive here the typical watteau figures, and behind is a landscape that has all the idealistic charm of his rendering of nature.] when watteau, perhaps unknown to himself, resolved to be himself, a new school was born in france, a school whose influence still prevails. we are fond of taking credit to ourselves for the initiation of the modern school of landscape. we remember with pride the day in when the french salon was illumined with three of constable's pictures; we also remember the acknowledgment by french painters of the inspiration of turner and bonnington; but it would be interesting to follow back their inspiration; and it would not be difficult to trace monet's division of tones and envelope of air to watteau. influence in art and inspiration is a ball that is tossed back and forth. if constable, turner, and bonnington influenced the french school they owe allegiance to watteau, and through him to "the bull in art," rubens, who was master to van dyck, the founder of the english school. does gainsborough's lovely "perdita" in the wallace collection owe nothing of its exquisite femininity, sweet melancholy, and woodland background, to watteau? constable and turner were but paying old debts, for the painter of the _fêtes galantes_ had shown the beauty of landscape and made it something more than a setting for figures. he taught also that nature is intimate and familiar with accidental beauty of sunlight and twilight, misty horizons, and lovable little things near to us; not swept and garnished and coldly unreal, but a world where human beings may wander happily with nature on a level with their own eyes; not a world where only titans and gods roam through pseudo-classical scenes. in watteau's pictures poetry and reality dwell in harmony. he proved their compatibility; he showed that all the world is a vision seen through a temperament. it is unjust to attribute to watteau's influence only the frivolous school of painters which immediately followed him; they were incidents of the reaction of their time against the dull and the pedantic. they copied him, but they missed his sincerity; they lacked his genius; they were begotten of their age when dulness tired of being good and grew wanton. but even his followers have more of life and warmth and beauty than his predecessors, the frigid and attenuated school of le brun. fragonard is a master and lives; we are rising to a new appreciation of him; and pater and lancret do not tire us even if they are "soulless watteaus." le brun and his school are dead, and must one day be buried in the cellars of the louvre to make way for their betters--the painters inspired by the flemish frenchman--antoine watteau--who made possible the modern school. from him constable, turner, gainsborough, corot, manet and monet derived. what an achievement for a short life of thirty-seven years! iv his critics and admirers most critics of watteau allow something of his rhythmic sense and beauty of colour to tinge their appreciations. ordinary statements of facts seem inadequate to express the feeling he evokes, whether the writer be concerned with the "outwardness" of his genius, like the brothers de goncourt, or the "inwardness" of it, like m. camille mauclair. instinctively language becomes flowery, and light and lovely words rise spontaneously to re-echo in another medium the music of his pictures. according to our temperament and taste we are influenced by the familiar-and-candid friend standpoint of de caylus; by the de goncourts' searching analysis clothed in apt and sparkling words; by m. camille mauclair's soul-search into the effect on watteau's life of the disease from which he suffered, or by the calm and cultivated mind of walter pater with its rare and sympathetic insight, and that "tact of omission" which he extolls in watteau. the source of all the biographies is the memoir of the comte de caylus, which was lost from the archives of the academy, and discovered by the brothers de goncourt in a second-hand book-shop. while we are grateful for the information de caylus's memoir contains, we can but smile at the judgment of a friend and admirer on a contemporary so far in advance of his age as watteau. solemn de caylus entirely failed to understand the real man and artist. apart from the details he gives of watteau's life, the passages which describe his method of work are the most interesting. he informs us that watteau could never be an heroic or allegorical painter (thank heaven!), not being trained academically; he also tells us that his reflections on painting were profound, and that his execution was inferior to his ideas; that he had no knowledge of anatomy, having hardly ever drawn from the nude, so that he neither understood it nor was able to express it. de caylus also calls watteau "mannered," but admits that he was endowed with charm, and so on, and so on. watteau's nudes are studied, and, what is more, achieved. recall any one of them, "the toilet," "antiope," "the judgment of paris"--they are as documentary as his drawings. the values and reflected lights of his nude bodies are academic enough to satisfy a modern student at julian's, the most carping and exacting of critics. de caylus, while deploring watteau's methods of technique, contributes the interesting information that he preferred to use his paints liquid; that he rubbed his pictures all over with oil and repainted over this surface; also that he was slovenly in his habits, rarely cleaning his palette, and allowing days to pass without setting it afresh; that his pot of medium was full of dirt and dust and the sediment of used colours, and that he was idle and indolent. well, as to watteau's methods, i prefer to think that the surface of oil while it mellows preserves also. the worst artists are often the most solicitous of their mediums, and the laborious industry of the mediocre painter is often laborious idleness. a man who can leave behind him, after a short life, the quality and quantity of work bequeathed to the world by watteau refutes, by that work, accusations of indolence and idleness. neither can i admit that he was mannered. his manner was different from the clique of painters then in vogue, and it is obvious that he had a manner, but this very manner is his originality. of course his pictures are "invented," but invented from the accumulated facts of his own drawings, wrested from life hurriedly, for he had very little time, and yet showing no marks of haste. if, as m. mauclair says, "there exists in intellectual consumptives a condition of mind which seems to concentrate all those preceptions of supreme delicacy conferred on noble minds by the presentiment of approaching death," we need not grieve that the lives of such men as keats, watteau, and schubert were short. "the body's disease caused a mystic exaltation in the soul, whose productions, far from being touched by debility or decadence, are rather the concentration of extreme power and violent emotion." this intelligent and sympathetic critic goes on to say that the very unwholesomeness of body is marked by "unmistakable health of mind," which may indeed be a "courageous facing of earthly finality," but is also a fertile field in which great enterprises are undertaken and achieved. as i have said, according to your temperament you may take watteau seriously, lightly, joyously or sadly. there is recompense whether you feel that he is the great and profound master m. mauclair calls him, or whether you range yourself with the de goncourts, who describe him as "a painter of utopias, a beautifier, the most amiable and determined of liars, a painter of pictures where the fiddles of lérida play marches that lead the way to death, where smart la tulipe struts and swaggers, and manon flirts between two gun shots, and a host of little love-birds flutter, light-heartedly, into war's stern discipline." the de goncourts note that there is in watteau's work "murmurs of vague and slow harmony behind the laughing words," and that a "musical sadness gently contagious exhales from these _fêtes galantes_. like the seduction of venice, i know not what veiled poetry breathes sweet and low to our charmed senses." m. mauclair asserts that no one has ever understood watteau so well as verlaine, and that "his exquisite little volume of poems _fêtes galantes_ is an absolute transposition of the painter's work"; but it is the brilliant appreciation of the de goncourts that has had the strongest influence on subsequent writers, so admirably do they reveal watteau, so like the colour of his pictures are the colours of their words, so adequate is their exposition of one side of watteau's fascination. they claim watteau as the great poet of the eighteenth century, and then proceed to give in glittering prose a penetrating and persuasive criticism, apostrophising watteau's art as "a country refreshed by fountains, decorated with marbles and statues, and peopled by naiades, a country lovable and radiant, far from a jealous world, where baskets of flowers swing from bending trees; where fields are full of music, gardens full of roses and tangled vines; a france where the pines of italy grow, where villages are gay with weddings, coaches, ceremonies and festal attire, and violins and flutes conduct to a _temple jesuite_ the marriage of nature and the opera." [illustration: plate viii.--the music lesson (in the wallace collection) watteau, seemingly just for joy in the colour, trickles--there is no other word for it--one luscious colour over another, like liquid jewels embedded in gold. the colour fascinates. is it rose and white? the man's garments are neither rose, nor white, nor yellow, and yet they are all three. the rose of the woman's rosette repeats the carmines of her complexion. the composition is charming.] "_la mode de watteau_--that divine tailor whose artist scissors have fashioned playfully the delight in disorder, the morning _négligé_, and the beautiful ceremonious garments of the afternoon. fairy scissors dowering the times to come with fashions from the 'thousand and one nights.' beribboned scissors of watteau, what a delightful realm of coquetry you cut from the bigoted realm of the maintenon!" how different in manner and method is walter pater's "imaginary portrait," called "a prince of court painters: extracts from an old french journal." calmly this subtle analysis begins, which shows a deeper insight into the personality of watteau than either the brothers de goncourt, or m. mauclair, who calls pater's "imaginary portrait" a "whimsical interpretation." i have read many books about the painter of the _fêtes galantes_, but i always return to pater's "whimsical portrait," for it gives the very atmosphere of his artistic descent and development, from the age of seventeen to the last year of his life. missing no dominant event, misusing no legends, cast in the form of a diary, the narrative is made convincingly real by pater's sympathetic imagination. these extracts are from an imaginary old french journal, kept apparently by an elder sister of jean baptiste pater, watteau's pupil. this lonely and sensitive lady, who has evidently lost her cloistral heart to the unconcerned painter, is living in valenciennes, watteau's birthplace. the first entry is dated:-- "valenciennes, _september _. "they have been renovating my father's large workroom.... among old watteau's work-people came his son, 'the genius,' my father's godson and namesake, a dark-haired youth, whose large, unquiet eyes seemed perpetually wandering to the various drawings which lie exposed here. my father will have it that he is a genius indeed and a painter born.... and just where the crowd was busiest young antony was found, hoisted into one of those empty niches of the old _hôtel de ville_, sketching the scene to the life, but with a kind of grace--a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed out to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own window--which has made trite old harlequin, clown, and columbine seem like people in some fairyland.... his father will hear nothing of educating him as a painter." "_october ._ "chiefly through the solicitations of my father, old watteau has consented to place antony with a teacher of painting here.... ah! such gifts as his, surely, may once in a way make much industry seem worth while.... he is apt, in truth, to fall out too hastily with himself and what he produces.... yes! i could fancy myself offended by a sort of irony which sometimes crosses the half melancholy sweetness of manner habitual with him; only that, as i can see, he treats himself to the same quality." so this gentle woman continues to record in her diary, as if musing on the life of one she loved, the salient happenings in antony watteau's career. nothing escapes walter pater's sympathy and understanding, so that at the end we come to a perfect appreciation of his reading of watteau. this essay, in the form of a journal, is a little masterpiece about a "little master." under august we find the following:-- "antony, looking well, in his new-fashioned, long-skirted coat, and taller than he really is, made us bring our cream and wild strawberries out of doors, ranging ourselves according to his judgment (for a hasty sketch in that big pocket-book he carries) on the soft slope of one of those fresh spaces in the wood, where the trees unclose a little, while jean-baptiste and my younger sister danced a minuet on the grass, to the notes of some strolling lutanist, who had found us out. he is visibly cheerful at the thought of his return to paris, and became for a moment freer and more animated than i have ever yet seen him, as he discoursed to us about the paintings of peter paul rubens in the church here." under august she writes: "methinks antony watteau reproduces that gallant world, those patched and powdered ladies and fine cavaliers, so much to its own satisfaction, partly because he despises it; if this be a possible condition of excellent artistic production--he dignifies, by what in him is neither more nor less than a profound melancholy, the essential insignificance of what he wills to touch in all that, transforming its mere prettiness into grace. it looks certainly very graceful, fresh, animated, 'piquant,' as they love to say--yes! and withal, i repeat, perfectly pure, and may well congratulate itself on the loan of a fallacious grace not its own." we are shown his restless nostalgia, his progress, success, and journeying to and fro, his broidery of the world he painted, until, as she says of a summer, "a kind of infectious sentiment passed upon us, like an efflux from its flowers and flower-like architecture." "_january ._ "those sharply-arched brows, those restless eyes which seem larger than ever--something that seizes on one, and is almost terrible, in his expression--speak clearly, and irresistibly set one on the thought of a summing up of his life." and then the end under date july :-- "antony watteau departed suddenly, in the arms of m. gersaint, on one of the late hot days of july. at the last moment he had been at work upon a crucifix for the good _curé_ of nogent, liking little the very rude one he possessed. he died with all the sentiments of religion. "he has been a sick man all his life. he was always a seeker after something in the world that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all." epilogue the greatest gift in art is personality. but all masters are not of equal personality. indeed, so rare is the gift in its fulness, that in the whole field of art there are but a few who appear as planets in the monotony of sidereal excellence. luminous examples of this quality of personality are such originals as donatello, holbein, vermeer of delft, and watteau, to mention only a few of the most lovable. that something in an artist which finds a new way to express an old thing is the rarest and most to be desired of gifts. this gift watteau had in the highest degree. he originated a grace unsurpassed in its way--dare i say it?--even by the greeks. attic simplicity of grace is grander, but not more beautiful, not more intimately beautiful. the greeks gave us the grand beauty of form; watteau gives us the beauty of caprice, of frills and fripperies; but his people are adorned by garments that lend them grace; his women walking are rhythmical lines, sitting they are silhouettes of delight, their garments enhancing beauty, not hiding it. watteau is the great master of the eighteenth century in france, a century distinctly feminine. to say that he is the most feminine painter that ever lived is in no sense a disparagement, for to this quality of grace and daintiness, of coquetry and caprice, of melancholy and longing, was united a very masculine quality of craft and originality in craft. we tingle with delight in looking at his luscious colour and studying the mastery of its application. what artist has not known the envious desire to possess one of his drawings, the part of his achievement which entitles him to be ranked with the greatest, so truthful, so full of subtle distinction of line, whether it be a blackamoor's face or a beauty's back. the origin of the broken tone in modern art is his. from him we may trace the modern impressionist movement, and from him modern pointillism. what is impressionism, and what is pointillism? impressionism is the elimination of the little, the giving of the large truth, the instantaneous impression of vision; but all vision is not the same, and as the lens of the looking eye varies, so the impression will vary. we may teach ourselves to see little or much, our memory may be accurate or false, according to our gifts. emerson says: "our difference of wit appears to be only a difference of impressionability or power to appreciate faint, fainter, and infinitely faintest voices and visions." this faculty of seeing at the first glance "faint, fainter, and infinitely faintest," the impressionist claims. he may be so impressionable, or so little capable of sensitiveness to impression, that his picture in one instance may be fuller of fine truths than the most laborious idleness of finish can make it, and in the other his lack of sensitiveness to impression may be a mere jumble of decomposed colour understood only by himself. pointillism is the application of pure colour to the canvas in small streaks or dots, and has become part of the doctrine of the impressionists. to them it represents the decomposition of light; the streak and dot--broken colour--is used to increase the appearance of the vibration of light, which it does in a marvellous manner. the use of broken colour was one of watteau's characteristics, and is part of the charm and originality of his technique. even his inconsistencies have charm. his drawings were from the life; his nudes were also from the life, so true to nature are they, so very modern as to reflection and value, with the added watteau grace. but, let me confess it, the modern craftsman more wedded to truth than inspiration may feel less conviction of his greatness in examining his pictures because, admire his colour and technique as much as we will, we cannot but feel that in his "invented" pictures watteau's inspiration is what the student in france calls _chic_. and yet who would have them different? his pastorals may be "_chic'd_," but there they are, done--unrivalled, supreme. eighteenth-century art in france means, for most of us, watteau. he is the fitting master of a century in which women played so great a part. he did not immortalise any woman. no mona lisa, no giovanna tornabuoni, no emma lady hamilton, lives through his brush. he immortalised women--not any particular woman; he created a type, the watteau type--adorable, dainty, and fragrant as a flower. she has no name, no place of abode since watteau died. he saw her in his dream-life, held her for a moment as she flitted past, so she remains: eternally young, eternally free. "fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave the song, nor ever can those trees be bare; she cannot fade, ... for ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!" the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh the whistler book works of sadakichi hartmann shakespeare in art $ . japanese art . the whistler book . a history of american art vols. . l. c. page & company beacon st., boston, mass. [illustration: _james mcneill whistler from the painting by boldini_] the whistler book _a monograph of the life and position in art of james mcneill whistler, together with a careful study of his more important works_ by sadakichi hartmann author of "a history of american art," "japanese art," etc. with fifty-seven reproductions of mr. whistler's most important works l. c. page & company boston * * * mdccccx _copyright_, _ _, by l. c. page & company. (incorporated) entered at stationer's hall, london * * * * * _all rights reserved_ first impression, october, _electrotyped and printed by_ _the colonial press_ _c. h. simonds & co., boston, u.s.a._ to those painters upon whose shoulders the black mantle of whistler's muse may fall contents chapter page i. introductory--white chrysanthemums ii. quartier latin and chelsea iii. the butterfly iv. the art of omission v. on light and tone problems vi. symphonies in interior decoration vii. visions and identifications viii. in quest of line expression ix. moss-like gradations x. whistler's iconoclasm xi. as his friends knew him xii. the story of the beautiful bibliography principal magazine articles principal paintings nocturnes index list of illustrations page portrait of james mcneill whistler, by boldini (_see page _) _frontispiece_ the self portrait of pen and ink sketch, made at west point drawing made for the united states coast and geodetic survey portrait sketch of fantin-latour "hommage à delacroix," by fantin-latour the woman in white _owned by john h. whittemore._ arrangement in black: f. r. leyland _national gallery, washington._ jo (etching) wapping wharf (etching) harmony in green and rose: the music room _owned by frank j. hecker._ lange leizen of the six marks: purple and rose _owned by john g. johnson._ the princess of the porcelain land _national gallery, washington._ symphony in white, ii: the little white girl _owned by arthur studd._ on the balcony: variations in flesh-colour and green _national gallery, washington._ nocturne in black and gold: the falling rocket _owned by mrs. samuel untermyer._ nocturne in blue and gold: old battersea bridge _tate gallery, london._ nocturne in gray and gold: chelsea, snow nocturne in blue and silver lady in gray _courtesy of the metropolitan museum, new york._ "l'andalusienne" _owned by john h. whittemore._ sir henry irving as philip ii _courtesy of the metropolitan museum, new york._ arrangement in black and white: lady meux (no. ) arrangement in black: senor pablo sarasate _carnegie art institute, pittsburg._ shutter decoration, peacock room arrangement in gray and green: miss alexander eagle wharf (etching) at the piano arrangement in black and brown: miss rose corder _owned by richard a. canfield._ arrangement in black: lady archibald campbell (the yellow buskin) _wilstach gallery, philadelphia._ arrangement in black and gold: comte de montesquiou _owned by richard a. canfield._ arrangement in black and gray: thomas carlyle _city art gallery, glasgow._ arrangement in black and gray: the artist's mother _luxembourg gallery, paris._ "la vieille aux loques" (etching) street in saverne (etching) portrait of drouet (etching) black lion wharf (etching) wapping, on the thames (etching) old hungerford bridge (etching) the silent canal (etching) view of amsterdam (etching) nocturne (lithograph) little rose of lyme regis _boston museum of fine arts._ study of nude figure (chalk drawing) pastel study _owned by th. r. way._ archway, venice (pastel) _owned by howard mansfield._ the japanese dress (pastel) _owned by howard mansfield._ mr. kennedy: portrait study _courtesy of the metropolitan museum, new york._ the lime burner (etching) portrait of stéphane mallarmé (lithograph) arrangement in flesh-colour and black: theodore duret the unsafe tenement (etching) in the sunshine (etching) the pool (etching) arrangement in black and white: "l'américaine" the fiddler (etching) nocturne in brown and silver: old battersea bridge the whistler book chapter i.--introductory white chrysanthemums[ ] [footnote : published originally in "camera work," .] the white chrysanthemum is my favourite flower. there are other flowers, i grant, perhaps more beautiful, which i cannot help admiring, but the white chrysanthemum somehow appeals to me more than any other flower. why? that is more than i can tell. the unconscious movements of our soul activity cannot be turned into sodden prose. what would be the use of having a favourite flower if one could give any reason for liking it? it merely reveals that part of our personality, not to be logically explained, which rises within us like the reminiscences of some former soul existence. there are colours and certain sounds and odours which effect me similarly. whenever i gaze at a white chrysanthemum, my mind becomes conscious of something which concerns my life alone; something which i would like to express in my art, but which i shall never be able to realize, at least not in the vague and, at the same time, convincing manner the flower conveys it to me. i am also fond of displaying it occasionally in my buttonhole; not for effect, however, but simply because i want other people to know who i am; for those human beings who are sensitive to the charms of the chrysanthemum, must hail from the same country in which my soul abides, and i should like to meet them. i should not have much to say to them--souls are not talkative--but we should make curtsies, and hand white chrysanthemums to one another. whistler was busy all his life painting just such white chrysanthemums. you smile? well, i think i can persuade you to accept my point of view. you are probably aware that whistler was opposed to realism. the realists endorse every faithful reproduction of facts. also, whistler believed all objects beautiful, but only under certain conditions, at certain favoured moments. it is at long intervals and on rare occasions that nature and human life reveal their highest beauty. it was whistler's life-long endeavour to fix such supreme and happy moments, the white chrysanthemums of his æsthetic creed, upon his canvases. have you never seen a country lass and thought she should be dressed up as a page--her limbs have such a lyrical twist, as george meredith would say--she should stand on the steps of a throne, and the hall should be illuminated with a thousand candles? have you never met a new england girl, and thought that she was ill-suited to her present surroundings, that she would look well only standing on the porch of some old colonial mansion, in the evening, when odours of the pelargoniums and gladioli begin to fill the garden? have you not noticed that a bunch of cut flowers which looks beautiful in one vase may become ugly in another? and how often has it not happened to all of us that we were startled by a sudden revelation of beauty in a person whom we have known for years and who has looked rather commonplace to us? suddenly, through some expression of grief or joy, or merely through a passing light or shadow, all the hidden beauty bursts to the surface and surprises us with its fugitive charms. whistler's "at the piano," "the yellow buskin," "old battersea bridge," "chelsea: snow," are painted in that way. could you imagine his "yellow buskin lady" in any other way than buttoning her gloves, and glancing back, for a last time, over her shoulder, as she is walking away from you into grey distances! that peculiar turn of her body reveals the quintessence of her beauty. and that is the reason why whistler has painted her in that attitude. thus every object has its moment of supreme beauty. in life these moments are as fugitive as the fractions of a second. through art they can become a permanent and lasting enjoyment. the ancient greek believed in an ideal standard of beauty to which the whole universe had to conform. the modern artist, on the other hand, sees beauty only in such moments as are entirely individual to the forms and conditions of life he desires to portray. and as it pains him that his conception of beauty will die with him, he becomes an artist through the very endeavour of preserving at least a few fragments of it for his fellow-men. with whistler, this conception was largely a sense for tone, a realization of some dream in black and silvery grey, in pale gold or greenish blues. a vague flare of colour in some dark tonality was, to him, the island in the desert which he had to seek, unable to rest until he had found it. he saw life in visions, and his subjects were merely means to express them. in his "lady archibald campbell" he cared more for black and grey gradations and the yellow note of the buskin than for the fair sitter. the figure is, so to speak, invented in the character of the colour arrangement. whistler once said he would like best to paint for an audience that could dispense with the representation of objects and figures, with all pictorial actualities, and be satisfied solely with the music of colour. and why should we not profit by his lesson, and learn to look at pictures as we look at the flush of the evening sky, at a passing cloud, at the vision of a beautiful woman, or at a white chrysanthemum! chapter ii quartier latin and chelsea during jean françois raffaelli's sojourn in america i had occasion to ask him the rather futile question of how long it took a painter in paris to become famous. of course i referred to a man of superior abilities, and meant by fame an international reputation. he answered twenty years at least, and i replied that about twenty years more would be needed in america. whistler had a long time to wait before fame knocked at his door, although he had a local reputation in london and paris at forty. he was known as a man of curious ways, and an excellent etcher; but, with the exception of two medals, he had received no honours whatever for his paintings. his work still impressed by its novelty; but he had not yet captivated the public. he still had to fight for recognition, and, as long as a man has to do that, he is neither a popular nor a successful man. toward the middle of the seventies recognition appeared to come more readily. he seemed to know everybody of note, and everybody seemed to know him. his writings and controversies attracted considerable attention, his supremacy as an etcher had been admitted, and his pictures became more widely known. he had gathered around him a number of wealthy patrons, who were connoisseurs and keen appreciators of his talents. he was so successful financially in the latter part of his life that he had residences and studios in paris as well as in london. at paris his headquarters were in the rue du bac. in london he had various quarters,--on fulham road, tite street, langham street, alderney street, st. regents street, the vale, etc. going from one place to the other as his moods dictated to him, with an occasional sketching trip to venice, to holland or the northern parts of france, he lived the true life of the artist, quarrelled with his friends, delighted his admirers with the products of his fancies, and astounded the intelligent public on two continents with the caprices of his temper. strange to say, even at that time, his best work had already left his easel. he was busy with minor, but not less interesting, problems and devoted most of his time to etchings, pastels and lithographs. but it was at this time that his "ten o'clock" and "the gentle art of making enemies" were published; and when his "carlyle" found its way to the glasgow city gallery, and "the portrait of the artist's mother" was purchased by the luxembourg gallery at paris. comparatively little is known of whistler's private life. i wonder how many of his admirers, excepting his personal friends, were acquainted during his life-time with the fact that he was married, and could tell whom he had married. he remained a bachelor until his fifty-fourth year, when he married the widow of his friend e. w. godwin, the architect of the "white house." she was the daughter of john bernie philip, a sculptor, and was herself an etcher. they were married on aug. , . eight years later his wife died, may th, . how this man of moods and capricious tastes got along in married life the general public has never found out. his friends assure us that it was a happy union and that he was deeply devoted to his wife. he has painted her repeatedly, but the pictures do not betray any domestic secrets to the public. although whistler was fond of notoriety, and managed to keep himself continually before the public,--in the fullest limelight, so to speak,--he never allowed personal news and the details of his everyday life to claim the attention of the public. all his innumerable feuds and press displays were related to his work,--to his completed pictures and theories of art. he liked to play upon his personality, but only as far as the artist was concerned. he was peculiarly free from the taint of exploiting his own domestic affairs. he hated biographies and all references to his family life. even in his feuds with his old friends, f. r. leyland, and his brother-in-law, seymour haden, when he brutally dragged apparent private matters into the glare of publicity, the discriminating observer will notice that his controversies, sarcasms and interpretations refer solely to "art situations" and never descend to the low depths of personal abuse. [illustration: the self portrait of .] james mcneill whistler was born on july th (some say july th), , at lowell, mass. one of his ancestors, a dr. whistler, is frequently mentioned in pepys' delicious diary. he was baptized james abbott whistler in the church of st. anne, at lowell. his father, major george washington whistler, was a civil engineer and, during the first eight years of james' life, moved from lowell to stonington, connecticut, thence to springfield, massachusetts, and, finally, in , went to russia to superintend the construction of the railroad from st. petersburg to moscow. the following year the family sailed from boston to make their home in st. petersburg. this was the first impression the boy whistler received from the outside world, and no doubt the trip across the atlantic and the sojourn in a foreign country made a lasting impression upon him. russia, with its quaint old civilization and touches of barbaric splendour, was the country to excite the imagination of any boy, and the change from a new england village life to the metropolitan turmoil of st. petersburg would have left imperishable traces in any receptive mind. the father was paid lavishly and the boy was brought up in luxury. the first report of any art talent in the boy can be found in the reference, mentioned by several biographers, to his taking lessons at the imperial academy of sciences at st. petersburg. it had probably no particular bearing on his career, since art teaching in russia was traditional, and probably consisted of nothing but drawing from wooden models and plaster casts. it informs us, however, of the fact that he became familiar with the rudiments of drawing at an early age. of by far greater importance to his development were his visits to the hermitage. there he saw for the first time velasquez and he learnt to differentiate between painters who could paint and such who could only tell a story in line and colour. [illustration: pen and ink sketch, made at west point.] on the death of the father, april th, , the family returned to the united states and settled in stonington, conn., and young whistler attended school at pomfret, conn. in , seventeen years old, he entered the united states military academy at west point and was enrolled as james mcneill whistler, taking his mother's maiden name as a middle name. like poe, he does not seem to have been over-fond of a routine military career. no doubt something of the artist's temperament had awakened in him, and, like all young talents, he objected to regulated study, and tried to satisfy the vague aspirations of his unsettled consciousness with work that was more congenial to him. he left west point in july, . the technical discharge was "deficiency in chemistry," but it was probably general unfitness for a career of discipline and exactness. through some influence he received an appointment in the drawing division of the united states coast and geodetic survey at washington, d. c., at the salary of $ . a day, but he resigned two months later. the government records show that he worked only six and a half days in january and five and three-quarter days in february. he apparently had no taste for map designing and bird's-eye views. it is said he paid more attention to the deliberate drawing of little trees and detail than to the typographic facts. [illustration: drawing made for the united states coast and geodetic survey.] his military career had come to an end; he had to do something else, and he felt that he had to become an artist at any price. money was not over abundant in the whistler family, but there was sufficient to allow him a few years' leisure to study art wherever he chose, and so he went to paris, and joined the youthful band of artists, who fought for modernism and a new technique, and the glory of the _métier_, with an enthusiasm, a bravery and devotion that has rarely been encountered. there he lived the regular student life for four years. he entered the atelier of charles gleyre, but only stayed for a short while. he preferred to look about for himself. at one time he and young tissot made a copy of ingres' "angelique." whistler arrived in france shortly after the _coup d'état_. paris was not then what she is to-day. none of the chain of boulevards around the centre of the town, not even the boulevard of st. michael, which became the great thoroughfare for artists, were in existence in their present condition. but whistler had come at the time when paris was being reconstructed into one of the most beautiful cities of the world, and, when the imperial régime unfolded its full splendour. paris became intoxicated with its own beauty, and the social life blossomed forth in all its elegance and frivolity. during - whistler had a studio in the rue compagne première, boarding in madame lalouette's pension in the rue dauphine. for some time he also shared quarters with fantin-latour, who, with legros, was his most intimate friend during his student years. they saw each other daily, and it was on one of these occasions that he made the humourous sketch of latour, depicting him on a cold winter morning seated in bed, drawing, all dressed, with a top hat on his head. [illustration: portrait sketch of fantin-latour.] they were the days of henri murger's "la vie bohême," of _bon camaraderie_, eccentric days when every man sought to make his mark by peculiarities of dress, soft felt rubens' hats, velvet cloaks with the ends thrown over the shoulders, and other exotic garments. in one exhibition, in sheer audacity of youth, whistler appeared dressed in a japanese kimono. think of a man in a kimono in ! whistler at that time was a true bohemian. his little studio was his workshop, his temple, his parlour, his playhouse and his dormitory. he frequented the queer, interesting quarters that students seek,--quaint old _cafés_ where food was good as well as cheap, and character abundant. what is there so fascinating about the bohemian's life? the philistine, i fear, generally considers him an eccentric, indolent man, with no thought for the morrow, no notion of economy, no home save the place which affords him temporary shelter. he never stops to think that the bohemians are the men who make our songs, who paint our pictures, chisel marvellous creations out of wood and stone, compose our sweetest poems and write our newspapers. it is a grievous mistake to assume that they are merely a lot of idle, luckless fellows. they are men with brains of good quality, and hearts in the right place. all classes and trades of men have burdened the world with their wants and woes. not so the bohemian. he, too, has his heartaches and bitter disappointments, but who ever hears of them? the humourous tale over which you laugh so heartily, recounting the adventures of a poet in search of a publisher, had the author's personal experience for a basis. he could not sell his poems, but needed bread; so, out of his misfortune, he had good cheer. the ordinary man, rebuffed by fortune, would sit down and mourn himself into illness. the bohemian utilizes these very reverses, and both he and the world are the merrier eventually for them. he lives in a world distinct from that of common men. talent, love of comradeship, a sunny disposition--these are the magnets that will draw one toward it. it has its obligations, its trials, its code of honour, rigid as the most unbending militarism; but there is charm of companionship and an absence of jealousies and pettiness within it that makes you powerless to rid yourself of its enchantments. the bohemian's life is apart from yours, but why chide him for it? he builds on the ruins of no other man's life, he feeds on no man's scandals, he exults in no man's misfortunes, but goes on his way, imbibing the sweetness of life from every flower, and, in his own way, scattering the perfume broadcast. he does half our thinking and originates two-third of all the movements for the social reclamation of the world. he is no hypocrite before the mighty, nor heartless in the face of the unfortunate. he covets no man's goods, but lives his own quiet, interesting, exquisite life. he asks only a share of the sunlight of life. in du maurier's "trilby" we find a sympathetic description of the art life of that period, but also a rather despicable type of a man, "joe sibley," by name, who always pretends but never does a thing and who was meant for a ludicrous satire on young whistler (a character which was eliminated on whistler's request from the second edition). it is easy to draw a mental picture of him as he looked at that time. i see him studying in the louvre, in a loose black blouse with low turned down collar and a soft black hat on his long, slightly curled hair, lost in wonder before a painting by leonardo; or strolling along the boulevards, cane in hand, ogling the beautiful women, and dreaming of designing some dress for the empress eugenie, passing by in an open phaeton. and how enthusiastic he got, no doubt, over some japanese print or chinese vase in some curio shop. a certain trigness, smartness, acquired very likely at west point where the cadets change their white duck trousers several times a day, induced him, even at this time, to take special care over the fit of his coat. [illustration: "hommage À delacroix," by fantin-latour.] in he went with several fellow students, fantin-latour, legros, and ribot, to bonvin's studio to work from the model, under the direction of courbet. at that time he was interested in types. he painted a "fumette," a little grisette of the quartier latin, and the "mother gerard," who in her younger days had been a maker of pretty verses, but, reduced in circumstances, had become a flower vender at the bal bullier. among his friends and associates we find the names of legros, cordier, duranty, the etcher bracquemond, inventor of the "pen and ink" process, de balleroy, champfleury, manet and baudelaire. they were all young men of talent, _plein d'avenir_. fantin-latour made a group-portrait of them, including whistler and himself, seated and standing, assembled about a portrait of delacroix. the canvas was exhibited at the salon of as an "_hommage à delacroix_." whistler's step-sister had married seymour haden, the etcher, and whistler, paying them a visit in , stayed in london. the four years in paris had matured him, and he knew how to accomplish something beyond the routine studio work. in he exhibited for the royal academy. it was his "at the piano," which, if not a masterpiece, is already a true and individual work of art. courbet still had a strong hold on him. he spent two summers with him in trouville and may have derived his first lessons as a _mystificateur_, which part he played so successfully during life, from the french painter, for courbet was a _poseur_ throughout, who assumed a particular kind of dress, and who was not satisfied merely with painting pictures that offended the academy and conventional taste, but made a special effort and took special pleasure in shocking the _bourgeoisie_. whistler also made his first trip to holland during these years, and became enchanted with rembrandt and vermeer, but took a great dislike to van der helst. in - youthful efforts of his had been refused at the paris salon; the same happened again in , but he was one of the men who scored a success at the _salon des refusées_. a number of talented painters, and among them men of genius like manet, cazin, degas, harpignies, vollon, pissaro, jongkind and bracquemond, tired of the cliquism and jury of the regular salon,--a story which repeats itself everywhere,--decided to arrange their own exhibition. napoleon iii, in his nonchalant way a true patron of art, issued an order to arrange the exhibition of "revolt" in the same building as the official exhibition. the exhibition was a success, and even the empress eugenie and the court came to see it. this is really of no significance, as nobody bought anything; but it sounds well, and biographers should never neglect to mention such incidents. [illustration: _owned by john h. whittemore_ the woman in white.] one thing is certain: whistler's picture, "the white girl," even with manet's "dejeuner sur l'herbe" in the same room, attracted an unusual share of attention. zola, in "l'[oe]uvre," says that the crowd laughed in front of "la dame en blanc." desnoyers thought it "the most remarkable picture, at once simple and fantastic with a beauty so peculiar that the public did not know whether to think it beautiful or ugly." paul mantz wrote in the _gazette des beaux-arts_ that it was the most important picture in the exhibition and called the picture a "symphonie du blanc" some years before whistler adopted that title. the exhibition of this picture represents, in a way, the turning point in whistler's career. it was a steady ascent ever after. before this he was unknown, and exposed to the manifold privations and vicissitudes of an artist's career. many a day he had gone hungry and frequently could not paint for lack of material. now things began to run a trifle smoother, although sales were still rare and money scarce. his lodgings in linsey row (now cheyne walk) were extremely simple and his studio consisted of a second-story back room. during the next three years he worked hard, and finished a number of pictures that since then have made history. they are all in a lighter key and of brilliant colouring. the problem he seemed to be most interested in was to reproduce in relief the charm of diversified colour patches as seen in japanese prints. he continued to see things in this way until he made a trip to south america in . feeling, perhaps, slightly discouraged, or in need of some recreation, he and his brother set out for chili, under the pretence of joining the insurgents à la poe and byron, although i hardly believe that a man of thirty-two really capable of such a wild goose chase. at all events, when they reached valparaiso the rebellion had ceased and instead of handling a musket "our jimmie" opened his paint box instead. the result was startling. impressed by the new sights of southern scenery, and in particular of the translucency and subdued brilliancy of the sky at night, he painted one of his finest nocturnes, the "valparaiso harbour," now at the national gallery of art. the darkness of night to a large extent bars colour, and furnishes a kind of tonal veil over all objects; but in southern countries the nights are clearer and brighter and, although forms and colours are indistinct, they remain more plainly discernible than in the blackness of our northern nights. after his return to london he worked hard at solving the problem of creating tone which would suggest atmosphere with as little subject matter as possible. four years passed before he held the first exhibition of a "variation" and "harmony." he now began to feel his own strength. he felt that he had done something new and had the courage to coin his own titles. the method of classifying his pictures as harmonies and symphonies, arrangements, nocturnes, notes, and caprices, was entirely his own invention and in his earlier career did much to attract attention to his work. one year later, in , exhibiting several symphonies, he included for the first time an impression of night under the title of "nocturne." the years - were probably the busiest and the most important ones of his whole career. they produced not only the "nocturne," but also the "peacock room" and the painting which is generally conceded to be his masterpiece, the "portrait of the artist's mother." success and fame at last knocked at his door. mr. f. r. leyland, the rich ship-owner of liverpool, proved a generous patron. between and he ordered portraits of himself, mrs. leyland and the four children. whistler made long visits at speke hall, leyland's home near liverpool. his paintings began to sell more readily than heretofore and several orders for interior decoration had come in, among them the decoration of the music room of the famous violinist sarasate's home in paris. he was willing to work at anything as long as he could carry out his own ideas. he invented schemes for interior decoration and also once tried himself as an illustrator, when he made exquisite drawings of the vases, plates, cups of blue and white nankin for the catalogue of sir h. thompson's collection of porcelain. (ellis and elvey, london, .) [illustration: _national gallery, washington_ arrangement in black: f. r. leyland.] after leaving linsey row, during the years - , whistler lived in several other houses situated in the chelsea district, for like so many of us that have got used to a certain part of the city, he could never get away from it. the most pretentious of these abodes was the "white house" which became one of the centres of attraction in the art life of london. there he gave his famous sunday morning breakfasts, which mr. harper pennington describes so amusingly: "they were always late in being served, outrageously delayed without apparent cause. it was no uncommon thing for us to wait an hour, or even two, for the eggs, fish, cutlets, and a sweet dish of which the meal consisted. a bottle of very ordinary white wine was our only drink." the whole thing, in fact, was an "arrangement"--just a colour scheme in yellow to match his "blue and white" porcelain and his "yellow and blue" dining room. the room itself was unique in its effective and independent style of decoration. it was entirely carried out after his own designs, even to the painting of the exterior. and the environment, the thames, the old church of chelsea with its square tower, the peculiar shaped bridge of battersea, the lights of cremorne in the distance, all furnished interesting pictorial topics and played an important part in the painter's _mise en scène_. his neighbours added to the lustre of this period. in the same district at that time lived rossetti, swinburne, george meredith and carlyle, and whistler was on friendly footing with all of them. exhibitions of his work were now a regular occurrence. in he held his first "one man's show" of thirteen paintings and fifty prints at number pall mall, london. in he arranged an exhibition in the grosvenor gallery. among the exhibits were "the falling rocket" (nocturne in black and gold) which brought about the ruskin attacks, and consequently the famous libel suit, whistler v. ruskin. one can hardly imagine, to-day, why the picture should have created so much commotion; but it was a decided innovation at that time, an event in a way ushering in a new era of art. now this particular style of representation has any number of disciples, and we have accepted it as one of the principal assertions of modern art. strange, that history always repeats itself. we should know by this time that our tastes and the tastes of time are not absolute, and that our sense of beauty is likely to be affected by circumstances to an extent which we cannot realize. there was a time, and not so long ago, when gothic buildings were regarded by the man of culture much as dandelions are regarded by the gardener. for years the very name nocturne was a reproach. it was supposed to be the product of idiosyncrasy and nonchalant audacity, the work of a decadent period in art, which, because it was decadent, could not be good, for everything that looked like a whistler was regarded as a note of decadence. it was an argument in a circle, no doubt; but such arguments seem most convincing when once a prejudice exists in the art world. only gradually did people begin to see more than cleverness in his products. oscar wilde was a constant friend of whistler's at this time. the friendship was still young and, for a while, the two were inseparable. the author of "dorian gray" spent hours in whistler's studio, came repeatedly to the sunday breakfasts, and presided at whistler's private views. whistler went out and about with him everywhere. but whistler gradually came to feel that wilde, in spite of his brilliancy and wit, lacked fundamental purpose. wilde talked constantly about art, but, in the end, whistler concluded that wilde, like most modern authors, knew very little about it. the days of the renaissance, of versatility, of talent and appreciation seem to have passed. whistler easily tired of his friends and, although this friendship had lasted for years, he finally dropped wilde without much ado. a critic of "the london times" has summed up the difference between the two in the following words: "with a mind not a jot less keen than whistler's, oscar wilde had none of the convictions, the high faith for which whistler found it worth while to defy the crowd. wilde had posed to attract the crowd. and the difference was this, that, while whistler was a prophet who liked to play pierrot, wilde grew into pierrot who liked to play the prophet." like most artists who have suddenly sprung into fame, whistler had lived beyond his means. he was fond of comfort and elegance, and allowed himself the fulfilment of any whim as long as it granted him genuine pleasure, as "art and joy should go together." the auction sale of the contents of his home in , and the sale of his paintings at sotheby's in february, , were perhaps not entirely caused by financial difficulties. they may have been prompted in an equal degree by a desire to make a change and break the routine of the studio life. he told, however, to his friends in his inimitable way how the sheriff's officer called upon him with a writ, and the last bottle of champagne was brought out of the cellar for that worthy's delectation. in venice, where he went in september, , he seems to have been in straitened circumstances for quite a while. he lived in modest quarters and dined in cheap, dingy places. these were his "polenta and macaroni days," and, in a way, a repetition of his paris student's life, only much harder to bear as he was older (forty-five) and used to luxury. no matter what his reason may have been for breaking up his bachelor establishment it was the second turning point in his career. painting did not play quite as important a part in whistler's life after his venetian sojourn. he still painted a number of portraits, among them the "sarasate" and "comte montesquiou," but he was more active as an etcher, lithographer, pamphleteer, lecturer and teacher. orders were scarce at all times. the only regular portrait orders he had in the first half of the eighties were those of lady archibald campbell, wife of the duke of argyll; and of lady meux, who liked her first portrait, in a black evening gown with a white opera cloak against a black background, so well that she had herself painted three times in succession. whistler's sense of beauty was a strong feature in his work. maybe it was not the sense of beauty an englishman would like. he looked for a pictorial aspect, rather than the "lady" in his sitter; and in england the "lady" is the thing to secure in a portrait of a woman. he returned to london in , but stayed only a short while. during the next ten years he had no permanent home; like a nomad he flitted from city to city, from studio to studio through england, france and belgium. finally he found some sort of a resting place in the rue du bac , for many years his paris home. it was a two-story house with a garden enclosed by a wall, as secluded a spot as one could find in the gay and noisy city. he was always fond of gardens of flowers. "in the roses of his garden he buried his sorrows," one of his most talented pupils, e. h. wuerpel, tells us, in his little brochure "my friend whistler." in the meanwhile his london exhibitions became more and more numerous. during the next fifteen years the following eight exhibitions are on record. --jan.--an exhibition of fifty-three pastels at the fine art society in bond st., london. --feb.--fifty-one etchings and dry points exhibited in bond st. gallery, london. --may--harmonies--notes--nocturnes--shown at the dowdswell gallery, london. at the same time an exhibition took place in paris and dublin. they were arranged according to his own idea of exhibiting. [illustration: jo (etching).] --nov.--twenty-five works sent to the exhibition of the dublin sketching club. --may--a second series of notes--harmonies--nocturnes shown at the dowdswell gallery. --the most representative exhibition of his works, since that of , at the college for working women, queen sq., london. --mar.--an exhibition of forty-four nocturnes, marines and chevalet pieces for which whistler prepared the catalogue. at the goupil galleries, bond street, london. --dec.--exhibitions of seventy lithographs, london. in the years following his death, as is usually the case, - , occurred the most important assemblage of his works--the memorial exhibition of glasgow, boston, paris and london. of special interest are whistler's first american exhibits. at the first exhibition of the society of american artists at the kurtz gallery, new york, , he was represented by a "coast of brittany." in the autumn of at the pennsylvania academy of fine arts he exhibited the portrait of his mother, which was also seen the following spring at the society of american artists in new york. sheridan ford once asked him why he did not exhibit more frequently in america. whistler answered: "i don't know, they will not allow me to take them across the ocean. you see, i don't own my pictures. i sold most of them long ago to people who think more of them than they do of me. i wrote and asked for two or three of them to take over, and the answers i received were to the effect that i could have them to exhibit here, but not to exhibit in america. why? because the owners are afraid of the ocean. i said i would insure the pictures, at which of course they laughed. i may go and i may not. a good many people in america don't like me, and i am not there to fight them as i can fight my enemies here. i don't mind having enemies where i can get at them. i like the pleasure of whipping them; but these fellows in america have it all their own way. there is no record, and i am at a constant disadvantage." in he was elected president of the royal society of british artists, but soon quarrelled with the old-fashioned element among its members, and the whole affair degenerated into one of those disputes upon which such copious light has been shed in "the gentle art of making enemies." the enforcement of the whistlerian policy of elimination and arrangement brought disaster upon the society. the annual sales fell from £ , in to under , in . it was time for the ideal exhibitor and manager of _mise en scènes_ to retire. and so he did, if not accompanied by a cavalcade of buglers blowing a blast with, at least, as much noise and controversy as he could conjure up in these art-forsaken and colourless days. it is not until towards the close of his life, in , that we find him again at the head of an artistic corporation, when the international society was proud to acknowledge his leadership. in whistler made his début in germany at the international art exhibition of munich. the result was not a flattering one. the jury officiating on that occasion established a peculiar claim to the affectionate recollection of posterity by awarding a second class medal to the "portrait of the artist's mother," now in the luxembourg. of course a jury has perfect rights to make awards as it pleases as long as the verdict is a competent and impartial one, but whistler by this time was too well-known, and one can hardly blame him that he wrote the following sarcastic but unusually dignified letter to the secretary of the central committee. "sir: i beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, officially informing me that the committee awards me a second class gold medal. pray convey my sentiments of tempered and respectable joy to the gentlemen of the committee, and my complete appreciation of the second-hand compliment paid me. "and i have, sir, "the honour to be "your most humble obedient servant, "j. mcneill whistler." after whistler ceased to hold exhibitions. the death of his wife brought about a long silence, and little was heard of whistler. he had laid aside his jester's bells and cap and ceased pamphleteering and posing in public. he had become a kind of recognized institution in the art world, occupying a place apart from the masses of his contemporaries. men of very dissimilar æsthetic convictions agreed in regarding him as a painter of exceptional ability, and he had a solid and appreciative following. we in america wondered what had become of him. occasionally a newspaper notice informed us that he had taken up teaching, or false reports crossed the ocean that he had become a symbolist. he himself was inactive, as far as the public was concerned. i suppose he was at last tired of notoriety and the cares of public life. he had played his part and had played it well. intimate friends tell us that he worked as hard as ever. he still had many problems to solve, if for nobody else but himself, and was satisfied that he could afford to devote his time to them. financially he was fairly well situated; but he spent money extravagantly, and the two residences and various studios he kept up in paris and london proved at all times a heavy drain on his income, which was derived entirely from his art products. he left about ten thousand pounds, a rather small sum, considering the prices he received for some of his paintings. his school in the passage stanislaw, opposite carolus duran's home, was neither a necessity nor a particular pleasure to him. he opened it for the sole benefit of one of his favourite models, mme. carmen rossi, who, as a child, had posed for the painter. she received the entire profits and it is said that during the three years that the school existed she made enough to retire in comfort. the school was opened in the autumn of and closed in . he was too impatient to be a good teacher; he simply came there and painted and the pupils saw him paint and learned what they could, just as did the apprentices of the old masters. he taught solely the science of painting, neither colour nor composition. he had an abhorrence of talking art, and one of the anecdotes he liked to relate was that he had known rossetti for years and "had talked art many, many times but _painting_ only once." he even refused to discuss technicalities. there was no talk of pigments, mediums, varnish or methods of applying them. he worked with his pupils, that was all. like the apprentices of old they had to pick up their knowledge themselves, and if he found something that he liked his usual praise consisted of "go right on," or "_continuez, continuez_." on the wall was tacked his second series of propositions which endorsed his constant advice to pupils: "if you possess superior faculties, so much the better, _allons_, develop them; but should you lack them, so much the worse, for despite all efforts you will never produce anything of interest." good common sense, but, after all, a slight return for the tuition fee. it should have induced most pupils to pack up their paint boxes and return home. as leon dabo, in his lecture on "whistler's technique" at the metropolitan museum of art, has so well observed: "nothing is more absurd than the notion, so widely promulgated by elderly maiden ladies who misspend their energies writing about paintings and painters from cimabue to whistler, that a work of art is produced as the logical result of an apprenticeship served in an art school. there probably is much juxtaposition of this belief--we all know the painters whose only reason for lowering intensely blue sky is because it is _too blue_; the painters who labour, heaping up chunks of paint until it looks 'right;' but with whistler a canvas advanced in an entirely different manner. he knew scientifically that he could use only so much of a given tone if he wished to produce _colour_, and he knew what other tone to place in juxtaposition, what parts of the canvas must hold the spectator's eye, in varying degrees of interest, in order to obtain the effect he desired to give and its use in the butterfly, the exact spot of a sail on the ocean, a light on the horizon, all these, to many insignificant objects and spots, nevertheless do their work, either to re-vivify an otherwise large surface or to hold the eye momentarily interested, until the ambience was obtained. and this science--the effect of line and colour on the eye,--is practically unknown to painters, is untaught in our art schools. this mastery over his means and material whistler possessed in a higher degree than any other modern painter." in he once more took a house in london and selected cheyne walk, an old mansion covered with ivy, near the thames in the chelsea district, where he had spent so many years during the beginning of his career. friends could not imagine why he came back from paris to london, as he disliked the place, its climate and its art. they simply forgot that he was a lover of atmospheric effects, and that london fogs and the thames were, after all, nearest to his heart. in the summer of he contemplated a short trip to holland in the company of mr. ch. w. freer, but was taken sick in flushing. after consulting some doctors in the hague, he recovered sufficiently to return to london and set to work, but only one year in the old haunts was granted him. he had just entered upon his seventieth year when he died suddenly on july , . he suffered from some internal complaint, the exact nature of which is unknown. he had felt ill for several days, but on the seventeenth his condition had so improved that he ordered a cab for a drive. on leaving the house he was seized with a fit, but recovered; a short while later he had another spasm, which killed him. he was interred (on the nd) in the family burial plot in the churchyard of the old church at chelsea (which his mother had regularly attended), near the grave of hogarth. the coffin, covered with purple pall, was carried to the church followed by the honorary pall-bearers and relatives on foot. the pall-bearers were: sir james guthrie (president of the royal scottish academy); charles w. freer, george w. vanderbilt, edwin a. abbey, john lavery (of the r. s. academy) and the art critic, theodore duret; all personal friends of whistler's. [illustration: wapping wharf (etching).] the relatives present included the misses philip and f. l. philip, mr. and mrs. cecil lawson, mr. and mrs. charles whibley and edwin w. godwin. although no announcement of the funeral was made in london papers many distinguished friends and acquaintances crowded the church. beautiful wreaths were sent by vanderbilt, lawrence, alma tadema and various federations and societies. those present were: george w. vanderbilt, mr. joseph pennell, rev. h. c. leserve of boston, johnson sturges, r. f. knoedler and i. m. b. macnary of new york city; m. dumont of the international society of painters; marcus bourne huish, editor of the "art journal;" thomas armstrong; and alfred east (a. r. a.). when a reporter called at the house july th he was informed that the artist had left stringent instructions that no information whatever regarding his illness or death should be given either to his friends or the newspapers. he remained true to his eccentricities, or rather to his peculiar personality. even in his exit from this life to the thrones of glory beyond, he endeavoured to make it as odd and picturesque as possible. he played his part to the last. and it was one of the noblest parts ever played by man. chapter iii the butterfly the famous butterfly monogram, originally a decorative combination of the letters "j. m. w.," which evolved into a decorative design of a butterfly, enclosed in a circle, as it appeared in his "sarasate" and "carlyle," and, frequently, a mere stencil-like silhouette as seen in his correspondence, began to appear in whistler's pictures in the late sixties. the "symphony in gray and green--the ocean" (painted in ) was probably the first important canvas in which it was introduced. in his earlier pictures he had made use of an ordinary written signature as most painters use. it is strange that it took an artist of whistler's sensitiveness so long to realize the incongruities of these crude calligraphic displays. they disfigure many a good picture and smack of the materialism of this age. every picture should have a signature, if for no other reason than to prove the authenticity at some future time. but surely it can be treated with more discretion than it is to-day. the old masters frequently handled it with ingenuity and some degree of modesty. it was the japanese artist who gave it a decorative significance. the red cartouches of hiroshige are known to every print collector. he considered it a part of the picture, a colour note or vehicle of balance in an empty space, as important a detail of composition as any other. whistler treated his monogram in the same conscientious and picturesque fashion. he used it with preference in his symphonies, nocturnes and large portraits, but, at times, also in white, as on a rail post in the lower right corner of his "bognor." he handled it with more than ordinary reverence, as everything that pertained to the exploiting of his own personality. he often introduced it at the first painting to judge the effect, and, of course, he wiped or scraped it out over and over again until he procured the desired effect. he continually made slight changes in the design, he toyed with it as with some curio, elaborated it in many ways, and, eventually, even bestowed a sting upon the insect, as it appears in his "gentle art of making enemies." the butterfly teaches a lesson. it proves that an artist can be self-assertive, arrogant and yet refined. whistler thus introduced a method of picture signing that should be generally adopted. every artist should have his own monogram, and use it with discretion. but it has even a deeper significance in whistler's life. it is in a way a symbol of his evolution as a painter. as we study his work we find that the butterfly monogram does not appear before whistler freed himself from foreign influences, and invented an individual and independent style of his own. the butterfly may well stand for the full awakening and realization of his own faculties. did he not say himself: "in the pale citron wing of the butterfly, with its dainty spots of orange, he saw the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and was taught how the delicate drawing high upon the walls should be traced in slender tones of orpiment and repeated by the base in notes of graver hue." like all painters whistler had to learn his trade, and then find his peculiar way of expression. it took him well nigh a quarter of a century. he entered the studio of gleyre in the summer of as a young man of twenty-one, and was nearly forty-seven when he had finished the "portrait of the artist's mother" and had painted a few nocturnes. all his earlier pictures remind us of some other master. "the music room" recalls stevens, "the blue wave: biarritz" the forceful style of courbet, and "the white symphony" even the light manner of alma tadema. charles gleyre was an excellent draughtsman of the ingres school, but all he could teach his pupils was to draw. that he had once been capable of some finer appreciation of colour and atmosphere, students of art may notice in his "evening," painted in , but he became, like so many other painters of this period, the victim of the academic style. outline drawing reigned supreme, there was room for nothing else, and it was surely not a congenial environment for young whistler, who, even at that time, differed with the prevalent ideas of art. drawing, however, is one of the most important factors of the technique of painting. velasquez even thought it was the most important one, and whistler, with the peculiar tendency of his art, was, no doubt, fortunate that he reached paris while draughtsmanship was still honoured and not neglected, as in the later days of the impressionists. a student in paris either becomes an enthusiastic worker from the nude, making one study after the other, like all those julian and colarossi pupils--or he gets so imbued with the art atmosphere that he sets about on conquests of his own, and the city of seine, with its museums, monuments, artists, population, pleasures and sights is just the right place for "free lance" education. whistler chose the latter way. the canvases of this period show strong influences of stevens and courbet. he must have been enamoured with the style of that great painter of woman, as he was undoubtedly with the rude sincerity of courbet. if any man could paint at that time it was courbet. he was the simplifier of planes and values, who advocated frankness and freedom of expression, and detached painting from all the absurdities and abstractions of the classic and romantic periods. from him whistler learned to put on his pigments in a bold, vigorous way. he was never fond of brushwork, but at that time he liked to pile it on in a flat and solid manner. only gradually his brushwork became thinner and thinner, invisible and almost untraceable, carrying out his maxim: "a picture is finished when all traces of means used to bring about the end have disappeared." as is the case with all great paintings, one must forget all about technique. from stevens he learned, as he often said in later years, all that could be learned from him. i believe that the influence was subtler and more spiritual, and one that lasted all his life. stevens was for him what the chart from which we learn history in school days remains for us. we can never forget it and entirely get away from it. in the beginning, of course, it was a technical preference. like stevens, he used precise outlines, a profusion of details and yet with all a poetic atmosphere that is produced principally by a beautiful juxtaposition of colour values. even to-day few of whistler's earlier canvases have more admirers than the "harmony in green and rose," perhaps better known as "the music room" (in the possession of frank j. hecker). it was painted in , in the london home of haden, the painter-etcher. this picture was first known as "the morning call." in the corner of the room a mirror reflects the profile of a woman, who is not represented in the picture. this is a portrait of lady seymour haden, whistler's stepsister, with whom he was lodging at the time. in front of the window hang a pair of white curtains with a green and red flower pattern. a young woman (miss booth, a relative of the hadens) in a black riding habit, which she holds up with her gloved hand, stands on the dark red carpet. in the background sits a little girl reading. [illustration: _owned by frank j. hecker_ harmony in green and rose: the music room.] another more exotic influence became palpable in his work soon after, and exercised an almost despotic control for several years. at the paris _exposition universelle_ of whistler became acquainted, for the first time, with japanese art. the parisian artists, particularly the set with which whistler was acquainted, got colour mad. the suggestiveness of oriental composition, which accentuates detail here and neglects it there; the peculiar space arrangement and the decorative treatment of detail, captivated all modern spirit. edmond and jules de goncourt, the æsthetes of the empire, and the forerunners of the japanese enthusiasts, and specialists like cernuschi, regamey, guimet, and bing became the spokesmen for japanese _bibelots_. paris was deluged with little art objects fashioned out of bronze, porcelain, cloisonne, jade, ivory, wood and metal. everybody started a collection, and became a member of the "societé du jinglar," with annual meetings at sèvres, which was fanatically devoted to the worship and exploitation of eastern art. the harmonious arrangement of the japanese colour prints in particular fascinated the cognoscenti. the application of colour in japanese art is somewhat different to ours. it is more primitive, and based on the decorative principle of simultaneous contrast. it deals solely with flat tints with occasional gradations on the outer edges, and vibration is produced by the simple method of letting the paper, or silk, shine through the pigment. if japanese colouring does not directly recall the polychromic designs of primitive people, of pottery decorations, wall designs, carpets and mats, scandinavian wood ornamentation, etc., the reason is entirely to be found in its refinement and finish. it has the same origin; a totem pole is the beginning, and a japanese print about the end of the development. true enough, coloured prints were classified as vulgar art. they were considered ordinary pictorial commodities of no more importance to the natives than coloured supplements to our sunday readers. but they were of such exquisite finish that we wonderingly ask ourselves if the nobler branches of art in this country really reached a higher standard of perfection. it is hardly possible. it was rather their application than their art value which offended the nobility. many of the most cherished prints of kiyonaga, sharaku, shunsho, and outomaro, depicting teahouse scenes, actors, wrestlers and ladies of the yoshiwara, were drawn for no other purpose than to serve as souvenir cards and advertisements. the colour appreciation of the japanese clerk, labourer and peasant must have been developed to an exceptional degree, if these designs, that were so cheap that everybody bought them as we do newspapers, could arouse nothing but ordinary appreciation and matter-of-fact comment. the japanese used colours in combinations that seem strange and unusual to us. they did not seem to care about any complementary laws, but introduced yellow with pink, purple with green, brown with red without the slightest hesitation. this may be explained by the restraint of their palette. their old hand-made colours are all keyed in middle tints; they did not lack decision or strength, but they were never loud or vehement. thus arrangements were possible that would look crude with the use of western colours. cheret's and toulouse lautrec's posters, even when of three-sheet dimensions and seen in open air, seldom expressed more than contrast and animation. they worked on the principle of the japanese colour print, but in a very crude and superficial fashion. they wished to startle, not to please. if colour is seen in flat tint patches it produces a more vivid image on the retina than a pictorial representation of mixed pigments, as flat tints are more favourable to the brilliancy of colour. each separate soft tint creates a complementary image, and the eye would be easily fatigued if the colours were strong. in the japanese colour print they are softened and blended together not so much by the skilful and harmonious juxtaposition, as by the suavity of the medium, the introduction of neutral tints, the mellow white foundation of the paper, and the arrangement of shapes encased in precise lines. the european painter had a different idea. although recognizing the supremacy of colour, he took visual appearances as they were and actually appeared in life as guiding models for his representations. colour became submerged in other qualities almost equally important, as those of line, perspective, chiaroscura, relief drawing and minute observation. the eastern artist applied colour for colour's sake, and kept all other elements, notably those of line, feeling, shape and space arrangement independent--not independent as far as the tonality of the final effect was concerned, but independent in their function as vehicles of expression. they were never diffused in the same way as in an old master. each line, shape and colour had to tell its own story, while in western art composition, colour and idea often became inseparable by the application of the blurred outline. whistler, at this stage of his development, was interested simply in recreating japanese colour arrangements, to paint local values in such a way that they would reflect the beauty, contrast and variety of an outamaro print. the pictures of this period remind one of that capricious chinese princess, of whom heinrich heine speaks, whose quaint and solitary pleasure consisted of tearing costly silks into tatters, to scatter the rags to the winds and to watch them flutter like rose, blue and yellow butterflies to the lily ponds below. already in his "woman in white" whistler had shown some preferences for colour, but not until after he had taken his first house in london, when his mother came to live with him, did he show those peculiar outbursts of colour that were a direct outcome of the study of japanese prints. in later years it was all tone, but in the years - , it was all colour, with a preference for white. the principal pictures of this period were "lange leizen of the six marks: in purple and rose" (in the possession of john g. johnson); "the little white girl" (owned by arthur studd), "the golden screen," "the princess of the porcelain land," and "the balcony: variations of flesh colour" (owned by charles w. freer) and "the white symphony" (owned by john g. whittemore). whistler clothed his english models in eastern dress, and reproduced the beautiful colours with japanese detail. he was among the first to appreciate the beauty of chinese porcelain, of which he owned many choice pieces. in his "lange leizen" is shown a young woman in a japanese costume, seated and holding with her left hand on her lap a blue and white vase of the shape known in holland as the "lange leizen of the six marks" (referring to the potter's mark on the bottom of the vase). her right hand, covered by the sleeve of the kimono, is raised and holds a brush. her skirt is black with a delicate design in colours. the kimono is cream white, decorated with bright flowers and lined with rose colours. around her hair, which falls over her shoulders, is tied a black scarf. on the floor are several blue and white vases and an oriental carpet. to the right is a red covered table, and behind the figure is a chest. the painting is signed "whistler, ," in the upper right-hand corner. the frame was designed by whistler himself and decorated with chinese fret and six marks. it was shown in the royal academy of . [illustration: _owned by john g. johnson_ lange leizen of the six marks: purple and rose.] another picture of this period is the "golden screen." a young woman in japanese costume is seated on a brown rug, her head seen in profile, as she examines a japanese print. she wears a purple kimono decorated with multicoloured flowers and bordered with a vermilion scarf, and a green obi tied around her waist; her outer kimono is white with a red flowered design. to the left is a tea box, some roses and a white vase with pansies. hiroshige prints are scattered over the floor. the background consists of a folding screen with japanese houses and figures, painted on a gold ground. these two pictures are far from being satisfactory. the composition is restless, the colours do not harmonize, and the figure is one of that peculiar nightmarish type which some artists affect; a being belonging to that peculiar class of humanity who wear slouch drapery instead of tailor-made costumes, and carry crystal balls, urns and sunflowers as an æsthetic amusement, i suppose, about their person. the model for both these pictures was joanna heffernan, an irish girl, neither particularly handsome nor well educated; but she was a good model, who adapted herself easily to a painter's idea, and her native wit and willingness to learn atoned for any lack of knowledge. she generally read while she was posing for whistler, and as she talked with his friends, posed for other artists and visited picture exhibitions, she played quite an important part in the painter's life during his early years in london. she went to paris in the winter of - to pose for "the woman in white," in his studio on the boulevard des battignoles. he painted her in a number of other pictures, notably as "jo" and "the little white girl." although different in each picture, now young, now more mature, in one case a lady and in another a buxom girl, she is really beautiful in none, though always attractive. he probably merely used her as a suggestion. he liked to have her in his studio even when he did not paint her form or features. there is also a dry point of "jo," dated , which shows her with streaming hair, which is probably the nearest approach to a likeness. it is a beautiful bit of drawing and interesting as a space arrangement. it shows how a head can almost fill the entire space of a picture without becoming obtrusive or looking too large. the line work is excellent in its purity of design and apparent carelessness. a change of method is noticeable in "the little white girl," the colour scheme of which is exquisite. the white dress of the young girl, in profile, with loosened hair, leaning against a mantelpiece, and her reflection in the glass, are accentuated in a beautiful manner by the brilliant colour notes of a red lacquer box, a blue and white vase, a fan with a hiroshige-like design and a decorative arrangement of pink and purple azaleas. the painting is thinner and there is greater repose in the composition. swinburne saw the picture before it was sent up to the royal academy in , and expressed his admiration by writing "before the mirror. verses under a picture:" "come snow, come wind or thunder, high up in the air i watch my face and wonder at my bright hair. naught else exalts or grieves the rose at heart that heaves with love of our own leaves, and lips that pair. "i cannot tell what pleasures or what pains were, what pale new loves and treasures new years will bear, what beam will fall, what shower with grief or joy for dower. but one thing knows the flower, the flower is fair." [illustration: _owned by arthur studd_ symphony in white, ii: the little white girl.] "la princesse du pays de la porcelaine" (whistler apparently was fond of using elaborate titles) is perhaps his finest work in vivid colouring. the colour differentiations are well placed, but the canvas, after all, looks too much like a huge japanese print, painted in the western style, which represents objects round and in relief, and not merely in flat tints. the placing of the screen with the face looming above it is as peculiar as it is attractive, but it is an arrangement that is strictly japanese in character. whistler began with painting detail, and only gradually learned to see life in a broader and more mysterious way. it is a portrait of miss christie spartali, a real rossetti type, daughter of the consul-general for greece in london in . her father did not like it; but rossetti did, and sold it from his own studio to help whistler along. later it came into the possession of f. r. leyland, and was used to decorate the "peacock room." it was first exhibited at the paris salon of . it is really a combination of rossetti and outomaro, with a slight flavour of whistler's individuality. [illustration: _national gallery, washington_ the princess of the porcelain land.] "on the balcony" (exhibited first in ) of the freer collection is a peculiar combination of models masquerading in kimonos and a background of english river scenery. he essayed the same task as chavannes in his mural decorations, i. e., to determine the local tints of each face or arm by the surrounding colours. the problem was made still more difficult by showing each face in a different illumination. one face is silhouetted in profile against the river, another shaded by a fan and the form of a standing figure, the others are seen in front light. i do not believe he has ever attempted a more ambitious problem, and he solved it in a most subtle and convincing fashion. it is a delightful harmony in colour, and exceedingly well-balanced; it reminds one of the japanese, but the colour and vibrating atmosphere is occidental. pity that he found it necessary to introduce japanese costumes. i perfectly realize that one of the principal charms of this picture is the incongruity of the ensemble. yet who ever saw in a london town such a balcony with japanese awnings, and english girls dressed up like geishas, whiling away the early hours of the night. the figures belong neither to japan nor great britain. they are simply there for colour's sake, but, after all, such associations of thought, no matter whether in paint or poetry, never constitute the greatest art. the composition is more restful and simpler than in his earlier works. when whistler began to realize this shortcoming of his earlier style, he turned away from "orchestral explosions of colour" and "volleys of paint," and began that wonderful process of elimination which helped him to become one of the greatest painters of the nineteenth century. [illustration: _national gallery, washington_ on the balcony: variations in flesh-colour and green.] in his later work whistler returned once more to vivid colouring. it was solely in pastels and water colours, never in oils. and the butterfly, the symbol of whistler's individuality, fluttered gaily from picture to picture, from print to print, and letter to letter; now disappearing in greyish mists, then peeping forth from a dark olive background, and again asserting his existence at times as a mere shadow, as a dark or coral red silhouette. changing his colour and size on every canvas; he is now shaded blue, brown, rose, red, violet or peacock blue and then, suddenly assuming unusually large proportions, he spreads his wings in full flight to be lost once more as a grey, almost imperceptible spot, in some twilight atmosphere. at one moment he appears on a vase, a rug, or a curtain. he floats on the sea, rest on doorposts, wings his way over flowers and rocks, shifts sportively from the lower left to the right corner, thereupon rises to almost the middle of the canvas, flutters around the figures, even touches their forms delicately, as a dainty creature may do, and continues his endless variations and gyrations; ever ready to assert the _final approval_ of the master. chapter iv the art of omission a blue-black night, broken by sparks of bursting skyrockets and weird forms of light, in which two illuminated towers are vaguely indicated. to the left a cluster of foliage and a crowd of people, felt rather than seen. such is the subject matter of this little x canvas which probably excited more controversy and discussion than any other of whistler's pictures. it was scarcely noticed when it was first exhibited at the dudley gallery in october. but in the storm broke loose, and the famous libel suit against ruskin, and the record of all details of the trial in a brown-covered pamphlet, under the title "whistler v. ruskin, art and art critics" (in ), were the immediate results. and the discussion con or pro has not ceased to this very day. some call it merely a clever sketch; others consider it one of the highest expressions beauty is capable of. what is there so remarkable and fascinating in this picture, that it can exercise such an influence! technically it is not perfect, the blacks are rather opaque, and it does not possess the haunting charm of the "old battersea bridge" or even of the "valparaiso harbour." is it the subject matter? fireworks were never painted before, or, at least, did not constitute the sole motif of a picture. yet this should be no objection. fireworks are one of the modern amusements that enjoy great popularity. there should be no objection to their representation, as little as to a baseball game, a prize fight or any realistic phase of our personal life. the curious interest of this painting, or any of whistler's nocturnes, does not lie merely in the novelty of the subject (i. e. novel to pictorial representation), nor that it depicts the mystery of night in an unusual manner, as some artists and writers claim. its significance lies much deeper. it actually represents the beginning of a new way of painting, not merely of atmospheric conditions, but of an art different in its _intentions_ from any previous form of representation. during the trial whistler himself gave the following definition of a nocturne: "i have perhaps meant rather to indicate an artistic interest alone in the work, divesting the picture of any sort of interest which might have been otherwise attached to it. it is an arrangement of line, form and colour first, and i make use of any incident which shall bring about a symmetrical result. among my works are some night pieces, and i have chosen the word 'nocturne' because it generalizes and simplifies the whole set of them." after whistler had stated that he had worked two days on the "falling rocket," the general attorney said: "the labour of two days, then, is that for what you ask two hundred guineas?" to which whistler replied: "no--i ask it for the knowledge of a life-time." [illustration: _owned by mrs. samuel untermyer_ nocturne in black and gold: the falling rocket.] this is hardly a satisfactory explanation. it merely informs us that the consideration of line, form and colour is more important than the incident depicted. have not all painters worked in that way! the actual manipulation of the pigment on the canvas is the supreme pleasure of every genuine painter. but the source of inspiration after all lies in the incident that is in the line, form and colour indicated by the incident. or does whistler wish to convince us that he mentally invented a colour scheme and then set out to find the incident? he might have said to himself, "i want to paint a night scene, in blue and gold, and i want such a silhouette to dominate the scene," but, after all, the incident had to furnish, or rather suggest, the possibilities of the mental vision. he, more than most painters, saw poetry in nature. his wonderful description of a river scene at night in the "ten o'clock" vouches for that. read these lines that are worthy of any poet: "when the evening mist clothes the riverside with 'poetry' as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky and the tall chimneys become campanile, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and the fairy land is before us--then the wayfarer hastens home, the workman and the cultured one, the wise and the one of pleasures cease to understand as they have ceased to see, and nature, who for once has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her master; her son in that he loves her, and her master in that he knows her." a man who wrote like that surely received his inspirations from nature, and was dependent on the incident as much as anybody else. no, the true significance of his nocturne, as remarked before, lies in the original intention, not in the final effect of the subject he wished to produce. for conventionalist and impressionist alike, nature is the source of symbols for their mood. with them the standpoint is remarkably different from that of the superficial realists, who imagine that the mere copy of a scene must give the emotion that the scene itself arouses; who forget that the artist's emotion is as much a selective factor as his vision of the objective signs needful for the communication of his feeling to his public. he probably wished to remain under cover, and not come out boldly and say: "this is the japanese way of doing things. i disengage the poetical significance from an object or fact in eastern fashion. i have learned this from the hiroshige prints." few artists are willing to lay bare the mechanism of their individual way of interpretation. they would be misunderstood anyhow. painters would have rejoiced to call him a downright imitator. and that is just the point where he differed from the average artist who followed the eastern trail of art. he succeeded in combining the two great art elements of the world, those of the east and the west. in the sixties he was interested merely in a phase of japanese art, that of colour. hiroshige prints were hung on the wall or scattered on the floor of his studio, as can be noted in several of his earlier paintings. the japanese artists were virtuosos of colour. they combined the most contradictory colours into a harmony, nuances which for centuries had escaped the appreciation of the european eye. after many experiments whistler realized that this refined sense of colour was only one of the external accomplishments of japanese art, that its true soul was revealed in its suggestive quality. the japanese artists work without perspective, shadows and reflections, and even when they apply them they do so in a purely decorative way. they rely entirely on design, on line and the juxtaposition of flat colour shapes. they do not care to produce an illusion, as if the frame afforded a view on a scene of actual life. they are satisfied with making a mere delineation, a suggestion of a beautiful gown or mountain view. in literature, or even in such a simple matter as the naming of things, the japanese invariably give play to the exercise of their imagination to bring out a suggestive effect. the same tendency extends into their fine arts. in treating objects of nature, however insignificant, the japanese artist strives to suggest or indicate some sentiment beyond what is conveyed by the facts represented, just as the poet strives to store up a mine of thought in the thirty-one syllables of an ordinary verse, the tanka, or in the still shorter haikai of seventeen syllables. in short, the japanese artist exerts himself to produce more than beauty of form or colour. this quality is less apparent in the coloured wood print so popular with westerners. an outomaro is really lacking suggestiveness. it runs too much into technical detail, and just for that reason perhaps we more readily understand the european artists. take for instant a simple representation of summer plants, merely a few stalks. the artist is not satisfied to show us the actual facts but endeavours to indicate something beyond what is actually represented, the delight of a flowery field in summer or the cool refreshing breeze under which the plants are bending and swaying. the western artists hitherto entertained a different ideal and though there were many schools, each advocating a different ideal, they all agreed on one point: that they had to create an illusion, with modelling, rotundity of form, light, shade and distance. suggesting a fact is subtler than actually representing a fact. a sketch has something, a virility and freshness that a finished painting rarely has. we prefer courbet to ingres, israels to leighton. there must be something left to imagination, to our emotions and æsthetic consciousness. the japanese leave most to imagination. their method lacks strength but is capable of conveying finer poetic sentiments. their vision is clearer, more rapid and less disturbed by intellectual preoccupations than ours. they are perhaps more perceptual than conceptual. not that they lack deep poignant expression, but that they are deficient in intensity and depth of representation. the grandiose unity of effect of a titian, tintoretto or rubens is beyond the kakemono and colour print. they succeeded in some instances in adumbrating in lines of conventional severity and precision strange and mystical intimations of spiritual existence. but we find it difficult to discern these qualities as we need more than suggestion to arrive at such conclusions. whistler tried and succeeded in translating this suggestiveness in such a manner that the western mind could understand and appreciate it. how did he accomplish this task! he realized that he could not abandon atmosphere, light and distance. he had to apply the eastern principle without deteriorating the western technique. to proceed like the japanese would have resulted in a failure. his "princess of the porcelain land" must have taught him this. he strove for something else than a mere resemblance. he adopted certain ideas of space arrangement, certain forms of design and the elimination of detail. the underlying composition reminds of the japanese, but not the finish. hiroshige was the first designer of japanese colour prints who devoted himself largely to landscapes with figures, and with eastern ingenuity almost exhausted the subject. his "hundred views of fusi-yama" contain the most startling designs and problems of composition that have ever been attempted, and they are treated with incomparable boldness, and solved with astounding skill. the rarest aspects of nature are treated with perfect balance. it is a play of curves and geometrical shapes that bewilders the western mind that has been content with comparatively few formulæ. the vista idea of representing a scene as if viewed through the frame of a doorway, which whistler so frequently used in his etchings as in "the lime burner" and "the garden," is strictly japanese. one of his friends said that whistler never objected to any one trying to copy his way of painting, but looked upon filching of ideas as grand larceny. this proves how ignorant we all are about our conduct of life. if anybody ever plagiarized ideas it was whistler. the "t" shape of the "old battersea bridge," in his nocturne of blue and gold, is almost an exact copy of a hiroshige design. the same can be said of the branch of leaves protruding like a silhouette from the margin of his "ocean," and the composition of several other nocturnes. but whistler added something which no japanese print suggests. he added light, atmosphere, distance and mystery. [illustration: _tate gallery, london_ nocturne in blue and gold: old battersea bridge.] hiroshige relied entirely upon design and line, and he was not a good draughtsman at that, at least not in his figures. his human figures frequently look like miniature caricatures or curious little insects. his line lacks purity and sweep, but is more realistic and less conventional than that of his predecessors. his colour is crude in comparison with the older artists. his prints that were executed after the introduction of european aniline colours in , with their streaks of vivid red and blue, are almost offensive to the eye. his earlier ones, when he was content in working in pale colours, in pale blue and black with just a suggestion of pink, are vastly superior. later on he tried to learn from the europeans, and strove for atmospheric effects, but always suggested it rather by design than colour. if he used colour for that purpose it went never beyond a simple wash. whistler sacrificed line almost entirely. he worked in big masses, shapes and silhouettes and made colour the principal attraction. the simplicity of design he borrowed from the japanese, but the intimate charm of his colour he got from another art, the art of music. many paintings of the latter half of the nineteenth century show this musical tendency. chavannes, cazin, our american landscape painter tryon, even the impressionists, try to produce with colour something similar to the effect of sound. it is either a resemblance of feeling in execution, or the desire to deliver us over to a mood like music. generally both desires go hand in hand. the painter, to accomplish this, must go back to the emotional elements of things, to view objects with primitive enthusiasm and to disregard all cumbersome detail. these qualities must dominate his conception, and his treatment must be slightly decorative. he must see things flat, in curious shapes, and then juxtapose and complement his colours in such fashion that they produce instantaneously a pleasant retinal image. in most paintings the subject matter attracts our attention first, and the appreciation of its technique reaches our emotion through a mental process. a chavannes fresco and a cazin landscape, on the other hand, appeal directly to our emotions. henner, corot, carrière are musical, leighton, dagnan-bouveret, böcklin are not. chavannes and tryon construct their compositions like a composer his score. by applying parallelism of line and repetition of form and colour shapes with slight variation, they attempt to transpose musical conditions to the sphere of colour. cazin goes further than either. he comes nearest to whistler. he actually tries to make the colour _sing_, not a composition of diversified interests, but a simple sweet melody that instantaneously produces a distinct lyrical emotion. in his best pictures he reproduces successfully the perfect harmony of a few fugitive tints, such as occur so frequently in nature by a combination of the evening sky and a shimmering surface of water, by a white cottage in moonlight, or desolate marshes against a starlit sky. in this, whistler excelled. he advanced another step by using the smallest limit of colours possible, without obliterating form and subject matter. although whistler accentuated the breadth of vision, divided his space arrangement into as few planes as possible, juxtaposed rarely more than two colours, and made all objects appear shadowy and weird against a glimmering sky, it is astonishing how vibrant he kept his colour; the more so as his colours are laid on rather flatly, and, occasionally, so thinly that the canvas shines through. this, of course, helps the vibrating quality, but the colour tints contain so many subtle variations that they scarcely become discernible to the eye but merely conscious as a vague shimmer, like that of night and atmosphere themselves. the colour combinations are frequently the same. blue and silver, and blue and gold appear most frequently. then there is brown with gold or silver, and a crepuscule in flesh colour and green, which was also the theme of "on the balcony." his subjects were chosen with great discretion. outside of the "valparaiso harbour" picture, a "southampton water" and a "st. marks, venice," most were devoted to london. there is a chelsea embankment in winter, a chelsea in snow and ice, the westminster bridge, the trafalgar square in snow, and the old battersea reach and bridge in three versions. whistler never stopped work at a picture until it was as perfect as he could make it. many of the pictures that are now on the market, mere scraps and fragments at ridiculous prices, he would not have allowed to go out of his studio. he had the conscience of the true artist, but he never went to the extreme. he knew when to stop, a quality which is exceedingly rare. he would never have spoiled a canvas as maris and ryder do. he worked very hard on most of his pictures, but they do not show it. the difficulties and deliberate slowness of execution are lost in the final result. "to say of a picture, as it is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view." he followed this maxim out to the letter. industry was with him a necessity--not a virtue. were you to ask me to define the charm of his nocturnes, i should say, i fancy that it lies in the delicious purity of their expression. the emotions which whistler wishes to excite are those of visional pleasure, of subtle speculation and vague emotional joy. in him inspiration always prevailed over caprice. the picture had first to express the arrangement of colour entrusted to it, and was scarcely allowed any dash or extravagance of brushwork or form, unless they would form a part of his original plan and serve as a contrast or dissonance. he never added anything in his repaintings, but cut out one passage after another; he did not graft on, he pruned, for he meant nothing should remain but the most essential. if there was ever a man tormented by the accursed ambition to put the whole world into one picture, the whole picture into one tonality, and the whole tonality into one colour note, it was whistler. it is difficult to understand why his work was ever criticized as being unfinished. when burne-jones, in a spirit hostile to whistler's work, declared in the witness box at the ruskin trial: "in my opinion ... a picture ought not to fall short of what has been for ages considered as complete and finished," whistler retorted effectively: "a picture is completely finished when nothing more can be done to improve it." [illustration: nocturne in gray and gold: chelsea, snow.] and for this finish he tried incessantly. there was never an artist who was more conscientious and more ardently striving for perfection than he. he sometimes tried experiments with different mediums in oil painting. at one time he used benzine to thin the colours, another time kerosene. he would cover a large canvas all over with the latter, in order to bring out the dried tints, before he started to repaint or overpaint. and he said to clifford adams, his last apprentice, "in the morning we may not succeed in getting the direct relation of colour, but at noon it may become more harmonious and at sundown we might strike just the right thing." and so he worked, day after day and year after year, on his pictures, until every trace of labour was obliterated and the picture had become a masterpiece. "a masterpiece that would appear "as a flower" to the painter--perfect in its bud as in its bloom--with no reason to explain its presence, no mission to fulfil; a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist--a puzzle to the botanist--an accident of sentiment to the literary man." this flatly contradicts the general idea rampant among painters that he furnished his paintings _au premier coup_. his friends endorse the denial. mr. r. a. canfield has seen not less than sixteen changes of background to one portrait, "and heaven knows how many more that were not counted." whenever he was dissatisfied with a painting, he started a new canvas until he finally realized the task he had attempted. in that sense his colleagues are right, his pictures look as if they were painted _au premier coup_ but it was a roundabout way. it is impossible to advance any theory about his technique. all his pictures are painted in varying thicknesses of paint, in varying degrees of liquidity of paint, in varying smoothness and roughness, in few or many sittings, in fact, in the varying technique which alone can correspond to moods of so great a painter and the circumstances of each picture. the only thing which has any semblance to a constant method is a moderate adherence, in his portraits at least, to the old way of painting from dark to light which, in the final painting, in overlapping pieces of paint, as in the case of most oil paintings until recently, results in the thickening of the paint towards the light. there are scarcely more than sixteen finished nocturnes on record. of these, most are masterpieces, or would pass as belonging to the best of his works. and as he worked at them ever since he returned from valparaiso in and held the first important exhibition of nocturnes at the dowdswell gallery, and in paris (in the rue sèze) not previous to , when quite a number were still unfinished, we are astonished at the small output. but masterpieces are scarce. and if a painter can be credited with two or three every year he is a hero in his profession. the importance of the nocturne in whistler's own career, everybody must realize who is familiar with his work. they add to his personality a delicious flavour that even his lithographs and large paintings do not grant in the same manner. it was to him an instrument that obeyed his slightest wishes. it was art, at once aristocratic, delicate, of high finish and moreover imbued with an individual rhythm and the poetry of nature. [illustration: nocturne in blue and silver.] what wonderful rain and snow this man has painted! what vast expanses of water as mystic as the night! and those vagrant mists, that envelop everything and blot out the very existence of things! there has not been anything in art since turner that could be compared with it. there are no banal sunsets, no glaring moonlights, only the more intricate moods of nature, snowfall, mist, late evening and night. also in the choice of his subject he added a new note. the art of a landscape painter is determined by a thousand influences upon his mind other than those of nature. the essence of monet's art is one of an hour, but with such a painter as daubigny or rousseau it is one of a place. there is the sense of the atmosphere of the moment given by one school of landscape painters, of locality by another, poetry by a third and of the historic associations of a place by yet another school. these things are, of course, determined by temperament, and schools of painting may be classified in this way more adequately than they are. human association creeps into landscapes in various degrees, and also in other ways than the historical way which we feel,--as in f. e. church's pictures, for instance,--but landscape, generally subordinate to the human interest, now sometimes tries to free itself from this influence entirely. it has become like poetry, simply the record of an emotion or mood remembered in colour. this is whistler's peculiar innovation. and yet the final significance of the nocturne in the world of art is still an open question. time alone can decide its value. the rest is mere hypothesis. many--and i only talk of people who understand--argue that despite its perfection, the nocturne represents a minor phase of art. of course, a nocturne, no matter how beautiful, cannot compete in importance with the "portrait of carlyle," or "the artist's mother." size does not mean much, but it means something. a small painting can be as exquisite in workmanship as a large one, but it can never rise to the same dignity of expression. a frescoe by chavannes would lose much if executed in the size of the average easel picture. but the nocturne stands for something in modern art which lends it special importance, aside of all workmanship and beauty of pictorial treatment. it represents a return to the art of painting for painting's sake. every art, may it be music, poetry, dancing, sculpture or painting, has its own peculiar technique, which the technically ignorant person cannot appreciate. poetry which has no formal conventions is inconceivable. and, in a similar manner, painting has the charm of texture and brushwork, the charm of how the paint is actually put on and displayed on the canvas. the æsthetic satisfaction derived from an art is in exact proportion to one's knowledge of the art's technique. this largely explains the general public's indifference to art. and the everlasting fight between the artist and the public has been on these lines. the plea of the modern experimentist that all poetry of painting should be in the paint, which also whistler advanced, is a just one if not carried to extremes. absolute paucity of idea is as unfavourable as story-telling. the intrinsic beauty of a painting lies in the method of painting, and the only guide for the painter is colour and the general arrangement--not a method learned by rote, not an arrangement garroted by a thousand rules which others have invented, but that personal style or rhythm which is inveterately the painter's own. so whistler's style is beautiful because it is personal. his revolt was against story-telling, against the genre pictures, which adulterated painting with the skill of the novel writer. it is for future æsthetics to decide whether the introduction of musical ideals is not just as dangerous as the intermixture of any other art. there is no doubt, however, that the new combination grants a higher pleasure to the connoisseur at present. music is the most fashionable and, perhaps, most widely understood art to-day. this be as it may, whistler did a great service to modern art. by realizing its limitations he bestowed upon it a new vitality and glow. his art, far from being lawless, is the expression of a new law. make any kind of pictures you like, dear painters, provided they are beautiful. for each age there is a different beauty. old forms and old perfections wither. there has been too much story-telling. the david school, with its pompous historical, allegorical and mythological representations, has become intolerable to us. david, vernet, etc., up to ingres and delaroche all seem lifeless. also the romanticists, who were the interpreters of poets, appear highstrung to more recent art ideas. the reaction was inevitable. the impressionists--and their merit lies principally in that their work represents a technical reaction--went too far, inasmuch as it allows scarcely any scope to intellectual expansion. it is based on immediate vision, and occupies itself only with the consideration of light and colour, and keen observation of modern life. all the great painters met the public half way. the great painters, we need only to recall rembrandt, velasquez or leonardo, were painters as much as they were poets, but each in equal measure. the qualities balanced each other, and they did not, like the modern painters, sacrifice one for the other. whistler has to be classified as an impressionist, but he remained true to the old tradition. he was as much a reactionist against classic and romantic painting as any of them; but he had no use for the new technique. like monet, he went back to velasquez and goya, franz hals, van dyke and all the old masters who could paint. like courbet, he reduced a scene to three or four broad tones, but he was more exact in the grade of tones, and invariably endeavoured to explain the sentiment inspired by them. his work was never _anti intellectual_. on the contrary he was a true visionary. he protested against literary elements, but emphasized the psychological and symbolical qualities of painting. nobody was further remote from gross superficial realism. like flaubert and the goncourts, he proved that realism can go hand in hand with refined form and delicate psychology. he was sane throughout. and that is why the æsthetic revolution, produced by him, is not yet at an end. the first principle for the painter is to acquire a personal mode of feeling and thinking, and the second that he should find an adequate and personal method of expressing himself. the painter must choose his method. if he has only the old themes to paint the old forms will suit him well enough--portraits and single figures, landscapes and marines, cattle pictures and still life--but if he has anything special to say, he must find for himself a special and unique form of expression. the only criterion is beauty. chapter v on light and tone problems in his "art in the netherlands," and his various books on italian art, h. taine has maintained that the hand of the mediæval painter was largely guided by optical sensations. and, following this rather suggestive, than conclusive, trend of argument, we will readily perceive that the peculiar lighting conditions of those days, the semi-darkness of the interiors, the play of sunlight dying in the obscurity of shadows, and the absence of strong artificial lights have done much to disclose to the genius of a titian and a rembrandt the manifold harmonies of chiaroscura, of colouring, modelling and emotion. the tallow candle, the oil lamp, the torch and the open fire-place were the only artificial light appliances known to the middle ages, and they were all only like solitary rays of light in universal darkness. illumine a room by night, by placing a candle on the table or on the floor, and judge for yourself. the effects obtained, no doubt, would appear to you as weird and picturesque. the flickering light is uncertain, the shadows are intensely dark and pronounced, almost crude and vacillating, as if engaged in a continual combat with light. the contrasts are startling, yet not discordant, the vague train of light mingled with shadows accentuate only a few places with vivid spots, perchance the polished surface of a piece of furniture, a glass or pewter mug on the table, the collaret or jewelled belt of some fair lady. the eye is led to noticing gradations of obscurity, the darkness grows animated with colour and form, and we see the objects as through a glaze of van dyke brown. no wonder that the painter of the middle ages, having become sensible to the beauty of transparent darkness and the brilliant passages of light, dared to unite extremes and to show every form and colour in its full strength. the vagueness of chiaroscural effects was the great modifier which enveloped all adjacent objects in clair obscure and tempered them with a warm and mellow radiance. how different are the conditions in our time. there are no more schalcken or rembrandt effects. we have succeeded in banishing darkness from our homes. we have become very sanitary, we want light and air, the walls of houses are built less substantial, and through the increased largeness and transparency of panes, the daylight streams in with dazzling vehemence. it penetrates into the remotest nooks and corners. even at dawn the shadows are only vaguely dark, of an uncertain and mixed bluish grey. lenbach, the portrait painter, realized this deficiency, and found it necessary to construct a special studio, where the light was only sparingly admitted through deep casements, and where the sitters for his old-master-like interpretations of modern characters were placed far away from the windows. [illustration: _courtesy of the metropolitan museum, new york_ lady in gray.] the greatest havoc among chiaroscural effects, however, has been played by modern light appliances. gas and electric light, with their various modifiers and intensifiers, have killed all the old ideals. there are no longer any striking chiaroscural contrasts or strong accentuations. in the middle ages dress and drapery showed depth of folds and recesses which are absolutely unknown to-day. now, everything is diffused with light. nothing is steady and fixed, and yet objects stand out in painful relief. the modelling has lost much of its tonal variety, and all objects vaguely reflect the imprint of all-pervading light. the values of colour appear bleached and vary incessantly. our eyes are perpetually moving in a restless manner from one part to another, and no longer find any place to rest in the depth of shadows. luckily for us, we have been rendered unconscious of these dangers, we have grown accustomed to them, but their influence on modern painting has been a most palpable one. chiaroscural composition underwent a complete transformation. saliency of object induced the modern painter for a time, at the beginning of the last century, to strive solely for fixed and precise conceptions of form and to utterly neglect the beauty of light and shade. when he discovered his error, he went to the other extreme, and not merely softened contours, but blotted them out completely. at a loss how to meet this difficulty he lost himself in an intenser and more varied study of illumination, with the aim to reach a higher pitch of light. lamplight and firelight effects and the contrasts of commingling light rays from two, or even three, sources became the order of the day. sargent studied the effect of japanese lanterns on white dresses in twilight. harrison tried to fix the play of sunlight on the naked human body. dannat experimented with flesh tones and electrical arclight and magnesium flashlight illumination. zorn endeavoured to solve in his omnibus picture the conflict of various lights in a glass-encased interior. degas and besnard became enchanted with illumination from below, in the cross lights and the lurid unnatural lights of the stage, and his disciples introduced the effects of footlights into interiors by placing the lamp on the floor. all these studies address themselves most powerfully to the modern mind, as they depict contemporary conditions. the eye may be offended or even repelled by unnecessary trivialities at times, but the underlying aspiration is, after all, the truth. from an æsthetic view-point it is less satisfactory, as this modern substitute of light and shade composition, consisting of an opposition of colours, rather than of masses, does not afford, in the speech of herbert spencer, "the maximum of stimulation with the minimum of fatigue." it contains a discord, a lack of normal gratification, and this shortcoming, in conjunction with the deterioration of the crafts, which were replaced by factory labour, and the hopelessly prosaic aspect of modern dress, as far as colour is concerned, directed the painter into other fields of investigation. he realized that nature had remained unchanged, that the colour-symphony of sea and landscapes, of dawn and sunset, were as beautiful as ever, and he went out of doors for inspiration. and then, to his great astonishment, he discovered that the optical sensations afforded by nature were very similar to those he had experienced in his home life, also how everything was diffused with light, and forms rendered uncertain by the vibration of light. the famous colour harmony of italian painters, red, green and violet, which aroused action successively in the whole field of vision without exhausting it, seemed meaningless. strange, apparently discordant combinations of green and blue and yellow, orange and red, which stimulate only certain portions of the retina at the expense of others, obtruded themselves upon his optical consciousness. it became apparent that light does not emphasize, but that it generalizes, and that colours and tones, although more varied, are less decisive than in the painting of the old masters. the charm of pictorial illusion seemed to have shifted from the juxtaposition of contrast to the more subtle and less powerful variety of half tones. it is not so much the richness and fullness of colour the modern painter strives for, as raffaelli has pointed out, but the combination of colours which yield a sensation of light, which, in a way, is a reflection of our temporary light conditions. that the impressionists banished black from their palette is significant itself. [illustration: _owned by john h. whittemore_ "l'andalusienne."] ever since the semi-darkness of the middle ages was dispelled, the minds of painters had been occupied with the invention of a new method of painting. chardin and watteau, who crosshatched and stippled pure colours in their pastels and water colours, were really the forerunners of impressionism. delacroix was the first master-painter who scientifically concerned himself with light and colour notation, as turner (_viz._ ruskin) introduced the emphasis of the colour of shadows at the expense of their tones. but not before science came to the assistance of the painter, was he able to perfect his system of open air mosaics, of producing tone by the parallel and distinct projection of pure colours. and it is chevreul, young, helmholtz and ogden rood, who, after analyzing colour sensations from a physiological viewpoint and tracing them to their causes, supplied the genius of manet, monet and degas with a new pictorial revelation of light and colour. the modern style of painting is a direct outcome of the environment in which we live. with the decline of candlelight parties the new era was ushered in, and the kerosene lamp was the last harmonizer of light and darkness. as it went slowly out of fashion, the reign of half and quarter tones, or, in other words, a new reign of light, of light transposed into tone, set in. it set in, however, at the expense of everything else. it is largely technical, and the representations are photographic, prosaic, crude and often without the slightest suggestion of sentiment, not even that which an ordinary scene out of doors produces in an imaginative mind. this, more than any other course, estranges art from the approval of the general public. the subject of an old master, although mostly of a religious order and legible to the ordinary mind, at times may have soared beyond the ordinary faculties of comprehension, but the object represented invariably appealed to the sense of sight, as it was painted in such a way as to create an illusion. the old masters succeeded in suggesting on a flat surface the roundness and actual colouring of things. the modern painter depicts objects in which the beauty is not always palpable to the layman, and in a manner which is less convincing, as he suggests form rather than actually representing it, and adheres most stubbornly to individual colour interpretation. it needs connoisseurship and technical knowledge to understand and appreciate the paintings of to-day. the paintings of a degas, besnard or renoir remain a myth even to the people who are fond of art. comparatively few persons are versed in the thought-transference from colour to sentiment. whistler did not believe in the constant mechanical mixture of seven solar tones, which make the eye perform the work which should be done by the painter. he tried hard for the dissociation of tones by endeavouring to translate the flat tints of the japanese into oil paintings executed in western fashion, but was not satisfied with the result. living in london, with a view on the thames, he realized that the aspects of modern life have turned grey. they have nothing to do with oriental embroideries. our large cities with their smoke and manifold exhalations (not to speak of communities subjected to the use of soft coal) have acquired a dust-laden, misty atmosphere. this peculiarity of city atmosphere, however, to be noticed in london and paris as much as in chicago and pittsburg, is a wonderful subduer and eliminator of detail, and should prove a valuable ally in conquering new suggestions of light effects. this whistler realized, and he used it to express what the inner life of things in modern art needed most to express, the poetry of paint expressed in tone and light. "the study of light _per se_" as leon dabo says, "had become a creed with monet, manet and their followers. somehow whistler's contribution to this _naissance_--for it was a real birth, first successfully carried out by constable--has been entirely neglected for the more obvious quality of full sunlight produced by the so-called impressionists. whistler's paintings prove conclusively that where there is harmony of colour there is vibration of atmosphere, and, therefore, the illusion of light." when we stand before the "mona lisa" of leonardo da vinci and before his less famous, but almost equally fascinating woman of the liechtenstein gallery, we do not marvel merely at the lifelike representation, which seems to actually vibrate; but at something evasive and unfathomable that we find difficult to express in words. we experience something similar when we contemplate whistler's "mother" or some portraits of modern masters like blanche, lavery, enigmatic khnopff, or the grey men and women of carriere, who rise so softly and mistily out of the background. although they have not attained the mastership of the former in the representation of the living, breathing people, there is the same mysterious mood in their paintings. they seem to quiver with something that is essentially modern, and cannot emanate alone from the charm of momentary expression which is one of their main attractions. the modern figures have a less corporeal effect than those of the renaissance; they resemble apparitions which have suddenly taken shape in the greyness of life only to dissolve again into shadows. this is more than a technical change, it is a new way of thinking. we concede a new attribute to these painters and call their achievements the "psychological style" of painting. robert henri's "young woman in black" is an interesting attempt in this direction. by this we wish to convey that the figures tell us something of the inner life, and that the way in which this is accomplished impresses us like a commentary on their souls. of course this is nothing new. all the masterpieces of portraiture, no matter how different technically they may be, whether clear and sharp or soft and diffused, whether by a raphael or a rembrandt, titian or franz hals, have the faculty to make us dream and invent some psychical annotation to the figures represented, but modern life is more analytical. we rejoice in dissecting our thoughts, sentiments and moods, and some of our foremost contemporaries, though they may wield their brushes as dexterously as the old masters, concentrate upon the endeavour to reflect specifically the spiritual qualities and to accentuate its functions as far as it is possible in paint. the modern painter is fond of specializing, not only in subject, but technically, because he lacks the overflowing energy and strength to conquer all the elements of his profession in one effort. this age, at least in the upper intellectual strata, has become very skeptical. we are not concerned so much about divinities and our future state as about ourselves in the present. religion no longer furnishes the emotional staff on which we may lean on our pilgrimage of life, and yet we need some spiritual support, some science for the soul, and we may look about for something that may mystify us and lift us above the prose of every-day existence. and this search is mirrored in the endeavour of these men who would like to paint enigmatic figures, like "mona lisa" and the woman of the liechtenstein gallery. conditions change, but not so much that they become entirely extinct. the possibilities for emotional art are to-day as great as ever. for portraiture, single figure representation and character delineation gentle effects capable of subtler gradations are more desirable. they may be found in many out-of-the-way places. a modern ribera may find endless suggestions for new light and shade combinations in an ordinary cellar, and the picturesque "tavern atmosphere" of a caravaggio or terborg can surely be substituted in some obscure nooks and corners of our towns. our living-rooms show a wealth of still life that, by the play of light, could be turned into beautiful accessories. there is nothing more gratifying to the eye than a bright, haphazard shimmer on some objects while the remainder is lost in a vague, picturesque haze. the student of light and shade will find the range of light is still a very wide one. the vivid glow of firelight, here flickering brightly, there vanishing in gloom, will always produce a striking effect. a pale splendour caressing the human form with vague reflections could be obtained by light streaming through stained-glass windows. the dazzling illumination of the hour of sunset, which pales and subdues all objects, and, concentrated on the human body, makes it look as if it had been absorbed all in light and radiated it (which prudhon has attempted and henner specialized), may fill our minds with new dreams of vision. even the ghostlike rays of shimmering moonlight (as steichen has shown in his versions of rodin's balzac) may open novel methods to render tone and form in the broadest and softest manner possible. still i do not believe in the garish effects of certain modern painters, who take special delight in reproducing the flaring vagaries of artificial light. the trend of such works is towards an affected æstheticism. they may be fascinating and "stunningly clever" but they do not ring true. they are at their best only in colour experiments specially made to startle the beholder. when elsheimer painted his "christ taken prisoner," showing the pale light of the moon in the background, while the nocturnal figures in the foreground are enveloped by the glare of torches, he ventured upon a problem that was, after all, logical and true to life. but to place a lamp on the floor merely for the purpose of throwing interesting diagonal shadows upwards on a woman's figure, is not far from being an absurdity. the various aspects of electrical illumination, gaslight, flashlight effects, searchlight, etc., no doubt can be solved pictorially, but they should never be applied unless the character of the picture absolutely demands them. tone is the ideal of the modern painter. it is his highest ambition. it is the powerful subduer of all the incongruities of modern art. but what painters strive for, in most instances are merely fragmentary accomplishments. it is not tone in the large sense as the old masters understood it. to titian and rembrandt and velasquez "tone" meant a combination of all pictorial qualities, the contrast of colour, the balance of lighter and darker planes, the linear arrangement; all these together produced tone. they do not sacrifice form or detail, correct drawing, the physiognomy of the faces and the idea and conception of the picture to it. do not misunderstand me. tone is desirable; no picture should be without it. but it is merely one of the elements that enter into the making of a picture, and not the whole thing. there are light tonalities as well as dark tonalities. a renoir is as much in tone as a black-in-black tissot. what tonal painters see in tone is merely the appearance of old age. the old masters have become famous, and the public has acquired a certain predilection for dark-toned pictures. the modern painters try to reproduce it, overlooking (perhaps wilfully) that the dark tonality is entirely an artificial product, caused by dirt and dampness, the chemical action of light, and the gradual change of colour, oil and varnish. the old masters painted in a low key, but they probably never thought that some day their pictures would look as they do now. the modern painters try to produce a quality that has nothing to do with art, they cater to the taste of certain art patrons that have a liking for old-looking things. in portraiture the simplest scheme will always be most certain of success. variety is desirable, but no exaggeration or strained effects. of all modern painters whistler and carrière seem to have excelled in conquering the modern limitations of light and shade composition and making the most of them. they have enveloped their figures in clair-obscure that is uncertain in form, mystic in tendency, but suggestive of atmosphere, depth and space, some grey or dark interior filled with struggling shadows, capricious gleams of light and tonal gradations, tantalizing in their subtlety and power of suggestion. all sharp lines are dissolved, each detail vanishes with soft delicacy into the other and their light, falling from some unknown source, quivers like a soft chord through the twilight. the "mother and child" of carrière has but little of the robust yet sweet and seductive charm of the madonna pictures. its glimmer of light is sad and dreamy, as if it were woven out of grey monotonies of everyday life. and in whistler's "sarasate" we see in the plastic, but solitary light passage, on face and shirt front a symbol of all the glamour of romance and poetry that light can yield in our prosaic age. whistler translated all objects into flat surface planes, and, in that way, sacrificed more to the realization of tone than any other painter. his fragmentary visions are almost colourless but never give the impression of monochrome. looking at one of his enigmatic figures receding into vague shadows, a strange association of thought occurs to me: i see in one of the sunless courtyards of the escurial the dark figure of a woman standing near a fountain and holding a red rose in her hand. at one of the palace windows is seen the proud face of velasquez, gazing absent-mindedly upon the scene. and the wind ruffles the flower, carries one petal after another and scatters them upon the surface of the water. is this dark silent woman the personification of whistler's muse, and does she tell us that the splendour of light and shade composition of the old masters has faded, that we know nothing of its fervour that rose from the depths of a more picturesque age, and that all we can do is to scatter a few colour notes across the darkness of space? for the jubilant and passionate note is altogether missing in whistler's art, though it can claim profundity and some dreaminess. [illustration: _carnegie art institute, pittsburg_ arrangement in black: senor pablo sarasate.] light now flits phantom-like across the masterpieces of pictorial delineation, but it is still the great elixir of art, that will give life to any scene and animate any object. no special method can be indicated. every worker must be his own pioneer and pathfinder. the new era of light is yet in a primitive stage. it is a lonely art whose language is understood but by the few, though we have approached the hour of dawn before the awakening. life may seem dreary and colourless to us, yet we should realize that only one beam of light is needed to change it into a vision of beauty. to rembrandt even the bree-straat in amsterdam, resplendent in his time of oriental culture and moorish pomp, may have seemed dull and colourless. he had to create for himself a distant and enchanted realm from out the prosaic world in which he lived. and so must every ambitious artist dream himself far away from the grey of everyday life and construct a poetic world for himself alone. light is, after all, objective and merely suggestive. the artist's mind must serve as some faustean retort, which will turn these suggestions into the soft gleams and sparkling shimmers of art. whistler was one of the few to accomplish the task. chapter vi symphonies in interior decoration william morris demanded that our entire environment should be beautiful. only in moments of superior enjoyment do we realize the significance of human life, and by a poem, picture or sonata we construct the symbols that bring us closest to this appreciation. why then not construct a candlestick, a chair, the surface of a wall, in such a way that they might be taken for symbols, to remind us of the existence of our soul? the candlestick shall no longer be a mere stand and holder for a candle but a souvenir of reminiscences. that is the philosophical idea that underlies all interior decoration and furnishing. as sheridan ford so aptly expressed it in an article in "st. stephen's review" in : "there are in england two new, and in their origin, distinct methods of interior decoration. gradually they have coalesced to a degree, although they will always retain their individual traits and differences. these two methods may be termed the whistlerian, and the english or pre-raphaelite; the one, spontaneous, fresh--simple, the other, a revival--complex--reformatory. through many years, from the early days of the pre-raphaelites down to the last meeting of the painter-socialists, an outside influence--a personality--has been making itself felt in london in strange and subtle ways." the morris arts and crafts movement believes in patterned design and the dominant force of the material. every material speaks its own language, and we must understand, before we can lend expression to it. when the actual moment of designing arrives, the artist-artisan should work with a piece of the material itself before his eyes--wood, stone, iron or plain silk, linen or wool stuff, according to circumstances. this memory of nature's forms, dominated by the momentary impression of the material, with its requirements, capabilities and limitations, would lead him to a more congenial and workmanlike result than all the contents of a natural history museum, botanical garden or library. in the same way as we can give to words a dramatic, epic or lyrical significance, so has wood, leather and glass their own sphere of expression. harmony in every detail is the ultimate result. a room is no museum, every object must be related to the other, the candlestick must make a rhyme with the wall-paper, with the woodwork, the hangings, the table and chairs. whistler, on the other hand, was the apostle of japanese simplicity, of suggestion rather than realization. he tried to express his own æsthetic creed, and that consisted of restful expanses of unbroken wall, of decorative devices and ornamental motifs, individual caprices accentuated by black, and, finally, by colour. colour in interior decoration meant to him the same thing as tone in painting. it reigned supreme. our feeling of beauty varies; it may find its expression in a certain flower, a certain hour of the day or season, in a certain poem or song or, as it was the case with whistler, in a certain delicate colour tint, that would make a room look gay and cheerful. he tried to bring the sun into the house, even in a land of fog and cloud. pale pink, brown, pale turquoise, primrose, saffron, sulphure and lemon-yellow were his favourite colours. these he endeavoured to express. it was the gesture of his soul translated into every object and material. a colour is like a special metric form, and all lines, and every combination of tint--the sofa, the lamp, wall-paper--take the place of stanzas in a finished poem. in such a house we would see mirrors everywhere reflecting our own personality. such were whistler's creations. they reflected his own face, and echoed his own song. whistler arrived at these conclusions early in his life. during his stevens-japanese print period he interested himself a good deal with decorative schemes. he had painted "the princess of the porcelain land," which was purely decorative, and, in a way, served as inspiration for the peacock room, as the design for the latter was really invented to find a proper environment for the painting. in a diary of william michael rossetti, the ever busy biographers have found a note referring to six schemes or projects of practically the same size. it reads: "whistler is doing on a large scale, for leyland, the subject of women with flowers." they were never executed, although some of the sketches are still in existence. he abandoned decorative schemes entirely in later years, but became more and more engrossed in the problems of interior decoration. in later years he intended to paint a grand decoration with full orchestration that he would call "the symphony of colours--full palette." this would have been indeed interesting, but i fear he went too deep into blacks to have accomplished it. in most instances he abstained from mural decoration,--the panels over the chimney-place, and the shutter and ceiling decoration of the peacock room for the leyland home at prince's gate, london, were his only supreme effort in that direction. they show the right idea about decorative painting. he agreed with all decorative painters from gozzoli to bob chanler, that it should be an arrangement of colours which, within its frame, affords a pleasant visual entertainment. there is no intention to give food for thought. the peacocks in blue on gold and gold on blue relate as little as does an oriental carpet. he merely wished to please the eye by depicting them more beautifully than they were in nature. but why did he select peacocks? do they not convey an idea? figures usually are story-telling symbols, but not necessarily so; with him they were vehicles of colour, to invent a pattern for their luminosity. peacock designs occur frequently in japanese art. no doubt, whistler studied them. there is a certain resemblance, but he individualized them in his own way. the sharply silhouetted forms of the birds are a happy invention of luminous colour and interesting design. the japanese would have made a more lavish use of gold, that is they would have left larger spaces untouched by any additional colour. blank spaces of gold (or any colour) act in such instances like the musical silence of a pause between music, they represent the birth of beauty from luxury. but the leyland room was overcrowded, with its elaborate ceiling, bulky chandelier and collection of blue and white porcelain on walnut shelves, broken by an endless repetition of perpendicular lines. he could not change the architecture of the place, so he went to work and decorated the few spaces that were available. to decorate the inside shutters with a peacock design was a unique performance, and to cover the moulding of the chandelier and the entire ceiling with conventionalized peacock feathers, utilizing the eyes of the feathers as accents, was even more marvellous. in the elegance of its scheme, and its individual perfection, splendour and restfulness it has no equal. [illustration: shutter decoration, peacock room.] when whistler moved into houses of his own, he had, like all ambitious house-owners, the desire to create a comfortable and beautiful home. none of his houses were ever completely decorated and finished; they had a look, as pennell tells us, as if he had just moved in, or was just moving out; often there were packing cases and trunks about, but as much as was finished was always beautiful. the "house beautiful" or "white house," was a three-storied house with many windows of various sizes, a green slate roof, bluish-grey door, portland stone facings and fantastic wood ornamentation. a queer looking house, was the verdict of the neighbours, and yet it was rather unassuming, so that it escaped the attention of the ordinary passer-by. while various schemes for each room were in his mind, a friend, mr. sutherland, director of the p. o. company, called one evening in the spring of to ask whistler if he would help him in the decoration of his home. whistler entered upon the idea with enthusiasm and prepared the plans. the novelty of the schemes was first approved of, but, as they developed, mr. sutherland began to doubt their plausibility. whistler relieved him from all obligations, and determined that he would use the ideas in his own home. he went at once to work and three weeks later gave a dinner to celebrate the event. it was a revelation of simple delicate colour schemes--everything was artistic from the mahogany woodwork in the "gold and yellow" room down to the single flower in some bit of kaga porcelain. in the room everything was yellow, gold or brown. the walls were tinted yellow, the cabinet and chimney-piece in one structure were of a bright yellow mahogany, with gilt panels. the tiles before it were of a pale sulphur colour. in some niches there was a display of orange coloured vases. the peacock designs were seen in some panels, but they were carried out in yellow and gold. the chairs were covered with yellow velvet, the table had brass legs and rested on a brown rug. one may say that whistler established three simple rules for decoration, which interpreted in words, might read like this: first: that a house should be a dainty and complete thing--from the door-knocker to the ridge tile. second: that each room should be restful, with ceiling, walls and floors so treated as to give a sense of shelter, freedom and completeness, terminating in the floor at the base. third: that pure, tender colours scientifically used give ease and infinite suggestion, and should be allowed to play about a room without coming into boisterous contact with another. harper pennington, a friend of whistler's, has given a humourous but sympathetic description of the "white house:" "his furniture was limited to the barest necessities, and, frequently, too few of those." indeed, some wit made what he called his "standing joke" about poor jimmy's dearth of seats. once dick (corney) grain said, when shaking hands before a sunday luncheon, "ah! jimmy, glad to see you playing before such a full house!" glaring around the studio with his large protruding eyes in search of something to sit on. "what do you mean?" said whistler. "standing room only," replied the actor. the studio could boast of only four or five small cane-seated chairs (always requisitioned for the dining room on sundays), and the most uncomfortable bamboo sofa ever made. nobody, except some luckless model, sat upon it twice. never a book or any instrument of music in his room, nothing that would not constantly be in use, nothing superfluous; all his cares were centred on the wall and woodwork, painted in graduated monochromes, of which he held the secret. the strangest thing about these rooms of his was, that they always looked complete. there was no space, apparently, for more than he put in them. so great was the art in his arrangements of colour and a few pieces of ordinary furniture--a spindle-legged table and three or four small painted chairs--that it seemed impossible to add so much as a book without disturbing the harmonious whole. curtains, a little mirror, one, two, three at the most, perfectly placed pictures, a vase, perhaps a pair of them, upon the mantel, and matting on the floor, were literally all that any room i ever knew him to occupy appeared _able_ to contain. there was a sense of finish and finality about it which a piano and stuffed furniture would have disturbed. in the vases, as in two square hanging pots upon the wall of the dining-room, there were always a few yellow flowers, and in a huge old china bowl, that formed the centrepiece of the dining-room table, swam some tiny gold fish--the whole thing was carefully composed so as to make the "symphony" complete at those historic sunday breakfasts. his various abodes became a topic of conversation, and a place of pilgrimage, and made whistler, for a while at least, a recognized leader in decoration. he developed a style, the influence of which has been felt all over europe. the beauty of one colour in the decoration of a room, the division of space into simple lines and masses, the scarcity of furniture, leaving large empty spaces, the use of flowers or a few choice pieces of bric-a-brac, we owe largely to whistler. the backgrounds of his "miss alexander," "carlyle" and "the artist's mother" offer vague glimpses into the realm of individualized decoration, and, in a way, better information about its character than a hundred pages of explanation. [illustration: arrangement in gray and green: miss alexander.] among the houses that were decorated under whistler's supervision are the aubrey house, kensington; carlyle cottage, chelsea; the home of mr. d'oyly carte, on the banks of the thames, the music room of sarasate in paris, for whom it is said, he also designed the furniture, and the "pink palace," where he lived with his favourite model "maud," in . occasionally he may have designed the furniture as a particular favour to a friend, but it was not his habit. all he did was to give advice or to make the selection. now and then he may have made a hasty sketch to make his idea clear to others, but it is not known that he ever made a regular design that could have been used by a skilful cabinet-maker to work from. he merely suggested, and, if conditions allowed, to establish beauty of proportions. beauty of design should exist, no matter whether it be in the vault of the sistine chapel, or a writing desk, but colour is imperative. his "style" consisted of little more than selecting a special colour scheme. he took pride in mixing the colours, but never put them on himself. an ordinary house-painter served the purpose just as well. he looked at a room, decided what parts should be dark or black, and then proceeded, in his most scientific manner, to find a colour, delicate and luminous, that would brighten the walls. no doubt, he laboured under favourable conditions. but we should not forget that he himself created these conditions, in which his artistic personality perhaps found its happiest and most characteristic expression. exquisite colour and simplicity and the desire to gain the possible effects of light were the leading characteristics of the whistler style. whistler committed one great error. he invariably preferred beauty to comfort. he frequently lost sight of the practical, with the result that use and beauty were not always combined in due proportion. he had little regard for physical requirements--he himself was always active, he had no time to lounge, consequently decorative possibilities alone interested him. it is the same trouble with _l'art nouveau_. although infinitely superior to the soulless copyism of different styles as practised by sterling bronze and artistic furniture companies, it lacks that true artistic feeling for ornamentation, which makes the designer at once realize the proper limits of his materials and show proper judgment in the uses to which he puts them. whistler was so sensitive to any discord of line or colour, that he, no doubt, would have endured inconvenience rather than have destroyed the harmony of an effect. most of us do not care to exist that way. a house is built to live in, with as much grace as possible, but primarily with a feeling of comfort. most people would prefer a modern apartment to an old palace at fiesole. the material demands of the owner should determine the construction of the house. the american architects begin to realize this more and more. what principle rules the construction of a window? the dimensions of the room. the windows are not made for the street, to be looked at from the outside; they are there for the room, to distribute light and emphasize any special use they may be put to. in a parlour, for instance, people are more apt to look out a window than anywhere else; for that reason the parlour windows should be wider than in other rooms to enable several people to look out comfortably at the same time. a chair is made to sit upon comfortably, not merely to look beautiful. the most beautiful design in a chair will not condone the torture that may be caused by a shape that does not adapt itself to the human form. the chairs in the sarasate music room were exquisite but too stiff to allow any repose. imagine listening to a concert sitting erect, without being able to stretch out one's limbs. the main reason for not having any comfortable chairs in his own studio was one of self-protection. it was his work-room, and he wished to prevent visitors from making it a hall of gossip. he preferred to have it empty; a promenade to contemplate the next master stroke on one of his paintings. when whistler was forced to give up the "white house," and all its beautiful contents were dispersed, he was enraged that the succeeding owner, "arry" quilter, took liberties with the facade. quilter had added a bay window, and, to whistler's idea, destroyed the entire effect. after that he never wanted to look at it again. on one occasion he expressed his anger in a most amusing manner. "to think of arry living in the temple i created," he said. "he has no use for it. if he had any feeling for the symmetry of things he would come to me and say: 'here, whistler, is your house, take it, you know its meaning, i don't. take it and live in it.--but no, he has not sense enough to see that.'" harry quilter, no doubt, got as much enjoyment out of the house as whistler did, although in a different way. extreme sensitiveness in regard to line, colour and form produces a beautiful result, not unlike a handsome painting, but i fear it would prove monotonous in the long run. a beautiful room is like a simple melody, but if the melody has any striking individuality, we soon tire of it. if the decoration could be kept entirely neutral the problem could be solved satisfactorily. but pink and lemon-yellow are not neutral. not everybody would feel happy in a blue room decorated with purple fans. even a woman in a certain gown would destroy the harmony, and a definite colour seen all the time, even if unconsciously, would soon disturb our mental serenity. the whistler rooms were beautiful when no human being moved in them. they were there for the photographer, but not for congenial habitation. i believe most people will agree that the most beautiful bed is the one in which one can sleep most peacefully; the most beautiful chair the one which allows perfect relaxation of the body; the most beautiful glass that which lends itself most gracefully to convey to our lips the special beverage it is intended for. this may sound unæsthetic, but it is common sense. comfort comes first, whenever ordinary living purposes are concerned. there is plenty of opportunity for the exploration and exfoliation of beauty, but it should be subordinated to the primary causes. whistler's influence, in my opinion, was most beneficial in the arrangement of exhibitions. an exhibition of paintings, or any work of art, is solely an æsthetic venture, and should be harmonious at any cost. it is just in this that most exhibitions fail. they show the most incongruous backgrounds, frames of the most incredible malformations, floors that are either bare or loudly carpeted and pictures that are hung without the slightest consideration for their colour values. with the simple use of distemper, matting and muslin whistler performed wonders. during his short reign as president of the society of british artists he transformed the suffolk street galleries from a barn into a dignified exhibition hall. pictures, frames, walls, floors, lighting and decorations, each element had its due place, the one supplementing the other, and harmonizing, instead of conflicting with it, as is so often the case. every year saw some fresh assertions of his leadership. he took a great deal of interest in the arrangement of his own exhibitions, making some of them occasions for the exploitation of his views in new and original ways. his initial exhibition in pall mall, , where, for the first time, walls were brought into harmony with the pictures upon them, and successes in bond street, at the fine arts society, and at dowdswell's, are accepted facts in the art history of london. each one of these exhibitions especially embodied the demonstration of a colour scheme or problem of decoration. so there came to pass, in their turn, the arrangement in "flesh colour and grey," the harmony in "gold and brown" and the arrangement in "yellow and white," and others, equally characteristic and original. with scrupulous love of detail, he neglected nothing and devoted unusual attention to the make-up of the catalogue. the brown-covered paper catalogue of the exhibition of etchings held at the fine art society gallery, in , was issued with the imprint of the artist's home in tite street, chelsea, and represented his peculiar views of typography as well as the art of slaying incompetent and hostile reviewers with their own weapons. after the title of each etching was printed a quotation from some criticism, under the general motto (on the title page) "out of their own mouths ye shall judge them." "prodigious amateur--there are years when mr. whistler gives great promise--in this instance criticism is powerless--mr. whistler is eminently vulgar--general absence of tone--mr. whistler has produced too much for his reputation"--are some of the quotations. the gallery, on this occasion, was hung with white and yellow, had yellow matting on the floor, yellow chairs and yellow flower pots. the attendants at the door were in yellow and white livery, while the artist wore yellow socks, and his assistants yellow cravats. for the catalogue of the exhibition of paintings held in , whistler prepared a page of "propositions" called "l'envoie," which we quote elsewhere, and he repeated in the catalogue of "his heroic kick in bond street" in , the use of quotations from the critics, for each title entry. the mottoes on this occasion were: "the voice of a people" and a sentence from the speech of the general attorney at the whistler v. ruskin trial, "i do not know when so much amusement has been offered to the british public as by mr. whistler's pictures." the artist triumphed, the success of the exhibition proved the futility of the early judgments. a perusal of this queer document, even to-day, elicits a smile; it is delicious humour and at the same time a splendid assertion of artistic power and self-adulation. the first new york exhibition of work by whistler was held in the old wunderlich gallery, on broadway, in march, , when sixty-two "notes," "harmonies" and "nocturnes" were shown, with some accessories of yellow hangings, flowers, furniture and footmen imitation of the london exhibition of . but this sort of thing is rarely successful in this country. it is apt to be misinterpreted, and somehow looks out of place. one of the finest achievements of the painter is the frame which rightly bears his name. the official exhibitions still insist on the usual monotony of gilt frames, and the painters seem to have neither any particular inclination nor the opportunity to create frames of lovely forms and well-balanced repeating patterns of their own. the frame-makers and art-dealers are masters of the situation, and their interests are strictly mercenary ones. "attractive enough at first sight, hopelessly inartistic on further inspection," is the verdict which one has to give of the average frame of to-day. only a few of our painters oppose the mechanically manufactured frames. they have their frames specially designed for each picture, stanford white having been the designer of quite a number of them. their frames are wide and flat, without corners and centrepieces, the repeating pattern is generally a simple, classic ornament, with a tendency toward parallel lines. the architectural designs, with greek columns in the upright sides, are rather heavy and less recommendable. whistler's frames, which served as inspiration to all these later-day designers, were conceived in simple planes, broken with parallel grooves that were restful to the eye as sole ornamentation. they were original inventions, free from any taint of imitation. the gaudy burnished gold effect was substituted by pale gold and bronze that could be tinted and glazed according to the principal colour note of the pictures the frame was designed for. they are so simple that it is difficult to improve their design. but he did not make them for general use, he merely suggested to other painters the advantageousness of designing their own frames, as is now largely customary. [illustration: eagle wharf (etching).] whistler has performed a brave deed. if he had done nothing else but to improve our taste in the arrangement of exhibitions he would be remembered for many years. he has done far more. he has set up the big ideal of simplicity. his eccentricities and harmonies of decoration may not live. there are many men working on the same problem all over the western hemisphere, and his peculiar style will undergo many modifications and improvements, but we should never forget that he was one of the first who opened our eyes to a practicable and inexpensive way of beautifying our home and everyday life. chapter vii visions and identifications although remarkably sure, efficient and successful in various branches of art, whistler has to be ranked primarily as a figure painter. in these efforts centre his greatness. he is, however, only a figure painter in a modified sense. we look in vain for large and elaborate compositions. he achieved his fame as a portrait and single figure painter. it is strange that a man who had the science of painting at his finger ends should limit himself to single figures. perhaps he knew his limitations, or, the limitation of his peculiar view-point as to what painting should be and could accomplish. possibly he went too far in his elimination. who can say? an artist must be true to his own convictions, and the public and critics must accept, and, in time, learn to appreciate them. analysis of an artist's work is interesting only as far as it helps one to find the right view-point for contemplation. whistler, of course, had no use for ordinary portraiture, as it has been practised for centuries. he felt, no doubt, that the time for idealization as well as realistic interpretation of likenesses had passed. no painter can surpass van dyke in the elegant delineation of men and women, or franz hals in the representation of instantaneous expression. whistler wanted a characteristic attitude that expressed in a simple pose or movement an entire personality. but the purely technical problem fascinated him even more, to express himself forcefully in black and dull colours, to paint broadly and yet so delicately that no brushwork became visible, and to create the illusion of atmosphere and space around the human form. his first picture of importance (started in ), "at the piano," was also the first true whistler, not only the whistler we admire and cherish to-day but the whistler who has exercised an influence on modern painting and who will live as one of the prominent figures in the history of art. i have rarely seen a modern interior treated with more charm and simplicity. a woman, apparently lady haden, in a quaint black old-fashioned gown, is seated at the piano, from which she seems to elicit some vague melancholy chords, while a little girl in white, in a pensive attitude, stands opposite her, in the curve of the instrument. the dark silhouette of the mother is beautifully balanced by the white form of the little girl. there is an astonishing number of horizontal lines in the composition, but somehow they are not noticed, at least they do not offend the eye. i believe the diagonal tendency of the figures counteracts all other lines. one peculiarity of whistler's interiors and backgrounds is that they nearly always represent a straight wall. he rarely indulged in perspective arrangements. his aim was breadth and simplicity, and he avoided all cheap pictorial effect. technically, it still shows the stevens' influence--it could almost pass for a genre picture--but in poetical conception and the suggestion of a mystic atmosphere it already predicts all the accomplishments of the artist's prime. [illustration: at the piano.] in his earlier career whistler occasionally made use of more elaborate accessories, as in his "little white girl," "the princess of the porcelain land," and the "woman in white." the latter i consider one of his weakest compositions. the figure is rather stiff and too high up in the picture. the carpeted floor looks as though it were sloping. the bottom of the dress is too distinct. the same could be said of the entire contour, the lines are not sufficiently graceful to permit such clearness of line. also as a painting of a white figure on a white background it is not unsurpassed. "katherine emmerich," by gabriel max, at the pinakothek, munich, and the raffaelli's "sleeping woman," in the wilstach gallery, philadelphia, treat the same theme but are technically superior. whistler developed slowly. only gradually he learned to avoid detail as much as possible, and only occasionally accentuated it here and there, as a note of contrast to the larger planes. the years - were the most active and important years of his career. nearly all his portraits, those of frederick leyland, florence leyland, miss alexander, rose corder, sarasate, sir henry irving as philip ii, the fur jacket, lady archibald campbell, the artist's mother, carlyle, theodore duret, mme. cassatt, mrs. huth, lady meux, etc., were painted in that period. [illustration: _courtesy of the metropolitan museum, new york_ sir henry irving as philip ii.] all these later pictures were painted under the ban of velasquez. in whistler's paintings velasquez's art was revived and rejuvenated. he repeats the same inspirations but in an etherealized, modernized and individualized manner. whistler was triumphantly himself. there is much conjecture as to how whistler acquired his knowledge of velasquez. joseph pennell claims that whistler never went to the prado in madrid. duret tells us, that during a trip to spain in , he intended to go to madrid, but on the way was fascinated by the scenery around guethary (north of biarritz) to such an extent that he prolonged his stay until it was time to return, without having crossed the pyrenees. others, with a quizzical mien, say that he might have gone without letting anybody know of it. it is hardly credible that he did not see the "dwarfs," the "spinners," the "mercury and argus," the "maria theresa," "la meninas," "Æsop," the "menippus" and the "surrender of breda." however it really matters little. he had seen the portraits of the hermitage at an early age, and was thoroughly acquainted with the various portraits of philip ii at the london national gallery. in this age of handbooks one can study gozzoli in a new york garret. of course a trip to florence might prove profitable, but the right man, with the proper amount of imagination, knows no obstacle. his intuition will help him to get thoroughly imbued with any subject he is bent upon knowing. the portraits are all single figure studies, with a plain or simple background. they do nothing. they merely convey the charm of a personality as seen in an arrangement of colour. whistler was a keen observer of facial expression and gesticulation and still more so of that other no less telling kind of expression, which depends upon our general bearing, and upon the way we move our limbs and body while we are trying to convey our thoughts and intentions to our neighbours. but this was not the principal theme, as it is of so many portrait painters. to him the very soul of art was elimination: to leave out all that could be left out. he realized that he could not proceed in the elimination process as gaily and liberally as in his nocturnes. he needed a more convincing sense of form, a certain regard for detail--no matter how broadly rendered--and a feeling for accurate line. this fragmentary representation of a human being requires the keenest artistic feeling, to know exactly when one has to stop in the process of reducing the multiplicity of nature to simple forms, of discarding superficial traits of the figure and retaining only the essential ones. for elimination is only half the game; selection makes up the rest. the sureness with which whistler stops just upon the border line proves his genius. however vague and enveloped his line may have become, it has never been pushed beyond the point where it falls into meaningless and spiritless formlessness. whistler's portraiture may be summed up as a never-ceasing study to express a human personality in the subtlest way imaginable. at bottom of all that he creates, there lies the desire to make his figures betray their character, emotions, and their whole personality by means of a tonal vision. in the portrait of frederick leyland, the "medici of liverpool" (painted ), whistler, for the first time, introduced the plain background without accessories, endeavouring to subordinate it to the figure. in the portrait the figure occupies the entire length of the canvas, and yet is enveloped in atmosphere. i believe this is largely due to the vagueness of outline and the accentuation of the principal points of the human form by touches of light, as the headlights on the silver buckle of the shoe, the hand on the hip and the gray overcoat over the left arm. the blacks in this picture have a marvellous quality. the painting of a black evening suit against a pitch black background is one of the masterpieces of modern technique, over which future ages will not cease to marvel. also the shadow on the grey floor helps. the pose is dignity itself, but it seems to me that the artist did not quite succeed in carrying out his own ideal. the figure makes the impression as if it were stepping out of the picture, like a rubens. the same problem occupied him for years. he succeeded much better in the "rose corder" and "the fur jacket;" and in the "lady archibald campbell," also called the "yellow buskin," he actually solved the problem. the picture is at the wilstach gallery, philadelphia, and everybody who has seen it will realize, or feel, at least, that the figure is represented as if actually moving in space. most of his pictures were painted in ordinary rooms, without a top light, partly, no doubt, because he wanted to paint his sitters under natural, not artificial conditions. also the "rose corder" portrait, painted in , carries out this sensation. this portrait, which was purchased by richard a. canfield from its former owner, graham robertson, is entitled "an arrangement in black and brown." the differentiation of brown in the hair, fur, felt hat, feather and floor are so subtle and beautiful, that it would be almost impossible to go any further in the exploitation of one colour. the person who can appreciate the subtleties of these cool, almost neutral colours, appreciates whistler. it was his main ambition, even to that extent that he wished the beholder to know of his intention. and that is no doubt the main reason why he called his portraits "arrangements and harmonies," even as other artists call their portraits "interpretations," and their sculptured busts "versions." titles are really of no importance. they are, at the best, only annotations, but, as long as they are deemed necessary, they ought to give a vague suggestion of the subject matter or reveal the technical aim of the painter. whistler's titles are frequently too long, but they generally convey some direct and valuable information to the beholder. [illustration: _owned by richard a. canfield_ arrangement in black and brown: miss rose corder.] the "florence leyland" portrait, painted in --at the brooklyn museum of art and sciences,--is also much liked by painters. it always seemed to me a trifle dismal in tone. the greys have a muddy look and the background is too black and opaque. it is a study in greys and blacks. the dress, the floor, and the feather of the hat are grey. the hat itself, the gloves and the bow are black. even the handkerchief and the white ruffles that fall over the gloves are grey. the design is elegant and visible, but swallowed up in the colour. its success or failure depends upon your psychological appreciation of colours. if you like that particular combination you will admire the picture, and otherwise you will not, and no argument will persuade you to accept it as a masterpiece. whistler's unusually low key in the majority of his portraits strikes us as peculiar, even to this day. there are no gold, rose and mauve flesh tints of a titian to be found on his canvases. "there is no bloom of flesh which emulates the gleam of a pearl or the luminous grain of a camelia." but the fault-finding is largely the effect of our being accustomed to high-keyed portraiture. whistler explained this, in his drastic manner, in an article in the london world, july, , which we quote in full: "the notion that i paint flesh lower in tone than it is in nature is entirely based upon the popular superstition as to what flesh really is--when seen on canvas; for the people never look at nature with any sense of pictorial appearance--for which reason--by the way--they also never look at a picture with any sense of nature, but unconsciously from habit, with reference to what they see in other pictures. "now in the usual 'picture of the year' there is but one flesh that should do service under all circumstances, whether the person painted be in the soft light of the room or in the glare of the open. the one aim of this unsuspecting painter is to make his man stand out from the frame--never doubting that on the contrary, he should really, and in truth absolutely does, stand within the frame--and at a depth behind it equal to the distance at which the painter sees his model, and nothing could be more offensively inartistic than this brutal attempt to thrust the model on the hitherside of this window. lights have been heightened, until the white of the tube alone remains--shadows have been deepened until black alone is left. scarcely a feature stays in its place, so fierce is its intention of 'firmly' coming forth; and in the midst of this unseemly struggle for prominence, the gentle truth has but a sorry chance, falling flat and flavourless and without force. whereas, could the people be induced to turn their eyes but for a moment, with the fresh power of comparison, upon their fellow creatures as they pass in the gallery, they might be made dimly to perceive, though i doubt it, so blind is their belief in the bad, how little they resemble the impudent images on the wall! how 'quiet' in colour they are, how grey and low in tone. and then it might be explained to their riveted intelligence how they had mistaken meretriciousness for mastery and by what methods the imposture had been practised upon them." people on the whole prefer brightness to æsthetic gloom, and refuse to accept the unadulterated truth. "a beautiful picture! but i would not like to see my wife or mother painted that way," is the general verdict at a whistler exhibition. and it includes people who should know better. do not even learned critics excuse the low-keyed, ash grey tints of velasquez faces by asserting that he wished to symbolize the doom of spanish feudalism by their paleness? ridiculous! a proud spanish cavalier himself, such a thought would never have entered his head. he painted them with a bloodless enervated complexion, because they had that kind of complexion and because he, as a realistic painter, objected to any idealizing process. it can, however, be safely stated that whistler frequently went too far in his search for dark tonalities. but there was a reason for it. no primary colour is agreeable with black. if black is the favourite colour he must exclude yellow, red, and blue or paint them exceedingly low as tissot has done in his "prodigal son" series. yellow is the easiest colour to manage, as black impoverishes its tone. the secondary colours, like orange, green, and violet, lend themselves more readily to any scheme where black furnishes the prominent note, but they must be dull, obscure and possess no brilliancy. white, on the other hand, as whistler so fully realized in his "lady meux, no. ," will always produce by its extreme difference a harmony of contrast. [illustration: arrangement in black and white: lady meux (no. ).] the most suitable colours for a combination with black are the neutral colours, like grey and brown, or delicate tints, like pink and olive, russet and citrine. at these conclusions every student of the harmony and contrasts of colour must naturally arrive. and whistler conquered his knowledge by actual experiments. it was no whim. as long as he favoured black he could not change his colour schemes. his colouring had to be kept cool and the few tones of luminous colours that he introduced had to be broken and neutralized. the scientific facts underlying his colour moods should answer all futile questions of why he selected such deep and sombre colour combinations. we all realize that he is no colourist in the sense of memling, pinturicchio, titian, rubens, fragonard, delacroix, makart or roybet, he does not even show us as much variety as constable or israels or an impressionist. i say impressionist, because an impressionist's canvas can be deprived of colour (and how many are) as much as any black-in-black arrangement of a tissot or ribot. the high key does not save a picture from being colourless. colour means the full use of the palette, green, blue, red, and yellow, on one canvas as distinct sensations and not modified into a general tint. the majority of impressionists are tonalists not colourists. franz hals and velasquez were fond of black and greys but rarely lacked the sense of conveying a delicate colour impression. whistler, who, in his portraits is a great tonalist but never a colourist, displays the same faculty in his best work, but in some instances his subtle touch seems to have forsaken, him, and the result was a dull tonality as in his "florence leyland." a similar colour scheme but of great charm is represented in "la belle américaine" (the only picture that in subject matter bears any relation to america). the grey tight-fitting gown and the black boa around the neck in conjunction with the assertive and yet so nonchalant pose have a singular charm. as soon as the outlines of a figure are too much obliterated the charm of colour seems to vanish. colour alone cannot hold it. it demands form to balance it. whistler said that painting was every bit as much a science as mathematics. i fear at times he considered it too much a science, at least as far as his colour was concerned. he painted figures, indoors, so low in tone that he could have added a streak of real sunshine at its proper value to the picture. if his darkest canvases grow darker still with age, they will be almost indistinguishable. but his scientific attitude rarely played him false in composition. having painted only single figures, it has been doubted whether he had any extensive knowledge of figure composition. this seems to be a futile question. it is my contention that he limited himself to one figure representation, because he knew all about "old master" composition. he wanted one big total effect and did not see how it could have been reached, or had been ever reached by anybody except by one single figure. he had nothing in common with the representation of history, legend or myth and much less of genre, realism of the gutter, or descriptive painting. he wanted to represent modern men and women in the costume of to-day. so he chose the single standing or seated figure. why did he never paint a group! perhaps he had found it impossible to obtain in a more elaborate composition the result that he cherished most. a painter must paint from the model, to approach any degree of verity. a monticelli may "fake" or paint from imagination, but his colour masses are a different proposition than life-size figures. the fact must be before one's eyes to render them accurately. one figure in modern costume offers such facts in a natural manner. an elaborate group can be secured only with difficulty, and will never look quite natural. whistler knew his strength, and did not waste superior energy for a less satisfactory result. this was scientific restraint. and how he controlled the various forms of representation. he invariably chose the most favourable position. a standing figure offers the widest scope of characterization when shown in a full front view. nearly all his men, sarasate, duret, and irving are drawn in that position. but a seated figure is shown to the best advantage in a clear profile, every student of composition must arrive at the conclusion, and there was nothing else to do but to paint his "mother" and "carlyle" in that attitude. women on the other hand are more picturesque in outline, also look well, standing, in profile with slightly turned face, viz., "rose corder," "miss alexander," "the yellow buskin," "the fur jacket," "mrs. huth," "lady meux no. ." also in the delineation of the human face he preferred the simple full-face view, with just a slight shift to the right or left to show the line of the nose. the three-quarter view is undoubtedly more picturesque, and when he painted small heads, among them his own, he frequently used it. in the larger portraits he wanted dignity, breadth, and simplicity and he sacrificed everything to that effect. [illustration: _wilstach gallery, philadelphia_ arrangement in black: lady archibald campbell (the yellow buskin).] the portraits of miss cecily henrietta alexander (painted in ), and mr. theodore duret (painted in ), show perhaps in the clearest way that he always worked on the same problem. they are, one may say, the uniting link between the japanese period and the "carlyle" and "the artist's mother," his most finished and perfect work. they have more colour and grace than most of his pictures, and show the figures with some accessories. both linger in one's mind as a vision of select refinement. little miss alexander, with her plumed hat in her hand and her white dress relieved by grey and black accents against a general background, depicts a "pose" such as the painter seldom indulged in. there is a flavour of aristocratic coquetry, a flavour of gainsborough and boldini in this attitude, an attribute that in this instance is as important to the picture as the unusual colour scale. it took him years to finish this picture, and nobody can appreciate how many weary hours of anguish it cost the little model. more than once it reduced her to tears. one day as she was entering the studio she met carlyle, who was sitting also for his portrait. "puir lassie! puir lassie!" he said. but whistler had no pity. he had but little consideration for his sitters or models; he forgot their presence as soon as he became entangled in the intricacies of his technique. the duret on the other hand shows superior characterization. it may be because the figure is more clearly silhouetted, the outlines of the gaunt figure are as plain as they can be. the painter tried to brighten up the black suit problem with a light background and pink domino. the strange combination of an awkward shape, with almost a touch of brutality in its make-up, and the gay insignia of an opera ball, the domino and red fan, arouse a feeling of grotesque drollery, and yet it is all so forbiddingly proud that one is strongly fascinated by the canvas. one of the most important portraits that compete with the leyland, duret and miss alexander is the "arrangement in black:--portrait of the senor pablo de sarasate," painted about . here we have the true whistler atmosphere, the blurred contour of the violinist's figure, which melts into the background without losing the form, the elimination of all unnecessary details and accessories, and the concentration of light on the face, shirt-front, hands and cuffs. it is astonishing how few bright planes there are in most of whistler's portraits. in the "sarasate" the lighted planes scarcely occupy one-thirtieth part of the picture. the rest is all darkness, except the vague shimmer on the floor, suggesting the footlight on the platform of a concert hall. the light floor is one of the leading characteristics of his single standing figures. it helps to suggest space. there is depth in the background; it is not opaque like most backgrounds but vibrant with subtle differentiations of values. the figure is standing in space. one might think at first that this is brought about by the smallness of the figure. joseph pennell says that "what whistler was trying to do was to paint the man on a shadowy concert platform as the audience saw him." sarasate is intended to look small, less than life-size, as he would appear upon the concert stage. i do not agree with this. i have heard sarasate play in europe and america but never saw him on a shadowy platform. to me the conception is a much bigger one. this is not the sarasate of ordinary life, nor is it the one we know from the concert hall. the artist has attempted to suggest the whole atmosphere that surrounds the life of musical genius. and he accomplished it by introducing a male figure in an ordinary dress-suit with a shimmering shirt front, the outlines of which are lost in vibrant emptiness. only the violin and bow occupy a certain prominence. "all is balanced by the bow," as whistler remarked to sidney starr. the figure always seemed to me a trifle small. i personally prefer the leyland size, as it is more dignified. it does not seem logical to sacrifice beauty and breadth to a mere illusion. the whole tonal school and pictorial photography in particular have been influenced by the "pablo sarasate," now at the carnegie art institute, pittsburg, pennsylvania. it gives unparalleled joy to the followers of dark tonalities. as usual the imitators--painters as well as photographers--have exaggerated the extreme rather than normal aspect of the painter's art. for what is most to be admired technically in whistler is the frugality, the thinness of his brush work, that, despite the low pitch and flatness of its colour tints, reveals an astounding variety, subtlety and virility, a vibrancy that seems to radiate from the canvas. for unobtrusiveness of paint whistler has few rivals. in comparison with him monet seems a plebeian and sargent a sleight of hand performer. he combines the fanaticism of a perfect technique with the search for truth and a desire to create new sensations, and expresses our breathless modern life, with all its intricate moods. his art revels in the realms of imagination unknown to manet's realism, and zorn's and sargent's pyrotechnical displays of technique look barbarous in comparison to whistler's smooth, fluid, unerring brushwork, which masters all the optical illusions of this world with wizard-like dexterity. he created a style for himself, and his space and colour arrangements have exerted a deep and lasting influence on modern painting. whether he is as great a painter as some critics make him--whether he is as "big" as franz hals, for instance, is still a matter of discussion. he will always live in the history of art as being the first man who combined the beauties of eastern design with the principles of western art. the mysterious atmosphere of some of his canvases (from which solid forms emerge or recede into), is a poetic translation of japanese suggestiveness--which does not care to create an illusion, but rather suggests it. whistler in his portraits was not an initiator of a new art like monet in his landscapes. he was the last and most perfect of an old school. he merely pushed to their extreme consequence the principles which all great painters since velasquez have championed. he followed more closely what one might call the thematic development of tone, and discerned more plainly the significance and mystery that lie hidden in blurred objects. the portrait of the æsthete, count robert de montesquiou de fezensac, who honoured this shore with a visit (painted in - ), was one of the last pictures of this series. whistler undertook several portraits of this peculiar, high-strung personality but finished only one. he explained "that it was impossible to produce the same masterpiece twice over--as difficult as for a hen to lay the same egg over twice." the pose is one of _hauteur_ as becomes the author of "les hortenses bleus." he wears a dress-suit, and a dark overcoat with a grey lining is thrown over his arm while the other arm thrusts forth a slender cane-like sword. as it is so frequently the case with whistler's arrangement, it is more a play with colour than a character delineation. a character delineation plus tone is surely more admirable than mere tonality or mere character delineation. in his "leyland," "mother," "duret," and "carlyle" he accomplished both. in this one he only excelled in one. i also fail to see why he called it "black and gold," as i cannot discover the slightest suggestion of gold. it is brown and black. there is little use in reviewing each of his arrangements separately as they all carry out the same principle. [illustration: _owned by richard a. canfield_ arrangement in black and gold: comte de montesquiou.] in his two, perhaps, most important pictures, which are generally conceded to be his masterpieces, his "carlyle" and "the artist's mother," both arrangements in black and grey, the painter is a trifle more precise in line. he depicted, as background, actual walls of a room and made an unusual excursion to the domain of space arrangement. had he at the time arrived at the conclusion that a deep sentiment, no matter how vague, as that of a great philosopher and an adorable woman, can be rendered successfully by illusion rather than suggestion! the "carlyle" was exhibited as early as , and purchased after many weary negotiations by the glasgow city gallery in . it is a masterpiece of characterization, of tone and space composition. it is a most formidable object lesson to any portraitist. notice how purely simple and well balanced the composition of "carlyle" is, how all the details of dress have been eliminated, how the outline has been accentuated against the background, how naturally the figure is seated, and how well it has been placed in space. there is an atmosphere around the figure. one feels that the person is seated in a room. [illustration: _city art gallery, glasgow_ arrangement in black and gray: thomas carlyle.] the same can be said of the composition in the portrait of "the artist's mother," at the luxembourg gallery, paris. it was first exhibited at the royal academy in london. in the season of it appeared in america, and then was shown at the paris salon in . it was also seen in munich, and was finally purchased by the french government in . the simple pose, the delicate way of handling detail in the lace cap and the hands, the masterly space arrangement, produced largely by the rectangular curtain and the silhouette of the figure, the fine sense of values, and the clever way in which he utilizes a few frames to break the monotony of the background all have been commented upon a hundred times. no modern painting has been more talked about and more frequently imitated than this one, but none of the adaptations has reached or surpassed its "pathos and tender depth of expression." technically it is perfect. it is not the technique, however, which principally interests us in the picture. just as in his "sarasate," whistler attempted in his "mother" to give us the whole atmosphere that surrounds a personality. old mrs. whistler was a stern presbyterian and her religious views must have been trying to her son. yet "jimmy," though he used to give a queer smile when he mentioned them, never in any way complained of the old lady's strict sabbatarian notions, to which he bowed without remonstrance. this differentiation of character between mother and son explains much of the rigid quaker-like and yet so sympathetic pose of the picture. the artist does not merely represent his old mother. he endowed the old woman, sitting pensively in a grey interior, with one of the noblest and mightiest emotions the human soul is capable of--the reverence and calm we feel in the presence of our own aging mother. and with this large and mighty feeling, in which all discords of mannerisms are dissolved, and, by the tonic values of two ordinary dull colours, he succeeded in writing an epic, a symphony domestica, of superb breadth and beauty--a symbol of the mother of all ages and all lands, slowly aging as she sits pensively amidst the monotonous colours of modern life. nothing simpler and more dignified has been created in modern art. [illustration: _luxembourg gallery, paris_ arrangement in black and gray: the artist's mother.] chapter viii in quest of line expression "artist, thou art king! art is the true empire! when thy hand has drawn a perfect line, the cherubims themselves descend to delight themselves in it as in a mirror," wrote mérodack peladan, in his preface to the catalogue of the salon de la rose-croix ( ). he expressed a great truth, that macabre and cabalistic poet-artist. there is nothing more exquisite, more enjoyable, perhaps, to the art lovers than a perfect line. pure line expression, as it is found in dürer, harunobu, raphael, and ingres, is a pleasure apart from all other pictorial representations. it is more intellectual and more remote from all sensuous pleasure than colour, tone, light or shade. it is a language of itself which enables the artist to convey an abstract impression of his individuality. and no medium expresses line in as pure and unadulterated a fashion as etching. it makes the most of it. etching is the true worship of linear expression. in all other mediums there is a slight desire to hide line, it merely serves as an accessory. in etching it reigns supreme. there are no obstacles to the etching needle except incompetence. it translates every wish of the artist, the slightest accent or deviation with unerring precision and vitality. the japanese, no doubt, achieved the greatest mastery of the _drawn_ line that has ever been known to history. only the line form of the greek competes with it. the japanese artists revelled in line expression, and it passed through all possible variations, from the sweep of tanyu's brush and the classic curve of harunobu to the angular dürer-like twist of hokusai. but even their line, unless made by the brush, cannot rival in virility, delicacy and precision the line of a master etcher. in his paintings whistler sacrificed line too much. he felt that he had to find a medium in which he had absolute freedom to satisfy his desire and so he alighted upon etching. a draughtsman so sure of himself, so adroit at realizing by simple contrasts of black and white all the effects of which that austere, monochromatic medium is capable of, did not, one supposes, find himself unprepared to use the needle, and, indeed, at the first attempt, whistler proved himself a successful etcher. true enough, his earliest work, like "la vieille aux loques," "la marchande de moutarde," "la cuisine," and "la mère gérard," betrays a keen sense of the beauty of material; but they are, after all, conventional productions and show a slight influence of rembrandt's etchings and the little dutch masters. they are attempts at realistic picture-making, and, no matter how broadly the objects are conceived and carried out, look spotty. the light and shade division could be more scientific, and the tonality consequently a finer one. too many little things fill out the pictorial scheme. he still worked for the effect of dignified completeness and had not yet learned to apply his later sense of elimination. the certainty and freedom of his draughtsmanship is always admirable. there is no academic pedantry in his drawing and no laborious effort. the beholder is charmed by its fascinating expressiveness and delightful flexibility. his perspective views and figure subjects convey an impression of unhesitating knowledge of form and contour and of an exact understanding of subtleties of modelling. they show no struggle with difficulties of statement; everything seems to come right, as a matter of course, and to fit together naturally without any deliberate intention on his part. [illustration: "la vieille aux loques" (etching).] it was in - , during a trip to alsace lorraine with delonney, an artist friend, when he made his first attempts at etching. a few dated prints like the "scene in alsatian village" and "street at saverne" of this period are highly treasured by collectors, and pronounced as good as any that came after. a few years later, in the sixties, he took up the process more seriously and remained its ardent disciple ever afterwards. in the eighties he devoted more time to his etchings, pastels and water colours than to larger paintings. his fastidious love for rare and picturesque subjects made him select a number of favourite sketching grounds. they were the thames embankments, of which he never tired, the french towns of tours, bourges and loches, also venice, and the netherlands. of course, like every true artist, he etched everything that appealed to him. there are numerous london and paris sketches, scenes from ajaccio and algiers, and many figure compositions, character studies and portraits. but his french, thames, belgium, holland and two venice series are probably the most interesting from a collector's point of view, as they combine in a more pronounced manner direct whistlerian methods with the quest of line expression. [illustration: street in saverne (etching).] his first designs of the thames series were made in . some few themes recur with many variations, such as the battered shop-fronts of chelsea, "the pool," the london bridges, the barges on the river, and the wharfs, warehouses and factories, like "price's candle works." a few years later he made a trip through the northern part of france, and one of the finest results was the "learned, spirited" "hôtel de ville at loches." in he made his first trip to venice, stayed fourteen months and made forty-four etchings during the time, including "little venice," "san biagio," and "the garden." in later years holland attracted him almost as much as the city of the adriatic. it is interesting to note his absolute disdain of literary associations. to him venice was not, as to heine, the city of shakespeare. when he crossed the rialto and piazzetta he did not hear the voice of shylock lamenting for his daughter, nor did he conjure up splendid visions of decayed power, as did ruskin in his "stones of venice." the venice of claude lorraine and turner existed for him as little as the panoramic suavity of a canaletto. he was satisfied with sitting at a little trattoria near the old post office, at florian's, or in his simple sitting room at san barnaba, dreaming of some linear expression of an old bridge or archway, of some enchanted fragment of vision, or a peculiar flush of colour over the grand canal. to him venice was a modern city. he only saw what was actually there, and when it fascinated him, he seized his burin or crayon and endeavoured, with frank directness, to record the pictorial event. he invariably chose subjects that appealed to the experienced collector rather than the general public. he never idealized or conventionalized, nor did he belong to those who only see the ugly side of life, its squalor and unpicturesqueness. some of whistler's admirers have pronounced him not only the greatest etcher of the day, but of all times, and compared him to rembrandt. this comparison is not without justification, inasmuch as whistler was not a professional etcher but a great artist who, like rembrandt, took up the etching point as an instrument for new expression. they both sketched with wonderful freedom. they were no mechanics; under their hands the point lost the engraving look and became wonderfully free. still, to say that whistler was the best etcher of the day is rather a sweeping expression. lalanne, jacquemart, appian, veyrasset, meyrion, zorn, pennell, raffaelli, rops and klinger are all wonderful etchers. in painting, his mastership is indisputable. in etching i do not feel it quite as keenly. there is not the slightest doubt that etchings like "jo," "the adam and eve tavern," "chelsea," "soupe à trois sous," "the lion's wharf," the beautiful little still life "the wine glass," the portrait of "becquet," "unsafe tenement," the "battersea bridge" of --"a masterpiece of masterpieces"--show uncommon ability, which gives up everything to the right point and never beyond it. one of the most ravishing designs is his "girl on a couch." "the model resting," quite different in execution, is scarcely less captivating. but much of his work seems to be a little too elaborate, too overcrowded with line work. i do not particularly admire prints like his "southampton docks," "portrait of drouet" or "the silent canal." this is more astonishing when one compares them with the frugal technique of his paintings. [illustration: portrait of drouet (etching).] a rather just, though somewhat pedantic, criticism came from the pen of hamerton in : "amongst living men whistler may be cited as an etcher of rare quality in one important respect, the management of lines, but his etchings owe much of strange charm which they possess to chinese disdain of tonal values, and to wayward caprice, loving it here and scorning it there, which, being strictly personal, can only be of use as an example in one sense, that it shows how valuable in art is genuine personal feeling. whistler is an admirably delicate draughtsman when he likes; there are passages in his etchings which are as striking in their way as feats of execution, as the most wonderful passages of meyrion." there can be little fault found with this statement. i take objection only to the "wayward caprice" and the "chinese disdain." i think that whistler learned "loving detail here and scorning it there" only in his later works. it came out strongly in compositions like "the balcony," "doorway," and "palace" and obtained full mastery in his "dutch" series, above all the fascinating "amsterdam canal" piece, when the lines were so vague and subtle that deep biting was impossible and a few impressions would efface the design. as for the chinese disdain of tonal values, i think it is whistler's particular merit that he gradually abolished tonality altogether, and, in his later work, rarely resorted to cross-hatching. he laid more stress upon the simplification of line. etchings can produce tonal sensations, but it is surely not the main object to strive for. whistler followed haden's doctrine that the line ought to be preserved as much as possible, and made the most of it. if the linear expression is sacrificed in etching there is no executive expression left; there is no brushwork to take its place; the etcher is working with a point and not with a brush, and there must be primarily _point expression_, that is line expression, or none. [illustration: black lion wharf (etching).] otto h. bacher has written a few analytical notes of whistler's line work. "where it required accuracy he was minute. he used his needle with the ease of a draughtsman with a pen. he grouped his lines in an easy, playful way that was fascinating. they would often group themselves as tones, a difficult thing to get in an etching. he used line and dot in all its phases with certainty. sometimes the lines formed a dark shadow of a passage through a house, with figures in the darkness so beautifully drawn that they looked far away from the spectator. these shadows which so beautifully defined darkness were made only by many lines carefully welded together and made vague as the shadows became faint in the distance or contrasted with some light object. he made his etched lines feel like air against solids.... if he etched a doorway, he played with the lines and allowed them to jumble themselves into beautiful forms and contrasts, but was always very careful of the general direction they should run as a whole." bacher saw a good deal of whistler in venice, perhaps more so than any one else, and his observations on whistler's etching tools, how he ground and bit his plates, are extremely interesting. "in grounding plates whistler used the old-fashioned ground, composed of white wax, bitumen, pitch and rosin. he heated the plates with an ordinary alcohol flame, holding the plate in a small hand vise. the silk covered dabber that spread the ground over the plate was fascinatingly managed by whistler.... when he came to smoking the plate he preferred the old wax taper made for that purpose. he kept his two etching needles, very sharp ordinary dentist tools, in cork, to preserve their fine points. whistler always had his stopping-out varnish with him in a small bottle, applying it with a brush in a most delicate manner. he did not make use of any mirror but preferred the old negative process. when he bit a plate he put it on the corner of a kitchen table, with his retouching varnish, etching needle, feather and bottle of nitric acid, at hand, ready for instant use. taking a feather, he would place it at the mouth of the bottle of acid, tipping bottle and allowing acid to run down the feather and drip on plate. he moved bottle and feather always in the same position around the edges until plate was covered,--would use feather continually to wash acid backward and forward upon the plate, keeping parts equally covered, and blowing away air bubbles." frequently whistler sketched directly on copper plates. he carried the prepared plates in his pockets or in a book and when he found a motif sketched it in _improvisatore_ fashion. his sketches of the "annual review at spithead," in , show his uncommon facility as a sketch artist. he was the champion of dry point. already during the leyland period he selected dry point as a favourite medium. and in this, to my notion, lies the strength of whistler as an etcher. "whistler added," as joseph pennell has so beautifully said, "a new scientific method to the art of etching--that of painting on the copper plate with the needle." as a printer of his own plates he seems to have been quite an expert. he, no doubt, allowed himself great latitude and experimented with each plate, so that few impressions resemble each other. although he had abolished blacks and dark tonal passages at an early date, he frequently painted on the plate with printer's ink, and went through an elaborate process of wiping. of course this makes the excellence of the impression uneven, but also makes a particularly good one a more valuable possession. the intention was always the same. from the very start he sought for the same arrangement of lines and spaces, the same effect as in his venetian plates. he wanted breadth--not breadth of line itself, but breadth of expression. after all it was a growth and slow development. he became simpler and simpler, and well nigh reached perfection in his parisian series of - , of little shops, boulevard scenes, and public gardens, and in prints like "the little mast," "the riva," "the barber," and "zaandam" he acquired his wonderful sense for right workmanship on a small scale. some of his etchings of fragments of architecture have never been surpassed in sketchy treatment; most noticeable perhaps in the exaggerated simplicity of the "london bridge" and in the holland series of the nineties. there we realize that great simplicity of motif is dependent on great simplicity of genius. the effects are so spontaneous and subdued that their value might well escape common observation. the extreme sensibility is a matter of both touch and vision. his plates look as if the rapidity of execution had been extraordinary, and yet his line, as delicate at times as in silver point drawings, is not exactly what we could call nervous, but of remarkable freedom and unerring precision. it is piquant and sprightly, subtle and alert. the lines can almost be counted in some of his later etchings. he had learned the truth of the proverb "wise economy is everything." it was even more than wise economy. it was the highest expression of artistic wisdom, which had almost disappeared since the surface decorations of greek vases, in which mood, character and incident were reduced to a few details, strong enough to incite in the imagination of the beholder all that was eliminated. every art is at its best when it is most itself. nobody realized this more than whistler, who invariably emphasized this. he had an absolutely clear idea of what every medium could do. in his larger paintings it was the exploitation of a few dull colours, of a silhouette in space combined with psychological research; in his nocturnes, a play of slightly differentiated tones; in his water-colours a mere suggestion of reality; and in his pastels a certain joyousness of expression. pure line, caprice of detail, distance and atmosphere, he reserved for his etchings; and a subtle expression of values of "moss-like gradations" for his lithographs. his decision may not always appear right to others, but it was right to him. how carefully he thought out these technical problems is shown in his "propositions," which he addressed to an american etching club that had invited him to take part in a competition of large plates. he wrote the following series of maxims that should be posted on the wall of every studio: "that art is criminal to go beyond the means used in its exercise." "that the space to be covered should always be in proper relation to the means used for covering it." "that in etching, the means used, or instruments employed, being the finest possible point, the space to be covered should be small in proportion." "that all attempts to overstep the limits insisted upon such proportions are inartistic thoroughly, and tend to reveal the paucity of the means used, instead of concealing the same, as required by art in its refinement." "that the huge plate, therefore, is an offence--its undertaking an unbecoming display of determination and ignorance--in accomplishment a triumph of unthinking earnestness and uncontrolled energy--both endowments of the 'duffer.'" [illustration: wapping, on the thames (etching).] "that the custom of 'remarque' emanates from the amateur and reflects his foolish facility beyond the border of his picture, thus testifying to his unscientific sense of its dignity." "that it is odious." "that, indeed, there should be no margin on the proof to receive such 'remarque.'" "that the habit of the margin, again, dates from the outsider, and continues with the collector in his unreasoning connoisseurship--taking curious pleasure in the quantity of the paper." "that the picture ending where the frame begins, and in the case of etchings, the white mount, being inevitably, because of its colour, the frame, the picture thus extends itself irrelevantly through the margin of the mount." "that wit of this kind would leave six inches of raw canvas between the painting and its gold frame, to delight the purchaser with the quality of the cloth." we may not agree with his conclusion on the margin and remarque. the latter, no doubt, was introduced by the artist to please the purchaser. it is therefore, if a fault at all, that of the artist as much as of the collector. the question of margin is an individual one. there is little difference between a mat and a margin, and the japanese print and the framing of black and whites in general have taught us the utility of uneven spacing around the picture. the remainder of the argument is excellent, theoretically as well as æsthetically. whistler's composition, excepting the french set, was strictly impressionistic. one merely has to look at the "cadogan pier," "the little pool," "old hungerford bridge," "little wapping," "the velvet dress," "the dam wood," "the long lagoon," etc., to come to this conclusion. [illustration: old hungerford bridge (etching).] the word impressionism is rather difficult to explain. it is on the tongue of everybody, and yet few mean exactly the same thing when they make use of it. the term applied formerly to every art expression--as every artist endeavoured to render an impression--has been specialized in the latter half of the last century. it has become the nickname of a definite number of painters, who have adopted a new palette (as suggested by scientific researches) and introduced a new method of laying colours on the canvas. in recent years the term has undergone another change--it has become a general claim for individuality of subject and treatment. first of all, let us determine what difference there really is between the old and the new style of impressionism. the artist of the old school received an impression and elaborated upon it. he embellished it with all his art was capable of, and the original impression underwent all sorts of changes. it was merely the first inspiration--the foundation stone upon which the whole art structure was erected. the artist of the new school, on the other hand, endeavours to reproduce the impression he has received, unchanged. he wants the impression itself, and wants to see it on his canvas as he has seen and felt it, hoping that his interpretation may call forth similar æsthetic pleasures in others as the original impression did in him. it is a singular coincidence, indeed, that while the men of the lens busy themselves with imitating the art of several centuries ago, those of the brush are seeking but for the accuracy of the camera plus technical individuality. the impressionist painters adhere to a style of composition that apparently ignores all previous laws. they depict life in scraps and pigments, as it appears haphazard in the finder or on the ground glass of the camera. the mechanism of the camera is essentially the one medium which renders every interpretation impressionistic, and every photographic print, whether sharp or blurred, is really an impression. how did the impressionistic painters arrive at this new style of composition? permit me two questions. when was impressionism introduced into painting? in the sixties. when did photography come into practice? in the early forties. do you see what i am driving at? photography in the sixties was still a comparative novelty, and consequently excited the interest of pictorial reformers more than it does to-day. its influence must have been very strongly felt, and the more i have thought of the nature of this influence the stronger has become the conviction in me that the impressionistic style of composition is largely of photographic origin. [illustration: the silent canal (etching).] impressionistic composition is unthinkable without the application of focus. the lens of the camera taught the painter the importance of a single object in space to realize that all subjects cannot be seen with equal clearness, and that it is necessary to concentrate the point of interest according to the visual abilities of the eye. there is no lens, as everybody knows, which renders foreground and middle distance equally well. if three objects, for instance, a house, a tree and a pool of water, stand at different depths before the camera, the photographer can, at will, fix either the house, the tree or the pool of water, but whatever one of these three objects it will be, the other two objects will appear less distinct. the human eye could have told the painter the same story, as the eye naturally and instinctively rests on the most pleasing part of the scene, and in so doing, puts out of focus more or less all the other parts. it is a curious fact that all the compositions of the old masters were out of focus. true enough they swept minor light and colour notations into larger ones, but there seldom was any definite indication in their work whether an object was in the foreground or middle distance. this way of seeing things was, no doubt, a voluntary one--they had a different idea of pictorial interpretation. in their pictures, as in nature, we continually allow our attention to flit from one point to the other in the endeavour to grasp the whole, and the result is a series of minor impressions, which consciously influence the final and total impression we receive from a picture. the impressionist is satisfied with giving one full impression that stands by itself, and it was the broadcast appearance of the photographic images in the sixties that taught him to see and represent life in focal planes and divisions. in the catalogue of whistler's etchings, arranged by frederick wedmore in , we find prints enumerated and commented upon. in a later edition the number had increased to . in the catalogue of etchings of james mcneill whistler, compiled by an amateur and published by wunderlich in new york, , and which claims to contain all known etchings by the artist, the number is . but as whistler was working on copper all his life, it is difficult to state how many etchings he really made. joseph pennell, who probably knows more about this phase of art than any living man, makes a statement as follows: "i know little, and can say less, of the state of his plates,--and i believe he himself knew little more about them,--how many were printed, whether they exist or not, or what has become of the coppers. all i do know is that in the case of the thames set, long after whistler or delâtre--i am not sure which--had pulled a certain number of proofs, long after the plates had been steeled and regularly published, about , and later still, after a bond street dealer had been selling them in endless numbers to artists for a few shillings each, the idea was suggested to another dealer that he should purchase the copper plates, remove the lead facings and, if they were in condition, print as many as the plates would stand, or, if they were not, destroy the plates and sell them; for even whistler's destroyed copper plates have a value. the experiment was tried, and extraordinarily fine proofs were obtained. i believe collectors resented this very much, but artists rejoiced, and the world is richer by a number of splendid examples of the master." [illustration: view of amsterdam (etching).] whistler gave etching a new impetus, and a new significance in the use of line; even as mrs. schuyler van rensselaer has so well expressed it: "in telling use of a line he has no superior among the modern and few equals in any age." his work is never dull, nor cold, nor commonplace. it is always fascinating and capable of provoking æsthetic sentiments. at times it is of "slight constitution," a mere passing fancy, leaving many objects in the stage of mere suggestion, but it always has a finished look. and finish, as he understood it, meant the carrying on of a technical process until it had fulfilled to the utmost its mission and explanation, until not a touch more was needed to make clear the intention which the picture embodied. chapter ix moss-like gradations grey is the colour of modern life. there is some truth in the statement. modern civilization shuns the slashed doublet and purple cloak. beauty of colour, as a titian and veronese understood it, belongs to the past. the brilliancy and splendour has faded out of it. the modern painter uses a more limited scale of colour, and the tendency is toward grey. man's garb is monotone, and the life in large cities devoid of the rich colour-bursts of mediæval life. the contrasts are all in lower, paler and murkier tones, and grey, in most instances, furnishes the keynote and general harmonizer. all the artists who have a fine feeling for the arrangement of colours have realized that harmonies of red, green and violet, which shone so resplendently from the warm brown tones of the old masters, are the dreams of another age. even the impressionists, by the very character of their technical innovations, notably the abolition of browns, the struggle for a higher pitch of light by the interaction of purely applied colours and the exaggeration of the transparency of shadows, are pursuing the grey phantom of modern art. their ambition is no longer a combination of bright colours, as in veronese's "marriage of cana," but a tonality of dull yellow or green, which pervades the whole surface of the pictures. the flowing robes, flowers and gold ornaments, once so radiant on the canvases of the renaissance, have turned as pale as ashes. we take delight to-day in subtler gradations, in semi and quarter tones, the losing of forms in mystic shadows, a restless, suggestive technique of mobile touches, nervous sparkles, of delicate broken tints that show a hundred differentiations. and this over-sensitiveness and fastidious objection to strong contrast, this love for the externals of technique, raising brushwork to a higher pedestal than the idea, has much to do with the exclusiveness of modern painting and the keener appreciation for monochrome. in monochrome representation the eye has to deal only with one mode of perception--that of form. the perception of colour depends upon the differentiation of the effect upon the optical nerve fibres, that of form on the numbers and relative position of the latter. the latter mode of æsthetic perception is, in our times, more trained and developed, as it is in constant usage. reproductive processes, the halftone and photography, have made monochrome a vehicle of expression almost as popular as the spoken word. to former ages only the various processes of engraving were known. with the exception of etching and wood engraving, they were applied largely to popularize the products of painters, and the independent etchers and block-cutters generally adhered to a severe and classical style of art. it was the nineteenth century with its principle of universal education, newspapers, books and manifold publications, that brought about the great change. texture constitutes to most collectors the principal charm of the graphic arts. it is a rare and fantastic valuation, an appreciation of preciosity, this occupying oneself with the fascination of the minor arts. art would be too austere if it were not for the makers of etchings and lithographs, of pastels and water-colours. photography, the latest arrival in the ranks of the graphic arts, has the widest range of expression, and its technique is interesting as far as it can express mechanically and with comparative ease gradations of tone that without visible touches, marks, strokes or lines melt imperceptibly into each other. but this smoothness of texture will also be its most formidable drawback. there is no chance for manual expression without destroying the charm of photographic texture. chemistry is the only legitimate means to accomplish it. [illustration: nocturne (lithograph).] copper and steel engravings lack that freedom of expression, and are restricted largely to reproductive purposes. carried out by cross-hatching, they are limited by the black of the ink and the white of the paper, and the precise character of the line work. modern reproductive wood engraving, notably of the american school, is the only medium which has conquered the subtleties of tone. the scale in monochrome painting in colour is so limited that few artists apply it. india ink and sepia, however, are much in favour, and if handled by an artist, fulfil the requirements of painting. the only short-comings are a certain transparency in the middle tints and an artificial look in the texture. charcoal and chalk have a great similarity, and also lend themselves to elaborate composition, although the more delicate and lighter greys are frequently muddy. pen and ink can merely give an impression of line, and next to etching it is the best medium for sketching, only a less pliable one, which is largely due to the unelasticity of the steel pen; all subtler gradations are left out, as the brightest tints are lost in the white and the darkest in the black. in lead pencil sketches the lowest tones are grey as compared with black, and consequently can not produce any decided depth. crayon lithography is capable of producing beautiful soft greys. as the gradations from one tint to another are not continuous, the texture, consisting of innumerable minute dots, does not permit clear uninterrupted line work and even flow of tone. it does not lend itself particularly well to faithful copying from nature. the very character of its granulated line and surface suggests a sketchy and fragmentary treatment. whistler, who, with fantin-latour, shares the honour of the happy revival of artistic lithography, readily realized this. he laid special stress upon the texture; its detached shapes creep over the paper like grey moss over a stone. they are all carried out in grey monotonous middle tints but marvellously delicate and subtle in values. superficial but delicious in quality, his lithographic _croquis_ impress us like the laborious trifles and harmonious _bagatelles_ of a herrick. theodore duret tells us that whistler made his first series of six lithographs during the years - (republished in by boussod valadon in paris). they were drawn directly on stone, contrary to his later method, when he used transfer paper almost exclusively. they were rather large in size, and resembled his painted nocturnes in general treatment. this is particularly the case with his "view on the thames," the most beautiful print of the series. i do not believe that these representations were of particular importance, as they contradict his own theory. what can be and has been perfectly expressed in one medium, can not reach equal perfection in another medium. it was really nothing but a translation of a painted nocturne into black and white. the essential charm of a whistler nocturne consists of colour. black and white can convey only a vague idea of vibrancy. when whistler took up lithographing for the second time in - , he had become thoroughly familiar with his medium. he no longer worked on the stone, and abandoned all elaborate finished compositions. his motifs are sketchy little figure studies, street scenes, portraits and occasionally a nude or semi-nude like his "dancing girl" in fluttering drapery. the printing he entrusted to a lithograph printer in london, thomas way by name, who was somewhat of an artist himself and consequently better equipped than the ordinary pressman to do justice to whistler's vague fancies. frequently whistler took a hand in the printing, or at least made corrections. printer way told mr. wedmore, with reference to the sometimes disputed matter of the transfer paper, "that even when the artist drew on that in the first instance, and saw in proofs things that were lacking or things that were exaggerated, he would make his correction upon the stone itself, and so, of certain of his lithographs--his later ones especially--he produced different 'states,' though it was not easy to expressly define them, and though these differences were, of course, but the exceptions, and whereas very often, though of course not always in etchings--whistler's or other peoples'--the earlier state is finer than the later; in these lithographs, generally speaking, the later state is finer than the earlier." whistler's lithographs can easily be classified according to the subjects they represent. during the years whistler lived in paris he depicted views and scenes of the city like the "pantheon," "the grand gallery of the louvre," "the luxembourg gardens" and interesting types like "la belle new yorkaise" and "la belle dame paresseuse." one print, "les confidences dans le jardin," depicts two gossiping women in the garden of his house in the rue du bac. his london subjects are equally numerous. in , when he painted "the master smith" and the "little rose of lyme regis," while at a watering place in dorsetshire he made several sketches of the picturesque streets of the old town. of particular charm are his "early morning" (a view of the thames from his chelsea window) and "the locksmith of the dragon square." in , during an illness of his wife, he lived in the surrey hotel and executed a number of panoramic views of the strand, the thames with its river traffic, the quays, st. paul's cathedral and bird-eye views of london streets. [illustration: _boston museum of fine arts_ little rose of lyme regis.] all these designs are beautifully enveloped in a misty atmosphere. the paper is used as a value as important as the grey lines of the crayon, and the forms are softened as if broken by light and generally massed in an unsymmetrical fashion. some of the portrait sketches are superb, in particular that of stéphane mallarmé, who was whistler's life-long friend and one of his staunchest supporters. it was largely due to mallarmé that the "portrait of the artist's mother" found a home in the luxembourg. he also translated the "ten o'clock" into french. whistler's sketch of the poet appeared on the front of the parisian edition of "vers et prose" ( ). it is apparently hurriedly dashed off, but the result of many careful studies and experiments. it is a mere fragment, negligent, disdainful; but how knowingly made, and how characteristic of the poet's personality! despite its vagueness it is a likeness, and preferable, to me at least, who was fortunate to know mallarmé in the early eighties, to most portraits made of him. whistler never surpassed this particular effort, although his portraits of joseph pennell, mrs. pennell, walter sickert, w. e. henley and his wife, miss philip and comte montesquieu are excellent character studies. way published in a catalogue of lithographs. later additions probably increase the number to . the london fine arts society held in a special sale of lithographs. the "grolier club" of new york in held an exhibition of prints. his nudes are charming little inventions in pose and gesture with considerable knowledge of the human figure. in the society exhibition of he exhibited a nude entitled "caprice." a _r. a._ horsley took exception to it, and in a lecture before a church congress, after indulging in most curious, pedantic and mediæval arguments, ended with the following tirade: "is not clothedness a distinct type and feature of our christian faith? all art representations of nakedness are out of harmony with it." [illustration: study of nude figure (chalk drawing).] whistler, ever ready to take up the cudgel, avenged himself by writing under the picture: "_horsley_ soit qui mal y pense," and leaving it there during the entire exhibition. strange, that whistler never attempted to paint a large nude in oil. he, no doubt, had a reason for this omission, although it is nowhere recorded. perhaps he agreed on the point with ruskin that a realistic nude had no place in modern life, not for any moral reason but merely that the human body was too defective to allow the highest æsthetic gratification. a figure in modern garb is a part of modern life, a nude is an alien in space without any special significance. this should have appealed to whistler; perhaps he strove hard to realize it but never succeeded in doing so. his lithographs and pastels of nudes seem largely experimental. they never go beyond the sketch and vaguely remind one of tanagra figures. "the model resting," and "the little nude reading," a profile view of a young girl sitting in bed holding with both hands a book, are two of the best known. whistler also made a few attempts in coloured lithography, as for instance, "la maison jaune." but it is hardly coloured lithography, it is merely a black and white design with a few touches of colour, as expressed in "a lannion" or the "maison rouge à paimpol," the result of an excursion to brittany. perhaps the most exquisite and delicate of his efforts are these slight delicate renderings of female forms. when he adds a little colour it is always done with rare preciosity, the "un-finish" always being masterly. and there is such a thing as masterly "un-finish" always being just at the right spot as there is merit in the masterly inactivity of a russian general opposing an invading army. the very essence of whistler's art is to be seen in these coloured drawings. of peculiar charm are whistler's pastels. the majority, some fifty which he exhibited in the london fine arts society in , depict venetian scenes. they were catalogued as "harmonies in blue and browns, in opal and turquoise, etc." they show a rare elegance of design and a peculiar suavity of colour. they are the last remnants of his early period of vivid colouring, and are highly valued. they represent canals with draped gondolas, views from the lagoons with ships at anchor, archways, and white churches, the cemetery with green trees, lights gleaming on the distant shore and reflections in the water. his figures in pastels are mostly young girls, semi-nude or in quaintly coloured robes, frequently in pink and red against vague backgrounds. whistler's virtuosity in these sketches and pictorial fragments is entirely different from the so-called impressionist's work. it is primarily full of imagination, of a high mental tone and dignity. whistler has shown how noble an aspect can be given to the expression of an extremist, for he also was an extremist. he perfectly realized that aggressive sketchiness can never be monumental, that sketches are merely gymnastic exercises that lend health and strength to a painter's technique, although they remain to the end merely exercises. at the same time, if rightly handled, they express certain æsthetic aspects of life better than more elaborate efforts. he knew what a sketch could and could not convey, and the wonderful freshness and spontaneity which they exhibit are witness alike to the clear crispness of his perception and to his sympathetic handling. [illustration: _owned by th. r. way_ pastel study.] the only medium in which whistler expressed himself without adding a decided note to individuality of execution, are his water colours. they have an easy flow, but the areas of surface seem too large for the slight treatment. the meaning of the motifs seems to be dissipated. they represent mostly street scenes, country views, the seashore and marines, charmingly translucent, but without suggesting a style, that developed the medium according to its resources. but whatever whistler did was interesting. it is difficult to imagine a more delightful pastime than to look over a collection of his pastels, lithographs and aquarelles. they are carried out lightly, but with true touches of genius and joyous mystifying excursions into the dreamland of pictorial fancy, quite in the whistlerian manner. no one, i think, quite so well fulfilled whistler's own theory that an artist should see nature through the spiritual eye of an individual. few painters were such frank interpreters of their own intimate moods. aside of all these works on record whistler has scattered through the world countless scraps of drawings, themselves amply sufficient to make an artist's reputation. what a precious document we should have if their author were able to-day to give a list, as certain artists have done, a kind of _liber veritatis_ of all the studies he has made and disseminated! but he has flung them far and wide, as the plum tree scatters its blossoms in approaching spring. chapter x whistler's iconoclasm it would be difficult to find in the whole history of art writing another case of a pamphleteer who became as famous with a few manuscripts as whistler. both the "gentle art of making enemies," edited by sheridan ford, and published in by william heineman, london; frederick stokes & co., new york; and delabrosse & co., all in the same year, and "the ten o'clock," delivered in london, february, ; in cambridge, march th; and oxford, april th of the following year, and published in , created a sensation. they scarcely embrace five thousand words of reading matter. whistler's diction was exceedingly terse and poignant and he managed to say, or at least to suggest to intelligent minds, in a few words a phrase or maxim, which would exact from more sluggish pens page after page of argument. of course, his letters and replies to critics were written largely for effect. a well turned phrase was to him the ideal of diction and no doubt he rewrote every sentence a dozen times before he allowed it to go out to the public. it was to him a part--and a most serious part--of his profession. and whenever he did not deal with personalities and approached the technical principle on which his practice as artist was based, as in his "propositions," his observations and theories became lucid and convincing. read his reply to the criticism which was caused by the withdrawal of two members from the society of the british artists, who left voluntarily knowing that changes of policy were inevitable under the presidency of whistler. the attack in the london daily news ended as follows: "it will be for the patrons of the suffolk-street gallery to decide whether the more than half-uncovered walls which will be offered to their view next week are more interesting than the work of many artists of more than average merit which will be conspicuous by its absence, owing to the selfish policy inaugurated. (signed) a british artist." [illustration: _owned by howard mansfield_ archway, venice (pastel).] whistler answered: "far from me to propose to penetrate the motives of such withdrawal, but what i do deny was that it could possibly be caused--as its strangely late announcement seemed sweetly to insinuate--by the strong determination to tolerate no longer the mediocre work that had hitherto habitually swarmed the walls of the suffolk-street. "this is a plain question of date, and i pointed out that these two gentlemen left the society six months ago--long before the supervising committee were called upon to act at all, or make any demonstration whatever. your correspondent regrets that i do not 'go further,' and straightway goes further himself, and scarcely fares better, when, with a quaintness of _naiveté_ rare at this moment, he proposes that 'it will be for the patrons of the gallery to decide whether the more than half-covered walls are more interesting than the works of many artists of more than the average merit.' now it will be for the patrons to decide absolutely nothing. it is, and will always be, for the gentlemen of the hanging committee alone, duly chosen, to decide whether empty space be preferable to poor pictures--whether, in short, it be their duty to cover walls, merely that walls may be covered--no matter with what quality of work. "indeed the period of the patron has utterly passed away, and the painter takes his place--to point out what he knows to be consistent with the demands of his art--without deference to patrons or prejudice to party. beyond this, whether the 'policy of mr. whistler and his following' be 'selfish or no,' matters but little; but if the policy of your correspondent's 'following' find itself among the ruthlessly rejected, his letter is more readily explained." this is some logic and delicious sarcasm. it is to the point and there is nothing unpleasant in the entire argument. his art challenges and explanations always impress us in that manner. that is why his art lecture, if it may be passed as such--it is exceedingly short as art lectures go--is so much more valuable as a literary document than his collected letters, though the latter are more amusing, and give perhaps a better insight into the author's personality. it is a concise _résumé_ of modern art, not only the exploitation of one man's ideas, but rather a set of theories which reflect the thoughts of most of the younger and modern painters. it is written in a subjective way but the impression derived therefrom is objective. whistler was one of the few great representatives of modern art, and if such a man has the gift to express his idea in a clear manner, a gift which most painters lack, he will necessarily reflect the aspirations of his contemporaries. as a piece of literature aside from the idea conveyed in it, i would compare it to fromentin's "le desert," a charming treatise on colour and atmosphere, but as soon as it treats the more serious problems of art it becomes of deeper significance, and i, for my part, would not hesitate to mention it in the same breath with lessing's "laokoon." it has neither the dignity nor logical sequence of the hamburgh philosopher, but the statements in it are more important, or at least, more significant to us than any theories of the german critic. i do not know of any book which is more reflective of modern art than whistler's "ten o'clock." it filled a big gap, and its influence on the reasoning power (which, true enough, is small in many instances) of the modern painter has been far-reaching. [illustration: _owned by howard mansfield_ the japanese dress (pastel).] whistler's literary activity began about , when he lived in linsey row, london. his pictures had been rejected from several leading london and paris exhibitions, and, finally, when he succeeded in exhibiting his "woman in white" at the berner street galleries, during the spring months of (before sending it to paris), it called forth a storm of derision and ridicule. his answer to a most silly criticism in the "athenæum," that the face of his "woman in white" was well done, but that it was not that of mr. wilkie collins' heroine was his first attempt at repudiation. it was as follows: "may i beg to correct an erroneous impression likely to be confirmed by a paragraph in your last number? the berner street galleries have, without my sanction, called my picture the 'woman in white.' i had no intentions whatsoever of illustrating mr. wilkie collins' novel; it so happens, indeed, that i have never read it. my painting simply represents a girl in white standing in front of a white curtain. i am, james whistler." the reply, in my mind, is rather commonplace. it has, as yet, nothing of whistler's fine sarcasm and finished style. almost anybody could have written it. the attitude of a critic to accept something as a starting point, and then to criticize a picture from that point, is such a commonplace occurrence that it was hardly worth answering. also his second literary attempt, more than ten years later, when he objected to having one of his pictures called "the yacht race: a symphony in b sharp," had little merit except that of indignation. whistler was an iconoclast, as fanatic as any, when problems of art were in question, but his image-breaking was always indirect, "inverted" as it were; he defended his position by asserting his own beliefs. he, no doubt, was prompted by his own deep-rooted convictions, but the stimulant of his literary activity was never based on didacticism: to bring out an idea because it was a great truth and ought to be brought out. the stimulant for his utterances was always personal anger, irritation and wrath. he fought for himself and his art, but not for others. he was one of the greatest egotists that ever lived. whenever he felt hurt at some injustice and stupidity he had to set it aright, no matter at what cost, to his own satisfaction. it was not before he was forty-four that he took up letter writing seriously. in one of his earliest answers he is seen at his best; it was written as early as but never published until , when it appeared in the "art journal." somebody had found fault with him calling one of his pictures "a symphony in white," because one of the girls had reddish hair; and a yellow dress, a blue ribbon and a blue fan had been introduced into a white tonality. he replied in his vigorous fashion: "can anything be more amazing than the stultified prattle of this poor person? not precisely a symphony in white ... for there is a yellowish dress ... brown hair ... and of course there is the flesh colour of the complexions. bon dieu! did this creature expect white hair and chalked faces? and does he then in his astounding wisdom believe that a symphony in f contains no other note, but a continued repetition of f, f, f, f, f?... fool! james whistler." in this letter he took the right attitude, that of the fighter, who, with a few penstrokes, annihilated the foolishness of his opponents. if all his feuds had been of this character, no objection would have been raised to them. alas, he did things, frequently, merely to pose as a wit, to say something that would make london society laugh, caring little in how malicious and vituperative a manner he would couch his words. even when he was wrong and knew that he was wrong he would fight, as in the _café orientale_ incident. a correspondent of the "world" attacked the title, stating that it had an _e_ too many for french, and an _f_ too few for italian. whistler does not attempt to justify his orthographical error, but, by telling an anecdote, endeavours to ridicule all criticism which pretends to such accuracy. it is cleverly told, but after all it is silly. nearly all his friends, sooner or later, were forced into crossing swords with him. the list is a long one and embraces many well-known names. he fought with his brother-in-law, f. seymour haden, because he had admired frank duveneck's etchings and mistaken them for whistler's. he advised harry quilter, an art writer, "his bitterest enemy," to employ his sense of smell in preference to his eyesight; he calls the art critic p. g. hamerton, "a certain mr. hamerton." he wrangled with sir william eden and even his friend leyland about the price for ordered pictures, in each case making the whole transaction public; he attacked tom taylor and f. wedmore for misquotations in their writings (he who had been guilty of the same thing himself), he quarrelled with the academy when they repainted an old sign of his, "the famous lion and butterfly wrangle;" and wrote most insulting letters to wyke bayliss, who has succeeded him in the presidency. he withdrew all his pictures from the paris exposition, because the american colonel, c. r. hawkins, had refused a few of his etchings in a rather impolite manner. the real reason was lack of space, and one could hardly expect from an american colonel the manners of a chesterfield. surely, whistler did not possess them himself. he, at all times, practised more "manner" than manners, his language had at times an irritating touch of rudeness and coarseness. the feuds were endless. he continually baited his fellow artists. he called the pre-raphaelites "what a damn crew." legros, val prinsep, w. p. frith, sir frederick leighton and dante gabriel rossetti, were at one time or another recipients. everybody who came in contact with him, william m. chase, "the masher of the avenues," theodore child, who had to bear the brunt of a pun on his name, etc., all have some queer experiences to tell about him. george moore, who had stood so gallantly by whistler's side, was thrown over without much ado as soon as he remained neutral, and did not join the front ranks of the fighting host in the sir william eden episode. swinburne did not fare better; nor his friend stott of oldham, on whom he had passed such exaggerated eulogies in the beginning of his career. even his oldest friend and supporter, kennedy, the picture dealer, was finally bespattered with the mud of whistler's invectives. his _bon mots_ and repartee in ordinary life were as significant as those in his pamphlets, letters and catalogues. we all remember his "why drag in velasquez!" his "goodness gracious! you don't fancy a man owns a picture because he bought it," or "indeed! it is not every man in england i paint for." then again talking about leighton, "yes, and he paints too." in meeting du maurier and wilde at one of the exhibitions whistler burst forth: "i say, which one of you invented the other, eh!" the famous repartee, whistler:--"nature's creeping up." oscar wilde: "heavens, i wish i had said that!" "you will," dryly replied whistler. [illustration: _courtesy of the metropolitan museum, new york_ mr. kennedy: portrait study.] most of his adversaries were smaller men or, at any rate, lacked the faculty of repartee, and for a witty man it was easy enough to mock them out of existence. only oscar wilde, who himself made a profession of scattering corrosive epigrams, occasionally got the best of him. his sarcastic remark, "with our james, vulgarity begins at home; would that it might stop there," was one of the sentences that made whistler lay aside his pen for a while and ponder on reciprocity. the famous whistler _v_. ruskin libel suit was gotten up, i believe, largely for effect. it happened naturally enough, but whistler made the most of it. and, from the press agent's point of view, it was the opportunity of a life time. in sir coutts lindsey had organized an independent gallery in opposition to the london royal academy. among the exhibitors were burne-jones, millais, leighton and whistler. the works of the pre-raphaelites were praised but whistler's nocturnes were ignored or sneered at. he perhaps would have taken no notice of the ordinary criticisms, but when john ruskin, who then was in the prime of his fame, wrote in his "fors clavigera," an art publication, a short and most obtrusive paragraph about the pictures, he put on his paint and feathers once more and went on the war path. it is incredible how a man like ruskin could have ever been so bitter and pedantic, to write the following paragraph: "lastly the mannerisms and errors of these pictures (by burne-jones), whatever may be their extent, are never affected or indolent. their work is natural to the painter, however strange to us; and it is wrought with utmost conscience of care, however far, to his own or our desire, the result may be yet incomplete. scarcely so much can be said for any other pictures of the modern school; their eccentricities are most always in some degree forced, and their imperfections gratuitously, if not impertinently indulged. for mr. whistler's sake, no less than for the protection of the purchasers, sir coutts lindsey ought not to have admitted works into the gallery in which the ill-educated conceit of the artist so nearly approached the aspect of the wilful imposture. i have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face. john ruskin." the suit went to trial before judge huddleston and a special jury, november th, , and whistler won the case, although one farthing damages were allowed him. he published a small brown covered paper pamphlet: "whistler _v._ ruskin--art and art critics," the same year. not satisfied with his scant victory, he endeavoured to strike back at his still powerful adversary by publishing a hodge-podge _résumé_ of ruskin's writings and deliberately stringing together a number of well known sentences in such a way that they have no connection whatever. all this is amusing but smacks of the mountebank. the mortimer menpes incident shows a different side of his nature. it was a controversy as to who was "the father of the decorative revolution," menpes or whistler. intensely sympathetic with the work of japan's great painters and craftsmen, menpes' impressions of her cities, temples, shrines, theatres, gardens, and museums, received during a few months' stay in that land of delight, are worthy of consideration, but he had no claim to the decorative innovation, not even to the pink hue of his house, as whistler had mixed the colour himself one summer afternoon, when menpes was still his pupil. when a dispute was of real importance whistler was apt to ignore it entirely, and let others fight it out for him. it was too serious a matter for exchange of witty remarks. this shows that whistler, at times, realized the value of silence. even as there were friends and acquaintances and associates with whom he never quarrelled, he liked carlo pelligrini to the very end. he never picked a quarrel with sarasate, nor with the comte montesquieu, though most people did. charles keene, the caricaturist, never writhed under whistler's "strong arm." even sheridan ford came out unscathed, although they were never on terms of "commonplace" amity and acquiescence. nor did ever his american acquaintances advance to "warm personal friends." h. w. singer says in his little monograph that "perhaps whistler's human soul was occupied by a double portion of malice, invidiousness and pettiness, so that his artistic spirit might be entirely free and unfettered in its greatness." as good an explanation as many others. he wrote down those records he thought important as did casanova his amours and cellini his assassinations and, collected into a book, they form a sort of autobiography to those who can read between the lines. he had a way, as pennell tells us, half-laughing, half-serious, of calling it his bible. "well, you know, you have only to look, and there it all is in the bible," or "i am afraid you do not know the bible as you should," he would reply to some question about his work or his experiences as an artist. as remarked previously, his attacks were remarkably free from all personal and domestic references, they referred solely to art transactions related to the profession. whistler was an artist, and naturally over-sensitive. he could not help being impatient of criticisms that utterly failed to see the aim of his work, sometimes praising him for qualities a painter would blush to possess and again heaping unmerited blame on admirable achievements. things really irritated him and he worked himself into a white fury, often over nothing. later on his love for notoriety and his pose made him exaggerate the importance of events. as in the case of every master, there were, of course, followers and disciples. to these, the master held forth, now instilling a principle of art, now relating an encounter with this or that critic. mr. menpes speaks quite truthfully when he says: "all the same, he was one of the true fearless champions that art ever had, he fought with the dignity of the artist, demanded consideration and courteous treatment, and upheld dignity of workmanship, never tired of exposing and exploiting the ignorance of the average press critic." the real whistler, then, as his closest friends saw him, was an impulsive, quixotic, erratic, if you like, but, above and beyond everything else, an artist of indisputable genius who fought a losing battle for a quarter of a century; jested through it all, and finally triumphed magnificently. his minor accomplishments were illumined by the flare of newspaper polemics; his greater and nobler qualities were too often obscured by the lack of comprehension. yet there were times when whistler gave of his best simply and sincerely to all who had the perception to receive his gift. such an occasion was that on which he delivered for the first time his immortal lecture on art, "ten o'clock." he chose this title because he did not want the people to rush to him from the dinner table, as to the theatre. ten o'clock was early enough. the audience and critics who greeted him in prince's hall, london, on that never to be forgotten occasion, were puzzled by what they chose to regard as whistler's "new pose." as a matter of fact, he was not posing at all, but had called them to him that he might impart to them, out of his very heart, the standard of artistic faith by which his life was ruled. it was a revolt not so much against the conclusions of modern paintings nor a plea for japanese art (he does not mention japan except once in the beautiful final sentence: "the story of the beautiful is already complete, hewn in the marble of parthenon--and broidered, with the birds, upon the fan of hokusai at the foot of fusiyama") as against the pedantic and realistic methods in art, a fierce crusade for the ideals of painting. his style is virile, individual, marvellously condensed and suggestive. it contains a number of beautifully put phrases like: "art happens--no hovel is safe, no prince can depend upon it." [illustration: the lime burner (etching).] "colours are not more since the heavy hangings of night were first drawn aside, and the loveliness of night revealed." "if art be rare to-day it is seldom heretofore." in these aphorisms he puts his finger on the secret of literary expression--the application of the simplest and subtlest means to the most complicated and inexistent subject. paragraphs as the following must excite the admiration of every literary man. "alas! ladies and gentlemen, art has been maligned. she has naught in common with such practices. she is a goddess of dainty thought--reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others." "she is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own perfection only--having no desire to teach--seeking and finding the beautiful in all conditions and at all times as did her priest rembrandt, when he saw picturesque grandeur and noble dignity in the jews' quarter of amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhabitants were not greeks." or again: "humanity takes the place of art, and god's creations are excused by their usefulness. beauty is confounded with virtue and, before a work of art, it is asked: 'what good shall it do?'" "hence it is that nobility of action in his life is hopelessly linked with the merit of the work that portrays it; and thus the people have acquired the habit of looking, as who should say, not _at_ a picture, but _through_ it, at some human fact, that shall, not from a social point of view, better their mental or moral state. so we have come to hear of the painting that elevates, and the duty of the painter--of the picture that is full of thought and of the panel that merely decorates." whistler fought principally for three big ideas: "that the main object of painting was to express the beauty of the technical medium unalloyed by any exterior motive, independent of time and place." "that art was not restricted to any special locality, but universal, cosmopolitan." "that art could be understood only by the artist and that all criticism consequently was futile occupation." all these arguments have sifted down into the rank and file of the profession, they have become common property and are continually used in the every-day conversations of artists. they are all three open to criticism, and in a way (like all things, according to walt whitman) have done as much harm as good. that the main object of art is art, cannot be confuted. but what is art in painting! is all poetry and sentiment in a painting to be expressed by the actual handling of the colours, the process of handling and the mechanism of brushwork! can all the poetry be contained in the objects themselves and the way they are painted? it has become the fashion of artists to say that they are _painters_, not _artists_. now what do they mean by this? what is a painter? a person who can handle the brush and who knows colour, or, in other words, who masters the tool of his trade. and what is an artist? the term artist is not limited to one profession. it applies to a musician or a sculptor as well as painter. in calling somebody an artist we mean to convey that he has a poetic conception in his work. but he must surely possess an equal mastery of technique or he would be unable to express it. and is the painter absolutely void of poetic conception? surely not. he tries to get the poetry out of the medium itself, while the artist adds something from the outside to the medium. in that sense abbott thayer, ryder and inness are artists, sargent and chase are painters. but how about chavannes, whistler, israels? i suppose they are both. there we are in a dilemma. they oppose subject painting; the beauty of the object, the poetry that is inherent in what they see before them, is supposed to be sufficient. but they object to the phrase that they are merely interested in surface beauty, they assert that they search for character and the inner meaning of things as much as anybody else. in this they contradict their own and whistler's argument. whistler himself was all his life a subject painter. of course he has avoided telling stories, but he has suggested them, and given to each picture that vague note of interest which every true painting should possess. the main purpose is to make the picture more interesting. and you cannot make a picture more interesting without adding something. painting for painting's sake is an impossibility. one cannot translate nature and life into colour without the help of the imagination. a little more or less, what is the difference? the second claim, that all art is cosmopolitan, has been welcomed by all our ex-patriots, who have neither the strength nor the inclination to discover virgin material in their own country and to translate it into beauty. it furnishes a marvellous loop-hole for the imitative talent. whistler said: "there is no such thing as english art--art is art when it is good enough." this is at its best merely a truism. we perfectly agree that only good workmanship makes a painting worthy of the name of art, but surely hogarth, gainsborough and constable have a true native flavour in their work, which they could have gained nowhere but on british soil. all art, when perfect, can command universal appreciation, but it is perfect in most instances only when it has, perhaps not so much a local interest, but a local motive or stimulant, i. e. it must have inhaled the atmosphere of some peculiar locality and the faculty to exude it again. i believe, whistler used his argument largely as a subterfuge, to hide his own enthusiasm for japanese art. he understood how to amalgamate the foreign influences and his own individuality (this i have analyzed at length in some other chapter). his art in a sense was cosmopolitan, but merely because he was the first to adopt the new principles of an eastern art; and it is just as easy to trace american as japanese or old master traits in his work. i claim that all great art is local, and mention only three of the greatest painters, velasquez, rembrandt, and dürer, to prove my argument. they surely were imbued with the spirit of their time and country. and i am equally certain that a painter who would express america as it is to-day (as whitman has done in his time in literature) would be a greater man than whistler. the foremost masters of the nineteenth century, monet, manet, chavannes, and whistler, were all innovators in technical problems, for they discovered new mediums of expression, and, in a way, only prepared the way for more concentrated expressions of art. the third great theory of the essay, which consists largely of whistler's arrogant assertions as to the superiority of the artist and his own hatred for so called connoisseur, dilettante, and critic, has made a very proud man of the painter. imagine an ordinary wielder of the brush reading the following sentence: "vulgarity--under whose fascinating influence 'the many' have elbowed 'the few,' and the gentle circle of art swarms with the intoxicated mob of mediocrity, whose leaders prate and counsel, and call aloud, where the gods once spoke in whispers. "and now from their midst the dilettante stalks abroad. the amateur is loosed. the voice of the æsthetic is heard in the land, and the catastrophe is upon us. "the artist in fulness of heart and head is glad, and laughs aloud, and is happy in his strength, and is merry at the pompous pretension--the solemn stillness that surrounds him." whistler lashed himself into the belief that he was the sole judge of his work. this is a very erroneous attitude. creation is an unconscious process. few artists have the critical faculty to analyze their work, and years pass before he is able to get a clear view of his own work. if we were an art-loving nation things would be different, but interest in painting has become a privilege of the rich and of museums; it is too remote to be considered an immediate pleasure. it needs some kind intermediator to bring about more sympathy between the public and the artist. what writers, who can write and to whom the smell of paint is not unfamiliar, see in a picture, is one thing. what a painter desires to express is an entirely different proposition, but this is no reason to find fault with the writer. what he says may be explanatory and interesting. a work of art is made to arouse sensations, pure or æsthetic, emotions and vagrant thoughts, and they will differ vastly in every beholder. this may be beyond the pale of unattached writers and gentlemen clerks of collections and appointed preachers, into which whistler has divided the critics, but there is no argument necessary to make any reader believe that authors like hawthorne, the goncourts, guy de maupassant, paul heyse, mallarmé, knew how to write about art. whistler also laughed at the pretence of the state as a fosterer of art. in this he was right. art can not be forced upon a community. it is a matter of individual appreciation. it is a matter of conquest. but this is, after all, a busy world we are living in, and unless things are pointed out to us we may overlook them or not even learn of their existence, no matter how hungry we may be for new sensations. and that is the crucial point where the art writer may prove useful. the majority of artists entertain no kindly feeling towards art writers. in their just anger with critics, who arrogate to themselves the right of telling an artist how he should have done his work, they forget that the real writer on art, misnamed critic, has quite a different aim, and is their best friend. for he takes upon himself the duty of mediating between artist and public. without him, we may say, the true artist is nowhere. true art (in opposition to commercial work and all vulgar practices to which pictorialism is put) is a difficult matter to comprehend. when the public, composed of people whose energy is drained almost to exhaustion by daily associations and occupations, suddenly encounters a new phase of art, it can no more formulate a just opinion of it than it could when placed face to face with the tablets of karnak and sakkarah. just as the electrician in a new invention must explain the working of natural forces, so must the "critic" explain the work of the artistic forces which come into play in the production of a picture. most artists have become popular--as far as the true artist can become popular--only after the eyes of the public have been opened by some critic. such artists as find no apostle to proclaim their creed die unattended. many an artist left his family in poverty; but after his death critics dwelt at length upon the beauties of his pictures, and only then the public began to pay enormous prices for them. and whistler himself! does he not refute his own contempt by his barnum-boulanger-like use of the press? true enough all his little squibs and elaborate bids for notoriety had some underlying truth which he wished to express. but if ever an artist realized the power of type it was whistler. as for the ordinary critic--he deserves our deepest sympathy. he proves beyond dispute "that there is something rotten" in our art appreciation. old japan and the primitifs knew them not. he is harmless, however, as he has absolutely nothing to do with art. he is a necessary evil produced by the shortcomings of the time. anatole france's remark about art criticism, that it should be the adventure of one's soul among masterpieces, is enough, but he forgets that the adventure should be the experience of a literary artist. for the only criticism that is lasting is either biographical in tendency or artistic commentary, which by a new work of art reflects the beauty of the original. if a picture is really beautiful, one should be able to write a poem about it, or express it in music, dancing or some other art. [illustration: portrait of stÉphane mallarmÉ (lithograph).] chapter xi as his friends knew him one afternoon in , walking along the boulevards with stéphane mallarmé, during absinthe hours, i met whistler. the poet and the painter raised their hats and shook hands and exchanged a few words in french, which i did not understand. i was introduced, whistler bowed, shook hands and then we passed on. it was one of those fugitive meetings that occur so frequently and to which no importance can be attached. it gives one the sole and rather futile privilege of having seen whistler, just as i have seen liszt, the king of bavaria, ibsen and many others, without having become acquainted with them. i do not remember how whistler was dressed, i only recall the top hat, monocle and cane. he looked rather undersized to me, a trifle affected, but exceedingly picturesque, and possessing that peculiar magnetism which we feel in the presence of great men. as for a more intimate analysis of whistler's personality, i must refer to some of his friends, who have expressed themselves in print. i shall cite a number of paragraphs that have the merit of descriptive verity, and that will give a clear insight into his curious, highstrung character, as it appeared in every-day life. "what strikes one in whistler's biography," says laurence binyon, the london critic and poet, "is the extraordinary amount of time, trouble and energy he expended on things and people that did not matter, the record of his squabbles, the fanatical loyalty of his enmities, the rage of his 'egotism.'" this is the whistler that the world knew. but there was another whistler, mr. binyon suggests,--"a man of singular sensitiveness, who shunned the vulgar daytime and stole abroad at twilight ... bent always on revealing to his fellow men the loveliness that lurks in familiar sights and among the dingy aspects of a modern city." one of his earliest intimates who writes of him in vanity fair, as one of the "men of the day," signed john junior, says: "mr. whistler--'jimmy' as his friends call him--is personally one of the most charming, simple and witty of men. he touches nothing but he embellishes and enlivens it with startling novelty of conceit. his hereditary lock of white hair is a rallying point of humour wherever he goes, and his studio is the resort of all who delight in hearing the new thing." the article continues to say that it is evidently not difficult for the newspaper correspondent to approach him, as much had been written about his charming house and spacious studio in chelsea. he was so thoroughly an artist that material seemed indifferent to him. his famous "peacock room," which he did for mr. leyland, shows his genius as a decorator, and conservative opinion is, that he was even greater as an etcher than as a painter. he had engraved, and painted in water-colours, of course, and his attire, from his top-coat to his shoe strings, was made from his own designs. apparently he chafed under the academic tyranny of even the tailor. of his powers in mimicry and in character acting his friend never tired of talking and telling anecdotes which illustrate it, and indicate that even in drollery his art is as subtle as in work of seriousness and dignity. "dickens was not a patch on him," said someone, recently, who had seen the pantomiming of both. harper pennington, one of his _officially_ acknowledged pupils, gives a fine description of the man in the "metropolitan magazine" of . "whistler was not a tall man, but of trim and muscular appearance, broad-shouldered, strong-armed, and well set up--the result of west point training. he was intensely active and alert, although not in the least fidgety or nervous. his eyes were as bright as a bird's, flashing from face to face in a group of persons. it is noteworthy that he moved his eyes and not his head from side to side, fixing each speaker in his turn. this may have been another effect of west point drills--'eyes right,' 'eyes left.' his long hands and bony wrists suggested force and delicacy of touch. if he was a trifle robin-legged, the effect served to enhance a certain dandified attitude he frequently assumed, especially when chaffing someone who deserved it, to the delight of the gallery, without which he seldom thought it worth while to perform. "the man was above all things gregarious--he did not like to be alone--and most intensely human. he had his foibles, faults and virtues like the rest. the whistler i knew was clean of person and speech. i never heard him utter one word that might not be repeated without offending the most easily shocked of prudes. he has been described as untidy. he was, on the contrary, the only man who ever washed his hair three times every day, and was fastidious to the point of being prinky about his person. his clothes, generally black, were always simple in the extreme and spotless, even when, in those old venice days of dreadful poverty, they were worn threadbare--actually in holes. his courage was indisputable. he would fight any man, no matter what size or weight, and the jaunty cheerfulness with which he bore privations, when he lacked everything, even the materials necessary for his work, deceived those who were his daily companions and sufficiently proved his moral pluck. "he wore a black silk ribbon tie at his neck, a bow with six inch loops and fluttering ends, but that was all that was unusual in his attire, unless the long bamboo wands of canes--a dark one for the night and a light for day--should be included. nothing that glittered, not even a watch-chain or a ring, formed any part of his costume. a tiny white or yellow flower at his buttonhole was his unique adornment. "is it true, as thackeray declared, that ordinary mortals do, indeed, delight to pry into the weakness of the strong, the smallness of the great? i have thought it best to show _my_ whistler as he really was, a simple, kind and tender-hearted fellow, who turned his best side towards the unappreciative world he lived in, not from vanity of person, but to hide his poverty, and the makeshifts he was driven to employ, as a man will say 'i like to walk,' when he can't afford to ride. his cackling laugh hid many a bitter thrust that had gone home and hurt him to the quick. he laughed, and then would come the swift _riposte_ of witty repartee. he never attacked a living creature, never struck the first blow, and would have been glad to live in peace with all the world. but so coarse were the criticisms of his person and his work that he was driven to defend art, which was the only thing he could not joke about. upon the rare occasions when he talked with me, as a master might, about his work, his face itself seemed transfigured. "brave when he was well, his cowardice when ill or in pain was comical. if he caught cold he would disappear, and those who knew him well were sure he had fled to his doctor--his brother's house in wimpole street. dr. whistler told me that jimmy would appear all muffled up and say: 'willie, i am ill! i am going up to bed--here--and won't go home until you've cured me!' any little malady was enough to demoralize him. in his hours of weakness he would hide away like a wounded animal and not show up again until he had been nursed back to his normal state. [illustration: arrangement in flesh-colour and black: theodore duret.] "whistler was extremely frugal and abstemious. he ate and drank most moderately the plainest fare. he liked dainty dishes and rare old wine, but had a horror of the 'groaning board' at huge set feasts and formal banquets. he could cook quite decently himself, and sometimes made an omelet or scrambled eggs, but these culinary feats i never saw performed; as to the master's knowledge of wine, it was very limited indeed. i have seen him mistake a heavy vintage of champagne for 'tisane.' i never saw him cook anything, even in his poorest days, in venice, but i know that he liked a good dinner at a club even when it was punctually served and consisted of quite ordinary delicacies such as other men delight in." the notes from his childhood are rather scarce. in his mother's diary, written during the stay in russia, we find the following reference to him when he was twelve years old: "... jimmie's eagerness to attain all his desires for information and his fearlessness often make him offend and it makes him appear less amiable than he really is." and at some other place, when they had watched some parade with the empress passing: "he behaved like a man. with one compassing arm he guarded me, and with the other kept people at a proper distance, and i must confer, brilliant as the spectacle was, the greatest pleasure was derived by the conduct of my dear and manly boy." miss emma palmer, his cousin, describes whistler at this period as "tall and slight, with a pensive, delicate face, shaded by soft brown curls. he had a foreign appearance and manners, which, added to his natural abilities, made him very charming even at that age. he was one of the sweetest, loveliest boys i ever knew and was a great favourite." "whistler, as a boy, was exactly what those who knew him as a man would expect: gay and bright, absorbed in his work when that work was in any way related to art, brave and fearless, selfish, if selfishness is another word for ambition, considerate and kindly above all to his mother. the boy, like the man, was delightful to those who knew and understood him, 'startling' and 'alarming' to those who did not." joseph pennell, in his excellent book, has given us a most fascinating description of whistler as a student in paris and a young painter in england. no one can refuse to admire the loyalty of this writer, who has gathered with such loving care every note of interest in whistler's life. the following paragraphs are from his quartier latin chapter; "to whistler the frenchman was more sympathetic than the english, in his serious as in his light hours. his fellow students brought back to england the impression that he was an idler; it is hard to-day to make people believe that he was anything else in his youth. and yet he worked in paris as prodigiously as he played. to us it is incomprehensible how he found time to read as a student, and yet he knew the literature of the period thoroughly, and always the charm of his manner and his courtesy made it delightful to do anything for him. few men ever ate less than whistler, but few were more fastidious about what they did eat--no man ever shrank more from thought, or at the mention of death than whistler. there was always in life so much for him to do and so little time in which to do it. "he was popular with the children, and delighted in music, though he was not too critical, for he was known to call the passing hurdy-gurdy into his garden and have it ground under his windows. occasionally the brother (greaves) played, so that whistler might dance. he was always full of drolleries and fun. he would imitate a man sawing, or two men fighting at the door, so cleverly that his brother never ceased to be astonished when he walked into the room alone and unhurt. he delighted in american mechanical toys and his house was full of japanese dolls. one great doll, dressed like a man, he would take with him not only to greaves, but to dinners at the little holland house, where the princess then lived, and to other houses, where he put it through amazing performances." many notes are quoted from the writings of his associates. here are some of the most interesting of them: mr. luke ionides writes: "he was a great favourite among us all, and also among the grisettes we used to meet at the gardens where dancing went on. i remember one especially, they called her the tigress. she seemed madly in love with jimmie and would not allow any other woman to talk to him when she was present. she sat for him several times with her curly hair down her back. she had a good voice and i have often thought she suggested 'trilby' to du maurier. one time in a rage she tore up a lot of drawings, when whistler came home and saw them piled high on the table, he wept." if whistler had money in his pockets, mr. ionides says, he spent it royally on others. mr. rowley, "taffy," writes: "it was in - that i knew whistler, and a most amusing and eccentric fellow he was, with his long black thick curly hair and large felt hat with a broad black ribbon around it. i remember on the wall was a representation of him, i believe done by du maurier, a sketch of him, then a fainter one and then finally an interrogation--very clever it was and very much like the original. in those days he did not work hard." "whistler was never wholly one of us," mr. armstrong tells us; drouet does not think that whistler worked hard, certainly not in usual student fashion at the schools. he was every evening at the students' ball, and as he never got up until ten or eleven in the morning, where was the time for work? the personal observations and a glance at one of whistler's self-portraits of this period should give us a fair vision of the young whistler at paris. the earliest known self-portrait in oil is the one painted in paris about , the whistler with a hat, engraved by guérard, which was lent by samuel p. avery to the memorial exhibition at boston. it shows him with a slight mustache, a large rubens hat, a big dotted tie, and a coat with a velvet collar. it is a good example of a dark silhouette against dark arrangement. the face has a few strong headlights, the remainder of it in middle tints, while the rest of the figure--the hat, the hair, the bust--are darker than the background. the space arrangement and position of the head are clever, but the shape of the bust is awkward, and, i fear slightly contorted. mrs. jameson writes: "the man, as i knew him, was so different from the descriptions and presentations i have read of him, that i would like to speak of the other side of his character. it is impossible to conceive a more unfailingly courteous, considerate and delightful companion than whistler as i found him, and i never heard a complaint of anything in my simple household arrangements from him. any little failure was treated as a joke. his courtesy to servants and maids was particularly charming, indeed. i cannot conceive of his quarrelling with any one without provocation. his talk about his own work revealed a very different man to me from the self-satisfied man he is usually believed to have been. he knew his powers, of course, but he was painfully aware of his defects--in drawing for instance. to my judgment he was the most absolutely truthful man about himself that i ever met. i never knew him to hide an opinion or thought--nor to try to excuse an action." [illustration: the unsafe tenement (etching).] mr. watts denton, on the other hand, tries to make us believe that dante gabriel rossetti got exceedingly tired of whistler after a while and considered him a brainless fellow, who had no more than a quick malicious wit at the expense of others, and no real philosophy or humour. otto bacher, the american painter and etcher, has written a delightful book entitled "with whistler in venice." the title is slightly deceptive as the contents are largely an eulogy on the beauties of venice. whistler is a mere picturesque incident. bacher describes his friend in this fashion: "when he was talking the glass (monocle) was dropped. if he sat at one of the tables at the café the clanging of the eye-glass accentuated his conversation. if he was presented to any one it would drop and dangled to and fro from the neat cord for a few moments, to be readjusted after some moments of fumbling. his monocle was always a source of entertainment. he generally carried in his hand a japanese bamboo cane, using it to emphasize his remarks. "he rose early, worked strenuously and retired late. he seemed to forget ordinary hours for meals and would often have to be called over and over again. he was a fastidious smoker, but a continuous one--his choice of words was always a marked feature. his manners were elegant. he would always adapt himself to any situation and, at the same time, retain his dignity and personality." another interesting account was furnished in the cornhill magazine, , by mortimer menpes: "whistler was of all men essentially a purist--a purist in every sense of the word, both as a man and a worker. as a man he was sadly misunderstood by the masses. whistler's nature was ever a combative one and his long and brilliant career was a continuous fight throughout. he revealed himself only to the few, and even that small inner circle, of whom i was one of the most devoted, saw the real man but seldom. but on those rare occasions whistler could be gentle, sweet and sympathetic, almost feminine, so lovable was he. whistler treated his hair as everything about him, purely from an artist's standpoint, as a picture, as a bit of decoration. whistler wanted to produce certain lines in the frock coat and he insisted upon having the skirts cut very long, while there were to be capes over the shoulders, which must need form graceful curves in sympathy with the long-flowing lines of the skirt. the idea of wearing white duck trousers with a black coat was not conceived in order to be unlike other people, but because they formed a harmony in black and white he loved. his straight brimmed hats, his cane, the way he held his cane, each and every detail was observed, but only as the means of forming a decorative whole." less personal are val prinsep's remarks: "i have always thought that behind the 'poseur' there was quite a different whistler. those who saw him with his mother were conscious of the fact that the irrepressible jimmy was very human. no one could have been a better son or more attentive to his mother's wishes; after his marriage i have heard that the life of this most bohemian 'poseur' was most harmonious and domestic. "the grammar of expression was a constant stumbling block to him, hence his slowness in producing. for let it not be supposed his pictures, which looked so simple in their execution, were produced with facility. the late mr. leyland told me that when he was sitting for his portrait, a standing full-length, whistler nearly cried over the drawing of the legs and bitterly regretted that he had not learned something of the construction of the human form during his student years. he once spoke of himself as a 'soiled butterfly.' surely this is the first recorded instance of a butterfly being an aggressive and vindictive insect. this however was a mere pose of whistler's, the result of a well considered determination to exalt himself, which he found in the long run paid, even as all judicious publicity is said to bring in a sum percentage of profit." a. ludovici, a new york dealer, makes quite a hero of whistler. "he soon made me feel that i was talking to an artist of great taste and refinement, full of love for his work and a ready wit, and, in spite of an academic training just received in paris, i became that moment devoted to him and his art. the little i had seen of it at the grosvenor engendered a desire to learn more regarding the mysterious technique of which he was such an undoubted master and confirmed my predilection in favour of painting the scene of life surrounding in preference to the making up of the conventional subject so much in vogue. i who knew him for the last twenty years of his life always found him most simple in his tastes, firm in his convictions, generous and open-hearted to those whose friendship he relied on and always ready to help and oblige any one in whom his interests had been awakened. a more brilliant and staunch friend one could not wish to have had." also alexander harrison, the marine painter, expresses himself in a highly enthusiastic manner: "i have never known a man of more sincere and genuine impulse even in ordinary human relations and i am convinced that no man existed who could have been more easily controlled on lines of response to a fair and square apprehension of his genuine qualities. when off his guard he was often a pathetic kid and i have spotted him in bashful moods, although it would be hard to convince the bourgeois of this. wit, pathos, gentleness, affection, audacity, acridity, tenacity were brought instantly to the sensitive surface, like a spark by rough contact." mr. percy thomas says: "he was a man who could never bear to be alone. through his own open door strange people drifted. if they amused him he forgave them, however they presumed, and they usually did succeed. whistler seldom painted men except when they came for their portraits, and the models drifting in and out of the door of linsey row, were mostly women. he liked to have them with him. mr. thomas thinks he felt it necessary to see them about his studio, for, as he watched their movements they would take the pose that he wanted, or suggest a group, an arrangement. he lived at a rate that would have killed most men, and at an expense in details that was fabulous." walter gray speaks about whistler's technique. "no one can realize who has not watched whistler paint the agony that his work gave him. i have seen him, after a day's struggle with a picture when things did not go, completely collapse, as from an illness. his drawing coat gave him infinite trouble. whatever his friends charge against him it seems to me that whistler's faults and weaknesses sprang from an unbalanced mentality; he was a _deséquilibré_, the common defect of great painters. yet, underneath all his vagaries and eccentricities, one felt that indefinable yet unmistakable being--a gentleman." pennell gives a most valuable description of whistler as a painter. "the long nights of observation of the river were followed by long days of experiment in his studio. in the end he gave up even making notes of subjects and effects. it was impossible for him to choose and mix his colour at night, and he was compelled to trust his memory, which he cultivated, when he painted his nocturnes. he reshaped his brushes, usually heating them over a candle, melting the glue and pushing the hairs into the form he wanted. whistler told us he used a medium composed of opal, mastix and turpentine. the colours were arranged upon a palette, a long oblong board some two feet by three with the 'butterfly' inlaid in one corner; round the edge, sunken boxes for brushes and tubes. the palette was laid upon the table; the colours were placed, though, more frequently, there were no pure colours at all. large quantities of different tones of prevailing colours in the fashion and his paints were mixed, and so much medium was used that he called it 'sauce.' mr. greaves says, that the nocturnes were mostly painted on very absorbant canvas, sometimes on panels, sometimes on bare brown holland sized. for the blue nocturnes the canvas was covered with a red ground, or the panel was of mahogany, which had the advantage of forcing up the blues. others were done in a practically warm black ground. for the fireworks there was a lead ground, or if the night was grey--the canvas was grey. [illustration: in the sunshine (etching).] "so much 'sauce' was used that, frequently, the canvas had to be thrown flat on the floor to keep the whole thing from running off. he washed the liquid colours on the canvas, lighting and darkening the tone as he worked. in many nocturnes the entire sky and water is rendered with great sweeps of the brush exactly the right tone. how many times he may have wiped out that sweeping tone is another matter. some one remembers seeing the nocturnes set out along the garden wall to bake in the sun, sometimes they dried out like body colour in the most unexpected manner. he had no recipe, no system. "in his painting it was surprising to see how much he accomplished in a short time. he would decide upon any local tone, putting it on with five or six big strokes, any variation of tones would be added in the same way. in a given time he would put down more facts than any man i ever knew. in the beginning of a pastel he drew his subject crisply and carefully in outline with black crayon upon one of the sheets of tinted paper which fitted the general colour of the motives. a few touches with sky tinted pastels produced a remarkable effect. he never was in a hurry in his work, always careful and accomplished much. every subject contrived some problem for nature which he wished to convey on canvas." the portraits painted and etched by himself and various artist friends also comment favourably upon his personality. william michael rossetti, in his diary of february , , mentions seeing in whistler's studio "a clever, vivacious portrait of himself," believed to be that belonging to the late george mccullough and which appears as the frontispiece to pennell's book. another portrait sketch of this period or a little later was shown at the exhibition at the metropolitan museum of art in . another portrait sketch can be seen in the freer collection. in whistler planned a big picture similar to fantin-latour's "hommage à delacroix", only less serious and more eccentric in conception. whistler was to be the centre figure and to be surrounded by the "woman in white" on a couch and a kimonoed lady walking about the studio, while albert moore and fantin-latour were chosen to serve as black notes. one of the studies, whistler in his studio, is illustrated in pennell. a chalk drawing belonging to thomas way is likewise in the same book. there are three etched portraits in existence. a very early one dated , the "whistler with the white lock," which appeared as frontispiece in ralph thomas' "catalogue of etchings and drypoints of whistler," and an etching very similar to the portrait, dated . in he was painting a portrait of himself in a white jacket which, according to the pennells, was changed into a dark coat after the death of his wife. a full length portrait in long overcoat was in the paris exposition of , under the title of "brown and gold." another half length is known to belong to george w. vanderbilt. a dry-point by helleu, drawn in , has many admirers, but is rather superficial as a characterization. the most important portrait is the mephistophilean interpretation by boldini, painted and shown at the exposition in . but i almost prefer a certain photograph which shows him with top-hat, and overcoat over his shoulder. it reminds me of the glimpse i caught of him that afternoon, in paris years ago, when i was still carefree and had not the slightest idea that i would one day write a book about the man i passed so nonchalantly. the few paragraphs that are cited in this chapter may not do his personality full justice, but they must suffice. a personality can not be recalled from the shades. we can only produce a mental image, and an abundance of notes would only confuse the outlines. his work remains, that is the principal thing. even the greatest painters of the past are mere ghosts and visions to us. and although whistler, more than any other modern painter, has the chance of marching down posterity, unforgotten and wreathed in glory, a curious high-seasoned personality not unlike benvenuto cellini, the author of these lines must refrain, as he can add nothing new or original. prophets or seers, call them what you will, in the arts or in the sciences, must of necessity be few and far between, and in advance of their age. whistler is to me one of these, in his absolute and genuine love of his profession, for the resolve to win out at any cost, for his conquests in various realms of art and the triumph of ideas they represent. i admire his colossal vanity and egotism, but, more than all, i admire him for the seriousness with which he took himself and his business of being a painter. it is so rare a quality. velasquez was so much of a solemn cavalier that he was almost ashamed of being a painter. it offended him to be reminded of his profession. it was a serious sport to him, but only a sport. he was like goethe: a distinguished and conscientious amateur. their exalted position in life enabled them to treat art with such ease and condescension. but whistler had to climb to the very heights from which they started, and all the battles and victories, struggles and temporary defeats, magnificent successes and lavish praises were the result of his personal efforts. whistler needed, and had the true autolatry of the artist; he could conceive genius only under an artistic guise; he entertained the absolute faith that the faculty of painting is something so hugely superior to anything else that it confers a sort of sacred character on its owner. and it is for this wholesome artistic seriousness, this salutary egotism, that i admire whistler, the man. [illustration: the pool (etching).] chapter xii the story of the beautiful who knew the errant life of the highway, of the starlit desert and windy mountain slopes better than the story-teller of old, who wandered from town to village, from camp to solitary tent, all over the face of the earth, telling his simple tales to those who cared to listen? he was the wayfarer who lived in his life the odyssey of the eternal wanderer, and whose words reflected in quaint imaginative excursions the adventures of strange men and women he had met in lonely forests and crowded city streets. every nomadic tribe, every nation, every country, has had its singer of songs, its chanter of religious hymns, its troubadour, its vagrom poet, some story-teller of the beautiful. they have vanished, and the story is now repeated by the professional poet and artist. he no longer treads the highways and the listeners no longer offer him the hospitality of a night's shelter. he lives the life of the large cities; he hastens from place to place, he mingles with the crowd but passes unseen as nobody will listen to his stories. more than ever is he the vagrom man, unless he tells his story of the beautiful in such a novel, fascinating way that art, "the whimsical goddess," will open the book of life and inscribe his name. then his townspeople, his nation, a whole continent, the entire world may claim him. whistler travelled many highways and lo, when he arrived at the age of sixty a weary, restless wanderer in the realm of art, three nations--england, france and america--claimed him as their own. born in america, obtaining his education partly in america and partly in st. petersburg, russia, living the rest of his life in europe, dividing his time almost equally between paris and london, he was a cosmopolitan in the true sense of the word, and that is what he wished to be considered. he loved england and loved france, but he felt quite indifferent towards america. in paris he had spent his student years, and he was drawn to this city by many bonds of attachments and friendships that lasted for life. and it was france who gave him that final great recognition of his genius when it purchased "the artist's mother" portrait for the luxembourg, and made him an officer of the legion of honour. in england, on the other hand, he fought the great battles of his life for social as well as artistic recognition. in england he married, and was for many years one of the most conspicuous characters of london art and social life. america really did nothing for him, and he did nothing for america. he never came back to america--during forty-eight years--after leaving it as a young man of twenty-one. he never exhibited in america until his name as a painter was one of the best known in europe. he even preferred to exhibit his work with english artists in international exhibitions. we all remember the general hawkins incident in . whistler only became known to america after his death through memorial exhibitions. now, of course, we like to claim him, and do so with ostentation. expatriots are always claimed by their native country when they have achieved success or performed some remarkable act that has aroused the wonder of nations. nobody cares whether mr. jack johnson lived on the place monceau, or died on the riviera. to the analytical mind it is of little consequence whether he will go down in history as an american, english or frenchman, as he was one of the great artists of the nineteenth century with an international significance. in the case of artists like burne-jones, israels, boldini, fortuny, lenbach, segantini, it may be of more importance, as they are _local_ talents. whistler's predilections were natural. he was too shrewd a promoter of his own artistic welfare not to make the best of this dispute of nations. he could not have prevented it anyhow, and the question of his nationality will be disputed for many years to come. of course, one can simply settle the matter by saying that as he was born in america of american parents, he is an american. the english differ; they choose to do in this case what we have always done with our immigrants. after a person has lived for any length of time in the country we make him a citizen and consider him an american. how about carl schurz, general siegel and roebling, the bridge builder? they were all born abroad and yet their names are inscribed on our roll of honour. of what nationality was lafcadio hearn, who, born on the ionian islands, of irish and greek parentage, living for years in new orleans and new york, finally selected japan as the country of his choice, where he lived the remainder of his life and was buried? and yet we class him as an american writer. it seems that the party most concerned in it; the personality itself, should decide the question. hearn wished to be considered a japanese. we are not quite sure what whistler's opinion was on the matter. he claimed to be a cosmopolitan. but that is no answer, as it does not settle the dispute. it leaves others to settle it, and the trouble starts anew. there is another much subtler point, open to argument. is his art in any sense american? has it a flavour, a peculiarity of its own, that could be derived from any source except that of american birth and parentage? to this question i answer emphatically yes. true enough his subject matter was, with the exception of "l'américaine" and a few portraits, strictly continental. but the spirit was strictly japanese and--american. or, i would rather say, his form of art conception was oriental, but the essence, the under-rhythm of his personality, was after all american. he was somewhat of a snob and a _precieux_, like his friend comte montesquiou. he had all the polished manners, the spirit, the grace of a foreign aristocrat and yet he was neither a frenchman nor an englishman in his habits or views on art. he remained an alien, as any man in a foreign climate must remain to some extent, when the change of domicile is made as late as the twentieth year. his wit and sarcasm was american. it was not pointless, neither brusque nor frivolous but it was at times flat like mark twain's. his self-exploitation revealed the shrewdness of an intellectual barnum. his attitude in society was that of a "yankee at king arthur's court." besides there are vague traits in his art which reveal the premises of his origin. his women, "the fur jacket," "lady archibald campbell," "l'américaine," and "miss alexander," have a natural _finesse_, direct grace and elegant frailty that can be found nowhere but in america. his power of adaptability, his disregard for ancient culture for modern purposes, his technical fanaticism, his adventurous tastes and theories, all have an american physiognomy. if there is anything that will make him an american it is the aptitude for labour, free association, and practical adaptation. that he left america never to return again is no compliment to our country, but he, no doubt, acted wisely. if we remember the sad unsuccessful lives of whitman and poe, we shun to think what might have become of whistler had he stayed on these shores. he, no doubt, would have become one of our best painters, but he would never have become the whistler we know to-day. [illustration: arrangement in black and white: "l'amÉricaine."] like all our painters of merit, fuller, abbott thayer, winslow homer, homer martin, to mention but a few, he would have retired into solitude, he would have become a hermit at a much earlier stage in his career. in england it was revolt, fight and victory; here it would have been stagnation. there would have been no fight because there would have been nobody to fight with. when a man is young, he is strong because he is impulsive and because he has absolute faith in his beliefs. as he grows older his views broaden, he is not quite as certain of himself, and there will come a time when he will vacillate from one point to another, trying his faculties in different directions and searching for the final path on which his inborn talent may blossom forth in fullest strength and beauty. this is the time when a man needs encouragement, some patron no matter how stingy, some order no matter how humble, some friends and supporters who champion his cause--or he will succumb. he may not give up the battle, but his development will be marred and retarded for years. american life is not particularly kind to budding geniuses, either in the period of revolt or of later evolution. there is no gainsaying we are a very material race just now. and it is nowise peculiar that it should be so. we do not expect much from australia and canada in the way of art. why should we of the united states, where there are vast territories in very much the same primitive condition as in other emigrant countries? of course there are certain parts and centres in this country which can boast of a culture dating back a few centuries, but the population has always lived in turmoil and conflict. self-assertion and self-improvement are the ideals of any man who has changed his domicile, in the one hope to better his material welfare. in a country which is so vast as ours and which has at times an increase of ten thousand aliens a week, the national pride in intellectual accomplishments cannot run high. all that wealth can do is done at present. we have numerous private collections of rare excellence and will have national galleries and kensington museums in due time, but, as whistler has said, art is not a matter of education, or of royal, civic or municipal encouragement. it is a growth and the soil must be ripe for it. no doubt, in due time collectors will divert some of their attention from the battered relics of past ages to the quite as admirable productions of their contemporaries. it would be pleasant to find that people cease the worship of dubious pictures by old masters as the one certain and infallible proof of enlightenment. the artist of to-day has to subsist on the spartan principle; he has either to do or to die. these are no stimulants to inspiration. he has to dig it all out of himself. that engenders martyrdom. and very few, particularly those equipped with lesser talent, are willing to give up a half-way respectable existence for a life in a garret and a long wait until fame knocks at the door. nearly all the great european artists had their struggle and lived in hovels. the american is less willing to enter upon such a precarious existence, as he realizes that if he accepts it, he may have to stay in a garret until the end of his life. american artists do not assist each other. each goes his own way, partly under the stress of conditions, because the vastness of the country and larger towns permits no closer association; and partly by choice, by personal inclination or professional reasons. there is but little intellectual intercourse. the atmospheric conditions are just as beautiful here as anywhere. and so are the subjects equally beautiful and plentiful. it would be ridiculous to deny it. yet it takes courage to be a pioneer. it needs leisure, some incentive and sympathy. no man is inexhaustible. he needs some encouragement from outside; and if it fails to come he will grow indifferent. he may open up a restaurant, or become an illustrator on a comic paper. deserters of this kind may not represent an irreparable loss, as they were never ensign-bearers, nor ever stood in the firing line. "they were not carved as from iron or wood, cut with an axe, or hammered with sledge, till the man shows strong and good." as daniel dawson sang, another young poet who fell by the wayside. our conditions are not conducive to the evolution and exploitation of a genius. graft and prohibition laws, whose evil influences are felt in all strata of society, also injure artistic progress, if not directly, surely by the stress of public opinion. such conditions would no doubt have retarded the progress of even a man like whistler for years. if a man has not the means to sip his demi-tasse at florian's, in venice on the piazza, he can not make any etchings or lithographs of the campanile. and if a man cannot afford to buy plates and an etching press he cannot make any etchings at all. and that is the fate of hundreds of artists in our larger cities. no, to go to paris and then to find another congenial abode in europe, to settle there, to live his own life, and to do in art what he wanted to do was the wisest move whistler ever made. it helped him to expand and to mature the great talent that was slumbering within him, ever since he stared, lost in wonder, at the velasquez of the hermitage at st. petersburg. whistler admired the greek as much as anybody, but this emotional reverence did not hinder him from smashing some traditions of ancient beauty to pieces. greek art was so perfect that for centuries no artist could escape its influence. all the old masters were nursed on the marble breasts of grecian goddesses. in all art schools the white corpses of plaster cast facsimiles were worshipped on bended knee. the pupils never dared to glance about. they did not see the beauty of the world around them. they could perceive it only through greek conventions. this had to cease. there was no life blood in these artificial constructions. but tradition was so deeply ingrained in western æstheticisms that it lingered on for centuries, until manet entered the studio, opened the windows, let in the light, and monet took the young students by the arm, pushed them into the open air and led them to the meadows and riverside, and the open road. whistler, in the meanwhile, had scoured the whole horizon of art, and beheld a new dawn in the east. there he saw an old civilization, as deep and broad as ours. it was just at a stage when modern materialism had begun to wash out some of its finest colours. art was deteriorating in the east under the stress of missionaries and merchants. an era of manufacture had set in. could not the noble, unselfish spirit of old japan be kept alive, revived,--amalgamated with our art, and be made to pour new life into our valiant dreams of beauty! you remember what whistler said of the primitive artist. the words are worth repeating: "in the beginning, man went forth each day--some to do battle, some to the chase, others, again, to dig and delve in the fields--all that they might gain and live, or lose and die. until there was found among them one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted him not, and so he stayed by the tents with the women, and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a gourd. "this man, who took not joy in the ways of his brethren--who cared not for conquest, and fretted in the field--this designer of quaint patterns--this deviser of the beautiful, who perceived in nature about him curious curvings, as faces are seen in the fire, this dreamer apart, was the first artist. "and when, from the field from afar, there came back the people, they took the gourd--and drank from out of it. "and presently there came to this man another--and in time others--of like nature, chosen by the gods--and so they worked together and soon they fashioned from the moistened earth forms resembling the gourd. and with the power of creation, the heirloom of the artist, presently they went forth beyond the slovenly suggestion of nature, and the first vase was born, in beautiful proportions. "and the toilers tilled and were athirst; and the heroes returned from fresh victories, to rejoice and to feast; and all drank alike from the artist's goblets, fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of the craftsman's pride, and understanding not his glory in his work; drinking at the cup, not from choice, not from a consciousness that it was beautiful, but because, forsooth, there was none other." the art of the past has done its work. the white gods are worshipped no longer in the sacred woods and the old masters have lost much of their spiritual glamour. but no need to mourn their loss, they will remain beautiful. we will always look with awe and wonder at the figures of the parthenon frieze. we will never cease to love the primitifs. we will continue to make pilgrimages to the prado and the sistine chapel. and rembrandt will as heretofore receive the adoration of mankind. yet the new art will be different. it has to be different to equal the old. it will be attuned to the moods of the modern mind. it will have new accents. it will bear the analytical and complex aspects of our time. it will be subtler, more fragile, perhaps, but it will drive deeper into our soul than the cold correctness of older forms and emblems. it was whistler who pointed out that a large picture is a contradiction, that a picture like raphael's "transfiguration" or veronese's "marriage of cana" are merely combinations of smaller pictures, drearily linked together by stretches of negligible paint. the demands of explanation, of form and composition, drag in, every now and then, lines and colour notes which are merely padding. they are the painter's concessions to the old rules of complexity. the modern mind demands a concentrated vision. painting must appeal again directly to our finer sensibilities, speak to us without interference of moral or literary considerations. [illustration: the fiddler (etching).] it was whistler who taught that painting was a science of colour manipulation. that the first requisite of a painter is to know how to paint. everybody can learn how to draw and how to handle a brush. to explore the secrets of colour, to discern their influences upon each other, to render them atmospheric and musical, that alone is of vital importance. for painting should be a visual language that speaks directly and distinctly to the cultured mind. how many of the younger american painters (alas, our younger men have all passed the threshold of thirty if not of forty) really know their _métier_? henri, reid, luks, tarbell, hawthorne, clews, r. e. miller, lucas, who else? that is why whistler's art is so exceptional and masterful. there may be other methods just as good as his; monticelli, maris, mancini, segantini, renoir, cézanne, etc., all have their peculiar way, but i believe that whistler got nearest to the pulse beat of our age. resolutely and tranquil, he carried an idea to its utmost logical conclusion, after once accepting its particular point of view. and that is why everything he did bears an unmistakable stamp of his own. it was whistler who proved that art was synonymous with hard work. few painters will follow his example and spend a whole day trying to put in a high-light or to find the right place for a butterfly's wing, and go home at night satisfied with having made a few brush-strokes after altering them a hundred times, but these commercial travellers of art will never know the painter's pure delight, the contemplation of life, the aspiration to perfection, the lifting of beauty out of the dead pigment. such worship of art, such absolute disinterestedness, such fidelity to painting cannot be too highly esteemed. and it was whistler who proclaimed that art cannot be taught but must be an inborn gift, that everything can be acquired by long practice save that one supernatural quality of genius which alone can transform a painter into a great artist. what is there in these pictures produced every year, here and in paris and everywhere? portraits, landscapes, ordinary delineations of prosaic scenes that may be painted with considerable skill and that may look pretty enough, but that are absolutely incapable of evoking a fine and subtle emotion. this, the men upon whose shoulders the black mantle of whistler's muse may fall, must realize, that it is a vain endeavour--as futile as cloud shadows on a summer day--unless they know that they can hold her, "the capricious jade," as they possess the magic wand to call her. [illustration: nocturne in brown and silver: old battersea bridge.] this was the spirit in which whistler conceived art. it had long faded out of european art. it was rapidly deteriorating in the orient. why could not a single man, even with the whole world against him, live up to some big ideal! to be an artist simply for one's own gratification. to fashion something beautiful simply because one feels like doing it. to purify one's mind by projecting into life what is accumulated there by some curious grace of nature. whistler undertook the task, and created a new art form that may be destined to rule art for the next thousand years. a new art form is always the expression of a new spirit. in painting the new spirit is rebellious. in addition it is emphatically individualistic. it is opposed to previous schools and academic training. it aims at attaining the maximum of personal intensity. the exigencies of the classic style--the necessity of a literary subject--at once stay the free use of the brush and hamper the virile expression of technique. why not give to art a new twist, graft upon it a new beauty, enliven it with a purer flame, that it may shine forth again in its old pristine beauty! the western mind still rebels that this resurrection should come from the east, through another race. even the most ardent disciples of whistler make little of the japanese influence. it is still a question of conquest. in my mind, as in that of many of our foremost artists, there is not the slightest doubt that the eastern idea will win out and that a new era, as important as that of greek influence, will set in. the meaning of the old symbols has faded and it is the artist's duty to create new ones. whistler disclosed new harmonies of tone, of arrangement, and visual poetry, all of them sensitive and expressive, using blacks and browns and a touch of vivid colour or a flare of white, and thereby succeeded in stirring the depth of our nature. his art has a tender pallor, tones purposely deadened, faded tints like those on japanese screens of old feudal castles, of a wondrous harmony and softness. details, discreetly accentuated, allow the ensemble to retain its full importance, and against dark background, in soft neutral tints, figures that the painter desires to bring out show with an illusion of life truly magical. herein consists the last great pictorial invention; it is through this that painting still has the faculty to powerfully address the modern mind. he said in his "ten o'clock" that the story of the beautiful was complete. he surely, like monet, has added a valuable chapter. he, in his own words, was "one of the chosen--with the mark of the gods upon him--who had to continue what had gone before." the end. bibliography bacher, otto h.: "with whistler in venice." new york, . bell, arthur g. and nancy: "j. mcneill whistler and his work." new york, . bell, nancy e.: (mrs. arthur bell): "james mcneill whistler." london and new york, . (miniatures series of painters.) bell, nancy e.: "representative painters of the xix century." london, . bénédite, léonce: "l'[oe]uvre de j. mcneill whistler reunis à l'occasion de l'exposition commemorative." paris, . bénédite, léonce: "exposition des [oe]uvres de j. mcneill whistler." introduction by léonce bénédite. palais de l'École des beaux-arts. paris, may, . bowdoin, w. g.: "james mcneill whistler." london, , new york, . bowdoin, w. g.: "james mcneill whistler." london and new york, . brinton, christian: "modern artists." new york, . caffin, chas. h.: "american masters of painting." new york, . caffin, chas. h.: "the story of american painting." new york, . cary, elizabeth l.: "the works of j. mcneill whistler." new york, . chesterton, g. k.: "heretics." london, . child, theodore: "american artists at the paris exposition," "art and criticism." new york, . child, theodore: "a pre-raphaelite mansion," "art and criticism." new york, . copley society of boston: "memorial exhibition of works of j. mcneill whistler. february, ." cox, kenyon: "old masters and new." new york, . dennis, g. r.: "bryan's dictionary of painters and engravers." london, . duret, theodore: "histoire de j. mcneill whistler et de son [oe]uvre." paris, . duret, theodore: "critique d'avant-garde." paris, . eddy, arthur jerome: "recollections and impressions of j. mcneill whistler." london, . forsythe, walter greenwood, harrison and joseph leroy, ed.: "guide to the study of james mcneill whistler." albany, (university of the state of new york). gallatin, albert e.: "whistler, notes and footnotes and other memoranda." new york, . goodspeed, charles e.: "whistler art dicta and other essays." boston, . goupil and co.: "portfolio of twenty-four reproductions." . grolier club, new york: "the etched works of whistler," compiled by edward g. kennedy, introduction by royal coutissoz. . hollingworth, c. j. h.: "the peacock room." obach galleries. london, . hartmann, sadakichi: "a history of american art," vol. . boston, . hubbard, elbert: "whistler." east aurora, n. y., (little journey series). huysman, j. k: "certains." (g. moreau, degas, cheret, whistler, rops, etc.) paris, . international society of sculptors, painters and engravers: "memorial exhibitions of the works of the late j. mcneill whistler." london, feb. nd to april th, . isham, samuel: "the history of american painting." new york, . knoor, thomas: "james mcneill whistler," zehnuhr vorlesung. strassburg, . koehler, sylvester rosa: "etching." new york, . levy, florence: "whistler catalogue." metropolitan museum, n. y., . mcfall, haldane: "whistler: butterfly, wasp, wit, masters of arts, enigma." boston, . mcfall, haldane: "whistler." boston, (spirit of age series). mansfield, howard: "a descriptive catalogue of the etchings and drypoints of james abbott mcneill whistler." chicago, caxton club, . mauclair, c.: "de watteau à whistler." paris, . maccoll, donald stewert: "nineteenth century art: james mcneill whistler." glasgow, . mcspadden, j. walker: "famous painters of america." new york, . menpes, mortimer: "whistler as i knew him." london, . moore, george: "modern painting." london, . muther, richard: "a history of modern painters." london, new york, . pattison, james william: "painters since leonardo." chicago, . pennell, e. r. and j.: "the life of j. mcneill whistler." london, . rossetti, william michael: "fine arts, chiefly contemporary," vol. . new york, . singer, hans w.: "james mcneill whistler." berlin, , london, (langham series). studio: "whistler portfolio." london, . symons, arthur: "studies in seven arts." new york, . ralph, thomas: "catalogue of etchings and drypoints of j. mcneill whistler." london, . tuckerman, h. t.: "book of artists." new york, . victoria and albert museum: "the etchings of j. mcneill whistler." (catalogue.) london, . vose, george l.: "sketch of the life of george washington whistler, civil engineer." boston, . way, thomas r.: "whistler's lithographs." london, . way, r., and dennis, g. r.: "the art of j. mcn. whistler: an appreciation." london, . wedmore, frederick: "whistler's etching; a study and a catalogue." london, . wedmore, frederick: "a note on etchings by whistler, exhibited at the galleries of obach and co." london, . wedmore, frederick: "four masters of etching (whistler, legros, seymour haden and jacquemart)." london, - . wedmore, frederick: "whistler and others" ( essays). london and new york, . whistler, j. mcn.: "eden _v._ whistler," "the baronet and the butterfly," "a valentine with a verdict." paris, . whistler, j. mcn.: "the gentle art of making enemies." london, . new edition, , includes whistler's "ten o'clock." whistler _v._ ruskin: "the painter etcher papers and the nocturnes, marines and chevalet pieces." whistler _v._ ruskin: "nocturnes, marines and chevalet pieces." london, . whistler _v._ ruskin: "paddon papers, or the owl and the cabinet." london, . whistler _v._ ruskin: "piker papers." whistler _v._ ruskin: "mr. whistler's ten o'clock." london, . whistler _v._ ruskin: "art and art critics," "the white house." chelsea, london, december, . whistler _v._ ruskin: "whistler album" ( photographs). paris, . whistler _v._ ruskin: "wilde _v._ whistler: being acrimonious correspondence." london, . principal magazine articles -----------------------+-------------------------+----------------- alden, w. s. saturday review aug. . alexandre, arsène les arts sept. . american architect nov. . art journal v. , p. . art journal v. , p. . art journal v. , p. . bacher, otto century magazine , p. - . baldry, a. l. the studio sept. . beal, s. american architect v. , p. . beerbohm, max metropolitan , p. - . beerbohm, max saturday review nov. . bénédite, léonce gazette des beaux-arts , p. - . bloor, a. j. critic . brinton, christian critic . brinton, christian munsey's magazine . brownell, w. c. scribner's magazine aug. . boughton, g. h. international studio , p. - . caffin, charles h. international studio , v. . coburn, fred. w. brush and pencil , v. . cortissoz, royal atlantic monthly , v. , pp. - . cox, kenyon nation magazine v. . crawford, earl stetson the reader , v. , pp. - . current literature sept. . dempsey, charles w. magazine of art , p. . dempsey, charles w. mcclure's magazine v. , p. . dodgson, campbell graphische künste . dowdeswell, w. american architect v. , p. . dreyfus, albert kunst für alle . eclectic magazine , v. , pp. - . fenellosa, ernest f. lotus magazine . finberg, a. j. athenæum magazine - . fortuny, pascal gazette des beaux-arts , v. . fourcaud, l. de gazette des beaux-arts june, . geffroy, gustave revue universelle sept. . hadley, frank h. brush and pencil , v. . harper's weekly aug. . hartmann, sadakichi wilson's magazine apr. . hawthorne, julian independent magazine nov. . hubbard, elbert idler magazine , v. . international studio , v. . jenney, w. l. b. american architect v. , p. . jackson, louise w. brush and pencil . kelley, g. weston's magazine v. . kessler, harry g. kunst und künstler . knaufft, ernest churchman magazine . knaufft, ernest review of reviews v. , p. . kobbé, gustave the chap book . kunst und künstler . kunst und künstler . levin, julius illustrirte zeitung . living age , v. (v. ). losee, william f. brush and pencil , v. . ludovici, a. art journal , v. . masters in art , v. . macfall, h. academy v. , p. . mather, frank, jr. world's work . matsuki, bunkio lotus magazine . mauclair, camille rev. polit. and litter. , v. . mans, octave international studio , v. . meier-graefe, julius die zukunft . menpes, dorothy international studio , v , pp. - . menpes, mortimer cornhill magazine , v. . mccoll, d. s. art journal v. , p. . mccoll, d. s. saturday review v. , p. . meynell, wilfred pall mall magazine , v. . morton, fred. w. brush and pencil , v. . mulliken, mary a. international studio , v. . muster, john de elseviers geillust , v. . the nation , pp. - . patini, rinaldo nuova antologia , v. . pennell, joseph burlington magazine , v. . pennell, joseph nation v. , p. . pennell, joseph north american review , v. . scribner's magazine v. , p. . pennington, harper international quar'ly , v. , no. . pennington, harper metropolitan magazine , pp. - . princep, val magazine of art . quilter, harry chamber's magazine , v. . revista latino americana , v. . rosenhagen, hans nord und süd , v. . saturday review v. p. . scott, william international studio , pp. - . sickert, bernhard burlington magazine , v. . sickert, oswald international studio , v. . sickert, oswald kunst und künstler , v. . sickert, walker fortnightly review v. , p. . sketchley, r. e. d. kunst und künstler , v. . smalley, phoebe j. the lamp v. , p. . spielmann, m. h. magazine of art nov. , pp. - . swinburne, a. c. fortnightly review v. , p. . swinburne, a. c. ecclesiastic magazine v. , p. . teall, gardner c. the bookman , pp. - . thompson, d. art journal , v. . academy v. , p. . wedmore, fred th century magazine , v. . knowledge v. , p. . way, thomas r. international studio . wuerpel, g. h. independent v. , p. . wilson, t. book buyer v. , p. . principal paintings[ ] [footnote : p. indicates when picture was painted, or started, as it sometimes took whistler more than ten years to finish a picture; e. indicates when first exhibited. dates and ownership are omitted whenever author failed to verify facts.] -------------------------+--------------------------------+-------- la fumette p. . self-portrait (s. p. avery, esq.) p. . la mère gérard p. . the music room (frank j. hecker, esq.) p. . the woman in white (j. h. whittemore, esq.) p. e. . lange leizen of six marks: in purple and rose (john g. johnson, esq.) p. e. . harmony in purple and gold: the golden screen (chas. w. freer, esq.) p. e. . symphony in white ii: the little white girl (arthur studd, esq.) p. and e. . symphony in white iii (e. davis, esq.) at the piano (e. davis, esq.) p. e. . la princesse du pays de la porcelaine (chas. w. freer, esq.) p. e. . on the balcony: harmony in flesh colour and green (chas. w. freer, esq.) e. . self-portrait (george mccullough, esq.) p. . arrangement in black: f. r. leyland (chas. w. freer, esq.) e. arrangement in brown and gold (j. j. cowan, esq.) woman in gray (rijks museum, amsterdam) lady in gray (metropolitan museum, new york) l'andalusienne (john h. whittemore, esq.) p. about . arrangement in black and brown: miss rose corder (r. a. canfield, esq.) p. e. . the peacock room (chas. w. freer, esq.) . arrangement in black and brown: the fur jacket (william burrell, esq.) p. . américaine p. e. . florence leyland (brooklyn institute, new york) p. e. . arrangement in gray and black: thomas carlyle (city art galleries, glasgow) p. e. . sir henry irving as philip ii e. . arrangement in gray and black: the artist's mother (luxembourg gallery) p. e. . arrangement in gray and green: miss alexander (w. c. alexander, esq.) p. e. . arrangement in black and white: lady meux p. e. . harmony in pink and gray: lady meux e. . theodore duret e. . arrangement in black: lady archibald campbell (wilstach gallery, phila.) e. . mrs. louis huth p. e. . arrangement in black: mme. cassatt e. . arrangement in black: (carnegie art institute, pablo sarasate pittsburg, pa.) p. e. . harmony in ivory: lady colin campbell e. . arrangement in violet and rose: mme. walter sickert e. . arrangement in black and gold: comte de montesquieu (r. a. canfield, esq.) e. . the master smith of lyme regis (boston museum) e. . little rose of lyme regis (boston museum) e. . full length self-portrait (g. w. vanderbilt, esq.) e. . nocturnes _the majority of nocturnes were painted during the years - ._ nocturne in blue and gold: valparaiso p. e. . (chas. w. freer, esq.) symphony in gray and green: the ocean p. . (r. a. canfield, esq.) crepuscule in flesh color and green: valparaiso p. . nocturne in blue and silver: battersea p. . (chas. w. reach freer, esq.) nocturne in blue and silver p. . nocturne in blue and gold: old battersea bridge (tate gallery, london.) nocturne: trafalgar square, snow. nocturne in blue and silver: bognor. (chas. w. freer, esq.) nocturne in opal and silver: the music room. nocturne in gray and gold: chelsea, snow. nocturne in gray and gold: westminster bridge. nocturne in blue and gold: southampton waters (art institute, chicago.) nocturne in brown and silver: old battersea bridge. nocturne in blue and gold: st. mark's, venice. pink and gray: chelsea (lord battersea.) nocturne in black and gold: the p. (mrs. s. untermyer) falling rocket cremorne gardens (metropolitan museum, n.y.) an orange note: sweet shop. index abbey, edwin a., _adam and eve tavern_, adams, clifford, _alexander, portrait of miss_, , , - , , "_américaine, la belle_," , , appian, _amsterdam canal_, _annual review at spithead_, armstrong, _arrangements_, , , _artist's mother, portrait of the_, , , , , , , , , , , , , - , , _at the piano_, , , - aubrey, avery, s. p., bacher, otto h., - , balleroy, de, balzac, _barber, the_, _battersea bridge_, baudelaire, bayliss, wyke, _becquet_, "_belle dame paresseuse, la_," "_belle new-yorkaise, la_," besnard, , bing, binyon, laurence, _blue wave, the; biarritz_, böcklin, _bognor_, boldini, , , bonvin, bracquemond, , burne-jones, , , butterfly monogram, the, - , - _cadogan pier_, _campbell, portrait of lady archibald_, , , , , , , , canaletto, canfield, r. a., , _caprice_, _caprices_, caravaggio, carlyle, thomas, , , _carlyle, portrait of thomas_, , , , , , , carrière, , , carte, d'oyly, casanova, _cassatt, portrait of mme._, cazin, , , cellini, benvenuto, , cernuschi, cézanne, champfleury, chandler, rob, chardin, chase, william m., , chavannes, , , , , , _chelsea_, , , cheret, _chevalet pieces_, chevreul, child, theodore, church, f. e., cimabue, clews, colarossi, collins, wilkie, "_confidences dans le jardin, les_," constable, , , _corder, portrait of rose_, , - , cordier, corot, courbet, , , , , , "_cuisine, la_," dabo, leon, , dagnan-bouveret, _dam wood, the_, _dancing girl_, dannat, daubigny, david, dawson, daniel, degas, , , , delacroix, , , delaroche, delâtre, delonney, denton, watts, _doorway_, drouet, _drouet, portrait of_, du maurier, , , , duran, carolus, duranty, dürer, , , duret, theodore, , , _duret, portrait of theodore_, , , , , , duveneck, frank, eden, sir william, , elsheimer, _etchings_, , , , , , - , - , - eugenie, empress, , _early morning_, _falling rocket, the_, , - fantin-latour, , , , , flaubert, ford, sheridan, , , , fortuny, fragonard, france, anatole, freer, charles w., , , , frith, w. p., fromentin, fuller, _fumette_, _fur jacket, the_, , , , gainsborough, , _garden, the_, , "_gentle art of making enemies, the_," , , , _girl on a couch_, gleyre, charles, , - godwin, edwin w., , _golden screen, the_, , goncourt, edmond and jules de, , , goya, gozzolli, , grain, corney, _grand gallery of the louvre, the_, gray, walter, greaves, guimet, guthrie, sir james, haden, f. seymour, , , , , , hals, franz, , , , , hamerton, p. g., , _harmonies_, , , , , , , , harpignies, harrison, alexander, harunobu, , hawkins, c. r., , hawthorne, hecker, frank j., heffernan, joanna, - heine, heinrich, , helleu, helmholtz, _henley, portraits of mr. and mrs. w. e._, henner, , henri, robert, , heyse, paul, herrick, hiroshige, , , , , , hogarth, , hokusai, homer, winslow, horsley, r. a., _hôtel de ville at loches_, _house beautiful_, see _white house_ huddleston, judge, _huth, portrait of mrs._, , ingres, , , , inness, ionides, luke, _irving as philip ii., portrait of sir henry_, , israels, , , , jacquemart, jameson, mrs., _jo_, , johnson, john g., jongkind, julian, keene, charles, kennedy, khnopff, kiyonaga, klinger, lalanne, lalouette, madame, _lange-leizen of the six marks_, , _lannion, a_, lautrec, toulouse, lavery, john, , legros, , , , leighton, sir frederick, , , , , lenbach, , leonardo da vinci, , , , lessing, leyland, f. r., , , , , , , , , , _leyland, portrait of florence_, , - , , _leyland, portrait of f. r._, , - , , _lime burner, the_, lindsey, sir coutts, , _lion's wharf_, _lithographs_, , , , - _little mast, the_, _little nude reading, the_, _little pool, the_, _little rose of lyme regis_, _little venice_, _little wapping_, _little white girl, the_, , - , _locksmith of the dragon square, the_, _london bridge_, _long lagoon, the_, lorraine, claude, ludovici, a, luks, _luxembourg gardens, the_, "_maison jaune, la_," "_maison rouge à paimpol, la_," makart, mallarmé, stéphane, , , _mallarmé, portrait of stéphane_, - mancini, manet, , , , , , , , mantz, paul, "_marchande de moutarde, la_," _marines_, maris, , martin, homer, _master smith, the_, "maud," maupassant, guy de, max, gabriel, mccullough, george, memling, menpes, mortimer, , , meredith, george, , "_mère gérard, la_," , _meux, portraits of lady_, , , , meyrion, , millais, _model resting, the_, , monet, , , , , , , , montesquiou de fezensac, comte, , _montesquiou de fezensac, portraits of comte_, , - , monticelli, , moore, albert, moore, george, _morning call, the_, see _music room, the_ morris, william, - murger, henri, _music room, the_, , napoleon iii, _nocturnes_, , - , , , , - , , - , , , - _notes_, , , , _ocean, the_, , _old battersea bridge_, , , , _old hungerford bridge_, _on the balcony (terrace)_, , - , , outomaro, , , , _palace_, palmer, emma, _pantheon_, _pastels_, , , - _peacock room_, , , , - , peladan, mérodack, pelligrini, carlo, pennell, joseph, , , , , , - , , , , , _pennell, portraits of mr. and mrs. joseph_, pennington, harper, , "pepys' diary," philip, john bernie, _philip, portrait of miss_, pinturicchio, pissaro, poe, edgar allan, _pool, the_, _price's candle works_, _princess of the porcelain land_, , , , , prinsep, val, , prudhon, quilter, harry, - , raffaelli, jean françois, , , , raphael, , , regamey, reid, rembrandt, , , , , , , , , , , , renoir, , , ribera, ribot, , _riva, the_, robertson, graham, rodin, rood, ogden, rops, rossetti, dante gabriel, , , , , rossetti, w. m., , rossi, mme. carmen, rousseau, rowley, roybet, rubens, , , , ruskin, john, , - , , , , , , - ryder, , _san biagio_, sarasate, pablo de, , , , _sarasate, portrait of pablo de_, , , , , - , sargent, , , _scene in alsatian village_, schalcken, segantini, , sharaku, shunsho, _sickert, portrait of walter_, _silent canal, the_, singer, h. w., "_soupe à trois sous_," _southampton docks_, _southampton water_, spartali, christie, spencer, herbert, starr, sidney, steichen, stevens, , - , , _st. mark's, venice_, stott, _street at saverne_, studd, arthur, sutherland, swinburne, , , _symphony in white, a_, , , , , see also _woman in white_ _symphonies_, , , , tadema, alma, taine, h., tanyu, tarbell, taylor, tom, "ten o'clock," , , , , - , terborg, thayer, abbott, , thomas, percy, thomas, ralph, thompson, sir h., tintoretto, tissot, , , , titian, , , , , , , tryon, , turner, , , _unsafe tenement_, _valparaiso harbour_, - , , vanderbilt, george w., , van der helst, van dyke, , , van rensselaer, mrs. schuyler, _variations_, velasquez, , , , , , - , , , , , , , _velvet dress, the_, vermeer, vernet, veronese, , , veyrasset, "_vielle aux loques, la_," _view on the thames_, vollon, watteau, way, thomas, , , wedmore, frederick, , , _westminster bridge_, whistler george washington, - whistler, james (abbott) mcneill private life, - , - , birth, youth, - marriage, , in russia, - at west point, - , student life in paris, - , - in london, - , , , - , , - in paris, - , , - in venice, , - , - in holland, , , in south america, - , financial difficulties, - his art school, - japanese influence, - butterfly monogram, - , - _whistler's portraits of himself_, , - whistler, william, _white girl, the_, see _symphony in white, a_ white house, the, , - , - , white, stanford, whitman, whittemore, john g., wilde, oscar, - , _wine glass, the_, _woman in white_, , , , - , wuerpel, e. h., _yacht race, the_, _yellow buskin, the_, see _campbell, portrait of lady archibald_ young, _zaandam_, zola, zorn, , , * * * * * transcriber's notes: punctuation text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). oe ligatures are shown thus: [oe] (e.g. man[oe]uvred). small capital text has been replaced with all capitals or with passages in title case. obvious punctuation errors have been repaired; however, inconsistencies in hyphenation (e.g. "every-day"/"everyday") have been retained. words and spelling pg : "grey" changed to "gray" (the author of "dorian gray") pg and : "ae" normalised to "æ" (men of very dissimilar æsthetic convictions) (the æsthetes of the empire) pg and index: "d'oyle" changed to "d'oyly" (the home of mr. d'oyly carte) pg : word "he" added (i believe he himself knew) pg : "laakoon" changed to "laokoon" pg : "absorbant" changed to "absorbent" (painted on very absorbent canvas) pg : "noctures" changed to "nocturnes" (for the blue nocturnes) pg : "frontpiece" changed to "frontispiece" (appears as the frontispiece) pg : "enlightment" changed to "enlightenment" (proof of enlightenment) pg : "riks museum" changed to "rijks museum" (rijks museum, amsterdam) pg : "hellew" changed to "helleu" online distributed proofreading canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net [illustration: leslie ward.] forty years of 'spy' by leslie ward _illustrated_ london chatto & windus contents chapter i early days page i come into the world.--the story of my ancestry.--my mother.--wilkie collins.--the collins family.--slough and upton.--the funeral of the duchess of kent.--the marriage of the princess royal.--her majesty queen victoria and the prince consort.--their visits to my parents' studios.--the prince of wales.--sir william ross, r.a.--westminster abbey.--my composition.--a visit to astley's theatre.--wilkie collins and pigott.--the panopticon.--the thames frozen over. --the comet.--general sir john hearsey.--kent villa.--my father.--lady waterford.--marcus stone and vicat cole.--the crystal palace.--rev. j. m. bellew.--kyrle bellew.--i go to school.--wentworth hope johnstone. chapter ii eton and after eton days.--windsor fair.--my dame.--fights and fun.-- boveney court.--mr. hall say.--boveney.--professor and mrs. attwell.--i win a useful prize.--alban doran.--my father's frescoes.--battle abbey.--gainsborough's tomb.--knole.--our burglar.--claude calthrop.--clayton calthrop.--the gardener as critic.--the gipsy with an eye for colour.--i attempt sculpture.--the terry family.--private theatricals.--sir john hare.--miss marion terry.--miss ellen terry.--miss kate terry.--miss bateman.--miss florence st. john.--constable.-- sir howard vincent.--i dance with patti.--lancaster gate and meringues.--prayers and pantries. chapter iii my father's friends my father's friends.--the pre-raphaelites.--plum-box painting. --the victorians.--the post-impressionists.--maclise.--sir edwin landseer.--tom landseer.--mulready.--daniel roberts.-- edward cooke.--burgess and long.--frith.--millais.--stephens and holman hunt.--stanfield.--c. r. leslie.--dr. john doran. --mr. and mrs. s. c. hall.--the virtues, james and william.-- mr. and mrs. tom taylor.--a story of tennyson.--sam lover.-- moscheles _père et fils_.--philip calderon.--sir theodore and ladymartin.--garibaldi.--lord crewe.--fechter.--joachim and lord houghton.--charles dickens.--lord stanhope.--william hepworth dixon.--sir charles dilke. chapter iv work and play school-days ended.--a trip to paris.--versailles and the morgue.--i enter the office of sydney smirke, r.a.--montagu williams and christchurch.--a squall.--frith as arbitrator. --i nearly lose my life.--william virtue to the rescue.--the honourable mrs. butler johnson munro.--i visit knebworth.-- lord lytton.--spiritualism.--my first picture in the royal academy.--a scotch holiday with my friend richard dunlop.-- patrick adam.--mr. and mrs. arthur lewis.--mr. george fox and harry fox.--sir william jaffray.--mr. william cobbett.-- adventures on and off a horse.--peter graham.--cruikshank.-- mr. phené spiers.--johnston forbes-robertson and irving.-- fred walker.--arthur sullivan.--sir henry de bathe.--sir spencer ponsonby.--du maurier.--arthur cecil.--sir francis burnand.--the bennett benefit. chapter v 'spy' my coming of age.--the letter.--the doctor's verdict.--the doctor's pretty daughter.--arthur sullivan.--"dolly" storey. --lord leven's garden party.--professor owen.--gibson bowles. --arthur lewis.--carlo pellegrini.--paolo tosti.--pagani's.-- j. j. tissot.--_vanity fair._--some of the contributors.-- anthony trollope.--john stuart mill.--_the world._--edmund yates.--death of lord lytton.--mr. macquoid.--luke fildes.-- small.--gregory.--herkomer.--_thegraphic._--gladstone.-- disraeli, etc. chapter vi caricature cannot be taught.--where i stalk.--the ugly man.--the handsome man.--physical defects.--warts.--joachim liszt and oliver cromwell.--pellegrini, millais and whistler.--the characteristic portrait.--taking notes.--methods.-- photography.--tattersall's--lord lonsdale.--lord rocksavage. --william gillette.--mr. bayard.--the bald man.--the humorous sitter.--tyler.--profiles.--cavalry officers.--the queen's uniform.--my subjects' wives.--what they think.--bribery.-- bradlaugh.--the prince of wales.--the tailor story.--sir watkin williams wynn.--lord henry lennox.--cardinal newman. --the rev. arthur tooth.--dr. spooner.--comyns carr.--pigott. --"piggy" palk and "mr. spy." chapter vii portraiture some of my sitters.--mrs. tom caley.--lady leucha warner.-- lady loudoun.--colonel corbett.--miss reiss.--the late mrs. harry mccalmont.--the duke of hamilton.--sir w. jaffray.-- the queen of spain.--soldier sitters.--millais.--sir william cunliffe brooks.--holman hunt.--george richmond.--sir william richmond.--sir luke fildes.--lord leighton.--sir laurence alma tadema.--sir george reid.--orchardson.--pettie.--frank dicksee.--augustus lumley.--"archie" stuart wortley.--john varley.--john collier.--sir keith fraser.--sir charles fraser.--mrs. langtry.--mrs. cornwallis west.--miss rousby. --the prince of wales.--king george as a boy.--children's portraits.--mrs. weldon.--christabel pankhurst. chapter viii my clubs the arts club.--mrs. frith's funeral.--the sympathetic waiter.--swinburne.--whistler.--edmund yates.--the orleans club.--sir george wombwell.--"hughie" drummond.--"fatty" coleman.--lady meux.--the prize fighter and her nephew.--the curate.--the theobald's tiger.--whistler and his pictures.-- charles brookfield.--mrs. brookfield.--the lotus club.--kate vaughan.--nellie farren.--the lyric club.--the gallery club. --some members.--the jockey club stand.--my plunge on the turf.--the beefsteak club.--toole and irving.--the fielding club.--archie wortley.--charles keene.--the amateur pantomime. --some of the caste.--corney grain.--a night on ebury bridge. --the punch bowl club.--oliver wendell holmes.--lord houghton and the herring. chapter ix the law the inspiration of the courts.--montagu williams.--lefroy.-- the de goncourt case.--irving.--sir frank lockwood.--dr. lampson, the poisoner.--mr. justice hawkins.--the tichborne case.--mr. justice mellor and mr. justice lush.--the druce case.--the countess of ossington.--the duke's portrait.-- my models.--the adventuress.--the insolent omnibus conductor. --i win my case.--sir george lewis.--the late lord grimthorpe. --sir charles hall.--lord halsbury.--sir alfred cripps (now lord parmoor).--sir herbert cozens-hardy.--lord robert cecil. --the late sir albert de rutzen.--mr. charles gill.--sir charles matthews.--lord alverstone.--mr. birrell.--mr. plowden. --mr. marshall hall.--mr. h. c. biron. chapter x the church and the varsities--parsons of many creeds and denominations dean wellesley.--dr. james sewell.--canon ainger.--lord torrington.--dr. goodford.--dr. welldon.--dr. walker.--the van beers' supper.--the bishop of lichfield.--rev. r. j. campbell.--cardinal vaughan.--dr. benson, archbishop of canterbury.--dr. armitage robinson.--varsity athletes.-- etherington-smith.--john loraine baldwin.--ranjitsinhji.-- mr. muttlebury.--mr. "rudy" lehmann. chapter xi in the lobby in the house.--distinguished soldiers.--the main lobby.--the irish party.--isaac butt.--mr. mitchell henry.--parnell and dillon.--gladstone and disraeli.--lord arthur hill.--lord alexander paget.--viscount midleton.--mr. seely.--lord alington's cartoon.--chaplains of the "house"--rev. f. e. c. byng.--archdeacon wilberforce.--the "fourth party."--lord northbrook and col. napier sturt.--lord lytton.--the method of millais.--lord londonderry. chapter xii voyage on h.m.s. _hercules_ sir reginald macdonald's caricature.--h.r.h. the duke of edinburgh's invitation.--the _lively_.--the _hercules_.-- admiral sir william hewitt.--irish excursions.--the channel squadron.--fishing party at loch brine.--the young princes arrive on the _bacchante_.--cruise to vigo.--the "night alarm."--the duke as _bon voyageur_.--vigo.--the birthday picnic.--a bear-fight on board the _hercules_.--homeward bound.--good-bye.--the duke's visit to my studio. chapter xiii yachtsmen--foreign rulers sir reginald macdonald's caricature.--h.r.h. the duke of edinburgh's invitation.--the _lively_.--the _hercules_.-- admiral sir william hewitt.--irish excursions.--the channel squadron.--fishing party at loch brine.--the young princes arrive on the _bacchante_.--cruise to vigo.--the "night alarm."--the duke as _bon voyageur_.--vigo.--the birthday picnic.--a bear-fight on board the _hercules_.--homeward bound.--good-bye.--the duke's visit to my studio. chapter xiv musicians--authors--actors and artists wagner.--richter.--dan godfrey.--arthur cecil.--sir frederick bridge and bombs.--w. s. penley.--sir herbert tree.--max beerbohm.--mr. and mrs. kendal.--henry kemble.--sir edgar boehm.--george du maurier.--rudyard kipling.--alfred austin. --william black.--thomas hardy.--w. e. henley.--egerton castle. --samuel smiles.--farren.--sir squire and lady bancroft.--dion boucicault and his wife.--sir charles wyndham.--leo trevor.-- cyril maude.--william gillette.--the late dion boucicault.-- arthur bourchier.--allan aynesworth.--charlie hawtrey.--the grossmiths.--h. b. irving.--w. l. courtney.--willie elliot.-- "beau little."--henry arthur jones.--gustave doré.--j. macneil whistler.--walter crane.--f. c. g.--lady ashburton and her forgetfulness. chapter xv notable peers--tangier--the tecks peers of the period.--my voyage to tangier.--marlborough house and white lodge. chapter xvi marriage--some clerics--farewell to _vanity fair_ my engagement and marriage to miss topham-watney.--"drawl" and the kruger cartoon.--"the general group."--field-marshal lord roberts.--archbishops temple and randall davidson.--the bishop of london.--archbishop of york.--canon fleming.--lord montagu of beaulieu.--lord salisbury's cartoon.--mr. asquith. --joe knight.--lord newlands.--four great men in connection with canada.--the queen of spain.--princess beatrice of saxe-coburg.--general sir william francis butler, g.c.b.--mr. witherby.--farewell to _vanity fair_. chapter xvii a holiday misfortune--royal portraits--farewell belgium.--accident at golf.--portraits of king george v, the duke of connaught, mr. roosevelt, mr. lloyd george, mr. garvin.--portrait painting of to-day.--final reflections. --farewell. illustrations in colour page mr. charles cox (banker), the marquis of winchester, sir alfred scott-gatty (garter king-at-arms, ) lord haldon, admiral sir compton domville, miss christabel pankhurst f. r spofforth (demon bowler), mr. gladstone, sir albert rollit, the archbishop of canterbury, dr. temple, the marquis of salisbury, in half-tone leslie ward _frontispiece_ james ward, r.a. james ward's mother miniature of my sister alice and myself painted by sir william ross, r.a. my father my mother cartoons from _punch_, sir william broadbent, sir thomas barlow, sir james paget, bart., gainsborough's tomb at kew churchyard and tablet to his memory inside church my brother, wriothesley russell, my sister, beatrice, bust of my brother, wriothesley russell, my daughter sylvia john everett millais, r.a., c. r. leslie, r.a. (my godfather) lord houghton, fred archer, the duke of beaufort, _cir._ first lord lytton (bulwer lytton), mr. george lane fox, lord portman, duke of grafton, sir william jaffray, bart. sir william crookes, sir oliver lodge, sir william huggins, professor owen, thomas gibson bowles, colonel hall walker, colonel fred burnaby, pellegrini asleep, etc., cir. john tenniel, anthony trollope, sir francis doyle, bart., "miles bugglebury," j. redmond, m.p., the speaker (j. w. lowther, m.p.), bonar law, m.p., henry kemble, h. beerbohm tree, gerald du maurier, william gillette, fifth earl of portsmouth, major oswald ames (ozzie), earl of lonsdale, the rev. r. j. campbell, sterling stuart, father bernard vaughan, canon liddon, cardinal newman, the dean of windsor (wellesley), dr. jowett, dr. spooner, professor robinson ellis, buckstone, and other sketches mrs. george rigby murray a study the hon. mrs. adrian pollock a midsummer-night's dream grand prix the beefsteak club george grossmith and corney grain, c. birch crisp, oliver locker lampson, m.p., weedon grossmith, the forty thieves: programme and photographs johnny giffard; alfred thompson; corney grain; "tom" bird; corney grain at datchet; pellegrini augustus helder, m.p.; madame rachel; lord ranelagh; beal, m.p.; barnum; first lord cowley; sir h. cozens-hardy; the dean of christchurch; sir roderick murcheson lord coleridge, mr. justice cozens-hardy, h. c. biron, e. s. fordham, charles williams-wynn, m.p., sir james ingham, lord vivian (hook and eye), sir albert de rutzen, mr. plowden, canon ainger, th marquis of winchester, archdeacon wilberforce, rev. j. l. joynes, dr. warre cornish, dr. goodford, rev. r. j. campbell, sam loates, arthur coventry, frank wootton, fordham, "dizzy" and "monty" corry (lord rowton), campbell-bannerman and fowler, gladstone and harcourt, lords spencer and ripon, the fourth party, baron deichmann, w. bramston beach, m.p., "sam" smith, m.p., percy thornton, m.p., seventh earl of bessborough, rev. f. h. gillingham, archdeacon benjamin harrison, "charlie" beresford, admiral sir john fisher, admiral sir regd. macdonald, captain jellicoe, king edward vii, sir john astley "jim" lowther, m.p., peter gilpin, earl of macclesfield, chinese ambassador (kuo sung tuo), ras makonnen, chinese ambassador (chang ta jen), richard wagner, the abbé liszt, kubelik, sir frederick bridge, paderewski, sir edgar boehm, bart., r.a., ; and the brass on sir edgar boehm's tomb sir henry lucy, w. s. gilbert, w. e. henley, rudyard kipling, from nursery rhyme sketches; rt. hon. "bobby" low; mr. justice lawrence; danckwerts, k.c.; the late lord chief justice cockburn; a smile from nature; henry irving lord newlands, count de soveral, m. gennadius, general sir h. smith dorrien, lord roberts, lord kitchener, lloyd george, asquith, rufus isaacs, my daughter my wife joseph knight, and a facsimile letter princess ena of battenberg, sketches drawn in september, , by mr. a. g. witherby m. p. grace, esq., battle abbey in line cruikshank's autograph facsimile of a whistler letter "smile, damn you, smile!" forty years of 'spy' chapter i early days i come into the world.--the story of my ancestry.--my mother.--wilkie collins.--the collins family.--slough and upton.--the funeral of the duchess of kent.--the marriage of the princess royal.--her majesty queen victoria and the prince consort.--their visits to my parents' studios.--the prince of wales.--sir william ross, r.a.--westminster abbey.--my composition.--a visit to astley's theatre.--wilkie collins and pigott.--the panopticon.--the thames frozen over. --the comet.--general sir john hearsey.--kent villa.--my father.--lady waterford.--marcus stone and vicat cole.--the crystal palace.--rev. j. m. bellew.--kyrle bellew.--i go to school.--wentworth hope johnstone. in the course of our lives the monotonous repetition of daily routine and the similarity of the types we meet make our minds less and less susceptible to impressions, with the result that important events and interesting _rencontres_ of last year--or even of last week--pass from our recollection far more readily than the trifling occurrences and casual acquaintanceships of early days. the deep indentations which everything makes upon the memory when the brain is young and receptive, when everything is novel and comes as a surprise, remain with most men and women throughout their lives. i am no exception to this rule; i remember, with extraordinary clearness of vision, innumerable incidents, trivial perhaps in themselves, but infinitely dear to me. they shine back across the years with a vivid outline, the clearer for a background of forgotten and perhaps important events now lost in shadow. i was born at harewood square, london, on november st, , and i was named after my godfather, c. r. leslie, r.a., the father of george leslie, r.a. my father, e. m. ward, r.a., the only professional artist of his family, and the nephew by marriage of horace smith (the joint author with james smith of "the rejected addresses"), fell in love with miss henrietta ward (who, although of the same name, was no relation), and married her when she was just sixteen. my mother came of a long line of artists. her father, george raphael ward, a mezzotint engraver and miniature painter, also married an artist who was an extremely clever miniature painter. john jackson, r.a., the portrait painter in ordinary to william iv., was my mother's great-uncle, and george morland became related to her by his marriage with pretty anne ward, whose life he wrecked by his drunken profligacy. his treatment of his wife, in fact, alienated from morland men who were his friends, and amongst them my great-grandfather, james ward (who, like my father, married a miss ward, an artist and a namesake). james ward, r.a., was a most interesting character and an artist of great versatility. as landscape, animal, and portrait painter, engraver, lithographer, and modeller, his work shows extraordinary ability. in his early days poverty threatened to wreck his career, but although misfortune hindered his progress, he surmounted every obstacle with magnificent courage and tenacity of purpose. on the subject of theology, his artistic temperament was curiously intermingled with his faith, but when he wished to embody his mysticism and ideals in paint, he failed. on the other hand, we have some gigantic masterpieces in the tate and national galleries which i think will bear the test of time in their power and excellence. "power," to quote a contemporary account of james' life, "was the keynote of his work, he loved to paint mighty bulls and fiery stallions, picturing their brutal strength as no one has done before or since." he ground his colours and manufactured his own paints, made experiments in pigments of all kinds, and "gordale scar" is a proof of the excellence of pure medium. the picture was painted for the late lord ribblesdale, and when it proved to be too large to hang on his walls, the canvas was rolled and stored in the cellars of the british museum. at the rise and fall of the thames, water flooded the picture; but after several years' oblivion it was discovered, rescued from damp and mildew, and after restoration was found to have lost none of its freshness and colour. [illustration: _my great grandfather on my mother's side_, james ward, r.a., _who died in his st year_.] [illustration: james ward's mother, _who died at all but a month_.] as an engraver alone james ward was famous, but the attraction of colour, following upon his accidental discovery--that he could paint--made while he was repairing an oil painting, encouraged him to abandon his engraving and take up the brush. this he eventually did, in spite of the great opposition from artists of the day, hoppner amongst them, who all wished to retain his services as a clever engraver of their own work. william ward, the mezzotint engraver, whose works are fetching great sums to-day, encouraged his younger brother, and james held to his decision. he eventually proved his talent, but his triumph was not achieved without great vicissitude and discouragement. he became animal painter to the king, and died at the great age of ninety, leaving a large number of works of a widely different character, many of which are in the possession of the hon. john ward, m.v.o. the following letters from sir edwin landseer, mulready, and holman hunt to my father, show in some degree the regard in which other great artists held both him and his pictures:-- november st, . my dear sir, ... i beg to assure you that not amongst the large group of mourners that regret him will you find one friend who so appreciated his genius or respected him more as a good man. believe me, yours sincerely, e. landseer. linden grove, notting hill, june st, . dear sir, i agree with my brother artists in their admiration of your wife's grandfather's pictures of cattle, now in the international exhibition, and i believe its being permanently placed in our national gallery would be useful in our school and an honour to our country. i am, dear sir, yours faithfully, w. mulready. june th, . my dear sir, ... it is many years now since i saw mrs. ward's grandfather's famous picture of the "bull, cow, and calf." i have not been able to go and see it in the international exhibition. my memory of it is, however, quite clear enough to allow me to express my very great admiration for the qualities of drawing, composition, and colour for which it is distinguished. in the two last particulars it will always be especially interesting as one of the earliest attempts to liberate the art of this century from the conventionalities of the last.... yours very truly, w. holman hunt. my mother's versatile talent has ably upheld the reputation of her artistic predecessors; she paints besides figure-subjects delightful interiors, charming little bits of country life, and inherits the gift of painting dogs, which she represents with remarkable facility. although both my parents were historical painters, my mother's style was in no way similar to my father's. her quality of painting is of a distinctive kind. this was especially marked in the painting of "mrs. fry visiting newgate," one of the most remarkable of her pictures. the picture was hung on the line in the royal academy, and after a very successful reception was engraved. afterwards, both painting and engraving were stolen by the man to whom they were entrusted for exhibition round the country; this man lived on the proceeds and pawned the picture. eventually the painting was recovered and bought for america, and it is still perhaps the most widely known of the many works of my mother purchased for public galleries. it is not surprising, therefore, that i should have inherited some of the inclinations of my artistic progenitors. my earliest recollection is of a sea-trip at the age of four, when i remember tasting my first acidulated drop, presented me by an old lady whose appearance i can recollect perfectly, together with the remembrance of my pleasure and the novelty of the strange sweet. my mother tells me my first caricatures were of soldiers at calais. i am afraid that--youthful as i then was--they could hardly have been anything but _caricatures_. wilkie collins came into my life even earlier than this. i was going to say i remember him at my christening, but i am afraid my words would be discredited even in these days of exaggeration. the well-known novelist, who was a great friend of my parents, was then at the height of his fame. he had what i knew afterwards to be an unfortunate "cast" in one eye, which troubled me very much as a child, for when telling an anecdote or making an observation to my father, i frequently thought he was addressing me, and i invariably grew embarrassed because i did not understand, and was therefore unable to reply. other members of the collins family visited us. there was old mrs. collins, the widow of william collins, r.a.; a quaint old lady who wore her kid boots carefully down on one side and then reversed them and wore them down on the other. she had a horror of highlanders because they wore kilts, which she considered scandalous. charles collins, one of the original pre-raphaelite brotherhood, her son, and wilkie's brother, paid frequent week-end visits to our house, and the memory of charles is surrounded by a halo of mystery and wonder, for he possessed a magic snuff-box made of gold inset with jewels, and at a word of command a little bird appeared on it, which disappeared in the same wonderful manner. but what was even more wonderful, mr. collins persuaded me that the bird flew all round the room singing until it returned to the box and fascinated me all over again. in after years i remember seeing a similar box and discovering the deception and mechanism. my disappointment for my shattered ideal was very hard to bear. my imagination as a small child, although it endowed me with happy hours, was sometimes rather too much for me. on being presented with a sword, i invented a lion to kill with it, and grew so frightened finally of the creature of my own invention that at the last moment, preparatory to a triumphant rush intended to culminate in victory, i was obliged to retreat in terror behind my mother's skirts, my clutch becoming so frantic that she had to release herself from my grasp. on leaving harewood square, my parents went to live at upton park, slough, where i spent some of the happiest days of my life. always a charming little place, it was then to me very beautiful. i remember the old church, delightfully situated by the roadside, the little gate by the low wall, and the long line of dark green yews bordering the flagged paths, where the stately people walked into church, followed by small page boys in livery carrying big bags containing the prayer-books. leech has depicted those quaint children in many a humorous drawing. there were two ladies whom i recollect as far from stately. i wish i could meet them now. such subjects for a caricature one rarely has the opportunity of seeing. quite six feet, ungainly, gawky, with odd clothes and queer faces, not unlike those of birds, they always inspired me with the utmost curiosity and astonishment. these ladies bore the name of "trumper," and i remember they called upon us one day. the servant--perhaps embarrassed by their strange appearance--announced them as the "miss trumpeters," and the accidental name labelled them for ever. even now i think of them as "the trumpeters." the eccentricity of the miss trumpers was evidently hereditary, for on the occasion of a dinner-party given at their house, old mrs. trumper startled her guests at an early stage of the meal by bending a little too far over her plate, and causing her wig and cap to fall with a splash into her soup. the ivy mantled tower was claimed very jealously in those days by the natives of upton to be the tower of gray's "elegy," but it was in stoke poges churchyard that gray wrote his exquisite poem, and it is there by the east wall of the old church that "the poet sleeps his last sleep." in the meadow by the chancel window stands the cenotaph raised to his memory by john penn, who, although the pennsylvanians will assure you he rests safely in their native town, is buried in a village called penn not far distant. the churchyard always impresses me with its atmosphere of romantic associations; the fine old elm tree, and the pines, and the two ancient yews casting their dark shade-- "where heaves the turf with many a mouldering heap," all add to the poetic feeling that is still so completely preserved. when one enters the church the impression gained outside is somewhat impaired by some startlingly ugly stained glass windows, which to my mind are a blot on the church. there is one which is so crushingly obvious as to be positively painful to the eye. it must be remembered, of course, that these drawbacks are comparatively modern, and a few of the windows are very quaint. one very old one reveals an anticipatory gentleman riding a wooden bicycle. the reverend hammond tooke was then rector of upton church, and a friend of my people. mrs. tooke was interested in me, and gave me my first bible, which i still possess, but which, i am afraid, is not opened as often as it used to be. my excuse lies in my fear lest it should fall to pieces if i touched it. on the way to and from church we used to pass the old rectory house (in after days the residence of george augustus sala), then owned by an admiral of whom i have not the slightest recollection. the admiral's garden was a source of unfailing interest, for there, on the surface of a small pond, floated a miniature man-o'-war. another scene of happy hours was herschel house, which belonged to an old lady whom we frequently visited. on her lawn stood the famous telescope, which was so gigantically constructed that--in search of science!--it enabled me to my delight to run up and down it. sir william herschel made most of his great discoveries at this house, including that of the planet uranus. living so near windsor we naturally witnessed a great number of incidents, interesting and spectacular. from our roof we saw the funeral procession of the duchess of kent, winding along the slough road, and from a shop window in windsor watched the bridal carriage of the princess royal (on the occasion of her marriage to the crown prince of prussia) being dragged up windsor hill by the eton boys. i can also recall an opportunity being given us of witnessing from the platform of slough station, gaily decorated for the occasion, the entry of a train which was conveying victor emmanuel, then king of sardinia, to windsor castle. if i remember rightly, the mayor--with the inevitable corporation--read an address, and it was then that i saw the robust monarch in his smart green and gold uniform, with a plumed hat: his round features and enormous moustache are not easily forgotten. the station-master at slough was an extraordinary character, and full of importance, with an appearance in keeping. he must have weighed quite twenty-two stone. he used to walk down the platform heralding the approaching train with a penetrating voice that resounded through the station. there is a story told of how he went to his grandson's christening, and, missing his accustomed position of supreme importance and prominence, he grew bored, fell asleep in a comfortable pew ... and snored until the roof vibrated! when the officiating clergyman attempted to rouse him by asking the portly sponsor the name of his godchild, he awoke suddenly and replied loudly, "slough--slough--change for windsor!" during the progress of my father's commissioned pictures, "the visit of queen victoria to the tomb of napoleon i." and "the investiture of napoleon iii. with the order of the garter" (both of which, i believe, still hang in buckingham palace), the queen and prince consort made frequent visits to my father's studio. on one of these visits of inspection, the queen was attracted by some little pictures done by my mother of her children, with which she was so much pleased that she asked her to paint one of princess beatrice (then a baby of ten months old). before the departure of the royal family on this occasion, we children were sent for, and upon entering the room made our bow and curtsey as we had been taught to do by our governess. my youngest sister, however, being a mere baby, toddled in after us with an air of indifference which she continued to show. i suppose the gold and scarlet liveries of the royal servants were more attractive to her than the quiet presence of the royal people. when the queen departed, we hurried to the nursery windows. to my delight, i saw the prince of wales waving his mother's sunshade to us, and in return i kept waving my hand to him until the carriage was out of sight. in after years my father told me with some amusement, how the prince consort (who was growing stouter) reduced the size of the painted figure of himself in my father's picture by drawing a chalk line, and remarking, "that's where my waist _should_ be!" i sat to my parents very often, and my father occasionally gave me sixpence as a reward for the agonies i considered i endured, standing in awkward attitudes, impatiently awaiting my freedom. in my mother's charming picture called "god save the queen," which represents her sitting at the piano, her fingers on the keys, her face framed by soft curls is turned to a small group representing her children who are singing the national anthem. here i figure with sword, trumpet, and helmet, looking as if i would die for my queen and my country, while my sisters watch with wide interested eyes. my sisters and i often played about my mother's studio while she painted. she never seemed to find our presence troublesome, although i believe we were sometimes a nuisance, whereas my father was obliged to limit his attentions to us when work was finished for the day. i loved to draw, and on sundays the subject had to be biblical, as to draw anything of an everyday nature on the sabbath was in those days considered, even for a child, highly reprehensible (at all events, by my parents). even then i was determined to be an artist. i remember that one day my oldest friend, edward nash (whose parents were neighbours of ours) and i were watching the seaforth highlanders go by, and, roused perhaps by this inspiring sight, we fell to discussing our futures. "i'm going to be an artist," i announced. "what are you?" "i'm going to be a scotchman," he replied gravely. in after life he distinguished himself as a great athlete, played football for rugby in the school "twenty," and was one of the founders of the hockey club. he is now a successful solicitor and the father of athletic sons. a very interesting personality crossed my path at this period in the shape of sir william ross, r.a., the last really great miniature painter of his time. he was a most courteous old gentleman, and there was nothing of the artist in his appearance--at least according to the accepted view of the appearance of an artist. in fact, he was more like a benevolent old doctor than anything else. when my sister alice and i knew that we were to sit to him for our portraits, we rather liked, instead of resenting, the idea (as perhaps would have been natural), for he looked so kind. after our first sitting he told me to eat the strawberry i had held so patiently. i obediently did as he suggested, and after each sitting i was rewarded in this way. the miniature turned out to be a _chef d'oeuvre_. it is so beautiful in its extreme delicacy and manipulation that it delights me always. my mother values it so much that in order to retain its freshness she keeps it locked up and shows it only to those who she knows will appreciate its exquisite qualities. queen victoria said when it was shown to her, "i have many fine miniatures by ross, but none to equal that one." [illustration: _miniature of my sister alice and myself painted by sir william ross, r.a., ._] we visited many artists' studios with our parents. i am told i was an observant child and consequently had to be warned against making too outspoken criticisms on the pictures and their painters. on one occasion a mr. bell was coming to dine; we were allowed in the drawing-room after dinner, and as his appearance was likely to excite our interest, we were warned by our governess against remarking on mr. bell's nose. this warning resulted in our anticipation rising to something like excitement, and the moment i entered the room, my gaze went straight to his nose and stayed there. i recollect searching my brain for a comparison, and coming to the conclusion that it resembled a bunch of grapes. my father was a very keen student of archæology; and i think he must have known the history of every building in london inside and out! i remember that once he took us to westminster abbey, there, as usual, to make known to us, i have no doubt, many interesting facts. afterwards we went to st. james' park, where my father pointed out the ornamental lake where king charles the second fed his ducks, and told our governess that he thought it would be an excellent idea if when we returned we were to write a description of our adventures. the next day, accordingly, we sat down to write our compositions; and although my sister's proves to have been not so bad, mine, as will be seen, was shocking. the reader will observe that in speaking of st. james' park, i have gone so far as to say "king charles fed his duchess by the lake," which seems to imply a knowledge of that gay monarch beyond my years. "thhe other day you were so kinnd as to take us to westminster abbey we went in a cab and we got out of the cab at poets corner and then went in westminster abbey and we saw the tombe of queen eleanor and then we saw the tomb of queen elizabeth and mary and the tomb of henry vii and his wife lying by him and the tomb of henry's mother, then we came to the tow little children of james ii and in the middle the two little princes that were smothered in the tower and there bones were found there and and bort to westminster abbey and berryd there. we saw the sword which was corrade in the procession after the battle of cressy and we then saw the two coronation chairs were the kings and queens were crowned and onder one of the chairs a large stone under it that edward brought with hin and we saw the tomb of gorge ii who was the last man who was berried there. then we went to a bakers shop and we had some buns and wen we had done papa said to the woman three buns one barth bun and ane biscuit and papa forgot his gluves and i said they were in the shop and papa said silly boy why did you not tell me and then to the cloysters were three monks were berried then the senkuary were the duke of york was taken and then the jeruclam chamber and then to marlborough house were marlborough lived and then westminster hall and then judge gerfys house and the inclosid at s' james park were charles ii fed his duchess and then we came home and had our tee and then went to bed." [illustration: my father. _from a drawing by george richmond, r.a._] [illustration: my mother. .] a visit to london, which made a far greater impression on me, was made later, when i went to astley's theatre. originally a circus in the westminster bridge road, started by philip astley, who had been a light horseman in the army, the theatre was celebrated for equestrian performances. "astley's," as it was called, formed the subject of one of the "sketches by boz." "it was not a royal amphitheatre," wrote dickens, "in those days, nor had duncan arisen to shed the light of classic taste and portable gas over the sawdust of the circus; but the whole character of the place was the same, the clown's jokes were the same, the riding masters were equally grand ... the tragedians equally hoarse.... astley's has changed for the better ... we have changed for the worse." thackeray mentions the theatre in "the newcomes." "who was it," he writes, "that took the children to astley's but uncle newcome?" mr. wilkie collins and mr. pigott (afterwards examiner of plays) took _us_; we had a large box, and the play--_garibaldi_--was most enthralling. i was overwhelmed with grief at signora garibaldi's death scene. there were horses, of course, in the great battle, and one of these was especially intelligent; limping from an imaginary wound, he took between his teeth from his helpless rider a handkerchief, dipped it in a pool of water, and returned--still limping--to lay the cool linen upon the heated brow of his dying master. thrilling with excitement and fear, it never occurred to me that the battle, the wounds, and the deaths following were anything but real; but all my grief did not prevent me from enjoying between the acts my never-to-be-forgotten first strawberry ice. the panopticon was another place of amusement, long forgotten, i suppose, except by the very few. the building, now changed and known as the alhambra, was a place where music and dancing were features of attraction. it was opened in and bore the name of the royal panopticon of science and art. i believe it was financed by philanthropic people, but it failed. _i_ remember it because in the centre, where the stalls are now, rose a great fountain with coloured lights playing upon it. there were savages, too, and i shook hands with a red indian, with all his war paint gleaming, the scalp locks to awe me, and the feathers standing fiercely erect. he impressed me enormously, and in consequence of my seeing the savages, i became nervously imaginative. i had heard of burglars, and often reviewed in my mind my possible behaviour if i discovered one under my bed, where i looked every night in a sort of fearsome expectation. religion had been early instilled into me; and, knowing the ultimate fate of wicked sinners, i resolved to tell him he would have to go to hell if he harmed me, and was so consoled with the idea that i went to sleep quite contentedly. a burglar might have been rather astonished had he heard such sentiments from my young lips. in that strange "chancy" way in which remembrances of odd bizarre happenings jostle irrelevantly one against another, i recall another experience. once i was going to a very juvenile party; i forget where, but i was ready and waiting for the nurse to finish dressing my sisters. resplendent in a perfectly new suit of brown velvet, and full of expectation of pleasures to come, i was rather excited and consequently restless. my nurse told me not to fidget. casual reprimands had no effect. growing angry, she commanded me loudly and suddenly to sit down, which i did ... but in the bath!... falling backwards with a splash and with my feet waving in the air. my arrival at the party eventually in my old suit did not in any way interfere with my enjoyment. about this time my mother visited paris, and we looked forward to the letters she wrote to us. one letter mentions the interesting but afterwards ill-fated prince imperial. "i again saw," she wrote, "the little baby emperor; he is lovely and wore a large hat with blue feathers, i should like to paint him." in the thames was frozen over, and at eton an ox was roasted upon the ice. i remember it well. another time on the occasion of one of our many visits to brighton, we saw the great comet, and a new brother arrived:--all three very wonderful events to me. the brilliance of the "star with a tail" aroused my sister and me to leave our beds and open the window to gaze curiously upon this phenomenon. simultaneously a carriage drove up to the door, and my mother (who had just arrived from slough) alighted, and after her the nurse with a baby in her arms. we were reprimanded severely for our temerity in being out of bed, but we could not return until we had had a glimpse of the new baby, who became one of the most beautiful children imaginable. in brighton we visited some relations of my father's, the misses smith, daughters of horace smith, one of the authors of "the rejected addresses." of the two sisters, miss tysie was considered the most interesting, and although miss rosie was beautiful, her sister was considered the principal object of attraction by the innumerable people they knew. everybody worth knowing in the world of art and especially of literature came to see the "recamier" of brighton; thackeray was counted amongst her intimates, and we may possibly know her again in a character in one of his books. i remember being impressed with these ladies as they were very kind to us. miss tysie died only comparatively recently. two years later, i met a real hero, a general of six feet four inches, who seemed to me like a brilliant personage from the pages of a romantic drama. general sir john hearsey, then just returned from india, where he had taken a conspicuous part in quelling the mutiny, came to stay with us at upton park with his wife, dazzling my wondering eyes with curiosities and strange toys, embroideries, and queer things such as i had never seen or heard of before. their two children were in charge of a dark-eyed ayah, whose native dress and beringed ears and nose created no little stir in sleepy upton. i could never have dreamt of a finer soldier than the general, and i shall never forget the awe i felt when he showed me the wounds all about his neck, caused by sabre-cuts, and so deep i could put my fingers in them. my father painted a splendid portrait of him in native uniform and another of the beautiful lady hearsey in a gorgeous indian dress of red and silver. another friend of my childhood was the late mr. birch, the sculptor; he was assisting my father at that time by modelling some of the groups for his pictures, and he used to encourage me to try and model, both in wax and clay. some thirty years later, we met at a public dinner, and i realised the then famous sculptor and a.r.a. was none other than the mr. birch of my childhood. when i was quite a small boy, we left upton park and came to kent villa. the house (which became afterwards the residence of orchardson, the painter), was built for my father, who went to live at kensington park chiefly through dr. doran, a great friend of his (of whom i have more to say later on). there were two big studios, one above the other, for my parents. the house, which was covered with creepers, was large and roomy. it was approached by a carriage drive, the iron gates to which were a special feature. there was a garden at the back where we used frequently to dine in a tent until the long-legged spiders grew too numerous; but we often received our friends there when the weather was summery. there was a ladies' school next door, and i recollect in later years my father's consternation when the girls, getting to know by some means or other (i think by the back stairs), of the prince of wales' intended visit, formed a guard of honour at our gate to receive him, which caused annoyance to my father and natural surprise to his royal highness. my parents were very regular in their habits, for no matter how late the hour of retiring, they always began to work by nine. at four my father would take a glass of sherry and a sandwich before he went his usual long walk with my mother to the west end, and from there they wandered into the neighbourhood of drury lane, and lingered at the old curiosity shops. they were connoisseurs of old furniture and bought with discretion. as great believers in exercise, this walk was a regular pastime; on their return they dined about seven and often read to one another afterwards. my father's insatiable love of history and of the past led him to seek with undying interest any new light upon old events. j. h. edge, k.c., in his novel, "the quicksands of life," writes of my father: "the artist was then and probably will be for all time the head of his school. he was a big, burly, genial man, with a large mind, a larger heart, and a large brain. he was a splendid historian, with an unfailing memory, untiring energy and industry, and at the same time, like all true artists, men who appreciate shades of colour and shades of character--highly strung and morbidly sensitive, but not to true criticism which he never feared." highly religious and intensely conscientious in every way and yet so very forgetful that his friends sometimes dubbed him the "casual ward." brilliant conversational powers combined with a strong sense of humour, made him a delightful companion. his love of children was extraordinary. he never failed to visit our nursery twice a day, when we were tiny, and i have often seen him in later years, when bending was not easy, on his knees playing games with the youngest children. his voice was very penetrating, and they used to say at windsor that one might hear him from the beginning of the long walk to the statue. in church he frequently disturbed other worshippers by loudly repeating (to himself, as he thought) the service from beginning to end. i remember that on sundays when the weather did not permit of our venturing to church, my father would read the service at home out of a very old prayer-book, and when he came to the prayer for the safety of george iv., we children used to laugh before the time came, in expectation of his customary mistake. his powers of mimicry were extraordinary; i have seen him keeping a party of friends helpless with laughter over his imitations of old-fashioned ballet-dancers. his burlesque of taglioni was side-splitting, especially as he grew stouter. although a painter of historical subjects, he was extraordinarily fond of landscape, and among those of other places of interest there are some charming sketches of rome, which he made while studying there in the company of his friend george richmond, r.a. among his drawings in the library at windsor castle, which were purchased after his death, are some remarkably interesting studies of many of the important people who sat to him for the pictures of royal ceremonies. for the studies of the peeresses' robes in "the investiture of napoleon iii. with the order of the garter," my father was indebted to lady waterford (then mistress of the robes), whose detailed sketches were extraordinarily clever and very useful. this lady was a remarkable artist, her colour and execution being brilliant, so much so that when she was complaining of her lack of training in art, watts told her no one who was an artist ever wished to see any of her work different from what it was ... and he meant it. my father had an equally high opinion of her gift. perhaps the "south sea bubble" is one of the most widely known of my father's pictures. removed from the national gallery to the tate not very long ago, this splendid example of a painter-historian's talent remains as fresh as the day it was painted, and its undoubted worth, although unrecognised by a section of intolerant modernists, will, i think, stand the test of time. i recollect many well-known people who came to our house in those days; some, of course, i knew intimately, and amongst those, marcus stone and vicat cole, who calling together one evening, were announced by the servant as "the marquis stone and viscount cole." gambert, the great art dealer, afterwards consul at nice, is always connected in my mind with the crystal palace, where he invited my parents to a dinner-party in the saloon, and we were told to wait outside. my sister and i walked about, quite engrossed with sight-seeing. the evening drew on and the people left, the stall-holders packed up their goods and departed, while we sat on one of the seats and huddled ourselves in a corner. as the dusk grew deeper we thought of the tragic fate of the "babes in the wood." up above, the great roof loomed mysteriously, and as fear grew into terror, we resolved as a last resort to pray. our prayer ended, a stall-keeper, interested, no doubt, came to the rescue, and on hearing our story, stayed with us until our parents came. [illustration: _my father is represented with millais on the left hand top of the cartoon._ .] [illustration: cartoons from "punch." . _my mother is represented in the centre of the trio of representative lady painters at the lower left hand corner._] we loved the crystal palace none the less for our misadventure, and the happiest day of the year, to me at least, was my mother's birthday, on the first of june, when we annually hired a private omnibus, packed a delicious lunch, and drove to the palace, where we visited our favourite amusements, or rambled in the spacious grounds. sims reeves, carlotta patti, grisi, adelina patti, sang there to distinguished audiences. blondin astonished us with remarkable feats, and stead, the "perfect cure," aroused our laughter with his eccentric dancing. a great source of attraction to me were the life-like models of fierce-looking african tribes, standing spear and shield in hand, in the doorways of their kralls. a pictorial description of how the victoria cross was won was another fascination, for in those days i had all the small boy's love of battle. when we were at home i loved to go to regent's park to see the panorama of the earthquake at lisbon, and i would gaze enthralled at the scene, which was as actual to me as the "battle of prague," a piece played by our governess upon the piano, a descriptive affair full of musical fireworks, the thundering of cavalry and the rattle of shots. on sundays we were accustomed to walk to st. mark's, st. john's wood, to hear the rev. j. m. bellew, whose sermons to children were famous. we had to walk, i remember, a considerable distance to the church. i can't recall ever being bored by him. he was a very remarkable man, and his manner took enormously with children; he had a magnificent head and silvery curls, which made a picturesque frame to his face, and offered an effective contrast to his grey eyes. this, combined with a very powerful sweep of chin, an expressive mouth, wide as orators' mouths usually are, and an attractive voice, made him a very fascinating personality. he taught elocution to fechter, the great actor, and afterwards--when he had retired from the protestant church and become a roman catholic--he gave superb readings of shakespeare. at all these readings, as at his sermons, an old lady, whose infatuation for bellew was well known, was always a conspicuous member of the audience; for no matter what part of the country he was to be heard, she would appear in a front seat with a wreath of white roses upon her head. bellew never became acquainted with her beyond acknowledging her presence by raising his hat. i used to take latin lessons with evelyn and harold bellew (afterwards known as kyrle bellew, the actor). sometimes i stayed with them at riverside house at maidenhead where their father, being very fond of children, frequently gave parties, and i remember his entertaining us. here mr. bellew nearly blew off his arm in letting off fireworks from the island. in those days there were few trees on this island, and it was an ideal place for a display, though this affair nearly ended disastrously. the advantage of "archæological research" was very early impressed upon me by my father, and i was taken to see all that was interesting and instructive. we used to go for walks together, and as we went he would tell me histories of the buildings we passed, and on my return journey i was supposed to remember and repeat all he had said. "come now," he would say, pausing in whitehall. "what happened there?" "oh--er----" i would reply nervously. "oliver cromwell had his head cut off--and said, 'remember'!" i used to dread these walks together, much as i loved him, and i was so nervous i never ceased to answer unsatisfactorily; so my father, over-looking the possibility of my lack of interest in his observations, and the fact that life was a spectacle to me, for what i saw interested me far more than what i heard, decided i needed the rousing influence of school life, and after a little preparation, sent me to chase's school at salt hill. salt hill was so called from the ceremony of collecting salt in very ancient days by monks as a toll; and in later times by the eton boys, who collected not "salt"--but money, to form a purse for the captain of the school on commencing his university studies at king's college, cambridge. soon after sunrise on the morning of "montem," as it was called, the eton boys, dressed in a variety of quaint or amusing costumes, started from the college to extort contributions from all they came across. "they roved as far as staines bridge, hounslow, and maidenhead, and when 'salt' or money had been collected, the contributors would be presented with a ticket inscribed with the words, '_nos pro lege_,' which he would fix in his hat, or in some conspicuous part of his dress, and thus secure exemption from all future calls upon his good nature and his purse." "montem" is now a matter of history, and was discontinued in , when the queen turned a deaf ear to her "faithful subjects'" petition for its survival. amongst my school friends at salt hill, wentworth hope-johnstone stands out as an attractive figure, as does that of mark wood (now colonel lockwood, m.p.). the former became in later life one of the first gentlemen riders of the day. at school he was always upon a horse if he could get one, and he would arrange plays and battle pieces in which we, his schoolfellows, were relegated to the inferior position of the army, while he was _aide-de-camp_, or figured as the equestrian hero performing marvellous feats of horsemanship. he became a steeple-chase rider, and coming to my studio many years after, i remember him telling me with the greatest satisfaction that he had never yet had an accident--ominously enough, for within the week he fell from his horse and sustained severe injuries. i did not stay long at my school at salt hill, for the school was broken up owing to the ill-health of the principal. my preparation thus coming to an end rather too soon, i was sent to eton much earlier than i otherwise should have been, and my pleasant childhood days began to merge into the wider sphere of a big school and all its unknown possibilities. chapter ii eton and after eton days.--windsor fair.--my dame.--fights and fun.-- boveney court.--mr. hall say.--boveney.--professor and mrs. attwell.--i win a useful prize.--alban doran.--my father's frescoes.--battle abbey.--gainsborough's tomb.--knole.--our burglar.--claude calthrop.--clayton calthrop.--the gardener as critic.--the gipsy with an eye for colour.--i attempt sculpture.--the terry family.--private theatricals.--sir john hare.--miss marion terry.--miss ellen terry.--miss kate terry.--miss bateman.--miss florence st. john.--constable.-- sir howard vincent.--i dance with patti.--lancaster gate and meringues.--prayers and pantries. i have the liveliest recollection of my first day at eton, when i was accompanied by my mother, who wished to see me safely installed. in her anxiety to make my room comfortable (it was afterwards, by the way, lord randolph churchill's room), she bought small framed and coloured prints of sacred subjects to hang upon the walls, to give it, as she thought, a more homely aspect. these were very soon replaced, on the advice of tuck, my fag-master (and wicket-keeper in the eleven), by racehorses and bulldogs by herring. next i remember my youthful digestion being put to test by a big boy who "stood me," against my will, "bumpers" of shandy-gaff; and for my first smoke a cheroot of no choice blend, the inevitable results succeeding. shortly afterwards i was initiated into the mysteries of school life; i had to collect cockroaches to let loose during prayers; and of course the usual fate of a new boy befell me. i was asked the old formula: or something to this effect-- "who's your tutor, who's your dame? where do you board, and what's your name?" if your reply did not give satisfaction, you were promptly "bonneted," and, in eton phraseology, your new "topper" telescoped over your nose. i was at first made the victim of a great deal of unpleasant "ragging" by a bully, who on one occasion playing a game he called "running deer!" made me a target for needle darts, one of which lodged tightly in the bone just above my eye; but he was caught in the act by tuck, who punished the offender by making him hold a pot of boiling tea at arm's length, and each time a drop was spilled, my champion took a running kick at him. i learned a variety of useful things. besides catching cockroaches, i became an adept in the art of cooking sausages without bursting their skins: if i forgot to prick them before cooking, i was severely reprimanded by my fag-master, and i considered his anger perfectly justifiable; my resentment only existing where unjustifiable bullying was concerned. windsor fair was an attraction in those days, especially for the small boys, as it was "out of bounds," and therefore forbidden. i remember once being "told off" to go to the fair and bring as many musical and noisy toys as i could carry; which were to be instrumental in a plot against our "dame" ... (the reverend dr. frewer) ... on the great occasion, the boys secreted themselves in their lock-up beds. the rest hid in the housemaid's cupboard, and we started a series of hideous discords upon the whistles and mouth organs from the fair. presently our "dame" appeared, roused by the concert, and at the door received the water from the "booby trap" all over his head, and then, drenched to the skin and looking like a drowned rat, he proceeded to rout us. we were all innocence with a carefully concocted excuse to the effect that the reception had been intended for anderson, one of the boys in the house. notwithstanding that expulsion was threatening us, we were all called to his room next morning, severely reprimanded, but ... forgiven. old etonians will remember jobie, who sold buns and jam; and levy, who tried to cheat us over our "tuck," and was held under the college pump in consequence; and old silly-billy, who used to curse the pope, and, considering himself the head of the church, was always first in the chapel at eton. then there was the very fat old lady who sold fruit under the archway, and had a face like an apple herself. she sold an apple called a lemon-pippin, that was quite unlike anything i have tasted since, and looked like a lemon. at "sixpenny" the mills took place, and there differences were settled. a "shinning-match," which was only resorted to by small boys, was a most serious and carefully managed affair; we shook hands in real duel fashion, and then we proceeded to exchange kicks on one another's shins until one of us gave in. i remember having a "shinning-match" to settle some dispute with one of my greatest friends, but we were discovered, taken into hawtrey's during dinner, and there talked to in serious manner. our wise lecturer ended his speech with the time-honoured, "'tis dogs delight to bark and bite," etc. in i recollect very well the queen and prince consort reviewing the eton college volunteer corps in the grounds immediately surrounding the castle, while we boys were permitted to look on from the terrace. at the conclusion of the review the volunteers were given luncheon in the orangery, where they were right royally entertained. prince albert, whom i had noticed coughing, retired after the review into the castle, while the queen and princess alice walked together on the slopes. this was the last time that prince albert appeared in public, for he was shortly after seized with an illness from which he never recovered. from eton i frequently had "leave" to visit some friends of my parents, the evans, of boveney court, a delightful old country house opposite surly hall. miss evans married a mr. hall-say, who built oakley court, and i was present when he laid the foundation stone. mr. evans, who was a perfectly delightful old man, lent one of his meadows at boveney (opposite surly hall) to the eton boys for their fourth of june celebrations. long tables were spread for them, with every imaginable good thing, including champagne, some bottles of which those in the boats used to secrete for their fags; and in my day small boys would come reeling home, unable to evade the masters, and the next day the "block" was well occupied, and the "swish" busy. there were certain unwritten laws in those days as regards flogging; a master was not supposed to give downward strokes, for thus i believe one deals a more powerful sweep of arm and the stroke becomes torture. in cricket, also, round arm bowling was always the rule; a ball was "no ball" unless bowled on a level with the shoulder, but lob-bowling was, of course, allowed. nowadays, the bowling has changed. perhaps the character of the "swishing" has also altered, but somehow i think the boys are just the same. [illustration: sir william broadbent, . _he was very angry and wrote to a leading medical journal to say how greatly he disapproved of this indignity._] [illustration: sir thomas barlow. .] [illustration: sir james paget, bart. .] on the occasion of my first holiday, i arrived home from eton a different boy; imbued with the traditions of my school, i was full of an exaggerated partisanship for everything good or indifferent that existed there. i remember i discovered my sisters in all the glory of leghorn hats from paris; they were large with flopping brims as was then the fashion. but to my youthful vision they seemed outrageous, and i refused to go out with the girls in these hats, which i considered, with a small boy's pride in his school, were a disgrace to me ... and consequently to eton! my regard for the honour and glory of this time-honoured institution did not prevent me sallying forth on several occasions with a school friend to anticipate the suffragettes by breaking windows; although i was not the proposer of this scheme, i was an accessory to the act, and my friend (who seemed to have an obsessive love of breaking for its own sake) and i successfully smashed several old (but worthless) windows, both of the eton parish church and also boveney church. although i have made this confession of guilt, i feel safe against the law both of the school and the london magistrates. in most respects i was the average schoolboy, neither very good, or very bad. running, jumping, and football i was pretty "nippy" at, until a severe strain prevented (under doctor's orders) the pursuance of any violent exercises for some time. previous to this i had won a special prize for my prowess in certain sports when i arrived second in every event. i won a telescope, which seemed a meaningless sort of thing until i went home for the holidays, when i gave an experimental quiz through it from my bedroom window and discovered the infinite possibilities of the girls' school next door. finally i was noticed by a portly old mistress who complained of my telescopic attentions, never dreaming, from what i could gather, of my undivided interest in other quarters, and my prize was confiscated by my father. during my enforced rest from all exercise of any importance, i spent my time in compiling a book of autographs and in sketching anything i fancied. my aptitude and love for drawing were not encouraged at school at the request of my father, but i was always caricaturing the masters, and having the result confiscated. it was inevitable, living as i did in an atmosphere of art, loving the profession, and sitting to my parents, that i should grow more and more interested and more determined to become a painter myself, although strangely enough i never had a lesson from either my father or mother. the boy is indeed the father of the man, for just as i anticipated my future by becoming the school caricaturist, so alban doran, one of my schoolfellows (and the son of my father's friend, dr. doran), spent the time usually occupied by the average schoolboy in play or sport, in searching for animal-culæ or bottling strange insects, the result of his tedious discoveries. i believe he kept an aquarium even in his nursery, and was more interested in microscopes than cricket. the clever boy became a brilliant man, distinguishing himself at "bart's," was joint compiler with sir james paget and dr. goodhart of the current edition of the catalogues of the pathological series in the museum of the college of surgeons. his success as a surgeon and a woman's specialist was all the more wonderful, when we remember his nervous shaking hands, which might have been expected to render his touch uncertain; but when an operation demands his skill the nervousness vanishes, and his hand steadies. he is noted for a remarkable collection of the ear-bones from every type of living creature in this country, and especially for his literary contributions to the study of surgery. when i was at home on my holidays i spent a great deal of my time in a temporary studio erected on the terrace of the house of lords. here i watched my father paint his frescoes for the houses of parliament. fresco painting would not endure the humidity of our climate, and several of these historical paintings which hung in the corridor of the house of commons began to mildew. other important frescoes were completely destroyed by the damp; but my father restored his works, and they were placed under glass, which preserved them. with his last two or three frescoes he adopted a then new process called "water-glass," which was a decided success. another holiday was spent at hastings, where my father occupied much of his time restoring frescoes which he discovered, half-obliterated, in the old parish church at battle. he intended eventually to complete his task; but on his return to london he found that the great pressure of work and engagements rendered this impossible. the dean of the parish wrote in consequence to say that the restorations looked so patchy that it would be better to whitewash them over! the archæological society met that year at hastings, and my father, who intended to prepare me for an architectural career, thought it would encourage me if we attended their meetings, at which planché, the president, presided. we visited all the places of interest near, and i heard many edifying discourses upon their histories, while i watched the members, who were rather antiquities themselves, and thoroughly enjoyed the many excellent luncheons spread for us at our various halting places. _À propos_ of restoration, my father visited kew church in , and found in the churchyard gainsborough's tomb, which was in a deplorable state of neglect. near to gainsborough are buried zoffany,[ ] r.a., jeremiah meyer, r.a., miniature painter and enamellist (the former's great friend), and joshua kirby, f.s.a., also a contemporary. my father at once took steps to have the tomb restored at his own expense, and as the result of his inquiries and efforts in that direction, received the following letter which is interesting in its quaint diction as well as in reference to the subject. petersham, surrey, august th, . my dear sir, it is with much pleasure that i learn that one great man is intending to do honor to the memory of another. in reply to your note, i beg that you will consider that my rights, as the holder of the freehold, are to be subservient by all means to the laudable object of paying our honor to the memory of the great gainsborough. i am, my dear sir, yours very truly, r. b. byam, esq. vicar of kew. to j. rigby, esq., kew. to this _capital_ letter my father replied:-- kent villa. dear and reverend sir, i cannot refrain from expressing to you my warm thanks for the very kind and disinterested manner in which you have been pleased to entertain my humble idea in regard to the restoration of gainsborough's tomb, and the erection of a tablet to his memory in the church, the duties of which you so ably fulfil, nor can i but wholly appreciate your very kind but far too flattering reference to myself in your letter to our friend mr. rigby which coming from such a source is i assure you most truly valued. your most obedient and obliged servant, e. m. ward. the tomb was restored, a new railing placed around it, and a tablet to the artist's memory was also placed by my father inside the church. [illustration: thomas gainsborough esq^r died aug^{st} the ^{nd} aged years also the body of gainsborough dupont esq^r who died jan^{ry} ^{th} aged years also margaret gainsborough wife of the above thomas gainsborough esq^r who died dec^{mr} the ^{th} in the ^{nd} year of her age restored and enclosed as a tribute of respect by e. m. ward r. a. september gainsborough's tomb at kew churchyard and tablet to his memory inside church.] some very pleasant memories are connected with enjoyable summers spent at sevenoaks, where my father took a house for two years, close to the seven oaks from which the neighbourhood takes its name. particularly i remember the amusing incident of the burglar. i was awakened from midnight slumbers by my sister knocking at the door and calling in a melodramatic voice "awake!... awake!... there is a burglar in our room." i promptly rushed to her bedroom, where i found my other sister crouching under the bedclothes in speechless terror. having satisfied myself as to the utter absence of a burglar in that particular room, i started to search the house--but by this time the whole household was thoroughly roused; the various members appeared with candles, and together we ransacked the establishment from garret to cellar. in the excitement of the moment we had not had time to consider our appearances and the procession was ludicrous in the extreme. my grandfather (in the absence of my father) came first in dressing-gown, a candle in one hand and a stick in the other. my mother came next (in curl papers), and then my eldest sister. it was the day of chignons, when everybody, without exception, wore their hair in that particular style. on this occasion my sister's head was conspicuous by its quaint little hastily bundled up knot. i wore a night-shirt only; but my other sister, who was of a theatrical turn of mind (she who had awakened me), had taken the most trouble, for she wore stockings which, owing to some oversight in the way of garters, were coming down. after satisfying ourselves about the burglar--who was conspicuous by his absence--we adjourned to our respective rooms, while i went back to see the sister upon whom fright had had such paralyzing effects. there i heard an ominous rattle in the chimney. "flora!" said my stage-struck sister, in trembling tones, with one hand raised (_à la_ lady macbeth)--and the poor girl under the clothes cowered deeper and deeper. two seconds later a large brick rattled down and subsided noisily into the fireplace. "that is the end of the burglar," said i, and the terrified figure emerged from the bed, brave and reassured. retiring to my room i recollected the procession, and having made a mental note of the affair went back to bed. early the next morning i arose and made a complete caricature of the incident of the burglar, which set our family (and friends next day) roaring with laughter when they saw it. [illustration: my brother, wriothesley russell. .] [illustration: my sister, beatrice. .] in those days we used to sketch at knole house, then in the possession of lord and lady delaware. my mother made some very beautiful little pictures of the interiors there, and several smaller studies. she copied a teniers so perfectly that one could have mistaken it for the original. the painting was supposed to represent "peter and the angels in the guard room," and the guards were very conspicuous. on the other hand, as one only discovered a little angel with peter in the distance, one could almost suppose teniers had forgotten them until the last minute, and then had finally decided to relegate them to the background. this picture (the original) was sold at christie's during a sale from knole several years ago. of course the old house was the happy hunting ground of artists; the pictures were mostly fine although some of them were at one time in the hands of a cleaner, by whom they were very much over-restored. a clever artist (and a frequenter of knole at that time for the purpose of making a series of studies) was claude calthrop (brother of clayton calthrop the actor and father of the present artist and writer dion clayton calthrop). i was then just beginning to be encouraged to make architectural drawings, and i was making a sketch of the exterior of knole house when one of the under gardeners came ambling by wheeling a barrow. he paused ... put down the barrow, took off his cap ... scratched his head and said to me, "er ... why waaste yer toime loike that ... why not taake and worrk loike oi dew!" another time when i was sketching in that neighbourhood, in rather a lonely part, i fell in with a gipsy encampment. one of the tribe, a rough specimen, of whom i did not at all like the look, was most persistently attentive. he asked a multitude of questions, about my brushes, paints, and materials generally--and seemed anxious as to their monetary value. as he did not appear to be about to cut my throat--and i felt sure he harboured no murderous intentions towards my painting--i began to feel more at ease, and when no comments after the style of my critic, the gardener, were forthcoming, it struck me that perhaps i had a vagrant but fellow beauty-lover in my gipsy sentinel. i wish now that i had even suggested (in view of his evident love of colour) his changing his roving career for one in which he could indulge his love of _red_ to the utmost and more or less harmlessly. when i was about sixteen i turned my attention to modelling, and in the vacation i started a bust of my young brother russell. i spent all my mornings working hard and at length finished it. on the last day of my holiday i went to have a final glance at my work and found the whole thing had collapsed into a shapeless mass of clay. with the exception of watching sculptors work i had no technical knowledge to help me; but, not to be discouraged, i waited eagerly for the term to end, so that i might return to my modelling. when the time came, and my holidays began, i at once set to work again, taking the precaution to have the clay properly supported this time. allowing no one to help me, i worked away strenuously, for i was determined it should be entirely my own. my bust was finished in time to send in to the royal academy, where it was accepted. i had favourable notices in the _times_ and other papers, which astonished and encouraged me, and i went back to school tremendously elated at my success. [illustration: bust of my brother, wriothesley russell. . _exhibited that year in the royal academy, modelled by myself._] [illustration: my daughter sylvia. _sketched ._] tom taylor, then art critic of the _times_, wrote to my mother, saying:-- dear mrs. ward, ... i must tell you how much leslie's bust of wrio was admired by our guests last night--particularly by professor owen.... later i started another bust of kate terry, but i was never pleased with it, as it did not do my distinguished sitter justice, and i resolved not to send it to an exhibition. i did not follow up my first success in the paths of sculpture, for i still suffered slightly from my strain, and i came to the conclusion that it would prove too great a tax on my strength at that time if i took up this profession. the stage claimed a great part of my attention about this time, and i became an inveterate "first-nighter" in my holidays. from the pit (for, except on rare occasions, i could not afford a more expensive seat), or when lucky enough to have places given me, i saw nearly all the popular plays of the day; and when tom taylor introduced my parents to the terry family, i became more interested than ever, owing to the greater attraction of personal interest. i grew ambitious and acted myself, arranged the plays, painted the scenery, borrowing the beautiful costumes from my father's extensive historical wardrobe. the first time i appeared before a large audience was at the bijou theatre, bayswater, which was taken by a good amateur company called "the shooting stars," composed chiefly of cambridge undergraduates. we arranged two plays, and the acting of the present judge selfe was especially good, also that of mr. f. m. alleyne. one night, when i came down from my dressing-room, made up in character to go on the impromptu stage, i complimented an old carpenter of ours, waiting in the wings, upon the clever way in which he had arranged the stage and the scenery. "oh yes, sir," he replied, very modestly, thinking i was a stranger, "_i_ didn't paint the scenery, mr. leslie did that!" in some theatricals at the friths' house, when john hare coached us, i took the part of an old butler. on my way to pembridge villas, attired ready for the stage, i remembered i needed some sticking plaster to obliterate one of my teeth; so leaving the cab at a corner, i entered a chemist's shop, where i was amused, because the assistant put me on one side rather rudely for other customers who came later, and after attending to them, addressed me roughly with a, "now, what do _you_ want?" his rudeness was an unconscious tribute to my effective disguise, and his manners altered considerably when i disillusioned him. at one time miss marion terry, who was then about to go on the stage, after witnessing my acting in a play of byron's, suggested in fun and raillery at my enthusiasm that we should make our début together. owing to her excessive sensibility and highly strung temperament, rehearsals were very trying to her at first, and for this reason her eventual success was in doubt. when one has seen her perform her many successful parts with such exquisite talent and pathos, one feels glad to realize that she finally overcame her nervousness, and that her gift of acting was not lost to the public. i knew the terrys very well then, and i was in love with them all; in fact, i do not know with which of them i was most in love. ellen terry sat to my father for his picture of "juliet," and kate terry for "beatrice" in _much ado_. i remember too that when ellen made her reappearance in the theatre, my mother lent our great actress a beautiful gold scarf, to wear in that part in which she fascinated us on the stage as fully as she did in private life. among my cherished letters i find the following notes written to me at school, after her marriage to g. f. watts. . my dear leslie, i am extremely obliged to you for your sketch and i'm sorry alice [my sister] should be "riled" that i wanted a _character_ of her, as the people down here call caricatures. please give my love to her and to her mama and to all the rest at kent villa--when you write. mrs. carr and mr. carr (my kind hostess and host) think the caricature is a capital one of _me_! polly [miss marion terry] sends her love, and is awfully jealous that i should have sketches done by you and _she not_!! with kindest regards and best thanks, believe me, dear leslie, sincerely yours, ellen watts. dear leslie, i fulfil my promise by sending you the photo of my sister kate, that you said you liked! i _think_ it's the same. i hope you'll excuse it being so soiled, but it's the only one i have--the fact is, the baby [her brother fred] seized it, as it lay upon the table waiting to be put into a cover, and has nearly bitten it to pieces. i came up from bradford, in yorkshire, on monday last, where i had spent a week with papa and polly, and i can't tell you, leslie, how cold it was. i intend going to kent villa, as soon as possible. i've promised alice a song of mrs. tom taylor's and have not sent it to her yet, "better late than never," tho' i really have been busy. with my best regards, sincerely yours, nelly watts. those were delightful days spent with delightful companions. lewis carroll was sometimes a member of the pleasant coterie which met at our house in those days. my sister beatrice was one of his greatest child friends, and although he always sent his mss. for her to read, he disliked any mention of his fame as an author, and would abruptly leave the presence of any one who spoke about his books. the public at that time were in complete ignorance of the real identity of lewis carroll. later in life, when i wished to make a cartoon of mr. dodgson for _vanity fair_, he implored me not to put him in any paper. naturally, i was obliged to consent, but _vanity fair_ extorted some work from his pen as a compromise. he was a clever amateur photographer, and in my mother's albums there are photographs taken by him of several members of the terry family, together with some of us. * * * * * mrs. cameron was famous in those days as an amateur photographer, and she took photographs of all the leading people of the day. watts and tennyson were among her intimates, and most celebrities of the day knew her by sight. she was a very little old lady--i remember being in a shop (where some of her photographs were on view) with my young brother, who was a beautiful boy, when mrs. cameron entered. she caught sight of russell, and could not take her eyes from his face. at last she said, "i want to know who the little boy is with you," and seemed very interested. i told her who we were, whereupon she asked if i thought my parents would allow him to sit to her. of course they were delighted. in kate terry resolved at the height of her fame to marry mr. arthur lewis (of whom i have more to say later), and to retire from the stage, apparently quite content to leave her glories. then the most famous of the terry sisters, kate received an ovation worthy of her. the _times_, in a long article, said: "it is seldom that the theatre chronicles have to describe a scene like that at the new adelphi on saturday, when miss kate terry took her farewell of the stage as juliet.... again and again miss terry was recalled, and again she appeared to receive the long and continued plaudits of the crowd.... let us close our last notice of miss terry with the hope that in her case the sacrifice of public triumph may be rewarded by a full measure of that private happiness which is but the just recompense of an exemplary, a laborious, conscientious and devoted life, on and off the stage, as the annals of the english theatre--not unfruitful in examples of wives--may show." _punch_ was just as enthusiastic and published a long eulogy in verse, two stanzas of which i quote below:-- she has passed from us just as the goal she had sighted, from the top of the ladder reached fairly at last; with her laurels still springing, no leaf of them blighted, and a fortune:--how bright!--may be gauged by her past. may this rhyme, kindly meant as it is, not offend her, all fragrant with flowers be the path of her life, may the joy she has given in blessings attend her, and her happiest part be the part of "the wife." although i was not intended to enter the theatrical profession, the stage never failed to attract me; and once, when i was still at school, i was presented with a seat in exactly the centre of the dress circle at a theatre where miss bateman (who became mrs. crowe) was taking the part of leah. i remember this fine actress made a great sensation, especially in one scene where she uttered a rousing curse with great declamatory power; the house was hushed with excitement and admiration; and you could have heard the proverbial pin drop, when i ... who had been playing football that morning, was suddenly seized with the most excruciating cramp; i arose ... and could not help standing up to rub away the pain in my leg, the curse then for the moment echoing throughout the audience. another time, somewhat later, i was again to prove a disturbing element. i was at the old strand theatre, in the stage box, and my host was a personal friend of miss florence st. john, then singing one of her most successful songs. now i am the unfortunate possessor of a loud voice and a still louder sneeze, which latter i have never succeeded in controlling. in the middle of the song, i was overcome with an overpowering and irresistible desire to sneeze ... which i suddenly did with terrific force. miss st. john was so disconcerted, that she stopped her song, and thinking it was a deliberate attempt at annoyance from her friend--my host--called out, "you brute!" after that, i took a back seat. besides visiting the theatre in my holidays, i used to go sketching into the country; and one summer my parents took an old farmhouse at arundel. this reminds me of another unfortunate propensity of mine, and that is, to tumble whenever i get an easy opportunity. when we were inspecting the house, we discovered a curious sort of uncovered coal hole under one of the front windows, and my father jokingly remarked, "what a trap for leslie!" three days later, when we were settled in the house, my parents were going for a drive ... and as i waved them a farewell, which precipitately ended by my disappearing into this hole, my father's jest became a prophecy. at arundel i made friends with a brewer named constable, who was also a clever amateur artist. sometimes he took me fishing, but more often i watched him sketch in the open. an interesting fact about mr. constable was that his father had been an intimate friend of the great constable, although, curiously enough, no relation. my friend told me that whatever he had learned had been owing to his close observation of the great artist's methods. i remember his water colours showed little of the amateur in their strength and handling, for they were masterly and forcible in touch, and perhaps more effective because they were usually painted in the late afternoon, when the sun was getting low, and the long shadows were full of strength and depth of colour. vicat cole, r.a., was also a friend of his, and he used frequently to paint at arundel. although i worked hard in the holidays at my drawing, i managed to enjoy myself pretty considerably, and was the fortunate possessor of many delightful acquaintances. one of the pleasantest memories of my later school days was of a dance given by mr. and mrs. j. m. levy and the misses levy at lancaster gate. the cotillion was led by sir howard vincent, and many of the smart and well-known men of that day were there; among them sir eyre shaw, the "captain shaw" of "gilbert and sullivan" fame. patti, who was a very intimate friend of theirs, was present, sitting in the middle of the room looking angelic and surrounded by a host of admiring men. we were each given a miniature bugle. patti had one also, on which she sounded a note, and whoever repeated it exactly was to gain her as a partner in the dance. the men advanced in turn, some blew too high, and others too low, until one and all gave up in disgust. at last my turn came; i was trembling with eagerness and excitement, and determined to dance with patti or die.... i hit the note!... and gained my waltz!--and the applause was great as i carried off my prize. [illustration: mr charles cox (banker) ] in earlier days i went to a juvenile party at lancaster gate, and, going down to supper late, i found myself quite alone. i calmly devoted my attention to some _méringues_, while it seems that my people, amongst the last of the guests, were ready to go. the ladies were putting on their cloaks.... i heard the sounds of departure, but, still engrossed in the good things, i ate on. hue and cry was raised for me; and finally i was found covered with cream and confusion amongst the _méringues_. i remember, _à propos_ of my being a "gourmand," that i was a great believer in the efficacy of prayer. my sister and i used to rise very early in the mornings after dinner-parties to rummage in and to ransack the cupboards for any dainty we fancied. after a good "tuck in," we would pray for the forgiveness of our sins, and then we would fall to breakfast with an easy conscience. chapter iii my father's friends my father's friends.--the pre-raphaelites.--plum-box painting. --the victorians.--the post-impressionists.--maclise.--sir edwin landseer.--tom landseer.--mulready.--daniel roberts.-- edward cooke.--burgess and long.--frith.--millais.--stephens and holman hunt.--stanfield.--c. r. leslie.--dr. john doran. --mr. and mrs. s. c. hall.--the virtues, james and william.-- mr. and mrs. tom taylor.--a story of tennyson.--sam lover.-- moscheles _père et fils_.--philip calderon.--sir theodore and ladymartin.--garibaldi.--lord crewe.--fechter.--joachim and lord houghton.--charles dickens.--lord stanhope.--william hepworth dixon.--sir charles dilke. before i proceed any further with the reminiscences of my school-days and after, i should like to recall a few memories of the men and women who visited the studios of my parents. artists of course predominated, and amongst the latter were men who distinguished themselves in the world. many of them, through no fault of their genius, have lost some of their shining reputation. others, who were merely popular painters of the hour, are forgotten. again, a few who were somewhat obscure in their lifetime, have gained a posthumous reputation, and still others have to await recognition in the future. it is an age of reactions. just as the pre-raphaelite movement "revolted" against the academic art preceding it, so the photographic idealism of pre-raphaelitism was superseded by a reaction in art resulting and undoubtedly profiting by its really fine example. i will not go as far as to say whistler gained by the pre-raphaelites; but his art assuredly became all the more conspicuous by contrast, and perhaps his school is indirectly responsible for the latest reaction in favour of raw colour. in the "back to the land" style of painting which we find in favour with a few modern artists, abnormal looking women are painted with surprising results, and these artists seem to delight in a sort of blatant realism that becomes nauseous. with passionate brutality they present their subjects to us, and their admirers call the result "life." let us have truth by all means, and let us not, on the other hand, lapse into the merely pretty; but let the truth we portray be imaginative truth allied to beauty. that reminds me of the "plum-box" artist, who used to go round to country houses when i was a boy, with a completed painted picture of what was then considered the ideal and fashionable face, which consisted mainly of big eyes, veiled by sweeping lashes, a perfect complexion, a rosebud mouth, and glossy curls. the artist (one feels more inclined to call him the "tradesman") then superimposed the features of his sitter upon this fancy background, and the result invariably gave great pleasure and satisfaction. nowadays it has become the fashion or the pose of the moment to decry the works of the victorians as old-fashioned, and in many cases with undoubtedly good reason; but unfortunately the best work is often included in the same category. in the rage for modernity, culminating in "post-impressionism," "futurism," and other "isms," in art, literature, the stage, and, i believe, costume, the thorough and highly conscientious work of some of our greatest men has become obscured; they are like the classic which nobody reads, and they stand unchallenged, but unnoticed except by the very few. perhaps their genius will survive to-day's reactionary rush into what is sometimes described as individualism, and the worship of personality before beauty, which, if carried to excess as it is to-day, seems to verge into mere charlatanism. we are a little too near the great ones to see them clearly, and perhaps they can only be judged by their peers. sometimes i see the casual onlooker glance at, sum up, and condemn, pictures which i know represent the unfaltering patience of a lifetime, combined with a passionate idealism of motive. the abundance of art schools, the enormous reduction in prices, the overwhelming commercialism which sets its heel upon the true artist, to crush him out of existence unless he compromises with art, all combine to render the art and artist in general widely different from the men of my early days. true, the victorian came at a great moment, and now more than ever, if i may misquote: "art is good ... with an inheritance." among the innumerable artists i knew during my later school-days, maclise stands out a massive figure and a strong personality. he reminded me in a certain grand way of a great bull; his chin was especially bovine; it was not exactly a dewlap or a double chin, but a heavy gradation of flesh going down into his collar. in the national portrait gallery there is a portrait by my father of maclise as a young man. his work is to me typical of the man: he was a magnificent draughtsman, a cartoonist of fine ideas. in the national collection at kensington there are some beautiful pencil drawings by him of various celebrities of the day, and they are perfect in line and study of character. in the royal gallery of the house of lords may be seen his "battle of waterloo" and "death of nelson," which are extremely masterly in drawing and composition. but in my opinion he lost his charm of line when he attempted paint, for his colouring is unsympathetic and the effect is hard. his crudity of colour is not so noticeable, however, in the frescoes as in his oil-paintings. sir edwin landseer was an artist who, like maclise, received large sums for his pictures. he was considered one of the greatest painters of the day, but i am afraid it is no longer the fashion to admire him, although his best works must always hold the position they have deservedly won. i wonder how many people remember that the lions in trafalgar square were designed by our great animal painter. "the sleeping bloodhound" stands out amongst landseer's pictures as a masterpiece. it was painted in two hours from the dead body of a favourite hound. it is curious that in many instances, especially of early work, his colour was very rich, and that in his later work his feeling for colour seems to have weakened. tom landseer no doubt contributed largely to his brother's reputation by his masterly fine engravings of sir edwin's pictures, which were sometimes unsatisfactory in colour and gained in black and white. herbert, whose name was prominent through his fresco of "moses breaking the tablets," was quite a character in those days. i remember he always spoke with what appeared to be a strong french accent, although it has been said he had never been abroad in his life. the story went that, going to boulogne he stepped from the boat ... slipped ... and broke his english. later in life he worked himself "out," and his academy pictures of religious subjects became very grotesque and quite a laughing-stock. i am afraid this type of work needs a watchful sense of humour and a powerful talent to preserve its gravity. mulready was an artist whose character showed in strong contrast to that of herbert. he was the dearest of old men; i can see him now with his superb old head, benevolent and yet strong. he painted that indisputably fine picture, "choosing the wedding gown," now in the national collection at the kensington museum. although the subject will not be viewed with sympathetic interest by many of the present generation, its worth is undoubted. his work is completely out of date, but i remember one curious fact in connection with his crayon drawings, which hung upon the walls of the academy schools; when leighton visited there, he had these drawings covered over, because they were extremely antagonistic to his own teaching. david roberts, who was then considered the greatest painter of interiors, began life as a scene painter, as did stanfield who was his contemporary and a very powerful sea painter. both men were royal academicians, as was edward cooke, an artist of less power than stanfield, but of not much less distinction, imbued with the spirit of the old dutch painters of sea and ships. he lived to a ripe old age with his two sisters, but perhaps the youngest in appearance and manner of the four was his wonderful old mother, who died when she was close upon a hundred. then there were burgess and long who painted spanish subjects. long was best known, however, by his picture of the "babylonian marriage mart," and burgess as a young man sprang into fame with his picture called "bravo toro." like almost every other artist, long took to portrait painting, and his pictures became a great financial success; but his portraits were not for the most part successful from an artist's point of view. most of the well-known artists of the day visited my parents, and amongst them i remember sydney cooper, david roberts, c. r. leslie, peter graham, stanfield, edward cooke, frith, millais, etc., etc. stephens, the art critic of the "athenæum," came with his intimate friend, holman hunt; he assisted the famous pre-raphaelite in painting in the detail in some of his pictures, such as the moorish temple in "the saviour in the temple." later, he wrote the catalogue of "prints and drawings" at the british museum. the last time i met mr. stephens, he told me the greatest pleasure he could possibly have was to go round london with my father, for there was not a place of interest of which he could not tell some anecdote of historical or topical information; and as an antiquary of some merit, the art critic was evidently in a position to give his appreciation with the authority of knowledge. i think my father's closest friend was john doran. to quote mr. edge:--" ... doctor doran, known as the 'doctor,' having graduated in germany as a 'doctor of philosophy.' he was a delightful raconteur, a brilliant conversationalist, a man to put the shyest at his ease. he, too, studied history and wrote some of the most delightful biographies in the english language. the painter (my father) and the doctor took many an excursion together to old-world places celebrated for memories quaint, tragic or humorous, and their rambles were perpetuated in their pictures and books." doran began his literary career by producing a melodrama at the surrey theatre when he was only fifteen years of age, and continued up to his death to produce a series of interesting works, although he did not write for the stage after his early success. he was editor of _notes and queries_ and the author of "table traits and something on them." perhaps his best-known work was "her majesty's servants." among his later works, "monarchs retired from business," and "the history of court fools" occur to my mind simultaneously. the three following anecdotes from dr. doran's journal, will appeal on the strength of their own dry humour and at the same time give the reader a glimpse of the character of my father's irish friend:-- _october_ th, . in an antiquated edition of burnet's "history of his own times" it was stated that an old earl of eglinton had behaved so scandalously that he was made to sit in the "cutty stool" (or stool of repentance at kirk) for three sabbaths running. on the fourth sunday he sat there again, so the minister called him down as his penance was over. "it may be so," said the earl, "but i shall always sit here for the future ... it is the best seat in the kirk, and i do not see a better man to take it from me." _december_ th, . colonel boldero told us after dinner a good story of luttrell that rogers told him the other day. he was about to sit for his picture, and asked luttrell's advice as to how he should be taken. "oh," said luttrell, "let it be as when you are entering a pew--with your face in your hat." [illustration: john everett millais, r.a,, _drawn by me from life for the "graphic" ._] [illustration: c. r. leslie, r.a. (my godfather). _died in ._] _december_ , . heard also at dinner a story of "poodle" byng. dining once at the duke of rutland's, he exclaimed on seeing fish on the table, "ah! my old friend haddock! i haven't seen that fish at a gentleman's table since i was a boy!" the "poodle" was never invited to belvoir again. mr. and mrs. s. c. hall, also well-known writers of the day, were constant visitors at our house. s. c. hall was said to have suggested the character of pecksniff to dickens, perhaps because he interlarded his conversation with pious remarks, which may have sounded singularly hypocritical to many people. as a child i regarded him with terror, because whenever he called he would come to our nursery and behave in a manner he probably thought highly entertaining to children, which consisted of pulling awful faces. his mass of white hair, bushy eyebrows and staring eyes gave him an ogreish look, and added to my fears when he shook his fist at me in mock horror. then he would tickle me as hard as he could; and as i hated this form of play, his exertions only moved me to tears, so that when i heard him coming i invariably hid myself until his departure. mr. hall began life as a barrister and turned to literary work, establishing the _art journal_, and carrying it on in the face of very discouraging circumstances. eventually he was successful, and his work had an extensive influence, i suppose, on the progress of british art. as a writer his output was enormous; he and his wife published between them no fewer than two hundred and seventy volumes. as an ardent spiritualist he was very interested at that time in a medium who, i am afraid, was an atrocious humbug. one good friday my father called, to find mr. hall in a state of great excitement. "you've just missed dear daniel," said hall. "he floated in through the window, round the house and out again, and i don't doubt we shall see the day when he will float round st. paul's." mrs. s. c. hall (very irish), who had a great personal reputation as a writer, was most attractive and altogether a very interesting woman, being a spiritualist and a philanthropist. she founded the hospital for consumptives in the fulham road, and persuaded her great friend jenny lind to sing at charity concerts to gain funds for her institution. my father painted both of them, and the portrait of mr. hall is now in the possession of the latter's family. ruskin was on very friendly terms with them, and it was the halls who introduced us to the virtues, who were the proprietors and publishers of the _art journal_. james virtue, who was a fine oar and president of the london rowing club, was one of the most cheerful men one could wish to meet; and as hostess, his wife, who, i am happy to say, is still living, was equally delightful. his brother william virtue afterwards saved my life--but that is anticipating events somewhat. mr. and mrs. tom taylor were another interesting and talented couple who were friends of my parents. tom taylor was the art critic of the _times_, and at one time editor of _punch_. he was also the author of several popular plays, of which _still waters run deep_ and the _ticket of leave man_, in which henry neville played the hero, are perhaps the most widely known. in conjunction with charles reade he wrote some amusing comedies; as well as writing in prose and verse for _punch_ he compiled some interesting biographies, of reynolds, constable, david cox, and c. r. leslie, r.a. at dinner his appearance was remarkable, for he usually wore a black velvet evening suit. a curious trait of the dramatist's was his absent-minded manner and forgetfulness of convention. sometimes when walking in the street with a friend he would grow interested, and, to emphasise his remarks, turned to look more directly into the face of his companion, at the same time placing his arm around his waist. in the case of a lady this habit sometimes proved rather embarrassing! mr. tom taylor was a man of unbounded kindness in helping everybody who was in need of money or in trouble; his generosity probably made him the object of attentions from all sorts and conditions of people, a fact very soon discovered by his domestics, for one day mr. and mrs. taylor returned from a walk to be met by a startled parlourmaid who announced the presence of a strange-looking man who was waiting to see them. her suspicions being aroused by his wild appearance, she had shown him into the pantry, fearing to leave him in the drawing-room. on repairing to the pantry with curiosity not unmixed with wonder, they discovered ... tennyson ... quite at home and immensely tickled by his situation. mrs. tom taylor was descended from wycliffe, and in her early youth lived with her two sisters with their father, the rev. mr. barker (who was quite a personality), in the country. laura barker was brought up in circumstances very similar to the brontës. she was extremely talented, and began her musical career at the age of thirteen, when her great musical gifts brought her to the notice of paganini. paganini, after hearing her play, was much astonished at her power in rendering--entirely from ear--his wonderful harmonies upon her violin. general perronet thompson, on another occasion, was so pleased with her performance that he encouraged her talent by presenting her with a "stradivarius." later she became an art critic in florence, and the composer of many popular songs. when she married mr. tom taylor she continued to publish her talented songs under her maiden name. a well-known composer, whose name is probably merged in memories of the near past, is sam lover, who will be remembered as the writer of "molly bawn," "rory o'more," "the four-leaved shamrock," and many others. his career was a strange and varied one. beginning life as an artist, he won his way to fame in dublin, where he became a very popular miniature painter, and many famous men of the day sat to him. his roving taste, however, led him gradually to abandon art for literature. in this again he was successful, and came to london, where he contributed to most of the magazines of the day, and wrote several novels. after more successes he began to compose the songs so well known to-day. about the same time he wrote ballad poetry, but finding the output a strain, he prepared a series of entertainments which he entitled "irish evenings," in which he embodied songs and music of his own composition. these entertainments became exceedingly popular, and the reputation he acquired led him to extend his horizon to america. on returning, he turned his experiences to account, and finally changed his profession and sailed away to become an english foreign consul in foreign lands. before he left england he said to my mother, "mrs. ward, if i return, i know i shall find you as young as when i leave you!" he has not returned, but his words come back to me, for indeed she seems to have discovered the secret of eternal youth. felix moscheles the painter, was a constant visitor at our house, and he was the son of old mr. moscheles the great composer and pianist and friend of mendelssohn. felix moscheles was a chum of du maurier when both lived in paris, and he wrote a biography of this eminent _punch_ artist and author of "trilby." inheriting some of the remarkable gift of his father (quite apart from his talent as a painter) felix played the piano, but he was astonishingly modest about his undoubted talent and would only play very occasionally. he is an old man now, but active still, for i heard his name not long ago in connection with a peace society. moscheles' niece, miss roche, who is mrs. henry dickens, the wife of the eminent k.c. and eldest surviving son of charles dickens, inherits the musical talent of her family, and is also well known in musical circles. _À propos_ of the dickens family, i remember an incident in connection with one of mr. philip calderon's pictures, when i was going through the royal academy (then in trafalgar square). i noticed an old darby and joan looking carefully through the catalogue for the title of a picture by the artist representing a nude nymph riding on a wave of the sea, surrounded by a friendly crowd of porpoises disporting themselves gaily around her. "ah," said the old gentleman, "here we are.... 'portrait of mrs. charles dickens, junior!'" sir theodore and lady martin (_née_ helen faucit) used to visit my parents. sir theodore was knighted when he had completed the queen's book, and his wife, when she left the stage, dined more than once at her majesty's table. when i was still at school, garibaldi visited england, and after being universally fêted in london, and honoured with a banquet by the lord mayor, suddenly announced his intention of returning to italy. the cause of the resolution was the subject of much controversy at the time, as he would, by his departure, cancel many engagements and upset the preparations the provinces had made to receive him. garibaldi embarked for italy after a sojourn of seven weeks in england, accompanied by the duke and duchess of sutherland in their yacht. his son, minotti garibaldi, came to our house, and his visit recalls an amusing episode in connection with one of my father's pictures. an eccentric old art critic, a low churchman, who, as such, cultivated a modesty in dress and a deep humility of demeanour that consorted oddly with his rubicund feature (which had roused our housekeeper to remark "mr. so-and-so, 'e's got a nose to light a pipe"), was calling upon my father to view his picture of "anne boleyn at the queen stairs of the tower." anne boleyn is represented in the picture as having sunk down from exhaustion and fear on the lower step leading to the place of execution. after remarking upon the masterly manner of the painting, the old man paused, and looking up under his eyes he placed a thoughtful finger upon his forehead and said in mournful accents, "_the hutter 'elplessness_!" a little later young garibaldi called and was introduced to our pious critic, who, not quite knowing what to say, but feeling he should rise to the occasion, made a spasmodic attempt at tact and ejaculated "_'ow's yer pa?_" [illustration: the marquis of winchester, .] the late lord crewe comes to my mind now as one of my parents' friends; he cultivated the society of artists and ... bishops! he was very absent-minded, and there is a story told of him, which, although far-fetched, is very typical. suddenly recollecting his duties as host of a large house party, he approached his guests one afternoon and asked them if they would care to go riding, and finding several agreeable, made arrangements with each one to be at the hall door at . , when he would supply them with an excellent white horse. at the appointed hour, guest after guest arrived booted, breeched, and habited, until nearly the whole party had assembled. they waited, and finally had the satisfaction of seeing lord crewe ride away, quite oblivious, on the white horse. my parents, after staying there some time, arrived home to find a letter inviting them to crewe hall and written in a way that suggested an absence of years. lord crewe's extraordinary absent-mindedness was proverbial, and, since he was not aware of it, caused him to be considerably taken advantage of. he used to dine at the "athenæum," and usually at the same table. another member came rushing in one day to obtain a place for dinner for himself. all being engaged, the waiter was obliged to refuse the extra guest, when the flurried member pointed to an empty seat. "oh, sir," said the waiter with apologetic deference, "that's lord crewe's." "never mind," said the urgent would-be diner. "tell him when he comes--that he's dined!" it is to be supposed the waiter found his deception worth while, for when lord crewe arrived, he was met with surprise and quiet expostulation. "you dined an hour ago, my lord," said the unscrupulous waiter. "so i did," murmured the poor victim, as he retraced his steps. i once remember his coming all the way from crewe to dine with my people. after dinner my sister beatrice, who played the violin, performed her latest piece for his benefit. lord crewe, evidently tired after his meal, went to sleep and slept soundly until the finish, when he awoke suddenly, applauded loudly and eulogised her talent at some length. marks, the r.a., paid a visit to crewe hall; after which he composed some very tuneful and witty songs of "the noble earl of crewe," which set forth that gentleman's idiosyncrasies at no small length, much to the amusement of all who heard them. i wonder how many people nowadays remember fechter the actor. i often saw him when i was a boy, and thought his acting splendid. his love scene with kate terry in the _duke's motto_ took london by storm. he had a marked foreign accent that did not interfere in the least with the clear elocution that he owed to bellew's instruction. fechter was born in london and educated in france as a sculptor, but his inclinations tended towards the stage; he made his début at the salle molière, and achieved success as duval in _la dame aux camellias_. after acting in italy, germany, and france, he came to england and won his laurels upon our stage. in conversation he was brilliant, and in appearance gave one the impression of strength both physically and mentally; i think his face is to this day more deeply impressed upon my mind than that of any other actor i remember excepting irving. my father painted his portrait in the costume he wore in hamlet and many years after my mother presented the picture to henry irving; but she still has the dress which fechter gave her when leaving england. charles dickens thought highly of him, as the following letter will show. , hanover terrace, thursday, twenty-fifth april, . my dear ward, i have the greatest interest in fechter (on whom i called; by the way, i hope he knows), and i should have been heartily glad to meet him again. but--one word in such a case is as good, or bad, as a thousand.... i am engaged on tuesday beyond the possibilities of backing out or putting off. with kind regards to mrs. ward, in which my daughter and miss hogarth join, very faithfully yours, charles dickens. irving (when comparatively unknown to the london public) i first saw in _lost in london_, and not long afterwards when he played "macbeth," i could not resist caricaturing him. sothern i remember, of course, in "lord dundreary;" and lytton, his son, also a successful actor in comparatively late years, and a playfellow of my brother russell. w. s. gilbert came often to our sunday "evenings" at kent villa. years after, i recollect a story he told in the club against himself. he was at the derby, and crossing over from the stand, he got amongst the crowd who hustled and jostled him without the slightest regard for his comfort. he remonstrated with them, and receiving a good deal of impertinence in consequence, he lost his temper. when he at length emerged from the crush, he discovered his watch, a unique repeater and gold chain worth about two hundred pounds, had disappeared. the five minutes' talk proved to be one of the most expensive he had ever indulged in. although my father was interested in all sorts and conditions of men, historians, as i have remarked before, possessed a supreme attraction for him, and he sought the society of such men, as they in their turn sought his, whenever opportunity presented itself. william hepworth dixon, the historian, became friendly with my father shortly after our arrival at kent villa, and in the company of douglas jerrold was frequently at our house. mr. dixon wrote a series of papers in the _daily news_ on the "literature of the lower orders," which were precursors of henry mayhew's inquiries into the conditions of the london poor. he took a great interest in the lower classes and was instrumental in obtaining a free entry for the public to the tower of london. afterwards he became chief editor of the _athenæum_. as a traveller he visited italy, spain, hungary--all europe, in fact, as well as canada and the united states, where he went to salt lake city and wrote a history of the mormons. he finally met with a riding accident in cyprus which made him more or less of an invalid afterwards. his extraordinary reluctance to enter a church is one of the idiosyncrasies that returns to me; this must have puzzled my father, who was a very religious man and a constant church-goer. lord stanhope (formerly lord mahon) was another historian, and an intimate friend of my father's. when the first peel ministry was formed in , lord mahon appeared as under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, and during the last year of the peel ministry he held the office of secretary to the board of control and supported the repeal of the corn laws. he subsequently pursued a somewhat wavering course, voted with the protectionists against the change in the navigation laws, and lost his seat for hertford at the general election of . afterwards his lordship devoted most of his life to historical research and wrote among other works "a history of the war of the succession in spain." his portrait is amongst the many my father painted of men distinguished in their studies; bulwer, thackeray, lord macaulay, hallam, dickens, collins, were also subjects for his brush. sir charles dilke (the dilkes were then proprietors of the _athenæum_) once came to dine with us, and was mortally offended because a foreign ambassador was given precedence, as is etiquette as well as politeness to a stranger amongst us. he took my sister down, and sulked and grumbled to her all dinner time, venting on our high-backed antique chairs his annoyance at what he imagined to be a serious slight to his dignity and position. i went with my father to charles dickens' last reading. he was an amateur actor of high repute, and his rendering of the famous novels was exceedingly dramatic. wilkie collins once wrote a play, called _the lighthouse_, for some private theatricals in which dickens acted. my father designed the invitation card, and the original drawing was sold at the dickens' sale at christie's, where it fetched a high price. at the last party given by miss dickens before he died, i was introduced to the great author, and curiously enough, he said, "i am so pleased to make your acquaintance, and i hope this will not be _your last visit_." that evening joachim gave us an exhibition of his incomparable art. lord houghton, who was as absent-minded in his way as his brother-in-law, lord crewe, was one of the guests. he fell asleep during joachim's recital, and snored. as the exquisite chords from the violin rose on the air, lord houghton's snores sounded loudly in opposition, sometimes drowning a delicate passage, and at others lost in a passionate rush of melody from the player, who must have needed all his composure to prevent him waking the slumbering lord. about that time i made several slight caricatures of dickens, which have been not only exhibited, but published. [illustration: lord houghton. .] [illustration: fred archer. .] [illustration: the duke of beaufort.] chapter iv work and play school-days ended.--a trip to paris.--versailles and the morgue.--i enter the office of sydney smirke, r.a.--montagu williams and christchurch.--a squall.--frith as arbitrator. --i nearly lose my life.--william virtue to the rescue.--the honourable mrs. butler johnson munro.--i visit knebworth.-- lord lytton.--spiritualism.--my first picture in the royal academy.--a scotch holiday with my friend richard dunlop.-- patrick adam.--mr. and mrs. arthur lewis.--mr. george fox and harry fox.--sir william jaffray.--mr. william cobbett.-- adventures on and off a horse.--peter graham.--cruikshank.-- mr. phené spiers.--johnston forbes-robertson and irving.-- fred walker.--arthur sullivan.--sir henry de bathe.--sir spencer ponsonby.--du maurier.--arthur cecil.--sir francis burnand.--the bennett benefit. after leaving school, i took a trip with some schoolfellows to paris. our visit was not remarkably adventurous. i remember my interest in the outside seats on the trains, our nearly being frozen to death while indulging in the novelty of a journey to versailles, and my excitement when i thought i had discovered shakespeare in the _morgue_, although second thoughts led me to the conclusion i was a little late in the day. my great ambition at this period of my life was to be able to study drawing and painting, but my father was inexorable in his decision, and i entered the office of sydney smirke, r.a., to learn architecture. mr. smirke was one of three talented brothers (the sons of the very distinguished artist, robert smirke, r.a.), sir edward smirke, the city solicitor, and sir robert smirke, r.a., who achieved fame as an architect and designed covent garden theatre among buildings of note. it is probable (i was told at the time) that mr. sydney smirke would have received a knighthood, had he not opposed queen victoria's desire at that time that all art exhibitions should be restricted to the neighbourhood of south kensington. he had then decided with the committee who commissioned him upon the present site of burlington house for the royal academy, which was to be built to his design. among his best-known works are the carlton and conservative club houses, the reading room, and the roman and assyrian galleries at the british museum. while i was in mr. smirke's office, i longed more than ever to be an artist, for the purely mechanical part of the profession did not appeal to me in the least, neither did the prospect of an architect's life commend itself. after a year during which i worked very conscientiously, considering my adverse sympathies, with bricks and mortar, mr. smirke finished his last work on burlington house, and announced his intention of retiring. in the meantime i had visited christchurch and bournemouth, and had completed a series of drawings of interiors. one of these--of the lady chapel--was bought by montague williams, whose wife had then recently died. my picture, which represented a woman placing flowers upon a tomb, figured in the drawing, was the best work i had done up to that period, and it probably possessed some sad association or suggestion for him. i had wished to sell the picture to the rev. zacchary nash, the rector of christchurch, and he wrote to me, saying, "if you very much wish me to buy the water-colour drawing, i will; but i dislike all pictures, and consider they never rise to my preconceived idea of the subject or object they are intended to represent." the walls of his house were entirely without the usual ornamentation, and i do not remember to have seen there a single picture, with the exception of the usual conventional and handed-down portraits of relations. i was made a member of the architectural association, and exhibited my drawings of christchurch, which were so highly appreciated by my father, and so pleased him by what he considered my advance in the architectural profession, that i had not the heart to tell him of my ever-increasing desire to leave it and go through the academy schools, and become a painter. he had repeatedly said he would rather i swept a crossing than be an artist, whereupon i decided upon the one outside our house, in anticipation. on my return, my father immediately exerted himself to find a new office for me, and mr. smirke suggested a colleague of his, mr. street, in the following letter:-- my dear sir, ... with regard to leslie i quite concur with you in wishing him to get into some busy and eminent office where he can see and profit by all the matters connected with the carrying out of architectural work. i have enclosed herewith a note to mr. street, requesting him to tell me candidly whether he can readily admit leslie into his office, and i shall not fail to let him know how highly i appreciate leslie's qualification. at the same time i must remind you that in an eminent architect's office, each stool has its money value and very big premiums are realised. what i shall tell street will be that in taking leslie into his office he is taking an excellent draughtsman with taste and intelligence to boot, and not a raw recruit--one in short, who would be found useful from the first day of his entrance. yours sincerely, sydney smirke. my father in the meantime had spoken to his friend mr. edward barry, r.a., with a view to my entering his office. this interview resulted in my calling upon mr. barry with specimens of my work, of which he approved and upon which he complimented me. at the same time he warned me that t-squares and compass, and not the paint brush, would be my daily implements for at least five years. this was too much for me, and i frankly told him it would be impossible, and that three years--until my coming of age--would be my limit. barry then expressed his opinion that an artist's career was what i was fitted for, and not an architect's office, and although i quite agreed with him i went home with a heavy heart at the thought of my father's disappointment. on my return i sought my room, and, after locking the door, i sat down to consider the situation. also, i found that--perhaps from the effect of my excitement--my nose was bleeding, and i endeavoured to staunch the flow of blood. presently, before i had decided upon a tactful plan of action, my father knocked at the door, and when i opened it, rushed in, greatly excited to hear the result of the interview. a rousing scene followed, and although i respected his feelings and was sorry to go against his wishes, i instinctively clung to my decision to live my life as i chose and to follow my own career. the same evening my father consulted his friend, mr. frith, on the matter, and he kindly consented to act as mediator in this affair of my future career. after trying to dissuade me, and presenting an artist's life from its very blackest standpoint, and still finding me full of hope and enthusiasm, mr. frith at last said, "i don't mind telling you that, had you been my son, i should certainly have encouraged you in your desire to adopt an artist's profession." [illustration: sir alfred scott-gatty, c.v.o. (garter king-at-arms, ).] finally my father was persuaded, and as there was nothing more to be said, we shook hands upon my determination. thus we buried the long-cherished idea of my architectural career, of which i was heartily glad to hear the last. after the disagreement, frith, to encourage me, commissioned me to "square out" one of his pictures from a small sketch--"the procession of our lady of boulogne." i received eighteen guineas when my task was completed, but in my excitement at receiving my first cheque, i threw it (in its envelope) accidentally in the fire. i was in despair when i discovered my blunder, and, in my ignorance of paper money, went to frith and told him of the calamity. he chaffed me, and said, "you know, leslie, i'm not compelled to give you another cheque ... but if you wish it i will." whereupon he gave me my long-looked-for and fateful eighteen guineas. i was now free to face my future and to begin life as i wished; and in the meanwhile i nearly ended it prematurely while i was on a visit to my friend william virtue, at sunbury. at my host's suggestion, we started with three friends for a bathe in the river, early on a sunday morning, the tide being high and the current strong. i was a fair swimmer and very fond of the pastime, and so, when our return home for breakfast was suggested, i thought to have one more plunge, whereupon bill, as we called him, being familiar with the current in the vicinity of the weir, advised me to avail myself of one in particular, which would, if i followed it, he said, carry me back to the boat. i acted upon the suggestion, but upon reaching our boat found myself unable to get a firm enough grip upon it, and, after making several attempts, became quite exhausted, and then tried to float on my back to give myself a rest. then an article i had been reading the night before headed "precautions in case of drowning," came to my mind, with the advice when exhausted to "throw yourself upon your back." but this precaution proved fruitless, as at this moment an under-current sucked me down. being by this time quite helpless, i was shot up again like the imp in the bottle, only to be washed under again, and then in desperation i called for "help!" and sank for the last time. in my case no past incidents lit up my brain with one lightning flash of thought--no beautiful ideas surged up--as one has heard told in novels. i only thought of the boat ... i must get to the boat ... and when i sank i said to myself, "good-bye." my host, who was then in smooth water on the other side of the river exclaimed, to the rest of the party, "where's ward?" and as he spoke he observed the ring in the water where i had disappeared. fearing i was dead, he exclaimed, "good god, how shall i break the news?" but he plunged in and lost no time in rescuing me. how it was done, he was scarcely able to say, but he found me obedient to his directions, and, being a powerfully built man, he was able to battle against the rush of water, whilst supporting me. i was eventually dragged into the boat, and, wonderful to relate, i had retained sufficient consciousness to know i was alive, while fearing at the same time for virtue, who, placing me in safety, had swum after another of our party who had rashly gone to the aid of both of us, and was in difficulties himself. needless to add, my heroic friend was in a fainting condition when we reached his house, but with the aid of a little brandy, he soon recovered, and no harm came to any of us. in fact, in the afternoon i had sufficiently recovered to walk to teddington, where i called upon the edward levys, who had taken a house there for the summer. feeling quite fit in spite of the episode of the morning, i was sitting in the drawing-room regaling my hostess with the little incident of my rescue, when she asked me to ring the bell for tea. on either side of the fireplace a bell appeared to be attached to the wall. one of these, as happens in old-fashioned houses, was a dummy, and this one i attempted to pull; being at that age when a young man does not wish to be outwitted, and finding the bell was extremely difficult to manage, i gave it an extra hard tug, and, to my consternation, pulled off the dummy handle and with it masses of plaster which came showering down all around me. my feelings on discovering my blunder were too deep for words. another lamentable accident happened to me when i was attempting to coax my coming moustache with a pair of curling tongs--to curl the edges! in carelessly handling the lamp (which exploded), and in trying to blow out the flames, i burnt myself so badly that i lost every atom of hair on my face, eyebrows, eyelashes, and the rest. seeing an advertisement a little later for hair restorer and moustache renovator, i bought it in high hopes, and rubbed it well in (as directions) before going to bed. when, the next morning i arose, expectant, i was puzzled to find my lips swollen out of all proportion, and my disappointment was not untinged with feelings that can be left to the imagination. about this time i received my first commission, through mrs. pender (afterwards lady pender), who asked my father if i could be induced to undertake a series of drawings for a friend of hers, mrs. butler johnstone munro. of course, i jumped at the offer, and lost no time in making the acquaintance of my patroness, who was an eccentric old lady of eighty, and quite an original character. her brother, mr. munro of novar, had left her his collection of pictures of all schools, which she prized greatly, and she wished me to make a plan and series of drawings to scale, of the pictures in their frames exactly as they hung upon the walls of her house in hamilton place, that it might give her an idea how they should be placed in a mansion she was moving into. the work took me a little over three months to complete, and when it was done, i made sure of a handsome remuneration from mrs. butler johnstone, who was very wealthy. alas! the five-pound note which she paid me after my first day's work was all i ever got, for she died suddenly while i was taking a summer holiday, and i was "mug" enough not to send in a claim to her executors. thus only the memory and satisfaction of having studied some of the finest pictures in this country was left me by way of compensation for my trouble. i often, however, look back in amusement at some of my experiences while i was working for this quaint old lady, who, i may mention, seemed to consider me at her beck and call, and used to telegraph for me to come and show her guests a portfolio containing an almost unique set of water-colour drawings by turner. colonel butler johnstone, m.p. (my patroness's husband) came into the room one day when i was starting upon my commission; _he_ evidently had no sympathy with art, for he said that he thought that i might be better occupied. it seemed to him, he said, rather ridiculous to undertake such tedious work, because when it was completed he couldn't see the object of it. this was a little disconcerting, but i was not discouraged. i remember, one summer morning, mrs. butler johnstone arriving on horseback at my father's house, and sending in a message by the servant to inform mr. leslie ward, that the "honourable mrs. butler johnstone munro" was waiting to see him, and, upon my hastening downstairs, i saw at the front door, mounted upon a good, but aged horse, my strange employer, shielding her wrinkled old face from the sun with a white parasol, which i afterwards discovered she habitually used whilst riding in the park during the season. this call was to ask me to accompany her to the kensington museum, and there to act as her mouthpiece, she being desirous of making a proposition to sir wentworth cole as to her intention of making a temporary loan of pictures to that institute. while we were driving to the museum in a hansom cab, i remember that a somewhat ridiculous _contretemps_ took place. the old lady, in giving her directions to the driver, managed to get her bonnet and cape entangled and dragged off, and i was reprimanded severely for the vain attempts i made to act as the "gallant" in assisting her to replace them. my visit for six weeks, with my parents, to the first lord lytton (bulwer lytton) at knebworth, made a great impression upon my mind, as i suppose i began to consider myself "grown up," and was rather flattered on receiving so interesting an invitation. during my stay i made a water-colour painting of the great hall, which was hung with rich red hangings and a fine old elizabethan curtain. i also both caricatured from memory and drew a portrait of my host (for which he sat), for his appearance proved an irresistible attraction to me. lord lytton had a remarkably narrow face with a high forehead; his nose was piercingly aquiline, and seemed to swoop down between his closely-set blue eyes, which changed in expression as his interest waxed and waned. when he was interestedly questioning his neighbour, he became almost satanic looking, and his glance grew so keenly inquisitive as to give the appearance of a "cast" in his eyes. carefully curled hair crowned his forehead, and his bushy eyebrows, beard and moustache gave a curious expression to his face, which was rather pale, except in the evening, when he slightly "touched up," as the dandies of his day were in the habit of doing. his _beau ideal_ was d'orsay, and he showed the nicest care in the choice of his clothes. his trousers were baggy as they tapered downward, and rather suggested a sailor's in the way they widened towards the feet. i can see him now standing on the hearthrug awaiting the announcement of dinner--dressed up "to the eyes," and listening with bent, attentive head to his guests. it was typical of lord lytton that he listened to the most insignificant of his guests with all the deference that he would have shown to the greatest. replacing his hookah (for he smoked opium) he would be silent for a considerable time, watching us out of his odd eyes, and when he spoke it was in a soft voice which he never raised above a low tone. he told many stories of "dis-ra-eel-i," whose name he pronounced with slow deliberation, and one strained one's ears to catch every word that he said, they were so interesting. i wish i could remember them now. at knebworth. [illustration: _in an inquisitive mood. sketched from memory._] [illustration: _slight sketch of knebworth._] [illustration: first lord lytton (bulwer lytton). _drawn from life._ .] [illustration: _silent before dinner. sketched from memory_] in art he had no taste whatever, but he was especially fond of artists with literary tastes, which perhaps explains why he "took" so much to maclise and my father. maclise (whom he considered everything that could be desired both as a personality and an artist) painted his portrait, which is now at knebworth. it is an extraordinarily good likeness, but very hard in the quality of painting, and unsympathetic in treatment. when i was at knebworth i first found myself in public opposition to my father's dislike of tobacco. i do not think i have mentioned this distaste before. when he gave a dinner at home, he usually persuaded a friend to choose the cigars, and was very glad to escape from the atmosphere of tobacco when they were being smoked by his guests. later in life the doctor ordered an occasional cigarette to soothe his nerves; he smoked _one_, and that was too much for him. _À propos_ of this detestation of tobacco, i suffered what i supposed then to be one of the most humiliating moments of my life. when the cigars were handed round to the guests after dinner, i took one and began to light it, whereupon my father, who had never allowed me to smoke in his presence, saw my cigar, and waved it magnificently down. considering myself "grown up," i was at the most sensitive period of my boyhood, and i felt i must appear ridiculous in the eyes of all the men at the table, when possibly the whole episode had passed unnoticed, or if they had observed me, would not have given a moment's notice to the occurrence. there was a french cook at knebworth who used to go fishing in the lake for minnows. lord lytton was wont to damp my ardour when i expressed a desire to fish, by informing me that there were pike, but that nobody had ever succeeded in catching any. strangely enough, from the moment i started to fish, i was very successful. never a day passed without my making a good haul; and although the frenchman failed to catch them, he knew the secret of stuffing and serving them for dinner. lord lytton was in some respects rather curious, for he informed me that if i went on fishing i should empty the lake. however, i went down one morning and found the whole lake drained and the fish destroyed. the only explanation which occurred to me was that he might have regarded fishing as cruel, just as he considered shooting brutal; for after once hearing the cries of a hare he had wounded he never handled a gun again. an american lady named madame de rossit was then acting as lord lytton's secretary. she had her little daughter with her, a very precocious child, who had been brought up evidently on the great man's poetry. i remember a very painful evening when all the household and the neighbours were present to hear the child recite "the lady of lyons." anything more distressing could hardly be imagined. hume, the spiritualist and medium, whom i mentioned in connection with the s. c. halls, constantly came, and lord lytton, with a view to testing my psychic possibilities, arranged that i should work with the planchette. he was, i think, making experiments more out of curiosity than earnest belief. our attempts were entirely without results. i was evidently not _en rapport_. my host was always attracted by the mysterious; he loved haunted rooms and tales of ghosts. there was a room at knebworth where a "yellow boy" walked at midnight, and the house itself was full of surprises. for instance, you went to a bookcase to take down a volume, and found the books were merely shams, or you attempted to open another case, and found it was a concealed entrance to the drawing-room. there were some fine pieces of old oak in the house, nevertheless, and upon my mother's expression of admiration for one old door he had it packed and sent to her as a present. in the grounds, there was a curious maze that we found just as troublesome, but more picturesque. then there was the beautiful _horace_ garden, of which my father made a painting. down a delightful green vista of lawns, barred with shadows from the trees overhead, stood statues of the greek and roman poets and philosophers, grey against the sunlit scene. this garden was lytton's idea, and it was certainly one of the greatest "beauty spots" of knebworth. the house itself did not inspire me; but at night, when the moon shone, the griffins on the front, silhouetted romantically against the sky, gave a mysterious beauty to the building, in the glamour of the moonlight. i will conclude my memories of knebworth with lord lytton's advice to me that no young man's education was complete until he had mastered the entire works of sir walter scott. on my return to london, i sent my painting to the royal academy, where it was very favourably received and well hung. the _telegraph_, coupling me with my father in this notice, said: "we have already mentioned a masterly drawing by e. m. ward, r.a., and we would call attention to the work of something more than promise by the academician's young son, 'the hall at knebworth, herts.'" needless to say, i was encouraged by kindly criticism, for having chosen my profession in the teeth of opposition, i felt i had to succeed, and was extremely anxious to gain the approval of my father. i entered carey's to take a preliminary course of instruction preparatory to the royal academy schools. these studios were well known in former days as sass's school of art, where many eminent artists had attended before they rose to fame. at the same time i studied at the slade school, where poynter was then professor. i then copied at the national gallery the well-known picture of "a tailor," by moroni, selected by my father, who had a very high regard for that wonderful old master. now that everything was running smoothly i was quite happy. i was at liberty to follow my own desires, with the thought of the future before me, which i faced with all the optimism of youth and an untroubled mind. with these high hopes i was considerably enlivened by my first holiday in scotland with a scotch school friend. dunlop and i started on tour from edinburgh, where i was introduced to the adams. mr. adam was a solicitor who, with all the security of a comfortable practice and successful life, was very anxious to bring up his son in his office; but patrick dreamed of an artistic career, and had other ambitions. he read the lives of constable, turner, and david cox, and, becoming inspired by the example of these great men, and by the works of sam bough (a painter of whom edinburgh is proud), he rose at dawn to paint before going to his father's office, where he regarded the hours spent on his stool as so much waste of time, and longed for evening when he could return to his beloved pursuits again. when we met, our sympathies went out to one another, and we spent our time discussing art. together we visited the local galleries and steeped ourselves in the beauty we found there. at holyrood palace we were shown the room where the ill-fated rizzio was murdered, and where the sad scene of love, passion, and hatred was enacted in so small a space, which was yet large enough to hold destinies between its walls. the blood-stain was pointed out to me, and i was informed at the same time that the episode of mary queen of scots and the unfortunate italian was the subject of e. m. ward's picture of the year in the royal academy. (this painting, by the way, was purchased by the late sir john pender.) it is to be supposed that i appeared duly impressed. when we left edinburgh, my newly-found friend, patrick adam, suggested we should correspond about art; but although he became a successful painter, and one of the foremost scottish academicians, i have never met him from that day to this. during our visits to the picture galleries, my friend richard dunlop, who was a matter-of-fact scot and not in the least temperamental or of an artistic turn of mind (but a splendid fellow for a' that), became distinctly bored, and after we had visited mr. arthur lewis (who was a very keen sportsman and deer-stalker to the day of his death) and his wife, formerly kate terry, at glen urquhart, he retraced his steps and left me to go on alone. my continual eulogies of the beauties we saw, the exquisite colours and effects of landscape evidently became too much for him. i am glad to say that he still remains one of my best friends, and i always associate him with our mutual and equally valued friend, charlie frith. on the various boats in which i voyaged from time to time, i enjoyed watching the passengers, and occasionally caricaturing people who amused me. there was one pale curate who looked as though he might have understudied penley in _the private secretary_. he wore a long coat and broad-brimmed hat, and his smile was always dawning to order, whereupon charming dimples appeared in his cheeks. i watched him shedding the cheerful light of his fascinating smile upon the ladies, until gradually a change crept over him; the smile wore off, and presently the sea claimed him. i always think a man or woman should be economical with their expressions when they are apt to be victims of _mal-de-mer_, for so few smiles at sea last until the voyage is over. about this period i was fortunate enough to be invited to cheshire by some friends of my parents, to the house of mr. and mrs. george fox, who lived at alderley edge. my host, who was a well-known _connoisseur_, possessed a remarkable collection of pictures. i remember one by thomas faed (called "god's acre," representing two little children by their mother's grave). the painting was full of delicate sentiment, a qualification perhaps rather despised in these days; but the masterly loose handling and fine colour redeemed it from any such criticism from myself. i fear the picture would not realise anything like the considerable price given for it by my host, which, i believe, was over two thousand five hundred pounds. [illustration: mr george lane fox. .] [illustration: lord portman. .] [illustration: duke of grafton. .] my first evening at the fox's is never forgotten, for i made an amusing blunder in all the superiority and imagined importance of nineteen years. harry fox, the son of the house, was then twenty-one. on that memorable evening i was sitting in the drawing-room when he entered, and, attempting to be friendly and conversational, i said to him-- "well, are you home from school now?" my friend, who married an equally fine horse-woman, was a splendid rider in those days (as he is now). he was always dapper in his appearance, and alert in his bearing. _my_ hunting days began when i visited alderley edge, and although i had ridden at upton, slough, i was somewhat of a novice at the riding with which i here intended to compete. i followed the hounds upon a powerful weight carrier called the "count," and became a very good acrobat when i was riding him. the horse over-jumped a good deal, but, growing accustomed to seeing me come over his ears, would wait until i got on to his back again. i jumped over everything, and because i had very little experience, i did not profit by the example of some of the finest riders when i saw them avoiding unnecessary obstacles. one day i was riding the "count" and when jumping a hedge, i lighted on my head. if you can think you have broken your neck, i did at that moment. another rider following nearly landed on top of me. "are you hurt?" he called. "give me some brandy," i replied, stirring from what i had previously imagined to be my last sleep. instead, he cantered on. it was enough: i could speak. this callous behaviour roused me to such resentment that i tried to rise--at the crucial moment the "count" stepped heavily upon my foot. i swore violently, and, anger impelling me to action, i mounted him and rode away. riding one evening as the twilight was falling and the surrounding country growing faint in the failing light, i rode my horse into a bog. we soon found ourselves up to the knees and in an apparently inextricable position. the situation was growing unpleasant when the horse, instinctively recognising the danger, made a supreme struggle for liberty, and, after some exertion, we emerged and reached home safely. i used to follow mr. brocklehurst, the then master of the cheshire harriers, and old mr. cobbett (the son of the great william cobbett) who dressed so exactly in the same fashion as his famous father, one could almost imagine he had left madame tussaud's, with his snuff-box, to take a day's hunting in cheshire. sir william cobbett (the grandson) still adheres as nearly as possible to that old tradition of dress. it was in cheshire, at alderley, that i met edmund ashton, an old etonian and a jolly fellow, who became engaged to fox's sister. the village was gay with decorations on the day of the wedding; on one triumphal arch the local poet had evidently exerted his muse, for in big letters shone the following couplet:-- on this day with joy and pride edmund weds his youthful bride. under the hospitable roof of mr. fox, a trio of us (will jaffray, now sir william, harry fox and i) formed a bond of friendship maintained to this day, and which has always been one of the pleasantest facts of my life. about this time i settled to work in earnest and entered the r.a. schools as probationer in architecture, with drawings of a monument to a naval victory, after which i became a full student for a study made from the antique. old charles landseer (brother of sir edwin and "tom" landseer the engraver) was then keeper. he was a quaint old gentleman, but i fear his teaching didn't carry much weight. what i do remember about him was that as he stooped to look over one's work the evident dye that had once been sprinkled on the back of his head had remained there until it became solidified and resembled old varnish. there was an old student too who bore somewhat the same appearance, and seemed privileged to remain for ever a student. in his case the rust seemed to have spread to his clothes, so that i can remember the peg on which he hung his coat was left severely alone, in fact, no other student would permit of his hat or coat being near it. it is a shame to mention old george cruikshank in the same breath, but while on the subject of hair dye he also toned his grey hair, but in a perfectly harmless manner. what was comic in him was that up to the last he wore a lock which, being suspended by a broad and very visible piece of elastic, was evidently in his mind quite a success. among the students whose names come into my head as being prominent students at the time were ouless, alfred gilbert, miss starr, swan, cope, waterlow, hamo thornycroft, percy macquoid, and forbes robertson. i can remember the latter coming up to me one day in the antique school, and evidently elated by the fact, saying-- "ward, to whom do you think i have been introduced to-day?" and while i was waiting to consider an answer, he said-- "_the great man_ ... and this day is the happiest of my life." i congratulated him.... i knew at once to whom he referred and what pleasure the meeting must have been to him, knowing the enthusiastic admiration in which he held irving. he became a friend of sir henry's, and finally, fascinated by the stage and finding his dramatic talent stronger than his artistic aptitude, clever as he was as an artist, he abandoned painting as a profession, and went on the stage. the garrick club, of which sir johnston is a member, possesses a portrait by him of phelps as cardinal wolsey. the only regret is that so great an actor should be retiring from the stage, although he has indeed won his laurels. it is to be hoped that his clever brother norman forbes will carry on the family tradition for some time to come. [illustration: signatures] fred walker, then one of the visiting artists at the r.a. schools, was a man who possessed great individuality, a highly strung and excessively nervous temperament, and, unfortunately, very bad health. it was the custom of the students, with whom he was very popular, to give an annual dinner, and about this time the toast of the evening was "fred walker." when his health was drunk, i remember he got up to reply, and found himself from sheer nervousness quite speechless, whereupon he murmured a scarcely audible "thank you," and collapsed into his seat again. du maurier drew the character of "little billee" from this artist. he died young, and after his death his pictures fetched very high prices, especially some delicate and beautiful water colours. "the haven of rest," now in the tate gallery, is a poem on canvas, and it is also one of his most popular works, which will certainly live. sir hubert herkomer was undoubtedly influenced by him in his earlier days. marks and fred walker were the first two academicians who lent their names to poster designs, and they were very much "called over the coals" for it. millais came in for a like share of condemnation when he sold his "bubbles" to pears' soap. in these days of advertisement, when the hoardings are covered with every type of art, and really great artists apply their talent to the demands of commercialism, the censure levelled at millais, walker, and marks appears rather more like fiction than fact. another novelty of that period was the musical play which arthur sullivan pioneered so successfully. my first experience of that delightful form of entertainment was at the bennett benefit, given by the staff of _punch_ to raise funds for the family of one of their then deceased contributors. the musical version of _box and cox_ which was produced for the first time, was entitled _cox and box_ and attracted a good deal of attention. sullivan, who had composed the music, conducted it himself; sir francis burnand wrote the libretto, and sir henry de bathe acted the part of the "bouncer," with george du maurier and sir spencer ponsonby as the lodgers. another musical play, _les deux aveugles_, followed, in which sir henry de bathe and du maurier acted again with arthur cecil. the _punch_ staff performed in a play by tom taylor, entitled _the wolf in sheep's clothing_, and the cast included the author, mark lemon, tenniel, shirley brooks, kate terry, and florence terry (who took the child's part). the production was a most artistic one, and attracted a very distinguished audience: everybody of any consequence in the world of art, literature, and the stage, flocked to see _punch_ behind the footlights. [illustration: _from a life-size oil picture_ _painted by leslie ward, _. sir william jaffray, bart.] chapter v 'spy' my coming of age.--the letter.--the doctor's verdict.--the doctor's pretty daughter.--arthur sullivan.--"dolly" storey. --lord leven's garden party.--professor owen.--gibson bowles. --arthur lewis.--carlo pellegrini.--paolo tosti.--pagani's.-- j. j. tissot.--_vanity fair._--some of the contributors.-- anthony trollope.--john stuart mill.--_the world._--edmund yates.--death of lord lytton.--mr. macquoid.--luke fildes.-- small.--gregory.--herkomer.--_thegraphic._--gladstone.-- disraeli, etc. on my coming of age, doctor doran sent me the following advice, which at the first attempt i had some difficulty in deciphering. later on, however, i soon discovered that it was intended, to complete the joke, that it should be begun at the end and from there read. doran john. yours truly ever, yourself find will you which in condition the see to surprised be will you, anything yourself deny never and advice my follow you if, fact in. everything in consideration first the yourself make. thing bad a always is which, behind be never then will you as others all before yourself put. difference the all makes which, it like you unless, lamb the with down lie or, lark the with rise don't. by done be to like would you as you to do others till wait. own your as good as be cannot course of which, others of opinion the considering by distracted be not will you then as own your but advice nobody's take. to-morrow till off put can you what to-day do never. life through guidance your for advice of words few a you give me let now. him cut to happened i although him for regard great a have and years for him known have i. morning very this himself shaving saw i man a of photo the you send i herewith. leslie dear my. on the morning of my birthday, which was to be celebrated by a dance, i felt so ill and consequently became so depressed, i was obliged eventually to pay a visit to the family doctor, who impressed me with the seriousness of my condition and prophesied all sorts of calamities after sounding my heart and feeling my pulse. "you must be very--very careful," he said, shaking his head. "my dear boy, i'm sorry to say it; but you must not dance to-night." i was overwhelmed. "but," i expostulated, "i came to ask you to make me fit so that i might dance." "you must give up dancing for a time," he said, with great firmness. i sank into the deepest dejection; life seemed bereft of half its interest. when the evening drew on and the guests began to arrive, i saw my favourite partners carried off, and as i watched the crowd of dancers enjoying themselves my dejection grew deeper. heaven knows what would have become of me had not my doctor's daughter arrived late, being a very pretty girl, and, i knew, one of the best dancers there, i threw discretion to the four winds, and went up to her. "don't tell your father," i said. "but will you have the next with me?" she laughed and accepted. i danced every dance after that. at the end of the evening, arthur sullivan played a "sir roger," with chappell's man at the piano; i realized none of the dire effects i had expected, and the next day felt better than i had done for months. the capriciousness of one's memory is extraordinary (at least in the light--or darkness--of one's usual forgetfulness). i remember my first dinner-party perfectly; and my kind host and hostess had on this occasion invited a particularly attractive girl for me to take down. most of the guests were elderly people, and some of them were hungry people also. i had received an invitation from my hostess for almost a fortnight previously, but on that occasion the dinner had been postponed, and their usual hour altered for the convenience of a guest. i, who had not been notified to that effect, arrived in consequence half an hour late, to find the guests still waiting; my inward embarrassment was great when i faced the pairs of hungry and expectant eyes. there was one awfully fat parson who looked as though food came before church matters. i remember even now his expression of intense relief. i hope he was satisfied. we had a most perfect dinner, and i took down my partner. i felt my hostess's eye upon me; i do not think the lady realized that the fault lay with herself and not with me. my first dinner-party at home was spoiled for me by an accident. i sat next to mrs. edmund yates, who was a beautiful woman, resplendent that evening in a gorgeous gown. everything had up till now gone smoothly, and i felt that i was getting along nicely when my sleeve caught my glass and swept it over--as fate would have it--mrs. yates' dress. i was terribly upset--so was she, and so was the liqueur. commissioned portraits were occupying most of my time in those days, and i exhibited (at the royal academy) one drawing of my brother russell, and one of my sister beatrice. the latter work was much admired by mr. "dolly" storey,[ ] who paid me the compliment of offering to buy it from me; but on hearing my parents wished to keep it in the family, he offered me a very good price for any other drawing of similar character. although i made a considerable number of portraits, i was always caricaturing the various personalities--interesting, extraordinary or amusing--who crossed my path. at a garden party at lord leven's, in roehampton lane, i saw professor owen or "old bones" (as he was irreverently nicknamed), and, struck with his antediluvian incongruity amidst the beautiful surroundings of the garden, and the children there, i resolved to caricature him. impressing his strange and whimsical face upon my memory, i returned home and at once conveyed my impressions to paper. i "caught" him in his best clothes, with the tall white hat, which made a contrast to his florid face; it is hardly one's idea of a garden party "get up" as will be seen by the boots. i suppose some eccentricity must be forgiven in the light of his genius, for "old bones" was a man, and a scientist, of prodigious activity. there was no end to his works--especially their titles, of which, for instance, "on the archetype and homologies of the vertebrate animals," is a fair example; while "memoir on a gigantic sloth," has possibilities. he belonged to innumerable societies, geological, zoological, chirurgical, and so forth; and he was, as _vanity fair_ described him, "a simple-minded creature, although a bit of a dandy." [illustration: sir william crookes.] [illustration: . sir oliver lodge.] [illustration: sir william huggins. .] [illustration: professor owen. _"my first" in "vanity fair_".] a little before this, mr. gibson bowles, then editor of _vanity fair_, had become dissatisfied with the artists who were working for him in the absence of pellegrini, and, owing to a disagreement, was looking for a new cartoonist. millais, remembering my ambitions in that direction (for when i saw the first numbers of _vanity fair_ i was greatly taken with pellegrini's caricatures, and, having a book of drawings of a similar character, had thought that if only i could get one drawing in _vanity fair_ i should die happy), called to see my book of caricatures. this book contained drawings made at various times, from my early youth up to that period; and when millais saw the sketch of "old bones," he was very taken with it. "i like so much this one of professor owen," he said. "it's just the sort of thing that bowles would delight in. re-draw it the same size as the cartoons in _vanity fair_ and i'll take it to him." i called with the cartoon, which was accepted--but was unsigned. i had invented a rather amusing signature in the form of a fool's bauble, but this did not meet with mr. bowles' approval. after a little discussion he handed me a johnson's dictionary, in order that i might search there for some appropriate pseudonym. the dictionary fell open in my hand in a most portentous manner at the "s's," and my eye fell with the same promptitude on the word spy. "how's that?" i said. "the verb to spy, to observe secretly, or to discover at a distance or in concealment." "just the thing," said bowles. and so we settled it, and since then, like the soap man (this is not an advertisement), i have used no other (with one exception, of which i will tell later). becoming a permanent member of the staff of _vanity fair_ and my dream more than realized, i turned my attention to caricature whole-heartedly and with infinite pleasure. on the publication of my first drawing, pellegrini called upon gibson bowles (rather suddenly, considering his previous indifference and silence), to tell him in flattering terms what he thought of the caricature, and to inquire into the identity of the artist. _i_ in my turn received the following letter from mr. arthur lewis. thorpe lodge, march, . my dear leslie ward, i've just got my last week's _vanity fair_. i presume the admirable cartoon of professor owen is yours, as you said you'd some idea of doing him for a trial of your skill. i cannot refrain from sending you my congratulations on so successful a commencement. without flattering, i can tell you that i think it almost (if at all) without exception the best of the whole series. i hope we may have many more of such quaint yet kindly caricatures from your pencil. believe me, sincerely yours, arthur lewis. i was extremely pleased to receive this flattering letter and encouragement from a man whom i admired; whose opinions, as those of an amateur artist of undoubted ability, were worth considering; and who was entirely in sympathy with my choice of a career. mr. arthur lewis knew everybody in literary and artistic circles; at his house in campden hill all the most delightful artists and _artistes_ of the day came to amuse and be amused. there, in the garden, where one might imagine oneself miles away from london, mrs. arthur lewis (kate terry of former years) entertained, and, in the summer time, gave charming garden parties. [illustration: thomas gibson bowles (tommy), _founder of "vanity fair."_ ] [illustration: colonel hall walker. .] [illustration: colonel fred. burnaby. .] before his marriage, mr. lewis was noted for his suppers at moray lodge, where he once entertained the prince of wales. it was from this house, by the way, that the moray minstrels derived their name. on sunday mornings he was pleased to paint, for as he was a very busy man, the week end was the only time he could spare for his favourite occupation. one of his pictures, after being hung on the line at the royal academy, was bought by a stranger from william agnew for two hundred pounds. lewis told me with great pride that he was prouder of that cheque than of any he ever received, and as a rich man he must have been the recipient of large sums. it was at the lawsons' house that i first met my fellow artist carlo pellegrini. previous to our meeting, a mutual acquaintance had jestingly and rather fiendishly accosted pellegrini one day with a remark concerning my work. "hullo, pellegrini! you've got a rival." "oh, that boy," replied the caricaturist, "i taught 'im all 'e know!" this was news indeed to me, for as well as owing my education in drawing to the academy schools, i had caricatured from my earliest childhood. at the time i treated the assertion as a joke; but in later life, when the fiction was believed by journalists and set forth in print, i rather regretted my former indifference. an episode occurred shortly after the publication of my caricature of the late lord alington, showing how easily such misunderstandings might gain credence. a friend of mine met me one day. "my dear fellow," he began, "there's a capital caricature in sotheran's that you could study with advantage--you should go and have a look at it. you may get a few tips from it." i stared a moment to make sure that he was not pulling my leg, then i understood. "my dear old fool," i said. "go and have another look and at the signature to it--that particular drawing is mine." pellegrini was quite as individual in his outward appearance as he was by temperament. in person he was little and stout, and extremely fastidious. he always wore white spats, and their whiteness was ever immaculate, for he rode everywhere, a fact which probably accounted for his bad health in later years. his boots, too, were the acme of perfection, and his nails were as long and pointed as those of a mandarin. he used to tell the story of his arrival in london, without the proverbial penny, and how he wandered about the streets unable to find a night's lodging, until, growing weary and desperate, he slept in a cab. there were other stories of how he fought with garibaldi, having a charmed life while the bullets whistled past him, or of his destined career of diplomacy, and of his medici descent. one of the most amusing characteristics of pellegrini was the way in which he related an anecdote. his expressive eyes, which always seemed to be observing everything, would commence to flash before the words came; and his english, which was ever poor, stumbled and tripped, for although he was rather too quick to recollect slang terms, his grammar remained appalling, but delightfully naïve. as the story progressed his eyes would roll and flash, and, working himself up into a frenzy as neapolitans do, he would become extremely excited, until when the crisis came, the point of the story burst upon the listeners' ears with a bomb-like suddenness. his own description of how he would treat his enemy was inimitable. first he created his subject, and then imagined him lying in terrible agony and poverty by the wayside, and dying of thirst. "i go up to 'im and i say, 'you thirsty?' and 'e say 'e die ... 'ah!' i reply, 'i go and fetch you some water.... i take it and 'old it to 'is lips ... then ... when 'is lips close on the brim ..." (here carlo's eyes would flash and distend)" ... i take the cup away and 'e fall back and die!" in reality, in spite of his melodramatic description, i expect pellegrini would have been the first to help the sufferer, for he had a tender heart and the kindest of dispositions. our meeting at the lawsons' was the beginning of a lasting friendship. i became fond of "pelican," as his friends called him, and always found his company refreshing. there are innumerable stories to tell of him, some hardly polite, but none the less entertaining. i think his quaint english added to the humour of his narrative, his naïve self-glorification and childish conceit added not a little to the entertainment of his hearers. a friend once said to him, "pelican, i noticed in the picture of d---- (a colonel in the blues) that 'spy' has left out the spurs!" "ah," replied carlo, smiting his chest with a blow of conscious pride, "_i_ never make mistake in the _closes_." as a matter of fact, d---- had stood in a position in which his spurs were concealed. i scored off pellegrini on another occasion, much to his amusement. weldon, "norroy king at arms," invited us to dine with him to meet sandys the artist, who did not turn up. pellegrini, who had a habit of sleeping after meals, partook of the excellent dinner, and then, taking a cigar and the most comfortable armchair, sank into a profound slumber, punctuated by violent snores. weldon and i after attempting conversation, exchanged looks rather glumly across his sleeping body, when weldon had an inspiration. "i say, ward," he exclaimed, "here's an opportunity, we may as well do something to amuse ourselves--do take a pencil and draw him!" so i drew the caricaturist, who, waking presently from his slumbers, was immensely tickled by my sketch, and wrote across the corner "approved by c. p." the drawing now hangs in the beefsteak club. another episode _à propos_ of carlo's slumbers occurred in there. i must mention first of all an extraordinary accomplishment of pellegrini's, which i do not remember ever having noticed in any other man--the habit of retaining a cigar in his mouth while he slept and snored. one day as he slept by the fire i watched him drawing in his breath and letting it go in his usual queer fashion ... when the cigar fell out of his mouth! feeling that a substitute was needed, i, in a spirit of curiosity, replaced it by a cork; the indrawing and expanding continued as before; then he snored--- once--twice--thrice; and suddenly the cork shot out, and, making a noise like a pop-gun, flew with considerable force into the fire. pleased with my experiment, i rescued it, but it was rather too burnt to replace. then an irresistible piece of devilry made me dab the tip of his nose with it. stirring in his sleep, he brushed his face with his hand with the action of one who brushes away a fly. i made another little dab in a carefully chosen spot, with the same result. the men sitting at the other end of the room began to giggle, and the caricaturist in burnt cork began to grow interesting. presently carlo awoke, stretched, and giving his face a final rub, stood up, accompanied by a roar of laughter. going to the nearest glass, pellegrini saw his comic reflection. [illustration: pellegrini asleep.] [illustration: _a looker-on at wimbledon common during a volunteer review, _.] [illustration: _a ballet dancer, manchester theatre. ("the ballet of hens"), _.] [illustration: pellegrini "ape." _"my fellow, what i care! i say to 'im, 'you go to----'_] "oh!" he said, dramatically, "i do not accept apologize--you no longer remain member 'ere!--write to the committee--most unclubbable that--you wait ... we shall see!" i tried to pacify him, but he waved me aside. the next morning he wrote me the following letter:-- studio, , mortimer street, cavendish square. dear leslie, forgive me if i took the joke of last evening too much _au sérieux_. ever yours, pellegrini. during my first years on _vanity fair_ (or thereabouts) pellegrini was engaged in making an excellent series of caricatures of the members of the marlborough club, in which the prince of wales was much interested. his royal highness enjoyed pellegrini's genius and his company. the drawings were reproduced in the most costly manner, and the collection was still unfinished when, owing to a disagreement, pellegrini refused to complete them. the famous caricaturist numbered some eminent men amongst his friends. paolo tosti and the late chevalier martino (marine painter in ordinary to the king) i remember especially. in the early days pellegrini was constantly to be seen at pagani's, where there gradually gathered a coterie of well-known italians and englishmen. in this way the restaurant became the _rendezvous_ of interesting people, and pagani's undoubtedly owed its fame to pellegrini. in later years, illness barred him from many pleasant places, and kept him a prisoner in nursing homes. he suffered from a variety of ailments, and not the least amongst them was lumbago. i was at the fielding club one evening when "pelican" came crawling in, looking white and ill; blue circles round his eyes accentuated his look of misery. "come along, pelican," i said, thinking to cheer him, for we frequently played together, "come and play billiards." "ah!" he groaned, his hand on his back. "i cannot play billiard to-night, my boy, i 'ave lumbago!" later the hospital claimed him, and it was sad to visit an old friend whose sufferings were acute, in such changed surroundings at fitzroy square. the king of italy decorated him, and when i came with my congratulations, he said, "oh! don't! it come too late!" there is yet another memory of him in brighter circumstances which comes to me quite clearly across the years. one of my sisters was staying at my studio in william street, when the neapolitan came in full of his quaint humour. looking at her gallantly, he smiled, and said, with a soft sigh and with such child-like admiration as to be irresistibly comical, "oh, those beautiful cat's-eye!" i remember the day was glorious and the season at its height. we were going out, when he said, "i _must_ carry your sunshade." this was only an excuse for foolery, for he took it and, walking with it, assumed a mincing gait to the accompaniment of remarkably comic grimaces. my sister, remonstrating, said, "really, mr. pellegrini, i can't walk with you like this." "very well," he replied, and crossing over with the same absurd gestures, he walked on the other side of the road, twirling the red sunshade all the way to gunter's, where he continued his fooling by trying to persuade the waitress to supply him with a liqueur (which was decidedly forbidden). while we ate our ices, he conquered the girl with high-flown and exaggerated compliments, and finally had his way; and as for the liqueur, success found him more or less indifferent to its consumption, for the jest had been nearly all bravado. james j. tissot was an occasional contributor to _vanity fair_. his work can hardly be called caricature; for the sketches were rather characteristic and undoubtedly brilliant drawings of his subjects. he was achieving considerable popularity (especially with dealers) by painting lively scenes--usually in grey tones--of greenwich breakfast parties, modern subjects with a pretty female figure as the centre of attraction. tissot had a strong personality, and from the psychological point of view his story is extraordinary. the woman to whom he was devoted (and who figured so frequently in his pictures) died, and tissot, overcome with grief, perhaps with remorse, left england and went to the east to seek distraction in foreign travel. in palestine he stayed and painted; and here he drew a series of religious pictures illustrating the life of christ. they were exhibited at the doré gallery on his return to england, and showed an extraordinary change of outlook. he became at first extremely religious, and then the victim of religious mania. later, he surprised his world by becoming a monk, driven by his devotion to the memory of the dead woman to the extremities which often arise when a strong character is suddenly disrupted by great sorrow. finally, he entered a monastery, where he eventually lost his reason and died. he used to say in his sane days, when talking about his work, and about art in general, "if you feel the drapery or the hang of a garment in a drawing is shaky, and your model cannot understand the subtleties of the pose you require, get a cheval glass, pose yourself, if possible, and sketch your reflection. sometimes it is astonishing how successful the result is." before i proceed any further with my recollections of _vanity fair_ i think perhaps i might jog the reader's memory by a few reminiscences of the early days of that paper, which was almost the first paper which could be called a society journal. _the owl_ was the first to be published of that type, and out of this pioneer arose _vanity fair_. in those days the eager public paid a shilling for their weekly publications; and _vanity fair_ was founded by mr. gibson bowles (better known as "tommy"), since a member of parliament, and at that time the best editor the paper ever had. he had the gift of the right word in the right place; and it may be remarked that a dislike of dickens prevented any quotations from that well-known author from entering the pages, and that he opposed the fashion of that period of alluding to a lady of title with the christian name as a prefix. among the earliest contributors were the late colonel fred burnaby and the late captain alexander cockburn, a son of the late chief justice, lady desart, lady florence dixie (who was editress at one time), and the late mr. "willie wyllats." the latter, an even more brilliant writer than many of the rising men of that generation, also wrote for _vanity fair_ at that period. the caricatures in _vanity fair_ were supplemented by very terse and extremely clever comments upon the lives of the subjects portrayed by the cartoonist. these were signed "jehu, junior," and were in themselves enough to attract the reader by their caustic wit. looking back to-day it is strange to read in the light of great events these miniature biographies of politicians now forgotten, of others who left their party to go over, of statesmen, of judges who sat on important cases and are now only remembered in connection with a trivial poisoner, an impostor in a claim, of careers then unproved but now shining clearly in the light of fame, and of others whose light is extinguished--all within so short a lapse of time. in those days i stalked my man and caricatured him from memory. many men i was unable to observe closely, and i was obliged to rely upon the accuracy of my eyesight, for distance sometimes lends an entirely fictitious appearance to the face. i listened to john stuart mill at a lecture on "woman's rights"; and then as he recited passages from his notes in a weak voice, it was made extremely clear that his pen was mightier than his personal magnetism upon a platform. a strange protuberance upon his forehead attracted me; and, the oddly-shaped skull dipping slightly in the middle, "the feminine philosopher" just escaped being bereft not only of his hair when i saw him, but of that highly important organ--the bump of reverence. his nose resembled a parrot's, and his frame was spare. in fact, he was ascetic and thin-looking generally; but his manner and personality breathed charm and intellect. with anthony trollope i was more fortunate, for my kind friend, mr. james virtue, the publisher, invited me to his charming house at walton, where i was able to observe the novelist by making a close study of him from various points of view. we went a delightful walk together to st. george's hill, and while trollope admired the scenery, i noted the beauties of nature in another way, committed those mental observations to my mental note-book, and came home to what fun i could get out of them. the famous novelist was not in the least conscious of my eagle eye, and imagining i should let him down gently, mr. virtue did not warn him, luckily for me, for i had an excellent subject. when the caricature appeared, trollope was furious, and naturally did not hesitate to give poor virtue a "blowing-up," whereupon i in turn received a stiff letter from mr. virtue. it surprised me not a little, that he should take the matter so seriously; but for a time mr. virtue was decidedly "short" with me. luckily, however, his displeasure only lasted a short period, for he was too genuinely amiable a man to let such a thing make a permanent difference to his ordinary behaviour. [illustration: john tenniel. .] [illustration: anthony trollope. .] [illustration: sir francis doyle, bart. .] i had portrayed trollope's strange thumb, which he held erect whilst smoking, with his cigar between his first and second fingers, his pockets standing out on either side of his trousers, his coat buttoned once and then parting over a small but comfortable corporation. the letterpress on this occasion i consider was far more severe than my caricature, for i had not praised the books with faint damns as being "sufficiently faithful to the external aspect of english life to interest those who see nothing but its external aspects and yet sufficiently removed from all depth of humanity to conciliate all respected parents." nor had i implied that "his manners are a little rough, as is his voice; but he is nevertheless extremely popular amongst his friends, while by his readers he is looked upon with gratitude due to one who has for so many years amused without ever shocking them. whether this reputation would not last longer if he had shocked them occasionally, is a question which the bookseller of a future generation will be able to answer." it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good, for through this drawing i received an offer from edmund yates, who was then starting _the world_, to make a series of caricatures regularly for the forthcoming paper. my father, who was anxious for me to continue my more serious work of portraiture, advised me to do half the number requested by yates. when yates heard my decision he refused to consider a smaller number of contributions, and so the matter dropped. previous to this i had illustrated a number of his lectures by drawings of celebrities, and i declined the extra work with some reluctance. looking back, i see the excellence of my father's advice that i should not devote the whole of my time to work for reproductions, and i have often regretted that i did not give more time to my more serious work. i never realized that _vanity fair_ might one day cease to exist for me, or that a period might arrive when, owing to the ever enlarging field of photography, that type of work would be no longer in such demand. my father was himself a caricaturist of no mean order; and one of my most cherished possessions is a caricature which my father made of me as a child, drawn on the day before i returned to eton after a holiday. in it i am represented as a most injured person, because a very callous conversation is being carried on in the face of the great tragedy of my life (at the moment), the ending of the holidays. of course i caricatured my father in due time for _vanity fair_; and he was a delightful subject. "for heaven's sake, don't let me down gently!" he said. and i didn't! in consequence, friends complained of my want of respect, whereas my father regarded the drawing with amusement, for he could always appreciate a joke against himself. once, however, i remember an amusing incident in which for quite a long time he failed to see any humour. my mother and sister, with my father and me, were returning from some theatre, and we hailed a cab. getting in, my father said "home" to the cabby, whereupon the man replied, "where, sir?" "home," replied my father, a trifle louder. "where, sir?" answered the cabby, his voice mounting one note higher in the scale. "go home," cried my father, irascibly. still the cab didn't move, and the expression on the face of the driver was a study. "do you hear?" thundered my father. "no," replied the man. then we came to the rescue. but to return to the subject. dr. doran (whom i had caricatured shortly before in _vanity fair_) possessed the same delightful magnanimity as regards a joke against himself, and i really found that men of this type appreciated caricature. this drawing of my father's friend caused me extreme disappointment when it appeared, for during its manipulation by the lithographers it had suffered considerably. the original now hangs in the national portrait gallery, to which it was presented, i believe, by one of the trustees of that institution. in january, , the death of lord lytton (whose funeral i attended with my parents, as i had also been present at thackeray's) led to my receiving a commission from mr. thomas, the editor of the _graphic_. mr. thomas, knowing that i was acquainted with the great author, sent me a water-colour sketch of the hall at knebworth by old mr. macquoid (the father of percy macquoid), in which i was to place a figure of lord lytton. my introduction to the paper came through luke fildes, who, besides making the drawing of charles dickens's "empty chair" after his death, was then making the very interesting drawing of napoleon iii. on his deathbed. small, gregory and herkomer also helped to make the _graphic_, and i produced portrait drawings of celebrated people, including miss elizabeth tompson, disraeli, sir john cockburn, millais, gladstone and leighton. [illustration: "miles bugglebury." _with praiseworthy ambitions but a failure in life._ .] chapter vi caricature cannot be taught.--where i stalk.--the ugly man.--the handsome man.--physical defects.--warts.--joachim liszt and oliver cromwell.--pellegrini, millais and whistler.--the characteristic portrait.--taking notes.--methods.-- photography.--tattersall's--lord lonsdale.--lord rocksavage. --william gillette.--mr. bayard.--the bald man.--the humorous sitter.--tyler.--profiles.--cavalry officers.--the queen's uniform.--my subjects' wives.--what they think.--bribery.-- bradlaugh.--the prince of wales.--the tailor story.--sir watkin williams wynn.--lord henry lennox.--cardinal newman. --the rev. arthur tooth.--dr. spooner.--comyns carr.--pigott. --"piggy" palk and "mr. spy." during my long and varied career as a caricaturist, i have watched some of the great men of the century build their careers, and as men are often known, remembered and immortalized--especially abroad--by some idiosyncrasy selected by the capriciousness of time, so i shall always retain of certain characters odd, and even baffling, recollections. the caricaturist, i am convinced, is born, not made. the facility which comes to some artists after long practice does not necessarily avail in this branch of art; for the power to see a caricature is in the eye of a beholder, and no amount of forcing the perceptions will produce the point of view of a genuine caricaturist. a good memory, an eye for detail, and a mind to appreciate and grasp the whole atmosphere and peculiarity of the "subject," are of course essentials ... together, very decidedly, with a sense of humour. i have met a considerable number of people, some interesting, amusing, extraordinary, and delightful, and some, but not many (i am glad to say), who, as subjects, were neither desirable nor delightful. on the turf, in the houses of lords and commons, in the church, in society, in the law courts--in fact, everywhere, i have hunted for my victim; and, in obedience to that inevitable eye with which i was presented at birth by my good (or bad, according to some people) fairy, i have found him in each and all of these places. at times i have followed the dictation of my own fancy, but more often i have been given a certain person or personage to stalk. of course, not every one lends himself readily to the caricaturist, for the ideal subject is clearly one whose marked peculiarity of feature or carriage strikes at once the "note" which can be effectively seized and turned to account. the handsome man with perfect features and ideal limbs, but nothing exceptionally positive about him but his good looks, is sometimes, for example, a decidedly difficult subject. on the other hand, every one is caricaturable--in time, and when one knows him--whether on account of a swagger, a movement of the wrist, curious clothes, or of an oddly shaped and individual hat. so a longer acquaintance and a more extended opportunity for prolonged study renders even the beautiful man (or woman) at length a possible or even a very good subject. here, however, the test of the caricaturist is revealed, for while there are many who can perceive and hit off the obvious superficial traits of those who present themselves as ready-made subjects, the genuine caricaturist combines a profound sense of character with such a gift of humour as will enable him to rise above the mere perception of idiosyncrasy or foible, and actually to translate into terms of comedy a psychological knowledge unsuspected by those who uncritically perceive and delight in the finished caricature. the painfully ugly man who has some physical defect is almost as bad as the man with no specially named feature; for one does not wish to be malicious, and the portraying of physical defects is not a delight to the caricaturist. his object is rather to seize upon some absurd but amusing idiosyncrasy all unguessed by the subject himself, and very often by his friends, for we grow unobservant of everyday occurrence and familiar faces. but in spite of this, we must touch upon defects, because, for instance, sometimes an accident resulting in a twisted leg, a curious nose, an odd thumb, will not alter a man, but are so characteristic that to omit them would only draw attention to their presence. i could not have left out the cyst upon the forehead of john stuart mill, or the warts upon the faces of liszt or joachim. in the case of the latter i was profoundly disappointed when he grew a beard, for the warts upon his face were as marked as cromwell's, and one was so accustomed to them that they seemed a part of the man. in connection with this question of portraying a man "warts and all," i might cite the beautiful bust of liszt by boehm. here the sculptor left out the warts, with, it seems to me, a failure of judgment which affects the importance of the bust as art as well as its importance as a true image of the subject. i do not mean that i should prefer such physical defects over-emphasized in a portrait, for that would be absurd. it is, however, essential that an artist should not be unduly sensitive about such blemishes. imagine, for instance, how little we should recognize--and how little we should appreciate--such a bowdlerized or expurgated rendering of the oddly-marked face of oliver cromwell. this reminds me of an early caricature of my own. it was drawn on paper with a flaw which the lithographer took for a wart; and in an excess of zeal the lithographer copied it minutely as such. the subject, whom i had drawn from memory, came to ask me for an explanation, saying, "my dear fellow, i may have other blemishes; but _really_ i have not a wart!" i was obliged to explain that the flaw in the paper upon which i drew the original had only shown it in one light. in the earlier days of _vanity fair_ i was very often given subjects refused by pellegrini. bowles would say to him, "now i want you to catch so-and-so," and pellegrini would reply, "i don't like 'im. send ward--'e can run after 'im better." thus it came about that i was sent off to stalk the undesirable subject because i was younger, and i was obliged of course to comply with the demands of the paper and pursue pellegrini's uncaricaturable subjects. as an artist, pellegrini's likes and dislikes were curious. he could find no beauty in a landscape, so he informed me, no matter how well depicted. whistler's work he adored and millais' he detested. he was a great personal friend of whistler's, and, curiously enough, because pellegrini's work was formerly greatly opposed to whistler's, he spent a considerable time studying whistler's method of painting and admiring his work. pellegrini became so imbued with the great painter and his ideas that he determined to abandon caricature and give his attention to portrait painting. his intention was to outshine millais, whom he found uncongenial as an artist, and whose work he prophesied would not survive a lifetime's popularity. one of his favourite recreations was to discuss millais and his success in relation to himself when he had gained fame as a painter. one day, on this subject, after working himself up into his customary excitement, he twisted a piece of paper into a funnel-shaped roll, and said to me:-- "now millais' ambitions go in like this"--pointing to the big end, "and become this"--turning up the smaller end. "and mine begin small and go on...." here he opened his arms as if to embrace the infinite. [illustration: j. redmond, m.p. .] [illustration: the speaker (j. w. lowther, m.p.). .] [illustration: bonar law, m.p. .] when pellegrini partially abandoned caricature and took up portraiture he attempted to become a master of painting too soon, and, inspired by whistler's facility, imagined that it would be easy to overcome very quickly the difficulties of a lifetime. occasionally, of course, he succeeded legitimately, as in the case of "gillie"[ ] farquhar; but, generally speaking, if pellegrini had a sitter who was an admirable subject for caricature, he was unconsciously liable to put what he saw into his portrait. his successes were great; he was undoubtedly--when he had a "sympathetic" subject, a genius in caricature. that pleasure, or sympathy, is one of the main elements in the success of a caricaturist. just as a subject may offer great temperamental difficulties, so it frequently happens that--for some inexplicable reason--he will at once afford an opening which a practised caricaturist will know immediately how to turn to account. it is this element of chance which lends a charming uncertainty to the caricaturist's art; and it is this element also which explains in many cases the strange success or failure of an impression, the apparent fluctuations of an artist's talent in preserving a likeness or translating a personality into terms of comedy. thus it often happened that i was fortunate in my own choice of a man, and thus, on the other hand, that when i was sent off in a hurry to seize the peculiarities of a man, i found he required a great deal of study, and so was obliged to leave out the caricature and put as many characteristics in as i could. the "characteristic portrait," although without the same qualities as the caricature, is sometimes more successful with one type of man. nature is followed more accurately, the humour is there, if there is humour in the subject, and the work is naturally more artistic in touch and finish, and probably a better drawing in consequence. the caricature done from memory is wider in scope; one is not distracted from the general impression by the various little fascinations of form one finds in closer study. in fact, i consider that in order that the cartoon should have a perfect result, it must be drawn firstly from memory. of course, little details and characteristics can be memorised by a thumb-nail sketch, or notes upon one's shirt cuff, and for this reason i usually watch my subject all the time. i make notes, keeping him under observation and making the note at the same time. the sketch made in these circumstances is frequently useless in consequence; but it seems to impress upon my brain the special trait i have noticed. my caricatures were often the result of hours of continual attempts, watching my subject as he walked or drove past me, or if he were a clergyman, as he preached, again and again. before i pleased myself i would make elusive sketches, feeling, as it were, my way to the impression i had formed of him. at other times i was lucky, and the aid of inspiration led to almost instantaneous results. a difficulty which caused me considerable trouble was the reproduction of my work. in early caricatures i frequently aimed at a result which, recognized, would not survive the process of reproduction, and so i was compelled to destroy the sketch; later in life my work became firmer and thus enabled the copyist to produce a better result. pellegrini seldom failed in his precision of touch, and was equally careful to preserve a clean line, for he traced his first work carefully on to the final pages to ensure a good outline. it is extraordinary how deeply-rooted the idea is that a big head and miniature body makes a caricature, whereas, of course, it does not in the least. i suppose the delusion is the result of suggestion from without, from sporting papers and such-like publications. i have had drawings sent to me, and photographs and drawings copied from photographs, requesting that i should convey my opinions of them to a tiny imaginary body, in the case of an author the head to be supported by one hand, with a book of poems or a novel in the other. in all cases i was obliged to refuse because--except in the case of a posthumous portrait--i never draw anybody from a photograph or without having seen and carefully studied them. (there is only one exception to this rule, drawn at the request of _vanity fair_.) for the great point i always try to seize is the indefinable and elusive characteristic (not always physical but influencing the outward appearance), which produces the whole personal impression of a man. now a photograph may give you his clothes, but it cannot extend to you this personal influence. it is accurate, hard, and set. when i have not been required to make a caricature i may have a sitting, and make a drawing, which is perhaps interesting to the uninitiated, but to me impossible, because i have not illuminated that impression by the inspiration i have received. so i tear it up and try again--sometimes over and over again. frequently one requires several sittings before one becomes familiar with one's subject, for different days and varying moods lend entirely different aspects to the same face. as a result one becomes, as it were, _en rapport_ with the subject before one. a first sitting, as far as actual execution goes, counts for nothing; occasionally my editor has said to me--"keep to the caricature;" but when in the attempt to obey i have made the drawing, i have frequently lost not only portrait and caricature but also the spontaneity as well. often when i have finished my work, i feel i should like to do it all again, for, although a general impression is in many cases the best, as a result of more frequent sittings we see characteristic within characteristic. the face of the man who lives or studies indoors is usually more difficult to portray than the features of the one who is very much in the open air, because the hardening effect of constant or very frequent out of door exposure produces more decided lines. just as a soldier who has seen a campaign or two on active service begins to show signs of wear, so his face grows in interest, and the furrows more distinct; and in the same way an old admiral is more interesting than a young sailor whose face as yet wears no history. so it is with the weather-beaten hunting-man and the traveller with weather-beaten countenance. tattersall's was a great field for me, for there is something quite distinctive in the dress and gait of the truly horsey man, which lends itself to caricature. lord lonsdale, for instance, is quite a type, and i studied him entirely there. he was, and is, a delightful subject, and the drawing eventually fetched a considerable sum in the sale of _vanity fair_ drawings at christie's. again one of my most successful caricatures was that of lord rocksavage (lord cholmondeley) as the result of sunday afternoon studies at tattersall's. americans show a good deal of the open-air quality to which i have alluded. i suppose the effect of climate and the method of heating rooms "across the pond" produces that parchment-like complexion, and the strongly-marked features of many typical american faces. i found william gillette (as sherlock holmes) very interesting to draw in consequence; but then, of course, i must say he is an exceptional american or are they all exceptional? so it was in the case of the american ambassador, mr. bayard, who had accentuated features, overhanging eyebrows, and deeply set eyes. he had a peculiar charm of manner, but was terribly deaf. shortly after arriving in london, he was a guest at the mansion house at a dinner given to representatives of art and literature, and was invited to speak. he did, but one thought he would never sit down. having been greatly applauded at one period of his speech, this gave him an impetus to go on, but the guests grew wearied and restless, and in consequence, rattled their glasses and clattered their knives and forks. mr. bayard, who was really saying delightful things, took this for applause and continued his speech indefinitely. afterwards, the lady mayoress, remarking upon the unfortunate incident, said to me, "i am ashamed of those of my guests who behaved so badly during the ambassador's speech. i do hope you were not one of them." i was glad to be able to assure her of my innocence, and that i was too engrossed in mr. bayard's appearance to follow very closely his speech. my best subjects are those who possess the greatest possibilities of humour. i divide human nature into two classes (as a caricaturist, i mean), those who are funny and those who are not. people say to me sometimes, "so-and-so has a big nose--suppose you make it bigger," or words to that effect. my reply is that a big nose made even bigger, need not in itself be funny. the bald man usually insists upon keeping on his hat, forgetting that his bald head contains a good deal in it, is frequently much more interesting than a well-covered cranium, and is nothing to be ashamed of. the knowledge of human nature, of the foibles, and vanities of man that come with one's study of caricature is extraordinary, one does not come to know a man until he becomes a model for the time being and disports himself in a variety of ways according to his character, temperament, or personality. [illustration: henry kemble. .] [illustration: h. beerbohm tree. .] [illustration: gerald du maurier. .] william gillett [illustration: (_sherlock holmes_). .] there is the man one does not dare caricature in his presence, but contents oneself with studying and noting carefully; and the man one thinks one dare caricature and finds to one's surprise that he takes offence; and the man who comes and says, "so-and-so is splendid, you must do him. d'you know old tommy what's-his-name? he's capital now, ain't he?" and seeing one observing him, "now i myself, for instance, i've nothing peculiar about me. if you were to caricature me, my friends wouldn't recognize me." then there is another type who comes to the studio and dictates as to the style of work one must adopt in a particular caricature; and yet another to whom nature has been unkind, and whom one lets down easily because one has a feeling of compassion, as i have said, for people so burdened through no fault of their own. one no longer feels surprise when they say, roaring with laughter, "very funny, and haven't you been hard on me!... but still it's not bad as a joke!" others are very amusing; they come to my studio and settle themselves down as though they were at the photographer's, then suddenly exclaim, "oh! i forgot. the photographer tells me this is my worst side, i must turn the other towards you if you don't mind." i then thanked him for the tip, as it was the worst i preferred; on one occasion a well-known fighting colonel who went by the nickname of "pug" (being so like one) called at my studio to see his caricature which he had been told was very like him. he asked where it was. i said, "on the mantelpiece," which he had already scanned. "no! no!" he uttered; "that is not me. no one could possibly take that for me. i was called 'bull dog' in my regiment" (but he was better known as "pug") "and that thing couldn't possibly fight. you know it yourself. for heaven's sake do me full face." as there was no getting rid of him i was compelled, with a soft heart, to obey; and as i thought i saw a tear in his eye i drew him again. he was much relieved, but i wasn't. in the first caricature i had put the "pug's" tail on to the crook of his stick which he held behind him, as it so much resembled one. after this i had to keep the profile drawing from publication. but the sensations one experiences on realizing one's profile for the first time, are certainly appalling. when i was a boy i never examined my features at all, i just accepted myself, and got used to seeing my face in the glass as i brushed my hair, and it did not strike me as being specially offensive; i wished, i must say, that nature had been more generous, but my wishes did not worry me or verge into vague longings after extreme beauty, nor did the sight of myself alarm me until one day i went to my tailor's, where the mirrors were many and large, with a clever arrangement enabling the customer to view himself _en profile_. in the course of the interview a personal view of my coat from the side was required, and gazing into the mirror i glimpsed a sudden impression of my face from the side. i left the shop, extremely depressed, for i came to the rapid conclusion _i looked the sort of person sideways that i should have disliked if i had known him_. it is sad to think few men know their own profile. i once had some very unpleasant moments with a cavalry officer owing to our difference of opinion as to the contour of his legs, and the set of his trousers. he came to my studio looking rather like a musical comedy colonel (although he was a soldier to the backbone), very smart with his perfectly tailored clothes, very tight trousers, immaculate shoes and very well groomed throughout, very typical of the sort of man an actor would delight in as a model. his entrance to my studio was just as full of dash, with great éclat he gave himself into my hands, saying, "do what you like with me, i don't mind anything. have a good old shot at me just for a joke--i'm a bit of a caricaturist myself." after standing a little while he grew tired, and as is frequently the case, self-conscious, and began to wonder why he came, and in consequence became rather depressed. a spell of fidgeting seized him, and he expressed a desire to see the drawing, which i informed him was against the rules. "oh, damn it all, let's have a look," he expostulated, and to keep him quiet i was obliged to show him my work. "hang it, i didn't come here to be made a pigmy of!" he shouted. "you'd better put a bit on the legs--they're not like that!" it was getting near lunch time, so i went on working for another five minutes or so, when presently he wanted to look again. remonstrating, i said, "you'll spoil the drawing if you keep on interrupting." but he insisted upon another glance to reassure himself; this time he was angry. "i'm not coming here to have the queen's uniform insulted!" and looking deeper into the drawing: "and my nose doesn't turn round the corner like that." i expostulated, and presently he stood once more. after the same brief interval he bounced over again. "i won't have the queen's uniform ridiculed. my ears are not so large as that--you must cut a bit off them...." at this i retired to the sofa, tired out, and determined to settle my recalcitrant soldier. "look here," i began, "i didn't ask you here to teach me my business. i really can't continue under your instructions." "oh, very well," he said, changing his tone, "i'm sure we're both hungry, and i think you'd better come with me and have a bit of lunch at my club, and we'll settle this after." i agreed, thinking perhaps he had been out of humour. we had an excellent lunch and parted good friends. before leaving he said, "i have no doubt you'll see there was something in my suggestion, and i'll come again to-morrow." i finished the drawing, without further discussion, but he did not leave my studio looking quite happy, and he carefully ascertained before getting the address of the lithographers who were going to reproduce the drawing. i heard afterwards that he lost very little time in paying them a visit and begging them to cut a considerable piece off the ears, which they informed him was impossible as they had no right of alterations, and it would be quite against their principles. an officer in my unhappy subject's regiment said to me afterwards, that the result was greatly appreciated at aldershot, but that they were all greatly disappointed to find that i had flattered him! my caricatures are frequently described as "gross" by the wife who is hurt by the pencil that points a joke at her husband's peculiarities; or she says, "why don't you do my husband as you did so-and-so!" (referring to a decided and unsparing caricature). i have been described as unkind; or sometimes when, carried away by a fascinating subject, i have perhaps not sufficiently controlled my pencil, i have been accused of "brutality." the truth is that in working one may not intend anything personal, or for one moment imagine any one could take the result seriously; but the finished work, made with a detailed, and possibly inhuman devotion to one's own conception, strikes the beholder in a mood entirely different. very few of those who admire a caricature realize that its satire lies, not in any personal venom, but in the artist's detached observation of life and character. in the early days of _vanity fair_ people viewed caricature as something entirely new, and in the light of this novelty viewed it in the right spirit; later they grew particular, and, as they frequently paid (from which i did not benefit), an entirely new type of subject came to me; it was as though a spirit of commercialism crept between me and my sitters. [illustration: fifth earl of portsmouth, .] [illustration: major oswald ames (ozzie). .] [illustration: earl of lonsdale. .] a subject whom i strongly caricatured, pleased me by saying when introduced to him, "no man is worth _that_ (snapping his fingers) if he can't join in a laugh against himself." i remember going to lunch with a very rich man (for the purpose of studying him), who would insist on looking at my rough notes in spite of my protestations to the effect that they were only notes, not drawings. he became highly incensed. "i may be stoutish," he exclaimed, "but i'm not a fat, dumpish figure like that. now wouldn't it be a good and a new idea if you were to make me different. you see my friends know me as a short, round man, it would be so funny and quite a novelty if you were to make me tall and thin. now you think it well over--it would be quite a departure in caricature." i intimated that i thought the idea was rather far-fetched and that it was possible that his friends would prefer him as nature had made him. "if you want to please me, you must make me tall," he said. "i'll come to your studio and pay you a visit and perhaps buy some of your work--if you satisfy me in this respect." i told him i was not accustomed to be bribed in that manner and wished i had not accepted his hospitality. there are people who think they can do anything by bribery. they call at one's studio, and hint that one shall paint a portrait of them and go as far as to point out how it shall be done, and what the price shall be. others, when one has done a mere drawing of them, imagine that they have been tremendously caricatured and complain bitterly. if it had not been a question of time and money, i would not have encouraged sitters in my studio at all. when i became pressed for time, however, it was impossible to seek my subjects, especially when, with the exception of men of definite public position, i was not always sure of finding them. one interesting point in connection with the men whom one finds only in such places as the house of commons, is the fact that one is then at the mercy of the lighting of the building. this frequently accounts for bad portraits and unrecognizable caricatures, for lighting falsifies extraordinarily. of course i had innumerable sitters who were delightful in every way, and many who, if they were peculiar, were otherwise good sorts; but i am chiefly concerned at this moment with the strange stories of the exceptional cases that have astonished me from time to time. a peculiarity of some of my sitters in which i have rarely found an exception, is as to their professed ability to stand. i do not like to tire my sitters, and i usually tell them i am afraid they will find a position wearisome, which they deny, telling me at the same time that standing for hours is not in the least tedious to them. half an hour goes by--and they start to sigh and fidget, and presently give in, and finally confess they had not expected it to be such an ordeal--and always with the air of having remarked something entirely original. i have noticed, too, the brightness of step with which my sitters enter my studio, and, after a long sitting, the revived brightness brought about by the mention of lunch. bradlaugh, who was a willing subject, asked me upon entering my studio rather breezily whether i wished him to stand upon "'is 'ead or 'is 'eels," so he quite appreciated the situation. there are people who become nervous about their clothes. i have known a peer object to spats because they did not look nice in a picture. one man who was a noted dandy grew very concerned about his trousers. after making innumerable efforts to persuade him to stand still, i was obliged to wait while he explained about his clothes. "my trousers are usually perfect, and without a crease," he said, bending to look at them, while he bagged out the knees and found creases in every direction. the more creases he saw the more concerned he became and looked at them in grieved surprise as though he had never seen them before. a sitter who worried over his clothes came to me in the form of a gentleman from islington, who wore the most extraordinary trousers, for which he continually apologized, and seemed quite oblivious of the fact that i was drawing him in profile. every other moment he would turn full face to me with some remark ending with another apology for his trousers (which reminded me of the first lord lytton's, they were so wide at the foot). "please remember i am drawing you in profile," i would interject occasionally, as he turned his face to me, and each time he would try to remember, apologize for his nether garments, and his forgetfulness, raising his hat and bowing to me at every apology. why he was so conscious of his clothes i do not know, unless he found their cut necessary to islington. _À propos_ of clothes. after being at tattersall's one day, i went with mr. sterling stuart to lunch, and afterwards we proceeded to his dressing-room to choose a suit which he was to wear when i drew his caricature. as he gave me a free hand i found one which attracted my eye immediately; it was an old tweed with a good broad, brown stripe, and i felt there was no question to which was the best for my purpose. he appeared the next day in my studio looking the pink of perfection, and as i surveyed him i suddenly realized with dismay that his trousers did not match the incomparable coat. i drew his attention to what i imagined was an oversight. "well, my boy! do you think," he said, "that the man who built that coat could have lived to build the trousers too?" [illustration: the rev. r. j. campbell. .] [illustration: sterling stuart (_the hatter_) .] [illustration: father bernard vaughan. .] not long after my cartoon of the prince of wales appeared, i was passing by a tailor's shop and i saw a reproduction in the window. feeling slightly curious as to its exact object there, i went to look, and on closer examination found that the ingenious tailor was using it as a form of advertisement, and underneath was written:-- "the very best coat that i've seen the prince wear was drawn by the artist of _vanity fair_." the sensitiveness of people with a tendency towards corpulency is also at times provocative of trouble. sir watkins william wynn, who sat for me on one occasion, was quite a portly old gentleman, and, presumably in order to conceal his stoutness from my notice, he buttoned his coat before taking up his position. as an inevitable result, a number of well marked creases made their appearance in the region of his watch-chain, and these i naturally included in my drawing. when he subsequently saw the latter he refused at first to believe that so many creases existed, but after i had finally convinced him of their presence he went straight off to his tailor's and bestowed the blame on him. no doubt the tailor profited in the long run; however, i fancy, as a matter of fact, that i have been of service to a good many tailors in my time. for many of the notabilities i have cartooned seemed altogether unaware of their habilatory shortcomings till they were confronted with them in my drawings. self-conceit is the keynote of the story of a noble lord who called upon me at my studio with a view to my "putting him in _vanity fair_." i was very busy at the time, and had consequently to suggest the postponing his appointment till a later hour, whereupon he took great offence and refused to return at all. but i was determined he should not escape me, and i took the opportunity at an evening party to study him thoroughly. when his caricature appeared he was so chagrined that he dyed his hair, which was white, to a muddy brown, in order that he should not be recognized. an old gentleman of great position in the world who came to my studio, had a very red nose. after the sitting, as he was leaving, he said rather shyly:-- "i hope you will not be too generous with your carmine, as it might give the public a wrong impression, and it is an unfortunate fact that both my grandfathers, my father, and myself all have had red noses, and all are total abstainers." another subject was restless to a degree, and walked about the room instead of permitting me to draw him. "hope you won't keep me very long," he said, "i'm never still for a moment, i'm always walking about my room. you'd better do me with a book in my hand as though i were dictating to my clerk." i was rather disconcerted, for this was not to be a caricature, but a characteristic portrait. "but," i said, "your friends won't know you so. anyway, go on walking." i made little notes as i watched him, and after he had been walking some time i began to hope that he would be getting tired, when he stopped short and said:-- "no! you'd better do me with my hand on my waistcoat." "very well," i replied, "we'll begin again." in this position i began a drawing of him, when he decided it would not do. "oh, well," i said, "sometimes you sit down, don't you? and it seems to me a very natural thing to do. suppose i draw you that way?" mark twain was another subject who came under the category of the "walkers." i had a good deal of difficulty in getting hold of him, but when i eventually caught him at his hotel, i found him decidedly impatient. "now you mustn't think i'm going to sit or stand for you," he told me, "for once i am up i go on." the whole time i watched him he paced the room like a caged animal, smoking a very large calabash pipe and telling amusing stories. the great humorist wore a white flannel suit and told me in the course of conversation that he had a dress suit made all in white which he wore at dinner-parties. he had just taken his honorary degree at oxford, and he rather wanted to put his gown on, but i preferred to "do" him in the more characteristic and widely-known garb. he struck me as being a very sensitive man, whose nervous pacings during my interview were the result of a highly strung temperament. the only pacifying influence seemed to be his enormous pipe which he never ceased to smoke. when i think of all the good stories i have missed when i have been studying these really humorous people, i regret that my attention must be centred on my work regardless of the delightful personalities which sometimes it has been my good fortune to meet. i should like to be able to wind up my sitters like mechanical toys, to be amusing to order. what a lot of trouble it would save! a clever amateur caricaturist once wanted me to paint his portrait, and during his sittings gave me his views upon caricature. he informed me that he had no compunction whatever in doing a caricature upon the physical defects of his subjects, and that if, for instance, a man had ... well ... a decidedly large stomach, he would not hesitate to increase it. after several sittings i made one of the best drawings and characteristic portraits i have ever done, as he appealed to me as a subject, for he was individual in his dress, and his hat had a character which is rare nowadays. but during the progress of the work, he was self-conscious and awkward, which is a result curious in a man who had a clever gift of caricature, himself. however, i did not exaggerate my work to the extent of producing a caricature, and gave him more credit than to expect me to flatter him. but it seemed that i expressed his bulk more truthfully than was tactful, for it appeared he had undergone a dieting process and considered himself quite sylph-like in consequence. when the drawing was in the hands of the lithographers i went down to see the proof, and to my surprise this man turned up. he appeared to be very friendly, shook hands, and expressed the usual polite banalities. i was a trifle puzzled, but i heard afterwards that he went to the office the next day with his lawyer to look at the drawing, and said to him:-- "don't you consider this to be a most offensive caricature of me?" (he imagined i was intending to insult him.) this resulted in publication being forbidden, whereupon the lithographers informed him that the drawing was already finished, and all the expense of reproduction incurred. he accordingly paid what was necessary, and it was never published, so i heard no more of the matter. some time after i met his medical adviser, whom i told of this extraordinary hallucination as to my intentions. he appeared amused. "oh!" he said, "he is really a very good fellow; but it's been a mania with him to reduce his stomach, and he was under the impression that he'd succeeded." my methods of studying my subjects vary considerably, and the most successful of my caricatures have been without exception those which were made without the knowledge of the persons portrayed. after all, this is nothing more than natural, for by watching a man unawares one more successfully catches his little tricks of manner, and to some extent his movements, all of which are carefully concealed when he comes in the guise of a complacent sitter to the studio. and so, for the purpose of frank caricature, one prefers to rely upon memory. i have spent such a considerable time in public places of interest that i fear i am quite well known to the police. not infrequently i have been detected in the act of obtaining my victims (by the pen), for i discovered the following account in a newspaper: "an amusing incident occurred one evening in the house of commons lobby in connection with the caricaturist and a victim. i had seen 'spy' silently and patiently stalking a new member (mr. keir hardie) with a striking and tempting personality. the new member, however, was nervous, having apparently an instinctive idea that he was being pursued, for he moved restlessly about, casting suspicious glances all round him. an evening or two after i was surprised to see 'spy' and his victim engaged in a friendly conversation, the artist taking advantage of the opportunity to examine every detail of face and figure. it seems that the new member thought he recognized a friend in his pursuer, and not knowing what he was after, he went up to him feeling that he had found refuge, and that here at least was one man who did not want to sketch him. i need hardly say that 'spy' took full advantage of the chase, and not long after this the victim appeared in _vanity fair_." that reminds me of the time when lord henry lennox came up to me in the lobby. "my dear," he said in his usual characteristic manner, "you see that little man over there--i detest him--he caricatured me and made me appalling." he took a violent dislike to pellegrini, who had seized upon his obvious stoop with a wonderful touch, and converted it into one of his finest caricatures. cardinal newman quite unconsciously placed me in rather an awkward dilemma. at the time when i was anxious to stalk him i heard he was in birmingham; so i went to euston station, and had actually bought my railway ticket when suddenly i caught sight of his eminence upon the platform. here was an opportunity not to be missed! i saw him go into the buffet and followed him. he sat down at a small table and ordered soup. i took a seat opposite and ordered food also, studying him closely while he partook of it. but i was not altogether satisfied, and i felt anxious to see him again. so i travelled down to birmingham, and on the following day i called at the oratory and asked one of the priests there at what time the cardinal was likely to go out. evidently, in spite of my protests, the priest concluded that i wanted an audience with cardinal newman, for saying that he would apprize him of my visit, he disappeared. my object had been to perfect my former study by a further glimpse; and a personal interview was really the last thing i desired. there was accordingly nothing left for me but to bolt! [illustration: canon liddon. .] [illustration: cardinal newman. .] [illustration: the dean of windsor (wellesley). .] my most comical search was probably one in which i was assisted by mr. gibson bowles. it took place in holloway gaol. the rev. arthur tooth, "the man of the mount," and that most celebrated ritualist, was in durance vile. "awkward," said mr. bowles, "but we must certainly have him. let me see.... i'm the secretary to the persian relief fund.... come along, ward." what possible connection could exist between the persian relief fund and the rev. arthur tooth i failed utterly to see, but apparently mr. bowles made the authorities at holloway see it, for we got safely through, and i had the unique experience of observing the reverend gentleman as he posed behind the bars. i found mr. bowles an invaluable second when studying my subjects, he was so thoroughly a man of the world and withal so tactful and resourceful that i was glad when we worked in company. it was a great help for me, and i was able to employ my attention in observing while he took the responsibility of conversations and entertainment of the subject entirely off my hands. sometimes i disconcerted my friends, who were all unaware of the promptings of the caricaturist's conscience. i was walking down st. james' street one day with a friend discussing the subjects of the day with easy equanimity when i saw brodrick the warden of merton (whom i had been hoping to catch for weeks). i suddenly grew quite excited, and, seeing him turn a corner, i rushed on in pursuit. my friend begged me to desist, and, finding me deaf to his entreaties, left me. i followed mr. brodrick into a shop, had one long look at him, and went home to complete a caricature that came with immediate success. on occasions, disguise has been necessary for a "complete stalk"--when i was endeavouring to obtain a glimpse of doctor spooner (known to fame as the creator of spoonerisms), i started by means of masquerading as a student in cap and gown, and as the renowned gentleman's sight was very bad indeed, he was a pretty safe man to tackle. my methods were, of course, well known to the real undergraduates who aided me to the best of their ability; but on this occasion one student in the front row nearly gave me away. suddenly turning round in the middle of the lecture, he inquired in a loud stage whisper, "how are you getting on?" "hush! he'll see," i remonstrated. "oh!" exclaimed the undergraduate, "that's all right if he does. i'll tell him you're my guv'nor!" mr. comyns carr, an old and valued friend of mine, always divided my work into two classes, one of which he was pleased to term the "_beefs_" and the other the "_porks_." he begged me, when i was painting his own cartoon, to put him among the "porks." i promised i would and did my best to prevent his face from becoming too florid. but apparently my labours were in vain, or else the lithographers failed me, for after the drawing was published, comyns carr greeted me at the club with the words, "oh, leslie! i'm among the 'beefs' after all!" i regretted the fact, but unfortunately the fault was not mine. the reproduction was limited to the number of colours, so that there was no happy medium for the lithographers; if the reproducers wanted a florid effect, the face appeared red all over, if the drawing was a "pork" with a red rose in his coat and a faint colour in his cheeks, they made the face all red and used the same colour for the rose. oxford dons. [illustration: dr jowitt (_master of balliol_). .] [illustration: dr spooner (_dean, new college_). .] [illustration: professor robinson ellis (professor of latin). .] one of the difficulties of my position as a caricaturist for a newspaper came home to me on the occasion of the visit to my studio of a queen's messenger. i was extremely busy at the time, and was, luckily for me, quite unable to accede to his request that i should immediately make a drawing of him, as he was shortly to appear in _vanity fair_. making an appointment for the next day he took his departure. i _called_ upon my editor on the following day, and while in conversation i remembered my engagement, and breaking it off suddenly, prepared to go. "who is your sitter?" said he. i referred to the gentleman in question, who i imagined had been sent to me from my editor. "i won't have that man. i have made no arrangement. he's been bothering me to put him in for years." "what shall i do then?" i said. "this is very awkward for me." "tell him we've got too many queen's messengers already." i hurried off and found my poor rejected sitter waiting with a thick stick, the presence of which he began to explain before i could make my apologies to him. he told me that he had bought the weapon, not in self-defence, or with an idea of attack, but because he thought it was most characteristic of him. i then had to interrupt him with my excuses which was a most disagreeable task. "oh," he said, "that's only an excuse for not putting me in. i see it." he flushed very red and showed a little temper, for he had been endeavouring for some time to be placed upon the list of subjects in _vanity fair_ and without success. after some discussion, during which, in some sympathy with his annoyance, i anxiously watched the stick, he slunk out of the studio with an air greatly different from the spruce and upright demeanour of his arrival.[ ] an awkward predicament in which i was the innocent arbitrator came about through a very gross caricature by another artist (i do not remember whom) of mr. pigott the censor of plays and a very old friend; i believe it was unpleasant, for he wrote to me and said he wished he had been put in my hands. i do not know whether i am wrong in saying so, but it was rather odd his writing to ask my advice, for he was strongly in favour of suing _vanity fair_ for libel. at all events i called upon him and advised him to ignore the matter. he reassured me by saying, "well, i've already come to that conclusion myself since writing my letter. i've seen my solicitors who gave me the same advice, but i still wish i'd been done by you." a friend of mine came to me once and said, "you simply must make a drawing of 'piggy' palk, he's such a splendid subject--have you ever seen him? i'm sure if you had you couldn't resist making a caricature of him." "very well," i said. "give me an opportunity of meeting him--what's he like?" "i must introduce you to him first, we'll get up a little dinner--he shall be there--at the raleigh club. we'll introduce you as 'mr. spy'--don't forget that he wears an eyeglass, because he's nothing without it." when the evening came i was placed on the opposite side of the table to the young man, where i had a good opportunity of studying his features, which were diminutive, with the exception of his ears which were enormous. i waited and waited for the eyeglass to appear (for as my friend had truly said, his face was nothing without it), and finally got up from dinner full of disappointment. there were several other guests who were quite aware of my identity, and all attempted to help me in my object, but without success, a fact which created no little amusement among us. my host pressed his friend to join our party in his rooms, and "piggy," as his friends called him, to my horror, said that he had another engagement; when, however, he was informed that there would be attractive young ladies among the party, he altered his mind. on arriving we were received by these charming ladies, who contributed to the evening's fun by entering very completely into the open secret of my visit. we had a piano and plenty of fun and chaff, and under cover of the evening's amusement i took in "piggy" palk. i was introduced to the most attractive of the ladies and enlisted her services on my behalf over the eyeglass. my friend at once introduced "piggy" to her, and she induced him to produce the eyeglass. after some preliminary conversation she began: "oh, lord haldon, i see you have an eyeglass, do you ever wear it? sometimes an eyeglass improves a man's appearance immensely, i should like to see how you look in one." "oh, yes," he said, "i sometimes wear it!" and so he put it into his right eye. "yes, it suits you very well. you don't make such faces as some people do in wearing it." he was flattered. "now i'd just love to see if you look as nice with it in the left eye." the obedient young man, mollified by her flattery, did all he was told, while i made good use of my eyes, and the company were becoming so hilarious that they could hardly conceal their merriment while the girl went on. "it's really wonderful how effective it is, and how it suits you equally in either eye." thinking he had made an impression, "piggy" took her into a corner and made himself most fascinating, assiduously retaining the eyeglass all the time. "he seems to be getting on very well," said one of the guests to me, in an undertone. [illustration: lord haldon, .] i was about to reply when lord haldon turned to me and said:-- "do you know, 'mr. spy,' that it's very bad manners to whisper?" so addressing myself to the lady, i offered my humble apologies and regrets for my forgetfulness (much to her amusement). when the caricature appeared he wondered "who the fellow was who had seen him," and tried to remember when it was he had worn lilies of the valley in his dress coat. i wonder he did not suspect "mr. spy." chapter vii portraiture some of my sitters.--mrs. tom caley.--lady leucha warner.-- lady loudoun.--colonel corbett.--miss reiss.--the late mrs. harry mccalmont.--the duke of hamilton.--sir w. jaffray.-- the queen of spain.--soldier sitters.--millais.--sir william cunliffe brooks.--holman hunt.--george richmond.--sir william richmond.--sir luke fildes.--lord leighton.--sir laurence alma tadema.--sir george reid.--orchardson.--pettie.--frank dicksee.--augustus lumley.--"archie" stuart wortley.--john varley.--john collier.--sir keith fraser.--sir charles fraser.--mrs. langtry.--mrs. cornwallis west.--miss rousby. --the prince of wales.--king george as a boy.--children's portraits.--mrs. weldon.--christabel pankhurst. "in portraits, the grace and one may add the likeness consists more in the general air than in the exact similitude of every feature." _sir joshua reynolds._ of the study of portraiture i was always fond, and the prospect of becoming a portrait painter appealed greatly to me. although fate interrupted this good intention through the unforeseen offer to work for _vanity fair_ (which, with my love for caricature, i could not resist the temptation of accepting), i did not refuse commissions to execute portraits, but as the number of cartoons that i had undertaken to do for publication was considerable, naturally private work had to make way for it. finding it difficult to direct my mind to both the serious and the comic at the same time, i was obliged to select different days for each; in case i might put too humorous an expression into the picture of a baby, or distort the features of a mayor in his robes. [illustration: _the portrait of a well-known character who claimed direct descent from the stuarts. he wore gold buttons and spurs with a red stripe down the side of his trousers, and was to be frequently seen in piccadilly in the seventies._] [illustration: _at a country dance near manchester._ . portraits.] [illustration: buckstone. "_new men and old acres._"] [illustration: _see page _.] [illustration: _a crusader at "drury lane"_.] my father had an admiration for ouless' method of painting a portrait, and with a slight acquaintance already that artist gave me good advice. i was lucky in my first commissions for ladies' portraits, for they were of exceptionally pretty women, viz. mrs. miller munday and miss chappell (mrs. t. caley), both hung in the royal academy. these were followed by equally attractive sitters in lady lucia warner, the countess of loudoun, and (the first) mrs. harry mccalmont. a presentation picture shortly afterwards came my way, of colonel corbett of longnor hall (shrewsbury), an extremely tall old gentleman of ripe years. i painted the picture on a full-length canvas, and after the first sitting or two he begged to be allowed to sit in a chair for the head; the experiment failed, for in less than half an hour the colonel of the shropshire yeomanry, master of hounds, and formerly officer in "the guards" was fast asleep. "no more of this," he said, when i roused him, "i'll stand to the bitter end," and he did, until the picture was completed. it is a strange fact, though, that military men stand less well than would be expected of them, and tire sooner. for instance, an officer whom i was painting, sent his "soldier servant" to stand in the uniform he was to wear in my portrait of him, for one employs a soldier in preference to an ordinary model, because they are invariably correct in their knowledge of a uniform and how to put it on. the man showed signs of nervousness, which did not surprise me, but when, after standing a very short while, he turned from a healthy pink to a deathly white, i recommended a rest and a walk in the fresh air. when he returned to the position again, he became faint, so i offered him brandy. this he refused on the grounds that he was a teetotaller, but as his paleness showed no signs of abating, i with difficulty persuaded him to take a little stimulant. it seemed to have the desired effect, for the blood circulated again, and i reassured him, and continued painting without further complications. this was not by any means my first experience, for on another occasion a very tall and powerfully built man, an ex-soldier and "chucker-out" at a music-hall, came for the same purpose, and after standing for a time, from sheer exhaustion had to give it up. but to return to my subject. when i was working for the _graphic_, a portrait in which i took much pleasure was that of millais. the sittings were most interesting, for in the course of conversation, i gained a considerable insight into his character, and gleaned much information as to his opinions, method of working, and views upon art. watts had been the idol of the royal academy students up till now, but millais was taking his place in their estimation, and although he was well to the front as a portrait painter, the enormous competition in this branch of art was scarcely evident yet. the time was approaching, however, when the art student had to consider how he could best live by painting. he was at first full of the noblest intentions, and would frequently exclaim, "art for art's sake; that's my motto ... none of your pot-boilers for me." unfortunately, the day for these very laudable sentiments was passing, and, when men were dependent on their profession, something else had to be thought of. hence the necessary study of portrait painting. i remember millais mentioned his belief in the pre-raphaelites and their influence upon the young artist; but he considered it important that the student should gradually abandon the influence for a more masterly method of painting and a freer brush. this versatile genius must have puzzled his adorers not a little by his erratic experiments in style; his emulations of reynolds in a modern portrait (of three ladies playing cards) were in direct contradiction to his previous work--the paint, i remember, was extremely thick, especially on the necks of the ladies. a portrait of irving followed the next year, painted quite thinly. the students were puzzled and distracted, for in the meantime they had all followed the previous lead, and were still painting necks in foundation white laid on without discretion. then millais astonished his coterie by painting "chill october" in his best manner. i called upon him once on a matter of advice and discovered him puzzling over his picture called "cherry ripe." something was wrong, and he could not place the fault, and he appealed to my "fresh eye" to find it. it occurred to me that something in the drawing of the head, which was covered with a mob-cap, was slightly out of drawing, and i called his attention to it. "you've hit it, my boy," he said. "that's just what i thought myself, but i was not quite certain." he paid me the great compliment of saying he had seen enough of my work to know he could safely ask my opinion, and i felt extremely flattered. when sir william cunliffe brooks commissioned him to paint the portrait of his daughter (the marchioness of huntly), a considerable stir was created in the art world when it became known that millais had received £ for the painting, for up till that time such a figure was unheard of for a modern portrait. sir william was delighted with the picture, but when he saw the completed portrait he was disappointed to find that his daughter's hands (which were most beautiful) were covered with gloves. he accordingly returned the picture, and expressed his desire that an alteration might be made and the hands shown in all their beauty. millais made a compromise by repainting one of the hands ungloved. holl had discarded his pathetic subjects for portraits, and surprised the art world with a vigorous canvas of the celebrated mezzotint engraver, samuel cousins, which was followed by an equally strong portrait of piatti the violoncello player. consequently, he became quite the vogue and was until his death completely occupied with commissions. i think that of his many successes the painting of lord spencer was perhaps his finest portrait. holman hunt (ruskin's ideal painter) had no following as a portrait painter; his portraits were hard, "tinny," and laboured, and became singularly unpleasant on a large canvas, although his subject pictures were conceived from a high standpoint, and for that reason will last. old george richmond was a highly accomplished draughtsman; many of his portraits in crayon were exquisite masterpieces,[ ] and most of the great men of the day (especially the clergy) were depicted at one time or another by his refined pencil. william richmond (now sir william), his son, inherited his father's talent but in a different manner; foremost in my memory stands out a portrait of lady hood. [illustration: mrs george reymond murray.] [illustration: a study.] [illustration: the hon. mrs adrian pollock.] ouless, the eminent portrait painter, like millais, was a jersey man, and both were highly successful students in their respective days at the r.a. schools. the painter of "the doctor," now sir luke fildes, exhibited a very beautiful portrait of his wife, which established him as a portrait painter at once, and it is unnecessary to say how many fine portraits he has painted since. lord leighton showed what refinement meant in his delineation of a beautiful woman's head, and although his method of painting was scarcely adapted to portraits, he showed great force in a head of richard burton, the traveller. when i was drawing leighton for the _graphic_ years ago, he amused me by saying:-- "every one has his prototype, and some people resemble animals. what do i remind you of?" when lord leighton compared his own head with that of a ram, i saw the resemblance at once: his hair curled like horns upon his forehead, and the general contour of his features was certainly reminiscent of that animal. i must not forget the late sir l. alma tadema, another subject painter, but one who did not often encroach upon the sphere of portraiture. when he did, i often traced a certain resemblance in his painting of the flesh to the marble he so perfectly expressed in his subject pictures. seymour lucas is, i consider, one of our few and consistent historical painters who can mingle portraiture successfully with his own art. of course, orchardson, pettie, and frank dicksee are big examples of aptitude in portrait painting by subject painters. nowadays, however, there is a new generation, and the average standard is in a marked way higher, although _great men_ naturally only crop up once in a way. to mention all the names of the good portrait painters would be a hopeless task, for there are too many. criticism would lead one into so many long lanes without any turnings, and would also involve the condemnation of some of the flights of the so-called art of the present day. of artists who are no longer with us, i should like to mention the late sir george reid, whose works are not sufficiently well known in london, but who was undoubtedly a great portrait painter. the late charles furse, who showed such power and who was gaining ground every day, stood out as one of our strongest portrait painters; unfortunately, death cut short his efforts. the late robert brough was fast becoming (if he had not already attained that position) another painter who deserves a place amongst our ablest men. but i must not forget to mention the president of the royal academy, sir e. poynter, who exhibits many portraits. when i was first beginning to paint, mr. peter graham very kindly lent me his studio, where i made my earliest studies in oil. one of my first sitters was the uncle of my old friend, edward nash, of rugby and 'varsity fame, who made the stipulation that i should arrange a looking-glass in a position to allow of his watching me paint and to prevent him falling asleep. i found the demand rather embarrassing, for i was not accustomed to attentions of this kind, being new to portraiture, and consequently feeling considerable restraint at being watched at my work. another early victim of my brush, thinking he had given me a sufficient number of sittings, suggested that i should promptly finish it, as his doctor had warned him that he was in danger of lead poisoning from the constant contact with oil colours; but when he was reassured on this point he allowed me to continue. during a visit to crewe, i painted more portraits. i remember my host, when a visitor called one day, said quite seriously:-- "mr. ward is getting on nicely with my picture. he is putting on the second coat of paint." another time i was staying at a country house in staffordshire, painting my host in hunting-dress. i came down early one morning to look at it, preparatory to a last sitting, when i discovered to my astonishment my host's dog sitting up begging before his master's picture. i think this one of the sincerest compliments i was ever paid. this was at the time when the oxford and cambridge boat race was about to be rowed. i am always interested in the chances of the rival crews; still, my interest was nothing out of the common, and there was no particular reason why one night i should have had a most vivid dream, in which i saw the two crews racing ... until the cambridge boat filled with water and swamped. the dream was most distinct, and i remembered it when i awoke, and related it at breakfast. my host's house was in a rather remote part of the country; and the london papers did not arrive until late. when they came, the first thing that struck my eye on opening the _daily telegraph_ was, "_swamping of the cambridge crew at practice._" when i became the owner of a studio myself, i was fortunate in my choice of a landlord. mr. augustus savile lumley had built the very fine studios in william street, lowndes square, on his return from a military and diplomatic career in europe. he was an artist, and was gifted in many ways, especially with great social abilities. for some time he was equerry to the duchess of teck, and he had been connected with the royal household for an indefinite period. during my acquaintance with him he became marshal of the ceremonies. he was considered a great authority on costume, and as such was continually in request when the prince of wales (and other notable hosts) contemplated entertaining on a large scale. in person he was fashionable and correct, a _beau_ of the old school, who affected a waist! after he was appointed marshal of the ceremonies, i recollect his tailor sent in an exorbitant bill for his uniform, which he very rightly refused to pay; and when his tailor sued him for the money, he brought an action and won his case. after mr. henry savile and lord savile had died, he inherited rufford abbey, and at his death mr. herman herkomer, the portrait painter, took his handsome studio in william street, where he had painted several portraits of the prince of wales, whose friendship he had enjoyed. during his travels and vicissitudes abroad, mr. augustus savile lumley had met many foreign artists of note, and when his studios were unoccupied, quite a coterie of foreigners gathered there. consequently, i had some interesting neighbours. john varley, mcclure hamilton, archibald stuart wortley, and john collier were amongst the artists who then occupied studios in the same building. archibald stuart wortley was accomplished in many ways. i made his acquaintance at the slade schools when we were both studying drawing, and when we met again at william street we soon became friends. i found him excellent company. it was just after his picture of "wharncliffe chase" had come back from exhibition at the royal academy, and he had completed a portrait of his sister (afterwards lady talbot) and one of lady wharncliffe, his aunt, that he started on his shooting pictures, which for some time he made a speciality of, and with which he succeeded so well. "the big pack," and "partridge shooting" were enormously popular, especially with sportsmen, who were delighted to find that one of the best shots in england could show equal dexterity with the brush in suggesting birds actually in flight. but eventually, anxiety to succeed as a portrait painter led him to give most of his time to this branch of art. amongst his best-known portraits were perhaps those of king edward vii., purdy, the gun-maker, and his own mother. he founded the society of portrait painters, consisting of fifty members, among whom were and now are some of the most eminent artists of the day. he was the first president of that institution, which two years ago became a royal one. under the presidency of j. j. shannon, r.a., i am glad to say it now thrives, and i had recently the honour to be on the hanging committee at the grafton galleries when the last annual exhibition was held. archie wortley was very versatile in his tastes, and probably too much so for the pursuance of a profession. outside that he was a social success, for he played the piano and sang, danced on the stage as a rival to vokes, was a clever mimic and _raconteur_, made an excellent after-dinner speech, and shot pigeons so well that in his match with carver (the champion) he tied. he was a keen fisherman and a good all-round sportsman. there were two things he could not and would not do, and they were, to get astride a horse or to walk for the sake of walking. two of my happiest holidays were spent with him and with his charming wife (formerly the beautiful miss nelly bromley) in an old manor house on the north coast of jersey, where he occupied his time painting or shooting geese at night on the ecrehon rocks, improving his garden, and felling trees. on the occasion of my first visit, he welcomed me with the remark:-- "you will get no frost or snow here, old chap--none of that weather that i know you left in london!" a morning or two after i was certainly amused to find his small son busily engaged in building up a snow man in the garden after breakfast, and when i jokingly reproached my friend for his former reassuring remarks upon the weather, he said:-- "well, i'm astounded. snow hasn't been seen on the island since heaven knows when!" his son, jack, who strongly resembles his father in features, and who was then a jolly little chap, distinguished himself in later life as a soldier, and comparatively recently married the daughter of mr. lionel phillips. "archie" came of a remarkable family; his younger brother is the right honourable charles stuart wortley, and general sir edward montagu stuart wortley was his cousin. the same relationship existed between him and the present lord montagu of beaulieu. in later years he was suddenly bitten with the idea that he had business abilities, and might make money. accordingly, he gave up his painting and spent all his time in the pursuit of business in the city, thinking he saw a way to make his fortune at the period of the "boom" following the south african war. unfortunately, the tide turned, and many speculators found themselves in a tight place--poor archie among them. he had by this time lost his connection as a portrait painter; everything seemed to go wrong; and over anxiety affected his nerves and health to such an extent that it gave way, and he never recovered from the shock. in a very short time, he succumbed to a fatal illness, deeply regretted by a large number of friends and acquaintances, for he was, to those who knew him, the best and the most loyal of friends. [illustration: "a midsummer night's dream." _drawn in _.] [illustration: grand prix. _presented to me by the commissioners of the turin exhibition, ._] when i vacated my studio to move into another, john collier took the lease of it. this was at the time i first became acquainted with him, when he had just returned from studying in munich. tadema was a great friend of his father, sir robert collier, the eminent lawyer who begged him--as a further lesson of instruction--to paint a picture from start to finish in the presence of his son. this the r.a. was induced to do. the painting was on a large canvas, from a female figure, and the title, if i remember rightly, was "the model." sir robert afterwards became the possessor of the picture. when the latter was created a peer, under the title of lord monkswell, he found more time for his pet occupation, viz., painting alpine scenery, of which he had such consummate knowledge. there is one amusing story that his wife used to tell of him, and that was her great difficulty in preventing him from using his best cambric handkerchiefs as painting rags; when she thought to prevent this extravagant habit by buying him common ones for that purpose, he invariably produced the latter (when at a dinner-party)--of course by mistake. john varley, a remarkably clever water-colour draughtsman and son of the eminent member of the "old water colour society" of that name, occupied a studio opposite mine, but, sadly enough, he contracted an illness at the time, from which he died. many of his pictures were painted in egypt, and were mostly of eastern scenery. the next occupant of this room was mr. mcclure hamilton, whose well-known portrait of mr. gladstone in his study was not only a fine piece of work, but a wonderful likeness. in addition to my fellow artists i had some very agreeable and interesting neighbours in the vicinity of william street, for general sir keith and lady fraser lived close by, while just opposite was the house of general sir charles fraser. all three were charming people and most hospitable. sir charles, the elder brother of sir keith, was not only a distinguished soldier and a v.c., but was very popular with the ladies; and, being a bachelor, he delighted in giving luncheon parties for them. on several occasions i was privileged to be invited. i never refused such invitations if i could help it, for it was delightful to meet the beautiful women who were always sure to be present. it was so characteristic of him to be constantly raising his hat in the park that i drew him (as i knew him) in this very act, for _vanity fair_. at a party given by mrs. millais, i saw a lady whom i thought one of the most beautiful women i had ever seen. i had the temerity to follow her from room to room to catch another glimpse of her exquisite features. i had heard of mrs. cornwallis west, but her beauty was even greater than i had imagined. i promptly gained an introduction, and found her, in addition, to be most fascinating and amusing. she sat to me for her portrait, during which time she kept me in fits of laughter. "professional beauty" was at this period a term commonly used, although frequently inappropriate to the ladies to whom it was applied, and photographers must have made a fortune by the exhibition of the photographs of these society ladies then in their windows. frank miles, a popular young artist of the day, whose drawings were published in the form of photographs of pretty heads of girls, which were to be seen then on the walls of every undergraduate's rooms, once said to me, "leslie, i know you like to see lovely faces. i have one of the most wonderful creatures i have ever seen coming to my studio. come, and i'll introduce you." at miles's studio in adelphi terrace the next day, i met mrs. langtry, who was then at the height of her beauty. to me her principal charm was that of expression, and the wonderful blue eyes which contrasted so strangely with her rich dark hair. her neck and shoulders were perfect, and i remember her extreme fascination of manner. another beauty who hailed from the island of jersey was mrs. rousby, whom i met first at sir james ferguson's (the surgeon). she came over to england with her husband, who was manager of the theatre at jersey. she acted in tom taylor's play _'twixt axe and crown_ in which she made a great success, chiefly through her attractive appearance. mr. frith (who was a relation of her husband, i believe) painted her portrait as she appeared in the play. her popularity was unbounded; one could hardly pass a tobacconist's shop without noticing the familiar features carved upon a meerschaum pipe; and her photographs were everywhere. i was constantly drawing her from memory and trying to represent her as truthfully as i could. during the completion of my oil painting of miss chappell (mrs. tom caley), the prince of wales visited mr. augustus lumley, to whom his royal highness was sitting, and mr. lumley, in the course of conversation, mentioned my name. the prince, with the tactful remembrance that distinguished him, recollected my name at once and expressed a wish to see my work. unfortunately, i was not in, and mr. lumley showed the prince round my studio. on the easel stood my portrait of miss chappell (who was then a very beautiful girl of about sixteen, and was afterwards just as handsome in her womanhood), and on the wall was pinned a decided caricature of h.r.h. the portrait, i was pleased to hear, was admired, the prince exclaiming, "what a pretty girl!" then he caught sight of the caricature of himself, and said, "what a beast of a thing!" accompanying their father were the young princes, who were amused by the various properties of the studio, which included an old-fashioned sword, whereupon one of the princes (so i was told afterwards), i think the present king george, drew it from its scabbard and attacked the lay figure. i was equally fortunate with my second portrait, having a very fine subject in lady shrewsbury, who in those days was always a charming hostess at shipley, where i spent many pleasant days. both these portraits were hung in the royal academy. some of my young subjects have revealed the most astonishing proclivities in the course of their sittings. i remember young mark sykes, who is now the popular member of parliament, came with his mother to sit to me, and to keep her son amused, lady sykes told him impromptu stories, which were delightfully imaginative and at the same time so clever. during one unguarded moment when i was drawing, i forgot to keep my young pickle under observation, and grew engrossed in lady sykes' narrative; pausing with the mahl stick in my hand (with which i had been keeping him in order) i listened to the story. in a trice my young friend snatched the mahl stick and whacked me on the head, effectively rousing me from my temporary interest in the story. i never heard a boy laugh with more satisfaction. many child sitters came to me then. there were three little children i was painting, and they, being motherless, were rather at the mercy of various maids and governesses. on the occasion of one visit to me, they had no one to escort them. consequently, the eldest, a girl of about eleven, arrived in a cab in charge of her two smaller sisters instead of the governess who usually kept them all three in order while i painted them. in the absence of this good lady, the two children behaved themselves uncommonly well, and i was able to paint them without interruption; but the child looking after them, having been in the studio about an hour, suddenly said tersely, "i'm going now ... i'm tired." then and there she carried off her charges with an air of great authority, ordered a cab, and was gone. being a child lover, and believing i was well able to control recalcitrant children, i was nevertheless unprepared for the behaviour of one little lady who came with her nurse to be painted. after two or three sittings, finding her somewhat weary, i thought to encourage her by showing her the portrait. "now," i began, with the best intentions, "if you'll be very good and sit _very_ still, i'll show you after this sitting what i've done." i kept my promise and lowered the oil painting which was quite wet, so that she might view it with greater ease. "i told mummie," she began, "i never wanted to come and sit for my picture," and, making a quick movement, carefully obliterated the whole of my work. my astonishment and chagrin were considerable, but, after severe corrections at home, the little girl returned to apologize and finish her sittings, and i completed the picture. one time, when i was visiting mr. and mrs. coope at brentwood, they commissioned me to paint two of their daughters; the late mrs. edward ponsonby and miss coope also partly completed a portrait of old mr. coope, but gave him up in despair, and he, upon seeing my bewilderment, sympathetically remarked, "the only artist who, had he lived now, could have painted me would have been franz hals." but that was before sargent's day. my hostess, mrs. coope, a very handsome and charming old lady, wrote to me some time after my return to ask me to come down and make a drawing of her little grandchildren, who were staying with her then. when i arrived, i was shown into the nursery and introduced to a little baby, who was entirely occupied with crawling on the floor. after pursuing my erratic model all over the room in hopes of catching her at a happy moment, and failing hopelessly in my quest, i gave up, and was informed by the fond grandparent-- "she'll never sit still ... your only chance is to crawl on the floor after her with your pencil and paper, and if you want to arrest her attention, the only thing is to buzz like a bee." so i buzzed, found the ruse successful, and made the sketch, which was very well received. i read of the death of mrs. georgina weldon the other day, at the age of seventy-seven. i recalled the days when she sat to me for the drawing i made of her in _vanity fair_. mrs. weldon was a very handsome and extraordinary woman, her life being chiefly spent in fighting law cases in the courts. she was reputed to know more law (especially the law of libel) than many barristers who had long been engaged in practice, and she conducted her cases with great skill and eloquence, though not often with success, especially in later years, when she seemed to become almost a monomaniac upon legal matters. some eight years after marriage, mrs. weldon formed a design for teaching and training, especially in music, a number of friendless orphans. she started her scheme in at tavistock house (once the residence of charles dickens), and with her husband's consent, began her philanthropic project with a number of the poorest and youngest children. many leading musicians of the day became associated with her--mr. henry leslie, m. rivière, and m. gounod among them. some of her friends and relatives could not understand why mrs. weldon gave up her time and money to a work which they viewed with disfavour, and their disapproval deepened when she developed an interest in spiritualism. "one night," says the _times_, "she was waited upon by two strangers of professed benevolent disposition, who were afterwards proved to be medical men on a visit of inspection (the keepers of a private asylum); they tried to force a way into her house and carry her off as a lunatic under an order of detention. she baffled them and escaped." mrs. weldon's first attempt to justify herself was by proceedings against dr. forbes winslow, in whose private asylum it had been intended to place her. baron huddleston, however, who heard the case, non-suited her, ruling that the statute of was a defence, and declined to allow the case to go to the jury. from this finding the divisional court subsequently dissented. mrs. weldon gained the first-fruits of her long battle in july, , when, after a ten days' trial, she gained a verdict for £ damages against dr. semple, who had signed the certificate of lunacy, and who was one of the two "benevolent strangers." mrs. weldon afterwards got a verdict against dr. forbes winslow for £ damages. a verdict for a like amount had been given in her favour in may in an action against the _london figaro_. in march, , she was sentenced to six months' imprisonment without hard labour, for a libel upon m. rivière in certain reflections--made in her publication "social salvation"--upon his career before he came to england. in may of the same year coming from prison to the court under a writ of _habeas corpus_, she was awarded, by a jury sitting at the middlesex sessions court to assess damages, a verdict of £ , against the composer of _faust_, for a series of libels upon her published in various french papers. in all her actions mrs. weldon conducted her own case with a brilliance that was remarkable, as was her english, which was perfectly beautiful; but her reputation of fearlessness where the law was concerned made one very careful of repeating in her presence any casual remark that might lead to trouble. during the time she sat to me i remember one particular day especially, when she arrived in high dudgeon, complaining bitterly of a housekeeper in another studio into which she had by mistake been shown. this lady had been impolite, and had not treated her with the respect due to her position; and for this slight she was prepared to sign a "round robin" to get rid of the woman and persuade the other tenants to help her. not paying much attention to the story, although i regretted any trouble that had occurred, i did not realize the identity of the offending "woman," until, going into my mother's studio, she informed me that on no account did she want to see mrs. weldon, whose voice she had now identified. but, as mrs. weldon was leaving, my mother inadvertently ran into her and was recognized. having determined to have a day _en negligée_, and to spend her time tearing up an accumulation of old letters, my mother had made arrangements not to be in to any models or visitors; her annoyance was considerable when mrs. weldon knocked at her door in mistake for mine, and without looking twice to distinguish her visitor, she had informed her that she did not require any models that day. after explanations and apologies had been exchanged on either side, peace was restored, as, incidentally, was my visitor's equanimity. mrs. weldon was engaged at this period to sing at the london pavilion at a very handsome salary. on one of these occasions, when i went to hear her, i amused myself during an interval with making a caricature of the conductor of the orchestra; when i had completed the drawing, i noticed that my temporary model had observed my procedure, and a moment later the attendant handed me a little piece of paper on which was drawn a caricature of myself! and a note requesting me to send my drawing for his inspection--which i did. when mrs. weldon went to brighton, she sent me a charming letter asking me to go down there, but at the moment i was a little disconcerted by the extreme publicity surrounding her movements, and did not take advantage of her kind invitation. i remember her saying to me, "they call me mad, and i suppose everybody is mad on some point. my mania is vanity--i love compliments--as long as you flatter me i shall be your best friend." miss christabel pankhurst, whom (as another lady looming largely in the eye of the public) i drew for _vanity fair_, made quite an attractive cartoon for that paper. she was a very good model, with most agreeable manners. i studied her first at the queen's hall, where her windmill-like gestures attracted my notice first. her brilliant colouring and clear voice were also characteristic. i did not discuss the subject in which she was so absorbed, but limited my conversations to generalities, lest by adverse criticism i might disturb the charm of expression i found in her face. [illustration: admiral sir compton domville, .] [illustration: miss christabel pankhurst, .] chapter viii my clubs the arts club.--mrs. frith's funeral.--the sympathetic waiter.--swinburne.--whistler.--edmund yates.--the orleans club.--sir george wombwell.--"hughie" drummond.--"fatty" coleman.--lady meux.--the prize fighter and her nephew.--the curate.--the theobald's tiger.--whistler and his pictures.-- charles brookfield.--mrs. brookfield.--the lotus club.--kate vaughan.--nellie farren.--the lyric club.--the gallery club. --some members.--the jockey club stand.--my plunge on the turf.--the beefsteak club.--toole and irving.--the fielding club.--archie wortley.--charles keene.--the amateur pantomime. --some of the caste.--corney grain.--a night on ebury bridge. --the punch bowl club.--oliver wendell holmes.--lord houghton and the herring. "the pleasantest society is that where the members feel a warm respect for one another."--_goethe_. it was in that my parents left london and returned to windsor, and i being obliged to remain in town, took rooms in connaught street, and a studio in william street, lowndes square. i also joined the arts club, hanover square, and finding that dining alone had its drawbacks, especially after the delightful family life at home, i frequently used my club as a more sociable place to have my meals in. there was also a pearl among waiters whose sympathetic and also clairvoyant sense enabled him to tell by one's expression exactly what one wanted. if one came in looking fit he would say perhaps, "ah, yes! i think so-and-so to-day," or if one came in jaded and weary, he would wheedle one into a chair and say in tactful tones, just tinged with sadness, "leave it to me, sir." but if simultaneously another member burst in with hilarious mood and cried, "now then, shave, what have you for dinner?" the obliging creature would be waiting for him with a bright reflection of his mood and suggest some quite appropriate and savoury dish. shave was my mainstay in many a dark hour. i shall always remember the only time he disappointed me. i had been to my godmother's funeral, and feeling tired--the black coaches and all the inevitable solemnity of death had oppressed me--when arriving at the door of my club, i saw a very funereal looking carriage outside the door, which reminded me very forcibly of the scene i had just left. throwing off the growing feeling of depression, i bethought me of my lunch, and, consoled with the remembrance of the coming tact of my attendant waiter, i walked quickly into the club. not seeing him, i said to the hall porter, "where's shave?" "he's in that carriage, sir!" replied the man. "at least, 'is corpse is." this was the finishing touch! i had imagined men might come and go--but that poor shave would go on for ever. i discovered on inquiring later that the sudden death was due to suicide after depression resulting from some misunderstanding which i did not inquire into, which must have affected his brain. i belonged to the club shortly after swinburne had resigned his membership, and the following story was repeated to me. it seems that he had spent an evening in the club; and he was about to leave when, selecting what he thought was his hat from amongst the many, he felt he had inadvertently mistaken another for his own. replacing it, he tried again. several times he repeated the process of trying on in hopes of finding the right hat, but all in vain. growing excited, he began to try on indiscriminately, without success; then, finding he had lost his hat, he lost his head, and dashed the offending hats to the ground in turn. at last, after a grand _finale_ of destruction, he strode hatless from the club, leaving devastation behind him. whistler once came searching for _his_ opera hat. i was comfortably ensconced, and did not assist him. finally, roused by his persistent search, i got up to help, and found to my chagrin that i had been sitting on the hat, and that, in so doing, i had ruined the springs and rendered it useless. he put it on, nevertheless, and although the effect was "amazing" (his favourite expression), jimmy accepted my apologies most good-humouredly and philosophically. one of the occasions of note at the club was an annual fish dinner held at the "old ship," greenwich, but when that custom ceased the dinner took place at the club itself. it was at one of these festivities that edmund yates, who had been very bitter against me previously in his paper, made, i remember, a very kindly allusion to myself. i had caricatured him, as he thought, with intent to hurt his feelings; and he had publicly--and very unjustly--accused me of artistic snobbery. he had said that i was in the habit of caricaturing only those who were socially unimportant, and flattering noble lords; but at this dinner i was sitting almost opposite him, and when he rose to reply to a toast, he endeavoured to propitiate me by referring to himself as "portly, but not quite so portly as the artist of _vanity fair_ had depicted him." this i understood to be a tentative offering of the olive branch. later, when in prison for libel, he wrote his reminiscences, in which he alluded in a more than friendly manner to some drawings i had done for him in earlier days to illustrate lectures that he delivered in america on dickens and thackeray. the arts club numbered some very distinguished men among its numbers. when i belonged, val prinsep, marcus stone, phené spiers, louis fagan, pellegrini, archibald forbes, tenniel, dr. buzzard, marks, and tadema were frequenters of the club, as also was charles keene, who combined an air of the sixteenth century very successfully with his idea of modern dress. keene used to smoke a clay pipe which was both becoming and in keeping. these clays, of which he had a continual supply, were among a number found in the thames, where they had probably been buried at some time, unless, perhaps, a pipe factory had existed in old days on the banks of the river. another prominent member, john tenniel, (so linley sambourne told me) had never seen either dizzy or gladstone in the flesh till years after his earlier cartoons of them appeared in _punch_. it may be also new to my reader that sambourne gave the nucleus of the idea for his famous cartoon "dropping the pilot" at one of the weekly dinners of the staff, the original drawing of which, i believe, is in the possession of lord rosebery. when i left connaught street and went to live on the other side of the park, i became a member of the orleans club, and enjoyed the then unique advantage of belonging to one where ladies were permitted to dine. here i made many pleasant acquaintances and spent a good time. [illustration: the beefsteak club. _the clubroom occupied from to ._] shortly after i joined the club a branch was opened at the orleans house, twickenham; but, although it was a delightful place to go to in the long summer days, and many a good cricket match was played there, the attendance each season grew smaller until the club was forced to close. i believe to-day the little orleans in king street, st. james', continues to enjoy a considerable reputation for good food and fellowship. the late veteran sir george wombwell, a constant attendant, who was known to be one of the smartest figures in london, and was always immaculately dressed, unfortunately spilt one evening some coffee down his shirt front, thereby spoiling his appearance for the supper he was giving that same evening. being much concerned, and as i was in the club at the time, he consulted me as to what was best to be done. it was too late to go home to change, he remarked. i thought a little. what about billiard chalk? no, it wouldn't be sufficiently permanent. then, as luck would have it, i remembered there was a tube of chinese white in the pocket of my overcoat, so with this i completely eradicated the stains. sir george was so pleased with my success as a shirt restorer that he invited me to his supper. at this period i paid occasional visits to theobald's park. on one of these, while sir henry meux was away in scotland, lady meux was entertaining a few guests previous to leaving england. an idea struck her before the party broke up, and she suggested a little farewell dinner and a theatre afterwards in town. "where had we better dine?" she questioned. "do any of you belong to the orleans club?" i was silent on purpose, but a tactless man at once said, "leslie ward's the man; he's a member," so i knew i was "in for it," and as i had received much hospitality at theobald's, and as i was aware of no rule that would interfere with our arrangement, beyond the one which prohibited the introduction of actresses, i acquiesced. "capital," said lady meux, "we will dine there and i will stand the dinner." on the following day, upon arriving in town i hurried to the orleans club. there i ordered a table to be ready for dinner in the private room that evening, and to be nicely decorated with flowers. when my lady guest arrived with her small party, which included a parson, i was requested in the usual way to write their names in the visitors' book. after this was done, we proceeded to the private dining-room; but "my lady," to my utmost astonishment, with a look of disgust on her face turned to the door, saying-- "this won't do! we will dine in the public room." fortunately, as it was august, that was quite empty, so we dined in comfort, having the room to ourselves. a few days after, i received a letter from the club, saying that the committee had met and considered that i should be asked to take my name off the books immediately. i then wrote explaining that i was quite ignorant of a rule which it seems had been (so innocently) violated when i introduced my guest to the club. i received a reply written in quite a friendly spirit, saying they had taken my letter into consideration, and that i was reinstated. lady meux was a hero-worshipper, and one of her peculiarities, which in later years almost amounted to a mania, was the desire to leave her property to a hero. her difficulty in making a selection must have been great. the popular generals or naval men who had distinguished themselves held very high places in her esteem. her sporting instinct, which was very strong, was sometimes carried to extremes; for instance, she once wished to test the courage of a nephew of her husband's who was staying in her house, and engaged a professor in the gentle art of prize-fighting to come down and try the boy. the man, by way of a preliminary, knocked the boy about a little, which did not satisfy lady meux, who urged the prize-fighter on to harder blows. when the boy's blood began to flow, she was delighted, and considered the ordeal was making a man of him; he made a very plucky stand against his professional antagonist, and when his strength was just at its ebb, the thoughtful lady let him off, and immediately gave him a handsome present for the pluck he had shown. on another occasion, a curate who depended upon her for the living on her estate, was cruelly persuaded to allow himself to be used as a sort of human firework display. he took his torture very philosophically, and was first tied up in tarpaulin from head to foot, and then covered with every imaginable kind of cracker, a large catherine wheel forming a centre piece to complete the scheme. when the fun began, he jerked and jumped, while the various fireworks ignited and exploded with terrific effect. afterwards, refreshment was administered, and the company were so pleased at the courage he had shown that the men asked him at once to come and have a drink with them. actually, lady meux was a kind-hearted and intelligent woman in her way; she used to organize "tea-fights" for the village children, and many acts of a generous nature are to be attributed to her; although perhaps her method of bestowing her gifts was sometimes a trifle eccentric. i was invited to stay at theobald's park with a sporting acquaintance. the attractions of the surroundings of this country house were somewhat unusual by reason of its menagerie, which contained a fine collection of animals, including a valuable tiger, and a museum full of old roman curios, mummies, and innumerable curiosities, collected by sir henry meux, who was himself a connoisseur of antiquities. we arrived, i remember, in advance of the rest of the house party, and that evening, as we drank our coffee, our hostess told us rather an uncanny story of a burglary which had happened shortly before. the man had been arrested and was "doing time." (by the way, lady meux visited his wife and befriended her during his imprisonment.) the next evening we were sitting in the billiard room, when we were disturbed by the loud barking of a dog. "what's the matter, i wonder?" said my friend, as the noise didn't cease. a moment later, a great roar was heard, followed by most extraordinary sounds, then on the top of this came the firing of a gun, then a trampling and uproar, after which followed a volley of shots, and immediately a sound as if every animal of the zoo had broken loose, the monkeys screaming and chattering above the trumpeting of the elephant and the growls of the bear. we jumped to our feet; my friend was horrified, and lady meux shrieked: "there are the burglars!" and fled upstairs. abandoning our game of billiards, we prepared to seek the scene from which such strange sounds were coming, when a footman appeared and informed us that the tiger had got loose and had mauled the gardener's boy. "i have orders," he said, "to turn out the lights, lock the doors, and forbid any one to go outside." "how ridiculous!" said my friend. "i've had considerable experience with tigers in india ... those orders are absurd ... turn up the lights at once." "no, sir; i daren't," answered the man. a moment later, the gardener appeared with his clothing torn and his arm all over blood. "i've shot the tiger between the eyes," he said, "and effectually." we were rather relieved, and after some instructions as to his somewhat severe wound, finding we could be of no service, we prepared to go to bed, when our hostess suddenly turned up in rather a melodramatic looking boudoir gown, her hair dishevelled, and her face white as death. we went up to her (as she paused in the doorway, with her hand on her heart, she appeared to be suffering), and told her, thinking to reassure her, that the tiger had been shot by the gardener while mauling his son. when she realized the significance of our words, she gave way to a frenzy of anger. "what! you don't mean to say that horrible man has shot the dear tiger that sir henry paid so much for! if he knew, he would no longer keep him in his service--i shall dismiss him at once!" and with a final burst of anger, she departed in a fit of hysterics. when lady meux had gone, my friend, who was awfully upset, broke into anger. "what a heartless woman!" he said. "why, the poor chap ought to be well rewarded for his pluck, instead of which he will be dismissed. what a damned shame!" at that moment the footman entered again. "perhaps you'd like to know, sir," he announced, "the boy is still alive, and not so seriously hurt as we first thought." we were somewhat relieved by this news, and as the lights were out we could not see to play billiards any longer, so we managed to grope round and find some little refreshment and go to bed. the next morning, as i was dressing i heard a voice outside calling my name. looking into the garden, i saw my friend, whose normal ruddy colour had changed to a most deathly white. "what's the matter?" i cried. in a hoarse voice he besought me to come down, which i did. taking me to the managerie, he showed me the general scene of destruction; bushes had been trampled down, some torn up by the roots, and everywhere the signs of a great struggle met the eye. as we walked, he told me how, going to the tiger's cage, he had looked for the body. seeing nothing but the broken bars, he looked into the sleeping compartment where a live tiger had sprung at his face, which he had withdrawn in the very nick of time. we were very puzzled by the fact that the animal was alive and apparently unharmed, and as we paced up and down by the cage, we tried to account for the tiger's reappearance in the sleeping compartment. a reporter appeared a little later on behalf of the local paper, but was ordered off the premises rather peremptorily. as we walked, a groom accosted us, who informed us that he was not one of the regular servants, but an odd man from newmarket. "i don't 'arf like it," he began. "what do you mean?" replied my friend. "t'aint all right, you bet," he said, with a wink. after some explanations, it transpired that the groom was trying to tell us that we had been hoaxed, and the gardener's boy was as well as we were and everybody concerned. i could not help laughing when i realized how completely we had been taken in. the elephant, the dogs, and all the menagerie, including the parrots, had been produced to make the uproar and trample down the bushes. the gardener had attended to the shooting, and all the servants were in the plot, and each had been carefully rehearsed (under threat of dismissal) by their mistress for the practical joke played upon her guest. the reporter, i may add, was the _chef_ in disguise. when i saw lady meux, who was pretending to be too ill and upset (owing to the shock to her nerves) to come down, i congratulated her upon her scheme, for i could not but admire the extraordinarily clever acting she had displayed for the furthering of her plot; the tears, the stage hysterics, and the way she had worked herself up into a frenzy until i could not tell whether it was assumed or real, were all marvellously clever. but when i asked her the reason of her plan, she told me her object was to frighten our friend, who was becoming addicted to the habit of taking more alcohol than was good for him, and by dint of doing so, she hoped to startle him into reconsidering his life, and by the means of a good shock, awaken his power of resistance to what was becoming a steady habit. i never discovered what our friend thought, and what the result was, but i know he was really frightened. as well as her leanings in the direction of warrior heroes, lady meux had a keen sense of humour; she wished me to caricature one of the guests who arrived in the house-party after the tiger affair. one evening i was inspired, and did a really funny caricature of him, and thinking she would be pleased with it, as a surprise i placed it on the mantelpiece, hoping she would see it when she came down to dinner. as fate would have it, my subject came in first; and when i arrived a little later, it had gone, so i asked him if he had seen a caricature of himself that i had done at my hostess' special request; as it was not ill-natured, i had no hesitation in referring to it before him. "oh," he answered grimly. "i've put it where it deserved to go--in the fire!" my friend, charles h. f. brookfield, was lunching with whistler one day, when the artist complained of the scarcity of money and commissions, and brookfield, remembering lady meux had said she would like her portrait painted, said, "cheer up, jimmy; i've an idea." with his usual cleverness and tact, he persuaded the lady that here was a genius waiting to do her justice, and the affair was arranged. when whistler saw lady meux in her pink satin, he was certainly enchanted, but her sables inspired him with a desire to paint her again, and her diamonds enhanced another dress so greatly that his enthusiasm grew keener still, and with great skill he persuaded his sitter to allow him to embark upon three pictures or even more. brookfield was so amused at the progress of the pictures which whistler painted at the same time, that he (brookfield) made a clever little sketch and caricature of the artist, his hair flying about in his wild enthusiasm, attacking the pictures with an enormously long brush. two or three years ago, when some of whistler's sketches were up for auction, this little drawing was sold at christie's as a genuine whistler for twenty pounds. a host of amusing stories come to me with the mention of brookfield, some of which he told me himself with an incomparable drollery that was entirely typical of the man, and others which are told of him by his friends. when he contemplated going upon the stage as a young man, many of his friends remonstrated with him and endeavoured to persuade him to abandon his decision. a near relation also wrote begging him not to embark upon such a career, terminating his letter with a final appeal, "i beg of you," he wrote, "not to go upon the stage--in the name of christ." "i have no intention of acting under any other name but my own," wrote the irrepressible young man in return. when he had been upon the stage some time, he met by chance one of the friends who had ranged himself on the side of the opposers. "hullo, charlie," he said, rather condescendingly. "still--er--on the stage?" "oh yes," replied our friend. "and you--still in the commons?" i am indebted to a mutual friend, mr. william elliot, for the following story of brookfield in later years. my friend met him one day with his wife in jermyn street; the next time he saw him brookfield remarked-- "it was so lucky i met you the other day, for it enabled me to tell my wife something i have always been too shy to tell her before--that i have become a catholic." (mrs. brookfield had always been a papist.) "what nonsense," replied my friend. "how could my meeting you and your wife start you on a confession of that nature?" "very simple," said "brooks." "the moment you had gone i said to ruth, 'what a pleasure it is to meet willie elliot--always the same--bright and agreeable. all these years that i have known him i have only one thing against him!' "'what is that?' said mrs. brookfield. "'he's a heretic!'" replied "brooks." a very typical story is told of how he wrote to the editor of _the lancet_ suggesting that they should publish a christmas number, and offering to write a humorous story entitled "my first post-mortem!" mrs. c. h. e. brookfield is the author of several interesting books, and i must not forget to mention mrs. brookfield, the mother of my friend, whose personality and exquisite charm of manner were so delightful. i had not the pleasure of her acquaintance in earlier days, but, judging from portraits, she must have been extremely beautiful, although it is strange that she should have been the original of heroines in thackeray's novels, the meek and mild "amelia" of "vanity fair" among them. the lotus club was now a novelty, and i joined it, as did several of my friends; and many an amusing evening was spent there. the representatives of the gaiety of that day, nellie farren, kate vaughan, kate munroe, and amalia were among the attractive actresses who frequented the club. there were dances twice a week, and i well remember dancing with nellie farren, who was the best waltzer of them all. kate vaughan was delightful, but not such a good partner, although, of course, her stage dancing was the absolute "poetry of motion." many were the pleasant hours i spent at that jolly club--and i was young. in the beefsteak club was founded by archibald stuart wortley. i was elected one of the original members. as a young man, i appreciated the beefsteak club for what it was then--a gay and jolly place, more or less bohemian. in later bachelor days much of my time in the evenings was spent there, and my constant attendance brought me into contact with many of the most interesting and entertaining men of the day. being a one-room club and also restricted to three hundred members (the admittance of visitors being prohibited), it was always unique, the conversation varying according to the different groups sitting side by side at the dinner-table, and the members being selected pretty equally from sailors, soldiers, actors, diplomats, legislators, sporting men, artistic and literary men, and so on. at one period, friday nights were especially popular, and i think that was because a member named craigie (a retired army man) made a point of never missing them. he was a great favourite with all, invariably occupied the same seat, and by report missed only one friday evening during his membership. i remember that upon entering the beefsteak club one saturday evening, i was shown the chair in which craigie always sat. the seat was in ribbons. it seems that on the only occasion that he was absent from his place on a friday a large stag's head fell plump on to it, piercing it through and through. what luck for our friend! it was a _ _ pointer, and happened on a _friday_ night too, so the tables were turned against the old superstition. craigie's cheery laugh has, i regret to say, long been missed. now he is no more, so friday nights have lost their special interest. the beefsteak is no longer the same late "sitting up" club, although it still remains delightful, and while we regret the absence of the retired editor of _punch_ (sir francis burnand), we hail the frequent appearance of his successor (sir owen seaman). just before my marriage, i was very much gratified by the extremely kind way in which my friends "clubbed" together and presented me with a handsome canteen of silver (quite an unprecedented occurrence, by the way, in the beefsteak club). the presentation on that occasion was made by comyns carr, who made one of his very appropriate and humorous speeches. a friend writes to me, "do you remember in your reply to carr's speech you started on a quotation from shakespeare, 'froze up,' and biron got the book and read the passage? it was the end of 'much ado,' where benedick says, 'a college of wit-crackers cannot flout me out of my humour. dost thou think i care for a satire or an epigram?... in brief since i do purpose to marry i will think nothing to any purpose the world can say against it,'--a happy quotation. wit-cracker for joe carr was admirably apt." i was also much indebted to my friend frederick post for his pains in helping to select the gift. the premises previous to this were in king william street, over toole's theatre, which was pulled down when the buildings of charing cross hospital were extended. by an odd series of coincidences, all my addresses seem to be either in a king or a william street, or the two combined. they were-- my studio                       william street, lowndes square. orleans club                    king street, st. james. fielding club                   king street, covent garden. beefsteak club                  king william street, strand. my insurance office             king street, city. _vanity fair_ offices   (at one time)                 king william street. one evening at the beefsteak club, i watched george grossmith chaffing corney grain. "oh, dick," he was saying, pointing a derisive finger at dick's waistcoat, "you're putting it on!" "you little whipper-snapper, how dare you!" said corney grain, smiling down at his friend. when they had gone, it amused me to sit down at the writing table and make a quick caricature while they were fresh in my mind. a member, observing my preoccupation, jokingly asked me why i was so busy, and if i usually spent so long over my correspondence. whereupon i showed him the drawing which represented the two humorists as i had watched them, a tall corney grain waving aside with a fat and expansive hand, a minute and impish grossmith. he handed it round to the members gathered by the fire, who, having seen the two men in a similar position shortly before, were much amused. "if i were you i'd draw it larger and have it reproduced--it's bound to be popular," he remarked. taking his advice i went home and sat up all night making a more careful drawing from my sketch, which i elaborated with colour afterwards. i offered the drawing to _vanity fair_ which, under the rule of a temporary editor (in the absence of gibson bowles) was refused. this gave me an opportunity of selling it privately to rudolph lehmann, who paid me twice as much as a previous bidder had offered for it. i had several reproductions made by the autotype company which i coloured myself, and eventually was £ in pocket. i have an autograph book full of the signatures and letters of distinguished people who became owners of these prints, including those of king edward and the dukes of edinburgh and teck. thus i had to thank the short-sighted editor for my success. i quote the following from george grossmith's amusing reminiscences, "piano & i." "i allude to the permission by mr. leslie ward, son of e. m. ward, r.a., the famous artist, to publish the portrait which appears in this book. most people are under the impression that it was one of the cartoons in _vanity fair_--it was nothing of the sort. it was a private enterprise of 'spy.' the first issue was tinted by the artist, signed by him and by corney grain and myself. those copies are now worth twenty or thirty times their original value. the origin of the picture was this. dick grain and i were most formidable rivals and most intimate friends. hostesses during the london season secured one or the other of us. the following words are not absolutely verbatim, but as nearly as possible as i can get to the fact. "_mrs. jones:_ 'are you coming to my party next wednesday, mrs. smith, to hear corney grain?' "_mrs. smith:_ 'indeed i am, and i sincerely hope you are coming to my party on thursday to hear george grossmith. oh, mrs. robinson, how are you ... etc.' "_mrs. robinson:_ 'delighted to meet you both. are you coming to my afternoon on saturday?' "_mrs. smith and mrs. jones, together:_ 'indeed we are, who have you got?' "_mrs. robinson:_ 'oh, i have engaged corney grain and george grossmith!'" [illustration: george grossmith. corney grain. "_gee gee_." .] corney grain grew so weary of signing my cartoon, which was sent him by persistent admirers, that he charged ten shillings and sixpence for every print upon which he placed his autograph, and the proceeds went, i believe, to the actors' benevolent fund. the coloured copies were frequently mistaken for the original drawing, and at the edmund yates sale one of the reproductions fetched £ owing to that mistaken impression. corney grain, in return for my caricature, had a friendly revenge in some verses which he sent to my mother on the back of a new year card. i produce them here with apologies for myself-- lines on leslie. if ever he manages to catch a train, it goes where he doesn't want to go. it starts at three or--thereabouts, but--really--he doesn't quite know. if he's due down south, he's up in the north, say in scotland--eating porridge-- if he's bound for chester--or bangor--say, you'll find him safe in norwich. at junctions he's always left behind, for he quite forgets to change, and he's shunted into sidings dark-- "i thought 'twas rather strange!" refrain. 'twill constant change afford to travel with leslie ward, wherever he may roam, tho' he's quite at home, he's always all abroad. if he leaves the train for a cup of tea, the train goes on without him; he's left his ticket and purse in the rack, and he hasn't a penny about him. he forgets the name of his hotel, tho' he's often stayed there before, he thinks it's the lion or the antelope, or the something horse or boar. but he's sure it's the name of an animal, that you sometimes see at the zoo! which gives you a pretty wide field of choice from a rat to a kangaroo! refrain as before. if he's due on a visit on monday, say, his coat is being repaired! on tuesday he's awfully sorry, you know, but his shirts weren't properly aired. on wednesday he was going to start, but he'd lost his mother's dog! on thursday he really meant to come, but he lost his way--in a fog! on friday the cab was a_t the door_! but his boots would not come on-- but on saturday he _does_ arrive-- and--finds all the family gone!! refrain as before. _r. corney grain._ i am afraid there is something of truth lurking in that poem, for i am reminded to tell a story against myself. one bitterly cold winter's night i was returning from my club, i arrived at my front door, and failed to find my bunch of keys. i searched my pockets without success, and at last assured that i was indeed unable to get in, i retraced my steps and wondered in the meantime what i should do. it was one-thirty on a winter's morning, i was in dress clothes, and my feet becoming colder and colder in the thin pumps that but half protected them; snow lay upon the ground and the outlook was the reverse of inviting. i bethought me of the grosvenor hotel, so hurrying back, i called in there and explained the situation to the porter, who informed me that a bed there for the night was impossible as i had no luggage with me. i expostulated and offered to send for my clothes in the morning, but he refused to admit me. my feelings as i paddled back in the slush in the direction of my studio were unmentionable, especially as i discovered i had only a half-crown in my pocket. under my arm i held the christmas number of _vanity fair_ which seemed to grow heavier and heavier, and a fine sleet began to fall. presently i met a policeman to whom i appealed in my trouble. he was very sympathetic, and appeared to have hopes of obtaining shelter for me. "anything will do," i said, shivering with cold. "have you a cell vacant at the station? i'd rather spend the night there than walking about in the snow." he smiled. "oh," he said, "there's a mate of mine who lives close by." we found the house and rang the bell. presently the wife appeared at the window and called out, "what on earth do you want waking me up this time of the night?" the constable began to explain, but the snow and the sleet came with an icy blast, and with a shudder the woman shut the window with a bang that had an air of finality about it. we turned away (i was disconsolate), and walked along the road undecided, until we came to a night-watchman's shanty, where i saw the welcome glow of a fire and an old man in occupation. the policeman, who was evidently a man of resource, said:-- "i've an idea--we'll go to that chap and perhaps he'll put you up for a while." he explained my sad case to the night-watchman, who was only too glad to admit me to a share of his hut and fire; endeavouring to make me quite comfortable, he piled sacks of cement by the fire and arranged a coat for my eider-down, which was white with cement, as was everything in the place. in spite of my discomfort, i longed to sleep, but my queer old host, excited perhaps at the unexpected advent of a nocturnal visitor, embarked upon a stream of conversation of his former life spent in the bush. it seemed to show a distinct ingratitude to sleep, and i tried to listen, but the flow of talk lulled me, and in spite of myself i fell into a deep slumber. it seemed only a few minutes after, when he woke me and informed me that it was time to turn out and six o'clock. i rose, and putting my hand into my waistcoat pocket with the intention of rewarding the watchman for his kindness--_i found my latch key!_ afterwards i endeavoured to persuade my quondam acquaintance to accept the remuneration of my only half-crown, but he refused it, saying, "keep it, sir; you may want it, for a cab," so i presented him with the bulky christmas number of _vanity fair_. going by the next evening, i looked into his shanty to give him his tip, and found him deeply engrossed in the volume, and, on close scrutiny, found he was not reading indiscriminately, but beginning at the beginning (as one would a novel), preparatory to going right through, and when i asked him if the literature was to his taste, he said-- "oh, sir; i've only got to the fifth page!" i have always felt a trifle embarrassed over the latch-key story, especially when charlie brookfield used to tell it at the club with embellishments of a witty order. an old member of the club was rather given (owing to loss of memory) to telling the same story rather too often, but as he was at the end of his life and had been so popular, few avoided him, remembering his brighter days. up to the last he was courtly and charming, but, after telling a story, he would explain: "that reminds me of another story!" whereupon he would repeat in exactly the same words the one he had just told. that recalls an only half-intentional score of mine off brookfield. brooks had one day a new audience, and was proceeding to regale it with lively tales. before beginning he said to me, "don't you listen; you know all my stories." now he _did_ tell some that i knew; but his comic chagrin was tremendous when, meaning really to make an inquiry, and only slyly to insinuate my foreknowledge, said: "hullo, brooks; have you seen sir henry lately?" about this time the fielding club opened, and was ably managed. a good number of interesting men belonged, including sir edward lawson, montagu williams, irving, serjeant ballantyne, toole, and hosts of others. toole used to come to the club and play cards; i remember his usual expression and comic way of saying, "_cash here forward_," when he was winning. he was inimitable, for his stock phrases were so entirely his own. there was a regular coterie that played poker there. alfred thompson, johnnie giffard, corney grain, tom bird, henry parker, myself, and others were devoted to the game. one member especially was extremely lucky. he possessed a thorough knowledge of the game and his opponents, and he had the most impassive face i have ever seen. no trace of any expression other than that of calm impersonal enjoyment ever escaped him. he was never known to get up from the table without winning, and he made a regular income out of his "coups" at poker; but as he cared nothing whether he won or lost, he finally ceased to play, finding he had gained so much from his friends. the club continued to be quite delightful until a number of the "crutch and toothpick" element joined to watch the well-known "actor chaps," as they called them, and with their entrance the club lost all its charm and pleasant bohemianism. irving, among others, became aware of the observing eye of these inquisitive youths, and discontinued going to the club; others followed by degrees, and gradually the club lost its popularity. the idea of the lyric club, of which i was elected an honorary member, was suggested by a small and defunct bohemian club of that name. it was opened on far more ambitious lines, however, having for its chairman the distinguished sportsman and patron of the drama, lord londesborough, who was well supported by a representative committee. all went well for some time, and the entertainments, for which a spacious theatre had been erected, were splendidly managed by luther munday. on the opening night there was a reception that went with a flourish of trumpets, and shortly after lord londesborough gave a dinner at which i sat next to irving. irving naturally gave life to the affair, and i can remember a cigar that he gave me--i think the largest and best i ever smoked. these occasions were followed up by regular receptions when theatrical performances frequently attracted the members. "the divine sarah," marie tempest, hollmann, and such geniuses brought large audiences, and frequently these evenings were varied with the guards' band. everything was done, in fact, to make the club a success. now there was another idea, which, i conclude, emanated from the more sporting members of the committee. it was, to take a branch club at barnes, where there was a handsome and suitable house and grounds well adapted for the purpose. the place at last decided upon was not only well adapted for cricket, lawn tennis, and other out-of-door games, but, being so near london, was of easy access. the terrace facing the river was also a capital place from which to see the oxford and cambridge boat race, and a steamer from westminster was hired to take the members down. naturally, perhaps, the most crowded meeting held there was on the occasion of a final in the army and navy football match, when many distinguished visitors were present. as with the orleans club, twickenham, this club was but a flash in the pan. there came a day when it could no longer be kept up, and so it was with that in coventry street (or piccadilly east, as it was called). both branches of the lyric club, in fact, came suddenly to grief, owing to a great misfortune which it is better not to recall. first of all held on sunday nights at the grosvenor galleries, the gallery club was quite a place to belong to, and for some time was decidedly select in its members. it was also at the time quite a novelty, the best of music being heard and the best of musicians giving their services. the same may be said of the entertainers, and their entertainments. smoke and talk prevailed during the intervals, and so the evenings passed off cheerily. when these galleries of the "greenery yallery" period closed their doors, we removed to the rooms of the institute of painters in water colours where the receptions were held. i forgot here to mention that occasional sunday nights were graced by the presence of lady guests. paderewski played on one of these occasions to a crowded and very appreciative audience. later on we found our home at the grafton galleries, in which suppers were also given, and many a pleasant sunday evening was spent there. like every club of the kind, however, it had its day. perhaps it may have been the difficulty of finding variety among the entertainers or a want of funds to procure the best; but, whatever the reason, there was obviously a falling off of the original members, and the gallery club came to an end. even so, it had been responsible for many evenings that are well worth remembering. i shall never forget one night at the grosvenor gallery when corney grain and george grossmith sat down at the piano together and sang and played the fool. they were then at their very best, and i think that was the night that weedon and his brother gave their humorous skit on the extraction of teeth. the title i cannot recall; but the performance was so clever that the title doesn't matter. in later days i joined the punch bowl club, which was organized by a very good fellow named mr. percy wood. he was a man of education and a thorough bohemian: he had received a partial, but very incomplete, training as a sculptor; but he disliked work, and in the summer time led an idler's life. he would dress himself in old clothes, and go round the country hawking, like a common pedlar. he seemed to consider life under such conditions perfection; and yet he was always a gentleman (if one may use the much misused term), and everybody liked him. he was at one time engaged on a statue of the prince of wales, who arranged to call at mr. wood's studio. whether his royal highness expected a distinguished company to meet him, or whether mr. wood intended to receive his royal highness in such a way, i am unable to say, but the prince arrived to find a "gentleman in possession" at the studio, and mr. wood's visitors' book that day must have shown quite unprecedented signatures. [illustration: c. birch crisp. _published in "mayfair."_ .] [illustration: oliver locker lampson, m.p. _published in "mayfair."_ .] [illustration: weedon grossmith. .] our friend started the punch bowl club (he had always been inspired with the great idea of a real bohemian club) in regent street, and one met a variety of good fellows and plenty of clever entertainers. one of the foremost members was mostyn piggott, who was quite a leading light. raven hill was very popular also. our club room was situated on the uppermost storey of a house of which the foundation must have been rather "dicky," for one evening it descended into another, and when we arrived, we found our room wrecked beyond recall. after this avalanche, he started new premises over a motor establishment leading out of oxford street. here we had very spacious and very originally decorated rooms, which were hung with a great number of indian trophies, for wood was an indian chief, and rejoiced in the title of _rah--rih--wah--casda of the six nations indians_--an honour bestowed, i believe, only on two or three other europeans, the prince of wales (king edward vii.) and the duke of connaught being the foremost chiefs. sometimes he appeared dressed in his war paint, as an indian chief, at the large meetings which he delighted in organizing, when he brewed the punch, while other members, dressed in the character, gave their services as cook and waiters. the club was run on somewhat similar lines to the savage club, and we addressed each other as "brother so-and-so." these dinners were very successful until wood's health gave way, for they ended at a very late hour, and he never went home, preferring to sit up all night. after his death the club's popularity waned; the organizing personality that had previously supported it being absent, amusements fell through, but before the end we had some very pleasant evenings entertaining distinguished guests. i was once persuaded to take the chair on the occasion of the visit of the lord chief justice, and when, with every good intention, i rose to propose the usual toasts, to thank the lord chief justice for his presence that evening, and to extol his good qualities, i almost forgot whether he was lord chief justice or the archbishop of canterbury. however, i managed to struggle through, and with admirable promptitude the guest of the evening replied with real humour and relieved me of some part of my duty. at the end of the evening, percy wood came up to me and thanked me for so ably taking the chair, and when i apologized for what i considered my inability adequately to fill the post, he congratulated me, whereupon an artist who was standing by, said, "what! that a good speech! it was awful rot!" it was a singular coincidence that on this and the following occasions when our guest was the bishop of london, both men were total abstainers, while we indulged in our toasts from the punch bowl. i made a silhouette beforehand of the bishop leaning forward as though to make a speech, which appeared on the menu. [illustration: w. s. gilbert and mslle. rosa.] [illustration: tom knox holmes.] [illustration: _played first at the gaiety theatre where the profits, £ , were handed over by the amateur company to the central theatrical fund._] [illustration: captain gooch. quentin twiss. eleanor bufton. lydia thompson.] [illustration: myself. a. stuart wortley. j. maclean.] of the many well-known clubs i remember, i went to the anglo-american club, where i was invited to meet oliver wendell holmes. at the time i was particularly requested to make a drawing of him for _vanity fair_. i was introduced to him, amongst others, and was particularly impressed by his kindly features; the first peculiarity my eye lit upon was the prominent eyebrows. crowds of listening people surrounded him while he talked, and the opportunity of watching my subject unnoticed at such close quarters, was a splendid one, and from my observations i made one of the best caricatures that i have ever done from memory. when i look back it gives me great pleasure to think of the jolly days and nights when, in march, , many old friends met together for the purpose of rehearsing for the unique _amateur pantomime_ given at the gaiety theatre and afterwards at brighton. edward terry, kate vaughan, nellie farren, amalia and royce were then in their zenith, and john hollingshead was manager of the gaiety; and it was after this performance that we gathered for the night rehearsal. the idea was originated by archibald stuart wortley and william yardley, and nothing could exceed their energy in promoting it. i won't say that such a thing had never been thought of before; as a similar entertainment by amateurs had taken place many years previously, in which mr. tom knox holmes had played the same part of pantaloon. i believe, however, that that performance was not carried out on the same scale. looking down the list of our theatrical company, i am reminded sadly of the few members of it that remain, although, of the four authors who contributed to its success, it is gratifying to know that sir francis burnand is hale and hearty. it is interesting to recollect how conscientiously w. s. gilbert learnt his steps as the harlequin, how marvellously old knox holmes (who was well over seventy) played the pantaloon, and what a perfect clown yardley made. "odger" colvile (afterwards the unfortunate general sir henry colvile) was marvellous in his leaps and bounds. all this was the result of real hard work, and these men in the harlequinade gave the whole of their mind to it as though it were a matter of life and death. i mustn't forget either in this act that fred mccalmont, lord de clifford, and algy bastard equally distinguished themselves. perhaps it is because the harlequinade required more rehearsing than the pantomime burlesque itself (written by reece, f. c. burnand, h. j. byron, and w. s. gilbert) that i mention it first; but, of course, captain gooch, quintin twiss, archie stuart wortley, i. maclean, and those who took prominent parts, were as good in their different ways; in fact, some of them were already distinguished amateur actors. the dancing of ashby sterry and johnny giffard i shall never forget: it was too funny to be described. i delighted in the various characters selected for me to play, and when, as the "lightning artist," i drew dizzy and gladstone, i was overwhelmed with applause and boos that resounded in every part of the house from partisans of the two political leaders. so successful; in fact, was this item of the programme, that i received on the following day a genuine offer from a well-known manageress to take a similar part professionally at her theatre (a fact that amused me greatly). poker players at the fielding club. [illustration: _a bluff._ "johnny" giffard.] [illustration: alfred thompson.] [illustration: a.m. "this game bores me." corney grain.] [illustration: "tom" bird. _a bird with a "full" hand is worth two with a flush._] [illustration: corney grain at datchet.] [illustration: pellegrini. "can't play billiard to-night, my boy, i 'av lumbago. what you recommend to make the ''air grow?'"] much of my time was occupied before the curtain was raised in "making up" some of the "forty thieves" as prominent people of the day. for instance, frank parker's features adapted themselves to gladstone's in a strikingly useful manner, and in consequence the "make up" was at once recognizable. "willie" higgins was benson the convict, and so on. at the end of the rehearsals many of us, being members of the beefsteak club, adjourned there, and it was not until the early morning that our party sought our respective beds. when i come to think of it, the majority of us were fairly young in those days, so we were all well able to stand the strain. at one dress rehearsal, a scene representing a soldiers' encampment, where we were seated at mess, and a group of us dressed as officers ate a sham meal, i remember our enthusiasm was added to by the hospitality of an officer in the company who produced real champagne. whether the effect lasted until another scene i could never quite remember, but "odger" colvile (our young guardsman, who was very fond of theatricals, and had, i believe, a private theatre at his father's place) displayed wonderful agility in the harlequinade, where, as the policeman, he attacked the proverbial dummy, which at the rehearsal, owing to an oversight, was missing. looking round in all the excitement of his enthusiasm in the part, he grew exasperated by the delay. "where the devil is the dummy?" he cried, and looking round desperately, his eye caught mine; without any warning he was on me, caught me up, and for the next few minutes i saw every imaginable star out of the heavens, he belabouring me with all the ardour which he would have bestowed upon the dummy. he at last let me go, while roars of laughter went up from the others--i would have laughed if i had been able, but i never had such a time in my life, and was obliged to reserve my laughter until i could get my breath, when i laughed as heartily as the others. the occasion of the brighton performance was not the less amusing to us, as after it was all over the company met together at supper at the "old ship," which included several ladies from the alhambra ballet, who came down to add to the stage effect. the following morning (sunday) "hughie" drummond, one of the "forty thieves" and a champion practical joker, got on to the balcony of the queen's hotel, from which he was able to reach the hands of the clock and deliberately altered the time from five minutes to eleven to a quarter past. this, of course scared the people going to church, and resulted in a general stampede. while sitting next to lord houghton at dinner one evening at the beefsteak club, i watched him make a lengthy scrutiny of the menu, which made me anticipate a wonderful selection to come. he ordered a herring! when the fish came, he regarded it stealthily for some time and then suddenly picking it up by the tail shook it violently (ostensibly to remove the flesh) and while i carefully picked off the bits of herring that covered me, the absent-minded poet ate the fragments that had accidentally lodged upon his plate. he used to take out his teeth at meal times, and, growing accustomed to remove them, he became occasionally rather mixed in his discretion as to their removal. one day, on meeting a lady of his acquaintance, instead of taking off his hat, as he intended to do, he plucked out his teeth and waved them enthusiastically. i remember the eccentric lord coming into the club one evening looking tired and hungry. over the mantelpiece a white paper gleamed. it was a list of the derby lottery. something stirred in his mind which was far away on other subjects bent, and reminded him that he was hungry. he scanned the lottery list, anxiously rubbing his head as though he were apparently shampooing it. at last he was heard to murmur in dissatisfied tones, "waiter, i don't see anything to eat there." one couldn't help laughing at his funny ways, but he was a distinguished man after all and very kind. chapter ix the law the inspiration of the courts.--montagu williams.--lefroy.-- the de goncourt case.--irving.--sir frank lockwood.--dr. lampson, the poisoner.--mr. justice hawkins.--the tichborne case.--mr. justice mellor and mr. justice lush.--the druce case.--the countess of ossington.--the duke's portrait.-- my models.--the adventuress.--the insolent omnibus conductor. --i win my case.--sir george lewis.--the late lord grimthorpe. --sir charles hall.--lord halsbury.--sir alfred cripps (now lord parmoor).--sir herbert cozens-hardy.--lord robert cecil. --the late sir albert de rutzen.--mr. charles gill.--sir charles matthews.--lord alverstone.--mr. birrell.--mr. plowden. --mr. marshall hall.--mr. h. c. biron. "the reason of the law is ... the law."--_sir walter scott._ the law courts held more possibilities for me than most "hunting grounds," because i invariably found my subject without the difficulty of "stalking" him, and with the advantage of wig and gown to add to the individuality and relieve the conventionality of his unprofessional habiliments. another advantage lay in the fact that when a barrister or a judge was conducting a case or presiding on the bench, a host of peculiarities and idiosyncrasies became evident, and i had the satisfaction of observing all unnoticed. in some cases the very fact of being "on the spot" refreshed my memory, for on one occasion i forgot the features of a certain judge, and felt i must have another glimpse to recall them before i could revive my inspiration. oddly enough, i recollected him perfectly the moment i set my foot upon the steps of the law courts, and, returning to my studio, i completed the drawing. i found my friend montague williams (who perhaps defended more prisoners than any counsel of his day) an inestimable help when i wished to find an especial opportunity of watching any well-known criminal or legal character. besides being a busy lawyer, he had a considerable personal knowledge of the men with whom, during the discharge of his duties, he had come in contact, and whom he regarded with more sympathy and kindness as to their possible reclamation than many men in his profession. he always found it necessary to believe fully in the innocence of the persons he was defending; and as he was naturally very excitable, he would work himself up to fever pitch, bringing tears to his own eyes as he described with pathos and righteous indignation the overwhelming injustice of the case against his client. his enthusiasm usually impressed the jury immensely. i recollect his saying once in an access of sentimental appeal: "think, gentlemen--think of his poor mother!" the lefroy case was a curious and very unpleasant affair; probably my readers still remember the strange story of robbery and crime in a railway carriage, and the long and continually iterated innocence of the accused man whom my friend was defending. i went down (as i was curious to see the prisoner) to the law courts with montague williams one day. lefroy's physiognomy was in itself almost enough to condemn him in my eyes--for his bad mouth, weak face, and chin that seemed to have altogether retreated, with the abnormal head with a very large back to it, all gave me an impression of latent criminalism. as i returned with my legal friend in the cab i ventured to say as much to him. "good lord, man," he said. "look at yourself in the glass ... if appearances went for anything you'd have been hanged long ago." i had neglected to shave that morning, it is true; but in spite of my omission i felt a trifle overwhelmed by my friend's verdict, much as it amused me. at the de goncourt trial (one of my early recollections) i sat next to irving. i was busily engaged in making a sketch of benson, who had been brought into the witness box with his latest decoration of broad arrows, and i remember that irving congratulated me upon my drawing. on another occasion i watched frank lockwood (as he was then) listening to a case as one of the general public, pencil in hand, ready to portray anything that struck him. the case before the court concerned an accident to a pedestrian (a scotchman) who was summoning a carter or the company he represented, for damages. the carter accused the plaintiff of drunkenness on the occasion of the accident, when he alleged that the man was so drunk that he reeled up against the wheel of his cart. i was amused to see mr. lockwood make a quick sketch of a drunken highlander attired in a kilt reeling against a cart wheel, with a glimpse of the strand in the background, and send it up to the judge. in the case of dr. lampson, the poisoner, i passed notes to the prisoner who mistook me for montague williams' clerk. williams had defended the man on a previous occasion, but this time the charge was a grave one, for the accused was said to have visited a young relative (who stood between him and a sum of money), and given him poisoned cake which set up such violent symptoms that suspicion rested upon the doctor. the death of the boy, following shortly after, led to the arrest of dr. lampson, who was tried and found guilty. one of the earliest cases i attended attracted great attention at the time, owing to the sensational evidence which embroiled lord ranelagh in a plot with a mrs. borradaile. this was due to the clever and unscrupulous plans of a madame rachel leverson, who successfully obtained money in this way, and who was finally convicted of misdemeanour and obtaining money by false pretences. the case made a considerable furore, because during cross-examination the accused appeared to divulge the fact that the aforesaid lord had bribed her to let him look through the keyhole while her client underwent the process of being made beautiful. the whole affair turned out to be a fabrication. one of my earliest caricatures for _vanity fair_ was that of mr. justice hawkins drawn from memory in . he had the reputation then of being the most good-humoured in the law courts and the possessor of the hoarsest voice of any judge. he once said it was worth £ a year to him. the last time i saw lord brampton (for he became eventually a law lord) was after the opening of a parliament, when the peers and peeresses were waiting for their carriages, and there was a tremendous downpour of rain. standing with his peer's robes wound round and round his body, the famous judge made a most grotesque figure, in tight little trousers with his silk hat slightly on one side, an eyeglass in his eye, and a big umbrella over all. he resembled a resplendent hawk. the tichborne case gave hawkins a chance to excel himself, and he proved to be on the winning side. i sketched most of the principal movers in this game of law, which was played round "the claimant," whom i recollect quite plainly as he sat at his table, which had a half circle cut into it for his unduly large stomach to fit in. of his illiteracy (if poor spelling goes to prove it) i have a personal proof in a letter which ends, "_beleive_ me, "yours truly, "a. c. tichborne." i once sat in the court, watching him, with pencil in hand ready to jot down upon my shirt cuff anything i especially noticed, when he caught my eye, called the usher, and spoke a few words to him. it was duly intimated that my presence was "extremely disturbing to the claimant." the claimant's counsel, dr. edward kenealy, q.c. (and the one man on record who was supposed to have ruffled hawkins's temper), was said to have believed in the claimant to the day of his death. dr. kenealy made his name in the tichborne trial. he was, besides being a lawyer, a writer and poet (and an admirer of disraeli) before the stupendous case arose to give him a field for his powers. i remember him as a little man with a wig that contrasted strangely with a sweep of beard and a firmly set mouth. when he rose to speak he placed one hand under his gown as though it might have been coat tails and used his right to point emphasis at his opponent. some years afterwards, when i was walking near brighton, i was very much interested to see his tomb in a churchyard there, or rather a very elaborate monument that had been placed there by the late guilford onslow. [illustration: augustus helder, m.p. (_a proprietor of the "graphic"._) .] [illustration: madame rachel. (_made ladies beautiful forever. she loses her case and is imprisoned?_) .] [illustration: lord ranelagh. _witness against madame rachel._] [illustration: beal, m.p. _radical_ .] [illustration: first lord cowley.] [illustration: barnum. . _sketched at victoria hotel._] [illustration: sir h. cozens hardy _on board a cross-channel steamer._ .] [illustration: the very rev. the dean of christchurch, francis paget. .] [illustration: sir roderick murcheson _coming from a levee._ .] mr. justice mellor and mr. justice lush, both judges in the tichborne case, came under my pencil at the same period. justice lush wore the oddest round wig with the suspicion of a dent on the top. he always reminded me of a champagne bottle, with this queerly shaped wig like a cork on his head, and his shoulders sloping down like a bottle. as a judge mr. lush attempted humour. _vanity fair_ labelled him "a little lush," because when he was told that the toast had been changed from "women and wine" to "lush and shea," he said, "a spell of sobriety will do the bar no harm, and a little lush may do the bench some good." sir john mellor was noted for his unwearied patience and extreme impartiality on the bench. when i caught him, he sat sucking his little finger and listening carefully to the counsel for the claimant stating his case as he watched the court from under his heavy-lidded eyes, over which his eyebrows slanted with sudden fine lines to his big nose, while his humorous mouth seemed ready for a wry smile. a trial with which i was indirectly associated, and which aroused at the time a furore only to be equalled by the sensation created by the tichborne case, was the druce-portland case. for the benefit of those readers who have forgotten the facts, i will give a slight outline of the extraordinary story. the fifth duke of portland was a very eccentric old gentleman. he had several peculiarities that rendered the mystery surrounding him even more involved, and his odd habits gave rise to the most extraordinary rumours. the reluctance to show his face or to hear other people was sometimes alleged to have been the result of a fatal quarrel with a brother, and it was said that the duke, after the affair, retired more completely from public life. he became more eccentric than ever; his servants were taught to play the piano to him. he resented any recognition by his servants and employees, and was accustomed to travel in a special carriage built for himself hung round with heavy curtains, in which he would travel to the station. the coachman had orders to come and go without scrutiny or inquiry, and frequently he was quite in the dark as to whether he conveyed his master or not. at the station the carriage was placed upon a special truck, and so the duke travelled to town. his hobby was building. five hundred workmen were employed to build and excavate museums, libraries, and a ball-room under the lake, and all the plans and models were prepared by himself. it is said that after making a fine collection of paintings, the duke's further peculiarity led him to destroy in a huge bonfire several thousand pounds worth of them. in his personal appearance he was remarkable for an excessively high hat, a strange ulster and trousers that were invariably tied round the ankles with string. he habitually wore a very old-fashioned wig, and never stirred out, wet or fine, without a great umbrella. in , the duke, whose habits had grown more and more unaccountable, died, and immediately afterwards, his sister, the countess of ossington, commissioned me to paint a life-sized portrait of him, and shortly afterwards mr. boehm was asked to model the bust. i therefore lost no time in having a cast of the head taken; a beautiful thing it was, showing how refined the features must have been in life. lady ossington then gave her ideas of how she wished the portrait composed, and suggested that the duke should be seated in his study with plans of buildings or of gardens that he might be designing, introduced as likely accessories, and, of all things, a sunset appearing in the background of which he would never tire. a considerable correspondence ensued between lady ossington and myself and her written descriptions helped me considerably. "viscountess ossington presents her compliments to mr. leslie ward," one of the letters ran, "and sends him an inverness tweed cloak that used to be thrown lightly on when looking at plans before going out...." when all this was fully described, the valet paid me a visit and brought with him his late master's clothes, his hat, stick, and wig as well as the cape which was of characteristic cut, at the same time informing me that the frock coat was always rather loosely made. my great difficulty was to procure a suitable model to sit for the clothes. at last i got the address of one, an old man from drury lane, who, i learnt, had been a super. he called upon me in answer to my letter, and i instructed him to come to my studio, showing him the clothes he would have to wear. as it so happened, he came long before his time, and was shown into the studio. he had evidently dressed himself up ready for me, but very carelessly, in the late duke's early victorian frock coat suit. when i arrived, there was this elderly gentleman seated on the throne with his own clothes on the floor. on approaching him i found him to be fast asleep and snoring. being naturally disgusted and annoyed i ordered him quickly to change and be off. he wore a silly smile and with the duke's wig on all awry he fumbled away at his coat tails. he was trying to explain to me that his change in coppers were in the coat. he could not have been sober on his arrival, but when giving me to understand that he had only been round (in this costume) to have a glass "at the pub," i confess it inwardly amused me. i was now obliged to procure the services of another model, and this time a _real gentleman_ turned up. he was also elderly, and not prepossessing in appearance, but nevertheless bore the traces of better breeding than the drury lane super. he had a ponderous and high-bridged nose of a purple hue which contrasted with his saffron face, and his eyes were tearful with evident sorrows of the past. when he had changed his rusty suit and knee-bagged etceteras for a spruce frock coat and equally dapper trousers, he sat in the gold-backed chair with the air of a duke while i prepared my palette. as i commenced to paint, he began to talk and to relate his experiences in the past. he had, according to his story, started life as an officer in a cavalry regiment, and the love of gambling became so irresistible that he lost fortunes. now, he said, he was determined to make amends for his folly in the past, and by the aid of his sympathisers he knew he could redeem that social position which he formerly held. that he must have decent clothes to start with, went without saying, and those who heard his story, he was convinced, would help him to procure them--of that he was sure. had i any to spare? (of course i saw what he was leading up to), and so the talk went on in this maudlin way till he had to be pulled up, and i had to remind him what he was in my studio for. possibly there was some foundation for his story, for that he had received a decent education there was little doubt. some time after he finished these sittings, he turned up again with a young woman whom he introduced to me as his wife. she was anxious to become a model too, but i fear by this time he was in little request. it occurred to me that he must have related to her some very plausible stories before they could have entered into matrimony. then, one morning, upon taking up the paper, i read a thrilling story of how an artist's model had so cruelly treated his wife that she died in consequence. it was a charge of manslaughter. this was the very man, but although in his drunken moments he had behaved as a brute-beast, evidence went to show that when sober no one could have treated her with more consideration and affection, so he got off with imprisonment, but died in gaol (it was said of remorse) shortly afterwards. before quite completing the face, and as i had been told of the extraordinary likeness that existed between the duke and his sister, it occurred to me that a few touches from lady ossington herself would enable me to improve the portrait. i therefore, with some difficulty, persuaded her to give me a sitting which really proved useful. anyhow, i received the kindest letter from her expressing her thanks for the satisfactory way in which i had completed my work, and this naturally pleased me, for it was no easy task. very shortly after, she wrote again, saying that although it was her intention to leave the portrait to the present duke to be permanently hung in the gallery at welbeck, it had been arranged that it should be temporarily lent for the approaching visit of the prince of wales. in consequence of her anxiety for its safe delivery, i undertook to take it down myself, and lady bolsover, who was there at the time, invited me to stay the day. i was fortunate in finding among her guests a lady whom i knew, who kindly showed me over the place, and thereby satisfied my curiosity, especially when we came to the underground passages of which i had heard so much. i must say that after mr. henry savile (his neighbour at rufford) had related stories to me about the duke, the mystery existing in my mind was somewhat dispelled concerning him. no doubt he was eccentric, but so much must have been human in him that his interesting personality predominated. although he took little nourishment he seemed to have worked hard both physically and mentally, and to have possessed tastes of a high order. mr. savile would often see him with his trousers tied with tape, much like the workmen on his estate, not only directing them in their work, but like one of themselves using the spade, although they were forbidden to recognize him by either touching or raising their caps. ages after the picture had passed out of my mind, i happened to be dining with friends, when i was introduced to an american lawyer. he was full of stories, as might be expected, and he told us one (of an extravagant order) which he said would lead to a very big case in the courts of law in which he himself would appear. the story was too impossible to believe; in fact, i was rude enough to tell him so. when the case came into court i was astonished (as were many others) to read the (to me) incredible story of the claim of a mrs. druce, who announced that the late thomas charles druce, an upholsterer of baker street, had been none other than the late duke. t. c. druce was reported to have died at holcombe house, and it was alleged that he had never been buried at highgate cemetery; also, according to report, the servants at holcombe house had stripped lead off the roof to weight the coffin, to indicate that there was a body inside. other evidence was produced to show that druce was alive several years after his reported death; curious coincidences pointing to a similarity of habits between druce and the late duke were sworn to by many witnesses. the employees at druce's baker street bazaar said that druce would never appear when an aristocratic or royal patron asked for him, and also that, like the duke, he disappeared for considerable periods, and was known to enter his office from an underground passage leading from harcourt house. other significant peculiarities were mentioned--such as druce's habit of tying his trousers with string round the ankle, the high hat and the old-fashioned wig; and photographs of the duke and druce were published in the papers. but i became extremely interested in the case when a point arose as to the date of the duke's alleged marriage with a miss crickmer; it was stated to have occurred in the year (at this date he was only sixteen and a half years old), and this question was met with a reproduction of my full-length portrait of the duke, which was stated beyond doubt to have been painted during the period of the duke's residence at bury, when he was lord tichfield. i regretted that i was not in court and able to contradict this extraordinary statement; but i felt assured that the druce claim would prove to be without foundation, and was not surprised to hear eventually that the case had been quashed by the opening of the druce vault, where the presence of the body put an end to the allegations of the druce family. an extraordinary incident which happened with alarming suddenness, and which nearly brought me into unpleasant contact with the law, occurred one night when i was coming home from my club. i usually preferred to walk, for the exercise was beneficial to me after a hard day's work. it was not conspicuously late, and i was walking along lost in thought when a girl whom i knew as one of my models approached me and said rather breathlessly, "there's a woman and two men following you; they're dangerous characters, i feel sure--do take a cab--please!" i was about to expostulate as this interruption was rather in the nature of a surprise, but before i could speak, she begged me excitedly to "take a cab," and as a hansom was passing, hailed it and began to bundle me in. "really," i began, "why all this excitement? what is the matter?" at that moment a big woman who looked rather like the adventuress in a melville melodrama, as far as i could see (she was heavily veiled), came up and addressed some very insulting remarks to the little model. "oh, good heavens!" i said, and got into the cab. the girl jumped in quickly and called at the same time to the driver to hurry. "what is all this?" i said in the cab as i saw her looking anxiously out of the window. "let's go another way--she's following us," replied the girl, who appeared to be shaking with fear. "oh," i said, "never mind. let's drive quickly." the other cab was following, and i wondered what i was "in for," when we drew up at my studio--the girl appeared to be so terrified that i gave her my key and told her to go in while i prepared to settle matters. as i alighted, i saw two rough-looking men getting off the back of the other cab. they looked such thorough blackguards that it occurred to me the girl's fears were not without grounds. before i could pay the cabby, the woman alighted and started to abuse me, while the bullies lurked behind. catching sight of a policeman sauntering up the road, i called to him to rid me of my unpleasant companions, but at his approach the woman changed her tune to a sort of snivelling self-righteousness, and said to the constable:-- "this man's my husband, i've just caught him in the very act of going off with another woman, he has deserted me cruelly." the man looked from my face to hers in immediate understanding, and said in conciliatory tones, which betrayed a strong lancashire accent. "why doant ye go 'ome with yer wife?" "you ass. she's no more my wife than you are," i said hotly--for i was furious. "i have the marriage certificate," broke in the woman with a well-simulated sob. "look 'ere," remonstrated the policeman. "come naow," and he tried to force me into her cab. this was too much for me. "look here," i said angrily. "we'll end this farce. i'm going to the police station, and you shall come with me." so we drove off in our respective cabs, by now the two men had disappeared. at the police station, the woman still kept up her foolish acting; after hearing my case, the inspector cross-questioned her. "what name?" she thoughtlessly gave her own, not knowing mine, and once again referred theatrically to the marriage certificate. an expression of dawning remembrance passed over the inspector's face, and after opening another book, he turned the pages until pausing, he read quietly for a moment. "yes, i have it," he said. "you were imprisoned for violent assault, fined, and were only released yesterday. you had better go about your business." the woman did not appear disturbed or non-plussed when she knew her identity was exposed, but still dogged my footsteps. after my experience of the evening, i refused to go home without a police escort, and all the way my strange adventuress followed us, still abusive, until at last, on nearing my studio, she disappeared. i found my door open as the little model had left it when she had evidently fled in her fear to her home. i often wonder what object the woman and her two attendant blackguards had in pursuing me. i am glad to think i escaped with a whole skin from an incomprehensible adventure. another episode which resulted in my actually appearing in the courts, this time not as a spectator, but as the plaintiff in a case which i brought against an omnibus company, occurred some time back. i happened to be returning from queen anne's gate, where i had spent a busy morning's work upon a portrait, and i was due at my studio to meet another sitter. having very little time to spare, i partook of a hasty cup of coffee and some light refreshment in lieu of lunch, and hastily jumped on to an omnibus going in the direction of chelsea. after a brief interval a lady sitting in front turned round to me as we were passing ebury bridge and said, "would you kindly ask the conductor for me if he will give me my change. i've spoken to him several times and without effect." "certainly," i replied, and called to the conductor. "what do yer want?" he answered tersely, without turning his head. "i want you to give this lady her change as she is getting down almost immediately and says she has already asked you for it." "_you've_ got her change," he replied to my astonishment. "i must have given it to you by mistake." finding that i only had the sum of twopence halfpenny in my pocket, a penny of which i was holding in readiness for my fare, i was not deceived by this convenient way of shifting the responsibility of fivepence on to my shoulders. but as his manners were so insolent to the lady and to myself, i was determined to ascertain the man's number. of course he refused to give it me, and covered the badge with his coat. my destination was coming nearer every moment, and in spite of my having such little time to spare, i descended from the top of the omnibus to the footboard, and the man's insolence increased when he realized my resolve to proceed a little further until i gained my point. i was considerably hampered with a parcel containing a drawing-board in one hand and an umbrella in the other, but i tried to tug at the strap which held the badge, at which the conductor turned round suddenly and said:-- "no, you don't," and taking advantage of my having no available hand to protect myself, pushed me off the omnibus. i fell heavily on to the kerb, and in consequence hurt my arm considerably. at the same moment a tradesman who knew me rushed to my rescue and excitedly said:-- "i'll take your parcel ... you can rely upon me ... you know me, sir ... lose no time ... you catch 'em." i got on my feet with some difficulty and attempted to pursue the omnibus, but the conductor was pulling his bell violently and urging the driver to hurry. finding it impossible to overtake them, i hailed a passing hansom and persuaded a policeman, who, for a wonder, happened to be near, to accompany me. we drove quickly, catching up the omnibus at its stopping place--chelsea town hall--where we got down. the policeman, taking the case in hand, produced the usual note book, and proceeded to take the man's name and number (which had been the "_casus belli_"). when asked to state the case, the conductor said in unguarded tones:-- "the man's drunk, and he's got my money!" i presented my case to the magistrate at the westminster police court then and there, and shortly afterwards the conductor was summoned to appear; but the solicitor who represented the omnibus company asked for time to call witnesses, so the case was postponed for a week. [illustration: lord coleridge. .] [illustration: mr justice cozens hardy. .] [illustration: h. c. biron. .] [illustration: e. s. fordham. .] when the second hearing came on, and i had as my counsel, mr. h. c. biron (now the police magistrate),--by the way one of my three witnesses was the late sir evans gordon,--i was much amused by the witnesses appearing against me. there was the driver of an omnibus which had been immediately behind the one i was thrown from, who said he had a full view of the whole incident. under cross-examination he gave his version of the affair. "that man," pointing to me, "got off the 'bus by 'imself--nobody touched 'im ... i saw 'im." "what else did you see?" asked mr. curtis bennett. "well ... i saw 'im tumble down." "how would you describe this gentleman--was he carrying anything, for instance?" "no," replied the man, "but 'e 'ad 'arf a cigar." "funny that you should have observed half a cigar and not a large parcel!" remarked mr. bennett. "can you describe him further?" "well, 'e 'ad a coat on and 'e 'ad long 'air." mr. bennett smiled. "the gentleman in question is in court now--you'd better look at him--i don't think we could accuse him of long hair--you may stand down." as i returned home that evening i heard the newsboys shouting something almost unintelligible, and caught a momentary glimpse of a poster bearing the words "victory for----" having a distinct curiosity to see who the derby winner might be, i bought a paper and saw the poster "victory for 'spy,'" "'spy' and the conductor," "result," and so on, both of which amused me immensely, as i had not imagined for one moment that the case would be brought into such undue publicity. for some time after the affair of the omnibus, i was a considerable sufferer from my arm, and was under a doctor, whose fees i could probably have demanded in compensation from the company. i did not wish, however, to pursue the matter further, since i had only brought the action in the interests of others besides myself. the appeal failed; and the conductor had to pay £ . although i have caricatured a very large number of men at the bar and on the bench, i have not a proportionate number of personal anecdotes to tell of my subjects, for as i have stated, they were chiefly the result of studies from memory. as a result of my observations during criminal cases i have witnessed, i drew sir henry poland, montague williams, serjeant parry (who was a great friend of dr. doran's and my father's), and sir douglas straight (who became an indian judge). i was present not only at the farewell dinner given in his honour on that occasion, but also at that given him on his retirement from the editorship of the _pall mall gazette_. in those days his great intimacy with montague williams (whom he frequently opposed in court) gave them the nickname of "the twins." after his return from the east, sir douglas was made editor of the _pall mall gazette_, a post he held until a few years ago. he was an able man and a good editor. his cartoon appeared previous to his becoming a judge. sir george lewis never got over his, which was the outcome of a study during the bravo trial; and even when he was nearly eighty he admitted as much to me. a strikingly unconventional looking man was the late lord grimthorpe, who came under my observation in ' ; he wore a swallow tail coat, and never carried a stick or an umbrella. he had somewhat the appearance of a verger, although his was a strong, determined face. he was great in church matters, and seemed never happier than when putting up the backs of the bishops during a debate in the lords. sir james ingham i studied, like most of my legal subjects, from memory, but to make variety from the other magistrates, i caught him in the adjoining yard and produced him in the act of deliberating in a case of cruelty to a horse. sir thomas chambers, recorder of london, was a favourite subject (among the early cartoons), and one of my funniest caricatures. he was a delightful kind of gentleman, but owing to a chronic affection of his eyes, always carried his handkerchief in his hand to wipe away a tear, looking all the while as though he had lost his best friend. sir charles hall, who followed sir thomas as recorder of london, was a great social success, and a favourite in royal circles. he was as popular at the garrick club as he was in country houses. i met him first at glen tanar while on a visit to sir william cunliffe brooks, where i shot my first stag. he was an exceptionally fine rifle shot, and "brought down" many there. lord halsbury, a late lord chancellor, was another subject for whom i have the greatest admiration, and he is one of the very remarkable men of the day. his eye is as bright and his brain as clear as it ever was. sir alfred cripps (now lord parmoor), was very amusing to study and to draw, and my sketches of him fill a book. i believe he is in himself quite as fascinating a person as his varying expressions in court led me to find him. sir herbert cozens-hardy, master of the rolls, is another characteristic subject. three times i have done him in various capacities for _vanity fair_. lord robert cecil i caught as he walked up and down whitehall in wig and gown, during the south african case upon which he was at the time engaged. some of the judges were very tolerant of an artist taking liberties with their idiosyncrasies. the late sir albert de rutzen, the bow street magistrate, was an exception. he was most strict, and always had a keen eye for any one whom he suspected of sketching in court. during the crippen trial, a lady who sat next to me, a personal friend of sir albert's, warned me to be very careful not to let him discover my object in coming to the court or to appear to be watching him for the purpose of caricaturing him. as i was very intent upon obtaining a nearer glimpse of him, i sent a letter of introduction to sir albert and asked him if he could give me a few minutes to take a note of his features. as he was very busy at that time he suggested i might return another day about lunch time, when he would give me the time i required. perhaps he was rather forgetful, for when i arrived at his rooms at the hour appointed i was told sir albert could not possibly see me. but this disappointment did not deter me from carrying out my object, and in due time the cartoon appeared in _vanity fair_. [illustration: charles williams-wynn, m.p. .] [illustration: sir james ingham. .] [illustration: lord vivian (hook and eye). .] to go through the list, and to mention all the caricatures and drawings i have made, would take so long that i can only mention a few of the present-day barristers and legal celebrities, some of whom i number amongst my friends. charles gill, the famous k.c., whom i have known for years, i drew in ' . he is recorder of chichester, and a brilliant barrister with a cheerful and wholesome countenance. he now lives the life of a country squire when he can find time to do so. sir charles mathews, whom i also number amongst my old friends, is one of the kindest-hearted men i know, in spite of the fact that he could, if it was necessary in court, make the most cutting observations in the least unpleasant way. he was, by the way, the bosom friend of the late lord chief justice, lord russell of killowen, and is the public prosecutor. when i made a drawing of mr. birrell, i was much amused by his telling me that mrs. birrell was particularly pleased with the portrait, because it would be a continual reminder to him to pin his tie down, which i had depicted in its usual place, somewhere above his collar. i observed mr. plowden (who was not exactly an advocate of woman suffrage) at a dinner held by one of the women's societies, where i sat opposite to him, and was much amused to watch his face as a speaker alluded to magistrates in a manner that can hardly be termed polite. as mr. plowden was a man of humour, the reference evidently appealed to him, if one might judge from his expression. lord alverstone i met in a similar way as the guest of the evening at the punch bowl club, when i had the honour of being in the chair and the pleasure of hearing the lord chief justice sing the judge's song from "trial by jury." it is noteworthy that he was a teetotaller and a great churchman. he was always willing to preside or give his patronage to any occasion when he could aid athleticism in any shape or form, for he had been a great athlete and runner in his day. the present lord chief justice, lord reading, (sir rufus isaacs) is one of the most delightful men i have ever met. he is, as everybody knows, a great worker, and i remember he told me that, after his strenuous sittings, he went away for three months' holiday every year, and during that time, nothing, not even the lawyer's brief, could induce him to remember that he was a k.c., or lure him away from his well-earned rest. he thoroughly believed that only by this method of holiday-making was he enabled to work as hard as he did at other times. mr. marshall hall (to whom i am related by marriage) is one of the most versatile of my legal subjects, for besides being a k.c. and a late member of parliament, he has the advantage of being a fine shot, a good golfer, a clever mimic, and a wonderful judge of precious stones, of old silver and of _objets d'art_ generally--of which he has a very exceptional collection. as a _raconteur_ he is unsurpassed, and in consequence most amusing company. my friend, mr. h. c. biron, the magistrate, who is also a lover of art and a delightful host, is still a bachelor, and lives in a gem of a house in montpelier square, where my drawing of him is placed on the walls. as the son of an eminent "beak," he was born into the very atmosphere of the law, and the starchfield case was perhaps the most sensational that has as yet come before him. nor must i forget to mention the very popular k.c. member for cambridge, mr. p. p. rawlinson. [illustration: sir albert de rutzen. .] [illustration: mr plowden. _from an unpublished sketch._ .] chapter x the church and the varsities--parsons of many creeds and denominations dean wellesley.--dr. james sewell.--canon ainger.--lord torrington.--dr. goodford.--dr. welldon.--dr. walker.--the van beers' supper.--the bishop of lichfield.--rev. r. j. campbell.--cardinal vaughan.--dr. benson, archbishop of canterbury.--dr. armitage robinson.--varsity athletes.-- etherington-smith.--john loraine baldwin.--ranjitsinhji.-- mr. muttlebury.--mr. "rudy" lehmann. parsons of different creeds and denominations have been represented in _vanity fair_ from time to time--anglicans, romans, wesleyans, congregationalists and others. my method with a clerical subject is to go to his church and watch him in the pulpit, but it is not always easy to catch a bishop, because he has not, so to speak, a home of his own. i remember making an excursion to st. botolph's to study the bishop of kensington, only to find he was not preaching there that day but at st. george's, camden hill. back west i went and after the sermon i waited outside the vestry door. presently the bishop came out, bag in hand, and walked down the hill. i hastened on ahead with the intention of doubling back and securing a good near view, but he turned into the tube station. i followed and secured a seat opposite him, and made the mental notes which resulted in the cartoon which was published very shortly afterwards in _vanity fair_. now and again i have been put to considerable trouble in stalking my man. i remember particularly well the peculiar circumstances under which i studied dean wellesley of windsor, who was rather an eccentric looking old gentleman. i was staying at windsor, in the winchester tower, with some friends who were officially connected with the castle, and i learned that my best chance of seeing the dean would be in the early morning when he was in the habit of taking a constitutional around the round tower about . a.m. i welcomed the opportunity, rose early and went out. the dean was already on the scene pacing to and fro in the snow, supporting himself by an umbrella in one hand and a walking-stick in the other. i did not follow him in an obtrusive manner, but after pacing round two or three times, i must have attracted his attention, for i feel sure he had never seen any other individual taking such an odd constitutional at that hour. but of course he could not suspect my object. as he walked, i looked at him carefully, and especially observed his hat which, i had been informed, would be turned down according to the direction of the wind. on this occasion, it was turned up in front, although i am sure that in walking round the tower he must have been kept busy on such a cold and windy morning. in due time the caricature (which i always regard as one of my best) was published. through the medium of my father, who was a very old friend of the dean, i heard that he was very annoyed at the caricature. some time after, i was walking with my father in the high street at windsor when we met _the dean_! "let me introduce my son," said my father. "he is the culprit and is responsible for your caricature in _vanity fair_." "oh indeed," said the dean. "i'm very pleased to make his acquaintance--i shouldn't have been, had any one recognized the caricature as myself!" an amusing sequel occurred a few days later when my mother met mrs. wellesley, who told her that, thanks to the cartoon, the dean had at last discarded the awful hat she had been vainly trying to get rid of for a quarter of a century. i had another early morning experience in pursuit of dr. james sewell (warden of new college, oxford). i followed him into the college chapel and sat near his stall, but i felt i had not sufficiently impressed his features upon my memory to make a perfectly satisfactory caricature, so i inquired into his customs in hope of finding him again. i discovered that he also was in the habit of taking an early morning walk, and at . the next day i awaited him at a suitable distance from his door. after getting tired of waiting what seemed a very long time, i knocked at his door and asked the servant if dr. sewell was in. "no," he replied; "the doctor started a _long_ time ago, but he went out by the other door this morning." i felt rather sold, but determined to keep my vigil at an earlier hour the next morning. accordingly i watched again, and this time saw him come out in all the glory of his beautiful white collar and cravat (which had earned him the nickname of "the shirt"), and a red handkerchief, as usual, hanging from the pocket of his coat tail. i "stalked" him discreetly, and with success. after a final glimpse of him, walking down one of the paths of the gardens of oxford, i hurried home to make a note of my observations. during my frequent visits there, i usually stayed at "the mitre," for i liked the old place. the staircase was crooked with age and the bedroom floors extremely uneven. on the occasion of one of my sojourns in that charming town, i recollected with considerable pleasure a standing invitation from sir john stainer, who had invited me, in the event of my coming to oxford, to dine with him and taste some exceptionally fine old port that had been bequeathed him. i dined with sir john and tasted the port, and enjoyed a very pleasant evening. returning to "the mitre" i went into the coffee-room before retiring, and as i was feeling very fit and in excellent spirits, i entered into conversation with other occupants of the room, one of whom dared me to place a very ripe cheese that was standing on the table in the crown of somebody's silk hat. being under the impression that it was the hat of my quondam acquaintance, i promptly plunged the cheese into it. after some joking repartee, i retired to bed but could not help noticing how much more crooked the staircase seemed than usual and how the ceiling appeared to be falling. in my bedroom the floor was like the waves of the sea, and i experienced considerable difficulty in reaching land, but after the utmost perseverance i arrived at the bed, where, holding on to the post to ensure my safety, i fell into a perfect sleep. imagine my surprise when the next morning i found myself lying on the floor fully dressed, with one arm firmly encircling the bed-post. pulling myself together i realized that it was eleven o'clock, and that i felt in excellent form and ready to face anything the day might bring, since the effects of the old port had worn off. at breakfast the excellence of my appetite was somewhat marred by a paper with which the waiter presented me, which, on opening, i found to be a bill from foster's for a new silk hat. my acquaintance of the night before had disappeared, and a total stranger to me proved to be the owner of the damaged hat. the same day i had the good fortune to meet one of my favourite subjects, namely, canon ainger, at dr. warren's (the president of magdalen), where i was invited to lunch. i had depicted the famous preacher in the pulpit after paying many visits to the temple church, where i had divided my attention between his fine sermons and his interesting personality. he quite entered into the spirit of my caricature and congratulated me upon it. about the period when a number of distinguished professors and schoolmasters had appeared in _vanity fair_, i happened to be on a visit to my people at windsor, when i met lord torrington (a very courtly old gentleman of the old school), who was calling on them. formerly he had been lord of the bedchamber to william iv. and governor of ceylon, also a lord in waiting to the queen, and had been selected to escort the prince consort to england. in the course of conversation my caricatures were referred to, and lord torrington remarked to me, in fun, "you've had such a lot of schoolmasters and professors in your paper. i do not think they're particularly interesting. how should i do for a change?" [illustration: . canon ainger (master of the temple).] [illustration: th marquis of winchester. _"(cap of maintenance." premier marquis.)_] [illustration: archdeacon wilberforce. .] i privately decided that the suggestion was an excellent one, and as it had not yet occurred to me in those days to ask my subject to sit to me, i lost no time in observing him as he talked and made a mental note of every trait and peculiarity. after his departure i immediately made a caricature and sent it off to _vanity fair_. the next time lord torrington came to windsor he failed to make his customary call upon my mother, who met him some time afterwards in the neighbourhood. "how is it, lord torrington," she asked after the usual polite formalities, "that you have not been to see me?" "because, mrs. ward," he replied in deeply offended tones, "i shouldn't be responsible for my actions if your son were in the house." "then," said my mother, reassuringly, "i'll take good care if he is there next time, that he shall be locked in his room!" to which he replied, "even that assurance does not satisfy me!" and true to his word, he never called again. i have always considered one of my best early caricatures to be that of the rev. dr. goodford, provost of eton, whom i stalked in the high street. i had remembered him, of course, when a small boy at eton as headmaster. when he saw the caricature he protested rather indignantly against my having depicted him with his umbrella over his shoulder--on the grounds that it was not his habit to walk in this way. a short time after the publication of the cartoon he was passing down the high street with his wife when his reflection caught his eye in ingleton drake's shop-window, and he stopped suddenly to gaze in astonishment at what he saw therein. running after mrs. goodford, who had walked on oblivious of his distraction, he exclaimed, "my dear ... 'spy' was quite right after all--i do walk with my umbrella over my shoulder." in later days when caricatures made way for characteristic portraiture i frequently met, for the first time, men whom i had "stalked" in earlier days. on one occasion i called upon a dignitary of the church who had arranged to give me sittings. as i commenced to work he gave his opinions upon artists of the day, and he referred to a caricature of himself that had appeared in _vanity fair_. "i can't think who did it," he said distastefully, "but it was a horrid thing. i'll show it to you." calling his secretary, he asked that the offending drawing should be found. the search, however, proved unsuccessful, at which fact i need not say that i was greatly relieved. i suggested to the reverend gentleman that i would rather he did _not_ discover it at all! "but why?" said he. "it is the best i ever saw." it had been intended for a caricature, and the bishop's friends had been unanimous in proclaiming it to be in every way typical, and not over-caricatured. * * * * * some of my subjects had fixed ideas as to their own characteristics. i remember i was bent on doing dr. welldon, then headmaster of harrow, in profile, but he suddenly wheeled round on his heel and remarked, as if in explanation, "i always look my boys straight in the face." i endeavoured to persuade him to return to his former position. "you must imagine your boys over there," i explained, pointing to a distant spot on a far horizon, and the plan worked well. [illustration: rev. j. l. joynes (lower master, eton.) .] [illustration: dr warre cornish (vice provost of eton) .] [illustration: dr goodford (provost of eton) .] i took the opportunity of informing him that i sketched him in , whilst studying the game of football at "the wall" at eton, for a full-page drawing which the _graphic_ had commissioned me to execute. mr. frank tarver refreshed my memory on all the points to enable me to be accurate, and afterwards at his request the team posed and welldon was one of the group. mr. frank tarver also wrote the letterpress which accompanied the picture. while dr. walker, headmaster of st. paul's, was posing to me in cap and gown, he puffed a huge cigar, and i asked him if he smoked when he was interviewing his boys. "oh yes," he replied, "not in class of course, but always in my study, even when the boys are there. i smoke when the boys happen to come in; as you see, a good big one, too!" for many years, most of my time was employed either in making portraits, stalking a possible caricature, or travelling to the most likely or unlikely places to pursue a "wanted" subject for _vanity fair_. my work greatly extended my list of acquaintances, and often i found business and pleasure strangely bound together in one's daily life and occupation, and sometimes a little incongruously. on one occasion i was due to stay with my old friends mr. and mrs. george fox (now mrs. dashwood) in order to study the bishop of lichfield with a view to making a drawing of him. the night before i was the guest at the never-to-be-forgotten supper given in honour of jan van beers, the belgian artist, an exhibition of whose remarkable work at one of the bond street galleries was just then arousing great interest. van beers was a delightful man and a clever artist, but although he could originate and portray the most extraordinary ideas, it is not by the weird and eccentric creations, but by his light and humorous work, that he is still remembered. when i was talking of him with sir alma tadema, he remarked that it was a pity such unusual talent should be thrown away on such frivolous and unworthy subjects. the suggestion of the supper came in the first place, from sir john aird, a patron of van beers'; and, as sir john wished it to be a unique entertainment, he felt he could not do better than leave its arrangement to the originality of van beers himself. van beers called on me some little time before the date, and asked me if i could collect a number of both my own and pellegrini's caricatures, including those of several of the expected guests, so that slides might be made from them to throw upon a sheet with the aid of a lantern; and, after some difficulty, i found the right people to do the work. the supper from beginning to end was proved to be a gigantic surprise. as the midnight hour struck, the very representative gathering, very hungry and expectant, sat down at the long and charming decorated tables. everywhere the eye rested on the most dazzling arrangements. exquisite lights illuminated the room, charmingly assorted glass-flowers diffusing the electricity, which at that period was a decided novelty and only just becoming popular. our sense of expectancy was titillated to the uttermost by the alternating lights thrown upon the scene from different angles, and the soup, which seemed somewhat tardy in making its appearance, was welcomed. for a moment all was in darkness, until suddenly a lurid glow arose in the weirdest manner from the table, which was discovered to be made entirely of glass covered with a very transparent table cloth. the bright light coming up from beneath gave the assembled guests a ghastly and weird appearance, accentuated no doubt by our increasing hunger. when the general illumination appeared once more and normalities were, so to speak, resumed, an excellent menu began to make things go. between each course there was a fresh surprise in the form of a novelty entertainment--principally musical. from one corner of the room came an angelic voice singing a selection from an opera, which led to a discussion as to the identity of the singer who proved to be melba. then came hollman, the 'cellist, followed by florence st. john, who gave us a cheerful song from a comic opera. one bright particular star followed another until by degrees everything glowed. in the midst of the repast a monster pie was brought in and placed opposite alma tadema (who was in the chair). he cut it, and to our delighted astonishment countless little birds flew out in all directions alighting here there and everywhere, as though to complete the delightful scheme of decoration, whilst with one accord they seemed to burst into exquisite song. toasts followed and suitable speeches, the artists joined the general company and were individually thanked for the pleasure they had given. it had been arranged that the caricatures should appear earlier in the evening, but owing to a mistake on the part of the operator they arrived as the last item of the evening's entertainment, and after such an excellent supper, in which the wines were truly worthy of the perfect quality of the fare, the assembly could hardly be expected to crane their necks very far back in search of the caricatures of familiar faces thrown by the lantern-slides upon the ceiling. and in any case, to my mind, the effect was spoiled by the exaggerated angle at which they were reflected. after the coffee the party broke up about three o'clock. i had arranged to leave london by the five o'clock train for lichfield, so had engaged a bedroom at the euston hotel in order to lose no time in changing. i went to bed and slept soundly for over an hour, was duly aroused, caught my train and arrived at elmhurst, the residence of mr. and mrs. george fox, in time for early breakfast. the lichfield festival was being held at the time of my visit, and there was a great gathering of the clergy and their wives. i attended a very fine service in the cathedral, after which mrs. maclagan (the bishop's wife) gave a big luncheon party to which i had been invited. my main object was to make a cartoon of the bishop of lichfield for mrs. maclagan, who was determined that a cartoon of her husband should appear in _vanity fair_. she did her utmost to persuade him to give me sittings, but he was very reluctant and not to be cajoled, so she gave me this opportunity to observe him, and placed me near him at the luncheon table. there were scarcely any laymen present, indeed i believe that mr. fox and i were the only men present not "of the cloth"; and nearly all the clergymen had come to the festival from a distance. my name got mixed up with that of a decidedly important parson who was announced as mr. leslie ward--not altogether to his satisfaction i fear. mrs. maclagan being a perfect hostess, had chosen me an admirable companion, a lady who started the conversation by asking me which plays i had seen in london. i gathered she had been intending to go on the stage, previous to her marriage, but she had become a dean's wife and devoted her talents to charity performances and "drew in the shekels" for the church. i had a very enjoyable lunch, a charming _vis à vis_, and an excellent subject in view. i prolonged my visit to await the return of the dean of lichfield, dr. bickersteth, who was absent. as he did not return at the expected date i gave up the idea and hope of seeing him for the time being, but on my return journey, to my great delight, the dean was on the platform and _en route_ for some local station. i got into the same carriage, and was able to take a good look at him. he was a very good subject, and made an excellent caricature. when i decided to give my attention to the rev. r. j. campbell i studied him closely at the city temple. on my return i drew him in every sort of way but could not satisfy myself, for he had so many gestures and different attitudes, and when he works himself up and droops over the pulpit "fearless but intemperate" he looks rather like a gargoyle. not long after i had succeeded in caricaturing him to my satisfaction, i met him at one of sir henry lucy's delightful luncheon parties, where, after the ladies had left the dining-room, i sat next him, and in the course of conversation, gathered that he thought i had hit him rather hard. "well, mr. campbell, the caricature was done before i met you," i said, jestingly. "had i known you i couldn't have done such a cruel thing." on parting he said, "if you ever caricature me again i shall expect you to be kind, so i needn't feel frightened of you in future." when i sketched the very rev. hermann adler (the chief rabbi) i visited him at his house. while i was engrossed in my subject, his daughters came to see how the caricature was progressing. "oh, father!" they exclaimed, "it's just like you." "how dare you! i'll cut you both out of my will," threatened the rabbi, in mock anger. cardinal vaughan i "stalked" and made many a note of before he sat to me. he usually wore an inverness cape, and his finely cut features i found both attractive and impressive, but i could always see the making of a caricature in them. i had stalked and sketched dr. benson, archbishop of canterbury, before he sat to me at lambeth palace. when i was drawing his son, mr. a. c. benson (then a master at eton), i showed him a little portrait sketch of his father, which pleased him so much that i gave it to him, but i have always regretted that i did not make an equestrian picture as he seems most familiar to me on horseback. on many occasions my subjects have been particularly friendly and delightful in aiding me in my work, and sometimes extending their kindness across the boundary of professional moments. i remember a very delightful hour spent with dr. armitage robinson--a subject in a thousand--when dean of westminster. he was astonishingly well up in abbey lore, and together we visited chapels and crypts and strange hidden places which i feel sure must be practically unknown to the majority of visitors. when i heard he was leaving westminster for wells i felt an artist's regret that anything less imperative than death should have been permitted to disturb the impression of this picturesque abbot in the peculiarly appropriate setting of old westminster. [illustration: _studies from memory._ rev. r. j. campbell. .] the finest and handsomest young athlete i ever drew as an undergraduate was r. b. etherington-smith, known to his intimates as "ethel." he was rapidly making his mark as a surgeon, and his sad and untimely death was deplored by every one who knew him. among the cricketers i first caricatured f. r. spofforth--the demon bowler--followed by w. g. grace and c. b. fry, whom i portrayed as a runner. john loraine baldwin, the veteran cricketer, i introduced into the series in his self-propelling invalid chair; he was a very fine old man, and the founder of the "zingari," and also of the baldwin club. philipson, the distinguished wicket-keeper, i induced to stand in his rooms at the temple as though keeping wicket; and ranjitsinhji i closely observed playing cricket at brighton, after finding it very difficult to keep him up to the mark with his appointments. if i were to mention all my subjects in their various professions, i should fill more space than i am permitted, but among other well-known cricketers whom i have portrayed and caricatured are g. l. jessop, lord harris, ivo bligh (lord darnley), george hirst, f. s. jackson, and lord hawke. but amongst my pleasantest recollections are those of the university-rowing men with whom i came in close contact, for in every way possible they extended their hospitality to me, and i shall always remember with pleasure my visits to oxford and cambridge especially during the rowing season. when studying muttlebury, known as "muttle," while instructing his eight on horseback from the bank, he provided me with a mount at the same time, to enable me to watch him in the capacity of a coach. i had a final glimpse of him, however, practising rowing on the floor of his room. my visits were usually referred to in the _granta_, and a considerable amount of chaff was indulged in at my expense. on this particular visit when i went down to draw mr. muttlebury the following appeared under the heading of "motty notes!" "mr. leslie ward ('spy' of _vanity fair_) came up on monday to take mr. muttlebury's portrait, which is to appear in _vanity fair_ just before the boat race. the question how to make it most characteristic will be a difficult one to settle. certainly if our mighty president is sketched in a rowing attitude, it would scarcely be a case of all skittles and straight lines. mr. ward rode down with the crew, and is said to have been much impressed with the romantic beauty of our broad and rapid river, which he thought it would be quite impossible to caricature adequately. "he was also struck with the colleges, and catching sight of the new buildings of jesus from the common, said it was a fine house, and inquired who lived there.(!) "on tuesday morning, mr. muttlebury submitted to the torture. left sitting." [illustration: f. r. spofforth (demon bowler) .] i very frequently travelled to cambridge with mr. "rudy" lehmann, whose reputation as a rowing coach--both for his own university, as well as oxford and harvard--is so widely known as to make further comment superfluous. he was the originator of the _granta_ and is on the staff of _punch_, for which journal one of his best known and most amusing contributions was a skit purporting to be from the emperor william to queen victoria. as a man of letters he has made his mark. he is the father of a very fine little boy who should make a reputation as an oar, and follow in the footsteps of his distinguished father. when i arrived in cambridge on one of many occasions after a visit at oxford where i had gone with the object of producing c. m. pitman for _vanity fair_, i discovered the contemporary number of the _granta_ had again been on my track and chaffed me more than ever; as i was on excellent terms with the authors of that publication, i took their friendly "digs" in the spirit they were intended. here is a further specimen of their humorous prose: "mr. leslie ward has turned up again to gather his usual crop of caricatures for _vanity fair_. mr. pitman[ ] is to suffer first, i understand. last year i think i informed you how mr. ward borrowed a cap and gown in order to attend the lectures of professor robinson ellis[ ] whom he was commissioned to draw; and i have no doubt he will go through adventures just as surprising on his present visit. "on arriving in oxford last monday, mr. ward remembered that some years ago he had breakfasted in certain rooms in king edward street, with a friend whose name he had forgotten. he therefore concluded that these must be the lodgings of the president of the o.u.b.o. imagine his astonishment after he had driven there, when he was informed that mr. pitman had never occupied the rooms. eventually, however, he ran his victim down at , high street. "mr. ward's next proceedings were characteristic of his amiable nature. at the bottom of the stairs he dropped his gloves, at the top of the stairs he dropped his stick, and in the room itself he dropped his hat. having recovered all his scattered property, he took off his coat, and in doing so distributed over the floor a considerable fortune in loose gold and silver and copper, which for greater security he had placed in one of the outside pockets of his garment. great and resounding was the fall thereof, but mr. ward, on having his attention called to the fact, merely observed with an easy carelessness that marks the true artist, that he thought he had heard something fall but wasn't sure. "on being asked what other celebrities besides mr. pitman he proposed to draw, he declared that he had all the names written down on a piece of paper. up to the present, however, though mr. ward had looked for it in the most unlikely places, this piece of paper has defied every effort to find it. is it true, by the way, that once when on a visit to cambridge, mr. ward who was staying at 'the hoop,' wandered into the 'blue boar' and insisted, in spite of the landlady's despairing efforts to persuade him to the contrary, that he had slept there on the previous night and wanted to be shown his room, as the staircase had somehow become unfamiliar to him?" [illustration: . sam loates.] [illustration: . arthur coventry.] [illustration: frank wootton. .] [illustration: fordham. .] returning in the train, from one of my visits to the "varsity," i fell asleep and passed the junction where i should have changed. i awoke, hearing a noise overhead, followed by the disappearance of the lamps, a fact that i did not pay much attention to, imagining they were being replenished. these sounds were followed by a clinking of chains and sudden jerks, which usually accompany the process of shunting, and which i thought meant that another train was being coupled to the one i occupied. a complete silence followed, and after a short interval--i was alone in the carriage--i opened the window and looked out, and discovered that my carriage and its immediate neighbours, had been shunted into a siding for the night. i was feeling extremely cold and did not care to risk a walk of an exploring nature, as express trains kept flashing by and the night was dark. presently i saw men with lamps passing by some distance away, and by dint of shouting loudly, i attracted the attention of a porter, who called out when he saw me-- "what are you doin' there? get out of that!" "i shall be only too delighted," i said, when he approached. "i've been here for an hour." i felt cold and simply furious. however, i followed the porter very gingerly over the rails to the station, where i had to wait a long time, and finally arrived in london at an unearthly hour. since then i have been very wary of sleeping in trains. chapter xi in the lobby in the house.--distinguished soldiers.--the main lobby.--the irish party.--isaac butt.--mr. mitchell henry.--parnell and dillon.--gladstone and disraeli.--lord arthur hill.--lord alexander paget.--viscount midleton.--mr. seely.--lord alington's cartoon.--chaplains of the "house"--rev. f. e. c. byng.--archdeacon wilberforce.--the "fourth party."--lord northbrook and col. napier sturt.--lord lytton.--the method of millais.--lord londonderry. although from the year , i had drawn all the cartoons in _vanity fair_, and mr. gibson bowles had procured a privileged pass for me in the inner lobby of the house of commons for the purpose of studying the characteristics of my parliamentary subjects, the same facilities were accorded me through mr. palgrave (clerk of the desk), where for the two following years i was making drawings and portraits for the _graphic_. in i returned to _vanity fair_, permanently and exclusively to work for that publication, when pellegrini and i shared our labours pretty equally until his health gave way and he became a chronic invalid, so that for some years before his death i was responsible for most of the cartoons in the paper. of course, actual sketching or the use of the pencil in both assemblies was prohibited (for the privilege of a pass was also accorded me in the house of lords through the courtesy of the black rod) but after careful observation i was always able to go home and express on paper the result. i must not forget that in , after the bomb explosion in westminster hall, that the number of people admitted to the inner lobby was considerably reduced, in fact, from that time to the present the strangers are few and far between, but although my permit was limited to two days a week my name remained in the lobby-list until i retired from the paper in the latter part of . in "the house" i found that generally speaking members were very much occupied with the affairs of the moment, and usually quite unconscious of one's observance; but when it came to the point of special study of a subject for the purpose of caricature, it was by no means easy to find him or to watch him under such circumstances as enabled me to arrive at the knowledge necessary for my purpose and still leave him unaware. however, i found more than one "kind friend at court" do me good service. amongst these sir a. w. clifford, black rod, was most courteous and helpful in the house of lords, and always ready to find me a place--usually under the gallery. i came to know his face really well, and caricatured him with faithful directness and in full uniform. by great good fortune, mr. gibson bowles was my editor, and he would occasionally inveigle a subject of rare promise to my lair. the sergeant-at-arms is always the man in power in the house of commons. i have a most grateful remembrance of much courtesy received from the present occupant of that post of honour, captain erskine, but in the days of which i now write, mr. gosset--always depicted by harry furniss as a beetle--was in authority, and most kind in trying to place me at the best point for observation, usually under the speaker's gallery. but quite the most desirable hunting-ground in the house just then was his own room. there he held quite a court, and among his intimates were many distinguished men whom nature and the circumstance of dress had designed for the caricaturist's art. among them was isaac butt, m.p. for limerick, a pioneer of the home rule movement, and a most popular man, endowed with a charm of frankness and simple good fellowship which endeared him to all who knew him. he told most amusing stories, and as an advocate he defended o'brien and almost every irish political prisoner of note. he was described by "jehu junior" as the man who "invented home rule" ... an attempt to dismember the empire, and to found in ireland a commune of paris on a larger scale. when i observed him first i was struck by the unusual formation of his ears which bulged in an extraordinary manner, and also by his habit of fidgeting with an open penknife which he always carried in his hand, and continuously opened and shut in the same absent-minded manner in which some people fidget with a watch-chain; the habit found its place in my caricature, and proved a great surprise to the subject. among the irish members i caricatured mr. mitchell henry who led the home rule party in ' , but afterwards "ratted." he gave me three sittings, but was afterwards heard to say that he did not know "where the devil that fellow got hold of him!" i got to know him after extremely well, and accepted his hospitality on more than one occasion. he was very wealthy at one time, and up to the last collected every relic of dr. johnson he could lay hands on. my father had also taken a very great interest in anything connected with the great man and had painted several events in his life, of which i suppose the best known is "dr. johnson in the anti-chamber of the earl of chesterfield," now in the tate gallery. at his death i sold to him a very interesting study from one of these pictures. [illustration: mr gladstone. .] at the request of mr. bowles i went over to dublin to make a special picture of parnell and dillon in kilmainham gaol. i had letters of introduction to both, and parnell wrote to my hotel a very charming letter of acquiescence in answer to my request for an interview, which letter i greatly regret that i have had the misfortune to mislay. then i received a second letter in which he informed me that he had heard that he would not be allowed to see me alone in prison, but that a warder would have to be present the whole time, and under the circumstance he was forced to decline my request. it was within the bond of my contract with mr. bowles that i should not be required to place the signature "spy" on any drawing that was not the outcome of personal observation of the subject required, so i gave it up, and the parnell-dillon cartoon which appeared in _vanity fair_ was from the clever imagination of harry furniss. i remember parnell as a carelessly dressed man with good features, a fine head with a high forehead and eyes both striking and piercing, but not altogether pleasant in expression. i was in the law-courts when the piggott case was on, and opposite to me was the celebrated royal academician, philip calderon, who was studying him with the intention of making a large picture of the court commissioned by the _graphic_, but it was never finished or produced as a sketch. when the _vanity fair_ cartoons were put up for sale at christie's the only one of my series (curiously enough) that failed to find a bidder was the drawing of piggott, although it was one of my most successful studies, from a sketch as he stood in the witness-box. gladstone and disraeli i drew in black and white, of course many years before, for the _graphic_, and on subsequent occasions for _vanity fair_. as a careful observation of the movement of my subject is always necessary, one day in talking to monty corry i told him i was on the look-out for an opportunity to complete my study of his chief, whom i wished to observe at a distance sufficiently near and far to get his gait. he said that they would be leaving downing street for the house of lords together at a certain hour, and he suggested that i should follow them or walk on the opposite side of the road. at the appointed time i was at my post and keenly watched them start, disraeli leaning on monty corry's arm. as they strolled towards the house of lords i followed along on the other side, mentally taking in their movements and completing my impression of the great leader and his secretary. also at the request of mr. monty corry, disraeli's valet gave me an opportunity of inspecting the coat with the astrachan collar which seemed to hold a share in its owner's strong individuality, and from these observations i made the caricature "power and place" which appeared in due course in _vanity fair_, and was published in a special number. that the character of the man may be seen in his walk i have frequently proved, though never more clearly than through the two most distinguished statesmen of their generation; disraeli walked, or appeared to walk, on his heels as though he were avoiding hot ashes. in strongest contrast was the walk of gladstone, who planted his feet with deliberate but most vigorous firmness as though with every step he would iron his strong opinion into the mind of the nation. [illustration: "dizzy" and "monty" corry (lord rowton).] _À propos_ of caricature and movement, lord arthur hill presented some difficulty to the caricaturist because he was so charged with movement that he never appeared to pause for a moment. his leading feature was his stride which seemed, and was, of tremendous length. he also had a very long neck and a curiously flat head, and he always seemed to walk as though he saw a stout wall in front of him and was full of determination to get through it. my caricature is just one long stride. man's dress is very much more commonplace than it used to be, and nowadays clothes seldom help out the artist, but in the days of which i write the exaggerated styles or idiosyncrasies in some apparently trivial detail of male attire made all the difference in the world to the caricaturist, and many of the older peers, country squires and occasional eccentric gentlemen retained the old-fashioned habits of dress in spite of the wisdom or folly of fashion. gladstone, of course, was the making of many caricaturists, the lion-like striking face in the setting of the high collar was a picture in ten thousand. i drew the "grand old man" over and over again from sheer interest, his face had the strongest fascination for me. i watched it change with the years; and year by year the unusual collar grew less in dimensions and in importance to the caricaturist, as the character pencilled itself about the features of the wonderful old face. also among clothes-subjects was mr. john laird, member of parliament, who was a superlative delight to the caricaturist, for his clothes were unique even among the remarkable, his usual costume consisting of a long-tailed frock-coat covered by a short pea-jacket which extended only a little beyond his waist. lord alexander paget--the father of the present lord anglesey--known to his friends as "dandy paget," was a very smart man of the best type. he wore a hat with a very curly brim, and dressed in very loud checks; but he could wear what he liked, for he always "looked right." i stayed a week-end with him in cheshire, and while there he obliged me by showing me his wonderful wardrobe in which i never saw a more varied selection, and i soon hit on the suit which i thought the most effective for my purpose. this was the one with the biggest check of all, and with the peggiest of peg-top trousers. also for rare habilatory peculiarity, the uncle of "the dasher" (the late earl of portarlington) was hard to beat. he was an old gentleman who usually, in walking costume, wore a decidedly blue frock-coat trimmed with deep braid, lavender-coloured trousers of a nautical cut and patent leather boots, showing but the tips, after the bulwer-lytton style. his hair was trimmed over his ears in the buster-brown manner, and his moustache and tip well cosmetiqued. his silk hat was of a build of its own, well curled. his tie of a brilliant hue, a fancifully arranged handkerchief emerging from his breast pocket, the gayest of button-holes, and grey kid gloves completed an _ensemble_ wonderful to behold. one of the greatest treats i have ever had was watching him pirouette through the figures of a quadrille, in the good old-fashioned style, on the occasion of a ball at stafford house. one curious anomaly, a puritan beau, i remember in mr. sturge, the old quaker, whom my eye always seemed to seek and find in the lobby, leaning upon his stick, his face shaded by a silk hat with an extraordinary wide brim, and a white cravat tied carefully under his chin. day after day he was to be seen there, but when the lobby list was wiped out after the bomb scare, i missed my pet figure who came no more. the names by which some of the members were known were not without significance. mr. tom collins, m.p., had the reputation of being the noisiest and most slovenly man in the house of ' , and was commonly known as "noisy tom." lord vivian, whose caricature i believe to be among my happiest, was dubbed "hook and eye." he was a well-known racing man, and i frequently observed him on the race-course. then there was mr. edward jenkins, m.p., known as "ginx's baby," after his well-known book of that name. mr. adams-acton, the well-known sculptor, arranged a dinner in order that i might meet him, but i am ashamed to say that i entirely forgot the engagement until some days after. my father, being one of the guests, was extremely put out at my non-appearance. "we waited for you a quarter of an hour," he said, "i was so ashamed!" however, i made my excuses to mr. adams-acton and took further opportunities of seeing the well-known m.p. in the lobby of the house, where his intensely shakesperian forehead marked him out from the rest. the earl of powis, irreverently dubbed "mouldy" by "jehu junior," was a delightful old peer of a period long past, and one of my favourite studies. viscount midleton i frequently saw in the lobby; he was nearly blind, and his helplessness seemed peculiarly pathetic in "the house," as he used to run up against doors and pillars when unattended, but as a rule he was led by his secretary. it was in ' that i caricatured old mr. seely, m.p. for lincoln, and a great breeder of pigs. he was the grandfather of brigadier-general seely, once minister of war in the asquith government. it was "jehu junior" who described my subject as "an amiable and decent person ... and there is no reason in the nature of things why he should not have lived and died happy and respectable. but he was returned to parliament for lincoln." years after when i saw colonel seely in the house for the first time i recognized him at once because of the same characteristic attitude, although he is very much taller. a number of well-known faces recur in my memory from the background of the house! there was robert dalgleish, m.p., another jovial and most popular member, who wore the longest finger nails i have ever seen excepting on a chinaman: lord cottesloe, who was the son of one of nelson's companions in arms, and whom i used to watch with great interest as he came down the steps of the house of lords: viscount cole (now lord inniskillen), whom i knew as a boy at eton: also viscount dupplin, known as "duppy," who was always smartly dressed and wore white ducks in summer; he was celebrated for his knowledge of the chinese language. _À propos_ of the caricature of the late lord alington, one of my earliest, a very old friend of mine who was something of a busybody to me, "there is something about pellegrini's work that you ought to study." i said, "i don't want to study anybody's work, only my subjects." "well," he replied, "don't be offended, old chap, it's only to your advantage that i am saying this. go and look at pellegrini's cartoon of lord alington in this week's _vanity fair_. there is something in that which you never get." my only answer was, "you old ass, go and look at it yourself and read the signature upon it," which happened to be my own. amongst strongly-marked and characteristic faces i well remember lord colonsay (scotch law), who had a most beautiful mop of shining silver hair; also the rev. francis e. c. byng, afterwards lord stafford, who was chaplain to the house of commons from ' to ' . he was a little man with great natural dignity, glossy curly black hair and a very prominent chin. he was a perfect study for the caricaturist, and i believe anything but a stereotyped parson. the late chaplain, the rev. basil wilberforce, archdeacon of westminster abbey, sat to me a few years ago for _vanity fair_; i had observed him in the house of commons, and in his beautiful and most interesting home in deans' yard. his unrivalled stateliness of bearing was combined with unusual lightness of movement, and he was a most impressive figure, especially on occasions of state ceremonial. i remember watching him with great pleasure in his place in the speaker's procession as it passed to the house for prayers. there was no man in london who had such a following in the pulpit. as a subject he was most interesting and very patient. his gown in the reproduction is the best sample of three-colour work i had had done, and he was so pleased with my drawing that he bought it. of course i did not confine my secret observations to the house, but made for my man anywhere that i could watch him. i caught sir henry rawlinson at a royal academy soirée and finished the study at another social evening at the royal geographical society. in those days the royal academy social gatherings made good hunting-ground, and it was vastly entertaining to watch the orthodox social celebrities swarm round the "lions." occasionally it was still possible to meet those who consider it a solemn misdemeanour if not a hideous crime to portray one's friends and acquaintance in the spirit, or with the pen of humour. i remember on one occasion just after i had published a caricature which probably caused a little surprise to the unconscious subject, i met a man who must have strongly objected to my observing eye so over-full was he of righteous indignation. "well," said he, on the note that conveys that magnificent sense of superiority which seems the mark of a limited intelligence, "have you been caricaturing any _more_ of your friends?" as a matter of fact the work of the leading modern caricaturists is peculiarly free from vulgar offence. the art of caricature as the art of any other form of portraiture is to portray the true leading features through the mirthful marking of the obvious. occasionally the caricaturist draws on the extraordinary, for instance, mr. harry furniss, has immortalized the late sir william harcourt's row of chins, but it is as guiltless of offence as mr. gladstone's collar or mr. chamberlain's orchid. [illustration: "methodical & methodist" campbell bannerman and fowler.] [illustration: "babble & bluster" gladstone and harcourt. .] [illustration: "faithful & faddist" lords spencer and ripon.] not long after i had caricatured sir albert rollit he introduced me to his pretty daughter in the lobby. "oh, i'm so pleased to know you, mr. ward," she said. "you made that splendid caricature of my father." "it is good of you to take it in the spirit which it is drawn," i answered; "because it is a caricature." one of the stoutest men i ever drew was sir cunliffe owen, director of the kensington museum, and head of the english commission of the international exhibition at paris in ' . when i dined with him there i was astonished to see that he drank no wine--although his guests were plentifully supplied--but under his doctor's orders he was limited to one small tumbler of water. while in paris i stayed with sir cunliffe in the company of the members of the english commission in paris as their guest. they gave me an amazingly good time, and i made a sketch of my host for _vanity fair_. it was towards the end of , that i was asked by mr. bowles to obtain a cartoon of the "fourth party" for _vanity fair_, and later on it was claimed that the cartoon was proof positive of the existence of the "fourth party." it is certain that lord randolph churchill, mr. balfour, sir john gorst, and sir henry drummond wolff came to my studio, and that we had great difficulty in finding a seat suitable for the accommodation of mr. balfour's sprawl. i have naturally met many most distinguished soldiers, among them field marshal sir william gomm, whom i met by the introduction of mr. gibson bowles. he had attained the age of ninety, looked years younger, and was, in fact, astonishingly sprightly--a tiny little dot of a man. "what is the secret of your longevity?" inquired mr. bowles. "no doubt you lived a careful life." "indeed, sir, nothing of the kind!" replied the old gentleman, who was very much afraid of being mistaken for a prig. there was more than a hint of the dandy about this vigorous nonogenarian. i was interested to observe that he wore patent leather shoes of a decidedly dainty shape, decorated with steel buckles holding enormous bows, and his trousers were the most wonderful in shape i have ever seen. another great soldier i depicted was sir hastings doyle, a remarkable man in his day. he had the most charming manners, and is said to have known no fear. his sitting-room was like a fashionable woman's boudoir, and when the great general appeared i noticed his eyebrows and moustache were darkened with cosmetic, and his cheeks slightly touched with carmine as was frequently the custom then with many an old beau. sir bartle frere i caricatured in the attitude which he frequently adopted whilst lecturing at the royal geographical society. he was a man of remarkably mild appearance, and i was astonished to hear him define the zulu war as a celibate-man-slaying-machine. [illustration: sir albert rollit, .] one day while i was at the beefsteak club, in conversation with colonel napier sturt, he suggested his friend, lord northbrook, as an excellent subject for a caricature. i said that i had already observed him in the house of lords, and the colonel responded that he was sure that if i cared to see lord northbrook's pictures he would be delighted to show them to me at any time, which would give me a further opportunity of noticing him. shortly after colonel sturt took me to lord northbrook's to luncheon, and when we entered the house in park lane, to my astonishment, colonel sturt said, "let me introduce my friend 'spy' to my old friend 'skull,'" his nickname for lord northbrook. this colonel always posed as the poor younger son, being a brother of the late lord alington. he affected a watch without a chain, the old-fashioned key of which aggressively hung from his waistcoat pocket. my first cartoon of the duke of beaufort (for i drew him twice for _vanity fair_) was anything but a complimentary caricature, and represented him as i had seen him standing by his coach at ascot. he was the finest gentleman i ever came across. i had never seen the second lord lytton before i walked into his room at claridge's hotel. i knew a good many people who knew him, and i was interested in seeing him, as i had heard so much of him years before when visiting knebworth. although a much shorter and fairer man than his father, he was not unlike him in feature, and had the same curious light-blue eyes. he also affected the same cut of trouser. when i went in it seemed to me that he was inclined to attitudinize in the orthodox pose of a statesman, and i felt that he was not himself. when i took my pencil out to make notes, i felt it wiser to drop it until he was natural. he was very pleasant and affable, and when the time came to leave i couldn't find my hat. "oh," he said, "i think i know--you left it in the other room--i'll get it for you." he was going out and had put on an overcoat with an astrachan collar, and in his walk i perceived at once the resemblance to his father; he had the same stoop from the neck, and he took short steps. in this way i got him into my head and went straight home and made my caricature. i had satisfied myself with the caricature, but millais, who was painting his portrait at the time, said, "if you would like to have another look at him he is coming to me to-morrow to give me a last sitting, and i am sure he wouldn't mind you looking on." this also gave me an interesting opportunity of seeing the manner in which millais painted a portrait, which to me was something quite novel, for instead of placing his easel some little way from his sitter he put it actually by the side of him, and instead of looking straight at his model he walked to the cheval glass which was the length of the room away, and looked most carefully at the model's reflection in the mirror and making a dash for the canvas painted his sitter from the reflection. old lord londonderry hearing that he was not to be allowed to escape my eagle eye, sent me an invitation to visit him at plas machynlleth, he promised that i should have every opportunity of making a caricature, and at the same time he begged that i would not let him off in any way. so in due course i went down to wales, and well do i remember the first morning of my visit. i came down a trifle earlier than the hour announced for breakfast, and walked absent-mindedly down the stairs and into the hall, and had said, "good morning" before i realized that i had stepped into the midst of family prayers. i felt an awful fool. however, in spite of the episode i spent quite a long and most enjoyable time at plas machynlleth. lord londonderry was a most delightful host, he showed me his estate and took me to every place of interest near, and both he and lady londonderry were so kind that the pleasant time i spent there remains in my memory. while there i made a drawing of lady eileen vane tempest, now lady allandale, which was much appreciated by her mother. as lord londonderry had expressed a wish that i should not spare him in any detail i drew him taking snuff as was his habit, and even his gouty knuckles are suggested in the caricature. his lack of self-consciousness and refreshing sense of humour completed a personality that was for me at any rate delightful. [illustration: the fourth party. lord randolph churchill. mr arthur balfour. sir drummond wolfe. sir john gorst.] chapter xii voyage on h.m.s. hercules sir reginald macdonald's caricature.--h.r.h. the duke of edinburgh's invitation.--the _lively_.--the _hercules_.-- admiral sir william hewitt.--irish excursions.--the channel squadron.--fishing party at loch brine.--the young princes arrive on the _bacchante_.--cruise to vigo.--the "night alarm."--the duke as _bon voyageur_.--vigo.--the birthday picnic.--a bear-fight on board the _hercules_.--homeward bound.--good-bye.--the duke's visit to my studio. in july, , i received an invitation from h.r.h. the duke of edinburgh to go for a cruise as his guest on board h.m.s. _hercules_, which he commanded, and which was the flag-ship of the reserve squadron. it was not an opportunity to lose, although one which had arrived by chance. it happened that admiral sir reginald macdonald, a great favourite at court and in society generally, was a victim of mine in _vanity fair_. i had known him previously, and always found him most cheerful and entertaining, but on the publication of the cartoon his merriment frizzled away, and he became severe. a letter arrived from him upbraiding me, and saying it was not the act of a friend to depict him as a drunkard. in short it was quite a furious epistle, and revealed him in an altogether new light. i wrote at once in the endeavour to persuade him that his idea concerning the caricature was entirely misconceived, but some days had elapsed bringing no answer when one morning he dashed into my studio with a most injured air, and so full of his grievance that he did not observe his great friend the duke of hamilton, who was sitting to me for his portrait at the time. [illustration: baron deichmann.] [illustration: . w. bramston beach, m.p. (_a great runner in his day_.)] [illustration: "sam" smith, m.p. (_radical and low churchman_). ] [illustration: percy thornton, m.p. (_a great runner in his day_.) .] "_hullo_, rim![ ] what's up?" inquired the duke, whereupon my victim appealed for his opinion on my treatment of him; but he received only chaff in place of the sympathy he expected and very soon he withdrew. on the next day he called again as i was at my work, and his demeanour seemed altogether calmer: "here is a letter i have brought you to read," he said. "it is lucky for you that opinions differ." the letter was from the prince of wales and ran as follows:-- "my dear rim, "i have to-day seen your excellent portrait in _vanity fair_, do you think you could procure for me the original drawing as i should so much like to possess it." after reading the prince's letter and being aware of sir reginald's feeling in the matter, and also knowing that mr. gibson bowles was the owner of the drawing i thought it diplomatic to make an alternative suggestion, which was to offer to draw a new sketch of him for presentation in full uniform and cocked hat. the idea pleased him, and when it was completed he took it himself to marlborough house. not only did it meet with the approval of the royal recipient, but the duke of edinburgh, who happened to be there at the time, was so pleased with it that he wanted one done of himself like it, and this led to the invitation for the cruise of which i am writing. to quote sir reginald's letter to me he says, "the duke of edinburgh considers your sketch the best drawn, and without exception the most wonderfully like he ever saw, and in consequence he will be very glad indeed if you will come for a cruise as his guest during the following dates, etc...." previous to making a start i received instructions from captain le strange, a.d.c., who was to pilot the duke's guests to bantry bay on h.m.s. (despatch boat) _lively_. in his letter he informed me that admiral sir william hewitt, admiral hardinge, and mr. wentworth-cole would be of the party on the _hercules_; that he thought it would be a most jovial one, and that if i were a fair sailor i should enjoy the trip very much. he also said that h.r.h. had just taken his fleet of eight ships out for the first time, and that they seemed to work very well. on july th, i started from paddington by the afternoon train for plymouth, and discovered in my vis-à-vis of the railway carriage, mr. wentworth-cole. captain le strange met us at plymouth, and we dined at devonport, and were escorted on board at . p.m. shortly after we weighed anchor, the wind got up, and the yacht _lively_ did full credit to her name. through sunday and monday it blew a big gale, and admiral hardinge did not show up on deck until we steamed into bantry bay, where i was relieved to see the ships coming in with us for i hoped for steadier boards to tread. on monday evening, the two admirals moved to the flag ship and wentworth-cole and i followed shortly afterwards. it was the first time i had boarded a man-of-war and the formalities of the quarter-deck were not less striking because i was still feeling somewhat rocky. however, the sound of the bugle seemed to pull me together, and the duke, having received me most cordially escorted me to his state cabin to which my own was adjacent. it was evident that the comfort of his guests was to be well considered, as by this time i knew that a picked marine had already been selected to valet me, and information had leaked out that the services of an experienced cook from gunters' had been obtained. by degrees i became acquainted with the captain and commander and officers of the ship and i soon settled down. on the following morning a trip had been arranged by h.r.h. for us to steam to glengariff on the _lively_. the weather was very fine and after an early breakfast on board her we set out (mr. mackenzie of kintale joining us). it must have been quite three o'clock before we reached glengariff, and sat down to lunch in the hotel. during our meal a young american visitor anxious to see if royalty ate like ordinary beings seated herself at a table adjoining ours, and fixed her eyes steadily upon the duke. she even ordered marmalade to make believe it was her midday meal, but we were informed afterwards that she had lunched. evidently her interest had not diminished, as when seeing us seated on the lawn drinking coffee, she refreshing herself in a similar way, drew up close to our party with the same inquisitive intention whilst taking it for granted that she also was a centre of interest to us. the proprietress gave her a hint and she vanished. by this time we were replenished, and, after a stroll to cromwell's bridge, the owner of the hotel brought her book out for us to sign our names in, and on our departure presented not only the duke, but each of us with a bouquet. our host, mr. mackenzie, with his friends, proceeded to killarney, while we returned on the _lively_ to bantry. the officers on board the _hercules_ were most friendly, and willing to help in giving me a good time. every one was pleasant, and the chaff came readily, especially when i was supposed to discover from the stern walk where the rudder was. in time i became more accustomed to the routine, and learned to know when i might venture on the captain's bridge, or pace the deck without getting in the way. among the many interesting men whose acquaintance i made on the cruise was one cole, a paymaster in the navy and quite a character. he was a very clever amateur draughtsman, and had accompanied the admiral on several of his cruises. his drawings brimmed over with humour, especially in a kind of log-book in which he sketched the event of the day which was greatly appreciated by h.r.h. he was full of fun and the favourite of all, but owing to a peculiarly deep-pitched voice, and a somewhat serious expression exaggerated by the fact that he wore blue glasses, some one had christened him "the sepulchral." whilst the reserve squadron was anchored at bantry waiting for the channel fleet to join us, much of the time was spent--when the admiral was not engaged on duty--in taking trips on the _lively_ to various places, or on fishing excursions. there was the inspection of the coastguard station in the vicinity of ballydonogan, and afterwards we went on to a place called killmakillog to fish for trout on glanmore lake. it was on the occasion of our trip to waterville that a tramp, a rough looking customer, approached the duke with a letter which h.r.h. passed on to me with the directions to give him half a crown. the letter ran:-- _to_ the prince of great britain and ireland. "may it please your highness, "that having served in the th of foot during the crimea war and afterwards in the east india mutiny--drink alone disqualified me for pension. "i pray you will help to live one of her majesty's loyal soldiers. "daniel moriarty." the terrible irish famine was nearly at an end. to the duke had been allotted the mission of official inquiry and relief; but although much had been done officially to relieve the general suffering, on our daily trips we frequently came across cases of great distress, usually where the peasantry refused relief outside their own homes. during one round we came upon a particularly painful scene. walking into an old cabin which was apparently empty, we discovered through the dim light which penetrated from a hole in the roof, the weird figure of a very old man scantily clothed in the meanest rags. stretched upon the floor by his side lay a young boy in the same deplorable condition. the old man spoke a few words of welcome in a feeble voice, and the miserable lad tried to rise to come forward. it was the most painful scene i can remember, and it would have taken the genius and human understanding of hogarth to depict in detail. needless to say such a case of dire distress was immediately relieved. the duke of edinburgh was most kind-hearted, and he did much personally as well as officially to relieve the distress in this district. i was told on the best authority that he distributed within a very short time over £ from his private purse in individual cases of extreme need. when the channel squadron under admiral hood (afterwards lord hood) joined us life on board became more ceremonious and eventful. admiral hood gave a dinner-party for the duke on board the flag-ship _minotaur_, and admiral hewitt accompanied h.r.h. during their absence i was inspired to caricature the latter. when they returned, the duke took up my sketch, and it tickled his fancy immensely, in fact i had never seen him laugh so much. sir william was getting very stout at the time, and i had noticed that he always fastened the bottom button of his jacket leaving the upper ones loose, doubtless with the intention to give an appearance of slimness to his waist. the effect was ludicrous, and i had endeavoured to put on paper my impression of it. i fear, however, that poor sir william did not appreciate the joke. the next day the duke inspected some of the ships, and i was privileged to accompany him and found it a great opportunity to increase my knowledge. the combined fleets lying at anchor made a glorious naval picture. the ships were seventeen in all, of which i remember:-- _northumberland_, captain wratislaw; _defence_, captain thrupp; _valiant_, captain charman; _audacious_, captain woolcombe; _warrior_, captain douglas; _achilles_, captain heneage; _hercules_ (flag-ship), captain townsend; _lord warden_, captain indsay brine; _hector_, captain caster; _penelope_, captain nicholson; _agincourt_, captain buller; _minotaur_ (flag-ship), captain rawson; _salamis_ (despatch boat), commander fitzgeorge; _lively_ (despatch boat), commander le strange. i was introduced to several of the captains, and among them were some whom i was destined to draw years after as admirals for _vanity fair_. on the evening of the inspection the duke gave a return dinner-party on board the _hercules_. admiral hood was, of course, the principal guest, and i had the privilege of being placed next him at dinner. the _hercules_ having no band of its own, that of the _minotaur_ was lent for the occasion, and several of the leading officers were present, notably captain heneage of the _achilles_--known as "pompo"--who was certainly the _beau_ of the combined fleets. the immaculate appearance of this distinguished officer in these days at sea was certainly one of the distractions of the voyage, and as admiral sir algernon heneage, he is still to be seen in the west end, an ornament and a great favourite in london society. eventually he came to my studio and i made a characteristic drawing of him. as we were still waiting for the _bacchante_ (with the young princes on board) to join us, h.r.h. arranged a fishing excursion to blackwater for an off day. commander le strange was to conduct us. the _lively_ weighed anchor at a.m., and we arrived at blackwater at o'clock. unfortunately as a bag containing my fishing-rod, footgear and other articles of wearing apparel appropriate to a voyage of this kind had failed to reach me yet from cork, i was altogether unprepared for the excursion. the duke hearing of my predicament, very kindly offered to lend me a rod, at the same time he impressed me with the fact that he valued it greatly, and that i must take great care of it. it had been a birthday present given to him by the prince consort, and bore an inscription in silver to that effect. mr. mahony, the landowner, drove to blackwater to meet us, and from there took us to loch brine, where the fish were plentiful. he with h.r.h. went out in a boat to fish leaving us to pursue our sport from the bank. i scrambled on to a rock from which i cast my line, when alas the rubber soles on my shoes played me false, and i was in the water, and the rod in pieces. what was to be done? all sport was at end for me! i turned to my companion who advised me to say nothing about it, and give it to the coxswain to mend. in a weak moment i resolved to keep my own counsel, but imagine my consternation a little later, when the admiral joined us for luncheon, and exclaimed, "you are a nice fellow, breaking my rod!" i had quite forgotten how water carries sound. every word of the discussion had been overheard by h.r.h. i was non-plussed and the matter passed off without further comment. then we all sat down to lunch with a good appetite, but it was a poor day's sport for me, and we returned to the _lively_, and dined at o'clock. the next day mr. mahony and his family came on board; later in the day we returned to bantry, and shortly after the _bacchante_ came into the bay. the young princes lost no time in paying their respects to the admiral, who at once invited them to dinner. i sat next to prince eddy who was a perfectly natural boy, and to my mind immensely tactful, for he immediately commenced to tell me of the success of my latest cartoon in _vanity fair_--which happened to be lord shrewsbury. on the next day the combined squadrons weighed anchor and started for the ten days' cruise to vigo. [illustration: seventh earl of bessborough. _"m.c.c. cricket."_ .] [illustration: rev. f. h. gillingham. _"a hard hitter."_ .] [illustration: archdeacon benjamin harrison. _"canterbury cricket."_ .] the naval evolutions and drill were exceedingly interesting to watch by day, and, on the second night out, came the great excitement of a "night alarm." this proceeding might be described as the supreme episode of naval drill. it may come at any moment, and although i was let into the secret it seemed to arrive with startling suddenness to me. we were at dinner when the alarm was given. "there's not a moment to be lost," said the duke. "stick to me and we'll go down." a fleeting impression of the blue jackets and marines turning out of their hammocks like one man, then in a flash every officer gave his word of command--all hands were at the guns--every man in his place!--lights out! and so on. on saturday the weather turned stormy, and i found that even a man-of-war didn't glide smoothly through a rough sea in the bay of biscay; and, although i managed to put in an appearance at church service on sunday, i thought it more discreet to remain in my cabin during the gale; but on monday the duke, finding that i didn't appear at the luncheon table, sent for me, and with difficulty i dragged myself to my place. "now," said he, "i am going to be your doctor, and you must take the prescription i give you. it is the only cure for sea-sickness." so at his suggestion i drank one glass of champagne and presently another, but when it came to the third proposal i politely declined, for although the first two glasses had a most comforting effect "yet another" would have proved the last straw. "very well," said he, in mock sternness, "when you want medical aid in future don't come to me for it." but i was better. we continued our voyage with three incidents on the way. a man overboard--the funeral of a stoker on board the _hector_, which was impressive, the court-martial of an offender on the _defence_, and a sudden dense fog that came on suddenly when the ships were manoeuvring and crossing one another. every light was ordered out, and i went on the bridge where i found both sir william hewitt and the captain. the former, who realized the danger of the situation, and who was always ready with chaff, said to me: "you had better go down to your cabin and get a wicker chair ready for emergency. there will be no life-belt for you in case of a collision as there are only just enough for the crew and of course they come first." i needn't say that the precaution didn't recommend itself to me. i thought to myself if the ship goes down i shall go with her; but the fog cleared off quite suddenly, and although three of the ships were lost to sight they turned up in the morning. during the cruise i heard on all sides how highly regarded the duke of edinburgh was as a seaman and a commanding officer, and he was undoubtedly much liked by those with whom he came in close contact. to his guests on board he was kindness itself, and he could be most entertaining. he told us his experiences of boyhood, how he had been treated just as any other middy, and subject to their backslidings also if one might judge by the account of severe punishments which had their place in the stories. he talked much of russia, and told us how well the palace was guarded, that none but members of the imperial family were allowed to enter by the principal entrance, and that on one occasion he, being unrecognized by a sentry was challenged, and that he had to beat an ignominious retreat, and go round by the equerries' door. not only were his experiences and travels most interesting, but he had an extraordinary good ear for dialect; with him a good yarn lost nothing in the telling, and he could hit off a type in a very few words. when he had an half-hour to spare in the evenings we would play a game i introduced of "drawing consequences," which is played in much the same way as the ordinary schoolroom game, except that one fills the required space with contributory drawing in place of the usual words. h.r.h. came out well under its inspiration, and the combined results of our drawings were occasionally very amusing. one evening he produced a crystal and inset was a very tiny portrait of dowager empress of russia, which the company mistook for a miniature, and thought it marvellous that any human eye could see to produce it. i at once detected that a photograph was behind it, and that it was in fact a very minutely reduced and tinted photograph. i am afraid i destroyed the general illusion. the duke smiled, he was very sincere in his love of art, and particularly proud of the talent of his sister the princess royal--empress frederick of germany, whose pictures he spoke of in the highest terms, an opinion which i had heard frequently endorsed. on thursday we sighted the spanish coast, and on friday there was a big drill and evolutions; and on saturday the fleet arrived in vigo bay at o'clock. of course the two flag-ships were the centre of interest, and on our arrival there was the usual demonstration in connection with naval events. the duke received visits from officials, and in the afternoon gave me his first sitting. it was a splendid evening. h.r.h. gave a big dinner-party. the _minotaur_ band came over to the _hercules_, and there was a fine display of fireworks ashore and the bay was illuminated by the flashes from the search-lights, and the general appearance of the fleet enlivened by the movements of boats and pinnaces going to and fro between ships and shore. in celebration of his birthday (august th) the duke had arranged a picnic for the princes and their middy friends, mr. dalton (the prince's tutor) cole, who as usual brought his sketch book with him, wentworth-cole, and commander le strange were also of the party, but the presiding spirit was the duke in his best form, full of fun, and most anxious that the boys should have a good time. on our journey out in the pinnace i remember that wentworth-cole was the victim of a practical joke instigated by me for the amusement of the royal middies. he was wearing a hat with several ventilatory holes on the summit of the crown. it suddenly occurred to me that these would make suitable receptacles for matches; so, when he was engrossed in the scenery, i found an opportunity of filling them up, in which occupation prince george lent willing aid. when a chance came i lighted the heads of the matches, but hearing a titter, wentworth-cole turned round, discovered the plot, and saved the situation. it was a real picnic. we arrived in the steam pinnace at a most picturesque island some miles out from vigo, and there in a rural setting, and on a particularly rugged piece of ground the baskets were opened and we sat down to a capital luncheon. the coxswain, who was a very handy man, was of the greatest use in every direction on this occasion. by this time the seigning nets had been cast in the bay near at hand, and the princes and their shipmates were anxiously awaiting the opportunity to set to work. in the meantime we all strolled down towards the sea, prince eddy and i remaining in the rear of the main body, while he on the q.t. and boy-like, found the opportunity of taking occasional puffs from my pipe. on joining the others prince george, after noticing its unusual shape politely asked if he might look at it. evincing curiosity in its condition and with an air of a connoisseur he passed several pieces of dried grass through the stem and thoroughly cleaned it out, then after filling the bowl with tobacco and lighting it he tested it well by taking some good whiffs. afterwards he returned it with the remark that it was now fit to smoke. the little episode amused me greatly as it was so completely natural. by now, finding that the nets were ready to be manipulated we, one and all, tucked up our trousers and hauled them in, the duke being the most energetic of the lot. it was warm work but not wasted, for the haul was a fine one. during the afternoon a couple of bull fights in an adjoining field gave us a good show of a non-professional bull fight, also we saw some interesting types of portuguese, who were entered with the other incidents of the day in cole's sketch book. he was also clever in portraying those big-eyed, dark, and picturesque peasant girls. i think that must have been the last of the very delightful excursions on the _lively_, which ship, of pleasant memory, came eventually to a bad end, as she struck a rock and went to the bottom. we stayed some time in vigo bay, and made several delightful excursions there. when on board, the young princes did their best to kill any chance of monotony. there was a bear fight i am not likely to forget. i was in the habit of returning to my cabin for a _siesta_ after luncheon, and on this particular occasion i think the officers on board were occupied on duty. the princes came to pay the duke a visit, but only to find that he had gone ashore, and things were generally a little on the dull side. i was the sole occupant of the cabin, and as they peeped in they saw me in my berth asleep, so passed on to the adjoining one (mr. wentworth-cole's) in search, no doubt, of a bit of fun. presently i got the full benefit of their inspiration, which took the form of squeezing the contents of a very large sponge from their side of the partition on to my head. it was a thorough "cold pigging" that i received, that effectually wakened me from slumber; but i rose to the occasion, and in my turn sent back the sponge. this ended in a rough and tumble which, of course, they were inviting. cole (of the pencil) came along in the thick of it, and eventually made a caricature of the scene in the duke's book. it represented the little bear, the middle sized bear and the big bear at play, and he called it "a bear fight." it was not until we were homeward bound that the duke succumbed to the ordeal of a second sitting for his portrait. he was an interesting subject; i made two drawings of him, the portrait which he had commanded, and which i understood was intended as a birthday present for the duchess, and i also made a water-colour drawing in similar style to that which had pleased him of sir reginald macdonald: which represented him at full length in admiral's uniform. after i had thanked h.r.h. for all his kindness and hospitality and the cruise was at an end, i said good-bye, and returned to london with wentworth-cole. when i arrived in london, amongst the first letters i received was one from h.r.h. containing a handsome cheque in payment of the portrait. some little time after i was at work one morning in my studio in william street, lowndes square, when the hall porter announced "a gentleman to see you, sir," and in walked the duke of edinburgh carrying a parcel under his arm, which proved to be a photograph of the duchess, which he suggested i should study and left with me, for he was most anxious that i should make a drawing of her royal highness, and suggested that later on her time would be less occupied, but i gathered that the proposal had escaped her memory. chapter xiii yachtsmen--foreign rulers sir reginald macdonald's caricature.--h.r.h. the duke of edinburgh's invitation.--the _lively_.--the _hercules_.-- admiral sir william hewitt.--irish excursions.--the channel squadron.--fishing party at loch brine.--the young princes arrive on the _bacchante_.--cruise to vigo.--the "night alarm."--the duke as _bon voyageur_.--vigo.--the birthday picnic.--a bear-fight on board the _hercules_.--homeward bound.--good-bye.--the duke's visit to my studio. some years before my cruise on the _hercules_ i had caricatured a young man of whom "jehu junior" prophesied a career of no mean order. lord charles beresford has performed all that was expected of him, but it is difficult to recognize in him to-day my subject of . when he came to my studio i was struck by his characteristic stride, and asked him to walk up and down my studio while i endeavoured to capture some impression of his rolling gait, curly hair and jolly laugh. he was willing to be made fun of, and his excellent company aided me in arriving at a result which may best be gathered from the following letter, which i received from him on the completion of the caricature. "fairfield, york, " . "my dear ward, "the _vanity fair_ cartoon is really the only caricature that i know that ever was in the least like me, i think it quite excellent. i know it is the exact way i stand and i am generally smiling profusely. all my friends were delighted with it, and at osborne they all said it was capital. i hope you were pleased with it yourself; i am sure you ought to be. "yours very sincerely, "charles beresford." [illustration: . "charlie" beresford.] [illustration: admiral sir regd. macdonald. "r.i.m." .] [illustration: . admiral sir john fisher.] [illustration: captain jellicoe. .] at this time i heard a story of lord charles, who was always known as "charlie beresford," and who played many a practical joke. there was a very stout and good-humoured lady who was a general favourite in society and especially with young men. on one occasion she happened to be leaving an evening-party when lord charles escorted her to her brougham, which appeared a tight fit for her, and being prompted by a sudden fit of devilment he seized the linkman who was handy and thrust him into her carriage. directly the door was closed, the oblivious coachman drove off, and what happened afterwards must be left to the imagination. in that year i went down to cowes for the yachting week, as it was quite the best opportunity for following up the types of well-known yachtsmen, and i passed many amusing hours in the gardens of the squadron. amongst the most frequent visitors was lady cardigan in gayest attire, and usually accompanied by a much-beribboned poodle, the colour of whose furbelows matched her own. i greatly appreciated her hospitality, for she had an inexhaustible fund of good stories which secured many an extra point through her wit in the telling. just then prince battyany was renting eaglehurst, and i have a very pleasant recollection of being taken to a garden-party there by lord and lady londonderry on their yacht the _aileen_. the next time i went to cowes was on the occasion of the german emperor's first visit, when the little place was naturally overcrowded, and in consequence i had unusual difficulty in getting into the squadron. on previous occasions i had had no trouble in being "put up" for the club, but it seemed that every one was full up. i was extremely disappointed as the proprietor of _vanity fair_ (mr. gibson bowles) had particularly wished me to make a representative group of prominent members of the r.y.s. i was in a quandary, so i went to the secretary, mr. pasley, and told him of my predicament. he said, "they're all full up, i am sorry i haven't the power to let you in, but i will do my best for you. i will speak to the prince of wales, he is sure to be here soon." we were talking at the gate of the castle grounds when suddenly the secretary said, "here he comes." h.r.h. upon hearing of my dilemma, with his usual good nature sent a message to tell me that he regretted i had not let him know before and that i might come in whenever i liked, and at once if i wished. so i received my pass in due course. the late chevalier martino was of course "all there" as a guest of the emperor william on board the _hohenzollern_. he was a neapolitan, and of a most impassioned temperament. i remember meeting him one night at dinner. the conversation fell on the battle of trafalgar, and, forgetting the dishes which were before him he suddenly rose from the table and started to recite the "death of nelson." during the recitation he worked himself to such a pitch of emotion that at the climax of the death scene, he fell to all appearance lifeless upon the floor. when i met him shortly afterwards, he said, "you must have thought i was mad that evening, but i couldn't help it, i am an enthusiast." [illustration: king edward vii. .] he was a favourite with both king edward and the german emperor, and was marine-painter in ordinary to our sovereign. in the course of further conversation he told me that he had been in the italian navy, and that with his knowledge of ships he did not require to make more than the very slightest notes preparatory to illustrating a naval review. he was an interesting companion and told very good stories. the emperor was very sympathetic to martino who, in consequence of a paralytic trouble with which he was afflicted, found considerable difficulty in rising from the table. he told me that the emperor would, with one arm, lift him to his feet as though he was a feather, with a strength that was surprising. he always refused to exhibit his pictures, but at his death many of them were collected for public exhibition. his work was thoroughly appreciated by naval men as being so absolutely accurate. on one occasion, being invited by a member of the squadron to dine upon his yacht, i was struck by the beauty of the lady to whom i sat next. the admiral had an excellent _chef_ on board, and consequently we were served with a particularly good dinner, but i appreciated his hospitality rather less when he passed me drawing materials with which to depict the lady. i paid her a polite compliment, but wasn't to be "drawn" in this way in return for my dinner. lord albemarle, whom i have portrayed, is a notable yachtsman, and also a clever caricaturist with a great feeling for drawing and sculpture, so he spends much of his spare time in his studio. he served his country in the south african war, as lieut.-colonel in the c.i.v., and is lieut.-colonel in the scots guards (retired), as did mr. rupert guinness, who was also one of my _vanity fair_ series, and who took me over the royal naval volunteer training ship (the _buzzard_) on the thames embankment, which he commands. of course, in these sea-days i very frequently enjoyed sailing with my more intimate friends. i had great times with my old friend, harry mccalmont, who was a whole-hearted sailor, as was his father before him. he was always very much to the fore at cowes in the yachting season, and it will be remembered that he built the _geralda_, which eventually became the royal yacht of spain. he afterwards presented me with her white ensign, and it was on her deck that i portrayed him in a large oil picture which i painted some time before his death. he, like lord albemarle, served in south africa and was in the scots guards. i spent many delightful hours too, with charlie brookfield on his little cutter, sailing here and there from one point to another, around the isle of wight. when sir thomas lipton first built _shamrock_, it was obvious that he should appear in the series of _vanity fair_ celebrities. he sat to me in my studio when, during conversation, he told me of his implicit belief in the uses of advertisement, which he considered the corner-stone of success. i have been particularly fortunate in my opportunities for observation when at work on the royal yachtsmen, among whom was king edward himself. the prince was always most kind and courteous, and when i had the honour of receiving a sitting from him, he did not forget to inquire after my father, whose health was not all that could be desired at the time, and later on when my father died i received the following letter of sympathy:-- "dear mr. ward, "i am desired by the prince of wales to write and let you know how sincerely sorry he is to hear of the terrible affliction which has fallen upon you, and to assure you that you have his unfeigned sympathy in your sorrow. "he had known your father so long that he could not help letting you know what he felt on this sad occasion. "believe me, "yours truly, "francis knollys." in many indefinable ways the king never missed an opportunity of showing his kindness for which i was always grateful. when i made a portrait of him as prince of wales i received a letter of acknowledgment from which i may quote the following extract:--"the king thinks the portrait an excellent one, and there is nothing in it to alter." some years after when he had begun to show signs of _embonpoint_, a fact of which he was fully aware, i had the honour of a sitting, and he said laughingly:-- "now let me down gently." "oh, but you've a very fine chest, sir," i replied. he laughed and shook his head at me, as though he found my aim at diplomacy more entertaining than convincing. queen alexandra also sat to me at marlborough house, where i made the drawing in black and white for _vanity fair_, but when i took it to the editor he decided that it must be coloured, as were all the previous cartoons. the princess of wales, as she then was, had been so kind in giving me sittings that i dared not suggest more, so i attempted to colour my sketch from memory, and in my anxiety to get the flesh tint i spoilt it, as i found it impossible to obtain the clearness of colour over the pencil work, and in trying to do so i ruined the sketch. later on i met the prince (edward vii.) and he asked me what i had done with the drawing of the princess. on my informing him of the fate of the sketch, and the circumstance of its destruction, he said, seeing my concern and embarrassment: "well, don't worry yourself. no one has yet succeeded in making a satisfactory portrait of the princess--not even angeli," although one or two successful portraits have been painted of her majesty since then both as princess of wales and queen. one of my very early caricatures was one of her brother, the late king of greece, done from memory. comparatively recently, prince louis of battenberg (a handsome subject), whom i had studied beforehand at the admiralty, came to my studio, and he brought the princess louise and princess victoria of schleswig-holstein to see the result with which they expressed themselves much pleased, and the drawing is now in their possession. in i was interested in making a study of the prince imperial at chiselhurst, and i have a very vivid recollection of my introduction to him, which took place at a dance given by lord and lady otho fitzgerald at oakley court. i had been invited with the other members of my family, and it chanced that my dress clothes were in the hands of my tailor, who failed to return them at the promised hour. leaving word that the parcel was to be forwarded immediately i went down to windsor to inform my sisters that there was but a poor chance of my being able to join them. they were almost weeping over the news as my father and mother were away from home and they were relying on my escorting them to the ball. however, at the last moment the parcel arrived, but on putting on the coat and waistcoat i discovered that they were not mine, but were undoubtedly intended for a person at least twice my size. everybody was in despair, but my sisters said, "you must go!" so i had to swallow my pride and entered the ball-room awkwardly enough as i had buckled back my waistcoat as far as i could, but with the coat there was nothing to be done but take a lappel over each arm and do my best to conceal the ill-fitting garment (which i could have folded twice round my body) by holding it out of sight. i kept well in the background through the early part of the evening, but after supper i felt bolder, and decided to dance at any price. in the ball-room i felt a fool indeed, like "auguste" at the circus, and on asking one fair lady for a dance noticed her furtive glance sweep over me; i hastened to explain the reason of my unfortunate plight, at which she took pity on me and gave me a dance. i was young then and took a pride in well-fitting clothes, yet it was under these most trying circumstances that i was presented to the prince imperial and, with both my arms fully occupied, pride of speech and ease of demeanour were far from me at that difficult moment. lord otho being a prominent member of the r.y.s., the burgee of that club usually flew from the flagstaff of oakley court. _À propos_ of this captain bay middleton, one of the guests, who could never resist a practical joke, persuaded the prince imperial to accompany him, in the small hours of the morning following the dance, to the summit of the tower, where he, having procured a towel hoisted it in place of the r.y.s. banzee. the prince thought this was a great joke, but i never heard that the owner shared his opinion. shortly afterwards i was driving along a dusty road _en route_ to ascot races when i passed lord otho's coach with the prince imperial upon it, but as i was covered with dust i certainly did not expect the latter to recognize me. however, when we met by appointment at charing cross to travel to chiselhurst the first thing he said, with a smile, was, "why did you cut me the other day on the road to ascot?" of course i had nothing to say. on the journey the prince talked most interestingly, and i gathered that he felt sanguine as to the belief of his ultimate succession to the throne of france. from his charm of manner and general conversation i could quite understand his popularity with his brother officers in the british army. he did not strike me as being particularly smart in dress or general appearance, although he wore his hat well tilted on one side, and he clicked his heels in french fashion, as he had evidently been taught to do from boyhood. on arriving at chiselhurst we drove together to the residence of the empress eugenie where he gave me every opportunity of studying his characteristics, and upon the publication of his cartoon i received a letter of appreciation with a signed photograph of himself which is still unfaded, and which i greatly value. [illustration: sir john astley (_the mate_). .] [illustration: peter gilpin (_gentleman trainer_). ] [illustration: "jim" lowther, m.p. .] [illustration: earl of macclesfield. .] i have drawn and caricatured and made portraits of the numerous foreign rulers, who have visited our islands from time to time. when don carlos (the pretender to the spanish throne) came to england in i visited him at claridge's, where he was staying, to study him for _vanity fair_. i found him a very picturesque and striking figure in his uniform, which he put on for me, including the order of the golden fleece. he was very obliging, and offered to lend me his uniform to use for further details, also the order, which he begged me to treasure with the greatest possible care, as he stated that it had been handed down in his family for generations, and was, of course, of great value to him. i promised to be very careful that nothing should befall it, and when the uniform and the order arrived i sought for a model, preferably a soldier; and incidentally asked colonel fred burnaby if he knew a man big enough to wear it. he very kindly permitted his soldier-servant, who was a very fine man to stand for me, and when he came to the studio, and had donned the uniform i entrusted him with the order of the golden fleece, and cautioned him to handle it very carefully. taking it up to fasten round his neck he straightway dropped it on the floor, where it broke in half. when it snapped in two imagine my horror. it was with difficulty that i restrained my anger. on finding it broken i hurried off with it to hancocks, the jewellers in bond street, who promised to mend it to the best of their ability. on the return of the decoration i could detect no flaw; it appeared exactly as it was, but the accident was costly. needless to say i soon returned it and was thankful to hear no more about it. an amusing _contretemps_ occurred when i was sent by my editor to "stalk" general ignatieff, who was at claridge's hotel. i had thought the best plan would be to stay there for a day or two, in order to obtain good facilities for studying him, so i arrived with my portmanteau, and endeavoured to ascertain something of the habits of the general. my curiosity resulted in old mr. claridge politely ordering my bag to be removed. when i informed him of my identity and disclosed the reason for my interest in the general's movements, his reply was somewhat as follows:-- "i know there is such a person as 'spy' because i can show you a lot of his cartoons in my room, i do not doubt your word, but i have no proof and would rather that you went." but he was considerate in giving what information he could as to his whereabouts, and after saving my hotel bill i managed to catch my victim on his way from hatfield. in my editor was anxious to procure a drawing of midhat pasha for _vanity fair_, and as there was a great difficulty in obtaining an interview, i was smuggled into his presence by mr. gibson bowles, who had an official appointment with him. the pasha, it will be remembered, had just been exiled from his own country and this opportunity offered me every facility for making close observation of him who was, at the same time, ignorant of my identity or purpose. i was fortunate in the case of mooh-ton-oolk, sir salar jung, minister of the nizam of hyderabad. sir salar was received with great acclamation in england on account of the excellent service he had rendered to the english in the suppression of the mutiny. he also did much to break down caste prejudice. i attended his wonderful breakfast at that residence in piccadilly which is now the bachelor's club. sir salar had brought with him to england his curry-cook who provided us with innumerable curries, of which very few were familiar to me although i enjoyed them considerably, more than that i was much interested in the distinguished company who were present. following the breakfast my eminent host gave me an opportunity of making a sketch of him. some little time afterwards i accepted an invitation to dinner, which was given on a magnificent scale at the "star and garter," richmond, and organized for him by a mutual friend, a lady whose husband owned the house that sir salar jung temporarily occupied. over a hundred guests sat down to the banquet, which was arranged should be followed by a dance. it chanced that i drove down in a hansom and a violent thunder storm came on so that in spite of all precautions the front of my dress shirt became hopelessly splashed with mud. as it was too late to retrace my steps i decided to buy a dicky (this appendage being a novelty to me), and fix it over the damaged shirt front. twice after i imagined it was safely fixed it flew up with surprising suddenness, and when my hostess asked me to help her with the dance that she had arranged should follow the dinner that evening, i felt more than a shade of embarrassment as i feared the dicky might betray me and my movements were therefore cautious, though with an additional pin i managed to secure it and all went well in the end. h.h. ras makunan, k.c.m.g., who was cousin and heir-apparent to the emperor menelik of abyssinia, was also a warrior and a sportsman, and represented the emperor at king edward's coronation. he was persuaded to make an appointment with me at my studio, and arrived at the early hour of a.m. with his attendant, previous to breakfasting with the officers of the horse guards at the knightsbridge barracks. before his visit i had been given the tip to have in readiness a bottle of good port wine, but upon pouring out a glass i was told that he judged it wiser to delay any refreshment until after breakfast. in the meantime small boys had collected at the entrance to my studio, being attracted by the royal carriage waiting at the door. when they saw the chief occupant enter it they simply stared in amazement with open mouths. finding a second interview necessary, which was arranged for at the westminster palace hotel, i called at the appointed hour, but being kept waiting for a very considerable time sent up a reminder. sir john was very angry at the delay, and after persuading the ras that it was not the custom to treat gentlemen in such a manner he came out from an inner room (where he had been busily occupied sorting coloured silks) and did his duty to me, in fact sat in quite a stately manner, holding his long gun characteristically. during the process of sketching him i was given the hint not to make him quite as black as nature had painted him. a kind of levee (if i may say so) was occasionally held by cetewayo when he visited england and was housed in melbury road. as i wanted to see him i procured an invitation to one of these receptions. [illustration: chinese ambassador. kuo sung tuo. .] [illustration: ras makounnen. .] [illustration: chinese ambassador. chang ta jen. .] the deposed monarch who looked quite jolly and robust shook me by the hand as though i might be some one in authority. my visit afterwards bore fruit in _vanity fair_, for i represented him as i saw him, nearly bursting through his light grey tweed suit with a kingly headgear of black velvet enriched with gold braid and a golden tassel attached. on leaving this country i was told that his chief ambition was to take back with him some good specimens of our best sporting dogs. well-bred fox terriers were procured, therefore, but when shown to him he feared they would not be strong enough, for it was for hunting he required them, "for hunting the man," so i believe bloodhounds filled their place. in the case of the shah of persia it was different, for when eventually i gained an audience at marlborough house he received me with courtesy, and i was somewhat embarrassed on seeing him desert (at all events _pro tem._), several gentlemen, great authorities on the latest improvement in guns which were being shown him at his especial request. i was directed to the window and his majesty evidently anxious to assist me, ordered the curtains to be drawn further apart that i might see him in a good light, he then came so close that i could focus only his nose which certainly was _the_ feature in his face. after making my obeisance i withdrew in favour of those i previously stood in the way of; and from the slight sketch i made and, relying on my memory for the rest, i eventually made my picture. having already studied the viscount tadasa hayashi, a distinguished japanese minister at the court of st. james', and wishing to depict him in evening dress i persuaded him to come to my studio and to bring with him his star and ribbon. with the characteristic courtesy of the best of his race he appeared most good-naturedly in the early morning, dressed as though he were going to an evening reception, and thoroughly entered into the spirit of his portrait and my work. among the large number of ministers and ambassadors i have depicted, i may mention the names of counts munster, paul metternich, mensdorff, messrs. choate, bayard, hay and whitelaw reid, and last but not least count benckendorff. the latter (whom i have frequently had the pleasure of meeting at the beefsteak club) amused me greatly when he came to my studio by saying, "it is a simple task you have before you, you have only to draw an egg--a nose--and an eyeglass and it is done." chapter xiv musicians--authors--actors and artists wagner.--richter.--dan godfrey.--arthur cecil.--sir frederick bridge and bombs.--w. s. penley.--sir herbert tree.--max beerbohm.--mr. and mrs. kendal.--henry kemble.--sir edgar boehm.--george du maurier.--rudyard kipling.--alfred austin. --william black.--thomas hardy.--w. e. henley.--egerton castle. --samuel smiles.--farren.--sir squire and lady bancroft.--dion boucicault and his wife.--sir charles wyndham.--leo trevor.-- cyril maude.--william gillette.--the late dion boucicault.-- arthur bourchier.--allan aynesworth.--charlie hawtrey.--the grossmiths.--h. b. irving.--w. l. courtney.--willie elliot.-- "beau little."--henry arthur jones.--gustave doré.--j. macneil whistler.--walter crane.--f. c. g.--lady ashburton and her forgetfulness. i was a privileged member of a select audience at a rehearsal in at the albert hall with the intention of studying wagner and his eccentricities, while he was conducting one of his own operas, therefore, i was not as surprised as i might have been when i observed him waving his baton and growing more and more excited, dancing on and off his stool, until finally losing his head he grew very angry with everything and everybody, and gave up evidently in fear of one of those nervous attacks to which he was subject. richter then took the baton and conducted magnificently. under very different circumstances i studied dan godfrey the bandmaster, a very different type of musician, when he had just been promoted to the rank of lieutenant. an officer on guard invited me to breakfast after i had watched him conduct the band in the quadrangle of st. james' palace, to enable me to examine his features more clearly. arthur cecil, the actor, loved music and was a born musician in addition to his interest in the stage, and was for some time in co-partnership with mrs. john wood at the court theatre. he was the first baron stein in _diplomacy_. during his fatal illness at brighton i visited him in the nursing home, and his first words to me were uttered in complaint of his food, for he dearly loved his food. "what do you think they gave me to-day?" he said. "a boiled mutton chop." when he was convalescent he gained permission from his doctor to go, with his nurse, to reside at the brighton orleans club, and whenever the menu was put before him, he selected the choice dishes dear to his heart (or his palate) that had been forbidden him a very short time previously. his greatest pleasure, however, was to be able to play the piano again, and that he did before me in the private hospital, his first selection being some music from his favourite opera of "hansel und gretel." owing to his indiscretion during convalescence, he caught cold which caused his death prematurely, for he was under sixty. after many times acting as an amateur he joined german reed's company at st. george's hall, and from there went to the haymarket theatre, after which he had a distinguished career as an actor in comedy. he was very popular both at the garrick and beefsteak clubs. of course sir frederick bridge was an acquaintance of his, for arthur was devoted to sacred music. although it is quite ten years since i portrayed sir frederick he appeared just the same when i saw him recently at lunch at our mutual friend, c. s. cockburn's house. he has, i think, officiated at innumerable historical ceremonies, including the jubilees of ' and ' , as well as the coronations of king edward and king george. he told me the following story, in the terse and witty manner which is so characteristic of him. [illustration: richard wagner. .] [illustration: the abbÉ liszt. .] "in ' , just before the queen's jubilee, a good deal of alarm was experienced in consequence of the fenian outrages, and the very frequent discoveries of clockwork bombs in black bags. previous to the royal visit, the abbey was closed to the public and the utmost precautions were taken by the officials to ensure the royal safety, by the order of colonel majendie (another of my victims) the chief inspector of explosives. every portion of the choir stand was examined, and even the organ pipes and every corner of the abbey was subjected to vigorous inspection. the day before the royal ceremony, i called a rehearsal of the band, and after their departure i remained in the organ loft to look over my music for the next day, in the company of a young pupil, who interrupted me when i was engrossed in my music, by calling my attention to a strange noise. "'listen, doctor,' he said, 'don't you hear a ticking?' "'ticking!' i shouted. 'where?' "jumping out of my seat, i listened intently, and sure enough, i heard a faint sound that was strangely ominous, and in the corner of the loft i saw that fateful sight--_a little black bag_. "i confess i behaved very badly, for instead of waiting to be blown to pieces for my country, i left the loft as quickly as possible and hastened into the cloister, where i met an old servant. he was a comfortable looking old creature with a glass eye. "'graves,' i said, 'go up into the organ loft and fetch a little black bag that you will find in the corner.' "'yes, sir,' he replied, and ambled off unsuspectingly. then i waited. i do not know what i expected to see--a headless graves returning in some gruesome but faithful remnant trying to perform this last request--but i breathed again when he reappeared safe and sound--with the bag--which contained an alarm clock, ticking away very merrily. i discovered upon inquiry that a cornet in the band had bought the clock for his wife on the way to the rehearsal, and how he had escaped detection, with the bag, and run the gauntlet of the fifty policemen who were guarding the abbey i never quite knew. if a rumour of my discovery had got into the papers, i do not think the queen would have come to the abbey; as it was, i might have made my fortune by giving a nice little account of it to the press. "that is my only experience of dynamite. graves died safely in bed a short time ago, and when i sent a wreath to his funeral, i thought of the episode of the bag, for to the day of his death, he used to say, 'you very nearly blew me up that time, sir!'" quite recently sir frederick has married again for the third time. [illustration: kubelik. .] [illustration: sir frederick bridge. .] [illustration: paderewski. .] most people are unaware that the late w. s. penley was a clever musician, and had a remarkably fine organ in his house which he delighted in playing; also that he was a choir boy. i saw him in his inimitable and famous part in "charley's aunt" several times, and one could hardly realize he could have worn a serious look or had a quiet side to his character. when he stood to me in my studio, i was attempting to catch a certain expression that i knew was very characteristic of him. i ran backwards and forwards, to quickly seize the look and convey it to my paper, and staggering backwards once too often in my forgetfulness and interest, i went head over heels over my rug. penley did not stop laughing for some minutes and said when i had recovered (and he had!), "i shall not forget _that_, it was too funny--and when i play the part of an artist, i shall put your little accident and incidental business in." but not very long afterwards he retired from the stage and death claimed him before the opportunity came. i have always been treated with the greatest possible kindness by members of the theatrical profession, and i cannot speak too highly of the aid they have given me when occasion called for it. it only seems the other day since i caricatured sir herbert tree in , when he looked a slim young man with a remarkably sleek figure. i think it was in the _red lamp_ that a lady who had seen tree's first performance in the part prophesied his enormous future, and told me she considered he would win a position on the stage that would rival irving's, but no doubt the same idea entered other heads. quite recently sir herbert presented me with his book, which is quite unique amongst the literary efforts written by the members of his profession, and is well worth study, as he jokingly impressed upon me at the time, adding that no man should consider his life completed unless he read it before he died. which reminded me of bulwer lytton who told me that no young man's education was complete who had not read scott through and through. i first met max beerbohm quite a long time ago when i was at the "mitre" (oxford), when julius beerbohm happened to be staying there also and he invited me to dine with him, adding:-- "i want you to meet max beerbohm, my half-brother, because i should particularly like you to see some most amusing caricatures that he has drawn, and which i think you will appreciate," and i did. "max" has now a world-wide reputation in caricature and in letters; then he was an undergraduate and invited me to lunch in his rooms, when he showed me many of his humorous sketches. the kendals i have known since i was a boy, and i was first introduced to them at the house of the late mr. augustus dubourg, then an official in the house of lords, and joint author, with tom taylor, of _new men and old acres_, in which they played. their retirement from the stage, which was not advertised in any way or accompanied by the usual "benefit," was one of the greatest losses, in my opinion, that the stage has known, for mrs. kendal (madge robertson), who was a sister of robertson the author of _school_, etc., is one of the most beautiful and consummate artistes england has ever produced. william kendal himself, would even now, almost fill the part of a young man on the stage, for with him years do not tell us a tale of age. if i were to relate all the anecdotes that i have heard of henry kemble (or the "beetle" as he was known) i might yarn for ever. for instance, on one occasion the tax collector called on kemble for the queen's taxes, "quite an unusual tax," said kemble; but after much discussion he found he had to pay. "very well," he said to the collector, "i will pay just this once but pray inform her majesty from me that she must not look upon me as a permanent source of income." some of charlie brookfield's stories were very funny. he also drew a series of caricatures of kemble as a special constable, in which capacity he was enlisted in a time of riots. there is a story "brooks" used to tell of kemble. he and kemble were returning from a theatre one evening when they observed a large crowd gathered round the mansion house. dismissing their cab, they prepared to join in the fun, if there was to be any, and on approaching, found sir charles dilke was speaking from a window. as they had arrived somewhat late and the speech was nearly over, their interest was not excited, nor did they comprehend the gist of the matter. here and there rough-looking men commented aloud with decided emphasis, sometimes for and sometimes against the speaker, when brookfield, in a mischievous mood, thought he would add his comment to the next remark. "what abart the dockers!" he roared, choosing his words quite at random, with his hand to his mouth, in loud imitation of his audience. "yus--what abart the dockers," shouted a navvy next to him, and immediately pandemonium followed, brookfield's hat being squashed in, his coat ripped up, and a few minutes later, two very dishevelled actors emerged from the _melée_, wondering vaguely why "the dockers" had proved such a sore point! when i made my drawing of sir edgar boehm, the famous sculptor, i depicted him working in a characteristic attitude upon his bust of ruskin, which was in the rough clay and half finished. he was engaged also at the time upon a bust of queen victoria, to whom he was "sculptor in ordinary." imagine my surprise when i received the following letter from sir edgar:-- "feb. nd, . "dear mr. ward, "... did you hear that the queen when she saw your excellent portrait of me was under the impression that ruskin's bust was meant for one of herself! till some time after the mistake was pointed out to h.m. i have heard it now from three different people who know, else i should not have believed that we could be for one instant suspected of being disloyal.... "yours sincerely, "j. e. boehm." very shortly after the deaths of boehm, millais, and leighton (who died within a very short time of one another) it interested me to visit their tombs in st. paul's, and i was almost staggered when i beheld on sir edgar boehm's tomb a crude reproduction in brass of my _vanity fair_ cartoon! some time after i met linley sambourne (who was a particular friend of his), and when i asked him if he knew who was the designer, he replied, "his son--i thought you were aware of that. have you never heard that sir edgar said that he should never give any friend his photograph in future, but always send the vanity fair representation of himself instead." the sketch of george du maurier i made for him while he was busily engaged at his drawing-table illustrating _trilby_. [illustration: sir edgar boehm, bart., r.a. .] [illustration: _from the brass on sir edgar boehm's tomb in st. paul's cathedral. the idea evidently was suggested, though without my knowledge, by the cartoon here reproduced._] i also made a caricature of his son, gerald du maurier, for _vanity fair_, who told me that dana gibson in his early days had such a great admiration for his father's work that he had founded his own largely from its study. when the two artists met many years after in london, du maurier, who was not only a great artist but a man of singularly sweet and generous disposition, paid dana gibson the compliment of telling him that if, as a student, he had used him as a guide the follower had certainly outstripped the leader. the story reflects the modesty and generosity of george du maurier, but, of course, it does not follow that this view is taken by the public. rudyard kipling, being thoroughly accustomed to studios, was at once at home in mine, and was so engrossing in his conversation with oliver fry (the then editor of _vanity fair_) that it was all that i could do to stick to my sketch, and not give myself up entirely to listening to his interesting and amusing stories. i watched him, however, and took him in his most humorous mood. in the case of the late poet laureate, mr. alfred austin, i required but a tiny scrap of paper to take my notes. it was at his charming house, swinford old manor, which is surrounded by the garden that he loved and in which we strolled. his dress was that of a country squire and not that of a long-haired poet. he stood but a few feet high. william black, the novelist (who was also small in stature), was very modest and cheerful. i represented him in waders with a large salmon rod, for being a scot he was an expert with it. his deep-red complexion and dark eyes surrounded by thick-rimmed spectacles conduced to the making of an effective cartoon. mr. thomas hardy was not talkative as a sitter, but he was pleasant. in appearance he did not present the idea of the typical literary man: his clothes had a sporting touch about them. i believe that one of my most popular character-portraits was that of w. e. henley, the poet who looked more like an australian bush-ranger than a follower of the winged muse. he was brought to my studio by mr. charles whibley, the well-known writer. in consequence of his lameness he sat, and he told capital stories of whistler and other interesting characters. mr. egerton castle posed splendidly in his rich brown velvet fencing costume with foil in hand, and looked so self-confident and certain of victory that one might have thought that he was concocting a plot for a new story of romance. i must not close this note on authors without a word of tribute to the old-fashioned charm and courtesy of samuel smiles, who presented me with a copy of his famous book, "self-help." i find that my earliest recollections of the stage are also the keenest, and the acting i saw in my youth seems to have made the most lasting impression. the stage world was, of course, much more limited in its dimensions in those days, and the few representatives of genius were nearer and, perhaps in consequence, seemingly greater than in later years, when of all the ministers of delight it must be acknowledged that the actor gives most pleasure to the greatest number of people. as a youth i was fond of attending first nights, and continued to be present at them whenever i had the chance, until by degrees i came to the conclusion that although a first night was amusing in many ways i preferred not to risk a failure, but to wait for the play that i knew was worth seeing. [illustration: . sir henry lucy.] [illustration: w. e. henley. .] [illustration: . w. s. gilbert.] [illustration: rudyard kipling. .] the sir peter teazle of old william farren will always last in my memory, and i recollect it from my youth. of course i used to enjoy, of all things, the old prince of wales's theatre under the management of bancroft and mrs. bancroft, whose truly great acting, especially in the robertson plays, was indeed a delight. earlier than that, too, i remember how deeply i was impressed with the acting of the elder boucicault and his wife in those vivid dramatic representations of irish life, _the colleen bawn_ and _the shaughran_. in private life the feelings of this old and distinguished actor on the subject of home rule were identical with that of redmond at the present time, and he did not hesitate to express them. sir charles wyndham, our veteran actor, of whom we are most justly proud, seems to have one leg in the past and the other in the present, so unconscious of the passing years and full of life and power does he still seem on those occasions on which the public have the opportunity of watching this favourite of several generations of playgoers. the peculiarly low-pitch of the voice with its pleasing upward gradation, the finished manner, the sympathetic attraction, all these qualities have ever belonged to wyndham. of course, i saw him many times in david garrick, the play through which he is best known, but there are many parts in modern comedy wherein he stands alone, for instance, in _mrs. dane's defence_, the play in which miss lena ashwell won her first laurels. i consider myself particularly fortunate in being able to count mr. leo trevor among my friends. i caricatured him for _vanity fair_ in a straw hat and the zingari colours. he is the cheeriest of good fellows--his bright and happy smile is particularly characteristic of the nature of the man, who, in spite of the fact that he is so much sought after, always remains unspoilt. the public probably knows him best through his most popular play, _the flag lieutenant_, which, coming as it did just after the boer war, appealed to the sympathy and patriotism of all. the author was particularly fortunate in being able to portray his creation of the major through the genius of mr. cyril maude. under the mirth and mirth-provoking art of this gifted actor there always runs that magic touch which has been defined as "serious without being earnest!" in character parts, especially those associated with the typical old gentleman, he is of course, incomparable, but whether he is cast for an old or a young or a middle-aged part he can always draw the smiles and the tears of his audience. of course, when sketching him i was most anxious to catch his characteristic expression which can only be caught through his smile. when mr. william gillette sat for me in dressing-gown and pipe, i did not have to request him to smile, for a serious and contemplative gaze was quite in keeping with his _róle_ of sherlock holmes. during our conversation he asked me if i could recommend a good tobacco, because the brand he smoked on the stage burnt his tongue. i suggested "log cabin," and at our next meeting asked if he had acted on my recommendation, and if he found the result satisfactory; but "log cabin," in spite of its merits and mildness, was not suitable for dramatic service as it took too long to light. like another successful actor of modern times, arthur bourchier began acting when at oxford. after he left the university he used to play as a member of the company known as the "old stagers" at canterbury during the cricket week. when he talked of taking his hobby seriously and becoming a professional actor he was considerably chaffed by his friends; but he got the best of the laugh, as from his first appearance on the legitimate stage he did well, and was not long in proving himself one of the most powerful actors of the day. my old friend, allan aynesworth, was another amateur who went on the stage with full confidence, although he had less experience than arthur bourchier. however, he made a great success, and won for himself a foremost place in the esteem of the public. he is a beau ideal of "an officer and a gentleman" with a touch of the hero thrown in. i understand that besides being a popular actor he is an excellent producer of plays. when i started to sketch charlie hawtrey he looked almost glum, and the only thing to help me out in conveying a humorous impression seemed to be his characteristic habit of stroking his head with his hand. i asked him to think of something funny, and the result seemed to work so well that i begged him to share the joke, but he left it secret under the pretext that it was too silly to tell. with the grossmiths talent seems hereditary; the younger george grossmith, son of the original g. g., is already a fountain of fun for modern playgoers, and my old friend, weedon grossmith, is an actor who, whenever he has had a part to suit him, has proved himself to be an inimitable and a thorough artist which, by the way, he is in more senses than one. one of his best parts is the _duke of killiecrankie_, in which his witty and delightful personality gets full play. h. b. irving, through his very strong resemblance to his distinguished father, seems almost to be a link with the past. he has inherited sir henry's charm of manner and the sunny sudden smile which one remembers so well, also his immense power of concentration. he is a keen student of facial expression, and like the late w. s. gilbert seeks his types in the criminal law courts. one whom experience has convinced of the truth of the phrase, "new times, new manners," may be permitted to make the comment, "new times, new plays." outside the shadow of his great father's great, but somewhat gruesome plays, it is difficult to say what his son may not accomplish. writing of h. b. irving reminds one that w. l. courtney was a don at oxford when h. b. was an undergraduate there, and that the distinguished writer and critic had a great opinion of the young actor's talent. courtney has a particularly dry sense of humour, and he is so engrossing in conversation that when he does go to the garrick or beefsteak clubs late at night, few other members who happen to be there will leave before him. another excellent fellow, who for a time was an amusing and clever actor, is willie elliot. he has a natural gift for story-telling and his scotch stories are inimitable. as an actor, he was for some time quite a success, and created the part of "deedes, the gifted author," in _a pantomime rehearsal_, afterwards played by "charlie" little, and he was also strikingly good in the _little minister_. the late c. p. little was a most delightful creature who is best described as society's impressario. when little left the stage he started to chronicle the doings of society, and was so much in it that he became a part of it. his entire attention was concentrated on the constitution, influence, and the events of society, and he knew every detail relating to its proceedings, manners, and whims. in his unique part he was a complete success, and always an acquisition. from nursery rhyme sketches, . [illustration: "_the father gone a-hunting._"] [illustration: "_the mother gone to buy a skin to wrap the baby bunting in._"] [illustration: rt. hon. "bobby" low _amused by seeing himself with others in the ministry represented on the stage at the court theatre in a burlesque called the "happy land." i sat next him._] [illustration: mr justice a. t. lawrence (_a study_).] [illustration: danckwerts, k.c. (_study_).] [illustration: the late lord chief justice cockburn. (_sketched in court during tichbourne trial._)] [illustration: a smile from nature. (study.)] [illustration: henry irving _as "shylock._"] mr. henry arthur jones usually rode to the theatre, and as i found him conducting a rehearsal of the _bauble shop_ in riding-kit i sketched him in it with a hunting-crop in one hand and a book of the play in the other, which reminds me of another subject who wished to be painted in "boots and breeches," and turned up at my studio in a pair of the latter that had evidently been worn in earlier days, for they appeared to irk him somewhat round the knees. after he had been standing for a considerable length of time, i asked him to rest, as i always prefer to give my sitters as little trouble and fatigue as possible. but he did not move, and finally when i asked him again he remarked rather ruefully:-- "either i shall have to go on standing for ever or i shall fall over, for i'm paralysed by these breeches." so i had to treat him like a lay figure and liberate each limb and rub it until the circulation was restored. another sitter was an undergraduate in training for the 'varsity boat-race. i have found men of this rowing calibre usually wonderful sitters, being perfectly fit; this particular young man was in excellent form, so much so that he completely outstood me and said when i, at last, begged him to have a rest:-- "why i can go on standing all day without fatigue!" the following is an amusing but somewhat embarrassing contretemps which befell me at an afternoon party. i was greeted on arrival by my hostess's young and effusive daughter whose father i had just cartooned in _vanity fair_ and who introduced me to an old lady, exclaiming:-- "this is mr. leslie ward.... i should say the great mr. leslie ward!" whereupon the old lady raised her lorgnettes and gazed severely through them at me, and then turning to the young lady remarked somewhat ironically, "i think perhaps in future you'd better label your guests." i felt inclined to sink into the floor, especially when i viewed the embarrassment of my young hostess, and then the cold gaze of the lady.... i have often wondered since whether i had caricatured her husband. artists have not been entirely ignored in _vanity fair_; gustave doré was a willing victim, and gave me good opportunities of watching him in a studio in london while at work, but eventually i represented him as i first saw him, in dress clothes. i nearly fell over his sketches on the floor, for they were so thickly spread about everywhere. somewhere about the same period i did whistler, who was an excellent subject, but his unlimited peculiarities lay more in his gesture and speech and habits. i never went to a social function at which he was present without hearing his caustic, nasal little laugh, "ha-ha-ho-ho-he-he" raised at the wrong moment. for instance, when a song was being sung in a drawing-room, or when a speech was being made at a public dinner. at the same time there was something quite irresistible about the fascination of the man. he lived in a house in tite street on the chelsea embankment where there was a charming garden, and every one who had the opportunity breakfasted with him when invited, although the menu usually consisted of a sardine and a cup of coffee. his wife, who was the widow of godwin, the architect, was a charming woman, and he simply adored her; in fact he so much felt her death that he was never the same high-spirited man after. [illustration: handwritten note] _À propos_ of public dinners, i am reminded of walter crane, whose name i always shall hold in grateful memory, because he saved me from that most detestable task, at least to me, a public speech. we were invited as representatives of art to the company of patten makers, the lord mayor being present, and i was suddenly told in the middle of a pheasant course, that i should be expected to speak, a piece of information that agitated me considerably, but was much relieved when crane, who sat next to me, took the burden off my shoulders, and saved the situation very cleverly indeed. f. carruthers gould, with his bushy eyebrows, i frequently came in contact with in the precincts of the house of commons where we were both engrossed in making mental notes of our subjects. i have a great admiration for his work in which he has expressed the views of his party with admirable spirit in some of the finest cartoons of the age. many people are unaware he was originally a member of the stock exchange, but he was not born for that business, although in it he saw ample opportunity for caricature. it was there that he made a startling cartoon in which he represented the members of the stock exchange as the animals coming out of the ark two by two, in a truly humorous manner, and this made his reputation. i have always admired the way in which he introduced birds into his caricatures, and on one occasion remarked to him how beautifully, and with what thorough knowledge, he drew them; and he then informed me that he was the nephew of the great ornithologist, gould, and had been brought up among birds from his earliest youth. his political cartoons are most humorously conceived and carried out, although we know which side he favours in politics. a stray anecdote occurs to me, as i write, of the very artistic but eccentric louisa lady ashburton, a gifted lady who knew most of the really great literary and artistic people of her age, and counted many others, such as watts and carlyle, her intimates. my mother, who knew her very well, painted several interiors of her residence, kent house, knightsbridge, in one of which a striking portrait of her figured. but my story is chiefly concerned with the exacting old lady from whom i received a letter through her secretary (previous to my introduction to her), saying, "she had taken a fancy to a pencil-sketch of mine, of a child that she had seen, and that if i would lunch with her, at a day and hour mentioned, we could discuss the possibility of my making a portrait of her little grandson." the day arrived and with it a thick fog--for it was in november--i called upon the lady at the time stated in her letter, and was informed that she was out. after waiting some little time, i took myself off for a short while; had lunch elsewhere and returned about three o'clock, and was more fortunate this time, for i was announced into the dining-room, where i found lady ashburton and her lady secretary at lunch, to which they had just sat down. i was much astonished, after being requested to take a seat at the table, to receive rather a strong glare from my hostess, with the query, "who is he?" to her secretary. "this is mr. leslie ward; don't you remember the letter i wrote at your request asking him to lunch to-day?" whereupon the forgetful lady remembered, and asked me promptly to have a glass of port. afterwards we went to the drawing-room, where the little boy was sent for and i was requested to begin the drawing there and then, and upon my remarking that the light was too bad owing to the fog, and that i should be very pleased to make a mental study of the child before i began my portrait upon a brighter day, she observed that she quite understood from me that i had come to make the drawing, and said it was perfectly easy to draw by lamp-light, so i wasn't allowed out of the house before i had started. then i found her ladyship, although considerably advanced in years, was still a student of drawing, for she produced the cast of a head and was getting ready to copy it. i was straining my eyes in attempting to draw the little boy, while she was endeavouring to place the cast in position and soliciting my attention to her work at frequent intervals. when finally the pencil sketch of her small grandson was completed, as it was after a second sitting by daylight, i received the most delightful letter of appreciation and thanks from her ladyship, which i have kept to this day. soon after my mother urged me to attend a special exhibition at the school of art needlework in which she was interested, and the first person i saw on entering was old lady ashburton. i went up to her and began to thank her for her welcome appreciation of my small drawing, and again she looked at me with astonishment and wonder. "who are you?... i don't know you," she said. this time i did not hesitate to enlighten her. "oh," she smiled in remembrance, "go and find miss phillimore; i want to speak to her." chapter xv notable peers--tangier--the tecks peers of the period.--my voyage to tangier.--marlborough house and white lodge. in , the new premises of _the daily telegraph_ were opened in fleet street. it will be remembered that the paper was originated by mr. j. m. levy. when he had made _the daily telegraph_ a great permanent institution he retired from the toil of journalism and left the control and organising power to his son, the present lord burnham, who maintained its reputation, and at the time of the opening ceremony of the new offices in fleet street it was undoubtedly the most popular newspaper of the day. the prince of wales and prince leopold were present among the very distinguished and representative assembly to honour sir edward lawson, and assist at the celebration of an interesting occasion. when the guests began to move about and conversation became general, i had opportunity to observe the different people, and my eye was immediately attracted to old lord houghton (monckton-milnes). he had come on from a state banquet, and was dressed in the uniform of a deputy-lieutenant which was ludicrously ill-fitting, the tunic rucked up in many folds, whilst the trousers, which were much too long, hung also in folds; on his head he wore a black skull cap, which seemed strangely at variance with his patent leather boots, and he carried a very long stick with a crutch handle. as he moved to and fro among the guests, his odd appearance was accentuated by the occasional contrast of the immaculately groomed contingent, and on this occasion the poet-peer was truly a figure of fun. i was not alone in my observations, as while i was still gazing at him the prince of wales came up to me and remarked what a splendid opportunity was before me of making a good caricature of lord houghton, and that i should never have a better. immediately after and quite unaware that the subject had already been broached, prince leopold came to me with the same suggestion. after the royal party had returned from supper, i noticed the prince of wales and lord houghton in deep conversation. lady lawson, having been let into the secret of the intended caricature, found me a convenient place near one of the pillars, where i watched him unobserved. of course h.r.h. was amused to see our manoeuvres. meanwhile, lord houghton was, judging from his expression, telling a wicked story to the prince, and leant forward so that it should not be heard by those near. as he approached the point he became convulsed with laughter, and drawing still nearer, in his eagerness to make it understood, he slid to the end of the chair, and was about to whisper it to the prince when the cushion, which was not fixed, gave way, and he fell to the floor with his legs in the air. the prince of wales picked him up, and looked at me, as much as to say, "here is your chance." so that i went away with two ideas in my head, one of the entry in the wonderful uniform, and the other of the episode of falling off the chair. i made my caricatures in full colour and presented them in due course to the princes, the prince of wales being very much amused to find that the same idea had occurred to them both, and i received a letter of thanks and full appreciation. not long after, on going into the beefsteak club, i found the sole occupants of the room were prince leopold and whistler, who was monopolising the prince's attention by reading aloud extracts from a letter he was concocting, with the intention of administering a sound snubbing to a tradesman who had sent in an exorbitant bill. jimmy, who was priding himself far more on his literary composition than the creation of one of his masterpieces, was chuckling over the pungent satire and barbed phrase with obvious appreciation, but the prince was looking a little bored, and, by way of changing the subject, he turned to me and said that he had only just received the caricature of lord houghton, and how delighted he was with it. an altogether very different type of peer was the old marquis of winchester, hereditary bearer of the cap of maintenance, whose office it is to carry the cap on state occasions, such as the opening of parliament. on the last occasion on which queen victoria opened parliament in person, i recollect this marquis, who was the last remaining representative of the old georgian type of beau, and of most picturesque appearance, make a striking figure in the group. it was the only occasion on which i was present at the ceremony, and i remember that as the queen was going up the steps of the throne, she slipped. in the early spring of , having a troublesome cough which i could not shake off, i was ordered to take a trip to tangier. it was indeed a novel idea to me, having travelled so little, to see so primitive and interesting a place as it had been described to me, and with a portfolio of unfinished _vanity fair_ cartoons to complete while away, i set off on a p. and o. for gibraltar. i arrived there in a dense mist, which, however, passed off in a few hours. i had a letter of introduction to colonel whitaker, who was in command of the artillery at this time, and having ascertained that there was no boat to take me to tangier for two or three days, i promptly presented my letter, which was answered with equal promptitude, inviting me to dine at the regimental mess on the following evening. i, of course, accepted, and had a thoroughly good time. next day i called upon him at one of the charming villas on the rock, to thank him for his hospitality. anxious to be in the warm and sunny clime of africa, i now lost no time in getting on board a paddle-boat of sorts for my destination. i didn't like the look of the morning, for it was not one that i had pictured to myself as being appropriate to the occasion. when we were under way, i noticed a depressing-looking group of moors huddled up together, who, as the vessel proceeded, grew very ill indeed, and this didn't enliven matters. on arriving in the bay of tangier, the passengers were landed in small boats, their baggage being seized from them, regardless of instructions, by a collection of officious moors, who followed them with the porters to their respective hotels. [illustration: lord newlands. .] [illustration: count de soveral. (_late portuguese minister_). .] [illustration: m. gennadilts (_greek minister in england for years_). .] the proprietor of the continental, ansaldo by name, was quite a personality and looked after his visitors with the greatest interest, especially those who were likely to make a prolonged stay in his hotel. evidently anxious to make me at home, he immediately introduced me to a young doctor who was permanently staying in the hotel, and who "knew the ropes," and he was quite a good fellow and very useful in showing me the way about. my disappointment regarding the weather led me to inquire of him if it was at all usual to see such dull skies in tangier, and how long the drizzling rain was likely to last. the answer came promptly, "wait and see," and i did for a week, when the sun appeared in its full glory and everything was _couleur de rose_ for a long time to come. having a letter of introduction to mr. white (the consul), i lost little time in calling upon him, and after ringing at the bell of the consulate and giving instructions for its safe delivery, i was shown into the drawing-room. he was evidently occupied at the time, so i had to wait. at last he came in, and to my astonishment handed me the letter back, saying, "i think there is some mistake." being much puzzled as to what he meant, i took it out of the envelope and read as follows (as nearly as i can remember):-- "dear mr. ward, "mind when presenting the letter of introduction to mr. white you make out that you are an intimate friend of mine, and be careful in speaking of me to call me by my christian name, maughan, pronounced like vaughan. he is a good chap and will be useful to you, especially if he thinks you are a great pal of mine," etc....! imagine my feelings, which were indescribable; with awkward apologies i beat a hasty retreat. afterwards i had the face to send mr. white the right letter, the result being that while i was sketching in the market-place next morning, he politely came up to me, and later on i received an invitation to dine at his house, so all ended well. having made a "_faux-pas_," there was nothing now left but to forget it, so, under the guidance of new acquaintances, i sallied forth in pursuit of pastures new. the socco or market-place first of all appealed to me as a subject for my water-colour brush, and from the hill (taking it all in) i made my first sketch which, on my return home, sargent happened to see and complimented me upon. the picturesque groups of women in strange straw hats, and the moors in their jhelabs, the camels, snake-charmers, and the ebony-coloured men from timbuctoo, were all something to feast one's eyes upon. again, the occasional saint (mad-man) and the strings of blind beggars were a novelty to the stranger's eye. in the town, what struck me first was the persistent way in which these blind people followed one about in pursuit of coppers; many of them i was told had their eyes simmered for some quite paltry offence and in consequence were doomed for life. an occasional leper, too, one came across, but he was despicable beyond description in the eyes of his fellow-creatures. becoming by degrees used to the first impressions, and beginning to generalise on the surroundings, the desire came upon me to see something of the country, and for this purpose the hiring of a barb or mule was indispensable. mr. harris (_the times_ correspondent) and my doctor friend were extremely kind in showing me round at first, and with their aid and advice i soon got to know my way about. the latter escorted me in the evenings to the different haunts of vice, the kieffe dens, where men were lying sometimes unconscious from excessive abuse of the drug (which was smoked in a small pipe), or to a rather low spanish music hall of a not refined or elevating character; and to while away the time, i learnt to know how these people enjoyed their leisure hours. i have no desire to bore my readers, with detailed descriptions of the various weird and picturesque ceremonies that constantly engross the attention of european visitors in tangier, although i feel sorely tempted while speaking of them to go on. "sumurun" and "kismet" illustrate them far better than i can do, and there are many well-written books on the subject. my companion now suggested what he thought would best give me an idea of the surrounding country and coast scenery, viz. a ride to cape spartel[ ] lighthouse. i assented, and we hired the mules. the view all along the route was certainly very engrossing; but at certain altitudes, looking down on the sea, i felt as though i must fall over into the abyss below, it being so precipitous! however, we reached our destination in safety and i was well rewarded by the panorama that surrounded us. after dismounting and taking refreshment, a moor approached with what appeared to be--rather uncanny--a full-grown scorpion. after marking, with a piece of stick, a circular line on the ground he proceeded to cover it with red-hot ashes, and when this wall of charcoal was completed, to place the wretched scorpion within the circle. naturally, it did its utmost to escape, but, growing weary in its attempts, arched its tail over its back and stung itself to death. this was termed suicide, but i fear the scorching was the cause, although it retired well into the middle of the circle first. the performance, although curious, was distinctly not edifying. about now i was lucky enough to make the acquaintance of an english merchant--mr. stanbury--from birmingham who annually visited morocco. he knew the country and the people and could speak their language, and not only was he a useful travelling companion, but a very nice fellow to boot. as he was starting on a business visit to tetuan, and invited me to come with him, i took this exceptional advantage of joining him, as i heard it was a place that an artist would revel in. we were most unlucky in the day we selected to start, for it rained incessantly. i wore a common moorish jhelab, which, being full of grease, protected me from the damp. a soldier and muleteer accompanied us, and notwithstanding that we were well mounted, our journey was not all my fancy pictured. it is about a sixty-mile ride, and although we plodded on, the ground was so heavy that it was useless to attempt to get into the town that night. we therefore stopped half-way at the fondak where the cattle are housed, at four in the afternoon. the rain showing no signs of ceasing, we put up for the night. after being served with hot coffee and brandy from a primitive bar, we lay down on straw mats which apparently had not been shaken for months. my friend, as the time went on, being evidently used to an emergency of this kind, calmly went to sleep; i, on the other hand, being attacked by an army of fleas, did not get any rest before two o'clock, when i fell into a deep slumber from which i found it difficult to awake. as we had to make a start at three, i pulled myself together, but in the hurry left my gold wrist-watch behind me. the annexe adjoining the bar was occupied by the proprietor, his wife, and a coffee boy. we were soon in our saddles, escorted as before, and entered the gates of the city, where the consul with others were in readiness to receive us. we entered a mansion, and i was puzzled to know whether it was a hotel or the consulate, as the consul conducted us there. he was an eastern of sorts, that was certain, and one who was evidently acclimatized to bad drainage, for i nearly choked as i was shown my room. upon realizing the absence of my watch, the soldier lost little time in going back for it, but not finding it, brought back the proprietor of the fondak as a suspect. next morning i rose feeling very "chippy," but being somewhat refreshed after partaking of a light breakfast, proceeded to the outskirts of the town with my sketch-book, where i discovered some picturesque bits. on returning to my hotel i found a summons to give evidence in a case of alleged robbery. the law court to which i was taken was presided over by two picturesque elderly judges in the purest of white robes and equally clean turbans. our party was fully represented. the man professed complete innocence of having even seen the watch, so meanwhile he was kept under surveillance. the effect of the poisonous atmosphere i had imbibed in my lodging began to tell on my health, so i determined to get out of it and cut short my otherwise interesting visit. i was now on my homeward journey, and having conveyed my instructions to the escort, viz. that if he should fail to extract a confession from the man (who then had his arms bound with cord), he was to trouble no more about him and leave him at the fondak. about this the soldier seems to have taken no heed and was obdurate, and upon arriving there, arrested the coffee-coloured coffee boy as well, and marched the two of them into tangier. although this annoyed me and i tried to remonstrate at the time, i was powerless in the matter. on arriving in tangier, however, very tired, i was only too glad to dismiss them from my mind and give orders that they should be at once liberated, while i came to the conclusion that the woman was the guilty party after all. after the first ten days of north african air, my cough had gone, so that i was quite able to appreciate the change of scene, the white buildings, the coloured people, the superb vegetation, the mosques (but not the mosquitoes, as the latter worried me terribly); and by degrees the fascination of the climate, the atmosphere of romance and adventure surrounding the interesting race amongst whom i was living, took hold of me. my artistic sense was being constantly appealed to, and everywhere i saw a picture awaiting my brush. the arabs and moors, in their picturesque dresses, were to me extraordinarily attractive, with their magnificent physique and bearing, and especially the letter-carriers with their finely moulded ankles and feet with perfect straight toes. at tangier i was fortunate enough to behold two of the most beautiful pictures i have ever seen. i was walking in the bay one evening, watching the sun set like a ball of fire, dipping into a sea that shimmered with a thousand opalescent reflections as the wavelets rippled to my feet, when i came upon a group of swarthy, naked fishermen hauling in their nets, which were full of leaping fish that scintillated iridescently. with strong fine movements the men drew them in, some standing in the water, others on the shore, their bodies wet with the water that rolled off their mahogany skins in pearly drops. at each movement of their superb limbs, the play of muscle attracted my eye, and as they turned, their bodies bathed in the amber light, i saw a multitude of scales from the fish clinging to their bodies, like so many sequins, gold in the sun and silver in the colder light from the east. spellbound, i watched them falling into groups and alternating attitudes, which in themselves were magnificent--an arabian nights dream and an ideal composition for the painter who could depict the movement, colour, and light of a scene that few men are lucky enough to behold. i shall never forget it and never see such beauty again, for it is well-nigh impossible that nature should repeat such perfection, with similar conspiracies of light, shade, and shadow in exactly the same manner. [illustration: general smith-dorrien. .] [illustration: lord roberts. .] [illustration: lord kitchener. .] another scene i was privileged to witness from the balcony of my room (which looked down on some rocks in the bay), where i was "lazing" in the sun one morning, when i became aware of a picturesque group of moorish ladies who, with their maids, were preparing to disrobe by the sea. the process was interesting because it was so astonishingly beautiful; after removing their outer garment and yashmak, they appeared in robes of every imaginable colour. garment after garment was divested in this manner, and each one more bewilderingly brilliant than the other, gorgeous orange, green, or scarlet, contrasted with the cool sea and the hot african sky, the rocks looming darkly in the background, the soft sand at their feet; and presently when a bevy of beautiful brown ladies stepped into the water, i saw a real alma tadema picture without the inevitable marble, and all the added charm of movement and the sky and the sea. when my visit of five weeks was at an end, and professional duties had to be thought of, i prepared for departure, and, accompanied by the brothers duff-gordon and ansaldo (the hotel proprietor), i journeyed to gibraltar, where ansaldo had formerly been a big "boss," and was still very popular. as the first race-meeting was being held, i accepted his invitation to witness the sport, where he offered me hospitality in his refreshment tent. at the end of a very jolly day, cosmo duff-gordon and his brother joined me at the hotel, they having returned from the bull-ring in algeciras; and the next day we were homeward bound on the p. and o. for england. * * * * * one of the smartest figures in society was lord portarlington, known to his friends as "the dasher." i drew him--and there was plenty of him--smoking his very unusually large cigar, and not forgetting the gardenia, which was in proportion. _À propos_ of the choice of riding in a four-wheeler or a hansom, "the dasher" on one occasion played heavy lead in a cab drama in which the third person and i took part in addition to the cabman and the crowd. we were leaving the beefsteak club together one night when "the dasher" suggested that as we were all going the same way he should give us a lift, so he hailed a four-wheeler and we drove off. he directed the driver to go to grosvenor place, but the man mistook the way and drove on. lord portarlington got up to direct the cabman, i tried to stop him, fearing his weight was too great for the springs to bear, but i was too late--they all gave way and over we went. the third occupant was a long thin creature, whose boots i distinctly felt on my back as he wormed his way out through the open window, which for the time being was in place of the roof; then i felt myself being hauled up and extricated just in time to see the cabman dragged from under the horse, which directly he was freed from his harness bolted, taking the greater part of the crowd in his wake. meantime, lord portarlington remained a prisoner in the cab; just then a man came up to me not knowing i had been a victim in the accident, and looking at me very earnestly as much as to say, "this is a sad case indeed," said in a hushed voice, pointing to the overturned cab, "do you know, sir, there is somebody in there!" at last by the aid of several pairs of strong arms acting in concert lord portarlington was dragged out, but he felt the shock badly, and was laid up for two or three days. it must have been at the end of the 'eighties when my drawing of m. gennadius, who has now been greek minister for over thirty years, was published. he was quite willing that i should have ample opportunity for observation, and we dined and spent a pleasant evening together at his club. in prince george of wales gave me the honour of a sitting at marlborough house. his majesty even in those days was a good sitter, and, like most naval men, was patient withal. he was very natural and genial in his manner, and i remember we were walking round the room and looking at the pictures by way of a little break in the monotony of the sitting, when queen alexandra (then princess of wales) came into the room to know how the sketch was progressing. it was through mr. augustus savile lumley and my father that i first became acquainted with the duke of teck, whom i had the privilege to meet on several occasions. as he had learnt that the authorities on _vanity fair_ were desirous of publishing his portrait, and also one of princess may in that journal, he called at my studio to talk the matter over, and eventually it was decided that i should visit white lodge for the purpose of receiving sittings from both. on the first occasion i hailed a hansom to drive down there, and it was a coincidence that while directing the driver the nearest route he stopped me and said, "i know the way, sir--i was for some time second coachman there!" this was substantiated shortly after when i had related the fact to prince adolphus, who went out to see him. i found on entering that princess may was prepared to sit, so fraülein bricka, her former governess with whom i had corresponded, took me into the drawing-room and presented me to her. the princess, whom i had previously seen, was at once charming in her manner, and although i am sure those sittings were not a treat for her to look forward to, she showed admirable patience throughout. i was not, however, fated to start my drawing under good auspices. on that occasion i had anticipated a sitting from the duke of teck and not from the princess may, and i had brought with me blue rough-surfaced paper which i use for men's drawings, and which i knew would be difficult as a foundation for the unusual delicacy and brightness of the skin and complexion of my subject. i confided my difficulty to fraülein bricka, and suggested that i should immediately go into richmond and bring back the paper suitable for the purpose, but she thought that as the princess was prepared to sit it would be better to make the best of the materials i had at hand; and as she was so anxious that everything should go well, i fell in with the idea. on the occasion of the first sitting the duchess paid an early visit to see how the drawing progressed, and after a few observations invited me to luncheon. occasionally the princes came in to break the monotony of sitting for their sister. the duchess of teck was a great favourite with the people wherever she went. she had great natural dignity, sympathetic consideration for others, and that charm of manner which puts every one else at ease. i remember on one of my visits, h.r.h. had most kindly invited me to luncheon on the occasion of the last sitting which i eventually received from the princess. i expressed my regret, and hoped i might be excused on the plea that i had to go down to newmarket, and she with her usual graciousness at once assented. when i had finished my last sitting the duke came into the room, and, not knowing that i was not able to remain, said, "well, ward, you're going to stay to lunch of course." i replied that i regretted i was unavoidably prevented, which h.r.h. was aware of. "very curious," he said, "since the duchess has asked you to stay to luncheon that you refuse." he went into her boudoir and came out completely in understanding; and slapping me on the shoulder, said, "poor ward. poor ward, i quite understand. i'm sorry you can't stay." the duchess followed him in. "you refused to stay to lunch," she said, chaffingly, "but i am not going to let you off altogether. what shall it be, you have only to say." so i thanked her and suggested some sandwiches and a glass of sherry. i proceeded to pack my paints and brushes, "never mind about that," said the duchess, "prince francis will do it for you, and the princess will help him." i attempted to protest, but the duchess pointed to the table saying, "i command you to sit down and eat your sandwiches and drink your wine," and by the time i had refreshed myself, my paraphernalia was packed. as i left the family came into the hall to see me off, and as i was getting into my cab the footman put into my hand a packet of sandwiches with a direction from h.r.h. that i should eat them on the way. i was never pleased with the result of the drawing, and to my horror in the end the printing was extremely unsatisfactory, and in spite of the complimentary press notices that appeared i have always believed that the sketch of the princess was a failure. i felt the disappointment the more, as there had been so much willingness and kindness to help me make a successful drawing, and also i always feared the duchess shared my disappointment. she came in one afternoon just towards the end of the sitting and looked for a long time at the sketch, and then in her kindest voice said, "if i may make a suggestion, mr. ward, the drawing is not pretty enough for the princess. it may be, perhaps, that i, like most mothers, have an exaggerated idea of the good looks of my children, but i admire my daughter very much, and i do not think at present the drawing does her justice." i was entirely of her opinion, and the strong points of the picture should have been the colouring and the charm of expression. when prince charles of denmark (the present king of norway) and his elder brother first made their appearance before the british public, a similar reception to that with which this chapter opens was given at _the daily telegraph_ office by lord burnham. i, having that morning received a sitting from prince charles at marlborough house, had the honour of meeting him again in the evening, when he presented me to his brother, the present king of denmark. i had already met their father, who was crown prince of denmark at the time. he, like all the danish royal family, had the great charm of simplicity, and talked with very great pride and affection of his family, and he told me of all that he had seen in england, dr. barnardo's home for boys had made the greatest impression upon him. on one occasion, when i was at work upon prince charles's portrait at marlborough house, we saw a dirigible balloon sailing by outside that roused some discussion as to their possible utility in the future. i remember his then saying with a laugh, that before long such things would be no novelty, and that many of us would be flying about in the air in the near future. his words often recurred to me during the time i was making the _vanity fair_ cartoon of that enthusiastic airman, mr. hedges butler, who stood for me in the car of his balloon, which was suspended from the ceiling in my lofty studio, and remained in it all the time i painted him. chapter xvi marriage--some clerics--farewell to _vanity fair_ my engagement and marriage to miss topham-watney.--"drawl" and the kruger cartoon.--"the general group."--field-marshal lord roberts.--archbishops temple and randall davidson.--the bishop of london.--archbishop of york.--canon fleming.--lord montagu of beaulieu.--lord salisbury's cartoon.--mr. asquith. --joe knight.--lord newlands.--four great men in connection with canada.--the queen of spain.--princess beatrice of saxe-coburg.--general sir william francis butler, g.c.b.--mr. witherby.--farewell to _vanity fair_. among my lady friends during my bachelor days there was one who was always telling me that i ought to marry and settle down, and in time i began to think so myself. one day she informed me that she had found the very girl. i was introduced to her, found her exceedingly attractive, and shortly we met again at a luncheon-party. on this occasion it was arranged that the whole party should drive down to the ranelagh club, and it fell to my happy lot to escort her. i remember on the road we discussed the types we each preferred, and although neither fulfilled the ideal of the other it was quite a satisfactory afternoon, and we met again frequently, previous to my visit to my friend, freddy bentinck, at brownsea island. i had a glorious time there, but when i got back to town and failed to see the announcement of my marriage in _the morning post_, i hastened down into the country to find out the reason, only to discover that my engagement had been broken off. my future bride was much admired, and exceedingly popular with her many friends, and adored by her very discreet parents, and i, alas, was financially--no catch. in the circumstances i could only accept my _congé_, and although it was some time before i was given the opportunity of meeting her again, we were always good friends. some years later fate decreed that my old love and i should meet again, and we found ourselves alighting from the same train both bound on a visit to the same country-house in herefordshire. this unexpected event proved too much for us, and this time we determined to ignore the opinions of our relatives and "so-called" good friends of former years, and within a few months we married. the ceremony took place at st. michael's, chester square, and the rev. canon fleming, who was a very dear old friend of all of us, especially of my mother, officiated with the aid of the rev. john labouchere, harry newton being my best man. the reception was held at the hans crescent hotel, at which there was a large attendance of friends. amongst the many beautiful gifts we received, a canteen of silver presented to me by members of the beefsteak club was prominent, and in the face of fifteen years of happiness even my most pessimistic friends are bound to admit that i have not made the failure of double harness that they anticipated. [illustration: my daughter.] [illustration: my wife.] during the latter part of our honeymoon we joined my wife's people at monte carlo, where rather an amusing incident occurred _à propos_ of my cartoon of kruger. mrs. raby watney (my wife's mother) received a letter from her brother, mr. marshall hall, in which he said that a drawing of kruger, which had just appeared in _vanity fair_, was much appreciated, and that the reproduction, enlarged and reflected on a screen, appearing nightly at the palace theatre, was creating quite a sensation. he added, "tell leslie he mustn't allow himself to be cut out by other artists." so mrs. watney wrote back to him, "look at the signature, 'drawl,' and read it backwards." as i have said before, it is my rule never to place my signature "spy" under a drawing i have not made from observation of the subject himself, but so anxious was the editor to publish a cartoon of kruger that to test my powers of imagination, and with the addition of a description of his personal appearance from one who knew him, i made it and sent it in to the office. but the most amusing comment of all occurred in the reviews of the bound volume of _vanity fair_. as usual they were most polite and complimentary to "spy," who was declared to be quite up to his standard, but they added, "we must confess the best drawings in the volume are by a man who signs himself drawl," and one paper proceeded to describe the new caricaturist in full, and among other details said that he was a dane. on our return to london we looked about for a house and found it very difficult to find a suitable one with a studio attached, so eventually we decided on a house in elizabeth street, and i to keep on my old studio at , bromfield place, pimlico road, which i had occupied for fifteen years. in june, , there appeared in _vanity fair_ the drawing of field-marshal lord roberts, whom i sketched in helmet and khaki, with a suggestion of oom paul introduced in a boulder in the background. this cartoon, on account of the subject, beat the record for popularity, and its sale exceeded that of all other cartoons in _vanity fair_. later on, when the commander-in-chief came to my studio to give me a sitting for the drawing which appeared in _the world_, he told me that copies of this _vanity fair_ cartoon had come to him from all parts with a request for him to sign it. in the christmas number of _vanity fair_ lord roberts was prominent again as the central figure of "a general group," which contained portraits of sir redvers buller, lord kitchener, general hunter, general french, general pole-carew, sir george white, lord dundonald, general baden-powell, colonel plumer, sir frederick carrington, and general hector macdonald. it was a difficult subject to imagine, but it worked out satisfactorily as i was familiar with nearly all in the group. about this time i made my mental notes for the _vanity fair_ drawing of archbishop temple in st. paul's cathedral. the prelate had then become almost blind, and had to be conducted to and from the pulpit. some years later i went to lambeth palace to sketch the present archbishop (dr. randall davidson). i was received by his charming wife, and when i got into conversation with the archbishop he talked to me of his old friend, and said, "one of the best portraits i have ever seen of archbishop temple is that one hanging on the wall; i don't know who did it." "oh, i'm so very pleased that you think that," i replied, "because you will find my signature there, and i did it entirely from observation after a visit to st. paul's." [illustration: the archbishop of canterbury, dr. temple ] at the official residence of the bishop of stepney, , amen court, in the precincts of st. paul's cathedral, i sketched both the bishop of london and the present archbishop of york at the time when each ruled over the see of stepney. when sketching dr. winnington-ingram again, as bishop of london, for _the world_, he came to my studio, and was extremely friendly and entertaining as a sitter. it was about the time of my marriage that my drawing of canon fleming appeared in _vanity fair_. of course i knew his face very well indeed. he was the kindest-looking of men, and the cartoon eventually came into the possession of his family. it was through my old friend, archie stuart-wortley, that i first knew john scott-montagu, now lord montagu of beaulieu, his first cousin and great pal, and we spent many delightful days together, at the palace house, beaulieu, and in his delightful bungalow on the solent. john was a brilliant and most versatile young man; it was difficult to say what he could not do, and there is very little about which he does not know something. at one time he will be absorbed in engineering, at another in commerce or in literary work, or may be political. he is a very fine shot, a keen fisherman, in fact, a good all-round sportsman and a most entertaining companion. he has driven a railway engine, but although now absorbed in plans and buildings for the development of beaulieu, and also in the building of another beautiful house on the solent for himself, he is, of course, always tremendously keen on everything relating to _the car_. his brain power and energy are amazing. i have drawn him and also his wife, who is a daughter of the late marquis of lothian. she is an accomplished musician and a charming hostess. i always think of lord montagu in connection with the difficulty of conveying a correct sense of height in these full-length _vanity fair_ cartoons. for instance, to insure a clear impression of his moderate height, in my drawing i lowered the head considerably below the margin of the paper upon which it was drawn, while in its published form the printers had placed it on a level with the margin, thereby giving the impression of increased height, and consequently of a decidedly tall man. naturally the proportion of a figure being relative to the space surrounding it, i took good care in the case of major oswald ames, who is something like feet inches, to make his head almost touch the margin; the same rule applied to the feet, and with the aid of a miniature chair in the background the effect was produced. i conclude i was fortunate with sketches of the late lord salisbury, as a lady, a great friend of his, said that a grease paint picture i made of him, in cyril maude's dressing-room at the haymarket theatre, was quite the best she had ever seen of that distinguished statesman. in , i made another, after watching him again in the house of lords. it happened to be on the easel one day when lord redesdale came to my studio, and he, being struck with it, complimented me by asking if i would part with it, so that the original is now in his possession, and by his permission is reproduced in this book. [illustration: the marquis of salisbury, .] [illustration: letter of appreciation] [illustration: dinner given to joseph knight by the dramatic profession at the savoy hotel june, the fourth, ] as regards the present prime minister, i was on the look out for him one day, and he did not appear in the lobby. a member of parliament came up and asked me who i was looking for. i told him i wanted mr. asquith, cautioning him, of course, not to let him know for what purpose. he said, "i'll soon have him out," upon which i suggested that he should tell him an amusing story. consequently i got quite a successful caricature, and not long after the cartoon was published it was, with his approbation, reproduced in colour on the menu of some important liberal banquet at which he was to be present. it was with very great pleasure that i designed the menu for the complimentary dinner given by the members of the dramatic profession to my old friend, joe knight, at the savoy hotel on the th june, . it contained a portrait of himself for which he sat. he was one of the oldest of the dramatic critics, and had been an art critic, and an intimate friend of rossetti. he was a very great favourite, especially at the garrick and beefsteak clubs, and he had a fine library which was distributed at his death. a characteristic habit of his was while relating a story to his neighbour at the dinner or supper table to place the palm of his hand before his mouth as though speaking in secrecy, but his voice always thundered out the words so that every one in the room could hear, and there was no secret after all! one of the nicest men among the many hundreds who have been willing subjects is lord newlands. i was struck with his considerate and charming manner to all he came in contact with, even to an old charwoman. it was interesting to hear him talk of his old friend, dr. jowett, master of balliol college, whose memory he regarded with the deepest respect. my early caricature of him seemed to have pleased him so much that he not only gave a good sum for it at the sale of _vanity fair_ cartoons at christie's, but also commissioned me to make a copy of it. as henry hozier he was secretary to lord salisbury, - . amongst the many prominent men in connection with canada that i cartooned were sir wilfrid laurier, perhaps the most striking personality of all the colonists that came my way; sir walter blake, who over here became a prominent member of the house of commons; the late duke of argyll, a delightfully intellectual and kind-hearted man; lord minto, whom i depicted in canadian riding-kit, who was a gentleman to the backbone and a thorough sportsman; and lord grey, whose distinguished career is so well known. of the duke of connaught, whose retirement, when it comes, is sure to be felt in canada with regret, it can only be said that no one of the royal family could have filled the post better, and that a more popular successor to the post of governor-general could not have been selected than prince alexander of teck. of course i mention all these as having been victims of my brush at one time or another. shortly before her marriage, i went to kensington palace to make a drawing of princess ena of battenberg (now the queen of spain). i was in some difficulty at first about the regulation of the light upon my sitter, and to soften the effect i pinned a large sheet of brown paper over the lower part of the window, but it was suggested by her mother that, perhaps, some drapery would be equally serviceable and more ornamental from the view of those outside. i am afraid that being keen on my work i had not considered the appearance of the palace windows as no doubt i should have done. the young princess was a very handsome girl, with a wealth of beautifully silky fair hair, a lovely complexion and fine eyes full of fun; she was also particularly bright and natural in her manner. at one of the sittings i met the princess beatrice of saxe-coburg; i had not the honour of a presentation, but she entered into conversation with me. she was most charming, but although i gathered she had unusual knowledge of art, it was not until after she had left the room that i was informed of her identity. i regretted not having known at the time that she was the daughter of the duke of edinburgh, as i should have liked to have told her of my enjoyable cruise with her father. so highly did the princess henry of battenberg value her niece's criticism of my sketch, that when the young princess disagreed with her over the suggestion of a slight alteration in it, h.r.h. good-humouredly gave in. i have the pleasantest remembrance of the character drawing of general sir william francis butler, g.c.b., which i made for _vanity fair_ in . the general was one of the empire's very big men, and it will be remembered that prior to the boer war he was very sharply criticised for certain pessimistic prophecies in connection with the war which annoyed everybody; but events justified every word he uttered. he married miss thompson of "the roll call" fame, and he was very much struck with a proof print from a drawing of her that i had done for _the graphic_ at the time she painted "the roll call." it chanced that he sat to me on my birthday, which was in november. i usually left my studio at sunset in time to get a walk, but that afternoon i lingered until dusk. presently there came a ring at my bell, which i answered, and seeing some one at a distance from the gate the visitor asked me if mr. leslie ward was in. i exclaimed, "why, general! don't you know me? you've been sitting to me all the morning." he said, "here is a little parcel which i should like you to accept, it being your birthday," and hurried off. i took it into my studio and found it contained a pair of extremely handsome silver candlesticks of the georgian period. my subject had a stern countenance but a kind heart. not long after, i began to realise that my long association with _vanity fair_ was about to come to an end. when mr. gibson bowles resigned his connection with the journal, in order to take an active part in the political field which had always attracted his keenest interest, i could not have contemplated a more delightful successor than mr. a. g. witherby as my chief, for i again received every encouragement to succeed in my work. not only is he a very clever caricaturist and draughtsman, but he is equally clever as a writer; in addition to which he is a good sort and keen sportsman, and when he decided to part with the paper it was a great blow to me. i shall ever remember the kind hospitality i received from him and his wife during his proprietorship of the paper. [illustration: princess ena of battenberg. _drawn at kensington palace, may , just previously to her marriage with the king of spain._] in early days my father cautioned me against giving more than half of my time to work for reproduction, and experience has taught me the wisdom of the warning. i think after all he was right, and i regret that for nearly forty years i devoted too much time to the work on _vanity fair_. as a society journal it was certainly for a long period a publication of unique interest, and i venture to prophesy that, when the history of the victorian era comes to be written in true perspective, the most faithful mirror and record of representative men and the spirit of their times will be sought and found in _vanity fair_. chapter xvii a holiday misfortune--royal portraits--farewell belgium.--accident at golf.--portraits of king george v, the duke of connaught, mr. roosevelt, mr. lloyd george, mr. garvin.--portrait painting of to-day.--final reflections. --farewell. sometimes as the late summer comes round, my wife and i prefer to take our holiday or part of it abroad, when the change of scene and living is a possible attraction. five years ago we had been told of a quiet and charming little watering-place in belgium, not far from ostend, called wenduyne, and having in advance booked rooms at the hotel recommended to us, we arrived and found it most comfortable. i took no work with me, not even pencil and brushes, for i was determined to have a complete rest. we were pleased to learn that the golf links at le coq were quite handy, and we lost no time in taking the tram there and inscribing our names as temporary members. these links are beautifully kept up, and in the vicinity of the club house are gaily decorated with flower beds. [illustration: _drawn in september by mr. a. g. witherby. what was mistaken for the gout was a broken bone in the foot._] mrs. oakes (my wife's cousin) and i soon arranged to play a game of golf. the nailed boots that i had been wearing during the morning were new and uncomfortable, so i changed them for a pair of canvas shoes with india-rubber soles, which were well adapted to the course in dry weather. a sudden storm, however, made its appearance, and the rain fell in buckets, saturating the ground completely. we were soon wet through, but knowing there were but two holes more to play we decided to continue to the bitter end, which shortly came. i made a bad shot and placed my ball awkwardly. in my endeavour to move it, and at the same moment of striking (and i conclude the india-rubber soles of my shoes were the cause) my foot slipped and i fell helplessly to the ground. my companion, in ignorance of the serious consequences of the fall, urged me to try and rise to my feet, when i found that my leg was badly fractured above the ankle. in time, but not before i was exhausted, a chauffeur turned up with a private motor-car on a road near at hand, and i was borne off by some cottagers and placed inside, while mrs. oakes, who had been in search of aid, escorted me back to the hotel. after being jolted two or three miles over the rough, cobbled road, i was deposited on a sofa until surgical aid came. fortunately i was soon in very competent hands, although the pain i underwent during the setting of the fracture i shall never forget, for it was agonising. my wife returned to the hotel to find me safely installed in the proprietor's (m. machiel's) private sitting-room, which he most kindly gave up for my use. she nursed me for some time under the surgeon's directions, until i urged her to enjoy the remainder of her visit and procure the services of a hospital nurse from london to relieve her. it was over a month before i was allowed to stir, and when the time came that i might be wheeled on to the balcony of m. machiel's villa i breathed again. the surgeon, whose temporary villa was adjoining the hotel, was a well-known town-councillor and scientist in antwerp who must have weighed twenty stone. when giving me permission at first to get up, he invited me to waltz with him, which gave me hopes of my permanent recovery, but i did not accept the invitation. on returning home, after the kind attention i received both from m. and madame machiel and the officials at ostend who saw to my comfort before boarding the boat, i found every aid awaiting me at my studio, where i remained in the experienced hands of dr. reginald ingram, who attended me until i was convalescent. the press cuttings sent me while abroad concerning the accident amused me, as i was reported in some papers to have broken both my legs, while among the kind letters i received was one from hermann vezin, the actor, who was lying on a bed of sickness from which he never recovered. i reproduce here another, and amusing, communication which came from an anonymous friend after the accident i have just described. it invites me, as will be seen, to "smile" in spite of all. [illustration: smile damn you smile! ] my studio on the ground floor at buckingham gate made an excellent hospital, but i was still prevented from doing any work for some time. when _the world_ approached me after my decision to terminate my connection with _vanity fair_, the inducement was that in addition to the same remuneration which i had received from that paper, i was permitted to retain the rights of my original drawings. in consequence, i was able to send a collection to the turin exhibition at the request of sir isidore spielmann, for which i received a grand prix. my second drawing of the present king was published by his permission in _the world_ in ; it was but a short time before the death of king edward, for a paragraph in reference to it appeared in _the morning post_ opposite the announcement of the late king's death. i knew on the best authority that the prince was a very fine shot, so i represented him in shooting-kit grasping his gun. h.r.h. took the greatest trouble to sit in order that every detail of the picture should be perfectly correct; indeed, on the occasion of the first sitting he not only changed into a complete suit of shooting-clothes, but he permitted me to choose the suit i thought best for the drawing. he told me he always shot with a hammered gun, and preferred it to any other, and that he made a point of wearing a red tie when shooting. on reminding him of boyhood days and the circumstances of my cruise on the _hercules_, he remembered the incident perfectly. not long after, i received the honour of sittings from the duke of connaught. i had been presented to h.r.h. at st. james's palace by sir henry de bathe at my first levee, and not having a court suit of my own, i hired one for the occasion. when i returned to my cab after the levee i was horrified to discover that through careless tailoring my black velvet breeches had split across my thigh, the accident evidently having occurred at the moment i made my obeisance. i was naturally very much concerned at this ill-timed catastrophe, and could only hope that it had escaped observation. when the duke of connaught was sitting to me i told him the story. he laughed, and related an incident that occurred on another occasion. an old and seemingly rather eccentric military officer was advancing to make his bow, when the lord chamberlain noticing something rather strange in his apparel attempted to draw his attention to the fact, and to prevent his advance. other royal attendants made similar efforts, only to be waved aside by the old gentleman, who obstinately refused to be stopped. it was then that the duke noticed that his sword, every button, in fact, and all the gold upon his uniform was covered with yellow tissue paper which he had obviously forgotten to remove. i sketched the duke in undress uniform, and while the portrait was in progress the duchess and the princess patricia came to look at it, and the princess, who is herself a clever artist, seemed to take an especial interest in my method of work. on my next visit h.r.h. told me that the duchess had been so much pleased with the portrait that she would like to possess the original. it was then arranged that the drawing should be sent out to canada, but at my request it was first lent to the proprietors of _the graphic_, who reproduced it in colour for the special duke of connaught number, which was published shortly after the duke had accepted office as governor-general of canada. _the graphic_ also reproduced in colour a drawing that i did of sir colin keppel, in admiral's uniform; he, it will be remembered, took the king and queen to india. when the honorary degree of ll.d. was conferred on mr. roosevelt, oxford made quite a fête day of the occasion. at the ceremony of installation i went down to observe the ex-president in all the glory of his robes and red gown. another interesting portrait i painted about this time, also within the fine setting of official dignity and circumstance, was that of archbishop bourne in his cardinal's robes. i sent it to the exhibition at the royal academy, where it was alloted a very prominent position. it was at the request of _the world_ that i made the drawing described as "his majesty's servants." it was a group picture of the most prominent actors of the day, including tree and bourchier, weedon grossmith, willard, and h. b. irving, etc. among a number of very interesting subjects which appeared in _the world_ was captain scott, and i think i was about the last artist to whom he sat before he started on his fatal expedition. one of my drawings of mr. lloyd george also appeared in _the world_; but my best caricature of the much discussed chancellor of the exchequer was published in _vanity fair_. he was so pleased with it that he selected it as a frontispiece for his biography, which appeared shortly after its publication, and when this cartoon was put up for sale with some other original drawings it fetched a very high price. i occasionally made a drawing for _mayfair_, the only society journal that i can recall having succeeded in any way on the lines of _vanity fair_, although in this paper any accentuation of characteristics seems out of place. the fact is the object of _vanity fair_ was most distinctly the entertainment of the public, while that of _mayfair_ is rather purposely for the satisfaction of the individuals. in , i was commissioned by _mayfair_ to make a drawing of the distinguished scientist, sir john murray, who died recently. he was a splendid subject, and had a most picturesque head. his portrait, which was exhibited in the new gallery, was painted by sir george reid, and is one of the most striking in my memory. mr. bowie, the well-known scottish a.r.s.a., to whom i recently sat for the portrait exhibited at the royal society of portrait painters, which has been so well noticed, also painted a very life-like portrait of sir george reid. mr. birch crisp, the well-known stockbroker, who was responsible for the chinese and russian loans, was one of my recent subjects in _mayfair_. he sat several times in spite of the fact that he is an extremely busy man and rarely to be found out of his office. he was very interested in my work, and has made a representative collection of it, which hangs in his beautiful house near ascot. another of the most interesting of my later-day subjects was mr. locker-lampson. his cleancut face with its strongly-marked features shows the determined character of the man. a good story is told by him in connection with the general election of . he was due at a political meeting in the neighbourhood of the fen district, and being already rather behind time, his car was at top speed when they turned an awkward corner of the road--and passengers and car were suddenly in the water. mr. locker-lampson scrambled to the bank, left the car and proceeded to the local vicarage, where he borrowed the parson's coat and spoke that night at three meetings. the next morning all the village turned out to the scene of the accident; there was the stranded car and from a pole attached to it a banner waved in the wind bearing the words "locker's in," and he got in all right by a big majority. last year at the request of the staff of _the pall mall gazette_ and _the observer_, i made a portrait of their editor, mr. garvin. owing to a family bereavement i was not able to be at the presentation dinner, to my regret, as i had very much enjoyed the opportunity of meeting and drawing this very distinguished man of letters. as i conclude this book, so, incidents during my professional career of forty-three years seem to arise, but i must not try the patience of my readers by referring to any more. it strikes me that the average standard of portrait painting has now for many years past been in the ascendant, but that snapshot photography has to a great extent interfered with the old form of coloured caricature, which was for so long a feature of _vanity fair_, although the increase of illustrated journalism has both aided and encouraged the development of many a clever caricaturist. again i hesitate to mention names lest i should leave out some of the best, and, _à propos_ of this, i have always found it wiser when asked the questions, "who is the best portrait painter of the day for men?" or "who do you consider paints women best?" to reply in joke, "why, of course, i am the best for both men and women." thus one does not commit one's self; as i have invariably found when i have mentioned a name that the answer has been, "oh! do you really think so? i can't bear his portraits, he has just painted me and my wife, and we have had to relegate both the pictures to the 'servants' hall.'" the illustrations in _punch_ stand as high as the names of its excellent artists, and of course caricature portraiture plays its part prominently there in black and white, as it also does in many of the magazines and evening papers. "poster" work is in a strong position, too, in this manner, and here i must again refrain from individualising its chief exponents. one word also in praise of the royal society of portrait painters, and the work of its members, of whom it is only necessary to read down the list to realise how representative it is, and where i am proud to have contributed my latest portrait in oil--that of mr. m. p. grace, the present occupant of "battle abbey," my ambition now being to devote a far greater portion of my time to strict portraiture. [illustration: _from a life-size oil picture_| |_painted by leslie ward, ._ m. p. grace, esq., battle abbey.] praise is as acceptable to an artist as to any other worker, and in addition to the kindly tributes of my personal friends i should like to express appreciation for those i have received from strangers. i was particularly gratified to receive the following letter:-- "nov. th, . "_my dear sir_, "as a reader of 'vanity fair,' i much desire to take the opportunity of wishing you many happy returns for your birthday on monday, and of sending you a few cordial and sincere words of greeting for that occasion. i suppose you will receive many such messages from friends both known and unknown, whilst others not caring to trouble you will at least think upon your name with much respect, and with such thoughts will couple expressions of good will. "this is, of course, quite as it should be, and, personally, i would assure you of my very high esteem and regard. i thank you most sincerely for the pleasure your cartoons ever gave me, and for the successful part you take in making 'vanity fair' such a splendid publication. i read much, owing to indifferent health precluding my indulgence in vigorous exercise of any kind, thereby necessitating my leisure being spent in quiet and instructive pastimes--such as a study of art, literature, and music. "i would express in all sincerity my fervent hope that every happiness and joy this world can possibly give may be yours to enjoy, with an entire lack of all that tends in any way to cause trouble or promote pain. particularly do i wish you excellent health. nothing, i feel sure, adds to or detracts more from life than the physical state--hence my remark. may all good luck and fortune attend you, and permit you to continue for many years yet your splendid work as an artist. somehow i feel that words are quite inadequate to express all that is in one's heart to say. i can only ask you, therefore, my dear sir, to accept my poorly expressed words as _heartfelt and sincere_, and believe them to come from one who takes the keenest interest in yourself and your fine work. "can you kindly oblige by replying to the two following questions for me:-- " . where may a brief and authentic sketch of your life and career be found? i much desire to have the opportunity of perusing such. " . also may i enquire where a _good_ portrait of yourself may be procured? i am anxious to have a good one for framing, as a slight personal 'memento' (if i may so call it) of one whose work greatly interests me. "wishing you again many happy returns, offering you my sincerest congratulations, and hoping you are well, "i am, my dear sir, "very sincerely yours, "a reader of 'vanity fair.' "leslie ward, esq., 'spy.'" so kind a letter i naturally preserve with gratification. postscript. in march last, and for the two months that i spent in the empire hospital, vincent square, i received from mr. jocelyn swan and mr. reginald ingram the best surgical and medical skill that man could wish for. the hospital itself, which is for paying patients (excepting during the war, in the cases of military officers), and which contains a number of comfortable private rooms, is perfectly managed. then it was that a combination of brighton air and a delightfully conducted nursing home hastened my convalescence and quickly gave me the desire to work again. one of the principal consolations of convalescence i found, as soon as i was well enough to receive them, lay in the visits of my friends. it was with particular pleasure--for we had not met for a long time--that i saw sir willoughby maycock by my bedside at the empire hospital. i was also much honoured and gratified by receiving a visit from the duchess of argyll, who, on learning of my illness, expressed a wish to see me. during convalescence i made up my mind to write an additional chapter of this book, and indeed i went so far as to cause search to be made for the notes upon which the chapter was to be based, and for the material which i had prepared before my illness. unfortunately, however, notes and material alike had disappeared--irretrievably; and i am forced to conclude without the chapter i had planned. i should like to append here a note which really bears upon the pages dealing with my school-days at eton, and which to my mind has considerable historical interest. it refers to the brocas at eton. "sir john de brocas was a gascon knight who became an officer of edward the second's household, and settled in england. his third son, sir bernard brocas, was a great favourite with the black prince, and master of the horse to his father edward the third. he was also a friend of william of wykeham, sat in ten parliaments for hampshire, and chamberlain to richard the second's queen. by his second marriage (in ) with mary, widow of sir john de borhunte, he became hereditary master of the royal buckhounds, a post which his descendants held until , when they sold it. he owned a lot of property in and about windsor and clewer, whence comes the name the brocas clump, etc., but his chief estate was at beaurepaire, near basingstoke. he died in , and was buried in st. edmund's chapel, westminster abbey." finally, i see that in telling the story of craigie at the beefsteak club on pages - i have omitted to mention some members who almost invariably accompanied him and helped greatly to make the beefsteak meetings so agreeable. i should not like to appear forgetful of lord hothfield, sir george chetwynd, mr. 'johnny' morgan, colonel walter dally jones, and sir j. k. fowler, of all of whom i have such pleasant memories. i must now conclude with thanking my friend charles jerningham, 'the linkman,' for his introduction (after persuading me to write my reminiscences) to mr. spalding of messrs. chatto & windus. from him and others in this old firm of publishers i have received every help and courtesy. i now say farewell, and hope that the good public will forgive what shortcoming there may be in "forty years of 'spy.'" index adam, patrick, adams-acton, john, adler, very rev. hermann, agnew, william, ainger, canon, aird, sir john, albemarle, lord, albert, prince (the prince consort), , , alexandra, queen, alington, lord, , allandale, lady, alleyne, f. m., alma-tadema, sir l., , , , alverstone, lord, amalia, , ames, major oswald, argyll, duke of, ashburton, lady, ashby-sterry, j., ashton, edmund, ashwell, lena, asquith, mr., , astley, philip, austin, alfred, aynesworth, allan, baden-powell, sir r., baldwin, j. l., balfour, a. j., ballantyne, serjeant, bancroft, sir squire and lady, barry, edward, bateman, miss (mrs. crowe), bathe, sir henry de, , battenberg, princess henry of, battenberg, prince louis of, battyany, prince, bayard, mr., , , beaufort, duke of, beerbohm, julius, beerbohm, max, bellew, rev. j. m., bellew, kyrle, benckendorff, count, benson, archbishop, benson, a. c., bentinck, f., beresford, lord c., , bernhardt, sarah, bickersteth, dr., birch, charles, bird, t., biron, h. c., , birrell, rt. hon. a., black, william, blake, sir w., boehm, sir edgar, , borradaile, mrs., bourchier, arthur, bourne, archbishop, bowie, john, bowles, gibson, , , , , , , , brampton, baron, bricka, fraülein, bridge, sir f., brodrick, mr., warden of merton, brookfield, charles, , , , , , brookfield, mrs., brooks, shirley, brooks, sir wm. cunliffe, , brough, robert, buller, sir r., burnaby, col. fred, , burnand, sir francis, , , burgess, j. b., burton, sir richard, butler, hedges, butler, sir w. f., , butt, isaac, buzzard, dr., byam, rev. r. b., byng, rev. f. e. c., byron, h. j., calderon, philip, , caley, mrs. t., , calthrop, claude, cameron, mrs., campbell, rev. r. j., , cardigan, lady, carlos, don, carr, comyns, , , carrington, sir f., carroll, lewis, castle, egerton, cecil, arthur, , cecil, lord robert, cetewayo, , chambers, sir thomas, choate, j., churchill, lord randolph, , clarence, duke of, , claridge, mr., clemens, s. l. (mark twain), clifford, sir a. w., clifford, lord de, cobbett, sir william, cockburn, capt. a., cockburn, c. s., cole, vicat, , collier, the hon. john, collins, charles, , collins, t., collins, wilkie, , , collins, mrs. william, colonsay, lord, colvile, general sir henry, , connaught, the duke of, , , , connaught, princess patricia of, constable, mr., a brewer-artist, cooke, edward, , coope, mr. and mrs., cooper, sydney, corbett, colonel, cornwallis-west, mrs., corry, monty, courtney, w. l., cousins, samuel, cozens-hardy, sir herbert, craigie, a member of the beefsteak club, crane, walter, crewe, lord, cripps, sir alfred, crisp, birch, cruikshank, george, dalgleish, robert, darnley, lord, dashwood, mrs., davidson, dr. randall, delaware, lord and lady, denmark, king of, desart, lady, dickens, charles, , , , dickens, mrs. henry, dicksee, sir frank, dilke, sir charles, disraeli, b., dixie, lady florence, dixon, w. h., doran, alban, doran, john, , , , , , doré, gustave, doyle, sir hastings, druce, t. c., drummond, hugh, dubourg, augustus, du maurier, george, , , , dundonald, lord, dunlop, richard, , edge, k.c., j. h., , edinburgh, duke of, , , , , edward vii, king, , , , , , , , , , , , , elliot, william, , ellis, prof. robinson, erskine, captain, etherington-smith, r. b., eugenie, empress, evans, mr. and miss, faed, thomas, fagan, louis, farren, nellie, , , farren, william, farquhar, "gillie," fechter, ferguson, sir james, fildes, sir luke, , fitzgerald, lord and lady otho, , , fleming, canon, , forbes, archibald, forbes-robertson, sir j., fox, mr. and mrs. george, , , fox, harry, fraser, general sir charles, fraser, general sir keith and lady, french, sir j., frere, sir bartle, frewer, the rev. dr., frith, w. p., , , fry, c. b., fry, oliver, furniss, harry, , , furse, charles, gambert, garibaldi, garvin, j. l., gennadius, m., george v, king, , , , , , george, d. lloyd, german emperor, the, , , gibson, dana, giffard, j., , gilbert, sir w. s., , gill, k.c., charles, gillette, william, , gladstone, w. e., , godfrey, dan, gomm, sir william, gooch, captain, goodford, dr., , goodhart, dr., gordon, sir evans, gorst, sir john, gosset, mr., gould, f. c., gounod, m., grace, m. p., grace, w. g., graham, peter, , grain, corney, , , , gray, thomas, greece, king of, grey, lord, grimthorpe, lord, grisi, grossmith, george, , , grossmith, jun., george, grossmith, weedon, , guinness, hon. r., haldon, lord, , hall, sir charles, hall, marshall, , hall, mr. and mrs. s. c., , , hall-say, mr., halsbury, lord, hamilton, duke of, hamilton, mcclure, , harcourt, sir w., hardie, keir, hardinge, admiral, hardy, thomas, hare, sir john, harris, lord, harris, mr., a times correspondent, hawke, lord, hawtrey, charles, hay, col. j., hayashi, viscount tadasa, hearsey, general sir john, heneage, admiral sir a., henley, w. e., henry, mitchell, herbert, j. r., herkomer, sir hubert, herkomer, herman, herschel, sir william, hewitt, admiral sir w., , , higgins, 'willie,' hill, raven, hirst, george, holl, frank, hollingshead, john, hollmann, , holmes, o. w., holmes, t. k., hood, lord, , hope-johnstone, wentworth, houghton, lord, , , hume the medium, hunt, w. holman, , , , hunter, general, huntly, the marchioness of, ignatieff, general, imperial, the prince, , ingham, sir james, irving, sir henry, , , , , irving, h. b., jackson, f. s., jackson, r.a., john, jaffray, sir william, jenkins, edward, jerrold, douglas, jessop, g. l., joachim, jones, henry arthur, jowett, dr., jung, sir salar, , keene, charles, kemble, henry, kendal, mr. and mrs., kenealy, dr. edward, kensington, the bishop of, kent, the duchess of, keppel, sir colin, kipling, rudyard, kirby, joshua, kitchener, lord, knight, joseph, knollys, sir f., kruger, paul, , labouchere, rev. j., laird, john, lampson, dr., landseer, charles, landseer, sir edwin, , landseer, thomas, langtry, mrs., laurier, sir w., lawson, sir edward, , lehmann, rudolph, , leighton, lord, , , lemon, mark, lennox, lord henry, leopold, prince, , leslie, r.a., c. r., , leslie, r.a., george, leslie, henry, le strange, commander, , leven, lord, leverson, madame rachel, levy, edward, levy, mr. and mrs. j. m., , lewis, arthur, , , , , , , lewis, sir george, lichfield, bishop of, , lind, jenny, lipton, sir thomas, locker-lampson, g., lockwood, colonel, lockwood, sir frank, londesborough, lord, london, bishop of, londonderry, lord, long, e. l., lonsdale, lord, loudoun, the countess of, louise, princess, lover, sam, lucas, seymour, lucy, sir henry, lumley, a. s., , lush, mr. justice, lytton, lord, , lytton, the second lord, mccalmont, fred, mccalmont, harry, mccalmont, mrs. harry, macdonald, sir h., macdonald, admiral sir r., machiel, m., , mackenzie, mr., of kintale, , maclagan, mrs., , maclean, i., maclise, daniel, , mahony, mr., majendie, colonel, makunan, h.h. ras, , marks, stacy, , , martin, sir theodore and lady, martino, chevalier, mary, queen, , matthews, sir charles, maude, cyril, melba, madame, mellor, mr. justice, mensdorff, count, metternich, count paul, meux, sir henry and lady, , , meyer, jeremiah, middleton, captain bay, midhat pasha, midleton, viscount, miles, frank, mill, john stuart, millais, sir john, , , , , , , , millais, mrs., minto, lord, monkswell, lord, montagu of beaulieu, lord and lady, , moriarty, daniel, morland, george, moroni, moscheles, felix, mulready, w., , munday, luther, munday, mrs. miller, munro, mrs. butler johnstone, munroe, kate, munster, count, murray, sir john, muttlebury, mr., nash, edward, , nash, rev. zacchary, neville, henry, newlands, lord, newman, cardinal, , newton, harry, northbrook, lord, norway, king of, oakes, mrs., , onslow, guilford, orchardson, w. q., ossington, lady, , ouless, w. w., owen, sir cunliffe, owen, professor, , paganini, paget, lord a., paget, sir james, palgrave, mr., palk, "piggy," pankhurst, christabel, parker, frank, parker, henry, parnell, c. s., parry, serjeant, pasley, mr., patti, adelina, , patti, carlotta, pellegrini, , , , , , , , pender, lady, penley, w. s., penn, john, persia, shah of, pettie, john, philipson, the wicket-keeper, piggott, mostyn, pigott, mr., the examiner of plays, , pitman, c. m., , planché, j. r., plowden, mr., plumer, colonel, poland, sir henry, pole-carew, general, portarlington, earl of, , , portland, the fifth duke of, , post, frederick, powis, earl of, poynter, sir e. j., prinsep, val, ranelagh, lord, ranjitsinhji, k. s., rawlinson, f. p., rawlinson, sir henry, reading, lord, redesdale, lord, reece, reeves, sims, reid, sir george, , reid, whitelaw, ribblesdale, lord, richter, hans, richmond, r.a., george, , richmond, sir w., rivière, m., , roberts, david, , roberts, lord, robinson, dr. armitage, rocksavage, lord, rollit, sir albert, roosevelt, t., ross, sir william, rossit, madame de, rousby, mrs., royal, the princess, , royce, ruskin, john, rutzen, sir albert de, st. john, florence, , sala, g. a., salisbury, lord, sambourne, linley, , sargent, j. s., savile, henry, saxe-coburg, princess beatrice of, schleswig-holstein, princess victoria of, scott, captain, seaman, sir owen, seely, brig.-gen., seely, charles, selfe, judge, sewell, dr. james, , shannon, j. j., shave, a waiter, , shaw, sir eyre, shrewsbury, lord, shrewsbury, lady, , smiles, samuel, smirke, sir edward, smirke, sir robert, smirke, r.a., sydney, , smith, the misses, smith, horace, smith, james, sothern, e. a., spain, queen of, , spielmann, sir i., spiers, phené, spofforth, f. r., spooner, dr., stainer, sir john, stanfield, clarkson, , stanhope, lord, stephens, f. g., stone, marcus, , straight, sir douglas, street, g. e., stuart, sterling, sturge, mr., sturt, colonel napier, sullivan, sir arthur, , swinburne, a. c., sykes, mark, sykes, lady, taglioni, tarver, frank, taylor, tom, , , taylor, mrs. tom, teck, duke and duchess of, teck, prince adolphus of, , teck, prince alexander of, tempest, marie, temple, archbishop, teniers, tenniel, sir john, , terry, edward, terry, ellen, terry, florence, terry, kate (mrs. arthur lewis), , , , , , terry, marion, thackeray, w. m., , thomas, moy, thompson, alfred, thompson, general perronet, tichborne, a. c., tissot, j. j., , tooke, mr. and mrs. hammond, toole, john, tooth, the rev. arthur, torrington, lord, , tree, sir h. b., trevor, leo, trollope, anthony, trumper, the misses, , twiss, quintin, van beers, jan, varley, john, , vaughan, cardinal, vaughan, kate, , , vezin, hermann, victor emmanuel, king, victoria, queen, , , , vincent, sir howard, virtue, james, , virtue, william, vivian, lord, wagner, richard, walker, dr., walker, fred, , ward, beatrice, , , ward, r.a., e. m., , , , , , , , , , , ward, mrs. e. m., , , , , , , ward, george raphael, , ward, r.a., james, , , ward, m.v.o., the hon. john, ward, russell, , , , ward, william, warner, lady lucia, warren, sir t. h., waterford, lady, watney, mrs. r., watts, g. f., , weldon, mrs. georgina, , , , weldon, w. h., welldon, dr., wellesley, dean, wentworth-cole, mr., , whibley, charles, whistler, , , , , , whitaker, colonel, white, sir george, white, mr., consul at tangier, wilberforce, archdeacon, william iv, king, williams, montagu, , , , windt, harry de, winslow, dr. forbes, witherby, a. g., wolff, sir h. drummond, wombwell, sir george, wood, mrs. john, wood, percy, , wortley, a. s., , , , , , wyllats, willie, wyndham, sir charles, wynn, sir w. w., yardley, william, yates, edmund, , , yates, mrs. edmund, zoffany, the end printed by william clowes and sons, limited, london and beccles. footnotes: [ ] spelt _zoffanj_ on his tombstone. [ ] "dolly" storey, g. a. storey, a.r.a. [ ] "gillie" farquhar is a brother of lord farquhar, once a smart society man who knew everybody and whom everybody knew. he travelled and then went on the stage. his conversation was amusing, and his individuality was marked by a keen sense of humour. arthur cecil and he were great friends, and as they both became stout were called by their friends "the brothers bulge." [ ] the queen's messenger to whom i refer possessed the nickname of "beauty," for as a young man he was strikingly handsome, but later in life he was no longer sought after for his good looks. [ ] a crayon portrait of my father by george richmond is one of his finest accomplishments. [ ] c. m. pitman, always known as "cherry" pitman. [ ] i had followed the professor continually in order to get his manner of walking. [ ] r.i.m. (initials of sir reginald macdonald which became his nickname). [ ] where the late duke of fife was wrecked. +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | transcriber's note:- | | | | an entry was added to the illustration index for the | | illustration on page which was apparently missed during | | original production. | | | | a number of illustrations have been shifted from the middle of | | paragraphs to convenient nearby spaces and the page numbers in | | the index have been altered accordingly. the facing page heading| | in the index has been changed to page. | | | | some punctuation errors have been corrected. | | | | the following suspected printer's errors have been addressed. | | | | page , going changed to getting. | | before getting the address | | | | page , perparatory changed to preparatory | | preparatory to a last sitting | | | | page , met changed to me | | when he saw me | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------------+ produced from scanned images of public domain material from the google print project.) memoirs of madame vigée lebrun uniform with this volume: memoirs of countess potocka _illustrated._ translated by lionel strachey memoirs of a contemporary _illustrated._ translated by lionel strachey [illustration: mme. vigÉe lebrun and her daughter.] memoirs of madame vigée lebrun translated by lionel strachey with numerous reproductions of paintings by the authoress london grant richards copyright, , by doubleday, page & company printed by manhattan press new york. n. y., u. s. a. prefatory note madame lebrun brought out her memoirs at the suggestion of her friend, the princess dolgoruki, in . the authoress was born in , at paris, where she died in . she was the daughter of louis vigée, an obscure portrait painter. her baptismal name was marie louise elisabeth. in mademoiselle vigée was married to jean baptiste pierre lebrun, a notable picture dealer and critic, known also to his contemporaries as an inveterate gambler. this book forms a rendering of madame carette's edition of the lebrun memoirs, slightly abridged for the sake of uniformity with the "memoirs of the countess potocka" and the "memoirs of a contemporary," issuing from the same hands as the present volume. contents page chapter i. youth. precocious talents manifested -- mlle. vigée's father and mother -- death of her father -- a friend of her girlhood -- her mother remarries -- mlle. vigée's first portrait of note (count schouvaloff) -- acquaintance with mme. geoffrin -- the authoress's puritanical bringing-up -- male sitters attempt flirtation -- public resorts of paris before the revolution chapter ii. up the ladder of fame. tedious sojourn in the country -- social amenities in paris -- mlle. vigée becomes mme. lebrun -- prognostications of unhappy wedlock -- on the ladder of fame -- singularities of oriental taste -- marie antoinette as a model -- painting the royal family -- how louis xviii. sang -- the princess de lamballe chapter iii. work and pleasure. impressions of flanders -- the authoress's election to the french royal academy of painting -- her devotion to work -- social pleasures -- a tale of an artist's extravagance -- calonne and calumny -- m. lebrun allows his wife naught per cent. of her earnings -- a dramatic constellation -- the incomparable mme. dugazon chapter iv. exile. a gallic maecenas -- anecdote concerning beaumarchais -- the duke de nivernais -- mme. du barry sketched in words -- and painted in oils -- rumblings of the revolution -- mme. lebrun's fearsome journey to italy -- renewed artistic activity at rome -- easter sunday at st. peter's -- fascination of the eternal city -- vanities and violences of its people chapter v. neapolitan days. naples -- a sleepy ambassadress -- the remarkable life of lady hamilton -- being the story of a frivolous flirt fond of beer -- more royal models -- excursions to posilippo -- mlle. lebrun writes a novel at the age of nine -- the queen of naples sits to the authoress -- the wedding of the doge of venice with the sea chapter vi. turin and vienna. a queen who refused to be painted -- a four-course dinner of frogs, frogs, frogs and frogs -- villeggiatura -- french refugees at turin -- their heartrending plight -- vienna -- news of the "awful murder" of louis xvi. and marie antoinette -- barefoot princess lichtenstein -- inducements to visit russia -- journey thither via dresden -- the sistine madonna chapter vii. saint petersburg. arrival at st. petersburg -- the beautiful grandduchess elisabeth -- catherine ii. receives mme. lebrun -- and is most gracious -- petty court intrigues -- a visit to count strogonoff -- hospitality of the russians -- an ambassador as gardener -- princess dolgoruki and her hideous admirer -- the extravagances of potemkin -- his end chapter viii. life in russia. painting russian royalties -- festivities at court -- the pangs of waiting for dinner -- "to keep warm, spend the winter in russia" -- the hardiness of its common people -- who are well suited with serfdom -- and remarkably honest -- the quaint ceremonial of blessing the neva -- various social customs chapter ix. catherine ii. surroundings of st. petersburg -- patriarchal unconventionalities -- an artillery repast -- the greatness of the second catherine -- who lit her own fire and made her own coffee -- and was sworn at by a chimney sweeper -- other domestic amenities in the career of an empress -- the suit of gustavus iv. -- catherine's death -- humiliating funeral incidents chapter x. the emperor paul. accession of the emperor paul -- his arbitrary rule -- his civility to the authoress -- a man who did not know the emperor's address -- paul's kindness to foreigners -- his fear of assassination -- his personal appearance -- the empress maria -- vagaries of a half-mad emperor -- a noble prelate chapter xi. family affairs. poniatowski, last king of poland -- his amiable character -- the authoress's faculty of presaging death -- poniatowski the nephew -- mme. lebrun received as a member of the st. petersburg academy -- her daughter's untoward marriage -- resulting in estrangement between mother and child chapter xii. moscow. journey to moscow -- a bad smell and its origin -- first impression of moscow -- another impression, oral and unpleasing -- the kremlin -- steam-and-snow bathing -- society -- luxurious prince kurakin -- an impossible duologue -- examples of russian cleverness -- determination to return to france chapter xiii. good-by to russia. departure from moscow -- news of the death of paul -- particulars of his assassination -- et tu brute? -- paul's presentiments of peril -- his successor not an accomplice in the crime -- alexander i. a popular monarch -- an order from an imperial customer and model -- farewells to friends -- among them czar and czarina chapter xiv. homeward bound. first station, narva -- the cataract -- riga -- hardships of travel a hundred years ago -- obdurate custom-house officials -- a summons to potsdam -- the loveliest and sweetest of queens -- her ugly children -- an ambitious cook -- the journey continued -- "remember your jewel-case" -- modelling in dirt for a pastime -- likewise sewing -- home again chapter xv. old friends and new. paris after the revolution -- renewing old acquaintances and forming new ties -- rival beauties: mme. récamier and mme. tallien -- mme. campan -- an englishwoman's slip of the tongue -- some distinguished foreigners chapter xvi. unmerry england. london -- its historic piles -- and dull sundays -- and taciturn people -- pictures by sir joshua reynolds -- his modesty -- how to dry pictures in a damp climate -- the artistic view of a certain popular beauty -- the prince of wales -- his alleged attentions to mme. lebrun -- the authoress lectures an unfriendly critic -- news of one of napoleon's "atrocious crimes" chapter xvii. persons and places in britain. english palaces -- and scenery -- suburban princes -- richmond terrace -- an eccentric margravine -- the charm of the isle of wight -- the britons a stolid nation -- their indifference to rain chapter xviii. bonapartes and bourbons. back in paris -- the devotion of mme. grassini -- capricious, exacting mme. murat -- aspects of christian warfare -- "kill all those people!" -- louis xviii. enters the capital -- the barrenness of napoleon's victories -- his successor's attainments -- bourbon characteristics -- the authoress loses her husband, daughter and brother -- conclusion appendix list of madame vigée lebrun's paintings index list of illustrations madame vigÉe lebrun and her daughter _frontispiece_ facing page the duchess d'angoulÊme and her brother, the dauphin madame vigÉe lebrun marked: "virginia lebrun, st. luke's gallery, rome" portrait of the authoress marie antoinette, done in madame lebrun's first portrait of the queen, destined for presentation to the emperor joseph ii. marie antoinette ordered two copies, one for the emperor of russia and one for herself portrait of marie antoinette and her children known as "the royal family," exhibited at the paris salon of , the year before the outbreak of the revolution madame elisabeth, sister of louis xvi the dauphin son of louis xvi. and marie antoinette madame lebrun, the authoress, nÉe elisabeth vigÉe peace bringing back plenty exhibited by madame lebrun at the french royal academy of painting, on her election as a member of that institution madame vigÉe lebrun and her daughter the dauphin of france the baroness de crussol marie caroline, wife of ferdinand iv. of naples princess christine, daughter of ferdinand iv. of naples marie antoinette, queen of france queen marie antoinette the princess de talleyrand isabel czartoryska a polish noblewoman the duchess de polignac queen marie antoinette portrait of the authoress painted for the uffizi gallery at florence, where the picture now hangs portrait of mme. lebrun's daughter in the bologna gallery madame vigÉe lebrun hubert robert a french painter of repute, born , died . one of madame lebrun's contemporaries a mother and her daughter "woman painting" (identity of sitter uncertain) madame courcelles "the woman with the muff" madame molé-raymond, of the comédie-française madame vigÉe lebrun genevieve adelaide helvetius, countess d'andlou louise marie adelaide de bourbon chapter i youth precocious talents manifested -- mlle. vigÉe's father and mother -- death of her father -- a friend of her girlhood -- her mother remarries -- mlle. vigÉe's first portrait of note (count schouvaloff) -- acquaintance with mme. geoffrin -- the authoress's puritanical bringing-up -- male sitters attempt flirtation -- public resorts of paris before the revolution. i will begin by speaking of my childhood, which is the symbol, so to say, of my whole life, since my love for painting declared itself in my earliest youth. i was sent to a boarding-school at the age of six, and remained there until i was eleven. during that time i scrawled on everything at all seasons; my copy-books, and even my schoolmates', i decorated with marginal drawings of heads, some full-face, others in profile; on the walls of the dormitory i drew faces and landscapes with coloured chalks. so it may easily be imagined how often i was condemned to bread and water. i made use of my leisure moments outdoors in tracing any figures on the ground that happened to come into my head. at seven or eight, i remember, i made a picture by lamplight of a man with a beard, which i have kept until this very day. when my father saw it he went into transports of joy, exclaiming, "you will be a painter, child, if ever there was one!" i mention these facts to show what an inborn passion for the art i possessed. nor has that passion ever diminished; it seems to me that it has even gone on growing with time, for to-day i feel under the spell of it as much as ever, and shall, i hope, until the hour of death. it is, indeed, to this divine passion that i owe, not only my fortune, but my felicity, because it has always been the means of bringing me together with the most delightful and most distinguished men and women in europe. the recollection of all the notable people i have known often cheers me in times of solitude. as a schoolgirl my health was frail, and therefore my parents would frequently come for me to take me to spend a few days with them. this, of course, suited my taste exactly. my father, louis vigée, made very good pastel drawings; he did some which would have been worthy of the famous latour. my father allowed me to do some heads in that style, and, in fact, let me mess with his crayons all day. he was so wrapt up in his art that he occasionally did queer things from sheer absent-mindedness. i remember how, one day, after dressing for a dinner in town, he went out and almost immediately came back, it having occurred to him that he would like to touch up a picture recently begun. he removed his wig, put on a nightcap, and went out again in this headgear, with his gilt-frogged coat, his sword, etc. had not one of his neighbours stopped him, he would have exhibited himself in this costume all through the town. he was a very witty man. his natural good spirits infected every one, and some came to be painted by him for the sake of his amusing conversation. once, when he was making a portrait of a rather pretty woman, my father observed, while he worked at her mouth, that she made all manner of grimaces in order to make that organ look smaller. falling out of patience with all this maneuvering, my father quietly remarked: "please don't let me give you so much trouble. you have only to say the word and i will paint you without a mouth." my mother was an extremely handsome woman. this may be judged from the pastel portrait made of her by my father, as well as from my own oil painting of a much later date. she carried her goodness to austerity, and my father worshipped her as though she had been divine. she was very pious, and, in heart, i was so, too. we always heard high mass together, and were regular attendants at the other church services. especially in lent did we never omit any of the prescribed devotions, evening prayer not excepted. i have always liked sacred singing, and in those days organ music would often move me to tears. my father was in the habit of inviting various artists and men of letters to his house of an evening. at the head of them i must place doyen, the historical painter, my father's most intimate and my first friend. doyen was the nicest man in the world, so clever and so good; his views on persons and things were always exceedingly just, and moreover he talked about painting with such fervent enthusiasm that it made my heart beat fast to listen to him. poinsinet was very clever, too, and gay. perhaps his extraordinary credulity is generally known. as a consequence of it he was continually made game of in the most unheard-of ways. some friends once told him that there was an office called the king's screen, and persuaded him to stand before a blazing fire so hot that it nearly roasted his calves. when he attempted to move away, he was told he must not stir, but that he must accustom himself to intense heat or he would not get the post. poinsinet was, however, far from being a fool. many of his works are still in favour, and he is the only author who ever gained three dramatic successes in one night: "ermeline," at the grand opéra; "the circle," at the théâtre française; "tom jones," at the opéra comique. some one put it into his head that he had a taste for travel, so he began with spain, and was drowned while crossing the guadalquivir. i may also mention davesne, painter and poet. he was rather mediocre in both arts, but was bidden to my father's suppers because of his witty conversation. though nothing more than a child, the jollity of these suppers was a great source of pleasure to me. i was obliged to leave the table before dessert, but from my room i heard the laughter and the joking and the songs. these, i confess, i did not understand; nevertheless, they helped to make my holidays delightful. at eleven i left the boarding-school for good, after my first communion. davesne, who painted in oils, sent his wife for me to teach me how to mix colours. their poverty grieved me deeply. one day, when i wanted to finish a head i had begun, they made me remain to dinner. the dinner consisted of soup and baked apples. i was overjoyed at not having to leave my parents again. my brother, three years younger than i, was as lovely as an angel. i was not nearly so lively as he, and far from being so clever or so pretty. in fact, at that time of my life i was very plain. i had an enormous forehead, and eyes far too deep-set; my nose was the only good feature of my pale, skinny face. besides, i was growing so fast that i could not hold myself up straight, and i bent like a willow. these defects were the despair of my mother. i fancy she had a weakness for my brother. at any rate, she spoiled him and forgave him his youthful sins, whereas she was very severe toward myself. to make up for it, my father overwhelmed me with kindness and indulgence. his tender love endeared him more and more to my heart; and so my good father is ever present to me, and i believe i have not forgotten a word he uttered in my hearing. how often, during , did i think of something in sort prophetic which he said. he had come home from a philosophers' dinner where he had met diderot, helvetius and d'alembert. he was so thoroughly dejected that my mother asked him what the matter was. "all i have heard to-night, my dear," he replied, "makes me believe that the world will soon be turned upside down." i had spent one happy year at home when my father fell ill. after two months of suffering all hope of his recovery was abandoned. when he felt his last moments approaching, he declared a wish to see my brother and myself. we went close to his bedside, weeping bitterly. his face was terribly altered; his eyes and his features, usually so full of animation, were quite without expression, for the pallor and the chill of death were already upon him. we took his icy hand and covered it with kisses and tears. he made a last effort and sat up to give us his blessing. "be happy, my children," was all he said. an hour later our poor father had ceased to live. so heartbroken was i that it was long before i felt able to take to my crayons again. doyen came to see us sometimes, and as he had been my father's best friend his visits were a great consolation. he it was who urged me to resume the occupation i loved, and in which, to speak truth, i found the only solace for my woe. it was then that i began to paint from nature. i accomplished several portraits--pastels and oils. i also drew from nature and from casts, often working by lamplight with mlle. boquet, with whom i was closely acquainted. i went to her house in the evenings; she lived in the rue saint denis, where her father had a bric-à-brac shop. it was a long way off, since we lodged in the rue de cléry, opposite the lubert mansion. my mother, therefore, insisted on my being escorted whenever i went. we likewise frequently repaired, mlle. boquet and i, to briard's, a painter, who lent us his etchings and his classical busts. briard was but a moderate painter, although he did some ceilings of rather unusual conception. on the other hand, he could draw admirably, which was the reason why several young people went to him for lessons. his rooms were in the louvre, and each of us brought her little dinner, carried in a basket by a nurse, in order that we might make a long day of it. mlle. boquet was fifteen years old and i fourteen. we were rival beauties. i had changed completely and had become good looking. her artistic abilities were considerable; as for mine, i made such speedy progress that i soon was talked about, and this resulted in my making the gratifying acquaintance of joseph vernet. that famous painter gave me cordial encouragement and much invaluable advice. i also got to know the abbé arnault, of the french academy. he was a man of strong imaginative gifts, with a passion for literature and the arts. his conversation enriched me with ideas, if i may thus express myself. he would talk of music and painting with the most inspiring ardour. the abbé was a warm partisan of gluck, and at a later date brought the great composer to see me, for i, too, was passionately fond of music. my mother was now proud of my face and figure; i was growing stouter, and presented the fresh appearance proper to youth. on sundays she took me to the tuileries. she was still handsome herself, and after the lapse of all these years i am free to confess that the manner in which we were so often followed by men embarrassed more than it flattered me. seeing me so irremediably affected by our cruel loss, my mother deemed it best to take me out of myself by showing me pictures. thus we went to the luxembourg palace, the gallery of which then contained some of rubens's masterpieces, as well as numerous works by the greatest painters. at present nothing is to be seen there but pictures of the modern french school. i am the only painter of that class not represented. the old masters have since been removed to the louvre. rubens has lost much by the change: the difference between well or badly lighted pictures is the same as between well or badly played pieces of music. we also saw some rich private collections, none of which, however, equalled that of the palais royal, made by the regent and containing a conspicuous number of old italian masters. as soon as i entered one of these galleries i at once became exactly like a bee, so much useful knowledge did i eagerly gather while intoxicated with bliss in the contemplation of the great masters. besides, in order to improve myself, i copied some of the pictures of rubens, some of rembrandt's and van dyck's heads, as well as several heads of girls by greuze, because these last were a good lesson to me in the demi-tints to be found in delicate flesh colouring. van dyck shows them also, but more finely. it is to these studies that i owe my improvement in the very important science of degradation of light on the salient parts of a head, so admirably done by raphael, whose heads, it is true, combine all the perfections. but it is only in rome, under the bright italian sky, that raphael can be properly judged. when, after years, i was enabled to see some of his masterpieces, which had never left their native home, i recognised raphael to be above his high renown. my father had left us penniless. but i was earning a deal of money, as i was already painting many portraits. this, however, was insufficient for household expenses, seeing that in addition i had to pay for my brother's schooling, his clothes, his books, and so on. my mother, therefore, saw herself obliged to remarry. she took a rich jeweller, whom we never had suspected of avarice, but who directly after the marriage displayed his stinginess by limiting us to the absolute necessities of life, although i was good-natured enough to hand him over everything i earned. joseph vernet was greatly enraged; he counselled me to grant an annuity and to keep the rest for myself. but i did not comply with this advice. i was afraid my mother might suffer in consequence, with such a skinflint. i detested the man, the more as he had appropriated my father's wardrobe and wore all the clothes just as they were, without having them altered to fit him. my young reputation attracted a number of strangers to our house. several distinguished personages came to see me, among them the notorious count orloff, one of peter the third's assassins. count orloff was a giant in stature, and i remember his wearing a diamond of enormous size in a ring. about this time i painted a portrait of count schouvaloff, grand chamberlain, then, i believe, about sixty years old. he combined amiability with perfect manners, and, as he was an excellent man, was sought after by the best company. one of my visitors of eminence was mme. geoffrin, the woman so famous for her brilliant social life. mme. geoffrin gathered at her house all the known men of talent in literature and the arts, all foreigners of note and the grandest gentlemen attached to the court. being neither of good family nor endowed with unusual abilities, nor even possessing much money, she had nevertheless made a position for herself in paris unique of its kind, and one that no woman could nowadays hope to achieve. having heard me spoken of, she came to see me one morning and said the most flattering things about my person and my gifts. although she was not very old, i should have put her down for a hundred, for not only was she rather bent, but her dress gave her an aged appearance. she was clad in an iron-gray gown, and on her head wore a large, winged cap, over which was a black shawl knotted under her chin. at present, on the other hand, women of her years succeed in making themselves look much younger by the care they bestow on their toilet. [illustration: the duchess d'angoulÊme and her brother, the dauphin.] immediately after my mother's marriage we went to live at my stepfather's in the rue saint honoré, opposite the terrace of the palais royal, which terrace our windows overlooked. i often saw the duchess de chartres walking in the garden with her ladies-in-waiting, and soon observed that she noticed me with kindly interest. i had recently finished a portrait of my mother which evoked a great deal of discussion at the time. the duchess sent for me to come and paint her. she most obligingly commended my young talents to her friends, so that it was not long before i received a visit from the stately, handsome countess de brionne and her lovely daughter, the princess de lorraine, who were followed by all the great ladies of the court and the faubourg saint germain. since i have acknowledged that i was stared at in the streets--the same is true of the theatres and other public places--and that i was the object of many attentions, it may readily be guessed that some admirers of my face gave me commissions to paint theirs. they hoped to get into my good graces in this way. but i was so absorbed in my art that nothing could take me away from it. then, besides, the moral and religious principles my mother had instilled me with were a strong protection against the seductions surrounding me. happily i never as yet had read a single novel. the first i read, "clarissa harlowe," was only after my marriage, and it interested me prodigiously. before my marriage i read nothing but sacred literature, such as the moral precepts of the holy fathers, which contained everything one needs to know, and some of my brother's class-books. to return to those gentlemen. as soon as i observed any intention on their part of making sheep's eyes at me, i would paint them looking in another direction than mine, and then, at the least movement of the pupilla, would say, "i am doing the eyes now." this vexed them a little, of course, but my mother, who was always present, and whom i had taken into my confidence, was secretly amused. on sundays and saints' days, after hearing high mass, my mother and my stepfather took me to the palais royal for a walk. the gardens were then far more spacious and beautiful than they are now, strangled and straightened by the houses enclosing them. there was a very broad and long avenue on the left arched by gigantic trees, which formed a vault impenetrable to the rays of the sun. there good society assembled in its best clothes. the opera house was hard by the palace. in summer the performance ended at half-past eight, and all elegant people left even before it was over, in order to ramble in the garden. it was the fashion for the women to wear huge nosegays, which, added to the perfumed powder sprinkled in everybody's hair, really made the air one breathed quite fragrant. later, yet still before the revolution, i have known these assemblies to last until two in the morning. there was music by moonlight, out in the open; artists and amateurs sang songs; there was playing on the harp and the guitar; the celebrated saint georges often executed pieces on his violin. crowds flocked to the spot. we never entered this avenue, mlle. boquet and i, without attracting lively attention. we both were then between sixteen and seventeen years old, mlle. boquet being a great beauty. at nineteen she was taken with the smallpox, which called forth such general interest that numbers from all classes of society made anxious inquiries, and a string of carriages was constantly drawn up outside her door. she had a remarkable talent for painting, but she gave up the pursuit almost immediately after her marriage with m. filleul, when the queen made her gatekeeper of the castle of la muette. would that i could speak of the dear creature without calling her dreadful end to mind. alas! how well i remember mme. filleul saying to me, on the eve of my departure from france, when i was to escape from the horrors i foresaw: "you are wrong to go. i intend to stay, because i believe in the happiness the revolution is to bring us." and that revolution took her to the scaffold! before she quitted la muette the terror had begun. mme. chalgrin, a daughter of joseph vernet, and mme. filleul's bosom friend, came to the castle to celebrate her daughter's wedding--quietly, as a matter of course. however, the next day the jacobins none the less proceeded to arrest mme. filleul and mme. chalgrin, who, they said, had wasted the candles of the nation. a few days later they were both guillotined. among the favourite walks were the temple boulevards. every day, though especially on thursdays, hundreds of vehicles drove or stood in the roads where the cafés and shows still are. the young men on horseback caracoled about the carriages, as they did at longchamps, for longchamps was already in existence and even very brilliant. the side paths were full of immense throngs of pedestrians, enjoying the pastime of admiring or criticising all the lovely ladies, dressed in their best, who passed in fine carriages. at a certain spot, where the café turc now stands, a spectacle was to be seen which many a time made me burst into loud laughter. it was a long row of old women belonging to the marais quarter, sitting gravely on chairs, their faces so thickly rouged that they looked precisely like dolls. as at that date the right to wear rouge was only conceded to women of high rank, these worthy ladies thought they must take advantage of the privilege to its full limit. one of our friends, who knew most of them, told us that their only employment at home was to play lotto from morning till night. he also said that one day, after he had returned from versailles, some of them had asked him the news, that he had replied m. de la pérouse was to make a journey round the world, and that the hostess had thereupon exclaimed: "gracious! what a lot of time the man must have on his hands!" years later, long after my marriage, i saw various little shows on this very boulevard. at one only did i attend often; that was carlo perico's "fantoccini," which amused me vastly. these marionettes were so cleverly made, and their gestures were so natural, that the delusion sometimes succeeded. my little girl, six years old almost, did not at first suspect that the figures were not alive. i informed her as to the truth, and when, soon after, i took her to the comédie française, where my box was rather far from the stage, she asked me, "and those, mamma, are they alive?" the coliseum was another highly fashionable resort. it was established in one of the large squares of the champs Élysées, in the form of a vast rotunda. in the middle was a lake of clear water, on which boatmen's races were held. you strolled round about in broad, gravelled avenues lined with benches. at nightfall every one left the garden to meet in a great hall where a full orchestra dispensed excellent music. at this period there also was on the temple boulevard a place called the summer vauxhall, whose garden was simply a big space for walking in, bordered by covered tiers of seats for the convenience of good society. people gathered there before dark in warm weather, and the diversions of the day closed with a grand display of fireworks. all these places were frequented much more than tivoli is to-day. it is surprising, too, that the parisians, who have nothing but the tuileries and the luxembourg, should have renounced those other resorts, which were half urban and half rural, where you went in the evening to get a breath of air and eat ices. chapter ii up the ladder of fame tedious sojourn in the country -- social amenities in paris -- mlle. vigÉe becomes mme. lebrun -- prognostications of unhappy wedlock -- on the ladder of fame -- singularities of oriental taste -- marie antoinette as a model -- painting the royal family -- how louis xviii. sang -- the princess de lamballe. my detestable stepfather, annoyed no doubt by the public admiration shown my mother, forbade us to go for any more walks, and informed us that he was about to take a place in the country. at this announcement my heart beat with joy, for i was passionately fond of the country. i had been sleeping near the foot of my mother's bedstead, in a dark corner where the light of day never penetrated. every morning, whatever the weather might be, my first care was to open the window wide, such was my thirst for fresh air. so my stepfather took a small cottage at chaillot, and we went there on saturday, spent sunday there, and returned to paris on monday morning. good heavens, what a country! imagine a tiny vicarage garden, without a tree, without any shelter from the blazing sun but a little arbour, where my stepfather had planted some beans and nasturtium, which refused to grow. at that we only occupied a quarter of this delightful garden, for it was divided into four by slender railings, and the three other sections were let out to shopboys, who came every sunday and amused themselves by shooting at the birds. the incessant noise threw me into a desperate state of mind, besides which i was terribly afraid of being killed by these marksmen, so inaccurate was their aim. i could not understand why this stupid, ugly place, the very recollection of which makes me yawn as i write, was "the country." at last my good angel brought to my rescue a friend of my mother's, who one day came to dine with us at chaillot with her husband. both were sorry for me in my exile, and sometimes took me out for a charming drive. [illustration: madame vigÉe lebrun marked: "virginia lebrun, st. luke's gallery, rome".] we went to marly-le-roi, and there i found a more beautiful spot than any i had seen in my life. on each side of the magnificent palace were six summer-houses communicating with one another by walks embowered with jessamine and honeysuckle. water fell in cascades from the top of a hill behind the castle, and formed a large channel on which a number of swans floated. the handsome trees, the carpets of green, the flowers, the fountains, one of which spouted up so high that it was lost from sight--it was all grand, all regal; it all spoke of louis xiv. one morning i met queen marie antoinette walking in the park with several of the ladies of her court. they were all in white dresses, and so young and pretty that for a moment i thought i was in a dream. i was with my mother, and was turning away when the queen was kind enough to stop me, and invited me to continue in any direction i might prefer. alas! when i returned to france in i hastened to see my noble, smiling marly. the palace, the trees, the cascades, and the fountains had all disappeared; scarcely a stone was left. i found it very hard to quit those lovely gardens and go back to our hideous chaillot. but we at last went back to paris, and settled there for the winter. the time left over from my work i now spent in a most agreeable manner. from the age of fifteen i had been going out into the best society; and i knew all the celebrated artists, so that i received invitations from all sides. i very well remember the first time i dined in town with the sculptor le moine, who was then enjoying a great reputation. it was there i met the famous actor lekain, who struck terror into my heart because of his wild and sinister appearance; his huge eyebrows only added to the fierce expression of his face. he scarcely talked at all, and ate enormously. at le moine's i made the acquaintance of gerbier, the noted advocate, and of his daughter mme. de roissy, who was very beautiful, and one of the first women i made a portrait of. grétry and latour, an eminent pastellist, often came to these dinners at le moine's, which were highly convivial and amusing. it was then the custom to sing at dessert. when the turn of the young ladies came--to whom, i must admit, this custom was torture--they would turn pale and tremble all over, and consequently often sing very much out of tune. in spite of these dissonances, the dinners ended pleasantly, and we always rose from the table with regret, although we did not immediately order our carriages, as the fashion is to-day. i cannot, however, speak of the dinners of the present day excepting through hearsay, in view of the fact that soon after the time i have just mentioned i stopped dining in town for good. a slight adventure i had made me determine to go out only in the evening. i had accepted an invitation to dine with princess rohan-rochefort. all dressed and ready to get into my carriage, i was seized with a sudden desire to take a look at a portrait that i had begun that same morning. i had on a white satin dress, which i was wearing for the first time. i sat down on my chair opposite my easel without noticing that my palette was lying on the chair. it may readily be conceived that the state of my gown was such as to compel me to remain at home, and i resolved thenceforth to accept no invitations excepting to supper. the dinners of princess rohan-rochefort were delightful. the nucleus of the society was composed of the handsome countess de brionne and her daughter the princess lorraine, the duke de choiseul, the cardinal de rohan, and m. de rulhières, the author of the "disputes"; but the most agreeable without question of all the guests was the duke de lauzun; no one could possibly have been cleverer or more entertaining; we were all fascinated by him. the evening was usually filled up with playing and singing, and i often sang to my own accompaniment on the guitar. supper was at half-past ten; we were never more than ten or twelve at table. we all vied with one another in sociability and wit. as for me, i was only a humble listener, and, although too young to appreciate the qualities of this conversation to the full, it spoiled me for ordinary conversation. my life as a young girl was very unusual. not only did my talent--feeble as it seemed to me when i thought of the great masters--cause me to be sought after and welcomed by society, but i sometimes was the object of attentions which i might call public, and of which, i avow, i was very proud. for example, i had made portraits of cardinal fleury and la bruyère, copied from engravings of ancient date. i made a gift of them to the french academy, which sent me a very flattering letter through the permanent secretary, d'alembert. my presentation of these two portraits to the academy also secured me the honour of a visit from d'alembert, a dried up morsel of a man of exquisitely polished manners. he stayed a long time and looked my study all over, while he paid me a thousand compliments. after he had gone, a fine lady, who happened to be visiting me at the same time, asked me whether i had painted la bruyère and fleury from life. "i am a little too young for that," i answered, unable to refrain from a laugh, but very glad for the sake of the lady that the academician had left before she put her funny question. my stepfather having retired from business, we took up residence at the lubert mansion, in the rue de cléry. m. lebrun had just bought the house and lived there himself, and as soon as we were settled in it i began to examine the splendid masterpieces of all schools with which his lodgings were filled. i was enchanted at an opportunity of first-hand acquaintance with these works by great masters. m. lebrun was so obliging as to lend me, for purposes of copying, some of his handsomest and most valuable paintings. thus i owed him the best lessons i could conceivably have obtained, when, after a lapse of six months, he asked my hand in marriage. i was far from wishing to become his wife, though he was very well built and had a pleasant face. i was then twenty years old, and was living without anxiety as to the future, since i was already earning a deal of money, so that i felt no manner of inclination for matrimony. but my mother, who believed m. lebrun to be very rich, incessantly plied me with arguments in favour of accepting such an advantageous match. at last i decided in the affirmative, urged especially by the desire to escape from the torture of living with my stepfather, whose bad temper had increased day by day since he had relinquished active pursuits. so little, however, did i feel inclined to sacrifice my liberty that, even on my way to church, i kept saying to myself, "shall i say yes, or shall i say no?" alas! i said yes, and in so doing exchanged present troubles for others. not that m. lebrun was a cruel man: his character exhibited a mixture of gentleness and liveliness; he was extremely obliging to everybody, and, in a word, quite an agreeable person. but his furious passion for gambling was at the bottom of the ruin of his fortune and my own, of which he had the entire disposal, so that in , when i quitted france, i had not an income of twenty francs, although i had earned more than a million. he had squandered it all. [illustration: portrait of the authoress.] my marriage was kept secret for some time. m. lebrun, who was supposed to marry the daughter of a dutchman with whom he did a great business in pictures, asked me to make no announcement until he had wound up his affairs. to this i consented the more willingly that i did not give up my maiden name without regret, particularly as i was so well known by that name. but the keeping of the secret, which did not last long, was nevertheless fraught with disastrous consequences for my future. a number of people who simply believed that i was merely considering a match with m. lebrun came to advise me to commit no such piece of folly. auber, the crown jeweller, said to me in a friendly spirit: "it would be better for you to tie a stone to your neck and jump into the river than to marry lebrun." another day the duchess d'aremberg, accompanied by mme. de canillas, and mme. de souza, the portuguese ambassadress, all very young and pretty, came to offer their belated counsels a fortnight after the knot had been tied. "for heaven's sake," exclaimed the countess, "on no account marry m. lebrun! you will be miserable if you do!" and then she told me a lot of things which i was happy enough to disbelieve, but which only proved too true afterward. the announcement of my marriage put an end to these sad warnings, which, thanks to my dear painting, had little effect on my usual good spirits. i could not meet the orders for portraits that were showered upon me from every side. m. lebrun soon got into the habit of pocketing my fees. he also hit upon the idea of making me give lessons in order to increase our revenues. i acceded to his wishes without a moment's thought. the number of portraits i painted at this time was really prodigious. as i detested the female style of dress then in fashion, i bent all my efforts upon rendering it a little more picturesque, and was delighted when, after getting the confidence of my models, i was able to drape them according to my fancy. shawls were not yet worn, but i made an arrangement with broad scarfs lightly intertwined round the body and on the arms, which was an attempt to imitate the beautiful drapings of raphael and domenichino. the picture of my daughter playing the guitar is an example. besides, i could not endure powder. i persuaded the handsome duchess de grammont-caderousse to put none on for her sittings. her hair was ebony black, and i divided it on the forehead, disposing it in irregular curls. after the sitting, which ended at the dinner hour, the duchess would not change her head-dress, but go to the theatre as she was. a woman of such good looks would, of course, set a fashion: indeed, this mode of doing the hair soon found imitators, and then gradually became general. this reminds me that in , when i was painting the queen, i begged her to use no powder, and to part her hair on the forehead. "i should be the last to follow that fashion," said the queen, laughing; "i do not want people to say that i adopted it to hide my large forehead." as i said, i was overwhelmed with orders and was very much in vogue. soon after my marriage i was present at a meeting of the french academy at which la harpe read his discourse on the talents of women. when he arrived at certain lines of exaggerated praise, which i was hearing for the first time, and in which he extolled my art and likened my smile to that of venus, the author of "warwick" threw a glance at me. at once the whole assembly, without excepting the duchess de chartres and the king of sweden--who both were witnessing the ceremonies--rose up, turned in my direction, and applauded with such enthusiasm that i almost fainted from confusion. but these pleasures of gratified vanity were far from comparable with the joy i experienced in looking forward to motherhood. i will not attempt to describe the transports i felt when i heard the first cry of my child. every mother knows what those feelings are. not long before that event i painted the duchess de mazarin, who was no longer young, but whose beauty had not yet faded. this duchess de mazarin was said to have been endowed on her birth by three fairies, wealth, duty and ill-luck. certain it is that the poor woman could undertake nothing, not even so much as entertaining a party of friends, without some mishap befalling. a number of tales of all sorts of untoward happenings were current. here is one of the least known: one evening, having sixty people to supper, she conceived the plan of putting on the table an enormous pie, in which were imprisoned a hundred tiny living birds. at a sign from the duchess the pie was opened, and the whole fluttering flock beat their wings against the faces of the guests and took refuge in the hair of the women, making nests of their elaborately built-up head-dresses. it may be imagined what consternation and excitement there was! it was impossible to get rid of the unfortunate birds, and at last the company was obliged to leave the table, while they blessed such a silly trick. the duchess de mazarin was very stout; it took hours to lace her. one day, while she was being laced, a visitor was announced. one of her maids ran to the door and exclaimed: "you can't come in until we have arranged her meat." i remember that this excessive corpulency evoked the admiration of the turkish ambassadors. when asked at the opera to point out the woman that pleased them most of all the occupants of the boxes, they pointed without hesitation to the duchess de mazarin--because she was the fattest. while speaking of ambassadors, i must not forget to say how i once painted two diplomats, who, though they were copper-coloured, nevertheless had splendid heads. in some envoys were sent to paris by the emperor tippoo sahib. i saw these indians at the opera and they appeared to me so remarkably picturesque that i thought i should like to paint them. but as they communicated to their interpreter that they would never allow themselves to be painted unless the request came from the king, i managed to secure that favour from his majesty. i repaired to the hotel where the strangers were lodging, for they wanted to be painted at home. on my arrival one of them brought in a jar of rose-water, with which he sprinkled my hands; then the tallest, whose name was davich kahn, gave me a sitting. i did him standing, with his hand on his dagger. he threw himself into such an easy, natural position of his own accord that i did not make him change it. i let the paint dry in another room, and began on the portrait of the old ambassador, whom i represented seated with his son next to him. the father especially had a magnificent head. both were clad in flowing robes of white muslin worked with golden flowers, and these robes, a sort of long tunic with wide, upturned sleeves, were held in place by gorgeous belts. mme. de bonneuil, to whom i had spoken of my artistic sittings, very much wanted to see these ambassadors. they invited us both to dinner, and we accepted from sheer curiosity. upon entering the dining-room we were rather surprised to see that the dinner was served on the floor, which obliged us to assume an attitude that was very much like lying down, following the example of our oriental hosts. they helped us with their hands to the contents of the dishes. in one of these was a fricassee of sheep's feet with white sauce, highly spiced, and in another some indescribable hash. our meal was not exactly pleasant; it was rather too much of a shock to us to see those brown hands used as spoons. the ambassadors had brought a young man with them who spoke a little french. during my sittings mme. de bonneuil taught him to sing a popular ditty. when we went to make our farewells the young man recited his song, and expressed his regret in parting from us by adding: "ah! my heart! how it weepeth!" which i found very oriental and very well put. [illustration: marie antoinette, done in mme. lebrun's first portrait of the queen, destined for presentation to the emperor joseph ii. marie antoinette ordered two copies, one for the emperor of russia and one for herself.] when davich kahn's portrait was dry i sent for it, but he had hidden it behind his bed and would not give it up, asserting that the picture still needed a soul. i could only obtain my painting by employing strategy. when the ambassador could not find it he put the responsibility on his valet, and threatened to kill him. the interpreter had all the trouble in the world to explain that it was not the custom to kill one's valet in paris, and informed him, moreover, that the king of france had asked for the portrait. it was in the year that i painted the queen for the first time; she was then in the heyday of her youth and beauty. marie antoinette was tall and admirably built, being somewhat stout, but not excessively so. her arms were superb, her hands small and perfectly formed, and her feet charming. she had the best walk of any woman in france, carrying her head erect with a dignity that stamped her queen in the midst of her whole court, her majestic mien, however, not in the least diminishing the sweetness and amiability of her face. to any one who has not seen the queen it is difficult to get an idea of all the graces and all the nobility combined in her person. her features were not regular; she had inherited that long and narrow oval peculiar to the austrian nation. her eyes were not large; in colour they were almost blue, and they were at the same time merry and kind. her nose was slender and pretty, and her mouth not too large, though her lips were rather thick. but the most remarkable thing about her face was the splendour of her complexion. i never have seen one so brilliant, and brilliant is the word, for her skin was so transparent that it bore no umber in the painting. neither could i render the real effect of it as i wished. i had no colours to paint such freshness, such delicate tints, which were hers alone, and which i had never seen in any other woman. at the first sitting the imposing air of the queen at first frightened me greatly, but her majesty spoke to me so graciously that my fear was soon dissipated. it was on that occasion that i began the picture representing her with a large basket, wearing a satin dress, and holding a rose in her hand. this portrait was destined for her brother, emperor joseph ii., and the queen ordered two copies besides--one for the empress of russia, the other for her own apartments at versailles or fontainebleau. i painted various pictures of the queen at different times. in one i did her to the knees, in a pale orange-red dress, standing before a table on which she was arranging some flowers in a vase. it may be well imagined that i preferred to paint her in a plain gown and especially without a wide hoopskirt. she usually gave these portraits to her friends or to foreign diplomatic envoys. one of them shows her with a straw hat on, and a white muslin dress, whose sleeves are turned up, though quite neatly. when this work was exhibited at the salon, malignant folk did not fail to make the remark that the queen had been painted in her chemise, for we were then in , and calumny was already busy concerning her. yet in spite of all this the portraits were very successful. toward the end of the exhibition a little piece was given at the vaudeville theatre, bearing the title, i think, "the assembling of the arts." brongniart, the architect, and his wife, whom the author had taken into his confidence, had taken a box on the first tier, and called for me on the day of the first performance. as i had no suspicion of the surprise in store for me, judge of my emotion when painting appeared on the scene and i saw the actress representing that art copy me in the act of painting a portrait of the queen. the same moment everybody in the parterre and the boxes turned toward me and applauded to bring the roof down. i can hardly believe that any one was ever more moved and more grateful than i was that evening. i was so fortunate as to be on very pleasant terms with the queen. when she heard that i had something of a voice we rarely had a sitting without singing some duets by grétry together, for she was exceedingly fond of music, although she did not sing very true. as for her conversation, it would be difficult for me to convey all its charm, all its affability. i do not think that queen marie antoinette ever missed an opportunity of saying something pleasant to those who had the honour of being presented to her, and the kindness she always bestowed upon me has ever been one of my sweetest memories. one day i happened to miss the appointment she had given me for a sitting; i had suddenly become unwell. the next day i hastened to versailles to offer my excuses. the queen was not expecting me; she had had her horses harnessed to go out driving, and her carriage was the first thing i saw on entering the palace yard. i nevertheless went upstairs to speak with the chamberlains on duty. one of them, m. campan, received me with a stiff and haughty manner, and bellowed at me in his stentorian voice, "it was yesterday, madame, that her majesty expected you, and i am very sure she is going out driving, and i am very sure she will give you no sitting to-day!" upon my reply that i had simply come to take her majesty's orders for another day, he went to the queen, who at once had me conducted to her room. she was finishing her toilet, and was holding a book in her hand, hearing her daughter repeat a lesson. my heart was beating violently, for i knew that i was in the wrong. but the queen looked up at me and said most amiably, "i was waiting for you all the morning yesterday; what happened to you?" "i am sorry to say, your majesty," i replied, "i was so ill that i was unable to comply with your majesty's commands. i am here to receive more now, and then i will immediately retire." "no, no! do not go!" exclaimed the queen. "i do not want you to have made your journey for nothing!" she revoked the order for her carriage and gave me a sitting. i remember that, in my confusion and my eagerness to make a fitting response to her kind words, i opened my paint-box so excitedly that i spilled my brushes on the floor. i stooped down to pick them up. "never mind, never mind," said the queen, and, for aught i could say, she insisted on gathering them all up herself. when the queen went for the last time to fontainebleau, where the court, according to custom, was to appear in full gala, i repaired there to enjoy that spectacle. i saw the queen in her grandest dress; she was covered with diamonds, and as the brilliant sunshine fell upon her she seemed to me nothing short of dazzling. her head, erect on her beautiful greek neck, lent her as she walked such an imposing, such a majestic air, that one seemed to see a goddess in the midst of her nymphs. during the first sitting i had with her majesty after this occasion i took the liberty of mentioning the impression she had made upon me, and of saying to the queen how the carriage of her head added to the nobility of her bearing. she answered in a jesting tone, "if i were not queen they would say i looked insolent, would they not?" [illustration: portrait of marie antoinette and her children known as "the royal family." exhibited at the paris salon of , the year before the outbreak of the revolution.] the queen neglected nothing to impart to her children the courteous and gracious manners which endeared her so to all her surroundings. i once saw her make her six-year-old daughter dine with a little peasant girl and attend to her wants. the queen saw to it that the little visitor was served first, saying to her daughter, "you must do the honours." the last sitting i had with her majesty was given me at trianon, where i did her hair for the large picture in which she appeared with her children. after doing the queen's hair, as well as separate studies of the dauphin, madame royale, and the duke de normandie, i busied myself with my picture, to which i attached great importance, and i had it ready for the salon of . the frame, which had been taken there alone, was enough to evoke a thousand malicious remarks. "that's how the money goes," they said, and a number of other things which seemed to me the bitterest comments. at last i sent my picture, but i could not muster up the courage to follow it and find out what its fate was to be, so afraid was i that it would be badly received by the public. in fact, i became quite ill with fright. i shut myself in my room, and there i was, praying to the lord for the success of my "royal family," when my brother and a host of friends burst in to tell me that my picture had met with universal acclaim. after the salon, the king, having had the picture transferred to versailles, m. d'angevilliers, then minister of the fine arts and director of royal residences, presented me to his majesty. louis xvi. vouchsafed to talk to me at some length and to tell me that he was very much pleased. then he added, still looking at my work, "i know nothing about painting, but you make me like it." the picture was placed in one of the rooms at versailles, and the queen passed it going to mass and returning. after the death of the dauphin, which occurred early in the year , the sight of this picture reminded her so keenly of the cruel loss she had suffered that she could not go through the room without shedding tears. she then ordered m. d'angevilliers to have the picture taken away, but with her usual consideration she informed me of the fact as well, apprising me of her motive for the removal. it is really to the queen's sensitiveness that i owed the preservation of my picture, for the fishwives who soon afterward came to versailles for their majesties would certainly have destroyed it, as they did the queen's bed, which was ruthlessly torn apart. i never had the felicity of setting eyes on marie antoinette after the last court ball at versailles. the ball was given in the theatre, and the box where i was seated was so situated that i could hear what the queen said. i observed that she was very excited, asking the young men of the court to dance with her, such as m. lameth, whose family had been overwhelmed with kindness by the queen, and others, who all refused, so that many of the dances had to be given up. the conduct of these gentlemen seemed to me exceedingly improper; somehow their refusal likened a sort of revolt--the prelude to revolts of a more serious kind. the revolution was drawing near; it was, in fact, to burst out before long. with the exception of the count d'artois, whose portrait i never did, i successively painted the whole royal family--the royal children; monsieur, the king's brother, afterward louis xviii.; madame royale; the countess d'artois; madame elisabeth. the features of this last-named princess were not regular, but her face expressed gentle affability, and the freshness of her complexion was remarkable; altogether, she had the charm of a pretty shepherdess. she was an angel of goodness. many a time have i been a witness to her deeds of charity on behalf of the poor. all the virtues were in her heart: she was indulgent, modest, compassionate, devoted. in the revolution she displayed heroic courage; she was seen going forward to meet the cannibals who had come to murder the queen, saying, "they will mistake me for her!" [illustration: madame elisabeth, sister of louis xvi.] the portrait i made of monsieur favoured me with the occasion to become acquainted with a prince whose wit and learning one could extol without flattery; it was impossible not to find pleasure in the conversation of louis xviii., who talked on all subjects with equal degrees of taste and understanding. however, for the sake of variety no doubt, at some of our sittings he would sing to me, and he would sing such common songs that i was unable to understand how these trivial things had ever reached the court. he sang more out of tune than any one in the whole world. "how do you think i sing?" he asked me one day. "like a prince, your highness," was my reply. the marquis de montesquiou, equerry-in-chief to monsieur, would send me a fine carriage and six to bring me to versailles and take me back with my mother, who accompanied me at my request. all along the road people stood at the windows to see me pass, and every one took their hats off. this homage rendered to six horses and an outrider amused me, for on returning to paris i got into a cab, and nobody took the slightest notice of me. about this time i also painted the princess de lamballe. without being actually pretty, she appeared so at a little distance; she had small features, complexion of dazzling freshness, superb blond locks, and was generally elegant in person. the unhappy end of this unfortunate princess is sufficiently well known, and so is the devotion to which she fell a victim. for in , when she was at turin, entirely out of harm's way, she returned to france upon learning that the queen was in danger. chapter iii work and pleasure impressions of flanders -- the authoress's election to the french royal academy of painting -- her devotion to work -- social pleasures -- a tale of an artist's extravagance -- calonne and calumny -- m. lebrun allows his wife nought per cent. of her earnings -- a dramatic constellation -- the incomparable mme. dugazon. in m. lebrun took me to flanders, whither he was called by affairs of business. a sale was then being held in brussels of a splendid collection of pictures belonging to prince charles, and we went to view it. i found there several ladies of the court who met me with great kindness, among them the princess d'aremberg, whom i had frequently seen in paris. but the acquaintance upon which i congratulated myself most was that of the prince de ligne, whom i had not known before, and who has left an historic reputation for wit and hospitality. he invited us to visit his gallery, where i admired various masterpieces, especially portraits by van dyck and heads by rubens, for he owned but few italian pictures. he was also good enough to receive us at his magnificent house at bel-oeil. i remember that he made us ascend to an outlook, built on the top of a hill commanding the whole of his estate and the whole of the country round about. the perfect air we breathed up there, together with the delightful view, was something enchanting. what was best of all in this lovely place was the greetings of the master of the house, who for his graceful mind and manners never had an equal. [illustration: the dauphin son of louis xvi. and marie antoinette.] the town of brussels seemed to me prosperous and lively. in high society, for instance, people were so wrapped up in pleasure-seeking that several friends of the prince de ligne sometimes left brussels at noon, arriving at the opera in paris just in time to see the curtain go up, and when the performance was over returned to brussels, travelling all night. that is what i call being fond of the opera! we quitted brussels to go to holland. i was very much pleased with saardam and maestricht; these two little towns are so clean and so very well kept that one envies the lot of the inhabitants. the streets being very narrow and provided with canals, one does not ride in carriages, but on horseback, and small boats are used for the transportation of merchandise. the houses, which are very low, have two doors--the birth door, and the death door, through which one only passes in a coffin. the roofs of these houses shine as if they were of burnished steel, and everything is so scrupulously clean that i remember seeing, outside a blacksmith's shop, a sort of lamp hanging up, which was gilded and polished as though intended for a lady's chamber. the women of the people in this part of holland seemed to me very handsome, but were so timid that the sight of a stranger made them run away at once. i suppose, however, that the presence of the french in their country may have tamed them. we finally visited amsterdam, and there i saw in the town hall the magnificent painting by van loo representing the assembled aldermen. i do not believe that in the whole realm of painting there is anything finer, anything truer; it is nature itself. the aldermen are dressed in black; faces, hands, draping--all done inimitably. these men are alive; you think you are with them. i persuaded myself that this picture must be the most perfect of its kind; i could not tear myself away from it, and the impression it made on me was strong enough to make it ever present in my mind. we returned to flanders to see the masterpieces of rubens. they were hung much more advantageously than they have been since in paris, for they all produce a wonderful effect in those flemish churches. other works by the same master adorn some private galleries. in one of them, at antwerp, i found the famous "straw hat," which has lately been sold to an englishman for a large sum. this admirable picture represents a woman by rubens. it delighted and inspired me to such a degree that i made a portrait of myself at brussels, striving to obtain the same effects. i painted myself with a straw hat on my head, a feather, and a garland of wild flowers, holding my palette in my hand. and when the portrait was exhibited at the salon i feel free to confess that it added considerably to my reputation. the celebrated müller made an engraving after it, but it must be understood that the dark shadows of an engraving spoiled the whole effect of such a picture. soon after my return from flanders, the portrait i had mentioned, and several other works of mine, were the cause of joseph vernet's decision to propose me as a member of the royal academy of painting. m. pierre, then first painter to the king, made strong opposition, not wishing, he said, that women should be admitted, although mme. vallayer-coster, who painted flowers beautifully, had already been admitted, and i think mme. vien had been, too. m. pierre, a very mediocre painter, was a clever man. besides, he was rich, and this enabled him to entertain artists luxuriously. artists were not so well off in those days as they are now. his opposition might have become fatal to me if all true picture-lovers had not been associated with the academy, and if they had not formed a cabal, in my favour, against m. pierre's. at last i was admitted, and presented my picture "peace bringing back plenty." [illustration: mme. lebrun, the authoress, nÉe elisabeth vigÉe.] i continued to paint furiously, sometimes taking three sittings in the course of a single day. after-dinner sittings, which fatigued me extremely, brought about a disorder of my stomach, so that i could digest nothing and became wretchedly thin. my friends made me consult a doctor, who ordered me to sleep every day after dinner. at first it was some trouble to me to follow this habit, but by remaining in my room with the blinds down i gradually succeeded. i am persuaded that i owe my life to this rule. all i regret about that enforced rest is that it deprived me for good and all of the amusement of dining in town, and as i devoted the whole morning to painting i never was able to see my friends until the evening. then, it is true, none of the pleasures of society were closed to me, for i spent my evenings in the politest and most accomplished circles. after my marriage i still lived in the rue de cléry, where m. lebrun had large, richly furnished apartments and kept his pictures by all the great masters. as for myself, i was reduced to occupying a small anteroom, and a bedroom, which also served for my drawing-room. this was unpretentiously papered and furnished, and there i received my visitors from town and court. every one was eager to come to my evening parties, which were sometimes so crowded that marshals of france sat on the floor for want of chairs. i remember that the marshal de noailles, who was very stout and very old, one evening had the greatest difficulty in getting up again. i was fond of flattering myself, of course, that all these grand people came for my sake. but, as it always was in open houses, some came to see the others, and most of them to enjoy the best music to be heard in paris. such famous composers as grétry, sacchini, and martini often played pieces from their operas at my house before the first performance. our usual singers were garat, asvedo, richer, and mme. todi. my sister-in-law, who had a very fine voice and could sing anything at sight, was very useful to us. sometimes i sang myself, but without much method, i confess. garat may, perhaps, be mentioned as the most extraordinary virtuoso who ever lived. not only did no difficulties exist for his flexible throat, but as to expression he had no rival, and i think that no one has ever sung gluck as well as he. for instrumental music i had as a violinist viotti, whose playing, so full of grace, of force and expression, was ravishing. i also had jarnovick, maestrino, and prince henry of prussia, an excellent amateur, who brought this first violinist besides. salentin played the hautboy, hulmandel and cramer the piano. mme. de montgerou came once, soon after her marriage. although she was very young then, she nevertheless astonished my friends, who were very hard to please, by her admirable execution, and especially by her expression; she really made the instrument speak. mme. montgerou has since taken first rank as a pianist, and distinguished herself as a composer. at the time i gave my concerts people had taste and leisure for amusement, and even some years later the love of music was so general that it occasioned a serious quarrel between those who were called gluckists and piccinists. all amateurs were divided into two opposing factions. the usual field of battle was the garden of the palais royal. there the partisans of gluck and the partisans of piccini went at each other with such violence that there was more than one duel to record. the women who were usually present comprised the marquise de grollier, mme. de verdun, the marquise de sabran, who afterward married the chevalier de boufflers, mme. le couteux du molay--my best friends, all four of them--the marquise de rougé, mme. de pezé, her friend, whom i painted in the same picture with her, and a host of other french ladies, whom, owing to the smallness of my rooms, i could receive but rarely, and all sorts of distinguished foreign ladies. as for men, the list would be too long to write it down. [illustration: peace bringing abundance exhibited by mme. lebrun at the french royal academy of painting on her election as a member of that institution.] from this crowd i selected the cleverest for invitation to my suppers, which the abbé delille, the poet lebrun, the chevalier de boufflers, the viscount de ségur, and others contributed to make the most entertaining in paris. he can form no opinion of what society once was in france who has not seen the time when, all of the day's business absolved, a dozen or fifteen delightful people met at the house of a hostess to finish their evening. the ease and the refined merriment which reigned at these light evening repasts gave them a charm which dinners can never have. a sort of confidence and intimacy prevailed among the guests; it was by such suppers that the good society of paris showed its superiority to that of all europe. at my house, for instance, we met at about nine o'clock. no one ever talked politics, but we chatted about literature and told anecdotes of the hour. sometimes we diverted ourselves by acting charades, and sometimes the abbé delille or the poet lebrun read us some of their compositions. at ten o'clock we sat down to table. my suppers were of the simplest. they always consisted of some fowl, a fish, a dish of vegetables, and a salad, so that if i succumbed to the temptation of keeping back some visitors there really was nothing more for any one to eat. but that mattered little; the hours passed like minutes, and at midnight the company broke up. i not only gave suppers at my own house, but frequently supped in town. sometimes there was dancing, and there was no crowding to suffocation, as there is nowadays. eight persons only performed the square dances, and the women who were not dancing could at least look on, for the men stood behind them. i often went to spend the evening at m. de rivière's, in charge of the saxon legation, a man distinguished as much by his wit as by his good qualities. we played comedies there, and comic operas. his daughter (my sister-in-law) sang excellently, and could pass for a good society actress. m. de rivière's eldest son was charming in comic parts, and i was given the use of a few professionals in opera and drama. mme. laruette, some years retired from the stage, did not disdain our troupe. she played with us in several operas, and her voice was still fresh and fine. my brother vigée played leading parts with very great success. in short, all our actors were good--excepting talma. my saying this will no doubt make my readers laugh. the fact is, that talma, who acted lovers' parts with us, was so awkward and diffident that no one could then possibly have foreseen how great an actor he would become. my surprise was therefore very great when i saw our leading man surpass larive and take the place of lekain. but the time it took to operate this change, and all of the same kind, proves to me that the dramatic talent takes longer to reach perfection than any other. one evening, when i had invited a dozen or more friends to hear a recital by the poet lebrun, and while we were waiting for them, my brother read aloud to me a few pages of "anacharsis." arriving at the place where, in the description of a greek dinner, the method of preparing various sauces is explained, "we ought," said my brother, "to try this to-night." i at once ordered up my cook and instructed her properly, deciding that she was to make a certain sauce for the chicken and another for the eel. as i was expecting some very pretty women, i conceived the idea of greek costumes, in order to give m. de vaudreuil and m. boutin a surprise, knowing they would not arrive until ten o'clock. my studio, full of things i used for draping my models, would furnish me with enough material for garments, and the count de parois, who lived in my house in the rue de cléry, owned a superb collection of etruscan pottery. it happened that he came to see me that evening. i confided my project to him, so that he supplied me with a number of drinking-cups and vases, from among which i took my choice. i cleaned all these articles myself, and arranged them on a table of mahogany without a tablecloth. this done, i put behind the chairs a large screen, which i took the precaution of concealing under some hangings looped up at intervals, as may be seen in poussin's pictures. a hanging lamp threw a strong light on the table. all was now prepared except my costumes, when joseph vernet's daughter, the charming mme. chalgrin, was first to arrive. i immediately took her in hand, doing her hair and dressing her up. then came mme. de bonneuil, so remarkable for her beauty, and mme. vigée, my sister-in-law, who, without being pretty, had the most beautiful eyes imaginable. and there they were, all three, metamorphosed into veritable athenians. lebrun came in; we wiped off his powder, undid his side curls, and put a wreath of laurels on his head. then the marquis de cubières arrived. while we sent for a guitar of his, which he had turned into a gilded lyre, i attended to his costume, and then likewise dressed up m. de rivière, and chaudet, the famous sculptor. the hour was waxing late. i had little time to think of myself. but as i always wore white gowns in the form of a tunic--now called a blouse--it was sufficient to put a veil and a wreath of flowers on my head. i took particular pains in costuming my daughter, darling child that she was, and mlle. de bonneuil, now mme. regnault d'angély, who was as lovely as an angel. both were ravishing to behold, bearing a very light antique vase, in readiness to serve us with drink. at half past nine the preparations were ended, and at ten we heard the carriage of the count de vaudreuil and of boutin roll in, and when these two gentlemen arrived before the door of the dining-room, whose two leaves i had thrown open, they found us singing gluck's chorus, "the god of paphos," with m. de cubières accompanying us on his lyre. never in all my days have i seen two such astonished faces as those of m. de vaudreuil and his companion. they were so surprised and delighted that they stood motionless for a long time before they could make up their minds to take the seats we had reserved for them. besides the two courses i have mentioned, we had for supper a cake made with honey and corinth raisins, and two dishes of vegetables. i confess that that evening we drank a bottle of old cyprus wine, which had been presented to me. but that was the whole of our dissipation. we nevertheless remained a long time at table, where lebrun recited to us several odes of "anacreon," which he had translated, and i think i never spent a more amusing evening. m. boutin and m. de vaudreuil were so enthusiastic that the next day they told all their friends about the entertainment. some of the women of the court asked me to repeat the performance. i declined for various reasons, and some of them felt hurt by my refusal. soon the report spread in society that this supper had cost me twenty thousand francs. the king spoke of it with annoyance to the marquis de cubières, who fortunately had been one of my guests, and who therefore was able to convince his majesty how foolish the accusation was. nevertheless, what was estimated at versailles at the modest price of twenty thousand francs was increased at rome to forty thousand. at vienna the baroness de strogonoff informed me that i had spent sixty thousand francs on my greek supper. at st. petersburg the sum fixed upon was eighty thousand francs. in reality, the supper had occasioned an outlay of nearly fifteen francs! although, as i am sure, i was the most harmless creature who ever drew breath, i had enemies. a few years before the revolution i did the portrait of m. de calonne, which i exhibited at the salon of . i painted that minister in a sitting position and as far as the knees, which caused mlle. arnould to say, when she looked at it: "mme. lebrun cut off his legs, so that he should not get away." unfortunately, this little witticism was not the only one my picture evoked; i was made the butt of calumnies of the most odious description. there were a thousand stories circulated as to the payment of the portrait, some asserting that the minister had given me a quantity of sweetmeats wrapped in bank-notes, others that i had received in a pasty a sum large enough to ruin the treasury. the fact is, that m. de calonne had sent me four thousand francs in a box worth twenty louis. some of the people who were with me when the box arrived can certify this. they were even surprised at the smallness of the amount, for not long before, m. de beaujon, whom i had painted in the same style, had sent me eight thousand francs, without any one considering this fee too large. i cared so little about money that i scarcely knew the value of it. the countess de la guiche, who is still alive, can affirm that, upon coming to me to have her portrait painted and telling me that she could afford no more than a thousand francs, i answered that m. lebrun wished me to do none for less than two thousand. my closest friends all know that m. lebrun took all the money i earned, on the plea of investing it in his business. i often had no more than six francs in my pocket and in the world. when in i painted the picture of the handsome prince lubomirskia, who was then grown up, his aunt, the princess lubomirska, remitted twelve thousand francs to me, out of which i begged m. lebrun to let me keep forty; but he would not let me have even that, alleging that he needed the whole sum to liquidate a promissory note. my indifference to money no doubt proceeded from the fact that wealth was not necessary to me. since that which made my house pleasant required no extravagance, i always lived very economically. i spent very little on dress; i was even reproached for neglecting it, for i wore none but white dresses of muslin or lawn, and never wore elaborate gowns excepting for my sittings at versailles. my head-dress cost me nothing, because i did my hair myself, and most of the time i wore a muslin cap on my head, as may be seen from my portraits. one of my favourite distractions was going to the play, and i can vow that so many talented actors were on the paris stage that many of them have had no successors. i remember perfectly having seen the renowned lekain act, whose ugliness, monstrous as it was, was not apparent in all his parts. but when he played the rôle of orosmane, in which i once saw him, i was very near the stage, and his turban made him so hideous that, although i admired his fine bearing, he frightened me. mlle. dumesnil, although she was short and very ugly, sent her audiences into transports in her great tragic rôles. it sometimes happened that mlle. dumesnil acted through a portion of the play without producing any impression; then, all of a sudden, she would change; her gestures, her voice and her features all became so intensely tragic that she brought down the house. i was assured that before coming on the stage she was in the habit of drinking a bottle of wine, and that another was held in reserve for her in the wings. the most brilliant first appearance i can remember was mlle. raucourt's in the part of dido, when she was eighteen or twenty at the most. the beauty of her face, her figure, her voice, her declamation--everything foreshadowed a perfect actress. to so many advantages she added an air of remarkable decency and a reputation of severe morals, which caused her to be sought after by our greatest ladies. she was presented with jewelry, with theatrical costumes, and with money for herself and her father, who was always with her. later on she changed her habits very much. [illustration: mme. vigÉe lebrun and her daughter.] talma, our last great tragic actor, in my opinion surpassed all the others. there was genius in his acting. it may also be said that he revolutionised the art, in the first place through banishing the bombastic and affected style of delivery by his natural, sincere elocution, and secondly through bringing about an innovation in dress, attiring himself like a greek or a roman when he played achilles or brutus--for which i was heartily grateful to him. talma had one of the finest heads and one of the most mobile countenances imaginable, and, however impetuous his acting became, always kept dignified, which seems to me a prime quality in a tragic actor. he was a very good man, and the best tempered individual in the world. it was his custom to make no fuss in society; in order to make him respond, it needed something in the conversation which would stir one of his deepest interests, and then he was well worth listening to, particularly when he talked about his art. comedy was perhaps better off still for talent than tragedy. i often had the good fortune to see préville on the stage. there, indeed, was the perfect, the inimitable artist! his acting, so clever, so natural, and so full of fun, was at the same time most varied. he would play in turn crispin, sosie, and figaro, and you would not know it was the same man, so inexhaustible were his comic resources. dugazon, his successor in humorous parts, would have been an excellent comedian if a desire to make the public laugh had not often led him into being farcical. he played certain parts of valets admirably. dugazon behaved villainously in the revolution: he was one of those who went for the king to varennes, and an eyewitness told me that he had seen him at the carriage door with a gun on his shoulder. be it observed that this man had been overwhelmed with favours by the court, and especially by the count d'artois. i also witnessed mlle. contat's first appearance. she was extremely pretty and well made, but did her work so badly at first that no one foresaw what a fine actress she was to become. her charming face was not sufficient to protect her from hisses when she played the part confided to her by beaumarchais, of susanna in "the marriage of figaro." but from that moment on she advanced further and further on the path of success. at a period when all of the great actors were beginning to age, a young talent arose that to-day is the ornament of the french stage: mlle. mars was then playing the parts of young girls in the most highly accomplished manner; she excelled in that of victorine in "the unwitting philosopher," and in a dozen others in which she never had an equal. for it was impossible for any one else to be so true to life and so affecting; it was nature at its best. fortunately, that face, that figure, that bewitching voice are so perfectly preserved that mlle. mars has no age, nor, i believe, ever will have, and the public proves every night by its applause that it shares my opinion. i remember having seen sophie arnould twice at the opera, in "castor and pollux." i recollect that she seemed to me to possess grace and feeling. as for her abilities as a singer, the music of that epoch disgusted me so that i did not listen to it enough to be able to speak about it now. mlle. arnould was not pretty; her mouth spoiled her face; only her eyes conveyed the cleverness which made her famous. a great number of her witty sayings have been passed round from mouth to mouth or printed. a woman whose superior gifts delighted us for a long time was mlle. arnould's successor. this was mme. saint huberti, whom one must have heard in order to understand how far lyric tragedy can go. mme. saint huberti had not only a superb voice, but was also a great actress. her good fate ordained that she should sing the operas of piccini, sacchini and gluck, and all this music, so beautiful, so expressive, exactly suited her talent, which was full of significance, of sincerity and of nobility. she was not good-looking, but her face was entrancing because of its soulfulness. the count d'entraigues, a very fine, handsome man, and very distinguished through his intellect, fell in love with her and married her. when the revolution broke out they escaped to london together. it was there that one evening they were both murdered, without either the murderers or their motives ever being discovered. in the ballet, likewise noted for people with great capabilities, gardel and vestris the elder were first. vestris was tall and imposing, and was not to be excelled in dances of the grave and sedate order. i could not prescribe the grace with which he took off and put back his hat at the bow preceding the minuet. all the young women of the court took lessons from him, before their presentation, in making the three courtesies. vestris the elder was succeeded by his son, the most astonishing dancer to be seen, such were his combined gracefulness and lightness. although our dancers of the present day by no means spare us their pirouettes, certainly no one could ever do as many as he did. he would suddenly rise toward the sky in such a marvellous manner that one thought he must have wings, and this made old vestris say, "if my son touches the ground it is only from politeness to his colleagues." mlle. guimard had another sort of talent altogether. her dancing was only a sketch; she did nothing but take short steps, but executed them with such fascinating motions that the public awarded her the palm over all other female dancers. she was short, slight, very well shaped, and, although plain, her features were such that at the age of forty-five she looked no more than fifteen when on the stage. i now come to one whose entire dramatic career i have been able to follow--the best talent the opéra-comique had to show, mme. dugazon. never has such reality been seen upon the stage. the actress disappeared, and gave place to the actual babet, countess d'albert, or nicolette. her voice was rather weak, but it was strong enough for laughter, for tears, for all situations, for all parts. grétry and delayrac, who wrote for her, were mad about her. no one ever again played nina like her--nina, so decent and so passionate at once, and so unhappy and so touching that the mere sight of her made the audience shed tears. mme. dugazon was a royalist, heart and soul. of this she gave the public a proof, when the revolution was well advanced, in playing the part of the maid in "unforeseen events." the queen was witnessing the performance, and in a duet begun by the valet, with "i love my master dearly," mme. dugazon, whose answer was "ah, how i love my mistress!" turned toward the queen's box, laid her hand over her heart, and sang her reply in a melting voice while she bowed to her majesty. i was told that the public--and such a public--afterward sought revenge by attempting to make her sing some horrible thing which had come into vogue and was often heard in the theatres. but mme. dugazon would not yield. she left the stage. chapter iv exile a gallic maecenas -- anecdote concerning beaumarchais -- the duke de nivernais -- mme. du barry sketched in words -- and painted in oils -- rumblings of the revolution -- mme. lebrun's fearsome journey to italy -- renewed artistic activity at rome -- easter sunday at st. peter's -- fascination of the eternal city -- vanities and violences of its people. the same year that i went to flanders i made a stay of some length at raincy. the duke d'orléans, the father of philippe Égalité, who was then living there, sent for me to paint his portrait and mme. de montesson's. i cannot recall a certain incident without laughing, though it annoyed me considerably at the time. during mme. de montesson's sittings the old princess de conti came to see her one day, and this princess persisted in addressing me as "miss." it is true that it had formerly been the custom for great ladies to behave in this way toward their inferiors, but that sort of court snobbery had gone out with louis xv. another noted country estate, gennevilliers, belonged to the count de vaudreuil, one of the most amiable of men. the count de vaudreuil had bought this property largely for his highness the count d'artois, because it included fine hunting-grounds. the purchaser had done much to embellish the place. the house was furnished in the best taste, and without ostentation; there was a small but charming theatre in the house, where my sister-in-law, my brother, m. de rivière and i often played in comic operas with mme. dugazon, and garat, cailleau, and laruette. the count d'artois and his company witnessed our performances. the last given in the theatre at gennevilliers was "the marriage of figaro" by the actors of the comédie-française. mlle. contat was delightful in the part of suzanne. dialogue, couplets, and all the rest were aimed against the court, of which a large part was present. this extravagance benefited no one, but beaumarchais was none the less intoxicated with joy. as there were complaints of the heat, he allowed no time for the windows to be opened, but smashed all the panes with his walking-stick. the count de vaudreuil came to repent of having given his patronage to the "marriage of figaro." in fact, very soon after the performance mentioned beaumarchais asked for an audience. this being at once granted, he arrived at versailles at such an early hour that the count had only just got up. the dramatist then broached a financial project which he had hatched out, and which was to bring in a vast fortune. he concluded by proposing to hand over to m. de vaudreuil a large sum if he would engage to carry the affair through successfully. the count listened quite calmly, and when beaumarchais finished speaking, answered: "m. de beaumarchais, you could not come at a more favourable time, for i have spent a good night, my digestion is in good order, and i never felt better than i do to-day. if you had made such a proposition to me yesterday i would have thrown you out of the window." another fine country place i visited was villette. the marquise de villette, nicknamed lovely and lovable, having invited me, i went to pass a few days there. on one occasion we found a man painting fences in the park. this painter was working with such expedition that m. de villette complimented him upon it. "oh!" was the reply, "i'd undertake to cover up in a day all that rubens painted in his whole life!" i dined several times at saint ouen, with the duke de nivernais, who owned a very handsome residence there, and who gathered about him the most agreeable company it was possible to meet. the duke, always praised for his elegant and pointed wit, had manners that were dignified and gentle and without the slightest affectation. he was particularly distinguished for his extreme civility to women of all ages. in this respect i might speak of him as a model of whom i would never have found a copy if i had not known the count de vaudreuil, who, much younger than the duke de nivernais, added to his refined gallantry a politeness that was the more flattering since it came from the heart. in fact, it is very difficult to convey an idea to-day of the urbanity, the graceful ease, in a word the affability of manner which made the charm of parisian society forty years ago. the women reigned then; the revolution dethroned them. the duke de nivernais was very small and very lean. although very old when i knew him, he was still full of life; he was passionately fond of poetry, and wrote charming verses. i also dined frequently at the marshal de noailles's, in his fine mansion situated at the entrance to saint germain. there was then an immense park there, admirably kept. the marshal was highly sociable; his cleverness and good spirits infected all his guests, whom he selected from among the literary celebrities and the most distinguished people of the town and the court. it was in that i went for the first time to louveciennes, where i had promised to paint mme. du barry. she might then have been about forty-five years old. she was tall without being too much so; she had a certain roundness, her throat being rather pronounced but very beautiful; her face was still attractive, her features were regular and graceful; her hair was ashy, and curly like a child's. but her complexion was beginning to fade. she received me with much courtesy, and seemed to me very well behaved, but i found her more spontaneous in mind than in manner: her glance was that of a coquette, for her long eyes were never quite open, and her pronunciation had something childish which no longer suited her age. she lodged me in a part of the building where i was greatly put out by the continual noise. under my room was a gallery, sadly neglected, in which busts, vases, columns, the rarest marbles, and a quantity of other valuable articles were displayed without system or order. these remains of luxury contrasted with the simplicity adopted by the mistress of the house, with her dress and her mode of life. summer and winter mme. du barry wore only a dressing-robe of cotton cambric or white muslin, and every day, whatever the weather might be, she walked in her park, or outside of it, without ever incurring disastrous consequences, so sturdy had her health become through her life in the country. she had maintained no relations with the numerous court that surrounded her so long. in the evening we were usually alone at the fireside, mme. du barry and i. she sometimes talked to me about louis xv. and his court. she showed herself a worthy person by her actions as well as her words, and did a great deal of good at louveciennes, where she helped all the poor. every day after dinner we took coffee in the pavilion which was so famous for its rich and tasteful decorations. the first time mme. du barry showed it to me she said: "it is here that louis xv. did me the honour of coming to dinner. there was a gallery above for musicians and singers who performed during the meal." [illustration: the dauphin of france.] when mme. du barry went to england, before the terror, to get back her stolen diamonds, which, in fact, she recovered there, the english received her very well. they did all they could to prevent her from returning to france. but it was not long before she succumbed to the fate in store for everybody who had some possessions. she was informed against and betrayed by a little negro called zamore, who is mentioned in all the memoirs of the period as having been overwhelmed with kindness by her and louis xv. being arrested and thrown into prison, mme. du barry was tried and condemned to death by the revolutionary tribunal at the end of . she was the only woman, among all who perished in those dreadful days, unable to face the scaffold with firmness; she screamed, she sued for pardon to the hideous mob surrounding her, and that mob became moved to such a degree that the executioner hastened to finish his task. this has always confirmed my belief that if the victims of that period of execrable memory had not had the noble pride of dying with fortitude the terror would have ceased long before it did. i made three portraits of mme. du barry. in the first i painted her at half length, in a dressing-gown and straw hat. in the second she is dressed in white satin; she holds a wreath in one hand, and one of her arms is leaning on a pedestal. the third portrait i made of mme. du barry is in my own possession. i began it about the middle of september, . from louveciennes we could hear shooting in the distance, and i remember the poor woman saying, "if louis xv. were alive i am sure this would not be happening." i had done the head, and outlined the body and arms, when i was obliged to make an expedition to paris. i hoped to be able to return to louveciennes to finish my work, but heard that berthier and foulon had been murdered. i was now frightened beyond measure, and thenceforth thought of nothing but leaving france. the fearful year was well advanced, and all decent people were already seized with terror. i remember perfectly that one evening when i had gathered some friends about me for a concert, most of the arrivals came into the room with looks of consternation; they had been walking at longchamps that morning, and the populace assembled at the Étoile gate had cursed at those who passed in carriages in a dreadful manner. some of the wretches had clambered on the carriage steps, shouting, "next year you will be behind your carriages and we shall be inside!" and a thousand other insults. as for myself, i had little need to learn fresh details in order to foresee what horrors impended. i knew beyond doubt that my house in the rue gros chenet, where i had settled but three months since, had been singled out by the criminals. they threw sulphur into our cellars through the airholes. if i happened to be at my window, vulgar ruffians would shake their fists at me. numberless sinister rumours reached me from every side; in fact, i now lived in a state of continual anxiety and sadness. my health became sensibly affected, and two of my best friends, the architect brongniart and his wife, when they came to see me, found me so thin and so changed that they besought me to come and spend a few days with them, which invitation i thankfully accepted. brongniart had his lodgings at the invalides, whither i was conducted by a physician attached to the palais royal, whose servants wore the orléans livery, the only one then held in any respect. there i was given everything of the best. as i was unable to eat, i was nourished on excellent burgundy wine and soup, and mme. brongniart was in constant attendance upon me. all this solicitude ought to have quieted me, especially as my friends took a less black view of things than i did. nevertheless, they did not succeed in banishing my evil forebodings. "what is the use of living; what is the use of taking care of oneself?" i would often ask my good friends, for the fears that the future held over me made life distasteful to me. but i must acknowledge that even with the furthest stretch of my imagination i guessed only at a fraction of the crimes that were to be committed. i remember having supped at the brongniarts's with his excellence m. de sombreuil, at that time governor of the invalides. he brought us the news that an attempt was threatening to take the arms that he had in reserve, "but," he added, "i have hidden them so well that i defy any one to find them." the good man did not consider that one could trust no one but oneself. as the arms were very soon abstracted, it seems evident that he was betrayed by some of the servants in his employ. m. de sombreuil, as notable for his private virtues as for his military talents, was among the prisoners who were to be killed in their cells on the second of september. the murderers gave him his life at the tears of supplication of his heroic daughter, but, villainous even in granting pardon, they compelled mlle. de sombreuil to drink a glass of the blood that flowed in streams in front of the prison. for a long time afterward the sight of anything with red colour made this unfortunate young woman vomit horribly. some years later (in ) m. de sombreuil was sent to the scaffold by the revolutionary tribunal. i had made up my mind to leave france. for some years i had cherished the desire to go to rome. the large number of portraits i had engaged to paint had, however, hindered me from putting my plan into execution. but i could now paint no longer; my broken spirit, bruised with so many horrors, shut itself entirely to my art. besides, dreadful slanders were pouring upon my friends, my acquaintances and myself, although, heaven knows, i had never hurt a living soul. i thought like the man who said, "i am accused of having stolen the towers of notre dame; they are still in their usual place, but i am going away, as i am evidently to blame." i left several portraits i had begun, among them mlle. contat's. at the same time i refused to paint mlle. de laborde (afterward duchess de noailles), brought to me by her father. she was scarcely sixteen, and very charming, but it was no longer a question of success or money--it was only a question of saving one's head. i had my carriage loaded, and my passport ready, so that i might leave next day with my daughter and her governess, when a crowd of national guardsmen burst into my room with their muskets. most of them were drunk and shabby, and had terrible faces. a few of them came up to me and told me in the coarsest language that i must not go, but that i must remain. i answered that since everybody had been called upon to enjoy his liberty, i intended to make use of mine. they would barely listen to me, and kept on repeating, "you will not go, citizeness; you will not go!" finally they went away. i was plunged into a state of cruel anxiety when i saw two of them return. but they did not frighten me, although they belonged to the gang, so quickly did i recognise that they wished me no harm. "madame," said one of them, "we are your neighbours, and we have come to advise you to leave, and as soon as possible. you cannot live here; you are changed so much that we feel sorry for you. but do not go in your carriage: go in the stage-coach; it is much safer." i thanked them with all my heart, and followed their good advice. i had three places reserved, as i still wanted to take my daughter, who was then five or six years old, but was unable to secure them until a fortnight later, because all who exiled themselves chose the stage-coach, like myself. at last came the long-expected day. it was the th of october, and the king and queen were conducted from versailles to paris surrounded by pikes. the events of that day filled me with uneasiness as to the fate of their majesties and that of all decent people, so that i was dragged to the stage-coach at midnight in a dreadful state of mind. i was very much afraid of the faubourg saint antoine, which i was obliged to traverse to reach the barrière du trône. my brother and my husband escorted me as far as this gate without leaving the door of the coach for a moment; but the suburb that i was so frightened of was perfectly quiet. all its inhabitants, the workmen and the rest, had been to versailles after the royal family, and fatigue kept them all in bed. opposite me in the coach was a very filthy man, who stunk like the plague, and told me quite simply that he had stolen watches and other things. luckily he saw nothing about me to tempt him, for i was only taking a small amount of clothing and eighty louis for my journey. i had left my principal effects and my jewels in paris, and the fruit of my labours was in the hands of my husband, who spent it all. i lived abroad solely on the proceeds of my painting. not satisfied with relating his fine exploits to us, the thief talked incessantly of stringing up such and such people on lamp-posts, naming a number of my own acquaintances. my daughter thought this man very wicked. he frightened her, and this gave me the courage to say, "i beg you, sir, not to talk of killing before this child." that silenced him, and he ended by playing at battle with my daughter. on the bench i occupied there also sat a mad jacobin from grenoble, about fifty years old, with an ugly, bilious complexion, who each time we stopped at an inn for dinner or supper made violent speeches of the most fearful kind. at all of the towns a crowd of people stopped the coach to learn the news from paris. our jacobin would then exclaim: "everything is going well, children! we have the baker and his wife safe in paris. a constitution will be drawn up, they will be forced to accept it, and then it will be all over." there were plenty of ninnies and flatheads who believed this man as if he had been an oracle. all this made my journey a very melancholy one. i had no further fears for myself, but i feared greatly for everybody else--for my mother, for my brother, and for my friends. i also had the gravest apprehensions concerning their majesties, for all along the route, nearly as far as lyons, men on horseback rode up to the coach to tell us that the king and queen had been killed and that paris was on fire. my poor little girl got all a-tremble; she thought she saw her father dead and our house burned down, and no sooner had i succeeded in reassuring her than another horseman appeared and told us the same stories. i cannot describe the emotions i felt in passing over the beauvoisin bridge. then only did i breathe freely. i had left france behind, that france which nevertheless was the land of my birth, and which i reproached myself with quitting with so much satisfaction. the sight of the mountains, however, distracted me from all my sad thoughts. i had never seen high mountains before; those of the savoy seemed to touch the sky, and seemed to mingle with it in a thick vapour. my first sensation was that of fear, but i unconsciously accustomed myself to the spectacle, and ended by admiring it. a certain part of the road completely entranced me; i seemed to see the "gallery of the titans," and i have always called it so since. wishing to enjoy all these beauties as fully as possible, i got down from the coach, but after walking some way i was seized with a great fright, for there were explosions being made with gunpowder, which had the effect of a thousand cannon shots, and the din echoing from rock to rock was truly infernal. i went up mount cenis, as other strangers were doing, when a postilion approached me, saying, "the lady ought to take a mule; to climb up on foot is too fatiguing." i answered that i was a work-woman and quite accustomed to walking. "oh! no!" was the laughing reply. "the lady is no work-woman; we know who she is!" "well, who am i, then?" i asked him. "you are mme. lebrun, who paints so well, and we are all very glad to see you safe from those bad people." i never guessed how the man could have learned my name, but it proved to me how many secret agents the jacobins must have had. happily i had no occasion to fear them any longer. no sooner had i arrived at rome than i did a portrait of myself for the florence gallery. i painted myself palette in hand before a canvas on which i was tracing a figure of the queen in white crayon. after that i painted miss pitt, who was sixteen and extremely pretty. i represented her as hebe, on some clouds, holding in her hand a goblet from which an eagle was about to drink. i did the eagle from life, and i thought he would eat me. he belonged to cardinal de bernis. the wretched beast, accustomed to being in the open air--for he was kept on a chain in the courtyard--was so enraged at finding himself in my room that he tried to fly at me. i admit that i was dreadfully frightened. about this time i painted the portrait of a polish lady, the countess potocka. she came with her husband, and after he had gone away she said to me quite coolly, "he is my third husband, but i am thinking of taking back my first, who would suit me better, although he is a drunkard." i painted this pole in a very picturesque way: for a background she had a rock overgrown with moss, and falling water nearby. the pleasure of living in rome was the only thing that consoled me for having left my country, my family, and so many friends i loved. my work did not deprive me of the daily diversion of going about the city and its surroundings. i always went alone to the palaces where collections of pictures and statues were exhibited, so as not to have my enjoyment spoiled by stupid remarks or questions. all these palaces are open to strangers, and much gratitude is due to the great roman nobles for being so obliging. it may seem hard to believe, but it is true that one might spend one's whole life in the palaces and churches. in the churches are to be found great treasures of painting and extraordinary monuments. the wealth of st. peter's in this respect is well known. the finest of the churches regarding architecture is st. paul's, whose interior is lined with columns on each side. one can have no idea of the grand and imposing effect of the catholic religion unless one can see rome during lent. on easter day i took good care to be in the square of st. peter's to see the pope give his blessing. nothing could have been more solemn. the immense square was filled at early morning by peasants and by the inhabitants of the town, in all sorts of different costumes--bright and varied in colour--and there were also a large number of pilgrims. they all stood as still as the superb obelisk of oriental granite in the middle of the square. at ten o'clock the pope arrived, clothed all in white, his crown on his head. he took his place in the centre stand outside the church on a magnificent high velvet throne. the cardinals surrounded him, clad in their handsome dress. it must be said that pope pius vi. was splendid. his healthy face showed no sign of the wear and tear of old age. his hands were white and plump. he knelt down to read his prayer. afterward, rising up, he gave a double blessing in speaking these words, "_urbi et orbi_." then, as if struck by an electric shock, the people, the strangers, the troops, and all others fell on their knees, while the cannons boomed from all sides, this adding to the majesty of the scene, by which it was impossible not to be moved. [illustration: the baroness de crussol.] the blessing given, the cardinals threw a quantity of papers down from the gallery, and these, i was told, were indulgences. thousands of hands shot upward to grasp them. the eagerness and the excitement of this crowd, its pressing and pushing, were beyond description. when the pope withdrew, the regimental bands intoned a flourish, and the troops then marched off to the rattle of drums. in the evening the dome of st. peter's was illuminated, first with lights under coloured glasses, and then with white lights of greatest brilliancy. it was difficult to conceive how the change could be effected with such rapidity; however, the spectacle was as beautiful as it was remarkable. the same evening, too, gorgeous fireworks were set off at the castle of st. angelo. myriads of bombs and fire balloons were sent into the air; the final display was the most magnificent to be seen of the kind, and the reflection of these splendid fireworks in the tiber doubled their effect. in rome, where everything is grand, the great mansions have no wretched lamps before them, but each palace is provided with enormous candelabras, from which stream gigantic flames that shed day, so to speak, over the whole city. this luxurious manner of lighting strikes a stranger the more as the streets of rome are mostly illuminated by the lamps burning in front of the madonnas. strangers are attracted to rome far more by holy week than by the carnival, at which i was not surprised. the masqueraders establish themselves in tiers, disguised as harlequins, as pulcinellos, etc., just as we see them on the boulevards in paris, the difference being that in rome they never stir. i saw only a single young man going about the streets after the french fashion. he was giving a lifelike imitation of a very affected exquisite whom we had no difficulty in recognising. the carriages and wagons come and go full of richly costumed people. the horses are adorned with feathers, ribbons, and bells, the servants being dressed up as scaramouche or harlequin, but it all passes off in the quietest way in the world. finally, toward evening, several discharges of cannon announce the horse-races, which enliven the rest of the day. there is no town in the world where one could pass one's time as delightfully as in rome, even were one deprived of all the resources which good society offers. the walks within the walls are a joy, for one is never tired of revisiting the coliseum, the capitol, the pantheon, the square of st. peter's with its colonnades, its superb obelisk, and its lovely fountains, across which the rays of the sun often throw beautiful rainbows. the square is wonderfully impressive at sunset and in the moonlight. whether it was on my way or not, i always took pleasure in crossing it. what astonished me very much in rome was to find at the coliseum, on sunday mornings, a crowd of women from the lowest classes, extravagantly bedizened, loaded with ornaments, and wearing in their ears enormous stars of paste diamonds. it was also in this garb that they went to church, frequently followed by a domestic, who very often was no other than their husband, his real occupation being probably that of a valet. these women do nothing at home; their idleness is such that they live in the greatest want. they may be seen at their windows in the streets of rome, with flowers and feathers on their head, their faces made up with cosmetics. the upper part of their dress, which is visible, indicates great luxury, so that one is surprised, upon entering their rooms, to find that they have on nothing more than a dirty petticoat. the roman dames whom i mention nevertheless enact aristocratic parts, and when the time comes to go to the villas they carefully close their shutters in order to create the belief that they have left for the country. i was assured that every woman in rome was in the habit of carrying a dagger. i do not, however, believe that the great ladies wear any, but certain it is that the wife of denis, the landscape painter, with whom i lodged, and who was a roman, showed me the dagger which she always had about her. as for the men of the people, they are never unprovided with one, and this brings about a number of grave tragedies. three evenings after my arrival, for instance, i heard in my street some shouts followed by a great tumult. i sent out to learn what the matter was, and was informed that a man had just killed another with his dagger. as these peculiar habits made me very much afraid, i was assured that strangers had nothing to fear--that it was simply a question of an act of revenge between italians. as for the case in point, the murderer and his victim had quarrelled ten years ago, and the first, having recognised his enemy, at once struck him down with his dagger, which proves how long an italian can keep a grudge. certainly the customs of the upper class are milder, since high society is very much the same all over europe. however, i am not the best judge, as with the exception of relations involving my art, and invitations sent to me for numerous parties, i had little occasion to become acquainted with the patrician ladies of rome. what happened to me was what naturally happens to every exile, which was to seek the company of my own countrymen. in and rome was full of french refugees, whom i knew for the greater part, and with whom i soon made friends. we saw the princess joseph de monaco and the duchess de fleury arrive, and a host of other notabilities. the princess joseph de monaco had a charming face, and was very sweet and charming. unfortunately for her, she did not stay in rome. she returned to paris to attend to the small amount of property remaining to her children, and she was there during the terror. thrown into prison and condemned to death, she was taken to the scaffold. the arrival at rome of so many people bringing so much news made me undergo different emotions every day. often they were very sad, but sometimes very sweet. i was told, for instance, that a little while after my departure, when the king was begged to have his picture painted, he had replied: "no, i shall wait for mme. lebrun to come back, so that she may make a portrait of me to match the queen's. i want her to paint me at full figure, in the act of commanding m. de la pérouse to make a journey round the world." chapter v neapolitan days naples -- a sleepy ambassadress -- the remarkable life of lady hamilton -- being the story of a frivolous flirt fond of beer -- more royal models -- excursions to posilippo -- mlle. lebrun writes a novel at the age of nine -- the queen of naples sits to the authoress -- the wedding of the doge of venice with the sea. i had been in rome eight months or thereabouts, when, observing that all foreigners were leaving for naples, i was seized with a great desire to go there likewise. i confided my plan to the cardinal de bernis, who, while approving, advised me not to go alone. he spoke to me of a m. duvivier, the husband of voltaire's niece, mme. denis, who proposed to make the journey, and who would be charmed with my company. m. duvivier came to me, repeating everything that the cardinal had said, and promising to take care of my daughter and myself. he added, thus tempting me the more, that he had in his carriage a sort of stove, for cooking fowl, which would be very useful to us, seeing how bad the fare was in the best inns of terracina. all his offers suited me to a marvel, and so i started with this gentleman. his coach was very large; my daughter and her governess sat in front, and there was another seat in the middle. a huge man-servant sat on it in front of me in such a way that his large back touched me and i had to hold my nose. i am not in the habit of talking while travelling, so that conversation between us was restricted to the exchange of a few phrases. but as we were crossing the pontine marshes, i noticed on the edge of a canal a shepherd whose flock was passing into a meadow all studded with flowers, and beyond which the sea and cape circe were visible. "what a charming picture!" said i to my travelling companion. "this shepherd, these sheep, the meadow, the sea!" "those sheep are all filthy," he answered; "you ought to see them in england." farther along on the terracina road, at the place where you cross a small river in a boat, i saw at my left the line of the apennines crowned with magnificent clouds, which the setting sun illumined. i was unable to refrain from expressing my admiration aloud. "those clouds mean that we shall have rain to-morrow," said my optimistic friend. we reached naples at about three or four o'clock. i cannot describe the impression i received upon entering the town. that burning sun, that stretch of sea, those islands seen in the distance, that vesuvius with a great column of smoke ascending from it, and the very population so animated and so noisy, who differ so much from the roman that one might suppose they were a thousand miles apart. i had engaged a house at chiaja on the edge of the sea. opposite me i had the island of capri, and this situation delighted me. hardly had i arrived when count skavronska, the russian ambassador at naples, whose house was next to mine, sent one of his runners to find out how i was, and at the same time had a very choice dinner brought me. i was the more grateful for this kind attention, as i must have died of hunger before there would have been time to get my kitchen ready. the same evening i went to thank the count, and thus became acquainted with his charming wife. [illustration: marie caroline, wife of ferdinand iv. of naples.] count skavronska had features that were noble and regular; he was very pale. this pallor came from the extreme delicacy of his health, which, however, did not prevent him from being highly sociable nor from chatting both gracefully and cleverly. the countess was as sweet and pretty as an angel. the famous potemkin, her uncle, had loaded her with wealth, for which she had no use. her great delight was to live stretched out on a lounge wrapped in a large black cloak, and wearing no stays. her mother-in-law sent her, from paris, cases full of the most beautiful dresses then made by mlle. bertin, queen marie antoinette's dressmaker. i do not believe that the countess ever opened one of them, and when her mother-in-law expressed a wish to see her in the beautiful gowns and head-dresses contained in the cases, she answered indifferently: "what for? why?" she gave me the same answer when showing me her jewel-case, one of the most splendid i have ever seen. it contained enormous diamonds given her by potemkin, but i never saw them on her. i remember her telling me that in order to go to sleep she had a slave under her bed who told her the same story every night. she was utterly idle all day, she had no education, and her conversation was quite empty. but in spite of all that, thanks to her lovely face and her angelic sweetness, she had an incomparable charm. count skavronska had made me promise to do his wife's portrait before any one else's, and, having agreed, i began this portrait two days after my arrival. after the first session, sir william hamilton, the british ambassador at naples, came to me and begged that my first portrait in this town should be that of the splendid woman he presented to me. this was mme. harte, who soon after became lady hamilton, and who was famous for her beauty. after the promise to my amiable neighbours, i could not begin the other portrait until countess skavronska's was well advanced. i then painted mme. harte as a bacchante reclining by the edge of the sea, holding a goblet in her hand. her beautiful face had much animation, and was a complete contrast to the countess's. she had a great quantity of fine chestnut hair, sufficient to cover her entirely, and thus, as a bacchante with flying hair, she was admirable to behold. the life of lady hamilton is a romance. her maiden name was emma lyon. her mother, it is said, was a poor servant, and there is some disagreement as to her birthplace. at the age of thirteen she entered the service of an honest townsman of hawarden as a nurse, but, tired of the dull life she led, and believing that she could obtain a more agreeable situation in london, she betook herself thither. the prince of wales told me that he had seen her at that time in wooden shoes at the stall of a fruit vender, and that, although she was very meanly clad, her pretty face attracted attention. a shopkeeper took her into his service, but she soon left him to become housemaid under a lady of decent family--a very respectable person. in her house she acquired a taste for novels, and then for the play. she studied the gestures and vocal inflections of the actors, and rendered them with remarkable facility. these talents, neither of which pleased her mistress in the very least, were the cause of her dismissal. it was then that, having heard of a tavern where painters were in the habit of meeting, she conceived the idea of going there to look for employment. her beauty was then at its height. she was rescued from this pitfall by a strange chance. doctor graham took her to exhibit her at his house, covered with a light veil, as the goddess hygeia (the goddess of health). a number of curious people and amateurs went to see her, and the painters were especially delighted. some time after this exhibition, a painter secured her as a model; he made her pose in a thousand graceful attitudes, which he reproduced on canvas. she now perfected herself in this new sort of talent which made her famous. nothing, indeed, was more remarkable than the ease lady hamilton acquired in spontaneously giving her features an expression of sorrow or of joy, and of posing marvellously to represent different people. her eyes a-kindle, her hair flying, she showed you a bewitching bacchante; then, all of a sudden, her face expressed grief, and you saw a magnificent repentant magdalen. the day her husband presented her to me, she insisted on my seeing her in a pose. i was delighted, but she was dressed in every-day clothes, which gave me a shock. i had gowns made for her such as i wore in order to paint in comfort, and which consisted of a kind of loose tunic. she also took some shawls to drape herself with, which she understood very well, and then was ready to render enough different positions and expressions to fill a whole picture gallery. there is, in fact, a collection drawn by frederic reimberg, which has been engraved. to return to the romance of emma lyon. it was while she was with the painter i have mentioned that lord greville fell so desperately in love with her that he intended to marry her, when he suddenly lost his official place and was ruined. he at once left for naples in the hope of obtaining help from his uncle hamilton, and took emma with him so that she might plead his cause. the uncle, indeed, consented to pay all his nephew's debts, but also decided to marry emma lyon in spite of his family's remonstrances. lady hamilton became as great a lady as can be imagined. it is asserted that the queen of naples was on an intimate footing with her. certain it is that the queen saw her often--politically, might perhaps be said. lady hamilton, being a most indiscreet woman, betrayed a number of little diplomatic secrets to the queen, of which she made use to the advantage of her country. lady hamilton was not at all clever, though she was extremely supercilious and disdainful, so much so that these two defects were conspicuous in all her conversation. but she also possessed considerable craftiness, of which she made use in order to bring about her marriage. she wanted in style, and dressed very badly when it was a question of every-day dress. i remember that when i did my first picture of her, as a sibyl, she was living at caserta, whither i went every day, desiring to progress quickly with the picture. the duchess de fleury and the princess de joseph monaco were present at the third sitting, which was the last. i had wound a scarf round her head in the shape of a turban, one end hanging down in graceful folds. this head-dress so beautified her that the ladies declared she looked ravishing. her husband having invited us all to dinner, she went to her apartment to change, and when she came back to meet us in the drawing-room, her new costume, which was a very ordinary one indeed, had so altered her to her disadvantage that the two ladies had all the difficulty in the world in recognising her. when i went to london in lady hamilton had just lost her husband. i left a card for her, and she soon came to see me, wearing deep mourning, with a dense black veil surrounding her, and she had had her splendid hair cut off to follow the new "titus" fashion. i found this andromache enormous, for she had become terribly fat. she said that she was very much to be pitied, that in her husband she had lost a friend and a father, and that she would never be consoled. i confess that her grief made little impression upon me, since it seemed to me that she was playing a part. i was evidently not mistaken, because a few minutes later, having noticed some music lying on my piano, she took up a lively tune and began to sing it. as is well known, lord nelson had been in love with her at naples; she had maintained a very tender correspondence with him. when i went to return her visit one morning, i found her radiant with joy, and besides she had put a rose in her hair, like nina. i could not help asking her what the rose signified. "it is because i have just received a letter from lord nelson," she answered. the duke de berri and the duke de bourbon, having heard of her poses, very much desired to witness a spectacle which she had never been willing to offer in london. i requested her to give me an evening for the two princes, and she consented. i also invited some other french people, who i was aware would be anxious to see this sight. on the day appointed i placed in the middle of my drawing-room a very large frame, with a screen on either side of it. i had had a strong limelight prepared and disposed so that it could not be seen, but which would light up lady hamilton as though she were a picture. all the invited guests having arrived, lady hamilton assumed various attitudes in this frame in a truly admirable way. she had brought a little girl with her, who might have been seven or eight years old, and who resembled her strikingly. one group they made together reminded me of poussin's "rape of the sabines." she changed from grief to joy and from joy to terror so rapidly and effectively that we were all enchanted. as i kept her for supper, the duke de bourbon, who sat next to me at table, called my attention to the quantity of porter she drank. i am sure she must have been used to it, for she was not tipsy after two or three bottles. long after leaving london, in , i heard that lady hamilton had ended her days at calais, dying there neglected and forsaken in the most awful poverty. the excursions i made at naples did not prevent me from accomplishing a great deal of work. i even undertook so many portraits that my first stay in that town extended to six months. i had arrived with the intention of spending only six weeks. the french ambassador, the baron de talleyrand, came to inform me one morning that the queen of naples wished me to do the portraits of her two eldest daughters, and i began upon them at once. her majesty was preparing to leave for vienna, where she was to busy herself about the marriage of these princesses. i remember her saying to me after her return: "i have had a successful journey; i have just made two fortunate matches for my daughters." the eldest, in fact, soon after was married to the emperor of austria, francis ii., and the other, who was called louise, to the grand duke of tuscany. this second girl was very ugly, and made such grimaces that i did not want to finish her picture. she died a few years after her marriage. during the queen's absence i also painted the prince royal. the hour of noon was appointed for the sittings, and in order to attend i was obliged to follow the chiaja road in the heat of the day. the houses on the left, which faced the sea, being painted a lustrous white, the sun was reflected from them so vividly that i was almost struck blind. to save my eyes, i put on a green veil, which i had never seen any one else do, and which must have looked rather peculiar, since only black or white veils were worn. but a few days after i saw several english women imitating me, and green veils came into fashion. i also found great comfort in my green veil at st. petersburg, where the snow was so dazzling that it might have killed my eyesight. one of my greatest pleasures was to go for walks on the lovely slope of posilippo. under it is the grotto of the same name, which is a splendid piece of work a mile long, and which is recognised as having been done by the romans. this slope of posilippo is covered with country houses, casinos, meadows, and very fine trees with vines winding about them in festoons. it is here that virgil's tomb is to be found, and it is said that laurels grow upon it, but i must confess that i saw none. in the evenings i walked on the seashore; i frequently took my daughter, and we often remained sitting there together until moonrise, enjoying the salubrious air and the gorgeous view. this was a rest for my daughter after her daily studies, for i had resolved to give her the best education possible, and to this effect i had engaged at naples masters of writing, geography, italian, english, and german. she showed a preference for german above the others, and evinced a remarkable aptitude in her various studies. there were some signs in her of a talent for painting, but her favourite pastime was to compose novels. returning from evening parties to which i had gone, i would find her with a pen in her hand and another in her cap; i would then oblige her to go to bed, but not infrequently did she secretly get up in the middle of the night to finish one of her chapters, and i remember very well how, at the age of nine, at vienna, she wrote a little romance as remarkable for its situations as for its style. [illustration: princess christine, daughter of ferdinand iv. of naples.] all the portraits i had engaged to do at naples being finished, i went back to rome, but hardly had i arrived when the queen of naples arrived also, she making a stop there on her return journey from vienna. as i happened to be in the crowd through which she made her way, she noticed me and spoke to me, and begged me with extreme graciousness to visit naples once more for the purpose of painting her portrait. it was impossible to refuse, and i complied with her wish at once. upon arriving at naples i began the portrait of the queen forthwith. it was then so terribly hot that one day when her majesty gave me a sitting we both fell asleep. i took great pleasure in doing this picture. the queen of naples, without being as pretty as her younger sister, the queen of france, reminded me strongly of her. her face was worn, but one readily judged that she had been handsome; her hands and arms especially were perfect in form and colour. this princess, of whom so much evil has been written and spoken, had an affectionate nature and simple ways at home. her magnanimity was truly royal. the marquis de bombelles, the ambassador at vienna in , was the only french envoy who refused to swear to the constitution; the queen, being apprised that by this brave and noble conduct m. de bombelles, the father of a large family, had been reduced to the most unfortunate position, wrote him a letter of commendation with her own hand. she added that all sovereigns should be at one in acknowledging faithful subjects, and asked him to accept a pension of twelve thousand francs. she had a fine character and a good deal of wit. she bore the burden of government alone. the king would have nothing to do with it; he spent most of his time at caserta. before i left naples for good the queen presented me with a box of old lacquer, with her initials surrounded by beautiful diamonds. the initials are worth ten thousand francs; i shall keep them all my life. i had a burning desire to see venice; i arrived there the day before ascension. m. denon, whom i had known in paris, having heard of this, came to see me without delay. his cleverness and his great knowledge of the arts made him the most charming mentor, and i congratulated myself upon such a happy encounter. the very next day he took me out on the canal, where the marriage of the doge with the sea was enacted. the doge and all the members of the senate were on a vessel gilded inside and out and called the _bucentaur_; it was surrounded by a swarm of boats, of which several were occupied by musicians. the doge and the senators had on black gowns and white wigs with three bows. when the _bucentaur_ had reached the place fixed for the celebration of the marriage, the doge pulled a ring from his finger and threw it into the sea. at the same instant a thousand cannon shots announced to the city and its surroundings the consummation of this great wedding, which concluded with mass. a number of strangers were present at the ceremony. i observed among them prince augustus of england, and the charming princess joseph de monaco, then preparing to go back to france for her children. i saw her at venice for the last time. chapter vi turin and vienna a queen who refused to be painted -- a four-course dinner of frogs, frogs, frogs and frogs -- villeggiatura -- french refugees at turin -- their heartrending plight -- vienna -- news of the "awful murder" of louis xvi. and marie antoinette -- barefoot princess lichtenstein -- inducements to visit russia -- journey thither via dresden -- the sistine madonna. meanwhile, it being my desire to see france again, i reached turin with this end in view. the two aunts of louis xvi. had been kind enough to give me letters to clotilda, queen of sardinia, their niece. they sent word that they very much wished to have a portrait done by me, and consequently, as soon as i was settled, i presented myself before her majesty. she received me very well after reading the letters of princess adelaide and princess victoria. she told me that she regretted having to refuse her aunts, but that, having renounced the world altogether, she must decline being painted. what i saw indeed seemed quite in accord with her statement and her resolve. the queen of sardinia had her hair cut short and wore on her head a little cap, which, like the rest of her garb, was the simplest conceivable. her leanness struck me particularly, as i had seen her when she was very young, before her marriage, when her stoutness was so pronounced that she was called "fat milady" in france. be it that this change was caused by too austere religious practices, or by the sufferings which the misfortunes of her family had made her undergo, the fact was that she had altered beyond recognition. the king joined her in the room where she received me. he was likewise so pale and thin that it was painful to look at them together. i lost no time in going to see madame, the wife of louis xviii. she not only accorded me a warm welcome, but arranged picturesque drives for me in the neighbourhood of turin, which i took with her lady-in-waiting, mme. de gourbillon, and her son. said surroundings are very beautiful, but our first expedition was not very auspicious. we set out in the heat of the day to visit a monastery situated high up on a mountain. as the mountain was very steep, we were obliged to get out of the carriage when we had gone half way and then climb on foot. i remember passing a spring of the clearest water, whose drops sparkled like diamonds, and which peasants declared to be a cure for sundry diseases. after climbing so long that we were exhausted, we at length arrived at the monastery dying with heat and hunger. the table was already laid for the monks and for travellers, which filled us with joy, since it may be imagined how impatient we were for dinner. as there was some delay, we thought that something special was being done for us, seeing that madame had recommended us to the monks in a letter she had given us addressed to them. at last a dish of frogs' breasts was served, which i took for a chicken stew. but as soon as i tasted it i found it impossible to eat another morsel, hungry as i was. then three other dishes were brought on, boiled, fried and grilled, and i set great hopes on each in turn. alas! they were only frogs again! so we ate nothing but dry bread, and drank water, these monks never drinking nor offering wine. my heart's desire was then an omelet--but there were no eggs in the house. after my visit to the monastery i met porporati, who wanted me to live with him. he proposed occupying a farm he owned two miles from turin, where he had some plain but comfortable rooms. i gladly accepted this offer, as i hated living in town, and at once went to establish myself with my daughter and her governess in this retreat. the farm stood in the open country, surrounded with fields, and little streams edged by trees high enough to form delightful bowers. from morning till night i took rapturous walks in these enchanting solitudes. my child enjoyed the pure air as much as i did the quiet, peaceful life that we led. alas! it was in this peaceful place, while i was in such a happy state of mind, that i was struck a most cruel blow. the cart which brought our letters having come one evening, the carter handed me one from my friend m. de rivière, my sister-in-law's brother, who apprised me of the dreadful events of the th of august and supplied me with some horrible details. i was quite overcome, and made up my mind to go back to turin immediately. on entering the town, great heavens! what did i behold! streets, squares, were all filled with men and women of all ages who had fled from french towns and come to turin in search of a home. they were coming in by thousands, and the sight broke my heart. most of them brought neither baggage, nor money, nor even food, for they had had no time to do anything but think of saving their lives. since then the case has been cited to me of the aged duchess de villeroi, whose lady's maid, possessing a small sum of money, kept her alive on the way by a daily expenditure of ten sous. the children were crying with hunger in lamentable fashion. in fact, i never saw anything more pitiful. the king of sardinia ordered these unfortunates to be housed and fed, but there was not room for all. madame also did much to succour them; we went all over the town, accompanied by her equerry, seeking lodgings and victuals for the poor wretches, without being able to find as many of either as were wanted. [illustration: marie antoinette, queen of france.] never shall i forget the impression made upon me by an old soldier, decorated with the cross of st. louis, who might have been about sixty-five years old. he was a fine man with a noble mien, supporting himself against the curbstone at the corner of a lonely street; he accosted nobody and asked for nothing; i believe he would rather have died of hunger than beg, but the profound unhappiness imprinted on his face compelled interest at first sight. we went straight to him, giving him a little money that remained to us, and he thanked us with sobs in his throat. the next day he was lodged in the king's palace, as several other refugees were, for there was no more room in the town. it may well be imagined that i abandoned the plan of going to paris. i decided to leave for vienna instead. vienna is of considerable extent, if you count its thirty-two suburbs. it is full of very fine palaces. the imperial museum boasts pictures by the greatest masters, and i often went to admire them, as well as those belonging to prince lichtenstein. his gallery comprises seven rooms, of which one contains only pictures by van dyck and the others some fine titians, caravaggios, rubens, canalettos, and so on. there are also several masterpieces by the last-named painter in the imperial museum. it has been said with truth that the prater is one of the best promenades in existence. it is a long, magnificent avenue in which large numbers of elegant carriages drive up and down, and which is lined on either side by sitting spectators, just as in the great avenue of the tuileries. but what renders the prater more pleasant and more picturesque is that the avenue leads to a wood, which is not very thick, and full of deer so tame that one can approach them without frightening them. there is another promenade on the bank of the danube, where every sunday various companies of the middle classes meet together to eat fried chicken. the park of schoenbrunn is also well frequented, especially on sundays. its broad avenues, and the pretty resting places on the heights at the end of the park, make it very pleasant for walking in. in vienna i went to several balls, especially to those given by the russian ambassador, count rasomovski. they danced the waltz there with such fury that i could not imagine how all these people, spinning round at such a rate, did not fall down from giddiness; but men and women were so accustomed to this violent exercise that they never rested a single moment while a ball lasted. the "polonaise" was often danced, too, and was much less fatiguing, for this dance is nothing more than a procession in which you quietly walk two by two. it suits pretty women to perfection, as there is time to look their faces and figures all over. i also wanted to see a great court ball. i was invited to one. the emperor francis ii. had taken for his second wife maria theresa of the two sicilies, daughter to the queen of naples. i had painted this princess in , but i found her so changed on meeting her at this ball that i had difficulty in recognising her. her nose had lengthened, and her cheeks had sunk so much that she resembled her father. i was sorry for her sake that she had not kept her mother's features, who reminded me strongly of our charming queen of france. a person whose friendship i had great pleasure in renewing at vienna was the countess de brionne, princess de lorraine. she had been most kind to me in my early youth, and i resumed the agreeable habit of supping at her house, where i often met the valiant prince nassau, so formidable in a fight, so gentle and modest in a _salon_. i also made frequent visits at the house of the countess de rombec, sister of count cobentzel. the countess de rombec gathered about her the most distinguished society of vienna. it was under her roof that i saw prince metternich and his son, who has since become prime minister, and who was then nothing but a very handsome young man. i there met again the amiable prince de ligne; he told us about the delightful journey he had made in the crimea with the empress catherine ii., and inspired me with a wish to see that great ruler. in the same house i encountered the duchess de guiche, whose lovely face had not changed in the least. her mother, the duchess de polignac, lived permanently at a place near vienna. it was there that she heard of the death of louis xvi., which affected her health very seriously, but when she heard the dreadful news of the queen's death she succumbed altogether. her grief changed her to such an extent that her pretty face became unrecognisable, and every one foresaw that she had not much longer to live. she did, in fact, die in a little while, leaving her family and some friends who would not leave her disconsolate at their loss. i can judge how terrible that which had happened in france must have been to her by the sorrow i experienced myself. i learned nothing from the newspapers, for i had read them no more since the day when, having opened one at mme. de rombec's, i had found the names of nine persons of my acquaintance who had been guillotined. people even took care to hide all political pamphlets from me. i thus heard of the horrible occurrence through my brother, who wrote it down and sent the letter without giving any further particulars whatever. his heart broken, he simply wrote that louis xvi. and marie antoinette had perished on the scaffold. afterward, from compassion toward myself, i always abstained from putting the least question concerning what accompanied or preceded that awful murder, so that i should have known nothing about it to this very day had it not been for a certain fact to which i may possibly refer in the future. as soon as spring came i took a little house in a village near vienna and went to settle there. this village, called huitzing, was adjacent to the park of schoenbrunn. i took with me to huitzing the large portrait i was then doing of the princess lichtenstein, to finish it. this young princess was very well built; her pretty face had a sweet, angelic expression, which gave me the idea of representing her as iris. i painted her standing, as if about to fly into the air. she had about her a fluttering, rainbow-coloured scarf. of course i painted her with naked feet, but when the picture was hung in her husband's gallery the heads of the family were greatly scandalised at seeing the princess exhibited without shoes, and the prince told me that he had had a pair of nice, little slippers placed under the portrait, which slippers, so he had informed the grandparents, had slipped off her feet and fallen on the ground. at vienna i was as happy as any one possibly could be away from her kin and country. in the winter the city offered one of the most agreeable and brilliant societies of europe, and when the fine weather returned i delightedly sought my little country retreat. not thinking of leaving austria before i could safely return to france, the russian ambassador and some of his compatriots urged me strongly to go to st. petersburg, where, they assured me, the empress would be pleased to see me. everything that the prince de ligne had told me about catherine ii. inspired me with an irrepressible desire to get a glance at that potentate. moreover i reasoned correctly that even a short stay in russia would complete the fortune i had decided to make before resuming residence in paris. so i made up my mind to go. [illustration: queen marie antoinette.] after a sojourn at vienna of two years and a half, i left that place in april of the year for prague. i then passed on to budweis, whose surroundings are most engaging. the town is deserted, the fortifications are in ruins; there are only old men and some women and children to be met with--and not many of those. finally we reached dresden by a very narrow road skirting the elbe at a great height, the river flowing through a broad valley. the very day after my arrival i visited the famous dresden gallery, unexcelled in the world. its masterpieces are so well known that i render no special account. i will only observe that here, as everywhere else, one recognises how far raphael stands above all other painters. i had inspected several rooms of the gallery, when i found myself before a picture which filled me with an admiration greater than anything else in the art of painting could have evoked. it represents the virgin, standing on some clouds and holding the infant jesus in her arms. this figure is of a beauty and a nobility worthy of the divine brush that traced it; the face of the child bears an expression at once innocent and heavenly; the draperies are most accurately drawn, and their colouring is exquisite. at the right of the virgin is a saint done with admirable fidelity to life, his two hands being especially to be noted. at the left is a young saint, with head inclined, looking at two angels at the bottom of the picture. her face is all loveliness, truth and modesty. the two little angels are leaning on their hands, their eyes raised to the persons above them, and their heads are done with an ingenuity and a delicacy not to be conveyed in words. being in great haste to get to st. petersburg, i went from dresden to berlin, where i only remained five days, my project being to return thither and make a longer stay on my way back from russia, for the purpose of seeing prussia's charming queen. chapter vii saint petersburg arrival at st. petersburg -- the beautiful grandduchess elisabeth -- catherine ii. receives mme. lebrun -- and is most gracious -- petty court intrigues -- a visit to count strogonoff -- hospitality of the russians -- an ambassador as gardener -- princess dolgoruki and her hideous admirer -- the extravagances of potemkin -- his end. i entered st. petersburg on the th of july, , by the road from peterhoff, which gave me a favourable idea of the city, for this road is lined on both sides by delightful country houses, with gardens of the best taste in the english style. their residents have taken advantage of the soil, which is very marshy, to adorn the gardens--where there are kiosks and pretty bridges--by canals and little streams. but it is a pity that a dreadful dampness spoils this pleasant scene of an evening; even before sunset such a fog rises over the road that one seems to be enveloped in thick, dark smoke. magnificent as i had conceived the city to be, i was enchanted by the aspect of its monuments, its handsome mansions, and its broad streets, one of which, called the prospekt, is a mile long. the neva, clear and limpid, cuts through the town, laden with vessels and barks unceasingly moving up and down, and this greatly adds to the liveliness of the town. the quays of the neva are of granite, like those of the large canals dug through the town by catherine. on one bank of the river are splendid edifices: the academy of arts, the academy of sciences and a number of others are reflected in the neva. there was no grander sight on a moonlight night, i was told, than the bulk of those majestic piles, resembling ancient temples. altogether, st. petersburg took me back to the times of agamemnon, partly through the grandeur of the buildings and partly through the popular garb, which reminded me of the dress of antiquity. though i have just spoken of moonlight, i was unable to enjoy it at the time of my arrival, for in the month of july there is not a single hour of actual darkness in st. petersburg. the sun sets at about half-past ten, and it is merely dusk until twilight, which begins half an hour after midnight, so that one can always see plainly. i have often supped at eleven o'clock by daylight. my first care was to take a good rest, for, after riga, the roads had been most horrible. large stones, one on top of the other, gave my carriage, which was one of the roughest in the world, a violent shock at every moment. and the inns being so bad as to exclude every possibility of staying at them, we had jolted and jerked on to st. petersburg without a stop. i was far from recovered from all my fatigue--since the term of my residence in st. petersburg had been only twenty-four hours--when a visitor was announced in the person of the french ambassador, count esterhazy. he congratulated me on my arrival at st. petersburg, telling me that he was about to inform the empress of it and at the same time to take her orders for my presentation. very little later i received a visit from the count de choiseul-gouffier. while conversing with him i confessed what happiness it would give me to see the great catherine, but i did not dissemble the fright and embarrassment i expected to undergo when i should be presented to that powerful princess. "you will find it quite easy," he replied. "when you see the empress you will be surprised at her good nature; she is really an excellent woman." i acknowledge that i was astonished by his remark, the justice of which i could scarcely believe, in view of what i had heard up to that time. it is true that the prince de ligne, during the charming narration of his journey in the crimea, had recounted several facts proving that this great princess had manners that were as gracious as they were simple, but an excellent woman was hardly the thing to call her. however, the same evening count esterhazy, on returning from czarskoiesielo, where the empress was living, came to tell me that her majesty would receive me the next day at one o'clock. such a quick presentation, which i had not hoped for, put me into a very awkward position. i had nothing but very plain muslin dresses, as i usually wore no others, and it was impossible to have an ornamental gown made from one day to the next, even at st. petersburg. count esterhazy had said he would call for me at ten o'clock precisely and take me to breakfast with his wife, who also lived at czarskoiesielo, so that when the appointed hour struck i started with serious apprehensions about my dress, which certainly was no court dress. on arriving at mme. d'esterhazy's, i, in fact, took note of her amazement. her obliging civility did not prevent her from asking me, "have you not brought another gown?" i turned crimson at her question, and explained how time had been wanting to have a more suitable gown made. her displeased looks increased my anxiety to such a degree that i needed to summon up all my courage when the moment came to go before the empress. the count gave me his arm, and we were walking across a portion of the park, when, at a ground-floor window, i espied a young person who was watering a pot of pansies. she was seventeen years old at most; her features were well formed and regular, her face a perfect oval; her fine complexion was not bright, but was of a paleness completely in harmony with the expression of her countenance, whose sweetness was angelic. her fair hair floated over her neck and forehead. she was clad in a white tunic, a carelessly knotted girdle surrounding a waist as slender and supple as a nymph's. as i have described her, so ravishingly did this young person stand out against the background of her apartment, adorned with pillars and draped in pink and silver gauze, that i exclaimed, "that is psyche!" it was princess elisabeth, the wife of alexander. she addressed me, and kept me long enough to tell me a thousand flattering things. she then added, "we have wanted you here for a long time, mme. lebrun--so much so that i have sometimes dreamed you had already come." i parted from her with regret, and have always preserved a memory of that charming vision. a few minutes later i was alone with the autocrat of all the russias. the ambassador had told me i must kiss her hand, in accordance with which custom she drew off one of her gloves, and this ought to have reminded me what to do. but i forgot all about it. the truth is, that the sight of this famous woman made such an impression upon me that i could not possibly think of anything else but to look at her. i was at first extremely surprised to find her short; i had imagined her a great height--something like her renown. she was very stout, but still had a handsome face, which her white hair framed to perfection. genius seemed to have its seat on her broad, high forehead. her eyes were soft and small, her nose was quite greek, her complexion lively, and her features very mobile. she at once said in a voice that was soft though rather thick: "i am delighted, madame, to see you here; your reputation had preceded you. i am fond of the arts and especially of painting. i am not an adept, but a fancier." everything else she said during this interview, which was rather long, in reference to her wish that i might like russia well enough to remain a long time, bore the stamp of such great amiability that my shyness vanished, and by the time i took leave of her majesty i was entirely reassured. only i could not forgive myself for not having kissed her hand, which was very beautiful and very white, and i deplored that oversight the more as count esterhazy reproached me with it. as for what i was wearing, she did not seem to have paid the least attention to it. or else perhaps she may have been easier to please than our ambassadress. i went over part of the gardens at czarskoiesielo, which are a veritable little fairyland. the empress had a terrace from them communicating with her apartment, and on this terrace she kept a large number of birds. i was told that every morning she went out to feed them, and that this was one of her chief pleasures. directly after my audience her majesty testified her wish to have me spend the summer in that beautiful region. she commanded her stewards, of whom the old prince bariatinski was one, to give me an apartment in the castle, as she desired to have me near her, so that she might see me paint. but i afterward found out that these gentlemen took no pains to put me near the empress, and that in spite of her repeated orders they always maintained that they had no lodgings at their disposal. what astonished me most of all, when i was informed of this matter, was that these courtiers, suspecting me to belong to the party of the count d'artois, were afraid lest i had come to get esterhazy replaced by another ambassador. it is probable that the count was in connivance with them about all this, but anybody was surely little acquainted with me who did not know that i was too busy with my art to give any time to politics, even if i had not always felt an aversion to everything smacking of intrigue. moreover, aside from the honour of being lodged with the empress and the pleasure of inhabiting such a fine place, everything would have been stiff and irksome for me at czarskoiesielo. i have always had the greatest need to enjoy my liberty, and, for the sake of following my own inclination, i have always infinitely preferred living in my own house. moreover, the reception i met with in russia was well calculated to console me for a petty court intrigue. i cannot say how eagerly and with what kind-hearted affability a stranger is sought after in this country, especially if possessing some talent. my letters of introduction became quite superfluous; not only was i at once invited to live with the best and pleasantest families, but i found several former acquaintances in st. petersburg, and even some old friends. first, there was count strogonoff, a true lover of the arts, whose portrait i had painted at paris in my early youth. it was to us both an extreme pleasure to meet once more. he owned a splendid collection of pictures in st. petersburg, and near the town, at kaminostroff, a delightful italian villa, where he gave a great dinner every sunday. he called for me to take me there, and i was enraptured with the place. the villa stood by the high road, and its windows overlooked the neva. the garden, whose boundaries were immense, was laid out in the english manner. a number of boats arrived from all directions, bringing visitors to count strogonoff's, for a number of people who were not invited to dinner came to walk in the park. the count also allowed merchants to set up their stalls there, so that this beautiful place was enlivened with an amusing fair, especially as the costumes of the different neighbouring districts were picturesque and varied. about three o'clock we went up on a covered terrace lined with pillars, bright daylight falling between them from every side. on one hand we enjoyed the view of the park, and on the other that of the neva, covered with a thousand boats. the weather was the finest in the world, for the summers are splendid in russia, a country that in july i have often found hotter than italy. we dined on this same terrace, and the dinner was magnificent; at dessert gorgeous fruits were served, and remarkably fine melons, which seemed to me a great luxury. as soon as we sat down at table delightful instrumental music was heard, and continued throughout the dinner. the overture to "iphigenia" was executed entrancingly. i was greatly surprised when count strogonoff informed me that each of the musicians played but one note; it was impossible for me to conceive how all these individual sounds could form into such a perfect whole, and how any expression could grow out of such a mechanical performance. after dinner we took a delightful walk in the park; then, toward evening, we went back to the terrace, whence, at nightfall, we witnessed a very fine display of fireworks which the count had had in store for us. reflected in the waters of the neva, these fireworks were of beautiful effect. finally, by way of concluding the pleasures of the day, there arrived in two very narrow little boats some indians, who danced before us. their dances consisted in going through light movements without stirring from their places, and entertained us considerably. count strogonoff's house was far from being the only one kept with such splendour. at st. petersburg, as at moscow, a number of noblemen owning enormous fortunes were in the habit of setting an open table, so that a well-recommended stranger was never under the necessity of having recourse to an inn. there was a dinner or a supper everywhere; nothing was embarrassing but your choice. i remember, toward the end of my stay in st. petersburg, how prince narischkin, the grand equerry, always held open table to the extent of twenty-five or thirty covers for strangers who were recommended to him. these hospitable customs exist in the interior of russia, whither modern civilisation has not yet penetrated. when russian noblemen go upon visits to their estates, which are usually situated at great distances from the capital, they stop on the way in the houses of their countrymen, where, without being personally known by the host, they, their servants and their horses are taken in and treated as handsomely as possible, even should they remain a month. i once saw a traveller who had journeyed across this vast country with two friends. all three had traversed those distant provinces as they might have done during the golden age, in the days of the patriarchs. they had everywhere been lodged and fed with such liberality that their purses had become almost useless. they had not been able to so much as force drink-money on the people who had waited upon them and cared for their horses. their hosts, who for the most part were traders or husbandmen, had expressed astonishment at the warmth of their gratitude. "if we were in your country," said they, "you would do the same for us." i only wish this had been true. the summer ends in russia with the month of august, and there is no autumn. i often went walking at czarskoiesielo, whose park, bounded by the sea, is one of the loveliest sights imaginable. it is full of monuments which the empress was wont to call her caprices. there are a superb marble bridge in the palladian style, turkish baths--trophies of romazoff's and orloff's victories--a temple with thirty-two pillars, and then the colonnade and the great stairway of hercules. the park has unrivalled avenues of trees. opposite the castle is a long, broad lawn, and at the end of it a cherry orchard, where i remember having frequently eaten excellent cherries. [illustration: the princess de talleyrand.] count cobentzel very much wished me to make the acquaintance of a woman whose cleverness and beauty i had often heard vaunted--the princess dolgoruki. i received an invitation from her to dine at alexandrovski, where she had a country house, and the count came for me to take me there with my daughter. this very large house was furnished without ostentation, and it was a great pleasure to me to watch the continual passage of the boats, in which the rowers sang in chorus. the songs of the russian people have a somewhat barbarous originality, but are melancholy and melodious. the beauty of princess dolgoruki struck me very much. her features had the greek character mixed with something jewish, especially in profile. her long, dark chestnut hair, carelessly taken up, touched her shoulders. her figure was perfect, and in her whole person she exhibited at once nobility and grace without the least affectation. she received me with so much amiability and civility that i willingly acceded to her request that i might stay a week with her. the charming princess kurakin, whose acquaintance i had made, was living with the princess dolgoruki, these ladies and count cobentzel keeping house together. the company was very numerous, and no one thought of anything but amusement. after dinner we took delightful rides in handsome boats furnished with red velvet, gold-fringed curtains. a choir, preceding us in a plainer boat, charmed us with their singing, which was always perfectly exact, even at the highest notes. the day of my arrival we had music in the evening; the next day there was a delightful play. dalayrac's "underground" was given. princess dolgoruki played the part of camille; young de la ribaussière, who afterward became minister in russia, played the boy; and count cobentzel, the gardener. i remember how, during the performance, a messenger arrived from vienna with despatches for the count, who was austrian ambassador at st. petersburg, and how, at the sight of the man dressed as a gardener, he did not want to give up the despatches, this giving rise to a most diverting argument between them behind the scenes. at the end of the week, the whole of which had seemed to last but a minute, i was obliged, to my regret, to leave the hospitable roof of princess dolgoruki, as i had made a number of engagements to paint portraits. i, however, formed several connections at alexandrovski which proved infinitely agreeable during my whole stay in russia. count cobentzel was passionately devoted to the princess dolgoruki, without her responding in the least to his importunities; but the coolness she showed toward his intentions by no means drove him away. his sole object was the happiness of being in her presence; whether in the country or in town, he scarcely ever left her for a moment. so soon as his despatches, written with great facility, were sent off, he rushed to her side and made a complete slave of himself. he was seen to fly at the least word, the least gesture of his divinity. if a play was given he took any part she offered him, even if the rôle was not at all suited to his appearance. for count cobentzel, who looked about fifty, was very ugly, and squinted horribly. he was rather tall, but also extremely fat, which, however, did not prevent him from being quite active, particularly when it was a case of executing the demands of his dearly beloved princess. otherwise he was quick and clever, his conversation was enlivened with a thousand anecdotes which he could recount to perfection, and i always knew him as the best and most obliging of men. what made the princess dolgoruki indifferent to the sighs of count cobentzel and to those of many other admirers was the fact that from one of them she had received attentions more brilliant than ever woman had had lavished upon her by any lovelorn king. the famous potemkin--he who had said the word "impossible" should be ruled out of the dictionary--had testified his adoration for her with a magnificence surpassing all that we read of in the "thousand and one nights." when, in , after making her journey in the crimea, the empress catherine ii. returned to st. petersburg, prince potemkin remained behind in command of the army, several of the generals having brought their wives. it was then that he had occasion to meet princess dolgoruki. her name, too, was catherine, and the prince made a great banquet for her, nominally in honour of the empress. at table the princess was seated by his side. at dessert, on the table were put crystal goblets full of diamonds, which were served to the ladies by the spoonful. the queen of the festival observing this luxury, potemkin whispered to her, "since this celebration is for you, why should you be astonished at anything?" he would spare no sacrifice to satisfy a wish or a whim of that charming woman. learning one day that she was in want of ball slippers of a kind she usually sent for to france, potemkin despatched an express messenger to paris, who hastened day and night to bring back these slippers. it was well known in st. petersburg that to afford the princess dolgoruki a spectacle he much desired her to see he had assaulted the fortress of otschakoff sooner than had been agreed upon, and perhaps sooner than was prudent. no woman, it seems to me, had greater dignity of mien and manner than princess dolgoruki. having seen my "sibyl," about which she was very enthusiastic, she wished me to make her portrait in this style, and i had the pleasure of doing her bidding to her entire satisfaction. the portrait done, she sent me a very handsome carriage, and put on my arm a bracelet made of a tress of her hair with a diamond inscription reading, "adorn her who adorns her century." i was deeply touched by the graciousness and delicacy of such a gift. at the time of my reaching st. petersburg, prince potemkin had already been there some years, but he was still spoken of as though he had been a wizard. some idea of what an extraordinary and high-flying imagination he had may be obtained from reading what the prince de ligne and the count de ségur have written about the journey he arranged for the empress catherine ii. in the crimea; those palaces, those wooden villages built all along the route, as if by a magic wand, that huge forest going up in flames by way of fireworks for her majesty--the whole journey, in fact, was a fantastic affair. his niece, countess skavronska, said to me in vienna, "had my uncle known you, he would have loaded you with distinctions and riches." certain it is that at every opportunity this famous man was generous to prodigality and luxurious to madness. all his tastes were extravagant, all his habits royal, so much so that, although he possessed a fortune exceeding that of some sovereigns, the prince de ligne told me that he had known him to be without money. favour and power had accustomed prince potemkin to satisfy his slightest desires. here is an example which proves the point. one day, when the talk ran on the size of one of his adjutants, he declared that a certain officer in the russian army--whom he named--was taller still. after every one who knew the officer in question had contradicted potemkin, he forthwith sent off a messenger with an order to bring back with him this officer, who was then eight hundred miles away. upon hearing that he had been sent for by the prince, his joy was unbounded, since he believed that he had been promoted to a higher rank. his disappointment may therefore be imagined when, on his arrival in camp, he was informed that he was to be measured with potemkin's adjutant, and that he must then return without any other reward than the fatigue of the long journey. the man whom a long period of favour had, so to say, accustomed to reign beside the sovereign was unable to survive the thought of disgrace. catherine ii. sent to prince repnin her orders to treat for peace, to which potemkin was strongly opposed. angry as possible, he set out upon the instant in the hope of preventing the signature, but only to learn at yassy that peace was concluded. this news was fatal to him. already indisposed, he now fell mortally ill, which did not hinder him from at once beginning the return journey to st. petersburg. but in a few hours his ailment grew so serious that it became out of the question for him to support the movement of a carriage. he was laid out in a meadow and covered with his cloak, and there potemkin breathed his last sigh, on the th of october, , in the arms of countess branicka, his niece. plato zouboff, a young lieutenant of the guard, succeeded potemkin in the favour of the empress, who showered honours and wealth upon him. chapter viii life in russia painting russian royalties -- festivities at court -- the pangs of waiting for dinner -- "to keep warm, spend the winter in russia" -- the hardiness of its common people -- who are well suited with serfdom -- and remarkably honest -- the quaint ceremonial of blessing the neva -- various social customs. upon her majesty's return from czarskoiesielo count strogonoff came to me with her command to paint the two grand duchesses, alexandrina and helen. these princesses might have been thirteen or fourteen years old, and their faces were angelic, though of entirely different expression. their complexions especially were so tender and delicate that one might have supposed they lived on ambrosia. the eldest, alexandrina, was of the greek type of beauty and very much resembled alexander, but the face of the younger, helen, was far more subtle. i grouped them together, holding and looking at the empress's portrait; their dress was somewhat greek in style, quite simple and modest. as soon as i had done their pictures the empress ordered me to paint the grand duchess elisabeth, not long married to alexander. i have already said what a ravishing person this princess was; i should very much have liked not to represent such a heavenly figure in common dress, and i have always wanted to paint an historical picture of her and alexander, so regular were the features of both. i painted her standing, in full court dress, arranging some flowers near a basketful of others. when i had done her large portrait she had another done for her mother, in which i painted her leaning on a cushion, with a diaphanous violet wrap. i can say that the more sittings the grand duchess elisabeth gave me, the kinder and more affectionate did she become. one morning, while she was posing, i was seized with a giddy fit and grew so dazed that i had to close my eyes. she took alarm, and herself quickly ran for water, bathed my eyes, tended me with inexpressible kindness, and sent to inquire after me as soon as i had got home. about this time, too, i did a portrait of the grand duchess anne, the wife of the grand duke constantine. she, born as princess of coburg, without having a celestial face like her sister-in-law, was nevertheless sweetly pretty. she was probably sixteen, and her features were all life and mirth. not that this young princess ever knew much happiness in russia. if it can be said that alexander inherited his good looks and his character from his mother, it is equally true that this was not the case with constantine, who strongly resembled his father, without, however, being quite as ugly, but like him endowed with a marvellously quick temper. in that era the russian court usually included such a large number of beautiful women that a ball at the empress afforded an exquisite sight. i was present at the most magnificent ball she ever gave. the empress, grandly arrayed, sat at the end of the room, attended by the first personages of the court. close to her stood the grand duchess marie, and paul, alexander and constantine. an open balustrade separated them from the space where the dancing was going forward. the ball consisted of nothing but repetitions of the dance called "polonaise," in which i had for my first partner young prince bariatinski, with whom i went the round of the room and afterward took a seat on the bench to watch all the dancers. i could not tell how many pretty women i saw pass before me, but i cannot help saying that, amidst all these beauties, the princesses of the imperial family carried off the palm. they were all habited in greek costumes, with tunics attached at the shoulder with large diamond buckles. i had taken a hand in the grand duchess elisabeth's dress, so that her costume was the most correct. paul's daughters, however, helen and alexandrina, wore on their heads veils of light-blue gauze, strewn with silver, which lent their faces an almost divine appearance. the splendour of all that surrounded the empress, the gorgeousness of the room, the handsome people, the profusion of diamonds, and the sparkling of the thousand lights made a veritable enchantment of this ball. a few days later i went to a gala dinner at court. when i entered the room the invited ladies were all there, standing by the table, on which the first dish was already served. a moment after, a large door with two valves was thrown open, and the empress appeared. i have said that she was short, but nevertheless on state occasions, her erect head, her eagle eye, her countenance so used to command--all was so symbolic of majesty that she seemed to be the queen of the world. she wore the ribbons of three orders. her garb was plain and dignified, consisting of a muslin tunic embroidered with gold and enclasped by a diamond belt, a pair of wide sleeves being turned back in oriental fashion. over this tunic was a red velvet dolman with very short sleeves. the cap set on her white hair was not adorned with bows, but with diamonds of the greatest beauty. when her majesty had taken her place all the ladies sat down to the table, and, according to universal custom, laid their napkins on their knees, while the empress fastened hers with two pins, just as napkins are fastened on children. she soon noticed that the ladies did not eat, and suddenly burst out: "ladies, you do not want to follow my example, and you are only pretending to eat! i have adopted the habit of pinning my napkin, as otherwise i could not even eat an egg without spilling some of it on my collar." i, in fact, observed her to dine with a very hearty appetite. a good orchestra played during the whole meal, the musicians being in a large gallery at the end of the room. relating to dinners, i may say here that certainly the saddest i ever went to at st. petersburg was at a sister's of zuboff, where i had neglected to present a letter of introduction. six months of my sojourn in russia had gone by, when i met her one evening coming out of the theatre. she stepped over to me and said most politely that she was still waiting for a letter which had been given to me for her. scarcely knowing what excuse to make, i replied that i had mislaid the letter, but that i would look for it again and hasten to bring it to her. i accordingly went one morning to visit the countess d----, and she invited me to dine with her the day after the next. it was then the custom all over st. petersburg to dine at half-past two, and i therefore went to the countess's at that hour with my daughter, who was also invited. we were conducted to a very melancholy drawing-room, on the way to which i observed no preparations whatever for dinner. one hour, two hours went by, but there was no more question of sitting down to table than if we had just taken our morning coffee. at last two servants came in and opened several card-tables, and although it seemed rather strange to me that any one should eat in a drawing-room, i flattered myself that dinner was now to be served. but i was wrong. the servants went out, and in a few minutes a number of the guests had settled down to play cards. about six o'clock my poor daughter and i were so starved that, when we looked into a mirror, we were frightened and sorry for ourselves. i felt as if i should die. not until half-past seven were we informed that the meal was ready; but our poor stomachs had gone through too much agony; we were unable to eat anything at all. i then found out that the countess d---- dined at the hour usual in london. the countess ought to have notified me, but perhaps she imagined that the whole universe was aware of her dinner hour. as a rule, nothing was more distasteful to me than to dine in town, but i was sometimes obliged to do it, especially in russia, where one runs a risk of mortally offending people if one declines their invitations too often. i disliked the dinners the more as there were such a number of them. they were highly luxurious; most of the nobility had very good french cooks, and the fare was incomparable. a quarter of an hour before the guests sat down at table a servant would pass round a tray with all sorts of cordials and small slices of buttered bread. no cordials were taken after dinner, but always superior malaga wine. it is the custom in russia for the great ladies, even at their own houses, to go into table before the guests, so that the princess dolgoruki and others would take me by the arm, in order that i might go in at the same time as they, for it would be impossible to exceed the russian ladies in the urbanities of good society. i will even go so far as to say that they are without the haughtiness chargeable to some of our french ladies. at st. petersburg the rigour of the climate would be unnoticed by any one who remains indoors, to such a degree have the russians perfected the means of keeping their houses warm. from the very porter's door all is heated by such excellent stoves that the fires maintained in the chimney places are purely ornamental. the stairways and corridors are of the same temperature as the rooms, whose communicating doors are left open without any inconvenience resulting. when the emperor paul, then grand duke only, came to france for the first time, he said to the parisians: "in st. petersburg you see the cold, but here you feel it." and when, after spending seven and a half years in russia, i went back to paris, where the princess dolgoruki was also staying, i remember that on a certain day, on which i had gone to see her, we were both so cold in front of her fireplace that we said, "we must go to spend the winter in russia to get warm." [illustration: isabel czartoryska a polish noblewoman.] for going out, such precautions are taken that even foreigners are hardly affected by the severity of the weather. every one wears velvet, fur-lined boots in his carriage, and cloaks likewise heavily lined with fur. at seventeen degrees below zero the theatres are closed, and every one remains at home. i am perhaps the only person who, not suspecting how cold it was, ever took it into my head to pay a visit when the thermometer was at eighteen. the countess golovin lived rather far away, in the broad street called the prospekt, and from my house to hers i met not a single carriage, which surprised me considerably. i nevertheless went on. the cold was such that at first i thought my carriage windows must be open. upon seeing me enter her drawing-room, the countess exclaimed: "heavens! how could you go out this evening? do you not know that it is nearly twenty degrees?" this made me think of my poor coachman, and without taking off my pelisse i at once returned to my carriage, and was driven home as quickly as possible. but the cold had so attacked my head that i was benumbed. my head was treated with cologne water to restore the circulation; otherwise i should have gone mad. one very astonishing thing is the small effect which this severe temperature has on the common people. far from their health suffering in consequence, it has been observed that there are more centenarians in russia than anywhere else. in st. petersburg, as in moscow, the great lords and all the notables of the empire drive six-or eight-in-hand; their postilions are little boys of eight or ten, who ride with amazing dexterity. there are from two to eight horses, and it is curious how these little fellows, so lightly clad, with their shirts sometimes open on their chests, cheerfully expose themselves to cold which certainly would kill a french or prussian grenadier in a few hours. as for me, who was content with two horses for my carriage, i was surprised at the submissiveness and resignation of the coachmen. they never complained. in the most rigorous weather, when waiting for their masters either at the theatre or a ball, they sit still without budging, and only knock their feet against the box to get a little warmth, while the little postilions lie down at the bottom of the staircases. i must acknowledge, however, that the coachmen are provided by their masters with furred coats and gloves, and that, in the event of the cold being unusual, if any noblemen gives a party or a ball he has strong liquor distributed among them, and wood to build campfires in the courtyard and the street. the common people of russia are in general ugly, but their behaviour is at once simple and dignified, and they are the best creatures in the world. one never sees a drunken man, although the popular beverage is corn brandy. most of the russians of this class live on potatoes and garlic, with oil, which they eat with their bread, so that they always stink, although it is their habit to take a bath every saturday. but their food does not prevent them from singing loudly when at work or rowing their boats, and they often reminded me of something the marquis de chastellux said one evening at my house about the beginning of the revolution: "if their bonds are taken off they will be much more unhappy!" the russians are clever and capable, since they learn all trades with great ease, some of them even gaining success in the arts. one day, at count strogonoff's, i saw an architect who had once been his serf. this young man exhibited so much talent that the count made a present of him to the emperor paul, who made him one of his architects and ordered him to build a theatre-hall after the plans designed and submitted by him. i never saw the hall, but was told that it was very handsome. in the matter of artistic serfs i was less fortunate than the count. as i found myself without a man-servant, after being robbed by one i had brought from vienna, count strogonoff gave me one of his serfs, who was supposed to prepare his daughter-in-law's palette and clean her brushes when she amused herself with painting. this youth, whom i therefore engaged for the same purpose, became persuaded, after serving me for a fortnight, that he was a painter, too, and gave me no rest until i had obtained his freedom from the count to enable him to work with the academy students. he wrote me some letters on this subject that were really curiosities of style and ideas. the count, in yielding to my request, had said, "you may be sure that before long he will want to come back." i gave the young man twenty rubles and the count gave him at least as much. accordingly, he at once hastened to purchase the uniform of the students in painting, and thus attired came to thank me with a triumphant air. about two months later he brought me a large family picture, which was so bad that i could not look at it, and for which the poor young man had been paid so little that, after liquidating all his expenses, he had lost eight rubles of his money. as the count had foreseen, his disappointment made him surrender his wretched liberty and go back to his master. the servants are remarkable for their intelligence. i had one who knew not a word of french, and although i was equally ignorant of russian we understood each other perfectly without the agency of speech. by raising my arm i asked him for my easel, or my paint box, or otherwise conveyed to him by gesture what articles i wanted. he invariably seized my meaning, and was of the greatest value to me. another very precious quality i discovered in him was his honesty, which was proof against all temptations. frequently bank-notes were remitted to me in payment of my pictures, and when i was busy painting i laid them near me on a table. on quitting work i constantly forgot to take away the notes, which sometimes lay there three or four days without his ever abstracting one. moreover, he was a man of exceptional sobriety; i never once saw him drunk. this good servant was called peter; he wept when i left st. petersburg, and i have always sincerely regretted losing him. the russian people in general are honest and gentle by nature. at st. petersburg or moscow not only are great crimes never heard of, but one never hears of thefts. this good and quiet behaviour, surprising in men little beyond barbarism, is attributed by many to the system of servitude they are under. as for me, i believe the reason to be that the russians are extremely religious. not long after my arrival at st. petersburg i went into the country to see the daughter-in-law of my old friend, count strogonoff. his house at kaminostroff was situated at the right of the great highway skirting the neva. i alighted from my carriage, opened a little wicket giving admission to the garden, and reached a room on the ground floor whose door was wide open. so it was very easy to enter countess strogonoff's house. consequently, when i found her in a little sitting-room, and she showed me her apartments, i was greatly astonished to see all her jewels near a window looking out on the garden and therefore within close reach of the high road. this seemed to me the more imprudent as russian ladies are in the habit of exhibiting their diamonds and other ornaments under large cases, such as are to be seen in jewellers' shops. "countess," i asked her, "are you not afraid of being robbed?" "no," was her answer; "there are the best police." and she pointed out, above the jewel-box, various images of the virgin, and st. nicholas, the patron saint of the country, with a lamp burning in front of them. it is a fact that, during the seven years and more which i spent in russia, i on all occasions observed the image of the virgin, or of a saint, and the presence of a child, to have something sacred for a russian. the common people, in speaking to you, never address you otherwise, according to your age, than as mother, father, brother or sister, and in this usage every one is included, even the emperor and the empress and the whole imperial family. in the class above the populace there are a number of people in comfortable circumstances and others very well-to-do. the tradesmen's wives, for instance, spend a great deal on dress, without this appearing to impose any restriction on household expenses. their head-dress especially is always fine and fashionable. on their caps, whose flaps are usually embroidered with small pearls, they wear a broad piece of stuff which falls from the head to the shoulders and down the whole back. this sort of veil throws a shadow on the face, which they assuredly need, seeing that all of them, i know not why, whiten and rouge their faces and pencil their eyebrows in the most absurd manner. when the month of may comes to st. petersburg there is no evidence of spring flowers embalming the air, nor of the nightingale's song, celebrated so much by the poets. the ground is covered with half-melted snow. the doga brings into the neva ice blocks as large as enormous rocks, heaped on top of each other, and these ice blocks renew the cold which has diminished with the breaking of the neva. this dissolution might be called a splendid horror; the noise of it is fearful. close to the exchange the neva is three times as wide as the seine at the pont royal, and one may imagine the effect of this sea of ice cracking in all its parts. in spite of the officials posted all along the quays to prohibit the people from jumping from floe to floe, the boldest venture upon the moving ice for the purpose of crossing the river. before undertaking their dangerous expedition they make the sign of the cross, and then rush on, fully persuaded that if they perish it must be because they were predestined to it. the first who crosses the neva in a boat at the hour of the breaking up presents a silver cup, full of river water, to the emperor, who in turn fills it with gold. the windows are still left stuffed up at this season. russia has no spring, but the vegetation hastens to make up for lost time. one may say with literal truth that the leaves sprout while you watch them. one day at the end of may i went with my daughter for a walk in the summer garden, and, wishing to assure ourselves as to the truth of all we had heard concerning the rapidity of vegetable growth, we took note of some shrub-leaves that were only in bud. we took a long turn in the avenue, then coming back to the spot we had started from, we found the buds open and the leaves completely unrolled. the russians take advantage of all phases of their climate to enjoy themselves. in the severest cold they indulge in sledging parties, either by day or with torches at night. in some places they throw up mountains of snow, down which they slide at a stupendous rate of speed without any danger. men versed in their business push you off from the top of the mountain, and others catch you at the bottom. one of the most interesting ceremonies to be seen is the blessing of the neva. it occurs once a year, and it is the archimandrite who bestows the benediction in presence of the emperor, the imperial family, and all the dignitaries. as at this season the ice of the neva is at least three feet thick, a hole is made through which, after the ceremony, everybody draws up some of the holy water. frequently women are seen to dip their little children in, and sometimes the unfortunate mothers let loose their hold of the poor victims of superstition. but instead of mourning the loss of her child, the mother then gives thanks for the happiness of the angel who has gone to pray for her. the emperor is obliged to drink the first glass of water, it being tendered him by the archimandrite. i have already said that in st. petersburg you must go out into the street to find out how cold it is. and it is likewise true that the russians are not content with giving their houses a springlike temperature; some of their rooms are lined with windowed screens, behind which are arranged boxes and pots containing the lovely flowers that the month of may gives to france. in winter the rooms are lighted most elaborately. they are also scented with hot vinegar into which bits of mint have been thrown and which yields a very agreeable and healthy smell. all apartments are furnished with long, broad divans for men and women to sit on. i became so used to them that after a time i could not sit on a chair. the russian lady's salute is a bow, seeming to me more dignified and graceful than our courtesy. they do not ring for their servants, but signal to them by clapping their hands together, as sultanas are said to do in the harems. every russian lady has a man in full livery at the door of her drawing-room; he is always there to open the door for visitors, whom it was at that time the custom not to announce by name. but what seemed stranger still to me was that some of these ladies made a female serf sleep under their bed. of an evening i went out into society. there were innumerable balls, concerts and theatrical performances, and i thoroughly enjoyed these gatherings, where i found all the urbanity, all the grace of french company. it seemed as though good taste had made a jump with both feet from paris to st. petersburg. nor was there a lack of open houses, and in all of them one was welcomed with the greatest hospitality. one met at about eight and supped at ten. in the meantime tea was drunk, like everywhere else. but the russian tea is so excellent that i--with whom it does not agree, and who must abstain from it--was glad to inhale its aroma. instead of tea i drank hydromel. this tasty beverage is made with good honey and a small fruit picked in the russian woods; it is left in the cellar for a certain length of time before bottling. i found it far preferable to cider, beer, or even lemonade. chapter ix catherine ii. surroundings of st. petersburg -- patriarchal unconventionalities -- an artillery repast -- the greatness of the second catherine -- who lit her own fire and made her own coffee -- and was sworn at by a chimney sweeper -- other domestic amenities in the career of an empress -- the suit of gustavus iv. -- catherine's death -- humiliating funeral incidents. i experienced a great joy when, after breathing frosty air outdoors and air heated by stoves indoors for several months, i witnessed the arrival of summer. i took a great delight in the walks, and hastened to enjoy the beautiful surroundings of st. petersburg. i very often went to the lake of pergola alone with my russian man-servant to take what i called an air-bath. i enjoyed the contemplation of its limpid water, which vividly reflected the trees on its banks. and then i would mount to the heights adjacent. on one side the horizon was bounded by the sea and i could distinguish the sails lit up by the sun. here a silence reigned that was disturbed only by the song of a thousand birds, or sometimes by the sound of a distant bell. the pure air and the wild, picturesque place enchanted me. my faithful peter, who warmed up my little dinner or picked flowers of the field for me, made me think of robinson on his island with friday. the heat being considerable, i often went with my daughter for early walks on the island of krestovski. the extreme point of this island seemed to merge into the sea, on which large vessels were navigating. sometimes we went there in the evening to see the russian peasants dance, their national dress being very picturesque. i remember, on the subject of the excessive heat often prevailing at st. petersburg, a certain day in the month of july of some year in which that month was hotter than in italy. on this day i saw princess dolgoruki's mother, princess bariatinski, who was once as lovely as an angel, and whose clever and spontaneous wit rendered her one of the most fascinating women of st. petersburg, established in her cellar, with her lady's companion seated on the bottom step, very quietly reading to her from a book. but to return to the island of krestovski. taking a row in a boat one day, we came upon a crowd of men and women all bathing together. we even saw from a distance young men naked on horseback, who were thus bathing with their horses. in any other country one would have been shocked by this, but the russian people are really primitively ingenuous. in the winter husband, wife and children sleep together on the stove; if the stove is not large enough, they lie on wooden benches lining their hut, wrapped up simply in their sheepskins. these good people have kept the customs of the ancient patriarchs. a walk which pleased me particularly was one on the island of zelaguin, which, though it had once been a very handsome garden, was now deserted. however, there remained some lovely trees, charming avenues, a temple surrounded with magnificent weeping willows, flowers to please the eye, little running streams, and bridges after the english fashion. in order to enjoy this walk to the full, i took a little house opposite on the bank of the neva. the advantageous situation of my cottage was combined with pleasing diversion, due to the fact that most of the boats, of which there was an unceasing procession up and down the river, gave me a continuous concert of vocal music or wind instruments. the artillery general, melissimo, lived in a pretty house close to mine, and i enjoyed having him for my neighbour, since he was the best and most obliging of men. as the general had spent much time in turkey, his house was a model of oriental comfort and luxury. there was a bathroom lighted from above, in the middle of which was a basin large enough to hold a dozen people. one went down into the water by steps. linen to be used for drying the body after bathing was hung on a golden balustrade circling the basin, and consisted of large pieces of indian mull worked at the bottom in flowers and gold, so that the weight of this embroidery caused the mull to adhere to the skin, which appeared to me an elaborate refinement. round the room ran a broad divan on which one could stretch oneself and rest after taking a bath, and one of the doors opened from a sweet little sitting-room. this sitting-room, again, overlooked an odorous flower-bed, and some of the stems grew to the height of the window. it was in this room that the general gave us a breakfast of fruits, cream cheese and excellent mocha coffee, on all of which my daughter regaled herself royally. another time he asked us to a very good dinner, and had it served under a turkish tent brought back from one of his journeys. the tent was put up on the lawn facing the house. there were twelve of us, all seated by the table on splendid divans. we were served with delicious fruits at dessert. the whole dinner was quite asiatic, and the general's courtesy added to the savour of all the good things. i wish, however, that he had omitted firing off cannon shots in our immediate proximity just as we were sitting down at table, but i was informed that such was the custom with all generals. i took my little house on the neva for one summer only. the next, young count strogonoff lent me one at kaminstroff, where i was very well suited. every morning i walked alone in a neighbouring wood and passed my evenings with countess golovin, my neighbour. there i met young prince bariatinski, princess tarent, and various other congenial people. we would chat or have readings until supper time. in fact time was speeding by for me in the most agreeable manner. the russian people lived very happily under the rule of catherine; by great and lowly have i heard the name of her blessed to whom the nation owed so much glory and so much well-being. i do not speak of the conquests by which the national vanity was so prodigiously flattered, but of the real, lasting good that this empress did her people. during the space of the thirty-four years she reigned, her beneficent genius fathered or furthered all that was useful, all that was grand. she erected an immortal monument to peter i.; she built two hundred and thirty-seven towns in stone, saying that wooden villages cost much more because they burned down so often; she covered the sea with her fleets; she established everywhere manufactories and banks, highly propitious to the commerce of st. petersburg, moscow and tobolsk; she granted new privileges to the academy; she founded schools in all the towns and the country districts; she dug canals, built granite quays, gave a legal code, instituted an asylum for foundlings, and, finally, introduced into her empire the boon of vaccination, adopted by the russians solely through her mighty will, and, for the public encouragement, was the first to be inoculated. catherine herself was the source of all these blessings, for she never allowed any one else real authority. she dictated her own despatches to her ministers, who, in effect, were but her secretaries. i am much annoyed that the duchess d'abrantès, who has recently published a work on catherine ii., has either not read what the prince de ligne and the count de ségur have written, or has not given credence to those irrefutable witnesses. if she had, she would have more justly appreciated and admired the qualities distinguishing that great empress, considering her as a ruler, and she would have paid more respect to the memory of a woman in whom our sex ought to take pride for so many reasons. [illustration: the duchess de polignac.] catherine ii. loved everything that was magnificent in the arts. at the hermitage she built a set of rooms corresponding to certain rooms in the vatican, and had copies made of the fifty pictures by raphael adorning those rooms. she enriched the academy of fine arts with plaster casts of the finest ancient statues and with a large number of paintings by various masters. the hermitage, which she had founded and erected quite near her palace, was a model of good taste in every respect, and made the clumsy architecture of the imperial palace at st. petersburg appear to worse advantage than ever by the contrast. it is well known that she wrote french with great facility. in the library at st. petersburg i saw the original manuscript of the legal code she gave the russians written entirely in her own hand and in the french language. her style, i was told, was elegant and very concise, and this reminds me of an instance of her laconic manner of expression which seems to me quite delightful. when general suvaroff had won the battle of warsaw, catherine at once sent him a messenger, and this messenger brought the fortunate victor nothing but an envelope on which she had written with her own hand, "to marshal suvaroff." this woman, whose power was so great, was at home the simplest and least exacting of women. she rose at five in the morning, lit her fire, and then made her coffee herself. it was even said that one day, having lit the fire without being aware that the sweeper had climbed up the chimney, the sweeper began to swear at her, and to shower the coarsest revilements upon her, believing he was speaking to a stove-lighter. the empress hastened to extinguish the fire, though not without laughing heartily at having been thus treated. after breakfast the empress wrote her letters and prepared her despatches, remaining in seclusion until nine o'clock. she then rang for her men servants, who sometimes did not answer her bell. one day, for instance, impatient at waiting, she opened the door of the room they were in, and, finding them settled down at a game of cards, she asked them why they did not come when she rang. thereupon one of them calmly replied that they wanted to finish their game--and so they did. on another occasion the countess bruce, who was allowed in the empress's apartments at all hours, came in one morning to find her alone at her toilet. "your majesty seems to be without assistance," said the countess. "how can i help it?" answered the empress. "my maids all went off. i was trying on a dress which fitted so badly that i lost my temper over it, and so they left me to myself. not one of them stayed, not even reinette, my head maid, and i am waiting for them to cool off." in the evening catherine would gather about her some of the people of her court she liked best. she sent for her grandchildren, and blind man's buff, hunt the slipper and other games were played until ten o'clock, when her majesty went to bed. princess dolgoruki, who was among the favoured, often told me with what good spirits and jollity the empress enlivened these gatherings. count stachelberg and the count de ségur were invited to catherine's small parties. when she broke with france and dismissed the count de ségur, the french ambassador, she expressed deep regret at losing him. "but," she added, "i am an autocrat. every one to his trade." many persons have attributed catherine's death to the keen sorrow brought her by the failure of the marriage arranged between her granddaughter, the duchess alexandrina, and the king of sweden. that prince arrived at st. petersburg, with his uncle, the duke of sudermania, in august, . he was only seventeen years old, but his tall figure and his proud and noble bearing made him respected in spite of his youth. having been very carefully brought up, he showed a most unusual politeness. the princess whom he had come to marry, and who was fourteen, was lovely as an angel, and he speedily fell deeply in love with her. i remember that when he came to my house to see the portrait i had done of his bride elect, he looked at it with such rapt attention that his hat fell from his hand. the empress wished for this marriage more than anything, but she insisted that her granddaughter should have a chapel and clergy of her own religion in the palace at stockholm, but the young king, all his love for the young duchess alexandrina notwithstanding, would not consent to anything that would violate the laws of his country. knowing that catherine had sent for the patriarch to pronounce the betrothal after a ball in the evening, the king remained absent from the ball despite m. de markoff's repeated calls urging him to come. i was then doing the portrait of count diedrichstein. we went to my window several times to see if the young king would yield and go to the ball, but he did not. in the end, according to what princess dolgoruki told me, when every one was assembled, the empress half opened the door of her room and said in a very subdued voice, "ladies, there will be no ball to-night." the king of sweden and the duke of sudermania left st. petersburg the next morning. whether or no it was the grief arising from this occurrence that cut short the days of catherine, russia was soon to lose her. the sunday preceding her death, i went to her majesty after church to present her with the portrait that i had made of the grand duchess elisabeth. she congratulated me upon my work and then said: "they insist that you must take my portrait. i am very old, but still, as they all wish it, i will give you the first sitting this day week." the following thursday she did not ring at nine o'clock as was her wont. the servants waited until ten o'clock, and even a little later. at last the head maid went in. not seeing the empress in her room, she went to the clothes-closet, and no sooner did she open the door than catherine's body fell upon the floor. it was impossible to discover at what hour the apoplectic shock had touched her; however, her pulse was still beating, and hope was not entirely given up. never in my days did i see such lively alarm spread so generally. for my part i was so seized with pain and terror when apprised of the dreadful tidings that my convalescing daughter, perceiving my state of prostration, became again ill. after dinner i hastened to princess dolgoruki's, whither count cobentzel brought us the news every ten minutes from the palace. our anxiety continued to grow, and was unbearable for everybody, since not only did the nation worship catherine, but it had an awful dread of being governed by paul. toward evening paul arrived from a place near st. petersburg, where he lived most of the time. when he saw his mother lying senseless, nature for a moment asserted her rights; he approached the empress, kissed her hand, and shed some tears. catherine ii. finally expired at nine o'clock on the evening of november , . count cobentzel, who saw her breathe her last sigh, at once came to inform us that she had ceased to live. i confess that i did not leave princess dolgoruki's devoid of fear, in view of the general talk as to a probable revolution against paul. the immense mob i saw on my way home in the palace square by no means tended to comfort me; nevertheless, all those people were so quiet that i soon concluded, and rightly, we had nothing to fear for the moment. the next morning the populace gathered again at the same place, giving vent to its grief under catherine's windows in heartrending cries. old men and young, as well as children, called to their "matusha" (little mother), and between their sobs lamented that they had lost everything. this day was the more depressing as it augured so sadly for the prince succeeding to the throne. the empress's body was exposed six weeks in a large room at the palace, lit up day and night and gorgeously decorated. catherine was laid out on a bed of state and surrounded by shields bearing the arms of all the towns in the empire. her face was uncovered, her beautiful hand resting on the bed. all the ladies--of whom some took turn in watching by the body--bent to kiss that hand, or pretended to. i, who had never kissed it in her lifetime, did not dare to kiss it now, and even avoided looking at catherine's face, which would have left too bad an impression on my memory. after his mother's death, paul at once had his father peter disinterred; he had been buried for thirty-five years in the convent of alexander nevski. nothing was found in the coffin but bones and a sleeve of peter's uniform. paul desired the same honours rendered to these remains as to catherine's. he had them exhibited in the middle of the church at kazan; the watch service was performed by old officers, friends of peter iii, whom his son had pressed to come, and whom he loaded with honours. the day of the funeral having arrived, peter iii.'s coffin, on which his son had placed a crown, was put with great ceremony beside catherine's, and both were conveyed to the citadel, peter's preceding, it being paul's wish to humble his mother's ashes. i saw the marvellous procession from my window as one sees a play from a box in the theatre. before the emperor's coffin rode a horseman of the guard, clad from top to toe in golden armour; but the man riding in front of the empress's coffin wore only steel armour. the murderers of peter iii. were, by order of his son, obliged to act as pall-bearers. the new emperor walked in the procession on foot, bareheaded, with his wife and the whole court, which was very numerous, and attired in deep mourning. the women wore long trains and enormous black veils. they were obliged to walk in the snow, at a very low temperature, from the palace to the fortress, where russia's sovereigns were laid to rest, a long distance on the other side of the neva. mourning was ordered for six months. the women's hair was brushed back, and their headgear came to a point on the forehead, which did not improve their looks at all. but this slight inconvenience was insignificant compared to the deep anxiety to which the empress's death gave rise throughout the whole empire. chapter x the emperor paul accession of the emperor paul -- his arbitrary rule -- his civility to the authoress -- a man who did not know the emperor's address -- paul's kindness to foreigners -- his fear of assassination -- his personal appearance -- the empress maria -- vagaries of a half-mad emperor -- a noble prelate. the emperor paul, born october , , ascended the throne on the th of december, . what i have related touching catherine's funeral is sufficient proof that the new emperor did not share the national sorrow; it is well known, besides, that he bestowed the order of st. andrew upon nicholas zuboff, who brought him the news of his mother's death. paul was clever, well-informed and energetic, but his whims bordered on insanity. in this unhappy prince generous emotions were often followed by outbreaks of ferocity; approval or anger, favour or resentment, were with him altogether a matter of caprice. one night i was at a court ball; every one except the emperor was masked, both men and women wearing black dominos. one of the doorways between two rooms became crowded, and a young man in haste to pass elbowed a woman, who began to scream. paul at once turned to one of his adjutants, saying, "take that gentleman to the fortress, and come back to tell me that he is safe under lock and key." the adjutant soon came back to tell the emperor that he had executed his order; "but," he went on, "your majesty must know that the young man is very short-sighted. here is the proof." and he produced the prisoner's eye-glasses, which he had brought with him. paul, after trying the eye-glasses, was convinced, and said with feeling: "go for him quickly and take him to his parents; i shall not go to bed until you have come back with the information that he is at home again." the least infraction of paul's commands was punished with exile to siberia, or at least with imprisonment, so that, unable to foresee how far lunacy and arbitrariness combined would go, one lived in a state of perpetual fear. it soon came to one's not daring to invite company to one's house. if one would see a few friends, one was very careful to close the shutters, and when a ball was given it was agreed that the carriages should be sent home so as to attract less attention. everybody's words and actions were watched to such an extent that i heard it said there was no social circle without a spy. allusion to the emperor was usually abstained from altogether. i remember how one day, joining a very small gathering, a lady who did not know me and who had just ventured upon this subject, cut her words short when she saw me coming into the room. countess golovin was obliged to tell her that she might continue. "you may speak without fear," she said; "it is mme. lebrun." all this seemed extremely burdensome after living under catherine, who allowed every one to enjoy entire liberty without, however, using the word. it would take a long time to recount to what futilities paul practised his tyranny. he ordered, for instance, that every one should make obeisance to his palace, even when he was absent. he forbade the wearing of round hats, which he looked upon as a symbol of jacobinism. the police knocked off with their sticks all the round hats they saw, to the great annoyance of people whose ignorance of the regulation exposed them to being thus unhatted. on the other hand, every one was obliged to wear powder. at the time when this regulation was made i was painting young prince bariatinski's portrait, and he had acceded to my request that he come without powder. one day he arrived pale as death. "what is the matter with you?" i asked him. "i have just met the emperor," he replied, all a-tremble, "i barely had time to hide in a doorway, but i am terribly afraid that he recognised me." there was nothing surprising in prince bariatinski's fright. all classes were likewise affected, for no inhabitant of st. petersburg was sure one night that he would sleep in his bed the next. for my part, i avow that in the reign of paul i experienced the greatest fear of all my life. i had gone to pergola to spend the day, and had with me m. de rivière, my coachman, and peter, my faithful russian servant. while m. de rivière was walking about with his gun to shoot birds or rabbits--to which, by the way, he never did great harm--i remained on the shore of the lake. all of a sudden i noticed the fire that had been lit to cook our dinner communicate itself to the trees and spread with great rapidity. the trees were close together, and pergola was close to st. petersburg! i began to scream dreadfully, calling upon m. de rivière, and, aided by fear, the four of us succeeded in extinguishing the blaze, though not without severely burning our hands. but we thought of the emperor, of siberia, and it may well be imagined how this filled us with zeal! i can only explain the terror that paul inspired me with from the fact that it was universal, since i must admit that toward myself he was never anything but civil and considerate. when i saw him for the first time at st. petersburg he was amiable enough to remember that i had been presented to him in paris on the occasion of his visit there. i was very young then, and so many years had since gone by that i had forgotten the incident; but princes as a rule are gifted with a memory for faces and names. among the various queer ordinances of his reign, one, to which obedience was very troublesome, compelled both men and women to alight from their carriages whenever the emperor drove by. now, i must add that paul was to be met with very frequently in the streets of st. petersburg, as he travelled them perpetually, sometimes on horseback with but slim attendance, and sometimes in a sledge without an escort, without any sign by which he might have been recognised. you were nevertheless obliged to obey his command, under pain of incurring his severest displeasure, and it will be agreed that it was cruel to have to jump out into the snow and stand there, however extreme the cold. one day when i was out driving, my coachman not having observed his approach, i scarcely had time to exclaim: "stop! it is the emperor!" but, as my door was opened and i was about to get out, the emperor himself descended from his sledge and hastened to stop me, saying in the most gracious manner that his order did not concern foreign ladies, especially mme. lebrun. the reason why even paul's most favourable whims were not reassuring for the future was that no man was ever more changeable in his tastes and affections. at the beginning of his reign, for instance, he loathed bonaparte. later on he conceived such a great tenderness for him that a portrait of the french hero was kept in his sanctuary and he exhibited it to every one. neither his dislike nor his favour was lasting. count strogonoff, i believe, is the only person he always loved and esteemed. he was not known to have favourites among the gentlemen of the court, but was very fond of a french actor called frogères, who was not without talent and rather clever. frogères went into the emperor's study at all hours unannounced; they were often seen walking together in the gardens arm in arm, chatting on the subject of french literature, for which paul had a strong fancy, particularly our drama. this actor was often invited to the small court gatherings, and as he was highly gifted in the art of joking, he made the greatest lords the object of jokes, which amused the emperor very much, but which probably were very slightly amusing to those at whose expense they were made. the grand dukes themselves were not safe from frogères's naughty pleasantries; in fact, after the death of paul, he did not venture to appear at the palace. the emperor alexander, walking alone one day in the streets of moscow, met him and called to him. "frogères, why have you not been to see me?" the emperor asked him with affable air. "sire," replied frogères, freed from his fears, "i did not know your majesty's address." the emperor laughed a great deal over this piece of nonsense, and munificently paid the french actor some arrears in salary which the poor man had up till then not dared to claim. after dealing for a long time with paul, it was indeed natural that frogères should dread the resentment of a sovereign, for paul was so vindictive that the greatest share of his wrongdoings was attributable to his hatred for the russian nobility, against whom he had had a grievance during catherine's lifetime. in this hatred he confused the innocent with the guilty, detesting all the great nobles and taking a delight in humbling any of them he did not exile. to foreigners, on the other hand, and especially to the french, he showed remarkable kindness, and i must here affirm that he always received and treated well all travellers and refugees coming from france. of these last some were even generously assisted by him. i will mention as an instance the count d'autichamp, who, finding himself in st. petersburg without any resources whatever, had hit upon the idea of making a very pretty elastic shoe. i bought a pair, which the same evening i showed to several women of the court at princess dolgoruki's. they were pronounced charming, and this, together with the sympathy inspired by the refugee, resulted in immediate orders for a large number of pairs. the little shoe eventually came under the notice of the emperor, who, as soon as he learned the name of the workman, sent for him and gave him a fine position. unfortunately, it was a confidential post, and the russians were so offended that paul could not leave the count d'autichamp in it for long. but he made amends in such a way as to secure him against poverty. several facts of this kind, i confess, made me more indulgent toward the emperor than the russians were, whose peace was incessantly disturbed through the extravagant caprices of an omnipotent madman. it would be difficult to convey an idea of the fears, the discontent and the secret murmurings of his court, that i had formerly seen so placid and happy. it may be said with truth that as long as paul's reign lasted terror was the order of the day. as one cannot torment one's fellowmen without being tormented oneself, paul was far from leading an enviable life. he had a fixed idea that he would die by steel or by poison, and this conviction explains much of his queer conduct. while going about the streets of st. petersburg alone at all hours of the day and night, he took the precaution to have his broth made in his room, and the rest of his cooking was likewise done in the secrecy of his apartment. the whole was superintended by his faithful kutaisoff, a confidential valet who had been to paris with him and was in constant attendance upon him. this kutaisoff had entertained an unlimited devotion for the emperor, and nothing could ever change it. paul was exceedingly ugly. a flat nose, and a very large mouth furnished with very long teeth, made him look like a death's head. his eyes were more than vivacious, though they often had a soft expression. he was neither stout nor lean, neither tall nor short, and although his whole person was not wanting in a sort of elegance, it must be admitted that his face suggested opportunity for caricature. indeed, a number were made, in spite of the danger that such an amusement threatened. one of them represented him holding a paper in each hand. on one was written "order," on the other "counter-order," and on his forehead "disorder." at the mere mention of this caricature i still feel a little shiver; for it must be understood that there were lives in jeopardy, in which the artists' and the purchasers' were included. but all i have said did not hinder st. petersburg from being a pleasant as well as profitable place of sojourn for a painter. the emperor paul loved and patronised the arts. a great admirer of french literature, he munificently subsidised the actors to whom he owed the pleasure of seeing our dramatic masterpieces performed. doyen, my father's friend and the historical painter i have already mentioned, was distinguished by paul as he had been by catherine ii. though very old at the time, doyen, who had imposed a simple and frugal manner of living upon himself, had accepted but a portion of the empress's generous offers. the emperor continued in the path of catherine, and ordered a ceiling for the new palace of st. michael, as yet unfurnished. the room where doyen was working was close to the hermitage. paul and all the court passed through it on their way to mass, and the emperor rarely returned without stopping to chat for more or less time with the painter in quite amiable fashion. i am hereby reminded how, one day, one of the emperor's gentlemen-in-waiting stepped up to doyen and said: "permit me, sir, to make a slight observation. you are painting the hours dancing round the chariot of the sun. i see one there, in the distance, smaller than the rest; the hours, however, are all exactly alike." "sir," replied doyen with cool self-possession, "you are perfectly right, but what you point out is only a half-hour." the first speaker nodded in assent, and went off greatly pleased with himself. i must not forget to record that the emperor, wishing to pay the price of painting the ceiling before it was finished, sent to doyen a bank-note for a large sum--how much i do not now remember. but the bank-note was enclosed in a wrapper, upon which paul had written with his own hand, "here is something to buy colours with; as for oil, there is a lot left in the lamp." if my father's old friend was pleased with his life at st. petersburg, i was none the less pleased with mine. i worked without relaxing from morning till evening. only on sundays i lost two hours, which i was obliged to grant people wishing to see my studio, and among these there were frequently grand dukes and grand duchesses. besides the pictures i have already spoken of, and an endless succession of portraits, i had sent to paris for my large portrait of queen marie antoinette, one in which i had painted her in a blue velvet dress, and the general interest it provoked yielded me the sweetest delight. the prince de condé, then at st. petersburg, on coming to see it, uttered not a word, but burst into tears. in respect of social amenity st. petersburg left nothing to be desired. one might have believed oneself at paris, so many french were there at the fashionable gatherings. it was thus that i saw the duke richelieu and the count de langeron again. they were really not residents, the first being governor of odessa and the other always travelling on military inspections, but it was different with a host of other countrymen of mine. for instance, i made acquaintance with the amiable and dear good countess ducrest de villeneuve. not only was this young woman very pretty and very well built, but she had a special charm coming from her great goodness of heart. i often saw her at st. petersburg, as well as at moscow, by which i am reminded that one day, when i went to dine with her, an instance occurred of a kind not rare in russia, but which frightened me excessively. m. ducrest de villeneuve came for me in a sledge, and it was so cold that my forehead was quite frozen. i exclaimed in terror, "i shall be able to think no more!" m. de villeneuve hurried me into a shop, where my forehead was rubbed with snow, and this remedy, employed by the russians in all similar cases, soon banished the cause of my despair. [illustration: marie antoinette.] i did not neglect the natives who treated me so well, for my french friends and my relations with russian families were constantly increasing. besides the numerous persons i have already mentioned, i often saw m. dimidoff, the richest private gentleman in russia. his father had left him a heritage of richly productive iron and quicksilver mines, and the enormous sales he made to the government kept on enlarging his fortune. his immense wealth was the cause of his obtaining in marriage mlle. strogonoff, a member of one of the most aristocratic and oldest families of russia. their union was very happy. they left only two sons, one of whom lives in paris most of the time, and who, like his father, has a great love for pictures. the emperor ordered me to make a portrait of his wife. i represented her standing, wearing a court dress, and a diamond crown on her head. i do not like painting diamonds; the brush cannot render their brilliancy. nevertheless, in taking for a background a large crimson velvet curtain, i succeeded in making the crown shine as much as possible. when i sent for the picture to finish the details at home, the empress wanted to lend me the court dress and all the jewels belonging to it, but they were so valuable that i declined to accept the trust, which would have given me too much anxiety. i preferred to finish my painting at the palace, whither i had the picture taken back. the empress maria was a very handsome woman; her plumpness kept her fresh. she had a tall figure, full of dignity, and magnificent fair hair. i recollect having seen her at a great ball with her beautiful locks falling at each side of her shoulders and a diamond tiara on the top of her head. this tall and handsome woman walked majestically next to paul, on his arm, and a striking contrast was thus presented. to all her loveliness was added a sweet character. the empress maria was truly the woman of the gospel; her virtues were so universally known that she perhaps affords the only example of a woman never attacked by slander. i confess i was proud to find myself honoured with her favour, and that i set great store by the good-will she showed me on all occasions. our sittings took place immediately after the court dinner, so that the emperor and his two sons, alexander and constantine, were habitually present. these august spectators did not annoy me in the least, especially as the emperor, who alone could have made me feel any diffidence, was exceedingly polite to me. one day, when coffee was being served, as i was already at my easel, he brought me a cup himself, and then waited until i had drunk the coffee to take back the cup and put it away. another time, it is true, he made me witness a rather comical scene. i was having a screen put behind the empress in order to obtain a quiet background. in this moment of intermission paul began cutting up a thousand antics, exactly like a monkey, scratching the screen and pretending to climb up it. alexander and constantine seemed pained at their father's grotesque behaviour before a stranger, and i myself felt sorry on their account. during one of the sittings the empress sent for her two youngest sons, the grand duke nicholas and the grand duke michael. never have i seen a finer child than the grand duke nicholas, the present emperor. i could, i believe, paint him from memory to-day, so much did i admire his enchanting face, which bore all the characteristics of greek beauty. i remember, too, a type of beauty of an altogether different kind--an old man. although in russia the emperor is the supreme head of the church, as well as of the government and the army, the religious power is held, under him, by the first "pope," called "the great archimandrite," who is about the same to the russians that the holy father is to us. while living in st. petersburg i had often heard of the merit and virtues of the divine occupying this post, and one day some of my acquaintances who were going to visit him, proposing to take me with them, i eagerly accepted their invitation. never in my life had i been in the presence of such an imposing man. his figure was tall and majestic; his handsome face, whose every feature was endowed with perfect regularity, expressed at once a gentleness and a nobility difficult to describe; a long white beard, falling below the chest, added to the venerable appearance of his magnificent head. his dress was simple and dignified. he wore a long white robe, divided in front, from top to bottom, by a broad strip of black material, which made the whiteness of his beard stand out admirably. his walk, his gestures, his glance,--everything about him commanded respect from the very first. the great archimandrite was a superior man. he had a profound mind and great learning, and spoke several languages; besides, by reason of his virtues and kindness he was cherished by all who knew him. his grave vocation never prevented him from being affable and gracious toward high society. one of the princesses galitzin, who was very beautiful, seeing him in a garden one day, ran to throw herself on her knees before him. the old man at once picked a rose and gave it to her, accompanying it with his blessing. one of my regrets on leaving st. petersburg was my not having done the archimandrite's portrait, for i believe no painter could ever meet with a finer model. chapter xi family affairs poniatowski, last king of poland -- his amiable character -- the authoress's faculty of presaging death -- poniatowski, the nephew -- mme. lebrun received as a member of the st. petersburg academy -- her daughter's untoward marriage -- resulting in estrangement between mother and child. i will now speak of a man i frequently saw for whom i entertained a lively friendship, and who, after wearing a crown, was then living in st. petersburg as a private gentleman. this was stanislaus augustus poniatowski, poland's last king. in my early youth i had heard this prince, who had not then ascended the throne, talked of by people in the habit of meeting him at mme. geoffrin's, where he often went to dinner. all his companions of that date praised his amiability and his good looks. for his good or his harm--it is difficult to decide which--he made a journey to st. petersburg. catherine ii. showed him every distinction, and helped him with all her might to become king of poland. poniatowski was crowned in september of the year . but this same catherine destroyed her own work and overthrew the monarch she had so heartily helped. the ruin of poland once determined, replin and stachelberg, the russian envoys, became the actual rulers of this unfortunate kingdom, and so remained until the day it ceased to exist. their court became more numerous than that of the prince, whom they continually insulted with impunity, and who was king in name only. stanislaus augustus poniatowski was kind-hearted and very brave, but perhaps he wanted the necessary energy to hold down the spirit of rebellion reigning in his country. he did everything to make himself agreeable to the nobility and the people, and he partly succeeded. but there were so many disorderly interior elements, in addition to the scheme of the three great neighbouring powers for the seizure of poland, that it would have been a miracle had he triumphed. he ultimately succumbed and retired to grodno, where he lived on a pension allowed him by russia, prussia and austria, who had divided his kingdom between them. after the death of catherine ii., the emperor paul invited poniatowski to st. petersburg, to be present at his coronation. during the whole ceremony, which was very long, the ex-king was allowed to stand, which, in view of his advanced years, pained everybody there. paul afterward behaved more civilly when he asked him to stay at st. petersburg, and lodged him in a marble palace to be seen on a fine quay of the neva. the king of poland was now suitably housed. he created an agreeable social circle for himself, largely composed of french, to whom were added some other foreigners he wished to honour. he was so extremely good as to seek me out, to bid me to his private parties, and he called me his "dear friend," as prince kaunitz did at vienna. nothing touched me more than to hear him repeat that it would have made him glad to have me at warsaw while he was still king. i was aware, in fact, how at that time, some one having told him i was going to poland, he had replied that he would treat me with the greatest distinction. but i am sure that every allusion to the past must have been very painful to him. he was very tall; his handsome face expressed gentleness and kindness; his voice was resounding, and his walk erect without conceit; his conversation had a particular charm, since he loved and knew literature to a high degree. he was so passionately fond of the arts, that at warsaw, when he was king, he perpetually went to visit the best artists. he was more considerate than can possibly be imagined. i recollect being given a proof that makes me feel rather ashamed when i think of it. sometimes, when i am painting, i refuse to see any one in the world but my model, which more than once has made me rude to people coming to disturb me at my work. one morning, when i was occupied with finishing a portrait, the king of poland came to see me. having heard the noise of horses at my door, i fully suspected it was he who was paying me a call, but i was so absorbed in my task that i lost my temper so far as to cry out, at the moment he opened my door, "i am not at home!" the king, without a word, put on his cloak again and went away. when i had laid down my palette and recalled in cold blood what i had done, i reproached myself so strongly that the same evening i went to the king of poland for the purpose of proffering my excuses and asking pardon. "what a reception you gave me this morning!" he said as soon as he set eyes on me. he then immediately went on: "i quite understand how a very busy artist becomes impatient if disturbed, and so you may believe that i am not at all angry with you." he obliged me to remain to supper, and there was no further mention of my delinquency. [illustration: portrait of the authoress painted for the uffizi gallery at florence, where the picture now hangs.] i rarely missed the little suppers of the king of poland. lord witworth, the english ambassador to russia, and the marquis de rivière were likewise faithful attendants. we all three preferred these intimate gatherings to the large mobs, because after supper there was always a delightful round of chat, enlivened especially by the king, who knew a host of interesting anecdotes. one evening, when i had followed the usual invitation, i was struck by the singular change i observed in our dear prince's appearance; his left eye particularly looked so dull that i was frightened. at leaving, i said on the staircase to lord witworth and to the marquis de rivière, on whose arm i was, "do you know, i am very anxious about the king?" "why so?" they asked. "he seemed remarkably well; he talked as he always does." "i have the misfortune to be a good soothsayer," i replied. "i read uncommon trouble in his eyes. the king will soon die." alas! i had only prophesied too well, for the next day the king went down with an attack of apoplexy, and a few days later was buried in the citadel close to catherine. i did not learn of his death without feeling a very real sorrow, which was shared by all who had known the king of poland. i am rarely mistaken in the meaning of the ocular expression. the last time i saw the duchess de mazarin, who was in perfect health, and in whom nobody observed the least change, i said to my husband, "in another month the duchess will not be alive." and my prophecy came true. stanislaus poniatowski never married; he had a niece and two nephews. his oldest nephew, prince joseph poniatowski, is well known through his military talents and the great bravery which have earned for him the name of the "polish bayard." when i knew him at st. petersburg he might have been twenty-five to twenty-seven years old. though his forehead was already devoid of hair, his face was remarkably handsome. all his features, admirably regular, were indicative of a noble soul. he had exhibited such prodigious valour and so much military science in the late war against the turks that the public voice already proclaimed him a great captain, and i was surprised upon seeing him how any one could win so high a reputation at that early age. at st. petersburg all vied with each other in welcoming and making much of him. at a great supper given him, to which i was bidden, all the women urging him to have his portrait painted by me, he answered with a modesty conspicuous in his character, "i must win several more battles before i can be painted by mme. lebrun." when i again saw joseph poniatowski at paris i at first did not recognise him, so much was he changed. into the bargain he was wearing a hideous wig that completed his metamorphosis. his renown had, however, reached such a point that there was no need for him to be distressed at having lost his good looks. he was then preparing to go to war in germany under napoleon, to whom he, as a pole, had become a faithful ally. the heroism he displayed in the campaign of and is sufficiently known, as well as the tragic occurrence that ended his noble career. joseph poniatowski's brother resembled him in no way; he was lanky, chilly, and dry. i got a close view of him at st. petersburg, and remember that one morning he came to my house to look at countess strogonoff's portrait, and that he concerned himself about nothing but the frame. he nevertheless manifested great pretensions as a picture fancier, permitting his opinions to be guided by an artist who drew very well, but whose chief distinction was to imitate raphael's sketches, in consequence of which he harboured a sovereign disdain for the french school. the king of poland's niece, mme. menicheck, showed herself obliging to me on many occasions, and it was a great pleasure to meet her again in paris. at st. petersburg she made me do the likeness of her daughter, then quite a child, whom i painted playing with her dog, as well as the portrait of her uncle, the king of poland, in a henri iv. costume. the first portrait i did of that charming prince i kept for myself. one of the pleasantest reminiscences of my travels is that of my reception as a member of the academy of st. petersburg. count strogonoff, then director of the fine arts, apprised me of the appointed day for my installation. i ordered a uniform of the academy, in the shape of an amazonian dress: a little violet bodice, a yellow skirt, and a black hat and feathers. at one o'clock i arrived in a room leading to a long gallery, at the end of which i perceived count strogonoff at a table. i was requested to go up to him. for this purpose i was obliged to traverse the long gallery in question, where tiers of benches had been placed which were full of spectators. but as i luckily recognised a number of friends and acquaintances in the crowd, i reached the other end of the gallery without feeling too much confusion. the count addressed me in a very flattering little speech, and then presented me, on behalf of the emperor, with a diploma nominating me a member of the academy. everybody thereupon burst into such applause that i was moved to tears, and i shall never forget that touching moment. that evening i met several persons who had witnessed the affair. they mentioned my courage in passing through that gallery so full of people. "you must suppose," i answered, "that i had guessed from their faces how kindly they were prepared to greet me." very soon after i did my own portrait for the academy of st. petersburg. i represented myself painting, palette in hand. in dwelling on these agreeable memories of my life, i am trying to postpone the moment when i must speak of the sorrows, the cruel anxieties which disturbed the peace and happiness i was enjoying at st. petersburg. but i must now enter upon the sad particulars. my daughter had attained the age of seventeen. she was charming in every respect. her large blue eyes, sparkling with spirit, her slightly tip-tilted nose, her pretty mouth, magnificent teeth, a dazzling fresh complexion--all went to make up one of the sweetest faces to be seen. her figure was not very tall; she was lithe without, however, being lean. a natural dignity reigned in all her person, although she had as much vivacity of manner as of mind. her memory was prodigious: everything remained that she had learned in her lessons or in the course of her reading. she had a delightful voice, and sang exquisitely in italian, for at naples and st. petersburg i had given her the best singing masters, as well as instructors of english and german. moreover, she could accompany herself on the piano or the guitar. but what enraptured me above everything else was her happy disposition for painting, so that i cannot say how proud and satisfied i was over the many advantages she commanded. i saw in my daughter the happiness of my life, the future joy of my old age, and it was therefore not surprising that she gained an ascendancy over me. when my friends said, "you love your daughter so madly that it is you who obey her," i would reply, "do you not see that she is loved by every one?" indeed, the most prominent residents of st. petersburg admired and sought her out. i was not invited without her, and the successes she won in society were far more to me than any of my own had ever been. since i could but very rarely leave my studio of a morning, i sometimes consented to confide my daughter to the countess czernicheff, in order that she might take part in sledging expeditions, which amused her greatly, and the countess would sometimes also take her to spend the evening at her house. there she met a certain nigris, count czernicheff's secretary. this m. nigris had a fairly good face and figure; he might have been about thirty. as for his abilities, he drew a little, and wrote a beautiful hand. his soft ways, his melancholy look, and even his yellowish paleness, gave him an interesting and romantic air, which so far affected my daughter that she fell in love with him. immediately the czernicheff family put their heads together and began an intrigue to make him my son-in-law. being informed what was happening, my grief was deep, as may well be imagined; but unhappy as i was at the thought of giving my daughter, my only child, to a man without talents, without fortune, without a name, i made inquiries about this m. nigris. some spoke well of him, but others reported badly, so that the days went by without my being able to fix upon any decision. in vain did i attempt to make my daughter understand how unlikely in every way this marriage was to make her happy. her head was so far turned that she would take nothing from my affection and experience. on the other hand, people who had determined to get my consent employed all possible means to wring it from me. i was told that m. nigris would carry off my daughter and that they would marry at some country inn. i had little faith in this elopement and secret marriage, because m. nigris had no fortune, and the family that befriended him was not blessed with superfluous money. i was threatened with the emperor, and i answered, "then i will tell him that mothers have truer and older rights than all the emperors in the world!" it will scarcely be credited that the persons intriguing against me were so sure of making me yield under persecution that they were already throwing out allusions to a marriage portion. as i was supposed to be very rich, the ambassador from naples came to see me and asked a sum which far exceeded my possessions. i had left france with eighty louis in my pocket, and a portion of my savings i had since lost through the bank of venice. i could have endured the malignant and stupid slanders which the cabal spread, and which were repeated to me from all sides; it pained me much more to see my daughter becoming alienated and withdrawing all her confidence from me. her old governess, mme. charrot, who had already made the great mistake of allowing her to read novels without my knowledge, had totally dominated her mind and embittered her against me to such a degree that all a mother's love was impotent to fight against her sinister influence. at last my daughter, who had become thin and changed, fell ill altogether. i was then, of course, obliged to surrender, and wrote to m. lebrun, so that he might send his approval. m. lebrun had in recent letters spoken of his wish to marry our daughter to guérin, whose successes in painting had been bruited loud enough to reach my ears. but this plan, which had such attractions for me, now could not be carried out. i informed m. lebrun, making him feel that, having but this one dear child, we must sacrifice everything to her desires and her happiness. [illustration: portrait of mme. lebrun's daughter in the bologna gallery.] the letter gone, i had the satisfaction of seeing my daughter recover; but alas! that satisfaction was the only one she gave me. owing to the distance, her father's answer was long delayed, and some one convinced her that i had only written to m. lebrun to prevent him from assenting to what she called her felicity. the suspicion hurt me cruelly; nevertheless, i wrote again several times, and, after letting her read my letters, gave them to her, so that she might post them herself. even this great condescension on my part was not enough to undeceive her. with the distrust toward me that was incessantly being poured into her, she said to me one day, "i post your letters, but i am sure you write others to the contrary." i was stunned and heartbroken, when at that very moment the postman arrived with a letter from m. lebrun giving his consent. a mother might then, without being accused of exaction, have expected some excuses or thanks; but in order to have it understood how entirely those wicked people had estranged my daughter's heart, i will confess that the cruel child showed not the least gratitude at what i had done for her in immolating all my wishes, hopes and dislikes. the wedding was nevertheless enacted a few days later. i gave my daughter a very fine wedding outfit and some jewellery, including a bracelet, mounted with some large diamonds, on which was her father's likeness. her marriage portion, the product of the portraits i had painted at st. petersburg, i deposited with the banker livio. the day after my daughter's wedding i went to see her. i found her placid and unelated over her bliss. being at her house again a fortnight later, i made the inquiry, "you are very happy, i trust, now that you are married to him?" m. nigris, who was talking with some one else, had his back turned to us, and, since he was afflicted with a severe cold, had a heavy great coat on his shoulders. she replied, "i confess that fur coat is disenchanting; how could you expect me to be smitten with such a figure as that?" thus a fortnight had sufficed for love to evaporate. as for me, the whole charm of my life seemed to be irretrievably destroyed. i even felt no joy in loving my daughter, though god knows how much i still did love her, in spite of all her wrongdoing. only mothers will fully understand me. soon after her marriage she took the smallpox. although i had never had that frightful disease, no one succeeded in preventing me from hastening to her side. her face was so swelled up that i was seized with terror. but it was only for her that i feared, and as long as the illness lasted i thought not of myself for a single moment. at last i was glad to see her restored without being marked in the least. i then resolved to leave for moscow. i wanted a change from st. petersburg, where i had been suffering to such a degree that my health was affected. not that after the wedding the wretched stories which had been brought up against me left any impression. on the contrary, the people who had blackened my character most repented of their injustice. however, i was unable to shake off the memory of the past months. i felt miserable, but kept my trouble to myself; i complained of no one. i observed silence, even with my dearest friends, on the subject of my daughter and the man she had given me for a son, going so far as reticence toward my brother, to whom i had written frequently since being apprised by him of another misfortune. indeed, this period of my life was devoted to tears: we had lost our mother. hoping, then, to obtain relief from so much sorrow through distraction and a change of scene, i hastened the life-sized portrait i was then doing of the empress maria, as well as several half-length portraits, and left for moscow on the th of october, . chapter xii moscow journey to moscow -- a bad smell and its origin -- first impressions of moscow -- another impression, oral and unpleasing -- the kremlin -- steam-and-snow bathing -- society -- luxurious prince kurakin -- an impossible duologue -- examples of russian cleverness -- determination to return to france. no more dreadful fatigue can be imagined than that which awaited me in the journey from st. petersburg to moscow. the roads i counted upon as being frozen--as i had been led to believe--were not yet in that condition. the roads, in fact, were terrible; the logs, which rendered them almost impracticable in severe weather, not being as yet fixed by the frost, rolled incessantly under the wheels, and produced the same effect as waves of the sea. my carriage was half-covered with mud, and gave us such terrible shocks that at every moment i expected to give up the ghost. for the sake of some relief from this torture, i stopped half-way at the inn of novgorod, the only one on the route, where--so i had been informed--i should be well fed and lodged. being greatly in want of rest, and faint with hunger, i asked for a room. hardly was i installed when i noticed a pestilential smell that made me sick. the master of the inn, whom i begged to change my room, had no other to give me, and i therefore resigned myself. but soon, seeming to observe that the intolerable stench came from a glazed door in the room, i called for a waiter, and questioned him as to the door. "oh!" he calmly replied, "there has been a dead man behind that door since yesterday. that is probably what you smell." i waited for no further particulars, got up, had my horses harnessed, and started, taking nothing with me but a piece of bread to continue my journey to moscow. i had accomplished but half of the journey whose second part was to be more fatiguing than the first. not that there were any high hills, but the road consisted of perpetual ups and downs--which i called torture. the climax to my annoyance was that i could not amuse myself with a view of the country through which i was travelling, since a thick fog veiled the scene on all sides, and this always depresses me. if one considers, besides these tribulations, the diet i was restricted to after i had eaten my piece of bread, it will readily be conceived that i must have found the road very long. at length i arrived in the former immense capital of russia. i seemed to be entering ispahan, of which place i had seen several drawings, so much does the aspect of moscow differ from everything else in europe. nor will i attempt to describe the effect of those thousands of gilded cupolas surmounted with huge gold crosses, those broad streets, those superb palaces, for the most part situated so far asunder that villages intervened. to obtain a right idea of moscow, you must see it. i was driven to the mansion which m. dimidoff had been kind enough to lend me. this enormous building had in front of it a large courtyard surrounded by very high railings. it was untenanted, and i promised myself perfect peace. after all my fatigue and my forced diet, my first concern, as soon as i had appeased my hunger, was, of course, to sleep. but, bad luck to it! at five o'clock in the morning i was awakened with a start by an infernal din. a large troop of those russian musicians who only blow one note each on their horns had established themselves in the room next to mine to practise. perhaps the room was very spacious and the only one suitable for this kind of rehearsal. i was careful to inquire of the porter if this music was played every day. upon his answer that, the palace being uninhabited, the largest apartment had been devoted to this purpose, i resolved to make no change in the customs of a house that was not my own, and to look for another lodging. in one of my first expeditions i called on the countess strogonoff, the wife of my good old friend. i found her hoisted on the top of some very high affair which did nothing but rock to and fro. i could not imagine how she could endure this perpetual motion, but she wanted it for her health, as she was unable to walk. but this did not prevent her being agreeable to me. i spoke to her of the embarrassment i was in on account of lodgings. she at once told me she had a pretty house that was not occupied, and begged me to accept it, but because she would hear nothing of my paying a rent, i positively declined the offer. seeing that her efforts were in vain, she sent for her daughter, who was very pretty, and asked me to paint this young person's portrait in payment of rent, to which i agreed with pleasure. thus, a few days later, i settled in a house where i hoped to find quiet, since i was to live there alone. so soon as i was established in my new dwelling, i visited the town as often as the rigours of the season would permit. for during the five months i spent at moscow, the snow never melted; it deprived me of the pleasure of seeing the environments, said to be admirable. moscow is at least ten miles round. the moskva cuts through the town, and is joined by two other small streams, and it is really an astonishing sight--all those palaces, those finely sculptured public monuments, those convents, those churches, all intermingled with pretty landscapes and villages. this mixture of urban magnificence and rural simplicity produces an extraordinary, fantastic effect, which must please the traveller who is in search of something new. the churches are so numerous in this city that a popular saying runs: "moscow with its forty times forty churches." moscow is supposed to contain , inhabitants, and commerce must be on a large scale, because in a single quarter, whose name i have forgotten, there are six thousand shops. in the quarter called the kremlin there stands the fortress of the same name, the old palace of the czars. this fortress is as ancient as the town, said to have been built about the middle of the twelfth century, and is situated on an elevation at the foot of which flows the moskva, but there is nothing remarkable in the style excepting its antiquity. close to this pile, whose walls are flanked with towers, i was shown a bell of colossal dimensions half-embedded in the ground, and i was told it had never been possible to raise it in order to hang it in the palace chapel. the cemeteries at moscow are stupendous, and following the custom prevailing all over russia, several times a year, but especially on the day that in russia corresponds to our death day, the cemeteries are filled with vast crowds. men and women kneel at their family tombs, and there give vent to loud lamentations, which may be heard a long way off. a habit as universal in moscow as in st. petersburg is the taking of steam baths. there are some for women and some for men, only when the men have taken their bath, coming out of it as red as scarlet, they go out and roll in the snow in the most extreme cold. to this habit the vigour and sound health of the russians have been attributed. it is very certain they know nothing of chest maladies or rheumatism. a pleasant walk in moscow is the market, which is always to be found provisioned with the rarest and most excellent fruits. it is in the middle of a garden, and is traversed by a broad avenue which renders the place fascinating. it is quite proper for the greatest ladies to go there and do their buying in person. in summer they repair thither in carriages, and in winter in sledges. i had observed that in st. petersburg society formed, so to speak, a single family, all the members of the nobility being cousins to one another. at moscow, where the population and the nobility are far more numerous, society becomes almost the public. for instance, you will find six thousand persons in the ballroom where the first families meet. around this room runs a colonnade on a platform a few feet above the ground, where the persons who are not dancing can promenade, and adjoining are various apartments in which people sup or play cards. i went to one of these balls, and was surprised at the quantity of pretty women i found assembled. i can say the same for a ball to which marshal soltikoff invited me. the young women were nearly all of remarkable beauty. they had imitated the antique costume i had suggested to the grand duchess elisabeth for catherine ii.'s ball. they wore cashmere tunics edged with gold fringes; gorgeous jewels held their short upturned sleeves in place; their greek head-dresses were for the most part tied with bands adorned with diamonds. nothing could have been more stylish or luxurious than these costumes; they beautified even this class of lovely women, of whom no one was prettier than the next. one i especially observed was a young person soon after married to prince tufakin. her face, whose features were regular and delicate, wore an excessively melancholy expression. after her marriage i began her portrait, but was only able to finish the head in moscow, so that i carried off the picture to finish it at st. petersburg, where, however, i before long heard of the death of that charming young lady. she was scarcely more than seventeen years old. i painted her as iris, seated on some clouds, with a billowy scarf about her. [illustration: madame vigÉe lebrun.] mme. soltikoff kept one of the best houses in moscow. i had paid her a call upon arrival. she and her husband, who was then governor of the town, showed me great kindness. she asked me to paint the marshal's portrait, and her daughter's, who had married count gregory orloff, son of count vladimir. at this time i was doing a picture of countess strogonoff's daughter, so that by the end of ten or twelve days i had begun six portraits, without counting the likeness of the good and genial mme. ducrest de villeneuve, whom i was charmed to meet again in moscow, and who was so pretty that i insisted on painting her. an accident that might have cost me my life deprived me of the use of my studio and retarded the completion of all these works. i was enjoying perfect peace in the house loaned me by countess strogonoff, but, as it had not been inhabited for seven years, it was horribly cold. i remedied the evil as far as possible by heating all the stoves to the utmost. in spite of this measure, i was obliged to leave the fire lit in my bedroom at night, and was so frozen in bed, with the shutters hermetically closed, to say nothing of a small lamp burning near me to moderate the air, that i tied my pillow all round my head with a ribbon, at the risk of being stifled. one night, when i had succeeded in going to sleep, i was awakened by suffocating smoke. i barely had time to ring for my maid, who declared that she had put out all the fires. i told her to open the passage door. scarcely had she obeyed when her candle went out, and my room and the whole apartment was filled with thick, sickening smoke. we broke the windows as fast as we could. not knowing where this dreadful smoke came from, it may well be imagined how anxious i was. i then sent for one of the men who lit the fires, and he informed me that another man had forgotten to open the cover capping the pipes, which is on the roof, i think. relieved from the alarm of having set countess strogonoff's house on fire, i went to look at my rooms, all upset that i was. near the room where i gave my sittings was a large stove with two doors, in front of which i had put marshal soltikoff's picture to dry. i found this portrait so thoroughly scorched that i was obliged to do it over again. but what gave me most pain in this night of trouble was my inability to have removed at once a collection of pictures by various great masters, sent me by my husband; they, of course, suffered very much. by five o'clock in the morning the smoke had only begun to disperse, and as we had broken the windows the place was no longer tenable. but what were we to do? where to go? i decided to send to good mme. ducrest de villeneuve. she rushed over at once, and took me off to her house, where i remained a fortnight, during which the dear woman showered attentions upon me which i shall never forget. when i had concluded to go home, i first went with m. ducrest de villeneuve to examine the premises. although the windows had not yet been replaced, the whole house was still so redolent with smoke that it was impossible to think of living in it then. i was exceedingly put out at this, when count gregory orloff, with that courtesy which is the natural heritage of the russians, offered to lend me a vacant house belonging to him. i accepted his offer, and immediately went to settle in my new lodgings. here, by the way, the rain poured in so hard that mme. soltikoff, coming to see me and wishing to stay a few minutes in the room where my pictures were exhibited, asked me for an umbrella. but in spite of this new form of discomfort, i remained in the house until my departure from moscow. the russian nobles display as much luxury at moscow as at st. petersburg. moscow possesses a multitude of splendid palaces most richly furnished. one of the most sumptuous belonged to prince alexander kurakin, whom i knew in st. petersburg, where i had twice painted his portrait. on learning that i was in moscow, he came to see me, and invited me to dinner with my friends, the countess ducrest de villeneuve and her husband. we found an immense palace, ornamented externally with royal magnificence. every room through which we passed was more handsomely furnished than the one preceding, and in most of them was a picture of the master of the house, either full or half length. before leading us to table prince kurakin showed us his bedchamber, which surpassed all the rest in elegance. the bed, standing on a raised platform laid with superb carpets, was encircled by richly draped columns. two statues and two vases with flowers stood at the four corners of the platform; chairs of exquisite taste and divans of great price rendered this room a habitation worthy of venus. to reach the dining-room we traversed broad corridors, both sides of which were lined with liveried serfs holding torches, which made me feel as though i was taking part in some grave and solemn ceremony. during the dinner invisible musicians overhead diverted us with the horn-playing i have already referred to. prince kurakin's large fortune allowed him to maintain the establishment of a king. he was an excellent man, politely obliging toward his equals, and not in the least haughty to his inferiors. i also dined with prince galitzin, universally sought after because of his affable and friendly ways. although he was too old to sit down to table with his guests, forty in number, the luxurious and very abundant dinner nevertheless lasted more than three hours, which tired me inexpressibly, especially as i was placed opposite a tall window through which came a blinding light. to me this banquet seemed unendurable, but by way of compensation i had the pleasure, before eating, of going through a fine gallery containing pictures by great masters, mixed, it is true, with some that were rather mediocre. prince galitzin, whom age and illness kept to his armchair, had charged his nephew with doing me the honours. this young man, being ignorant of painting, limited himself to explaining the subjects as best he could, and i had difficulty in refraining from laughter when, before a picture representing psyche, being unable to pronounce the name, he gave me the information, "that is fiché." this long meal at prince galitzin's reminds me of another, which probably never ended at all. i had engaged to dine with a big, stout, enormously wealthy banker of moscow. we were eighteen at table; never in my life did i see such a collection of ugly and insignificant faces--typical faces of money-makers. when i had looked at them all once i dared not raise my eyes again, for fear of meeting one of those visages. there was no conversation; they might have been taken for dummies if they had not eaten like ogres. four hours went by in this fashion, and i was bored to the verge of nausea. at last i made up my mind, and feigning indisposition i left them sitting at the table--where they perhaps still are. it was an unlucky day, for that evening a rather comical episode occurred, though it did not amuse me in the least. for some reason or other i was obliged to make a call upon an englishwoman. a lady of my acquaintance took me there, and left me for some time, after promising to come back for me. as ill-luck would have it, this englishwoman knew not a word of french, and myself not a word of english, and it may readily be conceived how great was our mutual embarrassment. i still see her before a little table, between two candles lighting up a face as pale as death. she thought it her duty, from politeness, to keep talking to me in a language i could not understand, and i reciprocated by addressing her in french, which she understood no better. we remained together more than an hour, which hour seemed to me a century, and i imagine the poor englishwoman must have found it just as long. at the period when i was in moscow the wealthiest resident of the town, and perhaps of all russia, was prince bezborodko. he could have raised, it is said, an army of , men on his estate, so many peasants did he own, these people, as everybody knows, being considered as part of the soil in russia. on his different properties he owned a large number of serfs, whom he treated with the greatest kindness, and whom he caused to be instructed in various trades. when i went to see him he showed me rooms full of furniture, bought in paris from the workshops of the famous upholsterer, daguère. most of this furniture had been imitated by his serfs, and it was impossible to distinguish between copy and original. it is this fine work which leads me to assert that the russian people are gifted with remarkable intelligence; they understand everything, and seem endowed with the talent of execution. thus the prince de ligne wrote: "i see russians who are told to be sailors, huntsmen, musicians, engineers, painters, actors, and who become all these things according to their masters' wish. i see others sing and dance in the trenches, plunged in snow and mud, in the midst of musket and cannon shots. and they are all alert, attentive, obedient, and respectful." prince bezborodko was a man of high ability. he was employed in the reign of catherine ii. and of paul, first as secretary to the cabinet, and then, in , as secretary of state for foreign affairs. in his desire to avoid the countless appeals by which he was besieged, he made himself as inaccessible as possible. women sometimes followed him into his carriage. he would answer their demands with "i shall forget," and if it was a case of a petition with "i shall lose it." his greatest gift was a thorough and exact knowledge of the russian language. in addition to this he boasted a phenomenal memory and an astonishing facility of putting his thoughts into words. i give a well-known instance in proof thereof. on one occasion the empress ordered him to draw up a ukase, which, however, a great pressure of business caused him to forget. the first time he saw the empress again, after conferring with him on several matters of administration, she asked him for the ukase. bezborodko, not the least bit in the world dismayed, drew a sheet of paper out of his portfolio, and without a moment's hesitation improvised the whole thing from beginning to end. catherine was so well pleased with this presentment that she took the paper from him to look at it. her surprise may be imagined at the sight of a sheet that was quite blank! bezborodko began elaborate excuses, but she stopped him with compliments, and the next day made him privy councillor. another russian, whose memory was as marvellous as prince bezborodko's, was count buturlin, whom i knew quite well at moscow, where, by the way, we lived so far apart that whenever i supped with countess buturlin i was obliged to go two miles. the count, through his experience and his knowledge, is one of the most remarkable men i have ever known. he speaks all the languages with extraordinary ease, and his information on all sorts of subjects renders his conversation infinitely fascinating. but his superiority over others never prevented him from being very unaffected, nor from treating his friends with good-nature and generosity. he owned a huge library in moscow, composed of the rarest and most valuable books in different languages. his memory was such that when he was recounting a historical or any other anecdote he could at once tell in what room and on what shelf of his library the book was that he had just cited. i was greatly amazed at this, yet a thing as fully astonishing was to hear him talk of all the towns of europe and their most conspicuous features as if he had lived in them a long time, whereas he had never once set foot outside of russia. for my part, i know that he spoke to me about paris and its buildings, and everything curious to be seen there, in such complete detail that i exclaimed, "it is impossible that you have not been in paris!" the request made to me for portraits and my agreeable social circle ought to have kept me longer in moscow, where i stayed but five months, of which i spent six weeks in my room. but i was melancholy and ailing; i felt a need of rest, especially of breathing in a warmer climate. i therefore resolved upon returning to st. petersburg to see my daughter and then quitting russia. i was, however, held back for some days by an unusually severe attack of my general indisposition. chapter xiii good-by to russia departure from moscow -- news of the death of paul -- particulars of his assassination -- et tu brute? -- paul's presentiments of peril -- his successor not an accomplice in the crime -- alexander i. a popular monarch -- an order from an imperial customer and model -- farewells to friends -- among them, czar and czarina. when i was sufficiently restored i announced my departure and made my adieus. everything was done to induce me to stay. people offered to pay more for my portraits than i had received in st. petersburg--to allow me all the time i required to finish them without fatiguing myself. i call to mind now, the very day prior to my leaving, while i was engaged in packing up on the ground floor of my house, there suddenly appeared before me, unannounced, a man of colossal stature in a white cloak, at whose sight i was nearly frightened to death. in moscow one continually saw people banished to siberia by paul, and although but two french had been exiled--both authors of infamous libels against russia--i forthwith judged this stranger to be an emissary of paul. i breathed freely only when i heard him beseeching me not to leave moscow, and begging me to do a large likeness of his whole family. upon my refusal, which i made as polite as possible, the good gentleman asked me fervently at least to give my own portrait to the town. i acknowledge that this last request so touched my heart as to leave me an enduring regret that my affairs and the state of my health prevented me from complying. [illustration: hubert robert a french painter of repute. born . died . one of mme. lebrun's contemporaries.] several persons who, i doubt not, were initiated into the revolutionary conspiracy under progress urged me to defer my departure for a few days, promising they would go to st. petersburg with me. but in my complete ignorance of the plot, i persisted in starting--in which i made a great mistake. for by waiting a little i might have avoided the hardships i underwent on those abominable roads, again rendered well-nigh impracticable by a thaw. it was on the th of march, , when i was half-way between moscow and st. petersburg, that i heard the news of paul's death. i found in front of the posthouse a number of couriers, who were about to spread the news in the different towns of the empire, and, since they took all the horses, i could obtain none for myself. i was obliged to remain in my carriage, which had been put by the roadside on the bank of a river; such a bitter wind was blowing that it froze me. nevertheless, i was compelled to pass the night there. at last i contrived to hire some horses, and i reached st. petersburg only at eight or nine on the morning of the following day. i found that city in a delirium of joy; people were singing and dancing and kissing one another in the streets; acquaintances of mine ran up to my carriage and squeezed my hands, exclaiming "what a blessing!" they told me that the houses had been illuminated the evening before. in short, the death of the unhappy prince gave rise to general rejoicings. none of the particulars of the dreadful occurrence were secret from anybody, and i can aver that the accounts given me that day all agreed. palhen, one of the conspirators, had taken every means to frighten paul with a plot he alleged to have been hatched by the empress and her children for the purpose of seizing the throne. paul's habitually suspicious mind incited him only too strongly to credit these false confidences, which enraged him to the degree of ordering his wife and the grand dukes to be shut up in the fortress. palhen declined to obey without the emperor's signed authority. paul gave his signature, and palhen at once went to alexander with the document. "you see," he said, "that your father is mad, and that you are all lost unless we forestall him by locking him up first." alexander, though believing his life and his family's in jeopardy, did nothing but consent through silence to this idea, which seemed merely to propose putting a lunatic out of harm's way. but palhen and his accomplices thought it necessary to go further. five of the conspirators undertook the assassination, one of them being plato zuboff, a former pet of catherine, whom paul had loaded with favours after recalling him from exile. the five penetrated into paul's sleeping apartment after he had gone to bed. the two guards at the door defended it valiantly, but their resistance was fruitless, and one of them was killed. at the sight of the infuriated men rushing in upon him, paul rose from his couch. as he was very powerful he made a long fight against his murderers, who finally managed to strangle him in an armchair. the unhappy man's last words were, "you, too, zuboff! i thought you were my friend!" it seems that chance had contributed in every way to the success of the plot. a regiment of soldiers had been brought to surround the palace, and the colonel, far from being in the counsels of the conspirators, fully believed that an attempt upon the emperor's life was to be frustrated. a portion of the regiment went through the garden to post themselves under paul's window. unfortunately, the marching of the soldiers did not awaken him; nor did the noise of a flock of crows, which were in the habit of sleeping on the roof, and which burst out cawing. had it been otherwise, the ill-fated ruler would have had time to reach a secret staircase next to his room, by which he could have descended to that of one mme. narischkin, in whom he had full confidence. having got thus far, nothing would have been easier for him than to make off in a little boat always moored on the canal beside the palace. besides, the distrust he harboured against his wife had caused him to double-lock the door dividing his apartments from the empress's. when he tried to escape through that door it was too late, the assassins having taken the precaution to withdraw the key. to crown all, kutaisoff, his faithful valet, the very day the murder was committed received a letter revealing the conspiracy; but this man had for some time been neglecting most of his duties, and did not open his letters punctually. kutaisoff left the letter disclosing the conspiracy on the table. on opening the missive next day the unhappy man fell into such a desperate state that he nearly died of it. the same was the case with the colonel who had placed his troops about the palace. this young officer, talesin by name, learning of the crime that had been perpetrated, felt such grief at his deception that he went home with a raging fever, which nearly put an end to him. i believe, in fact, that he did not long survive the blow, all innocent that he was. but what i am sure of is that alexander i. went to see him every day during his illness, and interdicted some firing exercises too near the patient's house. although the various impediments i have mentioned might have interfered with paul's killing, it must be concluded that the contrivers of the scheme never doubted its issue. for all st. petersburg knew that on the night of the event a handsome young man in the plot named s----ky drew out his watch at midnight among a passably large company, saying: "it must all be over by this time." paul was dead, indeed; his body was forthwith embalmed, and for six weeks he lay on a bed of state, his face uncovered and showing scarcely a trace of decay, owing to the fact that it was plastered with rouge. the empress maria, his widow, went to kneel in prayer every day at the bed. she took her two youngest sons, nicholas and michael, such small children that nicholas one day asked her, "why is papa always asleep?" the trick employed to make alexander i. consent to his father's deposal--for he took no other view of the case--was a fact vouched for to me by count strogonoff, one of the wisest and most upright men i have ever known, and the best informed of all as to happenings at the russian court. he doubted the less how easy it had been to induce paul to sign the order for his wife's and children's imprisonment, as he was aware by what fearful suspicions the mind of that poor prince was haunted. the very evening before the assassination there was a grand court concert, at which the whole royal family was present. during a moment's private conversation with count strogonoff, the emperor said to him: "no doubt you think me the happiest of men, my friend. at last i am living in this palace of st. michael, which i have had built and finely fitted out according to my own tastes. i have my family about me here for the first time. my wife is still good looking, my eldest son is handsome, too, and my daughters are charming. there they are, all of them, opposite me; but when i look at them i see my murderers in them all." count strogonoff exclaimed, recoiling, horror-struck: "some one is lying to your majesty! this is an infamous slander!" paul stared at him with haggard eyes, and then, pressing his hand, declared, "what i have just told you is the truth." i am firmly persuaded that alexander knew nothing of the attempt to be made upon his father's life. if all the facts i was acquainted with at the time were not enough, i have conviction from proof afforded by that prince's well-known character. alexander i. had a noble, magnanimous heart; not only was he always god-fearing, but he was so honest that even in politics was he never known to resort to guile or deceit. very well, then--on hearing that paul was no more his despair was so intense that no one who went near him could doubt his innocence of the murder. the wiliest of men could not have summoned up all the tears he shed. in the first hours of his grief he refused to be emperor, and i know for certain that his wife elisabeth threw herself on her knees before him, imploring him to take the reins of government. he then went to his mother, the empress, who called to him as soon as she set eyes upon him from afar: "go away! go away! i see you all covered with your father's blood!" alexander raised his tearful eyes to heaven and said, in accents coming from the soul, "i take god to witness, mother, that i did not order this awful crime to be done!" these few words bore such a thorough stamp of truth that the empress consented to listen to him, and when she learned how the conspirators had cheated her son in the carrying out of their enterprise, she fell at his feet with, "then i bow to my emperor!" alexander lifted her up, knelt before her in turn, took her in his arms and bestowed every mark of respect and affection upon her. nor did he ever give the lie to this affection. so long as he lived never did the emperor alexander refuse his mother anything, and his respect toward her was so great that he insisted on maintaining all the honours of court etiquette for her. thus she always took precedence before the empress elisabeth. paul's death occasioned none of the upheavals which too often follow upon the departure of a ruler. all those who had participated in his favour continued to keep the emoluments they owed to his patronage. his valet kutaisoff, that barber whom he made so rich, whom he had decorated with the highest orders in russia, remained peacefully in the enjoyment of his master's benefactions. if there was no change in the lot of paul's friends, it was otherwise with his victims. exiles were called back, and their property was restored to them; justice was done to all who had been sacrificed to caprices without number. in fact, a golden era began for russia. it was impossible to deny this at witnessing the love, the regard and the enthusiasm of the russians for their new emperor. that enthusiasm was so strong that all esteemed it the greatest thing to have seen, to have met alexander. if he went walking in the summer garden of an evening, or if he passed along the streets of st. petersburg, the crowd would press about him and call down blessings upon him, while he, the most benevolent of princes, would answer all these demonstrations with perfect graciousness. i was unable to go to moscow for his coronation, but some people who were there told me that nothing was ever more moving or more beautiful. the transports of popular gladness vented themselves all over the city and in the church. when alexander placed the diamond crown on the empress elisabeth's head, radiant with beauty, they formed such a lovely pair as to evoke unbounded acclaim. in the midst of the universal elation i was myself fortunate enough to meet the emperor on one of the st. petersburg quays a few days after my arrival. he was on horseback, and although paul's regulations had of course been abolished, i had my carriage stopped for the pleasure of seeing alexander pass. he rode up to me at once, asked me how i liked moscow, and whether the roads had given me any trouble. i replied that i regretted having been unable to stay long enough in that glorious city to see all its splendours; as for the roads, i acknowledged they were abominable. he agreed with me, saying he hoped to have them mended. then, after paying me a thousand compliments, he left me. next day count strogonoff came to me on the emperor's behalf, with a command to paint him at half length, and also on horseback. no sooner was this news spread than numbers of court people rushed to my house, asking for a copy of either portrait, they cared not which, so long as they had one of alexander. at any other time of my life this would have been an opportunity to make a fortune, but alas! my physical condition, to say nothing of the mental sufferings still besetting me, prohibited me from taking advantage of it. feeling unfit to work at a full-length picture, i did a pastel bust-portrait of the emperor, and one of the empress; these i intended to enlarge at dresden or berlin, in case i should be obliged to leave st. petersburg. it was not long, in fact, before my ailments became unbearable; the doctor i consulted ordered me to take the waters at carlsbad. i cannot describe the regrets i experienced at leaving st. petersburg, where i had spent such happy years. it was not without an aching heart that i bade my daughter good-by, bitter though it was to see her estranged from me, to see her completely under the thumb of a clique headed by the vile governess whom i would accuse of everything evil. a few days prior to my departure my son-in-law remarked that he did not conceive how i could quit st. petersburg at the moment most favourable to my fortune. "you will admit," i answered, "that my heart must be very sick. the reason you can easily guess." other separations i likewise found most painful. the princesses kurakin and dolgoruki, that excellent count strogonoff, who had given me so many proofs of friendship--that was what i regretted far more than the fortune i was renouncing. i remember how the dear count came to see me as soon as he heard i was going. he was so perturbed that he walked up and down the studio where i was painting, muttering to himself, "no, no; she won't go away; it is impossible!" my daughter, who was present, thought he was turning mad. to all the kindly proffered demonstrations of attachment i could not answer except by a promise to return to st. petersburg. and such was then my firm intention. when i had quite decided to depart i asked for an audience with the empress, which was immediately granted, and on presenting myself i found the emperor there, too. i testified my liveliest and sincerest regrets to their majesties, telling them my health compelled me to take the waters at carlsbad, recommended to me for stoppages. to this the emperor affably replied: "do not go so far in search of a remedy. i will give you the empress's horse, and after riding it for some time you will be cured." i thanked the emperor a hundred times for the offer, but confessed that i did not know how to ride. "well," he resumed, "i will give you a riding-master to take you out." i cannot say how touched i was by such kindness, and on taking leave of their majesties i sought in vain for terms strong enough to express my gratitude. a few days after this interview i met the empress walking in the summer garden. i was with my daughter and m. de rivière. her majesty stepped up to me, saying: "do not leave us, i beg of you, mme. lebrun. remain here and take care of your health. i cannot bear to have you go." i assured her it was my desire and my purpose to return to st. petersburg for the pleasure of seeing her again. god knows i spoke the truth, but i have, none the less, often been assailed with the fear that my refusal to stay in russia may have appeared as ingratitude to their majesties, and that they may not have quite forgiven me. on crossing the russian border i burst into tears. i wanted to retrace my journey, and i vowed i would come back to those who had for so long heaped tokens of friendship and devotion upon me, and whose memory is ever in my heart. but one must believe in fate, for i never again saw the country which i still look upon as a second motherland. [illustration: a mother and her daughter.] chapter xiv homeward bound first station, narva -- the cataract -- riga -- hardships of travel a hundred years ago -- obdurate custom-house officials -- a summons to potsdam -- the loveliest and sweetest of queens -- her ugly children -- an ambitious cook -- the journey continued -- "remember your jewel-case" -- modelling in dirt for a pastime -- likewise sewing -- home again. i left st. petersburg sad, sick and alone in my carriage, having been unable to keep my russian maid. i had nobody but a very old man who wanted to go to prussia, and whom i had given a servant's place through pity, which i had cause to regret, because he got so drunk at every stage that he had to be carried back to the box. m. de rivière, escorting me in his calash, was of no great assistance to me, especially after crossing the russian frontier and entering the sandy district, for his postilions, from whom he did not know how to exact obedience, were continually taking side roads, while i followed the main road. my first stop i made at narva, a well-fortified but ugly, ill-paved little town. the road leading there is entrancing; it is edged with pretty houses and english gardens; in the distance is the sea, covered with ships, which makes this route extremely picturesque. the women of narva wear the dress of ancient times. they are good-looking, for the people of livonia in general are splendid. nearly all the heads of the old men reminded me of raphael's heads of christ, and the young men, their long hair falling on their shoulders, might have been models to that great painter. the day after my arrival i went to visit a magnificent cataract at some distance from the town. a huge mass of water--you cannot tell where it comes from--forms a torrent so rapid and powerful that in its course it runs up enormous rocks, from which it tumbles noisily down to rush up other rocks. the multitudinous cascades thus shooting after each other in succession, and swallowing each other up, produce a terrifying din. while i was occupied in sketching this beautiful horror some of the inhabitants of narva who were watching me told me of a dreadful thing they had witnessed. the waters of the cataract, swollen by great rains, had carried away some of the bank, and with it a house that was the home of a family. the cries of distress of the unfortunates were heard, and their frightful plight was seen, but no aid could be given them, since it was impossible to steer a boat in the torrent. the heartrending spectacle was finally followed by one far more shocking, when the house and the unhappy family were engulfed, and disappeared before the eyes of those who were now narrating the catastrophe, and who were still quite affected by it. arriving at riga, i found that this town, like narva, was neither handsome nor well-paved, but it is known to be a great commercial place and has a fine harbour. most of the men are habited like turks or poles, and all women not of the populace put a gauze veil over their heads when they go out. i scarcely had time to make other observations, as i was hastening to reach mittau, where i still hoped to find the royal family. but to my annoyance i arrived too late and did not meet them, so that i made but a short stay in this town, where i had only gone for the sake of seeing our princes. i had taken the post from st. petersburg, but at riga we met the grand duchess of baden, who was on her way to the empress, her daughter, and who left not a horse on our route. i was obliged to hire horses at livery-stables, and the coachman, instead of putting me down for the night at the posthouses, took me to wretched cabins where there were no beds and nothing to eat, so that in most cases i spent the night in my carriage. as for food, the soup i got was made without meat, but with carrots and bad butter. if i had a fowl killed it was so lean and so tough that m. de rivière and i were unable to cut it. and we barely had time to finish these miserable meals, in so great haste were the liverymen to resume the journey. we drove through such deep sand that the horses went at a walk. it was frightfully hot. in order to get air i was obliged to leave all my windows open, and both postilions smoked incessantly; the vile odour of their pipes sickened me so that i preferred to walk most of the time they smoked, although i was up to my ankles in sand. fortunately, no robbers are ever met with on these roads. true, i noticed wolves on the neighbouring heights, but apparently they were afraid of us, for they always fled when we drew near, and so did the poor stags, which i frequently saw crossing the road, when alarmed by m. de rivière's calash. in my state of health such hardships were bound to tell upon me. a few days, in fact, were enough to break me down to such a degree that not to succumb altogether it needed all my courage and my lively determination not to interrupt the journey. i became so weak and ill that i had to drag myself to my carriage, where i remained motionless, bereft even of the ability to think. the only sensation i had was a sharp pain in the right side, caused by rheumatism, and intensified with every jolt. this pain was so unbearable that one day, when we were driving on a road under repair and full of stones, i fainted away in the carriage. a part of my torture ended at koenigsberg. there i took the post as far as berlin, where i arrived about the end of july, , at ten in the evening. but though i needed rest so badly, i was first to undergo the ordeal of the custom-house. i was made to enter a large, dark vault, where i waited a full two hours. the customs officers then said they wanted to hold my carriage, so as to examine it at night, which would have compelled me to walk to the inn in the pouring rain. i argued with these men in french, and they answered me in german. it was enough to drive one to distraction. they would not even allow me to take out a nightcap and a little vial containing an antispasmodic, of which i certainly would stand in great need after such a trial. i was so hoarse from shouting at the barbarians that i could not speak. at last i obtained permission to leave the custom-house in my carriage, and i went to the "city of paris" inn with a customs officer, a real demon and dead drunk into the bargain. he opened my luggage and turned everything pell-mell, appropriating a piece of embroidered indian stuff given me by mme. du barry on my departure from paris. as i did not wish my "sibyl" or the studies i had made of the emperor and empress of russia to be unrolled, my carriage was put under seal, and at last i was able to get to bed. early next day i sent for m. ranspach, my banker, who settled all my difficulties with the custom-house. three days sufficed to rest me from the fatigues of my journey, and i was feeling much better when the queen of prussia, who was then absent from berlin, was kind enough to request my presence at potsdam, where she desired me to do her portrait. i went. but my pen is incapable of rendering the impression which the first sight of that princess made upon me. the beauty of her heavenly face, that expressed benevolence and goodness, and whose features were so regular and delicate, the loveliness of her figure, neck, and arms, the exquisite freshness of her complexion--all was enchanting beyond anything imaginable. she was in deep mourning, and wore a coronet of black jet, which, far from being to her disadvantage, brought out the dazzling whiteness of her skin. one must have seen the queen of prussia in order to understand how bewitched i was when i first beheld her. she made an appointment for the first sitting. "i cannot," she said, "give it to you before noon, because the king reviews the troops at ten every morning and likes me to attend." she wanted to lodge me in the palace, but, knowing that this must inconvenience one of her ladies, i declined with thanks and took quarters in a neighbouring hotel, where i was very badly off in every way. my stay at potsdam was nevertheless a veritable delight to me, for the more i saw of that charming queen the more was i sensible to the privilege of being in her company. she seemed to wish to see the studies i had made of the emperor alexander and the empress elizabeth; i promptly brought them to her, as well as my "sibyl," which i had stretched. i cannot say how graciously she praised this picture. she was so friendly and so kind that the feeling she inspired was altogether one of affection. i look back with pleasure upon all the marks of favour that her majesty showered upon me, even in the slightest matters. for instance: i was in the habit of taking coffee of a morning, and in my hotel it was always atrocious. somehow i told the queen about this, and the next day she sent me some that was excellent. another time, when i complimented her on her bracelets, which were in the antique style, she at once removed them from her arms and put them on mine. this gift was more welcome to me than a fortune would have been; from that day forth those bracelets have travelled with me everywhere. she was also obliging enough to give me a box at the theatre quite near hers. from this place of vantage i enjoyed, above all, looking at her majesty, whose lovely face was like that of a sixteen-year-old girl. during one of our sittings the queen sent for her children. to my great surprise i found that they were ugly. in showing them to me she said, "they are not pretty." i confess i had not the courage to deny it. i contented myself with replying that their faces had a great deal of character. besides the two pastels i made of her majesty, i did two others of prince ferdinand's family. one of the young princesses, louise, who had married prince radziwill, was pretty and very genial. for some time i had a delightful correspondence with her; i count her as one of the people one can never forget. her husband was a thorough musician. i remember a surprise he caused me arising solely from a difference in national customs. during my sojourn at berlin i was taken to a grand public concert, and was amazed to the last degree, upon entering the hall, to see prince radziwill performing on the harp! such a thing would be impossible with us. never could an amateur, especially a prince, play before any one but his own social circle, and certainly not before people who paid. i suppose in prussia it was quite usual. in berlin i made the acquaintance of the baroness de krudener, so well known for her cleverness and her rhapsodical notions. her renown as an author was already established, but she had not yet gained the reputation of a religious prophet that made her so famous in the north. she and her husband treated me with great civility. i can say the same for mme. de souza, the portuguese ambassadress, whose portrait i painted at the time. on first arriving at berlin i called upon the french ambassador, general bournonville, for i was at last beginning to consider a return to paris. my friends, and particularly my brother, urgently suggested i should do so. they had easily had my name taken off the list of exiles, so that i was reëstablished as a frenchwoman, which, in spite of all, i had ever remained in my heart. although general bournonville was the first republican ambassador i visited, i had already seen others. toward the end of my stay at st. petersburg general duroc and m. de châteaugiron appeared at alexander's court as envoys of bonaparte, and i remember hearing the empress elisabeth saying to the emperor, "when are we to receive the _citizens_?" m. de châteaugiron called upon me. i was as polite as in me lay, but that tricoloured cockade affected me unspeakably. a few days later they both dined at princess galitzin's. at table i found myself next to general duroc, who was said to have been one of napoleon's intimates. he addressed not a single word to me, and i did likewise with him. the dinner i speak of gave rise to a rather amusing incident. the princess's cook, wholly ignorant of the french revolution, naturally took these gentlemen for ambassadors from the king of france. wishing to honour them, after much reflection he bethought himself that the lily was the emblem of france, and accordingly arranged his truffles and fillets and sweetmeats in that pattern. this so took the guests aback that the princess, fearing no doubt she was suspected of a bad joke, called up the cook, and asked him what all the lilies meant. said the worthy soul with an air of proud satisfaction, "i wanted to show your excellency that i knew the proper thing to do on great occasions." a few days before i said farewell to berlin the director-general of the academy of painting most courteously came to me in person with my diploma as a member of said academy. the many tokens of good-will heaped upon me at the prussian capital and court would assuredly have kept me longer had my plans not been definitely fixed. hence, being resolved to go, i bade good-by to that dear, kind, lovely young queen, all unwitting, alas! how few years after i was to be shocked with the news of her death. [illustration: woman painting.] at starting from berlin i was threatened with the loss of everything i owned, and this is how it happened: my horses were ordered for five o'clock in the morning. my man servant must have gone to make his adieus to some friends, for he did not appear, and in prussia, as every one knows, horses do not wait. i got up and dressed in a thoroughly sleepy condition. meanwhile the porter of my hotel, not seeing my man, took my jewel-case downstairs with my remaining effects. this jewel-case, which contained all my diamonds and other ornaments, and my cash--my whole fortune, in fact--i always had under my feet when travelling. by the greatest luck, as soon as i got into my carriage, though half asleep, i noticed that my feet were not supported as usual. the horses were just off. i cried out to have them stopped, and then called to the porter for my jewel-case, purposely making enough noise to wake the mistress of the house. and i was successful, for, after some evasions by the porter, the case was brought out. it had been found in a stable at the back of the yard, all covered with hay. the incident had given my man time to arrive, and i drove away in high spirits, as may well be imagined, at having recovered both my servant and my jewel-case. i record the adventure thinking it may be useful as a lesson to absent-minded travellers. from berlin i went to dresden, and then on to brunswick, where i spent a few days with the rivière family. between brunswick and weimar my postilion lost the way, and we were stuck for hours in the heaviest soil. i remember that as a truce to my impatience--and more particularly to my appetite--i gathered up some of that wretched earth and tried to model a head with it; i really achieved something that looked like a face. though furnished with letters for the court at weimar, i did not present them, but after a day's rest proceeded to gotha. here i met an old friend i had known in paris, baron grimm, who very civilly attended to all my wants for the journey, which i did not again interrupt until i reached frankfort. we were obliged to wait at frankfort six days, during which i was very much bored. to pass the time i mended my old shirts, and the lord knows what sort of sewing that was! on reaching paris i engaged a chambermaid, who remarked, when she saw my mending, "any one can see that madame has been in a savage country, for this is sewn like the devil." i laughed and informed her that it was my own handiwork. the poor girl, quite embarrassed, was eager to take back what she had said, but i reassured her by acknowledging that i had never been an adept with the needle. i will not attempt to describe my feelings at setting foot on the soil of france, from which i had been absent twelve years. i was stirred by terror, grief and joy in turn. i mourned the friends who had died on the scaffold; but i was to see those again who still lived. this france, that i was entering once more, had been the scene of horrible crimes. but this france was my country! chapter xv old friends and new paris after the revolution -- renewing old acquaintances and forming new ties -- rival beauties: mme. rÉcamier and mme. tallien -- mme. campan -- an englishwoman's slip of the tongue -- some distinguished foreigners. on my arrival in paris at our house in the rue gros chenet, m. lebrun, my brother, my sister-in-law, and her daughter were awaiting me when i alighted from my carriage; they were all weeping for joy, and i, too, was deeply moved. i found the staircase lined with flowers, and my apartment in complete readiness. the hangings and curtains of my bedroom were in green cloth, the curtains edged with yellow watered silk. m. lebrun had had a crown of gilt stars put over the bedstead, the furniture was all convenient and in good taste, and i felt altogether comfortably installed. although m. lebrun made me pay dearly enough for all this, i nevertheless appreciated the pains he had taken to make my place of abode agreeable. the house in the rue gros chenet was separated by a garden from a house facing the rue de cléry, which also belonged to m. lebrun. in this second house was a great room where very fine concerts were given. i was taken there the evening of my arrival, and as soon as i entered the place everybody turned in my direction, the audience clapping their hands, the musicians rapping on their violins with their bows. i was so touched by this flattering testimony that i gave way to tears. i call to mind that mme. tallien was at this concert, radiant with beauty. my first visitor, next day, was greuze, whom i found unchanged. you would even have said that he had never undressed his hair, for the same locks waved at each side of his head--just as before my departure. i was grateful for his attention, and very glad to see him again. after greuze came my good friend, mme. de bonneuil, as pretty as ever; the dear creature was preserved in a truly wonderful manner. she told me that her daughter, mme. regnault de saint-jean-d'angély, was to give a ball the following night, and that i must come unfailingly. i answered that i had no ball dress, and then showed her that famous piece of indian stuff given me by mme. du barry, which had gone through such great adventures since being in my possession. mme. de bonneuil declared it admirable, and sent it to mme. germain, the celebrated dressmaker, who immediately made me a fashionable gown, which she brought me that very evening. so i went to mme. regnault de saint-jean-d'angély's ball, and i saw the handsomest women of the period, first among them mme. regnault herself, and next mme. visconti, so remarkable for her beauty of both figure and face. while amusing myself with looking over all these lovely ladies, some one sitting in front of me turned round. she was so exquisite that i could not help exclaiming, "oh, how beautiful you are!" it was mme. jouberthon, then portionless, who afterward married lucien bonaparte. i also saw a number of french generals at this ball. macdonald, marmont and several others were pointed out to me. in fact, this was a new society. a few days after my return mme. bonaparte called upon me one morning. she spoke of the balls at which we had been together before the revolution; she was most cordial, and even invited me to dinner at the first consul's. however, the date of this dinner was never mentioned. my friend robert soon paid me a visit, and so did the brongniarts, and ménageot. i was very deeply touched with the joy testified by the friends and acquaintances who crowded to see me every day. but the pleasure of greeting them all was bitterly mingled with sorrow at learning of many deaths i was ignorant of, for not an individual came who had not lost a mother, a husband, or some relation. and i had another trial to undergo, worse than all the rest. good manners demanded a visit to my odious stepfather. he still lived at neuilly, in a small house bought by my father, where i had often been in my early youth. everything in the place reminded me of my poor mother and my happy days with her. i found her workbasket just as she had left it. in short, the visit was the more sad for me as i was mournfully inclined. going to neuilly, i for the first time recrossed the louis xv. square, where i still seemed to see the blood of a host of noble victims. my brother, who was with me, reproached himself for not having made our carriage take a different route, since i was suffering beyond belief. at this very day i never pass that square without calling up the horrors it has witnessed--i cannot control my imagination. the first time i went to the play the house looked exceedingly dull to me. accustomed as i had been, in france and abroad, to see every one powdered, those dark heads and those men in dark clothes made a melancholy picture. you would have thought the audience had assembled to go to a funeral. in general, paris had a less lively appearance to me. the streets seemed so narrow that i was tempted to believe double rows of houses had been built. this was no doubt due to my recent impressions of st. petersburg and berlin, where the streets, for the most part, are very wide. but what displeased me far more was still to see "liberty, fraternity or death" written on the walls. these words, sanctified by the terror, aroused the saddest thoughts in me touching the past, and inspired me with some fears for the future. i was taken to see a great review by the first consul in the square of the louvre. i stood at a window in the museum, and recollect that i refused to acknowledge the tiny man i saw to be bonaparte; the duke de crillon, who was beside me, had all the difficulty in the world to convince me. here, as in the case of catherine ii., i had depicted such a famous man in the shape of a giant. not long after my arrival bonaparte's brothers came to view my works; they were very civil toward me, and said the most flattering things. lucien, especially, inspected my "sibyl" quite minutely, and proffered me a thousand praises on account of it. my first visits were to my good old friends, the marquise de grollier, mme. de verdun and the countess d'andlau, whose two daughters i saw at the same time, mme. de rosambeau and mme. d'orglande, both worthy of their mother in mind and good looks. i likewise went to see mme. de ségur. i found her lonely and dejected; her husband had no post, and they were living in straitened circumstances. later, when i came back from london, bonaparte made the count de ségur master of ceremonies, which gave them an easy life. i remember how, about this time, going to see the countess ségur toward eight in the evening, and finding her alone, she said to me: "you would scarcely believe i have had twenty people to dinner. they all went after the coffee." i was, indeed, rather surprised, because before the revolution most of the guests you had to dinner would remain with you until evening, which i thought much more proper than the new method. at the same time mme. de ségur invited me to a large musical party at which all the notables of the day came together. here i had occasion to observe another innovation, which seemed to me no better than the first. i was astonished, when i entered the room, to find all the men on one side and all the women on the other--like hostile forces, you would have said. not a man came over to our side excepting the master of the house, the count de ségur, impelled by his old habits of gallantry to pay the ladies a few compliments. mme. de canisy was announced, a very handsome woman, with the figure of a painter's model. and then we lost our only knight, for the count went to lay himself at the feet of this beauty, and did not leave her the whole evening. [illustration: mme. courcelles.] i was seated next to mme. de bassano, who had been praised highly to me, and whom i had thus been anxious to see. she seemed very much wrapped up in the diamond monogram given me by the queen of naples when i bade that princess farewell. moreover, considering me probably as an interloper, since i was neither a minister's wife nor a lady of the court, she spoke not a single word to me, which did not, however, prevent me from looking at her repeatedly and judging her extremely pretty. the first artist i went to see was m. vien, who had formerly been created first painter to the king, and whom bonaparte had recently nominated senator. he was then eighty-two years old. m. vien may be regarded as heading the restoration of the french school. after this visit i went to m. gérard's, already famous for his pictures, "belisarius" and "psyche." he had just finished a fine portrait of mme. bonaparte reclining on a sofa, which was to add yet more to his reputation in this style of painting. mme. bonaparte's portrait made me wish to see that which gérard had done of mme. récamier. so i went to that lovely woman's house, delighted with the chance of making her acquaintance. one woman there was who rivalled mme. récamier in respect of beauty. this was mme. tallien. besides her great beauty, she had great goodness of heart; in the revolution a host of victims condemned to death owed their lives to the influence she exercised upon tallien. the rescued ones called her "our lady of good help." she received me most graciously. later, after marrying the prince de chimay, she inhabited a palatial house at the end of the rue de babylone, where she and her husband diverted themselves with giving plays. they both acted very well. she invited me to see one of these pieces, and came to several of my evening parties. i had the felicity, too, at this time, of knowing ducis, whose admirable character equalled his rare talent. the ease and simplicity of all his ways contrasted so well with the splendid imagination with which heaven had gifted him that i have never known a more lovable man than this excellent ducis. the sole regret of his friends was that they were unable to induce him to settle in paris. but he disliked the city, and the author of "oedipus" and "othello" demanded shepherds and pastures to make his life agreeably consistent. the solitary mode of existence he rejoiced in caused me a surprise, or rather a fright, which i shall never forget. after my return from london i went to see him at versailles, whither, as i was aware, he had retired. it was in the evening; i knocked at his door, and it was opened to me by mme. peyre, the architect's widow, candle in hand. i thought she had died long ago, and i uttered a scream. while i tried to collect my wits she related how she had lately been married to ducis. at last i understood, and composed myself. she led me to her husband, whom i found alone in a little room on the top floor of the house, buried in books and manuscripts. nothing in this abode seemed to me either pastoral or pleasant, but by the aid of his imagination ducis turned this attic, which he called his "lookout," into a place of delight. i met mme. campan again with much pleasure. she was then playing a somewhat important part in what was soon to become the reigning family. one day she asked me to dinner at saint germain, where her boarding-school was established. at table i sat near mme. murat, napoleon's sister, but we were so placed that i could see only her profile, particularly as she did not turn her head in my direction. in the evening the young ladies of the school gave us a performance of "esther," in which mlle. augué, who afterward married marshal ney, enacted the leading rôle very well. bonaparte was one of the spectators. he was seated in the first row, and i posted myself in the second, in a corner, but near enough to observe him conveniently. though i was in a dark spot, mme. campan came to tell me, between two acts, that he had guessed who i was. i was glad to notice a bust of marie antoinette in mme. campan's room. i felt grateful to her because of this, and she confided to me that bonaparte approved of it, which i thought very proper on his part. it is true that at this period there seemed no need for him to have any fears relating either to the past or the future. his victories evoked enthusiasm from the french, and even from foreigners. he had many admirers among the english especially, and i recall one day, when i went to dine with the duchess of gordon, she showed me bonaparte's portrait, saying in french, "there is my zero." as she pronounced french very badly, i understood that she meant "hero," and we both laughed heartily over my explanation of "zero." the large number of strangers i knew in paris, and the desire to dispel an unconquerable melancholy, prompted me to give some evening parties. princess dolgoruki was anxious to meet the abbé delille. so i requested his presence at supper with several other people worthy of listening to him. though this charming poet had gone blind, he had nevertheless kept his cheerfulness of disposition. he recited some of his beautiful lines to us, and we were all enchanted by them. on another occasion i arranged a supper at which all the great personages of the day were present, and among the ambassadors was m. de metternich. then i gave a ball, to which mme. hamelin, m. de trénis, and other renowned dancers came. mme. hamelin was regarded as the best dancer in paris society. certainly she was exquisitely graceful and fleet of foot. i remember how, at this ball, mme. dimidoff danced the russian waltz so entrancingly that we stood on our chairs to watch her. having a suitable room in my house on the rue gros chenet, i conceived the idea of putting in a stage and giving plays. the spectators included all persons of distinction. in all these gatherings i aimed at paying back the russians and germans in paris a few of the favours they had so thoughtfully and amiably rendered me in their own country. almost every day i saw princess dolgoruki, who had been such an angel to me in st. petersburg. she enjoyed being in paris very well. one evening i found the viscount de ségur at her house. i had often seen him before the revolution; he was then young and fashionable, and made a thousand conquests through his personal graces. when i saw him again at the princess's his face was expressionless and wrinkled; he wore a wig with symmetrical curls at each side, leaving his forehead bald. another twelve years and the wig aged him so that i could barely recognise him excepting by his voice. princess dolgoruki came to see me the day of her presentation to bonaparte. i asked her what she thought of the first consul's court. "it is not a court," she replied, "but a power." the thing must of course have appeared to her in that light, being accustomed to the court of st. petersburg, which is so large and brilliant, whereas at the tuileries she found few women and a prodigious number of military men of all grades. among all the amusements that residence in paris afforded me, i was none the less pursued by innumerable black thoughts, which assailed me even in the midst of pleasures. to put an end to such a painful state of mind, i determined to take a journey. more than once, while i was at rome, the newspapers had had it that i was at london, but the fact was i had never seen that city. accordingly, i resolved to go there. chapter xvi unmerry england london -- its historic piles -- and dull sundays -- and taciturn people -- pictures by sir joshua reynolds -- his modesty -- how to dry pictures in a damp climate -- the artistic view of a certain popular beauty -- the prince of wales -- his alleged attentions to mme. lebrun -- the authoress lectures an unfriendly critic -- news of one of napoleon's "atrocious crimes." i started for london on the th of april, . i knew not a word of english. true, i was accompanied by an english maid, but the girl had long been serving me badly, and i was obliged to dismiss her very shortly after my arrival in london, because she did nothing but eat bread and butter all day. luckily i had brought some one besides, a charming person to whom ill-fortune made the home she had found under my roof very precious. this was my faithful adelaide, who lived with me on the footing of a friend, and whose attentions and counsels have always been most valuable to me. on disembarking at dover i was at first somewhat affrighted at the view of a whole population assembled on the shore. but i was reassured when informed that the crowd was simply composed of curious idlers, who were following their usual habits in coming down to see the travellers land. the sun was going down. i at once hired a three-horse chaise, and made off forthwith, for i was not without apprehensions, seeing i had been told i might very likely encounter highwaymen. i took the precaution of putting my diamonds into my stockings, and was glad i had done so when i perceived two horsemen advancing toward me at a gallop. what capped the climax of my fears was to see them separate, in order--as i imagined--to present themselves at the two windows of my carriage. i confess i was seized with a violent fit of trembling, but that was the worst that happened. vast and handsome though london may be, that city affords less food for the artist's interest than paris or the italian towns. not that you do not find a great number of rare works of art in england. but most of them are owned by wealthy private persons, whose country houses and provincial seats they adorn. at the period i mention, london had no picture gallery, that now existing being the result of legacies and gifts to the nation made within a few years. in default of pictures, i went to look at the public edifices. i returned several times to westminster abbey, where the tombs of the kings and queens are superb. as they belong to different ages they offer great attractions to artists and fanciers. i admired, among others, the tomb of mary stuart, in which the remains of that ill-fated queen were deposited by her son, james i. i spent much time in that part of the church devoted to the sepulture of the great poets, milton, pope, and chatterton. this last-named is known to have poisoned himself while dying of starvation, and i reflected that the money laid out upon rendering him these posthumous honours might have sufficed, when he was alive, to insure him comfortable days. st. paul's cathedral is also very fine. its dome is an imitation of that of st. peter's, at rome. at the tower of london i saw a very interesting collection of armour, dating from the various centuries. there is a row of royal figures on horseback, among them elizabeth, mounted on a courser and ready to review her troops. the london museum contains a collection of minerals, birds, weapons and tools from the south sea islands, due to the famous captain cook. the streets of london are wide and clean. broad side pavements make them very convenient for foot-passengers, and one is the more surprised to witness scenes upon them that ought to be proscribed by civilisation. it is not rare to see boxers fighting and wounding each other to the point of drawing blood. far from such a spectacle seeming to shock the people looking on, they give them glasses of gin to stimulate their zeal. sunday in london is as dismal as the climate. not a shop is open; there are no plays, nor balls, nor concerts. universal silence reigns, and as on that day no one is allowed to work nor even to play music without incurring the risk of having his windows broken by the populace, there is no resource for killing time but the public walks. these, indeed, are very well frequented. the chief amusement of the town is the assembling of good company, called a "rout." two or three hundred individuals walk up and down the rooms, the women arm-in-arm, for the men usually keep aside. in this crowd one is pushed and jostled without end, so that it becomes very fatiguing. but there is nothing to sit on. at one of these routs i attended, an englishman i knew in italy caught sight of me. he came up to me and said, in the midst of the profound silence that reigns at all these parties, "don't you think these gatherings are enjoyable?" "you enjoy yourselves with what would bore us," i replied. i really did not see what pleasure was to be got out of stifling in such a crowd that you could not even reach your hostess. [illustration: girl with muff.] nor are the walks in london any livelier. the women walk together on one side, all dressed in white; they are so taciturn, and so perfectly placid, that they might be taken for perambulating ghosts. the men hold aloof from them, and behave just as solemnly. i have sometimes come upon a couple, and have amused myself, if i happened to follow them awhile, by watching whether they would speak to each other. i never saw any who did. i went to the principal painters, and was mightily astonished to see that they all had a large room full of portraits with nothing but the heads done. i asked them why they thus exhibited their pictures before finishing them. they all answered that the persons who had posed were satisfied with being seen and mentioned, and that besides, the sketch made, half the price was paid in advance, when the painter was satisfied, too. at london i saw many pictures by the renowned reynolds; their colouring is excellent, resembling that of titian, but they are mostly unfinished, except as to the head. i, however, admired a "child samuel" by him, whose completeness and colouring both pleased me. reynolds was as modest as he was talented. when my portrait of m. de calonne arrived at the london custom-house, reynolds, who had been apprised of the fact, went to look at it. when the box was opened he stood absorbed in the picture for a long space and praised it warmly. thereupon some nincompoop ejaculated, "that must be a fine portrait; mme. lebrun was paid eighty thousand francs for it!" "i am sure," replied reynolds, "i could not do it as well for a hundred thousand." the london climate was the despair of this artist because of the difficulty it offers to drying pictures, and he had invented, i heard, a way of mixing wax with his colours, which made them dull. in truth, the dampness in london was such that, to dry the pictures i painted there, i had a fire constantly burning in my studio until the moment i went to bed. i would set my pictures at a certain distance from the fireplace, and often would leave a rout to go and ascertain whether they wanted moving nearer the grate or farther away. this slavery was unavoidable and unendurable. concerts were very much the fashion in london, and i preferred them to the routs, though these afforded an opportunity to the well-received foreigner--and fortunately i was one--of meeting all the best english society. invitations are not by letter, as in france. only a card is sent, with the inscription, "at home such and such a day." the most fashionable woman in london at this time was the duchess of devonshire. i had often heard of her beauty and her influence in politics, and when i called upon her she greeted me in the most affable style. she might then have been about forty-five years old. her features were very regular, but i was not struck by her beauty. her complexion was too high, and ill-fortune had ordained that one of her eyes should be blind. as at this period the hair was worn over the forehead, she concealed the eye under a bunch of curls, but that was insufficient to hide such a serious defect. the duchess of devonshire was of fair size, her degree of stoutness being exactly appropriate to her age, and her unconstrained manner became her exceedingly well. not long after my arrival in london, the treaty of amiens was abrogated, and all french who had not lived in england over a year were compelled to leave the country at once. the prince of wales, to whom i was presented, assured me that i was not to be included in this edict, that he would oppose my expulsion, and that he would immediately ask his father, the king, for a permit allowing me to remain. the permit, stating all necessary particulars, was granted me. it mentioned that i was at liberty to travel anywhere within the kingdom, that i might sojourn wherever i pleased, and also that i must be protected in the seaport towns i might elect to stop at--a favour which old french residents of england had great difficulty in securing at this juncture. the prince of wales went to the limit of politeness by bringing the document to me in person. the prince of wales might then have been about forty, but he looked older, which was to be accounted for by his stoutness. tall and well-built, he had a handsome face; his features were all regular and distinguished. he wore a wig very artistically disposed, the hair parted on the forehead like the apollo di belvedere's, and this suited him to perfection. he was proficient in all the bodily exercises, and spoke french very well and with the greatest fluency. he was elaborately elegant--magnificently so, to the extent of prodigality. at one time he was reputed to have debts to the amount of £ , --which were finally paid by his father and parliament. as he was one of the handsomest men in the united kingdom, he was the idol of the women. it was but a little while before my departure that i did his portrait. i painted him at almost full length, in uniform. several english painters became enraged against me on hearing that i had begun this picture and that the prince allowed me all the time i asked to finish it, for they had long and vainly been waiting for the same concession. i was aware that the queen-mother said her son was making love to me, and that he often came to lunch at my house. never did the prince of wales enter my door in the forenoon except for his sittings. as soon as his likeness was done the prince gave it to mme. fitzherbert. she had it put in a rolling frame, like a large bedroom mirror, so as to move it into any of her rooms--something which i thought highly ingenious. the anger of the english artists toward me did not stop at talk. a certain m. ----, a portrait painter, published a work in which he vehemently belittled french painting in general and my own in particular. sundry parts of the book were translated to me, and they appeared so unjust and absurd that i could not help springing to the defense of the famous painters whose countrywoman i was. accordingly, i wrote to this m. ---- as follows: "_sir_: i understand that in your work on painting you speak of the french school. as, from what is reported to me concerning your remarks, i gather that you have not the least idea of that school, i think i must give you some information that you may find serviceable. i presume, in the first place, that you do not attack the great artists who lived in the reign of louis xiv., such as lebrun, lesueur, simon vouet, etc., and rigaud, mignard, and largillière, the portrait painters. as for the artists of the day, you do the french school the greatest injustice in rating it by its achievements of thirty years ago. since then it has made enormous strides in a branch totally different from that signalising its decline. not, however, that the man who ruined it was not gifted with a very superior talent. boucher was a born colourist. he had discrimination in composing and good taste in the choice of his figures. but of a sudden he stopped working except for the dainty chambers of women, when his colouring became insipid, his style affected; and, this example once set, all painters tried to follow it. his defects were carried to the extreme, as always happens; things went from bad to worse, and art seemed irretrievably destroyed. then came an able painter, called vien, whose style was simple and severe. he was appreciated by true art-lovers, and regenerated our school. we have since produced david, young louis drouais--who died at rome, aged twenty-five, just as he seemed to give promise of becoming a second raphael--gérard, gros, girodet, guérin, and a number of others i might cite. "it is not surprising that after criticising the works of david, which you evidently do not know at all, you do me the honour of criticising mine, which you know no better. being ignorant of the english language, i had not been able to read what you wrote about my painting, and when i was told, without being given the particulars, that you had abused me soundly, i answered that, however much you might disparage my pictures, all the worst you could say of them would be less than i think. i do not suppose that any artist imagines he has attained perfection, and, far from any such presumption on my part, i have never yet been quite satisfied with any work of mine. nevertheless, being now more fully informed, and knowing that your criticism bears principally on a point that appears important to me, i believe my duty is to repudiate it in the interest of art. "patience, the only merit you allow me, is unfortunately not one of the virtues of my character. only, it is true that i am loath to leave my work. i consider it is never complete enough, and, in the fear of leaving it too imperfect, my conscience makes me think about it a long time and touch it up repeatedly. "it seems that my lace shocks you, although i have painted none for fifteen years. i vastly prefer scarfs, which you, sir, would do well yourself to employ. scarfs, you may believe me, are a boon to painters, and had you used them you would have acquired good taste in draping, in which you are deficient. as for those stuffs, those eloquent cushions, those velvets, to be seen in my _shop_, it is my opinion that one should pay as much attention as possible to all such accessories. on this point i have raphael as an authority, who never neglected anything of this kind, who wished everything to be explicit, to be rendered minutely--that is the language of art--even to the smallest flowers in the grass. i can, furthermore, quote the example of ancient sculpture, in which not the most trifling accessories are found neglected: the draped scarfs which lie so snugly upon nude figures, and of which mere fragments are bought by real fanciers to-day, the ornamentation on breastplates, the buskins--all that is carried out with perfect finish. "and now, sir, allow me to remark that the word _shop_, which term you apply to my studio, is scarcely worthy of an artist. i show my pictures without having money asked at the door. i have even, to avoid that practise" [then in vogue among the painters of london], "set aside one day each week for persons of good standing and such persons as these may see fit to present to me. i may, therefore, beg you to observe that the word _shop_ is improper, and that severity never excuses a man from being polite. "i have the honour to be, etc." this letter, which i read to some friends, remained no secret to london society, and the laugh was not on the side of m. ----, who, all enmity aside, did not know how to do drapings. i met a number of compatriots in england whom i had known for years. i had the felicity of meeting the count d'artois once more, at a party given by lady percival, who received a number of exiles. he had grown stouter, and i really thought him very handsome. a few days later he honoured me by coming to see my studio. i was out, and i only returned just as he was going away. but he was good enough to come back and compliment me upon my portrait of the prince of wales, with which he seemed highly pleased. the count d'artois did not go out much into society. having but a modest income, he yet saved money, with which he helped the poorest of the french. his goodness of heart incited him to sacrifice all his pleasures for charitable purposes. [illustration: madame vigÉe lebrun.] this prince's son, the duke de berri, often came to see me of a morning. he sometimes appeared with small pictures under his arm, which he had bought at a very low price. what proves how good a judge of painting he was is that these pictures were splendid wouvermans. but it needed a very fine feeling to detect their merit under the grime that covered them. the duke de berri also had a passion for music. i was at the play in london when the murder of the duke d'enghien was announced. hardly had the news spread through the theatre, when all the women in the boxes turned their backs to the stage, and the piece would not have gone on if somebody had not come in to state the report a false one. we then all resumed our seats, and the play continued, but as we went out it was, alas! all confirmed. we even learned some particulars of this atrocious crime, which will always leave a terrible blood-stain on napoleon's career. next day we attended the funeral mass celebrated for the noble victim. all of the french, our princes included, and a large number of english ladies were present. the abbé de bouvant gave a most touching discourse on the lot of the unhappy duke d'enghien. the sermon ended with an invocation to the almighty to spare our dear princes from a like fate. alas! the prayer was not heard, for we lived to see the duke de berri fall by the dagger of a dastardly assassin. chapter xvii persons and places in britain english palaces -- and scenery -- suburban princes -- richmond terrace -- an eccentric margravine -- the charm of the isle of wight -- the britons a stolid nation -- their indifference to rain. although the kind treatment i received induced me to stay three years in london, whereas i had intended to pass but three months, the climate of that town seemed very melancholy to me. it even disagreed with my health, and i seized every opportunity to take a breath of pure air in the lovely vales and dales of england, where i could at least see some sunlight. i began, shortly after my arrival, by spending a fortnight with mme. chinnery at gillwell, where i found the celebrated viotti. the house was most luxurious, and i was given a charming welcome. on reaching the place i saw that the gate was garlanded with flowery wreaths twined about the pillars. on the staircase, similarly decorated, stood at intervals little marble cupids, holding vases filled with roses. in short, it was a springtime fairy pageant. so soon as i had entered the drawing-room, two little angels, mme. chinnery's son and daughter, sang a delicious piece of music to me, composed for me by that good-natured viotti. i was truly touched by this affectionate greeting; indeed, the fortnight i spent at gillwell were days of joy and gladness. mme. chinnery was a beautiful woman, with much mental subtlety and charm. her daughter, then fourteen years of age, played the piano astonishingly, so that every evening this young girl, viotti, and mme. chinnery, herself an excellent musician, gave us a delightful concert. i recollect that my hostess's son, though yet a child, had a veritable passion for study. he could not be made to lay his books aside. when his hours of recreation came, and i told him to go out and play with his sister, he would reply, "i am playing." at the age of eighteen the young man had already earned so much credit that at the restoration he was charged with reviewing all the accounts of the expenditure occasioned by the stay of the english army in france. i was not tardy in making other excursions to the surroundings of london, and these excursions absorbed all the time i could spare for pleasure. at windsor, the royal residence, i admired only the park, which is very fine. the king enjoyed walking on a splendid terrace, whence a magnificent and extensive view is to be got. hampton court is another royal castle. here i saw superb stained-glass windows, which are very old, and which i thought superior to any i had seen hitherto. i also found some grand pictures and some large cartoons, done by raphael, which i could not admire enough. the cartoons were on the floor, so that i knelt before them such a long time that the custodian was surprised. in the galleries i was shown armour and weapons dating back to remote ages; then, in the gardens, gorgeous yellow rose-bushes, and finally a gigantic vine, enclosed in a hothouse, that in some year or other yielded , pounds of grapes. i went with prince bariatinski and a few other russians to pay a visit to the famous doctor herschel. this renowned astronomer lived in strict seclusion at some distance from london. his sister, who was always with him, aided him in his astronomical researches, and one was fully worthy of the other, both in learning and noble simplicity. near the staircase we found a telescope almost large enough to walk about in. the doctor greeted us with the warmest cordiality. he was obliging enough to let us see the sun through a dark glass, pointing out the two spots discernible upon it, one of which is considerable in size. at night he showed us the planet he had discovered that bears his name. we also inspected at his house a chart of the moon, very detailed, with the mountains, ravines and rivers represented which make that planet resemble the globe we inhabit. in fact, the whole stretch of our visit went by without a dull moment; my russian companions, adelaide and myself were all delighted with it. one cannot speak about the environs of london without calling to mind several fine english watering-places. matlock, for instance, offers the precise aspect of a swiss landscape. on one side of the promenade are highly effective rocks, grown with variegated shrubs, and on the other rich meadows. this english vegetation is truly lovely; it all presents an enchanting view to the eye of those who love nature's beauty. i remember following the bank of a stream so dainty and limpid that i could not tear myself away from it. tunbridge wells, where one also takes the waters, is likewise a very picturesque place. it is true that although one may enjoy the morning rambles in the beautiful neighbourhood, in the evenings one is much wearied by the social gatherings, which are quite numerous. people came together for meals, and after supper, as after dinner, every one would rise and sing "god save the king," a prayer for his majesty, which moved me to tears through the sad comparison it prompted me to make between england and france. brighton was still better known than either tunbridge wells or matlock. brighton, where the prince of wales had then taken up his residence, is a rather pretty town opposite dieppe, with the shores of france visible. at the time i was there the english feared a descent by the french. the generals were perpetually reviewing the militia, who were forever marching about with drums beating, making an infernal din. i took some delightful walks at brighton by the seashore. one day i witnessed a singular phenomenon; the fog was so thick that the ships off the coast looked as if they were suspended in the air. i spent a few days at knowles castle, which, after once belonging to queen elizabeth, is now the property of lady dorset. at the gate of this castle i saw two huge elm trees, reported to be more than , years old, which, nevertheless, still bore leaves, especially at the top. the park, whose boundary touches a forest, is remarkably picturesque. the castle contains some very fine pictures; the furniture is still the same as in the day of elisabeth. in lady dorset's sleeping apartment the curtains of the bed are all sprinkled with gold and silver stars, and the dressing-table is of solid silver. lady dorset, an extremely wealthy lady, had married sir a. wilford, whom i had known as english ambassador at st. petersburg. he had no fortune, but was a fine figure of a man, with noble and distinguished mien. the first time we all met for dinner lady dorset said to me: "you will be very much bored, as we never talk at table." i reassured her upon this point. i told her this was also my own habit, having for years nearly always eaten alone. she must have been enormously fond of this custom of hers, for at dessert her son, eleven or twelve years old, came in, and she hardly spoke to him; she finally sent him away without giving him the least sign of affection. i could not help thinking of the reputation englishwomen bear: that usually, when their children are grown up, they care little about them--which has been taken to mean that they love only their little ones. at london i renewed acquaintance with the amiable count de vaudreuil. i found him greatly changed and fallen off, through all that he had suffered for france. he had married his niece in england, and i went to see her at twickenham, where she was settled. the countess de vaudreuil was young and pretty. she had exquisite blue eyes, a sweet face, and the most striking freshness. her invitation to pass a few days at twickenham i accepted, and while there i did a portrait of her two sons. his highness the duke d'orléans lived near-by; the count de vaudreuil, whom the duke d'orléans had shown special marks of favour, took me to see him. we found that prince, whose chief delight was his studies, seated at a long table covered with books, one of them lying open before him. during the visit he pointed out to me a landscape painted by his brother, the duke de montpensier, whose acquaintance i also made while staying with mme. de vaudreuil. as for the youngest of these princes, the duke de beaujolais, i only met him out walking; he seemed to have a passably good face and to be very lively. the duke de montpensier sometimes came for me, and we would go out sketching together. he took me to the terrace at richmond, whence the view is magnificent. from that eminence you survey a considerable part of the river's course. we also went over the lovely meadow where the trunk of the tree under which milton sat may still be seen. it was there, so i was informed, that he composed his poem of "paradise lost." altogether, the surroundings of twickenham were highly interesting; the duke de montpensier knew them to perfection, and i congratulated myself on having him for my guide, the more as this young prince was exceedingly kind and sympathetic. i had engaged to paint a portrait of the margravine of anspach, who asked me to stay with her for a few days in the country so that i might redeem my promise. as i had heard that the margravine was an eccentric woman, who would not allow me a moment's peace, would have me waked at five every morning, and do a thousand equally intolerable things, i accepted her invitation only after stipulating certain terms. first i requested a room where i should hear no noises, on the ground that i wished to get up late. then i warned her that in case we went driving anywhere i never talked in a carriage, and that i preferred walking alone. the good lady agreed to everything and kept her word religiously. if i accidentally came upon her in her park, where she would often be working like a day-labourer, she pretended not to see me, and let me pass without opening her mouth. perhaps the margravine of anspach had been slandered, or perhaps she was obliging enough to put constraint upon herself for my sake; at all events, i felt so much at ease while under her roof that, when i was bidden to another country-place belonging to her, called blenheim, i went without hesitation. there the park and the house were far better than at armesmott, and the time went by in a most agreeable manner. charming evening parties, plays, music--nothing lacked; indeed, though pledged to stay but one week, i remained, instead, three. i made some expeditions on the water with the margravine. on one occasion we landed at the isle of wight, which stands high on a rock, and reminds one of switzerland. this island is noted for the mild and gentle ways of its inhabitants. they all live together, i was told, like a single family, enjoying perfect peace and happiness. possibly now, since a large number of regiments have been in the island, it is no longer the same in respect to the quiet life, but it is a fact that at the time of my visit all the population were well-dressed, civil and benevolent. besides the suavity i observed in the people, the scenery was so entrancing that i should have liked to spend my life in that beautiful spot. only the isle of wight, and ischia, near naples, have ever made me feel such a desire. i also went to lord moira's country seat. although i have forgotten the name of his house, i remember how comfortable everything was and what wonderful cleanliness prevailed all over. lord moira's sister, lady charlotte, kind and courteous, did the honours with infinite tact. it was, therefore, unfortunate that the place bored one. at dinner the women left the table before dessert; the men remained to drink and talk politics. i can truthfully state, however, that at no gathering i attended did the men get drunk. this convinces me that, if the custom ever existed in england, it has now ceased as far as good society is concerned. i may also remark that i dined several times at lord moira's with the duke de berri, and that the duke never took anything else than water, far from drinking too much wine, as has since been alleged. after dinner we met together in a large hall, where the women sat apart, occupied with embroidery or tapestry-work, and not uttering a sound. the men, on their side, took books to hand, and observed like silence. one evening i asked lord moira's sister, since the moon was shining brightly, whether we might not walk in the park. she replied that the shutters were closed and that caution demanded they should not be reopened, because the picture-gallery was on the ground floor. as the library contained collections of prints, my only resource was to seize upon these collections and go through them, abstaining, in obedience to the general example, from a single word of speech. in the midst of such a taciturn company, fancying myself alone one day, i happened to make an exclamation on coming to a handsome print, which astonished all the rest to the last degree. it is, nevertheless, a fact that the total absence of conversation does not preclude the possibility of pleasant chat in england. i know a number of english who are extremely bright; i may even add that i never encountered one who was stupid. the season was too far advanced when i was at lord moira's to allow of my taking long walks. lady charlotte proposed to go driving with me, but she went in a sort of cariole as hard as a cart, which i could only endure for a short while. the english are used to braving their weather. i often met them in the pouring rain, riding without umbrellas in open carriages. they are satisfied with wrapping their cloaks about them, but this has its drawbacks for strangers unaccustomed to such a watery state of things. homeward bound in these english drives, i would sometimes stop on a hill four or five miles from london, hoping for a view of that stupendous city, but the fog lying upon it was always so thick that i never was able to distinguish anything but the tips of its spires. chapter xviii bonapartes and bourbons back in paris -- the devotion of mme. grassini -- capricious, exacting mme. murat -- aspects of christian warfare -- "kill all those people!" louis xviii. enters the capital -- the barrenness of napoleon's victories -- his successor's attainments -- bourbon characteristics -- the authoress loses her husband, daughter and brother -- conclusion. although i had come to england with the intention of remaining but five or six months, i had now stayed nearly three years, held, not solely by my interests as a painter, but also by the kind treatment bestowed upon me. i have often heard it said that the english are lacking in hospitality, but i am far from sharing that opinion, and harbour grateful memories of the cordiality i met with in london. though receiving more social invitations than i could possibly accept, i nevertheless succeeded--and this was said to be very difficult--in forming an intimate circle to my taste. i achieved it through allying myself with lady bentinck and her sister, the villiers young ladies, mme. anderson, and lord trimlestown, who, an accomplished amateur in the arts, cultivates painting and literature with taste and talent, and who, now in paris, keeps his friendship for me. i should, therefore, not have decided to return to france so soon had i not learned that my daughter had arrived at paris. i keenly longed to see her again, the more as i was secretly informed that her father allowed her to form connections that to me seemed improper for a young woman, and hence i hastened my departure. it surely needed a deep motive to resist the appeals which friends and even acquaintances were kind enough to make. as at this period bonaparte, who had proclaimed himself emperor, prohibited all english people in france, after the rupture of the peace of amiens, from leaving, lady herne, well known for her artistic proclivities, said that i ought to be kept back as a hostage. at the moment i was to get into the post-chaise that was to convey me to the inn near my place of embarkation, the charming mme. grassini appeared on the scene. i thought she had simply come to bid me farewell, but she declared she wished to take me to the inn, and made me get into her carriage, which i found full of pillows and packages. "what is all this for?" i inquired. "you are not aware, then," she replied, "that you are going to the worst inn of the world? you may have to wait there a week or more if the wind is not favourable, and i have made up my mind to stay with you." i can hardly say how moved i was at this token of affection. the beautiful woman was leaving the pleasures of london and her friends, to say nothing of the host of admirers always in her train, merely to keep me company. to me this seemed lovable, and i have never forgotten it. it was a great joy to me to see my friends once more, and especially my daughter. her husband, whom she had accompanied to france, was charged by prince narischkin with the mission of engaging musical artists for st. petersburg. he left a few months later, but alone--for love, alas! had long since vanished--and my daughter remained, to my great satisfaction. to her misfortune and mine, my child had a very quick temper; besides, i had not been able to instil into her completely my own distaste for bad company. add to this that--whether through my own fault or not--her power over my mind was great, and i had none over hers, and it will be understood how she sometimes made me shed bitter tears. still, she was my daughter. her beauty, her gifts, her cleverness rendered her as fascinating as possible, and, though i mourned because i could not persuade her to come to live with me, since she persisted in seeing certain people i would not receive, i at any rate saw her every day, and that in itself was a great blessing. one evening i arranged some living pictures of a kind which had won warm approval in st. petersburg, and, being careful to place behind the gauze none but handsome men and pretty women, the result was charming. another day i painted on a screen several head-dresses of historic characters, making holes under them for the insertion of a face. the conversation passing with those who put in their heads amused us vastly. robert, who took part in all our gaieties like a schoolboy, put his face under ninon's head-dress, which made us laugh like mad. all these particulars may seem childish to-day, when evening parties are taken up with talking politics or playing cards, but some of us had not yet lost the habit of enjoying ourselves, and the fact is, we enjoyed ourselves very much. after all, these pleasures were well worth the cards of parisian and the stifling routs of london drawing-rooms. one of the first people i met, upon my return from london, was mme. de ségur, and i frequently went to see her. one day her husband told me that my journey to england had displeased the emperor, who had curtly remarked, "mme. lebrun went to see her friends." but bonaparte's resentment against me could not have been violent, since, a few days after speaking thus, he sent m. denon to me with an order to paint his sister, mme. murat. i thought i could not refuse, although i was only to be paid , francs--that is to say, less than half of what i usually asked for portraits of the same size. this sum was the more moderate, too, because, for the sake of satisfying myself as to the composition of the picture, i painted mme. murat's pretty little girl beside her, and that without raising the price. [illustration: geneviÈve adÉlaÏde helvetius, countess d'andlau.] i could not conceivably describe all the annoyances, all the torments i underwent in painting this picture. to begin with, at the first sitting, mme. murat brought two lady's maids, who were to do her hair while i was painting her. however, upon my remark that i could not under such circumstances do justice to her features, she vouchsafed to send her servants away. then she perpetually failed to keep the appointments she made with me, so that, in my desire to finish, i was kept in paris nearly the whole summer, as a rule waiting for her in vain, which angered me unspeakably. moreover, the intervals between the sittings were so long that she sometimes changed her mode of doing her hair. in the beginning, for instance, she wore curls hanging over her cheeks, and i painted them accordingly; but some time after, this having gone out of fashion, she came back with her hair dressed in a totally different manner, so that i was forced to scrape off the hair i had painted on the face, and was likewise compelled to blot out a brow-band of pearls and put cameos in its place. the same thing happened with her dress. one i had painted at first was cut rather open, as dresses were then so worn, and furnished with wide embroidering. the fashion having changed, i was obliged to close in the dress and do the embroidering anew. all the annoyances that mme. murat subjected me to at last put me so much out of temper that one day, when she was in my studio, i said to m. denon, loudly enough for her to hear, "i have painted real princesses who never worried me, and never made me wait." the fact is, mme. murat was unaware that _punctuality is the politeness of kings_, as louis xiv. so well said. delivered of the vexations arising from mme. murat's portrait, i resumed the peaceful life i was accustomed to, but my desire for travel was not yet stilled: i had never seen switzerland. i therefore resolved to leave paris once more, and soon was making for the mountains. in the period succeeding my swiss travels i at length acquired an inclination for rest. this, together with a taste i had always had for the country, prompted me to leave for louveciennes before the breaking of the first buds, and consequently i was established there by the time the allies were making their second descent upon paris. it is well known that the villages fared much worse than the towns at the hands of the foreign troops. i shall never forget the night of march , . ignorant that danger was so near, i had not as yet considered flight. it was eleven o'clock in the evening, and i had just gone to bed, when joseph, my swiss man servant, who spoke german, entered my room, in the belief that i should need protection. the village was being invaded by the prussians, who were sacking all the houses, and joseph was followed by three soldiers with villainous faces, who approached my bed with brandished swords. joseph tried to fool them by saying in german that i was swiss and an invalid. but paying no attention to him, they began by taking my gold snuff-box, which was on my night-stand. then they felt under my quilt, to find out whether i had any money concealed, one of them calmly slicing off a piece of the quilt with his sword. another, who seemed to be french, or at least spoke our language perfectly, said, "give her back the box"; but far from acceding, his companions went to my desk and seized upon everything it contained. afterward, the soldiers pillaged my cupboards. at last, after putting me through four hours of mortal fright, these terrible people quit my house. nor was this my only experience of the kind. with the return of the foreigners in , some english came to louveciennes. they robbed me of a number of articles, among them a magnificent large lacquer box that i sorely regretted losing, since it had been given me in st. petersburg by my old friend, count strogonoff. after the nocturnal visit by the prussians i wanted to go to saint germain, but the road was not safe enough, so i took refuge with a good person living at marly, near mme. du barry's pavilion. other women, frightened like myself, had already chosen this place. we all dined together and slept six in a room--as far as sleep was possible. the nights went by with continual alarms, and i felt the liveliest anxiety for my poor servant, to whom i owed my life. the faithful fellow had insisted on staying in my house to hold the soldiers in check. i had the greatest fears on his account, as the village was entirely given up to plunder. the peasants camped in the vineyards and slept on straw in the open air, after being robbed of all their possessions. several of them sought us out, lamenting their misfortunes, and these mournful tales were recited in mme. du barry's splendid garden, near the "temple of love," amid flowers and under the brightest of skies! i was so appalled by their stories and by the incessant cannonading and fusillading that one evening i attempted to go down into a cellar and stay there. but i hurt my leg, and was obliged to come up again. the last affair happened at roquencourt. there was also fighting near mme. hocquart's house, very near the place where i was. we learned that after the combat the prussians had sacked from top to bottom the house of a very bonapartist lady, who during the fighting screamed from her terrace to the french, "kill all those people!" the victors, having heard her, broke into the house, and smashed all the mirrors and the furniture as well, while the lady, in her chemise and without shoes, was fleeing to versailles, where she found shelter. ultimately, louis xviii. entered paris, ready to forgive and forget. i went to see him pass on the quai des orfèvres. he was in a carriage, seated beside the duchess d'angoulême. the constitution he had announced had been greeted with joyful acclamation; the delight of the people was great and universal. flags hung from all the windows on the line of march. cries of "long live the king!" rose to the skies, and were so loud and heartfelt that i was moved beyond anything i can say. in the duchess d'angoulême's face was to be read in turn her pleasure at such a welcome and the painful memories assailing her. her smile was sweet but sad--a most natural thing, because she was following the road her mother had followed in going to execution, and she knew it. however, the exultation evoked by the king's appearance and hers went far to console that afflicted heart. the plaudits pursued them to the tuileries, where the crowds filling the gardens gave vent to the same transports. they sang, they danced in front of the palace, and when the king showed himself at the window of the large balcony and kissed his hands over and over again to the people, their joy knew no bounds. that evening there was a grand court reception at the tuileries; an immense number of women attended. the king spoke to them all most graciously and to some of them even recalled various incidents creditable to their families. possessed of an extreme desire to get a close view of louis xviii., i mingled with the crowd that gathered on sunday in the corridor to see him go by on his way to mass. i was opposite the windows, with the rest, so that the king could easily distinguish me. when he did, he stepped over to me, gave me his hand in the most affable manner, and said a thousand flattering things about the pleasure he felt in meeting me once more. as he remained thus holding my hand for several moments and addressing none of the other women, the onlookers must no doubt have taken me for a very great lady, because, no sooner had the king passed than a young officer, seeing that i was alone, offered me his arm, and would not leave me until he had escorted me to my carriage. most of the people who came back with our princes were either friends or acquaintances of mine. it was very sweet, after all those years of exile, to meet again in the country of our birth. but, alas! this happiness endured only a few months, for, while we were rejoicing at our lot, bonaparte was landing at cannes. at midnight, on the th of march, , louis xviii. and the whole royal family left paris. napoleon entered the next day, at eight of the evening, resuming possession of the tuileries, the troops filling the courtyards, giving our princes' palace the aspect of a castle taken by assault. without offense to the memory of a great captain and the brave generals and soldiers who helped him to win such fine victories, one may well ask what bonaparte's victories have led to, and whether an inch of the ground remains to us that cost us so much blood. what proves how tired the people were of those eternal wars was their lack of enthusiasm during the hundred days. the king returned to paris on the th of july, , amid almost unanimous rejoicings, since, after all our misfortunes, louis xviii. brought back peace. henceforth it was seen how this prince combined wisdom and ability with his more brilliant mental qualities. times were critical, and louis xviii. was assuredly the ruler to suit the period. with much courage and coolness he united elevation of soul and great subtlety of mind; all his ways were royal. he gave readily and liberally; he was fond of patronising art and letters, which he himself cultivated; his features were by no means devoid of beauty, and so noble was their expression that, infirm though he was, the first sight of him called forth involuntary respect. his favourite recreation was talking about literature with clever people. in his youth he had written very pretty verses, and his style was that of an accomplished man of letters. knowing latin perfectly, he liked to converse in that language with our most learned latinists. his memory was prodigious; he could always repeat the most striking passages of a book read rapidly, of a piece seen once. ducis, who before the revolution had occupied a post in monsieur's household, came out from his retreat at versailles to present his homage to the king. louis at once recognised him, welcomed him warmly, and recited the best lines of his "oedipus," scarcely remembered by the aged author. his majesty was himself the author of several political writings and an account of a "journey to coblentz." there are also attributed to him the text of the opera "the caravan" and "the lutenist of lübeck," a prose play in one act, given at the théâtre français. he had a strong attachment for the théâtre français. he often went to that playhouse, and especially admired the acting of talma. whenever that great actor, happening to be on duty for the week, carried a torch before the king to his box, louis would regularly stop to talk with him a long time. these conversations were in english, spoken by both as well as their own language. it was reported to me that talma had said, "i prefer louis xviii.'s courtesy to bonaparte's pension." courtesy, in fact, is the greatest charm of princes; it doubles the value of the slightest favour. in this regard his highness the count d'artois was in no way behind his brother. by no means forgotten are the innumerable apt sayings, bearing the corner-mark of kindness, with which he won men's hearts. after his accession to the throne--upon the death of louis xviii.--i chanced to be at the louvre the day he was giving medals to the painters and sculptors. before presenting them he said, in the most sympathetic manner, "they are not encouragements, but rewards." all the artists were touched by the delicate compliment implied in these words. as for the duke de berri, if he had not quite the same courtesy as his father, he was as clever, especially in that timely quickness of wit so useful to princes. i select one example out of a thousand. the first time he reviewed some troops he heard a few cries from the ranks of "long live the emperor!" "quite right, my friends," was his immediate remark; "every one must live." upon which the same soldiers exclaimed, "long live the duke de berri!" his goodness of heart went so far that not only did he interest himself in everything that concerned his friends, but behaved toward the domestics of his household as the father of a family might have done. he was worshipped by his servants, and employed his influence to encourage them in good conduct and in making whatever savings they could. one day, as he was about to enter his carriage, a little kitchen scullion came running up to him with, "your highness, i have saved fifteen francs this year!" "well, my boy, that makes thirty," said the duke, giving him the sum the boy had mentioned. the duke de berri kept his revenues in good order; his heaviest expenses were occasioned by his taste for the arts, a predilection shared by his amiable wife. the duchess de berri was fond of encouraging young artists; she would buy their pictures and often order more. her liberality in paying never made her forget the duty of politeness incumbent upon rank. she showed model civility in all her dealings with men of talent. of the duchess d'angoulême i would not venture to speak. what could i say that would not fall short of the truth? the merits of this princess are known to the whole world, and i fear i should but weaken the future verdict of history. it is equally well known that fate united her with a prince whose high soul worthily appreciated her. such was the family brought back to us by the restoration. it is for politicians to explain how so many virtues and excellencies were insufficient to preserve the throne to them--my grateful heart cannot but regret them. under bonaparte, the large portrait i had made of the queen and her children had been relegated to a corner of the palace of versailles. i left paris one morning to take a glance at it. arrived at the royal gate, a guard escorted me to the room which contained the picture, and which was forbidden the public. the custodian who admitted us recognised me from having seen me in rome, and exclaimed, "oh, how glad i am to welcome mme. lebrun here!" he hastened to turn my picture round, which was facing the wall, since bonaparte, after learning that many came to look at it, had ordered its removal. the order, as is plain, was very badly obeyed, since the exhibition of the picture continued, and this to such a degree that the custodian, when i wanted to give him a trifle, persisted in declining it, saying that i had earned him enough money. when the restoration came, this picture was reëxhibited at the salon. i was keeping for myself another picture representing the queen, done during the reign of bonaparte. i had painted marie antoinette ascending to heaven; to her left, on some clouds, are louis xvi. and two angels, symbolising the two children he had lost. [illustration: louise marie adÉlaÏde de bourbon.] as soon as the peace of my country seemed assured, i abandoned all thoughts of leaving it again, and divided my time between paris and the country. my liking for my pretty house at louveciennes was undiminished. i spent eight months of the year there, and in those surroundings my life flowed as smoothly as possible. i painted, i busied myself about my garden, i took long, solitary walks, and on sundays i received my friends. so fond was i of louveciennes that, wishing to bequeath the place something to remember me by, i painted a picture of saint genoveva for the church. mme. de genlis was good enough to dedicate a poem to me in acknowledgment. if i gave away pictures, some were given me, and that in the heartiest manner. i had frequently expressed a desire that my friends should commemorate themselves on the panels of my drawing-room at louveciennes. one fine summer's morning, at four o'clock, while i was asleep, the prince de crespy, the baron de feisthamel, m. de rivière, and my niece, eugenia lebrun, set silently to work. by ten o'clock each frame was filled. my surprise may be imagined when, upon coming down to breakfast, i entered the room and found it adorned with these delightful paintings as well as with garlands of flowers. it was my birthday. tears came into my eyes--the only thanks i was able to offer. in his highness the duke de berri signified his wish to buy my "sibyl," which he had seen in my studio at london, and although i perhaps prized this most of all my works, i speedily complied with his request. some years later i painted her highness the duchess de berri, who gave me sittings at the tuileries with the politest punctuality, and besides showed me a friendliness than which none could have been greater. i shall never forget how, while i was painting her one day, she said, "wait a moment." then, getting up, she went to her library for a book containing an article in my praise, which she was obliging enough to read aloud from beginning to end. during one of these sittings the duke de bordeaux brought his mother a copybook in which his master had written "very good." the duchess gave the boy two louis. the little prince, who might have been about six, began to jump for joy, shouting, "this will do for my poor--and for my old woman first of all!" when he was gone the duchess told me that her son referred to a poor soul he often met when he went out and of whom he was particularly fond. while the duchess sat for me i would become irritated at the number of people who came to make calls. she took note of this and was so considerate as to say, "why did you not ask me to pose at your house?" which she did for the two final sittings. i confess that i never could think of such affecting warmth of heart without comparing the time i devoted to this genial princess with the melancholy hours mme. murat had made me spend. i painted two portraits of the duchess de berri. in the first she is wearing a red velvet dress, and in the other one of blue velvet. i have no idea what has become of these pictures. i must now speak of the sad years of my life during which, in a brief space, i saw the beings dearest to me depart this world. first, i lost m. lebrun. true that for a long time i had entertained no relations whatever with him, yet i was none the less mournfully affected by his death. you cannot without regret be separated forever from one to whom so close a tie as marriage has bound you. this blow, however, was far less than the cruel grief i experienced at the death of my daughter. i hastened to her as soon as i heard of her illness, but the disease progressed rapidly, and i cannot tell what i felt when all hope of saving her was gone. when, going to see her the last day, my eyes fell upon that dreadfully sunken face, i fainted away. my old friend mme. de noisville rescued me from that bed of sorrow; she supported me, for my legs would not carry me, and took me home. the next day i was childless! mme. de verdun came with the news, and vainly tried to soften my despair. all the wrongdoing of the poor little one vanished--i saw her again, i still see her, in the days of her childhood. alas! she was so young! why did she not survive me? it was in that i was bereft of my daughter, and in i lost my brother. so many successive shocks plunged me into such deep dejection that my friends, grieving for my state, urged me to try the distraction of a journey. i therefore decided to visit bordeaux. i did not know that town, and hence the anticipation changed the current of my thoughts. nor was i disappointed. my health benefited by the journey, and i returned to paris less dark in spirit. from that day to this i have travelled no more. after my return from bordeaux i resumed my daily habits and my work, which of all distractions i have always found the best. although having had the misfortune to lose so many dear ones, i did not remain forsaken. i have mentioned mme. de rivière, my niece, who, through her affection and her ministrations, is the blessing of my life. i must also speak of my other niece, eugenia lebrun, now mme. tripier le franc. her studies at first prevented me from seeing her as often as i should have liked to, for since her earliest youth her disposition, her mental qualities, and her great gift for painting had promised to be a joy to me. i took pleasure in guiding her, in lavishing my counsels upon her, and in watching her progress. i am well rewarded to-day, when she has realised all my hopes by her lovely character and her very remarkable talent for painting. she has followed the same course as myself in the adoption of portrait painting, and is earning success merited by fine colouring, by great sincerity, and, particularly, by perfect resemblance. still young, she can but add to a reputation which in her diffidence and modesty she has scarcely ventured to foresee. mme. tripier le franc and mme. de rivière have become my daughters. they bring back all of a mother's feelings to me, and their tender devotion spreads a beautiful charm over my existence. it is among these two dear creatures and the friends who have been spared me that i hope to end peacefully a wandering and even a laborious but honest life. the end appendix list of mme. vigÉe lebrun's paintings [this list is as complete and accurate as the material available for its compilation allowed. the authoress's own catalogue of her works, which necessarily formed the principal source of information, is itself conspicuous for errors and omissions. to rectify all of these beyond doubt and make an absolutely perfect list would have been impossible.] from to mme. lebrun's mother, large pastel. the same, back view. mme. lebrun's brother as a schoolboy. m. le sèvre. m., mme. and mlle. bandelaire. m. bandelaire, half-length pastel. m. vandergust. mlle. pigale, milliner to the queen. her clerk. mme. lebrun's mother in white cloak. mme. raffeneau. baroness d'esthal. her two children. mme. d'aguesseau with her dog. mme. suzanne. countess de la vieuville. m. mousat. mlle. mousat. mlle. lespare. mme. de fossy and her son. viscount and viscountess de la blache. mlle. dorion. m. tranchart. marquis de choiseul. count de zanicourt. studies of heads and copies from raphael, van dyck, rembrandt, etc. m. and mme. de roissy. m. de la fontaine. count du barry. count de geoffré. marshal de stainville. mme. de bonneuil. mme. de saint-pays. mme. paris. m. perrin. copy of marquis de vérac. an american lady. mme. thilorié, half-length. copy of the same. mme. tétare. copy of the bishop of beauvais. m. de vismes. m. pernon. mlle. dupetitoire. mlle. baillot. abbé giroux. little roissy. copy of chancellor d'aguesseau. copy of m. de la marche. mme. damerval. count de brie. mme. maingat. baroness de lande. mme. le normand. mme. de la grange. m. méraut. viscount de boisjelin. m. de saint-malo. m. desmarets. countess d'harcourt. mlle. de saint-brie and mlle. de sence. countess de gontault. mlle. robin. m. de borelly. m. de momanville. the rossignol sisters. mme. de belgarde. mme. de monville with her child. mme. denis. count schouvaloff. count de langeas. mme. mongé. mme. tabari. mme. de fougerait. mme. de jumilhac. marquise de roncherol. prince de rochefort. mlle. de rochefort. m. de livoy. mme. de ronsy. m. de monville. mlle. de cossé. mme. augeard. copy of mme. damerval. mme. deplan. m. caze. m. goban. mlle. de rubec. m. de roncherol. prince de rohan, the elder. prince julius de rohan. m. ducluzel. count and countess de cologand. mlle. julie, who married talma. mme. courville. marquis de gérac. mme. de laborde. mlle. de givris. mlle. de ganiselot. m. de veselay. princess de craon. marquis de chouart. prince de montbarrey. baron gros, painter, as a child. princess de talleyrand. count des deux-ponts. mme. de montbarrey. a banker. m. and mme. toullier. princess d'arenberg. m. de saint-denis. monsieur, the king's brother. m. and mme. de valesque. little vaubal. mme. de lamoignon. m. de savalette. prince of nassau. mme. de brente. lady berkely. mme. saulot. countess potocka. mme. de verdun. mme. de montmorin. her daughter. marquis de crèvecoeur. baron de vombal. mme. perrin. m. oglovi. m. saint-hubert. mme. de nolstein. mme. de beaugoin. mlle. dartois. mme. le normand. m. de finnel. m. de lange. mme. de montlegiets mme. de la fargue. duchess de chartres. mme. de teuilly. m. de saint-priest, ambassador. m. and mme. dailly. m. and mme. domnival. mme. mongé. mme. degéraudot. marquis de cossé. marquis d'armaillé. duke de cossé. mlle. de ponse. monsieur, the king's brother. marquise de montemey. mme. de foissy. the brongniart children. m. de rannomanovski. mme. de roissy. mme. de bec de lièvre. copy of portrait of the queen. madame, wife of monsieur. copy of portrait of mme. du barry. mlle. lamoignon. head of mme. vigée lebrun. copy of portrait of marie antoinette. mme. filorier. marquis de vrague. countess de virieu. mme. richard. mme. de mongé. large portrait of the queen for the empress of russia. half-length portraits of marie antoinette. copies of the same. mme. de savigny. the same with her son. m. and mme. de lastic. woman as a jewess for m. de cossé. mme. dicbrie. copies of busts of marie antoinette. mme. ducluzel. mme. de verdun. count de dorsen, the younger. m. and mme. de montesquiou. portrait of the queen, for m. de sartines. mme. de palerme. a little american. mlle. de la ferté. head, looking down, for m. de cossé. duke d'orléans. marquise de montesson. copies of the duke d'orléans. copies of large portrait of marie antoinette for m. de vergennes. mme. de vannes. countess de tournon. prince de montbarrey. mme. lessout. large picture of marie antoinette. the same. mme. de verdun and family. mme. de montesquiou. mme. de montaudran. mme. foulquier. mme. genty. duchess de mazarin. young girl smelling a rose. mme. young. count de cossé. princess de croyes. mme. de saint-alban. m. de landry. portraits of mme. vigée lebrun. monsieur, brother of the king. copy of same. duchess de chaulnes. mme. dumoley. m. dumoley, the younger. countess du barry. sketch for a picture of juno. venus, study of a head. mme. d'harvelay. studies of heads. mlle. de laborde. mlle. devaron. mme. moreton. copy of m. moreton. mme. de la porte. princess lamballe. madame, sister of the king. copy of same. duchess de polignac. copy of same. baron de montesquiou. mme. de verdun. mme. de chatenay. prince henry of prussia. marquise de la guiche. mme. grant. landgrave de salm. mme. de mailly. countess d'artois. countess de simiane. duchess de guiche. marie antoinette with hat. the same in full dress. mme. elisabeth, sister of the king. copy of same. mlle. lavigne. copies of the queen with hat. the queen in velvet dress. copies of same. the dauphin. mme. royale, daughter of the king. count de vaudreuil. copies of same. countess de grammont-caderousse. countess de serre. m. de beaujon. m. de beaujon. princess de carignan. mme. fodi. m. de calonne. countess de ségur. copy of same. count de ségur. copy of same. baroness de crussol. m. de saint-hermine. grétry. countess de clermont-tonerre. countess de virieu. viscountess de vaudreuil. copies of the queen in full dress. mme. vigée. copy of m. de calonne. m. de beaujon. mme. fouquet's little daughter. mme. de tott. little d'espagnac. mme. de la briche's little daughter. mme. de puységur. mme. raymond. mme. daudelot. mme. davaray. countess de sabran. mme. vigée lebrun and her daughter. mlle. lebrun reading the bible. mme. de rougé and two sons. mme. dugazon, as _nina_. cailleau, as a huntsman. his two children. mlle. lebrun in profile. the same, looking at a mirror. mme. de la grange. marie antoinette and her children. mme. vigée lebrun. countess de béon. m. le jeune. the dauphin, madame, and the duke de normandie. aunt of mme. verdun. duchess de guiche, holding a wreath of flowers. pastel of same. duchess de polignac with straw hat. the same, singing at a piano. mme. de chatenay. mme. du barry, full-length. the same, in dressing-gown. mme. de polignac. duke de polignac. his father. robert, landscape painter. mme. dumoley. mme. de la briche. countess de beaumont. little baron d'escars. little prince lubomirski. the same, in pursuit of fame. little brongniart. marquise de grollier. le bailly de crussol. mme. de la guiche, as a dairymaid. count d'angevilliers. m. de chatelux, from memory. the duke de normandie, full-length. mme. péregaux. mme. de ségur, profile. large portrait of marie antoinette for the baron de breteuil. duchess de la rochefoucauld. cupid. duchess d'orléans. mme. vigée lebrun and daughter, for m. d'angevilliers. mme. de grollier. le bailly de crussol. mme. d'aumont. mme. de polignac. mme. de guiche, pastel. mme. de pienne. mme. de châtre. mme. de fresne-d'aguesseau. marshal de ségur. madame and the dauphin. robert, the landscape painter. mlle. lebrun, small oval. mme. chalgrin. mme. vigée lebrun, pastel. joseph vernet. prince of nassau, full length. mme. vigée lebrun, with daughter in arms. mme. raymond with her child. mme. de simiane. mme. rousseau. mme. duvernais. mme. de saint-alban. mme. savigni. mlle. dorion. mme. du barry. done at rome mme. vigée lebrun, for the academy of lucca. the same for the gallery at florence. copy of same, for lord bristol. miss pitt. mlle. roland. mme. silva, a portuguese. countess potocka. princesses adelaide and victoria, house of bourbon. various landscapes, oils and crayons done at naples countess skavronska, three-quarter length. the same, half-length. lady hamilton, as a reclining bacchante. the same, as a sibyl, full-length. the same, as a bacchante dancing. head of the same as a sibyl. princess maria theresa, who married emperor francis ii. princess maria louisa, who married the grand duke of tuscany. princess marie-christine, of naples. paesiello, composer. prince resonico. lord bristol, three-quarter length. bailiff of litta. queen of naples. studies of vesuvius and several landscapes. done at turin and other places head, in oils, for the academy of parma. small portrait for the institute of bologna. mme. de gourbillon. her son. mlle. lebrun, as a bather. mlle. porporati. copy of portrait of raphael at florence. various landscapes from nature. done at venice mme. marini. done at vienna mme. bistri, a pole. mlle. de caquenet. countess kinska, three-quarter length. the same, half-length. countess de buquoi. countess rasomovska. countess palfi. princess lichtenstein. count strogonoff, half-length. the same, hands showing. count czernicheff, in black domino. countess zamoiska, dancing. young countess de fries as sapho. duchess de guiche in blue turban. portraits of prince schotorinski, one with cloak. mme. de schoenfeld, wife of saxon minister, with her child. prince henry lubomirski, playing on a lyre, with two naiades listening. princess lichtenstein, as iris. princess esterhazy, sitting by the sea. princess louise galitzin. mme. mayer. little girl bathing. countess severin potocka. princess of wurtemberg. small picture for count wilsech. countess de braonne, to the knees. small portrait for mme. de carpeny. duchess de polignac, from memory, after her death. young edmund de polignac. princess sapieha. pastels done at vienna count woina, son of the polish ambassador. mlle. caroline woina, his sister. young countess metzy de polignac. young countess thérèse de hardik. the two brothers of the duchess de guiche. brother of mlle. de fries, half-length. countess de rombec, half-length. count julius de polignac. princess linovska. lady gaisford. the de choisy sisters. mlle. schoen. agenor, infant son of the duchess de polignac. his brother, count de fries. countess de thun. countess d'harrack. small drawing of the same. m. de rivière. m. thomas, architect. countess de rombec. marquis de rivière. landscapes near vienna, from nature. done in russia mme. dimidoff. princess mentchikoff, with her child, three-quarter length. countess potocka, with dove, reclining. young countess schouvaloff, half-length. the young grand duchesses helen and alexandrina. grand duchess elizabeth, arranging flowers in a basket. half-length copies of the same. half-length pictures of her, one hand showing. countess orloff. marshall soltikoff. grand duchess anne, half-length. countess scavronska, copied from portrait done at naples. countess strogonoff, with her child. count strogonoff, half-length. countess sammakloff, with her children. countess apraxin. princess isoupoff. her son. countess voranxoff. countess golovin, one hand showing. countess tolstoï, leaning against a rock. princess alexis kurakin and her husband. king stanislaus augustus poniatowski, one in henry iv. costume, the other in velvet cloak. his great-niece, playing with a little dog. princess michael galitzin. emperor alexander i., of russia. empress elizabeth, his wife. empress maria of russia, wife of the emperor paul. countess diedrichstein and her husband. princess bauris galitzin, three-quarter length. lord talbot, half-length. princess sapieha, with tambour, dancing. daughter of princess isoupoff. mme. kutusoff, half-length. baron strogonoff. mlle. kasisky. princess alexander galitzin. mme. kalitcheff. count potocka. count litta. princess viaminski. young prince bariatinski. prince alexander kurakin, half-length. mme. vigée lebrun, in black, to the knees, holding palette, for the academy of st. petersburg. done at berlin pastels of the queen of prussia. mme. de souza, portuguese ambassadress. portrait of a lady. done at dresden emperor alexander, copied from portrait done at st. petersburg. daughter of the countess potocka. a german lady. done in england miss dorset. mme. chinnery. her children. miss dillon. mme. villiers. margravine of anspach. mme. baring. prince of wales. mme. de polastron. countess diedrichstein. infant son of mme. de polastron. lord byron. prince bariatinski. an american lady. son of margravine of anspach. portraits of mme. vigée lebrun. mme. grassini, two of them in oriental costume, the other half-length. portrait of an irish lady. lady georgina, daughter of lady gordon. prince biron of courland, as a huntsman. two sons of countess de vaudreuil. views of the seacoast in crayons, and several landscapes. done at paris after returning queen of prussia, from picture done at berlin, large half-length. prince ferdinand of prussia. prince augustus ferdinand, his son. princess louise radzivill, his sister. princess tufakin. mme. catalani, singing at a piano. mme. murat, with her daughter. portraits of mme. vigée lebrun for friends. mme. grassini. m. ragani, her husband. viscountess de vaudreuil. count de vaudreuil, her uncle. duchess de guiche. young princess potemski, half-length. mme. constans. countess d'andlau, with hands showing. duke de berri. countess de rosambeau and countess d'orglande, daughters of countess d'andlau. the two d'andlau brothers. viotti, famous violinist. marquise de grollier, painting flowers. m. de crussol, large half-length picture. mlle. de grénonville. mme. davidoff. marquis de rivière, for king charles x., half-length. count de coëtlosquet. mme. de pront, his niece. duchess de berri. mlle. de sassenay. m. raoul rochette. m. sapey. mme. lafont. mlle. de rivière. alfred de rivière. baron de feisthamel, painting. baron de crespy le prince, drawing. mme. ditte. mme. de rivière, both hands showing. profile of mme. vigée lebrun, for a medallion for the city of st. petersburg, on which angelica kauffman was also to appear. sundry pictures poetry, painting and music. spanish scene. love asleep under a tree. young girl, surprised in her shirt. young girl, caught writing. innocence seeking refuge in the arms of justice. venus binding the wings of love. juno asking girdle from venus. bacchante with tiger-skin. peace bringing back plenty. apotheosis of the queen. shipwrecked woman. cataract of narva. amphion playing on the lyre. an old man with his son. about swiss and english landscapes. sundry portraits mme. ducrest de villeneuve. marquise de jancourt. countess de provence. woman painting. mme. molé-raymond, of the comédie-française, with muff. the infant duke de berri. lady playing the harp. countess czartoryska. mme. courcelles. davich khan. his son. prince de rochefort. cardinal fleury, from an engraving. la bruyère, from an engraving. mme. de suffrein, from memory. abbé delille, from memory. countess de las casas, from memory. index d'abrantès, duchess, d'alembert, alexander, as emperor of russia, , alexandrina, duchess, alexandrina, grand duchess, amiens, treaty of, amsterdam, "anacharsis," d'angevilliers, m., d'angoulême, duchess, , anne, grand duchess, anspach, margravine of, , archimandrite, the, , , d'aremberg, duchess, d'aremberg, princess, arnault, abbé, arnould, mlle., , d'artois, count, , , , , d'artois, countess, assassination of paul, emperor of russia, , asvedo, auber, the crown jeweller, augué, mlle., augustus, prince of england, bariatinski, prince, , bariatinski, princess, barrière du trône, bassano, mme. de, beaujolais, duke de, beaujon, m. de, beaumarchais, m. de, beauvoisin bridge, berlin, arrival at, bernis, de, cardinal, , berri, duke de, , , , , berri, duchess de, , bertin, mlle., bezborodko, prince, , bombelles, marquis de, bonaparte, , , , bonaparte, lucien, , bonneuil, mme. de, , boquet, mlle., , , , boufflers, chevalier de, , bourbon, duke de, bournonville, general, boutin, m., branicka, countess, briard, brighton, , brionne, countess de, , , brongniart, brongniart, mme., brongniarts, brussels, budweis, buturlin, count, café turc, calonne, m. de, campan, mme., canaletto's pictures, canillos, mme. de, canisy, mme. de, caravaggio's pictures, catherine ii., , , , , , , ; her reign a boon to russia, ; her simple mode of life, ; her death, chalgrin, mme., champs Élysées, chartres, duchess de, , chaudet, chimay, prince de, chinnery, mme., , choiseul, duke de, clotilda, queen of sardinia, cobentzel, count, , , , coliseum, the, , comédie française, condé, prince de, contat, mlle., , conti, princess de, constantine, grand duke, couteux du molay, le, cramer, cubières, marquis de, , dalayrac's "underground," daughter of mme. lebrun, death of, , davesne, davich kahn, de la ribaussière, delayrac, delille, abbé, , , denis, denis, mme., denon, m., devonshire, duchess of, diderot, diedrichstein, count, dimidoff, m., dimidoff, mme., dolgoruki, princess, , , , , , , , , domenichino, dorset, lady, doyen, , , , du barry, mme., her portrait is painted by mme. lebrun, ; account of her death, ducis, ducrest de villeneuve, countess, , , dugazon, dugazon, mme., dumesnil, mlle., duroc, general, duvivier, m., accompanies mme. lebrun to naples, Égalité, philippe, elisabeth, mme., elisabeth, princess, wife of alexander, , , , d'enghien, duke, d'entraigues, count, esterhazy, count, , , esterhazy, countess, "fantoccini," carlo perico's, faubourg, saint antoine, faubourg, saint germain, filleul, m., fitzherbert, mme., fleury, cardinal, fleury, duchess de, , france, return to, francis ii., emperor of austria, , frogères, "gallery of the titans," galitzin, prince, , garat, gardel, gennevilliers, geoffrin, mme., genis, mme. de, gérard, m., gerbier, gluck, , , gluckists, golovin, countess, gourbillon, mme. de, grammont-caderousse, duchess de, grassini, mme., grétry, , , greuze, , greville, lord, grollier, marquise de, guiche, countess de la, , guimard, mlle., hamelin, mme., hamilton, sir william, , hamilton, lady, , , , hampton court, harlequin, harte, mme. (lady hamilton), , helen, grand duchess, helvetius, henry of prussia, prince, hermitage, the, herschel, doctor, , hulmondel, hydromel, "iphigenia," jarnovick, jouberthon, mme., knowles castle, krestovski, island of, krudener, baroness de, kurakin, prince alexander, kurakin, princess, , kutaisoff, , laborde, mlle. de, la bruyère, la harpe, lamballe, princess de, lambeth, m., langeron, count de, larive, laruette, mme., latour, , lauzun, duke de, lebrun, eugenia, , lebrun, mme., daughter of, , ; letter of, - lebrun, m., his marriage to mlle. vigée, ; his appropriation of her earnings, ; his death, lebrun, the poet, , lekain, , , le moine, lichtenstein, prince, lichtenstein, princess, ligne, prince de, , , , , , london, journey to, ; streets of, ; sunday in, ; artists of, ; climate of, longchamps, lorraine, princess de, , louis xviii., , , - louveciennes, sacking of, , louvre, the, lubomirska, prince, lubomirska, princess, luxembourg palace, , lyon, emma (lady hamilton), madame, the wife of louis xviii., maestricht, maestrino, maria, empress of russia, portrait of, ; beauty of, ; children of, marie antoinette, , ; her portrait is painted by mme. lebrun, , ; reference to portrait, ; bust of, marie, grand duchess, maria theresa, wife of emperor francis ii., marly-le-roi, "marriage of figaro," the, mars, mlle., martini, matlock, mazarin, duchess de, , melissimo, ; his luxurious house, ; elaborate entertainment for mme. lebrun, metternich, m. de, metternich, prince, moira, lord, monaco, princess joseph de, , , montesquiou, marquis de, montgerou, mme. de, montesson, mme. de, montpensier, duke de, moscow, journey to, , ; size of, ; cemeteries of, ; palaces of, ; banker of, ; departure from, müller, murat, mme., , naples, queen of, , , , narischkin, prince, narva, nassau, prince, nelson, lord, neva, the breaking up of ice in, ; blessing of, nicholas, grand duke of russia, nivernais, duke de, noailles, marshal de, d'orléans, duke, , orloff, count, , , opéra-comique, palais royal, , , paris, comparison with other cities, parois, count de, paul, , , ; accession of, ; tyranny of, ; personal appearance of, ; assassination of, pergola, lake of, pérouse, m. de la, , peter iii., his funeral, with that of catherine, peter, mme. lebrun's servant, , peyre, mme., pezé, mme. de, piccini, , piccinists, pierre, m., opposition to mme. lebrun's election to royal academy of painting, pitt, miss, poinsinet, polignac, duchess de, poniatowski, prince joseph, , poniatowski, stanislaus augustus, - pope pius vi., porporati, posilippo, , potemkin, account of his extravagances, , ; his death, potocka, countess, potsdam, poussin's pictures, "rape of the sabines," prater, the, préville, prince of wales, the, , prussia, queen of, , radziwill, prince, raincy, raphael, , raphael's "madonna," dresden gallery, rasomovski, count, raucourt, mlle., first appearance, récamier, mme., , reimburg, frederic, his collection of pictures of lady hamilton, rembrandt, repnin, prince, reynolds, richelieu, duke, richer, riga, rivière, marquis de, , , rivière, mme. de, , rohan-rochefort, princess, , rohan, cardinal de, roissy, mme. de, romazoff, rombec, countess de, rome, palaces and churches, ; manner of lighting streets, ; general use of daggers, roquencourt, rougé, marquise de, royale, mme. rubens, , , , , rulhières, m. de, russia, rigour of climate, , russian hospitality, ; entertainments, ; characteristics, , , ; servants, , saardam, sabran, marquise de, sacchini, , saint georges, saint huberti, mme., saint ouen, salentin, sardinia, king of, scaramouche, schoenbrunn, park of, schouvaloff, count, ségur, count de, , , , , , ségur, mme. de, , skavronska, count, , skavronska, countess, soltikoff, marshall, soltikoff, mme., , sombreuil, m. de, sombreuil, mlle. de, souza, mme. de, st. angelo, castle of, st. paul's, , st. peter's, pope's blessing at, st. petersburg, description of, , stachelburg, count, "straw hat," by rubens, strogonoff, baroness de, , strogonoff, count, , , , , , , strogonoff, mlle., sudermania, duke of, suvaroff, general, sweden, king of, , switzerland, journey to, talleyrand, baron de, tallien, mme., talma, , "the unwitting philosopher," tippoo sahib, emperor, titian's pictures, todi, mme., tuileries, , tunbridge wells, turin, mme. lebrun goes to, ; filled with refugees from paris, tuscany, grand duke of, vallayer-coster, mme., van dyck, , , van loo, painting by, vaudreuil, m. de, , , , verdun, mme. de, vernet, joseph, , , versailles, , vestris, the elder, vien, m., vien, mme., vigée, mme. lebrun's brother, villeroi, duchess de, villette, marquise de, viotti, , wilford, sir a., windsor, witworth, lord, , zelaguin, island of, zouboff, plato, , the history of painting in italy. vol. ii. the history of painting in italy, from the period of the revival of the fine arts, to the end of the eighteenth century: translated from the original italian of the abate luigi lanzi. by thomas roscoe. _in six volumes._ vol. ii. containing the schools of rome and naples. london: printed for w. simpkin and r. marshall, stationers'-hall court, ludgate street. . j. m'creery, tooks court, chancery-lane, london. contents of the second volume. history of painting in lower italy. book the third. roman school. page epoch i. _the old masters_ epoch ii. _raffaello and his school_ epoch iii. _the art declines, in consequence of the public calamities of rome, and gradually falls into mannerism_ epoch iv. _restoration of the roman school by barocci and other artists, subjects of the roman state and foreigners_ epoch v. _the scholars of pietro da cortona, from an injudicious imitation of their master, deteriorate the art_--_maratta and others support it_ book the fourth. neapolitan school. epoch i. _the old masters_ epoch ii. _modern neapolitan style, founded on the schools of raffaello and michelangiolo_ epoch iii. _corenzio, ribera, caracciolo, flourish in naples_--_strangers who compete with them_ epoch iv. _luca giordano, solimene, and their scholars_ history of painting in lower italy. book iii. roman school. i have frequently heard the lovers of art express a doubt whether the roman school possesses the same inherent right to that distinctive appellation as the schools of florence, bologna, and venice. those of the latter cities were, indeed, founded by their respective citizens, and supported through a long course of ages; while the roman school, it may be said, could boast only of giulio romano and sacchi, and a few others, natives of rome, who taught, and left scholars there. the other artists who flourished there were either natives of the cities of the roman state, or from other parts of italy, some of whom established themselves in rome, and others, after the close of their labours there, returned and died in their native places. but this question is, if i mistake not, rather a dispute of words than of things, and similar to those objections advanced by the peripatetic sophists against the modern philosophy; insisting that they abuse the meaning of their words, and quoting, as an example, the _vis inertiæ_; as if that, which is in itself inert, could possess the quality of force. the moderns laugh at this difficulty, and coolly reply that, if the _vis_ displeased them, they might substitute _natura_, or any other equivalent word; and that it was lost time to dispute about words, and neglect things. so it may be said in this case; they who disapprove of the designation of school, may substitute that of academy, or any other term denoting a place where the art of painting is professed and taught. and, as the learned universities always derive their names from the city where they are established, as the university of padua or pisa, although the professors may be all, or in great part, from other states, so it is with the schools of painting, to which the name of the country is always attached, in preference to that of the master. in vasari we do not find this classification of schools, and monsignor agucchi was the first to divide italian art into the schools of lombardy, venice, tuscany, and rome.[ ] he has employed the term of schools after the manner of the ancients, and has thus characterised one of them as the roman school. he has, perhaps, erred in placing michel angiolo, as well as raphael, at the head of this school, as posterity have assigned him his station as chief of the school of florence; but he has judged right in classing it under a separate head, possessing, as it does, its own peculiar style; and in this he has been followed by all the modern writers of art. the characteristic feature in the roman school has been said to consist in a strict imitation of the works of the ancients, not only in sublimity, but also in elegance and selection; and to this we shall add other peculiarities, which will be noticed in their proper place. thus, from its propriety, or from tacit convention, the appellation of the roman school has been generally adopted; and, as it certainly serves to distinguish one of the leading styles of italian art, it becomes necessary to employ it, in order to make ourselves clearly understood. we cannot, indeed, allow to the roman school so extensive a range as we have assigned to that of florence, in the first book; nevertheless, every one that chooses may apply this appellation to it in a very enlarged sense. nor is the fact of other artists having taught, or having given a tone to painting in the capital, any valid objection to this term; since, in a similar manner, we find titiano, paolo veronese, and bassano, in venice, though all of them were strangers; but, as they were subjects of her government, they were all termed venetians, as that name alike embraces those born in the city or within the dominions of the republic. the same may be said of the subjects of the pope. besides the natives of rome, there appeared masters from many of her subject cities, who, teaching in rome, followed in the steps of their predecessors, and maintained the same principles of art. passing over pier della francesca and pietro vannucci, we may refer to raffaello himself as an example. raffaello was born in urbino, and was the subject of a duke, who held his fief under the roman see, and who, in rome, held the office of prefect of the city; and whose dominions, in failure of male issue, reverted to the pope, as the heritage of the church. thus raffaello cannot be considered other than a roman subject. to him succeeded giulio romano and his scholars; who were followed by zuccari, and the mannerists of that time, until the art found a better style under the direction of baroccio, baglione, and others. after them flourished sacchi and maratta, whose successors have extended to our own times. restricted within these bounds, the roman may certainly be considered as a national school; and, if not rich in numbers, it is at least so in point of excellence, as raffaello in himself outweighs a world of inferior artists. the other painters who resided in rome, and followed the principles of that school, i shall neither attempt to add to, nor to subtract from the number of its followers; adopting it as a maxim not to interfere in the decision of disputes, alike idle and irrelevant to my subject. still less shall i ascribe to it those who there adopted a totally different style, as michelangiolo da caravaggio, an artist whom lombardy may lay claim to, on account of his birth, or venice, from his receiving his education in that city, though he lived and wrote in rome, and influenced the taste of the national school there by his own example and that of his scholars. in the same manner many other names will occasionally occur in the history of this school: it is the duty of the historian to mention these, and it is, at the same time, an incomparable triumph to the roman school, that she stands, in this manner, as the centre of all the others; and that so many artists could not have obtained celebrity, if they had not seen rome, or could not have claimed that title from the world unless they had first obtained her suffrage. i shall not identify the limits of this school with those of the dominions of the church, as in that case we should comprise in it the painters of bologna, ferrara, and romagna, whom i have reserved for another volume. in my limits i shall include only the capital, and the provinces in its immediate vicinity, as latium, the sabine territories, the patrimony of the church, umbria, picenum, and the state of urbino, the artists of which district were, for the most part, educated in rome, or under the eyes of roman masters. my historical notices of them will be principally derived from vasari, baglione, passeri, and leone pascoli. from these writers we have the lives of many artists who painted in rome, and the last named author has included in his account his fellow countrymen of perugia. pascoli has not, indeed, the merits of the three first writers; but he does not deserve the discredit thrown on him by ratti and bottari, the latter of whom, in his notes to vasari, does not hesitate to call him a wretched writer, and unworthy of credit. his work, indeed, on the artists of perugia, shows that he indiscriminately copied what he found in others, whether good or bad; and to the vulgar traditions of the early artists he paid more than due attention. but his other work, on the history of the modern painters, sculptors, and architects, is a book of authority. in every branch of history much credit is attached to the accounts of contemporary writers, particularly if they were acquaintances or friends of the persons of whom they wrote; and pascoli has this advantage; for, in addition to information from their own mouths, he derived materials from their surviving friends, nor spared any pains to arrive at the truth, (_see vita del cozza_). the judgment, therefore, which he passes on each artist, is not wholly to be despised, since he formed it on those of the various professors then living in rome, as winckelmann has observed (tom. i. p. ); and, if these persons, as it is pretended, have erred in their judgment on the greek sculptors, they have certainly not erred in their estimate of modern painters, particularly luti, to whom i imagine pascoli, from esteem and intimacy, deferred more than to any other artist. we have from bellori other lives, written with more learning and criticism, some of which are supposed to be lost. he had originally applied himself to painting, but deserted that art, as we may conjecture from pascoli (_vita del canini_), and attached himself to poetry, and the study of antiquities: and his skill in both arts manifests itself in the lives he has left, which are few, but interspersed with interesting and minute particulars of the characters of the painters and their works. in his plan, he informs us he has followed the advice of niccolo poussin. he composed also a "description of the figures painted by raffaello, in the churches of the vatican;" a tract which contains some severe reflections on vasari,[ ] but is nevertheless highly useful. we also find a profusion of entertaining anecdotes in taja, in his "description of the vatican;" and in titi, in his account of the pictures, sculpture, and architecture of rome. this work has recently been republished, with additions; and we shall occasionally quote it under the name of the _guide_. pesaro is indebted for a similar _guide_ to signor becci, and ascoli and perugia to signor baldassare orsini, a celebrated architect. we have also the _lettere perugine_ of sig. dottore annibale mariotti, which treat of the early painters of perugia, with a store of information and critical acumen that render them highly valuable. to these may also be added, the _risposta_ of the above named sig. orsini, whom i regret to see entering on etruscan ground, as he there repeats many ancient errors, which have been long exploded by common consent: in other points it is a treatise worth perusal. if we turn to _descriptions_, we have them of several periods, as that of the basilica loretana, and that of assisi, composed by p. angeli; and the account of the duomo of orvieto, written by p. della valle; and the works on the churches of s. francesco di perugia, and s. pietro di fano, by anonymous writers. the abbate colucci has favoured us with recent notices on various artists of piceno and umbria, and urbino, in his _antichità picene_, extended, as far as my observation goes, to tom. xxxi.[ ] the learned authors whom i have named, and others to whom i shall occasionally refer, have furnished the chief materials of my present treatise, although i have myself collected a considerable part from artists and lovers of art, either in conversation, or in my correspondence. thus far in the way of introduction. [footnote : bellori, vite de' pittori, p. . "the roman school, of which raffaello and michel angiolo were the great masters, derived its principles from the study of the statues and works of the ancients."] [footnote : lett. pittor. tom. ii. p. ; and dialoghi sopra le tre arti del disegno. in lucca, .] [footnote : this work contains contributions from various quarters. i have not, however, made an equal use of all; as i believe some pictures to be copies, which are there referred to as originals; and as several names there mentioned, may with propriety be omitted. in my references, i shall often cite the collections; sometimes also the authors of some more considerable treatises, as p. civalli, terzi, sig. agostino rossi, sig. arciprete lazzari, respecting whom i must refer to the second index, where will be found the titles of their respective works.] roman school epoch i. _early artists._ if we turn our eyes for a moment to that tract of country which we have designated as falling within the limits of the roman school, amidst the claims of modern art, we shall occasionally meet with both greek and latin pictures of the rude ages; from the first of which we may conclude, that greek artists formerly painted in this part of italy; and from the latter, that our own countrymen were emulous to follow their example. one of these artists is said to have had the name of luca, and to him is ascribed the picture of the virgin, at s. maria maggiore, and many others in italy, which are believed to be painted by s. luke the evangelist. who this luca was, or whether one painter or more of that name ever existed, we shall presently inquire. the tradition was impugned by manni,[ ] and after him by piacenza, (tom. ii. p. ,) and is now only preserved among the vulgar, a numerous class indeed, who shut their ears to every rational criticism as an innovation on their faith. this vulgar opinion is alike oppugned by the silence of the early artists, and the well attested fact, that in the first ages of the church the virgin was not represented with the holy infant in her arms;[ ] but had her hands extended in the act of prayer. this is exemplified in the funeral vase of glass in the museo trombelli at bologna, with the inscription maria, and in many bassirilievi of christian sarcophagi, where she is represented in a similar attitude. rome possesses several of these specimens, and several are to be found in velletri.[ ] it is however a common opinion, that these pictures are by a painter of the name of luca. lami refers to a legend of the th century of the madonna dell'impruneta, where they are said to be the works of a florentine of the name of luca, who for his many christian virtues obtained the title of saint.[ ] they are not however all in the same style, and some of them bear greek inscriptions, whence we may conclude that they are by various hands; although they all appear to be painted in or about the th century. this tradition was not confined to italy alone, but found its way also into many of the eastern churches. the author of the _anecdotes des beaux arts_, relates that the memory of a luca, a hermit, who had painted many rude portraits of the virgin, was held in great veneration in greece; and that through a popular superstition he had succeeded to the title of s. luke the evangelist. tournefort (_voyage, &c._) mentions an image of the virgin at mount lebanon, attributed by the vulgar to s. luke; but which was doubtless also the work of some luke, a monk in one of the early ages. more considerable remains both of the greek and italian artists of the th century are to be found in assisi, as related in my first book; and to those already mentioned as painted on the walls, may be added others on panel, and all by unknown artists; particularly a crucifixion in s. chiara, of which there is a tradition, that it was painted before giunta appeared. another picture anterior to this period, and bearing the date of , is to be seen at subiaco; it is a consecration of a church, and the painter informs us that _conciolus pinxit_. if in addition to these artists we inquire after the miniature painters, we may find specimens of them in abundance, in the library of the vatican, and other collections in rome. i shall name s. agostino, in the public library of perugia, where the redeemer is seen in the midst of saints, and the opening of genesis is painted in miniature; a design which, from the angular folds of the drapery, partakes of the greek style, but still serves to prove this art to have been known at that time in umbria. in addition to what i have remarked, i may also observe, that in perugia, in the course of the same century, the artists were sufficiently numerous to form an academy, as we may collect from the _lettere perugine_, and these, when we consider the time, must have been in great part miniature painters. it is now time to notice oderigi of gubbio, a town very near to perugia. vasari tells us that he was a man of celebrity, and a friend of giotto, in rome; and dante, in his second _cantica_, calls him an honour to agobbio, and excelling in the art of miniature. these are the only authorities that baldinucci could have for transferring this ancient artist to the school of cimabue, and ingrafting him in his usual manner on that stock. upon these he founded his conjecture; and, according to his custom, gave them more weight than they deserved. his opinion, however amplified, reduces itself to the assumption that giotto, oderigi, and dante, were lovers of art, and common friends, and became therefore acquainted in the school of cimabue; a very uncertain conclusion. we shall consider this subject more maturely in the school of bologna, since oderigi lived there, and instructed franco, from whom bologna dates the series of her painters. it is thought, too, that he left some scholars in his native place, and not long after him, in , we find cecco, and puccio da gubbio, engaged as painters of the cathedral of orvieto; and about the year , guido palmerucci of the same place, employed in the palace of his native city. there remains a work of his in fresco in the hall, much injured by time; but some figures of saints are still preserved, which do not yield to the best style of giotto. some other vestiges of very ancient paintings are to be seen in the confraternita de' bianchi; in whose archives it is mentioned that the picture of s. biagio was repaired by donato, in ; whence it must necessarily be of a very early period. this and other interesting information i obtained from sig. sebastiano rangliasci, a noble inhabitant of gubbio, who has formed a catalogue of the artists of his native city, inserted in the fourth volume of the last edition of vasari. we are now arrived at the age of giotto, and the first who presents himself to us is pietro cavallini, who was instructed by giotto, in rome,[ ] in the arts of painting and mosaic, both of which he followed with skill and intelligence. the roman guide makes mention of him, and that of florence refers to a nunziata at s. mark; and there are others mentioned by vasari as being in the chapels of that city; one of which is in the loggia del grano. the most remarkable of his works is to be seen in assisi. it is a fresco, and occupies a large façade in one division of the church. it represents the crucifixion of our saviour, surrounded by bands of soldiers, foot and horse, and a numerous crowd of spectators, all varying in their dress and the expression of their passions. in the sky is a band of angels, whose sympathizing sorrow is vividly depicted. in extent and spirit of design it partakes of the style of memmi, and in one of the sufferers on the cross he has shewn that he justly appreciated and successfully followed his guide. the colours are well preserved, particularly the blue, which there, and in other parts of the church, presents to our admiring gaze, to use the language of our poets, a heaven of oriental sapphire. vasari does not appear to have been acquainted with any scholar of pietro cavallini, except it be giovanni da pistoja; but pietro, who lived in rome the greater part of his life, which was extended to a period of eighty-five years, must have contributed his aid in no small degree to the advancement of art, in the capital, as well as in other places. however this may be, in that part of italy, pictures of his school are still found; or at least memorials of art of the age in which he flourished. we have an andrea of velletri, of whom a specimen is preserved in the select collection of the museo borgia, with the virgin surrounded by saints, a common subject at that period in the churches, as i have before observed. it has the name of the painter, with the year , and in execution approaches nearer to the school of siena than any other. in the year we find ugolino orvietano, gio. bonini di assisi, lello perugino, and f. giacomo da camerino, noticed by us in another place, all employed in painting in the cathedral of orvieto. mariotti, in his letters, mentions other artists of perugia, and the memory of a very early painter of fabriano is preserved by ascevolini, the historian of that city, who informs us, that in the country church of s. maria maddalena, in his time, there was a picture in fresco, by bocco, executed in . a francesco tio da fabriano, who in painted the tribune of the conventuals at mondaino, is mentioned by colucci, (tom. xxv. p. ). this work has perished; but the productions of a successor of his at fabriano are to be seen in the oratory of s. antonio abate, the walls of which remain. many histories of the saint are there to be found, divided into pictures, in the early style, and inscribed, _allegrettus nutii de fabriano hoc opus fecit _.... the art in these parts was not a little advanced by their proximity to assisi, where giotto's scholars were employed after his death, particularly puccio capanna of florence. this artist, who is esteemed one of the most successful followers of giotto, after painting in florence, in pistoia, rimino, and bologna, is conjectured by vasari to have settled in assisi, where he left many works behind him. we shall find the succeeding century more fruitful in art, as the popes at that time forsook avignon, and, re-establishing themselves in rome, began to decorate the palace of the vatican, and to employ painters of celebrity both there and in the churches. there does not appear any person of distinction amongst them as a native of rome. from the roman state we find gentile da fabriano, piero della francesca, bonfigli, vannucci, and melozzo, who first practised the art of _sotto in su_; and amongst the strangers are pisanello, masaccio, beato angelico, botticelli and his colleagues. amongst these too, it is said, was to be found mantegna, and there still remains the chapel painted by him for innocent viii. although since converted to another purpose. each of these artists i shall notice in their respective schools, and shall here only mention such as were found in the country from the ufente to the tronto, and from thence to the metauro, which are the confines of our present class. the names of many others may be collected from books; as an andrea, and a bartolommeo, both of orvieto, and a mariotto da viterbo, and others who worked at orvieto from to ; and some who painted in rome itself, a giovenale and a salli di celano, and others now forgotten. but without pausing on these, we will advert to the artists of piceno, of the state of urbino, and the remaining parts of umbria: where we shall meet with the traces of schools which remained for many years. the school of fabriano, which seems very ancient in picenum, produced at that time gentile, one of the first painters of his age, of whom bonarruoti is reported to have said, that his style was in unison with his name. the first notice we have of him is among the painters of the church of orvieto, in ; and then, or soon afterwards, he received from the historians of that period the appellation of _magister magistrorum_, and they mention the madonna which he there painted, and which still remains. he afterwards resided in venice, where, after ornamenting the palazzo publico, he was rewarded by the republic with a salary, and with the privilege of wearing the patrician dress of that city. he there, says vasari, became the master, and, in a manner, the father of jacopo bellini, the father and preceptor of two of the ornaments of the venetian school. these were gentile, who assumed that name in memory of gentile da fabriano, born in ; and giovanni, who surpassed his brother in reputation, and from whose school arose giorgione and titian. he (gentile da fabriano) was employed in the lateran, at rome, where he rivalled pisanello, in the time of martin v.; and it is to be regretted that his works, both there and in venice, have perished. facio, who eulogizes him, and who had seen his most finished performances, extols him as a man of universal art, who represented, not only the human form and edifices in the most correct manner, but painted also the stormy appearances of nature in a style that struck terror into the spectator. in painting the history of st. john, in the lateran, and the five prophets over it, of the colour of marble, he is said to have used more than common care, as if he at that time prognosticated his own approaching death, which soon afterwards occurred, and the work remained unfinished. notwithstanding this, ruggier da bruggia, as facio relates, when he went to rome, in the holy year, and saw it, considered it a stupendous work, which placed gentile at the head of all the painters of italy. according to vasari and borghini, he executed a countless number of works in the marca, and in the state of urbino, and particularly in gubbio, and in città di castello, which are in the neighbourhood of his native place; and there still remain in those districts, and in perugia, some paintings in his style. a remarkable one is mentioned in a country church called la romita, near fabriano.[ ] florence possesses two beautiful specimens: the one in s. niccolo, with the effigy and history of the sainted bishop, the other in the sacristy of s. trinità, with an epiphany, having the date of . they bear a near resemblance to the style of b. angelico, except that the proportions of the figures are not so correct, the conception is less just, and the fringe of gold and brocades more frequent. vasari pronounces him a pupil of beato, and baldinucci confirms this opinion, although he says that beato took religious orders at an early age in , a period which would exclude gentile from his tuition. i conjecture both the one and the other to have been scholars of miniature painters, from the fineness of their execution, and from the size of their works, which are generally on a small scale. the name of an antonio da fabriano appears in a crucifixion, in , painted on wood, which i saw in matelica, in the possession of the signori piersanti; but it is inferior to gentile in style.[ ] on an ancient picture, which is preserved in perugia, in the convent of s. domenico, is the name of a painter of camerino, a place in the same neighbourhood, who flourished in . the inscription is _opus johannis bochatis de chamereno_. in the same district is s. severino, where we find a lorenzo, who, in conjunction with his brother, painted in the oratory of s. john the baptist in urbino, the life of that saint. these two artists were much behind their age. i have seen some other works by them, from which it appears that they were living in , and painted in the florentine style of . other artists of the same province are named in the _storia del piceno_, particularly at s. ginesio, a fabio di gentile di andrea, a domenico balestrieri, and a stefano folchetti, whose works are cited, with the date of their execution attached to them.[ ] in this district also resided several strangers, scarcely known to their native places, as francesco d'imola, a scholar of francia, who, in the convent of cingoli, painted a descent from the cross; and carlo crivelli, a venetian, who passed from one state to another, and finally settled in ascoli. his works are to be met with there more frequently than in any other city of picenum. i shall speak of his merits in the venetian school, and shall here only add, that he had for a pupil pietro alamanni, the chief of the painters of ascoli, a respectable _quattrocentista_, who painted an altarpiece at s. maria della carità, in . about this time also we find amongst their names a vittorio crivelli, a venetian, of the family, as i conjecture, and perhaps of the school of carlo. there is frequent mention of him in the _antichità picene_. urbino, too, had her artists, as her princes were not behind the other rulers of italy in good taste. at the restoration of the art, we find giotto, and several of his scholars, there; and afterwards gentile da fabriano,[ ] a galeazzo, and, possibly, a gentile di urbino. at pesaro, in the convent of s. agostino, i have seen a madonna, accompanied with beautiful architecture, and an inscription--_bartholomaeus magistri gentilis de urbino_, ; and at monte cicardo, i saw the same name on an ancient picture of , but without his birthplace. (ant. pic. tom. xvii. .) i am in doubt whether this _m. gentilis_ refers to the father of bartolommeo or his master, as the scholars at that time often took their designation from their masters. at all events, this artist is not to be confounded with bartolommeo from ferrara, whose son, benedetto, subscribes himself _benedictus quondam bartholomaei de fer. pictor._ . this is to be seen in the church of s. domenico di urbino, on the altarpiece in the chapel of the muccioli, their descendants. in the city of urbino there remain some works of the father of raffaello, who, in a letter of the duchess giovanna della rovere, which is the first of the lettere pittoriche, is designated as _molto virtuoso_. there is by him in the church of s. francis, a good picture of s. sebastian, with figures in an attitude of supplication. there is one attributed also to him in a small church dedicated to the same saint, representing his martyrdom, with a figure foreshortened, which raffaello, when young, imitated in a picture of the virgin, at città di castello. he subscribed himself _io. sanctis urbi._ (_urbinas_). so i read it in the sacristy of the conventuals of sinigaglia in an annunciation in which there is a beautiful angel, and an infant christ descending from the father; and which seems to be copied from those of pietro perugino, with whom raffaello worked some time, though it has a still more ancient style. the other figures are less beautiful, but yet graceful, and the extremities are carefully executed. but the most distinguished painter in urbino was f. bartolommeo corradini d'urbino, a domenican, called fra. carnevale. to an accurate eye his pictures are defective in perspective, and retain in the drapery the dryness of his age, but the portraits are so strongly expressed that they seem to live and speak; the architecture is beautiful, and the colours bright, and the air of the heads at the same time noble and unaffected. it is known that bramante and raffaello studied him, as there were not, at that time, any better works in urbino. in gubbio, which formed a part of this dukedom, were to be seen in that age the remains of the early school. there exists a fresco by ottaviano martis in s. maria nuova, painted in . the virgin is surrounded by a choir of angels, certainly too much resembling each other, but in their forms and attitudes as graceful and pleasing as any contemporary productions. borgo s. sepolcro, foligno, and perugia, present us with artists of greater celebrity. borgo was a part of umbria subject to the holy see, and was, in , pledged to the florentines,[ ] by eugenius iv. at the time piero della francesca, or piero borghese, one of the most memorable painters of this age, was at the summit of his reputation. he must have been born about , since vasari states that "he painted about the year ,"[ ] and that he became blind at sixty years of age, and remained so until his death, in his eighty-sixth year. from his fifteenth year he applied himself to painting, at which age he had made himself master of the principles of mathematics, and he rose to great eminence both in art and science.[ ] i have not been able to ascertain who was his master, but it is probable that as he was the son of a poor widow, who had barely the means of bringing him up, he did not leave his native place; and that under the guidance of obscure masters he raised himself, by his own genius, to the high degree of fame which he enjoyed. he first appeared, says vasari, in the court of the elder guidubaldo feltro, duke of urbino, where he left only some pictures of figures on a small scale, which was the case with such as were not the pupils of the great masters. he was celebrated for a remarkable drawing of a vase, so ingeniously designed that the front, the back, the sides, the bottom, and the mouth, were all shewn; the whole drawn with the greatest correctness, and the circles gracefully foreshortened. the art of perspective, the principles of which he was, as some affirm, the first among the italians to develope and to cultivate, was much indebted to him;[ ] and painting, too, owed much to his example in imitating the effects of light, in marking correctly the muscles of the naked figure, in preparing models of clay for his figures, and in the study of his drapery, the folds of which he fixed on the model itself, and drew very accurately and minutely. on examining the style of bramante and his milanese contemporaries, i have often thought that they derived some light from piero, for, as i have before said, he painted in urbino where bramante studied, and afterwards executed many works in rome, where bramantino came and was employed by nicholas v. in the floreria of the vatican is still to be seen a large fresco painting, in which the above named pontiff is represented with cardinals and prelates, and there is a degree of truth in the countenances highly interesting. taja does not assert that it is by pietro, but says that it is attributed to him.[ ] those which are pointed out in arezzo doubtless belong to him, and the most remarkable are the histories of the holy cross in the choir of the church of the conventuals, which shew that the art was already advanced beyond its infancy; there is so much new in the giotto manner of foreshortening, in the relief, and in many difficulties of the art overcome in his works. if he had possessed the grace of masaccio he might with justice have been placed at his side. at città s. sepolcro there still remain some works attributed to him; a s. lodovico vescovo, in the public palace, at s. chiara a picture of the assumption, with the apostles in the distance, and a choir of angels at the top, but in the foreground are s. francis, s. jerome, and other figures, which injure the unity of the composition. there are, however, still traces in them of the old style; a poverty of design, a hardness in the foldings of the drapery, feet which are well foreshortened, but too far apart. as to the rest, in design, in the air, and in the colouring of the figures, it seems to be a rude sketch of that style which was ameliorated by p. perugino, and perfected by raffaello. in the latter part of this century there flourished several good painters at foligno, but it is not known from whom they derived their instructions. in the twenty-fifth volume of the antichità picene we read, that in the church of s. francesco di cagli there exists (i know not whether it be now there) a most beautiful composition, painted in , at the price of ducats of gold, by m. pietro di mazzaforte and m. niccolo deliberatore of foligno. at s. venanzio di camerino is a large altarpiece on a ground of gold, with christ on the cross, surrounded by many saints, with three small evangelical histories added to it. the inscription is _opus nicolai fulginatis_, ; it is in the style of the last imitators of giotto, and there is scarcely a doubt that the artist studied at florence. i believe him to be the same artist as niccolo deliberatore, or di liberatore; and different from niccolò alunno, also of foligno, whom vasari mentions as an excellent painter in the time of pinturicchio. he painted in distemper, as was common before pietro perugino, but in tints that have survived uninjured to our own times. in the distribution of his colours he was original; his heads possess expression, though they are common, and sometimes heavy, when they represent the vulgar. there is at s. niccolò di foligno a picture by him, composed in the style of the fourteenth century, the virgin surrounded by saints, and underneath small histories of the passion, where the perspicuity is more to be praised than the disposition. in the same style some of his pieces in foligno are painted after . vasari thinks they are all surpassed by his pietà in a chapel of the duomo, in which are represented two angels, "whose grief is so vividly expressed, that any other artist, however ambitious he might be, would find it difficult to surpass it." perugia, from whence the art derived no common lustre, abounded in painters beyond any other city. the celebrated mariotti formed a long catalogue of the painters of the fourteenth century, and among the most conspicuous are fiorenzo di lorenzo, and bartolommeo caporali, of whom we have pictures of the date of . some strangers were also to be found amongst them, as that lello da velletri, the author of an altarpiece, and its lower compartments, noticed by signor orsini. benedetto bonfigli was distinguished above all others, and was the most eminent artist of perugia in his day. i have seen by him, besides the picture in fresco in the palazzo publico, mentioned by vasari, a picture of the magi, in s. domenico, in a style similar to gentile, and with a large proportion of gold; and another in a more modern style, an annunciation, in the church of the orfanelli. the angel in it is most beautiful, and the whole picture would bear comparison with the works of the best artists of this period, if the drawing were more correct.[ ] what i have already adduced sufficiently proves that the art was not neglected in the papal states, even in the ruder ages; and that men of genius from time to time appeared there, who, without leaving their native places, still gave an impulse to art. florence, however, has ever been the great capital of design, the leading academy, and the athens of italy. it would be idle to question her indisputable claim to this high honour; and sixtus iv., who, as we have before mentioned, sought through all italy for artists to ornament the sistine chapel, procured the greatest number from tuscany; nor were there to be found amongst them any who were his own subjects, except pietro perugino, and he too had risen to notice and celebrity in florence. these then are the first mature fruits of the roman school, for until this period they had been crude and tasteless. pietro is her masaccio, her ghirlandajo, her all. we will here take a short view of him and his scholars, reserving, however, the divine raffaello to the next epoch, which indeed is designated by his illustrious name. pietro vannucci della pieve,[ ] as he calls himself in some pictures, or of perugia in others, from the citizenship which he there enjoyed, had studied under a master of no great celebrity, if we are to believe vasari; and this was a pietro da perugia, as bottari conjectured, or niccolò alunno, as it was reported in foligno. mariotti pretends that pietro advanced himself greatly in perugia in the schools of bonfigli, and pietro della francesca, from which he not only derived that excellence in perspective, which, from the testimony of vasari was so much admired in florence, but also much of his design and colouring.[ ] mariotti then raises a doubt whether, when he went as an artist to florence, he became the scholar of verrocchio, as writers report, or whether he did not rather perfect himself from the great examples of masaccio, and the excellent painters who at that time flourished there; and he finally determines in favour of the opinion held by pascoli, bottari, and taja, and adopted by padre resta, in his _galleria portatile_, p. , that verrocchio was never his master. it is well worth while to read the disquisitions of this able writer in his fifth letter, where we may admire the dexterity with which he settles a point so perplexed and so interesting to the history of art. i will only add that it appears to me not improbable, that pietro, when he arrived at florence, attached himself to this most celebrated artist, and was instructed by him in design, and in the plastic art particularly, and in that fine style of painting with which verrocchio, without much practising it himself, imbued both vinci and credi. traditions are seldom wholly groundless; they have generally some foundation in truth. the manner of pietro is somewhat hard and dry, like that of other painters of his time; and he occasionally exhibits a poverty in the drapery of his figures; his garments and mantles being curtailed and confined. but he atones for these faults by the grace of his heads, particularly in his boys and in his women; which have an air of elegance and a charm of colour unknown to his contemporaries. it is delightful to behold in his pictures, and in his frescos which remain in perugia and rome, the bright azure ground which affords such high relief to his figures; the green, purple, and violet tints so chastely harmonized, the beautiful and well drawn landscape and edifices, which, as vasari says, was a thing until that time never seen in florence. in his altarpieces he is not sufficiently varied. there is a remarkable painting executed for the church of s. simone, at perugia, of a holy family, one of the first specimens of a well designed and well composed altarpiece. in other respects pietro did not make any great advances in invention; his crucifixions and his descents from the cross are numerous, and of an uniform character. he has thus represented, with little variation, the ascensions of our lord and of the virgin, in bologna, in florence, perugia, and città di s. sepolcro. he was reproached with this circumstance in his lifetime, and defended himself by saying that no one had a right to complain, as the designs were all his own. there is also another defence, which is, that compositions, really beautiful, are still seen with delight when repeated in different places; whoever sees in the sistine his s. peter invested with the keys, will not be displeased at finding at perugia the same landscape, in a picture of the marriage of the virgin. on the contrary, this picture is one of the finest objects that noble city affords; and may be considered as containing an epitome of the various styles of pietro. in the opinion of some persons, his frescos exhibit a more fertile invention, and greater delicacy and harmony of colour. of these, his masterpiece is in his native city, in the sala del cambio. it is an evangelical subject, with saints from the old testament, and with his own portrait, to which his grateful fellow citizens attached an elegant eulogy. he is most eminent, and adopts a sort of raffaellesque style, in some of his latter pictures. i have observed it in a holy family, in the carmine in perugia. the same may be said too of certain small pictures, almost of a miniature class; as in the grado of s. peter, in perugia, than which nothing can be more finished and beautiful; and in many other pieces in which he has spared no pains,[ ] but which are few in comparison to the multitude by his scholars, attributed to him. in treating of the school of pietro perugino, it is necessary to advert to what taja,[ ] and after him the author of the _lettere perugine_, notices respecting his scholars, "that they were most scrupulous in adhering to the manner of their master, and as they were very numerous, they have filled the world with pictures, which both by painters and connoisseurs are very commonly considered as his." when his works in perugia are inspected, he generally rises in the esteem of travellers, of whom many have only seen paintings incorrectly ascribed to him. in florence there are some of his pictures in the grand duke's collection: and in the church of s. chiara, his beautiful descent from the cross, and some other works; but in private collections both here and in other cities of tuscany, many holy families are assigned to him, which are most probably by gerino da pistoja, or some of his tuscan scholars, of whom there is a catalogue in our first book. the papal states also possessed many of his scholars, who were of higher reputation, nor so wholly attached to his manner as the strangers. bernardino pinturicchio, his scholar and assistant in perugia and in rome, was a painter little valued by vasari, who has not allowed him his full share of merit. he has not the style of design of his master, and retains more than consistent with his age, the ornaments of gold in his drapery; but he is magnificent in his edifices, spirited in his countenances, and extremely natural in every thing he introduces into his composition. as he was on the most familiar footing with raffaello, with whom he painted at siena, he has emulated his grace in some of his figures, as in his picture of s. lorenzo in the church of the francescani di spello, in which there is a small s. john the baptist, thought by some to be by raphael himself. he was very successful in arabesques and perspective; in which way he was the first to represent cities in the ornaments of his fresco paintings, as in an apartment of the vatican, where in his landscapes he introduced views of the principal cities of italy. in many of his paintings he retained the ancient custom of making part of his decorations of stucco, as the arches, a custom which was observed in the milanese school to the time of gaudenzio. rome possesses some of his works, particularly in the vatican, and in araceli. there is a good picture by him in the duomo of spello.[ ] his best is at siena, in the magnificent sacristy of which we have already made mention. they consist of ten historical subjects, containing the most memorable passages in the life of pius ii., and on the outside is an eleventh, which represents the coronation of pius iii., by whom this work was ordered. vasari has added to the life of pinturicchio that of girolamo genga, of urbino, at first a scholar of signorelli, afterwards of perugino, and who remained some time pursuing his studies in florence. he was, for a long period, in the service of the duke of urbino, and attached himself more to architecture than to painting, though, in the latter, he was sufficiently distinguished to deserve a place in the history of art. we cannot form a correct judgment of him, as a great part of his own works have perished; and as he assisted signorelli in orvieto and other places; and was assisted by timoteo della vite in urbino, and in the imperial palace of pesaro by raffaelle del colle, and various others. in the petrucci palace at siena, which now belongs to the noble family of savini, some historical pieces are ascribed to him near those of signorelli. they are described in the lettere senesi, and in the notes published at siena to the fourth volume of vasari. these pieces are praised as superior to those of signorelli, and as in many parts approaching the early style of raffaello. nor do i see how, in the above mentioned letters, they could be supposed to be by razzi, or peruzzi, or pacchiarotto, "_in their hard dry manner_" when history assures us that girolamo was with pandolfo a considerable time, which cannot be asserted of the other three; and as it appears that petrucci, to finish the work of signorelli, selected genga from among his scholars. if we deprive him of this work, which is the only one which can be called his own, what can he have executed in all this time? in this house there is no other picture that can be assigned to him, although vasari asserts that he there painted other rooms. a most beautiful picture by genga, and of the greatest rarity, is to be seen in s. caterina da siena in rome; the subject is the resurrection of our saviour. of the other scholars of perugino we have no distinct account; but we find some notice of them in the life of their master. giovanni spagnuolo, named lo spagna, was one of the many _oltramontani_ whom perugino instructed. the greater part of these introduced his manner into their own countries, but giovanni established himself at spoleti, at which place, and in assisi, he left his best works. in the opinion of vasari the colouring of perugino survived in him more than in any of his fellow scholars. in a chapel of the angioli, below assisi, there remains the picture described by vasari, in which are the portraits of the brotherhood of s. francis, who closed his days on this spot, and, perhaps, no other pupil of this school has painted portraits with more truth, if we except raffaello himself, with whom no other painter is to be compared. a more memorable person is andrea luigi di assisi, a competitor of raffaello, although of more mature years, who, from his happy genius was named l'ingegno. he assisted perugino in the sala del cambio, and in other works of more consequence; and he may be said to be the first of that school who began to enlarge the style, and soften the colouring. this is observable in several of his works, and singularly so in the sybils and prophets in fresco in the church of assisi; if they are by his hand, as is generally believed. it is impossible to behold his pictures without a feeling of compassion, when we recollect that he was visited with blindness at the most valuable period of his life. domenico di paris alfani also enlarged the manner of his master, and even more than him orazio his son, and not his brother, as has been imagined. this artist bears a great resemblance to raffaello. there are some of his pictures in perugia, which, if it were not for a more delicate colouring, and something of the suavity of baroccio, might be assigned to the school of raffaello; and there are pictures on which a question arises whether they belong to that school or to orazio; particularly some madonnas, which are preserved in various collections. i have seen one in the possession of the accomplished sig. auditor frigeri in perugia; and there is another in the ducal gallery in florence. the reputation of the younger alfani has injured that of the other; and even in perugia some fine pieces were long considered to be by orazio, which have since been restored to domenico. an account of these, and other works of eminent artists, may be found in modern writers; and particularly in mariotti, who mentions the altarpiece of the crucifixion, between s. apollonia and s. jerome, at the church of the conventuals, a work by the two alfanis, father and son. in commendation of the latter he adds, that he was the chief of the academy for design, which was founded in , and which, after many honourable struggles, has been revived in our own time. there are other artists of less celebrity in perugia, though not omitted by vasari. eusebio da s. giorgio painted in the church of s. francesco di matelica, a picture with several saints, and on the grado, part of the history of s. anthony, with his name, and the year . we may recognize in it the drawing of perugino, but the colouring is feeble. his picture of the magi at s. agostino is better coloured, and in this he followed paris. the works of giannicola da perugia, a good colourist, and therefore willingly received by pietro to assist him in his labours, however inferior to that artist in design and perspective, are recognized in the cappella del cambio, which is near the celebrated sala of perugino, and was painted by him with the life of john the baptist. in the church of s. thomas, is his picture of that apostle about to touch the wounds of our saviour, and excepting a degree of sameness in the heads, it possesses much of the character of perugino. giambatista caporali, erroneously called benedetto by vasari, baldinucci, and others, holds likewise a moderate rank in this school, and is more celebrated among the architects. giulio, his natural son, afterwards legitimatized, also cultivated the same profession. the succeeding names belonging to this school are not mentioned by vasari; a circumstance which does not prove the impropriety of their admission, as there are many deserving of notice. mariotti, our guide in the chronology of this age, and a correct judge of the conformity of style, notices mariano di ser eusterio, whom vasari calls mariano da perugia (tom. iv. p. ), referring to a picture in the church of s. agostino in ancona, which is "not of much interest." in opposition to this opinion of vasari, however, mariotti adduces another picture, of a respectable class, by mariano, to be found in s. domenico di perugia; whence we may conclude that this painting is deserving of a place in the history of art. he also mentions berto di giovanni, whom raffaello engaged as his assistant to paint a picture for the monks of monteluci (of which we shall speak in our notice of penni) and who was appointed in this contract by raphael himself to paint the grado. this grado is in the sacristy, and is so entirely in the manner of raffaello, in the history of the virgin which it represents, that we may conclude either that raffaello made the design, or that it was painted by one of his school. if it was by berto, it proves him to have been one of those who exchanged the school of perugino for that of raffaello; and if he did not paint it, he must always be held in consideration for the regard he received from the master of the art. of this artist more information may be obtained from bianconi, in the antologia romana, vol. iii. p. . mariotti enumerates also sinibaldo da perugia, who must be esteemed an excellent painter from his works in his native place, and more so from those in the cathedral at gubbio, where he painted a fine picture in , and a gonfalon still more beautiful, which would rank him among the first artists of the ancient school. to the above painters pascoli adds a female artist of the name of teodora danti, who painted cabinet pictures in the style of perugino and his scholars. from tradition, as well as conjecture, we may notice in città di castello a francesco of that city, a scholar of perugino, who, in an altarpiece in the church of the conventuals, left an annunciation with a fine landscape. he is named in the guida di roma, in the account of the chapel of s. bernardino in ara caeli, where he is supposed to have worked with pinturicchio and signorelli. there is a conjecture, though no decided proof, that a giacomo di guglielmo was a pupil of pietro, who, at castel della pieve, his native place, painted a gonfalon, estimated by good judges in perugia at sixty-five florins; and also a tiberio di assisi, who, in many of the coloured lunettes in the convent degli angeli, containing the history of the life of s. francis, shews clearly that perugino was his prototype, though he had not talent enough to imitate him. besides tiberio, some have assigned to the instructions of perugino, the most eminent painter of assisi, adone (or dono) doni, not unknown to vasari, who often mentions him, and particularly in his life of gherardi (vol. v. p. ). he is there called of ascoli, an opinion which bottari maintains against orlandi, who, on the best grounds, changed it to assisi. in ascoli he is not at all known, but he is well known in perugia by a large picture of the last judgment in the church of s. francis, and still better in assisi, where he painted in fresco, in the church of the angeli, the life of the founder, and of s. stephen, and many other pieces, which, for a long period, served as a school for youth. he had very little of the ancient manner; the truth of his portraits is occasionally wonderful; his colouring is that of the latest of the scholars of perugino; and he appears to be an artist of more correctness than spirit. i find also a lattanzio della marca, of the school of perugino, commemorated by vasari in the above mentioned life. he is thought to be the same as lattanzio da rimino, of whom ridolfi makes mention, among the scholars of giovanni bellino, as painting a picture in venice in rivalship with conegliano.[ ] we are enabled more correctly to ascertain this from a document in the possession of mariotti, of which we shall shortly speak, from which we not only learn to a certainty his native place, but further, that he was the son of vincenzo pagani, a celebrated painter, as will hereafter be seen, and that both were living in the year . it appears, therefore, very probable that lattanzio was instructed by his father, and that we may doubt of his being under bellini, who died about , or under perugino, among whose disciples he is not enumerated by the very accurate mariotti. it seems certain, that on the death of vannucci he succeeded to his fame, and obtained for himself some of the most important orders in perugia, as, for instance, the great work of painting the chambers in the castle. he accomplished this task by the assistance of raffaellino del colle, gherardi, doni, and paperello. he there commenced the picture of s. maria del popolo, and executed the lower part, where there is a great number of persons in the attitude of prayer; a fine expression is observable in the countenances, the figures are well disposed, the landscape beautiful, and there is a strength and clearness in the colouring, and a taste which, on the whole, is different from that of perugino. the upper part of the picture, which is by gherardi, has not an equal degree of force. lattanzio finished his career by being sheriff of his native city; and of this office, a more honourable distinction than at the present day, it appears he took possession in the year , and at that time renounced the art. it is certain, that, in the before mentioned paper, the capitano lattanzio di vincenzo pagani da monte rubbiano acknowledges to have received six scudi of gold from sforza degli oddi, as earnest money for a picture representing the trinity, with four saints; and engages that in the ensuing august it should be executed by his father vincenzo and tommaso da cortona, and this must be the picture still existing in the chapel of the oddi in s. francesco, since the figures particularized in the agreement are found there; we shall have an opportunity of noticing it again. in the _antichità picene_, tom. xxi. p. , ercole ramazzani di roccacontrada is recorded as a scholar of pietro perugino, and for some time of raffaello. a picture of the circumcision, by him, is there mentioned to be at castel planio, with his name and the date of ; and in speaking of the artist it is added, that he possessed a beautiful style of colour, a charming invention, and a manner approaching to barocci. i have never seen the above mentioned picture, nor the others which he left in his native city, mentioned in the _memorie_ of abbondanziere: but only one by a ramazzani di roccacontrada, painted in the church of s. francesco, in matelica, in . although i cannot affirm to a certainty that this painter called himself ercole, i still suspect him to be the same. it represents the conception of the virgin, in which the idea of the subject is taken from vasari, where adam, and others of the old testament, are seen bound to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, as the heirs of sin, while the virgin triumphs over them in her exemption from the penalty of the first parents. ramazzani has adopted this design, which he had probably seen, but he has executed his picture on a much larger scale, with better colouring, and much more expression in the countenances. to conclude, we do not see a trace of the manner of perugino, and the period at which he lived seems too late for him to have received instructions from that artist; and it is most probable that he was taught by some of his latter scholars, in whom, if i mistake not, that more fascinating than correct style of colouring had its origin, before it was adopted by barocci. i may further observe, that as perugino was the most celebrated name at the beginning of the sixteenth century, many other artists of the roman states, who studied the art about his time, are given to his school without any sufficient authority; and particularly those who retained a share of the old style. such was a palmerini of urbino, a contemporary of raphael, and probably his fellow scholar in early life, of whom there remains at s. antonio, a picture of various saints, truly beautiful, and approaching to a more modern style. in the same style i found, in the borghese gallery at rome, the woman of samaria at the well, painted by a pietro giulianello, or perhaps _da_ giulianello, a little district not far from rome; an artist deserving to be placed in the first rank of _quattrocentisti_, although not mentioned by any writer. there are besides, some pictures by pietro paolo agabiti, who in tom. xx. of the _ant. pic._ is said to be of masaccio, where he painted in , and some time afterwards. but i have seen a work by him in the church of s. agostino in sassoferrato, a series of small histories, with an inscription in which he names sassoferrato as his native place, with the date of ; a date that will carry him from the moderns to the better class of the old school. lorenzo pittori da macerata painted in the church of the virgin, highly esteemed for its architecture, a picture of christ in , in a manner which has been called _antico moderno_. two artists, bartolommeo, and pompeo his son, flourished in fano, and painted in in conjunction, in the church of s. michele, the resurrection of lazarus. it is wonderful to observe how little they regarded the reform which the art had undergone. these artists strictly followed the dry style of the quattrocentisti, with a thorough contempt of the modern style. nor was the son at all modernized on leaving his father's studio. i found at s. andrea di pesaro a picture by him of various saints, which might have done him honour in the preceding age. civalli mentions other works by him in a better style: and he certainly in his lifetime enjoyed a degree of reputation, and was one of the masters of taddeo zuccaro. there are a number of painters of this class, of whom a long list might be compiled; they are generally represented to be pupils of some well known master, and in such cases pietro perugino is selected; though it would be more candid to confess our ignorance on the subject. it would be improper to pass on to another epoch of art, without adverting to the grotesque. this branch of the art is censured by vitruvius[ ] as a creation of portentous monsters beyond the reign of nature, transferring to canvas the dreams and ravings of a disordered fancy, as wild as the waves of a convulsed sea, lashed into a thousand varying forms by the fury of the tempest. this style took its name from the _grotte_, for so those beautiful antique edifices may be called, where paintings of this kind are found, covered with earth, and with buildings of a later period. this style was revived in rome, where a greater proportion of these ancient specimens is found, and was restored at this epoch. vasari ascribes the revival of them to morto da feltro, and the perfecting of the style to giovanni da udine. but he himself, notwithstanding the little esteem he had for pinturicchio, calls him the friend of morto da feltro, and allows that he executed many works in the same manner in castel s. angelo. before him too pietro his master had painted some of the same kind in the sala del cambio, which orsini says are well conceived, and to him likewise a precedent had been afforded by benedetto bonfigli, of whom taja, in his description of the vatican palace, says, that he painted for innocent viii. in rome some singularly beautiful grotesques. this branch of art was afterwards cultivated in many of the schools of italy, particularly in that of siena. peruzzi approved of it in architecture, and adopted it in his painting, and gave occasion to lomazzo to offer a defence of it, and precepts, as i before noticed, and as may be seen in the sixth book of his trattato della pittura, chapter forty-eight. [footnote : _dell'errore, che persiste_, &c. see the second index. it was opposed by crespi, in his _dissertazione anticritica_, referred to in the same index. it was also opposed by p. dell'aquila, in the _dizionario portatile della bibbia, tradotto dal francese_, in a note of some length, on the article s. luca.] [footnote : see the _opuscoli calogeriani_, tom. xliii. where a learned dissertation is inserted, which shews that this custom was introduced about the middle of the fifth century, on occasion of the council of ephesus.] [footnote : engraved by command of the learned cardinal borgia. the artists began about the middle of the fifth century, to represent her with the infant in her arms. see _opuscoli calogeriani_, as above.] [footnote : "the painter was a man of holy life, and a florentine, whose name was luca, and who was honoured by the common people with the title of saint." lami, deliciæ eruditorum, tom. xv.] [footnote : so says vasari, who writes his life, but padre della valle thinks it highly probable that he was the scholar of cosimati, and not of giotto; as cavallini was contemporary with giotto. i agree that he was only a very few years younger, and might have received some instructions in the school of cosimati: but who, except giotto himself, could have taught him that giottesque and improved style scarcely inferior to gaddi?] [footnote : in the archives of the collegiate church of s. niccolo, in fabriano, is preserved a catalogue of the pictures of the city, which has been communicated to me by sig. can. claudio serafini. this picture, which is divided into five compartments, is there mentioned; and it is added, that "many celebrated painters visited the place to view this excellent work, and in particular, the illustrious raffaello."] [footnote : in the archives before alluded to, are also mentioned two ancient pictures of a giuliano da fabriano, the one in the church of the domenicans, the other in the church of the capuchins.] [footnote : tom. xxiii. page , &c. by the first, is the ancient picture of s. maria della consolazione in that church, erected in . by the second, are the pictures in the church of s. rocco, painted about the year . the third artist painted a picture in the church of s. liberato, in .] [footnote : galeazzo sanzio and his sons will be noticed in the second epoch.] [footnote : see vasari, bologna edition, p. .] [footnote : the commentators of vasari remark, that when he uses this phrase, he refers to the year of the death of the artist, or to the period when he relinquished his art. pietro must therefore have become blind about the year , in the sixtieth year of his age, and must have died about , aged eighty-six. this painter was intimately connected with the family of vasari. lazaro the great-grandfather of vasari, who died in , was the friend and imitator of pietro, and some time before his death assigned him his nephew signorelli as a scholar. we must, therefore, give credit to vasari's account of borghese; for if we discredit him on this occasion, as some have done, when are we to believe him? it is true, indeed, that he is guilty of a strange anachronism in mentioning guidubaldo, the old duke of urbino, as his first patron; but this kind of error is frequent in him, and not to be regarded.] [footnote : "fu eccellentissimo prospettivo, e il maggior geometra de' suoi tempi." romano alberti, trattato della nobiltà della pittura, p. . see also pascoli, vite, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : it appears that in this art he was preceded by van eych of flanders. see tom. i. p. , &c.; and also the eulogium on him by bartolommeo facio, p. , where he praises his skill in geometry, and refers to several of his pictures, which prove him to have been highly accomplished, and almost unrivalled in perspective.] [footnote : if there be any truth in pietro having been blind for twenty-four years, i do not know how he could have painted sixtus iv. on the other hand this tradition of his blindness comes from vasari, whose family was so intimately connected with that of pietro della francesca, that there was less room for error in the life of that artist than in any other. this excellent picture, of which i have seen a beautiful copy in the possession of the duke di ceri, i should myself rather attribute to melozzo.] [footnote : he is favorably mentioned by crispolti, in the _perugia augusta_; by ciatti, in the _istorie di perugia_; alessi, in the _elogi de' perugini illustri_; and by pascoli, in the _vite de' pittori sc. arch. perugini_; with whom i can in no manner concur in opinion, that "benedetto was equal to the best artists of his time, and probably the first among the early masters who contributed to the introduction of an improved style," (p. ). an assertion singularly unjust to masaccio.] [footnote : he subscribed himself _de castro plebis_, now _città della pieve_. there, according to pascoli, the father was born, who afterwards removed to perugia, where pietro was born; but the greater probability is, that pietro also was born in città della pieve. _mariotti._] [footnote : this resemblance might have arisen from his imitation of the works of borghese, (pietro della francesca) which he saw in perugia, as it most assuredly cannot be proved that perugino was ever in his school. p. valle and others express great doubts of it, and when i reflect that vannucci was only twelve years old when borghese lost his sight, i regard it as an absurd tradition.] [footnote : vasari, at the close of his life observes, "none of his scholars ever equalled pietro in application or in amenity of colour." padre della valle asserts on the contrary, "that he was indebted for a great portion of his celebrity to the talents displayed by his scholars;" and says that he detected the touch of raffaello in his picture in the grand duke's collection; but we must have a stronger testimony before we submit ourselves to this decision.] [footnote : descrizione del palazzo vaticano, p. .] [footnote : consisting of three subjects from the life of christ, in the chapel of the holy sacraments. the annunciation, the birth of christ, and the dispute with the doctors, the best of the three. in one of these he introduced his own portrait. vasari does not mention this fine production.] [footnote : he probably came to venice from rimino, or resided there for some time. we find other early painters assigned first to one country and then to another, as jacopo davanzo, pietro vannucci, lorenzo lotto, &c.] [footnote : it is said that mengs, who was desirous of being considered a philosophical painter, coincided with vitruvius in opinion. but this opinion should be restricted to some indifferent specimens; for when he afterwards saw them painted in the true style of the ancients, he regarded them with extraordinary pleasure; as in genoa, which possesses some beautiful arabesques by vaga. so the defender of ratti assures us.] roman school. epoch ii. _raffaello and his school._ we are now arrived at the most brilliant period, not only of the roman school, but of modern painting itself. we have seen the art carried to a high degree of perfection by da vinci and bonarruoti, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and it is a remarkable fact that the same period embraces not only raphael, but also coreggio, giorgione, and titian, and the most celebrated venetian painters: so that a man enjoying the common term of life might have seen the works of all these illustrious masters. the art in but a few years thus reached a height to which it had never before attained, and which has never been rivalled, except in the attempt to imitate these early masters, or to unite in one style their varied and divided excellences. it seems indeed an ordinary law of providence, that individuals of consummate genius should be born and flourish at the same period, or at least at short intervals from each other, a circumstance of which velleius paterculus, after a diligent investigation, protested he could never discover the real cause. i observe, he says, men of the same commanding genius making their appearance together, in the smallest possible space of time; as it happens in the case of animals of different kinds, which, confined in a close place, nevertheless each selects its own class, and those of a kindred race separate themselves from the rest, and unite in the closest manner. a single age was sufficient to illustrate tragedy, in the persons of Æschylus, sophocles, and euripides: ancient comedy under cratinus, aristophanes, and eumolpides; and in like manner the new comedy under menander, diphilus, and philemon. there appeared few philosophers of note after the days of plato and aristotle, and whoever has made himself acquainted with isocrates and his school, is acquainted with the summit of grecian eloquence. the same remark applies also to other countries. the great roman writers are included under the single age of octavius: leo x. was the augustus of modern italy; the reign of louis xiv. was the brilliant era of french letters, that of charles ii. of the english. this rule applies equally to the fine arts. _hoc idem_, proceeds velleius, _evenisse plastis, pictoribus, sculptoribus, quisquis temporum institerit notis reperiet, et eminentiam cujusque operis arctissimis temporum claustris circumdatam._[ ] of this union of men of genius in the same age, _causas_, he says, _quum semper requiro, numquam invenio quas veras confidam_. it seems to him probable that when a man finds the first station in art occupied by another, he considers it as a post that has been rightfully seized on, and no longer aspires to the possession of it, but is humiliated, and contented to follow at a distance. but this solution i confess does not satisfy my mind. it may indeed account to us why no other michelangiolo, or raffaello, has ever appeared; but it does not satisfy me why these two, and the others before mentioned, should all have appeared together in the same age. for myself, i am of opinion that the age is always influenced by certain principles, universally adopted both by professors of the art, and by amateurs: which principles happening at a particular period to be the most just and accurate of their kind, produce in that age some supereminent professors, and a number of good ones. these principles change through the instability of all human affairs, and the age partakes in the change. i may add, nevertheless, that these happy periods never occur without the circumstance of a number of princes and influential individuals rivalling each other in the encouragement of works of taste; and amidst these there always arise some persons of commanding genius, who give a bias and tone to art. the history of sculpture in athens, a city where munificence and taste went hand in hand, favours my opinion, and it is further confirmed by this golden period of italian art. nevertheless i do not pretend to give a verdict on this important question, but leave the decision of it to a more competent tribunal. but although it be a matter of difficulty to account for this developement and union of rare talent at one particular period, we may however hope to trace the steps of a single individual to excellence; and i would wish to do so of raffaello. nature and fortune seemed to unite in lavishing their favours on this artist; the first in investing him with the rarest gifts of genius, the other in adding to these a singular combination of propitious circumstances. in order to illustrate our inquiry it will be necessary to observe him from his earliest years,[ ] and to note the progress of his mind. he was born in urbino in ; and if climate, as seems not improbable, have any influence on the genius of an artist, i know not a happier spot that could have been chosen for his birth, than that part of italy which gave to architecture a bramante, supplied the art of painting with a successor to raffaello in baroccio, and bestowed on sculpture the plastic hand of a brandani, without referring to many less celebrated, but still deserving artists, who are the boast of urbino and her state. the father of this illustrious artist was giovanni di santi,[ ] or as he has been commonly called giovanni sanzio, an artist of moderate talents, and who could contribute but little to the instruction of his son; although it was no small advantage to have been initiated in a simple style, divested of mannerism. he made some further progress from studying the works of f. carnevale, an artist of great merit, for the times in which he flourished; and being placed at perugia, under pietro, he soon became master of his style, as vasari observes, and had then probably already formed the design of excelling him. i was informed in città di castello, that at the age of seventeen he painted the picture of s. nicholas of tolentino in the church of the eremitani. the style was that of perugino, but the composition differed from that of the age, being the throne of our saviour surrounded by saints. the beato (beatified saint) is there represented, while the virgin and st. augustine, concealed in part by a cloud, bind his temples with a crown; there are two angels at the right hand, and two at the left, graceful, and in different attitudes; with inscriptions variously folded, on which are inscribed some words in praise of s. eremitano. above is the eternal father surrounded by a majestic choir of angels. the actors of the scene appear to be in a temple, the pillars of which are ornamented in the minute and laboured style of mantegna, and the ancient manner is still perceptible in the folds of the drapery, though there is an evident improvement in the design, as in the figure of satan, who lies under the feet of the saint. this figure is free from the singular deformity with which the ancient painters represented him; and has the genuine features of an ethiopian. to this picture another of this period may be added in the church of s. domenico; a crucifixion, with two attendant angels; the one receives in a cup the sacred blood which flows from the right hand, the other, in two cups, collects that of the left hand and the side; the weeping mother and disciples contribute their aid, while the magdalen and an aged saint kneeling in silence contemplate the solemn mystery; above is the deity. these figures might all pass for those of pietro, except the virgin, the beauty of which he never equalled, unless perhaps in the latter part of his life. another specimen of this period is noticed by the abate morcelli, (de stylo inscript. latin, p. ). he states, that in the possession of sig. annibale maggiori, a nobleman of fermo, he saw the picture of a madonna, raising with both hands a veil of delicate texture from the holy infant, as he lies in a cradle asleep. nigh at hand is s. joseph, whose eyes rest in contemplation on the happy scene, and on his staff the same writer detected an inscription in extremely minute characters, r. s. v. a. a. xvii. p. _raphael sanctius urbinas an. ætatis pinxit_. this must have been the first attempt of the design which he perfected at a more mature age, and which is in the treasury of loreto, where the holy infant is represented, not in the act of sleeping, but gracefully stretching out his hand to the virgin: of the same epoch i judge the _tondini_ to be, which i shall describe in the course of a few pages, when i refer to the madonna della seggiola. vasari informs us, that before executing these two pictures, he had already painted in perugia an assumption in the church of the conventuals, with three subjects from the life of christ in the grado; which may however be doubted, as it is a more perfect work. this picture possesses all the best parts of the style of vannucci; but the varied expressions which the apostles discover on finding the sepulchre void, are beyond the reach of that artist's powers. raffaello still further excelled his master, as vasari observes, in the third picture painted for città di castello. this is the marriage of the virgin, in the church of s. francesco. the composition very much resembles that which he adopted in a picture of the same subject in perugia; but there is sufficient of modern art in it to indicate the commencement of a new style. the two espoused have a degree of beauty which raffaello scarcely surpassed in his mature age, in any other countenances. the virgin particularly is a model of celestial beauty. a youthful band festively adorned accompany her to her espousals; splendour vies with elegance; the attitudes are engaging, the veils variously arranged, and there is a mixture of ancient and modern drapery, which at so early a period cannot be considered as a fault. in the midst of these accompaniments the principal figure triumphantly appears, not ornamented by the hand of art, but distinguished by her native nobility, beauty, modesty, and grace. the first sight of this performance strikes us with astonishment, and we involuntarily exclaim, how divine and noble the spirit that animates her heavenly form! the group of the men of the party of s. joseph are equally well conceived. in these figures we see nothing of the stiffness of the drapery, the dryness of execution, and the peculiar style of pietro, which sometimes approaches to harshness: all is action, and an animating spirit breathes in every gesture and in every countenance. the landscapes are not represented with sterile and impoverished trees, as in the backgrounds of pietro; but are drawn from nature, and finished with care. the round temple in the summit is ornamented with columns, and executed, vasari observes, with such admirable art, that it is wonderful to observe the difficulties he has willingly incurred. in the distance are beautiful groups, and there is a figure of a poor man imploring charity depicted to the life, and, more near, a youth, a figure which proves the artist to have been master of the then novel art of foreshortening. i have purposely described these specimens of the early years of raphael, more particularly than any other writer, in order to acquaint the reader with the rise of his divine talents. in the labours of his more mature years, the various masters whose works he studied may each claim his own; but in his first flight he was exclusively supported by the vigour of his own talents. the bent of his genius, which was not less voluptuous and graceful than it was noble and elevated, led him to that ideal beauty, grace, and expression, which is the most refined and difficult province of painting. to insure success in this department neither study nor art is sufficient. a natural taste for the beautiful, an intellectual faculty of combining the several excellences of many individuals in one perfect whole, a vivid apprehension, and a sort of fervour in seizing the sudden and momentary expressions of passion, a facility of touch, obedient to the conceptions of the imagination; these were the means which nature alone could furnish, and these, as we have seen, he possessed from his earliest years. whoever ascribes the success of raffaello to the effects of study, and not to the felicity of his genius, does not justly appreciate the gifts which were lavished on him by nature.[ ] he now became the admiration of his master and his fellow scholars; and about the same time pinturicchio, after having painted with so much applause at rome before raffaello was born, aspired to become, as it were, his scholar in the great work at siena. he did not himself possess a genius sufficiently elevated for the sublime composition which the place required; nor had pietro himself sufficient fertility, or a conception of mind equal to so novel an undertaking. it was intended to represent the life and actions of Æneas silvius piccolomini, afterwards pope pius ii.; the embassies entrusted to him by the council of constance to various princes; and by felix, the antipope, to frederick iii., who conferred on him the laurel crown; and also the various embassies which he undertook for frederick himself to eugenius iv., and afterwards to callistus iv., who created him a cardinal. his subsequent exaltation to the papacy, and the most remarkable events of his reign, were also to be represented; the canonization of s. catherine; his attendance on the council of mantua, where he was received in a princely manner by the duke; and finally his death, and the removal of his body from ancona to rome. never perhaps was an undertaking of such magnitude entrusted to a single master. the art itself had not as yet attempted any great flight. the principal figures in composition generally stood isolated, as pietro exhibited them in perugia, without aiming at composition. in consequence of this the proportions were seldom true, nor did the artists depart much from sacred subjects, the frequent repetition of which had already opened the way to plagiarism. historical subjects of this nature were new to raffaello, and to him, unaccustomed to reside in a metropolis, it must have been most difficult, in painting so many as eleven pictures, to imitate the splendour of different courts, and as we may say, the manners of all europe, varying the composition agreeably to the occasion. nevertheless, being conducted by his friend to siena, he made the sketches and cartoons of _all_ these subjects, says vasari in his life of pinturicchio, and that he made the sketches of the whole is the common report at siena. in the life of raffaello he states that he made _some of the designs and cartoons for this work_, and that the reason of his not continuing them, was his haste to proceed to florence, to see the cartoons of da vinci and bonarruoti. but i am more inclined to the first statement of vasari, than the subsequent one. in april, , raffaello was employed in the library, as is proved by the will of cardinal francesco piccolomini.[ ] while the library was yet unfinished, piccolomini was elected pope on the twenty-first day of september; and his coronation following on the eighth of october, pinturicchio commemorated the event on the outside of the library, in the part opposite to the duomo. bottari remarks, that in this façade we may detect not only the design, but in many of the heads the colouring also of raffaello. it appears probable therefore that he remained to complete the work, the last subject of which might perhaps be finished in the following year, , in which he departed to florence. we may here observe, that this work, which has maintained its colours so well that it almost appears of recent execution, confers great honour on a young artist of twenty years of age; as we do not find a composition of such magnitude, in the passage from ancient to modern art, conceived by any single painter. so that if raffaello stood not entirely alone in this work, the best part of it must still be assigned to him, since pinturicchio himself was improving at this time, and the works which he afterwards executed at spello and siena itself, incline more to the modern than any he had before done. this will justify us in concluding that raffaello had already, at that early age, far outstripped his master; his contour being more full, his composition more rich and free, accompanied by an ornamental and grander style, and an ability unlimited, and capable of embracing every subject that was presented to him. the works which he saw in florence did not lead him out of his own path, as, to mention one instance, afterwards happened to franco, who, coming from venice, applied himself to a style of design and a career entirely new. raffaello had formed his own system, and only sought examples, to enlarge his ideas and facilitate his execution. he therefore studied the works of masaccio, an elegant and expressive painter, whose adam and eve he afterwards adopted in the vatican. he also became acquainted with fra bartolommeo, who, about this time, had returned to the exercise of his profession. to this artist he taught the principles of perspective, and acquired from him, in return, a better style of colouring. we have not any record to prove that he made himself known to da vinci; and the portrait of raffaello, in the ducal gallery in florence, which is said to be by lionardo, is an unknown head. i would willingly, however, flatter myself, that a congeniality of mind and an affinity of genius, emulous in the pursuit of perfection, must have produced a knowledge of each other, if it did not conciliate a mutual attachment. no one certainly was more capable than da vinci, of communicating to raffaello a degree of refinement and knowledge, which he could not have received from pietro; and to introduce him into the more subtle views of art. as to michelangiolo, his pictures were rare, and less analogous to the genius of raffaello. his celebrated cartoon was not yet finished, in , and that great master was jealous of its being seen, before its entire completion. he finished it some few years afterwards, when he returned to florence on his flight from rome, occasioned by the anger of julius ii. raffaello therefore could not have had the opportunity of studying it at that time, nor did he then long remain in florence, for, as vasari states, he was soon obliged to return to his native place, in consequence of the death of his parents.[ ] in we find him in perugia: and to this year belongs the chapel of s. severo, and the crucifixion, which was severed from the wall, and preserved by the padri camaldolensi. from these works, which are all in fresco, we may ascertain the style which he acquired in florence; and i think we may assert, that it was not anatomical, no traces of it being visible in the body of the redeemer, which was an opportunity well adapted for the exhibition of it. nor was it the study of the beautiful, of which he had previously exhibited such delightful specimens; nor that of expression, as there were not to be found in florence, heads more expressive and lovely than those he had painted. but after his visit to florence, we find his colouring more delicate, and his grouping and the foreshortening of his figures improved; whether or not he owed it to the example of da vinci or bonarruoti, or both together, or to some of the older masters. he afterwards repaired to florence, but soon quitted it again, in order to paint in the church of s. francis, in perugia, a dead christ entombed, the cartoon of which he had designed at florence; and which picture was first placed in the church of s. francis, was afterwards, in the pontificate of paul v., transferred to rome, and is now in the borghese palace. after this he returned again to florence, and remained there until his departure for rome, at the end of the year . in this interval, more particularly, he executed the works which are said to be in his second style, though it is a very delicate matter to attempt to point them out. vasari assigns to this period the holy family in the rinuccini gallery, and yet it bears the date of . of this second style is undoubtedly the picture of the madonna and the infant christ and s. john, in a beautiful landscape, with ruins in the distance, which is in the gallery of the grand duke, and others, some of which are to be found in foreign countries. his pictures of this period are composed in the more usual style of a madonna, accompanied by saints, like the picture of the pitti palace, formerly at pescia, and that of s. fiorenzo in perugia, which passed into england. the attitudes, however, the air of the heads, and smaller features of composition, are beyond a common style. the dead christ above mentioned, is in a more novel and superior style. vasari calls it a most divine picture; the figures are not numerous; but each fulfils perfectly the part assigned to it; the subject is most affecting; the heads are remarkably beautiful, and the earliest of the kind in the restoration of art, while the expression of profound sorrow and extreme anguish does not divest them of their beauty. after finishing this work, raphael was ambitious of painting an apartment in florence, one, i believe, of the palazzo pubblico. there remains a letter of his, in which he requests the duke of urbino to write to the gonfaloniere soderini, in april, .[ ] but his relative, bramante, procured him a nobler employ in rome, recommending him to julius ii. to ornament the vatican. he removed thither, and was already established there in the september of the same year.[ ] we at length, then, behold him fixed in rome, and placed in the vatican at a period, and under circumstances calculated to render him the first painter in the world. his biographers do not mention his literary attainments; and, if we were to judge from his letter just cited, and now in the museo borgia, we might consider him grossly illiterate. but he was then writing to his uncle; and therefore made use of his native dialect, as is still done even in the public acts in venice; though he might be master of, and might use on proper occasions, a more correct language. raffaello, too, was of a family fully competent to afford him the necessary instructions in his early years. other letters of his are found in the _lettere pittoriche_, in a very different style; and of his knowledge in matters of importance, it is sufficient to refer to what celio calcagnini, an eminent literary character of the age of leo, states of him to giacomo zieglero: "i need not," he says, "mention vitruvius, whose precepts he not only explains, but defends or impugns with evident justice, and with so much temper, that in his objections there does not appear the slightest asperity. he has excited the admiration of the pontiff leo, and of all the romans, in such a way, that they regard him as a man sent down from heaven purposely to restore the eternal city to its ancient splendour."[ ] this acknowledged skill in architecture must suppose an adequate acquaintance with the latin language and geometry; and we know from other quarters, that he assiduously cultivated anatomy, history, and poetry.[ ] but his principal pursuit in rome was the study of the remains of grecian genius, and by which he perfected his knowledge of art. he studied, too, the ancient buildings, and was instructed in the principles of architecture for six years by bramante, in order that on his death he might succeed him in the management of the building of s. peter.[ ] he lived among the ancient sculptors, and derived from them not only their contours and drapery, and attitudes, but the spirit and principles of the art itself. nor yet content with what he saw in rome, he employed artists to copy the remains of antiquity at pozzuolo and throughout all italy, and even in greece. nor did he derive less assistance from living artists whom he consulted on his compositions. "the universal esteem which he enjoyed,"[ ] and his attractive person and engaging manners, which all accounts unite in describing as incomparable, conciliated him the favour of the most eminent men of letters of his age; and bembo, castiglione, giovio, navagero, ariosto, aretino, fulvio, and calcagnini, set a high value on his friendship, and supplied him, we may be allowed to suppose, with hints and ideas for his works. his rival michelangiolo, too, and his party, contributed not a little to the success of raffaello. as the contest between zeuxis and parrhasius was beneficial to them both, so the rivalship of bonarruoti and sanzio aided the fame of michelangiolo, and produced the paintings of the sistine chapel; and at the same time contributed to the celebrity of raffaello, by producing the pictures of the vatican, and not a few others. michelangiolo disdaining any secondary honours, came to the combat, as it were, attended by his shield bearer; for he made drawings in his grand style, and then gave them to f. sebastiano, the scholar of giorgione, to execute; and by these means he hoped that raffaello would never be able to rival his productions either in design or colour. raffaello stood alone; but aimed at producing works with a degree of perfection beyond the united efforts of michelangiolo and sebastian del piombo, combining in himself a fertile invention, ideal beauty founded on a correct imitation of the greek style, grace, ease, amenity, and an universality of genius in every department of the art. the noble determination of triumphing in such a powerful contest animated him night and day, and did not allow him any respite. it also excited him to surpass both his rivals and himself in every new work which he produced. the subjects, too, chosen for these chambers, aided him, as they were in a great measure new, or required to be treated in a novel manner. they did not profess to represent bacchanalian or vulgar scenes, but the exalted symbols of science; the sacred functions of religion; military actions, which contributed to establish the peace of the world; important events of former days, under which were typified the reigns of the pontiffs julius and leo x.: the latter the most powerful protector, and one of the most accomplished judges of art. more favourable circumstances could not have conspired to stimulate a noble mind. the eulogizing of augustus was a theme for the poets of his age, which produced the richest fruits of genius. propertius, accustomed to sing only of the charms or the disdain of his cinthia, felt himself another poet when called on to celebrate the triumphs of augustus; and with newborn fervour invoked jove himself to suspend the functions of his divinity whilst he sang the praises of the emperor.[ ] it is certain that such elevated subjects, in minds richly stored, must excite corresponding ideas, and thus both in poets and painters, give birth to the sublime. raffaello, on his arrival in rome, says vasari, was commissioned to paint a chamber, which was at that time called la segnatura, and which, from the subject of the pictures, was also called the chamber of the sciences. on the ceiling are represented theology, philosophy, poetry, and jurisprudence. each of them has on the neighbouring façade a grand historical piece illustrative of the subject. on the basement are also historical pieces which belong to the same sciences; and these smaller performances, and the caryatides and telamoni distributed around, are monocromati or chiaroscuri, an idea entirely of raffaello, and afterwards, it is said, continued by polidoro da caravaggio. raffaello commenced with theology, and imitated petrarch, who in one of his visions has assembled together men of the same condition, though living in different ages. he there placed the evangelists, whose volumes are the foundation of theology; the sacred writers, who have preserved its traditions; the theologists, s. thomas, s. bonaventura, scotus, and the rest who have illustrated it by their arguments; above all, the trinity in the midst of the beatified, and beneath on an altar the eucharist, as if to express the mystery of that doctrine. there are traces of the ancient style in this piece. gold is made use of in the glories of the saints, and in other ornamental parts; the upper glory is formed on the plan of that of s. severo, which i have already noticed: the composition is more symmetrical and less free than in other pieces; and the whole, compared with the other compositions, seems too minute. nevertheless, whosoever regards each part in itself, will find it of such careful and admirable execution, that he will be disposed to prefer it to all other works. it has been observed, that raffaello began this piece at the right side, and that by the time he had arrived at the left side portion, he had made rapid strides in the art. this work must have been finished about the year : and such was the surprise and admiration of the pope, that he ordered all the works of bramantino, pier della francesca, signorelli, l'abate di arezzo, and sodoma (though some of the ornamental parts by this last are preserved) to be effaced, in order that the whole chamber might be decorated by raffaello. in the subsequent works of raffaello, and after the year , we do not find any traces of his first style. he had adopted a nobler manner, and henceforth applied all his powers to the perfecting of it. he had now to represent, on the opposite side, philosophy. in this he designed a gymnasium in the form of a temple, and placed the learned ancients, some in the precincts of the building, some on the ascent of the steps, and others in the plain below. in this, more than on any other occasion, he was aided by his favourite petrarch in the third capitolo of his fame. plato, "_che in quella schiera andò più presso al segno_," is there represented with aristotle, "_più d'ingegno_," in the act of disputation; and they possess also in the composition, the highest place of honour; socrates is represented instructing alcibiades; pythagoras is seen, and before him a youth holds a tablet with the harmonious concords; and zoroaster, king of bactriana, appears with an elementary globe in his hand. diogenes is stretched near on the ground, with his wooden bowl in his hand, "_assai più che non vuol vergogna aperto_:" archimedes is seen "_star col capo basso_," and turning the compasses on the table, instructs the youth in geometry; and others are represented meditating, or in disputation, whose names and characters it would be possible, with careful observation, to distinguish more truly than vasari has done. this picture is commonly called the school of athens, which in my judgment is just as appropriate, as the name of the sacrament bestowed on the first subject. the third picture, representing jurisprudence, is divided into two parts. on the left side of the window stands justinian, with the book of the civil law; trebonian receives it from his hand with an expression of submission and acquiescence, which no other pencil can ever hope to equal. on the right side is seen gregory ix. who delivers the book of the decretals to an advocate of the consistory, and bears the features of julius ii., who is thus honoured in the character of his predecessor. in the concluding picture, which is a personification of poetry, is seen mount parnassus, where, in company of apollo and the muses, the greek, roman, and tuscan poets are represented in their own portraitures, as far as records will allow. homer, seated between virgil and dante, is, perhaps, the most striking figure; he is evidently gifted with a divine spirit, and unites in his person the characters of the prophet and the poet. the historical pieces in chiaroscuro contribute, by their ornaments, to charm the sight, and preserve the unity of design. beneath the theology, for instance, is represented s. augustine on the borders of the sea, instructed by the angels not to explore the mystery of the trinity, incomprehensible to the human mind. under the philosophy, archimedes is seen surprised and slain by a soldier, whilst immersed in his studies. this first chamber was finished in , as that year appears inscribed near the parnassus. vasari, until the finishing of the first chamber, does not speak of the improvement of his manner; on the contrary, in his life of raffaello, he says, "although he had seen so many monuments of antiquity in that city, and studied so unremittingly, still his figures, up to this period, did not possess that breadth and majesty which they afterwards exhibited. for it happened, that the breach between michelangiolo and the pope, which we have before mentioned in his life, occurred about this time, and compelled bonarruoti to flee to florence; from which circumstance, bramante obtaining possession of the keys of the chapel, exhibited it to his friend raffaello, in order that he might make himself acquainted with the style of michelangiolo;" and he then proceeds to mention the isaiah of s. agostino, and the sibyls della pace, painted after this period, and the heliodorus. in the life of michelangiolo, he again informs us of the quarrel which obliged him to depart from rome, and proceeds to say, that when, on his return, he had finished one half of the work, the pope suddenly commanded it to be exposed; "whereupon raffaello d'urbino, who possessed great facility of imitation, immediately changed his style, and at one effort designed the prophets and sibyls della pace." this brings us to a dispute prosecuted with the greatest warmth both in italy and other countries. bellori attacked vasari in a violent manner, in a work entitled: "_se raffaello ingrandì e migliorò la maniera per aver vedute le opere di michelangiolo_," (whether raffaello enlarged and improved his style on seeing the works of michelangiolo). crespi replied to him in three letters, inserted in the lettere pittoriche,[ ] and many other disputants have arisen and stated fresh arguments. it is not, however, our province to engage the reader in these disputations. it was greatly to the advantage of michelangiolo's fame to have had two scholars, who, while he was yet living, and after the death of raffaello, employed themselves in writing his life; and a great misfortune to raffaello not to have been commemorated in the same manner. if he had survived to the time when vasari and condivi wrote, he would not have passed over their charges in silence. raffaello would then have easily proved, that when bonarruoti fled to florence, in , he himself was not in rome, nor was called thither until two years afterwards; and that he could not, therefore, have obtained a furtive glance of the sistine chapel. it would have been proved too, that from the year , when michelangiolo had, perhaps, not commenced his work, until , in which year he exhibited the first half of it,[ ] raffaello had been endeavouring to enlarge his style; and as michelangiolo had before studied the torso of the belvidere, so raffaello also formed himself on this and other marbles,[ ] a circumstance easily discoverable in his style. he might too have asked vasari, in what he considered grandeur and majesty of style to consist; and from the example of the greeks, and from reason herself, he might have informed him, that the grand does not consist in the enlargement of the muscles, or in an extravagance of attitude, but in adopting, as mengs has observed, the noblest, and neglecting the inferior and meaner parts;[ ] and exercising the higher powers of invention. hence he would have proceeded to point out the grandeur of style in the school of athens, in the majestic edifice, in the contour of the figures, in the folds of the drapery, in the expression of the countenances, and in the attitudes; and he would have easily traced the source of that sublimity in the relics of antiquity. and if he appeared still greater in his isaiah, he might have refuted vasari from his own account, who assigns this work to a period anterior to , and therefore contemporary as it were with the school of athens: adding, that he elevated his style by propriety of character, and by the study of grecian art. the greeks observed an essential difference between common men and heroes, and again between their heroes and their gods; and raffaello, after having represented philosophers immersed in human doubts, might well elevate his style when he came to figure a prophet meditating the revelations of god.[ ] all this might have been advanced by raffaello, in order to relieve bramante and himself from so ill supported an imputation. as to the rest, i believe he never would have denied, that the works of michelangiolo had inspired him with a more daring spirit of design, and that in the exhibition of strong character, he had sometimes even imitated him. but how imitated him? in rendering, as crespi himself observes, that very style more beautiful and more majestic, (p. ). it is indeed a great triumph to the admirers of raffaello to be able to say, whoever wishes to see what is wanting in the sibyls of michelangiolo, let him inspect those of raffaello; and let him view the isaiah of raffaello, who would know what is wanting in the prophets of michelangiolo. after public curiosity was gratified, and raffaello had obtained a glimpse of this new style, bonarruoti closed the doors, and hastened to finish the other half of his work, which was completed at the close of , so that the pope, on the solemnization of the feast of christmas, was enabled to perform mass in the sistine chapel. in the course of this year, raffaello was employed in the second chamber on the subject of heliodorus driven from the temple by the prayers of onias the high priest, one of the most celebrated pictures of the place. in this painting, the armed vision that appears to heliodorus, scatters lightnings from his hand, while the neighing of the steed is heard amidst the attendant thunder. in the numerous bands, some of which are plundering the riches of the temple, and others are ignorant of the cause of the surprise and terror exhibited in heliodorus, consternation, amazement, joy, and abasement, and a host of passions, are expressed. in this work, and in others of these chambers, raffaello, says mengs, gave to painting all the augmentation it could receive after michelangiolo. in this picture he introduced the portrait of julius ii., whose zeal and authority is represented in onias. he appears in a litter borne by his grooms, in the manner in which he was accustomed to repair to the vatican, to view this work. the miracle of bolsena was also painted in the lifetime of julius. the remaining decorations of these chambers were all illustrative of the history of leo x., whose imprisonment in ravenna, and subsequent liberation, is typified by st. peter released from prison by the angel. it was in this piece that the painter exhibited an astonishing proof of his knowledge of light. the figures of the soldiers, who stand without the prison, are illuminated by the beams of the moon: there is a torch which produces a second light; and from the angel emanates a celestial splendour, that rivals the beams of the sun. he has here, too, afforded another proof how art may convert the impediments thrown in her way to her own advantage; for the place where he was painting being broken by a window, he has imagined on each side of it a staircase, which affords an ascent to the prison, and on the steps he has placed the guards overpowered with sleep; so that the painter does not seem to have accommodated himself to the place, but the place to have become subservient to the painter. the composition of s. leo the great, who checks attila at the head of his army, and that of the other chamber, the battle with the saracens in the port of ostium, and the victory obtained by s. leo iv., justify raffaello's claim to the epic crown: so powerfully has he depicted the military array of men and horse, the arms peculiar to each nation, the fury of the combat, and the despair and humiliation of the prisoners. near this performance, too, is the wonderful piece of the incendio di borgo (a city enveloped in fire), which is miraculously extinguished by the same s. leo. this wonderful piece alternately chills the heart with terror, or warms it with compassion. the calamity of fire is carried to its extreme point, as it is the hour of midnight, and the fire, which already occupies a considerable space, is increased by a violent wind, which agitates the flames that leap with rapidity from house to house. the affright and misery of the inhabitants is also carried to the utmost extremity. some rush forward with water, but are driven back by the scorching flames; others seek safety in flight, with naked feet, robeless, and with dishevelled hair; women are seen turning an imploring look to the pontiff; mothers, whose own terrors are absorbed in fear for their offspring; and here a youth, who bearing on his shoulders his aged and infirm sire, and sinking beneath the weight, collects his almost exhausted strength to place him out of danger. the concluding subjects refer to leo iii.; the coronation of charlemagne, by the hand of that pontiff, and the oath taken by the pope on the holy evangelists, to exculpate himself from the calumnies laid to his charge. in leo, is meant to be represented leo x., who is thus honoured in the persons of his predecessors; and in charlemagne is represented francis i., king of france. many persons of the age are also figured in the surrounding group, so that there is not an historical subject in these chambers that does not contain the most accurate likenesses. in this latter department of art, also, raffaello may be said to have been transcendant. his portraits have deceived even persons the most intimately acquainted with the subjects of them. he painted a remarkable picture of leo x., and on one occasion the cardinal datary of that time, found himself approaching it with a bull, and pen and ink, for the pope's signature.[ ] the six subjects which relate to leo, elected in , were finished in . in the nine years which raphael employed on these three chambers, and also in the three following years, he made additional decorations to the pontifical palace; he observed the style of ornament suitable to each part of it, and thus made the pope's residence a model of magnificence and taste for all europe. few have adverted to this instance of his merit. he superintended the new gallery of the palace, availing himself in part of the design of bramante, and in part improving on him. "he then made designs for the stuccos, and the various subjects there painted, and also for the divisions, and he then appointed giovanni da udine to finish the stuccos and arabesques, and giulio romano the figures." the exposure of this gallery to the inclemencies of the air, has left little remaining besides the squalid grotesques; but those who saw it at an early period, when the unsullied splendor of the gold, the pure white of the stuccos, the brilliancy of the colours, and the newness of the marble, rendered every part of it beautiful and resplendent, must have thought it a vision of paradise. vasari, in eulogizing it, says, "it is impossible to execute, or to conceive, a more exquisite work." the best which now remain are the thirteen ceilings, in each of which are distributed four subjects from holy writ, the first of which, the creation of the world, raffaello executed with his own hand as a model for the others, which were painted by his scholars, and afterwards retouched and rendered uniform by himself, as was his custom. i have seen copies of these in rome, executed at great cost, and with great fidelity, for catherine, empress of russia, under the direction of mr. hunterberger, and from the effect which was produced by the freshness of the colours, i could easily conceive how highly enchanting the originals must have been. but their great value consisted in raffaello having enriched them by his invention, expression, and design, and every one is agreed that each subject is a school in itself. it appears certain too, that he was desirous of competing with michelangiolo, who had treated the same subject in the sistine chapel; and of appealing to the public to judge whether or not he had equalled him. to describe in a suitable manner the other pictures in chiaroscuro, and the numerous landscapes and architectural subjects, the trophies, imitations of cameos, masks, and other things which this divine artist either designed himself or formed into new combinations from the antique, is a task, says taja, far above the reach of human powers. taja has however himself given us a delightful description of these works.[ ] it confers the highest honour on raffaello, to whom we owe the fifty-two subjects, and all the ornamental parts. nor were the pavements, or the doors, or other interior works in the palace of the vatican, completed without his superintendence. he directed the pavements to be formed of _terra invetriata_, an ancient invention of luca della robbia, which having continued for many generations as a family secret, was then in the hands of another luca. raffaello invited him to florence to execute this vast work, employed him in the gallery, and in many of the chambers, which he adorned with the arms of the pope. for the couches and other ornaments of the camera di segnatura he brought to rome f. giovanni da verona, who formed them of mosaic with the most beautiful views. for the entablatures of the chambers, and for several of the windows and doors, he engaged giovanni barile, a celebrated florentine engraver of gems. this work was executed in so masterly a manner, that louis xiii., wishing to ornament the palace of the louvre, had all these intaglios separately copied. the drawings of them were made by poussin, and mariette boasted of having them in his collection. nor was there any other work either of stone or marble for which a design was required, which did not come under the inspection of raffaello, and on which he did not impress his taste, which was consummate also in the sister art of sculpture. a proof of this is to be seen in the jonah, in the church of the madonna del popolo, in the chigi chapel, which was executed by lorenzetto under his direction, and which, bottari says, may assume its place by the side of the greek statues. among his most remarkable works may be mentioned his designs for the tapestry in the papal chapel, the subjects of which were from the lives of the evangelists, and the acts of the apostles. the cartoons for them were both designed and coloured by raffaello; and after the tapestries were finished in the low countries, the cartoons passed into england, where they still remain. in these tapestries the art attained its highest pitch, nor has the world since beheld anything to equal them in beauty. they are exposed annually in the great portico of s. peter, in the procession of the _corpus domini_, and it is wonderful to behold the crowds that flock to see them, and who ever regard them with fresh avidity and delight. but all these works of raffaello would not have contributed to the extension of art at that period, beyond the meridian of rome, if he had not succeeded in extending the fruits of his genius, by the means of prints. we have already noticed m. a. raimondi, in the first book, and we have shewn that this great engraver was courteously received, and was afterwards assisted by sanzio, whence an abundance of copies of the designs and the works of this master have been given to the world. a fine taste was thus rapidly propagated throughout europe, and the beautiful style of raffaello began to be justly appreciated. in a short time it became the prevailing taste, and if his maxims had remained unaltered, italian painting would probably have flourished for as long a period as greek sculpture. in the midst of such a variety of occupations, raffaello did not fail to gratify the wishes of many private individuals, who were desirous of having his designs for buildings, in which branch of art he was highly celebrated, and also of possessing his pictures. i need only to refer to the gallery of agostini chigi, which he ornamented with his own hand, with the well known fable of galatea. he afterwards, with the assistance of his pupils, painted the marriage of psyche, at the banquet of which he assembled all the heathen deities, with such propriety of form, with their attendant symbols and genii, that in these fabulous subjects he almost rivalled the greeks. these pictures, and those also of the chambers of the vatican, were retouched by maratta, with incredible care; and the method he adopted, as described by bellori, may serve as a guide in similar cases. raffaello also painted many altarpieces, with saints generally introduced; as that delle contesse at foligno, where he introduced the chamberlain of the pope, alive, rather than drawn from the life: that for s. giovanni in monte, at bologna, of s. cecilia, who, charmed to rapture by a celestial melody, forgets her musical instrument, which falls neglected from her hands; that for palermo, of christ ascending mount calvary, called _dello spasimo_, which, however much disparaged by cumberland, for having been retouched, is a noble ornament of the royal collection at madrid; and the others at naples and at piacenza, which are mentioned by his biographers. he also painted s. michael for the king of france, and many other holy families[ ] and devotional subjects, which neither vasari nor his other biographers have fully enumerated. but although the creation of these wonderful works was become a habit in this great artist, still every part of his productions cannot be considered as equally successful. it is known, that in the frescos of the palace, and in the chigi gallery, he was censured in some naked figures for errors committed, as vasari says, by some of his school. mengs, who varied his opinions at different periods of his life, insinuates, that raffaello for some time seemed to slumber, and did not make those rapid strides in the art, which might have been expected from his genius. this was, probably, when michelangiolo was for some years absent from rome. but when he returned, and heard it reported that many persons considered the paintings of raffaello superior to his in colour, of more beauty and grace in composition, and of a correspondent excellence in design, whilst his works were said to possess none of these qualities except the last; he was stimulated to avail himself of the pencil of fra sebastiano, and at the same time supplied him with his own designs. the most celebrated work which they produced in conjunction, was a transfiguration, in fresco, with a flagellation, and other figures, in a chapel of s. peter in montorio. raffaello being subsequently employed to paint a picture for the cardinal giulio de' medici, afterwards clement vii., sebastiano, in a sort of competition, painted another picture of the same size. in the latter was represented the raising of lazarus; in the former, with the master's accustomed spirit of emulation, the transfiguration. "this is a picture which combines," says mengs, "more excellences than any of the previous works of raffaello. the expression in it is more exalted and more refined, the chiaroscuro more correct, the perspective better understood, the penciling finer, and there is a greater variety in the drapery, more grace in the heads, and more grandeur in the style."[ ] it represents the mystery of the transfiguration of christ on the summit of mount tabor. on the side of the hill he has placed a band of his disciples, and with the happiest invention has engaged them in an action conformable to their powers, and has thus formed an episode not beyond the bounds of probability. a youth possessed is presented to them, that they may expel the evil spirit that torments him; and in the possessed, struggling with the presence of the demon, the confiding faith of the father, the affliction of a beautiful and interesting female, and the compassion visible in the countenances of the surrounding apostles, we are presented with perhaps the most pathetic incident ever conceived. yet this part of the composition does not fix our regard so much as the principal subject on the summit of the mountain. there the two prophets, and the three disciples, are most admirably delineated, and the saviour appears enveloped in a glory emanating from the fountain of eternal light, and surrounded by that chaste and celestial radiance, that is reserved exclusively for the eyes of the elect. the countenance of christ, in which he has developed all his combined ideas of majesty and beauty, may be considered the masterpiece of raffaello, and seems to us the most sublime height to which the genius of the artist, or even the art itself, was capable of aspiring. after this effort he never resumed his pencil, as he was soon afterwards suddenly seized with a mortal distemper, of which he died, in the bosom of the church, on good friday, (also the anniversary of his birthday,) , aged thirty-seven years. his body reposed for some days in the chamber where he was accustomed to paint, and over it was placed this noble picture of the transfiguration, previous to his mortal remains being transferred to the church of the rotonda for interment. there was not an artist that was not moved to tears at this affecting sight. raffaello had always possessed the power of engaging the affections of all with whom he was acquainted. respectful to his master, he obtained from the pope an assurance that his works, in one of the ceilings of the vatican, should remain unmolested; just towards his rivals, he expressed his gratitude to god that he had been born in the days of bonarruoti; gracious towards his pupils, he loved them, and intrusted them as his own sons; courteous even to strangers, he cheerfully lent his aid to all who asked his advice; and in order to make designs for others, or to direct them in their studies, he sometimes even neglected his own work, being alike incapable of refusing or delaying his inestimable aid. all these reflections forced themselves on the minds of the spectators, whose eyes were at one moment directed to the view of his youthful remains, and of those divine hands that had, in the imitation of her works, almost excelled nature herself; and at another moment, to the contemplation of this his latest production, which appeared to exhibit the dawn of a new and wonderful style; and the painful reflection presented itself, that, with the life of raffaello, the brightest prospects of art were thus suddenly obscured. the pope himself was deeply affected at his death, and requested bembo to compose the epitaph which is now read on his tomb; and his loss was considered as a national calamity throughout all italy. true indeed it is, that soon after his decease, rome herself, and her territory, experienced such unheard of calamities, that many had just cause to envy him, not only the celebrity of his life, but the opportune period of his death. he was not doomed to see the illustrious leo x., at a time when he extended the most exalted patronage to the arts, poisoned by a sacrilegious hand; nor clement vii., pressed by an enraged enemy, seeking shelter in the castle of s. angelo, afterwards compelled to fly for his life, and obliged to purchase, at enormous sums, the liberty of his servants. nor did he witness the horrors attending the sacking of rome, the nobility robbed and plundered in their own palaces, the violation of hapless females in the convents; prelates unrelentingly dragged to the scaffold, and priests torn from the altars, and from the images of their saints, to whom they looked in vain for refuge, slaughtered by the sword, and their bodies thrown out of the churches a prey to the dogs. nor did he survive to see that city, which he had so illustrated by his genius, and where he had for so many years shared the public admiration and esteem, wasted with fire and sword. but of this we shall speak in another place, and shall here adduce some observations on his style, selected from various authors, and more particularly from mengs, who has ably criticised it in his works already enumerated by me, as well as in some others. raffaello is by common consent placed at the head of his art; not because he excelled all others in every department of painting, but because no other artist has ever possessed the various parts of the art united in so high a degree. lazzarini even asserts, that he was guilty of errors, and that he is only the first, because he did not commit so many as others. he ought, however, to have allowed, that his defects would be excellences in any other artist, being nothing more in him than the neglect of that higher degree of perfection to which he was capable of attaining. the art, indeed, comprehends so many and such difficult parts, that no individual artist has been alike distinguished in all; even apelles was said to yield to amphion in disposition and harmony, to asclepiadorus in proportion, and to protogenes in application. the style of design of raffaello, as seen in those drawings, divested of colours, which now form the chief ornaments of cabinets, presents us, if we may use the term, with the pure transcript of his imagination, and we stand in amaze at the contours, grace, precision, diligence, and genius, which they exhibit. one of the most admired of his drawings i once saw in the gallery of the duke of modena, a most finished and superior specimen, uniting in style all the invention of the best painters of greece, and the execution of the first artists of italy. it has been made a question whether raffaello did not yield to michelangiolo in drawing; and mengs himself confesses, that he did, as far as regards the anatomy of the muscles, and in strong expression, in which he considers raffaello to have imitated michelangiolo. but we need not say with vasari, that in order to prove that he understood the naked figure as well as michelangiolo, he appropriated to himself the designs of that great master. on the contrary, in the figures of the two youths in the incendio di borgo, criticised by vasari, one of whom is in the act of leaping from a wall to escape the flames, and the other is fleeing with his father on his shoulders, he not only proved that he had a perfect knowledge of the action of the muscles and the anatomy requisite for a painter, but prescribed the occasion when this style might be used without impropriety, as in figures of a robust form engaged in violent action. he moreover commonly marked the principal parts in the naked figure, and indicated the others after the example of the better ancient masters, and where he wrought from his own ideas, his execution was most correct. on this subject bellori may be consulted at page of the work already quoted, and the annotations to vol. ii. of mengs, (page ,) made by the cavaliere d'azzara, minister of the king of spain at rome, an individual, who, in conferring honour on the artist, has by his own writing conferred honour on art itself. in chasteness of design, raffaello was by some placed on a level with the greeks, though this praise we must consider as extravagant. agostino caracci commends him as a model of symmetry; and in that respect, more than in any other, he approached the ancients; except, observes mengs, in the hands, which being rarely found perfect in the ancient statues, he had not an equal opportunity of studying, and did not therefore design them so elegantly as the other parts. he selected the beautiful from nature, and as mariette observes, whose collection was rich in his designs, he copied it with all its imperfections, which he afterwards gradually corrected, as he proceeded with his work. above all things, he aimed at perfecting the heads, and from a letter addressed to castiglione on the galatea of the palazzo chigi, or of the farnesina, he discovers how intent he was to select the best models of nature, and to perfect them in his own mind.[ ] his own fornarina assisted him in this object. her portrait, by raffaello's own hand, was formerly in the barberini palace, and it is repeated in many of his madonnas, in the picture of s. cecilia, in bologna, and in many female heads. critics have often expressed a wish that these heads had possessed a more dignified character, and in this respect he was, perhaps, excelled by guido reni, and however engaging his children may be, those of titian are still more beautiful. his true empire was in the heads of his men, which are portraits selected with judgment, and depicted with a dignity proportioned to his subject. vasari calls the air of these heads superhuman, and calls on us to admire the expression of age in the patriarchs, simplicity of life in the apostles, and constancy of faith in the martyrs; and in christ in the transfiguration, he says, there is a portion of the divine essence itself transferred to his countenance, and made visible to mortal eyes. this effect is the result of that quality that is called expression, and which, in the drawing of raffaello has attracted more admiration of late years than formerly. it is remarkable, that not only zuccaro, who was indeed a superficial writer, but that vasari, and lomazzo himself, so much more profound than either of them, should not have conferred on him that praise which he afterwards received from algarotti, lazzarini, and mengs. lionardo was the first, as we shall see in the milanese school, to lead the way to delicacy of expression; but that master, who painted so little, and with such labour, is not to be compared to raffaello, who possessed the whole quality in its fullest extent. there is not a movement of the soul, there is not a character of passion known to the ancients, and capable of being expressed by art, that he has not caught, expressed, and varied, in a thousand different ways, and always within the bounds of propriety. we have no tradition of his having, like da vinci, frequented the public streets to seek for subjects for his pencil; and his numerous pictures prove that he could not have devoted so much time to this study, while his drawings clearly evince, that he had not equal occasion for such assistance. nature, as i have before remarked, had endowed him with an imagination which transported his mind to the scene of the event, either fabulous or remote, in which he was engaged, and awoke in him the very same emotions which the subjects of such story must themselves have experienced; and this vivid conception assisted him until he had designed his subject with that distinctness which he had either observed in other countenances, or found in his own mind. this faculty, seldom found in poets, and still more rarely in painters, no one possessed in a more eminent degree than raffaello. his figures are passions personified; and love, fear, hope, and desire, anger, placability, humility, or pride, assume their places by turns, as the subject changes; and while the spectator regards the countenances, the air, and the gestures of his figures, he forgets that they are the work of art, and is surprised to find his own feelings excited, and himself an actor in the scene before him. there is another delicacy of expression, and this is the gradation of the passions, by which every one perceives whether they are in their commencement or at their height, or in their decline. he had observed their shades of difference in the intercourse of life, and on every occasion he knew how to transfer the result of his observations to his canvas. even his silence is eloquent, and every actor "il cor negli occhi, e nella fronte ha scritto:" the smallest perceptible motion of the eyes, of the nostrils, of the mouth, and of the fingers, corresponds to the chief movements of every passion; the most animated and vivid actions discover the violence of the passion that excites them; and what is more, they vary in innumerable degrees, without ever departing from nature, and conform themselves to a diversity of character without ever risking propriety. his heroes possess the mien of valour; his vulgar, an air of debasement; and that, which neither the pen nor the tongue could describe, the genius and art of raffaello would delineate with a few strokes of the pencil. numbers have in vain sought to imitate him; his figures are governed by a sentiment of the mind, while those of others, if we except poussin and a very few more, seem the imitation of tragic actors from the scenes. this is raffaello's chief excellence; and he may justly be denominated the painter of mind. if in this faculty be included all that is difficult, philosophical, and sublime, who shall compete with him in the sovereignty of art? another quality which raffaello possessed in an eminent degree was grace, a quality which may be said to confer an additional charm on beauty itself. apelles, who was supremely endowed with it among the ancients, was so vain of the possession that he preferred it to every other attribute of art.[ ] raffaello rivalled him among the moderns, and thence obtained the name of the new apelles. something might, perhaps, be advantageously added to the forms of his children, and other delicate figures which he represented, but nothing can add to their gracefulness, for if it were attempted to be carried further it would degenerate into affectation, as we find in parmegiano. his madonnas enchant us, as mengs observes, not because they possess the perfect lineaments of the medicean venus, or of the celebrated daughter of niobe; but because the painter in their portraits and in their expressive smiles, has personified modesty, maternal love, purity of mind, and, in a word, grace itself. nor did he impress this quality on the countenance alone, but distributed it throughout the figure in its attitude, gesture, and action, and in the folds of the drapery, with a dexterity which may be admired, but can never be rivalled. his freedom of execution was a component part of this grace, which indeed vanishes as soon as labour and study appear; for it is with the painter as with the orator, in whom a natural and spontaneous eloquence delights us, while we turn away with indifference from an artificial and studied harangue. in regard to the province of colour, raffaello must yield the palm to titian and correggio, although he himself excelled michelangiolo and many others. his frescos may rank with the first works of other schools in that line: not so his pictures in oil. in the latter he availed himself of the sketches of giulio, which were composed with a degree of hardness and timidity; and though finished by raffaello, they have frequently lost the lustre of his last touch. this defect was not immediately apparent, and if raffaello's life had been prolonged, he would have been aware of the injuries his pictures received from the lapse of time, and would not have finished them in so light a manner. he is on this account more admired in his first subject in the vatican, painted under julius ii., than in those he executed under leo x., for being there pressed by a multiplicity of business, and an idea of the importance of a grander style, he became less rich and firm in his colouring. that, however, he excelled in these respects is evinced by his portraits, when not having an opportunity of displaying his invention, composition, and beautiful style of design, he appears ambitious to distinguish himself by his colouring. in this respect his two portraits of julius ii. are truly admirable, the medicean and the corsinian: that of leo x. between the two cardinals; and above all, in the opinion of an eminent judge, renfesthein, that of bindo altoviti, in the possession of his noble descendants at florence, by many regarded as a portrait of raphael himself.[ ] the heads in his transfiguration are esteemed the most perfect he ever painted, and mengs extols the colouring of them as eminently beautiful. if there be any exception, it is in the complexion of the principal female, of a greyish tint, as is often the case in his delicate figures; in which he is therefore considered to excel less than in the heads of his men. mengs has made many exceptions to the chiaroscuro of raffaello, as compared with that of correggio, on which connoisseurs will form their own decision. we are told that he disposed it with the aid of models of wax; and the relief of his pictures, and the beautiful effect in his heliodorus, and in the transfiguration, are ascribed to this mode of practice. to his perspective, too, he was most attentive. de piles found, in some of his sketches, the scale of proportion.[ ] it is affirmed by algarotti, that he did not attempt to paint _di sotto in su_. but to this opinion we may oppose the example we find in the third arch of the gallery of the vatican, where there is a perspective of small columns, says taja, imitated _di sotto in su_. it is true, that in his larger works he avoided it; and in order to preserve the appearance of nature, he represented his pictures as painted on a tapestry, attached by means of a running knot to the entablature of the room. but all the great qualities which we have enumerated, would not have procured for raffaello such an extraordinary celebrity, if he had not possessed a wonderful felicity in the invention and disposition of his subjects, and this circumstance is, indeed, his highest merit. it may with truth be said, that in aid of this object he availed himself of every example, ancient and modern; and that these two requisites have not since been so united in any other artist. he accomplishes in his pictures that which every orator ought to aim at in his speech--he instructs, moves, and delights us. this is an easy task to a narrator, since he can regularly unfold to us the whole progress of an event. the painter, on the contrary, has but the space of a moment to make himself understood, and his talent consists in describing not only what is passing, and what is likely to ensue, but that which has already occurred. it is here that the genius of raffaello triumphs. he embraces the whole subject. from a thousand circumstances he selects those alone which can interest us; he arranges the actors in the most expressive manner; he invents the most novel modes of conveying much meaning by a few touches; and numberless minute circumstances, all uniting in one purpose, render the story not only intelligible, but palpable. various writers have adduced in example the s. paul at lystra, which is to be seen in one of the tapestries of the vatican. the artist has there represented the sacrifice prepared for him and s. barnabas his companion, as to two gods, for having restored a lame man to the use of his limbs. the altar, the attendants, the victims, the musicians, and the axe, sufficiently indicate the intentions of the lystrians. s. paul, who is in the act of tearing his robe, shews that he rejects and abhors the sacrilegious honours, and is endeavouring to dissuade the populace from persisting in them. but all this were vain, if it had not indicated the miracle which had just happened, and which had given rise to the event. raffaello added to the group the lame man restored to the use of his limbs, now easily recognized again by all the spectators. he stands before the apostles rejoicing in his restoration; and raises his hands in transport towards his benefactors, while at his feet lie the crutches which had recently supported him, now cast away as useless. this had been sufficient for any other artist; but raffaello, who wished to carry reality to the utmost point, has added a throng of people, who, in their eager curiosity, remove the garment of the man, to behold his limbs restored to their former state. raffaello abounds with examples like these, and he may be compared to some of the classical writers, who afford the more matter for reflection the more they are studied. it is sufficient to have noticed in the inventive powers of raffaello, those circumstances which have been less frequently remarked; the movement of the passions, which is entirely the work of expression, the delight which proceeds from poetical conceptions, or from graceful episodes, may be said to speak for themselves, nor have any occasion to be pointed out by us. other things might contribute to the beauty of his works, as unity, sublimity, costume, and erudition; for which it is sufficient to refer to those delightful poetical pieces, with which he adorned the gallery of leo x., and which were engraved by lanfranco and badalocchi, and are called the bible of raffaello. in the return of jacob, who does not immediately discover, in the number and variety of domestic animals, the multitude of servants, and the women carrying with them their children, a patriarchal family migrating from a long possessed abode into a new territory? in the creation of the world, where the deity stretches out his arms, and with one hand calls forth the sun and with the other the moon, do we not see a grandeur, which, with the simplest expression, awakes in us the most sublime ideas? and in the adoration of the golden calf, how could he better have represented the idolatrous ceremony, and its departure from true religion, than by depicting the people as carried away by an insane joy, and mad with fanaticism? in point of erudition it is sufficient to notice the triumph of david, which taja describes and compares with the ancient bassirelievi, and is inclined to believe that there is not any thing in marble that excels the art and skill of this picture. i am aware that on another occasion he has not been exempted from blame, as when he repeated the figure of s. peter out of prison, which hurts the unity of the subject; and in assigning to apollo and to the muses instruments not proper to antiquity. yet it is the glory of raffaello to have introduced into his pictures numberless circumstances unknown to his predecessors, and to have left little to be added by his successors. in composition also he is at the head of his art. in every picture the principal figure is obvious to the spectator; we have no occasion to inquire for it; the groups, divided by situation, are united in the principal action; the contrast is not dictated by affectation, but by truth and propriety; a figure absorbed in thought, often serves as a relief to another that acts and speaks; the masses of light and shade are not arbitrarily poised, but are in the most select imitation of nature; all is art, but all is consummate skill and concealment of art. the school of athens, as it is called, in the vatican, is in this respect amongst the most wonderful compositions in the world. they who succeeded raffaello, and followed other principles, have afforded more pleasure to the eye, but have not given such satisfaction to the mind. the compositions of paul veronese contain a greater number of figures, and more decoration; lanfranco and the machinists introduced a powerful effect, and a vigorous contrast of light and shade: but who would exchange for such a manner the chaste and dignified style of raffaello? poussin alone, in the opinion of mengs, obtained a superior mode of composition in the groundwork, or economy of his subject; that is to say, in the judicious selection of the scene of the event. we have thus concisely stated the perfection to which raffaello carried his art, in the short space allotted him. there is not a work in nature or art where he has not practically illustrated his own axiom, as handed down to us by federigo zuccaro, that things must be represented, not as they are, but as they ought to be; the country, the elements, animals, buildings, every age of man, every condition of life, every affection, all was embraced and rendered more beautiful by the divine genius of raffaello. and if his life had been prolonged to a more advanced period, without even approaching the term allowed to titian or michelangiolo, who shall say to what height of perfection he might not have carried his favourite art? who can divine his success in architecture and sculpture, if he had applied himself to the study of them; having so wonderfully succeeded in his few attempts in those branches of art? of his pictures a considerable number are to be found in private collections, particularly on sacred subjects, such as the madonna and child, and other compositions of the holy family. they are in the three styles which we have before described: the grand duke has some specimens of each. the most admired is that which is named the madonna della seggiola.[ ] of this class of pictures it is often doubted whether they ought to be considered as originals, or copies, as some of them have been three, five, or ten times repeated. the same may be said of other cabinet pictures by him, particularly the s. john in the desart, which is in the grand ducal gallery at florence, and is found repeated in many collections both in italy and in other countries. this was likely to happen in a school where the most common mode was the following:--the subject was designed by raffaello, the picture prepared by giulio, and finished by the master so exquisitely, that one might almost count the hairs of the head. when the pictures were thus finished, they were copied by the scholars of raffaello, who were very numerous, and of the second and third order; and these were also sometimes retouched by giulio and by raffaello himself. but whoever is experienced in the freedom and delicacy of the chief of this school, need not fear confounding his productions with those of the scholars, or of giulio himself; who, besides having a more timid pencil, made use of a darker tint than his master was accustomed to do. i have met with an experienced person, who declared that he could recognize the character of giulio in the dark parts of the flesh tints, and in the middle dark tints, not of a leaden colour as raffaello used, nor so well harmonized; in the greater quantity of light, and in the eyes designed more roundly, which raffaello painted somewhat long, after the manner of pietro. on this propitious commencement was founded the school which we call roman, rather from the city of rome itself, than from the people, as i have before observed. for as the inhabitants of rome are a mixture of many tongues, and many different nations, of whom the descendants of romulus form the least proportion; so the school of painting has been increased in its numbers by foreigners whom she has received and united to her own, and who are considered in her academy of s. luke, as if they had been born in rome, and enjoyed the ancient rights of romans. hence is derived the great variety of names that we find in the course of it. some, as caravaggio, derived no assistance from the study of the ancient marbles, and other aids peculiar to the capital; and these may be said to have been in the roman school, but not to have formed a part of it. others adopted the principles of the disciples of raffaello, and their usual method was to study diligently both raffaello and the ancient marbles; and from the imitation of him, and more particularly of the antique, resulted, if i err not, the general character, if i may so express it, of the roman school: the young artists who were expert in copying statues and bassirelievi, and who had those objects always before their eyes, could easily transfer their forms to the panel or the canvas. hence their style is formed on the antique, and their beauty is more ideal than that of other schools. this circumstance, which was an advantage to those who knew how to use it, became a disadvantage to others, leading them to give their figures the air of statues, beautiful, but isolated, and not sufficiently animated. others have done themselves greater injury from copying the modern statues of saints; a practice which facilitated the representation of devout attitudes, the disposition of the folds in the garments of the monks and priests, and other peculiarities which are not found in ancient sculpture. but as sculpture has gradually deteriorated, it could not have any beneficial influence on the sister art; and it has hence led many into mannerism in the folds of their drapery, after bernino and algardi; excellent artists, but who ought not to have influenced the art of painting, as they did, in a city like rome. the style of invention in this school is, in general, judicious, the composition chaste, the costume carefully observed, with a moderate study of ornament. i speak of pictures in oil, for the frescos of this later period ought to be separately considered. the colouring, on the whole, is not the most brilliant, nor is it yet the most feeble; there being always a supply of artists from the lombards, or flemings, who prevented it being entirely neglected. we may now return to the original subject of our inquiry, examine the principles of the roman school, and attend it to its latest epoch. raffaello at all times employed a number of scholars, constantly instructing and teaching them; whence he never went to court, as we are assured by vasari, without being accompanied by probably fifty of the first artists, who attended him out of respect. he employed every one in the way most agreeable to his talent. some having received sufficient instruction, returned to their native country, others remained with him as long as he lived, and after his death established themselves in rome, where they became the germs of this new school. at the head of all was giulio romano, whom, with gio. francesco penni, raffaello appointed his heir, whence they both united in finishing the works on which their master was employed at his death. they associated to themselves as an assistant perino del vaga, and to render the connexion permanent, they gave him a sister of penni to his wife. to these three were also joined some others who had worked under raffaello. on their first establishment they did not meet with any great success, for, as vasari informs us, the chief place in art being by universal consent assigned to fra sebastiano, through the partiality of michelangiolo, the followers of raffaello were kept in the back ground. we may also add, as another cause, the death of leo x., in , and the election of his successor, adrian vi., a decided enemy to the fine arts, by whom the public works contemplated, and already commenced by his predecessor, remained neglected; and many artists, in consequence of the want of employment, occasioned by this event, and by the plague, in , were reduced to the greatest distress. but adrian dying after a reign of twenty-three months, and giulio de' medici being elected in his place under the name of clement vii., the arts again revived. raffaello, before his death, had begun to paint the great saloon, and had designed some figures, and left many sketches for the completion of it. it was intended to represent four historical events, although the subjects of some of them are disputed. these were the apparition of the cross, or the harangue of constantine; the battle wherein maxentius is drowned, and constantine remains victor; the baptism of constantine, received from the hands of s. silvester; and the donative of the city of rome, made to the same pontiff. giulio finished the two first subjects, and giovanni francesco the other two, and they added to them bassirelievi, painted in imitation of bronze under each of the same subjects, with some additional figures. they afterwards painted, or rather finished the pictures of the villa at monte mario, a work ordered by the cardinal giulio de' medici, and suspended until the second or third year of his papal reign. this villa was afterwards called di madama, and there still remain many traces, although suffering from time, of the munificence of that prince, and the taste of the school of raffaello. giulio meanwhile, with the permission of the pope, established himself in mantua, il fattore went to naples; and some little time afterwards, in , in consequence of the sacking of rome, and the unrestrained licence of the invading army, vaga, polidoro, giovanni da udine, peruzzi, and vincenzio di s. gimignano left rome, and with them parmigianino, who was at this time in the capital, and passionately employed in studying the works of raffaello. this illustrious school was thus separated and dispersed over italy, and hence it happened that the new style was quickly propagated, and gave birth to the florid schools, which form the subjects of our other books. although some of the scholars of raffaello might return to rome, yet the brilliant epoch was past. the decline became apparent soon after the sacking of the city, and from the time of that event, the art daily degenerated in the capital, and ultimately terminated in mannerism. but of this in its proper place. at present, after this general notice of the school of raffaello, we shall treat of each particular scholar and of his assistants. giulio pippi, or giulio romano, the most distinguished pupil of raffaello, resembled his master more in energy than in delicacy of style, and was particularly successful in subjects of war and battles, which he represented with equal spirit and correctness. in his noble style of design he emulates michelangiolo, commands the whole mechanism of the human body, and with a masterly hand renders it subservient to all his wishes. his only fault is, that his demonstrations of motion are sometimes too violent. vasari preferred his drawings to his pictures, as he thought that the fire of his original conception was apt to evaporate, in some degree, in the finishing. some have objected to the squareness of his physiognomies, and have complained of his middle tints being too dark. but niccolo poussin admired this asperity of colour in his battle of constantine, as suitable to the character of the subject. in the picture of the church dell'anima, which is a madonna, accompanied by saints, and in others of that description, it does not produce so good an effect. his cabinet pictures are rare, and sometimes too free in their subjects. he generally painted in fresco, and his vast works at mantua place him at the head of that school, which indeed venerates him as its founder. gianfrancesco penni of florence, called il fattore, who when a boy was a servant in the studio of raffaello, became one of his principal scholars, and assisted him more than any other in the cartoons of the tapestries: he painted in the gallery of the vatican the histories of abraham and isaac, noticed by taja. among other works left incomplete by his master, and which he finished, is the assumption of monte luci in perugia, the lower part of which, with the apostles, is painted by giulio, and the upper part, which abounds with raffaellesque grace, is ascribed to il fattore, although vasari assigns it to perino. of the works which he performed alone, his frescos in rome have perished, and so few of his oil pictures remain, that they are rarely to be found in any collection. he is characterised by fertility of conception, grace of execution, and a singular talent for landscape. he was joint heir of raffaello with giulio, and wished to unite himself with him in his profession; but being coldly received by giulio in mantua, he proceeded to naples, where he, as we shall see, contributed greatly to the improvement of art, although cut off by an early death. orlandi notices two penni in the school of raffaello, comprehending luca, a brother of gianfrancesco, a circumstance not improbable, and not, as far as i know, contradicted by history. we are also told by vasari, that luca united himself to perino del vaga, and worked with him at lucca, and in other places of italy; that he followed rosso into france, as we have before observed; and that he ultimately passed into england, where he painted for the king and private persons, and made designs for prints. perino del vaga, whose true name was pierino buonaccorsi, was a relation and fellow citizen of penni. he had a share in the works of the vatican, where he at one time worked stuccos and arabesques with giovanni da udine, at another time painted chiaroscuri with polidoro, or finished subjects from the sketches and after the style of raffaello. vasari considered him the best designer of the florentine school, after michelangiolo, and at the head of all those who assisted raffaello. it is certain, at least, that no one could, like him, compete with giulio, in that universality of talent so conspicuous in raffaello; and the subjects from the new testament, which he painted in the papal gallery, were praised by taja above all others. in his style there is a great mixture of the florentine, as may be seen at rome, in the birth of eve, in the church of s. marcello, where there are some children painted to the life, a most finished performance. a convent at tivoli possesses a s. john in the desart, by him, with a landscape in the best style. there are many works by him in lucca, and pisa, but more particularly in genoa, where we shall have occasion again to consider him as the origin of a celebrated school. giovanni da udine, by a writer of udine called giovanni di francesco ricamatore, (boni, p. ,) likewise assisted sanzio in arabesques and stuccos, and painted ornaments in the gallery of the vatican, in the apartments of the pope, and in many other places. indeed, in the art of working in stucco, he is ranked as the first among the moderns,[ ] having, after long experience, imitated the style of the baths of titus, discovered at that time in rome, and opened afresh in our own days.[ ] his foliage and shells, his aviaries and birds, painted in the above mentioned places, and in other parts of rome and italy, deceive the eye by their exquisite imitation; and in the animals more particularly, and the indigenous and foreign birds, he seems to have reached the highest point of excellence. he was also remarkable for counterfeiting with his pencil every species of furniture; and a story is told, that having left some imitations of carpets one day in the gallery of raffaello, a groom in the service of the pope coming in haste in search of a carpet to place in a room, ran to snatch up one of those of giovanni, deceived by the similitude. after the sacking of rome he visited other parts of italy, leaving wherever he went, works in the most perfect and brilliant style of ornament. this will occasion us to notice him in other schools. at an advanced age he returned to rome, where he was provided with a pension from the pope, till the time of his death.[ ] polidoro da caravaggio, from a manual labourer in the works of the vatican, became an artist of the first celebrity, and distinguished himself in the imitation of antique bassirelievi, painting both sacred and profane subjects in a most beautiful chiaroscuro. nothing of this kind was ever seen more perfect, whether we consider the composition, the mechanism, or the design; and raffaello and he, of all artists, are considered in this respect to have approached nearest to the style of the ancients. rome was filled with the richest friezes, façades, and ornaments over doors, painted by him and maturino of florence, an excellent designer, and his partner; but these, to the great loss of art, have nearly all perished. the fable of niobe, in the maschera d'oro, which was one of their most celebrated works, has suffered less than any other from the ravages of time and the hand of barbarism. this loss has been in some measure mitigated by the prints of cherubino alberti, and santi bartoli, who engraved many of these works before they perished. polidoro lost his comrade by death in rome, as was supposed, by the plague, and he himself repaired to naples, and from thence to sicily, where he fell a victim to the cupidity of his own servant, who assassinated him. with him invention, grace, and freedom of hand, seem to have died. this notice of him as an artist may suffice for the present, as we shall again recur to him in the fourth book, as one of the masters of the neapolitan school. pellegrino da modena, of the family of munari, of all the scholars of raffaello, perhaps resembled him the most in the air of his heads, and a peculiar grace of attitude. after having painted in an incomparable manner the history of jacob, before mentioned, and others of the same patriarch, and some from the life of solomon, in the gallery of the vatican, under raffaello, he remained in rome employed in the decoration of many of the churches, until his master's death. he then returned to his native place, where he became the head of a numerous succession of raffaellesque painters, as we shall in due time relate. bartolommeo ramenghi, or as he is sometimes named, bagnacavallo, and by vasari il bologna, is also included in the catalogue of those who worked in the gallery. there is not however any known work of his in rome, and we may say the same of biagio pupini, a bolognese, with whom he afterwards united himself to paint in bologna. vasari is not prodigal of praise towards the first, and writes with the most direct censure against the second. of their merits we shall speak more fully in the bolognese school, to which bagnacavallo was the first to communicate a new and better style. besides these, vasari mentions vincenzio di s. gimignano, in tuscany, to whom, as a highly successful imitator of raffaello, he gives great praise, referring to some façades in fresco by him, which have now perished. after the sacking of rome he returned home, but so changed and dispirited, that he appeared quite another person, and we have no account of any of his subsequent works. schizzone, a comrade of vincenzio, a most promising artist, shared the same fate; and we find also, in the bolognese school, cavedone losing his powers by some great mental affliction. among the subjects of the vatican we do not find any ascribed to vincenzio, but we may perhaps assign to him the history of moses in horeb, which taja, on mere conjecture, ascribes to the bold pencil of raffaele del colle, who was employed by raffaello in the farnesina, and in the hall of constantine, under giulio. of this artist and his successors we have spoken in the first book, where we have made some additions to the account of vasari. timoteo della vite, of urbino, after some years spent at bologna in studying under francesco francia, returned to his native city, and from thence repaired to the academy which his countryman and relation raffaello had opened in the vatican. he assisted raffaello at the pace, in the fresco of the sybils, of which he retained the cartoons; and after some time, from some cause or other, he returned to urbino, and there passed the remainder of his days. he brought with him to rome, a method of painting which partook much of the manner of the early masters, as may be seen in some of his madonnas, at the palace bonaventura, and the chapter of urbino; and in a discovery of the cross in the church of the conventuals of pesaro. he improved his style under raffaello, and acquired much of his grace, attitudes, and colour, though he always remained a limited inventor, with a certain timidity of touch, more correct than vigorous. the picture of the conception at the osservanti of urbino, and the noli me tangere, in the church of s. angelo, at cagli, are the best pieces that remain of timoteo. pietro della vite, who is supposed to have been his brother, painted in the same style, but in an inferior manner. this pietro is, perhaps, the relative and heir of raffaello, whom baldinucci mentions in his fifth volume. the same writer affirms, at the end of his fourth volume, that the artists of urbino included amongst the scholars of raffaello one crocchia, and assign to him a picture at the capuchins in urbino, of which i have no further knowledge. benvenuto tisi, of ferrara, or as he is generally called, il garofalo, also studied only a little time under sanzio; but it was sufficient to enable him to become, as we shall notice hereafter, the chief of the ferrarese school. he imitated raffaello in design, in the character of his faces, and in expression, and considerably also in his colouring, although he added something of a warmer and stronger cast, derived from his own school. rome, bologna, and other cities of italy, abound with his pictures from the lives of the apostles. they are of various merit, and are not wholly painted by himself. in his large pictures he stands more alone, and many of these are to be found in the chigi gallery. the visitation in the palazzo doria, is one of the first pieces in that rich collection. this artist was accustomed, in allusion to his name, to mark his pictures with a violet, which the common people in italy call garofalo. it does not appear from vasari, titi, and taja, that garofalo had any share in the works which were executed by raffaello and his scholars. gaudenzio ferrari is mentioned by titi, as an assistant of raffaello in the story of psyche, and we shall advert to him again in another book as chief of the milanese school. orlandi, on the credit of some more modern writers, asserts, that he worked with raffaello also at torre borgia; and before that time, he considers him to have been a scholar of scotto and perugino. in florence, and in other places in lower italy, some highly finished pictures are attributed to him, which partake of the preceding century, though they do not seem allied to the school of perugino. of these pictures we shall resume our notice hereafter; at present it may be sufficient to remark, that in lombardy, where he resided, there is not a picture in that style to be found with his name attached to it. he is always raffaellesque, and follows the chiefs of the roman school. vasari also notices jacomone da faenza. this artist assiduously studied the works of raffaello, and from long practice in copying them, became himself an inventor. he flourished in romagna, and it was from him that a raffaellesque taste was diffused throughout that part of italy. he is also mentioned by baldinucci, and we shall endeavour to make him better known in his proper place. besides the above mentioned scholars and assistants of raffaello, several others are enumerated by writers, of whom we may give a short notice. il pistoja, a scholar of il fattore, and probably employed by him in the works of sanzio, as raffaellino del colle was with giulio, is mentioned as a scholar of raffaello by baglione, and, on the credit of that writer, also by taja. we mentioned him among the tuscans, and shall further notice him in naples, where we shall also find andrea da salerno, head of that school, whom dominici proves to be a scholar of raffaello. in the _memorie di monte rubbiano_, edited by colucci, at page , vincenzo pagani, a native of that country, is mentioned as a pupil of the same master. there remains of him in the collegiate church there, a most beautiful picture of the assumption; and the padre civalli points out another in fallerone and two at sarnano, in the church of his religious fraternity, much extolled, and in a raffaellesque manner, if we are to credit report. this painter, of whom, in piceno, i find traces to the year , again appears in umbria in , where lattanzio his son, being elected a magistrate of perugia, he transferred himself thither, and was employed to paint the altarpiece of the cappella degli oddi, in the church of the conventuals, as we have already mentioned. according to the conditions of the contract, paparelli had a share with him in this work, and he must be considered as an assistant of vincenzo, both because he is named as holding the second place, and because he is reported by vasari on other occasions, as having been an assistant. but as history mentions nothing relative to this picture, except the contract, we shall content ourselves with observing, that this praiseworthy artist, who was passed over in silence for so many years, still painted in the year . whether he was a scholar of raffaello, or whether this was a tradition which arose in his own country in progress of time, supported only on the consideration of his age and his style, is a point to be decided by proofs of more authority than those we possess. i agree with the sig. arciprete lazzari, when, writing of f. bernardo catelani of urbino, who painted in cagli the picture of the great altar in the church of the capucins, he says, that he had there exhibited the style of the school of raffaello, but he does not consider him his scholar. it has been asserted, that marcantonio raimondi painted some pictures from the sketches of raffaello, in a style which excited the admiration of the designer himself; but this appears doubtful, and is so considered by malvasia. l'armenini also assigns to this school, scipione sacco, a painter of cesena, and orlandi, don pietro da bagnaja, whom we shall mention in the romagna school. some have added to it bernardino lovino, and others baldassare peruzzi, a supposition which we shall shew to be erroneous. padre della valle has more recently revived an opinion, that correggio may be ranked in the same school, and that he was probably employed in the gallery, and might have painted the subject of the magi, attributed by vasari to perino. this is conjectured from the peculiar smile of the mother and the infant. but these surmises and conjectures we may consider as the chaff of that author, who has nevertheless presented us with much substantial information. we shall now advert to the foreigners of this school. bellori has enumerated, among the imitators of raffaello, michele cockier, or cocxie, of malines, of whom there remain some pictures in fresco in the church dell'anima. being afterwards in flanders, where several works of raffaello were engraved by cock, he was accused of plagiarism, but still maintained a considerable reputation; as to a fertile invention he added a graceful style of execution. many of his best pictures passed into spain, and were there purchased at great prices. palomino acquaints us with another excellent scholar of sanzio, pier campanna, of flanders, who, although he could not entirely divest himself of the hardness of his native school, was still highly esteemed in his day. he resided twenty years in italy, and was employed in venice by the patriarch grimani, for whom he painted several portraits, and the celebrated picture of the magdalen led by saint martha to the temple, to hear the preaching of christ. this picture, which was bequeathed by the patriarch to a friend, after a lapse of many years, passed into the hands of mr. slade, an english gentleman. pier campanna distinguished himself in bologna, by painting a triumphal arch on the arrival of charles v., by whom he was invited to seville, where he resided a considerable time, painting and instructing pupils, among whom is reckoned morales, who, from his countrymen, had the appellation of the divine. he was accustomed to paint small pictures, which were eagerly sought after by the english, and transferred to their country, where they are highly prized. of his altarpieces, several remain in seville, and we may mention the purification, in the cathedral, and the deposition at s. croce, as the most esteemed. murillo, who was himself a truly noble artist, greatly admired and studied this latter picture, which, even after we have seen the masterpieces of the italian school, still excites our astonishment and admiration. this artist, to some one, who, in his latter years, inquired why he so often repaired to this picture, replied, that he waited the moment when the body of christ should reach the ground. mention is also made of one mosca, whether a native or foreigner i know not, as a doubtful disciple of this school. christ on his way to mount calvary, now in the academy in mantua, is certainly a raffaellesque picture, but we may rather consider mosca an imitator and copyist, than a pupil of raffaello. in the edition of palomino, published in london, , i find some others noticed as scholars of raffaello, who being born a little before or after , could not possibly belong to him; as gaspare bacerra, the assistant of vasari; alfonso sanchez, of portugal; giovanni di valencia; fernando jannes. it is not unusual to find similar instances in the history of painting, and the reports have for the most part originated in the last age. whenever the artists of a country began to collect notices of the masters who had preceded them, their style had become the prevailing taste; and as if human genius could attain no improvement beyond that which it receives subserviently from another, every imitator was supposed to be a scholar of the artist imitated, and every school, arrogating to itself the names of the first masters, endeavoured to load itself with fresh honours. [footnote : hist. rom. vol. i. ad calcem.] [footnote : besides his life by vasari, another was published by sig. abate comolli, which i consider posterior to that of vasari. memoirs of him were also collected by piacenza, bottari, and other authors whom i shall notice; and i shall also avail myself of the information derived from the inspection of his pictures, and their character, and the various dates of his works.] [footnote : we find his name written _io. sanctis_ in the nunziata of sinigaglia; and it appears that he was born of a father called, according to the expression of that age, _santi_ or _sante_; a name in common use in many parts of italy. in support of the surname of sanzio, bottari produces a portrait of antonio sanzio, which exists in the palazzo albani, representing him holding in his hands a document, with the title of _genealogia raphaelis sanctii urbinatis_. julius sanctius is there named as the head of the family, _familiæ quæ adhuc urbini illustris extat, ab agris dividendis cognomen imposuit_, and was the progenitor of antonio. from the latter, and through a sebastiano, and afterwards through a gio. batista, descends giovanni, _ex quo ortus est raphael qui pinxit a. _. it is also recorded that sebastiano had a brother, galeazzo, _egregium pictorem_, and the father of three painters, antonio, vincenzio, and giulio, called _maximus pictor_. thus in this branch of the sanzii are enumerated four painters, of whom i do not find any memorial in urbino. the family also boasts of a canon in divinity, and a distinguished captain of infantry. the anonymous writer of comolli confirms this illustrious origin of raffaello; but it is highly probable, that in that age, when the forgery of genealogies, as tiraboschi observes, was a common practice, he may have adopted it without any examination. the portrait of antonio is well executed, but it has been said that it would have been much more so, if raffaello had painted it a year before his death, according to the inscription. if connoisseurs (who alone ought to decide this point) should be of this opinion, it may be suspected that the person that counterfeited the hand of the artist, might also substitute the writing; or we may at least conclude, that the etymology of sanzio should be sought for in the word _sanctis_, the name of the grandfather of raffaello, not in _sancire_, (to divide fields or property). in tom. xxxi. of the ant. picene, a will is produced of ser simone di antonio, in , where a _magister baptista, qu. peri sanctis de peris_, who is called _pittor di grido e di eccellenza_, leaves his son tommaso his heir, to whom is substituted a son of antonio his brother, of the name of francesco. i may remark, that in this _batista di pier sante de' pieri_, we may find the surname of a family different from that of sanzia. but on this subject i hope we shall shortly be favoured with more certain information by the sig. arciprete lazzari, who has obliged me with many valuable contributions to the present edition of this work.] [footnote : condivi, in his life of bonarruoti, (num. .) assures us that michaelangelo was not of a jealous temper, but spoke well of all artists, not excepting raffaello di urbino, "between whom and himself there existed, as i have mentioned, an emulation in painting; and the utmost that he said was, that raffaello did not inherit his excellences from nature, but obtained them through study and application."] [footnote : see the preface to the life of raffaello, by vasari, _ediz. senese_, p. , where the will is quoted.] [footnote : vasari states, that that event occurred either whilst michaelangelo was employed upon the statues in s. pietro in vincoli, or whilst he was painting the vault of the sistine chapel, that is, some years afterwards, when raffaello was in rome. to this second opinion, which is the most common one, i formerly assented; but since, on perusal of a brief of julius ii. (lett. pittoriche, tom. iii. p. ) in which that pope invites michaelangelo back to rome, and promises that _illæsus, inviolatusque erit_, i am inclined to believe that the cartoon was finished in , which is the date of the brief; so that raffaello, if he could not see it on his first visit to florence, might at least have done so on his second or third.] [footnote : see vasari, ed. sen. tom. v. p. , where we find the letter written from him to one of his uncles, with all the provincialisms common to the inhabitants of urbino and its neighbourhood.] [footnote : malvasia, _felsina pittrice_, tom. i. p. . there are some facts, however, in opposition to this letter, and which seem to prove that raffaello did not go to rome until . but the sig. abate francesconi is now employed in rectifying the chronology of the life and works of sanzio; and from his critical sagacity we may expect the solution of this difficulty.] [footnote : see le aggiunte al vasari. ed. senese, p. .] [footnote : a sonnet by him is referred to by sig. piacenza, in his notes to baldinucci, tom. xi. p. .] [footnote : in compliance with the wishes of leo x. he made drawings of the buildings of ancient rome, and accompanied them with descriptions, employing the compass to ascertain their admeasurement. we owe this information to sig. abate francesconi, who has restored to sanzio a letter, formerly attributed to castiglione. it is a sort of dedication of the work to leo x.; but the work itself and the drawings are lost; and many of the edifices measured by raffaello were destroyed in the following pontificates. the abate morelli has made public a high eulogium on this work, by a contemporary pen, in the notes to the notizia, page . it is written by one marcantonio michiel, who asserts, that raffaello had drawn the ancient buildings of rome in such a manner, and shewn their proportions, forms, and ornaments so correctly, that whoever had inspected them might be said to have seen ancient rome.] [footnote : in a brief of leo x. , mentioned by sig. piacenza, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : cæsaris in nomen ducuntur carmina: cæsar dum canitur, quæso, jupiter ipse vaces. prop. lib. iv. eleg. vi.] [footnote : vol. ii. p. et seq.] [footnote : see the first letter of crespi, lettere pittoriche, tom. ii. p. .] [footnote : mengs has observed, that raffaello diligently studied the bassirelievi of the arches of titus and constantine, which were on the arch of trajan, and adopted from them his manner of marking the articulations of the joints, and a more simple and an easier mode of expressing the contour of the fleshy parts. riflessioni sopra i tre gran pittori, &c. cap. .] [footnote : riflessioni su la bellezza e sul gusto della pittura, parte iii. cap. , and see the _osservazioni_ of the cav. azara on that tract, §. xii.] [footnote : a doubt has arisen on the exact time in which he painted the prophet and the sybils, and from the grandeur of their style doubts have been thrown on vasari's account, that they were painted anterior to . but a painter who is the master of his art, elevates or lowers his style according to his subject. the sybils are in raffaello's grandest style; and that they are amongst his earliest works, is proved from his having had timoteo della vite, as his assistant in them.] [footnote : lett. pittor. tom. v. p. .] [footnote : commencing at p. .] [footnote : i do not find that any mention has been made of his picture in the possession of the olivieri family at pesaro, or of the one in the basilica di loreto in the treasury, which seems to be the same which was formerly in the church of the madonna del popolo, or a copy of it. i have seen a similar subject in the lauretana, belonging to the signori pirri, in rome. at sassoferrato also, on the great altar of the church of the capucins, there is a virgin and child, said to be by him; but it is more probably by fra bernardo catelani. there exist engravings of the two first, but i have not seen any of the last.] [footnote : riflessioni sopra i tre gran pittori, &c., cap. i. § .] [footnote : lo dico con questa condizione che v. s. si trovasse meco a far la scelta del meglio: ma essendo carestia e di buoni giudici e di belle donne, mi servo di una certa idea che mi viene in mente. lett. pittor. tom. i. p. .] [footnote : plin. hist. natur. lib. xxxv. cap. . quintil. instit. orat. xii. .] [footnote : portraits of raffaello are to be found in the duomo, and in the sacristy of siena, in more than one picture; but it is doubtful whether by his own hand or that of pinturicchio. that which is mentioned in the guida di perugia, as being in a picture of the resurrection at the conventuals, is said to be by pietro perugino: and in the borghese gallery in rome, there is one, supposed to be by the hand of timoteo della vite. the portrait in the gallery in florence, by da vinci, bears some resemblance to raffaello, but it is not he. another which i have seen in bologna, ought, perhaps, to be ascribed to giulio romano. one of the most authentic portraits of raffaello, by his own hand, next to the one in the picture of s. luke, is that in the medici collection in the _stanza de' pittori_, though this is not in his best manner.] [footnote : idée de peintre parfait, chap. xix.] [footnote : engraved by morghen. the three figures, the madonna, the infant, and st. john, appear almost alive. it should seem that raffaello made several studies for this picture, and he painted one without the st. john, which remained for some time in urbino. i saw a copy in the possession of the calamini family, at recanati, which was said to be by baroccio, and at all events belonging to his school. i have seen the same subject in the casa olivieri, at pesaro, and at cortona, in the possession of another noble family, to whom it had passed by inheritance from urbino, and was considered to be by raffaello. the faces in these are not so beautiful, nor the colours so fine; they are round, and in a larger circle, with some variations: i have also seen a copy in the sacristy of s. luigi de' franzesi, in rome, and in the palazzo giustiniani.] [footnote : morto da feltro sotto alessandro vi., cominciò a dipingere a grottesco, ma senza stucchi. baglione, vite, p. .] [footnote : the entrance into these baths was designedly and maliciously closed. serlio, in speaking of the various arabesques in pozzuolo, baja, and rome, says that they were injured or destroyed by the artists who had copied them, through a jealous feeling lest others should also avail themselves of the opportunity of studying them, (lib. iv. c. ). the names of these destroyers, which serlio has suppressed, posterity has been desirous of recovering, and some have accused raffaello, others pinturicchio, and others vaga, or giovanni da udine, or rather his scholars and assistants, "of whom," says vasari, "there were an infinite number in every part of italy." this subject is ably discussed by mariotti, in _lettera_ ix. p. , and in the _memorie delle belle arti_, per l'anno , p. .] [footnote : it was charged on the office of the piombo, or papal signet, when sebastiano da venezia was invested with it, and was a pension of three hundred scudi. padre federici observes that the one was designated fra sebastiano, but that the other was not called fra giovanni; nor is this remarkable, for a bishop is called monsignore, but the person who enjoys a pension charged upon a bishoprick has not the same title. it cannot however be deduced from this, as federici wishes to do, that sebastiano was first frate di s. domenico, by the name of f. marco pensaben, and afterwards secularized by the pope, and appointed to the signet, and that he retained the _fra_ in consequence of his former situation.] roman school. epoch iii. _the art declines in consequence of the public calamities of rome, and gradually falls into mannerism._ after the mournful events of the year , rome for some time remained in a state of stupor, contemplating her past misfortunes and her future destiny; and, like a vessel escaped from shipwreck, began slowly to repair her numerous losses. the soldiers of the besieging army, among other injuries committed in the apostolic palace, had defaced some heads of raffaello; and f. sebastiano, an artist by no means competent to such a task, was employed to repair them. this, at least, was the opinion of titian, who was introduced to these works, and ignorant of the circumstances, asked sebastiano what presumptuous wretch had had the audacity to attempt their restoration;[ ] an impartial observation, against which even the patronage of michelangiolo could not shield the artist. paul iii. was now in possession of the papal chair, and under his auspices the arts again began to revive. the decoration of the palace of caprarola, and other works of paul and his nephews, gave employment to the painters, and happy had these patrons been, could they have found a second raffaello. bonarruoti, as we have observed, was engaged by the pope, and gave to the roman school many noble specimens of art, though he formed but few scholars. sebastiano, after the death of raffaello, freed from all further competition with that great artist, and honoured with the lucrative office of the papal signet, seemed disposed to rest from his labours; and as he had never, at any time, discovered great application, he now resigned himself to a life of vacant leisure, and vasari does not mention with commendation any pupil of his school except laureti.[ ] giulio romano was now invited back to rome, and the superintendence of the building of s. peter's offered to him, but death prevented his return to his native city. perino del vaga, however, repaired to rome, and might, himself, have effected the restoration of art, if his magnanimity had corresponded with the sublimity of his mind. but he did not inherit the daring genius of his master. he communicated his instructions with jealousy, and worked with a spirit of gain, or to speak correctly, he did not paint himself, but undertaking works of more or less consequence, he allowed his scholars to execute them, often to the injury of his own reputation. he continued to secure to himself artists of the first talents, as we shall see; but this was done with the intention of making them dependant on him, and to prevent their interfering with his emoluments and commissions. but together with the good, he engaged also many indifferent and inferior artists, whence it happens, that in the chambers of the castle of s. angelo, and in other places, we meet with so marked a difference in many of his works. few of his scholars attained celebrity. luzio romano is the most noted, and possessed a good execution. of him there exists a frieze in the palazzo spada; and for some time, too, he had for an assistant marcello venusti of mantua, a young man of great talents, but diffident, and probably standing in need of more instruction than perino afforded him. he afterwards received some instructions from bonarruoti, whose ideas he executed in an excellent manner, as i have mentioned before, and by his aid he became himself also a good designer.[ ] perino, by these means, always abounded in work and in money. a similar traffic in the art was carried on by taddeo zuccaro, if we are to believe vasari; and by vasari himself, too, if we may be allowed to judge from his pictures. the actual state of the art at this period may be ascertained from a view of the numerous works produced; but none are so distinguished as the paintings in the sala regia, commenced under paul iii., and scarcely finished, after a lapse of thirty years, in . of these vaga had the direction, as raffaello had formerly had, of the chambers of the vatican. he planned the compartments, ornamented the ceiling, directed all the stuccos, cornices, devices, and large figures, and all in the style of a great master. he then applied himself to design the subjects for his pencil, and was employed on them when he was carried off by death in . through the partiality of michelangiolo, he was succeeded by daniel di volterra, who had already worked in stucco, under his direction, in the same place. volterra resolved to represent the donations of those sovereigns who had extended or consolidated the temporal dominion of the church, whence the chamber was called sala dei regi, and this idea was, in some degree, though with variations, continued by succeeding artists. volterra was naturally slow and irresolute, and after painting the deposition from the cross, which we have mentioned as being executed with the assistance of michelangiolo, he produced no more of these prodigies of art. he had indeed begun some designs, but on the death of the pope, in , he was compelled, in order to accommodate the conclave, to remove the scaffolding, and expose the work unfinished. it did not meet with public approbation, nor was it continued under julius iii., and still less under paul iv., in whose reign the art was held in so little respect, that the apostles, painted by raffaello in one of the chambers of the vatican, were displaced. pius iv., who resumed the work, on the suggestion of vasari, in , had intended to charge salviati with the entire execution of it; but, by the intercessions of bonarruoti, was at length prevailed on to assign one half of the apartment to salviati, and the other half to ricciarelli, though this did not contribute to expedite the work. pirro ligorio, a neapolitan, was at this time held in high esteem by the pope. he was an antiquarian, though not of great celebrity, but a good architect, and a fresco painter of some merit;[ ] an enthusiast too, and alike jealous of ricciarelli, for the homage he paid to bonarruoti, and of salviati, for the respect which he did not shew to ligorio himself. remarking that the pope wished to hasten the completion of the work, he proposed to select a number of scholars, and to divide the work amongst them. vasari adds, that salviati was disgusted and left rome; where, on his return, he died, without finishing his work; and that ricciarelli, who was always slow, never touched it again, and died also after the lapse of some little time. the completion of the work was then entrusted, as far as possible, to the successors of raffaello. livio agresti da forli, girolamo siciolante da sermoneta, and marco da pino, of sienna, although they had received their first instructions from other masters, had been instructed by perino del vaga, and had assisted in his cartoons. taddeo zuccaro had accomplished himself under giacomone da faenza, and had made his younger brother federigo an able artist. to these the work was assigned, and there were added to them samacchini and fiorini, bolognese artists; and giuseppe porta della garfagnana, called giuseppe salviati. this latter had been the pupil of francesco salviati, from whom he learnt the principles of design; he was afterwards a follower of the school of venice, where he resided. of these numerous artists vasari assigns the palm to taddeo zuccaro, but the court was so much pleased with porta, that it was in contemplation to destroy the works of the other artists, in order that the apartment might be finished by him alone. he represented alexander iii. in the act of bestowing his benediction on frederick barbarossa, in the piazza of s. mark, in venice; and he here indulged his taste for architectural ornaments, in the venetian manner. when however this work is viewed and compared with that of other artists, we discover a sameness of style, the character of the time; a deficiency of strength in the colours and shadows is the common failing. it seems as if the art, through a long course of years, had become debilitated: it discovers the lineaments of a better age, but feebly expressed and deprived of their primitive vigour. that portion of the work which remained unfinished, was, after the death of pius iv., completed by vasari and his school, under his successor; and some little was supplied under gregory xiii., who was elected in . with that year a reign commenced but little auspicious to art, and still less so was the pontificate of sixtus v., the successor of gregory. these pontiffs erected or ornamented so many public buildings, that we can scarcely move a step in rome, without meeting with the papal arms of a dragon or a lion. baglione has accurately described them, and to him we are indebted for the lives of the artists of this and the following period. it is natural for men advanced in years to content themselves with mediocrity in the works which they order, from the apprehension of not living to see them, if they wait for the riper efforts of talent. hence those artists were the most esteemed, and the most employed, who possessed despatch and facility of execution, particularly by sixtus, of whose severity towards dilatory artists we shall shortly adduce a memorable instance. this inaccuracy of style was continued to the time of clement viii., when a number of works were hastily finished to meet the opening of the holy year . under these pontiffs the painters of italy, and even the _oltramontani_, inundated rome with their works, in the same manner that the poets and philosophers had filled that city with their writings in the time of domitian and marcus aurelius. every one indulged his own taste; and the style of many was deteriorated through rapidity of execution. thus the art, particularly in fresco, became the employment of a mechanic, not founded in the just imitation of nature, but in the capricious ideas of the artist.[ ] nor was the colouring better than the design. at no period do we find such an abuse of the simple tints, in none so feeble a chiaroscuro, or less harmony. these are the mannerists, who peopled the churches, convents, and saloons of rome with their works, but in the collections of the nobility they have not had the same good fortune. this era, nevertheless, is not wholly to be condemned, as it contains several great names, the relics of the preceding illustrious age. we have enumerated the painters who flourished in rome in the first reigns of this century, and we ought to notice a number of others. they were for the most part foreigners, and ought to be introduced in other schools. i shall here describe those particularly, who were born within the limits of the roman school, and those who, being established in it, taught and propagated their own peculiar style. girolamo siciolante da sermoneta, who adopted raffaello's style, may be enumerated among the scholars of that great man, from his felicitous imitation of their common master. in the sala de' regi, in the vatican, he painted pepin, king of france, bestowing ravenna on the church, after having made astolfo, king of the lombards, his prisoner. but he approached raffaello more closely in some of his oil pictures than in his frescos, as in the martyrdom of s. lucia, in the church of s. maria maggiore; in the transfiguration in ara coeli, and in the nativity in the church della pace, a subject which he repeated in the most graceful style in the church of osimo. his masterpiece is in ancona on the great altar in the church of s. bartolommeo, a vast composition, original and rich in invention, and commensurate with the grandeur of the subject, and the multitude of saints that are introduced in it. the throne of the virgin is seen above, amidst a brilliant choir of angels, and on either side a virgin saint in the attitude of adoration. to this height there is a beautiful ascent on each side, and the picture is thus divided into a higher and lower part, in the latter of which is the titular saint, a half naked figure vigorously coloured, together with s. paul and two other saints, the whole in a truly raffaellesque style. this altarpiece possesses so much harmony, and such a force of colour, that it is esteemed by some persons the best picture in the city. if any thing be wanting in it, it is perhaps a more correct observance of the perspective. sermoneta did not paint many pictures for collections. he excelled in portrait painting. a similar manner, though more laboured, and formed on the styles of raffaello and andrea del sarto, was adopted by scipione pulzone da gaeta, who was educated in the studio of jacopino del conte. he died young in his thirty-eighth year, but left behind him a great reputation, partly in the painting of portraits, of which he executed a great number for the popes and princes of his day, and with so much success, that by some he is called the vandyke of the roman school. he was a forerunner of seybolt in the high finishing of the hair, and in representing in the pupil of the eye the reflexion of the windows, and other objects as minute and exact as in real life. he also painted some pictures in the finest style, as the crucifixion in the vallicella, and the assumption in s. silvestro at monte cavallo, a composition of chaste design, great beauty of colouring, and brilliant in effect. in the borghese collection is a holy family by him, and in the gallery in florence, a christ praying in the garden; and in other places are to be found some of his cabinet pictures, deservedly held in high esteem. taddeo and federigo zuccaro have been called the vasaris of this school; for as vasari trod in the steps of michelangiolo, so these artists professed to follow raffaello. they were the sons of an indifferent painter of s. angiolo in vado, called ottaviano zuccaro, and came to rome one after the other, and in the roman state executed a vast number of works, some good, some indifferent, and others, when they allowed their pupils to take a share in them, absolutely bad. a salesman, who dealt in the pictures of these artists, was accustomed, like a retailer of merchandize, to ask his purchasers whether they wished for a zuccaro of holland, of france, or of portugal; intimating by this that he possessed them of all qualities. taddeo, who was the elder of the two, studied first under pompeo da fano, and afterwards with giacomone da faenza. from the latter and other good italian artists, whom he assiduously studied, he acquired sufficient talent to distinguish himself. he adopted a style which, though not very correct, was unconstrained and engaging, and very attractive to such as do not look for grandeur of design. he may be compared to that class of orators who keep the attention of their hearers awake, not from the nature of their subject, but from the clearness of their language, and from their finding, or thinking they find, truth and nature in every word. his pictures may be called compositions of portraits; the heads are beautiful, the hands and feet not negligently painted, nor yet laboured, as in the florentine manner; the dress and ornaments, and form of the beard, are agreeable to the times; the disposition is simple, and he often imitates the old painters in shewing on the canvass only half figures in the foreground, as if they were on a lower plain. he often repeated the same countenance, and his own portrait. in his hands, feet, and the folds of his drapery, he is still less varied, and not unfrequently errs in his proportions. in rome are vast works of taddeo, in fresco, and amongst the best may be ranked the history of the evangelists, in the church of the consolazione. he left few pictures in oil. there is a pentecost by him in the church of the spirito santo in urbino, which city also possesses some other of his works, though not in his best style. he is most pleasing in his small cabinet pictures, which are finished in the first style of excellence. one of the best of these, formerly possessed by the duke of urbino, is now in the collection of the noble family of leopardi, in osimo. it is a nativity of our lord, in taddeo's best manner, but none of his productions have added so much to his celebrity as the pictures in the farnese palace of caprarola, which were engraved by preninner in . they represent the civil and military history of the illustrious family of the farnesi. there occur also other subjects, sacred and profane, of which the most remarkable is the stanza del sonno, the subject of which was executed in a highly poetical manner, from the suggestions of caro in a delightful letter, which was circulated among his friends, and is reprinted in the lettere pittoriche, (tom. iii. l. ). strangers who visit caprarola, often return with a higher opinion of this artist than they carried with them. it is true that a number of young artists, fully his equal, or perhaps superior to him, were employed there, both in conjunction with him and after his death, whose works ought not to be confounded with his, though it is not always easy to distinguish them. like raffaello, he died at the age of thirty-seven, and his monument is to be seen at the side of that illustrious master in the rotunda. federigo, his brother and scholar, resembled him in style, but was not equal to him in design, having more mannerism than taddeo, being more addicted to ornament, and more crowded in his composition. he was engaged to finish in the vatican, in the farnese palace, in the church of la trinità de' monti, and other places, the various works which his brother had left incomplete at his death; and he thus succeeded, as it were, to the inheritance of his own house. he had the reputation of possessing a noble style, and was invited by the grand duke francis i. to paint the great dome of the metropolitan church at florence, which was commenced by vasari, and left unfinished at his death. federigo in that task designed more than three hundred figures, fifty feet in height, without mentioning that of lucifer, so gigantic that the rest appeared like children, for so he informs us, adding, that they were the largest figures that the world had ever seen.[ ] but there is little to admire in this work except the vastness of the conception,[ ] and in the time of pier da cortona, there was an intention of engaging that artist to substitute for it a composition of his own, had not the apprehension that his life might not be long enough to finish it, frustrated the design. after the painting of this dome, every work on a large scale in rome was assigned to federigo, and the pope engaged him to paint the vault of the paolina, and thus give the last touch to a work commenced by michelangiolo. about this period, in order to revenge himself on some of the principal officers of the pope who had treated him with indignity, he painted, and exposed to public view, an allegorical picture of calumny,[ ] in which he introduced the portraits of all those persons who had given him offence, representing them with asses' ears. his enemies, on this, made such complaints, that he was compelled to quit the dominions of the pope. he therefore left rome and visited flanders, holland, and england, and was afterwards invited to venice to paint the submission of the emperor federigo barbarossa to pope alexander iii., in the palazzo pubblico, and he was there highly esteemed and constantly employed. the pontiff being by this time appeased, federigo returned to finish the work he had left imperfect, and which is perhaps the best of all he executed in rome, without the assistance of his brother. the larger picture also of s. lorenzo in damaso, and that of the angels in the gesù, and other of his works in various churches, are not deficient in merit. federigo built for himself a house in the monte pincio, and decorated it with pictures in fresco, portraits of his own family, conversazioni, and many novel and strange subjects, which he painted with the assistance of his scholars, and at little expense; but on this occasion more than on any other, he appears an indifferent artist, and may be called the champion of mediocrity. federigo was afterwards invited to madrid by philip ii.; but that monarch not being satisfied with his works, they were effaced, and their places supplied by tibaldi, and he himself, with an adequate pension, was sent back to italy. he undertook another journey late in life, visiting the principal cities of italy, and leaving specimens of his art in every place where he was called to exercise his talents. one of the best of these is an assumption of the virgin, in an oratory of rimino, on which he inscribed his name, and the death of the virgin, at s. maria _in acumine_, with some figures of the apostles, more finished than usual with him. a simple and graceful style is observable in his presepio, in the cathedral of foligno, and in two pictures from the life of the virgin, in a chapel of loreto, painted for the duke of urbino. the cistercian monks, at milan, possess two large pictures in their library on the miracle della neve, with a numerous assemblage of figures, the countenances in his usual lively manner, the colouring varied and well preserved. in the borromei college, in pavia, is a saloon painted in fresco, with subjects from the life of s. carlo. the most admired of these is the saint at prayer in his retirement; the other pieces, the consistory in which was his chapel, and the plague of milan, would be much better, if the figures were fewer. he returned to venice, where his great picture remained, and which had not been so much injured by time, as by a sarcasm of boschini on certain sugar [_zucchero_] of very poor quality lately imported into venice, in consequence of which he retouched his work, and wrote on it, by way of a memorial, _federicus zuccarus f. an. sal. , perfecit an. _. it is one of his best works, copious, and, agreeably to zanetti, beautiful and well sustained. he then went to turin, where he painted a s. paul, for the jesuits, and began to ornament a gallery for charles emanuel, duke of savoy; and it was in that city that he first published _la idea de' pittori, scultori, e architetti_, which he dedicated to the duke. he afterwards returned into lombardy, where he composed two other works, the one intitled _la dimora di parma del sig. cav. federigo zuccaro_: the other, _il passaggio per italia colla dimora di parma del sig. cav. federigo zuccaro_, both printed in bologna, in . in the following year, on his return to his native place, he fell sick in ancona, where he died. baglione admired the versatility of talent in this artist, which extended to sculpture and architecture; but more than all he admired his good fortune, in which he exceeded all his contemporaries. this distinction he owed in a great measure to his personal qualities, to his noble presence, his encouragement of letters, his quality of attaching persons to him, and his liberality, which led him to expend in a generous manner the large sums he derived from his works. he appears to have written with the intention of rivalling and excelling vasari. whatever was the cause, vasari was disliked by him, as may be gathered from the notes to his lives, occasionally cited by the annotator of the roman edition; and is charged by him with spleen and malignity, particularly in the life of taddeo zuccaro. in order to excel vasari, it seems he chose an abstruse mode of writing, in opposition to the plain style of that author. the whole work, printed in turin, is involved in its design, and instead of precepts, contains speculative metaphysical opinions, which tend more to raise disputes than to convey information. the language is incongruous and affected, and even the very titles to the chapters are interwoven with many absurdities, as that of the th, _che la filosofia e il filosofare è disegno metaforico similitudinario_. this style may perhaps impose on the ignorant, but cannot deceive the learned.[ ] the latter do not esteem a writer for pedantic expressions adopted from the greek and latin authors; but for a correct mode of definition, for an accuracy of analysis, for a sagacity in tracing effects to their true causes, and for a manner strictly adapted to the subject. these qualities are not to be found in the works of federigo, where we find philosophical expressions mingled with puerile reflections, as in the etymology of the word _disegno_, which after much circumlocution, he informs us, owes its derivation to _segno di dio_; and instead of affording any instructive maxims to youth, he presents them with a mass of sterile and ill directed speculations. hence we may be said to derive more information from a single page of vasari, than from this author's whole work. both mariette and bottari have shewn the little esteem in which they held this work, by their correspondence, inserted in the th volume of the lettere pittoriche. nor are his other two works of greater utility, one of which contains some arguments in the same style, which are proposed as a theme for disputation in the academy of the innominati, in parma. it is generally thought that this treatise of zuccaro was composed in rome, where he presided in the academy of s. luke. that academy was instituted in the pontificate of gregory xiii., who signed the brief for its foundation at the instance of muziano, as baglione relates in the life of that artist. he further states, that when the ancient church of s. luke, on the esquiline, was demolished, the seat i believe of the society of painters, the church of s. martina was allotted to them, at the foot of the campidoglio. but this brief does not seem to have been used until the return of zuccaro from spain, as according to the same writer, it was he who put it in execution. and this must have occurred in , if the year which was celebrated by the painters of s. luke in , was the true centenary of the academy. but the origin of the institution may be dated, agreeably to some persons, from the month of november, , as mentioned by the sig. barone vernazza, who, among the first promoters, or members, includes the piedmontese arbasia, on the relation of romano alberti. baglione says that federigo was declared president by common consent; and that that day was a sort of triumph to him, as he was accompanied on his return home by a company of artists and literary persons; and in a little time afterwards he assigned a saloon in his own house for the use of the academy. he wrote both in poetry and in prose in the academy of s. luke, which is referred to more than once in his greater work. he evinced an extraordinary affection for this institution, and according to the example of muziano, he named it the heir of his estate, in the event of the extinction of his family. he was succeeded in the presidency by laureti, and a series of eminent artists down to our own time. the sittings of the academy have now for a long time past been fixed in a house contiguous to the church of s. martina, which is decorated with the portraits and works of its members. the picture of s. luke, by raffaello, is there religiously preserved, together with his own portrait; and there too is to be seen the skull of raffaello, in a casket, the richest spoil ever won by death from the empire of art. of this academy we shall speak further towards the conclusion of this third book. we will now return to federigo. the school of this artist received distinction from passignano and other scholars, elsewhere mentioned by us. to these we may add niccolo da pesaro, who painted in the church of ara coeli; but whose best piece is a last supper in the church of the sacrament at pesaro. it is a picture so well conceived and harmonized, and so rich in pictorial ornament, that lazzarini has descanted on it in his lectures as one of the first of the city. it is said that baroccio held this artist in great esteem. baglione commended him for his early works, but it must be confessed that he did not persevere in his first style, and fell into an insipid manner, whence he suffered both in reputation and fortune. another artist of pesaro, instructed by zuccaro, was gio. giacomo pandolfi, whose works are celebrated in his native city, and do not yield the palm to those of federigo, as the picture of s. george and s. carlo in the duomo. he ornamented the whole chapel in the nome di dio, with a variety of subjects in fresco, from the old and new testament; but as he was then become infirm from age and the gout, they did not add much to his fame. his greatest merit was the instilling good principles into simon canterini, of whom, as well as of the pesarese artists his followers, we shall write at large in the school of bologna. one paolo cespede, a spaniard, called in rome cedaspe, also received his education from zuccaro. he commenced his career in rome, and excited great expectations from some pictures in fresco, which are still to be seen at the church of trinità de' monti, and other places. he had adopted a natural style, and was in a way to rise in his profession, when he obtained an ecclesiastical benefice in his native country, and retired to reside upon it. marco tullio montagna accompanied federigo to turin as an assistant; and a small picture of s. saverio and other saints in a church of that city, generally attributed to the school of zuccaro, is probably by him. he painted in rome in the church of s. niccolo in carcere, in the vaults of the vatican, and in many other places, in a tolerable style, but nothing more. after the above named artists a crowd of contemporaries present themselves, more particularly those who had the direction of the works under gregory xiii. the sala de' duchi was entrusted to lorenzino of bologna, who was invited to rome from his native city, where he enjoyed the reputation of an excellent painter, and deservedly so, as we shall see in his place. he undertook the decoration of the gallery of the vatican, which, from the vast size of that building, forms a boundless field of art. niccolò circignani, or delle pomarance, already mentioned in the first book, distributed the work amongst a number of young artists, who there painted historical subjects, landscapes, and arabesques. the pope was desirous that the walls also should serve the cause of science, and ordered the compartments to be adorned with geographical delineations of ancient and modern italy, a task which was assigned to padre ignazio danti, a domenican, a mathematician and geographer of his court, and who was afterwards promoted to the bishopric of alatri. ignazio was born in perugia, of a family devoted to the fine arts, and had two brothers, painters; girolamo, of whom there remain some works in s. pietro, on the model of vasari; and vincenzio, who in rome assisted ignazio, and there died, and was a good fresco painter. another grand work was also undertaken about this time, which was the continuation of the gallery of raffaello, in an arm of the building contiguous to it, where, in conformity to the plan of raffaello, it was intended to paint four subjects in every arcade, all from the new testament. roncelli, the scholar of circignano, our notice of whom we shall reserve to a subsequent epoch, was charged with the execution of this plan, but was himself subject to the direction of padre danti, experience having shewn that the entire abandonment of a design to the direction of practical artists is injurious to its execution, as there are few that, in the choice of inferior artists, are not governed by influence, avarice, or jealousy. the selection, therefore, was reserved to danti, who to an excellent practical knowledge of the art of design, united moral qualities that insured success: and under his direction the whole work was regulated and conducted in such a manner, that the spirit of raffaello seemed to be resuscitated in the precincts of the vatican. but the hand was no longer the same, and the imbecility which was apparent in the new productions, when compared with the old, betrayed the decline of the art, though we occasionally meet with subjects by tempesti, raffaellino da reggio, the younger palma, and girolamo massei, which reflect a ray of honour on the age. another superintendant of the works of the vatican, but rather in architecture than in painting, was girolamo muziano da brescia, who, undistinguished in his native place, came young to rome, and was there considered the great supporter of true taste. he derived his principles both in design and colour from the venetian school, and early acquired such skill in landscape, that he was named in rome il giovane de' paesi. but he soon afterwards adopted a more elevated style, and devoted himself with such obstinate assiduity to study, that he shaved his head in order to prevent himself from going out of the house. it was at this time that he painted the raising of lazarus, afterwards transferred from the church of s. maria maggiore to the quirinal palace; and which, when exposed to public view, immediately conciliated to him the esteem and protection of bonarruoti. his pictures occur in various churches and palaces of rome, and are often ornamented with landscapes in the style of titian. the church of the carthusians possesses one of singular beauty. it represents a troop of anchorets attentively listening to a saint. there is great elegance and good disposition in the picture of the circumcision in the gesù, and the ascension in ara coeli displays an intimate knowledge of art. the picture too of s. francis receiving the stigmata, in the church of the conception, is an enchanting piece, both as regards the figures and the landscape. nor was he beneath himself in the pictures which he executed in the duomo at orvieto, which are highly commended by vasari. the chapel of the visitation in the basilica loretana, possesses three pictures by him, and that of the probatica discovers great originality and expression. in the duomo of foligno, a picture by him in fresco, of the miracles of s. feliciano is pointed out, which was formerly hidden by dust, but was a few years ago restored in a wonderful manner to all its original freshness and charm of colour. the figures of muziano are accurately drawn, and we not unfrequently trace in them the anatomy of michelangiolo. he excelled in painting military and foreign dresses; and above all, in representing hermits and anchorets, men of severe aspects, whose bodies are attenuated by abstinence, and his style, in general, inclines rather to the dry than the florid. we are indebted to this artist for the engraving of the trajan column. giulio romano had begun to copy it, and the laborious undertaking was continued and perfected by muziano, and so prepared for the engraver. the most celebrated scholar of muziano, was cesare nebbia of orvieto. he presided over the works of sixtus, entrusting the completion of his own designs to the younger painters. in this task he was assisted by gio. guerra da modena, who suggested to him the subjects, and apportioned the work among the scholars. both the one and the other of these artists, was endowed with a facility which was essential to the vast works on which they were employed in the five years reign of sixtus, in the chapel of s. maria maggiore, in the library of the vatican itself, in the quirinal and lateran palaces, and at the scala santa, and many other places. but in other respects, muziano left his scholars far behind, as he was possessed of a great and inventive genius, while nebbia was more remarkable for the mechanism of his art; particularly when he decorated walls. there are, however, some beautiful and well coloured pictures by him; among which may be mentioned the epiphany, in the church of s. francis at viterbo, quite in muziano's style. baglione associates with nebbia giovanni paolo della torre, a gentleman of rome, who was raised by girolamo above the rank of a mere dilettante. taja too, adds giacomo stella da brescia, who, he observes, had degenerated in some degree from the style of his master. he was employed, nevertheless, both in the gallery of gregory xiii., and in other places, not without commendation. it may be observed, that m. bardon states him to have been a native of lyons, long resident in italy. another foreigner, but who came a considerable time after muziano, was raffaellino da reggio, who, after being instructed in the first principles of the art by lelio di novellara, formed a master style in rome. nothing was wanting to this artist except a greater knowledge of design, as he possessed spirit, disposition, delicacy, relief, and grace; qualities not common in that age. his pictures in oil are occasionally, though not often, found in galleries, but his best works are his frescos of small figures, such as the two charming fables of hercules, in the ducal hall at florence, and the two gospel stories in the gallery adjoining to that of raffaello d'urbino. he painted also at caprarola in competition with the zuccari, and vecchi, and with such success, that his figures seem living, while those of his comrades are inanimate. this excellent artist died immaturely, greatly lamented, without leaving any pupil worthy of his name. he was however considered as the head of a school in rome, and his works were studied by the youth of the academy. many artists adopted his manner of fresco, particularly paris nogari of rome, who left there numerous works, which are known for their peculiar manner; amongst others, some subjects in the gallery. he had another follower in gio. batista della marca, of the family of lombardelli, a young man of great natural talents, but which were rendered unavailing from his want of application. many pictures in fresco by him remain in perugia and in rome, but the best are in montenovo, his native place. none, however, approached so near to raffaellino as giambatista pozzo, who also died young, and who, as far as regards ideal beauty, may be considered the guido of his day. to be convinced of this it is only necessary to see the choir of angels, which he painted in the chapel of the gesù. if he had survived to the time of the caracci, it is impossible to say to what degree of perfection he might not have attained. tommaso laureti, a sicilian, already noticed with commendation by us among the scholars of f. sebastiano, and deserving honourable mention among the professors of bologna, was invited to rome in the pontificate of gregory xiii., and was entrusted with a work of an invidious nature. this was the decoration of the ceiling and lunettes in the hall of constantine, the lower part of which had been illustrated by the pencils of giulio romano and perino. the subjects chosen by this master were intended to commemorate the piety of constantine, idols subverted, the cross exalted, and provinces added to the church. baglione informs us that laureti was entertained by the pope in his palace in a princely manner; and either from his natural indolence, or his reluctance to return to a laborious profession, procrastinated the work so much, that gregory died, and sixtus commenced his reign before it was completed. the new pontiff was aware that the artist had abused the patience of his predecessor, and became so exasperated, that laureti, in order to avert his wrath, proceeded in all haste to finish his labours. when the work however was exposed to public view, in the first year of the new pontificate, it was judged unworthy of the situation. the figures were too vast and heavy, the colouring crude, the forms vulgar. the best part of it was a temple in the ceiling, drawn in excellent perspective, in which art indeed laureti may be considered as one of the first masters of his day. misfortune was added to his disgrace; for he was not only not rewarded as he had expected, but the cost of his living and provisions were placed to his charge, even to the corn supplied to his horse. so that he gained no remuneration, and actually died in poverty in the succeeding pontificate. he had however an opportunity afforded him of redeeming his credit, particularly in the stories of brutus and horatius on the bridge, which he painted in the campidoglio, in a much better style. intimately acquainted with the theory of art, and possessing an agreeable manner of inculcating its principles, he taught at rome with considerable applause. he had a scholar and assistant in the vatican, in antonio scalvati, a bolognese, who in the time of sixtus was employed among the painters of the library, and who was afterwards engaged in painting portraits under clement viii., leo xi., and paul v.; and was highly celebrated in this department. a better fortune attended gio. batista ricci da novara, who arrived at rome in the pontificate of sixtus, and who from his despatch manifested in the works at the scala lateranense, and the vatican library, was immediately taken into employ by the pope, who appointed him superintendant for the decorations of the palace of the quirinal. he was also held in favour by clement viii., in whose time he painted in s. giovanni laterano the history of the consecration of that church: and there, according to baglione, he succeeded better than in any other place. he left not a few works in rome, and elsewhere his pictures display a facility of pencil, and a brilliancy and elegance which attract the eye. he was born in a city into which gaudenzio ferrari had introduced the raffaellesque style, and where lanini, his son-in-law had practised it; but in whose hands it seemed to decline, and still more so under ricci, when he came to rome; so that his style was raffaellesque reduced to mannerism, like that professed by circignani, nebbia, and others of this age. giuseppe cesari, also called il cavaliere d'arpino, is a name as celebrated among painters, as that of marino among poets. these two individuals, each in his line, contributed to corrupt the taste of an age already depraved, and attached more to shew than to reality. both the one and the other exhibited considerable talents, and it is an old observation, that the arts, like republican states, have received their subversion from master spirits. cesari discovered great capacity from his infancy, and soon attracted the admiration of danti, and obtained the protection of gregory xiii., with the reputation of the first master in rome. some pictures painted in conjunction with giacomo rocca,[ ] from designs of michelangiolo, (in which giacomo was very rich,) established his reputation. so much talent was not required to secure him general applause, as the public of that day were chiefly attracted by the energy, fire, tumult, and crowds, that filled his composition. his horses, which he drew in a masterly manner, and his countenances, which were painted with all the force of life, won the admiration of the many; while few attended to the incorrect design, the monotony of the extremities, the poverty of the drapery, the faulty perspective and chiaroscuro. of these few however were caravaggio, and annibale caracci. with these he became involved in disputes, and challenges were mutually exchanged. cesari refused the challenge of caravaggio, as he was not a cavaliere, and annibale declined that of the cavaliere d'arpino, alleging that the pencil was his proper weapon. thus these two eminent professors met with no greater obstacle in rome in their attempts to reform the art, than cesari and his adherents. the cavaliere d'arpino survived both these masters more than thirty years, and left behind him _progeniem vitiosiorem_. to conclude, he was born a painter, and in so vast and difficult an art, he had endowments sufficient to atone, in part, for his defects. his colouring in fresco was admirable, his imagination was fruitful and felicitous, his figures were animated, and possessed a charm that baglione, who himself entertained very different principles, could not refrain from admiring. cesari moreover practised two distinct manners. the one, the most to be commended, is that in which he painted the ascension, at s. prassede, and several prophets, _di sotto in su_: the madonna in the ceiling of s. giovanni grisogono, which is remarkable for its fine colouring; the gallery of the casa orsini; and in the campidoglio, the birth of romulus, and the battle of the romans and the sabines, a painting in fresco, preferred by some to all his other works. others of his pictures may be added, particularly some smaller works, with lights in gold, exquisitely finished, as if they were by an entirely different artist. of this kind there is an epiphany in possession of the count simonetti, in osimo, and s. francis in extacies, in the house of the belmonti at rimino. his other style was sufficiently free, but negligent, and this latter he used too frequently, partly through impatience of labour, and partly through old age, as may be seen in three other subjects in the campidoglio, painted in the same saloon forty years after the first. his works are almost innumerable, not only in rome, where he worked in the pontificates of gregory and sixtus, and where, under clement viii., he presided over the decorations in s. gio. laterano, and there continued under paul v., but also in naples, at monte casino, and in various cities of the roman state, without mentioning the pictures sent to foreign courts, and painted for private individuals. for the latter indeed, and even for persons of inferior rank in life, he worked more willingly than for princes, with whom, like the tigellius of horace, he was capricious and morose. he was indeed desirous of being solicited by persons of rank, and often affected to neglect them, so much had the applause of a corrupted age flattered his vanity. cesari had many scholars and assistants, whom he more particularly employed in the works of the lateran; as he did not deign in those times often to take up the pencil himself. some of these pupils adopted his faults, and as they did not possess the same genius, their works proved intolerably bad. a vicious example, easy of imitation, is, as horace has observed, highly seductive. there were however some of his school, who in part at least corrected themselves from the works of others. his brother, too, bernardino cesari, was an excellent copyist of the designs of bonarruoti, and worked assiduously under the cav. giuseppe, but little remains of him, as he died young. one cesare rossetti, a roman, served under arpino a longer time, and of him there are many works in his own name. there are also to be found some public memorials of bernardino parasole, who was cut off in the flower of his age. guido ubaldo abatini of città di castello, merited commendation from passeri as a good fresco painter, particularly for a vault at the vittoria. francesco allegrini di gubbio was a fresco painter, in design very much resembling his master, if we may judge from the cupola of the sacrament in the cathedral of gubbio, and from another at the madonna de' bianchi. we there observe the same attenuated proportions, and the same predominant facility of execution. he nevertheless shewed himself capable of better things, when his mind became matured, and he worked with more care. he is commended by ratti for various works in fresco, executed at savona, in the duomo, and in the casa gavotti, and for others in the casa durazzo at genoa; where one may particularly admire the freshness of the colouring, and the skill exhibited in his _sotto in su_. he is also commended by baldinucci for similar works in the casa panfili, and merits praise for his smaller pieces and battles frequently found in rome and gubbio. he also added figures to the landscapes of claude, two of which are to be seen, in the colonna palace. he lived a long time in rome, and his son flaminio with him, commemorated by taja for some works in the vatican. baglione has enumerated not a few other artists, in part belonging to the roman state, and in part foreigners. donato of formello (a fief of the dukes of bracciano) had greatly improved on the style of vasari his master, as is proved by his histories of s. peter, in a staircase of the vatican, particularly the one of the piece of money found in the fish's mouth. he died whilst yet young, and the art had real cause to lament his loss. giuseppe franco, also called _dalle lodole_, in consequence of his painting a lark in one of his pieces in s. maria in via, and on other occasions, and prospero orsi, both romans, had a share in the works prosecuted by sixtus. when these were finished, the former repaired to milan, where he remained some years; the latter, from painting historical subjects, passed to arabesque, and from his singular talents in that line, was called prosperino dalle grottesche. of the same place was girolamo nanni, deserving of particular mention, because, during all the time that he was engaged in these works, he never hurried himself, and to the directors who urged him to despatch, he answered always _poco e buono_, which expression was ever afterwards attached to him as a surname. he continued to work with the same study and devotion, as far as his talents would carry him, at s. bartolommeo all'isola, at s. caterina de' funai, and in many other places: he was not however much distinguished, except for his great application. of him however, and of giuseppe puglia, or bastaro, and of cesare torelli, also romans; and of pasquale cati da jesi, an inexhaustible painter of that age, though somewhat affected, and of many professors, that are in fact forgotten in rome itself, i have thought it my duty to give this short notice, as i had pledged myself to include a number of the second rate artists. it would be an endless task to enumerate here all the foreign artists. it may be sufficient to observe, that in the vatican library more than a hundred artists, almost all foreigners, were employed. in the first book i have mentioned gio. de' vecchi, an eminent master, who, from the time of his works for the farnese family, was considered a first rate artist; and the colony of painters, his fellow citizens, whom raffaellino brought to rome. in the same book we meet with titi, naldini, zucchi, coscj, and a number of florentines, and in the following book matteo da siena and some others of his school. again, in the fourth book, matteo da leccio and giuseppe valeriani dell' aquila will have place; and in the third volume will be described palma the younger (amongst the venetians) who worked in the gallery; about which time salvator fontana, a venetian, painted at s. maria maggiore, whom it is sufficient to have named. we may also enumerate nappi and paroni of milan, croce of bologna, mainardi, lavinia fontana, and not a few others of various schools, who in those times painted in rome, without ultimately remaining there, or leaving scholars. a more circumstantial mention may be made of some _oltramontani_, who, in conjunction with our countrymen, were employed in the works in these pontificates; and it may be done with the more propriety, as we do not speak of them in any other part of our work. but those who worked in rome were very numerous in every period, and it would be too much to attempt to enumerate them all in a history of italian painting. one arrigo, from flanders, painted a resurrection in the sistine chapel, and also worked in fresco in other places in rome; and is commended by baglione as an excellent artist. francesco da castello, was also of flanders, and of a more refined and correct taste. there is a picture by him at s. rocco, with various saints; and it is perhaps the best piece the world possesses of him; but almost all his works were painted for the cabinet, and in miniature, in which he excelled. the brilli we may include among the landscape painters. the states of the church possessed in this epoch painters of consideration, besides those in perugia, where flourished the two alfani and others, followers of a good style; but whether they were known or employed in rome, i am not able to say. i included them in the school of pietro, in order that they might not be separated from the artists of perugia, but they continued to live and to work for many years in the th century. to these may be added piero and serafino cesarei,[ ] and others of less note. in the city of assisi, there resided, in the beginning of the th century, a francesco vagnucci, and there remain some works by him in the spirit of the old masters. there, also, afterwards resided cesare sermei cavaliere, who was born in orvieto, and married in assisi, and lived there until , when he died at the age of . he painted both there and in perugia, and if not in a grand style of fresco, still with a felicity of design, with much spirit in his attitudes, and with a vigorous pencil. he was a good machinist, and of great merit in his oil pictures. at spello i saw a picture by him of the beatified andrea caccioli; and it seems to me, that few other painters of the roman school had at that time equalled him. his heirs, in assisi, possess some pictures by him of fairs, processions, and ceremonies which occur in that city on occasion of the perdono; and the numbers and variety and grace of the small figures, the architecture, and the humour displayed, are very captivating. at spello, just above mentioned, in the church of s. giacomo, is a picture which represents that saint and s. catherine before the madonna: where we read _tandini mevanatis_, ; that is, of tandino di bevagna, a place near assisi; nor is it a picture to be passed over. gubbio possessed two painters, brothers of the family de' nucci; virgilio, who was said to be the scholar of daniel di volterra, whose deposition he copied for an altar at s. francis in gubbio; and benedetto, a disciple of raffaellino del colle, considered the best of the painters of gubbio.[ ] both of them have left works in their native place, and in the neighbouring districts; the first of them always following the florentine, and the second the roman school. of the latter there are many pictures at gubbio, which shew the progress he had made in the style of raffaello; and to see him in his best work, we must inspect his s. thomas in the duomo, which would be taken for a picture of garofalo, or some such artist, if we were not acquainted with the master. a little time afterwards flourished felice damiani, or felice da gubbio, who is said to have studied in the venetian school. the circumcision at s. domenico has certainly a good deal of that style; but in pencil he inclines more to the roman taste, which he, perhaps, derived from benedetto nucci. the decollation of st. paul, at the castel nuovo, in recanati, is by him: the attitude of the saint excites our sympathy: the spectators are represented in various attitudes, all appropriate and animated: the drawing is correct, and the colours vivid and harmonious. it is inscribed with the year . about ten years afterwards, he painted two chapels at the madonna de' lumi, at s. severino, with subjects from the life of christ; and there likewise displayed more elegance than grandeur of style. his most studied and powerful work is at s. agostino di gubbio, the baptism of the saint, painted in , a picture abounding in figures, and which surprises by the novelty of the attire, by its correct architecture, and by the air of devotion exhibited in the countenances. he received for this picture two hundred scudi, by no means a low price in those times; and it should seem that his work was regulated by the price, since in some other pictures, and particularly in one in , he is exceedingly negligent. federigo brunori, called also brunorini, issued, it is said, from his school, and still more decidedly than his master, followed the venetian style. his portraits are natural; and he was a lover of foreign drapery, and coloured with a strong effect. the bianchi have an ecce homo by him, in which the figures are small, but boldly expressed, and shew that he had profited from the engravings of albert durer. pierangiolo basilj, instructed by damiani, and also by roncalli, partakes of their more delicate manner. his frescos, in the choir of s. ubaldo, are held in esteem; and at s. marziale, there is by him a christ preaching, with a beautiful portico in perspective, and a great number of auditors: the figures in this are also small, and such as are seen in the compositions of albert durer. the pictures appear to be painted in competition. brunori displays more energy, basilj more variety and grace. in the former edition of this work i made mention of castel durante, now urbania, in the state of urbino. i noticed luzio dolce among the ancient painters, of whom i had at that time seen no performance, except an indifferent picture, in the country church of cagli, in . since that period colucci has published (tom. xxvii.) a _cronaca di castel durante_, wherein he gives a full account of luzio, and of others that belong to that place. bernardino, his grandfather, and ottaviano, his father, excelled in stucco, and had exercised their art in other places; and he himself, who was living in , is commended for his altarpieces and other pictures, in the churches, both in his native city and other places: and further, it is stated that he was employed by the duke to paint at the imperiale. he also makes honourable mention of a brother of luzio, and extols giustino episcopio, called formerly de' salvolini, who, in conjunction with luzio, painted in the abbey the picture of the spirito santo, and the other pictures around it. he also executed many other works by himself in castel durante and elsewhere, and in rome as well, where he studied and resided for a considerable time. it is probable that luzio was, in the latter part of his life, assisted by agostino apolonio, who was his sister's son, married in s. angelo in vado, and who removed and settled in castel durante where he executed works both in stucco and in oils, particularly at s. francesco, and succeeded alike to the business and the property of his maternal uncle. at fratta, which is also in the state of urbino, there died young, one flori, of whom scarcely any thing remains, except the supper of our lord, at s. bernardino. but this picture is composed in the manner of the best period of art, and deserves commemoration. not far from thence is città di castello, where, in the days of vasari, flourished gio. batista della bilia, a fresco painter, and another gio. batista, employed in the palazzo vitelli, (tom. v. p. ). i know not whether it was from him, or some other artist, that avanzino nucci had his first instructions, who repairing to rome, designed after the best examples, and was a scholar and fellow labourer in many of the works of niccolo circignano. he had a share in almost all the works under sixtus, and executed many others, in various churches and palaces. he possessed facility and despatch, and a style not very dissimilar to that of his master, though inferior in grandeur. he resided some time in naples, and worked also in his native place. there is a picture by him, of the slaughter of the innocents, at s. silvestro di fabriano. somewhat later than he, was sguazzino, noticed by orlandi for the pictures painted at the gesù in perugia; though he left better works in città di castello, as the s. angelo, in the duomo; and the lunettes, containing various histories of our lady, at the spirito santo, besides others in various churches. he was not very correct in his drawing, but had a despatch and a contrast of colours, and a general effect that entitled him to approbation. another considerable painter, though less known, was gaspare gasparrini, of macerata. he was of noble birth, and followed the art through predilection, and painted both in fresco and oils. from the information which i received from macerata,[ ] it seems he learned to paint from girolamo di sermoneta.[ ] however this may be, gasparrini pursued a similar path, although his manner is not so finished, if we may judge from the two chapels at s. venanzio di fabriano, in one of which is the last supper, and in the other the baptism of christ. other subjects are added on the side walls, and the best is that of s. peter and s. john healing the sick, a charming composition, in the style of raffaello. we find by him, in his native place, a picture of the stigmata, at the conventuals, and some cabinet pictures, in the collection of the signori ferri, relations of the family of gaspare. others too are to be found, but either doubtful in themselves, or injured by retouching. padre civalli m. c., who wrote at the close of the sixteenth century, mentions this master with high commendation, as may be seen on reference to the _antichità picene_, tom. xxv. in a recent description of the pictures at ascoli, i find that a sebastian gasparrini, of macerata, a scholar of the cav. pomaranci, decorated a chapel of s. biagio in that city with historical paintings in fresco. but it is probable that this may be giuseppe bastiani, the scholar of gasparrini. another chapel at the carmelites in macerata, contains many pictures by him, with the date of . of marcantonio di tolentino, mentioned by borghini in his account of the tuscan artists, and after him by colucci (tom. xxv. p. ), i do not know whether or not he returned to practise his art in his native country. in caldarola, in the territory of macerata, flourished a durante de' nobili, a painter who formed himself on the style of michelangiolo. a picture of a madonna by him is to be seen in ascoli, at s. pier di castello, on which he inscribed his name and country, and the year . from another school i believe arose a simon de magistris, a painter as well as sculptor, who left many works in the province. one of his pictures of s. philip and s. james, in the duomo of osimo, in , discovers a poverty in the composition, and little felicity of execution; but he appears to greater advantage, at a more advanced period of life, in the works he left at ascoli. there is one, of the rosario, at s. domenico, where orsini found much to commend in the arrangement of the figures, in the design, and in the colouring. there is another, of the same subject, at s. rocco, which is preferred to the former, except for the shortness of the figures, and which we have described in writing of andrea del sarto, and afterwards of taddeo zuccaro. for the same reason he reproaches carlo allegretti, who, in the same city, committed a similar fault. he painted in various styles, as may be seen from an epiphany, in bassano's manner, which he placed in the cathedral, a picture which will apologize for the others. baldassini, in his storia di jesi, speaking of colucci, records there the priest antonio massi, who studied and gave to the world some pictures in bologna; and antonio sarti, whom i esteem superior to massi; praising highly his picture of the circumcision, in the collegiate church of massaccio. this city gave birth to paolo pittori, who ornamented his native place and its vicinity. these may serve as an example of the provincial painters of this age. i purposely omit many names, several of whom are fresco painters, who were indifferent artists; and others who were below mediocrity. it is indeed true, that many have escaped, from being unknown to me, and there still remain, in the roman state, many works highly beautiful, deserving of research and notice. from the time of the preceding epoch, the art became divided into various departments; and at this period, they began to multiply, in consequence of many men of talent choosing to cultivate different manners. after jacopo del conte and scipione da gaeta, the portraits of antonio de' monti, a roman, are celebrated, who was considered the first among the portrait painters under gregory; as also those of prospero and livia fontana, and of antonio scalvati; all three of the school of bologna; to whom may be added pietro fachetti, of mantua. with regard to perspective, it was successfully cultivated by jacopo barocci, commonly called il vignola, an illustrious name in architecture; owing to which his celebrity in the other branches has been overlooked. but it ought to be observed that his first studies were directed to painting, in the school of passarotti, in bologna; until he was led by the impulse of his genius, to apply himself to perspective, and by the aid of that science, as he was accustomed to say, to architecture, in which he executed some wonderful works, and amongst others the palace of caprarola. there, and i know not whether in other places, are to be seen some pictures by him. as a writer, we shall refer to him in the second index, where, omitting his other works, we shall cite the two books which he wrote in this department of art. great progress was made in rome, in the art of perspective, after laureti, by the genius of gio. alberti di città s. sepolcro, whose eulogy i shall not here stop to repeat, having already spoken of it in the first volume. baglione names two friends, tarquinio di viterbo and giovanni zanna, of rome; the first of whom painted landscapes, and the second adorned them with figures. he mentions the two brothers, conti, of ancona; cesare, who excelled in arabesques, and vincenzio in figures: these artists painted for private persons. marco da faenza was much employed under gregory xiii., in arabesques, and the more elegant decorations of the vatican, and had also the direction of other artists. of him we shall make more particular mention amongst the artists of romagna. the landscapes in the apostolic palace, and in various places of rome, were many of them painted by matteo da siena, and by gio. fiammingo, with whom taja makes us acquainted, in the ducal hall, and particularly the two brothers brilli, of flanders, who painted both in fresco and oil. matteo always retained his _ultramontane_ manner, rather dry, and not very true in colour. paolo, who survived him, improved his style, from the study of titian and the caracci, and was an excellent artist in every department of landscape, and in the power of adapting it to historical subjects. italy abounds with his pictures. two other landscape painters also lived in rome at this time, fabrizio of parma, who may be ranked with matteo, and cesare, a piedmontese, more attached to the style of paolo. nor ought we to omit filippo d'angeli, who, from his long residence in naples, is called a neapolitan, though he was born in rome, where, and as we have observed in florence, he was highly esteemed. his works are generally of a small size; his prospects are painted with great care, and ornamented with figures admirably introduced. there are also some battle pieces by him. but in battles and in hunting pieces, none in these times equalled antonio tempesti. he was followed, though at a considerable interval, by francesco allegrini, a name not new to those who have read the preceding pages. to these we may add marzio di colantonio, a roman, though he has left fewer works in rome than in turin, where he was employed by the cardinal, prince of savoy. he was also accomplished in arabesque and landscapes, and painted small frescos in an agreeable manner. it is at this epoch that vasari describes the manufacture of earthen vases, painted with a variety of colours, with such exquisite art, that they seemed to rival the oil pictures of the first masters. he pretends that this art was unknown to the ancients, and it is at any rate certain that it was not carried to such perfection by them. signor gio. batista passeri, who composed _l'istoria delle pitture in majolica fatte in pesaro e ne' luoghi circonvicini_, derives the art from luca della robbia, a florentine, who discovered a mode of giving to the clay a glazing to resist the injuries of time. in this manner were formed the bassirelievi and altars which still exist, and the pavements which are described at page . others derive this art from cina, whence it passed to the island of majolica, and from thence into italy; and this invention was particularly cultivated in the state of urbino. the coarse manufacture had been for a long time in use. the fine earthenware commenced there about , and was manufactured by an excellent artist, of whom there exists in the convent of domenicans, of gubbio, a statue of an abbot, s. antonio, well modelled and painted, and many services in various noble houses with his name _m. giorgio da ugubio_. the year is also inscribed, from which it appears that his manufacture of these articles began in , and ended in . at this time urbino also cultivated the plastic art, and the individual of his day, who most excelled, was federigo brandani. whoever thinks that i exaggerate, may view the nativity, which he left at s. joseph, and say, whether, except begarelli of modena, there is any one that can be compared with him for liveliness and grace in his figures, for variety and propriety of attitude, and for natural expression of the accessory parts; the animals, which seem alive; the satchels and a key suspended; the humble furniture, and other things admirably appropriate, and all wonderfully represented: the figure of the divine infant is not so highly finished, and is perhaps the object which least surprises us. nor in the meanwhile did the people of urbino neglect to advance the art of painted vases, in which fabric a m. rovigo of urbino is much celebrated. the subjects which were first painted in porcelain, were poor in design, but were highly valued for the colouring, particularly for a most beautiful red, which was subsequently disused, either because the secret was lost, or because it did not amalgamate with the other colours. but the art did not attain the perfection which vasari describes, until about the year , and was indebted for it to orazio fontana, of urbino, whose vases, for the polish of the varnish, for the figures, and for their forms, may perhaps be ranked before any that have come down to us from antiquity. he practised this art in many parts of the state, but more especially in castel durante, now called urbania, which possesses a light clay, extremely well adapted for every thing of this nature. his brother, flamminio, worked in conjunction with him, and was afterwards invited to florence by the grand duke of tuscany, and introduced there a beautiful manner of painting vases. this information is given us by the sig. lazzari, and for which the florentine history of art ought to express its obligations to him. the establishment of this fine taste in urbino, was, in a great measure, owing to the duke guidobaldo, who was a prince enthusiastically devoted to the fine arts, and who established a manufactory, and supported it at his own expense. he did not allow the painters of these vases to copy their own designs, but obliged them to execute those of the first artists, and particularly those of raffaello; and gave them for subjects many designs of sanzio never before seen, and which formed part of his rich collection. hence these articles are commonly known in italy by the name of raphael ware, and from thence arose certain idle traditions respecting the father of raffaello, and raffaello himself; and the appellation of _boccalajo di urbino_ (the potter of urbino), was in consequence applied, as we shall mention, to that great master.[ ] some designs of michelangiolo, and many of raffaele del colle, and other distinguished masters, were adopted for this purpose. in the life of batista franco, we are informed that that artist made an infinite number of designs for this purpose, and in that of taddeo zuccaro it is related that all the designs of the service, which was manufactured for philip ii., were entrusted to him. services of porcelain were also prepared there for charles v. and other princes, and the duke ordered not a few for his own court. several of his vases were transferred to, and are now in the s. casa di loreto; and the queen of sweden was so much charmed with them, that she offered to replace them with vases of silver. a large collection of them passed into the hands of the grand duke of florence, in common with other things inherited from the duke of urbino, and specimens of them are to be seen in the ducal gallery, some with the names of the places where they were manufactured. there are many, too, to be found in the houses of the nobility of rome, and in the state of urbino, and, indeed, in all parts of italy. the art was in its highest perfection for about the space of twenty years, or from to ; and the specimens of that period are not unworthy a place in any collection of art. if we are to believe lazzari, the secret of the art died with the fontani, and the practice daily declined until it ended in a common manufactory and object of merchandize. whoever wishes for further information on this subject, may consult the above cited passeri, who inserted his treatise in the fourth volume of the calogeriani, not forgetting the dizionario urbinate, and the cronaca durantina. the art of painting on leather deserves little attention; nevertheless, as baglione mentions it with commendation in his life of vespasian strada, a fresco painter of some merit in rome, i did not think it right to pass it over without this slight notice. [footnote : dolce, dial. della pittura, p. .] [footnote : we shall notice him again in the school of bologna, where he passed his best years, and also in the roman school, in which he was a master. sebastiano had also another scholar, or imitator, as we find a communion of s. lucia, painted in his style, in the collegiate church of spello. the artist inscribes his name, _camillus bagazotus camers faciebat_.--_orsini risposta_, p. .] [footnote : he painted the s. catherine in s. agostino, the presepio in s. silvestro at monte cavallo, and left works in many other churches.] [footnote : he painted some façades in rome. in the oratory of s. giovanni decollato, there remains the dance before herod, not very correctly designed, and feeble in colouring; but the perspective, and the richness of the drapery in the venetian style, may confer some value on the picture.] [footnote : bellori, vite de' pittori, p. .] [footnote : idea de' pittori, scultori, e architetti, reprinted in the lett. pitt. tom. vi. p. .] [footnote : the charming poet lasca noticed this work as soon as the cupola was opened to public view, in a madrigal inserted in the edition of his poems in the year . he blamed giorgio d'arezzo (vasari) more than federigo, that for sordid motives he had designed and undertaken a work, which in the judgment of the florentines, injured the cupola of brunellesco, which was the admiration of every one, and which benvenuto cellini was accustomed to call, _la maraviglia delle cose belle_. he concludes by saying, that the florentine people "non sarà mai di lamentarsi stanco se forse un dì non le si dà di bianco."] [footnote : this is not the large picture of the calumny of apelles painted in distemper for the orsini family, and engraved, and which is now to be seen in the palazzo lante, and is one of the most finished productions of federigo.] [footnote : the same inflated style has of late become prevalent in some parts of italy, with no little injury to our language and to good taste. in the _arte di vedere_ we find for example _le pieghe longitudinali, la trombeggiata resurrezzione del bello_, &c. some one has also attempted to illustrate the qualities of the art of painting by those of music, which has given occasion to a clever maestro di capella to write a humorous letter, an extract of which is given in the _difesa del ratti_, pag. , &c., and is the most entertaining and least ill tempered thing to be met with in that work.] [footnote : a scholar of daniel di volterra, from whom he inherited these designs, with many others by the same great master. he painted but little, and generally from the designs of others, and which he did not execute in a happy manner; and baglione says, his pictures were deficient in taste.] [footnote : there remained, in the time of pascoli, some _pitture saporite_, as he terms them, by this artist, at spoleto, where piero established himself, and in the neighbouring towns; and which often pass for the works of pietro perugino, from a similarity of names. it appears however that cesarei was desirous of preventing this error, as he inscribed his name perinus perusinus, or perinus cesareus perusinus, as in the picture of the rosary at scheggino, painted in . vasari, in the life of agnol gaddi, names among his scholars stefano da verona, and says, that "all his works were imitated and drawn by that pietro di perugia, the painter in miniature, who ornamented the books at the cathedral of siena, in the library of pope pius, and who worked well in fresco." these words have puzzled more than one person. pascoli (p. p. p. .) and mariotti (l. p. p. .) consider them as written of piero cesarei; as if a man born in the golden age should so far extol an old _trecentista_; or as if the canons of siena could approve such a style after possessing razzi and vanni. padre della valle interprets it to mean pietro vannucci, and not finding the books of the choir adorned in such a style as he wished, reproves vasari for having confounded so great a master with a common fresco painter and a _miniatore_. it is most likely that this _miniatore_ and _frescante_ of vasari was a third pietro, hitherto unknown in perugia, and whom we shall notice in the venetian school.] [footnote : see il sig. cav. reposati _appendice del tomo ii. della zecca di gubbio_; and the sig. conte ranghiasci in the _elenco de' professori eugubini_, inserted in vol. iv. of vasari (ediz. senese), at the end of the volume.] [footnote : i am indebted for it, to the noble sig. cav. ercolani, who obligingly transmitted it to me, after procuring it from the sig. cav. piani and the sig. paolo antonio ciccolini, of macerata.] [footnote : in a former edition, on the authority of a ms. i called him serj, and was doubtful whether siciolante was not his surname. sig. brandolese has informed me of an epitaph, in the hands of mons. galletti, in which he is called siciolante, whence serio was most probably his surname.] [footnote : another probable cause of this appellation, is to be found in the name of raffaello ciarla, who was one of the most celebrated painters of this ware, and was appointed by the duke to convey a large assortment of it to the court of spain. hence the vulgar, when they heard the name of raffaello, might attribute them to sanzio.] roman school. fourth epoch. _restoration of the roman school by barocci, and other artists, subjects of the roman state, and foreigners._ the numerous works carried on by the pontiffs gregory and sixtus, and continued under clement viii., while they in a manner corrupted the pure taste of the roman school, contributed, nevertheless, at the same time, to regenerate it. rome, from the desire of possessing the best specimens of art, became by degrees the resort of the best painters, as it had formerly been in the time of leo x. every place sent thither its first artists, as the cities of greece formerly sent forth the most valiant of their citizens to contend for the palm and the crown at olympia. barocci, of urbino, was the first restorer of the roman school. he had formed himself on the style of correggio, a style the best calculated to reform an age which had neglected the true principles of art, and particularly colouring and chiaroscuro. happy indeed had it been, had he remained in rome, and retained the direction of the works which were entrusted to nebbia, ricci, and circignani! he was there, indeed, for some time, and assisted the zuccari in the apartments of pius iv., but was compelled to fly in consequence of some pretended friends having, in an execrable manner, administered poison to him through jealousy of his talents, and so materially injured his health, that he could only paint at intervals, and for a short space of time. forsaking rome, therefore, he resided for some time in perugia, and a longer period in urbino, from whence he despatched his pictures from time to time to rome and other places. by means of these, the tuscan school derived great benefit through cigoli, passignano, and vanni, as we have before observed; and it is not improbable, that roncalli and baglione may have profited by them, if we may judge from some works of both the one and the other of these artists to be seen in various places. however this might be, at the commencement of the seventeenth century, these five were in the highest repute as artists who were not corrupted by the prevailing taste. an idea had subsisted from the time of clement viii., of decorating the church of the vatican, with the history of s. peter, and of employing in that work the best artists. the execution of this design occupied a considerable time, the pictures being reduced to mosaic, as the painting on wood and slate did not resist the humidity of the church. the five before mentioned artists were selected to paint each a subject; and bernardo castelli, one of the first painters of the genoese school, was the sixth, and the least celebrated. these artists were all liberally paid, and the five first raised to the rank of _cavalieri_, and their works had a beneficial influence on the rising generation, and proved that the reign of the mannerists was on the decline. caravaggio gave it a severe shock by his powerful and natural style, and baglione attests, that this young artist, by the great applause which he gained, excited the jealousy of federigo zuccaro, then advanced in years, and entered into competition with cesare, his former master. but the most serious blow the mannerists received, was from the caracci and their school. annibale arrived in rome not much before the year , invited by the cardinal farnese to paint his gallery; a work which occupied him for nearly eight years, and for which he received only five hundred scudi, a sum so inadequate that we can scarcely believe it to be correct. he also decorated several churches. lodovico, his cousin, was with him for a short time; agostino, his brother, for a longer period; and he had his scholars with him, amongst whom we may enumerate domenichino, guido, albano, and lanfranc. they came thither at different periods, matured in their talents, and able to assist their master not only in execution but design. rome had for some years seen only the two extreme styles of painting. caravaggio and his followers were mere _naturalists_; arpino and his scholars pure idealists. annibale introduced a style founded in nature, yet ennobled by the ideal, and supported his ideal by his knowledge of nature. he was at first denounced as cold and insipid, because he was not affected and extravagant, or rather because great merit was never unaccompanied by envy. but though envy for a time, by her insidious suggestions and subterfuges, may derive a mean pleasure in persecuting a man of genius, she can never hope to succeed in blinding the public, who ever decide impartially on the merits of individuals, and whose judgment is not disregarded even by princes. the farnese gallery was opened, and rome beheld in it a grandeur of style, which might claim a place after the sistine chapel, and the chambers of the vatican. it was then discovered, that the preceding pontiffs had only lavished their wealth for the corruption of art; and that the true secret which the great ought to put in practice lay in a few words: a judicious selection of masters, and a more liberal allowance of time. hence, though somewhat tardy indeed in consequence of the death of annibale, came the order from paul v., to distribute the work among the bolognese; for so the caracci and their scholars were at that time designated; one of whom, ottaviano mascherini, was the pope's architect.[ ] a new spirit was thus introduced into the roman school, which, if it did not wholly destroy the former extravagance of style, still in a great degree repressed it. the pontificate of gregory xv. (lodovisi) was short, but still, through national partiality, highly favourable to the bolognese, amongst whom we may reckon guercino da cento, although a follower of caravaggio rather than annibale. he was the most employed in st. peter's, and in the villa lodovisi. this reign was followed by the pontificate of urban viii., favourable both to poets and painters, though, perhaps, more so to the latter than the former; since it embraced, besides the caracci and their school, poussin, pietro da cortona, and the best landscape painters that the world had seen. the leading masters then all found employment, either from the pope himself, or his nephew the cardinal, or other branches of that family, and were engaged in the decoration of st. peter's, or their own palaces, or in the new church of the capucins, where the altarpieces were distributed among lanfranc, guido, sacchi, berrettini, and other considerable artists. the same liberal plan was followed by alexander vii. a prince of great taste, and by his successors. it was during the reign of alexander, that christina, queen of sweden, established herself in rome, and her passion for the fine arts inspired and maintained not a few of the painters whom we shall mention. it must indeed be premised, that we are under the necessity of deferring our notice of the greatest names of this epoch to another place, as they belong of right to the school of bologna, and some we have already recorded in the florentine school. but to proceed. federigo barocci might from the time of his birth be placed in the preceding epoch, but his merit assigns him to this period, in which i comprise the reformers of art. he learned the principles of his art from batista franco, a venetian by birth, but a florentine in style. this artist going young to rome, to prosecute his studies there, was struck with the grand style of michelangiolo, and copied both there and in florence, all his works, as well his paintings and drawings as statues. he became an excellent designer, but was not equally eminent as a colourist, having turned his attention at a late period to that branch of the art. in rome he may be seen in some evangelical subjects painted in fresco, in a chapel in the minerva, and preferred by vasari to any other of his works. he also decorated the choir of the metropolitan church of urbino in fresco, and there left a madonna in oil, placed between s. peter and s. paul, in the best florentine style, except that the figure of s. paul is somewhat attenuated. there is a grand picture in oil by him in the tribune of s. venanzio, in fabriano; containing the virgin, with the titular and two other protecting saints. in the sacristy of the cathedral of osimo, i saw many small pictures representing the life of christ, painted by him in the year , as we learn from the archives of that church; a thing of rare occurrence, as franco was scarcely ever known to paint pictures of this class. under this artist, whilst he resided in urbino, barocci designed and studied from the antique. he then went to pesaro, where he employed himself in copying after titian, and was instructed in geometry and perspective by bartolommeo genga, the architect, the son of girolamo and the uncle of barocci. from thence he passed to rome, and acquired a more correct style of design, and adopted the manner of raffaello, in which style he painted the s. cecilia for the duomo of urbino, and in a still more improved and original manner, the s. sebastian, a work which mancini, in point of solid taste, sets above all the works of barocci. but the amenity and gracefulness of his style led him almost instinctively to the imitation of correggio, in whose manner he painted in his native city the delightful picture of s. simon and s. judas, in the church of the conventuals. nevertheless this was not the style which he permanently adopted as his own, but as a free imitation of that great master. in the heads of his children and of his female figures, he approaches nearly to him; also in the easy flow of his drapery, in the pure contour, in the mode of foreshortening his figures; but in general his design is not so grand, and his chiaroscuro less ideal; his tints are lucid and well arranged, and bear a resemblance to the beautiful hues of correggio, but they have neither his strength nor truth. it is however delightful to see the great variety of colours he has employed, so exquisitely blended by his pencil, and there is perhaps no music more finely harmonized to the ear, than his pictures are to the eye. this is in a great measure the effect of the chiaroscuro, to which he paid great attention, and which he was the first to introduce into the schools of lower italy. in order to obtain an accurate chiaroscuro, he formed small statues of earthenware, or wax, in which art he did not yield the palm to the most experienced sculptors. in the composition and expression of every figure, he consulted the truth. he made use of models too, in order to obtain the most striking attitudes, and those most consonant to nature; and in every garment, and every fold of it, he did not shew a line that was not to be found in the model. having made his design, he prepared a cartoon the size of his intended picture, from which he traced the contours on his canvass; he then on a small scale tried the disposition of his colours, and proceeded to the execution of his work. before colouring, however, he formed his chiaroscuro very accurately after the best ancient masters, (vol. i. p. ,) of which method he left traces in a madonna and saints, which i saw in rome in the albani palace, a picture which i imagine the artist was prevented by death from finishing. another picture unfinished, and on that account very instructive and highly prized, is in possession of the noble family of graziani in perugia. to conclude, perfection was his aim in every picture, a maxim which insures excellence to artists of genius. bellori, who wrote the life of barocci, has given us a catalogue of his pictures. there are few found which are not of religious subjects; some portraits, and the burning of troy, which he painted in two pictures, one of which now adorns the borghese gallery. except on this occasion his pencil may be said to have been dedicated to religion; so devout, so tender, and so calculated to awaken feelings of piety, are the sentiments expressed in his pictures. the minerva, in rome, possesses his institution of the sacrament, a picture which clement x. employed him to paint; the vallicella has his two pictures of the visitation and the presentation. in the duomo of genoa is a crucifixion by him, with the virgin and s. john, and s. sebastian; in that of perugia, the deposition from the cross; in that of fermo, s. john the evangelist; in that of urbino, the last supper of our lord. another deposition, and a picture of the rosario, and mysteries, is in sinigaglia; and, in the neighbouring city of pesaro, the calling of st. andrew, the circumcision, the ecstacy of s. michelina on mount cavalry, a single figure, which fills the whole picture, and esteemed, it is said, by simon cantarini, as his masterpiece. urbino, besides the pictures already noticed, and some others, possesses a s. francis in prayer, at the capucins; and at the conventuals, the great picture of the perdono, in which he consumed seven years. the perspective, the beautiful play of light, the speaking countenances, the colour and harmony of the work, cannot be imagined by any one who has not seen it. the artist himself was delighted with it, wrote his name on it, and etched it. his annunciation, at loreto, is a beautiful picture, and the same subject at gubbio, unfinished; the martyrdom of s. vitale, at the church of that saint, in ravenna, and the picture of the misericordia, painted for the duomo of arezzo, and afterwards transferred to the ducal gallery of florence. the same subject exists also in the hospital of sinigaglia, copied there by the scholars of barocci, who have repeated the pictures of their master in numerous churches of the state of urbino, and of umbria, and in some in piceno, and these are, occasionally, so well painted, that one might imagine he had finished them himself. the same may be said of some of his cabinet pictures, which are to be seen in collections; such is the virgin adoring the infant christ, which i remarked in the ambrosian library at milan, in the casa bolognetti in rome, and in a noble house in cortona, and which i find mentioned also in the imperial gallery at vienna. a head of the _ecce homo_ has also been often repeated, and some holy families, which he varied in a singular manner; i have seen a s. joseph sleeping, and another s. joseph, in the casa zaccaria, in the act of raising a tapestry; and in the repose in egypt, which was transferred from the sacristy of the jesuits at perugia to the chamber of the pope, he is represented plucking some cherries for the infant christ, a picture, which seems painted to rival correggio. bellori remarks, that he was so fond of it that he frequently repeated it. the school of barocci extended itself through this duchy and the neighbouring places; although his best imitator was vanni of siena, who had never studied in urbino. the disciples of federigo were very numerous, but remaining in general in their own country they did not disseminate the principles, and few of them inherited the true spirit of their master's style: the most confining themselves to the exterior of the art of colouring; and even this was deteriorated by the use of large quantities of cinnabar and azure, colours which their master had employed with greater moderation; and they were not unfrequently condemned for this practice, as bellori and algarotti remark. the flesh tints under their pencil often became livid, and the contours too much charged. i cannot give an accurate catalogue of these scholars, but independent of the writers on the works in urbino, and other guides and traditions in various parts, i am certain, that if they were not instructed by barocci himself, they must at all events, from their country, and from the period at which they flourished, have formed themselves on his pictures. there is little to be observed respecting francesco baldelli, the nephew and scholar of federigo. i do not find any memorial of him, except a picture which he placed in the capella danzetta, of s. agostino, in perugia, and which is mentioned by crispolti, in his history of that city, at page . of bertuzzi and porino i have not seen any works, except copies in the style of barocci, or feeble productions of their own. an excellent copyist was found in alessandro vitali of urbino, in which city, at the suore della torre, is found the annunciation of loreto, copied by him in such a manner that it might be taken for the original picture. barocci was pleased with his talent, and willingly retouched some of his pictures, and probably favoured him in this way in the s. agnes and s. agostino, placed by vitali, the one in the duomo, the other in the church of the eremitani, where he may be said to surpass himself. antonio viviani, called il sordo of urbino, also made some very accurate copies of his master, which are still preserved by his noble posterity. he too was a great favourite of federigo, and was in his native city called his nephew; although baglione, who wrote his life, is silent on this head. he left some pictures in urbino, in the best style of barocci; particularly the s. donato, in a suburban church of the saint of that name. this however cannot be called his own style, for he visited rome at various times, where, having received instructions from mascherini, and employed himself for a time in the imitation of cesari, and of the rapid manner of the practicians recorded by us, he exhibited in that metropolis various styles, and some of the most feeble which he adopted. assuredly his fresco pictures, which remain in various places in rome, do not support the opinion which is inspired by a view of the vast work which he conducted in the church de' filippini at fano. there, in the vault, and in the chapel, are executed various histories of the chief of the apostles to whom the church is dedicated. his style in these exhibits a beautiful imitation of barocci and raffaello, in which the manner of the latter predominates. lazzari maintains that this antonio viviani repaired to genoa, and that soprani changed his name to antonio antoniani; thus giving to barocci a scholar who never existed. of this supposition we shall speak with more propriety in the genoese school. another viviani is mentioned by tradition in urbino, lodovico, a brother or cousin of the preceding. this painter sometimes imitates barocci, as in the s. girolamo in the duomo, and sometimes approaches the venetian style, as in the epiphany at the monastery della torre. another painter almost unknown in the history of art, but of singular merit, is filippo bellini of urbino, of whom i have not seen any works in his native place, but a number in oil and fresco scattered through many cities of the march. he is in general an imitator of barocci, as in the picture of the circumcision in the church of loreto, in the espousals of the virgin in the duomo in ancona, and in a madonna belonging to the counts leopardi at osimo. he affords, however, sometimes an example of a vigorous and lively style, and exhibits a powerful colouring, and a grandeur of composition. he discovered this character in some works in fabriano in his best time, and particularly in the opere della misericordia, which are fourteen subjects taken from scripture, and represented in the church della carità.[ ] they are beheld by cultivated foreigners with admiration, and it appears strange that such a painter, whose life and works are alike worthy of remembrance, should not have found a place in the catalogues. he is also extolled for his works in fresco, in the chapel of the conventuals in montalboddo, where he has represented the martyrdom of s. gaudenzio, and which is described in the guide book of that city. we may next notice antonio cimatori, called also antonio visacci, not only by the vulgar, but also by girolamo benedetti, in the relazione, which in the lifetime of the artist he composed on the festival at urbino, in honour of giulia de' medici, married to the prince federigo. cimatori was there engaged to paint the arches and pictures, which were exhibited, in conjunction with the younger viviani, mazzi, and urbani. his forte lay in pen drawing, and in chiaroscuro; as may be seen from his prophets, in a grand style, transferred from the duomo to the apostolic palace. he did not leave many works in his native place; but amongst them is his picture of s. monica, at s. agostino. his copies from the original pictures of barocci are to be found in various places, particularly in the duomo of cagli. he resided, and worked for a long time in pesaro, where he instructed giulio cesare begni, a bold and animated artist, a good perspective painter, and in a great degree a follower of the venetian school, in which he studied and painted. he left many works in udine, and many more in his native place, in a rapid and unfinished style, but of a good general effect. in the _descrizione odeporica della spagna_, (tom. ii. p. ), we find giovanni and francesco d'urbino mentioned, who about the year , it seems, were both engaged by the court to decorate the escurial. the latter came early in life to spain, and being endowed with a noble genius, soon became an excellent artist, and is extolled by his contemporary p. siguenza, and by all who have seen the judgment of solomon, and his other pictures in a choir in that magnificent place: he died young. that these works belong to the pencil of barocci might be suspected from their era, and the practice of that splendid court, which was in the habit of engaging in its service the first masters of italy or their scholars. but not possessing positive information, nor finding any indication of their style, i dare not assign these two to barocci. i feel a pleasure however in restoring them to the glorious country from which they had been separated. passing from the fellow countrymen of barocci to foreigners, some persons have imagined andrea lilio, of ancona, to have been his disciple. i rather consider him to have been an imitator of him, but more in respect to colour than any thing else. he had a share in the works which were carried on under sixtus, and painted for the churches, chiefly in fresco, and sometimes in partnership with viviani of urbino. he went to rome when young, and lived there until the reign of paul v., but suffered both in body and mind from domestic misfortunes, which interrupted not a little his progress in art. ancona possesses several of his pictures in fresco, varying in their merit, as well as some of his oil pictures at the paolotti in s. agostino, and in the sacristy some pieces, from the life of s. nicholas, highly prized. the most celebrated is his martyrdom of s. lorenzo, by many ascribed to barocci, for which i refer to the _guida_ of montalboddo, and the church of s. catherine, where it is placed. his greatest work is the altarpiece in the duomo at fano, representing all the saints, containing a vast number of figures well grouped and well contrasted, and if not very correctly designed, still possessing barocci's tone of colour. giorgio picchi of durante i included in a former edition among the scholars of barocci, in conformity to the general opinion prevalent in pesaro and rimini; but i have not found this confirmed in the chronicle of castel durante, published by colucci, which contains a particular account of this artist, written soon after his death. i am therefore inclined to think him only a follower, like lilio, with whom he was associated in rome in the time of sixtus v., if the chronicle is to be relied on. it relates that he worked in the library of the vatican, at the scala santa, and at the palazzo di s. giovanni; and it appears unaccountable that all this was unknown to baglione, who narrates the same circumstances of lilio and others, and makes no mention of picchi. however this may be, he was certainly a considerable artist, and was attached to the style of barocci, which was in vogue at that period, as we may perceive from his great picture of the cintura, in the church of s. agostino, in rimini, and still more from the history of s. marino, which he painted in the church of that saint in the same city. others of his works are to be found both in oil and fresco in urbino, in his native place, at cremona, and elsewhere; and although on a vast scale, embracing whole oratories and churches, they could not have cost him any great labour, from the rapid manner which he had acquired in rome. in s. ginesio, a place in the march, domenico malpiedi is considered as belonging to federigo's school, and of him there are preserved in the collegiate church, the martyrdoms of s. ginesio and s. eleuterio, which are highly commended. from colucci we learn that there also remain other works by him; and from the prices paid, we may conclude that he was esteemed an excellent artist. he was living in , and about the same time there flourished also another malpiedi, who painted a deposition from the cross in s. francesco di osimo, and inscribed on it _franciscus malpedius di s. ginesio_, a picture feeble in composition, deficient in expression, and little resembling the school of barocci, except in a distant approximation of colour. the _guida_ of pesaro assigns to the same school terenzio terenzj, called il rondolino, whom it characterises as an eminent painter, and of whom there exist four specimens in public, and many more in the neighbourhood of the city (page ). it is also mentioned that he was employed by the cardinal della rovere in rome, and that he placed a picture in the church of s. silvestro. the picture of s. silvestro _in capite_, which represents the madonna, attended by saints, is ascribed by titi to a terenzio of urbino, who, according to baglione, served the cardinal montalto. it is most probable, that in the records of pesaro there arose some equivoque on the name of the cardinal, and that these two painters might, or rather ought to be merged in one. terenzio rondolino, it appears to me, is the same as terenzio d'urbino, and very probably in rome took his name from urbino, the capital of pesaro. but by whatever name this painter may be distinguished, we learn from baglione that terenzio d'urbino was a noted cheat; and that, after having sold to inexperienced persons many of his own pictures for those of ancient masters, he attempted to pass the same deceit upon the cardinal peretti, the nephew of sixtus v. and his own patron, offering to his notice one of his own pieces as a raphael: but the fraud was detected, and terenzio in consequence banished from the court; a circumstance which he took to heart, and died whilst yet young. two brothers, felice and vincenzio pellegrini, born and resident in perugia, are recorded by orlandi and pascoli, as scholars of barocci. the first became an excellent designer, and in the pontificate of clement viii. was called to rome, probably to assist cesari, though it is not known that he left any work in his own name. some copies after barocci by him exist in perugia, and it is well known that his master was highly satisfied with his labours in that line. the other brother is mentioned by bottari in the notes to his life of raffaello; and i recollect having seen in perugia a picture in the sacristy of s. philip, in rather a hard manner, in which it is difficult to recognize the style of his supposed master. it is possible that these two artists might have had their first instructions from barocci, and that they afterwards returned to another manner. a similar instance occurs in ventura marzi. in the biographical dictionary of the painters of urbino he is given to the school of barocci. his manner however is different, and i should say bad, if all his pictures were similar to that of s. uomobuono, which i saw in the sacristy of the metropolitan church; but he did indeed paint some better, and it is an ancient maxim, that to improve we must sometimes err. benedetto bandiera, of perugia, who approaches nearer to the style of barocci than most others, is said to have been a relative of vanni, from whom he derived that manner, if we may believe orlandi. but pascoli, both on this point, and on the period in which he flourished, confutes him, and considers him to have been instructed by barocci in urbino for many years, and that afterwards he became a diligent observer of all his pictures which he could discover in other places. whilst italy was filled with the fame of barocci, there came to urbino, and resided in his house for some time, claudio ridolfi, called also claudio veronese, from his native city, of which he was a noble. he was there instructed by dario pozzo, an author of few but excellent works, and after these first instructions he remained many years without further applying himself. being afterwards compelled by necessity to practise the art, he became the scholar of paolo, and the rival of the bassani; and not finding employment in his native place, which then abounded with painters, he removed to rome, and from thence to urbino. it is said that he derived from federigo the amenity of his style, and the beautiful airs of his heads. he married in urbino, and afterwards fixed his residence in the district of corinaldo, where, and in the neighbouring places, he left a great number of pictures, which yield little in tone to the best colourists of his native school, and are often conducted with a design, a sobriety, and a delicacy sufficient to excite their envy. ridolfi, who wrote a brief life of him, enumerates scarcely one half of his works. there are some at fossombrone, cantiano, and fabriano; and rimino possesses a deposition from the cross, a beautiful composition. there are several mentioned in the _guida di montalboddo_, lately edited. urbino is rich in them, where the nascita del s. precursore, (the birth of s. john the baptist), at s. lucia, and the presentation of the virgin at the spirito santo, are highly valued. many of his works are also to be seen in the palazzo albani, and in other collections of the nobility in urbino. he there indeed formed a school, which gave birth to cialdieri, of whom there are works remaining, both public and private; the most noted of which is a martyrdom of s. john, at the church of s. bartholomew. he possessed a facility and elegance of style, was highly accomplished in landscape, which he often introduced into his pictures, and is remarkable for his accurate perspective. urbinelli, of urbino, and cesare maggieri[ ] of the same city, lived also about this time. the first was a vigorous painter, an excellent colourist, and partial to the venetian style. the second an industrious artist, inclining to the style of barocci and roman school. the history of art does not assign either of these to the school of ridolfi; but there is a greater probability of the first rather than the second belonging to it. another painter of uncertain school, but who partakes more of claudio than of barocci, is patanazzi, who is mentioned in the galleria de' pittori urbinati, (v. coluc. tom. xvi.), and poetic incense is bestowed on his _risentito pennello e l'ottima invenzione_. i have seen by him in a chapel of the duomo a marriage of the virgin, the figures not large, but well coloured and correctly drawn, if indeed some of them may not be thought rather attenuated than slender and elegant. a celebrated scholar of ridolfi, benedetto marini, of urbino, went to piacenza, where he left some highly valued pictures in several churches, in which the style of barocci is mixed with the lombard and venetian. the work which excites our greatest admiration is the miracle of the loaves in the desert, which he painted in the refectory of the conventuals in . it is one of the largest compositions in oil which is to be seen, well grouped and well contrasted, and displaying uncommon powers.[ ] i should not hesitate to prefer the scholar to the master in grandeur of idea and vigour of execution, though in the fundamental principles of the art he may not be equal to him. the history of his life, as well as his works, scattered in that neighbourhood, in pavia, and elsewhere, were deserving of commemoration; yet this artist as well as bellini remains unnoticed by the catalogues, and what is more, he is little known in his native place, which has no other specimen of his pencil than a picture of s. carlo at the trinità, with some angels, which does not excite the same admiration as his works in lombardy.[ ] some other scholars of claudio are found in verona, to which city he returned, and remained for a short time; and in the bolognese school mention will be made of cantarini, among the masters of which he is numbered. in the meantime let us turn from these provincial schools, which were the first that felt the reviving influence of the age, to the capital, where we shall find caravaggio, the caracci, and other reformers of the art. michelangiolo amerighi, or morigi da caravaggio, is memorable in this epoch, for having recalled the art from mannerism to truth, as well in his forms, which he always drew from nature, as in his colours, banishing the cinnabar and azures, and composing his colours of few but true tints, after the manner of giorgione. annibale caracci extolling him, declares that he did not paint, but grind flesh, and both guercino and guido highly admired him, and profited from his example. he was instructed in the art in milan, from whence he went to venice to study giorgione; and he adopted at the commencement of his career that subdued style of shadow, which he had learnt from that great artist, and in which some of the most highly prized works of caravaggio are executed. he was however afterwards led away by his sombre genius, and represented objects with very little light, overcharging his pictures with shade. his figures inhabit dungeons, illuminated from above by only a single and melancholy ray. his backgrounds are always dark, and the actors are all placed in the same line, so that there is little perspective in his pictures; yet they enchant us, from the powerful effect which results from the strong contrast of light and shade. we must not look in him for correct design, or elegant proportion, as he ridiculed all artists who attempted a noble expression of countenance, or graceful foldings of drapery, or who imitated the forms of the antique, as exhibited in sculpture, his sense of the beautiful being all derived from visible nature. there is to be seen by him in the spada palace a s. anne, with the virgin at her side, occupied in female work. their features are remarkable only for their vulgarity, and they are both attired in the common dress of rome, and are doubtless portraits, taken from the first elderly and young women that offered themselves to his observation. this was his usual manner; and he appeared most highly pleased when he could load his pictures with rusty armour, broken vessels, shreds of old garments, and attenuated and wasted bodies. on this account some of his works were removed from the altars, and one in particular at the scala, which represented the death of the virgin, in which was figured a corpse, hideously swelled. few of his pictures are to be seen in rome, and amongst them is the madonna of loreto, in the church of s. agostino; but the best is the deposition from the cross, in the church of the vallicella, which forms a singular contrast to the gracefulness of barocci, and the seductive style of guido, exhibited on the adjoining altars. he generally painted for collections. on his arrival in rome he painted flowers and fruit; afterwards long pictures of half figures, a custom much practised after his time. in these he represented subjects sacred and profane, and particularly the manners of the lower classes, drinking parties, conjurors, and feasts. his most admired works are his supper at emmaus, in the casa borghese; s. bastiano in campidoglio; agar, with ishmael dying, in the panfili collection; and the picture of a fruit girl, which exhibits great resemblance of nature, both in the figures and accompaniments. he was still more successful in representing quarrels and nightly broils, to which he was himself no stranger, and by which too he rendered his own life scandalous. he fled from rome for homicide, and resided for some time in naples; from thence he passed to malta, where, after having been honoured with the cross by the grand master, for his talent displayed in his picture of the decollation of s. john, in the oratory of the church of the conventuals, he quarrelled with a cavalier and was thrown into prison. escaping from thence with difficulty, he resided for some time in sicily, and wished to return to rome; but had not proceeded further on his journey than porto ercole, when he died of a malignant fever, in the year . he left numerous works in these different countries, as we learn from gio. pietro bellori, who wrote his life at considerable length. of his chief scholars we shall treat in the following book. at present we will enumerate his followers in rome and its territories. his school, or rather the crowd of his imitators, who were greatly increased on his death, does not afford an instance of a single bad colourist; it has nevertheless been accused of neglect, both in design and grace. bartolommeo manfredi, of mantua, formerly a scholar of roncalli, might be called a second caravaggio, except that he was rather more refined in his composition. his works are seldom found in collections, although he painted for them, as he died young, and is often supplanted by his master, as i believe was the case with some pictures painted for the casa medicea, mentioned by baglione. carlo saracino, or saraceni, also called veneziano, wishing to be thought a second caravaggio, affected the same singular mode of dress as that master, and provided himself with a huge shagged dog, to which he gave the same name that caravaggio had attached to his own. he left many works in rome, both in fresco and oils. he too was a _naturalista_, but possessed a more clear style of colour. he displayed a venetian taste in his figures, dressing them richly in the levant fashion, and was fond of introducing into his compositions corpulent persons, eunuchs, and shaven heads. his principal frescos are in a hall of the quirinal; his best oil pictures are thought to be those of s. bonone, and a martyred bishop in the church dell'anima. he is seldom found in collections; but, from the above peculiarities, i have more than once recognized his works. he returned to venice, and soon afterwards died there; hence he was omitted by ridolfi, and scarcely noticed by zanetti. monsieur valentino, as he is called in italy, who was born at brie, near paris, and studied in rome, became one of the most judicious followers of caravaggio. he painted in the quirinal the martyrdom of the saints processo and martiniano. he was a young artist of great promise, but was cut off by a premature death. his easel pictures are not very rare in rome. the denial of s. peter, in the palazzo corsini, is a delightful picture. simone vovet, the restorer of the french school, and the master of le brun, formed his style from the pictures of caravaggio and valentino. in rome there are some charming productions by him both in public and private, particularly in the barberini gallery. i have heard them preferred to many others that he painted in france in his noted rapid style. angiolo caroselli was a roman, in whose works, consisting chiefly of portraits and small figures, if we except the s. vinceslao of the quirinal palace, and a few similar pictures, we find the style of caravaggio improved by an addition of grace and delicacy. he was remarkable for not making his design on paper, or using any preparatory study for his canvass. he is lively in his attitudes, rich in his tints, and finished and refined in his pictures, which are highly prized, but few in number, when we consider the term of his life. besides practising the style of caravaggio, in which he frequently deceived the most experienced, he imitated other artists in a wonderful manner. a s. elena by him was considered as a production of titian even by his rivals, until they found the cipher a. c. marked on the picture in small letters, and poussin affirms, that he should have taken his two copies of raffaello for genuine pictures, if he had not known where the originals were deposited. gherardo hundhorst is called gherardo dalle notti, from having painted few subjects except illuminated night pieces, in which he chiefly excelled. he imitated caravaggio, adopting only his better parts, his carnations, his vigorous pencil, and grand masses of light and shade: but he aimed also at correctness in his costume, selection in his forms, gracefulness of attitude, and represented religious subjects with great propriety. his pictures are very numerous, and the prince giustiniani possesses the one of christ led by night to the judgment seat, which is one of his most celebrated works. the school of caravaggio flourished for a considerable period, but its followers, painting chiefly for private individuals, have in a great degree remained unknown. baglione makes particular mention of gio. serodine, of ascona, in lombardy, and enumerates many works by him, more remarkable for their facility of execution than their excellence. there remains no public specimen of him, except a decollation of s. john at s. lorenzo fuor delle mura. one of the latest of the school of caravaggio was tommaso luini, a roman, who, from his quarrelsome disposition, and his style, was called il caravaggino. he worked in rome, and appeared most to advantage when he painted the designs of his master, sacchi, as at s. maria in via. when he embodied his own ideas, his design was rather dry and his colouring dark. about the same time gio. campino of camerino, who received his first instructions under gianson in flanders, resided in rome for some years, and increased the number of this school. he was afterwards painter to the court of madrid, and died in spain. it is not known whether or not gio. francesco guerrieri di fossombrone ever studied in rome, but his works are to be seen at filippini di fano, where he painted in a chapel, s. carlo contemplating the mysteries of the passion, with two lateral pictures from the life of that saint; and in another chapel, where he represented the dream of s. joseph, his style resembles that of caravaggio, but possesses more softness of colour, and more gracefulness of form. in the duomo of fabriano is also a s. joseph by him. he has left, in his native place, an abundance of works, which, if distributed more widely, would give him a celebrity which it has not hitherto been his lot to receive. i there saw, in a church, a night piece of s. sebastian attended by s. irene, a picture of most beautiful effect; a judith, in possession of the franceschini family; other works in the casa passionei and elsewhere, very charming, and which often shew that he had very much imitated guercino. his female forms are almost all cast in the same mould, and are copied from the person of a favorite mistress. we now come to the caracci and their school. before annibale arrived in rome, he had already formed a style which left nothing to be desired, except to be more strongly imbued with the antique. annibale added this to his other noble qualities when he came to rome; and his disciples, who trod in his steps, and continued after his death to paint in that city, are particularly distinguished by this characteristic from those who remained in bologna under the instruction of his cousin lodovico. the disciples of annibale left scholars in rome; but no one except sacchi approached so near in merit to his master, as they had done to annibale, nor did there appear, like them, any founder of an original style. still they were sufficient to put a check on the mannerists, and the followers of caravaggio, and to restore the roman school to a better taste. we shall now proceed to enumerate their scholars in their various classes. domenichino zampieri, to his talents as a painter, added commensurate powers of instruction. besides alessandro fortuna, who under the direction of his master painted some fables from apollo, in the villa aldobrandini in frescati, and died young, zampieri had in rome two scholars of great repute, mentioned only by bellori; antonio barbalunga, of messina, and andrea camassei of bevagna, both of whom honoured their country with their name and works, although they did not live many years. the first was a happy imitator of his master, who had long employed him in copying for himself. in the church of the p. p. teatini, at monte cavallo, is his picture of their founder, and of s. andrea avellino, attended by angels, which might be ascribed to zampieri himself, whose forms in this class of subjects were select, and his attitudes elegant, and most engaging. to him i shall return in the fourth book. the second, who had also studied in the school of sacchi, lived longer in rome; and whoever wishes justly to appreciate him, must not judge from the chapel which he painted whilst yet young in his native place, but must inspect his works in the capital. there, in s. andrea della valle, is the s. gaetano, painted at the same time, and in competition with the s. andrea of barbalunga, before mentioned with commendation; the assumption at the rotonda, and the pietà at the capucins; and many excellent frescos in the baptistery of the lateran, and in the church of s. peter; which evince that he had almost an equal claim to fame with his comrade. if, indeed, he was somewhat less bold, and less select, yet he had a natural style, a grace, and a tone of colour, that do honour to the roman school, to which he contributed giovanni carbone, of s. severino, a scholar of some note. it has been remarked, that his fate resembles that of domenichino, as his merits were undervalued, and himself persecuted by his relatives, and he was also prematurely cut off by domestic afflictions. francesco cozza was born in calabria, but settled in rome. he was the faithful companion of domenichino during the life of that master, and after his death completed some works left unfinished by that artist, and executed them in the genuine spirit of his departed friend, as may be seen in titi. he appears to have inherited from his teacher his learning rather than his taste. one of his most beautiful pictures is the virgin del riscatto at s. francesca romana a capo alle case. out of rome there are few public or private works to be met with by him. he was considered exceedingly expert in his knowledge of the hands of the different masters, and on disputed points, which often arose on this subject in rome, his opinion was always asked and acted on, without any appeal from his judgment. of pietro del po, also a disciple of domenichino, and of his family, we shall speak more at large in the fourth book. giannangiolo canini, of rome, was first instructed by domenichino, and afterwards by barbalunga, and would have obtained a great reputation for his inventive genius, if, seduced by the study of antiquities, he had not for his pleasure taken a short way to the art; which led him to neglect the component parts, and to satisfy himself with a general harmonious effect. he possessed, however, great force and energy in subjects which required it, as in the martyrdom of s. stephen at s. martino a' monti. the works which he executed with the greatest labour and care, were some sacred and profane subjects, which he was commissioned to paint for the queen of sweden. but although he was appointed painter to that court, and was also a great favourite with the queen, it should seem that he did not much exercise his profession either for her or others, as his great pleasure was in designing from the antique. he filled a large volume with a collection of portraits of illustrious ancients, and heads of the heathen deities, from gems and marbles. this book, the cardinal chigi having carried it with him into france, he presented to louis xiv., and received a collar of gold as a remuneration for it. on his return to rome he was intending to eulogize the queen in verse, and to continue in prose the lives of the painters, which he had in part prepared when he died. his biographical work probably afforded assistance to passeri or to bellori, his intimate friends. with canini worked giambatista passeri, a roman, a man of letters, and who became afterwards a secular priest. it is recorded, that in the early part of his life he lived on very intimate terms with domenichino at frescati, and he adhered much to his style. there exists by him a crucifixion between two saints at s. giovanni della malva, but no other work in public, as most of his pictures are in private collections. in the palazzo mattei are some pictures representing butcher's meat, birds, and game, touched with a masterly pencil; to these are added some half figures, and also some sparrows (_passere_), in allusion to his name. there is also, by his hand, at the academy of s. luke, the portrait of domenichino, painted on the occasion of his funeral; on which occasion passeri, and not passerino, as malvasia states, recited a funeral oration, and probably paid some poetical tribute to his memory, since he was accustomed to write both verse and prose as bellori did; and his silence on the lives of bellori, which had then appeared, and which he had numerous opportunities of noticing, probably arose from feelings of jealousy. he is esteemed one of the most authentic writers on italian art; and if mariette expressed himself dissatisfied with him, (v. lett. pitt. tom. vi. p. ,) it probably arose from his having seen only his life of pietro da cortona, which was left unfinished by the author. he possessed a profound knowledge of the principles of art, was just in his criticisms, accurate in his facts; if, indeed, as has been pretended by a writer in the _pittoriche lettere_, he did not in some degree depreciate lanfranc, in order to raise his own master, zampieri. his work contains the lives of many painters, at that time deceased, and was published anonymously, it is supposed, by bottari, who in many places shortened it, and improved the style, which was too elaborate, containing useless preambles, and was occasionally too severe against bernino and others, on which account the work remained unedited for more than a century. vincenzio manenti, of sabina, who was first the scholar of cesari, and afterwards of domenichino, left many works in his native place. some pictures by him are to be seen in tivoli, as the s. stefano in the duomo, and the s. saverio at the gesù, which do not exhibit him as an artist of very great genius, but assiduous and expert in colouring. of ruggieri, of bologna, we shall speak elsewhere. guido cannot be said to have contributed much to the roman school, except in leaving in the capital a great number of works displaying that charm of style, and distinguished by that superhuman beauty, which were his characteristics. we are told of two scholars who came to him at the same time from perugia, giandomenico cerrini, and luigi, the son of giovanni antonio scaramuccia. the pictures of cerrini, (who was commonly called il cav. perugino) were frequently touched by his master guido, and passed for originals of that artist, and were much sought after. in his other works he varies, having sometimes followed the elder scaramuccia. his fellow disciple is more consistent. he displays grace in every part of his work, and if he does not soar, still he does not fall to the ground. there are many of his paintings in perugia, both in public and private, amongst which is a presentation at the filippini, from all accounts a beautiful performance. he left many works in milan, where in the church of s. marco, is a s. barbera by him; a large composition, and extremely well coloured. he published a book in pavia, in , which he intituled _le finezze de' pennelli italiani_. it is full, says the abbate bianconi, _di buona volontà pittorica_. it possesses nevertheless some interesting remarks. gio. batista michelini, called il folignate, is almost forgotten in this catalogue; but there are in gubbio various works by him, and particularly a pietà, worthy of the school of guido. macerata possessed a noble disciple of guido, in the person of the cav. sforza compagnoni, by whose hand there is, in the academy de' catinati, the device of that society, which might be taken for a design of guido. he gave a picture to the church of s. giorgio, which is still there, and presented a still more beautiful one to the church of s. giovanni, which was long to be seen over the great altar, but is now in the possession of the conte cav. mario compagnoni. malvasia mentions him in the life of viola, but makes him a scholar of albano. the ginesini boast of cesare renzi, as a respectable scholar of guido, and, in the church of s. tommaso, they shew a picture of that saint by his hand. in addition to the scholars of guido, whose names have been handed down to us, i shall here beg leave to add an imitator of guido, who from the time in which he flourished, and from his noble style of colour, probably belonged to the same school. i found his name subscribed giorgio giuliani da cività castellana, .., on a large picture of the martyrdom of s. andrew, which guido painted for the camaldolesi di s. gregorio at rome: and which this artist copied for the celebrated monastery of the camaldolesi all'avellana. it is exposed in the refectory, and notwithstanding the dampness of the place, maintains a freshness of colour very unusual in pictures of that antiquity. the cav. gio. lanfranco came to rome whilst yet young, and there formed that free and noble style, which served to decorate many cupolas and noble edifices, and which pleases also in his cabinet pictures when he executed them with care. giacinto brandi di poli was his most celebrated scholar in rome. he at first adopted his master's moderate tone of colour, the variety and contrast of his composition, and his flowing pencil; but in consequence of his filling, as he did, rome and the state with his works, he neglected correctness of design, and never arrived at that grandeur of style which we admire in lanfranc. he sometimes indeed went beyond himself, as in the s. rocco of the ripetta, and in the forty martyrs of the stigmata in rome; but his inordinate love of gain would not allow him to finish many works in the same good style. i have been informed by a connoisseur, on whose opinion i can rely, that the best works of this artist are at gaeta, where he painted at the nunziata a picture of the madonna with the holy infant; and where, in the inferior part of the duomo, he painted in the vault three recesses and ten angles, adding over the altar the picture of the martyrdom of s. erasmus, bishop of the city, who was buried in that church. brandi did not perpetuate the taste of his school, not leaving any pupil of eminence except felice ottini, who painted in his youth a chapel at the p. p. di gesù e maria, and did not long survive that work. orlandi also mentions a carlo lamparelli di spello, who left in rome a picture at the church of the spirito santo, but nothing further. an alessandro vaselli also left some works in another church in rome. after brandi, we ought to commemorate giacomo giorgetti, of assisi, who is little known beyond his native city, and the neighbouring towns. he is said to have first studied the art of design in rome, when he learned colouring from lanfranc, and became a good fresco painter. there is by him in a chapel of the duomo at assisi, a large composition in fresco, and in the sacristy of the conventuals, various subjects from the life of the virgin, also in fresco; works coloured in a fine style, and much more finished than was usual with lanfranc. if there be any fault to be found with them, it is the proportions of the figures, which not unfrequently incline to awkwardness. his name is found in the _descrizione della chiesa di s. francesco di perugia_, together with that of girolamo marinelli, his fellow citizen and contemporary, of whom i never found any other notice. lanfranc instructed in rome a noble lady, who filled the church of s. lucia with her pictures. these were designed by her master, and coloured by herself. her name was caterina ginnasi. there were also with lanfranc in rome, mengucci, of pesaro, and others, who afterwards left rome, and will be mentioned by us elsewhere. some have added to these beinaschi, but he was only an excellent copyist and imitator, as we shall see in the fourth book. at the same time, we may assert, that none of the caracci school had a greater number of followers than lanfranc; as pietro di cortona, the chief of a numerous family, derived much of his style from him, and the whole tribe of machinists adopted him as their leader, and still regard him as their prototype. albano too, here deserves a conspicuous place as a master of the roman school. giambatista speranza, a roman, learned from him the principles of the art, and became a fresco painter of the best taste in rome. if we inspect his works at s. agostino, and s. lorenzo in lucina, and in other places where he painted religious subjects, we immediately perceive that his age is not that of the zuccari, and that the true style of fresco still flourished. from albano too, and from guercino, pierfrancesco mola di como derived that charming style, which partook of the excellences of both these artists. he renounced the principles of cesari, who had instructed him for many years; and after having diligently studied colouring at venice, he attached himself to the school of the caracci, but more particularly to albano. he never, however, equalled his master in grace, although he had a bolder tone of colour, greater invention, and more vigour of subject. he died in the prime of life whilst preparing for his journey to paris, where he was appointed painter to the court. rome possesses many of his pictures, particularly in fresco, in the churches; and in the quirinal palace, is joseph found by his brethren, which is esteemed a most beautiful piece. there are also many of his pictures to be found in private collections; and in his landscapes, in which he excelled, it is doubted whether the figures are by him or albano. he had in rome three pupils, who, aspiring to be good colourists, frequented the same fountains of art as their master had done, and travelled through all italy. they were antonio gherardi da rieti, who on the death of mola frequented the school of cortona; and painted in many churches in rome with more despatch than elegance;[ ] gio. batista boncuore, of abruzzo, a painter in a grand though somewhat heavy style;[ ] and giovanni bonatti, of ferrara, whom we shall reserve for his native school. virgilio ducci, of città di castello, is little known among the scholars of albano, though he does not yield to many of the bolognese in the imitation of their common master. two pictures of tobias, in a chapel of the duomo, in his native place, are painted in an elegant and graceful style. an antonio catalani, of rome, is mentioned to us by malvasia, and with him girolamo bonini, of ancona, the intimate friend of albani. these artists resided in bologna, and were employed there, as we shall see in our history of that school. of the second we are told that he painted both in venice and in rome; and orlandi praises his works in the sala farnese, which either no longer exist, or are neglected to be mentioned in the guida of titi. lastly, from the studio of albani issued andrea sacchi, after its chief the best colourist of the roman school, and one of the most celebrated in design, in the practice of which he continued until his death. profoundly skilled in the theory of art, he was yet slow in the execution. it was a maxim with him that the merit of a painter does not consist in giving to the world a number of works of mediocrity, but a few perfect ones; and hence his pictures are rare. his compositions do not abound with figures, but every figure appears appropriate to its place; and the attitudes seem not so much chosen by the artist, as regulated by the subject itself. sacchi did not, indeed, shun the elegant, though he seems born for the grand style--grave miens, majestic attitudes, draperies folded with care and simplicity; a sober colouring, and a general tone, which gave to all objects a pleasing harmony, and a grateful repose to the eye. he seems to have disdained minuteness, and, after the example of many of the ancient sculptors, to have left some part always unfinished; so at least his admirers assert. mengs expresses himself differently, and says, that sacchi's principle was to leave his pictures, as it were, merely indicated, and to take his ideas from natural objects, without giving them any determinate form: on this matter the professors of the art must decide. his picture of s. romualdo surrounded by his monks, is ranked among the four best compositions in rome; and the subject was a difficult one to treat, as the great quantity of white in the vestures tends to produce a sameness of colour. the means which sacchi adopted on this occasion have always been justly admired. he has placed a large tree near the foreground, the shade of which serves to break the uniformity of the figures, and he thus introduced a pleasing variety in the monotony of the colours. his transito di s. anna at s. carlo a' catinari, his s. andrea in the quirinal, and his s. joseph at capo alle case, are also beautiful pictures. perugia, foligno, and camerino, possess altarpieces by him which are the boast of these cities. he enjoyed the reputation of an amiable and learned instructor. one of his lectures, communicated by his celebrated scholar, francesco lauri, may be read in the life of that artist, written by pascoli, who, as i have before remarked, collected the greater part of his information from the old painters in rome. he has probably engrafted on them some sentiments either of his own or of others, as often happens in a narrative when the related facts are founded more in probability than in certainty; but the maxims there inculcated by sacchi are worthy of an artist strongly attached to the true, the select, and the grand; and who, to give dignity to his figures, seems to have had his eyes on the precepts of quintilian respecting the action of his orator. he had a vast number of scholars, among whom we may reckon giuseppe sacchi, his son, who became a conventual monk, and painted a picture in the sacristy, in the church of the apostles. but his most illustrious disciple was maratta, of whom, and of whose scholars, we shall speak in another epoch. we find a follower of the caracci, though we know not of what particular master, in giambatista salvi, called from the place in which he was born, sassoferrato,[ ] and whom we shall notice further when we speak of carlo dolci, and his very devotional pictures. this artist excelled dolci in the beauty of his madonnas, but yielded to him in the fineness of his pencil. their style was dissimilar, salvi having formed himself on other models; he first studied in his native place under tarquinio, his father,[ ] then in rome and afterwards in naples; it is not known precisely under what masters, except that in his ms. memoirs we read of one domenico. the period in which salvi studied corresponds in a remarkable manner with the time in which domenichino was employed in naples, and his manner of painting shews that he adopted the style of that master, though not exclusively. i have seen in the possession of his heirs many copies from the first masters, which he executed for his own pleasure. i observed several of albano, guido, barocci, raffaello, reduced to a small size, and painted, as one may say, all in one breath. there are also some landscapes of his composition, and a vast number of sacred portraits; several of s. john the baptist, but more than all of the madonna. though not possessing the ideal beauty of the greeks, he has yet a style of countenance peculiarly appropriate to the virgin, in which an air of humility predominates, and the simplicity of the dress and the attire of the head corresponds with the expression of the features, without at the same time lessening the dignity of her character. he painted with a flowing pencil, was varied in his colouring, had a fine relief and chiaroscuro; but in his local tints he was somewhat hard. he delighted most in designing heads with a part of the bust, which frequently occur in collections; his portraits are very often of the size of life, and of that size, or larger, is a madonna, by him, with the infant christ, in the casali palace at rome. the picture of the rosario, that he painted at s. sabina, is one of the smallest pictures in rome. it is, however, well composed, and conducted with his usual spirit, and is regarded as a gem. in other places the largest picture by him which is to be seen, is an altarpiece in the cathedral of montefiascone. a follower of the caracci also, though of an uncertain school, was giuseppino da macerata, whom a dubious tradition has assigned to agostino. his works are to be seen in the two collegiate churches of fabriano; an annunciation, in oils, in s. niccolò, and at s. venanzio two chapels, painted in fresco, in one of which, where he represented the miracles of the apostles, he surpassed himself in the beauty of the heads and in the general composition; in other respects he is somewhat hasty and indecisive. two of his works remain in his native place; at the carmelites the madonna in glory, with s. nicola and s. girolamo on the foreground; and at the capucins, s. peter receiving the keys. both these pictures are in the caracci style, but the second is most so; corresponding in a singular manner with one of the same subject which the filippini of fano have in their church, and which is an authentic and historical work of guido reni. the second, therefore, is probably a copy. there is written on it _joseph ma. faciebat_ , but the figures of the year are not very legible. marcello gobbi, and girolamo boniforti,[ ] a tolerable good imitator of titian, lived at this time in macerata. perugia presents us with two scholars of the caracci, giulio cesare angeli and anton. maria fabrizzi, the one the pupil of annibale in rome, the other of lodovico in bologna. they were attracted by the fame of their masters, and secretly leaving their native place for about the space of twelve years, they obtained admission for some time into their school, if we may rely on pascoli. fabrizzi, who is also said to have worked under annibale, does not shew great correctness; and the cause may be ascribed to his too ardent temperament, and the want of more mature instruction; for annibale dying after three years, from a scholar he became a master, and was celebrated for his vigorous colouring, his composition, and the freedom of his pencil. angeli was more remarkable for expression and colour than design, and excelled rather in the draped than in the naked figure. there is a vast work by him in fresco in the oratory of the church of s. agostino in perugia, and in part of it a limbo of saints, certainly not designed by the light of lodovico's lamp, if indeed it ought not to be considered that this lunette is by another hand. this branch of the bolognese school, which was constantly degenerating from the excellence of its origin, being at such a distance from bologna as not to be able to be revivified by the pictures of the caracci, still survived for a long time. angeli instructed cesare franchi, who excelled in small pictures, which were highly prized in collections; and stefano amadei also, who was formed more on the florentine school of that age than on the school of bologna. stefano was also attached to letters, and opened a school, and by frequent meetings and instructive lectures improved the minds of the young artists who frequented it. one of the most assiduous of these was fabio, brother of the duke of cornia, of whom some works are mentioned in the guida di roma, and who entitled himself to a higher rank than that of a mere dilettante. besides the bolognese, a number of tuscans who were employed by paul v. in the two churches of s. peter and s. m. maggiore, also contributed to the melioration of the roman school; and some others who, deprived of that opportunity of distinguishing themselves, are yet memorable for the scholars they left behind them. of the diocese of volterra was cristoforo roncalli, called il cav. delle pomarance, cursorily noticed by us among the tuscans. i now place him in this school, because he both painted and taught for a considerable time in rome; and i assign him to this epoch, not from the generality of his works, but from his best having been executed in it. he was the scholar of niccolò delle pomarance, for whom he worked much with little reward; and from his example he learnt to avail himself of the labour of others, and to content himself with mediocrity. yet there are several pictures by him, in which he appears excellent, except that he too often repeats himself in his backgrounds, his foreshortened heads, and full and rubicund countenances. his style of design is a mixture of the florentine and roman. in his frescos he displayed fresh and brilliant colours; in his oil pictures, on the contrary, he adopted more sober tints, harmonized by a general tone of tranquillity and placidness. he frequently decorated these with landscapes gracefully disposed. among his best labours is reckoned the death of ananias and sapphira, which is at the certosa, and which was copied in mosaic in s. peter's. other mosaics also in the same church were executed after his cartoons, and in the lateranense is his baptism of constantine, a grand historical composition. but his most celebrated work is the cupola of loreto, very rich in figures, but injured by time, except some prophets, which are in a truly grand style. he painted considerably in the treasury of that church; and there are some histories of the madonna not conducted with equal felicity, particularly in the perspective. he obtained this vast commission through the patronage of the cardinal crescenzi, in competition with caravaggio, who, to gratify his revenge, hired an assassin to wound him in the face; and in rivalship too with guido reni, who retaliated in a more laudable manner, by proving his superiority by his works. roncalli from this time was in great request in the cities of picenum, which in consequence abound with his pictures. there is to be seen at the eremitani at s. severino, a _noli me tangere_; at s. agostino in ancona, a s. francis praying; and at s. palazia in osimo, a picture of a saint, one of his most finished productions. in the same city, in the casa galli, he painted _di sotto in su_ the judgment of solomon; and this is perhaps the best fresco that he ever executed. he could vary his manner at will. there is an epiphany in the possession of the marquis mancinforti in ancona, quite in the style of the venetian school. there were two artists who approached this master in style, the cav. gaspare celio, a roman, and antonio, the son of niccolò circignani. celio was the pupil of niccolò, according to baglione, but of roncalli, if we are to believe titi. he designed and engraved antique statues, and painted in a commendable manner whilst young, after the designs of p. gio. bat. fiammeri, at the gesù, and at a more mature age after his own, in numerous churches. the s. francis, on the altar of the ospizio, at ponte sisto, is by him; and he also painted the history of s. raimondo at the minerva, and the moses passing the red sea, in a vault of the mattei gallery, where he competed with other first rate artists. antonio is not well known in rome, where he worked with his father, after whose death he decorated by himself a chapel at the traspontina, another at the consolazione, and painted also in private houses. città di castello, where he passed some of the best years of his life, possesses many of his pictures, and amongst the rest, that of the conception, at the conventuals, which may be called a mixture of barocci and roncalli, from whom he probably learned to improve the style he had inherited from his father. the cav. delle pomarance instructed the marchese gio. batista crescenzi, who became a great patron of the fine arts, and who was so much skilled in them, that paul v. appointed him superintendent of the works which he was carrying on in rome; and philip iii., the catholic, also availed himself of his services in the escurial. he did not execute many works, and his chief talent lay in flower painting. his house was frequented by literary men, and particularly by marino; he formed in it a gallery containing an extensive collection of pictures and drawings, of which he himself says, "i believe i may indeed safely affirm that there is not a prince in europe that does not yield to me in this respect." (lett. p. .) there the artists were always to be found, one of whom, his disciple, was called bartolommeo del crescenzi, of the family of cavarozzi of viterbo. he was a most correct artist, a follower first of roncalli, and afterwards became the author of a captivating natural style. there exist many excellent pictures by him in collections, and in the church of s. anna, a picture of that saint, executed, says baglione, in his best taste, and with a vigorous pencil. among the scholars of roncalli may also be ranked giovanni antonio, father of luigi scaramuccia, who also saw and imitated the caracci. his works are often met with in perugia. the spirit and freedom of his pencil are more commended than his tints, which are too dark, and which in the churches easily distinguish him amidst a crowd of other artists. it is probable that he used too great a quantity of _terra d'ombra_, like others of his day. girolamo buratti, of the same school, painted in ascoli the beautiful picture of the presepio at the carità, and some subjects in fresco, highly commended by orsini. of alessandro casolani, who belongs to this master, we spoke in the sienese school. with him, too, was included cristoforo his son, who, with giuseppe agellio of sorrento, may be ranked with the inferior artists. francesco morelli, a florentine, demands our notice only as having imparted the rudiments of the art to the cav. gio. baglione of rome. his pupil, however, did not remain with him for any length of time, but formed a style for himself from a close application to the works of the best masters, and was employed by paul v., by the duke of mantua, and by persons of distinction. he is less vigorous in design and expression, than in colour and chiaroscuro. we meet with his works, not only in rome, where he painted much, but also in several provincial towns, as the s. stephen in the duomo of perugia, and the s. catherine at the basilica loretana. in his colours he resembled cigoli, but was far behind him in other respects. the picture which procured him great applause in the vatican, the resuscitation of tabitha, is defaced by time; but both there and at the cappella paolina in s. maria maggiore, which was the most considerable work of paul v., his pieces in fresco still remain, and are not unworthy of their age. he is not often found in collections, but in that of the propaganda i saw a s. rocco painted by him with great force of colour. he lived to a considerable age, and left behind him a compendium of the lives of professors of the fine arts, who had been his contemporaries in rome from to . he wrote in an unostentatious manner, and free from party spirit, and was on all occasions more disposed to commend the good than to censure the bad. whenever i peruse him, i seem to hear the words of a venerable teacher, inclined rather to inculcate precepts of morals, than maxims on the fine arts. of the latter, indeed, he is very sparing, and it would almost lead one to suppose that he had succeeded in his profession, more from a natural bias, and a talent of imitation, than from scientific principles and sound taste. it was, perhaps, in order that he might not be tied to treat of the art theoretically, and to write profoundly, that he distributed his work in five dialogues, in the course of which we do not meet with professors of art, but are introduced to a foreigner and to a roman gentleman, who act the respective parts of master and scholar. dialogues, indeed, were never composed in a more simple style, in any language. the two interlocutors meet in the cloisters of the minerva, and after a slight salutation, one of them recounts the lives of the masters of the art, to the number of eighty, which are commenced, continued, and ended, in a style sufficiently monotonous, both as to manner and language; the other listens to this long narrative, without either interrupting or answering, or adding a word in reply: and thus the dialogue, or rather soliloquy, concludes, without the slightest expression of thanks on the part of the auditor, or even the ceremony of a farewell. we shall now return to the tuscan scholars. passignano was at rome many times, without, however, leaving there any scholars, at least of any name. we may indeed mention vanni, and he left there, too, a gio. antonio, and a gio. francesco del vanni, who are mentioned in the _guida di roma_. the school of cigoli produced two roman artists of considerable reputation; domenico feti, who distinguished himself in mantua, and gio. antonio lelli, who never left his native place. they painted more frequently in oil, and for private collections, than in fresco, or in churches. of the first, no public work remains except the two angels at s. lorenzo in damaso; of the second some pictures, and some histories on the walls, among which the visitation in the choir of the minerva is much praised. comodi and ciarpi are said to have been the successive masters of pietro di cortona; and on that account, and from his birthplace, he has by many been placed in the school of florence; although others have assigned him to that of rome. it is true, indeed, that he came hither at the age of fourteen only, bringing with him from tuscany little more than a well-disposed genius; and he here formed himself into an excellent architect, and as a painter became the head of a school distinguished for a free and vigorous style, as we have mentioned in our first book. whoever wishes to observe how far he carried this style in fresco, and in large compositions, must inspect the sala barberina in rome; although the palazzo pitti, in florence, presents us with works more elegant, more beautiful, and more studied in parts. whoever, too, wishes to see how far he carried it in his altarpieces, must inspect the conversion of s. paul at the capucins in rome, which, placed opposite the s. michael of guido, is, nevertheless, the admiration of those who do not object to a variety of style in art: nor am i aware that we should reject this principle in what we designate the fine arts; as it is invariably acknowledged in eloquence, in poetry, and history, where we find demosthenes and isocrates, sophocles and euripides, and thucydides and xenophon, equally esteemed, though all dissimilar in style. the works of pietro in rome, and in the states of the church, are not at all rare. they are to be found also in other states of italy, and those pieces are the most attractive in which he had the greatest opportunity of indulging his love of architecture. his largest compositions, which might dismay the boldest copyist, are s. ivo at the sapienza of rome, and the s. charles in the church of that saint, at catinari, in the act of relieving the infected. the preaching of s. james in imola, in the church of the domenicans, is also on a vast scale. the virgin attended by s. stephen, the pope, and other saints in s. agostino, in cortona, is a picture of great research, and is considered one of his best performances. there is an enchanting picture of the birth of the virgin, in the quirinal palace; and the martyrdom of s. stephen, at s. ambrogio, in rome, and daniel in the den of lions, in the church of that saint, in venice, are most beautiful works, superior to those of most of his competitors in this school, in regard to composition, and equal to them in colour. his historical subjects are not met with in the galleries of the roman nobility. in that of the campidoglio, is the battle between the romans and the sabines, full of picturesque spirit; and in possession of the duke mattei, is the adultery, half figures, more studied and more highly finished than was customary with him. this brief notice of him may suffice for the present. of the scholars whom he formed in the roman school, i shall speak more opportunely in the subsequent epoch. at this period we find three veronese artists, ottini, bassetti, and turchi, studying in rome; and we shall speak of them more at length in the venetian school. the first returned home without executing any public work. the second left, in the church dell'anima, in rome, two pictures in fresco, the birth, and the circumcision of christ. the third, known under the name of orbetto, took up his residence, and died in that capital; but i am not aware that he left there any disciples of merit, except some of his own countrymen, who returned to their native place. this engaging and elegant painter, who possessed great originality and beauty of colour, worked still more in verona than in rome, and we ought to see his works in the former city, in order justly to appreciate them. but he is not on that account held in the less esteem in rome for his cabinet pictures, which are highly prized, as the sisara de' colonnesi, and for his scriptural subjects, as the flight into egypt, in the church of s. romualdo, and the s. felice cappuccino, at the conception, where, as we before observed, the barberini family employed the most eminent artists. many other italians worked in rome in the time of the caracci, but their schools, as well as the places of their birth, are uncertain; and of these, in a city so abounding in pictures, a slight notice will suffice. in the guida di roma, we find only a single notice of felice santelli, a roman, in the church of the p. p. spagnuoli del riscatto scalzi, where he painted in competition with baglione; he is a painter full of truth, and one of his pictures in viterbo, in the church of s. rosa, is inscribed with his name. in baglione, we read of orazio borgianni, a roman, the rival of celio, and we find pictures and portraits by him in a good natural style. gio. antonio spadarino, of the family of galli, painted in s. peter's, a s. valeria, with such talent, that orlandi complains of the silence of biographers respecting him. he had a fellow disciple in matteo piccione, of the march, and titi mentions their peculiar style. nor is grappelli much known, whose proper name or country i cannot accurately ascertain; but his joseph recognized, which is painted in fresco, in the casa mattei, commands our admiration. mattio salvucci, who obtained some reputation in perugia, came to rome, and although he was graciously received by the pope, yet, from his inconstant temper, he did not remain there, nor does pascoli, his fellow countrymen and biographer, mention any authentic pictures by him. domenico rainaldi, nephew of the architect, cav. carlo rainaldi, who was employed by alexander vii., is mentioned in the roman guida, as also giuseppe vasconio, praised too by orlandi. in the same description of books, and particularly in those which treat of the pictures of perugia, mention is made in this epoch of the cav. bernardino gagliardi, who was domiciled for many years in that city, though born in città di castello. although a scholar of avanzino nucci, he adopted a different style, after having seen in his travels the best works of every school of italy, from rome to turin. in historical composition he particularly followed the caracci and guido, but in what i have seen of him, both in his own and his adopted city, he appears exceedingly various. the noble house of oddi, in perugia, amongst some feeble productions of his, have a conversazione of young people, half figures, and truly beautiful. in the duomo of castello is a martyrdom of s. crescenziano, a picture of fine effect, though inferior in other respects. he there appears more studied and more select in the two pictures of the young tobias, which are included among his superior works. his best is perhaps the picture of s. pellegrino, with its accompaniments, in the church of s. marcello in rome. i do not recollect any other provincial painters of this period whom i have not assigned to one or other of the various masters. a more arduous task than recording the names of the italian artists now awaits us in the enumeration of strangers. about the beginning of the century peter paul rubens came young to rome, and left some oil pictures at the vallicella, and in s. croce in gerusalemme. not many years afterwards antonio vandyck arrived there also, with an intention of remaining for a long period; but many of his fellow countrymen, who were there studying, became offended at his refusing to join them in their convivial tavern parties and dissipated mode of life; he in consequence left rome. great numbers too of that nation who professed the lower school of art, remained in italy for a considerable period, and some are mentioned in their classes. others were employed in the churches of rome, and the ecclesiastical state. the master is unknown who painted at s. pietro in montorio, the celebrated deposition, which is recommended to students, as a school of colour in itself; by some he is called angiolo fiammingo. of vincenzio fiammingo there is at the vallicella a picture of the pentecost; of luigi gentile, from brussels, the picture of s. antonio at s. marco, and others in various churches in rome; he painted also at the church of the capucins, at pesaro, a nativity and a s. stephen, pictures highly finished and of a beautiful relief. he executed others at ancona, and in various cities, with his usual taste, which is still more to be admired in his easel pictures. he excelled, says passeri, who was very sparing in his praise of artists, in small compositions; since besides finishing them with great diligence, he executed them in an engaging style, and he concludes with the further encomium, that he equalled, if not surpassed, most artists in portrait painting. about the year , diego velasquez, the chief ornament of spanish art, studied in rome and remained there for a year. he afterwards returned thither under the pontificate of innocent x., whose portrait he painted, in a style which was said to be derived from domenico greco, instructed by titian, at the court of spain. velasquez renewed in this portrait the wonders which are recounted of those of leo x. by raffaello, and of paul iii. by titian; for this picture so entirely deceived the eye as to be taken for the pope himself. at this time too a number of excellent german artists were employed in rome, as daniel saiter, whom i shall notice in the school of piedmont, and the two scor, gio. paolo, called by taja, gian. paolo tedesco, whose noah's ark, painted in the quirinal palace, has excited the most enthusiastic encomiums; and egidio, his brother, who worked there for a considerable time in the gallery of alexander vii. there were also in rome vovet, as we have observed, and the two mignards, nicolas, an excellent artist, and pierre, who had the surname of romano, and who left some beautiful works at s. carlino and other places; and a master who claims more than a brief notice, nicolas poussin, the raffaello of france. bellori, who has written the life of poussin, introduces him to rome in , and informs us that he was already a painter, and had formed his style more after the prints of raffaello than the instruction of his masters. at rome he improved, or rather changed his style, and acquired another totally different, of which he may be considered the chief. poussin has left directions for those who come to study the art in rome: the remains of antiquity afforded him instruction which he could not expect from masters. he studied the beautiful in the greek statues, and from the meleager of the vatican (now ascertained to be a mercury) he derived his rule of proportions. arches, columns, antique vases, and urns, were rendered tributary to the decoration of his pictures. as a model of composition, he attached himself to the aldobrandine marriage; and from that, and from basso-relievos, he acquired that elegant contrast, that propriety of attitude, and that fear of crowding his picture, for which he was so remarkable, being accustomed to say, that a half figure more than requisite was sufficient to destroy the harmony of a whole composition. leonardo da vinci, from his sober and refined style of colour, could not fail to please him; and he decorated that master's work _su la pittura_ with figures designed in his usual fine taste. he followed him in theory and emulated him in practice. he adopted titian's style of colour, and the famous dance of boys, which was formerly in the villa lodovisi, and is now in madrid, taught him to invest with superior colours the engaging forms of children, in which he so much excelled. it should seem that he soon abandoned his application to colouring, and his best coloured pictures are those which he painted on first coming to rome. he was apprehensive lest his anxiety on that head might distract his attention from the more philosophical part of his picture, to which he was singularly attentive; and to this point he directed his most serious and assiduous care. raffaello was his model in giving animation to his figures, in expressing the passions with truth, in selecting the precise moment of action, in intimating more than was expressed, and in furnishing materials for fresh reflection to whoever returns a second and a third time to examine his well conceived and profound compositions. he carried the habit of philosophy in painting even further than raffaello, and often executed pictures, whose claim to our regard is the poetical manner in which their moral is inculcated. thus, in that at versailles, which is called _memoria della morte_, he has represented a group of youths, and a maid visiting the tomb of an arcadian shepherd, on which is inscribed the simple epitaph, "i also was an arcadian." he did not owe this elegant expression of sentiment to his genius alone, but was indebted for it, as well to the perusal of the first classic authors, as the conversation of literary men, and his intercourse with scholars. he deferred much to the cav. marini, and might do so with advantage where poetry was not concerned. in the art of modelling, in which he excelled, he accomplished himself under fiammingo; he consulted the writings of p. zaccolini for perspective; he studied the naked figure in the academy of domenichino and in that of sacchi; he made himself acquainted with anatomy; he exercised himself in copying the most beautiful landscapes from nature, in which he acquired an exquisite taste, which he communicated to his relative gaspar dughet, of whom we shall speak in a short time. i think it may be asserted without exaggeration, that the caracci improved the art of landscape painting, and that poussin brought it to perfection.[ ] his genius was less calculated for large than small figures, and he has generally painted them a palm and a half, as in the celebrated sacraments, which were in the casa boccapaduli: sometimes of two or three palms size, as in the picture of the plague in the colonna gallery, and elsewhere. other pictures of his are seen in rome, as the death of germanicus in the barberini palace, the triumph of flora in the campidoglio, the martyrdom of s. erasmus, in the pope's collection at monte cavallo, afterwards copied in mosaic in s. peter's. although he had established himself in rome, he afterwards left that city for paris, where he was appointed first painter to the court; after two years time, however, he again returned to rome, but had his appointment confirmed, and, though absent, enjoyed the same place and stipend. he remained in rome for twenty three years, and there closed his days. it is not long since his bust in marble, with an appropriate eulogy, was placed in the church of the rotonda, at the suggestion and generous expense of the sig. cav. d'agincourt. in the class of portrait painters, we find at the beginning of the seventeenth century, antiveduto grammatica, and ottavio lioni of padua, who engraved the portraits of the painters; and, on his death, baldassare galanino was preeminent. it must however be remarked, that these artists were also designers; and that even those who were held the first masters in composition were employed in portrait painting, as guido for example, who executed for the cardinal spada one of the finest portraits in rome. thus far of historical painters. we may now recur to landscape and other inferior branches of the art, whose brightest era may be said to have been in the reign of urban viii. landscape, indeed, never flourished so greatly as at that period. a little time before this pontificate, died in rome, adam elzheimer, or adam of frankfort, or tedesco, who had already, under the pontificate of paul v., established a school (in which david teniers was instructed); an artist of an admirable fancy, who in an evening committed to the canvass, with singular fidelity, the scenery which he had visited in the early part of the day, and he so refined his style in rome, that his pictures, which generally represented night scenes, were there held in the greatest request. only a short time too had elapsed since the death of giovanni batista viola in rome, one of the first artists who, profiting from the instructions of annibal caracci, reformed the old, dry style of the flemish, and introduced a richer mode of touching landscape. vincenzio armanno had also promoted this branch of art, adding to his landscapes a similitude to nature, which without much selection of ground, or trees, or accompaniments, charms us by its truth, and a certain stilness of colour, pleasingly chequered with lights and shades. he is highly to be commended too in his figures, and is copious in his invention. but the three celebrated landscape painters, whose works are so much sought after in the collections of princes, appeared under urban; salvator rosa, a neapolitan, and a poet of talent; claude gellée, of lorraine; and gaspar dughet, also called poussin, the relative of niccolas, as i have already mentioned. that kind of fashion, which often aspires to give a tone to the fine arts, alternately exalted one or other of these three, and thus also obliged the painters in rome to copy in succession, and to follow their various styles. rosa was the most celebrated of this class at the commencement of this century. a scholar of spagnoletto, and the son, as one may say, of caravaggio, as in historical composition he attached himself to the strong natural style and dark colouring of that master, so in landscape he seems to have adopted his subject without selection, or rather to have selected the least pleasing parts. _le selve selvagge_, to speak with dante, savage scenery, alps, broken rocks and caves, wild thickets, and desert plains, are the kind of scenery in which he chiefly delighted; his trees are shattered, torn, and dishevelled; and in the atmosphere itself he seldom introduced a cheerful hue, except occasionally a solitary sunbeam. he observed the same manner too in his sea views. his style was original, and may be said to have been conducted on a principle of savage beauty, as the palate of some persons is gratified with austere wines. his pictures too were rendered more acceptable from the small figures of shepherds, mariners, or banditti, which he has introduced in almost all his compositions; and he was reproached by his rivals with having continually repeated the same ideas, and in a manner copied himself. owing to his frequent practice, he had more merit in his small than in his large figures. he was accustomed to insert them in his landscapes, and composed his historical pictures in the same style as the regulus, so highly praised in the colonna palace, or fancy subjects, as the witchcrafts, which we see in the campidoglio, and in many private collections. in these he is never select, nor always correct, but displays great spirit, freedom of execution, and skill and harmony of colour. in other respects he has proved, more than once, that his genius was not confined to small compositions, as there are some altarpieces well conceived, and of powerful effect, particularly where the subject demands an expression of terror, as in a martyrdom of saints at s. gio. de' fiorentini at rome; and in the purgatory, which i saw at s. giovanni delle case rotte in milan, and at the church del suffragio in matelica. we have also some profane subjects by him, finely executed on a large scale; such is the conspiracy of catiline, in the possession of the noble family of martelli, in florence, mentioned also by bottari, as one of his best works. rosa left naples at the age of twenty, and established himself in rome, where he died at the age of about sixty. his remains were placed in the church degli angeli, with his portrait and eulogy; and another portrait of him is to be seen in the chigi gallery, which does not seem to have been recognised by pascoli; the picture represents a savage scene; a poet is represented in a sitting attitude, (the features those of salvator,) and before him stands a satyr, allusive to his satiric style of poetry, but the picture is described by the biographer as the god pan appearing to the poet pindar. he had a scholar in bartol. torregiani, who died young, and who excelled in landscape, but was not accomplished enough to add the figures. giovanni ghisolfi, of milan, a master of perspective, adopted in his figures the style of salvator. gaspar dughet, or poussin, of rome, or of the roman school, did not much resemble rosa, except in despatch. both these artists were accustomed to commence and finish a landscape and decorate it with figures on the same day. poussin, contrary to salvator, selected the most enchanting scenes, and the most beautiful aspects of nature; the graceful poplar, the spreading plane trees, limpid fountains, verdant meads, gently undulating hills, villas delightfully situated, calculated to dispel the cares of state, and to add to the delights of retirement. all the enchanting scenery of the tusculan or tiburtine territory, and of rome, where, as martial observes, nature has combined the many beauties which she has scattered singly in other places, was copied by this artist. he composed also ideal landscapes, in the same way that torquato tasso, in describing the garden of armida, concentrated in his verses all the recollections of the beautiful which he had observed in nature. notwithstanding this extreme passion for grace and beauty, it is the opinion of many, that there is not a greater name amongst landscape painters. his genius had a natural fervour, and as we may say, a language, that suggests more than it expresses. to give an example, in some of his larger landscapes, similar to those in the panfili palace, we may occasionally observe an artful winding of the road, which in part discovers itself to the eye, but in other parts, leaves itself to be followed by the mind. every thing that gaspar expresses, is founded in nature. in his leaves he is as varied as the trees themselves, and is only accused of not having sufficiently diversified his tints, and of adhering too much to a green hue. he not only succeeded in representing the rosy tint of morning, the splendour of noon, evening twilight, or a sky tempestuous or serene; but the passing breeze that whispers through the leaves, storms that tear and uproot the trees of the forest, lowering skies, and clouds surcharged with thunder and rent with lightning, are represented by him with equal success. niccolas, who had taught him to select the beauties of nature, instructed him also in the figures, and the accessary parts of the composition. thus in gaspar every thing displays elegance and erudition, the edifices have all the beautiful proportions of the antique; and to these may be added arches and broken columns, when the scene lay in the plains of greece or rome; or, if in egypt, pyramids, obelisks, and the idols of the country. the figures which he introduces are not in general shepherds and their flocks, as in the flemish pictures, but are derived from history, or classic fables, hawking parties, poets crowned with laurel, and other similar decorations, generally novel, and finished in a style almost as fine as miniature. his school gave birth to but few followers. by some crescenzio di onofrio is alone considered his true imitator, of whom little remains in rome; nor indeed is he much known in florence, although he resided there many years in the service of the ducal house. it is said that he executed many works for the ducal villas; and that he painted for individuals may be conjectured from some beautiful landscapes which the sig. cancelliere scrilli possesses, together with the portrait of sig. angelo, his ancestor, on which the artist has inscribed his name and the year , the date of his work. after him we may record gio. domenico ferracuti, of macerata, in which city, and in others of piceno, are to be found many landscapes painted by him, chiefly snow pieces, in which kind of landscape he was singularly distinguished. claude lorraine is generally esteemed the prince of landscape painters, and his compositions are indeed, of all others, the richest and the most studied. a short time suffices to run through a landscape of poussin or rosa from one end to the other, when compared with claude, though on a much smaller surface. his landscapes present to the spectator an endless variety; so many views of land and water, so many interesting objects, that like an astonished traveller, the eye is obliged to pause to measure the extent of the prospect, and his distances of mountains or of sea are so illusive, that the spectator feels, as it were, fatigued by gazing. the edifices and temples, which so finely round off his compositions, the lakes peopled with aquatic birds, the foliage diversified in conformity to the different kinds of trees,[ ] all is nature in him; every object arrests the attention of an amateur, every thing furnishes instruction to a professor; particularly when he painted with care, as in the pictures of the altieri, colonna, and other palaces of rome. there is not an effect of light, or a reflection in the water, or in the sky itself, which he has not imitated; and the various changes of the day are no where better represented than in claude. in a word, he is truly the painter, who in depicting the three regions of air, earth, and water, has embraced the whole universe. his atmosphere almost always bears the impress of the sky of rome, whose horizon is, from its situation, rosy, dewy, and warm. he did not possess any peculiar merit in his figures, which are insipid, and generally too much attenuated; hence he was accustomed to observe to the purchasers of his pictures, that he sold them the landscape, and presented them with the figures gratis. the figures indeed were generally added by another hand, frequently by lauri. a painter of the name of angiolo, who died young, deserves to be mentioned as the scholar of claude, as well as vandervert. claude also contributed to the instruction of gaspar poussin. to the preceding may be added those artists who particularly distinguished themselves by sea views and shipping. enrico cornelio vroom is called enrico di spagna, as he came to rome immediately from seville, although born in haerlem in holland. he was a pupil of the brills, and seems rather to have aimed at imitating the national art of shipbuilding, than the varying appearances of the sea and sky. no one is more diligent, or more minute in fitting up the vessels with every requisite for sailing; and some persons have purchased his pictures, for the sole purpose of instructing themselves in the knowledge of ships, and the mode of arming them. sandrart relates that he returned to spain, and there painted landscapes, views of cities, fishing boats, and seafights. he places his birth in , whence he must have flourished about the year . guarienti makes a separate article of enrico vron of haerlem, as if he had been a different artist. another article is occupied upon _enrico delle marine_, and on the authority of palomino, he says, that that artist was born in cadiz, and coming to rome, there acquired that name; and that, without wishing ever to return to spain, he employed himself in painting in that city shipping and sea views until his death, at the age of sixty in . i have named three writers, whose contradictions i have frequently adverted to in this work, and whose discordant notices require much examination to reconcile or refute. what i have advanced respecting enrico was the result of my observations on several pictures in the colonna gallery, six in number, and which, as far as i could judge, all partake of a hard and early style, and generally of a peculiar reddish tone, often observed in the landscapes of brill. any other enrico di spagna, a marine painter, or of a style corresponding with that of him who died in , i have not met with in any collection, nor is any such artist to be found in the works of sig. conca, as any one may ascertain by referring to the index of his work. hence, at present, i can recognize the dutch artist alone, and shall be ready to admit the claims of the cadiz painter whenever i am furnished with proofs of his having really existed. agostino tassi, of perugia, whose real name was buonamici, a man of infamous character, but an excellent painter, was the scholar of paul brill, though he was ambitious of being thought a pupil of the caracci. he had already distinguished himself as a landscape painter, when he was condemned to the galleys at leghorn, where through interest the laborious part of his sentence was remitted, and in this situation he prosecuted his art with such ardour, that he soon obtained the first rank as a painter of sea views, representing ships, storms, fishing parties, and the dresses of mariners of various countries with great spirit and propriety. he excelled too in perspective, and in the papal palace of the quirinal and in the palace de' lancellotti displayed an excellent style of decoration, which his followers very much overcharged. he painted many pictures in genoa, in conjunction with salimbeni and gentileschi, and was assisted by a scholar of his born in rome, and domiciled in genoa, where he died. this scholar is called by raffaello soprani, gio. batista primi, and he eulogizes him as an esteemed painter of sea views. equal to tassi in talent, and still more infamous in his life, was pietro mulier, or pietro de mulieribus, of holland, who, from his surprising pictures of storms, was called il tempesta. his compositions inspire a real terror, presenting to our eyes death, devoted ships overtaken by tempests and darkness, fired by lightning, or driving helpless before the demons of the storm; now rising on the mountain waves, and again submerged in the abyss of ocean. his works are more frequently met with than those of tassi, as he almost always painted in oil. he was assisted in rome by a young man, who in consequence obtained the name of tempestino, though he often exercised his genius in landscape in the style of poussin. he afterwards married a sister of this young artist, and subsequently procured her assassination, for which he was sentenced to death in genoa, but his sentence was commuted for five years imprisonment. his pictures of storms, which he painted in his dungeon, seem to have acquired an additional gloom from the horrors of his prison, his merited punishment, and his guilty conscience. these works were very numerous, and were considered his best performances. he excelled also in the painting of animals, for which purpose he kept a great variety of them in his house. lastly, he acquired celebrity from his landscapes, in some of which he has shewn himself not an unworthy follower of claude in invention, enriching them with a great variety of scenery, hills, lakes, and beautiful edifices, but he is still far behind that master in regard to tone of colour and finishing. he was however superior to claude in his figures, to which he gave a mixed italian and flemish character, with lively, varied, and expressive countenances. there are more specimens of his talents in milan than in any other place, as he passed his latter years in that and the neighbouring cities, as in bergamo, and particularly in piacenza. his epitaph is given in the guida di milano, page . il montagna, another artist from holland, was also a painter of sea views, which may almost indeed be called the landscapes of the dutch. he left many works in italy, more particularly in florence and in rome, where he is sometimes mistaken for tempesta in the galleries and in picture sales; but montagna, as far as i can judge, is more serene in his skies, and darker in his waves and the appearance of the sea. a large picture of the deluge, which is at s. maria maggiore in bergamo, placed there in , in which the figures are by the cav. liberi, is supposed to be by montagna, from the tone of the water. this however is an error, for the montagna of whom we speak, called by felibien (tom. iii. p. ,) montagna di venezia, certainly died in padua; and in a ms. by a contemporary author, where he is mentioned as a distinguished sea painter, he is said to have died in . i apprehend this is the same artist whom malvasia (tom. ii. p. ,) calls mons. rinaldo della montagna, and states that he was held in esteem by guido for his excellence in sea views. i also find a niccolo de plate montagna, favourably mentioned by felibien, also a marine painter, who died about ; and i formerly imagined that this might be the artist who painted so much in italy, but i now retract that opinion. tempesti was the first to introduce the custom of decorating landscapes with battles and skirmishes. a flemish artist of the name of jacopo succeeded to him in this branch, but his fame was eclipsed by his own scholar cerquozzi, a roman, who from his singular talent in this respect, was called michelangiolo delle battaglie. he was superior to tempesti in colouring, but inferior to him in designing horses. in the human figure, too, he is less correct, and more daring in the style of his master cesari. it must however be remembered, that when cerquozzi painted battles he was not in his prime, and that his chief merit lay in subjects on which i shall presently make some remarks. padre jacopo cortese, a jesuit, called from his native country il borgognone, carried this branch of the art to a height unknown before or since. m. a. cerquozzi discovered his genius for this department, and persuaded him to abandon the other branches of painting which he cultivated, and to confine himself to this alone. the battle of constantine, by giulio romano in the vatican, was the model on which he founded his style. his youth had been dedicated to arms, and his military spirit was not to be extinguished by the luxury of rome, or the indolence of the cloister. he imparted a wonderful air of reality to his compositions. his combatants appear before us courageously contending for honour or for life, and we seem to hear the cries of the wounded, the blast of the trumpet, and the neighing of the horses. he was indeed an inimitable artist in his line, and his scholars were accustomed to say that their own figures seemed to fight only in jest, while those of borgognone were the real occupants of the field of battle. he painted with great despatch, and his battle pieces are in consequence very frequent in collections; his touch was rapid, in strokes, and his pencil flowing, so that the effect is heightened by distance; and this style was probably the result of his study of paolo at venice, and of guido in bologna. from whatever cause it may be, his colouring is very different from that of guglielmo baur, who is considered his master, and of whom there are some works in the colonna gallery. there also may be seen several specimens of his scholars, bruni, graziano, and giannizero, who adopted from borgognone their colouring, and the selection of a distant point of view for their subject. others of his scholars occur in various schools. it was also during the pontificate of urban, about the year , that the burlesque style was first brought into notice in rome. it had been practised by ludius in the time of augustus, and was not wholly unknown to our early artists; but i am not aware that any one had exercised this branch as a profession, or on so small a scale as was practised by pietro laar, who was called bamboccio, from his deformity, as well as from the subjects of his pencil; and the appellation of _bambocciate_ is generally applied to these small pictures, which represent the festivities of the vintage, dances, fights, and carnival masquerades. his figures are usually of a span in size, and the accompanying landscape and the animals are so vividly coloured, that we seem, says passeri, to see the very objects themselves from an open window, rather than the representation on canvass. the great painters frequently purchased the pictures of pietro, in order to study his natural style of colour, though at the same time they lamented that so much talent should be misapplied to such low subjects.[ ] he resided many years in rome, and then retired to holland, where he died at an advanced age, and not a young man, as passeri has imagined. his place and his employ in rome were soon filled up by cerquozzi, who had for some time past exchanged the name of m. a. delle battaglie, for that of m. a. delle bambocciate. although the subjects which he represents are humourous, like those of laar, the incidents and the characters are for the most part different. the first adopted the flemish boors, the other the peasantry of italy. they had both great force of colour, but bamboccio excels cerquozzi in landscape, while the latter discovers more spirit in his figures. one of cerquozzi's largest compositions is in the spada palace at rome, in which he represented a band of insurgent lazzaroni applauding maso aniello. laar had another excellent imitator in gio. miel, of antwerp, who having imbibed a good style of colouring from vandyke, came to rome and frequented the school of sacchi. from thence, however, he was soon dismissed, as his master wished him to attempt serious subjects, but he was led both by interest and genius to the burlesque. his pictures pleased from their spirited representations and their excellent management of light and shade, and brought high prices from collectors. he afterwards painted on a larger scale, and besides some altarpieces in rome, he left some considerable works in piedmont, where we shall notice him again. theodore hembreker, of haerlem, also employed himself on humourous subjects, and scenes of common life, although there are some religious pieces attributed to him in the church della pace in rome, and a number of landscapes in private collections. he passed many years in italy, and visited most of the great cities, so that his works are frequently found not only in rome, where he had established himself, but in florence, naples, venice, and elsewhere. his style is a pleasing union of the flemish and italian. many artists of this period attached themselves to the painting of animals. castiglione distinguished himself in this line, but he resided for the most part of his time in another country. m. gio. rosa, of flanders, is the most known in rome and the state, for the great number of his paintings of animals, in which he possessed a rare talent. it is told of him, that dogs were deceived by the hares he painted, thus reviving the wonderful story of zeuxis, so much boasted of by pliny. two of his largest and finest pictures are in the bolognetti collection, and there is attached to them a portrait, but whether of the painter himself, or some other person, is not known. we must not confound this artist with rosa da tivoli, who was also an excellent animal painter, but not so celebrated in italy, and flourished at a later period, and whose real name was philip peter roos. he was son-in-law of brandi, and his scholar in rome, and rivalled his hasty method in many pictures which i have seen in rome and the states of the church; but we ought not to rest our decision of his merits on these works, but should view the animals painted by him at his leisure, particularly for the galleries of princes. these are to be found in vienna, dresden, monaco, and other capital cities of germany; and london possesses not a few of the first value in their way.[ ] after caravaggio had given the best examples of flowers in his pictures, the cav. tommaso salini, of rome, an excellent artist, as may be seen in a s. niccola at s. agostino, was the first that composed vases of flowers, accompanying them with beautiful groups of corresponding foliage, and other elegant designs. others too pursued this branch, and the most celebrated of all, was mario nuzzi della penna, better known by the name of mario da' fiori; whose productions during his life were emulously sought after, and purchased at great prices; but after the lapse of some years, not retaining their original freshness, and acquiring, from a vicious mode of colouring, a black and squalid appearance, they became much depreciated in value. the same thing happened to the flower pieces of laura bernasconi, who was his best imitator, and whose works are still to be seen in many collections. orsini informs us, that he found in ascoli some paintings of flowers by another of the fair sex, to whose memory the academy of s. luke in rome erected a marble monument in their church, not so much in compliment to her talents in painting, as in consequence of her having bequeathed to that society all her property, which was considerable. in her epitaph she is commemorated only as a miniature painter, and orlandi describes her as such, adding, that she resided for a long time in florence, where she left a large number of portraits in miniature of the medici, and other princes of that time, about the year . she also painted in other capitals of italy, and died at an advanced age in rome, in . michelangiolo di campidoglio of rome, was greatly distinguished for his masterly grouping of fruits. though almost fallen into oblivion from the lapse of years, his pictures are still to be met with in rome, and in other places. the noble family of fossombroni in arezzo, possess one of the finest specimens of him that i have ever seen. more generally known is pietro paolo bonzi, called by baglione, il gobbo di cortona, which was his native place; by others, il gobbo de' caracci, from his having been employed in their school; and by the vulgar, il gobbo da' frutti, from the natural manner of his painting fruit. he did not pass the bounds of mediocrity in historical design, as we may see from his s. thomas, in the church of the rotonda, nor in landscapes; but he was unrivalled in painting fruits, and designing festoons, as in the ceiling of the palazzo mattei; and in his elegant grouping of fruit in dishes and baskets, as i have seen in cortona, in the house of the noble family of velluti, in the olivieri gallery in pesaro, and elsewhere. the marchesi venuti, in cortona, have a portrait of him painted, it is believed, by one of the caracci, or some one of their school, and it is well known, that the drawing of caricatures was a favourite amusement of that academy. at this brilliant epoch, the art of perspective too was carried to a high degree of perfection in deceiving the eye of the spectator. from the beginning of the seventeenth century, it had made great advances by the aid of p. zaccolini, a theatine monk of cesena, in whose praise it is sufficient to observe, that domenichino and poussin were instructed by him in this art. s. silvestro, in montecavallo, possesses the finest specimen of this power of illusion, in a picture of feigned columns, and cornices and other architectural decorations. his original drawings remain in the barberini library. gianfrancesco niceron de' p. p. minimi added to this science by his work entitled _thaumaturgus opticus_, ; and in a gallery of his convent at trinità de' monti, he painted some landscapes, which, on being viewed in a different aspect, are converted into figures. but the most practised artist in the academy of rome, was viviano codagora, who drew from the ruins of ancient rome, and also painted compositions of his own invention in perspective. he engaged cerquozzi and miel, and others in rome, to insert the figures for him, but he was most partial to gargiuoli of naples, as we shall mention in our account of that school. viviano may he called the vitruvius of this class of painters. he was correct in his linear perspective, and an accurate observer of the style of the ancients. he gave his representations of marble the peculiar tint it acquires by the lapse of years, and his general tone of colour was vigorous. what subtracts the most from his excellence is a certain hardness, and too great a quantity of black, by which his pictures are easily distinguished from others in collections, and which in the course of time renders them dark and almost worthless. his true name is unknown to the greater number of the lovers of art, by whom he is called il viviani; and who seem to have confounded him with ottavio viviani of brescia, who is mentioned by the dictionaries; a perspective painter also, but in another branch, and in a different style, as we shall hereafter see. [footnote : he excelled chiefly in architecture, although he had given a proof of his talents in painting, in some subjects in the gallery, executed under gregory xiii.] [footnote : in the, not very accurate, catalogue of the pictures in fabriano, besides the above mentioned fourteen, seven more are mentioned by the same master.] [footnote : mention is also made of one basilio maggieri, an excellent painter of portraits.] [footnote : v. le pitture pubbliche di piacenza, p. .] [footnote : in a letter of the oretti correspondence, written in , from andrea zanoni to the prince ercolani, i find marini classed in the school of ferraù da faenza, and there still remain many pictures by him in the style of that master.] [footnote : pascoli has restored to him the picture of s. rosalia at the maddalena, which titi had ascribed to michele rocca, called _il parmigianino_, an artist of repute, and proper to be mentioned, as by those who are not acquainted with his name and style, he might be mistaken for mazzuola, or perhaps scaglia. the same author, soon afterwards, mentions grecolini, and thereby renders any further notice of that artist on my part unnecessary.] [footnote : we ought to judge of him from the visitation, at the church of the orfanelli, rather than from the picture of various saints, in _ara coeli_. this kind of observation may be extended to many other artists, who are commemorated for the sake of some superior work.] [footnote : memoirs of this painter have been long a desideratum, as may be seen from the lett. pitt. tom. v. p. . i give such information as i have been able to procure in his native place, assisted by the researches of the very obliging monsignore massajuoli, bishop of nocera. gio. batista was born in sassoferrato on the th july, , and died in rome on the th august, . and i may here correct an error of my first edition, where it is printed .] [footnote : there is a picture of the rosario in the church of the eremitani, with his name, and the year . it is a large composition.] [footnote : in the oretti correspondence there is a letter from an anonymous writer to malvasia respecting this painter, who is there called francesco, and is declared to be _pittore di molta stima_. he then painted in ancona, as appears from letters under his own hand to malvasia, where he invariably subscribes himself francesco.] [footnote : passeri, vite de' pittori, page . he was remarkable for being the first to adopt a new style in trees in landscapes, where by a strong character of truth and attention to the forms of the trunk, foliage, and branches, he denoted the particular species he wished to express.] [footnote : he painted for his _studio_ a landscape enriched with views from the villa madama, in which a wonderful variety of trees was introduced. this he preserved for the purpose of supplying himself, as from nature, with subjects for his various pictures, and refused to sell it to the munificent pontiff, clement ix., although that prince offered to cover it with pieces of gold.] [footnote : v. salvator rosa, sat. iii. p. , where he reprehends not only the artists, but also the great, for affording such pictures a place in their collections.] [footnote : he was the ancestor of the sig. giuseppe rosa, director of the imperial gallery in vienna, who has given us a catalogue of the italian and flemish pictures of that collection, and who will, we hope, add the german. of this deserving artist he possesses a portrait, engraved in , where we find a list of the various academies that had elected him a member, and these are numerous, and of the first class in europe. we find him also amongst those masters whose drawings were collected by mariette; and he is also mentioned in the lessico universale delle belle arti, edited in zurich, in .] roman school. fifth epoch. _the scholars of pietro da cortona, from an injudicious imitation of their master, deteriorate the art. maratta and others support it._ it may with equal justice be asserted of the fine arts, as of the belles lettres, that they never long remain in the same state, and that they experience often great changes even in the common period assigned to the life of man. many causes contribute to this; public calamities, such as i mentioned to have occurred after the death of raffaello; the instability of the human mind, which in the arts as in dress is guided by fashion and the love of novelty; the influence of particular artists; the taste of the great, who from their selection or patronage of particular masters, silently indicate the path to those artists who seek the gifts of fortune. these and other causes tended to produce the decline of painting in rome towards the close of the seventeenth century, at a time too when literature began to revive; a clear proof that they are not mutually progressive. this was in a great measure occasioned by the calamitous events which afflicted rome and the state, about the middle of that century; by the feuds of the nobles, the flight of the barberini family, and other unfortunate circumstances, which, during the pontificate of innocent x., as we are informed by passeri, (p. ,) rendered the employment of artists very precarious; but more than all the dreadful plague of , under alexander vii. to this state of decay too the evil passions of mankind contributed in no small degree, and these indeed in all revolutions are among the most active and predominant sources of evil, and often even in a prosperous state of things sow the seeds of future calamities. the cav. bernini, a man of more talents as an architect than as a sculptor, was under urban viii. and innocent x., and also until the year , in which he died, the arbiter of the public taste in rome. the enemy of sacchi and the benefactor of cortona, he obtained more employ for his friend than for his rival; and this was easily accomplished, as cortona was rapid as well as laborious, while sacchi was slow and irresolute, qualities which rendered him unacceptable even to his own patrons. in course of time bernini began to favour romanelli, to the prejudice of pietro; and, instructing that artist and baciccio in his principles, he influenced them to the adoption of his own style, which, though it possessed considerable beauty, was nevertheless mannered, particularly in the folds of the drapery. the way being thus opened to caprice, they abandoned the true, and substituted false precepts of art, and many years had not elapsed before pernicious principles appeared in the schools of the painters, and particularly in that of cortona. some went so far as to censure the imitation of raffaello, as bellori attests in the life of carlo maratta, (p. ,) and others ridiculed, as useless, the study of nature, preferring to copy, in a servile manner, the works of other artists. these effects are visible in the pictures of the time. all the countenances, although by different artists, have a fulness in the lips and nose like those of pietro, and have all a sort of family resemblance, so much are they alike; a defect which bottari says is the only fault of pietro, but it is not the only fault of his school. every one was anxious to avoid the labour of study, and to promote facility at the expense of correct design; the errors in which they endeavoured to conceal by overcharging rather than discriminating the contours. no one can be desirous that i should enter into further particulars, when we are treating of matters so very near our own times, and whoever is free from prejudice may judge for himself. i now return to the state of the roman school about one hundred and twenty years back. the schools most in repute, after the death of sacchi, in , and of berrettini, in , when the best scholars of the caracci were dead, were reduced to two, that of cortona supported by ciro, and that of sacchi, by maratta. the first of these expanded the ideas, but induced negligence; the second enforced correctness, but fettered the ideas. each adopted something from the other, and not always the best part; an affected contrast pleased some of the scholars of maratta, and the drapery of maratta was adopted by some of the followers of ciro.[ ] the school of cortona exhibited a grand style in fresco; the other school was restricted to oils. they became rivals, each supported by its own party, and were impartially employed by the pontiffs until the death of ciro, that is, until . from that time a new tone was given to art by maratta, who, under clement xi., was appointed director of the numerous works which that pontiff was carrying on in rome and in urbino. although this master had many able rivals, as we shall see, he still maintained his superiority, and on his death, his school continued to flourish until the pontificate of benedict xiv., ultimately yielding to the more novel style of subleyras, batoni, and mengs. thus far of the two schools in general: we shall now notice their followers. besides the scholars whom pietro formed in tuscany, as dandini of florence, castellucci of arezzo, palladino of cortona, and those whom he formed in other schools, where we shall see them as masters, he educated others in the roman state, of whom it is now time to speak. the number of his scholars is beyond belief. they were enumerated by sig. cav. luzi, a nobleman of cortona, who composed a life of berrettini with more accuracy than had been before done, but his death prevented the publication of it. pietro continued to teach to the close of his life, and the picture of s. ivo, which he left imperfect, was finished by gio. ventura borghesi, of città di castello. of this artist there are also at s. niccola, two pictures, the nativity, and the assumption of the virgin, and i am not acquainted with any other public specimens of his pencil in rome. his native place possesses many of his performances, and the most esteemed are four circles of the history of s. caterina, v. m., in the church of that saint. many of his works are to be found also in prague, and the cities of germany. he follows pietro with sufficient fidelity in design, but does not display so much vigour of colour. carlo cesi, of rieti, or rather of antrodoco, in that neighbourhood, was also a distinguished scholar of pietro. he lived in rome, and in the quirinal gallery, where the best artists of the age painted under alexander vii., he has left a large picture of the judgment of solomon. he worked also in other places; as at s. m. maggiore, at the rotunda, and was patronized by several cardinals. he was correct in his design, and opposed, both in person and by his precepts and example, the fatal and prevailing facility of his time. pascoli has preserved some of his axioms, and this among others, that the beautiful should not be crowded, but distributed with judgment in the composition of pictures; otherwise they resemble a written style, which by the redundancy of brilliant and sententious remarks fails in its effect. francesco bonifazio was of viterbo, and from the various pictures by him, which orlandi saw in that city, i do not hesitate to rank him among the successful followers of pietro. we may mention michelangiolo ricciolini, a roman by birth, although called of todi, whose portrait is in the medici gallery, where is also that of niccolo ricciolini, respecting whom orlandi is silent. both were employed in decorating the churches of rome; the second had the reputation of a better designer than the first, and in the cartoons painted for some mosaics for the vatican church, he competed with the cav. franceschini. paolo gismondi, called also paolo perugino, became a good fresco painter, and there are works remaining by him in the s. agata, in the piazza nova, and at s. agnes, in the piazza navona. pietro paolo baldini, of whose native place i am ignorant, is stated by titi to have been of the school of cortona. ten pictures by him are counted in the churches of rome, and in some of them, as in the crucifixion of s. eustace, a precision of style derived from another school is observable. bartolommeo palombo has only two pictures in the capital. that of s. maria maddelena de' pazzi, which is placed at s. martino a' monti, entitles him to rank with the best of his fellow scholars, the picture possesses so strong a colouring, and the figures are so graceful and well designed. pietro lucatelli, of rome, was a distinguished painter, and is named in the catalogue of the colonna gallery, as the scholar of ciro, and in titi, as the disciple of cortona. he is a different artist from andrea lucatelli, of whom we shall shortly speak. gio. batista lenardi, whom, in a former edition, i hesitated to place in the list of the pupils of pietro, i now consider as belonging to that school, though he was instructed also by baldi. in the chapel of the b. rita, at s. agostino, he painted two lateral pictures as well as the vault; he also ornamented other churches with his works, and particularly that of buonfratelli, at trastevere, where he painted the picture of s. gio. calibita. that of the great altar was ascribed to him, probably from a similarity of style; but is by andrea generoli, called il sabinese, a pupil either of pietro himself, or of one of his followers. thus far of the less celebrated of this school. the three superior artists, whose works still attract us in the galleries of princes, are cortesi, and the two elder scholars of the academy of pietro, romanelli and ferri. nor is it improbable that having competitors in some of his first scholars, he became indisposed to instruct others with the same degree of good will, as those noble minds are few, in whom the zeal of advancing the art exceeds the regret at having produced an ingrate or a rival. guglielmo cortesi, the brother of p. giacomo, like him named il borgognone, was one of the best artists of this period; and a scholar rather than an imitator of pietro. his admiration was fixed on maratta, whom he followed in the studied variety of his heads, and in the sobriety of the composition, more than in the division of the folds of his drapery or in colour; in which latter he manifested a clearness partaking of the flemish. his style was somewhat influenced by that of his brother, whose assistant he was, and by his study of the caracci. he often appears to have imitated the strong relief and azure grounds of guercino. his crucifixion of s. andrea, in the church of monte cavallo, the fight of joshua in the quirinal palace, and a madonna attended by saints, in the trinità de' pellegrini, merit our attention. in these works there is a happy union of various styles, exempt from mannerism. francesco romanelli was born at viterbo, and, as well as testa, studied some time under domenichino. he afterwards placed himself with pietro, whose manner he imitated so successfully, that on pietro going on a journey into lombardy, he left him, together with bottalla (called bortelli by baldinucci) to supply his place in decorating the barberini palace. it is reported that the two scholars, in the absence of their master, endeavoured to have the work transferred to themselves, and were on that account dismissed. it was at this time that romanelli, assisted by bernini, changed his style, and adopted by degrees a more elegant and a seductive manner in his figures, but possessing less grandeur and science than that of pietro. he used more slender proportions, clearer tints, and a more minute taste in folding his drapery. his deposition in s. ambrogio, which was extolled as a prodigy, stimulated pietro to paint opposite to it that wonderful picture of s. stephen, on seeing which bernini exclaimed, that he then perceived the difference between the master and the scholar. romanelli was twice in france, having found a patron in the cardinal barberini, who had fled to paris; and he participated in the spirited manner of that country, which gave an animation before unknown to his figures. this at least is the opinion of pascoli. he decorated a portico of cardinal mazarine with subjects from the metamorphoses of ovid, and afterwards adorned some of the royal saloons with passages from the Æneid. he was preparing to return to france with his family for the third time, when he was intercepted by death at viterbo. he left in that city, at the grand altar of the duomo, the picture of s. lorenzo, and in rome, and in other cities of italy, numerous works both public and private, although he died at about forty-five years of age. he had the honour of painting in the church of the vatican. the presentation which he placed there is now in the church of the certosa, the mosaic in s. peter. he did not leave behind him any scholars who inherited his reputation. urbano, his son, was educated by ciro after the death of his father. he is known for his works in the cathedral churches of velletri and viterbo: those in viterbo are from the life of s. lorenzo, the patron saint of the church, and prove him to have been a young man of considerable promise, but he was cut off prematurely. ciro ferri, a roman by birth, was, of all the disciples of cortona, the one the most attached in person, and similar to him in style; and not a few of the works of pietro were given to him to complete, both in florence and in rome. there are indeed some pictures so dubious, that the experienced are in doubt whether to assign them to the master or the scholar. he displays generally less grace in design, a less expansive genius, and shuns that breadth of drapery which his master affected. the number of his works in rome is not proportioned to his residence there, because he lent much assistance to his master. there is a s. ambrogio in the church of that saint just mentioned, and it is a touchstone of merit for whoever wishes to compare him with the best of his fellow scholars, or with his master himself. his works in the pitti palace have been already mentioned in another place, and we ought not to forget another grand composition by him in s. m. maggiore in bergamo, consisting of various scriptural histories painted in fresco. he speaks of them himself in some letters inserted in the pittoriche, (tom. ii. p. ,) from which we gather, that he had been reprehended for his colouring, and contemplated visiting venice in order to improve himself. he did not leave any scholar of celebrity in rome. corbellini, who finished the cupola of s. agnes, the last work of ciro, which has been engraved, would not have found a place in titi and pascoli, if it had not been to afford those writers an opportunity of expressing their regret at so fine a composition being injured by the hand that attempted to finish it. but another scion of the same stock sprung up to support the name and credit of the school of ciro, transferred from florence to rome. we mentioned in the first book, that when ciro was in florence he formed a scholar in gabbiani, who became the master of benedetto luti. ciro was only just dead when luti arrived in rome, who not being able to become his scholar, as he had designed when he left his native place, applied himself to studying the works of ciro, and those of other good masters, as i have elsewhere remarked. he thus formed for himself an original style, and enjoyed in rome the reputation of an excellent artist in the time of clement xi., who honoured him with commissions, and decorated him with the cross. it is to be regretted that he attached himself so much to crayons, with which he is said to have inundated all europe. he was intended by nature for nobler things. he painted well in fresco, and still better in oils. his s. anthony in the church of the apostles, and the magdalen in that of the sisters of magnanapoli, which is engraved, are highly esteemed. nor would it add a little to his reputation, if we had engravings of his two pictures in the duomo of piacenza, s. conrad penitent, and s. alexius recognised after death; where, amidst other excellences, a fine expression of the pathetic predominates. of his profane pieces, his psyche in the capitoline gallery, is the most remarkable, and breathes an elegant and refined taste. of the few productions which tuscany possesses by him, we have written in the school of gabbiani. we shall here mention a few of his scholars, who remained in rome, noticing others in various schools. placido costanzi is often mentioned with approbation in the collections of rome for the elegant figures he inserted in the landscapes of orizzonte; he also painted some altarpieces in a refined style. in the church of the magdalen is a picture of s. camillo attended by angels, so gracefully painted, that he seems to have aspired to rival domenichino. he also distinguished himself in fresco, as may be seen in the s. maria in campo marzio, where the ceiling in the greater tribune is the work of costanzi. pietro bianchi resembled luti more than any of his scholars in elegance of manner, and excelled him in large compositions, which he derived from his other master, baciccio. his extreme fastidiousness and his early death prevented him from leaving many works. a very few of his pictures are found in the churches of rome. at gubbio is his picture of s. chiara, with the angel appearing, a piece of grand effect, from the distribution of the light. the sketch of this picture was purchased by the king of sardinia at a high price. he painted for the church of s. peter a picture, which was executed in mosaic in the altar of the choir: the original is in the certosa, in which the cav. mancini had the greatest share, as bianchi did little more than furnish the sketch. francesco michelangeli, called l'aquilano, is known to posterity from a letter written by luti himself, (lett. pitt. tom. vi. p. ,) where the annotator informs us, that his master frequently employed him in copying his works, and that he died young. this notice is not without its use, as it acquaints us with the origin of the beautiful copies of luti which are so frequently met with. we may lastly notice an artist of mediocrity of this school, who is nevertheless said to be the painter of some beautiful pictures; the two pictures of s. margaret, in araceli; s. gallicano, in the church of that saint; and the nativity, in the church of the infant jesus. his name was filippo evangelisti, and he was chamberlain to the cardinal corradini, through whose influence he obtained many commissions. being himself incapable of executing these well, (if we may rely on a letter in the _pittoriche_) he engaged benefial, whom we shall shortly notice, to assist him. they thus painted in partnership, the gain was divided between them, but the celebrity was the portion of the principal; and if any piece came out under the name of the assistant, it was rather censured than praised. the poor artist at last became impatient of this treatment, and disdaining any longer to support a character which did him no honour, he left his companion to work by himself; and it was then that evangelisti, in his picture of s. gregory, in the church of the saints peter and marcellino, appeared in his true colours, and the public thus discovered that he was indebted to benefial for genius as well as labour. the school of sacchi may boast of one of the first artists of the age in francesco lauri, of rome, in whom his master flattered himself he had found a second raffaello. the disciple himself, in order to justify the high expectation which the public had conceived of him, before opening a school in rome, travelled through italy, and from thence visited germany, holland, and flanders, and resided for the space of a year in paris; thus adding greatly to the funds of knowledge and experience already obtained by him in his native place. he was, however, cut off very early in life, leaving behind him, in the sala de' crescenzi, three figures of goddesses painted in the vault in fresco; but no other considerable work, as far as my knowledge extends. this artist must not be confounded with filippo, his brother, and scholar in his early years, who was afterwards instructed by caroselli, who espoused his sister. he was not accustomed to paint large compositions; and the adam and eve, which are seen in the pace, it should seem, he represented on so much larger a scale, lest any one should despise his talent, as only capable of small works, on which he was always profitably employed. we meet with cabinet pictures by him in the flemish style, touched with great spirit, and coloured in good taste, evincing a fund of lively and humorous invention. he sometimes painted sacred subjects, and at s. saverio, in the collection of the late monsignor goltz, i saw an enchanting picture by him, a perfect gem, and greatly admired by mengs. he painted in the palazzo borghese some beautiful landscapes in fresco, in which branch his family was already celebrated, as his father, baldassare, of flanders, who had been a scholar of brill, and lived in rome in the time of sacchi, was ranked among the eminent landscape painters, and is commemorated by baldinucci. the immature death of lauri was compensated for by the lengthened term of years accorded to luigi garzi and carlo maratta, who continued to paint to the commencement of the eighteenth century; enemies to despatch, correct in their style, and free from the corrupt prejudices which afterwards usurped the place of the genuine rules of art. the first, who is called a roman by orlandi, was born in pistoja, but came while yet young to rome. he studied landscape for fifteen years under boccali, but being instructed afterwards by sacchi, he discovered such remarkable talents, that he became highly celebrated in naples and in rome in every class of painting. in the former city, his decoration of two chambers of the royal palace is greatly extolled; and in the latter, where he ornamented many churches, he seemed to surpass himself in the prophet of s. giovanni laterano. he is praised in general for his forms and attitudes, and for his fertile invention and his composition. he understood perspective, and was a good machinist, though in refinement of taste he is somewhat behind maratta. in his adherence to the school of sacchi we may still perceive some imitation of cortona, to whom some have given him as a scholar, as well in many pictures remaining in rome, as in others sent to various parts; among which is his s. filippo neri, in the church of that saint at fano, which is a gallery of beautiful productions. but on no occasion does he seem more a follower of cortona, or rather of lanfranco, than in the assumption in the duomo of pescia, an immense composition, and which is considered his masterpiece. it is mentioned in the _catalogo delle migliori pitture di valdinievole_, drawn up by sig. innocenzio ansaldi, and inserted in the recent history of pescia. mario, the son of luigi garzi who is mentioned twice in the _guida di roma_, died young. we may here also mention the name of agostino scilla of messina, whom we shall hereafter notice more at length. carlo maratta was born in camurano, in the district of ancona, and enjoyed, during his life, the reputation of one of the first painters in europe. mengs, in a letter "on the rise, progress, and decline of the art of design," assigns to maratta the enviable distinction of having sustained the art in rome, where it did not degenerate as in other places. the early part of his life was devoted to copying the works of raffaello, which always excited his admiration, and his indefatigable industry was employed in restoring the frescos of that great master in the vatican and the farnesina, and preserving them for the eyes of posterity; a task requiring both infinite care and judgment, and described by bellori. he was not a machinist, and in consequence neither he nor his scholars distinguished themselves in frescos, or in large compositions. at the same time he had no fear of engaging in works of that kind, and willingly undertook the decoration of the duomo of urbino, which he peopled with figures. this work, with the cupola itself, was destroyed by an earthquake in ; but the sketches for it are preserved in urbino, in four pictures, in the albani palace. he was most attached by inclination to the painting of cabinet pictures and altarpieces. his madonnas possess a modest, lively, and dignified air; his angels are graceful; and his saints are distinguished by their fine heads, a character of devotion, and are clothed in the sumptuous costume of the church. in rome his pictures are the more prized the nearer they approach to the style of sacchi, as the s. saverio in the gesù, a madonna in the panfili palace, and several others. some are found beyond the territories of the church, and in genoa is his martyrdom of s. biagio, a picture as to the date of which i do not inquire, but only assert that it is worthy of the greatest rival of sacchi. he afterwards adopted a less dignified style, but which for its correctness is worthy of imitation. though he had devoted the early part of his life to the acquisition of a pure style of design, he did not think himself sufficiently accomplished in it, and again returned, when advanced in years, to the study of raffaello, of whose excellences he possessed himself, without losing sight of the caracci and guido. but many are of opinion that he fell into a style too elaborate, and sacrificed the spirit of his compositions to minute care. his principal fault lay in the folding of his drapery, when through a desire of copying nature he too frequently separates its masses, and neglects too much the naked parts, which takes away from the elegance of his figures. he endeavoured to fix his principal light on the most important part of his composition, subduing rather more than was right, the light in other parts of his picture, and his scholars carried this principle afterwards so far as to produce an indistinctness which became the characteristic mark of his school. though not often, he yet painted some few pictures of an extraordinary magnitude, as the s. carlo in the church of that saint at the corso, and the baptism of christ in the certosa, copied in mosaic in the basilica of s. peter. his other pictures are for the most part on a smaller scale; many are in rome, and amongst them the charming composition of s. stanislaus kostka, at the altar where his ashes repose; not a few others in other cities, as the s. andrea corsini in the chapel of that noble family in florence, and the s. francesco di sales at the filippini di forli, which is one of his most studied works. he contributed largely, also, to the galleries of sovereigns and private individuals. there is not a considerable collection in rome without a specimen of his pencil, particularly that of the albani, to which family he was extremely attached. his works are frequently met with in the state. there is a valuable copy of the battle of constantine, in possession of the mancinforti family in ancona. it is related, that, being requested to copy that picture, he proposed the task to one of his best scholars, who disdained the commission. he therefore undertook the work himself, and on finishing it, took occasion to intimate to his pupils, that the copying such productions might not be without benefit to the most accomplished masters. he had a daughter whom he instructed in his own art; and her portrait, executed by herself, in a painting attitude, is to be seen in the corsini gallery at rome. maratta, in his capacity of an instructor, is extolled by his biographer, bellori (p. ); but is by pascoli accused of jealousy, and of having condemned a youth of the most promising talents in his school, niccolo berrettoni di montefeltro, to the preparation of colours. this artist, however, from the principles which he imbibed from cantarini, and from his imitation of guido and coreggio, formed for himself a mixed style, delicate, free, and unconstrained, and the more studied, as that study was concealed under the semblance of nature. he died young, leaving very few works behind him, almost all of which were engraved, in consequence of his high reputation. the marriage of the virgin mary, which he executed for s. lorenzo in borgo, was engraved by pier santi bartoli, a very distinguished engraver of those times, an excellent copyist, and himself a painter of some merit.[ ] another of his pictures, a madonna, attended by saints at s. maria di monte santo, and the lunettes of the same chapel, were engraved by frezza. an account of this artist may be found in the lettere pitt. tom. v. p. . giuseppe chiari of rome, who finished some pictures of berrettoni and of maratta himself, was one of the best painters of easel pictures of that school. many of his works found their way to england. he painted some pictures for the churches of rome, and probably the best is the adoration of the magi in the church of the suffragio, of which there is an engraving. he also succeeded in fresco. those works in particular, which he executed in the barberini palace, under the direction of the celebrated bellori, and those also of the colonna gallery, will always do him credit; he was sober in his colours, careful and judicious; rare qualities in a fresco painter. he did not inherit great talents from nature, but by force of application became one of the first artists of his age. tommaso chiari, a pupil also of maratta, and whose designs he sometimes executed, did not pass the bounds of mediocrity. the same may be observed of sigismond rosa, a scholar of giuseppe chiari. to giuseppe chiari, who was the intimate friend of maratta, we may add two others, who were, according to pascoli, the only scholars whom he took a pleasure in instructing; giuseppe passeri, the nephew of giambatista, and giacinto calandrucci of palermo. both were distinguished as excellent imitators of their master. passeri worked also in the state. in pesaro is a s. jerome by him, meditating on the last judgment, which may be enumerated among his best works. in the church of the vatican, he painted a pendant to the baptism of maratta, s. peter baptizing the centurion, which after being copied in mosaic, was sent to the church of the conventuals in urbino. this picture, which was executed under the direction of maratta, is well coloured; but in many of his works his colouring is feeble, as in the conception at the church of s. thomas in parione, and in other places in rome. calandrucci, after having given proof of his talents in the churches of s. antonio de' portoghesi, and s. paolino della regola, and in other churches of rome, and after having been creditably employed by many noble persons, and by two pontiffs, returned to palermo, and there, in the church del salvatore, placed his large composition of the madonnas, attended by s. basil and other saints, which work he did not long survive. he left behind him in rome a nephew, who was his scholar, called giambatista; and he had also a brother there of the name of domenico, a disciple of maratta and himself; but there are no traces of their works remaining. andrea procaccini and pietro de' petri, also hold a distinguished place in this school, although their fortunes were very dissimilar. procaccini, who painted in s. giovanni laterano, the daniel, one of the twelve prophets which clement xi. commanded to be painted as a trial of skill by the artists of his day, obtained great fame, and ultimately became painter to the court of spain, where he remained fourteen years, and left some celebrated works. petri on the contrary continued to reside in rome, and died there at a not very advanced age. he was employed there in the tribune of s. clement, and in some other works. he did not, however, obtain the reputation and success that he deserved, in consequence of his infirm health and his extreme modesty. he is one of those who engrafted on the style of maratta, a portion of the manner of cortona. orlandi calls him a roman, others a spaniard, but his native place in fact was premia, a district of novara. paolo albertoni and gio. paolo melchiorri, both romans, flourished about the same time; less esteemed, indeed, than the foregoing, but possessing the reputation of good masters, particularly the second. at a somewhat later period, the last scholar of maratta, agostino masucci presents himself to our notice. this artist did not exhibit any peculiar spirit, confining himself to pleasing and devout subjects. in his representations of the virgin he emulated his master, who from his great number of subjects of that kind, was at one time called carlo dalle madonne; as he himself has commemorated in his own epitaph. like maratta he imparted to them an expression of serene majesty, rather than loveliness and affability. in some of his cabinet pictures i am aware that he occasionally renounced this manner, but it was only through intercession and expostulation. he was a good fresco painter, and decorated for pope benedict xiv. an apartment in a casino, erected in the garden of the quirinal. he painted many altarpieces, and his angels and children are designed with great elegance and nature, and in a novel and original style. his s. anna at the nome s. s. di maria, is one of the best pictures he left in rome; there is also a s. francis in the church of the osservanti di macerata, a conception at s. benedetto di gubbio, in urbino a s. bonaventura, which is perhaps his noblest composition, full of portraits (in which he was long considered the most celebrated painter in rome), and finished with exquisite care. lorenzo, his son and scholar, was very inferior to him. stefano pozzi received his first instructions from maratta, and afterwards became a scholar of masucci. he had a younger brother, giuseppe, who died before him, ere his fame was matured. stefano lived long, painting in rome with the reputation of one of the best masters of his day; more noble in his style of design than masucci, and if i err not, more vigorous, and more natural in his colouring. we may easily estimate their merits in rome in the church just mentioned, where we find the transito di s. giuseppe of pozzi, near the s. anna of masucci. of the cav. girolamo troppa, i have heard from oral tradition that he was the scholar of maratta. he was certainly his imitator, and a successful one too, although he did not live long. he left works both in oil and fresco in the capital, and in the church of s. giacomo delle penitenti, he painted in competition with romanelli. i have found pictures by him in the state; and in s. severino is a church picture very well conducted. girolamo odam, a roman of a lorena family, is reckoned among the disciples of the cav. carlo, and is eulogized in a long and pompous article by orlandi, or perhaps by some friend of odam, who supplied orlandi with the information. he is there described as a painter, sculptor, architect, engraver, philosopher, mathematician, and poet, and accomplished in every art and science. in all these i should imagine he was superficial, as nothing remains of him except some engravings and a very slender reputation, not at all corresponding to such unqualified commendation. of other artists who are little known in rome and its territories, such as jacopo fiammingo, francesco pavesi, michele semini, there is little information that can be relied on. respecting subissati, conca is silent, though information might possibly be obtained of him in madrid, at which court he died. in urbino, which was his native place, i find no picture of him remaining, except the head of a sybil: antonio balestra of verona and raffaellino bottalla will be found in their native schools, but i must not here omit one, a native of the state, who after being educated in the academy, returned to his native country, and there introduced the style of carlo, at that time so much in vogue. orlandi mentions with applause gioseffo laudati of perugia, as having contributed to restore the art, which after the support it had found in bassotti and others, had fallen into decay. lodovico trasi, of ascoli, is deserving of particular notice. he was for several years a fellow disciple of maratta in the school of sacchi, and was afterwards desirous of becoming his scholar. after studying some time in his academy, he returned to ascoli, where he has left a great number of works both public and private, in various styles. in some of his smaller pictures he discovers a good marattesque style; but in his fresco and altarpieces he is negligent, and adheres much to sacchi, yet in a manner that discovers traces of cortona. his picture of s. niccolo at the church of s. cristoforo is beautiful, and is one of the pieces which he finished with more than usual care. he has there represented the enfranchisement of a slave, at the moment the pious youth is serving at his master's table. there are some remarkable pictures of this artist in the cathedral, painted in distemper, particularly that of the martyrdom of s. emidio. trasi was the instructor of d. tommaso nardini, who continued on his master's death the decoration of the churches of the city, and his best work is perhaps in s. angelo magno, a church of the olivetani. the perspective was by agostino collaceroni of bologna, a scholar of pozzi. nardini supplied the figures, representing the mysteries of the apocalypse and other scriptural events. it displays great spirit and harmony, richness of colouring and facility, which are the distinguishing characteristics of this master, and are perhaps better expressed in this picture than in any other. we may add to the two before mentioned painters, silvestro mattei, who studied under maratta, giuseppe angelini, the scholar of trasi, and biagio miniera, also of ascoli, whom orsini has noticed in his _guida_. there flourished about the same time in the neighbouring city of fermo, two ricci, scholars of maratta, who were probably instructed before going to rome by lorenzino di fermo, a good artist, though doubtful of what school, and who is said to have painted the picture of s. catharine at the church of the conventuals, and other pictures in the adjoining territories. the one was named natale, the other ubaldo; the latter was superior to the former, and is much extolled for his s. felice, which he painted for the church of the capucins, in his native place. he did not often pass the bounds of mediocrity, which is frequently the case with artists residing at a distance from a capital, and who have not the incitement to emulation and an opportunity of studying good examples. the same observation is, i think, applicable also to another scholar of maratta, giuseppe oddi, of pesaro, where one of his pictures remains in the church della carità. we shall now return to the metropolis. a fresh reinforcement to support the style of the caracci in rome, was received from the school of bologna. i speak only of those who established themselves there. domenico muratori had been the scholar of pasinelli, and painted the great picture in the church of the apostles, which is probably the largest altarpiece in rome, and represents the martyrdom of s. philip and s. james. the grandeur of this composition, its judicious disposition and felicity of chiaroscuro, though its colouring was not entirely perfect, gave him considerable celebrity. he was also employed in many smaller works, in which he always evinced an equally correct design, and perhaps better colouring. he was chosen to paint one of the prophets in the basilica lateranense, and was employed also in other cities. in the cathedral of pisa, he painted a large picture of s. ranieri, in the act of exorcising a demon, which is esteemed one of his most finished works. francesco mancini di s. angiolo in vado, and bonaventura lamberti di carpi, had better fortune in bologna, in having for their master carlo cignani. mancini, when he came to rome, did not adhere exclusively to his master's manner, as he was rather more attached to the facility and freedom of franceschini, his fellow scholar, whom he somewhat resembles in style. he seems, however, to have had less despatch, and certainly painted less. he was chaste in his invention, and followed the example of lazzarini; he designed well, coloured in a charming manner, and was numbered among the first artists of his age in rome. he painted the miracle of s. peter at the beautiful gate of the temple, a picture which is preserved in the palace of monte cavallo, and is copied in mosaic in s. peter's. this picture, which is a spirited composition, and well arranged in the perspective, is his principal work, and does not suffer from a comparison with those mentioned in the guida di roma, and others scattered through the dominions of the church. such are pictures with various saints in the church of the conventuals of urbino, and in that of the camaldolesi of fabriano; the appearing of christ to s. peter in that of the filippini, in città di castello, and the various works executed in oil and in fresco at forli and at macerata. he painted many pictures for foreign collections, and was commended for his large compositions. from his studio issued the canonico lazzarini before named, whom, as he lived amongst other followers of cignani, i shall reserve with them to the close of the bolognese school. niccola lapiccola, of crotone, in calabria ultra, remained in rome; and a cupola of a chapel in the vatican painted by him, was copied in mosaic. there are some pictures by him in other churches; the best are, perhaps, in the state, particularly in velletri. i have heard that he was a disciple of mancini, though in his colouring he somewhat adhered to his native school. bonaventura lamberti is numbered by mengs among the latest of the successful followers of the school of cignani, whose style he preserved more carefully than mancini himself. he did not give many works to the world. he had, however, the honour of having his designs copied in mosaic by giuseppe ottaviani, in s. peter's, and one of his pictures engraved by frey. it is in the church of the spirito santo de' napolitani, and represents a miracle of s. francesco di paola. the gabrieli family, which patronised him in an extraordinary manner, possesses a great number of historical pictures by him, which are in themselves sufficient to engage the attention of an amateur for several hours. lamberti had the honour of giving to the roman school the cav. marco benefial, born and resident in rome, a painter of great genius, though not always equal to himself, rather perhaps from negligence, than deficiency of powers. the marchese venuti[ ] extols this master above all others of his time for his accurate design, and his caracciesque colouring. his monument is placed in the pantheon, among those of the most celebrated painters, and to his bust is attached the eulogy bestowed on him by the abate giovenazzo, where he is particularly commended for his power of expression. the factions to which he gave rise still subsist, as if he were yet living. his admirers not being able to defend all his works, have fixed on the flagellation at the stimmate, painted in competition with muratori,[ ] and s. secondino at the passionisti, as the subjects of their unqualified approbation; pictures indeed, of such science, that they may challenge any comparison. to these may be added his s. lorenzo and s. stefano, in the duomo of viterbo, and a few others of similar merit, in which he evidently imitated domenichino and his school. his enemies have designated him as an inferior artist, and adduce several works feeble in expression and effect. the impartial consider him an eminent artist, but his productions vary, being occasionally in a grand style, and at other times not passing the bounds of mediocrity. this is a character which has been ascribed to many poets also, and even to petrarch himself. our obligations are due to the sig. batista ponfredi, his scholar, for the memoirs of this eminent man. they were addressed to the count niccola soderini, a great benefactor of benefial, and more rich in his works than any other roman collector. his letter is in the fifth volume of the _pittoriche_, and is one of the most instructive in the collection, although altered by the editor in some points. i shall transcribe a passage from it, as it may be satisfactory to see the actual state of the art at that time, and the way in which marco contributed to its support. "he was so anxious to revive the art, and so grieved to see it fall into decay, that he frequently consumed several hours in the day in declaiming against the prevailing conception of style, and urging the necessity of shunning mannerism, and adopting a style founded in truth, which few did, or if they did, attempted not to imitate its simplicity, but adapted it to their own manner. he directed the particular attention of his pupils to the difference between the production of a mannerist, and one which was studied and simple, and founded in nature; that the first, if it were well designed, and had a good chiaroscuro, had at first sight a striking effect from the brilliancy of its colours, but gradually lost ground at every succeeding view, while the other appeared the more excellent the longer it was inspected."--these and other precepts of the same kind he delivered in terms perhaps too cynical; not only in private, but in the school of design at the campidoglio, at the time that he presided there; the consequence was that the inferior artists combined against him, deprived him of his employment, and suspended him from the academy. some further information respecting benefial was communicated to the public in the _risposta alle lett. perugine_, p. . from a scholar also of cignani, (franceschini,) francesco caccianiga received instructions in bologna, whence he came to rome, where he perfected his style and established himself. he was a painter to whom nothing was wanting, except that natural spirit and vigour which are not to be supplied by industry. he was employed by several potentates, and two of his works executed for the king of sardinia were engraved by himself. ancona possesses four of his altarpieces, among which are the institution of the eucharist, and the espousals of the virgin; pictures coloured in a clear, animated, and engaging style, and easily distinguished among a thousand. rome has few public works by him. in the gavotti palace is a good fresco, and there are others in the palace and villa of the borghesi, who generously extended to him a permanent and suitable provision, when overtaken by poverty and age.[ ] from the school of guercino came sebastiano ghezzi of comunanza, not far from ascoli. he was eminent both in design and colouring, and at the church of the agostiniani scalzi di monsammartino is a s. francesco by him, which is esteemed an exquisite picture, and wants only the finishing hand of the artist. he was the father and teacher of giuseppe ghezzi, who studied in rome, and was also a tolerable writer, considering the period at which he wrote. in his painting he seemed to adopt the style of cortona. his name is frequently mentioned in the guida di roma, and more than once in the _antichità picene_, where it is stated that he was held in great esteem by clement xi., and that he died secretary to the academy of s. luke, (tom. xxv. p. ). pascoli, who has written his life, extols him for his skill in restoring pictures, in which capacity the queen of sweden employed him exclusively on all occasions. pierleone, his son and scholar, possessed a style similar to that of his father, but less hurried, and became a more distinguished artist. he was selected with luti and trevisani, and other eminent masters, to paint the prophets of the lateran, as well as other commissions. but for his chief reputation he is indebted to the singular talent he possessed in designing caricatures, which are to be found in the cabinets of rome and other places. in these he humourously introduced persons of quality, a circumstance particularly gratifying in a country where the freedom of the pencil was thought a desirable addition to the licence of the tongue. other schools of italy also contributed artists to the roman school, who however did not produce any new manner, except that in respect of the two principal masters then in vogue, cortona and maratta, they have afforded an occasional modification of those two styles. gio. maria morandi came whilst yet a youth from florence, and forsaking the manner of bilivert, his first instructor, formed for himself a new style. this was a mixture of roman design and venetian colouring (for in travelling through italy, he resided some time at venice, and copied much there), while some part of it partakes of the manner of cortona, and was esteemed in rome. he established himself in this latter city, in the guida of which he is often mentioned, and his works are not unfrequently found in collections. his visitation at the madonna del popolo is a fine composition; and still more highly finished, and full of grand effect, is his picture of the death of the virgin mary, in the church della pace. this may indeed be considered his masterpiece, and it has been engraved by pietro aquila. he was also celebrated for his historical pictures, which he sometimes sent into foreign countries, and more than in any other branch, he acquired a reputation in portraits, in which he was constantly employed by persons of quality in rome and florence, and was also called to vienna by the emperor. there, besides the imperial family, he painted also the portraits of many of the lesser princes of germany. odoardo vicinelli, a painter of considerable merit in these latter times, in vol. vi. of the lett. pitt. is said to have been a scholar of morandi, and pascoli does not hesitate to assert that he conferred greater honour than any other of his scholars on his master; i believe, in rome, where pietro nelli alone could dispute precedence with him. francesco trevisani, a native of trevigi, was educated by zanchi in venice, where, in order to distinguish him from angiolo trevisani, he was called il trevisani romano. in rome, he abandoned his first principles, and regulated his taste by the best manner then in vogue. he possessed a happy talent of imitating every manner, and at one time appears a follower of cignani, at another of guido; alike successful whichever style he adopted. the albiccini family, in forli, possess many of his pictures in various styles, and amongst them a small crucifixion, most spirited and highly finished, which the master esteemed his best work, and offered a large sum to obtain back again. his pictures abound in rome, and in general exhibit an elegance of design, a fine pencil, and a vigorous tone of colour. his s. joseph dying, in the church of the collegio r., is a remarkably noble production. a subject painted by him to accompany one by guido in the spada palace is also highly esteemed. he enjoyed the patronage of clement xi. by whom he was not only commissioned to paint one of the prophets of the lateran, but was also employed in the cupola of the duomo in urbino, in which he painted the four quarters of the world; a work truly estimable for design, fancy, and colouring. in other cities of the state we find pictures by him painted with more or less care, in foligno, at camerino, in perugia, at forli, and one of s. antonio at s. rocco in venice, of a form more elegant than robust. pasquale rossi, better known by the name of pasqualino, was born in vicenza, and from long copying the best venetian and roman pictures, attained without the instruction of a master, a natural mode of colour, and a good style of design. few of his public works remain in rome; christ praying in the garden in the church of s. carlo al corso, the baptism also of our saviour at the madonna del popolo. the silvestrini of fabriano have several pictures by him, and among them a madonna truly beautiful. his s. gregory, in the duomo of matelica, in the act of liberating souls from purgatory, is in the style of guercino, and is one of his best works. in private collections we find his cabinet pictures representing gaming parties, conversations, concerts, and similar subjects, carefully finished on a small scale, and little inferior to flemish pictures. i have met with numerous specimens of them in various places; but in no place have i admired this artist so much as in the royal gallery at turin, in which are some ornaments over doors, and pictures of considerable size by him, chiefly scriptural subjects, executed in an animated and vigorous style, and with so much imitation of the roman school, that we should think them to be by some other master. giambatista gaulli, commonly called baciccio, studied first in genoa. whilst still young he went to rome, where under the direction of a frenchman, and by the more valuable aid of bernino, he formed himself on the style of the great machinists. as he was endowed by nature with a ready genius and a dexterity of hand, he could not have chosen any branch of the art more adapted to his talent. the vault of the gesù is his most conspicuous work. the knowledge of the _sotto in su_, the unity, harmony, and correct perspective of its objects, the brilliancy and skilful gradation of the light, rank it among the best, if indeed it be not his best picture in rome. it must, however, be confessed, that we must inspect it with an eye to the general effect, rather than to the local tints, or the drawing of the figures, in which he is not always correct. his faults in his easel pictures, which are very numerous in italy and in foreign countries, are less obtrusive, and are abundantly atoned for by their spirit, freshness of tints, and engaging countenances. he varies his manner with his subject, assigning to each a peculiar style. there is a delightful picture in his best manner, gracefully painted in the church of s. francesco a ripa, representing the madonna with the divine infant in her arms, and at her feet s. anna kneeling, surrounded by angels. in a grave and pathetic style on the contrary, is the representation of s. saverio dying in the desert island of sanciano, which is placed near the altar of s. andrea at monte cavallo. his figures of children are very engaging and highly finished, though after the manner of fiammingo, more fleshy and less elegant than those of titian or the greeks. he painted seven pontiffs, and many persons of rank of his day, and was considered the first portrait painter in rome. in this branch of his art he followed a custom of bernino, that of engaging the person he painted in an animated conversation, in order to obtain the most striking expression of which the subject was susceptible. giovanni odazzi, his first scholar, was ambitious of emulating him in celerity, but not possessing equal talent, he did not attain the same distinction. he is the most feeble, or at all events, the least eminent of the painters of the prophets of the lateran, where his hosea is to be seen; and indeed, in every corner of rome, his pictures are to be met with, as he never refused any commission. pascoli has preserved the memory of another of his scholars, a native of perugia, in the lives of the painters of his native country. this was francesco civalli, initiated in the art by andrea carlone; he was a youth of talent, but impatient of instruction. he painted in rome and other places, but did not pass the bounds of mediocrity. the cav. lodovico mazzanti, was the scholar of gaulli, and emulated his manner to the best of his ability; but his talents were not commanding, nor were his powers equal to his ambition. gio. batista brughi, a worker in mosaic, rather than a painter, left notwithstanding some public pictures in rome. he is called in the guida sometimes brughi, and sometimes gio. batista, the disciple of baciccio, which makes it there appear as if they had been distinct individuals. i do not recollect any other artist contributed by gaulli to the roman school. the neapolitan school, which was in the beginning of this age supported by solimene, sent some scholars to rome, who adopted a roman style. sebastiano conca was the first that arrived there with an intention of seeing it, but he established himself there, together with giovanni, his brother, to meliorate his style of design. resigning the brush, he returned at forty years of age to the pencil, and spent five years in drawing after the antique, and after the best modern productions. his hand, however, had become the slave of habit in naples, and would not answer to his own wishes; and he was kept in constant vexation, as he could appreciate excellence, but found himself incapable of attaining it. the celebrated sculptor, le gros, advised him to return to his original style, and he then became in rome an eminent painter, in the manner of pietro da cortona, with considerable improvements on his early manner. he possessed a fertile invention, great facility of execution, and a colour which enchanted by its lucidness, its contrast, and the delicacy of the flesh tints. it is true, that on examination we find that he was not in reality a profound colourist, and that to obtain a grandeur of tone, he adopted in the shadows a green tint, which produced a mannerism. he distinguished himself in frescos, and also in pictures in the churches, decorating them with choirs of angels, happily disposed in a style of composition that may be called his own, and which served as an example to many of the machinists. he was indefatigable too in painting for private individuals, and in the states of the church there is scarcely a collection without its conca. his most studied, finished, and beautiful work is the probatica at the hospital of siena. of great merit in rome is the assumption at s. martina, and the jonah among the prophets in the s. giovanni laterano. his works were in high esteem in the ecclesiastical state; his best appear to be the s. niccolo at loreto, s. saverio in ancona, s. agostino at foligno, s. filippo in fabriano, and s. girolamo emiliano at velletri. giovanni, his brother, assisted sebastiano in his commissions, had an equal facility, a similar taste, though less beautiful in his heads, and of not so fine a pencil. he shewed great talent in copying the pictures of the best masters. in the church of the domenicans of urbino are the copies which he made of four pictures to be executed in mosaic; they were by muziani, guercino, lanfranco, and romanelli. conca is eulogized by rossi with his usual intelligence and discrimination (v. tom. ii. of his _memorie_, p. .) mengs perhaps censures him too severely, where he says, that by his precepts he contributed to the decay of the art. he had his followers, but they were not so numerous as to corrupt all the other schools of italy. every school, as we have seen, had within itself the seeds of its own destruction, without seeking for it elsewhere. it is true, indeed, that some of his scholars inherited his facility and his colouring, and left many injurious examples in italy. nor shall i give myself much trouble to enumerate his disciples, but shall content myself with the names of the most celebrated. gaetano lapis di cagli was one of these, and brought with him good principles of design when he came to study under conca. he was a painter of an original taste, as rossi describes, not very spirited, but correct. many of his works are found in the churches of his native place, and in the duomo are two highly prized pieces on each side the altar, a supper of our lord, and a nativity. in the various pictures i have seen of him at s. pietro, s. niccolo, and s. francesco, i generally found the same composition of a madonna of a graceful form, attended by saints in the act of adoring her and the holy infant. we find some of his works also in perugia and elsewhere. the prince borghese, in rome, has a birth of venus by him, painted on a ceiling, with a correctness of design, and a grace superior to any thing that remains of him, and no one can justly appreciate his talents, who has not seen this work. it should seem, that a timidity and diffidence of his own powers, prevented his attaining that high station which his genius seemed to have intended for him. salvator monosilio, who resided much in rome, was of messina, and trod closely in the footsteps of his master. in a chapel of s. paolino della regola, where calandrucci furnished the altarpiece, he painted the vault in fresco; and others of his works are to be seen at the s. s. quaranta, and at the church of the polacchi. in piceno, where conca was in great reputation, monosilio was held in high esteem, and was employed both in public and in private. at s. ginesio is a s. barnabas by him, in the church of that saint, which in the _memorie_ so often quoted by us, is designated as an excellent work. conca educated another sicilian student, the abbate gaspero serenari, of palermo, who was considered a young man of talents in rome, and painted in the church of s. teresa, in competition with the abate peroni of parma. on his return to palermo he became a celebrated master, and besides his oil pictures he executed some vast works in fresco, particularly the cupola of the gesù, and the chapel of the monastery of carità. gregorio guglielmi, a roman, is not much known in his native place, although his fresco pictures in the hospital of the s. spirito in sassia, intitle him to be numbered amongst the most eminent young artists who painted in rome in the pontificate of benedict xiv. he left rome early and went to turin, where, in the church of s. s. solutore e comp. is a small picture of the tutelar saints. he was afterwards in dresden, vienna, and st. petersburgh, where he painted in fresco with much applause, for the respective sovereigns of those cities. he was facile in composition, pleasing in his colour, and attached to the roman style of design, which, like lapis, he seemed to have carried from some other school into that of conca. among his most esteemed works is a ceiling, painted in the university of vienna, and another in the imperial palace at schoenbrunn. he did not succeed so well in oils, in which his efforts are mostly feeble; a proof that he belongs more to the school of conca than that of trevisani, to which some have assigned him. corrado giaquinto was another scholar of solimene. he came from naples to rome, where he attached himself to conca to learn colouring, in which he chiefly followed his master's principles, though he was less correct and more of a mannerist, and was accustomed to repeat himself in the countenances of his children, which resemble the natives of his own country. he was not, however, without merit, as he possessed facility as well as vigour, and was known in the ecclesiastical state for various works executed in rome, macerata, and other places. he went afterwards to piedmont, as we shall mention at the proper time; then to spain, where he was engaged in the service of the court, and gave satisfaction to the greater part of the native artists. the public taste in spain, which had for a long time retained the principles of the school founded by titian, had been changed within a few years. luca giordano was become the favorite, and they admired his spirit, his freedom, and his despatch; qualities which were combined in corrado. this partiality lasted even after mengs had introduced his style, which in consequence appeared at first meagre and cold to many of the masters and connoisseurs of the day, when compared with that of luca giordano; until prejudice there, as in italy, ultimately yielded to truth. some other artists flourished in rome at the commencement, and as far as the middle of the century, and somewhat beyond, who may perhaps have a claim to be remembered. of francesco fernandi, called l'imperiali, the martyrdom of s. eustachio in the church of the saint of that name, is well conceived and scientifically coloured. antonio bicchierai, a fresco painter, is more particularly known at s. lorenzo in panisperna, in which church he painted a sfondo which did him honour. michelangiolo cerruti, and biagio puccini, a roman, about the time of clement xi. and benedict xiii., were esteemed artists of good execution. of others who acquired some reputation in the following pontificate, i shall write in other schools, or if i should not mention them, they may be found in the guida of the city. i shall now pass from native to foreign artists, and shall take a brief notice of them, since my work has grown upon me with so many new italian names, which are its proper object, that i have not much spare room for foreigners, and a sufficient notice of them may be found in their own country. not a few _oltremonti_ painted at this period in rome, celebrated for the most part in the inferior branches of painting, where they deserve commemoration. some of them were employed in the churches, as gio. batista vanloo di aix, a favorite scholar of luti, who painted the picture of the flagellation at s. maria in monticelli. but he did not remain in rome, but passed to piedmont, and from thence to paris and london, and was celebrated for his historical compositions, and highly esteemed in portrait. some years after vanloo, pietro subleyras di gilles settled in rome, and conferred great benefit on the roman school; for whilst it produced only followers of the old manner, and thus fell gradually into decay, he very opportunely appeared and introduced an entirely new style. an academy had been founded in rome by louis xiv., about the year . le brun had there cooperated, the giulio romano of france, and the most celebrated of the four carli, who were at that time considered the supporters of the art; the others were cignani, maratta, and loth. it had already produced some artists of celebrity, as stefano parocel, gio. troy, carlo natoire, by whom many pictures are to be found in the public edifices in rome. there prevailed, however, in the style of this school a mannerism, which in a few years brought it into disrepute. mengs designated it by the epithet of _spiritoso_, and it consisted, according to him, in overstepping the limits of beauty and propriety, overcharging both the one and the other, and aiming at fascinating the eyes rather than conciliating the judgment. subleyras, educated in this academy, reformed this taste, retaining the good, and rejecting the feeble part, and adding from his own genius what was wanting to form a truly original manner. there was an engaging variety in the air of his heads, and in his attitudes, and he had great merit in the distribution of his chiaroscuro, which gives his pictures a fine general effect. he painted with great truth; but the figures and the drapery, under his pencil, took a certain fulness which in him appears easy, because it is natural; it remained his own, for although he left some scholars, none of them ever emulated the grandeur of style which distinguished their master. he was mature in talent when he left the academy, and the portrait which he in preference to masucci, painted of benedict xiv., established his reputation as the first painter in rome. he was soon afterwards chosen to paint the history of s. basil, for the purpose of being copied in mosaic for the church of the vatican. the original is in the church of the carthusians, and astonishes, by the august representation of the sacrifice solemnly celebrated by the saint in the presence of the emperor, who offers bread at the altar. the countenances are very animated, and there is great truth in the drapery and accompaniments, and the silks in their lucid and light folds appear absolutely real. from this production, and others of smaller size, and particularly the saint benedict at the church of the olivetani di perugia, which is perhaps his masterpiece, he deserves a place in the first collections, where, indeed, his pictures are rare and highly prized. further notices of this artist may he found in the second volume of the _giornale delle belle arti_. egidio alè, of liege, studied in rome, and became a spirited, pleasing, and elegant painter. his works in the sacristy dell'anima, in fresco and oil, painted in competition with morandi, bonatti, and romanelli, do him honour. ignazio stern was a bavarian, who was instructed by cignani in bologna, and worked in lombardy. an annunciation in piacenza, in the church of the nunziata, exhibits a certain grace and elegance, which is peculiar to him, as is observed in the description of the public pictures in that city. stern afterwards established himself in rome, where he painted in fresco the sacristy of s. paolino, and left some oil pictures in the church of s. elisabetta, and in other churches. he was more particularly attached to profane history, conversations, and similar subjects, which have a place even in royal collections. spain possessed a disciple of the school of maratta, in sebastiano mugnoz, but dying young he left few works behind him. in this place i ought to notice an establishment designed _to revive the art in that quarter, where it seemed to have so much declined_, as d. francesco preziado, of that country, says, in a letter which we shall shortly have occasion to mention with commendation. "the royal academy of s. ferdinand, in madrid, which owed its origin to philip v., and was completed and endowed by ferdinand vi., sent several students to rome, and provided for their maintenance." they there selected the master the most agreeable to their genius, and had, in addition, a director, who was employed to superintend their studies; as i am informed by sig. bonaventura benucci, a roman painter, educated in that academy. bottari and all rome called it the spanish academy, and i myself, in a former edition, followed the common report, and the two above named sovereigns i described as the founders of the academy. having been censured for this statement, i have here thought proper to specify my authorities. it may without dispute be asserted, that the spanish students have left in rome many noble specimens of their talents and taste. d. francesco preziado was for many years the director of this academy, and painted a holy family at the s. s. quaranta, in a good style. he made also a valuable communication to the lettere pittoriche (tom. vi. p. ), on the artists of spain, very useful to any one desiring information respecting this school, which is less known than it deserves to be. an institution very much on the plan of the french academy was founded in rome a few years ago, by his most faithful majesty, for portuguese students, to the promotion of which, two celebrated portuguese, the cav. de manique, intendant general of the police in lisbon, and the count de souza, minister of that court in rome, had the merit of contributing their assistance; the one having projected, and the other executed, the plan in the year . the government of the academy was entrusted to the sig. gio. gherardo de' rossi, known for his very numerous and able writings, to which he has recently added an ingenious little work, intitled, _scherzi poetici e pittorici_, with engravings by a celebrated academician. these establishments are of too recent a date to allow me to speak further respecting their productions. the provincial painters have been occasionally noticed in connexion with their masters. i here add a supplement, which may be useful in the way of completion. foligno possessed a fra umile francescano, a good fresco painter, engaged in rome by cardinal castaldi, to ornament the tribune of s. margaret, while gaulli and garzi were commanded to paint the pictures for it. the abbate dondoli lived at spello at the beginning of this century. he was more to be commended for his design than for his colouring. marini has some celebrity in s. severino, his native place. he was the scholar of cipriano divini, whom he surpassed in his art. marco vanetti, of loreto, is known to me more from his life of cignani, who was his master, than from his own works. antonio caldana, of ancona, painted a very large composition in rome, in the sacristy of s. niccola da tolentino, from the life of that saint. i do not know whether there remain any works of his in his native place; but there are a great number by a respectable artist, one magatta, whose name was domenico simonetti, and who painted the gallery of the marchesi trionfi; he furnished many churches with his paintings, and distinguished himself in that of the church of the suffragio, which is his most finished production. anastasi di sinigaglia was a painter less elegant and finished, but free and spirited. his works are not scarce in that city, and his best are the two historical subjects in the church della croce. three pictures by him also in s. lucia di monte alboddo, are highly prized, and are called by the writer of the _guida_, "_capi d'opera dell'anastasi_." camillo scacciani, of pesaro, called carbone, flourished at the beginning of the age we are writing on, and had a caracciesque style allied to the modern. there is a s. andrea avellino by him in the duomo of pesaro; his other works are in private collections. this notice i deem sufficient, always excepting the living artists, whom i of course omit.[ ] three masters who died successively in the pontificate of pius vi. seem to require from me more than a transient notice, and with them i shall conclude the series of historical painters of the fifth epoch. i shall first commemorate the cav. raffaello mengs, from whom our posterity may perhaps date a new and more happy era of the art. he was born in saxony, and brought to rome by his father while yet a boy, and was at that time skilled in miniature, and was a careful and correct draughtsman. on his arrival in rome, his father employed him in copying the works of raffaello, and chastised the young artist for every fault in his work, with an incredible severity, or rather inhumanity, inflicting on him even corporeal punishment, and reducing his allowance of food. being thus compelled to study perfection, and endowed with a genius to appreciate it and perceive it, he acquired a consummate taste in art; he communicated to winckelmann very important materials for his _storia delle belle arti_, and was himself the author of many profound and valuable essays on the fine arts, which have materially contributed to improve the taste of the present age. they have different titles, but all the same aim, the discrimination of the real perfection of art.[ ] the artist, as characterized by mengs, may be compared to the orator of cicero, and both are endued by their authors with an ideal perfection, such as the world has never seen, and will probably never see; and it is the real duty of an instructor to recommend excellence, that in striving to attain it, we may at least acquire a commendable portion of it. considered in this point of view, i should defend several of his writings, where in the opinion of others he seems to assume a dictatorial tone, in the judgment he passes on guido, domenichino, and the caracci; the very triumvirate whom he proposes as models in the art. mengs assuredly was not so infatuated as to hope to surpass these great men, but because he knew that no one does so well but that it might be done still better, he shews where they attained the summit of art, and where they failed. the artist, therefore, described by mengs, and to whose qualifications he also aspired, and was anxious that all should do the same, ought to unite in himself the design and beauty of the greeks, the expression and composition of raffaello, the chiaroscuro and grace of coreggio, and, to complete all, the colouring of titian. this union of qualities mengs has analyzed with equal elegance and perspicuity, teaching the artist how to form himself on that ideal beauty, which is itself never realised. if, on some occasions, he appears too enthusiastic, or in some degree obscure, it cannot excite our surprise, as he wrote in a foreign language, and was not much accustomed to composition. his ideas therefore stood in need of a refined scholar to render them clear and intelligible; and this advantage he would have procured, had he been resolved to publish them; but his works are all posthumous, and were given to the world by his excellency the sig. cav. azara. hence it frequently happens in his works, that one treatise destroys another, as tiraboschi has observed in regard to his notice of coreggio, in his _notizie degli artefici modenesi_; and hence concludes that the _riflessioni di mengs su i tre gran pittori_, where he finds much to censure in coreggio, were written by him before he saw the works of that master; and that his _memorie_ on the life of the same master, where he extols coreggio to the skies, and calls him the apelles of modern painting, were written after having seen and studied him.[ ] in spite however of all objections, he will retain a distinguished place, as well among the theorists or writers, as among professors themselves, as long as the art endures. we perhaps should not say that mengs was a whetstone which gave a new quality to the steel, which it could not otherwise have acquired; but that he was the steel itself, which becomes brighter and finer the more it is used. he became painter to the court of dresden; every fresh work gave proof of his progress in the art. he went afterwards to madrid, where in the chambers of the royal palace he painted the assembly of the gods, the seasons, and the various parts of the day, in an enchanting manner. after repairing a second time to rome to renew his studies, he again returned to madrid, where he painted in one of the saloons the apotheosis of trajan, and in a theatre, time subduing pleasure; pictures much superior to his former pieces. in rome there are three large works by him; the painting in the vault of s. eusebio; the parnassus in the saloon of the villa albani, far superior to the preceding one;[ ] and lastly, the cabinet of manuscripts in the vatican was painted by him, where the celestial forms of the angels, the majesty of moses, and the dignified character of s. peter, the enchanting colour, the relief, and the harmony, contribute to render this chamber one of the most remarkable in rome for its beautiful decorations. this constant endeavour to surpass himself, would be evident also from his easel pictures, if they were not so rare in italy; as he painted many of this description for london and the other capitals of europe. in rome itself, where he studied young, where he long resided, to which he always returned, and where at last he died, there are few of his works to be found. we may enumerate the portrait of clement xiii. and his nephew carlo, in the collection of the prince rezzonico; that of cardinal zelada, secretary of state; and a few other pieces, in the possession of private gentlemen, more particularly the sig. cav. azara. florence has some large compositions by him in the palazzo pitti, and his own portrait in the cabinet of painters, besides the great deposition from the cross in chiaroscuro, for the marchese rinuccini, which he was prevented by death from colouring; and a beautiful genius in fresco in a chamber of the sig. conte senatore orlando malevolti del benino. returning from the consideration of his works to mengs himself, i leave to others to estimate his merit, and to determine how far his principles are just.[ ] as far as regards myself, i cannot but extol that inextinguishable ardour of improving himself by which he was particularly distinguished, and which prompted him, even while he enjoyed the reputation of a first rate master, to proceed in every work as if he were only commencing his career. truth was his great aim, and he diligently studied the works of the first luminaries of the art, analysed their colours, and examined them in detail, till he entered fully into the spirit and design of those great models. whilst employed in the ducal gallery in florence, he did not touch a pencil, until he had attentively studied the best pieces there, and particularly the venus of titian in the tribune. in his hours of leisure he employed himself in carefully studying the fresco pictures of the best masters of that school, which is so distinguished in this art. he was accustomed to do the same by every work of celebrity which fell in his way, whether ancient or modern; all contributed to his improvement, and to carry him nearer to perfection; he was in short a man of a most aspiring mind, and may be compared to the ancient, who declared that he wished "to die learning." if maxims like these were enforced, what rapid strides in the art might we not expect! but the greater part of artists form for themselves a manner which may attract popularity, and then relax their efforts, satisfied with the applause of the crowd; and if they feel the necessity of improving, it is not with a design of acquiring a just reputation, but of adding to the price of their works. notwithstanding the considerable space which mengs has occupied in our time, he has nevertheless left room for the celebrity of pompeo batoni, of luca. the cav. boni, who has honoured this artist with an elegant eulogium, thus expresses himself in comparing him with mengs. "the latter," he says, "was the painter of philosophy, the former of nature. batoni had a natural taste which led him to the beautiful without effort; mengs attained the same object by reflection and study. grace was the gift of nature in batoni, as it had formerly been in apelles; while the higher attributes of the art were allotted to mengs, as they were in former days to protogenes. perhaps the first was more painter than philosopher, the second more philosopher than painter. the latter, perhaps, was more sublime, but more studied; batoni less profound, but more natural. not that i would insinuate that nature was sparing to mengs, or that batoni was devoid of the necessary science of the art, &c." if it were ever said with truth of any artist, that he was born a painter, this distinction must be allowed to batoni. he learned only the principles of the art in his native country, and of the two correspondents from whom i have received my information, the one considers him to have been the scholar of brugieri, the other of lombardi, as already mentioned, vol. i. p. , and probably he was instructed by both. he came young to rome, and did not frequent any particular school, but studied and copied raffaello and the old masters with unceasing assiduity, and thus learnt the great secret of copying nature with truth and judgment. that boundless and instructive volume, open to all, but cultivated by few, was rightly appreciated by batoni, and it was hence that he derived that beautiful variety in his heads and contours, which are sometimes wanting even in the great masters, who were occasionally too much addicted to the ideal. hence, too, he derived the gestures and expressions most appropriate to each subject. persuaded that a vivid imagination was not alone sufficient to depict those fine traits in which the sublimity of the art consists, he did not adopt any attitudes which were not found in nature. he took from nature the first ideas, copied from her every part of the figure, and adapted the drapery and folds from models. he afterwards embellished and perfected his work with a natural taste, and enlivened all with a style of colour peculiarly his own; clear, engaging, lucid, and preserving after the lapse of many years, as in the picture of various saints at s. gregorio, all its original freshness. this was in him not so much an art as the natural ebullition of his genius. he sported with his pencil. every path was open to him; painting in various ways, now with great force, now with a touch, and now finishing all by strokes. sometimes he destroyed the whole work, and gave it the requisite force by a line.[ ] although he was not a man of letters, he yet shows himself a poet in conception, both in a sublime and playful style. one example from a picture in the possession of his heirs, will suffice. wishing to express the dreams of an enamoured girl, he has represented her wrapped in soft slumbers, and surrounded by loves, two of whom present to her splendid robes and jewels, and a third approaches her with arrows in his hand, while she, captivated by the vision, smiles in her sleep. many of these poetical designs, and many historical subjects, are in private collections, and in the courts of europe, from which he had constant commissions. batoni possessed an extraordinary talent for portrait painting, and had the honour of being employed by three pontiffs in that branch of the art, benedict xiv., clement xiii., and pius vi.; to whom may be added, the emperor joseph ii. and his august brother and successor, leopold ii., the grand duke of muscovy, and the grand duchess, besides numerous private individuals. he for some time painted miniatures, and transferred that care and precision which is essential in that branch to his larger productions, without attenuating his style by hardness. we find an extraordinary proof of this in his altarpieces, spread over italy, and mentioned by us in many cities, particularly in lucca. of those that remain in rome, mengs gave the preference to s. celso, which is over the great altar of that church. another picture, the fall of simon magus, is in the church of the certosa. it was intended to have been copied in mosaic for the vatican, and to have been substituted for a picture of the same subject by vanni, the only one in that church on stone. but the mosaic, from some cause or other, was not executed. perhaps the subject displeased, from not being evangelical, and the idea of removing the picture of vanni not being resumed, the subject was changed, and a commission given to mengs to paint the government of the church conferred on s. peter. he made a sketch for it in chiaroscuro with great care, which is in the palazzo chigi, but did not live to finish it in colours. this sketch evinces a design and composition superior to the picture of batoni, but the subject of the latter was more vigorously conceived. at all events, however, batoni must henceforth be considered the restorer of the roman school, in which he lived until his th year, and educated many pupils in his profession. the example of the two last eminent artists was not lost on antonio cavallucci da sermoneta, whose name when i began to print this volume, i did not expect would here have found a place. but having recently died, some notice is due to his celebrity, as he is already ranked with the first artists of his day. he was highly esteemed both in rome and elsewhere. the primaziale of pisa, who in the choice of their artists consulted no recommendation but that of character, employed him on a considerable work, representing s. bona of that city taking the religious habit. it breathes a sacred piety, which he himself both felt and expressed in a striking manner. in this picture he wished to shew that the examples of christian humility, such as burying in a cloister the gifts of nature and fortune, are susceptible of the gayest decoration. this he effected by introducing a train of noble men and women, who, according to custom, assisted in the solemnity. in this composition, in which he follows the principles of batoni rather than those of mengs, we may perceive both his study of nature, and his judgment and facility in imitating her. another large picture of the saints placido and mauro, he sent into catania, and another of s. francesco di paola, he executed for the church of loreto, and which was copied in mosaic. in rome are his s. elias and the purgatorio, two pictures placed at s. martino a' monti, and many works in the possession of the noble family of gaetani, who were the first to encourage and support this artist. his last work was the venus and ascanius, in the palazzo cesarini, which has been described to me as a beautiful production by the sig. gio. gherardo de' rossi, who has declared his intention of publishing the life of cavallucci, which will no doubt be done in his usual masterly manner. the roman school has recently had to regret the loss of two accomplished masters; domenico corvi of viterbo, and giuseppe cades of rome, who although younger than corvi, and for some years his scholar, died before him. in my notice of them, i shall begin with the master who has been honoured and eulogized more than once in the respectable _memorie delle belle arti_, as well as his scholar, and also some other disciples; as there was not in rome in the latter times any school more productive in talent. he was truly an accomplished artist, and there were few to compare with him in anatomy, perspective, and design; and from mancini his instructor, he acquired something of the style of the caracci. hence, his academy drawings are highly prized, and i may say, more sought after than his pictures, which indeed want that fascination of grace and colour which attracts the admiration alike of the learned and the vulgar. he maintained an universal delicacy of colour, and was accustomed to defend the practice by asserting, with what justice i cannot say, that pictures painted in that manner were less liable to become black. his most esteemed works are his night pieces, as the birth of our saviour in the church of the osservanti at macerata, which is perhaps the summit of his efforts. some amateurs went thither express towards the close of day; a lofty window opposite favoured the illusion of the perspective of the picture; and corvi, who in other pictures is inferior to gherardo delle notti, viewed in this manner, here excels him, by an originality of perspective and general effect. he worked much both for his own countrymen and foreigners, besides the pictures which he kept ready by him, to supply the daily calls of purchasers, and many of which are still on sale in the house of his widow. cades recommends himself to our notice, principally by a facility of imitation, dangerous to the art when it is not governed by correct principles. no simulator of the character of another handwriting, could ever rival him in the dexterity with which at a moment's call he could imitate the physiognomy, the naked figure, the drapery, and the entire character of every celebrated designer. the most experienced persons would sometimes request from him a design after michelangiolo or raffaello, or some other great master, which he instantly complied with, and when confronted with an indisputable specimen of the master, and these persons were requested to point out the original, as buonaruoti for example, they often hesitated, and frequently fixed on the design of cades. he was notwithstanding, extremely honourable. he made on one occasion, a large design in the style of sanzio, to deceive the director of a foreign cabinet, who boasted an infallible knowledge of the touch of raffaello; and employing a person to shew it to him, with some fictitious history attached to it, the director purchased it at zecchins. cades wishing to return the money, the other refused to receive it, insisting on retaining the drawing, and disregarding all the protestations of the artist, and his request to be remunerated by a smaller sum; and this drawing is at this moment probably considered as an original, in one of the finest cabinets of europe. he was confident in his talents from his early years, and on a public occasion, he made a drawing after the bent of his own genius, regardless of the directions of corvi, who wished it to be done in another style, and he was in consequence dismissed from that school. this drawing obtained the first premium, and now exists in the academy of s. luke, where it is much admired. in the art of colouring, too, he owed little to the instruction of masters, and much to his native talent of imitation. i have seen exhibited in the church of the holy apostles, a picture by him, which in the upper part represents the madonna with the holy infant, and in the inferior part five saints, an allegorical picture, as i have heard suggested, relating to the election of clement xiv. that pope was elected by the suffrages of the cardinal carlo rezzonico and his friends, and contrary to the expectation of p. innocenzio buontempi, who ordered the picture, and who after this election was promoted by the pope to the eminent station of maestro nel s. ordine serafico, and afterwards to that of the pope's confessor. hence this piece represents in the centre s. clement reading the sacred volume; on his right is s. carlo, who appears to admire his learning, and by his attitude seems to say, "this is a man justly entitled to the pontificate;" and in the last place s. innocent the pope, which representing the person of the p. maestro, must here for the sake of propriety yield the place to the cardinal s. carlo. in the background are s. francis and s. anthony, half figures. cades here took for his model the picture of titian in the quirinal, which he imitated as well in the composition as in the colour. and in this, indeed, he proceeded too far, giving it that obscure tone which the works of titian have acquired only by the lapse of time. cades here defended himself by saying that this piece was intended to be placed in the church of s. francesco di fabriano in a very strong light, where if the colours had not been kept low, they would have been displeasing to the spectator. there is an error in the perspective which cannot be overlooked. the allegorical figure of p. m. innocenzio, who stands amazed at the sudden phenomenon, appears to be out of equilibrium, and would fall in real life. other faults of colour, of costume, or of vulgarity of form, are noticed in others of his pictures by the author of the _memorie_, in tom. i. and iii. but as he advanced in life he improved his style from study, and attending to the criticisms of the public. in tom. iii. just referred to, we find the description of one of his works executed for the villa pinciana, the subject of which is taken from boccaccio; walter conte di anguersa recognized in london. let us weigh the opinion which this eminent author gives of this most beautiful composition, or let us compare it with the picture of s. joseph of copertino, which he painted at twenty-one years of age, as an altarpiece in the church of the apostles, and we shall perceive the rapid strides which are made by genius. other princely families, besides the borghesi, availed themselves of his talents to ornament their palaces and villas; as the ruspoli and the chigi, and he executed several works for the empress of russia. he died before he had attained his fiftieth year, and not long after he had so much improved his style. in the opinion of some, his execution still required to be rendered more uniform, since he sometimes displayed as many different manners in a picture, as there were figures. but in that he might plead the example of caracci, as we shall notice on a proper opportunity. we shall now pass to other branches of the art, and shall commence with landscapes. in this period flourished the scholars of the three famous landscape painters, described in their proper place, besides grimaldi, mentioned in the bolognese school, who resided a considerable time in rome; and paolo anesi, of whom we made mention in speaking of zuccherelli. with anesi lived andrea lucatelli, a roman, whose talents are highly celebrated in every inferior branch of the art. in the archbishop's gallery in milan are a number of his pictures, historical, architectural, and landscapes. in these he often appears original in composition, and in the disposition of the masses; he is varied in his touch, delicate in his colouring, and elegant in his figures, which, as we shall see, he was also accustomed to paint in the flemish style, separate from his landscapes. francis van blomen was a less finished artist, and from the hot and vaporous air of his pictures, obtained the name of orizzonte. the palaces of the pope and the nobility in rome, abound with his landscapes in fresco and oil. in the character of his trees, and in the composition of his landscapes, he commonly imitated poussin. in his general tone there predominates a greenish hue mixed with red. his pictures are not all equally finished, but they rise in value as those of older artists become injured by time, or rare from being purchased by foreigners. at the side of van blomen we often find the works of some of his best scholars, as giacciuoli and francis ignazio, a bavarian. at the same time lived in rome francesco wallint, called m. studio, who painted small landscapes and sea views, ornamented with very beautiful figures; devoid however of that sentiment which is the gift of nature, and that delicacy which charms in the italian school. he imitated claude: wallint the younger, his son, attached himself to the same manner with success, but did not equal his father. at the beginning of this epoch, or thereabouts, there flourished two artists in perugia in the same line; ercolano ercolanetti, and pietro montanini, the scholar of ciro ferri and of rosa. the last was ambitious of the higher walks of art, and attempted the decoration of a church, but failed in the attempt, as his talent was restricted to landscape; and even when he added figures to these, they were not very correct, and possessed more spirit than accuracy of design. he was nevertheless a pleasing painter, and his pictures were sought after by foreigners. in perugia there is an abundance of his works, and some are to be seen in the sacristy of the eremitani, which might be said to discover a flemish style. alessio de marchis, a neapolitan, is not much known in rome, although in the ruspoli and albani palaces, some pleasing pieces by him are pointed out. he is better known in perugia and urbino, and the adjacent cities. it is said that, in order to obtain a study for a picture from nature, he set fire to a barn. for this act he was condemned to the galleys for several years, and was liberated under the pontificate of clement xi. whose palace in urbino he decorated with architectural ornaments, distant views, and beautiful seapieces, more in the style of rosa than any other artist. there is an extraordinarily fine picture by him of the burning of troy, in the collection of the semproni family, and some landscapes in other houses in urbino, in which he has displayed all his genius, and extended it also to figures. but in general there is little more to praise in him than his spirit, his happy touch, and natural colouring, particularly in fires, and the loaded and murky air, and the general tone of the piece, as the detached parts are negligent and imperfect. he left a son, also a landscape painter, but not of much celebrity. at the beginning of the century bernardino fergioni displayed in rome an extraordinary talent in sea views, and harbours, to which he added a variety of humourous figures. he was first a painter of animals, and afterwards tried this line with better success; but his fame was a few years afterwards eclipsed by two frenchmen, adrian manglard, of a solid, natural, and correct taste; and his scholar, joseph vernet, who surpassed his master by his spirit and his charming colouring. the first seemed to paint with a degree of timidity and care, the latter in the full confidence of genius; the one seemed to aim at truth, the other at beauty. manglard was many years in rome, and his works are to be seen in the villa albani, and in many other palaces. vernet is to be seen in the rondanini mansion, and in a few other collections. there were not many painters of battles during this epoch, except the scholars of borgognone. christiano reder, called also m. leandro, who came to rome about , the year of the taking of buda, devoted himself, in conformity with the feelings of the times, to painting battles between the christians and the turks; but his pictures, though well touched, were soon depreciated from the great number of them. the best in the opinion of pascoli, was that in the gallery de' minimi; and he left many also in the palaces of the nobility. he was also expert in landscape and humourous subjects, and was assisted by peter van blomen, called also stendardo, the brother of francis orizzonte. stendardo also painted battle pieces, but he was more attached to bambocciate, in the flemish style, wherein he delights to introduce animals, and particularly horses, in designing which he was very expert, and almost unrivalled. his distances are very clear, and afford a fine relief to his figures. in rome, and throughout the ecclesiastical state, we find many pictures of this sort by that lucatelli who has been mentioned among the landscape painters. the connoisseurs attribute to him two different manners; the first good, the second still better, and exhibiting great taste, both in colouring and invention. in some collections we find monaldi near him, who although of a similar taste, yielded to him in correctness of design, in colour, and in that natural grace which may be called the _attic salt_ of this mute poetry. i have not ascertained who was the instructor of antonio amorosi, a native of comunanza, and a fellow countryman of ghezzi, and his co-disciple also in the school of the cav. giuseppe (vernet). i only know that he is in his way equally facetious, and sometimes satirical. like ghezzi he painted pictures in the churches, which are to be found in the guida di roma; he did not, however, succeed so well in them as in his _bambocciate_, which would appear really flemish if the colours were more lucid. he is less known in the metropolis than in piceno, where he is to be seen in many collections, and is mentioned in the guida d'ascoli. he pleased also in foreign countries, and represented subjects from common life, as drinking parties in taverns in town and country, on which occasion he discovered no common talent in architecture, landscape, and the painting of animals. arcangelo resani, of rome, the scholar of boncuore, painted animals in a sufficiently good taste, accompanying them with large and small figures, in which he had an equal talent. in the medici gallery is his portrait, with a specimen attached of the art in which he most excelled, the representation of still life. in the same way nuzzi added flowers, and other artists landscapes, to their portraits. carlo voglar, or carlo da' fiori, was a painter of fruit and flowers in a very natural style, and was also distinguished in painting dead game. he had a rival in this style in francesco varnetam, called deprait, who was still more ingenious in adding glass and portraits, and composed his pieces in the manner of a good figurist. this artist after residing several years in rome, was appointed painter to the imperial court, and died in vienna, after having spread his works and his fame through all germany. in the time of the two preceding artists, christian bernetz was celebrated, who on the death of the first, and the departure of the second artist, remained in rome the chief painter in this style. all the three were known to maratta, and employed by him in ornamenting his pictures; and he enriched theirs in return with children and other figures, which have rendered them invaluable. the last was also a friend of garzi, in conjunction with whom he painted pictures, each taking the department in which they most excelled. scipione angelini, of perugia, improperly called angeli by guarienti, was celebrated by pascoli for similar talents. his flowers appear newly plucked and sparkling with dew drops. in the _memorie messinesi_, i find that agostino scilla when he was exiled from sicily, repaired to rome, where he died. whilst in rome, he seemed to shun all competition with the historical painters, and occupied himself (with a certainty of not being much celebrated), in designing animals, and in other inferior branches of the art. in this line both he and giacinto, his younger brother, had great merit. saverio, the son of agostino, who, on the death of them both, continued to reside and to paint in rome, did not equal them in reputation. during this period of the decline of the art, one branch of painting, perspective, made an extraordinary progress by the talents of p. andrea pozzo, a jesuit, and a native of trent. he became a painter and architect from his native genius, rather than from the instruction of any master. his habit of copying the best venetian and lombard pictures, had given him a good style of colour, and a sufficiently correct design, which he improved in rome, where he resided many years. he painted also in genoa and turin, and in these cities and in both the states, we find some beautiful works, the more so as they resemble rubens in tone, to whose style of colour he aspired. there are not many of his oil paintings in italy, and few of them are finished, as s. venanzio in ascoli, and s. borgia at s. remo. even the picture of s. ignatius at the gesù in rome, is not equally rendered in every part. nevertheless, he appears on the whole a fine painter, his design well conceived, his forms beautiful, his colours fascinating, and the touch of his pencil free and ready. even his less finished performances evince his genius; and of the last mentioned picture, i heard from p. giulio cordara, an eminent writer in verse and prose, an anecdote which deserves preservation. a painter of celebrity being directed to substitute another in its place, declared that neither himself nor any other living artist could execute a superior work. his despatch was such, that in four hours he began and finished the portrait of a cardinal, who was departing the same day for germany. he occupies a conspicuous place among the ornamental painters, but his works in this way would be more perfect if there was not so great a redundance of decoration, as vases, festoons, and figures of boys in the cornices, though this indeed was the taste of the age. the ceiling of the church of s. ignatius is his greatest work, and which would serve to show his powers, if he had left nothing else, as it exhibits a novelty of images, an amenity of colour, and a picturesque spirit, which attracted even the admiration of maratta and ciro ferri; the last of whom, amazed that andrea had in so few years, and in so masterly a manner, peopled, as he called it, this piazza navona, concluded that the horses of other artists went at a common pace, but those of pozzo on the gallop. he is the most eminent of perspective painters, and even in the concaves has given a convex appearance to the pieces of architecture represented, as in the tribune of frascati, where he painted the circumcision of jesus christ, and in a corridor of the gesù at rome. he succeeded too in a surprising manner in deceiving the eye with fictitious cupolas in many churches of his order; in turin, modena, mondovi, arezzo, montepulciano, rome, and vienna, to which city he was invited by the emperor leopold i. he also painted scenes for the theatres, and introduced colonnades and palaces with such inimitable art, that it renders more credible the wonderful accounts handed down to us by vitruvius and pliny of the skill of the ancients in this art. although well grounded in the theory of optics, as his two volumes of perspective prove, it was his custom never to draw a line without first having made a model, and thus ascertained the correct distribution of the light and shade. when he painted on canvass, he laid on a light coat of gum, and rejected the use of chalk, thinking that when the colours were applied, the latter prevented the softening of the lights and shadows, when requisite. he had many scholars who imitated him in perspective; some in fresco; others in oil, taking their designs from real buildings, and at other times painting from their own inventions. one of these was alberto carlieri, a roman, a painter also of small figures, of whom orlandi makes mention. antonio colli, another of his scholars, painted the great altar at s. pantaleo, and decorated it in perspective in so beautiful a manner, that it was by some taken for the work of his master. of agostino collaceroni of bologna, considered of the same school, we have before spoken. there were also architectural painters in other branches. pierfrancesco garoli, of turin, painted the interior of churches, and garzi supplied the figures. tiburzio verzelli, of recanati, is little known beyond piceno, his birthplace. the noble family of calamini of recanati, possess perhaps his best picture, the elevation of s. pietro in vaticano, one of the most beautiful and largest works of this kind that i ever saw, which occupied the master several years in finishing. gaspare vanvitelli, of utrecht, called _dagli occhiali_, may be called the painter of modern rome; his pictures, which are to be found in all parts of europe, represent the magnificent edifices of that city, to which landscapes are added, when the subject admits of it. he also painted views of other cities, seaports, villas, and farm houses, useful alike to painters and to architects. he painted some large pictures, though most of his works are of a small size. he was correct in his proportions, lively and clear in his tints, and there is nothing left to desire, except a little more spirit and variety in the landscape or in the sky, as the atmosphere is always of a pale azure, or carelessly broken by a passing cloud. he was the father of luigi vanvitelli, a painter, who owed his great name to architecture, as we shall see was the case also with the celebrated serlio. but no painter of perspective has found more admirers than the cav. gio. paolo pannini, mentioned elsewhere; not so much for the correctness of his perspective, in which he has many equals, as for his charming landscape and spirited figures. it cannot indeed be denied, that these latter are sometimes too high in proportion to the buildings, and that also, to shun the dryness of viviani, he has a mannered style of mixing a reddish hue in his shadows. for the first defect there is no remedy; but the second will be alleviated by time, which will gradually subdue the predominant colour. lastly, to this epoch the art of mosaic owes the great perfection which it attained, in imitating painting, not only by the means of small pieces of marble selected and cemented together, but by a composition which could produce every colour, emulate every tint, represent each degree of shade, and every part, equal to the pencil itself. baglione attributes the improvement in this art to muziani, whom he calls the inventor of working mosaics in oil; and that which he executed for the cappella gregoriana, he praises as the most beautiful mosaic that has been formed since the time of the ancients. paolo rossetti of cento was employed there under muziani, and instructed marcello provenzale, his fellow countryman. both left many works beautifully painted in mosaic; and the second, who lived till the time of paul v. painted the portrait of that pope, and some cabinet pictures. an extensive work, as has often been the case, was the cause of improving this art. the humidity of the church of s. peter was so detrimental to oil paintings, that from the time of urban viii. there existed an idea of substituting mosaics in their place. the first altarpiece was executed by a scholar of provenzale, already mentioned, giambatista calandra, born in vercelli. it represents s. michael, and is of a small size, copied from a picture of the cav. d'arpino. he afterwards painted other subjects in the small cupolas, and near some windows of the church, from the cartoons of romanelli, lanfranco, sacchi, and pellegrini; but thinking his talents not sufficiently rewarded, he began to work also for individuals, and painted portraits, or copied the best productions of the old masters. among these pascoli particularly praises a madonna copied from a picture of raffaello, in possession of the queen of sweden, and of this and other similar works he judged that from their harmony of colour and high finishing, they were deserving of close and repeated inspection. at this time great approaches were made towards the modern style of mosaic; but this art was afterwards carried to a much higher pitch by the two cristofori, fabio, and his son pietro paolo. these artists painted the s. petronilla, copied from the great picture of guercino, the s. girolamo of domenichino, and the baptism of christ by maratta. for other works by him and his successors, i refer the reader to the _descrizione_ of the pictures of rome above cited. i will only add, that when the works were completed for s. peter's, lest the art might decay for want of due encouragement, it was determined to decorate the church of loreto with similar pictures, which were executed in rome, and transferred to that church. before i finish this portion of my work, i would willingly pay a tribute to the numerous living professors, who have been, or who are now resident in rome; but it would be difficult to notice them all, and to omit any might seem invidious. we may be allowed, however, to observe that the improvement which has taken place in the art of late years, has had its origin in rome. that city at no period wholly lost its good taste, and even in the decline of the art was not without connoisseurs and artists of the first merit. possessing in itself the best sources of taste in so many specimens of grecian sculpture, and so many works of raffaello, it is there always easy to judge how near the artists approach to, and how far they recede from, their great prototypes of art. this criterion too is more certain in the present age, when it is the custom to pay less respect to prejudices and more to reason; so that there can be no abuse of this useful principle. the works too of winckelmann and mengs have contributed to improve the general taste; and if we cannot approve every thing we there find, they still possess matter highly valuable, and are excellent guides of genius and talent. this object has also been promoted by the discovery of the ancient pictures in herculaneum, the baths of titus, and of the villa adriana, and the exquisite vases of nola, and similar remains of antiquity. these have attracted every eye to the antique; mengs and winckelmann have admirably illustrated the history of ancient sculpture, and the art of painting may be more advantageously studied from the valuable engravings which have been published, than from any book. from these extraordinary advantages the fine arts have extended their influence to circles where they were before unknown, and have received a new tone from emulation as well as interest. the custom of exhibiting the productions of art to a public who can justly appreciate them, and distinguish the good from the bad; the rewards assigned to the most meritorious, of whatever nation, accompanied by the productions of literary men, and public rejoicings in the campidoglio; the splendour of the sacred edifices peculiar to the metropolis of the christian world, which, while the art contributes to its decoration, extends its protection in return to the professors of that art; the lucrative commissions from abroad, and in the city itself, from the munificence and unbounded liberality of pius vi. and that of many private individuals;[ ] the circumstance of foreign sovereigns frequently seeking in this emporium for masters, or directors for their academies; all these causes maintain both the artists and their schools in perpetual motion, and in a generous emulation, and by degrees we may hope to see the art restored to its true principles, the imitation of nature and the example of the great masters. there is not a branch, not only of painting, but even of the arts depending on it, as miniature, mosaic, enamel,[ ] and the weaving of tapestry, that is not followed there in a laudable manner. whoever desires to be further informed of the present state of the roman school, and of the foreign artists resident in rome, should peruse the four volumes entitled, _memorie per le belle arti_, published from the year , and continued to the year , a periodical work deserving a place in every library of the fine arts, and which was, i regret to add, prematurely discontinued. [footnote : with regard to drapery, winckelmann conjectures, (storia delle arti del disegno, tom. i. p. ,) that the erroneous opinion that the ancients did not drape their figures well, and were surpassed in that department by the moderns, was at that time common among the artists. this opinion still subsists among some sculptors, who disapprove particularly of the ancient custom of moistening the drapery, in order to adapt it the better to the form of the figure. the ancients, they say, ought to be esteemed, not idolized. to carry nature to the highest degree of perfection, was always allowable, but not so to degrade her by mannerism.] [footnote : he was the pupil of niccolas poussin, and from him acquired his taste for drawing after the antique. he employed this talent in copying the finest bassirilievi, and the noblest remains of ancient rome. these were engraved by him, and circulated through europe. he also copied a great number of ancient pictures from the _sotterranei_, which passed into private hands unpublished. pascoli mentions many more of his works in engraving, the pursuit of which branch of the art led him gradually to forsake painting. of his pictures we find one in the church of porto, and a very few more of his own designing. he devoted himself to the copying the pictures of the best masters, and carried his imitation even to the counterfeiting the effects of time on the colours; and he copied some pictures of poussin with such dexterity, that it was with difficulty the painter himself could distinguish them.] [footnote : in the _risposta alle riflessioni critiche di mons. argens_.] [footnote : this artist had painted one of the two laterals of the chapel, asserting that there was no artist living capable of painting a companion to it. benefial painted one very superior, and represented in it an executioner with his eyes fixed on and deriding the picture of muratori.] [footnote : see _memorie per le belle arti_, tom. ii. p. , where sig. giangherardo de' rossi gives an account of this artist, derived principally from information furnished by sig. cav. puccini, who has been occasionally mentioned with approbation in the first volume of this work.] [footnote : francesco appiani, of ancona, a scholar of magatta, and not long since deceased, did not find a place in my former edition, but is fully entitled to one in this. he studied a considerable time in rome, whilst benefial, trevisani, conca, and mancini, flourished there; and through the friendship of these masters (particularly of the latter), was enabled to form an agreeable style, of which he there left a specimen at s. sisto vecchio. it is the death of s. domenico, painted in fresco, by order of benedict xiii. who remunerated him with a gold medal. he went afterwards to perugia, where he was presented with the freedom of the city, and continued his labours there with unabated ardour, until ninety years of age, an instance of vigour unexampled, except in the case of titian. perugia abounds with his paintings of all kinds, and his best works are to be found in the churches of s. pietro de' cassinensi, s. thomas, and monte corona. he also decorated the church of s. francis, and the vault of the cathedral, where he rivalled the freedom of style and composition of carloni. both he himself, and one of his pictures, placed in a church of masaccio, are eulogised in the antich. picene (tom. xx. p. ). he painted many pictures also for england.] [footnote : for a more particular catalogue of these works, see the _memorie delle belle arti_, , in which year they were republished in rome, with the remarks of the sig. avvocato fea, in one vol. to. and vols. vo. the most celebrated treatise of mengs is the _riflessioni sopra i tre gran pittori, raffaello, tiziano, e coreggio, e sopra gli antichi_. on the life and style of coreggio he wrote a separate paper, which was afterwards the subject of a controversy; for as, at the close of the year , appeared the _notizie storiche del coreggio_ of ratti, accompanied by a letter from mengs, dated madrid, , in which he entreats ratti to collect and publish them, ratti was by several writers accused of plagiarism, and of having endeavoured, by a change of style and the addition of some trifling matter, to appropriate to himself what in reality belonged to mengs. not long afterwards there appeared an anonymous defence of ratti, without date or place, for which i refer to the next note.] [footnote : in the _difesa del ratti_, accused _de repetundis_, this very obvious contradiction is adduced as a proof that the _memorie_ were really composed by that author. it is there asserted that he wrote them in a clear and simple style, and then communicated them to mengs, on whose death they were found among his writings, and published as his. some other things are indeed said, that do not favour the cause of ratti; as that when he was in parma he consulted mengs on what he should say of the works of coreggio in that city, and as he could not see those in dresden, he had from him a minute account of them; and also that mengs was accustomed to add remarks to the ms. on which his friends consulted him. if, therefore, it be conceded that mengs had such a share in this ms. (which would appear to have been drawn up by the scholar under the direction of the master, as to opinions on art, and as to a catalogue of the best pictures, accompanied too with remarks,) who does not perceive that the best part of that work, and the great attraction of its matter and style, is due to mengs?] [footnote : this picture is one of the most finished compositions since the restoration of art. each muse is there represented with her peculiar attribute, as derived from antiquity; and the artist is deservedly eulogized by the sig. ab. visconti, in the celebrated _museo pio clementino_, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : this eminent man was not without his enemies and calumniators, excited by his criticisms on the great masters, and still more by his animadversions on artists of inferior fame, and some recently deceased. cumberland wrote against him with manifest prejudice; and the anonymous author of the _difesa del cav. ratti_, the work of ratti himself, or for which at least he furnished the materials, speaks of him in a contemptuous manner. he particularly questions his literary character and his discernment, and ascribes to his confidential friend, winckelmann, the merit of his remarks. in point of art he estimates mengs as an excellent, but by no means an unrivalled painter. descending to particulars, he publishes not a few criticisms, which he received either in ms. or from the mouths of different professors, and adds others of his own. of these the experienced must form their own judgment. with regard to his colouring, indeed, with which his rival batoni found great fault, the most inexperienced person may perceive that it is not faultless, as the flesh tints are already altered by time, at least in some of his works. lastly, in the _difesa_ are some personal remarks regarding mengs, which, if ratti, from respect to his late deceased friend, thought it right to omit them in his life of him, printed in , might with still greater propriety have been spared in this subsequent work.] [footnote : see the _elogio di pompeo batoni_, page , where the illustrious author, who, to his other accomplishments, adds that of painting, expatiates at length, and in the style of a professor, on this wonderful talent of batoni.] [footnote : the decoration of the villa pinciana, in which the prince borghesi has given encouragement to so many eminent artists, is an undertaking that deserves to be immortalized in the history of art.] [footnote : i refer to what i have written on the art of enamel, in the school of ferrara, in which city the art may be said to have been revived by the sig. ab. requeno. it was also greatly improved in the school of rome, where in an entire cabinet was painted in enamel for the empress of russia, as was publicly noticed in the _giornale di roma_, of the month of june. il sig. consigl. gio. renfestein, had the commission of the work, which was executed from the designs of hunterberger, by the sigg. gio. and vincenzio angeloni. they were both assisted in their task by the sig. ab. garcia della huerta, who greatly facilitated the inventions of requeno, as well by his experience as by his work, intitled _commentarj della pittura encaustica del pennello_, published in madrid, a very learned work, and which obtained for the author from charles iv. an annuity for life.] book iv. neapolitan school. first epoch. we are now arrived at a school of painting which possesses indisputable proofs of having, in ancient times, ranked among the first in italy; as in no part of that country do the remains of antiquity evince a more refined taste, no where do we find mosaics executed with more elegance,[ ] nor any thing more beautiful than the subterranean chambers which are ornamented with historical designs and grotesques. the circumstance of its deriving its origin from ancient greece, and the ancient history of design, in which we read of many of its early artists, have ennobled it above all others in italy; and on this account we feel a greater regret at the barbarism which overwhelmed it in common with other schools. we may express a similar sentiment with regard to sicily, which from its affinity in situation and government, i shall include in this fourth book; but generally in the notes.[ ] that island, too, possessed many greek colonies, who have left vases and medals of such extraordinary workmanship, that many have thought that sicily preceded athens in carrying this art to perfection. but to proceed to the art of painting in naples, which is our present object, we may observe that dominici and the other national writers, the notice of whom i shall reserve for their proper places, affirm, that that city was never wholly destitute of artists, not only in the ancient times, which filostrato extols so highly in the proemium of his _immagini_, but even in the dark ages. in confirmation of this, they adduce devotional pictures by anonymous artists, anterior to the year ; particularly many madonnas in an ancient style, which were the objects of adoration in various churches. they subjoin moreover a catalogue of these early artists, and bitterly inveigh against vasari, who has wholly omitted them in his work. the first painter whom we find mentioned at the earliest period of the restoration of the art, is tommaso de' stefani, who was a contemporary of cimabue, in the reign of charles of anjou.[ ] that prince, according to vasari, in passing through florence, was conducted to the studio of cimabue, to see the picture of the virgin, which he had painted for the chapel of the rucellai family, on a larger scale than had ever before been executed. he adds, that the whole city collected in such crowds thither to view it, that it became a scene of public festivity, and that that part of the city in which the artist resided, received in consequence the name of borgo allegri, which it has retained to the present day. dominici has not failed to make use of this tradition to the advantage of tommaso. he observes that charles would naturally have invited cimabue to naples, if he had considered him the first artist of his day; the king however did not do so, but at the same time employed tommaso to ornament a church which he had founded, and he therefore must have considered him superior to cimabue. this argument, as every one will immediately perceive, is by no means conclusive of the real merits of these two artists. that must be decided by an inspection of their works; and with regard to these, marco da siena, who is the father of the history of painting in naples, declares, that in respect to grandeur of composition, cimabue was entitled to the preference. tommaso enjoyed the favour also of charles ii. who employed him, as did also the principal persons of the city. the chapel of the minutoli in the duomo, mentioned by boccaccio, was ornamented by him with various pictures of the passion of our saviour. tommaso had a scholar in filippo tesauro, who painted in the church of s. restituta, the life of b. niccolo, the hermit, the only one of his frescos which has survived to our days. about the year , giotto was invited by king robert to paint the church of s. chiara in naples, which he decorated with subjects from the new testament, and the mysteries of the apocalypse, with some designs suggested to him at a former time by dante, as was currently reported in the days of vasari. these pictures were effaced about the beginning of the present century, as they rendered the church dark; but there remains, among other things in good preservation, a madonna called della grazia, which the generous piety of the religious possessors preserved for the veneration of the faithful. giotto painted some pictures also in the church of s. maria coronata; and others which no longer exist, in the castello dell'uovo. he selected for his assistant in his labours, a maestro simone, who, in consequence of enjoying giotto's esteem, acquired a great name in naples. some consider him a native of cremona, others a neapolitan, which seems nearer the truth. his style partakes both of tesauro and giotto, whence some consider him of the first, others of the second master; and he may probably have been instructed by both. however that may be, on the departure of giotto he was employed in many works which king robert and the queen sancia were prosecuting in various churches, and particularly in s. lorenzo. he there painted that monarch in the act of being crowned by the bishop lodovico, his brother, to whom upon his death and subsequent canonization, a chapel was dedicated in the episcopal church, and simone appointed to decorate it, but which he was prevented from doing by death. dominici particularly extols a picture by him of a deposition from the cross, painted for the great altar of the incoronata; and thinks it will bear comparison with the works of giotto. in other respects, he confesses that his conception and invention were not equally good, nor did his heads possess so attractive an air as those of giotto, nor his colours such a suavity of tone. he instructed in the art a son, called francesco di simone, who was highly extolled for a madonna in chiaroscuro, in the church of s. chiara, and which was one of the works which escaped being effaced on the occasion before mentioned. he had two other scholars in gennaro di cola, and stefanone, who were very much alike in their manner, and on that account were chosen to paint in conjunction some large compositions, such as the pictures of the life of s. lodovico, bishop of tolosa, which simone had only commenced, and various others of the life of the virgin, in s. giovanni da carbonara, which were preserved for a long period. notwithstanding the similarity of their styles, we may perceive a difference in the genius of the two artists; the first being in reference to the second, studied and correct, and anxious to overcome all difficulties, and to elevate the art; on which account he appears occasionally somewhat laboured: the second discovers more genius, more confidence, and a greater freedom of pencil, and to his figures he gives a spirit that might have assured him a distinguished place, if he had been born at a more advanced period of art. before zingaro (who will very soon occupy our attention) introduced a manner acquired in other schools, the art had made little progress in naples and her territories. this is clearly proved by colantonio del fiore, the scholar of francesco, who lived till the year , of whom dominici mentions some pictures, though he is in doubt whether they should not be assigned to maestro simone; which is a tacit confession, that in the lapse of a century the art had not made any considerable progress. it appears, however, that colantonio after some time, by constant practice, had considerably improved himself; having painted several works in a more modern style, particularly a s. jerome, in the church of s. lorenzo, in the act of drawing a thorn from the foot of a lion, with the date of . it is a picture of great truth, removed afterwards, for its merit, by the p. p. conventuali, into the sacristy of the same church, where it was for a long time the admiration of strangers. he had a scholar of the name of angiolo franco, who imitated better than any other neapolitan the manner of giotto; adding only a stronger style of chiaroscuro, which he derived from his master. the art was, however, more advanced by antonio solario, originally a smith, and commonly called lo zingaro. his history has something romantic in it, like that of quintin matsys, who, from his first profession, was called il fabbro, and became a painter from his love to a young girl, who promised to marry him when he had made himself a proficient in the art of painting. solario in the same manner being enamoured of a daughter of colantonio, and receiving from him a promise of her hand in marriage in ten years, if he became an eminent painter, forsook his furnace for the academy, and substituted the pencil for the file. there is an idle tradition of a queen of naples having been the author of this match, but that matter i leave in the hands of the narrators of it. it is more interesting to us to know that solario went to bologna, where he was for several years the scholar of lippo dalmasio, called also lippo delle madonne, from his numerous portraits of the virgin, and the grace with which he painted them. on leaving bologna he visited other parts of italy in order to study the works of the best artists in the various schools; as vivarini, in venice; bicci, in florence; galasso, in ferrara; pisanello, and gentile da fabriano, in rome. it has been thought that he assisted the two last, as luca giordano affirmed that among the pictures in the lateran he recognized some heads which were indisputably by solario. he excelled in this particular, and excited the admiration of marco da siena himself, who declared that his countenances seemed alive. he became also a good perspective painter for those times, and respectable in historical compositions; which he enlivened with landscape in a better style than other painters, and distinguished his figures by drapery peculiar to the age, and carefully drawn from nature. he was less happy in designing his hands and feet, and often appears heavy in his attitudes, and crude in his colouring. on his return to naples, it is said, that he gave proof of his skill, and was favorably received by colantonio, and thus became his son-in-law nine years after his first departure; and that he painted and taught there under king alfonso, until the year , about which time he died. the most celebrated work of this artist was in the choir of s. severino, in fresco, representing, in several compartments, the life of s. benedict, and containing an incredible variety of figures and subjects. he left also numerous pictures with portraits, and madonnas of a beautiful form, and not a few others painted in various churches of naples. in that of s. domenico maggiore, where he painted a dead christ, and in that of s. pier martire, where he represented a s. vincenzio, with some subjects from the life of that saint, it is said that he surpassed himself. thus there commenced in naples a new epoch, which from its original and most celebrated prototype, is called by the cav. massimo, the school of zingaro, as in that city those pictures are commonly distinguished by the name of zingaresque, which were painted from the time of that artist to that of tesauro, or a little later, in the same way that pictures are every where called cortonesque, that are painted in imitation of berettini. about this time there flourished two eminent artists, whom i deem it proper to mention in this place before i enter on the succeeding scholars of the neapolitan school. these were matteo da siena, and antonello da messina. the first we noticed in the school of siena, and mentioned his having painted in naples the slaughter of the innocents. it exists in the church of s. caterina a formello, and is engraved in the third volume of the lettere senesi. the year m.cccc.xviii. is attached to it, but we ought not to yield implicit faith to this date. il p. della valle, in p. of the above mentioned volume, observes, that matteo, in the year , when he painted with his father in pienza, was young, and that in the portrait which he painted of himself in , he does not appear aged. he could not therefore have painted in naples in . after this we may believe it very possible, that in this date an l has been inadvertently omitted, and that the true reading is m.cccc.lxviii. thus the above writer conjectures, and with so much the more probability, as he advances proofs, both from the form of the letters and the absence of the artist from his native place. whoever desires similar examples, may turn to page of vol. i., and he will find that such errors have occurred more than once in the date of books. guided by this circumstance we may correct what dominici has asserted of matteo da siena having influenced the style of solario. it may be true that there is a resemblance in the air of the heads, and the general style, but such similarity can only be accounted for by matteo deriving it from solario, or both, as often happens, deriving it from the same master. antonello, of the family of the antonj, universally known under the name of antonello da messina, is a name so illustrious in the history of art, that it is not sufficient to have mentioned him in the first book and to refer to him here again, as he will claim a further notice in the venetian school, and we must endeavour too to overcome some perplexing difficulties, to ascertain with correctness the time at which he flourished, and attempt to settle the dispute, whether he were the first who painted in oil in italy, or whether that art was practised before his time. vasari relates, that when young, after having spent many years in rome in the study of design,[ ] and many more at palermo, painting there with the reputation of a good artist, he repaired first to messina, and from thence passed to naples, where he chanced to see a large composition painted in oil by gio. da bruggia, which had been presented by some florentine merchants to king alfonso. antonello, smitten with this new art, took his departure to flanders, and there, by his affability, and by a present of some drawings of the italian school, so far ingratiated himself with giovanni, as to induce him to communicate to him the secret, and the aged painter dying soon afterwards, thus left him instructed in the new art. this must have happened about the year , since that time is required to support the supposition that giovanni, born about , died at an advanced age, as the old writers assert, or exactly in , as is asserted by the author of the _galleria imperiale_. antonello then left flanders, and first resided for some months in his native place; from thence he went to venice, where he communicated the secret to domenico veneziano; and having painted there a considerable time, died there at the age of forty-nine. all this we find in vasari, and it agrees with what he relates in the life of domenico veneziano, that this artist, after having learnt the new method from antonello in venice, painted in loreto with piero della francesca, some few years before that artist lost his eyesight, which happened in . thus the arrival of antonello in venice must have occurred about the year , or some previous year; but this conclusion is contrary to venetian evidence. the remaining traces of antonello, or the dates attached to his works there, commence in , and terminate according to ridolfi in . there does not appear any reason whatever, why he should not have attached dates to his pictures, until after residing twenty-four years in venice. besides, how can it be maintained, that antonello, after passing many years in rome as a student, and many in palermo as a master, and some years in messina and flanders, should not in venice, in the forty-ninth year after the death of giovanni, have passed the forty-ninth year of his age. hackert quotes the opinion of gallo, who in the _annali di messina_, dates the birth of antonello in , and his death at forty-nine years of age, that is, in . but if this were so, how could he have known gio. da bruggia? yet if such fact be denied, we must contradict a tradition which has been generally credited. i should be more inclined to believe that there is a mistake in his age, and that he died at a more advanced period of life. nor on this supposition do we wrong vasari; others having remarked what we shall also on a proper opportunity confirm; that as far as regards venetian artists, vasari errs almost in every page from the want of accurate information. i further believe that respecting the residence of antonello in venice, he wrote with inaccuracy. that he was there about the year , and communicated his secret to domenico, is a fact, which after so many processes made in florence on the murder of domenico, and so much discussion respecting him, must have been well ascertained, not depending on the report contained in the memoirs of the painters by grillandajo, or any other contemporary, in whose writings vasari might search for information. but admitting this, i am of opinion, that antonello did not reside constantly in venice from the year until his death, as vasari insinuates. it appears that he travelled afterwards in several countries, resided for a long time in milan, and acquired there a great celebrity; and that he repaired afresh to venice, and enjoyed there for some years a public salary. this we gather from maurolico, quoted by hackert: _ob mirum hic ingenium venetiis aliquot annos publicè conductus vixit: mediolani quoque fuit percelebris_, (_hist. sican. pl. , prim. edit._), and if he was not a contemporary writer, still he was not very far removed from antonello. this is the hypothesis i propose in order to reconcile the many contradictory accounts which we find on this subject in vasari, ridolfi, and zanetti; and when we come to the venetian school, i shall not forget to adduce further proofs in support of it. others may perhaps succeed better than i have done in this task, and with that hope i shall console myself: as in my researches i have no other object than truth, i shall be equally satisfied whether i discover it myself, or it be communicated to me by others. that therefore antonello was the first who exhibited a perfect method of practising painting in oil in italy, is an assertion that, it seems to me, may be with justice maintained, or at least it cannot be said that there is proof to the contrary. and yet in the history of the art in the two sicilies, this honour is strongly disputed. in that history we find the description of a chapel in the duomo of messina, called madonna della lettera, where it is said there exists a very old greek picture of the virgin, an object of adoration, which was said to be in oil. if this were even admitted, it could not detract from the merit of antonello in having restored a beautiful art that had fallen into desuetude; but in these greek pictures, the wax had often the appearance of oil, as we observed in vol. i. p. . marco da siena, in the fragment of a discourse which dominici has preserved, asserts, that the neapolitan painters of continued to improve in the two manners of painting in fresco and in oil. when i peruse again what i have written in vol. i. p. , where some attempt at colouring in oil anterior to antonello is admitted, i may be permitted not to rely on the word of pino alone. there exist in naples many pictures of , and i cannot imagine, why in a controversy like this, they are neither examined nor alluded to, and why the question is rested solely on a work or two of colantonio. some national writers, and not long since, signorelli, in his _coltura delle due sicili_ (tom. iii. p. ), have pretended, that colantonio del fiore was certainly the first to paint in oil, and adduce in proof the very picture of s. jerome, before mentioned, and another in s. maria nuova. il sig. piacenza after inspecting them, says, that he was not able to decide whether these pictures were really in oil or not. zanetti (p. v. p. ) also remarks, that it is extremely difficult to pass a decided judgment on works of this kind, and i have made the same observation with respect to van eyck, which will i hope, convince every reader who will be at the trouble to refer to vol. i. p. . and unless that had been the case, how happened it that all europe was filled with the name of van eyck in the course of a few years; that every painter ran to him; that his works were coveted by princes, and that they who could not obtain them, procured the works of his scholars, and others the works of ausse, ugo d'anversa, and antonello; and of ruggieri especially, of whose great fame in italy we shall in another place adduce the documents.[ ] on the other hand, who, beyond naples and its territory, had at that time heard of colantonio? who ever sought with such eagerness the works of solario? and if this last was the scholar and son-in-law of a master who painted so well in oil, how happened it that he was neither distinguished in the art, nor even acquired it? why did he himself and his scholars work in distemper? why did the sicilians, as we have seen, pass over to venice, where antonello resided, to instruct themselves, and not confine themselves to naples? why did the whole school of venice, the emporium of europe, and capable of contradicting any false report, attest, on the death of antonello, that he was the first that painted in oil in italy, and no one opposed to him either solario or colantonio?[ ] they either could not at that time have been acquainted with this discovery, or did not know it to an extent that can contradict vasari, and the prevailing opinions respecting antonello. dominici has advanced more on this point than any other person, asserting that this art was discovered in naples, and was carried from thence to flanders by van eyck himself, to which supposition, after the observations already made, i deem it superfluous to reply.[ ] we shall now return to the scholars of solario, who were very numerous. amongst them was a niccola di vito, who may be called the buffalmacco of this school, for his singular humour and his eccentric invention, though in other respects he was an inferior artist, and little deserving commemoration. simone papa did not paint any large composition in which he might be compared to his master; he confined himself to altarpieces, with few figures grouped in a pleasing style, and finished with exquisite care; so that he sometimes equalled zingaro, as in a s. michele, painted for s. maria nuova. of the same class seems to have been angiolillo di roccadirame, who in the church of s. bridget, painted that saint contemplating in a vision the birth of christ; a picture which even with the experienced, might pass for the work of his master. more celebrated and more deserving of notice, are pietro and polito (ippolito) del donzello, sons-in-law of angiolo franco, and relatives of the celebrated architect giuliano da maiano, by whom they were instructed in that art. vasari mentions them as the first painters of the neapolitan school, but does not give any account of their master, or of what school they were natives, and he writes in a way that might lead the reader to believe that they were tuscans. he says that giuliano, having finished the palace of poggio reale for king robert, the monarch engaged the two brothers to decorate it, and that first giuliano dying, and the king afterwards, polito _returned_ to florence.[ ] bottari observes, that he did not find the two donzelli mentioned by orlandi, nor by any one else; a clear proof that he did not himself consider them natives of naples, and on that account he did not look for them in bernardo dominici, who has written at length upon them, complaining of the negligence or inadvertent error of vasari. the pictures of the two brothers were painted, according to vasari, about the year . but as he informs us that polito did not leave naples until the death of alfonso, this epoch should be extended to , or beyond; as he remained for a year longer, or thereabouts, under the reign of ferdinand, the son and successor of alfonso. he painted for that monarch some large compositions in the refectory of s. maria nuova, partly alone and partly in conjunction with his brother, and both brothers combined in decorating for the king a part of the palace of poggio reale. we may here with propriety also mention, that they painted in one of the rooms the conspiracy against ferdinand, which being seen by jacopo sannazzaro, gave occasion to his writing a sonnet, the st in the second part of his _rime_. their style resembles that of their master, except that their colouring is softer. they distinguished themselves also in their architectural ornaments, and in the painting of friezes and trophies, and subjects in chiaroscuro, in the manner of bassirilievi, an art which i am not aware that any one practised before them. the younger brother leaving naples and dying soon afterwards, pietro remained employed in that city, where he and his scholars acquired a great reputation by their paintings in oil and fresco. the portraits of pietro had all the force of nature, and it is not long since, that on the destruction of some of his pictures on a wall in the palace of the dukes of matalona, some heads were removed with the greatest care, and preserved for their excellence. we may now notice silvestro de' buoni, who was placed by his father in the school of zingaro, and on his death attached himself to the donzelli. his father was an indifferent painter, of the name of buono, and from that has arisen the mistake of some persons, who have ascribed to the son some works of the father in an old style, and unworthy the reputation of silvestro. this artist, in the opinion of the cav. massimo, had a finer colouring and a superior general effect to the donzelli; and in the force of his chiaroscuro, and in the delicacy of his contours, far surpassed all the painters of his country who had lived to that time. dominici refers to many of his pictures in the various churches of naples. one of the most celebrated is that of s. giovanni a mare, in which he included three saints, all of the same name, s. john the baptist, the evangelist, and s. chrysostom. silvestro is said to have had a disciple in tesauro, whose christian name has not been correctly handed down to us; but he is generally called bernardo. he is supposed to have been of a painter's family, and descended from that filippo who is commemorated as the second of this school, and father or uncle of raimo, whom we shall soon notice. this bernardo, or whatever his name may have been, made nearer approaches to the modern style than any of the preceding artists; more judicious in his invention, more natural in his figures and drapery; select, expressive, harmonized, and displaying a knowledge in gradation and relief, beyond what could be expected in a painter who is not known to have been acquainted with any other schools, or seen any pictures beyond those of his own country. luca giordano, at a time when he was considered the coryphæus of painting, was struck with astonishment at the painting of a soffitto by tesauro at s. giovanni de' pappacodi, and did not hesitate to declare that there were parts in it, which in an age so fruitful in fine works, no one could have surpassed. it represents the seven sacraments. the minute description which the historian gives of it, shews us what sobriety and judgment there were in his composition; and the portraits of alfonso ii. and ippolita sforza, whose espousals he represented in the sacrament of marriage, afford us some light for fixing the date of this picture. raimo tesauro was very much employed in works in fresco. some pictures by him are also mentioned in s. maria nuova, and in monte vergine; pictures, says the cav. massimo, "very studied and perfect, according to the latest schools succeeding our zingaro." to the same schools gio. antonio d'amato owed his first instructions; but it is said, that when he saw the pictures which pietro perugino had painted for the duomo of naples, he became ambitious of emulating the style of that master. by diligence, in which he was second to none, he approached, as one may say, the confines of modern art; and died at an advanced period of the sixteenth century. he is highly extolled for his dispute of the sacrament, painted for the metropolitan church, and for two other pictures placed in the borgo di chiaia, the one at the carmine, the other at s. leonardo. and here we may close our account of the early painters, scanty indeed, but still copious for a city harassed by incessant hostilities.[ ] [footnote : in the museo of the sig. d. franc. daniele, are some birds, not inferior to the doves of furietti.] [footnote : i adopt this mode because "little has hitherto been published on the sicilian school," as the sig. hackert observes in his _memorie de' pittori messinesi_. i had not seen that book when i published the former edition of the present work, and i was then desirous that the memoirs of the sicilian painters should be collected together and given to the public. i rejoice that we have had memoirs presented to us of those of messina, and that we shall also have those of the syracusans and others, as the worthy professor gives us reason to hope in the preface to the _memorie_ before mentioned, which were written by an anonymous writer, and published by sig. hackert with his own remarks.] [footnote : the history of the art in messina enumerates a series of pictures from the year , of which period is the s. placido of the cathedral, painted by an antonio d'antonio. it is supposed that this is a family of painters, which had the surname of antonj, and that many pictures in s. francesco, s. anna, and elsewhere, are by different antonj, until we come to salvatore di antonio, father of the celebrated antonello di messina, and himself a master; and there remains by him a s. francis in the act of receiving the stigmata, in the church of his name. thus the genealogy of this antonello is carried to the before mentioned antonio di antonio, and still further by a writer called _il minacciato_ (hack. p. ), although antonio never, to my knowledge, subscribed himself degli antonj, having always on his pictures, which i have seen, inscribed his country, instead of his surname, as _messinensis_, _messineus_, _messinæ_.] [footnote : the _memorie de' pittori messinesi_ assert, that at rome he was attracted by the fame of the works of masaccio, and that he there also designed all the ancient statues. they add, too, that he arrived at such celebrity, that his works are equal to those of the best masters of his time. i imagine it must be meant to allude to those who preceded pietro perugino, francia, gio. bellini, and mantegna; as his works will not bear any comparison with those of the latter masters.] [footnote : in the first epoch of the venetian school.] [footnote : the following inscription, composed at the instance of the venetian painters, is found in ridolfi, p. . "_antonius pictor, præcipuum messanæ suæ et totius siciliæ ornamentum hâc humo contegitur: non solum suis picturis, in quibus singulare artificium et venustas fuit: sed et quod coloribus oleo miscendis splendorem et perpetuitatem_ primus italiÆ picturÆ _contulit, summo_ semper _artificum studio celebratus._"] [footnote : a letter of summonzio, written on the th march, , has been communicated to me by the sig. cav. de' lazara, extracted from the th volume of the mss. collected in venice by the sig. ab. profess. daniele francesconi. it is addressed to m. a. michele, who had requested from him some information respecting the ancient and modern artists of naples; and in reference to the present question he thus speaks. "since that period (the reign of king ladislaus), we have not had any one of so much talent in the art of painting as our maestro colantonio of naples, who would in all probability have arrived at great eminence, if he had not died young. owing to the taste of the times, he did not arrive at that perfection of design founded on the antique, which his disciple antonello da messina attained; an artist, as i understand, well known amongst you. the style of colantonio was founded on the flemish, and the colouring of that country, to which he was so much attached, that he had intended to go thither, but the king raniero retained him here, satisfied with showing him the practice and mode of such colouring." from this letter, which seems contrary to my argument, i collect sufficient, if i err not, to confirm it. for, st, the defence of those writers falls to the ground, who assume that the art of oil colouring was derived from naples, while we see that colantonio, by means of the king, received it from flanders. ndly, van eyck himself is not here named, but the painters of flanders generally; which country first awakened, as we have observed, by the example of italy, had discovered new, and it is true, imperfect and inefficient methods, but still superior to distemper; and who knows if this were not the mode adopted by colantonio. rdly, it is said that he died young, a circumstance which may give credit to the difficulty that he had in communicating the secret: in fact, it is not known that he communicated it even to his son-in-law, much less to a stranger. thly, hence the necessity of antonello undertaking the journey to flanders to learn the secret from van eyck, who was then in years, and not without difficulty communicated it to him. thly, if we believe with ridolfi that antonello painted in in trevigi, and credit the testimony of vasari, that he was not then more than forty-nine years of age, how could he be the scholar of colantonio, who, according to dominici, died in ? it is with diffidence i advance these remarks on a matter on which i have before expressed my doubts, and i have been obliged to leave some points undecided, or decided rather according to the opinions of others than my own.] [footnote : in the ducal gallery in florence, is a deposition from the cross, wholly in the style of zingaro: and i know not whether it ought to be ascribed to polito, who certainly resided in florence, or to some other painter of the neapolitan school.] [footnote : in messina, towards the close of the fifteenth century, or at the beginning of the sixteenth, some artists flourished who practised their native style, not yet modernised on the italian model, as alfonso franco, a scholar of jacopello d'antonio, and a pietro oliva, of an uncertain school. both are praised for their natural manner, the peculiar boast of that age, but in the first we admire a correct design and a lively expression, for which his works have been much sought after by strangers, who have spared only to his native place a deposition from the cross, at s. francesco di paola, and a dispute of christ with the doctors, at s. agostino. still less remains of antonello rosaliba, always a graceful painter. this is a madonna with the holy infant, in the village of postunina.] neapolitan school. second epoch. _modern neapolitan style, founded on the schools of raffaello and michelangiolo._ it has already been observed, that at the commencement of the sixteenth century, the art of painting seemed in every country to have attained to maturity, and that every school at that time assumed its own peculiar and distinguishing character. naples did not, however, possess a manner so decided as that of other schools of italy, and thus afforded an opportunity for the cultivation of the best style, as the students who left their native country returned home, each with the manner of his own master, and the sovereigns and nobility of the kingdom invited and employed the most celebrated strangers. in this respect, perhaps, naples did not yield precedence to any city after rome. thus the first talents were constantly employed in ornamenting both the churches and palaces of that metropolis. nor indeed was that country ever deficient in men of genius, who manifested every exquisite quality for distinction, particularly such as depended on a strong and fervid imagination. hence an accomplished writer and painter has observed, that no part of italy could boast of so many native artists, such is the fire, the fancy, and freedom, which characterizes, for the most part, the works of these masters. their rapidity of execution was another effect of their genius, a quality which has been alike praised by the ancients,[ ] and the moderns, when combined with other more requisite gifts of genius. but this despatch in general excludes correct design, which from that cause is seldom found in that school. nor do we find that it paid much attention to ideal perfection, as most of its professors, following the practice of the naturalists, selected the character of their heads and the attitudes of their figures from common life; some with more, and others with less discrimination. with regard to colour, this school changed its principles in conformity to the taste of the times. it was fertile in invention and composition, but deficient in application and study. the history of the vicissitudes it experienced will occupy the remainder of this volume. the epoch of modern painting in naples could not have commenced under happier auspices than those which it had the good fortune to experience. pietro perugino had painted an assumption of the virgin, which i am informed exists in the duomo, or s. reparata, a very ancient cathedral church, since connected with the new duomo. this work opened the way to a better taste. when raffaello and his school rose into public esteem, naples was among the first distant cities to profit from it, by means of some of his scholars, to whom were also added some followers of michelangiolo, about the middle of the century. thus till nearly the year , this school paid little attention to any other style than that of these two great masters and their imitators, except a few artists who were admirers of titian. we may commence the new series with andrea sabbatini of salerno. this artist was so much struck with the style of pietro, when he saw his picture in the duomo, that he immediately determined to study in the school of perugia. he took his departure accordingly for that city, but meeting on the road some brother painters who much more highly extolled the works of raffaello, executed for julius ii., he changed his mind and proceeded to rome, and there placed himself in the school of that great master. he remained with him however, only a short time, as the death of his father compelled him to return home, against his wishes. but he arrived a new man. it is related that he painted with raffaello at the pace, and in the vatican, and that he became an accomplished copyist of his works, and successfully emulated the style of his master. compared with his fellow scholars, although he did not rival giulio romano, he yet surpassed raffaele del colle, and others of that class. he had a correctness of design, selection in his faces and in his attitudes, a depth of shade, and the muscles rather strongly expressed; a breadth in the folding of his drapery, and a colour which still preserves its freshness after the lapse of so many years. he executed many works in naples, as appears from the catalogue of his pictures. among his best works are numbered some pictures at s. maria delle grazie; besides the frescos which he executed there and in other places, extolled by writers as miracles of art, but few of which remain to the present day. he painted also in his native city, in gaeta, and indeed in all parts of the kingdom, both in the churches and for private collections, where many of his madonnas, of an enchanting beauty, are still to be seen.[ ] andrea had several scholars, some of whom studied under other masters, and did not acquire much of his style. such was cesare turco, who rather took after pietro; a good painter in oil, but unsuccessful in fresco. but andrea was the sole master of francesco santafede, the father and master of fabrizio; painters who in point of colouring have few equals in this school, and possessing a singular uniformity of style. nevertheless the experienced discover in the father more vigour, and more clearness in his shadows; and there are by him some pictures in the soffitto of the nunziata, and a deposition from the cross in the possession of the prince di somma, highly celebrated. but of all the scholars of andrea, one paolillo resembled him the most, whose works were all ascribed to his master, until dominici restored them to their right owner. he would have been the great ornament of this school had he not died young. polidoro caldara, or caravaggio, came to naples in the year of the sacking of rome, . he was not, as vasari would have us believe, in danger of perishing through want at naples; for andrea da salerno, who had been his fellow disciple, generously received him into his house, and introduced him in the city, where he obtained many commissions, and formed several scholars before he went to sicily. he had distinguished himself in rome by his chiaroscuri, as we have related; and he painted in colours in naples and messina. his colour in oil was pallid and obscure, at least for some time, and in this style i saw some pictures of the passion in rome, which gavin hamilton had received from sicily. in other respects they were valuable, from their design and invention. vasari mentions this master with enthusiasm, calls him a divine genius, and extols to the skies a picture which he painted in messina a little while before his death. this was a composition of christ on his way to mount calvary, surrounded by a great multitude, and he assures us that the colouring was enchanting. giambernardo lama was first a scholar of amato, and afterwards attached himself to polidoro, in whose manner he painted a pietà at s. giacomo degli spagnuoli, which, from its conception, its correctness, and vigour of design, variety in attitude, and general style of composition, was by many ascribed to that master. in general however, he displayed a softer and more natural manner, and was partial to the style of andrea di salerno. marco di pino, an imitator of michelangiolo, as we have observed, though sober and judicious, was held in disesteem by him. in the _segretario_ of capece, there is an interesting letter to lama, where amongst other things he says, "i hear that you do not agree with marco da siena, as you paint with more regard to beauty, and he is attached to a vigorous design without softening his colours. i know not what you desire of him, but pray leave him to his own method, and do you follow yours." a francesco ruviale, a spaniard, is also mentioned in naples, called polidorino, from his happy imitation of his master, whom he assisted in painting for the orsini some subjects illustrative of the history of that noble family; and after the departure of his master, he executed by himself several works at monte oliveto and elsewhere. the greater part of these have perished, as happened in rome to so many of the works of polidoro. this ruviale appears to me to be a different artist from a ruviale, a spaniard, who is enumerated among the scholars of salviati, and the assistants of vasari, in the painting of the chancery; on which occasion vasari says, he formed himself into a good painter. this was under paul vii. in , at which time polidorino must already have been a master. palomino has not said a word of any other ruviale, a painter of his country; and this is a proof that the two preceding artists never returned home to spain. some have included among the scholars of polidoro an able artist and good colourist, called marco calabrese, whose surname is cardisco. vasari ranks him before all his neapolitan contemporaries, and considers his genius a fruit produced remote from its native soil. this observation cannot appear correct to any one who recollects that the calabria of the present day is the ancient magna græcia, where in former times the arts were carried to the highest pitch of perfection. cardisco painted much in naples and in the state. his most celebrated work is the dispute of s. agostino in the church of that saint in aversa. he had a scholar in gio. batista crescione, who together with lionardo castellani, his relative, painted at the time vasari wrote, which was an excuse for his noticing them only in a cursory manner. we may further observe that polidoro was the founder of a florid school in messina, where we must look for his most able scholars.[ ] gio. francesco penni, or as he is called, il fattore, came to naples some time after polidoro, but soon afterwards fell sick, and died in the year . he contributed in two different ways to the advancement of the school of naples. in the first place he left there the great copy of the transfiguration of raffaello, which he had painted in rome in conjunction with perino, and which was afterwards placed in s. spirito degl'incurabili, and served as a study to lama, and the best painters, until, with other select pictures and sculptures at naples, it was purchased and removed by the viceroy don pietro antonio of aragon. secondly, he left there a scholar of the name of lionardo, commonly called il pistoja, from the place of his birth; an excellent colourist, but not a very correct designer. we noticed him among the assistants of raffaello, and more at length among the artists of the florentine state, where we find some of his pictures, as in volterra and elsewhere. after he had lost his friend penni in naples, he established himself there for the remainder of his days, where he received sufficient encouragement from the nobility of that city, and painted less for the churches than for private individuals. he chiefly excelled in portrait. pistoja is said to have been one of the masters of francesco curia, a painter, who, though somewhat of a mannerist in the style of vasari and zucchero, is yet commended for the noble and agreeable style of his composition, for his beautiful countenances, and natural colouring. these qualities are singularly conspicuous in a circumcision painted for the church della pietà, esteemed by ribera, giordano, and solimene, one of the first pictures in naples. he left in ippolito borghese an accomplished imitator, who was absent a long time from his native country, where few of his works remain, but those are highly prized. he was in the year in perugia, as morelli relates in his description of the pictures and statues of that city, and painted an assumption of the virgin, which was placed in s. lorenzo. there were two neapolitans who were scholars and assistants of perino del vaga in rome; gio. corso, initiated in the art by amato, or as others assert by polidoro; and gianfilippo criscuolo, instructed a long time by salerno. there are few remains of corso in naples, except such as are retouched; nor is any piece so much extolled as a christ with a cross painted for the church of s. lorenzo. criscuolo in the short time he was at rome, diligently copied raffaello, and was greatly attached to his school. he followed, however, his own genius, which was reserved and timid, and formed for himself rather a severe manner; a circumstance to his honour, at a time when the contours were overcharged and the correctness of raffaello was neglected. he is also highly commended as an instructor. from his school came francesco imparato, who was afterwards taught by titian, and so far emulated his style, that a s. peter martyr by him in the church of that saint in naples was praised by caracciolo as the best picture which had then been seen in that city. we must not confound this francesco with girolamo imparato, his son, who flourished after the end of the sixteenth century, and enjoyed a reputation greater than he perhaps merited. he too was a follower of the venetian, and afterwards of the lombard style, and he travelled to improve himself in colouring, the fruits of which were seen in the picture of the rosario at s. tommaso d'aquino, and in others of his works. the cav. stanzioni, who knew him, and was his competitor, considered him inferior to his father in talent, and describes him as vain and ostentatious. to these painters of the school of raffaello, there succeeded in naples two followers of michelangiolo, whom we have before noticed. the first of these was vasari, who was called thither in , to paint the refectory of the p. p. olivetani, and was afterwards charged with many commissions in naples and in rome. by the aid of architecture, in which he excelled more than in painting, he converted that edifice, which was in what is commonly called the gothic style, to a better form; altered the vault, and ornamented it with modern stuccos, which were the first seen in naples, and painted there a considerable number of subjects, with that rapidity and mediocrity that characterize the greater part of his works. he remained there for the space of a year, and of the services he rendered to the city, we may judge from the following passage in his life. "it is extraordinary," he says, "that in so large and noble a city, there should have been found no masters after giotto, to have executed any work of celebrity, although some works by perugino and by raffaello had been introduced. on these grounds i have endeavoured, to the best of my humble talents, to awaken the genius of that country to a spirit of emulation, and to the accomplishment of some great and honourable work; and from these my labours, or from some other cause, we now see many beautiful works in stucco and painting, in addition to the before mentioned pictures." it is not easy to conjecture why vasari should here overlook many eminent painters, and even andrea da salerno himself, so illustrious an artist, and whose name would have conferred a greater honour on his book, than it could possibly have derived from it. whether self love prompted him to pass over that painter and other neapolitan artists, in the hope that he should himself be considered the restorer of taste in naples; or whether it was the consequence of the dispute which existed at that time between him and the painters of naples; or whether, as i observed in my preface, it sometimes happens in this art, that a picture which delights one person, disgusts another, i know not, and every one must judge for himself. for myself, however much disposed i should be to pardon him for many omissions, which in a work like his, are almost unavoidable, still i cannot exculpate him for this total silence. nor have the writers of naples ever ceased complaining of this neglect, and some indeed have bitterly inveighed against him and accused him of contributing to the deterioration of taste. so true is it, that an offence against a whole nation is an offence never pardoned. the other imitator, and a favourite of michelangiolo (but not his scholar, as some have asserted) that painted in naples, was marco di pino, or marco da siena, frequently before mentioned by us. he appears to have arrived in naples after the year . he was well received in that city, and had some privileges conferred on him; nor did the circumstance of his being a stranger create towards him any feeling of jealousy on the part of the neapolitans, who are naturally hospitable to strangers of good character; and he is described by all as a sincere, affable, and respectable man. he enjoyed in naples the first reputation, and was often employed in works of consequence in some of the greater churches of the city, and in others of the kingdom at large. he repeated on several occasions the deposition from the cross, which he painted at rome, but with many variations, and the one the most esteemed was that which he placed in s. giovanni de' fiorentini, in . the circumcision in the gesù vecchio, where parrino traces the portrait of the artist and his wife,[ ] the adoration of the magi at s. severino, and others of his works, contain views of buildings, not unworthy of him, as he was an eminent architect, and also a good writer on that art. of his merit as a painter, i believe i do not err, when i say that among the followers of michelangiolo, there is none whose design is less extravagant and whose colour is more vigorous. he is not however, always equal. in the church of s. severino, where he painted four pictures, the nativity of the virgin is much inferior to the others. a mannered style was so common in artists of that age, that few were exempt from it. he had many scholars in naples, but none of the celebrity of gio. angelo criscuolo. this artist was the brother of gio. filippo, already mentioned, and exercised the profession of a notary, without relinquishing that of a miniature painter, which he had learnt in his youth. he became desirous of emulating his brother in larger compositions, and under the direction of marco succeeded in acquiring his style. these two painters laid the foundation of the history of the art in naples. in , there issued from the giunti press in florence, a new edition of the works of vasari, in which the author speaks very briefly of marco da siena, in the life of daniello da volterra. he only observes that he had derived the greatest benefit from the instructions of that master, and that he had afterwards chosen naples for his country, and settled and continued his labours there. marco, either not satisfied with this eulogium, or displeased at the silence of vasari with regard to many of the painters of siena, and almost all those of naples, determined to publish a work of his own in opposition to him. among his scholars was the notary before mentioned, who supplied him with memoirs of the neapolitan painters taken from the archives of the city, and from tradition; and from these materials marco prepared a _discorso_. he composed it in , a year after the publication of this edition of vasari's works, and it was the first sketch of the history of the fine arts in naples. it did not, however, then see the light, and was not published until , and then only in part, by dominici, together with notes written by criscuolo in the neapolitan dialect, and with the addition of other notes collected respecting the subsequent artists, and arranged by two excellent painters, massimo stanzioni, and paolo de' matteis. dominici himself added some others of his own collecting, and communicated by some of his learned friends, among whom was the celebrated antiquarian matteo egizio. the late _guida_ or _breve descrizione di napoli_ says, this voluminous work stands in need of more information, a better arrangement, and a more concise style. there might also be added some better criticisms on the ancient artists, and less partiality towards some of the modern. still this is a very lucid work, and highly valuable for the opinions expressed on the talents of artists, for the most part by other artists, whose names inspire confidence in the reader. whether the sister arts of architecture and sculpture are as judiciously treated of, it is not our province to inquire. in the above work the reader may find the names of other artists of naples who belong to the close of this epoch, as silvestro bruno, who enjoyed in naples the fame of a good master; a second simone papa, or del papa, a clever fresco painter, and likewise another gio. ant. amato, who to distinguish him from the first is called the younger. he was first instructed in the art by his uncle, afterwards by lama, and successively imitated their several styles. he obtained considerable fame, and the infant christ painted by him in the banco de' poveri, is highly extolled. to these may be added those artists who fixed their residence in other parts of italy, as pirro ligorio, honoured, as we have observed, by pius iv. in rome, and who died in ferrara, engineer to alfonso ii.; and gio. bernardino azzolini, or rather mazzolini, in whose praise soprani and ratti unite. he arrived in genoa about , and there executed some works worthy of that golden age of art. he excelled in waxwork, and formed heads with an absolute expression of life. he extended the same energetic character to his oil pictures, particularly in the martyrdom of s. agatha in s. giuseppe. the provincial cities had also in this age their own schools, or at least their own masters; some of whom remained in their native places, and others resided abroad. cola dell'amatrice, known also to vasari, who mentions him in his life of calabrese, took up his residence in ascoli del piceno, and enjoyed a distinguished name in architecture and in painting, through all that province. he had somewhat of a hard manner in his earlier paintings, but in his subsequent works he exhibited a fulness of design and an accomplished modern style. he is highly extolled in the guida di ascoli for his picture in the oratory of the _corpus domini_, which represents the saviour in the act of dispensing the eucharist to the apostles. pompeo dell'aquila was a finished painter and a fine colourist, if we are to believe orlandi, who saw many of his works in aquila, particularly some frescos conducted in a noble style. in rome in s. spirito in sassia, there is a fine deposition from the cross by him. this artist is not mentioned either by baglione or any other writer of his time. giuseppe valeriani, another native of aquila, is frequently mentioned. he painted at the same period and in the same church of s. spirito, where there exists a transfiguration by him. we perceive in him an evident desire of imitating f. sebastiano, but he is heavy in his design, and too dark in his colours. he entered afterwards into the society of jesuits, and improved his first manner. his best works are said to be a nunziata in a chapel of the gesù, with other subjects from the life of christ, in which are some most beautiful draperies added by scipio da gaeta. this latter artist also was a native of the kingdom of naples; but of him and of the cav. di arpino, who both taught in rome, we have already spoken in that school. marco mazzaroppi di s. germano died young, but is known for his natural and animated colouring, almost in the flemish style. at capua they mention with applause the altarpieces and other pictures of gio. pietro russo, who after studying in various schools returned to that city, and there left many excellent works. matteo da lecce, whose education is uncertain, displayed in rome a michelangiolo style, or as some say, the style of salviati. it is certain that he had a strong expression of the limbs and muscles. he worked for the most part in fresco, and there is a prophet painted by him for the company of the gonfalone, of such relief, that the figures, says baglione, seem starting from the wall. although there were at that time many florentines in rome, he was the only one who dared in the face of the last judgment of michelangiolo, to paint the fall of the rebel angels, a subject which that great artist designed to have painted, but never put his intentions into execution. he chose too to accompany it with the combat between the prince of the angels and lucifer, for the body of moses; a subject taken from the epistle of s. james, and analogous to that of the other picture. matteo entered upon this very arduous task with a noble spirit; but, alas! with a very different result. he painted afterwards in malta, and passing to spain and to the indies, he enriched himself by merchandise, until turning to mining, he lost all his wealth, and died in great indigence. we may also mention two calabrians of doubtful parentage. nicoluccio, a calabrian, who will be mentioned among the scholars of lorenzo costa, but only cursorily, as i know nothing of this parricide, as he may be called, except that he attempted to murder his master. pietro negroni, a calabrian also, is commemorated by dominici as a diligent and accomplished painter. in sicily, it is probable that many painters flourished belonging to this period, besides gio. borghese da messina, a scholar also of costa, and laureti, whom i notice in the schools of rome and bologna, and others whose names i may have seen, but whose works have not called for my notice. the succeeding epoch we shall find more productive in sicilian art. [footnote : _plin. hist. nat._ lib. xxxv. cap. . _nec ullius velocior in picturâ manus fuit._] [footnote : the style of raffaello found imitators also in sicily, and the first to practise it was salvo di antonio, the nephew of antonello, by whom there is, we are told, in the sacristy of the cathedral, the death of the virgin, "_in the pure raffaellesque style_," although salvo is not the painter who has been called the raffaello of messina: this was girolamo alibrandi. a distinguished celebrity has of late been attached to this artist, whose name was before comparatively unknown. respectably born, and liberally educated, instead of pursuing the study of the law, for which he was intended, he applied himself to painting, and having acquired the principles of the art in the school of the antonj of messina, he went to perfect himself in venice. the scholar of antonello, and the friend of giorgione, he improved himself by the study of the works of the best masters. after many years residence in venice he passed to milan, to the school of vinci, where he corrected some dryness of style which he had brought thither with him. thus far there is no doubt about his history; but we are further told, that being recalled to his native country, he wished first to see coreggio and raffaello, and that he repaired to messina about the year ; a statement which is on the face of it incorrect, since lionardo left milan in , when raffaello was only a youth, and coreggio in his infancy. but i have before observed, that the history of art is full of these contradictions; a painter resembling another, he was therefore supposed his scholar, or at all events acquainted with him. on this subject i may refer to the milanese school in regard to luini, (epoch ii.) and observe that a follower of the style of lionardo almost necessarily runs into the manner of raffaello. thus it happened to alibrandi, whose style however bore a resemblance to others besides, so that his pictures pass under various names. there remains in his native place, in the church of candelora, a purification of the virgin, in a picture of twenty-four sicilian palms, which is the chef d'oeuvre of the pictures of messina, from the grace, colouring, perspective, and every other quality that can enchant the eye. polidoro was so much captivated with this work, that he painted in distemper a picture of the deposition from the cross, as a precious covering to this picture, in order that it might be transmitted uninjured to posterity. girolamo died in the plague of , and at the same time other eminent artists of this school; a school which was for some time neglected, but which has, through the labours of polidoro, risen to fresh celebrity.] [footnote : i here subjoin a list of them. deodato guinaccia may be called the giulio of this new raffaello, on whose death he inherited the materials of his art, and supported the fame of his school: and like giulio, completed some works left unfinished by his master; as the nativity in the church of alto basso, which passes for the best production of polidoro. in this exercise of his talents he became a perfect imitator of his master's style, as in the church of the trinità a' pellegrini, and in the transfiguration at s. salvatore de' greci. he imparted his taste to his scholars, the most distinguished of whom for works yet remaining, are cesare di napoli, and francesco comandè, pure copyists of polidoro. with regard to the latter, some errors have prevailed; for having very often worked in conjunction with gio. simone comandè, his brother, who had an unequivocal venetian taste, from having studied in venice, it not unfrequently happens, that when the pictures of comandè are spoken of, they are immediately attributed to simone, as the more celebrated artist; but an experienced eye cannot be deceived, not even in works conjointly painted, as in the martyrdom of s. bartholomew, in the church of that saint, or the magi in the monastery of basicò. there, and in every other picture, whoever can distinguish polidoro from the venetians, easily discovers the style of the two brothers, and assigns to each his own. polidoro had in his academy mariano and antonello riccio, father and son. the first came in order to change the manner of franco, his former master, for that of polidoro; the second to acquire his master's style. both succeeded to their wishes; but the father was so successful a rival of his new master, that his works are said to pass under his name. this is the common report, but i think it can only apply to inexperienced purchasers, since if there be a painter, whose style it is almost impossible to imitate to deception, it is polidoro da caravaggio. in proof, the comparison may be made in messina itself, where the pietà of polidoro, and the madonna della carità of mariano, are placed near each other. stefano giordano was also a respectable scholar of caldara, and we may mention, as an excellent production, his picture of the supper of our lord in the monastery of s. gregory, painted in . with him we may join jacopo vignerio, by whom we find described, as an excellent work, the picture of christ bearing his cross, at s. maria della scala, bearing the date of . we may close this list of the scholars of polidoro with the infamous name of tonno, a calabrian, who murdered his master in order to possess himself of his money, and suffered for the atrocious crime. he evinced a more than common talent in the art, if we may judge from the epiphany which he painted for the church of s. andrea, in which piece he introduced the portrait of his unfortunate master. some writers have also included among the followers of polidoro, antonio catalano, because he was a scholar of deodato. we are informed he went to rome and entered the school of barocci; but as barocci never taught in rome, we may rather imagine that it was from the works of that artist he acquired a florid colouring, and a _sfumatezza_, with which he united a portion of the taste of raffaello, whom he greatly admired. his pictures are highly valued from this happy union of excellences; and his great picture of the nativity at the capuccini del gesso is particularly extolled. we must not mistake this accomplished painter for antonio catalano _il giovane_, the scholar of gio. simone comandè, from whose style and that of others he formed a manner sufficiently spirited, but incorrect, and practised with such celerity, that his works are as numerous as they are little prized.] [footnote : these traditions are frequently nothing more than common rumour, to which, without corroborating circumstances, we ought not to give credit. it has happened more than once, that such portraits have been found to belong to the patrons of the church.] neapolitan school. third epoch. _corenzio, ribera, caracciolo, flourish in naples. strangers who compete with them._ about the middle of the sixteenth century, tintoretto was considered one of the first artists in venice; and towards the close of the same century caravaggio in rome, and the caracci in bologna, rose to the highest degree of celebrity. the several styles of these masters soon extended themselves into other parts of italy, and became the prevailing taste in naples, where they were adopted by three painters of reputation, corenzio, ribera, and caracciolo. these artists rose one after the other into reputation, but afterwards united together in painting, and assisting each other interchangeably. at the time they flourished, guido, domenichino, lanfranco, and artemisia gentileschi, were in naples; and there and elsewhere contributed some scholars to the neapolitan school. thus the time which elapsed between bellisario and giordano, is the brightest period of this academy, both in respect to the number of excellent artists, and the works of taste. it is however the darkest era, not only of the neapolitan school, but of the art itself, as far as regards the scandalous artifices, and the crimes which occurred in it. i would gladly pass over those topics in silence, if they were foreign to my subject, but they are so intimately connected with it, that they must, at all events, be alluded to. i shall notice them at the proper time, adhering to the relation of malvasia, passeri, bellori, and more particularly of dominici. bellisario corenzio, a greek by birth, after having passed five years in the school of tintoretto, settled in naples about the year . he inherited from nature a fertile imagination and a rapidity of hand, which enabled him to rival his master in the prodigious number of his pictures, and those too of a large class. four common painters could scarcely have equalled his individual labour. he cannot be compared to tintoretto, who, when he restrained his too exuberant fancy, was inferior to few in design; and excelled in invention, gestures, and the airs of his heads, which, though the venetians have always had before their eyes, they have never equalled. corenzio successfully imitated his master when he painted with care, as in the great picture, in the refectory of the benedictines, representing the multitude miraculously fed; a work he finished in forty days. but the greater part of the vault resembles in many respects the style of the cav. d'arpino,[ ] other parts partake of the venetian school, not without some character peculiar to himself, particularly in the glories, which are bordered with shadowy clouds. in the opinion of the cav. massimo, he was of a fruitful invention, but not select. he painted very little in oil, although he had great merit in the strength and harmony of his colours. the desire of gain led him to attempt large works in fresco, which he composed with much felicity, as he was copious, varied, and energetic. he had a good general effect, and was finished in detail and correct, when the proximity of some eminent rival compelled him to it. this was the case at the certosa, in the chapel of s. gennaro. he there exerted all his talents, as he was excited to it by emulation of caracciolo, who had painted in that place a picture, which was long admired as one of his finest works, and was afterwards transferred into the monastery. in other churches we find some sacred subjects painted by him in smaller size, which dominici commends, and adds too, that he assisted m. desiderio, a celebrated perspective painter, whose views he accompanied with small figures beautifully coloured and admirably appropriate. the birthplace of giuseppe ribera has been the subject of controversy. palomino, following sandrart and orlandi, represents him as a native of spain, in proof of which they refer to a picture of s. matteo, with the following inscription. _jusepe de ribera espanol de la ciutad de xativa, reyno de valencia, academico romano ano ._ the neapolitans, on the contrary, contend that he was born in the neighbourhood of lecce, but that his father was from spain; and that in order to recommend himself to the governor, who was a spaniard, he always boasted of his origin, and expressed it in his signature, and was on that account called spagnoletto. such is the opinion of dominici, signorelli, and galanti. this question is however now set at rest, as it appears from the _antologia di roma_ of , that the register of his baptism was found in sativa (now san filippo) and that he was born in that place. it is further said, that he learnt the principles of the art from francesco ribalta of valencia, a reputed scholar of annibale caracci. but the history of neapolitan artists, which is suspicious in my eyes as relates to this artist, affirms also, that whilst yet a youth, or a mere boy, he studied in naples under michelangiolo da caravaggio, when that master fled from rome for homicide, and fixing himself there about , executed many works both public and private.[ ] but wherever he might have received instruction in his early youth, it is certain that the object of his more matured admiration was caravaggio. on leaving him, ribera visited rome, modena, and parma, and saw the works of raffaello and annibale in the former place, and the works of coreggio in the two latter cities, and adopted in consequence a more graceful style, in which he persevered only for a short time, and with little success; as in naples there were others who pursued, with superior skill, the same path. he returned therefore to the style of caravaggio, which for its truth, force, and strong contrast of light and shade, was much more calculated to attract the general eye. in a short time he was appointed painter to the court, and subsequently became the arbiter of its taste. his studies rendered him superior to caravaggio in invention, selection, and design. in emulation of him, he painted at the certosini that great deposition from the cross, which alone, in the opinion of giordano, is sufficient to form a great painter, and may compete with the works of the brightest luminaries of the art. beautiful beyond his usual style, and almost titianesque, is his martyrdom of s. januarius, painted in the royal chapel, and the s. jerome at the trinità. he was much attached to the representation of the latter saint, and whole lengths and half figures of him are found in many collections. in the panfili palace in rome we find about five, and all differing. nor are his other pictures of similar character rare, as anchorets, prophets, apostles, which exhibit a strong expression of bone and muscle, and a gravity of character, in general copied from nature. in the same taste are commonly his profane pictures, where he is fond of representing old men and philosophers, as the democritus and the heraclitus, which sig. march. girolamo durazzo had in his collection, and which are quite in the manner of caravaggio. in his selection of subjects the most revolting were to him the most inviting, as sanguinary executions, horrid punishments, and lingering torments; among which is celebrated his ixion on the wheel, in the palace of buon ritiro at madrid. his works are very numerous, particularly in italy and spain. his scholars flourished chiefly at a lower period of art, where they will be noticed towards the conclusion of this epoch. with them we shall name those few who rivalled him successfully in figures and half figures; and we must not, at the same time, neglect to impress on the mind of the reader, that among so many reputed pictures of spagnoletto found in collections, we may rest assured that they are in great part not justly entitled to his name, and ought to be ascribed to his scholars. giambatista caracciolo, an imitator, first of francesco imparato, and afterwards of caravaggio, attained a mature age without having signalised himself by any work of peculiar merit. but being roused by the fame of annibale, and the general admiration which a picture of that master had excited, he repaired to rome; where by persevering study in the farnese gallery, which he carefully copied, he became a correct designer in the caracci style.[ ] of this talent he availed himself to establish his reputation on his return to naples, and distinguished himself on some occasions of competition, as in the madonna at s. anna de' lombardi, in a s. carlo in the church of s. agnello, and christ bearing his cross at the incurabili, paintings praised by connoisseurs as the happiest imitations of annibale. but his other works, in the breadth and strength of their lights and shades, rather remind us of the school of caravaggio. he was a finished and careful painter. there are however some feeble works by him, which dominici considers to have been negligently painted, through disgust, for individuals who had not given him his own price, or they were perhaps executed by mercurio d'aversa his scholar, and an inferior artist. the three masters whom i have just noticed in successive order, were the authors of the unceasing persecutions which many of the artists who had come to, or were invited to naples, were for several years subjected to. bellisario had established a supreme dominion, or rather a tyranny, over the neapolitan painters, by calumny and insolence, as well as by his station. he monopolized all lucrative commissions to himself and recommended, for the fulfilment of others, one or other of the numerous and inferior artists that were dependant on him. the cav. massimo, santafede, and other artists of talent, if they did not defer to him, were careful not to offend him, as they knew him to be a man of a vindictive temper, treacherous, and capable of every violence, and who was known through jealousy to have administered poison to luigi roderigo, the most promising and the most amiable of his scholars. bellisario, in order to maintain himself in his assumed authority, endeavoured to exclude all strangers who painted rather in fresco than in oil. annibale arrived there in , and was engaged to ornament the churches of spirito santo and gesù nuovo, for which, as a specimen of his style, he painted a small picture. the greek and his adherents being required to give their opinion on this exquisite production, declared it to be tasteless, and decided that the painter of it did not possess a talent for large compositions. this divine artist in consequence took his departure under a burning sun for rome, where he soon afterwards died. but the work in which strangers were the most opposed was the chapel of s. gennaro, which a committee had assigned to the cav. d'arpino, as soon as he should finish painting the choir of the certosa. bellisario leaguing with spagnoletto, (like himself a fierce and ungovernable man,) and with caracciolo, who aspired to this commission, persecuted cesari in such a manner, that before he had finished the choir he fled to monte cassino, and from thence returned to rome. the work was then given to guido, but after a short time two unknown persons assaulted the servant of that artist, and at the same time desired him to inform his master that he must prepare himself for death, or instantly quit naples, with which latter mandate guido immediately complied. gessi, the scholar of guido, was not however intimidated by this event, but applied for and obtained the honorable commission, and came to naples with two assistants, gio. batista ruggieri and lorenzo menini. but these artists were scarcely arrived, when they were treacherously invited on board a galley, which immediately weighed anchor and carried them off, to the great dismay of their master, who, although he made the most diligent inquiries both at rome and naples, could never procure any tidings of them. gessi also in consequence taking his departure, the committee lost all hope of succeeding in their task, and were in the act of yielding to the reigning cabal, assigning the fresco work to corenzio and caracciolo, and promising the pictures to spagnoletto, when suddenly repenting of their resolution, they effaced all that was painted of the two frescos, and entrusted the decoration of the chapel entirely to domenichino. it ought to be mentioned to the honor of these munificent persons, that they engaged to pay for every entire figure ducats, for each half figure ducats, and for each head ducats. they took precautions also against any interruption to the artist, threatening the viceroy's high displeasure if he were in any way molested. but this was only matter of derision to the junta. they began immediately to cry him down as a cold and insipid painter, and to discredit him with those, the most numerous class in every place, who see only with the eyes of others. they harassed him by calumnies, by anonymous letters, by displacing his pictures, by mixing injurious ingredients with his colours, and by the most insidious malice they procured some of his pictures to be sent by the viceroy to the court of madrid; and these, when little more than sketched, were taken from his studio and carried to the court, where spagnoletto ordered them to be retouched, and, without giving him time to finish them, hurried them to their destination. this malicious fraud of his rival, the complaints of the committee, who always met with some fresh obstacle to the completion of the work, and the suspicion of some evil design, at last determined domenichino to depart secretly to rome. as soon however as the news of his flight transpired, he was recalled, and fresh measures taken for his protection; when he resumed his labours, and decorated the walls and base of the cupola, and made considerable progress in the painting of his pictures. but before he could finish his task he was interrupted by death, hastened either by poison, or by the many severe vexations he had experienced both from his relatives and his adversaries, and the weight of which was augmented by the arrival of his former enemy lanfranco. this artist superseded zampieri in the painting of the _catino_ of the chapel; spagnoletto, in one of his oil pictures; stanzioni in another; and each of these artists, excited by emulation, rivalled, if he did not excel domenichino. caracciolo was dead. bellisario, from his great age, took no share in it, and was soon afterwards killed by a fall from a stage, which he had erected for the purpose of retouching some of his frescos. nor did spagnoletto experience a better fate; for, having seduced a young girl, and become insupportable even to himself from the general odium which he experienced, he embarked on board a ship; nor is it known whither he fled, or how he ended his life, if we may credit the neapolitan writers. palomino however states him to have died in naples in , aged sixty-seven, though he does not contradict the first part of our statement. thus these ambitious men, who by violence or fraud had influenced and abused the generosity and taste of so many noble patrons, and to whose treachery and sanguinary vengeance so many professors of the art had fallen victims, ultimately reaped the merited fruit of their conduct in a violent death; and an impartial posterity, in assigning the palm of merit to domenichino, inculcates the maxim, that it is a delusive hope to attempt to establish fame and fortune on the destruction of another's reputation. the many good examples in the neapolitan school increased the number of artists, either from the instructions of the above mentioned masters, or from an inspection of their works; for there is much truth in the observation of passeri, "that a painter who has an ardent desire of learning, receives as much instruction from the works of deceased artists as from living masters." it was greatly to the honour of the neapolitan artists, amidst such a variety of new styles, to have selected the best. cesari had no followers in naples, if we except luigi roderigo,[ ] who exchanged the school of bellisario for his, but not without a degree of mannerism, although he acquired a certain grace and judgment, which his master did not possess. he initiated a nephew, gianbernardino, in the same style; who, from his being an excellent imitator of cesari, was employed by the carthusian monks to finish a work which that master had left imperfect. thus almost all these artists trod in the steps of the caracci, and the one that approached nearest to them was the cav. massimo stanzioni, considered by some the best example of the neapolitan school, of which, as we have observed, he compiled some memoirs. he was a scholar of caracciolo, to whom he bore some analogy in taste, but he availed himself of the assistance of lanfranco, whom in one of his ms. he calls his master, and studied too under corenzio, who in his painting of frescos yielded to few. in portrait he adopted the principles of santafede, and attained an excellent titianesque style. going afterwards to rome, and seeing the works of annibale, and, as some assert, making acquaintance with guido, he became ambitious of uniting the design of the first with the colouring of the second, and we are informed by galanti, that he obtained the appellation of _guido reni di napoli_. his talents, which were of the first order, enabled him in a short time to compete with the best masters. he painted in the certosa a dead christ, surrounded by the maries, in competition with ribera. this picture having become somewhat obscured, ribera persuaded the monks to have it washed, and he purposely injured it in such a way with a corrosive liquid, that stanzioni refused to repair it, declaring that such an instance of malice ought to be perpetuated to the public eye. but in that church, which is in fact a museum of art, where every artist, not to be surpassed by his rivals, seems to have surpassed himself, massimo left some other excellent works, and particularly a stupendous altarpiece, of s. bruno presenting to his brethren the rules of their order. his works are not unfrequent in the collections in his own country, and are highly esteemed in other places. the vaults of the gesù nuovo and s. paolo entitle him to a distinguished place among fresco painters. his paintings were highly finished, and he studied perfection during his celibacy, but marrying a woman of some rank, in order to maintain her in an expensive style of living, he painted many hasty and inferior pictures. it may be said that cocchi, in his _ragionamento del matrimonio_, not without good reason took occasion to warn all artists of the perils of the wedded state. the school of massimo produced many celebrated scholars, in consequence of his method and high reputation, confirming that ancient remark, which has passed into a proverb, _primus discendi ardor nobilitas est magistri_. (the example of the master is the greatest incentive to improvement). muzio rossi passed from his school to that of guido, and was chosen at the age of eighteen to paint in the certosa of bologna, in competition with the first masters, and maintained his station on a comparison; but this very promising artist was immaturely cut off, and his own country does not possess any work by him, as the tribune of s. pietro in majella, which he painted a little time before his death, was modernized, and his labours thus perished. this is the reason that his works in the certosa just mentioned, and which are enumerated by crespi, are held in great esteem. another man of genius of this school, antonio de bellis, died also at an early age; he painted several subjects from the life of s. carlo, in the church of that saint, which were left imperfect by his death. his manner partakes somewhat of guercino, but is in fact founded like that of all the scholars of massimo, on the style of guido. francesco di rosa, called pacicco, was not acquainted with guido himself, but under the direction of massimo, devoted himself to the copying of his works. he is one of the few artists commemorated by paolo de' matteis, in one of his mss. which admits no artists of inferior merit. he declares the style of rosa almost inimitable, not only from his correct design, but from the rare beauty of the extremities, and still more from the dignity and grace of the countenances. he had in his three nieces the most perfect models of beauty, and he possessed a sublimity of sentiment which elevated his mind to a high sense of excellence. his colouring, though conducted with exquisite sweetness, had a strong body, and his pictures preserve a clear and fresh tone. these are frequently to be found in the houses of the nobility, as he lived long. he painted some beautiful altarpieces, as s. tommaso d'aquino at the sanità, the baptism of s. candida at s. pietro d'aram, and other pieces. this artist had a niece of the name of aniella di rosa, who may be called the sirani of the neapolitan school, from her talents, beauty, and the manner of her death, the fair bolognese being inhumanly poisoned by some envious artists, and aniella murdered by a jealous husband. this husband was agostino beltrano, her fellow scholar in the school of massimo, where he became a good fresco painter, and a colourist in oil of no common merit, as is proved by many cabinet pictures and some altarpieces. his wife also painted in the same style, and was the companion of his labours, and they jointly prepared many pictures which their master afterwards finished in such a manner that they were sold as his own. some, however, pass under her own name, and are highly extolled, as the birth and death of the virgin, at the pietà, not however without suspicion that massimo had a considerable share in that picture, as guido had in several painted by gentileschi. but at all events, her original designs prove her knowledge of art, and her contemporaries, both painters and writers, do not fail to extol her as an excellent artist, and as such paolo de' matteis, has admitted her name in his catalogue. three young men of orta became also celebrated scholars in this academy, paol domenico finoglia, giacinto de' popoli, and giuseppe marullo. by the first there remains at the certosa at naples, the vault of the chapel of s. gennaro, and various pictures in the chapter house. he had a beautiful expression, fertility, correctness, a good arrangement of parts, and a happy general effect. the second painted in many churches, and is admired more for his style of composition, than for his figures. the third approached so near to his master in manner, that artists have sometimes ascribed his works to massimo; and in truth he left some beautiful productions at s. severino, and other churches. he had afterwards a dry style of colouring, particularly in his contours, which on that account became crude and hard, and he gradually lost the public favour. his example may serve as a warning to every one to estimate his own powers correctly, and not to affect genius when he does not possess it. another scholar who obtained a great name, was andrea malinconico, of naples. there do not exist any frescos by him, but he left many works in oil, particularly in the church, de' miracoli, where he painted almost all the pictures himself. the evangelists, and the doctors of the church, subjects with which he ornamented the pilasters, are the most beautiful pictures, says the encomiast, of this master; as the attitudes are noble, the conception original, and the whole painted with the spirit of a great artist, and with an astonishing freshness of colour. there are other fine works by him, but several are feeble and spiritless, which gave a connoisseur occasion to remark that they were in unison with the name of the painter. but none of the preceding artists were so much favoured by nature as bernardo cavallino, who at first created a jealous feeling in massimo himself. finding afterwards that his talent lay more in small figures than large, he pursued that department, and became very celebrated in his school, beyond which he is not so well known as he deserves to be. in the galleries of the neapolitan nobility are to be seen by him, on canvass and copper, subjects both sacred and profane, composed with great judgment, and with figures in the style of poussin, full of spirit and expression, and accompanied by a native grace, and a simplicity peculiarly their own. in his colouring, besides his master and gentileschi, who were both followers of guido, he imitated rubens. he possessed every quality essential to an accomplished artist, as even the most extreme poverty could not induce him to hurry his works, which he was accustomed frequently to retouch before he could entirely satisfy himself. life was alone wanting to him, which he unfortunately shortened by his irregularities.[ ] andrea vaccaro was a contemporary and rival of massimo, but at the same time his admirer and friend, a man of great imitative powers. he at first followed caravaggio, and in that style his pictures are frequently found in naples, and some cabinet pictures, which have even imposed upon connoisseurs, who have bought them for originals of that master. after some time massimo won him over to the style of guido, in which he succeeded in an admirable manner, though he did not equal his friend. in this style are executed his most celebrated works at the certosa, at the teatini and rosario, without enumerating those in collections, where he is frequently found. on the death of massimo, he assumed the first rank among his countrymen. giordano alone opposed him in his early years, when on his return from rome he brought with him a new style from the school of cortona, and both artists were competitors for the larger picture of s. maria del pianto. that church had been lately erected in gratitude to the virgin, who had liberated the city from pestilence, and this was the subject of the picture. each artist made a design, and pietro da cortona being chosen umpire, decided against his own scholar in favour of vaccaro, observing, that as he was first in years, so he was first in design and natural expression. he had not studied frescos in his youth, but began them when he was advanced in life, in order that he might not yield the palm to giordano, but by the loss of his fame, he verified the proverb, that _ad omnem disciplinam tardior est senectus_. of his scholars, giacomo farelli was the most successful, who by his vigorous talents, and by the assistance of his master, painted a picture in competition with giordano. the church of s. brigida has a beautiful picture of that saint by farelli, and its author is mentioned by matteis as a painter of singular merit. he declined however, in public esteem, from wishing at an advanced age to change his style, when he painted the sacristy of the tesoro. he was on that occasion anxious to imitate domenichino, but he did not succeed in his attempt, and indeed he never afterwards executed any work of merit. nor did domenichino fail to have among the painters of naples, or of that state, many deserving followers.[ ] cozza, a calabrian, who lived in rome, i included in that school, as also antonio ricci, called il barbalunga, who was of messina, and well known in rome. i may add, that he returned to messina, and ornamented that city with many works; as at s. gregorio, the saint writing; the ascension at s. michele; two pietàs of different designs at s. niccolo and the spedale. he is considered as one of the best painters of sicily, where good artists have abounded more than is generally imagined. he formed a school there and left several scholars.[ ] i ought after him to mention another sicilian, pietro del po da palermo, a good engraver, and better known in rome in that capacity, than as a painter. there is a s. leone by him at the church of the madonna di costantinopoli; an altarpiece which however does not do him so much honour as the pictures which he painted for collections, some of which are in spain; and particularly some small pictures which he executed in the manner of miniatures with exquisite taste. two of this kind i saw in piacenza, at the sig. della missione, a decollation of s. john, and a crucifixion of s. peter in his best manner, and with his name. this artist, after working in rome, settled in naples with a son of the name of giacomo, who had been instructed in the art by poussin and himself. he also taught a daughter of the name of teresa, who was skilled in miniatures. the two pos were well acquainted with the principles of the art, and had taught in the academy of rome. but the father painted little in naples; the son found constant employ in ornamenting the halls and galleries of the nobility with frescos. his intimacy with letters aided the poetic taste with which his pictures were conceived, and his varied and enchanting colours fascinated the eye of every spectator. he was singular and original in his lights, and their various gradations and reflections. in his figures and drapery he became, as is generally the case with the machinists, mannered and less correct; nor has he any claim as an imitator of domenichino, except from the early instructions of his father. in rome there are two paintings by him, one at s. angiolo in pescheria, the other at s. marta; and there are some in naples; but his genius chiefly shines in the frescos of the gallery of the marchese genzano, and in the house of the duke of matalona, and still more in seven apartments of the prince of avellino. a more finished imitator of zampieri than the two pos was a scholar of his, of the name of francesco di maria, the author of few works, as he willingly suffered those reproaches of slowness and irresolution which accompanied the unfortunate domenichino to the grave. but his works, though few in number, are excellent, particularly the history of s. lorenzo at the conventuals in naples, and also many of his portraits. one of the latter exhibited in rome, together with one by vandyke, and one by rubens, was preferred by poussin, cortona, and sacchi, to those of the flemish artists. others of his pictures are bought at great prices, and are considered by the less experienced as the works of domenichino. he resembled that master indeed in every quality, except grace, which nature had denied him. hence giordano said of his figures, that when consumption had reduced the muscles and bones, they might be correct and beautiful, but still insipid. in return he did not spare giordano; declaring his school "heretical, and that he could not endure works which owe all their merit to ostentatious colour, and a vague design," as matteis, who is partial to the memory of francesco, attests. lanfranco in naples had contributed, as i have observed, to the instruction of massimo, but that artist renounced the style of lanfranco for that of guido. the two pos, however, were more attached to him, and imitated his colouring. pascoli doubts whether he should not assign preti to him, an error which we shall shortly confute. dominici also includes among his countrymen brandi, a scholar of lanfranco; collecting from one of his letters that he acknowledged gaeta for his native place. his family was probably from thence, but he himself was born in poli.[ ] i included him among the painters of rome, where he studied and painted; and i mentioned at the same time the cav. giambatista benaschi, as he is called by some, or beinaschi by others. this variation gave occasion to suppose, that there were two painters of that name; in the same way there may be a third, as the name is sometimes written bernaschi. some contradictions in his biographers, which it is not worth our while to enter on, have contributed to perpetuate this error. i shall only observe, that he was not born until , and was not a scholar of lanfranco, but of m. spirito, in piedmont, and of pietro del po, in rome. thus orlandi writes of him, who had a better opportunity than pascoli, or dominici, of procuring information from angela, the daughter of the cavaliere, who lived in rome in his time, and painted portraits in an agreeable style. he is considered both by pascoli and orlandi, as a painter of rome, but he left very few works there, as appears from titi. naples was the theatre of his talents, and there he had numerous scholars, and painted many cupolas, ceilings, and other considerable works, and with such a variety of design, that there is not an instance of an attitude being repeated by him. nor was he deficient in grace, either of form or colour, as long as he trod in the steps of lanfranco, as he did in the s. m. di loreto, and in other churches, but aspiring in some others to a more vigorous style, he became dark and heavy. he excelled in the knowledge of the _sotto in su_, and displayed extraordinary skill in his foreshortenings. the painters in naples have often compared among themselves, says dominici, the two pictures of s. michael, the one by lanfranco, and the other by benaschi, in the church of the holy apostles, without being able to decide to which master they ought to assign the palm of merit. guercino himself was never in naples, but the cav. mattia preti, commonly called il cav. calabrese, allured by the novelty of his style, repaired to cento, to avail himself of his instructions. this information we have from domenici, who had heard him say, that he was in fact the scholar of guercino, but that he had, moreover, studied the works of all the principal masters; and he had indeed visited almost every country, and seen and studied the best productions of every school, both in and beyond italy. hence in his painting he may be compared to a man whose travels have been extensive, and who never hears a subject started to which he does not add something new, and indeed the drapery and ornaments, and costume of preti, are highly varied and original. he confined himself to design, and did not attempt colours until his twenty-sixth year. in design he was more vigorous and robust than delicate, and sometimes inclines to heaviness. in his colouring he was not attractive, but had a strong _impasto_, a decided chiaroscuro, and a prevailing ashy tone, that was well adapted for his mournful and tragical subjects; for, following the bent of his genius, he devoted his pencil to the representation of martyrdoms, slaughters, pestilence, and the pangs of a guilty conscience. it was his custom, says pascoli, at least in his large works, to paint at the first conception, and true to nature, and he did not take much pains afterwards in correction, or in the just expression of the passions. he executed some large works in fresco in modena, naples, and malta. he had not equal success at s. andrea della valle, in rome, where he painted three histories of that saint, under the tribune of domenichino; a proximity from which his work suffers considerably, and the figures appear out of proportion, and not well adapted to the situation. his oil pictures in italy are innumerable, as he lived to an advanced age; he had a great rapidity of hand, and was accustomed, wherever he went, to leave some memorial of his talents, sometimes in the churches, but chiefly in private collections, and they are, in general, figures of half size, like those of guercino and caravaggio. naples, rome, and florence, all abound with his works, but above all bologna. in the marulli palace is his belisarius asking alms; in that of ratti, a s. penitente, chained in a suffering position; in the malvezzi palace, sir thomas more in prison; in that of the ercolani, a pestilence, besides many more in the same, and other galleries of the nobility. amongst his altarpieces, one of the most finished is in the duomo of siena, s. bernardino preaching to and converting the people. in naples, besides the soffitto of the church de' celestini, he painted not a little; less however than both he himself and the professors of a better taste desired, and in conjunction with whom he resisted the innovations of giordano. but that artist had an unprecedented popularity, and in spite of his faults triumphed over all his contemporaries, and preti was himself obliged to relinquish the contest, and close his days in malta, of which order, in honour of his great merit as a painter, he was made a commendatore. he left some imitators in naples, one of whom was domenico viola; but neither he, nor his other scholars passed the bounds of mediocrity. the same may be said of gregorio preti, his brother, of whom there is a fresco at s. carlo de' catinari, in rome. after this enumeration of foreign artists, we must now return to the national school, and notice some disciples of ribera, it often happens that those masters who are mannerists, form scholars who confine their powers to the sole imitation of their master, and thus produce pictures that deceive the most experienced, and which in other countries are esteemed the works of the master himself. this was the case with giovanni do, and bartolommeo passante, in regard to spagnoletto, although the first in progress of time softened his manner, and tamed his flesh tints; while the second added only to the usual style of spagnoletto, a more finished design and expression. francesco fracanzani possessed a peculiar grandeur of style, and a noble tone of colour; and the death of s. joseph, which he painted at the pellegrini, is one of the best pictures of the city. afterwards however his necessities compelled him to paint in a coarse manner in order to gratify the vulgar, and he fell into bad habits of life, and was finally, for some crime or other, condemned to die by the hands of the hangman, a sentence, which for the honour of the art, was compounded for his secret death in prison by poison.[ ] aniello falcone and salvator rosa are the great boast of this school; although rosa frequented it but a short time and improved himself afterwards by the instructions of falcone. aniello possessed an extraordinary talent in battle pieces. he painted them both in large and small size, taking the subjects from the sacred writings, from profane history, or poetry; his dresses, arms, and features, were as varied as the combatants he represented. animated in his expression, select and natural in the figures and action of his horses, and intelligent in military affairs, though he had never been in the army, nor seen a battle; he drew correctly, consulted truth in every thing, coloured with care, and had a good impasto. that he taught borgognone as some have supposed, it is difficult to believe. baldinucci, who had from that artist himself the information which he published respecting him, does not say a word of it. it is however true, that they were acquainted and mutually esteemed each other; and if the battle pieces of borgognone have found a place in the collections of the great, and have been bought at great prices, those of aniello have had the like good fortune. he had many scholars, and by means of them and some other painters his friends, he was enabled to revenge the death of a relation and also of a scholar, whom the spanish authorities had put to death. on the revolution of maso aniello, he and his partisans formed themselves into a company called the band of death; and, protected by spagnoletto, who excused them to the viceroy, committed the most revolting and sanguinary excesses; until the state was composed, and the people reduced to submission, when this murderous band fled, to escape the hands of justice. falcone withdrew to france for some years, and left many works there; the remainder fled to rome, or to other places of safety. the most celebrated of the immediate scholars of falcone was salvator rosa, whom we have elsewhere noticed, who began his career by painting battles, and became a most distinguished landscape painter; and domenico gargiuoli, called micco spadaro, a landscape painter of merit, and a good painter in large compositions, as he appears at the certosa, and in other churches. he had an extraordinary talent too in painting small figures, and might with propriety be called the cerquozzi of his school. hence viviano codagora, who was an eminent landscape painter, after becoming acquainted with him, would not permit any other artist to ornament his works with figures, as he introduced them with infinite grace; and this circumstance probably led to their intimate friendship, and to risking their lives in the same cause as we have before related. the neapolitan galleries possess many of their pictures; and some have specimens of _capricci_, or humourous pictures, all by the hand of spadaro. he indeed had no equal in depicting the manners and dresses of the common people of his country, particularly in large assemblies. in some of his works of this kind, the number of his figures have exceeded a thousand. he was assisted by the etchings of stefano della bella, and callot, both of whom were celebrated for placing a great body of people in a little space; but it was in the true spirit of imitation, and without a trace of servility; on the contrary, he improved the principal figures (where bad contours are with difficulty concealed) and corrected the attitudes, and carefully retouched them. carlo coppola is sometimes mistaken for falcone from their similarity of manner: except that a certain fulness with which he paints his horses in his battle pieces, may serve as a distinction. andrea di lione resembles him, but in his battles we easily trace his imitation. marzio masturzo studied some time with falcone; but longer with rosa in rome, and was his best scholar; but he is sometimes rather crude in his figures, and rocks, and trunks of trees, and less bright in his skies. his flesh tints are not pallid, like those of rosa, as in these he followed ribera. i shall close this catalogue, passing over some less celebrated artists, with paolo porpora, who from battles, were directed by the impulse of his genius to the painting of animals, but succeeded best in fish, and shells, and other marine productions, being less skilled in flowers and fruit. but about his time abraham brughel painted these subjects in an exquisite style in naples, where he settled and ended his days. from this period we may date a favourable epoch for certain pictures of minor rank, which still add to the decoration of galleries and contribute to the fame of their authors. after the two first we may mention giambatista ruoppoli and onofrio loth, scholars of porpora, excelling him in fruits, and particularly in grapes, and little inferior in other respects. giuseppe cav. recco, from the same school, is one of the most celebrated painters in italy, of hunting, fowling, and fishing pieces, and similar subjects. one of his best pictures which i have seen, is in the house of the conti simonetti d'osimo, on which the author has inscribed his name. he was admired in the collections also for his beautiful colouring, which he acquired in lombardy; and he resided for many years at the court of spain, whilst giordano was there. there was also a scholar of ruoppoli, called andrea belvedere, excelling in the same line, but most in flowers and fruit. there arose a dispute between him and giordano, andrea asserting that the historical painters cannot venture with success on these smaller subjects; giordano, on the contrary, maintaining that the greater included the less; which words he verified by painting a picture of birds, flowers, and fruit, so beautifully grouped that it robbed andrea of his fame, and obliged him to take refuge among men of letters; and indeed in the literary circle he held a respectable station. nevertheless his pictures did not fall in esteem or value, and his posterity after him still continue to embellish the cabinets of the great. his most celebrated scholar was tommaso realfonso, who to the talents of his master, added that of the natural representation of every description of utensils, and all kinds of confectionery and eatables. he had also excellent imitators in giacomo nani, and baldassar caro, employed to ornament the royal court of king charles of bourbon; and gaspar lopez, the scholar first of dubbisson, afterwards of belvidere. lopez became a good landscape painter, was employed by the grand duke of tuscany, and resided a considerable time in venice. according to dominici he died in florence, and the author of the algarotti catalogue in venice, informs us, that that event took place about the year . we may here close the series of minor painters of the school of aniello,[ ] and may now proceed to the succeeding epoch, commencing with the historical painters. [footnote : in tom. iii. of the _lett. pittoriche_, is a letter of p. sebastiano resta dell'oratorio, wherein he says, it is probable that the cav. d'arpino imitated him in his youth: which cannot be admitted, as it is known that cesari formed himself in rome, and resided only in naples when an adult. as to the resemblance between them, that applies as well to other artists. in the same letter corenzio is called the cav. bellisario, and some anecdotes are related of him, and among others, that he lived to the age of a hundred and twenty. this is one of those tales to which this writer so easily gives credit. in proof of this we may refer to tiraboschi, in the life of antonio allegri, where similar instances of his credulity are noticed.] [footnote : caravaggio had another scholar of eminence in mario minniti of syracuse, who however passed a considerable part of his life in messina. having painted for some time in rome with caravaggio, he imbibed his taste; and though he did not equal him in the vigour of style, he displayed more grace and amenity. there are works remaining of him in all parts of sicily, as he painted much, and retained in his service twelve scholars, whose works he retouched, and sold as his own. hence his pictures do not altogether correspond with his reputation. messina possesses several, as the dead of nain at the church of the capucins, and the virgin, the tutelar saint, at the virginelle.] [footnote : among the scholars of annibale, i find carlo sellitto mentioned, to whom guarienti assigns a place in the abbeccadario, and i further find him commended in some ms. notices of eminent artists of the school.] [footnote : there is a different account of him in the memorie de' pittori messinesi, where it is said that his true family name was rodriguez. it is there said that he studied in rome, and went from thence to work in naples, in the guida of which city he is frequently mentioned. it is added that, from his roman style, he was called by his brother alonso, the _slave of the antique_; and that he returned the compliment by calling his brother, who was instructed in venice, _the slave of nature_. but alonso, who spent his life in sicily, surpassed his brother in reputation; and it is a rare commendation that he painted much and well. he particularly shone in the probatica in s. cosmo de' medici, and the picture of two founders of messina in the senatorial palace, a work rewarded with a thousand scudi. his fame declined, and he began to fail in commissions on the arrival of barbalunga. but he did not, on that account, refuse him his esteem, as he was accustomed to call him the caracci of sicily.] [footnote : i find in messina, gio. fulco, who imbibed the principles of the art under the cav. massimo; a correct designer, a lively and graceful painter, particularly of children, excepting a somewhat too great fleshiness, and a trace of mannerism. many of his works in his native country were destroyed by an earthquake. some remain at the nunziata de' teatini, where in the chapel of the crucifix are his frescos, and a picture by him in oil of the nativity of the virgin.] [footnote : gio. batista durand, of burgundy, was established in messina. he was the scholar of domenichino, and was always attached to his manner. of his larger works we find only a s. cecilia in the convent of that saint, as he was generally occupied in painting portraits. he had a daughter called flavia, the wife of filippo giannetti, skilled in portraits, and an excellent copyist.] [footnote : domenico maroli, onofrio gabriello, and agostino scilla, were the three painters of messina who did him the most honour, although from being engaged in the revolutions of and , the first lost his life, and the other two were long exiles from their country. maroli did not adopt the style of barbalunga exclusively, but having made a voyage to venice, and there studied the works of the best venetian artists, and particularly of paolo, he returned with many of the excellences of that great master, brilliant flesh tints, a beautiful air in his heads, and a fine style in his drawings of women, a talent which he abused as much or more than liberi. to this moral vice he added a professional one, which was painting sometimes on the _imprimiture_, and generally with little colour; whence his works, which were extolled and sought after when new, became, when old, neglected, like those dark paintings of the venetian school, which we have mentioned. messina has many of them: the martyrdom of s. placido at the suore di s. paolo, the nativity of the virgin in the church della grotta, and some others. in venice there must also be remaining in private collections, some of his paintings of animals in the style of bassano, as we have before mentioned. onofrio gabriello was for six years with barbalunga, and for some further time with poussin, and then with cortona in rome, until passing another nine years in venice with maroli, he brought back with him to messina that master's vicious method of colour, but not his style. in the latter he aimed at originality, exhibiting much lightness, grace, and fancy, in the accessory parts, and in ribbons, jewels, and lace, in which he particularly excelled. he left many pictures in messina, in the church of s. francesco di paola: many also in padua, in the _guida_ of which city various pictures by him are enumerated, without mentioning his cabinet pictures and portraits in private collections. i have seen several in possession of the noble and learned sig. co. antonio maria borromeo; amongst which is a family piece with a portrait of the painter. agostino scilla, or silla, as orlandi calls him, opened a school in messina, which was much frequented while it lasted, but the scholars were dispersed by the storm of revolutions, in which they took a part, not without great injury both to the art and themselves. he possessed an elegant genius for painting, which he cultivated, and added to it a taste for poetry, natural history, and antiquities. his genius raised such high expectations in barbalunga, that he procured a pension for him from the senate, in order to enable him to reside in rome under andrea sacchi. after four years he returned to messina, highly accomplished, from his study of the antique and of raffaello, and if his colouring was at first somewhat dry, he soon rendered it rich and agreeable. he excelled in figures and in heads, particularly of old men, and had a peculiar talent in landscapes, animals, and fruit. for this i may refer to the roman school, where he is mentioned with his brother and son. there are few of his works in rome, but many in messina. his frescos are in s. domenico, and in the nunziata de' teatini, and many paintings in other places, among which is s. ilarione dying, in the church of s. ursula, than which work there is no greater favourite with the public. of the scholars of scilla, who remained in messina after the departure of their master, there is not much to be said. f. emanuel da como we have mentioned elsewhere. giuseppe balestriero, an excellent copyist of the works of agostino, and a good designer, after painting some pictures, became a priest, and took leave of the art. antonio la falce was a good painter in distemper and in oil. he afterwards attempted frescos, and painted tavern scenes. placido celi, a man of singular talents, but bad habits, followed his master to rome. he there changed his style for that of maratta and morandi; after whose works he painted in rome, in the churches dell'anima and traspontina, and in several churches of his own country, but he never passed the bounds of mediocrity. a higher reputation belongs to antonio madiona, of syracuse, who although he separated himself from scilla in rome, to follow il preti to malta, was nevertheless an industrious artist, and painted both there and in sicily, in a strong and vigorous style, which partakes of both his masters. and this may suffice for the members of this unfortunate school. to complete the list of the chief scholars of barbalunga, i may mention here bartolommeo tricomi, who confined himself to portrait painting, and in this hereditary gift of the school of domenichino, he greatly excelled. he had notwithstanding in andrea suppa a scholar who surpassed him. the latter learned also of casembrot, as far as regards landscape and architecture; but he formed himself principally on the antique; and by constantly studying raffaello and the caracci, and other select masters, or their drawings, he acquired a most enchanting style of countenance, and indeed of every part of his composition. his works are as fine as miniature, and are perhaps too highly finished. his subjects, in unison with his genius, are of a pensive and melancholy cast, and are always treated in a pathetic manner. he excelled in frescos, and painted the vaults in the suore in s. paolo; he excelled equally in oils, as may be seen from the picture of s. scolastica, there also. some of his works were lost by earthquakes. his style was happily imitated by antonio bova, his scholar, and we may compare their works together at the nunziata de' teatini. he painted much in oil, as well as fresco, and from his placid and tranquil disposition, took no part in the revolutions of messina, but remained at home, where he closed his days in peace, and with him expired the school of barbalunga.] [footnote : pascoli, vite, tom. i. p. .] [footnote : i may insert at the close of this epoch the names of some sicilian painters, who flourished in it, or at the beginning of the following, instructed by various masters. they were furnished to me by the sig. ansaldo, whose attentions i have before acknowledged, and were transmitted to him by a painter of that island. filippo tancredi was of messina, but is not assigned to any of the before mentioned masters, as he studied in naples and in rome under maratta. he was a skilful artist, composed and coloured well; was celebrated in messina, and also in palermo, where he lived many years, and where the vault of the church de' teatini, and that also of the gesù nuovo were painted by him. the cav. pietro novelli (or morelli, which latter however i regard as an error) called monrealese from his native place, also enjoyed the reputation of a good painter, and an able architect. he there left many works in oil and fresco, and the great picture of the marriage at cana, in the refectory of the p. p. benedettini, is particularly commended. he resided for a long time in palermo, and the greatest work he there executed, was in the church of the conventuals, the vault of which was divided into compartments, and wholly painted by himself. guarienti eulogises him for his style, as diligent in copying nature, correct in design, and graceful in his colouring, with some imitation of spagnoletto; and the people of palermo confer daily honour on him, since, whenever they meet with a foreigner of taste, they point out to him little else in the city, than the works of this great man. pietro aquila, of marzalla, a distinguished artist, who engraved the farnese gallery, left no works to my knowledge in rome; in palermo there remain of him two pictures in the church della pietà, representing the parable of the prodigal son. lo zoppo di gangi is known at castro giovanni, where in the duomo he left several works. of the cav. giuseppe paladini, a sicilian, i find commended at s. joseph di castel termini, the picture of the madonna and the tutelar saint. i also find honourable mention among the chief painters of this island, of a carrega, who i believe painted for private individuals. others, though i know not of what merit, are found inscribed in the academy of s. luke, from the registers of which i have derived some information for my third and fourth volumes, communicated to me by the sig. maron, the worthy secretary of the academy.] [footnote : in this epoch flourished in messina one abraham casembrot, a dutchman, who was considered one of the first painters of his time, of landscape, seapieces, harbours, and tempests. he professed architecture also, and was celebrated for his small figures. he was accustomed to give the highest finish to every thing he painted. the church of s. giovacchino has three pictures of the passion by him. some individuals of messina possess delightful specimens of him, though not many, as he sold them at high prices, and generally to holland. hence most of the collectors of messina turned to jocino, the contemporary of casembrot; a painter of a vigorous imagination, and rapid execution. his landscapes and views are still prized, and maintain their value. i do not find that casembrot wholly formed any scholar at messina. he communicated, however, the elements of architecture and perspective to several, as well as the principles of painting. for this reason we find enumerated among his scholars the cappucin p. feliciano da messina (domenico guargena) who afterwards studied guido in the convent of bologna, and imbued himself with his style. hackert makes honourable mention of a madonna and child and s. francesco by him at the church of that order in messina, and he assigns the palm to him among the painters of his order, which boasted not a few.] neapolitan school. fourth epoch. _luca giordano, solimene, and their scholars._ a little beyond the middle of the th century, luca giordano began to flourish in naples. this master, though he did not excel his contemporaries in his style, surpassed them all in good fortune, for which he was indebted to his vast talents, confidence, and unbounded powers of invention, which maratta considered unrivalled and unprecedented. in this he was eminently gifted by nature from his earliest youth. antonio, his father, placed him first under the instructions of ribera, and afterwards under cortona in rome,[ ] and having conducted him through all the best schools of italy, he brought him home rich in designs and in ideas. his father was an indifferent painter, and being obliged in rome to subsist by his son's labours, whose drawings were at that time in the greatest request,[ ] the only principle that he instilled into him was one dictated by necessity, despatch. a humorous anecdote is related, that luca, when he was obliged to take refreshments, did not retire from his work, but, gaping like a young bird, gave notice to his father of the calls of hunger, who, always on the watch, instantly supplied him with food, at the same time reiterating with affectionate solicitude, _luca fa presto_. upon this incident he was always afterwards known by the name of _luca fa presto_, among the students in rome, and which is also his most frequent appellation in the history of the art. by means like these, antonio acquired for his son a portentous celerity of hand, from which quality he has been called _il fulmine della pittura_. the truth however is, that this despatch was not derived wholly from rapidity of pencil, but was aided by the quickness of his imagination, as solimene often observed, by which he was enabled to ascertain, from the first commencement of his work, the result he proposed to himself, without hesitating to consider the component parts, or doubting, proving, and selecting like other painters. he also obtained the name of the proteus of painting, from his extraordinary talent in imitating every known manner, the consequence of his strong memory, which retained every thing he had once seen. there are numerous instances of pictures painted by him in the style of albert durer, bassano, titian, and rubens, with which he imposed on connoisseurs and on his rivals, who had more cause than any other persons to be on their guard against him. these pictures are valued by dealers at more than double or triple the price of pictures of his own composition. there are examples of them even in the churches at naples; as the two pictures in the style of guido at s. teresa, and particularly that of the nativity. there is also at the court of spain a holy family, so much resembling raffaello, that, as mengs says in a letter, (tom. ii. p. ,) whoever is not conversant with the quality of beauty essential to the works of that great master, would be deceived by the imitation of giordano. he did not however permanently adopt any of these styles as his own. at first he evidently formed himself on spagnoletto; afterwards, as in a picture of the passion at s. teresa a little before mentioned, he adhered to paul veronese; and he ever retained the maxim of that master, by a studied decoration to excite astonishment, and to fascinate the eye. from cortona he seems to have taken his contrast of composition, the great masses of light, and the frequent repetition of the same features, which, in his female figures, he always copied from his wife. in other respects he aimed at distinguishing himself from every other master by a novel mode of colouring. he was not solicitous to conform to the true principles of art; his style is not natural either in tone or colour, and still less so in its chiaroscuro, in which giordano formed for himself a manner ideal and wholly arbitrary. he pleased, notwithstanding, by a certain deceptive grace and attraction, which few attempt, and which none have found it easy to imitate. nor did he recommend this style to his scholars, but on the contrary reproved them when he saw them disposed to imitate him, telling them that it was not the province of young students to penetrate so far. he was well acquainted with the principles of design, but would not be at the trouble of observing them; and in the opinion of dominici, if he had adhered to them too rigidly he would have enfeebled that spirit which is his greatest merit; an excuse which perhaps will not appear satisfactory to every amateur. another reason may with more probability of truth be assigned, which was his unbounded cupidity, and his habit of not refusing commissions from the meanest quarter, which led him to abuse his facility to the prejudice of his reputation. hence, among other things, he has been accused of having often painted superficially, without impasto, and with a superabundance of oil, so that some of his pictures have almost disappeared from the canvass. naples abounds with the works of giordano both public and private. there is scarcely a church in that great city which does not boast some work by him. a much admired piece is the expulsion of the sellers and buyers from the temple at the p. p. girolamini: the architectural parts of which are painted by moscatiello, a good perspective painter. of his frescos, those at the treasury of the certosa are esteemed the best. they were executed by him when his powers were matured, and appear to unite in themselves all the best qualities of the artist. every one must be forcibly struck by the picture of the serpent raised in the desert, and the throng of israelites, who, assailed in a horrible manner, turn to it for relief. the other pictures on the walls and in the vault, all scriptural, are equally powerful in effect. the cupola of s. brigida is also extolled, which was painted in competition with francesco di maria, and in so very short a time, and with such fascinating tints, that it was preferred by the vulgar to the work of that accomplished master, and thus served to diffuse less solid principles among the rising artists. as a miracle of despatch we are also shewn the picture of s. saverio, painted for the church of that saint in a day and a half, full of figures, and as beautiful in colour as any of his pictures. luca went to florence to paint the capella corsini and the riccardi gallery, besides many works in the churches and for individuals, particularly for the noble house of rosso, who possessed the baccanali of giordano, afterwards removed to the palace of the marchese gino capponi. he was also employed by the grand duke; and cosmo iii., in whose presence he designed and painted a large picture in less time than i dare mention, complimented him by saying that he was a fit painter for a sovereign prince. the same eulogium was passed on him by charles ii. of spain, in whose court he resided thirteen years; and, to judge from the number of works he left there, it might be supposed that he had consumed a long life in his service. he continued and finished the series of paintings begun by cambiasi of genoa, in the church of the escurial, and ornamented the vault, the cupola, and the walls with many scriptural subjects, chiefly from the life of solomon. he painted some other large compositions in fresco in a church of s. antonio, in the palace of buonritiro, in the hall of the ambassadors; and for the queen mother a nativity, most highly finished, which is said to be a surprising picture, and perhaps superior to any other of his painting. if all his works had been executed with similar care, the observation, that his example had corrupted the spanish school, might perhaps have been spared.[ ] in his old age he returned to his native place, loaded with honours and riches, and died lamented and regretted as the greatest genius of his age. his school produced but few designers of merit; most of them were contaminated by the maxim of their master, that it is the province of a painter to please the public, and that their favour is more easily won by colour than by correct design; so that, without much attention to the latter, they gave themselves entirely to facility of hand. his favorite scholars were aniello rossi of naples, and matteo pacelli della basilicata, whom he took with him to spain as assistants, and who returned with him home with handsome pensions, and lived after in leisure and independence. niccolo rossi of naples became a good designer and colourist in the style of his master, although somewhat too red in his tints. in some of his more important works, as in the soffitto of the royal chapel, giordano assisted him with his designs. he painted much for private individuals, and was considered next to reco in his drawings of animals. the _guida_ of naples commends him and tommaso fasano, for their skill in painting in distemper some very fine works for santi sepolcri and quarantore. giuseppe simonelli, originally a servant of giordano, became an accurate copyist of his works, and an excellent imitator of his colouring. he did not succeed in design, though he is praised for a s. niccola di tolentino in the church of montesanto, which approaches to the best and most correct manner of giordano. andrea miglionico had more facility of invention, and equal taste in colour, but he has less grace than simonelli. andrea also painted in many churches in naples, and i find him highly commended for his picture of the pentecost in the s. s. nunziata. a franceschitto, a spaniard, was so promising an artist that luca was accustomed to say, that he would prove a greater man than his master. but he died very young, leaving in naples a favourable specimen of his genius in the s. pasquale, which he painted in s. maria del monte. it contains a beautiful landscape, and a delightful choir of angels. but his first scholar, in point of excellence, was paolo de' matteis, mentioned also by pascoli among the best scholars of morandi, and an artist who might vie with the first of his age. he was invited to france, and during the three years that he resided there, obtained considerable celebrity in the court and in the kingdom at large. he was then engaged by benedict xiii. to come to rome, where he painted at the minerva and at the ara coeli. he decorated other cities also with his works, particularly genoa, which has two very valuable pictures by him at s. girolamo; the one, that saint appearing and speaking to s. saverio in a dream; the other, the immaculate conception with an angelic choir, as graceful as ever was painted. his home was, notwithstanding, in naples, and that is the place where we ought to view him. he there decorated with his frescos the churches, galleries, halls, and ceilings in great number; often rivalling the celerity without attaining the merit of his master. it was his boast to have painted in sixty-six days a large cupola, that of the gesù nuovo, a few years since taken down in consequence of its dangerous state; a boast which, when solimene heard, he sarcastically replied, that the work declared the fact itself without his mentioning it. nevertheless there were so many beauties in it in the style of lanfranco, that its rapid execution excited admiration. when he worked with care, as in the church of the pii operai, in the matalona gallery, and in many pictures for private individuals, he left nothing to desire, either in his composition, in the grace of his contour, in the beauty of his countenances, though there was little variety in the latter, or in any of the other estimable qualities of a painter. his colouring was at first _giordanesque_; afterwards he painted with more force of chiaroscuro, but with a softness and delicacy of tint, particularly in the madonnas and children, where he sometimes displays the sweetness of albano, and a trace of the roman school, in which he had also studied. he was not very happy in his scholars, who were not numerous. giuseppe mastroleo is the most distinguished, who is much praised for his s. erasmus at s. maria nuova. gio. batista lama was a fellow disciple, and afterwards a relative of matteis, and received some assistance from him in his studies. excited by the example of paolo, he attained a suavity of colour and of chiaroscuro, much praised in his larger works, as the gallery of the duke of s. niccola gaeta, and particularly in his pictures of small figures in collections. in these he was fond of representing mythological stories, and they are not unfrequent in naples and its territories. francesco solimene, called l'abate ciccio, born at nocera de' pagani, was the son of angelo, a scholar of massimo. early imbibing a love of painting, he forsook the study of letters, and after receiving the first rudiments of the art from his father, he repaired to naples. he there entered the school of francesco di maria, but soon left it, as he thought that master too exclusively devoted to design. he then frequented the academy of po, where he industriously began at the same time to draw from the naked figure and to colour. thus he may be said to have been the scholar of the best masters, as he always copied and studied their works. at first he imitated pietro da cortona, but afterwards formed a manner of his own, still retaining that master as his model, and copying entire figures from him, which he adapted to his new style. this new and striking style of solimene approached nearer than any other to that of preti. the design is not so correct, the colouring not so true, but the faces have more beauty: in these he sometimes imitated guido, and sometimes maratta, and they are often selected from nature. hence by some he was called il cav. calabrese _ringentilito_. to the style of preti he added that of lanfranco, whom he named his master, and from whom he adopted that curving form of composition, which he perhaps carried beyond propriety. from these two masters he took his chiaroscuro, which he painted strong in his middle age, but softened as he advanced in years, and then attached himself more to facility and elegance of style. he carefully designed every part of his picture, and corrected it from nature before he coloured it; so that in preparing his works, he may be included among the most correct, at least in his better days, for he latterly declined into the general facility, and opened the way to mannerism. he possessed an elegant and fruitful talent of invention, for which he is celebrated by the poets of the day. he was also characterised by a sort of universality in every style he attempted, extending himself to every branch of the art; history, portrait, landscape, animals, fruit, architecture, utensils; and whatever he attempted, he seemed formed for that alone. as he lived till the age of ninety, and was endowed with great celerity of pencil, his works, like those of giordano, were spread over all europe. of that artist he was at the same time the competitor and the friend, less powerful in genius, but more correct in his principles. when giordano died, and solimene became the first painter in italy, notwithstanding what his rivals said of his colours not being true to nature, he began to ask extravagant prices for his pictures, and still abounded in commissions. one of his most distinguished works is the sacristy of the p. p. teatini detti di s. paolo maggiore, painted in various compartments. his pictures also in the arches of the chapels in the church of the holy apostles deserve to be mentioned. that work had been executed by giacomo del po, to correspond with the style of the tribune, and the other works which lanfranco had painted there: but po did not satisfy the public expectation. the whole work was therefore effaced, and solimene was employed to paint it over again, and proved that he was more worthy of the commission. the chapel of s. filippo in the church of the oratory, is a proof of his extreme care and attention; every figure in it being almost as finely finished as a miniature. among private houses the most distinguished is the sanfelice, so called from the name of his noble scholar ferdinand, for whom he painted a gallery, which afterwards became an academy for young artists. of his large pictures we may mention that of the great altar in the church of the monks of s. gaudioso, without referring to others in the churches and in various parts of the kingdom; particularly at monte cassino, for the church of which he painted four stupendous pictures in the choir. they will be found in the _descrizione istorica del monistero di monte cassino_, edited in naples, in . he is not often met with in private collections in italy, beyond the kingdom of naples. in rome the princes albani and colonna have some large compositions by him, and the bonaccorsi family a greater number in the gallery of macerata; and among them the death of dido, a large picture of fine effect. his largest work in the ecclesiastical state, is a supper of our lord, in the refectory of the conventuals of assisi, an elegant composition, painted with exquisite care, where the artist has given his own portrait among the train of attendants. solimene instilled his own principles into the minds of his disciples, who formed a numerous school, which extended even beyond the kingdom of naples, about the beginning of the eighteenth century. among those who remained in naples, was ferdinando sanfelice, lately noticed by us, a nobleman of naples, who put himself under the instructions of francesco, and became as it were the arbiter of his wishes. as the master could not execute all the commissions which crowded on him from every quarter, the surest mode to engage him was to solicit him through sanfelice, to whom alone he could not deny any request. by the assistance of solimene, sanfelice attained a name among historical painters, and painted altarpieces for several churches. he took great delight in fruit, landscapes, and views, in which he particularly excelled, and had also the reputation of an eminent architect. but perhaps none of the disciples of solimene approached nearer to the fame of their master than francesco de mura, called franceschiello. he was a neapolitan by birth, and contributed much to the decoration of his native city, both in public and private. perhaps no work on the whole procured him a greater degree of celebrity than the frescos painted in various chambers of the royal palace of turin, where he competed with beaumont, who was then in the height of his reputation. he there ornamented the ceilings of some of the rooms which contain the flemish pictures. the subjects which he chose, and treated with much grace, were the olympic games, and the deeds of achilles. in other parts of the palace he also executed various works. another artist, who was held in consideration, was andrea dell'asta, who after being instructed by solimene, went to finish his studies in rome, and engrafted on his native style some imitation of raffaello and the antique. we may enumerate among his principal works, the two large pictures of the nativity, and the epiphany of christ, which he painted in naples for the church of s. agostino de' p. p. scalzi. niccolo maria rossi was also reputably employed in the churches of naples, and in the court itself. scipione cappella excelled all the scholars of solimene in copying his pictures, which were sometimes touched by the master and passed for originals. giuseppe bonito had a good invention, and was a distinguished portrait painter, and was considered one of the best imitators of solimene. he was at the time of his death painter to the court of naples. conca and he excel their fellow disciples in the selection of their forms. other scholars in naples and sicily,[ ] less known to me, will be found in the history of painting in naples, which has been recently published by the accomplished sig. pietro signorelli, a work which i have not in my possession, but which is cited by me, as is the case with several more, on the authority of others. some artists, who resided out of the kingdom, we shall notice in other schools, and in the roman school we have already spoken sufficiently of conca and giaquinto; to whom we may add onofrio avellino, who resided some years in rome, executing commissions for private persons, and painting in the churches. the vault of s. francesco di paola is the largest work he left. the works of maja and campora are to be found in genoa, those of sassi in milan, and of others of the school of solimene in various cities. these artists, it is to be regretted, sometimes passed the boundaries prescribed by their master. his colouring, though it might be more true to nature, is yet such as never offends, but possesses on the contrary a degree of amenity which pleases us. but his scholars and imitators did not confine themselves within their master's limits, and it may be asserted, that from no school has the art suffered more than from them. florence, verona, parma, bologna, milan, turin, in short, all italy was infected with their style; and by degrees their pictures presented so mannered a colouring, that they seemed to abandon the representation of truth and nature altogether. the habit too of leaving their pictures unfinished after the manner of giordano and solimene, was by many carried so far, that instead of good paintings, many credulous buyers have purchased execrable sketches. the imitation of these two eminent men carried too far, has produced in our own days pernicious principles, as at an earlier period did the imitation of michelangiolo, tintoretto, and even of raffaello himself, when carried to an extreme. the principal and true reason of this deterioration is to be ascribed generally to the masters of almost all our schools; who, abandoning the guidance of the ancient masters, endeavoured in their ignorance to find some new leader, without considering who he might be, or whither he might lead them. thus, at every proclamation of new principles, they and their scholars were ready to follow in their train. in the time of giordano and solimene, niccola massaro was considered a good landscape painter. he was a scholar of salvator rosa, but rather imitated him in design than in colour. in the latter he was insipid, nor even added the accompaniment of figures to his landscapes, but was assisted in that respect by antonio di simone, not a finished artist, but of some merit in battle pieces.[ ] massaro instructed gaetano martoriello, who was a landscape painter of a free style, but often sketching, and his colouring not true to nature. in the opinion of connoisseurs a better style was displayed by bernardo dominici, the historiographer, and the scholar of beych in landscape, a careful and minute painter of flemish subjects and _bambocciate_. there were two neapolitans, ferraiuoli and sammartino, who settled in romagna, and were good landscape painters. in perspective views moscatiello was distinguished, as we observed, when we spoke of giordano. in the life of solimene, arcangelo guglielmelli is mentioned as skilled in the same art. domenico brandi of naples, and giuseppe tassoni of rome, were rivals in animal painting. in this branch, and also in flowers and fruits, one paoluccio cattamara, who flourished in the time of orlandi, was celebrated. lionardo coccorante, and gabriele ricciardelli, the scholar of orizzonte, were distinguished in seaviews and landscapes, and were employed at the court of king charles of bourbon.[ ] by the accession of this prince, a munificent patron of the fine arts, wherever he reigned, the neapolitan school was regenerated and invigorated; employment and rewards awaited the artists; the specimens of other schools were multiplied, and mengs, who was invited to paint the royal family, and a large cabinet picture, laid the foundations of a more solid style, at the same time improving his own fortune, and giving a considerable impulse to art. but the greatest benefit this monarch has conferred on the arts is to be found at ercolano, where under his orders so many specimens of sculpture and ancient paintings, buried for a long lapse of ages, have been brought to light, and by his direction accurately drawn and engraved, and illustrated with learned notes, and communicated to all countries. lastly, in order that the benefits which he had conferred on his own age, might be continued to the future masters of his country, he turned his attention to the education of youthful artists. of this fact i was ignorant at the time of my first edition, but now write on the information afforded me at the request of the marchese d. francesco taccone, treasurer of the kingdom, by the very learned sig. daniele, regio antiquario, both of whom, with truly patriotic feelings, have devoted themselves to the preservation of the antiquities of their country, and are equally polite in communicating to others that information for which they are themselves so distinguished. there formerly existed at naples the academy of s. luke, founded at the gesù nuovo, in the time of francesco di maria, who was one of the masters, and taught in it anatomy and design. this institution continued for some years. king charles in some measure revived this establishment by a school for painting, which he opened in the laboratory of mosaics and tapestry. six masters of the school of solimene were placed there as directors, and some good models being provided in the place, young artists were permitted to attend and study there. bonito was engaged as the acting professor, and after some time mura was associated with him, but died before the professor. ferdinand iv. treading in the steps of his august father, has, by repeated instances of protection to these honorable pursuits, conferred fresh honours on the bourbon name, and rendered it dearer than ever to the fine arts. he transferred the academy to the new royal museum, and supplied it with all requisites for the instruction of young artists. on the death of bonito he bestowed the direction of it on the first masters, and having established pensions for the maintenance in rome of a certain number of young men, students in the three sister arts, he assigned four of these to those students who were intended for painters; thus confirming by his suffrage to the city of rome, that proud appellation which the world at large had long conceded to her, the athens of modern art. [footnote : cortona had in sicily a good scholar in gio. quagliata, who, in the _memorie messinesi_, is said to have been favored and distinguished by his master; and to have afterwards returned to his native country to paint in competition with rodriguez, and what surprises me still more, with barbalunga. if we may be allowed to judge of these two artists by their works which remain in rome, barbalunga in s. silvestro at monte cavallo, appears a great master; quagliata at the madonna di c. p. a respectable scholar. the former is celebrated and known to every painter in rome, the latter has not an admirer. in messina he perhaps painted better. his biographer commends him as a graceful and sober painter, as long as his rivals lived; and adds, that after their death he devoted himself to frescos, when the exuberance of his imagination is evident in the strong expression of character, and in the superfluity of architectural and other ornaments. andrea, his brother, was not in rome; he is, however, in messina, considered a good artist.] [footnote : giordano is said at this period to have copied the chambers and the gallery of raffaello no less than twelve times, and perhaps twenty times the battle of constantine, painted by giulio romano, without reckoning his designs after the works of michelangiolo, polidoro, and other great masters. see _vite del bellori_, edited in rome in , with the addition of the life of giordano, page .] [footnote : it may be observed, that if he had followers, some of them did not copy him implicitly. palomino, although much attached to giordano, forsaking letters for painting, when his style was so much in vogue, did not imitate him servilely, but in conjunction with the style of other distinguished painters of his age; a good artist, and appointed by charles ii. painter to himself. this is the same palamino who has merited the appellation of the _vasari of spain_, and whom i have so often cited. they who are acquainted with that noble language highly commend his style, which is perhaps the reason that copies of his _teorica e pratica della pittura_ ( vol. fol.) are so rare out of spain. but in point of accuracy, like vasari himself, he often errs. i fancy that he frequently adopted traditions, without sufficiently weighing them, which i am led to suspect from the circumstance that in the scholars assigned to masters, he is guilty of many anachronisms.] [footnote : the _memorie de' messinesi pittori_ mentions a gio. porcello, who, after studying under solimene, returned, it is said, to his native country, where he found the art at an extremely low ebb; and he attempted to revive it by opening an academy in his house, and diffusing the taste of his master, which he fully possessed. a still better style of painting was brought from rome by antonio and paolo, two brothers, who, fresh from the school of maratta, also opened an academy in messina, which was greatly frequented. they worked in conjunction in many churches, and excelled in fresco, but in oil antonio was much superior to his brother. there was also a third brother, gaetano, who executed the ornamental parts. their works on the walls and on canvass are to be seen in s. caterina di valverde, in s. gregorio delle monache, and elsewhere. there flourished at the same time with the filocami, litterio paladino, and placido campolo, a scholar of conca in rome, where he derived more benefit from the antique marbles than from the instructions of his master. both these artists executed works on a very large scale; and of the first they particularly commend the vault of the church of monte vergine, and, of the second, the vault of the gallery of the senate. both are esteemed for their correct design; but the taste of the second is more solid and more free from mannerism. the above named five artists all died in the fatal year of . luciano foti survived them, an excellent copyist of every master, but particularly of polidoro, whose style he adopted in his own composition. but his characteristic merit consisted in his penetration into the secrets of the art, which enabled him to detect every style, every peculiar varnish, and the various methods of colouring, so that he not only ascertained many doubtful masters, but restored pictures, damaged by time, in so happy a manner as to deceive the most experienced. a man of such talents outweighs a host of common artists. to these we may add other artists of the island itself, born in different places. marcantonio bellavia, a sicilian, who painted in rome, at s. andrea delle fratte, is conjectured, though not ascertained, to be a scholar of cortona. calandrucci, of palermo, is named among the scholars of maratta. gaetano sottino painted the vault of the oratory at the madonna di c. p., a respectable artist. giovacchino martorana, of palermo, was a machinist, and in his native city they boast of the chapel de' crociferi, and at s. rosalia, four large pictures from the life of s. benedict. olivio sozzi, of catania, painted much in palermo; particularly at s. giacomo, where all the altars have pictures by him, and the tribune three large subjects from the infancy of christ. another sozzi, of the name of francesco, i find praised for a picture of five saints, bishops of agrigentum, in the duomo of that city. of onofrio lipari, of palermo, there are two pictures of the martyrdom of s. oliva in the church de' paolotti. of filippo randazzo, there are to be seen in palermo some vast works in fresco, as well as of tommaso sciacca, who was an assistant of cavalucci in rome, and who left some large compositions at the duomo and at the olivetani of rovigo.] [footnote : gio. tuccari of messina, the son of an antonio, a feeble scholar of barbalunga, although he painted much in other branches of the art, owes the celebrity of his name to his battle pieces, which, by the despatch of his pencil, were multiplied beyond number. they were frequently sent into germany where they were engraved. he had a fruitful and spirited genius, but was not a correct designer.] [footnote : among the painters of messina is mentioned niccolo cartissani, who died in rome with the name of a good landscape painter, and filippo giannetti, a scholar of casembrot, who in the vastness of his landscapes and his views surpassed his master; but he will not bear a comparison in the correctness of his figures and in finishing; though he was, from his facility and rapidity of pencil, denominated the giordano of landscape painters. he was esteemed and protected by the viceroy co. di s. stefano, and painted in palermo and naples.] transcriber's notes: standardized spacing after apostrophes in italian names and phrases. standardized inconsistent hyphenation. retained archaic spelling and punctuation, except as noted below. moved footnotes to the end of each chapter. other adjustments: changed 'pistoia' to 'pistoja' for consistency with remaining text. ...pistoja, rimino, and bologna... changed 'winckelman' to 'winckelmann' ...as winckelmann has observed... changed 'niccolo alunno' to 'niccolò alunno' ...different from niccolò alunno... added missing end quotation mark ..."connoisseurs are very commonly considered as his."... changed 'antient' to 'ancient' ...he retained the ancient custom... changed 'beautifully' to 'beautiful' ...some singularly beautiful grotesques... changed 'della' to 'dello' ...called dello spasimo, which... eliminated duplicate 'as as' ...as in the martyrdom of s. lucia.. added accent to 'niccolò' circignani ...niccolò circignani, or delle pomarance,... changed 'hat' to 'that' ...in the style of that master... retained two-dot ellipsis to represent missing partial date ...castellana, .., on a large picture... eliminated duplicate 'was was' ...he was called il trevisani romano... changed 'vandyk' to 'vandyke' ...together with one by vandyke... [illustration: from an engraving by frank cousins, john andrew & son, sc. the connoisseurs _property of king edward vii_] the riverside art series landseer a collection of fifteen pictures and a portrait of the painter with introduction and interpretation by estelle m. hurll boston and new york houghton, mifflin and company the riverside press, cambridge copyright, , by houghton, mifflin & co. _published november, ._ preface the wide popularity of landseer has been chiefly due to the circulation of engravings after his works. this little book is, so far as i know, the first attempt to bring together a collection of his pictures made in the modern process of half tone, from photographs direct from the original paintings. it is hoped that they may give a fairly good idea of the range and character of his art. estelle m. hurll. new bedford, mass. september, . contents and list of pictures page the connoisseurs. painted by landseer. (_frontispiece_) picture from engraving by frank cousins introduction i. on landseer's character as an artist vii ii. on books of reference x iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection x iv. outline table of the principal events in landseer's life xii v. some of landseer's contemporaries xiii i. king charles spaniels picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl ii. shoeing picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl iii. suspense picture from photograph of the original painting iv. the monarch of the glen picture from engraving by thomas landseer v. the twa dogs picture from photograph of the original painting vi. dignity and impudence picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl vii. peace picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl viii. war picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl ix. a distinguished member of the humane society picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl x. a naughty child picture from photograph of the original painting xi. the sleeping bloodhound picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl xii. the hunted stag picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl xiii. jack in office picture from photograph of the original painting xiv. the highland shepherd's chief mourner picture from photograph of the original painting xv. a lion of the nelson monument picture from photograph by franz hanfstaengl xvi. the connoisseurs introduction i. on landseer's character as an artist. if the popularity of a painter were the measure of his artistic greatness, sir edwin landseer's would be among the foremost of the world's great names. at the height of his career probably no other living painter was so familiar and so well beloved throughout the english-speaking world. there were many homes in england and america where his pictures were cherished possessions. while popular opinion is never a safe basis for a critical estimate, it must be founded on reasons worth considering. in the case of landseer there is no doubt that a large element in his success was his choice of subjects. the hearts of the people are quickly won by subjects with which they are familiar in everyday life. a universal love for animals, and especially for domestic pets, prepared a cordial welcome for the painter of the deer and the dog. his pictures supplied a real want among the class of people who know and care nothing about "art for art's sake." the dramatic power with which landseer handled his subjects was the deeper secret of his fame. he knew how to tell a story with a simple directness which has never been surpassed. with almost equal facility for humor and pathos, he alternated between such inimitable satire as the jack in office and such poignant tragedy as the highland shepherd's chief mourner. before pictures like these, the keenest criticism must confirm the popular verdict. poetic imagination is one of the most coveted of the artist's gifts, and landseer's rich endowment commands universal admiration. the artist who is a story teller finds it one of the most difficult tasks to keep within proper limits. he is under a constant temptation to emphasize his point too strongly, to exaggerate his meaning in order to make it plain. that landseer never fell into such error none would dare to claim. in interpreting the emotions of dumb animals he sometimes overdrew, or seemed to overdraw, their resemblance to human beings. only those who have observed animals as closely as he--and how few they are--are competent to decide in this matter. when one thoroughly considers the question, the wonder is less that he sometimes made mistakes, than that he made so few. as a sympathetic critic has said: "nothing short of the most exquisite perception of propriety on his part could have enabled him to give innumerable versions of the inner life of animals with so little of the exaggeration and fantasticalness which would have easily become repugnant to the common sense of englishmen."[ ] [footnote : henrietta keddie ("sarah tytler").] among landseer's technical qualities the critic has highest praise for his drawing. he was a born draughtsman, as we see in the astonishing productions of his boyhood. he was besides a painstaking and faithful student in the youthful years when the foundations of good work must be laid. another valuable quality was his artistic discrimination, that which a certain critic has called "the selective glance that discerns in a moment what are the lines of character and of life." seizing these, he transferred them to his canvas in the decisive strokes which reproduce not merely the body but the vitality of the subject. his dexterity in texture-painting was remarkable. the glossy coat of the bay mare, the soft long hair of the newfoundland dog, the polished surface of metal, were rendered with consummate skill. there are marvellous tales of the rapidity of his workmanship. in the moment of inspiration his practised hand made the single telling brush stroke which produced the desired effect. with apparently little systematic effort towards orderly composition, he often felt his way instinctively, as it were, to some admirable arrangements. he sometimes showed a feeling for pose almost plastic in quality, as when he painted a distinguished member of the humane society and the sleeping bloodhound. his sense of the picturesque is quite marked. he was fond of sparkle, and disposed very cleverly the points of bright light in his pictures. landseer's admirers are wont to regret that he devoted himself to so limited a range of subjects. the patronage of the rich absorbed much of his time in unimportant work,--time which might better have been spent in those works of creative imagination of which he showed himself capable. his pictures of deer subjects reveal an otherwise unsuspected power in landscape-painting which with cultivation might have led him into another field of success. in portrait-painting, too, his work was admirable, especially in the delineation of children. it is idle to speculate upon what he might have been had he not been what he was. much greater artists than he might well envy him his unique fame. to exceptional artistic ability he united a sympathetic imagination which divined some of the most precious secrets of common life. it was his peculiar glory that he touched the hearts of the people. ii. on books of reference. in the year following landseer's death (_i.e._, in ), a memoir of the painter was published by f. g. stephens, made up in part of material previously issued by the writer on the early works of landseer. a few years later (in ), this memoir served in turn, as the substantial material, revised and somewhat enlarged, for stephens' biography of landseer in the series "great artists." besides stephens, cosmo monkhouse has devoted valuable critical work to the art career of landseer. full of suggestive and illuminating comment is his large volume "the works of sir edwin landseer, with a history of his art life." the book is illustrated with forty-four engravings. an interesting article on landseer's art appeared in "the british quarterly review" soon after his death, and was reprinted in littell's "living age," december , . some pleasant chapters on landseer are to be found in elbert hubbard's "little journeys to the homes of eminent painters." comments on the artist's pictures and methods are scattered through the works of ruskin and hamerton. a catalogue of landseer's works was issued by henry graves, london, . iii. historical directory of the pictures of this collection. _the connoisseurs._ painted in . the property of king edward vii. . _king charles spaniels._ painted in , according to the authority of f. g. stephens. monkhouse gives the date as . in the national gallery, london. size: ft. - / in. by ft. - / in. . _shoeing._ exhibited in . bequeathed by mr. jacob bell to the national gallery, london, where it now hangs. size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _suspense._ exhibited in . in the south kensington museum, london. size: ft. - / in. by ft. - / in. . _the monarch of the glen._ painted in . catalogued by graves as the property of lord fitzgerald in . . _the twa dogs._ signed e. l. . in the south kensington museum, london. size: ft. in. by ft. - / in. . _dignity and impudence._ exhibited in . bequeathed by mr. jacob bell to the national gallery, london, where it now hangs. size: ft. - / in. by ft. - / in. . _peace._ exhibited at the royal academy, in . in the national gallery, london. size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _war._ exhibited at the royal academy, in . in the national gallery, london. size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _a distinguished member of the humane society._ exhibited at the royal academy, in . in the national gallery, london. size: ft. - / in. by ft. in. . _a naughty child._ exhibited at the british institution, in . in the south kensington museum, london. size: ft. in. by in. . _the sleeping bloodhound._ exhibited at the british institution in . bequeathed by mr. jacob bell to the national gallery, london, where it now hangs. size: ft. in. by ft. in. . _the hunted stag._ exhibited at the royal academy, in . in the national gallery, london. size: ft. - / in. by ft. - / in. . _jack in office._ exhibited at the royal academy, in . in the south kensington museum, london. size: ft. in. by ft. - / in. . _the highland shepherd's chief mourner._ exhibited at the royal academy, in . in the south kensington museum, london. size: ft. by ft. in. . _a lion of the nelson monument._ commission received in . lions set up in trafalgar square, . iv. outline table of the principal events in landseer's life. . landseer born in london. . "honorary exhibitor" at royal academy, studies under haydon. . admittance to royal academy as student. . portrait of brutus exhibited. . fighting dogs exhibited. . premium of £ awarded by directors of british institution for larder invaded. . first visit to highlands and to sir walter scott at abbotsford. cat's-paw exhibited. . removal to house in st. john's wood, london. . associate of royal academy. . royal academician. . landseer's highest level in art; suspense exhibited. highland shepherd dog rescuing sheep from snowdrift. . highland shepherd's chief mourner. . travel on continent. . the sanctuary. . peace; and war. the stag at bay. . a random shot. . knighthood conferred. . gold medal from paris exhibition. . commission for lions of nelson monument. . flood in the highlands. . lions placed in trafalgar square. . the swannery invaded. . death, october . funeral in st. paul's, october . v. some of landseer's contemporaries. artists:-- sir charles eastlake, - } c. r. leslie, - . } henry fuseli, - . } william mulready, - . } painters j. m. w. turner, - . } benjamin west, - . } sir david wilkie, - . } john gibson, sculptor, - . thomas landseer, engraver, - . authors:-- elizabeth barrett browning, - . robert browning, - . lord byron, - . charles dickens, - . george eliot, - . james hogg, - . walter savage landor, - . john ruskin, - . sir walter scott, - . tennyson, - . thackeray, - . wordsworth, - . i king charles spaniels edwin henry landseer was the most gifted member of a family of artists. his father was a well-known engraver, and his brother thomas distinguished himself in the same profession. as soon as he could hold a pencil, the boy edwin began to draw. the family were then living in the outskirts of london, and there were open fields near the house. here the future animal--painter used to spend long afternoons sketching cows and sheep, and at the end of the day his father would criticise his work. at an early age the young artist began to show a preference for the dog above other animals. a drawing of a foxhound made when he was five years old is still exhibited as a remarkable production. at the age of fourteen he became a pupil at the royal academy, "a bright lad with light curling hair, and a very gentle, graceful manner and much manliness withal." the following year all the critics were surprised when he exhibited an admirable portrait of a dog called brutus. the painter fuseli was at this time at the head of the academy, and was very fond of his precocious pupil, whom he playfully called his "little dog boy," in reference to the brutus. it was by means of another dog picture that the artist took his next step towards fame. "the fighting dogs" was a remarkable work for a painter sixteen years old, and upon its exhibition in it was purchased by an english nobleman. this was the real beginning of landseer's professional career, and from this time forward his success was assured. it became a fashion among people of means to bring their dogs to landseer for their portraits. he even counted royalty among his patrons, painting the favorite pets of queen victoria and her husband, prince albert. the spaniels of our picture were the pets of a certain mr. vernon, who not unnaturally deemed the beautiful little creatures a worthy subject for a master's brush. this kind of dog, as its name implies, is supposed to have come originally from spain. both stuart kings, charles i. and charles ii., were specially fond of the breed, each having a favorite variety. one of the dukes of marlborough was also a lover of spaniels, and imported into england the variety called, from his palace, the blenheim. the difference of color between the king charles and the blenheim is seen in the picture, the former being black and tan, with a few white touches; the other white, with spots of liver color. both have characteristic silky coats, round heads, big lustrous eyes set wide apart, and long ears hanging in folds. [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son, sc. king charles spaniels _national gallery, london_] the little dogs lie side by side on a table. the blenheim has his paws over the edge, resting his nose comfortably upon them. the king charles nestles upon the brim of a high-crowned hat ornamented with a long ostrich plume drooping over the brim. such a hat was worn among the cavaliers or king's party in the reign of charles i.; hence the title of the cavalier's pets,[ ] often given to the picture. the hat, it must be understood, serves an important artistic purpose in the composition, the height, from crown to feather tip, relieving the otherwise flat effect of the picture. [footnote : the idea suggested in this title is made the basis of an imaginary story woven about the picture in sarah tytler's little book, _landseer's dogs and their stories_.] the attention of the dogs seems attracted by some object across the room. it is the painter talking to them soothingly over his sketch: he has learned the secret of dog language. as his pencil moves rapidly over the paper, they watch him with wide eyes, full of wonder but with no fear. they are like spoiled children gazing at a visitor with an expression half wilful, half beseeching. the fresh ribbon bows they wear are evidence of the fond care bestowed upon them. though the spaniel is not of the highest order of canine intelligence, it is an affectionate and lovable pet often known to fame in distinguished company. tradition has it that it was one of these little creatures which followed the unfortunate mary stuart to the executioner's block-- "the little dog that licked her hand, the last of all the crowd which sunned themselves beneath her glance and round her footsteps bowed." it is also supposed that sir isaac newton's little dog diamond was a spaniel, the mischief-maker who destroyed his master's priceless calculations, and drew from the philosopher the mild exclamation, "diamond, diamond, thou little knowest the mischief thou hast done." again, it was a spaniel whom elizabeth barrett browning cherished as the companion of weary hours of illness and confinement. the charming verses to flush celebrate the dog's beauty and affection. the history of our picture illustrates landseer's remarkable facility of workmanship. after making the first sketch at mr. vernon's house in pall mall, the painter was for a long time too busy to do any further work upon it. one day artist and patron chanced to meet upon the street, and the former was reminded of his promise. the sketch was taken out and, two days later, the finished painting was delivered to the owner. the picture lost nothing, however, by the haste with which it was executed. a competent critic (cosmo monkhouse) has said that landseer never excelled it as a piece of painting. much praise has been bestowed upon the few dexterous strokes which have so perfectly reproduced the texture of the plume on the hat. even in the black and white reproduction we can appreciate some of the best points of the picture. ii shoeing at the blacksmith's shop the bay mare betty is being fitted to new shoes. already the fore feet are nicely shod and the blacksmith now has the near hind foot in hand. the other occupants of the place are a small donkey and the bloodhound laura. betty is a sensible horse and enjoys the shoeing process. when the time comes around for her regular visit to the forge, she walks off of her own accord and unattended to the familiar spot. no halter is necessary to keep her standing; in fact, she would not tolerate such an indignity. she takes her place by the window as if perfectly at home. blacksmith and horse are old friends who understand each other well. the man has won the animal's confidence by the care he has taken to fit the shoes comfortably. though a plain, rough fellow, he is of a kindly nature and knows his business thoroughly. the shop is a quaint little place such as one finds in english villages. the thick masonry of the walls shows how old the building is; the floor is paved with large blocks of stone. between the anvil and the forge there is only space enough for the horse to stand. yet all the necessary tools are at hand, and a good blacksmith may shoe a horse as well here as in the most elaborate city establishment. at this stage of the process the preparations are all over. the old shoes were first removed and the feet pared and filed. new shoes were chosen as near the right size as possible, and one by one shaped for each foot. holding the shoe in his long tongs, the blacksmith thrusts it into the fire, while he fans the flames with the bellows. thence it is transferred, a glowing red crescent, to the anvil. now the workman swings his hammer upon it with ringing strokes, the sparks fly out in a shower, and the soft metal is shaped at will. the shoe may be made a little broader or a little longer, as the case may be; bent a trifle here or there, to accommodate the foot to be fitted. the steel toe calk is welded in, the ends are bent to form the heels, the holes for nails are punctured, the shoe taking an occasional plunge into the flames during these processes. now there must be a preliminary trying-on. the shoe still hot is held to the foot for which it is intended, and the air is filled with the fumes of burning hoof. yet the horse does not flinch, for the thick hoof is a perfect protection for the sensitive parts of the foot. if the careful blacksmith is not quite satisfied with the fit, there must be more hammering on the anvil, and another trying on. when the shoe is satisfactory, it is thrust hissing into a barrel of cold water, and, cooled and hardened, is ready to be nailed on. [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son, sc. shoeing _national gallery, london_] it is at this point in the story that we come upon betty. the farrier, after the approved method of his trade, holds the foot firmly between his knees, and bends to his task. the nails, long and flat, are in the tool-box on the floor beside him. a few firm blows of the hammer drive each one into place, first on one side, then on the other; the projecting points are twisted off every time, and finally, all the rough ends are filed smoothly on the outside of the hoof. betty is at last fully shod and will step complacently home. our painter has arranged the four figures of the picture in a sort of circular composition, so that we may see each one in a characteristic pose. the bay mare is, of course, the chief attraction, a fine high-bred creature, with straight legs, arching neck, and gentle face marked on the forehead with a pure white star. landseer exerted his utmost skill in reproducing the texture of the glossy hide. its beautiful sheen is more striking by contrast with the shaggy hair of the donkey. it was a clever thought to place this plebeian little beast beside the aristocratic, high-spirited horse. the donkey bends his head in a deprecating way below betty's handsome neck, and the horse permits the companionship of an inferior with gentle tolerance. there is something very appealing about the donkey, a patient little beast of burden, meekly bearing his saddle. the bloodhound shows no little curiosity as to the shoeing process, as if it were something new to her. she sits on her haunches, thrusting her head forward, the long ears drooping, the sensitive nose sniffing the strange odors. among these dumb companions the blacksmith feels himself surrounded by friends. he is a lover of pets, as we see by the birdcage hanging in the window. his sturdy frame looks equal to the demands of his trade, which are in fact very laborious. it is grimy work, and only the roughest clothes can be worn. a big leather apron with a cut down the middle is, as it were, his badge of office. our farrier does his work with conscientious earnestness, concentrating all his thought and energy upon each blow of the hammer. the task completed, he will take an honest pride in the good piece of work he has done for betty. it is interesting to know that old betty's owner was mr. jacob bell, an intimate friend and business adviser of landseer. iii suspense a wounded knight has been brought home to his castle, and a line of blood-stains on the floor shows where he was carried through the hall to the room beyond. the family and servants press after, the door is closed, and the favorite hound is shut out in the hall alone. only the meaningless murmur of voices, broken perhaps by the groans of his master, tells what is going on within. it is a moment of suspense, and the dog waits with drooping head, and eyes fixed mournfully on the barrier which separates him from the object of his devotion.[ ] so alert is every sense that at the slightest touch upon the door he will spring forward and push his way in. [footnote : a similar situation is described in the story of _bob, son of battle_, where the shepherd dog waits in suspense outside the sickroom of his mistress.] it is some such story as this which the painter tells us in the picture called suspense.[ ] every detail is full of meaning to the imagination. the heavy door, studded with great nails, calls to mind the old norman castle; the gauntlets on the table and the plume on the floor suggest the armor of the mediæval knight. the picture is like an illustration for one of scott's novels. our knight may have been wounded, like ivanhoe, in a tournament. the scene of the lists rises before us, the opposite lines of mounted knights charging upon each other with their lances, the shock of the meeting, the unhorsing of many, the blows of the battle axe upon helmet and coat of mail, and finally the entrance of the squires to bear their wounded masters to a place of safety. [footnote : a pretty imaginary story is woven about the picture in sarah tytler's little book, _landseer's dogs and their stories_.] the hound had no part in the sports of the tourney, but the scene of his glory was the chase. when the knight went forth for a day's hunting in the forest, the whole pack went with him, waking the woodland echoes with their baying. some familiar verses tell of "the deep-mouthed bloodhound's heavy bay resounding up the rocky way, and faint from farther distance borne, the echo of the hoof and horn." the dogs' delicate sense of smell enables them to track game with unerring precision. it seems impossible to exhaust their perseverance or their wind, and it is surely not their fault if a hunting-party returns unsuccessful. while hunting brings out the more ferocious elements of the nature, the hound is on the other hand capable of an affectionate devotion which makes him a valued friend of man. the english country gentleman is a lover of dogs and horses, and knows how to appreciate their good qualities. out of the many animals in his kennels one dog is usually a chosen favorite which becomes his master's inseparable companion. such a favorite is the dog of our picture, and we like to fancy that the knight is worthy the love of so noble a creature. [illustration: john andrew & son, sc. suspense _kensington museum, london_] the hound is represented in his best and noblest aspect: all the forces of his being seem concentrated in loving anxiety. it is as if suffering brought out in the dog's nature those higher qualities by which he is allied to human beings. his countenance is intensely expressive yet thoroughly canine. every line of the drawing brings out the dog's character,--the squat of the haunches, the position of the legs far apart, the rising of the hair on the crest of the back, the droop of the head, the flattening of the tail. the broad collar with the ring is a symbol of his subjection. the privilege of man's friendship has cost the dog his freedom. to offset the hours of delightful companionship with his friendly master are the weary times when he must tug impotently at the chain which keeps him within the castle enclosure. it has been said that landseer looked upon most animals with the eyes of the artist, the poet, and the natural historian, but the dog alone he painted as a friend. our picture is good evidence of the truth of the statement. every resource of the painter's art was lavished upon his favorite subject with the loving care that one gives only to a friend. the massive size of the dog is seen by comparing the figure with the height of the table and the door. the great creature practically fills the canvas. the pose is so finely conceived, the figure itself so admirably "modelled," to use the critic's phrase, that it seems almost like a work of sculpture. the light and shadow are carefully studied. the light seems to come from some source at the right, bringing out strongly the expressiveness of the dog's face. landseer, we are told, was fond of introducing into his pictures a bit of sparkling metal. here the reflected light on the gauntlets, like that on the spurs beside the king charles spaniels and on the helmet near the sleeping bloodhound, adds an effective touch to the composition. suspense has been a popular favorite among landseer's works, and is one of the pictures referred to in the memorial verses published in "punch" after the artist's death. this is the stanza describing it:-- "the lordly bloodhound with pricked ear, and scent suspicious, watches for his lord at the locked door, from whose sill, trickling clear, the blood bespeaks surprise and treacherous sword." iv the monarch of the glen an annual visit to the scottish highlands was one of landseer's pleasures. it was here that he learned to know the habits of the deer, the subject of many of his noblest paintings. his first journey to this region was as a young man of twenty-two, in company with a friend and fellow painter, leslie. an incident of the excursion was a visit to abbotsford, the home of sir walter scott. the painter and the novelist had much in common in their attachment to dogs, their fondness for vigorous out-of-door exercise, and their love of nature. landseer was deeply impressed with the rugged grandeur of the highland scenery. especially was his imagination stirred by the mountain solitudes, the haunt of the deer, which scott had described in his poems. a favorite resort was the valley of glencoe, a singularly wild and romantic spot where a long narrow ravine is shut in between almost perpendicular hills. the painter first made the acquaintance of the deer after the ordinary manner of the sportsman. for sport in itself, however, he cared little or nothing; the great attraction of hunting was the chance to study the action of animals. his friends laughed at him for a poor shot, but his true weapon was the pencil, not the gun. one day, while deerstalking, just as a magnificent shot came his way, the gillies were astonished to have the painter thrust the gun into their hands, and hastily take out his sketch-book. it was the life and not the death of the animal in which he was chiefly interested. the monarch of the glen seems to be a picture caught in just this way. the very life and character of the animal are transferred to the canvas as by a snap shot of the camera. the stag has heard some strange sound or scented some new danger, and, mounting a hill, looks abroad to see if all is well. the responsibility of the herd is his, and he has a tender care for the doe and the young deer. he must always be on the alert. his attitude reminds one of scott's "antlered monarch" in "the lady of the lake," which "like crested leader proud and high tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky; a moment gazed adown the dale, a moment snuffed the tainted gale." it is with a proud sense of ownership that the monarch surveys his domain. with head erect he seems to defy the whole world of sportsmen. behind him are piled the massive crags of the mountain peaks, with the mist rising from the valley below. this fog, so dangerous to the traveller, is a blessing to the deer, tempering the heat of the summer sun and hiding him from his enemy, man. it appealed to landseer on account of its weird sublimity, and he liked to get the effect of it in his landscapes, especially when illumined by a burst of sunlight. [illustration: from an engraving by thomas landseer, john andrew & son, sc. the monarch of the glen] the monarch of the glen is a splendid specimen of his kind. the spreading horns above his head are like the boughs of an oak tree. we know from the number of branches that he is seven years old. the horns are developed at the end of the first year, and every year thereafter are displaced by new ones with an additional branch. the large ears are held erect as if the animal could fairly see with them. his fine eyes scan the horizon with a searching glance which misses nothing. his sensitive nose detects from afar the approach of any stranger to his fastnesses. the end is always moist, in order that he may catch the way of the wind, as the hunter catches it on his moistened finger. his neck is encircled with a heavy mane, falling in a broad band, like the collar of a royal order. his body is rather short, thick, and round. the legs, which are seen only half their length, seem strangely disproportioned to the weight of so heavy an annual. that the deer's horns are so large and his legs so small are two perpetual mysteries about this wild creature. an amusing fable by la fontaine relates how a stag, gazing at his reflection in the water, deplores the awkwardness of his legs, and admires the beauty of his antlers. a moment later, fleeing for his life, he learns the value of his despised legs, while the boasted horns impede his progress by catching in the branches of the forest trees. the speed of which the deer is capable is indeed marvelous. he adds to his power of fleet running a wonderful trick of bounding through space. it is said that a deer may leap six or eight feet into the air, and cover in a single bound a distance of eighteen to thirty feet. the leap is performed without apparent haste or effort, the animal rising gracefully into the air by a tiny toe-touch of the dainty hoofs. it is a sort of wingless flying.[ ] the deer is besides a strong swimmer, and lakes and streams are no obstacles in his way. [footnote : see _the trail of the sandhill stag_, by ernest seton-thompson, from which is also drawn the information about the deer's moist nose.] as we look into the noble face of the monarch of the glen, we feel a sense of kinship with him, like the experience of yan in the beautiful story of "the sandhill stag." it was after following the trail of the deer many days that the youth at last came suddenly face to face with the object of his desire, "a wondrous pair of bronze and ivory horns, a royal head, a noble form behind it." as they gazed into each other's eyes, every thought of murder went out of yan's heart, and gave place to a strange sense of fellowship. "go now without fear," he said, "but if only you would come sometimes and look me in the eyes, and make me feel as you have done to-day, you would drive the wild beast wholly from my heart, and then the veil would be a little drawn, and i should know more of the things that wise men have prayed for knowledge of." v the twa dogs the scotch poet robert burns, who died a few years before landseer's birth, was a kindred spirit of the painter in his love of dogs and his sense of humor. an early picture by landseer illustrating the poem of "the twa dogs" fits the verses as if painter and poet had worked together. we are told that burns once had a collie which he named luath, after a dog in ossian's "fingal." the favorite came to an untimely end, through some one's cruelty, and the poet was inconsolable. he determined to immortalize luath in a poem, and this is the history of the tale of "the twa dogs." the poem relates how "upon a bonny day in june when wearing through the afternoon, twa dogs, that were na thrang[ ] at hame, forgather'd ance upon a time." [footnote : busy.] of the two dogs, one is the collie luath, here represented as the friend and comrade of a ploughman. he is described in broad scotch as "a gash[ ] and faithfu' tyke as ever lap a sheugh[ ] or dike. his honest, sonsie,[ ] baws'nt[ ] face, aye gat him friends in ilka place. his breast was white, his touzie[ ] back weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black; his gaucie[ ] tail, wi' upward curl, hung o'er his hurdies[ ] wi' a swirl." [footnote : knowing.] [footnote : ditch.] [footnote : comely.] [footnote : white-striped.] [footnote : shaggy.] [footnote : bushy.] [footnote : hips.] luath's companion was a foreign dog, from "some far place abroad, where sailors gang to fish for cod," in short, newfoundland. he was, moreover, a dog of "high degree," whose "lockèd, letter'd, braw brass collar showed him the gentleman and scholar." the "gentleman" is appropriately called cæsar, a name commonly given to newfoundland dogs. the picture carries out faithfully the poet's conception of both animals. luath is here to the very life, with shaggy black back, white breast, and honest face. we only regret that his position does not allow us to see the upward curl of his bushy tail. cæsar is a black and white newfoundland dog with a brass collar. the model is said to have been neptune, the dog of a certain mr. gosling.[ ] [footnote : two years later ( ) landseer painted the portrait of mr gosling's neptune, showing head and shoulders in front view.] though representing opposite stations in life, the twa dogs were excellent friends. on this occasion, weary of their usual diversions, they sat down together on a hillock "and there began a lang digression about the lords o' the creation." it is cæsar who opens the conversation, expressing curiosity as to how the poor man can endure his life. luath owns that the cotter's lot is a hard one, but declares that in spite of poverty and hardships the poor are "maistly wonderfu' contented." the talk then drifts to the corruption of politics and the vices of the rich. cæsar at last brings it to an end by describing the wearisome monotony and emptiness of the fashionable life. [illustration: john andrew & son, sc. the twa dogs _south kensington museum, london_] by this time it was sundown, and the two friends separated, rejoicing "that they were na men, but dogs." the contrast between the two canine types is well brought out in our picture. even the attitudes show their opposite temperaments. the collie is a somewhat awkward figure, sitting on his haunches, with legs far apart, nervously alert. the newfoundland dog lies at his ease with one paw elegantly crossed over the other. they talk muzzle to muzzle, the one long and pointed, the other thick and square. in those days the collie was chiefly the poor man's dog, the indispensable aid of the shepherd, and the friend of the laborer. it was not until later years that, following the example of the queen, the rich began to notice his good qualities, and he became a popular favorite. but neither burns nor landseer needed to be taught by the dictates of fashion to understand the collie's fine nature. the dog they portrayed, however, was not the luxuriously reared pet we know to-day, but the unkempt companion of humble folk. the newfoundland dog, though of plebeian origin, and a hard worker in his native land, is generally regarded as an aristocrat. he is dignified, gentle, and kindly in nature. both dogs are very sagacious, and the painter and poet agreed in giving them the thoughts and feelings of human beings. in the picture cæsar seems to be describing the fashionable revels he has witnessed, while honest luath listens in amazement to the recital. the landscape is such as one might see in scotland. at the foot of the hill lies a lake, beyond which is a range of low mountains. two years after painting the picture of the twa dogs, landseer made a pilgrimage to ayr, the birthplace of burns, and rambled about the spots associated with the poet's memory. that he took a peculiar interest in the subject of the poem is shown by the fact that over thirty years after he painted it a second time, with some slight variations. vi dignity and impudence any one with a sense of humor must often be struck by the resemblance between the ways of dogs and the ways of men. the dignified dog, the vulgar dog, the nervous dog, the lazy dog, the impudent dog, are all types of which there are many human counterparts. the dog, indeed, seems at times almost to mimic the manners of men. so in our picture of dignity and impudence we are at once reminded of a corresponding situation in human life. the hound grafton, posing as dignity, lies at the entrance of his kennel, his paws overhanging the edge. his handsome head is held erect as he surveys an approaching visitor with the air of an elderly statesman receiving a political candidate. there can be no doubt that his opinions are decidedly conservative. a small scotch terrier has been playing about him, having no awe of his big host, but making himself quite at home in his cosy quarters. he is like a frolicsome child, playing about the statesman's chair, while the old gentleman pursues his train of thought quite undisturbed. now at the sound of approaching footsteps the impertinent creature peeps forth, with the curiosity of his kind, to see who the newcomer is. his tongue is thrust halfway out at one side like that of a saucy street boy making faces at the passers by. though dignity apparently ignores the presence of impudence, we may be sure that the little fellow's antics afford him a quiet amusement. plainly the two dogs are the best of friends.[ ] [footnote : a story of a dog friendship as odd as that between dignity and impudence is told apropos of this picture in sarah tytler's little book, _landseer's dogs and their stories_.] there is the greatest possible contrast between them, both in character and appearance. the bloodhound is of a ponderous nature which does not act without deliberation. thoroughly aroused he may become quite terrible, but he is not hasty in his judgments. the terrier is a nervous creature, full of activity. we can see from the tense position of his head in the picture that his whole body is quivering with motion. the bloodhound seems large even for his breed, which averages about twenty-seven inches in height. one of his huge paws is almost as large as the terrier's head and could easily crush the little creature. but in spite of his reputation for fierceness his expression here is not at all savage. it is rather grave and judicial, as if carefully summing up the character of his visitor. while the terrier saucily asks "who are you?" the bloodhound is steadily gazing at the intruder, as if to read his secret thoughts. a modern authority on dogs quaintly says of the bloodhound's discrimination, "if he puts you down as a bad character, or one who cannot be thoroughly trusted, there must be something radically wrong about you, indeed." [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son, sc. dignity and impudence _national gallery, london_] perhaps something of the gravity of the hound's countenance is due to the looseness of the skin about the head, making folds which suggest the wrinkles in an old man's face. the eyes, too, are rather deep set and impress one with the unfathomable depths of the dog's intelligence. how unlike are the shining round orbs of the little terrier. the hound's sleek short-haired coat comports well with his dignity, while the long tangled hair of the terrier suits his impudent character. with the long overhanging ears of the larger dog are amusingly contrasted the small sharp points standing upright on his companion's head. finally, were the two dogs to lift up their voices to greet the new arrival, an odd duet would be produced by the deep baying of one, broken by the short sharp yelps of the other. dignity and impudence would each find perfect vocal expression. our picture illustrates admirably landseer's genial gift of humor and shows us how varied was his power. as we have occasion to see elsewhere in our book, some of his works deal with pathetic, even tragic, subjects.[ ] like other men of poetic imagination the painter seemed equally ready to call forth smiles or tears. while no one can look at dignity and impudence without smiling at the contrast, the fun is without irony. pomposity and impertinence are amusing qualities alike in dogs and men, but are altogether harmless. [footnote : see suspense, the highland shepherd's chief mourner, war, and the hunted stag.] the painter has here kept strictly within the proper limits of his art. a few slight changes would entirely transform the character of the picture. by exaggerating only a little the human quality of expression in the dogs' faces and suggesting a resemblance to some particular individuals, the picture would become a caricature. cartoonists have not scrupled to borrow the design and adapt it to such purposes. landseer himself, however, had no aim but to produce a humorous effect of contrast between the two dogs. vii peace a flock of sheep and goats are pasturing on the meadowland above some cliffs which rise abruptly from the sea. to those familiar with the scenery of england the place recalls at once the white cliffs of dover. the caretakers are a lad and his sister, who have brought with them a younger child. a shepherd dog is their assistant, one of those intelligent animals trained to keep the flock together and to lead it about. it is noontide of a bright summer day. the sea lies blue and still under the clear sky. the flock no longer graze industriously, but rest in scattered groups. the young people amuse themselves quietly on the grass, and the dog has stretched himself for a nap. overhead two large sea gulls take their flight through the air. there is a single reminder here of a time when all was not so peaceful,--the rusty old cannon in the midst. from these uplands a battery once frowned across the channel, threatening destruction to the approaching enemy. the booming of guns resounded where now is heard only the lowing of cattle and the laughter of children. happily the cannon has now so long been out of use that it has become a part of the cliff, like one of the rocks. the flock gather about it as a rallying place, and in its black mouth grow tender herbs for the lambs to crop. no cottage is in sight, and we judge that our young people have brought their flock from a little distance. two sturdy goats act as beasts of burden in the family, both equipped with saddle and bridle. as they rest now at one side they are the impersonations of docility and dignity, but a hint of mischief lurks in their complacent expressions. one feels decidedly suspicious of the old fellow with the long beard. twin lambs lying at the cannon's mouth are the softest and daintiest little creatures of the flock. so, evidently, thinks the sheep beside them, gently nosing the woolly back of the one nearest. the children are of the best type of english villagers, with fresh, sweet, happy faces. all three are well dressed and have the tidy appearance which is the sign of family thrift and prosperity. the girl has her hair brushed back smoothly from her forehead and knotted at the back like a little woman's. she bears herself with a pretty air of motherliness toward her brothers. like other english village maidens, she is skilled in all sorts of domestic duties and has few idle moments through the day. her sewing-basket lies beside her on the ground, and while the dog looks after the sheep, she busies herself with her work. [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son, sc. peace _national gallery, london_] evidently she has some knitting under way, and the work comes to a pause while she winds a new skein of yarn. the little toddler may now make himself useful by holding the skein. he is proud of the honor and watches the rapidly moving thread with fascinated eyes. so deftly do the fingers untangle the snarls that the task is converted into a game as absorbing as a cat's cradle puzzle. even the older lad, of the manly age to feel himself superior to such amusements, peers over the little one's shoulder with genuine curiosity. in the excitement of their occupation, the little knitter's straw bonnet has slipped from her head far down her back, leaving the plump neck exposed to the sun. the full significance of the picture is best understood in contrast with the companion subject, war. the two pictures have been called by a critic "true poem-pictures." the painter means to show here that the choicest blessing of peace is the prosperity of the humbler classes, who are the bulwark of the nation. agricultural pursuits can flourish only when arms are laid down. happy is the land where innocent children and dumb beasts can roam in safety over the country. the long level stretch of land and sea adds much to the impression of tranquillity in the picture. the imagination has a delightful sense of liberty in great spaces. ruskin has told us that this is because space is the symbol of infinity. however we may explain it, we certainly have here a pleasant sense of looking across illimitable space over a world flooded with sunshine. the picture recalls the stories of landseer's first lessons in drawing in the pastures near his boyhood home. here he practised all day on sheep, which are the best subjects for the beginner, because they keep still so long! in later years his preference was for animals of livelier action, but in this exceptional instance, as if in reminiscence of his youth, he painted a pastoral scene with much artistic feeling. there are a good many more figures in the picture than are usual with our painter, and he therefore had a more difficult problem in bringing all the parts into harmonious relations. it is interesting to contrast it with the altogether different kind of composition in the companion picture of war. viii war in the exigencies of war a stone cottage seems to have been used as a part of some rudely improvised earthworks. a detachment of cavalry has made a charge against this rampart, and the place now lies in ruins. to the smoke of battle is added the smoke of burning timbers rising in a dense cloud, which shuts out the surrounding scenes as with an impenetrable curtain. below the breach, in a confused heap amidst the débris, lie some of the victims of the disaster. there are two dragoons, vigorous men in the prime of life, and their two splendid horses. the man lying most plainly in sight has the appearance of an officer, from the sash worn diagonally over his steel coat. he has fallen backward on the ground beside his horse, one booted leg still resting across the saddle. his face, well cut and refined, is turned slightly away, and the expression is that of a peaceful sleeper. on the other side of his horse, his comrade lies in a trench hemmed in by heavy beams. both men are already apparently quite dead: it is too late for the army surgeon or nurse. death has come swiftly in the midst of action, and the tide of battle has swept on, leaving them behind. the horse belonging to the man in the trench has died with his rider; we see only his fine head. the other horse, though unable to rise, is still alive. as he lies stretched on the ground, we see what muscular strength he had,--a beautiful creature whose glossy hide and sweeping mane and tail show the pride his owner took in him. the two have shared together all the hardships of the campaign,--long journeys, short rations, extremes of cold and heat, fatigue and privation. the horse has learned to listen for the familiar voice, so strong in command, so reassuring in danger. now even in his dying agony he turns with touching devotion to his master. not a sound comes from the closed lips, not a flutter of the eyelids disturbs the calm of the face. lifting his head for a last effort, the splendid creature sends forth a prolonged whinny. this must surely arouse the sleeper, and he fixes his eyes on the impassive countenance with an almost human expression of anxiety and entreaty. all in vain, and in another moment the flames and smoke will envelop them, and soon nothing will remain to show where they fell. this is the story we read in our picture of war. there is nothing here to tell us whether the fallen riders are among the victors or the vanquished. we do not care to know, for in either case their fate is equally tragic. it was england's iron duke who said "nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won." [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son, sc. war _national gallery, london_] various small touches in the composition add to the significance of the scene. fresh flowers among the heaps of stones show how recently there was a smiling garden where now all is so ghastly. on the ground lie an embroidered saddle-cloth, a bugle, and a sword, emblems of the military life. it is said that the horrors of war have never yet been faithfully portrayed. those who have lived through the experience are unwilling to recall it, while those who draw upon their imaginations must fall short of the reality. whenever any powerful imagination comes somewhere near the truth, people turn away shocked, unable to endure the spectacle.[ ] even this picture is almost too painful to contemplate, yet it selects only a single episode from a battlefield strewn with scenes of equal horror. [footnote : as when the exhibition of verestschagin's pictures was forbidden.] landseer had himself seen nothing of war. the napoleonic wars had ended in his childhood and the crimean war was still ten years in the future. it was in the quiet interim of the early reign of victoria when the picture was painted. the object was to emphasize by contrast the blessings of peace illustrated in the companion picture. as in peace we have a delightful sense of light, space, and liberty, in war we have a suffocating sense of darkness, limitation, and horror. of the many tragedies of the battlefield, naturally the sort which would most appeal to landseer's imagination would be the relations between horses and their riders. always in close sympathy with animal life, he had a keen sense of the suffering which the horses undergo in the stress of conflict. the real hero of our picture is the horse. in an artistic sense also the dying horse dominates the composition, his great bulk lying diagonally across the centre of the foreground, and his lifted head forming the topmost point of the group. all the other figures are subordinated, both literally and in point of sentiment. their conflict is over and they are at rest, but the suffering animal is even now at the climax of his agony, his terror increased by a desolate sense of loneliness. the pathos of the situation is the deeper because of the animal's inability to understand his master's silence. the sentiment is one common with landseer, as we see in other pictures of our collection. it is the favorite animal's love for his master made manifest in some great trial. like the bloodhound in the picture of suspense, and like the highland shepherd's chief mourner, the horse is raised by the dignity of suffering to the level of human emotion. ix a distinguished member of the humane society in his walks about the city and in the country landseer's eye was always quick to catch sight of a fine animal of any kind. to his remarkable habits of observation is due the perfect fidelity to nature which we find in all his work. one day, in a street in london, he met a newfoundland dog carrying a basket of flowers. he was struck at once with the singular beauty of the dog's color. newfoundland dogs of various colors were at that time common about london, red, brown, bronze, black, and black and white. landseer had already painted a black and white one in the picture of the twa dogs, which we have examined. here, however, was a dog of a beautiful snowy white with a head quite black save the muzzle. the painter was not long in making his acquaintance, and learned that he was called paul pry. permission being obtained to make the dog's portrait, our beautiful picture was the result. it is probably this picture which gave rise to the later custom of calling the white newfoundland dog the landseer newfoundland, to distinguish it from the black. the newfoundland dog is a general favorite for his many good qualities. he is very sagacious and faithful, and unites great strength with equal gentleness. he is at once an excellent watchdog and a companionable member of the household. children are often intrusted to his care: he makes a delightful playmate, submitting good-naturedly to all a child's caprices and apparently enjoying the sport. at the same time he keeps a watchful eye against any danger to his charge, and no suspicious character is allowed to molest. it is possible to train such dogs to all sorts of useful service. in their native country of newfoundland they do the work of horses, and harnessed to carts or sledges draw heavy loads. they learn to fetch and carry baskets, bundles, and letters, and are quick, reliable messengers. perhaps their most striking peculiarity is their fondness for the water; they take to it as naturally as if it were their proper element. they are not only strong swimmers, but also remarkable divers, sometimes keeping their heads under the surface for a considerable time. nature seems specially to have fitted them for the rescue of the drowning, and in this humane calling they have made a noble record. innumerable stories are told of people, accidentally falling from boats, bridges, or piers, who have been brought safely to land by these dog heroes. the dog seizes the person by some part of the clothing, or perhaps by a limb, and with the weight dragging at his mouth, makes his way to the shore. he seems to take great pains to hold the burden as gently as possible, keeping the head above water with great sagacity. some one has told of seeing a dog rescue a drowning canary, holding it so lightly in his mouth that it was quite uninjured. [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son, sc. a distinguished member of the humane society _national gallery, london_] it is in his capacity as a life saver that the newfoundland dog of our picture is represented, called by the pleasant jest of the painter, a distinguished member of the humane society. surely no member of the honorable body could be more efficient than he in that good cause. he lies at the end of a stone jetty, his fore paws hanging over its edge a little above water level. nothing can be seen behind him but the gray sky, with sea gulls flying across: against this background the massive head stands out grandly. he seems to look far out to sea, as if following the course of a distant vessel. a gentle lifting of the ears shows how alert is his attention; he is constantly on duty, ready to spring into the water in an instant. his attitude shows his great size to full advantage,--the splendid breadth of his breast and the solidity of his flank. the open mouth reveals the powerful jaw. a sense of his strength is deeply impressed upon us. the pose suggests that of a couching lion, and has the same adaptability to sculpture, as we may see by comparing it with the bronze lion of the nelson monument. as the dog lies in the full sunlight, the picture is an interesting study in the gradations of light and shadow, or of what in technical phrase is called _chiaroscuro_. a critic calls our attention to "the painting of the hide, here rigid and there soft, here shining with reflected light, there like down; the masses of the hair, as the dog's habitual motions caused them to grow; the foreshortening of his paws as they hang over the edge of the quarry."[ ] [footnote : f. g. stephens.] other newfoundland dogs are known to fame through epitaphs written in their honor by distinguished men, such as lord byron, lord grenville, and the earl of eldon. never has dog had a nobler monument than this distinguished member of the humane society, whose portrait ranks among landseer's best works. the owner of the dog, mr. newman smith, became likewise the owner of the picture, and by him it was bequeathed to the english national gallery, where it now hangs. x a naughty child in stories of the english village life of half a century ago we often read of the "dame school," where children took the first steps in their education. this would be held in the cottage of the schoolmistress, who, in our imagination, was always a kindly old woman in a big cap and short petticoats. the children sat in rows on hard wooden seats, or "forms," and gabbled their lessons aloud. each was provided with a slate on which letters and figures were laboriously inscribed. by the great fireplace sat the mistress, and the big-faced clock ticked off the slow hours. a striking contrast was this to the kindergarten of the twentieth century! our picture shows us a corner of a dame school where a naughty child is in a fit of temper. the rough board walls, with great projecting beams, show how little thought was given to schoolroom adornment in those days. the high bench, without back, is as uncomfortable a seat as one could imagine. it is supposed that the children of that period were strictly disciplined in good behavior, but it appears that naughtiness was no less common then than now. the refractory pupil who would not learn his lessons was condemned to sit on the dunce stool, wearing the tall pointed cap. naturally he did not yield readily to his punishment, and there was often a struggle with the mistress before peace was restored. the child of our picture is evidently giving the good dame a great deal of trouble. neither threatening nor coaxing can induce him to study his lesson. the book is turned face down on the form, and in a storm of rage the boy has thrown his slate crashing to the floor. this exhibition of temper is followed by a fit of sulks. he squeezes himself into the smallest possible space in the corner, huddling his feet together, toes turned in, and pressing his arms close to his side. the raising of the shoulders reminds one of the way a cat raises its back as it shrinks from its enemy. the child's mouth is twisted, pouting in a scornful curve. his eyes, bright with unshed tears, glare sullenly before him into space. here is wilfulness and obstinacy to a degree. if the boy's face were not disfigured by anger, we should see in him a handsome little fellow. he is of a sturdy build, with plump arms and shoulders, a noble head with a profusion of flaxen curls, and a face which might be charming in another mood. if the schoolmistress could once win him she would have a pupil to be proud of. such a head as his might produce a daniel webster. the episode of the schoolroom is the story the painter wished us to read in his work. the real story of the picture is quite a different tale. the scene of the naughty child's temper was landseer's own studio, and the child was angry, not because he had to learn a lesson, but because he must sit for his picture. in those days, before the invention of photography, it was indeed a tedious process to obtain a child's portrait. it is scarcely to be wondered at that an active boy like this should not relish the prospect of a long sitting. [illustration: john andrew & son, sc. a naughty child _south kensington museum, london_] landseer was struck by the child's beauty and was eager to make the picture. the outburst of temper did not trouble him a bit. seizing his sketch-book he hastily drew the little fellow exactly as he looked. it was characteristic of his art to reproduce accurately every peculiarity of pose and motion, and he found this attitude of the child far more novel and interesting than the stiff pose of a commonplace portrait. it seems hardly probable that the parents could have been pleased to have their son's ill-temper perpetuated. what they thought of the picture we can only surmise. certain it is that later generations of mothers, leading their children through the gallery where the picture hangs, could not have failed to pause and point the moral. our picture emphasizes the fact that landseer's artistic skill was not limited to the portrayal of animal life. how natural it was to think of him chiefly as a painter of dogs is illustrated in the familiar witticism of sydney smith. being asked if he was about to sit to landseer for a portrait, he asked, "is thy servant a dog that he should do this thing?" had not landseer's tastes gradually limited his work to animal subjects, he might have become well known both for his landscapes and his portraits. he was especially happy in the delineation of children, whose unconscious motions display the same free play of muscle as do the animals. we have seen in our picture of peace how sympathetically he entered into the heart of childhood. two english painters who preceded landseer are famous for their pictures of children, sir joshua reynolds and sir thomas lawrence. it has not been thought unsuitable to compare landseer with these great men, in the treatment of child subjects. his works, says a critic,[ ] "without the color or subtlety of character of reynolds or the superfineness of lawrence, are quite equal to the first in naturalness and to the second in real refinement, and are without the mannerism or affectation of either." [footnote : cosmo monkhouse.] xi the sleeping bloodhound if a universal dog-lover like landseer could be said to have a preference for any particular kind, it was certainly for the bloodhound. this noble animal is of very ancient origin, known apparently to the romans, and introduced early in english history into great britain. apparently many gentlemen of landseer's acquaintance were possessors of fine specimens. one of these we have already seen in the picture of suspense, where the dog's senses are all in intense concentration. here, by contrast, the sleeping bloodhound is seen in complete relaxation. we might almost fancy the picture a sequel to suspense, and carry on our story to another chapter, in which, the knight's wounds being stanched, the door is opened and the dog admitted to his master's presence. quiet having fallen on the household, the hound retires to a corner for a well-deserved nap. he lies on a fur rug spread in front of an ottoman, beside which stands his master's helmet. his forelegs are stretched out straight before him, his body curled around, his head pushed forward in a position which from a dog's point of view represents solid comfort. though asleep he is still on guard; the painter has conveyed the impression of the dog's latent power, even in repose. like rab, in dr. john brown's famous story, he is "a sort of compressed hercules of a dog." as he lies at his ease, we note the characteristics of his kind,--the loose skin, the long soft ears, the long thick tail. of his most striking quality there is no visible evidence, namely, his exquisite sense of smell. it is this which has made him so valuable to man, both as a companion of his sports and a protector of life and property. in former times when the resources of government were limited, bloodhounds often served in the useful capacity of a detective force. in the border country between england and scotland, before the union of the kingdoms, these dogs were kept to maintain safety, and to track criminals. in cuba they were put on the pursuit of outlaws and fugitives from justice. this explains why the dog has sometimes been called a sleuthhound; that is, a dog set upon a _sleuth_, or trail. in our own southern states bloodhounds were once used to recover runaway slaves, as we may read in "uncle tom's cabin." there have been times, too, when the dog's unique gift of scent has enabled him to find lost children and exhausted travellers, and thus be a benefactor to humanity. whatever the task set him, whether for good or ignoble ends, the bloodhound has always fulfilled it with unflagging perseverance and devotion. he is a dog to command both fear and admiration, and we count ourselves fortunate if we win his good opinion. [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son, sc. the sleeping bloodhound _national gallery, london_] the original of the portrait was countess, the bloodhound of mr. jacob bell, of whom we have also heard as the owner of the bay mare betty. the dog had long been waiting for a portrait sitting, but the busy painter seemed to have no time for the work. finally occurred a strange accident which was the immediate cause of the picture. poor countess fell one night from a parapet at mr. bell's residence, in some unknown way losing her balance, or missing her footing. the distance was between twenty and thirty feet, and the dog was killed. mr. bell immediately took the animal to landseer's studio, and there in an incredibly short time was produced this portrait. the story explains why the painter chose the unusual theme of a sleeping dog. ordinarily he delighted in showing the expressiveness of a dog's eye. this being here impossible on account of the model's condition, we have instead a picture which we would not exchange even for suspense or dignity and impudence. if we have here less of those higher qualities which are brought out in the dog's human relationships, we see the better the purely animal side of his nature. the union of power with repose is a rare combination in art, and one we associate with greek sculpture. the picture of the sleeping bloodhound has what we call plastic qualities. we have a sense of the massive solidity of the dog's body, as if he were modelled in clay. in this respect the picture should be compared with the newfoundland dog called the distinguished member of the humane society, and with the lion of the nelson monument. the helmet beside the dog is one of those picturesque accessories which landseer enjoyed putting into his works. like the gauntlets in the picture of suspense, it suggests the knightly deeds of chivalry with which the bloodhound seems appropriately associated. the reflection of light from the polished surface of the metal makes an effective touch in the picture. it is by no accident that the helmet occupies the place it does; it is an essential part of the composition, serving precisely the same purpose which the cavalier's hat does in the picture of the king charles spaniels. both compositions gain by this device the necessary height to balance their horizontal lines. xii the hunted stag in his study of the deer in the scottish highlands, landseer found almost inexhaustible material for his art. in fact, nothing of interest escaped him in the life of this noble animal. if we could have a complete collection of his pictures on this subject, they would set forth the entire story of the deer. the painter, as we have seen, did his hunting with a sketch-book, and brought home, instead of so many head of game, so many pictures with which to delight future generations. many of these pictures deal with tragic subjects, as in our illustration of a hunted stag borne down a mountain torrent with the hounds upon him. the pathetic side of animal life appealed strongly to landseer's dramatic imagination. he who could see so readily the comic aspects of a situation was equally quick in his appreciation of suffering. it has been said by a close observer of animal life that no wild animal dies a natural death.[ ] every creature of the woods lives in the midst of perpetual dangers from some one of which, sooner or later, he comes to a violent or tragic end. the rigor of the elements sometimes overcomes him,--rain or snow, heat or cold, flood or avalanche, the falling tree or the crashing rock. it may be that some other animal which is his natural enemy finally falls upon him and destroys him. the most cruel fate of all is when he falls into the power of the sportsman, matching against the wild creature's instincts his wits, his dogs, and his rifle. in such an unequal contest man seldom fails to win. [footnote : ernest seton-thompson in _wild animals i have known_.] deerstalking was long the favorite sport in england, dating from the early days of semi-barbarism, when the only serious pursuits of the rich were war and the chase. the forest laws of the old norman kings set the punishment for killing a deer, except in the chase, as great as for taking a human life. large tracts of land were reserved for hunting grounds in districts which might otherwise have been covered with prosperous villages. down to our own times, a large pack of hounds was maintained by the english crown solely for the use of royal hunting parties. at length, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the new king, edward vii., has abolished the custom. it would seem that the deer was well fitted by nature to cope with his enemy the sportsman. his senses are so exquisitely delicate that he detects the approach of the hunter at a great distance. as soon as he takes alarm he flees from the danger, covering the ground in flying leaps with incredible speed. from time to time he pauses on some hilltop to locate anew the position of the enemy. [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son, sc. the hunted stag _national gallery, london_] as he begins to tire, he resorts to stratagem as a substitute for speed. sometimes another deer comes to his aid, taking the track he has made, while he hides in some thicket or flies in a different direction. one of his tricks is to run backward over his course for a number of yards, and then leap aside to start in another way. the story of the sandhill stag tells how a deer used this device three times in succession, the last time returning to a thicket near his track from which he could discern his pursuer long before the trail would bring him too near. after this, grown more desperate, the stag circled round till he joined his old track, and then bounded aside to let the hunter follow the cold scent. when all such artifices fail, the hunted deer's last resort is the water. plunging into a lake or mountain stream, he swims up the current, taking care not to touch any brush on the bank, lest he leave a scent for the hounds. it is said that he can even hide under the water, leaving only the tip of his nose above the surface. the stag of our picture has reached the water too late; already the hounds are upon him. the mass of struggling animals is swept along the current of a mountain stream to an inevitable doom. the hunted creature raises his noble head in his dying agony, seeking to escape his tormentors. even yet he strikes out in a brave attempt to swim, but the end is only too plain. the painter's art has set the tragedy very forcibly before us. behind is a lake, around which rises a range of high hills. a single break in their outline admits a ray of sunlight into the sombre grandeur of the scene. the narrow stream which issues from the lake falls between huge boulders, in a steep descent. the struggle of the dogs with their prey churns the torrent into foam about the body of the stag. while we admire the art which can produce such a picture, the subject, like that of war, is too painful for enjoyment. we must turn again to the monarch of the glen, and from the contrast of the dying with the living, we enjoy the more the splendid vitality of the animal. xiii jack in office in the time of landseer a familiar figure about the streets of london was the itinerant dealer in dog's meat. his outfit consisted of a square covered wheelbarrow in which he carried the meat, a basket, a pair of scales, knives, skewers, and similar tools of his trade. his assistant was a dog, whose duty was to guard the meat barrow while the butcher called for orders or delivered his goods. in this capacity a dog would serve even better than a boy, in keeping hungry animals from his master's property. there is a quaint old saying that "it takes a rogue to catch a rogue." the dog's wages were all the meat he could eat, and having satisfied himself to the point of gluttony, there would be no danger of any inroads on the meat from him. in our picture a butcher has left his barrow standing on the cobble-stone pavement at the corner of the narrow entrance to a square. his dog jack controls the situation in his absence, and rules with undisputed authority. such is the master's confidence in the dog's ability to manage, that he has taken no pains to put the meat away in the barrow. a large cut is left in the scale pan, and a basket on the pavement contains some choice bits. naturally the tempting odor has drawn a number of stray street dogs to the place. from his elevated position jack surveys them as a monarch receiving a throng of obsequious courtiers. as a matter of fact he is himself a low mongrel cur, vastly inferior in origin to some of the surrounding dogs. circumstances having raised him to a position of authority he regards them all with supercilious disdain. a miserable, half starved hound approaches the basket with eyes fixed hungrily on the contents, the tail drooping between the shaking legs, the attitude expressing the most abject wretchedness. he is a canine uriah heep professing himself "so 'umble." behind is a retriever, uplifting a begging paw, and farther away are other eager dogs. a puppy in front has just finished eating, and, still gnawing the skewer, looks up to ask for more. not one of them all dares touch the meat, though jack moves not a muscle to prevent them. it is a question whether an overfed, tight-skinned animal like this would prove a very redoubtable enemy in a fight. jack's influence, however, is due in no small measure to his sagacious air of importance. seated on his haunches, he holds between his fore legs the handle of the scales as the insignia of office. a broad collar and a small leather harness show he has to take his own turn in serving another. ignoring the appeal of the puppy, he turns to the group of larger dogs, regarding them with a contemptuous expression of his half-closed eyes. he has been a keen observer of dog nature, and knows what value to place upon the professions of these fawning creatures. [illustration: john andrew & son, sc. jack in office _south kensington museum, london_] the situation inevitably suggests corresponding relations in human life. it often happens that a man of inferior qualities is raised to some position of authority which he holds with arrogant assumption. himself the servant of another, he delights in the exercise of a petty tyranny. he is forthwith surrounded by a throng of flatterers seeking the benefits he has to bestow. it is pitiable to see how some who were originally his superiors humiliate themselves before him. like the sycophant hound and the imploring retriever, they seem to lose all sense of self-respect. one can see how easily the picture of jack in office could be converted into a caricature, and it is not surprising to learn that it has been used in england as a political cartoon. american politics might also produce many a parallel situation. the party boss in a municipal government holding petty appointments in his control is a veritable jack in office surrounded by his followers. the humor of the picture is, as we see, a trifle keener than in dignity and impudence. arrogance and sycophancy are such despicable qualities, whether in dog or man, that they are held up not only for our laughter but for our contempt. as may be inferred from our previous illustrations, the greater number of landseer's dog subjects were drawn from animals of the finer breeds. jack in office is unique in our collection as dealing with the commoner animals of the street. even here, however, the painter found material for his favorite theme of the dog's fidelity to his master. jack is, as it were, the butcher's business partner, sharing alike in his labors and his gains. as we are to see again in our next picture, the dog which is made the companion of daily labor is even more to his master than one which is merely a playmate. it is instructive to examine one by one the details of the composition, which the painter has rendered with much technical skill. the vista of the square at the end of the alley is a pleasant feature of the composition, giving a more spacious background to the group. xiv the highland shepherd's chief mourner while the mountains of the scottish highlands are haunted by deer, the valleys are the pasture ground for large flocks of sheep. here our painter, landseer, made the acquaintance of two unique characters, the highland shepherd and his dog. in former times the shepherds of scotland were no ordinary men. the loneliness of the life in these wilds left an impress upon their nature, making it stern and serious. not infrequently great readers were found among them, and even poets. the ettrick shepherd james hogg was one of scotland's first men of letters. the poet wordsworth, whose boyhood was passed in the north of england, describes in "the prelude" his admiration for the shepherds of that region:-- "there, 't is the shepherd's task the winter long to wait upon the storms: of their approach sagacious, into sheltering coves he drives his flock, and thither from the homestead bears a toilsome burden up the craggy ways, and deals it out, their regular nourishment strewn on the frozen snow. and when the spring looks out, and all the pastures dance with lambs, and when the flock, with warmer weather, climbs higher and higher, him his office leads to watch their goings, whatsoever track the wanderers choose. * * * * * a rambling schoolboy, thus i felt his presence in his own domain, as of a lord and master, or a power, or genius, under nature, under god, presiding; and severest solitude had more commanding looks when he was there." the shepherd would be helpless without his dog, the collie, whose astuteness and skill can hardly be overstated. the trained sheep dog learns to know every individual member of the flock, so that if a straggler goes beyond bounds, he will reclaim it; if an intruder enters he will drive it out. when the flock is to be led home, he gathers the scattered portions into a compact body and keeps them in the way. a sagacious dog belonging to hogg once amazed his master by gathering together a flock of seven hundred lambs which had broken up at midnight and scattered in three directions. the collie is fitted by nature with special qualifications for his peculiar work. his neck is long and arched, that he may put his nose well to the ground and stretch it when running. his half pricked ears are the best possible for distinguishing sounds at a distance, and the part that falls over protects the inner ear from the rain. his thick coat is proof against rain, snow, or wind, and the heavy mane shields the most vulnerable part of his chest, like a natural lung protector. with bare hind legs, long and springy, he can make his way easily in the heather. the long, tapering muzzle gives a peculiarly intelligent look to the face. an authority on dogs says, "there is, if the expression may be used, a philosophic look about him which shows thought, patience, energy, and vigilance." [illustration: john andrew & son, sc. the highland shepherd's chief mourner _south kensington museum, london_] the shepherd and his dog are constant companions from dawn to sunset, sharing the responsibilities of their charge. common hardships seem to knit the friendship, and the tie between them is unusually close. we can easily understand that a faithful dog deprived of his master would mourn him deeply. such grief is the subject of our picture, the highland shepherd's chief mourner. an old shepherd living alone in his rude cottage has thrown down his hat and staff for the last time. his neighbors have prepared his body for decent burial, the coffin has been closed and nailed, and now stands on the trestles ready for removal. the shepherd's plaid has been laid over it as a sort of pall, and a bit of green is added by some reverent hand. for the moment the house is deserted, and the dog is left alone with all that represents his master's life to him. his mute grief is intensely pathetic; speech could not express more plainly his utter despair. a beautiful description by ruskin suggests the important points to notice in the picture,--"the close pressure of the dog's breast against the wood, the convulsive clinging of the paws, which has dragged the blanket off the trestle, the total powerlessness of the head laid close and motionless upon its folds, the fixed and tearful fall of the eye in its utter hopelessness, the rigidity of repose which marks that there has been no motion or change in the trance of agony since the last blow was struck on the coffin-lid, the quietness and gloom of the chamber, the spectacles marking the place where the bible was last closed, indicating how lonely has been the life--how unwatched the departure of him who is now laid solitary in his sleep." the critic shows that the skill with which the painting is executed, remarkable as it is, is not so great a thing to praise the painter for as the imagination which could conceive so pathetic a scene. the picture is, he says, "one of the most perfect poems which modern times have seen." the incident which landseer imagined has doubtless many a parallel in actual life. there is a story of a traveller who was killed by a fall from a precipice near mt. helvellyn. three months later his remains were discovered, watched over by the faithful dog. scott's poem "helvellyn" commemorates the incident,[ ] and the line telling how-- "faithful in death, his mute favorite attended," expresses well the spirit of our picture. [footnote : wordsworth's verses on fidelity apparently refer to the same story.] xv a lion of the nelson monument our conception of the range of landseer's art would be quite inadequate if we failed to notice his studies of the lion. though his works on this subject were not numerous, he was all his life greatly interested in the noble animal called the king of beasts. as a boy, he used to visit a certain menagerie called exeter change, and make drawings of the beasts there. a drawing of a senegal lion, made here at the age of nine, is very creditable. the same menagerie furnished, many years later, the material for his first serious lion study. one of the animals having died, landseer obtained the body for dissection. his methods of work were always thorough. he believed that it was only by mastering an animal's anatomy that a painter could faithfully reproduce its motions and attitudes. the result of his studies on this occasion was an interesting series of pictures,--a lion disturbed at his repast, a lion enjoying his repast, and a prowling lion. naturally opportunities for dissecting lions were not frequent, and the painter had to bide his time for further studies. a friend who could help him in this respect was mr. mitchell, secretary of the zoölogical society. whenever the secretary happened to have a dead lion on his hands, he offered landseer the first chance to obtain it. an amusing story is told of one of mr. mitchell's efforts in his friend's behalf. a company of guests was gathered one evening at landseer's house, when suddenly a man servant appeared at the drawing-room door, and quietly asked, "did you order a lion, sir?" the inquiry was made in a matter-of-fact tone, precisely as if ordering lions were an every-day affair, like ordering a rib of beef, or a leg of mutton. there was a sensation among the guests, and much merriment was caused by their pretended alarm. tradition says that charles dickens was of the party, and it was he who often told the story afterwards. as it proved, mr. mitchell had sent the painter a lion which had died that day in the zoölogical garden of regent's park. in landseer received an important commission from the english government requiring all his knowledge of the lion. his task was to model some lions to ornament the nelson monument in trafalgar square, london. this monument had been erected more than fifteen years before ( ), in memory of the admiral under whose leadership the english fleet had won their victory off cape trafalgar, october , . it consisted of a tall granite column surmounted by a statue of nelson. to make the base of the column more imposing, it now seemed desirable to place colossal bronze figures of lions at the four corners. [illustration: fr. hanfstaengl, photo. john andrew & son, sc. a lion of the nelson monument _trafalgar square, london_] with characteristic thoroughness, the artist made his preparatory studies. two of these are rough sketches on canvas in the national gallery of london, and show distinctly the original data for his final conception. apparently they are studies from menagerie animals. one is in profile, showing the beast as he creeps in snarling discontent within the limited area of his cage. the other sketch has caught the attitude of the animal lifting his head to scan an approaching visitor. in these two studies, landseer obtained the proper proportions of the side face, from nosetip to ear, and the length of the front face, from the crest of the mane to the lower jaw. they also show completely the manner in which the mane grows, both along the back and on each side the face. it could not be expected that a man who had been all his life a painter would immediately acquire proficiency as a sculptor. landseer had his lions under way nearly ten years, and in the mean time practised himself in the new art by modelling the figure of a stag. certain qualities of sculpture he had already shown in some of his paintings. the pose of the newfoundland dog called a distinguished member of the humane society is conceived in the spirit of plastic art. so also is the sleeping bloodhound. when it came, therefore, to modelling a figure, the artist understood well how to secure a monumental pose. in this point his work is especially successful. the lion lies in a grand, majestic attitude. the mane rises like a crown on his brow, and falls in splendid masses on either side his head. the mouth is open, and the expression a little mild for dignity. one is reminded of the tamed spirit of the menagerie captive rather than of the proud majesty of the animal in his native wilds. a work of this sort must necessarily have a certain stiffness and conventionality which we should not like in a painting. it is said that landseer modelled only a single figure, and the others were cast from the same model with slight variations. when at last the work was completed, the colossal figures were mounted on huge pedestals radiating diagonally from the four corners of the square base of the monument. xvi the connoisseurs the story of landseer's art career was a series of continuous successes from his precocious boyhood to his honored old age. he was an exhibitor at the royal academy when he was in his teens, and early in his twenties he was successful enough in his profession to set up an establishment of his own. he then took a small house in a pleasant part of london known as st. john's wood, and fitted up the barn into a studio. the place was called maida villa, as a compliment to the famous staghound which was sir walter scott's favorite dog. here landseer lived, like sir walter himself, surrounded by dogs. he never married, and his sister, mrs. mackenzie, was for many years his housekeeper. his life was, of course, a very busy one, filled with commissions which came much more rapidly than he could execute them. his house was enlarged as his means permitted, and became a delightful resort for many favored guests. the painter was of a frank nature, genial and kindly among his friends, witty in conversation, and a clever mimic. an invitation to one of his parties was a privilege. many were the distinguished patrons who visited his studio; even the royal carriages were sometimes seen standing at the door of maida villa. his work was duly rewarded with the proper honors. at the age of twenty-eight, the painter was elected to membership in the royal academy, and twenty years later he was knighted. thereafter he was known as sir edwin landseer, probably the most popular painter of his day. he is described as a man of heavy figure, six feet in height, with a weather-beaten countenance. he used to wear a sober gray tweed suit, and had the general appearance of an english country gentleman. his movements were quick and energetic. our portrait shows him at the age of sixty-two, when his beard was white. his face is attractive because of the kindly expression, but it is by no means handsome. the redeeming feature is the high broad forehead, the sign of the fine poetic temperament of which so many of his works are proof. it was characteristic of landseer to paint his portrait with his dogs. neither the man nor his art can be separated from the animal to which he devoted his best gifts. the dogs give the title to the picture, and with the genial humor natural to the painter, he represents himself as the subject of their criticism. holding his sketch-book across his knees, he appears to be making a pencil study of some dog subject, while over each shoulder peers the grave face of a canine "connoisseur." the dog at the painter's right seems to express approval, while his more critical comrade on the other side reserves judgment till the picture is completed. it would appear that landseer's dog pictures were faithful enough to satisfy the judgment of the originals. "we cannot help believing," writes an admiring critic,[ ] "that the manner in which landseer drew the forms and expressed the character of the canine race would have been rewarded with the gratitude, if not the full satisfaction of such a critic.... on the whole, seeing that he was but a man [the connoisseurs] must, we fancy, have allowed that he was a good artist, a fair judge of character, and meant kindly by them." [footnote : cosmo monkhouse.] the honors bestowed upon landseer culminated at the time of his death in the magnificent funeral ceremonies attending his burial at st. paul's church, london. his body was laid near those of sir joshua reynolds, turner, fuseli, and other famous english painters. in the memorial sermon following the funeral, the painter's character was fittingly summed up in a few lines from coleridge's "ancient mariner." "he prayeth well who loveth well both man and bird and beast, "he prayeth best who loveth best all things, both great and small, for the dear god who loveth us he made and loveth all." the riverside press _electrotyped and printed by h. o. houghton & co._ _cambridge, mass., u.s.a._ authors' portraits for school use _sample of the portraits in "masterpieces of american literature" and "masterpieces of british literature," described on the second page of this circular._ [illustration: oliver wendell holmes.] portraits of authors and pictures of their homes _for the use of pupils in the study of literature_ we have received so many calls for portraits of authors and pictures of their homes suitable for class and note-book use in the study of reading and literature, that we have decided to issue separately the twenty-nine portraits contained in "masterpieces of american literature" and "masterpieces of british literature," and the homes of eight american authors as shown in the appendix to the _newly revised_ edition of "richardson's primer of american literature." portraits _american._ bryant. hawthorne. o'reilly. emerson. holmes. thoreau. everett. irving. webster. franklin. longfellow. whittier. lowell. _british._ addison. coleridge. macaulay. bacon. cowper. milton. brown. dickens. ruskin. burns. goldsmith. tennyson. byron. gray. wordsworth. lamb. homes of authors bryant. holmes. lowell. emerson. longfellow. stowe. hawthorne. whittier. _sold only in lots of ten or more, assorted as desired._ ten, assorted, postpaid, cents. each additional one in the same package, cent. in lots of or more, assorted, cent each, postpaid. _for mutual convenience please send a remittance with each order. postage stamps taken._ houghton, mifflin & co. park street, boston; east th street, new york; - wabash avenue, chicago. ornaments for school-rooms _the atlantic life-size portraits_ of whittier, lowell, emerson, hawthorne, longfellow, holmes, bryant. size, by inches. lithographs, $ . , _net_, each, postpaid. teachers' price, cents, _net_, each, postpaid. _masterpieces portraits._ for descriptions and prices see other pages of this circular. _homes of american authors._ for descriptions and prices see other pages of this circular. _longfellow's residence._ a colored lithograph of the historic mansion ("washington's headquarters") at cambridge, in which mr. longfellow lived for forty years. size, by inches. price, cents, _net_, postpaid. _fine steel portraits_ (the size of cabinet photographs) of over ninety of the most celebrated american and european authors. the -cent portraits and the -cent portraits are printed on paper measuring by inches, and the $ . portraits by inches. _a list with prices to teachers may be had on application._ houghton, mifflin & co. park street, boston; east th street, new york: - wabash avenue, chicago. authors' homes, for school use. _sample of the pictures of author's homes in the newly revised edition of richardson's primer of american literature, described on the second page of this circular._ [illustration: holmes's birthplace. _the gambrel roofed house, cambridge._] the history of modern painting [illustration: _mansell photo_ leslie my uncle toby and the widow wadman] the history of modern painting by richard muther professor of art history at the university of breslau in four volumes [illustration] volume two revised edition continued by the author to the end of the xix century london: published by j. m. dent & co. new york: e. p. dutton & co. mcmvii contents page list of illustrations ix book iii the triumph of the moderns chapter xvi the draughtsmen the general alienation of painting from the interests of life during the first half of the nineteenth century.--the draughtsmen and caricaturists the first who brought modern life into the sphere of art.--england: gillray, rowlandson, george cruikshank, "punch," john leech, george du maurier, charles keene.--germany: johann adam klein, johann christian erhard, ludwig richter, oscar pletsch, albert hendschel, eugen neureuther, "die fliegende blätter," wilhelm busch, adolf oberländer.--france: louis philibert debucourt, carle vernet, bosio, henri monnier, honoré daumier, gavarni, guys, gustave doré, cham, marcellin, randon, gill, hadol, draner, léonce petit, grévin.--need of a fresh discovery of the world by painters.--incitement to this by the english chapter xvii english painting to england little affected by the retrospective tendency of the continent.--james barry, james northcote, henry fuseli, william etty, benjamin robert haydon.--painting continues on the course taken by hogarth and reynolds.--the portrait painters: george romney, thomas lawrence, john hoppner, william beechey, john russell, john jackson, henry raeburn.--benjamin west and john singleton copley paint historical pictures from their own time.--daniel maclise.--animal painting: john wootton, george stubbs, george morland, james ward, edwin landseer.--the painting of _genre_: david wilkie, w. collins, gilbert stuart newton, charles robert leslie, w. mulready, thomas webster, w. frith.--the influence of these _genre_ pictures on the painting of the continent chapter xviii the military picture why the victory of modernity on the continent came only by degrees.--romantic conceptions.--Æsthetic theories and the question of costume.--painting learns to treat contemporary costume by first dealing with uniform.--france: gros, horace vernet, hippolyte bellangé, isidor pils, alexander protais, charlet, raffet, ernest meissonier, guillaume régamey, alphonse de neuville, aimé morot, edouard détaille.--germany: albrecht adam, peter hess, franz krüger, karl steffeck, th. horschelt, franz adam, joseph v. brandt, heinrich lang chapter xix italy and the east why painters sought their ideal in distant countries, though they did not plunge into the past.--italy discovered by leopold robert, victor schnetz, ernest hébert, august riedel.--the east was for the romanticists what italy had been for the classicists.--france: delacroix, decamps, prosper marilhat, eugène fromentin, gustave guillaumet.--germany: h. kretzschmer, wilhelm gentz, adolf schreyer, and others.--england: william muller, frederick goodall, f. j. lewis.--italy: alberto pasini chapter xx the painting of humorous anecdote after seeking exotic subjects painting returns home, and finds amongst peasants a stationary type of life which has preserved picturesque costume.--munich: the transition from the military picture to the painting of peasants.--peter hess, heinrich bürkel, carl spitzweg.--hamburg: hermann kauffmann.--berlin: friedrich eduard meyerheim.--the influence of wilkie, and the novel of village life.--munich: johann kirner, carl enhuber.--düsseldorf: adolf schroedter, peter hasenclever, jacob becker, rudolf jordan, henry ritter, adolf tidemand.--vienna: peter krafft, j. danhauser, ferdinand waldmüller.--belgium: influence of teniers.--ignatius van regemorter, ferdinand de braekeleer, henri coene, madou, adolf dillens.--france: françois biard chapter xxi the picture with a social purpose why modern life in all countries entered into art only under the form of humorous anecdote.--the conventional optimism of these pictures comes into conflict with the revolutionary temper of the age.--france: delacroix' "freedom," jeanron, antigna, adolphe leleux, meissonier's "barricade," octave tassaert.--germany: gisbert flüggen, carl hübner.--belgium: eugène de block, antoine wiertz chapter xxii the village tale germany: louis knaus, benjamin vautier, franz defregger, mathias schmidt, alois gabl, eduard kurzbauer, hugo kauffmann, wilhelm riefstahl.--the comedy of monks: eduard grützner.--tales of the exchange and the manufactory: ludwig bokelmann, ferdinand brütt.--germany begins to transmit the principles of _genre_ painting to other countries.--france: gustave brion, charles marchal, jules breton.--norway and sweden stand in union with düsseldorf: karl d'uncker, wilhelm wallander, anders koskull, kilian zoll, peter eskilson, august jernberg, ferdinand fagerlin, v. stoltenberg-lerche, hans dahl.--hungary fructified by munich: ludwig ebner, paul boehm, otto von baditz, koloman déry, julius aggházi, alexander bihari, ignaz ruskovics, johann jankó, tihamér margitay, paul vagó, arpad fessty, otto koroknyai, d. skuteczky.--difference between these pictures and those of the old dutch masters.--from hogarth to knaus.--why hogarth succumbed, and _genre_ painting had to become painting pure and simple.--this new basis of art created by the landscapists chapter xxiii landscape painting in germany the significance of landscape for nineteenth-century art.--classicism: joseph anton koch, leopold rottmann, friedrich preller and his followers.--romanticism: karl friedrich lessing, karl blechen, w. schirmer, valentin ruths.--the discovery of ruysdael and everdingen.--the part of mediation played by certain artists from denmark and norway: j. c. dahl, christian morgenstern, ludwig gurlitt.--andreas achenbach, eduard schleich.--the german landscape painters begin to travel everywhere.--influence of calame.--h. gude, niels björnson möller, august cappelen, morten-müller, erik bodom, l. munthe, e. a. normann, ludwig willroider, louis douzette, hermann eschke, carl ludwig, otto v. kameke, graf stanislaus kalkreuth, oswald achenbach, albert flamm, ascan lutteroth, ferdinand bellermann, eduard hildebrandt, eugen bracht.--why many of their pictures, compared with those of the old dutch masters, indicate an expansion of the geographical horizon, rather than a refinement of taste.--the victory over interesting-subject-matter and sensational effect by the "_paysage intime_" chapter xxiv the beginnings of "paysage intime" classical landscape painting in france: hubert robert, henri valenciennes, victor bertin, xavier bidault, michallon, jules cogniet, watelet, théodore aligny, edouard bertin, paul flandrin, achille benouville, j. bellel.--romanticism and the resort to national scenery: victor hugo, georges michel, the ruysdael of montmartre, charles de la berge, camille roqueplan, camille flers, louis cabat, paul huet.--the english the first to free themselves from composition and the tone of the galleries: turner.--john crome, the english hobbema, and the norwich school: cotman, crome junior, stark, vincent.--the water colour artists: john robert cozens, girtin, edridge, prout, samuel owen, luke clennel, howitt, robert hills.--the influence of aquarelles on the english conception of colour.--john constable and open-air painting.--david cox, william muller, peter de wint, creswick, peter graham, henry dawson, john linnell.--richard parkes bonington as the link between england and france chapter xxv landscape from constable in the louvre and his influence on the creators of the french _paysage intime_.--théodore rousseau, corot, jules dupré, diaz, daubigny and their followers.--chintreuil, jean desbrosses, achard, français, harpignies, Émile breton, and others.--animal painting: carle vernet, géricault, r. brascassat, troyon, rosa bonheur, jadin, eugène lambert, palizzi, auguste lançon, charles jacque chapter xxvi jean franÇois millet his importance, and the task left for those who followed him.--millet's principle _le beau c'est le vrai_ had to be transferred from peasant painting to modern life, from barbizon to paris book iv the realistic painters and the modern idealists chapter xxvii realism in france gustave courbet and the modern painting of artisan life.--alfred stevens and the painting of "society."--his followers auguste toulmouche, james tissot, and others.--in opposition to the cinquecento the study of the old germans, the lombards, the spaniards, the flemish artists, and the _rococo_ masters becomes now a formative influence.--gustave ricard, charles chaplin, gaillard, paul dubois, carolus duran, léon bonnat, roybet, blaise desgoffe, philippe rousseau, antoine vollon, françois bonvin, théodule ribot bibliography list of illustrations plates in colour page leslie: my uncle toby and the widow wadman _frontispiece_ romney: serena lawrence: caroline of brunswick, queen of george iv maclise: the waterfall, cornwall morland: horses in a stable landseer: jack in office fromentin: algerian falconers rottmann: lake kopaïs turner: the old téméraire constable: willy lott's house bonington: la place de molards, geneva corot: landscape millet: the wood-sawyers in black and white achenbach, andreas. sea coast after a storm fishing boats in the north sea adam, albrecht. albrecht adam and his sons a stable in town baade, knut. moonlight night on the coast becker, jacob. a tempest berge, charles de la. landscape boilly, leopold. the toilette the newsvendor the marionettes bonheur, rosa. the horse-fair ploughing in nivernois bonington, richard parkes. the windmill of saint-jouin reading aloud portrait of richard parkes bonington bonnat, lÉon. adolphe thiers victor hugo bonvin, franÇois. the cook the work-room breton, Émile. the return of the reapers the gleaner brion, gustave. jean valjean bunbury, william henry. richmond hill bÜrkel, heinrich. portrait of heinrich bürkel brigands returning a downpour in the mountains a smithy in upper bavaria busch, wilhelm. portrait of wilhelm busch cabat, louis. le jardin beaujon calame, alexandre. landscape chaplin, charles. the golden age portrait of countess aimery de la rochefoucauld charlet, nicolas touissaint. un homme qui boît seul n'est pas digne de vivre chintreuil, antoine. landscape: morning constable, john. portrait of john constable church porch, bergholt dedham vale the romantic house the cornfield cottage in a cornfield the valley farm copley, john singleton. the death of the earl of chatham corot, camille. portrait of camille corot the bridge of st. angelo, rome corot at work daphnis and chloe vue de toscane at sunset the ruin evening an evening in normandy the dance of the nymphs a dance la route d'arras courbet, gustave. portrait of gustave courbet the man with a leather belt. portrait of himself as a youth a funeral at ornans the stone-breakers the return from market the battle of the stags a woman bathing deer in covert girls lying on the bank of the seine a recumbent woman berlioz the hind on the snow my studio after seven years of artistic life the wave cox, david. crossing the sands the shrimpers crome, john (old crome). a view near norwich cruikshank, george. monstrosities of danhauser, josef. the gormandizer daubigny, charles franÇois. portrait of charles françois daubigny springtime a lock in the valley of optevoz on the oise shepherd and shepherdess landscape: evening daumier, honorÉ. portrait of honoré daumier the connoisseurs the mountebanks in the assize court "la voilà ... ma maison de campagne" menelaus the victor debucourt, louis philibert. in the kitchen the promenade decamps, alexandre. the swineherd coming out from a turkish school the watering-place defregger, franz. portrait of franz defregger speckbacher and his son the wrestlers sister and brothers the prize horse andreas hofer appointed governor of the tyrol dÉtaille, edouard. salut aux blessés diaz, narcisse virgilio. portrait of narcisse diaz the descent of the bohemians among the foliage the tree trunk forest scene dubois, paul. portrait of my sons duprÉ, jules. portrait of jules dupré the house of jules dupré at l'isle-adam the setting sun the bridge at l'isle-adam near southampton the punt sunset the hay-wain the old oak the pool duran, carolus. portrait of carolus duran enhuber, carl. the pensioner and his grandson erhard, johann christoph. portrait of johann christoph erhard a peasant scene a peasant family flÀmm, albert. a summer day flÜggen, gisbert. the decision of the suit frith, william powell. poverty and wealth fromentin, eugÈne. portrait of eugène fromentin arabian women returning from drawing water the centaurs gaillard, ferdinand. portrait gavarni (sulpice guillaume chevalier). portrait of gavarni thomas vireloque fourberies de femmes phèdre at the théâtre français "ce qui me manque à moi? une t'ite mère comme ça, qu'aurait soin de mon linge" gillray, james. affability grÉvin, alfred. nos parisiennes grÜtzner, eduard. twelfth night guillaumet, gustave. the séguia, near biskra a dwelling in the sahara gurlitt, ludwig. on the sabine mountains guys, constantin. study of a woman harpignies, henri. moonrise hÉbert, ernest. the malaria hess, peter. the reception of king otto in nauplia a morning at partenkirche hÜbner, carl. july huet, paul. portrait of paul huet the inundation at st. cloud hugo, victor. ruins of a mediæval castle on the rhine jacque, charles. the return to the byre (etching) a flock of sheep on the road millet at work in his studio millet's house at barbizon kauffmann, hermann. woodcutters returning a sandy road returning from the fields keene, charles. the perils of the deep from "our people" kirner, johann. the fortune teller klein, johann adam. a travelling landscape painter knaus, louis. portrait of louis knaus in great distress the card-players the golden wedding behind the scenes kobell, william. a meeting koch, joseph anton. portrait of josef anton koch krafft, peter. the soldier's return landseer, sir edwin. a distinguished member of the humane society the last mourner at the shepherd's grave high life low life lawrence, sir thomas. mrs. siddons princess amelia the english mother the countess gower leech, john. the children of mr. and mrs. blenkinsop little spicey and tater sam from "children of the mobility" leleux, adolphe. mot d'ordre leslie, charles robert. sancho and the duchess lessing, carl friedrich. portrait of carl friedrich lessing the wayside madonna maclise, daniel. noah's sacrifice malvolio and the countess madou, jean baptiste. in the ale-house the drunkard marchal, charles. the hiring fair marcke, emile van. la falaise marilhat, prosper. a halt du maurier, george. the dancing lesson a recollection of dieppe down to dinner a wintry walk meissonier, ernest. portrait of ernest meissonier the outpost meyerheim, friedrich eduard. portrait of friedrich eduard meyerheim children at play the king of the shooting match the morning hour the knitting lesson michel, georges. a windmill millais, sir john everett. george du maurier millet, jean franÇois. portrait of himself the house at gruchy the winnower a man making faggots the gleaners vine-dresser resting at the well burning weeds the angelus the shepherdess and her sheep the shepherd at the pen at nightfall a woman feeding chickens the shepherdess the labourer grafting a tree a woman knitting the rainbow the barbizon stone monnier, henri. a chalk drawing joseph proudhomme morgenstern, christian. a peasant cottage (etching) morland, george. the corn bin going to the fair the return from market muller, william. prayer in the desert the amphitheatre at xanthus mulready, william. fair time crossing the ford de neuville, alphonse. portrait of alphonse de neuville le bourget newton, gilbert stuart. yorick and the grisette oberlÄnder, adolf. variations on the kissing theme. rethel variations on the kissing theme. gabriel max variations on the kissing theme. hans makart portrait of adolf oberländer variations on the kissing theme. genelli variations on the kissing theme. alma tadema pettenkofen, august von. a hungarian village (pencil drawing) preller, friedrich. portrait of friedrich preller ulysses and leucothea raeburn, sir henry. sir walter scott raffet, auguste marie. portrait of auguste marie raffet the parade polish infantry the midnight review reid, sir george. portrait of charles keene ribot, thÉodule. the studio at a norman inn keeping accounts st. sebastian, martyr ricard, gustave. madame de calonne richter, ludwig. portrait of ludwig richter home the end of the day spring after work it's good to rest riedel, august. the neapolitan fisherman's family judith robert, hubert. monuments and ruins robert, leopold. portrait of leopold robert fishers of the adriatic the coming of the reapers to the pontine marshes romney, george. portrait of george romney lady hamilton as euphrosyne rottmann, karl. portrait of karl rottmann the coast of sicily rousseau, thÉodore. portrait of théodore rousseau morning landscape, morning effect the village of becquigny in picardy la hutte evening sunset the lake among the rocks at barbizon a pond, forest of fontainebleau rowlandson, thomas. harmony schirmer, johann wilhelm. an italian landscape schnetz, victor. an italian shepherd spitzweg, carl. portrait of carl spitzweg at the garret window a morning concert the postman stevens, alfred. the lady in pink la bête à bon dieu the japanese mask the visitors tassaert, octave. portrait of octave tassaert after the ball the orphans the suicide tidemand, adolf. the sectarians adorning the bride troyon, constant. portrait of constant troyon in normandy: cows grazing crossing the stream the return to the farm a cow scratching herself turner, joseph mallord william. portrait of j. m. w. turner a shipwreck dido building carthage jumièges landscape with the sun rising in a mist venice vautier, benjamin. portrait of benjamin vautier the conjurer the dancing lesson november vernet, horace. the wounded zouave vollon, antoine. portrait of antoine vollon a carnival scene waldmÜller, ferdinand. the first step wallander, wilhelm. the return webster, thomas. the rubber west, benjamin. the death of nelson wiertz, antoine. the orphans the things of the present as seen by future ages the fight round the body of patroclus wilkie, david. blind-man's-buff a guerilla council of war in a spanish posada the blind fiddler the penny wedding the first earring de wint, peter. nottingham book iii the triumph of the moderns chapter xvi the draughtsmen inasmuch as modern art, in the beginning of its career, held commerce almost exclusively with the spirits of dead men of bygone ages, it had set itself in opposition to all the great epochs that had gone before. all works known to the history of art, from the cathedral pictures of stephan lochner down to the works of the followers of watteau, stand in the closest relationship with the people and times amid which they have originated. whoever studies the works of dürer knows his home and his family, the nuremberg of the sixteenth century, with its narrow lanes and gabled houses; the whole age is reflected in the engravings of this one artist with a truth and distinctness which put to shame those of the most laborious historian. dürer and his contemporaries in italy stood in so intimate a relation to reality that in their religious pictures they even set themselves above historical probability, and treated the miraculous stories of sacred tradition as if they had been commonplace incidents of the fifteenth century. or, to take another instance, with what a striking realism, in the works of ostade, brouwer, and steen, has the entire epoch from which these great artists drew strength and nourishment remained vivid in spirit, sentiment, manners, and costume. every man whose name has come down to posterity stood firm and unshaken on the ground of his own time, resting like a tree with all its roots buried in its own peculiar soil; a tree whose branches rustled in the breeze of its native land, while the sun which fell on its blossoms and ripened its fruits was that of italy or germany, of spain or the netherlands, of that time; never the weak reflection of a planet that formerly had shone in other zones. it was not until the beginning of the nineteenth century that this connection with the life of the present and the soil at home was lost to the art of painting. it cannot be supposed that later generations will be able to form a conception of life in the nineteenth century from pictures produced in this period, or that these pictures will become approximately such documents as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries possess in the works of dürer, bellini, rubens, or rembrandt. the old masters were the children of their age to the very tips of their fingers. they were saturated with the significance, the ideals, and the aims of their time, and they saturated them with their own aims, ideals, and significance. on the other hand, if any one enters a modern picture gallery and picks out the paintings produced up to , he will often receive the impression that they belong to earlier centuries. they are without feeling for the world around, and seem even to know nothing of it. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ boilly. the toilette.] even david, the first of the moderns, has left no work, with the exception of his "marat," which has been baptized with the blood of the french revolution. to express the sentiment of liberty militant he made use of the figures of roman heroes. the political freedom of the people, so recently won, so fresh in men's minds, he illustrated by examples from roman history. at a later time, when the allied forces entered paris after the defeat of napoleon, he made use of the story of leonidas at thermopylæ. only in portrait painting was any kind of justice done to modern life by the painters in "the grand style." true it is that there lived, at the time, a few "little masters" who furtively turned out for the market modest little pictures of the life around them, paintings of buildings and kitchen interiors. the poor alsatian painter _martin drolling_, contemptuously designated a "dish painter" by the critics, showed in his kitchen pictures that, in spite of david, something of the spirit of chardin and the great dutchmen was still alive in french art. but he has given his figures and his pots and pans and vegetables the pose and hard outline of classicism. a few of his portraits are better and more delicate, particularly that of the actor baptiste, with his fine head, like that of a diplomatist. at the exhibition of , this picture, with its positive and firmly delineated characterisation, made the appeal of a holbein of . another "little master," _granet_, painted picturesque ruins, low halls, and the vaults of churches; he studied attentively the problem of light in inner chambers, and thereby drew upon himself the reproach of david, that "his drawing savoured of colour." in _leopold boilly_ parisian life--still like that of a country town--and the arrival of the mail, the market, and the busy life of the streets, found an interpreter,--_bourgeois_ no doubt, but true to his age. in the time of the revolution he painted a "triumph of marat," the tribune of the people, who is being carried on the shoulders of his audience from the _palais de justice_ in paris, after delivering an inflammatory oration. in , when the exhibition of david's coronation picture had thrown all paris into excitement, boilly conceived the notion of perpetuating in a rapid sketch the scene of the exhibition, with the picture and the crowd pressing round it. his speciality, however, was little portrait groups of honest _bourgeois_ in their stiff sunday finery. boilly knew with accuracy the toilettes of his age, the gowns of the actresses, and the way they dressed their heads; he cared nothing whatever about æsthetic dignity of style, but represented each subject as faithfully as he could, and as honestly and sincerely as possible. for that reason he is of great historical value, but he is not painter enough to lay claim to great artistic interest. the execution of his pictures is petty and diffidently careful, and his neat, philistine painting has a suggestion of china and enamel, without a trace of the ease and spirit with which the eighteenth century carolled over such work. the heads of his women are the heads of dolls, and his silk looks like steel. his forerunners are not the dutchmen of the good periods, terborg and metsu, but the contemporaries of van der werff. he and drolling and granet were rather the last issue of the fine old dutch schools, rather descendants of chardin than pioneers, and amongst the younger men there was at first no one who ventured to sow afresh the region which had been devastated by classicism. géricault certainly was incited to his "raft of the medusa" not by livy or plutarch, but by an occurrence of the time which was reported in the newspapers; and he ventured to set an ordinary shipwreck in the place of the deluge or a naval battle, and a crew of unknown mortals in the place of greek heroes. but then his picture stands alone amongst the works of the romanticists, and is too decidedly transposed into a classical key to count as a representation of modern life. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ boilly. the newsvendor.] [illustration: _baschet._ boilly. the marionettes.] in its striving after movement and colour, romanticism put forward the picturesque and passionate middle ages in opposition to the stiff and frigid neo-greek or neo-roman ideal; but it joined with classicism in despising the life of the present. even the political excitement at the close of the restoration and the revolution of july had but little influence on the leading spirits of the time. accustomed to look for the elements of pictorial invention in religious myths, in the fictions of poets, or in the events of older history, they paid no attention to the mighty social drama enacted so near to them. the fiery spirit of delacroix certainly led him to paint his picture of the barricades, but he drew his inspiration from a poet, from an ode of auguste barbier, and he gave the whole an air of romance and allegory by introducing the figure of liberty. he lived in a world of glowing passions, amid which all the struggles of his age seemed to have for him only a petty material interest. for that reason he has neither directly nor indirectly drawn on what he saw around him. he painted the soul, but not the life of his epoch. he was attracted by teutonic poets and by the middle ages. he set art free from greek subject-matter and italian form, to borrow his ideas from englishmen and germans and his colour from the flemish school. he is inscrutably silent about french society in the nineteenth century. [illustration: queen charlotte. george iii. gillray. affability. "well, friend, where a' you going, hay?--what's your name, hay?--where d'ye live, hay?--hay?"] and this alienation from the living world is even more noticeable in ingres. his "mass of pius vii in the sistine chapel" is the only one of his many works which deals with a subject of contemporary life, and it was blamed by the critics because it deviated so far from the great style. as an historical painter, and when better employed as a painter of portraits, ingres has crystallised all the life and marrow of the past in his icy works, and he appears in the midst of the century like a marvellous and sterile sphinx. nothing can be learnt from him concerning the needs and passions and interests of living men. his own century might writhe and suffer and struggle and bring forth new thoughts, but he knew nothing about them, or if he did he never allowed it to be seen. [illustration: cruickshank. monstrosities of .] delaroche approached somewhat nearer to the present, for he advanced from antiquity and the middle ages to the seventeenth century; and the historical picture, invented by him, virtually dominated french art under napoleon iii, in union with the dying classicism. even then there was no painter who yet ventured to portray the manners and types of his age with the fresh insight and merciless observation of balzac. all those scenes from the life of great cities, their fashion and their misery, which then began to form the substance of drama and romance, had as yet no counterpart in painting. [illustration: rowlandson. harmony.] [illustration: bunbury. richmond hill.] the belgians preserved the same silence. during the whole maturity of classicism, from to , françois, paelinck, van hanselaere, odevaere, de roi, duvivier, etc., with their coloured greek statues, ruled the realm of figure painting as unmitigated dictators; and amongst the historical painters who followed them, wappers, in his "episode," was the only one who drew on modern life for a subject. there was a desire to revive rubens. decaisne, wappers, de keyzer, bièfve, and gallait lit their candle at his sun, and were hailed as the holy band who were to lead belgian art to a glorious victory. but their original national tendency deviated from real life instead of leading towards it. for the sake of painting cuirasses and helmets they dragged the most obscure national heroes to the light of day, just as the classicists had done with greeks and romans. german painting wandered through the past with even less method, taking its material, not from native, but from french, english, and flemish history. from carstens down to makart, german painters of influence carefully shut their eyes to reality, and drew down the blinds so as to see nothing of the life that surged below them in the street, with its filth and splendour, its laughter and misery, its baseness and noble humanity. and from an historical point of view this alienation from the world is susceptible of an easy explanation. [illustration: leech. the children of mr. and mrs. blenkinsop.] [illustration: leech. little spicey and tater sam.] in france, as in all other countries, the end of the _ancien régime_, the tempest of the revolution, and the consequent modification of the whole of life--of sentiments, habits, and ideas, of dress and social conditions--at first implied such a sudden change in the horizon that artists were necessarily thrown into confusion. when the monarchy entered laughingly upon its struggle of life and death, the survivors from the time of louis xvi, charming "little masters" who had been great masters in that careless and graceful epoch, were suddenly made witnesses of a revolution more abrupt than the world had yet seen. savage mobs forced their way into gardens, palaces, and reception-rooms, pike in hand, and with the red cap upon their heads. the walls echoed with their rude speech, and plebeian orators played the part of oracles of freedom and brotherhood like old roman tribunes of the people. what was there yesterday was no longer to be seen; a thick powder-smoke hung between the past and the present. and the present itself had not yet assumed determinate shape; it hovered, as yet unready, between the old and the new forms of civilization. the storms of the revolution put an end to the comfortable security of private life. thus it was that the ready-made and more easily intelligible shapes and figures of a world long buried out of sight, with which men believed themselves to have an elective affinity, at first seemed to the artists to have an infinitely greater value than the new forms which were in the throes of birth. painters became classicists because they had not yet the courage to venture on the ground where the century itself was going through a process of fermentation. [illustration: leech. from "children of the mobility."] [illustration: _magazine of art._ sir john millais pinxt. george du maurier.] the romanticists despised it, for they thought the fermenting must had yielded flat lemonade instead of fiery wine. the artist must live in art before he can produce art. and the more the life of nations has been beautiful, rich, and splendid, the more nourishment and material has art been able to derive from it. but when they came the romanticists found--in france as in germany--everything, except a piece of reality which they could deem worthy of being painted. the whole of existence seemed to this generation so poor and bald, the costume so inartistic and so like a caricature, the situation so hopeless and petty, that they were unable to tolerate the portrayal of themselves either in poetry or art. it was the time of that wistfully sought phantom which, as they believed, was to be found only in the past. the powerful passions of the middle ages were set in opposition to a flaccid period that was barren of action. [illustration: _l'art._ du maurier. the dancing lesson.] and then came the overwhelming pressure of the old masters. after the forlorn condition of colouring brought about by david and carstens, it was so vitally necessary to restore the artistic tradition and technique of the old masters, that it was at first thought necessary to adopt the old subject-matter also--especially the splendid robes of the city of the lagoons--in order to test the newly acquired secrets of the palette. faltering unsteadily under influences derived from the old artists, modern painting did not yet feel itself able to create finished works of art out of the novel elements which the century placed at its disposal. it still needed to be carried in the arms of a venetian or flemish nurse. and æsthetic criticism bestowed its blessing on these attempts. the romanticists had been forced to the treatment of history and the deification of the past by disgust with the grey and colourless present; the younger generation were long afterwards held captive in this province by æsthetic views of the dignity of history. to paint one's own age was reckoned a crime. one had to paint the age of other people. for this purpose the _prix de rome_ was instituted. the spirit which produced the pictures of cabanel and bouguereau was the same that induced david to write to gros, that the battles of the empire might afford the material for occasional pictures done under the inspiration of chance, but not for great and earnest works of art worthy of an historical painter. that æsthetic criticism which taught that, whatever the subject be, and whatever personages may be represented, if they belong to the present time the picture is merely a _genre_ picture, still held the field. whilst the world was laughing and crying, the painter, with the colossal power of doing everything, amused himself by trying not to appear the child of his own time. no one perceived the refinement and grace, the corruption and wantonness, of modern life as it is in great cities. no one laid hold on the mighty social problems which the growing century threw out with a seething creative force. whoever wishes to know how the men of the time lived and moved, what hopes and sorrows they bore in their breasts, whoever seeks for works in which the heart-beat of the century is alive and throbbing, must have his attention directed to the works of the draughtsmen, to the illustrations of certain periodicals. it was in the nineteenth century as in the middle ages. as then, when painting was still an ecclesiastical art, the slowly awakening feeling for nature, the joy of life was first expressed in miniatures, woodcuts, and engravings, so also the great draughtsmen of the nineteenth century were the first who set themselves with their whole strength to bring modern life and all that it contained earnestly and sincerely within the range of art, the first who held up the glass to their own time and gave the abridged chronicle of their age. their calling as caricaturists led them to direct observation of the world, and lent them the aptitude of rendering their impressions with ease; and that at a time when the academical methods of depicting physiognomy obtained elsewhere in every direction. it necessitated their representing subjects to which, in accordance with the æsthetic views of the period, they would not otherwise have addressed themselves; it led them to discover beauties in spheres of life by which they would otherwise have been repelled. london, the capital of a free people ruling in all quarters of the globe, the home of millions, where intricate old corners and back streets left more space than in other cities for old-fashioned "characters," for odd, eccentric creatures and better-class charlatans of every description, afforded a ground peculiarly favourable for caricature. in this province, therefore, england holds the first place beyond dispute. [illustration: _l'art._ du maurier. a recollection of dieppe.] [illustration: _l'art._ du maurier. down to dinner.] direct from hogarth come the group of political caricaturists, in whom the sour, bilious temper of john bull lives on in a new and improved edition. men like _james gillray_ were a power in the political warfare of their time; bold liberals who fought for the cause of freedom with a divine rage and slashing irony, while at the same time they were masterly draughtsmen in a vehement and forceful style. the worst of it is, that the interest excited by political caricature is always of a very ephemeral nature. the antagonism of pitt and fox, shelburne and burke, the avarice and stupidity of george iii, the union, the conjugal troubles of the prince of wales, and the war with france, seem very uninteresting matters in these days. on the other hand, _rowlandson_, who was not purely a politician, appeals to us in an intelligible language even after a hundred years have gone by. like hogarth, he was the antithesis of a humorist. something bitter and gloomily pessimistic runs through all he touches. he is brutal, with an inborn power and an indecorous coarseness. his laughter is loud and his cursing barbarous. ear-piercing notes escape from the widely opened lips of his singers, and the tears come thickly from the eyes of his sentimental old ladies who are hanging on the declamation of a tragic actress. his comedy is produced by the simplest means. as a rule any sort of contrast is enough: fat and thin, big and little, young wife and old husband, young husband and old wife, shying horse and helpless rider on a sunday out. or else he brings the physical and moral qualities of his figures into an absurd contrast with their age, calling, or behaviour: musicians are deaf, dancing masters bandy-legged, servants wear the dresscoats and orders of lords, hideous old maids demean themselves like coquettes, parsons get drunk, and grave dignitaries of state dance the cancan. and so, when the servant gets a thrashing, and the coquette a refusal, and the diplomatist loses his orders by getting a fall, it is their punishment for having forgotten their proper place. they are all of them "careers on slippery ground," with the same punishments as hogarth delighted to depict. but rowlandson became another man when he set himself to represent the life of the people. [illustration: _l'art._ du maurier. a wintry walk.] [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ keene. from "our people." the perils of the deep.] born in july , in a narrow alley of old london, he grew up amidst the people. as a young man he saw paris, germany, and the low countries. he went regularly to all clubs where there was high play. as man, painter, and draughtsman alike, he stood in the midst of life. street scenes in paris and london engage his pencil, especially scenes from vauxhall gardens, the meeting-place of fashionable london, and there is often a touch of menzel in the palpitating life of these pictures--in these lords and ladies, fops and ballad-singers, who pass through the grounds of the gardens in a billowy stream. his illustrations include everything: soldiers, navvies, life at home and in the tavern, in town and in village, on the stage and behind the scenes, at masquerades and in parliament. when he died at seventy, on nd april , the obituaries were able to say of him with truth that he had drawn all england in the years between and . and all these leaves torn from the life of sailors and peasants, these fairs and markets, beggars, huntsmen, smiths, artizans, and day labourers, were not caricatures, but sketches keenly observed and sharply executed from life. his countrymen have at times a magnificent michelangelesque stir of life which almost suggests millet. he was fond of staying at fashionable watering-places, and came back with charming scenes from high life. but his peculiar field of observation was the poor quarter of london. here are the artizans, the living machines. endurance, persistence, and resignation may be read in their long, dismal, angular faces. here are the women of the people, wasted and hectic. their eyes are set deep in their sockets, their noses sharp and their skin blotched with red spots. they have suffered much and had many children; they have a sodden, depressed, stoically callous appearance; they have borne much, and can bear still more. and then the devastations of gin! that long train of wretched women who of an evening prostitute themselves in the strand to pay for their lodging! those terrible streets of london, where pallid children beg, and tattered spectres, either sullen or drunken, rove from public-house to public-house, with torn linen and rags hanging about them in shreds! the cry of misery rising from the pavement of great cities was first heard by rowlandson, and the pages on which he drew the poor of london are a living dance of death of the most ghastly veracity. but, curiously enough, this same man, who as an observer could be so uncompromisingly sombre, and so rough and brutal as a caricaturist, had also a wonderfully delicate feeling for feminine charm. in the pages he has devoted to the german waltz there lives again the chivalrous elegance of the period of werther, and that peculiarly english grace which is so fascinating in gainsborough. his young girls are graceful and wholesome in their round straw hats with broad ribbons; his pretty little wives in their white aprons and coquettish caps recall chardin. one feels that he has seen paris and appreciated the fine fragrance of watteau's pictures. [illustration: _mag. of art._ sir geo. reid. portrait of charles keene.] mention should also be made of _henry william bunbury_, who excelled in the drawing of horses and ponies. "a long story" is an excellent example of his powers as a caricaturist pure and simple. the variations rung on the theme of boredom and the self-centred and animated stupidity of the narrator have been vividly observed, and are earnestly rendered. rowlandson has the savage indignation of swift; bunbury is not savage, but he has the same english seriousness and something of the same brutality. the faces here are crapulous and distorted, and the subject is treated without lightness or good-nature. perhaps the english do not take their pleasures so very seriously, but undoubtedly they jest in earnest. yet bunbury's incisiveness and his thorough command of what it is his design to express assure him a distinct position as an artist. his "richmond hill" shows the pleasanter side of english character. the breeze billowing in the trees, the little lady riding by on her cob, the buxom dames in the shay, and the man spinning past on his curricle, give the scene a spirit of life and movement, besides rendering it an historical document of the period of social history that lies between _the virginians_ and _vanity fair_. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ keene. from "our people."] as a political caricaturist _george cruikshank_ has the same significance for england as henri monnier has for france, and the drawings of the latter often go straight back to the great english artist. but his first works in were children's books, and such simple delineations from the world of childhood and the life of society have done more to preserve his name than political caricatures. their touch of satire is only very slight. cruikshank's ladies panting under heavy chignons, his serious and exceedingly prosy dames pouring out tea for serious and not less ceremonious gentlemen, whilst the girls are galloping round hyde park on their thoroughbreds, accompanied by a brilliant escort of fashionable young men--they are all of them not so much caricatures as pictures freshly caught from life. he had a great sense for toilettes, balls, and parties. and he could draw with artistic observation and tender feeling the babbling lips and shining eyes of children, the shy confidence of the little ones, their timid curiosity and their bashful advances. and thus he opened up the way along which his disciples advanced with so much success. [illustration: klein. a travelling landscape painter.] the style of illustration has adapted itself to the altered character of english life. what at first constituted the originality of english caricaturists was their mordant satire. everything was painted in exceedingly vivid colours. whatever was calculated to bring out an idea in comic or brutal relief--great heads and little bodies, an absurd similarity between persons and animals, the afflorescence of costume--was seized upon eagerly. these artists fought for the weary and heavy-laden, and mercilessly lashed the cut-throats and charlatans. they delighted in spontaneous obscenity, exuberant vigour, and undisguised coarseness. men were shaken by a broad aristophanic laughter till they seemed like epileptics. at the time when the empire style came into england, gillray could dare to represent by speaking likenesses some of the best-known london beauties, in a toilette which the well developed madame tallien could not have worn with more assurance. such things were no longer possible when england grew out of her awkward age. after the time of gillray a complete change came over the spirit of english caricature. everything brutal or bitterly personal was abandoned. the clown put on his dress-clothes, and john bull became a gentleman. even by cruikshank's time caricature had become serious and well-bred. and his disciples were indeed not caricaturists at all, but addressed themselves solely to a delicately poetic representation of subjects. they know neither rowlandson's innate force and bitter laughter, nor the gallows humour and savagery of hogarth; they are amiable and tenderly grave observers, and their drawings are not caricatures, but charming pictures of manners. _punch_, which was founded in , has perhaps caught the social and political physiognomy of england in the middle of the nineteenth century with the greatest delicacy. it is a household paper, a periodical read by the youngest girls. all the piquant things with which the parisian papers are filled are therefore absolutely excluded. it scrupulously ignores the style of thing to which the _journal amusant_ owes three-fourths of its matter. every number contains one big political caricature, but otherwise it moves almost entirely in the region of domestic life. students flirting with pretty barmaids, neat little dressmakers carrying heavy bonnet-boxes and pursued by old gentlemen--even these are scenes which go a little too far for the refined tone of the paper which has been adapted to the drawing-room. [illustration: johann christoph erhard.] next to cruikshank, the nestor of caricature, must be mentioned _john leech_, who between and was the leading artist on _punch_. in his drawings there is already to be found the high-bred and fragrant delicacy of the english painting of the present time. they stand in relation to the whimsical and vigorous works of rowlandson as the fine _esprit_ of a rococo abbé to the coarse and healthy wit of rabelais. the mildness of his own temperament is reflected in his sketches. others have been the cause of more laughter, but he loved beauty and purity. men are not often drawn by him, or if he draws them they are always "pretty fellows," born gentlemen. his young women are not coquettish and _chic_, but simple, natural, and comely. the old english brutality and coarseness have become amiable, subtle, refined, mild, and seductive in john leech. he is a fine and delicate spirit, who seems very ethereal beside hogarth and rowlandson, those giants fed on roast-beef; he prefers to occupy himself with sport and boating, the season and its fashions, and is at home in public gardens, at balls, and at the theatre. here a pretty baby is being taken for an airing in hyde park by a tidy little nurse-maid, and there on mamma's arm goes a charming schoolgirl, who is being enthusiastically greeted by good-looking boys; here again a young wife is sitting by the fireside with a novel in her hand and her feet out of her slippers, while she looks dreamily at the glimmering flame. or a girl is standing on the shore in a large straw hat, with her hand shading her eyes and the wind fluttering her dress. even his "children of the mobility" are little angels of grace and purity, in spite of their rags. the background, be it room, street, or landscape, is merely given with a few strokes, but it is of more than common charm. every plate of leech has a certain fragrance and lightness of touch and a delicacy of line which has since been attained only by frederick walker. his simplicity of stroke recalls the old venetian woodcuts. there is not an unnecessary touch. everything is in keeping, everything has a significance. [illustration: erhard. a peasant scene.] leech's successor, _george du maurier_, is less delicate--that is to say, not so entirely and loftily æsthetic. he is less exclusively poetic, but lives more in actual life, and suffers less from the raw breath of reality. at the same time, his drawing is pithier and more incisive; one discerns his french training. in du maurier was a pupil of gleyre, and returned straight to england when leech's place on _punch_ became vacant by his death. since that time du maurier has been the head of the english school of drawing--of the diarists of that society which is displayed in hyde park during the season, and found in london theatres and dining-rooms, and in well-kept english pleasure grounds, at garden parties and tennis meetings, the leaders of clubs and drawing-rooms. his snobs rival those of thackeray, but he has also a special preference for the fair sex--for charming women and girls who race about the lawn at tennis in large hats and bright dresses, or sit by the fire in fashionable apartments, or hover through a ball-room waltzing in their airy skirts of tulle. the coquettishness of his little ones is entirely charming, and so too is the superior and comical exclusiveness of his æsthetically brought-up children, who will associate with no children not æsthetic. [illustration: erhard. a peasant family.] but the works of _charles keene_ are the most english of all. here the english reveal that complete singularity which distinguishes them from all other mortals. both as a draughtsman and as a humorist keene stands with the greatest of the century, on the same level as daumier and hokusai. an old bachelor, an original, a provincial living in the vast city, nothing pleased him better than to mix with the humbler class, to mount on the omnibus seat beside the driver, to visit a costermonger, or sit in a dingy suburban tavern. he led a bohemian life, and was, nevertheless, a highly respectable, economical, and careful man. trips into the country and little suppers with his friends constituted his greatest pleasures. he was a member of several glee clubs, and when he sat at home played the scotch bagpipes, to the horror of all his neighbours. during his last years his only company was an old dog, to which he, like poor tassaert, clung with a touching tenderness. all the less did he care about "the world." grace and beauty are not to be sought in his drawings. for him "society" did not exist. as du maurier is the chronicler of drawing-rooms, keene was the fine and unsurpassed observer of the people and of humble london life, and he extended towards them a friendly optimism and a brotherly sympathy. an endless succession of the most various, the truest, and the most animated types is contained in his work: mighty guardsmen swagger, cane in hand, burly and solemn; cabmen and omnibus drivers, respectable middle-class citizens, servants, hairdressers, the city police, waiters, muscular highlanders, corpulent self-made city men, the seething discontent of whitechapel; and here and there amidst them all incomparable old tradesmen's wives, and big, raw-boned village landladies in the highlands. keene has something so natural and self-evident in his whole manner of expression, that no one is conscious of the art implied by such drawing. amongst those living in his time only menzel could touch him as a draughtsman, and it was not through chance that each, in spite of their differences of temperament, greatly admired the other. keene bought every drawing of menzel's that he could get, and menzel at his death possessed a large collection of keene's sketches. [illustration: ludwig richter.] in the beginning of the century germany had no draughtsmen comparable for realistic impressiveness with rowlandson. at a time when the great art lay so completely bound in the shackles of the classic school, drawing, too, appeared only in traditional forms. the artist ventured to draw as he liked just as little as he ventured to paint anything at all as he saw it; for both there were rules and strait-waistcoats. almost everything that was produced in those years looks weak and flat to-day, forced in composition and amateurish in drawing. where rowlandson with his brusque powerful strokes recalls michael angelo or rembrandt, the germans have something laboured, diffident, and washed out. yet even here a couple of unpretentious etchers rise as welcome and surprising figures out of the tedious waste of academic production, though they were little honoured by their contemporaries. in their homely sketches, however, they have remained more classic than those who put on the classical garment as if for eternity. what the painter refused to paint, and the patrons of art who sought after ideas would not allow to count as a picture, because the subject seemed to them too poor, and the form too commonplace and undignified--military scenes at home and abroad, typical and soldierly figures from the great time of the war of liberation, the life of the people, the events of the day--was what the nuremberg friends, _johann adam klein_ and _johann christoph erhard_, diligently engraved upon copper with sympathetic care, and so left posterity a picture of german life in the beginning of the century that seems the more sincere and earnest because it has paid toll neither to style in composition nor to idealism. this invaluable klein was a healthy and sincere realist, from whom the æsthetic theories of the time recoiled without effect, and he had no other motive than to render faithfully whatever he saw. even in vienna, whither he came as a young man in , it was not the picture galleries which roused him to his first studies, but the picturesque national costumes of the wallachians, poles, and hungarians, and their horses and peculiar vehicles. a sojourn among the country manors of styria gave him opportunity for making a number of pretty sketches of rural life. in the warlike years and , with their marching and their bivouacs, he went about all day long drawing amongst the soldiers. even in rome it was not the statues that fascinated him, but the bright street scenes, the ecclesiastical solemnities, and the picturesque caravans of country people. and when he settled down in nuremburg, and afterwards in munich, he did not cease to be sensitive to all impressions that forced themselves on him in varying fulness. the basis of his art was faithful and loving observation of life as it was around him, the pure joy the genuine artist has in making a picture of everything he sees. [illustration: l. richter. home.] poor erhard, who at twenty-six ended his life by suicide, was a yet more delicate and sensitive nature. the marching of russian troops through his native town roused him to his first works, and even in these early military and canteen scenes he shows himself an exceptionally sharp and positive observer. the costumes, the uniforms, the teams and waggons, are drawn with decision and accuracy. from vienna he made walking tours to the picturesque regions of the schneeberg, wandered through salzburg and pinzgau, and gazed with wonder at the idyllic loveliness of nature as she is in these regions, on the cosy rooms of the peasants with their great tiled stoves and the sun-burnt figures of the country people. he had a heart for nature, an intimate, poetic, and profound love for what is humble and familiar--for homely meadows, trees, and streams, for groves and hedgerows, for quiet gardens and sequestered spots. he approached everything with observation as direct as a child's. both klein and he endeavoured to grasp a fragment of nature distinctly, and without any kind of transformation or generalisation; and this fresh, unvarnished, thoroughly german feeling for nature gives them, rather than mengs and carstens, the right to be counted as ancestors of the newer german art. [illustration: l. richter. the end of the day.] klein and erhard having set out in advance, others, such as haller von hallerstein, l. c. wagner, f. rechberger, f. moessmer, k. wagner, e. a. lebschée, and august geist, each after his own fashion, made little voyages of discovery into the world of nature belonging to their own country. but erhard, who died in , has found his greatest disciple in a young dresden master, whose name makes the familiar appeal of an old lullaby which suddenly strikes the ear amid the bustle of the world--in _ludwig richter_, familiar to all germans. richter himself has designated chodowiecki, gessner, and erhard as those whose contemplative love of nature guided him to his own path. what leech, that charming draughtsman of the child-world, was to the english, ludwig richter became for the germans. not that he could be compared with leech in artistic qualities. beside those of the british artist his works are like the exercises of a gifted amateur: they have a petty correctness and a _bourgeois_ neatness of line. but germans are quite willing to forget the artistic point of view in relation to their ludwig richter. sunny and childlike as he is, they love him too much to care to see his artistic failings. here is really that renowned german "_gemüth_" of which others make so great an abuse. [illustration: l. richter. spring.] "i am certainly living here in a rather circumscribed fashion, but in a very cheerful situation outside the town, and i am writing you this letter (it is sunday afternoon) in a shady arbour, with a long row of rose-bushes in bloom before me. now and then they are ruffled by a pleasant breeze--which is also the cause of a big blot being on this sheet, as it blew the page over." this one passage reveals the whole man. can one think of ludwig richter living in any town except dresden, or imagine him except in this dressing-gown, seated on a sunday afternoon in his shady arbour with the rose-bushes, and surrounded by laughing children? that profound domestic sentiment which runs through his works with a biblical fidelity of heart is reflected in the homeliness of the artist, who has remained all his life a big, unsophisticated child; and his autobiography, in its patriarchal simplicity, is like a refreshing draught from a pure mountain spring. richter survived into the present as an original type from a time long vanished. what old-world figures did he not see around him as a boy, when he went about, eager for novelty, with his grandfather, the copperplate printer, who in his leisure hours studied alchemy and the art of producing gold, and was surrounded by an innumerable quantity of clocks, ticking, striking, and making cuckoo notes in his dark workroom; or as he listened to his blind, garrulous grandmother, around whom the children and old wives of the neighbourhood used to gather to hear her tales. that was in , and two generations later, as an old man surrounded by his grandsons, he found once more the old, merry child life of his own home. and it was once more a fragment of the good old times, when on christmas eve the little band came shouting round the house of gingerbread from _hansel and gretel_ which grandfather had built out of real gingerbread after his own drawing. [illustration: l. richter. after work it's good to rest.] "if my art never entered amongst the lilies and roses on the summit of parnassus, it bloomed by the roads and banks, on the hedges and in the meadows, and travellers resting by the wayside were glad of it, and little children made wreaths and crowns of it, and the solitary lover of nature rejoiced in its colour and fragrance, which mounted like a prayer to heaven." richter had the right to inscribe these words in his diary on his eightieth birthday. through his works there echoes a humming and chiming like the joyous cry of children and the twitter of birds. even his landscapes are filled with that blissful and solemn feeling that sunday and the spring produce together in a lonely walk over field and meadow. the "_gemüthlichkeit_," the cordiality, of german family-life, with a trait of contemplative romance, could find such a charming interpreter in none but him, the old man who went about in his long loose coat and had the face of an ordinary village schoolmaster. only he who retained to his old age that childlike heart--to which the kingdom of heaven is given even in art--could really know the heart of the child's world, which even at a later date in germany was not drawn more simply or more graciously. his illustrations present an almost exhaustive picture of the life of the german people at home and in the world, at work and in their pleasure, in suffering and in joy. he follows it through all grades and all seasons of the year. everything is true and genuine, everything seized from life in its fulness: the child splashing in a tub; the lad shouting as he catches the first snowflake in his hat; the lovers seated whispering in their cosy little chamber, or wandering arm in arm on their "homeward way through the corn" amid the evening landscape touched with gold; the girl at her spinning-wheel and the hunter in the forest, the travelling journeyman, the beggar, the well-to-do philistine. the scene is the sitting-room or the nursery, the porch twined with vine, the street with old-fashioned overhanging storeys and turrets, the forest and the field with splendid glimpses into the hazy distance. children are playing round a great tree, labourers are coming back from the field, or the family is taking its rest in some hour of relaxation. a peaceful quietude and chaste purity spread over everything. certainly richter's drawing has something pedantic and unemphatic, that weak, generalising roundness which, beside the sharp, powerful stroke of the old artists, has the spirit of a drawing-master. but what he has to give is always influenced by delicate and loving observation, and never stands in contradiction to truth. he does not give the whole of nature, but neither does he give what is unnatural. he is one of the first of germans whose art did not spring from a negation of reality, produced by treating it on an arbitrary system, but rested instead upon tender reverie, transfigured into poetry. when in the fifties he stayed a summer in pleasant loschwitz, he wrote in his diary: "o god, how magnificent is the wide country round, from my little place upon the hill! so divinely beautiful, and so sensuously beautiful! the deep blue heaven, the wide green world, the bright and fair may landscape alive with a thousand voices." [illustration: wilhelm busch.] in all that generation, to whom existence seemed so sad, ludwig richter is one of the few who really felt content with the earth, and held the life around them to be the best and healthiest material for the artist. and that is the substance of the plate to which he gave the title "rules of art." a wide landscape stretches away with mighty oaks slanting down, and a purling spring from which a young girl is drawing water, whilst a high-road, enlivened by travellers young and old, runs over hill and dale into the sunny distance. in the midst of this free rejoicing world the artist is seated with his pencil. and above stands the motto written by richter's hand-- "und die sonne homer's, siehe sie lächelt auch uns." by the success of richter certain disciples were inspired to tread the same ground, although none of them equalled him in his charming human qualities. and least of all _oskar pletsch_, whose self-sufficient smile is soon recognised in all its emptiness. everything which in richter was genuine and original is in him flat, laboured, and prearranged. his landscapes, which in part are very pretty, are derived from r. schuster; what seems good in the children is richter's property, and what pletsch contributed is the conventionality. _albert hendschel_ also stood on richter's shoulders, but his popularity is more justifiable. even in these days one takes pleasure in his sketch-books, in which he immortalised the joy and sorrow of youth in such a delicious way. [illustration: _braun, munich._ oberlÄnder. variations on the kissing theme. rethel.] _eugen neureuther_ worked in munich, and as an etcher revelled in the charming play of arabesques and ornamental borders, and told of pleasant little scenes from the life of the bavarian people in his pretty peasant quatrains. [illustration: _braun, munich._ oberlÄnder. variations on the kissing theme. gabriel max.] the rise of caricature in germany dates from the year . though there are extant from the first third of the century no more than a few topical papers of no artistic importance, periodical publications, which soon brought a large number of vigorous caricaturists into notice, began to appear from that time, owing to the political agitations of the period. _kladderadatsch_ was brought out in berlin, and _fliegende blätter_ was founded in munich, and side by side with it _münchener bilderbogen_. but later generations will be referred _par excellence_ to _fliegende blätter_ for a picture of german life in the nineteenth century. what the painters of those years forgot to transmit is here stored up: a history of german manners which could not imaginably be more exact or more exhaustive. from the very first day it united on its staff of collaborators almost all the most important names in their own peculiar branch. schwind, spitzweg, that genial humorist, and many others whom the german people will not forget, won their spurs here, and were inexhaustible in pretty theatre scenes, satires on german and italian singing, memorial sketches of fanny elsler, of the inventor of the dress coat, etc., which enlivened the whole civilized world at that time. this elder generation of draughtsmen on _fliegende blätter_ were, indeed, not free from the guilt of producing stereotyped figures. the travelling englishman, the polish jew, the counter-jumper, the young painter, the rich boor, the stepmother, the housemaid, and the nervous countess are everywhere the same in the first volumes. in caricature, just as in "great art," they still worked a little in accordance with rules and conventions. to observe life with an objective unprejudiced glance, and to hold it fast in all its palpitating movement, was reserved for men of later date. [illustration: _braun, munich._ oberlÄnder. variations on the kissing theme. hans makart.] [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ adolf oberlÄnder.] two of the greatest humorists of the world in illustrative art, _wilhelm busch_ and _adolf oberländer_, stand at the head of those who ushered in the flourishing period of german caricature. they are masters, and take in with their glance the entire social world of our time, and in their brilliant prints they have made a history of civilisation for the epoch which will be more vivid and instructive for posterity than the most voluminous works of the greatest historians. their heads are known by lenbach's pictures. one has an exceptionally clever, expressive countenance--a thorough painter's head. the humorist may be recognised by the curious narrowing of one eye, the well-known eye of the humorist that sees everything, proves everything, and holds fast every absurdity in the gestures, every eccentricity in the bearing of his neighbour. that is wilhelm busch. [illustration: _braun, munich._ oberlÄnder. variations on the kissing theme. genelli.] [illustration: _braun, munich._ oberlÄnder. variations on the kissing theme. alma tadema.] in the large orbs of the other--orbs which seem to grow strangely wide by long gazing as at some fixed object--there is no smile of deliberate mischief, and it is not easy to associate the name of oberländer with this saturnian round face, with its curiously timid glance. one is reminded of the definition of humour as "smiling amid tears." even in those days when he came every year to munich and painted in lenbach's studio, busch was a shy and moody man, who thawed only in the narrowest circle of his friends: now he has buried himself in a market-town in the province of hanover, in wiedensahl, which, according to ritter's _gazetteer_, numbers eight hundred and twenty-eight inhabitants. he lives in the house of his brother-in-law, the clergyman of the parish, and gives himself up to the culture of bees. his laughter has fallen silent, and it is only a journal on bees that now receives contributions from his hand. but what works this hermit of wiedensahl produced in the days when he migrated from düsseldorf and antwerp to munich, and began in his series of sketches for _fliegende blätter_! the first were stiff and clumsy, the text in prose and not particularly witty. but the earliest work with a versified text, _der bauer und der windmüller_, contains in the germ all the qualities which later found such brilliant expression in _max und moritz_, in _der heilige antonius_, _die fromme helene_, and _die erlebnisse knopps,_ _des junggesellen_, and made busch's works an inexhaustible fountain of mirth and enjoyment. busch unites an uncommonly sharp eye with a marvellously flexible hand. wild as his subjects generally are, he solves the greatest difficulties as easily as though they were child's play. his heroes appear in situations of the most urgent kind, which place their bodily parts in violent and exceedingly uncomfortable positions: they thrash others or get thrashed themselves, they stumble or fall. and in what a masterly way are all these anomalies seized, the boldest foreshortenings and the most flying movements! untrained eyes see only a scrawl, but for those who know how to look, a drawing by busch is life itself, freed from all unnecessary detail, and marked down in its great characteristic lines. and amid all this simplification, what knowledge there is under the guise of carelessness, and what fine calculation! busch is at once simpler and more inventive than the english. with a maze of flourishes run half-mad, and a few points and blotches, he forms a sparkling picture. with the fewest possible means he hits the essential point, and for that reason he is justly called by grand cartaret the classic of caricaturists, _le roi de la charge et la bouffonnerie_. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ debucourt. in the kitchen.] _oberländer_, without whom it would be impossible to imagine _fliegende blätter_, has not fallen silent. he works on, "fresh and splendid as on the first day." a gifted nature like busch, he possesses, at the same time, that fertility of which dürer said: "a good painter is inwardly complete and opulent, and were it possible for him to live eternally, then by virtue of those inward ideas of which plato writes he would be always able to pour something new into his works." it is now thirty years ago that he began his labours for _fliegende blätter_, and since that time some drawing of his, which has filled every one with delight, has appeared almost every week. kant said that providence has given men three things to console them amid the miseries of life--hope, sleep, and laughter. if he is right, oberländer is amongst the greatest benefactors of mankind. every one of his new sketches maintains the old precious qualities. it might be said that, by the side of the comedian busch, oberländer seems a serious psychologist. wilhelm busch lays his whole emphasis on the comical effects of simplicity; he knows how to reduce an object in a masterly fashion to its elemental lines, which are comic in themselves by their epigrammatic pregnancy. he calls forth peals of laughter by the farcical spirit of his inventions and the boldness with which he renders his characters absurd. he is also the author of his own letterpress. his drawings are unimaginable without the verse, without the finely calculated and dramatic succession of situations growing to a catastrophe. oberländer gets his effect purely by means of the pictorial elements in his representation, and attains a comical result, neither by the distorted exaggeration of what is on the face of the matter ridiculous, nor by an elementary simplification, but by a refined sharpening of character. it seems uncanny that a man should have such eyes in his head; there is something almost visionary in the way he picks out of everything the determining feature of its being. and whilst he faintly exaggerates what is characteristic and renders it distinct, his picture is given a force and power of conviction to which no previous caricaturist has attained, with so much discretion at the same time. no one has attained the drollness of oberländer's people, animals, and plants. he draws _à la_ max, _à la_ makart, rethel, genelli, or piloty, hunts in the desert or theatrical representations, renaissance architecture run mad or the most modern european mashers. he is as much at home in the cameroons as in munich, and in transferring the droll scenes of human life to the animal world he is a classic. he sports with hens, herrings, dogs, ducks, ravens, bears, and elephants as hokusai does with his frogs. beside such animals all the reinecke series of wilhelm kaulbach look like "drawings from the copybook of little moritz." and landscapes which in their tender intimacy of feeling seem like anticipations of cazin sometimes form the background of these creatures. one can scarcely err in supposing that posterity will place certain plates from the work of this quiet, amiable man beside the best which the history of drawing has anywhere to show. [illustration: debucourt. the promenade.] the _charivari_ takes its place with _punch_ and _fliegende blätter_. in the land of rabelais also caricature has flourished since the opening of the century, in spite of official masters who reproached her with desecrating the sacred temple of art, and in spite of the gendarmes who put her in gaol. here, too, it was the draughtsmen who first broke with æsthetic prejudices, and saw the laughing and the weeping dramas of life with an unprejudiced glance. debucourt and carle vernet, the pair who made their appearance immediately after the storms of the revolution, are alike able and charming artists, who depict the pleasures of the salon in a graceful style; and they rival the great satirists on the other side of the channel in the incisiveness of their drawing, and frequently even surpass them by the added charm of colour. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ monnier. a chalk drawing.] _carle vernet_, originally an historical painter, remembered that he had married the daughter of the younger moreau, and set himself to portray the doings of the _jeunesse dorée_ of the end of the eighteenth century in his _incroyables_ and his _merveilleuses_. crazy, eccentric, and superstitious, he divided his time afterwards between women and his club-fellows, horses and dogs. he survives in the history of art as the chronicler of sport, hunting, racing, and drawing-room and café scenes. _louis philibert debucourt_ was a pupil of vien, and had painted _genre_ pictures in the spirit of greuze before he turned in to colour engraving. in this year appeared the pretty "menuet de la mariée," with the peasant couples dancing, and the dainty châtelaine who laughingly opens the ball with the young husband. after that he had found his specialty, and in the last decade of the eighteenth century he produced the finest of his colour engravings. in there is the wonderful promenade in the gallery of the palais royal, with its swarming crowd of young officers, priests, students, shop-girls, and _cocottes_; in "grandmother's birthday," "friday forenoon at the parisian bourse," and many others. the effects of technique which he achieved by means of colour engraving are surprising. a freshness like that of water colour lies on these yellow straw hats, lightly rouged cheeks, and rosy shoulders. to white silk cloaks trimmed with fur he gives the iridescence of a robe by netscher. if there survived nothing except debucourt from the whole art of the eighteenth century, he would alone suffice to give an idea of the entire spirit of the time. only one note would be wanting, the familiar simplicity of chardin. the smiling grace of greuze, the elegance of watteau, and the sensuousness of boucher--he has them all, although they are weakened in him, and precisely by his affectation is he the true child of his epoch. the crowd which is promenading beneath the trees of the palais royal in is no longer the same which fills the drawing-rooms of versailles and petit trianon in the pages of cochin. the faces are coarser and more plebeian. red waistcoats with _breloques_ as large as fists, and stout canes with great gold tops, make the costume of the men loud and ostentatious, while eccentric hats, broad sashes, and high coiffures bedizen the ladies more than is consistent with elegance. at the same time, debucourt gives this democracy an aristocratic bearing. his prostitutes look like duchesses. his art is an attenuated echo of the _rococo_ period. in him the _décadence_ is embodied, and all the grace and elegance of the century is once more united, although it has become more _bourgeois_. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ monnier. joseph proudhomme.] the empire again was less favourable to caricature. not that there was any want of material, but the censorship kept a strict watch over the welfare of france. besides, the artists who made their appearance after david lived on olympus, and would have nothing to do with the common things of life. neither draughtsmen nor engravers could effect anything so long as they saw themselves overlooked by a greek or roman phantom as they bent over their paper or their plate of copper, and felt it their duty to suggest the stiff lines of antique statues beneath the folds of modern costume. [illustration: _l'art._ honorÉ daumier.] _bosio_ was the genuine product of this style. every one of his pictures has become tedious, because of a spurious classicism to which he adhered with inflexible consistency. he cannot draw a grisette without seeing her with david's eyes. it deprives his figures of truth and interest. something of the correctness of a schoolmistress is peculiar to them. his grace is too classic, his merriment too well-bred, and everything in them too carefully arranged to give the idea of scenes rapidly depicted from life. beauty of line is offered in place of spontaneity of observation, and even the character of the drawing is lost in a pedantic elegance which envelopes everything with the uniformly graceful veil of an insipidly fluent outline. as soon as romanticism had broken with the classic system, certain great draughtsmen, who laid a bold hand on modern life without being shackled by æsthetic formulæ, came to the front in france. _henri monnier_, the eldest of them, was born a year after the proclamation of the empire. cloaks, plumes, and sabretasches were the first impressions of his youth; he saw the return of triumphant armies and heard the fanfare of victorious trumpets. the old guard remained his ideal, the inglorious kingship of the restoration his abhorrence. he was a supernumerary clerk in the department of justice when in his first brochure, _moeurs administratives dessinées d'aprés nature par henri monnier_, disclosed to his superiors that the eyes of this poor young man in the service of the ministry had seen more than they should have done. dismissed from his post, he was obliged to support himself by his pencil, and became the chronicler of the epoch. in monnier's prints breathes the happy paris of the good old times, a paris which in these days scarcely exists even in the provinces. his "joseph proudhomme," from his shoe-buckles to his stand-up collar, from his white cravat to his blue spectacles, is as immortal as _eisele und beisele_, _schulze und müller_, or molière's _bourgeois gentilhomme_. monnier himself is his own proudhomme. he is the philistine in paris, enjoying little parisian idylls with a _bourgeois_ complacency. with him there is no distinction between beautiful and ugly; he finds that everything in nature can be turned to account. how admirably the different worlds of parisian society are discriminated in his _quartiers de paris_! how finely he has portrayed the grisette of the period, with her following of young tradesmen and poor students! as yet she has not blossomed into the fine lady, the luxurious _blasée_ woman of the next generation. she is still the bashful _modiste_ or dressmaker's apprentice whose outings in the country are described by paul de kock, a pretty child in a short skirt who lives in an attic and dresses up only when she goes to the theatre or into the country on a sunday. monnier gives her an air of good-nature, something delightfully childlike. in the society of her adorers she is content with the cheapest pleasures, drinks cider and eats cakes, rides on a donkey or breakfasts amid the trees, and hardly coquets at all when a fat old gentleman follows her on the boulevards. these innocent flirtations remind one as little of the more recent _lorettes_ of gavarni as these in their turn anticipate the drunken street-walkers of rops. [illustration: _l'art._ daumier. the connoisseurs.] under louis philippe began the true modern period of french caricature, the flourishing time when really great artists devoted themselves to it. it never raised its head more proudly than under the _bourgeois_ king, whose onion head always served the relentless philippon as a target for his wit. it was never armed in more formidable fashion; it never dealt more terrible blows. charles philippon's famous journal _la caricature_ was the most powerful lever that the republicans used against the "july government"; it was equally feared by the ministry, the _bourgeoisie_, and the throne. when the _charivari_ followed _la caricature_ in , political cartoons began to give way to the simple portraiture of manners in french life. the powder made for heavy guns exploded in a facile play of fireworks improvised for the occasion. french society in the nineteenth century has to thank principally _daumier_ and _gavarni_ for being brought gradually within the sphere of artistic representation. these men are usually called caricaturists, yet they were in reality the great historians of their age. through long years they laboured every week and almost every day at their great history, which embraced thousands of chapters--at a true zoology of the human species; and their work, drawn upon stone in black and white, proves them not merely genuine historians, but really eminent artists who merit a place beside the greatest. [illustration: _l'art._ daumier. the mountebanks. (_by permission of m. eugène montrosier, the owner of the picture._)] when in his young days daubigny trod the pavement of the sistine chapel in rome, he is said to have exclaimed in astonishment, "that looks as if it had been done by daumier!" and from that time daumier was aptly called the michael angelo of caricature. even when he is laughing there is a florentine inspiration of the terrible in his style, a grotesque magnificence, a might suggestive of buonarotti. in the period before he dealt the constitutional monarchy crushing blows by his drawings. "le ventre legislatif" marks the furthest point to which political caricature ever ventured in france. but when he put politics on one side and set himself free from philippon, this same man made the most wonderful drawings from life. his "robert macaire" giving instructions to his clerk as a tradesman, sending his patients exorbitant bills as doctor to the poor, lording it over the bourse as banker, taking bribes as juryman, and fleecing a peasant as land-agent, is the incarnation of the _bourgeois_ monarchy, a splendid criticism on the money-grubbing century. politicians, officials, artists, actors, honest citizens, old-clothes-mongers, newspaper-boys, impecunious painters, the most various and the basest creatures are treated by his pencil, and appear on pages which are often terrible in their depth and truthfulness of observation. the period of louis philippe is accurately portrayed in these prints, every one of which belongs to the great volume of the human tragicomedy. in his "Émotions parisiennes" and "bohémiens de paris" he deals with misfortune, hunger, the impudence of vice, and the horror of misery. his "histoire ancienne" ridiculed the absurdity of classicism _à la_ david at a time when it was still regarded as high treason to touch this sacred fane. these modern figures with the classical pose, which to some extent parodied david's pictures, were probably what first brought his contemporaries to a sense of the stiffness and falsity of the whole movement; and at a later period offenbach also contributed his best ideas with much the same result. moreover, daumier was a landscape-painter of the first order. no one has more successfully rendered the appearance of bridges and houses, of quays and streets under a downpour, of nature enfeebled as it is in the precincts of paris. he was an instantaneous photographer without a rival, a physiognomist such as breughel was in the sixteenth century, jan steen and brouwer in the seventeenth, and chodowiecki in the eighteenth, with the difference that his drawing was as broad and powerful as chodowiecki's was delicate and refined. this inborn force of line, suggestive of jordaens, places his sketches as high, considered as works of art, as they are invaluable as historical documents. the treatment is so summary, the outline so simplified, the pantomime, gesticulation, and pose always so expressive; and daumier's influence on several artists is beyond doubt. millet, the great painter of peasants, owes much to the draughtsman of the _bourgeois_. precisely what constitutes his "style," the great line, the simplification, the intelligent abstention from anecdotic trifles, are things which he learnt from daumier. during the years when he drew for the _charivari_, _gavarni_ was the exact opposite of daumier. in the one was a forceful strength, in the other a refined grace; in the one brusque and savage observation and almost menacing sarcasm, in the other the wayward mood of the butterfly flitting lightly from flower to flower. daumier might be compared with rabelais; gavarni, the _spirituel_ journalist of the _grand monde_ and the _demi-monde_, the draughtsman of elegance and of _roués_ and _lorettes_, might be compared with molière. born of poor parentage in paris in , and in his youth a mechanician, he supported himself from the year by fashion prints and costume drawings. he undertook the conduct of a fashion journal, _les gens du monde_, and began it with a series of drawings from the life of the _jeunesse dorée_: _les lorettes_, _les actrices_, _les fashionables_, _les artistes_, _les Étudiants de paris_, _les bals masqués_, _les souvenirs du carnaval_, _la vie des jeunes hommes_. a new world was here revealed with bold traits. the women of daumier are good, fat mothers, always busy, quick-witted, and of an enviable constitution; women who are careful in the management of their household, and who go to market and take their husband's place at his office when necessary. in gavarni the women are piquant and given to pouting, draped in silk and enveloped in soft velvet mantles. they are fond of dining in the _cabinet particulier_, and of scratching the name of their lover, for the time being, upon crystal mirrors. [illustration: _l'art._ daumier. in the assize court.] [illustration: _quantin, paris._ daumier. "la voilÀ ... ma maison de campagne."] gavarni was the first who seized the worldly side of modern life; he portrayed elegant figures full of _chic_, and gave them a garb which fitted them exactly. in his own dress he had a taste for what was dandified, and he plunged gaily into the enjoyment of the parisian life which eddied around in a whirl of pleasure. the present generation feels that the air in such old journals of fashion is heavy. in every work of art there is, in addition to what endures, a fine perfume that evaporates after a certain number of years, and is no longer perceptible to those who come afterwards. what is fresh and modern to-day looks to-morrow like the dried flowers which the botanist keeps in a herbarium. and those who draw the fashions of their age are specially liable to this swift decay. thus many of gavarni's lithographs have the effect of pallid pictures of a vanished world. but the generation of honoured in him the same _charmeur_, the same master of enamoured grace, which that of had done in watteau. he was sought after as an inventor of fashions, whom the tailor humann, the worth of the "july monarchy," regarded as his rival. he was the discoverer of all the fairy costumes which formed the chief attraction at masquerades and theatres, the delicate _gourmet_ of the eternal feminine; and having dangled much after women, he knew how to render the wave of a petticoat, the seductive charm of a well-proportioned leg, and the coquettishness of a new _coiffure_ with the most familiar connoisseurship. he has been called the balzac of draughtsmen. and the sentences at the bottom of his sketches, for which he is also responsible, are as audacious as the pictures themselves. thus, when the young exquisite in the series "la vie des jeunes hommes" stands with his companion before a skeleton in the anthropological museum, the little woman opines with a shudder, "when one thinks that this is a man, and that women love _that_"! [illustration: _quantin, paris._ daumier. menelaus the victor.] but that is only one side of the sphinx. he is only half known when one thinks only of the draughtsman of ladies' fashions who celebrated the free and easy graces of the _demi-monde_ and the wild licence of the carnival. at bottom gavarni was not a frivolous butterfly, but an artist of a strangely sombre imagination, a profound and melancholy philosopher who had a prescience of all the mysteries of life. all the mighty problems which the century produced danced before his spirit like spectral notes of interrogation. the transition was made when, as an older man, he depicted the cold, sober wakening that follows the wild night. _constantin guys_ had already worked on these lines. he was an unfortunate and ailing man, who passed his existence, like verlaine, in hospital, and died in an almshouse. guys has not left much behind him, but in that little he shows himself the true forerunner of the moderns, and it is not a mere chance that baudelaire, the ancestor of the _décadence_, established guys' memory. these women who wander aimlessly about the streets with weary movements and heavy eyes deadened with absinthe, and who flit through the ball-room like bats, have nothing of the innocent charm of monnier's grisettes. they are the uncanny harbingers of death, the demoniacal brides of satan. guys exercised on gavarni an influence which brought into being his _invalides du sentiment_, his _lorettes vieilles_, and his _fourberies de femmes_. "the pleasure of all creatures is mingled with bitterness." the frivolous worldling became a misanthrope from whom no secret of the foul city was hidden; a pessimist who had begun to recognise the human brute, the swamp-flower of over-civilisation, the "bitter fruit which is inwardly full of ashes," in the queen of the drawing-room as in the prostitute of the gutter. henceforth he only recognises a love whose pleasures are to be reckoned amongst the horrors of death. his works could be shown to no lady, and yet they are in no sense frivolous: they are terrible and puritanic. if daumier by preference showed mastery in his men, gavarni showed it in his women as no other has done. he is not the powerful draughtsman that daumier is; he has not the feeling for large movement, but with what terrible directness he analyses faces! he has followed woman through all seasons of life and in every grade, from youth to decay, and from brilliant wealth to filthy misery, and he has written the story of the _lorette_ in monumental strophes: café chantant, villa in the champs elysées, equipage, grooms, bois de boulogne, procuress, garret, and radish-woman, that final incarnation which victor hugo called the sentence of judgment. [illustration: gavarni.] and gavarni went further on this road. his glance became sharper and sharper, and the seriousness of meditation subdued his merriment; he came to the study of his age with the relentless knife of a vivisectionist. fate had taught him the meaning of the struggle for existence. a journal he had founded in the thirties overwhelmed him with debts. in he sat in the prison of clichy, and from that time he meditated on the miserable, tattered creatures whom he saw around him, with other eyes. he studied the toiling masses, and roamed about in slums and wine-caves amongst pickpockets and bullies. and what paris had not yet revealed to him, he learnt in in london. even there he was not the first-comer. géricault, who as early as dived into the misery of the vast city, and brought out a series of lithographs, showed him the way. beggars cowering half dead with exhaustion at a baker's door, ragged pipers slouching round deserted quarters of the town, poor crippled women wheeled in barrows by hollow-eyed men past splendid mansions and surrounded by the throng of brilliant equipages--these are some of the scenes which he brought home with him from london. but gavarni excels him in trenchant incisiveness. "what is to be seen in london gratis," runs the heading of a series of sketches in which he conjures up on paper, in such a terrible manner, the new horrors of this new period: the starvation, the want, and the measureless suffering that hides itself with chattering teeth in the dens of the great city. he went through whitechapel from end to end, and studied its drunkenness and its vice. how much more forcible are his beggars than those of callot! the grand series of "thomas vireloque" is a dance of death in life; and in it are stated all the problems which have since disturbed our epoch. by this work gavarni has come down to us as a contemporary, and by it he has become a pioneer. the enigmatical figure of "thomas vireloque" starts up in these times, following step by step in the path of his prototype: he is the philosopher of the back streets, the ragged scoundrel with dynamite in his pocket, the incarnation of the _bête humaine_, of human misery and human vice. here gavarni stands far above hogarth and far above callot. the ideas on social politics of the first half of the century are concentrated in "thomas vireloque." [illustration: _baschet._ gavarni. thomas vireloque.] of course the assumption of government by napoleon iii marked a new phase in french caricature. it became more mundane and more highly civilised. all the piquancy and brilliance, waywardness and corruption, looseness and amenity, mirth and affectation of this refined city life, which in those days threw its dazzling splendour over all europe, found intelligent and subtle interpreters in the young generation of draughtsmen. the _journal pour rire_ comes under consideration as the leading paper. it was founded in , and in assumed the title of _journal amusant_, under which it is known at the present day. [illustration: _hetzel, paris._ gavarni. fourberies de femmes. _au premier mosieu._--"attendez-moi ce soir, de quatre à cinq heures, quai de l'horloge du palais.--_votre_ augustine." _au deuxième mosieu._--"ce soir, quai des lunettes, entre quatre et cinq heures.--_votre_ augustine." _au troisième mosieu._--"quai des morfondus, ce soir, de quatre heures à cinq.--_votre_ augustine." _À un quatrième mosieu._--"je t'attends ce soir, à quatre heures.--_ton_ augustine."] _gustave doré_, to the lessening of his importance, moved on this ground only in his earliest period. he was barely sixteen and still at school in his native town burg, in alsace, when he made an agreement with philippon, who engaged him for three years on the _journal pour rire_. his first drawings date from : "les animaux socialistes," which were very suggestive of grandville, and "désagréments d'un voyage d'agrément"--something like the german _herr und frau buchholz in der schweiz_--which made a considerable sensation by their grotesque wit. in his series "les différents publics de paris" and "la ménagerie parisienne" he represented with an incisive pencil the opera, the _théâtre des italiens_, the circus, the _odéon_ and the _jardin des plantes_. but since that time the laurels of historical painting have given him no rest. he turned away from his own age as well as from caricature, and made excursions into all zones and all periods. he visited the inferno with dante, lingered in palestine with the patriarchs of the old testament, and ran through the world of wonders with perrault. the facility of his invention was astonishing, and so too was the aptness with which he seized for illustration on the most vivid scenes from all authors. but he has too much classicism to be captivating for very long. his compositions dazzle by an appearance of the grand style, but attain only an outward and scenical effect. his figures are academic variations of types originally established by the greeks and the cinquescentisti. he forced his talent when he soared into regions where he could not stand without the support of his predecessors. even in his "don quixote" the figures lose in character the larger they become. everything in doré is calligraphic, judicious, without individuality, without movement and life, composed in accordance with known rules. there is a touch of wiertz in him, both in his imagination and in his design, and his youthful works, such as the "swiss journey," in which he merely drew from observation without pretensions to style, will probably last the longest. in broad lithographs and charming woodcuts, _cham_ has been the most exhaustive in writing up the diary of modern parisian life during the period - . the celebrated caricaturist--he has been called the most brilliant man in france under napoleon iii--had worked in the studio of delaroche at the same time as jean françois millet. after he came forward as cham (his proper name was count amadée de noë) with drawings which soon made him the artist most in demand on the staff of the _charivari_. neither so profound nor so serious as gavarni, he has a constant sparkle of vivacity, and is a draughtsman of wonderful _verve_. in his reviews of the month and of the year, everything which interested paris in the provinces of invention and fashion, art and literature, science and the theatre, passes before us in turn: the omnibuses with their high imperials, table-turning and spirit-rapping, the opening of the _grands magasins du louvre_, madame ristori, the completion of the suez canal, the first newspaper kiosks, new year's day in paris, the invention of ironclads, the tunnelling of mont cenis, gounod's _faust_, patti and nilsson, the strike of the tailors and hat-makers, jockeys and racing. everything that excited public attention had a close observer in cham. his caricatures of the works of art in the salon were full of spirit, and the international exhibition of found in him its classic chronicler. here all the mysterious paris of the third napoleon lives once more. emperors and kings file past, the band of strauss plays, gipsies are dancing, equipages roll by, and every one lives, loves, flirts, squanders money, and whirls round in a maëlstrom. but the end of the exhibition betokened the end of all that splendour. in cham's plates which came next one feels that there is thunder in the air. neither fashions nor theatres, neither women nor pleasure, could prevent politics from predominating more and more: the fall of napoleon was drawing near. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ gavarni. phÈdre at the thÉÂtre franÇais.] [illustration: _quantin, paris._ gavarni. "ce qui me manque À moi? une 'tite mÈre comme Ça, qu'aurait soin de mon linge."] there was a greater division of labour amongst those who followed cham, since one chose "little women" as a speciality, another the theatre, and another high-life. assisted by photography, _nadar_ turned again to portraiture, which had been neglected since daumier, and enjoyed a great success with his series "les contemporains de nadar." _marcellin_ is the first who spread over his sketches from the world of fashions and the theatre all the _chic_ and fashionable glitter which lives in the novels of those years. he is the chronicler of the great world, of balls and _soirées_; he shows the opera and the _théâtre des italiens_, tells of hunting and racing, attends the drives in the corso, and at the call of fashion promptly deserts the stones of paris to look about him in châteaux and country-houses, seaside haunts in france, and the little watering-places of germany, where the gaming-tables formed at that time the rendezvous of well-bred paris. baden-baden, where all the lions of the day, the politicians and the artists and all the beauties of the paris salons, met together in july, offered the draughtsman a specially wide field for studies of fashion and _chic_. here began the series "histoires des variations de la mode depuis le xvi siècle jusqu'à nos jours." in a place where all classes of society, the great world and the _demi-monde_, came into contact, marcellin could not avoid the latter, but even when he verged on this province he always knew how to maintain a correct and distinguished bearing. he was peculiarly the draughtsman of "society," of that brilliant, pleasure-loving, tainted, and yet refined society of the second empire which turned paris into a great ball-room. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ guys. study of a woman.] _randon_ is as plebeian as marcellin is aristocratic. his speciality is the stupid recruit who is marched through the streets with his "squad," or the retired tradesman of small means, as daudet has hit him off in m. chèbe, the old gentleman seated on a bench in the bois de boulogne: "let the little ones come to me with their nurses." his province includes everything that has nothing to do with _chic_. the whole life of the parisian people, the horse-fairs, the races at poissy, and all the more important occurrences by which the appearance of the city has been transformed, may be followed in his drawings. when he travelled he did not go to watering-places, but to the provinces, to cherbourg and toulon, or to the manufacturing towns of belgium and england, where he observed life at the railway stations and the custom-house, at markets and in barracks, at seaports and upon the street. goods that are being piled together, sacks that are being hoisted, ships being brought to anchor, storehouses, wharfs, and docks--everywhere there is as much life in his sketches as in a busy beehive. nature is a great manufactory, and man a living machine. the world is like an ant-hill, the dwelling of curious insects furnished with teeth, feelers, indefatigable feet, and marvellous organs proper for digging, sawing, building, and all things possible, but furnished also with an incessant hunger. soon afterwards there came _hadol_, who made his début in , with pictures of the fashions; _stop_, who specially represented the provinces and italy; _draner_, who occupied himself with the parisian ballet and designed charming military uniforms for little dancing girls. _léonce petit_ drew peasants and sketched the charms of the country in a simple, familiar fashion--the mortal tedium of little towns, poor villages, and primitive inns, the gossip of village beldames before the house-door, the pompous dignity of village magistrates or of the head of the fire brigade. he is specially noteworthy as a landscape artist. the trees on the straight, monotonous road rise softly and delicately into the air, and the sleepy sameness of tortuous village streets is pregnantly rendered by a few strokes of the pencil. the land is like a great kitchen garden. the fields and the arable ground with their dusty, meagre soil chant a mighty song of hard labour, of the earnest, toilsome existence of the peasant folk. [illustration: _journal amusant._ grÉvin. nos parisiennes. "tiens! ne me parle pas de lui, je ne peux pas le souffrir, même en peinture!" "cependant, s'il t'offrait de t'epouser?" "Ça, c'est autre chose."] _andrieux_ and _morland_ discovered the _femme entretenue_, though afterwards her best known delineator was _grévin_, an able, original, facile, and piquant draughtsman, whom some--exaggerating beyond a doubt--called the direct successor of gavarni. grévin's women are a little monotonous, with their ringleted chignons, their expressionless eyes which try to look big, their perverse little noses, their defiant, pouting lips, and the cheap toilettes which they wear with so much _chic_. but they too have gone to their rest with the grisettes of monnier and gavarni, and have left the field to the women of mars and forain. in these days grévin's work seems old-fashioned, since it is no longer modern and not yet historical; nevertheless it marks an epoch, like that of gavarni. the _bals publics_, the _bals de l'opéra_, those of the _jardin mabille_, the _closerie des lilas_, the races, the promenades in the _bois de vincennes_, the seaside resorts, all places where the _demi-monde_ pitched its tent in the time of napoleon iii, were also the home of the artist. "how they love in paris" and "winter in paris" were his earliest series. his finest and greatest drawings, the scenes from the parisian hotels and "the english in paris," appeared in , the year of the exhibition. his later series, published as albums--"les filles d'Ève," "le monde amusant," "fantaisies parisiennes," "paris vicieux," "la chaîne des dames"--are a song of songs upon the refinements of life. it does not lie within the plan of this book to follow the history of drawing any further. our intention was merely to show that painting had to follow the path trodden by rowlandson and cruikshank, erhard and richter, daumier and gavarni, if it was to be art of the nineteenth century, and not to remain for ever dependent on the old masters. absolute beauty is not good food for art; to be strong it must be nourished on the ideas of the century. when the world had ceased to draw inspiration from the masterpieces of the past merely with the object of depicting by their aid scenes out of long-buried epochs, there was for the first time a prospect that mere discipleship would be overcome, and that a new and original painting would be developed through the fresh and independent study of nature. the passionate craving of the age had to be this: to feel at home on the earth, in this long-neglected world of reality, which hides the unsuspected treasure of vivid works of art. the rising sun is just as beautiful now as on the first day, the streams flow, the meadows grow green, the vibrating passions are at war now as in other times, the immortal heart of nature still beats beneath its rough covering, and its pulsation finds an echo in the heart of man. it was necessary to descend from ideals to existing fact, and the world had to be once more discovered by painters as in the days of the first renaissance. the question was how by the aid of all the devices of colour to represent the multifarious forms of human activity: the phases and conditions of life, fashion as well as misery, work and pleasure, the drawing-room and the street, the teeming activity of towns and the quiet labour of peasants. the essential thing was to write the entire natural history of the age. and this way, the way from museums to nature, and from the past to the world of living men, was shown by the english to the french and german painters. [illustration: _mansell photo._ romney. serena.] chapter xvii english painting to "the english school has an advantage over others in being young: its tradition is barely a century old, and, unlike the continental schools, it is not hampered by antiquated greek and latin theories. what fortunate conditions it has for breaking away into really modern work! whereas in other nations the weight of tradition presses hard on the boldest innovators. the english do not look back; on the contrary, they look into life around them." so wrote burger-thoré in one of his salons in . yet england was not unaffected by the retrospective tendency on the continent. perhaps it might even be demonstrated that this movement had its earliest origin on british soil. england had its "empire style" in architecture fifty years before there was any empire in france; it had its classical painting when david worked at cupids with boucher, and it gave the world a romanticist at the very time when the literature of the continent became "classical." _the lady of the lake_, _marmion_, _the lord of the isles_, _the fair maid of perth_, _old mortality_, _ivanhoe_, _quentin durward_, who is there that does not know these names by heart? we have learnt history from walter scott, and that programme of the artistic crafts which lorenz gedon drew up in , when he arranged the department _works of our fathers_ in the munich exhibition, had been carried out by scott as early as . for scott laid out much of the money he received for his romances in building himself a castle in the style of the baronial strongholds of the middle ages: "towers and turrets all imitated from a royal building in scotland, windows and gables painted with the arms of the clans, with lions couchant," rooms "filled with high sideboards and carved chests, targes, plaids, highland broadswords, halberts, and suits of armour, and adorned with antlers hung up as trophies." here was a makartesque studio very many years before makart. amongst the painters there were classicists and romanticists; but they were neither numerous nor of importance. what england produced in the way of "great art" in the beginning of last century could be erased from the complete chart of british painting without any essential gap being made in the course of its development. reynolds had had to pay dear for approaching the italians in his "ugolino," his "macbeth," and his "young hercules." and a yet more arid mannerism befell all the others who followed him on the way to italy, among them _james barry_, who, after studying for years in italy, settled down in london in , with the avowed intention of providing england with a classical form of art. he believed that he had surpassed his own models, the italian classic painters, by six pompous representations of the "culture and progress of human knowledge," which he completed in , in the theatre of the society for the encouragement of arts. the many-sided _james northcote_, equally mediocre in everything, survives rather by his biographies of reynolds and titian than by the great canvases which he painted for boydell's shakespeare gallery. that which became best known was "the murder of the children in the tower." _henry fuseli_, who was also much occupied with authorship and as _preceptor britanniæ_, always mentioned with great respect by his numerous pupils, produced a series of exceedingly thoughtful and imaginative works, to which he was incited by klopstock and lavater. by preference he illustrated milton and shakespeare, and amongst this series of pictures his painting of "titania with the ass," from shakespeare's _midsummer night's dream_, in the london national gallery, is probably the best. his pupil _william etty_ was saturated with the traditions of the venetian school; he is the british makart, and followed rather heavily and laboriously in the track of titian, exploring the realms of nude beauty, and toiling to discover that secret of blooming colour which gleams from the female forms of the venetians. the assiduous _benjamin robert haydon_, a spirit ever seeking, striving, and reflecting, became, like gros in france, a victim of the grand style. he would naturally have preferred to paint otherwise, and more simply. the national gallery possesses a charming picture by him of a london street (for some years past on loan at leicester), which represents a crowd watching a punch and judy show. but, like gros, he held it a sin against the grand style to occupy himself with such matters. he thought it only permissible to paint sacred subjects or subjects from ancient history upon large spaces of canvas; and he sank ever deeper into his theories, reaching the profoundest abyss of abstract science when he made diligent anatomical studies of the muscles of a lion, in order to fashion the heroic frames of warriors on the same plan. his end, on th june , was like that of the frenchman. there was found beside his body a paper on which he had written: "god forgive me. amen. finis," with the quotation from shakespeare's _lear_: "stretch me no longer on the rack of this rough world." all these masters are more interesting for their human qualities than for their works, which, with their extravagant colour, forced gestures, and follies of every description, contain no new thing worthy of further development. even when they sought to make direct copies from continental performances, they did not attain the graceful sweep of their models. the refinements which they imitated became clumsy and awkward in their hands, and they remained half _bourgeois_ and half barbaric. the liberating influence of english art was not found in the province of the great painting, and it is probably not without significance that the few who tried to import it came to grief in the experiment. there can be no doubt that such art goes more against the grain of the english nature than of any other. even in the days of scholastic philosophy the english asserted the doctrine that there are only individuals in nature. in the beginning of modern times a new era, grounded on the observation of nature, was promulgated from england. bacon had little to say about beauty: he writes against the proportions and the principle of selection in art, and therefore against the ideal. handsome men, he says, have seldom possessed great qualities. and in the same way the english stage had just as little bent for the august and rhythmical grandeur of classical literature. when he stabbed polonius, garrick never dreamed of moving according to the taste of boileau, and was probably as different from the greek leader of a chorus as hogarth from david. the peculiar merits of english literature and science have been rooted from the time of their first existence in their capacity for observation. this explains the contempt for regularity in shakespeare, the feeling for concrete fact in bacon. english philosophy is positive, exact, utilitarian, and highly moral. hobbes and locke, john stuart mill and buckle, in england take the place of descartes, spinoza, leibnitz, and kant upon the continent. amongst english historians carlyle is the only poet: all the rest are learned prose-writers who collect observations, combine experiences, arrange dates, weigh possibilities, reconcile facts, discover laws, and hoard and increase positive knowledge. the eighteenth century had seen the rise of the novel as the picture of contemporary life; in hogarth this national spirit was first turned to account in painting. in the beginning of the nineteenth century, again, the good qualities of english art consisted not in bold ideality, but in sharpness of observation, sobriety, and flexibility of spirit. [illustration: george romney.] their proper domain was still to be found in portraiture, and if none of the new portrait painters can be compared with the great ancestors of english art, they are none the less superior to all their contemporaries on the continent. _george romney_, who belongs rather to the eighteenth century, holds the mean course between the refined classic art of sir joshua and the imaginative poetic art of thomas gainsborough. less personal and less profound in characterisation, he was, on the other hand, the most dexterous painter of drapery in his age: a man who knew all the secrets of the trade, and possessed, at the same time, that art which is so much valued in portrait painters--the art of beautifying his models without making his picture unlike the original. professional beauties beheld themselves presented in their counterfeit precisely as they wished to appear, and accorded him, therefore, a fervent adoration. and after his return from italy in his fame was so widespread that it outstripped gainsborough's and equalled that of reynolds. court beauties and celebrated actresses left no stone unturned to have their portraits introduced into one of his "compositions"; for romney eagerly followed the fashion of allegorical portraiture which had been set by reynolds, representing persons with the emblem of a god or of one of the muses. romney has painted the famous lady hamilton, to say nothing of others, as magdalen, joan of arc, a bacchante, and an odalisque. [illustration: _mag. of art._ romney. lady hamilton as euphrosyne.] great as his reputation had been at the close of the eighteenth century, it was outshone twenty years later by that of _sir thomas lawrence_. born in bristol in , lawrence had scarcely given up the calling of an actor before he saw all england in raptures over his genius as a painter. the catalogue of his portraits is a complete list of all who were at the time pre-eminent for talent or beauty. he received fabulous sums, which he spent with the grace of a man of the world. in he was commissioned to paint for the windsor gallery the portraits of all the "victors of waterloo," from the duke of wellington to the emperor alexander. the congress at aix-la-chapelle gave him an opportunity for getting the portraits of representatives of the various courts. all the capitals of europe, which he visited for this purpose, received him with princely honours. he was member of all the academies under the sun, and president of that in london; but, as a natural reaction, this over-estimation of earlier years has been followed by an equally undeserved undervaluation of his works in these days. beneath the fashionable exterior of his ceremonial pictures naturalness and simplicity are often wanting, and so too are the deeper powers of characterisation, firm drawing, and real vitality. a feminine coquetry has taken the place of character. his drawing has a banal effect, and his colouring is monotonous in comparison with that realism which reynolds shares with the old masters. it is easy to confound the majority of his pictures of ceremonies with those of winterhalter, and his smaller portraits with pretty fashion plates; yet one cannot but admire his ease of execution and nobility of composition. several of his pictures of women, in particular, are touched by an easy grace and a fine charm of poetic sensuousness in which he approaches gainsborough. not many at that time could have painted such pretty children's heads, or given young women such an attractive and familiar air of life. with what a girlish glance of innocence and melancholy does mrs. siddons look out upon the world from the canvas of lawrence: how piquant is her white greek garment, with its black girdle and the white turban. and what subtle delicacy there is in the portrait of miss farren as she flits with muff and fur-trimmed cloak through a bright green summer landscape. the reputation of lawrence will rise once more when his empty formal pieces have found their way into lumber-rooms, and a greater number of his pictures of women--pictures so full of indescribable fascination, so redolent of mysterious charm--are accessible to the public. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ lawrence. mrs. siddons.] as minor stars, the soft and tender _john hoppner_, the attractively superficial _william beechey_, the celebrated pastellist _john russell_, and the vigorously energetic _john jackson_ had their share with him in public favour, whilst _henry raeburn_ shone in scotland as a star of the first magnitude. he was a born painter. wilkie says in one of his letters from madrid, that the pictures of velasquez put him in mind of raeburn; and certain works of the scot, such as the portrait of lord newton, the famous _bon vivant_ and doughty drinker, are indeed performances of such power that comparison with this mighty name is no profanation. at a time when there was a danger that portrait painting would sink in the hands of lawrence into an insipid painting of prettiness, raeburn stood alone by the simplicity and naturalistic impressiveness of his portraiture. the three hundred and twenty-five portraits by him which were exhibited in the royal scottish academy in , gave as exhaustive a picture of the life of edinburgh at the close of the century as those of sir joshua gave of the life of london. all the celebrated scotchmen of his time--robertson, hume, ferguson, and scott--were painted by him. altogether he painted over six hundred portraits; and, small though the number may seem compared with the two thousand of reynolds, raeburn's artistic qualities are almost the greater. the secret of his success lies in his vigorous healthiness, in the indescribable _furia_ of his brush, in the harmony and truth of his colour-values. his figures are informed by a startling intensity of life. his old pensioners, and his sailors in particular, have something kingly in the grand air of their calm and noble countenances. armstrong has given him a place between frans hals and velasquez, and occasionally his conception of colour even recalls the modern frenchmen, as it were manet in his hals period. he paints his models, just as they come into contact with him in life, in the frank light of day and without any attempt at the dusk of the old masters; of raiment he gives only as much as the comprehension of the picture demands, and depicts character in large and simple traits. [illustration: lawrence. princess amelia.] the importance of west and copley, two americans who were active in england, is that they were the first to apply the qualities acquired in english portrait painting to pictures on a large scale. _benjamin west_ has undoubtedly been over-praised by his contemporaries, and by a critic of the present day he has, not unfairly, been designated "the king of mediocrity." at his appearance he was interesting to europeans merely as an anthropological curiosity,--as the first son of barbaric america who had used a paint brush. a thoroughly american puff preceded his entry into the eternal city in . it was reported that as the son of a quaker farmer he had grown up amongst his father's slaves in the immediate neighbourhood of the indians, and had painted good portraits in philadelphia and new york without having ever seen a work of art. people were delighted when, on being brought into the vatican, he clapped his hands and compared the apollo belvidere to an indian chief. in the art of making himself interesting "the young savage" was ahead of all his patrons; and as he followed the ruling classical tendency with great aptitude, within the course of a year he was made an honorary member of the academies of parma, bologna, and florence, and praised by the critics of rome as ranking with mengs as the first painter of his day. in , at a time when hogarth and reynolds, wilson and gainsborough, were in the fulness of their powers, he went to london; and as people are always inclined to value most highly what they do not possess, he soon won an important position for himself, even beside these masters. hogarth produced nothing but "_genre_ pictures," wilson only landscapes, and reynolds and gainsborough portraits: west brought to the english what they did not as yet possess--a "great art." [illustration: lawrence. the english mother.] his first picture--in the london national gallery--"pylades and orestes brought as hostages before iphigenia," is a tiresome product of that classicism which upon the continent found its principal representatives in mengs and david: it is stiff in drawing, its composition is suggestive of a bas-relief, and its cold grey colouring is classically academic. his other pictures from antique and sacred history stand much on the same level as those of wilhelm kaulbach, with whose works they share their stilted dignity, their systematically antiquarian structure, and their mechanical combination of forms borrowed in a spiritless fashion from the cinquecentisti. fortunately west has left behind him something different from these ambitious attempts; for on the occasions when he turned away from the great style he created works of lasting importance. this is specially true of some fine historical pictures dealing with his own age, which will preserve his name for ever. "the death of general wolfe" at the storming of quebec on th september --exhibited at the opening of the royal academy in --is by its very sobriety a sincere, honest, and sane piece of work, which will maintain its value as an historical document. it was just at this time that so great a part was played by the question of costume, and west encountered the same difficulties which gottfried schadow was obliged to face when he represented ziethen and the old dessauer in the costume of their age. the connoisseurs held that such a sublime theme would only admit of antique dress. if west in their despite represented the general and his soldiers in their regulation uniform, it seems at the present time no more than the result of healthy common sense, but at that time it was an artistic event of great importance, and one which was only accomplished in france after the work of several decades. in that country gérard and girodet still clung to the belief that they could only raise the military picture to the level of the great style by giving the soldiers of the empire the appearance of greek and roman statues. gros is honoured as the man who first ceased from giving modern soldiers an air of the antique. but the american englishman had anticipated him by forty years. as in géricault's "raft of the medusa," it was only the pyramidal composition in west's picture that betrayed the painter's alliance with the classical school; in other respects it forecast the realistic programme for decades to come, and indicated the course of development which leads through gros onwards. if in gros men are treated purely as accessories to throw a hero into relief, in west they stand out in action. they behave in the picture spontaneously as they do in life. that is to say, there is in west's work of the element through which horace vernet's pictures of are to be distinguished from those of gros. this realistic programme was carried out with yet greater consistency by west's younger compatriot _john singleton copley_, who after a short sojourn in italy migrated to england in . his chief works in the london national gallery depict in the same way events from contemporary history--"the death of the earl of chatham, th april " and "the death of major pierson, th january ,"--and it is by no means impossible that when david, in the midst of the classicising tendencies of his age, ventured to paint "the death of marat" and "the death of lepelletier," he was led to do so by engravings after copley. in the representation of such things other painters of the epoch had draped their figures in antique costume, called genii and river-gods into action, and given a roman character to the whole. copley, like west, offers a plain, matter-of-fact representation of the event, without any rhetorical pathos. and what raises him above west is his liquid, massive colour, suggestive of the old masters. in none of his works could west set himself free from the dead grey colour of the classical school, whereas copley's "death of william pitt" is the result of intimate studies of titian and the dutch. the way the light falls on the perukes of the men and the brown, wainscoted walls puts one in mind of rembrandt's "anatomical lecture"; only, instead of a pathetic scene from the theatre, we have a collection of good portraits in the manner of the dutch studies of shooting matches. [illustration: _mansell photo_ lawrence. caroline of brunswick, queen of george iv.] [illustration: lawrence. the countess gower.] [illustration: _cassell & co._ raeburn. sir walter scott.] that this unhackneyed conception of daily life has its special home in england is further demonstrated by the work of _daniel maclise_, who depicted "the meeting of wellington and blücher," "the death of nelson," and other patriotic themes upon walls and canvases several yards square, with appalling energy, promptitude, and expenditure of muscle. by these he certainly did better service to national pride than to art. nevertheless, with their forcible, healthy realism they contrast favourably with the mythological subjects so universally produced on the continent at that time. beside the portrait painters of men stand the portrait painters of animals. since the days of elias riedinger animal painting had fallen into general disesteem on the continent. thorwaldsen, the first of the classicists who allowed animals to appear in his works (as he did in his alexander frieze), dispensed with any independent studies of nature, and contented himself with imitating the formal models on the frieze of the parthenon; or, in lack of a grecian exemplar, simply drew out of the depths of his inner consciousness. especially remarkable is the sovran contempt with which he treated the most familiar domestic creatures. german historical painting knew still less what to make of the brute creation, because it only recognised beauty in the profundity of ideas, and ideas have nothing to do with beasts. its four-footed creatures have a philosophic depth of contemplation, and are bad studies after nature. kaulbach's "reinecke" and the inclination to transplant human sentiments into the world of brutes delayed until the sixties any devoted study of the animal soul. france, too, before the days of troyon, had nothing to show worth mentioning. but in england, the land of sport, animal painting was evolved directly from the old painting of the chase, without being seduced from its proper course. fox-hunting has been popular in england since the time of charles i. racing came into fashion not long after, and with racing came that knowledge of horseflesh which has been developed in england further than elsewhere. since the seventeenth century red deer have been preserved in the english parks. it is therefore comprehensible that english art was early occupied with these animals, and since it was sportsmen who cared most about them, the painter was at first their servant. he had not so much to paint pictures as reminiscences of sport and the chase. his first consideration in painting a horse was to paint a fine horse; as to its being a fine picture, that was quite a secondary matter. _john wootton_ and _george stubbs_ were in this sense portrayers of racehorses. the latter, however, took occasion to emancipate himself from his patrons by representing the noble animal, not standing at rest by his manger, or with a groom on his back and delighting in the consciousness of his own beauty, but as he was in action and amongst pictorial surroundings. [illustration: west. the death of nelson.] [illustration: _mansell photo_ maclise. the waterfall, cornwall.] [illustration: copley. the death of the earl of chatham.] [illustration: maclise. noah's sacrifice.] soon afterwards _george morland_ made his appearance. he made a specialty of old nags, and was perhaps the most important master of the brush that the english school produced at all. his pictures have the same magic as the landscapes of gainsborough. he painted life on the high-road and in front of village inns--scenes like those which isaac ostade had represented a century before: old horses being led to water amid the sunny landscape of the downs, market carts rumbling heavily through the rough and sunken lanes, packhorses coming back to their stalls of an evening tired out with the day's exertions, riders pulling up at the village inn or chatting with the pretty landlady. and he has done these things with the delicacy of an old dutch painter. it is impossible to say whether morland had ever seen the pictures of adriaen brouwer; but this greatest master of technique amongst the flemings can alone be compared with morland in verve and artistic many-sidedness; and morland resembled him also in his adventurous life and his early death. to the spirit and dash of brouwer he joins the refinement of gainsborough in his landscapes, and rowlandson's delicate feeling for feminine beauty in his figures. he does not paint fine ladies, but women in their everyday clothes, and yet they are surrounded by a grace recalling chardin: young mothers going to see their children who are with the nurse, smart little tavern hostesses in their white aprons and coquettish caps busily serving riders with drink, and charming city madams in gay summer garb sitting of a sunday afternoon with their children at a tea-garden. over the works of morland there lies all the chivalrous grace of the time of werther, and that fine anglo-saxon aroma exhaled by the works of english painters of the present day. genuine as is the fame which he enjoys as an animal painter, it is these little social scenes which show his finest side; and only coloured engraving, which was brought to such a high pitch in the england of those days, is able to give an idea of the delicacy of hue in the originals. [illustration: maclise. malvolio and the countess.] [illustration: _mansell & co._ morland. horses in a stable.] morland's brother-in-law, the painter and engraver _james ward_, born in and dying in , united this old english school with the modern. the portrait which accompanies the obituary notice in the _art journal_ is that of a very aged gentleman, with a grey beard and thick, white, bristly hair. the pictures which he painted when he had this appearance--and they are the most familiar--were exceedingly weak and insipid works. in comparison with morland's broad, liquid, and harmonious painting, that of ward seems burnished, sparkling, flaunting, anecdotic, and petty. but james ward was not always old james ward. in his early days he was one of the greatest and manliest artists of the english school, with whom only briton rivière can be compared amongst the moderns. when his "lioness" appeared in the royal academy exhibition of he was justly hailed as the best animal painter after snyders, and from that time one masterpiece followed another for ten long years. what grace and power there are in his horses and dogs! in pictures of this sort stubbs was graceful and delicate; ward painted the same horse in as sporting a manner and with the same knowledge, but with an artistic power such as no one had before him. his field of work was wide-reaching. he painted little girls with the thoroughly english feeling of morland, and had the whole animal world for his domain. lions, snakes, cats, pigs, oxen, cows, sheep, swans, fowls, frogs are the characters in his pictures. and characters they were, for he never humanised the looks of his four-footed models, as others did later. the home of his animals is not the drawing-room, but the woods and meadows, the air and the gardens. his broad, weighty manner was transformed first into extravagant virtuosity and then into pettiness of style during the last thirty years of his life, when he became senile. his reputation paled more than he deserved before the star of the world-famous landseer. [illustration: morland. the corn bin.] the most popular animal painter, not merely of england but of the whole century, was _edwin landseer_. for fifty years his works formed the chief features of attraction in the royal academy. engravings from him had such a circulation in the country that in the sixties there was scarcely a house in which there did not hang one of his horses or dogs or stags. even the continent was flooded with engravings of his pictures, and landseer suffered greatly from this popularity. he is much better than the reproductions with their fatal gloss allow any one to suppose, and his pictures can be judged by them just as little as can raphael's "school of athens" from jacobi's engraving. [illustration: _portfolio._ morland. going to the fair.] edwin landseer came of a family of artists. his father, who was an engraver, sent him out into the free world of nature as a boy, and made him sketch donkeys and goats and sheep. when he was fourteen he went to haydon, the prophet on matters of art; and, on the advice of this singular being, studied the sculptures of the parthenon. he "anatomised animals under my eyes," writes haydon, "copied my anatomical drawings, and applied my principles of instruction to animal painting. his genius, directed in this fashion, has, as a matter of fact, arrived at satisfactory results." landseer was the spoilt child of fortune. there is no other english painter who can boast of having been made a member of the royal academy at twenty-four. in high favour at court, honoured by the fashionable world, and tenderly treated by criticism, he went on his way triumphant. the region over which he held sway was narrow, but he stood out in it as in life, powerful and commanding. the exhibition of his pictures which took place after his death in contained three hundred and fourteen oil paintings and one hundred and forty-six sketches. the property which he left amounted to £ , ; and a further sum of £ , was realised by the sale of his unsold pictures. even meissonier, the best paid painter of the century, did not leave behind him five and a half million francs. one reason of landseer's artistic success is perhaps due to that in him which was inartistic--to his effort to make animals more beautiful than they really are, and to make them the medium for expressing human sentiment. all the dogs and horses and stags which he painted after , and through which he was made specially familiar to the great public, are arrayed in their sunday clothes, their glossiest hide and their most magnificent horns. and in addition to this he "darwinises" them: that is to say, he tries to make his animals more than animals; he lends a human sentimental trait to animal character; and that is what distinguishes him to his disadvantage from really great animal painters like potter, snyders, troyon, jadin, and rosa bonheur. he paints the human temperament beneath the animal mask. his stags have expressive countenances, and his dogs appear to be gifted with reason and even speech. at one moment there is a philosophic dignity in their behaviour, and at another a frivolity in their pleasures. landseer discovered the sentimentality of dogs, and treated them as capable of culture. his celebrated picture "jack in office" is almost insulting in its characterisation: there they are, jack the sentry, an old female dog like a poor gentlewoman, another dog like a professional beggar, and so on. and this habit of bringing animals on the stage, as if they were the actors of tragical, melodramatic, or farcical scenes, made him a peculiar favourite with the great mass of people. nor were his picture-stories merely easy to read and understand; the characteristic titles he invented for each of them--"alexander and diogenes," "a distinguished member of the humane society," and the like--excited curiosity as much as the most carefully selected name of a novel. but this search after points and sentimental anecdotes only came into prominence in his last period, when his technique had degenerated and given way to a shiny polish and a forced elegance which obliged him to provide extraneous attractions. his popularity would not be so great, but his artistic importance would be quite the same, if these last pictures did not exist at all. [illustration: morland. the return from market.] but the middle period of landseer, ranging from to , contains masterpieces which set him by the side of the best animal painters of all times and nations. the well-known portrait of a newfoundland dog of ; that of the prince consort's favourite greyhound of ; "the otter speared" of , with its panting and yelping pack brought to a standstill beneath a high wall of rock; the dead doe which a fawn is unsuspectingly approaching, in "a random shot," ; "the lost sheep" of , that wanders frightened and bleating through a wide and lonely landscape covered with snow,--these and many other pictures, in their animation and simple naturalness, are precious examples of the fresh and delicate observation peculiar to him at that time. landseer's portrait reveals to us a robust and serious man, with a weather-beaten face, a short white beard, and a snub bulldog nose. standing six feet high, and having the great heavy figure of a teuton stepping out of his aboriginal forest, he was indeed much more like a country gentleman than a london artist. he was a sportsman who wandered about all day long in the air with a gun on his arm, and he painted his animal pictures with all the love and joy of a child of nature. that accounts for their strength, their convincing power, and their vivid force. it is as if he had become possessed of a magic cap with which he could draw close to animals without being observed, and surprise their nature and their inmost life. [illustration: _cassell & co._ landseer. a distinguished member of the humane society.] landseer's subject-matter and conception of life are indicated by the pictures which have been named. old masters like snyders and rubens had represented the contrast between man and beast in their boar and lion hunts. it was not wild nature that landseer depicted, but nature tamed. rubens, snyders, and delacroix displayed their horses, dogs, lions, and tigers in bold action, or in the flame of passion. but landseer generally introduced his animals in quiet situations--harmless and without fear--in the course of their ordinary life. [illustration: _mag. of art._ landseer. the last mourner at the shepherd's grave.] horses, which leonardo, rubens, velasquez, wouwerman, and the earlier english artists delighted to render, he painted but seldom, and when he painted them it was with a less penetrating comprehension. but lions, which had been represented in savage passion or in quiet dignity by artists from rubens to decamps, were for him also a subject of long and exhaustive studies, which had their results in the four colossal lions round the base of the nelson column in trafalgar square. here the englishman makes a great advance on thorwaldsen, who designed the model for the monument in lucerne without ever having seen a lion. landseer's brutes, both as they are painted and as they are cast in bronze, are genuine lions, cruel and catlike, although in savageness and bold passion they are not to be compared with those of delacroix, nor with those of his elder compatriot, james ward. on the other hand, stags and roes were really first introduced into painting by landseer. those of robert hills, who had previously been reckoned the best painter of stags, are timid, suspicious creatures, while landseer's are the true kings of the forest, the shooting of which ought to be punished as an act of assassination. his principal field of study was the highlands. here he painted these proud creatures fighting on the mountain slopes, swimming the lake, or as they stand at a gaze in their quiet beauty. with what a bold spirit they raise their heads to snuff the mountain air, whilst their antlers show their delight in battle and the joy of victory. and how gentle and timid is the noble, defenceless roe in landseer's pictures. [illustration: landseer. high life.] he had also a delight in painting sheep lost in a snow-storm. but dogs were his peculiar specialty. landseer discovered the dog. that of snyders was a treacherous, snarling cur; that of bewick a robber and a thief. landseer has made the dog the companion of man, an adjunct of human society, the generous friend and true comrade who is the last mourner at the shepherd's grave. landseer first studied his noble countenance and his thoughtful eyes, and in doing so he opened a new province to art, in which briton rivière went further at a later period. but yet another and still wider province was opened to continental nations by the art of england. in an epoch of archæological resuscitations and romantic regrets for the past, it brought french and german painters to a consciousness that the man of the nineteenth century in his daily life might be a perfectly legitimate subject for art. engravings after the best pictures of wilkie hang round the walls of louis knaus's reception-room in berlin. and that in itself betrays to us a fragment of the history of art. the painters who saw the english people with the eyes of walter scott, fielding, goldsmith, and dickens were a generation in advance of those who depicted the german people in the spirit of immermann, auerbach, gustav freytag, and fritz reuter. the english advanced quietly on the road trodden by hogarth in the eighteenth century, whilst upon the continent the nineteenth century had almost completed half its course before art left anything which will allow future generations to see the men of the period as they really were. since the days of fielding and goldsmith the novel of manners had been continually growing. burns, the poet of the plough, and wordsworth, the singer of rustic folk, had given a vogue to that poetry of peasant life and those village tales which have since gone the round of all europe. england began at that time to become the richest country in the world, and great fortunes were made. painters were thus obliged to provide for the needs of a new and wealthy middle class. this fact gives us the explanation both of the merits and the faults which are characteristic of english _genre_ painting. [illustration: landseer. low life.] in the first quarter of the nineteenth century _david wilkie_, the english knaus, was the chief _genre_ painter of the world. born in in the small scotch village of cults, where his father was the clergyman, he passed a happy childhood, and possibly had to thank his youthful impressions for the consistent cheerfulness, the good-humour and kindliness that smile out of his pictures, and make such a contrast with hogarth's biting acerbity. at fourteen he entered the edinburgh school of art, where he worked for four years under the historical painter john graham. having returned to cults, he painted his landscapes. a fair which he saw in the neighbouring village gave the impulse for his earliest picture of country life, "pitlessie fair." he sold it for five and twenty pounds, and determined in to try his luck with this sum in london. in the very next year his "village politicians" excited attention in the exhibition. from that time he was a popular artist. every one of his numerous pictures--"the blind fiddler," "the card players," "the rent day," "the cut finger," "the village festival"--called forth a storm of applause. after a short residence in paris, where the louvre gave him a more intimate knowledge of the dutch, came his masterpieces, "blind-man's buff," "distraining for rent," "reading the will," "the rabbit on the wall," "the penny wedding," "the chelsea pensioners," and so forth. even later, after he had become an academician, he kept to plain and simple themes, in spite of the reproaches of his colleagues, who thought that art was vulgarised by the treatment of subjects that contained so little dignity. it was only at the end of his life that he became untrue to himself. his reverence for teniers and ostade was not sufficient to outweigh the impression made on him during a tour taken in through italy, spain, holland, and germany, by the artistic treasures of the continent, and especially murillo and velasquez. he said he had long lived in darkness, but from that time forth could say with the great correggio: "_anch' io sono pittore._" he renounced all that he had painted before which had made him famous, and showed himself to be one of the many great artists of those years who had no individuality, or ventured to have none. he would have been the burns of painting had he remained as he was. and thus he offered further evidence that the museums and the muses are contradictory conceptions; since the modern painter always runs the risk of falling helplessly from one influence into another, where he is bent on combining the historical student of art with the artist. of the pictures that he exhibited after his return in , two dealt with italian and three with spanish subjects. the critics were loud in praise; he had added a fresh branch of laurel to his crown. yet, historically considered, he would stand on a higher pedestal if he had never seen more than a dozen good pictures of teniers, ostade, metsu, jan steen, and brouwer. now he began to copy his travelling sketches in a spiritless fashion; he only represented _pifferari_, smugglers, and monks, who, devoid of all originality, might have been painted by one of the düsseldorfers. even "john knox preaching," which is probably the best picture of his last period, is no exception. "he seemed to me," writes delacroix, who saw him in paris after his return from spain,--"he seemed to me to have been carried utterly out of his depth by the pictures he had seen. how is it that a man of his age can be so influenced by works which are radically opposed to his own? however, he died soon after, and, as i have been told, in a very melancholy state of mind." death overtook him in , on board the steamer _oriental_, just as he was returning from a tour in turkey. at half-past eight in the evening the vessel was brought to, and as the lights of the beacon mingled with those of the stars the waters passed over the corpse of david wilkie. [illustration: _mansell photo_ landseer. jack in office.] [illustration: wilkie. blind-man's buff.] in judging his position in the history of art, only those works come into consideration which he executed before that journey of . then he drew as a labour of love the familiar scenes of the household hearth, the little dramas, the comic or touching episodes that take place in the village, the festivals, the dancing, and the sports of the country-folk, and their meeting in the ale-house. at this time, when as a young painter he merely expressed himself and was ignorant of the efforts of continental painting, he was an artist of individuality. in the village he became a great man, and here his fame was decided; he painted rustics. even when he first saw the old masters in the national gallery their immediate effect on him was merely to influence his technique. and by their aid wilkie gradually became an admirable master of technical detail. his first picture, "pitlessie fair," in its hardness of colour recalled a dutch painter of the type of jan molenaer; but from that time his course was one of constant progress. in "the village politicians" the influence of teniers first made itself felt, and it prevailed until . in this year, when he painted the pretty sketch for "blind-man's buff," a warm gold hue took the place of the cool silver tone; and instead of teniers, ostade became his model. the works in his ostade manner are rich in colour and deep and clear in tone. finally, it was rembrandt's turn to become his guiding-star, and "the parish beadle," in the national gallery--a scene of arrest of the year --clearly shows with what brilliant success he tried his luck with rembrandt's dewy _chiaroscuro_. it was only in his last period that he lost all these technical qualities. his "knox" of is hard and cold and inharmonious in colour. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ wilkie. a guerilla council of war in a spanish posada.] so long as he kept from historical painting, art meant for him the same thing as the portrayal of domestic life. painting, he said, had no other aim than to reproduce nature and to seek truth. undoubtedly this must be applied to wilkie himself with considerable limitation. wilkie painted simple fragments of nature just as little as hogarth; he invented scenes. nor was he even gifted with much power of invention. but he had a fund of innocent humour, although there were times when it was in danger of becoming much too childlike. "blind-man's buff," "the village politicians," and "the village festival," pictures which have become so popular through the medium of engraving, contain all the characteristics of his power of playful observation. he had no ambition to be a moralist, like hogarth, but just as little did he paint the rustic as he is. he dealt only with the absurdities and minor accidents of life. his was one of those happy dispositions which neither sorrow nor dream nor excite themselves, but see everything from the humorous side: he enjoyed his own jests, and looked at life as at a pure comedy; the serious part of it escaped him altogether. his peasantry know nothing of social problems; free from want and drudgery, they merely spend their time over trifles and amuse themselves--themselves and the frequenters of the exhibition, for whom they are taking part in a comedy on canvas. if hogarth had a biting, sarcastic, scourging, and disintegrating genius, wilkie is one of those people who cause one no lasting excitement, but are always satisfied to be humorous, and laugh with a contented appreciation over their own jokes. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ wilkie. the blind fiddler.] and in general such is the keynote of this english _genre_. all that was done in it during the years immediately following is more or less comprised in the works of the scotch "little master"; otherwise it courts the assistance of english literature, which is always rich in humorists and excellent writers of anecdote and story. in painting, as in literature, the english delight in detail, which by its dramatic, anecdotic, or humorous point is intended to have the interest of a short story. or perhaps one should rather say that, since the english came to painting as novices, they began tentatively on that first step on which art had stood in earlier centuries as long as it was still "the people's spelling-book." it is a typical form of development, and repeats itself constantly. all painting begins in narrative. first it is the subject which has a fascination for the artist, and by the aid of it he casts a spell over his public. the simplification of motives, the capacity for taking a thing in at a single glance, and finding a simple joy in its essentially pictorial integrity, is of later growth. even with the dutch, who were so eminently gifted with a sense for what is pictorial, the picture of manners was at first epical. church festivals, skating parties, and events which could be represented in an ample and detailed fashion were the original materials of the _genre_ picture, which only later contented itself with a purely artistic study of one out of countless groups. this period of apprenticeship, which may be called the period of interesting subject-matter, was what england was now going through; and england had to go through it, since she had the civilisation by which it is invariably produced. [illustration: wilkie. the penny wedding.] just as the first _genre_ pictures of the flemish school announced the appearance of a _bourgeoisie_, so in the england of the beginning of the century a new plebeian, middle-class society had taken the place of the patrons of earlier days, and this middle class set its seal upon manners and communicated its spirit to painting. prosperity, culture, travel, reading, and leisure, everything which had been the privilege of individuals, now became the common property of the great mass of men. they prized art, but they demanded from it substantial nourishment. that two colours in connection with straight and curved lines are enough for the production of infinite harmonies was still a profound secret. "you are free to be painters if you like," artists were told, "but only on the understanding that you are amusing and instructive; if you have no story to tell we shall yawn." when they comply with these demands, artists are inclined to grow fond of sermonising and develop into censors of the public morals, almost into lay preachers. or, if the aim of painting lies in its narrative power, there is a natural tendency to represent the pleasant rather than the unpleasant facts of life, which is the cause of this one-sided character of _genre_ painting. everything that is not striking and out of the way--in other words, the whole poetry of ordinary life--is left untouched. wilkie only paints the rustic on some peculiar occasion, at merry-making and ceremonial events; and he depicts him as a being of a different species from the townsman, because he seeks to gain his effects principally by humorous episodes, and aims at situations which are proper to a novel. [illustration: wilkie. the first earring.] baptisms and dances, funerals and weddings, carousals and bridal visits are his favourite subjects; to which may be added the various contrasts offered by peasant life where it is brought into contact with the civilisation of cities--the country cousin come to town, the rustic closeted with a lawyer, and the like. a continual roguishness enlivens his pictures and makes comical figures out of most of these good people. he amuses himself at their expense, exposes their little lies, their thrift, their folly, their pretensions, and the absurdities with which their narrow circle of life has provided them. he pokes fun, and is sly and farcical. but the hard and sour labour of ordinary peasant life is left on one side, since it offers no material for humour and anecdote. [illustration: newton. yorick and the grisette.] through this limitation painting renounced the best part of its strength. to a man of pictorial vision nature is a gallery of magnificent pictures, and one which is as wide and far-reaching as the world. but whoever seeks salvation in narrative painting soon reaches the end of his material. in the life of any man there are only three or four events that are worth the trouble of telling; wilkie told more, and he became tiresome in consequence. we are willing to accept these anecdotes as true, but they are threadbare. things of this sort may be found in the gaily-bound little books which are given as christmas presents to children. it is not exhilarating to learn that worldly marriages have their inconveniences, that there is a pleasure in talking scandal about one's friends behind their backs, that a son causes pain to his mother by his excesses, and that egoism is an unpleasant failing. all that is true, but it is too true. we are irritated by the intrusiveness of this course of instruction. wilkie paints insipid subjects, and by one foolery after another he has made painting into a toy for good children. and good children play the principal parts in these pictures. as a painter, one of george morland's pupils, _william collins_, threw the world into ecstasies by his pictures of children. out of one hundred and twenty-one which he exhibited in the academy in the course of forty years the principal are: the picture of "the little flute-player," "the sale of the pet lamb," "boys with a bird's nest," "the fisher's departure," "scene in a kentish hop-garden," and the picture of the swallows. the most popular were "happy as a king"--a small boy whom his elder playmates have set upon a garden railing, from which he looks down laughing proudly--and "rustic civility"--children who have drawn up like soldiers, by a fence, so as to salute some one who is approaching. but it is clear from the titles of such pictures that in this province english _genre_ painting did not free itself from the reproach of being episodic. collins was richer in ideas than meyer of bremen. his children receive earrings, sit on their mother's knee, play with her in the garden, watch her sewing, read aloud to her from their spelling-book, learn their lessons, and are frightened of the geese and hens which advance in a terrifying fashion towards them in the poultry-yard. he is an admirable painter of children at the family table, of the pleasant chatter of the little ones, of the father watching his sleeping child of an evening by the light of the lamp, with his heart full of pride and joy because he has the consciousness of working for those who are near to him. being naturally very fond of children, he has painted the life of little people with evident enjoyment of all its variations, and yet not in a thoroughly credible fashion. chardin painted the poetry of the child-world. his little ones have no suspicion of the painter being near them. they are harmlessly occupied with themselves, and in their ordinary clothes. those of collins look as if they were repeating a copybook maxim at a school examination. they know that the eyes of all the sightseers in the exhibition are fixed upon them, and they are doing their utmost to be on their best behaviour. they have a lack of unconsciousness. one would like to say to them: "my dear children, always be good." but no one is grateful to the painter for taking from children their childishness, and for bringing into vogue that codling which had its way for so long afterwards in the pictures of children. _gilbert stuart newton_, an american by birth, who lived in england from to , devoted himself to the illustration of english authors. like wilkie, he has a certain historical importance, because he devoted himself with great zeal to a study of the dutchmen of the seventeenth century and to the french painters of the eighteenth, at a time when these masters were entirely out of fashion on the continent and sneered at as representatives of "the deepest corruption." dow and terborg were his peculiar ideals; and although the colour of his pictures is certainly heavy and common compared with that of his models, it is artistic, and shows study when one thinks of contemporary productions on the continent. his works ("lear attended by cordelia," "the vicar of wakefield restoring his daughter to her mother," "the prince of spain's visit to catalina" from _gil blas_, and "yorick and the grisette" from sterne), like the pictures of the düsseldorfers, would most certainly have lost in actuality but for the interest provided by the literary passages; yet they are favourably distinguished from the literary illustrations of the düsseldorfers by the want of any sort of idealism. while the painters of the continent in such pictures almost invariably fell into a rounded, generalising ideal of beauty, newton had the scene played by actors and painted them realistically. the result was a theatrical realism, but the way in which the theatrical effects are studied and the palpableness of the histrionic gestures are so convincingly true to nature that his pictures seem like records of stage art in london about the year . [illustration: webster. the rubber.] [illustration: c. r. leslie. sancho and the duchess.] _charles robert leslie_, known as an author by his pleasant book on constable and a highly conservative _handbook for young painters_, had a similar _repértoire_, and rendered in oils shakespeare, cervantes, fielding, sterne, goldsmith, and molière, with more or less ability. the national gallery has an exceedingly prosaic and colourless picture of his, "sancho panza in the apartment of the duchess." some that are in the south kensington museum are better; for example, "the taming of the shrew," "the dinner at mr. page's house" from _the merry wives of windsor_, and "sir roger de coverley." his finest and best-known work is "my uncle toby and the widow wadman," which charmingly illustrates the pretty scene in _tristram shandy_: "'i protest, madam,' said my uncle toby, 'i can see nothing whatever in your eye.' 'it is not in the white!' said mrs. wadman. my uncle toby looked with might and main into the pupil." as in newton's works, so in leslie's too, there is such a strong dose of realism that his pictures will always keep their value as historical documents--not for the year but for . as a colourist he was--in his later works at any rate--a delicate imitator of the dutch _chiaroscuro_; and in the history of art he occupies a position similar to that of diez in germany, and was esteemed in the same way, even in later years, when the young pre-raphaelite school began its embittered war against "brown sauce"--the same war which a generation afterwards was waged in germany by liebermann and his followers against the school of diez. [illustration: mulready. fair time.] _mulready_, thirty-two of whose pictures are preserved in the south kensington museum, is in his technique almost more delicate than leslie, and he has learnt a great deal from metsu. by preference he took his subjects out of goldsmith. "choosing the wedding gown" and "the whistonian controversy" would make pretty illustrations for an _édition de luxe_ of _the vicar of wakefield_. otherwise he too had a taste for immortalising children, by turns lazy and industrious, at their tea or playing by the water's edge. from _thomas webster_, the fourth of these kindly, childlike masters, yet more inspiriting facts are to be obtained. he has informed the world that at a not very remote period of english history all the agricultural labourers were quite content with their lot. no one ever quarrelled with his landlord, or sat in a public-house and let his family starve. the highest bliss of these excellent people was to stay at home and play with their children by the light of a wax-candle. webster's rustics, children, and schoolmasters are the citizens of an ideal planet, but the little country is a pleasant world. his pictures are so harmless in intention, so neat and accurate in drawing, and so clear and luminous in colour that they may be seen with pleasure even at the present day. [illustration: _cassell & co._ frith. poverty and wealth.] the last of the group, _william powell frith_, was the most copious in giving posterity information about the manners and costumes of his contemporaries, and would be still more authentic if life had not seemed to him so genial and roseate. his pictures represent scenes of the nineteenth century, but they seem like events of the good old times. at that period people were undoubtedly good and innocent and happy. they had no income-tax and no vices and worries, and all went to heaven and felt in good spirits. and so they do in frith's pictures, only not so naturally as in ostade and beham. for example, he goes on the beach at a fashionable english watering-place during the season, in july or august. the geniality which predominates here is quite extraordinary. children are splashing in the sea, young ladies flirting, niggers playing the barrel-organ and women singing ballads to its strains; every one is doing his utmost to look well, and the pair of beggars who are there for the sake of contrast have long become resigned to their fate. in his racecourse pictures everything is brought together which on such occasions is representative of london life: all types, from the baronet to the ragman; all beauties, from the lady to the street-walker. a rustic has to lose his money, or a famished acrobat to turn his pockets inside out to assure himself that there is really nothing in them. his picture of the gaming-table in homburg is almost richer in such examples of dry observation and humorous and spirited episode. [illustration: mulready. crossing the ford.] this may serve to exemplify the failures of these painters of _genre_. not light and colour, but anecdote, comedy, and genial tale-telling are the basis of their labours. and yet, notwithstanding this attempt to express literary ideas through the mediums of a totally different art, their work is significant. while continental artists avoided nothing so much as that which might seem to approach nature, the english, revolting from the thraldom of theory, gathered subjects for their pictures from actual life. these men, indeed, pointed out the way to painters from every country; and they, once on the right road, were bound ultimately to arrive at the point from which they no longer looked on life through the glasses of the anecdotist, but saw it with the eye of the true artist. chapter xviii the military picture while english painting from the days of hogarth and wilkie embraced rustic and middle-class life, the victory of modernity on the continent could only be accomplished slowly and by degrees. the question of costume played an important part in it. "artists love antiquated costume because, as they say, it gives them greater sweep and freedom. but i should like to suggest that in historical representations of their own age an eye should be kept on propriety of delineation rather than on freedom and sweep. otherwise one might just as well allow an historian to talk to us about phalanxes, battlements, triarii, and argyraspids in place of battalions, squadrons, grenadiers, and cuirassiers. the painters of the great events of the day ought, especially, to be more true to fact. in battle-pieces, for example, they ought not to have cavalry shooting and sabreing about them in leather collars, in round and plumed hats, and the vast jack-boots which exist no longer. the old masters drew, engraved, and painted in this way because people really dressed in such a manner at the time. it is said that our costume is not picturesque, and therefore why should we choose it? but posterity will be curious to know how we clothed ourselves, and will wish to have no gap from the eighteenth century to its own time." [illustration: vernet. the wounded zouave.] [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ charlet. un homme qui boÎt seul n'est pas digne de vivre.] these words, which the well-known vienna librarian denis wrote in in his _lesefrüchte_, show how early came the problem which was at high-water mark for a generation afterwards. the painting of the nineteenth century could only become modern when it succeeded in recognising and expressing the characteristic side of modern costume. but to do that it took more than half a century. it was, after all, natural that to people who had seen the graceful forms and delicate colours of the _rococo_ time, the garb of the first half of the century should seem the most unfortunate and the least enviable in the whole history of costume. "what person of artistic education is not of the opinion," runs a passage in putmann's book on the düsseldorf school in ,--"what person of artistic education is not of the opinion that the dress of the present day is tasteless, hideous, and ape-like? moreover, can a true style be brought into harmony with hoop-petticoats and swallow-tail coats and such vagaries? in our time, therefore, art is right in seeking out those beautiful fashions of the past, about which tailors concern themselves so little. how much longer must we go about, unpicturesque beings, like ugly black bats, in swallow-tail coats and wide trousers? the peasant's blouse, indeed, can be accepted as one of the few picturesque dresses which have yet been preserved in germany from the inauspicious influence of the times." the same plaint is sung by hotho in his history of german and netherlandish painting; the costume of his age he declares to be thoroughly prosaic and tiresome. it is revolting to painters and an offence to the educated eye. art must necessarily seek salvation in the past, unless it is to wait, and give brush and palette a holiday, until that happy time when the costume of nations comes to its pictorial regeneration. only one zone, the realm of blouse and military uniform, was beyond the domain of tail-coat and trousers, and still furnished art with rich material. since it was by working on uniform that plastic artists first learnt how to treat contemporary costume, so it was the military picture that first entered the circle of modern painting. by exalting the soldier into a warrior, and the warrior into a hero, it was here possible, even in the times of david and carstens, to effect a certain compromise with the ruling classical ideas. gérard, girodet--to some extent even gros--made abundant use of the mask of the greek or roman warrior, with the object of admitting the battle-piece into painting in the grand style. the real heroes of the napoleonic epoch had not this plastic appearance nor these epic attitudes. classicism altered their physiognomies and gave them, most illogically, the air of old marble statues. it was horace vernet who freed battle painting from this anathema. this, but little else, stands to his credit. together with his son-in-law paul delaroche, _horace vernet_ is the most genuine product of the _juste-milieu_ period. the king with the umbrella founded the museum of versailles, that monstrous depôt of daubed canvas, which is a horrifying memory to any one who has ever wandered through it. however, it is devoted _à toutes les gloires de la france_. in a few years a suite of galleries, which it takes almost two hours merely to pass through from end to end, was filled with pictures of all sizes, bringing home the history of the country, from charlemagne to the african expedition of louis philippe, under all circumstances which are in any way flattering to french pride. for miles numberless manufacturers of painting bluster from the walls. as _pictor celerrimus_ horace vernet had the command-in-chief, and became so famous by his chronicle of the conquest of algiers that for a long time he was held by trooper, philistine, and all the kings and emperors of europe as the greatest painter in france. he was the last scion of a celebrated dynasty of artists, and had taken a brush in his hand from the moment he threw away his child's rattle. a good deal of talent had been given him in his cradle: sureness of eye, lightness of hand, and an enviable memory. his vision was correct, if not profound; he painted his pictures without hesitation, and is favourably distinguished from many of his contemporaries by his independence: he owes no one anything, and reveals his own qualities without arraying himself in those of other people. only these qualities are not of an order which gives his pictures artistic interest. the spark of géricault's genius, which seems to have been transmitted to him in the beginning, was completely quenched in his later years. having swiftly attained popularity by the aid of lithography which circulated his "mazeppa" through the whole world, he became afterwards a bad and vulgar painter, without poetry, light, or colour; a reporter who expressed himself in banal prose and wounded all the finer spirits of his age. "i loathe this man," said baudelaire, as early as . [illustration: auguste marie raffet.] devoid of any sense of the tragedy of war, which gros possessed in such a high degree, vernet treated battles like performances at the circus. his pictures have movement without passion, and magnitude without greatness. if it had been required of him, he would have daubed all the boulevards; his picture of smala is certainly not so long, but there would have been no serious difficulty in lengthening it by half a mile. this incredible stenographical talent won for him his popularity. he was decorated with all the orders in the world. the _bourgeois_ felt happy when he looked at vernet's pictures, and the paterfamilias promised to buy a horse for his little boy. the soldiers called him "_mon colonel_," and would not have been surprised if he had been made a marshal of france. a lover of art passes the pictures of vernet with the sentiment which the old colonel owned to entertaining towards music. "are you fond of music, colonel?" asked a lady. "madame, i am not afraid of it." [illustration: raffet. the parade.] the trivial realism of his workmanship is as tedious as the unreal heroism of his soldiers. in the manner in which he conceived the trooper, vernet stands between the classicists and the moderns. he did not paint ancient warriors, but french soldiers: he knew them as a corporal knows his men, and by this respect for prescribed regulation he was prevented from turning them into romans. but though he disregarded classicism, in outward appearance, he did not drop the heroic tone. he always saw the soldier as the bold defender of his country, the warrior performing daring deeds, as in the "battle of alexander"; and in this way he gave his pictures their unpleasant air of bluster. for neither modern tactics nor modern cannon admit of the prominence of the individual as it is to be seen in vernet's pictures. the soldier of the nineteenth century is no longer a warrior, but the unit in a multitude; he does what he is ordered, and for that he has no need of the spirit of an ancient hero; he kills or is killed, without seeing his enemy or being seen himself. the course of a battle advances, move by move, according to mathematical calculation. it is therefore false to represent soldiers in heroic attitudes, or even to suggest deeds of heroism on the part of those in command. in giving his orders and directing a battle a general has to behave pretty much as he does at home at his writing-table. and he is never in the battle, as he is represented by horace vernet; on the contrary, he remains at a considerable distance off. therefore, even with the dimensions of which vernet availed himself, the exact portrait of a modern battle is exclusively an affair for panorama, but never for the flat surface of a picture. a picture must confine itself, either to the field-marshal directing the battle from a distance upon a hill in the midst of his staff, or else to little pictorial episodes in the individual life of the soldier. the gradual development from unreal battle-pieces to simple episodic paintings can be followed step by step in the following works. [illustration: raffet. .] what was painted for the versailles museum in connection with deeds of arms in the crimean war and the italian campaign kept more or less to the blustering official style of horace vernet. in the galleries of versailles the battles of wagram, loano, and altenkirche ( - ), and an episode from the retreat from russia ( ), represent the work of _hippolyte bellangé_. these are huge lithochromes which have been very carefully executed. _adolphe yvon_, who is responsible for "the taking of malakoff," "the battle of magenta," and "the battle of solferino," is a more tedious painter, and remained during his whole life a pupil of delaroche; he laid chief stress on finished and rounded composition, and gave his soldiers no more appearance of life than could be forced into the accepted academic convention. the fame of _isidor pils_, who immortalised the disembarkation of the french troops in the crimea, the battle of alma, and the reception of arab chiefs by napoleon iii, has paled with equal rapidity. he could paint soldiers, but not battles, and, like yvon, he was too precise in the composition of his works. in consequence they have as laboured an effect in arrangement as they have in colour. he was completely wanting in sureness and spontaneity. it is only his water-colours that hold one's attention; and this they do at any rate by their unaffected actuality, and in spite of their dull and heavy colour. _alexandre protais_ verged more on the sentimental. he loved soldiers, and therefore had the less toleration for war, which swept the handsome young fellows away. two pendants, "the morning before the attack" and "the evening after the battle," founded his reputation in . the first showed a group of riflemen waiting in excitement for the first bullets of the enemy; the second represented the same men in the evening delighted with their victory, but at the same time--and here you have the note of protais--mournful over the loss of their comrades. "the prisoners" and "the parting" of owed their success to the same lachrymose and melodramatic sensibility. [illustration: _cassell & co._ raffet. polish infantry.] [illustration: raffet. the midnight review. c'est la grande revue qu'aux champs-elysées a l'heure de minuit tient césar décédé.] a couple of mere lithographists, soldiers' sons, in whom a repining for the napoleonic legend still found its echo, were the first great military painters of modern france. "charlet and raffet," wrote bürger-thoré in his _salon_ of , "are the two artists who best understand the representation of that almost vanished type, the trooper of the empire; and after gros they will assuredly endure as the principal historians of that warlike era." _charlet_, the painter of the old bear napoleon i, might almost be called the béranger of painting. the "little corporal," the "great emperor" appears and reappears in his pictures and drawings without intermission; his work is an epic in pencil of the grey coat and the little hat. from his youth he employed himself with military studies, which were furthered in gros' studio, which he entered in . the græco-roman ideal did not exist for him, and he was indifferent to beauty of form. his was one of those natures which have a natural turn for actual fact; he had a power for characterisation, and in his many water-colours and lithographs he was merely concerned with the proper expression of his ideas. how it came that delacroix had so great a respect for him was nevertheless explained when his "episode in the retreat from russia," in the world exhibition of , emerged from the obscurity of the lyons museum; it is perhaps his best and most important picture. when it appeared in the salon of , alfred de musset wrote that it was "not an episode but a complete poem"; he went on to say that the artist had painted "the despair in the wilderness," and that, with its gloomy heaven and disconsolate horizon, the picture gave the impression of infinite disaster. after fifty years it had lost none of its value. since the reappearance of this picture it has been recognised that charlet was not merely the specialist of old grey heads with their noses reddened with brandy, the molière of barracks and canteens, but that he understood all the tragical sublimity of war, from which horace vernet merely produced trivial anecdotes. [illustration: _mag. of art._ ernest meissonier.] beside him stands his pupil _raffet_, the special painter of the _grande armée_. he mastered the brilliant figure of napoleon; he followed it from ajaccio to st. helena, and never left it until he had said everything that was to be said about it. he showed the "little corsican" as the general of the italian campaign, ghastly pale and consumed with ambition; the bonaparte of the pyramids and of cairo; the emperor napoleon on the parade-ground reviewing his grenadiers; the triumphal hero of with the cuirassiers dashing past, brandishing their sabres with a hurrah; the titan of beresina riding slowly over the waste of snow, and, in the very midst of disaster, spying a new star of fortune; the war-god of , the great hypnotiser greeted even by the dying with a cry of "long life to the emperor"; the adventurer of , riding at the head of shattered troops over a barren wilderness; the vanquished hero of , who, in the midst of his last square, in the thick of his beloved battalions, calls fickle fate once more into the lists; and the captive lion who, from the bridge of the ship, casts a last look on the coast of france as it fades in the mist. he has called the emperor from the grave, as a ghostly power, to hold a midnight review of the _grande armée_. and with love and passion and enthusiasm he has followed the instrument of these victories, the french soldiers, the swordsmen of seven years' service, through bivouac and battle, on the march and on parade, as patrols and outposts. the ragged and shoeless troops of the empire are portrayed in his plates, with a touch of real sublimity, in defeat and in victory. the empty inflated expression of martial enthusiasm has been avoided by him; everything is true and earnest. in a masterly fashion he could make soldiers deploy in masses. no one has known in the same way how to render the impression of the multitude of an army, the notion of men standing shoulder to shoulder, the welding of thousands of individuals into one complete entity. in raffet a regiment is a thousand-headed living being that has but one soul, one moral nature, one spirit, one sentiment of willing sacrifice and heroic courage. his death was as adventurous as his life; he passed away in a hotel in genoa, and was brought back to french soil as part of the cargo of a merchant ship. for a long time his fame was thrown into the shade, at first by the triumphs of horace vernet, and then by those of meissonier, until at length a fitting record was devoted to him by the piety of his son auguste. never had _ernest meissonier_ to complain of want of recognition. after his _rococo_ pictures had been deemed worth their weight in gold he climbed to the summit of his fame, his universal celebrity and his popularity in france, when he devoted himself in the sixties to the representation of french military history. the year took him to italy in the train of napoleon iii. meissonier was chosen to spread the martial glory of the emperor, and, as the nephew was fond of drawing parallels between himself and his mighty uncle, meissonier was obliged to depict suitable occasions from the life of the first napoleon. his admirers were very curious to know how the great "little painter" would acquit himself in such a monumental task. first came the "battle of solferino," that picture of the musée luxembourg which represents napoleon iii overlooking the battle from a height in the midst of his staff. after lengthy preparations it appeared in the salon of , and showed that the painter had not been untrue to himself: he had simply adapted the minute technique of his _rococo_ pictures to the painting of war, and he remained the dutch "little master" in all the battle-pieces which followed. napoleon iii had no further deeds of arms to record, so the intended parallel series was never accomplished. it is true, indeed, that he took the painter with the army in ; but after the first battle was lost, meissonier went home: he did not wish to immortalise the struggles of a retreat. henceforward his brush was consecrated to the first napoleon. " " depicts the triumphant advance to the height of fame; " " shows napoleon when the summit has been reached and the soldiers are cheering their idol in exultation; " " represents the fall: the star of fortune has vanished; victory, so long faithful to the man of might, has deserted his banners. there is still a look of indomitable energy on the pale face of the emperor, as, in utter despair, he aims his last shot against the traitor destiny; but his eyes seem weary, his mouth is contorted, and his features are wasted with fever. [illustration: meissonier. . (_by permission of m. georges petit, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ meissonier. the outpost. (_by permission of m. georges petit, the owner of the copyright._)] meissonier has treated all these works with the carefulness which he expended on his little _rococo_ pictures. to give an historically accurate representation of napoleon's boots he did not content himself with borrowing them from the museum. walking and riding--for he was a passionate horseman--he wore for months together boots of the same make and form as those of the "little corporal." to get the colour of the horses of the emperor and his marshals, in their full-grown winter coat, and to paint them just as they must have appeared after the hardships and negligence of a campaign, he bought animals of the same race and colour as those ridden by the emperor and his generals, according to tradition, and picketed them for weeks in the snow and rain. his models were forced to wear out the uniforms in sun and storm before he painted them; he bought weapons and harness at fancy prices when he could not borrow them from museums. and there is no need to say that he copied all the portraits of napoleon, ney, soult, and the other generals that were to be had, and read through whole libraries before beginning his napoleon series. to paint the picture " ," which is generally reckoned his greatest performance--napoleon at the head of his staff riding through a snow-clad landscape--he first prepared the scenery on a spot in the plain of champagne, corresponding to the original locality, just as he did in earlier years with his interiors of the _rococo_ period; he even had the road laid out on which he wished to paint the emperor advancing. then he waited for the first fall of snow, and had artillery, cavalry, and infantry to march for him upon this snowy path, and actually contrived that overturned transport waggons, discarded arms, and baggage should be decoratively strewn about the landscape. from these laborious preparations it may be understood that he spent almost as many millions of francs upon his pictures as he received. in his article, _what an old work of art is worth_, julius lessing has admirably dealt with the hidden ways of taste and commerce applied to art. amongst all painters of modern times meissonier is the only one whose pictures, during his own lifetime, fetched prices such as are only reached by the works of famous old masters of the greatest epochs. and yet he sold them straight from his easel, and never to dealers. meissonier avenged himself magnificently for the privations of his youth. in , when he gave up his apprenticeship with menier, the great chocolate manufacturer, to become a painter, he had fifteen francs a month to spend. he had great difficulty in disposing of his drawings and illustrations for five or ten francs, and was often obliged to console himself with a roll for the want of a dinner. only ten years later he was able to purchase a small place in poissy, near st. germain, where he went for good in , to give himself up to work without interruption. gradually this little property became a pleasant country seat, and in due course of time the stately house in paris, in the boulevard malesherbes, was added to it. his "napoleon, ," for which the painter himself received three hundred thousand francs, was bought at an auction by one of the owners of the "grands magasins du louvre" for eight hundred and fifty thousand francs; "napoleon iii at solferino" brought him two hundred thousand, and "the charge of the cuirassiers" three hundred thousand. and in general, after , he only painted for such sums. it was calculated that he received about five thousand francs for every centimetre of painted canvas, and left behind him pictures which, according to present rate, were worth more than twenty million francs, without having really become a rich man; for, as a rule, every picture that he painted cost him several thousand. and meissonier never sacrificed himself to money-making and the trade. he never put a stroke on paper without the conviction that he could not make it better, and for this artistic earnestness he was universally honoured, even by his colleagues, to his very death. as master beyond dispute he let the classicists, romanticists, impressionists, and symbolists pass by the window of his lonely studio, and always remained the same. a little man with a firm step, an energetic figure, eyes that shone like coals, thick, closely cropped hair, and the beard of a river-god, that always seemed to grow longer, at eighty years of age he was as hale and active as at thirty. by a systematic routine of life he kept his physique elastic, and was able to maintain that unintermittent activity under which another man would have broken down. during long years meissonier went to rest at eight every evening, slept till midnight, and then worked at his drawings by lamplight into the morning. in the course of the day he made his studies from nature and painted. diffident in society and hard of access, he did not permit himself to be disturbed in his indefatigable diligence by any social demands. a sharp ride, a swim or a row was his only relaxation. in , as captain of the national guard, he had taken part in the street and barricade fighting; and again in , when he was sixty-six, he clattered through the streets of the capital, with the dangling sword he had so often painted and a gold-laced cap stuck jauntily on one side, as a smart staff-officer. even the works of his old age showed no exhaustion of power, and there is something great in attaining ripe years without outliving one's reputation. as late as the spring of , only a short time before his death, he was the leader of youth, when it transmigrated from the palais des champs elysées to the champ de mars; and he exhibited in this new salon his "october ," with which he closed his napoleonic epic and his general activity as a painter. halting on a hill, the emperor in his historical grey coat, mounted on a powerful grey, is thoughtfully watching the course of the battle, without troubling himself about the cuirassiers who salute him exultantly as they storm by, or about the brilliant staff which has taken up position behind him. not a feature moves in the sallow, cameo-like face of the corsican. the sky is lowering and full of clouds. in the foreground lie a couple of dead soldiers, in whose uniform every button has been painted with the same conscientious care that was bestowed on the buttons of the _rococo_ coats of fifty years before. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ alphonse de neuville.] beyond this inexhaustible correctness i can really see nothing that can be said for meissonier's fame as an artist. he, whose name is honoured in both hemispheres, was most peculiarly the son of his own work. the genius for the infinitesimal has never been carried further. he knew everything that a man can learn. the movements in his pictures are correct, the physiognomies interesting, the delicacy of execution indescribable, and his horses have been so exactly studied that they stand the test of instantaneous photography. but painter, in the proper sense, he never was. precisely through their marvellous minuteness of execution--a minuteness which is merely attractive as a trial of patience and as an example of what the brush can do--his pictures are wanting in unity of conception, and they leave one cold by the hardness of their contours, the aridness of their colour, and the absence of all vibrating, nervous feeling. in a cavalry charge, with the whirling dust and the snorting horses, who thinks of costume? and who thinks of anything else when meissonier paints a charge? here are life and movement, and there a museum of military uniforms. when manet saw meissonier's "cuirassiers" he said, "everything is iron here except the cuirasses." his _rococo_ pictures are probably his best performances; they even express a certain amount of temperament. his military pictures make one chilly. reproduced in woodcuts they are good illustrations for historical works, but as pictures they repel the eye, because they lack air and light and spirit. they rouse nothing except astonishment at the patience and incredible industry that went to the making of them. one sees everything in them--everything that the painter can have seen--to the slightest detail; only one does not rightly come into contact with the artist himself. his battle-pieces stand high above the scenic pictures of horace vernet and hippolyte bellangé, but they have nothing of the warmth of raffet or the vibrating life of neuville. there is nothing in them that is contagious and carries one away, or that appeals to the heart. patience is a virtue: genius is a gift. precious without originality, intelligent without imagination, dexterous without verve, elegant without charm, refined and subtile without delicacy, meissonier has all the qualities that interest, and none of those which lay hold of one. he was a painter of a distinctness which causes astonishment, but not admiration; an artist for epicures, but for those of the second order, who pay the more highly for works of art in proportion as they value their artifice. his pictures recall the unseasonable compliment which charles blanc made to ingres: "_cher maître, vous avez deviné la photographie trente ans avant qu'il y eut des photographes._" or else one thinks of that malicious story of which jules dupré is well known as the author. "suppose," said he, "that you are a great personage who has just bought a meissonier. your valet enters the salon where it is hanging. 'ah! monsieur,' he cries, 'what a beautiful picture you have bought! that is a masterpiece!' another time you buy a rembrandt, and show it to your valet, in the expectation that he will at any rate be overcome by the same raptures. _mais non!_ this time the man looks embarrassed. 'ah! monsieur,' he says, '_il faut s'y connaître_,' and away he goes." _guillaume regamey_, who is far less known, supplies what is wanting in meissonier. sketchy and of a highly strung nervous temperament, he could not adapt himself to the picture-market; but the history of art honours him as the most spirited draughtsman of the french soldier, after géricault and raffet. he did not paint him turned out for parade, ironed and smartened up, but in the worst trim. syria, the crimea, italy, and the east are mingled with the difference of their types and the brightness of their exotic costumes. he had a great love for the catlike, quick-glancing chivalry of turcos and sapphis; but especially he loved the cavalry. his "chasseurs d'afrique" are part and parcel of their horses, like centaurs, and many of his cavalry groups recall the frieze of the parthenon. unfortunately he died at thirty-eight, shortly before the war of , the historians of which were the younger painters, who had grown up in the shadow of meissonier. [illustration: de neuville. le bourget. (_by permission of messrs. goupil, the owners of the copyright._)] [illustration: dÉtaille. salut aux blessÉs. (_by permission of messrs. goupil, the owners of the copyright._)] the most important of the group, _alphonse de neuville_, had looked at war very closely as an officer during the siege of paris, and in this way he made himself a fine illustrator, who in his anecdotic pictures specially understood the secret of painting powder-smoke and the vehemence of a fusillade. the "bivouac before le bourget" brought him his first success. "the last cartridges," "le bourget," and "the graveyard of saint-privat" made him a popular master. neuville is peculiarly the french painter of fighting. he did not know, as charlet did, the soldier in time of peace, the peasant lad of yesterday who only cares about his stomach and has little taste for martial adventure. his soldier is an elegant and enthusiastic youthful hero. he even neglected the troops of the line; his preference was for the chasseur, whose cap is stuck jauntily on his head and whose trousers fall better. he loved the plumes, the high boots of the officers, the sword-knots, canes, and eye-glasses. everything received grace from his dexterous hand; he even saw in the trooper a gallant and ornamental _bibelot_, which he painted with chivalrous verve. the pictures of aimé morot, the painter of "the charge of the cuirassiers," possibly smell most of powder. neuville's frequently over-praised rival, meissonier's favourite pupil, _edouard détaille_, after he had started with pretty little costume pictures from the _directoire_ period, went further on the way of his teacher with less laboriousness and more lightness, with less calculation and more sincerity. the best of his works was "salut aux blessés"--the representation of a troop of wounded prussian officers and soldiers on a country road, passing a french general and his staff, who with graceful chivalry lift their caps and salute the wounded men. détaille's great pictures, such as "the presentation of the colours," and his panoramas were as accurate as they were tedious and arid, although they are far superior to most of the efforts which the germans made to depict scenes from the war of . [illustration: _soldan, nürnberg._ albrecht adam and his sons.] in germany the great period of the wars of liberation first inspired a group of painters with the courage to enter the province of battle-painting, which had been so much despised by their classical colleagues. germany had been turned into a great camp. prussian, french, austrian, russian, and bavarian troops passed in succession through the towns and villages: long trains of cannon and transport waggons came in their wake, and friends and foes were billeted amongst the inhabitants; the napoleonic epoch was enacted. such scenes followed each other like the gay slides in a magic lantern, and once more gave to some among the younger generation eyes for the outer world. there was awakened in them the capacity for receiving impressions of reality and transferring them swiftly to paper. two hundred years before, the emancipation of dutch art from the italian house of bondage had been accomplished in precisely the same fashion. the dutch struggle for freedom and the thirty years' war had filled holland with numbers of soldiery. the doings of these mercenaries, daily enacted before them in rich costume and with manifold brightness, riveted the pictorial feeling of artists. echoes of war, fighting scenes, skirmishes and tumult, the incidents of camp life, arming, billeting, and marauding episodes are the first independent products of the dutch school. then the more peaceable doings of soldiers are represented. at haarlem, in the neighbourhood of frans hals, were assembled the painters of social pieces, as they are called; pieces in which soldiers, bold and rollicking officers, make merry with gay maidens at wine and play and love. from thence the artist came to the portrayal of a peasantry passing their time in the same rough, free and easy life, and thence onward to the representation of society in towns. [illustration: adam. a stable in town.] german painting in the nineteenth century took the same road. eighty years ago foreign troops, and the extravagantly "picturesque and often ragged uniforms of the republican army, the characteristic and often wild physiognomies of the french soldiers," gave artists their first fresh and variously hued impressions. painters of military subjects make their studies, not in the antiquity class of the academy, but upon the parade-ground and in the camp. later, when the warlike times were over, they passed from the portrayal of soldiers to that of rustics; and so they laid the foundation on which future artists built. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ hess. the reception of king otto in nauplia.] in berlin franz krüger and in munich albrecht adam and peter hess were figures of individual character, belonging to the spiritual family of chodowiecki and gottfried schadow; and, entirely undisturbed by classical theories or romantic reverie, they penetrated the life around them with a clear and sharp glance. they lacked, indeed, the temperament to comprehend either the high poetic tendencies of the old munich school or the sentimental enthusiasm of the old düsseldorf. on the other hand, they were unhackneyed artists, facing facts in a completely unprejudiced spirit: entirely self-reliant, they refused to form themselves upon any model derived from the old masters; they had never had a teacher and never enjoyed academic instruction. this naïve straightforwardness makes their painting a half-barbaric product; something which has been allowed to run wild. but in a period of archæological resuscitations, pedantic brooding over the past and slavish imitation of the ancients, it seems, for this very reason, the first independent product of the nineteenth century. as vigorous, matter-of-fact realists they know nothing of more delicate charms, but represented fact for all it was worth and as honestly and conscientiously as was humanly possible. they are lacking in the distinctively pictorial character, but they are absolutely untouched by the classicism of the epoch. they never dream of putting the uniforms of their warriors upon antique statues. it is this downright honesty that renders their pictures not merely irreplaceable as documents for the history of civilisation, and in spite of their unexampled frigidity, hardness, and gaudiness, lends them, even from the standpoint of art, a certain innovating quality. in a pleasantly written autobiography _albrecht adam_ has himself described the drift of historical events which made him a painter of battles. he was a confectioner's apprentice in nördlingen when, in the year , the marches of the french army began in the neighbourhood. in an inn he began to sketch sergeants and grenadiers, and went proudly home with the pence that he earned in this way. "adam, when there's war, i'll take you into the field with me," said an old major-general, who was the purchaser of his first works. that came to pass in , when the bavarians went with napoleon against austria. after a few weeks he was in the thick of raging battle. he saw napoleon, the crown-prince ludwig, and general wrede, was present at the battles of abensberg, eckmühl, and wagram, and came to vienna with his portfolios full of sketches. there his portraits and pictures of the war found favour with the officers, and eugène beauharnais, viceroy of italy, took him to upper italy and afterwards to russia. he was an eye-witness of the battles at borodino and on the moskwa, and saved himself from the conflagration of moscow by his courage and determination. a true soldier, he mounted a horse when he was sixty-two years of age to be present on the italian expedition of the austrian army under radetzky in . his battle-pieces are therefore the result of personal experience. when campaigning he led the same life as the soldiers whom he portrayed, and as he proceeded in this portrayal with the objective quietness and fidelity of an historian, his artistic productions are invaluable as documents. even where he could not draw as an eye-witness he invariably made studies afterwards, endeavouring to collect the most reliable material upon the spot, and preparing it with the utmost conscientiousness. the ground occupied by bodies of troops, the marshalling of them, and the conflict of masses, together with the smallest episodes, are represented with simplicity and reality. in the portrayal of the soldier's life in time of peace he was inexhaustible. just as vividly could he render horses undergoing the strain of the march and in the tumult of battle as in the stall, the farm-horse of the transport waggon no less than the noble creature ridden for parade. that his colour was sharp and hard, and his pictures therefore devoid of harmony, is to be explained by the helplessness of the age in regard to colouring. only his last pictures, such as "the battle on the moskwa," have a certain harmony of hue; and there is no doubt that this is to be set to the account of his son franz. after adam, the father of german battle-painters, _peter hess_ made an epoch by the earnestness and actuality of his pictures. he too accompanied general wrede on the - campaigns, and has left behind him exceedingly healthy, sane, and objectively viewed cossack scenes, bivouacs, and the like, belonging to this period; though in his great pictures he aimed at totality of effect just as little as adam. confused by the complexity of his material, he only ventured to single out individual incidents, and then put them together on the canvas after the fashion of a mosaic; and, to make the nature of the action as clear as possible, he assumed as his standpoint the perspective view of a bird. of course, pictures produced in this way make an effect which is artistically childish, but as the primitive endeavours of modern german art they will keep their place. the best known of his pictures are those inspired by the choice of prince otto of bavaria as king of greece, especially "the reception of king otto in nauplia," which is to be found in the new pinakothek in munich. in spite of its hard, motley, and quite impossible colouring, and its petty pedantry of execution, this is a picture which will not lose its value as an historical source. vigorous _franz krüger_ had been long known in berlin, by his famous pictures of horses, before the emperor of russia in commissioned him to paint, on a huge canvas, the great parade on the _opernplatz_ in berlin, where he had reviewed his regiment of cuirassiers before the king of prussia. from that time such parade pictures became krüger's specialty; especially famous is the great parade of , with the likenesses of those who at the time played a political or literary part in berlin. in these works he has left a true reflection of old berlin, and bridged over the chasm between chodowiecki and menzel: this is specially the case with his curiously objective water-colour portrait heads. mention should be made of karl steffeck as a pupil of krüger, and theodor horschelt--in addition to franz adam--as a pupil of adam. by _steffeck_, a healthy, vigorous realist, there are some well-painted portraits of horses, and by _th. horschelt_, who in took part in the fights of the russians against the circassians in the caucasus, there survive some of the spirited and masterly pen-and-ink sketches which he published collectively in his _memories from the caucasus_. _franz adam_, who first published a collection of lithographs on the italian campaign of in connection with raffet, and in the italian war of painted his first masterpiece, a scene from the battle of solferino, owes his finest successes--although he had taken no part in it--to the war of . in respect of harmony of colouring he is perhaps the finest painter of battle-pieces germany has produced. as i shall later have no opportunity of doing so, i must mention here the works of _josef brandt_, the best of franz adam's pupils. they are painted with verve and chivalrous feeling. there is a flame and a sparkle, both in the forms of his warriors and of his horses, in his pictures of old polish cavalry battles. everything is aristocratic: the distinction of the grey colouring no less than the ductile drawing with its chivalrous sentiment. in everything there breathes life, vigour, fire, and freshness: the east of eugène fromentin translated into polish. _heinrich lang_, a spirited draughtsman, who had the art of seizing the most difficult positions and motions of a horse, embodied the wild tumult of cavalry charges ("the charge of the bredow brigade," "the charge at floing," etc.) in rapid pictures of incisive power, though otherwise the heroic deeds of the germans in resulted in but few heroic deeds in art. [illustration] chapter xix italy and the east in the beginning of the century the man who did not wear a uniform was not a proper subject for art unless he lived in italy as a peasant or a robber. that is to say, painters were either archæologists or tourists; when they did not dive into the past they sought their romantic ideal in the distance. italy, where monumental painting had first seen the light, was the earliest goal for travellers, and satisfied the desire of artists, since, for the rest of the world, it was still enveloped in poetic mystery. only in rome, in naples, and in tuscany was it thought possible to meet with human beings who had not become vulgar and hideous under the influence of civilisation. there they still preserved something of the beauty of grecian statues. there artists were less afraid of being diverted from absolute beauty by the study of nature, and thus an important principle was carried. instead of copying directly from antique statues, as david and mengs had done before them, painters began to study the descendants of those who had been the models of the old roman sculptors; and so it was that, almost against their will, they turned from museums to look rather more closely into nature, and from the past to cast a glance into the present. to _leopold robert_ belongs the credit of having opened out this new province to an art which was enclosed in the narrow bounds of classicism. he owes his success with the public of the twenties and his place in the history of art entirely to the fact that in spite of his strict classical training he was one of the first to interest himself, however little, in contemporary life. hundreds of artists had wandered into italy and seen nothing but the antique until this young man set out from neufchâtel in and became the painter of the italian people. what struck him at the first glance was the character of the people, together with their curious habits and usages, and their rude and picturesque garb. "he wished to render this with all fidelity," and especially "to do honour to the absolute nobility of that people which still bore a trace of the heroic greatness of their forefathers." above all, he fancied that he could find this phenomenon of atavism amongst the bandits; and as sonnino, an old brigand nest, had been taken and the inhabitants removed to engelsburg shortly after his arrival, a convenient opportunity was offered to him for making his studies in this place. the pictures of brigand life which he painted in the beginning of the twenties soon found a most profitable market. "dear m. robert," said the fashionable guests who visited his studio by the dozen, "could you paint a little brigand, if it is not asking too much?" robbers with sentimental qualms were particularly prized: for instance, at the moment when they were fondling their wives, or praying remorsefully to god, or watching over the bed of a sick child. from brigands he made a transition to the girls of sorrento, frascati, capri, and procida, and to shepherd lads, fishers, pilgrims, hermits, and _pifferari_. early in the twenties, when he made an exhibition of a number of these little pictures in rome, it effectually prepared the way for his fame; and when he sent a succession of larger pictures to the paris salon in - he was held as one of the most brilliant masters of the french school, to whom romanticists and classicists paid the same honour. in the first of these pictures, painted in , he had represented a number of peasants listening to a neapolitan fisherman improvising to the accompaniment of a harmonica. "the return from a pilgrimage to the madonna dell' arco" of is the painting of a triumphal waggon yoked with oxen. upon it are seated lads and maidens adorned with foliage, and in their gay sunday best. an old _lazzarone_ is playing the mandolin, and girls are dancing with tambourines, whilst a young man springs round clattering his castanets, and a couple of boys, to complete the seasons of life, head the procession. his third picture, "the coming of the reapers to the pontine marshes," was the chief work in the salon of after the "freedom" of delacroix. heine accorded him a classical passage of description, and the orthodox academical critics were liberal with most unmerited praise, treating the painter as a dangerous revolutionary who was seducing art into the undignified naturalism of ribera and caravaggio. robert, the honest, lamblike man, who strikes us now as being a conscientious follower of the school of david! [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ leopold robert.] how little did the artistic principles which he laid down in his letters accord with his own paintings! "i try," he wrote to a friend in , "to follow nature in everything. nature is the only teacher who should be heard. she alone inspires and moves me, she alone appeals to me: it is nature that i seek to fathom, and in her i ever hope to find the special impulse for work." she is a miracle to him, and one that is greater than any other, a book in which "the simple may read as well as the great." he could not understand "how painters could take the old masters as their model instead of nature, who is the only great exemplar!" what is to be seen in his pictures is merely an awkward transference of david's manner of conception and representation to the painting of italian peasants--a scrupulously careful adaptation of classical rules to romantic subjects. he looked at modern italians solely through the medium of antique statuary, and conducts us to an italy which can only be called leopold robert's italy, since it never existed anywhere except in robert's map. all his figures have the movement of some familiar work of antique sculpture, and that expression of cherished melancholy which went out of fashion after the time of ary scheffer. never does one see in his pictures a casual and unhackneyed gesture in harmony with the situation. it seems as if he had dressed up antique statues or david's horatii and his sabine women in the costume of the italian peasantry, and grouped them for a _tableau vivant_ in front of stage scenery, and in accordance with parisian rules of composition. his peasants and fishers make beautiful, noble, and often magnificent groups. but one can always give the exact academic rules for any particular figure standing here and not there, or in one position and not in another. his pictures are much too official, and obtrusively affect the favourite pyramid form of composition. [illustration: l. robert. fishers of the adriatic.] but as they are supposed to be pictures of italian manners, the contrast between nature and the artificial construction is almost more irritating than it is in david's mythological representations. it is as if robert had really never seen any italian peasants, though he maintains all the while that he is depicting their life. the hard outlines and the sharp bronze tone of his works are a ghastly evidence of the extent to which the sense of colour had become extinct in the school of david. it was merely form that attracted him; the sun of italy left him indifferent. the absence of atmosphere gives his figures an appearance of having been cut out of picture sheets. o great artists of holland, masters of atmospheric effect and of contour bathed in light, what would you have said to such heartless silhouettes! in his youth robert had been a line engraver, and he adapted the prosaic technique of line engraving to painting. however, he was a transitional painter, and as such he has an historical interest. he was a modern tasso, too, and on the strength of the adventurous relationship to princess charlotte napoleon, which ultimately drove him to suicide, he could be used with effect as the hero of a novel. through the downfall of the school of david his star has paled--one more proof that only nature is eternal, and that conventional painting falls into oblivion with the age that saw it rise. "i wished to find a _genre_ which was not yet known, and this _genre_ has had the fortune to please. it is always an advantage to be the first." with these words he has himself indicated, in a way which is as modest as it is accurate, the ground of his reputation amongst contemporaries, and why it is that the history of art cannot quite afford to forget him. [illustration: l. robert. the coming of the reapers to the pontine marshes.] amongst the multitude of those who, incited by robert's brilliant successes, made the spanish staircase in rome the basis of their art, _victor schnetz_, by his "vow to the madonna" of , specially succeeded in winning public favour. at a later time his favourite themes were the funerals of children, inundations, and the like; but his arid method of painting contrasts with the sentimental melancholy of these subjects in a fashion which is not particularly agreeable. [illustration: schnetz. an italian shepherd.] it was _ernest hébert_ who first saw italy with the eyes of a painter. he might be called the perugino of this group. he was the most romantic of the pupils of delaroche, and owed his conception of colour to that painter. his spiritual father was ary scheffer. the latter has discovered the poetry of sentimentality; hébert the poetry of disease. his pictures are invariably of great technical delicacy. his style has something femininely gracious, almost languishing: his colouring is delicately fragrant and tenderly melting. he is, indeed, a refined artist who occupies a place by himself, however mannered the melancholy and sickliness of his figures may be. in "the malaria" of they were influenced by the subject itself. the barge gliding over the waters of the pontine marshes, with its freight of men, women, and children, seems like a gloomy symbol of the voyage of life; the sorrow of the passengers is that of resignation: dying they droop their heads like withering flowers. but later the fever became chronic in hébert. the interesting disease returned even where it was out of place, as it does still in the pictures of his followers. the same fate befell the painters of italy which befalls tourists. what robert had seen in the country as the first comer whole generations saw after him, neither more nor less than that. the pictures were always variations on the old theme, until in the sixties bonnat came with his individual and realistic vision. [illustration: _portfolio._ hÉbert. the malaria.] in germany, where "the yearning for italy" had been ventilated in an immoderate quantity of lyrical poems ever since the time of wackenroder's _herzensergiessungen_, _august riedel_ represented this phase of modern painting; and as leopold robert is still celebrated, riedel ought not to be forgotten. riedel lived too long ( - ), and, as he painted nothing but bad pictures during the last thirty years of his life, what he had done in his youth was forgotten. at that time he was the first apostle of leopold robert in germany, and as such he has his importance as an innovator. when he began his career in the munich academy in peter langer, a classicist of the order of mengs, was still director there. riedel also painted classical subjects and church pictures--"christ on the mount of olives," "the resurrection of lazarus," and "peter and paul healing the lame." but when he returned from italy in he reversed the route which others had taken: the classic land set him free from classicism, and opened his eyes to the beauty of life. instead of working on saints in the style of langer, he painted beautiful women in the costume of modern italy. his "neapolitan fisherman's family" was for germany a revelation similar to that which robert's "neapolitan improvisator" had been for france. the fisherman, rather theatrically draped, is sitting on the shore, while his wife and his little daughter listen to him playing the zither. the blue sea, dotted with white sails, and distant ischia and cape missene, form the background; and a blue heaven, dappled with white clouds, arches above. everything was of an exceedingly conventional beauty, but denoted progress in comparison with robert. it already announced that search for brilliant effects of light which henceforward became a characteristic of riedel, and gave him a peculiar position in his own day. "even hardened connoisseurs," wrote emil braun from rome about this time, "stand helpless before this magic of colouring. it is often long before they are able to persuade themselves that such glory of colour can be produced by the familiar medium of oil painting, and with materials that any one can buy at a shop where pigments are sold." riedel touched a problem--diffidently, no doubt--which was only taken up much later in its full extent. and if cornelius said to him, "you have fully attained what i have avoided with the greatest effort during the course of my whole life," it is none the less true that riedel's italian girls in the full glow of sunlight have remained, in spite of their stereotyped smile, so reminiscent of sichel, better able to stand the test of galleries than the pictures of the michael-angelo of munich. before his "neapolitan fisherman's family," which went the world over like a melody from auber's _masaniello_, before his "judith" carrying the head of holofernes in the brightest light of morning, before his "girls bathing" in the dimness of the forest, and before his "sakuntala," painted "with refined effects of light," the cartoon painters mumbled and grumbled, and raised hue and cry over the desecration of german art; but riedel's friends were just as loud in proclaiming the witchery of his colour, and "the southern sunlight which he had conjured on to his palette," to be splendid beyond the powers of comprehension. it is difficult at the present day to understand the fame that he once had as "a pyrotechnist in pigments." but the results which he achieved by himself in colouring, long before the influence of the belgians in germany, will always give him a sure place in the history of german art. and these qualities were unconsciously inherited by his successors, who troubled their heads no further about the pioneer and founder. [illustration: riedel. the neapolitan fisherman's family.] [illustration: riedel. judith.] those who painted the east with its clear radiance, its interesting people, and its picturesque localities, stand in opposition to the italian enthusiasts. they are the second group of travellers. gros had given french art a vision of that distant magic land, but he had had no direct disciples. painters were as yet in too close bondage to their classical proclivities to receive inspiration from napoleon's expedition into egypt. but the travels of chateaubriand and the verse of byron, and then the greek war of liberation, and, above all, the conquest of algiers, once more aroused an interest in these regions, and, when the revolution of the romanticists had once taken place, taught art a way into the east. authors, journalists, and painters found their place in this army of travellers. the first view of men and women standing on the shore in splendid costume, with turbans or high sheepskin hats, and surrounded by black slaves, or mounted upon horses richly caparisoned, or listening to the roll of drums and the muezzin resounding from the minarets, was like a scene from _the arabian nights_. the bazaars and the harems, the quarters of the janizaries and gloomy dungeons were visited in turn. veiled women were seen, and mysterious houses where every sound was hushed. at first the moors, obedient to the stern laws of the koran, fled before the painters as if before evil spirits, but the moorish women were all the more ready to receive these conquerors with open arms. artists plunged with rapture into a new world; they anointed themselves with the oil of roses, and tasted all the sweets of oriental life. the east was for the byronic enthusiasts of what italy had been for the classicists. could anything be imagined more romantic? you went on board a steamer provided with all modern comforts and all the appliances of the nineteenth century, and it carried you thousands of years back in the history of the world; you set foot on a soil where the word progress did not exist--in a land where the inhabitants still sat in the sun as if cemented to the ground, and wore the same costumes in which their forefathers had sat there two thousand years ago. here the romanticists not only found nature decked in the rich hues which satisfied their passion for colour, but discovered a race of people possessed of that beauty which, according to the classicists, was only to be seen in the italian peasants. they beheld "men of innate dignity and remarkable distinction of pose and gesture." thus a new experience was added to life. there was the east, where splendour and simplicity, cruelty and beauty, softness of temper and savage austerity, and brilliant colour and blinding light are more completely mingled than anywhere else in the world; there was the east, where rich tints laugh in the midst of squalor and misery, the brightness of earlier days in the midst of outworn usages, and the pride of art in the midst of ruined villages. it was so great, so unfathomable, and so like a fairy tale that it gave every one the chance of discovering in it some new qualities. for _delacroix_, the byron of painting, it was a splendid setting for passion in its unfettered wildness and its unscrupulous daring. he, who had lived exclusively in the past, now turned to the observation of living beings, as may be seen in his "algerian women," his "jewish wedding," his "emperor of morocco," and his "convulsionaries of tangier." amongst the orientals he also found the hotly flaming sensuousness and primitive wildness which beset his imagination with its craving for everything impassioned. the great _charmeur_, the master of pictorial caprice, _decamps_, found his province in the east, because its sun was so lustrous, its costume so bright, and its human figures so picturesque. if delacroix was a powerful artist, decamps was no more than a painter,--but painter he was to his finger-tips. he was indifferent to nothing in nature or history: he showed as much enthusiasm for a pair of tanned beggar-boys playing in the sunshine at the corner of a wall as for biblical figures and old-world epics. he has painted hens pecking on a dung-heap, dogs on the chase and in the kennel, monkeys as scholars, and musicians in all the situations which teniers and chardin loved. his "battle of tailleborg" of has been aptly termed the only picture of a battle in the versailles museum. he looked on everything as material for painting, and never troubled as to how another artist would have treated the subject. there is an individuality in every one of his works; not an individuality of the first order, but one that is decidedly charming and that assures him a very high place amongst his contemporaries. having made a success in with an imaginary picture of the east, he had a wish to see how far the reality corresponded with his ideas of turkey, and in the same year--therefore before delacroix--he went on that journey to the greek archipelago, constantinople, and asia minor which became a voyage of discovery for french painting. in the salon of was exhibited his "patrol of smyrna," which at once made him one of the favourite french painters of the time. soon afterwards came the picture of the "pasha on his rounds," accompanied by a lean troop of running and panting guards, that of the great "turkish bazaar," in which he gave such a charming representation of the gay and noisy bustle of an oriental fair, those of the "turkish school," the "turkish café," "the halt of the arab horsemen," and "the turkish butcher's shop." in everything which he painted from this time forward--even in his biblical pictures--he had before his eyes the east as it is in modern times. like horace vernet, he painted his figures in the costume of modern arabs and egyptians, and placed them in landscapes with modern arab buildings. but the largeness of line in these landscapes is expressive of something so patriarchal and biblical, and of such a dreamy, mystical poetry, that, in spite of their modern garb, the figures seem like visions from a far distance. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ decamps. the swineherd.] decamps' painting never became trivial. all his pictures soothe and captivate the eye, however much they disappoint, on the first glance, the expectations which the older descriptions of them may have excited. fifty years ago it was said that delacroix painted with colour and decamps with light; that his works were steeped in a bath of sunshine. this vibrating light, this transparent atmosphere, which contemporaries admired, is not to be found in decamps' pictures. their brilliancy of technique is admirable, but he was no painter of light. the world of sunshine in which everything is dipped, the glow and lustre of objects in shining, liquid, and tremulous air, is what gustave guillaumet first learnt to paint a generation later. decamps attained the effect of light in his pictures by the darkening of shadows, precisely in the manner of the old school. to make the sky bright, he threw the foreground into opaque and heavy shade. and as, in consequence of the ground of bole used to produce his beautiful red tones, the dark parts of his pictures gradually became as black as pitch, and the light parts dead and spotty, he will rather seem to be a contemporary of albert cuyp than of manet. as draughtsman to a german baron making a scientific tour in the east, _prosper marilhat_, the third of the painters of oriental life, was early in following this career. he visited greece, asia minor, and egypt, and returned to paris in intoxicated with the beauties of these lands. especially dear to him was egypt, and in his pictures he called himself, "marilhat the egyptian." decamps had been blinded by the sharp contrast between light and shadow in oriental nature, by the vivid blaze of colour in its vegetation, and by the tropical glow of the southern sky. marilhat took novelties with a more quiet eye, and kept close to pure reality. he has not so much virtuosity as decamps, and in colour he is less daring, but he is perhaps more poetic, and on that account, in the years - , he was prized almost more. the exhibition of , in which eight of his pictures appeared, closed his career. he had expected the cross of the legion of honour, but did not get it, and this disappointment affected him so deeply that he became first hypochondriacal and then mad. his early death at thirty-six set decamps free from a powerful rival. _eugène fromentin_ went further in the same direction as marilhat. he knew nothing of the preference for the glowing hues of the tropics nor of the fantastic colouring of the romanticists. he painted in the spirit of a refined social period in which no loud voice is tolerated, but only light and familiar talk. the east gave him his grace; the proud and fiery nature of the arab horse was revealed to him. in his portraits fromentin looks like a cavalry officer. in his youth he had studied law, but that was before his acquaintance with the landscape painter cabat brought him to his true calling, and a sojourn made on three different occasions--in , , and --on the borders of morocco decided for him his specialty. by his descriptions of travels, _a year in sahel_, which appeared in the _revue des deux mondes_, he became known as a writer: it was only after , however, that he became famous as a painter. fromentin's east is algiers. while marilhat tried to render the marvellous clearness of the southern light, and decamps depicted the glowing heat of the east, its dark brooding sky in the sultry hours of summer and the grand outlines of its landscape, fromentin has tried--and perhaps with too much system--to express the grace and brilliant spirit of the east. taste, refinement, ductility, distinction of colouring, and grace of line are his special qualities. his arabs galloping on their beautiful white horses have an inimitable chivalry; they are true princes in every pose and movement. the execution of his pictures is always spirited, easy, and in keeping with their high-bred tone. whatever he does has the nervous vigour of a sketch, with that degree of finish which satisfies the connoisseur. there is always a coquetry in his arrangement of colour, and his tones are light and delicate if they are not deep. in the landscape his little arab riders have the effect of flowers upon a carpet. [illustration: _baschet._ decamps. coming out from a turkish school. (_by permission of mme. moreau-nélaton, the owner of the picture._)] [illustration: _cassell & co._ decamps. the watering place.] afterwards, when naturalism was at its zenith, fromentin was much attacked for this wayward grace. he was accused of making a superficial appeal to the eye, and of offering everything except truth. and for its substantive fidelity fromentin's "east" cannot certainly be taken very seriously. he was a man of fine culture, and in his youth he had studied the old dutch masters more than nature; he even saw the light of the east through the dutch _chiaroscuro_. his pictures are subtle works of art, nervous in drawing and dazzling in brilliancy of construction, but they are washed in rather than painted, and stained rather than coloured. in his book he speaks himself of the cool, grey shadows of the east. but in his pictures they turn to a reddish hue or to brown. an effort after beauty of tone in many ways weakened his arab scenes. he looked at the people of the east too much with the eyes of a parisian. and the more his recollections faded, the more did he begin to create for himself an imaginary africa. he painted grey skies simply because he was tired of blue; he tinted white horses with rosy reflections, chestnuts with lilac, and dappled-greys with violet. the grace of his works became more and more an affair of affectation, until at last, instead of being oriental pictures, they became parisian fancy goods, which merely recalled the fact that algiers had become a french town. [illustration: marilhat. a halt.] but after all what does it matter whether pictures of the east are true to nature or not? other people whose names are not fromentin can provide such documents. in his works fromentin has expressed himself, and that is enough. take up his first book, _l'été dans la sahara_: by its grace of style it claims a place in french literature. or read his classic masterpiece, _les maîtres d'autrefois_, published in after a tour through belgium and holland: it will remain for ever one of the finest works ever written on art. a connoisseur of such refinement, a critic who gauged the artistic works of belgium and holland with such subtlety, necessarily became in his own painting an epicure of beautiful tones. this man, who never made an awkward movement nor uttered a brutal word, this sensitive, distinguished spirit could be no more than a subtle artist who had eyes for nothing but the aristocratic side of eastern life. as a painter, however, he might wish to be true to nature; he could be no more than this. his art, compact of grace and distinction, was the outcome of his own nature. he is a descendant of those delicately feminine, seductively brilliant, facile and spontaneous, sparkling and charming painters who were known in the eighteenth century as _peintres des fêtes galantes_. he is the watteau of the east, and in this capacity one of the most winning and captivating products of french art. [illustration: e. fromentin. arabian falconers.] finally, _guillaumet_, the youngest and last of the group, found in the east peace: a scion of the romanticists, there is none the less a whole world of difference between him and them. while the romanticists, as sons of a flaccid, inactive period, lashed themselves into enthusiasm for the passion and wild life of the east, guillaumet, the child of a hurried and neurotic epoch, sought here an opiate for his nerves. where they saw contrasts he found harmony; and he did not find it, like fromentin, in what is understood as _chic_. manet's conception of colour had taught him that nature is everywhere in accord and harmoniously delicate. he writes: "_je commence à distinguer quelques formes: des silhouettes indécises bougent le long des murs enfumés sous des poutres luisantes de sui. les détails sortent du demi-jour, s'animent graduellement avec la magie des rembrandt. même mystère des ombres, mêmes ors dans les reflets--c'est l'aube.... des terrains poudreux inondés de soleil; un amoncellement de murailles grises sous un ciel sans nuage; une cité somnolente baignée d'une lumière égale, et dans le frémissement visible des atomes aériens quelques ombres venant ça et là détacher une forme, accuser un geste parmi les groupes en burnous qui se meuvent sur les places ... tel m'apparait le ksar, vers dix heures du matin...._ "_l'oeil interroge: rien ne bouge. l'oreille écoute: aucun bruit. pas un souffle, si ce n'est le frémissement presque imperceptible de l'air au-dessus du sol embrasé. la vie semble avoir disparu, absorbée par la lumière. c'est le milieu du jour.... mais le soir approche.... les troupeaux rentrent dans les douars; ils se pressent autour des tentes, à peine visibles, confondus sous cette teinte neutre du crépuscule, faite avec les gris de la nuit qui vient et les violets tendres du soir qui s'en va. c'est l'heure mystérieuse, où les couleurs se mèlent, où les contours se noient, où toute chose s'assombrit, où toute voix se tait, où l'homme, à la fin du jour, laisse flotter sa pensée devant ce qui s'éteint, s'efface et s'evanouit._" [illustration: _l'art._ eugÈne fromentin.] this description of a day in algiers in guillaumet's _tableaux algériens_ interprets the painter guillaumet better than any critical appreciation could possibly do. for him the east is the land of dreams and melting softness, a far-off health-resort for neurotic patients, where one lies at ease in the sun and forgets the excitements of paris. it was not what was brilliant and pictorial in sparkling jewels and bright costume that attracted him at all, but the silence, the mesmeric spell of the east, the vastness of the infinite horizon, the imposing majesty of the desert, and the sublime and profound peace of the nights of africa. "the evening prayer in the desert" was the name of the first picture that he brought back with him in . there is a wide and boundless plain; the straight line of the horizon is broken by a few mountain forms and by the figures of a party belonging to a caravan; but, bowed as they are in prayer, these figures are scarcely to be distinguished. the smoke of the camp ascends like a pillar into the air. the monotony of the wilderness seems to stretch endlessly to the right and to the left, like a grand and solemn nirvana smiting the human spirit with religious delirium. [illustration: fromentin. arabian women returning from drawing water.] for decamps and marilhat the east was a great, red copper-block beneath a blue dome of steel; a beautiful monster, bright and glittering. guillaumet has no wish to dazzle. his pictures give one the impression of intense and sultry heat. his light is really "_le frémissement visible des atomes aériens_." moreover, he did not see the chivalry of the east like fromentin. the latter was fascinated by the nomad, the pure arab living in tent or saddle, the true aristocrat of the desert, mounted on his white palfrey, hunting wild beasts through fair blue and green landscapes. poor folk who never owned a horse are the models of guillaumet. with their dogs--wild creatures who need nothing--they squat in the sun as if with their own kin: they are the lower, primitive population, the pariahs of the wilderness; tattered men whose life-long siesta is only interrupted by the anguish of death, animal women whose existence flows by as idly as in the trance of opium. after the french romanticists had shown the way, other nations contributed their contingent to the painters of oriental subjects. in germany poetry had discovered the east. rückert imitated the measure and the ideas of the oriental lyric, and the greek war of liberation quickened all that passionate love for the soil of old hellas which lives in the german soul. _wilhelm müller_ sang his songs of the greeks, and in _leopold schefer_ brought out his tale _die persierin_. but just as the oriental tale was a mere episode in german literature, an exotic grafted on the native stem, so the oriental painting produced no leading mind in the country, but merely a number of good soldiers who dutifully served in the troops of foreign commanders. [illustration: _cassell & co._ fromentin. the centaurs.] _kretszchmer_ of berlin led the way with ethnographical representations, and was joined at a later time by wilhelm gentz and adolf schreyer of frankfort. _gentz_, a dexterous painter, and, as a colourist, perhaps the most gifted of the berlin school in the sixties, is, in comparison with the great frenchmen who portrayed the east, a thoroughly arid realist. he brought to his task a certain amount of rough vigour and restless diversity, together with north german sobriety and berlin humour. _schreyer_, who lived in paris, belonged to the following of fromentin. the arab and his steed interested him also. his pictures are bouquets of colour, dazzling the eye. arabs in rich and picturesque costume repose on the ground or are mounted on their milk-white steeds, which rear and prance with tossing manes and wide-stretched nostrils. the desert undulates away to the far horizon, now pale and now caressed by the softened rays of the setting sun, which tip the waves of sand with burnished gold. schreyer was--for a german--a man with an extraordinary gift for technique and a brilliantly effective sense of life. the latter remark is specially true of his sketches. at a later date--in , after being with lembach and makart in cairo--the viennese _leopold müller_ found the domain of his art beneath the clear sky, in the brightly coloured land of the nile. even his sketches are often of great delicacy of colour, and the ethnographical accuracy which he also possessed has long made him the most highly valued delineator of oriental life and a popular illustrator of works on egypt. the learned and slightly pedantic vein in his works he shares with gérôme, but by his greater charm of colour he comes still nearer to fromentin. [illustration: _l'art._ guillaumet. the sÉguia, near biskra.] [illustration: _l'art._ guillaumet. a dwelling in the sahara.] the route to the east was shown to the english by the glowing landscapes of _william müller_; but the english were just as unable to find a byron amongst their painters. _frederick goodall_ has studied the classical element in the east, and endeavoured to reconstruct the past from the present. best known amongst these artists was _j. f. lewis_, who died in and was much talked of in earlier days. for long years he wandered through asia minor, filling his portfolios with sketches and his trunks with oriental robes and weapons. when he returned there was a perfect scramble for his pictures. they revealed a new world to the english then, but no one scrambles for them now. john lewis was exceedingly diligent and conscientious; he studied the implements, the costumes, and the popular types of the east with incredible industry. in his harem pictures as in his representations of arabian camp life everything is painted, down to the patterns of embroidery, the ornaments of turbans, and the pebbles on the sand. even his water-colours are triumphs of endurance; but patience and endurance are not sufficient to make an interesting artist. john lewis stands in respect of colour, too, more or less on a level with gentz. he has seized neither the dignity of the mussulman nor the grace of the bedouin, but has contented himself with a faithful though somewhat glaring reproduction of accessories. _houghton_ was the first who, moving more or less parallel with guillaumet, succeeded in delicately interpreting the great peace and the mystic silence of the east. [illustration: w. mÜller. prayer in the desert.] the east was in this way traversed in all directions. the first comers who beheld it with eager, excited eyes collected a mass of gigantic legends, with no decided aim or purpose and driven by no passionate impulse, merely eager to pluck here or there an exotic flower, or lightly to catch some small part of the glamour that overspread all that was eastern, piled up dreams upon dreams, and gave it a gorgeous and fantastic life. there were deserts shining in the sun, waves lashed by the storm, the nude forms of women, and all the asiatic splendour of the east: dark-red satin, gold, crystal, and marble were heaped in confusion and executed in terrible fantasies of colour in the midst of darkness and lightning. after this generation had passed like a thunderstorm the _chic_ of fromentin was delicious. he profited by the taste which others had excited. painters of all nationalities overran the east. the great dramas were transformed into elegies, pastorals, and idylls; even ethnographical representations had their turn. guillaumet summed up the aims of that generation. his dreamy and tender painting was like a beautiful summer evening. the radiance of the blinding sky was mitigated, and a peaceful sun at the verge of the horizon covered the steppes of sand, which it had scorched a few hours before, with a network of rosy beams. they were all scions of the romantic movement. the yearning which filled their spirits and drove them into distant lands was only another symptom of their dissatisfaction with the present. classicism had dealt with greek and roman history by the aid of antique statues, and next used the colours of the flemish masters to paint italian peasantry. romanticism had touched the motley life of the middle ages and the richly coloured east; but both had anxiously held aloof from the surroundings of home and the political and social relations of contemporaries. it was obvious that art's next task was to bring down to earth again the ideal that had hovered so long over the domain of ancient history, and then winged its flight to the realms of the east. "_ah la vie, la vie! le monde est là; il rit, crie, souffre, s'amuse, et on ne le rend pas._" in these words the necessity of the step has been indicated by fromentin himself. the successful delivery of modern art was first accomplished, the problem stated in was first solved, when the subversive upheaval of the third estate, which had been consummating itself more and more imperiously ever since the revolution, found distinct expression in the art of painting. art always moves on parallel lines with religious conceptions, with politics, and with manners. in the middle ages men lived in the world beyond the grave, and so the subjects of painting were madonnas and saints. according to louis xiv, everything was derived from the king, as light from the sun, and so royalty by the grace of god was reflected in the art of his epoch. the royal sun suffered total eclipse in the revolution, and with this mighty change of civilisation art had to undergo a new transformation. the of painting had to follow on the politics of : the proclamation of the liberty and equality of all individuals. only painting which recognised man in his full freedom, no privileged class of gods and heroes, italians and easterns, could be the true child of the revolution, the art of the new age. belgium and germany made the first diffident steps in this direction. chapter xx the painting of humorous anecdote at the very time when the east attracted the french romanticists, the german and belgian painters discovered the rustic. romanticism, driven into strange and tropical regions by its disgust of a sluggish, colourless and inglorious age, now planted a firm foot upon native soil. amid rustics there was to be found a conservative type of life which perpetuated old usages and picturesque costume. it is not easy for a dilettante to enter into sympathetic relationship with these early pictures of peasant life. they are gaudy in tone, smooth as metal, and the figures stand out hard against the atmosphere, as if they had been cut from a picture-sheet. but the historian has no right to be merely a dilettante. it would be unfair of him to make the artistic conceptions of the present time the means of depreciating the past. for, after all, works of the past are only to be measured with those of their own age, and when one once remembers what an importance these modest "little masters" had for their time it is no longer difficult to treat them with justice. in an age when futile and aimless intentions lost their way in theory and imitation of the "great painting" there blossomed here, and for the first time, a certain individuality of mind and temper. while cornelius, kaulbach, and their fellows formed a style which was ideal in a purely conventional sense, and epitomised the art of the great masters according to method, the "_genre_ painters" seized upon the endless variety of nature, and, after a long period of purely reproductive painting, made the first diffident attempt to set art free from the curse of system and the servile repetition of antiquated forms. even as regards colour they have the honour of preparing the way for a restoration in the technique of painting. their own defects in technique were not their fault, but the consequence of that fatal interference of winckelmann through which art lost its technical traditions. they did not enjoy the advantages of issuing from a long line of ancestors. in a certain sense they had to make a beginning in the history of art by themselves; for between them and the older german painting they only met with men who held the ability to paint as a shame and a disgrace. with the example of the old dutch and flemish masters before them, they had to knit together the bonds which these men had cut; and considering the æsthetic ideas of the age, this reference to netherlandish models was an event of revolutionary importance. in doing this they may have been partially influenced by wilkie, who made his tour in germany in , and whose pictures had a wide circulation through the medium of engraving. and from another side attention was directed to the old dutch masters by schnaase's letters of . while the entire artistic school which took its rise from winckelmann gave the reverence of an empty, formal idealism to classical antiquity and the cinquecento, applying their standards to all other periods, schnaase was the first to give an impulse to the historical consideration of art. in this way he revealed wide and hitherto neglected regions to the creative activity of modern times. the result of his book was that the netherlandish masters were no longer held to be "the apes of vulgar nature," but took their place as exquisite artists from whom the modern painter had a great deal to learn. [illustration: kobell. a meeting.] in munich the conditions of a popular, national art were supplied by the very site of the town. since the beginning of the century munich had been peculiarly the type of a peasant city, the capital of a peasant province; it had a peasantry abounding in old-fashioned singularities, gay and motley in costume as in their ways of life, full of bright and easy-going good-humour, and gifted with the bavarian force of character. here it was, then, that "the resort to national traits" was first made. and if, in the event, this painting of rustic life produced many monstrosities, it remained throughout the whole century an unfailing source from which the art of munich drew fresh and vivid power. even in the twenties there was an art in munich which was native to the soil, and in later years shot up all the more vigorously through being for a time cramped in its development by the exotic growths of the school of cornelius. it was as different from the dominant historical painting as the "_magots_" of teniers from the mythological machinery of lebrun, and it was treated by official criticism with the same contempt. cornelius and his school directed the attention of educated people so exclusively to themselves, and so entirely proscribed the literature of the day, that what took place outside their own circle in munich was but little discussed. the vigorous group of naturalists had not much to offer critics who wished to display their knowledge by picking to pieces historical pictures, interpreting philosophical cartoons, and pointing to similarities of style between cornelius and michael angelo. but for the historian, seeking the seeds of the present in the past, they are figures worthy of respect. setting their own straightforward conception of nature against the eclecticism of the great painters, they laid the foundation of an independent modern art. the courtly, academic painting of cornelius derived its inspiration from the sistine chapel; the naturalism of these "_genre_ painters" was rooted in the life of the bavarian people. the "great painters" dwelt alone in huge monumental buildings; the naturalists, who sought their inspiration in the life of peasants, in the life of camps, and in landscape, without troubling themselves about antique or romantic subjects, furnished the material for the first collections of modern art. both as artists and as men they were totally different beings. cornelius and his school stand on the one side, cultured, imperious, fancying themselves in the possession of all true art, and abruptly turning from all who are not sworn to their flag; on the other side stand the naturalists, brisk and cheery, rough it may be, but sound to the core, and with a sharp eye for life and nature. [illustration: peter hess. a morning at partenkirche.] painting in the grand style owed its origin to the personal tastes of the king and to the great tasks to which it was occasionally set; independent of princely favour, realistic art found its patrons amongst the south german nobility and, at a later date, in the circle of the munich art union, and seems the logical continuation of that military painting which, at the opening of the century, had its representatives in nuremberg, augsburg, and munich. the motley swarm of foreign soldiers which overran the soil of germany incited albrecht adam, peter hess, johann adam klein, and others, to represent what they saw in a fashion which was sincere and simple if it was also prosy. and when the warlike times were over it was quite natural that some of the masters who had learnt their art in camps should turn to the representation of peasant life, where they were likewise able to find gay, pictorial costumes. _wilhelm kobell_, whose etchings of the life of the bavarian people are more valuable than his battle-pieces, was one of the first to make this transition. in sturdy _peter hess_ painted his "morning at partenkirche," in which he depicted a simple scene of mountain life--girls at a well in the midst of a sunny landscape--in a homely but poetic manner. when this breach had been made, bürkel was able to take the lead of the munich painters of rustic subjects. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ heinrich bÜrkel.] _heinrich bürkel's_ portrait reveals a square-built giant, whose appearance contrasts strangely with that of his celebrated contemporaries. the academic artists sweep back their long hair and look upwards with an inspired glance. bürkel looks down with a keen eye at the hard, rough, and stony earth. the academic artists had a mantle--the mantle of rauch's statues--picturesquely draped about their shoulders; bürkel dressed like anybody else. no attribute is added which could indicate that he was a painter; neither palette, nor brush, nor picture; beside him on the table there is--a mug of beer. there he sits without any sort of pose, with his hand resting on his knee--rough, athletic, and pugnacious--for all the world as if he were quite conscious of his peculiarities. even the photographer's demand for "a pleasant smile" had no effect upon him. this portrait is itself an explanation of bürkel's art. his was a healthy, self-reliant nature, without a trace of romance, sentimentality, affected humour, or sugary optimism. amongst all his munich contemporaries he was the least academic in his whole manner of feeling and thinking. sprung from the people, he became their painter. he was born, th may , in pirmasens, where his father combined a small farm with a public-house and his mother kept a shop; and he had been first a tradesman's apprentice, and then assistant clerk in a court of justice, before he came to munich in . here the academy rejected him as without talent; but while it shut the door against the pupil, life revealed itself to the master. he went to the schleissheimer gallery, and sat there copying the pictures of wouwerman, ostade, brouwer, and berghem, and developed his powers, by the study of these netherlandish masters, with extraordinary rapidity. his first works--battles, skirmishes, and other martial scenes--are amateurish and diffident attempts; it is evident that he was without any kind of guidance or direction. all the more astonishing is the swiftness with which he acquired firm command of abilities, admirable for that age, and the defiant spirit of independence with which he went straight from pictures to nature, though hardly yet in possession of the necessary means of expression. he painted and drew the whole new world which opened itself before him: far prospects over the landscape, mossy stones in the sunlight, numbers of cloud-pictures, peasants' houses with their surroundings, forest paths, mountain tracks, horses, and figures of every description. the life of men and animals gave him everywhere some opportunity for depicting it in characteristic situations. and later, when he had settled down again in munich, he did not cease from wandering in the south german mountains with a fresh mind. up to old age he made little summer and winter tours in the bavarian highlands. tegernsee, rottach, prien, berchtesgaden, south tyrol, and partenkirche were visited again and again, on excursions for the week or the day; and he returned from them all with energetic studies, from which were developed pictures that were not less energetic. [illustration: bÜrkel. brigands returning.] [illustration: bÜrkel. a downpour in the mountains.] for, as every artist is the result of two factors, of which one lies in himself and the other in his age and surroundings, the performances of bürkel are to be judged, not only according to the requirements of the present day, but according to the conditions under which they were produced. what is weak in him he shares with his contemporaries; what is novel is his own most peculiar and incontestable merit. in a period of false idealism worked up in a museum--false idealism which had aped from the true the way in which one clears one's throat, as schiller has it, but nothing more indicative of genius--in a period of this accomplishment bürkel preferred to expose his own insufficiency rather than adorn himself with other people's feathers; at a time which prided itself on representing with brush and pigment things for which pen and ink are the better medium, he looked vividly into life; at a time when all germany lost itself aimlessly in distant latitudes, he brought to everything an honest and objective fidelity which knew no trace of romantic sentimentalism; and by these fresh and realistic qualities he has become the father of that art which rose in munich in a later day. positive and exact in style, and far too sincere to pretend to raise himself to the level of the old masters by superficial imitation, he was the more industrious in penetrating the spirit of nature and showing his love for everything down to its minutest feature; weak in the sentiment for colour, he was great in his feeling for nature. that was heinrich bürkel, and his successors had to supplement what was wanting in him, but not to wage war against his influence. [illustration: bÜrkel. a smithy in upper bavaria.] the peculiarity of all his works, as of those of the early dutch and flemish artists, is the equal weight which he lays on figures and on landscape. in his eyes the life of man is part of a greater whole; animals and their scenic surroundings are studied with the same love, and in his most felicitous pictures these elements are so blended that no one feature predominates at the expense of another. seldom does he paint interiors, almost always preferring to move in free and open nature. but here his field is extraordinarily wide. those works in which he handled italian subjects form a group by themselves. bürkel was in rome from to , the very years in which leopold robert celebrated his triumphs there; but curious is the difference between the works of the munich and those of the swiss painter. in the latter are beautiful postures, poetic ideas, and all the academical formulas; in the former unvarnished, naturalistic bluntness of expression. even in italy he kept romantic and academic art at a distance. they had no power over the rough, healthy, and sincere nature of the artist. he saw nothing in italy that he had not met with at home, and he painted things as he saw them, honestly and without beatification. to find material bürkel did not need to go far. picture to yourself a man wandering along the banks of the isar, and gazing about him with a still and thoughtful look. a healthy peasant lass with a basket, or a plough moving slowly in the distance behind a sweating yoke of horses, is quite enough to fill him with feelings and ideas. his peculiar domain was the high-road, which in the thirties and the forties, before the railways had usurped its traffic, was filled with a much more manifold life than it is to-day. waggons and mail-carts passed along before the old gateways; in every village there were taverns inviting the wayfarer to rest, and blacksmiths sought for custom on the road. there were vehicles of every description, horses at the forge, posting-stages, change of teams, the departure of marketing folk, and passengers taking their seats or alighting. here horses were being watered, and an occasion was given for brief dialogues between the coachman and his fares. there travellers surprised by a shower were hurrying under their umbrellas into an inn; or, in wintry weather, they were waiting impatiently, wrapped up in furs, whilst a horse was being shod. [illustration: carl spitzweg.] the beaten tracks through field and forest offered much of the same sort. peasants were driving to market with a cart-load of wood. horses stood unyoked at a drinking-trough whilst the driver, a muscular fellow with great sinews, quietly enjoyed his pipe. along some shadowy woodland path a team drew near to a forge or a lonely charcoal-burner's hut, where the light flickered, and over which there soared a bare and snowy mountain peak. such pictures of snow-clad landscape were a specialty of bürkel's art, and in their simplicity and harmony are to be ranked with the best that he has done. heavily freighted wood-carts passing through a drift, waggons brought to a standstill in the snow, raw-boned woodmen perspiring as they load them in a wintry forest, are the accessory objects and figures. [illustration: _albert, munich._ spitzweg. at the garret window.] but life in the fields attracted him also. having a love of representing animals, he kept out of the way of mowers, reapers, and gleaners. his favourite theme is the hay, corn, or potato harvest, which he paints with much detail and a great display of accessory incidents. maids and labourers, old and young, are feverishly active in the construction of hay-cocks, or, in threatening weather, pile up waggons, loaded as high as a house, with fresh trusses. in this enumeration all the rustic life of bavaria has been described. it is only the sunday and holiday themes, the peculiar motives of the _genre_ painter, that are wanting. and in itself this is an indication of what gives bürkel his peculiar position. by their conception his works are out of keeping with everything which the contemporary generation of "great painters" and the younger _genre_ painters were attempting. the great painters had their home in museums; bürkel lived in the world of nature. the _genre_ painters, under the influence of wilkie, were fond of giving their motive a touch of narrative interest, like the english. cheerful or mournful news, country funerals, baptisms, and public dinners offered an excuse for representing the same sentiment in varying keys. their starting-point was that of an illustrator; it might be very pretty in itself, but it was too jovial or whimpering for a picture. bürkel's works have no literary background; they are not composed of stories with a humorous or sentimental tinge, but depict with an intimate grasp of the subject the simplest events of life. he neither offered the public lollipops, nor tried to move them and play upon their sensibilities by subjects which could be spun out into a novel. he approached his men, his animals, and his landscapes as a strenuous character painter, without gush, sentimentality, or romanticism. in contradistinction from all the younger painters of rustic subjects, he sternly avoided what was striking, peculiar, or in any way extraordinary, endeavouring to paint everyday life in the house or the farmyard, in the field or upon the highway, in all plainness and simplicity. at first, indeed, he thought it necessary to satisfy the demands of the age by, at any rate, painting in a broad and epical manner. the public collections chiefly possess pictures of his which contain many figures: "the return from the mountain pasture," "coming back from the bear hunt," "the cattle show," and "from the fair"; scenes before an inn at festivals, or waggoners setting out, and the like. but in these works the scheme of composition and the multitude of figures have a somewhat overladen and old-fashioned effect. on the other hand, there are pictures scattered about in private collections which are of a simplicity which was unknown at the time: dusty roads with toiling horses, lonely charcoal burners' huts in the dimness of the forest, villages in rain or snow, with little figures shivering from frost or damp as they flit along the street. from the very beginning, free from the vices of _genre_ and narrative painting and the search after interesting subjects, he has, in these pictures, renounced the epical manner of representing a complicated event. like the moderns, he paints things which can be grasped and understood at a glance. [illustration: spitzweg. a morning concert.] but, after all, bürkel occupies a position which is curiously intermediate. his colour relegates him altogether to the beginning of the century. he was himself conscious of the weakness of his age in this respect, and stands considerably above the school of cornelius, even where its colouring is best. yet, in spite of the most diligent study of the dutch masters, he remained, as a colourist, hard and inartistic to the end. having far too much regard for outline, he is not light enough with what should be lightly touched, nor fugitive enough with what is fleeting. what the moderns leave to be indistinctly divined he renders sharp and palpable in his drawing. he trims and rounds off objects which have a fleeting form, like clouds. but although inept in technique, his works are more modern in substance than anything that the next generation produced. they have an intimacy of feeling beyond the reach of the traditional _genre_ painting. in his unusually fresh, simple, and direct studies of landscape he did not snatch at dazzling and sensational effects, but tried to be just to external nature in her work-a-day mood; and, in the very same way, in his figures he aimed at the plain reproduction of what is given in nature. the hands of his peasants are the real hands of toil--weather-stained, heavy, and awkward. there are no movements that are not simple and actual. others have told droller stories; bürkel unrolls a true picture of the surroundings of the peasant's life. others have made their rustics persons suitable for the drawing-room, and cleaned their nails; bürkel preaches the strict, austere, and pious study of nature. an entirely new age casts its shadow upon this close devotion to life. in their intimacy and simplicity his pictures contain the germ of what afterwards became the task of the moderns. all who came after him in germany were the sons of wilkie until wilhelm leibl, furnished with a better technical equipment, started in spirit from the point at which bürkel had left off. _carl spitzweg_, in whose charming little pictures tender and discreet sentiment is united with realistic care for detail, must likewise be reckoned with the few who strove and laboured in quiet, apart from the ruling tendency, until their hour came. thrown entirely on his own resources, without a teacher, he worked his way upwards under the influence of the older painters. by dint of copying he discovered their secrets of colour, and gave his works, which are full of poetry, a remarkable impress of sympathetic delicacy, suggestive of the old masters. one turns over the leaves of the album of spitzweg's sketches as though it were a story-book from the age of romance, and at the same time one is astonished at the master's ability in painting. he was a genius who united in himself three qualities which seem to be contradictory--realism, fancy, and humour. he might be most readily compared with schwind, except that the latter was more of a romanticist than a realist, and spitzweg is more of a realist than a romanticist. the artists' yearning carries schwind to distant ages and regions far from the world, and a positive sense of fact holds spitzweg firmly to the earth. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ spitzweg. the postman.] like jean paul, he has the boundless fancy which revels in airy dreams, but he is also like jean paul in having a cheery, provincial satisfaction in the sights of his own narrow world. he has all schwind's delight in hermits and anchorites, and witches and magic and nixies, and he plays with dragons and goblins like boecklin; but, for all that, he is at home and entirely at his ease in the society of honest little schoolmasters and poor sempstresses, and gives shape to his own small joys and sorrows in a spirit of contemplation. his dragons are only comfortable, philistine dragons, and his troglodytes, who chastise themselves in rocky solitudes, perform their penance with a kindly irony. in spitzweg a fine humour is the causeway between fancy and reality. his tender little pictures represent the germany of the forties, and lie apart from the rushing life of our time, like an idyllic hamlet slumbering in sunday quietude. indeed, his pictures come to us like a greeting from a time long past. there they are: his poor poet, a little, lean old man, with a sharp nose and a night-cap, sits at his garret window scanning verses on his frozen fingers, enveloped in a blanket drawn up to his chin, and protected from the inclemency of the weather by a great red umbrella; his clerk, grown grey in the dust of parchments, sharpens his quill with dim-sighted eyes, and feels himself part of a bureaucracy which rules the world; his book-worm stands on the highest ladder in the library, with books in his hand, books in his pockets, books under his arms, and books jammed between his legs, and neglects the dinner-hour in his peaceful enjoyment, until an angry torrent of scolding is poured over his devoted head by the housekeeper; there is his old gentleman devoutly sniffing the perfume of a cactus blossom which has been looked forward to for years; there is his little man enticing his bird with a lump of sugar; the widower glancing aside from the miniature of his better half at a pair of pretty maidens walking in the park; the constable whiling away the time at the town-gate in catching flies; the old-fashioned bachelor, solemnly presenting a bouquet to a kitchen-maid who is busied at the market-well, to the amusement of all the gossips watching him from the windows; the lovers who in happy oblivion pass down a narrow street by the stall of a second-hand dealer, where amidst antiquated household goods a gilded statuette of venus reposes in a rickety cradle; the children holding up their pinafores as they beg the stork flying by to bring them a little brother. spitzweg, like jean paul, makes an effect which is at once joyous and tender, _bourgeois_ and idyllic. the postillion gives the signal on his horn that the moment for starting has arrived; milk-maids look down from the green mountain summit into the far country; hermits sit before their cells forgotten by the world; old friends greet each other after years of separation; dachau girls in their holiday best pray in woodland chapels; school children pass singing through a still mountain valley; maidens chatter of an evening as they fetch water from the moss-grown well, or the arrival of the postman in his yellow uniform brings to their windows the entire population of an old country town. the little man with the miserable figure of a tailor had been an apothecary until he was thirty years of age, but he had an independent and distinctive artistic nature which impresses itself on the memory in a way that is unforgettable. it is only necessary to see his portrait as he sits at his easel in his dressing-gown with his meagre beard, his long nose, and the droll look about the corners of his eyes, to feel attracted by him before one knows his works. spitzweg reveals in them his own life: the man and the painter are one in him. there is a pretty little picture of him as an elderly bachelor, looking out of the window in the early morning and nodding across the roofs to an old sempstress who had worked the whole night through without noticing that the day had broken; that is the world he lived in, and the world which he has painted. as a kind-hearted, inflexible benedick, full of droll eccentricities, he lived in the oldest quarter of munich in a fourth-storey attic. his only visitor was his friend moritz schwind, who now and then climbed the staircase to the little room that looked over the roofs and gables and pinnacles to distant, smoky towers. his studio was an untidy confusion of prosaic discomfort and poetic cosiness. [illustration: kauffmann. woodcutters returning.] here he sat, an ossified hermit, _bourgeois_, and book-worm, as if he were in a spider's nest, and here at a little window he painted his delightful pictures. here he took his homely meal at the rickety little table where he sat alone in the evening buried in his books. a pair of heavy silver spectacles with keen glasses sparkled on his thick nose, and the great head with its ironically twinkling eyes rested upon a huge cravat attached to a pointed stand-up collar. when disturbed by strangers he spoke slowly and with embarrassment, though in the society of schwind he was brilliant and satirical. then he became as mobile as quicksilver, and paced up and down the studio with great strides, gesticulating and sometimes going through a dramatic performance in vivid mimicry of those of whom he happened to be talking. his character has the same mixture of philistine contentment and genial comedy which gleams from his works with the freshness of dew. a touch of the sturdy philistinism of eichendorf is in these provincial idylls of germany; but at the same time they display an ability which even at the present day must compel respect. the whole of romanticism chirps and twitters in the spitzweg album, as from behind the wires of a birdcage. everything is here united: the fragrance of the woods and the song of birds, the pleasures of travelling and the sleepy life of provincial towns, moonshine and sunday quiet, vagabonds, roving musicians, and the guardians of law, learned professors and students singing catches, burgomasters and town-councillors, long-haired painters and strolling players, red dressing-gowns, green slippers, night-caps, and pipes with long stems, serenades and watchmen, rushing streams and the trill of nightingales, rippling summer breezes and comely lasses, stroking back their hair of a morning, and looking down from projecting windows to greet the passers-by. in common with schwind he shows a remarkable capacity for placing his figures in their right surroundings. all these squares, alleys, and corners, in which his provincial pictures are framed, seem--minutely and faithfully executed as they are--to be localities predestined for the action, though they are painted freely from memory. just as he forgot none of the characteristic figures which he had seen in his youth, so he held in his memory the whimsical and marvellous architecture of the country towns of swabia and upper bavaria which he had visited for his studies, with such a firm grip that it was always at his command; and he used it as a setting for his figures as a musician composes an harmonious accompaniment for a melody. [illustration: kauffmann. a sandy road.] [illustration: kauffmann. returning from the fields.] to look at his pictures is like wandering on a bright sunday morning through the gardens and crooked, uneven alleys of an old german town. at the same time one feels that spitzweg belonged to the present and not to the period of the ingenuous philistines. it was only after he had studied at the university and passed his pharmaceutical examination that he turned to painting. nevertheless he succeeded in acquiring a sensitiveness to colour to which nothing in the period can be compared. he worked through burnett's _treatise on painting_, visited italy, and in made a tour, for the sake of study, to paris, london, and antwerp, in company with eduard schleich. in the gallery of pommersfelden he made masterly copies from berghem, gonzales coquez, ostade, and poelenburg, and lived to see the appearance of piloty. but much as he profited by the principles of colour which then became dominant, he is like none of his contemporaries, and stands as far from piloty's brown sauce as from the frigid hardness of the old _genre_ painters. he was one of the first in germany to feel the really sensuous joy of painting, and to mix soft, luxuriant, melting colours. there are landscapes of his which, in their charming freshness, border directly on the school of fontainebleau. spitzweg has painted bright green meadows in which, as in the pictures of daubigny, the little red figures of peasant women appear as bright and luminous patches of colour. his woodland glades penetrated by the sun have a pungent piquancy of colour such as is only to be found elsewhere in diaz. and where he diversified his desolate mountain glens and steeply rising cliffs with the fantastic lairs of dragons and with eccentric anchorites, he sometimes produced such bold colour symphonies of sapphire blue, emerald green, and red, that his pictures seem like anticipations of boecklin. spitzweg was a painter for connoisseurs. his refined cabinet pieces are amongst the few german productions of their time which it is a delight to possess, and they have the savour of rare delicacies when one comes across them in the dismal wilderness of public galleries. bürkel's realistic programme was taken up with even greater energy by _hermann kauffmann_, who belonged to the munich circle from to , and then painted until his death in in his native hamburg. his province was for the most part that of bürkel: peasants in the field, waggoners on the road, woodmen at their labour, and hunters in the snowy forest. for the first few years after his return home he used for his pictures the well-remembered motives taken from the south german mountain district. a tour in norway, undertaken in , gave him the impulse for a series of norwegian landscapes which were simple and direct, and of more than common freshness. in the deanery at holstein he studied the life of fishers. otherwise the neighbourhood of hamburg is almost always the background of his pictures: harburg, kellinghusen, wandsbeck, and the alster valley. concerning him lichtwark is right in insisting upon the correctness of intuition, the innate soundness of perception which one meets with in all his works. [illustration: friedrich eduard meyerheim.] in berlin the excellent _eduard meyerheim_ went on parallel lines with these masters. an old tradition gives him the credit of having introduced the painting of peasants and children into german art. but in artistic power he is not to be compared with bürkel or kauffmann. they were energetic realists, teeming with health, and in everything they drew they were merely inspired by the earnest purpose of grasping life in its characteristic moments. but meyerheim, good-humoured and childlike, is decidedly inclined to a sentimentally pathetic compromise with reality. at the same time his importance for berlin is incontestable. hitherto gipsies, smugglers, and robbers were the only classes of human society, with the exception of knights, monks, noble ladies, and italian women, which, upon the banks of the spree, were thought suitable for artistic representation. friedrich eduard meyerheim sought out the rustic before literature had taken this step, and in he began with his "king of the shooting match," a series of modest pictures in which he was never weary of representing in an honest and sound-hearted way the little festivals of the peasant, the happiness of parents, and the games of children. he had grown up in dantzic, and played as a child in the tortuous lanes of the old free imperial city, amid trumpery shops, general dealers, and artisans. later, when he settled down in berlin, he painted the things which had delighted him in his youth. the travels which he made for study were not extensive: they hardly led him farther beyond the boundaries of the mark than hesse, the harz district, thüringen, altenburg, and westphalia. here he drew with indefatigable diligence the pleasant village houses and the churches shadowed by trees; the cots, yards, and alleys; the weather-beaten town ramparts, with their crumbling walls; the unobtrusive landscapes of north germany, lovely valleys, bushy hills, and bleaching fields, traversed by quiet streams fringed with willows, and enlivened by the figures of peasants, who still clung to so much of their old costume. his pictures certainly do not give an idea of the life of the german people at the time. for the peasantry have sat to meyerheim only in their most pious mood, in sunday toilette, and with their souls washed clean. clearness, neatness, and prettiness are to be found everywhere in his pictures. but little as they correspond to the truth, they are just as little untrue through affectation, for their idealism sprang from the harmless and cheerful temperament of the painter, and from no convention of the schools. [illustration: meyerheim. children at play.] a homely, idyllic poetry is to be found in his figures and his interiors. his women and girls are chaste and gracious. it is evident that meyerheim had a warm sympathy for the sorrows and joys of humble people; that he had an understanding for this happy family life, and liked himself to take part in these merry popular festivals; that he did not idealise the world according to rules of beauty, but because in his own eyes it really was so beautiful. his "king of the shooting match" of (berlin national gallery) has as a background a wide and pleasant landscape, with blue heights in the distance and the cheerful summer sunshine resting upon them. in the foreground are a crowd of figures, neatly composed after studies. the crowned king of the match, adorned for a festival, stands proudly on the road by which the procession of marksmen is advancing, accompanied by village music. an old peasant is congratulating him, and the pretty village girls and peasant women, in their gay rustic costumes, titter as they look on, while the neighbours are merrily drinking his health. then there is the "morning lesson," representing a carpenter's house, where an old man is hearing his grandson repeat a school task; "children at play," a picture of a game of hide-and-seek amongst the trees; "the knitting lesson," and the picture of a young wife by the bed of a naked boy who has thrown off the bedclothes and is holding up one of his rosy feet; and "the road to church," where the market-place is shadowed with lime trees and the fresh young girlish figures adorned in their sunday best. these are all pictures which in lithograph and copperplate engraving once flooded all germany and enraptured the public at exhibitions. [illustration: meyerheim. the king of the shooting match.] but the german _genre_ picture of peasant life only became universally popular after the village novel came into vogue at the end of the thirties. walter scott was not only a romanticist, but the founder of the peasant novel: he was the first to study the life and the human character of the peasantry of his native land, their rough and healthy merriment, their humorous peculiarities, and their hot-headed love of quarrelling; and he led the romanticists from their idyllic or sombre world of dreams nearer to the reality and its poetry. a generation later immermann created this department of literature in germany by the oberhof-episode of his _münchhausen_. "the village magistrate" was soon one of those typical figures which in literature became the model of a hundred others. in jeremias gotthelf began in his _bauernspiegel_ those descriptions of bernese rustic life which found general favour through their downright common sense. berthold auerbach, otto ludwig, and gottfried keller were then active, and fritz reuter lit upon a more clear-cut form for his tales in dialect. [illustration: meyerheim. the morning hour.] the influence which these writers had upon painting was enormous. it now turned everywhere to the life of the people, and took its joy and pleasure in devoting itself to reality. and the rustic was soon a popular figure much sought after in the picture market. yet this reliance on poetry and fiction had its disadvantage. for in germany, also, a vogue was given to that "_genre_ painting" which, instead of starting with a simple, straightforward representation of what the artist had seen, offered an artistically correct composition of what he had invented, and indulged in a rambling display of humorous narrative and pathetic pieces. in carlsruhe _johann kirner_ was the first to work on these lines, adapting the life of the swabian peasantry to the purposes of humorous anecdote. in munich _carl enhuber_ was especially fertile in the invention of comic episodes amongst the rustics of the bavarian highlands, and his ponderous humour made him one of the favourite heroes of the art union. every one was in raptures over his "partenkirche fair," over the charlatan in front of the village inn, who (like a figure after gerhard dow) is bringing home to the multitude by his lofty eloquence the fabulous qualities of his soap for removing spots; over that assembly of peasants which gave the painter an opportunity for making clearly recognisable people to be found everywhere in any little town, from the judge of the county court and the local doctor down to the watchmen. his second hit was "the interrupted card party": the blacksmith, the miller, the tailor, and other dignitaries of the village are so painfully disturbed in their social reunion by the unamiable wife of the tailor that her happy spouse makes his escape under the table. the house servant holds out his blue apron to protect his master, whilst the miller and the blacksmith try to look unconcerned; but a small boy who has accompanied his mother with a mug discovers the concealed sinner by his slipper, which has come off. the "session day" contains a still greater wealth of comical types: here is the yard of a country assize court, filled with people, some of them waiting their turn, some issuing in contentment or dejection. most contented, of course, are a bridal pair from the mountains--a stout peasant lad and a buxom maiden--who have just received official consent to their marriage. disastrous country excursions--townspeople overtaken by rain on their arrival in the mountains--were also a source of highly comical situations. [illustration: meyerheim. the knitting lesson.] in düsseldorf the reaction against the prevailing sentimentality necessarily gave an impulse to art on these humorous lines. when it seemed as if the mournfulness of the thirties would never be ended, _adolf schroedter_, the satirist of the band of düsseldorf artists in those times, broke the spell when he began to parody the works of the "great painters." when lessing painted "the sorrowing royal pair," schroedter painted "the triumphal procession of king bacchus"; when hermann stilke produced his knights and crusaders, schroedter illustrated _don quixote_ as a warning; and when bendemann gave the world "the lamentation of jeremiah" and "the lamentation of the jews," schroedter executed his droll picture "the sorrowful tanners," in which the tanners are mournfully regarding a hide carried away by the stream. since he was a humorist, and humour is rather an affair for drawing than painting, the charming lithographs, "the deeds and opinions of piepmeyer the delegate," published in conjunction with detmold, the hanoverian barrister, and author of the _guide to connoisseurship_, are perhaps to be reckoned as his best performances. _hasenclever_ followed the dilettante schroedter as a delineator of the "stolid peter" type, and painted the "study" and similar pictures for kortum's _jobsiade_ with great technical skill, and, at the same time, with little humour and much complacency. by the roundabout route of illustration artists were gradually brought more directly into touch with life, and painted side by side with melodramatic brigands, rustic folk, or a student at a tavern on the rhine, absurd people reading the newspapers, comic men sneezing, or the smirking philistine tasting wine. [illustration: kirner. the fortune teller.] [illustration: enhuber. the pensioner and his grandson.] [illustration: jacob becker. a tempest.] _jacob becker_ went to the westerwald to sketch little village tragedies, and won such popularity with his "shepherd struck by lightning" that for a long time the interest of the public was often concentrated on this picture in the collection of the staedel institute. _rudolf jordan_ of berlin settled on heligoland, and became by his "proposal of marriage in heligoland" one of the most esteemed painters of düsseldorf. and in _henry ritter_, his pupil, who died young, enjoyed a like success with his "middy's sermon," which represents a tiny midshipman with comical zeal endeavouring to convert to temperance three tars who are staggering against him. a norwegian, _adolf tidemand_, became the leopold robert of the north, and, like robert, attained an international success when, after , he began to present his compatriots, the peasants, fishers, and sailors of the shores of the north sea, to the public of europe. there was no doubt that a true ethnographical course of instruction in the life of a distant race, as yet unknown to the rest of europe, was to be gathered from his pictures, as from those of robert, or from the oriental representations of vernet. in tidemand's pictures the germans learnt the norwegian usage of christmas, accompanied the son of the north on his fishing of a night, joined the bridal party on the hardanger fjord, or listened to the sexton giving religious instruction; sailed with fishing girls in a skiff to visit the neighbouring village, or beheld grandmother and the children dance on sunday afternoon to father's fiddle. norwegian peasant life was such an unknown world of romance, and the costume so novel, that tidemand's art was greeted as a new discovery. that the truth of his pictures went no further than costume was only known at a later time. tidemand saw his native land with the eyes of a romanticist, as robert saw italy, and, in the same one-sided way, he only visited the people on festive occasions. though a born norwegian, he, too, was a foreigner, a man who was never familiar with the life of his country people, who never lived at home through the raw autumn and the long winter, but came only as a summer visitor, when nature had donned her bridal garb, and naturally took away with him the mere impressions of a tourist. as he only went to norway for recreation, it is always holiday-tide and sabbath peace in his pictures. he represents the same idyllic optimism and the same kindly view of "the people" as did björnson in his earliest works; and it is significant that the latter felt himself at the time so entirely in sympathy with tidemand that he wrote one of his tales, _the bridal march_, as text to tidemand's picture "adorning the bride." to seek the intimate poetry in the monotonous life of the peasant, and to go with him into the struggle for existence, was what did not lie in tidemand's method of presentation; he did not live amongst the people sufficiently long to penetrate to their depths. the sketches that resulted from his summer journeys often reveal a keen eye for the picturesque, as well as for the spiritual life of this peasantry; but later in düsseldorf, when he composed his studies for pictures with the help of german models, all the sharp characterisation was watered down. what ought to have been said in norwegian was expressed in a german translation, where the emphasis was lost. his art is düsseldorf art with norwegian landscapes and costumes; a course of lectures on the manners and customs of norwegian villages composed for germans. the only thing which distinguishes tidemand to his advantage from the german düsseldorfers is that he is less humorously and sentimentally disposed. pictures of his, such as "the lonely old people," "the catechism," "the wounded bear hunter," "the grandfather's blessing," "the sectarians," etc., create a really pleasant and healthy effect by a certain actual simplicity which they undoubtedly have. other men would have made a melodrama out of "the emigrant's departure" (national gallery in christiania). tidemand portrays the event without any sort of emphasis, and feels his way with tact on the boundary between sentiment and sentimentality. there is nothing false or hysterical in the behaviour of the man who is going away for life, nor in those who have come to see him off. in vienna the _genre_ painters seem to owe their inspiration especially to the theatre. what was produced there in the province of grand art during the first half of the century was neither better nor worse than elsewhere. the classicism of mengs and david was represented by _heinrich füger_, who had a more decided leaning towards the operatic. the representative-in-chief of nazarenism was _josef führich_, whose frescoes in the altlerchenfeld church are, perhaps, better in point of colour than the corresponding efforts of the munich artists, though they are likewise in a formal way derivative from the italians. vienna had its wilhelm kaulbach in _carl rahl_, its piloty in _christian ruben_, who, like the munich artist, had a preference for painting columbus, and was meritorious as a teacher. it was only through portrait painting that classicism and romanticism were brought into some sort of relation with life; and the vienna portraitists of this older régime are even better than their german contemporaries, as they made fewer concessions to the ruling idealism. amongst the portrait painters was _lampi_, after whom followed _moritz daffinger_ with his delicate miniatures; but the most important of them all was _friedrich amerling_, who had studied under lawrence in london and under horace vernet in paris, and brought back with him great acquisitions in the science of colour. in the first half of the century these assured him a decided advantage over his german colleagues. it was only later, when he was sought after as the fashionable painter of all the crowned heads, that his art degenerated into mawkishness. [illustration: tidemand. the sectarians.] _genre_ painting was developed here as elsewhere from the military picture. as early as _peter krafft_, an academician of the school of david, had exhibited a great oil-painting, "the soldier's farewell"--the interior of a village room with a group of life-size figures. the son of the family, in grey uniform, with a musket in his hand, is tearing himself from his young wife, who has a baby on her arm and is trying in tears to hold him back. his old father sits in a corner with folded hands beside his mother, who is also crying, and has hid her face. in krafft added "the soldier's return" as a pendant to this picture. it represents the changes which have taken place in the family during the warrior's absence: his old mother is at rest in her grave; his grey-headed father has become visibly older, his little sister has grown up, and the baby in arms is carrying the musket after his father. they are both exceedingly tiresome pictures; the colour is cold and grey, the figures are pseudo-classical in modern costume, and the pathos of the subject seems artificial and forced. nevertheless a new principle of art is declared in them. krafft was the first in austria to recognise what a rich province had been hitherto ignored by painting. he warned his pupils against the themes of the romanticists. these, as he said, were worked out, since no one would do anything better than the "last supper of leonardo da vinci or the madonnas of raphael." and he warmly advocated the conviction "that nothing could be done for historical painting so long as it refused to choose subjects from modern life." krafft was an admirable teacher with a sober and clear understanding, and he invariably directed his pupils to the immediate study of life and nature. the consequence of his career was that _carl schindler_, _friedrich treml_, _fritz l'allemand_, and others set themselves to treat in episodic pictures the military life of austria, from the recruiting stage to the battle, and from the soldier's farewell to his return to his father's house. a further result was that the viennese _genre_ painting parted company with the academical and historic art. just at this time tschischka and schottky began to collect the popular songs of the viennese. castelli gave a poetic representation of _bourgeois_ life, and ferdinand raimund brought it upon the stage in his dramas. bauernfeld's types from the life of the people enjoyed a rapid popularity. josef danhauser, peter fendi, and ferdinand waldmüller went on parallel lines with these authors. in their _genre_ pictures they represented the austrian people in their joys and sorrows, in their merriment and heartiness and good-humour; the people, be it understood, of raimund's popular farces, not those of the pavement of vienna. _josef danhauser_, the son of a viennese carpenter, occupied himself with the artisan and _bourgeois_ classes. david wilkie gave him the form for his work and ferdinand raimund his ideas. his studio scenes, with boisterous art students caught by their surly teacher at the moment when they are playing their worst pranks, gave pleasure to the class of people who, at a later date, took so much delight in emanuel spitzer. his "gormandizer" is a counterpart to raimund's _verschwender_; and when, in a companion picture, the gluttonous liver is supping up the "monastery broth" amongst beggars, and his former valet remains true to him even in misfortune, grillparzer's _treuer diener seines herrn_ serves as a model for this type. girls confessing their frailty to their parents had been previously painted by greuze. amongst those of his pictures which had done most to amuse the public was the representation of the havoc caused by a butcher's dog storming into a studio. in his last period he turned with collins to the nursery, or wandered through the suburbs with a sketch-book, immortalising the doings of children in the streets, and drawing "character heads" of the school-teacher tavern _habitués_ and the lottery adventurer. [illustration: tidemand. adorning the bride.] and this was likewise the province to which _waldmüller_ devoted himself. chubby peasant children are the heroes of almost all his pictures. a baby is sprawling with joy on its mother's lap, while it is contemplated with proud satisfaction by its father, or it is sleeping under the guardianship of a little sister; a boy is despatched upon the rough path which leads to school, and brings the reward of his conduct home with rapturous or dejected mien, or he stammers "many happy returns of the day" to grandpapa. waldmüller paints "the first step," the joys of "christmas presents," and "the distribution of prizes to poor school children"; he follows eager juveniles to the peep-show; he is to be met at "the departure of the bride" and at "the wedding"; he is our guide to the simple "peasant's room," and shows the benefit of "almsgiving." though his pictures may seem old-fashioned in subject nowadays, their artistic qualities convey an entirely modern impression. born in , he anticipated the best artists of later days in his choice of material. both in his portraits and in his country scenes there is a freshness and transparency of tone which was something rare among the painters of that time. [illustration: peter krafft. the soldier's return.] _friedrich gauermann_ wandered in the austrian alps, in steiermark, and salzkammergut, making studies of nature, the inhabitants, and the animal world. in contradistinction from waldmüller, painter of idylls, and the humorist danhauser, he aimed above all at ethnographical exactness. with sincere and unadorned observation gauermann represents the local peculiarities of the peasantry, differentiated according to their peculiar valleys; life on the pasture and at the market, when some ceremonial occasion--a shooting match, a sunday observance, or a church consecration--has gathered together the scattered inhabitants. _genre_ painting in other countries worked with the same types. the costume was different, but the substance of the pictures was the same. in belgium leys had already worked in the direction of painting everyday life; for although he had painted figures from the sixteenth century, they were not idealised, but as rough and homely as in reality. when the passion for truthfulness increased, as it did in the following years, there came a moment when the old german tradition, under the shelter of which leys yet took refuge, was shaken off, and artists went directly to nature without seeking the mediation of antiquated style. at that time belgium was one of the most rising and thriving countries in europe. it had private collections by the hundred. wealthy merchants rivalled one another in the pride of owning works by their celebrated painters. this necessarily exerted an influence on production. pretty _genre_ pictures of peasant life soon became the most popular wares; as for their artistic sanction, it was possible to point to brouwer and teniers, the great national exemplars. at first, then, the painters worked with the same elements as teniers. the common themes of their pictures were the ale-house with its thatched roof, the old musician with his violin, the mountebank standing in the midst of a circle of people, lovers, or drinkers brawling. only the costume was changed, and everything coarse, indecorous, or unrestrained was scrupulously excluded _ad usum delphini_. that the deep colouring of the old masters became meagre and motley was in belgium also an inevitable result of the helplessness in regard to colour which had been brought on by classicism. the pictorial _furia_ of adriaen brouwer gave way to a polished porcelain painting which hardly bore a trace of the work of the hand. harsh and gaudy reds and greens were especially popular. [illustration: waldmÜller. the first step.] the first who began a modest career on these lines was _ignatius van regemorter_. as one recognises the pictures of wouwerman by the dappled-grey horse, regemorter's may be recognised by the violin. every year he turned out one picture at least in which music was being played, and people were dancing with a rather forced gaiety. then came _ferdinand de braekeleer_, who painted the jubilees of old people, or children and old women amusing themselves at public festivities. teniers was his principal model, but his large joviality was transformed into a chastened merriment, and his broad laughter into a discreet smile. braekeleer's peasantry and proletariat are of an idyllic mildness; honest, pious souls who, with all their poverty, are as moral as they are happy. _henri coene_ elaborated such themes as "oh, what beautiful grapes!" or "a pinch of snuff for the parson!" [illustration: madou. in the ale-house.] madou's merit lies in having extended belgian _genre_ painting somewhat beyond these narrow bounds; he introduced a greater variety of types verging more on reality than that everlasting honest man painted by ferdinand de braekeleer. _madou_ was a native of brussels. there he was born in , and he died there in . when he began his career wappers had just made his appearance. madou witnessed his successes, but did not feel tempted to follow him. whilst the latter in his large pictures in the grand style aimed at being rubens _redivivus_, madou embodied his ideas in fleeting pencil sketches. a great number of lithographs of scenes from the past bore witness to his conception of history. there was nothing in them that was dignified, nothing that was stilted, no idealism and no beauty; in their tabards and helmets the figures moved with the natural gestures of ordinary human beings. by the side of great seigneurs, princes, and knights, and amid helmets and hose, drunken scoundrels, tavern politicians, and village cretins started into view, and grimaced and danced and scuffled. in belgium his plates occupy a position similar to that of the first lithographs of menzel in germany. but madou lingered for a still briefer period in the pantheon of history; the tavern had for him a yet greater attraction. the humorous books which he published in paris and brussels first showed him in his true light. having busied himself for several years exclusively with drawings, he made his _début_ in as a painter. it is difficult to decide how much madou produced after that date. the long period between and yields a crowded chronicle of his works. even in the seventies he was just as vigorous as at the beginning, and though he was regarded as a jester during his lifetime he was honoured as a great painter after his death. at the auction of his unsold works, pictures fetched , francs, sketches reached , water-colours , and drawings . the present generation has reduced this over-estimation to its right measure, but it has not shaken madou's historical importance. he has a firm position as the man who conquered modern life in the interests of belgian art, and he is the more significant for the _genre_ painting of his age, as he eclipsed all his contemporaries, even in germany and england, in the inexhaustible fund of his invention. [illustration: madou. the drunkard.] a merry world is reflected in his pictures. one of his most popular figures is the ranger, a sly old fox with a furrowed, rubicund visage and huge ears, who roves about more to the terror of love-making couples than of poachers, and never aims at any one except for fun at the rural justice, a portly gentleman in a gaudy waistcoat, emerging quietly at the far end of the road. he introduces a varied succession of braggarts, poor fellows, down-at-heel and out-at-elbows, old grenadiers joking with servant girls, old marquesses taking snuff with affected dignity, charlatans at their booth, deaf and dumb flute-players, performing dogs, and boys sick over their first pipe. here and there are fatuous or over-wise politicians solemnly opening a newly printed paper, with their legs astraddle and their spectacles resting on their noses. rascals with huge paunches and blue noses fall asleep on their table in the ale-house, and enliven the rest of the company by their snoring. at times the door is opened and a scolding woman appears with a broom in her hand. on these occasions the countenance of the toper is a comical sight. at the sound of the beloved voice he endeavours to raise himself, and anxiously follows the movements of his better half as he clings reeling to the table, or plants himself more firmly in his chair with a resigned and courageous "_j'y suis, j'y reste_." being less disposed to appear humorous, _adolf dillens_ makes a more sympathetic impression. he, too, had begun with forced anecdotes, but after a tour to zealand opened his eyes to nature; he laid burlesque on one side, and depicted what he had seen in unhackneyed pictures: sound and healthy men of patriarchal habits. even his method of painting became simpler and more natural; his colouring, hitherto borrowed from the old masters, became fresher and brighter. he emancipated himself from rembrandt's _chiaroscuro_, and began to look at nature without spectacles. there is something poetic in his method of observation: he really loved these good people and painted them in the unadorned simplicity of their life--cheery old age that knows no wrinkles and laughing youth that knows no sorrows. he is indeed one-sided, for a good fairy has banished all trouble from his happy world; but his pictures are the product of a fresh and amiable temperament. his usual themes are a friendly gathering at the ale-house, a conversation beneath the porch, skating, scenes in cobblers' workshops, a gust of wind blowing an umbrella inside out; and if he embellishes them with little episodic details, this tendency is so innocent that nobody can quarrel with him. in france it was _françois biard_, the paul de kock of french painting, who attained most success in the thirties by humorous anecdote. he devoted his whole life to the comical representation of the minor trespasses and misfortunes of the commonplace _bourgeoisie_. he had the secret of displaying his comicalities with great aptitude, and of mocking at the ridiculous eccentricities of the philistine in an obvious and downright fashion. strolling players made fools of themselves at their toilette; lads were bathing whilst a gendarme carried off their clothes; a sentry saluted a decorated veteran, whose wife gratefully acknowledged the attention with a curtsey; the village grandee held a review of volunteers with the most pompous gravity; a child was exhibited at the piano to the admiration of its yawning relatives. one of his chief pictures was called "posada espagnol." the hero was a monk winking at a beauty of forty who was passing by while he was being shaved. women were sitting and standing about, when a herd of swine dashing in threw everything over and put the ladies to flight, and so called forth one of those comic effects of terror in which paul de kock took such delight. biard was inexhaustible in these expedients for provoking laughter; and as he had travelled far he had always in reserve a slave-market, a primeval forest, or an ice-field to appease the curiosity of his admirers when there was nothing more to laugh at. from the german standpoint he had importance as an artist whose flow of ideas would have furnished ten _genre_ painters; and if he is the only representative of the humorously anecdotic picture in france, the reason is that there earlier than elsewhere art was led into a more earnest course by the tumult of ideas on social politics. chapter xxi the picture with a social purpose that modern life first entered art, in all countries, under the form of humorous anecdote is partly the consequence of the one-sided æsthetic ideas of the period. in an age that was dominated by idealism it was forgotten that murillo had painted lame beggars sitting in the sun, velasquez cripples and drunkards, and holbein lepers; that rembrandt had so much love for humble folk, and that old breughel with a strangely sombre pessimism turned the whole world into a terrible hospital. the modern man was hideous, and art demanded "absolute beauty." if he was to be introduced into painting, despite his want of _beauté suprême_, the only way was to treat him as a humorous figure which had to be handled ironically. mercantile considerations were also a power in determining this form of humour. at a time when painting was forced to address itself to a public which was uneducated in art, and could only appreciate anecdotes, such comicalities had the best prospect of favour and a rapid sale. the object was to provoke laughter, at all hazards, by drollness of mien, typical stupidity, and absurdity of situation. the choice of figures was practically made according as they were more or less serviceable for a humorous purpose. children, rustics, and provincial philistines seemed to be most adapted to it. the painter treated them as strange and naïve beings, and brought them before the public as a sort of performing dogs, who could go through remarkable tricks just as if they were human beings. and the public laughed over whimsical oddities from another world, as the courtiers of louis xiv had laughed in versailles when m. jourdain and m. dimanche were acted by the king's servants upon the stage of molière. meanwhile painters gradually came to remark that this humour _à l'huile_ was bought at too dear a price. for humour, which is like a soap-bubble, can only bear a light method of representation, such as hokusai's drawing or brouwer's painting, but becomes insupportable where it is offered as a laborious composition executed with painstaking realism. and ethical reasons made themselves felt independently of these artistic considerations. the drollness of these pictures did not spring from the characters, but from an effort to amuse the public at the expense of the painted figures. as a general rule a peasant is a serious, square-built, angular fellow. for his existence he does battle with the soil; his life is no pleasure to him, but hard toil. but in these pictures he appeared as a figure who had no aim or purport; in his brain the earnestness of life was transformed into a romping game. painters laughed at the little world which they represented. they were not the friends of man, but parodied him and transformed life into a sort of punch and judy show. and even when they did not approach their figures with deliberate irony, they never dreamed of plunging with any sincere love of truth into the depths of modern life. they painted modern matter without taking part in it, like good children who know nothing of the bitter facts that take place in the world. when the old dutch painters laughed, their laughter had its historical justification. in the pictures of ostade and dirk hals there is seen all the primitive exuberance and wild joy of life belonging to a people who had just won their independence and abandoned themselves after long years of war with a sensuous transport to the gladness of existence. but the smile of these modern _genre_ painters is forced, conventional, and artificial; the smile of a later generation which only took the trouble to smile because the old dutch had laughed before them. they put on rose-coloured glasses, and through these gaudy spectacles saw only a gay masque of life, a fair but hollow deception. they allowed their heroes to pass such a merry existence that the question of what they lived upon was never touched. when they painted their tavern pictures they anxiously suppressed the thought that people who drained their great mugs so carelessly possibly had sick children at home, hungry and perishing with cold in a room without a fire. their peasants are the favoured sons of fortune: they sowed not, neither did they reap, nor gathered into barns, but their heavenly father fed them. poverty and vice presented themselves merely as amiable weaknesses, not as great modern problems. just at this time the way was being paved for the revolution of : the people fought and suffered, and for years before literature had taken part in this struggle. before the revolution the battle had been between the nobility and the middle class; but now that the latter had to some extent taken the place of the nobility of earlier days, there rose the mighty problem of strife between the unproductive and the productive, between rich and poor. in england, the birthplace of the modern capitalistic system, in a country where great industry and great landed property first ousted the independent yeomanry and called forth ever sharper division between those who possessed everything and those who possessed nothing, the unsolved problem of the nineteenth century found its earliest utterance. more than sixty years ago, in the year of goethe's death, a new literature arose there, the literature of social politics. with ebenezer elliott, who had been himself a plain artisan, the fourth estate made its entry into literature; a workman led the train of socialistic poets. thomas hood wrote his _song of the shirt_, that lyric of the poor sempstress which soon spread all over the continent. carlyle, the friend and admirer of goethe, came forward in as the burning advocate of the poor and miserable in _past and present_. he wrote there that this world was no home to the working-man, but a dreary dungeon full of mad and fruitless plagues. it was an utterance that shook the world like a bomb. benjamin disraeli's _sybil_ followed in . as a novel it is a strange mixture of romantic and naturalistic chapters, the latter seeming like a prophetic announcement of zola's _germinal_. as a reporter charles dickens had in his youth the opportunity of learning the wretchedness of the masses in london, even in the places where they lurked distrustfully in dark haunts. in his christmas stories and his london sketches he worked these scenes of social distress into thrilling pictures. the poor man, whose life is made up of bitter weeks and scanty holidays, received his citizenship in the english novel. in france the year was an end and a beginning--the close of the struggles begun in , and the opening of those which led to the decisive battle of . with the _roi bourgeois_, whom lafayette called "the best of republicans," the third estate came into possession of the position to which it had long aspired; it rose from the ranks of the oppressed to that of the privileged classes. as a new ruling class it made such abundant capital with the fruits of the revolution of july that even in börne wrote from paris: "the men who fought against all aristocracy for fifteen years have scarcely conquered--they have not yet wiped the sweat from their faces--and already they want to found for themselves a new aristocracy, an aristocracy of money, a knighthood of fortune." to the same purpose wrote heine in : "the men of thought who, during the eighteenth century, were so indefatigable in preparing the revolution, would blush if they saw how self-interest is building its miserable huts on the site of palaces that have been broken down, and how, out of these huts, a new aristocracy is sprouting up which, more ungraciously than the old, has its primary cause in money-making." there the radical ideas of modern socialism were touched. the proletariat and its misery became henceforward the subject of french poetry, though they were not observed with any naturalistic love of truth, but from the romantic standpoint of contrast. béranger, the popular singer of _chansons_, composed his _vieux vagabond_, the song of the old beggar who dies in the gutter; auguste barbier wrote his ode to freedom, where _la sainte canaille_ are celebrated as immortal heroes, and with the scorn of juvenal "lashes those who drew profit from the revolution, those _bourgeois_ in kid gloves who watched the sanguinary street fights comfortably from the window." in - eugène sue published his _mystères de paris_, a forbidding and nonsensical book, but one which made an extraordinary sensation, just because of the disgusting openness with which it unveiled the life of the lower strata of the people. even the great spirits of the romantic school began to follow the social and political strife of the age with deep emotion and close sympathy. already in the course of the thirties socialistic ideas forced their way into the romantic school from every side. their source was saint simon, whose doctrines first found a wide circulation under louis philippe. according to saint simon, the task of the new christianity consisted in improving as quickly as possible the fate of the class which was at once the poorest and the most numerous. his pupils regarded him as the messiah of the new era, and went forth into the world as his disciples. george sand, the boldest feminine genius in the literature of the world, mastered these seething ideas and founded the artisan novel in her _compagnon du tour de france_. it is the first book with a real love of the people--the people as they actually are, those who drink and commit deeds of violence as well as those who work and make mental progress. in her periodical, _l'Éclaireur de l'indre_, she pleads the cause both of the artisan in great towns and of the rustic labourer; in she declared herself as a socialist, without qualification, in her great essay _politics and socialism_, and she brought out her celebrated _letters to the people_ in . the democratic tide of ideas came to victor hugo chiefly through the religious apostle lamennais, whose book, written in prison, _de l'esclavage moderne_, gave the same fuel to the revolution of as the works of rousseau had done to that of . "the peasant bears the whole burden of the day, exposes himself to rain and sun and wind, to make ready by his work the harvest which fills our barns in the late autumn. if there are those who think the lighter of him on that account, and will not accord him freedom and justice, build a high wall round them, so that their noisome breath may not poison the air of europe." from the forties there mutters through hugo's poems the muffled sound of the revolution which was soon to burst over paris, and thence to move, like a rolling thunderstorm, across europe. in place of the tricolor under which the _bourgeoisie_ and the artisan class had fought side by side eighteen years before, the banner of the artisan was hoisted blood-red against the ruling _bourgeoisie_. this _zeitgeist_, this spirit of the age which had grown earnest, necessarily guided art into another course; the painted humour and childlike optimism of the first _genre_ painters began to turn out a lie. in spite of schiller, art cannot be blithe with sincerity when life is earnest. it can laugh with the muscles of the face, but the laughter is mirthless; it may haughtily declare itself in favour of some consecrated precinct, in which nothing of the battles and struggles of the outside world is allowed to echo; but, for all that, harsh reality demands its rights. josef danhauser's modest little picture of , "the gormandizer," is an illustration of this. in a sumptuously furnished room a company of high station and easy circumstances are seated at dinner. the master of the house, a sleek little man, is draining his glass, and a young dandy is playing the guitar. but an unwelcome disturbance breaks in. the figure of a beggar, covered with rags and with a greasy hat in his hand, appears at the door. the ladies scream, and a dog springs barking from under a chair, whilst the flunkey in attendance angrily prepares to send the impudent intruder about his business. that was the position which art had hitherto taken up towards the social question. it shrank peevishly back as soon as rude and brutal reality disturbed its peaceful course. people wished to see none but cheerful pictures of life around them. [illustration: danhauser. the gormandizer.] for this reason peasants were invariably painted in neat and cleanly dress, with their faces beaming with joy, an embodiment of the blessing of work and the delights of country life. even beggars were harmless, peacefully cheerful figures, sparkling with health and beauty, and enveloped in æsthetic rags. but as political, religious, and social movements have always had a vivid and forcible effect on artists, painters in the nineteenth century could not in the long run hold themselves aloof from this influence. the voice of the disinherited made itself heard sullenly muttering and with ever-increasing strength. the parable of lazarus lying at the threshold of the rich man had become a terrible reality. conflict was to be seen everywhere around, and it would have been mere hardness of heart to have used this suffering people any longer as an agreeable subject for merriment. a higher conception of humanity, the entire philanthropic character of the age, made the jests at which the world had laughed seem forced and tasteless. modern life must cease altogether before it can be a humorous episode for art, and it had become earnest reality through and through. painting could no longer affect trivial humour; it had to join issue, and speak of what was going on around it. it had to take its part in the struggle for aims that belonged to the immediate time. powerfully impressed by the revolution of july, it made its first advance. the government had been thrown down after a blood-stained struggle, and a liberated people were exulting; and the next salon showed more than forty representations of the great events, amongst which that of _delacroix_ took the highest place in artistic impressiveness. the principal figure in his picture is "a youthful woman, with a red phrygian cap, holding a musket in one hand and a tricolor in the other. naked to the hip, she strides forward over the corpses, giving challenge to battle, a beautiful vehement body with a face in bold profile and an insolent grief upon her features, a strange mixture of phryne, _poissarde_, and the goddess of liberty." thus has heine described the work while still under a vivid impression of the event it portrayed. in the thick of the powder smoke stands "liberty" upon the barricade, at her right a parisian gamin with a pistol in his hand, a child but already a hero, at her left an artisan with a gun on his arm: it is the people that hastens by, exulting to die the death for the great ideas of liberty and equality. the painter himself had an entirely unpolitical mind. he had drawn his inspiration for the picture, not from experience, but out of _la curée_, those verses of auguste barbier that are ablaze with wrath-- "c'est que la liberté n'est pas une comtesse du noble faubourg saint-germain, une femme qu'un cri fait tomber en faiblesse, qui met du blanc et du carmin; c'est un forte femme aux puissantes mamelles, À la voix rauque, aux durs appas, qui, du brun sur la peau, du feu dans les prunelles, agile et marchant à grands pas, se plait aux cris du peuple, aux sanglantes mêlées, aux longs roulements des tambours, À l'odeur de la poudre, aux lointaines volées des cloches et des canons sourds." and by this allegorical figure he has certainly weakened its grip and directness; but it was a bold, naturalistic achievement all the same. by this work the great romanticist became the father of the naturalistic movement, which henceforward, supported by the revolutionary democratic press, spread more and more widely. the critics on these journals began to reproach painters with troubling themselves too little about social and political affairs. "the actuality and social significance of art," it was written, "is the principal thing. what is meant by beauty? we demand that painting should influence society, and join in the work of progress. everything else belongs to the domain of utopias and abstractions." the place of whimsicalities is accordingly taken by sentimental and melodramatic scenes from the life of the poor. rendered enthusiastic by the victory of the people, and inspired by democratic sentiments, some painters came to believe that the sufferings of the artisan class were the thing to be represented, and that there was nothing nobler than work. [illustration: leleux. mot d'ordre.] one of the first to give an example was _jeanron_. his picture of "the little patriots," produced in connection with the revolution of july, was a glorification of the struggle for freedom; his "scene in paris" a protest against the sufferings of the people. he sought his models amongst the poor of the suburb, painted their ragged clothes and their rugged heads without idealisation. for him the aim of art was not beauty, but the expression of truth--a truth, no doubt, which made political propaganda. it was jeanron's purpose to have a socialistic influence. one sees it in his blacksmiths and peasants, and in that picture "the worker's rest" which in induced thoré's utterance: "it is a melancholy and barren landscape from the neighbourhood of paris, a plebeian landscape which hardly seems to belong to itself, and which gives up all pretensions to beauty merely to be of service to man. jeanron is always plebeian, even in his landscapes: he loves the plains which are never allowed to repose, on which there is always labour; there are no beautiful flowers in his fields, as there is no gold ornament on the rags of his beggars and labourers." and afterwards, during the early years of the reign of louis philippe, when the tendency became once more latent, the revolution of february worked out what the revolution of july had begun. mediocre painters like _antigna_ became famous because they bewailed the sorrows of the "common man" in small and medium-sized pictures. others began to display a greater interest in rustics, and to take them more seriously than they had done in earlier works. _adolphe leleux_ made studies in brittany, and discovered earnest episodes in the daily life of the peasant, which he rendered with great actuality. and after sliding back into romanticism, as he did with his arragon smugglers, he enjoyed his chief success in with that picture at the luxembourg to which he was incited by the sad aspect of the streets of paris during the rising of . the men who, driven by hunger and misery, fought upon the barricades may be found in leleux's "mot d'ordre." after the _coup d'état_ of even _meissonier_, till then exclusively a painter of _rococo_ subjects, encroached on this province. in his picture of the barricades ( december ) heaps of corpses are lying stretched out in postures which could not have been merely invented. the execution, too, has a nervous force which betrays that even so calculating a spirit as meissonier was at one time moved and agitated. in his little smokers and scholars and waiting-men he is an adroit but cold-blooded painter: here he has really delivered himself of a modern epic. his "barricade" (formerly in the van praet collection) is the one thrilling note in the master's work, which was elsewhere so quiet. _alexandre antigna_, originally an historical painter, turned from historical disasters to those which take place in the life of the lower strata of the people. a dwelling of a poor family is struck by lightning; poor people pack up their meagre goods with the haste of despair on the outbreak of fire; peasants seek refuge from a flood upon the roof of their little house; petty shopkeepers are driving with their wares across the country, when their nag drops down dead in the shafts; or an old crone, cowering at the street corner, receives the pence which her little daughter has earned by playing on the fiddle. [illustration: _l'art._ octave tassaert.] but the artist in whose works the philanthropic if sentimental humour of the epoch is specially reflected is that remarkable painter, made up of contradictions, _octave tassaert_. borrowing at one and the same time from greuze, fragonard, and prudhon, he painted subjects mythological, ribald, and religious, boudoir pictures, and scenes of human misery. tassaert was a fleming, a grandson of that tassaert who educated gottfried schadow and died as director of the berlin academy in . his name has been for the most part forgotten; it awakes only a dim recollection in those who see "the unhappy family" in the luxembourg _musée_. but forty years ago he was amongst the most advanced of his day, and enjoyed the respect of men like delacroix, rousseau, troyon, and diaz. he took chardin and greuze as his models, and is a real master in talent. he was the poet of the suburbs, who spoke in tender complaining tones of the hopes and sufferings of humble people. he painted the elegy of wretchedness: suicide in narrow garrets, sick children, orphans freezing in the snow, seduced and more or less repentant maidens--a sad train. he was called the correggio of the attic, the prudhon of the suburbs. his labours are confined to eleven years, from to . after that he sent no more to the salon and sulkily withdrew from artistic life. he had no wish ever to see his pictures again, and sold them--forty-four altogether--to a dealer for two thousand francs and a cask of wine. with a glass in his hand he forgot his misanthropy. he lived almost unknown in a little house in the suburbs with a nightingale, a dog, and a little shop-girl for his sole companions. [illustration: _baschet._ tassaert. after the ball.] but his nightingale died, and then the dog, who should have followed at his funeral. he could not survive the blow. he broke his palette, threw his colours into the fire, lit a pan of charcoal that he might die like "the unhappy family," and was found suffocated on the following day. on a scrap of paper he had written, without regard to metre or orthography, a few verses to his nightingale and his dog. there is much that is magniloquent and sentimental in tassaert's pictures. his poor women perish with the big eyes of the heroines of ary scheffer. nevertheless he belongs to the advance line of modern art, and suffered shipwreck merely because he gave the signal too early. the sad reality prevails in his work. merciless as a surgeon operating on a diseased limb, he made a dissecting-room of his art, which is often brutal where his brush probes the deepest wounds of civilisation. there is nothing in his pictures but wretched broken furniture, stitched rags, and pale faces in which toil and hunger have ploughed their terrible furrows. he painted the degeneration of man perishing from lack of light and air. himself a fleming, he has found his greatest follower in another netherlander, _charles de groux_, whose sombre pessimism dominates modern belgian art. in germany, where the socialistic writings of the french and english had a wide circulation, _gisbert flüggen_, in munich known as the german wilkie, was perhaps the first who as early as the forties went somewhat further than the humorous representation of rustics, and entered into a certain relation with the social ideas of his age in such pictures as "the interrupted marriage contract," "the unlucky gamester," "the _mésalliance_," "decision of the suit," "the disappointed legacy hunter," "the execution for rent," and the like. under his influence danhauser in vienna deserted whimsicalities for the representation of social conflicts in middle-class life. to say nothing of his "gormandizer," he did this in "the opening of the will," where in a somewhat obtrusive manner the rich relations of the deceased are grouped to the right and the poor relations to the left, the former rubicund, sleek, and insolent, the latter pale, spare, and needily clad. an estimable priest is reading the last testament, and informs the poor relatives with a benevolent smile that the inheritance is theirs, whereon the rich give way to transports of rage. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ tassaert. the orphans.] yet more clearly, although similarly transposed into a sentimental key, is the mood of the time just previous to , reflected in the works of _carl hübner_ of düsseldorf. ernest wilkomm in the beginning of the forties had represented in his sensational _genre_ pictures, particularly in the "white slaves," the contrast between afflicted serfs and cruel landlords, between rich manufacturers and famishing artisans; robert prutz had written his _engelchen_, in which he had announced the ruin of independent handicraft by the modern industrial system. soon afterwards the famine among the silesian weavers, the intelligence of which in flew through all germany, set numbers of people reflecting on the social question. freiligrath made it the subject of his verses, _aus dem schlesischen gebirge_, the song of the poor weaver's child who calls on rübezahl--one of his most popular poems. and yet more decisively does the social and revolutionary temper of the age find an echo in heine's _webern_, composed in . even geibel was impelled to his poem _mene tekel_ by the spread of the news, though it stands in curious opposition to his manner of writing elsewhere. carl hübner therefore was acting very seasonably when he likewise treated the distress of the silesian weavers in his first picture of . hübner knew the life of the poor and the heavy-laden; his feelings were with them, and he expressed what he felt. this gives him a position above and apart from the rest in the insipidly smiling school of düsseldorf, and sets his name at the beginning of a new chapter in the history of german _genre_ painting. his next picture, "the game laws," sprang from an occasion which was quite as historical: a gamekeeper had shot a poacher. in followed "the emigrants," "the execution for rent" in , and in "benevolence in the cottage of the poor." these were works in which he continued to complain of the misery of the working classes, and the contrast between ostentatious wealth and helpless wretchedness, and to preach the crusade for liberty and human rights. in opposition to the usual idyllic representations, he spoke openly for the first time of the material weight oppressing large classes of men. undoubtedly, however, the artistic powers of the painter corresponded but little to the good intentions of the philanthropist. [illustration: tassaert. the suicide.] in even the historical painter piloty entered this path in one of his earliest pictures, "the nurse": the picture represents a peasant girl in service as a nurse in the town, with her charge on her arm, entering the dirty house of an old woman with whom she is boarding her own child. the rich child, already dressed out like a little lady, is exuberant in health, whilst her own is languishing in a dark and cold room without food or warm clothing. in belgium _eugène de block_ first took up these lines. the artistic development of his character is particularly interesting, inasmuch as he went through various transformations. first he had come forward in with the representation of a brawl amongst peasants, a picture which contrasted with the tameness of contemporary painting by a native power suggestive of brouwer. then, following the example of madou and braekeleer, he occupied himself for a long time with quips and jests. at a time when every one had a type to which he remained true as long as he lived, block chose poachers and game-keepers, and represented their mutual cunning, now enveloping them, after the example of braekeleer, in the golden light and brown shadows of ostade, now throwing over them a tinge of gallait's cardinal red. but this forced humour did not satisfy him long; he let comicalities alone, and became the serious observer of the people. a tender compassion for the poor may be noticed in his works, though without doubt it often turns to a tearful sentimentalism. he was an apostle of humanity who thundered against pauperism and set himself up as spokesman on the social question; a tribune of the people, who by his actions confirmed his reputation as a democratic painter. this it is which places him near that other socialistic agitator who in those days was filling brussels with his fame. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ flÜggen. the decision of the suit.] it was in that a young man wrote to one of his relatives from italy the proud words: "i will measure my strength with rubens and michael angelo." [illustration: hÜbner. july.] having gained the _prix de rome_, he was enabled to make a sojourn in the eternal city. he was thinking of his return. he was possessed of a lofty ambition, and dreamt of rivalling the fame of the old masters. as a victor he made an entry into his native land, into the good town of dinant, which received him like a mother. he was accompanied by a huge roll of canvas like a declaration of war. but he needed a larger battle-field for his plans. "i imagine," said he, "that the universe has its eyes upon me." so he went on to paris with his "patroclus" and a few other pictures. no less than six thousand artists had seen the work in rome: a prince of art, thorwaldsen, had said when he beheld it: "this young man is a giant." and the young man was himself of that opinion. with the gait of a conqueror he entered paris, in the belief that artists would line the streets to receive him. but when the portals of the _salon_ of were opened he did not see his picture there. it was skied over a door, and no one noticed it. théophile gautier, gustave planché, and bürger-thoré wrote their articles without even mentioning it with one word of praise or blame. for one moment he thought of exhibiting it out of doors in front of the louvre, of calling together a popular assembly and summoning all france to decide. but an application to the minister was met with a refusal, and he returned to brussels hanging his head. there he puffed his masterpiece, "the fight round the body of patroclus," in magniloquent phrases upon huge placards. a poet exclaimed, "hats off: here is a new homer." the _moniteur_ gave him a couple of articles. but when the exhibition came, artists were again unable to know what to make of it. the majority were of an opinion that michael angelo was brutally parodied by these swollen muscles and distorted limbs. and no earthquake disturbed the studios, as the painter had expected. however, he was awarded a bronze medal and thanked in an honest citizen-like fashion "for the distinguished talent which he had displayed." then his whole pride revolted. he circulated caricatures and cried out: "this medal will be an eternal blot on the century." then he published in the _charivari_ an open letter to the king. "michael angelo," he wrote, "never allowed himself to pass final judgment on the works of contemporary artists, and so his majesty, who hardly understands as much about art as michael angelo, would do well not to decide on the worth of modern pictures after a passing glance." _antoine wiertz_, the son of a gendarme who had once been a soldier of the great republic, was born in dinant in . by his mother he was a walloon, and he had german blood in him through his father, whose family had originally come from saxony. german moral philosophy and treatises on education had formed the reading of his youthful years. he had not to complain of want of assistance. at the declaration of belgian independence he was five-and-twenty; so his maturity fell in the proud epoch when the young nation laid out everything to add artistic to political splendour. even as a boy, their only child, he was idolised by his parents, the old gendarme and the honest charwoman. his first attempts were regarded by his relations as marvels. the neighbours went into raptures over a frog he had modelled, "which looked just as if it were alive." the landlord of a tavern ordered a signboard from him, and when it was finished the whole population stood before it in admiration. a certain herr maibe, who was artistically inclined, had his attention directed to the young genius, undertook all the expenses of his education, and sent him to the antwerp academy. there he obtained a government scholarship, and gained in the _prix de rome_. from the first he was quite clear as to his own importance. [illustration: _american art review._ wiertz. the orphans.] even as a pupil at the antwerp academy he wrote in a letter to his father contemptuously of his fellow-students' reverence for the old masters. "they imagine," said he, "that the old masters are invincible gods, and not men whom genius may surpass." and instead of admonishing him to be modest, his father answered with pride: "be a model to the youth of the future, so that in later centuries young painters may say, 'i will raise myself to fame as the great wiertz did in belgium.'" such dangerous flattery would have affected stronger characters. it needed only the italian journey to send him altogether astray. michael angelo made him giddy, as had been the case with cornelius, chenavard, and many another. with all the ambition of a self-taught man he held every touch of his brush to be important, and was indignant if others refused to think the same. after his failures in paris and brussels he began to find high treason in every criticism, and started a discussion on "the pernicious influence of journalism upon art and literature." we find him saying: "if any one writes ill of me when i am dead, i will rise from the grave to defend myself." in his hatred of criticism he resolved to exhibit no more, lived a miserable existence till his death in , and painted hasty and careless portraits, _pour la soupe_, when he was in pressing need of money. these brought him at first from three to four hundred, and later a thousand francs. he indulged in colossal sketches, for the completion of which the state built him in a tremendous studio, the present _musée wiertz_. it stands a few hundred paces from the luxembourg station, to the extreme north of the town, in a beautiful though rather neglected little park, a white building with a pillared portico and a broad perron leading up to it. here he sat in a fantastically gorgeous costume, for ever wearing his great rubens hat. philanthropic lectures on this world and the next, on the well-being of the people and the diseases of modern civilisation, were the fruits of his activity. whoever loves painting for painting's sake need never visit the museum. there there are battles, conflagrations, floods, and earthquakes; heaven and earth are in commotion. giants hurl rocks at one another, and try, like jupiter, to shake the earth with their frown. all of them delight in force, and bring their muscles into play like athletes. but the painter himself is no athlete, no giant as thorwaldsen called him, and no genius as he fancied himself to be. _le singe des génies_, he conceived the notion of "great art" purely in its relation to space, and believed himself greater than the greatest because his canvases were of greater dimensions. when the ministry thought of making him director of the antwerp academy, after the departure of wappers, he wrote the following characteristic sentences: "i gather from the newspapers that i may be offered the place of wappers." if in the moment when the profound philosopher is pondering over sublime ideas people were to say to him, "will you teach us the a, b, c? i believe that he whose dwelling-place is in the clouds would fall straight from heaven to earth." living in an atmosphere of flattery at home, and overpowered by the incense which was there offered to his genius, he could not set himself free from the fixed idea of competing with michael angelo and rubens. below his picture of "the childhood of mary" he placed the words: "counterpart to the picture by rubens in antwerp treating the same subject." he offered his "triumph of christ" to the cathedral there under the condition of its being hung beside rubens' "descent from the cross." "the rising up of hell" he wished to exhibit of an evening in the theatre when it was opened for a performance. during the waits the audience were to contemplate the picture while a choir sang with orchestral accompaniment. but all these offers were declined with thanks. such failures make men pessimists; but it was through them that wiertz, after being an historical painter, became the child of his age. he began to hurl thunderbolts against the evils of modern civilisation. he preaches and lashes and curses and suffers. the forms of which he makes use are borrowed from the old masters. the man of michael angelo, with his athletic build, his gigantic muscles, his nude body, the man of the renaissance and not the man of the nineteenth century, strides through his works; it is only in the subject-matter of his pictures that the modern spirit has broken through the old formula. all the questions which have been thrown out by the philosophy and civilisation of the nineteenth century are reflected as vast problems in his vast pictures. he fashions his brush into a weapon with which he fights for the disinherited, for the pariahs, for the people. he is bent on being the painter of democracy--a great danger for art. [illustration: wiertz. the things of the present as seen by future ages.] he agitates in an impassioned way against the horrors of war. his picture "food for powder" begins this crusade. a cannon is lying idle on the wall of a fortress, and around this slumbering iron monster children are playing at soldiers, with no suspicion that their sport will soon be turned into bitter earnest, and that in war they will themselves become food for this demon. in another picture, "the civilisation of the nineteenth century," soldiers intoxicated with blood and victory have broken into a chamber by night and are stabbing a mother with her child. a third, "the last cannon shot," hints dimly at the future pacification of the world. "a scene in hell," however, is the chief of the effusions directed against war. the emperor napoleon in his grey coat and his historical three-cornered hat is languishing in hell; wavering flames envelop him as with a flowing purple mantle, and an innumerable multitude of mothers and sisters, wives and betrothed maidens, children and fathers, from whom he has taken their dearest are pressing round him. fists are clenched against him, and screams issue from toothless, raging mouths. he, on the other hand, with his arms crossed on his breast, and his haughty visage stern and gloomy, stands motionless, looking fixedly with satanic eyes upon the thousands whose happiness he has destroyed. [illustration: wiertz. the fight round the body of patroclus.] in his "thoughts and visions of a decapitated head", wiertz, moved by victor hugo's _le dernier jour d'un condamné_, makes capital punishment a subject of more lengthy disquisition. the picture, which is made up of three parts, is supposed to represent the feelings of a man, who has been guillotined, during the first three minutes after execution. the border of the picture contains a complete dissertation: "the man who has suffered execution sees his body dried up and in corruption in a dark corner; and sees also, what it is only given to spirits of another world to perceive, the secrets of the transmutation of matter. he sees all the gases which have formed his body, and its sulphurous, earthy, and ammoniacal elements, detach themselves from its decaying flesh and serve for the structure of other living beings.... when that abominable instrument the guillotine is one day actually abolished, may god be praised," and so on. beside this painted plea against capital punishment hangs "the burnt child," as an argument in favour of _crêches_. a poor working woman has for one moment left her garret. meanwhile a fire has broken out, and she returns to find the charred body of her boy. in the picture "hunger, madness, and crime" he treats of human misery in general, and touches on the question of the rearing of illegitimate children. there is a young girl forced to live on the carrots which a rich man throws into the gutter. in consequence of a notification to pay taxes she goes out of her mind, and with hellish laughter cuts to pieces the baby who has brought her to ruin. cremation is recommended in the picture "buried too soon": there is a vault, and in it a coffin, the lid of which has been burst open from the inside; through the cleft may be seen a clenched hand, and in the darkness of the coffin the horror-stricken countenance of one who is piteously crying for help. in the "novel reader" he endeavours to show the baneful influence of vicious reading upon the imagination of a girl. she is lying naked in bed, with loosened hair and a book in her hand; her eyes are reddened with hysterical tears, and an evil spirit is laying a new book on the couch, _antonine_, by alexandre dumas _fils_. "the retort of a belgian lady"--an anticipation of neid--glorifies homicide committed in the defence of honour. a dutch officer having taken liberties with a belgian woman, she blows out his brains with a pistol. in "the suicide" the fragments of a skull may be seen flying in all directions. how the young man who has just destroyed himself came to this pass may be gathered from the book entitled _materialism_, which lies on his table. and thus he goes on, though the spectator feels less and less inclined to take any serious interest in these lectures. for although the intentions of wiertz had now and then a touch of the sublime, he was neither clear as to the limits of what could be represented nor did he possess the capacity of expressing what he wished in artistic forms. like many a german painter of those years, he was a philosopher of the brush, a scholar in disguise, who wrote out his thoughts in paint instead of ink. wiertz made painting a vehicle for more than it can render as painting: with him it begins to dogmatise; it is a book, and it awakens a regret that this rich mind was lost to authorship. there he might, perhaps, have done much that was useful towards solving the social and philosophical questions of the day; as he is, he has nothing to offer the understanding, and only succeeds in offending the eye. a human brain with both great and trivial ideas lays itself bare. but, like cornelius, from the mere fulness of his ideas he was unable to give them artistic expression. he groped from michael angelo to rubens, and from raphael to ary scheffer, without realising that the artistic utterance of all these masters had been an individual gift. the career of wiertz is an interesting psychological case. he was an abnormal phenomenon, and he cannot be passed over in the history of art, because he was one of the first who treated subjects from modern life in large pictures. never before had a genuinely artistic age brought forth such a monster, yet it is impossible to ignore him, or deny that he claims a certain degree of importance in the art history of the past century. chapter xxii the village tale during the decade following the year _genre_ painting in germany threw off the shackles of the anecdotic style, and continued a development similar to that of history, which, in the same country, flourished long after it was moribund elsewhere. after the elder artists, who showed so much zeal in producing perfectly ineffective little pictures, executed with incredible pains and a desperate veracity of detail, there followed, from , a generation who were technically better equipped. they no longer confined themselves to making tentative efforts in the manner of the old masters, but either borrowed their lights directly from the historical painters in paris, or were indirectly made familiar with the results of french technique through piloty. subjects of greater refinement were united with a treatment of colour which was less offensive. the childlike innocence which had given pleasure in meyerheim and waldmüller was now thought to be too childlike by far. the merriment which radiated from the pictures of schroedter or enhuber found no echo amidst a generation which was tired of such cheap humour: the works of carl hübner were put aside as lachrymose and sentimental efforts. when the world had issued from the period of romanticism there was no temptation to be funny over modern life nor to make socialistic propaganda; for after the revolution of people had become reconciled to the changed order of affairs and to life as it actually was--its cares and its worries, its mistakes and its sins. it was the time when berthold auerbach's village tales ran through so many editions; and, hand in hand with these literary productions, painting also set itself to tell little stories from the life of sundry classes of the people, amongst which rustics were always the most preferable from their picturesqueness of costume. at the head of this group of artists stands _louis knaus_, and if it is difficult to hymn his praises at the present day, that is chiefly because knaus mostly drew upon that sarcastic and ironical characteristic which is such an unpleasant moral note in the pictures of hogarth, schroedter, and madou. the figures of the old dutch masters behave as if the glance of no stranger were resting upon them: it is possible to share their joys and sorrows, which are not merely acted. we feel at our ease with them because they regard us as one of themselves. in knaus there is always an artificial bond between the figures and the frequenters of the exhibition. they plunge into the greatest extravagances to excite attention, tickle the spectator to make him laugh, or cry out to move him to tears. with the exception of wilkie, no _genre_ painter has explained his purpose more obtrusively or in greater detail. even when he paints a portrait, by way of variation, he stands behind with a pointer to explain it. on this account the portraits of mommsen and helmholtz in the berlin national gallery are made too official. each of them is visibly conscious that he is being painted for the national gallery, and by emphasis and the accumulation of external characteristics knaus took the greatest pains to lift these personalities into types of the nineteenth-century scholar. [illustration: l. knaus.] since popular opinion is wont to represent the philologist as one careless of outward appearance, and the investigator of natural philosophy as an elegant man of the world,--mommsen must wear boots which have seen much service, and those of helmholtz must be of polished leather; the shirt of the one must be genially rumpled, and that of the other must fit him to perfection. by such obvious characterisation the sunday public was satisfied, but those who were represented were really deprived of character. it is not to be supposed that in mommsen's room the manuscripts of all his principal works would lie so openly upon the writing-table and beneath it, so that every one might see them: it is not probable that his famous white locks would flutter so as he sat at the writing-table. even the momentary gesture of the hand has in both pictures something obtrusively demonstrative. "behold, with this pen i have written the history of rome," says mommsen. "behold, there is the famous ophthalmometer which i invented," says helmholtz. but as a _genre_ painter knaus has fallen still more often into such intolerable stage gesticulation. the picture "his highness upon his travels" is usually mentioned as that in which he reached his zenith in characterisation. yet is not this characterisation in the highest degree exaggerated? is not the expression apportioned to every figure, like parts to a theatrical company, and does not the result seem to be strained beyond all measure? just look at the children, see how each plays a part to catch your eye. a little girl is leaning shyly on her elder sister, who has bashfully thrust her finger into her mouth: some are looking on with rustic simplicity, others with attention: a child smaller than the others is puckering up its face and crying miserably. the prince, in whose honour the children are drawn up, passes the group with complete indifference, while his companion regards "the people" haughtily through his eyeglass. the schoolmaster bows low, in the hope that his salary may be raised, whilst the stupid churchwarden looks towards the prince with a jovial smile, as though he were awaiting his colleague from the neighbouring village. of course, they are all very intelligible types; but they are no more than types. for the painter the mere accident of the moment is the source of all life. would that six-year-old peasant child who stands with the greatest dignity in knaus's picture as "the village prince" have ever stood in that fashion, with a flower between his teeth and his legs thrust apart, unless he had been carefully taught this self-conscious pose by the painter himself? so that there may not be the slightest doubt as to which of the shoemaker's apprentices is winning and which is losing, one of them has to have a knowing smirk, whilst the other is looking helplessly at his cards. and how that little maccabee is acting to the public in "the first profit!" the old man in threadbare clothes, who stands in an ante-chamber rubbing his hands in the picture "i can wait"; the frightened little girl who sees her bit of bread-and-butter imperilled by geese in "in great distress,"--they have all the same deliberate comicality, they are all treated with the same palpable carefulness, the same pointed and impertinently satirical sharpness. even in "the funeral" he is not deserted by the humorous proclivity of the anecdotist, and the schoolmaster has to brandish the bâton with which he is conducting the choir of boys and girls as comically as possible. knaus uses too many italics, and underlines as if he expected his public to be very dull of understanding. in this way he appeals to simple-minded people, and irritates those of more delicate taste. the peasant sits in his pictures like a model; he knows that he must keep quiet, and neither alter his pose nor his grimace, because otherwise knaus will be angry. all his pictures show signs of the superior and celebrated city gentleman, who has only gone into the country to interest himself in the study of civilisation: there he hunts after effectively comical features, and, having arranged his little world in _tableaux vivants_, he coolly surrenders it to the derision of the cultivated spectator. [illustration: knaus. in great distress. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] [illustration: knaus. the card players. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] but such a judgment, which seems like a condemnation, could not be maintained from the historical standpoint. germany could not forget knaus, if it were only for the fact that in the fifties he sided with those who first spread the unusual opinion that painting was incomprehensible without sound ability in the matter of colour. he was not content, like the elder generation, to arrange the individual characters in his pictures in well-disposed groups. he took care to make his works faultless in colouring, so that in the fifties he not only roused the enthusiasm of the great public by his "poetic invention," but made even the parisian painters enthusiastic by his easy mastery of technique. to the following effect wrote edmond about in : "i do not know whether herr knaus has long nails; but even if they were as long as those of mephistopheles, i should still say that he was an artist to his fingers' ends. his pictures please the sunday public and the friday public, the critics, the _bourgeois_, and (god forgive me!) the painters. what is seductive to the great multitude is the clearly expressed dramatic idea, while artists and connoisseurs are won by his knowledge and thorough ability. herr knaus has the capacity of satisfying every one. his pictures attract the most incompetent eyes, because they tell pleasant anecdotes; but they likewise fascinate the most jaded by perfect execution of detail. the whole talent of germany is contained in the person of herr knaus. so germany lives in the rue de l'arcade in paris." in the fifties all the technical ability which was to be gained from the study of the old dutch masters and from constant commerce with the modern french reached its highest point in knaus. even in his youth the great netherlandish painters, ostade, brouwer, and teniers, must have had more effect upon him than his teachers, sohn and schadow, since his very first pictures, "the peasants' dance" of and "the card sharpers" of , had little in common with the düsseldorf school, and therefore so much the more with the netherlandish _chiaroscuro_. "the card sharpers" is precisely like an ostade modernised. by his migration to paris in he sought to acquire the utmost perfection of finish; and when he returned home, after a sojourn of eight years, he had at his command such a sense for effect and fine harmony of tone, such a knowledge of colour, and such a disciplined and refined taste, that his works indicate an immeasurable advance on the motley harshness of his predecessors. his "golden wedding" of --perhaps his finest picture--had nothing of the antiquated technique of the older type of düsseldorf pictures of peasant life; technically it stood on a level with the works of the french. [illustration: knaus. the golden wedding. (_by permission of messrs. goupil & co., the owners of the copyright._)] and knaus has remained the same ever since: a separate personality which belongs to history. he painted peasant pictures of tragic import and rustic gaiety; he recognised a number of graceful traits in child-life, and, having seen a great deal of the world, he made a transition, after he had settled in berlin, from the character picture of the black forest to such as may be painted from the life of cities. he even ventured to touch on religious subjects, and taught the world the limitations of his talent by his "holy families," composed out of reminiscences of all times and all schools, and by his "daniel in the lions' den." knaus is whole-heartedly a _genre_ painter; though that, indeed, is what he has in common with many other people. but thirty years ago he had a genius for colour amid a crowd of narrative and character painters, and this makes him unique. he is a man whose significance does not merely lie in his talent for narrative, but one who did much for german art. it may be said that in giving the _genre_ picture unsuspected subtleties of colour he helped german art to pass from mere _genre_ painting to painting pure and simple. in this sense he filled an artistic mission, and won for himself in the history of modern painting a firm and sure place, which even the opponent of the illustrative vignette cannot take from him. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ knaus. behind the scenes.] _vautier_, who must always be named in the same breath with knaus, is in truth the exact opposite of the berlin master. he also is essentially a _genre_ painter, and his pictures should not be merely seen but studied in detail; but where knaus has merits vautier is defective, and where knaus is jarring vautier has merits. in technique he cannot boast of similar qualities. he is always merely a draughtsman who tints, but has never been a colourist. as a painter he has less value, but as a _genre_ painter he is more sympathetic. in the pictures of knaus one is annoyed by the deliberate smirk, by his exaggerated and heartlessly frigid observation. vautier gives pleasure by characterisation, more delicately reserved in its adjustment of means, and profound as it is simple, by his wealth of individual motives and their charm, and by the sensitiveness with which he renders the feelings and relationship of his figures. a naïve, good-humoured, and amiable temperament is betrayed in his works. he is genially idyllic where knaus creates a pungently satirical effect, and a glance at the portraits of the two men explains this difference. [illustration: _kunst für alle._ benjamin vautier.] knaus with his puckered forehead, and his searching look shooting from under heavy brows, is like a judge or a public prosecutor. vautier, with his thoughtful blue eyes, resembles a prosperous banker with a turn for idealism, or a writer of village tales _à la_ berthold auerbach. knaus worried himself over many things, brooded much and made many experiments; vautier was content with the acquisition of a plain and simple method of painting, which appeared to him a perfectly sufficient medium for the expression of that which he had realised with profound emotion. the one is a reflective and the other a dreamy nature. vautier was a man of a happy temperament, one with whom the world went well from his youth upwards, who enjoyed an existence free from care, and who had accustomed himself as a painter to see the world in a rosy light. there is something sound and pure in his characters, in his pictures something peaceful and cordial; it does not, indeed, make his paltry pedantic style of painting any the better, but from the human standpoint it touches one sympathetically. his countrymen may be ashamed of vautier as a painter when they come across him amongst aliens in foreign exhibitions, but they rejoice in him none the less as a _genre_ painter. it is as if they had been met by the quiet, faithful gaze of a german eye amid the fiery glances of the latin nations. it is as if they suddenly heard a simple german song, rendered without training, and yet with a great deal of feeling. a generation ago knaus could exhibit everywhere as a painter; as such vautier was only possible in germany during the sixties. but in knaus it is impossible to get rid of the impress of the berlin professor, while from vautier's pictures there smiles the kindly sentiment of german home-life. vautier's world, no doubt, is as one-sided as that of old meyerheim. his talkative paul prys, his brides with their modest shyness, his smart young fellows throwing amorous glances, his proud fathers, and his sorrow-stricken mothers are, it may be, types rather than beings breathing positive and individual life. such a golden radiance of grace surrounds the pretty figures of his bare-footed rustic maidens as never pertained to those of the real world, but belongs rather to the shepherdess of a fairy tale who marries the prince. his figures must not be measured by the standard of realistic truth to nature. but they are the inhabitants of a dear, familiar world in which everything breathes of prettiness and lovable good-humour. it is almost touching to see with what purity and beauty life is reflected in vautier's mind. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ vautier. the conjurer.] how dainty are these brown-eyed swabian peasant girls, how tender and sympathetic the women, and how clean and well-behaved the children! you could believe that vautier mixed with his peasants like a friend or a benevolent god-father, that he delighted in their harmless pleasures, that he took part in their griefs and cares. in his pictures he does not give an account of his impressions with severity or any deliberate attempt to amuse, but with indulgence and cordiality. it is not his design to excite or to thrill, to waken comedy through whimsicalities or mournfulness by anything tragical. life reveals to him "merely pleasant things," as it did to goethe during his tour in italy, and even in its tragedies only people "who bear the inevitable with dignity." he never expressed boisterous grief: everything is subdued, and has that tenderness which is associated with the mere sound of his christian name, benjamin. knaus has something of menzel, vautier of memlinc: he has it even in the loving familiarity with which he penetrates minute detail. in their religious pictures the old german and netherlandish masters painted everything, down to the lilies worked on the virgin's loom, or the dust lying on the old service-book; and this thoroughly german delight in still life, this complacent rendering of minutiæ, is found again in vautier. men and their dwellings, animated nature and atmosphere, combine to make a pleasant world in his pictures. vautier was one of the first to discover the magic of environment, the secret influence which unites a man to the soil from which he sprang, the thousand unknown, magnetic associations existing between outward things and the spirit, between the intuitions and the actions of man. the environment is not there like a stage scene in front of which the personages come and go; it lives and moves in the man himself. one feels at home in these snug and cosy rooms, where the black forest clock is ticking, where little, tasteless photographs look down from the wall with an honest, patriarchal air, where the floor is scoured so clean, and greasy green hats hang on splendid antlers. there is the great family bed with the flowered curtains, the massive immovable bench by the stove, the solid old table, around which young and old assemble at meal-times. there are the great cupboards for the treasures of the house, the prayer-book given to grandmother at her confirmation, the filigree ornaments, the glasses and coffee-cups, which are kept for show, not for daily use. over the bedstead are hung the little pictures of saints painted on glass, and the consecrated tokens. from the window one overlooks other appurtenances of the house; gaudy scarlet runners clamber in from the little garden, blossoming fruit-trees stand in its midst, and the gable of the well-filled barn rises above it. everything has an air of peace and prosperity, the mood of a sunday forenoon; one almost fancies that one can catch the chime of the distant church bells through the blissful stillness. but completeness of effect and pictorial harmony are not to be demanded: the illustrated paper is better suited to his style than the exhibition. [illustration: vautier. the dancing lesson. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] the third member of the alliance is _franz defregger_, a man of splendid talent; of all the masters of the great munich school of piloty, he is at once the simplest and the healthiest. true it is, no doubt, that when posterity sifts and weighs his works, much of him, also, will be found too light. defregger's art has suffered from his fame and from the temptations of the picture market. moreover, he had not vautier's fine sense of the limitations of his ability, but often represented things which he did not understand. he was less of a painter than any of the artists of piloty's school, and more completely tethered by the size of his picture. he could not go beyond a certain space of canvas without suffering for it; and he bound his talent on the bed of procrustes when he attempted to paint madonnas, or placed himself with his hofer pictures in the rank of historical painters. but as a _genre_ painter he stands beside vautier, in the first line; and by these little _genre_ pictures--the simpler and quieter the better--and some of his genially conceived and charming portrait studies, he will survive. those are things which he understood and felt. he had himself lived amid the life he depicted, and so it was that what he depicted made such a powerful appeal to the heart. [illustration: vautier. november.] the year made him known. the munich exhibition had in that year a picture on a subject from the history of the hofer rising of . it represented how the little son of speckbacher, one of the tyrolese leaders, had come after his father, armed with a musket; and at the side of an old forester he is entering the room in which speckbacher is just holding a council of war. the father springs up angry at his disobedience, but also proud of the little fellow's pluck. from this time defregger's art was almost entirely devoted to the tyrolese people. to paint the smart lads and neat lasses of tyrol in joy and sorrow, love and hate, at work and merry-making, at home or outside on the mountain pasture, in all their beauty, strength, and robust health, was the life-long task for which he more than any other man had been created. he had, over knaus and most other painters of village tales, the enormous advantage of not standing personally outside or above the people, and not regarding them with the superficial curiosity of a tourist--for he belonged to them himself. others, if ironically disposed, saw in the rustic the stupid, comic peasant; or, if inclined to sentimentalism, introduced into the rural world the moods and feelings of "society," traits of drawing-room sensitiveness, the heavy air of the town. models in national costume were grouped for pictures of upper bavarian rustic life. but defregger, who up to the age of fifteen had kept his father's cattle on the pastures of the ederhof, had shared the joys and sorrows of the peasantry long enough to know that they are neither comic nor sentimental people. the roomy old farmhouse where he was born in lay isolated amid the wild mountains. he went about bare-footed and bare-headed, waded through deep snow when he made his way to school in winter, and wandered about amid the highland pastures with the flocks in summer. milkmaids and wood-cutters, hunters and cowherds, were his only companions. at fifteen he was the head labourer of the estate, helped to thresh the corn, and worked on the arable land and in the stable and the barn like others. when he was twenty-three he lost his father and took over the farm himself: he was thus a man in the full sense of the word before his artistic calling was revealed to him. and this explains his qualities and defects. when he came to piloty after the sale of his farm and his aimless sojourn in innsbruck and paris he was mature in mind; he was haunted by the impressions of his youth, and he wanted to represent the land and the people of tyrol. but he was too old to become a good "painter." on the other hand, he possessed the great advantage of knowing what he wanted. the heroes of history did not interest him; it was only the tyrolese woodmen who persisted in his brain. he left piloty's studio almost as he had entered it--awkward, and painting heavily and laboriously, and but very little impressed by piloty's theatrical sentiment. his youth and his recollections were rooted in the life of the people; and with a faithful eye he caught earnest or cheerful phases of that life, and represented them simply and cordially: and if he had had the strength to offer a yet more effectual resistance to the prevalent ideal of beauty, there is no doubt that his stories would seem even more fresh and vigorous. [illustration: franz defregger.] "the dance" was the first picture which followed that of "speckbacher," and it was circulated through the world in thousands of reproductions. there are two delightful figures in it: the pretty milkmaid who looks around her, radiant with pleasure, and the wiry old tyrolese who is lifting his foot, cased in a rough hobnail shoe, to dance to the _schuhplattler_. at the same time he painted "the prize horse" returning to his native village from the show decked and garlanded and greeted exultantly by old and young as the pride of the place. "the last summons" was again a scene from the tyrolese popular rising of . all who can still carry a rifle, a scythe, or a pitchfork have enrolled themselves beneath the banners, and are marching out to battle over the rough village street. the wives and children are looking earnestly at the departing figures, whilst a little old woman is pressing her husband's hand. everything was simply and genially rendered without sentimentality or emphasis, and the picture even makes an appeal by its colouring. as a sequel "the return of the victors" was produced in : a troop of the tyrolese levy is marching through its native mountain village, with a young peasant in advance, slightly wounded, and looking boldly round. tyrolese banners are waving, and the fifes and drums and clarionet players bring up the rear. the faces of the men beam with the joy of victory, and women and children stand around to welcome those returning home. joy, however, is harder to paint faithfully than sorrow. it is so easy to see that it has been artificially worked up from the model; nor is defregger's picture entirely innocent on this charge. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ defregger. speckbacher and his son.] [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ defregger. the wrestlers.] "andreas hofer going to his death" was his first concession to piloty. defregger had become professor at the munich academy, and was entered in the directory as "historical painter." the figures were therefore painted life size; and in the grouping and the choice of the "psychic moment" the style aimed at "grand painting." the result was the same emptiness which blusters through the historical pictures of the school of delaroche, gallait, and piloty. the familiar stage effect and stilted passion has taken the place of simple and easy naturalism. nor was he able to give life to the great figures of a large canvas as he had done in the smaller picture of the "return of the victors." this is true of "the peasant muster" of --which represented the tyrolese, assembled in an arms manufactory, learning that the moment for striking had arrived--and of the last picture of the series, "andreas hofer receiving the presents of the emperor francis in the fortress of innsbruck." all the great hofer pictures, which in earlier days were honoured as his best performances, have done less for his memory than for that of the sturdy hero. the _genre_ picture was defregger's vocation. there lay his strength, and as soon as he left that province he renounced his fine qualities. [illustration: _cassell & co._ defregger. sister and brothers.] [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ defregger. the prize horse.] and a holiday humour, a tendency to beautify what he saw, is spread over even his _genre_ pictures. they make one suppose that there is always sunshine in the happy land of tyrol, that all the people are chaste and beautiful, all the young fellows fine and handsome, all the girls smart, every household cleanly and well-ordered, all married folk and children honest and kind; whereas in reality these milk-maids and woodmen are far less romantic in their conduct; and so many a townsman who avoids contact with the living people goes into raptures over them as they are pictures. with vautier he shares this one-sidedness as well as his defective colour. almost all his pictures are hard, dry, and diffident in colouring, but, as with vautier, the man atones for the painter. from defregger one asks for no qualities of colour and no realistic tyrolese, since he has rendered himself in his pictures, and gives one a glimpse into his own heart; and a healthy, genial, and kindly heart it is. his idealism is not born of laboriously acquired principles of beauty; it expresses the temperament of a painter--a temperament which unconsciously sees the people through a medium whereby they are glorified. a rosy glow obscures sadness, ugliness, wretchedness, and misery, and shows only strength and health, tenderness and beauty, fidelity and courage. he treasured sunny memories of the cheerful radiance which rested on his home in the hour of his return; he painted the joy which swelled in his own breast as he beheld again the rocks of his native country, heard once more the peaceful chime of its sabbath bells. and this is what gives his works their human, inward truth, little as they may be authentic documents as to the population of tyrol. later this will be more impartially recognised than it possibly can be at present. the larger the school of any artist, the more it will make his art trivial; and thus for a time the originality of the master himself seems to be mere trifling. the tyrolese were depreciated in the market by defregger's imitators; only too many have aped his painting of stiff leather breeches and woollen bodices, without putting inside them the vivid humanity which is so charming in a genuine defregger. but his position in the history of art is not injured by this. he has done enough for his age; he has touched the hearts of many by his cheerful, fresh, and healthy art, and he would be certain of immortality had he thrown aside his brush altogether from the time when the progress of painting left him in the rear. with defregger, the head of the tyrolese school, gabl and mathias schmidt, standing at a measurable distance from him, may find a well-merited place. _mathias schmidt_, born in the tyrolese alps in the same year as defregger, began with satirical representations of the local priesthood. a poor image-carver has arrived with his waggon at an inn, on the terrace of which are sitting a couple of well-fed ecclesiastics, and by them he is ironically called to account as he offers a crucifix for sale. a young priest, as an austere judge of morals, reproves a pair of lovers who are standing before him, or asks a young girl such insidious questions at the bridal examination that she lowers her eyes, blushing. his greatest picture was "the emigration of the zillerthal protestants." amongst later works, without controversial tendencies, "the hunter's greeting" and "the lathered parson" may be named. the latter is surprised by two pretty girls while shaving. to these may be added "the parson's patch," a picture of a robust housekeeper hastily mending a weak spot in the pastor's inexpressibles just before service. shortly after defregger had painted his picture of "speckbacher," _alois gabl_ came forward with his "haspinger preaching revolt," and followed it up by smaller pictures with a humorous touch, representing a levy of recruits in tyrol, the dance at the inn interrupted by the entrance of the parson, magnates umpiring at the shooting butts, a bar with laughing girls, and the like. in , _eduard kurzbauer_, who died young, in his "fugitives overtaken" executed a work representing an entire class of painted illustrations. a young man who has eloped with a girl is discovered with her by her mother in a village inn. the old lady is looking reproachfully at her daughter, who is overwhelmed by shame and penitence; the young man is much moved, the old servant grave and respectful, the young landlady curious, and the postilion who has driven the eloping pair has a sly smirk. elsewhere kurzbauer, who is a fresh and lively anecdotist, painted principally episodes, arraying his figures in the peasant garb of the black forest: a rejected suitor takes a sad farewell of a perverse blonde who disdains his love; or the engagement of two lovers is hindered by the interference of the father. [illustration: _cassell & co._ defregger. andreas hofer appointed governor of the tyrol.] _hugo kauffmann_, the son of hermann kauffmann, planted himself in the interior of village taverns or in front of them, and made his dressed-up models figure as hunters, telling incredible tales, dancing to the fiddle, or quarrelling over cards. another north german, _wilhelm riefstahl_, showed how the peasants in appenzell or bregenz conduct themselves at mournful gatherings, at their devotions in the open air, and at all souls' day celebrations, and afterwards extended his artistic dominion over rügen, westphalia, and the rhine country with true mecklenburg thoroughness. he was a careful, conscientious worker, with a discontent at his own efforts in his composition, a certain ponderousness in his attempts at _genre_; but his diligently executed pictures--full of colour and painted in a peculiarly german manner--are highly prized in public galleries on account of their instructive soundness. after the various classes of the german peasantry had been naturalised in the picture market by these narrative painters, _eduard grützner_, when religious controversy raged in the seventies, turned aside to discover drolleries in monastic life. this he did with the assistance of brown and yellowish white cowls, and the obese and copper-nosed models thereto pertaining. he depicts how the cellarer tastes a new wine, and the rest of the company await his verdict with anxiety; how the entire monastery is employed at the vintage, at the broaching of a wine cask or the brewing of the beer; how they tipple; how bored they are over their chess or their dice, their cards or their dominoes; how they whitewash old frescoes or search after forbidden books in the monastery library. this, according to grützner, is the routine in which the life of monks revolves. at times amidst these figures appear foresters who tell of their adventures in the chase, or deliver hares at the cloister kitchen. and the more grützner was forced year after year to make up for his decline as a colourist, by cramming his pictures with so-called humour, the greater was his success. it was only long afterwards that _genre_ painting in broad-cloth came into vogue by the side of this _genre_ in peasant blouse and monastic cowl, and stories of the exchange and the manufactory by the side of village and monastic tales. here düsseldorf plays a part once more in the development of art. the neighbourhood of the great manufacturing towns on the rhine could not but lead painters to these subjects. _ludwig bokelmann_, who began by painting tragical domestic scenes--card players, and smoking shop-boys, in the style of knaus--made the pawnshop a theme for art in , and dexterously crowded into his picture all the types which popular fancy brings into association with the conception: business-like indifference, poverty ashamed, fallen prosperity, bitter need, avarice, and the love of pleasure. in , when the failure of the house of spitzeder made a sensation in the papers, he painted his picture "the savings bank before the announcement of failure," which gave him another opportunity for ranging in front of the splendid building an assembly of deluded creditors of all classes, and of showing how they expressed their emotion according to temperament and education, by excited speeches, embittered countenances, gloomy resignation, or vivid gesticulation. much attention was likewise excited by "the arrest." in this picture a woman was being watched for by a policeman, whilst the neighbours--male and female--loitered round with the requisite expression of horror, indignation, sympathy, or indifferent curiosity. the opening of a will, the last moments of an electioneering struggle, scenes in the entrance hall of a court of justice, the emigrants' farewell, the gaming-table at monte carlo, and a village fire, were other newspaper episodes from the life of great towns which he rendered in paint. his earlier associate in düsseldorf, _ferdinand brütt_, after first painting _rococo_ pictures, owed his finest successes to the stock exchange. it, too, had its types: the great patrician merchants and bankers of solid reputation, the jobbers, break-neck speculators, and decayed old stagers; and, as brütt rendered these current figures in a very intelligible manner, his pictures excited a great deal of attention. acquittals and condemnations, acts of mortgage, emigration agents, comic electors, and prison visits, as further episodes from the social, political, and commercial life of great towns, fill up the odd corners of his little local chronicle. thus the german _genre_ painting ran approximately the same course as the english had done at the beginning of the century. at that time the kingdom of german art was not of this world. classicism taught men to turn their eyes on the art of a past age. art in germany had progressed slowly, and at first with an uncertain and hesitating step, before it learnt that what blossoms here, and thrives and fades, should be the subject of its labours. gradually it brought one sphere of reality after the other into its domain. observation took the place of abstraction, and the discoverer that of the inventor. the painter went amongst his fellow-creatures, opened his eyes and his heart to share their fortunes and misfortunes, and to reproduce them in his own creation. he discovered the peculiarities of grades of life and professional classes. every one of the beautiful german landscapes with its peasantry, every one of the monastic orders and every manufacturing town found its representative in _genre_ painting. the country was mapped out. each one took over his plot, which he superintended, conscientiously, like an ethnographical museum. and just as fifty years before, germany had been fertilised by england, so it now gave in its turn the principles of _genre_ painting to the powers of the second rank in art. even france was in some degree influenced. as if to indicate that alsace would soon become german once more, after there appeared in that province certain painters who busied themselves with the narration of anecdote from rustic life quite in the manner of knaus and vautier. _gustave brion_, the grand-nephew of frederica of sesenheim, settled in the vosges, and there gave intelligence of a little world whose life flowed by, without toil, in gentle, patriarchal quietude, interrupted only by marriage feasts, birthdays, and funeral solemnities. he appears to have been rather fond of melancholy and solemn subjects. his interiors, with their sturdy and honest people, bulky old furniture, and large green faïence stoves, which are so dear to him, are delightful in their familiar homeliness and their cordial alsatian and german character, and recall vautier; in fact, he might well be termed the french vautier. he lives in them himself--the quiet old man, who in his last years occupied himself solely with the management of his garden and the culture of flowers, or sat by the hour in an easy-chair at the window telling stories to his old dog putz. but pictorial unity of effect must be asked from him as little as from vautier. _charles marchal_, too, was no painter, but an anecdotist, with a bias towards the humorous or sentimental; and so very refined and superior was he that he saw none but pretty peasant girls, who might easily be mistaken for "young ladies," if they exchanged their kerchiefs and bodices for a parisian toilette. his chief picture was "the hiring fair" of : pretty peasant girls are standing in a row along the street, bargaining with prospective masters before hiring themselves out. [illustration: grÜtzner. twelfth night.] the most famous of this group of artists is _jules breton_, who after various humorous and sentimental pieces placed himself in in the front rank of the french painters of rustics by his "return of the reapers" (musée luxembourg). his "gleaners" in , "blessing the fields" in , and "the erection of the picture of christ in the churchyard" were pretty enough to please the public, and sufficiently sound in technique not to be a stumbling-block to artists. after he conceived an enthusiasm for sunsets, and was never weary of depicting the hour when the fair forms of peasant maidens stand gracefully out against the quiet golden horizon. jules breton wrote many poems, and a vein of poetry runs through his pictures. they tell of the sadness of the land when the fields sleep dreamily beneath the shadows of the evening, touched by the last ray of the departing sun; but they tell of it in verses where the same rhymes are repeated with wearisome monotony. breton is a charming and sympathetic figure, but he never quite conquered classicism. his gleaners moving across the field in the evening twilight bear witness to an attentive, deliberate study of the works of leopold robert; and unfortunately much of the emphasis and classical style of robert has been transmitted to breton's rustic maidens. they have most decidedly a lingering weakness for pose, and a sharp touch of the formula of the schools. there is an affectation of style in their garb, and their hands are those of _bonnes_ who have never even handled a rake. breton, as millet said of him, paints girls who are too beautiful to remain in the country. his art is a well-bred, idyllic painting, with gilt edges; it is pleasing and full of delicate figures which are always elegant and always correct, but it is a little like flat lemonade; it is monotonous and only too carefully composed, destitute of all masculinity and seldom avoiding the reef of affectation. norway and sweden were fructified from düsseldorf immediately. when tidemand had shown the way, the academy on the rhine was the high school for all the sons of the north during the fifties. they set to translating knaus and vautier into swedish and norwegian, and caught the tone of their originals so exactly that they almost seem more düsseldorfian than the düsseldorfers themselves. _karl d'uncker_, who arrived in and died in , was led by the influence of vautier to turn to little humorous incidents. after "the two deaf friends" (two old people very hard of hearing, who are making comical efforts to understand each other) and "the vagabond musician and his daughter before the village magistrates" there followed in the scene in "the pawnshop," which divided the honours of the year with knaus's "golden wedding." he is an artistic compromise between knaus and schroedter, a keen observer and a humorous narrator, who takes special pleasure in the sharp opposition of characteristic figures. in his "pawnshop" and his "third class waiting room" vagabonds mingle in the crowd beside honest people, beggars beside retired tradesmen, old procuresses beside pure and innocent girls, and heartless misers beside warm-hearted philanthropists. in these satirically humorous little comedies swedish costume has been rightly left out of sight. this ethnographical element was the _forte of bengt nordenberg_, who as a copyist of tidemand gradually became the riefstahl of the north. his "golden wedding in blekingen," his "bridal procession," his "collection of tithes," "the pietists," and "the promenade at the well," are of the same ethnographical fidelity and the same anecdotic dryness. he gets his best effects when he strikes an idyllic, childlike note or one of patriarchal geniality. the "bridal procession" received in the village with salvoes and music, "the newly married pair" making a first visit to the parents of one of them, the picture of schoolboys playing tricks upon an old organist, that of children mourning over a lamb slain by a wolf, are, in the style of the sixties, the works of a modest and amiable anecdotist, who had a fine sense for the peaceful, familiar side of everyday life in town and country. [illustration: brion. jean valjean.] in _wilhelm wallander_, as in madou, noise and frolic and jest have the upper hand. his pictures are like saucy street ditties sung to a barrel-organ. the crowd at the market-place, the gossip in the spinning-room on a holiday evening, hop-pickings, dances, auctions on old estates, weddings, and the guard turning out, are his favourite scenes. even when he came to düsseldorf he was preceded by his fame as a jolly fellow and a clever draughtsman, and when he exhibited his "market in vingaker" he was greeted as another teniers. his "hop-harvest" is like a waxwork show of teasing lads and laughing lasses. he was an incisive humorist and a spirited narrator, who under all circumstances was more inclined to jest than to touch idyllic and elegiac chords. in his pictures peasant girls never wander solitary across the country, for some lad who is passing by always has a joke to crack with them; it never happens that girls sit lonely by the hearth, there is always a lover to peep out laughing from behind the cupboard door. _anders koskull_ cultivated the _genre_ picture of children in a more elegiac fashion; he has poor people sitting in the sun, or peasant families in the sunday stillness laying wreaths upon the graves of their dear ones in the churchyard. _kilian zoll_, like meyer of bremen, painted very childish pictures of women spinning, children with cats, the joys of grandmother, and the like. _peter eskilson_ turned to the representation of an idyllic age of honest yeomen, and has given in his best known work, "a game of skittles in faggens," a pleasant picture from peasant life in the age of pig-tails. the object of _august jernberg's_ study was the westphalian peasant with his slouching hat, long white coat, flowered waistcoat, and large silver buttons. he was specially fond of painting dancing bears surrounded by a crowd of amused spectators, or annual fairs, for which a picturesque part of old düsseldorf served as a background. _ferdinand fagerlin_ has something attractive in his simplicity and good-humour. if he laughs, as he delights in doing, his laughter is cordial and kind-hearted, and if he touches an elegiac chord he can guard against sentimentalism. in contrast with d'uncker and wallander, who always hunted after character pieces, he devotes himself to expression with much feeling, and interprets it delicately even in its finer _nuances_. henry ritter, who influenced him powerfully in the beginning of his career, drew his attention to holland, and fagerlin's quiet art harmonises with the dutch phlegm. within the four walls of his fishermen's huts there are none but honest grey-beards and quiet women, active wives and busy maidens, vigorous sailors and lively peasant lads. but his pictures are sympathetic in spite of this one-sided optimism, since the sentiment is not too affected nor the anecdotic points too heavily underlined. amongst the norwegians belonging to this group is _v. stoltenberg-lerche_, who with the aid of appropriate accessories adapted the interiors of cloisters and churches to _genre_ pictures, such as "tithe day in the cloister," "the cloister library," and "the visit of a cardinal to the cloister," and so forth. _hans dahl_, a _juste-milieu_ between tidemand and emanuel spitzer, carried the düsseldorf village idyll down to the present time. "knitting the stocking" (girls knitting on the edge of a lake), "feminine attraction" (a lad with three peasant maidens who are dragging a boat to shore in spite of his resistance), "a child of nature" (a little girl engaged to sit as model to a painter amongst the mountains, and running away in alarm), "the ladies' boarding school on the ice," "first pay duty," etc., are some of the witty titles of his wares, which are scattered over europe and america. everything is sunny, everything laughs, the landscapes as well as the figures; and if dahl had painted fifty years ago, his fair maidens with heavy blond plaits, well-bred carriage, and delicate hands that have never been disfigured by work, would undoubtedly have assured him no unimportant place beside old meyerheim in the history of the development of the _genre_ picture. an offshoot from the munich painting of rustics shot up into a vigorous sapling in hungary. the process of refining the raw talents of the magyar race had been perfected on the shores of the isar, and the hungarians showed gratitude to their masters by applying the principles of the munich _genre_ to magyar subjects when they returned home. the hungarian rooms of modern exhibitions have consequently a very local impress. everything seems aboriginal, magyar to the core, and purely national. gipsies are playing the fiddle and hungarian national songs ring forth, acrobats exhibit, slender sons of pusta sit in hungarian village taverns over their tokay, muscular peasant lads jest with buxom, black-eyed girls, smart hussars parade their irresistible charms before lively damsels, and recruits endeavour to imbibe a potent enthusiasm for the business of war from the juice of the grape. stiff peasants, limber gipsies, old people dancing, smart youths, the laughing faces of girls and bold fellows with flashing eyes, quarrelsome heroes quick with the knife, tipsy soldiers and swearing sergeants, drunkards, suffering women and poor orphans, pawnshops and vagabonds, legal suits, electioneering scenes, village tragedies and comic proposals, artful shop-boys, and criminals condemned to death, the gay confusion of fairs and the merry return from the harvest and the vintage, waxed moustaches, green and red caps and short pipes, tokay, banat wheat, alfoeld tobacco, and sarkad cattle,--such are the elements worked up, as the occasion demanded, either into little tales or great and thrilling romances. and the names of the painters are as thoroughly magyar as are the figures. beside _ludwig ebner_, _paul boehm_, and _otto von baditz_, which have a german sound, one comes across such names as _koloman déry_, _julius aggházi_, _alexander bihari_, _ignaz ruskovics_, _johann jankó_, _tihamér margitay_, _paul vagó_, _arpad fessty_, _otto koroknyai_, _d. skuteczky_, etc. [illustration: _l'art._ marchal. the hiring fair.] but setting aside the altered names and the altered locality and garb, the substance of these pictures is precisely the same as that of the munich pictures of twenty years before: dance and play, maternal happiness, wooing, and the invitation to the wedding. instead of the _schuhplattler_ they paint the czarda, instead of the drover's cottage the taverns of pesth, instead of the blue bavarian uniform the green of the magyar hussars. their painting is tokay adulterated with isar water, or isar water with a flavour of tokay. what seems national is at bottom only their antiquated standpoint. it is a typical development repeating itself in the nineteenth century through all branches of art; the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. any other progress than that of the gradual expansion of subject-matter cannot be established in favour of the productions of all this _genre_ painting. in colour and in substance they represent a phase of art which the leading countries of europe had already left behind about the middle of the century, and which had to be overcome elsewhere, if painting was again to be what it had been in the old, good periods. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ pettenkofen. a hungarian village (pencil drawing).] for as yet all these _genre_ painters were the children of hogarth; their productions were the outcome of the same spirit, plebeian and alien to art, which had come into painting when the middle classes began to hold a more important position in society. yet their artistic significance ought not to be and cannot be contested. in an age which was prouder of its antiquarian knowledge than of its own achievements, which recognised the faithful imitation of the method of all past periods, the mere performance of a delicate task, as the highest aim of art, these _genre_ painters were the first to portray the actual man of the nineteenth century; the first to desert museums and appeal to nature, and thus to lay the foundation of modern painting. they wandered in the country, looked at reality, sought to imitate it, and often displayed in their studies a marvellous directness of insight. but these vigorous initial studies were too modest to find favour and esteem with a public as yet insufficiently educated for the appreciation of art. whilst in england the exhibitions of the royal academy and in france those of the paris salon created, comparatively early, a certain ground for the comprehension of art, the _genre_ painters of other countries worked up to and into the sixties without the appropriate social combinations. after the art unions began to usurp the position of that refined society which had formerly played the mæcenas as the leading dictators of taste. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ breton. the return of the reapers.] albrecht adam, who was chiefly responsible for the foundation of the munich union, has himself spoken clearly in his autobiography of the advantages and disadvantages of this step. "often," he writes, "often have i asked myself whether i have done good or not by this scheme, and to this hour i have not been able to make up my mind. the cultivation of art clearly received an entirely different bias from that which it had in earlier days. what was formerly done by artistic and judicious connoisseurs was now placed for the most part in the hands of the people. like so much else in the world, that had its advantages, but in practice the shady side of the matter became very obvious." the disadvantages were specially these: "the people" for a long time could only understand such paintings as represented a story in a broad and easy fashion; paintings which in the narrative cohesion of the subject represented might be read off at a glance, since the mere art of reading had been learnt at school, rather than those which deserved and required careful study. the demand for anecdotic subject was only waived in the case of ethnographical painting, in italian and oriental _genre_; for here the singular types, pictorial costumes, and peculiar customs of foreign countries were in themselves enough to provoke curiosity. what was prized in the picture was merely something external, the subject of representation, not the representation itself, the matter and not the manner, that which concerned the theme, that which fell entirely beyond the province of art. the illustrated periodicals which had been making their appearance since the forties gave a further impetus to this phase of taste. the more inducement there was to guess charades, the more injury was done to the sensuous enjoyment of art; for the accompanying text of the author merely translated the pictures back into their natural element. painters, however, were not unwilling to reconcile themselves to the circumstances, because, as a result of their technical insufficiency, they were forced, on their side, to try to lend their pictures the adjunct of superficial interest by anecdotic additions. literary humour had to serve the purpose of pictorial humour, and the talent of the narrator was necessary to make up for their inadequate artistic qualities. as the historical painters conveyed the knowledge of history in a popular style, the _genre_ painters set up as agreeable tattlers, excellent anecdotists: they were in turn droll, meditative, sentimental, and pathetic, but they were not painters. [illustration: _l'art._ breton. the gleaner.] and painters, under these conditions, they could not possibly become. for though it is often urged in older books on the history of art that modern _genre_ painting far outstripped the old dutch _genre_ in incisiveness of characterisation, depth of psychological conception, and opulence of invention, these merits are bought at the expense of all pictorial harmony. in the days of rembrandt the dutch were painters to their fingers' ends, and they were able to be so because they appealed to a public whose taste was adequately trained to take a refined pleasure in the contemplation of works of art which had sterling merits of colour. mieris painted the voluptuous ruffling of silken stuffs; van der meer, the mild light stealing through little windows into quiet chambers, and playing upon burnished vessels of copper and pewter, on majolica dishes and silver chattels, on chests and coverings; de hoogh, the sunbeam streaming like a golden shaft of dust from some bright lateral space into a darker ante-chamber. each one set before himself different problems, and each ran through an artistic course of development. [illustration: wallender. the return.] the more recent masters are mature from their first appearance; the hungarians paint exactly like the swedes and the germans, and their pictures have ideas for the theme, but never such as are purely artistic. like simple woodland birds, they sing melodies which are, in some ways, exceedingly pretty; but their plumage is not equal to their song. no man can be painter and _genre_ painter at the same time. the principal difference between them is this: a painter sees his picture, rather than what may be extracted from it by thought; the _genre_ painter, on the other hand, has an idea in his mind, an "invention," and plans out a picture for its expression. the painter does not trouble his head about the subject and the narrative contents; his poetry lies in the kingdom of colour. there reigns in his works--take brouwer, for example--an authentic, uniformly plastic, and penetrative life welling from the artist's soul. but the leading motive for the _genre_ painter is the subject as such. for example, he will paint a children's festival precisely because it is a children's festival. but one must be a jan steen to accomplish such a task in a soundly artistic manner. the observation of these more recent painters meanwhile ventured no further than detail, and did not know what to do with the picture as a whole. they got over their difficulties because they "invented" the scene, made the children pose in the places required by the situation, and then composed these studies. the end was accomplished when the leading heroes of the piece had been characterised and the others well traced. the colouring was merely an unessential adjunct, and in a purely artistic sense not at all possible. for a picture which has come into being through a piecing together from separate copies of set models, and of costumes, vessels, interiors, etc., may be ever so true to nature in details, but this mosaic work is bound systematically to destroy the pictorial appearance, unity, and quietude of the whole. knaus is perhaps the only one who, as a fine connoisseur of colour, concealed this scrap-book drudgery, and achieved a certain congruity of colour in a really artistic manner by a subtilised method of harmony. but as regards the pictures of all the others, it is clear at once that, as heine wrote, "they have been rather edited than painted." the effectiveness of the picture was lost in the detail, and even the truth of detail was lost in the end in the opulence of subject, seductive as that was upon the first glance. for, as it was held that the incident subjected to treatment--the more circumstantial the better--ought to be mirrored through all grades and variations of emotion in the faces, in the gestures of a family, of the gossips, of the neighbours, of the public in the street, the inevitable consequence was that the artist, to make himself understood, was invariably driven to exaggerate the characterisation, and to set in the place of the unconstrained expression of nature that which has been histrionically drilled into the model. not less did the attempt to unite these set figures as a composition in one frame lead to an intolerable stencilling. the rules derived from historical painting in a time dominated by that form of art were applied to our chequered and many-sided modern life. since the structure of this composition prescribed laws from which the undesigned manifestation of individual objects is free, the studies after nature had to be readjusted in the picture according to necessity. there were attitudes in a conventional sense beautiful, but unnatural and strained, and therefore creating an unpleasing effect. an arbitrary construction, a forced method of composition, usurped the place of what was flexible, various, and apparently casual. the painters did not fit the separate part as it really was into the totality which the coherence of life demands: they arranged scenes of comedy out of realistic elements just as a stage manager would put them together. and this indicates the further course which development was obliged to take. when hogarth was left behind, painting had once more gained the independence which it had had in the great periods of art. the painter was forced to cease from treating secondary qualities--such as humour and narrative power--as though they were of the first account; and the public had to begin to understand pictures as paintings and not as painted stories. an "empty subject" well painted is to be preferred to an "interesting theme" badly painted. pictures of life must drive out _tableaux vivants_, and human beings dislodge character types which curiosity renders attractive. rather let there be a moment of breathing reality rendered by purely artistic means of expression than the most complete village tale defectively narrated; rather the simplest figure rendered with actuality and no thought of self than the most suggestive and ingenious characterisation. a conception, coloured by the temperament of the artist, of what was simple and inartificial, expressing nature at every step, had to take the place of laborious composition crowded with figures, the plainness and truth of sterling art to overcome what was overloaded and arbitrary, and the fragment of nature seized with spontaneous freshness to supplant episodes put together out of fragmentary observations. only such painting as confined itself, like that of the dutch, "to the bare empirical observation of surrounding reality," renouncing literary byplay, spirited anecdotic fancies, and all those rules of beauty which enslave nature, could really become the basis of modern art: and this the landscape painters created. when once these masters resolved to paint from nature, and no longer from their inner consciousness, there inevitably came a day when some one amongst them wished to place in the field or the forest, which he had painted after nature, a figure, and then felt the necessity of bringing that figure into his picture just as he had seen it, without giving it an anecdote mission or forcing it arbitrarily into his compositions. the landscapist found the woodcutter in the forest, and the woodcutter seemed to him the ideal he was seeking; the peasant seemed to him to have the right to stand amid the furrows he had traced with his plough. he no longer drove the fisher and the sailor from their barks, and had no scruple in representing the good peasant woman, laden with wood, striding forwards in his picture just as she strode through the forest. and so entry was made into the way of simplicity; the top-heavy burden of interesting subject-matter was thrown aside, and the truth of figures and environments was gained. the age contained all the conditions for bringing landscape painting such as this to maturity. chapter xxiii landscape painting in germany that landscape would become for the nineteenth century even more important than it was for the holland of the seventeenth century had been clearly announced since the days of watteau and gainsborough, and since this tendency, in spite of all coercive rules, could be only momentarily delayed by classicism, it came to pass that the era which began with winckelmann's conception of "vulgar nature" ended a generation later with her apotheosis. the thirty years from to denoted no more than a brief imprisonment for modern landscape, the luxuriantly blooming child being arbitrarily confined meanwhile in the strait-waistcoat of history. at first the phrase of gotthold ephraim lessing, which declared that landscape was no subject for painting because it had no soul, held painters altogether back from injuring their reputation by such pictures. and when, after the close of the century, some amongst them overcame this dread, poussin the classicist was of course set up as the only model. for an age which did not paint men but only statues, nature was too natural. as the figure painter subordinated everything to style and moulded the human body accordingly, landscape became mannered to suit an historical idea, and was used merely as a theatrical background for greek tragedies. as the draughtsmen of the age freed the human figure from all "individual blemishes," and thereby abandoned the most essential points of life and credibility which are bound up with personality, the landscapists wished to purify nature from everything "accidental," with the result that dreary commonplaces were produced from her, the infinitely manifold. as the former sought the chief merit of their works in "well-balanced composition," the latter regarded trees and mountains, temples and palaces, clouds and rivers, merely as counters which only needed to be changed in their mutual position according to acquired rules of composition to make new pictures. they did not reflect that nature possesses a more original force than the most able self-conscious work of man, or, as ludwig richter has so well expressed it, that "what god almighty has made is always more beautiful than what men can invent." there were summary rules for landscapes in the poussin style, the beauty of which was sought above all in an opulent play of noble lines, corresponding to the fine and flowing lines of carstens' figures. but the conception was all the more pedantic whilst the drawing was hard and dry and the colour feeble and vitreous. the most familiar of the group is the old tyrolese _josef anton koch_, who came to rome in , and, during two years, had an opportunity of allying himself with carstens. his pictures are usually composed with motives taken from the sabine mountains. a landscape with "the rape of hylas" is possessed by the staedel institute in frankfort, a "sacrifice of noah" by the museum in leipzig, and a landscape from the sabine mountains by the new pinakothek in munich. all three show little promise in technique; it was only in water-colour that he painted with more freedom. [illustration: josef anton koch.] without a doubt nature in italy is favourable to this "heroic" style of landscape. in south italy the country is at once magnificent and peaceful. the naked walls of rock display their majestic lines with a sharp contour; the sea is blue, and there is no cloud in the sky. as far as the eye reaches everything is dead and nugatory in its colour, and rigid and inanimate in form: a plastic landscape, full of style but apparently devoid of soul. nowhere is there anything either stupendous or familiar, though, at the same time, there is no country on the earth where there is such a sweep of proud majestic lines. it was not the composition of poussin, but the classic art of claude--which aimed at being nothing but the transparent mirror of sunny and transparent nature--that gave perfect expression to this classic landscape; and in the nineteenth century _karl rottmann_, according to what one reads, has most completely represented this same classical form of art. his twenty-eight italian landscapes in the arcades of the munich hofgarten are said to display a sense of the beauty of line and a greatness of conception paralleled by few other landscape works of the century. and those who draw their critical appreciations from books will probably continue to make this statement, with all the greater right since the world has been assured that the arcade pictures are but a shadow of earlier splendour. to a spectator who has not been primed and merely judges with his own eyes without knowing anything about rottmann's celebrity, these pictures with their hard, inept colouring and their pompous "synthetic" composition seem in the majority of cases to be excessively childish, though it is not contested that before their restoration by leopold rottmann and their present state of decay they may very possibly have been good. rottmann's grecian landscapes in the new pinakothek are not ranked high even by his admirers. standing in the beginning entirely upon koch's ground, he was led in these pictures to give more importance to colour and light, and even to introduce unusual phenomena, such as lowering skies, with rainbows, sunsets, moonlight scenes, thunderstorms, and the like. this mixture of classical principles of drawing with effect-painting in the style of eduard hildebrandt brought a certain confusion into his compositions, to say nothing of the fact that he never got rid of his harsh and heavy colour, bengal lights, and a crudeness of execution suggestive of tapestry. his water-colours, probably, contain the only evidence from which it may be gathered that rottmann really had an eminent feeling for great characteristic lines, and did not unsuccessfully go through the school of claude with his finely moulded, rhythmically perfected, and yet simple conception of nature. [illustration: _gräphische künst._ karl rottmann.] otherwise _friedrich preller_ is the only one of all the stylists deriving from koch who rose to works consistent in execution. to him only was it granted to assure his name a lasting importance by exhaustively working out a felicitous subject. the _odyssey_ landscapes extend through his whole life. during a sojourn in naples in he was struck by the first idea. after his return home he composed for doctor härtel in leipzig the first series as wall decoration in tempera in - . then there followed his journeys to rügen and norway, where he painted wild strand and fell landscapes of a sombre austerity. after this interruption, so profitably extending his feeling for nature, he returned to the _odyssey_. the series grew from seven to sixteen cartoons, which were to be found in at the munich international exhibition. the grand duke of weimar then commissioned him to paint the complete sequence for a hall in the weimar museum. in - preller prepared himself afresh in italy, and as an old man completed the work which he had planned in youth. this weimar series, executed in encaustic painting, is artistically the maturest that he ever did. of the entire school he only had the secret of giving his figures a semblance of life, and concealed the artificiality of his compositions. nature in his pictures has an austere, impressive sublimity, and is the worthy home of gods and heroes. during his long life he had made so many and such incessant studies of nature in north and south--even at seventy-eight he was seen daily with his sketch-book in the campagna--that he could venture to work with great, simple lines without the danger of becoming empty. at the time when these pictures were painted the rendering of still-life in landscape had in general been long buried, although even to-day it has scattered representatives in the younger preller, albert hertel, and edmund kanoldt. as antique monuments came into fashion with classicism, german ruins became the mode at the beginning of the romantic period and the return to the national past. for koch and his followers landscape was only of value when, as the background of classical works of architecture, it directed one's thoughts to the antique: shepherds had to sit with their flock around them on the ruins of the temple of vesta, or cows to find pasture between the truncated pillars of the roman forum. but now it could only find its justification by allying itself with mediæval german history, by the portrayal of castles and strongholds. [illustration: rottmann. the coast of sicily.] "what is beautiful?--a landscape with upright trees, fair vistas, atmosphere of azure blue, ornamental fountains, stately palaces in a learned architectural style, with well-built men and women, and well-fed cows and sheep. what is ugly?--ill-formed trees with aged, crooked, and cloven stems, uneven and earthless ground, sharp-cut hills and mountains which are too high, rude or dilapidated buildings, with their ruins lying strewn in heaps, a sky with heavy clouds, stagnant water, lean cattle in the field, and ungraceful wayfarers." in these words gérard de lairesse, the ancestor of classicism, defined his ideal of landscape, and in the last clause, where he speaks of ugliness, he prophetically indicated the landscape ideal of the romanticists, as this is given for the first time in literature in tieck's _sternbald_. for the young knight in _sternbald_ who desires to become a painter exclaims with enthusiasm: "then would i depict lonely and terrible regions, rotting and broken bridges, between two rough cliffs facing a precipice, through which the forest stream forces its foaming course, lost travellers whose garments flutter in the moist wind, the dreaded figures of robbers ascending from the gully, waggons fallen upon and plundered, and battle against the travellers." which is all exactly the opposite to what lairesse demanded from the landscapist. alexander humboldt has shown that the men of antiquity only found beauty in nature so far as she was kindly, smiling, and useful to them. but to the romanticists nature was uncomely where she was the servant of civilisation, and beautiful only in tameless and awe-inspiring savageness. the light, therefore, was never to be that of simple day, but the gloom of night and of the mountain glens. such phenomena are neither to be seen in berlin nor in breslau, and to be a romanticist was to love the opposite of all that one sees around one. tieck, who lived in the cold daylight of berlin with its modern north german rationalism, has therefore--and not by chance--first felt the yearning for moonlight landscapes of primæval forest; _lessing_, from breslau, was the first to give it pictorial expression. [illustration: k. rottmann. lake kopaÏs.] even in the twenties koch's classical heroic landscapes, executed with an ideal sweep of line, were contrasted with castle chapels, ruins, and cloister courts composed in a similarly arbitrary manner. landscape was no longer to make its appeal to the understanding by lines, as in the work of the classicists, but to touch the spirit by colour. the various hues of moonlight seemed specially made to awaken sombre emotions. but as yet the technique of painting was too inadequately trained to express this preconceived "mood" through nature itself. to make his intentions clearer, therefore, the painter showed the effect of natural scenery on the figures in his pictures, illustrating the "mood" of the landscape in the "accessories." lessing's early works represent in art that self-consciously elegiac and melancholy sentimental rendering of a mood introduced into literature by _sternbald_, in his knights, squires, noble maidens, and other romantic requisites. the melancholy lingers upon rocks savagely piled upon each other, tumble-down chapels and ruined castles, in swamps and sombre woods, in old, decaying trees, half-obliterated paths, and ghostly gravestones; it veils the sky with a dark grey cerement. amid hills and glens with wayside crosses, mills, and charcoal-burners' huts may be seen lonely wanderers, praying pilgrims, priests hurrying from the cloister to bring the last consolation to the dying, riders who have lost their way, and mercenary soldiers lying dead. his first picture of revealed a desolate churchyard beneath a dark and lowering heaven, from which a solitary sunbeam bursts forth to illumine a grave-stead. then followed the castle by the sea standing upon strangely moulded cliffs heaped in confusion; the churchyard in the snow where the nuns in the cloisters are following a dead sister to the grave; the churchyard cloister, likewise in snow, where an old man has dug a fresh grave; the cloister in the light of evening with a priest visiting the sick; the landscape with the weary, grey-headed crusader, riding on a weary horse through a lonely mountain district, probably meant as an illustration to uhland's ballad _das rosennest_-- "rühe hab ich nie gefunden, als ein jahr im finstern thurm"; and then came the desolate tableland with the robbers' den burnt to ashes, and the landscape with the oak and the shrine of the virgin, before which a knight and noble lady are making their devotions. as yet all these pictures were an arbitrary _potpourri_ from walter scott, tieck, and uhland, and their ideal was the wolf's glen in the _freischütz_. [illustration: friedrich preller.] the next step which romanticism had to take was to discover such primæval woodland scenes in actual nature, and as italian landscape seems, as it were, to have been made for claude, nature, as she is in germany, makes a peculiar appeal to this romantic temperament. in certain parts of saxon switzerland the rocks look as if giants of the prime had played ball with them or piled them one on top of the other in sport. lessing found in a landscape corresponding to the romantic ideal of nature in the eifel district, whither he had been induced to go by a book by nöggerath, _das gebirge im rheinland und westfalen nach mineralogischem und chemischem bezuge_. up to that time he had only known the romantic ideal of nature through scott, tieck, and uhland, just as the classicists had taken their ideal from homer, theocritus, and virgil: in the eifel district it came before him in tangible form. flat, swampy tracts of shrub and spruce alternated with dark woods, where gigantic firs, weird pines, and primæval oaks raised their branches to the sky. at the same time he beheld the rude and lonely sublimity of nature in union with a humanity which was as yet uncultivated, and for that reason all the simpler and the healthier, judged by the romanticist's distaste for civilisation. defiant cones of rock and huge masses of mountain wildly piled upon each other overlooked valleys in which a stalwart race of peasants passed their days in patriarchal simplicity. here, for the first time, a sense for actual landscape was developed in him; hitherto it had been alloyed by a taste for knights, robbers, and monks. "oh, had i been born in the seventeenth century," he wrote, "i would have wandered after the thirty years' war throughout germany, plundered, ruined, and run wild as she then was." hitherto only "composed" italian landscapes had been painted, the soil of home ostensibly offering no _sujets_, or, in other words, not suiting those tendencies which subordinated everything to style: so lessing was now the first painter of german landscape. his "eifel landscape" in the berlin national gallery, which was followed by a series of such pictures, introduces the first period of german landscape painting. the forms of the ground and of the rough sides of rock are rendered sharply and decisively, from geological knowledge. on principle he became an opponent of all artistic influence derived from italy, and located himself in the eifel district. the landscapes which he painted there are founded on immediate studies of nature, and are sustained by large and earnest insight. he draws the picture of this quarter in strong and simple lines: the sadness of the heath and the dark mist, the dull breath of which rises from swampy moorland. still he painted only scenes in which nature had taken the trouble to be fantastic. the eye of the painter did not see her bright side, approaching her only when she looked gloomy or was in angry humour. either he veils the sky with vast clouds or plunges into the darkness of an untrodden forest. gnarled trees spread around, their branches stretching out fantastically twisted; the unfettered tumult of the powers of nature, the dull sultry atmosphere before the burst of the storm or its moaning subsidence, are the only moments which he represents. but the whole baggage of unseasonable romanticism, the nuns and monks, pious knights and sentimental robbers, at first used to embody the mood of nature, were thrown overboard. a quieter and more melancholy though thoroughly manly seriousness, something strong and pithy, lies in the representations of lessing. the romanticists had lost all sense of the dumb silent life of nature. they only painted the changing adornment of the earth: heroes and the works of men, palaces, ruins, and classic temples. nature served merely as a stage scene: the chief interest lay in the persons, the monuments, and the historical ideas associated with them. even in the older pictures of lessing the mood was exclusively given by the lyrical accessories. but now it was placed more and more in nature herself, and rings in power like an organ peal, from the cloudy sky, the dim lights, and the swaying tree-tops. for the first time it is really nature that speaks from the canvas, sombre and forceful. in this respect his landscapes show progress. they show the one-sidedness, but also the poetry of the romantic view of nature. and they are no less of an advance in technique; for in making the discovery that his haunting ideal existed in reality, lessing first began to study nature apart from preconceived and arbitrary rules of composition, and--learnt to paint. [illustration: _albert, munich._ preller. ulysses and leucothea.] up to there stood at his side a master no less powerful, the refractory, self-taught _karl blechen_, who only took up painting when he was five-and-twenty, and became one of the most original of german landscapists, in spite of a ruined life prematurely closing in mental darkness and suicide. he possessed a delicate feeling for nature, inspiration, boldness, and a spirited largeness of manner, although his technique was hard, awkward, and clumsy to the very end. he might be called the alfred rethel of landscape painting. he was not moved by what was kindly or formally beautiful in nature, but by loneliness, melancholy, and solitude. many of his landscapes break away from peaceful melancholy, and are like the pictures in some horrible nightmare, ghastly and terrifying; on the other hand, he often surprises us by the pleasure he takes in homely everyday things, a characteristic hitherto of rare occurrence. whereas lessing never crossed the alps for fear of losing his originality, blechen was the first who saw even modern italy without the spectacles of ideal style. from his italian pictures it would not be supposed that he had previously studied the landscapes of the classicists, or that beside him in berlin schinkel worked on the entirely abstract and ideal landscape. as a painter blechen has even discovered the modern world. for lessing landscape "with a purpose" was something hideous and insupportable. he cared exclusively for nature untouched by civilisation, painted the murmuring wood and the raging storm, here and there at most a shepherd who indicated the simplest and the oldest employment on the earth's surface. but the blechen exhibition of contained an entirely singular phenomenon as regards the thirties, an evening landscape before the iron works in eberswald: a long, monotonous plain with a sluggish river, behind which the dark outlines of vomiting manufactory chimneys rise sullenly into the bright evening sky. even in that day blechen painted what others scarcely ventured to draw: nature working in the service of man, and thereby--to use tieck's expression--"robbed of her austere dignity." [illustration: carl friedrich lessing.] lessing's most celebrated follower, _schirmer_, appears in general as a weakened and sentimental lessing. he began in with "a primæval german forest," but a journey to italy caused him in to turn aside from this more vigorous path. henceforth his efforts were directed to nobility of form and line, to turning out southern ideal landscapes with classically romantic accessories. the twenty-six biblical landscapes drawn in charcoal, belonging to the düsseldorf kunsthalle, the four landscapes in oil with the history of the good samaritan in the kunsthalle of carlsruhe, and the twelve pictures on the history of abraham in the berlin national gallery, are the principal results of this second period--his period of ideal style. they are tame efforts at a compromise between lessing and preller, and therefore of no consequence to the history of the development of landscape painting. amongst the many who regarded him as a model, _valentin ruths_ of hamburg is one of the most natural and delicate. his pictures, however, did not display any new impulse to widen the boundary by proceeding more in the direction of healthy and honestly straightforward observation of nature, or by emancipating himself from the school of regular composition and the rendering of an arbitrary mood. [illustration: lessing. the wayside madonna.] meanwhile this impulse came from another quarter. at the very time when the _genre_ artists were painting their earliest pictures of rustic life under the influence of teniers and ostade, the landscapists also began to return to the old dutch masters, following everdingen in particular. thus another strip of nature was conquered, another step made towards simplicity. the landscape ideal of the classicists had been architecture, that of the romanticists poetry; from this time forward it became pure painting. little denmark, which fifty years before had exercised through carstens that fateful influence on germany which led painters from the treatment of contemporary life and sent them in pursuit of the antique, now made recompense for the evil it had done. during the twenties and thirties it produced certain landscapists who guided the germans to look with a fresh and unfettered gaze, undisturbed by the ideal, at nature in their own country, after the aberrations of classicism and the one-sidedness of the romanticists. under eckersberg the academy of copenhagen was the centre of a healthy realism founded on the dutch, and some of the painters who received their training there and laboured in later years in dresden, düsseldorf, and munich spread abroad the principles of this school. [illustration: schirmer. an italian landscape.] _j. c. dahl_ taught as professor in the academy of dresden. at the present time his norwegian landscapes seem exceedingly old-fashioned, but in the thirties they evidently must have been something absolutely new, for they raised a hue and cry amongst the german painters as "the most wild naturalism." in johann christian clausen dahl was born in bergen. he was the son of one of those norwegian giants who are one day tillers of the soil and on the morrow fishers or herdsmen and hunters, who cross the sea in their youth as sailors and clear the waste land when they return home. as he wandered with his father through the dense, solitary pine forests, along abrupt precipices, sullen lakes, rushing waterfalls, silvery shining glaciers, the majesty of northern nature was revealed to him, and he rendered them in little coloured drawings, which, in spite of their awkward technique, bear witness to an extraordinary freshness of observation. the course of study at the copenhagen academy, whither he proceeded in his twentieth year, enabled him to become acquainted with everdingen and ruysdael, and these two old masters, who had also painted norwegian landscapes, stimulated him to further efforts. dahl became the first representative of norwegian landscape painting, and remained true to his country even when in he undertook a professorship in dresden. italy and germany occupied his brush as much as norway, but he was only himself when he worked amongst the norwegian cliffs. breadth of painting and softness of atmosphere are wanting in all his pictures. they are hard and dry in their effect, and not seldom entirely conventional; especially the large works painted after . in them he gave the impression of a bewildering, babbling personality. they have been swiftly conceived and swiftly painted, but without artistic love and fine feeling. in his later years dahl did not allow himself the time to bury himself in nature quietly and with devotion, and finally--especially in his moonlight pictures--took to using a violet-blue, which has a very conventional effect. everdingen sought by preference for what was forceful and violently agitated in nature; ruysdael felt an enthusiasm for rushing mountain streams. but for dahl even these romantic elements of northern nature were not enough. he approached nature, not to interpret her simply, but to arrange his effects. in his picture the wild norwegian landscape had to be wilder and more restless than in reality it is. not patient enough to win all its secrets from the savage mountain torrent, he forced together his effects, made additions, brought confusion into his picture as a whole, and a crudeness into the particular incidents. his large pictures have a loud effect contrasted with the simple intuition of nature amongst the netherlanders. many of them are merely fantastically irrational compositions of motives which have been learned by heart. but there were also years in which dahl stood in the front rank of his age, and even showed it the way to new aims. he certainly held that position from to in those pictures in which, instead of making romantic adaptations of ruysdael and everdingen, he resembled them by rendering the weirdness and eeriness and the rough and wild features of norwegian scenery: red-brown heaths and brownish green turf-moors, stunted oaks and dark pine forests, erratic blocks sown without design amid the roots of trees, branches snapped by the storm and hanging as they were broken, and trunks felled by the tempest and lying where they fell. in certain pictures in the bergen and copenhagen galleries he pointed out the way to new aims. the tendency to gloom and seriousness which reigns in those dutch romanticists has here yielded to what is simple and familiar, to the homely joy of the people of the north in the crisp, bright day and the wayward sunbeams. he loves the glimmer of light upon the birch leaves and the peacefully rippling sea. like adrian van der neer, he studied with delight the wintry sky, the snow-clad plains, and the night and the moonshine. he began to feel even the charm of spring. poor peasant cots are brightly and pleasantly perched upon moist, green hills, as though he had quite forgotten what his age demanded in "artistic composition." or the summer day spreads opulent and real between the cliffs, and the warm air vibrates over the fields. peasants and cattle, glimmering birches and village spires, stand vigorously forth in the landscape; even the execution is so simple that with all his richness of detail he succeeds in attaining a great effect. it is felt that this painting has developed amid a virgin nature, surrounded by the poetry of the fjord, the lofty cliff, and the torrent. in the same measure the dutch had not the feeling for quietude and habitable, humble, and familiar places. and perhaps it was not by chance that this reformer came from the most virgin country of europe, from a country that had had no share in any great artistic epoch of the past. [illustration: morgenstern. a peasant cottage (etching).] _caspar david friedrich_, that singular painter who carried on his artistic work in greifswald, and later in dresden also, is, if anything, almost more original and startling. like dahl, he studied under eckersberg, at the academy in copenhagen, and it was this elder artist who opened his eyes to nature, in which he saw moods and humours as romantic as they were modern. his work was not seen in a right light until shown in the german centenary exhibition of , when his just place was first, in the history of art, assigned to him. for munich a similar importance was won by the hamburg painter _christian morgenstern_, who, like all artists of this group, imitated the dutch in the tone of his colour, though as a draughtsman he remained a fresh and healthy son of nature. even what he accomplished in all naïveté between and , through direct study of hamburg landscape, is something unique in the german production of that age. his sketches and etchings of these years assure him a high place amongst the earliest german "mood" painters, and show that as a landscapist he had at that time made the furthest advance towards simplicity and intimacy of feeling. a journey to norway, undertaken in , and a sojourn at the copenhagen academy, where he worked up his norwegian studies, only extended his ability without altering his principles; and when he came to munich in the beginning of the thirties his new and personal intuition of nature made a revolution in artistic circles. the landscape painters learnt from him that everdingen, ruysdael, and rembrandt were contemporaries of poussin, that foliage need not be an exercise of style, and is able properly to indicate the nature of the tree. he discovered the beauty of the bavarian plateau for the munich school. even the first picture that he brought with him from hamburg displayed a wide plain shadowed by clouds--a part of the lüneberg heath--and to this type of subject he remained faithful even in later days. himself a child of the plains, he sought for kindred motives in bavaria, and found them in rich store on the shore of the isar, in the quarries near polling, at peissenberg, and in the mossy region near dachau. his pictures have not the power of commanding the attention of an indifferent spectator, but when they have been once looked into they are seen to be poetic, quiet, harmless, sunny, and thoughtful. he delighted in whatever was ordinary and unobtrusive, the gentle nature of the wood, the surroundings of the village, everything homely and familiar. if rottmann revelled in the forms of southern nature, morgenstern abided by his native germany; where lessing only listened to the rage of the hurricane, morgenstern hearkened to the quiet whisper of the breeze. the shadows of the clouds and the radiance of the sun lie over the dark heath, the moonlight streams dreamily over the quiet streets of the village, the waves break, at one moment rushing noisily and at another gently caressing the shore. later, when he turned to the representation of the mountains, he lost the intimacy of feeling which was in the beginning peculiar to him. in mountain pictures, often as he attempted ravines, waterfalls, and snowy alpine summits, he never succeeded in doing anything eminently good. these pictures have something petty and dismembered, and not the great, simple stroke of his plains and skies. what morgenstern was for munich, _ludwig gurlitt_ was for düsseldorf--the most eminent of the great northern colony which migrated thither in the thirties. his name is not to be found in manuals, and the pictures of his later period which represent him in public galleries seldom give a full idea of his importance. after a journey to greece in he took to a brown tone, in which much is conventional. moreover, his retired life--he resided from to in a saxon village, and from to in siebleben, near gotha--contributed much to his being forgotten by the world. but the history of art which seeks operative forces must do him honour as the first healthy, realistic landscape painter of germany, and--still more--as one who opened the eyes of a number of younger painters who have since come to fame. gurlitt was a native of holstein, and, like morgenstern, received his first instruction in hamburg, where at that time bendixen, vollmer, the lehmanns, and the genslers formed an original group of artists. after this, as in the case of morgenstern also, there followed a longer sojourn in norway and copenhagen. in düsseldorf, where he then went, a jutland heath study made some sensation on his arrival. it was the first landscape seen in düsseldorf which had not been composed, and schadow is said to have come to gurlitt's studio, accompanied by his pupils, to behold the marvel. in he migrated to munich, where morgenstern had worked before him, and here he produced a whole series of works, which reveals an artist exceedingly independent in sentiment, and one who even preserves his individuality in the presence of the dutch. his pictures were grey in tone, and not yellowish, like those of the dutch; moreover, they were less composed and less "intelligently" dressed out with accessories than the pictures of dahl; they were glances into nature resulting from earnest, realistic striving. even when he began to paint italian pictures, as he did after , he preserved a straightforward simplicity which was not understood by criticism in that age, though it makes the more sympathetic appeal at the present day. the strength of his realism lay, as was the case with all artists of those years, rather in drawing; but at times he reaches, even in painting, a remarkable clearness and delicacy, which at one time verges on the silver tone of canaletto, at another on the fine grey of constable. [illustration: gurlitt. on the sabine mountains.] realism begins in german art with the entry of these northern painters into düsseldorf and munich. they were less affected by æsthetic prejudices, and fresher and healthier than the germans. gurlitt was specially their intellectual leader, the soul, the driving force of the great movement which now followed. roused by him, _andreas achenbach_ emancipated himself from the landscape of style, and, in the years from to , painted norwegian pictures even before he knew norway. roused by gurlitt, achenbach set forth upon the pilgrimage thither, the journey which was a voyage of discovery for german landscape painting. until achenbach's death in he yearly exhibited works which were no longer in touch with the surrounding efforts of younger men, and there was an inclination to make little of his importance as a pioneer. what is wanting in his pictures is artistic zeal; what he seems to have too much of is routine. andreas achenbach is, as his portrait shows, a man of great acuteness. from his clear, light blue eyes he looks sharply and sagaciously into the world around; his short, thick-set figure, proud and firm of carriage, in spite of years, bears witness to his tough energy. his forehead, like menzel's, is rather that of an architect than of a poet; and his pictures correspond to his outward appearance. each one of his earlier good pictures was a battle fought and won. realism incarnate, a man from whom all visionary enthusiasm lay at a world-wide distance, he conquered nature by masculine firmness and unexampled perseverance. he appears as a _maître-peintre_, a man of cool, exact talent with a clear and sober vision. the chief characteristic of his organism was his eminent capacity for appreciating the artistic methods of other artists, and adapting what was essential in them to his own manner of production. one breathes more freely before the works of the masters of barbizon, and merely sees good pictures in those of achenbach. the former are captivating by their intimate penetration, where he is striking by his bravura of execution. his landscapes have no chance inspiration, no geniality. everything is harmonised for the sake of pictorial effect. the structure and scaffolding are of monumental stability. yet fine as his observation undoubtedly is, he has never surprised the innermost working of nature, but merely turned her to account for the production of pictures. for the french artists colour is the pure expression of nature and of her inward humour, but for achenbach it is just the means for attaining an effectiveness similar to that of the dutch. penetrating everything thoroughly with those sparkling blue eyes of his, he learnt to render conscientiously and firmly the forms of the earth and its outward aspect, but the moods of its life appealing to the spirit like music were never disclosed to him. the paintings of the dutch attracted him to art, not the impulse to give token to his own peculiar temperament. he thinks more of producing pictures which may equal those of his forerunners in their merits than of rendering the impression of nature which he has himself received. his intelligence quickens at the study of the rules and theories set up by the dutch, and he seeks for spots in nature where he may exercise these principles, but remains chill at the sight of sky and water, trees and mountains. it is not mere love of nature that has guided his brush, but a refined calculation of pictorial effect; and as he never went beyond this endeavour after rounded expression, as it was understood by the dutch, though he certainly set german landscape free from a romantic subjection to style like schirmer's, he never led it to immediate personal observation of nature. it is not the fragrance of nature that is exhaled from his pictures, but the odour of oil and varnish; and as the means he made use of to attain his effects never alter, the result is frequently conventional and methodic. [illustration: achenbach. sea coast after a storm.] but this does not alter the fact that, when the development of german landscape painting is in question, the name of andreas achenbach will be always heard in connection with it. he united technical qualities of the higher order with the capacity of impressing the public, and therefore he completed the work that the danes had begun. he was the reformer who gave evidence that it was not alone by cliffs and baronial castles and murmuring oaks that sentiment was to be awakened; he hated everything unhealthy, mawkish, and vague, and by showing the claws of the lion of realism in the very heart of the romantic period he came to have the significance of a hero in german landscape painting. he forced demure lower german landscape to surrender to him its charms; he revealed the fascination of dutch canal scenes, with their quaint architecture and their characteristic human figures; he went to the stormy, raging north sea, and opposed the giant forces of boisterous, unfettered nature to the tame pictures of the school of schirmer. achenbach's earliest north sea pictures were exhibited at the very time when heine's north sea series made its appearance, and they soon ousted the wrecks of the french painter gudin, which, up to that time, had dominated the picture market. for the first time in the nineteenth century sea-pieces were so painted that the water really seemed a fluent, agitated element, the waves of which did not look as if they had been made of lead, and the froth and foam of cotton wool. the things which he was specially felicitous in painting were rhine-land villages with red-tiled roofs, dutch canals with yellow sandbanks and running waves breaking at the wooden buttresses of the harbour, norwegian scenes with stubborn cliffs and dark pines, wild torrents and roaring waterfalls. he did not paint them better than everdingen and ruysdael had done, but he painted them better than any of his contemporaries had it in their power to do. as gurlitt is connected with the present by achenbach, morgenstern is connected with it by _eduard schleich_. the munich picture rendering a mood took the place of rottmann's architectural pictures. instead of the fair forms of the earth's surface, artists began to study the play of sunlight on the plain and amid the flight of the clouds, and instead of the build of the landscape they turned to notice its atmospheric mood. through morgenstern schleich was specially directed to ruysdael and goyen. in ruysdael he was captivated by that profound seriousness and that sombre observation of nature which corresponded to something in his own humour; in goyen by the pictorial harmony of sunlight, air, water, and earth. schleich has visited france, belgium, hungary, and italy, yet it is only by exception that he has painted anything but what the most immediate vicinity of munich might offer. he chose the plainest spot in nature--a newly tilled field, a reedy pond, a stretch of brown moorland, a pair of cottages and trees; and under the guidance of goyen he observed the changes of the sky with great care--the retreat of thunderclouds, the sun shrouded by thin veils of haze, the tremulous moonlight, or the hovering of the morning and evening mists. the isar district and the mossy dachauer soil were his favourite places of sojourn. he had a special preference for rain and moonlight and the mood of autumn, in rendering which he toned brown and grey hues to fine dutch harmonies. his keynote was predominantly serious and elegiac, but he also loved scenes in which there was a restless and violent change of light. over a wide plateau the sunlight spreads its radiance, whilst from the side an army of dense thunderclouds approaches, threatening storm and casting dark shadows. over a monotonous plain, broken by solitary clumps of trees, the warm summer rain falls dripping down. trees and shrubs throw light shadows, and the plain glistens in the beams of the sun. or else there is a wide expanse of moor. darkling the clouds advance, the rushes bend before the wind, and narrow strips of moonlight glitter amid the slender reeds. by such works schleich became the head of the munich school of landscape without having ever directed the study of pupils. through him and through achenbach capacity for the fresh observation of the life of nature was given to german painters. [illustration: achenbach. fishing boats in the north sea.] undoubtedly amongst the younger group of artists there was a great difference in regard to choice of subject. the modern rendering of mood has only had its origin in germany; it could not finally develop itself there. just as figure painting, after making so vigorous a beginning with bürkel, turned to _genre_ painting in the hands of enhuber and knaus, until it returned to its old course in leibl, landscape also went through the apprentice period of interesting subject, until it once more recognised the poetry of simpleness. the course of civilisation itself led it into these lines. when morgenstern painted his first pictures the post-chaise still rattled from village to village, but now the whistle of the railway engine screams shrill as the first signal of a new age throughout europe. up to that time the possibility of travelling had been greatly circumscribed by the difficulties of traffic. but facilitated arrangements of traffic brought with them such a desire for travel as had never been before. in literature the revolution displayed itself by the rise of books of travels as a new branch of fiction. hackländer sent many volumes of touring sketches into the market. theodor mügge made norway, sweden, and denmark the scene of his tales. but america was the land where the sesame was to be found, for germany had been set upon the war-trail with cooper's indians, it had charles sealsfield to describe the grotesque mountain land of mexico, the magic of the prairie, and the landscapes of susquehannah and the mississippi, and read gerstäcker's, balduin möllhausen's, and otto ruppius' transatlantic sketches with unwearying excitement. the painters who found their greatest delight in seeing the world with the eyes of a tourist also became cosmopolitan. [illusration: calame. landscape.] in geneva _alexander calame_ brought germany to the knowledge of what is to be seen in switzerland. calame was, indeed, a dry, unpoetic landscapist. he began as a young tradesman by making little coloured views of switzerland which foreigners were glad to bring away with them as mementoes of their visits, just as they now do photographs. even his later pictures can only lay claim to the merit of such "mementoes of switzerland." his colour is insipid and monotonous, his atmosphere heavy, his technique laborious. by painting he understood the illumination of drawings, and his drawing was that of an engraver. an excellent drawing-master, he possessed an unusual mastery of perspective. on the other hand, all warmth and inward life are wanting in his works. sentiment has been replaced by correct manipulation, and in the deep blue mirror of his alpine lakes, as in the luminous red of his alpine summits, there is always to be seen the illuminator who has first drawn the contours with a neat pencil and pedantic correctness. his pictures are grandiose scenes of nature felt in a petty way--in science too it is often the smallest spirit that seeks the greatest heroes. "the ruins of pæstum," like "the thunderstorm on the handeck" and "the range of monte-rosa at sunrise," merely attain an external, scenical effect which is not improved by crude and unnatural contrasts of light. and as, in later years, when orders accumulated, he fell a victim to an astounding fertility, many of his works give one the impression of a dexterous calligrapher incessantly repeating the same ornamental letters. "_un calame, deux calame, trois calame--que de calamités_," ran the phrase every year in the paris salon. [illustration: flamm. a summer day.] but if france remained cool he found the more numerous admirers in germany. when, in , he exhibited his first pictures in berlin, a view of the lake of geneva, his appearance was at once hailed with the warmest sympathy. the dexterity, the rounded form, the finish of his pictures, were exactly what gave pleasure, and the distinctness of his drawing made its impression. his lithograph studies of trees and his landscape copies attained the importance of canonical value, and for whole decades remained in use as a medium of instruction in drawing. amongst german painters _carl ludwig_, _otto von kameke_, and _count stanislaus kalkreuth_ were specially incited by calame to turn to the sublimity of alpine nature. desolate wastes of cliffs, still, clear blue lakes, wild, plunging torrents, and mountain summits covered with glaciers and glowing to rose colour in the reflection of the setting sun are the elements of their pictures as of those of the genevan master. after achenbach there came a whole series of artists from the north who began to depict the mountains of their native norway under the strong colour effects of the northern sun. the majestic formations of the fjords, the emerald green walls of rock, the cloven valleys, the terrible forest wildernesses, and the mountains of norway dazzlingly illuminated and reflecting themselves like glittering jewels in the quiet waters of sapphire blue lakes, were interesting enough to afford nourishment for more than one landscapist. _knud baade_, who worked from in munich, after a lengthy sojourn at the copenhagen academy and with dahl in dresden, delighted in moonlight scenes, gloomy fir forests, and midnight suns. the sea rises in waves mountain high, and tosses mighty vessels like withered leaves or dashes foaming against the cliffs of the shore. fantastic clouds chase each other across the sky, and the wan moonlight rocks unsteadily upon the waves. more seldom he paints the sea lit up afar by the moon, or the fjord with its meadows and silver birches; and in such plain pictures he makes a far more attractive effect than in those which are wild and ambitious, for his diffident, petty execution is, as a rule, but little suited to restless and, as it were, dramatic scenes of nature. having come to düsseldorf in , _hans gude_ became the calame of the north. achenbach taught him to approach the phenomena of nature boldly and realistically, and not to be afraid of a rich and soft scale of colour. schirmer, the representative of italian still landscape, guided him to the acquisition of a certain large harmony and sense for style in the structure of his pictures, to beauty of line and effective disposition of great masses of light and shade. this quiet, sure-footed, and robust realism, which had, at the same time, a gift of style, became the chief characteristic of his northern landscapes, in which, however, the mutable and fleeting moods of nature were all the more neglected. here are norwegian mountain landscapes with lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, then pictures of the shore under the most varied phases of light, or grand cliff scenery with a sombre sky and a sea in commotion. hans gude, living from in carlsruhe, and from in berlin, is one of those painters whom one esteems, but for whom it is not possible to feel great enthusiasm--one of those conscientious workers who from their very solidity run the risk of becoming tedious. his landscapes are good gallery pictures, soberly and prosaically correct, and never irritating, though at the same time they seldom kindle any warm feeling. like gude, _niels björnson möller_ devoted himself to pictures of the shore and the sea. undisturbed by men in his sequestered retreat, _august capellen_ gave way to the melancholy charms of the norwegian forest. he represented the tremulous clarity of the air above the cliffs, old, shattered tree-trunks and green water plants, sleepy ponds, and far prospects bounded by blue mountains; but he would have made an effect of greater originality had he thought less of schirmer's noble line and compositions arranged in the grand style. _morten-müller_ became the specialist of the fir forest. his native woods where the valleys stretch towards the high mountain region offered him motives, which he worked up in large and excessively scenical pictures. his strong point was the contrast between sunlight playing on the mountain tops and mysterious darkness reigning in the forest depths, and his pictures have many admirers on account of "their elegiac melancholy, their minor key of touching sadness." the norwegian spring changing the earth into one carpet of moorland, broken by marshes, found its delineator in _erik bodom_. _ludwig munthe_ became the painter of wintry landscape in thaw, when the snow is riddled with holes and a dirty brown crust of earth peeps from the dazzling mantle. a desolate field, a pair of crippled trees stretching their naked branches to the dark-grey sky, a swarm of crows and a drenched road marked with the tracks of wheels, a tawny yellow patch of light gleaming through the cloud-bank and reflected in the wayside puddles, such are the elements out of which one of munthe's landscapes is composed. through _eilert adelsten normann_ representations of the fjords gained currency in the picture market. his specialty was the delineation of the steep and beetling rocky fastnesses of lofodden with their various reflections of light and colour, the midnight sun glaring over the deep clear sea, the contrast between the blue-black masses of the mountains and the gleaming fields of snow. [illustration: baade. moonlight night on the coast.] others, such as _ludwig willroider_, _louis douzette_, and _hermann eschke_, set themselves to observe the german heath and the german forest from similar points of view; the one painted great masses of mountain and giant trees, the other the setting sun, and the third the sea. _oswald achenbach_, _albert flamm_, and _ascan lutteroth_ set out once more on the pilgrimage to the south, where, in contrast to their predecessors, they studied no longer the classic lines of nature in italy, but the splendour of varied effects of colour in the neighbourhood of vesuvius and the bay of naples. the most enterprising turned their backs on europe altogether, and began to paint the primæval forests of south america, to which alexander humboldt had drawn attention, the azure and scarlet wonders of the tropics, and the gleam and sparkle of the icy world at the ultimate limits of the polar regions. _ferdinand bellermann_ was honoured as a new columbus when in he returned home with his sketches, botanically accurate as they were, of the marvels of the virgin forest. _eduard hildebrandt_, who in had already gone through the canary islands, italy, sicily, north africa, egypt, nubia, sahara, and the northern sea of ice, at the mandate of frederich wilhelm iv in undertook a voyage round the world "to learn from personal view the phenomena that the sea, the air, and the solid earth bring forth beneath the most various skies." _eugen bracht_ traversed egypt, syria, and palestine, and returned with a multitude of studies from the sombre and majestic landscape of the desert, and from that world of ruins and mountains in the east, and developed them at home into as many pictures. a modicum of praise is due to all these masters for having continually widened the circuit of subject-matter, and gradually disclosed the whole world; and if their works cannot be reckoned as the products of a delicate landscape painting, that is a result of the same taste which prescribed anecdotic and narrative subjects to the _genre_ picture of those years. the landscape painters conquered the earth, but, above all, those parts of it which were geographically remarkable. this they did in the interest of the public. they went with a baedeker in their pocket into every quarter of the globe, brought with them all the carmine necessary for sunsets, and set up their easels at every place marked with an asterisk in the guidebook. and in these fair regions they noted everything that was to be seen with the said baedeker's assistance. through satisfying the interest of the tourist by a rendering, faithful to a hair's breadth, of topographically instructive points, they could best reckon on the sale of their productions. at the same time, their pictures betray that, during this generation, historical painting was throned on a summit whence it could dictate the æsthetic catechism. the historical picture represented a humanity that carried about with it the consciousness of its outward presence, draped itself in front of the glass, and made an artificial study of every gesture and every expression of emotion. _genre_ painting followed, and rendered the true spirit of life, illustrating it histrionically, but without surprising it in its unconstrained working. and so trees, mountains, and clouds also were forced to lay aside the innocence of unconscious being and wrap themselves in the cloak of affectation. simple reality in its quiet, delicate beauty, the homely "mood" of nature, touching the forms of landscape with the play of light and air, had nothing to tell an age overstrained by the heroics of history and the grimaces of _genre_ painting. a more powerful stimulus was necessary. so the landscapists also were forced to seek nature where she was histrionic and came forth in blustering magnificence; they were forced to send off brilliant pyrotechnics to fire out sun, moon, and stars in order to be heard, or, more literally, seen. instruction or theatrical effect--the aim of historical painting--had also to be that of the landscape painter. and as railroads are cosmopolitan arrangements, he was in a position to satisfy both demands with promptitude. as historical painters in the chase of striking subjects directed their gaze to the farthest historical horizon, and the _genre_ painters sought to take their public captive principally through what was alien and strange, oriental and italian, the landscape painters, too, found their highest aim in the widest possible expansion of the geographical horizon. "have these good people not been born anywhere in particular?" asked courbet, when he contemplated the german landscapes in the munich exhibition of . what would first strike the inhabitant of a northern country in foreign lands was made the theme of the majority of the pictures. but as the historical painting, in illustrating all the great dramatic scenes from the trojan war to the french revolution, yielded at one time to a pædagogical doctrinaire tendency and at another to theatrical impassionedness, so landscape painting on its cosmopolitan excursions became partly a dry synopsis of famous regions, only justifiable as a memento of travel, partly a tricked-out piece of effect which, like everything obtrusive, soon lost its charm. pictures of the first description which chiefly borrowed their motives from alpine nature, so imposing in its impressiveness of form--grand masses of rock, glaciers, snow-fields, and abrupt precipices--only needed to have the fidelity of a portrait. where that was given, the public, guided by the instinct for what is majestic and beautiful in nature, stood before them quite content, while alpine travellers instructed the laity that the deep blue snow of the picture was no exaggeration, but a phenomenon of the mountain world which had been correctly reproduced. in all these cases there can be no possible doubt about geographical position, but there is seldom any need to make inquiries after the artist. the interest which they excite is purely of a topographical order; otherwise they bear the stamp of ordinary prose, of the aridity and unattractiveness which always creeps in as a consequence of pure objectivity. works of the second description, which depict exotic regions, striking by the strangeness of various phenomena of light and the splendour and glow of colour, are generally irritating by their professional effort to display "mood." the old masters revealed "mood" without intending to do so, because they approached nature piously and with a wealth of feeling. the new masters obtain a purely external effect, because they strain after a "mood" in their painting without feeling it; and though art does not exclude the choice of exotic subjects, it is not healthy when a tendency of this sort becomes universal. really superior art will, from principle, never seek the charm of what is strange and distant, since it possesses the magical gift of bestowing the deepest interest on what lies nearest to it. in addition to this, such effects are as hard to seize as the moment of most intense excitement in the historical picture. as an historical painter delacroix could render it, and turner as a landscape painter, but geniuses like delacroix and turner are not born every day. as these phenomena were painted at the time in germany, the right "mood" was not excited by them, but merely a frigid curiosity. almost all landscapes of these years create an effect merely through their subject; they are entertaining, astonishing, instructive, but the poetry of nature has not yet been aroused. it could only reveal itself when the preponderance of interest in mere subject was no longer allowed. as the figure painters at last disdained through narrative and "points" to win the applause of those who had no sensitiveness for art, so the landscape painters were obliged to cease from giving geographical instruction by the representation of nature as beloved by tourists, and to give up forcing a "mood" in their pictures by a subterfuge. the necessary degree of artistic absorption could only go hand in hand with a revolt against purely objective interest of motive, and with a strenuous effort at the representation of familiar nature in the intimate charm of its moods of light and atmosphere. it was necessary for refinement of taste to follow on the expression of subject-matter; and this impulse had to bring artists back to the path struck by dahl, morgenstern, and gurlitt. to unite the simple, moving, and tender observation of those older artists with richer and more complex methods of expression was the task given to the next generation in france, where _paysage intime_, the most refined and delicate issue of the century, grew to maturity in the very years when german landscape painting roamed through the world with the joy of an explorer. chapter xxiv the beginnings of "paysage intime" how it was that the secrets of _paysage intime_ were reserved for our own century--and this assuredly by no mere accident--can only be delineated in true colours when some one writes a special history of landscape painting, a book which at the present time would be the most seasonable in the literature of art. wereschagin once declared that in the province of landscape the works of the old masters seem like the exercises of pupils in comparison with the performances of modern art; and certain it is that the nineteenth century, if it is inferior to previous ages in everything else, may, at any rate, offer them an equivalent in landscape. it was only city life that could produce this passionately heightened love of nature. it was only in the century of close rooms and over-population, neurosis and holiday colonies, that landscape painting could attain to this fulness, purity, and sanctity. it was only our age of hurry and work that made possible a relation between nature and the human soul, which really has something of what the earth spirit vouchsafed to faust: "to gaze into her heart as into the bosom of a friend." in france also, the tendency which since the eighteenth century had made itself felt in waves rising ever higher, had been for a short time abruptly interrupted by classicism. of the pre-revolutionary landscapists _hubert robert_ was the only one who survived into the new era. his details of nature and his _rococo_ savour were pardoned to him for the sake of his classic ruins. at first there was not one of the newer artists who was impelled to enter this province. a generation which had become ascetic, and which dreamed only of rude, manly virtue, expressed through the plastic and purified forms of the human body, had lost all sense for the charms of landscape. and when the first landscapes appeared once more, after several years, they were, as in germany, solemn stage-tragedy scenes, abstract "lofty" regions such as poussin ostensibly painted. only in poussin a great feeling for nature held together the conventional composition, in spite of all his straining after style; whereas nothing but frigid rhetoric and sterile formalism reigns in the works of these newer painters, works which were created at second-hand. the type of the beautiful which had been borrowed from the antique was worked into garden and forest with a laboured effort at style, as it had been worked into the human form and the flow of drapery. a _prix de rome_ was founded for historical landscapes. _henri valenciennes_ was the lenôtre of this classicism, the admired teacher of several generations. the beginner in landscape painting modelled himself upon valenciennes as the figure painter upon guérin. his _traité élémentaire de perspective pratique_, in which he formulated the principles of landscape, contains his personal views as well as the æsthetics of the age. although, as he premises, he "is convinced that there is in reality only one kind of painting, historical painting, it is true that an able historical painter ought not entirely to neglect landscape." rembrandt, of course, and the old dutch painters were without any sort of ideal, and only worked for people without soul or intelligence. how far does a landscape with cows and sheep stand below one with the funeral of phocion, or a rainy day by ruysdael below a picture of the deluge by poussin! hardly does claude lorrain find grace in the eyes of valenciennes. "he has painted with a pretty fidelity to nature the morning and evening light. but just for that very reason his pictures make no appeal to the intelligence. he has no tree where a dryad could dwell, no spring in which nymphs could splash. gods, demigods, nymphs, satyrs, even heroes are too sublime for these regions; shepherds could dwell there at best." claude, indeed, loved italy, but knew the old writers all too little, and they are the groundwork for landscape painters. as david said to his pupil gros, "look through your plutarch," valenciennes advised his own pupils to study theocritus, virgil, and ovid: only from these authors might be learnt what were the regions suitable for gods and heroes. "vos exemplaria græca nocturna versate manu, versate diurna." if, for example, the landscapist would paint morning, let him portray the moment when aurora rises laughing from the arms of her aged spouse, when the hours are yoking four fiery steeds to the car of the sun-god, or ulysses kneels imploring before nausicaa. for noon the myth of icarus or of phaëton might be turned to account. evening may be represented by painting phoebus hastening his course as he nears the horizon in flaming desire to cast himself into the arms of thetis. having once got his themes from the old poets, the landscape painter must know the laws of perspective to execute his picture; he must be familiar with poussin's rules of composition, and occasionally he ought even to study nature. then he needs a weeping willow for an elegy, a rock for the death of phaëton, and an oak for the dance of the nymphs. to find such motives he should make journeys to the famed old lands of civilisation; best of all on the road which art itself has traversed--first to asia minor, then to greece, and then to italy. [illustration: _baschet._ hubert robert. monuments and ruins.] these æsthetics produced _victor bertin_ and _xavier bidault_, admired by their contemporaries for "richness of composition and a splendid selection of sites." their methodical commonplaces, their waves and valleys and temples, bear the same relation to nature as the talking machine of raimundus lullus does to philosophy. the scholastic landscape painter triumphed; a school it was which nourished itself on empty formulas, and so died of anæmia. bidault, who in his youth made very good studies, is, with his stippled leaves and polished stems, his grey skies looking sometimes like lead and sometimes like water, the peculiar essence of a tiresome classicism; and he is the same bidault who, as president of the hanging committee, for years rejected the landscapes of théodore rousseau from the salon. it is only the figure of _michallon_, who died young, that still survives from this group. he too belongs to the school of valenciennes, through his frigid, meagre, and pedantically correct style; but he is distinguished from the rest, for he endeavoured to acquire a certain truth to nature in the drawing of plants, and was accounted a bold innovator at the time. he did not paint "the plant in itself," but burs, thistles, dandelions, everything after its kind, and through this botanical exactness he acquired in the beginning of the century a fame which it is now hard to understand. in the persons of _jules cogniet_ and _watelet_ the gates of the school were rather more widely opened to admit reality. having long populated their classic valleys with bloodless, dancing nymphs and figurants of divine race, they abandoned historical for picturesque landscape, and "dared" to represent scenes from the environs of paris, castles and windmills. but as they clung even here to the classical principles of composition, it is only nature brushed and combed, trimmed and coerced by rules, that is reflected in their painting. even in , when delacroix exhibited his "dante's bark," the ineffable watelet shone in his full splendour. amongst his pictures there was a view of bar-sur-seine, which the catalogue appropriately designated not simply as a _vue_, but as a _vue ajustée_. till his last breath watelet was convinced that nature did not understand her own business, and was always in need of a painter to revise her errors and correct them. beside this group who adapted french localities for classical landscapes there arose in the meantime another group, and they proceeded in the opposite direction. their highest aim was to go on pilgrimage to sacred italy, the classic land, which, with their literary training and their one-sided æsthetics, they invariably thought more beautiful and more worthy of veneration than any other. but they tried to break with valenciennes' arbitrary rules of composition, and to seize the great lines of italian landscape with fidelity to fact. in going back from valenciennes to claude they endeavoured to pour new life into a style of landscape painting which was its own justification, compromised as it had been by the classic school. they made a very heretical appearance in the eyes of the strictly orthodox pupils of valenciennes. they were called the gothic school, which was as much as to say romanticists, and the names of _théodore aligny_ and _edouard bertin_ were for years mentioned with that of corot in critiques. they brought home very pretty drawings from greece, italy, egypt, palestine, and syria, and bertin did this especially. aligny is even not without importance as a painter. he aimed at width of horizon and simplicity of line more zealously than the traditional school had done. he is, indeed, a man of sombre, austere, and earnest talent, and the solemn rhythm of his pictures would have more effect if the colour were not so dry, and if a fixed and monotonous light were not uniformly shed over everything in place of a vibrating atmosphere. _alexandre desgoffe_, _paul flandrin_, _benouville_, _bellel_, and others drew from the same sources with similar conviction and varying talent. paul flandrin, in particular, was in his youth a good painter in the manner of . his composition is noble and his execution certain, recalling poussin. ingres, his master, said of him, "if i were not ingres i would be flandrin." it was only later that the singular charm of claude lorrain and the roman majesty of poussin were transformed under the brush of flandrin into arid still-life, into landscapes of pasteboard and wadding. but not from this quarter could the health of a school which had become anæmic be in any way restored. french landscape had to draw a new power of vitality from the french soil itself. it was saved when its eyes were opened to the charms of home, and this revelation was brought about by romanticism. in the salon notices, from onwards, the complaints of critics are repeated with increasing violence--complaints that, instead of fair regions, noble character, and monumental lines, nothing but "malarious lakes, desolate wastes, and terrible cliffs" should be painted, which, in the language of classicism, means that french landscape painting had taken firm hold of the soil in france. the day when racine was declared by the young romanticists to be a maker of fine phrases put an end to the whole school of david and to classical landscape at the same time. it fell into oblivion, as, sooner or later, every artistic movement which does not rest on the nature and personality of the artist inevitably must. the young revolutionaries no longer believed that an alliance with mythological subjects and "grand composition" could compensate for the lack of air and light. they were tired of pompous, empty, and distant scenery. they only thought of nature, and that amid which they lived seemed the less to forego its charms the more italy came under suspicion as the home of all these ugly, unpleasant, and academical pictures. that was the birthday of french landscape. at the very time when delacroix renewed the _répertoire_ of grand painting, enriching art with a world of feeling which was not merely edited, a parallel movement began in landscape. "dante's bark" was painted in , "the massacre of chios" in . almost at the same hour a tornado swept through the branches of the old french oaks, and bent the rustling corn; the sky was covered with clouds, and the waters, which had been hard-bound for so long, sped purling once more along their wonted course. the little paper temples, built on classic heights, toppled down, and there rose lowly rustic cottages, from the chimneys of which the smoke mounted wavering to the sky. nature awoke from her wintry sleep, and the spring of modern landscape painting broke with its sadness and its smiles. [illustration: _l'art._ victor hugo. ruins of a mediÆval castle on the rhine.] this is where the development of french art diverges from that of german. after it had stood under the influence of poussin, the german long continued to have a suspicious preference for scenery that was devoid of soul, for beautiful views, as the phrase is, and it penetrated much later into the spirit of familiar nature. but as early as the twenties this spirit had revealed itself to the french. it was only in the province of poetry that they went through the period of enthusiasm for exotic nature--and even there not to the same extent as germany. only in chateaubriand's _atala_ are there to be found pompously pictorial descriptions of strange landscapes which have been in no degree inwardly felt. chiefly it was the virgin forests of north america that afforded material for splendid pictures, which he describes in grandiloquent and soaring prose. a nature which is impressive and splendid serves as the scenery of these dramas of human life. but with lamartine the reaction was accomplished. he is the first amongst the poets of france who conceived landscape with an inward emotion, and brought it into harmony with his moods of soul. his poetry was made fervent and glorified by love for his home, for his own province, for south burgundy. even in the region of art a poet was the first initiator. [illustration: _baschet._ michel. a windmill.] [illustration: _baschet._ de la berge. landscape.] _victor hugo_, the father of romanticism in literature, cannot be passed over in the history of landscape painting. since , when that remarkable exhibition of painter-poets was opened in paris--an exhibition in which théophile gautier, prosper merimée, the two de goncourts, and others were represented by more or less important works--the world learnt what a gifted draughtsman, what a powerful dramatist in landscape, was this great romanticist. even in the reminiscences of nature--spirited and suggestive of colour as they are--which he drew with a rapid hand in the margin of his manuscripts, the fiery glow of romanticism breaks out. the things of which he speaks in the text appear in black shadows and ghostly light. old castles stand surrounded by clouds of smoke or the blinding glare of fire, moonrise makes phantom silhouettes of the trees, waves lashed by the storm dash together as they spout over vessels; and there are gloomy seas and dark unearthly shores, fairy palaces, proud citadels, and cathedrals of fabled story. whenever one of his finished drawings is bequeathed to the louvre, hugo is certain to receive a place in the history of art as one of the champions of romanticism. the movement was so universal amongst the painters that it is difficult at the present time to perceive the special part that each individual played in the great drama. this is especially true of _georges michel_, a genius long misunderstood, a painter first made known in wider circles by the world exhibition in , and known to the narrower circle of art lovers only since his death in . at that time a dealer had bought at an auction the works left behind by a half-famished painter--pictures with no signature, and only to be identified because they collectively treated motives from the surroundings of paris. a large, wide horizon, a hill, a windmill, a cloudy sky were his subjects, and all pointed to an artist schooled by the dutch. curiosity was on the alert, inquiry was made, and it was found that the painter was named georges michel, and had been born in ; that at twelve years of age he had shirked school to go drawing, had run away with a laundress at fifteen, was already the father of five children when he was twenty, had married again at sixty-five, and had worked hard to his eightieth year. old men remembered that they had seen early works of his in the salon. it was said that michel had produced a great deal immediately after the revolution, but exceedingly tedious pictures, which differed in no respect from those of the other classicists; for instance, from demarne and swebach, garnished with figures. it was only after that he disappeared from the salon; not, as has been now discovered, because he had no more pictures to exhibit, but because he was rejected as a revolutionary. during his later years michel had been most variously employed: for one thing, he had been a restorer of pictures. [illustration: _baschet._ cabat. le jardin beaujon.] in this calling many dutch pictures had passed through his hands, and they suggested to him the unseasonable idea of looking more closely into nature in the neighbourhood than he had done in his youth--nature not as she was in italy, but in the environs of the city. while valenciennes and his pupils made so many objections to painting what lay under their eyes, georges michel remained in the country, and was the first to light on the idea of placing himself in the midst of nature, and not above her; no longer to arrange and adapt, but to approach her by painting her with directness. if any one spoke of travelling to italy, he answered: "the man who cannot find enough to paint during his whole life in a circuit of four miles is in reality no artist. did the dutch ever run from one place to another? and yet they are good painters, and not merely that, but the most powerful, bold, and ideal artists." every day he made a study in the precincts of paris, without any idea that he would count in these times among the forerunners of modern art. he shares the glory of having discovered montmartre with alphonse karr, gérard de nerval, and monselet. after his death such studies were found in the shops of all the second-hand dealers of the northern boulevard; they were invariably without a frame, as they had never seemed worth framing, and when they were very dear they were to be had for forty francs. connoisseurs appreciated his wide horizons, stormy skies, and ably sketched sea-shores. for, in spite of his poverty, michel had now and then deserted montmartre and found means to visit normandy. painfully precise in the beginning, while he worked with swebach and demarne, he had gradually become large and bold, and employed all means in giving expression to what he felt. he was a dreamer, who brought into his studies a unison of lights, and, now and then, beams of sun which would have delighted albert cuyp. a genuine offspring of the old dutch masters--of the grand and broad masters, not of those who worked with a fine brush--already he was aiming at _l'expression par l'ensemble_, and since the paris universal exhibition he has been fittingly honoured as the forerunner of théodore rousseau. his pictures, as it seems, were early received in various studios, and there they had considerable effect in setting artists thinking. but as he ceased to date his pictures after it is, nevertheless, difficult to be more precise in determining the private influence which this ruysdael of montmartre exerted on men of the younger generation. [illustration: _l'art._ paul huet.] one after the other they began to declare the italian pilgrimage to be unnecessary. they buried themselves as hermits in the villages around the capital. the undulating strip of country, rich in wood and water, which borders on the heights of saint-cloud and ville d'avray, is the cradle of french landscape painting. in grasping nature they proceeded by the most various ways, whilst they drew everything scrupulously and exactly which an observing eye may discern, or wedded their own temperament with the moods of nature. [illustration: _baschet._ huet. the inundation at st. cloud.] that remarkable artist _charles de la berge_ seems like a forerunner of the english pre-raphaelite school. he declared the ideal of art to consist in painting everything according to nature, and overlooking nothing; in carrying drawing to the most minute point, and yet preserving the impression of unison and harmony in the picture--which is as easy to say as it is difficult to perform. his brief life was passed in this struggle. his pictures are miracles of patience: to see that it is only necessary to know the "sunset" of , in the louvre. there is something touching in the way this passionate worker had branches and the bark of trees brought to his room, even when he lay on his deathbed, to study the contortions of wood and the interweaving of fibres with all the zeal of a naturalist. the efforts of de la berge have something of the religious devotion with which jan van eyck or altdorfer gazed at nature. but he died too young to effect any result. he copied the smallest particulars of objects with the utmost care, and in the reproduction even of the smallest aimed at a mathematical precision, neutralising his qualities of colour, which were otherwise of serious value, by such hair-splitting detail. _camille roqueplan_, the many-sided pupil of gros, made his first appearance as a landscape painter with a sunset in . he opposed the genuine windmills of the old dutch masters to those everlasting windmills of watelet, with their leaden water and their meagre landscape. in his pictures a green plain, intersected by canals, stretches round; a fresh and luminous grey sky arches above. that undaunted traveller _camille flers_, who had been an actor and ballet dancer in brazil before his appearance as a painter, represented the rich pastures of normandy with truth, but was diffident in the presence of nature where she is grand. his pupil, _louis cabat_, was hailed with special enthusiasm by the young generation on account of his firm harmonious style. his pictures showed that he had been a zealous student of the great dutch artists, and that it was his pride to handle his brush in their manner, expressing as much as possible without injuring pictorial effect. he is on many sides in touch with charles de la berge. later he even had the courage to see italy with fresh eyes, and in a simple manner to record his impressions without regard for the rules and theories of the classicists. but the risk was too great. he became once more an admirer of imposing landscape, an adherent of poussin, and as such he is almost exclusively known to us of a younger generation. [illustration: _baschet._ j. m. w. turner.] _paul huet_ was altogether a romanticist. in de la berge there is the greatest objectivity possible, in huet there is impassioned expression. his heart told him that the hour was come for giving passion utterance; he wanted to render the energy of nature, the intensity of her life, with the whole might of vivid colouring. in his pictures there is something of byronic poetry; the conception is rich and powerful, the symphony of colour passionately dramatic. in every one of his landscapes there breathes the human soul with its unrest, its hopelessness, and its doubts. huet was the child of an epoch, which at one moment exulted to the skies and at another sorrowed to death in the most violent contrast; and he has proclaimed this temper of the age with all the freedom and power possible, where it is only earth and sky, clouds and trees that are the medium of expression. most of his works, like romanticism in general, have an earnest, passionate, and sombre character; nothing of the ceremonial pompousness peculiar to classical landscapes. he has a passion for boisterous storms and waters foaming over, clouds with the lightning flashing through them, and the struggle of humanity against the raging elements. in this effort to express as much as possible he often makes his pictures too theatrical in effect. in one of his principal works, the "view of rouen," painted in , the breadth of execution almost verges on emptiness and panoramic view. huet was in the habit of heaping many objects together in his landscapes. he delighted in expressive landscapes in the sense in which, at that time, people delighted in expressive heads. this one-sidedness hindered his success. when he appeared in the twenties his pictures were thought bizarre and melancholy. and later, when he achieved greater simplicity, he was treated by the critics merely with the respect that was paid to the old guard, for now a pleiad of much brighter stars beamed in the sky. [illustration: turner. a shipwreck.] [illustration: j. m. w. turner. the old tÉmÉraire.] but we must not forget that michel and huet showed the way. rousseau and his followers left them far behind, as columbus threw into oblivion all who had discovered america before him, or gutenberg all who had previously printed books. the step on which these initiators had stood was more or less that of andreas achenbach and blechen. they are good and able painters, but they still kept the flemish and dutch masters too much in their memory. it is easy to detect in them reminiscences of ruysdael and hobbema and the studies of gallery pictures grown dim with age. they still coloured objects brown, and made spring as mournful as winter, and morning as gloomy as evening; they had yet no sense that morning means the awakening of life, the youth of the sun, the springtide of the day. they still composed their pictures and finished and rounded them off for pictorial effect. the next necessary step was no longer to look at ruysdael and cuyp, but at nature--to lay more emphasis on sincerity of impression, and therefore the less upon pictorial finish and rounded expression--to paint nature, not in the style of galleries, but in its freshness and bloom. and the impulse to this last step, which brought french landscape painting to its highest perfection, was given by england. [illustration: _l'art._ turner. dido building carthage.] the most highly gifted work produced in this province between the years and is of english origin. at the time when landscape painting was in france and germany confined in a strait-waistcoat by classicism, the english went quietly forward in the path trodden by gainsborough in the eighteenth century. in these years england produced an artist who stands apart from all others as a peculiar and inimitable phenomenon in the history of landscape painting, and at the same time it produced a school of landscape which not only fertilised france, but founded generally the modern conception of colour. that phenomenon is _joseph mallord william turner_, the great pyrotechnist, one of the most individual and intellectual landscape painters of all time. what a singular personality! and how vexatious he is to all who merely care about correctness in art! such persons divide the life of turner into two halves, one in which he was reasonable and one in which he was a fool. they grant him a certain talent during the first fifteen years of his activity, but from the moment when he is complete master of his instrument, from the moment when the painter begins in glowing enthusiasm to embody his personal ideal, they would banish him from the kingdom of art, and lock him up in a madhouse. when in the forties the munich pinakothek was offered a picture by turner, glowing with colour, people, accustomed to the contours of cornelius, knew no better than to laugh at it superciliously. it is said that in his last days he sent a landscape to an exhibition. the committee, unable to discover which was the top or which the bottom, hung it upside-down. later, when turner came into the exhibition and the mistake was about to be rectified, he said: "no, let it alone; it really looks better as it is." one frequently reads that turner suffered from a sort of colour-blindness, and as late as liebreich wrote an article printed in _macmillan_, which gave a medical explanation of the alleged morbid affection of the great landscape painter's eyes. only thus could the german account for his pictures, which are impressionist, although they were painted about the middle of the century. the golden dreams of turner were held to be eccentricities of vision, since no one was capable of following this painter of momentary impressions in his majesty of sentiment, and the impressiveness and poetry of his method of expression. [illustration: _s. low & co._ turner. jumiÈges.] [illustration: _l'art._ turner. landscape with the sun rising in a mist.] [illustration: _s. low & co._ turner. venice.] in reality turner was the same from the beginning. he circled round the fire like a moth, and craved, like goethe, for more light; he wanted to achieve the impossible and paint the sun. to attain his object nothing was too difficult for him. he restrained himself for a long time; placed himself amongst the followers of the painter of light _par excellence_; studied, analysed, and copied claude lorrain; completely adopted his style, and painted pictures which threw claude into eclipse by their magnificence and luminous power of colour. the painting of "dido building carthage" is perhaps the most characteristic of this phase of his art. one feels that the masses of architecture are merely there for the sake of the painter; the tree in the foreground has only been planted in this particular way so that the background may recede into farther distance. the colour is splendid, though still heavy. by the union of the principles of classic drawing with an entirely modern feeling for atmosphere something chaotic and confused is frequently introduced into the compositions of these years. but at the hour when it was said to him, "you are the real claude lorrain," he answered, "now i am going to leave school and begin to be turner." henceforth he no longer needs claude's framework of trees to throw the light beaming into the corners of his pictures. at first he busied himself with the atmospheric phenomena of the land of mist. then when the everlasting grey became too splenetic for him he repaired to the relaxing, luxuriant sensuousness of southern seas, and sought the full embodiment of his dreams of light in the land of the sun. it is impossible in words to give a representation of the essence of turner; even copies merely excite false conceptions. "rockets shot up, shocks of cannon thundered, balls of light mounted, crackers meandered through the air and burst, wheels hissed, each one separately, then in pairs, then altogether, and even more turbulently one after the other and together." thus has goethe described a display of fireworks in _the elective affinities_, and this passage perhaps conveys most readily the impression of turner's pictures. to collect into a small space the greatest possible quantity of light, he makes the perspective wide and deep and the sky boundless, and uses the sea to reflect the brilliancy. he wanted to be able to render the liquid, shining depths of the sky without employing the earth as an object of comparison, and these studies which have merely the sky as their object are perhaps his most astonishing works. everywhere, to the border of the picture, there is light. and he has painted all the gradations of light, from the silvery morning twilight to the golden splendour of the evening red. volcanoes hiss and explode and vomit forth streams of lava, which set the trembling air aglow, and blind the eyes with flaring colours. the glowing ball of the sun rises behind the mist, and transforms the whole ether into fine golden vapour; and vessels sail through the luminous haze. in reality one cannot venture on more than a swift glance into blinding masses of light, but the impression remained in the painter's memory. he painted what he saw, and knew how to make his effect convincing. and at the same time his composition became ever freer and easier, the work of his brush ever more fragrant and unfettered, the colouring and total sentiment of the picture ever more imaginative and like those of a fairy-tale. his world is a land of sun, where the reality of things vanishes, and the light shed between the eye and the objects of vision is the only thing that lives. at one time he took to painting human energy struggling with the phenomena of nature, as in "storm at sea," "fire at sea," and "rain, steam, and speed"; at another he painted poetic revels of colour born altogether from the imagination, like the "sun of venice." he is the greatest creator in colour, the boldest poet amongst the landscape painters of all time! in him england's painting has put forth its greatest might, just as in byron and shelley, those two great powers, the english imagination unrolled its standard of war most proudly and brilliantly. there is only one turner, and ruskin is his prophet. [illusration: _l'art._ old crome. a view near norwich.] [illustration: _s. low & co._ john constable.] as a man, too, he was one of those original characters seldom met with nowadays. he was not the fastidious _gourmet_ that might have been expected from his pictures, but an awkward, prosaic, citizen-like being. he had a sturdy, thick-set figure, with broad shoulders and tough muscles, and was more like a captain in the merchant service than a disciple of apollo. he was sparing to the point of miserliness, unformed by any kind of culture, ignorant even of the laws of orthography, silent and inaccessible. like most of the great landscape painters of the century, he was city-bred. in a gloomy house standing back in a foggy little alley of old london, in the immediate vicinity of dingy, monotonous lodging-houses, he was born, the son of a barber, on rd april . his career was that of a model youth. at fifteen he exhibited in the royal academy; when he was eighteen, engravings were already being made after his drawings. at twenty he was known, and at twenty-seven he became a member of the academy. his first earnings he gained by the neat and exact preparation of little views of english castles and country places--drawings which, at the time, took the place of photographs, and for which he received half a crown apiece and his supper. thus he went over a great part of england, and upon one of his excursions he is said to have had a love-affair _à la_ lucy of lammermoor, and to have so taken it to heart that he resolved to remain a bachelor for the rest of his life. in he became professor of perspective at the academy, and delivered himself, it is said, of the most confused utterances on his subjects. his father had now to give up the barber's business and come to live with him, and he employed him in sawing, planing, and nailing together boards, which were painted yellow and used as frames for his pictures. the same miserly economy kept him from ever having a comfortable studio. he lived in a miserable lodging where he received nobody, had his meals at a restaurant of the most primitive order, carried his dinner wrapped up in paper when he went on excursions, and was exceedingly thankful if any one added to it a glass of wine. his diligence was fabulous. every morning he rose on the stroke of six, locked his door, and worked with the same dreadful regularity day after day. his end was as unpoetic as his life. after being several times a father without ever having had a wife, he passed his last years with an old housekeeper, who kept him strictly under the yoke. if he was away from the house for long together he pretended that he was travelling to venice for the sake of his work, until at last the honest housekeeper learnt, from a letter which he had put in his overcoat pocket and forgotten, that the object of all these journeys was not venice at all, but chelsea. there she found him in an attic which he had taken for another mistress, and where he was living under the name of booth. in this little garret, almost more miserable than the room in the back street where he was born, the painter of light ended his days; and, to connect an atom of poetry with so sad a death, ruskin adds that the window looked towards the sunset, and the dying eyes of the painter received the last rays of the sun which he had so often celebrated in glowing hymns. he left countless works behind him at his death, several thousands of pounds, and an immortal fame. this thought of glory after death occupied him from his youth. only thus is it possible to understand why he led the life of a poor student until his end, why he did things which bordered on trickery in the sale of his _liber studiorum_, and kept for himself all those works by which he could have made a fortune. he left them--taken altogether, three hundred and sixty-two oil-paintings and nineteen thousand drawings--to the nation, and £ , to the royal academy, and merely stipulated that the two best pictures should be hung in the national gallery between two claude lorrains. another thousand pounds was set aside for the erection of a monument in st. paul's. there, in that temple of fame, he lies buried near sir joshua reynolds, the great ancestor of english painting, and he remains a phenomenon without forerunners and without descendants. [illustration: constable. willy lott's house.] [illustration: constable. church porch, bergholt.] for it does not need to be said that turner, with his marked individuality, could have no influence on the further development of english painting. the dramatic fervour of romanticism was here expressed just as little as classicism. it was only the poets who fled into the wilderness of nature, and sang the splendour and the mysteries of the mountains, the lightning and the storm, the might of the elements. in painting there is no counterpart to scott's descriptions of the highlands or wordsworth's rhapsodies upon the english lakes, or to the tendency of landscape painting which was represented in germany by lessing and blechen. wordsworth is majestic and sublime, and english painting lovely and full of intimate emotion. it knows neither ancient alpine castles nor the sunsets of greece. turner, as a solitary exception, represented nature stately, terrible, stormy, glorious, mighty, grand, and sublime; all the others, like gainsborough, loved simplicity, modest grace, and virginal quietude. england has nothing romantic. at the very time when lessing painted his landscapes, ludwig tieck experienced a bitter disappointment when he trod the soil where shakespeare wrote the witch scenes in _macbeth_. a sombre, melancholy, primæval maze was what he had expected, and there lay before him a soft, luxuriant, and cultivated country. what distinguishes english landscape is a singular luxuriance, an almost unctuous wealth of vegetation. drive through the country on a bright day on the top of a coach, and look around you; in all directions as far as the eye can reach an endless green carpet is spread over gentle valleys and undulating hills; cereals, vegetables, clover, hops, and glorious meadows with high rich grasses stretch forth; here and there stand a group of mighty oaks flinging their shadows wide, and around are pastures hemmed in by hedges, where splendid cattle lie chewing the cud. the moist atmosphere surrounds the trees and plants like a shining vapour. there is nothing more charming in the world, and nothing more delicate than these tones of colour; one might stand for hours looking at the clouds of satin, the fine ærial bloom, and the soft transparent gauze which catches the sunbeams in its silver net, softens them, and sends them smiling and toying to the earth. on both sides of the carriage the fields extend, each more beautiful than the last, in constant succession, interwoven with broad patches of buttercups, daisies, and meadowsweet. a strange magic, a loveliness so exquisite that it is well-nigh painful, escapes from this inexhaustible vegetation. the drops sparkle on the leaves like pearls, the arched tree-tops murmur in the gentle breeze. luxuriantly they thrive in these airy glades, where they are ever rejuvenated and bedewed by the moist air of the sea. and the sky seems to have been made to enliven the colours of the land. at the tiniest sunbeam the earth smiles with a delicious charm, and the bells of flowers unfold in rich, liquid colour. the english look at nature as she is in their country, with the tender love of the man nurtured in cities, and yet with the cool observation of the man of business. the merchant, enveloped the whole day long in the smoke of the city, breathes the more freely of an evening when the steam-engine brings him out into green places. with a sharp practical glance he judges the waving grain, and speculates on the chances of harvest. and this spirit of attentive, familiar observation of nature, which is in no sense romantic, reigns also in the works of the english landscape painters. they did not think of becoming cosmopolitan like their german comrades, and of presenting remarkable points, the more exotic the better, for the instruction of the public. like gainsborough, they relied upon the intimate charm of places which they knew and loved. and as a centre norwich first took the place of suffolk, which gainsborough had glorified. [illustration: constable. dedham vale.] _john crome_, known as old crome, the founder of the powerful norwich school of landscape, is a healthy and forcible master. born poor, in a provincial town a hundred miles from london, in , and at first an errand boy to a doctor, whose medicines he delivered to the patients, and then an apprentice to a sign-painter, he lived completely cut off from contemporary england. norwich was his native town and his life-long home. he did not know the name of turner, nor anything of wilson, and perhaps never heard the name of gainsborough. thus his pictures are neither influenced by the contemporary nor by the preceding english art. whatever he became he owed to himself and to the dutch. early married, and blessed with a numerous family, he tried to gain his bread by drawing-lessons, given in the great country-houses in the neighbourhood, and in this way had the opportunity of seeing many dutch pictures. in later life he came to know paris at a time when all the treasures of the world were collected in the louvre, and this enthusiasm for the dutch found fresh nourishment. even on his deathbed he spoke of hobbema. "hobbema," he said, "my dear hobbema, how i have loved you!" hobbema is his ancestor, the art of holland his model. [illustration: _l'art._ constable. the romantic house.] his pictures were collectively "exact" views of places which he loved, and neither composed landscapes nor paintings of "beautiful regions." crome painted frankly everything which norfolk, his own county, had to offer him--weather-beaten oaks, old woods, fishers' huts, lonely pools, wastes of heath. the way he painted trees is extraordinary. each has its own physiognomy, and looks like a living thing, like some gloomy northern personality. oaks were his peculiar specialty, and in later years they only found a similarly great interpreter in théodore rousseau. at the same time his pictures of the simplest scenes have a remarkable largeness of conception, and a subtlety of colour recalling the old masters, and reached by no other painter in that age. an uncompromising realist, he drew his portraits of nature with almost pedantic pains, but preserved their relation of colour throughout. and as a delicate adept in colouring he finally harmonised everything in the manner of the dutch to a juicy brown tone, which gives his beautiful wood and field pictures a discreet and refined beauty, a beauty in keeping with the art of galleries. [illustration: _l'art._ constable. the cornfield.] crome took a long time before he made a way for himself. his whole life long he sold his work merely at moderate prices: for no picture did he ever receive more than fifty pounds. even his end was uneventful. he had begun as a manual worker, and he died in as a humble townsman whose only place of recreation was the tavern, and who passed his leisure in the society of sailors, shopkeepers, and artisans. yet the principles of his art survived him. in he had founded in norwich, far from all academies, a society of artists, who gave annual exhibitions and had a common studio, which each used at fixed hours. _cotman_, whose specialty was ash-trees, _the younger crome_, _stark_, and _vincent_, are the leading representatives of the vigorous school of norwich; and by them the name of this town became as well known as an art-centre in europe as delft and haarlem had been in former times. their relation to the dutch was similar to that of georges michel in france, or that of achenbach in germany. they painted what they saw, rounded it with a view to pictorial effect, and harmonised the whole in a delicate brown tone. they felt more attracted by the form of objects than by their colour; the latter was, in the manner of the dutch, merely an epidermis delicately toned down. the next step of the english painters was that they became the first to get the better of this dutch phase, and to found that peculiarly modern landscape painting which no longer sets out from the absolutely concrete reality of objects, but from the _milieu_, from the atmospheric effect; which values in a picture less what is ready-made and perfectly rounded in drawing than the freshly seized impression of nature. hardly twenty years have gone by since "open-air painting" was introduced into germany. at present, things are no longer painted as they are in themselves but as they appear in their atmospheric environment. artists care no longer for landscapes which float in a neutral brown sauce; they represent objects flooded with light and air. people no longer wish for brown trees and meadows, for the eye has perceived that trees and meadows are green. the world is no longer satisfied with the indeterminate light of the studio and the conventional tone of the picture gallery; it requires some indication of the hour of the day, since it is felt that the light of morning is different from the light of noon. and it is the english who made these discoveries, which have lent to modern landscape painting its most delicate and fragrant charm. the very mist of england, the damp and the heaviness of the atmosphere, necessarily forced english landscape painters, earlier than those of other nations, to the observation of the play of light and air. in a country where the sky is without cloud, in a pure, dry, and sparkling air, nothing is seen except lines. shadow is wanting, and without shadow light has no value. for that reason the old classical masters of italy were merely draughtsmen; they knew how to prize the value of sunshine no more than a millionaire the value of a penny. but the english understood the charm even of the most scanty ray of light which forces its way like a wedge through a wall of clouds. the entire appearance of nature, in their country, where a damp mist spreads its pearly grey veil over the horizon even upon calm and beautiful summer days, guided them to see the vehicle of some mood of landscape in the subtlest elements of light and air. the technique of water-colour painting which, at that very time, received such a powerful impetus, encouraged them to give expression to what they saw freshly and simply even in their oil-paintings, and to do so without regard for the scale of colour employed by the old masters. _john robert cozens_, "the greatest genius who ever painted a landscape," had been the first to occupy himself with water-colour painting as understood in the modern sense. _tom girtin_ had experimented with new methods. _henry edridge_ and _samuel prout_ had come forward with their picturesque ruins, _copley fielding_ and _samuel owen_ with sea-pieces, _luke clennel_ and _thomas heaphy_ with graceful portrayals of country life, _howitt_ and _robert hills_ with their animal pictures. from there existed a society of painters in water-colours, and this extensive pursuit of water-colour painting could not fail to have an influence upon oil-painting also. the technique of water-colour accustomed english taste to that brightness of tone which at first seemed so bizarre to the germans, habituated as they were to the prevalence of brown. instead of dark, brownish-green tones, the water-colour painters produced bright tones. direct study of nature, and the completion of a picture in the presence of nature and in the open air, guided their attention to light and atmosphere more quickly than that of the oil-painters. an easier technique, giving more scope for improvisation, of itself suggested the idea that rounded finish with a view to pictorial effect was not the final aim of art, but that it was of the most immediate importance to catch the first freshness of impression, that flower so hard to pluck and so prone to wither. the first who applied these principles to oil-painting was _john constable_, one of the greatest pioneers in his own province and one of the most powerful individualities of the century. east bergholt, the pretty little village where constable's cradle stood, is fourteen miles distant from sudbury, the birthplace of gainsborough. here he was born on th june , at the very time when gainsborough settled in london. his father was a miller, a well-to-do man, who had three windmills in bergholt. the other famous miller's son in the history of art is rembrandt. at first a superior career was chosen for him; it was intended that he should become a clergyman. but he felt more at home in the mill than in the schoolroom, and became a miller like his fathers before him. observation of the changes of the sky is an essential part of a miller's calling, and this occupation of his youth seems to have been not without influence on the future artist; no one before him had observed the sky with the same attention. [illustration: constable. cottage in a cornfield.] a certain dunthorne, an eccentric personage to whom the boy often came, gave him--always in the open air--his first instruction; and another of his patrons, sir george beaumont, as an æsthetically trained connoisseur, criticised what he painted. when constable showed him a study he asked: "where do you mean to place your brown tree?" for the first law in his æsthetics was this: a good painting must have the colour of a good fiddle; it must be brown. sojourn in london was without influence on constable. he was twenty-three years of age, a handsome young fellow with dark eyes and a fine expressive countenance, when, in , he wrote to his teacher dunthorne: "i am this morning admitted a student at the royal academy; the figure which i drew for admittance was the torso. i am now comfortably settled in cecil street, strand, no. ." he was known to the london girls as "the handsome young miller of bergholt." he undertook the most varied things, copied pictures of reynolds, and painted an altar-piece, "christ blessing little children," which was admired by no one except his mother. in addition he studied ruysdael, whose works made a great impression on him, in the national gallery. in he appears for the first time in the catalogue of the royal academy as the exhibitor of a landscape, and from this time to the year of his death, , he was annually represented there, contributing altogether one hundred and four pictures. in the earliest--windmills and village parties--every detail is carefully executed; every branch is painted on the trees, and every tile on the houses; but as yet one can breathe no air in these pictures and see no sunshine. but he writes, in , a very important letter to his old friend dunthorne. "for the last two years," he says, "i have been running after pictures, and seeking the truth at second-hand. i have not endeavoured to represent nature with the same elevation of mind with which i set out, but have rather tried to make my performance look like the work of other men. i am come to a determination to make no idle visits this summer, nor to give up my time to commonplace people. i shall return to bergholt, where i shall endeavour to get a pure and unaffected manner of representing the scenes that may employ me. there is little or nothing in the exhibition worth looking up to. _there is room enough for a natural painter._" he left london accordingly, and worked, in , the whole summer "quite alone among the oaks and solitudes of helmingham park. i have taken quiet possession of the parsonage, finding it empty. a woman comes from the farmhouse, where i eat, and makes my bed, and i am left at liberty to wander where i please during the day." and having now returned to the country he became himself again. "painting," he writes, "is with me but another word for feeling; and i associate 'my careless boyhood' with all that lies upon the banks of the stour; those scenes made me a painter, and i am grateful." he had passed his whole youth amid the lovely valleys and luxuriant meadows of bergholt, where the flocks were at pasture and the beetles hummed; he had wandered about the soft banks of the stour, in the green woods of suffolk, amongst old country-houses and churches, farms and picturesque cottages. this landscape which he had loved as a boy he also painted. he was the painter of cultivated english landscape, the portrayer of country life, of canals and boats, of windmills and manor-houses. he had a liking for all simple nature which reveals everywhere the traces of human activity--for arable fields and villages, orchards and cornfields. a strip of meadow, a watergate with a few briars, a clump of branching, fibrous trees, were enough to fill him with ideas and feelings. gainsborough had already painted the like; but constable denotes an advance beyond gainsborough as beyond crome. intimate in feeling as gainsborough undoubtedly was, he had a tendency to beautify the objects of nature; he selected and gave them a delicacy of arrangement and a grace of line which in reality they did not possess. constable was the first to renounce every species of adaptation and arbitrary arrangement in composition. his boldness in the rendering of personal impressions raises him above crome. crome gets his effect principally by his accuracy: he represented what he saw; constable showed how he saw the thing. while the former, following hobbema, has an air reminiscent of galleries and old masters, constable saw the world with his own eyes, and was the first entirely independent modern landscape painter. in his young days he had made copies after claude, rubens, reynolds, ruysdael, teniers, and wilson, which might have been mistaken for the originals, but later he had learnt much from girtin's water-colour paintings. from that time he felt that he was strong enough to trust his own eyes. he threw to the winds all that had hitherto been considered as the chief element of beauty, and gave up the rounding of his pictures for pictorial effect; cut trees right through the middle to get into his picture just what interested him, and no more. [illustration: _s. low & co._ constable. the valley farm.] [illustration: _s. low & co._ cox. crossing the sands.] he set himself right in the midst of verdure; the nightingales sang, the leaves murmured, the meadows grew green, and the clouds gleamed. in the fifteenth-century art there were the graceful spring trees of perugino; in the seventeenth, the bright spring days of those two flemings jan silberecht and lucas uden; in the nineteenth, constable became the first painter of spring. if sir george beaumont now asked him where he meant to put his brown tree, he answered: "nowhere, because i don't paint brown trees any more." he saw that foliage is green in summer, and--painted it so; he saw that summer rain and morning dew makes the verdure more than usually intense, and--he painted what he saw. he noticed that green leaves sparkle, gleam, and glitter in the sun--and painted them accordingly; he saw that the light, when it falls upon bright-looking walls, dazzles like snow in the sunshine--and painted it accordingly. there was a good deal of jeering at the time about "constable's snow," and yet it was not merely all succeeding english artists who continued to put their faith in this painting of light, but the masters of barbizon too, and manet afterwards. [illustration: _mansell_ bonington. la place des moulards, geneva.] the problem of painting light and air, which the older school had left unsolved, was taken up by him first in its complete extent. crome had shown great reserve in approaching the atmospheric elements. constable was the first landscape painter who really saw effects of light and air and learnt to paint them. his endeavour was to embody the impression of a mood of light with feeling, without lingering on the reproduction of those details which are only perceptible to an analytical eye. whereas in the old dutch masters the chief weight is laid on the effect of the drawing of objects, here it rests upon light, no matter upon what it plays. thus constable freed landscape painting from the architectonic laws of composition. they were no longer needed when the principle was once affirmed that the atmospheric mood gave greater value to the picture than subject. he not only studied the earth and foliage in their various tones, according as they were determined by the atmosphere, but observed the sky, the air, and the forms of cloud with the conscientiousness of a student of natural philosophy. the comments which he wrote upon them are as subtle as those in ruskin's celebrated treatise on the clouds. a landscape, according to him, is only beautiful in proportion as light and shadow make it so; in other words, he was the first to understand that the "mood" of a landscape, by which it appeals to the human spirit, depends less on its lines and on objects in themselves than on the light and shadow in which it is bathed, and he was the first painter who had the secret of painting these subtle gradations of atmosphere. in his pictures the wind is heard murmuring in the trees, the breeze is felt as it blows over the corn, the sunlight is seen glancing on the leaves and playing on the clear mirror of the waters. thus constable for the first time painted nature in all its freshness. his principle of artistic creation is entirely opposed to that which was followed by the pre-raphaelites at a later date. whilst the latter tried to reconstruct a picture of nature by a faithful, painstaking execution of all details--a process by which the expression of the whole usually suffers--constable's pictures are broadly and impressively painted, often of rude and brutal force, at times solemn, at times elegant, but always cogent, fresh, and possessing a unity of their own. [illustration: _s. low & co._ cox. the shrimpers.] a genius in advance of its age is only first recognised in its full significance when following generations have come abreast with it. and that constable was made to feel. in he died in poverty at hampstead, in the modest "country retreat" where he spent the greatest part of his life. he said that his painting recalled no one, and was neither polished nor pretty, and asked: "how can i hope to be popular? i work only for the future." and that belonged to him. [illustration: _portfolio._ mÜller. the amphitheatre at xanthus.] constable's powerful individuality has brought forth enduring fruit, and helped english landscape painting to attain that noble prime which it enjoyed during the forties and fifties. with his rich, brilliant, bold, and finely coloured painting, _david cox_ stands out as perhaps the greatest of constable's successors. like constable, he was a peasant, and observed nature with the simplicity of one who was country-bred. he was born in , the son of a blacksmith, in a humble spot near birmingham, and, after a brief sojourn in london, migrated with his family to hereford, and later to harborne, also in the neighbourhood of birmingham. the strip of country which he saw from his house was almost exclusively his field of study. he knew that a painter can pass his life in the same corner of the earth, and that the scene of nature spread before him will never be exhausted. "farewell, pictures, farewell," he is reported to have said when he took his last walk, on the day before his death, round the walls of harborne. he has treated of the manner in which he understood his art in his _treatise on landscape painting_, written in . his ideal was to see the most cogent effect in nature, and leave everything out which did not harmonise with its character; and in cox's pictures it is possible to trace the steps by which he drew nearer to this ideal the more natural he became. the magic of his brush was never more captivating than in the works of his last years, when, fallen victim to a disease of the eye, he could no longer see distinctly and only rendered an impression of the whole scene. cox is a great and bold master. the townsman when he first comes into the country, after being imprisoned for months together in a wilderness of brick and mortar, does not begin at once to count the trees, leaves, and the stones lying on the ground. he draws a long breath and exclaims, "what balm!" cox, too, has not painted details in the manner of the pre-raphaelites. he represented the soft wind sweeping over the english meadows, the fresh purity of the air, the storms that agitate the landscape of wales. a delicate silver-grey is spread over most of his pictures, and his method of expression is powerful and nervous. by preference he has celebrated, both in oil-paintings and in boldly handled water-colours, the boundless depths of the sky in its thousand variations of light, now deep blue in broad noon and now eerily gloomy and disturbed. the fame of being the greatest of english water-colour painters is his beyond dispute, yet if he had painted in oils from his youth upwards he would probably have become the most important english landscapist. his small pictures are pure and delicate in colour, and fresh and breezy in atmospheric effect. it is only in large pictures that power is at times denied him. in his later years he began to paint in oils, and in this medium he is a less important artist, though a very great painter. _william müller_, who died young, stood as leader at his side. [illustration: _s. low & co._ de wint. nottingham.] he was one of the most dexterous amongst the dexterous, next to turner the greatest adept of english painting. had he been simpler and quieter he might be called a genius of the first order. but he has sometimes a touch of what is theatrical; it does not always break out, but it does so occasionally. he has an inclination for pageantry, and nothing of that self-sufficiency and quiet tenderness with which constable and cox devoted themselves to home scenery. he was at pains to give a trace of largeness and sublimity to modest and unpretentious english landscape, to give to the most familiar subject a tinge of preciosity. his pictures are grandiose in form, and show an admirable lightness of hand, but light and air are wanting in them, the local colour of england and its atmosphere. as a foreigner--he was the son of a danzig scholar, who had migrated to bristol--müller has not seen english landscape with constable's native sentiment. he was not content with an english cornfield or an english village; the familiar homeliness of the country in its work-a-day garb excited no emotion in him. [illustration: _l'art._ bonington. the windmill of saint-jouin.] something in müller's imagination, which caused him to love decided colours and sudden contrasts rather than delicate gradations, attracted him to southern climes. his natural place was in the east, which had not at that time been made the vogue. here, like decamps and marilhat, he found those vivid rather than delicate effects which appealed to his eye. he was twice in the south--the first time in athens and egypt in , and once again in smyrna, rhodes, and lycia in - . in the year during which he had yet to live he collected those oriental pictures which form his legacy, containing the best that he did. certain of them, such as "the amphitheatre at xanthus," are painted with marvellous verve; they are not the work of a day, but of an hour. all these mountain castles upon abrupt cliffs, these views of the acropolis and of egypt, are real masterpieces of broad painting, their colour clear and their light admirable. not one of the many frenchmen who were in the south at this time has represented its sunshine and its brilliant atmosphere with such flattering, voluptuous tones. _peter de wint_, who was far more true and simple, was, like constable and cox, entirely wedded to his own birthplace. at any rate, his sojourn in france lasted only for a short time, and left no traces in his art. from youth to age he was the painter of england in its work-a-day garb--of the low hills of surrey, of the plains of lincolnshire, or of the dark canals of the thames, which he specially portrayed in unsurpassable water-colour paintings. his ancestor in art is philips de koning, the pupil of rembrandt, the master of dutch plains and wide horizons. [illustration: _studio._ bonington. reading aloud.] after cox and de wint came _creswick_, more laborious, more patient, more studious of detail, furnished perhaps with a sharper eye for the green tones of nature, though with less feeling for atmosphere. it cannot be said that he advanced art, but merely that he added a regard for light and sunshine, unknown to the period before , to the study of hobbema and waterloo. with those who would not have painted as they did but for constable, _peter graham_ and _dawson_ may be likewise ranked; and these artists peculiarly devoted themselves to the study of sky and water. henry dawson painted the most paltry and unpromising places--a reach of the thames close to london, or a quarter in the smoky precincts of dover, or greenwich; but he painted them with a power such as only constable possessed. in particular he is unequalled in his masterly painting of clouds. constable had seldom done this in the same way. he delighted in an agitated sky, in clouds driven before the wind and losing their form in indeterminate contours; in nature he saw merely reflections of his own restless spirit, striving after colour and movement. dawson painted those clouds which stand firm in the sky like piles of building--cloud-cathedrals, as ruskin has called them. there are pictures of his consisting of almost nothing but great clouds. but that wide space, the earth, which our eyes regard as their own peculiar domain, is wanting. colours and forms are nowhere to be seen, but only clouds and undulating yellowish mist in which objects vanish like pallid spectres. _john linnell_ carried the traditions of this great era on to the new period: at first revelling in golden light, in sunsets and rosy clouds of dusk, and at a later time, in the manner of the pre-raphaelites, bent on the precise execution of bodily form. the young master, who died at twenty-seven, _richard parkes bonington_, unites these english classic masters with the french. an englishman by birth and origin, but trained as a painter in france, where he had gone when fifteen years of age, he seems from many points of view one of the most gracious products of the romantic movement in france, though at the same time he has qualities over which only the english had command at that period, and not the french. he entered gros's studio in france, which was then the favourite meeting-place of all the younger men of revolutionary tendencies, but repeated journeys to london did not allow him to forget constable. in normandy and picardy he painted his first landscapes, following them up with a series of venetian sea-pieces and little historical scenes. then consumption seized him and took but a brief time in striking him down. on rd september he died in london, whither he had gone to consult a specialist. in consequence of his early death his talent never ripened, but he was a simple, natural, pure, and congenial artist for all that. "i knew him well and loved him much. his english composure, which nothing could disturb, robbed him of none of the qualities which make life pleasant. when i first came across him i was myself very young, and was making studies in the louvre. it was about or . he was in the act of copying a flemish landscape--a tall youth who had grown rapidly. he had already an astonishing dexterity in water-colours, which were then an english novelty. some which i saw later at a dealer's were charming, both in colour and composition. other modern artists are perhaps more powerful and more accurate than bonington, but no one in this modern school, perhaps no earlier artist, possessed the ease of execution which makes his works, in a certain sense, diamonds by which the eye is pleased and fascinated, quite independently of the subject and the particular representation of nature. and the same is true of the costume pictures which he painted later. even here i could never grow weary of marvelling at his sense of effect, and his great ease of execution. not that he was quickly satisfied; on the contrary, he often began over again perfectly finished pieces which seemed wonderful to us. but his dexterity was so great that in a moment he produced with his brush new effects, which were as charming as the first." with these words his friend and comrade, the great eugène delacroix, drew the portrait of bonington. bonington was at once the most natural and the most delicate in that romantic school in which he was one of the first to make an appearance. he had a fine eye for the charm of nature, saw grace and beauty in her everywhere, and represented the spring and the sunshine in bright and clear tones. no frenchman before him has so painted the play of light on gleaming costumes and succulent meadow grasses. even his lithographs from paris and the provinces are masterpieces of spirited, impressionist observation--qualities which he owed, not to gros, but to constable. he was the first to communicate the knowledge of the great english classic painters to the youth of france, and they of barbizon and ville d'avray continued to spin the threads which connect constable with the present. [illustration: richard parkes bonington.] chapter xxv landscape from that same salon of in which delacroix exhibited his "dante's bark" brought to frenchmen a knowledge of the powerful movement which had taken place on the opposite side of the channel. english water-colour painting was brilliantly represented by bonington, who sent his "view of lillebonne" and his "view of havre." copley fielding, robson, and john varley also contributed works; and these easy, spirited productions, with their skies washed in broadly and their bright, clear tones, were like a revelation to the young french artists of the period. the horizon was felt to be growing clear. in , at the time when delacroix's "massacre of chios" appeared, the sun actually rose, bringing a flood of light. the english had learnt the way to france, and took the louvre by storm. john constable was represented by three pictures, and bonington, copley fielding, harding, samuel prout, and varley were also accorded a place. this exhibition gave the deathblow to classical landscape painting. michallon had died young in ; and men like bidault and watelet could do nothing against such a battalion of colourists. constable alone passed sentence upon them of eternal condemnation. familiar neither with georges michel nor with the great dutch painters, the french had not remarked that a landscape has need of a sky expressive of the spirit of the hour and the character of the season. even what was done by michel seemed a kind of diffident calligraphy when set beside the fresh strand-pieces of bonington, the creations of the water-colour artists, bathed as they were in light, and the bold pictures of the bergholt master, with their bright green and their cloudy horizon. the french landscape painters, who had been so timid until then, recognised that their painting had been a convention, despite all their striving after truth to nature. constable had been the first to free himself from every stereotyped rule, and he was an influence in france. the younger generation were in ecstasies over this intense green, the agitated clouds, this effervescent power inspiring everything with life. though as yet but little esteemed even in england, constable received the gold medal in paris, and from that time took a fancy to parisian exhibitions, and still in exhibited in the louvre by the side of bonington, who had but one year more in which to give admirable lessons by his bright plains and clear shining skies. at the same time bonington's friend and compatriot, william reynolds, then likewise domiciled in paris, contributed some of his powerful and often delicate landscape studies, the tender grey notes of which are like anticipations of corot. this influence of the english upon the creators of _paysage intime_ has long been an acknowledged fact, since delacroix himself, in his article "questions sur le beau" in the _revue des deux mondes_ in , has affirmed it frankly. the very next years announced what a ferment constable had stirred in the more restless spirits. the period from to showed the birth-throes of french landscape painting. in it was born. in this year, for ever marked in the annals of french, and indeed of european art, there appeared together in the salon, for the first time, all those young artists who are now honoured as the greatest in the century: all, or almost all, were children of paris, the sons of small townsmen or of humble artisans; all were born in the old quarter of the city or in its suburbs, in the midst of a desolate wilderness of houses, and destined for that very reason to be great landscape painters. for it is not through chance that _paysage intime_ immediately passed from london, the city of smoke, to paris, the second great modern capital, and reached germany from thence only at a much later time. [illustration: _l'art._ thÉodore rousseau.] "do you remember the time," asks bürger-thoré of théodore rousseau in the dedicatory letter to his _salon_ of ,--"do you still recall the years when we sat on the window-ledges of our attics in the rue de taitbout, and let our feet dangle at the edge of the roof, contemplating the chaos of houses and chimneys, which you with a twinkle in your eye compared to mountains, trees, and outlines of the earth? you were not able to go to the alps, into the cheerful country, and so you created picturesque landscapes for yourself out of these horrible skeletons of wall. do you still recall the little tree in rothschild's garden, which we caught sight of between two roofs? it was the one green thing that we could see; every fresh shoot of the little poplar wakened our interest in spring, and in autumn we counted the falling leaves." from this mood sprang modern landscape painting with its delicate reserve in subject, and its vigorously heightened love of nature. up to the middle of the century nature was too commonplace and ordinary for the germans; and it was therefore hard for them to establish a spiritual relationship with her. landscape painting recognised its function in appealing to the understanding by the execution of points of geographical interest, or exciting a frigid curiosity by brilliant fireworks. but these children of the city, who with a heartfelt sympathy counted the budding and falling leaves of a single tree descried from their little attic window; these dreamers, who in their imagination constructed beautiful landscapes from the moss-crusted gutters of the roof and the chimneys and chimney smoke, were sufficiently schooled, when they came into the country, to feel the breath of the great mother of all, even where it was but faintly exhaled. where a man's heart is full he does not think about geographical information, and no roll of tom-toms is needed to attract the attention of those whose eyes are opened. their spirit was sensitive, and their imagination sufficiently alert to catch with ecstasy, even from the most delicate and reserved notes, the harmony of that heavenly concert which nature executes on all its earthly instruments, at every moment and in all places. [illustration: rousseau. morning.] [illustration: rousseau. landscape, morning effect.] thus they had none of them any further need for extensive pilgrimage; to seek impulse for work they had not far to go. croissy, bougival, saint-cloud, and marly were their arcadia. their farthest journeys were to the banks of the oise, the woods of l'isle adam, auvergne, normandy, and brittany. but they cared most of all to stay in the forest of fontainebleau, which--by one of those curious chances that so often recur in history--played for a second time a highly important part in the development of french art. a hundred years before, it was the brilliant centre of the french renaissance, the resort of those italian artists who found in the palace there a second vatican, and in francis i another leo x. in the nineteenth century, too, the renaissance of french painting was achieved in fontainebleau, only it had nothing to do with a school of mannered figure painters, but with a group of the most delicate landscape artists. from a sense of one's duty to art one studies in the palace the elegant goddesses of primaticcio, the laughing bacchantes of cellini, and all the golden, festal splendour of the cinquecento; but the heart is not touched till one stands outside in the forest on the soil where rousseau and corot and millet and diaz painted. how much may be felt and thought when one saunters of a dreamy evening, lost in one's own meditations, across the heath of the _plateau de la belle croix_ and through the arching oaks of _bas bréau_ to barbizon, the mecca of modern art, where the secrets of _paysage intime_ were revealed to the parisian landscape painters by the nymph of fontainebleau! there was a time when men built their gothic cathedrals soaring into the sky, after the model of the majestic palaces of the trees. the dim and sacred mist of incense hovered about the lofty pointed arches, and through painted windows the broken daylight shone, inspiring awe; the fair picture of a saint beckoned from above the altar, touched by the gleam of lamps and candles; gilded carvings glimmered strangely, and overwhelming strains from the fugues of bach reverberated in the peal of the organ throughout the consecrated space. but now the gothic cathedrals are transformed once more into palaces of trees. the towering oaks are the buttresses, the tracery of branches the choir screen, the clouds the incense, the wind sighing through the boughs the peal of the organ, and the sun the altar-piece. man is once more a fire-worshipper, as in his childhood; the church has become the world, and the world has become the church. how the spirit soars at the trill of a blackbird beneath the leafy roof of mighty primæval oaks! one feels as though one had been transplanted into the saturnian age, when men lived a joyous, unchequered life in holy unison with nature. for this park is still primæval, in spite of all the carriage roads by which it is now traversed, in spite of all the guides who lounge upon the granite blocks of the hollows of opremont. yellowish-green ferns varying in tint cover the soil like a carpet. the woods are broken by great wastes of rock. perhaps there is no spot in the world where such splendid beeches and huge majestic oaks stretch their gnarled branches to the sky--in one place spreading forth in luxuriant glory, and in another scarred by lightning and bitten by the wintry cold. it is just such scenes of ravage that make the grandest, the wildest, and the most sombre pictures. the might of the great forces of nature, striking down the heads of oaks like thistles, is felt nowhere in the same degree. barbizon itself is a small village three miles to the north of fontainebleau, and, according to old tradition, founded by robbers who formerly dwelt in the forest. on both sides of the road connecting it with the charming little villages of dammarie and chailly there stretch long rows of chestnut, apple, and acacia trees. there are barely a hundred houses in the place. most of them are overgrown with wild vine, shut in by thick hedges of hawthorn, and have a garden in front, where roses bloom amid cabbages and cauliflowers. at nine o'clock in the evening all barbizon is asleep, but before four in the morning it awakes once more for work in the fields. [illustration: _cassell & co._ rousseau. the village of becquigny in picardy.] historians of after-years will occupy themselves in endeavouring to discover when the first immigration of parisian painters to this spot took place. it is reported that one of david's pupils painted in the forest of fontainebleau and lived in barbizon. the only lodging to be got at that time was in a barn, which the former tailor of the place, a man of the name of ganne, turned into an inn in . here, after , corot, rousseau, diaz, brascassat, and many others alighted when they came to follow their studies in barbizon from the spring to the autumn. of an evening they clambered up to their miserable bedroom, and fastened to the head of the bed with drawing-pins the studies made in the course of the day. it was only later that père copain, an old peasant, who had begun life as a shepherd with three francs a month, was struck with the apt idea of buying in a few acres and building upon them small houses to let to painters. by this enterprise the man became rich, and gradually grew to be a capitalist, lending money to all who, in spite of their standing as celebrated parisian artists, did not enjoy the blessings of fortune. but the general place of assembly was still the old barn employed in ganne's establishment, and in the course of years its walls were covered with large charcoal drawings, studies, and pictures. here, in a patriarchal, easy-going, homely fashion, artists gathered together with their wives and children of an evening. festivities also were held in the place, in particular that ball when ganne's daughter, a godchild of madame rousseau, celebrated her wedding. rousseau and millet were the decorators of the room; the entire space of the barn served as ball-room, the walls being adorned with ivy. corot, always full of fun and high spirits, led the polonaise, which moved through a labyrinth of bottles placed on the floor. [illustration: _l'art._ rousseau. la hutte.] they painted in the forest. but they did not take the trouble to carry the instruments of their art home again. they kept breakfast, canvas, and brushes in holes in the rocks. never before, probably, have men so lost themselves in nature. at every hour of the day, in the cool light of morning, at sunny noon, in the golden dusk, even in the twilight of blue moonlight nights, they were out in the field and the forest, learning to surprise everlasting nature at every moment of her mysterious life. the forest was their studio, and revealed to them all its secrets. [illustration: _cassell & co._ rousseau. evening.] the result of this life _en plein air_ became at once the same as it had been with constable. earlier artists worked with the conception and the technique of waterloo, ruysdael, and everdingen, and believed themselves incapable of doing anything without gnarled, heroic oaks. even michel was hard-bound in the gallery style of the dutch, and for decamps atmosphere was still a thing unknown or non-existent. he placed a harsh light, opaque as plaster, against a background as black as coal. even the colours of delacroix were merely tones of the palette; he wanted to create preconceived decorative harmonies, and not simply to interpret reality. following the english, the masters of fontainebleau made the discovery of air and light. they did not paint the world, like the other romanticists, in exuberantly varying hues recalling the old masters: they saw it _entouré d'air_, and tempered by the tones of the atmosphere. and since their time the "harmony of light and air with that of which they are the life and illumination" has become the great problem of painting. through this art grew young again, and works of art received the breathing life, the fresh bloom, and the delicate harmony which are to be found everywhere in nature itself, and which are only reached with much difficulty by any artificial method of tuning into accord. after constable they were the first who recognised that the beauty of a landscape does not lie in objects themselves, but in the lights that are cast upon them. of course, there is also an articulation of forms in nature. when boecklin paints a grove with tall and solemn trees in the evening, when he forms to himself a vision of the mysterious haunts of his "fire-worshippers," there is scarcely any need of colour. the outline alone is so majestically stern that it makes man feel his littleness utterly, and summons him to devotional thoughts. but the subtle essence by which nature appeals either joyously or sorrowfully to the spirit depends still more on the light or gloom in which she is bathed; and this mood is not marked by an inquisitive eye: the introspective gaze, the imagination itself, secretes it in nature. and here a second point is touched. [illustration: _cassell & co._ rousseau. sunset.] the peculiarity of all these masters, who on their first appearance were often despised as realists or naturalists, consists precisely in this: they never represented, at least in the works of their later period in which they thoroughly expressed themselves,--they never represented actual nature in the manner of photography, but freely painted their own moods from memory, just as goethe when he stood in the little house in the kikelhahn near ilmenau, instead of elaborating a prosaic description of the kikelhahn, wrote the verses _ueber allen wipfeln ist ruh_. in this poem of goethe one does not learn how the summits looked, and there is no allusion to the play of light, and yet the forest, dimly illuminated by the rays of the setting sun, is presented clearly to the inward eye. any poet before goethe's time would have made a broad and epical description, and produced a picture by the addition of details; but here the very music of the words creates a picture of rest and quietude. the works of the fontainebleau artists are goethe-like poems of nature in pigments. they are as far removed from the æsthetic aridness of the older landscape of composition, pieced together from studies, as from the flat, prosaic fidelity to nature of that "entirely null and void, spuriously realistic painting of the so-called guardians of woods and waters." they were neither concerned to master nature and compose a picture from her according to conventional rules, nor pedantically to draw the portrait of any given region. they did not think of topographical accuracy, or of preparing a map of their country. a landscape was not for them a piece of scenery, but a condition of soul. they represent the victory of lyricism over dry though inflated prose. impressed by some vision of nature, they warm to their work and produce pictures that could not have been anticipated. and thus they fathomed art to its profoundest depths. their works were fragrant poems sprung from moods of spirit which had risen in them during a walk in the forest. perhaps only titian, rubens, and watteau had previously looked upon nature with the same eyes. and as in the case of these artists, so also in that of the fontainebleau painters, it was necessary that a genuine realistic art, a long period of the most intimate study of nature, should have to be gone through before they reached this height. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ rousseau. the lake among the rocks at barbizon.] [illustration: _l'art._ rousseau. a pond, forest of fontainebleau.] in the presence of nature one saturates one's self with truth; and after returning to the studio one squeezes the sponge, as jules dupré expressed it. only after they had satiated themselves with the knowledge of truth, only after nature with all her individual phenomena had been interwoven with their inmost being, could they, without effort, and without the purpose of representing determined objects, paint from personal sentiment, and give expression to their humour, in the mere gratification of impulse. thence comes their wide difference from each other. painters who work according to fixed rules resemble one another, and those who aim at a distinct copy of nature resemble one another no less. but each one of the fontainebleau painters, according to his character and his mood for the time being, received different impressions from the same spot in nature, and at the same moment of time. each found a landscape and a moment which appealed to his sentiment more perceptibly than any other. one delighted in spring and dewy morning, another in a cold, clear day, another in the threatening majesty of storm, another in the sparkling effects of sportive sunbeams, and another in evening after sundown, when colours have faded and forms are dim. each one obeyed his peculiar temperament, and adapted his technique to the altogether personal expression of his way of seeing and feeling. each one is entirely himself, each one an original mind, each picture a spiritual revelation, and often one of touching simplicity and greatness: _homo additus naturæ_. and having dedicated themselves, more than all their predecessors, to personality creating in and for itself, they have become the founders of the new creed in art. that strong and firmly rooted master _théodore rousseau_ was the epic poet, the plastic artist of the pleïades. "_le chêne des roches_" was one of his masterpieces, and he stands himself amid the art of his time like an oak embedded in rocks. his father was a tailor who lived in the rue neuve-saint eustache, nr. _au quatrième_. as a boy he is said to have specially devoted himself to mathematics, and to have aimed at becoming a student at the polytechnic institute. thus the dangerous, doctrinaire tendency, which beset him in his last years, of making art more of a science than is really practicable, and of referring everything to some law, lay even in his boyish tastes. he grew up in the studio of the classicist lethière, and looked on whilst the latter painted both his large louvre pictures, "the death of brutus" and "the death of virginia." he even thought himself of competing for the _prix de rome_. but the composition of his "historical landscape" was not a success. then he took his paint-boxes, left lethière's studio, and wandered over to montmartre. even his first little picture, "the telegraph tower" of , announced the aim which he was tentatively endeavouring to reach. [illustration: _l'art._ camille corot.] at the very time when watelet's metallic waterfalls and zinc trees were being drawn up in line, when the pupils of bertin hunted the calydonian boar, or drowned zenobia in the waves of the araxes, rousseau, set free from the ambition of winning the _prix de rome_, was painting humble plains within the precincts of paris, with little brooks in the neighbourhood which had nothing that deserved the name of waves. his first excursion to fontainebleau occurred in the year , and in he painted his first masterpiece, the "côtés de grandville," that picture, replete with deep and powerful feeling for nature, which seems the great triumphant title-page of all his work. a firm resolve to accept reality as it is, and a remarkable eye for the local character of landscape and for the structure and anatomy of the earth--all qualities revealing the rousseau of later years--were here to be seen in their full impressiveness and straightforward actuality. he received for this work a medal of the third class. at the same time his works were excluded from making any further appearance in the salon for many years to come. concession might be made to a beginner; but the master seemed dangerous to the academicians. two pictures, "cows descending in the upper jura" and "the chestnut avenue," which he had destined for the salon of , were rejected by the hanging committee, and during twelve years his works met with a similar fate, although the leading critical intellects of paris, thoré, gustave planché, and théophile gautier, broke their lances in his behalf. amongst the rejected of the present century, théodore rousseau is probably the most famous. at that period he was selling his pictures for five and ten louis-d'or. it was only after the february revolution of , when the academic committee had fallen with the _bourgeois_ king, that the doors of the salon were opened to him again, and in the meanwhile his pictures had made their way quietly and by their unassisted merit. in the sequestered solitude of barbizon he had matured into an artistic individuality of the highest calibre, and become a painter to whom the history of art must accord a place by the side of ruysdael, hobbema, and constable. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ corot. the bridge of st. angelo, rome.] he painted everything in barbizon--the plains and the hills, the river and the forest, all the seasons of the year and all the hours of the day. the succession of his moods is as inexhaustible as boundless nature herself. skies gilded by the setting sun, phases of dewy morning, plains basking in light, woods in the russet-yellow foliage of autumn: these are the subjects of théodore rousseau--an endless procession of poetic effects, expressed at first by the mere instinct of emotion and later with a mathematical precision which is often a little strained, though always irresistibly forcible. marvellous are his autumn landscapes with their ruddy foliage of beech; majestic are those pictures in which he expressed the profound sentiment of solitude as it passes over you in the inviolate tangle of the forest, inviting the spirit to commune with itself; but especially characteristic of rousseau are those plains with huge isolated trees, over which the mere light of common day rests almost coldly and dispassionately. [illustration: corot at work.] it is an artistic or psychological anomaly that in this romantic generation a man could be born in whom there was nothing of the romanticist. théodore rousseau was an experimentalist, a great worker, a restless and seeking spirit, ever tormented and unsatisfied with itself, a nature wholly without sentimentality and impassionless, the very opposite of his predecessor huet. huet made nature the mirror of the passions, the melancholy and the tragic suffering which agitate the human spirit with their rage. whilst he celebrated the irresistible powers and blind forces, the elemental genii which rule the skies and the waters, he wanted to waken an impression of terror and desolation in the spirit of the beholder. he piled together masses of rock, lent dramatic passion to the clouds, and revelled with delight in the sharpest contrasts. rousseau's pervasive characteristic is absolute plainness and actuality. such a simplicity of shadow had never existed before. since the renaissance artists had systematically heightened the intensity of shadows for the sake of effect; rousseau relied on the true and simple doctrine that may be formulated in the phrase: the more light there is the fainter and more transparent are the shadows, not the darker, as decamps and huet painted them. or, to speak more generally, in nature the intensity of shadows stands in an inverse relation to the intensity of the light. [illustration: corot. daphnis and chloe.] rousseau does not force on the spectator any preconceived mood of his own, but leaves him before a picture with all the freedom and capacity for personal feeling which he would have received from the spectacle of nature herself. the painter does not address him directly, but lets nature have free play, just as a medium merely acts as the vehicle of a spirit. so personal in execution and so absolutely impersonal in conception are rousseau's pictures. huet translated his moods by the assistance of nature; rousseau is an incomparable witness, confining himself strictly to the event, and giving his report of it in brief, virile speech, in clear-cut style. huet puts one out of humour, because it is his own humour which he is determined to force. rousseau seldom fails of effect, because he renders the effect which has struck him, faithfully and without marginal notes. only in the convincing power of representation, and never in the forcing of a calculated mood, does the "mood" of his landscape lie. or, to take an illustration from the province of portrait painting, when lenbach paints prince bismarck, it is lenbach's bismarck; as an intellectual painter he has given an entirely subjective rendering of bismarck, and compels the spectator so to see him. holbein, when he painted henry viii, proceeded in the opposite way: for him characterisation depended on his revealing his own character as little as possible; he completely subordinated himself to his subject, surrendered himself, and religiously painted all that he saw, leaving it to others to carry away from the picture what they pleased. and théodore rousseau, too, was possessed by the spirit of the old german portrait painter. he set his whole force of purpose to the task of letting nature manifest herself, free from any preconceived interpretation. his pictures are absolutely without effective point, but there is so much power and deep truth, so much simplicity, boldness, and sincerity in his manner of seeing and painting nature, and of feeling her intense and forceful life, that they have become great works of art by this alone, like the portraits of holbein. more impressive tones, loftier imagination, more moving tenderness, and more intoxicating harmonies are at the command of other masters, but few had truer or more profound articulation, and not one has been so sincere as théodore rousseau. rousseau saw into the inmost being of nature, as holbein into henry viii, and the impression he received, the emotion he felt, is a thing which he communicates broadly, boldly, and entirely. he is a portrait painter who knows his model through and through; moreover, he is a connoisseur of the old masters who knows what it is to make a picture. every production of rousseau is a deliberate and well-considered work, a cannon-shot, and no mere dropping fusilade of small arms; not a light _feuilleton_, but an earnest treatise of strong character. though a powerful colourist, he works by the simplest means, and has at bottom the feeling of a draughtsman; which is principally the reason why, at the present day, when one looks at rousseau's pictures, one thinks rather of hobbema than of billotte and claude monet. his absolute mastery over drawing even induced him in his last years to abandon painting altogether. he designated it contemptuously as falsehood, because it smeared over the truth, the anatomy of nature. [illustration: corot. vue de toscane.] in rousseau there was even more the genius of a sculptor than of a portrait painter. his spirit, positive, exact, like that of a mathematician, and far more equipped with artistic precision than pictorial qualities, delighted in everything sharply defined, plastic, and full of repose: moss-grown stones, oaks of the growth of centuries, marshes and standing water, rude granite blocks of the forest of fontainebleau, and trees bedded in the rocks of the glens of opremont. in a quite peculiar sense was the oak his favourite tree--the mighty, wide-branching, primæval oak which occupies the centre of one of his masterpieces, "a pond," and spreads its great gnarled boughs to the cloudy sky in almost every one of his pictures. it is only rembrandt's three oaks that stand in like manner, firm and broad of stem, as though they were living personalities of the north, in a lonely field beneath the hissing rain. to ensure the absolute vitality of organisms was for rousseau the object of unintermittent toil. [illustration: corot. at sunset.] plants, trees, and rocks were not forms summarily observed and clumped together in an arbitrary fashion; for him they were beings gifted with a soul, breathing creatures, each one of which had its physiognomy, its individuality, its part to play, and its distinction of being in the great harmony of universal nature. "by the harmony of air and light with that of which they are the life and the illumination i will make you hear the trees moaning beneath the north wind and the birds calling to their young." to achieve that aim he thought that he could not do too much. as dürer worked seven times on the same scenes of the passion until he had found the simplest and most speaking expression, so rousseau treated the same motives ten and twenty times. restless are his efforts to discover different phases of the same subject, to approach his model from the most various points of view, and to do justice to it on every side. he begins an interrupted picture again and again, and adds something to it to heighten the expression, as leonardo died with the consciousness that there was something yet to be done to his "joconda." sometimes a laboured effect is brought into his works by this method, but in other ways he has gained in this struggle with reality a power of exposition, a capacity of expression, a force of appeal, and such a remarkable insight for rightness of effect that every one of his good pictures could be hung without detriment in a gallery of old masters; the nineteenth century did not see many arise who could bear such a proximity in every respect. his landscapes are as full of sap as creation itself; they reveal a forcible condensation of nature. the only words which can be used to describe him are strength, health, and energy. "it ought to be: in the beginning was the power." [illustration: _s. low & co._ corot. the ruin.] from his youth upwards théodore rousseau was a masculine spirit; even as a stripling he was a man above all juvenile follies--one might almost say, a philosopher without ideals. in literature turgenief's conception of nature might be most readily compared with that of rousseau. in turgenief's _diary of a sportsman_, written in , everything is so fresh and full of sap that one could imagine it was not so much the work of a human pen as a direct revelation from the forest and the steppes. though men are elsewhere habituated to see their joys and sorrows reflected in nature, the sentiment of his own personality falls from turgenief when he contemplates the eternal spectacle of the elements. he plunges into nature and loses the consciousness of his own being in hers; and he becomes a part of what he contemplates. for him the majesty of nature lies in her treating everything, from the worm to the human being, with impassiveness. man receives neither love nor hatred at her hands; she neither rejoices in the good that he does nor complains of sin and crime, but looks beyond him with her deep, earnest eyes because he is an object of complete indifference to her. "the last of thy brothers might vanish off the face of the earth and not a needle of the pine branches would tremble." nature has something icy, apathetic, terrible; and the fear which she can inspire through this indifference of hers ceases only when we begin to understand the relationship in which we are to our surroundings, when we begin to comprehend that man and animal, tree and flower, bird and fish, owe their existence to this one mother. so turgenief came to the same point as spinoza. [illustration: corot. evening.] and rousseau did the same. the nature of théodore rousseau was devoid of all excitable enthusiasm. thus the world he painted became something austere, earnest, and inaccessible beneath his hands. he lived in it alone, fleeing from his fellows, and for this reason human figures are seldom to be found in his pictures. he loved to paint nature on cold, grey impassive days, when the trees cast great shadows and forms stand out forcibly against the sky. he is not the painter of morning and evening twilight. there is no awakening and no dawn, no charm in these landscapes and no youth. children would not laugh here, nor lovers venture to caress. in these trees the birds would build no nests, nor their fledglings twitter. his oaks stand as if they had so stood from eternity. "die unbegrieflich hohen werke sind herrlich wie am ersten tag." like turgenief, rousseau ended in pantheism. [illustration: _s. low & co._ corot. an evening in normandy.] he familiarised himself more and more with the endless variety of plants and trees, of the earth and the sky at the differing hours of the day: he made his forms even more precise. he wished to paint the organic life of inanimate nature--the life which heaves unconsciously everywhere, sighing in the air, streaming from the bosom of the earth, and vibrating in the tiniest blade of grass as positively as it palpitates through the branches of the old oaks. these trees and herbs are not human, but they are characterised by their peculiar features, just as though they were men. the poplars grow like pyramids, and have green and silvered leaves, the oaks dark foliage and gnarled far-reaching boughs. the oaks stand fixed and immovable against the storm, whilst the slender poplars bend pliantly before it. this curious distinction in all the forms of nature, each one of which fulfils a course of existence like that of man, was a problem which pursued rousseau throughout his life as a vast riddle. observe his trees: they are not dead things; the sap of life mounts unseen through their strong trunks to the smallest branches and shoots, which spread from the extremity of the boughs like clawing fingers. the soil works and alters; every plant reveals the inner structure of the organism which produced it. and this striving even became a curse to him in his last period. nature became for him an organism which he studied as an anatomist studies a corpse, an organism all the members of which act one upon the other according to logical laws, like the wheels of a machine; and for the proper operation of this machine the smallest plants seemed as necessary as the mightiest oaks, the gravel as important as the most tremendous rock. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ corot. the dance of the nymphs.] convinced that there was nothing in nature either indifferent or without its purpose, and that everything had a justification for its existence and played a part in the movement of universal life, he believed also that in everything, however small it might be, there was a special pictorial significance; and he toiled to discover this, to make it evident, and often forgot the while that art must make sacrifices if it is to move and charm. in his boundless veneration for the logical organism of nature he held, as a kind of categorical imperative, that it was right to give the same importance to the infinitely small as to the infinitely great. the notion was chimerical, and it wrecked him. in his last period the only things that will preserve their artistic reputation are his marvellously powerful drawings. no one ever had such a feeling for values, and thus he knew how to give his drawings--quite apart from their pithy weight of stroke--an effect of light which was forcibly striking. just as admirable were the water-colours produced under the influence of japanese picture-books. the pictures of petty detail which belong to these years have only an historical interest, and that merely because it is instructive to see how a great genius can deceive himself. one of his last works, the view of mont blanc, with the boundless horizon and the countless carefully and scrupulously delineated planes of ground, has neither pictorial beauty nor majesty. in the presence of this bizarre work one feels astonishment at the artist's endurance and strength of will, but disappointment at the result. he wanted to win the secret of its being from every undulation of the ground, from every blade of grass, and from every leaf; he was anxiously bent upon what he called _planimétrie_, upon the importance of horizontal planes, and he accentuated detail and accessory work beyond measure. his pantheistic faith in nature brought théodore rousseau to his fall. those who did not know him spoke of his childish stippling and of the decline of his talent. those who did know him saw in this stippling the issue of the same endeavours which poor charles de la berge had made before him, and of the principles on which the landscape of the english pre-raphaelites was being based about this time. if one looks at his works and then reads his life one almost comes to have for him a kind of religious veneration. there is something of the martyr in this insatiable observer, whose life was one long struggle, and to whom the study of the earth's construction and the anatomy of branches was almost a religion. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ corot. a dance.] [illustration: j. b. c. corot. landscape.] at first he had to struggle for ten years for bread and recognition. it seems hardly credible that his landscapes, even after , when they had obtained entry into the salon, were a source of irritation there for years, simply because they were green. the public was so accustomed to brown trees and brown grass, that every other colour in the landscape was an offence against decency, and before a green picture the philistine immediately cried out, "spinage!" "_allez, c'était dur d'ouvrir la brêche_," said he, in his later years. and at last, at the world exhibition of , when he had made it clear to europe who théodore rousseau was, the evening of his life was saddened by pain and illness. he had married a poor unfortunate creature, a wild child of the forest, the only feminine being that he had found time to love during his life of toil. after a few years of marriage she became insane, and whilst he tended her rousseau himself fell a victim to an affection of the brain which darkened his last years. death came to his release in . as he lay dying his mad wife danced and trilled to the screaming of her parrot. he rests "_dans le plain calme de la nature_" in the village churchyard at chailly, near barbizon, buried in front of his much-loved forest. millet erected the headstone--a simple cross upon an unhewn block of sandstone, with a tablet of brass on which are inscribed the words: [illustration: _hanjstaengl._ corot. la route d'arras.] thÉodore rousseau, peintre. "_rousseau c'est un aigle. quant à moi, je ne suis qu'une alouette qui pousse de petites chansons dans mes nuages gris._" with these words _camille corot_ has indicated the distinction between rousseau and himself. they denote the two opposite poles of modern landscape. what attracted the plastic artists, rousseau, ruysdael, and hobbema--the relief of objects, the power of contours, the solidity of forms--was not corot's concern. whilst rousseau never spoke about colour with his pupils, but as _ceterum censeo_ invariably repeated, "_enfin, la forme est la première chose à observer_," corot himself admitted that drawing was not his strong point. when he tried to paint rocks he was but moderately effective, and all his efforts at drawing the human figure were seldom crowned with real success, although in his last years he returned to the task with continuous zeal. apart from such peculiar exceptions as that wonderful picture "the toilet," his figures are always the weakest part of his landscapes, and only have a good effect when in the background they reveal their delicate outlines, half lost in rosy haze. he was not much more felicitous with his animals, and in particular there often appear in his pictures great heavy cows, which are badly planted on their feet, and which one wishes that he had left out. amongst trees he did not care to paint the oak, the favourite tree with all artists who have a passion for form, nor the chestnut, nor the elm, but preferred to summon, amid the delicate play of sunbeams, the aspen, the poplar, the alder, the birch with its white slender stem and its pale, tremulous leaves, and the willow with its light foliage. in rousseau a tree is a proud, toughly knotted personality, a noble, self-conscious creation; in corot it is a soft tremulous being rocking in the fragrant air, in which it whispers and murmurs of love and joy. his favourite season was not the autumn, when the turning leaves, hard as steel, stand out with firm lines, quiet and motionless, against the clear sky, but the early spring, when the farthest twigs upon the boughs deck themselves with little leaves of tender green, which vibrate and quiver with the least breath of air. he had, moreover, a perfectly wonderful secret of rendering the effect of the tiny blades of grass and the flowers which grow upon the meadows in june; he delighted to paint the banks of a stream with tall bushes bending to the water, and he loved water itself in undetermined clearness and in the shifting glance of light, leaving it here in shadow and touching it there with brightness; the sky in the depths beneath wedded to the bright border of the pool or the vanishing outlines of the bank, and the clouds floating across the sky, and here and there embracing a light shining fragment of the blue. he loved morning before sunrise, when the white mists hover over pools like a light veil of gauze, and gradually disperse as the sun breaks through, but he had a passion for evening which was almost greater: he loved the soft vapours which gather in the gloom, thickening until they become pale grey velvet mantles, as peace and rest descend upon the earth with the drawing on of night. [illustration: _l'art._ jules duprÉ.] in contradistinction from rousseau his specialty was everything soft and wavering, everything that has neither determined form nor sharp lines, and that, by not appealing too clearly to the eye, is the more conducive to dreamy reveries. it is not the spirit of a sculptor that lives in corot, but that of a poet, or still better, the spirit of a musician, since music is the least plastic of the arts. it is not surprising to read in his biography that, like watteau, he had almost a greater passion for music than for painting, and that when he painted he had always an old song or an opera aria upon his lips, that when he spoke of his pictures he had a taste for drawing comparisons from music, and that he had a season-ticket at the _conservatoire_, never missed a concert, and played upon the violin himself. indeed, there is something of the tender note of this instrument in his pictures, which make such a sweetly solemn appeal through their delicious silver tone. beside rousseau, the plastic artist, père corot is an idyllic painter of melting grace; beside rousseau, the realist, he seems a dreamy musician; beside rousseau, the virile spirit earnestly making experiments in art, he appears like a bashful schoolgirl in love. rousseau approached nature in broad daylight, with screws and levers, as a cool-headed man of science; corot caressed and flattered her, sung her wooing love-songs till she descended to meet him in the twilight hours, and whispered to him, her beloved, the secrets which rousseau was unable to wring from her by violence. [illustration: _l'art._ the house of jules duprÉ at l'isle-adam.] _corot_ was sixteen years senior to rousseau. he still belonged to the eighteenth century, to the time when, under the dictatorship of david, paris transformed herself into imperial rome. david, gérard, guérin, and prudhon, artists so different in talent, were the painters whose works met his first eager glances, and no particular acuteness is needed to recognise in the nymphs and cupids with which corot in after-years, especially in the evening of his life, dotted his fragrant landscapes, the direct issue of prudhon's charming goddesses, the reminiscences of his youth nourished on the antique. he, too, was a child of old paris, with its narrow streets and corners. his father was a hairdresser in the rue du bac, number , and had made the acquaintance of a girl who lived at number in the same street, close to the pont royal, and was shop-girl at a milliner's. he carried on his barber's shop until , when camille, the future painter, was two years old. then madame corot herself undertook the millinery establishment in which she had once worked. there might be read on the front of the narrow little house, number of the rue du bac, _madame corot, marchande de modes_. m. corot, a polite and very correct little man, raised the business to great prosperity. the tuileries were opposite, and under napoleon i corot became court "modiste." as such he must have attained a certain celebrity, as even the theatre took his name in vain. a piece which was then frequently played at the comédie française contains the passage: "i have just come from corot, but could not speak to him; he was locked up in his private room occupied in composing a new spring hat." [illustration: _s. low & co._ duprÉ. the setting sun.] camille went to the high school in rouen, and was then destined, according to the wish of his father, to adopt some serious calling "by which money was to be made." he began his career with a yard-measure in a linen-draper's establishment, ran through the suburbs of paris with a book of patterns under his arm selling cloth--_couleur olive_--and in his absence of mind made the clumsiest mistakes. after eight years of opposition his father consented to his becoming a painter. "you will have a yearly allowance of twelve hundred francs," said old corot, "and if you can live on that you may do as you please." at the pont royal, behind his father's house, he painted his first picture, amid the tittering of the little dressmaker's apprentices who looked on with curiosity from the window, but one of whom, mademoiselle rose, remained his dear friend through life. this was in , and twenty years went by before he returned to french soil in the pictures that he painted. victor bertin became his teacher; in other words, classicism, style, and coldness. he sought diligently to do as others; he drew studies, composed historical landscapes, and painted as he saw the academicians painting around him. to conclude his orthodox course of training it only remained for him to make the pilgrimage to italy, where claude lorrain had once painted and poussin had invented the historical landscape. in --when he was twenty-eight--he set out with bertin and aligny, remained long in rome, and came to naples. the classicists, whose circle he entered with submissive veneration, welcomed him for his cheerful, even temper and the pretty songs which he sang in fine tenor voice. early every morning he went into the campagna, with a colour-box under his arm and a sentimental ditty on his lips, and there he drew the ruins with an architectural severity, just like poussin. in , after a sojourn of two years and a half in italy, he was able to make an appearance in the salon with his carefully balanced landscapes. in and he stayed again in italy, and only after this third pilgrimage were his eyes opened to the charms of french landscape. [illustration: _l'art._ the bridge at l'isle-adam.] one can pass rapidly over this first section of corot's work. his pictures of this period are not without merit, but to speak of them with justice they should be compared with contemporary classical productions. then one finds in them broad and sure drawing, and can recognise a powerful hand and notice an astonishing increase of ability. even on his second sojourn in italy he painted no longer as an ethnographical student, and no longer wasted his powers on detail. but it is in the pictures of his last twenty years that corot first becomes the theocritus of the nineteenth century. the second corot has spoilt one's enjoyment for the first. but who would care to pick a quarrel with him on that score! beside his later pictures how hard are those studies from rome, which the dying painter left to the louvre, and which, as his maiden efforts, he regarded with great tenderness all through his life. how little they have of the delicate, harmonious light of his later works! the great historical landscape with homer in it, where light and shadow are placed so trenchantly beside each other, the landscape "aricia," "saint jerome in the desert," the picture of the young girl sitting reading beside a mountain stream, "the beggar" with that team in mad career which decamps could not have painted with greater virtuosity,--they are all good pictures by the side of those of his contemporaries, but in comparison with real corots they are like the exercises of a pupil, in their hard, dry painting, their black, coarse tones, and their chalky wall of atmosphere. there is neither breeze nor transparency nor life in the air; the trees are motionless, and look as if they were heavily cased in iron. [illustration: _baschet._ duprÉ. near southampton. (_by permission of m. jules beer, the owner of the picture._)] corot was approaching his fortieth year, an age at which a man's ideas are generally fixed, when the great revolution of french landscape painting was accomplished under the influence of the english and of rousseau. trained in academical traditions, he might have remained steadfast in his own province. to follow the young school he had completely to learn his art again, and alter his method of treatment with the choice of subjects, and this casting of his slough demanded another fifteen years. when he passed from italian to french landscape, after his return from his third journey to rome in , his pictures were still hard and heavy. he had already felt the influence of bonington and constable, by the side of whose works his first exhibited picture had hung in . but he still lacked the power of rendering light and air, and his painting had neither softness nor light. even in the choice of subject he was still undecided, returning more than once to the historical landscape and working on it with unequal success. his masterpiece of , "the baptism of christ," in the church of saint nicolas du chardonnet in paris, is no more than a delicate imitation of the old masters. the "christ upon the mount of olives" of , in the museum of langres, is the first picture which seems like a convert's confession of faith. in the centre of the picture, before a low hill, christ kneels upon the ground praying; his disciples are around him, and to the right, vanishing in the shadows, the olive trees stretch their gnarled branches over the darkened way. a dark blue sky, in which a star is flickering, broods tremulously over the landscape. one might pass the christ over unobserved; but for the title he would be hard to recognise. but the star shining far away, the transparent clearness of the night sky, the light clouds, and the mysterious shadows gliding swiftly over the ground,--these have no more to do with the false and already announce the true corot. from this time he found the way on which he went forward resolute and emancipated. [illustration: duprÉ. the punt.] for five-and-twenty years it was permitted to him to labour in perfect ripeness, freedom, and artistic independence. one thinks of corot as though he had been a child until he was fifty and then first entered upon his adolescence. up to he took from his father the yearly allowance of twelve hundred francs given him as a student, and in that year, when he received the cross of the legion of honour, m. corot doubled the sum for the future, observing: "well, camille seems to have talent after all." about the same time his friends remarked that he went about barbizon one day more meditatively than usual. "my dear fellow," said he to one of them, "i am inconsolable. till now i had a complete collection of corots, and it has been broken to-day, for i have sold one for the first time." and even at seventy-four he said: "how swiftly one's life passes, and how much must one exert one's self to do anything good!" the history of art has few examples to offer of so long a spring. corot had the privilege of never growing old; his life was a continual rejuvenescence. the works which made him corot are the youthful works of an old man, the matured creations of a grey-headed artist, who--like titian--remained for ever young; and for their artistic appreciation it is not without importance to remember this. [illustration: _baschet._ duprÉ. sunset. (_by permission of m. jules beer, the owner of the picture._)] of all the fontainebleau painters corot was the least a realist: he was the least bound to the earth, and he was never bent upon any exact rendering of a part of nature. no doubt he worked much in the open air, but he worked far more in his studio; he painted many scenes as they lay before him, but more often those which he only saw in his own mind. he is reported to have said on his deathbed: "last night i saw in a dream a landscape with a sky all rosy. it was charming, and still stands before me quite distinctly; it will be marvellous to paint." how many landscapes may he not have thus dreamed, and painted from the recollected vision! [illustration: _l'art._ duprÉ. the hay-wain.] for a young man this would be a very dangerous method. for corot it was the only one which allowed him to remain corot, because in this way no unnecessary detail disturbed the pure, poetic reverie. he had spent his whole life in a dallying courtship with nature, ever renewed. as a child he looked down from his attic window upon the wavering mists of the seine; as a schoolboy in rouen he wandered lost in his own fancies along the borders of the great river; when he had grown older he went every year with his sister to a little country-house in ville d'avray, which his father had bought for him in . here he stood at the open window, in the depth of the night, when every one was asleep, absorbed in looking at the sky and listening to the plash of waters and the rustling of leaves. here he stayed quite alone. no sound disturbed his reveries, and unconsciously he drank in the soft, moist air and the delicate vapour rising from the neighbouring river. everything was harmoniously reflected in his quick and eager spirit, and his eyes beheld the individual trait of nature floating in the universal life. he began not merely to see nature, but to feel her presence, like that of a beloved woman, to receive her very breath and to hear the beating of her heart. one knows the marvellous letter in which he describes the day of a landscape painter to jules dupré: "_on se lève de bonne heure, à trois heures du matin, avant le soleil; on va s'asseoir au pied d'un arbre, on regarde et on attend. on ne voit pas grand'chose d'abord. la nature ressemble à une toile blanchâtre où s'esquissent à peine les profils de quelques masses: tout est embaumé, tout frisonne au souffle fraîchi de l'aube. bing! le soleil s'éclaircit ... le soleil n'a pas encore déchiré la gaze derrière laquelle se cachent la prairie, le vallon, les collines de l'horizon.... les vapeurs nocturnes rampent encore commes des flocons argentés sur les herbes d'un vert transi. bing!... bing!... un premier rayon de soleil ... un second rayon de soleil.... les petites fleurettes semblent s'éveiller joyeuses.... elles out toutes leur goutte de rosée qui tremble ... les feuilles frileuses s'agitent au souffle du matin ... dans la feuillée, les oiseaux invisibles chantent.... il semble que ce sont les fleurs qui font la prière. les amours à ailes de papillons s'ébattent sur la prairie et font onduler les hautes herbes.... on ne voit rien ... tout y est. le paysage est tout entier derrière la gaze transparente du brouillard, qui, au reste ... monte ... monte ... aspiré par le soleil ... et laisse, en se levant, voir la rivière lamée d'argent, les prés, les arbres, les maisonettes, le lointain fuyant.... on distingue enfin tout ce que l'on divinait d'abord._" [illustration: _baschet._ duprÉ. the old oak.] at the end there is an ode to evening which is perhaps to be reckoned amongst the most delicate pages of french lyrics: "_la nature s'assoupit ... cependant l'air frais du soir soupire dans les feuilles ... la rosée emperle le velours des gazons.... les nymphes fuient ... se cachent ... et désirent être vues.... bing! une étoile du ciel qui pique une tête dans l'étang.... charmante étoile, dont le frémissement de l'eau augmente le scintillement, tu me regardes ... tu me souris en clignant de l'oeil.... bing! une seconde étoile apparaît dans l'eau; un second oeil s'ouvre. soyez les bienvenues, fraîches et charmantes étoiles.... bing! bing! bing! trois, six, vingt étoiles.... toutes les étoiles du ciel se sont donné rendez-vous dans cet heureux étang.... tout s'assombrit encore.... l'étang seul scintille.... c'est un fourmillement d'étoiles.... l'illusion se produit.... le soleil étant couché, le soleil intérieur de l'âme, le soleil de l'art se lève.... bon! voilâ mon tableau fait_." [illustration: duprÉ. the pool.] any one who has never read anything about corot except these lines may know him through them alone. even that little word "bing" comprises and elucidates his art by its clear, silvery resonance. the words vibrate like the strings of a violin that have been gently touched, and they want mozart's music as an accompaniment. i do not know any one who has described all the feminine tenderness of nature, the dishevelled leaves of the birches, the heaving bosom of the air, the fresh virginity of morning, the weary, sensuous charm of evening, with such seductive tenderness and such highly strung feeling, so voluptuously and yet so coyly. to these impressions of rouen, ville d'avray, and barbizon were added finally those of paris. for corot was born in paris, and, often as he left it, he always came back; he passed the greatest part of his life there, and there it was, perhaps, that in his last period he created his most poetic works. in these years he had no more need of actual landscapes; he needed only a sky and they rose before him. every evening after sundown he left his studio just at the time when the dusk fell veiling everything. he raised his eyes to the sky, the only part of nature which remained visible. and how often does this twilight sky of paris recur in corot's pictures! at the end of his life he could really give himself over to a dream. the drawings and countless studies of his youth bear witness to the care, patience, and exactitude of his preparation. they gave him in after-years, when he was sure of his hand, the right to simplify, because he knew everything thoroughly. thus boecklin paints his pictures without a model, and thus corot painted his landscapes. the hardest problems are solved apparently as if he were improvising; and for that very reason the sight of a corot gives such unspeakable pleasure, such an impression of charming ease. it is only a hand which has used a brush for forty years that can paint thus. all effects are attained with the minimum expenditure of strength and material. the drawing lies as if behind colour that has been blown on to the canvas; it is as if one looked through a thin gauze into the distance. whoever has studied reality so many years, with patient and observant eye, as corot did, whoever has daily satiated his imagination with the impressions of nature, may finally venture on painting, not this or that scenery, but the fragrance, the very essence of things, and render merely his own spirit and his own visions free from all earthly and retarding accessories. there is a temptation to do honour to corot's pictures merely as "the confessions of a beautiful soul." [illustration: _l'art._ narcisse diaz.] but corot was as great and strong as a hercules. in his blue blouse, with his woollen cap and the inevitable short corot pipe in his mouth--a pipe which has become historical--one would have taken him for a carter rather than a celebrated painter. at the same time he remained during his whole life--a girl: twenty years senior to all the great landscape painters of the epoch, he was at once a patriarch in their eyes and their younger comrade. his long white hair surrounded the innocent face of a ruddy country girl, and his kind and pleasant eyes were those of a child listening to a fairy-tale. in , during the fighting on the barricades, he asked with childish astonishment: "what is the matter? are we not satisfied with the government?" and during the war in this great hoary-headed child of seventy-four bought a musket, to join in fighting against germany. benevolence was the joy of his old age. every friend who begged for a picture was given one, while for money he had the indifference of a hermit who has no wants and neither sows nor reaps, but is fed by his heavenly father. he ran breathlessly after an acquaintance to whom, contrary to his wont, he had refused five thousand francs: "forgive me," he said; "i am a miser, but there they are." and when a picture-dealer brought him ten thousand francs he gave him the following direction: "send them," he said, "to the widow of my friend millet; only, she must believe that you have bought pictures from _him_." his one passion was music, his whole life "an eternal song." corot was a happy man, and no one more deserved to be happy. in his kind-hearted vivacity and even good spirits he was a favourite with all who came near him and called him familiarly their papa corot. everything in him was healthy and natural; his was a harmonious nature, living and working happily. this harmony is reflected in his art. and he saw the joy in nature which he had in himself. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ diaz. the descent of the bohemians.] everything that was coarse or horrible in nature he avoided, and his own life passed without romance or any terrible catastrophes. he has no picture in which there is a harassed tree vexed by the storm. corot's own spirit was touched neither by passions nor by the strokes of fate. there is air in his landscapes, but never storm; streams, but not torrents; waters, but not floods; plains, but not rugged mountains. all is soft and quiet as his own heart, whose peace the storm never troubled. [illustration: _l'art._ diaz. among the foliage.] no man ever lived a more orderly, regular, and reasonable life. he was only spendthrift where others were concerned. no evening passed that he did not play a rubber of whist with his mother, who died only a little before him, and was loved by the old man with the devoted tenderness of a child. from an early age he had the confirmed habits which make the day long and prevent waste of time. the eight years which he passed in the linen-drapery establishment of m. delalain had accustomed him to punctuality. every morning he rose very early, and at three minutes to eight he was in his studio as punctually as he had been in earlier years at the counter, and went through his daily task without feverish haste or idleness, humming with that quietude which makes the furthest progress. for that reason he had also an aversion to everything passionate in nature, to everything irregular, sudden, or languid, to the feverish burst of storm as to the relaxing languor of summer heat. he loved all that is quiet, symmetrical, and fresh, peaceful and blithe, everything that is enchanting by its repose: the bright, tender sky, the woods and meadows tinged with green, the streamlets and the hills, the regular awakening of spring, the soft, quiet hours of evening twilight, the dewy laughing morning, the delicate mists which form slowly the over surface of still waters, the joy of clear, starry nights, when all voices are silent and every breeze is at rest; and the cheerfulness of his own spirit is reflected in everything. [illustration: diaz. a tree trunk.] one might go further, and say that corot's goodness is mirrored in his pictures. corot loved humanity and wished it well, and he shrank from no sacrifice in helping his friends. and even so did he love the country, and wished to see it animated, enlivened, and blest by human beings. that is the great distinction between him and chintreuil, who is otherwise so like him. chintreuil also painted nature when she quivers smiling beneath the gentle and vivifying glance of spring, but figures are wanting in his pictures. as a timid, fretful, unsociable man, he imagined that nature also felt happiest in solitude. the scenery in which chintreuil delighted was thick, impenetrable copse, lonely haunts in the tangle of the thicket, from which now and then a startled hind stretches out its head, glancing uneasily. corot, who could not endure solitude, being always the centre of a cheery social gathering, made nature a sociable being. men, women, and children give animation to his woods and meadows. and at times he introduces peasants at work in the fields, but how little do they resemble the peasants of millet! the rustics of the master of gruchy are as hard and rough as they are actual; the burden of life has bowed their figures and lined their faces prematurely; they are old before their time, and weary every evening. corot's labourers never grow weary: lightly touched in rather than painted, dreamt of rather than seen, they carry on an ethereal existence in the open air, free and contented; they have never suffered, just as corot himself knew no sufferings. but as a rule human beings were altogether out of place in the happy fields conjured up by his fairy fantasy; and then came the moment when prudhon lived again. the nymphs and bacchantes whom he had met as a youth by the tomb of virgil visited him in the evening of life in the forest of fontainebleau and in the meadows of ville d'avray. [illustration: _cassell & co._ diaz. forest scene.] in his pictures he dreamed of pillars and altars near which mythical figures moved once more, dryads sleeping by the stream, dancing fauns, _junctæque nymphis gratiæ decentes_ in classical raiment. in this sense he was a classicist all his life. his nymphs, however, are no mere accessories; they have nothing in common with the faded troop of classic beings whose old age in the ruins of forsaken temples was so long tended by the academy. in corot they are the natural habitants of a world of harmony and light, the logical complement of his visions of nature: in the same way beethoven at the close of the ninth symphony introduced the human voice. no sooner has he touched in the lines of his landscapes than the nymphs and tritons, the radiant children of the greek idyllic poets, desert the faded leaves of books to populate corot's groves, and refresh themselves in the evening shadows of his forests. [illustration: charles franÇois daubigny.] for the evening dusk, the hour after sunset, is peculiarly the hour of corot; his very preference for the harmonious beauty of dying light was the effluence of his own harmonious temperament. when he would, corot was a colourist of the first order. the world exhibition of contained pictures of women by his hand which resembled feuerbach in their strict and austere beauty of countenance, and which recalled delacroix in the liquid fulness of tone and their fantastic and variously coloured garb. but, compared with the orgies of colour indulged in by romanticism, his works are generally characterised by the most delicate reserve in painting. a bright silvery sheet of water and the ivory skin of a nymph are usually the only touches of colour that hover in the pearly grey mist of his pictures. as a man corot avoided all dramas and strong contrasts; everything abrupt or loud was repellent to his nature. thus it was that the painter, too, preferred the clear grey hours of evening, in which nature envelops herself as if in a delicate, melting veil of gauze. here he was able to be entirely corot, and to paint without contours and almost without colours, and bathe in the soft, dusky atmosphere. he saw lines no longer; everything was breath, fragrance, vibration, and mystery. "_ce n'est plus une toile et ce n'est plus un peintre, c'est le bon dieu et c'est le soir._" elysian airs began to breathe, and the faint echo of the prattling streamlet sounded gently murmuring in the wood; the soft arms of the nymphs clung round him, and from the neighbouring thicket tender, melting melodies chimed forth like Æolian harps-- "rege dich, du schilfgeflüster; hauche leise, rohrgeschwister; säuselt, leichte weidensträuche; lispelt, pappelzitterzweige unterbroch'nen träumen zu." his end was as harmonious as his life and his art. "_rien ne trouble sa fin, c'est le soir d'un beau jour._" his sister, with whom the old bachelor had lived, died in the october of , and corot could not endure loneliness. on rd february --when he had just completed his seventy-ninth year--he was heard to say as he lay in bed drawing with his fingers in the air: "_mon dieu_, how beautiful that is; the most beautiful landscape i have ever seen." when his old housekeeper wanted to bring him his breakfast he said with a smile: "to-day père corot will breakfast above." even his last illness robbed him of none of his cheerfulness, and when his friends brought him as he lay dying the medal struck to commemorate his jubilee as an artist of fifty years' standing, he said with tears of joy in his eyes: "it makes one happy to know that one has been so loved; i have had good parents and dear friends. i am thankful to god." with those words he passed away to his true home, the land of spirits--not the paradise of the church, but the elysian fields he had dreamt of and painted so often: "_largior hic campos æther et lumine vestit purpureo._" [illustration: _l'art._ daubigny. springtime.] when they bore him from his house in the faubour-poissonière and a passer-by asked who was being buried, a fat shopwoman standing at the door of her house answered: "i don't know his name, but he was a good man." beethoven's symphony in c minor was played at his funeral, according to his own direction, and as the coffin was being lowered a lark rose exulting to the sky. "the artist will be replaced with difficulty, the man never," said dupré at corot's grave. on th may an unobtrusive monument to his memory was unveiled at the border of the lake at ville d'avray, in the midst of the dark forest where he had so often dreamed. he died in the fulness of his fame as an artist, but it was the forty pictures collected in the centenary exhibition of which first made the world fully conscious of what modern art possessed in corot: a master of immortal masterpieces, the greatest poet and the tenderest soul of the nineteenth century, as fra angelico was the tenderest soul of the fifteenth, and watteau the greatest poet of the eighteenth. [illustration: _baschet._ daubigny. a lock in the vally of optevoz.] _jules dupré_, a melancholy spirit, who was inwardly consumed by a lonely existence spent in passionate work, stands as the beethoven of modern painting beside corot, its mozart. if théodore rousseau was the epic poet of the fontainebleau school, and corot the idyllic poet, dupré seems its tragic dramatist. rousseau's nature is hard, rude, and indifferent to man. for corot god is the great philanthropist, who wishes to see men happy, and lets the spring come and the warm winds blow only that children may have their pleasure in them. his soul is, as goethe has it in _werther_, "as blithe as those of sweet spring mornings." jules dupré has neither rousseau's reality nor corot's tenderness; his tones are neither imperturbable nor subdued. "_quant derrière un tronc d'arbre ou derrière une pierre, vous ne trouvez pas un homme à quoi ça sert-il de faire du paysage._" in corot there is a charm as of the light melodies of the _zauberflöte_; in dupré the ear is struck by the shattering notes of the _sinfonie eroica_. rousseau looks into the heart of nature with widely dilated pupils and a critical glance. corot woos her smiling, caressing, and dallying; dupré courts her uttering impassioned complaint and with tears in his eyes. in him are heard the mighty fugues of romanticism. the trees live, the waves laugh and weep, the sky sings and wails, and the sun, like a great conductor, determines the harmony of the concert. even the two pictures with which he made an appearance in the salon in , after he had left the sèvres china manufactory and become acquainted with constable during a visit to england--the "near southampton" and "pasture-land in the limousin"--displayed him as an accomplished master. in "near southampton" everything moves and moans. across an undulating country a dark tempest blusters, like a wild host, hurrying and sweeping forward in the gloom, tearing and scattering everything in its path, whirling leaves from the slender trees. clouds big with rain hasten across the horizon as if on a forced march. the whole landscape seems to partake in the flight; the brushwood seems to bow its head like a traveller. in the background a few figures are recognisable: people overtaken by the storm at their work; horses with their manes flying in the wind; and a rider seeking refuge for himself and his beast. a stretch of sluggish water ruffles its waves as though it were frowning. everything is alive and quaking in this majestic solitude, and in the mingled play of confused lights, hurrying clouds, fluttering branches, and trembling grass. [illustration: _cassell & co._ daubigny. on the oise.] [illustration: _s. low & co._ daubigny. shepherd and shepherdess.] "pasture-land in the limousin" had the same overpowering energy; it was an admirable picture in , and it is admirable still. the fine old trees stand like huge pillars; the grass, drenched with rain, is of an intense green; nature seems to shudder as if in a fever. and through his whole life dupré was possessed by the lyrical fever of romanticism. as the last champion of romanticism he bore the banner of the proud generation of through well-nigh two generations, and until his death in stood on the ground where paul huet had first placed french landscape; but huet attained his pictorial effects by combining and by calculation, while dupré is always a great, true, and convincing poet. every evening he was seen in l'isle adam, where he settled in , wandering alone across the fields, even in drenching rain. one of his pupils declares that once, when they stood at night on the bridge of the oise during a storm, dupré broke into a paroxysm of tears at the magnificent spectacle. he was a fanatic rejoicing in storms, one who watched the tragedies of the heaven with quivering emotion, a passionate spirit consumed by his inward force, and, like his literary counterpart victor hugo, he sought beauty of landscape only where it was wild and magnificent. he is the painter of nature vexed and harassed, and of the majestic silence that follows the storm. the theme of his pictures is at one time the whirling torture of the yellow leaves driven before the wind in eddying confusion; tormented and quivering they cleave to the furrows in the mad chase, fall into dykes, and cling against the trunks of trees, to find refuge from their persecutor. at another time he paints how the night wind whistles round an old church and whirls the screaming weather-cock round and round, how it moans and rattles with invisible hand against the doors, forces its way through the windows, and, once shut in its stony prison, seeks a way out again, howling and wailing. he paints sea-pieces in which the sea rages and mutters like some hoarse old monster; the colour of the water is dirty and pallid; the howling multitude of waves storms on like an innumerable army before which every human power gives way. stones are torn loose and hurled crashing upon the shore. the clouds are dull and ghostly, here black as smoke, there of a shining whiteness, and swollen as though they must burst. he celebrates the commotion of the sky, nature in her angry majesty, and the most brilliant phenomena of atmospheric life. rousseau's highest aim was to avoid painting for effect, and corot only cared for grace of tone; a picture of his consists "of a little grey and a certain _je ne sais quoi_." jules dupré is peculiarly the colour-poet of the group, and sounds the most resonant notes in the romantic concert. his light does not beam in gently vibrating silver tones, but is concentrated in glaring red suns. "_ah, la lumière, la lumière!_" beside the flaming hues of evening red he paints the darkest shadows. he revels in contrasts. his favourite key of colour is that of a ghostly sunset, against which a gnarled oak or the dark sail of a tiny vessel rises like a phantom. trembling and yet with ardent desire he looks at the tumult of waters, and hears the roll and resonance of the moon-silvered tide. he delights in night, rain, and storm. corot's gentle rivulets become a rolling and whirling flood in his pictures, a headlong stream carrying all before it. the wind no longer sighs, but blusters across the valley, spreading ruin in its path. the clouds which in corot are silvery and gentle, like white lambs, are in dupré black and threatening, like demons of hell. in corot the soft morning breeze faintly agitates the tender clouds in the sky; in dupré a damp, cold wind of evening blows a spectral grey mist into the valley, and the hurricane tears apart the thunderclouds. "wenn ich fern auf nackter haide wallte, wo aus dämmernder geklüfte schooss der titanensang der ströme schallte und die nacht der wolken mich umschloss, wenn der sturm mit seinen wetterwogen mir vorüber durch die berge fuhr und des himmels flammen mich umflogen, da erscheinst du, seele der natur." [illustration: daubigny. landscape: evening.] [illustration: _baschet._ chintreuil. landscape: morning.] the first of the brilliant pleiad who did not come from paris itself is _diaz_, who in his youth worked with dupré in the china manufactory of sèvres. of noble spanish origin--narciso virgilio diaz de la peña ran his high-sounding name in full--he was born in bordeaux in , after his parents had taken refuge from the revolution across the pyrenees, and in his landscapes, too, perhaps, his spanish blood betrays him now and then. diaz has in him a little of fortuny. beside the great genius wrestling for truth and the virile seriousness of rousseau, beside the gloomy, powerful landscapes of dupré with their deep, impassioned poetry, the sparkling and flattering pictures of diaz seem to be rather light wares. for him nature is a keyboard on which to play capricious fantasies. his pictures have the effect of sparkling diamonds, and one must surrender one's self to this charm without asking its cause; otherwise it evaporates. diaz has perhaps rather too much of the talent of a juggler, the sparkle of a magic kaleidoscope. "you paint stinging nettles, and i prefer roses," is the characteristic expression which he used to millet. his painting is piquant and as iridescent as a peacock's tail, but in this very iridescence there is often an unspeakable charm. it has the rocket-like brilliancy and the glancing chivalry which were part of the man himself, and made him the best of good company, the _enfant terrible_, the centre of all that was witty and spirited in the circle of fontainebleau. he, too, was long acquainted with poverty, as were his great brother-artists rousseau and dupré. shortly after his birth he lost his father. madame diaz, left entirely without means, came to paris, where she supported herself by giving lessons in spanish and italian. when he was ten years old the boy was left an orphan alone in the vast city. a protestant clergyman in bellevue then adopted him. and now occurred the misfortune which he was so fond of relating in after-years. in one of his wanderings through the wood he was bitten by a poisonous insect, and from that time he was obliged to hobble through life with a wooden leg, which he called his _pilon_. from his fifteenth year he worked, at first as a lame errand boy, and afterwards as a painter on china, together with dupré, raffet, and cabat, in the manufactory of sèvres. before long he was dismissed as incompetent, for one day he took it into his head to decorate a vase entirely after his own taste. then poverty began once more. often when the evening drew on he wandered about the boulevards under cover of the darkness, opened the doors of carriages which had drawn up at the pavement, and stretched out his hand to beg. "what does it matter?" he said; "one day i shall have carriages and horses, and a golden crutch; my brush will win them for me." he exhibited a picture on speculation at a picture-dealer's, in the hope of making a hundred francs; it was "the descent of the bohemians," that picturesque band of men, women, and children, who advance singing, laughing, and shouting by a steep woodland road, to descend on some neighbouring village like a swarm of locusts. a parisian collector bought it for fifteen hundred francs. diaz was saved, and he migrated to the forest of fontainebleau. [illustration: _l'art._ harpignies. moonrise.] his biography explains a great deal in the character of the painter's art. his works are unequal. in his picture "last tears," which appeared in the world exhibition of , and which stands to his landscapes as a huge block of copper to little ingots of gold, he entered upon a course in which he wandered long without any particular artistic result. he wanted to be a figure-painter, and with this object he concocted a style of painting by a mixture of various traditions, seeking to unite prudhon, correggio, and leonardo. from the master of cluny he borrowed the feminine type with a snub nose and long almond-shaped eyes, treated the hair like da vinci, and placed over it the _sfumato_ of allegri. his drawing, usually so pictorial in its light sweep, became weak in his effort to be correct, and his colouring grew dull and monotonous by its imitation of the style of the classicists. but during this period diaz made a great deal of money, sold his pictures without intermission, and avenged himself, as he had determined to do, upon his former poverty. he, who had begged upon the boulevards, was able to buy weapons and costumes at the highest figure, and build himself a charming house in the place pigalle. in all that concerns his artistic position these works, which brought him an income of fifty thousand francs, and, for a long time, the fame of a new prudhon, are nevertheless without importance. faltering between the widely divergent influences of the old masters, he did not get beyond a wavering eclecticism, and was too weak in drawing to attain results worth mentioning. it is as a landscape painter that he will be known to posterity. he is said to have been the terror of all game as long as he was the house-mate of rousseau and millet in fontainebleau, and wandered through the woods there with a gun on his arm to get a cheap supper. it is reported, too, that when his pictures were rejected by the salon in those days he laughingly made a hole in the canvas with his wooden leg, saying: "what is the use of being rich? i can't have a diamond set in my _pilon_!" it was however in the years before , when he had nothing to do with any picture-dealer, that the immortal works of diaz were executed. [illustration: _l'art._ constant troyon.] the mention of his name conjures up before the mind the recesses of a wood, reddened by autumn, a wood where the sunbeams play, gilding the trunks of the trees; naked white forms repose amid mysterious lights, or on paths of golden sand appear gaily draped odalisques, their rich costume glittering in the rays of the sun. few have won from the forest, as he did, its beauty of golden sunlight and verdant leaves. others remained at the entrance of the forest; he was the first who really penetrated to its depths. the branches met over his head like the waves of the sea, the blue heaven vanished, and everything was shrouded. the sunbeams fell like the rain of danaë through the green leaves, and the moss lay like a velvet mantle on the granite piles of rock. he settled down like a hermit in his verdant hollow. the leaves quivered green and red, and covered the ground, shining like gold in the furtive rays of the evening sun. nothing was to be seen of the trees, nothing of the outline of their foliage, nothing of the majestic sweep of their boughs, but only the mossy stems touched by the radiance of the sun. the pictures of diaz are not landscapes, for the land is wanting; they are "tree scapes," and their poetry lies in the sunbeams which dance playing round them. "have you seen my last stem?" he would himself inquire of the visitors to his studio. [illustration: _l'art._ troyon. in normandy: cows grazing.] these woodland recesses were the peculiar specialty of diaz, and he but seldom abandoned them to paint warm, dreamy pictures of summer. for, like a true child of the south, he only cared to see nature on beautiful days. he knows nothing of spring with its light mist, and still less of the frozen desolation of winter. the summer alone does he know, the summer and the autumn; and the summers of diaz are an everlasting song, like the springs of corot. beautiful nymphs and other beings from the golden age give animation to his emerald meadows and his sheltered woods bathed in the sun: here are little, homely-looking nixies, and there are pretty cupids and venuses and dianas of charming grace. and none of these divinities think about anything or do anything; they are not piquant, like those of boucher and fragonard, and they know neither coquetry nor smiles. they are merely goddesses of the palette; their wish is to be nothing but shining spots of colour, and they love nothing except the silvery sunbeams which fall caressingly on their naked skin. if the painter wishes for more vivid colour they throw around them shining red, blue, yellowish-green, or gold-embroidered clothes, and immediately are transformed from nymphs into oriental women, as in a magic theatre. a fragment of soft silk, gleaming with gold, and a red turban were means sufficient for him to conjure up his charming and fanciful land of turks. sometimes even simple mortals--wood-cutters, peasant girls, and gipsies--come into his pictures, that the sunbeams may play upon them, while their picturesque rags form piquant spots of colour. [illustration: _l'art._ troyon. crossing the stream.] diaz belongs to the same category as isabey and fromentin, a fascinating artist, a great _charmeur_, and a feast to the eyes. when in the far south, amid the eternal summer of mentone, he closed his dark, shining eyes for ever, at dawn on th november , a breath of sadness went through the tree-tops of the old royal forest of fontainebleau. the forest had lost its hermit, the busy woodsman who penetrated farthest into its green depths; and it preserves his memory gratefully. only go, in october, through the copse of bas bréau, lose yourself amid the magnificent foliage of these century-old trees that glimmer with a thousand hues like gigantic bouquets, dark green and brown, or golden and purple, and at the sight of this brilliant gleam of autumn tones you can only say, a diaz! the youngest of the group, _daubigny_, came when the battle was over, and plays a slighter _rôle_, since he cannot be reckoned any longer among the discoverers; nevertheless he has a physiognomy of his own, and one of peculiar charm. the others were painters of nature; daubigny is the painter of the country. if one goes from munich to dachau to see the apple trees blossom and the birches growing green, to breathe in the odour of the cow-house and the fragrance of the hay, to hear the tinkle of cow-bells, the croaking of frogs, and the hum of gnats, one does not say, "i want to see nature," but "i am going into the country." jean jacques rousseau was the worshipper of nature, while georges sand, in certain of her novels, has celebrated country life. in this sense daubigny is less an adorer of nature than a man fond of the country. his pictures give the feeling one has in standing at the window on a country excursion, and looking at the laughing and budding spring. one feels no veneration for the artist, but one would like to be a bird to perch on those boughs, a lizard to creep amongst this green, a cockchafer to fly humming from tree to tree. [illustration: _l'art._ troyon. the return to the farm.] [illustration: _l'art._ troyon. a cow scratching herself.] daubigny, possibly, has not the great and free creative power of the older artists, their magnificent simplicity in treating objects: the feminine element, the susceptibility to natural beauty, preponderates in him, and not the virile, creative power of embodiment, which at once discovers in itself a telling force of expression for the image received from nature. he seeks after no poetic emotions, like dupré; he has not the profound, penetrative eye for nature, like rousseau; in his charm and amiability he approaches corot, except that mythological beings are no longer at home in his landscapes. they would take no pleasure in this odour of damp grass, the smell of the cow-byres, and the dilapidated old skiffs which rock, in daubigny's pictures, fastened to a swampy bank. corot, light, delicate, and simple as a boy, sitting on a school-bench all his life, is always veiled and mysterious. daubigny, heavier and technically better equipped, has more power and less grace; he dreams less and paints more. corot made the apotheosis of nature: his silvery grey clouds bore him to the elysian fields, where nothing had the heaviness of earth and everything melted in poetic vapour. daubigny, borne by no wings of icarus, seems like antæus beside him; he is bodily wedded to the earth. dupré made the earth a mirror of the tears and passions of men. corot surprised her before the peasant is up of a morning, in the hours when she belongs altogether to the nymphs and the fairies. in daubigny the earth has once more become the possession of human beings. it is not often that figures move in his pictures. even rousseau more often finds a place in his landscapes for the rustic, but nature in him is hard, unapproachable, and deliberately indifferent to man. she looks down upon him austerely, closing and hardening her heart against him. in daubigny nature is familiar with man, stands near him, and is kindly and serviceable. the skiffs rocking at the river's brink betray that fishers are in the neighbourhood; even when they are empty his little houses suggest that their inhabitants are not far off, that they are but at work in the field and may come back at any moment. in rousseau man is merely an atom of the infinite; here he is the lord of creation. rousseau makes an effect which is simple and powerful, dupré one which is impassioned and striking, corot is divine, diaz charming, and daubigny idyllic, intimate, and familiar. he closed a period and enjoyed the fruits of what the others had called into being. one does not admire him--one loves him. he had passed his youth with his nurse in a little village, surrounded with white-blossoming apple trees and waving fields of corn, near l'isle adam. here as a boy he received the impressions which made him a painter of the country, and which were too strong to be obliterated by a sojourn in italy. the best picture that he painted there showed a flat stretch of land with thistles. a view of the island of st. louis was the work with which he first appeared in the salon in . daubigny is the painter of water, murmuring silver-grey between ashes and oaks, and reflecting the clouds of heaven in its clear mirror. he is the painter of the spring in its fragrance, when the meadows shine in the earliest verdure, and the leaves but newly unfolded stand out against the sky as bright green patches of colour, when the limes blossom and the crops begin to shoot. a field of green corn waving gently beneath budding apple trees in the breeze of spring, still rivers in which banks and bushy islands are reflected, mills beside little streams rippling in silvery clearness over shining white pebbles, cackling geese, and washerwomen neatly spreading out their linen, are things which daubigny has painted with the delicate feeling of a most impressionable lover of nature. at the same time he had the secret of shedding over his pictures the most marvellous tint of delicate, vaporous air; especially in those representations, at once so poetic and so accurate, of evening by the water's edge, or of bright moonlight nights, when all things are sharply illuminated, and yet softly shrouded with a dream-like exhalation. his favourite light was that of cool evening dusk, after the sun and every trace of the after-glow has vanished from the sky. valmandois, where he passed his youth, and afterwards the oise, with its green banks and vineyards and hedged gardens, the most charming and picturesque river in north france, are most frequently rendered in his pictures. every day, when nature put on her spring garb, he sailed along the banks in a small craft, with his son charles. his most vigorous works were executed in the cabin of this vessel: spirited sketches of regions delicately veiled in mist and bound with a magical charm of peace, regions with the moon above them, shedding its clear, silver light--refined etchings which assure him a place of honour in the history of modern etching. the painter of the banks of the oise saw everything with the curiosity and the love of a child, and remained always a naïve artist in spite of all his dexterity. [illustration: rosa bonheur. the horse-fair. (_by permission of mr. l. h. lefèvre, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: rosa bonheur. ploughing in nivernois.] after these great masters had opened up the path a tribe of landscape painters set themselves to render, each in his own way, the vigorous power, the tender charm, and the plaintive melancholy of the earth. some loved dusk and light, the simple reproduction of ordinary places in their ordinary condition; others delighted in the struggle of the elements, the violent scudding of clouds, the parting glance of the sun, the sombre hours when nature shrouds her face with the mourning veil of a widow. although he never tasted the pleasures of fame, _antoine chintreuil_ was the most refined of them all--an excessively sensitive spirit, who seized with as much delicacy as daring swiftly transient effects of nature, such as seldom appear: the moment when the sun casts a fleeting radiance in the midst of clouds, or when a shaft of light quivers for an instant through a dense mist; the effect of green fields touched by the first soft beams of the sun, or that of a rainbow spanning a fresh spring landscape. his pupil _jean desbrosses_ was the painter of hills and valleys. _achard_ followed rousseau in his pictures of lonely, austere, and mournful regions. _français_ painted familiar corners in the neighbourhood of paris with grace, although more heavily than corot, and without the shining light which is poured through the works of that rare genius. the pictures of _harpignies_ are rather dry, and betray a heavy hand. he is rougher than his great predecessors, less seductive and indeed rather staid, but he has a convincing reality, and is loyal and simple. he is valuable as an honest, genial artist, a many-sided and sure-footed man of talent, somewhat inclined to classicism. _Émile breton_, the brother of jules, delighted in the agitation of the elements, wild, out-of-the-way regions, and harsh climate. his execution is broad, his tones forcible, and he has both simplicity and largeness. apart from his big, gloomy landscapes, _léonce chabry_ has also painted sea-pieces, with dark waves dashing against the cleft rocks. [illustration: van marcke. la falaise.] the representation of grazing animals plays a great part in the art of almost all of these painters. some carried the love of animal painting so far that they never painted a landscape without introducing into the foreground their dearly loved herds of cows or flocks of sheep. the key of the landscape, the cheerful and sunny brilliancy of colour or the still melancholy of the evening dusk, is harmoniously repeated in the habits and being of these animals. thus, too, new paths were opened to animal painting, which had suffered, no less than landscape, from the yoke of conventionality. up to the close of the eighteenth century french artists had contented themselves with adapting to french taste the light and superficial art of nicolaus berghem. demarne, one of the last heirs of this dutch artist, brought, even in the period of the revolution, a little sunshine, blitheness, and country air amongst the large pictures in the classical manner. the animal painting of the _ancien régime_ expired in his arms, and the "noble style" of classicism obstructed the rise of the new animal painting. the fact that the great jupiter, father of gods and men, assumed the form of a four-footed creature when he led weak, feminine beings astray had no doubt given a certain justification to the animal picture during the reign of the school of david. but the artists preferred to hold aloof from it, either because animals are hard to idealise in themselves, or because the received antique sculpture of animals was difficult to employ directly in pictures. in landscapes, which gods and heroes alone honoured with their presence, idealised animals would have been altogether out of place. only animals which are very difficult to draw correctly, such as sphinxes, sirens, and winged horses--beings which the old tragedians were fond of turning to account--are occasionally allowed to exist in the pictures of bertin and paul flandrin. _carle vernet_, who composed cavalry charges and hunting scenes, had not talent enough seriously to make a breach, or to find disciples to follow his lead. _géricault_, the forerunner of romanticism, was likewise the first eminent painter of horses; and although his great "raft of the medusa" is heavily fettered by the system of classicism, his jockey pictures and horse races are as fresh, as vivid, and as unforced as if they had been painted yesterday instead of seventy years ago. in dashing animation, verve, and temperament géricault stands alone in these pictures; he is the very opposite of raymond brascassat, who was the first specialist of animal pieces with a landscape setting, and was much praised in the thirties on account of his neat and ornamental style of treatment. _brascassat_ was the winterhalter of animal painting, neither classicist nor romanticist nor realist, but the embodiment of mediocrity; a man honestly and sincerely regarding all nature with the eyes of a philistine. his fame, which has so swiftly faded, was founded by those patrons of art who above all demand that a picture should be the bald, banal reproduction of fact, made with all the accuracy possible. [illustration: charles jacque. the return to the byre (etching). (_by permission of m. frédéric jacque, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: _l'art._ charles jacque. a flock of sheep on the road. (_by permission of m. frédéric jacque, the owner of the copyright._)] it was only when the landscape school of fontainebleau had initiated a new method of vision, feeling, and expression that france produced a new great painter of animals. as dupré and rousseau tower over their predecessors cabat and flandrin in landscape, so _constant troyon_ rises above brascassat in animal painting. in the latter there may be found a scrupulous pedantic observation in union with a thin, polished, academic, and carefully arranged style of painting; in the former, a large and broad technique in harmony with wild nature, and a directness and force of intuition without parallel in the history of art. brascassat belongs to the same category as denner, troyon to that of frans hals and brouwer. there would be no purpose in saying anything of his labours in the china manufactory of sèvres, of his industrial works, and of the little classical views with which he made a first appearance in the salon in , or of the impulse which he received from roqueplan. he first found his own powers when he made the acquaintance of théodore rousseau and jules dupré, and migrated with them into the forest of fontainebleau. at the headquarters of the new school his ideas underwent a revolution. here, in the first instance, as a landscape painter, he was attracted by the massive forms of cattle, which make such a harmonious effect of colour in the atmosphere and against verdure, and the philosophic quietude of which gives such admirable completion to the dreamy spirit of nature. a journey to holland and belgium in , in the course of which he became more familiar with the old animal painters, confirmed him in the resolve of devoting himself exclusively to this province. he was captivated not so much by paul potter as by albert cuyp, with his rich and powerful colouring, and his technique, which is at once so virile and so easy. but above all rembrandt became his great ideal, and filled him with wonder. in his first masterpiece of , "the mill," the influence of the great dutch artist is clearly recognisable, and from that time up to it remained dominant. in this year, during a prolonged sojourn in normandy, he became troyon, and painted "oxen going to their work," that mighty picture in the louvre which displays him in the zenith of his creative power. till then no animal painter had rendered with such a combination of strength and actuality the long, heavy gait, the philosophical indifference, and the quiet resignation of cattle, the poetry of autumnal light, and the mist of morning rising lightly from the earth and veiling the whole land with grey, silvery hues. the deeply furrowed smoking field makes an undulating ascent, so that one seems to be looking at the horizon over the broad face of the earth. a primitive, homeric feeling rests over it. troyon is perhaps not so correct as potter, nor so lucid as albert cuyp, but he is more forcible and impressive than either. no one has ever seized the poetry of these heavy masses of flesh, with their strong colour and largeness of outline, as he has done. what places him far above the old painters is his fundamental power as a landscapist, a power unequalled except in rousseau. his landscapes have always the smell of the earth, and they smack of rusticity. at one time he paints the atmosphere, veiling the contours of objects with a light mist recalling corot, and yet saturated with clear sunshine; at another he sends his heavy, fattened droves in the afternoon across field-paths bright in the sunlight and dark green meadows, or places them beneath a sky where dense thunderclouds are swiftly rolling up. troyon is no poet, but a born painter, belonging to the irrepressibly forceful family of jordaens and courbet, a _maître peintre_ of strength and plastic genius, as healthy as he is splendid in colour. his "cow scratching herself" and his "return to the farm" will always be counted amongst the most forcible animal pictures of all ages. when he died in , after passing twelve years with a clouded intellect, _rosa bonheur_ sought to fill the place which he had left vacant. she had already won the sympathies of the great public, as she united in her pictures all the qualities which were missed in troyon, and had the art of pleasing where he was repellent. for a long time troyon's works were held by _amateurs_ to be wanting in finish. they did not acknowledge to themselves that "finish" in artistic creations is, after all, only a work of patience, rather industrial than artistic, and at bottom invented for the purpose of enticing half-trained connoisseurs. rosa bonheur had this diligence, and is indebted to it for the spread of her fame through all europe, when troyon was only known as yet to the few. the position has now been altered. without doubt it is a pleasure to look at her fresh and sunny maiden picture of , "ploughing in nivernois," with its yoke of six oxen, its rich red-brown soil turned up into furrows, and its wide, bright, simple, and laughing landscape beneath the clear blue sky. she had all the qualities which may be appreciated without one's being an epicure of art--great anatomical knowledge, dexterous technique, charming and seductive colouring. and it is an isolated fact in the history of art that a woman has painted pictures so good as the "hay harvest in auvergne" of , with its brutes which are almost life-size, or the "horse fair" of , which is perhaps her most brilliant work, and for which she made studies, going in man's clothes for eighteen months, at all the parisian _manèges_, amongst stable-boys and horse-dealers. until her death, from the château by, between thomery and fontainebleau, she carried on an extensive transpontine export, and her pictures are by no means the worst of those which find their way from the continent to england and america. she was perhaps the only feminine celebrity of the century who painted her pictures, instead of working at them like knitting. but troyon is a strong master who suffers no rival. his landscapes, with their deep verdure, their powerful animals, and their skies traversed by heavy clouds, are the embodiment of power. rosa bonheur is an admirable painter with largeness of style and beauty of drawing, whose artistic position is between troyon and brascassat. troyon's only pupil was _Émile van marcke_, half a belgian, who met the elder master in sèvres, and for a long time worked by his side at fontainebleau. he united the occupation of a painter with that of a landed proprietor. the cattle which he bred on an extensive scale at his property, bouttencourt in normandy, had a celebrity amongst french landowners, as he had the reputation of rearing the best fat cattle. he too had not the impressiveness of troyon, though he was, none the less, a healthy and forcible master. his animals have no passions, no movement, and no battles. they seem lost in endless contemplation, gravely and sedately chewing the cud. around them stretch the soft green norman pastures, and above them arches the wide sky, which at the horizon imperceptibly melts into the sea. _jadin_ is a painter of horses and dogs who had once a great reputation, though to-day his name is almost, if not entirely forgotten. he was fond of painting hunting scenes, and is not wanting in life and movement; but he is too impersonal to play a part in the history of painting. having named him, some mention must likewise be made of _eugène lambert_, the painter of cats, and _palizzi_, who painted goats. lambert, who was fond of introducing his little heroes as the actors of comical scenes, is by admission the chief amongst all those who were honoured amongst the different nations with the title of "raphaels of the cat." palizzi, an incisive master of almost brutal energy, a true son of the wild abruzzo hills, delighted, like his compatriots morelli and michetti, in the blazing light of noon, shining over rocky heights, and throwing a dazzle of gold on the dark green copse. _lançon_, a rather arid painter, though a draughtsman with a broad and masculine stroke, was the greatest descendant of delacroix in the representation of tigers, lions, bears, and hippopotamuses. an unobtrusive artist, though one of very genial talent, was _charles jacque_, the troyon of sheep. he has been compared with the _rageur_ of bas bréau, the proud oak which stands alone in a clearing. a man of forcible character, over whom age had no power, he survived until as the last representative of the noble school of barbizon. he has painted sheep in flocks or separately, in the pasture, on the verge of the field-path, or in the fold; and he loved most of all to paint them in the misty hours of evening twilight, at peace and amid peaceful nature. but in spirited etchings he has likewise represented old weather-beaten walls, the bright films of spring, the large outlines of peasant folk, the tender down of young chickens, the light play of the wind upon the sea, murmuring brooks, and quiet haunts of the wood. like millet, he had in an eminent degree the gift of simplification, the greatest quality that an artist can have. with three or four strokes he could plant a figure on its feet, give life to an animal, or construct a landscape. he was the most intimate friend of jean françois millet, and painted part of what millet painted also. chapter xxvi jean franÇois millet whence has _millet_ come? it was the time when art, still blind to the life around, could find no subjects worthy of it except in the past and in the distance. then millet came and overthrew an art vegetating in museums or astray in tropical countries. it was the time when leopold robert in italy tested the noble pose of the school of david upon the peasant, and when the german painters of rustics recognised in the labourer an object for pleasantries and pathetic little scenes. then millet stepped forward and painted, with profound simplicity, the people at work in the field, or in their distress, without sentimentality and without beautifying or idealising them. that great utterance, "i work," the utterance of the nineteenth century, is here spoken aloud for the first time. rousseau and his fellow-artists were the painters of the country. millet became the painter of the labourer. he, the great peasant, is the creator of that painting of peasants which is entwined with the deepest roots of intimate landscape. misunderstood in the beginning, it proclaimed for the first time the new gospel of art before which the people of all nations bow at the present date. what others did later was merely to advance on the path opened by millet. and as time passes the figure of this powerful man shines more and more brilliantly. the form of jean françois millet rises so powerfully, so imperiously, and so suddenly that one might almost imagine him to have come from ibsen's third kingdom; for he is without forerunners in art. an attempt has been made to bring him into relation with the social and political movement of ideas in the forties, but certainly this is unjust. millet was in no sense revolutionary. during his whole life he repudiated the designs which some of the democratic party imputed to him, as well as the conclusions which they drew from his works. millet's life in itself explains his art. never have heart and hand, a man and his work, tallied with each other as they did in him. he does not belong to those painters who, even when one admires them, give one nevertheless a sense that they could just as easily have produced something different. let any one consider his works and read the letters published in sensier's book: the man whom one knows from the letters lives in his works, and these works are the natural illustration of the book in which the man has depicted himself. in the unity of man and artist lies the source of his strength, the secret of his greatness. [illustration: _s. low & co._ jean franÇois millet. portrait of himself.] even the circumstances over which he triumphed necessitated his being the painter that he actually was, if he became one at all. he was not born in a city where a child's eyes are everywhere met by works of art--pictures which no doubt early awaken the feeling for art, but which just as easily disturb a free outlook into nature. moreover, he did not spring from one of those families where art is itself practised, or where art is discussed and taste early guided upon definite lines. he was a peasant, whose father and grandfather were peasants before him, and whose brothers were farm labourers. he was born in , far away from paris, in a little norman village hard by the sea, and there he grew up. the regular and majestic plunge of the waves against the granite rocks of the coast, the solemn murmurs of the ebb and flow of the sea, the moaning of the wind in the apple trees and the old oaks of his father's garden, were the first sounds which struck upon the ear in gruchy, near cherbourg. it has been adduced that his father loved music, and had had success as the leader of the village choir. but though there may have always been a dim capacity for art in the youngster's blood, there was nothing calculated to strengthen it in his education. millet's sturdy father had no idea of making an artist of his son; the boy saw no artist at work in the neighbourhood; nature and instinct guided him alone. for a man brought up in a city and trained at an academy all things become hackneyed. many centuries of artistic usage have dimmed their original freshness; and he finds a ready-made phrase coined for everything. millet stood before the world like the first man in the day of creation. everything seemed new to him; he was charmed and astonished, and a wild flood of impressions burst in upon him. he did not come under the influence of any tradition, but approached art like the man in the age of stone who first scratched the outline of a mammoth on a piece of ivory, or like the primæval greek who, according to the legend, invented painting by making a likeness of his beloved with a charred stick upon a wall. no one encouraged him in his first attempts. no one dreamt that this young man was destined to any life other than that of a peasant. from the time he was fourteen until he was eighteen he did every kind of field labour upon his father's land in the same way as his brothers--hoeing, digging, ploughing, mowing, threshing, sowing the seed, and dressing the ground. but he always had his eyes about him; he drew upon a white patch of wall, without guidance, the picture of a tree, an orchard, or a peasant whom he had chanced to meet on a sunday when going to church. and he drew so correctly that every one recognised the likenesses. a family council was held upon the matter. his father brought one of his son's drawings to a certain m. mouchel in cherbourg, a strange personage who had once been a painter and had the reputation of being a connoisseur; and he was to decide whether françois "had really enough talent for painting to gain his bread by it." so millet, the farm-hand, was twenty when he received his first lessons in drawing. he was learning the a b c of art, but humanly speaking he was already millet. what had roused his talent and induced him to take a stump of charcoal in his hand was not the study of any work of art, but the sight of nature--nature, the great mother of all, who had embraced him, nature with whom and through whom he lived. through her, visions and emotions were quickened in him, and he felt the secret impulse to give them expression. [illustration: millet. the house at gruchy.] of what concerned the manual part of his art he understood nothing, and his two teachers in cherbourg, mouchel and langlois, who were half-barbarians themselves, gave him the less knowledge, as only two months later, in , his father died, and the young man returned to his own people as a farm-labourer once more. and it was only after an interruption of three years that a subsidy from the community of cherbourg, which was collected by his teacher langlois, and a small sum saved by his parents--six hundred francs all told--enabled him to journey up to paris. he was twenty-three years of age, a broad-chested hercules in stature, for till that time he had breathed nothing but the pure, sharp sea air; his handsome face was framed in long fair locks, which fell wildly about his shoulders. what had this peasant to do in the capital! in delaroche's school he was called _l'homme des bois_. he had all the awkwardness of a provincial, and the artist was only to be surmised from the fire in the glance of his large dark blue eyes. at first delaroche took peculiar pains with his new pupil. but to submit to training is to follow the lead of another person. a man like millet, who knew what he wanted, was no longer to be guided upon set lines. the pictures of delaroche made no appeal to him. they struck him as being "huge vignettes, theatrical effects without any real sentiment." and delaroche soon lost patience with the clumsy peasant, whom he--most unfairly--regarded as stiff-necked and obstinate. other aims floated before millet, and he _could_ not now learn to produce academical compositions, so, as these were alone demanded in the school of delaroche, he never cleared himself from a reputation for mediocrity. it was the period of the war between the classicists and the romanticists. "an ingres, a delacroix!" was the battle-cry that rang through the parisian studios. for millet neither of these movements had any existence. his memory only clung to the plains of normandy, and the labourers, shepherds, and fishermen of his home, with whom he mingled in spirit once more. incessantly he believed himself to hear what he has called "_le cri de la terre_," and neither romanticists nor classicists caught anything of this cry of the earth. he lived alone with his own thoughts, associating with none of his fellow-artists, and indeed keeping out of their way. always prepared for some scornful attempt at witticism, he turned his easel round whenever he was approached, or gruffly cut all criticism short with the remark: "what does my painting matter to you? i don't trouble my head about your bread and grease." thus it was that delaroche certainly taught him very little of the technique of painting, though, at the same time, he taught him no mannerism. he did not learn to paint pretty pictures with beautiful poses, flattering colour, and faces inspired with intellect. he left the studio as he had entered it in , painting with an awkward, thick, heavy, and laborious brush, though with the fresh, untroubled vision which he had had in earlier days. he was still the stranger, the incorrigible norman peasant. for a time he exerted himself to make concessions to the public. at seven-and-twenty he had married a cherbourg girl, who died of consumption three years afterwards. without acquaintances in paris, and habituated to domestic life from his youth upwards, he married a second time in . he had to earn his bread, to please, to paint what would sell. so he toiled over pretty pictures of nude women, like those which diaz had painted with such great success--fair shepherdesses and gallant herdsmen, and bathing girls, in the _genre_ of boucher and fragonard. and he who did this spoke of both of them afterwards as pornographists. but the attempt was vain, for he satisfied neither others nor himself. the peasant of gruchy could not be piquant, easy, and charming; on the contrary, he remained helpless, awkward, and crude. "your women bathing come from the cow-house" was the appropriate remark of diaz in reference to these pictures. when burger-thoré, who was the first to take notice of millet, declared, on the occasion of "the milkmaid" being exhibited in , that boucher himself was surpassed in this picture, the critic took a literary licence, because he had a human pity for the poor painter. how little the picture has of the fragrance of the old masters! how laboured it seems! how obvious it is that it was painted without pleasure! millet was not long at pains to conceal his personality. an "oedipus" and "the jewish captives in babylon" were his last rhetorical exercises. in he came forward with a manifesto--"the winnower," a peasant in movement and bearing, in his whole character and in the work on which he is employed. millet returns here to the thoughts and feelings of his youth; for the future he will paint nothing but peasants in all the situations of their rude and simple life. in he made a great resolve. [illustration: f. jacque. millet at work in his studio. (_by permission of m. f. jacque, the owner of the copyright._)] the sale of his "winnower" had brought him five hundred francs, and these five hundred francs gave him courage to defy the world. "better turn bricklayer than paint against conviction." charles jacque, the painter of animals, who lived opposite to him in the rue rochechouard, wanted to quit paris in on account of the outbreak of cholera. he proposed that millet should go with him into the country for a short time; he did so, and the peasant's son of former times became once more a peasant, to end his days amongst peasants. "in the middle of the forest of fontainebleau," said jacque, "there is a little nest, with a name ending in 'zon'--not far off and cheap,--diaz has been telling me a great deal about it." millet consented. one fine june day they got into a heavy, rumbling omnibus, with their wives and their five children, and they arrived in fontainebleau that evening after two hours' journey. "to-morrow we are going in search of our 'zon.'" and the next day they went forward on foot to barbizon, millet with his two little girls upon his shoulders, and his wife carrying in her arms the youngest child, a boy of five months old, having her skirt drawn over her head as a protection against the rain. [illustration: f. jacque. millet's house at barbizon. (_by permission of m. f. jacque, the owner of the copyright._)] as yet the forest had no walks laid out as it has to-day; it was virgin nature, which had never been disturbed. "_mon dieu, mon dieu, que c'est beau!_" cried millet, exulting. once more he stood in the presence of nature, the old love of his youth. the impressions of childhood rushed over him. born in the country, he had to return to the country to be himself once again. he arrived at ganne's inn just as the dinner-hour had assembled twenty persons at the table, artists with their wives and children. "new painters! the pipe, the pipe!" was the cry which greeted the fresh arrivals. diaz rose, and, in spite of his wooden leg, did the honours of the establishment to the two women with the dignity of a spanish nobleman, and then turned gravely to millet and jacque, saying: "citizens, you are invited to smoke the pipe of peace." whenever the colony of barbizon received an addition this was always taken down from its sacred place above the door. an expressly appointed jury had then to decide from the ascending rings of smoke whether the new-comer was to be reckoned amongst the "classicists" or the "colourists." jacque was with one voice declared to be a "colourist." as to millet's relation to the schools, there was a discrepancy of opinion. "_eh bien_," said millet, "_si vous êtes embarrassés, placez-moi dans la mienne_." whereupon diaz, as the others would not let this pass, cried: "be quiet; it is a good retort, and the fellow looks powerful enough to found a school which will bury us all." he was right, even though it was late before his prophecy was fulfilled. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ millet. the winnower. (_by permission of m. charles millet._)] millet was thirty-five when he settled in barbizon; he had reached the age which dante calls the middle point of life. he had no further tie with the outward world; he had broken all the bridges behind him, and relied upon himself. he only went back to paris on business, and he always did so unwillingly and for as short a time as possible. he lived at barbizon in the midst of nature and in the midst of his models, and to his last day unreservedly gave himself up to the work which in youth he had felt himself called to fulfil. neither criticism, mockery, nor contempt could lead him any more astray; even if he had wished it, he would have been incapable of following the paths of official art. "_mes critiques_," said he as though by way of excuse, "_sont gens instruits et de goût, mais je ne peux me mettre dans leur peau, et comme je n'ai jamais vu de ma vie autre chose que les champs, je tâche de dire comme je peux ce que j'y ai éprouvé quand j'y travaillais_." when such a man triumphs, when he succeeds in forcing upon the world his absolutely personal art, it is not mahomet who has come to the mountain, but the mountain to mahomet. millet's life has been, in consequence, a continuous series of renunciations. it is melancholy to read in sensier's biography that such a master, even during his paris days, was forced to turn out copies at twenty francs and portraits at five, and to paint tavern signs or placards for the booths of rope-dancers and horse-dealers, each one of which brought him in a roll of thick sous. when the revolution of june broke out his capital consisted of thirty francs, which the owner of a small shop had paid him for a sign, and on this he and his family lived for a fortnight. in barbizon he boarded with a peasant and lived with his family in a tiny room where wheat was stored and where bread was baked twice in the week; then he took a little house at a hundred and sixty francs a year. in winter he sat in a workroom without a fire, in thick straw shoes and with an old horse-cloth over his shoulders. living like this he painted "the sower," that marvellous strophe in his great poem on the earth. by the produce of a vegetable garden he endeavoured to increase his income, lived on credit with grocer and butcher, and at last had creditors in every direction--in particular gobillot, the baker of chailly, from whom he often hid at his friend jacque's. he was forced to accept a loaf from rousseau for his famishing family, and small sums with which he was subsidised by diaz. "i have received the hundred francs," he writes in a letter to sensier, "and they came just at the right time; neither my wife nor i had tasted food for four-and-twenty hours. it is a blessing that the little ones, at any rate, have not been in want." [illustration: _neurdein frères, photo._ millet. a man making faggots.] [illustration: _levy et ses fils, photo._ millet. the gleaners.] all his efforts to exhibit in paris were vain. even in "death and the woodcutter" was rejected by the salon. the public laughed, being accustomed to peasants in a comic opera, and, at best, his pictures were honoured by a caricature in a humorous paper. even the most delicate connoisseurs had not the right historical perspective to appreciate the greatness of millet, so far was it in advance of the age. and all this is so much the sadder when one thinks of the price which his works fetched at a later period, when one reads that drawings for which he could get with difficulty from twenty to forty francs are the works for which as many thousands are now offered. it was only from the middle of the fifties that he began to sell at the rate of from two hundred and fifty to three hundred francs a picture. rousseau was the first to offer him a large sum, buying his "woodcutter" for four thousand francs, on the pretext that an american was the purchaser. dupré helped him to dispose of "the gleaners" for two thousand francs. an agreement which the picture-dealer arthur stevens, brother of stevens the painter, concluded with him had to be dissolved six months afterwards, since millet's time had not yet come. at last, in , when he painted four large decorative pictures--"the four seasons," which are, by the way, his weakest works--for the dining-room of the architect feydau, superfluity came in place of need. he was then in a position, like rousseau and jacque, to buy himself a little house in barbizon, close to the road by which the place is entered and opposite ganne's inn. wild vine, ivy, and jessamine clambered round it, and two bushes of white roses twisted their branches around the window. it was surrounded by a large garden, in which field-flowers bloomed amongst vegetables and fruit-trees, whilst a border of white roses and elders led to another little house which he used as a studio. behind was a poultry-yard, and behind that again a thickly grown little shrubbery. here he lived, simple and upright, with his art and his own belongings, as a peasant and a father of a family, like an old testament patriarch. his father had had nine children, and he himself had nine. while he painted the little ones played in the garden, the elder daughters worked, and when the younger children made too much noise, jeanne, who was seven years old, would say with gravity, "_chut! papa travaille._" after the evening meal he danced his youngest boy upon his knee and told norman tales, or they all went out together into the forest, which the children called _la forêt noire_, because it was so wild, gloomy, and magnificent. millet's poverty was not quite so great as might be supposed from sensier's book. chintreuil, théodore rousseau, and many others were acquainted with poverty likewise, and bore it with courage. it may even be said that, all things considered, success came to millet early. the real misfortune for an artist is to have had success, to have been rich, and later to see himself forgotten when he is stricken with poverty. millet's course was the opposite. from the beginning of the sixties his reputation was no longer in question. at the world exhibition of he was showered with all outward honours. he was represented by nine pictures and received the great medal. the whole world knew his name, subsistence was abundantly assured to him, and all the younger class of artists honoured him like a god. in the salon of he was on the hanging committee. the picture-dealers, who had passed him by in earlier days, now beset his doors; he lived to see his "woman with the lamp" for which he had received a hundred and fifty francs, sold for thirty-eight thousand five hundred at richard's sale. "_allons, ils commencent à comprendre que c'est de la peinture serieuse._" m. de chennevières commissioned him to take part in the paintings in the panthéon, and he began the work. but strength was denied him; he was prostrated by a violent fever, and on th january , at six o'clock in the morning, millet was dead. he was then sixty. [illustration: _mansell & co._ millet. the wood sawyers.] his funeral, indeed, was celebrated with no great parade, for it took place far from paris. it was a cold, dull morning, and there was mist and rain. not many friends had come, only a few painters and critics. at eleven o'clock the procession was set in order. and it moved in the rain quickly over the two _centimètres_ from barbizon to chailly. even those who had hastened from various villages, drawn by curiosity, could not half fill the church. but in paris the announcement of death raised all the greater stir. when forty newspapers were displayed in a picture-dealer's shop on the morning after his demise, all paris assembled and the excitement was universal. in the critical notices he was named in the same breath with watteau, leonardo, raphael, and michael angelo. the auction which was held soon afterwards in the hôtel drouot for the disposal of the sketches which he had left behind him brought his family three hundred and twenty-one thousand francs. and in these days, the very drawings and pastels which were bought for six thousand francs immediately after his death have on the average risen in value to thirty thousand, while the greater number of his pictures rose to a figure beyond the reach of european purchasers, and passed across the ocean to the happy land of dollars. under such circumstances to speak any longer of millet being misunderstood, or to sing hymns of praise upon him as a counterblast to the undervaluation of millet in the beginning, would be knocking at an open door. it is merely necessary to inquire in an entirely objective spirit what position he occupies in the history of modern painting, and what future generations will say of him. [illustration: _l'art._ millet. vine-dresser resting. (_by permission of m. charles millet._)] millet's importance is to some extent ethical; he is not the first who painted peasants, but he is the first who has represented them truthfully, in all their ruggedness, and likewise in their greatness--not for the amusement of others, but as they claim a right to their own existence. the spirit of the rustic is naturally grave and heavy, and the number of his ideas and emotions is small. he has neither wit nor sentimentalism. and when in his leisure moments he sometimes gives way to a broad, noisy merriment, his gaiety often resembles intoxication, and is not infrequently its consequence. his life, which forces him to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, always reminds him of the hard fundamental conditions of existence. he looks at everything in a spirit of calculation and strict economy. even the earth he stands on wakens in him a mood of seriousness. it is gravely sublime, this nature with its wide horizon and its boundless sky. at certain seasons it wears a friendly smile, especially for those who have escaped for a few hours from town. but for him who always lives in its midst it is not the good, tender mother that the townsman fancies. it has its oppressive heats in summer and its bitter winter frosts; its majesty is austere. and nowhere more austere than in millet's home, amid those plains of normandy, swept by the rude wind, where he spent his youth as a farm labourer. from this peasant life, painting, before his time, had collected merely trivial anecdotes with a conventional optimism. it was through no very adequate conception of man that peasants, in those earlier pictures, had always to be celebrating marriages, golden weddings, and baptisms, dancing rustic dances, making comic proposals, behaving themselves awkwardly with advocates, or scuffling in the tavern for the amusement of those who frequent exhibitions. they had really won their right to existence by their labour. "the most joyful thing i know," writes millet in a celebrated letter to sensier in , "is the peace, the silence, that one enjoys in the woods or on the tilled lands. one sees a poor, heavily laden creature with a bundle of faggots advancing from a narrow path in the fields. the manner in which this figure comes suddenly before one is a momentary reminder of the fundamental condition of human life, toil. on the tilled land around one watches figures hoeing and digging. one sees how this or that one rises and wipes away the sweat with the back of his hand. 'in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.' is that merry, enlivening work, as some people would like to persuade us? and yet it is here that i find the true humanity, the great poetry." perhaps in his conception of peasant life millet has been even a little too serious; perhaps his melancholy spirit has looked too much on the sad side of the peasant's life. for millet was altogether a man of temperament and feelings. his family life had made him so even as a boy. to see this, one needs only to read in sensier's book of his old grandmother, who was his godmother likewise, to hear how he felt in after-years the news of his father's death and of his mother's, and how he burst into tears because he had not given his last embrace to the departed. of course, a man who was so sad and dreamy might be expected to lay special stress on the dark side of rustic life, its toil and trouble and exhaustion. he had not that easy spirit which _amara lento temperat risu_. the passage beneath the peasant-picture in holbein's "dance of death" might stand as motto for his whole work-- "À la sueur de ton visage tu gagneras ta pauvre vie; après travail et long usage voici la mort qui te convie." [illustration: _mansell, photo._ millet. at the well.] [illustration: _neudein frères, photo._ millet. burning weeds.] this grave and sad trait in millet's character sets him, for example, in abrupt contrast with corot. corot had a cheerful temperament, which noticed what was kindly in nature everywhere. his favourite hour was morning, when the sun rises and the lark exults, when the mists are dissipated and the shining dew lies upon the grass like pearls. his favourite season was spring, bringing with the new leaves life and joy upon the earth. and if he sometimes peopled this laughing world with peasant lads and maidens in place of the joyous creatures of his fancy, they were only those for whom life is a feast rather than a round of hard toil. compared with so sanguine a man as corot, millet is melancholy all through; whilst the former renders the spring, the latter chooses the oppressive and enervating sultriness of summer. from experience he knew that hard toil which makes men old before their time, which kills body and spirit, and turns the image of god into an ugly, misshapen, and rheumatic thing; and perhaps he has been one-sided in seeing only this in the life of the peasant. nevertheless, it is inapposite to cite as a parallel to millet's paintings of the peasant that cruel description of the rustic made in the time of louis xiv by labruyère: "one sees scattered over the field dwarfed creatures that look like some strange kind of animal, black, withered, and sun-burnt, fastened to the earth, in which they grub with invincible stubbornness; they have something resembling articulate language, and when they raise themselves they show a human countenance,--as a matter of fact they are men. at night they retire to their holes, where they live on black bread, water, and roots. they save other men the trouble of sowing, ploughing, and gathering in the harvest, and so gain the advantage of not themselves being in want of the bread that they have sown." yes, millet's peasants toil, and they toil hard, but in bowing over the earth at their work they are, in a sense, proudly raised by their whole peasant nature. millet has made human beings out of the manikins of illustrated humour, and in this lies his ethical greatness. as his whole life passed without untruth or artificiality, so his whole endeavour as an artist was to keep artificiality and untruth at a distance. after a period of _genre_ painting which disposed of things in an arbitrary manner, he opened a way for the new movement with its unconditional devotion to reality. the "historical painters" having conjured up the past with the assistance of old masterpieces, it was something to the credit of the _genre_ painters that, instead of looking back, they began to look around them. fragments of reality were arranged--in correspondence with the principle of classical landscape painting--according to the rules of composition known to history to make _tableaux vivants_ crowded with figures; and such pictures related a cheerful or a moving episode of the painter's invention. millet's virtue is to have set emotion in the place of invention, to have set a part of nature grasped in its totality with spontaneous freshness in the place of composition pieced together from scattered observation and forcing life into inconsistent relations--to have set painting in the place of history and anecdote. as rousseau and his fellows discovered the poetry of work-a-day nature, millet discovered that of ordinary life. the foundation of modern art could only be laid on painting which no longer subjected the world to one-sided rules of beauty, but set itself piously to watch for the beauty of things as they were, and renounced all literary episodes. millet does not appear to think that any one is listening to him; he communes with himself alone. he does not care to make his ideas thoroughly distinct and salient by repetitions and antitheses; he renders his emotion, and that is all. and thus painting receives new life from him: his pictures are not compositions that one sees, but emotions that one feels; it is not a painter who speaks through them, but, a man. from the first he had the faculty of seeing things simply, directly, and naturally; and to exercise himself in this faculty he began with the plainest things: a labourer in the field, resting upon his spade and looking straight before him; a sower amid the furrows, on which flights of birds are settling down; a man standing in a ploughed field, putting on his coat; a woman stitching in a room; a girl at the window behind a pot of marguerites. he is never weary of drawing land broken up for cultivation, and oftener still he draws huddled flocks of sheep upon a heath, their woolly backs stretching with an undulatory motion, and a shepherd lad or a girl in their midst. "the sower" ( ), "the peasants going to their work," "the hay-trussers," "the reapers," "a sheep-shearer," "the labourer grafting a tree" ( ), "a shepherd," and "the gleaners" ( ) are his principal works in the fifties. and what a deep intuition of nature is to be found in "the gleaners"! they have no impassioned countenances, and their movements aim at no declamatory effect of contrast. they do not seek compassion, but merely do their work. it is this which gives them loftiness and dignity. they are themselves products of nature, plants of which the commonest is not without a certain pure and simple beauty. look at their hands. they are not hands to be kissed, but to be cordially pressed. they are brave hands, which have done hard work from youth upwards--reddened with frost, chapped by soda, swollen with toil, or burnt by the sun. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ millet. the angelus. (_by permission of m. georges petit, the owner of the copyright._)] "the labourer grafting a tree" of is entirely idyllic. in the midst of one of those walled-in spaces which are half courtyard and half garden, separating in villages the barns from the house, there is standing a man who has cut a tree and is grafting a fresh twig. his wife is looking on, with their youngest child in her arms. everything around bears the mark of order, cleanliness, and content. their clothes have neither spot nor hole, and wear well under the anxious care of the wife. here is the old french peasant, true to the soil, and living and dying in the place of his birth: it is a picture of patriarchal simplicity. in appeared "the angelus," that work which chimes like a low-toned and far-off peal of bells. "i mean," he said--"i mean the bells to be heard sounding, and only natural truth of expression can produce the effect." nothing is wanting in these creations, neither simplicity nor truth. the longer they are looked at, the more something is seen in them which goes beyond reality. "the man with the mattock," the celebrated picture of , is altogether a work of great style; it recalls antique statues and the figures of michael angelo, without in any way resembling them. in his daring veracity millet despised all the artificial grace and arbitrary beatification which others introduced into rustic life; and while, in turning from it, he rested only on the most conscientious reverence for nature, his profound draughtsmanlike knowledge of the human form has given a dignity and a large style to the motions of the peasant which no one discovered before his time. there is a simplicity, a harmony, and a largeness in the lines of his pictures such as only the greatest artists have had. he reached it in the same way as rousseau and corot reached their style in landscape: absorbed and saturated by reality, he was able, in the moment of creation, to dispense with the model without suffering for it, and to attain truth and condensation without being hindered by petty detail. [illustration: _l'art._ millet. the shepherdess and her sheep. (_by permission of m. charles millet._)] he himself went about in barbizon like a peasant. and he might have been seen wandering over the woods and fields with an old, red cloak, wooden shoes, and a weather-beaten straw hat. he rose at sunrise, and wandered about the country as his parents had done. he guarded no flocks, drove no cows, and no yokes of oxen or horses; he carried neither mattock nor spade, but rested on his stick; he was equipped only with the faculty of observation and poetic intuition. he went about like the people he met, roamed round the houses, entered the courtyards, looked over the hedges, knew the gleaners and reapers, the girls who took care of the geese, and the shepherds in their big cloaks, as they stood motionless amongst their flocks, resting on a staff. he entered the wash-house, the bake-house, and the dairies where the butter was being churned. he witnessed the birth of a calf or the death of a pig, or leant with folded arms on the garden wall and looked into the setting sun, as it threw a rosy veil over field and forest. he heard the chime of vesper bells, watched the people pray and then return home. and he returned also, and read the bible by lamplight, while his wife sewed and the children slept. when all was quiet he closed the book and began to dream. once more he saw all that he had come across in the course of the day. he had gone out without canvas or colours; he had merely noted down in passing a few motives in his sketch-book: as a rule he never took his pencil from his pocket, but merely meditated, his mind being compelled to notice all that his eye saw. then he went through it again in his memory. on the morrow he painted. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ millet. the shepherd at the pen at nightfall. (_by permission of m. charles millet._)] his study seems to have been an incessant exercise of the eye to see and to retain the essential, the great lines in nature as in the human body. advancing upon daumier's path, he divested figures of all that is merely accidental, and simplified them, to bring the character and ground-note more into relief. this simplification, this marvellous way of expressing forcibly as much as possible with the smallest means, no one has ever understood like millet. there is nothing superfluous, nothing petty, and everything bears witness to an epic spirit attracted by what is great and heroic. his drawing was never encumbered by what was subsidiary and anecdotic; his mind was fixed on the decisive lines which characterise a movement, and give it rhythm. it was just this feeling for rhythm which his harmonious nature possessed in the very highest degree. he did not give his peasants grecian noses, and he never lost himself in arid and trivial observation; he simplified and sublimated their outlines, making them the heroes and martyrs of toil. his figures have a majesty of style, an august grandeur; and something almost resembling the antique style of relief is found in his pictures. it is no doubt characteristic that the only works of art which he had in his studio were plaster casts of the metopes of the parthenon. he himself was like a man of antique times, both in the simplicity of his life and in his outward appearance--a peasant in wooden shoes who had, set upon his shoulders, the head of the zeus of otricoli. and as his biography reads like an homeric poem, so his great and simple art sought for what was primitive, aboriginal, and heroic. note the michelangelesque motions of "the sower." the peasant, striding on with a firm tread, seems to show by his large movements his consciousness of the grandeur of his daily toil: he is the heroic embodiment of man, swaying the earth, making it fruitful and subservient to his own purposes. "il marche dans la plaine immense, va, vient, lance la graine au loin, rouvre sa main et recommence; et je médite, obscur témoin, pendant que déployant ses voiles l'ombre où se mêle une rumeur semble élargir jusqu'aux étoiles le geste auguste du semeur." note the epical quietude of "the gleaners," the three fates of poverty, as gautier called them, the priestly dignity of "the woodcutter," the almost indian solemnity of "the woman leading her cow to grass." she stands in her wooden shoes as if on a pedestal, her dress falls into sculpturesque folds, and a grave and melancholy hebetude is imprinted on her countenance. millet is the michael angelo of peasants. in their large simplicity his pictures make the appeal of religious painting, at once plastic and mystical. [illustration: _l'art._ millet. a woman feeding chickens.] but it is in no sense merely through instinct that millet has attained this altitude of style. although the son of a peasant, and himself a peasant and the painter of peasants, he knew thoroughly well what he wanted to do; and this aim of his he has not only formulated practically in his pictures, but has made theoretically clear in his letters and treatises. for millet was not simply a man who had a turn for dreaming; he had, at the same time, a brooding, philosophic mind, in which the ideas of a thinker were harboured beside the emotions of a poet. in the portrait of himself, given on the title-page of sensier's book, a portrait in which he has something sickly, something ethereal and tinged with romance, only one side of his nature is expressed. the great medallion of chappu reveals the other side: the keen, consecutive thinker, to be found in the luminous and remorselessly logical letters. in this respect he is the true representative of his race. in opposition to the _esprit_ and graceful levity of the parisian, a quieter and more healthy human understanding counts as the chief characteristic of the norman; and this clear and precise capacity for thought was intensified in millet by incessant intellectual training. [illustration: _mansell, photo._ millet. the shepherdess.] even as a child he had received a good education from his uncle, who was an ecclesiastic, and he learnt enough latin to read the _georgics_ of virgil and other ancient authors in the original text. he knows them almost by heart, and cites them continually in his letters. when he came to paris he spent long hours in the galleries, not copying this or that portion of a picture, but fathoming works of art to their inmost core with a clear eye. in cherbourg he devoured the whole of vasari in the library, and read all he could find about dürer, leonardo, michael angelo, and poussin. even in barbizon he remained throughout his whole life an eager reader. shakespeare fills him with admiration; theocritus and burns are his favourite poets. "theocritus makes it evident to me," he says, "that one is never more greek than when one simply renders one's own impressions, let them come whence they may." when not painting or studying nature he had always a book in his hand, and knew no more cordial pleasure than when a friend increased his little library by the present of a fresh one. though in his youth he tilled the ground and ploughed, and in later days lived like a peasant, he was better instructed than most painters; he was a philosopher, a scholar. his manner in speaking was leisurely, quiet, persuasive, full of conviction, and impregnated by his own peculiar ideas, which he had thoroughly thought out. "my dear millet," wrote a critic, "you must sometimes see good-looking peasants and pretty country girls." to which millet replied: "no doubt; but beauty does not lie in the face. it lies in the harmony between man and his industry. your pretty country girls prefer to go up to town; it does not suit them to glean and gather faggots and pump water. beauty is expression. when i paint a mother i try to render her beautiful by the mere look she gives her child." he goes on to say that what has been once clearly seen is beautiful if it is simply and sincerely interpreted. everything is beautiful which is in its place, and nothing is beautiful which appears out of place. therefore no emasculation of characters is ever beautiful. apollo is apollo and socrates is socrates. mingle them and they both lose, and become a mixture which is neither fish nor flesh. this was what brought about the decadence of modern art. "_au lieu de naturaliser l'art, ils artialisent la nature._" the luxembourg gallery had shown him that he ought not to go to the theatre to create true art. "_je voudrais que les êtres que je représente aient l'air voués à leur position; et qu'il soit impossible d'imaginer qu'il leur puisse venir à l'idée d'être autre chose que ce qu'ils sont. on est dans un milieu d'un caractère ou d'un autre, mais celui qu'on adopte doit primer. on devrait être habitué à ne recevoir de la nature ses impressions de quelque sorte qu'elles soient et quelque temperament qu'on ait. il faut être imprégné et saturé d'elle, et ne penser que ce qu'elle vous fait penser. il faut croire qu'elle est assez riche pour fournir à tout. et où puiserait-on, sinon à la source? pourquoi donc à perpétuité proposer aux gens, comme but suprême à atteindre, ce que de hautes intelligences ont découvert en elle. voila donc qu'on rendrait les productions de quelques-uns le type et le but de toutes les productions à venir. les gens de génie sont comme doués de la baguette divinatoire; les uns découvrent que, dans la nature, ici se trouve cela, les autres autre chose ailleurs, selon le temperament de leur flair. leurs productions vous assurent dans cette idée que celui-là trouve qui est fait pour trouver, mais il est plaisant de voir, quand le trésor est déterré et enlevé, que des gens viennent à perpétuité gratter à cette place-là. il faut savoir découvrir où il y a des truffes. un chien qui n'a pas de flair ne peut que faire triste chasse, puisqu'il ne va qu'en voyant chasser celui qui sent la bête et qui naturellement va le premier.... un immense orgueil ou une immense sottise seulement peut faire croire à certains hommes qu'ils sont de force à redresser les prétendus manques de goût et les erreurs de la nature. les oeuvres que nous aimons, ce n'est qu'à cause qu'elles procèdent d'elle. les autres ne sont que des oeuvres pédantes et vides. on peut partir de tous les points pour arriver au sublime, et tout est propre à l'exprimer, si on a une assez haute visée. alors ce que vous aimez avec le plus d'emportement et de passion devient votre beau à vous et qui s'impose aux autres. que chacun apporte le sien. l'impression force l'expression. tout l'arsenal de la nature est à la disposition des hommes. qui oserait décider qu'une pomme de terre est inférieure à une grenade._" [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ millet. the labourer grafting a tree. (_by permission of m. charles millet._)] thus he maintains that when a stunted tree grows upon sterile soil it is more beautiful in this particular place, because more natural, than a slender tree artificially transplanted. "the beautiful is that which is in keeping. whether this is to be called realism or idealism i do not know. for me, there is only one manner of painting, and that is to paint with fidelity." in what concerns poetry old boileau has already expressed this in the phrase: "nothing is beautiful except truth"; and schiller has thrown it into the phrase, "let us, ultimately, set up truth for beauty." for the art of the nineteenth century millet's words mean the erection of a new principle, of a principle that had the effect of a novel force, that gave the consciousness of a new energy of artistic endeavour, that was a return to that which the earth was to antæus. and by formulating this principle--the principle that everything is beautiful so far as it is true, and nothing beautiful so far as it is untrue, that beauty is the blossom, but truth the tree--by clearly formulating this principle for the first time, millet has become the father of the new french and, indeed, of european art, almost more than by his own pictures. for--and here we come to the limitations of his talent--has millet as a painter really achieved what he aimed at? no less a person than fromentin has put this question in his _maîtres d'autrefois_. on his visit to holland he chances for a moment to speak of millet, and he writes:-- [illustration: _l'art._ millet. a woman knitting. (_by permission of m. charles millet._)] "an entirely original painter, high-minded and disposed to brooding, kind-hearted and genuinely rustic in nature, he has expressed things about the country and its inhabitants, about their toil, their melancholy, and the nobleness of their labour, which a dutchman would never have discovered. he has represented them in a somewhat barbaric fashion, in a manner to which his ideas gave a more expressive force than his hand possessed. the world has been grateful for his intentions; it has recognised in his method something of the sensibility of a burns who was a little awkward in expression. but has he left good pictures behind him or not? has his articulation of form, his method of expression, i mean the envelopment without which his ideas could not exist, the qualities of a good style of painting, and does it afford an enduring testimony? he stands out as a deep thinker if he is compared with potter and cuyp; he is an enthralling dreamer if he is opposed to terborch and metsu, and he has something peculiarly noble compared with the trivialities of steen, ostade, and brouwer. as a man he puts them all to the blush. does he outweigh them as a painter?" [illustration: _neurdein frères, photo._ millet. the rainbow.] if any one thinks of millet as a draughtsman he will answer this question without hesitation in the affirmative. his power is firmly rooted in the drawings which constitute half his work. and he has not merely drawn to make sketches or preparations for pictures, like leonardo, raphael, michael angelo, watteau, or delacroix; his drawings were for him real works of art complete in themselves; and his enduring and firmly grounded fame rests upon them. michael angelo, raphael, leonardo, rubens, rembrandt, prudhon, millet; that is, more or less, the roll of the greatest draughtsmen in the history of art. his pastels and etchings, his drawings in chalk, pencil, and charcoal, are astonishing through their eminent delicacy of technique. the simpler the medium the greater is the effect achieved. "the woman churning" in the louvre; the quietude of his men reaping, and of his woman-reaper beside the heaps of corn; "the water carriers," who are like greek kanephoræ; the peasant upon the potato-field, lighting his pipe with a flint and a piece of tinder; the woman sewing by the lamp beside her sleeping child; the vine-dresser resting; the little shepherdess sitting dreamily on a bundle of straw near her flock at pasture,--in all these works in black and white he is as great as he is as a colourist and as a painter in open air. there are no sportive and capricious sunbeams, as in diaz. millet's sun is too serious merely to play over the fields; it is the austere day-star, ripening the harvest, forcing men to sweat over their toil and with no time to waste in jest. and as a landscape painter he differs from corot in the same vital manner. corot, the old bachelor, dallies with nature; millet, nine times a father, knows her only as the fertile mother, nourishing all her children. the temperament of the brooding, melancholy man breaks out in his very conception of nature: "oh, if they knew how beautiful the forest is! i stroll into it sometimes of an evening, and always return with a sense of being overwhelmed. it has a quiet and majesty which are terrible, so that i have often a feeling of actual fear. i do not know what the trees talk about amongst themselves, but they say to each other something which we do not understand, because we do not speak the same language. that they are not making bad jokes seems certain." he loved what corot has never painted--the sod, the sod as sod, the sod which steams beneath the rays of the fertilising sun. and yet, despite all difference of temperament, he stands beside corot as perhaps the greatest landscape painter of the century. his landscapes are vacant and devoid of charm; they smell of the earth rather than of jessamine, yet it is as if the earth-spirit itself were invisibly brooding over them. a few colours enable him to attain that great harmony which is elsewhere peculiar to corot alone, and which, when his work was over, he so often discussed with his neighbour rousseau. with a few brilliant and easily executed shadings he gives expression to the vibration of the atmosphere, the lustre of the sky at sunset, the massive structure of the ground, the blissful tremor upon the plain at sunrise. at one time he renders the morning mist lying over the fields, at another the haze of sultry noon, veiling and as it were absorbing the outlines and colours of all objects, the light of sunset streaming over field and woodland with a tender, tremulous glimmering, the delicate silver tone which veils the landscape on clear moonlight nights. there is not another artist of the century who renders night as millet does in his pastels. one of the most charming and poetic works is the biblical and mystical night-piece "the flight into egypt." as he strides forward saint joseph holds upon his arm the child, whose head is surrounded by a shining halo, whilst the mother moves slowly along the banks of the nile riding upon an ass. the stars twinkle, the moon throws its tremulous light uncertainly over the plain. joseph and mary are barbizon peasants, and yet these great figures breathe of the sistine chapel and of michael angelo. and which of the old masters has so eloquently rendered the sacred silence of night as millet has done in his "shepherd at the pen"? the landscapes which he has drawn awaken the impression of spaciousness as only rembrandt's etchings have done, and that of fine atmosphere as only corot's pictures. a marvellously transparent and tender evening sky rests over his picture of cows coming down to drink at the lake, and a liquid moonlight washes over the crests of the waves around "the sailing boat." the garden in stormy light with a high-lying avenue spanned by a rainbow--the motive which he developed for the well-known picture in the louvre--is found again and again in several pastels, which progress from a simple to a more complicated treatment of the theme. everything is transparent and delicate, full of air and light, and the air and light are themselves full of magic and melting charm. [illustration: _s. low & co._ the barbizon stone.] but it is a different matter when one attempts to answer fromentin's question in the form in which it is put. for without in any way detracting from millet's importance, one may quietly make the declaration: no, millet was _not_ a good painter. later generations, with which he will no longer be in touch through his ethical greatness, if they consider his paintings alone, will scarcely understand the high estimation in which he is held at present. for although many works which have come into private collections in boston, new york, and baltimore are, in their original form, withdrawn from judgment, they are certainly not better than the many works brought together in the millet exhibition of or the world exhibition of . and these had collectively a clumsiness, and a dry and heavy colouring, which are not merely old-fashioned, primitive, and antediluvian in comparison with the works of modern painters, but which fall far below the level of their own time in the quality of colour. the conception in millet's paintings is always admirable, but never the technique; he makes his appeal as a poet only, and never as a painter. his painting is often anxiously careful, heavy, and thick, and looks as if it had been filled in with masonry; it is dirty and dismal, and wanting in free and airy tones. sometimes it is brutal and hard, and occasionally it is curiously indecisive in effect. even his best pictures--"the angelus" not excepted--give no æsthetic pleasure to the eye. the most ordinary fault in his painting is that it is soft, greasy, and woolly. he is not light enough with what should be light, nor fleeting enough with what is fleeting. and this defect is especially felt in his treatment of clothes. they are of a massive, distressing solidity, as if moulded in brass, and not woven from flax and wool. the same is true of his air, which has an oily and material effect. even in "the gleaners" the aspect is cold and gloomy; it is without the intensity of light which is shed through the atmosphere, and streams ever changing over the earth. and this is a declaration of what was left for later artists to achieve. the problem of putting real human beings in their true surroundings was stated by millet, solved in his pastels, and left unsolved in his oil paintings. this same problem had to be taken up afresh by his successors, and followed to its furthest consequences. at the same time, it was necessary to widen the choice of subject. for it is characteristic of millet, the great peasant, that his art is exclusively concerned with peasants. his sensitive spirit, which from youth upwards had compassion for the hard toil and misery of the country folk, was blind to the sufferings of the artisans of the city, amid whom he had lived in paris in his student days. the _ouvrier_, too, has his poetry and his grandeur. as there is a cry of the earth, so is there also a cry, as loud and as eloquent, which goes up from the pavement of great cities. millet lived in paris during a critical and terrible time. he was there during the years of ferment at the close of the reign of louis philippe. around him there muttered all the terrors of socialism and communism. he was there during the february revolution and during the days of june. while the artisans fought on the barricades he was painting "the winnower." the misery of paris and the sufferings of the populace did not move him. millet, the peasant, had a heart only for the peasantry. he was blind to the sufferings, blind to the charms of modern city life. paris seemed to him a "miserable, dirty nest." there was no picturesque aspect of the great town that fascinated him. he felt neither its grace, its elegance and charming frivolity, nor remarked the mighty modern movement of ideas and the noble humanity which set their seal upon that humanitarian century. the development of french art had to move in both of these directions. it was partly necessary to take up afresh with improved instruments the problem of the modern conception of colour, touched on by millet; it was partly necessary to extend from the painting of peasants to modern life the principle formulated by millet, "_le beau c'est le vrai_," to transfer it from the forest of fontainebleau to paris, from the solitude to life, from the evening gloom to sunlight, from the softness of romance to hard reality. * * * * * the fourth book of this work will be devoted to the consideration of those masters who, acting on this principle, extended beyond the range of millet and brought the art which he had created to fuller fruition. book iv the realistic painters and the modern idealists chapter xxvii realism in france to continue in paris what millet had begun in the solitude of the forest of fontainebleau there was need of a man of the unscrupulous animal power of _gustave courbet_. the task assigned to him was similar to that which fell to caravaggio in the seventeenth century. in that age, when the eclectic imitation of the cinquecento had reached the acme of mannerism, when carlo dolci and sassoferato devoted themselves in mythological pictures to watering down the types of raphael by idealising, caravaggio painted scenes amongst dregs of the people and the unbridled soldiery of his age. at a period when these artists indulged in false, artificial, and doctrinaire compositions, which, on a barren system, merely traced the performances of classic masters back to certain rules of art, caravaggio created works which may have been coarse, but which had an earnest and fruitful veracity, and gave the entire art of the seventeenth century another direction by their healthy and powerful naturalism. when courbet appeared the situation was similar: ingres, in whose frigid works the whole cinquecento had been crystallised, was at the zenith of his fame. couture had painted his "decadent romans" and cabanel had recorded his first successes. beside these stood that little neo-grecian school with louis hamon at its head--a school whose prim style of china painting had the peculiar admiration of the public. courbet, with all his brutal weight, pushed between the large symmetrical figures of the thoroughbred classicists and the pretty confectionery of the neo-grecian painters of beauty. but the old panacea is never without effect: in all periods when art has overlived its bloom and falls into mannerism it is met by a strong cross-current of realism pouring into it new life-blood. in painting, nature had been made artificial, and it was time for art to be made natural. painters still strayed in the past, seeking to awaken the dead, and give life once more to history. the time had come for accentuating the claims of the present more sharply than before, and for setting art amid the seething life of modern cities: it was a development naturally and logically following that of political life; it is historically united with the unintermittent struggle for universal suffrage. courbet merely fought the decisive battle in the great fight which jeanron, leleux, octave tassaert, and others had begun as skirmishing outposts. as a painter he towered over these elder artists, whose sentimental pictures had not been taken seriously as works of art, and challenged attention all the more by painting life-size. in this manner the last obstacle was removed which had stood in the way of the treatment of modern subjects. scanty notice had been taken of millet's little peasant figures, which were merely reckoned as accessories to the landscape. but courbet's pictures first taught the academy that the "picture of manners," which had seemed so harmless, had begun to usurp the place of historical painting in all its pride. at the same time--and this made courbet's appearance of still more consequence than that of his predecessors--a most effective literary propaganda went hand in hand with that which was artistic. millet had been silent and was known only by his friends. he had never arranged for an exhibition of his works, and quietly suffered the rejections of the hanging committee and the derision of the public. courbet blustered, beat the big drum, threw himself into forcible postures like a strong man juggling with cannon-balls, and announced in the press that he was the only serious artist of the century. no one could ever _embêter le bourgeois_ with such success, no one has called forth such a howl of passion, no one so complacently surrendered his private life to the curiosity of the great public, with the swaggering attitude of an athlete displaying his muscles in the circus. as regards this method of making an appearance--a method by which he became at times almost grotesque--one may take whatever view one pleases; but when he came he was necessary. in art revolutions are made with the same brutality as in life. people shout and sing, and break the windows of those who have windows to break. for every revolution has a character of inflexible harshness. wisdom and reason have no part in the passions necessary for the work of destruction and rebuilding. caravaggio was obliged to take to his weapons, and make sanguinary onslaughts. in our civilised nineteenth century everything was accomplished according to law, but not with less passion. one has to make great demands to receive even a little; this has been true in all times, and this is precisely what courbet did. he was a remarkable character striving for high aims, an eccentric man of genius, a modern narcissus for ever contemplating himself in his vanity, and yet he was the truest friend, the readiest to sacrifice himself; for the crowd a cynic and a reckless talker; at home an earnest and mighty toiler, bursting out like a child and appeased the very next moment; outwardly as brutal as he was inwardly sensitive, as egotistic as he was proud and independent; and being what he was, he formulated his purposes as incisively by his words as in his works. full of fire and enthusiasm, destroying and inciting to fresh creation--a nature like lorenz gedon, whom he also resembled in appearance--he became the soul and motive power of the great realistic movement which flooded europe from the beginning of the fifties. altogether he was the man of whom art had need at that time: a doctor who brought health with him, shed it abroad, and poured blood into the veins of art. both as man and artist his entry upon the arena is in some degree like the breaking in of an elemental force of nature. he comes from the country in wooden shoes, with the self-reliance of a peasant who is afraid of nothing. he is a great and powerful man, as sound and natural as the oxen of his birthplace. he had broad shoulders, with which he pushed aside everything standing in his way. his was an instinct rather than a reflecting brain, a _peintre-animal_, as he was called by a frenchman. and such a plebeian was wanted to beat down the academic olympus. in making him great and strong, nature had herself predestined him for the part he had to play: a man makes a breach the more easily for having big muscles. furnished with the strength of a samson wrecking the temple of the philistines, he was himself "the stone-breaker" of his art, and, like the men he painted, he has done a serviceable day's work. [illustration: _l'art._ gustave courbet.] gustave courbet, the strong son of franche-comté, was born in , in ornans, a little town near besançon. like his friend and fellow-countryman proudhon, the socialist, he had a strain of german blood in his veins, and in their outward appearance it gave them both something teutonic, rugged, and heavy, contrasting with french ease and elegance. on his massive frame was set a thick, athletic neck, and a broad countenance with black hair, and big, strong eyes like those of a lion-tamer, which sparkled like black diamonds. a strong man, who had never been stinted, he was of medium height, broad-shouldered, bluff, ruddy like a slaughterman, and, as the years passed, disposed to acquire a more liberal circumference of body. he went about working like sisyphus, and never without a short pipe in his mouth, the classic _brûle-gueule_, loaded with strong caporal. his movements were broad and heavy, and, being a little short in his breathing, he wheezed when he was excited, and perspired over his painting. his dress was comfortable, but not elegant; and his head was formed for a cap rather than the official tall hat. in speech he was cynical, and often broke into a contemptuous laugh. both in his studio and at his tavern he moved more freely in his shirt-sleeves, and at the munich exhibition of he seemed to the german painters like a thorough old bavarian, when he sat down to drink with them at the _deutsches haus_ in his jovial way, and, by a rather teutonic than latin capacity for disposing of beer, threw the most inveterate of the men of munich into the shade. originally destined for the law, he determined in to become a painter, and began his artistic studies under flageoulot, a mediocre artist of the school of david, who had drifted into the provinces, and boastfully called himself _le roi du dessin_. in he came to paris, already full of self-reliance, fire and strength. on his first turn through the luxembourg gallery he paused before delacroix's "massacre of chios," glowing as it is in colour, and said it was not bad, but that he could do that style of thing whenever he liked. after a short time he acquired a power of execution full of bravura by studying the old masters in the louvre. self-taught in art, he was in life a democrat and in politics a republican. in , during a battle in june, he had a fair prospect of being shot with a party of insurgents whom he had joined, if certain "right-minded" citizens had not interceded for their neighbour, who was popular as a man and already much talked about as a painter. in the beginning of the fifties he was to be found every evening at a _brasserie_ much frequented by artists and students in the rue hautefeuille in the _quartier latin_, in the society of young authors of the school of balzac. he had his studio at the end of the street, and is said to have been at the time a strong, fine, spirited young man, who made free use of the drastic slang of the studios. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ courbet. the man with a leather belt. portrait of himself as a youth.] "his notable features," writes théophile silvestre of courbet at this time,--"his notable features seem as though they had been modelled from an assyrian bas-relief. his well-shaped and brilliant dark eyes, shadowed by long silken lashes, have the soft quiet light of an antelope's. the moustache, scarcely traceable beneath his slightly curved aquiline nose, is joined by a fan-shaped beard, and borders his thick, sensuous lips; his complexion is olive-brown, but of a changing, sensitive tone. the round, curiously shaped head and prominent cheek-bones denote stubbornness, and the flexible nostrils passion." a great dispute over realism usually took the place of dessert at meal-times. courbet never allowed himself to be drawn into controversy. he threw his opinion bluntly out, and when he was opposed cut the conversation short in an exceedingly forcible manner. it was another murder of the innocents when he spoke of the celebrities of his time. he designated historical painting as nonsense, style as humbug, and blew away all ideals, declaring that it was the greatest impudence to wish to paint things which one has never seen, and of the appearance of which one cannot have the faintest conception. fancy was rubbish, and reality the one true muse. [illustration: _l'art._ courbet. a funeral at ornans.] "our century," he says, "will not recover from the fever of imitation by which it has been laid low. phidias and raphael have hooked themselves on to us. the galleries should remain closed for twenty years, so that the moderns might at last begin to see with their own eyes. for what can the old masters offer us? it is only ribera, zurbaran, and velasquez that i admire; ostade and craesbeeck also allure me; and for holbein, i feel veneration. as for m. raphael, there is no doubt that he has painted some interesting portraits, but i cannot find any ideas in him. and the artistic kin, the heirs, or more properly the slaves of this great man, are really preceptors of the lowest art. what do they teach us? nothing. a good picture will never come from their _École des beaux-arts_. the most precious thing is the originality, the independence of an artist. schools have no right to exist; there are only painters. independently of system and without attaching myself to any party, i have studied the art of the old masters and of the more modern. i have tried to imitate the one as little as i have tried to copy the other, but out of the total knowledge of tradition i have wished to draw a firm and independent sense of my own individuality. my object was by gaining knowledge to gain in ability; to have the power of expressing the ideas, the manners, and the aspect of our epoch according to an appreciation of my own, not merely to be a painter, but a man also--in a word, to practise living art is the compass of my design. i am not only a socialist, but also a democrat and a republican--that is to say, a supporter of every revolution; and moreover, a sheer realist, which means a loyal adherent to the _vérité vraie_. but the principle of realism is the negation of the ideal. and following all that comes from this negation of the ideal, i shall arrive at the emancipation of the individual, and, finally, at democracy. realism, in its essence, is democratic art. it can only exist by the representation of things which the artist can see and handle. for painting is an entirely physical language, and an abstract, invisible, non-existent object does not come within its province. the grand painting which we have stands in contradiction with our social conditions, and ecclesiastical painting in contradiction with the spirit of the century. it is nonsensical for painters of more or less talent to dish up themes in which they have no belief, themes which could only have flourished in some epoch other than our own. better paint railway stations with views of the places through which one travels, with likenesses of great men through whose birthplace one passes, with engine-houses, mines, and manufactories; for these are the saints and miracles of the nineteenth century." these doctrines fundamentally tallied with those which the neapolitan and spanish naturalists vindicated in the seventeenth century against the eclectics. for men like poussin, leseur, and sassoferato, raphael was "an angel and not a man," and the vatican "the academy of painters." but velasquez when he came to rome found it wearisome. "what do you say of our raphael? do you not think him best of all, now that you have seen everything that is fair and beautiful in italy?" don diego inclined his head ceremoniously, and observed: "to confess the truth, for i like to be candid and open, i must acknowledge that i do not care about raphael at all." there are reported utterances of caravaggio which correspond almost word for word with those of courbet. he, too, declaimed against the antique and raphael, in whose shadow he saw so many shallow imitators sitting at their ease, and he declared, in a spirit of sharp opposition, that the objects of daily life were the only true teachers. he would owe all to nature and nothing to art. he held painting without the model to be absurd. so long as the model was out of sight, his hands and his spirit were idle. moreover, he called himself a democratic painter, who brought the fourth estate into honour; he "would rather be the first of vulgar painters than second amongst the superfine." and just as these naturalists in the seventeenth century were treated by the academical artists as rhyparographists, courbet's programme did not on the whole facilitate his acceptance in formal exhibitions as he desired that it should. a play must be acted, a manuscript printed, and a picture viewed. so courbet had no desire to remain an outsider. when the picture committee of the world exhibition of gave his pictures an unfavourable position, he withdrew them and offered them to public inspection separately in a wooden hut in the vicinity of the pont de jena, just at the entry of the exhibition. upon the hut was written in big letters: realism--g. courbet. and in the interior the theories which he had urged hitherto by his tongue and his pen, at the tavern and in his pamphlets, were demonstrated by thirty-eight large pictures, which elucidate his whole artistic development. [illustration: _baschet._ courbet. the stone-breakers.] "lot's daughters" and "love in the country" were followed in by the portrait of himself and the picture of his dog, in by "a guitarrero," in by the "portrait of m. m----," and in by "the walpurgisnacht"; all works in which he was still groping his way. "the sleeping bathers," "the violoncello player," and a landscape from his native province, belonging to the year , made a nearer approach to his realistic aim, and with the date there are seven portraits, landscapes, and pictures from popular national life: "the painter," "m. h. t---- looking over engravings," "the vintage in ornans below the roche du mont," "the valley of the bue seen from the roche du mont," "view of the château of saint-denis," "evening in the village of scey-en-varay," and "peasants returning from mass near flagey." all these works had passed the doors of the salon without demur. the first picture which brought about a collision of opinion was "a fire in paris," and, according to the account given by contemporaries, it must have been one of his finest works. firemen, soldiers, artisans in jacket and blouse, were exerting themselves, according to paul d'abrest who describes the picture, around a burning house; even women helped in the work of rescue, and formed part of the chain handing buckets from the pump. opposite stood a group of young dandies with girls upon their arms looking inactively upon the scene. an artillery captain, who was amongst courbet's acquaintances, had through several nights sounded the alarm for his men and exercised them on the scaffolding of a wall, so that the painter could make his studies. courbet transferred his studio to the barracks and made sketches by torch-light. but he had reckoned without the police; scarcely was the picture finished before it was seized, as the government recognised in it, for reasons which did not appear, "an incitement to the people of the town." this was after the _coup d'état_ of . so courbet's manifesto was not "the fire in paris." "the stone-breakers," two men in the dress of artisans, in a plain evening landscape, occupied once more the first place in the exhibition of , having already made the effect, amongst its classical surroundings in the salon of , of a rough, true, and honest word, spoken amid elaborate society phrases. there was also to be seen "afternoon at ornans,"--a gathering of humble folk sitting after meal-time at a table laid out in a rustic kitchen. a picture which became celebrated under the title of "bonjour, m. courbet" dealt with a scene from courbet's native town. courbet, just arrived, is alighting from a carriage in his travelling costume, looking composedly about him with a pipe in his mouth. a respectable prosperous gentleman, accompanied by a servant in livery, who is carrying his overcoat, is stretching out his hand to him. this gentleman is m. bryas, the mæcenas of ornans, who for long was courbet's only patron, and who had a whim for having his portrait taken by forty parisian painters in order to learn the "manners" of the various artists. and there was further to be seen the "demoiselles de village" of , three country beauties giving a piece of cake to a peasant-girl. finally, as masterpieces, there were "the funeral at ornans," which now hangs in the louvre, and that great canvas, designated in the catalogue as "a true allegory," "my studio after seven years of artistic life," the master himself painting a landscape. behind him is a nude model, and in front of him a beggar-woman with her child. around are portrait figures of his friends, and the heroes of his pictures, a poacher, a parson, a sexton, labourers, and artisans. [illustration: _l'art._ courbet. the return from market.] the exhibition was, at all events, a success with young painters, and courbet set up a teaching studio, at the opening of which he again issued a kind of manifesto in the _courrier du dimanche_. "beauty," he wrote, "lies in nature, and it is to be met with under the most various forms. as soon as it is found it belongs to art, or rather to the artist who discovers it. but the painter has no right to add to this expression of nature, to alter the form of it and thereby weaken it. the beauty offered by nature stands high above all artistic convention. that is the basis of my views of art." it is said that his first model was an ox. when his pupils wanted another, courbet said: "very well, gentlemen, next time let us study a courtier." the break-up of the school is supposed to have taken place when one day the ox ran away and was not to be recaptured. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ courbet. the battle of the stags.] courbet did not trouble himself over such ridicule, but painted quietly on, the many-sidedness of his talent soon giving him a firm seat in every saddle. after the scandal of the separate exhibition of he was excluded from the salon until , and during this time exhibited in paris and besançon upon his own account. "the funeral at ornans" was followed by "the return from market," a party of peasants on the high-road, and in by "the return from the conference," in which a number of french country priests have celebrated their meeting with a hearty lunch and set out on the way back in a condition which is far too jovial. in , when the gates of the champs elysées were thrown open to him once more, he received the medal for his "battle of the stags," and regularly contributed to the salon until . in these years he attempted pictures with many figures less frequently, and painted by preference hunting and animal pieces, landscapes, and the nude figures of women. "the woman with the parrot," a female figure mantled with long hair, lying undressed amid the cushions of a couch playing with her gaudily feathered favourite, "the fox hunt," a coast scene in provence, the portrait of proudhon and his family, "the valley of the puits-noir," "roche pagnan," "the roe hunt," "the charity of a beggar," the picture of women bathing in the gloom of the forest, and "the wave," afterwards acquired by the luxembourg, belong to his principal works in the sixties. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ courbet. a woman bathing. (_by permission of m. sainctelette, of brussels, the owner of the picture._)] these works gradually made him so well known that after his pictures came to have a considerable sale. the critics began to take him seriously. castagnary made his début in the _siècle_ with a study of courbet; champfleury, the apostle of literary realism, devoted to him a whole series of _feuilletons_ in the _messager de l'assemblée_, and from his intercourse with him proudhon derived the fundamental principles of his book on realism. the son of franche-comté triumphed, and there was a beam in his laughing eyes, always like those of a deer. his talent began more and more to unfold its wings in the sun of success, and his power of production seemed inexhaustible. when the custom arose of publishing in the parisian papers accounts of the budget of painters, he took care to communicate that in six months he had made a hundred and twenty-three thousand francs. incessantly busy, he had in his hand at one moment the brush and at another the chisel. and when he gave another special exhibition of his works in , at the time of the great world exhibition--he had a mania for wooden booths--he was able to put on view no less than a hundred and thirty-two pictures in addition to numerous pieces of sculpture. in the committee of the munich exhibition set apart a whole room for his works. with a self-satisfied smile he put on the order of michael, and was the hero of the day whom all eyes followed upon the boulevards. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ courbet. deer in covert.] the nature of the bullfighter was developed in him more strongly than before, and he stretched his powerful limbs, prepared to do battle against all existing opinions. naturally the events of the following years found no idle spectator in such a firebrand as courbet; and accordingly he rushed into those follies which embittered the evening of his life. the _maître peintre d'ornans_ became courbet _le colonnard_. first came the sensational protest with which he returned to the emperor napoleon the order of the legion of honour. four weeks after courbet had plunged into this affair the war broke out. eight weeks later came sedan and the proclamation of the republic, and shortly afterwards the siege of paris and the insurrection. on th september the provisional government appointed him director of the fine arts. afterwards he became a member of the commune, and dominated everywhere, with the _brûle-gueule_ in his mouth, by the power of his voice; and france has to thank him for the rescue of a large number of her most famous treasures of art. he had the rich collections of thiers placed in the louvre, to protect them from the rough and ready violence of the populace. but to save the luxembourg he sacrificed the column of the vendôme. when the commune fell, however, courbet alone was held responsible for the destruction of the column. he was brought before the court-martial of versailles, and, although thiers undertook his defence, he was condemned to six months' imprisonment. having undergone this punishment he received his freedom once more, but the artist had still to suffer a mortal blow. the pictures which he had destined for the salon of were rejected by the committee, because courbet was held morally unworthy to take part in the exhibition. [illustration: _baschet._ courbet. girls lying on the bank of the seine.] soon after this an action was brought against him, on the initiative of certain reactionary papers, for the payment of damages connected with the overthrow of the vendôme column, and the painter lost his case. for the recovery of these damages, which were assessed at three hundred and thirty-four thousand francs, the government brought to the hammer his furniture and the pictures that were in his studio, at a compulsory sale at the hôtel drouot, where they fetched the absurdly trifling figure of twelve thousand one hundred and eighteen francs fifty centimes. the loss of his case drove him from france to switzerland. he gave the town of vevay, where he settled, a bust of helvetia, as a mark of his gratitude for the hospitality it had extended towards him. but the artist was crushed in him. "they have killed me," he said; "i feel that i shall never do anything good again." and thus the jovial, laughing courbet, that honoured leader of a brilliant pleiad of disciples, the friend and companion of corot, decamps, gustave planché, baudelaire, théophile gautier, silvestre, proudhon, and champfleury; the enthusiastic patriot and idol of the fickle parisians, passed his last years in melancholy solitude, forgotten by his adherents and scorned by his adversaries. he was attacked by a disease of the liver, and privation, disillusionment, and depression came all at once. moreover, the french government began again to make claims for indemnification. his heart broke in a prolonged mortal struggle. shortly before his death he said to a friend: "what am i to live upon, and how am i to pay for the column? i have saved thiers more than a million francs, and the state more than ten millions, and now they are at my heels--they are baiting me to death. i can do no more. to work one must have peace of spirit, and i am a ruined man." and champfleury writes, referring to the last visit which he paid to the dying exile on th december : "his beard and hair were white, and all that remained of the handsome, all-powerful courbet whom i had known was that notable assyrian profile, which he raised to the snow of the alps, as i sat beside him and saw it for the last time. the sight of such pain and misery as this premature wreck of the whole man was overwhelming." [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ courbet. a recumbent woman.] the lake of geneva, over which he looked from his window in vevay, was the subject of the last picture that he painted in switzerland. far from home and amid indifferent strangers he closed his eyes, which had once been so brilliant, in endless grief of spirit. the apostle of realism died of a broken heart, the herculean son of franche-comté could not suffer disillusionment. courbet passed away, more or less forgotten, upon new year's eve in , in that chilly hour of morning when the lake which he had learnt to love trembles beneath the first beams of the sun. it was only in belgium, where he had often stayed and where his influence was considerable, that the intelligence of his death woke a painful echo. in paris it met with no word of sympathy. courbetism was extinguished; as impressionists and independents his adherents had gathered round new flags. zola has done him honour in _l'oeuvre_ in the person of old bongrand, that half-perished veteran who is only mentioned now and then with veneration. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ courbet. berlioz.] and the course of development has indeed been so rapid since courbet's appearance that in these days one almost fails to understand, apart from historical reasons, the grounds which in made his separate exhibition of his works an event of epoch-making importance. it was not cham alone who at that time devoted a large cartoon to courbet, as he did in "the opening of courbet's studio and concentrated realism." all the comic journals of paris were as much occupied with him as with the crinoline, the noiseless pavement, the new tramways, or the balloon. haussard, the principal representative of criticism, in discussing "the funeral at ornans," spoke of "these burlesque masks with their fuddled red noses, this village priest who seems to be a tippler, and the harlequin of a veteran who is putting on a hat which is too big for him." all this, he continued, suggested a masquerade funeral, six metres long, in which there was more to laugh at than to weep over. even paul mantz declared that the most extravagant fancy could not descend to such a degree of jejune triviality and repulsive hideousness. in a _revue d'année_ produced at the odéon, the authors, philoxène hoyer and théodore de banville, make "a realist" say-- "faire vrai ce n'est rien pour être réaliste, c'est faire laid qu'il faut! or, monsieur, s'il vous plait, tout ce que je dessine est horriblement laid! ma peinture est affreuse, et, pour qu'elle soit vraie, j'en arrache le beau comme on fait de l'ivraie. j'aime les teints terreux et les nez de carton, les fillettes avec de la barbe au menton, les trognes de varasque et de coquecigrues, les dorillons, les cors aux pieds et les verrues! voilà le vrai!" [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ courbet. the hind on the snow.] so it went on through the sixties also. when the empress eugénie passed through the exhibition on the opening day of the salon of , with an elegant walking-stick in her hand, she was so indignant at courbet's "naked women" that the picture had to be immediately removed. in the beginning of the seventies, when he exhibited in germany, a few young munich painters recognised in his pictures something like the cry of a conscience. but otherwise "artists and laymen shook their heads, not knowing what to make of them. some smiled and went indifferently on, while others were indignant in their condemnation of this degradation of art." for "courbet went to the lowest depths of society, and took his themes from a class where man really ceases to be man, and the image of god prolongs a miserable existence as a moving mass of flesh. living bodies with dead souls, which exist only for the sake of their animal needs; in one place sunk in misery and wretchedness, and in another having never risen from their brutal savagery--that is the society from which courbet chooses his motives, to gloss over the debility of his imagination and his want of any kind of training. had he possessed the talent for composition, then perhaps his lifeless technique would have become interesting; as it is he offers a merely arbitrary succession of figures in which coherence is entirely wanting." in "the stone-breakers" it was an offence that he should have treated such "an excessively commonplace subject" at all as mere artisans in ragged and dirty clothes. and by "the funeral at ornans" it was said that he meant to sneer at the religious ceremony, since the picture had a defiant and directly brutal vulgarity. the painter was alleged to have taken pains to expose the repulsive, ludicrous, and grotesque elements in the members of the funeral party, and to have softened no feature which could excite an unseasonable merriment. in the "demoiselles de village" the design had been to contrast the stilted, provincial nature of these village misses with the healthy simplicity of a peasant child. in the picture, painted in , of the two grisettes lying in the grass on the bank of the seine he had "intentionally placed the girls in the most unrefined attitudes, that they might appear as trivial as possible." and umbrage was taken at his two naked wrestlers because he "had not painted wrestlers more or less like those of classic times, but the persons who exhibit the strength of their herculean frames at the hippodrome," and therefore given "the most vulgar rendering of nudity that was at all possible." and in his naked women it was said that this love of ugly and brutal forms became actually base. all these judgments are characteristic symptoms of the same sort of taste which rose in the seventeenth century against caravaggio. even his principal work, the altar-piece to st. matthew, which now hangs in the berlin museum, excited so much indignation that it had to be removed from the church of st. luigi dei francesi in rome. annibale carracci has a scornful caricature in which the neapolitan master appears as a hairy savage, with a dwarf at his side and two apes upon his knees, and, in this fashion, intended to brand the hideousness of his rival's art and his ape-like imitation of misshapen nature. francesco albani called him the "antichrist of painting," and "a ruination to art." and baglione adds: "now a number of young men sit down to copy a head after nature; they study neither the foundations of drawing, nor concern themselves about the more profound conditions of art, merely contenting themselves with a crude reproduction of nature, and therefore they do not even know how to group two figures appropriately, nor to bring any theme into an artistic composition. no one any longer visits the temples of art, but every one finds his masters and his models for a servile imitation of nature in the streets and open places." the nineteenth century formed a different estimate of caravaggio. in opposing his fortune-telling gipsies, his tipplers, gamblers, musicians, and dicing mercenaries to the noble figures of the academical artists, with their generalised and carefully balanced forms, their trivial, nugatory countenances, and their jejune colouring, he accomplished the legitimate and necessary reaction against a shallow and empty idealistic mannerism. no one is grateful to the eclectic artists for the learned efforts which it cost them to paint so tediously: in caravaggio there is the fascination of a strong personality and a virile emphasis in form, colour, and light. the carracci and albani were the issue of their predecessors; caravaggio is honoured as a fearless pioneer who opened a new chapter in the history of art. [illustration: courbet. my studio after seven years of artistic life.] courbet met with a similar fate. if one approaches him after reading the criticisms of his pictures already cited, a great disillusionment is inevitable. having imagined a grotesque monster, one finds to one's astonishment that there is not the slightest occasion either for indignation or laughter in the presence of these powerful, sincere, and energetic pictures. one has expected caricatures and a repulsive hideousness, and one finds a broad and masterly style of painting. the heads are real without being vulgar, and the flesh firm and soft and throbbing with powerful life. courbet is a personality. he began by imitating the flemish painters and the neapolitans. but far more did he feel himself attracted by the actual world, by massive women and strong men, and wide fertile fields smelling of rich, rank earth. as a healthy and sensuously vigorous man he felt a voluptuous satisfaction in clasping actual nature in his herculean arms. of course, by the side of his admirable pictures there are others which are heavy and uncouth. but if one is honest one paints according to one's inherent nature, as old navez, the pupil of david, was in the habit of saying. courbet was honest, and he was also a somewhat unwieldy being, and therefore his painting too has something bluff and cumbrous. but where in all french art is there such a sound painter, so sure of his effects and with such a large bravura, a _maître peintre_ who was so many-sided, extending his dominion as much over figure-painting as landscape, over the nude as over _nature morte_? there is no artist so many of whose pictures may be seen together without surfeit, for he is novel in almost every work. he has painted not a few pictures of which it may be said that each one is _sui generis_, and on the variations of which elsewhere entire reputations might have been founded. with the exception of millet, no one had observed man and nature with such sincere and open eyes. with the great realists of the past courbet shares the characteristic of being everywhere and exclusively a portrait painter. a pair of stone-breakers, kneeling as they do in his picture, with their faces protected by wire-masks, were figures which every one saw working at the street corner, and courbet represented the scene as faithfully as he could, as sincerely and positively as was at all possible. "afternoon in ornans" is a pleasant picture, in which he took up again the good tradition of lenain. and in "the funeral at ornans" he has painted exactly the manner in which such ceremonies take place in the country. the peasants and dignitaries of a little country town--portrait figures such as the masters of the fifteenth century brought into their religious pictures--have followed the funeral train, and behave themselves at the grave just as peasants would. they make no impassioned gesticulations, and form themselves into no fine groups, but stand there like true rustics, sturdy and indifferent. they are men of flesh and blood, they are like the people of real life, and they have been subjected to no alteration: on the one side are the women tearfully affected by the words of the preacher, on the other are the men bored by the ceremony or discussing their own affairs. in the "demoiselles de village" he gives a portrait of his own sisters, as they went to a dance of a sunday afternoon. the "girls lying on the bank of the seine" are grisettes of , such as gavarni often drew; they are both dressed in doubtful taste, one asleep, the other lost in a vacant reverie. his naked women make a very tame effect compared with the colossal masses of human flesh in that cascade of nude women of the plumpest description who in rubens' "last judgment" plunge in confusion into hell, like fish poured out from a bucket. but they are amongst the best nude female figures which have been created in the nineteenth century. courbet was a painter of the family of rubens and jordaens. he had the preference shown by the old flemish artists for healthy, plump, soft flesh, for fair, fat, and forty, the three f's of feminine beauty, and in his works he gave the academicians a lesson well worth taking to heart; he showed them that it was possible to attain a powerful effect, and even grace itself, by strict fidelity to the forms of reality. [illustration: _neuerdein, photo._ courbet. the wave.] his portraits--and he had the advantage of painting berlioz and baudelaire, champfleury and proudhon--are possibly not of conspicuous eminence as likenesses. as caravaggio, according to bellori, "had only spirit, eyes and diligence for flesh-tints, skin, blood, and the natural surface of objects," a head was merely a _morceau_ like anything else for courbet too, and not the central point of a thinking and sensitive being. the physical man, taine's human animal, was more important in his eyes than the psychical. he painted the epidermis without giving much suggestion of what was beneath. but he painted this surface in such a broad and impressive manner that the pictures are interesting as pictorial masterpieces if not as analyses of character. [illustration: _l'art._ stevens. the lady in pink.] [illustration: _l'art._ stevens. la bÊte À bon dieu.] to these his landscapes and animal pieces must be added as the works on which his talent displayed itself in the greatest purity and most inherent vigour: "the battle of the stags," that most admirable picture "the hind on the snow," "deer in covert," views of the moss-grown rocks and sunlit woods of ornans and the green valleys of the franche-comté. he had the special secret of painting with a beautiful tone and a broad, sure stroke dead plumage and hunting-gear, the bristling hide of wild-boars, and the more delicate coat of deer and of dogs. as a landscape painter he does not belong to the family of corot and dupré. his landscapes are green no doubt, but they have limitations; the leaves hang motionless on the branches, undisturbed by a breath of wind. courbet has forgotten the most important thing, the air. whatever the time of the year or the day may be, winter or summer, evening or morning, he sees nothing but the form of things, regarding the sun as a machine which has no other purpose than to mark the relief of objects by light and shade. moreover, the lyricism of the fontainebleau painters was not in him. he paints without reverie, and knows nothing of that tender faltering of the landscape painter in which the poet awakes, but has merely the equanimity of a good and sure worker. in regard to nature, he has the sentiments of a peasant who tills his land, is never elegiac or bucolic, and would be most indignant if a nymph were to tread on the furrows of his fields. he paints with a pipe in his mouth and a spade in his hand, the plain and the hills, potatoes and cabbages, rich turf and slimy rushes, oxen with steaming nostrils heavily ploughing the clods, cows lying down and breathing at ease the damp air of the meadows drenched with rain. he delights in fertile patches of country, and in the healthy odour of the cow-house. a material heaviness and a prosaic sincerity are stamped upon all. but his painting has a solidity delightful to the eye. it is inspiriting to meet a man who has such a resolute and simple love of nature, and can interpret her afresh in powerful and sound colour without racking his brains. his attachment to the spot of earth where he was born is a leading characteristic of his art. he borrowed from ornans the motives of his most successful creations, and was always glad to return to his parents' house. the patriotism of the church-spire, provincialism, and a touching and vivid sense of home are peculiar to all his landscapes. but in his sea-pieces, to which he was incited by a residence in trouville in the summer of , he has opened an altogether new province to french art. _eugène le poittevin_, who exhibited a good deal in berlin in the forties, and therefore became very well known in germany, cannot count as a painter. _théodore gudin_, whose signature is likewise highly valued in the market, was a frigid and rough-and-ready scenical painter. his little sea-pieces have a professional manner, and the large naval battles and fires at sea which he executed by the commission of louis philippe for the museum of versailles are frigid, pompous, and spectacular sea-pieces parallel with vernet's battle-pieces. _ziem_, who gave up his time to venice and the adriatic, is the progenitor of eduard hildebrandt. his water and sky take all the colours of the prism, and the objects grouped between these luminous elements, houses, ships, and men, equally receive a share of these flattering and iridescent tones. this gives something seductive and dazzling to his sketches, until it is at last perceived that he has only painted one picture, repeating it mechanically in all dimensions. courbet was the first french painter of sea-pieces who had a feeling for the sombre majesty of the sea. the ocean of gudin and ziem inspires neither wonder nor veneration; that of courbet does both. his very quietude is expressive of majesty; his peace is imposing, his smile grave; and his caress is not without a menace. [illustration: _l'art._ stevens. the japanese mask.] courbet has positively realised the programme which he issued in that pamphlet of . when he began his activity, eclectic idealism had overgrown the tree of art. but courbet stripped off the parasitic vegetation to reach the firm and serviceable timber. and having once grasped it he showed the muscles of an athlete in making its power felt. something of the old flemish sturdiness lived once more in his bold creations. if he and delacroix were united, the result would be rubens. delacroix had the fervour and passionate tamelessness, while courbet contributed the flemish weight. each made use of blood, purple, thrones, and golgothas in composing the dramas they had imagined. the latter pictured creation with the absolutism of complete objectivity. delacroix rose on the horizon like a brilliant meteor catching flame from the light of vanished suns; he reflected their radiance, had almost their magnitude, and followed the same course amid the same coruscation and blaze of light. courbet stands firm and steady upon the earth. the former had the second sight known to visionaries, the latter opened his eyes to the world that can be felt and handled. neurotic and distempered, delacroix worked feverishly. as a sound, full-blooded being courbet painted, as a man drinks, digests, and talks, with an activity that knows no exertion, a force that knows no weariness. delacroix was a small, weakly man, and his whole power rested in his huge head. that of courbet, as in animals of beauty and power, was dispersed through his whole frame; his big arms and athletic hands render the same service to his art as his eyes and his brain. and as, like all sincere artists, he rendered himself, he was the creator of an art which has an irrepressible health and overflows with an exuberant opulence. his pictures brought a savour of the butcher's shop into french painting, which had become anæmic. he delighted in plump shoulders and sinewy necks, broad breasts heaving over the corset, the glow of the skin dripping with warm drops of water in the bath, the hide of deer and the coat of hares, the iridescent shining of carp and cod-fish. delacroix, all brain, caught fire from his inward visions; courbet, all eye and maw, with the sensuousness of an epicure and the satisfaction of a _gourmet_, gloats over the shining vision of things which can be devoured--a gargantua with a monstrous appetite, he buried himself in the navel of the generous earth. plants, fruit, and vegetables take voluptuous life beneath his brush. he triumphs when he has to paint a _déjeuner_ with oysters, lemons, turkeys, fish, and pheasants. his mouth waters when he heaps into a picture of still-life all manner of delicious eatables. the only drama that he has painted is "the battle of the stags," and this will end in brown sauce amid a cheerful clatter of knives and forks. [illustration: _l'art._ stevens. the visitors. (_by permission of m. faure, the owner of the picture._)] even as a landscape painter he is luxurious and phlegmatic. in his pictures the earth is a corpulent nurse, the trees fine and well-fed children, and all nature healthy and contented. his art is like a powerful body fed with rich nourishment. in such organisms the capacity for enthusiasm and delicacy of sentiment are too easily sacrificed to their physical satisfaction, but their robust health ensures them the longer life. here is neither the routine and external technique and the correct, academic articulation of form belonging to mannerists, nor the strained, neurotic, sickly refinement of the decadents, but the powerful utterance of inborn, instinctive talent, and the strong cries of nature which rise out of it will be understood at all times, even the most distant. it is hardly necessary to add that the appearance of a genius of this kind was fraught with untold consequences to the further development of french painting. [illustration: _baschet._ ricard. madame de calonne.] what is held beautiful in nature must likewise be beautiful in pictorial art when it is faithfully represented, and nature is beautiful everywhere. in announcing this and demonstrating it in pictures of life-size, courbet won for art all the wide dominion of modern life which had hitherto been so studiously avoided--the dominion in which it had to revel if it was to learn to see with its own eyes. one fragment of reality after another would then be drawn into the sphere of representation, and no longer in the form of laboriously composed _genre_ pictures, but after the fashion of really pictorial works of art. what millet had done for the peasant, and courbet for the artisan, _alfred stevens_ did for "society": he discovered the _parisienne_. until the graceful life of the refined classes, which gavarni, marcellin, and cham had so admirably drawn, found no adequate representation in the province of painting. the _parisienne_, who is so _chic_ and piquant, and can hate and kiss with such fervour, fascinated every one, but grecian profile was a matter of prescription. _auguste toulmouche_ painted little women in fashionable toilette, but less from any taste he had for the graceful vision than from delight in _genre_ painting. they were forced to find forbidden books in the library, to resist worldly marriages, or behave in some such interesting fashion, to enter into the kingdom of art. it was reserved for a foreigner to reveal this world of beauty, _chic_, and grace. alfred stevens was a child of brussels. he was born in the land of flemish matrons on th may , and was the second of three children. joseph, the elder brother, became afterwards the celebrated painter of animals; arthur, the youngest, became an art-critic and a picture-dealer; he was one of the first who brought home to the public comprehension the noble art of rousseau, corot, and millet. stevens' father fought as an officer in the great army at the battle of waterloo, and is said to have been an accomplished critic. some of the ablest sketches of delacroix, devéria, charlet, and roqueplan found their way into his charming home. roqueplan, who often came to brussels, took the younger stevens with him to his parisian studio. he was a tall, graceful young man, who, with his vigorous upright carriage, his finely chiselled features, and his dandified moustache, looked like an officer of dragoons or cuirassiers. he was a pleasure-loving man of the world, and was soon the lion of parisian drawing-rooms. the grace of modern life in great cities became the domain of his art. the _parisienne_, whom his french fellow-artists passed by without heed, was a strange, interesting phenomenon to him, who was a foreigner--an exotic and exquisitely artistic _bibelot_, which he looked upon with eyes as enraptured as those with which decamps had looked upon the east. [illustration: _l'art._ chaplin. the golden age. (_by permission of messrs. goupil & co., the owners of the copyright._)] his very first picture, exhibited in , was called "at home." a charming little woman is warming her feet at the fire; she has returned from visiting a friend, and it has been raining or snowing outside. her delicate hands are frozen in spite of her muff, her cheeks have been reddened by the wind, and she has a pleasant sense of comfort as her rosy lips breathe the warm air of the room. from the time of this picture women took possession of stevens' easel. his way was prescribed for him, and he never left it. robert fleury, the president of the judging committee in the salon, said to him: "you are a good painter, but alter your subjects; you are stifling in a sphere which is too small; how wide and grand is that of the past!" whereon stevens is said to have showed him a volume of photographs from velasquez. "look here at velasquez," he said. "this man never represented anything but what he had before his eyes--people in the spanish dress of the seventeenth century. and as the justification of my _genre_ may be found in this spanish painter, it may be found also in rubens, raphael, van dyck, and all the great artists. all these masters of the past derived their strength and the secret of their endurance from the faithful reproduction of what they had themselves seen: it gives their pictures a real historical as well as an artistic value. one can only render successfully what one has felt sincerely and seen vividly before one's eyes in flesh and blood." in these sentences he is at one with courbet, and by not allowing himself to be led astray into doing sacrifice to the idols of historical painting he continues to live as the historical painter of the _parisienne_. [illustration: _baschet._ chaplin. portrait of countess aimery de la rochefoucauld.] in his whole work he sounds a pæan to the delicate and all-powerful mistress of the world, and it is significant that it was through woman that art joined issue with the interests of the present. millet, the first who conquered a province of modern life, was at the same time the first great painter of women in the century. stevens shows the other side of the medal. in millet woman was a product of nature; in stevens she is the product of modern civilisation. the woman of millet lives a large animal life, in the sweat of her brow, bowed to the earth. she is the primæval mother who works, bears children, and gives them nourishment. she stands in the field like a caryatid, like a symbol of fertile nature. in stevens woman does not toil and is seldom a mother. he paints the woman who loves, enjoys, and knows nothing of the great pangs of child-birth and hunger. the one woman lives beneath the wide, open sky, _dans le grand air_; the other is only enveloped in an atmosphere of perfume. she is ancient cybele in the pictures of millet; in those of stevens the holy magdalene of the nineteenth century, to whom much will be forgiven, because she has loved much. the pictures of stevens represent, for the first time, the potent relations of woman to the century. whilst most works of this time are silent concerning ourselves, his art will speak of our weaknesses and our passions. in a period of archaic painting he upheld the banner of modernity. on this account posterity will honour him as one of the first historians of the nineteenth century, and will learn from his pictures all that greuze has revealed to the present generation about the civilisation of the eighteenth century. [illustration: _baschet._ gaillard. portrait.] and perhaps more, for stevens never moralised--he merely painted. painter to his finger tips, like delacroix, roqueplan, and isabey, he stood in need of no anecdotic substratum as an adjunct. the key of his pictures was suggested by no theme of one sort or another, but by his treatment of colour. the picture was evolved from the first tone he placed upon the canvas, which was the ground-note of the entire scale. he delighted in a thick pasty handling, in beautiful hues, and in finely chased detail. and he was as little inclined to sentimentality as to pictorial novels. everything is discreet, piquant, and full of charm. he was a delicate spirit, avoiding tears and laughter. subdued joy, melancholy, and everything delicate and reserved are what he loves; he will have nothing to do with stereotyped arrangement nor supernumerary figures, but although a single person dominates the stage he never repeats himself. he has followed woman through all her metamorphoses--as mother or in love, weary or excited, proud or humbled, fallen or at the height of success, in her morning-gown or dressed for visiting or a promenade, now on the sea-shore, now in the costume of a japanese, or dallying with her trinkets as she stands vacantly before the glass. the surroundings invariably form an accompaniment to the melody. a world of exquisite things is the environment of the figures. rich stuffs, charming _petit-riens_ from china and japan, the most delicate ivory and lacquer-work, the finest bronzes, japanese fire-screens, and great vases with blossoming sprays, fill the boudoir and drawing-room of the _parisienne_. in the pictures of stevens she is the fairy of a paradise made up of all the most capricious products of art. a new world was discovered, a painting which was in touch with life; the symphony of the salon was developed in a delicate style. a tender feminine perfume, something at once melancholy and sensuous, was exhaled from the pictures of stevens, and by this shade of _demi-monde haut-goût_ he won the great public. they could not rise to millet and courbet, and stevens was the first who gave general pleasure without paying toll to the vicious taste for melodramatic, narrative, and humorous _genre_ painting. even in the sixties he was appreciated in england, france, germany, russia, and belgium, and represented in all public and private collections; and through the wide reception offered to his pictures he contributed much to create in the public a comprehension for good painting. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ dubois. portrait of my sons. (_by permission of the artist._)] in the same way _james tissot_ achieved the representation of the modern woman. stevens, a belgian, painted the _parisienne_; tissot, a frenchman, the englishwoman. it was not till they went into foreign countries that these artists perceived the grace of what was not deemed suitable to art at home. in paris from the year tissot had painted scenes from the fifteenth century, to which he was moved by leys, and he studied with archæological accuracy the costume and furniture of the late gothic period. when he migrated to england in he gave up the romantic proclivities of his youth, and devoted himself to the representation of fashionable society. his oil paintings fascinate us by their delicate feeling for cool transparent tone values, whilst his water-colours--restaurant, theatre, and ball scenes--assure him a place among the pioneers of modernity. at first stevens found no successors amongst parisian painters. a few, indeed, painted interiors in graceful paris, but they were only frigid compositions of dresses and furniture, without a breath of that delicate aroma which exhales from the works of the belgian. the portrait painters alone approached that modern grace which still awaited its historian and poet. an exceedingly delicate artist, _gustave ricard_, in whose portraits the art of galleries had a congenial revival, was called the modern van dyck in the sixties. living nature did not content him; he wished to learn how it was interpreted by the old masters, and therefore frequented galleries, where he sought counsel sometimes from the english portrait-painters, sometimes from leonardo, rubens, and van dyck. in this way ricard became a _gourmet_ of colour, who knew the technique of the old masters as few others have done, and his works have an attractive golden gallery-tone of great distinction. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ carolus duran.] in _charles chaplin_ fragonard was revived. he was the specialist of languishing flesh and _poudre de riz_, the refined interpreter of aristocratic beauty, one on whose palette there might still be found a delicate reflection of the _fêtes galantes_ of the eighteenth century. in germany he was principally known by those dreamy, frail, and sensual maidens, well characterised by the phrase of the empress eugénie. "m. chaplin," she said, "i admire you. your pictures are not merely indecorous, they are more." but chaplin had likewise the other qualities of the _rococo_ painter. he was a decorative artist of the first rank, and, like fragonard, he carelessly scattered round him on all sides grace and beauty, charm and fascination. in he decorated the _salon des fleurs_ in the tuileries, in - the bathroom of the empress in the _palais de l'elysée_, and from a number of private houses in paris, brussels, and new york; and there is in all these works a refined _haut-goût_ of modern parisian elegance and fragrant _rococo_ grace. he revived no nymphs, and made no pilgrimage to the island of cythera; he was more of an epicurean. but fragonard's fine tones and fragonard's sensuousness were peculiar to him. he had a method of treating the hair, of introducing little patches, of setting a dimple in the chin, and painting the arms and bosom, which had vanished since the _rococo_ period from the power of french artists. rosebuds and full-blown roses blossom like girls _à la_ greuze, and fading beauties, who are all the more irresistible, are the elements out of which his refined, indecorous, and yet fragrant art is constituted. [illustration: _l'art._ bonnat. adolphe thiers. (_by permission of the artist._)] the great engraver _gaillard_ brought hans holbein once more into honour. he was the heir of that method of painting, the eternal matrix of which jan van eyck left to the world in unapproachable perfection. his energetic but conscientiously minute brush noted every wrinkle of the face, without doing injury to the total impression by this labour of detail. indeed, his pictures are as great in conception and as powerful in characterisation as they are small in size. gaillard is a profound physiognomist who attained the most vivid analysis of character by means of the utmost precision. _paul dubois_ takes us across the alps; in his portraits he is the same great quattrocentist that he was from the beginning in his plastic works. his ground is that of the excellent and subtle period when leonardo, who had been in the beginning somewhat arid, grew delicate and allowed a mysterious sphinx-like smile to play round the lips of his women. manifestly he has studied prudhon and had much intercourse with henner in those years when the latter, after his return from italy, directed attention once more to the old lombards. from the time when he made his début in , with the portrait of his sons, he received great encouragement, and stands out in these days as the most mature painter of women that the present age has to show. only the great english portrait painters watts and millais, who are inferior to him in technique, have excelled him in the embodiment of personalities. as the most skilful painter of drapery, the most brilliant decorator of feminine beauty, _carolus duran_ was long celebrated. the studies which he had made in italy had not caused him to forget that he took his origin from across the flemish border; and when he appeared with his first portraits, in the beginning of the seventies, it was believed that an eminent colourist had been born to french painting. at that time he had a fine feeling for the eternal feminine and its transitory phases of expression, and he was as dexterous in seizing a fleeting gesture or a turn of the head as he was in the management of drapery and the play of its hues. then, again, he made a gradual transition from delicate and discreetly coquettish works to the crude arts of upholstery. yet even in his last period he has painted some masculine portraits--those of pasteur, and of the painters français, fritz thaulow, and rené billotte--which are striking in their vigorous simplicity and unforced characterisation after the glaring virtuosity of his pictures of women. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ bonnat. victor hugo. (_by permission of the artist._)] _léon bonnat_, the pupil of madrazos, brought about the fruitful connection between french painting and that of the old spaniards. by this a large quantity of the fresh blood of naturalism was poured into it once more. born in the south of france and educated in spain, he had conceived there a special enthusiasm for ribera, and these youthful impressions were so powerful that he remained faithful to them in paris. as early as his residence in italy, which included the three years from to , his individuality had been fortified in a degree which prevented him from wasting himself on large academical compositions like the holders of the _prix de rome_; on the contrary, he painted scenes from the varied life of the roman people. several religious pictures, such as "the martyrdom of saint andrew" ( ), "saint vincent de paul" ( ), and the "job" of the luxembourg, showed that he was steadily progressing on the road paved by spagnoletto. he had a virtuosity in conjuring on to the canvas visages furrowed by the injustices of life--grey hair, waving grey beards, and the starting sinews and muscles of old weather-beaten frames. in the beginning of the seventies, when he had to paint a crucifixion for the jury-chamber in the paris palais de justice, he executed a virile figure, the muscles and anatomy of which were as clearly marked as the buttresses in a gothic cathedral. as in the paintings of caravaggio, a sharp, glaring light fell upon certain parts of the body, whilst others remained dark and colourless in the gloomy background. he applied the same principles to his portraits. a french lenbach, he painted in france a gallery of celebrated men. with an almost tangible reality he painted hugo, madame pasta, dumas, gounod, thiers, grévy, pasteur, puvis de chavannes, jules ferry, carnot, cardinal lavigerie, and others. over two hundred persons, famous or not, have sat to him, and he has painted them with an exceedingly intelligent power, masculine taste, and a learning which never loses itself in unnecessary detail. [illustration: _l'art._ antoine vollon.] the delicate physiognomy of women, the _frou-frou_ of exquisite toilettes, the dreaminess, the fragrance, the coquetry of the modern sphinx, were no concern of his. on the other hand, his masculine portraits will always keep their interest, if only on historical grounds. in all of them he laid great stress on characteristic accessories, and could indicate in the simplest way the thinker, the musician, the scholar, and the statesman. one remembers his pictures as though they were phrases uttered with conviction, though a german does not hesitate to place lenbach far above bonnat as a psychologist. the latter has not the power of seizing the momentary effect, the intimacy, the personal note, the palpitating life peculiar to lenbach. with the intention of saying all things he often forgets the most important--the spirit of the man and the grace of the woman. his pictures are great pieces of still-life--exceedingly conscientious, but having something of the conscientiousness of an actuary copying a tedious protocol. the portrait of léon cogniet, the teacher of the master, with his aged face, his spectacled eyes, and his puckered hands (musée luxembourg), is perhaps the only likeness in which bonnat rivals lenbach in depth of characterisation. his pictorial strength is always worthy of respect; but, for the sake of variety, the _esprit_ is for once on the side of the german. ruled by a passion for the spanish masters, such as bonnat possessed, _roybet_ painted cavaliers of the seventeenth century, and other historical pictures of manners, which are distinguished, to their advantage, from older pictures of their type, because it is not the historical anecdote but the pictorial idea which is their basis. all the earlier painters were rather bent upon archæological accuracy than on pictorial charm in the treatment of such themes. roybet revelled in the rich hues of old costumes, and sometimes attained, before he strained his talent in the procrustean bed of pictures of great size, a bloom and a strong, glowing tone which rival the old masters. [illustration: _l'art._ vollon. a carnival scene.] in all periods which have learnt to see the world through a pictorial medium, still-life has held an important place in the practice of art. a technical instinct, which is in itself art, delights in investing musical instruments, golden and silver vessels, fruit and other eatables, glasses and goblets, coverings of precious work, gauntlets and armour, all imaginable _petit-riens_, with an artistic magic, in recognising and executing pictorial problems everywhere. after the transition from historical and _genre_ painting had been made to painting proper there once more appeared great painters of still-life in france as there did in chardin's days. yet _blaise desgoffe_, who painted piecemeal and with laborious patience goldsmith's work, crystal vases, venetian glass, and such things, is certainly rather petty. in france he was the chief representative of that precise and detailed painting which understands by art a deceptive imitation of objects, and sees its end attained when the holiday public gathers round the pictures as the birds gathered round the grapes of zeuxis. it is as if an old master had revived in _philippe rousseau_. he had the same earnest qualities as the dutch and flemish classic masters--a broad, liquid, pasty method of execution, a fine harmony of clear and powerful tones--and with all this a marvellous address in so composing objects that no trace of "composition" is discernible. his work arose from the animal picture. his painting of dogs and cats is to be ranked with the best of the century. he makes a fourth with gillot, chardin, and decamps, the great painters of monkeys. as a decorator of genius, like hondekoeter, he embellished a whole series of dining-halls with splendidly coloured representations of poultry, and, like snyders, he heaped together game, dead and living fowl, fruit, lobsters, and oysters into huge life-size masses of still-life. behind them the cook may be seen, and thievish cats steal around. but, like kalf, he has also painted, with an exquisite feeling for colour, japanese porcelain bowls with bunches of grapes, quinces, and apricots, metal and ivory work, helmets and fiddles, against that delicate grey-brown-green tone of background which chardin loved. [illustration: _l'art._ bonvin. the cook.] _antoine vollon_ became the greatest painter of still-life in the century. indeed, vollon is as broad and nervous as desgoffe is precise and pedantic. flowers, fruit, and fish--they are all painted in with a firm hand, and shine out of the dark background with a full liquid freshness of colour. he paints dead salt-water fish like abraham van beyeren, grapes and crystal goblets like davids de heem, dead game like frans snyders, skinned pigs like rembrandt and maes. he is a master in the representation of freshly gathered flowers, delicate vegetables, copper kettles, weapons, and suits of armour. since chardin no painter depicted the qualities of the skin of fresh fruit, its life and its play of colour, and the moist bloom that rests upon it, with such fidelity to nature. his fish in particular will always remain the wonder of all painters and connoisseurs. but landscapes, dutch canal views, and figure-pictures are also to be found amongst his works. he has painted everything that is picturesque, and the history of art must do him honour as, in a specifically pictorial sense, one of the greatest in the century. a soft grey-brown wainscoting, a black and white pierrot costume, and a white table-cloth and dark green vegetables--such is the harmony of colour which he chiefly loved in his figure-pictures. on the same purely pictorial grounds nuns became very popular in painting, as their white hoods and collars standing out against a black dress gave the opportunity for such a fine effect of tone. this was the province in which poor _françois bonvin_ laboured. deriving from the dutch, he conceived an enthusiasm for work, silence, the subdued shining of light in interiors, cold days, the slow movements and peaceful faces of nuns, and painted kitchen scenes with a strong personal accent. before he took up painting he was for a long time a policeman, and was employed in taking charge of the markets. here he acquired an eye for the picturesqueness of juicy vegetables, white collars, and white hoods, and when he had a day free he studied lenain and chardin in the louvre. bonvin's pictures have no anecdotic purport. drinkers, cooks, orphan children in the schoolroom, sempstresses, choristers, sisters of mercy, boys reading, women in church, nuns conducting a sewing-class--bonvin's still, picturesque, congenial world is made up of elements such as these. what his people may think or do is no matter: they are only meant to create an effect as pictorial tones in space. during his journey to holland he had examined metsu, frans hals, pieter de hoogh, terborg, and van der meer with an understanding for their merits, but it was chardin in both his phases--as painter of still-life and of familiar events--who was in a special sense revived in bonvin. all his pictures are simple and quiet; his figures are peaceful in their expression, and have an easy geniality of pose; his hues have a beauty and fulness of tone recalling the old masters. [illustration: _l'art._ bonvin. the work-room.] even _théodule ribot_, the most eminent of the group, one of the most dexterous executants of the french school, a master who for power of expression is worthy of being placed between frans hals and ribera, made a beginning with still-life. he was born in , in a little town of the department of eure. early married and poor, he supported himself at first by painting frames for a firm of mirror manufacturers, and only reserved the hours of the evening for his artistic labours. in particular he is said to have accustomed himself to work whole nights through by lamplight, while he nursed his wife during a long illness, watching at her bedside. the lamplight intensified the contrasts of light and shadow. thus ribot's preference for concentrated light and strong shadows is partially due, in all probability, to what he had gone through in his life, and in later days ribera merely bestowed upon him a benediction as his predecessor in the history of art. [illustration: ribot. the studio.] his first pictures from the years to were, for the most part, scenes from household and kitchen life: cooks, as large as life, plucking poultry, setting meat before the fire, scouring vessels, or tasting sauces; sometimes, also, figures in the streets; but even here there was a strong accentuation of the element of still-life. there were men with cooking utensils, food, dead birds, and fish. then after there followed a number of religious pictures which, in their hard, peasant-like veracity and their impressive, concentrated life, stood in the most abrupt contrast with the conventionally idealised figures of the academicians. his "jesus in the temple," no less than "saint sebastian" and "the good samaritan"--all three in the musée luxembourg--are works of simple and forceful grandeur, and have a thrilling effect which almost excites dismay. sebastian is no smiling saint gracefully embellished with wounds, but a suffering man, with the blood streaming from his veins, stretched upon the earth; yet half-raising himself, a cry of agony upon his lips, and his whole body contorted by spasms of pain. in his "jesus in the temple," going on parallel lines with menzel, he proclaims the doctrine that it is only possible to pour new life-blood into traditional figures by a tactful choice of models from popular life around. and in "the good samaritan," also, he was only concerned to paint, with naturalistic force, the body of a wounded man lying in the street, a thick-set french peasant robbed of his clothes. from the seventies his specialty was heads--separate figures of weather-beaten old folk, old women knitting or writing, old men reading or lost in thought; and these will always be ranked with the greatest masterpieces of the century. ribot attains a remarkable effect when he paints those expressive faces of his, which seem to follow you with their looks, and are thrown out from the darkness of his canvas. a black background, in which the dark dresses of his figures are insensibly lost, a luminous head with such eyes as no one of the century has ever painted, wrinkled skin and puckered old hands rising from somewhere--one knows not whence--these are things which all lend his figures something phantasmal, superhuman, and ghostly. ribot is the great king of the under-world, to which a sunbeam only penetrates by stealth. before his pictures one has the sense of wandering in a deep, deep shaft of some mine, where all is dark and only now and then a lantern glimmers. no artist, not even ribera, has been a better painter of old people, and only velasquez has painted children who have such sparkling life. ribot worked in colombes, near paris, to which place he had early withdrawn, in a barn where only tiny dormer-windows let in two sharp rays of light. [illustration: _l'art._ ribot. at a norman inn.] by placing his canvas beneath one window and his model beneath the other, in a dim light which allowed only one golden ray to fall upon the face, he isolated it completely from its surroundings, and in this way painted the parts illuminated with the more astonishing effect. no one had the same power in modelling a forehead, indicating the bones beneath the flesh, and rendering all the subtleties of skin. a terrible and intense life is in his figures. his old beggars and sailors especially have something kingly in the grand style of their noble and quiet faces. an old master with a powerful technique, a painter of the force and health of jordaens, has manifested himself once more in ribot. [illustration: _l'art._ ribot. keeping accounts.] courbet's principles, accordingly, had won all down the line, in the course of a few years. "it is only ribera, zurbaran, and velasquez that i admire; ostade and craesbeeck also allure me; and for holbein i feel veneration. as for m. raphael, there is no doubt that he has painted some interesting portraits, but i cannot find any ideas in him." in these words he had prophesied as early as the course which french art would take in the next decade. when courbet appeared the grand painting stood in thraldom to the _beauté suprême_, and the æsthetic conceptions of the time affected the treatment of contemporary subjects. artists had not realism enough to give truth and animation to these themes. when cabanel, hamon, and bouguereau occasionally painted beggars and orphans, they were bloodless phantoms, because by beautifying the figures they deprived them of character in the effort to give them, approximately, the forms of historical painting. because painters did not regard their own epoch, because they had been accustomed to consider living beings merely as elements of the second and third rank, they never discovered the distinctiveness of their essential life. like a traveller possessed by one fixed mania, they made a voyage round the world, thinking only how they might adapt living forms to those which their traditional training recommended as peculiarly right and alone worthy of art. even portrait painting was dominated by this false method, of rendering figures as types, of improving the features and the contour of bodies, and giving men the external appearance of fair, ideal figures. but now the sway of the cinquecento has been finally broken. a fresh breeze of realism from across the pyrenees has taken the place of the sultry italian sirocco. from the pictures of the neapolitans, the spaniards, and the dutch it has been learnt that the joys and sorrows of the people are just as capable of representation as the actions of gods and heroes, and under the influence of these views a complete change in the cast has taken place. [illustration: _l'art._ ribot. st. sebastian, martyr.] the figures which in filled courbet's picture "the studio"--beggar-women, agricultural labourers, artisans, sailors, tippling soldiers, buxom girls, porters, rough members of the proletariat of uncouth stature--now crowd the stage of french art, and impart even to the heroes of history, bred through centuries from degenerated gods, something of their full-blooded, rough, hearty, and plebeian force of life. the artists of italian taste only gave the rights of citizenship to "universal forms"; every reminiscence of national customs or of local character was counted vulgar; they did not discover the gold of beauty in the rich mines of popular life, but in the classic masters of foreign race. but now even what is unearthly is translated into the terms of earth. if religious pictures are to be painted, artists take men from the people for their model, as caravaggio did before them--poor old peasants with bones of iron, and bronzed, weather-beaten faces, porters with figures bowed and scarred by labour, men of rough, common nature, though of gnarled and sinewy muscles. the pictures of martyrs, once artificial compositions of beautiful gesture and vacant, generalised countenances, receive a tone local to the scaffold, a trait of merciless veracity--the heads the energy of a relief, the gestures force and impressiveness, the bodies a science in their modelling which would have rejoiced ribera. as caravaggio said that the more wrinkles his model had the more he liked him, so no one is any longer repelled by horny hands, tattered rags, and dirty feet. in the good periods of art it is well known that the beauty or uncomeliness of a work has nothing to do with the beauty or uncomeliness of the model, and that the most hideous cripple can afford an opportunity for making the most beautiful work. the old doctrine of leonardo, that every kind of painting is portrait painting, and that the best artists are those who can imitate nature in the most convincing way, comes once more into operation. the apotheosis of the model has taken the place of idealism. and during these same years england reached a similar goal by another route. bibliography bibliography chapter xvi leopold boilly: jules houdoy: "l'art," , iv , . on the history of caricature in general: j. p. malcolm: an historical sketch of the art of caricaturing. london, . th. wright: a history of caricature and grotesque in literature and art. london, . arsène alexandre: l'art du rire. paris, . e. bayard: la caricature et les caricaturistes. paris, . fuchs und krämer: die karikatur der europäischen völker vom altertum bis zur neuzeit. berlin, . on the english caricaturists: victor champier: la caricature anglaise contemporaine, "l'art," , i , , ii , iii and . ernest chesneau: les livres à caricatures en angleterre, "le livre," novembre . augustin filon: la caricature en angleterre, w. hogarth, "revue des deux mondes," janvier . graham everitt: english caricaturists and graphic humorists of the nineteenth century. how they illustrated and interpreted their times. with illustrations. london, . rowlandson: c. m. westmacott: the spirit of the public journals. vols. - 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contemporains, ii série. paris, , p. . obituary: "magazine of art," march ; fernand brouet: "revue artistique," march ; dubufe: "nouvelle revue," march and april ; a. michel: "revue alsacienne," february ; "chronique des arts," , p. ; "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," ; a. hustin, "l'art," , p. . van deyssel: gustave doré, "de dietsche warande," iv . blanche roosevelt: life and reminiscences of gustave doré. london, . claude phillips: gustave doré, "portfolio," , p. . cham: marius vachon: "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii . felix ribeyre: cham, sa vie et son oeuvre. paris, . cham-album. vols. paris. without date. grévin: ad. racot: portraits d'aujourd'hui. paris, . chapter xvii barry: the works of james barry, esq.--to which is prefixed some account of the life and the writings of the author. vols. london, . j. j. hittorf: notice historique et biographique de sir j. barry. . alfred barry: the life and works of sir j. barry. london, . sidney colvin: james barry, "portfolio," , p. . h. 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dafforne: pictures by maclise. london, . james dafforne: leslie and maclise. london, . etty: a. gilchrist: life of w. etty, r. a. vols. london, . p. g. hamerton: etty, "portfolio," , p. . w. c. monkhouse: pictures by william etty, with descriptions. london, . edward armitage: j. beavington-atkinson: "portfolio," , p. . romney: william hagley: the life of george romney. london, . rev. john romney (son of the painter): memoirs of the life and writings of george romney. london, . p. selvatico: il pittore sir giorgio romney ed emma lyon, "arte ed artisti," p. . padova, . sidney colvin: george romney, "portfolio," , pp. and . lord ronald gower: romney and lawrence. london, . t. h. ward and w. roberts: romney, a biographical and critical essay, with a catalogue raisonné of his works. london, . g. paston: george romney, etc. (little books on art). london, . thomas lawrence: d. e. williams: the life and correspondence of sir thomas lawrence. vols. with portraits. london, . f. lewis: imitations of sir thomas lawrence's finest drawings. vol. reproductions in crayon. london, . a. genevay: "l'art," , iii . th. de wyzewa: thomas lawrence et la société anglaise de son temps, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i , ii , . lord ronald gower: romney and lawrence. london, . raeburn: portraits by sir henry raeburn, photographed by thomas asman, with biographical sketches. fol. edinburgh. no date. exhibition of portraits by sir henry raeburn, "art journal," , p. . alexander fraser: henry raeburn, "portfolio," , p. . andrew william raeburn: life of sir henry raeburn. with portraits. london, . sir w. armstrong: sir henry raeburn, etc. london, . george morland: john hassell: life of the late george morland. london, . william collins, memoirs of george morland. london, . f. w. blagdon: authentic memoirs of the late george morland. london, . g. dawe: the life of george morland. london, . walter armstrong: george morland, "portfolio," , p. . some notes on george morland: from the papers of james ward, r. a., "portfolio," , p. . other biographies by r. richardson, . j. t. nettleship, ; and williamson, . james ward: f. g. stephens: "portfolio," , pp. , , . landseer: f. g. stephens: the early works of edwin landseer. photographs. london, . new edition under the title: memoirs of sir edwin landseer. london, . f. g. stephens: "portfolio," , p. . james dafforne: pictures by sir edwin landseer, r. a. with descriptions and a biographical sketch of the painter. london, . james dafforne: studies and sketches by sir edwin landseer, "art journal," , passim. catalogue of the works of sir edwin landseer, "art journal," , p. . j. beavington-atkinson: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , pp. and . m. m. heaton: "academy," , p. . edw. leonidas: sir edwin landseer, "nederlandsche kunstbode," , p. . f. g. stephens: sir edwin landseer. london, . f. g. stephens: landseer, the dog painter, "portfolio," , p. . j. a. manson: sir edwin landseer. london, . <f><b>on the english genre painters:</f></b> frederick wedmore: the masters of genre painting. with illustrations. london, . wilkie: allan cunningham: life of wilkie. vols. london, . mrs. c. heaton: the great works of sir david wilkie. photographs. london and cambridge, . a. l. simpson: the story of sir david wilkie. london, . j. w. mollet: sir david wilkie. london, . feuillet de conches: sir david wilkie, "artiste," august . f. rabbe, in "les artistes célèbres." e. pinnington: sir david wilkie, etc. (famous scots series). london, . w. bayne: sir david wilkie, etc. (makers of british art). london, . william collins: w. wilkie collins: memoirs of the life of william collins, esq. vols. london, . william powell frith: my autobiography and reminiscences. london, . further reminiscences. london, . mulready: sir henry cole: biography of william mulready, r. a. notes of pictures, etc. no date. f. g. stephens: memorials of mulready. photographs. london, . james dafforne: pictures by mulready. london, . f. g. stephens: william mulready, "portfolio," , pp. and . r. liebreich: turner and mulready. london, . leslie: james dafforne: pictures by leslie. plates. london, . autobiographical recollections, edited by tom taylor. london, . chapter xviii in general: arsène alexandre: histoire de la peinture militaire en france. paris, . horace vernet: l. ruutz-rees: horace vernet and paul delaroche. illustrations. london, . amédée durande: josephe, carle, et horace vernet, correspondence et biographies. paris, . theophile silvestre: les artistes français, p. . jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains. paris, , p. . a. dayot: les vernet. paris, . charlet: de la combe: charlet, sa vie et ses lettres. paris, . eugène veron: "l'art," , i , . f. l'homme, in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . raffet: auguste bry: raffet, sa vie et ses oeuvres. paris, . georges duplessis: "l'art," , i . notes et croquis de raffet, mis en ordre et publiés par auguste raffet fils. paris, amand-durand, . henri béraldi: raffet, peintre national. paris, . f. l'homme, in "les artistes célèbres." a. dayot: raffet et son oeuvre, etc. paris, . <f><b><b>on the young military painters:</b></f> eugène montrosier: les peintres militaires, contenant les biographies de neuville, detaille, berne-bellecour, protais, etc. paris, . jules richard: en campagne. tableaux et dessins de meissonier, detaille, neuville, etc. vols. paris, . bellangé: francis wey: exposition des oeuvres d'hippolyte bellangé, Étude biographique. paris, . jules adeline: hippolyte bellangé et son oeuvre. paris, . protais: jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains. paris, , p. . pils: l. becq de fouquières: isidore pils, sa vie et ses oeuvres. paris, . roger-ballu: l'oeuvre de pils, "l'art," , i - . neuville: alfred de lostalot: "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii . detaille: jules claretie: l'art et les artistes français contemporains. paris, , p. . jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, ii série. paris, , p. . g. goetschy: les jeunes peintres militaires. paris, . régamey: e. chesneau: notice sur g. régamey. paris, . eugène montrosier: "l'art," , ii . albrecht adam: albrecht adam: autobiography, - . edited by h. holland. stuttgart, . das werk der münchener künstlerfamilie adam. reproductions after originals by the painters albrecht, benno, emil, eugen, franz and julius adam. text by h. holland. nuremberg, soldan, . p. hess: h. holland: p. v. hess. münchen, . originally in "oberbayerisches archiv," vol. xxxi. f. krüger: a. rosenberg: aus dem alten berlin, franz krüger-ausstellung, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xvi . h. mackowski, in "das museum," vi . see vor jahren, porträtskizzen berühmter und bekannter persönlickkeiten von f. krüger. berlin, . franz adam: friedrich pecht: franz adam, "kunst für alle," , ii . théodor horschelt: ed. ille: zur erinnerung an den schlachtenmaler théodor horschelt. münchen, . h. holland: théodor horschelt, sein leben und seine werke. münchen, . heinrich lang: h. e. von berlepsch: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," . on the more recent düsseldorf painters: adolf rosenberg: düsseldorfer kriegs- und militärmaler, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xxiv . chapter xix leopold robert: e. j. delécluze: notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de leopold robert. paris, . feuillet de conches: leopold robert, sa vie, ses oeuvres, et sa correspondance. paris, . charles clement: leopold robert d'après sa correspondance inédite. paris, . riedel: h. holland, in the "allgemeine deutsche biographie," , and books which are there cited. on the painters of the east in general: charles gindriez: l'algérie et les artistes, "l'art," , iii ; , i . hermann helferich: moderne orientmaler, "freie bühne," . decamps: marius chaumelin: decamps, sa vie et son oeuvre. marseilles, . ernest chesneau: mouvement moderne en peinture: decamps. paris, . ad. moreau: decamps et son oeuvre, avec des gravures en facsimilé des planches originales les plus rares. paris, . m. e. im-thurn: scheffer et decamps. nîmes, . (extr. des mém. de l'académie du gard, année .) charles clement, in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . marilhat: g. gonnot: marilhat et son oeuvre. clermont, . fromentin: jean rousseau: "l'art," , i , . l. gonse: "gazette des beaux-arts," - . published separately under the title "eugène fromentin peintre et écrivain. ouvrage augmenté d'un voyage en egypte et d'autres notes et morçeaux inédits de fromentin, et illustré de gravures hors texte et dans le texte." paris, quantin, . guillaumet: paul leroi: "l'art," , iii . exposition des oeuvres de guillaumet. préface par roger-ballu. paris, . gustave guillaumet: tableaux algériens. précédé d'une notice sur la vie et les oeuvres de guillaumet. paris, . adolphe badin: "l'art," , i , , . ary renan: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . wilhelm gentz: l. v. donop: ausstellung der werke von gentz in der berliner nationalgalerie. berlin, mittler, . obituary in "chronique des arts," , . adolf rosenberg: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , p. . adolf schreyer: richard graul: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xxiii . richard graul, in "graphische künste," , xii , and in "velhagen und klasings monatshefte," . chapter xx h. bürkel: c. a. r.: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , v . alfred lichtwark: hermann kauffmann und die kunst in hamburg. münchen, . spitzweg: c. a. regnet: "münchener künstler," , ii - . graf schack: "meine gemäldegalerie," , pp. - . o. berggruen: "graphische künste," , v. f. pecht, supplement "allgemeine zeitung," october , and "geschichte der münchener kunst," , p. . "münchener kunstvereinsbericht," , p. . c. a. regnet: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xxi . spitzweg-album. münchen, hanfstaengl, . spitzweg-mappe, with preface by f. pecht. münchen, braun & schneider, . h. holland: allgemeine deutsche biographie, . hermann kauffmann: alfred lichtwark: hermann kauffmann und die kunst in hamburg, - . münchen, . eduard meyerheim: autobiography, supplemented by p. meyerheim. introduction by l. pietsch. with preface by b. auerbach and the likeness of eduard meyerheim. berlin, stilke, . a. rosenberg: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xvi . ludwig pietsch: die künstlerfamilie meyerheim, "westermanns monatshefte," , p. . enhuber: friedrich pecht: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , iii on the viennese genre picture: c. v. lützow: geschichte der k. k. akademie der bildenden künste. vienna, . r. v. eitelberger: das wiener genrebild vor dem jahre , "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xii . also in his collected studies on the history of art, i . dr. cyriak bodenstein: hundert jahre kunstgeschichte wiens, - . wien, . albert ilg: kunstgeschichtliche charakterbilder aus oesterreich-ungarn (the nineteenth century, by a. nossig). wien, . ludwig hevesi: die österreichische kunst im jahrhundert. leipzig, . danhauser: albert ilg: raimund und danhauser, in kabdebo's "osterreichisch-ungarische kunstchronik." vienna, , iii . waldmüller: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , i . oskar berggruen: "graphische künste," x . r. v. eitelberger: j. danhauser und ferdinand waldmüller, in "kunst und künstler wiens," p. . (vol. i of his works on the history of art. vienna, .) gauermann: r. v. eitelberger: friedrich gauermann, in "kunst und künstler wiens," , p. . (vol. i of his works on the history of art. vienna, .) schrödter: obituary by kaulen in the "deutsches kunstblatt," , and . m. g. zimmermann, in the "allgemeine deutsche biographie." hasenclever: a. fahne: hasenclevers illustrationen zur jobsiade. bonn, . rudolf jordan: friedrich pecht: "kunst für alle," , ii . tidemand: c. dietrichson: adolf tidemand, hans liv og hans vaerker. vols. christiania, - . adolf tidemand, utvalgte vaerker. etchings by l. h. fischer. christiania, . madou: camille lemonnier: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . ferdinand de braekeleer: l. v. keymeulen: ferdinand de braekeleer, "revue artistique," , pp. , . biard: l. boivin: notice sur m. biard, ses aventures, son voyage en japonie avec mme. biard, examen critique de ses tableaux. paris, . obituary in the "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," ix . supplementary sheet, p. . chapter xxi in general: emil reich: die bürgerliche kunst und die besitzlosen klassen. leipzig, . tassaert: bernard prost: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . carl hübner: m. blanckarts: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xv . wiertz: louis labarre: antoine wiertz, étude biographique. brussels, . ed. f.: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , i . h. grimm: der maler wiertz, in " essays," new series, berlin, , p. . j. beavington-atkinson: "portfolio," , pp. , , . c. e. clement: antoine jos. wiertz, "american art review," , . catalogue du musée wiertz, précédé d'une notice biographique par em. de laveleye. brussels, . l. schulze waldhausen: anton wiertz, "deutsches kunstblatt," , ; , . w. claessens: wiertz. brussels, l. hochsteyn, . l. dietrichson: en abnorm kunstner. fra kunstverden, kopenhagen, , p. . max nordau: vom kreml bis zur alhambra. leipzig, , pp. - . robert mielke: antoine wiertz, "das atelier," , no. . chapter xxii knaus: alfred de lostalot: louis knaus, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i , . v. k. schembera: louis knaus, "die heimath," vii . l. pietsch: ludwig knaus. photographs after originals by the master. berlin photographische gesellschaft. friedrich pecht: zu knaus geburtstag, "kunst für alle," , v . g. voss: "tägliche rundschau," , p. . l. pietsch, louis knaus in the "künstlermonographien," ed. by knackfuss. bielefeld, . vautier: friedrich pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts. third series. nördlingen, , p. . e. heilbuth: knaus und vautier. text to behrens' work upon the gallery, reprinted in "kunst für alle," , . adolf rosenberg, vautier in the "künstlermonographien," ed. by knackfuss. bd. . bielefeld, . defregger: p. k. rosegger: wie defregger maler wurde. "oesterr.-ungarische kunstchronik," , iii . friedrich pecht: franz defregger, sein leben und wirken, "vom fels zum meer," iii . k. raupp: franz defregger und seine schule, "wartburg," viii , . ludwig pietsch: franz defregger, "westermanns monatshefte," february . f. pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts. münchen, . adolf rosenberg, in the "künstlermonographien," ed. by knackfuss. bd. . bielefeld, . franz hermann meissner in the "kunstlerbuch." berlin, . see also karl stieler und f. defregger, von dahoam. münchen, . riefstahl: h. holland: wilhelm riefstahl. altenburg, . m. haushofer: "kunst für alle," , iv . w. lübke: "nord und süd," , . h. e. v. berlepsch: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , . grützner: g. ramberg: "vom fels zum meer," , . friedrich pecht: "kunst für alle," , . j. janitsch: "nord und süd," , . fritz von ostini, in the "künstlermonographien," ed. by knackfuss. bd. . leipzig, . bokelmann: adolf rosenberg: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," . gustave brion: paul leroi: "l'art," , i . jules breton: autobiography. vie d'un artiste. paris, . the swedish genre painters: georg nordensvan: svensk konst och svenska konstnärer i ^de arhundradet. stockholm, . (german translation:) die schwedische kunst im jahrhundert. leipzig, . the hungarian genre painters: a. ipolyi: die bildende kunst in ungarn, "ungarische revue," , . szana tamáz: magyar müvészek. budapest, . heinrich glücksmann: die ungarische kunst der gegenwart, "kunst für alle," , vii , . chapter xxiii j. a. koch: david friedrich strauss: kleine schriften biographischen, literarischen, und kunstgeschichtlichen inhalts. leipzig, , p. . th. frimmel, in dohmes kunst und künstler des jahrhunderts, no. . leipzig, . c. v. lützow: aus kochs jugendzeit, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , ix . see also j. a. koch: moderne kunstchronik. briefe zweier freunde in rom und in der tartarei über das moderne kunstleben. karlsruhe, . reinhart: otto baisch: johann christian reinhart und seine kreise, ein lebens- und kulturbild. leipzig, . friedrich schiller und der maler johann christian reinhart. supplement to the "leipziger zeitung," , , . rottmann: a. teichlein: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , iv , . a. bayersdorfer: karl rottmann. münchen, . reprinted in a. bayersdorfer's leben und schriften. münchen, . o. berggruen: die galerie schack, "graphische künste," v . friedrich pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts. nördlingen, , ii pp. - . c. a. regnet, in dohmes kunst und künstler des jahrhunderts, no. . see also rottmann's italienische landschaften. after the frescoes in the arcades of the royal garden in munich, carried out by steinbock. münchen, bruckmann, . preller: r. schöne: fr. preller's odysseelandschaften. leipzig, . l. v. donop: der genelli-fries von fr. preller. "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , ix . friedrich pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts. nördlingen, , vol. i pp. - . c. ruland: zur erinnerung an friedrich preller. weimar, . obituary in "unsere zeit," , . m. jordan: katalog der preller ausstellung in der berliner nationalgalerie, . a. dürr: preller und goethe, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xvi - . j. beavington-atkinson: frederick preller, "art journal," , . w. lübke: friedrich preller, "allgemeine zeitung," , no. . preller und goethe, "allgemeine zeitung," , no. . o. roquette: preller und goethe, "gegenwart," , . friedrich j. frommann: zur charakteristik friedrich prellers, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , no. . see also homer's odyssee mit original compositionen von friedrich preller. leipzig, . popular edition with biography, leipzig, . italienisches landschaftsbuch, zehn originalzeichnungen von friedrich preller. carried out in wood-cut by h. kaeseberg and k. oertel, with text by max jordan. leipzig, . friedrich prellers figurenfries zur odyssee. compositions reproduced in coloured lithographs. leipzig, . k. f. lessing: karl koberstein: karl friedrich lessing, "nord und süd," , , p. . k. f. lessing's briefe mitgetheilt von th. frimmel, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , . rudolf redtenbacher: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xvi . m. schasler: "unsere zeit," , . w. dohme: "westermanns illustrierte monatshefte," , ix . a. rosenberg: lessing-ausstellung in der berliner nationalgalerie, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , no. . friedrich pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts, iii. nördlingen, , p. . blechen: robert dohme, in "allgemeine deutsche biographie," . ludwig pietsch: wie ich schriftsteller wurde. berlin, , _passim_. h. mackowsky, in the "museum," viii. berlin, spemann. schirmer: johann wilhelm schirmer: düsseldorfer lehrjahre, "deutsche rundschau," . alfred woltmann, in "allgemeine deutsche biographie." works cited in it. dahl: andreas aubert: maleren professor dahl - , et stykke av aarhundredets kunst- og kulturhistorie. kristiania, aschehoug, . morgenstern: obituary by pecht: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , ii . alfred lichtwark: hermann kauffmann und die kunst in hamburg von _bis_ . münchen, . andreas achenbach: ludwig pietsch: "nord und süd," , xv . friedrich pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts. third series. nördlingen, , p. . theodor levin: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xxi, no. . eduard schleich: c. a. regnet: zu eduard schleichs gedächtniss, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , ix . o. berggruen: die galerie schack, "graphische künste," v . alexander calame: e. h. gaullier: alexander calame. genève, . (le musée suisse, vol. i.) h. delaborde: la peinture de paysage en suisse; alexander calame: "revue des deux mondes," février, . j. m. ziegler: mittheilungen über den landschaftsmaler alexander calame. zurich, . c. meyer: alexander calame, "dioskuren." stuttgart, . a. bachelin: alexander calame. lausanne, . wilhelm rossmann, in the text to work of engravings from the dresden gallery. , etc. e. rambert: alexander calame, sa vie et son oeuvre d'après les sources originales. paris, . adolf rosenberg: "grenzboten," , ii . gude: a. rosenberg: die düsseldorfer schule. "grenzboten," , . af. dietrichson: h. gude liv og voerker. kristiania, . eduard hildebrandt: bruno meyer: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , iv , . f. arndt: eduard hildebrandt, der maler des kosmos, sein leben und seine werke. second edition. berlin, . ada pinelli: hildebrandt und schirmer. berlin, . louis douzette: adolf rosenberg: "graphische künste," , xiv . chapter xxiv in general: victor de laprade: le sentiment de la nature chez les modernes. second edition. paris, . aligny: aligny et la paysage historique, "l'art," , i ; ii . see also the etchings vues des sites les plus célèbres de la grèce antique. paris, . victor hugo: les dessins de victor hugo, "l'art," , i . h. helferich: malende dichter, "kunst für alle," , . paul huet: philippe burty: paul huet, notice biographique. paris, . e. legouvé: notice sur paul huet. paris, . ernest chesneau: peintres et statuaires romantiques. paris, . léon mancino: un précurseur, "l'art," , i . on the english: william bell scott: our british landscape-painters, from samuel scott to d. cox. with engravings. london, . j. comyns carr: modern landscape. with illustrations. paris and london, . turner: alice watts: j. m. w. turner. london, . john burnet and peter cunningham: turner and his works. london, . edition of henry murray. london, . john ruskin: notes on the turner collection. london, . walter thornbury: j. m. w. turner. vols. london, . new edition, . philip g. hamerton: turner et claude lorrain, "l'art," , iv pp. , . philip g. hamerton: turner, "portfolio," , pp. - ; , pp. - ; , pp. - . a. brunet-desbaines: the life of turner. london, . john ruskin: notes on his collection of drawings by the late j. m. w. turner, also a list of the engraved works of that master. london. fine art society, . f. wedmore: turner's liber studiorum, "academy," , nos. , , , and in "l'art," , - . philip g. hamerton: j. m. w. turner. london, . cosmo monkhouse: j. m. w. turner. london, . hart: turner, the dream-painter. london, . a. w. hunt: turner in yorkshire, "art journal," , new series, , . w. g. rawlinson: turner's liber studiorum, "art journal," , new series, . james dafforne: the works of j. m. w. turner. with a biographical sketch. london, . g. radford: turner in wharfedale, "portfolio," may, . philip g. hamerton: j. m. w. turner, in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . robert de la sizeranne: deux heures à la turner gallery. paris, . f. wedmore: turner and ruskin. vols. london, . _reproductions:_ the harbours of england. london, . liber studiorum, illustrative of landscape composition. london, - . the turner gallery. london, . turner's celebrated landscapes. reproduced by the autotype process. london, . a. w. callcott: sir a. w. callcott's italian and english landscapes. lithographed by t. c. dibdin. london, . james dafforne: pictures by sir a. w. callcott, r. a. with descriptions and a biographical sketch of the painter. london. no date. john crome: etchings of views in norfolk. with a biographical memoir by dawson turner. norwich, . j. wodderspoon: john crome and his works. norwich, . frederick wedmore: john crome, "l'art," , iii . mary m. heaton: john crome, "portfolio," , pp. and . r. l. binyon: john crome and john sell colman. london, . on english water-colour painting: cosmo monkhouse: the earlier english water-colour painters. london, seeley & co., . john lewis roget: a history of the "old water-colour society." vols. london, longmans, green & co., . samuel palmer: the life and letters of samuel palmer, painter and etcher. edited by a. h. palmer. with illustrations. . constable: charles robert leslie: the memoirs of john constable. london, . h. perrier: de hugo v. d. goes à constable, "gazette des beaux-arts," march, . frederick wedmore, "l'art," , ii . g. m. brock-arnold: thomas gainsborough and john constable, in "illustrated biographies of the great artists." london, low, . p. g. hamerton: constable's sketches, "portfolio," , p. . robert hobart: in "les artistes célèbres." _reproductions:_ various subjects of landscape, characteristic of english scenery, from pictures painted by john constable. plates. london, . second edition, london, . english landscape, from pictures painted by john constable. plates engraved by d. lucas. london. no date. english landscape scenery: mezzotinto engravings from pictures painted by john constable. fol. london, . david cox: n. neal solly: memoir of the life of david cox. london, . basil champneys: david cox, "portfolio," , p. . j. beavington-atkinson, "portfolio," , p. . frederick wedmore: "gentleman's magazine," march, . w. hall: david cox. london, . william j. muller: n. neal solly: memoir of the life of william james muller. london, . j. beavington-atkinson: william muller, "portfolio," , pp. , . frederick wedmore: w. muller and his sketches, "portfolio," , p. . peter de wint: walter armstrong: memoir of peter de wint. illustrated by photogravures. london, macmillan & co., . henry dawson: alfred dawson: the life of henry dawson, landscape painter, - . london, . john linnell: f. g. stephens: "portfolio," , p. . bonington: al. bouvenne: catalogue de l'oeuvre gravé et lithographié de r. p. bonington. paris, . paul mantz: "gazette des beaux arts," , ii . edmond saint-raymond: bonington et les côtes normandes de saint jouin, "l'art," , i . p. g. hamerton: a sketchbook of bonington at the british museum, "portfolio," , p. . chapter xxv in general: roger-ballu: le paysage français au xix siècle, "nouvelle revue," . john w. mollet: the painters of barbizon. ( . corot, daubigny, dupré; . millet, rousseau, diaz.) in "illustrated biographies of the great artists." london, low, . david croal thomson: the barbizon school of painters: corot, rousseau, diaz, millet, daubigny, etc. with one hundred and thirty illustrations. london, . see also the articles by g. gurlitt in "die gegenwart," , the text of h. helferich to behrens' work on the gallery, etc. théodore rousseau: a. teichlein: théodore rousseau und die anfänge des paysage intime, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , iii . alfred sensier: souvenirs sur théodore rousseau, suivis d'une conférence sur le paysage et orné du portrait du maître. paris, . philippe burty: théodore rousseau, paysagiste, "l'art," , p. . emile michel, in "les artistes célèbres." walter gensel: millet und rousseau, bd. in the "künstlermonographien" ed. by knackfuss. bielefeld, . corot: edmond about: voyage à travers l'exposition des beaux-arts. paris, . henri dumesnil: corot, souvenirs intimes: avec un portrait dessiné par aimé millet, gravé par alphonse leroy. paris, rapilly, . charles blanc: les artistes de mon temps. paris, . leleux: corot à montreux, "bibliothèque universelle et revue suisse," september . alfred robaut: corot, peintures décoratives, "l'art," , p. . jean rousseau: camille corot: avec gravures. paris, . armand silvestre: galerie durand-ruel: avec gravures à l'eauforte d'après des tableaux de corot. paris. no date. albert wolff: la capitale de l'art. paris, . charles bigot: peintres contemporains. paris, . l. roger-milès: corot, in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . album classique des chefs d'oeuvre de corot. paris, . julius meier-gräfe: corot und courbet. stuttgart, . dupré: les hommes du jour: m. jules dupré, - , par un critique d'art. paris, . r. ménard: "l'art," , iii ; iv . a. michel: "l'art," , p. . jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, ii série. paris, , p. . a. hustin, in "les artistes célèbres." diaz: jules claretie: narcisse diaz, "l'art," , iii . exposition des oeuvres de narcisse diaz à l'école des beaux-arts. notice biographique par m. jules claretie. paris, . roger-ballu: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . jean rousseau: "l'art," , i . t. chasrel: l'exposition de narcisse diaz, "l'art," , ii . hermann billung: narcisse virgilio diaz, ein lebensbild, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xiv . a. hustin, in "les artistes célèbres." daubigny: karl daubigny: ch. daubigny et son oeuvre. paris, . frédéric henriet: charles daubigny et son oeuvre. paris, . frédéric henriet, in "l'art," , p. . a. hustin, in "les artistes célèbres." robert j. wickenden: charles françois daubigny, "century magazine," july . chintreuil: frédéric henriet: chintreuil: esquisse biographique. paris, . a. de la fisèliere, champfleury, et f. henriet: la vie et l'oeuvre de chintreuil. paris, . "portfolio," , p. . harpignies: charles tardieu: henry harpignies, "l'art," , xvi , . français: j. g. prat: françois louis français, "l'art," , i , , . brascassat: m. cabat: notice sur brascassat. paris, . charles marionneau: r. brascassat, sa vie et son oeuvre. paris, . troyon: henri dumesnil: constant troyon, souvenirs intimes. paris, . a. hustin: "l'art," , i ; ii . a. hustin, in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . rosa bonheur: laruelle: rosa bonheur, sa vie, ses oeuvres. paris, . rené peyrol: rosa bonheur, her life and work. with three engraved plates and illustrations, "the art annual." london, . roger-milès: rosa bonheur. paris, . emile van marcke: emile michel: "l'art," , i . eugène lambert: chiens et chats, text by g. de cherville. paris, . lancon: alfred de lostalot: un peintre animalier, "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii . charles jacque: jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, ii série. paris, , p. . chapter xxvi ernest chesneau: jean françois millet, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . ph. l. couturier: millet et corot. saint-quentin, . a. piedagnel: jean françois millet. souvenirs de barbizon. avec portrait, eaux-fortes, et un facsimilé d'autographe. paris, . a. sensier: la vie et l'oeuvre de jean françois millet. manuscrit publié par p. mantz, avec de nombreux fascimilés, heliographies hors texte, et gravures. paris, quantin, . w. e. h.: millet as an art-critic, "magazine of art," , p. . charles yriarte: jean françois millet. portrait et gravures. paris, . andré michel: jean françois millet et l'exposition de ses oeuvres a l'école des beaux-arts, "gazette des beaux arts," , ii . charles bigot: peintres contemporains. paris, . r. graul: jean françois millet, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," new series, ii . le livre d'or de jean françois millet. illustré de eaux-fortes par frédéric jacque. paris, . emile michel, in "les artistes célèbres." h. naegely: millet and rustic art. london, . w. gensel: millet und rousseau. leipzig, . julia cartwright: jean françois millet, his life and letters. london, . german edition. leipzig, . arthur thomson: jean-françois millet and the barbizon school. london, . richard muther in his series "die kunst." berlin, . chapter xxvii courbet: champfleury: grandes figures d'hier et d'aujourd'hui. (balzac, wagner, courbet.) paris, poulet-malassis, . th. silvestre: les artistes français, p. . paris, . p. d'abrest: artistische wanderungen durch paris, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xi , . comte h. d'jdeville: gustave courbet: notes et documents sur sa vie et son oeuvre. paris, . t. chasrel: "l'art," , i . paul mantz: gustave courbet, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i ; ii , . Émile zola: mes haines. proudhon et courbet. paris, , p. . gros-kost: courbet, souvenirs intimes. paris, . h. billung: supplement to the "allgemeine zeitung," , p. . eug. véron: g. courbet, un enterrement à ornans, "l'art," , i , ; ii . a. de lostalot: l'exposition des oeuvres de courbet, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . carl v. lützow: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," . camille lemonnier: les peintres de la vie. cap. i, courbet et son oeuvre. paris, . abel patoux, in "les artistes célèbres." julius meier-gräfe: corot und courbet. stuttgart, . stevens: paul d'abrest: artistische wanderungen durch paris. ein besuch bei alfred stevens, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , x . l. cardon: les modernistes: alfred stevens, "la fédération artistique," - . camille lemonnier: alfred stevens, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i , . camille lemonnier: les peintres de la vie. cap. ii, alfred stevens. paris, . ricard: moriz hartmann: büsten und bilder. frankfurt-a-m., . paul de musset: notice sur la vie de gustave ricard. paris, . louis brés: gustave ricard et son oeuvre. paris, . bonvin: l. gauchez, "l'art," , i , ii , . paul lefort: philippe rousseau et françois bonvin, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . charles chaplin: paul lefort: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . gaillard: g. dargenty: "l'art," , i , . l. gonse: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . v. guillemin: f. gaillard, graveur et peinture, originaire de la franche-comté, - . notice sur sa vie et son oeuvre. besançon, . georges duplessis, in "les artistes célèbres." bonnat: roger ballu: les peintures de m. bonnat, "l'art," , iii p. . b. day: l'atelier bonnat, "magazine of art," , p. . jules claretie, peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, ii série. paris, , p. . carolus duran: jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, ii série. paris, , p. . vollon: jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, ii série. paris, , p. . philippe rousseau: paul lefort: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . paul dubois: jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains, ii série. paris, , p. . delaunay: georges lafenestre: elie delaunay, "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii , . ribot: e. véron: théodule ribot, exposition générale de ses oeuvres, "l'art," , p. . firmin javel: théodule ribot, "revue des musées," , iii . l. fourcaud: maîtres modernes: théodule ribot, sa vie et ses oeuvres. with illustrations. paris, . paul lefort: théodule ribot, "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii . _printed by_ morrison & gibb limited, _edinburgh_ masterpieces in colour edited by - - t. leman hare titian (?)- "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--the duchess of urbino. frontispiece (in the uffizi gallery, florence) this portrait of the duchess of urbino from the uffizi must not be confused with the portrait of the duchess in the pitti palace. the sitter here is eleonora gonzaga, duchess of urbino, and the portrait was painted somewhere between the years and at a period when the master's art had ripened almost to the point of its highest achievement.] titian by s. l. bensusan illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. the duchess of urbino frontispiece in the uffizi gallery, florence page ii. la bella in the pitti palace, florence iii. the entombment in the louvre iv. the holy family in the uffizi gallery, florence v. the marriage of st. catherine in the pitti palace, florence vi. flora in the uffizi gallery, florence vii. sacred and profane love in the borghese palace, rome viii. the holy family in the national gallery, london i titian vecelli, undeniably the greatest venetian painter of the renaissance, leaps into the full light of the movement. to be sure he appears full-grown, as venus is said to have done when she appeared above the foam in the waters of cythera, or pallas athene when she sprang from the brain of zeus, but happily he was destined to live to a great age. we have few and scanty records to tell of the very early days. so wide was his circle of patrons in after life, so intimate his acquaintance with the leading men of his generation, that it is not difficult to find out what manner of man he was without the aid of his pictures, even though they have a very definite story to tell the painstaking student. there are well over one hundred important works, dealing with the life and art of titian, written by enthusiasts in half-a-dozen languages, for of all the artists of the renaissance he makes perhaps the most direct appeal to the man _moyen sensuel_. [illustration: plate ii.--la bella (in the pitti palace, florence) this wonderful example of titian's portrait painting may be seen in the pitti palace to-day, and was probably commissioned by the duke of urbino somewhere about the year . it will be noticed by students of titian that the model for this portrait appears in some of the master's pictures as venus.] fearless and unashamed, he gave the world pagan pictures, entering into the joy of their creation with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy who has found an orchard gate unlocked. to be sure the spirit of joy and of youth passed with the years, even this most fortunate of painters knew trouble, domestic and financial, but the beauty remained, expressing the fullest vigour of the renaissance movement, the supreme achievement of human loveliness, the splendour of men and women. fortune was kind to titian in many ways, and not in the least degree by driving to the sheltering fold of the venetian republic the great men of all lands who were hurrying to safety before the destroying advance of spain. it is right, at the same time, to remember that the leaders of the destroying legions were the friends and patrons of the painter, that the greatest of them all desired to be buried in the shadow of the master's picture "la gloria," now in the prado. the time called for a supremely gifted artist to render its great men immortal, or at least to give them what we call immortality in the days when we forget that if modern science be correct man has existed for some , years and has not yet reached mental adolescence. perhaps when he has developed his brain, and can control the march of this planet and the duration of his own life, he will not make half so attractive a subject for the painters as did those men and women of the fifteenth and sixteenth century whose beauty casts a spell over us to-day. titian was born at pieve among the mountains of cadore where the tyrol and italy meet. his statue in bronze looks out towards venice to-day from the market-place of his native town, and the landscape that the painter knew best, and gave time out of mind to his pictures, has altered but little. he was a second son, and would seem to have been born about the year , but there was no registrar of births, marriages, and deaths in pieve and, while some authorities place the date at , the year that he himself favoured, others advance it as far as . there has been a great controversy about this birth date, but it might be safe to place it rather later still. titian was the son of one gregorio vecelli, who seems to have been a soldier and a man who held high position in the little town which, in the early days of the fifteenth century, had cast in its lot with the venetian republic. nothing is known of his mother except her name, but his elder brother named francesco followed art until he was middle aged, and there were two sisters ursula and katherine, of whom the former kept house for the painter for many years in venice, after the death of his wife. francesco and titian vecelli developed at an early age a marked feeling for painting, and in order that they might have every chance of developing their gifts to the best advantage, gregorio vecelli took them to venice, which lay some seventy miles from pieve, and left them with a brother who had sufficient influence to secure for titian admission to the studios of the brothers bellini, who then shared with the vivarini family the highest position in the art world of the republic. gian bellini, then a man past middle age, had in his studio several pupils who were destined to achieve distinction. palma vecchio, sebastian del piombo, and giorgione of castelfranco were among them, and of these the last named was certainly the greatest. it is probable that, had he lived, even titian vecelli must have toiled after him in vain, for he influenced his fellow-student to an extent that is very clearly revealed in the early pictures, and has even led to confusion between the work of the two men, a confusion greatly increased by the fact that titian completed some of the pictures that giorgione left unfinished. happily perhaps for titian, though unfortunately for the world at large, giorgione was destined to fall a victim to one of the plagues that ravaged venice from time to time, and he died soon after completing his thirtieth year, leaving titian undisputed master of venetian painting. like all great men titian was an assimilator. in his early days he started out under the influence of bellini. then he surrendered, as even his aged master did, to the strange, rare, and beautiful spirit of poetry and romance that giorgione brought into art. he may have helped to develop and strengthen it, for he and giorgione worked and lived together. finally when outside influences had died down titian found himself, and this was the greatest discovery of his life. in the last years of giorgione's short career he and titian, both young men, were engaged to decorate the great commercial house of the germans, rebuilt upon the site of the older building that had been destroyed by fire about the beginning of the year . the work would appear to have been started two years later. this united effort, purely decorative, must have been worthy of its surroundings at a time when venice and beauty were almost synonymous terms; the greater part is lost to us to-day. serious troubles were upon the republic. the league of cambrai, one of the least scrupulous political arrangements in european history, had resulted in an attack upon the venetian domains that had been entirely successful, though statecraft was destined to recover from the philistines of europe a part at least of what they had taken, and finding that the republic was too beset to give much thought to art or artists titian left venice for padua. this must have been very shortly after the completion of his work with giorgione. his hand is to be seen in the very pleasant and learned city of padua among the frescoes in the scuola del santo, and he may have been within its walls when the plague, on one of its periodical visits to venice, added his friend and fellow-worker giorgione to a heavy list of victims. [illustration: plate iii.--the entombment (in the louvre) this world-famous canvas hangs in the salon carré of the louvre. it is considered to be one of the masterpieces among the religious subjects painted by the great venetian artist.] on titian's return to the headquarters of the republic only palma vecchio was left among the great men of his own age, and it would seem that titian's rising fame had already spread beyond the borders of venice, because in , when he petitioned the council of ten for a broker's patent to work in the hall of the german merchants, he stated that he had been invited by the pope (leo x.) to come to rome, and that he wished to leave a memorial in venice. it is clear from the correspondence that he had an eye upon a post held by the aged gian bellini. this was the office of painter in the hall of the great council, a coveted position for which carpaccio, one of bellini's less distinguished pupils, is said to have been among the claimants. although titian was a remarkable and rising man the council hesitated to grant his request, partly because times were bad with the state and money was scarce. he was compelled to wait, and it would appear that his application was opposed both by the friends of bellini and the supporters of bellini's older pupils; but as soon as bellini died, towards the close of , titian came to his desire and undertook to paint the great battle of cadore in the hall of the great council. having secured his patent, work increased, his brush was in request in many quarters, and he did as so many other painters in the state employment of venice had done--he left his official work for such spare time as more remunerative employment left him--to the great scandal of the councillors whose angry protests are on record. his early portraits seem to have been of men; the women, in whose treatment he was perhaps less happy, sought him in later life, and his other early commissions were very largely for altar-pieces. titian had powerful friends and patrons at an early age, for we see that he had been recommended to the pope by cardinal bembo before he returned to venice from padua, and his pictures attracted the attention of that splendid patron of art alfonso of ferrara. this great connoisseur sent for and entertained him at his castle, and even offered to take him to rome when leo x. died, and his successor, after the fashion of popes, would be likely to give some liberal commissions to the greatest artists of his time. in return for these kindnesses, and in consideration of a splendid fee, titian painted the great picture of alfonso of ferrara of which a copy is to be seen in florence. the original went to madrid and has been lost. for the same generous master he painted his "bacchus and ariadne," his "venus with the shell," and a bacchanal, and it is generally agreed that he painted a part at least of the picture called "the bacchanal," now in the possession of the duke of northumberland. several of the works painted in ferrara were taken in later days to madrid, and it might be said in this place that it is almost as necessary to go to the prado to see the titians as it is to see the great works of velazquez. "the bacchanal" is there, and the "worship of venus" is there, and we find many others of the first importance, some two dozen, perhaps, whose authority is beyond dispute. this collection in the prado is the more valuable because it represents titian not only in the early days, but when he was at the zenith of his powers. the pictures range in date over a period of nearly seventy years, from the "madonna with st. bridget and st. ulphus" (circa ) down to the "allegory of the battle of lepanto," which was sent to spain in , a commission from philip ii. whose love for allegorical pictures is well known. charles v. and his son philip ii. are to be seen in the prado through the medium of titian's brush, and, although many of the works have suffered from restoration, which is one of the vices associated with the great spanish picture galleries, there are several that show few signs of an alien brush and are, for pictures by titian, in first-class order. students of the renaissance know that art was accepted by all the great rulers of europe as something lying outside the boundaries of ambition and strife. it was one of the rewards of a great conqueror that he could have his portrait painted by the first painter of his day, and patriotism was kept outside the studio, to the great benefit of art and rulers alike. venice offended spain in many ways, and even offended the church by laying a restraining hand upon the holy inquisition, but popes and spanish kings were proud, nevertheless, to be numbered among the patrons of the greatest artist of their time, they seemed to know that his brush would do more than immortalise their progress--that it would outlive it. the attention that titian received from the court of ferrara did much to develop the esteem in which venice held him, and titian was requested to paint his famous "assumption" for the great church of santa maria de' frari. to-day no more than a copy hangs in the church, the picture having been long ago transferred to the accademia. it is very properly regarded by the authorities as one of the first very great pictures of titian's life, marking as it does the entrance of living interests into sacred painting. the bustle and movement that earlier masters had not ventured to present are seen here to the greatest advantage, and although there must have been many to declare that its conception was wicked and irreligious and quite outside the thought of such acknowledged masters as beato angelico and gian bellini, it is likely that such criticism would have very little effect upon titian, because he went on painting altar-pieces without reverting in any instance to the methods of his predecessors. he painted a "madonna" for the church of st nicholas, an "assumption" for verona's cathedral, an "entombment of christ," now in paris, and it could have surprised nobody when the doge andrea gritti commissioned the artist to decorate the church of st. nicholas in the ducal palace. these frescoes have disappeared, but a picture by titian preserves the patron for us, and this is something to be grateful for, because the head is full of interest. titian continued to paint ecclesiastical subjects until pressure from the world beyond forced him to turn his brush to other purposes, and then he came under the patronage of frederic gonzaga, duke of mantua, son of that isabella d'este, who had commissioned titian's old master, gian bellini, to paint a secular picture for her _camerino_ and was in the next few years to have her own portrait painted by bellini's young pupil. in addition to an original picture he copied a portrait painted when she was young, and doubtless he was sufficiently a courtier to paint it in fashion that merited her approval and consoled her for having grown old. the instinct for the fine arts had descended to isabella's son, and when titian went to work in mantua he painted pictures that extended his european fame, because as the western world was situated in those days mantua had a word to say in its affairs, entertaining foreign potentates and receiving foreign ambassadors. in those days, too, ambassadors took note of art movements, knowing that in so doing they were bound to please their masters; the political correspondence of the times includes a very considerable amount of art gossip. it is certain that titian worked in mantua for the duke, and painted many pictures including the "eleven cæsars," but unhappily the greater part of all his labour is lost. perhaps some canvases await the discerning critic in half-forgotten gallery or lumber-rooms; it is not likely that all have been destroyed. [illustration: plate iv.--the holy family (in the uffizi gallery, florence) sometimes known as the virgin with the holy child and saints. here we find titian dealing with a religious subject with the restraint, dignity, and sense of beauty that proclaim him a master among painters. the motherly love of the virgin, the solicitude of st. joseph on the right, and the childish innocence of the two children are most effectively expressed and contrasted. the picture may be seen in the uffizi gallery.] the next great italian house with which titian seems to have entered into relations was that of urbino whose duke was nephew of that pope julius ii. who was known to his contemporaries as "the terrible pontiff" because of his uncontrollable temper. he was the pope who gave michelangelo the commission to paint the ceiling in the sistine chapel. this artist was at least as bad-tempered as the terrible pontiff and the "i'm not a painter" with which he greeted the pontiff's demand that he should paint when he preferred to practise sculpture has echoed down the ages. it is worth remembering that when the work was done, and pope julius came to see the result, he suggested that the scaffolding should be re-erected and the work decorated afresh with ultramarine and gold-leaf! although pope julius bought the "apollo" and the "laocoon," michelangelo was his adviser, but his nephew francesco maria della rovere had sound instinct, and his connection with titian lasted as long as he lived. in the early years of this connection titian painted the duke and duchess and the famous "bella," which is reproduced in these pages and is reckoned, in spite of repainting, to be one of the most notable works from titian's hand in this period of his career. many portraits painted for the court of urbino are mentioned by vasari; we cannot find any traces of them to-day. as one of them was of the turkish sultan, and it is not on record that titian ever went to turkey, it is reasonable to suppose that some at least of these pictures were copies of portraits that other men had painted. it was the custom for foreign potentates to have their portrait painted by the best man in their own capital and then to send the portrait to be copied by some artist of world-wide repute. in the uffizi gallery in florence there are portraits of the duke of urbino (which are signed) and his duchess; they were kept at urbino until the early part of the seventeenth century, and were then brought to their present resting-place. the picture of the duke is a very striking one. he had made a great reputation in fighting against the turks, and the emblems of his high office are seen in the picture. the duchess is painted in repose; like so many of titian's portraits of women this one has a rather listless expression. when the duke died his son guidobaldo continued relations with the painter, who painted the duchess julia just before her death. it seems likely that she never saw the picture, which is now in the pitti at florence. the portrait of the husband is lost. ii middle age this brief and rather hurried review of titian's life and work has brought us to his middle age and we find him now almost at the zenith of his fame, though his powers have not yet reached their ripest and fullest expression. venice, mantua, and urbino have acknowledged his talent, while if pope and sultan have not actually sat to him for their portraits they have sent him other men's work to copy. the great charles v., who seemed bent upon holding all western and central europe in the hollow of his hand, was his friend and patron, and we see what manner of man he was from the pictures in the prado. the first, painted in the very early years of their acquaintance, shows charles with a great hound by his side. his right hand rests on his dagger, his left on the dog's collar, he wears the chain of the golden fleece, and seems a man born to command. belonging, of course, to a much later date is the other portrait of charles at the battle of mühlburg, perhaps even less a monument of titian's skill than an enduring record of the terrible craze for repainting that beset spain until recent years, and is not unknown to-day, though public opinion has had some effect even in madrid. it is not generally known that there is a spanish official who has a salaried engagement to assist the old masters whose work shows signs of fading, and without wishing to be hypercritical it is reasonable to remark that these officials in a laudable anxiety to earn their stipend have done irreparable damage to much work that they were not fit to approach. [illustration: plate v.--the marriage of st. catherine (in the pitti palace, florence) this fine work is in the pitti palace, and is a triumph of harmony in colour and lines. the drawing of the arms of the infant christ is the one point that may be said to justify hostile criticism in a work of extraordinary beauty. a somewhat similar picture is in the national gallery.] in spite of the imminence of the political scheme that occupied the mind of charles v. he was able to spare time to consider the affairs of art, and his attitude towards titian seems to have been that of one friend towards another rather than that of an emperor towards a foreign painter. it is interesting in this connection to remember that his son philip ii., who succeeded to the throne of spain, was a patron of the arts, that philip iii. was not indifferent to them, that philip iv. was the friend as well as the patron of velazquez, and that velazquez admired titian above all the other venetians, and is said to have copied many of his pictures. charles proceeded to put the crown upon titian's reputation by sending him in a patent of nobility, and making him a knight of the order of the golden spur. among the stories that receive a sort of sanction from age is one to the effect that charles v. once picked up a brush that titian had dropped, and said to his astonished courtiers that such a man was worthy of having an emperor to serve him. stories of this kind seem to flourish in spain. students of the life of velazquez will not forget the legend that philip iv. painted the cross of st. iago upon the painter's cloak when he saw the famous picture "las meniñas," in order to give the most fitting expression of his admiration. this story contrasts strangely with the true facts of the case. charles went even further than to give the patent of nobility to titian, he made a determined effort to persuade him to live in madrid altogether. very wisely titian refused the offers; he was a venetian at heart, and a free man. to be a citizen of venice was an honour for which even a charles v. could hardly find an effective substitute. there is no reason to believe that titian would have fared any better in the wind-swept, heat-stricken capital of spain than velazquez fared in the years that brought philip iv. to the throne. at the splendid court of charles v. titian would soon have become a mere official painter, he would have been compelled to paint to order and endure the snubs and buffets of the blue-blooded, but uncultivated courtiers attached to the royal establishment. moreover, the venetians did not like spanish methods of dealing with matters of art and faith; to titian their attitude would have appeared intolerable. although he was a painter, titian had little of the temperament that is generally associated with artists. his genius was allied to sound commercial instincts, and he chose for intimates and advisers men whose practical experience of the world and of affairs was at least as great as his own, in some cases even greater. of these pietro aretino, father of modern journalists, was one of the most sagacious and quite the most remarkable. his voluminous letters tell us a great deal about titian to whom he played the part of mentor, and they reveal the writer as a man of great shrewdness who moved in the highest circles in many cities, living largely by his wits, and wielding a pen that was often sharper than a sword and was certainly more feared. he found titian as valuable to him as he was useful to titian, and, when any delicate negotiations were to the fore aretino's large circle of friends and patrons, his ready tongue and fluent pen were at the service of the painter. his portrait painted by titian was till recently in rome and reveals a man with massive head, sagacious expression, and a curious likeness to dr. hans richter the famous musician. his letters are still read with interest by those who like to look back over the course of life in the sixteenth century. at a time when he had passed middle age, titian would seem to have exhausted for the moment the possibilities of venice. we have seen that the fathers of the city had been a little vexed with his delay in painting the "battle of cadore" in the hall of the grand council. he had received a state allowance in order to enable him to paint it, and twenty years had not sufficed him for the completion of the commission. when he was threatened with the loss of his money and dignities by the indignant councillors, whose patience at the end of two decades was quite stale, he did set to work, and satisfied them that the picture was worth the waiting. but they could hardly have been inclined to extend much more patronage to a man who allowed the rulers of other states to turn his attention from commissioned work, and never hesitated to leave it for years at a time when other and more remunerative orders came to hand. moreover the great churches were fairly well filled, and the smaller ones could hardly afford to employ the greatest master of the day. so pietro aretino, perhaps casting about to do his friend a good turn, bethought him of his influence in rome, and addressed certain letters to the leading lights of mother church who were to be found there. these letters were doubtless supervised by titian himself, because they bear a striking likeness in phraseology to the petition the painter had addressed to the council of ten in the days when he was little known, and gian bellini was still working for the state. then, it will be remembered, the painter declared that he had been asked to go to rome but preferred to stay in venice; now aretino told the romans that titian had been invited to go to madrid but preferred to work in rome. so it happened early in the 'forties that, through the useful aretino, titian entered into relations with the farnese family, who were represented in the papal chair by pope paul iii. the result was that titian was invited to ferrara, where he met the pope and painted his portrait. the whole correspondence, so far as it can be seen, would seem to suggest that titian and aretino managed this business exceedingly well. when the painter found that his ambition was within measurable distance of being gratified, and that his graceless elder son for whom he had entered a special plea, was to receive a benefice, he seems to have remembered that venice held many attractions for him, and that he could not leave it in a hurry. not until the close of did he visit the eternal city, only to regret that the greater part of his life had been passed outside its walls. as soon as he was established in rome, titian found himself received by princes and prelates in fashion befitting his age and reputation. and giorgio vasari, the author of the great work on italian artists, was commissioned, by one of the heads of the house of farnese, to show the painter the wonders of the city. [illustration: plate vi.--flora (in the uffizi gallery, florence) the famous flora of titian's reproduced here is in the uffizi gallery and was painted somewhere about . in the seventeenth century it was engraved by one of the greatest engravers of the day, sandrart. the picture was publicly exhibited in florence towards the stormy close of the eighteenth century, and although people in those years had small leisure to concern themselves about works of art, it created a great sensation.] to the farnese family titian's visit was of the first importance because its pope and cardinal were his first patrons, and he painted many pictures for them. paul iii. was no more than ten years older than the painter and had not long to live. he sat to titian several times; two of the portraits are to be seen in naples and there are others to be seen elsewhere. in addition to the fine memorials of the farnese pope, naples holds several of titian's masterpieces, including the splendid "danäe," a "philip ii.," and a "mary magdalen." those who are fortunate enough to obtain access to the really remarkable collection of pictures at naples will not forget readily the striking portraits of the old pope. titian stayed less than a year in the eternal city in spite of the preparations he had made before undertaking the journey, and then returned to venice with many honours, but without the long desired post for his son. perhaps his departure gave offence to people in high places, perhaps his stay there had not been altogether as satisfactory as he had expected it to be, for despite flattering offers, despite the honour of roman citizenship conferred upon him before he went home, he refused to return. he might have gone in the end in consideration of the preferment granted to pomponio vecelli his scapegrace son, but charles v. sent for him, and he went instead to augsburg, where the emperor who had seen the fulfilment of so many of his hopes was living in great state, surrounded by as brilliant a court as the sixteenth century knew. in augsburg titian painted his most famous portrait of charles v., the one showing the emperor on horseback, which as has been stated, is to be seen to-day in the prado in madrid. titian remained in augsburg for the greater part of a year before he returned to venice, to find his studio, or work-shop as it would have been called in those days besieged by the envoys of the various european rulers who were all clamouring for portraits. from venice the painter went to milan at the invitation of prince philip of spain (afterwards philip ii.) and at the close of he was back in augsburg where he painted several portraits of prince philip of which perhaps the best is in the prado. by the time he returned to venice he would have been in the immediate neighbourhood of his eightieth year. his brush was never idle, and if the fruit of his labours could have been preserved in fire-proof galleries the gain to the world would have been enormous. unfortunately we have to face the unpleasant truth that considerably more than half his life work has been lost. iii the last decades titian's last work for charles v. was the famous "gloria." this was painted at a time when charles had decided to end his days in the shadow of the church, and is to be seen to-day in the prado, a composition of amazing strength and wonderful inspiration. the father and the son are seen enthroned, with the virgin mary at the feet of christ, and the patriarchs grouped in the background. charles himself in his shroud is pleading for forgiveness, an angel by his side encourages him and supports his appeal. the lighting of the picture is masterly, and so impressed the emperor that he took it with him into retirement, and directed that it should be placed above his tomb. philip ii. has no enviable reputation in this country, but his position as patron of the arts stands far above criticism. though he was a sober ascetic upon whom the authority of the church weighed very heavily, he did not ask titian to devote himself entirely to religious pictures. in matters of art he saw his way to making a considerable concession to the spirit of the renaissance, and when he took over the burden of empire he commissioned several mythological subjects from the old painter. among them were the "venus and adonis" now in the prado, the "diana surprised by actaeon" in bridge-water house, and the "jupiter and antiope" in the louvre. the allegorical pictures, the latest work of the painter's life, were commissioned later. strangely enough the years had done little or nothing to dim the lustre of the painter's work, his colour was still supremely beautiful, his feeling for landscape more intense than it had ever been, while his capacity for striking and novel composition remained a thing to wonder at. of course philip was not content with secular subjects, and titian was required to paint a certain number of pictures for the escorial, but he is best represented by his mythological subjects. perhaps they made a more direct appeal to him because by their side the religious pictures were a little old-fashioned, and he does not seem to have faced allegorical subjects with enthusiasm. it is interesting to turn to vasari and read some of the things he has to say about the painter at this period of his life, for although the old chronicler is not the most accurate of writers, he is at least a very interesting one and he knew titian intimately. he says of the famous "gloria" picture to which reference has been made--"the composition of this work was in accordance with the orders of his majesty, who was then giving evidence of his intention to retire, as he afterwards did, from mundane affairs, to the end that he might die in the manner of a true christian, fearing god and labouring for his own salvation." it is not difficult to imagine the emotion that this picture must have roused among those who were privileged to see it, when it came fresh from the painter's studio, to impress an age that had not forgotten to be devout. again vasari says, "in the year when i, the writer of the present history, was in venice, i went to visit titian as one who was his friend, and found him, although then very old, still with the pencils in his hand painting busily." the old gossip goes on to say that paris bordone, who "had studied grammar and become an excellent musician," had set himself to imitate titian, who did not love him on that account, and had sought to keep him from getting commissions. bordone persevered and went to augsburg, where he painted pictures, now lost, for some of the great german merchants. this little glimpse of rivalry suggests to us that titian was jealous of his reputation, although vasari tells us elsewhere that he was kind and considerate to his contemporaries, and free from uneasiness, because he had gained a fair amount of wealth, his labours having always been well paid. vasari hints, too, that he kept his brush in hand too long; he must have written this when he remembered that, for all his many excellences, titian was a venetian. "titian has always been healthy and happy," he writes; "he has been favoured beyond the lot of most men, and has received from heaven only favours and blessings. in his house he has always been visited by whatever princes, literati, or men of distinction have gone to venice, for in addition to his excellence in art he has always distinguished himself by courtesy, goodness, and rectitude." perhaps his remark that titian's reputation would have stood higher if he had finished work earlier may be no more than a veiled comment upon the indiscriminate misuse of the labours of pupils. [illustration: plate vii.--sacred and profane love (in the borghese palace, rome) this most beautiful work of titian's is one belonging to his early days. it was probably commissioned in by the chancellor of venice, and we find that it was in the possession of cardinal scipione borghese at the beginning of the seventeenth century. it may be seen to-day in the borghese palace of rome.] in the latter years of his sojourn in venice the artist lived in a house towards murano, between the church of san giovanni de paolo and the church of the jesuits. he entertained very largely, giving supper parties from which no seasonable delicacy was lacking, and gathering round him distinguished men and women who were far less celebrated for their morals than for their attractions. his gossip aretino was generally of the party, and it is to him that we owe so much of our intimate knowledge of the painter's home life and troubles. aretino's death in must have been a great blow to titian. vasari tells us that the painter's income was considerable. charles v. paid a thousand gold crowns for every portrait of himself and, when he conferred the patent of nobility upon the painter, he accompanied it with an annual gift of two hundred crowns. philip ii., son of the great emperor, added another two hundred annually, the german merchants gave him three hundred, so that he had seven hundred crowns a year without taking into account the commissions that came to him on every side, and, as he was painting for the richest and most generous people of his generation, his annual income must have been very considerable. and yet titian's own correspondence, of which a part has been preserved, shows that the state grants were not always paid regularly. it is of course far more easy for an arbitrary ruler to make gifts to his favourites than it is for the state treasury to respond to the demands that must needs follow each grant, and spanish finances have always been difficult to administer. as he grew older and his hand lost part at least of its cunning, titian depended more and more upon pupils, but in this he was only following the custom of his time. it is said that a clever german artist, who worked in his studio, was responsible for the greater part of several of the later pictures. the council of ten though they had taken from him the office of painter of doges and had given it to tintoretto, offered him a commission in the late 'sixties; even if they had a grievance against him they could not afford to nourish it. then again if titian was not always prompt in doing the work for which he was paid, even if he employed pupils to a greater extent than seemed necessary to those who had to pay for the finished canvas, it must have been hard to quarrel with him, for his personality would seem to have been most engaging. he was an excellent musician as well as a good host, paolo veronese has included him in the famous "marriage in cana" (louvre) playing a double bass. moreover titian was a courtier whose correspondence, although it dealt so largely with matter of finance, lacks none of the stilted graces of the time, and these may have helped to conciliate angry patrons. he seems to have been an affectionate father, and if he had any besetting sin it was love of money, his anxiety in this respect being increased by the fact that he was not always able to collect the accounts due to him. yet he saved enough to buy land round his birthplace and it is reported that he went to cadore whenever he had the opportunity. clearly an appreciative sense of the perennial peace of the dolomites never left him. by his wife, to whom he was not married until two sons had been born, titian had four children of whom two grew up. pomponio, to whom we have referred, was the eldest; and he came to a bad end, being a dissipated man. orazio, who was the second son, became a painter. one daughter died young, and there was another, lavinia, portraits of whom may be seen at dresden and berlin. his great friends were pietro aretino, poet and gossip, who laid half europe under contribution, and was almost as unscrupulous as he was clever, and the sculptor sansovino. whatever titian's faults were as a man, they may fairly be forgotten in his merits as an artist, and it is not the least of these merits that he worked from the time when he was a boy to the hour when his brush seemed falling from his hands, unsparing in his devotion to his task. he has left a legacy to the civilised world that compels a measure of admiration equal to that which is paid to velazquez. titian was the supreme master of colour, but, unfortunately, few of his pictures have escaped the restorer's hand, and a great many have been damaged in their journeys from city to city in an age when the art of picture packing was still unknown. exposure to all sorts of weather, long periods of neglect, careless restoration, and reckless repainting would have been enough to destroy the reputation of most painters, but titian's work has not suffered to the extent that might have been expected. enough remains of the master to make us not a little envious of the happy patrons of the arts who knew his work in all its glory. it is hard to say when titian's life would have come to an end in the ordinary course of events, but it is not unreasonable to suppose that he would have lived to be a centenarian had he retired from venice when he was ninety and gone to live in pieve, the well-beloved city that gave him birth. but he would not leave his workshop, and in the plague paid another visit to venice. it will be remembered that soon after the league of cambrai when titian was in padua, a visitation had devastated venice and carried off giorgione among thousands of lesser men. the venetians were never free from fear of the plague's return. in the hand of the plague lay heavy upon the city of lagoons, where sanitation was unknown, and isolation and disinfection were not practised properly. historians tell us that some , people perished, the greatest panic prevailed, and while the plague was at its height titian died. if his own insinuation of the year of his birth be correct he must have been in his ninety-ninth year, but even if we accept the date given by those who believe that he was born as late as , he would have been within seven years of his centenary. the epidemic is recorded in the famous church of the redentore on the giudecca, dedicated to christ by the doge mocenigo, whose portrait painted by tintoretto may be seen in the accademia to-day. [illustration: plate viii.--the holy family (in the national gallery, london) this superb painting is one of the gems of our national gallery, and represents titian at his best as a great colourist. it is painted in oil on canvas.] in spite of the distress prevailing in the city some effort was made to give the great painter a state funeral, but under the conditions existing, it was impossible to carry out the programme, and he was buried with comparatively little ceremony in the great church of the frari which, in addition to having one of the finest works of his hand, is further enriched by the famous altar-piece by his old master gian bellini. they say that his residence was entered shortly after his death by some of the riff-raff of venice, to whom the plague had given a welcome measure of licence, and was despoiled of many of its treasures. doubtless the painter's house held much that was worth the small risk involved in an hour when the authorities were hardly able to cope with duties to the sick and the disposal of the dead. in considering the life of titian we see that much good-fortune went to its making. he was born at the best period of the renaissance, he was the inheritor of the freedom for which other painters had striven. he painted a world that was as new to artists as were the far-off realms to the spanish adventurers who were discovering new countries and new trade routes, and paving the way for the ultimate decline of venice. at the outset of his career titian's work was full of the joy of life, it was the expression of an age that seemed to have come of age, of a city that had turned to canvas and marble rather than to books for a reflection of the new life. while the painter progressed, overcoming the various difficulties of expression that confronted him, making daring and successful experiments in composition, handling colour as it had never been handled before, this feeling of enthusiasm that belonged to the age was expressed in all his work. then again he had the great advantage of claiming for sitters the most distinguished men of his time, the statesmen and rulers who were making history at the expense of the map of europe, the men who held spiritual or temporal power, and the women they delighted to honour. naturally enough these conditions gave added scope to the painter's talent; and his subjects were worthy of his brush. he could seek out what was best and most characteristic in his sitters, and express through the medium of his art not only the likeness but the personality underlying it. had his work been more fortunate, had it been preserved in anything like its entirety, we should be able to read the history of his times in a clearer light, for though the written word can tell us much, the cleverly wrought picture has still more to say, and we can rely upon canvas, if titian painted it, to refute or to confirm the verdict of the historian. happily, too, titian's art grew with his age. practice and experience ripened it, and some of his finest pictures were painted when he was past the span of life that the psalmist has allotted to man. he covered every field, no form of painting seems to have come amiss to him. altar-pieces, portraits, historical pictures, mythological and allegorical subjects, one and all claimed his attention from time to time, and though we are all entitled to express our preference, there will be few to say that he failed in any style of work. perhaps he was least successful in allegorical subjects, and in the portraits of women, but, if this be so, his failure is merely relative, he attained such heights in mythological subjects and men's portraits, that the other work is not so good by comparison. if he gave us no picture devoted entirely to landscape it is worth remarking that the appeal of nature was an ever growing one. the impression given him by the mountains round cadore was never lost. from the time when he completed gian bellini's last picture down to the time when the plague came to venice and found him with an unfinished picture on his easel, the attraction of the countryside he knew so well was always with him, and he lost no opportunity of expressing it. gian bellini had opened the walls that shut in the madonna and the saints of the earlier masters, he had given the world glimpses of exquisite landscape through which the romance woven round his figures seemed to spread. titian opened the gates still further, giving a larger, wider, and more splendid view, convincing his contemporaries and successors that landscape could never more be overlooked. he would seem to have made few studies, a sketch by titian is one of the rarest things in art, he did not see in line but in colour. with titian as with velazquez after him it is hard to separate colour from line, and in colour he was the acknowledged master of his own time and the guide of the ages after him. some of his great contemporaries, not venetians of course, declared that titian was a poor draughtsman, but it is well to remember that among the venetians, art was an affair of painting, among the florentines it embraced sculpture and architecture; the mere handling of paint, however splendid the results, would not suffice florentine ambitions. it might even be said that much florentine painting is little more than tinted drawing. we go to titian for colour even to-day, when time and exposure and repainting have taken so much from the wealth that he gave to his pictures, and we can see that as he grew to ripe age he sought to obtain his colour effects by less obvious means than those that served him at the outset. it is hard for any but an artist to realise the secret of the cause that produced the later results, but, if it be left for the artist to explain it is easy for the layman to appreciate. with titian, venetian painting reached the zenith of its achievement, after him through tintoretto and veronese, the descent is slow but sure, and we are left wondering whether any fresh revival of the world's enthusiasm, any new discovery of the world's youth is destined to bring into art the spirit of enthusiasm that gave a titian to the world. there are few signs in our own time, but then we do not live in an age of great crises religious or political, or, if we do, we are too near to the changes to recognise them. perhaps there are some who find amusement in the suggestion that titian's action emancipating art from the thraldom of the church was a great and glorious one, not unattended by danger and difficulties. to these sceptics one can but reply by quoting the decree of the council of nicaea dated a.d. and never repealed. here we find the attitude of authority towards art set out in plainest fashion. "it is not the invention of the painter which creates a picture," says this remarkable decree, "but the inviolable law and tradition of the church. it is not the painter but the holy fathers who have to invent and dictate. to them manifestly belongs the composition, to the painter only the execution." a few great artists in later times had made their protest, definite or indefinite, against the attitude of the church, but titian rescued art as perseus rescued andromeda. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's note: italics is represented with underscore _ and small caps with all caps. illustrations were moved to paragraph breaks, everything else (including inconsistent hyphenation and spelling) has been retained as printed. masterpieces in colour edited by - - t. leman hare raphael - "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. corot. sidney allnutt. delacroix. paul g. konody. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--the ansidei madonna. frontispiece (in the national gallery, london) better than any other picture by raphael, this important altar-piece shows the precociousness of raphael's genius, for it was painted at perugia in , when the master had scarcely passed into the twenty-third year of his life. he had then just returned from florence, but, probably to humour his patrons, the ansidei family, he reverted in this picture once again to the formal manner of his second master, perugino. the "ansidei madonna" has the distinction of being the most costly picture at the national gallery--it was purchased in from the duke of marlborough for £ , .] raphael by paul g. konody illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. the ansidei madonna frontispiece in the national gallery, london page ii. the madonna del gran duca in the pitti palace, florence iii. the madonna della sedia in the pitti palace, florence iv. "la belle jardinière" in the louvre v. the madonna of the tower in the national gallery, london vi. pope julius ii. in the uffizi gallery, florence vii. putto with garland in the academy of st. luca, rome viii. portrait of raphael in the uffizi gallery, florence i "and i tell you that to paint one beautiful woman, i should need to see several beautiful women, and to have you with me to choose the best," wrote raphael, then at the zenith of his fame and good fortune, to his life-long friend count baldassare castiglione, who--the ideal courtier himself--has given the world that immortal monument of renaissance culture, the book of the courtier. in penning these lines the prince of painters intended, perhaps, no more than a pretty compliment to one who was himself a model of courtesy and graceful speech, but the words would gain deep significance if _picture_ were substituted for _woman_, and if castiglione were taken to signify the personification of intellect and learning. for the beauty of raphael's art, which in the course of four centuries has lost none of its hold upon the admiration of mankind, is distilled from the various elements of beauty contained in the art that had gone before him and was being created around him; and in choosing the best, at least as far as idea and conception are concerned, he was guided by the deepest thinkers and keenest intellects of what were then the world's greatest centres of culture. raphael was, indeed, born under a happy constellation. he was not a giant of intellect, nor an epoch-making genius; as michelangelo said of him, he owed his art less to nature than to study; but he was born at a time when two centuries of gradual artistic development had led up to a point where an artist was needed to gather up the diverging threads and bring the movement to a culmination, which will stand for all times as a standard of perfection. advantages of birth and early surroundings, charm of appearance and disposition which made him a favourite wherever he went, receptivity, adaptability, and application, and above all an early and easy mastery of technique, were combined in raphael to lead him to this achievement. the smooth unclouded progress of his life from recognition to fame, from prosperity to affluence, is not the turbulent way of genius. genius walks a sad and lonely path. michelangelo, the turbulent spirit, morose and dissatisfied, lionardo da vinci, pursuing his high ideals without a thought of worldly success until his lonely old age sees him expatriated and contemplating the fruitlessness of all his labours--these men of purest genius have little in common with the pliant courtier raphael, the head himself of a little court of faithful followers. the story goes that michelangelo, in the bitterness of his spirit, when meeting his happy rival at the head of his usual army of some fifty dependants on his way to the papal court, addressed him with the words "you walk like the sheriff with his _posse comitatus_." and raphael, quick at repartee, retorted "and you, like an executioner going to the scaffold." whether the anecdote be true or not, it marks the difference between the course of talent--albeit the rarest talent--and that of genius. [illustration: plate ii.--the madonna del gran duca (in the pitti palace, florence) this picture, remarkable for the effective simplicity of its design and for the purity of the virgin's face, derives the name by which it is commonly known from the fact that it was bought in by the grand duke ferdinand iii. from a poor widow, and held by him in such esteem that he would never part from it and always took it with him on his travels. at one time it was actually credited with the power of working miracles. it is one of the first works of raphael's florentine period, and now hangs in the pitti palace, florence.] what are the qualities of raphael's art that have carried his fame unsullied through the ages and made him the most popular, the most admired, of all painters? the greatest of the primitives, and of the later masters velazquez, rembrandt, frans hals, watteau, to mention only a few of the brightest beacons in the realm of art, have at some time or other been eclipsed and held in slight esteem. raphael alone escaped the inconstancy of popular favour; he was set up as an idol before he left the world to mourn his untimely death, and in the course of the years the world's idolatrous worship was extended even to the feeble handiwork of his assistants, which often passed under his name. only within the memory of living men did this blind and indiscriminating worship lead to a reaction as indiscriminating. but this reaction was confined to a comparatively small circle of æsthetically inclined art enthusiasts; and to-day, when the more scientific methods of criticism have succeeded in sifting the wheat from the chaff--the master's own work from the factory-like production of his bottega--he has been reinstated in all his former glory. contemptuous hostility to raphael's art has ceased to be a fashionable pose. the frank acknowledgment of the perfection of this art is no longer stayed by the consciousness of the harm done by that imperfect imitation of the raphaelic code of beauty, which has been the result of all academic teaching in europe since the founding of the prix de rome. beauty, formal beauty, pure and faultless, must appeal to everybody; and raphael means to us the perfection of beauty--such beauty as lies in rhythm, balance, colour, form, and execution. it is a calculated beauty, the lucid, unambiguous expression of an absolutely normal, well-balanced mind assisted by an unerring hand; hence it is intelligible to everybody without that unconscious mental effort which is needed for the understanding of an art of greater emotional intensity. it is of the very essence of art that it should express an emotion; a picture which is merely imitative without holding a hint of what the artist felt at the time of creating it, ceases to be a work of art, even if it represents a subject beautiful in itself. on the other hand, an ugly subject may be raised to sublime art by emotional statement; but this emotion is of necessity more complex and more difficult to understand than that simplest of all emotions, the pleasure caused by the contemplation of beauty. this accounts for the common fallacy that art and beauty are indissolubly connected, and for the favouritism shown by all the successive generations to raphael whose brush was wedded to beauty in the classic sense, and whose art knew nothing of the beauty of character. but beauty alone does not constitute raphael's greatness, or bouguereau and many other modern academic painters would have to be accounted great instead of being merely dull and insipid. raphael developed to its utmost power of expressiveness the art of space-composition, the secret of which was the heritage of the umbrian painters. what space-composition means cannot be better defined than it has been by mr. berenson: "space-composition differs from ordinary composition in the first place most obviously in that it is not an arrangement to be judged as extending only laterally, or up and down on a flat surface, but as extending inwards in depth as well. it is composition in three dimensions, and not in two, in the cube, not merely on the surface.... painted space-composition opens out the space it frames in, puts boundaries only ideal to the roof of heaven. all that it uses, whether the forms of the natural landscape, or of grand architecture, or even of the human figure, it reduces to be its ministrants in conveying a sense of untrammelled, but not chaotic spaciousness. in such pictures, how freely one breathes--as if a load had just been lifted from one's breast; how refreshed, how noble, how potent one feels; again, how soothed; and still again, how wafted forth to abodes of far-away bliss!" this sense of space and depth is achieved by methods which have nothing in common with our modern art of creating the illusion of what is called "atmosphere"--not by the "losing and finding" of contours, not by the application of optical theories, such as the zone of interchanging rays which dissolves all hard outlines, nor by the blurring and fogging of the distance. space-composition in the sense in which it was practised by raphael is closely akin to the art of architecture in its appeal to our emotions. as an illustrator, again, raphael was unequalled as regards clear, direct, measured statement of all that is essential to the immediate grasping of the idea or incident depicted. the first glance at one of raphael's works, whether it be a small panel picture or a monumental fresco, reveals its whole purport, and that in a manner so complete and lucid and convincing as could not be achieved by any other method of expression. with infallible sureness he invariably found the shortest way for the harmonious statement of idea, form, and emotion, which in his work are always found in perfect balance and so completely permeated by each other as to constitute an indissoluble trinity. another reason for raphael's powerful appeal--and in this he is perhaps the most typical child of his period--is that his art unites in one majestic current the two greatest movements of thought which have ever fired the imagination of civilised europe; classic antiquity and christian faith, when treated by raphael's brush, cease to be incompatible and live side by side in that measured harmony which is the hall-mark of his art. christianity is presented to us in the glorious classic garb of the old world, and the myth and philosophy of the ancients are brought into intimate relationship with christian teaching. he infuses new blood and life into the stones of ancient greece and rome--unlike mantegna who had remained cold and classic in his relief-like reconstructions of antiquity; just as he accentuates the human emotional side of the madonna and child _motif_ by discarding all hieroglyphic symbolism and setting before our eyes the intimate link of love that connects mother and babe. almost imperceptibly his cupids are transformed into child angels, and the jehovah of his "vision of ezekiel" has more in common with olympian jove than with the mediæval conception of the lord of heaven. [illustration: plate iii.--the madonna della sedia (in the pitti palace, florence) the madonna "of the chair," one of the most characteristic and deservedly popular of raphael's numerous versions of the virgin and child _motif_, belongs to the master's full maturity, and was painted during his sojourn in rome, at the time when he was occupied with the stupendous task of decorating the _stanze_ of the vatican. it would be difficult to find in the whole history of art a more pleasing solution of the problem presented by a figure composition in the round. the picture is now in the pitti palace, florence.] just as timoteo viti, perugino, fra bartolommeo, lionardo da vinci, masaccio, michelangelo, and sebastiano del piombo (who imparted to him something of the glow of venetian colouring), had been the sources from which raphael drew his knowledge of technique, colour, composition, and all the elements of pictorial style, so the humanists had paved his way as regards the intellectual aspect of his art. his marvellous faculty of rapid assimilation enabled him, on the one hand, to appropriate whatever he found worthy of imitation in his precursors and contemporaries, and thus to complete his technical equipment at an age at which it was given to few to have achieved mastery; whilst, on the other hand, his clear intellect, aided by the not entirely unmercenary desire to please his patrons, helped him to carry out with triumphant success the ideas evolved by the keenest thinkers of his time. to doubt that the general idea, and perhaps a good many of the details, of such a stupendous work as the fresco decoration of the _stanze_ at the vatican, had originated in raphael's head, is not to detract from his greatness. he was a boy in his early teens when he entered his first master's bottega. he was a youth of twenty-five when he started on his great task; and the intervening years had been so completely filled with the study of his craft and with the execution of important commissions, that it is impossible to believe he could have found much leisure for book-learning. and such learning was indispensable for the conception of that elaborate scheme with all its historical allusions and allegorical imagery. the wonder is that raphael could so completely enter into the suggestions made to him from various sources, and to weave them into a tissue of immortal beauty. ii at the end of the fifteenth century the rule of the duke federigo of montefeltre, an enlightened prince who devoted the best of his energy and such time as he could spare from his duties on the battlefield to the patronage of the arts, to the adornment of his noble palace, and to the collecting of priceless manuscripts, paintings, antiques, and works of art of every description, had raised the old city of urbino to one of the centres of culture and learning, and made the ducal court a gathering-place for the distinguished painters, architects, poets, and humanists who were attracted by the wealth and liberality of this great patron. among the less distinguished satellites attracted by the sun of montefeltre was one giovanni santi, who had come to urbino in the middle of the fifteenth century. though a painter of considerable skill, trained perhaps by fiorenzo di lorenzo, he found it necessary in the early days of his sojourn at urbino to supplement his modest income by trading in oil and corn and other commodities, as his father had done before him. but his varied accomplishments soon brought him into prominence and secured him a position as court painter and poet. more important than any of the pictures that have come to us from his brush is his famous rhyming chronicle of , verses in dantesque measure, in which he glorifies the virtues and exploits of his patron. he was a special favourite of elisabetta gonzaga, the youthful spouse of federigo's son guidobaldo, whose high esteem for giovanni is expressed in a letter in which she informs her sister-in-law of the court painter's death. to this giovanni santi and to his wife magia ciarla was born on good friday, the th of march[ ] , a son who was destined in the comparatively short span of his life to rise to fame such as has been the share of few mortals. an elder brother and sister of raphael had died in infancy, and his mother followed them to the grave before he had reached his eighth year. her place in the paternal home was taken by bernardina parte, a goldsmith's daughter, whom giovanni wedded soon after his first wife's death. from giovanni santi's great poem it would appear that he was on terms of friendship and intimacy with some of the greatest masters of the time, such as melozzo da forli, mantegna, pier dei franceschi, and verrocchio; and it is reasonable to assume that raphael's earliest art education under his father's guidance tended towards the development of that peculiar faculty which enabled him later on to seize and assimilate the excellences in the style of the various masters with whom he came in contact. footnote : the wording of raphael's epitaph, which states that he died on the same day (of the year) on which he was born, has led some writers to the assumption that he was born on april , whereas it is merely meant to signify that he was born and died on good friday. the ease with which his precocious talent absorbed the teaching of his masters became evident when, soon after his father's death, in , from fever contracted in the malarial air of the mantuan marshland, whither he had gone in the service of elisabetta gonzaga, he entered the bottega of francia's pupil timoteo viti (or della vite), who settled at urbino in , and whose eminent position among the painters of that city must have suggested to raphael's guardian--his maternal uncle simone ciarla--the desirability of placing the youth under such competent tuition. and so thoroughly did raphael acquire not only his first master's style, but even such of his mannerisms as the broad shape of hands and feet and the languid turn of the heads, that from such internal evidence morelli, the originator of the modern method of criticism, was able after more than three centuries of error to disprove vasari's assertion that raphael passed straight from his father's workshop into that of perugino. timoteo's influence is apparent even in works painted by raphael at a time when he had come under the spell of the more powerful personality of perugino, like the "sposalizio" or "betrothal of the virgin," of , in the brera gallery in milan; but it is unmistakably in evidence in the three earliest pictures that bear raphael's name: the "vision of a knight," at the national gallery, the "st. michael," at the louvre, and the "three graces," at chantilly. not only the features which connect this group of pictures with the style of timoteo viti, but the timid meticulous execution and the naïve stiffness of the figures, mark them as works of raphael's immature youth. the turn of the century, as we shall see, found raphael at perugia, so that the three pictures mentioned must have been painted before he had attained the age of seventeen. the panel of the "three graces," which, by the way, was obviously inspired by an antique cameo, was bought in by the duc d'aumale from lord dudley's collection for £ , --surely a price without parallel for a work painted by a lad of sixteen! a portrait in chalk of the marvellously gifted, winsome boy by the hand of his first master is preserved at the university galleries in oxford. the records of a lawsuit between some members of his family prove that raphael was still at urbino in , since in the summer of this year he appeared as a witness in court. when the verdict was given in the following year, he had already left for perugia to continue his studies as an assistant of perugino. again we find him before long assimilating the style of his new master so successfully and completely that, to use vasari's words, "his copies cannot be distinguished from the original works of the master, nor can the difference between the performances of raphael and those of pietro be discerned with any certainty." plagiarism in those days did not trouble the artistic conscience, and it is easy to trace in raphael's pictures of that period entire groups that are borrowed from the elder master. thus the "crucifixion," painted about for a church in città di castello, and now in the collection of dr. ludwig mond, is obviously based on perugino's version of the same subject at st. augustine's, siena, whilst the whole upper part of the vatican "coronation of the virgin" is "lifted" from an "assumption" by pietro. but this almost literal imitation was only a passing phase, whilst the great lesson of space-composition and the typically umbrian gift of almost religious fervour in stating the peaceful glory of the umbrian hill-land, which had been imparted to raphael at perugia, remained permanent acquisitions to his art. [illustration: plate iv.--la belle jardiniÈre (in the louvre) "la belle jardinière" is a magnificent example of raphael's florentine style, which came from his being influenced by leonardo da vinci when at florence (see the triangular composition). the virgin's mantle was probably finished by ridolfo ghirlandaio; other parts--the hands and the feet--are hardly finished; nevertheless it is one of the finest, most expressive, and touching madonnas by the master.] in perugino went back to florence, and raphael probably joined pinturicchio's staff of assistants, though vasari's statement that he furnished the designs for the latter master's frescoes in the piccolomini library at siena may be dismissed as a fable. during this time raphael painted his first madonna pictures, notably the "conestabile madonna" (now at st. petersburg), which is based entirely on perugino's "virgin with the pomegranate," and two panels at the berlin museum. the milan "sposalizio," in which the young master's personality already asserts itself through the very marked ferrarese and peruginesque influences, was painted in for the church of st. francesco at città di castello. his early mastery in portraiture is illustrated by his portrait of perugino at the borghese gallery, which is so firm in character and perfect in execution that it could pass for many years as the handiwork of holbein. meanwhile duke guidobaldo had returned to urbino after the death of his enemy, pope alexander vi., and thither raphael proceeded in . the little "st. george" at the louvre is a memento of this short visit which terminated in october of the same year, when raphael, armed with a letter of warmest recommendation from guidobaldo's sister giovanna della rovere to the gonfaloniere pier soderini, left his native town for florence, then the centre of artistic life, astir with the rivalry between the giants michelangelo and lionardo da vinci. the young man must have been fairly bewildered at the multitude of new impressions that crowded upon him in the glorious city on the banks of the arno, with its imposing palaces and churches, its seething life and its art so much more virile and monumental than the dreamy, almost effeminate art engendered by the soft balmy atmosphere of umbria. how he must have revelled in the contemplation of masaccio's noble frescoes in the brancacci chapel--the training school of generations of painters--which ten years later were echoed in his tapestry cartoons for the sistine chapel! how he must have stood in wonder and amazement before michelangelo's "david," and have resolved forthwith to devote himself to a more intimate study of the human form and movement! the fascination exercised upon him by the genius of lionardo found expression in some of the earliest fruits of raphael's sojourn in florence--the portraits at the pitti palace known as "angelo doni" and his wife maddalena strozzi, who, however, could not possibly have been the model for this reminiscence of lionardo's "mona lisa," since it is known that she was baptized in , whereas raphael's portrait of represents a woman of ripe age. in the workshop of the architect baccio d'agnolo, which was then a favourite social resort of the younger artists of florence, the youth from urbino met on terms of equality such masters as ridolfo ghirlandajo, antonio da sangallo, sansovino, and fra bartolommeo, who again had a considerable share in the formation of raphael's style, as may be seen from the "madonna di sant'antonio," now lent to the national gallery by mr. pierpont morgan who is said to have paid for it the enormous price of £ , . this picture, and the "ansidei madonna," which was bought for the national gallery from the duke of marlborough's collection for £ , , were painted during a visit to perugia towards the end of --the former for the nuns of st. antony of padua, in perugia, and the other for the ansidei chapel in the church of san fiorenzo of the same city. [illustration: plate v.--the madonna of the tower (in the national gallery, london) this beautiful painting, which the national gallery owes to the generosity of miss eva mackintosh, who presented it to the nation in , was at one time in the collection of the duc d'orléans. the late owner was fortunate in securing this unquestionably genuine masterpiece at the rogers' sale in for guineas. it was painted about ; and a copy of it by sassoferrato is in the leichtenburg collection in st. petersburg.] the records of raphael's movements between and , when he finally left florence, are scanty and unreliable. certain it is that, besides his visit to perugia, he spent some time at urbino in , when he painted for guidobaldo the "st. george" which figured among the gifts taken by castiglione to henry vii. of england, from whom the duke of urbino had received the insignia of the garter two years previously. the picture is now at the hermitage in st. petersburg. the majority of those exquisite madonna pictures, which have contributed more than anything else to raphael's undying fame and popularity, date from his florentine period--the "madonna del granduca" at the pitti palace, the "casa tempi madonna" at munich, the chantilly "madonna of the house of orleans," the "madonna of the meadow" in vienna, the "madonna of the goldfinch" at the uffizi, the "madonna of the lamb" at madrid, lord cowper's famous picture at panshanger, and the "belle jardinière" at the louvre. to the same period belongs the portrait of himself, in the painter's hall of the uffizi, and the portrait of a youth in the budapest national gallery. on the occasion of his visit to perugia, atalanta baglione, the mother of grifonetto baglione who had fallen a victim to the bloody family feud that turned perugia into a slaughter-house in , commissioned from raphael an altar-piece in memory of that event--the "entombment" which the master finished in florence in , and which is now at the borghese gallery. it was raphael's first attempt at dramatic composition, the art of which he had yet to master--its forced, unnatural emotion lays it more open to criticism than any other work from his own hand. a law-case in connection with the payment of crowns due by him for a house he had purchased from the cervasi family, necessitated raphael's presence at urbino once again in october . in april of the following year guidobaldo died; and a letter from raphael to his uncle simone ciarla, who had informed him of this sad event, proves that the master was then back again in florence. after expressing his grief at the news of the duke's death ("i could not read your letter without tears"), raphael appeals in this letter to his uncle to procure him another letter of recommendation to the gonfaloniere of florence "from my lord the prefect," since it was in the power of the chief magistrate of florence to place an important commission for the decoration of a certain apartment. but a better fate was in store for the youthful applicant, who was to be called to a wider field of action. according to vasari it was raphael's kinsman, bramante of urbino, who drew pope julius ii.'s attention to the rare gifts of raphael, and caused him to be summoned to rome. and the voice of bramante, who stood in high favour with the pope, and was engaged on the scheme of rebuilding the cathedral of st. peter, would certainly have commanded attention. but on this, as on many other points, vasari is not wholly trustworthy. first of all, bramante was not connected with raphael by any family ties; and, then, it is far more probable that the thought of calling raphael to rome to assist in the decoration of the papal apartments in the vatican was suggested to julius ii. by the prefetessa giovanna della rovere, who had always been a staunch supporter of the urbinate, or by her son francesco, the nephew and successor of duke guidobaldo montefeltre. bramante, who was on terms of friendship with his fellow-artist and fellow-townsman, may well have supported the recommendation. however this may be, raphael received the pope's command, and journeyed to rome, whither he had already been preceded by michelangelo. iii raphael came to rome before september , for on the th of that month he sent a letter from the city of the popes to francia at bologna, whom he had probably met at urbino. it must have been an intoxicating experience for the young master to find himself suddenly surrounded by the wonders of the classic world which at that time dominated the whole world of thought so that christianity itself became permeated with paganism; and to be as suddenly raised from the modest position, which in florence had made him look with awe and veneration upon michelangelo and lionardo, to independent responsibility, as the compeer of the greatest of his calling. from the very first pope julius ii. seems to have placed the utmost confidence in the newcomer, and the manner in which raphael accomplished the first task set to him by his mighty patron not only justified this confidence but apparently made the pope dissatisfied with much of the decorative work that had been executed in the vatican rooms before the advent of the urbinate. julius ii.'s hatred of his predecessor, alexander vi., had made it distasteful for him to live in the apartments that had been occupied by the borgia pope, so that he decided, in , to move into the upper rooms of the vatican, which, under the pontificate of nicholas v., had been decorated by pier dei franceschi and bramantino. these frescoes, however, did not find favour with the new pope, who enlisted the services of perugino, peruzzi, sodoma, signorelli, and pinturicchio for the redecoration of the _stanze_, and finally entrusted raphael with the painting of four medallions in sodoma's ceiling in the first room, the camera della signatura. there has been some divergence of opinion as to the use of this room, but the subjects of the decorative scheme clearly point towards its being originally intended for a library. the allegorical figures of theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, and poetry with which raphael filled the four medallions of the vaulted ceiling, were often used for the decoration of libraries during the late renaissance; and the frequent occurrence of books in all the compositions lends further probability to this theory. so delighted was julius ii. with the manner in which raphael had acquitted himself of his first commission, that he, forthwith, charged him with the decoration of the entire suite of four rooms, and ruthlessly decreed the destruction of all the fresco-work previously done by other hands. but raphael, in his hour of victory, gave proof of that generous and amiable disposition which endeared him to all with whom he came in contact. he prevailed upon his impetuous employer to save some of the work of baldassare peruzzi and of perugino, and sodoma's ceiling decoration in the camera della signatura. a series of heads by bramantino, "so beautiful and so perfectly executed, that the power of speech alone was required to give them life," had to go, but before their destruction raphael had them copied by one of his assistants. after his death these copies were presented by giulio romano to paolo giovio, and it is more than probable that they are identical with the "bramantino" portraits from the willett collection, now at the metropolitan museum, new york, and at south kensington. sir caspar pardon clarke, the director of the former institution, at least favours this theory which i first advanced in the _new york herald_ in . [illustration: plate vi.--pope julius ii. (in the uffizi gallery, florence) raphael's greatness as a portrait painter may be judged from his painting of his first papal patron, the warlike giuliano della rovere, who as pope adopted the name of julius ii. this portrait has more than the perfection of form, colour, and execution that is ever associated with raphael's name. it has depth of character, dignity, and serious concentration of thought, and is worthy of being placed beside velazquez's immortal portrait of pope innocent x. the picture is at the uffizi gallery, but replicas are to be found at the palazzo pitti and at the national gallery.] but to return to raphael's work in the camera della signatura, the thought and knowledge and learning displayed in the whole scheme either prove that the young master rapidly fell into line with the intellectual movement of his day, or that he wisely sought the advice of those who stood at the head of this movement. indeed, we know of a letter in which he asks the poet ariosto to advise him about certain details. moreover, the pope himself, no doubt, suggested his own ideas to his favourite painter; whilst the cultured cardinal bibbiena, count baldassare castiglione, and the famous humanist pietro bembo, his intimate friends, were ever at his disposal, and bramante probably assisted him in designing the architectural setting to his groups. raphael himself, though extraordinarily receptive, and better able than anybody else to clothe an idea in the most perfect pictorial forms, was not a man of learning. with dante's and petrarch's poetry he must have been made familiar in his father's house. he had probably dipped into the writings of marsilio ficino, and also acquired a knowledge of the rudiments of classic lore; but that he never mastered the latin tongue, which was then a _sine quâ non_ of all real culture and learning, is clearly evident from the fact that in the closing years of his life, when he held the appointment of inspector of antiquities, he had to enlist the learned humanist andrea fulvio to translate for him the latin inscriptions on classic ruins. in the camera della signatura, raphael's entire decoration has the same sense of orderly arrangement, the same unity of conception in the endless variety of _motif_ and incident, as each individual fresco of the scheme. on the pendentives, which connect the ceiling medallions with the large frescoes on the walls, he painted the "fall of man" next to "theology," the "judgment of solomon" next to "law," the "triumph of apollo over marsyas" to accompany "poetry," and an allegorical representation of "astronomy" (or "natural science") to go with "philosophy." after an enormous amount of preparatory work he proceeded to fill the large wall under "theology" with the wonderful monumental fresco known as the "disputa del sacramento," which, far from representing a dispute, shows the confessors and saints and fathers of the church (and among them dante, savonarola, and fra angelico) united in acknowledging the triumph of the church and the miracle of the eucharist. on the opposite wall, under "philosophy," is the so-called "school of athens," in which, in accordance with the contradictory spirit of the age, the philosophic systems of the ancient world are glorified in the same manner as is christianity in the "disputa." in that nobly-arranged group of philosophers, raphael's friends and contemporaries--bramante, lionardo, castiglione, francesco della rovere, federigo gonzaga, sodoma, the artist himself, and many others--figure in the guise of euclid, plato, zoroaster, and other sages. raphael's compositional skill was not baffled by the awkward intrusion of large door-frames into the space of the remaining two walls, on one of which, under the poetry medallion, he depicted "parnassus," with the muses and poets (homer, virgil, dante, ariosto, boccaccio, tebaldeo, sappho, &c.) grouped around apollo, who plays a viol instead of the customary lyre. above the door on the last wall are allegorical figures of fortitude, prudence, and temperance, and at the sides "justinian delivering the pandects," and "gregory ix." (impersonated by julius ii.) promulgating the decretals. the entire room was finished before november . it was probably in the same year that raphael painted the magnificent portrait of julius ii. at the pitti palace, stern of feature and careworn, as he well might have appeared at this time of political disaster culminating in the loss of bologna. but when raphael set about the decoration of the "stanza of heliodorus," the pope's star was again in the ascendant, and his policy had achieved the signal triumph of defeating the french and driving them out of the country. the subjects chosen for the decoration of this room are in consequence more or less directly connected with these events, especially the fresco from which the apartment derives its name: the "expulsion of heliodorus from the temple of jerusalem"--an obvious allusion to the expulsion of the french forces. the fresco is remarkable for the effective contrast of the tumultuous dramatic movement on the right, and the stately repose of the group on the left, around the majestically enthroned figure of pope julius ii. the same potentate of the church appears kneeling opposite the officiating priest in the fresco of the "mass of bolsena," which illustrates the miracle of drops of blood appearing from the host before the eyes of the priest who doubts the dogma of the transubstantiation, an event which has led to the institution of the corpus christi celebration. the fresco was probably inspired by julius himself, who had visited the chapel of bolsena on his campaign against bologna, and perhaps made a vow on this occasion to commemorate his visit by a votive offering. this "mass of bolsena" fresco is remarkable for the almost venetian glow of warm colour, a result, no doubt, of the knowledge imparted to raphael by sebastiano del piombo, who had come to rome from venice in . the wall opposite illustrates the "liberation of st. peter from prison," which is, however, not an allusion, as has been suggested, to leo x.'s escape from french captivity, since it was begun under the régime of julius ii., who more probably intended it to signify the deliverance of the church. on the last wall is depicted the "retreat of attila before st. leo," with leo x., who had succeeded julius ii. in , impersonating his namesake, but there is little of raphael's handiwork in this fresco, the execution of which is almost entirely due to his assistants. the decoration of this stanza was completed in , a year which brought further honours and duties to raphael who was then appointed to succeed bramante as architect of st. peter's. [illustration: plate vii.--putto with garland (in the academy of st. luca, rome) the fresco of a _putto_, now at the academy of st. luca in rome, is the only fragment that is left to the world of all the decorative work executed by raphael for the corridor leading from the famous _stanze_ of the vatican to the belvedere. it probably belonged to a shield bearing the papal arms, and is a graceful and characteristic example of the master's treatment of the form of children which he loved to introduce into his compositions.] henceforth raphael is to be considered rather as the head of a little army of painters and craftsmen, whom he supplied with ideas and designs to be executed under his directions, than as a master who is to be held responsible for the working out of every detail in the works which were turned out from his bottega with his sanction, and under his name. even in the early years of his roman period, comparatively few of the altar-pieces and easel pictures commissioned from him were entirely the work of his brush. in the ever popular "madonna della sedia," at the pitti palace, we have pure raphael, and also in the masterpiece known as the "madonna di foligno," which was painted for the pope's chamberlain sigismondi dei conti, for his family chapel in the church of ara coeli in , in commemoration of this dignitary's escape from a bursting fireball, as is indicated by the meteor in the landscape background. this picture was subsequently removed to sigismondo's birthplace foligno, whence it was carried off by the french in , but had to be eventually restored, and is now among the treasures of the vatican. the sadly deteriorated "madonna of the tower," at the national gallery, and the "madonna di casa d'alba," at the hermitage, are probably of the master's own execution; but giulio romano and other pupils must be held responsible for the "vierge au diadème," the "madonna del divino amore," the "garvagh madonna," the "madonna of the fish," the "madonna of the candelabra," and several other well-known pictures for which raphael had supplied the designs. iv a letter written by raphael to his uncle simone ciarla on the st of july is of incalculable importance for the light it throws upon the master's private life and character. it is written by a man flushed with success, but modest withal--in the full enjoyment of all the gifts that fortune and his talent and tact have brought to him, but in no way overbearing or boastful. and through it all sounds a note of cool calculation--in money matters as well as in the weighing of matrimonial chances. he states the amount of his fortune, of his salary as architect of st. peter's, and of the payments that are to be made to him for "work in hand." and in the same way he refers to an "advantageous match" proposed to him by cardinal bibbiani, to which he has already pledged himself, but should it fall to the ground, "i will fall in with your wishes"--a reference apparently to an eligible matrimonial candidate in urbino. nor are there chances lacking in rome, where, indeed, he knows of a pretty girl with a dowry of gold crowns! he also mentions with no little pride that he is living in rome in his own house. these remarks about his matrimonial schemes take us to one of the most interesting and most disputed chapters of raphael's life--his irregular attachment to the "bella fornarina," the beautiful daughter of a baker from siena, which is referred to first by vasari, and then, in , by fabio chigi, and has been treated as mere invention by many modern writers. the evidence collected by signor rodolfo lanciani proves, however, the truth of vasari's story, and furthermore establishes the name and ultimate fate of the "fornarina." according to local tradition, three houses in rome are pointed out as the successive homes of raphael's _inamorata_; and each of these houses is in close proximity to the buildings, on the decoration of which the master was successively employed. the first of these houses in the via di sta. dorotea is still occupied by a bakery known as "il forno della fornarina;" the second is in the vicolo del cedro near st. egidio in trastevere; and the third is the palazzetto sassi, which has a tablet let into the wall with an inscription to the effect that "tradition says that the one who became so dear to raphael, and whom he raised to fame, lived in this house." it has now been ascertained from a census return made under leo x. in , that one of the houses of the sassi family was occupied by the baker francesco from siena, which completely tallies with the tradition that "margherita, donna di raffaello," as she is described in a contemporary marginal note in a copy of the giunta edition of vasari in , was the daughter of a baker from siena. but even more decisive is the proof which was found in in an entry in the ledger of the congregation of sant'apollonia in trastevere, a kind of home for fallen and repentant women. this entry, which is under the date of the th august , that is a little over four months after raphael's death, runs as follows: "a di augusti hoggi e stata recenta nel nostro conservatorio ma^a margarita vedoa, figliola del quondam francescho luti da siena." ("august , .--to-day has been received into our establishment the widow _margarita, daughter of the late francesco luti of siena_.") the remarkable coincidence of dates and names leaves no doubt that this "widow" was the bella fornarina, margherita, the daughter of the baker francesco from siena, and the beautiful creature who served raphael as model for the "donna velata," for the "sistine madonna," and for one of the heads in the "st. cecilia." the story goes that raphael's attachment lasted up to the time of his death, when, on the insistence of the pope's messenger who was to bring the dying man the benediction, she was removed from the room. vasari also relates that in his will raphael "left her a sufficient provision wherewith she might live in decency." his long infatuation with the baker's daughter may well account for his unwillingness to enter into the bonds of matrimony even with as desirable and noble a partner as cardinal bernardo divizio's niece, maria bibbiena, to whom he was practically engaged in , and who after years of postponement is said to have died of a broken heart. vasari's statement that raphael's hesitation was due to the prospect of a cardinal's hat being bestowed upon him is utterly untrustworthy and contrary to all precedent and reason. it is much more likely that raphael considered it diplomatic to humour a man in as powerful a position as cardinal bibbiena, and to agree to become engaged to his niece, even though his own position at the time was such that he could speak on terms of equality to cardinals, as may be gathered from this witty repartee recorded by his friend baldassare castiglione: two cardinals, who examined a painting upon which he was just engaged, found fault with the redness of the complexion of st. peter and st. paul. "my lords," retorted raphael, "be not concerned; because i painted them so with full intention, since we have reason to believe that st. peter and st. paul are as red in heaven as you see them here, for shame that their church should be governed by such as you!" but we must return to raphael's work in the last decade of his life. he could now no longer devote himself entirely to the art of his choice, and found it utterly impossible to cope with the multitude of commissions that were showered upon him by the mighty of this earth, even though a swarm of assistants were constantly kept at work. the vain appeals of isabella d'este for a small painting from his hand prove the difficulty of obtaining such a favour. for raphael was now the pope's architect and superintendent of ceremonies, and in he was appointed inspector of antiquities in succession to fra giocondo of verona. he had to paint scenery and to design medals and plans; and on one occasion he was actually called upon to paint a life-size elephant on the walls of the vatican! [illustration: plate viii.--portrait of raphael (in the uffizi gallery, florence) though much "restored" and over-painted--and not by the most competent hands--the portrait of raphael in the _sala dei pittori_ at the uffizi, the walhalla of pictorial fame, is undoubtedly painted by the master himself, at the age of about twenty-three, when his features had lost none of the almost girlish charm and delicacy of which we are told by contemporary writers. in time the portrait stands midway between timoteo viti's charming drawing of his "apprentice," the boy raphael, at the oxford university galleries, and sebastiano del piombo's portrait of the "prince of painters" at the buda-pesth museum.] yet, with all these absorbing occupations he found time to model several reliefs for the chigi tomb in the chigi chapel of st. maria del popolo, notably a panel of classic design representing "christ and the woman of samaria," which was cast in bronze by lorenzotto, who also executed in marble a statue of jonah from a model by raphael. he furnished the architectural designs of the villa madama for giulio dei medici (afterwards clement vii.) and several other palaces in rome, and also for the dainty palazzo pandolfini in florence, where the alternating arched and triangular pediments are for the first time introduced in secular renaissance architecture. he furnished the engraver marcantonio raimondi of bologna with designs like the famous "judgment of paris." he planned and began an elaborate cosmography of rome; and yet in the midst of all his varied labours he found leisure to scribble some ardent love sonnets on his sheets of drawings. an example of his poetic effusions is preserved at the british museum, and its ardent tone lends colour to vasari's assertion that raphael was extremely susceptible to the charms of the fair sex. the palace in which he lived in princely state was built by bramante and bought by raphael on october , . in very much altered form it still stands in the piazza di scossacavalli at the corner of the via di borgo nuovo. since the present building has been identified as raphael's palace, his studio has been discovered, cut into two apartments, but with a beautiful wooden ceiling by bramante left intact. in this studio he must have painted the greatest and most deservedly popular of his altar-pieces, the "madonna di san sisto," and the "transfiguration," now at the vatican gallery, which was on his easel when death stayed his hand. here, too, he probably painted that masterly portrait of "baldassare castiglione," which is one of the priceless treasures of the louvre, and perhaps the magnificent group of "leo x. with cardinals giulio dei medici and l. dei rossi," now at the pitti palace. all the most notable men who were in rome at that period passed through raphael's studio, but of the portraits which he is known to have painted in rome, comparatively few have come down to us. that of the humanist tommaso inghirami was until recently at the inghirami palace in volterra, but has now gone across the atlantic; one of cardinal bibbiena is in madrid; and one of the venetian humanists navagero and beazzano in the doria palace in rome. among the lost portraits are those of pietro bembo, of giuliano dei medici, duke of nemours, of federigo gonzaga, and of lorenzo, duke of urbino. meanwhile raphael's pupils had been busy with the decoration of the remaining two _stanze_ of the vatican after raphael's designs. in the stanza dell'incendio del borgo, which was decorated for leo. x. between - , giulio romano had painted the "battle of ostia" and most of the "incendio del borgo," though parts of the latter, which illustrates the staying of the great conflagration by leo iv.'s prayer, are unquestionably raphael's own. the last room, called the hall of constantine, was almost entirely painted after the master's death by his pupils, who also had the chief share in the execution of the fifty-two scriptural subjects in the loggia of the vatican, which are known as "the bible of raphael." most of this work was done by perino del vaga, while giovanni da udine added the arabesques and grotesques round the panels. but all this has suffered much from exposure to the elements, and has been entirely repainted. for agostino chigi's villa farnesina, raphael painted the beautiful "galatea" fresco, which may be considered the supreme expression of the spirit of the renaissance. this merchant prince gave the master another opportunity for displaying his decorative skill, when he employed him in adorning the chigi chapel in st. maria della pace. the sibyls and angels of these frescoes afford the most striking instance of michelangelo's influence upon raphael; and it is a curious coincidence that it was just in reference to this work that michelangelo was called upon to express his opinion as to the fairness of raphael's charge of ducats. that small jealousy was not one of buonarroti's faults appears from the generous valuation of ducats he put upon his rival's work. in - raphael designed the cartoons for the tapestries which were to complete the decoration of the sistine chapel. the cartoons were translated into the material by the looms of flanders at a cost of , scudi; and these tapestries are now, after many wanderings, and after having suffered much dilapidation, housed on the upper floor of the vatican. seven of the cartoons, cut into strips for the exigencies of the loom, were discovered in flanders by rubens, and purchased on his advice by charles i. in . on the breaking up of the ill-fated king's collection, they were saved from transportation by oliver cromwell and are now at the victoria and albert museum. the execution of these cartoons is almost entirely due to gian francesco penni, and the borders of the tapestries were designed by giovanni da usline. about raphael also decorated cardinal bibbiena's bathroom with the "triumphs of venus and cupid," in pompeian style. the frescoes are still in existence, but are not accessible to the public. in the early days of april raphael was attacked by a fever which he had probably contracted in superintending some excavations. he made his last will on the th of april and died on the th. that he repented of his treatment of maria bibbiena is fairly evident from the epitaph which, by his wish, was placed upon her tomb: "we, baldassare turini da pescia and gianbattista branconi dall'aquila, testamentary executors and recipients of the last wishes of raphael, have raised this memorial to his affianced wife, maria, daughter of antonio da bibbiena, whom death deprived of a happy marriage." after providing for the fornarina, so that she might "live in decency," he left his fortune of , ducats to his relatives, and his drawings and sketches to his favourite pupils giulio romano and penni. he was buried in the pantheon in close proximity to maria bibbiena. his epitaph was written by cardinal bembo, and count baldassare castiglione also put his grief into the shape of a beautiful sonnet. "the death of raphael," says vasari, "was bitterly deplored by all the papal court, not only because he had formed part thereof, since he had held the office of chamberlain to the pontiff, but also because leo x. had esteemed him so highly, that his loss occasioned that sovereign the bitterest grief. oh, most happy and thrice blessed spirit, of whom all are proud to speak, whose actions are celebrated with praise by all men, and the least of whose works left behind thee is admired and prized." the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's note: italics is represented with underscore _ and small caps with all caps. illustrations were moved to paragraph breaks, one missing opening quotation mark was added and ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. the abbreviation "nro" has been expanded to "nostro", the caret character ^ used to represent superscripted letters. everything else has been retained as printed. masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare holman hunt - [illustration] holman hunt by mary e. coleridge illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack, ltd. new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. the painter's youth ( - ) ii. the east iii. the subject pictures iv. portraits and other works list of illustrations plate i. portrait of holman hunt at the age of fifteen frontispiece by kind permission of the painter page ii. the two gentlemen of verona from the birmingham art gallery iii. isabella and the pot of basil from the painting in the possession of mrs. james hall iv. the light of the world from the painting in keble college chapel, oxford v. the scapegoat from the painting in possession of sir cuthbert quilter, bart. vi. the triumph of the innocents from the painting lent by the painter to the walker art gallery, liverpool vii. the hireling shepherd from the painting in the manchester art gallery viii. may morning by kind permission of the painter [illustration] i the painter's youth ( - ) "art is too tedious an employment for any not infatuated with it." "the only artists i ever knew who achieved work of note in any sense whatever, went first through a steady training of several years and afterwards entered their studios with as unwearying a punctuality as business men attend their offices, worked longer hours than these, and had fewer holidays, partly because of their love for art, but also because of their deep sense of the utter uselessness of grappling with the difficulties besetting the happy issue of each contest, except at close and unflinching quarters." "i have many times in my studio come to such a pass of humiliation that i have felt that there was no one thing that i had thought i could do thoroughly in which i was not altogether incapable." w. h. h. upon a wintry afternoon in london, in the year , a little boy of six years old was standing on the stairs of a poor artist's house, watching, through a window in the wall, the marvellous deeds of the man within. the man within was painting the "burning of the houses of parliament." scarlet and gold! scarlet and gold! he used them up so quickly that he had to grind and prepare more and more. every time he ground with the muller on the slab a fresh supply of vermilion and chrome yellow, there was a fresh flare up of the conflagration, another outburst of applause from the little boy. meantime, the artist's wife put the kettle on the fire, and cut bread and butter as if nothing out of the way were going on; and by-and-by she and the father and their children sat down to tea. it seemed very strange to the little watchman that they could behave in this calm, everyday manner when such wonders were all about them in the room. presently a porter came from a warehouse in dyer's court, aldermanbury, where dwelt a merchant, mr. william hunt; and he took the little boy home to his father. [illustration: plate ii.--the two gentlemen of verona. (painted in ) the subject of this picture is taken from the last act of shakespeare's "two gentlemen of verona." it will be remembered that proteus and valentine had each gone from verona to milan to improve by travel and by seeing the wonders of the world abroad. later on julia, whose love proteus had won, followed him disguised as a page, only to discover that the false, fickle, and treacherous wooer was endeavouring to supplant his friend valentine in the affections of sylvia, the duke's daughter. but valentine, interposing at the critical moment, rescued her. this is the moment the artist depicts. the scene is one of pure bright sunlight, in which the brilliant colours of the gay costumes tell out with almost startling vividness. in the background are seen advancing the outlaws, with the duke and thurio whom they have captured. it adds an interest to the picture to know that sylvia was painted from miss siddall, who afterwards became the wife of dante gabriel rossetti. the beech-tree forest scenery was painted in lord amherst's park at knowle, kent. the picture is in the birmingham art gallery.] this little boy had been born on the nd april , in wood street, cheapside, and was christened william holman at st. giles's, cripplegate. from the time that he could hold anything he held a pencil. when he was about four years old he begged for a brush and some paints, and his joy is thus described: "how i idolised the implements when they were in my possession! the camel-hair pencil, with its translucent quill, rosy-coloured silk binding up its delicate hair at the base, all embedded together as in amber, was an equal joy with the gem-like cakes of paint. i carried them about with me in untiring love. a day or two of this joy had not exhausted it, when, alas, alas, the brush was lost! search proved to be all in vain. i remember going around and over every track about the house and garden. waking up from sorrowing sleep, in which my continuing pain had been finally relieved by a dream of the lost treasure lying ensconced in some quiet corner, i hurried to the spot, only to find it vacant. the loss was the greater trouble because it was my first terrible secret. that my father should ever forgive me for losing so beautiful an object was to my distracted mind impossible. what could be done? my hair was straight, fine, and of camel brush hue. i cut off pieces to test its fitness for the office of paint-brush, and as i held a little lock i found that it would spread the tints fairly well; but what to do for a handle? quill pens were too big, and i could not see how they could be neatly shortened. a piece of firewood carefully cut promised to make a more manageable stick. with my utmost skill i shaped this, and with a little length of coloured cotton i bound a stubborn sprout of hair upon the splint. i was disconcerted to find that it formed a hollow tube. it seemed perverse of fate to ordain that just in the handle where it was needed to be hollow it should be solid, and that the hair which should be solid would form an empty pipe. attempts to drill the stick into a tube failed, but there was an expedient for making the tuft fuller. cutting a cross cleft in the bottom of the wood, i inserted a straight length of hair, which i then rebound with its crimson thread. with gum i managed patiently to bind down loose ends and to give an improving gloss to the whole. my fears grew apace, since every hour there was a danger of inquiry for the lost pencil. i summoned up, therefore, an assumption of assurance, trusting that my father would see no difference between my brush and his. i went forward to him, holding the trophy very tenderly lest it should fall to pieces. he turned his eyes, they became bewildered, his usual loving look made a frown from him the more to be dreaded. i fortified my spirit, saying, 'thank you very much, father, for your brush.' he took it with, 'what's this?' and turned it over. breathless i sobbed; he burst out laughing, and so brought a torrent of tears to my eyes. he exclaimed, 'oh, i see, it's my brush, is it?' caught me up and tossed me aloft several times, ending with a scrubbing on my cheek from his close-shaven chin. this was the reception of my first work of art."[ ] [ ] "pre-raphaelitism and the pre-raphaelite brotherhood," vol. i., by w. holman hunt. the warehouse was a mysterious place full of laughter and talk by day; empty, silent, and vast at night when the master went over it with a bull's-eye lantern. a funny man called henry pinchers busied himself with velvet binding on the third floor. the jests of henry pinchers were of infinite charm. he had had to take two steps back for every step forward, he declared, one cold morning. "then how did you get to the warehouse at all?" asked his delighted auditor. "don't you see, you silly boy, i turned round and walked backwards!" said henry pinchers. other people were not much more clear than he in their answers to questions. temple bar was so called "because there was no other name"; and the martyrs were burnt at smithfield "because they were martyrs." whether the child found more satisfaction at the school to which, soon after, he was sent, does not appear. the lessons from the new testament read to him there made a deep impression upon his mind, and were remembered in years to come. "the gain in thoughtfully-spent life is the continual disturbance of absolute convictions." but there are certain convictions of childhood which are never effaced. the choice of a profession was not left to the last moment in those days. he was but twelve when his father asked him what he would like to be. "a painter!" he said at once; and the sorrowful silence that followed told him what he knew already--that his choice was not looked on with approval. his father had taken him away from school, and was about to find for him a situation in which he would have to go about with invoices for goods from nine in the morning till eight at night. no time for drawing; no time for painting in scarlet and gold! the idea did not harmonise with his presentiment of that which had to be. he set about to look for a place for himself, and explained the various qualifications that he possessed in the way of reading, writing, and arithmetic, to the master of a boy-friend who was leaving that gentleman's office. after some friendly chaff as to why he had not thought of enlisting as a grenadier, to which he replied in all good faith, "i really should like your place better," his services were accepted, and his father--amused, and gratified, no doubt, by the master's ready interest in the boy--consented that he should stay. the master, mr. james, drew and painted himself. far from discouraging his apprentice, he gave him his own box of oil-colours with directions how to prepare them; draughtsmanship was studied at a night school for mechanics, and the little salary expended on weekly lessons from a portrait-painter who had learnt from a pupil of a pupil of sir joshua reynolds. his father, who had permitted this, was displeased, however, to find that on mr. james's retirement he had time to visit the national gallery; and once again, to avoid more unendurable subjection, he secured a place at the london agency of richard cobden's manchester business. here he sat by himself in a little room that looked out on three blank walls, made entries in a ledger, pondered over the bible stories heard at school, and the far-away land where they happened, drew pen-and-ink flies on the window with such accurate realism that his employer took out a handkerchief to brush them away, designed patterns for calicoes--taught by an occasional clerk. here, too, he painted the portrait of an old orange-woman called hannah, a jewess, who came into the office and asked him to buy of her; "if only for a handsel to break her ill-luck of the morning." the portrait was such a good likeness that the employer laughed aloud when he saw it; the fame of the thing spread fast. one night his father told him of this remarkable picture, adding that he certainly ought to see it; but no sooner had he discovered the artist than he threatened to take him away altogether if stricter discipline were not observed. hunt was now sixteen; he had borne with the city for four years; if he waited until he came of age it would be too late to think of art as a profession. he took his life into his own hands, and declared that he meant to become a student at the royal academy, that he must be allowed to draw at the british museum that he might qualify himself to pass the entrance examination. he just contrived to make both ends meet by copy and portrait work three days out of the six. he learnt more from fellow-students than from masters. the first real instruction came from a pupil of wilkie's, who told him, as he sat copying "the blind fiddler," that wilkie painted without dead colour underneath, and finished each bit in turn like a fresco-painter. after this he found out for himself that quattrocentist work was very beautiful, and that the beauty of it was due to the early training of the artists in fresco. he was by nature hasty and impatient, and the city portrait-painter had encouraged rather than checked a tendency to handle his tools with loose bravura. he set himself to unlearn these lessons, to work with accurate and humble patience. the hardest part of the endeavour had yet to come. twice over he failed to find his name upon the list of those accepted as probationers for the academy. another precious year gone! his father appealed to him to give it up. "you are wasting time and energy. you can paint well enough to make friends admire you; but you cannot compete with others, who have genius to begin with, who have received an excellent education. are you not yourself convinced?" the sense of discouragement was bitter. six months more he asked for one other trial; if, for the third time, he failed, he would go back to business. one day, as he stood at work in the museum, a boy dressed in a velvet tunic, and belt, his bright brown hair curling over a turned-down white collar, darted aside as he went by, gazed attentively at the drawing for a minute or two, and was off again. he knew the boy, for he had seen him take the gold medal at the academy over the head of all the older students. he returned the visit on his way through the elgin room, where young millais was at work on the ulysses. quickly the younger artist turned round. "i say, are not you the fellow doing that good drawing in no. xiii. room? you ought to be at the academy." "that is exactly my opinion. but, unfortunately, the council have twice decided the other way." "you just send the drawing you are doing now, and you'll be in like a shot. you take my word for it; i ought to know; i've been there as a student, you know, five years. i got the first medal last year in the antique, and it's not the first given me, i can tell you.... i say, tell me whether you have begun to paint? what? i'm never to tell; it is your deadly secret. ah! ah! ah! that's a good joke! you'll be drawn and quartered without even being respectably hung by the council of 'forty' if you are known to have painted before completing your full course in the antique. why, i'm as bad as you, for i've painted a long while. i say, do you ever sell what you do? so do i. i've often got ten pounds, and even double. do you paint portraits?" "yes," i said; "but i'm terribly behind you." "how old are you?" he asked. "well, i'm seventeen," i replied. "i'm only fifteen just struck; but don't you be afraid. why, there are students of the academy just fifty and more. there's old pickering; he once got a picture into the exhibition, and he quite counts upon making a sensation when he has finished his course; but he is very reluctant to force on his genius. will you be here to-morrow?" "no," i whispered; "it's my portrait day, but don't betray me. good-bye." "don't you be down in the mouth," he laughed out, as i walked away more light-hearted than i had been for months.[ ] [ ] "pre-raphaelitism," vol. i. p. . [illustration: plate iii.--isabella, or the pot of basil when isabella found her murdered lover's grave in the forest she brought home his head in anxious secrecy. "then in a silken scarf--sweet with the dews of precious flowers pluck'd in araby, and divine liquids come with odorous ooze through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully,-- she wrapp'd it up; and for its tomb did choose a garden pot, wherein she laid it by, and cover'd it with mould, and o'er it set sweet basil, which her tears kept ever wet. and she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, and she forgot the blue above the trees, and she forgot the dells where waters run, and she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; she had no knowledge when the day was done, and the new morn she saw not: but in peace hung over her sweet basil evermore and moisten'd it with tears unto the core." _keats._ the picture is lent by mrs. james hall to the laing art gallery, newcastle-on-tyne.] at the next examination hunt passed. "i told you so. i knew you'd soon be in," said millais, when next they met at the academy. it was the beginning of one of those rare friendships that make high things possible. in the room at gower street, where millais painted while his mother sat at her work-table, holman hunt was now often to be found. "they both help me, i can tell you," said millais, as he stood with one hand on his father's shoulder, and the other on mrs. millais' chair. "he's really capital, and does a lot of useful things. look what a good head he has. i have painted several of the old doctors from him. by making a little alteration in each, and putting on different kinds of beards; he does splendidly. couldn't be better, could he? and he sits for hands and draperies too. and as for mamma, she reads to me and finds me subjects. she gets me all i want in the way of dresses and makes them up for me, and searches out difficult questions for me at the british museum--in the library, you know. she's very clever, i can tell you." he stooped down and rubbed his curly head against her forehead, and then patted the "old daddy," as he called him, on the back. the father was then only about forty-seven....[ ] [ ] "pre-raphaelitism," vol. i. p. . many and eager were the discussions that took place among the students. hunt's first visit to the national gallery, while he was still at the office, had not been altogether a success. the age of brown was flourishing. "bacchus and ariadne" was brown then. in fact when, some few years later, it was cleaned, and the original colours appeared, many people said they preferred it brown. lost in the brown air, and quite unable to derive any pleasure from "venus attired by the graces," the new-comer, standing in front of titian's masterpiece, inquired where were "the really grand paintings of the great master's?" "that picture before you, sir, of 'bacchus and ariadne' is one of the finest specimens existing of the greatest colourist in the world." here the custodian stopped to understand my paralysed expression. "can't you see its beauty, sir?" "not much, i must confess," i slowly stammered; "it is as brown as my grandmother's painted tea-tray." he stared hopelessly and then left me, only adding as a parting shot, "in the other rooms there are some wonderful rubens, a consummate guido, and miraculous heads by vandyke, and several supremely fine rembrandts; they will at least equal your grandmother's tea-tray; perhaps you'll be able to see some beauty in _them_."[ ] [ ] "pre-raphaelitism," vol. i. p. . it took wonderful courage in those days to go on thinking that grass and trees were green, when all the eminent teachers maintained that so far as art was concerned, they were brown, and that if you only painted them brown for several years "an eye for nature" would come. they were green, however, at ewell in surrey, whither the young artist went one autumn. while he was there, his first picture, "woodstock," was sold for £ . furthermore, a fellow-student borrowed from cardinal wiseman vol. i. of "modern painters," and lent it to him for twenty-four hours. he sat up most of the night to read it. he had fished out a copy of keats from a box marked "this lot d.," and determined to paint a scene from "the eve of st. agnes." "it's like a parson," said millais, laughing--a curious commentary on the reading of "isabella"; but he soon came round. millais had begun to assert his independence of judgment, to the no small wrath of his mother. "johnnie is behaving abominably," she said. "i want you, hunt, to hear; you would not believe it; he shuts us out of the studio altogether; he is there now all alone. for twelve days now neither his father nor i have been allowed to enter the room. i appeal to you; is that the way to treat parents? he cannot expect to prosper, can he, now? i hope you will tell him so." at this point a voice was heard from the studio. "is not that hunt? don't mind what they say. come here."[ ] [ ] "pre-raphaelitism," etc., vol. i. p. . some time afterwards, a wonderful conversation on the relative merits of the old masters was interrupted by a quiet knock at the door. "who's there?" asked my companion. "i have brought you the tea myself," said the mother. i was hurrying forward when millais stopped me with his hand, and a silent shake of the head. "i really can't let you in, mamma; please put the tray down at the door, and i'll take it in myself." the mother made one more attempt; in vain. on went the talk. when hunt had risen to say good-bye, "oh no!" said millais, "you must come in and see the old people," which brought to my mind the prospect of a terrible quarter of an hour. johnnie burst into the sitting-room, i came very bashfully behind. "now, we've come to have a nice time with you, mamma and papa." "we don't wish," said the mother, "to tax your precious time at all; we have our own occupations to divert us and engage our attention," and the crochet needles were more intently plied. "hoity-toity, what's all this? put down your worsted work at once. i'm going to play backgammon with you directly;" and he straightway fetched the board from its corner, and laid it on the table before her. "you know, hunt, how shamefully he has been behaving, and i appeal to you to say whether it is not barefacedness to come in and treat us as though nothing had occurred," appealed the mother. the _us_ was chosen because at the time johnnie had gone to his father with the guitar, placing it in his hand and remarking, as he put his arms round the paternal shoulders: "now, as we are too busy in the day to see one another, it's more jolly that we should do so after work, so just you be a dear old papa, and now prove to hunt what a splendid musician you are. hunt used to practise the violin once, but his family didn't like it, and he could not be annoying them in music and painting, too, so he gave up his fiddling; but he's very fond of music. you play that exquisite air out of rigoletto!" and then turning to me he added, "there's no one in england has such an erect back as he has;" while to him he railingly said, "you want pressing, like a shy young lady." his father was, however, already tuning the strings, when his son went over to the still irreconcilable mother, took her needles away, kissed her, and wheeled her in the chair round to the table where the opened chess-board was arranged awaiting her. the father had already commenced the air, which at my solicitation he repeated, and afterwards played "the harmonious blacksmith." the radiant faces of both parents gradually witnessed to their content; while the son beat time to the music, he paid no less attention to the game with the mother. the two boys worked hard. they sat up all night long in millais' studio; they kept themselves awake with coffee; they encouraged one another with talk; when millais was tired to death of his own picture he worked on hunt's, and hunt on his. "cymon and iphigenia" and "the eve of st. agnes" were sent in to the academy at eleven o'clock on the last night possible for sending in at all, and next day, in the exuberance of their joyful relief, they accompanied the chartist procession to kensington common--millais keen to see more of the fray than his companion thought prudent. one great disappointment bravely borne by millais, marked the academy of that year; "cymon and iphigenia" was not hung. hunt, however, gained an outspoken admirer in the person of an italian student, dante gabriel rossetti. "the best picture there!" said he, as he stood before "the eve of st. agnes," and he said it loudly too. he did not admire it the less because the subject was taken from keats, whom he adored. he loved and studied "the golden gates of ghiberti"--another point of agreement. he was passionately fond of art, but dejected by the enforced study of glass bottles under the stern guidance of ford madox brown. what was he to do? he could not go on with those bottles. hunt consented that they should share a studio: and he became an ardent, fascinating, but very troublesome learner. he hummed and moaned, rocking himself to and fro as he sat thinking; he raved and raged while he was painting, causing angelic little girl models to weep; he sat up night after night before his easel, eating or sleeping as the fit came upon him. he was perpetually encircled by a crowd of noisy followers, and he had a most inconvenient way of showing them everything in the studio, and asking them all to supper when the cupboard was bare--a very different friend from the un-bohemian millais, who in those days would not even smoke a pipe. "i have always been told by artists that a pipe is of incalculable comfort to the nerves, that when harassed by the difficulties of a problem it solaces them." "that is the very reason, it seems to me, for not smoking. a man ought to get relief only by solving his problem," said millais. very different, too, from the genial atmosphere of his home was that of the rossetti household, where there were strange gatherings of italian exiles by the hearth. [illustration: plate iv.--the light of the world "behold, i stand at the door and knock." "my types were of natural figures such as language had originally employed to express transcendental ideas, and they were used by me with no confidence that they would interest any other mind than my own. the closed door was the obstinately shut mind, the weeds the cumber of daily neglect, the accumulated hindrances of sloth; the orchard the garden of delectable fruit for the dainty feast of the soul. the music of the still small voice was the summons to the sluggard to awaken and become a zealous labourer under the divine master; the bat flitting about only in darkness was a natural type of ignorance; the kingly and priestly dress of christ, the sign of his reign over the body and the soul to them who could give their allegiance to him and acknowledge god's over-rule. in making it a night scene, lit mainly by the lantern carried by christ, i had followed metaphorical explanation in the psalms, 'thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path,' with also the accordant allusions by st. paul to the sleeping soul, 'the night is far spent, the day is at hand.'" _w. h. h._ the picture hangs in keble college chapel, oxford.] "then you are pre-raphaelite!" the other students cried, laughing, when self-willed hunt quoted sir charles ball to prove that the action of the demoniac boy in raphael's "transfiguration" was all wrong. the word was caught up, turned into a challenge, _p_ and _r_, two of the mystic initials that were so soon to charm and to enrage london, were formed. the _b_ was added at the suggestion of rossetti, whose love of the mediæval at once required a "brotherhood." need it be said that there had to be seven brothers, and that the brotherhood was to be kept a secret? rossetti's brother william, who had never learnt how to draw; a nominal pupil of hunt's, f. g. stephens, who had never learnt how to paint; woolner, who was a sculptor, and james collinson, were quickly enlisted. "collinson," said rossetti, "is a born stunner." "where's your flock?" shouted out millais. "i expected to see them behind you. tell me all about it." they held their first meeting in his studio, over a set of engravings of the frescoes in the campo santo at pisa. the three leaders were all, at this time, eager to establish some starting-point for their art "which would be secure, if it were ever so humble." they admired what was true in the works of raphael as much as any one else. "pre-raphaelitism is not pre-raphaelism," but they held that, since his day, pride and the dogged observance of rule without reference to nature had destroyed sincerity. as they turned over the pages of the book, they hailed with delight in the old frescoes of gozzoli that "freedom from corruption, pride, and disease" for which they sought. "think what a revelation it was to find such work at such a moment, and to recognise it with the triple enthusiasm of our three spirits!" they all agreed that they would make a series of designs from keats in the new manner. millais' "lorenzo and isabella," in his friends' judgment the most wonderful picture ever painted by a man under twenty, was the immediate fruit of this resolve. nature had gifted rossetti with a hopeful temperament which was of no small service to hunt in the dark days of discouragement that followed. when the latter was tempted to mourn over the waste of his young years in the city, the former pointed out to him that he had learnt to know men, and the ways of men, instead of mere bookish things that were "of very little use in life." what did it matter whether the sun went round the earth or the earth went round the sun? what did anything scientific matter in comparison with dante, with the poetry of browning, which he would recite, over the fire, by twenty pages at a time, with tennyson and henry taylor and coventry patmore?[ ] when mr. james, the city man, the owner of the original colour-box, reduced hunt to despair by his damning criticism of the new picture "rienzi," "but the man's a born fool!" exclaimed rossetti, with screams of laughter. when pounds, shillings, and pence ran low, "can you not understand," said he, "that there are hundreds of young aristocrats and millionaires growing up who will be only too glad to get due direction how to make the country as glorious as greece was, and as italy?" in paris, in belgium, in the country he was the most delightful of companions, and it was he who led as the brethren walked up and down stanhope street after their work, singing the _marseillaise_ or _mourir pour la patrie_. [ ] hunt, who had written poetry himself, mostly in couplet form, and in the spenserian stanza, gave it up on account of rossetti's greater proficiency. throughout his youth, however, rossetti acted on impulse, without consideration as to the effect upon others. when it was time to send in for the academy he was not quite ready with the charming picture painted in hunt's studio, and, for the sake of a few more days in which to finish, he sent instead to the hyde park gallery, which opened a week earlier than burlington house. "the girlhood of mary, virgin," signed with the mystic p.r.b., the meaning of which was then unknown, except to the seven brothers, appeared, therefore, a week earlier than hunt's "rienzi" and millais' "lorenzo and isabella," signed with the same initials, and, for good and for evil, rossetti began to be spoken of as the precursor of a new school. the effect on him was twofold. unable to endure hostile criticism, at the first touch of it, the year after, when he showed "the annunciation," he resolved that he would never again exhibit in public; but, pleased at the pre-eminence given him by those who were not behind the scenes, he withdrew from partnership with hunt in the studio; and more and more, as time went on, from his society and that of millais. [illustration: plate v.--the scapegoat "the apostles regarded it (the scapegoat) as a symbol of the christian church, teaching both them and their followers submission and patience under affliction.... one important part of the ceremony was the binding a scarlet fillet round the head of this second goat when he was conducted away from the temple, hooted at with execration, and stoned until he was lost to sight in the wilderness. the high priest kept a portion of this scarlet fillet in the temple, with the belief that it would become white if the corresponding fillet on the fugitive goat had done so, as a signal that the almighty had forgiven their iniquities.... the whole image is a perfect one of the persecution and trials borne by the apostolic church, and perhaps by the church, as subtly understood, to this day." the picture was originally called "azazel": it was painted near oosdoom by the dead sea. "every minute the mountains became more gorgeous and solemn, the whole scene more unlike anything ever portrayed. afar all seemed of the brilliancy and preciousness of jewels, while near, it proved to be only salt and burnt lime, with decayed trees and broken branches brought down by the rivers feeding the lake. skeletons of animals, which had perished for the most part in crossing the jordan and the jabbok, had been swept here, and lay salt-covered, so that birds and beasts of prey left them them untouched. it was a most appropriate scene for my subject, and each minute i rejoiced more in my work." _w. h. h._ sir cuthbert quilter is the owner of this picture.] "rienzi" honourably hung in the large room, pendant to "lorenzo and isabella," made a favourable impression, but was not sold until after the closing of the academy; and meantime, the landlord seized hunt's books, furniture, and sketches, and he was obliged to return to his family. as soon as he could he paid the man, who thought he had been "shamming poverty." at one time he was not able to post a letter because he had not even a penny wherewith to buy the stamp; as he threw himself back on a chair, he thrust his hand between the back and the seat, and lo, it came in contact with half-a-crown! when he went to lambeth to paint the background of "claudio and isabella," the man who carried his traps was so much better dressed that the porter was taken for the artist. still, he was in good heart, and he and millais, eager to improve the reputation already gained, were hard at work upon two large works, "christians escaping from persecuting druids" and "christ in the carpenter's shop," when all at once a derisive paragraph appeared in one of the papers, betraying the significance of the three letters, p.r.b., and holding up the new school to ridicule. munro the sculptor had wormed the secret out of rossetti, and, after promising not to tell, he had passed it on to a journalist. the storm of anger which followed was curiously out of proportion to the cause. _the germ_, a magazine started at rossetti's instigation, to be the organ of pre-raphaelites, would have failed, it may be, in any case, for lack of funds; but jealousy, and that hatred of light which is peculiar to old institutions, can alone account for the venomous reception of the new pictures, when once the secret of the letters became known. the academy sprang to arms; the older artists, and their pupils, waxed furious. they enlisted literature on their side. dickens joined in the hue and cry. with the honourable exception of _the spectator_, every single paper attacked the men who had dared to break with tradition. raphael had been insulted; raphael was, it appeared, the idol of all england. ruskin came, flashing, to the rescue a year later, with a letter to _the times_, in which he declared that since the days of albert dürer, there had been nothing in art so earnest or so complete as the pictures of millais and holman hunt. they were not this year hung together; they were placed in a less favourable light. the onslaughts of the press were well sustained. "valentine and sylvia" (the subject taken from shakespeare's "two gentlemen of verona") had suffered, in part, from hunt's distress of mind and the want of means occasioned by the bad conduct of a man whom he trusted; even after ruskin's letter no one ventured to buy. nobody came to him for a portrait now. his father's acquaintance in the city offered to bet £ that any picture of his would be sent back within a week. anonymous insults poured in upon him. a publisher, who had asked for illustrations of longfellow, declined to publish them. debt was staring him in the face, and failure seemed absolute. at this crisis of fortune, when he had resolved that he must give up art and adopt some other line of life--preferably that of a settler in the backwoods--millais came forward. he had freed himself from personal straits only a week or two earlier; now, with the warm concurrence of his father and mother, he offered to share every penny he had with his friend. his generous will to help overcame all resistance; the money--repaid the following year--was advanced; and the two brothers went off to surbiton together, to paint "ophelia" and "the hireling shepherd." "valentine and sylvia" had been retouched and sent to liverpool, where a prize of £ was offered for the finest painting. never did the two gentlemen, even in their native verona, provoke more comment than followed their footsteps wherever they appeared in england. immediately, anonymous insults in letters and papers began again. week after week went by; there was not a word from the authorities. at last it grew intolerable. the painter turned on his tormentors. he had never seriously expected such distinction for a moment; but he determined to write to the committee, and ask, by way of bitter satire, why the prize had not been awarded to him. happily, his designs, and a book in which he was interested, kept him up too late to begin that night. next morning, as he sat at work not far from the house, he heard millais' voice, "another letter from liverpool"! "valentine and sylvia" had won the prize; and they gave three cheers for the council in chorus. the happy days of comradeship at the old, ghost-haunted house called worcester park farm glided by all too fast. millais became intent upon "the huguenot"; hunt continued "the hireling shepherd" while the sun shone; after dark he threw his strength into "the light of the world." whenever the moon was full, although it was so cold that people skated in the daytime, he would work out-of-doors from nine at night until five the next morning. for the most part he enjoyed undisturbed solitude, but now and then a friendly guardian of the public peace came to see what he was about. "have you seen other artists painting landscape about here?" he inquired. "i can't exactly say as i have at this time o' night," said the policeman. his nocturnal studies continued to arouse interest even after the return to london. as he was coming back to chelsea on a 'bus one night the driver entertained him with descriptions of the eccentric persons who lived there, carlyle among them, "and i've been told as how he gets his living by teaching people to write." then he went on confidentially, "but i'll show you another queer cove if you're coming round the corner. you see him well from the 'bus. he's a cove, in the first place, as has a something standing all night at one winder, while he sits down at the other, or stands, and seemingly is a-drawing of it. he doesn't go to bed like other christians, but stays long after the last 'bus has come in; and, as the perlice tells us, when the clock strikes four, out goes the gas, down comes the gemman, opens the street door, runs down cheyne walk as hard as he can pelt, and when he gets to the end he turns and runs back again, opens his door, goes in, and nobody sees no more of him." pre-raphaelitism went steadily forward. "the light of the world" was not yet ready, but the wonderful academy of contained "the hireling shepherd," millais' "ophelia" and "the huguenot," and ford madox brown's fine picture, painted after the same method, "christ washing peter's feet." "the strayed sheep," a beautiful little landscape begun for a gentleman who admired "the hireling shepherd," but did not wish for so large a picture, was painted at fairlight, soon afterwards. at the academy of "claudio and isabella" hung in the first room. in "the light of the world" was finished, and sold to mr. combe of oxford. "the awakened conscience" went to the academy the same year. and now a plan that had been in the artist's mind ever since, as a child, he listened to the words of the new testament at school, found sudden fulfilment. the cry of the east was in his ears; he would go to the east, and paint a sacred picture there. as on so many other occasions throughout his life, he met with violent opposition. he would lose all that he had gained at such cost and have to begin over again on his return; he would find nothing but overgrown weeds, no beauty that was not tenfold more beautiful in england; he would get syrian fever and be an invalid for the rest of his days; he would die like wilkie. rossetti said that local colour interfered with the poetry of design. ruskin said that he was giving up the real purpose of his life, which was to train a new school of art. what millais said does not appear. what millais did was to help in the packing, which had been left to the last minute, so that there was no time for dinner, and to rush to the buffet for any "likely food" that he could find and toss it into the railway carriage after the train had begun to move. upon a parting gift from rossetti were written these lines from "philip van artevelde": "there's that betwixt us been, which we remember till they forget themselves, till all's forgot, till the deep sleep falls on them in that bed from which no morrow's mischief knocks them up." ii the east "i regard the man who has not sojourned in a tent as one who has not thoroughly lived." w. h. h. the first period of life was over. the mystic letters were used no more; after the savage onslaughts of the press it had been determined that pre-raphaelites should be recognised by their work alone, not by any arbitrary signal. henceforth each of the brothers followed his own line. marriage came in due course. mr. holman hunt has been twice married; he has two sons and a daughter. [illustration: plate vi.--the triumph of the innocents "you know that in the most beautiful former conceptions of the flight into egypt, the holy family were always represented as watched over and ministered to by attendant angels. but only the safety and peace of the divine child and its mother are thought of. no sadness or wonder of meditation returns to the desolate homes of bethlehem. "but in this english picture all the story of the escape, as of the flight, is told in fulness of peace and yet of compassion. the travel is in the dead of the night, the way unseen and unknown; but partly stooping from the starlight, and partly floating on the desert mirage, move with the holy family the glorified souls of the innocents. clear in celestial light, and gathered into child garlands of gladness, they look to the child in whom they live, and yet for whom they die. waters of the river of life flow before on the sands; the christ stretches out his arms to the nearest of them--leaning from his mother's breast.... you may well imagine for yourselves how the painter's ... better than magical power of giving effects of intense light, has aided the effort of his imagination, while the passion of his subject has developed in him a swift grace of invention which, for my own part, i never recognised in his design till now." _ruskin._ the canvas is now in the walker art gallery, liverpool. mr. j. t. middlemore has a replica.] "the scapegoat"--a subject which he had thought of suggesting to landseer--was painted by the shore of the dead sea. after many negotiations, for the country was in a troubled state and he risked his life by going, he encamped there, with a little band of followers to protect him, and a goat. soleiman, one of the arabs, desired--though only seven years younger than himself--to be his son. by what name should he call him? _hunt?_ that was no name at all. _holman?_ that was not much better. _william_, however, pronounced "wullaum," he "found very good." one night, when the dews fell heavily, and they were some way from the encampment, hunt, afraid of the effect of a chill, began waltzing--with his gun for a partner--to keep himself warm. soleiman was overcome with amazement. "henceforth let me be your brother," said he--unconscious that he had become a pre-raphaelite--as he flung his arms round the neck of this wonderful man. "you are indeed inspired; you dance like a dervish; you _are_ one. can you do it again?" "yes, my brother," and away the wonderful man went, a second and a third time, again and yet again. he was asked to repeat the performance for the benefit of the others, who yelled with delight when they heard of it, but this he declined to do; and the next day soleiman invited him to marry the daughter of the sheik his uncle, and to become sheik instead of himself when the old man died, that he might lead the tribe in battle, and act as dancing-dervish in times of peace. where had he been born? in london? what was london?--a mountain? or a plain? not a city like jerusalem with walls and gates and shops?--"never, my brother! i will never believe that you are a citizen--never! i know you are an english bedawee, and you were born in a tent." in spite of all this filial and fraternal affection, soleiman was not much good when danger threatened. "there are robbers," he declared one day; "they are coming this way--one, two, three, on horseback, and two--wait, three--yes, four on foot. you must put down your umbrella, shut up your picture, cover it with stones. they will not be here for an hour. we will go up in the mountains." "no," said hunt, he should stay where he was, it was a good work that he had in hand; allah would help him; he was quite content. after several passionate appeals, off went soleiman by himself, taking the donkey. the robbers presently appeared, seven of them, on foot and on horseback, armed with long spears, with guns and swords and clubs. the painter painted on unconcernedly. they drew up in a semicircle round him, and the chief shouted for water. the artist looked at him from his head to his horse's feet--at the others also, and then resumed his work. again the chief clamoured. they might have water, the artist said at last, since the day was hot; but englishmen were not the servants of arabs, and he was an englishman; they must fetch it themselves. and he continued to paint. "are you here alone?" they inquired. "no; there was an arab." thereupon they requested that he might be called. "but _i_ don't want him," said the artist. "_we_ want him." "well then, _you_ call him. his name is soleiman." soleiman, however, made no reply. "there is no one, or he would answer," they said distrustfully. "he is afraid. you know best how to reassure him." at length soleiman came slowly down through the rocks, driving the donkey. a long conversation followed--a wonderful description by his "brother" of the gun with two souls which he had, of the pistol that would fire more than five times without reloading, of his accomplishments as a dancing-dervish and as a story-teller (especially about lot), of the manner in which he wrote all day in coloured inks the sky, the mountains, the plain, the sea, even the salt, on that large paper. the arabs became intensely suspicious. what could these things mean? he had the white goat led over the ground, they supposed, to charm it. he was a magician. he would go back to england; he would wipe out the coloured inks with a sponge; he would find the cities of the plain underneath; he would be lord of a great treasure. for the present they agreed that they would let him alone; but he considered it prudent to waltz home that night. "my dreams kept me with the brotherhood," he says. once he had fallen asleep within his tent, he was back in england among the old set, "talking of plans and thoughts beloved of both." the academy hung "the scapegoat" on the line; and it was sold for £ , but "the finding of the saviour in the temple," begun in jerusalem, could not be finished for some time; he was compelled to work at smaller pictures which would bring in ready money. in the end, after a friendly consultation with his old foe, dickens, he asked and obtained for it £ , the largest sum that had ever yet been paid for an english picture. "isabella" was painted in florence in days of great sadness; a year after the artist completed, with his own hand, the marble monument designed for his young wife. "the shadow of death" ("is not this the carpenter"?) was painted on his return to the east, and yet again he went thither, to bring back with him "the triumph of the innocents" and "the holy fire." a number of mahommedan ladies, from the harem of a neighbouring "effendi," came to the house at jerusalem, and asked to see "the innocents," while it was still in progress. the leading lady counted up the figures. "seventeen babies in the large picture, and several more in the smaller one, with the sib miriam,[ ] al issa messiah, and mar jusif. this is very well," she said, "but on the day of judgment what will you do?" "ah," i returned, "i can trust only in the mercy of the beneficent; but why, pray, ask me that question?" she returned, "because the souls of these beings that you have made will be required of you, and what will you say then?" my reply, justified on metaphysical principles, was, "i hope every one of these will be present to justify me." she looked bewildered, but then turning to her flock, re-echoed my assurance, saying, "oh, if indeed you can satisfy god the just with their souls, it will be well with you!"[ ] [ ] the virgin mary. [ ] "pre-raphaelitism," etc., vol. ii p. . music and rosy dawn are the inspiration of "may morning"; on magdalen tower a band of choristers chant their hymn to the light of heaven, according to ancient custom, upon the st of may. "the lady of shalott" is fresh in the recollection of all who have seen her. a larger version of "the light of the world" has been purchased recently by mr. charles booth, for the benefit of the nation. since that time the artist has not been able to work. in rossetti died. his former comrade offered to visit him when he heard of the illness; but the offer was courteously declined by mr. william rossetti. in grave fears began to be expressed about millais. "the truth of his doomed condition, at first resolutely ignored, came very suddenly to him, and then day by day he stepped down into the grave, but never lost his composure or noble personality." these quiet words are the fitting close of the tribute paid to him by his oldest and greatest friend, in that book which is a record as much of friendship as of art. iii the subject pictures "one scarcely express purpose in our reform, left unsaid by reason of its fundamental necessity, was to make art a hand-maid in the cause of justice and truth." w. h. h. "the vital ambition of an artist is to serve as high priest and expounder of the excellence of the works of the creator--choosing the highest types and combinations of his handiworks, as the greeks taught the after-world to do, so that men's admiration may be fascinated by the perfection of the works of the great author of all, and men's life thus may be a continual joy and solace." the aim set forth in this declaration is not the aim of any school, however distinguished, but the aim, conscious or unconscious, of all great painters. it has been constantly pursued throughout the life of him who wrote these words; if we did not put this first, we should err. the secondary purpose of his work--to give england what she has never had before, a school of artists of her own--of vast and infinite grandeur though it be, is yet subservient. [illustration: plate vii.--the hireling shepherd "as to the pure white ground, you had better adopt that at once, as, i can assure you, you will be forced to do so ultimately, for hunt and millais, whose works already kill everything in the exhibition for brilliancy, will in a few years force every one who will not drag behind them to use their methods." _ford madox brown to lowes dickenson._ this picture is to be seen at manchester art gallery.] many technical questions beset a true revival which are of deeper interest to the actors in it than to the public at large. such was the question of the introduction of oil as a medium in the old days; such was the question of the proper way to render brightness in our air. "you vagabond!" said millais--as he watched hunt painting in transparent colour, with light sable brushes, over a ground of half-moist white, the landscape of "the hireling shepherd"--"that's just the way i paint flowers!" they had arrived at this method by independent lines of thought. to them, and to their brother artists, it was most important. millais, delighted, proposed that they should keep it a secret--and instantly confided it to ford madox brown. the outer world was more concerned with the fact that the sun could be made to shine upon canvas than with the way in which it was brought about. the one inevitable condition of the truth of a revival is always, by one method or by another, a return to nature. this had been accomplished; and the world, as ever, divided--the few hailing what they saw as a revelation, the many denouncing it as heresy. when a picture by the first pre-raphaelite was carried in triumph through the streets of florence there were those who named that quarter borgo allegri; but there were those who declared that art was at an end now the byzantine tradition had been broken. when the pictures of the last pre-raphaelite shone out at burlington house, there were happy people who vowed they looked like "openings in the wall"; there were also those who declared that art had come to an end now the tradition of raphael was ignored. steadily, through evil report and good report, the painter went his way. he did not hold--as millais came to hold in after years--that it was the business of the artist to find out what most people wanted, and to paint that. he did not hold--as rossetti held--that it was the business of the artist to impose his will on a select band of followers, trained by himself to believe that the age of dante was the golden age, and that colour should be based on the principles of illumination. he held that an artist was accountable to god. he held that an englishman should study those minds, those words, which have more power over england than any others--should help to make those clear. shakespeare had led him to "rate lightly that kind of art devised only for the initiated, and to suspect all philosophies which assume that the vulgar are to be left for ever unredeemed." he hated newspapers because "the influence of writers who have had no other qualification to judge of art matters than the possession of more or less literary facility, has been deterrent and ever fatal to a steady advance of taste." there are two aspects. art "presents the form of a nation's spirit, exactly as the sounding atoms on a vibrating plane make a constant and distinct pattern to the sound of a given note." likewise, "all art from the beginning served for the higher development of men's minds. it has ever been valued as good to sustain strength for noble resolves." determined to serve his generation, not as a playfellow, not as a tyrant, but as a master, he followed singly and faithfully that conviction which had led him from childhood to think of the bible as the great factor in human existence. to the interpretation of the life of christ he gave the best years of his manhood. in order to understand it more thoroughly he broke away from comfort, he risked success at the moment when first she smiled on him, he left the friend whom he loved. it was not enough to paint "the light of the world," to set before the eyes of his countrymen the eternal king, the eternal priest, knocking at the door of the human heart, barred darkly in behind the weeds of selfishness. he would go to the country where the king dwelt. he would show: ( ) the coming of god to earth, as it was seen by the dim eyes of tradition, of mortal learnedness, when there was found within the precincts of the temple, among the rabbis, a child who had forgotten to return to his parents. ( ) the oneness of creation in the form of the suffering creature dying by the dead sea shore--the goat, the type of the lamb. ( ) the sacredness of labour, in the form of the son of man resting from toil in that low workshop where the virgin mother hoarded the gifts of regal wisdom. ( ) the young immortal beauty ever to be seen by the child of god, by the spirit of maiden purity, turning the torrent of death into the river of life, making the darkness as the noon-day. to the bible, holman hunt gave his manhood--to shakespeare, his youth! no one who desires to add to the store of england's thought but must, at one time or another, plunge deep into the mind of her greatest thinker. it is a sign of the unthinking nature of english art that, before this time, there were no illustrations of shakespeare worth the name. it is characteristic of the pre-eminently thoughtful nature of this artist that he should have chosen two subjects that are often misunderstood, from two plays that are hardly ever acted--the subject of _forgiveness_ from the "two gentlemen of verona;" the subject _death-to-be-preferred-before-slavery_ from "measure for measure." the duty of the forgiveness of sins--which has been well defined in the one word, _affection_--a duty canvassed and discussed everywhere--is, in shakespeare, deprived of the very aspect of a duty. it seems to have appeared to him not only natural but inevitable that anybody should forgive anybody anything. the most astounding of all his reconciliations is that of the "two gentlemen." valentine has to forgive proteus; sylvia has to forgive proteus and valentine into the bargain; julia has to forgive proteus; and proteus has to forgive himself. upon the stage we have seen an actress, in despair at the difficulty of the thing, turn her back to the audience and lean against a tree while the discussion was going on; but in the picture sylvia kneels, her hand left trustingly in that of valentine, and we have no sooner looked at it than we believe and understand. it is the same with that difficult moment of "measure for measure," when the two sides of life speak in the brother and sister: "death is a fearful thing," "and shamed life a hateful." the nun, we are sometimes told, is a repellent person; what business had she to urge her brother to die when she could save him by doing wrong herself? to look at "claudio and isabella" is to believe her and to understand. another picture owes its motto to one of edgar's mad bursts of song in "king lear." "sleepest or wakest thou, jolly shepherd? thy sheep be in the corn; and yet one blast of thy minnikin mouth, thy sheep shall take no harm." it is not an actual shepherd and shepherdess who are seated in this leafy english landscape, among the green pastures and by the still waters. still less is it the kind of shepherd and shepherdess that watteau, fragonard, and the china manufactory of dresden have accustomed us to associate with the words. who and what are they, those careless people in the bright sunshine, letting the sheep eat the corn that kills them and the unripe apples? the shepherd's crook lies idle on the ground. he has found a death's-head moth; he is too busy showing it to his companion to have any use for that. she is flattered and pleased that he should attend to her rather than to the sheep. when this picture was painted, the oxford movement was in the air; the shepherd and the shepherdess were alike busy with the death's-head moth. turning to modern minds, the poet whose word weighed most with england at the time was undoubtedly tennyson. a verse from "in memoriam" describes "the ship." "the lady of shalott" gave the subject of a work which took twelve years in painting. it was enlarged from a small design in a volume of tennyson illustrated by hunt, millais, and rossetti; and by several other artists, not of their persuasion. this particular illustration did not find favour with the poet, he objected to the lady's hair, to her manner of wearing it. the dream has been changed into a profound allegory. the lady is--if we mistake not--the artist who, through neglect of the divine gift of reflective imagination, has failed in the high purpose of art. it was hers to weave the quest of the holy grail, as she saw it in the magic mirror. if she had stayed at her appointed work, all had gone well. but she looked out of window to see sir lancelot--not the sir lancelot of tennyson, but a boastful, pleasure-loving knight, going on his way in the sunlight, with two trumpeters before him. then came the curse upon her, for the order of the world was broken, the order of the world all about her, in the flower of the earth, in the bird of the air, in the stars, governed and guided each by its own angel. on one side of her room order is strength as seen in hercules--on the other submission, as typified in the earlier design by the cross, in the later by the nativity. this order she has broken, against this order she has sinned. the lovely picture of her weaving the likeness of the holy grail itself will come to naught. but up above there chimes the one word, _spes_; even for those who have failed there is hope. [illustration: plate viii.--may morning "this subject was the ceremony of may morning, magdalen tower, oxford, at sunrise, when the choristers, in perpetuation of a service which is a survival of primitive sun-worship--perhaps druidical--sing a hymn as the sun appears above the horizon.... for several weeks i mounted to the tower roof about four in the morning with my small canvas to watch for the first rays of the rising sun, and to choose the sky which was most suitable for the subject. when all was settled i repeated the composition upon a larger canvas." _w. h. h._ the picture is at the painter's home in kensington.] the lady was trying to be a realist: "out flew the web, and floated wide. the mirror cracked from side to side." "a man's work must be the reflex of a living image in his own mind, and not the icy double of the facts themselves. it will be seen that we were never realists. i think art would have ceased to have the slightest interest for any of us had the object been only to make a representation, elaborate or unelaborate, of a fact in nature. independently of the conviction that such a system would put out of operation the faculty making man "like a god," it was apparent that a mere imitator gradually comes to see nature claylike and finite, as it seems when illness brings a cloud before the eyes." the practice of making independent studies for pictures which was dear to the heart of rossetti, was discouraged by hunt and millais because they feared to lose unity of effect if they dwelt upon details except in their relation to the whole. they painted, first the background, after the manner described, straight from nature; if possible, they placed the figures in the open air and studied them outside the studio walls. there are curious differences to be noted whenever the picture is repeated, and they seem to be always in the direction of something more complex than the original. in the larger version of "the hireling shepherd," he is far more subtle and sophisticated, while the shepherdess looks older and more scornful. in the smaller version of "the triumph of the innocents," the hues of a soft, moonlit night prevail, the virgin is just a sweet mother, the child is blessing the children. in the larger version moonlight intensified, which was found by means of a lens to be that of the sun, bathes the children; the virgin, who is much older, gazes upon them with eyes in which a joyful wonder seems to be fighting still with almost unconquerable sorrow; the child, a wheat-ear in his hand, has thrown himself back in an ecstasy of divine laughter. the large water-colour of "christ among the rabbis," the rainbow halo encircling the head of the child as he meditates, while the dark-eyed boys, nicodemus and stephen, look on, is different in every respect from "the finding in the temple." iv portraits and other works "an artist should always make sure that in his treatment of nature alone he is able to incorporate some new enchantment to justify his claim as a master of his craft, doing this at times without any special interest in the subject he may illustrate." w. h. h. the principle given above has been followed in such works as "amaryllis," "the bride of bethlehem," and "sorrow." there is but one portrait reproduced in this book, and that a copy of a very early one which was rescued from destruction by the artist's mother. he was going to rub it out that he might use the ground for something else, and he objected to the rescue because it would cost him s. d.; but she stood firm. the portrait painted of himself in later life, palette in hand, was executed for the gallery of great artists by themselves at the uffizi. the haunting "head of rossetti," with fixed, intent eyes, was taken from a pastel sketch, made for woolner when he was out in melbourne. he had appealed to his pre-raphaelite brothers to give him some tangible proof of their kinship which would help him to find clients, because their names were better known than his, and often in the paper. they held a meeting, therefore, in millais' studio, worked the whole day, and sent him out their portraits by each other. rossetti's absorbed gaze is explained by the fact that he was drawing hunt at the moment. "bianca" was painted in tempera from a beautiful young american. one portrait called "the birthday"--the picture of a lady--could not but be wronged by any description whatever. day after day last autumn, two little rooms in leicester square were crowded with eager thousands, thronging to gaze upon the pictures that, when they first appeared, no one would buy. outside, the fog often held sway. within, light shone from every wall, the light of dawn from "may morning"; the glowing light of noonday from "the strayed sheep"; moonlight from "the ship"; soft starlight from "the triumph"; the light upon the sea, the downs, the mountains, the faces of men and women in the open field; the light of strange fire; the light of human eyes inspired with hope and purpose; the radiant light of spiritual force. chronological list of the chief pictures mentioned portrait of the artist by himself at seventeen woodstock (first picture sold--for £ ) the eve of st. agnes (the flight of madeline's porphyro) rienzi a converted british family sheltering a missionary claudio and isabella valentine and sylvia the hireling shepherd the strayed sheep the light of the world the awakened conscience the scapegoat the finding of christ in the temple isabella, or the pot of basil the shadow of death the ship the triumph of the innocents - may morning the lady of shalott the holy fire these dates are approximate; the painting of many of the pictures extended over several years. printed in great britain at the press of the publishers. transcriber's notes: the following corrections have been made, on page: " changed to ' (my brush, is it?' caught me up and) "artistocrats" changed to "aristocrats" (hundreds of young aristocrats) "incorporat" changed to "incorporate" (able to incorporate some). all other inconsistencies in spelling, hyphenation and italisation were preserved from the original. the mentor . . , no. [illustration: (decorative background)] learn one thing every day [illustration] january serial no. the mentor american miniature painters by mrs. elizabeth lounsbery author department of fine arts volume number fifteen cents a copy art and life [illustration: (decorative)] we are close to realizing the greatest joys to be found in this workaday world when we accept art as a vital part and not a thing separate and distinct from our daily lives. then we come to know the true values of things--to "find tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything." [illustration: (decorative)] "art, if we so accept it," says william morris, "will be with us wherever we go--in the ancient city full of traditions of past time, in the newly cleared farm in america or the colonies, where no man has dwelt for traditions to gather round him; in the quiet countryside as in the busy town--no place shall be without it. [illustration: (decorative)] you will have it with you in your sorrow as in your joy, in your working hours as in your leisure. it will be no respecter of persons, but be shared by gentle and simple, learned and unlearned, and be as a language that all can understand. it will not hinder any work that is necessary to the life of man at the best, but it will destroy all degrading toil, all enervating luxury, all foppish frivolity. [illustration: (decorative)] it will be the deadly foe of ignorance, dishonesty, and tyranny, and will foster good-will, fair dealing, and confidence between man and man. it will teach you to respect the highest intellect with a manly reverence, but not to despise any man who does not pretend to be what he is not." [illustration: john lawrence. by john trumbull. actual size - / inches high. in the possession of the new york historical society] _american miniature painters_ _john trumbull_ one the work of john trumbull as a historical painter has already been considered in the mentor (no. ), and in that number, too, the main facts of his life are told. john trumbull was a patriotic american and a leader in the artistic and public life of his day, both in england and in america. his position was much more than that of a painter. his attitude toward painting was not one of complete and whole souled devotion. "i am fully sensible," he wrote at one time, "that the profession of painting as it is generally practised is frivolous, and unworthy a man who has talents for more serious pursuits. but to preserve and diffuse the memory of the noblest series of actions which have ever presented themselves in the history of man is sufficient warrant for it." we see accordingly that john trumbull's idea of the work of a painter was to _write history on canvas with a brush_--and his pictures bear out his idea. his life governed and controlled his art. he was born in lebanon, connecticut, in , a son of the colonial governor of that state, and from early years he revealed a mental vigor that was extraordinary. he was an infant prodigy in learning. he entered harvard college in the junior year at the age of fifteen, and the time he spent there was occupied in omniverous reading and study--which finally came near wrecking his health. when he was a student he visited the great painter john singleton copley, and became impressed with that great painter's idea of the dignity of an artist's life. he determined to study art, and he was learning to paint when the war of the revolution began. this event determined the character of his art life. his skill in drawing being noted by general washington, he was set to work making plans of the enemy's works. he was then promoted to a position on the general staff, and, afterward, served as colonel under gates. but aggrieved at what he considered a tardy recognition of himself by congress, he resigned from the army, went to england and there, meeting the distinguished artist, benjamin west, took up under him the study of painting. when major andré was executed there was a spirit of retaliation aroused in england, and trumbull was arrested and imprisoned as a spy. it was only the intercession of benjamin west that saved his life. after seven months' imprisonment he was released, on condition that he leave the country. he did not leave, however, but continued his studies with west, and did not return to the united states until . and so we see that trumbull's life was more that of a patriot than a painter. art was not the controlling factor with him, but the servant. he devoted his brush to the commemoration of great historical events, such as the battles of bunker hill and trenton. and when he painted portraits he selected the prominent patriotic figures in the public life of his time--washington, alexander hamilton, and others of like importance. it was only natural then that he should turn with an interest little short of enthusiasm to the portrait of that brave and gallant officer, captain lawrence. the face of lawrence, as shown in trumbull's miniature, is more rotund, more genial--not to say jovial--than we are led to believe it to be from other portraits. john trumbull knew lawrence, however, and found great satisfaction in this portrait. the special interest to us that distinguishes the portrait from others of lawrence, is that it imparts a sense not so much of the military as of the personal character of the man. as pictured here, by trumbull, he is a very human hero. in studying this portrait, we feel anew the gripping pathos of lawrence's tragic end. prepared by the editorial staff of the mentor association illustration for the mentor. vol. , no. , serial no. copyright, , by the mentor association, inc. [illustration: the hours, by edward g. malbone actual size: inches high, inches wide. copyright, , by the providence athenaeum in the providence athenaeum] _american miniature painters_ _edward g. malbone_ two edward greene malbone was born in newport, rhode island, august , , and died in savannah in . while a boy he frequently visited the local theater in his native town to watch the process of scene painting, and, later, tried his hand at this work--attaining what was considered by the townspeople great success. as a child he was quiet, reserved and self-absorbed. at sixteen he showed an indication of great talent in his first portrait miniature. encouraged in his efforts by the english consul at providence, he devoted himself to the study of drawing heads and painting miniatures, and, at seventeen, he became professionally identified with miniature painting in providence, and, in , fairly established as a miniature painter in boston. in he accompanied his friend and fellow artist, washington allston, to charleston, and the following year the two went together to europe. it was during his stay in london that malbone painted his most important miniature, "the hours," now owned by the providence athenæum. this shows, at three-quarter length, the figures of three beautiful women, who represent, as the greeks personified them, eunomia, dice (die´-see) and irene--the past, the present and the coming hour. they have a general resemblance and seem as if they might represent the same individual in different moments of emotion and development. on the left is seen eunomia or the past, with an expression of pensive reluctance rather than regret. the central figure is dice, or the present--looking straight out from the picture. her right arm is slightly raised toward eunomia, at the left, while the left hand reaches half deprecatingly toward the coming hour. irene, or the coming hour, is shown leaning upon the left shoulder of the present. this miniature was given to his sister by the painter during his lifetime, and, later, was purchased from the family by the subscription of twelve hundred dollars for the providence athenæum. although urged by benjamin west to remain in england, where his art would win him ample appreciation and employment, malbone preferred to return to america, and on his arrival traveled for several years--stopping in the principal cities to paint miniatures. "these," to quote tuckerman, "are among the few pleasant and precious artistic associations with the past in this country." ill health finally took malbone to jamaica, but finding that his illness was incurable he left there, with the intention of returning to new england, but died in savannah--in the prime of his life and success--before he could reach the north. malbone is now considered the most important of all miniaturists of his time. prepared by the editorial staff of the mentor association illustration for the mentor, vol. , no. , serial no. copyright, , by the mentor association, inc. [illustration: the golden hour. by w. j. baer actual size. inches high, inches wide. copyright. , by w. j. baer in the possession of mr. robert s. clark, new york city] _american miniature painters_ _william j. baer_ three art beckons and the artist follows. only an artist knows what the lure of art is. the field of art is full of enticements. little incidents, apparently insignificant, have sometimes been sufficient to change an artist's career and direct him toward his most brilliant achievements. william j. baer was thirty years of age before he painted a miniature. more than that, he had never seen a miniature that interested him, and he believed that miniature painting had limitations that precluded it from serious consideration. he was an instructor of drawing at cooper institute, new york city, an illustrator for magazines, and a painter of portraits, and had no thought of painting miniatures when, in , he finished a very successful portrait of the late alfred corning clark of new york. mr. clark was so pleased with the painting that he expressed a desire to have a copy of it in miniature. mr. baer did not believe that a result could be obtained worthy of the effort, so he refused to try it. mr. clark renewed his request, and mr. baer again refused. a short time after, however, having some leisure, his mind turned back to mr. clark's request, and, upon consideration, he was prompted to make a quiet attempt at miniature painting. he supplied himself with the necessary materials, and made his first experiment by copying a head from one of his own pictures, a profile of a young woman. the result was surprising to him--detail, patience, eyesight and hand served him well. in another week he had painted the miniature of mr. clark from his original sketch in oil colors. when mr. clark saw it he was delighted and asked for another. and so, out of what was at first a mere diversion, mr. baer developed a perfected art. with the showing of mr. baer's miniatures at the first portrait show in , his success was definitely assured. in he painted his first ideal miniature, "the golden hour," now owned by mr. robert s. clark of new york city. the idea of this exquisite picture developed from an effort of mr. baer's to paint in profile from memory the head of an auburn-haired girl that he had seen. a well-known english girl who had posed for sir edward burne-jones and sir frederick leighton, happened then to call at his studio. several sittings, in which a number of pencil and red chalk drawings were made, gave him an entirely different idea. the profile developed into a lovely dream picture, in which woman's crowning glory, her glowing hair, was poetically idealized. the picture shows two profiles, like twin sisters--the first with hair of dark copper tinge, the second at the left with hair of brilliant auburn, melting into the sunset colors of the sky. this was the first of a number of ideal works by mr. baer, and was followed at intervals by others of like charm. "primevera," painted in , which is mr. baer's most important and ambitious endeavor, represents flora, the handmaiden of spring, and is a delicate color poem. mr. baer was born in cincinnati, ohio, on january , . he studied art in cincinnati and in munich. he returned to america in , and for several years was an instructor in various art institutions. in he received the first-class medal for miniature and ideal subjects in new york, and he was an organizer and a former president of the american society of miniature painters. mr. baer is at present treasurer of that society and an associate of the national academy. prepared by the editorial staff of the mentor association illustration for the mentor. vol. . no. , serial no. copyright, , by the mentor association, inc. [illustration: mrs. beckington, by alice beckington actual size: - / inches high, - / inches wide. in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] _american miniature painters_ _alice beckington_ four alice beckington is one of the leading members of the american society of miniature painters, and she now holds the office of vice-president. she was born in st. charles, missouri, on july , . she was a pupil at the art students' league in new york under carroll beckwith--after that she studied in paris with benjamin constant. miss beckington was a close friend of miss thayer's, and the work of the two shows a sympathetic understanding. miss beckington's work is serious, fine in taste, and dignified in character. she does not play lightly with her art. her pictures have a pleasing warmth of color; that is to say, blacks and browns, golden flesh colorings, and grays that are never cold. occasional cool effects are, however, to be found in her work, for miss beckington has a full appreciation of the value of harmoniously contrasting color. the picture reproduced on the reverse side of this sheet is taken from an original miniature in the metropolitan museum of art. it is a portrait of miss beckington's mother, the original ivory plate being slightly smaller than the reproduction here given. as may be seen, it is a work of distinction. the character of this refined woman is portrayed with simple eloquence. the pale blue of the dress and the delicately toned background set off in a poetic and sympathetic manner the character of this fine gentlewoman. the picture is thoroughly representative of miss beckington's work, and amply explains her high standing among our miniature painters. just as many persons in social life who are assured in their exclusive positions dress simply and unaffectedly, so miss beckington paints--with directness and sincerity, without display or striving for effect. miss beckington, referring to her early efforts in miniature painting, says that it was during the four years when she was working in oils in paris that she became interested in miniature painting--and that in this work she was self-taught. her first portrait of her mother was accepted by the salon in paris in , and upon her return to new york she exhibited pictures annually at the national academy. she believes that the great principles of art that obtain in oil painting should apply to miniature work as well; and she paints her miniatures in the same manner as she would paint in oils--with only the difference in treatment required by the conditions of a small sized picture. prepared by the editorial staff of the mentor association illustration for the mentor, vol. , no. , serial no. copyright, , by the mentor association, inc. [illustration: persis. by laura coombs hills in the metropolitan museum of art new york city actual size: - / inches high, - / inches wide.] _american miniature painters laura coombs hills_ five laura coombs hills is a favorite of lovers of miniature painting. she has a fine, fresh style of her own. her spirit is buoyant, natural, and without affectation. she is a craftsman of extraordinary talent. no difficulties seem to daunt her. her coloring is positive, and she seems undismayed in rendering any tone of dress or background or face. her painting of flesh color, particularly, is just and true. temperamentally, miss hills must be counted as one of the soundest and truest of miniature painters, by which is meant that she looks at life with clear seeing eyes, and records what she sees truthfully and with sympathetic understanding. the accompanying picture, persis, is a good example of miss hills' work. it shows a child with brownish-red hair, wearing a dark shade of pink ribbon. her dress, of the faded pink variety, wherein the lights approach flesh coloring and the shadows are silvery, merges into golden tints. the background of sofa and tapestry offers a variety of greens throughout, with a note of clear orange in the bit of cushion to the left of the child's right arm. the floor and the arm of the sofa repeat the color of the hair. a few patches of blue and blue-green in the tapestry supply a relief for the colors of the figure and the cushions. it was somewhat over twenty years ago that miss hills began to paint miniatures. up to that time she had done some illustrating and decorative painting, worked on china, and some commercial designing. she was born in newburyport, massachusetts, september , , and was a pupil of helen m. knowlton, of the cowles art school in boston, and also of the art students' league in new york. she was in england on a visit when a girl friend of hers remarked on her work, and asked her why she did not turn her brush to miniature painting. miss hills was at first reluctant to attempt a new line of art. but after some consideration she got several pieces of ivory, persuaded some young girls to sit for her, and in a short time turned out seven miniatures. she was surprised to find how easy the work appeared to be. she had understood that miniature painting was difficult and required a special talent. she was not wrong about that, but until she undertook the work she was not aware that this special talent was hers. she was delighted. her outlook was clear and full of promise. she had a work of beauty to do and she knew that she could do it well. people interest miss hills, and the picturing of people, especially young people, is a delight to her. the people she paints are very real, and they are distinct and individual. she has painted over miniatures, and they are something more than portraits. they have a pictorial quality that gives them a very special charm and distinction. it has been observed that if the subjects that she has pictured in her miniatures had been rendered in oils on large canvases, "they would be found decorative and impressive." miss hills was a member of the society of american artists in , and was made an associate of the national academy in . she is a member of the boston water color club, copley society, new york woman's art club, and the american society of miniature painters. she has exhibited in several of the world expositions, and has received a number of medals for merit. prepared by the editorial staff of the mentor association illustration for the mentor, vol. , no. . serial no. copyright, , by the mentor association, inc. [illustration: portrait of a child. by lucia fairchild fuller actual size: inches high, - / inches wide. in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] _american miniature painters_ _lucia fairchild fuller_ six the miniature work of mrs. fuller, like that of miss thayer and miss hills, came close after that of mr. baer. these artists were each independent of the other, and in the history of the modern revival of miniature painting they stand simply as remarkable coincidences in taste and inclination. miss fuller's miniature work is full of intimate feeling, reflecting the charm of affectionately considered detail and giving out an impression that her subjects must have been near and dear to her. her work is distinguished for its delicate grace and simple charm. the picture on the reverse side of this sheet is a portrait of a child--a very real child. the composition is beautiful in line as well as in pattern. the human interest predominates, without sacrifice of fine workmanship. it is not simply a "prettified" picture, such as we find so often in the shops and soon tire of. it is a work that attracts the painter, as well as the layman, by its sympathetic appeal. "delightful!" we exclaim. a masterpiece of child life painting is this little girl in her "nightie" holding her doll. the coloring is tender and fine. the background is a pale blue, under which the baseboard and floor show a pale golden color, harmonizing with the child's blond hair. the little print on the wall also makes a "repeat" of the warm color. lucia fairchild fuller is the wife of the well known artist, henry brown fuller. she was born in boston on december , . she was a pupil of dennis m. banker, and studied at the cowles art school and at mrs. shaw's in boston--likewise with siddons mowbray, and william m. chase in new york. as a member of the society of american artists she became an associate of the national academy in , and was likewise one of the founders of the american society of miniature painters, of which she is now president. her work has not only won popular appreciation, but has secured distinguished recognition in the form of medals awarded at various expositions in paris and in the united states. prepared by the editorial staff of the mentor association illustration for the mentor. vol. , no. , serial no. copyright, , by the mentor association, inc. the mentor . department of fine arts january , american miniature painters by elizabeth lounsbery _author and critic_ [illustration: lord and lady fairfax by courtesy of mrs. frank ralston, new york attributed to charles willson peale] _mentor gravures_ the golden hour, _by w. j. baer_ the hours, _by edward g. malbone_ portrait of a child, _by lucia fairchild fuller_ mrs. beckington, _by alice beckington_ persis, _by laura coombs hills_ john lawrence, _by john trumbull_ the revival of miniature painting in america in the last twenty-five years has awakened interest in its past history. the installation in the metropolitan museum of art of the comprehensive collection of miniatures owned by the estate of the late j. pierpont morgan has no doubt done much to increase this, and inspire the purchase and gifts of examples by american painters, for the museum collection, that are now on permanent exhibition there. just when the art had its beginning has never been definitely determined, but its evolution from the portrait painting in illuminated manuscripts and parchments of the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is generally accepted. in these, small heads and portraits were painted into the text and often in the first letter of the first word of a paragraph. this was extensively practiced in italy, where this work assumed a necessarily religious character, being executed almost exclusively in the monasteries, for ecclesiastical use. minium, the latin name for a red mineral coloring matter, was the pigment used by the early scribes for the initial letters and headings of these manuscripts. thus, the term "miniatura" generally came to be applied to these portraits, which later became known as "miniatures." miniature painting on ivory, or paintings "in little," as they have been called, gradually developed into a "personal" art, because of their peculiar appeal to the sentiments and affections, and for their "companionable proportions." they were often framed in black wood, usually in gold, however, sometimes mounted in jewels or set in a locket that could be readily worn on a chain or ribbon about the neck, or kept in intimate touch upon the dressing table or desk. in them the fashions and vanities of costume and head-dress of all periods have been recorded in the daintiest and most minute detail. [illustration: general philip schuyler, by john trumbull in the possession of the new york historical society] the history of miniature painting, however, is not complex--the methods and materials being much the same throughout its development or decline. the art is largely confined to the simple portrayal of heads, with only occasional contributions of fanciful subjects. were it not, therefore, for the changes of fashion, one would have difficulty in remembering the painters, and an approach to monotony would result. [illustration: man's head, by john singleton copley in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] curiously enough, the first notable miniature painter, hans holbein, has remained the undisputed prince of miniature painters. indeed, it may be said that the birth of miniature painting as an enduring means of expression in art dates from the time of holbein's arrival in england, in . following holbein, nicholas hilliard became england's most distinguished exponent of the art--then richard cosway and his contemporaries in england, france and italy. this period, the eighteenth century, marks the introduction of miniature painting into america, where it became popular as an expression of art during and after the revolution, as large oil portraits had been before. charles willson peale, the famous painter of george washington (of whom peale is said to have painted fourteen portraits) was the best known of his era, many of his miniatures being painted while in camp on the battlefield. his brother james, likewise won a reputation in miniature painting, his work being notable for its extreme delicacy and beauty. we are told that starting life as a carpenter, he was able to make the frames used by both his brother and himself for their portraits and miniatures. [illustration: martha washington greene, by edward g. malbone in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] [illustration: washington allston, by richard m. staigg in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] [illustration: mrs. richard c. derby, by edward g. malbone in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] john singleton copley was another famous artist of this period. he was renowned for his large portraits in oil, which were characterized by a skilful treatment of silks and rich fabrics for both costumes and elaborate backgrounds, and yet he painted many miniatures. john trumbull, known chiefly as a painter of stirring historical subjects of the revolutionary era and for his portraits of washington, also worked in miniatures, as did john hesselius, in annapolis. gilbert stuart, while a prolific painter of portraits, is not said by his biographers to have painted miniatures, although several have been attributed to him. the fact that many miniatures, even by the greater artists, were not signed or dated, has made it difficult to determine the origin of some of the most beautiful examples, or to place them definitely as the work of american painters. moreover, miniatures brought back as souvenirs by those who were able to travel abroad in those days introduced the work of foreign artists, often unsigned, among american miniatures, thus making identification more difficult. [illustration: juliana m. mcwhorter, by benjamin trott in the possession of the new york historical society] edward g. malbone, born in newport, r.i., in , was destined to become the most important miniature painter of his time in america. malbone had the gift of realism; of simple, unaffected grace and a sureness of rendition that compelled attention. his portraits were likenesses of intimate and convincing truth. "the hours," malbone's most famous work, a fanciful subject depicting the past, present and future hour and painted in , after a short period of study in england, is now the property of the providence athenæum. many of his portrait miniatures are owned by individuals throughout the south, where he spent several years, and prematurely died in the height of his career, at the age of thirty. a group of his portraits is also included in the metropolitan museum collection. [illustration: gilbert stuart, by sarah goodridge in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] [illustration: gilbert stuart, by anson dickerson in the possession of the new york historical society] charles fraser, malbone's contemporary and friend, likewise excelled, especially in male portraiture. others of this period and men who afterwards forsook their art for other interests, but who were recognized as successful miniature painters, were robert fulton ( - ) the inventor of the steamboat, and alvan clark, the most notable of all lens grinders. john ramage, an irishman by birth, became a well known miniature painter in boston and new york about this time, and also richard m. staigg, who, though born in england, was prominently identified with american art as one of the original members of the national academy of design and a miniature painter of distinction, strongly influenced by malbone. benjamin trott was a contemporary of malbone's and fraser's, whose painting was characterized by strength and delicacy. anson dickinson, john wesley jarvis, joseph wood, henry inman of philadelphia, and charles cromwell ingham, may also be mentioned among the miniature painters of the early nineteenth century, together with sarah goodridge, a protégé of gilbert stuart's, and whose work reached a great degree of excellence about , and later john henry brown. [illustration: portrait of a woman, by isaac a. josephi in the possession of the new york historical society] about this time miniature painting began to decline, owing to the introduction of the daguerreotype and the photograph. such american artists as devoted their efforts to miniature painting struggled on without sufficient recognition until, feeling the need of organization and the encouragement in this branch of art that an association would lend, the american society of miniature painters was founded in by william j. baer, alice beckington, lucia fairchild fuller, laura coombs hills, john a. mcdougall, virginia reynolds, theodora m. thayer, and william j. whittemore. it was the intention of the society to hold annual exhibitions, where the work of all american miniaturists could be passed upon by a competent jury and then be seen by the public. the first annual exhibition was held in january, , at the galleries of messrs. knoedler & co., new york city. isaac a. josephi, prominent as a miniaturist at this time, became its first president, and is accredited with the conception of the society. william j. baer, sometime president and afterwards treasurer of the society, contributed largely through his efforts to make the society the factor that it has since become in the art world. the impetus thus given to miniature painting led, unfortunately, to the production of cheap substitutes of artistic work in the form of colored photographs made to simulate miniatures. these tawdry imitations were sold broadcast to undiscriminating persons, and did much toward creating the opinion that a miniature could not be a serious work of art. some merely regarded miniature painting as a remarkable feat of technical skill--a "stunt," in which the feature of interest was the astonishing minuteness of detail that could be introduced on a very small area. it was to counteract this popular fallacy and encourage the work of really good artists that the american society of miniature painters lent its best efforts--with the coöperation of the pennsylvania society of miniature painters,--an offshoot from the older organization. [illustration: primavera, by w. j. baer] [illustration: nanette siebert, by w. j. baer] these exhibitions revealed a miniature art of a high order of merit. but even among examples supremely fine in quality there are to be found many productions that were simply good, honest workmanship, without inspiration. painting on ivory is not easy of control, and it is unresponsive to the intention of the hand. the colors wash up readily, or at best are apt to be spotty and unmanageable. in consequence, the painter must resort to stippling (a process of drawing by means of dots) and repeated light touches to produce the required flow of form or surface. the results, therefore, except under the hand of a master, are apt to run to labored effects, due to the loss of freshness and directness. the expression, "it is art to hide art," may be taken to mean that an artist's results should appear comfortable, spontaneous and unrestrained. _william j. baer_ in these characteristics there is no more proficient exponent than william j. baer, although his earlier efforts in art were devoted to magazine illustrating, painting in oil and teaching drawing at the school of applied design for women, cooper institute and chatauqua. it may be interesting to note here how circumstances often cause the door of opportunity to open for a man, in fields quite different from those to which he dedicated himself. for example, s. f. b. morse ( - ) who was the most able portrait painter in the united states in his time, found his place in the hall of fame as the inventor of the telegraphic code. [illustration: betty, by w. j. baer (copyright) doubleday, page & co.] [illustration: jeanette, by w. j. baer] so mr. baer's activities as a portrait painter were turned into another field of art. having painted a successful portrait of the late alfred corning clark, of new york city, in , and afterwards a replica in a miniature, mr. baer began his career as a miniature painter, showing unrivalled skill and an acknowledged excellence of conception, character, color and suggestion of detail. in he painted his first ideal subject,--"the golden hour," and in what he considers his most important and ambitious endeavor, "primavera," representing "flora," the handmaiden of spring, in which the color scheme is rendered in delicate pinks, blues, greens and grays. "aurora," owned by mr. henry walters of baltimore; "daphne," a charming conception of the nude; "summer"; "mildred," a fancy head representing spring; "doris," another female nude, and "young diana," are also among the ideal subjects for which mr. baer has become famous, while the portrait miniatures of many prominent persons can be numbered as the result of his able brush. [illustration: the goldfish, by laura coombs hills courtesy of mr. george d. pratt] _laura coombs hills_ in freshness and brilliancy of rendition laura coombs hills, of boston, is a recognized leader among living miniaturists. her work is charmingly natural and unaffected, with vivacity evident in every essential part of her work. especially true is this of her miniature entitled "persis," in the metropolitan museum, a " × - / " oval. in this a child with brownish red hair, dressed in faded pink, is seated in relief against the reds and blues of the background. "the goldfish" is another beautiful miniature by miss hills, in which her treatment of the bright golden tresses of a girl, her gown and the illusive tones of the background, denote the artist to be a colorist of the first rank. "the bride," a harmony of gray, gold and blue, is also a notable example of her work that marks her as a craftsman of great talent. [illustration: parke godwin, by theodora w. thayer in metropolitan museum of art, new york city] _theodora w. thayer_ theodora w. thayer's short career ( - ) as a miniature painter measures well up to that of malbone's in its quality and good art. perhaps malbone will be more popularly remembered by reason of the fact that he painted a number of works, whereas the available works of miss thayer are few. the latter artist had the distinction of being "different" from other miniaturists, although quite without eccentricity. in her portrait of parke godwin, at the metropolitan museum, we see a person we should like to know. a charming portrait of an old gentleman, with a mass of white hair that dominates the picture. this is not only a characteristic example of miss thayer's art, but is an eloquent portrayal of fine manhood. in the profile portrait of miss gray the genius of this artist is again seen, also in her portrait of bliss carman, the poet, in profile. [illustration: eleanor b., by william j. whittemore exhibited at the panama-pacific exposition] [illustration: miss m., by william j. whittemore] _lucia fairchild fuller_ the successes of lucia fairchild fuller, like those of miss hills and miss thayer, followed immediately upon mr. baer's. mrs. fuller's painting, like mr. baer's, is full of tenderness, reflecting sympathetically and affectionately the details of her subjects. feminine grace and the charm of child life are special qualities of her work. in the metropolitan museum may be seen a masterpiece of child portraiture--a little girl standing in her nightgown, caressing her doll. in this the color scheme is delicate throughout--in the tender pearly flesh and the pale blue background. in "mother and child," the portrait of a woman with a classic profile, dressed in red brocade with ivory white draperies over her shoulders, upholding the nude figure of a little girl with outstretched arms, is again seen a perfection of arrangement, line and fine color, and a predominating human interest that attracts by its sympathy. _alice beckington_ alice beckington, like the other miniaturists just referred to, was one of the original members of the american society of miniature painters. a close friend of miss thayer's in the latter's lifetime, she profited much by that influence. her work is distinguished by its dignity and reserve. her most successful miniatures tend to warm schemes of color. in her portrait of her mother ("portrait of mrs. beckington") in the metropolitan museum, the coloring of the dress is of a faded blue, against a background of a warm, dull coloring--not gray, not brown, while the reddish color of the chair provides the only note of difference needed to satisfy the eye. this picture is essentially characteristic of miss beckington's art, representing her straightforward and sincere simplicity, combined with an appreciation of subdued color harmonies. [illustration: girl with the green shawl, by helen m. turner in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] [illustration: bessie moore, by virginia reynolds in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] [illustration: elizabeth humphrey, by martha s. baker in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] _william j. whittemore_ william j. whittemore is well known as a painter in oils and in water color--one who essayed miniature painting without ever deserting the other mediums. his work is marked by a fondness for completeness of beauty and fineness of finish, whether in oil or miniature. as a master of form and an excellent painter of likenesses, mr. whittemore has executed a great number of portrait miniatures. his "burgomeister," in which an old man wearing a ruff appears against a somber background, is a fine bit of characterization, strongly expressed. [illustration: alexander petrunkevitch by margaret f. hawley in the metropolitan museum of art, new york city] among other artists who are now prominently identified with american miniature painting may be mentioned elsie dodge pattie, whose work is represented in the larger type of miniature, rendered with much tenderness and directness, as in the portrait heads of her own children. also margaret f. hawley, of boston, a thorough craftsman, as is evidenced in her fine portrait of alexander petrunkevitch. the work of heloise g. redfield, who has had a paris training, is characteristic of the method of the french school (a method which has found little favor with american miniaturists generally) wherein there is a free wash of color on the surface of the miniature instead of the granulated appearance of stipple work. the work of katherine smith myrick is in direct contrast, being entirely of stipple-producing qualities, while mabel r. welch uses free washes, qualified with delicate and well controlled stipple that never obtrudes in her finished work. the miniatures of lucy m. stanton, a southern painter, now in new york, are rendered rather in the manner of the late theodora w. thayer, and are strong in characterization. those of margaret kendall are virile and natural, and her portraits of children are always charming. maria judson strean's portraits are refined, and painted, with lightness and freedom. the work of lydia e. longacre is personal and has much charm. harry l. johnson, of philadelphia, known as a miniaturist but a few years, has painted effectively both landscapes and figures on a diminutive scale. w. sherman potts is a competent and scholarly craftsman, who has established a summer school in miniature painting in connecticut. emily drayton taylor, who has been president of the philadelphia society of miniature painters since its organization, has been a prolific worker in the field. * * * * * entered as second-class matter march , , at the postoffice at new york, n. y., under the act of march , . copyright . by the mentor association, inc. * * * * * _supplementary reading_ portrait miniatures _by george c. williamson_ miniatures, ancient and modern _by c. j. h. davenport_ miniatures _by d. heath_ history of portrait miniatures (two vols.) _by george c. williamson_ how to identify portrait miniatures _by george c. williamson_ chats on old miniatures _by j. j. foster_ *** information concerning the above books may be had on application to the editor of the mentor. _the open letter_ miniatures are painted in water color and in oil--more commonly the former. some of the early dutch and german miniatures were painted in oil, and, as a rule, on copper. the miniatures painted during the eighteenth century were chiefly in water color, and on ivory. it is said that ivory came into general use during the reign of william iii ( - ). miniatures before that time were painted on vellum or cardboard. [illustration: mrs. parsons by richard cosway, r.a.] [illustration: sir charles oakeley by john smart] [illustration: a young man in mourning ( ) by nicholas hilliard] [illustration: col. henry sidney ( ) by samuel cooper] the development of miniature painting, especially as it is applied to portraits, is largely english, and our early american miniaturists drew their art from english painters. we present on this page reproductions of the work of four of the most famous early english miniature painters. the first of whom anything definite is known was nicholas hilliard ( - ). his work shows a close observation of the art of hans holbein. his little portraits look as if they had been taken out of illuminated manuscripts. his colors are solid, and gold is used to heighten the effect. some of his pictures, moreover, are accompanied by latin mottoes. nicholas hilliard had a son, lawrence, whose work was similar to that of his father, but a little bolder in treatment and richer in color. some years later came samuel cooper ( - ), reckoned by some the greatest english miniaturist. his work was broad and dignified, and has been referred to as "_life-size work in little_." his portraits of the prominent men of the puritan period are vigorous, and true to life. the picture of colonel sidney, printed herewith, is interesting as showing the photographic fidelity of cooper's work. there were many miniature painters during the eighteenth century, among whom richard cosway ( - ) stands prominent. his works were greatly admired for their smartness and brilliancy. in miniature form he pictured the pretty girl of the day. there were many people, however, of that same time that preferred the work of john smart ( - ), for while he lacked the dashing style of cosway, he excelled in refinement, power and delicacy--in "silky texture and elaborate finish." smart's work was very popular, for he pictured fine people in fine style. the little portrait of sir charles oakeley, printed here, is a typical example of smart's work. the cosway and smart miniatures on this page are taken from the collection of mr. j. pierpont morgan; the hilliard and cooper miniatures from the collection of the duke of portland. [illustration: w. d. moffat signature] editor the mentor association established for the development of a popular interest in art, literature, science, history, nature, and travel =contributors=--prof. john c. van dyke, hamilton w. mabie, prof. albert bushnell hart, rear admiral robert e. peary, william t. hornaday, dwight l. elmendorf, henry t. finck, william winter, esther singleton, prof. g. w. botsford, ida m. tarbell, gustav kobbÉ, dean c. worcester, john k. mumford, w. j. holland, lorado taft, kenyon cox, e. h. forbush, h. e. krehbiel, samuel isham, burges johnson, stephen bonsal, james huneker, w. j. henderson, and others. the purpose of the mentor association is to give its members, in an interesting and attractive way, the information in various fields of knowledge which everybody wants to have. the information is imparted by interesting reading matter, prepared under the direction of leading authorities, and by beautiful pictures, produced by the most highly perfected modern processes. the mentor is published twice a month by the mentor association, inc., at east nineteenth street, new york, n. y. subscription, three dollars a year. foreign postage cents extra. canadian postage cents extra. single copies fifteen cents. president, thomas h. beck; vice-president, walter p. ten eyck; secretary, w. d. moffat; treasurer, robert m. donaldson; asst. treasurer and asst. secretary, j. s. campbell complete your mentor library subscriptions always begin with the current issue. the following numbers of the mentor course, already issued, will be sent postpaid at the rate of fifteen cents each serial no. . beautiful children in art . makers of american poetry . washington, the capital . beautiful women in art . romantic ireland . masters of music . natural wonders of america . pictures we love to live with . the conquest of the peaks . scotland: the land of song and scenery . cherubs in art . statues with a story . the discoverers . london . the story of panama . american birds of beauty . dutch masterpieces . paris, the incomparable . flowers of decoration . makers of american humor . american sea painters . the explorers . sporting vacations . switzerland: the land of scenic splendors . american novelists . american landscape painters . venice, the island city . the wife in art . great american inventors . furniture and its makers . spain and gibraltar . historic spots of america . beautiful buildings of the world . game birds of america . the contest for north america . famous american sculptors . the conquest of the poles . napoleon . the mediterranean . angels in art . famous composers . egypt, the land of mystery . the revolution . famous english poets . makers of american art . the ruins of rome . makers of modern opera . dürer and holbein . vienna, the queen city . ancient athens . the barbizon painters . abraham lincoln . george washington . mexico . famous american women painters . the conquest of the air . court painters of france . holland . our feathered friends . glacier national park . michelangelo . american colonial furniture . american wild flowers . gothic architecture . the story of the rhine . shakespeare . american mural painters . celebrated animal characters . japan . the story of the french revolution . rugs and rug making . alaska . charles dickens . grecian masterpieces . fathers of the constitution . masters of the piano . american historic homes . beauty spots of india . etchers and etching . oliver cromwell . china . favorite trees . yellowstone national park . famous women writers of engl'd . painters of western life . china and pottery of our forefathers . the story of the american railroad . butterflies . the philippines . the louvre . william m. thackeray . grand canyon of arizona . architecture in american country homes . the story of the danube . animals in art . the holy land . john milton . joan of arc . furniture of the revolutionary period . the ring of the nibelung . the golden age of greece . chinese rugs . the war of . the national gallery, london . masters of the violin . american pioneer prose writers . old silver . shakespeare's country . historic gardens of new england . the weather . american poets of the soil . argentina . game animals of america . raphael . walter scott . the yosemite valley . john paul jones . russian music . chile . rembrandt . southern california: the land of sunshine . keeping time numbers to follow february . gems. _by esther singleton, author._ february . the orchestra. _by w. j. henderson, author and music critic._ the mentor association, inc. east th street, new york, n. y. [illustration: (decorative background)] the mentor little visits to the beauty spots of the world nothing is more broadening than travel. to see foreign lands, to study individual characters, their manners, their mode of living, means a wider appreciation of the world, a broadening of your view-point of life. these particular mentors, therefore, are extremely valuable. romantic ireland by dwight l. elmendorf scotland, the land of song and scenery by dwight l. elmendorf switzerland by dwight l. elmendorf spain and gibraltar by dwight l. elmendorf the mediterranean by dwight l. elmendorf paris, the incomparable by dwight l. elmendorf egypt, the land of mystery by dwight l. elmendorf holland by dwight l. elmendorf japan by dwight l. elmendorf beauty spots of india by dwight l. elmendorf china by dwight l. elmendorf the philippine islands by dean c. worcester the holy land by dwight l. elmendorf shakespeare's country by william winter _send at once for this travel set_ this set will be sent you upon receipt of request. they cost $ . . send no money, merely a post card indicating that you desire this travel set. a bill will follow in due course. address your request to secretary, the mentor association east nineteenth street . . new york city make the spare moment count transcriber's notes last page: changed "elmdneorf" to "elmendorf." (orig: china by dwight l. elmdneorf) page two: changed "amployment" to "employment." (orig: ample appreciation and amployment,) the history of modern painting [illustration: adolf von menzel. restaurant at the paris exhibition .] the history of modern painting by richard muther professor of art history at the university of breslau in four volumes [illustration] volume three revised edition continued by the author to the end of the xix century london: published by j. m. dent & co. new york: e. p. dutton & co. mcmvii contents page list of illustrations ix book iv (_continued_) the realistic painters and modern idealists (_continued_) chapter xxviii realism in england the mannerism of english historical painting: f. c. horsley, j. r. herbert, j. tenniel, e. m. ward, eastlake, edward armitage, and others.--the importance of ruskin.--beginning of the efforts at reform with william dyce and joseph noël paton.--the pre-raphaelites.--the battle against "beautiful form" and "beautiful tone."--holman hunt.--ford madox brown.--john everett millais and velasquez.--their pictures from modern life opposed to the anecdotic pictures of the elder _genre_ painters.--the scotch painter john phillip chapter xxix realism in germany why historical painting and the anecdotic picture could no longer take the central place in the life of german art after the changes of .--berlin: adolf menzel, a. v. werner, carl güssow, max michael.--vienna: august v. pettenkofen.--munich becomes once more a formative influence.--importance of the impetus given in the seventies to the artistic crafts, and how it afforded an incentive to an exhaustive study of the old colourists.--lorenz gedon, w. diez, e. harburger, w. loefftz, claus meyer, a. holmberg, fritz august kaulbach.--good painting takes the place of the well-told anecdote.--transition from the costume picture to the pure treatment of modern life.--franz lenbach.--the ramberg school.--victor müller brings into germany the knowledge of courbet.--wilhelm leibl chapter xxx the influence of the japanese the paris international exhibition of communicated to europe a knowledge of the japanese.--a sketch of the history of japanese painting.--the "society of the jinglar," and the influence of the japanese on the founders of impressionism chapter xxxi the impressionists impressionism is realism widened by the study of the _milieu_.--edouard manet, degas, renoir, camille pissarro, alfred sisley, claude monet.--the impressionist movement the final phase in the great battle of liberation for modern art chapter xxxii the new idealism in england rossetti and the new pre-raphaelites: edward burne-jones, r. spencer stanhope, william morris, j. m. strudwick, henry holliday, marie spartali-stillman.--w. b. richmond, walter crane, g. f. watts chapter xxxiii the new idealism in france and germany gustave moreau, puvis de chavannes, arnold boecklin, hans von marées.--the resuscitation of biblical painting.--review of previous efforts from the nazarenes to munkacsy, e. von gebhardt, menzel, and leibermann.--fritz von uhde.--other attempts: w. dürr, w. volz.--l. von hofmann, julius exter, franz stuck, max klinger book v a survey of european art at the present time introduction chapter xxxiv france bastien-lepage, l'hermitte, roll, raffaelli, de nittis, ferdinand heilbuth, albert aublet, jean béraud, ulysse butin, Édouard dantan, henri gervex, duez, friant, goeneutte, dagnan-bouveret.--the landscape painters: seurat, signac, anquetin, angrand, lucien pissarro, pointelin, jan monchablon, montenard, dauphin, rosset-granget, Émile barau, damoye, boudin, dumoulin, lebourg, victor binet, réné billotte.--the portrait painters: fantin-latour, jacques Émile blanche, boldini.--the draughtsmen: chéret, willette, forain, paul renouard, daniel vierge, cazin, eugène carrière, p. a. besnard, agache, aman-jean, m. denis, gandara, henri martin, louis picard, ary renan, odilon redon, carlos schwabe chapter xxxv spain from goya to fortuny.--mariano fortuny.--official efforts for the cultivation of historical painting.--influence of manet inconsiderable.--even in their pictures from modern life the spaniards remain followers of fortuny: francisco pradilla casado, vera, manuel ramirez, moreno carbonero, ricardo villodas, antonio casanova y estorach, benliure y gil, checa, francisco amerigo, viniegra y lasso, mas y fondevilla, alcazar tejeder, josé villegas, luis jimenez, martin rico, zamacois, raimundo de madrazo, francisco domingo, emilio sala y francés, antonio fabrés chapter xxxvi italy fortuny's influence on the italians, especially on the school of naples.--domenico morelli and his followers: f. p. michetti, edoardo dalbono, alceste campriani, giacomo di chirico, rubens santoro, edoardo toffano, giuseppe de nigris.--prominence of the costume picture.--venice: favretto, lonza.--florence: andreotti, conti, gelli, vinea.--the peculiar position of segantini.--otherwise anecdotic painting still preponderates.--chierici, rotta, vannuttelli, monteverde, tito.--reasons why the further development of modern art was generally completed not so much on latin as on germanic soil chapter xxxvii england general characteristic of english painting.--the offshoots of classicism: lord leighton, val prinsep, poynter, alma tadema.--japanese tendencies: albert moore.--the animal picture with antique surroundings: briton-rivière.--the old _genre_ painting remodelled in a naturalistic sense by george mason and frederick walker.--george h. boughton, philip h. calderon, marcus stone, g. d. leslie, p. g. morris, j. r. reid, frank holl.--the portrait painters: ouless, j. j. shannon, james sant, charles w. furse, hubert herkomer.--landscape painters.--zigzag development of english landscape painting.--the school of fontainebleau and french impressionism rose on the shoulders of constable and turner, whereas england, under the guidance of the pre-raphaelites, deviated in the opposite direction until prompted by france to return to the old path.--cecil lawson, james clarke hook, vicat cole, colin hunter, john brett, inchbold, leader, corbett, ernest parton, mark fisher, john white, alfred east, j. aumonier.--the sea painters: henry moore, w. l. wyllie.--the importance of venice to english painting: clara montalba, luke fildes, w. logsdail, henry woods.--french influences: dudley hardy, stott of oldham, stanhope forbes, j. w. waterhouse, byam shaw, g. e. moira, r. anning bell, maurice greiffenhagen, f. cayley robinson, eleanor brickdale bibliography list of illustrations plates in colour adolf von menzel: restaurant at the paris exhibition, _frontispiece_ millais: the vale of rest _facing_ p. degas: the ballet scene from _robert the devil_ " monet: a study " rossetti: the day-dream " burne-jones: the mill " l'hermitte: the pardon of plourin " raffaelli: the highroad to argenteuil " carriÈre: school-work " segantini: maternity " alma-tadema: the visit " colin hunter: their only harvest " in black and white page alma tadema, laurens. sappho aman-jean, edmond. sous la guerlanda an unknown master. harvesters resting ansdell, richard. a setter and grouse aumonier, m. j. the silver lining to the cloud bastien-lepage, jules. portrait of jules bastien-lepage portrait of his grandfather the flower girl sarah bernhardt mme. drouet the hay harvest le père jacques joan of arc the beggar the pond at damvillers the haymaker bell, r. anning. oberon and titania with their train , benliure y gil. a vision in the colosseum besnard, paul albert. evening portrait of mlles. d. boecklin, arnold. portrait of himself a villa by the sea a rocky chasm the penitent pan startling a goat-herd the herd venus despatching cupid flora in the trough of the waves the shepherd's plaint an idyll of the sea vita somnium breve the isle of the dead boldini, giovanni. giuseppe verdi boudin, eugÈne louis. the port of trouville boughton, george. green leaves among the sere snow in spring a breath of wind the bearers of the burden brangwyn. illustration to the rubáiyát of omar khayyám brown, ford madox. portrait of himself lear and cordelia romeo and juliet christ washing peter's feet the last of england work burne-jones, sir edward. chant d'amour the days of creation , circe pygmalion (the soul attains) perseus and andromeda the annunciation the enchantment of merlin the sea nymph the golden stairs the wood nymph butin, ulysse. portrait of ulysse butin the departure caldecott, randolph. the girl i left behind me carriÈre, eugÈne. motherhood casado del alisal. the bells of huesca cazin, jean charles. judith hagar and ishmael crane, walter. the chariots of the fleeting hours from _the tempest_ from _the tempest_ dagnan-bouveret, pascal adolphe jean. consecrated bread bretonnes au pardon the nuptial benediction dantan, edouard. a plaster cast from nature degas, hilaire germain edgard. the ballet in _don juan_ a ballet-dancer horses in a meadow dancing girl fastening her shoe diez, wilhelm. returning from market duez, ernest. on the cliff the end of october dyce, william. jacob and rachel eastlake, sir charles lock. christ blessing little children favretto, giacomo. on the piazzetta susanna and the elders fildes, luke. venetian women forain, j. l. at the folies-bergères forbes, stanhope. the lighthouse fortuny, mariano. portrait of mariano fortuny the spanish marriage (la vicaria) the trial of the model the snake charmers moors playing with a vulture the china vase at the gate of the seraglio furse, charles w. frontispiece to "stories and interludes" gervex. dr. péan at la salpétrière gÜssow, karl. the architect harunobu. a pair of lovers heilbuth, ferdinand. fine weather herkomer, hubert. john ruskin charterhouse chapel portrait of his father hard times the last muster found hiroshige. the bridge at yeddo a high road a landscape snowy weather hirth, rudolf du frÉnes. the hop harvest hokusai. hokusai in the costume of a japanese warrior women bathing fusiyama seen through a sail fusiyama seen through reeds an apparition hokusai sketching the peerless mountain holl, frank. "the lord gave, the lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the lord" leaving home ordered to the front hunt, william holman. the scapegoat the light of the world hunter, colin. the herring market at sea kaulbach, fritz august. the lute player kiyonaga. ladies boating korin. landscape rabbits lawson, cecil. the minister's garden leibl, wilhelm. portrait of wilhelm leibl in the studio the village politicians the new paper in church a peasant drinking in the peasant's cottage a tailor's workshop leighton, lord. portrait of lord leighton, p.r.a. captive andromache sir richard burton the last watch of hero the bath of psyche lenbach, franz. portrait of franz lenbach portrait of wilhelm i. portrait of prince bismarck the shepherd boy l'hermitte, lÉon. pay time in harvest portrait of léon l'hermitte manet, Édouard. portrait of Édouard manet the fifer the guitarero le bon bock a garden in rueil the fight between the "kearsarge" and "alabama" boating a bar at the folies bergères spring: jeanne mason, george hemming. the end of the day menzel, adolf. portrait of adolf menze from kugler's _history of friedrich the great_ the coronation of king wilhelm i. from kugler's _history of friedrich the great_ the damenstiftskirche at munich king wilhelm setting out to join the army the iron mill sunday in the tuileries gardens a levee meyer, claus. the smoking party michetti, francesco paolo. going to church the corpus domini procession at chieti millais, sir john everett. portrait of sir john everett millais lorenzo and isabella the north-west passage the huguenot autumn leaves the yeoman of the guard the right hon. w. e. gladstone yes or no mrs. bischoffsheim thomas carlyle monet, claude. portrait of claude monet monet's home at giverny morning on the seine a walk in grey weather the church at varangéville river scene the rocks at bell-isle hay-ricks a view of rouen moore, albert. portrait of albert moore midsummer companions yellow marguerites waiting to cross reading aloud moore, henry. mount's bay moreau, gustave. the young man and death orpheus design for enamel the plaint of the poet the apparition morelli, domenico. the temptation of st. anthony nittis, giuseppe de. paris races okio. a carp ouless, walter william. lord kelvin outamaro. mother's love paton, sir joseph noËl. the reconciliation of oberon and titania pettenkofen, august von. portrait of august von pettenkofen a woman spinning in the convent yard phillip, john. the letter-writer, seville spanish sisters pissarro, camille. sitting up rouen sydenham church pissarro, lucien. solitude ruth poynter, edward. idle fear the ides of march a visit to Æsculapius pradilla, francisco. the surrender of granada on the beach puvis de chavannes, pierre. portrait of pierre de chavannes a vision of antiquity the beheading of john the baptist the threadspinner the poor fisherman summer autumn raffaËlli, francisque jean. place st. sulpice the midday soup the carrier's cart paris, k. le chiffonier ramberg, arthur von. the meeting on the lake reid, john robertson. toil and pleasure renoir, firmin auguste. supper at bougival the woman with the fan fisher children by the sea the woman with the cat a private box the terrace robinson, f. cayley. a winter evening roll, alfred. the woman with a bull manda lamétrie, fermière rossetti, dante gabriel. portrait of dante gabriel rossetti beata beatrix monna rosa ecce ancilla domini sancta lilias astarte syriaca study for astarte syriaca dante's dream rosa triplex sir galahad mary magdalene at the house of simon the pharisee sant, james. the music lesson sisley, alfred. outskirts of a wood stanhope, r. spencer. the waters of lethe strudwick, j. m. elaine thy tuneful strings wake memories gentle music of a bygone day the ramparts of god's house the ten virgins tanyu. the god hoteï on a journey tito, ettore. the slipper seller toyokumi. nocturnal reverie villegas, josÉ. death of the matador walker, frederick. the bathers watts, george frederick. g. f. watts in his garden lady lindsay hope paolo and francesca love and death ariadne orpheus and eurydice artemis and endymion willette, adolfe. the golden age chapter xxviii realism in england the year was made famous by a momentous interruption in the quiet course of english art brought about by the pre-raphaelites. a movement, recalling the renaissance, laid hold of the spirit of painters. in all studios artists spoke a language which had never been heard there before; all great reputations were overthrown; the most celebrated cinquecentisti, whose names had hitherto been mentioned with respectful awe, were referred to with a shrug as bunglers. a miracle seemed to have taken place in the world, for the muse of painting was removed from the pedestal on which she had stood for three centuries and set up in triumph upon another. to understand fully the aims of pre-raphaelitism it is necessary to recall the character of the age which gave it birth. after english art had had its beginning with the great national masters and enjoyed a prime of real splendour, it became, about the middle of the nineteenth century, the prey to a tedious disease. a series of crude historical painters endeavoured to fathom the noble style of the italian cinquecento, without rising above the level of intelligent plagiarism. as brilliant decorative artists possessed of pomp and majesty, and sensuously affected by plastic beauty, as worshippers of the nude human form, and as modern greeks, the italian classic painters were the worst conceivable guides for a people who in every artistic achievement have pursued spiritual expression in preference to plastic beauty. but in spite of the experiences gained since the time of hogarth, they all went on the pilgrimage to rome, as to a sacred spring, drank their fill in long draughts, and came back poisoned. even wilkie, that charming "little master," who did the work of a pioneer so long as he followed the congenial flemish painters and the dutch, even wilkie lost every trace of individuality after seeing spain and italy. as this imitation of the high renaissance period led to forced and affected sentiment, it also developed an empty academical technique. in accordance with the precepts of the cinquecento, artists proceeded with an affected ease to make brief work of everything, contenting themselves with a superficial _façade_ effect. a painting based on dexterity of hand took the place of the religious study of nature, and a banal arrangement after celebrated models took the place of inward absorption. it was to no purpose that certain painters, such as _f. c. horsley_, _j. r. herbert_, _j. tenniel_, _edwin long_, _e. m. ward_, and _eastlake_, the english piloty, by imitation of the flemish and venetian masters, made more of a return from idealism of form to colour, and that _edwin armitage_, who had studied in paris and munich, introduced continental influences. they are the delaroche, gallait, and bièfve of england. their art was an imposing scene painting, their programme always that of the school of bologna--the mother of all academies, great and small--borrowing drawing from michael angelo and colour from titian; taking the best from every one, putting it all into a pot, and shaking it together. thus english art lost the peculiar national stamp which it had had under reynolds and gainsborough, constable and turner. it became an insignificant tributary of the false art which then held sway over the continent, insincere towards nature, full of empty rhetorical passion, and bound to the most vacant routine. and as the grand painting became hollow and mannered, _genre_ painting grew philistine and decrepit. its innocent childishness and conventional optimism had led to a tedious anecdotic painting. it repeated, like a talkative old man, the most insipid tales, and did so with a complacency that never wavered and with an unpleasant motley of colour. the english school still existed in landscape, but for everything else it was dead. a need for reform became urgent all the sooner because literature too had diverged into new lines. in poetry there was the influence of the lake poets wordsworth and coleridge, who had simplicity, direct feeling for nature, and a rousseau-like pantheism inscribed as a device upon their banner, and it came as a reaction against the dazzling imaginative fervour of those great and forceful men of genius byron and shelley. keats had again uttered the phrase which had before been shaftesbury's gospel: "beauty is truth, truth beauty." in the year john ruskin published the first volume of his _modern painters_, the æsthetic creed of which culminated in the tenet that nature alone could be the source of all true art. this transitional spirit, which strove for liberty from the academical yoke, though diffidently at first, is represented in painting by the scotch artist _william dyce_. in england he pursued, though undoubtedly with greater ability, a course parallel to that of the german nazarenes, whose faith he championed. born in , he had in italy, in the year , made the acquaintance of overbeck, who won him over to perugino and raphael. protesting against the histrionic emptiness of english historical painting, he took refuge with the quattrocentisti and the young raphael. his masterpiece, the westminster frescoes, with the arthurian legends as their subject, goes to some extent on parallel lines with schnorr's frescoes on the nibelungen myths. the representation of vigorous manhood and tempestuous heroism has been here attempted without sentimentality or theatrical heroics. in his oil pictures--madonnas, "bacchus nursed by the nymphs," "the woman of samaria," "christ in gethsemane," "st. john leading home the virgin," etc.--he makes a surprising effect by the graceful, sensuous charm of his women, by his exquisite landscapes and his tender idyllic characters. the charming work "jacob and rachel," which represents him in the hamburg kunsthalle, might be ascribed to führich, except that the developed feeling for colour bears witness to its english origin. with yearning the youth hastens to the maiden, who stands, leaning against the edge of the well, with her eyes cast down, half repulsing him in her austere chastity. [illustration: eastlake. christ blessing little children. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ dyce. jacob and rachel.] where the nazarenes obtain a pallid, corpse-like effect, a deep and luminous quality of colour delights one in his pictures. he is essentially graceful, and with this grace he combines the pure and quiet simplicity of the umbrian masters. there is something touching in certain of his madonnas, who, in long, clinging raiment, appeal to the godhead with arms half lifted, devout lips parted in prayer, and mild glances lost in infinity. a dreamy loveliness brings the heavenly figures nearer to us. dyce expresses the magic of downcast lids with long, dark lashes. like the umbrians, he delights in the elasticity of slender limbs and the chaste grace of blossoming maiden beauty. many german fresco painters have become celebrated who never achieved anything equal in artistic merit to the westminster pictures of dyce. yet he is to be reckoned with the flandrin-overbeck family, since he gives a repetition of the young raphael, though he certainly does it well; but he only imitates and has not improved upon him. the pictures of another scotchman, _sir joseph noël paton_, born in , appear at a rather later date. most of them--"the quarrel of oberon and titania," "the reconciliation of oberon and titania" in the edinburgh gallery, and his masterpiece, "the fairy queen"--have, from the æsthetic standpoint, little enjoyment to offer. the drawing is hard, the composition overladen, the colour scattered and motley. as in ary scheffer, all the figures have vapid, widely opened eyes. elves, gnomes, women, knights, and fantastic rocks are crowded so tightly together that the frame scarcely holds them. but the loving study of nature in the separate parts is extraordinary. it is possible to give a botanical definition of each plant and each flower in the foreground, with so much character and such care has paton executed every leaf and every blossom, even the tiny creeping things amid the meadow grass. here and there a fresh ray of morning sun breaks through the light green and leaps from blade to blade. the landscapes of albrecht altdorfer are recalled to mind. emancipation from empty, heroically impassioned emphasis, pantheistic adoration of nature, even a certain effort--unsuccessful indeed--after an independent sentiment for colour, are what his pictures seem to preach in their naïve angularity, their loving execution of detail, and their bright green motley. this was the mood of the young artists who united to form the pre-raphaelite group of . they were students at the royal academy of from twenty to four-and-twenty years of age. the first of the group, dante gabriel rossetti, had already written some of his poems. the second, holman hunt, had still a difficulty in overcoming the opposition of his father, who was not pleased to see him giving up a commercial career. john everett millais, the youngest, had made most progress as a painter, and was one of the best pupils at the academy. but they were contented neither by the artistic achievement of their teachers nor by the method of instruction. etty, the most valued of them all, according to the account of holman hunt, painted mythological pictures, full of empty affectation; mulready drew in a diluted fashion, and sacrificed everything to elegance; maclise had fallen into patriotic banalities; dyce had stopped short in his course and begun again when it was too late. thus they had of necessity to provide their own training for themselves. all three worked in the same studio; and it so happened that one day--in or --chance threw into their hands some engravings of benozzo gozzoli's campo-santo frescoes in pisa. nature and truth--everything which they had dimly surmised, and had missed in the productions of english art--here they were. overcome with admiration for the sparkling life, the intensity of feeling, and the vigorous form of these works, which did not even shrink from the consequences of ugliness, they were agreed in recognising that art had always stood on the basis of nature until the end of the fifteenth century, or, more exactly, until the year , when raphael left florence to paint in the vatican in rome. since then everything had gone wrong; art had stripped off the simple garment of natural truthfulness and fallen into conventional phrases, which in the course of centuries had become more and more empty and repellent by vapid repetition. was it necessary that the persons in pictures should, to the end of the world, stand and move just as they had done a thousand times in the works of the cinquecentisti? was it necessary that human emotions--love, boldness, remorse, and renunciation--should always be expressed by the same turn of the head, the same lift of the eyebrows, the same gesture of the arms, and the same folded hands, which came into vogue through the cinquecentisti? where in nature are the rounded forms which raphael, the first classicist, borrowed from the antique? and in the critical moments of life do people really form themselves into such carefully balanced groups, with the one who chances to have on the finest clothes in the centre? [illustration: _annan, photo._ paton. the reconciliation of oberon and titania.] from this reaction against the cinquecentisti and against the shallow imitation of them, the title pre-raphaelite brotherhood, and the secret, masonic sign p.r.b., which they added to their signatures upon their pictures, are rendered comprehensible. but whilst dyce, to avoid the cinquecentisti, imitated the quattrocentisti, the title here is only meant to signify that these artists, like the quattrocentisti, had determined to go back to the original source of real life. the academy pupils rossetti, millais, and holman hunt, together with the young sculptor thomas woolner, who had just left school, were at first the only members of the brotherhood. later the _genre_ painter james collinson, the painter and critic f. g. stephens, and rossetti's brother, william michael rossetti, were admitted to the alliance. [illustration: holman hunt. the scapegoat. (_by permission of messrs. henry graves & co., the owners of the copyright._)] boldly they declared war against all conventional rules, described themselves as beginners and their pictures as attempts, and announced themselves to be, at any rate, sincere. the programme of their school was truth; not imitation of the old masters, but strict and keen study of nature such as the old masters had practised themselves. they were in reaction against the superficial dexterity of technique and the beauty of form and intellectual emptiness to which the english historical picture had fallen victim; they were in reaction against the trivial banality which disfigured english _genre_ painting. in the representation of passion the true gestures of nature were to be rendered, without regard to grace and elegance, and without the stock properties of pantomime. the end for which they strove was to be true and not to create what was essentially untrue by a borrowed idealism which had an appearance of being sublime. in opposition to the negligent painting of the artists of their age, they demanded slavishly faithful imitation of the model by detail, carried out with microscopic exactness. nothing was to be done without reverence for nature; every part of a picture down to the smallest blade or leaf was to be directly painted from the original. even at the expense of total effect every picture was to be carried out in minutest detail. it was better to stammer than to make empty phrases. a young and vigorous art, such as had been in the fifteenth century, could win its way, as they believed, from this conception alone. in all these points, in the revolt against the emptiness of the _beauté suprême_ and the flowing lines of the accepted routine of composition, they were at one with courbet and millet. it was only in further developments that the french and english parted company; english realism received a specifically english tinge. since every form of classicism--for to this point they were led by the train of their ideas--declares the ideal completion of form, of physical presentment, to be its highest aim, the standard-bearers of realism were obliged to seek the highest aim of their art, founded exclusively on the study of nature, in the representation of moral and intellectual life, in a thoughtful form of spiritual creation. the blending of realism with profundity of ideas, of uncompromising truth to nature in form with philosophic and poetic substance, is of the very essence of the pre-raphaelites. they are transcendental naturalists, equally widely removed from classicism, which deals only with beautiful bodies, as from realism proper, which only proposes to represent a fragment of nature. from opposition to abstract beauty of form they insist upon what is characteristic, energetic, angular; but their figures painted faithfully from nature are the vehicles of a metaphysical idea. from the first they saturated themselves with poetry. holman hunt has an enthusiasm for keats and the bible, rossetti for dante, millais for the mediæval poems of chivalry. [illustration: holman hunt. the light of the world. (_by permission of mr. l. h. lefèvre, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: _mag. of art._ ford madox brown. portrait of himself. (_by permission of theodore watts dunton, esq., the owner of the picture._)] all three appeared before the public for the first time in the year . john millais and holman hunt exhibited in the royal academy, the one being represented by his "lorenzo and isabella," a subject drawn from keats, the other by his "rienzi." rossetti had his picture, "the girlhood of mary virgin," exhibited at the free exhibition, afterwards known as the portland gallery. all three works excited attention and also derision, and much shaking of heads. the three next works of --"a converted british family sheltering a christian missionary," by holman hunt; "the child jesus in the workshop of joseph the carpenter," by millais; and "the annunciation" by rossetti--were received with the same amused contempt. when they exhibited for the third time--holman hunt, a scene from _the two gentlemen of verona_; millais, "the return of the dove to the ark" and "the woodman's daughter"--such a storm of excitement broke forth that the pictures had to be removed from the exhibition. a furious article appeared in _the art journal_; the exhibitors, it was said, were certainly young, but they were too old to commit such sins of youth. even dickens turned against them in _household words_. the painters who had been assailed made their answer. william michael rossetti laid down the principles of the brotherhood by an article in a periodical called _the critic_, and smuggled a second article into _the spectator_. in they founded a monthly magazine for the defence of their theories, _the germ_, which on the third number took the title _art and poetry_, and was most charmingly embellished with drawings by holman hunt, madox brown, and others. stephens published an essay in it, on the ways and aims of the early italians, which gave him occasion to discuss the works recently produced in the spirit of simplicity known to these old masters. madox brown wrote a paper on historical painting, in which he asserted that the true basis of historical painting must be strict fidelity to the model, to the exclusion of all generalisation and beautifying, and exact antiquarian study of costumes and furniture in contradistinction to the fancy history of the elder painters. but all these articles were written to no purpose. after the fourth number the magazine was stopped, and in these days it has become a curiosity for bibliomaniacs. but support came from another side. holman hunt's picture dealing with a scene from shakespeare's _two gentlemen of verona_ received the most trenchant condemnation in _the times_. john ruskin came forward as his champion and replied on th may . _the times_ contained yet a second letter from him on th may. and soon afterwards both were issued as a pamphlet, with the title _pre-raphaelitism_, _its principles, and turner_. these works, he said, did not imitate old pictures, but nature; what alienated the public in them was their truth and rightness, which had broken abruptly and successfully with the conventional sweep of lines. [illustration: _mag. of art._ ford madox brown. lear and cordelia. (_by permission of albert wood, esq., the owner of the picture._)] _holman hunt_ is the painter who has been most consistent in clinging throughout his life to these original principles of the brotherhood. he is distinguished by a depth of thought which at last tends to become entirely elusive, and often a depth of spirit more profound than diver ever plumbed; but at the same time by an angular, gnarled realism which has scarcely its equal in all the european art of the century. "the flight of madeleine and porphyro," from keats' _eve of st. agnes_, was the first picture, the subject being borrowed in from his favourite poet. in the work through which he first acknowledged himself a member of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood he has given a plain and simple rendering of the scene in the introductory chapter of bulwer lytton's _rienzi_. he has chosen the moment when rienzi, kneeling beside the corpse of his brother, takes a vow of vengeance against the murderer who is riding away. the composition avoids any kind of conventional pyramidal structure. in the foreground every flower is painted and every colour is frankly set beside its neighbour without the traditional gradation. his third picture, "a converted british family sheltering a christian missionary," is not to be reckoned amongst his best performances. it is forced naïveté, suggesting the old masters, to unite two entirely different scenes upon the same canvas: in the background there are fugitives and pursuers, and a druid, merely visible by his outstretched arms, inciting the populace to the murder of a missionary; in the foreground a hut open on all sides, which could really offer no protection at all. yet in this hut a priest is hiding, tended by converted britons. however, the drawing of the nude bodies is an admirable piece of realism; admirable, also, is the way in which he has expressed the fear of the inmates, and the fanatical bloodthirsty rage of the pursuers, and this without any false heroics, without any rhetoric based upon the traditional language of gesture. the picture from shakespeare's _two gentlemen of verona_, with the motto, "death is a fearful thing, and shamed life a hateful," is perhaps theatrical in its arrangement, though it is likewise earnest and convincing in psychological expression. microscopic fidelity to nature, which formed the first principle in the programme of the brotherhood, has been carried in holman hunt to the highest possible point. every flower and every ear of corn, every feather and every blade of grass, every fragment of bark on the trees and every muscle, is painted with scrupulous accuracy. the joke made about the pre-raphaelites has reference to holman hunt: it was said that when they had to paint a landscape they used to bring to their studio a blade of grass, a leaf, and a piece of bark, and they multiplied them microscopically so many thousand times until the landscape was finished. his works are a triumph of industry, and for that very reason they are not a pleasure to the eye. a petty, pedantic fidelity to nature injures the total effect, and the hard colours--pungent green, vivid yellow, glaring blue, and glowing red--which holman hunt places immediately beside each other, give his pictures something brusque, barbaric, and jarring. but as a reaction against a system of painting by routine, which had become mannered, such truth without all compromise, such painstaking effort at the utmost possible fidelity to nature, was, in its very harshness, of epoch-making significance. with regard, also, to the transcendental purport of his pictures holman hunt is perhaps the most genuine of the group. in the whole history of art there are no religious pictures in which uncompromising naturalism has made so remarkable an alliance with a pietistic depth of ideas. the first, which he sent to the exhibition of , "the light of the world," represents christ wandering through the night in a gold-embroidered mantle, with a lantern in his hand, like a divine diogenes seeking men. taine, who studied the picture impartially without the catalogue, describes it, without further addition, as "christ by night with a lantern." but for holman hunt the meaning is christianity illuminating the universe with the mystic light of faith and seeking admission at the long-closed door of unbelief. it was because of this implicit suggestion that the work made an indescribable sensation in england; it had to go on pilgrimage from town to town, and hundreds of thousands of copies of the engraving were sold. the pietistic feeling of this ascetic preacher was so strong that he was able to venture on pictures like "the scapegoat" of without becoming comical. [illustration: _cassell & co._ ford madox brown. romeo and juliet.] [illustration: ford madox brown. christ washing peter's feet.] a striving to attain the greatest possible local truth had led holman hunt to the east when he began these biblical pictures. he spent several years in palestine studying the topographical character of the land, its buildings and its people, and endeavoured with the help of these actual men and women and these landscape scenes to reconstruct the events of biblical history with antiquarian fidelity. to paint "the shadow of death" he searched in the east until he discovered a jew who corresponded to his idea of christ, and painted him, a strong, powerful man, the genuine son of a carpenter, with that astounding truth to nature with which hubert van eyck painted his adam. even the hairs of the breast and legs are as faithfully rendered as if one saw the model in a glass. near this naked carpenter--for he is clothed only with a leather apron--there kneels a modern eastern woman, bowed over a chest, in which various oriental vessels are lying. the ground is covered with shavings of wood. up to this point, therefore, it is a naturalistic picture from the modern east. but here holman hunt's pietistic sentiment is seen: it is the eve of a festival; the sun casts its last dying rays into the room; the journeyman carpenter wearily stretches out his arms, and the shadow of his body describes upon the wall the prophetic form of the cross. another picture represented the discovery of our lord in the temple, a third the flock which has been astray following the good shepherd into his father's fold. on his picture of the flight into egypt, or, as he has himself called it, "the triumph of the innocents," he published a pamphlet of twelve pages, in which he goes into all the historical events connected with the picture with the loyalty of an historian; he discusses everything--in what month the flight took place, and by what route, how old christ was, to what race the ass belonged, and what clothes were worn by saint joseph and mary. one might be forgiven for thinking such a production the absurd effusion of a whimsical pedant were it not that hunt is so grimly in earnest in everything he does. in spite of all his peculiarities it must be admitted that he gave a deep and earnest religious character to english art, which before his time had been so paltry; and this explains the powerful impression which he made upon his contemporaries. the artist most closely allied to him in technique is _ford madox brown_, who did not reckon himself officially with the pre-raphaelites, though he followed the same principles in what concerned the treatment of detail. only a little senior to the founders of the brotherhood--he was nine-and-twenty at the time--he is to be regarded as their more mature ally and forerunner. rossetti was under no illusion when, in the beginning of his studies, he turned to him directly. in those years madox brown was the only english painter who was not addicted to the trivialities of paltry _genre_ painting or the theatrical heroics of traditional history. he is a bold artist, with a gift of dramatic force and a very rare capacity of concentration, and these qualities hindered him from following the doctrine of the pre-raphaelites in all its consequences. if he had, in accordance with their programme, exclusively confined himself to work from the living model, several of his most striking and powerful pictures would never have been painted. [illustration: sir john everett millais.] [illustration: _cassell & co._ millais. lorenzo and isabella.] [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ millais. the north-west passage.] madox brown passed his youth on the continent--in antwerp with wappers, in paris, and in rome. the pictures which he painted there in the beginning of the forties were produced, as regards technique, under the influence of wappers. the subjects were taken from byron: "the sleep of parisina" and "manfred on the jungfrau." it is only in the latter that an independent initiative is perceptible. in contradistinction from the generalities of the school of wappers he aimed at greater depth of psychology and accuracy of costume, while at the same time he endeavoured, though without success, to replace the conventional studio light by the carefully observed effect of free light. these three things--truth of colour, of spiritual expression, and of historical character--were from this time forth his principal care. and when his cartoon of "harold," painted in paris in the year , was exhibited in westminster hall, it was chiefly this scrupulous effort at truth which made such a vivid impression upon the younger generation. in the first masterpiece which he painted after his return to london in he stands out already in all his rugged individuality. "lear and cordelia," founded on a most tragic passage in the most tragic of the great dramas of shakespeare, is here treated with impressive cogency. it stood in such abrupt opposition to the traditional historical painting that perhaps nothing was ever so sharply opposed to anything so universally accepted. the figures stand out stiff and parti-coloured like card kings, without fluency of line or rounded and generalised beauty. and the colouring is just as incoherent. the brown sauce, which every one had hitherto respected like a binding social law, had given way to a bright joy of colour, the half-barbaric motley which one finds in old miniatures. it is only when one studies the brilliant details, used merely in the service of a great psychological effect, that this outwardly repellent picture takes shape as a powerful work of art, a work of profound human truth. nothing is sacrificed to pose, graceful show, or histrionic affectation. like the german masters of the fifteenth century, madox brown makes no attempt to dilute what is ugly, nor did holbein either when he painted the leprous beggars in his "altar to st. sebastian." every figure, whether fair or foul, is, in bearing, expression, and gesture, a character of robust and rigorous hardihood, and has that intense fulness of life which is compressed in those carved wooden figures of mediæval altars: the aged lear with his weather-beaten face and his waving beard; the envious regan; the cold, cruel, ambitious goneril; albany, with his fair, inexpressive head; the gross, brutal cornwall; burgundy, biting his nails in indecision; and cordelia, in her touching, bashful grace. and to this angular frankness of the primitive masters he unites the profound learning of the modern historian. all the archæological details, the old british costumes, jewels, modes of wearing the hair, weapons, furniture, and hangings, have been studied with the accuracy of menzel. he knows nothing of the academic rules of composition, and his robes fall naturally without the petty appendage of fair folds and graceful motives. [illustration: millais. the huguenot.] the picture in which he treated the balcony scene in shakespeare's _romeo and juliet_ is outwardly repellent, like "lear and cordelia," but what a hollow effect is made by makart's theatrical heroics beside this aboriginal sensuousness, this intensity of expression! juliet's dress has fallen from her shoulders, and, devoid of will and thought, with closed lids, half-naked, and thrilling in every fibre with the lingering joy of the hours that have passed, she abandons herself to the last fiery embraces of romeo, who in stormy haste is feeling with one foot for the ladder of ropes. he has solved a yet more difficult problem in the picture "elijah and the widow." [illustration: _brothers, photo._ millais. autumn leaves.] "see, thy son liveth," are the words in the bible with which the hoary elijah brings the boy, raised from death and still enveloped in his shroud, to the agonised mother kneeling at the foot of the sepulchre. the woman makes answer: "now by this i know that thou art a man of god." in the embodiment of this scene likewise madox brown has aimed in costume and accessories at a complete harmony between the figures and the character of the epoch, and has set out with an entirely accurate study of assyrian and egyptian monuments. even the inscription on the wall and the egyptian antiquities correspond to ancient originals. at the same time the figures have been given the breath of new life. elijah looks more like a wild aboriginal man than a saint of the cinquecento. the ecstasy of the mother, the astonishment of the child whose great eyes, still unaccustomed to the light, gaze into the world again with a dreamy effort, after having beheld the mysteries of death--these are things depicted with an astonishing power. the downright but convincing method in which hogarth paints the soul has dislodged the hollow, heroical ideal of beauty of the older historical painting. madox brown's confession of faith, which he formulated as an author, culminates in the tenet that truth is the means of art, its end being the quickening of the soul. this he expresses in two words: "emotional truth." while holman hunt and madox brown held fast throughout their lives to the pre-raphaelite principles, pre-raphaelitism was for _john everett millais_, the youngest of the three, merely a transitory phase, a stage in his artistic development. sir john millais was born th june , in southampton, where his family had come from jersey. thus he is half a frenchman by descent. his childhood was passed in dinant in brittany, but when he was nine years old he went to a london school of drawing. he was then the little fair-haired boy in a holland blouse, a broad sash, and a large sailor's collar, whom john phillip painted in those days. when eleven he entered the royal academy, probably being the youngest pupil there; at thirteen he won a prize medal for the best drawing from the antique; at fifteen he was already painting; and at seventeen he exhibited an historical picture, "pizarro seizing the inca of peru," which was praised by the critics as the best in the exhibition of . with "elgiva," a work exhibited in , this first period, in which he followed the lines of the now forgotten painter hilton, was brought to an end. his next work, "lorenzo and isabella," now in the walker art gallery in liverpool, bore the letters p.r.b., as a sign of his new confession of faith. microscopically exact work in detail has taken the place of the large bravura and the empty imitation of the cinquecentisti. the theme was borrowed from one of boccaccio's tales, _the pot of basil_--the tale on which keats founded _isabella_. a company of florentines in the costume of the thirteenth century are assembled at dinner. lorenzo, pale and in suppressed excitement, sits beside the lovely isabella, looking at her with a glance of deep, consuming passion. isabella's brother, angered at it, gives a kick to her dog. all the persons at the table are likenesses. the critic f. g. stephens sat for the beloved of isabella, and dante gabriel rossetti for the toper holding his glass to his lips at the far right of the table. even the ornaments upon the damask cloth, the screen, and the tapestry in the background are painted, stroke after stroke, with the conscientious devotion of a primitive painter. jan van eyck's brilliancy of colour is united to perugino's suavity of feeling, and the chivalrous spirit of the _decameron_ seized with the sureness of a subtle literary scholar. [illustration: _l'art._ millais. the yeoman of the guard.] the work of , "the child jesus in the workshop of joseph the carpenter," illustrated a verse in the bible (zechariah xiii. ): "and one shall say unto him, what are these wounds in thine hands? then he shall answer, those with which i was wounded in the house of my friends." the child jesus, who is standing before the joiner's bench, has hurt himself in the hand. st. joseph is leaning over to look at the wound, and mary is kneeling beside the child, trying to console him with her caresses, whilst the little st. john is bringing water in a wooden vessel. upon the other side of the bench stands the aged anna, in the act of drawing out of the wood the nail which has caused the injury. a workman is labouring busily at the joiner's bench. the floor of the workshop is littered with shavings, and tools hang round upon the walls. the quattrocentisti were likewise the determining influence in the treatment of this subject. ascetic austerity has taken the place of ideal draperies, and angularity that of the noble flow of line. the figure of mary, who, with her yellow kerchief, resembled the wife of a london citizen, was the cause of special offence. [illustration: _mag. of art._ millais. the right hon. w. e. gladstone. (_by permission of messrs. thomas agnew & co., the owners of the copyright._)] [illustration: _cassell & co._ millais. yes or no?] [illustration: _l'art._ millais. mrs. bischoffsheim. (_by permission of mrs. bischoffsheim, the owner of the picture._)] up to the seventies millais continued to paint such pictures out of the bible, or from english and mediæval poets, with varying success. one of them, which in its brilliant colouring looked like an old picture upon glass, represented the return of the dove to noah's ark. the central point was formed by two slender young women in mediæval costume, who received the exhausted bird in their delicate hands. the picture, "the woodman's daughter," was an illustration to a poem by coventry patmore, on the love of a young noble for a poor child of the wood. in a semicircular picture of he painted ophelia as she floats singing in the green pool where the white water-lilies cover her like mortuary wreaths--floats with her parted lips flickering with a gentle smile of distraction. the other picture of this year, "the huguenot," represented two lovers taking leave of each other in an old park upon the eve of st. bartholomew. she is winding a white scarf round his arm to save him from death by this badge of the catholics, whilst he is gently resisting. the mood of the man standing before the dark gate of death, the moral strength which vanquishes his fear, and all the solemnity of his farewell to life are expressed in his glance. a world of love rests in the eyes of the woman. millais has often treated this problem of the loving woman with earnest and almost sombre realism, that knows no touch of swooning sentimentality. "the order of release" of shows a jailor in the scarlet uniform of the eighteenth century opening a heavy prison door to set at liberty a highlander, whose release has been obtained by his wife. a scene from the seventeenth century is treated in "the proscribed royalist": a noble cavalier, hidden in a hollow tree, is kissing the hand of a graceful, trembling woman, who has been daily bringing him food at the risk of her life. "the black brunswicker" of closed this series of silent and motionless dramas. in the picture of , "sir isumbras at the ford," an old knight is riding home through the twilight of a sultry day in june. the dust of the journey lies upon his golden armour. at a ford he has fallen in with two children, and has lifted them up to carry them over the water. and "the vale of rest," a picture deep and intense in its scheme of colour, earnest and melancholy as a requiem, revealed--with a sentiment a little like that of lessing--a cloister garden where two nuns are silently preparing a grave in the evening light; while "the eve of saint agnes" in illustrated the same poem of keats to which ten years previously holman hunt had devoted his work of early years. madeleine has heard the old legend, telling how girls receive the tender homage of their future husbands if they go through their evening prayer supperless at midnight. with her heart filled with the thoughts of love she quits the hall where the guests are seated at a merry feast, and mounts to her room so hastily that her thin taper is extinguished on the way. she enters her little chamber, kneels down, repeats the prayer, and rises to her feet, taking off her finery and loosening her hair. the clear moonlight streams through the window, throwing a ghostly illumination over the little images of saints in the room, falling like a caress upon the tender young breast of the girl, playing upon her folded hands, and touching her long, fair hair with a radiance like a vaporous glory. in the shadow of the bed she sees him whom she loves. motionless, as in a dream, she stands, nor ventures to turn lest the fair vision should vanish. "the deliverance of a heretic condemned to the stake," "joan of arc," "cinderella," "the last rose," that dreamy picture of romantic grace, "the childhood of sir walter raleigh," and the picture of the hoary moses, supported by hur and aaron, watching from the mountain-top the victory of joshua, were the principal works achieved in the later years of the master. but when these pictures were executed england had become accustomed to honour millais, not as a pre-raphaelite, but as her greatest portrait painter. [illustration: millais. thomas carlyle.] his portrait of himself explains this transformation. with his white linen jacket and his fresh sunburnt face sir john millais does not look in the least like a "romanticist," scarcely like a painter; he has rather the air of being a wealthy landowner. he was a man of a sound and straightforward nature, a great and energetic master, conscious of his aim, but a poet in ruskin's sense of the word is what he has never been. his pre-raphaelitism was only a flirtation. his methods of thought were too concrete, his hand too powerful, for him to have lingered always in the world of the english poets, or endured the precise style of the pre-raphaelites. "millais will 'go far' if he will only change his boots," about had written on the occasion of the world exhibition of ; when that of was opened millais appeared in absolutely new shoes. the great exhibition of in manchester, which made known for the first time how many of the works of velasquez were hidden in english private collections, had helped millais to the knowledge of himself. from the naturalism of the quattrocentisti he made a transition to the naturalism of velasquez. millais was a born portrait painter. his cool and yet finely sensitive nature, his simple, manly temperament, directed him to this department, which rather gravitates to the observant and imitative than to the creative pole of art. in his pictures he has the secret of enchanting and of repelling; he has arrived at really definite issues in portrait painting. his likenesses are all of them as convincing as they are actual. together with the venetians and with velasquez, millais belongs to the master spirits of the grand style, which relies upon the large movement of lines, in figure and in face, upon the broad foundation of surfaces, and the strict subordination of individual details. his figures are characteristic and recognisable even in outline. he makes no effort to render them interesting by picturesque attitudes, or to vivify them by placing them in any situation. there they stand calm, and sometimes stiff and cold; they make no attempt at conversation with the spectator, nor come out of themselves, as it were, but fix their eyes upon him with an air of well-bred composure and indifference. even the hands are not made use of for characterisation. [illustration: _cassell & co._ millais. the vale of rest.] the extraordinary intensity of life which sparkles in his great figures, so simply displayed, is almost exclusively concentrated in the heads. millais is perhaps the first master of characterisation amongst the moderns. to bold and powerful exposition there is united a noble and psychical gaze. the eyes which he paints are like windows through which the soul is visible. [illustration: _mag. of art._ ford madox brown. the last of england.] amongst his portraits of men, those of gladstone and hook stand in the first rank: as paintings perhaps they are not specially eminent; both have an opaque, sooty tone, from which millais' works not unfrequently suffer, but as a definition of complex personalities they are comparable only with the best pictures of lenbach. how firmly does the statesman hold himself, despite his age, the old tree-feller, the stern idealist, a genuine english figure chiselled out of hard wood. the play of light centres all the interest on the fine, earnest, and puckered features, the lofty forehead, the energetic chin, and the liquid, thoughtful eyes. all the biography of gladstone lies in this picture, which is simpler and greater in intuition than that which lenbach painted of him. hook, with his broad face, furrowed with wrinkles, looks like an apostle or a fisher. millais has looked into the heart of this man, who has in him something rugged and faithful, massive and tender; the painter of vigorous fishermen and vaporous sunbeams. hook's landscapes have a forceful, earnest, and well-nigh religious effect, and something patriarchal and biblical lies in his gentle, reflective, and contemplative glance. in his portrait of the duke of westminster, painted in , millais depicts him in hunting dress, red coat, white corduroys, and high, flexible boots, as he stands and buttons on his glove. the same year "the yeoman of the guard" was exhibited in paris--the old type of discipline and loyalty, who sits there in his deep red uniform, with features cast in bronze, like a velasquez of . disraeli, cardinal newman, john bright, lord salisbury, charles waring, sir henry irving, the marquis of lorne, and simon fraser are all worthy descendants of the eminent men whom reynolds painted a century before. the plastic effect of the figures is increased by the vacant, neutral ground of the picture. like velasquez, millais has made use of every possible background, from the simplest, from the nullity of an almost black or bright surface, to richly furnished rooms and views of landscape. sometimes it is only indicated by a plain chair or table that the figure is standing in a room, or a heavy crimson curtain falls to serve as a _repoussoir_ for the head. with a noble abstention he avoids prettiness of line and insipid motives, and remains true to this virile taste even in his portraits of women. his women have curiously little of the æsthetical trait which runs elsewhere through english portraits of ladies. millais renders them--as in the picture "dummy whist"--neither sweet nor tender, gives them nothing arch, sprightly, nor triumphant. severe and sculptural in their mien, and full of character rather than beauty, proud in bearing and upright in pose, their serious, energetic features betray decision of character; and the glance of their brown eyes--eyes like juno's--is indifferent and almost hard. a straight and liberal forehead, a beautifully formed and very determined mouth, and a full, round chin complete this impression of earnest dignity, august majesty, and chilling pride. to this regular avoidance of every trace of available charm there is joined a strict taste in toilette. he prefers to work with dark or subdued contrasts of colour, and he is also fond of large-flowered silks--black with citron-yellow and black with dark red. [illustration: _mag. of art._ ford madox brown. work. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] and this same stringent painter of character commands, as few others, the soft light brush of a painter of children. no one since reynolds and gainsborough has painted with so much character as millais the dazzling freshness of english youth; the energetic pose of a boy's head or the beauty of an english girl--a thing which stands in the world alone: the soft, glancing, silken locks, rippling to a _blonde cendrée_, pale, delicate little faces, pouting little mouths, and great, shining blue, dreamy, childish eyes. sometimes they stand in rose-coloured dresses embroidered with silver in front of a deep green curtain, or sit reading upon a dark red carpet flowered with black. at other times they are arrayed like the little infantas of velasquez, and play with a spaniel like the doge's children of titian, or hold out with both hands an apron full of flowers, which millais paints with a high degree of finish. a spray of pale red roses, chrysanthemums, or lilies stands near. one must be a great master of characterisation to paint conscious, dignified, and earnest feminine beauty like that of mrs. bischoffsheim, and at the same time that fragrant perfume of the fresh and dewy spring of youth which breathes from millais' pictures of children. [illustration: phillip. the letter-writer, seville.] millais is one of those men in the history of nineteenth-century painting who are as forcible and healthy as they are many-sided. i do not know one who could have developed so swiftly from a style of the most minute exactness to one of the most powerful breadth; not one who could have united such poetry of conception with such an enormous knowledge of human beings; not one who could have been so like proteus in variety--at one moment charming, at another dreamy, at another entirely positive. in their firm structure and largeness of manner his landscapes sometimes recall théodore rousseau. and now the pre-raphaelite is just a little evident in an excess of detail. he paints every blade of grass and every small plant, though there is at the same time a largeness in the midst of this scrupulous exactitude. he does not merely see the isolated fact through a magnifying lens, but has eyes that are sensitive to the poetry of the whole, and in spite of all study of detail he sometimes reaches a total effect which is altogether impressionist. his picture "chill october" has an airy life, a grey, vibrating atmosphere, such as only john constable painted elsewhere. such a concrete study of nature as was made by the pre-raphaelites of necessity led at last to entirely realistic pictures from modern life. in their biblical and poetic pictures they had started from the conviction that new life-blood could only be poured into the old conventional types, which had gradually become meaningless by tactfully drawing the models for them from popular life. they believed, as the masters of florence and bruges had done before them, that there could be no good painting without strict dependence on the model; that it was of the utmost importance to give a poetic or legendary figure the stamp of nature, the strong savour of individuality. all their creations are based upon the elements of portrait painting, even when they illustrate remote scenes from the new testament or from mediæval poetry. and these elements at last led them altogether to give up transposing such figures into an alien _milieu_, and simply to paint what was offered by their own surroundings. in this way they reached the goal which was arrived at in french painting through courbet and ribot. it is due in the first place to the pre-raphaelites that the well-meant and moderately painted _genre_ picture of the old style, which, with its wealth of pathetic stories, was once a prime source of supposed artistic pleasure, was finally vanquished in england, and made way for earnest and vigorous painting,--painting which sought to make its effect by purely artistic means, and proudly declined attempt to conceal intrinsic weakness in "interesting" subject drawn from external sources. as early as millais exhibited a picture in the royal academy which ruskin called a truly great work containing the elements of immortality--"the rescue." it represented a fireman who has carried three children from a burning house and laid them in the arms of their parents. narrative purport was entirely renounced. the fireman was treated without sentimentality, and in a way that suggested the cool fulfilment of a duty, and the agitation of the parents was also rendered without any dash of melodrama. then there followed that masterpiece of exquisite and soft colouring, tender and moving expression, and infinite grace, "the gambler's wife," sadly taking up the cards which have brought her misery upon her. in was painted "the north-west passage," a sort of modern symbol of the forceful, enterprising english people who have populated and subdued half the world from their little island kingdom. "there is a passage to the pole, and england will find it--must find it." these are more or less the words spoken by trelawney, the old friend and comrade of byron in greece. with a chart before him he is brooding over the plan of the north-west passage, and upon his own outstretched hand, which would fain hold the future in its grasp, the hand of a youthful woman is soothingly laid, as she sits at his feet reading to him the narrative of the last voyage of discovery. the figure of the seaman with his white beard has a strong, sinewy life, and the broad daylight streams through the room, filled with charts and atlases. the sea and clear, bright sky gleam through the open window. it is a powerful and moving picture, one of those modern creations in which the ideas of the nineteenth century are concentrated with simplicity and a renunciation of all hollow emphasis. [illustration: phillip. spanish sisters.] a few pictures of modern life which have nothing in common with the older _genre_ painting may even be found among the works of the devotionalist holman hunt. "awakened conscience," according to the explanation of the painter, tells the story of a young woman seduced by a cruel and light-minded man, and kept in a luxurious little country-house. they are together. seated at the piano he is playing the old melody "oft in the stilly night," and the strains of the song recall to the frail maiden her youth, and the years of purity and innocence. thus even hunt has not overcome the moralising tendencies of hogarth, though his taste is more discreet and delicate. he has struck deeper chords of thought than the english public had heard before. and in particular the painting is not a mere substratum for the story; it has become the principal thing, and the story subsidiary. in another picture, "may morning on magdalen tower," he renounced all deeper purpose altogether, and merely painted a number of oxford dons and students, who, in accordance with the old custom, usher in the may with a hymn from the college tower. but the most remarkable work of this description has been executed by madox brown, the english menzel, who has not merely reconstructed the environment of past ages with the accuracy of an eye-witness, but has looked upon the drama of modern life as an attentive observer. his first picture, "the last of england," was executed in the june of , at a time when emigration to america began to take serious proportions. a married couple, humble, middle-class people, are sitting on the deck of a ship. the man, in his thick cloth overcoat, with a soft felt hat on his head, a pale face, and sunken eyes with dark rings underneath, casts one more look upon his native-land, which vanishes in the hazy distance, as he thinks bitterly of lost hopes and vain struggles. but the young wife, in a light-coloured cloak and a pretty round bonnet with wide strings, gazes before her with gentle resignation, from underneath a great umbrella protecting her from the boisterous sea-wind. in "work," begun at the same period, and finished, after various interruptions, in , he has produced the first modern picture of artisans after courbet's "stone-breakers." the painter, who was then living in hampstead, where extensive cuttings were being made for the laying down of gas-pipes, daily saw the english artisan at labour in all his thick-set strength. this gave him the theme for his picture. in bright daylight on a glaring summer afternoon artisans are digging a trench for gas-pipes in a busy street. women and poor children are standing near. even the older _genre_ artists had painted men in their working blouses, but only joking and making merry, never at work. like stage-managers who are sure of their public, they always set the same troop of puppets dancing. madox brown's artisans are robust and raw-boned figures; where the older artists affected to be witty with their _genre_ painting, madox brown painted straightforwardly, without humour and without making his figures beautiful. the composition of his pictures is just as plain. no one poses, no one makes impassioned gestures, no one thinks of grouping himself with his neighbour in fine flowing lines. it is pleasant to think that this powerful symbol of work has passed by presentation into the possession of one of the greatest manufacturing towns in england, into the gallery of manchester. [illustration: r. ansdell. a setter and grouse.] a scotchman, born in aberdeen, _john phillip_ was the vigorous abettor of the pre-raphaelites in these realistic endeavours. he, too, was a painter in the full meaning of the word, and he has therefore left works with which the future will have to reckon. velasquez had opened his eyes as he had opened those of millais. when phillip went to spain in , he was not the first who had trod the museo del prado. wilkie had painted in spain before him, and ansdell had been busy there at the same time. but no one had been able to grasp in any degree the impressive majesty of the old spanish painters. john phillip alone gained something of the _verve_ of velasquez, a broad, virile technique which distinguishes him from all his english contemporaries. the impression received from his pictures is one of opulence, depth, and weight; they unite something of the strength of velasquez to a more venetian splendour of colour. the streets of seville, the spanish port on the guadalquivir, the town where velasquez and murillo were born, were his chief field of study. here he saw those market-women, black as mulattoes and sturdy as grenadiers, who sit in front of their fruit-baskets under a great umbrella, and those water-carriers with sunburnt visages, strongly built chests, and athletic arms. after he had returned to scotland he occasionally painted pictures of ceremonies, "the house of commons," "the wedding of the princess royal," and so forth, but he soon returned to subjects from spanish life. gipsy-looking, cigarette-smoking women, with sparkling eyes and jet-black hair, young folks dancing to the castanets, bull-fighters with glittering silver-grey costume and flashing glances, dark-brown peasants in citron-yellow petticoats, hollow-eyed manufactory girls, potters, and glass-blowers.--such are the materials of phillip's pictures. they give no scope to anecdote; but they always reveal a fragment of reality which emits a world of impressions and an opulence of artistic ability. as painter _par excellence_, john phillip stands in opposition to older english _genre_ painters. whilst they were, in the first place, at pains to tell a story intelligibly, phillip was a colourist, a _maître peintre_, whose figures were developed from the colours, and whose creations are so full of character that they will always assert their place with the best that has ever been painted. even in england, the country of literary and narrative painting, art was no longer an instrument for expressing ideas; it had become an end in itself, and had discovered colour as its prime and most essential medium of expression. chapter xxix realism in germany in germany the realistic movement was carried out in much the same way as in france, though it came into action two decades after its french original. here also it was recognised that the well-meant but badly painted anecdote must give way to the well-painted picture: and if we inquire who it was that gave to germany the first serious paintings inspired by the modern spirit the reply, without hesitation, must be adolf menzel. the pioneering work of this great little man, who for fifty years had embodied in their typical perfection all phases of german art, is something fabulous: the greatest and, one might almost say, the only historical painter of bygone epochs, the only one who knew a previous period so intimately that he could venture on painting it, was also the leader of the great movement which, in the seventies, aimed at the representation of our own life. his first appearance was in the time when the proud titan cornelius sought to take heaven by storm. little menzel was no titan in those days; he seems in that generation like one bound to the earth, yet he belonged to the cyclopean race. he was a mighty architect with the powers of a giant; and this uncouth cyclops rough-hewed and chiselled the blocks, and, fitting each in its place, raised an edifice to as lofty a height as the romanticists had reached on the perilous wings of icarus. having been first the draughtsman and then the painter of frederick the great, he gave up history after finishing the picture of the battle of hochkirch: his talent was too modern, too much set upon what was concrete, to admit of its being given full scope to the end by constructive work from a _milieu_ that was not his own. until his fortieth year he had celebrated the glorious past of his country. when, with the death of friedrich wilhelm iv, a great and decisive turn was given to the politics of the prussian state--one which put an end to the stagnation of civil life in prussia and germany, and ushered in a new and brilliant period for the realm and the heirs of friedrich--the painter of friedrich the great became the painter of the new realm. after he had already, in the first half of the century, placed reality on the throne of art in the place of rhetoric and a vague ideal, he went one step further in the direction of keen and direct observation, and now painted what he saw around him--the stream of palpitating life. "the coronation of king wilhelm at königsberg" is the great and triumphant title-page to this section of his art. the effects of light, the red tones of the uniforms, the shimmering white silk dresses, the surging of the mass of people, the perfect ease with which all the personages are individualised, the princes, the ministers, the ambassadors, the men of learning, the instantaneousness in the movement of the figures, the absolutely unforced and yet subtle and pictorial composition, render this painting no picture of ceremonies, in the traditional sense of the phrase, but a work of art at once intimate and august in the impression which it makes. in the picture "king wilhelm setting out to join the army"--the representation of the thrilling moment, on the afternoon of st july , when the king drove along the linden avenue to the railway station--this phase, which he began with the coronation picture, was brought to a close. everything surges and moves, speaks and breathes, and glows with the palpitating life which vibrates through all in this moment of patriotic excitement. but the painter's course led him further. [illustration: adolf menzel.] he first became entirely menzel when he made the discovery of toiling humanity. in , in the year of the world exhibition, he came to paris and became acquainted with meissonier and stevens. with meissonier in particular--whose portrait he painted--he entered into a close friendship, and it was curious afterwards to see the two together at exhibitions--the little figure of menzel with his gigantic bald forehead and the little figure of meissonier with his gigantic beard, a cyclops and a gnome, two kings in the realm of liliput, of whom one was unable to speak a word of german and the other unable to speak a word of french, although they had need merely of a look, a shrug, or a movement of the hand to understand each other entirely. he also came into the society of courbet, who had just made the famous separate exhibition of his works, at the café lamartine, in the company of heilbuth, meyerheim, knaus, and others. here in paris he produced his first pictures of popular contemporary life, and if as an historical painter he had already been a leader in the struggle against theatrical art, he became a pioneer in these works also. everywhere he let in air and made free movement possible for those who pressed forward in his steps. in the course of years he painted and drew everything which excited in him artistic impulse upon any ground whatever, and not one of these endeavours was work thrown away. a universal genius amongst the painters of real life, he combined all the qualities of which other men of excellent talent merely possessed fragments separately apportioned amongst them: the sharpest eye for every detail of form, the most penetrative discrimination for the life of the spirit, and at times a glistening play of colour possessed by none of his german predecessors. [illustration: menzel. from kugler's "history of friedrich the great."] catholic churches seem always to have had a great attraction for him, as well as the people moving in them, and in this an echo of his _rococo_ enthusiasm is still perceptible. the quaint, _rococo_ churches in the ornate style favoured by the jesuits, which are still preserved intact in munich and the tyrol, were those for which he had a peculiar preference. he lost himself voluptuously in the thousand details of sculpture, framework, organs, balustrades, and carved pulpits, dimly outlined in the subdued light from stained-glass windows. in the gloom it was all transformed into a forest of ornaments, expanding their traceries like trees in a wood. sick and infirm people, women in prayer burying their faces in their hands, and lame men with crutches, kneel or move amid the luxuriant efflorescence of stone and wood and gold, of angels' heads and shrines, garlands of flowers, consoles, and fonts of holy water. twisted marble pillars, church banners, lamps and lustres mount in a confusion of capricious outlines at once tasteful and piquant to the vaulted dome, where the painted skies, blackened by the ascending mist of incense, seem waywardly fantastic. after the churches the salons appealed to him. there came his pictures of modern society: ladies and cavaliers of the court upon ballroom balconies, the conversation of privy councillors in the salon, the marvellous ball supper, where a mass of beautiful shoulders, splendid uniforms, and rustling silken trains move amid mirrors, lustres, colonnades, and gilded frames. "the ball supper" of is a vivid picture, bathed in glistening light. the music has stopped. and from a door of the brilliantly lighted ballroom the company is streaming into the neighbouring apartment, where the supper-table has been laid, and groups of ladies and men in animated conversation are beginning to occupy the chairs and sofas. in there followed the famous "levee": the emperor wilhelm in the red court uniform of the _gardes du corps_ is talking with a lady, surrounded by a sea of heads, uniforms, and naked bowing shoulders. though it was always necessary in earlier representations of the kind to have a _genre_ episode to compensate the insufficient artistic interest of the work, in menzel's pictures the pictorial situation is grasped as a whole. they have the value of a book; they neither falsify nor beautify anything, and they will hand down to the future an encyclopædia of types of the nineteenth century. from the salon he went to the street, from exclusive aristocratic circles into the midst of the eddying crowd. for many years in succession menzel was a constant visitor at the small watering-places in the austrian and bavarian alps. the multitude of people at the concerts, in the garden of the restaurant, on the promenade, at the open-air services, were precisely the things to occupy his brush. the light rippled through the leaves of the trees; women, children, and well-bred men of the world listened to the music or the words of the preacher. one person leaves a seat and another takes it; everything lives and moves. huge and lofty trees stretch out their arms, protecting the company from the sun. unusually striking was "the procession in gastein": in the centre was the priest bearing the host, then the choristers in their red robes, in front the visitors and tourists who had hastened to see the spectacle, and in the background the mountain heights. the bustle of people gives menzel the opportunity for a triumph. in kissingen he painted the promenade at the waters; in paris the sunday gaiety in the garden of the tuileries, the street life upon the boulevard, the famous scene in the _jardin des plantes_, with the great elephants and the vivid group of zouaves and ladies; in verona the piazza d'erbe, with the swarm of people crowding in between the open booths and shouting at the top of their voices. many after him have represented such scenes, although few have had the secret of giving their figures such seething life, or painting them, like menzel, as parts of one great, surging, and many-headed multitude. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ menzel. the coronation of king wilhelm i.] people travelling have always been for him a source of much amusement: men sitting in the corner of a railway carriage with their legs crossed and their hats over their eyes, yawning or asleep; women looking out of the windows or counting their ready money. alternating with such themes are those monotonous yet simple and therefore genial landscapes from the suburbs of the great city, poor, neglected regions with machines and men at their labour. children bathing in a dirty stream bordered by little, stunted willows; small craft gliding over a river, sailors leaping from one vessel to another, men landing sacks or barrels, and great, heavy cart-horses dragging huge waggons loaded with beer-barrels along the dusty country road. or the scaffolding of a house is being raised. six masons are at work upon it, and they are working in earnest. a green bush waves (german fashion) above the scaffolding, and further off long rows of houses stretch away, and the aqueducts and gas-works which supply the huge crater of berlin, and day-labourers are seen wheeling up barrow-loads of stones. for the first time a german painter sings the canticle of labour. [illustration: menzel. from kugler's "history of friedrich the great."] from the streets he enters the work-places, and interprets the wild poetry of roaring machines in smoky manufactories. the masterpiece of this group is that bold and powerful picture, his "iron mill" of . the workshop of the great rail-forge of königshütte in upper silesia is full of heat and steam. the muscular, brawny figures of men with glowing faces stand at the furnace holding the tongs in their swollen hands. their vigorous gestures recall daumier. upon the upper part of their bodies, which is naked, the light casts white, blue, and dark red reflections, and over the lower part it flickers in reddish, greenish, and violet tinges, on the creases in their clothing. the smoke rising in spirals is of a whitish-red, and the beams supporting the roof are lit up with a sombre glow. heat, sweat, movement, and the glare of fire are everywhere. dust and dirt, strong, raw-boned iron-workers washing themselves, or exhausted with hard toil, snatching a hasty meal, a confusion of belting and machinery, no pretty anecdote but sober earnest, no story but pure painting--these were the great and decisive achievements of this picture. courbet's "stone-breakers" of , madox brown's "work" of , and menzel's "iron mill" are the standard works in the art of the nineteenth century. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ menzel. the damenstiftskirche at munich.] within german art menzel has won an _enclave_ for himself, a rock amid the sea. in france during the sixties he represented german art in general. france offered him celebrity, and after this recognition he had the fortune to be honoured in his native-land before he was overtaken by old age. his realism was permitted to him at a time when realistic aims were elsewhere reckoned altogether as æsthetic errors. this explains the remarkable fact that menzel's toil of fifty years had scarcely any influence on the development of german painting; it would scarcely be different from what it is now if he had never existed. when he might have been an exemplar there was no one who dared to follow him. and later, when german art as a whole had entered upon naturalistic lines, the differences between him and the younger generation were more numerous than their points of sympathy, so that it was impossible for him to have a formative influence. he stood out in the new period merely as a power commanding respect, like a hero of ancient times. even the isolated realistic onsets made in berlin in the seventies are in no way to be connected with him. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ menzel. king wilhelm setting out to join the army.] if realism consisted in the dry and sober illustration of selected fragments of reality, if upright feeling, loyalty, and honest patriotism were serviceable qualities in art, a lengthier consideration should certainly be accorded to _anton von werner_. in his _genre_ pictures of campaign life everything is spick and span, everything is in its right place and in soldierly order: it is all typically prussian art. his portraits are casino pictures, and as such it is impossible to imagine how they could better serve their purpose. from the spurs to the cuirassier helmet everything is correct and in accordance with military regulation; even the likeness has something officially prescribed which would make any recruit form front if suddenly brought face to face with such a person. in his pictures of ceremonies his ability was just sufficient to chronicle the function in question with the conscientiousness of a clerk in a law court. the intellectual capacity for seeing more of a great man than his immaculately polished boots and the immaculately burnished buttons of his uniform was denied him, as was the artistic capacity of exalting a picture-sheet to the level of a picture. equipped with a healthy though trivial feeling for reality, _carl güssow_ ventured to approach nature in a sturdy and robust fashion in some of his works, and exhibited in berlin a few life-sized figures, "pussy," "a lover of flowers," "lost happiness," "welcome," "the oyster girl," and so forth. through these he opened for a brief period in berlin the era of yellow kerchiefs and black finger-nails, and on the strength of them was exalted by the critics as a pioneer of realism or else anathematised, according to their æsthetic creed. he had a robust method of painting muscles and flesh and clothes of many colours, and of setting green beside red and red beside yellow, yet even in these first works--his only works of artistic merit--he never got beyond the banal and barbaric transcript of a reality which was entirely without interest. _max michael_ seems to be somewhat influenced by bonvin. like the latter, he was attracted by the silent motions of nuns, juicy vegetables, dark-brown wainscoting, and the subdued light of interiors. he was, like ribot in france, although with less artistic power, a good representative of that "school of cellar skylights" which imitated in a sound manner the tone of the old spanish masters. one of his finest pictures, which hangs in the kunsthalle in hamburg, represents a girls' school in italy. a nun is presiding over the sewing-lesson; the background is brown; the light comes through the yellow glass of a high and small window (like that of an attic), and throws a brown dusky tone over the room, in which the gay costumes of the little italian girls, with their white kerchiefs, make exceedingly pretty and harmonious spots of colour. no adventure is hinted at, no episode related, but the picturesque appearance of the little girls, and their tones in the space, are all the more delicately rendered. a refined scheme of colour recalling the old masters compensates for the want of incident. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ menzel. the iron mill. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ menzel. sunday in the tuileries gardens.] in vienna _august von pettenkofen_ made a transition from the ossified, antediluvian _genre_ painting to painting which was artistically delicate. while the successors of gauermann and danhauser indulged in heart-breaking scenes or humorous episodes, pettenkofen was the first to observe the world from a purely pictorial point of view. alfred stevens had opened his eyes in paris in . troyon's pictures and millet's confirmed him in his efforts. he was brought up on a property belonging to his father in galicia, and had been a cavalry officer before he turned to painting: horses, peasants, and oxen are the simple figures of his pictures. in the place of episodic, ill-painted stories he set the meagre plains of lonely pusta, sooty forges, gloomy cobblers' work shops, dirty courtyards with middens and rubbish-heaps, gipsy encampments, and desolate garrets. there is no pandering to sentimentality or the curiosity excited by _genre_ painting. there are delicate chords of colour, and that is enough. the artist was in the habit of spending the summer months in the little town of spolnok on the theiss, to the east of pesth. here he wandered about amongst the little whitewashed houses, the booths of general dealers, and the fruit-sellers' stalls. a lazily moving yoke of oxen with a lad asleep, dark-eyed girls fetching water, poor children playing on the ground, old men dreaming in the sun in a courtyard, are generally the only breathing beings in his pictures. here is a sandy village-square with low, white-washed houses; there is a wain with oxen standing in the street, or a postilion trotting away on his tired nag. like menzel, pettenkofen paints busy humanity absorbed in their toil, simple beings who do not dream of leaving off work for the sake of those who frequent picture galleries. what differentiates him from the berlin painter is a more lyrical impulse, something tender, thoughtful, and contemplative. menzel gives dramatic point to everything he touches; he sets masses in movement, depicts a busy, noisy crowd, pressing together and elbowing one another, forcing their way at the doors of theatres or the windows of cafés in a multifarious throng. pettenkofen lingers with the petty artisan and the solitary sempstress. in menzel's "iron mill" the sparks are flying and the machines whirring, but everything is peaceful and quiet in the cobblers' workshops and the sunny attics visited by pettenkofen. menzel delights in momentary impressions and quivering life; pettenkofen in rest and solitude. in the former every one is thinking and talking and on the alert; in the latter every one is yawning or asleep. if menzel paints a waggon, the driver cracks his whip and one hears the team rattling over the uneven pavement; in pettenkofen the waggon stands quietly in a narrow lane, the driver enjoys a midday rest, and an enervating, sultry heat broods overhead. menzel has a love for men and women with excitement written on their faces; pettenkofen avoids painting character, contenting himself with the reproduction of simple actions at picturesque moments. the berlin artist is epigrammatically sharp; the viennese is elegiac and melancholy. menzel's pictures have the changing glitter of rockets; those of pettenkofen are harmonised in the tone of a refined amateur. they have only one thing in common: neither has found disciples; they are not culminating peaks in berlin or vienna art so much as boulders wedged into another system. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ menzel. a levee.] whilst the realistic movement in both towns was confined to particular masters, munich had once again the mission of becoming a guiding influence. here all the tendencies of modern art have left the most distinct traces, all movements were consummated with most consistency. the heroes of piloty followed the divinities of cornelius, and these were in turn succeeded by the tyrolese peasants of defregger, and amid all this difference of theme one bond connected these works: for interesting subject was the matter of chief importance in them, and the purely pictorial element was something subordinate. the efforts of the seventies had for their object the victory of this pictorial element. it was recognised that the talent for making humorous points and telling stories, which came in question as the determining quality in the pictures of monks and peasants of the school of defregger and grützner, was the expression of no real faculty for formative art--that it was merely technical incompleteness complacently supported by the lack of artistic sensibility in the public which had produced this narrative painting. it was felt that the task of formative art did not consist in narrative, but in representation, and in representation through the most sensuous and convincing means which stood at its disposal. a renewed study of the old masters made this recognition possible. [illustration: gÜssow. the architect. (_by permission of m. h. salomonson, esq., the owner of the picture._)] up to this time the most miserable desolation had also reigned over the province of the artistic crafts. but, borne up by the rekindled sentiment of nationality, and favoured by the high tide of the milliards paid by france, since , that eventful movement bearing the words "old german" and "fine style" on its programme had become an accomplished fact. the german renaissance, which research had been hitherto neglected, was discovered afresh. lübke explored it thoroughly and systematically; woltmann wrote on hans holbein, thausing on dürer; eitelberger founded the austrian industrial museum; georg hirth brought out his _deutsches zimmer_, and began the publication of the _formenschatz_. the national form of art of the german renaissance was taken up everywhere with a proud consciousness of patriotism: here, it was thought, was a panacea. those who followed the artistic crafts declared open war against everything pedestrian and tedious. _lorenz gedon_ in particular--in union with franz and rudolf seitz--was the soul of the movement. with his black, curly hair, his little, fiery, dark eyes, his short beard, his negligent dress, and his two great hands expert in the exercise of every description of art, he had himself something of the character of an old german stone-cutter. his manner of expressing himself corresponded to this appearance. in every thing it was original, saturated with his own personal conception of the world. as the son of a dealer in old pictures and curiosities, he was familiar with the old masters from his childhood, and followed them in the method of his study. he was far from confining himself to one branch. the façades of houses, the architecture of interiors, tavern rooms and festal decorations, furniture and state carriages, statues and embellishments in stone, bronze, wood, and iron, portrait busts in wax, clay, and marble, models for ornaments, for iron lattices, for the adornment of ships and the fittings of cabins, all objects that were wayward, fantastic, quaint, and curious lay in his province; and for the execution of each in turn this remarkable man felt that he had in him an equal capacity. and, at the same time, the temperament of a collector was united in him with that of an artist in an entirely special way. in the bushy wilderness of a garden before his house in the nymphenburger strasse countless stone fragments of mediæval sculpture were strewn about, up to the very hedge dividing it from the street. rusty old trellises of wrought iron slanted in front of the windows, and in the house itself the most precious objects, which artists ten years before had passed without heed, stood in masses together. as gedon was taken from his work when he was forty his artistic endeavour never got beyond efforts of improvisation, but the impulse which he gave was very powerful. through his initiative the whole province of the artistic crafts was brought under observation from a pictorial point of view. the bald philistine style of decoration gave way and a blithe revel of colour was begun. the great carnival feasts arranged by him on the model of the renaissance period are an important episode in the history of culture in munich, and have contributed in no unessential manner to the refinement of taste in the toilette of women. the munich exhibition of the arts and crafts in (before the entrance of which he had erected that great portal made of old fragments of architecture, wood-carving, and splendid stuffs, and bearing the inscription "the works of our fathers") indicated the zenith of that movement in the handicrafts which was flooding all germany in those days. the course which was run by this movement in the following years is well known, and it is well known how the imitation of the german renaissance soon became as wearisome as in the beginning it had been attractive. after it had been a little overdone another step was taken, and from the renaissance people went to the _baroque_ period, and soon afterwards the _rococo_ period followed. in these days sobriety has taken the place of this fever for ornamentation, and the mania for style has resulted in a surfeit, a weariness and a desire for simplicity and quietude. nevertheless the beneficial influence of the movement on the general elevation of taste is undeniable, and indirectly it was of service to painting. [illustration: _seeman, leipzig._ august von pettenkofen.] in rooms where the owner was the only article of the inventory repugnant to the conception of style, only those pictures were admitted which had been executed in the exact manner of the old masters. works of art were regarded as tasteful furniture, and were obliged to harmonise correctly with the other appointments of the room; they had, moreover, to be themselves legitimate "imitations of the works of our fathers." and, in this way, the movement in the handicrafts gave an impulse to a renewed study of the old masters, carried out with far more refinement than had hitherto been the case. amongst the costume painters spread over all germany, the experts in costume, working in munich during the seventies, form a really artistic race of able painters who were peculiarly sensitive to colour. they were the historians of art, the connoisseurs of colour in the ranks of the painters. piloty did not satisfy them; they buried themselves in the study of old masters with a delicately sensitive appreciation of them; they began to mix soft, luxuriant, and melting colours upon their palettes, and to feel the peculiar joy of painting. whilst they imitated the exquisite "little masters" of former ages, in dimly lighted studios hung with gobelins, imitating at the same time the beautifying rust of centuries, they gradually abandoned all their own tricks of art; and whilst they devoted themselves to detail they brought about the renaissance of oil-painting. compared with earlier works, their pictures are like rare dainties. they no longer recognised the end of their calling, as the _genre_ painters had done, in a one-sided talent for characterisation, but tried once more to lay chief weight upon the pictorial and artistic appearance of their pictures. they were conscious of a presentiment that there were higher spheres of art than the commonplace humour of _genre_ painting, and this recognition had a very wide bearing. pictorial point took the place of narrative humour. if artists had previously painted thoughts they now began to paint things, and even if the things were bundles of straw, mediæval hose, and the old robes of cardinals, they were no longer "invented," but something which had been seen as a whole. it was a transition towards ultimately painting what had actually taken place before the artist's eyes. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ pettenkofen. a woman spinning.] [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ pettenkofen. in the convent yard.] that sumptuous, healthy artist of such pictorial ability, _diez_, the victor scheffel of painting, stands at the head of the group. from his youth upwards his chief place of resort had been the cabinet of engravings where he studied schongauer, dürer, and rembrandt, and all the boon-companions and vagabonds etched or cut in copper or wood, and on the model of these he painted his own marauders, robber-barons, peasants in revolt, old german weddings and fairs. his picture "to the church consecration" recalls beham, his "merry riding" schongauer, and his "ambuscade" dürer, whilst teniers served as model for his fairs. diez knows the period from dürer and holbein to rubens, rembrandt, wouwerman, and brouwer as thoroughly as an historian of art, and sometimes--for instance in his "picnic in the forest"--he has even drawn the eighteenth century into the circle of his studies. his pictures had an unrivalled delicacy of tone, and could certainly hang beside their dutch models in the pinakothek without losing anything by such proximity. something of brouwer or ostade revived once more in _harburger_, the talented draughtsman of _fliegende blätter_, the undisputed monarch of the kingdom of slouching hats, old mugs, and delft pipes. pictures like "the peasants' doctor," "the card-players," "the grandmother," "by the quiet fireside," "in the armchair," and "easy-going folk" were masterpieces of delicate dutch painting: the tone of his pictures shows distinction and temperament; they have deep and fine _chiaroscuro_, and are soft and fluent in execution. _loefftz_ with his picture "love and avarice" appeared as quentin matsys _redivivus_, and then attached himself in turn to holbein and van dyck; and exercised, like diez, a great influence on the younger generation by his activity as a teacher. _claus meyer_, who became one of the best known amongst the young munich painters by his "sewing school in the nunnery" of , is worthy of remark inasmuch as he acquired a method of painting which was full of _nuances_, through modelling himself upon pieter de hoogh and van der meer of delft. through the windows hung with thin curtains the warm, quiet daylight falls into the room, glancing on the clean boards of the floor, on the polished tops of the tables, the white pages of the books, and the blond and brown hair of the children, playing round it like a golden nimbus. another sunbeam streams through the door, which is not entirely closed, and quivers over the floor in a bright and narrow strip of light. the intimate representation of peaceful scenes of modest life, the entirely pictorial representation of peaceful and congenial events, has taken the place of the adventures dear to _genre_ painting. old gentlemen with a glass of beer and a clay pipe, servant-girls peeling potatoes in the kitchen, pupils at the cloister sitting over their books in the library, drinkers, smokers, and dicers--such were the quiet, passive, and silent figures of his later pictures. the mild sunshine breaks in and plays over them. light clouds of tobacco smoke float in the air. everything is homely and pleasant, touched with a breath of pictorial charm, comfortable warmth, and poetic fragrance. a hundred years hence his works will be sold as flawlessly delicate and genuine old dutch pictures. _holmberg_ became the historian of cardinals. a window, consisting of rounded, clumpy panes, with little glass pictures let in, forms the background of the room, and in the subdued oil-light which beams over splendid vessels and ornaments, chests and gobelins, the white satin dresses of ladies in the mode of , or the lilac and purple robes of cardinals from the artist's rich wardrobe, are displayed, together with the appropriate models. in _fritz august kaulbach_, the most versatile of the group in his adoption of various manners, the essence of this whole tendency is to be found. he did not belong to the specialists who restricted themselves, in a one-sided fashion, to the imitation of the flemish or the dutch masters, but appeared like old diterici, proteus-like, now in one and now in another mask; and, whether he assumed the features of holbein, carlo dolci, van dyck, or watteau, he had the secret of being invariably graceful and _chic_. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ diez. returning from market.] [illustration: claus meyer. the smoking party.] when the german renaissance was at its zenith he painted in the renaissance style: harmless _genre_ pictures _à la_ beyschlag--the joys of love and of the family circle--but not being so banal as the latter he painted them with more delicate colouring and finer poetic charm. certain single figures were found specially acceptable--for instance, the daughters of nuremberg patricians, and noble ladies in the old german caps, dark velvet gowns, and long plaits like gretchen's, with their eyes sometimes uplifted and sometimes lowered, and their hands at one moment folded and at another carrying a shining covered goblet. occasionally these single figures were portraits, but none the less were they transformed into "ladies in old german costume"; and kaulbach understood how to paint, to the utmost satisfaction of his patrons, the black caps, no less well than the little veil and the net of pearls, and the greenish-yellow silk of the puffed sleeves, no less well than the plush border of the dark gown and the antique red gretchen pocket. many of them held a lute and stood amid a spring landscape, before a streamlet, or a silver-birch, such as stevens delighted in painting ten years previously. at that time fritz august kaulbach, with greater softness in his treatment, occupied in germany the place which florent willems had occupied in belgium. since then he has brought nearer to the public the most various old and modern masters, and he has done so with fine artistic feeling: in his "may day" he has revived the pastoral scenes of watteau with a felicitous cleverness; in his "st. cecilia" he created a total effect of great grace by going arm in arm with carlo dolci and gabriel max; his "pietà" he composed with "the best figures of michael angelo, fra bartolommeo, and titian," just as gerard de lairesse had once recommended to painters. intermediately he painted frail flower-like girls _à la_ gabriel max, charming little angels _à la_ thoma, children in pierrot costume _à la_ vollon, and little landscapes _à la_ gainsborough. he did not find in himself the plan for a new edifice in erecting his palace of art, but built according to any plans that came in his way; he simply chose from all existing forms the most graceful, the most elegant, the most precious, culled from their beauties only the flowers, and bound them into a tasteful bouquet. in his modern portraits of women, which in recent years have been his chief successes, he placed himself between van dyck and the english. of course, a really _chic_ painter of women, like sargent, is not to be thought of in this connection; but for germany these portraits were in exceedingly fine taste, had an interesting kaulbachian trace of indifferent health, and breathed an _odeur de femme_ which found very wide approval. in his "lieschen, the waitress of the shooting festival" he risked a fresh attempt at treating popular life, and made of it such a graceful picture that it might almost have been painted by piglhein; while in a series of spirited caricatures he even succeeded in being--kaulbach. the history of art is wide, and since fritz august kaulbach knows it extremely well, he will certainly find much to paint that is pleasing and attractive, "_s'il continue à laisser errer son imagination à travers les formes diverses créées par l'art de tous les temps_," as the _gazette des beaux-arts_ said of him on the occasion of the vienna world exhibition of . [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ kaulbach. the lute player.] after all, these pictures will have little that is novel for an historian of the next century. "_Être maître_," says w. bürger, "_c'est ne ressembler à personne._" but these were the works of painters who merely announced the dogma of the infallibility of universal eclecticism, as the caracci had done in their familiar sonnets: they were spirited imitators, whose connection with the nineteenth century will be known in after years only by the dates of their pictures. as old masters called back to life, they have enriched the history of art, as such, by nothing novel. yet, in replacing superficial imitations by imitations which were excellent and congenial, they have nevertheless advanced the history of art in the nineteenth century in another way. [illustration: franz lenbach.] by the labour of his life each one of them helped to make a place in germany for the art of oil-painting, which had been forgotten under the influence of winckelmann and carstens, and in this sense their works were very important stations, as one might say, on the great thoroughfare of art. through systematic imitation of the finest old masters, the munich school had in a comparatively short time regained the appreciation of colour and treatment which had so long been lost. at a hazy distance lay those times when the distinctive peculiarity of german painting lay in its wealth of ideas, its want of any sense for colour, and its clumsy technique, whilst the æsthetic spokesmen praised these qualities as though they were national virtues. these views had been altogether renounced, and a decade of strenuous work had been devoted to the extirpation of all such defects. such an achievement was sufficiently great, and sufficiently important and gratifying. this last resuscitation of the old masters was capable of being turned into a bridge leading to new regions. a feeling arose that the limit had been reached, and it arose in those very men who had advanced furthest in pictorial accomplishment, adapting and making their own all the ability of the old masters. painters believed that they had learnt enough of technique to be able to treat subjects from modern life in the spirit of these old masters, not handling them any longer as laboriously composed _genre_ pictures, but as real works of art. and a group of realists came forward as they had done in france, and began to seek truth with scientific rigour and an avoidance of any kind of anecdotic by-play. the greatest pupil of the old masters, _franz lenbach_, stands in a close and most important relationship with these endeavours of modern art, through some of his youthful works. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ lenbach. portrait of wilhelm i.] the public has accustomed itself to think of him only as a portrait painter, and he is justly honoured as the greatest german portraitist of the century. but posterity may one day regard it as a special favour of the gods that lenbach should have been born at the right time, and that his progress to maturity fell in the greatest epoch of the century. his gallery of portraits has been called an epic in paint upon the heroes of our age. the greatest historical figures of the century have sat to him, the greatest conquerors and masters in the kingdom of science and art. nevertheless this gallery would be worthless to posterity if lenbach had not had at his disposal one quality possessed by none of his immediate predecessors, a sacred respect for nature. at a time when rosy tints, suave smiles, and idealised drawing were the requirements necessary in every likeness, at a time when winterhalter painted great men, not as they were, but as, in his opinion, they ought to have been--without reflecting that god almighty knows best what heads are appropriate for great men--lenbach appeared with his brusque veracity of portraiture. that alone was an achievement in which only a man of original temperament could have succeeded. if a portrait painter is to prevail with society a peculiar combination of faculties is necessary, apart from his individual capacity for art. lenbach had not only an eye and a hand, but likewise elbows and a tongue which placed him _hors concours_. he could be as rude as he was amiable, and as deferential as he was proud; half boor and half courtier, at once a great artist and an accomplished _faiseur_, he succeeded in doing a thing which has brought thousands to ruin--he succeeded in forcing upon society his own taste, and setting genuine human beings of strong character in the place of the smiling automatons of fashionable painters. in comparison with the works of earlier portrait painters it might be said that a touch of pantheism and nature-worship goes through lenbach's pictures. [illustration: _seeman, leipzig._ lenbach. prince bismark.] and what makes this so invaluable is that his greatness depends really less upon artistic qualities than upon his being a highly gifted man who understands the spirit of others. it is not merely artistic technique that is essential in a portrait, but before everything a psychical grasp of the subject. no artist, says lessing, is able to interpret a power more highly spiritual than that which he possesses himself. and this is precisely the weak side in so many portrait painters, since a man's art is by no means always in any direct relationship with the development of his spiritual powers. in this respect a portrait of bismarck by lenbach stands to one by anton von werner, as an interpretation of goethe by hehn stands to one by düntzer. to speak of the congenial conception in lenbach's pictures of bismarck is a safe phrase. there will always remain something wanting, but since lenbach's works are in existence one knows, at any rate, that this something can be reduced to a far lower measure than it has been by the other bismarck portraits. "_bien comprendre son homme_," says bürger-thoré, "_est la première qualité du portraitiste_," and this faculty of the gifted psychologist has made lenbach the historian elect of a great period, the active recorder of a mighty era. it even makes him seem greater than most foreign portrait painters. how solid, but at the same time how matter-of-fact, does bonnat seem by lenbach's side! one should not look at a dozen bonnats together; a single one arrests attention by the plastic treatment of the person, but if you see several at the same time all the figures have this same plastic character, all of them have the same pose, and they all seem to have employed the same tailor. lenbach has no need of all that characterisation by means of accessories in which bonnat delights. he only paints the eyes with thoroughness, and possibly the head; but these he renders with a psychological absorption which is only to be found amongst modern artists, perhaps in watts. in a head by lenbach there glows a pair of eyes which burn themselves into you. the countenance, which is the first zone around them, is more or less--generally less--amplified; the second zone, the dress and hands, is either still less amplified, or scarcely amplified at all. the portrait is then harmonised in a neutral tone which renders the lack of finish less obvious. in this sketchy treatment and in his striking subjectivity lenbach is the very opposite of the old masters. holbein, and even rubens--who otherwise sets upon everything the stamp of his own personality--characterised their figures by a reverent imitation of every trait given in nature. they produced, as it were, real documents, and left it to the spectator to interpret them in his own way. [illustration: lenbach. the shepherd boy.] lenbach, less objective, and surrendering himself less absolutely to his subject, emphasises one point, disregards another, and in this way conjures up the spirit by his faces, just as he sees it. it may be open to dispute which kind of portraiture is the more desirable; but lenbach, at any rate, has now forced the world to behold its great men through his eyes. he has given them the form in which they will survive. no one has the same secret of seizing a fleeting moment; no one turned more decisively away from every attempt at idealising glorification or at watering down an individual to a type. he takes counsel of photography, but only as molière took counsel of his housekeeper: he uses it merely as a medium for arriving at the startling directness, the instantaneous impression of life, in his pictures. works like the portraits of king ludwig i, gladstone, minghetti, bishop strossmayer, prince lichtenstein, richard wagner, franz liszt, paul heyse, wilhelm busch, schwind, semper, liphart, morelli, and many others have no parallel as analyses of the character of complex personalities. some of his bismarck portraits, as well as his last pictures of the old emperor wilhelm, will always stand amongst the greatest achievements of the century in portraiture. in the one portrait is indestructible power, as it were the shrine built for itself by the mightiest spirit of the century; in the other the majesty of the old man, already half alienated from the earth, and glorified by a trace of still melancholy, as by the last radiance of the evening sun. in these works lenbach appears as a wizard calling up spirits, an _évocateur d'âmes_, as a french critic has named him. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ ramberg. the meeting on the lake.] but what the history of art has forgotten in estimating the fame of the portrait painter lenbach is, that in the beginning of his career this very man paved the way for the "realistic" movement in german painting which later he confronted so haughtily and with so much reserve. the first of these works of his, which have for germany much the same significance as the early works of courbet have for france, is the well-known "shepherd boy" in the schack gallery. stretched on his back, he lies in the high grass where flowers grow thickly, and looks up while butterflies and dragon-flies flutter through the dusty air of a roman summer day. such a frank, an audacious, naked realism, breaking away from everything traditional in its representation of fact, was something entirely novel and surprising in germany in the year . up to this time no one had seen a fragment of nature depicted with such unqualified veracity. the tanned shepherd lad, with his naked sunburnt feet, covered by a dark crust of mire from the damp earth, seemed to be lying there in the flesh, plastically thrown into relief by the glowing midday sun. the next of these pictures, "peasants taking refuge from the weather," which appeared in the exhibition of , called down a storm of indignation on account of its "trivial realism." every figure was painted after nature with blunt and rigorous sincerity, and no anecdotic incident was devised in it. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ hirth. the hop harvest.] after the sixties the influence of courbet began to be directly felt. in the days when he worked in couture's studio _victor müller_ had taken up some of the ideas of the master of ornans, and when he settled in in munich, müller communicated to the painters there the first knowledge of the works of the great frenchman. he did not follow courbet, however, in his subjects. "the man in the heart of the night lulled to sleep by the music of a violin," "venus and adonis," "hero and leander," "hamlet in the churchyard," "venus and tannhäuser," "faust on the promenade," "romeo and juliet," "ophelia by the stream"--such are the titles of his principal works. but how far they are removed from the anæmic, empty painting of beauty which reigned in the school of couture! though a romanticist of the purest water in his subjects, müller appears, in the manner in which he handles them, as a realist on whom there is no speck of the academical dust of the schools. the dominant features of victor müller's pictures are the thirst for life and colour, full-blooded strength, haughty contempt for every species of hollow exaggeration and all outward pose, genuine human countenances and living human forms inspired with tameless passion, an audacious rejection of all the traditional rules of composition, and, even in colour, a veracity which in that age, given up to an ostentatious painting of material, must have had an effect that was absolutely novel. in the blooming flesh of his "wood nymph" excited the munich public to indignation, just as the nude female figures of courbet had roused indignation about the same time in paris. pictures painted with singular sureness of hand were executed by him during the few years that he yet had to live--portraits of dogs, landscapes of a flaming glow of colour, single figures of red-haired bacchantes and laughing flower-girls, old men dying, and charming fairy pictures. the nearer he came to his death the more his powers of work seemed to increase. the most remarkable ideas came into his head. he drew, and painted without intermission designs which had occupied him for years. "i feel," he said, "like an architect who has been commissioned to carry out a great building, and i cannot do it: i must die." but the impulse which he had given in more than one direction had further issues. as hans thoma in later years continued the work of the great frankfort master in the province of fairy-tale, _wilhelm leibl_ realised müller's realistic programme. [illustration: wilhelm leibl. _kunst für alle._] wilhelm leibl, son of the conductor of music in the cathedral, was born at cologne on rd october . at munich he entered the studio of _arthur van ramberg_, that unjustly forgotten master who, both by his own work and by his activity as a teacher, exercised upon the younger munich school a far healthier influence than piloty. ramberg was a modern man, was always eager to come into immediate contact with life and break the fetters of tradition which hung everywhere upon that generation. he was an aristocrat and a dandy, and, having occupied himself in the beginning with romantic fairy subjects, he painted, soon after his migration to munich, a series of pictures from modern life--"dachau girls on sunday," "the return from the masked ball," "a walk with the tutor," "the meeting on the lake," "the invitation to boat," and others, which rose above the mass of contemporary productions by their great distinction, fragrance, and grace. at a time when others held nothing but the smock-frock fit for representation, ramberg painted the fashionable modern costume of women. and when others devoted themselves to clumsy _genre_ episodes, he created songs without words that were full of fine reserve, nobility, and delicate feeling. _rudolf hirth_, who made a stir with his "hop harvest"; _albert keller_, the tasteful painter of fashionable life; _karl haider_, the sincere and conscientious miniature painter whose energy of manner had a suggestion of the old masters, together with wilhelm leibl, all issued from ramberg's school, not from piloty's. the young student from cologne was thus saved, in the beginning, from occupying himself with history, and he had no need to addict himself to narrative _genre_ painting, since his entire organisation preordained him to painting pure and simple. wilhelm leibl was in those days a handsome fellow, with powerful limbs and shining brown eyes. he was realism incarnate--rather short, but strongly made, and with a frame almost suggesting a beast of burden, broad in the chest, high-shouldered, and bull-necked. his arms were thick and his feet large. his gait was slow, heavy, and energetic, and he made with his arms liberal gestures which took up a good deal of room. he had not the fiery spirit of courbet, being more prosaic, sober, and deliberate, but he resembled him both in appearance and in the artistic faculty of eye and hand. "he had," as a french critic wrote of him, "one of those organisations which are predestined for painting, as courbet had amongst us frenchmen. such men extract the most remarkable things from painting." [illustration: _kunst für alle._ leibl. in the studio.] [illustration: _american art review._ leibl. the village politicians.] even his first picture, exhibited in , and representing his two fellow-pupils rudolf hirth and haider looking at an engraving, had a soft, full golden harmony, which left all the products of conventional _genre_ painting far behind it, and came into direct competition with the refined works of the dutch painter michael swert. his second picture, a portrait of frau gedon, made an impression even in paris by its rembrandtesque beauty of tone, and was awarded there in the gold medal which the judges had not ventured to give him the year before at munich, because he was still an academy pupil. yet was the decisive year in leibl's life. the munich exhibition gave at that time an opportunity for learning the importance of french art upon a scale previously unknown. over four hundred and fifty pictures were accessible, and the works of the smooth, conventional historical painters were the minority. troyon was to be seen there, and millet and corot. but courbet, to whose works the committee had devoted an entire room, was chiefly the hero, and one over whom there was much conflict. opinions were violently at odds about him in the painters' club. the official circle greeted the master of ornans with the same hoot of indignation which had been accorded him in france. but for leibl he became an adored and marvellous ideal. his eyes sparkled when he sat opposite him at the _deutsches haus_, and in default of any other means of making himself understood he assured courbet of his veneration by sturdily drinking to him: "prosit courbet--prosit leibl." he stretched his powerful limbs, and threw himself into vigorous attitudes to evince in sanguinary quarrels, when necessary, his enthusiasm for the great frenchman. how false and paltry seemed the whole school of piloty, with its rose-coloured insipidity and its conventional bloom of the palette, when set against the downright veracity and the masterly painting of these works! [illustration: _kunst für alle._ leibl. the new paper.] in the same year he went to paris, special occasion for the journey being given by a commission for a portrait which he received from the duc tascher de la pagerie. there he painted "la cocotte," the portrait of a fat frenchwoman seated upon a sofa and watching the clouds of smoke from her clay pipe. in its massive realism, and in the exuberant power of its broad, liquid painting, it might have been signed "courbet," and leibl told afterwards with pride how courbet slapped him on the shoulder when he was at his work, saying: "_il faut que vous restez à paris._" the breaking out of the war brought his residence in paris to an end more quickly than he had foreseen, but though he was there only nine months that was long enough to give for ever a firm direction to the efforts of the painter. leibl became the apostle of courbet in germany, and in his outward life the german millet. back once more in bavaria, he migrated in to grasolfingen, then to schondorf on the ammersee, then to berbling near aibling, and in to aibling itself; he became a peasant, and, like millet, he painted pictures of peasants. the poetic and biblical, the august and epical bias which characterises the works of millet, is not to be expected in leibl. a spirit bent upon what is great and heroic speaks out of millet's pictures. a rembrandtesque feeling for space, the great line, the simplification, the intellectual restraint from anecdotic triviality of form, are the things which constitute his style. leibl is at his best when he buries himself with delight in the hundred little touches of nature. he triumphs when he has to paint the faces of old peasant women, full of wrinkles, and furrowed with care; the ruddy cheeks of girls, sparkling in all their natural rustic freshness; figured dresses, the material and texture of which are clearly recognisable; flowered silk kerchiefs worn round the neck, coarse woollen bodices, and heavy hobnail shoes. he is to millet what holbein is to michael angelo. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ leibl. in church.] nor can he be called an artist of intimate feeling in the sense in which the scandinavians are amongst the moderns. in viggo johansen the painter disappears; what he paints has not the effect of a picture, but of a moment of existence, a memory of something clear and familiar--something which has been lived and seen, but not fashioned with deliberate intention. his figures are like the sudden appearance of actual persons, spied upon, as if one were looking through the window into a strange room under cover of night. one feels that there is no occasion to pay the artist a compliment; but one would like to sit in such a warm, cosy room, impregnated with tobacco smoke, to inhale the fine cloud of steam issuing from the tea-kettle, to hear the water bubbling and humming upon the glimmering fire. but the painter is always seen in leibl's pictures. a communicative spirit, something which touches the heart and sets one dreaming, is precisely what is not expressed in them. the spectator invariably thinks, in the first place, of the astonishing ability, the incredible patience, which went to the making of them. and with all their photographic fidelity he is, moreover, conscious that the painter himself was less concerned in seizing the poetry of a scene, the instantaneous charm of an impression of nature, than in forcing into the foreground particular evidences of his technical powers which he has reserved for display. for instance, newspapers in which, if it is possible, a fragment of the leading article may be deciphered, earthen vessels, bottles, and brandy glasses, play in his pictures a _rôle_ similar to that assumed by the little caskets with brass covers that catch the flashing lights, the overturned settles, the tapestry, and the globe in works of the school of piloty. wilhelm leibl is a good workman, like courbet, a man of fresh, vigorous, and energetic nature and robust health, very material, and at times matter-of-fact and prosaic. painting is as natural to him as breathing and walking are to the rest of us. he goes his way like an ox in the plough, steadily and without tiring, without vibration of the nerves, and without the touch of poetry. he goes where his instinct leads him and paints with a muscular flexibility of hand whatever appeals to his eye or suits his brush. opposed to the neurotic and hurrying moderns, he has something of a mediæval monk who sits quietly in his cell, without counting the hours, the days, and the years, and embellishes the pages of his service-book with artistic miniatures, to depart in peace when he has set "amen, finis" at the bottom of the last page. but he has, too, all the capacity and all the boundless veneration for nature of these old artists. he is the greatest _maître peintre_ that germany has had in the course of the century, and in this sense his advent was of epoch-making importance. [illustration: _l'art._ leibl. a peasant drinking.] [illustration: leibl. in the peasant's cottage.] even defregger had observed peasant life altogether from a narrative and anecdotic point of view. in leibl this narrative _genre_ has been overcome. he had ability enough to give artistic attractions even to an "empty subject." to avoid exaggerated characterisation, to avoid the expression of anything divided into _rôles_, he consistently painted people employed in the least exciting occupations--peasants reading a newspaper, sitting in church, or examining a gun. pains are taken to avoid the slightest movement of the figures. whilst all his predecessors were romance writers, leibl is a painter. his themes--simple scenes of daily life--are a matter of indifference; the beauty of his pictures lies in their technique. they are works of which it may be said that every attempt to give an impression of them in words is useless, for they have not proceeded from delight in anecdotic theme, but, as in the good periods of art, from the discipline of the sense for colour and from an eminent capacity for drawing: they are pictures in which mere interest in subject is lost in the consideration of their artistic value, while the matter of what is represented is entirely thrown into the background by the manner in which it is carried out. the chief aim of the historical as of the _genre_ painters had been to draw a fluent cartoon based upon single studies, to mix the colours nicely upon the palette, lay them upon the canvas according to the rules, blend them and let them dry, so as then to attain the proper harmony of colour by painting over again and finally glazing. leibl's mastery, which of itself resulted in an astonishing truth to nature, lay in seizing an impression as quickly as possible, taking hold of the reality rightly at the first glance, and transferring the colours to his canvas with decision and sureness, in clear accord with the hues of the original. lessing's maxim, "from the eyes straight to the arm and the brush," has been realised here for the first time in germany. as yet no german had, in the same measure, what the painter calls qualities, and even in france two apparently heterogeneous faculties have seldom been united in one master in the same measure as they were in leibl: a broad and large technique, a bold _alla prima_ painting, and, on the other hand, a joy in work of detail with a fine brush, such as was known by quentin matsys, the smith of antwerp. "the village politicians" of was the chief work that he painted in schondorf. what would knaus, the king of illustration and the ruler over the province of vignettes, have made out of this theme! by a literary evasion he would have subordinated the interest of the picture to his ideas. one would have learnt what it is that peasants read, and received instruction as to their political allegiance to party and their offices and honours in the village: that would be the magistrate, that the smith, and that the tailor. in leibl there are true and simple peasants, who, by way of relaxation from the toil of the week, listen stupidly and indifferently to the reading of a sunday paper, in which one of them is endeavouring to discover the village news and the price of crops. they are harsh-featured and common, but they have been spared theatrical embellishment and impertinent satire; they are not artistically grouped, though they sit there in all the rusticity of their physiognomies, and all the angularity of their attitudes, without polish or sunday state. leibl renders the reality without altering it, but he renders it fully and entirely. the fidelity to nature held fast on the canvas surpassed everything that had hitherto been seen, and it was gained, moreover, by the soundest and the simplest means. whereas lenbach, in his effort to reproduce the colour-effects of the old masters, destroyed the durability of his pictures even while he worked upon them, leibl seemed to have chosen as his motto the phrase which dürer once used in writing to jacob heller: "i know that, if you preserve the picture well, it will be fresh and clean at the end of five hundred years, for it has not been painted as pictures usually are in these days." he took a further step in the direction of truth when he made a transition from the dutch towards the old german masters. after he had, in his earlier productions, worked very delicately at the tone of his pictures, and, for a time, had particularly sought to attain specific effects of _chiaroscuro_, attaching himself to rembrandt, he took up an independent position in his conception of colour, painting everything not as one of the old masters might have seen it, but as he had seen it himself. all the tricks of painting and sleights of virtuosity were despised, special emphasis being scarcely laid upon pictorial unity of effect. everything was simple and true to nature, and had a sincerity which is not to be surpassed. the picture of the three peasant women, "in church," is the masterpiece in this "second manner" of his, and when it appeared in the munich international exhibition of it was an event. from that date leibl was established--at any rate in the artistic circles of munich--as the greatest german _painter_ of his time. that leibl painted the picture without sketching for himself an outline, that he began with the eye of the peasant girl and painted bit by bit, like fragments of a mosaic, was a feat of technique in which there were few to imitate him. the young generation in munich studied the pages of the service-book and the squares of the gingham dress, the girl's jug and the carvings of the pew, with astonishment, as though they were the work of magic. they were beside themselves with delight over such unheard-of strength, power, and delicacy of modelling, the fusion of colour suggesting holbein, and the intimate study of nature. they perpetually discovered new points that came upon them as a surprise, and many felt as wilkie did when he sat in madrid before the drinkers of velasquez, and at last rose wearily with a sigh. [illustration: _l'art._ leibl. a tailor's workshop.] leibl did for germany what the pre-raphaelites did for england. men and women were represented with astonishing pains just as they sat and suffered themselves to be painted. he was determined to give the whole, pure truth, and he gave it; that, and nothing more and nothing less. he reproduced nature in her minutest traits and in her finest movements, bringing the imitative side of art to the highest perfection conceivable. in virtue of these qualities he was a born portrait painter; and although he never had "conception," as lenbach had, his portraits belong, with those of lenbach, to the best german performances of the century. only holbein when he painted his "gysze" had this remorseless manner of analysing the human countenance in every wrinkle. leibl once more taught the german painters to go into detail, and led them constantly to hold nature as the only source of art; and that has been the beginning of every renaissance. his works were pictorially the most complete expression of the aims of the munich school in colour. as a representative of the efforts of the decade from he is as typical as cornelius for the art of the thirties, piloty for that of the fifties, and as liebermann became later as a representative of the efforts of the eighties. chapter xxx the influence of the japanese courbet and ribot for france, holman hunt and madox brown for england, stevens for belgium, menzel, lenbach, and leibl for germany, are the great names of modern realism, the names of the men who subjected modern life to art, and subjected art to the nineteenth century. one point, however, the question of colour, still remained unsolved: as the preceding generation took their form, so these painters took their colour, not from nature, but from the treasury of old art. courbet announced it as his programme to express the manners, ideas, and aspect of his age--in a word, to create living art. he described himself as the sincere lover of _la vérité vraie_: "_la véritable peinture doit appeler son spectateur par la force et par la grande vérité de son imitation_." but one may question how far his figures, and the environment of them, are true in colour? where there is a delightful subtlety of fleeting _nuances_ in nature, an oppressive opaque heaviness is found in this modern caravaggio of franche-comté. he certainly painted modern stone-breakers, but it was in the tone of saints of the spanish school of the seventeenth century. his pictures of artisans have the odour of the museum. the home of his men and women is not the open field of ornans, but that room in the louvre where hang the pictures of caravaggio. _alfred stevens_ made a great stride by painting modern _parisiennes_. whereas the costume picture had up to his time sought the truth of the old masters only in the matter of the skirts which the fashion of their age prescribed, stevens was the first to dress his women in the garb of , just as terborg painted his in the costume of and not of . but the very atmosphere in which the _parisienne_ of the nineteenth century lived is no longer that in which the women of de hoogh moved. the whole of life is brighter. the studios in which pictures are painted are brighter, and the rooms in which they are destined to hang. van der meer of delft, the greatest painter of light amongst the dutch, still worked behind little casements; and in dusky patrician dwellings, "where the very light of heaven breaks sad through painted window," his pictures were ultimately hung. the old masters paid special attention to these conditions of illumination. the golden harmony of the italian renaissance came into being from the character of the old cathedrals furnished with glass windows of divers colours; the half-light of the dutch corresponded to the dusky studios in which painters laboured, and the gloomy, brown-wainscoted rooms for which their pictures were destined. the nineteenth century committed the mistake even here of regarding what was done to meet a special case as something absolute. rooms had long become bright when studios were artificially darkened, and artists still sought, by means of coloured windows and heavy curtains, to subdue the light, so as to be able to paint in tones dictated by the old masters. stevens shed over a modern woman, a _parisienne_, sitting in a drawing-room in the avenue de jena, the light of gerard dow, without reflecting that this illumination, filtered through little lattice-windows, was quite correct in holland during the seventeenth century, but no longer proper in the paris of , in a salon where the windows had great cross-bars and clear white panes which were not leaded. it is chiefly this that makes his pictures untrue, lending them an old flemish heaviness, something earthy, savouring of the clay, and not in keeping with the fresh fragrance of the modern _parisienne_. her modernity is seen through the yellowish glass which the old flemish masters seemed to hold between stevens and his model. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ hokusai in the costume of a japanese warrior.] considered as a separate personality _ribot_, too, is a great artist; his works are masterpieces. yet when young men spoke of him as the last representative of the school of cellar-windows there was an atom of truth in what they said. like courbet, he continued the art of galleries. the master of a style and yet the servant of a manner, he marks the summit of a tendency in which the great traditions of frans hals and ribera were once more embodied. when he paints subjects resembling the themes of these old masters he is as great as they are, as genuine and as much a master of style; but as soon as he turns to other subjects the imitative mannerist is revealed. even things as tender and unsubstantial as the flowers of the field seem as if they were made of wax. his disdain for what is light, fluent, and fickle, like air and water, is evident in his sea-pieces. his steamers plough their way through a greyish-black sea beneath a thick black stormy sky, as though through grey deserts. nature quivering in the air and bathed in light is not so heavy and compact, nor has it such plasticity of appearance. his women reading are the _ne plus ultra_ of painting; only it is astonishing that any human being can read in such a dark room. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ hokusai. women bathing.] ribot's parallel in germany is _lenbach_, who had less pictorial and greater intellectual power. as a painter of copies, particularly copies of the artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, he formed and perfected a school for the understanding of the old masters, as none of his contemporaries had done. the copies which he made as a young man for count schack in italy and spain are probably the best translations by the brush that have ever been executed. he has reproduced titian and rubens, velasquez and giorgione, with equal magic; no other painter has entered into all the subtleties of their technique with such intelligence and keenness; and by the aid of these sleights of art, which he learnt as a copyist from classic masterpieces, he communicated to his own works that impress which qualifies them for the gallery and suggests the old masters with such refinement. his pictures mark the summit of ability reached in germany in the pictorial style of the old artists. but, at the same time, his weakness lies in this very eminence. the man who had passed through the high-school of the old masters with the greatest success was entered as a student for life, and never took the professorial chair himself. helferich has called him the impersonated spirit of the galleries, the spirit which is centuries old. this indicates the direction which must be taken by the further development of painting. a really new and independent art must finally emancipate itself from the renaissance colouring, the tone of church painting, and the _chiaroscuro_ of pictures painted behind the variegated panes of lattice-windows. it must be evident that the methods of the old spanish and old dutch schools, excellent in themselves, were fully in keeping with strange scenes of martyrdom or quiet interiors with peasants and fat matrons, but that they could not possibly be employed in pictures of artisans beneath the free sky, nor in those of elegant interiors of our own days, nor of pale and delicate _parisiennes_ attired in silks, beings of a new epoch. a different period necessitates different methods. it is not merely that the subjects of art change, but the way in which they are handled must bear the marks of the period. nature should no longer be studied through the prism of old pictures, and the phrase _beau par la vérité_ must be exalted to a principle applying to colour also. the pre-raphaelites and menzel were the first to become alive to the problem. they were never taken captive by the tones of the early masters, but placed themselves always in conscious opposition to the artists of older ages. the battle against "brown sauce" even formed an essential point in the programme of the brotherhood. they protested against conventional colouring as violently as against the sweeping line taught by traditional rules of beauty. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ hokusai. fusiyama seen through a sail.] but, as so often happens in the nineteenth century, though the english found the jewel, they did not understand how to cut it. the pre-raphaelites had a quickening influence, in exciting a feeling for hue and tint, and rendering it keener by their own insistence on the elementary effects of colour. they sought to free themselves from brown sauce and to be just to local tones, through straightforward, independent observation. they painted the trees green, the earth grey, the sky blue, the sunbeams yellow, in sharply accentuated colours, as little blended as possible. but in most cases the result was not particularly pleasant; there was almost always a hard, motley colouring which produced a most unpleasant, glaring effect. their audacity was somewhat barbaric. there was a want of warmth and softness, the atmosphere did not combine the whole by its mitigating and harmonising power. even madox brown's "work" is an offensive chaos of crying colours. the bright clothes, the blue blouses, the red uniforms have a gaudy and unquiet effect. the problem was attacked, but the solution was harsh and crude. [illustration: hokusai. fusiyama seen through reeds.] of _menzel's_ pictures the same is true, though not perhaps in the same degree. in pictorial conception he also has not quite reached the summit. his method of painting is sometimes sparkling and full of spirit, holding the mean, more or less, between the quiet and plain painting of meissonier and the crisp, glittering style of fortuny; he lets off a flickering, dazzling, rocket-like firework, but at bottom he has been cut from the block from which draughtsmen are made. sometimes it is astonishing how his brush sweeps over costumes, ornaments, and buildings, but he does not think in colour; it is supplementary to the drawing, and not of earlier origin, nor even of equal birth. much as he tried to paint smoke and steam in his "iron mill," he had no understanding for atmospheric life; for this reason harsh and glaring tones almost invariably make a disturbing effect in his works. his "piazza d'erbe" as well as his "king wilhelm setting out to join the army" have a motley and restless effect in the picture, and only in photography or black and white do they acquire something of the simplicity which is to be desired in the originals. the best of his drawings may stand beside the sketches of dürer without detriment; to place his pictures on the same level is impossible, because quietude and pure harmony are wanting in them. so extremes meet. courbet, ribot, and lenbach are greater connoisseurs of colour than europe had seen previous to their appearance, but this they are at the expense of truth; they have identified themselves with the old masters, and not arrived at any personal conception of colour. menzel and the pre-raphaelites despised the old masters, but their conception of colour had something primitive, jarring, and undisciplined. the note of truth was still missing in the mighty orchestra. by what possible means could it be supplied? how bring to perfection that great harmony which is ever the end and aim of all true artistic effort. it was not until the art of the far east was unfolded before the eyes of western painters that this disquieting problem reached its solution. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ hokusai. an apparition.] in the year in which millet exhibited his "winnower" and courbet painted his "stone-breakers" a man died in the far east whose name was hokusai. he was the last great representative of an art of painting more than a thousand years old--one which had no raphael, correggio, or titian, though it was, nevertheless, art in the loftiest meaning of the word. marco polo, the great traveller of the middle ages, had told of a remarkable land "towards the sunrise," the soil of which it was not permitted to him to tread. and the artistic views of the eighteenth century were revolutionised when the first japanese porcelain and lacquer-work arrived at the courts of dresden and paris. the aged louis xiv himself began to find pleasure in idols, pagodas, and "stuffs printed with flowers." in a short time these works formed an important part of superior collections, and led to the movement against the inflexible despotism of the pompous lebrun style. for the japanese gave europe the unfettered principles of a freer intuition of beauty; they excited a preference for things which were unsymmetrical, capricious, full of movement, for everything by which the charming louis xv style is to be distinguished from the tiresome academic art of louis xiv. in the sixties of the nineteenth century japan exerted, for the second time, a revolutionary influence on the development of european painting. if japanese productions were in earlier days regarded as curiosities, for which place was to be found in cabinets of rarities, as trifles the artistic value of which was less prized than the dexterity of their construction, it was reserved for the present age to do justice to japanese art as such. [illustration: hokusai. hokusai sketching the peerless mountain.] as is well known, oil-painting exists neither in china nor japan. just as the japanese choose the slightest material for building, so everything in their painting bears a trace of extreme lightness. japanese pictures, _kakemonos_, are painted in water colour or chinese ink upon framed silk or paper; but this paper has an advantage over the european article in its unsurpassed toughness, its remarkable softness and pliability, its surface which has either a dull, silky lustre, or may only be compared with the finest parchment. and the pictures themselves are kept rolled up, and only hung, as occasion offers, in the tokonama, the little closet near the reception-room, and according to very refined rules. only a few are hung at a time, and only such as harmonise. when a visit is expected the taste of the guest determines the selection. fresh and variously coloured flowers and branches, placed near them in vases, are obliged to harmonise in colour with the pictures. [illustration: tanyu. the god hoteÏ on a journey.] as an instrument for painting use is only made of the pliant brush of hair, which executes everything with a free and fluent effect. pen, crayon, or chalk, and all hard mediums which offer resistance, are consistently excluded. the subject-matter of these pictures is surprisingly rich, and assumes for their proper understanding some acquaintance with japanese literature. an opulent folk-lore, in which cannibals and heroes like tom thumb live and move and have their being, just as in european fairy stories, stands at the disposal of the artist. historical representations from the life of fabulous national heroes, ghosts, and apparitions half man and half bird, alternate with simple landscapes and scenes from daily life. and in all pictures, whether they are fanciful or plain renderings of fact, attention is riveted by the same keenness of observation, the same refinement of taste, in the highest sense of the word by pictorial charm. after the japanese have been long recognised as the first decorative artists in the world, after the highest praise has been accorded to them in the industrial crafts taken jointly--in lacquer-work and bronze work, weaving, embroidery, and pottery--they are now likewise celebrated as the most spirited draughtsmen in existence. [illustration: _studio._ korin. landscape.] [illustration: _studio._ korin. rabbits.] the japanese artist lives with nature and in her as no artist of any other country has ever done. life in the open air creates a relation to nature suggestive of the doctrines of rousseau; it makes earth, sky, and water as familiar to man as are the beings that move in them. every house, even in the centre of towns, has a garden laid out with fine taste, and combining beautiful flowers, trees, and cascades, everything incidental to the soil. the form of trees, the shape and colour of flowers, the ripple of leaves, and the gleaming mail of insects are so imprinted in the memory of the painter that his fancy can summon them at pleasure without the need of fresh study. the most fleeting moment of the life of nature is held as firmly in his mind as the everlasting form of rocks and gigantic trees shadowing the temple groves of nippon. every one of these artists works with the unfettered falcon glance of the child of nature. his keen eye sees in the flight of birds turns and movements first revealed to us by instantaneous photography. this quickness of eye and this astonishing exercise of memory enable him to obtain the most striking effects with the slightest means. if a japanese executes figures, race, station, age, business, personality are all seized with the keenest vision, and pregnantly rendered in their essential features. robes and unclad forms, heads and limbs, animated and still nature, are all reproduced with the same reality. yet little as the doctrine ever gained ground that to create works of art nature should be mastered upon a system, trivial realism was just as little at any time the vogue. [illustration: _cassell & co._ okio. a carp.] the love of nature is born in the japanese, but the photographic imitation, the servile reproduction of reality, is never his ultimate aim. geoffroy has noted with much subtlety the resemblance which exists between japanese poets and painters in this respect. their poets never describe, but only endeavour to express a spiritual feeling, to hold a memory fast--the blitheness of smiling pleasure, the mournfulness of vanished joy. they sing of the mist passing over the mountain summits, the fishing boats, the reeds by the seashore, the plash of waves, the flying streaks of cloud, the sunset streaming purple over the weary world. the same economy of means, the same sureness in the choice of characteristic features, and a similar rapidity in striking the keynote are peculiar to the painters. they, too, express themselves by the scantiest means, shrink from saying too much, and aim only at a rapid and right expression of total effect, leaving to the imagination the task of supplementing and amplifying what is given. the heaviness of matter is overcome, the absurd pretence of reality not attempted. like the french of the eighteenth century, the japanese possess the sportive grace, the _esprit_ of the brush hovering over objects, extracting merely their bloom and essence, and using them as the basis for free and independent caprices of beauty. they have the remarkable faculty of being synthetic and discarding every ponderous and disturbing element, without losing the local accent in a landscape or a figure. they fasten upon the most vivid impression of things, but in great, comprehensive lines, subordinating every peculiarity to the light which shines upon them and the shadow in which they are muffled. their handwriting is at once broad and precise, graceful and bizarre. what a nonchalant, fragile, piquant, or coquettish effect have their feminine figures! and but a few firm strokes sufficed to create the impression. a dexterous sweep of the brush was all that was necessary for the modelling, all that was wanted to summon the idea of the velvet softness of the flesh and the firmness of the bosom. or surging waves have been painted, or foaming cataracts. but with what consummate mastery, with what peculiar knowledge, the swirl and eddying of the waters have been represented. and how slight are the means which have been employed! everything has the freshness of life, and the sheer, intangible movement of objects has been caught by a simple and decisive line. a few dashes of chinese ink are made, and the forcible strokes unite without effort in forming a mountain path or a hillside stream foaming over rocks and trees. or the prow of a vessel is represented. nothing is to be seen of the water, and yet it is as if the waves were rocking the ship. the billow swells, rises, and sinks, suggesting the wide sea, the rhythm in the universe. the lines in which the motives are executed render only what is essential. but combined with this striving after simplified form there is a sense of space which of itself, as it were, controls everything, producing the poetic illusion of distance. [illustration: hiroshige. the bridge at yeddo.] the japanese are masters of the art of enlarging a narrow picture frame to a great expanse, and indicating by a few strokes the distance between foreground and horizon. there is often nothing, or next to nothing, in the wide space, but proximity and distance are so correctly related that all the geological structure is clear, whilst light air is pervasive, giving the eye a vision of boundless perspective. the spur of a headland, the bank of a river, or a cleft between two mountains enables the eye to measure far landscapes. in the presence of their works one dreams, one has the presentiment of infinite distances. they divest objects of their earthiness by bold simplifications, and transform reality into dreamland. it is the spirit of things, their smile, and their intangible perfume which live in these veiled masterpieces which are yet so precise. the bold irregularity of japanese works, which know nothing of the stiffness of symmetrical composition, contributes much to this impression. their pictures are never "composed" in our sense of the word, but rather resemble the instantaneous pictures of photographers. a bird is seen to dart past, only half visible, a cluster of trees is a chance slice from the forest, as it is seen out of the window of a railway train whizzing past. or it is merely the bough of a tree with a bird upon it that stretches into the picture, which is otherwise filled with a fragment of blue sky. without appearing to concern themselves about it, they compose little poems of grace and freshness, with a frog, a butterfly, and a blossoming apple-branch sprouting out of a vase. they play with beetles, grasshoppers, tortoises, crabs, and fish as did the artists of the renaissance with cupids and angels. [illustration: hiroshige. a high road.] and in everything, as regards colour too, the japanese have a strain of refinement peculiar to themselves. it is as though they were controlled by the finest tact, as by a _force majeure_, even in their intuition of colour. that great harmony of which théodore rousseau spoke, and to which it was the aim of his life to attain, is reached by the japanese artist almost instinctively. the most vivid effects of red and green trees, yellow roads, and blue sky are represented; the most refined effects of light are rendered--illuminated bridges, dark firmaments, the white sickle of the moon, glittering stars, the bright and rosy blossoms of spring, the dazzling snow as it falls upon trim gardens; and there are discords nowhere. how heavy and motley our colouring is compared with these delicious chords, set beside each other so boldly, and invariably so harmonious. is it that our eyes are by nature less delicate? or is everything in the japanese only the result of a more rational training? we have not the same intense force of perception, this instinctive and sensuous gift of colour. their colouring is a delight to the eyes, a magic potion. offence is nowhere given by a glaring or an entirely crude tone; everything is finely calculated, delicately indicated, and has that melting softness so enchanting in japanese enamel. the simplest chords of colour are often the most effective; nothing can be more charming than the delicate duet of grey and gold. and the cheapest wood-cut has often all these refinements in common with the most costly _kakemono_. even here, where they turn to lowly things, their art is never vulgar, but maintains itself at such an aristocratic height that we barbarians of the west, blessed with oleographs and academies of art, can only look up with envy to this nation of connoisseurs. [illustration: hiroshige. a landscape.] the oldest of these japanese artists working in wood-cut engraving was matahei, who lived in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and executed scenes from the theatres and japanese family and street life. icho and moronobu followed at the close of the seventeenth century, the one being a spirited caricaturist, the other a genuine _baroque_ artist of noble and classic reserve. through the masters of the eighteenth century, as through eisen, fragonard, and boucher, this reproductive art took fresh development. the soft girls of soukénobu with their delicate round faces, the graceful beauties of harunobu arrayed in costly toilettes, the tall feminine forms of the marvellous outamaro in all their provocative charm, the vivid scenes from popular life of the great colourist shunsho, are works pervaded with a delicate perfume of which edmond de goncourt alone could render any impression in words. outamaro, the poet of women, was, in a special sense, the watteau of aristocratic life in japan. he knew the life of the japanese woman as no other has ever done--her domestic occupations, her walks and her charming graces, her vanities and her love affairs. he knew also the scenes of nature which she contemplated, the streets through which she passed, and the banks along which she sauntered with an undulating step. his women are slender beings, isolated like idols, and standing motionless in poses hieratically august; æsthetic souls, who swoon and grow pale under the sway of disquieting visions; fading flowers, forms roaming wearily by the verge of a lonely sea or a sluggish stream, or flitting timidly, like bats, through the soft brilliancy of lights amid a festival by night. and in killing what is fleshly and physical he renders the faces visionary and dreamy, renders the hands and the gestures finer, and at the same time subdues and mitigates the colours and the splendour of the clothes, taking pleasure in dying chords, in deep black and tender white, in fine, pallid _nuances_ of rose-colour and lilac. every one of his pupils became a fresh chronicler of aristocratic life. toyohami painted night festivals; toyoshiru, animated crowds; toyokumi, scenes of the theatre; kunisada, women upon their walks; kunioshi, melodramatic representations full of pomp, with marvellous fantastic landscapes. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ hiroshige. snowy weather.] the nineteenth century brought the widest popularisation of art, corresponding more or less to the "resort to popular national life," as the beginning of modern _genre_ painting and of the modern art of illustration was called in germany. the refined son of nippon shrugs his shoulders over these last creations of japanese reproduction in colours; he prefers those earlier charming masters of grace, and misses the aristocratic _cachet_ in the new men, with as much justification as the refined european collector has when he does not care to place the plates of granville or doré in a portfolio with those of eisen or fragonard. nevertheless amongst the draughtsmen who followed the popular tendency there was at any rate one great genius, one of the most important artists of his country, who became more familiar to europe than any of his other compatriots: this was _hokusai_. [illustration: an unknown master. harvesters resting.] all the qualities of japanese art are united in him as in a focus. his work is the encyclopædia of a whole nation, and in his technical qualities he stands by the side of the greatest men in europe. he is the most attentive observer, a painter of manners as no other has ever been; he takes strict measure of everything, analysing the slightest movements. he draws the solid things of earth, the immovable rocks, the everlasting primæval mountains, and yet follows the changing phenomena of light and shade upon its surface. he has, in the highest degree, that peculiarly japanese quality of giving tangible expression to the movements of things and living creatures. his men and women gesticulate, his animals run, his birds fly, his reptiles crawl, his fish swim; the leaves on the trees, the water of the rivers, and the sea and the clouds of the sky move gently. he is a magnificent landscape painter, celebrating all the seasons, from blossoming spring to ice-bound winter. in his designs he maps out orchards, fields, and woods, follows the winding course of rivers, summons a fine mist from the sea, sends the waves surging forward, and the billows racing up against the rocks and losing themselves as murmuring rivulets in the sand. but he is also a philosopher and a poet of wide flight, who makes the boldest journeys into the land of dreams. his imagination rises above the work-a-day world, rides upon the chimera, bodies forth a new life, creates monsters, and tells visions of terrible poetry. the deep feeling of the primitive masters revives in him, and he appears as a strange mystic, when he paints his blithe ethereal goddesses, or that old buddhist who, when banished, came every day across the sea, as the legend tells, to behold once more fuji, the sacred mountain. [illustration: _studio._ outamaro. mother's love.] hokusai was born in , amid flowery gardens in a quiet corner of yeddo, fourteen years after goya and twelve years after david. his father was purveyor of metallic mirrors to the court. hokusai took lessons from an illustrator, but does not seem to have been much known until his fortieth or fiftieth year. in he first founded an industrial school of art, which attracted numbers of young people. to provide them with a compendium of instruction in drawing he published in the first volume of his _mangwa_. from that time he was recognised as the head of a school. when his fame began to spread he changed his residence almost every month to protect himself from troublesome visitors. and just as often did he alter his name. even that under which he became famous in europe is only a pseudonym, like "gavarni": amongst various _noms de guerre_ it was that which he bore the longest and by which he was definitely recognised. as a painter he was only active in his youth. the achievement of his life is not his pictures, but a magnificent series of illustrated books, a life's work richer than that of any of his compatriots. like titian and corot, fate had predestined him to reach a very great age without ever growing old. "from my sixth year," he writes in the preface to one of his books, "i had a perfect mania for drawing every object that i saw. when i had reached my fiftieth year i published a vast quantity of drawings; but i am unsatisfied with all that i have produced before my seventieth year. at seventy-three i had some understanding of the form and real nature of birds, fish, and plants. at eighty i hope to have made further progress, and at ninety to have discovered the ultimate foundation of things. in my hundredth year i shall rise to yet higher spheres unknown, and in my hundred and tenth, every stroke, every point, and in short everything that comes from my hand will be alive." hokusai certainly did not reach so great an age as that. he died at eighty-nine, on th april , and is buried in the temple at yeddo. during the period between and he published about eighty great works, altogether over five hundred volumes. "i rose from my seat at the window, where i had idled the whole day long ... softly, softly.... then i was up and away.... i saw the countless green leaves tremble in the densely embowered tops of the trees; i watched the flaky clouds in the blue sky, collecting fantastically into shapes torn and multiform.... i sauntered here and there carelessly, without aim or volition.... now i crossed the bridge of apes and listened as the echo repeated the cry of the wild cranes.... now i was in the cherry-grove of owari.... through the mists shifting along the coast of miho i descried the famous pines of suminoye.... now i stood trembling upon the bridge of kameji and looked down in astonishment at the gigantic fuki plants.... then the roar of the dizzy waterfall of ono resounded in my ear. a shudder ran through me.... it was only a dream which i dreamed, lying in bed near my window with this book of pictures by the master as a cushion beneath my head." [illustration: kiyonaga. ladies boating.] in these words a learned japanese has indicated the great range of subject, the unspeakably rich material of the works of the master. by preference he leads us to the work-places of artisans, to woodcarvers, smiths, workers in metal, dyers, weavers, and embroiderers. then come the pleasures of the nobility, who are displayed in their refinement, reserve, and dignity; the country-folk at their daily avocations, or making merry upon holidays; the fantastic shapes of fabulous animals and demons, who figure in the life of japanese national heroes, mighty with the sword; apparitions, drunken men, wrestlers, street figures of every conceivable description, mythical reptiles, snow-clad mountain tops, waving rice-fields lashed by the wind, woodland glens, strange gateways of rock, far views over waters with cliffs clothed with pine. the most celebrated of those works which contain landscapes exclusively are the views, published in three volumes in - , of the mountain of fuji, the great volcano rising close by yeddo, and from old time playing a part in the works of japanese landscape painters. in hokusai's book the cone of the mountain is sometimes seen rising clear in a cloudless sky, whilst it is sometimes shrouded by clouds of various shapes. its beautiful outline glimmers through the meshes of a net, through the spindrift of snow falling in great flakes, or through a curtain of rain splashing vertically down. it rises from misty valleys coloured by the rays of the evening sun, or is reflected--itself out of sight--in the smooth surface of a lake, upon the reedy shores of which the wild geese cackle, or it stands in ghostly outlines against the night sky flooded with silver moonlight. summer breezes and winter storms drive over it, rattling showers of hail, lashed by the wind, or light falls of snow descend round it. in spring the blossoms of peach and plum-trees flutter to the earth, like swarms of white and rosy butterflies. only famished wolves or dragons, which popular superstition has located in the mountain of fuji, occasionally animate the grandiose solitude of the landscape. "never," says gonse, "has a more dexterous hand rested upon paper. it is impossible to study his plates without an excited feeling of pleasure, for they are absolute perfection, the highest that japanese art has produced in freshness, brilliancy, life, and originality. hokusai's capacity of giving the impression of relief and colour with a stroke of the brush has nothing like it except in rembrandt, callot, and goya. men, animals, landscapes, and everything in his drawings are reduced to their simplest expression. groups are seen in motion, priests in procession, soldiers on the march, and often a single stroke is sufficient to render an individual or create the impression of life and movement. every plate is a masterpiece of coloured woodcut engraving, of singular flavour in colour, delightful in its gravely harmonised chord of golden yellow, faded green, and fiery red, to which are sometimes added golden, silvern, and other metallic tones." after the beginning of the sixties paris came under the captivating influence of japan. and there is no doubt that as the english influenced the landscape painters of fontainebleau, the venetians delacroix, and the neapolitan masters courbet and ribot, the newest phase of french art, which took its departure from manet, was inaugurated by the enthusiasm for things japanese. from the moment when the peculiar isolation of japan was ended by the breaking up of the japanese feudal state, paris was flooded by splendid works of japanese art. a painter discovered amongst the mass of articles newly arrived albums, colour prints, and pictures. their drawing, colouring, and composition deviated from everything hitherto accounted as art, and yet the æsthetic character of these works was too artistic to permit of any one smiling over them as curiosities. whether the discoverer was alfred stevens or diaz, fortuny, james tissot, or alphonse legros, the enthusiasm for the japanese swept over the studios like a storm. the artistic world never wearied of admiring the capricious ability of these compositions, the astonishing power of drawing, the fineness in tone, the originality of pictorial effect, nor of wondering at the refined simplicity of the means by which these results were achieved. japanese art made itself felt by its fresh and tender charm, its creative opulence, its lightness and delicacy of observation; it arrested attention because directness, unfailing tact, and inherent distinction were of the essence of its conception; and it was recognised as the production of a nation of artists combining the subtilised taste of an originally refined civilisation with the freshness of feeling peculiar to primitive people. colour prints, now to be had for a few francs at every bazaar, were bought at the highest figures. every new consignment was awaited with feverish impatience. old ivory, enamel, porcelain and embellished pottery, bronzes and wood and lacquer-work, ornamented stuffs, embroidered silks, albums, books of wood-cuts, and knick-knacks were scarcely unpacked in the shop before they found their way into the studios of artists and the libraries of scholars. in a short time great collections of the artistic productions of japan passed into the hands of the painters manet, james tissot, whistler, fantin-latour, degas, carolus duran, and monet; of the engravers bracquemond and jules jacquemart; of the authors edmond and jules de goncourt, champfleury, philippe burty, and zola; and of the manufacturers barbedienne and christofle. [illustration: harunobu. a pair of lovers.] the international exhibition of brought japan still more into fashion, and from this year must be dated the peculiar influence of the west upon the east and the east upon the west. the japanese came over to study at the european polytechnic institutes, universities, and military academies. on the other hand, we became the pupils of the japanese in art. even during the course of the exhibition a group of artists and critics founded a japanese society of the "jinglar," which met every week in sèvres at the house of solon, the director of the manufactory. they used a japanese dinner-service, designed by bracquemond, and everything except the napkins, cigars, and ash-trays was japanese. one of the members, dr. zacharias astruc, published in _l'Étendard_ a series of articles upon "the empire of the rising sun," which made a great sensation. soon afterwards the parisian theatres brought out japanese ballets and fairy plays. ernest d'hervilly wrote his japanese piece _la belle saïnara_, which lemère printed for him in japanese fashion and paged from right to left, giving it a yellow cover designed by bracquemond. a japanese ballet was performed at the opera, and a japanese turn was given to the toilettes of women. for painters japanese art was a revelation. here was uttered the word that hovered on so many lips, and that no one had dared to pronounce. with what a fleeting touch, and yet with what precision, with what incomparable sureness, lightness, and grace, was everything carried out. how intuitive and spontaneous, how imaginative and how full of suggestion, how effortless and how rich in surprises, was this strange art. how happily was industry united with caprice, and nonchalance with endeavour at the highest finish. how suggestive was this disregard for symmetry, this piquant method of introducing a flower, an insect, a frog, or a bird here and there, merely as a pictorial spot in the picture. how the japanese understood the art of expressing much with few means, where the europeans toiled with a great expenditure of means to express little. it would certainly have been an exceedingly false move if a direct imitation of the japanese had been thought of. japanese art is the product of a sensuous people, and european art that of intellectual nations. the latter is greater and more serious; it is nobler, and it reaches heights of expression not attained by the grotesque and terrible distortions and the morbidly droll or melancholy outbursts of sentiment known to the japanese. our imagination is alien to that of these children of the sensuous world, who quake and tremble for joy, horrify themselves with their masks, and pass from convulsive laughter to sheer terror, and from the shudder of hallucination to ecstatic bliss. had japanese art been coarsely transposed by imitators it would have led to caricature. but if its poetics were little suitable for europe in the specialised case, they nevertheless contained general laws better fitted for modern art than those which had been hitherto borrowed from greece. all arts, music as well as poetry, were then striving for the dissolution of simple, tyrannical rhythms. the recurrence of unyielding measures beaten out with unwavering repetition no longer corresponded with the complicated, neurotic emotions of the new age. in painting, likewise, exertions were being made to burst the old shell, and a style was sought after for the treatment of modern life which had been violently handled in the effort to force it to fit the procrustean bed of traditional rules. then came the japanese with their astonishing, rapid, and pictorial sketches, and revealed a new method for the interpretation of nature. at a time when the symmetrical balance of lines, borrowed from the works of the renaissance masters, became wearisome in its monotony, they taught a much freer architecture of form, and one which was broken by charming caprices. where there had been rhythm, tension, clarity, largeness, and quietude in the old european painting, there was in them a nervous freedom, an artful carelessness, and life and charm. art was concealed beneath the fancy shown in their facile construction, which seemed to have been improvised by nature herself. an artistic method of deviating from geometrical arrangement, freedom of distribution, unforced and unsymmetrical structure, in the place of balance and construction according to rules, were learnt from the japanese in the matter of composition. [illustration: toyokumi. nocturnal reverie.] at the same time, they threw light upon what had been flat and trivial in courbet's realism. these spirited narrators never told a story for the sake of telling it; they never painted to give a prosaic copy of some particle of reality. they liberated european painting from the heaviness of matter, and rendered it tender and delicate. they taught that art of not saying everything, which says so much, the method of compendious drawing, the secret of expanding distance by a special treatment of lines, the touch thrown rapidly in, the unforeseen, the surprise, the fleeting hint, the way of increasing effect by the incompletion of motive, the suggestion of the whole by a part. artists learnt from them another manner of drawing and modelling, a manner of giving the impression of the object without the need for the whole of it being executed, so that one knows that it is there only through one's knowledge. they brought in the taste for pithy sketches dealing only with essentials, the consciousness of the endless catalogue of what may be contained--in life, reality, and fancy--by one fluent outline. they introduced the preference for perspective bird's-eye views, the disposition to throw groups, dense masses, and crowds more into the distance, and render them more animated and vivid by a relief of the foreground, which (though confirmed by photography) is apparently improbable. the influence of japan on colouring is just as visible as upon composition and drawing. it had been clearly shown in courbet's pictures of artisans that the rules of the bolognese school, with their brown sauce and their red shadows, could not possibly be applied to objects in the open air. it was therefore necessary to discover a new principle of colour for modern subjects, a principle by which oil-painting would be divested of its oil, and light and air would come to their rights. it was seen from the works of the painters of nippon that it was not absolutely necessary to paint brown to be a painter. they taught a new method of seeing things, opened the eyes to the changing play of the phenomena of light, the fugitive nature and constant mutability of which had up to this time seemed to mock at every rendering. the softness of their bright harmonies was studied and artistically transposed. these are the points in which japanese art has had a revolutionary effect upon the development of european. each one of those who at that time belonged to the society of the jinglar has had more or less experience of its influence. alfred stevens owes to it certain delicacies of colouring; whistler, his exquisite refinement of tone and his capriciously artistic method in the treatment of landscape; degas, his fantastic and free grouping, his unrivalled audacities of composition. manet especially became now the artist to whom history does honour, and louis gonse tells a story with a very characteristic touch of the first exhibition of the _maîtres impressionistes_. he went there, coming from the official salon in the company of a japanese, and, while the french public declared the fresh brightness of the pictures to be untrue and barbaric, the son of sacred nippon, accustomed from youth to see nature in light, airy tones without a yellow coating of varnish, said: "over there i was in an exhibition of oil-pictures, here i feel as if i were entering a flowery garden. what strikes me is the animation of these figures, and the feeling is one i have never had elsewhere in your picture exhibitions." chapter xxxi the impressionists the name impressionists dates from an exhibition in paris which was got up at nadar's in . the catalogue contained a great deal about impressions--for instance, "_impression de mon pot au feu_," "_impression d'un chat qui se promène_." in his criticism claretie summed up the impressions and spoke of the _salon des impressionistes_. the beginning of the movement, however, came about the middle of the sixties, and zola was the first to champion the new artists with his trenchant pen. assuming the name of his later hero claude, he contributed in to _l'Événement_, under the title _mon salon_, that article which swamped the office with such a flood of indignant letters and occasioned such a secession of subscribers that the proprietor of the paper, the sage and admirable m. de villemessant, felt himself obliged to give the naturalist critic an anti-naturalistic colleague in the person of m. théodore pelloquet. in these reviews of the salon, collected in in the volume _mes haines_, and in the essay upon _courbet, the painter of realism_--courbet, the already recognised "master of ornans "--those theories are laid down which lantier and his friends announced at a later date in _l'oeuvre_. then the architect dubiche, one of the members of the young _bohème_, dreamed in a spirit of presage of a new architecture. "with passionate gestures he demanded and insisted upon the formula for the architecture of this democracy, that work in stone which should give expression to it, a building in which it should feel itself at home, something strong and forcible, simple and great, something already proclaimed in our railway stations and our markets in the grace and power of their iron girders, but purified and made beautiful, declaring the largeness of our conquests." a few years went by, and then the paris centenary exhibition provided that something, though it was not in monumental stone. the great edifices were fashioned of glass and iron, and the mighty railway buildings were their forerunners. the enormous engine-rooms which gave space for thousands and the eiffel tower announced this new architecture. and as dubiche prophesied a new architecture, so did claude prophesy a new painting. "sun and open air and bright and youthful painting are what we need. let the sun come in and render objects as they appear under the illumination of broad daylight." in zola claude lantier is the martyr of this new style. he is scorned, derided, avoided, and cast out. his best picture is smuggled, through grace and mercy, into the exhibition by a friend upon the hanging committee as a _charité_. but, ten years after, these new doctrines had penetrated all the studios of paris and of europe like germs borne in the air. the artistic ideas of claude lantier were given to zola by his friend _Édouard manet_, the father of impressionism, and in that way the creator of the newest form of art. manet appeared for the first time in . in , when the committee of the salon gave up a few secondary rooms to the rejected, the first of his pictures which made any sensation were to be seen--a "scourging of christ" and a picture of a girl with a cat resting--both invariably surrounded by a dense circle of the scornful. forty years before, the first works of the romanticists, whose doctrine was likewise scoffed at in the formula _le laid c'est le beau_, had called forth a similar outcry against the want of taste common to them all. a generation later people laughed at "the funeral in ornans," and now the same derision was directed against manet, who completed courbet's work. his pictures were held to be a practical joke which the painter was playing upon the public, the most unheard of farce that had ever been painted. if any one had declared that these works would give the impulse to a revolution in art, people would have turned their backs upon him or thought that he was jesting. "criticism treated manet," wrote zola, "as a kind of buffoon who put out his tongue for the amusement of street boys." the rage against "the scourging of christ" went so far that the picture had to be protected by special precautions from the assaults of sticks and umbrellas. but the matter took a somewhat different aspect when, five years afterwards, from twenty to thirty more recent pictures were exhibited together in manet's studio. whether it was because the aims of the painter had become clearer in the meanwhile, or because his works suffered less from the proximity of others, they made an impression, and that although they represented nothing in the least adventurous and sensational. life-size figures, light and almost without shadow, rowed over blue water, hung out white linen, watered green flower-pots, and leant against grey walls. the light colours placed immediately beside each other had a bizarre effect on the eye accustomed to chiaroscuro. the eye, which, like the human spirit, has its habitudes, and believes that it always sees nature as she is painted, was irritated by these delicately chosen tone-values which seemed to it arbitrary, by these novel harmonies which it took for discords. nevertheless the clarity of the pictures made a striking effect, and something of "manet's sun" lingered in the memory. people still laughed, only not so loud, and they gave manet credit for having the courage of his convictions. "a remarkable circumstance has to be recorded. a young painter has followed his personal impressions quite ingenuously, and has painted a few things which are not altogether in accord with the principles taught in the schools. in this way he has executed pictures which have been a source of offence to eyes accustomed to other paintings. but now, instead of abusing the young artist through thick and thin, we must be first clear as to why our eyes have been offended, and whether they ought to have been." with these words criticism began to take manet seriously. charles ephrussi and duranty, besides zola, came forward as his first literary champions in the press. "manet is bold" was now the phrase used about him in public. the impressionists took the salon by storm. and manet's bright and radiant sun was seen to be a better thing than the brown sauce of the bolognese. it was as if a strong power had suddenly deranged the focus of opinion in all the studios, and manet's victory brought the same salvation to french art as that of delacroix had done forty years before and that of courbet ten years before. _manet et manebit._ delacroix, courbet, and manet are the three great names of modern french painting, the names of the men who gave it the most decisive impulses. [illustration: Édouard manet.] Édouard manet, _le maître impressioniste_, was born in , in the rue bonaparte, exactly opposite the École des beaux-arts, and his life was quietly and simply spent, without passion and excitement, unusual events, or sanguinary battles. at sixteen, having passed through the _collège rollin_, he entered the navy with the permission of his parents, and made a voyage to rio de janeiro, which was accomplished without any incident of interest, without shipwreck or any one being drowned. with his cheerful, even temperament he looked on the boundless sea and satiated his eyes with the marvellous spectacle of waves and horizon, never to forget it. the luminous sky was spread before him, the great ocean rocked and sported around, revealing colours other than he had seen in the salon. on his return he gave himself up entirely to painting. he is said to have been a slight, pale, delicate, and refined young man when he became a pupil of couture in , almost at the same time as feuerbach. nearly six years he remained with the master of "the decadent romans," without a suspicion of how he was to find his way, and even after he had left the studio he was still pursued by the shade of couture; he worked without knowing very well what he really wanted. then he travelled, visiting germany, cassel, dresden, prague, vienna, and munich, where he copied the portrait of rembrandt in the pinakothek; and then he saw florence, rome, and venice. under the influence of the neapolitan and flemish artists, to whom ribot, courbet, and stevens pointed at the time, he gradually became a painter. his first picture, "the child with cherries," painted in , reveals the influence of brouwer. in he exhibited, for the first time, the "double portrait" of his parents, for which he received honourable mention, although--or because--the picture was entirely painted in the old bolognese style. these works are only of interest because they make it possible to see the rapidity with which manet learnt to understand his craft with the aid of the old masters, and the sureness and energy with which he followed, from the very beginning, the realistic tendency initiated by courbet. "the nymph surprised," in , was a medley of reminiscences from jordaens, tintoretto, and delacroix. his "old musician," executed with diligence but trivial in its realism, had the appearance of being a tolerable courbet. then he made--not at first in madrid, which he only knew later, but in the louvre--the eventful discovery of another old master, not yet known in all his individuality to the master of ornans. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ manet. the fifer. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ manet. the guitarero. (_by permission of m. faure, the owner of the picture._)] at the great manchester exhibition of velasquez had been revealed to the english; in the beginning of the sixties he was discovered by the french. william stirling's biography of velasquez was translated into french by g. brunet, and provided with a _catalogue raisonné_ by w. bürger. the works of charles blanc, théophile gautier, and paul lefort appeared, and in a short time velasquez, of whom the world outside madrid had hitherto known little, was in artistic circles in paris a familiar and frequently cited personality, who began not only to occupy the attention of the historians of art, but of artists also. couture was in the habit of saying to his pupils that velasquez had not understood the orchestration of tones, that he had an inclination to monochrome, and that he had never comprehended the nature of colour. from the beginning of the sixties france came under the sway of that serious feeling for colour known to the great spaniard, and manet was his first enthusiastic pupil. certain of his single figures against a pearl-grey background--"the fifer," "the guitarero," "the bull-fighter wounded to death"--were the decisive works in which, with astonishing talent, he declared himself as the pupil of velasquez. w. bürger praised velasquez as _le peintre le plus peintre qui fût jamais_. as regards the nineteenth century, the same may be said of manet. only frans hals and velasquez had these eminent pictorial qualities. in the way in which the black velvet dress, the white silk band, and the red flag were painted in the toreador picture, there was a feeling for beauty which bore witness to the finest understanding of the great spaniard. in his "angels at the tomb of christ" he has sought, as little as did velasquez in his picture of the epiphany, to introduce any trace of heavenly expression into the faces, but as a piece of painting it takes its place amongst the best religious pictures of the century. his "bon bock"--a portrait of the engraver belot, a stout jovial man smoking a pipe as he sits over a glass of beer--is one of those likenesses which stamp themselves upon the memory like the "hille bobbe" of frans hals. "faure as hamlet" stands out from the vacant light grey background like the "truhan pablillos" of velasquez. the doublet and mantle are of black velvet, the mantle lined with rose-coloured silk; and the toilette is completed by a broad black hat with a large black feather. he seems as though he had just stepped to the footlights, and stands there with his legs apart, the mantle thrown over the left arm, and his right hand closing upon his sword. the cool harmony of black, white, grey, and rose-colour makes an uncommonly refined effect. manet has the rich artistic methods of velasquez in a measure elsewhere only attained by raeburn, and as the last of these studies he has created in his "enfant à l'Épée" a work which--speaking without profanity--might have been signed by the great spaniard himself. in the beginning of the sixties, when he gave a separate exhibition of his works, courbet is said to have exclaimed upon entering, "nothing but spaniards!" but even this following of the spaniards indicated an advance upon courbet; it meant the triumph over brown sauce and a closer approximation to truth. for, amongst all the old masters, velasquez and frans hals--who greatly resemble each other in this respect--are the simplest and most natural in their colouring; they are not idealists in colour like titian, paul veronese, and rubens, nor do they labour upon the tone of their pictures like the dutch "little masters" and chardin. they paint their pictures in the broad and common light of day. their flesh-tint is truer than the juicy tint of the venetians, and the fiery red of rubens, with his shining reflections. beside velasquez, as justi says, the colouring of titian seems conventional, that of rembrandt fantastic, and that of rubens is tinged with something which is not natural. or, as a contemporary of velasquez expressed himself: "everything else, old and new, is painting; velasquez alone is truth." [illustration: manet. le bon bock. (_by permission of m. faure, the owner of the picture._)] thus the difference between the youthful works of manet and those of his predecessor courbet is the difference between velasquez and caravaggio. of course, in manet's earliest pictures there were found the broad, dull red-brown surfaces which characterise the works of the bolognese and the neapolitans. a cool silver tone, a shadowless treatment gleaming in silver, has now taken the place of this warm brown sauce. he has the white of velasquez, his cool subdued rose-colour, his delicate grey which has been so much admired and against which every touch of colour stands out clear and determined, and that celebrated black of the spaniard which is never heavy and dull, but makes such a light and transparent effect. what is bright is contrasted with what is bright, and light colours are placed upon a silvery grey background. the most perfect modelling and plastic effect is attained without the aid of strong contrasts of shadow. thus he closed his apprenticeship to the old masters by being able to see with the eyes of that old master whose vision was the truest. [illustration: manet. a garden in rueil.] this was the point of departure for manet's further development. the study of velasquez did not merely set him free from sauce; it also started the problem of painting light. he went through a course of development similar to that of the old spaniard himself. when velasquez painted his first picture with a popular turn, the "bacchus," he still stood upon the ground of the tenebrous painters; he represented an open-air scene with the illumination of a closed room. although the ceremony is taking place in broad daylight, the people seem to be sitting in a dingy tavern, receiving light from a studio window to the left. ten years afterwards, when he painted "the smithy of vulcan," he had emancipated himself from this bolognese tradition, which he spoke of henceforward as "a gloomy and horrible style." the deep and sharply contrasted shadows have vanished, and daylight has conquered the light of the cellar. the great equestrian portraits which followed gave mengs occasion to remark, even a hundred years ago, that velasquez was the first who understood how to paint what is "ambiant," the air filling the vacuum between objects. and at the end of his life he solved the final problem in "the women spinning." in the "bacchus" might be found the treatment of an open-air scene in the key of sauce, but here was the glistening of light in an interior. the sun quivers over silken stuffs, falls upon the dazzling necks of women, plays through coal-black castilian locks, renders one thing plastically distinct and another pictorially vague, dissolves corporeality, and lends surface the rounding of life. contours touched with the brightness of light surround the heads of the girls at work. the shadows are not warm brown but cool grey, and the tints of reflected light play from one object to another. two remarkable pictures of and show that manet had grasped the problem and was endeavouring in a tentative way to give expression to his ideas. in one of these, "the picnic," painted in , there was a stretch of sward, a few trees, and in the background a river in which a woman was merrily splashing in her chemise; in the foreground were seated two young men in frock-coats opposite another woman, who has just come out of the water and been drying herself. needless to say, this picture was rejected as something unprecedented, by the committee, which included ingres, léon cogniet, robert fleury, and hippolyte flandrin. eugène delacroix was the only one in its favour. so manet was relegated to the _salon des refusés_, where bracquemond, legros, whistler, and harpignies were hung beside him. this exhibition was held in the industrial hall, and the public went through a narrow little door from one gallery to the other. half paris was bewildered and discomposed by these works of the rejected; even napoleon iii and the empress eugénie ostentatiously turned their backs upon manet's picture when they visited the salon. this naked woman made a scandal. how shocking! a woman without the slightest stitch of clothes between two gentlemen in their frock-coats! in the louvre, indeed, there were about fifty venetian paintings with much the same purport. every manual of art refers to "the family," as it is called, and the "ages of life" of giorgione, in which nude and clothed figures are moving in a landscape and placed ingenuously beside each other. but that a painter should claim for a modern artist the right of painting for the joy of what is purely pictorial was a phenomenon that had never been encountered before. the public searched for something obscene, and they found it; but for manet the whole picture was only a technical experiment: the nude woman in front was only there because the painter wanted to observe the play of the sun and the reflections of the foliage upon naked flesh; the woman in her chemise merely owed her existence to the circumstance of her charming outline making such a delightful patch of white amid the green meadows. manet for the first time touched the problem which madox brown had thrown out in his "work" ten years before in england, though for the present he did so with no greater success: the sunbeams glanced no doubt, but they were heavy and opaque; the sky was bright, but without atmosphere. as yet there is nothing of the manet who belongs to history. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ manet. the fight between the "kearsarge" and "alabama."] the celebrated "olympia" of , now to be found in the luxembourg, was painted during this stage in his development: it represents a neurotic, anæmic creature, who stretches out, pale and sickly, her meagre nudity upon white linen, with a purring cat at her feet; whilst a negress in a red dress draws back the curtain, offering her a bouquet. with this picture--no one can tell why--the definite battles over impressionism began. the critics who talked about obscenity were not consistent, because titian's pictures of venus with her female attendant, the little dog, and the youth sitting upon the edge of the bed, are not usually held to be obscene. but it is nevertheless difficult to find in this flatly modelled body, with its hard black outlines, those artistic qualities which zola discovered in it. the picture has nothing whatever of titian in it, but it may almost be said to have something of cranach. "the picnic" and "olympia" have both only an historical interest as the first works in which the artist trusted his own eyes, refusing to look through any one's spectacles. feeling that he would come to nothing if he continued to study nature through the medium of an old master, he had to render some real thing just as it appeared to him when he was not looking into the mirror of old pictures. he tried to forget what he had studied in galleries, the tricks of art which he had learnt with couture, and the famous pictures he had seen. in his earlier works there had been a far-fetched refinement and a delicacy taken from the old masters, but "the picnic" and "olympia" are simpler and more independent. in both he was already an "impressionist," true to his personal vision, though he could not entirely express the new language that hovered upon his lips. he had tried both to rid himself of courbet's brown sauce and of the ivory tone of bouguereau, and to be just to local tones through simple and independent observation; in his "picnic" he had painted the trees green, the earth yellow, and the sky grey, and in "olympia" the bed white and the body of the woman flesh-colour. but he was as little successful as the pre-raphaelites in bringing the local tones into full harmony. this is the step which manet made in advance of the pre-raphaelites: after he had emancipated himself from the conventional brown and ivory scheme of tone, and had been for a time, like the pre-raphaelites, true although hard, he attained that harmony which hitherto had been either not reached by artistic means or not reached at all, by strict observation of the medium by which nature produces her harmonies--light. as the air, the pervasive atmosphere, renders nature everywhere harmonious and refined in colour, so it forthwith became for the artist the means of reaching that great harmony which is the object of all pictorial endeavour, and which had never previously been reached except through some mannerism. [illustration: _baschet._ manet. boating.] [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ manet. a bar at the folies-bergÈres.] this movement, so historically memorable, when manet discovered the sun and the fine fluid of the atmosphere, was shortly before . not long before the declaration of war he was in the country, in the neighbourhood of paris, staying with his friend de nittis; but he continued to work as though he were at home, only his studio was here the pleasure-ground. here one day he sat in full sunlight, placed his model amid the flowers of the turf, and began to paint. the result was "the garden," now in the possession of madame de nittis. the young wife of the italian painter is reclining in an easy-chair, between her husband, who is lying on the grass, and her child asleep in its cradle. every flower is fresh and bright upon the fragrant sward. the green of the stretch of grass is luminous, and everything is bathed in soft, bright atmosphere; the leaves cast their blue shadows upon the yellow gravel path. "plein-air" made its entry into painting. in his activity had to be interrupted. he entered a company of volunteers consisting chiefly of artists and men of letters, and in december he became a lieutenant in the garde nationale, where he had meissonier as his colonel. the pictures, therefore, in which he was entirely manet belong exclusively to the period following . from this time his great problem was the sun, the glow of daylight, the tremor of the air upon the earth basking in light. he became a natural philosopher who could never satisfy himself, studying the effect of light and determining with the observation of a man of science how the atmosphere alters the phenomena of colour. [illustration: _baschet._ manet. spring: jeanne.] in tender, virginal, light grey tones, never seen before, he depicted, in fourteen pictures exhibited at a dealer's, the luxury and grace of paris, the bright days of summer and _soirées_ flooded with gaslight, the faded features of the fallen maiden and the refined _chic_ of the woman of the world. there was to be seen "nana," that marvel of audacious grace. laced in a blue silk corset, and otherwise clad merely in a muslin smock with her feet in pearl-grey stockings, the blond woman stands at the mirror painting her lips, and carelessly replying to the words of a man who is watching her upon the sofa behind. near it hung balcony scenes, fleeting sketches from the skating rink, the _café concert_, the _bal de l'opéra_, the _déjeuner_ scene at père lathuille's, and the "bar at the folies-bergères." in one case he has made daylight the subject of searching study, in another the artificial illumination of the footlights. "music in the tuileries" reveals a crowd of people swarming in an open, sunny place. every figure was introduced as a patch of colour, but these patches were alive and this multitude spoke. one of the best pictures was "boating"--a craft boldly cut away in its frame, after the manner of the japanese, and seated in it a young lady in light blue and a young man in white, their figures contrasting finely with the delicate grey of the water and the atmosphere impregnated with moisture. and scattered amongst these pictures there were to be found powerful sea-pieces and charming, piquant portraits. manet had a passion for the world. he was a man with a slight and graceful figure, a beard of the colour known as _blond cendré_, deep blue eyes filled with the fire of youth, a refined, clever face, aristocratic hands, and a manner of great urbanity. with his wife, the highly cultured daughter of a dutch musician, he went into the best circles of parisian society, and was popular everywhere for his trenchant judgment and his sparkling intellect. his conversation was vivid and sarcastic. he was famous for his wit _à la_ gavarni. he delighted in the delicate perfume of drawing-rooms, the shining candle-light at receptions; he worshipped modernity and the piquant _frou-frou_ of toilettes; he was the first who stood with both feet in the world which seemed so inartistic to others. thus the progress made in the acquisition of subject and material may be seen even in the outward appearance of the three pioneers of modern art. millet in his portrait stands in wooden shoes, courbet in his shirt-sleeves; manet wears a tall hat and a frock-coat. millet, the peasant, painted peasants. courbet, the democrat from the provinces, gave the rights of citizenship to the artisan, but without himself deserting the provinces and the _bourgeoisie_. he was repelled by everything either distinguished or refined. in such matters he could not find the force and vehemence which were all he sought. manet, the parisian and the man of refinement, gave art the elegance of modern life. in the year he made the parisian magistracy the offer of painting in the session-room of the town hall the entire _ventre de paris_, the markets, railway stations, lading-places, and public gardens, and beneath the ceiling a gallery of the celebrated men of the present time. his letter was unanswered, and yet it gave the impulse to all those great pictures of contemporary life painted afterwards in paris and the provinces for the walls of public buildings. in he received, through the exertions of his friend antonin proust, a medal of the second class, the only one ever awarded to him. and the dealer duret began to buy pictures from him; durand-ruel followed suit, and so did m. faure, the singer of the grand opera, who himself is the owner of five-and-thirty manets. the poor artist did not long enjoy this recognition. on th april , the varnishing day at the salon, he died from blood-poisoning and the consequences of the amputation of a leg. but the seed which he had scattered had already thrown out roots. it had taken him years to force open the doors of the salon, but to-day his name shines in letters of gold upon the façade of the École des beaux-arts as that of the man who has spoken the most decisive final utterance on behalf of the liberation of modern art. his achievement, which seems to have been an unimportant alteration in the method of painting, was in reality a renovation in the method of looking at the world and a renovation in the method of thinking. [illustration: _mansell photo._ degas. the ballet scene in robert the devil.] [illustration: degas. the ballet in _don juan_. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: degas. a ballet dancer. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] up to this time it was only the landscape painters who had emancipated themselves from imitation of the gallery tone, and what was done by corot in landscape had, logically enough, to be carried out in figure-painting likewise; for men and women are encompassed by the air as much as trees. after the landscape painters of barbizon had made evident the vast difference between the light of day and that of a closed room in their pictures painted in the open air, the figure-painters, if they made any claim to truth of effect, could no longer venture to content themselves with the illumination falling upon their models in the studio, when they were painting incidents taking place out of doors. yet even the boldest of the new artists did not set themselves free from tradition. even after they had become independent in subject and composition they had remained the slaves of the old masters in their intuition of colour. some imitated the spaniards, without reflecting that ribera painted his pictures in a small, dark studio, and that the cellar-light with which they were illuminated was therefore correct, whereas applied, in the present age, to the bright interiors of the nineteenth century it was utterly false. others treated open-air scenes as if they were taking place in a ground-floor parlour, and endeavoured by curtains and shutters to create a light similar to that which may be found in old masters and pictures dimmed with age. or the artist painted according to a general recipe and in complete defiance of what he saw with his eyes. for instance, an exceedingly characteristic episode is told of the student days of puvis de chavannes. upon a grey, misty day the young artist had painted a nude figure. the model appeared enveloped in tender light as by a bright, silvery halo. "that's the way you see your model?" grumbled couture indignantly when he came to correct the picture. then he mixed together white, cobalt blue, naples yellow, and vermilion, and turned puvis de chavannes' nude grey figure by a universal recipe into one that was highly coloured and warmly luminous--such a figure as an old master might perhaps have painted under different conditions of light. with his "fiat lux" manet uttered a word of redemption that had hovered upon many lips. the jurisdiction of galleries was broken now also in regard to colour; the last remnant of servile dependence upon the mighty dead was cast aside; the aims attained by the landscape painters thirty years before were reached in figure-painting likewise. [illustration: degas. horses in a meadow. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: degas. dancing girl fastening her shoe.] perhaps a later age may even come to recognise that manet made an advance upon the old masters in his delicacy and scrupulous analysis of light; in that case it will esteem the discovery of tone-values as the chief acquisition of the nineteenth century, as a conquest such as has never been made in painting since the eycks and masaccio, since the establishment of the theory of perspective. in a treatise commanding all respect hugo magnus has written of how the sense of colour increased in the various periods of the world's history; since the appearance of the impressionists, verification may be made of yet another advance in this direction. the study of tone-values has never been carried on with such conscientious exactitude, and in regard to truth of atmosphere one is disposed to believe that our eyes to-day see and feel things which our ancestors had not yet noticed. the old masters have also touched the problem of "truth in painting." it is not merely that the character of their colours often led the italian tempera and fresco painters to the most natural method of treating light. they even occupied themselves in a theoretical way with the question. an old italian precept declares that the painter ought to work in a closed yard beneath an awning, but should place his model beneath the open sky. in the frescoes which he painted in arezzo in , piero della francesca, in particular, pursued the problem of _plein-air_ painting with a fine instinct. but love of the beautiful and luminous tints, such as the technique of oil-painting enabled artists to attain at a later date, quickly seduced them from carrying out the natural treatment of light in the gradation of colour. under the influence of oil-painting the italians of the great period, from leonardo onwards, turned more and more to strong contrasts. and in spite of albert cuyp, even the dutch landscape painters of the seventeenth century have seen objects rather in line and form, plastically, than pictorially in their environment of light and air. the nineteenth century was the first seriously to attack a problem which--except by velasquez--had been merely touched upon by the old schools, but never solved. [illustration: renoir. supper at bougival. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: renoir. the woman with the fan. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] what the masters of barbizon had done through instinctive genius was made the object of scientific study by the impressionists. the new school set up the principle that atmosphere changes the colour of objects; for instance, that the colour and outline of a tree painted in a room are completely different from those of the same tree painted upon the spot in the open air. as an unqualified rule they claimed that every incident was to be harmonised with time, place, and light; thus a scene taking place out of doors had of necessity to be painted, not within four walls, but under the actual illumination of morning, or noon, or evening, or night. in making this problem the object of detailed and careful inquiry the artist came to analyse life, throbbing beneath its veil of air and light, with more refinement and thoroughness than the old masters had done. the latter painted light deadened in its fall, not shining. oils were treated as an opaque material, colour appeared to be a substance, and the radiance of tinted light was lost through this material heaviness. courbet still represented merely the object apart from its environment; he saw things in a plastic way, and not as they were, bathed in the atmosphere; his men and women lived in oil, in brown sauce, and not where it was only possible for them to live--in the air. everything he painted he isolated without a thought of atmospheric surroundings. now a complete change of parts was effected: bodies and colours were no longer painted, but the shifting power of light under which everything changes form and colour at every moment of the day. the elder painters in essentials confined light to the surface of objects; the new painters believed in its universality, beholding in it the father of all life and of the manifold nature of the visible world, and therefore of colour also. they no longer painted colours and forms with lights and cast-shadows, but pellucid light, pouring over forms and colours and absorbed and refracted by them. they no longer looked merely to the particular, but to the whole, no longer saw nothing except deadened light and cast-shadows, but the harmony and pictorial charm of a moment of nature considered as such. with a zeal which at times seemed almost paradoxical, they proceeded to establish the importance of the phenomena of light. they discovered that, so far from being gilded, objects are silvered by sunlight, and they made every effort to analyse the multiplicity of these fine gradations down to their most delicate _nuances_. they learnt to paint the quiver of tremulous sunbeams radiating far and wide; they were the lyrical poets of light, which they often glorified at the expense of what it envelops and causes to live. at the service of art they placed a renovated treasury of refined, purified, and pictorial phases of expression, in which the history of art records an increase in the human eye of the sense of colour and the power of perception. [illustration: renoir. fisher children by the sea. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: renoir. the woman with the cat. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] that light is movement is here made obvious, and that all life is movement is just what their art reveals. courbet was an admirable painter of plain surfaces. if he had to paint a wall he took it upon his strong shoulders and transferred it to his canvas in such a way that a stonemason might have been deceived. if it was a question of rocks, the body of a woman, or the waves of the sea, he began to mix his pigments thick, laid a firm mass of colour on the canvas, and spread it with a knife. this spade-work gave him unrivalled truth to nature in reproducing the surface of hard substances. rocks, banks, and walls look as they do in nature, but in the case of moving, indeterminate things his power deserts him. his landscapes are painted in a rich, broad, and juicy style, but his earth has no pulsation. courbet has forgotten the birds in his landscape. his seas have been seen with extraordinary largeness of feeling, and they are masterpieces of drawing; the only drawback is that they seem uninhabitable for fish. under the steady hand of the master the sea came to a standstill and was changed into rock. if he has to paint human beings they stand as motionless as blocks of wood. the expression of their faces seems galvanised into life, like their bodies. placing absolute directness in the rendering of impressions in their programme, as the chief aim of their artistic endeavours, the impressionists were the first to discover the secret of seizing with the utmost freshness the _nuances_ of expression and movement, which remained petrified in the hands of their predecessors. only the flash of the spokes is painted in the wheel of a carriage in motion, and never the appearance of the wheel when it is at rest; in the same way they allow the outlines of human figures to relax and become indistinct, to call up the impression of movement, the real vividness of the appearance. colour has been established as the sole, unqualified medium of expression for the painter, and has so absorbed the drawing that the line receives, as it were, a pulsating life, and cannot be felt except in a pictorial way. in the painting of nude human figures the waxen look--which in the traditional painting from the nude had a pretence of being natural--has vanished from the skin, and thousands of delicately distinguished gradations give animation to the flesh. moreover, a finer and deeper observation of temperament was made possible by lighter and more sensitive technique. in the works of the earlier _genre_ painters people never are what they are supposed to represent. the hired model, picked from the lower strata of life, and used by the painter in bringing his picture slowly to completion, was obvious even in the most elegant toilette; but now real human beings are represented, men and women whose carriage, gestures, and countenances tell at once what they are. even in portrait painting people whom the painter has surprised before they have had time to put themselves in order, at the moment when they are still entirely natural, have taken the place of lay-figures fixed in position. the effort to seize the most unconstrained air and the most natural position, and to arrest the most transitory shade of expression, produces, in this field of art also, a directness and vivacity divided by a great gulf from the pose and the grand airs of the earlier drawing-room picture. [illustration: renoir. a private box. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] from his very first appearance there gathered round manet a number of young men who met twice a week at a café in batignolles, formerly a suburb at the entrance of the avenue de clichy. after this trysting-place the society called itself _l'École des batignolles_. burty, antonin proust, henner, and stevens put in an occasional appearance, but legros, whistler, fantin-latour, duranty, and zola were constant visitors. degas, renoir, pissarro, sisley, monet, gauguin, and zandomeneghi were the leading spirits of the impressionistic staff, and, being excluded from the official salon, they generally set up their tent at nadar's, reichshofen's, or some other dealer's. these are the names of the men who, following manet, were the earliest to make the new problem the object of their studies. _degas_, the subtle colourist and miraculous draughtsman, who celebrates dancers, gauze skirts, and the _foyers_ of the opera, is the boldest and the most original of those who banded together from the very outset of the movement--the worst enemy of everything pretty and banal, the greatest dandy of modern france, the man whose works are caviare to the general and so refreshing to the _gourmet_, the painter who can find a joy in the sublime beauty of ugliness. [illustration: renoir. the terrace. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] degas was older than manet. he had run through all phases of french art since ingres. his first pictures, "spartan youths" and "semiramis building the walls of babylon," might indeed have been painted by ingres, to whom he looks up even now as to the first star in the firmament of french art. then for a time he was influenced by the suggestive and tender intimacy in feeling and the soft, quiet harmony of chardin. he had also an enthusiasm for delacroix: less for his exaggerated colouring than for the lofty mark of style in the gestures and movements painted by this great romanticist, which degas endeavoured to transfer to the pantomime of the ballet. from manet he learnt softness and fluency of modelling. and finally the japanese communicated to him the principle of their dispersed composition, the choice of standpoint, allowing the artist to look up from beneath or down from above, the taste for fantastic decoration, the suggestive method of emphasising this and suppressing that, the surprise of detail introduced here and there in a perfectly arbitrary fashion. from the original and bizarre union of all these elements he formed his exquisite, marvellously expressive, and entirely personal style, which is hard to describe with the pen, and would be defectively indicated by reference to besnard, who is allied to him in the treatment of light. it is only in literature that degas has a parallel. if a comparison between them be at all possible, it might be said that his style in many ways recalls that of the brothers de goncourt. as these have enriched their language with a new vocabulary for the expression of new emotions, degas has made for himself a new technique. utterly despising everything pretty and anecdotic, he has the secret of gaining the effect intended by refinements of drawing and tone-values, just as the de goncourts by the association of words; he has borrowed phrases from all the lexicons of painting; he has mixed oils, pastel, and water-colour together, and, such as he is to-day, he must, like the de goncourts, be reckoned amongst the most delicate and refined artists of the century. his range of subjects finds its limit in one point: he has the greatest contempt for banality, for the repetition of others and of himself. every subject has to give opportunity for the introduction of special models, not hitherto employed, of pictorial experiments and novel problems of light. he made his starting-point, the grace and charming movements of women. trim parisian laundresses in their spotless aprons, little shop-girls in their _boutiques_, the spare grace of racehorses with their elastic jockeys, marvellous portraits, like that of duranty, women getting out of the bath, the movements of the workwoman, and the toilette and _négligé_ of the woman of the world, boudoir scenes, scenes in court, and scenes in boxes at the theatre--he has painted them all. and with what truth and life! how admirably his figures stand! how completely they are what they give themselves out to be! the circus and the opera soon became his favourite field of study. in his ballet-girls he found fresher artistic material than in the goddesses and nymphs of the antique. at the same time the highest conceivable demands were here made on the capacities of the painter and the draughtsman, and on his powers of characterisation. of all modern artists degas is the man who creates the greatest illusion as an interpreter of artificial light, of the glare of the footlights before which these _décolleté_ singers move in their gauze skirts. and these dancers are real dancers, vivid every one of them, every one of them individual. the nervous force of the born ballerina is sharply differentiated from the apathy of the others who merely earn their bread by their legs. how fine are his novices with tired, faded, pretty faces, when they have to sweep a curtsey, and pose so awkwardly in their delightful shyness. how marvellously he has grasped the fleeting charm of this moment. with what spirited nonchalance he groups his girls enveloped in white muslin and coloured sashes. like the japanese, he claims the right of rendering only what interests him and appears to make a striking effect--"the vivid points," in hokusai's phrase--and does not hold himself bound to add a lifeless piece of canvas for the sake of "rounded composition." in pictures, where it is his purpose to show the varied forms of the legs and feet of his dancers, he only paints the upper part of the orchestra and the lower part of the stage--that is to say, heads, hands, and instruments below, and dancing legs above. he is equally uncompromising in his street and racing scenes, so that often it is merely the hindquarters of the horses and the back of the jockey that are visible. his pictures, however, owe not a little of their life and piquancy to this brilliant method of cutting through the middle, and to these triumphant evasions of all the vulgar rules of composition. but, for the matter of that, surely dürer knew what he was about when, in his pictures of apocalyptic riders, instead of completing the composition, he left it fragmentary, to create an impression of the wild gallop. [illustration: c. pissarro. sitting up. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: c. pissarro. rouen. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] a special group amongst the artist's ballet pictures is that in which he represents the training of novices, the severe course through which the grub must pass before taking wing as a butterfly. here is displayed a strange fantastic anatomy, only comparable to the acrobatic distortions to which the japanese are so much addicted in their art. but it is precisely these pictures which were of determining importance for the development of degas. in the quest of unstable lines and expressions, instead of feeling reality in all its charming grace, he came to behold it only in its degeneration. he was impelled to render the large outline of the modern woman--the female figure which has grown to be a product of art beneath the array of toilette--even in the most ungraceful moments. he painted the woman who does not suspect that she is being observed; he painted her seen, as it were, through the key-hole or the slit of a curtain, and making, to some extent, the most atrociously ugly movements. he was the merciless observer of creatures whom society turns into machines for its pleasure--dancing, racing, and erotic machines. he has depicted cruelly the sort of woman zola has drawn in nana--the woman who has no expression, no play in her eyes, the woman who is merely animal, motionless as a hindu idol. his pictures of this class are a natural history of prostitution of terrible veracity, a great poem on the flesh, like the works of titian and rubens, except that in the latter blooming beauty is the substance of the brilliant strophes, while in degas it is wrinkled skin, decaying youth, and the artificial brightness of enamelled faces. "_a vous autres il faut la vie naturelle, à moi la vie factice._" [illustration: _l'art française._ c. pissarro. sydenham church.] this sense of having lived too much expressed itself also in the haughty contempt with which he withdrew himself from exhibitions, the public, and criticism. any one who is not a constant visitor at durand-ruel's has little opportunity of seeing the pictures of degas. the conception of fame is something which he does not seem to possess. being a man of cool self-reliance, he paints to please himself, without caring how his pictures may suit the notions of the world or the usages of the schools. for years he has kept aloof from the salon, and some people say that he has never exhibited at all. and he keeps at as great a distance from parisian society. in earlier days, when manet, pissarro, and duranty met at the café nouvelle athènes, he sometimes appeared after ten o'clock--a little man with round shoulders and a shuffling walk, who only took part in the conversation by now and then breaking in with brief, sarcastic observations. after manet's death he made the café de la rochefoucauld his place of resort. and young painters went on his account also to the café de la rochefoucauld and pointed him out to each other, saying, "that is degas." when artists assemble together the conversation usually turns upon him, and he is accorded the highest honours by the younger generation. he is revered as the haughty _independant_ who stands unapproachably above the _profanum vulgus_, the great unknown who never passed through the ordeal of a hanging committee, but whose spirit hovers invisibly over every exhibition. [illustration: sisley. outskirts of a wood.] a refined _charmeur_, _auguste renoir_, has made important discoveries, in portrait painting especially. he is peculiarly the painter of women, whose elegance, delicate skin, and velvet flesh he interprets with extraordinary deftness. léon bonnat's portraits were great pieces of still-life. the persons sit as if they were nailed to their seats. their flesh looks like zinc and their clothes like steel. in carolus duran's hands portrait painting degenerated into a painting of draperies. most of his portraits merely betray the amount which the toilettes have cost; they are inspired by their rich array of silk and heavy curtains; often they are crude symphonies in velvet and satin. the rustle of robes, the dazzling--or loud--fulness of colour in glistening materials, gave him greater pleasure than the lustre of flesh-tints and any glance of inquiry into the moral temperament of his models. renoir endeavours to arrest the scarcely perceptible and transitory movements of the features and the figure. placing his persons boldly in the real light of day which streams around, he paints atmospheric influences in all their results, like a landscapist. light is the sole and absolute thing. the fallen trunk of a tree upon which the broken sunlight plays in yellow and light green reflections, and the body or head of a girl, are subject to the same laws. stippled with yellowish-green spots of light, the latter loses its contours and becomes a part of nature. with this study of the effects of light and reflection there is united an astonishing sureness in the analysis of sudden phases of expression. the way in which laughter begins and ends, the moment between laughter and weeping, the passing flash of an eye, a fleeting motion of the lips, all that comes like lightning and vanishes as swiftly, shades of expression which had hitherto seemed indefinable, are seized by renoir in all their suddenness. in the portraits of bonnat and duran there are people who have "sat," but here are people from whom the painter has had the power of stealing and holding fast the secret of their being at a moment when they were not "sitting." here are dreamy blond girls gazing out of their great blue eyes, ethereal fragrant flowers, like lilies leaning against a rose-bush through which the rays of the setting sun are shining. here are coquettish young girls, now laughing, now pouting, now blithe and gay, now angry once more, and now betwixt both moods in a charming passion. and there are women of the world of consummate elegance, slender and slight-built figures, with small hands and feet, an even pallor, almond-shaped eyes catching every light, moist shining lips of a tender grace, bearing witness to a love of pleasure refined by artifice. and children especially there are, children of the sensitive and flexuous type: some as yet unconscious, dreamy, and free from thought; others already animated, correct in pose, graceful, and wise. the three girls, in his "portrait of mesdemoiselles m----," grouped around the piano, the eldest playing, the second accompanying upon the violin, and the youngest quietly attentive, with both hands resting upon the piano, are exquisite, painted with an entirely naïve and novel truth. all the poses are natural, all the colours bright and subtle--the furniture, the yellow bunches of flowers, the fresh spring dresses, the silk stockings. but such tender poems of childhood and blossoming girlhood form merely a part of renoir's work. in his "dinner at chaton" a company of ladies and gentlemen are seated at table, laughing, talking, and listening; the champagne sparkles in the glasses, and the cheerful, easy mood which comes with dessert is in the ascendant. in his "moulin de la galette" he painted the excitement of the dance--whirling pairs, animated faces, languid poses, and everything enveloped in sunlight and dust. renoir's peculiar field is the study of the various delicate emotions which colour the human countenance. [illustration: _by permission of m. durand-ruel._ monet. a study.] the merit of _camille pissarro_ is to have once more set the painting of peasants, weakened by breton, upon the virile lines of millet, and to have supplemented them in those places where millet was technically inadequate. when the impressionist movement began camille pissarro had already a past: he was the recognised landscape painter of the norman plains; the straightforward observer of peasants, the plain and simple painter of the vegetable gardens stretching round peasant dwellings. since millet, no artist had placed himself in closer relationship to the life of the earth and of cultivated nature. though a delicate analyst, pissarro had not the epic feeling nor the religious mysticism of millet; but like millet he was a rustic in spirit, like him a norman, from the land of vineyards, of large farmyards, green meadows, soft avenues of poplars, and wide horizons reddened by the sun. he was healthy, tender, and intimate in feeling, rejoiced in the richness of the land and the voluptuous undulation of fields, and he could give a striking impression of a region in its work-a-day character. celebrated in the press as the legitimate descendant of millet, he might have contented himself with his regular successes. he had, indeed, arrived at an age when men usually leave off making experiments, and reap what they have sown in their youth, at an age when many conquerors occupy themselves with the mechanical reproduction of their own works. nevertheless the impressionistic movement became for pissarro the starting-point of a new way. [illustration: claude monet. _the century._] [illustration: monet's home at giverny. _the century._] he aimed at fresher, intenser, and more transparent light, at a more cogent observation of phenomena, at a more exact analysis of the encompassing atmosphere. he celebrated the eternal, immutable light in which the world is bathed. he loved it specially during clear afternoons, when it plays over bright green meadows fringed by soft trees, or at the foot of low hills. he has sought it on the slopes across which it ripples deliciously, on the plains from which it rises like a light veil of gauze. he studied the play of light upon the bronzed skin of labourers, on the coats of animals, on the foliage and fruit of trees. he characterised the seasons, the hour of day, the moment, with the conscientiousness of a peasant intent upon noting the direction of the wind and the position of the sun. the cold, chilly humour of autumn afternoons, the vivid clarity of sparkling wintry skies, the bloom and lightness of spring mornings, the oppressive brooding of summer, the luxuriance or the aridity of the earth, the young vigour of foliage or the fading of nature robbed of her adornment,--all these pissarro has painted with largeness, plainness, and simplicity. he strays over the fields, watching the shepherd driving out his flock, the wains rumbling along the uneven roads, the quiet, rhythmical movement of the gleaners, the graceful gait of the women who have been reaping and now return home in the evening with a rake across their shoulders; he stations himself at the entrance of villages where the apple-pickers are at work, and the women minding geese stand by their drove; he notes the whole life of peasants, and gives truer and more direct intelligence of it than millet did in his broad, synthetic manner. where there is a classic quietude and an oily heaviness in millet, there is in pissarro palpitating life, transparence, and freshness. he sees the country in bright, laughing tones; and the pure white of the kerchiefs, the pale rose-colour or tender blue bodices of his peasant women, lend his pictures a blithe delicacy of colour. his girls are like fresh flowers of the field which the sun of june brings forth upon the meadows. there is something intense and yet soft, strong and delicate, true and rhythmical in pissarro's tender poems of country life. [illustration: monet. morning on the seine.] [illustration: monet. a walk in grey weather. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] so long as any advance beyond rousseau and corot seemed impossible, pictures of talent but only moderate importance had increased in number in the province of landscape. the landscape painters who immediately followed the great pioneers loved nature on account of her comparative coolness in summer; upon sites where the classic artists of fontainebleau dreamed and painted they built comfortable villas and settled down with the sentiments of a householder. the country was parcelled out, and each one undertook his part, and painted it conscientiously without arousing any novel sensations. impressionism gave landscape painting, which showed signs of being split into specialties, once more a firm basis, a charming field of study. to communicate impressions without any of the studio combinations, just as they strike us suddenly, to preserve the vividness and cogency of the first imprint of nature upon the mind, was the great problem which impressionism placed before the landscape painters. the artists of fontainebleau painted neither the rawness and rigidity of winter nor the sultry atmosphere and scorching heat of summer; they painted artistic and dignified and exquisite works. the impressionists did not approach their themes as poets, but as naturalists. in their hands landscape, which in corot, millet, diaz, rousseau, daubigny, and jongkind is an occasional poem, becomes a likeness of a region under special influences of light. with more delicate nerves, and a sensibility almost greater, they allowed nature to work upon them, and perceived in the symphonies of every hour strains never heard before, transparent shadows, the vibration of atoms of light. decomposing the lines of contour, that tremor of the atmosphere which is the breath of landscape. here also england was not without influence. as corot and rousseau received an impulse from constable and bonington in , monet and sisley returned from london with their eyes dazzled by the light of the great turner. laid hold upon, like turner, by the miracles of the universe, by the golden haze which trembles in a sunbeam, they succeeded in painting light in spite of the defectiveness of our chemical mediums. [illustration: monet. the church at varangÉville. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] _alfred sisley_ might be compared with daubigny. he settled in the neighbourhood of moret, upon the banks of the loing, and is the most soft and tender amongst the impressionists. like daubigny, he loves the germinating energy, the blossoming, and the growth of young and luminous spring; the moist banks of quiet streamlets, budding beeches, and the rye-fields growing green, the variegated flowering of the meadows, clear skies, ladies walking in bright spring dresses, and the play of light upon the vernal foliage. he has painted tender mornings breathed upon with rosy bloom, reeds with a bluish gleam, and moist duck-weed, grey clouds mirrored in lonely pools, alleys of poplar, peasants' houses, and hills and banks, melting softly in the warm atmosphere. his pictures, like those of the master of oise, leave the impression of youth and freshness, of quiet happiness, or of smiling melancholy. [illustration: monet. river scene.] [illustration: monet. the rocks at belle-isle. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: monet. hay-ricks. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] on many of his pictures, saturated as they are with light, _claude monet_ could inscribe the name of turner without inciting unbelief. in exceedingly unequal works, which are nevertheless full of audacity and genius, he has grasped what would seem to be intangible. except turner there is no one who has carried so far the study of the effects of light, of the gradations and reflections of sunbeams, of momentary phases of illumination, no one who has embodied more subtle and forcible impressions. for monet man has no existence, but only the earth and the light. he delights in the rugged rocks of belle-isle, and the wild banks of the creuse, when the oppressive sun of summer is brooding over them. he paints phenomena as transitory as the shades of expression in renoir. the world appears in a glory of light, such as it only has in fleeting moments, and such as would be blinding were it always to be seen. nature, in his version, is an inhospitable dwelling where it is impossible to dream and live. one hopes sometimes to hear a word of intimate association from monet--but in vain; claude monet is only an eye. carouses of sunshine and orgies in the open air are the exclusive materials of his pictures. thus he has little to say for those who seek the soul of a human being in every landscape. like degas, he is _par excellence_ the master in technique whose highest endeavour is to enrich the art of painting with novel sensations and unedited effects, even if it has to be done by violence. there are sea-pieces filled with the spirit of evening, when the sea, red as a mirror of copper, merges into the glory of the sky, in a great radiant ocean of infinity; moods of evening storm, when gloomy clouds over the restless tree-tops race across the smoky red sky, losing tiny shreds in their flight, little thin strips of loosened cloud, saturated through and through with a wine-red glow by the splendour of the sun. or there are spring meadows fragrant with bloom, and hills parched by the sun; rushing trains with their white smoke gleaming in the light; yellow sails scudding over glittering waters; waves shining blue, red, and golden; and burning ships, with shooting tongues of flame leaping upon the masts; and, behind, a jagged rim of the evening glow. claude monet has followed light everywhere--in holland, normandy, the south of france, belle-isle-en-mer, the villages of the seine, london, algiers, brittany. he became an enthusiast for nature as she is in norway and sweden, for french cathedrals rising into the sky, tall and fair, like the peaks of great promontories. he interpreted the surge of towns, the movement of the sea, the majestic solitude of the sky. but he knows too that the artist could pass his life in the same corner of the earth and work for years upon the same objects without the drama of nature played before him ever becoming exhausted. for the light which streams between things is for ever different. so he stood one evening two paces in front of his little house, in the garden, amid a flaming sea of flowers scarlet like poppies. white summer clouds shifted in the sky, and the beams of the setting sun fell upon two stacks, standing solitary in a solitary field. claude monet began to paint, and came again the next day, and the day after that, and every day throughout the autumn, and winter, and spring. in a series of fifteen pictures, "the hay-ricks," he painted--as hokusai did in his hundred views of the fuji mountain--the endless variations produced by season, day, and hour upon the eternal countenance of nature. the lonely field is like a glass, catching the effects of atmosphere, the breeze, and the most fleeting light. the stacks gleam softly in the brightness of the beautiful afternoons, stand out sharp and clear against the cold sky of the forenoon, loom like phantoms in the mist of a november evening, or sparkle like glittering jewels beneath the caress of the rising sun. they shine like glowing ovens, absorbed by the light of the autumnal sunset; they are surrounded as by a rosy halo, when the early sun pierces like a wedge through the dense morning mist. they rise distinctly, covered with sparkling, rose-tinged snow, into the cloudless heaven, and cast their pure, blue shadows upon the silent, white, wintry landscape, or stand out in ghostly outlines against the night firmament, mantled with silver by the moonlight. without moving his easel, monet has interpreted the silence of winter, and autumn with her sad and splendid feasts of colour--dusk and rain, snow and frost and sun. he heard the voices of evening and the jubilation of morning; he painted the eternal undulation of light upon the same objects, the altered impression which the same particle of nature yields according to the changing light of the hour. he chanted the poetry of the universe in a single fragment of nature, and would be a pantheistic artist of world-wide compass had he merely painted these stacks of hay for the rest of his natural existence. [illustration: _gaz des beaux-arts._ monet. a view of rouen. (_by permission of the artist._)] and here ends the battle for the liberation of modern art. _libertas artibus restituta._ the painters of the nineteenth century are no longer imitators, but have become makers of a new thing, "enlargers of the empire." the prophetic words written in the beginning of the nineteenth century by the hamburger, philipp otto runge, "light, colour, and moving life," were to form the great problem, the great conquest of modern art; they were fulfilled after two generations. through the impressionists art was enriched by an opulence of new beauties. a new and independent style had been discovered for the representation of new things, and a new province--a province peculiar to herself--was won for painting. chapter xxxii the new idealism in england the flood of impressionism was at the same time crossed by another current. impressionism was a phase of progressive art of world-wide influence. it proclaimed that nature and life were the inexhaustible mine of beauty. then after naturalism had taught artists to work upon the impressions of external reality in an independent manner, a transition was made by some who embodied the impressions of their inward spirit in a free creative fashion, unborrowed from the old masters. we feel the need of living not merely in the world around us, but in an inner world that we build up ourselves, a world far more strange and fair, far more luminous than that in which our feet stumble so helplessly. we must needs mount upon the pinions of fancy into the wide land of vision, build castles in the clouds, watch their rise and their fall, and follow into misty distance the freaks of their changing architecture. the more grey and colourless the present may be, the more alluringly does the fairy splendour of vanished worlds of beauty flit before us. it is the very banality of everyday life that renders us more sensitive to the delicate charm of old myths, and we receive them in a more childlike, impressionable way than any earlier age, for we look upon them with fresh eyes that have been rendered keen by yearning. from all this it is evident that impressionism could not remain the mode of expression for the whole world of the present day. the longing for old-world romance would brook no refusal. it was demanded from art not that she should mirror nature, nature could be seen without her aid, but that she should carry us away on dream-wings to a distant world more beautiful than our own; not that she should be merely modern, but that she should afford us even to-day some reflection of that beauty which sheds forth its lustre from the works of the old masters. this yearning after far-off worlds of beauty was combined with a demand for new delights of colour. the impressionists had centred every effort in compassing the most difficult elements of the world of phenomena--light, air, and colour--ending in extreme imitation of reality. then came a desire for colours, more radiant, more vivid than ever was seen on this poor world of ours; and since hardly any of the younger generation fulfilled the desire of the modern longing, the standard of a bygone age was raised aloft, and there set in the anti-naturalistic, anti-modern current that still survived from the age of romance in the work-a-day world of the present. how was it possible that england should have taken the lead upon this occasion also? can an englishman, a matter-of-fact being who finds his happiness in comfort and a practical sphere of action, be at the same time a romanticist? is not london the most modern town in europe? yet, without a question, this is the very reason why the new romanticism found its earliest expression there, although it was the place where naturalism had reigned longest and with the greatest strictness. there was a reaction against the prose of everyday life, just as, in the earlier part of the century, english landscape painting had been a reaction against town life. to escape the whistle of locomotives and the restless bustle of the struggle for existence, men take refuge in a far-off world, a world where everything is fair and graceful, and all emotions tender and noble, a world where no rudeness, no discord, and nothing fierce or brutal disturbs the harmony of ideal perfection. these artists become revellers in a land of fantasy, and flee from reality to an inner life which they have created for themselves, wander from london's railways and fogs to the sunny italy of botticelli, take their rest in the land of poetry, and come back with packing-cases full of lovely pictures and hearts full of happy emotions. moreover, they find in the primitive artists that simplicity which is most refreshing of all to overstrained spirits. having produced byron, shelley, and turner, the english were artistic _gourmets_, sated with all enjoyments in the realms of the intellect, and they now meditated works through which yet a new thrill of beauty might pass through the imagination. in the primitive masters they discovered all the qualities which had vanished from art since the sixteenth century--inofficious purity, innocent and touching naturalism, antiquated austerity, and an enchanting depth of feeling. jaded with other experiences, they admired in those naïve spirits the capacity for ecstatic rapture and vision--in other words, for the highest gratification. if one could but have in this nineteenth century such feelings as were known to dante, the gloomy florentine; botticelli, the great jeremiah of the renaissance; or the tender mystic fra angelico! surfeited with modernity, and endowed with nerves of acute refinement, artists went back in their fancy to this luxuriously blissful condition, and finally came to the point at which modernity was transformed once more into childish babble and the unbelieving materialism of the present age into a mystical and romantic union with the old currents of emotion. under the influence of dante gabriel rossetti english pre-raphaelitism now entered upon a new and entirely different phase. [illustration: dante gabriel rossetti. _mag. of art._] although rossetti was the soul of the earlier movement, he was a man whose temperament was even then essentially different from that of his comrades millais and hunt, who founded the brotherhood with him in . even the two works which he exhibited with them in and make one feel the great gulf which lay between him and them. in the former year, when hunt was represented by his "rienzi," and millais by his "lorenzo and isabella," rossetti produced his "girlhood of mary virgin." in the following, when hunt painted "the converted british family sheltering a christian missionary" and millais "the child jesus in the workshop of joseph the carpenter," rossetti came forward with his "ecce ancilla domini." "the girlhood of mary virgin" was a little picture of austere simplicity and ascetic character; it was intentionally angular in drawing, and possessed a certain archaic bloom. the virgin, clad in grey garments, sits at a curiously shaped frame embroidering a lily with gold threads upon a red ground. the flower she is copying stands before her in a vase, and a little angel, with roseate wings, is watering it with an air of abashed reverence. st. anne is busy by the side of the virgin--both being, respectively, portraits of the artist's mother and sister--and in the background st. joachim is binding a vine to a trellis. and several latin books are lying upon the floor. the second work, "ecce ancilla domini," is the familiar picture which is now in the national gallery--a harmony of white upon white of indescribable graciousness and delicacy. mary, a bashful, meditative, and childlike maiden, in a white garment, is shown in a half-kneeling attitude upon a white bed. the walls of the chamber are white, and in front of her there stands a frame at which she has been working; and a piece of embroidery, with a lily which she has begun, hangs over it. before her stands the angel with flame rising from his feet, in solemn, peaceful gravity, as he extends towards her the stalk of the lily which he holds. a dove flies gently in through the window. now, in spite of their romantic subjects the work of hunt and millais is lucid and temperate, while rossetti is dreamily mystical. the two former were straightforward, true, and natural, whereas the simplicity of the latter was subtilised and consciously affected. it was due to the vibrating delicacy of his distempered, seething imagination that he was able to give himself a deceptive appearance of being a primitive artist. the creative power of the two former is an earnest power of the understanding, whereas in the latter there is a vague dreaminess, a tendency to luxuriate in his own moods, an efflorescence of tones and colours. in the one case there is an angular but single-minded study of nature; in the other there is the demureness and embarrassment of the quattrocento, a demureness breaking into blossom, and an embarrassment full of charm--a romanticism which cherished the yearning for repose in the childlike and innocent middle ages, and clothed it with all the attractions of mysticism. holman hunt, madox brown, and millais were realists in their drawing, men who wanted to represent objects with all possible accuracy, to be faithful in rendering the finest fibre of a petal and every thread in a fabric. rossetti's picture was a symphonic ode in pigments, and he himself was one of the earliest of the modern lyricists of colour. this distinction became wider and wider with the course of time, and as early as he found himself deserted by his earlier comrades. madox brown, holman hunt, and especially millais, in their further development, tended more and more to become naturalists, and were finally led to completely realistic subjects from the immediate present by the inviolable fidelity with which they studied nature. on the other hand, rossetti became the centre of a new circle of artists, who directed the current of what was originally naturalism more and more into mysticism and refined archaism. [illustration: _cassell & co._ rossetti. beata beatrix. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] in _the oxford and cambridge magazine_ was founded as a monthly periodical. there were several contributions by rossetti, and in this way he became so well known in oxford that the union accepted an offer from him to execute a series of wall-paintings. accordingly he painted several pictures from the arthurian legends, making the sketches for them himself, and employing for their elaboration a number of young men, some of them amateur artists and students at the university. in this way he came into connection with arthur hughes, william morris, and edward burne-jones. these artists, afterwards joined by spencer stanhope and walter crane, both of them younger men, became--with george frederick watts at their flank--the leading members of the new brotherhood, the representatives of that new pre-raphaelitism in which interest is still centred in england. [illustration: _pageant._ rossetti. monna rosa. (_by permission of mr. w. m. rossetti._)] their art is a kind of italian renaissance upon english soil. the romantic chord which vibrates in old english poetry is united to the grace and purity of italian taste, the classical lucidity of the pagan mythology with catholic mysticism, and the most modern riot of emotion with the demure vesture of the primitive florentines. through this mixture of heterogeneous elements english new idealism is probably the most remarkable form of art upon which the sun has ever shone: borrowed and yet in the highest degree personal, it is an art combining an almost childlike simplicity of feeling with a morbid _hautgoût_, the most attentive and intelligent study of the old masters with free, creative, modern imagination, the most graceful sureness of drawing and the most sparkling individuality of colour with a helpless, stammering accent introduced of set purpose. the old quattrocentisti wander amongst the real italian flowers; but with the new pre-raphaelites one enters a hot-house: one is met by a soft damp heat, bright exotic flowers exhale an overpowering fragrance, juicy fruits catch the eye, and slender palms, through the branches of which no rough wind may bluster, gently sway their long, broad fans. [illustration: _cassell & co._ rossetti. ecce ancilla domini. (_by permission of messrs. t. agnew & sons, the owners of the copyright._)] professor lombroso would certainly find the material for ingenious disquisition in rossetti, who introduced this italian phase, and himself came of an italian stock. and it might almost seem as if a soul from those old times had found its reincarnation in the lonely painter who lived at chelsea, though it was a soul who no longer bore heaven in his heart like fra angelico. in his whole being he seems like a phenomenon of atavism, like a citizen of that long-buried italy who, after many transmigrations, had strayed into the misty north, to the bank of the thames, and from thence looked in his home-sickness ever towards the south, enveloped in poetry and glowing in the sun. dante gabriel rossetti was a catholic and an italian. amid his english surroundings he kept the feelings of one of latin race. his father, the patriot and commentator upon dante, had originally lived in naples, and inflamed the popular party there by his passionate writings. in consequence of the active part which he took in political agitation he lost his post at the bourbon museum, escaped from italy upon a warship, disguised as an english officer, settled in london in , and married francesca polidori, the daughter of a secretary of count alfieri. here he became professor of the italian language at king's college, and published several works on dante, the most important of which, _dante's beatrice_, written in , once more supported the theory that beatrice was not a real person. dante gabriel, the son of this dante student gabriele rossetti, was born in london on th may . the whole family actively contributed to scholarship and poetry. his elder sister, maria francesca, was the authoress of _a shadow of dante_, a work which gives a most valuable explanation of the scheme of _the divine comedy_; his younger sister, christina, was one of the most eminent poetesses of england; and his brother, william michael rossetti, is well known as an art-critic and a student of shelley. even from early youth dante gabriel rossetti was familiar with the world of dante, and brought up in the worship of dante's wonderful age and an enthusiasm for his mystic and transcendental poetry. he knew dante by heart, and guido cavalcanti. the mystical poet became his guide through life, and led him to fra angelico, the mystic of painting. indeed, the world of dante and of the painters antecedent to raphael is his spiritual home. [illustration: _portfolio._ rossetti. sancta lilias.] [illustration: _brothers, photo._ rossetti. astarte syriaca. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] [illustration: _mansell & co._ rossetti. the day dream.] he was barely eighteen when he became a pupil at the royal academy, studying a couple of years later under madox brown, who was not many years older than himself. even then rossetti had an almost mesmeric influence upon his friends. he was a pale, tall, thin young man, who always walked with a slight stoop; reserved, dry in his manner, and careless in dress, there was nothing captivating about him at a transitory meeting. but his pale face was lit up by his unusually reflective, deeply clouded, contemplative eyes; and about his defiant mouth there played that contempt of the profane crowd which is natural to a superior mind, while the laurel of fame was already twined about his youthful forehead. in , when he was exhibiting his earliest picture, he had published in _the germ_, to say nothing of his numerous poems, a mystical, visionary, sketch in prose named _hand and soul_, which was much praised by men of the highest intellect in london. soon afterwards he published a volume entitled _dante and his circle_, in which he translated a number of old italian poems, and rendered dante's _vita nuova_ into strictly archaic english prose. reserved as he was towards strangers, he was irresistibly attractive to his friends, and his brilliant, genial conversation won him the goodwill of every one. a man of gifted and delicate nature, sensitive to an extreme degree, a sedentary student who had yet an enthusiasm for knightly deeds, a jaded spirit capable of morbidly heightened, exotic sensibility and soft, melting reverie, one whose overstrained nerves only vibrated if he slept in the daytime and worked at night, it seemed as though rossetti was born to be the father of the _décadence_, of that state of spirit which every one now perceives to be flooding europe. [illustration: rossetti. study for astarte syriaca.] his later career was as quiet as its opening had been brilliant. after that graciously sentimental little picture, "ecce ancilla domini," rossetti exhibited in public only once again; this was in . from that date the public saw no more of his painting. he worked only for his friends and the friends of his friends. he was famous only in private, and looked up to like a god within a narrow circle of admirers. one of his acquaintances, the painter deverell, had introduced him in to the woman who became for him what saskia uylenburgh had been for rembrandt and helene fourment for rubens--his type of feminine beauty. she was a young dressmaker's assistant, miss eleanor siddal. her thick, heavy hair was fair, with that faint reddish tint in it which titian painted; it grew in two tapering bands deep down into the neck, being there somewhat fairer than it was above, and it curled thickly. her eyes had something indefinite in their expression; nothing, however, that was dreamy, mobile, and changeable, for they seemed rather to be insuperable, fathomless, and unnaturally vivid. all the play of her countenance lay in the lower part of her face, in the nostrils, mouth, and chin. the mouth, indeed, with its deep corners, sharply chiselled outlines, and lips triumphantly curved, was particularly expressive. and her tall, slender figure had a refined distinction of line. in they married. some of his most beautiful works were painted during this epoch--the "beata beatrix," the "sibylla palmifera," "monna vanna," "venus verticordia," "lady lilith," and "the beloved"--pictures which he painted without a thought of exhibition or success. after a union of barely two years this passionately loved woman died, shortly after the birth of a still-born child. he laid a whole volume of manuscript poems--many of them inspired by her--in the coffin, and they were buried with her. from that time he lived solitary and secluded from the world, surrounded by mediæval antiques, in his old-fashioned house at chelsea, entirely given up to his dreams, a stranger in a world without light. he suffered much from ill-health, and was sensitive and hypochondriacal, and, indeed, undermined his health by an immoderate use of chloral. his friends entreated him to bring out his poems, and all england was expectant when rossetti at length yielded to pressure, opened the grave of his wife, and took out the manuscript. the poems appeared in the april of . the first edition was bought up in ten days, and there followed six others. wherever he appeared he was honoured like a god. but the attacks directed against the first pictures of the pre-raphaelites were repeated, although now transferred to another region. a pseudonymous article by robert buchanan in the _contemporary review_, and published afterwards as a pamphlet, entitled _the fleshly school of poetry_, accused rossetti of immorality and imitation of baudelaire and the marquis de sade. rossetti stepped once more into the arena, and replied by a letter in the _athenæum_ headed _the stealthy school of criticism_. from that time he shut himself up completely, never went out, and led "the hole-and-cornerest existence." in he published a second volume of poems, chiefly composed of ballads and sonnets. a year afterwards, on th april , he died, honoured, even in the academical circles in which he never mingled, as one of the greatest men in england. the exhibition of his works which was opened a couple of months after his death created an immense sensation. those of his pictures which had not been already sold straight from the easel were paid for with their weight in gold, and are now scattered in great english country mansions and certain private galleries in florence. the only very rich collection in london is that of an intimate friend of the artist, the late mr. leyland, who had gathered together, in his splendid house in the west end, probably the most beautiful work of which the east can boast in carpets and vases, or the early renaissance in intaglios, small bronzes, and ornaments. here, surrounded by the quaint and delicate pictures of carlo crivelli and botticelli, rossetti was in the society of his contemporaries. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ rossetti. dante's dream. (_by permission of the corporation of liverpool, the owners of the picture._)] [illustration: _cassell & co._ rossetti. rosa triplex. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] his range of subject was not wide. in his earliest period he had a fancy for painting small biblical pictures, of which "ecce ancilla domini" is the best known, and the delightfully archaic "girlhood of mary virgin" one of the most beautiful. but this austerely biblical tendency was not of long continuance. it soon gave way to a brilliant, imaginative romanticism, to which he was prompted by dante. "giotto painting the portrait of dante," "the salutation of beatrice on earth and in eden" (from the _vita nuova_), "la pia" (from the _purgatorio_), the "beata beatrix," and "dante's dream," in the walker art gallery in liverpool, are the leading works which arose under the influence of the great italian. the head of his wife, with her heavily veiled eyes, and giotto's well-known picture of dante, sufficed him for the creation of the most tender, mystical poems, which, at the same time, show him in all the splendour of his wealth of colour. he revels in the most brilliant hues; his pictures have the appearance of being bathed in a glow; and there is something deeply sensuous in his vivid and lustrous green, red, and violet tones. in the picture "dante on the anniversary of beatrice's death" the poet kneels at the open window which looks out upon florence; he has been drawing, and a tablet is in his hand. the room is quite simple, a frieze with angels' heads being its only ornament. visitors of rank have come to see him--an elderly magnate and his daughter--and have stood long behind him without his noticing their presence; for he has been thinking of beatrice, and it is only when his attention is attracted to them by a friend that he turns round at last. the "beata beatrix," in the national gallery in london--a picture begun in and ended in the august of --treats of the death of beatrice "under the semblance of a trance, in which beatrice, seated in a balcony overlooking the city, is suddenly rapt from earth to heaven." in accordance with the description in the _vita nuova_, beatrice sits in the balcony of her father's palace in strange ecstasy. across the parapet of the balcony there is a view of the arno and of that other palace where dante passed his youth close to his adored mistress, until the unforgotten th of june , when death robbed him of her. a peaceful evening light is shed upon the bank of the arno, and plays upon the parapet with warm silvery beams. beatrice is dressed in a garment belonging to no definite epoch, of green and rosy red, the colours of love and hope. her head rises against a little patch of yellow sky between the two palaces, and seems to be surrounded by it as by a halo. she is in a trance, has the foreknowledge of her approaching death, and already lives through the spirit in another world, whilst her body is still upon the earth. her hands are touched by a heavenly light. a dove of deep rose-coloured plumage alights upon her knees, bringing her a white poppy; whilst opposite, before the palace of dante, the figure of love stands, holding a flaming heart, and announcing to the poet that beatrice has passed to a life beyond the earth. [illustration: _cassell & co._ rossetti. sir galahad.] [illustration: _pageant._ rossetti. mary magdalene at the house of simon the pharisee. (_by permission of mr. w. m. rossetti._)] "la donna finestra," painted in , and to be counted amongst his ripest creations, has connection with that passage in the _vita nuova_ where dante sinks to the ground overcome with sorrow for beatrice's death, and is regarded with sympathy by a lady looking down from a window, the lady of pity, the human embodiment of compassion. "dante's dream" is probably the work which shows the painter at his zenith. the expression of the heads is profound and lofty, the composition severely mediæval and admirably complete; and although the painting is laboured, the total impression is nevertheless so cogent that it is impossible to forget it. "the scene," in rossetti's own description, "is a chamber of dreams, strewn with poppies, where beatrice is seen lying on a couch, as if just fallen back in death; the winged figure of love carries his arrow pointed at the dreamer's heart, and with it a branch of apple-blossom; as he reaches the bier, love bends for a moment over beatrice with the kiss which her lover has never given her; while the two green-clad dream-ladies hold the pall full of may-blossom suspended for an instant before it covers her face for ever." the expression of ecstasy in dante's face, and the still, angelical sweetness of beatrice, are rendered with astonishing intensity. she lies upon the bier, pale as a flower, wrapped in a white shroud, with her lips parted as though she were gently breathing, and seems not dead but fallen asleep. her fair hair floats round her in golden waves. in its vague folds the covering of the couch displays the marble outlines of the body: and a look of bliss rests upon the pure and clear-cut features of her lovely face. [illustration: burne-jones. chant d'amour. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: burne-jones. the days of creation. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] this "painting of the soul" occupied rossetti almost exclusively in the third and most fruitful period of his life, when he painted hardly any pictures upon the larger scale, but separate feminine figures furnished with various poetic attributes, the deeper meaning of which is interpreted in his poems. "the sphinx," in which he busied himself with the great riddle of life, is the only one containing several figures. three persons--a youth, a man of ripe years, and a grey-beard--visit the secret dwelling of the sphinx to inquire their destiny of this omniscient being. it is only the man who really puts the question; the grey-beard stumbles painfully towards her cavern, while the young man, wearied with his journey, falls dying to the earth before the very object of his quest. the sphinx remains in impenetrable silence, with her green, inscrutable, mysterious eyes coldly and pitilessly fixed upon infinity. "the blessed damozel," "proserpina," "fiammetta," "the daydream," "la bella mano," "la ghirlandata," "veronica veronese," "dis manibus," "astarte syriaca" are all separate figures dedicated to the memory of his wife. as dante immortalised his beatrice, rossetti honoured his wife, who died so early, in his poems and his pictures. he painted her as "the blessed damozel," with her gentle, saint-like face, her quiet mouth, her flowing golden hair and peaceful lids. he represents her as an angel of god standing at the gate of heaven, looking down upon the earth. she is thinking of her lover, and of the time when she will see him again in heaven, and of the sacred songs that will be sung to him. lilies rest upon her arm, and lovers once more united hover around. there is no action or rhetoric of gesture in rossetti. his tall gothic figures are motionless and silent, having almost the floating appearance of visionary figures which stand long before the gaze of the dreamer without taking bodily form. they glide along like phantoms and shadows, like the undulations of a blossom-laden tree or a field of corn waving in the wind. they neither talk nor weep nor laugh, and are only eloquent through their quiet hands, the most sensuous and the most spiritual hands ever painted, or with their eyes, the most dreamy and fascinating eyes which have been rendered in art since leonardo da vinci. in the pictures which rossetti devoted to her, eleanor siddal is a marvellously lofty woman, glorified in the mysticism of a rare beauty. rossetti drapes his idol in venetian fashion, with rich garments which recall giorgione in the character of their colour, and, like botticelli, he strews flowers of deep fragrance around her, especially roses, which he painted with wonderful perfection and hyacinths, for which he had a great love, and the intoxicating perfume of which affected him greatly. [illustration: burne-jones. circe. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] this taste for beautiful and deeply lustrous colours and rich accessories is, indeed, the one purely pictorial quality which this painter-poet has, if one understands by pictorial qualities the capacity for intoxicating one's self with the beauty of the visible world. his drawing is often faulty; and his bodies, enveloped in rich and heavy garments, are, perhaps, not invariably in accordance with anatomy. what explains rossetti's fabulous success is purely the condition of spirit which went to the making of his works--that nervous vibration, that ecstasy of opium, that combination of suffering and sensuousness, and that romanticism drunk with beauty, which pervade his paintings. when they appeared they seemed like a revelation of a beautiful land, only one could not say where it existed--a revelation, indeed, for it revealed for the first time a world of story which was in no sense fabulous: there came a romanticism which was something real; a style arose which seemed as though it were woven of tones and colours, a style rioting in an everlasting exhilaration of spirit, breaking out sometimes in a glow of flame and sometimes in delicate, tremulous longing. even where he paints a madonna she is merely a woman in his eyes, and he endows her with the glowing fire of passionate fervour, with a trace of the joy of the earth, which no painter has ever given her before; and through this union of refined modern sensuousness and catholic mysticism he has created a new thrill of beauty. his painting was a drop of a most precious essence, in its hues enchanting and intoxicating, the strongest spiritual potion ever brewed in english art. the intensity of his overstrained sensibility, and the wonderful southern mosaic of form into which he poured this sensibility with elaborate refinement, make him seem own brother to baudelaire. [illustration: burne-jones. pygmalion (the soul attains). (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: _pageant._ burne-jones. perseus and andromeda.] this tendency of spirit was so novel, this plunge in the tide of mysticism so enchanting, this delicate, archaic fragrance so overwhelming, that a new stage in the culture of modern england dates from the appearance of rossetti. he borrowed nothing from his contemporaries, and all borrowed from him. there came a time when budding girls in london attired themselves like early italians from dante's _inferno_, when jellaby postlethwaite, in du maurier's mocking skit, entered a restaurant at luncheon-time, and ordered a glass of water and placed in it a lily which he had brought with him. "what else can i bring?" asked the waiter. "nothing," he sighed; "that is all i need." there began that æstheticism, that yearning for the lily and that cult of the sunflower, which gilbert and sullivan parodied in _patience_. swinburne, who has tasted of emotions of the most various realms of spirit, and in his poems set them before the world as though in marvellously chiselled goblets, represents this æsthetic phase of english art in literature. as a painter, edward burne-jones--the greatest of that oxford circle which gathered round rossetti in --began to work at the point where rossetti left off. [illustration: burne-jones. the annunciation. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: _mansell photo._ burne-jones. the mill.] _sir edward burne-jones_, who must now be spoken of, was born in birmingham in august , and was reading theology in oxford when rossetti was there painting the mural pictures for the union. rossetti attracted him as a flame attracts the moth. as yet he had not had any artistic training, but some of his drawings which were shown to rossetti by a mutual friend revealed so much poetic force, in spite of their embarrassed method of expression, that the painter-poet entered into communication with him, and allowed him to paint in the debating room of the union a subject from the arthurian legends, "the death of merlin." the picture met with approval, and burne-jones abandoned theology, became an intimate friend of rossetti and the companion of his studies, and went with him to london. there he designed a number of church windows for christ church cathedral, oxford, and in exhibited his first picture, "the merciful knight." later there followed the triptych "pyramus and thisbe" and a picture called "the evening star," a glimmering landscape through which a gentle spirit in a bronze-green garment is seen to float. but none of these works excited much attention. the small picture exhibited in , "phyllis and demophoön," was even thought offensive on account of the "sensuous expression" of the nymph. so burne-jones withdrew it, and for many years from that time held aloof from all the exhibitions of the royal academy. for seven years his name was never seen in a catalogue. it was only on st may , at the opening of the grosvenor gallery--founded by sir coutts lindsay, likewise a painter, to afford himself and his comrades a place of exhibition independent of the academy--that burne-jones once more made his appearance before the eyes of the world. but his pictures, like those of rossetti, had found their way in secrecy and by their own merit, and of a sudden he saw himself regarded as one of the most eminent painters in the country. [illustration: _l'art._ burne-jones. the enchantment of merlin. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] his art is the flower of most potent fragrance in english æstheticism, and the admiration accorded to him in england is almost greater than that which had been previously paid to rossetti. the grosvenor gallery, where he exhibited his pictures at this period, was for a long time a kind of temple for the æsthetes. on the opening day men and women of the greatest refinement crowded before his works. there was a cult of burne-jones at the grosvenor gallery, as there is a cult of wagner at bayreuth. one had to work one's way very gradually through the crowd to see his pictures, which always occupied the place of honour in the principal room of the gallery, and i remember how helplessly i stood in before the first of his pictures which i saw there. in a kind of vestibule of early gothic architecture there was seated in the foreground an armed man, who, in his dark, gleaming harness and his hard and bold profile, was like a lombard warrior, say mantegna's duke of mantua, and as he mused he held in his hand an iron crown studded with jewels; farther in the background, upon a high marble throne, a maiden was seated, a young girl with reddish hair and a pale worn face, looking with steadfast eyes far out into another world, as though in a hypnotic trance. two youths, apparently pages, sang, leaning upon a balustrade; while all manner of costly accessories, brilliant stuffs, lustrous marble, grey granite, and mosaic pavement, shining in green and red tones, lent the whole picture an air of exquisite richness. the title in the catalogue was "king cophetua and the beggar-maid," and any one acquainted with provençal poetry knew that king cophetua, the hero of an old ballad, fell in love with a beggar-girl, offered her his crown, and married her. but this was not to be gathered from the picture itself, where all palpable illustration of the story was avoided. nevertheless a vague sense of emotional disquietude was revealed in it. the two leading persons of the strange idyll, the earnest knight and the pallid maiden, are not yet able themselves to understand how all has come to pass--how she, the beggar-maid, should be upon the marble throne, and he, the king, kneeling on the steps before her whom he has exalted to be a queen. they remain motionless and profoundly silent, but their hearts are alive and throbbing. they have feeling which they cannot comprehend themselves, and the past and present surge through one another: life is a dream, and the dream is life. [illustration: _pageant._ burne-jones. the sea nymph. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] everything that burne-jones has created is at once fragrant, mystical, and austere, like this picture. his range of subject is most extensive. in his _princess_ alfred tennyson had quickened into new life the legends of chivalry, and in his _idylls of the king_ the tales of the knights of the holy grail. swinburne published his _atalanta in calydon_, in which he exercised once more the mysterious spell of the ancient drama, while he created in _chastelard_, _bothwell_, and _mary stuart_ a trilogy of the finest historical tragedies ever written, and showed in _tristram of lyonesse_ that even tennyson had not exhausted all the beauty in old legends of the time of king arthur; while, as early as , he had given to the world his _poems and ballads_, dedicated to burne-jones. in these works lie the ideas to which the painter has given form and colour. [illustration: _portfolio._ burne-jones. the golden stairs. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, owner of the copyright._)] he paints circe in a saffron robe, preparing the potion to enchant the companions of ulysses, with a strange light in her orbs, while two panthers fawn at her feet. he represents the goddess of discord at the marriage-feast of thetis, a ghastly, pallid figure, entering amongst the gods who are celebrating the occasion, and holding the fateful apple in her hand. he depicts pygmalion, the artist king of cyprus, supplicating aphrodite to breathe life into the sculptured image of a maiden, the work of his own hands. apart from classical antiquity, he owes some of his inspiration to the bible and christian legends, the sublimity of their grave tragedies, and the troubled sadness of their yearning and exaltation. one of his leading works devotes six pictures to the days of creation. an angel--accompanied in every case by the angels of the previous days--carries a sphere, in which may be seen the stars, the waters, the trees, the animals, and the first man and woman, in their proper sequence. the scene of the "adoration of the kings" is a landscape where fragrant roses bloom in the shadow of the slender stems of trees, which rise straight as a bolt. the virgin sits in their midst calm and unapproachable, and in her lap the child, who is more slender than in the pictures of cimabue. the three wise men--tall, gigantic figures, clad in rich mediæval garments--approach softly, whilst an angel floats perpendicularly in the air as a silent witness. in his picture "the annunciation" mary is standing motionless beside the great basin of a well-spring, at the portico of her house. to the left the messenger of god appears in the air. he has floated solemnly down, and it seems as if the folds of his robes, which fall straight from the body, had hardly been ruffled in his flight, as if his wings had scarcely moved; with the extremities of his feet he touches the branches of a laurel. mary does not shrink, and makes no gesture. there they stand, gravely, and as still as statues. the robe of the angel is white, and white that of the virgin, and white the marble floor and the wainscoting of the house; and it is only the pinions of the heavenly messenger that gleam in a golden brightness. a picture called "sponsa die libano" bore as a motto the words from _the song of solomon_: "awake, o north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out." the bride, in an ample blue robe, walks musing beside a stream, upon the bank of which white lilies grow, whilst the vehement figures of the north and south winds rush through the air in grey, fluttering garments. in addition to his love for homer and the bible, burne-jones has a passion for the old trouvères of the _chansons de geste_, the great and fanciful adventures of vanished chivalry, provençal courts of love, and the legends of arthur, merlin, and the knights of the round table. his "chant d'amour" is like a page torn out of an old english or provençal tale. on the meadow before a mediæval town a lady is kneeling, a sort of st. cecilia, in a white upper-garment and a gleaming skirt, playing upon an organ, the full chords of which echo softly through the evening landscape. to the left a young knight is sitting upon the ground, and silently listens, lost in the music, while a strange figure, clad in red, is pressing upon the bellows of the instrument. "the enchantment of merlin," with which he made his first appearance in , illustrated the passage in the old legend of merlin and vivien, relating how it came to pass one day that she and merlin entered a forest, which was called the forest of broceliande, and found a glorious wood of whitethorn, very high and all in blossom, and seated themselves in the shadow: and merlin fell asleep, and when she saw that he slept she raised herself softly, and began the spell, exactly according to the teaching of merlin, drawing the magic circle nine times and uttering the spell nine times. and merlin looked around him, and it seemed to him as though he were imprisoned in a tower, the highest in the world, and he felt his strength leave him as if the blood were streaming from his veins. in other pictures he abandons all attempt to introduce ideas, confining himself to the simple grouping of tender girlish figures, by means of which he makes a beautiful composition of the most subtle lines, forms, colours, and gestures. the "golden stairs" of was a picture of this description: a train of girls, beautiful as angels, descended the steps without aim or object, most of them with musical instruments, and all with the same delicate feet and the same robes falling in beautiful folds. in this year he also produced "venus' looking-glass": a number of nymphs assembled by the side of a clear pool at sunset, in the midst of a sad and solemn landscape, are kneeling by the water's edge together, reflected in its surface. [illustration: burne-jones. the wood nymph. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] besides these numerous canvases, mention must be made of the decorative works of the master. for the english church in rome, burne-jones has designed decorations in a rich and grave byzantine style, and in england, where mural decoration has little space accorded to it in churches, there is all the more comprehensive scope for painting upon glass. until the sixties church windows of this kind were almost exclusively ordered from germany. the court depôt of glass-painting in munich provided for the adornment of glasgow cathedral from drawings by schwind, heinrich hess, and schraudolph, and for the windows of st. paul's from designs by schnorr, while kaulbach was employed for a public building in edinburgh. in these days burne-jones reigns over this whole province. where the german masters handled glass-painting by modernising it like a nazarene fresco, burne-jones, who has penetrated deeply into the mediæval treatment of form, created a new style in glass-painting, and one exquisitely in keeping with the neo-gothic architecture of england. his most important works of this description are probably the glass windows which he designed for st. martin's church and st. philip's church in birmingham, his native town. these labours of his in the province of gothic window-painting explain how he came to his style of painting at the easel: he habituated himself to compose his pictures with the architectonical sentiment of a gothic artist. forced to satisfy the requisitions of the slender, soaring gothic style, he came to paint his tall, straight-lined figures, the composition of which is not triangular in the old fashion, but formed in long lines as in vertical church windows. it is not difficult to find prototypes for every one of these works of his. his sibyls recall pompeii. his church decoration would never have arisen but for the mosaics of ravenna. and those angels in golden drapery with grave, hieratical gestures in the pictures of the trecentisti influenced him in his "days of creation." other works of his suggest the etruscan vases or the suavity of duccio. "laus veneris" has the severe classicality of mantegna saturated with bellini's warmth of hue. the "chant d'amour," in its deep splendour of colour, is like an idyll by giorgione. and often he heaps together costly work in gold and ivory like the florentine goldsmith painters pollajuolo and verrochio. many of his young girls are of lineal descent from those slender, flexible, feminine saints of perugino, painted in sweeping lines and planted upon small flat feet. often, too, when he exaggerates his gothic principles and gives them eight-and-a-half or nine times the proportion of their heads, they seem, with their lengthy necks and slim hands fit for princesses, like younger sisters of parmigianino's lithe-limbed women; while sometimes their movements have a more ample grace, a more majestic nobility, and their lips are moved by the mystical inward smile of luini, so unfathomably subtle in its silent reserve. but it is botticelli who is most often brought to mind. burne-jones has borrowed from him the fine transparent gauze draperies, clinging to the limbs and betraying clearly the girlish forms in his pictures; the splendid mantles, flowered and adorned with dainty patterns of gold; the taste for southern vegetation, for flowers and fruits, and artificial bowers of thick palm leaves or delicate boughs of cypress, which he delights in using as a refined and significant embellishment; from botticelli he has borrowed all the attributes with which he has endowed his angels--rose-garlands and vases, tapers and tall lilies; even his type of womanhood has an outward resemblance to that of the florentine, with its long, delicate, oval face framed in wavy hair, its dreamy eyes and finely arched brows, its dainty and rather tip-tilted nose, and its ripe, delicately curving mouth slightly opened. indeed, burne-jones's painting is like one of those gilded flower-tables where plants of all latitudes mingle their tendrils and their foliage, their bells and their clusters, their perfume and their marvellous glory of colour, in a harmony artificially arranged. in its strained archaism his art is an affected, artificial art, and would perish as swiftly as a luxuriant exotic plant, had not this pupil of the italians been born a thoroughbred englishman, and this botticelli risen from the grave become a true briton on the banks of the thames. [illustration: _brothers, photo._ stanhope. the waters of lethe. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] [illustration: strudwick. elaine. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] burne-jones stands to botticelli as botticelli himself stood to the antique, or as swinburne to his literary models. as a graceful scholar, swinburne has reproduced all styles: the language of the old testament, the forms of greek literature, and the naïve lisp of the poets of chivalry. he decorates his verses with all manner of strange metaphors drawn from the literatures of all periods. his _atalanta in calydon_ is, down to the choruses, an imitation of the sophoclean tragedies. in his _ballad of life_ he follows the model of the singers who made canzonets, the writers who followed dante and the earliest lyric poets of italy. in _laus veneris_ he tells the story of tannhäuser and dame venus in the manner of the french romantic poets of the sixteenth century; _saint dorothy_ is a faithful echo of chaucer's narrative style; and the _christmas carol_ is modelled upon the provençal ballades. even the earliest lyrical mysteries are reproduced in some poems so precisely that, so far as form goes, they might be mistaken for originals. but the thought of swinburne's verse is what no earlier poet would have ever expressed. it is inconceivable that a greek chorus would have chanted any song of the weariness of man, and of the gifts of grief and tears brought to him at his creation; nor would a greek have written that hymn to aphrodite, the deadly flower born of the foam of blood and the froth of the sea. and in _hesperia_, where he describes a man who has loved beyond measure and suffered over-much amid the mad pleasures of rome, and now sets out, pale and exhausted, to sail the golden sea of the west until he reach the "fortunate islands" and find peace before his death, the mood does not reflect the thoughts of the old world, but those of the close of the nineteenth century; and so it is, too, in his "hendecasyllabics," where he complains in classically chiselled diction of the swift decay of beauty and the hidden ills which of a sudden consume the inward force of life. and burne-jones treats old myths with the same freedom and independence. he takes them up and recasts them, discovers modern passions lying in the very heart of them, enriches them with a wealth of delicate shades, borrowed without the smallest ceremony from a new conception of the world and from the life of his own time. the human soul grown old looks back, as it were, upon the path which it has travelled, and sees the spirit of its own ripe age latent in its infancy, recognising that "the child is father of the man." all the figures in his pictures are surrounded by a dusk which has nothing in common with the broad daylight in which the renaissance artists placed the antique world. there remains what may be called a residue of modern feeling which has not been assimilated to the old myth, a breath of magic floating round these figures on their career, something mysterious, an elusive air of fable. this, indeed, is the pervasive temperament and sentiment of our own age. it is our own inward spirit that gazes upon us as though from an enchanted mirror with the mien of a phantom. [illustration: _dixon, photo._ strudwick. thy tuneful strings wake memories. (_by permission of w. imrie, esq., the owner of the picture._)] and just as he remodels the entire spirit of old myths, he converts the figures which he has borrowed into an artistic form of his own, and, without hesitation, subordinates them in type and physical build and bearing to the new part they have to play. [illustration: _cassell & co._ strudwick. gentle music of a bygone day. (_by permission of john dixon, esq., the owner of the picture._)] [illustration: _dixon, photo._ strudwick. the ramparts of god's house. (_by permission of wm. imrie, esq., the owner of the picture._)] his pictures differ in their whole character from those of the masters of the quattrocento. in botticelli, also, the young foliage grows green and flaunts in its exuberant abundance; but in burne-jones the vegetation suggests one of those immense forests in sumatra or java. all the plants are luxuriant and resplendent in colour, and seem to swoon in their own opulent, plethoric life. every tree creates an impression of having shot up in swift and wanton growth under a tropical sun. rank parasitic plants trail from stem to stem, and garlands of climbers grow in a luxuriant tangle round the branches. and in proportion as the vegetation is luxuriant and sensuous the human figures are wasted and languishing. the severe charm, rigidity, and demureness of the quattrocento is weakened into lackadaisical melancholy. the dreamy bliss of botticelli is transposed into sanctified solemnity, delicate fragility, a voluptuous lassitude, a gentle weariness of the world. when he paints ancient sibyls, they are touched at once by the unearthly asceticism of the middle ages seeking refuge from the world, and the melancholy, anæmic lassitude of the close of the nineteenth century. if he paints a venus she does not stand out victorious in her nudity, but wears a heavy brocaded robe, and around her lie the symbols of christian martyrdom, palms, and perhaps a lyre. it is not the fairness of her body that makes her goddess of love, but only the dim mystery of her radiant eyes. she is not the olympian who entered into frolicsome adventure with the war-god mars amid the laughter of the heavenly gods, for in her conventional humiliation she is rather like the beautiful dæmon of the middle ages who, upon her journey into exile, passed by the cross where the son of man was hanging, and tasted all the bitterness of the years. in their delicate features his madonnas have a gentle sadness rarely found in the italian masters. even the angels, who were roguish and wayward in the quattrocento, do their spiriting with ceremonious gravity, and a subdued melancholy underlies their devotional reverence. in botticelli they are fresh, youthful figures, lightly girdled, and with fluttering locks and swelling robes and limber bodies, whether they float around the madonna in blissful revelry or look up to the child christ in their rapt ecstasy. but in burne-jones they are devout, sombre, deeply earnest beings, gazing as thoughtfully and dreamily as though they had already known all the affliction of the world. their limbs seem paralysed, and their gesture weary. it is not possible to look at one of his pictures without being reminded of the florentines of the fifteenth century, and yet the spectator at once recognises that they are the work of burne-jones. he is even opposed to rossetti, his lord and master, through this element of melancholy: the intoxication of opium is followed by the sober awakening. rossetti's women are dazzling and glorious figures of a modern and deliberately cruel beauty--sisters of messalina, phædra, and faustina. he delineates them as luxuriant beings with supple and splendid bodies, long white necks, and snowily gleaming breasts; with full and fragrant hair, ardent, yearning eyes, and demoniacally passionate lips. their mother is the venus verticordia whom rossetti so often painted. cruel in their love as one of the blind forces of nature, they are like that water-sprite with her song and her red coral mouth dragged from the sea in a fishing-net, as an old french _fabliau_ tells, and so fair that every man who beheld her was seized by the love of her, but died when he clasped her in his arms. what they love in man is his physical strength, his face and sinews of bronze. only the strong man who loves them with overpowering madness, like a stormy wind, can bend them to his will. swinburne has sung of "the lips intertwisted and bitten, where the foam is as blood," of "the heavy white limbs and the cruel red mouth like a venomous flower." [illustration: _dixon, photo._ strudwick. the ten virgins. (_by permission of william imrie, esq., the owner of the picture._)] but the women of burne-jones know that this fervour is no longer to be found upon the earth. the blood has been sapped, and the fire burns low, and the glorious, ancient might of love has disappeared. for these women life has lost its sunshine, and love its passion, and the world its hopes. the hue of their cheeks is pallid, their eyes are dim, their bodies sickly and without flesh and blood, and their hips are spare. with pale, quivering lips, and a melancholy smile or a strangely resigned, intensely grieved look flickering at the corners of their mouths, they live consumed by sterile longing, and pine in silent dejection, gazing into vacant space like imprisoned goldfish, or luxuriate in the vague fata morgana of an over-delicate, over-refined, and bashfully tremulous eroticism-- "and the chaplets of old are above us, and the oyster-bed teems out of reach; old poets outsing and outlove us, and catullus makes mouths at our speech. who shall kiss in the father's own city, with such lips as he sang with again? intercede with us all of thy pity, our lady of pain." [illustration: _portfolio._ crane. the chariots of the fleeting hours. (_by permission of the artist._)] swinburne's first ardent and sensuous volume of lyrics contains a poem, _the garden of proserpine_: it tells how a man weary of all things human and divine, and no longer able to support the intoxicating fragrance of the roses of aphrodite, draws near with wavering steps to the throne where calm proserpine sits silent, crowned with cold white flowers. and in the same way rossetti's flaming and quivering passion and his volcanic desire end in burne-jones with sad resignation. whilst christianity and hellenism mingle in the figures of burne-jones, a division of labour is noticeable amongst the following artists: some addressed themselves exclusively to the treatment of ancient subjects, others to ecclesiastical romantic painting in the style of the quattrocento, and others again recognised their chief vocation in initiating a reformation in kindred provinces of industrial art. _r. spencer stanhope_, who was at oxford, like burne-jones, and, indeed, received his first artistic impulses while employed on the elaboration of rossetti's mural pictures for the union, worked even in later days chiefly in the field of decorative painting, and is, with burne-jones, the principal designer for the interior decoration of churches in england. his oil-paintings are few, and in their gracious quattrocento build they are in outward appearance scarcely different from those of burne-jones. in a picture belonging to the manchester gallery there is a maiden seated amid a flowery meadow, while a small cupid with red pinions draws near to her; the landscape has an air of peace and happiness. another picture--probably inspired by catullus' _lament for lesbia's sparrow_--displays a girl sitting upon an old town wall with a little dead bird. "the temptation of eve" is like a brilliantly coloured mediæval miniature, painted with the greatest _finesse_. as in the woodcut in the cologne bible, paradise is enclosed with a circular red wall. eve is like a slim, twisted gothic statue. like burne-jones, stanhope is always delicate and poetic, but he is less successful in setting upon old forms of art the stamp of his individuality, and thus giving them new life and a character of their own. in their severe, archæological character his pictures have little beyond the affectation of a style which has been arrived at through imitation. [illustration: walter crane. from _the tempest_.] the third member of this oxford circle, the poet _william morris_, has exercised great influence over english taste by the institution of an industrial establishment for embroidery, painting upon glass, and household decoration. keeping in mind that close union which existed in the fifteenth century between art and the manual crafts, he and certain of his disciples did not hesitate to provide designs for decorative stuffs, wall-papers, furniture, and household embellishments of every description. they were largely indebted to the japanese, to say nothing of the old italians, though they succeeded in creating a thoroughly modern and independent style, in spite of all they borrowed. the whole range of industrial art in england received a new lease of life, and household decoration became blither and more cheerful in its appearance. only light, delicate, and finely graduated colours were allowed to predominate, and they were combined with slender, graceful, and vivacious form. the heavy panelling which was popular in the sixties gave way to bright papers ornamented with flowers; narrow panes made way for large plate-glass windows with light curtains, in which long-stemmed flowers were entwined in the pattern. slim pillars supported cabinets painted in exquisite hues or gleaming with lacquer-work and enamel. seats were ornamented with soft cushions shining in all the delicate splendour of indian silks. and the pre-raphaelite style of ornamentation was even extended to the embellishment of books, so that england created the modern book, at a time when other nations adhered altogether to the imitation of old models. [illustration: walter crane. from _the tempest_.] in his early years _arthur hughes_ attracted much attention by an ophelia, a delicate, thoroughly english figure of soft pre-raphaelite grace; but in later years he rarely got beyond sentimental renaissance maidens suggestive of julius wolff, and humorous work in the style of _genre_. _j. n. strudwick_, who worked first under spencer stanhope and then under burne-jones, was more consistent in his fidelity to the pre-raphaelite principles. his pictures have the same delicate, enervated mysticism, and the same thoughtful, dreamy poetry, as those of his elders in the school. by preference he paints slender, pensive girlish figures, with the sentiment of burne-jones, taking his motive from some passage in a poet. in a picture called "elaine" the heroine is mournfully seated in a lofty room of a mediæval palace. another of his works reveals three girls occupied with music. or a knight strewn with roses lies asleep in a maiden's lap. or again, there is st. cecilia standing with her seraphina before a roman building. strudwick does not possess the spontaneity of his master. the childlike, angular effect at which he aims often seems slightly weak and mawkish; and occasionally his painting is somewhat diffident, especially when he paints in the architectural detail and rich artistic accessories, and stipples with a very fine brush. but his works are so exquisite and delicate, so precious and æsthetic, that they must be reckoned amongst the most characteristic performances of the new pre-raphaelitism. one of his larger compositions he has named "bygone days." there is a man musing over the memories of his life, as he sits upon a white marble throne in front of a long white marble wall, amid an evening landscape. he stretches out his arms after the vanished years of his youth, the years when love smiled upon him; but time, a winged figure like orcagna's _morte_, divides him from the goddess of love, swinging his scythe with a threatening gesture. "the past," a slender matron in a black robe, covers her face lamenting. in strudwick's most celebrated picture, "the ramparts of god's house," there is a man standing at the threshold of heaven, naked as a greek athlete. his earthly fetters lie shattered at his feet. angels receive him, marvellously spiritual beings filled with a lovely simplicity and revealing ineffable profundity of soul, beings who partake of fra angelico almost as much as of ellen terry. their expression is quiet and peaceful. instead of marvelling at the new-comer, they gaze with their eyes green as a water-sprite's meditatively into illimitable space. the architecture in the background is entirely symbolical, as in the pictures of giotto. a little house with a golden roof and gilded mediæval reliefs is inhabited by a dense throng of little angels, as if it were a noah's-ark. the colour is rich and sonorous, as in the youthful works of carlo crivelli. [illustration: g. f. watts in his garden. (_by permission, from a photograph by a. frazer-tytler, esq._)] _henry holliday_, who has of late devoted himself largely to decorative tasks, seems in these works to be the _juste-milieu_ between burne-jones and leighton. and the youngest representative of this group tinged with religious and romantic feelings is _marie spartali-stillman_, who lives in rome and paints as a rule pictures from dante, boccaccio, and petrarch, after the fashion of rossetti. [illustration: _l'art._ watts. lady lindsay. (_by permission of lady lindsay, the owner of the picture._)] others, who turned to the treatment of antique subjects, were led by these themes more towards the idealism of the cinquecento as regards the form of their work; and in this way they lost the severe stamp of the pre-raphaelites. in these days _william blake richmond_, in particular, no longer shows any trace of having once belonged to the mystic circle of oxonians. the ariadne which he painted in the old days was a lean and tall woman with fluttering black mantle, casting up her arms in lamentation and gazing out of those deep, gazelle-like eyes which burne-jones gave his vivien. even the scheme of colour was harmonised in the bronze, olive tone which marked the earliest works of burne-jones. but soon afterwards his views underwent a complete revolution in italy. influenced by alma tadema in form, and by the french in colour, he drew nearer to the academic manner, until he became, at length, a classicist without any salient peculiarity. the allegory "amor vincit omnia" is characteristic of this phase of his art. aphrodite, risen from her bath, is standing naked in a grecian portico, through which a purple sea is visible. her maidens are busied in dressing her; and they are, one and all, chaste and noble figures of that classic grace and elegant fluency of line which leighton usually lends to his ideal forms. in a picture which became known in germany through the international exhibition of , venus, a clear and white figure, floats down with stately motion towards anchises. it is only in the delicate pictures of children which have been his chief successes of late years that he is still fresh and direct. girls with thick hair of a _blonde cendrée_, finely moulded lips, and large gazelle-like eyes full of sensibility, are seen in these works dreamily seated in white or blue dresses against a red or a blue curtain. and the æsthetic method of painting, which almost suggests pastel work in its delicacy, is in keeping with the ethereal figures and the bloom of colour. _walter crane_ has been far more successful in uniting the pre-raphaelite conception with a sentiment for beauty formed upon the antique, burne-jones's "paucity of flesh and plenitude of feeling" with a measured nobility of form. born in liverpool in , he received his first impressions of art at the royal academy exhibition of , where he saw millais' "sir isumbras at the ford." the chivalrous poetry of this master became the ideal of his youth, and it rings clearly throughout his first pictures, exhibited in . one of these has as its subject "the lady of shalott" approaching the shore of her mysterious island in a boat, and the other st. george slaying the dragon. meanwhile, however, he had come to know walker, through w. j. linton, the wood-engraver, for whom he worked from to , and the former led him to admire the beauty of the sculptures of the parthenon. after this he passed from romantic to antique subjects, and there is something notably youthful, a fresh bloom as of old legends, in these compositions, which recall the sculpture of phidias. "the bridge of life," belonging to the year , was like an antique gem or a grecian bas-relief. at the paris world exhibition of he had a "birth of venus," noble and antique in composition, and of a severity of form which suggested mantegna. the suave and poetic single figures which he delights in painting are at once greek and english: girls, with branches of blossom, in white drapery falling into folds, and enveloping their whole form while indicating every line of the body. his "pegasus" might have come straight from the frieze of the parthenon. "the fleeting hours" at once recalls guido reni's "aurora" and dürer's apocalyptic riders. [illustration: _cameron, photo._ watts. hope. (_by permission of the artist._)] [illustration: _pageant._ watts. paolo and francesca. (_by permission of the artist._)] [illustration: _cameron, photo._ watts. love and death. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] later he turned to decorative painting, like all the representatives of the pre-raphaelite group. he is one of the most original designers for industrial work in tapestry, next to morris the most influential leader of the english arts and crafts, and he has collaborated in founding that modern naturalistic tendency of style which will be the art of the future. his designs are always based upon naturalistic motives--the english type of womanhood and the english splendour of flowers. there always predominates a sensitive relationship between the æsthetic character of the forms and their symbolical significance. he always adapts an object of nature so that it may correspond in style with the material in which he works. the way in which he makes use of the noblest models of antiquity and of the renaissance, and yet immediately transposes them into an english key of sentiment and into available modern forms, is entirely peculiar. and last, but not least, he is a marvellous illustrator. every one went wild with delight at the close of the sixties over the appearance of his first children's books, _the faerie queene_, _the little pig who went to market_, and _king luckiboy_, the pictures of which were soon displayed upon all patterns for embroidery. and they were followed by others: after he published _tell me a story_, _the first of may--a fairy masque_, _the sirens three_, _echoes of hellas_, and so forth. the two albums _the baby's bouquet_ and _the baby's opera_ of are probably the finest of them all. in spite of their childish subjects, the drawings of walter crane have such a monumental air that they have the effect of "grand painting." without imitation he reproduces spontaneously the grace and character of the primitive florentines. some of his plates recall "the dream of polifilo," and might bear the monogram of giovanni bellini. they owe their origin to a profound germanic sentiment mingled with pagan reminiscences; they are an almost grecian and yet english art, where fancy like a foolish, dreamy child plays with a brilliant skein of forms and colours. that great artist _george frederick watts_ stands quite apart as a personality in himself. in point of substance he is divided from others by not leaning upon poets, but by inventing independent allegories for himself; and in point of form by courting neither the quattrocento nor the roman cinquecento, but rather following the venice of the later renaissance. instead of the marble precision of squarcione or mantegna, what predominates in his work is something soft and melting, which might recall correggio, tintoretto, or giorgione, were it not that there is a cooler grey, a subdued light fresco tone in watts, in place of the venetian glory of colour. as a man, watts was one of those artists who are only to be found in england--an artist who, from his youth upwards, has been able to live for his art without regard to profit. born in london in the year , he left the academy after being a pupil there for a brief period, and began to visit the elgin room in the british museum. the impression made upon him by the sculptures of the parthenon was decisive for his whole life. not merely are numerous plastic works due to his study of them, but several of his finest paintings. when he was seventeen he exhibited his first pictures, which were painted very delicately and with scrupulous pains; and in he took part in the competition for the frescoes of the houses of parliament, amongst which the representation of st. george and the dragon was from his hand. with the proceeds of the prize which he received at the competition he went to italy, and there he came to regard the great venetians titian and giorgione as his kin and his contemporaries. the pupil of phidias became the worshipper of tintoretto. in italy he produced "fata morgana," a picture of a warrior vainly catching at the airy white veil of a nude female figure which floats past. this work already displays him as an accomplished artist, though it is wanting in the large, classical tranquillity of his later paintings. he returned home with plans demanding more than human energy. like the frenchman chenavard, he cherished the purpose of representing the history of the world in a series of frescoes, which were to adorn the walls of a building specially adapted for the purpose. "chaos," "the creation," "the temptation of man," "the penitence," "the death of abel," and "the death of cain" were the earliest pictures which he designed for the series. it was through fresco painting alone, as he believed, that it was possible to school english art to monumental grandeur, nobleness, and simplicity. but it was not possible for him to remain long upon this path in england, where painting has but little space accorded to it upon the walls of churches, while in other public buildings decoration is not in demand. moreover, it is doubtful whether watts would have achieved anything great in this province of art. at any rate, a work which he executed for the dining-hall at lincoln's inn--an assembly of the lawgivers of all times from moses down to edward i--is scarcely more than a mixture of raphael's "school of athens" and the "hemicycle" of delaroche. in magnificent allegories in the form of oil-paintings he first found the expression of his individuality. like turner, watts did not paint pictures for sale. yet he has lent one or other of his pictures to almost every public exhibition. a whole room is devoted to him in the tate gallery. but to know his work thoroughly one had to go to his house. his studio in little holland house contained almost all his important creations, and was visited by the public upon saturday and sunday afternoons as freely as if it were a museum. [illustration: _pageant._ watts. ariadne. (_by permission of mr. f. hollyer, the owner of the copyright._)] [illustration: _l'art._ watts. orpheus and eurydice. (_by permission of the artist._)] as a landscape painter watts is a visionary like turner, though in addition to the purely artistic effect of his pictures he always endeavoured to awaken remoter feelings and ideas of some kind or another. his landscape "corsica" reveals a grey expanse, with very slight vibrations of tone which suggest that out to sea a distant island is emerging from the mist. his "mount ararat," a picture entirely filled with the play of light blue tones, represents a number of barren rocky cones bathed in the intense blue of a pure transparent starry night. above the highest peak there is one star sparkling more brilliantly than the others. in his "deluge: the forty-first day," he attempted to depict, after an interpretation of his own, the power "with which light and heat, dissipating the darkness and dissolving the multitude of the waters into mist and vapour, give new life to perished nature." what is actually placed before the eye is a delicate symphony of colours which would have delighted turner: wild, agitated sea, clouds gleaming like liquid gold, and mist behind which the sun rises in a magical glow, like a red ball of fire. in his portraits he is earnest and sincere. just as fifty years ago david d'angers devoted half a lifetime to getting together a portrait gallery of famous contemporaries, so to watts belongs the glory of having really been the historian of his time. the collection of portraits, many of which are to be seen in the national portrait gallery, comprises about forty likenesses, all of them half-length pictures, all of them upon the same scale of size, all of them representing very famous men. amongst the poets comprised in this gallery of genius are alfred tennyson, robert browning, matthew arnold, swinburne, william morris, and sir henry taylor; amongst prose-writers, carlyle, john stuart mill, lecky, motley, and leslie stephen; amongst statesmen, gladstone, sir charles dilke, the duke of argyll, lord salisbury, lord shaftesbury, lord lyndhurst, and lord sherbrooke; amongst the leaders of the clergy, dean stanley, dean milman, cardinal manning, and dr. martineau; amongst painters, rossetti, millais, leighton, burne-jones, and calderon; and amongst notable foreigners, guizot, thiers, joachim the violinist, and many others. in the matter of technique watts is excelled by many of the french. his portraits have something heavy, nor are they eminent either for softness of modelling, or for that momentary and animated effect peculiar to lenbach. but few portraits belonging to the nineteenth century have the same force of expression, the same straightforward sureness of aim, the same grandeur and simplicity. before each of the persons represented one is able to say, that is a painter, that a poet, and that a scholar. all the self-conscious dignity of a president of the royal academy is expressed in the picture of leighton, and his look is as cold as marble; while the eyes of burne-jones seem mystically veiled, as though they were gazing into the past. indeed, the way in which watts grasps his characters is masterly beyond conception. amongst the old painters tintoretto and moroni might be compared with him most readily, while van dyck is the least like him of all. in opposition to the poetic fantasy of burne-jones dallying with legendary lore, an element of brooding thought is characteristic of the large compositions of watts, a meditative absorption in ideas which provoke the intellect to further activity by their mysterious allegorical suggestions. just as he makes an approach to the old venetians in external form, he is divided from them in the inward burden of his work by a severity and hardiness characteristic of the northern spirit, a predominance of idea seldom met with amongst southern masters, and a profoundly sad way of thought in which one sees the stamp of the nineteenth century. apart from the purely artistic effect of his work, he tried to make his pictures serve as a stimulus to deeper thought and meditation: "the end of art," he writes, "must be the exposition of some weighty principle of spiritual significance, the illustration of a great truth." "the spirit of christianity," the only one of his works which has a religious tone, displays a youth throned upon the clouds, with children nestling at his feet. his powerful head is bent upwards, and his right hand opened wide. in "orpheus and eurydice" he has chosen the moment when orpheus turns round to behold eurydice turning pale and sinking to the earth, to be once more swallowed by hades. the lyre drops from his hands, and with a gesture of despair he draws the form of his wife to his heart in a last, eternal embrace. "artemis and endymion" is a scene in which a tall female figure in silvery shining vesture bends over the sleeping shepherd, throwing herself into the curve of a sickle. but, as a rule, he neither makes use of christian nor of ancient ideas, but embodies his own thoughts. in "the illusions of life," a picture belonging to the year , beautiful, dreamy figures hover over a gulf, spreading at the verge of existence. at their feet lie the shattered emblems of greatness and power, and upon a small strip of the earth hanging over an abyss those illusions are visible which have not yet been destroyed: glory, in the shape of a knight in harness, chases the bubble of resounding fame; love is symbolised by a pair who are tenderly embracing; learning, by an old man poring over manuscripts in the dusk; innocence, by a child grasping at a butterfly. "the angel of death" is a picture of a winged and mighty woman throned at the entrance of a way which leads to eternity. upon her knees there rests, covered with a white cloth, the corpse of a new-born child. men and women of every station lay reverently down at the feet of the angel the symbols of their dignity and the implements of their earthly toil. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ watts. artemis and endymion. (_by permission of mr. robert dunthorne, the owner of the copyright._)] "love and death" represents the two great sovereigns of the world wrestling together for a human life. with steps which have a mysterious majesty, pallid death draws near, demanding entrance at the door of a house, whilst love, a slight, boyish figure with bright wings, places himself in the way; but with one great, irresistible gesture the mighty genius of death sweeps the shrinking child to one side. in another picture, "love and life," the genius of love, in the form of a slim, powerful youth, helps poor, weak, clinging life, a half-grown, timid, faltering girl, to clamber up the stony path of a mountain, over which the sun rises golden. "hope" is a picture in which a tender spirit, bathed in the blue mist, sits upon the globe, blindfold, listening in bliss to the low sound vibrating from the last string of her harp. "mammon" is embodied by watts in a coarse and bloated satyr brutally setting his heel upon a youth and a young girl, as upon a footstool. in , when the committee of the munich exhibition were moved by the writings of cornelius gurlitt to have some of these works sent over to germany, a certain disappointment was felt in artistic circles. and any one who is accustomed to gauge pictures by their technique is justified in missing the genuine pictorial temperament in watts. the sobriety of his scheme of colour, his preference for subdued tones, his distaste for all "dexterity" and freedom from all calculated refinement, are not in accord with the desires of our time. even his sentiment is altogether opposed to that which predominates in the other new idealists. burne-jones and rossetti found sympathy because their repining lyricism, their psychopathic subtlety, their wonderful mixture of archaic simplicity and _décadent hautgoût_, stand in direct touch with the present. watts' pictures seem cold and wanting in temperament because he made no appeal to the vibrating life of the nerves. but the same sort of criticism was written by the younger generation in germany, seventy years ago, on the works of goethe, which have, none the less, remained fresher than those of schlegel and tieck. what is modern is not always the same as what is eternally young. and if one endeavours, disregarding the current of the age, to approach watts as though he were an old master, one feels an increasing sense of the probability that amongst all the new idealists of the present he has, next to boecklin, the best prospect of becoming one. in spite of all its independence of spirit, the art of burne-jones has an affected mannerism in its outward garb. the sentiment of it is free, but the form is confined in the old limits. and it is not impossible that later generations, to whom his specifically modern sentiment will appeal more and more faintly, may one day rank him, on account of his archaism in drawing, as much amongst the eclectics as overbeck and führich are held to be at the present time. but that can never happen to watts. his works are the expression of an artist who is as little dependent upon the past as upon the momentary tendencies of the present. his articulation of form has nothing in common with the lines of beauty of the antique, or the quattrocento, or the cinquecento. it is a thing created by himself and to himself peculiar. he needs no erudition, and no attributes and symbols borrowed from the renaissance, to body forth his allegories. with him there begins a new power of creating types; and his figure of death--that tall woman, clad in white, with hollow cheeks, livid face, and lifeless sunken eyes--is no less cogent than the genius with the torch reversed or the burlesque skeleton of the middle ages. moreover, there is in his works a trace of profundity and simple grandeur which stands alone in our own period. it is precisely our more sensitive nervous system which divides us from the old painters, and has generally given the artistic productions of our day a disturbed, capricious, restless, and overstrained character, making them inferior to those of the old masters. watts is, perhaps, the only painter who can bear comparison with them in every respect. here is a man who has been able to live in himself far away from the bustle of exhibitions, a man who worked when he was old as soundly and freshly as when he was young, a man, also, who is always simple in his art, lucid, earnest, grandiose, impressive, and of monumental sublimity. though he shows no trace of imitation he might have come straight from the renaissance, so deep is his sense of beauty, so direct and so condensed his power of giving form to his ideas. and amongst living painters i should find it impossible to name a single one who could embody such a scene as that of "love and death" so calmly, so entirely without rhetorical gestures and all the tricks of theatrical management. there is the mark of style about everything in watts, and it is no external and borrowed style, but one which is his own, a style which a notable man, a thinker and a poet, has fashioned for the expression of his own ideas. that is what makes him a master of contemporary painting and of the painting of all times. and that is what will, perhaps, render him, in the eyes of later generations, one of the greatest men of our time. chapter xxxiii the new idealism in france and germany a similar change of taste occurred in france. just as the impressionists had held modernity alone in high honour, so now awoke the longing after the faded lustre of a bygone age of beauty. the younger generation in literature began to do homage to their spiritual ancestors not in zola but in charles baudelaire, that abstracter of the quintessence; and similarly in the province of art there came to the fore two of the older masters who until then had been relegated to the background. in pictorial art _gustave moreau_ is equivalent to charles baudelaire. certain of the strange and fascinating poems in the _fleurs du mal_ strike alone the same note of sentiment as the tortured, subtilised, morbid, but mysterious and captivating creations of moreau; and his figures, like those of baudelaire, live in a mysterious world, and stimulate the spirit like eternal riddles. every one of his works stands in need of a commentary; every one of them bears witness to a profound and peculiar activity of mind, and every one of them is full of intimate reveries. every agitation of his inward spirit takes shape in myths of hieratical strangeness, in mysterious hallucinations, which he sets in his pictures like jewels. he gives ear to dying strains, rising faintly, inaudible to the majority of men. marvellous beings pass before him, fantastic and yet earnest; forms of legendary story hover through space upon strange animals; a fabulous hippogriff bears him far away to greece and the east, to vanished worlds of beauty. upon the journey he beholds utopias, beholds the fortunate islands, and visits all lands, borne upon the pinions of a dream. an age which went wild over cabanel and bouguereau could not possibly be in sympathy with him. the naturalists, also, looked upon him as a singular being; it was much as if an indian magician whose robe shone in all the hues of the rainbow had suddenly made his appearance at a ball, amongst men in black evening dress. it is only since the mysterious smile of leonardo's feminine figures has once more drawn the world beneath its spell that the spirit of moreau's pictures has become a familiar thing. even his schooling was different from that of his contemporaries. he was the only pupil of that strange artist théodore chassériau, and chassériau had directed him to the study of bellini, mantegna, leonardo da vinci, and all those enchanting primitive artists whose enchanting female figures are seen to move through mysterious black and blue landscapes. he was then seized with an enthusiasm for the hieratical art of india. and he was also affected by old german copper-engraving, old venetian pottery, painting upon vases and enamel, mosaics and niello work, tapestries and old oriental miniatures. his exquisite and expressive style, which, at a time when the flowing cinquecento manner was in vogue, made an unpleasant effect by its archaic angularity, was the result of the fusion of these elements. when he appeared, the special characteristic of french art was its seeking after violent agitations of the spirit, _émotions fortes_. the spirit was to be roused by stormy vehemence, as a relaxed system is braced by massage. but the generation at the close of the nineteenth century wanted to be soothed rather than stirred by painting. it could not endure shrill cries, loud, emphatic speech, or vehement gestures. it desired subdued and refined emotions, and moreau's distinction is that he was the first to give expression to this weary _décadent_ humour. in his work a complete absence of motion has taken the place of the striding legs, the attitudes of the fencing-master, the arms everlastingly raised to heaven, and the passionately distorted faces which had reigned in french painting since david. he makes spiritual expression his starting-point, and not scenic effect; he keeps, as it were, within the laws which rule over classical sculpture, where vehemence was only permitted to intrude from the period of decline, from the pergamene reliefs, the laocoön, and the farnese bull. everything bears the seal of sublime peace; everything is inspired by inward life and suppressed passion. even when the gods fight there are no mighty gestures; with a mere frown they can shake the earth like zeus. his spiritual conception of the old myths is just as peculiar as his grave articulation of form; it is a conception such as earlier generations could not have, one which alone befits the spiritual condition of the close of the nineteenth century. during the most recent decades archæological excavations and scientific researches have widened and deepened our conceptions of the old mythology in a most unexpected manner. beside the laughter of the grecian pan we hear the sighs and behold the convulsions of asia, in her anguish bearing gods, who perish young like spring flowers, in the loving arms of oriental goddesses. we have heard of chryselephantine statues covered with precious stones from top to bottom; and we know the graceful terra-cotta figures of tanagra. before there was a knowledge of the tanagra statuettes no archæologist could have believed that the eros of hesiod was such a charming, wayward little rascal. before the discovery of the cyprus statues no artist would have ventured to adorn a grecian goddess with flowers, pins for the head, and a heavy tiara. prompted by these discoveries, moreau has been swayed by strangely rich inspirations. he is said to have worked in his studio as in a tower opulent with ivory and jewels. he has a delight in arraying the figures of his legends in the most costly materials, as the discoveries at cyprus give him warrant for doing, in painting their robes in the deepest and most lustrous hues, and in being almost too lavish in his manner of adorning their arms and breasts. every figure of his is a glittering idol, enveloped in a dress of gold brocade embroidered with precious stones. his love of ornamentation is even extended to his landscapes. they are improbable, far too fair, far too rich, far too strange to exist in the actual world, but they are in close harmony with the character of these sumptuously clad figures which wander in them like the mystic and melancholy shapes of a dream. the capricious generation that lived in the renaissance occasionally handled classical subjects in this manner, but there is the same difference between filippino lippi and gustave moreau as there is between botticelli and burne-jones: the former, like shakespeare in the _midsummer night's dream_, transformed the antique into a blithe and fantastic fairy world, whereas that fire of yearning romance which once flamed from poor hölderlin's poet heart burns in the pictures of moreau. his "orpheus" is one of his most characteristic and beautiful works. he has not borrowed the composition from antique tragedy. the drama is over. orpheus has been torn asunder by the mænads, and the limbs of the poet lie scattered over the icy fields of the hyperborean lands. his head, borne upon his lyre now for ever mute, has been cast upon the shore of erebus. nature seems to sleep in mysterious peace. around there is nothing to be seen but still waters and pallid light, nothing to be heard but the tone of a small shrill flute, played by a barbarian shepherd sitting on the cliff. a thracian girl, whose hair is adorned with a garland, and whose look is earnest, has taken up the head of the singer and regards it long and quietly. is it merely pity that is in her eyes? a romantic hellenism, a profound melancholy underlies the picture, and the old story closes with a cry of love. in his "oedipus and the sphinx" of , and his "heracles" of , he treated battle scenes, the heroic struggle between man and beast, and in these pictures, also, there is no violence, no vehemence, no movement. in a terrible silence the two antagonists exchange looks in his "oedipus and the sphinx," while their breath mingles. like a living riddle, the winged creature gazes upon the stranger, but the youth with his long locks stands so composedly before her that the spectator feels that he must know the decisive word. in "helen upon the walls of troy" the figure of the enchantress, as she stands there motionless, clad in a robe glittering with brilliant stones and diamonds like a shrine, is seen to rise against the blood-red horizon as though it were a statue of gold and ivory. like a queen of spades, she holds in her hand a large flower. heaps of bodies pierced with arrows lie at her feet. but she has no glance of pity for the dying whose death-rattle greets her. her wide, apathetic eyes are fixed upon vacancy. she sees in the gold of the sunset the smoke ascending from the grecian camp. she will embark in the fair ship of menelaus, and return in triumph to hellas, where new love shall be her portion. and the looks of the old men fasten upon her in admiration. "it is fitting that the trojans and the achæans fight for such a woman." helen in her blond voluptuous beauty is transformed beneath the hands of moreau into destiny stalking over ground saturated with blood, into the divinity of mischief--a divinity that, without knowing it, poisons everything that comes near her, or that she sees or touches. [illustration: _baschet._ moreau. the young man and death.] in his "galatea" moreau's love of jewels and enamel finds its highest triumph. galatea's grotto is one large, glittering casket. flowers made from the sun, and leaves from the stars, and branches of coral stretch forth their boughs and open their cups. and as the most brilliant jewel of all, there rests in the holy of holies the radiant form of the sleeping galatea, a kind of greek susanna, watched by the staring, adamantine eye of polyphemus. and just as he bathes these grecian forms in the dusk of a profound romantic melancholy, so in moreau's pictures the figures of the bible are tinged with a shade of indian buddhism, a pantheistic mysticism which places them in a strange modern light. in his "david" he represents in a quiet and peaceful way the entry of a human soul into nirvana. the aged king sits dreaming upon his gorgeous throne, and an angel watches in shining beauty beside this phantom, the flame of whose life is slowly sinking. a curious light falls upon him from the sky. the light of the evening horizon shines faint between the pillars, and the spectator feels that it is the end of a long day. his pictures of dealing with salome, in their strange sentiment--suggestive of an opium vision--are like a paraphrase of heine's poem in _atta troll_. in a sombre hall supported by mighty pillars, through which coloured lamps and stupefying pastil-burners shed a blue and red light, sits herod the king, half asleep with hasheesh, wrapped in silk, and motionless as a hindu idol. his face is pale and gloomy, and his throne is like a crystal confessional chair, fashioned with all the riches of the world. two women lean at the foot of a pillar. one of them touches the strings of a lute, and a small panther yawns near a vessel of incense. upon the floor of variegated mosaics flowers lie strewn. salome advances. tripping upon her toes as lightly as a figure in a dream, she begins to dance, holding a tremulous lotus-flower in her hand. a shining tiara is upon her head; her body is adorned with all the jewels which the dragons guard in the veins of the earth. faster and faster and with a more voluptuous grace she twists and stretches her splendid limbs; but of a sudden she starts and presses her hand to her heart: she has seen the executioner as he smote the head of john from the body.--in the midst of an oriental paradise, the body of the baptist lies in the grass; the head has been set upon a charger, and salome, like a bloodthirsty tigress, watches it with looks of ardent, famished love. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ moreau. orpheus.] different as they seem in technique, there are many points of contact between the visionary gustave moreau and _puvis de chavannes_, the original and fascinating creator of the decorative painting of the nineteenth century. where one indulges in detail, the other resorts to simplification; where the former is opulent the latter is ascetic; and yet they are associated through inward sympathy. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ moreau. design for enamel.] puvis de chavannes is the domenico ghirlandajo of the nineteenth century. the most eminent mural works which have been achieved in france owe their existence to him. wall-paintings from his hand may be found above the staircase of the museums of amiens, marseilles, and lyons, in the paris panthéon and the new sorbonne, in the town-halls of poitiers and many other french towns--pictures which it is difficult to describe in detail, through the medium of pedestrian prose. the two works with which he opened the decorative series in the museum of amiens in are entitled "bellum" and "concordia." in the former warriors are riding over a monotonous plain. two smoking pillars, the gloomy witnesses to sorrow and devastation, cast their dark shadows over the still fields, whilst here and there burning mills rise into the sombre sky like torches. in "concordia," the counterpart to this work, there are women plucking flowers, and naked youths urging on their horses amid a luxuriant grove of laurel. in the paris panthéon he painted, between and , "the girlhood of st. geneviève." a laughing spring landscape, filled with the blitheness of may, spreads beneath the bright sky of the isle de france. calm figures move in it, men and women, children and greybeards. a bishop lays his hand upon the head of a young shepherdess; sailors are coming ashore from their barks. "the grove sacred to the arts and muses" comes first in the decoration of the lyons museum. upon one side is a thick forest, dark and profound, and upon the other the horizon is fringed by violet-blue hills and a large lake reflecting the bluish atmosphere; in the foreground are green meadows, where the flowers gleam like stars, and trees standing apart, oaks and firs, their strong, straight stems rising stiffly into the sky. at the foot of a pillared porch strange figures lie by the shore or stand erect amid the pale grass, one with her arm pointing upwards, another musing with her hand resting upon her chin, a third unrolling a parchment. athletic youths are bringing flowers and winding garlands. the "vision of antiquity" and "christian inspiration" complete the series. the former of these pictures brings the spectator into attica. locked by a simple landscape of hills the blue sea is rippling, and bright islands rise from its bosom, while a clear sky sheds its full light from above. trees and shrubs are growing here and there. a shepherd is playing upon the pan-pipes, goats are grazing, and five female figures, some of them nude, the others clothed, caress tame peacocks in the tall grass or lean against a parapet, breathing in the fresh, cool air. farther back, at the foot of a height, is a young woman, holding herself erect like a statue, as she talks with a youth, whilst in the distance at the verge of the sea a spectral cavalcade, like that in phidias' frieze of the parthenon, gallops swiftly by. in the counterpart, "christian inspiration," a number of friars who are devoted to art are gathered together in the portico of an abbey church. the walls are embellished with naïve frescoes in the style of the siennese school. one of the monks who is working on the pictures has alighted from the ladder and regards the result of his toil with a critical air. lilies are blooming in a vase upon the ground. outside, beyond the cloister wall, the flush of evening sheds its parting light over a lonely landscape, whence dark cypresses rise into the air, straight as a lance. in the decoration of the sorbonne the object was to suggest all the lofty purposes to which the place has been dedicated upon the wall of the great amphitheatre used for the solemn sessions of the faculty, and facing the statues of the founders. puvis de chavannes did this by displaying a throne in a sacred grove, a throne upon which a grave matron arrayed in sombre garments is sitting in meditation. this is the old sorbonne. two genii at her side bring palm-branches and crowns as offerings in honour of the famous minds of the past. around are standing manifold figures arrayed in the costumes which were assigned to the arts and sciences in florence at the time of botticelli and filippino lippi. from the rock upon which they are set there bursts the living spring from which youth derives knowledge and new power. a thick wood divides this quiet haunt, consecrated to the muses, from the rush and the petty trifles of life. in a painting entitled "inter artes et naturam," over the staircase of the museum of rouen, artists musing over the ruins of mediæval buildings are seen lying in the midst of a norman landscape, beneath apple-trees whose branches are weighed down by their burden of fruit; upon the other side of the picture there is a woman holding a child upon her knees, whilst another woman is trying to reach a bough laden with fruit, and a group of painters look on enchanted with the grace of her simple, harmonious movement. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ moreau. the plaint of the poet.] puvis de chavannes is not a virtuoso in technique; for a frenchman, indeed, he is almost clumsy, and is sure in very little of the work of his hand,--in fact, it is quite possible that a later age will not reckon him among the great painters. but what it can never forget is that after a period of lengthy aberrations he restored decorative art in general to its proper vocation. [illustration: _l'art._ moreau. the apparition.] before his time what was good in the so-called monumental painting of the nineteenth century was usually not new, but borrowed from more fortunate ages, and what was new in it, the narrative element, was not good, or at least not in good taste. when paolo veronese produced his pictures in the doge's palace or giulio romano his frescoes in the sala dei giganti in mantua, neither of them thought of the great mission of instructing the people or of patriotic sentiments; they wanted to achieve an effect which should be pictorial, festal, and harmonious in feeling. the task of painters who were entrusted with the embellishment of the walls of a building was to waken dreams and strike chords of feeling, to summon a mood of solemnity, to delight the eye, to uplift the spirit. what they created was decorative music, filling the mansion with its august sound as the solemn notes of an organ roll through a church. their pictures stood in need of no commentary, no exertion of the mind, no historical learning. but the painting which in the nineteenth century did duty upon official occasions and was encouraged by governments for the sake of its pedagogical efficiency was not permitted to content itself with this general range of sentiment; it had to lay on the colours more thickly, and to appeal to the understanding rather than to sentiment. descriptive prose took the place of lyricism. puvis de chavannes went back to the true principle of the old painters by renouncing any kind of didactic intention in his art. in the panthéon of paris, when the eye turns to the works of puvis de chavannes after beholding all the admirable panels with which the recognised masters of the flowing line have illustrated the temple of st. geneviève, when it turns from st. louis, clovis, jeanne d'arc, and dionysius sanctus to "the girlhood of st. geneviève," it is as if one laid aside a prosy history of the world to read the _eclogues_ of virgil. [illustration: _graphische künste._ pierre puvis de chavannes.] in the one case there are archæological lectures, stage scenery, and histrionic art; in the other, simple poetry and lyrical magic, a marvellous evocation from the distant past of that atmosphere of legend which banishes the commonplace. his art would express nothing, would represent nothing; it would only charm and attune the spirit, like music heard faintly from the distance. his figures perform no significant actions; nor are any learned attributes employed in their characterisation, such as were introduced in greece and at the renaissance. he does not paint mars, vulcan, and minerva, but war, work, and peace. in translating the word _bellum_ into the language of painting in the museum of amiens he did not need academical bellonas, nor sword-cuts, nor knightly suits of armour, nor fluttering standards. a group of mourning and stricken women, warlike horsemen, and a simple landscape sufficed him to conjure up the drama of war in all its terrible majesty. and he is as far from gross material heaviness as from academical sterility. the reapers toiling in his painting entitled "summer" are modern in their movements and in their whole appearance, and yet they belong to no special time and seem to have been wafted into a world beyond; they are beings who might have lived yesterday, or, for the matter of that, a thousand years ago. the whole of existence seems in puvis de chavannes like a day without beginning or end, a day of paradise, unchangeable and eternal. and very simple means sufficed him to attain this transcendental effect: like millet, he generalises what is individual, and tempers what is presented in nature; antique nudity is associated in an unforced manner with modern costume; a designed simplicity, which has nothing of the academical painting of the nude, is expressed in the handling of form. even his landscape he constructs upon its elementary forms, and by means of its essential, expressive features. but by a certain concordance of lines, by a distinct rhythm of form, he compasses a sentiment which is grave and solemn or idyllic. [illustration: puvis de chavannes. a vision of antiquity. (_by permission of the artist._)] the quattrocentisti, especially ghirlandajo, were his models in this epical simplicity, and beside baudry, the deft and spirited decorator of the most modernised high renaissance style, he has the effect of a primitive artist risen from the grave. his pictures have an archaic bloom--something sacerdotal, if you will, something seraphic and holy. often one fancies that one recognises the influence of old tapestries, to say nothing of fra angelico, but one is at a loss to give the model copied. and what places him like moreau in sharp opposition to the old masters is that, instead of their sunny, smiling blitheness, he too is under the sway of that heavy melancholy spirit which the close of the nineteenth century first brought into the world. when he, a countryman of flandrin and chenavard, began his career under couture over half a century ago, the world did not understand his pictures. people blamed the poverty of his palette, asserted that he was too simple and restricted in his methods of colouring, and he was called a lenten painter, _un peintre de carême_, whose dull eye noted nothing in nature except ungainly lines and uniformly grey tones. women were especially unfavourable to him, taking his lean figures as a personal insult to themselves. moreover, the calm and immobility of his figures were censured, and when he exhibited his earliest pictures in , at the same time as those of courbet, he was called _un fou tranquille_, just as the latter was christened _un fou furieux_. in later years it was precisely through these two qualities, his grandiose quietude and his "anæmic" painting, that he brought the world beneath his spell, and diverted french art into a new course. [illustration: _baschet._ puvis de chavannes. the beheading of john the baptist. (_by permission of the artist._)] as his landscapes know nothing of agitated clouds, nor abruptness nor the strife of the elements, so his figures avoid all oratorical vehemence. they are eternally young, free from brutal passions, lost in oblivion. let him conjure up old hellas or the quiet life of the cloister, over figures and landscapes there always rests a tender sentiment of consecration and dreamy peace; no violent gesture and no loud tone disturb that harmony of feeling by any vehement action. [illustration: puvis de chavannes. the threadspinner. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the picture._)] [illustration: _neurdein frères, photo._ puvis de chavannes. the poor fisherman.] nor does the colour admit any discord in the large harmony. it is exceedingly soft and light, although subdued; it has that faint, deadened indecisiveness to be seen in faded tapestries or vanishing frescoes. tender and delicate in its chalky grey unity, which banishes reality and creates a world of dreams, it is spread around the shadowy figures. it is impossible to imagine his pictures without this light so pure and yet veiled, this silvery, transparent air, impregnated with the breath of the divine, as plato would say; it is impossible to imagine them without the delicate tones of these pale green, pale rose-coloured, and pale violet dresses, which are as delicate as fading flowers, and without this flesh-tint, which lends a phantomlike and unearthly appearance to his figures. it is all like a melody pitched in the high, finely touched, and tremulous tones of a violin; it invites a mood which is at once blithe and sentimental, happy and sad, banishes all earthly things into oblivion, and carries one into a distant, peaceful, and holy world. "mon coeur est en repos, mon âme est en silence, le bruit lointain du monde expire en arrivant, comme un son éloigné qu'affaiblit la distance, À l'oreille incertaine apporté par le vent. j'ai trop vu, trop senti, trop aimé dans ma vie; je viens chercher vivant le calme du léthé: beaux lieux, soyez pour moi ces bords où l'on oublie; l'oubli seul désormais est ma félicité. d'ici je vois la vie, à travers un nuage, s'évanouir pour moi dans l'ombre du passé... l'amitié me trahit, la pitié m'abandonne, et, seul, je descends le sentier de tombeaux. mais la nature est là qui t'invite et qui t'aime; plonge-toi dans son sein qu'elle t'ouvre toujours; quand tout change pour toi, la nature est la même, est le même soleil se lève sur tes jours." [illustration: _levy et ses fils, photo._ puvis de chavannes. summer.] it was not long before the doctrine of the two souls in _faust_ was exemplified in germany also: from the fertile manure of naturalism there sprang the blue flower of a new romanticism. in germany there had once lived albrecht dürer, the greatest and most profound painter-poet of all time; and there, too, even in an unpropitious age that genial visionary moritz schwind succeeded in flourishing. when the period of eclectic imitation had been overcome by naturalism, was it not fitting that artists should once more attempt to embody the world of dreams beside that of actual existence, and beside tangible reality to give shape to the unearthly foreboding which fills the human heart with the visions and the cravings of fancy? in that age of hope arose the cult of _boecklin_, and germany began to honour in him who had been so long blasphemed the founder of a new and ardently desired art. burne-jones, puvis de chavannes, gustave moreau, and arnold boecklin make up the four-leaved clover of modern idealism. to future generations they will bear witness to the sentiment of europe at the close of the nineteenth century. all four are more or less of the same age; they all four began their work in the beginning of the fifties; and they were all different from their contemporaries and from those who had gone before them. they embodied the spirit of the future. boecklin had gone through a process of change as little as the others. his spirit was so rich that it comprised a century in itself, and leads us now towards the century to come. he was the contemporary of schwind, he is our own contemporary, and he will be the contemporary of those who come after us. and it were as impossible to derive his art from that of any previous movement as to explain how he, our greatest visionary, came to be born in basle, the most prosaic town in europe. [illustration: _levy et ses fils, photo._ puvis de chavannes. autumn.] his father was a merchant there, and he was born in the year . in he went to schirmer in düsseldorf, and upon schirmer's advice repaired to brussels, where he copied the old dutch masters in the gallery. by the sale of some of his works he acquired the means of travelling to paris. he passed through the days of the revolution of june in , studied the pictures in the louvre, and returned home after a brief stay to perform his military duties. in the march of , when he was three-and-twenty, he went to rome, where he entered the circle of anselm feuerbach; and in he married a roman lady. in the following year he produced the decorative pictures in which he represented the relations of man to fire; these had been ordered for the house of a certain consul wedekind in hanover, but were sent back as being "bizarre." in he betook himself--rather hard up for money--to munich, where he exhibited in the art union "the great pan," which was bought by the pinakothek. paul heyse was the medium of his making the acquaintance of schack. and in he was appointed a teacher at the academy of weimar, by the influence of lenbach and begas. during this time he produced "pan startling a goat-herd" in the schack gallery, and "diana hunting." after three years he was again in rome, and painted there "the old roman tavern," "the shepherd's plaint of love," and "the villa by the sea." in he went to basle to complete the frescoes over the staircase of the museum, and in he was in munich, where "the idyll of the sea" was exhibited amongst other things. in he settled in florence, in at zürich. from until the day of his death, january , , he lived like a patriarch of art in his country house on the ridge of fiesole. any one who would interpret a theory based upon the idea that an artist is the result of influences might, while he is about it, speak of boecklin's apprentice period in düsseldorf and schirmer's biblical landscapes. that "harmonious blending of figures with landscape," which is the leading note in boecklin's work, was of course from the days of claude lorraine and poussin the essence of the so-called historical landscape which found its principal representatives at a later period in koch, preller, rottmann, lessing, and schirmer. yet boecklin is not the disciple of these masters, but stands at the very opposite pole of art. the art of all these men was merely a species of historical painting. old koch read the bible, Æschylus, ossian, dante, and shakespeare; found in them such scenes as noah's thank-offering, macbeth and the witches, or fingal's battle with the spirit of loda; and sought amid the sabine hills, in olevano and subiaco, for sites where these incidents might have taken place. preller made the _odyssey_ the basis of his artistic creation, chose out of it moments where the scene might be laid in some landscape, and found in rügen, norway, sorrento, and the coast of capri the elements of nature necessary to his epic. rottmann worked upon hexameters composed by king ludwig, and adhered in the views he painted to the historical memories attached to the towns of italy. lessing sought inspiration in sir walter scott, for whose monks and nuns he devised an appropriately sombre and mysterious background. schirmer illustrated the books of moses by placing the figures in schnorr's picture bible in preller's odyssean landscape. whether they were classicists appealing to the eye by the architecture of form, or romanticists addressing the spirit by the "mood" in their landscapes, it was common to all these painters that they set out from a literary or historical subject. they gave an exact interpretation of the actions prescribed by their authors, surrounding the figures with fictitious landscapes, corresponding in general conception to one's notion of the surroundings of heroes, patriarchs, or hermits. their pictures are historical incidents with a stage-setting of landscape. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ arnold boecklin. portrait of himself.] in boecklin all this is reversed. landscape painter he is in his very essence, and he is, moreover, the greatest landscape painter of the nineteenth century, at whose side even the fontainebleau group seem one-sided specialists. every one of the latter had a peculiar type of landscape, and a special hour in the day which appealed to his feelings more distinctly than any other. one loved spring and dewy morning, another the clear, cold day, another the threatening majesty of the storm, the flashing effects of sportive sunbeams, or the evening after sunset, when colours fade from view. but boecklin is as inexhaustible as infinite nature herself. in one place he celebrates the festival of spring with its burden of beauty: it is ushered in by snowdrops, and greeted with joy by the veined cups of the crocus; yellow primroses and blue violets merrily nod their heads, and a hundred tiny mountain streams leap precipitately into the valley to announce the coming of spring. in another, nature shines and blooms and chimes, and breathes her balm in all the colours of summer. tulips freaked with purple rise at the side of paths; flowers in rows of blue, white, and yellow--hyacinths, daisies, gentians, anemones, and snapdragon--fill the sward in hordes; and down in the valley blow the narcissus in dazzling myriads, loading the air with an overpowering perfume. but, beside such lovely idylls, he has painted with puissant sublimity as many complaining elegies and tempestuous tragedies. here, the sombre autumnal landscapes, with their tall black cypresses, are lashed by the rain and the howling storm. there, lonely islands or grave, half-ruined towers, tangled with creepers, rise dreamily from a lake, mournfully hearkening to the repining murmur of the waves; and there, in the midst of a narrow rocky glen, a rotten bridge hangs over a fearful abyss. or a raging storm, beneath the might of which the forests bow, blusters round a wild mountain land which rises from a blue-black lake. boecklin has painted everything: the graceful and heroic, the solitude and the waste, the solemnly sublime and the darkly tragic, passionate agitation and demoniacal fancy, the strife of foaming waves and the eternal rest of rigid masses of rock, the wild uproar of the sky and the still peace of flowery fields. the compass of his moods is as much greater than that of the french classicists as italy is greater than fontainebleau. for italy is boecklin's home as a landscape painter, and the moods of nature there are more in number than poussin ever painted. grave and sad and grandiose is the roman campagna, with the ruins of the street of sepulchres, and the grey and black herds of cattle looking mournfully over the brown pastures. hidden like the sleeping beauty lie the roman villas in his pictures, in their sad combination of splendour and decay, of life and death, of youth and age. behind weather-beaten grotto-wells and dark green nooks of yew, white busts and statues gleam like phantoms. from lofty terraces the water in decaying aqueducts trickles down with a monotonous murmur into still pools, where bracken and withered shrubs overgrown with ivy are reflected. huge cypresses of the growth of centuries stand gravely in the air, tossing their heads mournfully when the wind blows. then at a bound we are at tivoli, and the whole scenery is changed. great fantastic rocks rise straight into the air, luxuriantly mantled by ivy and parasitic growths; trees and shrubs take root in the clefts; the floods of the anio plunge headforemost into the depths with a roar of sound, like a legion of demons thunder-stricken by some higher power. then comes naples, with its glory of flowers and its moods of evening glowing in deep ruby. blue creepers twine round the balustrades of castles; hedges of monthly roses veil the roads, and oranges grow large amid the dark foliage. farther away he paints the homeric world of sicily, with its crags caressed or storm-beaten by the wave, its blue grottoes, and its deep glowing splendours of changing colour. or he represents the inland landscape of florence with its soft graceful lines of hill, its fields and flowers, buds and blossoms, and its numbers of white dreaming villas hidden amid rosy oleanders and standing against the blue sky with a brightness almost dazzling. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ boecklin. a villa by the sea.] [illustration: _albert, munich._ boecklin. a rocky chasm.] boecklin has no more rendered an exact portrait of the scenery of italy than the classic masters of france sought to represent in a photographic way districts in the forest of fontainebleau. his whole life, like theirs, was a renewed and perpetual wooing of nature. as a boy he looked down from his attic in basle upon the heaving waters of the rhine. when he was in rome, in , he wandered daily in the campagna to feast his eyes upon its grave lines and colours. after a few years in weimar he gave up his post to gather fresh impressions in italy. and the moods with which he was inspired by nature and the phenomena he observed were stored in his mind as though in a great emporium. then his imagination went through another stage. that "organic union of figures and landscape" which the representatives of "heroic landscape" had surmised and endeavoured to attain by a reasoned method through the illustration of passages in poetry took place in boecklin by the force of intuitive conception. the mood excited in him by a landscape is translated into an intuition of life. in many pictures, particularly those of his earlier period, the ground-tone given by the landscape finds merely a faint echo in small accessory figures. in such pictures he stands more or less on a level with _dreber_, that master who died in rome in , and was forgotten in the history of german art more swiftly than ought to have been the case. franz dreber was not one of those classicists dispersed over the face of europe, men who were content with setting heroic actions in the midst of noble landscapes in the fashion of preller; on the contrary, he was the lyricist of this movement, the first man who did not touch the epical material of old myths in a manner that was merely scholarly and illustrative, but developed his picture from the original note of landscape. in his pictures nature laughs with those who are glad, mourns with those who weep, sheds her light upon the joyful, and envelops tortured spirits in storm and the terror of thunder. if the golden age is to be represented, the scene is a soft summer landscape, where everything breathes peace and innocence and bliss. and the life of those who inhabit this happy region runs by in blissful peace also. fair women and children rest upon the meadow, and gather fruits and pluck roses. if he paints ulysses upon the shore of the sea, looking with yearning towards his distant home, a dull, sultry haze of noon broods over the district, wide and grey like the hero's yearning. a spring landscape of sunny blitheness, with butterflies sipping at the blossoms of the trees and sunbeams sportively dallying on the sea, are the surroundings of the picture where psyche is crowned by eros. and if prometheus is represented chained to the rock and striving to burst his fetters, all nature fights the fight of the titan. lurid clouds move swiftly through the sky, ghostly flashes of lightning quiver, and a wild tempest rakes the mountains. [illustration: _albert, munich._ boecklin. the penitent.] in boecklin's earlier pictures the accessory figures are placed in close relation with the landscape in a manner entirely similar. the mysterious keynote of sentiment in nature gives the theme of the scene represented. in the picture called "the penitent," in the schack gallery, a hermit is kneeling half-naked before the cross of the saviour upon the slope of a steep mountain. troops of ravens fly screaming above his head, and a strip of blue sky shines with an unearthly aspect between the trees, which are bent into wild shapes. the character of the scene is terribly severe, and severe and heavy is the misery in the heart of the man chastising himself with the scourge in his hand as he kneels there in prayer. a deep melancholy rests over the picture named "the villa by the sea." the failing waves break gently on the shore with a mournful whisper, the wind utters its complaint blowing through the cypresses, and a few sunbeams wander coyly over the deep grey of the sky. at the socle of a niche a young woman dressed in black stands, and, with her head resting upon her hand, looks out of deeply veiled eyes over the moving tide. in "the spring of love" the landscape vibrates in lyrically soft and flattering chords. the budding splendour of blossoms covers the trees luxuriantly, and a rivulet ripples over the laughing grassy balk. a young man touches the strings of a lyre and sings; and, joining in his song, a maiden stands beside him leaning against a bush laden with blossom. in "the walk to emmaus" the ground-tone is given by a grave evening landscape. the storm ruffles the tops of the great trees, and chases across the sky the heavy clouds, over which strange evening lights are flitting. all nature trembles in shivering apprehension. "abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent." but boecklin's great creations reach a higher level. having begun by extending the lyrical mood of a landscape to his figures, he finally succeeded in peopling nature with beings which seem the final condensation of the life of nature itself, the tangible embodiment of that spirit of nature whose cosmic action in the water, the earth, and the air, he had glorified in one of his youthful works, the frescoes of the basle museum. in such pictures he has no forerunners whatever in the more recent history of art. his principle of creation rests, it might be said, upon the same overwhelming feeling for nature which brought forth the figures of greek myth. when the ancient greek stood before a waterfall he gave human form to what he saw. his eye beheld the outlines of beautiful nude women, nymphs of the spot, in the descending volume of the cascade; its foam was their fluttering hair, and in the rippling of the water and spattering froth he heard their bold splashing and their laughter. the elemental sway of nature, the secret interweaving of her forces took shape in plastic forms-- "alles wies den eingeweihten blicken, alles eines gottes spur ... diese höhen füllten oreaden, eine dryas lebt in jedem baum, aus dem urnen lieblicher najaden sprang der ströme silberschaum. jener lorbeer wand sich einst um hilfe, tantals tochter schweigt in diesem stein, syrinx klage tönt aus jenem schilfe, philomelas schmerz aus diesem hain." the beings which live in boecklin's pictures owe their origin to a similar action of the spirit. he hears trees, rivers, mountains, and universal nature whisper as with human speech. every flower, every bush, every flame, the rocks, the waves, and the meadows, dead and without feeling as they are to the ordinary eye, have to his mind a vivid existence of their own; and in the same way the old poet conceived the lightning as a fiery bird and the clouds as the flocks of heaven. the stones have a voice, white walls lengthen like huge phantoms, the bright lights of the houses upon a mountain declivity at night change into the great eyes with which the spirit of the fell glares fixedly down; legions of strange beings circle and whir round in the fantastic region. in his imagination every impression of nature condenses itself into figures that may be seen. as a dragon issues from his lair to terrify travellers in the gloom of a mountain ravine, and as the avenging furies rise in the waste before a murderer, so in the still brooding noon, when a shrill tone is heard suddenly and without a cause, the grecian pan lives once again for boecklin--pan, who startles the goat-herd from his dream by an eerie shout, and then whinnies in mockery at the terrified fugitive. the cool, wayward splashing element of water takes shape as a graceful nymph, shrouded in a transparent water-blue veil, leaning upon her welling urn as she listens dreamily to the song of a bird. the fine mists which rise from the fountain-head become embodied as a row of merry children, whose vaporous figures float hazily through the shining clouds of spring. the secret voices that live amid the silence of the wood press round him, and the phantom born of the excited senses becomes a ghostly unicorn advancing with noiseless step, and bearing upon his back a maiden of legendary story dressed in a white garment. in the thundercloud lying over the broad summit of a mountain and abundant in blessing rain he sees the huge body of the giant prometheus, who brought fire from heaven and lies fettered to the mountain top, spreading over the landscape like a cloud. the form of death stumbling past cloven trees in rain and tempest, as he rides his pale horse, appears to him in a waste and chill autumnal region, where stands a ruined castle in lurid illumination. a sacred grove, lying in insular seclusion and fringed with venerable old trees that rise straight into the air, rustling as they bend their heads towards each other, is peopled, as at a word of enchantment, with grave priestly figures robed in white, which approach in solemn procession and fling themselves down in prayer before the sacrificial fire. the lonely waste of the sea is not brought home to him with sufficient force by a wide floor of waves, with gulls indolently flying beneath a low and leaden sky; so he paints a flat crag emerging from the waves, and upon its crest, over which the billows sweep, the shy dwellers of the sea bathe in the light. naiads and tritons assembled for a gamesome ride over the sea typify the sportive hide-and-seek of the waves. yet there is nothing forced, nothing merely ingenious, nothing literary in these inventions. the figures are not placed in nature with deliberate calculation: they are an embodied mood of nature; they are children of the landscape, and no mere accessories. [illustration: _albert, munich._ boecklin. pan startling a goat-herd.] boecklin's power of creating types in embodying these beings of his imagination is a thing unheard of in the whole history of art. he has represented his centaurs and satyrs, and fauns and sirens and cupids, so vividly and impressively that they have become ideas as currently acceptable as if they were simple incomposite beings. he has seen the awfulness of the sea at moments when the secret beings of the deep emerge, and he allows a glimpse into the fabulous reality of their heretofore unexplored existence. for all beings which hover swarming in the atmosphere around have their dwelling in the trees or their haunts in rocky deserts, he has found new and convincing figures. everything which was created in this field before his time--the works of dürer, mantegna, and salvator rosa not excepted--was an adroit sport with forms already established by the greeks, and a transposition of greek statues into a pictorial medium. with boecklin, who instead of illustrating mythology himself creates it, a new power of inventing myths was introduced. his creations are not the distant issue of nature, but corporeal beings, full of ebullient energy, individualised through and through, and stout, lusty, and natural; and in creating them he has been even more consistent than the greeks. in their work there is something inorganic in the combination of a horse's body with the head of zeus or laocoön grafted upon it. but in the presence of boecklin's centaurs heaving great boulders around them and biting and worrying each other's manes, the spectator has really the feeling which prompts him to exclaim, "every inch a steed!" in him the nature of the sea is expressed through his cold, slimy women with the dripping hair clinging to their heads far more powerfully than it was by the sea-gods of greece. how merciless is the look in their cold, black, soulless eyes! they are as terrible as the destroying sea that yesterday in its bellowing fury engulfed a hundred human creatures despairing in the anguish of death, and to-day stretches still and joyous in its blue infinity and its callous oblivion of all the evils it has wrought. [illustration: _albert, munich._ boecklin. the herd.] and only a slight alteration in the truths of nature has sufficed him for the creation of such chimerical beings. as a landscape painter he stands with all his fibres rooted in the earth, although he seems quite alienated from this world of ours, and his fabulous creatures make the same convincing impression because they have been created with all the inner logical congruity of nature, and delineated under close relationship to actual fact with the same numerous details as the real animals of the earth. for his tritons, sirens, and mermaids, with their awkward bodies covered with bristly hair and their prominent eyes, he may have made studies from seals and walruses. as they stretch themselves upon a rocky coast, fondling and playing with their young, they have the look of sea-cows in human form, though, like men, they have around them all manner of beasts of prey and domestic pets which they caress,--in one place a sea-serpent, in another a seal. his obese and short-winded tritons, with shining red faces and flaxen hair dripping with moisture, are good-humoured old gentlemen with a quantity of warm blood in their veins, who love and laugh and drink new wine. his fauns may be met with amongst the shepherds of the campagna, swarthy strapping fellows dressed in goat-skins after the fashion of pan--lads with glowing eyes and two rows of white teeth gleaming like ivory. it is chiefly the colour lavished upon them which turns them into children of an unearthly world, where other suns are shining and other stars. in the matter of colour also the endeavours of romanticists of the nineteenth century reach a climax in boecklin. when schwind and his comrades set themselves to represent the romantic world of fairyland an interdict was still laid upon colour, and it was lightly washed over the drawing, which counted as the thing of prime importance. but boecklin was the first romanticist in germany to reveal the marvellous power in colour for rendering moods of feeling and its inner depth of musical sentiment. even in those years when the brown tone of the galleries prevailed everywhere, colour was allowed in his pictures to have its own independent existence, apart from its office of being a merely subordinate characteristic of form. for him green was thoroughly green, blue was divinely blue, and red was jubilantly red. at the very time when richard wagner lured the colours of sound from music, with a glow and light such as no master had kindled before, boecklin's symphonies of colour streamed forth like a crashing orchestra. the whole scale, from the most sombre depth to the most chromatic light, was at his command. in his pictures of spring the colour laughs, rejoices, and exults. in "the isle of the dead" it seems as though a veil of crape were spread over the sea, the sky, and the trees. and since that time boecklin has grown even greater. his splendid sea-green, his transparent blue sky, his sunset flush tinged with violet haze, his yellow-brown rocks, his gleaming red sea-mosses, and the white bodies of his girls are always arranged in new glowing, sensuous harmonies. many of his pictures have such an ensnaring brilliancy that the eye is never weary of feasting upon their floating splendour. a master who died in rome some nineteen years ago might have been in the province of mural painting for german art what puvis de chavannes has become for french. in the earlier histories of art his name is not mentioned. seldom alluded to in life, dead as a german painter ten years before his death, he was summoned from the grave by the enthusiasm of a friend who was a refined connoisseur four years after the earth had closed over him. such was _hans von marées'_ destiny as an artist. [illustration: boecklin. venus despatching cupid.] marées was born in elberfeld in . in beginning his studies he had first betaken himself to berlin, and then went for eight years to munich, where he paid his tribute to the historical tendency by a "death of schill." but in he migrated to rome, where he secluded himself with a few pupils, and passed his time in working and teaching. only once did he receive an order. he was entrusted in with the execution of some mural paintings in the library of the zoological museum in naples, and lamented afterwards that he had not received the commission in riper years. when he had sufficient confidence in himself to execute such tasks he had no similar opportunity, and thus he lost the capacity for the rapid completion of a work. he began to doubt his own powers, sent no more pictures to any exhibition, and when he died in the summer of , at the age of fifty, his funeral was that of a man almost unknown. it was only when his best works were brought together at the annual exhibition of at munich that he became known in wider circles, and these pictures, now preserved in the castle of schleissheim, will show to future years who hans von marées was, and what he aimed at. "an artist rarely confines himself to what he has the power of doing," said goethe once to eckermann; "most artists want to do more than they can, and are only too ready to go beyond the limits which nature has set to their talent." setting out from this tenet, there would be little cause for rescuing marées from oblivion. some portraits and a few drawings are his only performances which satisfy the demands of the studio--the portraits being large in conception and fine in taste, the drawings sketched with a swifter and surer hand. his large works have neither in drawing nor colour any one of those advantages which are expected in a good picture; they are sometimes incomplete, sometimes tortured, and sometimes positively childish. "he is ambitious, but he achieves nothing," was the verdict passed upon him in rome. upon principle marées was an opponent of all painting from the model. he scoffed at those who would only reproduce existing fact, and thus, in a certain sense, reduplicate nature, according to goethe's saying: "if i paint my mistress's pug true to nature, i have two pugs, but never a work of art." for this reason he never used models for the purpose of detailed pictorial studies; and just as little was he at pains to fix situations in his mind by pencil sketches to serve as notes; for, according to his view, the direct use of motives, as they are called, is only a hindrance to free artistic creation. and, of course, creation of this kind is only possible to a man who can always command a rich store of vivid memories of what he has seen and studied and profoundly grasped in earlier days. this treasury of artistic forms was not large enough in marées. if one buries oneself in marées' works--and there are some of them in which the trace of great genius has altogether vanished beneath the unsteady hand of a restless brooder--it seems as if there thrilled within them the cry of a human heart. sometimes through his method of painting them over and over again he produced spectral beings with grimacing faces. their bodies have been so painted and repainted that whole layers of colour lie upon separate parts, and ruin the impression in a ghastly fashion. only too often his high purpose was wrecked by the inadequacy of his technical ability; and his poetic dream of beauty almost always evaporated because his hand was too weak to give it shape. if his pictures, in spite of all this, made a great effect in the munich exhibition, it was because they formulated a principle. it was felt that notes had been touched of which the echo would be long in dying. when marées appeared there was no "grand painting" for painting's sake in germany, but mural decoration after the fashion of the historical picture--works in which the aim of decorative art was completely misunderstood, since they merely gave a rendering of arid and instructive stories, where they should have simply aimed at expressing "a mood." like his contemporary puvis de chavannes in france, marées restored to this "grand painting" the principle of its life, its joyous impulse, and did so not by painting anecdote, but because he aimed at nothing but pictorial decorative effect. a sumptuous festal impression might be gained from his pictures; it was as though beautiful and subdued music filled the air; they made the appeal of quiet hymns to the beauty of nature, and were, at the same time, grave and monumental in effect. in one, st. martin rides through a desolate wintry landscape upon a slow-trotting nag, and holds his outspread mantle towards the half-naked beggar, shivering with the cold. in another, st. hubert has alighted from his horse, and kneels in adoration before the cross which he sees between the antlers of the stag. in another, st. george, upon a powerful rearing horse, thrusts his lance through the body of the dragon with solemn and earnest mien. but as a rule even the relationship with antique, mythological, and mediæval legendary ideas is wanting in his art. landscapes which seem to have been studied in another world he peoples with beings who pass their lives lost in contemplation of the divine. women and children, men and grey-beards live, and love, and labour as though in an age that knows nothing of the stroke of the clock, and which might be yesterday or a hundred thousand years ago. they repose upon the luxuriant sward shadowed by apple-trees laden with fruit, abandoning themselves to a thousand reveries and meditations. they do not pose, and they aim at being nothing except children of nature, nature in her innocence and simplicity. nude women stand motionless under the trees, or youths are seen reflected in the pools. the motive of gathering oranges is several times repeated: a youth snatches at the fruit, an old man bends to pick up those which have dropped, and a child searches for those which have rolled away in the grass. sometimes the steed, the homeric comrade of man, is introduced: the nude youth rides his steed in the training-school, or the commander of an army gallops upon his splendid warhorse. everything that marées painted belongs to the golden age. and when it was borne in mind that these pictures had been produced twenty years back or more, they came to have the significance of works that opened out a new path; there was poetry in the place of didactic formula; in the place of historical anecdote the joy of plastic beauty; in the place of theatrical vehemence an absence of gesticulation and a perfect simplicity of line. at a time when others rendered dramas and historical episodes by colours and gestures, marées composed idylls. he came as a man of great and austere talent, virgilian in his sense of infinite repose on the breast of nature, monastic in his abnegation of petty superficial allurements, despite special attempts which he made at chromatic effect. something dreamy and architectonic, lofty and yet familiar, intimate in feeling and yet monumental holds sway in his works. intimacy of effect he achieved by the stress he laid upon landscape; monumental dignity by his grandiose and earnest art, and his calm and sense of style in line. all abrupt turns and movements were avoided in his work. and he displayed a refinement entirely peculiar to himself through the manner in which he brought into accord the leading lines of landscape and the leading lines in his figures. a feeling for style, in the sense in which it was understood by the old painters, is everywhere dominant in his work, and a handling of line and composition in the grand manner which placed him upon a level with the masters of art. a new and simple beauty was revealed. and if it is true that it is only in the field of plastic art that he has had, up to the present, any pupil of importance--and he had one in adolf hildebrandt--it is, nevertheless, beyond question that the monumental painting of the future is alone capable of being developed upon the ground prepared by marées. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ boecklin. flora.] in this more than anything, it seems to me, lies the significance of all these masters. we must not lay too much stress upon the fact that they dealt with ideal and universal themes; a healthy art cannot be nourished on bloodless ideals, but only on the living essence of its own epoch. we must bear in mind, however, that a sound artistic principle has been formulated. a glance at the productions of classic art shows us that the old masters carefully considered the relation of a picture to its environment. take, for instance, the ravenna mosaics or giotto's frescoes. they must needs resound in solemn harmony the whole church through; looked at from any point of view they must make their presence felt right away in the farthest distance: so both giotto and the mosaic artists worked only in broad expressive lines, their forcible colour-schemes were fitted together in accordance with strict decorative laws. all naturalistic effects are avoided, all petty detail is left out in the flow of the drapery as well as in the structure of the landscape. then the clear outlines tell out. the pictures must, when viewed from a distance, simultaneously, in all their lines, carry on the lines of the building. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ boecklin. in the trough of the waves.] later on, in the netherlands, there arose another style of painting. in abrupt contrast to the monumental works of the italian school we have jan van eyck's tiny little pictures painted with a fine point, stroke by stroke, with the most minute exactitude. every hair in the head, every vein in the hands, every ornament in the costume is drawn true to life. jan van eyck knew what he was about with this fine-point style of art, for his pictures did not lay claim to any effect from a distance; they were meant to be looked at, like miniatures in the prayer-books, from the closest point of view possible. they were little domestic altar-pieces: when anyone wanted to look at them, he drew the curtain aside and knelt or stood just in front of them. the style of painting of the later dutch cabinet pictures is accounted for in the same way. these paintings were generally placed on an easel, as if to give the spectator a gentle hint, "if you wish to fully appreciate the beauties of this little picture, please stand right in front." even when the pictures were meant to adorn the walls, the minute and dainty style of a don or a mieris was appropriate, for the narrowness of the old dutch rooms precluded all possibility of the spectator's being able to stand far away from the picture. [illustration: _albert, munich._ boecklin. the shepherd's plaint.] if by chance one of these dutch artists, weenix for instance, had to do work for a flemish palace, he changed his style forthwith. he recognised the fact that a picture, to be effective in a large state-room, must differ not only in size, but in composition and style of painting from one that is meant for a small parlour. it is undoubtedly this lack of appreciation of the fact that a picture must be suitable to its surroundings that has robbed the nineteenth century of any claim to style. what abominable daubs mural painters have foisted upon us in our public buildings! the literary trend of the time drew away people's attention from the beauty of form and colour, and centred it upon the didactic value of the works. instead of starting from the idea that a picture should "adorn," they covered the walls with historical genre painting, never troubling themselves about decorative effect, and offered the beholder instructive stories in picture cards. as to art in the home, well, we can all of us remember the time when small photographs and etchings, instead of being kept in an album or a portfolio, were put on the wall, where they looked like mere spots of dead black and white. it was the same sort of thing in galleries and exhibitions, confusion worse confounded. on one and the same wall you got the most heterogeneous collection, cabinet pictures by brouwer or ostade next to an enormous altar-piece by rubens, a gigantic delacroix flanked by neat little meissoniers. in this way the power of appreciating the significance of a work of art as part of the decoration of a room was totally lost. surely it is not to be wondered at that a picture seen close to in an exhibition, bought, taken home, hung on the wall and looked at from a distance, turns out a meaningless chaos of dirty-brown. [illustration: _albert, munich._ boecklin. an idyll of the sea.] in the province of mural painting the tendency towards an improvement set in earliest. in england, france, and germany, almost simultaneously efforts began to be made with the object of restoring to mural painting once more its decorative element. in england burne-jones was the first to pay attention to harmony of style between picture and building. before his time english churches were provided with stained-glass windows in a spurious sort of cinquecento style that was absolutely unsuited to the building, but burne-jones satisfied the most exacting demands of the english neo-gothic architecture. all his subjects are brought into style with the slender pillars, the curves of the landscape as well as of the figures harmonise with the pointed arches of the building. everything, colour as well as line, is so simplified that the pictures retain the clearness of their composition when seen from the farthest possible standpoint. in france, puvis de chavannes travelled by another road to the same goal. the decoration of the pantheon was placed in his hands. before him many artists had done work there, but the policy of all of them had been to adopt the old style of oil-painting to mural decoration, and so they adorned the pantheon as well, though it was called a grecian temple, with oil-paintings founded on raphael or caravaggio, mural pictures that would have been far better suited to a church of the cinquecento or the _baroque_ period. puvis was the first to realise that in the decoration of a building the artist must be strictly controlled by the style of the architecture; so in his frescoes he avoided all projections, all roundness, all wavy lines, bends, and curves, and dealt exclusively with groups of vertical and horizontal lines, that followed the characteristic lines of pillar and architrave. similarly in the colours as well as the lines he excluded all detail that would distract the attention, all confusion of colours that would disturb the eye, and thereby gave his works the stately and dominant effect that they produce. had fate been kind, poor hans von marées might have won the same significance for germany as puvis did for france. though individually his works are faulty, they are all informed with a marvellous feeling for style; one observes how beautifully the lines of the landscape are made to harmonise with the lines of the figures, and with what a finely decorative quality the colours are combined. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ boecklin. vita somnium breve.] in a similar manner we must bring our minds to bear upon the problem of the framed picture in connection with the decoration of a room. our rooms are not only lighter but more spacious than the old-fashioned dutch parlours, with their leaded panes; so it was merely a hereditary taint in our painters that made them cling so long to the ancestral style of painting, in spite of the altered conditions of the lighting and size of modern rooms. impressionism did at any rate bring colour more into harmony with the improved lighting of our rooms; yet in every art the sins of the fathers are visited upon their children. the impressionists discovered atmosphere, and so they denied the existence of lines, and the outlines vanished into thin air; they discovered light, and therefore they likewise denied the existence of colours. then by means of light the colours were analysed, and patches of colour were decomposed into a heterogeneous conglomeration of luminous points. the impressionists simply revelled in the most delicate nuances of vague tones of indefinite colour, and as they eliminated from their work all significant lines and all strong and frank colours, they spoilt to a great extent the decorative effect of their pictures when viewed at a distance: their paintings from that standpoint are often nothing more than a daub of violet and yellow, without form and void. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ boecklin. the isle of the dead.] thus towards the close of the nineteenth century there came under discussion a new problem again in the matter of picture painting. the question arose as to how decorative qualities might be arrived at in painting pure and simple. the way seems to be pointed out in the works of moreau and boecklin; the way in which they placed side by side beautiful strong colours in broad masses, and invariably so as to avoid all discord, and combined the most conflicting tones into a harmonious whole in a manner which words fail one to describe. it was delightful, after having looked so long at nothing but the subtle, delicate nuances of the impressionists, to turn again to these full-toned colours ringing out their deep and mighty harmonies. it is scarcely to be wondered at that the younger generation of the present day refused to be bound by the principles of art laid down by their predecessors, notwithstanding the fact that moreau, as well as boecklin, was indebted to the quattrocento for the mosaic-like brilliancy of his colours. impressionism has discovered a whole range of new colour values by careful and intelligent study of the influence of light upon colour, and where formerly we saw ten we now find a hundred. red, green, blue have lost their meaning in the category of complex and infinitely differentiated tones. so, as we advance from a realistic transcript of impressions taken direct from nature to free, symphonic compositions of the colours to which impressionism has opened our eyes, we shall evolve harmonies richer than were ever imagined before, more melting than we ever dreamed of. this is the goal to which the efforts of the younger generation are primarily tending. building upon the foundations laid by the impressionists, they seek to ensure for their pictures both clearness and harmony, by simplification of form, by beauty of technique, and by subordination of colour to the decorative scheme. their confession of faith is comprised in the words of paterson: "a picture must be something more than garbled nature: it must please the educated eye; and only so far as nature gives the painter his material can he or dare he follow her." book v a survey of european art at the present time introduction by what means was the further development of painting in europe brought about under the influence of the principles of the two schools, the impressionists and the decorative-stylists? the following may supply the answer. "realism" having led painting from the past to the present, and "impressionism" having broken the jurisdiction of the galleries by establishing an independent conception of colour for a new class of subjects, the flood of modern life, which had been artificially dammed, began to pour into art in all its volume. a whole series of new problems emerged, and a vigorous band of modern spirits were ready to lay hold upon them and give them artistic shape, each according to his nature, his ability, and his individual knowledge and power. after nineteenth-century painting had found its proper field of activity they were no longer under the necessity of seeking remote subjects. the fresh conquest of a personal impression of nature took the place of that retrospective taste which employed the ready-made language of form and colour belonging to the old masters, as a vocabulary for the preparation of fresh works of art. nature herself had become a gallery of splendid pictures. artists were dazzled as if by a new light, overcome as though by a revelation of tones and strains from which the painter was to compose his symphonies. they learnt how to find what was pictorial and poetic in the narrowest family circle and amongst the beds of the simplest vegetable garden; and for the first time they felt more wonder in the presence of reality, the joy of gradual discovery and of a leisurely conquest of the world. of course, _plein-air_ painting was at first the chief object of their endeavours. having painted so long only in brown tones, the radiant magic world of free and flowing light was something so ravishingly novel that for several years all their efforts were exclusively directed to possessing themselves once more of the sun, and substituting the clear daylight for the clare-obscure which had reigned alone, void of atmosphere. in this sunny brightness, flooded with light and air, they found a crowd of problems, and turned to the perpetual discovery of new chords of colour. sunbeams sparkling as they rippled through the leaves, and greyish-green meadows flecked with dust and basking under light, were the first and most simple themes. the complete programme, however, did not consist of painting in bright hues, but, generally speaking, in seizing truth of colour and altogether renouncing artificial harmony in a generally accepted tone. thus, after the painting of daylight and sunlight was learnt, a further claim had still to be asserted: the ideal of truth in painting had to be made the keynote in every other task. for in the sun, light is no doubt white, but in the recesses of the forest, in the moonshine, or in a dim place, it shines and is at the same time charged with colour. night, or mist, with its hovering and pervasive secrets, is quite as rich in beauties as the radiant world of glistening sunshine. after seeing the summer sun on wood and water, it was a relief for the eye to behold the subdued, soft, and quiet light of a room. upon the older and rougher painting of free light there followed a preference for dusk, which has a softness more picturesque, a more tender harmony of colours, and more geniality than the broad light of day. artists studied clare-obscure, and sought for an enhancement of colour in it; they looked into the veil of night, and addressed themselves to a painting of darkness such as could only have proceeded from the _plein-air_ school. for this darkness of theirs is likewise full of atmosphere, a darkness in which there is life and breath and palpitation. in earlier days, when a night was painted, everything was thick and opaque, covered with black verging into yellow; to this latter error artists were seduced by the crusts of varnish upon old pictures. now they learnt to interpret the mysterious life of the night, and to render the bluish-grey atmosphere of twilight. or if figures were to be painted in a room, artists rendered the circulation of the air amid groups of people, which correggio called "the ambient" and velasquez "respiration." and there came also the study of artificial illumination--of the delicate coloured charm of many-coloured lanterns, of the flaring gas or lamp-light which streams through the glass windows of shops, flaring and radiating through the night and reflected in a blazing glow upon the faces of men and women. under these purely pictorial points of view the gradual widening of the range of subject was completed. so long as the acquisition of sunlight was the point in question, representations from the life of artisans in town and country stood at the centre itself of artistic efforts, because the conception and technical methods of the new art could be tested upon them with peculiar success. and through these pictures painting came into closer sympathy with the heart-beat of the age. at an epoch when the labouring man as such, and the political and social movement in civilisation, had become matters of absorbing interest, the picture of artisans necessarily claimed an important place in art; and one of the best sides of the moral value of modern painting lies in its no longer holding itself in indifference aloof from these themes. when the century began, hector and agamemnon alone were qualified for artistic treatment, but in the natural course of development the disinherited, the weary and heavy-laden likewise acquired rights of citizenship. in the passage where vasari speaks of the madonnas of cimabue, comparing them with the older byzantine virgins, he says finely that the florentine master brought more "goodness of heart" into painting. and perhaps the historians of the future will say the same about the art of the present. the predilection for the disinherited was in the beginning to such an extent identified with the plain, straightforward painting of the proletariat that naturalism could not be conceived at all except in so far as it dealt with poverty: in making its first great successes it had sought after the miserable and the outcast, and serious critics recognised its chief importance in the discovery of the fourth estate. of course, the painting of paupers, as a sole field of activity for the new art, would have been an exceedingly one-sided acquisition. it is not merely the working-man who should be painted, because the age must strive to compass in a large and full spirit the purport of its own complicated conditions of life. so there began, in general, the representation, so long needed, of the man of to-day and of society agitated, as it is, by the stream of existence. as zola wrote in the very beginning of the movement: "naturalism does not depend upon the choice of subject. the whole of society is its domain, from the drawing-room to the drinking-booth. it is only idiots who would make naturalism the rhetoric of the gutter. we claim for ourselves the whole world." everything is to be painted,--forges, railway-stations, machine-rooms, the workrooms of manual labourers, the glowing ovens of smelting-works, official fêtes, drawing-rooms, scenes of domestic life, _cafés_, storehouses and markets, the races and the exchange, the clubs and the watering-places, the expensive restaurants and the dismal eating-houses for the people, the _cabinets particuliers_ and _chic des premières_, the return from the bois and the promenades on the seashore, the banks and the gambling-halls, casinos, boudoirs, studios, and sleeping-cars, overcoats, eyeglasses and red dress-coats, balls, _soirées_, sport, monte carlo and trouville, the lecture-rooms of universities and the fascination of the crowded streets in the evening, the whole of humanity in all classes of society and following every occupation, at home and in the hospitals, at the theatre, upon the squares, in poverty-stricken slums and upon the broad boulevards lit with electric light. thus the new art flung aside the blouse, and soon displayed itself in the most various costumes, down to the frock-coat and the smoking-jacket. the rude and remorseless traits which it had at first, and which found expression in numbers of peasant, artisan, and hospital pictures, were subdued and softened until they even became idyllic. moreover, the scale of painting over life-size, favoured in the early years of the movement, could be abandoned, since it arose essentially from competition with the works of the historical school. so long as those huge pictures covered the walls at exhibitions, artists who obeyed a new tendency were forced from the beginning--if they wished to prevail--to produce pictures of the same size. but since historical painting was finally dead and buried, there was no need to set up such a standard any longer, and a transition could be made to a smaller scale, better fitted for works of an intimate character. the dazzling tones in which the impressionists revelled were replaced by those which were dim and soft, energy and force by subdued and tender treatment, largeness of size by a scale which was small and intimate. that was more or less the course of evolution run through in all european countries in a similar way between the years and . just in the same way from this time onwards the decorative-stylists' tendency set in universally. hitherto everything was focused on the "picture as such." tasteless novelty or methodless imitation held sway over the applied arts. the endeavours of the next decade aimed at freeing the picture from its isolation and making the room itself a harmonious work of art. a long line of eminent artists took in hand the hitherto neglected subject of art in decoration; and as thereby new blood was infused into the applied arts, so on the other hand pictorial art in one way renounced its freedom to fit itself into its new frame. colour, which formerly was determined principally by the lighting, now became subordinate to a decorative scheme. truth is no longer the end and aim of art, but fitness, harmony of form and colour values. it is, however, obviously impossible to give verse and chapter to the history of this development, just as it would be impossible to fix a boundary line between the two roads, the impressionistic on the one hand and the decorative on the other. we will wander free from one country to another, and try to assign to each its proper place in the general chart of modern painting. chapter xxxiv france paris, which for a hundred years had given the signal for all novel tactics in european art, still remained at the head of the movement; the artistic temperament of the french people themselves, and the superlatively excellent training which the painter enjoys in paris, enable him at once to follow every change of taste with confidence and ease. in manet died, on the varnishing day of the salon, and in the preface which zola wrote to the catalogue of the exhibition held after the death of the master he was well able to say: "his influence is an accomplished fact, undeniable, and making itself more deeply felt with every fresh salon. look back for twenty years, recall those black salons, in which even studies from the nude seemed as dark as if they had been covered with mouldering dust. in huge frames history and mythology were smothered in layers of bitumen; never was there an excursion into the province of the real world, into life and into perfect light; scarcely here or there a tiny landscape, where a patch of blue sky ventured bashfully to shine down. but little by little the salons were seen to brighten, and the romans and greeks of mahogany to vanish in company with the nymphs of porcelain, whilst the stream of modern representations taken from ordinary life increased year by year, and flooded the walls, bathing them with vivid tones in the fullest sunlight. it was not merely a new period; it was a new painting bent upon reaching the perfect light, respecting the law of colour values, setting every figure in full light and in its proper place, instead of adapting it in an ideal fashion according to established tradition." when the way had been paved for this change, when the new principles had been transferred from the chamber of experiments to full publicity, from the _salon des refusés_ to the salon which was official, it was chiefly _bastien-lepage_ who gained the first adherents to them amongst the public. but because he does not belong to the pioneers of art, and merely adapted for the great public elements that had been won by manet, the immoderate praise which was accorded him in earlier days has been recently brought within more legitimate limits. it has been urged, by way of restriction, that he stands in relation to manet as breton to millet, and that, admitting all differences, he has nevertheless a certain resemblance to his teacher, cabanel. as the latter rendered classicism elegant, bastien-lepage, it has been said, softened the ruggedness of naturalism, cut and polished the nails of his peasants, and made their rusticity a pretty thing, qualifying it for the drawing-room. degas was in the habit of calling him the bouguereau of naturalism. as a matter of fact, naturalism was bound to make certain concessions if it were ever to prevail, and such critics forget that it was just these amiable concessions which helped the principles of manet to prevail more swiftly than would have been otherwise possible. all the forms and ideas of the impressionists, with which no one, outside the circle of artists, had been able to reconcile himself, were to be found in bastien-lepage, purified, mitigated, and set in a golden style. he followed the _eclaireurs_, as the leader of the main body of the army which has gained the decisive battle, and in this way he has fulfilled an important mission in the history of art. [illustration: _baschet._ jules bastien-lepage.] bastien-lepage was born in ancient damvillers--once a small stronghold of lorraine--in a pleasant, roomy house that told a tale of even prosperity rather than of wealth. as a boy he played amongst the venerable moats which had been converted into orchards. thus in his youth he received the freshest impressions, being brought up in the heart of nature. his father drew a good deal himself, and kept his son at work with the pencil, without any æsthetic theories, without any vague ideal, and without ever uttering the word "academy" or "museum." having left school in verdun, bastien-lepage went to paris to become an official in the post-office. of an afternoon, however, he drew and painted with cabanel. but he was cabanel's pupil much as voltaire was a pupil of the jesuits. "my handicraft," as he said afterwards, "i learnt at the academy, but not my art. you want to paint what exists, and you are invited to represent the unknown ideal, and to dish up the pictures of the old masters. in old days i scrawled drawings of gods and goddesses, greeks and romans, beings i didn't know, and didn't understand, and regarded with supreme indifference. to keep up my courage, i repeated to myself that this was possibly 'grand art,' and i ask myself sometimes whether anything academical still remains in my composition. i do not say that one should only paint everyday life; but i do assert that when one paints the past it should, at any rate, be made to look like something human, and correspond with what one sees around one. it would be so easy to teach the mere craft of painting at the academies, without incessantly talking about michael angelo, and raphael, and murillo, and domenichino. then one would go home afterwards to brittany, gascony, lorraine, or normandy, and paint what lies around; and any morning, after reading, if one had a fancy to represent the prodigal son, or priam at the feet of achilles, or anything of the kind, one would paint such scenes in one's own fashion, without reminiscences of the galleries--paint them in the surroundings of the country, with the models that one has at hand, just as if the old drama had taken place yesterday evening. it is only in that way that art can be living and beautiful." [illustration: _baschet._ bastien-lepage. portrait of his grandfather. (_by permission of m. e. bastien-lepage, the owner of the picture._)] the outbreak of the war fortunately prevented him from remaining long at the academy. he entered a company of franc-tireurs, took part in the defence of paris, and returned ill to damvillers. here he came to know himself and his peculiar talent. at once a poet and a realist, he looked at nature with that simple frankness which those alone possess who have learnt from youth upwards to see with their own eyes instead of trusting to other people's. his friends called him "primitive," and there was some truth in what they said, for bastien-lepage came to art free from all trace of mannerism; he knew nothing of academical rules, and merely relied upon his eyes, which were always open and trustworthy. looking back as far as he could, he was able to remember nothing except gleaners bowed over the stubble-fields, vintagers scattered amid the furrows of the vineyards, mowers whose robust figures rose brightly from the green meadows, shepherdesses seeking shelter beneath tall trees from the blazing rays of the midday sun, shepherds shivering in their ragged cloaks in winter, pedlars hurrying with great strides across the plain raked by a storm, laundresses laughing as they stood at their tubs beneath the blossoming apple-trees. he was impressionable to everything: the dangerous-looking tramp who hung about one day near his father's house; the wood-cutter groaning beneath the weight of his burden; the passer-by trampling the fresh grass of the meadows and leaving his trace behind him; the little sickly girl minding her lean cow upon a wretched field; the fire which broke out in the night and set the whole village in commotion. that was what he wanted to paint, and that is what he has painted. the life of the peasants of lorraine is the theme of all his pictures, the landscape of lorraine is their setting. he painted what he loved, and he loved what he painted. [illustration: _baschet._ bastien-lepage. the flower girl.] it was in damvillers that he felt at home as an artist. he had his studio in the second storey of his father's house, though he usually painted in the open air, either in the field or the orchard, whilst his grandfather, an old man of eighty, was near him clipping the trees, watering the flowers, and weeding the grass. his mother, a genuine peasant, was always busy with the thousand cares of housekeeping. of an evening the whole family sat together round the lamp, his mother sewing, his father reading the paper, his grandfather with the great cat on his lap, and jules working. it was at this time that he produced those familiar domestic scenes, thrown off with a few strokes, which were to be seen at the exhibition of the works which he left behind him. he knew no greater pleasure than that of drawing again and again the portraits of his father and mother, the old lamp, or the velvet cap of his grandfather. at ten o'clock sharp his father gave the signal for going to bed. in paris, indeed, other demands were made. in he painted, with the object of being represented in the salon, that remarkable picture "in the spring," the only one of his works which is slightly hampered by conventionality in conception. the pupil of cabanel is making an effort at truth, and has not yet the courage to be true altogether. here, as in the "spring song" which followed, there is a mixture of borrowed sentiment, work in the old style and fresh naturalism. the landscape is painted from nature, and the peasant woman is real, but the cupids are taken from the old masters. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ bastien-lepage. sarah bernhardt.] the next years were devoted to competitive labours. to please his father and mother bastien-lepage twice contested the _prix de rome_. in he painted as a prize exercise a "priam before achilles," and in an "annunciation of the angel to the shepherds," that now famous picture which received the medal at the world exhibition of . and he who afterwards revelled in the clearest _plein-air_ painting here celebrates the secret wonders of the night, though the influences of impressionism are here already visible. in his picture the night is as dark as in rembrandt's visions; yet the colours are not harmonised in gold-brown, but in a cool grey silver tone. and how simple the effect of the heavenly appearance upon the shepherds lying round the fire of coals! the place of the curly ideal heads of the old sacred painting has been taken by those of bristly, unwashed men who, nurtured amid the wind and the weather, know nothing of those arts of toilette so much in favour with the imitators of raphael, and who receive the miracle with the simplicity of elemental natures. fear and abashed astonishment at the angelic appearance are reflected in their faces, and the plain and homely gestures of their hands are in correspondence with their inward excitement. even the angel turning towards the shepherds was conceived in an entirely human and simple way. in spite of this, or just because of it, bastien failed with his "annunciation to the shepherds," as he had done previously with his "priam." once the prize was taken by léon comerre, a pupil of cabanel, and on the other occasion by josef wencker, the pupil of gérôme. it was written in the stars that bastien-lepage was not to go to rome, and it did him as little harm as it had done to watteau a hundred and sixty years before. in italy bastien-lepage would only have been spoilt for art. the model for him was not one of the old classic painters, but nature as she is in damvillers,--nature, the great mother. when the works sent in for the competition were exhibited a sensation was made when one day a branch of laurel was laid on the frame of bastien-lepage's "annunciation to the shepherds" by sarah bernhardt. and sarah bernhardt's portrait became the most celebrated of the small likenesses which soon laid the foundation of the painter's fame. the portrait of his grandfather, that marvellous work of a young man of five-and-twenty, is the first picture in which he was completely himself. the old man sits in a corner of the garden, just as usual, in a brown cap, his spectacles upon his nose, his arms crossed upon his lap, with a horn snuff-box and a check handkerchief lying upon his knees. how perfectly easy and natural is the pose, how thoughtful the physiognomy, what a personal note there is in the dress! nor are there in that garden, bathed in light, any of those black shadows which only fall in the studio. everything bore witness to a simplicity and sincerity which justified the greatest hopes. after that first work the world knew that bastien-lepage was a preeminent portrait painter, and he did not betray the promise of his youth. his succeeding pictures showed that he had not merely rusticity and nature to rely upon, but that he was a _charmeur_ in the best sense of the word. [illustration: _baschet._ bastien-lepage. mme. drouet.] [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ bastien-lepage. the hay harvest.] this ingenuous artist, who knew nothing of the history of painting, and felt more at home in the open air than in museums, was not ignorant, at any rate, of the portraits of the sixteenth century, and had chosen for his likenesses a scale as small as that which clouet and his school preferred. the representation here reaches a depth of characterisation which recalls jan van eyck's little pearls of portrait painting. in these works also he mostly confined himself to bright lights. portraits of this type are those of his brother, of madame drouet, the aged friend of victor hugo, with her weary, gentle, benevolent face--a masterpiece of intimate feeling and refinement; of his friend and biographer andré theuriet, of andrieux the prefect of the police, and, above all, the famous and signal work of inexorable truth and marvellous delicacy, sarah bernhardt in profile, with her tangled chestnut hair, sitting upon a white fur, arrayed in a white china-silk dress with yellowish lights in it, and carefully examining a japanese bronze. the bizarre grace of the tragic actress, her slender figure, fashioned, as it were, for donatello, the nervous intensity with which she sits there, her weird chinese method of wearing the hair, and the profile of which she is so proud, have been rendered in none of her many likenesses with such an irresistible force of attraction as in this little masterpiece. in some of his other portraits bastien-lepage has not disdained the charm of obscure light; he has not done so, for example, in the little portrait of albert wolff, the art-critic, as he sits at his writing-desk amongst his artistic treasures, with a cigarette in his hand. only clouet and holbein painted miniature portraits of such refinement. amongst moderns, probably ingres alone has reached such a depth of characterisation upon the smallest scale, and in general he is the most closely allied to bastien-lepage as a portrait painter in profound study of physiognomy, and in the broad and, one might say, chased technique of his little drawings. comparison with gaillard would be greatly to the disadvantage of this great engraver, for bastien-lepage is at once more seductive and many-sided. it is curious how seldom his portraits have that family likeness which is elsewhere to be found amongst almost all portrait painters. in his effort at penetrative characterisation he alters, on every occasion, his entire method of painting according to the personality, so that it leaves at one time an effect that is bizarre, coquettish, and full of intellectual power and spirit, at another one which is plain and large, at another one which is bashful, sparing, and _bourgeois_. as a painter of peasant life he made his first appearance in . [illustration: _baschet._ bastien-lepage. le pÈre jacques.] [illustration: _baschet._ bastien-lepage. joan of arc.] in the salon of this year a sensation was made by a work of such truth and poetry as had not been seen since millet; this was the "hay harvest." it is noon. the june sun throws its sultry beams over the mown meadows. the ground rises slowly to a boundless horizon, where a tree emerges here and there, standing motionless against the brilliant sky. the grey and the green of these great plains--it is as if the weariness of many toilsome miles rose out of them--weighed heavily upon one, and created a sense of forsaken loneliness. only two beings, a pair of day-labourers, break the wide level scorched by a quivering, continuous blaze of light. they have had their midday meal, and their basket is lying near them upon the ground. the man has now lain down to sleep upon a heap of hay, with his hat tilted over his eyes. but the woman sits dreaming, tired with the long hours of work, dazzled with the glare of the sun, and overpowered by the odour of the hay and the sultriness of noon. she does not know the drift of her thoughts; nature is working upon her, and she has feelings which she scarcely understands herself. she is sunburnt and ugly, and her head is square and heavy, and yet there lies a world of sublime and mystical poetry in her dull, dreamy eyes gazing into a mysterious horizon. by this picture and "the potato harvest," which succeeded it in , bastien-lepage, the splendid, placed himself in the first line of modern french painters. this time he renders the sentiment of october. the sandy fields, impregnated with dust, rest in a white, subdued light of noon; pale brown are the potato stalks, pale brown the blades of grass, and the roads are bright with dust; and through this landscape, with its wide horizon, where the tree-tops, half despoiled already, shiver in the wind, there blows _le grand air_, a breeze strong as only millet in his water-colours had the secret of painting. with millet he shares likewise the breath of tender melancholy which broods so sadly over his pictures. "the girl with the cow," the little fauvette, that child of social misery--misery that lies sorrowful and despairing in the gaze of her eyes--is perhaps the most touching example of his brooding devotion to truth. her brown dress is torn and dirty, while a grey kerchief borders her famished, sickly face. a waste, disconsolate landscape, with a frozen tree and withered thistles, stretches round like a boundless nirvana. above there is a whitish, clear, tremulous sky, making everything paler, more arid and wearily bright; there is no gleam of rich luxuriant tints, but only dry, stinted colours; and not a sound is there in the air, not a scythe driving through the grass, not a cart clattering over the road. there is something overwhelming in this union between man and nature. one thinks of the famous words of taine: "man is as little to be divided from the earth as an animal or a plant. body and soul are influenced in the same way by the environment of nature, and from this influence the destinies of men arise." as an insect draws its entire nature, even its form and colour, from the plant on which it lives, so is the child the natural product of the earth upon which it stands, and all the impulses of its spirit are reflected in the landscape. in bastien-lepage went a step further. in that year appeared "joan of arc," his masterpiece in point of spiritual expression. here he has realised the method of treating historical pictures which floated before him as an idea at the academy, and has, at the same time, solved a problem which beset him from his youth--the penetration of mysticism and the world of dreams into the reality of life. "the annunciation to the shepherds," "in spring," and "the spring song" were merely stages on a course of which he reached the destination in "joan of arc." his ideal was "to paint historical themes without reminiscences of the galleries--paint them in the surroundings of the country, with the models that one has at hand, just as if the old drama had taken place yesterday evening." [illustration: _baschet._ bastien-lepage. the beggar.] the scene of the picture is a garden of damvillers painted exactly from nature, with its grey soil, its apple and pear-trees clothed with small leaves, its vegetable beds, and its flowers growing wild. joan herself is a pious, careworn, dreamy country girl. every sunday she has been to church, lost herself in long mystic reveries before the old sacred pictures, heard the misery of france spoken of; and the painted statues of the parish church and its tutelary saints pursue her thoughts. and just to-day, as she sat winding yarn in the shadow of the apple-trees, murmuring a prayer, she heard of a sudden the heavenly voices speaking. the spirits of st. michael, st. margaret, and st. catharine, before whose statues she has prayed so often, have freed themselves from the wooden images and float as light phantoms, as pallid shapes of mist, which will as suddenly vanish into air before the eyes of the dreaming girl. joan rises trembling, throwing her stool over, and steps forward. she stands in motionless ecstasy stretching out her left arm, and gazing into vacancy with her pupils morbidly dilated. of all human phases of expression which painting can approach, such mystical delirium is perhaps the hardest to render; and probably it was only by the aid of hypnotism, to which the attention of the painter was directed just then by the experiments of charcot, that bastien-lepage was enabled to produce in his model that look of religious rapture, oblivious to the whole world, which is expressed in the vague glance of her eyes, blue as the sea. [illustration: _baschet._ bastien-lepage. the pond at damvillers.] "joan of arc" was succeeded by "the beggar," that life-size figure of the haggard old tramp who, with a thick stick under his arm--of which he would make use upon any suitable occasion--picks up what he can in the villages, saying a paternoster before the doors while he begs. this time he has been ringing at the porch of an ordinary middle-class dwelling, and he is sulkily thrusting into the wallet slung round his shoulders a great hunch of bread which a little girl has just given to him. there is a mixture of spite and contempt in his eyes as he shuffles off in his heavy wooden shoes. and behind the doorpost the little girl, who, in her pretty blue frock, has such a trim air of wearing her sunday best, looks rather alarmed and glances timidly at the mysterious old man. "un brave homme," or "le père jacques," as the master afterwards called the picture, was to some extent a pendant to "the beggar." he comes out of the wood wheezing, with a pointed cap upon his head and a heavy bundle of wood upon his shoulders, whilst at his side his little grandchild is plucking the last flowers. it is november; the leaves have turned yellow and cover the ground. père jacques is providing against the winter. and the winter is drawing near--death. [illustration: _baschet._ bastien-lepage. the haymaker.] [illustration: _mansell photo._ l'hermitte. the pardon of plourin.] bastien-lepage's health had never been good, nor was parisian life calculated to make it better. slender and delicate, blond with blue eyes and a sharply chiselled profile--_tout petit, tout blond, les cheveux à la bretonne, le nez retroussé et une barbe d'adolescent_, as marie baskirtscheff describes him--he was just the type which _parisiennes_ adore. his studio was besieged; there was no entertainment to which he was not invited, no committee, no meeting to hold judgment over pictures at which he was not present. amateurs fought for his works and asked for his advice when they made purchases. pupils flocked to him in numbers. he was intoxicated with the parisian world, enchanted with its modern elegance; he loved the vibration of life, and rejoiced in masked balls like a child. consumptive people are invariably sensuous, drinking in the pleasures of life with more swift and hasty draughts. he then left paris and plunged into the whirlpool of other great cities. from switzerland, venice, and london he came back with pictures and landscapes. in london, indeed, he painted that beautiful picture "the flower-girl," the pale, delicate child upon whose faded countenance the tragedy of life has so early left its traces. through the whole summer of he worked incessantly in damvillers. once more he painted his native place in a landscape of the utmost refinement. here, as in his portraits, everything has been rendered with a positive trenchancy, with a severe, scientific effort after truth, in which there lies what is almost a touch of aridness. and yet an indescribable magic is thrown over the fragrant green of the meadows, the young, quivering trees, and the still pond which lies rippling in the cloudless summer day. [illustration: _portfolio._ l'hermitte. pay time in harvest.] in there appeared in the salon that wonderful picture "love in the village." the girl has hung up her washing on the paling, and the neighbour's son has run down with a flower in his hand; she has taken the flower, and in confusion they have suddenly turned their backs upon each other, and stand there without saying a word. they love each other, and wish to marry, but how hard is the first confession. note how the lad is turning his fingers about in his embarrassment; note the confusion of the girl, which may be seen, although she is looking towards the background of the picture; note the spring landscape, which is as fair as the figures it surrounds. it is a tender dreamer who gives himself expression here--and love came to him also. enthusiastically adored by the women in his school of painting, he had found a dear friend in _marie baskirtscheff_, the distinguished young russian girl who had become his pupil just as his fame began to rise. it is charming to see the enthusiasm with which marie speaks of him in her diary. "_je peins sur la propre palette du vrai bastien, avec des couleurs à lui, son pinceau, son atelier, et son frère pour modèle._" and how the others envy her because of it! "_la petite suédoise voulait toucher à sa palette._" with marie he sketched his plans for the future, and in the midst of this restless activity he was summoned hence together with her, for she also died young, at the age of twenty-four, just as her pictures began to create a sensation. a touching idyll in her diary tells how the girl learnt, when she was dying of consumption, that young bastien had also fallen ill, and been given up as hopeless. so long as marie could go out of doors she went with her mother and her aunt to visit her sick friend; and when she was no longer allowed to leave the house he had himself carried up the steps to her drawing-room by his brother, and there they both sat beside each other in armchairs, and saw the end draw near, merciless and inevitable, the end of their young lives, their talents, their ambition, and their hopes. "at last! here it is then, the end of all my sufferings! so many efforts, so many wishes, so many plans, so many ---- ----, and then to die at four-and-twenty upon the threshold of them all!" [illustration: _l'art._ lÉon l'hermitte.] her last picture was one of six schoolboys, sons of the people, who are standing at a street corner chattering; and it makes a curiously virile impression, when one considers that it was painted by a blond young girl, who slept under dull blue silken bed-curtains, dressed almost entirely in white, was rubbed with perfumes after a walk in hard weather, and wore on her shoulders furs which cost two thousand francs. it hangs in the luxembourg, and for a long time a lady dressed in mourning used to come there every week and cry before the picture painted by the daughter whom she had lost so early. marie died on st october , and bastien barely a month afterwards. "the funeral of a young girl," in which he wished to immortalise the funeral of marie, was his last sketch, his farewell to the world, to the living, alluring, ever splendid nature which he loved so much, grasped and comprehended so intimately, and to the hopes which built up their deceptive castles in the air before his dying gaze. he died before he reached raphael's age, for he was barely thirty-six. the final collapse came on th december , upon a sad, rainy evening, after he had lain several months upon a bed of sickness. his frame was emaciated, and as light as that of a child; his face was shrivelled--the eyes alone had their old brilliancy. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ roll. the woman with a bull. (_by permission of the artist._)] on th december his body was brought up to the eastern railway station. the coffin was covered with roses, white elder blossoms, and immortelles. and now he lies buried in lorraine, in the little churchyard of damvillers, where his father and grandfather rest beneath an old apple-tree. red apple-blossoms he too loved so dearly. his importance marie baskirtscheff has summarised simply and gracefully in the words: "_c'est un artiste puissant, originel, c'est un poète, c'est un philosophe; les autres ne sont que des fabricants de n'importe quoi à côté de lui.... on ne peut plus rien regarder quand on voit sa peinture, parce que c'est beau comme la nature, comme la vie...._" [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ roll. manda lamÉtrie, fermiÈre.] this tender poetic trait which runs through his works is what principally distinguishes him from _l'hermitte_, the most sterling representative of the picture of peasant life at the present time. l'hermitte, also, like most of these painters of peasants, was himself the son of a peasant. he came from mont-saint-père, near château-thierry, a quiet old town, where from the great "hill of calvary" one sees a dilapidated gothic church and the moss-grown roofs of thatched houses. his grandfather was a vine-grower and his father a schoolmaster. he worked in the field himself, and, like millet, he painted afterwards the things which he had done himself in youth. his principal works were pictures of reapers in the field, peasant women in church, young wives nursing their children, rustics at work, here and there masterly water-colours, pastels and charcoal drawings, in the pretty illustrations to andré theuriet's _vie rustique_, the decoration of a hall at the sorbonne with representations of rustic life, in his later period occasionally pictures from other circles of life, such as "the fish-market of st. malo," "the lecture in the sorbonne," "the musical soirée," and finally, as a concession to the religious tendency of recent years, a "christ visiting the house of a peasant." he has his studio in the rue vaquelin in paris, though he spends most of his time in the village where he was born, and where he now lives quietly and simply with the peasants. most of his works, which are to be ranked throughout amongst the most robust productions of modern naturalism, are painted in the great glass studio which he built in the garden of his father's house. whilst bastien-lepage, through a certain softness of temperament, was moved to paint the weak rather than the strong, and less often men in the prime of life than patriarchs, women, and children, l'hermitte displays the peasant in all his rusticity. he knows the country and the labours of the field which make the hands horny and the face brown, and he has rendered them in a strictly objective manner, in a great sculptural style. bastien-lepage is inclined to refinement and poetic tenderness; in l'hermitte everything is clear, precise, and sober as pale, bright daylight. [illustration: _cassell & co._ raffaelli. place st. sulpice. (_by permission of the artist._)] _alfred roll_ was born in paris, and the artisan of the parisian streets is the chief hero of his pictures. like zola in his rougon-macquart series, he set before himself the aim of depicting the social life of the present age in a great sequence of pictures--the workmen's strike, war, and toil. his pictures give one the impression that one is looking down from the window upon an agitated scene in the street. and his broad, plebeian workmanship is in keeping with his rough and democratic subjects. he made a beginning in with the colossal picture of the "flood at toulouse." the roofs of little peasants' houses rise out of the expanse of water. upon one of them a group of country people have taken refuge, and are awaiting a boat which is coming from the distance. a young mother summons her last remnant of strength to save her trembling child. beside her an old woman is sitting, sunk in the stupor of indifference, while in front a bull is swimming, bellowing wildly in the water. the influence of géricault's "raft of the medusa" is indeed obvious; but how much more plainly and actually has the struggle for existence been represented here, than by the great romanticist still hampered by classicism. the devastating effect of the masses of water in all their elemental force could not have been more impressively rendered than has been done through this bull struggling for life with all its enormous strength. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ raffaelli. the midday soup. (_by permission of the artist._)] in technique this picture belongs to the painter's earlier phase. even in the colouring of the naked figures it has still the dirty heaviness of the bolognese. this bond which united him to the school of courbet was broken when--probably under the influence of zola's _germinal_--he painted "the strike," in . the stern reality which goes through zola's accounts of the life of pit-men is likewise to be found in these ragged and starving figures, clotted with coal dust, assembling in savage desperation before the manufactory walls, prepared for a rising. the dull grey of a rainy november morning spreads above. in he painted war, war in the new age, in which one man is not pitted against another, but great masses of men, who kill without seeing one another, are made to manoeuvre with scientific accuracy--war in which the balloon, distant signalling, and all the discoveries of science are turned to account. "work" was the last picture of the series. there are men toiling in the hot, dusty air of paris with sandstones of all sizes. life-size, upon life-size figures, the drops of sweat were seen upon the apathetic faces, and the patches upon the blouses and breeches. any one who only reckons as art what is fine and delicate will necessarily find these pictures brutal; but whoever delights in seeing art in close connection with the age, as it really is, cannot deny to alfred roll's great epics of labour the value of artistic documents of the first rank. [illustration: _studio._ raffaelli. the carrier's cart. (_by permission of the artist._)] he devoted himself to the more delicate problems of light, especially in certain idyllic summer scenes, in which he delighted in painting life-size bulls and cows upon the meadow, and beside them a girl, sometimes intended as a milkmaid and sometimes as a nymph. of this type was the picture of , a woman returning from milking, "manda lamétrie, fermière." with a full pail she is going home across the sunny meadow. around there is a gentle play of light, a soft atmosphere transmitting faint reflections, lightly resting upon all forms, and mildly shed around them. a yet more subtle study of light in was named "the woman with a bull." pale sunbeams are rippling through the fluttering leaves, causing a delicious play of fine tones upon the nude body of the young woman and the shining hide of the bull. [illustration: _baschet._ raffaelli. paris k. . (_by permission of the artist._)] on a strip of ground in the suburbs of paris, where the town has come to an end and the country has not yet begun, _raffaelli_, perhaps the most spirited of the naturalists, has taken up his abode. he has painted the workman, the vagabond, the restlessness of the man who does not know where he is going to eat and sleep; the small householder, who has all he wants; the ruined man, overtaken by misfortune, whose only remaining passion is the brandy-bottle,--he has painted them all amid the melancholy landscape around paris, with its meagre region still in embryo, and its great straight roads losing themselves disconsolately in the horizon. théophile gautier has written somewhere that the geometricians are the ruination of landscapes. if he lived in these days he would find, on the contrary, that those monotonous roads running straight as a die give landscape a strange and melancholy grandeur. one thinks of the passage in zola's _germinal_, where the two socialists, Étienne and suwarin, walk in the evening silently along the edge of a canal, which, with the perpendicular stems of trees at its side, stretches for miles, as if measured with a pair of compasses, through a monotonous flat landscape. only a few low houses standing apart break the straight line of the horizon; only here and there, in the distance, does there emerge a human being, whose diminished figure is scarcely perceptible above the ground. raffaelli was the first to understand the virginal beauty of these localities, the dumb complaining language of poverty-stricken regions spreading languidly beneath a dreary sky. he is the painter of poor people and of wide horizons, the poet and historian of humanity living in the neighbourhood of great cities. there sits a house-owner, or the proprietor of a shop, in front of his own door; there a pedlar, or a man delivering parcels, hurries across the field; there a rag-picker's dog strays hungry about a lonely farmyard. sometimes the wide landscapes are relieved by the manufactories, water and gas-works which feed the huge crater of paris. at other times the snow lies on the ground, the skeletons of trees stand along the high-road, and a driver shouts to his team; the heavy cart-horses covered with worsted cloths, shiver, and an impression of intense cold strikes through you to your very bones. indeed, raffaelli's austerity was first subdued a little when he came to make a lengthy residence in england. then he acquired a preference for the light-coloured atmosphere and the gracious verdure of nature in england. he began to take pleasure in tender spring landscapes, in place of rigid scenes of snow. the poor soil no longer seems so hard and inhospitable, but becomes attractive beneath the soft, peaceful, bluish atmosphere. even the uncivilised beings, with famine in their eyes, who wandered about in his earliest pictures, become milder and more resigned. the grandfather, in his blouse and wooden shoes, leads his grandchild by the hand amid the first shyly budding verdure. old men sit quietly in the grounds of the alms-house, with the sun shining upon them. people no longer stand in the mist of november evenings with their teeth chattering from the frost, but breathe with delight the soft air of bright spring mornings. [illustration: raffaelli. the highroad to argenteuil.] [illustration: _studio._ raffaelli. le chiffonier. (_by permission of the artist._)] raffaelli, for fifteen years the master of this narrowly circumscribed region, has recorded his impressions of it in an entirely personal manner, in a style which in one of his _brochures_ he has himself designated "caractérisme." and by comparing the costumed models in the pictures of the previous generation with the figures of raffaelli, the happiness of this phrase is at once understood. in fact, raffaelli is a great master of characterisation, and perhaps nowhere more trenchant than in the illustrations which he drew for the _revue illustrée_. spirited caricatures of theatrical representations alternate with the grotesque figures of the salvation army. yet he feels most in his element when he dives into the horrors of paris by night. the types which he has created live; they meet you at every step, wander about the boulevards in the cafés and outside the barriers, and they haunt you with their looks of misery, vice, and menace. _giuseppe de nittis_, an italian turned a parisian, a bold, searching, nervously excitable spirit, was the first _gentilhomme_ of impressionism, the first who made a transition from the rugged painting of the proletariat to coquettish pictures from the fashionable quarters of the city, and reconciled even the wider public to the principles of impressionism by the delicate flavouring of his works. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ de nittis. paris races.] "it was a cold november morning. cold it was certainly, but in compensation the morning vapour was as fine as snow turned into mist. yonder in the crowded, populous, sooty quarters of the city, in paris busy with trade and industry, this early vapour which settles in the broad streets is not to be found; the hurry of awakening life, and the confused movement of country carts, omnibuses, and heavy, rattling freight-waggons, have scattered, divided, and dispersed it too quickly. every passer-by bears it away on his shabby overcoat, on his threadbare comforter, or disperses it with his baggy gloves. it dribbles down the shivering blouses and the waterproofs of toiling poverty, it dissolves before the hot breath of the many who have passed a sleepless or dissipated night, it is absorbed by the hungry, it penetrates into shops which have just been opened, into gloomy backyards, and it floats up the staircases, dripping on the walls and banisters, right up to the frozen attics. and that is the reason why so little of it remains outside. but in the spacious and stately quarter of paris, upon the broad boulevards planted with trees and the empty quays the mist lay undisturbed, section over section, like an undulating mass of transparent wool in which one felt isolated, hidden, almost imbedded in splendour, for the sun rising lazily on the distant horizon already shed a mild purple glow, and in this light the mist level with the tops of the houses shone like a piece of muslin spread over scarlet." [illustration: _cassell & co._ heilbuth. fine weather.] this opening passage in daudet's _le nabab_ most readily gives the mood awakened by giuseppe do nittis' parisian landscapes. de nittis was born in at barletta, near naples, in poor circumstances. in , when he was two-and-twenty years of age, he came to paris, where gérôme and meissonier interested themselves in him. intercourse with manet led him to his range of subject. he became the painter of parisian street-life as it is to be seen in the neighbourhood of the quays, the painter of mist, smoke, and air. the salons of and contained his first pictures, the "place des pyramides" and the view of the pont royal, fine studies of mist with a tremulous grey atmosphere, out of which graceful little figures raise their faint, vanishing outlines. from that time he has stood at the centre of artistic life in paris. he observed everything, saw everything, painted everything--a strip of the boulevards, the place du carrousel, the bois de boulogne, the races, the champs elysées, in the daytime with the budding chestnuts, the flower-beds blooming in all colours, the playing fountains, the women of grace and beauty, and the light carriages which crowd between the arc de triomphe, the obelisk, and the gardens of the tuileries, and in the evening when chains of white and coloured lights flash among the dark trees. de nittis has interpreted all atmospheric phases. he seized the intangible, the vibration of vapour, the dust of summer, and the rains of december days. he breathed the atmosphere, as it were, with his eyes, and felt with accuracy its greater or its diminished density. the great public he gained by his exquisite sense of feminine elegance. of marvellous charm are the figures which give animation to the place des pyramides, the place du carrousel, the quai du pont neuf--women in the most coquettish toilettes, men chatting together as they lean against a newspaper kiosk, flower-girls offering bouquets, loiterers carelessly turning over the books exposed for sale upon a stall, _bonnes_ with short petticoats and broad ribbons, smart-looking boys with hoops, and little girls with the air of great ladies. since gabriel de saint aubin, paris has had no more faithful observer. "de nittis," said claretie in , "paints modern french life for us as that brilliant italian, the abbé galliani, spoke the french language--that is to say, better than we do it ourselves." the summit of his ability was reached in his last pictures from england. one knows the london fogs of november, which hover over the town as black as night, so that the gas has to be lit at noon, fogs which are suffocating and shroud the nearest houses in a veil of crape. scenes like this were made for de nittis' brush. he roamed about in the smoke of the city, observed the fashion of the season, the confusion of cabs and drays upon london bridge, the surge and hurry of the human stream in cannon street, the vast panorama of the port of london veiled with smoke and fog, the fashionable west end with its magnificent clubs, the green, quiet squares and great, plainly built mansions; he studied the dense smoky atmosphere of fog compressed into floating phantom shapes, the remarkable effects of light seen when a fresh breeze suddenly drives the black clouds away. and again his eye adapted itself at once to the novel environment. it was not merely the blithe splendour of paris that found an incomparable painter in giuseppe de nittis, but london also with its thick atmosphere and that mixture of damp, tawny fog and grey smoke. piccadilly, the national gallery, the railway bridge at charing cross, the green park, the bank, and trafalgar square are varied samples of these english studies, which showed british painters themselves that not one of them had understood the foggy atmosphere of london as this tourist who was merely travelling through the town. "westminster" and "cannon street," a pair of dreary, sombre symphonies in ash-grey, perhaps display the highest of what de nittis has achieved in the painting of air. [illustration: _l'art._ ulysse butin.] born in hamburg, though a naturalised frenchman, _ferdinand heilbuth_ took up again the _cult_ of the _parisienne_ in the wake of stevens, and as he turned the acquisitions of impressionism to account in an exceedingly pleasing manner he seems, in comparison with stevens, lighter and more vaporous and gracious. he painted water-scenes, scenes on the greensward or in the entrance squares of châteaux, placing in these landscapes girls in fashionable summer toilette. he was particularly fond of representing them in a white hat, a white or pearl-grey dress with a black belt and long black gloves, in front of a bright grey stream, seated upon a fallen trunk, with a parasol resting against it. the bloom of the atmosphere is harmonised in the very finest chords with the virginal white of their dresses and the fresh verdure of the landscapes. his pictures are little watteaus of the nineteenth century, as discreet in effect as they are piquant. [illustration: _l'art._ butin. the departure.] after heilbuth's death _albert aublet_, who in earlier days depicted sanguinary historical pieces, became the popular painter of girls, whose beauties are gracefully interpreted in his pictures. when he paints the composer massenet, sitting at the piano surrounded by flowers and beautiful women,--when he represents the doings of the fashionable world on the shore at a popular watering-place, or young ladies plucking roses, or wandering meditatively in bright dresses amid green shrubs and yellow flowers, or going into the sea in white bathing-gowns, there may be nothing profound or particularly artistic in it all, but it is none the less charming, attractive, bright, joyous, and fresh. _jean béraud_, another interpreter of parisian elegance, has found material for numerous pictures in the blaze of the theatres, the naked shoulders of ballet-girls, the dress-coats of old gentlemen, the evening humour of the boulevards, the mysteries of the café anglais, the bustle of monte carlo, and the footlights of the café-concert. but absolute painter he is not. one would prefer to have a less oily heaviness in his works, a bolder and freer execution more in keeping with the lightness of the subject, and for this one would willingly surrender the touches of _genre_ which béraud cannot let alone even in these days. but his illustrations are exceedingly spirited. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ dantan. a plaster cast from nature.] it would be impossible to classify painters according to further specialties. in fact, it is as little possible to bring individuals into categories as it was at the time of the renaissance, when the painter busied himself at the same time with sculpture, architecture, and the artistic crafts. great artists do not wall themselves up in a narrow space to be studied. liberated from the studio and restored to nature, they endeavour, as in the best periods of art, to encompass life as widely as possible. a mere enumeration, such as chance offers, and such as will preserve a sense for the individuality of every man's talent without attempting comparisons, seems therefore a better method to pursue than a systematic grouping which could only be attained artificially and by ambiguities. the late _ulysse butin_ settled down on the shore of the channel and painted the life of the fishermen of villerville, a little spot upon the coast near honfleur. sturdy, large-boned fellows drag their nets across the strand, carry heavy anchors ashore, or lie smoking upon the dunes. the rays of the evening sun play upon their clothes; the night falls, and a profound silence rests upon the landscape. by preference _Édouard dantan_ has painted the interiors of sculptors' studios--men turning pots, casting plaster, or working on marble, with grey blouses, contrasting delicately with the light grey walls of workrooms which are themselves flooded with bright and tender light. very charming was "a plaster cast from nature," painted in : in the centre was a nude female figure most naturally posed, whilst a fine, even atmosphere, which lay softly upon the girl's form, streaming gently over it, was shed around. having cultivated in the beginning the province of feminine nudity with little success, in such pictures as "the bacchante" of the luxembourg, "the woman with the mask," and "rolla," _henri gervex_, the spoilt child of contemporary french painting, turned to the lecture-rooms of the universities, and by his picture of dr. péan at la salpétrière gave the impulse to the many hospital pictures, surgical operations, and so forth which have since inundated the salon. with the upper part of her body laid bare and her lips half opened, the patient lies under the influence of narcotics, whilst péan's assistant is counting her pulse. his audience have gathered round. the light falls clear and peacefully into the room. everything is rendered simply, without diffidence, and with confidence and quietude. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ gervex. dr. pÉan at la salpÉtriÈre. (_by permission of the artist._)] _duez_, when he had had his first success in with a large religious picture--the triptych of saint cuthbert in the luxembourg--appeared with animal pictures, landscapes, portraits, or fashionable representations of life in the streets and cafés. in the hands of such mild and complacent spirits as _friant_ and _goeneutte_, naturalism fell into a mincing, lachrymose condition; but in a series of quiet, unpretentious pictures _dagnan-bouveret_ was more successful in meeting the growing inclination of recent years for contemplative repose, just as in the province of literature ohnet, malot, and claretie, with their spirit of compromise, came after those stern naturalists flaubert and zola. according to the drawing of paul renouard, dagnan-bouveret is a little, black-haired man with a dark complexion and deep-set eyes, a short blunt nose, and a black pointed beard. there is nothing in him which betrays spirit, caprice, and audacity, but everything which is an indication of patience and endurance; and, as a matter of fact, such are the qualities by which he has gained his high position. he is a man of poetic talent, though rather tame, and stands to bastien-lepage and roll as breton to millet. one often fancies that it is possible to observe in him that german _gemüth_, that genial temper, for the satisfaction of which frau marlitt provided in fiction. a pupil of gérôme, he made his first great success in the salon of with the picture "a wedding at the photographer's." this was succeeded in by "the nuptial benediction"; in by "the vaccination"; in by "the horse-pond" of the musée luxembourg; in by a "blessed virgin," a homely, thoughtful, and delicately coloured picture which gained him many admirers in germany; and in by "the consecrated bread," in which he was one of the first to take up the study of light in interiors. in a catholic church there are sitting devout women--most of them old, but also one who is young--and children, while an acolyte is handing them consecrated bread. this simple scene in the damp village church, filled with a tender gloom, is rendered with a winning homely plainness, and with that touch of compassionate sentimentality which is the peculiar note of dagnan-bouveret. the "bretonnes au pardon" of thoroughly displayed this definitive dagnan: a soft, peaceful picture, full of simple and cordial poetry. in the grass behind the church, the plain spire of which rises at the end of a wall, women are sitting, both young and old, in black dresses and white caps. one of them is reading a prayer from a devotional book. the rest are listening. two men stand at the side. everything is at peace; the scheme of colour is soft and quiet, while in the execution there is something recalling holbein, and the effect is idyllically moving like the chime of a village bell when the sun is going down. [illustration: _l'art._ duez. on the cliff.] [illustration: _l'art_ duez. the end of october. (_by permission of the artist._)] the zeal with which painters took up the study of contemporary life, so long neglected, did not, however, prevent the quality of french landscape painting from being exceedingly high. new parts of the world were no longer to be conquered. for fifteen years none of the nobler, nor of the less noble, landscapes of france had been neglected, nor any strip of field; there were no flowers that were not plucked, whether they were cultivated in forcing-houses or had sprung pallid in a dark garden of old paris. it was only the joy in brightness and the newly discovered beauty of sunshine that brought with them any change of material. following the impressionists, the landscape painters deserted their forests. those "woodland depths," such as diaz and rousseau painted, seldom appear in the works of the most modern artists. in the severest opposition to such once popular scenes there lies the plain, the wide expanse stretching forth like a carpet in bright, shining tones under the play of tremulous sunbeams, and scarcely do a few trees break the quiet line of the distant horizon. at first the poorest and most humble corners were preferred. the painting of the poor brought even the most forlorn regions into fashion. later, in landscape also, a bent towards the most tender lyricism corresponded with that inclination to idyllic sentiment which was on the increase in figure painting. these painters have a peculiar joy in the fresh mood of morning, when a light vapour hovers over the meadows and the waters, before it is dissolved into shining dew. they love the bloom of fruit-trees and the first smile of spring, or revel in the gradations of the dusk, rich as they are in shades of tint, mistily wan and grey, pale lilac, delicate green, and milky blue. the perspective is broad and fine; objects are entirely absorbed by the harmony of colour, and the older and coarser treatment of free light heightened to the most refined play by the most delicate shades of hue. and these colourists deriving from corot, with their soft grey enveloping all, are opposed by others who strike novel and higher chords upon the keyboard of manet--landscape painters whom such simple and intimate things do not satisfy, but who search after unexpected, fleeting, and extraordinary impressions, analysing fantastically combined effects of light. [illustration: _l'art._ dagnan-bouveret. consecrated bread.] a group of new-impressionists, who might be called prismatic painters, stand in this respect at the extreme left. starting from the conviction that the traditional mixing of colours upon the palette results after all only in palette tones, and can never fully express the intensity and pulsating vividness of tone-values, they founded the theory of the resolution of tones,--in other words, they break up all compound colours into their primary hues, set these directly upon the canvas, and leave it to the eye of the spectator to undertake the mixture for itself. in particular _george seurat_ was an energetic disseminator of this painting in points which excited new discussions amongst artists and new polemics in the newspapers. his pictures were entirely composed of flaming, glowing, and shining patches. close to these pictures nothing was to be seen but a confusion of blotches, but at the proper distance they took shape as wild sea-studies in the brilliant hues of noon, with rocks and stones standing out in relief, orgies of blue, red, and violet. such was seurat's manner of seeing nature. that such a course brings with it a good deal of monotony, that it will hardly ever be possible to quicken art to this extent with science, is incontestable. but it is just as certain that seurat was a painter of distinction who shows in many of his pictures a fine sense for delicate, pale atmosphere. many of his landscapes, which at close quarters look like mosaics of small, smooth, variously coloured stones, acquire a vibrating light, such as monet himself did not attain, when looked at from a proper distance. _signac_, _anquetin_, _angrand_, _lucien pissarro_, _coss_, _luèc_, _rysselberghe_, and _valtat_ are the names of the other representatives of this scientific painting, and their method has not seldom enabled them to give expression in an overpowering manner to the quiet of water and sky, the green of the meadows, and the softness of tender light shifting over the sea. [illustration: _l'art._ dagnan-bouveret. bretonnes au pardon. (_by permission of the artist._)] when these "spotted" pictures hang in a room where they are fewer in number than ordinary paintings they are difficult to understand. only the disadvantages of such a method of painting are noticed; the disagreeable spottiness of the little points of colour ranged unpleasantly side by side, and putting one in mind of a piece of embroidery work, does not exactly appeal to the artist who looks for beautiful lines and _belle pâte_ in a picture. nevertheless, the method would scarcely have found so many exponents did it not afford an opportunity to get certain effects which are scarcely obtainable in any other way. as a matter of fact, one finds in these pictures a sense of life, such shimmering, glimmering effects, such tremulous, vibrating light, as could not be arrived at without this disintegration of colour into separate points. moreover, they have at a distance a decorative effect that leaves other pictures far behind. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ dagnan-bouveret. the nuptial benediction. (_by permission of messrs. boussod, valadon & co., the owners of the copyright._)] the importance of neo-impressionism, therefore, depends on two particulars. first, in the analysis of light it has carried the principles of impressionism to their furthest limit; secondly, in the matter of decorative effect it has laid aside one great fault of impressionism, and has given us pictures which, seen from a distance, take on a definite form instead of a blur of indistinct tones. amongst the younger painters exhibiting in the salon, _pointelin_--without any trace of imitation--perhaps comes nearest to the tender poetry of corot, and has with most subtlety interpreted the delicate charm of cold moods of morning, the deep feeling of still solitude in a wide expanse. _jan monchablon_ views the meadow and the grass, the blades and variegated flowers of the field, with the eyes of a primitive artist. wide stretches of rolling ground upon radiant spring days are usually to be seen in his pictures. the sun shines, the grass sparkles, and the horizon spreads boundless around. in the background cows are grazing, or there move small figures bathed in air, whilst a dreamy rivulet murmurs in the foreground. the bright, soft light of provence is the delight of _montenard_, and he depicts with delicacy this landscape with its bright, rosy hills, its azure sky, and its pale underwood. light, as he sees it, has neither motes nor shadows; its vibration is so intense and fine that it fills the air with liquid gold, and absorbs the tints of objects, wrapping them in a soft and mystic golden veil. _dauphin_, who is nearly allied with him, always remains a colourist. his painting is more animated, provocative, and blooming, especially in those sea-pieces with their bright harbours, glittering waves, and rocking ships with their sails shimmering and coquetting in the sunshine. the name of _rosset-granget_ recalls festal evenings, houses all aglow with lights and fireworks, or red lanterns shedding forth their gleam into the dark blue firmament, and reflected with a thousand fine tints in the sea. [illustration: _dial._ lucien pissarro. solitude (woodcut).] the melancholy art of _Émile barau_, a thoroughly rustic painter, who renders picturesque corners of little villages with an extremely personal accent, stands in contrast with the blithe painting of the devotees of light; it is not the splendour of colour that attracts him, but the dun hues of dying nature. he has come to a halt immediately in front of paris, in the square before the church of creile. he knows the loneliness of village streets when the people are at work in the fields, and the houses give a feeling that their inhabitants are not far off and may return at any moment. his pictures are harmonies in grey. the leading elements in his works are the pale light lying upon colourless autumn sward, the mournful outlines of leafless trees stretching their naked boughs into the air as though complaining, small still ponds where ducks are paddling, the scanty green of meagre gardens, the muddy waters of old canals, reddish-grey roofs and narrow little streets amid moss-covered hills, tall poplars and willows by the side of swampy ditches, and in the background the old village steeple, which is scarcely ever absent. _damoye_, likewise, is fond of twilight, and autumn and winter evenings. he is the poet of the great plains and dunes and the sombre heaven, where isolated sunbeams break shyly from behind white clouds. a fine sea-painter, _boudin_, studies in etretat, trouville, saint valery, crotoy, and berck the dunes and the misty sky, spreading in cold northern grey across the silent sea. _dumoulin_ paints night landscapes with deep blue shadows and bright blue lights, while _albert lebourg_ has a passion for the grey of rain and the glittering snow which gleams in the light, blue in one place, violet and rosy in another. _victor binet_ and _réné billotte_ have devoted themselves to the study of that poor region, still in embryo, which lies around paris, a region where a delicate observer finds so much that is pictorial and so much hidden poetry. binet is so delicate that everything grows nobler beneath his brush. he specially loves to paint the poetry of twilight, which softens forms and tinges the trees with a greyish-green, the quiet, monotonous plains where tiny footpaths lose themselves in mysterious horizons, the expiring light of the autumn sun playing with the fallen yellow leaves upon dusty highways. réné billotte's life is exceedingly many-sided. in the forenoon he is an important ministerial official, in the evening the polished man of society in dress-clothes and white tie whom carolus duran painted. of an afternoon, in the hours of dusk and moonrise, he roams as a landscape painter in the suburbs of paris; he is an exceedingly accomplished man of the world, who only speaks in a low tone, and what he specially loves in nature, too, is the hour when moonlight lies gently and delicately over all forms. the scenes he usually chooses are a quarry with light mist settling over it, a light-coloured cornfield in a bluish dusk, a meadow bathed in pale light, or a strip of the seashore where the delicate air is impregnated with moisture. [illustration: lucien pissarro. ruth (woodcut). (_by permission of messrs. hacon & ricketts, the owners of the copyright._)] to be at once refined and true is the goal which portrait painting in recent years has also specially set itself to reach. in the years of _chic_ it started with the endeavour to win from every personality its beauties, to paint men and women "to advantage"; but later, when the naturalism of bastien-lepage stood at its zenith, it strove at all costs to seize the actual human being, to catch, as it were, the work-a-day character of the personality as it is in involuntary moments when people believe themselves to be unobserved and give up posing. the place of those pompous arrangements of the painters of material was taken by a soul, and temperament interpreted by an intelligence. and corresponding with the universal principle of conceiving man and nature as an indivisible whole, it became imperative in portrait painting no longer to place persons before an arbitrary background, but in their real surroundings--to paint the man of science in his laboratory, the painter in his studio, the author at his work-table--and to observe with accuracy the atmospheric influences of this environment. [illustration: boudin. the port of trouville. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] the ready master-worker of this plain and sincere naturalism in portrait painting was peculiarly _fantin-latour_, who ought not merely to be judged by his latest paintings, which have something petrified, rigid, gloomy, and professorial. in his younger days he was a solid and powerful artist, one of the soundest and simplest of whom france could boast. his pictures were dark in tone and harmonious, and had a puritanic charm. the portrait of manet, and that of the engraver edwin edwards and his wife, in particular, will always preserve their historical value. later, when the whole bias of art tended away from the poorer classes, and once more approached this fashionable world, portrait painting also showed a tendency to become exquisite and over-refined, and to exhibit a preference for symphonic arrangements of colour and subtilised effects of light. white, light yellow, and light blue silks were harmonised upon very delicate scales with pearly-grey backgrounds. ladies in mantles of light grey fur and rosy dresses stand amid dark-green shrubs, in which rose-coloured lanterns are burning, or they sit in a ball-dress near a lamp which produces manifold and tender transformations of light upon the white of the silk. [illustration: _l'art._ boldini. giuseppe verdi.] the work of _jacques Émile blanche_, the son of the celebrated mad-doctor, is peculiarly characteristic of these tendencies of french portrait painting. it is well known that english fashion was at this time regarded in paris as the height of elegance, while anglicisms were entering more and more into the french language; and this tendency of taste gave blanche the occasion for most æsthetic pictures. the english miss, in her attractive mixture of affectation and naïveté, in all her slim and long-footed grace, has found a delicate interpreter in him. tall ladies clad in white, bitten with the anglomania, drink tea most æsthetically, and sit there bored, or are grouped round the piano; _gommeux_, neat, straight, _chic_, from their tall hats to their patent-leather boots, look wearily about the world, with an eyeglass fixed, a yellow rose in their buttonhole, and a thick stick in the gloved hand. amongst his portraits of well-known personalities, much notice was attracted by that of his father in --a modern bertin the elder, and in by that of maurice barrès, a portrait in which he has analysed the author of _le jardin de bérénice_ in a very simple and convincing fashion. [illustration: _quantin, paris._ willette. the golden age.] the brilliant italian _boldini_ brought to this english _chic_ the manual volubility of a southerner: sometimes he was microscopic _à la_ meissonier, sometimes a juggler of the brush _à la_ fortuny, and sometimes he gave the most seductive mannerism and the most diverting elegance to his portraits of ladies. born in , the son of a painter of saints, boldini had begun as a romanticist with pictures for scott's _ivanhoe_. from ferrara he went to florence, where he remained six years. at the end of the sixties he emerged in london, and, after he had painted lady holland and the duchess of westminster there, he soon became a popular portrait painter. but since his home has been paris, where the fine anglo-saxon aroma, the "æsthetic" originality of his pictures, soon became an object of universal admiration. in his portraits of women boldini always renders what is most novel. it is as if he knew in advance the new fashion which the coming season would bring. his trenchantly cut figures of ladies in white dresses and with black gloves have a defiant and insolent effect, and yet one which is captivating through their ultra-modern _chic_. the portraits of carolus duran have nothing of that charm which makes such an appeal to the nerves, nothing of that discomposing indefinable quality which lies in the expression and gestures of a fashionable woman, whose eccentricity reveals every day fresh _nuances_ of beauty. he had not the faculty of seizing movement, the most difficult element in the world. but boldini's pictures seem like bold and sudden sketches which clinch the conception with spirit and swiftness in liberal, pointed crayon strokes controlled by keen observation. there is no ornament, no bracelet, no pillars and drapery. one hears the silken bodice rustle over the tightly laced corset, sees the mobile foot, and the long train swept to the side with a bold movement. sometimes his creations are full and luxuriant, nude even in their clothes, excited and full of movement; sometimes they are bodiless, as if compact of the air, pallid and half-dead with the strain of nights of festivity, "living with hardly any blood in their veins, in which the pulse beats almost entirely out of complaisance." [illustration: forain. at the folies-bergÈres. (_by permission of m. durand-ruel, the owner of the copyright._)] his pictures of children are just as subtle: there is an elasticity in these little girls with their widely opened velvet eyes, their rosy young lips, and their poses calculated with so much coquetry. boldini has an indescribable method of seizing a motion of the head, a mien, or a passing flash of the eyes, of arranging the hair, of indicating coquettish lace underclothing beneath bright silk dresses, or of showing the grace and fineness of the slender leg of a girl, encased in a black silk stocking, and dangling in delicate lines from a light grey sofa. there is french _esprit_, something piquant and with a double meaning in his art, which borders on the indecorous and is yet charming. these portraits of ladies, however, form but a small portion of his work. he paints in oils, in water-colour, and pastel, and is equally marvellous in handling the portraits of men, the street picture and the landscape. his portrait of the painter john lewis brown, crossing the street with his wife and daughter, looked as though it had been painted in one jet. in his little pictures of horses there is an astonishing animation and nervous energy. m. faure, the singer, possesses some small _rococo_ pictures from his brush, scenes in the garden of the tuileries, which might have come from fortuny. his pictures from the street life of paris--the place pigalle, the place clichy--recall de nittis, and some illustrations--scenes from the great paris races--might have been drawn by caran d'ache. there is no need to treat illustration in greater detail, because, naturally, it could no longer play the initiative part which fell to it in earlier days, now that the whole of life had been drawn within the compass of pictorial representation. besides, in an epoch like our own, which is determined to know and see and feel everything, illustration has been so extended that it would be quite impossible even to select the most important work. entirely apart from the many painters who occasionally illustrated novels or other books, such as bastien-lepage, gervex, dantan, détaille, dagnan-bouveret, ribot, benjamin constant, jean paul laurens, and others, there are a number of professional draughtsmen in paris, most of whom are really distinguished artists. in particular, _chéret_, one of the most original artists of our time--chéret, the great king of posters, the monarch of a fabulously charming world, in which everything gleams in blue and red and orange, cannot be passed over in a history of painting. the flowers which he carelessly strews on all sides with his spendthrift hand are not destined for preservation in an historical herbarium; his works are transient flashes of spirit, brilliantly shining, ephemera, but a bold and subtle parisian art is concealed amid this improvisation. settled for many years in london, jules chéret had there already drawn admirable placards, which are now much sought after by collectors. in he introduced this novel branch of industry into france, and gave it--thanks to the invention of machines which admit of the employment of the largest lithographic stones--an artistic development which could not have been anticipated. he has created many thousands of posters. the book-trade, the great shops, and almost all branches of industry owe their success to him. his theatrical posters alone are amongst the most graceful products of modern art: la fête des mitrons, la salle de frascati, les mongolis, le chat botté, l'athénée comique, fantaisies music-hall, la fée cocotte, les tsiganes, les folies-bergères en voyage, spectacle concert de l'horloge, skating rink, les pillules du diable, la chatte blanche, le petit faust, la vie parisienne, le droit du seigneur, cendrillon, orphée aux enfers, Éden théâtre, etc. these are mere posters, destined to hang for a few days at the street corners, and yet in graceful ease, sparkling life, and coquettish bloom of colour they surpass many oil paintings which flaunt upon the walls of the musée luxembourg. [illustration: _baschet._ cazin. judith.] amongst the illustrators _willette_ is perhaps the most charming, the most brilliant in grace, fancy, and spirit. a drawing by him is something living, light, and fresh. only amongst the japanese, or the great draughtsmen of the _rococo_ period, does one find plates of a charm similar to willette's tender poems of the "chevalier printemps" or the "baiser de la rose." at the same time there is something curiously innocent, something primitive, naïve, something like the song of a bird, in his charming art. no one can laugh with such youthful freshness. no one has such a childlike fancy. willette possesses the curious gift of looking at the world like a boy of sixteen with eyes that are not jaded for all the beauty of things, with the eyes of a schoolboy in love for the first time. he has drawn angels for gothic windows, battles, and everything imaginable; nevertheless, woman is supreme over his whole work, ruined and pure as an angel, cursed and adored, and yet always enchanting. she is manon lescaut, with her soft eyes and angelically pure sins. she has something of the lovely piquancy of the woman of brantôme, when she disdainfully laughs out of countenance poor pierrot, who sings his serenades to her plaintively in the moonlight. one might say that willette is himself his pierrot, dazzled with the young bosoms and rosy lips: at one time graceful and laughing, wild as a young fellow who has just escaped from school; at another earnest and angry, like an archangel driving away the sinful; to-day fiery, and to-morrow melancholy; now in love, teasing, blithe, and tender, now gloomy and in mortal trouble. he laughs amid tears and weeps amid laughter, singing the _dies iræ_ after a couplet of offenbach; himself wears a black-and-white garment, and is, at the same time, mystic and sensuous. his plates are as exhilarating as sparkling champagne, and breathe the soft, plaintive spirit of old ballads. [illustration: _baschet._ cazin. hagar and ishmael.] beside this amiable pierrot _forain_ is like the modern satyr, the true outcome of the goncourts and gavarni, the product of the most modern decadence. all the vice and grace of paris, all the luxury of the world, and all the _chic_ of the _demi-monde_ he has drawn with spirit, with bold stenographical execution, and the elegance of a sure-handed expert. every stroke is made with trenchant energy and ultimate grace. adultery, gambling, _chambres séparées_, carriages, horses, villas in the bois de boulogne; and then the reverse side--degradation, theft, hunger, the filth of the streets, pistols, suicide,--such are the principal stages of the modern epic which forain composed; and over all the _parisienne_, the dancing-girl, floats with smiling grace like a breath of beauty. his chief field of study is the promenade of the folies-bergères--the delicate profiles of anæmic girls singing, the heavy masses of flesh of gluttonising _gourmets_, the impudent laughter and lifeless eyes of prostitutes, the thin waists, lean arms, and demon hips of fading bodies laced in silk. little dancing-girls and fat _roués_, snobs with short, wide overcoats, huge collars, and long, pointed shoes--they all move, live, and exhale the odour of their own peculiar atmosphere. there is spirit in the line of an overcoat which forain draws, in the furniture of a room, in the hang of a fur or a silk dress. he is the master of the light, fleeting seizure of the definitive line. every one of his plates is like a spirited _causerie_, which is to be understood through nods and winks. [illustration: carriÈre. motherhood.] the name of _paul renouard_ is inseparable from the opera. degas had already painted the opera and the ballet-dancers with wonderful reality, fine irony, or in the weird humour of a dance of death. but renouard did not imitate degas. as a pupil of pils he was one of the many who, in , were occupied with the decoration of the staircase of the new opera house, and through this opportunity he obtained his first glance into this capricious and mysterious world made up of contrasts,--a world which henceforward became his domain. all his ballet-dancers are accurately drawn at their rehearsals, but the charm of their smile, of their figures, their silk tights, their gracious movements, has something which almost goes beyond nature. renouard is a realist with very great taste. girls practising at standing on the tips of their toes, dancing, curtseying, and throwing kisses to the audience are broadly and surely drawn with a few strokes. the opera is for him a universe in a nutshell--a _résumé_ of paris, where all the oddities, all the wildness, and all the sadness of modern life are to be found. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ besnard. evening.] mention must also be made of _daniel vierge_, torn prematurely from his art by a cruel disease, but not before he had been able to complete his masterpiece, the edition of don pablo de segovia. _henri de toulouse-lautrec_ too must be named, the grim historian of absinthe dens, music halls and dancing saloons; and we must give a passing glance to _léandre_ and _steinlen_, in whose drawings also the whole of parisian life breathes and pulsates, with all the glitter of over-civilisation, with all its ultra-refinement of pleasure. but a detailed appreciation of these draughtsmen is obviously out of place in a history of painting. if we turn back to those who have done good work in the province of painting pure and simple, we must tarry for a while with that refined painter of elegiac landscape, _charles cazin_. he awaits us as the evening gathers, and tells with a vibrating voice of things which induce a mood of gentle melancholy. he has his own hour, his own world, his own men and women. his hour is that secret and mystic time when the sun has gone down and the moon is rising, when soft shadows repose upon the earth and bring forgetfulness. the land he enters is a damp, misty land with dunes and pale foliage, one that lies beneath a heavy sky and is seldom irradiated by a beam of hope, a land of lethe and oblivion of self, a land created to yield to the tender colour of infinite weariness. the motives of his landscapes are always exceedingly simple, though they have a simplicity which is perhaps forced, instead of being entirely naïve. he represents, it may be, the entrance into a village with a few cottages, a few thin poplars, and reddish tiled roofs, bathed in the pale shadows of evening. upon the broad street lined with irregular houses, in a provincial town, the rain comes splashing down. or it is night, and in the sky there are black clouds, with the moon softly peering between them. lamps are gleaming in the windows of the houses, and an old post-chaise rolling heavily over the slippery pavement. or dun-green shadows repose upon a solitary green field with a windmill and a sluggish stream. the earth is wrapt in mysterious silence, and there is movement only in the sky, where a flash of lightning quivers--not one that blazes into intensely vivid light, but rather a silvery white electric spark lambent in the dark firmament. corot alone has painted such things, but where he is joyous cazin is elegiac. the little solitary houses are of a ghostly grey. the trees sway towards each other as if in tremulous fear. and the mist hangs damp in the brown boughs. faint evening shadows flit around. a northern malaria seems to prevail. at times a sea-bird utters a wailing complaint. one thinks of russian novels, nihilism, and raskolnikoff, though i know not through what association of ideas. one is disposed to sit by the wayside and dream, as verlaine sings:-- "la lune blanche luit dans les bois; de chaque branche part une voix. l'étang reflète, profond miroir, la silhouette du saule noir où le vent pleure: rêvons c'est l'heure. un vaste et tendre apaisement semble descendre du firmament que l'astre irise: c'est l'heure exquise." [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ besnard. portrait of mlles. d.] sometimes the humour of the landscape is associated with the memory of kindred feelings which passages in the bible or in old legends have awakened in him. in such cases he creates the biblical or mythological pictures which have principally occupied him in recent years. grey-green dusk rests upon the earth; the shadows of evening drive away the last rays of the sun. a mother with her child is sitting upon a bundle of straw in front of a thatched cottage with a ladder leaning against its roof, and a poverty-stricken yard bordered by an old paling, while a man in a brown mantle stands beside her, leaning upon a stick: this picture is "the birth of christ." two solitary people, a man and a woman, are walking through a soft, undulating country. the sun is sinking. no house will give the weary wanderers shelter in the night, but the shade of evening, which is gradually descending, envelops them with its melancholy peace: this is "the flight into egypt." an arid waste of sand, with a meagre bush rising here and there, and the parching summer sun brooding sultry overhead, forms the landscape of the picture "hagar and ishmael." or the fortifications of a mediæval town are represented. night is drawing on, watch-fires are burning, brawny figures stand at the anvil fashioning weapons, and the sentinels pace gravely along the moat. the besieged town is bethulia, and the woman who issues with a wild glance from the town gateway is judith, going forth followed by her handmaid to slay holofernes. through such works cazin has become the creator of the landscape of religious sentiment, which has since occupied so much space in french and german painting. the costume belongs to no time in particular, though it is almost more appropriate to the present than to bygone ages; but something so biblical, so patriarchal, such a remote and mystical poetry is expressed in the great lines of the landscape that the figures seem like visions from a far-off past. the continuation of this movement is marked by that charming artist who delighted in mystery, _eugène carrière_, "the modern painter of madonnas," as he has been called by edmond de goncourt. probably no one before him has painted the unconscious spiritual life of children with the same tender, absorbed feeling: little hands grasping at something, stammering lips of little ones who would kiss their mother, dreamy eyes gazing into infinity. but although young children at the beginning of life, whose eyes open wide as they turn towards the future, look out of his pictures, a profound sadness rests over them. his figures move gravely and silently in a soft, mysterious dusk, as though divided from the world of realities by a veil of gauze. all forms seem to melt, and fading flowers shed a sleepy fragrance around; it is as though there were bats flitting invisible through the air. even as a portrait painter he is still a poet dreaming in eternal haze and a twilight of mystery. in his portraits, alphonse daudet, geffroy, dolent, and edmond de goncourt looked as though they had been resolved into vapour, although the delineation of character was of astonishing power, and marked firmly with a penetrative insight into spiritual life such as was shared by ribot alone. at the very opposite pole of art stands _paul albert besnard_: amongst the worshippers of light he is, perhaps, the most subtle and forcible poet, a luminist who cannot find tones high enough when he would play upon the fibres of the spirit. having issued from the École des beaux-arts, and gained the _prix de rome_ with a work which attracted much notice, he had long moved upon strictly official lines; and he only broke from his academical strait-waistcoat about a dozen years ago, to become the refined artist to whom the younger generation do honour in these days, a seeker whose works vary widely in point of merit, though they always strike one afresh from the bold confidence with which he attacks and solves the most difficult problems of light. in puvis de chavannes, cazin, and carrière a reaction towards sombre effect and pale, vaporous beauty of tone followed the brightness of manet; but besnard, pushing forward upon manet's course, revels in the most subtle effects of illumination--effects not ventured upon even by the boldest impressionists--endeavours to arrest the most unexpected and unforeseen phases of light, and the most hazardous combinations of colour. the ruddy glow of the fire glances upon faded flowers. chandeliers and tapers outshine the soft radiance of the lamp; artificial light struggles with the sudden burst of daylight; and lanterns, standing out against the night sky like golden lights with a purple border, send their glistening rays into the blue gloom. it is only in the field of literature that a parallel may be found in jens pieter jacobsen, who in his novels occasionally describes with a similar finesse of perception the reflection of fire upon gold and silver, upon silk and satin, upon red and yellow and blue, or enumerates the hundred tints in which the september sun pours into a room. the portrait group of his children is a harmony in red. a boy and two girls are standing, with the most delightful absence of all constraint, in a country room, which looks out upon a mountainous landscape. the wall of the background is red, and red the costume of the little ones, yet all these conflicting _nuances_ of red tones are brought into harmonious unity with inherent taste. rubens would have rejoiced over a second landscape exhibited in the same year. a nude woman is seated upon a divan drinking tea, with her feet tucked under her and her back to the spectator. upon her back are cast the warm and the more subdued reflections of a fire which lies out of sight and of the daylight quivering in yellowish stripes, like a glowing aureole upon her soft skin. [illustration: _studio._ aman-jean. sous la guerlanda.] in a third picture, called "vision de femme," a young woman with the upper part of her form unclothed appears upon a terrace, surrounded by red blooming flowers and the glowing yellow light of the moon. under this symbol besnard imagined lutetia, the eternally young, hovering over the rhododendrons of the champs elysées and looking down upon the blaze of lights in the café des ambassadeurs. in he produced "the siren," a symphony in red. a _petite femme_ of montmartre stands wearily in a half-antique morning toilette before a billowing lake, which glows beneath the rays of the setting sun in fiery red and dull mallow colour. in his "autumn" of he made the same experiment in green. the moon casts its silvery light upon the changeful greenish mirror of a lake, and at the same time plays in a thousand reflections upon the green silk dress of a lady sitting upon the shore; while, in a picture of , a young lady in an elegant _négligé_ is seated at the piano, with her husband beside her turning over the music. the light of the candles is shed over hands, faces, and clothes. another picture, called "clouds of evening," represented a woman with delicate profile amid a violet landscape over which the clouds were lightly hovering, touched with orange-red by the setting sun. the double portrait, executed in , of the "mlles. d----," one of whom is leisurely placing a scarf over her shoulders with a movement almost recalling leighton, while the other stoops to pick a blossom from a rhododendron bush, is exceedingly soft in its green, red, and blue harmony. the french government recognised the eminent decorative talent displayed in these pictures, and gave besnard the opportunity of achieving further triumphs as a mural painter. here, too, he is modern to his fingertips, knowing nothing of stately gestures, nothing of old-world naïveté; but merely through his appetising and sparkling play of colour he has the art of converting great blank spaces into a marvellous storied realm. in he had to represent "astronomy" as a ceiling-piece for the salon des sciences in the hôtel de ville. ten years before there would have been no artist who would not have executed this task by the introduction of nude figures provided with instructive attributes. one would have held a globe, the second a pair of compasses, and the third a telescope in one hand, and in the other branches of laurel wherewith to crown galileo, columbus, or kepler. besnard made a clean sweep of all this. he did not forget that a ceiling is a kind of sky, and accordingly he painted the planets themselves, the stars which run their course through the firmament of blue. the figures of the constellations are arranged in a gracious interplay of light bodies floating softly past. amongst the pictures of the École de pharmacie a like effect is produced by besnard's great composition "evening," a work treated with august simplicity. the atmosphere is of a grey-bluish white: stars are glittering here and there, and two very ancient beings, a man and a woman, sit upon the threshold of their house, grave, weather-beaten forms of quiet grandeur, executed with expressive lines. the old man casts a searching glance at the stars, as if yearning after immortality, while the woman leans weary and yet contented upon his shoulder. in the room behind a kettle hangs bubbling over the fire, and a young woman with a child upon her arm steps through the door: man and the starry world, the finite and the infinite, presented under plain symbols. [illustration: carriÈre. schoolwork.] such are, more or less, the representative minds of contemporary france, the centres from which other minds issue like rays. _alfred agache_ devotes himself with great dexterity to an allegorical style after the fashion of barroccio. inspired by the pre-raphaelites, _aman-jean_ has found the model for his allegorical compositions in botticelli, and is a neurasthenic in colour, which is exceptionally striking, in his delicate portraits of women. _maurice denis_, who drew the illustrations to verlaine's _sagesse_ in a style full of archaic bloom, as a painter takes delight in the intoxicating fragrance of incense, the gliding steps and slow, quiet movements of nuns, in men and women kneeling before the altar in prayer, and priests crossing themselves before the golden statue of the virgin. the spaniard _gandara_, who lives in paris, displays in his grey and melting portraits much feeling for the decorative swing of lines. that spirited "pointillist" _henri martin_ seems for the present to have reached a climax in his "cain and abel," one of the most powerful creations of the younger generation in france. _louis picard's_ work has a tincture of literature, and he delights in edgar allan poe, mysticism and psychology. _ary renan_, the son of ernest renan and the grandson of ary scheffer, has given the soft subdued tones of puvis de chavannes a tender anglo-saxon fragrance in the manner of walter crane. and that spirited artist in lithograph, _odilon redon_, has visions of distorted faces, flowers that no mortal eye has seen, and huge white sea-birds screaming as they fly across a black world. forebodings like those we read of in the verse of poe take shape in his works, ghosts roam in the broad daylight, and the sea-green eyes of medusa-heads dripping with blood shine in the darkness of night with a mesmeric effect. _carlos schwabe_ drew the illustrations for the _Évangile de l'enfance_ of catulle mendès with the charming naïveté of hans memlinc, and afterwards attracted attention by his delicate, archaic pictures. _bonnard_, _vuillard_, _valloton_ and _roussel_ are others whose names have in the last few years become well known. their art is built up on the foundation laid by the impressionists only so far as they use the new colour-values discovered by the "bright painters," in a free, harmonious manner, and place them at the service of a new decorative purpose. in exhibitions one is often at a loss how to view these decorative paintings, such, for instance, as those of bonnard and vuillard; the eye is astounded for a moment when, after looking at the usual array of good pictures, it suddenly comes upon works that look more like pieces of gobelin tapestry than paintings. then one's mind reverts to rooms such as olbrich, van de velde, or josef hoffmann designed with some particular purpose in view, and one understands the object of these pictures. "we can hang in our rooms any picture which is beautiful in itself and by itself." that is the old familiar story, but that feeling never enters our minds when we stand in a mediæval room in which there are no pictures that can be taken away from their surroundings. it is a difficult task to arrange things that are individually beautiful into a harmonious whole. the realisation of the old-time principle is for obvious reasons well-nigh impracticable--the modern man is a restless, fickle creature; he must always be at liberty to pitch his tent anywhere--but we can surely make some approach to it. one may imagine in every dwelling a room in which furniture and pictures are made to fit into some conception of harmony, and the works of bonnard and vuillard may be conceived as parts of such a scheme for the decoration of a room, and indeed--though we must not forget similar attempts which have been made in other directions--as parts of a scheme which, though thoroughly modern and by no means a mere external copy, reverts to the style of bygone centuries. from the historian's standpoint these young artists scarcely come into question; they are still too much in the embryonic stage for any conclusion to be arrived at with respect to either of them. but the art lover who looks to the future rather than the past feels bound to follow with care their creations, in which the wealth of beauty that is already indicated in their first prints, the certainty of purpose with which they direct their efforts towards the point at which impressionism has left the widest gap, seems to give a guarantee that in the future france will maintain in the province of art the position she has held during the nineteenth century as the leading artistic nation. chapter xxxv spain just as france to-day shows such a wealth of talent, spain, correspondingly, can scarcely be said to come into the question of modern endeavour in art; in fact, it is quite impossible to treat of a history of spanish art, one can only consider individual artists, for they each go their own way, working in different directions and without any concerted plan. it was in the spring of that a little picture called "la vicaria" was exhibited in paris at the dealer goupil's. a marriage is taking place in the sacristy of a _rococo_ church in madrid. the walls are covered with faded cordova leather hangings figured in gold and dull colours, and a magnificent _rococo_ screen separates the sacristy from the middle aisle. venetian lustres are suspended from the ceiling; pictures of martyrs, venetian glasses in carved oval frames hang on the wall, richly ornamented wooden benches, and a library of missals and gospels in sparkling silver clasps, and shining marble tables and glistening braziers form part of the scene in which the marriage contract is being signed. the costumes are those of the time of goya. as a matter of fact, an old beau is marrying a young and beautiful girl. with affected grace and a skipping minuet step, holding a modish three-cornered hat under his arm, he approaches the table to put his signature in the place which the _escribano_ points out with an obsequious bow. he is arrayed in delicate lilac, while the bride is wearing a white silk dress trimmed with flowered lace, and has a wreath of orange blossoms in her luxuriant black hair. as a girl-friend is talking to her she examines with abstracted attention the pretty little pictures upon her fan, the finest she has ever possessed. a very piquant little head she has, with her long lashes and her black eyes. then, in the background, follow the witnesses, and first of all a young lady in a swelling silk dress of the brightest rose-colour. beside her is one of the bridegroom's friends in a cabbage-green coat with long flaps, and a shining belt from which a gleaming sabre hangs. the whole picture is a marvellous assemblage of colours, in which tones of venetian glow and strength, the tender pearly grey beloved of the japanese, and a melting neutral brown, each sets off the other and give a shimmering effect to the whole. the painter, who was barely thirty, bore the name of _mariano fortuny_, and was born in reus, a little town in the province of tarragona, on th june . five years after he had completed this work he died, at the age of thirty-six, on st november . short as his career was, it was, nevertheless, so brilliant, his success so immense, his influence so great, that his place in the history of modern painting remains assured to him. like french art, spanish art, after goya's death, had borne the yoke of classicism, romanticism, and academical influence by turns. in the grave of goya there was buried for ever, as it seemed, the world of torreros, majas, manolas, monks, smugglers, knaves, and witches, and all the local colour of the spanish peninsula. as late as the paris world exhibition of , spain was merely represented by a few carefully composed, and just as carefully painted, but tame and tedious, historical pictures of the david or the delaroche stamp--works such as had been painted for whole decades by josé madrazo, j. ribera y fernandez, federigo madrazo, carlo luis ribera, eduardo rosales, and many others whose names there is no reason for rescuing from oblivion. they laboured, meditating an art which was not their own, and could not waken any echo in themselves. their painting was body without soul, empty histrionic skill. as complete darkness had rested for a century over spanish art, from the death of claudio coellos in to the appearance of goya, rising like a meteor, so the first half of the nineteenth century produced no single original artist until fortuny came forward in the sixties. he grew up amid poor surroundings, and when he was twelve years of age he lost his father and mother. his grandfather, an enterprising and adventurous joiner, had made for himself a cabinet of wax figures, which he exhibited from town to town in the province of tarragona. with his grandson he went on foot through all the towns of catalonia, the old man showing the wax figures which the boy had painted. whenever he had a moment free the latter was drawing, carving in wood, or modelling in wax. it chanced, however, that a sculptor saw his attempts, spoke of them in fortuny's birthplace, and succeeded in inducing the town to make an allowance of forty-two francs a month to a lad whose talent had so much promise. by these means fortuny was enabled to attend the academy of barcelona for four years. in , when he was nineteen years of age, he received the _prix de rome_, and set out for rome itself in the same year. but whilst he was copying the pictures of the old masters there a circumstance occurred which set him upon another course. the war between spain and the emperor of morocco determined his future career. fortuny was then a young man of three-and-twenty, very strong, rather thick-set, quick to resent an injury, taciturn, resolute, and accustomed to hard work. his residence in the east, which lasted from five to six months, was a discovery for him--a feast of delight. he found the opportunity of studying in the immediate neighbourhood a people whose life was opulent in colour and wild in movement; and he beheld with wonder the gleaming pictorial episodes so variously enacted before him, and the rich costumes upon which the radiance of the south glanced in a hundred reflections. and, in particular, when the emperor of morocco came with his brilliant suite to sign the treaty of peace, fortuny developed a feverish activity. the great battle-piece which he should have executed on the commission of the academy of barcelona remained unfinished. on the other hand, he painted a series of oriental pictures, in which his astonishing dexterity and his marvellously sensitive eye were already to be clearly discerned: the stalls of moorish carpet-sellers, with little figures swarming about them, and the rich display of woven stuffs of the east; the weary attitude of old arabs sitting in the sun; the sombre, brooding faces of strange snake-charmers and magicians. this is no parisian east, like fromentin's; every one here speaks arabic. guillaumet alone, who afterwards interpreted the fakir world of the east, dreamy and contemplative in the sunshine, has been equally convincing. [illustration: _l'art._ mariano fortuny.] yet fortuny first discovered his peculiar province when he began, after his return, to paint those brilliant kaleidoscopic _rococo_ pictures with their charming play of colour, the pictures which founded his reputation in paris. even in the earliest, representing gentlemen of the _rococo_ period examining engravings in a richly appointed interior, the japanese weapons, renaissance chests, gilded frames of carved wood, and all the delightful _petit-riens_ from the treasury of the past which he had heaped together in it, were so wonderfully painted that goupil began a connection with him and ordered further works. this commission occasioned his journey, in the autumn of , to paris, where he entered into meissonier's circle, and worked sometimes at gérôme's. yet neither of them exerted any influence upon him at all worth mentioning. the french painter in miniature is probably the father of the department of art to which fortuny belongs; but the latter united to the delicate execution of the frenchman the flashing, gleaming spirit of the latin races of the south. he is a meissonier with _esprit_ recalling goya. in his picture "the spanish marriage" (la vicaria) all the vivid, throbbing, _rococo_ world, buried with goya, revived once more. while in his oriental pieces--"the praying arab," "the arabian fantasia," and "the snake charmers"--he still aimed at concentration and unity of effect, this picture had something gleaming, iridescent and pearly, which soon became the delight of all collectors. fortuny's successes, his celebrity, and his fortune dated from that time. his fame flashed forth like a meteor. after fighting long years in vain, not for recognition, but for his very bread, he suddenly became the most honored painter of the day, and began to exert upon a whole generation of young artists that powerful influence which survives even at this very day. [illustration: fortuny. the spanish marriage (la vicaria). (_by permission of messrs. goupil & co., the owners of the copyright._)] the studio which he built for himself after his marriage with the daughter of federigo madrazo in rome was a little museum of the most exquisite products of the artistic crafts of the west and the east: the walls were decorated with brilliant oriental stuffs, and great glass cabinets with moorish and arabian weapons, and old tankards and glasses from murano stood around. he sought and collected everything that shines and gleams in varying colour. that was his world, and the basis of his art. pillars of marble and porphyry, groups of ivory and bronze, lustres of venetian glass, gilded consoles with small busts, great tables supported by gilded satyrs and inlaid with variegated mosaics, form the surroundings of that astonishing work "the trial of the model." upon a marble table a young girl is standing naked, posing before a row of academicians in the costume of the louis xv period, while each one of them gives his judgment by a movement or an expression of the face. one of them has approached quite close, and is examining the little woman through his lorgnette. all the costumes gleam in a thousand hues, which the marble reflects. by his picture "the poet" or "the rehearsal" he reached his highest point in the capricious analysis of light. in an old _rococo_ garden, with the brilliant façade of the alhambra as its background, there is a gathering of gentlemen assembled to witness the rehearsal of a tragedy. the heroine, a tall, charming, luxuriant beauty, has just fallen into a faint. on the other hand, the hero, holding the lady on his right arm, is reading the verses of his part from a large manuscript. the gentlemen are listening, and exchanging remarks with the air of connoisseurs; one of them closes his eyes to listen with thorough attention. here the entire painting flashes like a rocket, and is as iridescent and brilliant as a peacock's tail. fortuny splits the rays of the sun into endless _nuances_ which are scarcely perceptible to the eye, and gives expression to their flashing glitter with astonishing delicacy. henri regnault, who visited him at that time in rome, wrote to a parisian friend: "the time i spent with fortuny yesterday is haunting me still. what a magnificent fellow he is! he paints the most marvellous things, and is the master of us all. i wish i could show you the two or three pictures that he has in hand, or his etchings and water-colours. they inspired me with a real disgust of my own. ah! fortuny, you spoil my sleep." [illustration: fortuny. the trial of the model. (_by permission of messrs. boussod, valadon & co., the owners of the copyright._)] even as an etcher he caught all the technical finesses and appetising piquancies of his great forerunner goya. it is only with very light and spirited strokes that the outlines of his figures are drawn; then, as in goya, comes the aquatint, the colour which covers the background and gives locality, depth, and light. a few scratches with a needle, a black spot, a light made by a judiciously inserted patch of white, and he gives his figures life and character, causing them to emerge from the black depth of the background like mysterious visions. "the dead arab," covered with his black cloak, and lying on the ground with his musket on his arm, "the shepherd" on the stump of a pillar, "the serenade," "the reader," "the tambourine player," "the pensioner," the picture of the gentleman with a pig-tail bending over his flowers, "the anchorite," and "the arab mourning over the body of his friend," are the most important of his plates, which are sometimes pungent and spirited, and sometimes sombre and fantastic. in the picture "the strand of portici" he attempted to strike out a new path. he was tired of the gay rags of the eighteenth century, as he said himself, and meant to paint for the future only subjects from surrounding life in an entirely modern manner like that of manet. but he was not destined to carry out this change any further. he passed away in rome on st november . when the unsold works which he left were put up to auction the smallest sketches fetched high figures, and even his etchings were bought at marvellous prices. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ fortuny. the snake charmers.] in these days the enthusiasm for fortuny is no longer so glowing. the capacity to paint became so ordinary in the course of years that it was presupposed as a matter of course; it was a necessary acquirement for an artist to have before approaching his pictures in a psychological fashion. and in this later respect there is a deficiency in fortuny. he is a _charmeur_ who dazzles the eyes, but rather creates a sense of astonishment than holds the spectator in his grip. beneath his hands painting has become a matter of pure virtuosity, a marvellous, flaring firework that amazes and--leaves us cold after all. with enchanting delicacy he runs through the brilliant gamut of radiant colours upon the small keyboard of his little pictures painted with a pocket-lens, and everything glitters golden, like the dress of a fairy. he united to the patience of meissonier a delicacy of colour, a wealth of pictorial point, and a crowd of delightful trifles, which combine to make him a most exquisite and fascinating juggler of the palette--an amazing colourist, a wonderful clown, an original and subtle painter with vibrating nerves, but not a truly great and moving artist. his pictures are dainties in gold frames, jewels delicately set, astonishing efforts of patience lit up by a flashing, rocket-like _esprit_; but beneath the glittering surface one is conscious of there being neither heart nor soul. his art might have been french or italian, just as appropriately as spanish. it is the art of virtuosi of the brush, and fortuny himself is the initiator of a religion which found its enthusiastic followers, not in madrid alone, but in naples, paris, and rome. [illustration: _l'art._ fortuny. moors playing with a vulture.] yet spanish painting, so far as it is individual, works even now upon the lines of fortuny. after his death it divided into two streams. the official endeavour of the academies was to keep the grand historical painting in flower, in accord with the proud programme announced by francisco tubino in his brochure, _the renaissance of spanish art_. "our contemporary artists," he writes, "fill all civilised europe with their fame, and are the object of admiration on the far side of the atlantic. we have a peculiar school of our own with a hundred teachers, and it shuns comparison with no school in any other country. at home the academy of the fine arts watches over the progress of painting; it has perfected the laws by which our academy in rome is guided, the academy in the proud possession of spain, and situated so splendidly upon the janiculum. in madrid there is a succession of biennial exhibitions, and there is no deficiency in prizes nor in purchases. spanish painting does not merely adorn the citizen's house or the boudoir of the fair sex with easel-pieces; by its productions it recalls the great episodes of popular history, which are able to excite men to glorious deeds. austere, like our national character, it forbids fine taste to descend to the painting of anything indecorous. before everything we want grand paintings for our galleries; the commercial spirit is no master of ours. in such a way the glory of zurburan, murillo, and velasquez lives once more in a new sense." [illustration: _l'art._ fortuny. the china vase.] [illustration: _cassell & co._ fortuny. at the gate of the seraglio.] the results of such efforts were those historical pictures which at the paris world exhibition of , the munich international exhibition of , and at every large exhibition since have been so exceedingly refreshing to all admirers of the illustration of history upon ground that was genuinely spanish. at the paris world exhibition of _pradilla's_ "joan the mad" received the large gold medal, and was, indeed, a good picture in the manner of laurens. philip the fair is dead. the funeral train, paying him the last honours, has come to a halt upon a high-road, and the unhappy princess rushes up with floating hair and staring eyes fixed upon the bier which hides the remains of her husband. the priests and women kneeling around regard the unfortunate mad woman with mournful pity. to the right the members of the court are grouped near a little chapel where a priest is celebrating a mass for the dead; to the left the peasantry are crowding round to witness the ceremony. great wax candles are burning, and the chapel is lit up with the sombre glow of torches. this was all exceedingly well painted, carefully balanced in composition, and graceful in drawing. at the munich exhibition of he received a gold medal for his "surrender of granada, ," a picture which made a great impression at the time upon the german historical painters, as pradilla had made a transition from the brown bituminous painting of laurens to a "modern" painting in grey, which did more justice to the illumination of objects beneath the open sky. in the same year _casado's_ large painting, "the bells of huesca," with the ground streaming with blood, fifteen decapitated bodies, and as many bodiless heads, was a creation which was widely admired. _vera_ had exhibited his picture, filled with wild fire and pathos, "the defence of numantia," and _manuel ramirez_ his "execution of don alvaro de luna," with the pallid head which has rolled from the steps and stares at the spectator in such a ghastly manner. in his "conversion of the duke of gandia," _moreno carbonero_ displayed an open coffin _à la_ laurens: as grand equerry to the empress isabella at the court of charles v, the duke of gandia, after the death of his mistress, has to superintend the burial of her corpse in the vault at granada, and as the coffin is opened there, to confirm the identity of the person, the distorted features of the dead make such a powerful impression upon the careless noble that he takes a vow to devote himself to god. _ricardo villodas_ in his picture "victoribus gloria" represents the beginning of one of those sea-battles which augustus made gladiators fight for the amusement of the roman people. by _antonio casanova y estorach_ there was a picture of king ferdinand the holy, who upon maundy thursday is washing the feet of eleven poor old men and giving them food. and a special sensation was made by the great ghost picture of _benliure y gil_, which he named "a vision in the colosseum." saint almaquio, who was slain, according to tradition, by gladiators in the colosseum, is seen floating in the air, as he swings in fanatical ecstasy a crucifix from which light is streaming. upon one side men who have borne witness to christianity with their blood chant their hymns of praise; upon the other, troops of female martyrs clothed in white and holding tapers in their hands move by; but below, the earth has opened, and the dead rise for the celebration of this midnight service, praying from their graves, while the full moon shines through the apertures of the ruins and pours its pale light upon the phantom congregation. there was exhibited by _checa_ "a barbarian onset," a gallic horde of riders thundering past a roman temple, from which the priestesses are flying in desperation. _francisco amerigo_ treated upon a huge canvas a scene from the sacking of rome in , when the despoiling troops of charles v plundered the eternal city. "soldiers intoxicated with wine and lust, tricked out with bishops' mitres and wrapped in the robes of priests, are desecrating the temples of god. nunneries are violated, and fathers kill their daughters to save them from shame." so ran the historical explanation set upon the broad gold frame. but, after all, these historical pictures, in spite of their great spaces of canvas, are of no consequence when one comes to characterise the efforts of modern art. explanations could be given showing that in the land of bull-fights this painting of horrors maintained itself longer than elsewhere, but the hopes of those who prophesied from it a new golden period for historical painting were entirely disappointed. for spanish art, as in earlier days for french art, the historical picture has merely the importance implied by the _prix de rome_. a method of colouring which is often dazzling in result, and a vigorous study of nature, preserved from the danger of "beautiful" tinting, make the spanish works different from the older ones. their very passion often has an effect which is genuine, brutal, and of telling power. in the best of these pictures one believes that a wild temperament really does burst into flame through the accepted convention that the painters have delight in the horrible, which the older french artists resorted to merely for the purpose of preparing veritable _tableaux_. but in the rank and file, in place of the southern vividness of expression which has been sincerely felt, histrionic pose is the predominant element, the petty situation of the stage set upon a gigantic canvas, and in addition to this a straining after effect which grazes the boundary line where the horrible degenerates into the ridiculous. through their extraordinary ability they all compel respect, but they have not enriched the treasury of modern emotion, nor have they transformed the older historical painting in the essence of its being. and the man who handles again and again motives derived from what happens to be the mode in colours renders no service to art. delaroche is dead; but though he may be disinterred he cannot be brought to life, and the spaniards merely dug out of the earth mummies in which the breath of life was wanting. their works are not directing-posts to the future, but the last _revenants_ of that histrionic spirit which wandered like a ghost through the art of all nations. even the composition, the shining colours, the settles and carpets picturesquely spread upon the ground, are the same as in gallait. how often have these precious stage properties done duty in tragic funereal service since delaroche's "murder of the duke of guise" and piloty's "seni"! [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ pradilla. the surrender of granada.] [illustration: _kunst unserer zeit._ pradilla. on the beach.] and these conceptions, nourished upon historical painting, had an injurious influence upon the handling of the modern picture of the period. even here there is an endeavour to make a compromise with the traditional historic picture, since artists painted scenes from modern popular life upon great spaces of canvas, transforming them into pageants or pictures of tragical ceremonies, and sought too much after subjects with which the splendid and motley colours of historical painting would accord. _viniegra y lasso_ and _mas y fondevilla_ execute great processions filing past, with bishops, monks, priests, and choristers. all the figures stand beaming in brightness against the sky, but the light glances from the oily mantles of the figures without real effect. _alcazar tejedor_ paints a young priest reading his "first mass" in the presence of his parents, and merely renders a theatrical scene in modern costume, merely transfers to an event of the present that familiar "moment of highest excitement" so popular since the time of delaroche. by his "death of the matador," and "the christening," bought by vanderbilt for a hundred and fifty thousand francs, _josé villegas_, in ability the most striking of them all, acquired a european name; whilst a hospital scene by _luis jimenez_ of seville is the single picture in which something of the seriousness of french naturalism is perceptible, but it is an isolated example from a province of interest which is otherwise not to be found in spain. [illustration: villegas. death of the matador.] indeed, the spaniards are by no means most attractive in gravely ceremonial and stiffly dignified pictures, but rather when they indulge in unpretentious "little painting" in the manner of fortuny. yet even these wayward "little painters," with their varied glancing colour, are not to be properly reckoned amongst the moderns. their painting is an art dependent on deftness of hand, and knows no higher aim than to bring together in a picture as many brilliant things as possible, to make a charming bouquet with glistening effects of costume, and the play, the reflections, and the caprices of sunbeams. the earnest modern art which sprang from manet and the fontainebleau painters avoids this kaleidoscopic sport with varied spots of colour. all these little folds and mouldings, these prismatic arts of blending, and these curious reflections are what the moderns have no desire to see: they half close their eyes to gain a clearer conception of the chief values; they simplify; they refuse to be led from the main point by a thousand trifles. their pictures are works of art, while those of the disciples of fortuny are sleights of artifice. in all this _bric-à-brac_ art there is no question of any earnest analysis of light. the motley spots of colour yield, no doubt, a certain concord of their own; but there is a want of tone and air, a want of all finer sentiment: everything seems to have been dyed, instead of giving the effect of colour. nevertheless those who were independent enough not to let themselves be entirely bewitched by the deceptive adroitness of a conjurer have painted little pictures of talent and refinement; taking fortuny's _rococo_ works as their starting-point, they have represented the fashionable world and the highly coloured and warm-blooded life of the people of modern spain with a bold and spirited facility. but they have not gone beyond the observation of the external sides of life. they can show guitarreros clattering with castanets and pandarets, majas dancing, and ribboned heroes conquering bulls instead of jews and moors. yet their pictures are at any rate blithe, full of colour, flashing with sensuous brilliancy, and at times they are executed with stupendous skill. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ benliure y gil. a vision in the colosseum.] _martin rico_ was for the longest period in italy with fortuny, and his pictures also have the glitter of a casket of jewels, the pungency of sparkling champagne. some of his sea-pieces in particular--for instance, those of the canal in venice and the bay of fontarabia--might have been painted by fortuny. in others he seems quieter and more harmonious than the latter. his execution is more powerful, less marked by spirited stippling, and his light gains in intensity and atmospheric refinement what it loses in mocking caprices, while his little figures have a more animated effect, notwithstanding the less piquant manner in which they are painted. their outlines are scarcely perceptible, and yet they are seen walking, jostling, and pressing against each other; whereas those of fortuny, precisely through the more subtle and microscopic method in which they have been executed, often seem as though they were benumbed in movement. certain market scenes, with a dense crowd of buyers and sellers, are peculiarly spirited, rapid sketches, with a gleaming charm of colour. _zamacois_, _casanova_, and _raimundo de madrazo_, fortuny's brother-in-law, show no less virtuosity of the palette. sea-pieces and little landscapes alternate with scenes from spanish popular life, where they revel, like fortuny, in a scintillating medley of colour. later, in paris, madrazo was likewise much sought after as a painter of ladies' portraits, as he lavished on his pictures sometimes a fine _hautgoût_ of fragrant _rococo_ grace _a la_ chaplin, and sometimes devoted himself with taste and deftness to symphonic _tours de force à la_ carolus duran. particularly memorable is the portrait of a graceful young girl in red, exhibited in the munich exhibition of . she is seated upon a sofa of crimson silk, and her feet rest upon a dark red carpet. equally memorable in the paris world exhibition of was a pierrette, whose costume ran through the whole gamut from white to rose-colour. her skirt was of a darker, her bodice of a brighter red, and a light rose-coloured stocking peeped from beneath a grey silk petticoat; over her shoulders lay a white swansdown cape, and white gloves and white silk shoes with rose-coloured bows completed her toilette. his greatest picture represented "the end of a masked ball." before the paris opera cabs are waiting with coachmen sleeping or smoking, whilst a troop of pierrots and pierrettes, harlequins, japanese girls, _rococo_ gentlemen, and turkish women are streaming out, sparkling with the most glittering colours in the grey light of a winter morning, in which the gas lamps cast a warm yellow glimmer. [illustration: casado. the bells of huesca.] even those who made their chief success as historical painters became new beings when they came forward with such piquant "little paintings." _francisco domingo_ in valencia is the spanish meissonier, who has painted little horsemen before an inn, mercenary soldiers, newspaper readers, and philosophers of the time of louis xv, with all the daintiness in colour associated with the french patriarch--although a huge canvas, "the last day of sagunt," has the reputation of being his chief performance. in the year in which he exhibited his "vision in the colosseum," _benliure y gil_ made a success with two little pictures stippled in varied colours, the "month of mary" and the "distribution of prizes in valencia," in which children, smartened and dressed in white frocks, are moving in the ante-chambers of a church, decorated for the occasion. _casado_, painter of the sanguinary tragedy of huesca, showed himself an admirable little master full of elegance and grace in "the bull-fighter's reward," a small eighteenth-century picture. the master of the great hospital picture, _jimenez_, took the world by surprise at the very same time by a "capuchin friar's sermon before the cathedral of seville," which flashed with colour. _emilio sala y francés_, whose historical masterpiece was the "expulsion of the jews from spain in ," delights elsewhere in spring, southern gardens with luxuriant vegetation, and delicate _rococo_ ladies, holding up their skirts filled with blooming roses, or gathering wild flowers among the grass. _antonio fabrés_ was led to the east by the influence of regnault, and excited attention by his aquarelles and studies in pen and ink, in which he represented oriental and roman street figures with astonishing adroitness. but the _ne plus ultra_ is attained by the bold and winning art of _pradilla_, which is like a thing shot out of a pistol. he is the greatest product of contemporary spain, a man with a talent for improvisation as ingenious as it was free, who treated with equal facility the most varied subjects. in the bold and spirited decorations with which he embellished spanish palaces he sported with nymphs and loves and floating genii _à la_ tiepolo. all the grace of the _rococo_ period is cast over his works in the palais murga in madrid. the figures join each other with ease--coquettish nymphs swaying upon boughs, and audacious "putti" tumbling over backwards in quaint games. nowhere is there academic sobriety, and everywhere life, pictorial inspiration, the intoxicating joyousness of a fancy creating without effort and revelling in the festal delight of the senses. in the accompanying wall pictures he revived the age of the troubadours, of languishing love-song and knightly romance free from the burden of thought, in tenderly graceful and fluent figures. and this same painter, who filled these huge spaces of wall, lightly dallying with subjects from the world of fable, seems another man when he grasps fragments from the life of our own age in pithy inspirations sure in achievement. his historical pictures are works which compel respect; but those paintings on the most diminutive scale, in which he represented scenes from the roman carnival and the life in spanish camps, the shore of the sea and the joy of a popular merry-making with countless figures of the most intense vividness, carried out with an unrivalled execution of detail which is yet free from anything laboured, and full of splendour and glowing colour,--these, indeed, are performances of painting beside which as a musical counterpart at best paganini's variations on the g string are comparable--sleights of art of which only pradilla was capable, and such as only fortuny painted forty years ago. two masters who do not live at home, but in france, have followed still further the modern development of art with great power. the first is _zuloaga_. the pictures of this artist have something truly spanish, something that one as an admirer of goya looks for eagerly in spanish pictures. at the first glance the eye receives rather a shock. one seeks in vain for delicate painting of light in zuloaga, or exquisite harmonies of colour. he places the crudest reds and yellows next to each other, strong, almost brutal, like a poster. with an uncompromising love of truth he paints the rouge-smeared cheeks and blackened eyebrows of his women-about-town, does not even try to make their movements graceful or give their costumes a touch of modish smartness. but what a breadth of conception! with what daring he sweeps his bold strokes over the picture! it is just because he avoids all flattery, because he brings nothing foreign, nothing cosmopolitan into his exclusive world, that the characteristics of spanish life are mirrored with such truth in his works. especially in his portrait of the popular poet, don miguel de segovia, the whole picture is suffused with a rare don quixote feeling. velasquez' pablillas stands before you reincarnated. it is interesting, too, that zuloaga, though in france, remains still a spaniard. even when he paints parisiennes he translates toilette and gesture into grandiose spanish style. the influence of the french school is much more marked in the second of these spanish masters, _hermen anglada_. he has come to the front in the exhibitions of the last few years. besnard has given him much of his refined epicurism, and this french _hautgoût_ lends his pictures a charm which is altogether their own. if you are seeking for unusual and quaint effects you will find them in this spaniard, who paints pale, colourless women in the most astonishing costumes, places them in the midst of sensuous, misty landscapes, and gives you a glistening potpourri of colours. but anglada's work is in itself the best testimony to the fact that the spain of to-day is getting worn-out and bloodless. there is something senile and sapless in this over-refined art that takes pleasure in nothing but the most extraordinary nuances, and that needs something very unusual to tickle its nerves. chapter xxxvi italy italy has played a very different part from that of spain in the development of modern art. even at the world exhibition of edmond about called italy "the grave of painting" in his _voyage à travers l'exposition des beaux-arts_. he mentions a few piedmontese professors, but about florence, naples, and rome he found nothing to say. the great exhibition of in england was productive of no more favourable criticism, for w. bürger's account is as little consolatory as about's. "renowned italy and proud spain," writes burger, "have no longer any painters who can rival those of other schools. there is nothing to be said about the rooms where the italians, spanish, and swiss are exhibited." to-day there are in italy a great number of vigorous painters. in angelo de gubernati's lexicon of artists there are over two thousand names, some of which are favourably known in other countries also. but the mass dwindles to a tiny heap if those only are included who have risen from the level of dexterous picture-makers to that of painters of real importance in the world of art. whether it be from direct influence or similarity of origin, fortuny has found his ablest successors amongst the neapolitan artists. as early as the seventeenth century the school of painting there was very different from those in the rest of italy; the greek blood of the population and the wild, romantic scenery of the abruzzi gave it a peculiar stamp. southern _brio_, the joy of life, colour, and warmth, in contrast with the noble roman ideal of form, were the qualities of salvator rosa, luca giordano, and ribera, bold and fiery spirits. and a breath of such power seems to live in their descendants still. even now neapolitan painting sings, dances, and laughs in a bacchanal of colour, pleasure, delight in life, and glowing sunshine. [illustration: _kunst für alle._ morelli. the temptation of st. anthony.] a wild and restless spirit, _domenico morelli_, whose biography is like a chapter from _rinaldo rinaldini_, is the head of this neapolitan school. he was born on th august, , and in his youth he is said to have been, first a pupil in a seminary of priests, then an apprentice with a mechanician, and for some time even _facchino_. he never saw such a thing as an academy. indeed, it was a bohemian life that he led, making his meals of bread and cheese, wandering for weeks together with byron's poems in his pocket upon the seashore between posilippo and baiæ. in he fought against king ferdinand, and was left severely wounded on the battle-field. after these episodes of youth he first became a painter, beginning his career in with the large picture "the iconoclasts," followed in by a "tasso," and in by a "saul and david." biblical pictures remained his province even later, and he was the only artist in italy who handled these subjects from an entirely novel point of view, pouring into them a peculiarly exalted and imaginative spirit. a madonna rocking her sleeping child, whilst her song is accompanied by a legion of cherubs playing upon instruments, "the reviling of christ," "the ascension," "the descent from the cross," "christ walking on the sea," "the raising of the daughter of jairus," "the expulsion of the money-changers from the temple," "the marys at the grave," "salve regina," and "mary magdalene meeting christ risen from the grave," are the principal stages of his great christian epic, and in their imaginative naturalism a new revolutionary language finds utterance through all these pictures. there is in them at times something of the mystical quietude of the east, and at times something of the passionate breath of eugène delacroix. in these pictures he revealed himself as a true child of the land of the sun, a lover of painting which scintillates and flickers. as yet hard, ponderous, dark, and plastic in "the iconoclasts," he was a worshipper of light and resplendent in colour in the "mary magdalene." "the temptation of st. anthony" probably marks the summit of his creative power in the matter of colour. morelli has conceived the whole temptation as a hallucination. the saint squats upon the ground, claws with his fingers, and with fixed gaze tries to stifle thoughts, full of craving sensuality, which are flaming in him. yet they throng ever more thickly, take shape ever more distinctly, are transformed into red-haired women who detach themselves from corners upon all sides. they rise from beneath the matting, wind nearer from the depth of the cavern; even the breeze that caresses the fevered brow of the tormented man changes into the head of a girl pressing her kisses upon him. only naples could produce an artist at once so bizarre, so many-sided and incoherent, so opulent and strange. younger men of talent trooped around him. a fiery spirit, haughty and independent, he became the teacher of all the younger generation. he led them to behold the sun and the sea, to marvel at nature in her radiant brightness. through him the joy in light and colour came into neapolitan painting, that rejoicing in colour which touches such laughing concords in the works of his pupil _paolo michetti_. a man of bold and magnificent talent, the genuine product of the wild abruzzi, michetti was the son of a day-labourer, like morelli. however, a man of position became the protector of the boy, who was early left an orphan. but neither at the academy at naples nor in paris and london did this continue long. as early as he was back in naples, and settled amid the abruzzi, close to the adriatic, in francavilla à mare, near ostona, a little nest which the traveller passes just before he goes on board the oriental steamer at brindisi. here he lives out of touch with old pictures, in the thick of the vigorous life of the italian people. in he painted the work which laid the foundation of his celebrity, "the corpus domini procession at chieti," a picture which rose like a firework in its boisterous, exhilarating medley of bright colours. the procession is seen just coming out of church: men, women, naked children, monks, priests, a canopy, choristers with censers, old men and youths, people who kneel and people who laugh, the mist of incense, the beams of the sun, flowers scattered on the ground, a band of musicians, and a church façade with rich and many-coloured ornaments. there is the play of variously hued silk, and colours sparkle in all the tints of the prism. everything laughs, the faces and the costumes, the flowers and the sunbeams. following upon this came a picture which he called "spring and the loves." it represented a desolate promontory in the blue sea, and upon it a troop of cupids, playing round a hawthorn bush in full flower, are scuffling, buffeting each other, and leaping as riotously as neapolitan street-boys. some were arrayed like little japanese, some like grecian terra-cotta figures, whilst a marble bridge in the neighbourhood shone in indigo blue. the whole picture gleamed with red, blue, green, and yellow patches of colour: a serpentine dance painted twelve years before the appearance of loie fuller. then again he painted the sea. it is noon, and the sultry heat broods over the azure tide. naked fishermen are standing in it, and on the shore gaily dressed women are searching for mussels; whilst, in the background, vessels with the sun playing on their sails are mirrored brightly in the water. or the moon rises casting greenish reflections upon the body of christ, which shines like phosphorus as it is being taken from the cross: or there is a flowery landscape upon a summer evening; birds are settling down for the night, and little angels are kissing each other and laughing. in all these pictures michetti showed himself an improviser of astonishing dexterity, solving every difficulty as though it were child's play, and shedding a brilliant colour over everything--a man to whom "painting" was as much a matter of course as orthography is to ourselves. even the paris world exhibition of made him celebrated as an artist, and from that time his name was to the italian ear a symbol for something new, unexpected, wild, and extravagant. the word "michetti" means splendid materials, dazzling flesh-tones, conflicting hues set with intention beside each other, the luxuriant bodies of women basking in heat and sun, fantastic landscapes created in the mad brain of the artist, strange and curious frames, and village idylls in the glowing blaze of the sun. there are no lifeless spots in his works; every whim of his takes shape, as if by sorcery, in splendid figures. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ michetti. going to church.] another pupil of morelli, _edoardo dalbono_, completed his duty to history by a scene of horror _à la_ laurens, "the excommunication of king manfred," and then became the painter of the bay of naples. "the isle of sirens" was the first production of his able, appetising, and nervously vibrating brush. there is a steep cliff dropping sheer into the blue sea. two antique craft are drawing near, the crews taking no heed of the reefs and sandbanks. with phantomlike gesture the naked women stretch out their arms beckoning, embodiments as they are of the deadly beautiful and voluptuously cruel ocean. by degrees the sea betrayed to him all its secrets--its strangest combinations of colour and atmospheric effects, its transparency, and its eternally shifting phases of ebb and flow. he has painted the bay of naples under bright, hot noon and the gloom of night, in the purple light of the sinking sun and in the strange and many-coloured mood of twilight. at one moment it shines and plays variegated and joyous in blue, grass-green, and violet tones; at another it seems to glitter with millions of phosphorescent sparks: the rosy clouds of the sky are glassed in it, and the lights of the houses irregularly dotted over abrupt mountain-chains or the dark-red glow of lava luridly shining from vesuvius. now and then he painted scenes from neapolitan street-life--old, weather-beaten seamen, young sailors with features as sharply cut as if cast in bronze, beautiful, fiery, brown women, shooting the hot southern flame from their eyes, houses painted white or orange-yellow, with the sun glittering on the windows. the "voto alla madonna del carmine" was the most comprehensive of these southern pictures. everything shines in joyous blue, yellowish-green, and red colours. warmth, life, light, brilliancy, and laughter are the elements on which his art is based. [illustration: _kunst für alle._ michetti. the corpus domini procession at chieti.] _alceste campriani_, _giacomo di chirico_, _rubens santoro_, _federigo cortese_, _francesco netti_, _edoardo toffano_, _giuseppe de nigris_ have, all of them, this kaleidoscopic sparkle, this method of painting which gives pictures the appearance of being mosaics of precious stones. as in the days of the renaissance, the church is usually the scene of action, though not any longer as the house of god, but as the background of a many-coloured throng. as a rule these pictures contain a crowd of canopies, priests, and choristers, and country-folk, bowing or kneeling when the host is carried by, or weddings, horse-races, and country festivals; and everything is vivid and joyous in colour, saturated with the glowing sun of naples. alceste campriani's chief work was entitled "the return from montevergine." carriages and open rack-waggons are dashing along, the horses snorting and the drivers smacking their whips, while the peasants, who have had their fill of sweet wine, are shouting and singing, and the orange-sellers in the street are crying their goods. a coquettish glancing light plays over the gay costumes, and the white dust sparkles like fluid silver, as it rises beneath the hoofs of the horses wildly plunging forward. the leading work of _giacomo di chirico_, who became mad in , was "a wedding in the basilicata." it represents a motley crowd. the entire village has set out to see the ceremony. the wedding guests are descending the church steps to the square, which is decked out with coloured carpets and strewn with flowers. triumphal arches have been set up, and the pictures of the madonna are hung with garlands. meanwhile the _sindaco_ gives his arm to the bride, beneath whose gay costume a charmingly graceful little foot is peeping out. then the bridegroom follows with the _sindaco's_ wife. all the village girls are looking on with curiosity, and the musicians are playing. winter has covered the square with a white cloak of snow; yet the sunbeams sport over it, making it shine vividly with a thousand reflections. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ favretto. on the piazzetta.] of course, the derivation of all these pictures is easily recognisable. almost all the neapolitan painters studied at fortuny's in the seventies in rome, and when they came home again they perceived that the life of the people offered themes which had a coquettish fitness in fortuny's scale of tones. from the variously coloured magnificence of old churches, the red robes of ecclesiastics, the gaudy splendour of the country-people's clothes, and the gay glory of rags amongst the neapolitan children, they composed a modern _rococo_, rejoicing in colour, whilst the spaniard had fled to the past to attain his gleaming effects. a great number of the italians do the same even now. in numerous costume pictures, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, flashing with silk and velvet, the southerner's bright pleasure in colour still loves to celebrate its orgies. gay trains rustle, rosy loves laugh down from the walls, venetian chandeliers shed their radiance; no other epoch in history enables the painter with so much ease to produce such an efflorescence of full-toned chords of colour. with his shining glow of hue the delectable and spirited _favretto_ (who, like fortuny, entered the world of art as a victor, and, like him again, was snatched from it when barely thirty-seven, after a brief and brilliant career) stands at the head of this group. the child of poor parents, indeed the son of a joiner, he was born in venice in , and, like the spaniard, passed a youth which was full of privations. but all the cares of existence, even the loss of an eye, did not hinder him from seeing objects under a laughing brightness of colour. through his studies and the bent of his fancy he had come to be no less at home in the venice of the eighteenth century than in that of his own time. this venice of francesco guardi, this city of enchantment surrounded with the gleam of olden splendour, the scene of rich and brilliantly coloured banquets and a graceful and modish society, rose once more under favretto's hands in fabulous beauty. what _brio_ of technique, what harmony of colours, were to be found in the picture "un incontro," the charming scene upon the rialto bridge, with the bowing cavalier and the lady coquettishly making her acknowledgments! this was the first picture which gave him a name in the world. what fanfares of colour were in the two next pictures, "banco lotto" and "erbajuolo veneziano"! at the exhibition in turin in he was represented by "the bath" and "susanna and the elders"; at that in venice in he celebrated his last and greatest triumph. the three pictures "the friday market upon the rialto bridge," "the canal ferry near santa margherita," and "on the piazzetta" were the subject of enthusiastic admiration. all the venetian society of the age of goldoni, gozzi, and casanova had become vivid in this last picture, and moved over the smooth brick pavement of the piazzetta at the hour of the promenade, from the doge's palace to the library, and from the square of st. mark to the pillar of the lions and theodore, to and fro in surging life. men put up their glasses and chivalrously greeted the queens of beauty. the enchanting magic building of sansovino, the _loggetta_ with their bright marble pillars, bronze statues of blackish-grey, and magnificent lattice doors, formed the background of the standing and sauntering groups, whose variegated costumes united with the tones of marble and bronze to make a most beautiful combination of colours. favretto had a manner of his own, and, although a member of the school of fortuny, he was stronger and healthier than the latter. he drew like a genuine painter, without having too much of the fortuny fireworks. his soft, rich painting was that of a colourist of distinction, always tasteful, exquisite in tone, and light and pleasing in technique. by the other italian costume painters the scale run through by fortuny was not enriched by new notes. most of their pictures are nugatory, coquettishly sportive toys, masterly in technique no doubt, but so empty of substance that they vanish from memory like novels read upon a railway journey. many have no greater import than dresses, cloaks, and hats worn by ladies during a few weeks of the season. sometimes their significance is not even so great, since there are modistes and dressmakers who have more skill in making ruches and giving the right _nuance_ to colours. some small part of favretto's refined taste seems to have been communicated to the venetian _antonio lonza_, who delights in mingling the gleaming splendour of oriental carpets, fans, and screens amid the motley, picturesque costumes of the _rococo_ period--japanese who perform as jugglers and knife-throwers in quaint _rococo_ gardens before the old venetian nobility. but the centre of this costume painting is florence, and the great mart for it the _società artistica_, where there are yearly exhibitions. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ favretto. susanna and the elders.] francesco vinea, tito conti, federigo andreotti, and edoardo gelli are in italy the special manufacturers who have devoted themselves, with the assistance of meissonier, gérôme, and fortuny, to scenes from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, to plumed hats, wallenstein boots, and horsemen's capes, to renaissance lords and laughing renaissance ladies, and they have thereby won great recognition in germany. pretty, languishing women in richly coloured costumes, tippling soldiers and gallant cavaliers, laughing peasant women and trim serving-girls drawing wine in the cellar vaults and setting it before a trooper, who in gratitude affectionately puts his arm round their waist, beautiful and still more languishing noble ladies, who laugh with a parrot or a dog, instead of a trooper, in apartments richly furnished with gobelins--such for the most part are the subjects treated by _francesco vinea_ with great virtuosity bordering on the routine of a typewriter. his technique is neither refined nor fascinating; the colours are so crude that they affect the eye as a false note the ear. but the mechanical power of his painting is great. he has much ability, far more, indeed, than sichel, and possesses the secret of painting, in an astonishing manner, the famous lace kerchiefs wound round the heads of his fair ones. _andreotti_ and _tito conti_ work in the same fashion, except that the ballad-singers and rustic idylls of andreotti are the smoother and more mawkish, whereas the pictures of conti make a somewhat more refined and artistic effect. his colour is superior and more transparent, and his tapestry backgrounds are warmer. and, so far as one can judge from their pictures, life runs as merrily for the italians of the present as it did for those _rococo_ cavaliers. hanging here and there beside the serious art of other nations, these little picture-people enjoy their careless tinsel pomp; art is a gay thing for them, as gay as a sunday afternoon with a procession and fireworks, walks and sips of sherbet, to an italian woman. by the side of the blue-plush and red-velvet costume-picture comic _genre_ still holds its sway: barbaric in colour and with materials which are merrier than is appropriate in tasteful pictures, _gaetano chierici_ represents children, both good and naughty, making their appearance upon a tiny theatre. _antonio rotta_ renders comic episodes from the life of venetian cobblers and the menders of nets. _scipione vannuttelli_ paints young girls in white dresses arrayed as nuns or being confirmed in church. _francesco monteverde_ rejoices in comical _intermezzi_ in the style of grützner--for instance, an ecclesiastical gentleman observing, to his horror, that his pretty young servant-girl is being kissed by a smart lad in the yard. this is more or less his style of subject. _ettore tito_ paints the pretty venetian laundresses whom passini, cecil van haanen, charles ulrich, eugène blaas, and others introduced into art. only a very few struck deeper notes. _luigi nono_, in venice, painted his beautiful picture "refugium peccatorum"; _ferragutti_, the milanese, his "workers in the turnip field," a vivid study of sunlight of serious veracity; and after these _giovanni segantini_ came forward with his forcible creations, in which he has demonstrated that it is possible for a man to be an italian and yet a serious artist. [illustration: _hanfstaengl._ tito. the slipper seller.] segantini's biography is like a novel. born the child of poor parents, in arco, in , he was left, after the death of his parents, to the care of a relative in milan with whom he passed a most unhappy time. he then wanted to make his fortune in france, and set out upon foot; but he did not get very far, in fact he managed to hire himself out as a swine-herd. after this he lived for a whole year alone in the wild mountains, worked in the field, the stable, the barn. then came the well-known discovery, which one could not believe were it not to be read in gubernati. one day he drew the finest of his pigs with a piece of charcoal upon a mass of rock. the peasants ran in a crowd and took the block of stone, together with the young giotto, in triumph to the village. he was given assistance, visited the school of art in milan, and now paints the things he did in his youth. in a secluded village of the alps, val d'albola in switzerland, a thousand metres above the sea, amid the grand and lofty mountains, he settled down, surrounded only by the peasants who make a precarious living from the soil. out of touch with the world of artists the whole year round, observing great nature at every season and every hour of the day, fresh and straightforward in character, he is one of those natures of the type of millet, in whom heart and hand, man and artist, are one and the same thing. his shepherd and peasant scenes from the valleys of the high alps are free from all flavour of _genre_. the life of these poor and humble beings passes without contrasts and passions, being spent altogether in work, which fills the long course of the day in monotonous regularity. the sky sparkles with a sharp brilliancy. the spiky yellow and tender green of the fields forces its way modestly from the rocky ground. in front is something like a hedge where a cow is grazing, or there is a shepherdess pasturing her sheep. something majestic there is in this cold nature, where the sunshine is so sharp, the air so thin. and the primitive, it might almost be said antique, execution of these pictures is in accord with the primitive simplicity of the subjects. in fact, segantini's pictures, with their cold silvery colours, and their contours so sharp in outline, standing out hard against the rarefied air, make an impression like encaustic paintings or mosaics. they have nothing alluring or pleasing, and there is, perhaps, even a touch of mannerism in this mosaic painting; but they are nevertheless exceedingly true, rugged, austere, and yet sunny. segantini opened up to painting an entirely new world of beauty, the poetry of the highlands. his appearance dates from the impressionistic period when preference was given to damp, misty atmospheres which toned down all colour and melted away all lines, and artists made a specialty of flat, monotonous plains. at that time the mountains were in bad repute, thanks to the old-fashioned painters of views, the masters of the "picture-postcard style." segantini led the way again up to the heights; but he did not paint the mountain-tops that, like the titans of old, strive to reach the sky; he painted the plateaus, not the plains of the lowlands, but of the highlands, lonely, weird, sublime, where man draws near to the heart of nature, far from the noise and struggle of everyday life. the air of the heights is there, the colours and lines speak with no uncertain voice. thus segantini learnt from the locale of his pictures to become the first master of line among the impressionists. how he mirrors in his pictures the stillness, the might and grandeur of these lofty heights! with what astounding truth his cold, clear colours make us feel the coldness and clearness of these regions. like a dome of steel, the sky stretches over the steel-blue lakes, clear as crystal, over the pale-green meadows in the grip of the frost; the tender foliage rustles and freezes in the quivering ice-cold air: there glaciers gleam, there glitters the snow, there the sun pours down his beams upon the earth like plumes of fire. a thunder cloud draws near, calm and majestic as destiny in its relentless course. there is something northern and virginal, something earnest and grandiose, which stands in strange contrast with the joyful, conventional smile which is otherwise spread over the countenance of italian painting. though he died so young, giovanni segantini will live for all time in the history of art. with the exception of segantini, not one of these painters will own that there are poverty-stricken and miserable people in his native land. an everlasting blue sky still laughs over italy, sunshine and the joy of life still hold undisputed sway over italian pictures. there is no work in sunny italy, and in spite of that there is no hunger. even where work is being done there are assembled only the fairest girls of lombardy, who kneel laughing and jesting on the strand, while the wind dallies with their clothes. they have a special delight for showing themselves while engaged at their toilette, in a bodice, their little feet in neat little slippers, their naked arms raised to arrange their red-gold hair. as a rule, however, they do nothing whatever but smile at you with their most seductive smile, which shows their pearl-white teeth, and ensnares every poor devil who does not suspect that they have smiled for years in the same way, and most of all with him who pays highest: "_j'aime les hommes parse que j'aime les truffes_." these pictures are almost invariably works which are well able to give pleasure to their possessor, only they seldom suggest discussion on the course of art. _trop de marchandise_ is the phrase generally used in the paris salon when the italians come under consideration. few there are amongst them who are real pioneers, spirits pressing seriously forward and having a quickening influence on others. the vital questions of the painting of free light, impressionism, and naturalism do not interest them in the least. a naïve, pleasant, lively, and self-complacent technique is in most cases the solitary charm of their works. one feels scarcely any inclination to search the catalogue for the painter's name, and whether the beauty--for she is not the first of her kind--who was called ninetta last year has now become lisa. most of these modern italians execute their pictures in the way in which gold pieces are minted, or in the way in which plastic works, which run through so many editions, are produced in italy. nowhere are more beautiful laces chiselled, and in the same manner painters render the shining splendour of satin and velvet, the glittering brilliancy of ornaments, and the starry radiance of the beautiful eyes of women. only, as soon as one has once seen them one knows the pictures by heart, as one knows the works in marble, and this is so because the painters had them by heart first. everywhere there are the evidences of talent, industry, ability, and spirit, but there is no soul in the spirit and no life in the colours. so many brilliant tones stand beside each other, and yet there is neither a refined tone nor the impression of truth to nature. [illustration: segantini. maternity.] in all this art of theirs there is scarcely a question of any serious landscape. apart from the works of some of the younger men--for instance, _belloni_, _serra_, _gola_, _filippini_, and others, who display an intimacy of observation which is worthy of honour--a really close connection with the efforts made across the alps is not achieved in these days. as a rule the landscapes are mere products of handicraft, which are striking for the moment by their technical routine, but seldom waken any finer feelings, whether the milanese paint the dazzling alpine effects or the venetian lagunes steeped in light, with gondolas and gondola-poles glowing in the sunshine, or the neapolitans set glittering upon the canvas their beautiful bay like a brilliant firework. most of them continue to pursue with complete self-satisfaction the flagged gondola of ziem; the conquests of the fontainebleau painters and of the impressionists are unnoticed by them. and this industrial characteristic of italian painting is sufficiently explained by the entire character of the country. the italian painter is not properly in a position to seek effects of his own and to make experiments. hardly anything is bought for the galleries, and there are few collectors of superior taste. he labours chiefly for the traveller, and this gives his performances the stamp of attractive mercantile wares. the italian is too much a man of business to undertake great trials of strength _pour le roi de prusse_. he paints no great pictures, which would be still-born children in his home, nor does he paint severe studies of _plein-air_, preferring a specious, exuberant, flickering, and glaring revel in colour. in general he produces nothing which will not easily sell, and has a fine instinct for the taste of the rich travelling public, who wish to see nothing which does not excite cheerful and superficial emotions. but it is possible that this decline of the latin races is connected with the nature of modern art itself. of late the words "germanic" and "latin" have been much abused. it has been proclaimed that the new art meant the victory of the german depth of feeling over the latin sense of form, the onset of german cordiality against the empty exaggeration in which the imitation of the cinquecento resulted. such assertions are always hard to maintain, because every century shows similar reactions of truth to nature against mannerism. nevertheless is it true that modern art, with its heartfelt devotion to everyday life and the mysteries of light, has an essentially germanic character, finding its ancestors not in raphael, michael angelo, and titian, but in the english of the eighteenth, the dutch of the seventeenth, and the germans of the sixteenth century. the italians and spaniards, whose entire intellectual culture rests upon a latin foundation, may therefore find it difficult to follow this change of taste. they either adhere to the old bombastic and theatrical painting of history, or they recast the new painting in an external drawing-room art draped with gaudy tinsel. even in france the rise of the new art meant, as it were, the victory of the frankish element over the gallic. millet the norman, courbet the frank, bastien-lepage of lorraine, drove back the latins--ingres and couture, cabanel and bouguereau--just as in the eighteenth century the netherlander watteau broke the yoke of the rigid latin classicism. it is perhaps no mere chance that the threads of the germanic aim in art were drawn out with such zeal by the germanic nations. with the latins a striking effect is made by brilliant technique, mastery of the manual art of painting, and careless sway over all the enchantments of the craft; with the teutons one stands in the presence of an art which is so natural and simple that one scarcely thinks of the means by which it was called into being. in one case there is virtuosity, ductility, and grace; in the other, health, intrinsic feeling, and temperament. chapter xxxvii england to english painting the acquisitions of the french could now give little that was radically novel, for the epoch-making labours of the pre-raphaelites were already in existence. apart from certain cases of direct borrowing, it has either completely preserved its autonomy, or recast everything assimilated from france in a specifically english fashion. it is in art, indeed, as it is with men themselves. the english travel more than any other people, for travel is a part of their education. they are to be met in every quarter of the globe--in africa, asia, america, or the european continent; and they scarcely need to open their mouths, even from a distance, to betray that they are english. in the same way there is no need of a catalogue at exhibitions to recognise all english pictures at the first glance. english painting is too english not to be fond of travel. the painter delights in reconnoitring all other schools and studying all styles; he is as much at home in the past as in the present. but as the english tourist, let him go to the world's end, retains everywhere his own customs, tastes, and habits, so english painting, even on its most adventurous journeys, remains unwaveringly true to its national spirit, and returns from all its wanderings more english than before; it adapts what is alien with the same delicious abnegation of all scruple with which the english tongue brings foreign words into harmony with its own sense of convenience. a certain softness of feeling and tenderness of spirit induce the english even in these days to avoid hard contact with reality. their art rejects everything in nature which is harsh, rude, and brutal; it is an art which polishes and renders the reality poetic at the risk of debilitating its power. it considers matters from the standpoint of what is pretty, touching, or intelligible, and by no means holds that everything true is necessarily beautiful. and just as little does the english eye--so much occupied with detail--see light in its most exquisite subtleties. indeed, it rather sees the isolated fact than the total harmony, and is clearer than it is fine. for this reason _plein-air_ painting has very few adepts, and the atmospheric influences which blunt the lines of objects, efface colours, and bring them nearer to each other, meet with little consideration. things are given all the sharpness of their outlines, and the harmony, which in the french follows naturally from the observation of light and air saturating form and colour, is the more artificially attained by everything being brought into concord in a bright and delicate tone, which is almost too fine. the audacities of impressionism are excluded, because painting which starts from a masterly seizure of total effect would seem too sketchy to english taste, which has been formed by ruskin. painting must be highly finished and highly elaborated; that is a _conditio sine qua non_ which english taste refuses to renounce in oil-painting as little as in water-colour, and in england they are more closely related than elsewhere, and have mutually influenced each other in the matter of technique. in fact, english water-colours seek to rival oil-painting in force and precision, and have therefore forfeited the charm of improvisation, the _verve_ of the first sketch, and the freshness and ease which they should have by their very character. through a curious change of parts oil-painting has a fancy for borrowing from water-colours their effects and their processes. english pictures have no longer anything heavy or oily, but they likewise show nothing of the manipulation of the brush, rather resembling large water-colours, perhaps even pastels or wax-painting. the colours are chosen with reserve, and everything is subdued and softened like the quiet step of the footman in the mansion of a nobleman. the special quality in all english pictures--putting aside a preference for bright yellow and vivid red in the older period--consists in a bluish or greenish luminous general tone, to which every english painter seems to conform as though it were a binding social convention, and it even recurs in english landscapes. in fact, english painting differs from french as england from france. france is a great city, and the name of this city is paris. here, and not in the provinces, lives that fashionable, thinking world which has become the guide of the nation and the censor of beauty, by the refinement of its taste and its preeminent intellect. the ideas which fly throughout the land upon invisible wires are born in paris. painting, likewise, receives them at first hand. it stands amid the seething whirlpool of the age, the heart's-blood of the present streams through all its veins, and there is nothing human that is alien to it, neither the filth nor the splendour of life, its laughter nor its misery. all the nerves of the great city are vibrating in it. paris has made her people refined and, at the same time, insatiate in enjoyment. every day they have need of new impressions and new theories to ward off tedium. and thus is explained the universally comprehensive sphere of subject in french painting, and its feverish versatility in technique. but london has, in no sense, the importance for england which paris has for france. it is a centre of attraction for business; but the more refined classes of society live in the country. as soon as one is off in the dover express country houses fly past on either side of the train. they are all over england--upon the shores of the lakes, upon the strand of the sea, upon the tops of the hills. and how pleasant they are, how well appointed, how delightful to look at, with their gabled roofs and their gleaming brickwork overgrown with ivy! around them stretches a fresh lawn which is rolled every morning, as soft as velvet. fat oxen, and sheep as white as if they had been just washed, lie upon the grass. thus all rustic england is like a great summer resort, where there is heard no sound of the ringing and throbbing strokes of life. nor is painting allowed to disturb this idyllic harmony. no one wishes that anything should remind him of the prose of life when his work is done and the town has vanished. schiller's assertion, "life is earnest, blithe is art," is here the first law of æesthetics. [illustration: _mag. of art._ lord leighton, p.r.a.] english painting is exclusively an art based on luxury, optimism, and aristocracy; in its neatness, cleanliness, and good-breeding it is exclusively designed to ingratiate itself with english ideas of comfort. yet the pictures have to satisfy very different tastes--the taste of a wealthy middle class which wishes to have substantial nourishment, and the æesthetic taste of an _élite_ class, which will only tolerate the quintessence of art, the most subtle art that can be given. but all these works are not created for galleries, but for the drawing-room of a private house, and in subject and treatment they have all to reckon with the ascendant view that a picture ought, in the first place, to be an attractive article of furniture for the sitting-room. the traveller, the lover of antiquity, is pleased by imitation of the ancient style; the sportsman, the lover of country life, has a delight in little rustic scenes; and the women are enchanted with feminine types. and everything must be kept within the bounds of what is charming, temperate, and prosperous, without in any degree suggesting the struggle for existence. the pictures have themselves the grace of that mundane refinement from the midst of which they are beheld. england is the country of the sculptures of the parthenon, the country where bulwer lytton wrote his _last days of pompeii_, and where the most grecian female figures in the world may be seen to move. thus painters of antique subjects still play an important part in the pursuit of english art--probably the pursuit of art rather than its development. for they have never enriched the treasury of modern sentiment. trained, all of them, in paris or belgium, they are equipped with finer taste, and have acquired abroad a more solid ability than james barry, haydon, and hinton, the half-barbaric english classicists of the beginning of the century. but at bottom--like cabanel and bouguereau--they represent rigid conservatism in opposition to progress, and the way in which they set about the reconstruction of an august or domestic antiquity is only distinguished by an english _nuance_ of race from that of couture and gérôme. _lord leighton_, the late highly cultured president of the royal academy, was the most dignified representative of this tendency. he was a classicist through and through--in the balance of composition, the rhythmical flow of lines, and the confession of faith that the highest aim of art is the representation of men and women of immaculate build. in the picture galleries of paris, rome, dresden, and berlin he received his youthful impressions; his artistic discipline he received under zanetti in florence, under wiertz and gallait in brussels, under steinle in frankfort, and under ingres and ary scheffer in paris. back in england once more, he translated couture into english as anselm feuerbach translated him into german with greater independence. undoubtedly there has never been anything upon his canvas which could be supposed ungentlemanlike. and as a nation is usually apt to prize most the very thing which has been denied it, and for which it has no talent, leighton was soon an object of admiration to the refined world. as early as he became an associate, and in november president of the royal academy. for sixteen years he sat like a jupiter upon his throne in london. an accomplished man of the world and a good speaker, a scholar who spoke many languages and had seen many countries, he possessed every quality which the president of an academy needs to have; he had an exceedingly imposing presence in his red gown, and did the honours of his house with admirable tact. but one stands before his works with a certain feeling of indifference. there are few artists with so little temperament as lord leighton, few in the same degree wanting in the magic of individuality. the purest academical art, as the phrase is understood of ingres, together with academical severity of form, is united with a softness of feeling recalling hofmann of dresden; and the result is a placid classicality adapted _ad usum delphini_, a classicality foregoing the applause of artists, but all the more in accordance with the taste of a refined circle of ladies. his chief works, "the star of bethlehem," "orpheus and eurydice," "jonathan's token to david," "electra at the tomb of agamemnon," "the daphnephoria," "venus disrobing for the bath," and the like, are amongst the most refined although the most frigid creations of contemporary english art. [illustration: leighton. captive andromache. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] [illustration: _portfolio._ leighton. sir richard burton.] perhaps the "captive andromache" of is the quintessence of what he aimed at. the background is the court of an ancient palace, where female slaves are gathered together fetching water. in the centre of the stage, as the leading actress, stands andromache, who has placed her pitcher on the ground before her, and waits with dignity until the slaves have finished their work. this business of water-drawing has given leighton an opportunity for combining an assemblage of beautiful poses. the widow of hector expresses a queenly sorrow with decorum, while the amphora-bearers are standing or walking hither and thither, in the manner demanded by the pictures upon grecian vases, but without that sureness of line which comes of the real observation of life. in its dignity of style, in the noble composition and purity of the lines which circumscribe the forms with so much distinction and in so impersonal a manner, the picture is an arid and measured work, cold as marble and smooth as porcelain. "hercules wrestling with death for the body of alcestis" might be a grecian relief upon a sarcophagus, so carefully balanced are the masses and the lines. the pose of alcestis is that of the nymphs of the parthenon; only, it would not have been so fine were these not in existence. his "music lesson" of is charming, and his "elijah in the wilderness" is a work of style. and in his frescoes in the south kensington museum there is a perfect compendium of beautiful motives of gesture. the eye delights to linger over these feminine forms, half nude, half enveloped with drapery, yet it notes, too, that these creations are composed out of the painter's knowledge and artistic reminiscences; there is a want of life in them, because the master has surrendered himself to feeling with the organs of a dead greek. leighton's colour is always carefully considered, scrupulously polished, and endowed with the utmost finish, but it never has the magical charm by which one recognises the work of a true colourist. it is rather the result of painstaking study and cultivated taste than of personal feeling. the grace of form is always carefully prepared--a thing which has the consciousness of its own existence. beautiful and spontaneous as the movements undoubtedly are, one has always a sense that the artist is present, anxiously watching lest any of his actors offend against a law of art. [illustration: _brothers, photo._ leighton. the last watch of hero. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] lord leighton's pupils, poynter and prinsep, followed him with a good deal of determination. _val prinsep_ shares with leighton the smooth forms of a polished painting, whereas _edward poynter_ by his more earnest severity and metallic precision verges more on that union of aridness and style characteristic of ingres. his masterpiece, "a visit to Æsculapius," is in point of technique one of the best products of english classicism. to the left Æsculapius is sitting beneath a pillared porch overgrown with foliage, while, like raphael's jupiter in the farnesina, he supports his bearded chin thoughtfully with his left hand. a nymph who has hurt her foot appears, accompanied by three companions, before the throne of the god, begging him for a remedy. to say nothing of many other nude or nobly draped female figures, numerous decorative paintings in the houses of parliament, st. paul's, and st. stephen's church in dulwich owe their existence to this most industrious artist. _alma tadema_, the famous dutchman who has called to life amid the london fog the sacrifices of pompeii and herculaneum, stands to this grave academical group as gérôme to couture. as bulwer lytton, in the field of literature, created a picture of ancient civilisation so successful that it has not been surpassed by his followers, alma tadema has solved the problem of the picture of antique manners in the most authentic fashion in the province of painting. he has peopled the past, rebuilt its towns and refurnished its houses, rekindled the flame upon the sacrificial altars and awakened the echo of the dithyrambs to new life. poynter tells old fables, while alma tadema takes us in his company, and, like the best-informed cicerone, leads us through the streets of old athens, reconstructing the temples, altars, and dwellings, the shops of the butchers, bakers, and fishmongers, just as they once were. [illustration: leighton. the bath of psyche. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] this power of making himself believed alma tadema owes in the first place to his great archæological learning. by leys in brussels this side of his talent was first awakened, and in , when he went to italy for the first time, he discovered his archæological mission. how the old romans dressed, how their army was equipped and attired, became as well known to him as the appearance of the citizens' houses, the artizans' workshops, the market and the bath. he explored the ruins of temples, and he grew familiar with the privileges of the priests, the method of worship, of the sacrifices, and of the festal processions. there was no monument of brass or marble, no wall-painting, no pictured vase nor mosaic, no sample of ancient arts, of pottery, stone-cutting, or work in gold, that he did not study. his brain soon became a complete encyclopædia of antiquity. he knew the forms of architecture as well as he knew the old myths, and all the domestic appointments and robes as exactly as the usages of ritual. in brussels, as early as the sixties, this complete power of living in the period he chose to represent gave alma tadema's pictures from antiquity their remarkable _cachet_ of striking truthfulness to life. and london, whither he migrated in , offered even a more favourable soil for his art. whereas the french painters of the antique picture of manners often fell into a diluted idealism and a lifeless traffic with old curiosities, with alma tadema one stands in the presence of a veritable fragment of life; he simply paints the people amongst whom he lives and their world. the pompeian house which he has built in london, with its dreamy vividarium, its great golden hall, its egyptian decorations, its ionic pillars, its mosaic floor, and its oriental carpets, contains everything one needs to conjure up the times of nero and the byzantine emperors. it is surrounded by a garden in the old roman style, and a large conservatory adjoining is planted with plane-trees and cypresses. all the celebrated marble benches and basins, the figures of stone and bronze, the tiger-skins and antique vessels and garments of his pictures, may be found in this notable house in the midst of london. whether he paints the baths, the amphitheatre, or the atrium, the scenes of his pictures are no other than parts of his own house which he has faithfully painted. [illustration: _dixon, photo._ poynter. idle fears. (_by permission of lord hillingdon, the owner of the picture._)] and the figures moving in them are englishwomen. among all the beautiful things in the world there are few so beautiful as english girls. those tall, slender, vigorous figures that one sees upon the beach at brighton are really like greek women, and even the garb which they wear in playing tennis is as free and graceful as that of the grecian people. alma tadema was able to introduce into his works these women of lofty and noble figure with golden hair, these forms made for sculpture--to use the phrase of winckelmann--without any kind of beautifying idealism. in their still-life his pictures are the fruit of enormous archæological learning which has become intuitive vision, but his figures are the result of a healthy rendering of life. in this way the unrivalled classical local colour of his interiors is to be explained, as well as the lifelike character of his figures. by his works a remarkable problem is solved: an intense feeling for modern reality has called the ancient world into being in a credible fashion, whilst it has remained barricaded against all others who have approached it by the road of idealism. [illustration: _brothers, photo._ poynter. the ides of march. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] it is only in this method of execution that he still stands upon the same ground as gérôme, with whom he shares a taste for anecdote, and a pedantic, neat, and correct style of painting. his ancient comedies played by english actors are an excellent archæological lecture; they rise above the older picture of antique manners by a more striking fidelity to nature, very different from the generalisation of the classicists' ideal; yet as a painter he is wanting in every quality. his marble shines, his bronze gleams, and everything is harmonised with the green of the cypresses and delicate rose-colour of the oleander blossoms in a cool marble tone; but there is also something marble in the figures themselves. he draws and stipples, works like a copper engraver, and goes over his work again and again with a fine and feeble brush. his pictures have the effect of porcelain, his colours are hard and lifeless. one remembers the anecdotes, but one cannot speak of any idea of colour. [illustration: _dixon, photo._ poynter. a visit to Æsculapius. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] [illustration: _l'art._ alma tadema. sappho. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] _albert moore_ is to be noted as the solitary "painter" of the group: a very delicate artist, with a style peculiar to himself; one who is not so well known upon the continent as he deserves to be. his province, also, is ancient greece, yet he never attempted to reconstruct classical antiquity as a learned archæologist. merely as a painter did he love to dream amid the imperishable world of beauty known to ancient times. his figures are ethereal visions, and move in dreamland. he was influenced, indeed, by the sculptures of the parthenon, but the japanese have also penetrated his spirit. from the greeks he learnt the combination of noble lines, the charm of dignity and quietude, while the japanese gave him the feeling for harmonies of colour, for soft, delicate, blended tones. by a capricious union of both these elements he formed his refined and exquisite style. the world which he has called into being is made up of white marble pillars; in its gardens are cool fountains and marble pavements; but it is also full of white birds, soft colours, and rosy blossoms from kioto, and peopled with graceful and mysterious maidens, clothed in ideal draperies, who love rest, enjoy an eternal youth, and are altogether contented with themselves and with one another. it might be said that the old figures of tanagra had received new life, were it not felt, at the same time, that these beings must have drunk a good deal of tea. not that they are entirely modern, for their figures are more plastic and symmetrical than those of the actual daughters of albion; but in all their movements they have a certain _chic_, and in all their shades of expression a weary modernity, through which they deviate from the conventional woman of classicism. otherwise the pictures of albert moore are indescribable. frail, ethereal beings, blond as corn, lounge in æesthetically graduated grey and blue, salmon-coloured, or pale purple draperies upon bright-hued couches decorated by japanese artists with most æsthetic materials; or are standing in violet robes with white mantles embroidered with gold, by a grey-blue sea which has a play of greenish tones where it breaks upon the shore. they stand out with their rosy garments from the light grey background and the delicate arabesques of a gleaming silvery gobelin, or in a graceful pose occupy themselves with their rich draperies. they do as little as they possibly can, but they are living and seductive, and the stuffs which they wear and have around them are delicately and charmingly painted. it is harmonies of tone and colour that exclusively form the subject of every work. the figures, accessories, and detail first take shape when the scheme of colour has been found; and then albert moore takes a delight in naming his pictures "apricots," "oranges," "shells," etc., according as the robes are apricot or orange colour or adorned with light ornaments of shell. everything which comes from his hands is delightful in the charm of delicate simplicity, and for any one who loves painting as painting it has something soothing in the midst of the surrounding art, which still confuses painting with poetry more than is fitting. [illustration: _mansell photo._ alma tadema. a visit.] [illustration: _scribner._ albert moore.] such a painter-poet of the specifically english type is _briton-rivière_. he is a painter of animals, and as such one of the greatest of the century. lions and geese, royal tigers and golden eagles, stags, dogs, foxes, highland cattle, he has painted them all, and with a mastery which has nothing like it except in landseer. amongst the painters of animals he stands alone through his power of conception and his fine poetic vein, while in all his pictures he unites the greatest simplicity with enormous dramatic force. accessory work is everywhere kept within the narrowest limits, and everywhere the character of the animals is magnificently grasped. he does not alone paint great tragic scenes as barye chiselled them, for he knows that beasts of prey are usually quiet and peaceable, and only now and then obey their savage nature. moreover, he never attempts to represent animals performing a masquerade of humanity in their gestures and expression, as landseer did, nor does he transform them into comic actors. he paints them as what they are, a symbol of what humanity was once itself, with its elemental passions and its natural virtues and failings. amongst all animal painters he is almost alone in resisting the temptation to give the lion a consciousness of his own dignity, the tiger a consciousness of his own savageness, the dog a consciousness of his own understanding. they neither pose nor think about themselves. in addition to this he has a powerful and impressive method, and a deep and earnest scheme of colour. in the beginning of his career he learnt most from james ward. later he felt the influence of the refined, chivalrous, and piquant scotchmen orchardson and pettie. but the point in which briton-rivière is altogether peculiar is that in which he joins issue with the painters influenced by greece: he introduces his animals into a scene where there are men of the ancient world. briton-rivière is descended from a french family which found its way into england after the revocation of the edict of nantes, and he is one of those painters--so frequent in english art--whose nature has developed early: when he was fourteen he left school, exhibited in the academy when he was eighteen, painted as a pre-raphaelite between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, and graduated at oxford at seven-and-twenty. in his youth he divided his time between art and scholarship--painting pictures and studying greek and latin literature. thus he became a painter of animals, having also an enthusiasm for the greek poets, and he has stood for a generation as an uncontested lord and master on his own peculiar ground. in his first important picture, of , the comrades of ulysses, changed into swine, troop grunting round the enchantress circe. in the masterpiece of the prophet daniel stands unmoved and submissive to the will of god amid the lions roaring and showing their teeth, ready to spring upon him in their hunger, yet regarding him with a mysterious fear, spellbound by the power of his eye; while his great picture "persepolis" makes the appeal of a page from the philosophy of history, with its lions roaming majestically amid the ruins of human grandeur and human civilisation, which are flooded with moonlight. the picture "in manus tuas, domine," showed st. george riding solitary through the lonely and silent recesses of a primitive forest upon a pale white horse. he is armed in mail and has a mighty sword; a deep seriousness is imprinted on his features, for he has gone forth to slay the dragon. in yet another picture, "an old-world wanderer," a man of the early ages has come ashore upon an untrodden island, and is encompassed by flocks of great white birds, fluttering round him with curiosity and confidence, as yet ignorant of the fear of human beings. the picture of , "a mighty hunter before the lord," is one of his most poetic night-pieces: nimrod is returning home, and beneath the silvery silence of the moon the dead and dying creatures which he has laid low upon the wide assyrian plain are tended and bemoaned by their mates. [illustration: _scribner._ albert moore. midsummer. (_by permission of messrs. cadbury, jones & co., the owners of the copyright._)] [illustration: albert moore. companions. (_by permission of messrs. dowdeswell & dowdeswells, the owners of the copyright._)] between whiles he painted subjects which were not borrowed from ancient history, illustrating the friendship between man and dog, as landseer had done before him. for instance, in "his only friend" there is a poor lad who has broken down at the last milestone before the town and is guarded by his dog. in "old playfellows," again, one of the playmates is a child, who is sick and leans back quietly in an armchair covered with cushions. his friend the great dog has one paw resting on the child's lap, and looks up with a pensive expression, such as landseer alone had previously painted. but in this style he reached his highest point in "sympathy." no work of briton-rivière's has become more popular than this picture of the little maiden who has forgotten her key and is sitting helpless before the house-door, consoled by the dog who has laid his head upon her shoulder. [illustration: _scribner._ albert moore. yellow marguerites. (_by permission of w. connal, esq., the owner of the picture._)] since the days of reynolds english art has shown a most vivid originality in such representations of children. english picture-books for children are in these days the most beautiful in the world, and the marvellous fairy-tales and fireside stories of _randolph caldecott_ and _kate greenaway_ have made their way throughout the whole continent. how well these english draughtsmen know the secret of combining truth with the most exquisite grace! how touching are these pretty babies, how angelically innocent these little maidens! frank eyes, blue as the flowers of the periwinkle, gaze at you with no thought of their being looked at in return. the naïve astonishment of the little ones, their frightened mien, their earnest look absently fixed upon the sky, the first tottering steps of a tiny child and the mobile grace of a schoolgirl, all are rendered in these prints with the most tender intimacy of feeling. and united with this there is a delicate and entirely modern sentiment for scenery, for the fascination of bare autumn landscapes robbed of their foliage, for sunbeams and the budding fragrance of spring. everything is idyllic, poetic, and touched by a congenial breath of tender melancholy. [illustration: _scribner._ albert moore. waiting to cross. (_by permission of lord davey, the owner of the picture._)] and this aerial quality, this delicacy and innocent grace and tenderness, is not confined alone to such representations of children, but is peculiar to english painting. even when perfectly ordinary subjects from modern life are in question the basis of this art is, as in the first half of the century, by no means the sense for what is purely pictorial, by no means that naturalistic pantheism which inspires the modern french, but rather a sense for what is moral or ethical. the painter seldom paints merely for the joy of painting, and the numberless technical questions which play such an important part in french art are here only of secondary importance. it accords with the character and taste of the people that their artists have rather a poetic design than one which is properly pictorial. the conception is sometimes allegorical and subtle to the most exquisite fineness of point, sometimes it is vitiated by sentimentality, but it is never purely naturalistic; and this qualified realism, this realism with a poetic strain to keep it ladylike, set english art, especially in the years when bastien-lepage and roll were at their zenith, in sharp opposition to the art of france. in those days the life-size artisan picture, the prose of life, and the struggle for existence reigned almost exclusively in the parisian salon, whereas in the royal academy everything was quiet and cordial; an intimate, inoffensive, and heartfelt cheerfulness was to be found in the pictures upon its walls, as if none of these painters knew of the existence of such a place as whitechapel. a connection between pictures and poems is still popular, and some touching trait, some tender episode, some expression of softness, is given to subjects drawn from the ordinary life of the people. painters seek in every direction after pretty rustic scenes, moving incidents, or pure emotions. instead of being harsh and rugged in their sense of truth and passion, they glide lightly away from anything ugly, bringing together the loveliest and most beautiful things in nature, and creating elegies, pastorals, and idylls from the passing events of life. their method of expression is fastidious and finished to a nicety; their vision of life is smiling and kindly, though it must not be supposed that their optimism has now anything in common with the _genre_ picture of . the _genre_ painters from wilkie to collins epitomised the actual manners of the present in prosaic compositions. but here the most splendid poetry breaks out, as indeed it actually does in the midst of ordinary life. if in that earlier period english painting was awkward in narration, vulgar, and didactic, it is now tasteful, refined, beautiful, and of distinction. the philistinism of the pictures of those days has been finally stripped away, and the humorously anecdotic _genre_ entirely overcome. the generation of tiresome narrative artists has been followed by painter-poets of delicacy and exquisite tenderness of feeling. [illustration: _scribner._ albert moore. reading aloud. (_by permission of w. connal, esq., the owner of the picture._)] two masters who died young and have a peculiarly captivating individuality, george mason and fred walker, stand at the head of this, the most novel phase of english painting. alike in the misfortune of premature death, they are also united by a bond of sympathy in their taste and sentiment. if there be truth in what théophile gautier once said in a beautiful poem, "_tout passe, l'art robuste seul a l'éternité_," neither of them will enter the kingdom of immortality. that might be applied to them which heine said of leopold robert: they have purified the peasant in the purgatory of their art, so that nothing but a glorified body remains. as the pre-raphaelites wished to give exquisite precision to the world of dream, walker and mason have taken this precision from the world of reality, endowing it with a refined subtlety which in truth it does not possess. their pictures breathe only of the bloom and essence of things, and in them nature is deprived of her strength and marrow, and painting of her peculiar qualities, which are changed into coloured breath and tinted dream. they may be reproached with an excess of nervous sensibility, an effort after style by which modern truth is recast, a morbid tendency towards suave mysticism. nevertheless their works are the most original products of english painting during the last thirty years, and by a strange union of realism and poetic feeling they have exercised a deeply penetrative influence upon continental art. "_Æquam semper in rebus arduis servare mentem_" might be chosen as a motto for _george mason's_ biography. brought up in prosperous circumstances, he first became a doctor, but when he was seven-and-twenty he went to italy to devote himself to painting; here he received the news that he was ruined. his father had lost everything, and he found himself entirely deprived of means, so that his life became a long struggle against hunger. he bound himself to dealers, and provided animal pieces by the dozen for the smallest sums. in a freezing room he sat with his pockets empty, worked until it was dark, and crept into bed when rome went to feast. after two years, however, he had at last saved the money necessary for taking him back to england, and he settled with his young wife in wetley abbey. this little village, where he lived his simple life in the deepest seclusion, became for him what barbizon had been for millet. he wandered by himself amongst the fields, and painted the valleys of wetley with the tenderness of feeling with which corot painted the outskirts of fontainebleau. he saw the ghostly mists lying upon the moors, saw the peasants returning from the plough and the reapers from the field, noted the children, in their life so closely connected with the change of nature. and yet his peasant pictures more resemble the works of perugino than those of bastien-lepage. the character of their landscape is to some extent responsible for this. for the region he paints, in its lyrical charm, has kinship with the hills in the pictures of perugino. here there grow the same slender trees upon a delicate, undulating soil. but the silent, peaceful, and resigned human beings who move across it have also the tender melancholy of umbrian madonnas. mason's realism is merely specious; it consists in the external point of costume. there are really no peasants of such slender growth, no english village maidens with such rosy faces and such coquettish holland caps. mason divests them of all the heaviness of earth, takes, as it were, only the flower-dust from reality. the poetic grace of jules breton might be recalled, were it not that mason works with more refinement and subtlety, for his idealism was unconscious, and never resulted in an empty, professional painting of beauty. [illustration: _brothers, photo._ caldecott. the girl i left behind me. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] when he painted his finest pictures he suffered from very bad health, and his works have themselves the witchery of disease, the fascinating beauty of consumption. he painted with such delicacy and refinement, because sickness had made him weak and delicate; he divested his peasant men and women of everything fleshly, so that nothing but a shadow of them remained, a spirit vibrating in fine, elusive, dying chords. in his "evening hymn" girls are singing in the meadow; to judge from their dresses, they should be the daughters of the peasantry, but one fancies them religious enthusiasts, brought together upon this mysterious and sequestered corner of the earth by a melancholy world-weariness, by a yearning after the mystical. fragile as glass, sensitive to the ends of their fingers, and, one might say, morbidly spiritual, they breathe out their souls in song, encompassed by the soft shadows of the evening twilight, and uttering all the exquisite tenderness of their subtle temperament in the hymn they chant. another of his pastoral symphonies is "the harvest moon." farm labourers are plodding homewards after their day's work. the moon is rising, and casts its soft, subdued light upon the dark hills and the slender trees, in the silvery leaves of which the evening wind is playing. "the gander," "the young anglers," and "the cast shoe" are captivating through the same delicacy and the same mood of peaceful resignation. george mason is an astonishing artist, almost always guilty of exaggeration, but always seductive. life passes in his pictures like a beautiful summer's day, and with the accompaniment of soft music. a peaceful, delicate feeling, something mystical, bitter-sweet, and suffering, lives beneath the light and tender veil of his pictures. they affect the nerves like a harmonica, and lull one with low and softly veiled harmonies. many of the melancholy works of israels have a similar effect, only israels is less refined, has less of distinction and--more of truth. [illustration: mason. the end of the day. (_by gracious permission of h.m. queen victoria, the owner of the picture._)] this suavity of feeling is characteristic in an almost higher degree of _fred walker_, a sensitive artist never satisfied with himself. every one of his pictures gives the impression of deep and quiet reverie; everywhere a kind of mood, like that in a fairy tale, colours the ordinary events of life in his works, an effect produced by his refined composition of forms and colours. in his classically simple art mason was influenced by the italians, and especially the umbrians. walker drew a similar inspiration from the works of millet. both the englishman and the frenchman died in the same year, the former on th january , in barbizon, the latter on th june, in scotland; and yet in a certain sense they stand at the very opposite poles of art. walker is graceful, delicate, and tender; millet forceful, healthy, and powerful. "to draw sublimity from what is trivial" was the aim of both, and they both reached it by the same path. all their predecessors had held truth as the foe of beauty, and had qualified shepherds and shepherdesses, ploughmen and labourers, for artistic treatment by forcing upon them the smiling grace and the strained humour of _genre_ painting. millet and fred walker broke with the frivolity of this elder school of painting, which had seen matter for jesting, and only that, in the life of the rustic; they asserted that in the life of the toiler nothing was more deserving of artistic representation than his toil. they always began by reproducing life as they saw it, and by disdaining, in their effort after truth, all artificial embellishment; they came to recognise, both of them at the same time, a dignity in the human frame, and grandiose forms and classic lines in human movement, which no one had discovered before. with the most pious reverence for the exact facts of life, there was united that greatness of conception which is known as style. [illustration: _l'art._ walker. the bathers. (_by permission of messrs. thomas agnew & sons, the owners of the copyright._)] fred walker, the tennyson of painting, was born in london in , and had scarcely left school before the galleries of ancient art in the british museum became his favourite place of resort. drawings for wood-engraving were his first works, and with millet in france he has the chief merit of having put fresh life into the traditional style of english wood engraving, so that he is honoured by the young school of wood-engravers as their lord and master. his first, and as yet unimportant, drawings appeared in in a periodical called _once a week_, for which leech, millais, and others also made drawings. shortly after this _début_ he was introduced to thackeray, then the editor of _cornhill_, and he undertook the illustrations with millais. in these plates he is already seen in his charm, grace, and simplicity. his favourite season is the tender spring, when the earth is clothed with young verdure, and the sunlight glances over the naked branches, and the children pluck the first flowers which have shot up beneath their covering of snow. his pictures give pleasure by virtue of the same qualities--delicacy of drawing, bloom of colouring, and a grace which is not affected in spite of its grecian rhythm. [illustration: _l'art._ boughton. green leaves among the sere. (_by permission of the artist._)] walker was the first to introduce that delicate rosy red which has since been popular in english painting. his method of vision is as widely removed from that of manet as from couture's brown sauce. the surface of every one of his pictures resembles a rare jewel in its delicate finish: it is soft, and gives the sense of colour and of refined and soothing harmony. his first important work, "bathers," was exhibited in at the royal academy, where works of his appeared regularly during the next five years. about a score of young people are standing on the verge of a deep and quiet english river, and are just about to refresh themselves in the tide after a hot august day. some, indeed, are already in the water, while others are sitting upon the grass and others undressing. the frieze of the parthenon is recalled, so plastic is the grace of these young frames, and the style and repose of the treatment of lines, which are such as may only be found in puvis de chavannes. in his next picture, "the vagrants," he represented a group of gipsies camping round a fire in the midst of an english landscape. a mother is nursing her child, while to the left a woman is standing plunged in thought, and to the right a lad is throwing wood upon the faintly blazing fire. here, too, the figures are all drawn severely after nature and yet have the air of greek statues. there is no modern artist who has united in so unforced a manner actuality and fidelity to nature with "the noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" of the antique. in a succeeding picture of , "the plough," a labourer is striding over the ground behind the plough. the long day is approaching its end, and the moon stands silvery in the sky. far into the distance the field stretches away, and the heavy tread of the horses mingles in the stillness of evening with the murmur of the stream which flows round the grassy ridge, making its soft complaint. "man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening" is its thoroughly english motto. the same still mournfulness of sunset he painted in that work of marvellous tenderness, "the old gate." the peace of dusk is resting upon a soft and gentle landscape. a lady who is the owner of a country mansion and is dressed like a widow has just stepped out from the garden gate, accompanied by her maid, who is in the act of shutting it; children are playing on the steps, and a couple of labourers are going past in front and look towards the lady of the house. it is nothing except the meeting of certain persons, a scene such as takes place every day, and yet even here there is a subtlety and tenderness which raise the event from the prose of ordinary life into a mysterious world of poetry. [illustration: _l'art._ boughton. snow in spring. (_by permission of the artist._)] in his later period he deviated more and more towards a fragrant lyricism. in his great picture of , "the harbour of refuge," the background is formed by one of those peaceful buildings where the aged poor pass the remainder of their days in meditative rest. the sun is sinking, and there is a rising moon. the red-tiled roof stands out clear against the quiet evening sky, while upon the terrace in front, over which the tremulous yellow rays of the setting sun are shed, an old woman with a bowed figure is walking, guided by a graceful girl who steps lightly forward. it is the old contrast between day and night, youth and age, strength and decay. yet in walker there is no opposition after all. for as light mingles with the shadows in the twilight, this young and vigorous woman who paces in the evening, holding the arm of the aged in mysterious silence, has at the moment no sense of her youth, but is rather filled with that melancholy thought underlying goethe's "_warte nur balde_," "wait awhile and thou shalt rest too." her eyes have a strange gaze, as though she were looking into vacancy in mere absence of mind. and upon the other side of the picture this theme of the transient life of humanity is still further developed. upon a bench in the midst of a verdant lawn covered with daisies a group of old men are sitting meditatively near a hedge of hawthorn luxuriant in blossom. above the bench there stands an old statue casting a clearly defined shadow upon the gravel path, as if to point to the contrast between imperishable stone and the unstable race of men, fading away like the autumn leaves. well in the foreground a labourer is mowing down the tender spring grass with a scythe--a strange, wild, and rugged figure, a reaper whose name is death. [illustration: _l'art._ boughton. a breath of wind. (_by permission of the artist._)] it was not long before evening drew on for the painter, and death, the mighty reaper, laid him low. of a nervous and sensitive temperament, walker had one of those natures which find their way with difficulty through this rude world of fact. those little things which he had the art of painting so beautifully, and which occupy such an important place in his work, had, in another sense, more influence upon his life than ought to have been the case. while mason faced all unpleasantnesses with stoical indifference, walker allowed himself to be disturbed and hindered in his work by every failure and every sharp wind of criticism. in addition to that he was, like mason, a victim of consumption. a residence in algiers merely banished the insidious disease for a short time. amongst the last works, which he exhibited in , a considerable stir was made by a drawing called "the unknown land": a vessel with naked men is drawing near the shores of a wide and peaceful island bathed in a magical light. soon afterwards walker had himself departed to that unknown land: he died in scotland when he was five-and-thirty. his body was brought to the little churchyard at cookham on the banks of the thames. in this village fred walker is buried amid the fair river landscape which he so loved and so often painted. [illustration: _l'art._ boughton. the bearers of the burden. (_by permission of the artist._)] after the pre-raphaelite revolution, the foundation of the school of walker indicated the last stage of english art. his influence was far greater than might be supposed from the small number of his works, and fifty per cent. of the english pictures in every exhibition would perhaps never have been painted if he had not been born. a national element long renounced, that old english sentiment which once inspired the landscapes of gainsborough and the scenes of morland, and was lost in the hands of wilkie and the _genre_ painters, lives once more in fred walker. he adapted it to the age by adding something of tennyson's passion for nature. there is a touch of symbolism in that old gate which he painted in the beautiful picture of . he and mason opened it so that english art might pass into this new domain, where musical sentiment is everything, where one is buried in sweet reveries at the sight of a flock of geese driven by a young girl, or a labourer stepping behind his plough, or a child playing, free from care, with pebbles at the water's edge. their disciples are perhaps healthier, or, should one say, "less refined,"--in other words, not quite so sensitive and hyper-æsthetic as those who opened the old gate. they seem physically more robust, and can better face the sharp air of reality. they no longer dissolve painting altogether into music and poetry; they live more in the world at every hour, not merely when the sun is setting, but also when the prosaic daylight exposes objects in their material heaviness. but the tender ground-tone, the effort to seize nature in soft phases, is the same in all. like bees, they suck from reality only its sweets. the earnest, tender, and deeply heartfelt art of walker has influenced them all. evening when work is over, the end of summer, twilight, autumn, the pale and golden sky, and the dead leaves are the things which have probably made the most profound impression on the english spirit. the hour when toil is laid aside, and rest begins and people seek their homes, and the season when fires are first lighted are the hour and the season most beloved by this people, which, with all its rude energy, is yet so tender and full of feeling. repose to the point of enervation and the stage where it passes into gentle melancholy is the theme of their pictures--this, and not toil. how many have been painted in the last forty years in which people are returning from their work of an evening across the country! the people in the big towns look upon the country with the eyes of a lover, especially those parts of it which lie near the town; not the scenes painted by raffaelli, but the parks and public gardens. soft, undulating valleys and gently swelling hills are spread around, the flowers are in bloom, and the leaves glance in the sunshine. and over this country, with its trim gravel paths and its green, luxuriant lawns, there comes a well-to-do people. even the labourers seem in good case as they go home across the flowery meadows. [illustration: _cassell & co._ j. r. reid. toil and pleasure.] _george h. boughton_ was one of the most graceful and refined amongst walker's followers. by birth and descent a countryman of crome and cotman, he passed his youth in america, worked several years in paris from , and in settled in london, where he was exceedingly active as a draughtsman, a writer, and a painter. his charming illustrations for _harper's magazine_, where he also published his delicate story _the return of the mayflower_, are well known. as a painter, too, his brush was only occupied by pleasant things, whether belonging to the past or the present. there is something in him both of the delicacy of gainsborough and of the poetry of memlinc. he delights in the murmur of brooks and the rustle of leaves, in fresh children and pretty young women in æesthetically fantastic costume; he loves everything delicate, quiet, and fragrant. and for this reason he also takes delight in old legends entwined with blossoms, and attains a most harmonious effect when he places shepherds and kings' daughters of story, and steel-clad knights and squires in his charming and entirely modern landscapes. almost always it is autumn, winter, or at most the early spring in his pictures. the boughs of the trees are generally bare, though sometimes a tender pointed yellowish verdure is budding upon them. at times the mist of november hovers over the country like a delicate veil; at times the snowflakes fall softly, or the october sun gleams through the leafless branches. [illustration: frank holl.] moreover, a feeling for the articulation of lines, for a balance of composition, unforced, and yet giving a character of distinction, is peculiar to him in a high degree. in he had in the royal academy the charming picture "a breath of wind." amid a soft landscape with slender trees move the thoroughly grecian figures of the shapely english peasants, whilst the tender evening light is shed over the gently rising hills. his picture of he named "green leaves among the sere": a group of children, in the midst of whom the young mother herself looks like a child, are seated amid an autumn landscape, where the leaves fall, and the sky is shrouded in wintry grey. in the picture "snow in spring" may be seen a party of charming girls--little modern tanagra figures--whom the sun has tempted into the air to search for the earliest woodland snowdrops under the guidance of a damsel still in her 'teens. having just reached a secret corner of the wood, they are standing with their flowers in their hands surrounded by tremulous boughs, when a sudden snowstorm overtakes them. thick white flakes alight upon the slender boughs, and combine with the light green leaves and pale reddish dresses of the children in making a delicate harmony of colour. among his legendary pictures the poetic "love conquers all things," in particular is known in germany: a wild shepherd's daughter sits near her flock, and the son of a king gazes into her eyes lost in dream. [illustration: holl. "the lord gave, the lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the lord." (_by permission of e. c. pawle, esq., the owner of the picture._)] boughton is not the only painter of budding girlhood. all english literature has a tender feminine trait. tennyson is the poet most widely read, and he has won all hearts chiefly through his portraits of women: adeline, eleänore, lilian, and the may queen--that delightful gallery of pure and noble figures. in english painting, too, it is seldom men who are represented, but more frequently women and children, especially little maidens in their fresh pure witchery. belonging still to the older period there is _philip h. calderon_, an exceedingly fertile although lukewarm and academical artist, in whose blood is a good deal of effeminate classicism. when his name appears in a catalogue it means that the spectator will be led into an artificial region peopled with pretty girls--beings who are neither sad nor gay, and who belong neither to the present nor to ancient times, to no age in particular and to no clime. whenever such ethereal girlish figures wear the costume of the directoire period, _marcus stone_ is their father. he is likewise one of the older men whose first appearance was made before the time of walker. his young ladies part broken-hearted from a beloved suitor, turned away by their father, and save the honour of their family by giving their hand to a wealthy but unloved aspirant, or else they are solitary and lost in tender reveries. in his earliest period marcus stone had a preference for interiors; rich directoire furniture and objects of art indicate with exactness the year in which the narrative takes place. later, he took a delight in placing his _rococo_ ladies and gentlemen in the open air, upon the terraces of old gardens or in sheltered alleys. all his pictures are pretty, the faces, the figures, and the accessories; in relation to them one may use the adjective "pretty" in its positive, comparative, or superlative degree. in england marcus stone is the favourite painter of "sweethearts," and it cannot be easy to go so near the boundaries of candied _genre_ painting and yet always to preserve a certain _noblesse_. [illustration: _l'art._ holl. leaving home.] amongst later artists _g. d. leslie_, the son of charles leslie, has specially the secret of interpreting innocent feminine beauty, that somewhat predetermined but charming grace derived from gainsborough and the eighteenth century. a young lady who has lately been married is paying a visit to her earlier school friends, and is gazed upon as though she were an angel by these charming girls. or his pretty maidens have ensconced themselves beneath the trees, or stand on the shore watching a boat at sunset, or amuse themselves from a bridge in a park by throwing flowers into the water and looking dreamily after them as they float away. leslie's pictures, too, are very pretty and poetic, and have much silk in them and much sun, while the soft pale method of painting, so highly æsthetic in its delicate attenuation of colour, corresponds with the delicacy of their purport. [illustration: holl. ordered to the front.] _p. g. morris_, not less delicate in feeling and execution, became specially known by a "communion in dieppe." directly facing the spectator a train of pretty communicants move upon the seashore, assuming an air of dignified superiority, like young ladies from brighton or folkestone. a bluish light plays over the white dresses of the girls and over the blue jackets of the sailors lounging about the quay; it fills the pale blue sky with a misty vibration and glances sportively upon the green waves of the sea. "the reaper and the flowers" was a thoroughly english picture, a graceful allegory after the fashion of fred walker. on their way from school a party of children meet at the verge of a meadow an old peasant going home from his day's work with a scythe upon his shoulder. in the dancing step of the little ones may be seen the influence of greek statues; they float along as if borne by the zephyr, with a rhythmical motion which is seldom found in real school-children. but the old peasant coming towards them is intended to recall the contrast between youth and age as in fred walker's "harbour of refuge"; while the scythe glittering in the last rays of the setting sun signifies the scythe of fate, the scythe of death which does not even spare the child. [illustration: ouless. lord kelvin. (_by permission of the artist._)] and thus the limits of english painting are defined. it always reveals a certain conflict between fact and poetry, reverie and life. for whenever the scene does not admit of a directly ethical interpretation, refuge is invariably taken in lyricism. the wide field which lies between, where powerful works are nourished, works which have their roots in reality, and derive their life from it alone, has not been definitely conquered by english art. england is the greatest producer and consumer in the world, and her people press the marrow out of things as no other have ever done: and yet this land of industry knows nothing of pictures in which work is being accomplished; this country, which is a network of railway lines, has never seen a railway painted. even horses are less and less frequently represented in english art, and sport finds no expression there whatever. much as the englishman loves it from a sense of its wholesomeness, he does not consider it sufficiently æsthetic to be painted, a matter upon which wilkie collins enlarges in an amusing way in his book _man and wife_. and in english pictures there are no poor, or, at any rate, none who are wretched in the extreme. for although the chelsea pensioners were a favoured theme in painting, there were none of them miserable and heavy-laden; they were rather types of the happy poor who were carefully tended. if english painters are otherwise induced to represent the poor, they depict a room kept in exemplary order, and endeavour to display some touching or admirable trait in honest and admirable people. in fact, people seem to be good and honourable wherever they are found. everywhere there is content and humility, even in misfortune. even where actual need is represented, it is only done in the effort to give expression to what is moving in certain dispensations of fate, and to create a lofty and conciliating effect by the contrast between misfortune and man's noble trust in god. _john r. reid_, a scotchman by birth, but residing in london, has treated scenes from life upon the seacoast in this manner. how different his works are from the tragedies of joseph israels, or the grim naturalism of michael ancher! he occupies himself only with the bright side of life with its colour and sunshine, not with the dark side with its toils. he paints the inhabitants of the country in their sunday best, as they sit telling stories, or as they go a-hunting, or regale themselves in the garden of an inn. the old rustics who sit happy with their pipes and beer in his "cricket match" are typical of everything that he has painted. and even when, once in a way, a more gloomy trait appears in his pictures, it is there only that the light may shine the more brightly. the poor old flute-player who sits homeless upon a bench near the house is placed there merely to show how well off are the children who are hurrying merrily home after school. his picture of , indeed, treated a scene of shipwreck, but a passage from a poet stood beneath; there was not a lost sailor to be seen, and all the tenderness of the artist is devoted to the pretty children and the young women gazing with anxiety and compassion across the sea. _frank holl_ was in the habit of giving his pictures a more lachrymose touch, together with a more sombre and ascetic harmony of colour. he borrowed his subjects from the life of the humble classes, always searching, moreover, for melancholy features; he took delight in representing human virtue in misfortune, and for the sake of greater effect he frequently chose a verse from the bible as the title. thus the work with which he first won the english public was a picture exhibited in : "the lord gave, the lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the lord." a family of five brothers and sisters, who have just lost their mother, are assembled round the breakfast-table in a poorly furnished room. one sister is crying, another is sadly looking straight before her, whilst a third is praying with folded hands. the younger brother, a sailor, has just reached home from a voyage, to close his dying mother's eyes, and the eldest of all, a young and earnest curate, is endeavouring to console his brothers and sisters with the words of job. [illustration: _cassell & co._ sant. the music lesson. (_by permission of the artist._)] the next picture, exhibited in , he called "no tidings from the sea," and represented in it a fisherman's family--grandmother, mother, and child--who in a cheerless room are anxiously expecting the return of a sailor. "leaving home" showed four people sitting on a bench outside a waiting-room at a railway station. to awaken the spectator's pity "third class" is written in large letters upon the window just above their heads. the principal figure is a lady dressed in black, who is counting, in a somewhat obtrusive manner, the little money which she still has left. in the picture "necessity knows no law" a poor woman with a child in her arms has entered a pawnshop to borrow money on her wedding-ring; in another, women of the poorer class are to be seen walking along with their soldier sons and husbands, who have been called out on active service. one of them clasps tightly to her breast her little child, the only one still remaining to her in life, whilst an aged widow presses the hand of her son with the sad presentiment that, even if he comes back to her, she will probably not have long to live after his return. not only did frank holl paint stories for his countrymen, but he also painted them big in majuscule characters which were legible without spectacles, and he partially owed his splendid successes to this cheap sentimentality. almost everywhere the interest of subject still plays the first part, and this slightly lachrymose trait bordering on _genre_, this lyrically tender or allegorically subtle element, which runs through english figure pictures, would easily degenerate into vaporous enervation in another country. in england portrait painting, which now, as in the days of reynolds, is the greatest title to honour possessed by english art, invariably maintains its union with direct reality. by acknowledgment portrait painting in the present day is exceedingly earnest: it admits of no decorative luxuriousness, no sport with hangings and draperies, no pose; and english likenesses have this severe actuality in the highest degree. stiff-necked obstinacy, sanguine resolution, and muscular force of will are often spoken of as an englishman's national characteristics, and a trace of these qualities is also betrayed in english portrait painting. the self-reliance of the english is far too great to suffer or demand any servile habit of flattery: everything is free from pose, plain and simple. let the subject be the weather-beaten figure of an old sailor or the dazzling freshness of english youth, there is a remarkable energy and force of life in all their works, even in the pictures of children with their broad open brow, finely chiselled nose, and assured and penetrative glance. and as portrait painting in england, to its own advantage and the benefit of all art, has never been considered as an isolated province, such pictures may be specified among the works of the most frigid academician as well as amongst those of the most vigorous naturalist. frank holl, who had such a düsseldorfian tinge in his more elaborate pictures, showed at the close of his life, in his likenesses of the engraver samuel cousins, lord dufferin, mr. joseph chamberlain, lord wolseley, mr. gladstone, the duke of cleveland, sir george trevelyan, and lord spencer, a simple virility altogether wanting in his earlier works. they had a trenchant characterisation and an unforced pose which were striking even in england. it is scarcely possible to exhibit people more naturally, or more completely to banish from their expression that concentrated air of attentiveness which suggests photography and so easily intrudes into a portrait. even leighton, so devoid of temperament, so entirely devoted to the measured art of the ancients, became at once nervous and almost brutal in his power when he painted a portrait in place of ideal grecian figures. his vivid and forcible portrait of sir richard burton, the celebrated african traveller, would do honour to the greatest portrait painter of the continent. [illustration: furse. frontispiece to "stories and interludes."] amongst portrait painters by profession _walter ouless_ will probably merit the place of honour immediately after watts as an impressive exponent of character. he has assimilated much from his master millais--not merely the heaviness of colour, which often has a disturbing effect in the latter, but also millais' powerful flight of style, always so free from false rhetoric. the chemical expert pochin, as ouless painted him in , does not pose in the picture nor allow himself to be disturbed in his researches. it is a thoroughly contemporary portrait, one of those brilliant successes which later occurred in france also. the recorder of london, mr. russell gurney, he likewise painted in his professional character and in his robes of office. in its inflexible graveness and earnest dignity the likeness is almost more than the portrait of an individual; it seems the embodiment of the proud english bench resting upon the most ancient traditions. his portrait of cardinal manning had the same convincing power of observation, the same large and sure technique. the soft light plays upon the ermine and the red stole, and falls full upon the fine, austere, and noble face. besides ouless mention may be made from among the great number of portrait painters of _j. j. shannon_, with his powerful and firmly painted likenesses; of _james sant_, with his sincere and energetic portraits of women; of _mouat loudan_, with his pretty pictures of children, and of the many-sided _charles w. furse_. hubert herkomer was the most celebrated in germany, and is probably the most skilful of the young men whom _the graphic_ brought into eminence in the seventies. [illustration: _mag. of art._ herkomer. john ruskin. (_by permission of the artist._)] [illustration: _cassell & co._ herkomer. charterhouse chapel.] the career of _hubert herkomer_ is amongst those adventurous ones which become less and less frequent in the nineteenth century; there are not many who have risen so rapidly to fame and fortune from such modest circumstances. his father was a carver of sacred images in the little bavarian village of waal, where hubert was born in . in the enterprising bavarian tried his fortune in the new world. but there he did not succeed in making progress, and in the family appeared in england, at southampton. here he fought his way honestly at the bench where he carved, and as a journeyman worker, whilst his wife gave lessons in music. a commission to carve peter vischer's four evangelists in wood brought him with his son to munich, where they occupied room in the back buildings of a master-carpenter's house, in which they slept, cooked, and worked. in the preparatory class of the munich academy the younger herkomer received his first teaching, and began to draw from the nude, the antique serving as model. at a frame-maker's in southampton he gave his first exhibition, and drew illustrations for a comic paper. with the few pence which he saved from these earnings he went to london, where he lived from hand to mouth with a companion as poor as himself. he cooked, and his friend scoured the pans; meanwhile he worked as a mason on the frieze of the south kensington museum, and hired himself out for the evenings as a zither-player. then _the graphic_ became his salvation, and after his drawings had made him known he soon had success with his paintings. "after the toil of the day," a picture which he exhibited in the royal academy of --a thoughtful scene from the village life of bavaria, carried out after the manner of fred walker--found a purchaser immediately. he was then able to make a home for his parents in the village of bushey, which he afterwards glorified in the picture "our village," and he began his masterpiece "the last muster," which obtained in the great medal at the world exhibition in paris. since then he found the eyes of the english public fixed upon him. there followed at first a series of pictures in which he proceeded upon the lines of fred walker's poetic realism: "eventide," a scene in the westminster union; "the gloom of idwal," a romantic mountain picture from north wales; "god's shrine," a lonely bavarian hillside path, with peasants praying at a shrine; "der bittgang," a group of country people praying for harvest; "contrasts," a picture of english ladies surrounded by school-children in the bavarian mountains. at the same time he became celebrated as a portrait painter, his first successes in this field being the likenesses of wagner and tennyson, archibald forbes, his own father, john ruskin, stanley, and the conductor hans richter. and he reached the summit of his international fame when his portrait of miss grant, "the lady in white," appeared in ; all europe spoke of it at the time, and it called forth entire bundles of poems, anecdotes, biographies, and romances. from that time he advanced in his career with rapid strides. [illustration: _art annual._ herkomer. portrait of his father. (_by permission of the artist._)] the university of oxford appointed him professor of the fine arts. he opened a school of art, and had etchings, copper engravings, and engravings in mezzotint produced by his pupils under his guidance. he wrote articles in the london papers upon social questions, and political economy, and all manner of subjects, an article signed with herkomer's name being always capable of creating interest. he has his own theatre, and produces in it operas of which he writes the text and the music, and manages the rehearsals and the scenery, besides playing the leading parts. [illustration: _brothers, photo._ herkomer. hard times. (_by permission of the manchester art gallery, the owners of the picture._)] yet it is just his portraits of women, the foundations of his fame, which do not seem in general to justify entirely the painter's great reputation. miss grant was certainly a captivating woman, and she broke men's hearts wherever she made her appearance. people gazed again and again into the brilliant brown eyes with which she looked so composedly before her; they were overwhelmed by her austere and lofty virginal beauty. "the lady in black (an american lady)" made yet a more piquant and spiritualised effect. there was the unopened bud, and here the woman who has had experience of the delights and disappointments of life. there was unapproachable pride, and here a trait of distinction and of suffering, an almost weary carriage of the body. there would certainly be an interesting gallery of beauty if herkomer unite these "types of women" in a series. but even in the first picture how much of all the admiration excited was due to the painter and how much to the model? the portrait of miss grant was such a success primarily because miss grant herself was so beautiful. the arrangement of white against white was nothing new: whistler, a far greater artist, had already painted a "white girl" in , and it was a much greater work of art, though, on account of the attractiveness of the model being less powerful, it triumphed only in the narrower circle of artists. bastien-lepage, who set himself the same problem in his "sara bernhardt," had also run through the scale of white with greater sureness. and herkomer's later pictures of women--"the lady in yellow," lady helen fergusson, and others--are even less alluring, considered as works of art. the reserve and evenness of the execution give his portraits a somewhat clotted and stiff appearance. good modelling and exceedingly vigorous drawing may perhaps ensure great correctness in the counterfeit of the originals, but the life of the picture vanishes beneath the greasy technique, the soapy painting through which materials of drapery and flesh-tints assume quite the same values. there is nothing in it of the transparency, the rosy delicacy, freshness, and flower-like bloom of gainsborough's women and girls. herkomer appears in these pictures as a salon painter in whom a tame but tastefully cultivated temperament is expressed with charm. even his landscapes with their trim peasants' cottages and their soft moods of sunset have not enriched with new notes the scale executed by walker. all the more astonishing is the earnest certainty of touch and the robust energy which are visible in his other works. his portraits of men, especially the one of his father, that kingly old man with the long, white beard and the furrowed brow, take their place beside the best productions of english portraiture, which are chiselled, as it were, in stone. in "the last muster" he showed that it is possible to be simple and yet strike a profound note and even attain greatness. for there is something great in these old warriors, who at the end of their days are praying, having never troubled themselves over prayer during all their lives, who have travelled so far and staked their lives dozens of times, and are now drawing their last breath softly upon the seats of a church. even his more recent groups--"the assemblage of the curators of the charterhouse" and "the session of the magistrates of landsberg"--are magnificent examples of realistic art, full of imposing strength and soundness. in the representation of these citizens the genius of the master who in his "chelsea pensioners" created one of the "doelen pieces" of the nineteenth century, revealed itself afresh in all its greatness. beside portrait painting the painting of landscape stands now as ever in full bloom amongst the english; not that the artists of to-day are more consistently faithful to truth than their predecessors, or that they seem more modern in the study of light. in the province of landscape as in that of figure painting, far more weight is laid upon subject than on the moods of atmosphere. if one compares the modern english painters with crome and constable, one finds them wanting in boldness and creative force; and placed beside monet, they seem to be diffident altogether. but a touching reverence for nature gives almost all their pictures a singularly chaste and fragrant charm. [illustration: _mag. of art._ herkomer. the last muster. (_by permission of messrs. boussod, valadon & co., the owners of the picture._)] [illustration: _cassell & co._ herkomer. found.] of course, all the influences which have affected english art in other respects are likewise reflected in landscape painting. the epoch-making activity of the pre-raphaelites, the passionate earnestness of ruskin's love for nature, as well as the influence of foreign art, have all left their traces. in his own manner constable had spoken the last word. the principal thing in him, as in cox, was the study of atmospheric effects and of the dramatic life of air. they neither of them troubled themselves about local colour, but sought to render the tones which are formed under atmospheric and meteorological influences; they altogether sacrificed the completion of the details of subject to seizing the momentary impression. in turner, generally speaking, it was only the air that lived. trees and buildings, rocks and water, are merely _repoussoirs_ for the atmosphere; they are exclusively ordained to lead the eye through the mysterious depths of light and shadow. the intangible absorbed what could be touched and handled. as a natural reaction there came this pre-raphaelite landscape, and by a curious irony of chance the writer who had done most for turner's fame was also he who first welcomed this pre-raphaelite landscape school. everything which the old school had neglected now became the essential object of painting. the landscape painters fell in love with the earth, with the woods and the fields; and the more autumn resolved the wide green harmony of nature into a sport of colours multiplied a thousand times, the more did they love it. thousands of things were there to be seen. first, how the foliage turned yellow and red and brown, and then how it fell away: how it was scattered upon a windy day, whirling in a yellow drift of leaves; how in still weather leaf after leaf lightly rustled to the ground from between the wavering brown boughs. and then when the foliage fell from the trees and bushes the most inviolate secrets of summer came to light; there lay around quantities of bright seeds and berries rich in colour, brown nuts, smooth acorns, black and glossy sloes, and scarlet haws. in the leafless beeches there clustered pointed beechmast, the mugwort bent beneath its heavy red bunches, late blackberries lay black and brown amid the damp foliage upon the road, bilberries grew amid the heather, and wild raspberries bore their dull red fruit once again. the dying ferns took a hundred colours; the moss shot up like the ears of a miniature cornfield. eager as children the landscape painters roamed here and there across the woodland, to discover its treasures and its curiosities. they understood how to paint a bundle of hay with such exactness that a botanist could decide upon the species of every blade. one of them lived for three months under canvas, so as thoroughly to know a landscape of heath. confused through detail, they lost their view of the whole, and only made a return to modernity when they came to study the parisian landscape painters. thus english art in this matter made a curious circuit, giving and taking. first, the english fertilised french art; but at the time when french artists stood under the influence of the english, the latter swerved in the opposite direction, until they ultimately received from france the impulse which led them back into the old way. in accordance with these different influences, several currents which cross and mingle with each other are to be found flowing side by side in english landscape painting: upon one side a spirit of prosaic reasonableness, a striving after clearness and precision, which does not know how to sacrifice detail, and is therefore wanting in pictorial totality of effect; on the other side an artistic pantheism which rises at times to high lyrical poetry in spite of many dissonances. the pictures of _cecil lawson_ lead to the point where the pre-raphaelites begin. the elder painters, with their powerful treatment and the freedom and boldness of their execution, still keep altogether on the lines of constable, whereas in later painters, with their minute elaboration of all particularities, the influence of the pre-raphaelites becomes more and more apparent. where cecil lawson ended, _james clarke hook_ began, the great master-spirit who opened the eyes of the world fifty years ago to the depth of colouring and the enchanting life of nature, even in its individual details. his pictures, especially those sunsets which he paints with such delight, have something devout and religious in them; they have the effect of a prayer or a hymn, and often possess a solemnity which is entirely biblical, in spite of their brusque, pungent colours. in his later period he principally devoted himself to sea-pieces, and in doing so receded from the pre-raphaelite painting of detail, which is characteristic of his youthful period. his pictures give one the breath of the sea, and his sailors are old sea-wolves. all that remains from his pre-raphaelite period is that, as a rule, they carry a certain burden of ideas. _vicat cole_, likewise one of the older school, is unequal and less important. from many of his pictures one receives the impression that he has directly copied constable, and others are bathed in dull yellow tones; nevertheless he has sometimes painted autumn pictures, felicitous and noble landscapes, in which there is really a reflection of the sun of claude lorrain. [illustration: _brothers, photo._ lawson. the minister's garden. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] with much greater freedom does _colin hunter_ approach nature, and he has the secret of seizing her boldly in her most impressive moments. the twilight, with its mysterious, interpenetrating tremor of colours of a thousand shades, its shine and glimmer of water, with the sky brooding heavily above, is what fascinates him most of all. sometimes he represents the dawn, as in "the herring market at sea"; sometimes the pale tawny sunset, as in "the gatherers of seaweed," in the south kensington museum. his men are always in a state of restless activity, whether they are making the most of the last moments of light or facing the daybreak with renewed energies. [illustration: _brothers, photo._ colin hunter. the herring market at sea. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] although resident in london, he and hook are the true standard-bearers of the forcible scotch school of landscape. _maccallum_, _macwhirter_, and _james macbeth_, with whom _john brett_, the landscape painter of cornwall, may be associated, are all gnarled, northern personalities. their strong, dark tones stand often beside each other with a little hardness, but they sum up the great glimpses of nature admirably. their brush has no tenderness, their spirit does not lightly yield to dreaminess, but they stand with both feet firmly planted on the earth, and they clasp reality in a sound and manly fashion with both arms. their deep-toned pictures, with red wooden houses, darkly painted vessels, veiled skies, and rude fishermen with all their heart in their work, waken strong and intimate emotions. the difference between these scots and the tentative spirits of the younger generation of the following of walker and mason is like that between rousseau and dupré as opposed to chintreuil and daubigny. the scotch painters are sombre and virile; they have an accent of depth and truth, and a dark, ascetic harmony of colour. even as landscape painters the english love what is delicate in nature, what is refined and tender, familiar and modest: blossoming apple-trees and budding birches, the odour of the cowshed and the scent of hay, the chime of sheep-bells and the hum of gnats. they seek no great emotions, but are merely amiable and kindly, and their pictures give one the feeling of standing at the window upon a country excursion, and looking out at the laughing and budding spring. in her novel _north and south_ mrs. gaskell has given charming expression to the glow of this feeling of having fled from the smoke and dirt of industrial towns to breathe the fresh air and see the sun go down in the prosperous country, where the meadows are fresh and well-kept, and where the flowers are fragrant and the leaves glisten in the sunshine. in the pictures of the scotch artists toiling men are moving busily; for the english, nature merely exists that man may have his pleasure in her. not only is everything which renders her the prosaic handmaiden of mankind scrupulously avoided, but all abruptnesses of landscape, all the chance incidents of mountain scenery; and, indeed, they are not of frequent occurrence in nature as she is in england. a familiar corner of the country is preferred to wide prospects, and some quiet phase to nature in agitation. soft, undulating valleys, gently spreading hills conforming to the hogarthian line of beauty, are especially favoured. and should the rainbow, the biblical symbol of atonement, stand in the sky, the landscape is for english eyes in the zenith of its beauty. [illustration: _brothers, photo._ aumonier. the silver lining to the cloud. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] [illustration: _cassell & co._ colin hunter. their only harvest.] [illustration: _brothers, photo._ henry moore. mount's bay. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] there is _birket forster_, one of the first and most energetic followers of walker--birket forster, whose charming woodcuts became known in germany likewise; _inchbold_, who with a light hand combines the tender green of the grasses upon the dunes and the bright blue of the sea into a whole pervaded with light, and of great refinement; _leader_, whose bright evening landscapes, and _corbet_, whose delicate moods of morning, are so beautiful. _mark fisher_, who in the matter of tones closely follows the french landscape school, though he remains entirely english in sentiment, has painted with great artistic power the dreamy peace of solitary regions as well as the noisy and busy life of the purlieus of the town. _john white_, in , signalised himself with a landscape, "gold and silver," which was bathed in light and air. the gold was a waving cornfield threaded by a sandy little yellow path; the silver was the sea glittering and sparkling in the background. moved by birket forster, _ernest parton_ seeks to combine refinement of tone with incisiveness in the painting of detail. his motives are usually quite simple--a stream and a birch wood in the dusk, a range of poplars stretching dreamily along the side of a ditch. _marshall_ painted gloomy london streets enveloped in mist; _docharty_ blossoming hawthorn bushes and autumn evening with russet-leaved oaks; while _alfred east_ became the painter of spring in all its fragrance, when the meadows are resplendent in their earliest verdure, and the leaves of the trees which have just unfolded stand out against the firmament in light green patches of colour, when the limes are blossoming and the crops begin to sprout. _m. j. aumonier_ appears in the harmony of colouring, and in the softness of his fine, light-hued tones, as the true heir of walker and mason. a discreet and intimate sense of poetry pervades his valleys with their veiled and golden light, a fertile odour of the earth streams from his rich meadows, and from all the luxuriant, cultivated, and peacefully idyllic tracts which he has painted so lovingly and so well. _gregory_, _knight_, _alfred parsons_, _david fulton_, _a. r. brown_, and _st. clair simmons_ have all something personal in their work, a bashful tenderness beneath what is seemingly arid. the study of water-colour would alone claim a chapter for itself. since water-colour allows of more breadth and unity than oil-painting, it is precisely here that there may be found exceedingly charming and discreet concords, softly chiming tones of delicate blue, greenish, and rosy light, giving the most refined sensations produced by english colouring. [illustration: _mag. of art._ luke fildes. venetian women. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] of course, england has a great part to play in the painting of the sea. it is not for nothing that a nation occupies an insular and maritime position, above all with such a sea and upon such coasts, and the english painter knows well how to give an heroic and poetic cast to the weather-beaten features of the sailor. for thirty years _henry moore_, the elder brother of albert moore, was the undisputed monarch of this province of art. moore began as a landscape painter. from to he painted the glistening cliffs and secluded nooks of cumberland, and then the green valleys of switzerland flooded with the summer air and the clear morning light--quiet scenes of rustic life, the toil of the wood-cutter and the haymaker, somewhat as julien dupré handles such matters at the present time in paris. from he began his conquest of the sea, and in the succeeding interval he painted it in all the phases of its changing life,--at times in grey and sombre morning, at other times when the sun stands high; at times in quietude, at other times when the wind sweeps heavily across the waves, when the storm rises or subsides, when the sky is clouded or when it brightens. it is a joy to follow him in all quarters of the world, to see how he constantly studies the waves of every zone on fair or stormy days, amid the clearness and brilliancy of the mirror of the sea, as amid the strife of the elements; as a painter he is, at the same time, always a student of nature, and treats the sea as though he had to paint its portrait. in the presence of his sea-pieces one has the impression of a window opening suddenly upon the ocean. henry moore measures the boundless expanse quite calmly, like a captain calculating the chances of being able to make a crossing. nowhere else does there live any painter who regards the sea so much with the eyes of a sailor, and who combines such eminent qualities with this objective and cool, attentive observation, which seems to behold in the sea merely its navigable capacity. [illustration: _brothers, photo._ stanhope forbes. the lighthouse. (_by permission of the corporation of manchester, the owners of the picture._)] the painter of the river-port of london and the arm of the thames is _william l. wyllie_, whose pictures unite so much bizarre grandeur with so much precision. one knows the port life of the thames, with its accumulation of work, which has not its like upon the whole planet. everything is colossal. from greenwich up to london both sides of the river are a continuous quay: everywhere there are goods being piled, sacks being raised on pulleys, ships being laid at anchor; everywhere are fresh storehouses for copper, beer, sails, tar, and chemicals. the river is of great width, and is like a street populated with ships, a workshop winding again and again. the steamers and sailing vessels move up and down stream, or lie in masses, close beside one another, at anchor. upon the bank the docks lie athwart like so many streets of water, sending out ships or taking them in. the ranks of masts and the slender rigging form a spider's web spreading across the whole horizon; and a vaporous haze, penetrated by the sun, envelops it with a reddish veil. every dock is like a town, filled with huge vats and populated with a swarm of human beings, that move hither and thither amid fluttering shadows. this vast panorama, veiled with smoke and mist, only now and then broken by a ray of sunlight, is the theme of wyllie's pictures. even as a child he ran about in the port of london, clambered on to the ships, noted the play of the waves, and wandered about the docks; and so he painted his pictures afterwards with all the technical knowledge of a sailor. there is no one who knows so well how ships stand in the water; no one has such an understanding of their details: the heavy sailing vessels and the great steamers, which lie in the brown water of the port like mighty monsters, the sailors and the movements of the dock labourers, the dizzy tide of men, the confusion of cabs and drays upon the bridges spanning the arm of the thames; only vollon in paris is to be compared with him as painter of a river-port. [illustration: r. anning bell. oberon and titania with their train.] apart from him, _clara montalba_ specially has painted the london port in delicate water-colours. yet she is almost more at home in venice, the venice of francesco guardi, with its magic gleam, its canals, regattas, and palaces, the oriental and dazzling splendour of san marco, the austere grace of san giorgio maggiore, the spirited and fantastic _décadence_ of santa maria della salute. elsewhere english water-colour often enters into a fruitless rivalry with oil-painting, but clara montalba cleaves to the old form which in other days under bonington, david cox, and turner was the chief glory of the english school. she throws lightly upon paper notes and effects which have struck her, and the memory of which she wishes to retain. for the english painters of the day, so far as they do not remain in the country, venice has become what the east was for the earlier generations. they no longer study the romantic venice which turner painted and byron sang in _childe harold_, they do not paint the noble beauty of venetian architecture or its canals glowing in the sun, but the venice of the day, with its narrow alleys and pretty girls, venice with its marvellous effects of light and the picturesque figures of its streets. nor are they at pains to discover "ideal" traits in the character of the italian people. they paint true, everyday scenes from popular life, but these are glorified by the magic of light. after zezzos, ludwig passini, cecil van haanen, tito, and eugène blaas, the englishmen luke fildes, w. logsdail, and henry woods are the most skilful painters of venetian street scenes. in the pictures of _luke fildes_ and _w. logsdail_ there are usually to be seen in the foreground beautiful women, painted life-size, washing linen in the canal or seated knitting at the house door; the heads are bright and animated, the colours almost glaringly vivid. _henry woods_, the brother-in-law of luke fildes, rather followed the paths prescribed by favretto in such pictures as "venetian trade in the streets," "the sale of an old master," "preparation or the first communion," "back from the rialto," and the like; of all the english he has carried out the study of bright daylight most consistently. the little glass house which he built in at the back of the palazzo vendramin became the model of all the glass studios now disseminated over the city of the lagunes. and these labours in venice contributed in no unessential manner to lead english painting, in general, away from its one-sided æsthetics and rather more into the mud of the streets, caused it to break with its finely accorded tones, and brought it to a more earnest study of light. beside his idealised venetian women, luke fildes also painted large pictures from the life of the english people, such as "the return of the lost one," "the widower," and the like, which struck tones more earnest than english painting does elsewhere; and in his picture of , "the poor of london," he even recalled certain sketches which gavarni drew during his rambles through the poverty-stricken quarter of london. the poor starving figures in this work were rendered quite realistically and without embellishment; the general tone was a greenish-grey, making a forcible change from the customary light blue of english pictures. _dudley hardy's_ huge picture "homeless," where a crowd of human beings are sleeping at night in the open air at the foot of a monument in london, and _jacomb hood's_ plain scenes from london street life, are other works which in recent years were striking, from having a character rather french than english. _stott of oldham_, by his pretty pictures of the dunes with children playing, powerful portraits, and delicate, vaporous moonlight landscapes, has won many admirers on the continent also. _stanhope forbes_ painted "a philharmonic society in the country," a representation of an auction, and scenes from the career of the salvation army, in which he restrained himself from all subordinate ideas of a poetic turn. in the same way those artists are important who work according to the demands of decorative painting. a picture in a room should be like a jewel in its setting, in harmony. it should fit agreeably into the scheme of decoration, its colour in unison, its lines melodious, its general effect toning well with the general design. [illustration: brangwyn. illustration to the rubÁiyÁt of omar khayyÁm. (_by permission of messrs. gibbings & co., the owners of the copyright._)] these principles, taught by morris, have had a formative influence on the work of a large number of artists. there arose a tendency which, by borrowing characteristic effects from woodwork, carpets, and stained-glass, and by the application of style to line as well as to colour, went one step further than burne-jones. the pictures of _john w. waterhouse_, for instance, are not only conceived in literary vein, but seen with the eye of a painter. by smooth, thick lines, by the discordant harmony of blues, greens, and violet, he gets a carpet-like effect which is highly decorative. _byam shaw_, still a young man, is just such another master of decorative lines. at the age of twenty-five he painted the picture "love's baubles," which now hangs in the art gallery in liverpool. the subject he took from a poem in rossetti's "house of life." beautiful women snatch after the fruit which a boy carries along on a salver. the whole is a harmony of melodious lines and rich, quiet colours. in his next picture, "truth," he ranges himself with boutet de monoel or ludwig von zumbusch: he strives after the monumental effect that the figures of old brueghel have. next to byam shaw, _g. e. moira_ is the chief representative of this decorative school. his picture of pelleas and melisande is a work quite out of the ordinary, original in arrangement, incisive, almost bitter in colour, dull-green, black, lilac, and yellow; fine in the atmosphere of maeterlinck that pervades the whole. but he does his best work as a decorator, not as a painter of pictures that can be taken away from their setting. in the frieze with which he decorated the trocadéro restaurant in london he, for the first time, made use of polychrome relief, that since has played such an important part in the art of decoration, and sought to enhance the colour effect still more by the use of metal. in the paris exhibition he attracted considerable attention by the pictures with which he decorated the pavilion of the peninsular and oriental steamship company--simple lines and fantasies of colour which with their delicate, flowing harmony had an effect like music. his designs for stained-glass windows have the same qualities, and in his position as professor in the national college of art at south kensington he is bound to exert a great influence over the younger generation. _anning bell_, well known by his design for the cover of the _studio_, has also done excellent work in coloured relief, especially in his frieze "music and dancing." _maurice greiffenhagen_ surprises one by the ardour of his imagination, his strong emphatic line, and the tapestry-like beauty of his colour. he reminds one of aman-jean, such a wonderful "old-master-like" beauty is suffused through the picture "the sons of god looked upon the daughters of men." no less effective is the "gourmandise" with which he gives his interpretation the appearance of an old picture. the colours, though full of sound and movement, are at the same time so etiolated and faint that one would think the picture had hung for centuries in a dusty corner of an old church, or that spiders had spun their webs across it; the frame too is in keeping, and enhances the general effect of solemnity. the same style is found in the later work of _frank brangwyn_, who began by painting out-of-door pictures in the spirit of the french impressionists, and afterwards, thanks to a visit to the east, was brought into touch with nature saturated in colour and massive in feature. [illustration: f. cayley robinson. a winter evening. (_by permission of the artist._)] all his works are imposing through the decisive way in which he builds up his masses, and the wonderful, rhythmical articulation of forms and colours combined. the picture "gold, frankincense, and myrrh" which has been given a place in the luxembourg, and the large mural painting "commerce and navigation" in the royal exchange in london, are up to now his strongest work. _f. cayley robinson_, who arrests one's attention with his austere, almost heraldic arrangement of line, and his gloomy acerbity of colour; _miss eleanor fortescue brickdale_, who awoke high hopes with her picture "the deceitfulness of riches"; and that spirited draughtsman, w. nicholson, whose drawings lead the eye to and fro, backwards and forwards, along heavy decided lines, noting every expressive turn and movement. almost all these masters have come to us from the applied arts. it was the idea of attaining to unity of effect in decorative ornament that impelled these artists to work in the spirit of to-day, not that each should bring forward his own work of art and let it stand by itself, but that the scheme of decorative architecture, modelling, and painting should work together hand in hand in a homogeneous scheme of decoration. with all these artists one cannot help noticing that they owe much in the way of light and leading to one who in england, the land of poems-in-paint, proclaimed more outspokenly than anyone else the principle of "art for art's sake,"--to the great american, james m'neill whistler. bibliography bibliography chapter xxviii in general: john ruskin: letters to "the times" on the principal pre-raphaelite pictures in the exhibition of . reprinted for private circulation. london, . pre-raphaelitism: its art, literature, and professors, "london and county review," march . the poetic phase in modern english art, "new quarterly magazine," june . william holman hunt: the pre-raphaelite brotherhood, "contemporary review," april-june . edouard rod: les préraphaélites anglais, "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii , . w. v. seidlitz: die englische malerei auf der jubiläumsausstellung zu manchester im sommer, , "repertorium für kunstwissenschaft," , xi , . p. t. forsyth: religion in recent art. manchester and london, . wilhelm weigand: die aesthetische bewegung in england, "gegenwart," ( ), p. . wilhelm weigand: die praeraphaeliten, in his "essays." munich, . cornelius gurlitt: die praeraphaeliten, eine britische malerschule, "westermanns monatshefte," april-june, . w. holman hunt: pre-rafaelitism and pre-rafaelite brotherhood. london, . noël paton: j. m. gray: sir noël paton, "art journal," , p. . holman hunt: f. g. stephens: w. holman hunt, "portfolio," , p. . f. g. stephens: holman hunt's "the triumph of the innocents," "portfolio," , p. . j. beavington-atkinson: mr. holman hunt, his work and career, "blackwood's magazine," april . madox brown: w. m. rossetti: mr. madox brown's exhibition and its place in our school of painting, "fraser's magazine," may . sidney colvin: ford madox brown, "portfolio," , p. . madox brown's mural painting at manchester, "academy," , p. . w. m. rossetti: mr. madox brown's frescoes in manchester, "art journal," , new series, p. . e. chesneau: peintres anglais contemporains: ford madox brown, "l'art," , p. . f. g. stephens: ford madox brown, his early studies and motives, "portfolio," , pp. and . millais: sidney colvin: millais, "portfolio," , p. . modern artists. illustrated biographies. vols. - . emilie isabel barrington: why is mr. millais our popular painter? "fortnightly review," july . walter armstrong: sir j. e. millais, his life and work. illustrated with engravings and facsimiles, "the art annual." london, . john ruskin: notes on some of the principal pictures of sir john millais. london, . helen zimmern: sir john millais, "die kunst unserer zeit," munich, . m. h. spielmann: millais and his works. london, . a. l. baldry: millais, his art and his influence. london, . millais: life and letters of millais. vols. london, . chapter xxix menzel: (beside books, etc. cited for chapter xv.): duranty: adolf menzel, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i and ii. a. lichtwark: menzels piazza d'erbe, "gegenwart," , . c. gurlitt: menzels brunnenpromenade in kissingen, "gegenwart," , p. . georg galland: das arbeiterbild in vergangenheit und gegenwart, "frankfurter zeitung," , p. . jul. meier-gräfe: der junge menzel. stuttgart, . bleibtreu: k. pietschker: georg bleibtreu, der maler des neuen deutschen kaiserreiches, kunststudie und biographische skizze. koethen, . a. v. werner: ludwig pietsch: "nord und süd," , , p. . ad. rosenberg, in "künstlermonographien," ix. bielefeld, . max michael: hermann helferich: erinnerung an max michael, "kunst für alle," , vi . güssow: max kretzer: "westermanns monatshefte," vol. , , p. . pettenkofen: alfred de lostalot: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . carl v. lützow: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," . lorenz gedon: g. hirth: "zeitschrift des münchener kunstgewerbevereins," , , . fr. schneider, the same, , and . "allgemeine zeitung," , no. . k.: "allgemeine kunstchronik," , viii p. . ludwig pietsch: "nord und süd," , , p. . diez: friedrich pecht: zu wilhelm diez geburtstage, "kunst für alle," , iv . h. e. v. berlepsch: w. diez, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xxii. claus meyer: claus meyer-album. twelve photogravures, with biographical text by w. lübke. münchen, . harburger: harburger-album. munich, braun & schneider, . fritz august kaulbach: hermann helferich: neue kunst. berlin, . p. g.: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xxiii . r. graul: "graphische künste," , xiii , . see also kaulbach-album. verlag für kunst und wissenschaft. münchen, . ad. rosenberg, in the "künstlermonographien." ed. by knackfuss. bielefeld, . lenbach: friedrich pecht: franz lenbach, "nord und süd," , i . b. förster: franz lenbachs neueste porträts, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , no. . ludwig pietsch: franz lenbach, "nord und süd," , , p. . c. gurlitt: lenbachs bismarck-bildniss, "gegenwart," , p. . h. helferich: lenbachs zeitgenössische bildnisse, "nation," , - , pp. and . h. e. v. berlepsch: franz lenbach, in "velhagen und klasings monatshefte," , i. ad. rosenberg, in the "künstlermonographien." ed. by knackfuss. bielefeld, . see also lenbachs zeitgenössische bildnisse. heliogravures by albert. münchen, . leibl: s. r. köhler: "american art review," , . hermann helferich: "kunst für alle," january . georg gronau, in the "künstlermonographien." ed. by knackfuss. leipzig, . chapter xxx leading works: louis gonse: l'art japonais. paris, quantin, . anderson: the pictorial arts of japan, london, . j. brinkmann: kunst und handwerk in japan. berlin, . see also ernest chesneau: le japon à paris, "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii , . h. v. tschudi: die kunst in japan, "mittheilungen des k. k. österreichischen museums," , xiv . le blanc du vernet: l'art japonais, "l'art," , p. ; japonisme, "l'art," , p. . th. duret: l'art japonais. les livres illustrés. les albums imprimés. hokusai, "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii , . hans gierke: japanesische malerei, in "westermanns monatshefte," may . d. brauns: die leistungen der japaner auf dem gebiete der künste, "unsere zeit," , ii . o. v. schorn: malerei und illustration in japan, "vom fels zum meer," april . f. e. fenollosa: review of the chapter on painting in "l'art japonais," by l. gonse. yokohama, . w. koopmann: kunst und handwerk in japan, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xiv . t. de wyzewa: la peinture japonaise, "revue des deux mondes," july . also separately, les grands peintres de l'espagne, etc. paris, . s. bing: le japon artistique. paris, . edward f. strange: japanese illustration. london, . w. v. seidlitz: geschichte des japanischen farbenholzschnittes. dresden, . outamaro: e. de goncourt: outamaro le peintre des maisons vertes. paris, . hokusai: g. geffroy, in "la vie artistique." paris, . chapter xxxi in general: duranty: la nouvelle peinture, à propos du groupe d'artistes qui expose dans les galeries durand-ruel. paris, dentu, . théodore duret: les peintres impressionists: c. monet, sisley, c. pissarro, renoir, b. morisot. avec un dessin de renoir. paris, . louis enault: une revolution artistique. paris, . frederick wedmore: the impressionists, "the fortnightly review," january . felix fénélon: les impressionistes en . (angrand, caillebotte, miss cassatt, degas, dubois-pillet, david estoppey, forain, gauguin, guillaumin, claude monet, mme. morisot, de nittis, camille et lucien pissarro, raffaelli, renoir, seurat, signac, zandomeneghi, etc.) paris, . catalogue illustré de l'exposition des peintures du groupe impressioniste et synthétiste, faite dans le local de m. volpini au champ de mars, . g. lecomte: l'art impressioniste. paris, . h. huysmans: certains. paris, . h. huysmans: l'art moderne. paris, . g. geffroy: la vie artistique. paris, . jul. meier-gräfe: der impressionismus in muther's series, "die kunst." berlin, . manet: zola: mes haines. edouard manet. paris, , p. . catalogue de l'exposition des oeuvres de manet, avec préface d'emile zola. paris, . edmond bazire: manet. paris, . jacques de biez: edouard manet. conférence faite à la salle des capucines le mardi, janvier . paris, . l. gonse: manet, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . fritz bley: edouard manet, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , . paul d'abrest: "allgemeine kunstchronik," , viii . andreas aubert, in the copenhagen "tilskueren," . hugo von tschudi: edouard manet. berlin, . monet: théodore duret: le peintre claude monet: notice sur son oeuvre. paris, . a. de lostalot: exposition des oeuvres de m. claude monet, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . c. dargenty: exposition des oeuvres de m. monet, "courier de l'art," , . hermann helferich: claude monet, "freie bühne," , . degas: george moore: degas, the painter of modern life, "magazine of art," . max liebermann: degas, berlin, cassirer, . pissarro: g. lecomte: camille pissarro. no. of "hommes d'aujourd'hui." paris, . chapter xxxii rossetti: william sharp: dante gabriel rossetti and pictorialism in verse, "portfolio," , p. . william sharp: dante gabriel rossetti, a record and a study. london, . william tirebuck: dante gabriel rossetti, his works and influence. london, . t. hall caine: recollections of dante gabriel rossetti. london, . f. g. stephens: the earlier works of rossetti, "portfolio," may . sidney colvin: rossetti as a painter, "magazine of art," march . w. tirebuck: obituary in the "art journal," january . r. waldmüller: dante gabriel rossetti, dichter und maler, "allgemeine zeitung," , blatt . notes on rossetti and his works, "art journal," may . william michael rossetti, introduction to the two-volume edition of the works of dante gabriel rossetti. london, . franz hüffer: dante gabriel rossetti. leipzig, . j. beavington-atkinson: contemporary art, poetic and positive (rossetti and alma tadema, linnell and lawson), "blackwood's magazine," march . theodore watts: the truth about rossetti, "nineteenth century," march . f. g. stephens: the earlier works of rossetti, "portfolio," , pp. and . théodore duret: les expositions de londres: dante gabriel rossetti, "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii . david hannay: the paintings of rossetti, "national review," march . helen zimmern: aus london, d. g. rossetti, "westermanns monatshefte," august . harry quilter: the art of rossetti, "contemporary review," february . william michael rossetti: notes on rossetti and his works, "art journal," , pp. , , , . f. g. stephens: ecce ancilla domini, "portfolio," , p. . william michael rossetti: d. g. rossetti as designer and writer. london, . wilhelm weigand: "gegenwart," , p. , and his essays. f. g. stephens: beata beatrix, "portfolio," , p. . f. g. stephens: rosa triplex, by d. g. rossetti, "portfolio," , p. . h. c. marillier: d. g. rossetti, an illustrated memorial of his art and life. nd edition. london, . burne-jones: sidney colvin: "portfolio," , p. . f. g. stephens: "portfolio," , pp. and . birmingham museum and art gallery, catalogue (with notes) of the collections of paintings by george frederick watts and edward burne-jones. birmingham, . f. g. stephens: "portfolio," , p. . f. g. stephens: mr. burne-jones' mosaics at rome, "portfolio," may . malcolm bell: edward burne-jones. london, . andré michel: "journal des débats," march . cornelius gurlitt: die praerafaeliten, eine britische malerschule, "westermanns monatshefte," july . p. leprieur: burne-jones, decorateur et ornemaniste, "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii . ninety-one photogravures directly reproduced from the original paintings, "berl. photogr. gesell.," . malcolm bell: burne-jones. muther's "die kunst." bd. . otto v. schleinitz: "künstlermonographien." ed. by knackfuss. bd. . bielefeld, . arthur hughes: william michael rossetti: "portfolio," , p. . j. m. strudwick: g. bernard shaw: "art journal," , p. . richmond: h. lascelles: william b. richmond, "art journal," christmas annual. . morris: aymer vallance: william morris, his art, his writings, and his public life. london, . j. w. mackail: life of william morris. vols. london, . walter crane: f. g. stephens: the designs of walter crane, "portfolio," , , . cornelius gurlitt: "gegenwart," . peter jessen: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," . v. berlepsch: walter crane. wien, . otto v. schleinitz: walter crane, in the "künstlermonographien." ed. by knackfuss, bielefeld, . p. g. konody: the art of walter crane. london, . watts: j. beavington-atkinson: "portfolio," , p. . f. w. myers: on mr. watts' pictures, "fortnightly review," february . f. w. myers: stanzas on mr. watts' collected works. london, . h. quilter: the art of watts, "contemporary review," february . walter armstrong: george frederick watts, "l'art," , p. . e. i. barrington: the painted poetry of watts and rossetti, "nineteenth century," june . e. pfeiffer: on two pictures by g. f. watts, "academy," , p. . m. h. spielmann: the works of mr. g. f. watts, with a catalogue of his pictures, "pall mall gazette extra," no. . london, . f. g. stephens: g. f. watts, "portfolio," , p. . helen zimmern in "die kunst unserer zeit," . hermann helferich: "kunst für alle," december . jarno jessen: george frederick f. watts. berlin, . rosa e. d. sketchley: george frederick watts. london, . chapter xxxiii gustave moreau: paul leroi: les parias du salon, "l'art," , iii . charles tardieu: la peinture à l'exposition universelle de , "l'art," , ii . ary renan: g. moreau, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i , ii . claude phillips: fables of la fontaine by gustave moreau, "magazine of art," , p. . karl huysmans: a. rebours. paris, , passim. p. flat: le musée gustave moreau. Étude sur gustave moreau, ses oeuvres, son influence. paris, . ary renan: gustave moreau. paris, . g. larronnet: gustave moreau. paris, . puvis de chavannes: a. baignières: la peinture décorative au xix siècle. m. puvis de chavannes, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . edouard aynard: les peintures décoratives de puvis de chavannes au palais des arts. lyon, . thiebault-sisson: puvis de chavannes et son oeuvre, "la nouvelle revue," december . andré michel: exposition de m. puvis de chavannes, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . hermann bahr: zur kritik der moderne. zürich, . andré michel: "graphische künste," xiv, , . a. nossig: "allgemeine kunstchronik," , no. . m. vachon: puvis de chavannes. paris, . l. bénédite: les dessins de puvis de chavannes au musée du luxembourg. paris, . golberg: puvis de chavannes. paris, . boecklin: f. pecht: "nord und süd," , iv . reprinted in "deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts," nördlingen, , pp. - . a. rosenberg: "grenzboten," , i pp. - . graf schack: meine gemäldesammlung. stuttgart, , pp. - . o. berggruen: die galerie schack. wien, . zwei neue gemälde von a. boecklin, "deutsche rundschau," june . e. koppel: arnold boecklin, "vom fels zum meer," july . otto baisch: arnold boecklin, "westermanns monatshefte," august , . guido hauck: arnold boecklins gefilde seligen und goethes faust. berlin, . f. pecht: zu arnold boecklins geburtstag, "kunst für alle," , iii . fritz lemmermayer: "unsere zeit," , ii . helen zimmern: "art journal," , p. . berthold haendke: arnold boecklin in seiner historischen und künstlerischen entwicklung. hamburg, . hugo kaatz: der realismus arnold boecklins, "gegenwart," , , p. . carus sterne: arnold boecklins fabelwesen im lichte der organischen formenlehre, "gegenwart," , , p. . a. fendler: arnold boecklin, "illustrirte zeitung," , no. . max lehrs: arnold boecklin, ein leitfaden zum verständniss der kunst. münchen, . j. mähly: aus arnold boecklins atelier, "gegenwart," , . emil hannover, in "tilskueren," kopenhagen, , p. . franz hermann, "gazette des beaux-arts," nos. and , april and july . franz hermann, in "die kunst unserer zeit," december . carl neumann, "preussische jahrbücher," vol. , , part . cornelius gurlitt: "kunst für alle," , part . ola hansson: "seher und deuter." berlin, , p. . f. von ostini, in "velhagen und klasings monatshefte," . see also the work on boecklin produced by the "verlag für kunst und wissenschaft," with forty of the artist's chief pictures reproduced in photogravure. münchen, . w. ritter: arnold boecklin. paris, . h. f. meissner: arnold boecklin. berlin, . e. schick: boecklins tagebuch. hrsg. v. tschudi. berlin, . h. mendelssohn: arnold boecklin. berlin, . h. brockhaus: arnold boecklin. leipzig, . g. floerke: gespräche mit boecklin. münchen, . j. meier-gräfe: der fall boecklin. stuttgart, . h. von marées: conrad fiedler: h. von marées. munich, . ( vol. text, vol. pictures.) conrad fiedler: h. von marées auf der münchener jahresausstellung, "allgemeine zeitung," , supplement no. . h. janitschek: "die nation," , no. . carl von pidoll: aus der werkstatt eines künstlers. luxemburg, . cornelius gurlitt: "gegenwart," , . heinr. wölfflin: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , part . emil hannover, in "tilskueren," kopenhagen, , p. . franz dreber: exhibition in royal national gallery of berlin, . hubert janitschek: zur charakteristik franz drebers, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xi, , p. . chapter xxxiv bastien-lepage: a. theuriet: j. bastien-lepage, l'homme et l'artiste. paris, . a. hustin: bastien-lepage, "l'art," , i . g. dargenty: "l'art," , i , . a. de fourcaud: jules bastien-lepage, sa vie et ses oeuvres. paris, . marie von baskirtscheff: "journal intime." paris, . marie baskirtscheff: cornelius gurlitt: marie baskirtscheff und ihr tagebuch, in "die kunst unserer zeit," , i . léon l'hermitte: robert walker: l'hermitte, "art journal," , p. . raffaelli: alfred de lostalot: expositions diverses à paris: oeuvres de m. j. f. raffaelli, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . emil hannover: raffaelli, "af dagens krönike." kopenhagen, . j. de nittis: philippe burty: "l'art," , p. . henry jouin: maîtres contemporains, p. . paris, . ferdinand heilbuth: a. hustin: "l'art," , ii . a. helferich: "kunst für alle," v, , p. . gervex: f. jahyer: galerie contemporaine litéraire et artistique, , p. . friant: roger marx: silhouettes d'artistes contemporains, "l'art," , p. . ulysse butin: paul leroi: "l'art," , ii . abel patoux: "l'art," , ii , . dagnan-bouveret: b. karageorgevitsch: "magazine of art," february , no. . on the more modern landscape painters in general: p. taren: die moderne landschaft, "gegenwart," , . on neo-impressionism: paul signac: d'eugène delacroix au neo-impressionisme. paris, . george seurat: obituary in the "chronique des arts," , . cheret: ernest maindron: les affiches illustrées, "gazette des beaux-arts," , ii and . karl huysmans: certains. paris, . l'affiche illustrée. le roi de l'affiche. l'oeuvre de chéret, etc., "la plume," no. , november . r. h. sherard: "magazine of art," september , no. . l. morin: quelques artistes de ce temps. [cherét, vierge.] paris, . g. kahn: jules chéret, "art et decoration," xii, , p. . steinlen: crouzat: a. de steinlen, peintre, graveur, lithographe. paris, maison du livre, . paul renouard: eugène véron: "l'art," , iii ; , iv . jules claretie: m. paul renouard et l'opéra, "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . daniel vierge: j. and e. r. pennell: daniel vierge, "portfolio," , p. . by the editor: "magazine of art," , no. (december). cazin: leon bénédite: cazin. paris, . lautrec: e. klassowki: die maler von montmartre [billotte, steinlen, toulouse-lautrec, léandre]. "die kunst," bd. . edited by r. muther. andré rivoire: "revue de l'art ancien et moderne," xi, . carrière: g. geffroy: la vie artistique. préface d'edmond de goncourt. pointe sèche d'eugène carrière. paris, dentu, . léailles: e. carrière, l'homme et l'artiste. paris, . g. geffroy: l'oeuvre d'eugène carrière. paris, . aman-jean: a. beaunier, aman-jean, "art et decoration," vi, . odilon redon: j. destrée: l'oeuvre lithographique de odilon redon. catalogue descriptif. bruxelles, . chapter xxxv in general: francisco tubino: the revival of spanish art. . spanische künstlermappe. edited by prince ludwig ferdinand, with an introduction by f. reber. munich, . gustav diercks: moderne spanische maler, "vom fels zum meer," , . fortuny: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," ix, , p. . j. c. davillier: fortuny, sa vie, son oeuvre, sa correspondance. avec cinq dessins inédits en facsimile et deux eaux-fortes originales. paris, aubry, . fortuny und die moderne malerei der spanier, "allgemeine zeitung," , supplement, . walther fol: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i , . charles yriarte: "l'art," , i . charles yriarte, in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . see also the fortuny album published by goupil. page photographs. paris, . pradilla: delia hart: "art journal," , p. . chapter xxxvi james jackson jarves: modern italian painters and painting, "art journal," , p. . p. p.: die kunstausstellung im senatspalast zu mailand, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xvi, , , . camillo boito: pittura e scultura. milano, . die modernen venetianer maler, "allgemeine kunstchronik," , viii . milliot: de l'art actuel en italie, "revue du monde latin," juin, . angelo de gubernatis: dizionario degli artisti italiani viventi. firenze, . m. wittich: italienische malerei. mappe, , . helen zimmern: die moderne kunst in italien, "kunst unserer zeit," , p. . a. stella: pittura e scultura in piemonte. turin, paravia & comp., . on the neapolitans: principessa della rocca: artisti italiani viventi (napolitani). napoli, . helen zimmern: die neapolitanische malerschule, "kunst für alle," , p. . morelli: helen zimmern: "art journal," , pp. and . e. dalbano: domenico morelli. napoli nobilissima, xi, . michetti: helen zimmern: "art journal," , pp. and . dalbono: helen zimmern: "art journal," , p. . favretto: obituaries in : garocci, "arte e storia," vi ; "chronique des arts," ; "allgemeine kunstchronik," ; "mittheilungen des mähr. gewerbemuseums," ; "courrier de l'art," vi ; "kunstchronik," xxii ; "the saturday review," october . see also giacomo favretto e le sue opere. edizione unica di tutti i principali capolavori del celebre artista veneziano. publicata per cura di g. cesare sicco. torino, . l. brasch: giacomo favretta, "die kunst unserer zeit," xii, . segantini: w. fred: giovanni segantini. wien, . franz servaes: giovanni segantini. sein leben und sein werk. hrsg. v. k. k. ministerium für kultus und unterricht. wien, m. serlach & co. . chapter xxxvii in general: frederick wedmore: some tendencies in recent painting, "temple bar," july . e. chesneau: artistes anglais contemporains. paris, . claude phillips: the progress of english art as shown at the manchester exhibition, "magazine of art," december . ford madox brown on the same subject in the "magazine of art," february . rutari: kunst und künstler in england, "kölnische zeitung," , . leighton: j. beavington atkinson: "portfolio," , p. . mrs. a. lang: sir f. leighton, his life and work. plates. "the art annual," . london, virtue. wyke bayliss: five great painters of the victorian era. london, sampson low, marston & co. . g. c. williamson: frederic lord leighton. london, g. bell & sons, . poynter: sidney colvin: "portfolio," , . p. g. hamerton: "portfolio," , . james dafforne: "art journal," , p. ; , p. . alma tadema: g. a. simcox: "portfolio," , p. . h. billung: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xiv , . the works of laurence alma tadema, "art journal," february . alice meynell: l. alma tadema, "art journal," november . georg ebers: lorenz alma tadema, "westermanns monatshefte," november and december . helen zimmern: l. alma tadema, his life and work, "the art annual," . london, virtue. k. brügge: alma tadema, "vom fels zum meer," , . helen zimmern in "die kunst unserer zeit," , ii . rudolf de cardova: sir laurence alma tadema, "cassell's magazine," . h. zimmern: sir laurence alma tadema. london, g. bell & sons, . albert moore: sidney colvin: "portfolio," , . harold frederic: "scribner's magazine," december , p. . karl blind: "vom fels zum meer," . briton rivière: james dafforne: the works of briton rivière, "art journal," , p. . walter armstrong: briton rivière, his life and work, "art annual," . london, virtue. a. braun: ein englischer thiermaler, "allgemeine kunstchronik," , - . r. caldecott: claude phillips: "gazette des beaux-arts," , i . see also r. caldecott: sketches, with an introduction by h. blackburn. london, . george mason: sidney colvin: george mason, "portfolio," , p. . g. a. simcox: mr. mason's collected works, "portfolio," , p. . alice meynell: "art journal," , pp. , , and . walker: sidney colvin: frederick walker, "portfolio," , p. . obituary in the "art journal," , pp. , , . james dafforne: the works of frederick walker, "art journal," , p. . j. comyns carr: "portfolio," , p. . j. comyns carr: "l'art," , i , ii . j. comyns carr: frederick walker, an essay. london, . clementina black: frederick walker. london, duckworth, . g. h. boughton: sidney colvin: "portfolio," , p. . james dafforne: "art journal," , p. . g. d. leslie: tom taylor: "portfolio," , p. . p. h. calderon: tom taylor: "portfolio," , p. . james dafforne: "art journal," , p. . marcus stone: lionel g. robinson: "art journal," , p. . frank holl: harry quilter: in memoriam: frank holl, "universal review," august . erwin volckmann: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xxiv, , p. . gertrude e. campbell: "art journal," , p. . herkomer: j. dafforne: the works of hubert herkomer, "art journal," , p. . helen zimmern: h. herkomer, "kunst für alle," vi, , i. w. l. courtney: professor hubert herkomer, royal academician, his life and work, "art annual" for . london, virtue. ludwig pietsch: hubert herkomer, "velhagen und klasings monatshefte," . see also h. herkomer: etching and mezzotint engraving. lectures delivered at oxford. london, . l. pietsch: herkomer, "künstlermonographien." ed. knackfuss, no. . bielefeld, . on modern english landscape: p. g. hamerton: the landscape-painters, "portfolio," , p. . alfred dawson: english landscape art, its position and prospects. london, . alfred w. hunt: modern english landscape-painting, "nineteenth century," may . cecil lawson: "art journal," , p . heseltine ovon: "magazine of art," no. , december . hook: f. g. stephens: james clarke hook, "portfolio," , p. . a. h. palmer: james clarke hook, "portfolio," , pp. , , , , . frederick george stephens: james clarke hook, his life and work, "art annual," . london, virtue. vicat cole: james dafforne: "art journal," , p. . colin hunter: walter armstrong: "art journal," , p. . birket foster: james dafforne: "art journal," , p. . marcus b. huish: "art annual," . london, virtue. david murray: marion hepworth dixon: "art journal," , p. . w. armstrong: "magazine of art," , p. . ernest parton: "art journal," , p. . w. b. leader: james dafforne: "art journal," , p. . w. l. wyllie: j. penderel-brodhurst: "art journal," , p. . henry moore: "art journal," , pp. and . p. g. hamerton: a modern marine painter, "portfolio," , pp. and . on the group of english painters working in venice: julia cartwright: the artist in venice, "portfolio," , p . henry woods: "art journal," , p. . clara montalba: paul leroi: "l'art," , iii . stanhope a. forbes: wilfrid meynell: "art journal," , p. . shaw: p. g. konody: byam shaw, "kunst und kunsthandwerk," v, . _printed by_ morrison & gibb limited, _edinburgh_ the mentor vol. no. , angels in art by john c. van dyke _professor of the history of art, rutgers college_ [illustration] [illustration] the mentor serial no. department of fine arts mentor gravures angel with violin melozzo da forlì angel choir benozzo gozzoli angel of annunciation burne-jones madonna and child with angels bellini angel with lute carpaccio saint michael perugino "paint an angel!" exclaimed courbet (koor-bay´) the realist to a pupil who one day asked him how it should be done. "when did you ever see an angel?" the abashed pupil had to admit that he had never had the good fortune to see one. "very well, then, you had better paint the portrait of your grandfather, whom you see every day." the advice to keep his head out of the clouds while his feet were on earth may have been needed by the pupil; but nevertheless angels have been painted time out of mind, and even such pronounced realists as courbet and manet (mah-nay´) have painted them. and they saw them, too; that is, they saw the pretty-faced models they turned into angels by adding enlarged pigeon wings to their shoulder blades. but they were not very spiritual angels. realism rather scorns things spiritual, and besides religious feeling and sentiment in art passed out several centuries before the coming of the modern realists. the early men--the fra angelicos, the benozzos (ben-ots-o), the filippinos, of the fifteenth century--believed in the biblical scenes they painted, and sometimes stated their belief in letters of gold at the bottom of their pictures. they saw things with the eye of faith,--saw madonnas, saints, and angels in visions, and painted them, as the evangelists wrote, by the aid of inspiration. perhaps it was their belief, their intense feeling, that gave the fine religious sentiment to the work of these early men. yet they did not invent or discover the angel in art. it had a more material and commonplace origin than in medieval belief and religious fervor. winged figures in ancient art [illustration: perugino: baptism of christ (detail)] there were winged figures in egyptian, chaldean, and assyrian art, deities of the air, goddesses of the cloud and the heavens. the hittite and the persian produced the winged sphinx, and the greek the winged victory that flew above the advancing host and pointed the way to glory. this winged victory of the greeks probably suggested the christian angel; though the immediate forerunner of the angel was found in the cupid and psyche of roman art. the christians, following the romans, took over in their art much of the material of the old roman world. they had to do this; for christianity was without form in art, and the early christians decried it as idolatrous. but later on there came a demand for telling the bible stories in form and color, that people might see what they could not read. then christianity, answering the demand, took up roman forms and gave them christian significance. they took the cupids of roman art and turned them into cherubs, and out of the winged victories and psyches they made ministering angels. [illustration: perugino: cherub head (detail)] the pagan form was soon forgotten in the christian spirit, and the angels of the gothic and early renaissance periods developed a new meaning, a new soul. what beautiful sentiment, what profound feeling, the early painters put into the angel of the annunciation! what a world of pathos and sadness they gave the angel seated by the tomb of christ! what gladness and joy to the angels of the nativity standing near the madonna or singing the _gloria in excelsis_ in the upper sky! according to tradition, the angels know neither gladness nor sadness, neither wrath nor pity. they are heavenly messengers obeying the mandates of the most high, without emotion or feeling of any kind. but the old masters of italy did not so regard them. they gave them human characteristics, made them emotional and sympathetic, painted them in robes of blue, of red, of gold, of white, and gave them faces and forms that were human, it is true, but as near divine as earthly thought could render them. cherubim and seraphim the red-robed angels (they were painted red of face as well as of robe) were the seraphim, the angels of love, and nearest to god. often with the early painters only their heads were shown, with wings crossed in front of them, sometimes with four, six, or eight wings. the blue-robed angels were the cherubim, the angels of knowledge, and they too were shown in their heads only, with many crossed wings. they appeared in groups and halos surrounding the presence of the father, the son, or the virgin. the cherubs or _putti_ of later italian art, so frequently seen with the madonna and child, are the artistic descendants of the seraphim and cherubim. they are seen in the large aureoles of light that surround the madonna; for instance, in raphael's "sistine madonna" and titian's "assumption of the virgin." they recede into the background or come forward in clouds as the countless hosts of heaven. [illustration: domenichino. madonna of the rosary (detail)] frequently the cherubs are given enlarged childlike or feminine forms with individual features, elongated wings, variegated colors. they are then shown hovering or standing or seated near the madonna, and are usually playing on musical instruments--making music for the glory of the madonna and child. they are seen in the pictures of bellini (bel-lee´-nee) and carpaccio (kahr-pah´-cho) near the foot of the throne; with melozzo da forlì (for-lee´) they soar in the air; with duccio (doo´-cho) and cimabue (chee-mah-boo´-ah) they stand about the throne, dressed in rich robes, singing, playing, or worshiping. music and color were associated in the minds of the early italians as though both were manifestations of sentiment in art. especially was this true at venice,--the one great color spot in italian art. ministering and guardian angels the angels that sang the _gloria in excelsis_, or knelt near at hand at the birth of christ, were usually larger than the _putti_, girlish in form, and very beautiful of face. they were dressed sometimes in colors, as with correggio (kor-red´-jo); sometimes in gold brocades of gorgeous pattern, as with the vivarini (vee-vahr-ee´-nee); sometimes in white and blue, as with piero della françesca (frahn-ches´-kah). again, they frequently had jeweled crowns or embossed halos or peacock-eyed wings. it was the idea of the old masters to make them decoratively beautiful as well as representative of purity and truth. and they carried out this idea still further in the faces, which were always of the most lovely types they could find or imagine. to us today these angel faces are perhaps the most attractive feature of this early church art of italy. [illustration: correggio; angel group (detail of fresco at parma)] the same kind of angels, but clothed usually in white, appeared to the shepherds, attended the holy family in their flight into egypt, stood by the river bank at the baptism of christ, were with him in the wilderness, in the garden, at the crucifixion, watched by the tomb, and rolled away the stone from the door. others of the angelic host appeared at times to warn abraham, to present a message to saint joachim, to guide saint peter out of his prison. they were all ministering spirits, but without specific names. [illustration: fra bartolommeo; madonna enthroned (detail)] the seven archangels on the other hand, certain deeds to be done were given to certain angels who had definite names. these were the seven archangels. it was michael, captain of the hosts of heaven, that overcame the demon and drove him into the bottomless pit; it was jophiel with the flaming sword that drove adam and eve out of paradise; it was zadkiel that stayed the hand of abraham, and chamuel that wrestled with jacob. these were all archangels who appeared with their various symbols in christian art. uriel, guardian of the sun, is seen less frequently than the others; but raphael, the chief guardian angel, is often seen in company with tobit, and occasionally in the pictures of the last judgment with michael, blowing the dread blast of the great resurrection. [illustration: guido reni: st. michael and the demon] but the angel gabriel appears in art oftener than all the other angels put together. this is because he was the angel of the annunciation and foretold the coming of christ. he is seen a thousand times in italian art, lilies in hand, kneeling and repeating the message to the madonna. the theme was the most popular of all, and a thousand different types of beauty were created to impersonate gabriel. many of them are still existent, and some of them are the most lovely creations of the old masters. angel ideals of the old masters [illustration: verocchio (school of) archangel raphael (detail)] of course the ideal of angelic beauty varied with each painter. each chose for a model the fairest type he could find, and each differed from his fellow. perhaps the most popular types of angels in the early renaissance were painted by melozzo da forlì. a notable group of them was painted in a cupola of the church of the apostles in rome. they were angels of the ascension, and surrounded the rising figure of christ. the fresco afterward became so damaged that it was taken down, and some of the angels were transferred to the sacristy of st. peter's, where they are now to be seen. our reproduction shows a detail of one of them,--one with a fair face, abundant hair, a halo about the head made up of golden cubes of mosaic, and large expanded wings. the figure is seen slightly foreshortened, and this, with the spread wings that seem really large enough to support an angel, gives the impression of flight, or at least a hovering movement. the wings are upraised, and seem to frame the beautiful head and its halo. this upward swing of the wings is counterbalanced by the downward sweep of the drapery from the waist line. between the upward and the downward curves is a swirling cross line, made up by the shoulder, the arm, and the violin bow. all this is shrewdly worked out, and gives force and movement to the figure. the whole composition has nobility and loftiness about it, and is not a mere sweet-faced affair of the carlo dolci (dol´-chee) kind. [illustration: veronese: annunciation (detail)] [illustration: botticelli: madonna, child, and angels] types of benozzo and leonardo da vinci the angels of benozzo gozzoli (got´-so-lee) are of similar characters. they have not a particle of sweetness about them, and would never be called "pretty"; but what fine sentiment and decided individuality they have! they are part of a famous fresco in the riccardi palace at florence, one of the finest and best preserved frescos in all italy. the little chapel where they are had its walls entirely covered by benozzo with a fresco representing the adoration of the kings. the gorgeous procession of the kings and their attendants (made up of portraits of the medici and their friends, with lorenzo the magnificent riding as one of the kings) covers three walls of the chapel. the splendid cavalcade winds along, and finally comes up to the fourth wall, where was once shown the madonna and child with joseph. this group of the holy family has disappeared; but the band of worshiping angels is on the side wall, still intact. the angels are kneeling and standing amid flowers which one does not see at first because of the bright colors and the golden halos. what beautiful faces, naïve forms, and praying hands are here! this is sincerity in art, and true enough sentiment into the bargain. one will travel far before seeing its better. [illustration: botticini: madonna and child (detail of angels)] a historic and even a sentimental interest attaches to leonardo da vinci's (lay-o-nahrd´-o dah vin´-chee) little angel in the baptism of christ by andrea verocchio (vay-rok´-kee-o). vasari (vah-sah´-ree) recites the story of how verocchio, when ill perhaps, told his pupil, the young leonardo, to finish this picture by painting in the second angel, and that leonardo did it so well that it was superior to the other parts of the picture. "perceiving this, andrea resolved never again to take pencil in hand; since leonardo, though still so young, had acquitted himself better in the art than he had done." this is a pretty story, which has been pooh-poohed and denied by recent criticism, but without reason. the angel with the profile was certainly done by a different hand than the angel with the full face. it is different from any other part of the picture, and there is every reason to believe it done by leonardo as vasari states. the charm of the angel, the type, the graceful contours, the light and shade, all foreshadow the later work of leonardo. what a lovely creation, not only in face and feature, but in serenity and fine feeling! the charming angels of perugino perugino (pay-roo-jee´-no) was in that same studio of verocchio, a fellow pupil with leonardo; but his angels are much weaker conceptions than leonardo's. they are contemplative, full of wistful tenderness, lost in reverie; but they lack somewhat in mental grip. they make up for this, however, by a charming sentiment. the st. michael, reproduced herewith, shows it. he is hardly the ideal captain-general of the heavenly host, able to wield the sword in the front ranks; but on the contrary is a slight, boyish figure, full of fancy, and lost in day dreams. [illustration: fra angelico: trumpet-blowing angel] perugino's saint michael in this picture he stands aloof from the figures about him, and, with his head inclined to one side, seems to be listening to the song of the angels in the upper air. the brown eyes are full of earnestness; but the round face and slight mouth have no set purpose other than to suggest sentiment and symmetry. a very pretty type, no doubt; but not a strong one. a man of power like michelangelo could have very little sympathy with it. indeed, he sneered at the pretty face and called perugino a dolt and blockhead in art. that was more than perugino could bear, and, in a rage, he brought michelangelo before the council of eight on a charge of slander. but it only resulted in a laugh at perugino's expense. his action was perhaps foolish; but his pictures are not to be laughed at. they are excellent in color, and the pretty face that michelangelo scorned became the early model for perugino's great pupil, raphael. the angels of fra angelico [illustration: fra angelico: coronation (detail)] in sweetness of type and depth of feeling, the angels of fra angelico are more profound than perugino's. besides, they seem to have more sincerity about them. the monk-painter in his cell saw visions of heavenly things, and as he saw so he recorded in art. all his faces seem filled with divine tenderness. he painted only one face, one type. his pictures show men with beards and monks in cowls, and angels in flowing robes with bright wings; but there is always the same face, the same sentiment. his trumpet-blowing angels, of which there are countless copies in existence, are epitomes of this conception and sentiment. they have great purity and beauty. fra angelico was a man of pure thought to start with, and everything he touched reflected his purity. types of filippino and botticelli [illustration: filippino lippi: madonna and st. bernard (detail of angels)] [illustration: seppi; angel of annunciation] filippino and botticelli came later than fra angelico, and the florence of their day had begun to draw away from medieval traditions in art in favor of more learned technical accomplishment; yet one can hardly see any waning of sentiment in the work of these men. in fact, the sentiment of filippino is often perilously near to sentimentality, so intense and earnest is the feeling of the man. his madonna is always on the brink of tears, and his angels are in perfect sympathy with the madonna. botticelli is more of an intellectual force; but he too is saturated with sentiment to a point of morbidity. his madonnas have sad eyes, mouths that droop at the corners, hollow cheeks, and long, flowing hair. they bend before the angel of the annunciation like broken flowers, or agonize at the crucifixion like lost souls. their sentiment is intense. nor does it vary much when botticelli dealt with classic subjects. his venus in her seashell, his pallas, his spring, all have some of the same morbidity, mingled with mystery, melancholy, tenderness, that we see in his angels surrounding the madonna. this personal quality of the painter is very attractive, and has perhaps done more to make botticelli popular than his fine qualities as a draftsman and a painter. preraphaelite angels when the preraphaelite movement started in england over half a century ago, with rossetti, holman-hunt, and millais as painters, and ruskin for a prophet, it could think of no one better as a model to follow than botticelli. the botticelli look is quite apparent in the sad, rather unhealthy faces of rossetti. this rossetti influence was handed on to his pupil, burne-jones. none of the preraphaelite ardor was abated or its sentiment lessened with burne-jones. indeed, he improved upon his master both technically and sentimentally. he was a much better draftsman and colorist than rossetti, and presented the preraphaelite idea with greater force and effect. [illustration: burne-jones: the annunciation] the angels of burne-jones [illustration: verocchio: baptism (detail of leonardo's angel)] the burne-jones type had rounder, more inquiring eyes, thinner cheeks, a sadder mouth, a more willowy figure. it appears often in long, flowing hair, with swirling drapery, and dramatic action. at other times one sees it as a romantic type consumed by a fever of passionate sentiment. the annunciation shown herewith is not a very good illustration of this. the madonna has a dull stare in her eyes as though she was something of an invalid, and even the angel has a semi-malarious look. but the melancholy, the sadness, the morbidity, so apparent in botticelli are also apparent here. the picture is a fine example of the painter's decorative sense. it has been put together with much skill. notice the architecture, the passageway at back, the bas reliefs, the repeated lines of the draperies in both the madonna and the angel. one could almost wish it in stained glass, so beautifully would it fill an upright window. every painter of botticelli's rank in italy had a score or less of followers, and among them all there was never any dearth of sentimental madonnas and pathetic angels. florence held no monopoly of the subject. angels of bellini and carpaccio [illustration: murillo: guardian angel] at venice in the early days were bellini and carpaccio, who produced famous madonnas and most lovable angels. they are different angels from those of botticelli. in fact, they are little more than handsome children naïvely making music for the madonna and child. their unconscious quality is captivating. how very childlike, in their pure faces, their golden hair, their round legs and fat little hands! the models were perhaps the painter's own children. why not? was not the madonna, nine times out of ten, the painter's own wife? and how better could he depict the winged messengers of the sky than by painting them with the forms of those he loved here below? it is only a step across the world from heaven to earth, and is not love the band that unites them? * * * * * supplementary reading.--"sacred and legendary art," jameson; "life of christ in art," farrar; "christian iconography," didron; "angels of god," timpson; "angels in art," clement. the mentor issued semi-monthly by the mentor association, inc. fourth ave., new york, n. y. volume number annual subscription, four dollars. single copies twenty cents. foreign postage, seventy-five cents extra. canadian postage, fifty cents extra. entered at the post office at new york, n. y., as second-class matter. _editorial_ we have just received the following letter from a reader of the mentor: "i have examined with great care and profit a copy of the mentor just received. there is only one suggestion that i can make towards its improvement, and that is that on the back of the photogravures there should be a pronunciation scheme for all foreign names. not everyone who reads is able to pronounce properly the spanish, french, or italian; particularly is this true of names and places. the pronunciation might be put in brackets right after the names, or made a sort of marginal affair." * * * * * this is the kind of letter we like to get. the suggestion is a good one. we wrote at once to the writer, saying that pronunciation would be indicated wherever foreign names were used. we have done so in the text pages of the mentor--our readers know that. we have not been doing it in the stories printed on the back of the mentor gravures. there was no reason for not doing it. the indication of pronunciations should accompany foreign names wherever they are used. the writer of the above has done us a real service in calling attention to the matter. we wish that readers would write to us whenever they have a suggestion that they think would add to the value and usefulness of the mentor. * * * * * half knowledge on any subject is not of much use. the case of a college professor comes to mind. he was very strong on what he called "completing a thought and finishing a fact." he said that as a man walked through life or looked through books he was constantly in an atmosphere of information--that facts were darting like meteors all about him. he said that the habit of mind of most people was slovenly. such complete facts as come to their attention are perhaps absorbed. half facts come along, and most people do not "follow them up to a finish." the habit of this professor was to carry a memorandum pad in his pocket, and whenever he would hear a statement or receive a _bit_ of knowledge he would jot down a note and then, in some leisure moment, look the matter up in an authoritative reference book, thereby completing his information and, as he put it, "sewing it up good and tight" for future use. * * * * * the result is that that college professor knows what he knows thoroughly and accurately. he is never heard saying, as so many do when a subject is mentioned, "oh, what about that. i have had bits of information concerning it from time to time. what does it mean?" the professor had looked up the matter when he got his first bit of information, and, as a result, he had digested the subject and in his way owned it. * * * * * we have planned the mentor with the thought of giving members of the association the essential information that they should have on different subjects. everyone is not fortunate enough to have a good reference library--some are not even in touch with reference books. it is the purpose of the mentor, therefore, to come like a good friend who is well informed and spend a few minutes a day with you, telling you in simple language about the many interesting and important things, events, and people of the world. * * * * * and you don't have to make notes as the professor did. you don't have to go looking for books of reference on the subject. the mentor not only gives you in an interesting way the essential facts about a thing, together with illustrations, but it gives you a list of the important reference books on the subject. [illustration: angel with violin, by melozzo da forli] _melozzo da forlì_ one today we think of italy as one united country. for that reason it is difficult for many of us to realize the italy of melozzo da forlì's (mel-ot´-so day for-lee´) time. then there was no union--practically no italy. the country was rent by the strivings of many tiny principalities, each jealous of the other, each trying to outdo the other, each quick to seize an opportunity to work its neighbor harm. every one of the petty princes was seeking to beautify his capital city, to have his court outshine those of his rivals. if he desired to be known as a patron of art and letters, poets, architects, and philosophers were invited to associate themselves with him. artists, like the scholars, had to rely on the favor of such princes for their living. in later years the introduction of oil painting made easy the sending of a panel or a canvas as the gift of one lord to another. but before that time, instead of sending the painter's work, it would have been necessary to send the painter; for most of the work was done in another way. in fresco painting the artist was obliged to work directly on the wall on which the picture was to be seen when finished. often he himself applied the wet plaster, and after smoothing it laid on the color. he had to work rapidly; for when the plaster had dried every addition or correction showed. but before becoming sufficiently generous to give away their artist's work most of the nobles first employed their artists to decorate their own chapels or palaces for them. it was under the patronage of one of the cardinals, a nephew of pope pius iv, that melozzo da forlì painted his angels. pius iv did not wish to be behind his neighbors in the encouragement of the fine arts. he wanted rome to be the finest city in the world, and set about making it so. those who wished to please him were not slow to follow his leading. the angels reproduced in the mentor are but a portion of the entire fresco, which showed the ascension of christ, and formerly decorated the dome of the church of the apostles at rome. these fragments escaped destruction when the church was reconstructed in . they are now in the sacristy of saint peter's. almost nothing is known of the life of melozzo. we should not have known when he was born if his epitaph had not recorded his age. his name indicates that he came from forlì, a small town not far from ravenna. his fame rests almost entirely on these fragments; but so well were they done that they give this man high rank among the artists of italy. [illustration: angel choir, by benozzo gozzoli] _benozzo gozzoli_ two like many another painter, benozzo gozzoli (beñ-ot´-so got´-so-lee) owed much to his master. fra angelico painted beautiful angels, and his pupil seems to have learned some of his skill; for the group of adoring angels in the riccardi palace is one of the loveliest to be seen in all italy. early in his life benozzo was apprenticed to ghiberti, the sculptor of the doors of the baptistery at florence. so splendid are they that by the italians they are called "the doors of paradise." he began under a good man. but he could not have remained in that studio long; for at the age of twenty-seven we find fra angelico taking him with him to rome as assistant in his work for the pope. two years later benozzo started out for himself. he worked in several of the smaller tuscan towns, until in the death of several of the older artists of florence opened up the way for his return to his native city. he was not obliged to wait long; for the medici soon called upon him for what proved to be his masterpiece. the palace of the medici had in it a small private chapel; to benozzo they gave the task of decorating its walls. the subject chosen was "the adoration of the magi." we have three letters written by benozzo to piero de' medici when he was engaged upon this work. they show that he was using every effort to do his best. "i have no other thought in my heart," he writes, "but how best to perfect my work and satisfy your wishes." the work was well done. perhaps that is why everyone who today visits florence feels that he must see this tiny chapel before he leaves. one steps from the busy florentine street, through massive portals, into a courtyard. from the present we step back into the past. climbing a stair, we reach the dim chapel, which is but little changed from the way it was left by benozzo. it is as much a monument of his skill as it is of the munificence of the medici. benozzo's success with this work insured his prosperity. he married and settled in florence. ten years later he moved to pisa, where he spent sixteen years painting a series of frescos in the campo santo. and in that lovely, quiet place he lies buried today, near the frescos upon which he labored so faithfully. [illustration: angel of annunciation, by burne-jones] _sir edward burne-jones_ three the mother of sir edward burne-jones died when he was born. the lot of a lad without a mother is bound to be a hard one, especially if he has no brothers or sisters. his father would permit him to read only two or three books; but one of them was Æsop's fables, and this was the boy's favorite, because it had prints in it. the child used to spend much time before the shop windows looking at the volumes he might not read. he was never very strong physically. this course seems to have driven the boy to living in the realms of the imagination,--a training for the painter of nymphs and fairies he was to become later. not until he was twenty-three, it is said, did burne-jones see a good picture. when he went up to oxford he formed a friendship with william morris, a youth almost as shy as himself. they read ruskin's "modern painters" together, and told each other their dreams. at london during one of the vacations he came into touch with dante gabriel rossetti, and on advice of this artist gave up his studies at oxford to devote himself exclusively to the study of art. however frail burne-jones may have been physically, there could have been no lack of mental courage in the man who could take such a bold step as this. his struggle was a long one and a hard one; but he was never without the help and encouragement of warm friends, ruskin among them. he traveled to italy. on his second trip he went with ruskin. but with the possible exception of botticelli, the italian masters had little direct influence upon his work. he seems to have caught their spirit of doing things, of doing them as well as he was able, with deep sincerity of feeling. he was one of the leading spirits of the preraphaelites, a band of young men who hoped to regenerate art by putting into their work the simplicity and sincerity that had actuated the artists before raphael's time. he married in , and settled on the outskirts of london. a gradually increasing host of friends began to make their way to his modest home. burne-jones felt that, wherever else he might be at fault, in spirit he was right. so he did not reach for the fame that makes less wise men seek short cuts, but worked steadily and carefully. his reputation increased, honors came to him, and before he died he knew that his work was being appreciated. in , four years before his death, a baronetcy was conferred upon him by queen victoria, and to those who knew the man and his work this was felt to be not higher than was deserved. [illustration: madonna and child with angels, by bellini.] _giovanni bellini_ four the bellini (bel-lee´-nee) family was a very artistic one. not only giovanni, but his brother gentile as well, became a famous artist, and their father was a painter of note. not to be outdone by the other members of the family, their only sister andrea married mantegna, the great paduan master. under such circumstances it is unlikely that the boy giovanni had to overcome any parental opposition to his becoming an artist. art must have been a part of the daily life of the entire family. at first he doubtless studied under his father's direction; but his early work shows that he was much influenced by his brother-in-law as well. although the two brothers, giovanni and gentile, worked independently, they both won distinction and were highly esteemed by the venetians. they were commissioned to paint a series of large canvases for the ducal palace; but these works have since been destroyed by two fires which greatly damaged that wonderful building,--the first in and the second in . although no longer a young man when the invention of oil painting was first brought to venice, instead of adhering to the old traditions he set about mastering the new medium. and he succeeded too. pupils came to him to be taught the new practice; among them titian and giorgione. his studio was the very dwelling place of the genius of painting, and from his workshop went out many of the men to whom venetian painting owes its fame. painters from far and near came to visit him. among them was albrecht dürer, the german master, whom bellini received very cordially. "he is very old," wrote dürer, "but still the best in painting." there was a waiting list of nobles who wanted him to paint their portraits. fine in color, and accurate in drawing to the last, he seems not to have degenerated. he must have been a man of great force and talent. he lived to be ninety years old. he was laid to rest beside his brother, in san giovanni e paolo, the westminster abbey of venice. [illustration: angel with lute (detail of presentation), by carpaccio] _vittore carpaccio_ five venice the magnificent is never very far removed from the pictures of vittore carpaccio (kahr-pah´-cho). it doesn't matter whether he is painting the story of saint ursula at cologne or a scene from holy writ, cologne is given a very venetian look, and the madonna or the saints are in venetian costumes and brocades. this oriental love for splendor in dress has led some writers to believe that carpaccio must have accompanied his master gentile bellini to constantinople. when the sultan desired that venice send one of her foremost artists to paint his portrait, the commission was given to gentile bellini. he may have taken carpaccio with him. the portrait bellini painted exists today in the layard collection, recently bequeathed to the national gallery, london. although carpaccio painted many religious pictures, he succeeded best when there was some story to be told. he gave to his pictures the charming simplicity that is the first essential of a good story-teller. nor was he without a sense of humor. in one of his pictures telling the story of the life of saint jerome he shows the lion walking up to jerome and holding out his paw in order that the troublesome thorn might be removed, while the terrified brothers of the saint are seen flying in all directions. one of the venetian nobles gave carpaccio a commission to paint the portrait of a poet connected with his household. at least one of these rhymesters was to be found in the train of most of the nobles in those times. the poet was so elated that he burst forth into verse, giving carpaccio directions to paint him with a wreath of laurel. carpaccio painted the portrait; but, possibly at a hint from the nobleman, he substituted for the crown of laurel one of grape leaves. the poet retaliated by reviling carpaccio in a lampoon full of abuse. we do not know exactly when carpaccio was born, though it is generally believed to have been in , in istria, nor just when he died. only at venice can an adequate conception of his work be formed. he seems never to have journeyed far from that island city. carpaccio's love for splendor found plenty of employment among the beauty-loving venetians. venice was beyond the reach of papal dictation, and religion came to be considered by them more as an opportunity for display than as a rule of conduct. its tragic phases were not at all popular. the crucifixion was not often painted; but the presentation in the temple and the feast in the house of simon, with their display of fine costumes, were painted again and again. when ruskin first went to venice, carpaccio's work was not at all appreciated; but, thanks to his lead in admiring its charming qualities, today carpaccio is loved by many. [illustration: the assumption (detail of st. michael), by perugino] _perugino_ six perugino (pay-roo-jee´-no) was born in in a little town not far from perugia. his parents were respectable people, and when he was nine years old they sent him to perugia to be educated under one of the artists of that city. his family name was vannucci; but like many other italian artists he was called after the city from which he came. he grew up in perugia; but by the time he had reached early manhood we find him at florence, studying the frescos. according to vasari, he became a pupil of verocchio, and in verocchio's studio worked side by side with leonardo da vinci. it was about this time that the change from tempera to oil painting took place in italy. perugino and leonardo were among the first of the artists who thoroughly mastered the new medium. perugino's careful work did much to increase his fame. before he had reached the age of forty he was invited by the pope to come to rome. he painted several subjects for the sistine chapel, and his work was given a prominent place in that place. but when a later pope wished to make room for michelangelo's "last judgment" perugino's frescos were ruthlessly destroyed and the space they had occupied was filled with michelangelo's huge composition. judging from his quiet, pensive madonnas and his melancholy saints, it might be thought that perugino was of a saintly character too; but the records of florence show that after his return from rome he and a companion got into difficulties with the authorities. they were captured when lying in wait for someone against whom they had a grudge. perugino escaped with a fine of ten florins after pleading that he had intended that the fellow should have no more than a good drubbing; but his companion, who harbored graver designs, was exiled. perugino's work arose steadily in public esteem. commissions came rapidly, and he was able to choose among them. a number of the younger men came to him to be taught his method. among them was the young raphael, who worked with him for several years. raphael's early work much resembles perugino's. perugino married a beautiful girl many years his junior. he never tired of dressing her in rich costumes. but as he grew older he also grew miserly. when he died he left a comfortable estate for her and her three sons. he was carried off by the plague when working in one of the towns not far from florence, at the age of seventy-eight years. prepared by the editorial staff of the mentor association illustration for the mentor, vol. , no. , serial no. copyright, , by the mentor association, inc. transcriber's notes: italic text is denoted by _underscores_. minor punctuation and printer errors repaired. masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare rubens in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. _in preparation_ vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. holbein. s. l. bensusan. j. f. millet. percy m. turner. memlinc. w. h. james weale. albert dÜrer. herbert furst. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. chardin. paul g. konody. boucher. c. haldane macfall. watteau. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. and others. [illustration: plate i.--elizabeth of france, daughter of henry iv. frontispiece (in the louvre) the princess is seen to great advantage in this fine portrait. the fair complexion of the sitter is remarkably preserved, the white ruff, the jewels, and the gold brocade are very cleverly handled. another portrait of princess elizabeth, painted in madrid, may now be seen in st. petersburg.] rubens by s. l. bensusan illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. introduction ii. the painter's life iii. second period iv. the later years v. the painter's art list of illustrations plate i. elizabeth of france, daughter of henry iv. frontispiece in the louvre page ii. christ à la paille at antwerp museum iii. the four philosophers in the pitti palace, florence iv. isabella brandt in the wallace collection v. le chapeau de paille in the national gallery vi. the descent from the cross in the cathedral, antwerp vii. henry iv. leaving for a campaign in the louvre viii. the virgin and the holy innocents in the louvre [illustration] i introduction the name of peter paul rubens is written so large in the history of european art, that all the efforts of detractors have failed to stem the tide of appreciation that flows towards it. rubens was a great master in nearly every pictorial sense of the term; and if at times the coarseness and lack of restraint of his era were reflected upon his canvas, we must blame the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries rather than the man who worked through some of their most interesting years, and at worst was no more than a realist. there may have been seasons when he elected to attempt more than any man could hope to achieve. there were times when he set himself to work deliberately to express certain scenes, romantic or mythological, in a fashion that must have startled his contemporaries and gives offence to-day; but to do justice to the painter, we must consider his work as a whole, we must set the best against the worst. [illustration: plate ii.--christ À la paille (at antwerp museum) whatever the biblical story rubens chose, he handled it not only with skill, but with a certain sense of conviction that is the more remarkable in one who owed no allegiance to the church. there is fine feeling and deep reverence in the "christ à la paille," in addition to the dramatic feeling that accompanied all his religious pictures. the colouring, though very bold, is most effective; in the hands of a less skilled painter such a display of primary colouring might well have seemed violent or even vulgar.] consider the vast range of achievements that embraced landscape, portraiture, and decorative work, giving to every subject such quality of workmanship and skill in composition, as none save a very few of the world's great masters have been able to convey to canvas. and let it be remembered, too, that rubens was not only a painter, he was a statesman and a diplomat; and amid cares and anxieties that might well have filled the life of any smaller man, he found time to paint countless pictures in every style, and to move steadily forward along the road to mastery, so that his second period is better than the first, in which he was, if the expression may be used with propriety, finding himself. the third period, which saw the painting of the great works that hang in antwerp's cathedral and museum to-day, and is represented in our own national gallery and wallace collection, was the best of all. passing from his labours as he did at a comparatively early age, for rubens was but sixty-three when he died, he did not suffer the slow decline of powers that has so often accompanied men who reached their greatest achievements in ripe middle age and shrink to mere shadows of a name. he did not reach his supreme mastery of colour until he had lived for half a century or more, and the pictures that have the greatest blots upon them from the point of view of the twentieth century, were painted before he reached the summit of his powers. it is perhaps unfortunate that rubens painted far too many works to admit of a truly representative collection in any city or gallery. the best are widely scattered; some are in the prado in madrid, others are in belgium, some are in florence. holland has a goodly collection, while antwerp boasts among many masterpieces "the passing of christ," "the adoration of the magi," "the prodigal son," and "the christ à la paille." munich, brussels, dresden, vienna, and other cities have famous examples of both ripe and early art that must be seen before the master can be judged fairly and without prejudice. it is impossible to found an opinion not likely to be shaken, upon the work to be seen in london or in paris, where the louvre holds many of the painter's least attractive works. it may be said that peter paul rubens is represented in every gallery of importance throughout europe, that the number of his acknowledged works runs into four figures, and that there are very few without some definite and attractive aspect of treatment and composition that goes far to atone for the occasional shortcomings of taste. for his generation rubens sufficed amply. he was a man of so many gifts that he would have made his mark had he never set brush to a canvas, although time has blotted out the recollection of his diplomatic achievements or relegated them to obscure chronicles and manuscripts that are seldom disturbed save by scholars. to nine out of ten he is known only as a painter, and his fame rests upon the work that chances to have given his critics their first view and most lasting impression of his varied achievements. it may be said that among those who care least for rubens, and are quite satisfied to condemn him for the coarseness with which he treated certain subjects, there are many who are prompt to declare that in matters of art the treatment is of the first importance and the subject is but secondary. however, rubens is hardly in need of an apologist. his best work makes him famous in any company, and there is so much of it that the rest may be disregarded. moreover, we must not forget that the types he portrayed from time to time with such amazing frankness really existed all round him. he took them as he found them, just as the earlier painters of the renaissance took their madonnas from the peasant girls they found working in the fields, or travelling to the cities on saint days and at times of high festival. many a renaissance madonna enshrined on canvas for the adoration of the devout could remove the least suspicion of sanctity from herself, if she did but raise her downcast eyes or smile, as doubtless she smiled in the studio wherein she was immortalised. for the artist sees a vision beyond the sitter, and under his brush the sanctification or profanation of a type are matters of simple and rapid accomplishment. if another rubens were to arise to-day, he could find sitters in plenty who would respond to the treatment that his prototype has made familiar. perhaps to the men and women with whom he was thrown in contact, these creations were interesting inasmuch as they afforded a glimpse into an under-world of which they knew little or nothing. the offence of certain pictures is increased by the fact that, when rubens painted them, he had not attained to the supreme mastership over colour, and inspiration of composition, that came to him in later life. but in a brief review of the artist's life and work enough has been told of the aspects upon which his detractors love to dilate. it is time to turn to his brilliant and varied career, and note the incidents that have the greatest interest or the deepest influence upon his art work. ii the painter's life peter paul rubens was born in a.d. , at siegen in germany, where his father, dr. john rubens, a man of great attainments, was living in disgrace arising out of an old intrigue with the dissolute wife of william the silent. but for the necessity of shielding the reputation of the house of orange, there seems no doubt that john rubens would have paid the death penalty for his offence. it is curious to reflect that, had he done so, peter paul would have been lost to the world, for the intrigue would seem to have occurred in the neighbourhood of the year , while peter paul was not born until seven years later. when the child was one year old the rubens family was allowed to return to cologne, where john rubens had gone on leaving antwerp in . here peter paul and his elder brother, philip, were brought up, in utter ignorance of the misfortunes that had befallen their father, whose death was recorded when his famous son was nine or ten years old. after his decease the boys' mother decided to return to antwerp, where her husband in his early days had enjoyed a considerable reputation as a lawyer, and held civic appointments. although much of the family money must have been lost, perhaps on account of the fall in values resulting from the terrible war with spain, there would seem to have been enough to enable the widow and her two sons to live in comfort, if not in luxury. peter paul was sent to a good school, where he made progress and became very popular, probably because he was strikingly handsome, considerably gifted, and very quick to learn. [illustration: plate iii.--the four philosophers (in the pitti palace, florence) this picture was probably painted in italy. the man sitting behind the table with an open book before him is justus lipsius the philosopher. to his left is one of his pupils, and on the right we see philip rubens, pen in hand, and peter paul himself standing up against a red curtain.] at the age of thirteen school-days came to an end, and the boy became a page in the service of the widowed countess of lalaing, whose husband had been one of the governors of antwerp. here, at a very impressionable age, rubens obtained first his acquaintance with and finally his mastery over all the intricacies of courtly etiquette. in quite a short time he became a polished gentleman, in the sixteenth-century acceptation of that term. but the instinct to study art already developed made the duties of a page seem tiresome and unattractive, and we learn that the boy importuned his mother to be allowed to study painting. apparently he had shown sufficient promise to justify the request, and he was placed, first under an unknown painter named verhaecht and then under adam van noort, with whom he remained four years before passing to the studio of otto van veen, a scholar, a gentleman, and a painter of quality. the life here would seem to have developed in rubens many of the qualities that were destined to bring him fame and great rewards. by the time he was twenty, the guild of st. luke in antwerp received him as a member, and a year later he received an appointment from the city to assist his master in some civic decorations. so the glittering years of his first youth passed, happily, prosperously, and uneventfully, and when he was no more than twenty-three peter paul rubens turned his steps towards italy, then, as paris is now, the mecca of the pilgrim of the arts. if we wish to find some explanation for the splendid colouring that makes the masterpieces of rubens the delight of every unprejudiced eye, we may surely be content to remember that he saw venice with the enthusiastic eye of twenty-three in the year . even to-day when venice, vulgarised to the fullest extent that modern ingenuity can accomplish, has become no more than a remnant most forlorn of what it was, it is one of the world's wonder cities. when the seventeenth century was opening its eventful pages, the memory of wonderful achievements was upon the great city of the adriatic, it was still a power to be reckoned with. the season of pageants had not passed, and the luck that seemed destined to accompany rubens throughout his career was in close attendance upon him here. the duke of mantua. vincenzo gonzaga, saw some of his work, and was so struck by its quality that he sent for the young painter. the man seemed worthy of his creations, and the duke promptly offered him a position in his suite, an offer too good to be declined. thereafter the sojourn in venice was a short one. mantua, florence, and genoa were visited in turn, and in mantua, after some months travelling to and fro, the court settled down, and rubens was enabled to study the splendid collection of works that the city's rulers had collected. in the late summer of the following year rubens would seem to have visited rome, where he faced the terrible heat without any ill effect and devoted himself with untiring energy to a study of the work that is to be seen there and nowhere else. it would appear that he was well received by the leading artists of the day, that he made a friend of caravaggio, and he was soon commissioned to paint an altar-piece for the church of the holy cross of jerusalem. the work, done in three parts, is now we believe in the possession of the french government, and is to be seen in grasse or one of the neighbouring towns of the mediterranean littoral. when rubens' leave of absence expired--it must not be forgotten that he was in the service of mantua's ruler, and was not his own master--he returned to the north, where the duke would seem to have employed him for a time as an art expert. we may imagine that politics and art were closely connected, and that rubens soon knew responsibility in connection with both. the work must have been very well done in each case, for rather more than a year later, when it became necessary in the interests of mantua's political position to send a message to the king of spain, rubens was the chosen envoy. nowadays the journey from mantua to madrid may be accomplished without extraordinary exertion in forty-eight hours, but three hundred years ago such a journey must have savoured of adventure, more particularly as the painter-diplomat was in charge of the splendid presents sent to philip by the duke. nearly a year passed before rubens returned to mantua. his mission executed, he was rewarded with the grant of a regular income, and after executing some more work at home to the complete satisfaction of his patron, he returned to rome, this time in the company of his brother. they lived near the piazza di spagna, where the roman models and flower-sellers congregate to this day, and tourists are as the sand upon the sea-shore for multitude. philip rubens, smitten by the weakness to which so many men have succumbed before and since, celebrated his journey by writing a book. it was printed by the famous plantin press, with one of whose directors peter paul had been at school, and was illustrated by the artist. we may suppose that the work rubens had done in rome on the occasion of his earlier visit had satisfied its purchasers, for he received another commission for the chiesa nuova, but was recalled before it was completed, and taken to genoa by the duke of mantua. however, he soon returned to rome, where he remained until the close of and then left for antwerp, where his mother, who had been living in that city for some years, was dangerously ill. rubens does not seem to have known how ill she was, for he arrived in antwerp too late to see her. she was a woman cast in heroic mould, most generous of wives, most devoted of mothers. [illustration: plate iv.--isabella brandt (in the wallace collection) naturally enough rubens painted many portraits of his first wife. there is the delightful work in the pinacotek at munich where the painter sits by her side, there are others in the uffizi at florence, and the great hermitage gallery at st. petersburg.] perhaps the shock of her death awoke rubens to the disadvantages attaching to the paid service of any man, perhaps he was beginning to realise his own quality and to know that he could stand alone. perhaps he saw, too, that italy had taught him as much as his years would allow him to assimilate, enough to make a man of mark in antwerp. we have no certain information on these points, we can do no more than make surmises, but we do know that rubens wrote to the duke of mantua, thanking him for all the favours and marks of confidence that he had received, and acquainting him with his decision to resign from his service. with the return to antwerp the era that opened with the visit to venice eight years before comes to a close, and we enter upon the most strenuous period of the artist's life. iii second period rubens carried an assured reputation with him to antwerp. the story of his success had doubtless been spread through the town by people who were in touch with the italian courts, and it is hardly likely that his elder brother philip, now secretary to the antwerp town council, and a man wielding considerable influence, had forgotten to tell the story of his brother's progress. antwerp was in the early enjoyment of a period of peace following disastrous war, and it was quite in keeping with the spirit of the times that the leading citizens, who had taken a prominent part in the world of strife, should now turn their thoughts to the world of art and should endeavour to take their part in the friendly competition that all prosperous cities waged against one another in their pursuit of beauty; and this competition led to the enriching of churches and council-chambers with the finest ripe fruits of contemporary art. antwerp had established a circle for the exclusive benefit of those who had travelled in italy, because it was recognised on all sides that the best mental and artistic development was associated with italian travel. rubens was admitted at once to the charmed circle on the initiative of his friend jean breughel, the animal painter, with whom rubens collaborated in a picture that may be seen to-day at the hague, and is called "the earthly paradise," a quaint medley of two styles that cannot be persuaded to harmonise. peter paul lived with his beloved brother philip, to whose influence we are probably justified in tracing the first two commissions that were given to the young painter. one was to take part in the work of re-decorating the town hall, the other was to prepare an altar-piece for the church of st. walpurga. for the town hall rubens painted the first of his long series of "adorations," and though it is emphatically one of the works of his first period, and is far from expressing the varied qualities that have given him enduring fame, it created sufficient sensation in antwerp to bring him the position of court painter, with a definite salary and a special permission to remain in the city of his choice. had he been a lesser man he would have been called away to attend the court in brussels. undoubtedly rubens was a patriot, a man to whom the fallen fortunes of his city appealed very strongly. we must never forget that the endless wars stirred up by spanish ambition had roused the best instincts of patriotism the world over, and though rubens was not a warrior, he was a statesman and a patriot, who knew that his hands and brain could serve his city in their own effective fashion, one in no way inferior in its results to that of the fighting men. perhaps we may trace to all the mental disturbance of this era the artist's first great transition, for the rubens who painted in antwerp after his return from italy and gave the "descent from the cross" to his city, is quite a different man from the one who painted the earlier pictures. he has matured and developed, has completed the period of assimilation through which all creative artists must pass, has gathered from the talents, from the genius of the men he has studied, the material for founding a style of his own. he begins to speak with his own voice. [illustration: plate v.--le chapeau de paille (in the national gallery) this is a portrait of suzanne fourment, a sister of the painter's second wife, painted when the sitter was about twenty-one years old. the serenity of the girl's mind is admirably expressed in this sparkling work, and is one of rubens' successful essays in portraiture. another study of suzanne fourment may be seen in vienna.] it is well that rubens' industry was on a par with his talents, for commissions poured in upon him in the first years of his return from italy. they came not singly but in battalions, and very soon we find peter paul rubens following the fashion of his time and establishing a studio school. naturally enough there were plenty of young men who wished to become his pupils, and plenty of old ones who had just missed distinction and were anxious for any work that was remunerative. rubens realised that if he could but turn their gifts to the best advantage they would at least be as valuable to him as he could be to them. consequently he responded to the suggestions that were made to him on every side, and gathered the cleverest unattached men of his city to the studio, giving each one his work to do. let us place to his credit the fact that there was no disguise about this procedure, it was open and unabashed. rubens would even send pupils to start a work that had been commissioned, and would not appear on the scene until the first outline of the picture was on the canvas. then he would come along and with a few unerring strokes correct or supplement the composition, to which his pupils could pay their further attentions. rubens received high prices for his work, but would give his name to a picture in return for a comparatively low fee, if the purchaser would but be content to have his design and leave the painting to pupils. it may be said that rubens was always fortunate in his selection of assistants, just as he was fortunate in other affairs of life. the great vandyck was among those who worked in his studio, snyders the celebrated animal painter was another; it is said that rubens never touched his work. like the florentine painters of the renaissance, rubens was by no means satisfied to devote himself entirely to paint. he had been greatly impressed during his sojourn in italy by the extraordinary beauty of the palaces of genoa--a beauty, be it added, that charms us no less to-day when time has added its priceless gifts to the architects' design. rubens published a book on the genoese palaces, with something between fifty and one hundred drawings of his own, most carefully made. he found time to make illustrations for the famous plantin press, to which we have referred already. he superintended the work of engraving his own pictures, and in short showed himself a man competent to grasp more than the common burden of interests, and to deal with them all with a rare intelligence coupled with sound business instinct. although the painter's education had not been great, he had acquired scholarship at a time when classical education was considered of the very highest value, and no man who lacked it could claim to be regarded as a gentleman. he maintained correspondence with friends in the great cities of europe, and as he had great personal attractions and a perfect charm of manner with which to support his industry and achievements, there is small need to wonder at his progress. success would indeed have been a fickle jade had she refused to surrender to such wooing. iv the later years when the painter had passed his fortieth year he received a commission from the dowager queen maria de medici to paint certain panels for her palace in paris, and in order to see them properly placed and to get a comprehensive idea of the scheme of decoration, he betook himself with the first part of his finished work to the french capital. there is no doubt that rubens was already regarded in the governing circles of antwerp as something more than a painter. his relations with the ruling house had brought him into touch with diplomatic developments--he had handled one or two with extreme tact, delicacy, and success. the infanta isabel relied upon him in seasons of emergency, and although the political value of his first visit to paris in cannot be gauged, it is fairly safe to assume that his second visit to the capital two years later was far more concerned with politics than paint. to put before the reader a brief story of the complications of the political situation between france, spain, and the low countries would make impossible demands upon strictly limited space, but those who wish to understand something of the politics of his time may be referred to the works of emile michel and max rooses on peter paul rubens and his time. they will find there far more historical and biographical matter than can be referred to in this place. suffice it to say that from rubens must be regarded as a diplomatist quite as much as a painter, but curiously enough the development of the political side of his life did nothing to destroy the quality of his painting. in fact he seems to have travelled along the road of diplomacy to his best and latest manner, to have seen life more clearly, and the problems of his art more intelligently than before, to have brought to his work something of the quality that we call genius. the one gift that the gods denied him was poetic fancy, a quality that would have kept him from the portrayal of types and incidents that we are apt to regard, with or without justification, as ugly, that would have made his classicism pleasing to eyes that read it at its true value. but rubens was one of the men who have to fight, not against failure but against success; and the shrewd practical nature that made him what he was served as an effective barrier against acquisition of the qualities that would have lifted him to the region that always remained just beyond his reach. was a very interesting year in the painter's life, for he was sent on a mission to the court of spain, where he met velazquez, who was instructed to show him all the art treasures of the capital. what would we not give to-day for an authentic account of the conversations that these men must have held together? rubens was at the zenith of his fame, if not of his achievement, velazquez was unknown save in seville and madrid, and was fighting against every class of disadvantage on the road to belated recognition. let those who sneer at rubens and can find no good about him, remember that he it was who turned velazquez' attention to italy. rubens found time to paint portraits of several members of the royal family, and these works are fine likenesses enough, though they do not pretend to rival velazquez' achievements in the same field. the diplomatic business was conducted with so much skill that philip entrusted his visitor with a mission to paris and london. in the last-named city rubens was received by charles i., who conferred a knighthood upon him, and approved of his commission to decorate the banqueting-chamber at whitehall. [illustration: plate vi.--the descent from the cross (in the cathedral, antwerp) here we have rubens in his most realistic mood and in all his strength. not only is the composition of a very complicated picture quite masterly and the colour scheme most happily distributed, but the contrast in the expression on the faces round the dead christ is expressed in most dramatic fashion. the eye and the mind see the tragic drama at the same moment; although the subject had been treated hundreds of times already, the painter found it possible to give the theme a fresh and enduring expression.] back again in antwerp, rubens found his talents sorely tried by the diplomatic developments in which the restless ambition of maria de medici involved all the countries subject directly or indirectly to her influence. he found himself compelled to go twice to holland in the early thirties, but the death of the infanta isabel in removed him awhile from the heated arena of politics. rubens prepared antwerp for the visit of the archduke ferdinand, the spanish governor, the city being decorated for this occasion at a cost of , florins. the work was so successful that the archduke paid a special visit of congratulation to the artist, who was laid up in his room by an attack of gout. two or three years later, some warnings that his strength would not hold out much longer availed to turn rubens from the life of courts and capitals, and he purchased for himself the château de stein, a very beautiful estate that is preserved for us by the delightful picture in the national gallery. there he settled down for awhile to fulfil certain commissions for the king of spain, and doubtless had he been permitted to remain in retirement his health would have been the better and his life the longer. but antwerp could not dispense with the services of her painter-diplomat, and many a time when he would have been in his studio working at his ease, some urgent message from the city would drag him away. in the winter of he passed some months in antwerp, working as best he could in the intervals of severe attacks of gout. the king of spain's commission was still unfinished, and some feeling that he himself would never be able to complete it led rubens to engage a larger number of assistants than usual, and to content himself with directing their efforts and supplementing them as occasion arose. he seems to have known that death was near, for he made his will and prepared to meet the end. it came with may in , when the painter was in the sixty-fourth year of a brilliant and useful life. rubens was twice married, first to isabel brandt, who became his wife when she was eighteen and he was thirty-two, shortly after his return to antwerp from the service of the duke of mantua. a portrait of the two sons this wife bore him may be seen in vienna. isabel brandt did not live to see her boys, albert and nicholas, grow to manhood. she died in , some say from the plague that swept antwerp in that year. four years later the painter married the beautiful helena fourment, when he was fifty-four and she was sixteen, and she survived him. he seems to have been a good and affectionate husband and father. in fact, it is hard to find among the biographers of rubens anybody who speaks ill of the artist as a man. v the painter's art turning from a survey of rubens' life to a consideration of his art, the three divisions to which his work groups itself naturally, are very clearly seen. up to the time of his marriage with isabel brandt his work may be referred to the first division, and in art it may be said that no man's earliest pictures are of much consequence save for their promise of higher things. they do little more than mark his progress, record impressions he has received from strong personalities, and mark his own path through the influences of different schools and varied appeals, to the complete expression of himself. rubens was never a slavish imitator, he never assumed the mantles of the men he admired, as so many great painters have done. goya, for example, was a man whose range of thought and capacity for receiving impressions were so great that he has painted after the manner of half-a-dozen masters, and there are pictures to be seen in madrid to-day that are painted with goya's brush and recall fragonard. such instances may be multiplied, and rubens is to be admired for the restraint that marked this side of his early work. from the time of his marriage down to the season when he became recognised on all sides as a diplomatist, let us say roughly from to , we get the second period, and to this may be referred the greater part of the work that has given offence--the presentation of the coarsest types of men and women in a state of nature--the treatment of some of the grossest incidents in mythological stories in fashion that leaves nothing to the imagination. we are justified in asking ourselves whether the extraordinary development of the painter's social and political life did not avail to arrest in late middle age any tendencies he might otherwise have had to express still further the coarser side of classical subjects. by the time he reached the forties, rubens was the companion and even the trusted counsellor of princes and rulers. such refinement as western europe boasted was to be met in the circles he frequented. the greatest work of the greatest masters was within his reach, and he had travelled to the point at which a man is able to select as well as to admire, at which he can distinguish clearly between the points that make for a picture's strength and those that detract from it. rubens on arriving in italy in the days when he had first taken service under the duke of mantua, was doubtless unduly impressed by michel angelo and raphael. on no other grounds can we account for the delight that his earliest pictures manifest in the portrayal of massive and even ugly limbs. doubtless he was influenced too by titian, though we cannot agree that it was his admiration for the master that made him copy the king's titians in the prado, for it is more probable that on this occasion he simply obeyed instructions. moreover, rome appealed to him more than venice did. the wistful purity of a bellini madonna, the exquisite loveliness of a bellini child or cherub, left him unmoved, but a titian or a tintoretto at its biggest, if not at its best, pleased him, and when he came in rome to the works of raphael and michel angelo he would seem to have looked no further for inspiration. doubtless he heard many interesting theories of art in rome, where, as we have said, caravaggio, who wielded considerable influence in the art world, was among his friends. but rubens thought out things for himself, and learned to quell his own instincts and to subdue his own faults as they were revealed to him. [illustration: plate vii.--henry iv. leaving for a campaign (in the louvre) here the painter, leaving mythology and allegory for a time, is seen in one of his most effective historical pictures. henry iv., who is leaving for the war in germany, is seen conferring upon his queen the charge of the kingdom.] violence is perhaps the characteristic of rubens' early work. he has the grand manner without the grand method, his contrasts of light and shade and even of colour amuse where they do not offend, and his drawing is by no means remarkable or inspired. at best it is correct. we feel that we cannot see the wood because of the trees, that the blending has not been sufficiently skilful to bring about proportion and harmony, and that the expression of a giant form with prize-fighter's muscles in the foreground of a canvas is sufficient to fill the painter with a delight that enables him happily to ignore the rest. it is the enthusiasm of clever youth, the youth of a man in whose veins there is enough and to spare of very healthy blood, in whose mental equipment refinement has been overlooked. the death of his mother, the distressful plight of his favourite city, the responsibility of his commissions, his marriage and the fruits of his italian travel brought about the second period, and started the traditions that give antwerp a school and a name in the history of european art. the violence passes slowly from the canvases, the straining after effect that is so obvious and often so unpleasing in the earlier pictures goes with it. the chiaroscuro is more subdued and consequently more pleasing, only in the handling of colour the painter is still clumsy and heavy. rubens, the great colourist, seems to have been born when the artist was more than forty years old. some of the best work of the second period is in antwerp and brussels, but it is to be found scattered all over europe, and there are examples in private collections in this country. perhaps the dominant impression that these works leave is one of certain difficulties created to be overcome. just as the painter in his first manner revelled in his strength, so in his second period he rejoices in his skill. it was left to the later years to weld strength and skill into the service, on pictures that could stand for both and emphasise neither. mythology continued to hold him, indeed we must never forget that rubens lived in the age of pseudo-classicism, and is to be counted among its victims. to his second period belongs such work as the disgusting "procession of silenus" now in munich, a picture in which the grossness of the theme is only rivalled by the vulgarity of the treatment. some of rubens' apologists have held that this class of work was painted as a protest against vice, but such apologies are far-fetched. rubens needs no apologist. consider his work as a whole, and what is good dwarfs what is bad. doubtless, had he been able in the later days to re-possess and destroy some of his more tainted pictures, he would have done so. it will be remarked by all who know rubens' work intimately, that throughout his life he was happier with a venus than a madonna, more at home with some great classical figure, than with the picture of christ. he did not respond to christianity in the sense that the venetians responded to it, he could not for all his reputation have painted a madonna as bellini did, and there is no reason to believe that he would have cared to do so. then again we may not forget that rubens the artist, and rubens the courtier, and rubens the special envoy, were closely associated with rubens the man of business, who would always have painted for choice the work likely to find immediate acceptance. there were times when some legend of saint or martyr moved him strangely, and he turned to it with a measure of inspiration not often excelled by the greatest of the renaissance artists; but these occasions were rare, although antwerp preserves one of the most effective results of such inspiration in the "last communion of st. francis." it may be remarked in this place that to see rubens at his best, one must not go to the national gallery or to the louvre or to the prado--antwerp and vienna hold some of the finest examples of his second and third manner. and we must never forget that art is concerned with treatment, and that subject is of secondary interest to artists. when he became recognised as a diplomatist whose services were required by europe's greatest potentates, rubens had passed the meridian of life. he had known prosperity from the very earliest days, he had no occasion to paint pictures of the sort so admirably summed up by the offensive word "pot-boiler." kings and queens and emperors were offering him commissions, he was, if we may say so, on his best behaviour. he rose to the height of every great occasion. the commission that maria de medici gave him for her palace seems to have brought him to his third and latest manner, and from that year until death overtook him rubens was one of the great masters of european art. if we could eliminate all the pictures of his first manner and a considerable portion of those belonging to his middle period, his claims would hardly be denied by the representatives and supporters of any school. he seems to have received added inspiration from his child wife, and there are few more delightful pictures than one to be seen in munich in which rubens and helena fourment are walking from their garden to their château. perhaps even in the later days woman was nothing more than a thing of beauty for a man's delight, and man was no more than a godlike animal, but a well-defined measure of refinement was always beyond their painter's mental or artistic conceptions. it is sufficient for us that the appeal of nature came to him with great strength. the château of stein in our national gallery and the rainbow landscape in the wallace collection gives sufficient evidence of this, while such a work as the garden of venus in the prado suggests the limitations that were with him throughout his life. it is fair to say that in the later years they were not expressed so prominently in his work. [illustration: plate viii.--the virgin and the holy innocents (in the louvre) in this picture rubens allows his brush to run away with him as though for sheer joy in its capacity. perhaps his study of the virgin is a little commonplace, a little too suggestive of the exuberance of flanders rather than the refinement and spirituality of nazareth. but the studies of the holy innocents are a delight, and make the canvas supremely attractive. it will be seen that the grouping of the children results in every possible difficulty that an artist may have to face, but that rubens has encountered them all with sure, hard, and steady eye, in fashion worthy of tintoretto himself.] finally we have to consider and acknowledge his triumphs as a colourist. it may be said that rubens, for all his gifts, required more than twenty years of unremitting labour to obtain his mastery over colour, but when once it was his he retained the gift to the last hour. in the early days rubens as a colourist was a person of no importance, the grossness of his composition and the tameness of his drawing were not redeemed by the handling of pigment. in the second period the use of paint is far more skilled, but it does not blend, neither does it glow. in the later years it acquires both gifts, and the exquisitely luminous quality of some of his pictures, the marvellous delicacy of flesh tint, that must have astonished and delighted his patrons, is preserved to us to-day. in fact it may be said that rubens has preserved his colour to a larger extent than many great painters who came after him. he is far more reliable in this aspect of his art than is our own sir joshua, whose portraits have long ceased to tell the story they must have told to delighted and flattered sitters. it was no effort of genius that made rubens a supreme colourist in the later years. he came to his kingdom by dint of sheer hard work, but for his painstaking devotion to labours such results could not have been achieved. the spirit of the renaissance travelled very slowly from italy to the netherlands, and that its influence was felt in the sixteenth century did not lead to any very marked divergence from the traditions that the art of the netherlands was following. italian form and italian sentiment met with little response there, and there is no doubt that the eighty years of conflict with spain which led to the recognition of the republic, turned men's thoughts away from art. by the time it was possible to revive a school, the netherlands were looking to life rather than to faith, and even the classicism of the period that turned rubens towards pictures illustrating mythological incidents could not help him to create imaginary figures. this is as it should have been, for it made eighteenth-century art what it was through the influence of rubens and vandyck. he filled his canvas with the types he saw around him, and while nobody will dispute the virtue of the netherlands, there will be few found to assert that it produced the latin type of womanhood. the people of the netherlands do not belong to the latin races; that is why they did not respond earlier to the renaissance, that is why they look at what seems to be their worst rather than their best in some of rubens' most ambitious works. yet by reason of his long sojourn and hard study in italy, rubens did do something considerable to bring italian art and tradition into the netherlands, and if he could not establish it there, the cause of failure was that the genius of the country was opposed to it. among the painters who worked for rubens or were greatly influenced by him the best known are anthony vandyck, frans snyders, abraham janssens, jacob jordaens, and jan van den hoecke. then again, of course, it must not be forgotten that he exercised a very great influence upon david teniers, and that he served the interests of art development far more than he could have done by giving fresh life to an art form that had served its time and purpose. rubens the landscape painter, the painter of religious and mythological subjects, has rather obscured rubens the portrait painter, and this is not as it should be, for many will be inclined to agree that it is as a portrait painter that rubens was often at his best. visitors to florence will not forget the portrait group entitled "the philosophers," that may be seen in the pitti palace. our wallace collection has a delightful portrait of isabel brandt, and the national gallery holds the portrait of suzanne fourment, "le chapeau de paille," while amsterdam and other cities hold portraits of his second wife, the famous portrait of gervatius is to be seen in antwerp, and there are several delightful examples of his portraiture in brussels. it was in these schools of art that rubens has succeeded in pleasing many who turn with feelings not far removed from disgust from his unshrinking studies of the coarse overblown or overgrown womanhood. he contrived either to confer a measure of dignity upon his sitters or to conserve one. his portraits of his two wives, and the portrait group in the pitti palace that introduces his brother, are full of a deep feeling for which we may look in vain to many of his larger canvases. just as the pianist or violinist will turn from playing some wonderful concerto bristling with difficulties for the soloist and calculated to delight the ears of the groundlings, and then taking up some simple piece by a great master will infuse into it all the qualities that the showy concerto hid, so rubens turned from the wars and loves of gods and goddesses, from bacchic carnivals and groups in which nudity is insisted upon sometimes at the expense of relevance, and would paint portraits that will be a delight as long as they remain with us. rubens painting the portrait of wife or brother or friend, and rubens covering vast canvases with glittering and sometimes meretricious work are two different men. we may admire the latter, but we come near to intimate appreciation of the former. in the portraits the man is revealed, in the big pictures we see no more than artist, and some of us fail to realise how clever he is, how many problems of composition and tone and light and shade he has grappled with and overcome in manner well-nigh heroic. the secret of his changing moods is of course beyond us, but perhaps one may hazard an explanation for the difference in the quality of the work done. as far as we can see from a study of the painter's work and life, he approached mythology and christianity from a purely pictorial standpoint, and did not believe in one or the other. "the procession to calvary," "the crucifixion," "the descent from the cross," "the flight into egypt," "the adoration of the magi," "the draught of fishes," "the raising of the cross," "the assumption of the virgin," "the last supper," "the circumcision," "the flagellation," and the rest, were no more and no less to him as subjects than "the drunken hercules" or "the battle of the amazons," "the garden of venus" or "the judgment of paris." they were popular subjects for effective treatment, pictures that would make a sure appeal to those who loved either the sacred or the profane in art, pictures to be executed with all possible skill at the greatest possible speed, and with a measure of assistance regulated by the price that was to be paid for them. but the portraits of his friends, of the brother he loved, and of the wives to whom he was a devoted husband, stood on quite a different plane. he felt the human interest attaching to them, and this human interest brought to his canvas certain qualities that belong to the heart rather than the head, and have given them a claim that is not disputed even by the painter's most severe critics. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh masterpieces in colour edited by--t. leman hare millais -- "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. bellini. george hay. botticelli. henry b. binns. boucher. c. haldane macfall. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. chardin. paul g. konody. constable. c. lewis hind. corot. sidney allnutt. da vinci. m. w. brockwell. delacroix. paul g. konody. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. fra angelico. james mason. fra filippo lippi. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. gainsborough. max rothschild. greuze. alys eyre macklin. hogarth. c. lewis hind. holbein. s. l. bensusan. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. ingres. a. j. finberg. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. le brun, vigÉe. c. haldane macfall. leighton. a. lys baldry. luini. james mason. mantegna. mrs. arthur bell. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. millais. a. lys baldry. millet. percy m. turner. murillo. s. l. bensusan. perugino. selwyn brinton. raeburn. james l. caw. raphael. paul g. konody. rembrandt. josef israels. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. romney. c. lewis hind. rossetti. lucien pissarro. rubens. s. l. bensusan. sargent. t. martin wood. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. titian. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. van dyck. percy m. turner. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. watteau. c. lewis hind. watts. w. loftus hare. whistler. t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--the order of release. frontispiece (tate gallery) this is one of the pictures which millais always reckoned among the greatest of all his successes, and that it has many notable qualities which justify his preference can certainly not be denied. it is wonderful in its earnest and thoughtful realism, and it explains its motive with a completeness that is most convincing. the expression on the face of the woman who brings the order which frees her husband from prison is singularly happy in its combination of tenderness for the wounded highlander, and triumph over the hesitating gaoler; and there are many other little touches, like the joyous effusiveness of the dog, and the unconsciousness of the sleeping child, which amplify and perfect the pictorial story.] millais by a. lys baldry illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. the order of release, frontispiece at the tate gallery page ii. the boyhood of raleigh at the tate gallery iii. the knight errant at the tate gallery iv. autumn leaves at manchester art gallery v. speak! speak! at the tate gallery vi. the vale of rest at the tate gallery vii. ophelia at the tate gallery viii. the north-west passage at the tate gallery [illustration] as a record of some half century of brilliant activity, and of practically unbroken success, the life-story of john everett millais is in many respects unlike those which can be told about the majority of artists who have played great parts in the modern art world. he had none of the hard struggle for recognition, or of the fight against adverse circumstances, which have too often embittered the earlier years of men destined to take eventually the highest rank in their profession. things went well with him from the first; he gained attention at an age when most painters have barely begun to make a bid for popularity, and his position was assured almost before he had arrived at man's estate. he owed some of his success, no doubt, to his attractive and vigorous personality, but it was due in far greater measure to the extraordinary powers which he manifested from the very outset of his career. [illustration: plate ii.--the boyhood of raleigh (tate gallery) it would not be inappropriate to describe the "boyhood of raleigh" as the prologue to the romance of which the last chapter is written in the "north-west passage," for in both pictures the artist suggests the fascination of the adventurous life. young raleigh and his boy friend are under the spell of the story which the sailor is telling them, a story evidently of engrossing interest and stimulating to the imagination. the faces of the lads show how inspiring they find this tale of strange experiences in lands beyond the sea.] for there was something almost sensational in the manner of his development, in his unusual precocity, and in the youthful self-confidence which enabled him to take a prominent place among the leaders of artistic opinion while he was still little more than a boy. so early was the proof given that he possessed absolutely uncommon powers, that he was not more than nine years old when he began serious art training; and so evident even then was his destiny that this training was commenced on the advice of sir martin archer shee, the president of the royal academy, to whom the child's performances had been submitted by parents anxious for an expert opinion. the president's declaration when he saw these early efforts, that "nature had provided for the boy's success," was emphatic enough to dissipate any doubts there might have been whether or not young millais was to be encouraged in his artistic inclinations; and that this emphasis was justified by subsequent results no one to-day can dispute. the family from which millais sprang was not one with any past record of art achievement. his ancestors were men of action and inclined rather to be fighters than students of the arts. they were normans who had settled in jersey, and had for several hundred years been counted among the more important landholders in that island, where at different times they held several estates. from these ancestors millais derived his energetic temperament and that militant activity which enabled him in his career as an artist to triumph signally over established prejudices--the qualities which undoubtedly helped him to make his power felt even by the people who were most opposed to him. he was born on june th, , at southampton, where his parents were temporarily living, but his earliest years were spent in jersey. it was in that he began to show definitely his artistic inclinations; he was at dinan then with his parents and he amused himself there by making sketches of the country and people with success so remarkable that even strangers did not hesitate to recognise him as a budding genius. three years later this estimate was confirmed by sir martin archer shee, and the boy was then sent to work at the art school which henry sass carried on in bloomsbury, a school which had at that time a considerable reputation as a training place for art students, and in which most of the early victorian painters received their preliminary education. soon after he entered this school millais gave a very striking proof of his precocious ability--he gained the silver medal of the society of arts for a drawing of the antique, and an amusing story is told of the sensation he created when he appeared at the prize-giving to receive his award. the duke of sussex was presiding at the meeting, and to his amazement, when the name of "mr millais" was called, a small child presented himself as the winner of the medal. to amazement succeeded admiration when a consultation with the officials of the society proved that this boy of nine was really the successful competitor, and the presentation was received with great applause by the spectators of the scene. after two years' work under sass, with some study in the british museum in addition, he was admitted into the schools of the royal academy, and, though his age then was only eleven, he began almost immediately to prove how well he could hold his own in this new sphere of activity. during the six years over which his studentship at the academy extended he won every prize for which he competed, and carried off finally the gold medal for historical painting with a picture of "the tribe of benjamin seizing the daughters of shiloh." this was in ; in the previous year he had made his first appearance as an exhibitor at the academy with an ambitious composition, "pizarro seizing the inca of peru," which is now in the victoria and albert museum. his most ambitious effort at this period was, however, the design, "the widow bestowing her mite," which he produced in for the westminster hall competition, a vast canvas crowded with life-sized figures which was remarkable enough to have made the reputation of a far older and more experienced painter. so far his progress had been without interruption. the rare brilliancy of his student career had gained him the fullest approval of his fellow-workers in art, and he was beginning his career as a producer with every prospect of becoming immediately one of the most popular artists of his time. everything was in his favour; he had undeniable ability, good health, and an attractive personality, and he had proved in many ways that, young as he was, he could handle large undertakings with sound judgment and complete confidence. yet, with what seemed to be his way smooth before him, he did not hesitate to risk his already assured position in the art world by setting himself openly in opposition to the opinions of practically all the men who were then counted as the leaders of his profession. that he knew what might be the penalty he would have to pay for this rebellion against the fashion of the moment can scarcely be doubted, but he was by nature too strenuous a fighter to be daunted by dangerous possibilities, and his convictions, once formed, were always too strong to yield to any considerations of expediency. in , he and two friends of about his own age, dante gabriel rossetti, and william holman hunt, conceived the idea of making a practical protest against the inefficiency of the work which was being done by the more popular artists of the time. the three youths had come under the influence of ford madox brown, who with splendid sincerity was labouring to realise an ideal based not upon fashion, but upon an earnest desire for truthful expression, and by his example they were induced to study a purer type of art than any they could see about them. for this purer art they turned to the works of the italian primitives, whose childlike unconventionality and unhesitating naturalism touched a responsive chord in the natures of these youths who still retained some of the simple faith in reality which is one of the charms of childhood. they decided that for the future they would base their own practice upon that of the early italians, and that they would have none of the artificialities of the age in which they found themselves. their resolve was a bold one, but the manner in which they proceeded to make it effective was bolder still. [illustration: plate iii.--the knight errant (tate gallery) it is generally recognised that the effective representation of the nude figure imposes the severest test not only upon an artist's powers of drawing and painting but upon his sense of æsthetic propriety as well. the "knight errant" proves beyond dispute that millais was able to pass this test triumphantly, for the picture is a magnificent technical achievement and is absolutely discreet in treatment. the subject, a lady rescued from robbers by a wandering knight, is one which occurs frequently in mediæval romance.] they organised an association, the title of which, "the pre-raphaelite brotherhood," significantly asserted the nature of their artistic aims, and as the founders of this association they pledged themselves to seek the inspiration of their art in those italian painters who had lived before raphael was born, and whose sterling principles were abandoned by raphael and his successors. to the three founders of the brotherhood were joined two other painters, james collinson, and f. g. stephens, a sculptor, thomas woolner and dante gabriel rossetti's brother, william michael, who, being a writer, was given the office of secretary. the brotherhood, so constituted, was formally inaugurated in the autumn of , and the members at once set to work to prove by their acts the reality of their belief in the creed they had adopted. the first fruits of the movement were seen in the following spring at the academy where millais, who was then, it must be remembered, not quite twenty, exhibited his "lorenzo and isabella," a picture striking in its originality and in its unusual power. what it implied was not, however, immediately realised by the public; that the manner of the painting made it very unlike those by which it was surrounded was generally recognised, but most people, if they thought about the matter at all, seem to have assumed that the painter had failed to bring himself into line with the art of his time through youthful inexperience rather than by deliberate intention. time and practice, they considered, would correct such deficiencies in taste as were apparent in the "lorenzo and isabella," and when the lad had arrived at years of discretion he would be the first to see the necessity for amendment. but the members of the brotherhood, probably feeling that their initial effort had not produced quite the effect intended, took other steps to define their attitude. they started, in january , a magazine called _the germ_, which was proffered as the organ of the new movement. it was sufficiently uncompromising in its confession of faith, and neither its text nor its illustrations were wanting in clearness of statement. the magazine, indeed, was what it was intended to be, an open challenge to all the advocates of the old order of things; and as such it was taken by the people who saw it. it was only in existence for four months, but even in that short time it did its work thoroughly, and put an end to any doubts there were in the minds of art lovers and art workers concerning the meaning of pre-raphaelitism; thenceforward millais and his friends had certainly no reason to complain of being ignored. the attention which was given to the pictures they sent to the academy exhibition was, however, by no means what they desired, though, doubtless, it must have been much what they expected. millais exhibited a "portrait of a gentleman and his grandchild," "ferdinand lured by ariel," and "christ in the house of his parents"--better known as "the carpenter's shop"--and these visible embodiments of the principles laid down in _the germ_ were received with an absolute storm of abuse. the audacity of the young painters who sought by works of this character to discredit the smug and artificial respectability of the art which was then in vogue excited the critics beyond control and brought forth a veritable orgie of virulent expostulation. millais, with his mind made up and his fighting instinct fully roused, was not the man to yield to clamour. he made no concessions, but, loyally supporting the policy of the brotherhood, showed at the academy in "the woodman's daughter," "mariana in the moated grange," and "the return of the dove to the ark," all of which were as frank in their pre-raphaelitism as any of the previous year's canvases, and all of which were greeted with even more vehement disapproval by the literary custodians of the popular taste. every possible kind of misrepresentation of the aims of the young painter and his friends was employed to discredit their efforts, all sorts of base motives were imputed to them; ridicule, specious argument, and insult were used in turn to drive them from the course they had deliberately chosen. appeals were even made to the academy to have the pictures, round which this controversy was raging, removed summarily from the exhibition as things unfit to be set before the eyes of the public. but fortunately the courage of the brotherhood was proof against everything which the opposition could do, and neither abuse nor threats had any effect. yet millais at the time suffered for his principles; paintings which had been commissioned were thrown upon his hands, and his pictures almost ceased to be saleable. he had every proof that his pre-raphaelitism was commercially a mistake and that, if he persisted, the absolute marring of his career as a popular painter, was more than likely, yet, so stubborn was his conviction that he made no change in either his principles or his practice. happily, as time went on, the position of affairs began to improve; the opposition exhausted itself by excess of violence, and able champions of the movement took up the cudgels in defence of the young artists. one of the most authoritative of these champions was ruskin, who found in this apparently forlorn hope infinite possibilities of artistic progress, and whose declaration that the pre-raphaelites were laying "the foundations of a school of art nobler than the world has seen for three hundred years" generously expressed his sentiments towards the brotherhood. he took the trouble to study their art, and to analyse their motives, so that he based his advocacy not upon vague sympathy but upon real understanding of artistic principles which were sane and sound enough to satisfy even his exacting demand for purity of æsthetic purpose. that the ultimate success of pre-raphaelitism was due to his energetic interposition cannot, of course, be claimed--the boldness and tenacity of the artists who had adopted the new creed had more to do with the improvement which was brought about in the popular attitude--but ruskin's counter attack upon the critics had a valuable effect, and undoubtedly helped greatly to open the eyes of the public. [illustration: plate iv.--autumn leaves (manchester art gallery) as an example of the quiet and unforced sentiment which characterises so many of the pictures which millais painted, this delightful composition deserves particular consideration. it has a certain severity of design and solemnity of manner, but in its suggestion of the sadness of autumn there is no trace of morbid sentimentality and no kind of theatrical effect. the picture is a sort of allegory expressed with exquisite tenderness, and with a simple frankness of manner which is especially persuasive.] it is interesting, too, to note that just at the moment when the attack was fiercest the royal academy showed its faith in millais by electing him an associate. he is said to have been the youngest student ever received into the academy schools, and he must have been one of the youngest painters ever chosen as an associate, for after his election it was discovered that he had not reached the age at which, under the academy rules, admission to the associateship was possible. so his election had to be declared invalid and he had to wait some few years longer--until --for the official recognition of his claims. but it must assuredly be counted to the credit of the academy that such readiness should have been shown to admit the ability of a young artist who was openly in rebellion against the fashions of his time, and whose work was by implication a condemnation of much that was being done even by members of the academic circle. his election in came more as a matter of course; by that date he had won his way to a position which could scarcely be questioned even by the bitterest opponents of pre-raphaelitism, and he had laid securely the foundations of that remarkable popularity which he was destined to enjoy for the rest of his life. it would have been hard, indeed, to deny that he deserved whatever rewards were due to artistic merit of the highest order, for his pictures had passed well beyond the stage of brilliant promise into that of commanding achievement. his "ophelia" and "the huguenot" in , his "order of release" and "the proscribed royalist" in , and his exquisite "portrait of mr. ruskin" in , are to be accounted as masterly performances which would have done full credit to a painter whose skill had been matured by more than half a lifetime of strenuous effort, and which, as the productions of a young man who did not reach his twenty-fifth birthday until the summer of , are of really extraordinary importance. the "ophelia," "the huguenot," and "the order of release," can be placed, indeed, among the most memorable expositions of his artistic conviction, and the "portrait of mr. ruskin" ranks with the "ophelia" as one of the most astonishing examples of searching and faithful study which can be found in modern art. these pictures were followed closely by others not less notable--by "the rescue" in , by "autumn leaves," "the random shot," "the blind girl," and "peace concluded," in , and by "sir isumbras at the ford," "the escape of a heretic," and "news from home," in . of this group "sir isumbras at the ford" was the least successful, but "autumn leaves," with its exquisite delicacy of sentiment, and those two delightful little canvases, "the blind girl," and "the random shot," are of supreme interest both on account of the depth of thought which they reveal and of their splendid executive accomplishment. [illustration: plate v.--speak! speak! (tate gallery) to the man who has loved and lost, the vision of his lady appearing to him as he lies awake at dawn seems so real and living that he begs her to speak to him, and stretches out his arms to clasp what is after all only a creation of his imagination. the dramatic feeling of the picture is as convincing as its pathos; the painter has grasped completely the possibilities of his subject, and he tells his story with just the touch of mystery needed to give it due significance. the management of the light and shade, and of the contrast between the warm lamplight and the greyness of the early morning, is full of both power and subtlety.] another great picture appeared in --"the vale of rest," which differed from most of the works which millais had hitherto produced in its larger qualities of handling and more serious symbolism. its special importance was not fully realised by the artist's admirers when it was first exhibited, but millais himself looked upon it as the best thing he had done; and this opinion has since been generally recognised as sufficiently well founded. he had not before shown so much solemnity of feeling nor quite so complete a grasp of the larger pictorial essentials, though in "autumn leaves" there was decidedly more than a hint of the seriousness of purpose which gave authority and dignity of style to "the vale of rest." there was at this time a change coming over his art, a change which suggested that the stricter limits of pre-raphaelitism were a little too narrow for him now that his youthful enthusiasms were being replaced by the more tolerant ideas of mental maturity. but he was in no haste to abandon his earlier principles; he sought rather to find how they might be widened to cover artistic motives which scarcely came within the scope of the creed to which the brotherhood had originally been pledged. so he alternated between the literalism of "the black brunswicker" ( ), "the white cockade" ( ), "my first sermon" ( ), "my second sermon" ( ), and "asleep" and "awake," which were shown in with that daintiest of all his earlier paintings, "the minuet," and the sombre suggestion of such imaginative pictures as "the enemy sowing tares," and the finely conceived "eve of st. agnes," of which the former was exhibited at the academy in , and the latter in . it seemed as if he was trying to make up his mind as to the direction he was to take for the future, testing his powers in various ways, and studying himself to see how his wishes and his temperament could best be brought into accord. but when in he broke into the new art world in which he was to reign supreme for nearly thirty years, his abandonment of the technical methods which he had adopted in , and used ever since with comparatively little modification, was as decisive as it was surprising. in he was the careful, searching, and literal student of small details, precise in brushwork, and exactly realistic in his record of what he had microscopically examined. his "asleep" and "awake" were in his most matter-of-fact vein, almost pedantically accurate in statement of obvious facts; and even his charming "minuet" was elaborated with a care that left nothing for the imagination to supply. in , however, all this dwelling upon little things, all this studied minuteness of touch and literal presentation of what was obvious, had suddenly disappeared. all that remained to him of his pre-raphaelitism was the acuteness of vision which had served him so well for twenty years in his intimate examination of nature; everything else had gone, his minute actuality was replaced by large and generous suggestion, his restrained brushwork by the broadest and most emphatic handling, his realistic view by a kind of magnificent impressionism which expressed rightly enough the personal robustness of the man himself. what made this change the more dramatic was the absence of any suggestion in his previous work that he was preparing for an executive departure of such a marked kind. a diversion into a new class of subjects, or an inclination towards a more serious type of sentiment, might perhaps have been looked for from the painter of "the vale of rest," "the enemy sowing tares," and "the eve of st. agnes," but even in the larger manner of these pictures, there was little to imply that he desired to adopt a new mode of painting. but if the "souvenir of velazquez," "stella," "the pilgrims to st. paul's," and "the sisters," which he contributed to the academy, are compared with what he had done before, the full significance of his action can be perceived. the "souvenir of velazquez," indeed, is one of the most decisive pieces of fluent brushwork which has been produced by any modern painter of the british school. it is entirely convincing in its directness and in its summariness of executive suggestion, and as a masterly performance it is by no means unworthy to stand beside the works of that master to whom it was in some sort designed as a tribute. but it has a peculiarly english charm which millais grafted with happy discretion on to the technical manner of the spanish school, and as a study of childish grace it is almost inimitably persuasive. the little princesses whom velazquez painted were too often robbed of their daintiness by the formality of the surroundings in which it was their misfortune to be placed, but the child in this picture by millais has lost none of her freshness, and, with all her finery, is still a happy, young, little thing, ready for a romp as soon as the sitting is over. in the long series of fascinating studies of child-life which he painted with quite exquisite sympathy, this one claims a place of particular prominence on account of its beauty of characterisation, and its entire absence of affectation, quite as much as it does on account of its qualities as a consummate exercise in craftsmanship. this was the canvas which he finally decided to hand over to the academy as his diploma work. he had been promoted to the rank of academician in , and his intention then was to be represented in the diploma gallery by "the enemy sowing tares," which he regarded as in every way a sound example of his powers. but his fellow-academicians, for some not very intelligible reason, did not agree with him about the suitability of this picture, and it was, therefore, refused. so he sent them the "souvenir of velazquez" instead, a fortunate choice, for it brought permanently into a quasi-public gallery what is indisputably an achievement worthy of him at his best. [illustration: plate vi.--the vale of rest (tate gallery) none of the pictures which can be assigned to the period when millais was still a strict adherent to the pre-raphaelite creed can be said to surpass "the vale of rest" in depth and purity of feeling; and certainly none expresses better in its character and manner of treatment the artist's conception. the same exquisite sentiment, sincere and dignified, which distinguishes "autumn leaves" gives to "the vale of rest" an absorbing interest; and the way in which every detail of the composition and every subtlety in the arrangement and expression of the subject have been used to enhance the effect which the artist intended to produce, claims unqualified admiration.] once started on his new direction as a painter he went forward with unhesitating confidence in his ability to realise his intentions, and as the years passed by he added picture after picture to the already large company of his successes. his admirers, surprised as they were at first by his startling change of manner, did not hesitate to accept what he had to offer; indeed the splendid vigour of his work brought him an immediate increase of popularity, and he was thenceforth recognised at home and abroad as one of the most commanding figures in the whole array of british art, as a leader whose authority was not to be questioned. in he exhibited his portrait of "nina, daughter of f. lehmann, esq.," "the gambler's wife," a "portrait of sir john fowler," and "vanessa," a companion picture to his "stella;" and in "a widow's mite," "the boyhood of raleigh," and "the knight errant," with some other works of less importance. the portrait of miss lehmann is one of the pictures upon which his reputation most securely rests, admirable in its technical quality and its observation of character; and among the others "the boyhood of raleigh," and "the knight errant," are worthiest of attention because they are treated with great distinction, and have in large measure that interest which always results from judicious interpretation of a well-selected subject. "the boyhood of raleigh," especially, is to be considered on account of its possession of a certain dramatic sentiment which might easily have been made theatrical by an artist less surely endowed with a sense of fitness. but it tells its story with charm and conviction, and there is in the action of the figures, and in the expressions on the faces, just the right degree of vitality needed to make clear the pictorial motive. "the knight errant" is, perhaps, less significant as a piece of invention, but it has a distinct place in the artist's list of achievements, because it affords one of the few instances of his treatment of the nude figure on a large scale. it proves plainly enough that his avoidance of subjects of this class was not due to any inability on his part to succeed as a flesh painter, for this figure is beautiful both in colour and handling; it is more probable that the classic formality and conventionality which public opinion in this country requires in the representation of the nude did not appeal to a man with his love of actuality and sincere regard for nature's facts. indeed, from the standpoint of the decorative figure painter--of men like leighton, or albert moore, for instance--the woman that millais has represented is too frankly unidealised, too modern in type, and too realistically feminine. but in this disregard of convention there is a kind of summing up of his beliefs as an artist. though he had changed the outward aspect of his art he was still in spirit a pre-raphaelite, and a pre-raphaelite he remained to the end of his days. he depended more upon the keenness of vision natural to him, and assiduously cultivated by years of close observation, than upon what powers he may have had of abstract imagining; and he sought to only a limited extent to set down upon his canvas those mental images which satisfy men who look upon nature chiefly as a basis for decorative designs. the mental image with him was a direct reflection of fact, not an adaptation modified and formalised in accordance with recognised rules, not a fancy more or less remotely referable to reality; but he had certainly an ample equipment of that taste which enables the painter to discriminate between the realities which are too crude and obvious to be worth recording, and those which by their inherent beauty claim a permanent place in an artist's memory. he had, too, the judgment to see that the nude, treated as it would have to be to satisfy his æsthetic conscience, would be too plainly stated to be entirely acceptable. he found a much more appropriate field for the exercise of his particular capacities by turning to landscape painting. many of his earlier figure compositions had been given backgrounds which showed how well he could manage the complex details of masses of tangled vegetation, or the broad and simple lines of a piece of rural scenery; but in he attempted for the first time a landscape which was complete in itself and not merely incidental in a picture mainly concerned with human interest. this landscape, "chill october," was at the academy with his "yes or no?" "victory, o lord," "a somnambulist," and the "portrait of george grote," and it was welcomed by a host of admirers as a new revelation of his versatility. it has certainly qualities which justify the estimation in which it was and is still held; and though it lacks that imaginative insight into poetic subtleties which accounts for so much in the work of a master like turner, it must always claim the respect of art lovers as a large, dignified, and sincere study of nature in one of her sadder moods. it is the reserve of the picture, its reticent realism, that chiefly makes it memorable, for it is neither imposing in subject nor striking in effect; but in its broad simplicity there is something rarely fascinating. other nature studies of the same character followed at brief intervals during the next few years; they added to the interest of the artist's practice, but they can scarcely be said to have equalled in importance the portraits and figure subjects which he completed at this stage of his career. millais was, of course, far too great a master to have failed in any branch of artistic practice to which he seriously devoted himself, but the very capacities which made him so successful as a painter of the human subject prevented him from looking at open-air nature with the necessary degree of abstraction. the physical character of a piece of scenery, its details and individual peculiarities, he could record with absolute certainty, though the elusive subtleties of atmosphere, and the charming accidents of illumination, which mean so much in the poetic rendering of landscape, he dwelt upon hardly at all. in many of his landscapes the breadth and dignity, the accurate relation of part to part, the fascinating simplicity of manner, which are among the greater merits of "chill october," can be praised without reservation or hesitation; but the touch of fantasy, of actual unreality, by which the inspired landscape painter seems to suggest more truly the real spirit of nature, he hardly ever attempted; and never, it may fairly be said, with complete success. [illustration: plate vii.--ophelia (tate gallery) realism more searching and more significant than that which millais sought for and attained in this small canvas would hardly come within the bounds of possibility. but the picture is much more than a simple study of facts; it has an exquisite charm of poetic feeling, and it is conceived with a full measure of the tenderness needed in a representation of the most pathetic of all shakespeare's heroines. such a work has a place, definite and indisputable, among the classics of art, and counts as one of the chief masterpieces of the british school.] the years over which his activity as an exponent of pure landscape extended are, however, memorable because they saw the production of some of the most triumphant achievements of his maturer life. with his two landscapes, "flowing to the sea," and "flowing to the river," he exhibited in his "hearts are trumps," a portrait group which has become a modern classic; and in another wonderful portrait, the three-quarter length of "mrs. bischoffsheim." but it was in that he showed what is in many ways the greatest of all his paintings, "the north-west passage," a work which, if he had done nothing else of moment, would suffice to place him securely among the master painters of the world. the head of the old man, who is the central figure in the picture, is entirely magnificent, and there is much besides in this canvas which would have been beyond the reach of any one but an artist of almost abnormal power. this was followed in by his portrait of "miss eveleen tennant," and in by the "yeoman of the guard," which runs "the north-west passage" close in the race for supremacy. at this time, indeed, his productiveness was extraordinary; subject pictures, portraits, and landscapes appeared in rapid succession, and in all of them he kept to a level of masterly practice which other men reach only occasionally and at rare intervals. between and he painted eight landscapes, all important in scale and interesting in treatment, but after he produced no more for nearly ten years, when he began a fresh series. he was apparently too busy with portraits and figure subjects to give much time to out-of-door work, and to satisfy the demands made upon him by art collectors and sitters he must have had to work his hardest. yet popularity did not make him careless, and his hard work diminished neither his freshness of outlook nor his freedom of expression. conscientiousness as a craftsman was always one of his virtues, and the knowledge that he had a host of admirers ready to accept almost anything he would give them had certainly not the effect of inducing him to lower his standard. in the long list of his paintings, which belong to the period beginning in and ending in , several stand out with special prominence--for example, his portraits of "mrs. jopling," and "the right hon. w. e. gladstone," "cherry ripe," and "the princess elizabeth," all in , "the right hon. john bright" in , "cardinal newman," "alfred, lord tennyson," "sir henry thompson," "cinderella," and "caller herrin'," in , "j. c. hook, r.a.," and "the captive," in , "the marquess of salisbury" in , "the ruling passion," and another portrait of gladstone, in , "bubbles" in , and "the marquess of hartington" in . some of these were shown at the academy, but he was producing far more year by year than could be exhibited there, so he sent many important works to the grosvenor gallery, and most of his subject pictures to the galleries of the dealers by whom they were commissioned. after there was some relaxation in his effort; in that year he had at the academy only one picture, a landscape, "murthly moss," and only one portrait in each of the years and , though he showed several works in other galleries. in his landscapes "halcyon weather," and "blow, blow, thou winter wind," were at the academy, but after that year he worked no more out-of-doors. of the canvases painted during the last three or four years of his life, the most memorable are his portrait of "john hare" ( ), "speak! speak!" ( ), and "a forerunner" ( ), all of which were at the academy, and "time the reaper" which was at the new gallery in . "speak! speak!" was purchased by the chantrey fund trustees, and is now in the national gallery of british art with the other admirably chosen examples of his art which were given to the nation by sir henry tate. the crowning honour of his life came to him in february , when he was elected president of the royal academy in succession to lord leighton--an honour which was particularly appropriate not only because of his eminence as an artist, but also because he had been intimately connected for nearly sixty years with the institution over which he was then called to preside. to this connection he referred in his speech at the academy banquet in , at which he took the chair in the place of leighton whose illness prevented him from occupying his accustomed position. the words which millais used on this occasion expressed generously and affectionately his sense of obligation to the academy by which he had been trained in his boyhood, and from which he had received encouragement and support at the most critical period of his career, and declared with characteristic frankness that he owed to it a debt of gratitude which he never could repay. to those, however, who know how loyal he was to the institution that he loved so well it would seem that the debt was, indeed, fully paid. few men have done more to uphold the repute of the academy, few have by the brilliancy of their powers and their charm of personality done it more credit. that leighton was the ideal president can be readily admitted, but millais, as his successor, would have carried on a great tradition with dignity and sympathy and with no diminution of his predecessor's generous tolerance and earnest sense of artistic responsibility. he would have kept the academy on broad lines, and by his impatience of empty formalities he would have prevented it from losing touch with the movements in modern art. [illustration: plate viii.--the north-west passage (tate gallery) even if the "north-west passage" were not the masterly piece of painting that it is, it would still be a picture of importance because it appeals so vividly to the national spirit of adventure. the old arctic explorer, no longer able to satisfy his still strenuous inclinations, listens to the record of his past activities which is being read to him by his daughter, and yearns once more to battle with the hardships which must be faced by the traveller in the frozen north. the old man's head, one of the finest technical achievements in modern art, was painted from trelawny, the friend of byron, and shelley.] but, unfortunately, he was destined to hold his honourable office for but a brief time. even before leighton's death he had been suffering from a throat trouble which not long after was pronounced to be cancer; and in the months that followed immediately on his election the disease made rapid progress. not long after the opening of the academy exhibition his condition became so serious that an immediately fatal result was expected; but by an operation he obtained some temporary relief and his life was prolonged for a few weeks. this, however, was only a brief respite; he died on august , and was buried a week later in st. paul's cathedral, where little more than six months before he had followed his old friend's body to the grave. to speak of his death as premature would be scarcely a misapplication of the word. although millais had completed his sixty-seventh year he was still in art a young man. his vigour had not waned, and there was no perceptible diminution of his artistic vitality even in those last works which he painted under the shadow of nearly impending death. to a man of his splendid physique and buoyant temperament age would have come slowly, and the inevitable degeneration of his powers would have not begun for many more years. the possibility of great achievement remained to him, and it would be true to say that his death robbed us of much which would have added greatly to the sum total of british art. yet we may be grateful to fate for allowing him to develop the promise of his youth in the splendour of his maturer years; it is so often the lot of the precocious genius to die young with his mission but half fulfilled. if death had come to millais as it did to bonington or fred walker, our loss would have been sad indeed. in discussing millais as an artist the part which his personality played in making him what he was must by no means be overlooked. something of the vitality and the virility of his art was due to the way in which he kept touch with the life about him, and interested himself in people and things. he was no recluse who fed in secret upon his own ideas, or narrowed his outlook by hedging himself round with prejudices and preferences for one special class of artistic material. instead, he went out into the world and acquired his impressions of humanity in all directions and at first hand, finding much pleasure in association with his fellow-men. to his own human nature he gave free rein; he was a keen sportsman, a lover of children--of whose ways he had, as he proved in scores of pictures, a perfect understanding--and a man who was always happy in congenial society, and always welcome. he lived his life, in fact, largely, genially, and wholesomely, and he was as much unspoiled by the prosperity which came to him in his maturer years as he was unshaken by the opposition which he had to face in that brief period of his youth when, as he used to say himself, he was "so dreadfully bullied." that this brief taste of unpopularity did him good rather than harm can well be imagined, for without making him bitter it tested with some severity his tenacity and his power to fight vigorously for what he believed to be right--and such a test has always its value as a means of developing the finer qualities of a strong man, or as a warning to the weak one of the need for self-examination. millais did not require any incentive to self-examination, because he knew well enough what he intended to do when he deliberately set up his own conviction against that of the men who practically ruled british art, and he did not enter upon the fight with any idea of backing out if he found it was likely to go against him. but after the kind of triumphal progress which he made through the academy schools, the discovery that the wider public was not disposed to accept him as infallible was possibly necessary to prove to him that successes as a student did not give him, as a matter of course, an assured place among the chiefs of his profession. he was taught roughly, and in a way that roused both his fighting spirit and his pride, that this position was to be won only by sustained and strenuous effort; and this lesson he never forgot. its effects persisted long after he had become a popular favourite, and they helped, it can be fairly believed, to strengthen his character and to keep him from that easy contentment with his own works which is the first step towards degeneration. he did not degenerate after he had secured what he had been striving for; although he had silenced his critics, and had won them over to his side, he continued to sit in severest judgment upon himself, and to the last he exacted from his own capacities the utmost they could give him. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/giottoquil rich transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). [illustration: madonna and saints, attributed to giotto _in the lower church of assisi_] giotto by harry quilter london sampson low, marston, searle, & rivington crown buildings. , fleet street (all rights reserved.) london: r. clay, sons, and taylor, bread street hill, e.c. to the memory of elizabeth harriet quilter this essay is lovingly dedicated by _her youngest son_. preface. my only object in writing these few words of preface is to state plainly the share of originality which belongs to this essay. this is rendered necessary because the subject of the work has occupied the attention of many authors of far greater ability and experience than that of which the present writer can boast. the extent, then, to which this essay is original is as follows:--the facts of giotto's life have been taken from vasari's _lives of the painters_ and compared with those given by all later writers on the same subject. as these later authors are mentioned throughout the book, wherever their opinions are quoted, i need not give a list of them here. the descriptions of the pictures and sculptures of giotto are, in all cases, written by myself after careful study of the originals. in no case whatever is an opinion expressed upon the merit or meaning of a work which i have not personally examined; this applies to all pictures and statues mentioned in the essay as well as to those of giotto. the descriptions of padua, assisi, and florence were written on the spot, and the vignettes of the two former towns are reduced from sketches made by myself on purpose for the present work. the fresco of the _unknown madonna_, formerly attributed to giotto, and still ascribed to him by the monks of assisi, is reproduced here, by chromo-lithography, from a watercolour drawing made by me at assisi in the spring of last year--its only use is to show readers the kind of colouring prevalent in giotto's work. lastly, for all criticisms, theories, and illustrations given in the essay, i am alone responsible, except in cases where the name of the author is subjoined in a footnote. the white house, chelsea, _may, _. contents. chapter i. page introductory chapter ii. art in italy in the thirteenth century chapter iii. fresco-painting chapter iv. cimabue chapter v. giotto chapter vi. the chief function of painting chapter vii. the early work of giotto at florence and rome chapter viii. giotto at padua chapter ix. giotto's style chapter x. giotto at assisi. the upper church chapter xi. the lower church of assisi chapter xii. giotto's later work at florence illustrations. page the unknown madonna at assisi. attributed to giotto--frontispiece the madonna enthroned. by cimabue. in the rucellai chapel, s. maria novella, florence pastoral life. by giotto. bas-relief on the campanile, florence padua. from a drawing by the author paradise. by giotto. (greatly restored.) in the arena chapel, padua. _photograph_ joachim retires to the sheepfold. by giotto. in the arena chapel, padua. _wood engraving_ the entombment of christ. by giotto. in the arena chapel, padua. _photograph_ the resurrection. "noli me tangere." by giotto. in the arena chapel, padua. _photograph_ justice. by giotto. in the arena chapel, padua. _photograph_ the church at assisi. from a drawing by the author view of florence, showing giotto's campanile and the "duomo" the first arts. by giotto. bas-relief on the campanile riding. by giotto. bas-relief on the campanile "as in passing through life we learn many new things, so do we forget many old things, and gradually the remembrance of them is lost from among men. therefore those persons do not reason well who do not study to perpetuate useful things by writing, because in such case posterity will hereafter seek in vain for their origin, perfection, and use."--_tambroni._ * * * * * "such as are ignorant of things done and past before themselves had any being continue still in the estate of children, able to speak and behave themselves no otherwise; and even within the bounds of their native countries (in respect of knowledge or manly capacity) they are no more than well-seeming dumb images."--_from the dedication of an anonymous translation of boccaccio's novels, &c._ . * * * * * "and so it is with all truths of the highest order: they are separated from those of average precision by points of extreme delicacy, which none but a cultivated eye can in the least feel, and to express which all words are absolutely meaningless and useless. two lines are laid on canvas, or cut on stone: one is right and another wrong. there is no difference between them appreciable by the compasses--none appreciable by the ordinary eye--none which can be pointed out if it is not seen. one person feels it, another does not; but the feeling or sight of the one can by no words be communicated to the other. that feeling and that sight have been the reward of years of labour."--_john ruskin._ . * * * * * "i offer this little work as long as i live to the correction of those who are more learned. if i have done wrong in anything i shall not be ashamed to receive their admonitions; and if there be anything which they like, i shall not be slow to furnish more."--_wilhelm of bamberg, circa a.d._ errata. page , line from bottom, _for_ tambrani _read_ tambroni. " , " " top " hand " panel. " , " " " " o'er " o'erspread. " , " " " " chi " ché. " , " " " " baptism of lazarus " raising of lazarus. " , " " bottom, " selvatia " selvatica. " , " " " " sulasio " subasio. " , " " " appendix c has been omitted for want of space. " , " " " _for_ scavegni _read_ scrovegni. " , " " top " links " lamps. giotto. chapter i. introductory. the biographies in this series[ ] are intended to help in the preservation of the memories of those great artists, who, leaving to the world the legacies of their genius, have not all died, but live to this hour in the far-reaching influence their works exert. that such men lived, worked, and perished, is almost the sum of knowledge that most of us can boast of with regard to them; we here try to add the simple story of their lives, and perhaps a few touches of description as to the friends they loved, the country they lived in, and the times in which they worked; so that, perhaps, they may become in some measure to us, not only wielders of the chisel and the brush, but men like ourselves, with moments of frailty as well as exaltation, with lives more or less difficult through fading ambitions and frequent failure, but nevertheless bound to us by the tie of a common humanity, and claiming our sympathy and love, not only for the beauty they have left us, but because they also carried the burden, and fought the fight that we are fighting to-day. if it be true, as george eliot tells us, that the aspect of affairs for the race, is largely altered by the influence of "those who have lived faithfully hidden lives, and rest in unvisited tombs," it is none the less true, that there is some danger in regarding those whose achievements are of historic magnitude, as if they belonged to a separate order of humanity, and were removed alike from its every-day joys and sorrows; and we shall gain a knowledge by no means to be despised, if we once bring fairly home to our consciousness the fact that the seeds of greatness flourish in no other soil than that which we all possess; that the divine light of genius glorifies natures that are subject to the like joys, sorrows, and passions as our own, nay, that even, "like the fierce light that beats upon a throne," it often reveals faults of which the weakest of us might well be ashamed, as well as virtues of which we are all capable. it is not by elevating the great to a passionless region of undisturbed supremacy of life and action, that we show them our truest reverence, or learn from them our most worthy lesson, but by seeing them as they were in sober truth. if we would knit into firmer unison the varying struggles, failures, and triumphs of our great brotherhood, we must learn to look upon genius, not as some cold, unapproachable excellence that finds its work in alien spheres of imagination and action, but rather as a keener insight into the truths of thought and feeling, with its relations to the everyday aspects of life, no less than to its most exalted phases. it will not be wasted time to the busy dwellers in the england of the nineteenth century, to be led back in spirit to those old italian days when as yet civilisation dozed upon the stream of time, when the arno and the tiber ran their course unspanned by other bridges than those grey stone ones that remain to this day, when under the shadows of the umbrian mountains, the rushes of thrasymene wavered not with the rush of the locomotive, but the sighing of the breezes, and on the hills of assisi the brethren of st. francis chanted their earliest anthems, and took their first solemn vows of poverty and obedience. it will not be wasted time, if a thrill of kindly sympathy can be raised within us for that old life without whose struggles our fuller knowledge could never have existed, when the world was plainly divided into soldiers and scholars, rulers and ruled, men of action and men of thought, when the good was encrusted with no uncertainties, and the evil mitigated by no doubts, and all the lives of men were poured along a deeper and narrower channel than now. though we should not regret, we should still remember kindly those times and all that they wrought for us, and the lessons that they teach, though our lives be cast in a far different mould. it is not possible now for a new regenerator of art to cause a new departure for art by plain reference to natural fact, as did the subject of this book six hundred years ago; but how long has it been impossible? for little more than twenty years! strange as it may seem to many of our readers, a large portion of the very best art of the present day is based upon principles which were derived from the works of giotto and his immediate successors, and such men as millais, holman hunt, rossetti, and burne jones, would never have painted as they have done,[ ] had it not been for the umbrian shepherd boy, whose story we are about to tell. the quality which they found in giotto's work, of simple unswerving truth to the facts of nature and life, this it is which lies at the root of all their work, this it is which they sought to find in vain in the pictures of later artists, however superior such might be, and were, in beauty of form and refinement of colouring. forced and eccentric as the work of the modern pre-raphaelites at first seemed, it was indubitably based upon a sound principle--the principle of painting what they saw, and consequently what they believed in, rather than what they might have seen. they took up the theory that nature was essentially beautiful and, carrying it a step further than was usual, drew the conclusion that if they were absolutely faithful to nature, their work could not be ugly.[ ] it is hardly too much to say that this principle has gone far to effect as great a change in modern art as the practice of giotto effected in that of six hundred years ago. even those artists who have been most antagonistic to the pre-raphaelite movement, as it is called, have had their practice modified by it; and though they have continued to uphold the necessity for following rules of art, conventionally graceful arrangement of line, and contrasts of light and shade as the chief elements of pictorial beauty, have still been forced by their antagonists into bringing their works more into accordance with natural fact. upon this point, however, this is not the place to dwell; it is sufficient to bear in mind that the influence of giotto, of which we have spoken, is one which is even now modifying our art, and that therefore it will be no small help to the right understanding of present pictures and picture theories, to understand clearly what reform it was that giotto introduced into italian painting, and how it comes about that after so long an interval of time his work has come to form a sort of rallying point for young english artists of our own day. there is still another reason for dwelling upon the work of this old pre-raphaelite painter; which is, that there is one considerable section of the english art-world who unite in declaring the essential and necessary superiority of the venetian and florentine painting, say of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and in speaking in despairing terms of the hopeless ugliness of modern civilisation. i often wonder whether those worthy elders, had they lived in the times of giotto, would not have referred in terms of despairing eulogy to the old roman mosaics of the fifth and sixth centuries, and contrasted their beauty with the innovating tendency of the shepherd painter, who actually inserted portraits of living people into his sacred pictures, and vulgarised the most holy subjects by the insertion of personages who looked actually glad, or surprised, or sorry, just as they might have done in actual life! but it surely is not the case that art alone, of all the great influences of the world, reached its apogee in the middle ages, and that nothing henceforth remains for it but stagnation or decline. can we believe that progress will go on in all else, and that art alone is doomed to stand still for ever, like a sort of lot's wife, looking backward to venice and florence, as she to sodom? such cannot be the belief of those who hold that progress is not the result of an accidental conjunction of fortunate circumstances, but rather that of an universal law of nature, which ordains that we move for ever forward, though the steps of our advance are rarely perceptible. it is possible that all the older forms of art must die--as they seem to be dying now, of inanition--ere the fuller art be born, but nevertheless the fuller art must come in its season, and whatever be its distinguishing characteristic, this at least is certain, that it will be more in unison with the facts of nature and life, as we now know them, than a reflection of the faded beauties of ancient story. so that we are justified in looking with special interest upon the works of the man who first asserted the principle of the broad relation of art to life, and painted legends of the madonna, or whatever were his subjects, not in the ancient symbolical manner, but as incidents that happened in the work-a-day world, and were witnessed by spectators, such as might have really existed, some of whom were curious, some scornful, and some indifferent. whatever changes art may undergo in the future, our debt will be none the less to those who have made it such as we know it now, to those early workers who struggled against difficulties and solved them for us, and whose imperfections formed the groundwork of our fuller knowledge. and chief of these, as the first who introduced a rational and verifiable manner of painting, is giotto bondone, the pupil of cimabue, who not only cast on one side the arbitrary forms of representation handed down from the byzantine artists, but, as we have said, introduced into his pictures the element of natural life, and carrying his reform into the very heart of his subject, adopted for his characters not only appropriate action and natural positions, but made the whole picture tell a story of human life, instead of making it a composition of more or less graceful lines and variegated colours. this will be treated of in subsequent portions of this essay, it is sufficient to say here that painters were not slow to follow the example thus set, nor the public to appreciate the change. it was so sudden and of such marked importance, the advantages gained were so great, that the new method of painting, completely vanquished the traditional one, even in the artist's own lifetime; and with the whole weight of tradition, and with the church's dislike to innovation to contend with, it succeeded in permanently establishing itself in public favour. from the time of giotto's early manhood to the death of titian, the history of painting is mainly the history of the principles which the former artist taught his pupils and exemplified in his works. even in landscape painting, which was hardly if at all practised in his time, the advance made by giotto was remarkable, as he substituted for the ordinary conventional background, scenes in which nature was represented faithfully, though with many shortcomings of perspective and errors of proportion such as were inevitable in a first attempt. however, for two hundred years afterwards the advance in landscape was very slight,[ ] and in some respects his designs of leaves and foliage, especially some of those in the sculptures on the campanile at florence, are still worthy of our admiration for their fidelity, no less than for their beauty. and lastly, to conclude this introductory chapter, it may be worth while to attempt to answer the question of what analogy we can find between the work of giotto and that of the present day, and what lessons we can derive from the former. now that we have had our road cleared of the many difficulties that beset the old italian artist, have we any left that he can teach us how to master, and if so, what are they? the answer is a very simple one. in his time art was suffering its restriction to a certain class of subjects, the religious; and a certain way of representing those subjects, the conventional. this restriction had engendered a purely formal and unemotional art, and an almost total suppression in pictures of the elements of fancy and the realisation of natural fact. in the present day, as in the thirteenth century, art suffers from restrictions, the difference being, that instead of being imposed from without, they are imposed from within, or in other words, they are developments from her own practice. the effect of the great advance in art made in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries has been to make modern artists look at nature in a particular way, _i.e._, in the manner in which the painters of that day originated; and instead of aiming at beauty through truth to nature and life, they rather aim at it through an imitation of the works of raphael and titian. the perfection of _technique_ reached by those masters and their contemporaries, has raised the admiration of all later painters to such a degree that they have exalted the methods of this renaissance painting into a religion, and seek to find in the laws of chiaroscuro, composition, balance, and harmony of colour, which they can deduce from the pictures of that period, the source of the inspiration that renders those works immortal. thus art is still in service, in service to itself; it has but burst one set of fetters that it might "gather the links of the broken chain to fasten them proudly round her." no longer bound by superstition and formalism; she is bound by bonds of her own making, and falls down, like narcissus of old, in worship of her own fair face. indeed the present error is really a deeper one than that which giotto vanquished, for throughout all the degradation of art in the early centuries of the christian era, there was one principle which had been clung fast to, and that was, that pictures should represent things worthy to be represented; it is true that the range was narrowed and its treatment governed by rule, but it may be doubted whether this was not preferable to our present indifference of what it is that is painted, or whether anything should be painted at all. for it must be noticed that many modern writers on art seem to hold, and artists to exemplify, the principle, that one subject is as good as another; in fact, that the treatment is everything, the meaning of the work wholly subsidiary. art no longer exists to depict worthily worthy things, but rather like an æsthetic blondin balances itself solemnly on a tight-rope of its own construction, seeming to pride itself upon its removal from the vulgar crowd, and moves onward with abstracted gaze, heedless of the oft repeated cries of "come down." yet now, as in the older centuries, men sorrow and hope, succeed and fail, and woman's beauty is as fair, and her heart as tender, as under the italian sunshine six hundred years ago; there may be at the present hour in the cottages of england, as then mid the hills of vespignano, peasants' children in whom the inspiration of art is struggling for utterance, needing but the chance that cimabue gave to giotto, to give to mankind new lessons of beauty and truth. in a word, now as then, the subjects of art and its power are the same as they have ever been, and men have not ceased to be the same because the fashion of their dress is changed, and they no longer display their emotions with the frank egotism of the middle ages. and, as has been said, the history of giotto is the history of the man who first in painting gave expression to all the diverse emotions of men, who refused to believe that traditional arrangements of line, and profuseness of colouring, could be efficient substitutes for the vital facts of nature and life; who taught that painting is but one of the means by which man speaks to man, and that therefore the words it says are as important, perhaps more so, as the way in which they are said. so i repeat the history of this old pre-raphaelite is doubly important to us at this day, not only as the founder of the great schools of italian painting, but as the energetic reformer in whose works our artists may find an exhortation to cast away formulas for facts, and rely for the beauty and attractiveness of their pictures, more upon their correspondence with nature, than their subservience to artistic tradition. footnotes: [ ] this essay was originally written for, and will ultimately appear in, the series of "illustrated biographies of the great artists," published by messrs. sampson low, and co. [ ] see _pre-raphaelitism_, by john ruskin. . [ ] in this connection the following quotation from mr. ruskin's description of the origin of english pre-raphaelitism may be found interesting. he is here speaking of messrs. millais, hunt, and rossetti: "pupils in the same schools receiving precisely the same instruction, which for so long a time has paralysed every one of our painters; these boys agree in disliking to copy the antique statues set before them. they copy them as they are bid, and they copy them better than anybody else; they carry off prize after prize, and yet they hate their work. at last they are admitted to study from the life, they find the life very different from the antique, and they say so. their teachers tell them the antique is the best, and they must not copy the life. they agree among themselves that they like the life and that copy it they will. they do copy it faithfully, and their masters forthwith declare them to be lost men. their fellow-students hiss them whenever they enter the room. they cannot help it, they join hands and tacitly resist both the hissing and the instruction. accidentally a few prints of the works of giotto, a few casts from that of ghiberti, fall into their hands, and they see in them something which they never saw before; something eternally and everlastingly true." [ ] "from giotto's old age to the youth of raphael the advance consists principally in two great steps: the first, that distant objects were more or less invested with a blue colour; the second, that trees were no longer painted with a black ground but with a rich dark brown, or dark green one."--_john ruskin._ chapter ii. art in italy in the thirteenth century. if we would gain a true and adequate conception of the works and merit of any painter, it is necessary for us not only to examine his special productions, but to become in some measure acquainted with the state in which art was during his time. and not only is it necessary to take into account the actual amount of progress then manifested in one particular branch, such as painting, but to consider also the tendencies of the age, if we would separate the influence exercised by the artist's work, and define its true significance. therefore readers will not think it irrelevant to the right telling and understanding of the life of giotto, if they are first asked to consider for a short time the condition of art in the year ; and in order to thoroughly comprehend this condition, we must for a moment carry our thoughts back a thousand years further still, and think of those days when art and paganism flourished side by side in the grecian republic. it would be difficult at any time, impossible in the short space at our disposal, to explain the peculiar action and reaction of greek art upon greek religion; we must content ourselves with noting the fact that the two were absolutely inseparable--that the religion owed its influence over men's minds in no small degree to the power of art, is as indisputable as that art gained enormously in dignity and strength by being considered as the greatest exponent of religion, and by all its most important achievements being consecrated to that service. but if the greek art was on the one hand indissolubly connected with the national religion, it was, on the other, no less connected with the national life. if the wisdom of zeus, the pride of juno, and the tenderness of venus ornamented one side of the amphora, the struggles of the chase and the contests of the gymnasia adorned the other; nor did it seem to the people that there was anything extraordinary in thus mingling the doings of their neighbours, and the actions of their gods. why! their gods, after all, were but neighbours of a higher order, and had even been known to succumb to the craft or bravery of men. the barrier between seen and unseen scarcely existed; but nature passed through almost imperceptible gradations, from the dryad of the woodland, to the ruler of olympus. had their religion, their art, and their life stood apart, as, unhappily, religion, art, and life stand apart now, the rise of christianity could never have produced the withering effect upon all works of imagination which we know occurred; for it could not have taken away, at one blow, both the motives and the subjects of art, however it might have changed the mode of their representation; nor would christianity have been opposed to it in like manner, had it not clearly perceived that it was one of the great instruments in the hands of the pagan priests. unable to pervert to spiritual conceptions an art whose only conception of spiritual things was the perfection of bodily ones, ascetic christianity had no choice but to discourage the practice of art altogether, and this is what actually happened. gradually as the study of the nude figure was abandoned, the ignorance of the artists of the real outlines of the human form increased; and gradually, as the first broad christian theory of fellowship and brotherhood, faded through the help of the priest into a stern, asceticism, enforced by church tradition, all representations of vigour and manly beauty were considered to verge upon the profane, till at last we find in the work of the fifth to the tenth centuries, an almost total absence of all study of either nature or man; the former being totally disregarded, the latter represented under rude types, which were repeated from age to age without variety or improvement. splendour of material and colouring were made to atone for poverty of conception and absence of thought, and the great art of those ages was one which the greeks had only considered worthy to decorate the floors of their palaces. this art of mosaic, which about the fourth century[ ] began to supersede painting in tempera and encaustic, was peculiarly fitted to be the servant of asceticism. in the course of its practice all the flowing lines of drapery became harsh and stiff, the limbs lost their suppleness and movement, the face its expression and life, and in fact the whole picture became less a representation of an occurrence, than a type to recall some subject to the mind. if we remember that many of the facts of the christian religion were such as almost to defy absolute representation, we shall discover another reason for the adoption of this work. it is to be noted that, according to pliny, mosaic began to be in vogue in rome about years before christ. kugler asserts that this art was an invention of the alexandrian age, but in this he appears to be mistaken, and it is more probable that the greeks received it from persia and assyria (through their Ægean colonies and the histories of phoenician merchants), in which countries the art seems to have been of great antiquity,[ ] the finest examples of these wall mosaics are to be found in rome and ravenna, and, at a later date, in the decoration of st. mark's, at venice, to which we shall hereafter have occasion to refer. another kind of art of great importance at this time was illumination, the earliest traces of which are found towards the close of the second century, when the present form of leaves sewn together at the back superseded the rollers which had been previously used. the first embellishments were simple enlargements and variety of colouring in the letters; from this, the advance to borders and illustrative designs was comparatively rapid.[ ] the earliest examples of importance remaining at the present day, are the _dioscorides_, in the library at vienna, and the _virgil_, in the vatican, both of which are supposed to be of the fourth century. the influence of tradition, asceticism, and sacerdotalism, acted in a precisely similar way to restrain the art of illumination, as it did to destroy that of painting and sculpture. at first the byzantine school of illuminators greatly surpassed those of the western world, but, as humphreys says, "they belonged to a sinking and not a rising civilisation, and we find them gradually deteriorating after the tenth century, and never originating a new style or gradually progressing to more intricate or beautiful treatment of their subjects, but on the contrary, uninfluenced by the change and progress that was at work in western europe, they plodded on in the traditional track; the ancient costume and the bright gold of their miniatures of the fifth century still continuing in practice to the later period of byzantine illumination; and even in the year , m. papetie found the monks of mount athos decorating portions of their monastery with figures of the apostles and evangelists of the old approved pattern, and painted on the traditional gold grounds, the exact counterpart of those of the fifth century."[ ] we have spoken of the byzantine mosaic and illumination, and have only to mention their architecture to complete our account, for it must be remembered that almost every artistic impulse of these centuries was due either mediately or immediately to the influence of constantinople, which, however stationary, or even declining in its civilisation, was yet the great centre of enlightenment. it is quite impossible i believe to give in a few lines any description of the peculiarities of byzantine architecture, dependent as that style was upon a combination of the grecian, roman, and arabian methods of building. we know that one element in the style was the combination of the round dome with the ancient temple, and that the shape and size of the building was in the first place determined by the necessities of its worship. as is pointed out by professor brown,[ ] "the christian mode of worship required a style of building considerably different from the heathen temple. instead of a mere sacristry for the priest, the term at which the pomp of processions ended, and in the front of which, under the vault of the sky, sacrifices were performed, shelter was now required for the multitude offering their prayers, according to ritual, and receiving instruction from their pastors. new places for sacred edifices were therefore required, and those of great dimensions, with ample space and superior accommodation within the interior." the result of this demand led to the selection and adaptation of the most suitable buildings which were then available, and these happened to be the ancient basilicas or halls of justice, of which, as they are the origin of all christian churches, the following description may be interesting to some of my readers:[ ] "a basilica was a public edifice of the ancient romans, consisting of an oblong interior divided in its width into three divisions by two rows of columns. at the upper end it had a large niche or tribune, where courts of justice were held. the basilica was a place of general resort, like an exchange of modern times. these places also became to be used by the christians for their place of meeting, and afterwards churches were built on the model of the basilicæ, and the name of basilicæ is still affixed to the principal churches in rome. to a building of this kind there was added a transept, to give a cruciform shape; and so the general plan of our churches came to be adopted." if the exigencies of room and haste led to the transposition of these ancient exchanges into churches, and fixed the form of the christian architecture of the future; the zeal of the new faith also determined in no small measure the style of adornment of their interiors. for, again, the haste for their decoration was so great that the importation of marble from the quarries nearly twenty miles from rome was too slow a method for the christians to adopt, and they "immediately commenced the work of demolition among the classic edifices of antiquity erected by the pagan romans, chiefly for the value of the materials."[ ] this was probably the origin of the method of incrustation, which forms such a remarkable feature in the byzantine architecture, and indeed is, according to ruskin, its most typical feature. the process of changing a basilica into a cathedral being somewhat akin to that of changing a barrack into a palace, the rich materials had to be used as sparingly as possible, in order to make them sufficient for the concealment of the original poverty of the structure, and this naturally led to the blocks of marble being divided into thin slabs, in order to gain as much surface decoration as possible, and caused also the delicate proportions of symmetry and uniformity in the grecian temples to be neglected, since the proportions had to be taken as they were found, and made the best of. if we then add to this first origin of the christian architecture, the influences which were likely to attend upon its transference to the east, we easily perceive how its more elaborate decorations and peculiarities arose. the employment of coloured marbles, which arose first from the necessity of making use of the scattered fragments of the ancient temples, was continued, through a love for the picturesqueness of the effect produced; the elements of size, proportion, and simplicity, on which the structure of the grecian temples had been founded, once lost sight of, those of variety and intricacy took their place. eastern magnificence covered the walls with gold and colours, while the necessities of excluding the fierce sunshine of the east, narrowed the windows, and produced the chequered gloom, through which the lustre of the golden crucifix, and the silver lamp, alone shone clearly. such was the rise of the byzantine architecture, which, however lacking it may be in strictness of taste and correctness of method, has always been powerful over men's minds to an almost unparalleled extent.[ ] and in this architecture and decoration everything was subordinated to the religious impression; from its meanest detail, to the very shape of the church itself, everything was a type of the christian faith and hope, and was neither valuable nor precious, save as the symbol of the unseen divinity. it can be easily imagined how quickly art sank wholly under this influence, and became the mere servant of the popular superstition. as in ancient greece, so in byzantium, the priests used art for their great lever to move the imaginations of the people; the difference being only that as the religion was of a different kind, so was the art. this world was a hospital; "health and heaven were to come";[ ] that was practically the belief of these early ages of the christian church. it is indeed the theory of the church at the present day. so art no longer sought to find her gods in an apotheothised humanity, but substituted arbitrary types for the things unspeakable; thus a hand reaching down from the sky typified the almighty; a dove was the recognised symbol of the spirit, and so on.[ ] and as the church gradually encroached more and more upon the lives of the people, and as with its increasing influence it asserted its supremacy on every domain of human life; so it extended its power of repression upon the subjects as well as upon the methods of art. not only was the barrier raised against all representations of bodily strength, grace, and beauty, but even in the delineation of sacred subjects, the artist was forbidden to render them in any way human by using his powers of conception and modification. hardly even was a variation of grouping or the introduction of a figure allowed in the treatment of the religious events; and for hundreds of years st. john and the virgin stood in the same attitude, at the right and at the left hand of the cross, and christ, in the centre of the picture, gazed upon the spectators with the placid eyes of divine power, of which no agony could avail to dim the godhead. to the end of the eleventh century all expression of pain upon the face of the saviour was entirely absent, absolutely forbidden by the priesthood. he was depicted as standing upon the cross with erect head and widely open eyes,[ ] and in aspect, as crowe says, "either erect or menacing." while this spirit of representation continued, it was manifestly impossible for art to improve. all study of the nude discouraged, if not forbidden, all the worth of material beauty despised, all originality of conception sternly interdicted, and all expression of human emotion considered as irreligious, the unhappy painters had no opening left them for anything but slavish imitations of their predecessors. it would take me too long to show how this anti-naturalism of the church came to be in some degree modified; probably one of the chief causes was the recognition by the priesthood of the progressive tendency of the times, and the consequent relaxation of the harsh restrictions which had fixed the limits of pictorial art. in every age the essential principle of the catholic religion in its dealings with secular matters has been an adoption of the tendencies which it could not repress, and the endeavour to turn them to its own advancement. it may well be that the growing naturalism of pictorial representation from the twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth was sanctioned by the church from this cause. in any case, during this period religious art took its first hesitating steps in the right direction. slowly the crucifixes represented the saviour with downcast head and closed eyes, and his body no longer stood erect upon the cross, but swayed outward in the pain of death. such was the state of painting at the beginning of the thirteenth century, purely devoted to religious subjects, and representing those subjects according to established forms--influenced chiefly by the traditions of ancient art which were received from the schools of byzantium, but fettered by those traditions being embodied in christian types, and complicated by the introduction of church symbolism. thus, for instance, in the treatment of the drapery in the mosaics executed at venice by the greek, apollonius, something of the ancient manner may be observed through all the figures; but the rigidity of the lines, the meagreness of the bodies, and the lifelessness of the composition are entirely due to the influences of asceticism which prevailed in the early church. sculpture was in an identical position till the celebrated pulpit at pisa was made by niccola pisano in ; in which the same imitation of the antique, combined in a lesser degree with the restraining influences above mentioned, forms a nearer approach to the gothic naturalism of giotto than we can trace elsewhere. pisano's gift in design was a far lower one than giotto's, though he was much greater in sculptural skill, for in his works the new element is not so much the rejection of tradition for the sake of nature, as the partial rejection of ascetic religion for the sake of imitating the antique. it is true that by this adherence to the form of grecian sculpture he far exceeds the works of his contemporaries and predecessors of the middle ages, but that is only because the schools he imitated had studied nature so devotedly; there is in his work much of the spirit of the antique, but little of the spirit of nature on which the antique was founded. according to crowe,[ ] in the later work of niccola pisano there is a reference to natural models observable, but i have not seen the pulpit at siena of which he is speaking; and it is notable that there were several pupils of pisano engaged upon this work, and that crowe admits that where the references to nature occur, precisely there "is the master's ability least visible," so it is at least possible that they may not have been the work of his own hand. many other architects and sculptors of the thirteenth century there are; but we cannot spare space to do more than mention their names. arnolfo, giovanni pisano, fra guglielmo, and the three florentines, lapo, donato, and goro are the chief; their doings are described by crowe in his chapter on the progress of sculpture in the first volume of the _history of painting in italy_, in which there is a full description of the manner of each, and an examination of the questionable statements of vasari concerning them. what is interesting with regard to the subject of our biography in respect of these sculptors is, that they were the forerunners of that revival of the study of nature, in which he subsequently played the most important part. it does not appear to me that they actually attempted, as is asserted by crowe, "to graft on the imitation of the antique a study of nature," but rather that their imperfect naturalism arose from a misrepresentation of the antique work, and an almost total rejection of the byzantine formalism. it is a curious example of ruskin's dictum that the energy of growth in any people may be almost directly measured by their passion for sculpture or the drama, that just at the time when italy was beginning that splendid forward movement which crowned, with a blaze of light, the dark mountain of the middle ages; just then sculpture should have as it were leapt into full life after a sleep of nearly a thousand years. according to lanzi[ ] the improvement of mosaic followed that of sculpture, and a franciscan friar named fra jacopo torriti, surpassed all the contemporary greek and roman workers in mosaics. "on examining what remains of his works at santa maria maggiore at rome, one can hardly believe that it is the production of so rude an age, did not history compel us to believe it. it appears probable that he took the ancients for his models, and deduced his rules from the more chaste specimens of mosaic still remaining in several of the roman churches, the design of which is less crude, the attitudes less forced, and the composition more skilful, than were exhibited by the greeks who ornamented the church of san marco at venice. mino surpassed them in everything. from when he executed, however feebly, the mosaic of the tribune of the church of san giovanni at florence, he was considered at the head of living artists in mosaic. he merited this praise much more by his works at rome; and it appears that he long maintained his reputation." there is no doubt that the art of mosaic was in full practice in italy at this period, and was not, as has been supposed, confined to the greeks. there is a curious passage in the work of the abbé montfaucon[ ] who made an extensive tour through italy in , to the effect that in the cathedral of spoleto above the front entrance, he saw a piece of mosaic work made in the year , with the following inscription:-- "hic est pictura quam fecit sat placitura, doctor solfernus hac summo in arte modernus. annis inventis cum septem mille ducentis operarij palmenus," &c., &c. translation of the above inscription-- "this picture, which will please well, was made by doctor solfernus, the ablest of the moderns in this art, in the year . the workmen were palmenies," &c., &c. i can find no other record of this doctor solfernus, but there can be little doubt that the art was at this time generally known throughout italy. we need not pause here to examine the question of whether kugler is right in asserting that towards the close of the ninth century the art of mosaic had almost ceased in italy; that it had done so at rome appears certain; but at venice, and also in southern italy and sicily, the art, if discontinued, was soon revived by the importation of greek artists, and continued in full practice from the eleventh to the end of the fifteenth century, when it may be considered to have received its death-blow from the hand of oil painting.[ ] it may, i think, be assumed that the arts of mosaic and painting were carried on at rome during the tenth century, but were probably in a very declining state, and were quite superseded by the superior skill of the greek artists. there was a school of painting at pisa as early, according to lanzi, as the beginning of the twelfth century, and he gives an account of "a parchment containing the _exultet_, as usually sung upon sabbato santo (which) is in the cathedral, and we may here and there observe painted on it figures in miniature with plants and animals: it is a relique of the early part of the twelfth century, yet a specimen of art not altogether barbarous. there are likewise some other paintings of that century in the same cathedral, containing figures of our lady, with the holy infant on her right arm: they are rude, but the progress of the same school may be traced from them to the time of giunta." we may notice that crowe and cavalcaselle give the eleventh century as the date of the earliest pictures (crucifixes) at pisa, but their only authority for this is the negative one of the saviour's upright position, which, as we have mentioned above, was always observed up to the eleventh century. there is, however, no sufficient ground for believing that after this date the erect position was invariably departed from. giunta of pisa painted in the first half of the thirteenth century, and was the best of the pisan school as far as is at present known. it is, however, supposed by some who are most conversant with early italian painting, that this school subsequently developed some great artists whose works are still to be seen, though their names have unfortunately perished; this would, however, be denied by cavalcaselle. i have spoken as shortly as i could of the sort of art in painting, mosaic, and sculpture which preceded giotto; but before i close this very imperfect, and i fear confused and tedious, historical sketch, there is one other source of artistic influence which i must briefly mention, that is the influence of the lombardic architecture of the twelfth century, which is seen to the greatest perfection in the cities of northern italy, and which mr. ruskin once asserted to be the "root of all the mediæval art of italy--without which no giottos, no angelicos, and no raphaels would have been possible." the influence of this architecture upon giotto, and his intense liking for it, is evident from the frequency with which he introduced it into the frescoes. the lombardic is the development in the west of the romanesque architecture, whose leading feature was the round arch; it is the byzantine style, without some of its eastern characteristics, but with other peculiarities derived from western sources. perhaps its most special feature, the one in which it has been without a rival in any bygone age, and is without a rival still, is in the decorative use of brick and terra-cotta. the very name has reference to this, for in the great plains of lombardy where there is little stone, clay was naturally used as far as it possibly could be, to supply its place; and mouldings and statues which would have been carved from the solid stone or marble under more favourable circumstances, were here moulded out of brick. hence arose a style which, as it could not depend upon the richness of its material, or the difficulty of its workmanship, could gain its only reward from its delicacy of invention and grace of design, and in which the actual building of its sculptured tiles formed no inconsiderable part. this elevation of an ignoble material into value and dignity was, as grüner says, actually effected in the lombardic churches, and to them belongs that subtle charm which we involuntarily experience on discovering the perfect adaptation of simple things to great uses. though nowhere carried to such perfection as by the lombards of the twelfth century, this decorative use of brick was by no means a discovery of the more modern times, as we see from the following extract from thomas hope's _historical essay on architecture_:--"the ancient romans wherever they found clay more abundant or easier to work than stone, used it plentifully, both in regular layers throughout the body of the walls as we do, and in an external reticulated coating, which has proved to be as durable as stone itself, from the fineness of its texture and the firmness of its joints. indeed far from considering brick as a material fit only for the coarsest and most indispensable groundwork of architecture, they regarded it as equally adapted for all the elegances of ornamental form--all the details of rich architraves, capitals, friezes, cornices, and other embellishments. sometimes it owed to the mould its various forms, and at others, as in the _amphitheatrum castrense_, and the temple of the god ridiculus, to the chisel."[ ] i almost despair of conveying an idea of the peculiarities of this architecture to those who have never seen any examples of it, its chief elements being those of simplicity and intricacy, solidity and lightness; it appearing, in fact, to be a mass of contradictions. its byzantine origin, or rather the influence on it at some time of byzantine art, is clearly perceptible in the variety of colour which is employed; yellow, and white, and red, and green, and black tiles and bricks being used alternately, with the utmost skill and the greatest variety of effect. but it is to the varieties of tower and cupola and dome that lombardic architecture shows its most distinctive character; every combination of round arch vaulting with square, hexagonal, or circular towers, was used by them with a boldness, and a disregard of convention for which i know no parallel. and the result justified their daring. constructed first simply on the model of the old roman basilica, then modified and extended by the influence of the art which greek workmen brought from constantinople, combining the fancy of the arab, the roughness of the goth, and the formalism of the greek, this architecture grew from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, like a flower or tree, rejecting none of the influences with which it was surrounded. it may be possible, i have no doubt it is, for those who are skilled in the science of architecture, to discover the elements of a correct uniform style in these lombardic buildings; but i confess that to me it seems but as the result of people who were prepared to make use of anything that came in their way, and had never formulated a method of building at all. the roman arch, the byzantine dome, the arabian minaret, the square tower, the mosque, the basilica, and the temple, were all mingled here in a confusion of detail, which was yet executed with the utmost simplicity, we had almost said poverty, of material, and of which it is difficult to say whether the first impression produced, is wonder at the variety, indignation at the eccentricity, or delight at the effect of the whole building.[ ] i have now touched on the chief sources of artistic influence in italy towards the middle of the thirteenth century, which, briefly summed up, are these--an art of painting which had become little more than a handicraft, carried on in rome after the recipes of long perished masters, and in other parts of italy either dormant, or kept alive only by such men as giunta of pisa, and the pupils of the greek artists; an art of mosaic work which also owed its chief, if not its only, importance, to byzantine workmen, and which was even then engaged in decorating the shrine of st. mark at venice, with grecian designs. in sculpture, the pisani, father and son, and their pupils and fellow workers, trying to revive classicalism as a barrier against the false state of religious art, but failing to see that, after all, the strength of the ancients lay not in their ideal, but in their real perfection of nature--and so losing itself in the wilds of imitative and traditional art; and lastly, there were flourishing in italy, two great schools of architecture closely allied, the byzantine and the lombard, and gradually spreading was a third school destined to destroy them both, which we have nicknamed gothic. try to realise the artistic state of the country amongst this medley of dead and dying styles, with the whole influence of the classic past in favour of the traditional mode of painting and sculpture, and the whole strength of the priesthood arrayed against any attempt to make fresh inroads upon the sacred realm of church symbolism and scriptural formalism; the church still holding fast to the ascetic theory as the one saving grace, perhaps even the more strongly, because the ascetic practice had become a thing of the past. footnotes: [ ] see kugler's _handbook of painting_, edited by lady eastlake, , pp. and , for a description of the origin of mosaic art. [ ] for origin of mosaic work see pliny xxv., xxxiii., xxxv. see also the _iconographic encyclopædia_, by heck, translated from the german by spencer f. baird, new york, , vol. ii. p. , &c., and fosbroke's _cyclopædia of antiquities_, . [ ] see _art of illumination_, , and _illuminated books of the middle ages_, . by henry noel humphreys. [ ] for more on this subject see the _nouveau traité de diplomatie_ of the benedictines. [ ] brown's _sacred architecture_, , pp. , . [ ] brown's _sacred architecture_, . [ ] cadell's _italy_, vol. ii. p. . [ ] for a very interesting description of this feature in byzantine work see _the stones of venice_, by john ruskin, vol. ii. [ ] ruskin's _crown of wild olive_, introduction. [ ] for an account of christian symbolism, see mrs. jameson's _sacred and legendary art_. [ ] see _a new history of painting in italy_. by j. a. crowe and g. b. cavalcaselle, ; vol. i. chap. . [ ] lord lindsay, in his _history of christian art_, asserts that in painting, the schools of giotto, siena, and bologna spring immediately from the work of niccola pisano. vol. ii., p. . see, for an account of his pupils, pages _et seq._ of vol. ii. [ ] _history of painting in italy_, vol. i. p. ; roscoe's translation, . [ ] see _the antiquities of italy_, translated from the original latin of bernard de montfaucon. london, . [ ] for a full discussion of this question see kugler's _handbook of painting, italian schools_, vol. i. pp. _et seq._ [ ] for an interesting account of building in terra-cotta, and the various operations of drying, baking the tiles, &c., see grüner's _terra-cotta architecture of italy_. introductory essay. . [ ] see also chapter xxii. of hope's _historical essay on architecture_. chapter iii. fresco painting. "ascend the right stair from the further nave to muse in a small chapel scarcely lit by cimabue's virgin. bright and brave that picture was accounted, mark, of old; a king stood bare before its sovran grace, a reverent people shouted to behold the picture, not the king, and even the place containing such a miracle grew bold." --mrs. barrett browning. as we shall have occasion, in the following pages, to speak of fresco, secco, and tempera, as distinguished from oil painting, it will be wise to try and understand clearly what these methods of work are, and in what respects they differ from, exceed, or fall short of, the modern practice. tempera[ ] is the old name for any vehicle used in painting. the two great divisions of painting in the middle ages were fresco and secco; shortly put "fresco," meaning the painting on walls when the plaster was wet; "secco," the painting when it was dry. in fresco painting no vehicle was used but water; in secco painting a tempera was used composed of white and yolk of egg. thus, in cennino cennini's _treatise on painting_, written in ,[ ] he says:--"two sorts are good, but one is better than the other. the first tempera consists in the white and yolk of an egg into which are put some cuttings from the top of a fig-tree; beat them well together, then add some of this tempera, and not in too great quantity, to each of the vases (of colour), as if you were diluting them with water. the second kind of tempera is the yolk of the egg only, and you must know that this tempera is of universal application on walls, on pictures, and in fresco, and you cannot use too much of it, but it would be wise to take a middle course." it is to be noted that in his instructions for colouring in fresco, cennini is very particular to state several times that no vehicle is to be used except water. all frescoes at this time were re-touched in secco, with temperas such as above described; the fresco seems to have been somewhat similar to the first painting in oil, and to have received all its more minute details from the subsequent work in secco. this was almost inevitably the case, as from the haste with which large spaces of the wall had to be covered, there could hardly be time to put in much detail, besides, many of the colours employed could not be used in fresco,[ ] though all were used to finish works originally painted in fresco. secco had an especial province of its own; all _pictures_, as distinguished from wall paintings, being executed in it. it must be remembered that in the time of giotto the use of canvas was not yet introduced, and all small designs were painted upon linen cloths, stretched tightly over the surface of a smooth panel, and covered with coats of plaster carefully trimmed;[ ] the next step in the preparation of the ground was to substitute parchment stretched over wood for the prepared linen. it must be noticed that from the time of cennini to that of raphael, the practice of completing the fresco in secco grew gradually to be considered as a mark of an inferior artist, though it was never wholly discontinued (according to mrs. merrifield's treatise), except by a few "very expert artists, formed chiefly in the school of the carracci." it is perhaps not always borne in mind by those unacquainted with painting, that the range of colouring in fresco is strictly limited; no colours being employed in it by the early italians except such as were natural, and nearly all the more brilliant colours are artificial, such, for instance, as lake, vermilion, azure. the blues were more fugitive than any other hues, and in many cases have wholly disappeared, turned green or black, or flaked off from the surface of the walls. thus it will be clearly understood that the difference between painting in fresco and painting in secco, or (as it is more commonly called) in distemper, lies in two things, the kind of vehicle employed--water in the first, and glue of some sort (chiefly of egg) in the second method; and in the nature of the colours used, the first being restricted to tints comparatively simple and elementary, the second able to make use of the most elaborate colours obtainable. the first method is eminently suited to the expression of great thoughts in simple language, the second is more adapted to give pleasure, from the exquisiteness of the colours employed, and the skill with which the details are elaborated. the latter is the painting of the studio; the former the painting of the church, the palace, or the market-place. i do not think this difference is sufficiently understood in the present day; it does not appear as if painters had grasped the fact that the greatest strength of fresco lay in its emancipation from all the necessities of minute detail and careful elaboration; a freedom gained by the nature of the material. it is not that in itself this freedom is a good thing, but that it affords the artist a means of expression which he can hardly gain through the medium of painting in oil. in much the same way as a modern dining-room, however perfect in its decoration and gorgeous in its upholstery, can never give us the same effect as the rough pillars of some ruined temple; so does the comparative rough sublimity of fresco afford to a true artist a means of expressing great thoughts and lofty ideas in a comparatively facile manner. for it must be remembered he has not only spaces to decorate of a size commensurate with his subject, be it ever so important, but he has hardly to do more than to express his great thought clearly, and all small details are lost in the splendour of his conception. this is the real power of size in painting; a large picture, if it be not finished with the care of a small one, needs to be a representation of some thought which gains in grandeur from the size of its canvas; there can be no justification for covering ten feet square with the representation of an incident of no particular importance, or a scene of no particular beauty; for with every added foot of space which the artist takes up, he really makes an added claim to importance, and a subject which might have been of sufficient interest to have justified a painting on a minute scale, does but betray its insignificance when delineated on a large one. the whole of art being but the nicest possible adaptation of means to ends, it rightly shocks and repels us when we find an artist wilfully violating these conditions, and, in order to appear of greater importance in our eyes, making what might be a tolerable molehill, into a very indifferent mountain. this was very clearly seen by the old italian masters, who almost invariably chose fresco as the medium for their most important works, assigning to oil painting a lower province. in connection with this subject the following quotation of michelangelo's opinion may be interesting:--"quand il fut question de peindre dans la chapelle sextine, le frère sebastiano, peintre vénitienne, conseiller de le pape, de forcer michel ange à le faire à l'huile, et la mur fut préparé à cet effet. le grand homme arrive, et fait degrader cet apprêt, disait fièrement que la peinture à l'huile n'était bonne que pour les dames, les personnes lentes, et qui se pique l'adresse, tels que le frère sebastiano; et l'ouvrage fut fait à fresque, parce que à genre de peinture méprise cette attention à manoeuvre; vain merite qui est perdu pour elle. la touche disparait dans l'enduit qui la dévore, elle n'occupe pas l'âme du grand artiste, qui alors tout entière aux caractères, aux formes, aux expressions, et à la saillie des corps. son goût ne se manifeste pas sans science, sa main ne s'occupe que d'expérience, et il se livre tout entier à cette tâche difficile--la seule digne de lui. s'il la remplie, la spectateur est transporté, et comme l'auteur, il va cherche rien au-delà."[ ] we cannot stay to define the limits, within which it seems to us that this is a correct expression of the merits of fresco, but that it is in the main true is indisputable, and it is impossible to tell the good effect which might be produced upon the art of the present day, by encouraging our young painters to work in fresco, simply requiring of them that they should have something to say, and say it clearly. no theories as to the production of a great school of painting, will, i think, be able to map out a better means of attaining good art, than this simple one of making clear expression of a great subject the first object. curiously enough, the only english artist who seems thoroughly to have understood the great scope of fresco painting was fuseli, and in his lectures at the royal academy may be found a clear and enthusiastic exposition of this method. footnotes: [ ] though frequently wrongly used as synonymous with secco. [ ] recent researches by signors gaetano and carlo milanesi (florence, ) prove this date, which is given by tambroni and in mrs. merrifield's translation, to be only that of the copy of the original ms. cennini's work was originally written in all probability at least ten years earlier. [ ] in fresco some colours cannot be used, as artiemen, cinnabar, azuno della magna, mina, biucca, verdesume, and lacca.--_cennini._ [ ] according to mrs. jameson, _lives of the painters_, p. , all movable pictures were, up to , painted on panels of prepared wood; an evident mistake, made from a superficial examination of the back of the pictures. [ ] _encyclopédie méthodique._ paris, . chapter iv. cimabue. "i say 'consider it' in vain; you cannot consider it, for you cannot conceive the sickness of heart with which a young painter of deep feeling toils through his first obscurity; his sense of the strong voice within him, which you will not hear; his vain, fond wondering witness to the things you will not see; his far away perception of things that he could accomplish if he had but peace and time, all unapproachable, and all vanishing from him, because no one will leave him peace, or grant him time."--john ruskin, _political economy of art_. look back six hundred and forty years, and linger in fancy by the side of the arno, where florence in the height of her power and beauty, stood then as now, and you may hear the joy-bells ringing across the swift river for the birth of one of her proudest sons. thirty years more, and the whole city will rise in procession to honour him, and bear his work in triumph to the quiet church of st. mary; and six hundred years later, the representation of that honour will hang on the walls of an english gallery; and people will talk, question, and whisper about _the cimabue procession_. they may well admire it and ask its meaning; for to the painter it commemorated we owe the art of england as surely, as that to leighton we owe the picture which represents the old master's triumph. in two ways are we indebted to cimabue for the emancipation of painting; first, for the work which he did himself accomplish; and second and in chief, for his discovery and education of the shepherd boy, whose fame was ultimately to eclipse his own.[ ] i say that the master's fame was to be eclipsed by his pupil, but that must be taken with one most important reservation. however much we may be convinced of giotto's superiority, we are always forced to bear in mind the fact, that had it not been for cimabue, that superiority would in all probability never have been known. differing in the particulars of the story, all the accounts of giotto's early life agree in this important fact, that it was cimabue who discovered his early talent, who persuaded his father to let him enter his profession, and who educated him as a painter at his own expense, from the time that he was ten years old. is not this a greater monument to cimabue's name, than any amount of madonnas carried in triumph through the "street of gladness?" rightly understood, is it not even a surer testimony to the fact of his being a true artist; for does it not prove that the painter had more devotion to his art than his fame? to see in a youth, poor and unknown, the signs of genius, greater perhaps than your own, to take him from his obscurity, and to instruct his ignorance, careless of the effect which may be thereby produced upon your own reputation, and finally to stand aside while he wins the honour which is his due, but which nevertheless would have fallen to your share, had it not been for your own action; this seems to me as great a sacrifice of petty pride, and as great a triumph over natural selfishness, as can well be conceived. and this is what cimabue did, urged by no duty, and without possible reward, save that of doing his best for his art and his pupil. we owe him then a double debt: for his own work in loosening the bonds of tradition, and for the instruction of the artist whose paintings and sculptures were to inaugurate the real methods of art, and extend its province, from the mere exponent of religious legend to the representation of the passions of humanity and the beauty of nature. what little is known of the life of cimabue we can give in a very few words. even vasari, garrulous as he is, has little more to tell us, than that he lived, painted certain pictures, received certain honours, had a pupil called giotto, whose fame eclipsed his own, and died. "in the year giovanni cimabue, of the noble family of that name was born at florence, to give the first light to the art of painting." then follows the account of his greek instruction in the art of painting, which is doubted for various reasons by most modern authorities, chiefly, it appears because vasari has made him paint in the chapel of the gondi, which was not built at that time. crowe and cavalcaselle however do not give any other explanation of cimabue's teaching; and lindsay says he painted in the subterranean church under the instruction of the greeks; while lanzi, in the _history of painting_, suggests that the paintings of the greeks who are supposed to have instructed cimabue, may be seen in the chapels of the old church beneath the sacristy of s. maria novella. the point, however, is of little importance. after painting various works at florence and pisa, all of which have now perished, he was invited to help in the decoration of the church at assisi. according to vasari, he there painted in both the upper and lower churches, but, with some few exceptions, little of these frescoes remain; and the whole question as to the authorship of the five remaining frescoes in these churches has long been a favourite battle-ground for critics. vasari, lanzi, rumohr, eastlake, crowe and cavalcaselle, and many others having all theories more or less inconsistent with one another. i shall content myself with noticing the chief theories on the subject when i speak later on of the work of giotto at assisi. after this, cimabue returned to florence, and executed his great panel, the _virgin enthroned_, a picture of colossal size, which was placed in the church of s. maria novella; this was the work which was carried through the city by a triumphant procession of the people. "it is further reported, and may be read in certain records of old painters, that whilst cimabue was painting this picture in a garden near the gate of s. pietro, king charles the elder of anjou passed through florence, and the authorities of the city, among other marks of respect, conducted him to see the picture of cimabue. when this work was thus shown to the king it had not before been seen by any one; wherefore all the men and women of florence hastened in great crowds to admire it, making all possible demonstrations of delight. the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, rejoicing in this occurrence, ever afterwards called that place borgo allegri, and this name it has ever since retained, although in process of time it became enclosed within the walls of the city."[ ] vasari has little to tell us of the incidents of cimabue's life, nor can i find any other records likely to be authentic, which have fuller details. in a short time after the execution of this madonna, the artist was appointed to superintend the building of santa maria del fiore, in conjunction with a celebrated architect, arnolfo lapo, and he died, whilst the building was still unfinished, at the age of sixty.[ ] if he adopted giotto in , _i.e._ when the latter was ten years of age (the time given by most of the authorities), his pupil must, according to the time given by cennini, have just finished his novitiate when his master died; as, in his treatise on painting, that author gives thirteen years as the time in which the art of painting can be acquired. as it may well be that amongst my readers there be some who are desirous of knowing the shortest time in which it is possible to learn to paint, i will quote the words of the treatise. they may perchance aid amateurs to think a little more justly of what the mechanical difficulties of painting were, even in the rude days of early pre-raphaelitism:-- [illustration: the madonna enthroned. by cimabue. _in the rucellai chapel, s. maria novella, florence._] "know that you cannot learn to paint in less time than that which i shall name to you. in the first place you must study drawing for at least one year, then you must remain with a master at the workshop for the space of six years, at least, that you may learn all the parts and members of the art; to grind colours, to boil down glues, to grind plaster (gesso), to acquire the practice of laying grounds on pictures, to work in relief, and to scrape (or smooth) the surface, and to gild; afterwards to practise colouring, to adorn with mordants, paint cloths of gold, and paint on walls for six more years, drawing without intermission on holy days and work days. and by this means you will acquire great experience. if you do otherwise you will never attain perfection. there are many who say you may learn the art without the assistance of a master. do not believe them; let this book be an example to you, studying it day and night. and if you do not study under some master, you will never be fit for anything; nor will you be able to show your face among the masters." there is another curious statement about cimabue, and one which is very significant of his intense care for the best interests of art; it occurs in an ms. commentary upon dante, called the _anonimo_, and was written while giotto was still living, that is before .[ ] the author says:--"cimabue of florence, a painter of the time of our author (_i.e._ dante) knew more of the noble art (that of painting) than any other man, but he was so arrogant and proud withal, that if any one discovered a fault in his work, or if he perceived one himself (as will often happen to the artist who fails from the defects in the material that he uses, or from insufficiency of the instrument with which he works), he would instantly destroy that work, however costly it might be." there could be no surer testimony to the light in which cimabue regarded his painting than this of the old florentine commentator's, and it is amusing to see how, six hundred years ago, artists were liable to exactly the same amount of mistaken blame and misapprehension as they are to-day. [it is not six months ago since i heard one of the greatest of our living painters severely censured, because he would not part with a portrait which did not come up to his standard of good work, and though the opinion was expressed in the choicest slang of the nineteenth century, it was almost an exact equivalent for the words of the author _anonimo_; for i suppose "he did it for swagger," really means much the same as "proud and arrogant."] the changes introduced by cimabue into the conventional representations of religious subjects were numerous, and though each slight in itself, formed, when taken as a whole, a very marked progression from the byzantine manner, but whether owing to respect for his early masters, or from the almost overpowering effect of church tradition, the artist never wholly succeeded in shaking off the established forms of painting in the general arrangement of his figures and backgrounds. if we compare his great picture in s. maria novella with one of a similar subject by guido of siena, his predecessor,[ ] in the church of s. domenico at siena, we shall find that the main lines of the composition are much the same. nevertheless the advance is very clearly marked. the folds of the drapery have lost much of the stiffness and angularity, and the attitude and expression of the virgin, though still wanting life and energy, are simple and comparatively natural. a still greater improvement may be noticed in the gestures of the angels which support the throne, and in the action of the child saviour on the virgin's lap. in this picture there is, i think, a direct contradiction to the assertion of crowe[ ] that "in the flow of his drapery cimabue made no sensible progress;"[ ] though in other respects that author does full justice to the improvements introduced by the artist. many other modifications of style are noticeable in cimabue's works, especially the manner in which he abandoned what we may call the mosaic-like manner of painting, which had been in use for so long a time, and blended one colour with another instead of leaving it as a bright patch, divided by a sharp line. much of his colour has either faded or disappeared entirely, but enough is left to show that it must have been originally very rich in hue, and though of a deep tone, free from the heaviness and obscurity which was so prevalent in the work of the byzantine artists. in the _enthroned madonna_ of the lower church at assisi, which is indisputably one of his works, the colouring is far richer and deeper than anything remaining of giotto's, though it does not possess the exquisite clearness and delicacy of the latter; and is comparatively monotonous. this picture has however suffered so severely from damp, that it cannot be judged fair to say what the colour has, or has not, been, though it is still beautiful, and fortunately unrestored.[ ] in the accademia of florence there is another colossal madonna by cimabue, also an altar-piece representing the same subject as that of the one in s. maria novella, the arrangement, however, being slightly different. instead of the six guardian angels who support the chair on which the virgin is seated (in the former picture), there are here eight, and beneath the throne in niches stand four prophets; the thirty medallions of saints which surround the frame in the former picture are here absent. i am unable to give an accurate description of the differences between these two pictures, as i have only studied the one in the accademia;[ ] but there is, according to crowe and cavalcaselle, "a more obstinate maintenance of the old types" in the latter picture: and it is certainly true, from my own observation, that the colour has sustained such injuries from restoration and time, as to be almost entirely destroyed. this picture was originally of the gable form, but some ingenious artist, who considered that an unpleasant shape for a picture, has supplied the two triangular pieces necessary to complete the oblong, and painted thereon two cherubim, as poor in conception, colour, and execution as could well be imagined. the old shape of the work is still clearly visible, and in any other country than italy would be at once restored.[ ] footnotes: [ ] i have, throughout this essay, followed the mass of authority which describes giotto's father as a poor tenant farmer, or lower still in the social scale; but the most recent researches go to prove that he was in well-to-do circumstances, was, in fact, of the rank of "cavaliere," and it is certain that giotto inherited some property from him. [ ] vasari, _lives of the most eminent painters, &c._, vol. i. p. . [ ] lord lindsay gives the date of his death as , on the authority of ciampi. [ ] see notes to mrs. foster's translation of vasari. [ ] there are excellent engravings of both these pictures in kugler's _handbook of painting_, pages and of the fifth edition. [ ] _history of painting in italy_, vol. i. p. . [ ] look, for instance, at the natural manner in which the border of the virgin's drapery falls into its folds. the woodcut of this picture here given does little more than show the arrangement of the picture; but even here the advance is perceptible. [ ] vol. i. p. . vasari attributes the loss of colour in buffulmacco's pictures to the use of a peculiar purple mixed with salt, which corroded the other colours; possibly this may be the case with cimabue's. [ ] since writing the above sentence i have been to the rucellai chapel for the purpose of studying the great cimabue referred to above, the description of which is accordingly given in a later chapter. [ ] it is noticeable that in lindsay's _christian art_, it is to the influence of the sculptor, niccola pisano, rather than that of cimabue, that giotto owed his study of nature, &c., vol. ii. p. . chapter v. giotto. "where cimabue found the shepherd boy, tracing his idle fancies on the ground." rogers's _italy_. giotto was born[ ] at the small village of vespignano, about fourteen miles from florence, amidst surroundings, the chief characteristics of which are very beautifully described by mr. ruskin in the following paragraph:-- "few travellers can forget the peculiar landscape of that district of the apennines. as they ascend the hill which rises from florence to the lowest peak in the ridge of fiesole, they pass continually beneath the walls of villas bright in perfect luxury, and beside cypress hedges inclosing fair terraced gardens, where the masses of oleander and magnolia, motionless as leaves in a picture, inlay alternately upon the blue sky their branching lightness of pale rose colour and deep green breadth of shade, studded with walls of gleaming silver; and shining at intervals through their framework of rich leaf and rubied flower, the far-away bends of the arno beneath its slopes of olive, and the purple peaks of the carrara mountains tossing themselves against the western distance, where the streaks of motionless clouds hover above the pisan sea. the traveller passes the fiesolan ridge, and all is changed. the country is on a sudden lonely. here and there indeed are seen the scattered houses of a farm grouped gracefully upon the hill-sides; here and there a fragment of tower upon a distant rock; but neither gardens nor flowers, nor glittering palace exists. only a gray extent of mountain-ground tufted irregularly with ilex and olive; a scene not sublime, for its forms are subdued and low; not desolate, for its valleys are full of sown fields and tended pastures; not rich nor lovely, but sunburnt and sorrowful, becoming wilder every instant as the road winds into its recesses, ascending still, until the higher woods, now partly oak and partly pine, dropping back from the central crest of the apennines, leave a partial wilderness of scathed rock and arid grass, withered away here by frost, and there by strange lambent tongues of earth-fed fire."[ ] giotto's name is, according to lord lindsay, a contraction of ambrogiotto. in the modern sense of the word, he appears to have had absolutely no education, for we find him when ten years old engaged in tending sheep upon the hill-side. it is noticeable that for one who was to effect the change in art which giotto subsequently produced, no amount of early training could have been so beneficial, as the silent undogmatic one, that he received amongst the fresh meadows, and under the blue skies. the native genius within him grew gradually in strength, unhelped save by the influences of rustic life, and unhindered by tradition or example. it was no doubt to these early shepherd days, that he owed the strong sympathy with nature that he retained during his whole career, and his power of representing simple facts of animal life. throughout all his pictures, even those of his latest period, whenever he got a chance of introducing an animal he always seized it eagerly, and the little touches of dog, donkey, and ox nature which may be found scattered here and there in his works, form one of its most peculiar and pleasing features; especially when we consider that this was to artists an absolutely virgin soil. thus in the fresco at assisi[ ] representing the birth of christ, perhaps the most remarkable portion of the picture is the manner in which the two donkeys are poking their heads over the manger to examine the child, with that expression of happy placid stupidity, so well known to all who have ever had to do with these animals. and again, in the sculpture of the shepherd, forming one of the series round the base of the campanile at florence, the expression of the puppy's face, (grave consideration mixed with a sense of responsibility) as he watches the sheep filing past the shepherd's tent, is wonderfully natural, and worthy of sir edwin landseer, except that it is in one way much too good for him, in its thorough dogginess; landseer always intensified his animals' feelings to the very verge of caricature. hence one reason why he was so commonly and universally popular. [illustration: pastoral life. bas-relief designed by giotto. _on the campanile, florence._] at any rate, such was giotto's early life, spent in simple rural duties, and untroubled by school-boards and science primers; but when he was about ten years old, a strange event occurred which changed the whole current of his history. for there came riding through the valley the famous painter of florence, cimabue, then at the height of his reputation, and passed close to where the boy shepherd was sitting neglectful of his duties, trying to draw one of his flock with a piece of sharp slate upon the surface of rock. we may suppose that there was something in the work which the painter knew to be genius, for according to all the legends, he does not appear to have hesitated in the least, but after asking the boy if he would like to go with him, and receiving a glad answer in the affirmative, he obtained the father's permission, took him to florence, and installed him in his own studio. it must be remembered that an artist's studio was a very different place in , from what we call by the same name at the present time. it resembled a workshop, in which the pupils prepared and ground the colours under the master's direction, deriving what instruction they might from seeing him work and hearing him talk; nor were they allowed to touch brush or pencil till they had rendered themselves thorough masters of the preparation of the various colours, temperas, &c. a mastery which, as we have seen, was supposed at that time to take about six years to acquire. so the boy lived with his master in florence, and worked, much as a house painter's apprentice works now; drawing, no doubt, at every odd minute in the meantime, in fear and trembling, and thinking art was a very much longer business than he had bargained for, when he left his home to become a painter. many days no doubt he looked out from the rough building where he and his fellow pupils were grinding the master's colours, and saw cimabue standing in the shady garden, before a great glory of crimson drapery and golden background, and many a time his heart sank within him as he looked, and he thought it impossible that he could ever acquire that marvellous skill. but on these early days all the biographies are alike silent, there is not even an apocryphal anecdote of vasari's to enliven the darkness; and whatever we may fancy, we know absolutely nothing. the next point of giotto's life where history takes up the record is at the incident of the o. briefly told, this is as follows. about ,[ ] according to lord lindsay, boniface viii.[ ] was desirous of adding to the decorations of st. peter's, "and sent one of his courtiers from treviso to tuscany to ascertain what kind of man giotto might be, and what were his works." on his way the messenger received designs from various artists in siena, and then came to giotto, told him of his mission, and no doubt showed him the elaborate designs which he had received from the sienese artists. whereupon giotto drew with one sweep of his arm a circle in red ink, of perfect accuracy, and gave it to the messenger, refusing to send any other design, "whereby," says vasari, "the pope and such of his courtiers as were well versed in the subject, perceived how far giotto surpassed all the other painters of his time." whatever truth there may be in the details of this incident, it is, as ruskin points out,[ ] significant in showing the manner in which the pope and his counsellors judged of art: _i.e._, that the best workman was the best man, which for a rough and ready test is not altogether a bad one. the date of giotto's visit to rome is still further fixed by an assertion of baldinucci's that there is a record in the vatican in a register, to the effect that the mosaic of the _navicella_ (which is still in the portico of st. peter's though enormously damaged), was executed at rome in . if this be true, and though quoted by crowe it is not contradicted, it fixes the date of giotto's visit as at all events not later than that year. of the works of giotto at rome i shall speak in a subsequent chapter, in which i shall endeavour to fix upon the analogy of style, the order in which giotto painted at florence, padua, and assisi. it should have been noticed that crowe and cavalcaselle make the incident of the o occur in the time of benedict xi, by supposing that that pope sent from avignon "at the request of petrarch, to seek out the best artists of italy for the purpose of restoring and adorning the churches and palaces of rome which were falling into decay." this, however, leaves giotto's first visit to rome in unaccounted for, and contradicts vasari and lindsay, apparently without sufficient cause, for it seems highly improbable that if the painter had been already engaged in painting and designing mosaics for st. peter's, that in after years the pope should have thought it necessary to have a proof of his skill. however, the date of this visit to rome is of little importance, as the whole of the works of giotto in that city have been long destroyed, with the exception of the mosaic of the _navicella_, and some small panel pictures in the sacristy of st. peter's.[ ] about the year it seems probable that giotto returned to florence, and in the following year painted in the chapel of the podesta--commonly called the bargello. it was here that giotto introduced (i believe for the first time in the history of mediæval italian art) accurate portraits of living people into his picture of _paradise_. it is here that the famous portrait of dante in his early manhood was discovered after having been covered with whitewash for two hundred years. it was with the greatest difficulty that an american named kirkup, and signor bezzi obtained permission from the italian government to remove the whitewash from this fresco of _paradise_ at their own expense.[ ] all the frescoes in this chapel are very greatly injured by time and neglect, whitewash and restoration, and especially the dante portrait, which has suffered most of all from the last-mentioned cause. as i shall have little occasion to refer to the works in this chapel in subsequent chapters, i may here say that in my opinion crowe and cavalcaselle have erred in attributing all of them to giotto.[ ] there are many which show little, if any, trace of the master's hand, and others which are apparently imitations by pupils; as, however, the frescoes are all exceedingly defaced, it is not worth while to dwell minutely on this point.[ ] in less than two years from the date of this picture of the _paradise_, dante was exiled to verona, and for three or four years giotto did not see him again. in the year , when giotto went to padua to paint the arena chapel, dante also settled in that town.[ ] within a year from the painting of the bargello, giotto married a lady, of whom, no matter what may have been her virtues or attractions, posterity knows little or nothing, save that she bore the painter several children, and that her name was ciuta di lapo. it was shortly after this period of his life that he produced what must on the whole be considered the greatest work of his life--the decoration of the scrovegni chapel at padua. this was a small barn-like edifice of perfectly plain exterior, which had just been built by enrico scrovegni on the site of an old roman amphitheatre, and dedicated to the madonna. according to some accounts, giotto himself was its architect; but this has only been surmised from the fact of his decoration being so admirably suited to the building. the fact probably being that had the building been of a different or more elaborate shape, he would have treated it in a different manner. as it was, the extreme simplicity of the arrangement of the frescoes, is most happily in harmony with the simplicity of the architecture. here he seems to have lived for several years, and here as we have said came dante in , having passed the intervening years of his exile at bologna. according to baldinucci, our painter had no less than six children, all of whom were of a surpassing ugliness; and it is recorded that dante remarked upon this circumstance to him, pretending to be surprised that one who could paint such beautiful figures should have such ugly sons; to which giotto replied by a jest more suited to his own times, than to ours. indeed, all that the biography of giotto amounts to after this, is an account of his various jokes and eccentricities, most of which, i must confess, seem to me of very poor quality, somewhat akin to the pleasantries told at the tea-table of a humorous schoolmaster, or to those which are murmured between the pauses of the work, at the weekly meetings of a dorcas society. however, all the historians agree in asserting that he was a man of infinite jest, and the humour of these anecdotes may well have evaporated in the course of six hundred years. the following, which i give as it occurs in vasari, derives a certain interest from the quaint simplicity with which the biographer tells it, and the naïve way in which justice is depicted as of course being on the side of the best speaker, is not without a certain amount of significance, even in our enlightened nineteenth century. "giotto, as we have said before, was of an exceedingly jocund humour, and abounded in witty and humorous remarks, which are still well remembered in florence. examples of these may be found not only in the writings of messer giovanni boccaccio, but also in the three hundred stories of franco sacchetti, who cites many amusing instances of his talent in this way. and here i will not refuse the labour of transcribing some of these stories, giving them in franco's own words, that my readers may be made acquainted with the peculiar phraseology and modes of speech used in those times, together with the story itself. he says there in one of these, to set it forth with its proper title:-- "'_to giotto, the great painter, is given a buckler to paint by a man of small account. he, making a jest of the matter, paints in such sort that the owner is put out of countenance._' "every one has long since heard of giotto, and knows how greatly he stood above all other painters. hearing the fame of the master, a rude artisan, who desired to have a buckler painted, perhaps because he was going to do watch and ward in some castle, marched at once to the workshop of giotto, with one bearing the shield behind him. having got there he speedily found giotto, to whom he said, 'god save thee, master! i would fain have thee paint me my arms on this shield.' "giotto, having observed the man and considered his manner, replied nothing more than--'when wilt thou have it finished?' which the other having told him, he answered, 'leave the matter to me;' and the fellow departed. then giotto, being left alone, began to think within himself, 'what may this mean? hath some one sent this man to make a jest of me? however it be, no man before ever brought me a buckler to paint; yet here is this simple fellow who brings me his shield, and bids me paint his arms upon it as though he were of the royal family of france. of a verity, i must make him arms of a new fashion.' thinking thus within himself, he takes the said buckler, and having designed what he thought proper, called one of his scholars and bade him complete the painting. this was a tin scullcap, a gorget, a pair of iron gauntlets, with a cuirass, cuishes, and gandadoes, a sword, a dagger, and a spear. our great personage, of whom nobody knew anything, having returned for his shield, marches forward and inquires, 'master, is the shield painted?' 'to be sure it is,' replied giotto; 'bring it down here.' the shield being brought, our wise gentleman that would be, began to open his eyes and look at it, calling out to giotto, 'what trumpery is this that thou hast painted me here?' 'will it seem to thee a trumpery matter to pay for it?' answered giotto. 'i will not pay five farthings for it all,' returned the clown. 'and what didst thou require me to paint?' asked giotto. 'my arms.' 'and are they not here,' rejoined the painter; 'is there one wanting?' 'good, good,' quoth the man. 'nay, verily, but it is rather bad, bad,' responded giotto. 'lord, help thee, for thou must needs be a special simpleton; why, if a man were to ask thee, "who art thou?" it would be a hard matter for thee to tell him; yet here thou comest and criest, "paint me my arms!" if thou wert of the house of the bardi, that were enough; but thou! what arms dost thou bear? who art thou? who were thy forefathers? art thou not ashamed of thyself? begin at least to come into the world before thou talkest of arms, as though thou wert dusnam of bavaria at the very least. i have made thee a whole suit of armour on thy shield, if there be any other piece, tell me, and i'll put that too.' 'thou hast given me rough words, and hast spoiled my shield,' declared the other; and going forth, betook himself to the justice, before whom he caused giotto to be called. the latter forthwith appeared, but on his side summoned the complainant for two florins, the price of the painting, and which he demands to be paid. "the pleadings being heard on both sides, and giotto's story being much better told than that of our clown, the judge decided that the latter should take away his buckler, and should pay six livres to giotto, whom they declared to have the right. thus the good man had to pay and take to his shield; whereupon he was bidden to depart, and not knowing his place had it taught to him on this wise." in , giotto appears to have finished his work at the scrovegni chapel, and removed to florence, where he ultimately settled down. of this period of his life little, if anything, is known. he went to assisi some time after this, when i have found it impossible to discover.[ ] he painted during these latter years at florence, in four chapels of the santa croce, at ravenna (and at ferrara and verona, according to vasari); probably also he made excursions from florence into many of the neighbouring towns, but no certain traces of his work exist. in he was commissioned to paint the portrait of charles of calabria, the son of robert of naples, and in was sent for by the latter to adorn some of the neapolitan churches. on his way back to florence, he painted at gaeta and rimini some frescoes which have quite perished. these were his last works in painting, with the exception of some produced during a brief visit to milan in , for which he obtained the permission of the government to absent himself from the superintendence of the cathedral and campanile. the year previous he had been made master of the works of the cathedral, and chief builder to the city of florence; and while he was still engaged upon his bell tower and the cathedral façade, before his eyes had lost their lustre, or his hand its cunning, he died suddenly in . such is the life of our old master as far as we can gather it from the scanty materials before us: to what does it amount? that a boy showed signs of genius; that a man fulfilled his early promise; that a great painter was for once a prophet in his own country and in his own time; and that all history can tell us of him, is that he made bad jokes, and had six ugly children. such, i say, is the history of giotto as i have gathered it from the chronicles of vasari, baldinucci, and lanzi, kugler, rumohr, crowe, and jameson; but there is another history of the man, of greater worth and fuller meaning than can be found in these musty records; there is that which the painter has written with his own hand, in colours which yet retain much of their pristine brightness. the best record of the artist is neither his questionable witticisms, nor these rough outlines of his life, but that which shines forth clearly still on the walls of santa croce and the arches of assisi. what that record means to us, i will try to explain. footnotes: [ ] "the date is disputed. crowe now gives , but i have, throughout, followed vasari and other writers who give . all the chronology of giotto, except the date of his death, is highly uncertain."--h. q. [ ] "at pietro mala. the flames rise two or three feet above the stony ground out of which they spring, white and fierce enough to be visible in the intense rays even of the morning sun."--j. r. [ ] this fresco is, i think, the work of one of giotto's pupils, but probably executed from the master's design, or under his superintendence, or in any case is an imitation of giotto's method of introducing animal life into his compositions. [ ] after working at assisi and pisa, according to vasari, who is followed by kugler. it is quite clear that kugler is wrong in supposing that when giotto visited rome in , he had previously executed the frescoes on the ceiling of the lower church at assisi, for those works are evidently later than those of the upper church, and even in point of time it is impossible that both series could have been painted prior to , when the painter was but twenty-two. [ ] vasari says benedict xi., but rumohr shows it was boniface who invited giotto to rome. schorn, in note to vasari. [ ] _giotto and his works in padua._ published for the arundel society. [ ] portions of what is called the stefaneschi altar piece; i am informed very fine in quality, but cannot speak from experience. [ ] it was subsequently defrayed by the tuscan government. [ ] crowe considers them to be undoubtedly his. [ ] that the large fresco of _paradise_, in which the portraits of dante and corso donati occur is by giotto, is, i think, quite certain. [ ] the house where dante lived is still shown to strangers. [ ] i may here say once for all that owing to my ignorance of the italian language, and the small amount of time at my disposal, it has been out of my power to undertake that research amongst the mss. stored in the public libraries of italy by which alone could the accurate chronology of giotto's life be determined. chapter vi. the chief function of painting. "all honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children--in our gardens and in our houses. but let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. paint us an angel if you can, with a floating violet robe and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to receive the divine glory; but do not impose upon us any æsthetic rules which shall banish from the region of art, those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot house, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world."--george eliot. before i speak in detail of giotto's pictures, it will be well to consider very shortly what are the chief characteristics of good painting, and in what proportion the beauty of form, of colour, sentiment and thought, should be combined, in order to give us work of the highest order. and such a preliminary inquiry is the more needful, since the whole history of art is the history of the development of one or more of these characteristics, rather than the development of their just combination. if we look back at the greatest schools of the fifteenth century, we find that each of them had one main object in their art, which they pursued to the detriment of the others. however much, for instance, we may admire the feeling of raphael, we perceive the lack of the qualities which we find in titian--however much we delight in titian or tintoretto, we feel that there is something lacking which we had in raphael. and so on with every school, till at last we discover that the deficiency is not one in the individual painter, but is rather owing to the end which he and those of his school proposed to themselves; and whether it be the florentine striving after expression of emotion, or the venetian after expression of the truths of shade and colour, each is alike defective. in later times this becomes still more evident in the works of the dutch painters, and it may be seen at its utmost height in the works of the majority of modern artists, whose aim is commonly restricted not only to one phase of feeling, but to one special manifestation of such phase; not to the seeking of colour, say, as the main object, but to the seeking of one particular colour. if then every art school which the world has hitherto known, has been in some way partial in its choice of subject and the aims it has proposed to itself, let us think which partiality is the least blameable, and, in fact, what is the best thing that a painter can give us. is it perfection of form, or of colour, intensity of feeling, or depth of meaning? if we can't have all, what should we choose first and cling to most securely? now, at the present day, there is amongst those who care for art, a rapidly-increasing class who give a most decided answer to this question; one, which if we can at all accept its reasoning, will settle the matter for ever. "art," they say, "has but one real province, that of the simply sensuous; in whatever degree you admit other elements you so far weaken the art." to use the expression of a member of this school, what is wanted is "a solid sensuousness." now whatever else is true, this is false--"falser than all fancy painted;" and, should it once come to be believed, will reduce art to a worse slavery than the one from which giotto rescued it. it would really be hard to conceive that such a notion was really abroad did we not read it in book, essay, and article, and see the consequences of its prevalence in the works of our painters. just think: here we have an influence notoriously one of the most powerful in the world, one that appeals equally to both sexes, to all classes, ages, and nations of men; and we are asked, or rather told, with the true _sic volo, sic jubeo_ accent, that we must use it for but one thing, and that is the encouragement of sensuous pleasure. it is so utterly contrary to truth, and productive of such evil results, that i really lack the patience to speak of it and its exponents with common courtesy. but leaving on one side the injurious effects of such a doctrine, it is worth while to observe that it is really destructive of art itself. the one vital principle of all art is its freedom; its concern with every fact of nature or humanity, whether it be the form of a cabbage or the sufferings of a christ. take your solid sensuous feeling and welcome, but don't forget that that's but one, and a comparatively unimportant, fragment of men's nature; and give us also their power of endurance, their moments of rapture, their deeds of heroism, their every-day sufferings, and their rarer joys. i put that quotation from george eliot at the top of the chapter, because it expresses far more clearly and beautifully than any words that lie in my power, this essential fact, that art is concerned with no one phase of human feeling or external nature, but finds adequate material in whatever is connected with men's lives. well, then, leaving on one side this pestilential heresy of art for art's sake, this talk about gracious curves, and sensuous images, secrets, twilights, silences, and all the rest of the jargon; we find on thinking over the subject carefully, that there is one truth, which art from its very nature is more fitted to express than any other, and indeed that it is a truth which can and should enter into every work of art, and that is the truth of beauty. the more we see of the world and its varying actions and interests, the more certainly do we discover one fact, that there is a kernel of beauty beneath almost the roughest husks and rinds of human nature, and that in the natural world there is also a beauty far superior to that which lies on the surface, a subtle essence of loveliness only to be perceived by earnest students, after long and patient study. all the subtler and rarer manifestations of this beauty, are necessarily disregarded by the mass of men engaged in the hard struggle of life, and it is these which form the great province of the artist. his work is to say to us in his picture "look at this subject! it is beautiful, not only as you would have thought, for its arrangement of line and colour and the interest of its composition, but because i have penetrated into the depth of the meaning involved; i have seen something which you would not have seen, but yet something which was there, and if you think, you will see that it must have been so." every picture worthy of the name of great, is thus a record of penetrative insight as well as mere skill of painting; and the greater it is, the nearer it approaches in the complexity of its meaning to the personality of a human being, and receives a different interpretation from every one who sees it. again, of landscape painting, why is it that a picture of any natural scene will move hundreds of people who would have derived little or no enjoyment from the scene itself? why, for instance, could fred walker paint a street at cookham or a country lane in a shower, so as to give an amount of pleasure quite incommensurate with the importance or loveliness of his subject? it is because he saw in it a beauty which cannot be seen, except through him; for it is a beauty made up of the scene itself and his actual feelings about it. could you photograph instantaneously lane and figures, and rain clouds, in the very colours of nature, you would not gain a picture which would affect you in as powerful a way. who ever derived real pleasure from a photograph of a landscape? nature is beautiful always, but representations of nature made by machinery have little beauty, and no interest. i cannot dwell upon this theme--it would lead me too far from my subject--suffice it to say, that in landscape, no less than in figure painting, it is the spiritual insight of the painter which gives the highest value to his work.[ ] to sum up shortly--truth of form, and colour, and expression, will make a fine, perhaps even an impressive picture, but hardly a great one; in order to do that the artist must be possessed of the power of seizing the essence of the scene, of penetrating beneath the first commonplace view of the subject, and finding every element of true meaning and beauty which lies in his subject. if he once does this, he is a true artist, and his errors of detail will become fewer and fewer with time; if he fails in this first requisite, if he has no story to tell except one that every one of his spectators could tell equally well, then, no matter what may be his technical perfection, he will never be a great artist to the end of time. to close this somewhat long, but, i think, necessary digression, just remember what art was when giotto's work began. it was in a condition of double bondage, first to the service of the catholic church, and second to itself, in the perpetuation of traditional methods of work. always representing the same thing in the same way, its records had become little more than variations in the arrangement of coloured draperies. every detail of the composition was executed upon a given plan; the very position of the virgin's head and the saviour's hands were absolutely conventional. the study of animals was almost unknown; that of landscape nature absolutely so; all attempt at expression of any feeling but resignation, devotion, or divine peacefulness was perfectly discontinued; laughter, curiosity, or scorn, might have had no existence, for any trace of them which can be found in the pictures of the time. a picture was then nothing but a composition of traditionally graceful lines and pleasant colours, set against a gold background, and offered generally to the service of the church, in much the same spirit as the coloured german prints of the madonna are hung up at the little road-side shrines in italy to this day. in fact, art was very much in the way to which some good people of the present day would reduce it, and represented nothing save in a partial and symbolical manner. it was wholly unconnected with all the varying incidents and emotions of real life, and existed only to give form to certain traditions, and fulfil certain prescriptive offices. its aim was not to become of real use to man, to enter into his joys and griefs, to console, and to enlighten him, but only to serve as a faithful servant to the church. painting had gazed so long at things heavenly, as to have almost forgotten there was an earth at all, and so to the very ordinary-minded people who fortunately compose nine-tenths of the world's population, its influence was too remote to have much significance. it might represent saints, martyrs, and angels faithfully, but what was wanted were true representations of men and women. bearing this well in mind, let us examine giotto's works, and see what change, if any, he effected in the popular practice, and what is the peculiar merit of his works at this day, when we are six hundred years further on the march of progress. footnote: [ ] those who are interested in this subject will find an article discussing it in the _spectator_ of november th, , entitled "the human element in landscape painting." chapter vii. the early work of giotto at florence and rome. but little remains to us of the work of giotto's student days, and those years immediately following; but sufficient is known to show that his first works were, as we should naturally expect, executed in florence itself. the following description of some of these frescoes is taken from vasari. "the first pictures of giotto were painted for the chapel of the high altar in the abbey of florence, where he executed many works considered extremely fine. among these an _annunciation_ is particularly admired; the expression of fear and astonishment in the countenance of the virgin, when receiving the salutation of gabriel, is vividly depicted;[ ] she appears to suffer the extremity of terror, and seems almost ready to take flight. the altarpiece of that chapel is also by giotto; but this has been, and continues to be, preserved,[ ] rather from the respect felt for the work of so distinguished a man, than from any other motive." the large _madonna enthroned_, of which we speak at length a little further on, was also executed at this period. this was painted for the altar of the church of the ognissanti, and is probably the first quite certain work which now remains of this master. there is a madonna in the brera gallery at milan which, if giotto's work, probably belongs to an early period, but is (according to professor dobbert) of a less formal character; but i have not seen this work, and cannot speak as to its authenticity or character. giotto also painted at this time in the church of the carmine,[ ] which was burnt in , but a few of these frescoes were rescued and engraved by thomas patch;[ ] according to waagen, two of these fragments are in liverpool, one in the collection of mr. rogers, and others in the campo santo of pisa. the picture in the national gallery attributed to giotto is a fragment of one of these frescoes, and represents the heads of two of the apostles. whether these two heads are by giotto's own hand is almost impossible to say, but they are in any case works of his school, and of an early period. judging by the type of face, i should think it less probable of the two uncertainties that they were executed by giotto; but the matter is of little importance, as the qualities they possess chiefly are not those we find in giotto's work. the two heads are genuine early fresco at all events. there are several other works in the refectory, pisa, attributed to giotto by vasari, amongst which are a _tree of the cross_, a last supper, and scenes from the life of st. louis, a figure of the virgin, and a st. john and the magdalene at the foot of the cross; the last three of which are now concealed by whitewash, and the authorship of any of the pictures in the refectory is considered doubtful by rumohr. of the two series of panels illustrating the lives of christ and st. francis, i have spoken at length below; it is sufficient here to say that vasari assigns them to giotto. vasari makes giotto execute various paintings, amongst them the whole assisi series, and the frescoes (since discovered not to be by this master) in the campo santo of pisa, between these early works and his visit to rome. this, however, is impossible, from the date of that visit being fixed by strong evidence between the years and , which leaves the young painter the barest time possible to execute his numerous early works in florence after his six years' apprenticeship to cimabue. in , however, occurred the incident of the o related elsewhere, and in that or the following year giotto visited rome at the invitation of pope boniface viii.[ ] according to vasari, he here executed a large picture in the sacristy of st. peter's, "with five others in the church itself--these last being passages from the life of christ; all of which he executed with so much care, that no better work in distemper ever proceeded from his hands.... the pope having seen these works of giotto, whose manner pleased him infinitely, commanded that he should paint subjects from the old and new testaments entirely around the walls of st. peter's; and for a commencement the artist executed in fresco the angel seven toreccecia high, which is now over the organ: this was followed by many other pictures, of which some have been restored in our own days, while more have been either destroyed in laying the foundations of the new walls, or have been taken from the old edifice of st. peter's and set under the organ, as is the case with a madonna that was cut out of the wall that it might not totally be destroyed, and being supported with beams and bars of iron was thus carried away and secured for its beauty in the place wherein the pious love which the florentine doctor, messer nicolo acciainoli, has ever borne to the excellent in art, desired to see it enshrined, and where he has richly adorned the work of giotto with a framework composed of modern pictures and of ornaments in stucco. the picture in mosaic known as the _navicella_, and which stands above the three doors of the portico in the vestibule of st. peter's, is also from the hand of giotto--a truly wonderful work, and deservedly eulogised by all enlightened judges; and this not only for the merit of the design, but also for that of the grouping of the apostles, who labour in various attitudes to guide their boat through the tempestuous sea, while the winds blow in a sail which is swelling with so vivid a reality that the spectator could almost believe himself to be looking at a real sail. yet it must have been excessively difficult to produce the harmony and interchange of light and shadow which we admire in this work, with mere pieces of glass, and that in a sail of such magnitude--a thing which even with the pencil could only be equalled by great effort. there is a fisherman also standing on a rock and fishing with a line, in whose attitude the extraordinary patience proper to that occupation is most obvious, while the hope of prey and his desire for it are equally manifest in his countenance." the above must be taken for what it is worth, as all the works named in the quotation have perished, with the exception of the _navicella_ and one other.[ ] i have preferred to quote vasari's description of the _navicella_ to any more elaborate one, for its simplicity, and a certain strain of honest enthusiasm rare in contemporary criticism. the remark about the extraordinary patience of the fisherman, and his mingled hope and desire for prey, is delightful in its unconscious satire. this mosaic still remains, but so defaced by restoration as to have little traces of the original which roused vasari's enthusiasm. the production of these various works in rome occupied giotto six years, at the end of which he returned to florence in the year , and was employed to paint frescoes in the hall of the podesta, or as it is now more commonly called the bargello. i found it impossible, as i have said above, on examining these frescoes carefully, to believe that the greater portion of them were executed by giotto;[ ] and owing to damp and restoration the majority have suffered so severely, as to render it a question of little but antiquarian interest whose work they originally were. the large fresco of the _paradise_ at the end of the chapel, in which are the famous portraits of dante and corso donati, has been greatly restored, especially the dante head, which has been wholly re-painted. the portrait, nevertheless, is one of great interest, and the spirit of the composition has been preserved by the restorer, though the painting itself is hard and heavy compared with the untouched work of our master. it was shortly after the execution of this work, that giotto prepared the designs for the façade of the duomo, which were executed by andrea pisano; and in the succeeding year giotto married, and shortly afterwards removed to padua. the large _madonna enthroned_, by giotto, bears the greatest resemblance to the manner of cimabue of any of this master's work. before the throne, which is raised on two high steps, and surrounded with a canopy and pillars crowned by gothic arches, kneel two angels in white, each bearing a vase of flowers in her hand; on either side of the throne appear six saints and angels. the madonna is heavily painted, and clothed in a white under-robe, with a long blue-green mantle covering the lower portion of the figure. the virgin gazes straight out of the picture with something of the peculiar lack-lustre gaze so invariably found in the pictures of the byzantine masters, and which was seldom absent from the faces of cimabue himself. the two front angels on the east side of the throne are in green, and offer to the virgin a model of the church (in which the picture was to serve as an altarpiece) and a crown. the infant christ has his hand raised as if to address the spectator; in his face there is little of the infantine playfulness or expression which is to be found in giotto's later work, as, for instance, in the fresco of the _presentation in the temple_ in the arena chapel, where the infant christ is struggling to escape from the high priest to the virgin, who stretches her arms towards him. indeed, throughout this picture, there is hardly to be found a trace of the characteristic merits of giotto's later work, and it must have been executed in the early days of his apprenticeship to cimabue, whose method of arrangement has been almost slavishly copied. the type of face, however, both of the virgin and the christ, are of a broader, heavier type than in the byzantine model, the chin fuller and less retreating, the eye less elliptical, and the expression, though somewhat blank, has not that drooping, half-dreamy look of the older schools. if we turn from this madonna, to the gigantic one by cimabue which hangs on the opposite side of the entrance in the accademia, we can see clearly the advance made by giotto even in this early work. besides the differences above mentioned, there is a fresher, more life-like air about the whole picture; the figures are arranged less for graceful lines, and more in accordance with nature; the drapery is not so severely conventional in the arrangement of its folds, there is a nearer approach to the sweeping curves of nature than to the formal vertical lines which had grown common from the imitation of byzantine mosaics. when, however, all these differences are noted and allowed their full value, we can only conclude that this work of giotto's is one of his earliest and least spontaneous productions, and that the colour in it must have suffered great deterioration. like nearly all the pictures painted upon panel of this period, the colour has probably darkened and lost much of its original beauty, and this will perhaps account for the work having little of that purity of tint that is so noticeable in giotto's frescoes. of the ten small scenes from the life of st. francis, which are generally attributed to giotto, the same remarks apply as to the series of scenes from the new testament spoken of below, and the assertion must be reiterated that there is no reason to attribute either of these series to the hand of giotto, the colouring especially being contrary to the general work of that master. there is a crude vermilion tint employed in almost every one of these panels that may be sought for in vain in any of the frescoes at padua, assisi, or in the santa croce at florence. with regard to the twenty-two small designs on panel which are in the accademia under the title of being portions of the great altarpiece at santa maria novella, it scarcely admits of doubt that they are bad imitations of the master rather than specimens of even his earliest work. if we take the slightest of the drawings in the arena chapel and compare them with one of these panels, we shall find a total dissimilarity, both in colour and design. these works do not err on the side of incompleteness of design or a tentative method of execution. they rather belong to a school which carries its execution farther than its thought, and is in fact a complacent imitation of the work of giotto. i see in these no traces of giotto's work, though many traces of his manner, and feel sure that if these designs belong in any way to giotto, they must have been utterly spoilt in the re-painting. they do not, however, seem to me to have been his designs, as even in the sadly-spoilt frescoes in the bargello, can the traces of the master's handiwork be clearly seen, despite damp, whitewash, and restoration, and it is excessively improbable that these smaller panels should have needed or received equal alteration. they are in all probability the work of taddeo gaddi, or one of his pupils; but this is hardly the place to enter upon the discussion of their authorship, further than to explain it not to belong to the hand of giotto. in the chapel of the castellani, in the santa croce, is the crucifix generally ascribed to giotto by lord lindsay and other writers, but it is difficult to discover any ground, save such as is derived from popular tradition, for such an assumption. the lines of the figure are stiff and formal, the colour lifeless and heavy, and the whole work seems to belong to the sienese school in the character of the design. it should be noted that this work is set far back behind a double row of huge pewter candlesticks, and great branches of artificial flowers, and is placed immediately beneath the only window that lights the chapel, so that it is impossible to speak with certainty of the merits of the colouring. a curious instance of the difficulty of deciding a work to be by giotto on account of the merit or originality of the design is to be seen in this very chapel, where there are seven frescoes on the right of the crucifix, by agnolo gaddi, which are full of so-called giottesque traits. very evidently giotto's influence was in the air, and the very winds of heaven seem to have carried the matter. in the baroncelli chapel we have an opportunity of comparing undoubted works by taddeo gaddi with those frescoes in the upper church at assisi, which i have refused to consider as giotto's; but if these florentine ones be by the same hand it has undoubtedly advanced in skill; the architecture, especially, is of a considerably more elaborate character, and is more akin to that of the lower church at assisi. it must be noticed too that there is in these gaddi frescoes, more observation of nature than in those of the upper church; in one composition alone are there no less than four different species of trees introduced into the background; orange, palm, a species of laurel, and a round-topped tree, which might be anything from a sycamore to a cedar. various characteristics of giotto's works are to be traced in these frescoes; the colouring is evidently an unsuccessful imitation, and gesture and action are used somewhat overmuch, without helping to tell the story, as we can fancy would be done by one trying to follow giotto's method. footnotes: [ ] how a certain reviewer would have scoffed at giotto for representing the virgin in this manner! [ ] it has been removed since, and its whereabouts is not now known. [ ] there is a dispute about the period when these frescoes were executed, but the weight of evidence is in favour of their having been done at the earliest period of giotto's artistic career. [ ] mr. thomas patch does not seem to have appreciated the master much, for he can see little difference between his work and that of the other painters of the same period, _e.g._ the sienese and pisan schools. [ ] according to baldinucci, vasari says benedict ix., and crowe and cavalcaselle, benedict xi ( ). _vide supra_, p. . [ ] portrait of boniface viii. preserved under glass in the church. ed. flor. [ ] i may perhaps mention that mr. fairfax murray, who accompanied me to the bargello, and gave me his valuable opinion as to the authorship of the frescoes, also felt certain of giotto only having painted one or two of the number. chapter viii. giotto at padua. "these temples grew as grows the grass: art might obey, but not surpass; the passive master lent his hand to the vast soul that o'er him planned, and the same power that built the shrine o'erspread the tribes that knelt therein."--_emerson._ fancy a wet, cloudy, spring day in an old italian town; the only objects visible in the little grass-grown square where the hotel stands, being two or three mournful carriages, with the sorriest steeds harnessed to them, that even italian feeding can produce, and surrounding these, houses of mildewed stone, faced occasionally with brown plaster, large flakes of which are peeling off in every direction. the drivers have long since given up all hope of even a stray tourist, and ensconced themselves in the low wine-shop that you may see at the corner of the square, whence the sound of their voices and the smoke of their cigars, break forth occasionally into the heavy atmosphere. every now and then a slippered figure, with white stockings down at heel, and black stuff petticoat wrapped carefully over its head, hurries by on some domestic errand, or a stray dog limps dejectedly in and out of the carriage wheels, in search of stray scraps of sausage or cheese, which might indeed well be there, since the drivers eat both, pretty well all day long. to close the picture, an englishman in a tweed suit, staring contemplatively at the prospect from the doorway of the principal hotel, and wondering whether it was really worth while to travel half across europe, in order to reach such a resting-place: wondering also whom he shall get to direct him to the arena chapel, for this is padua, once most learned of universities, and now dullest of cities, and it is here that giotto painted the scrovegni chapel from floor to ceiling. after more or less contradictory directions and several fruitless attempts, i discovered the entrance to the enclosure wherein the chapel stands, and being by this time wet, tired, dirty, and considerably out of temper, immediately resolved to leave it to the next day to see the pictures, and returned to my hotel depressed in spirit, but trying to look forward to the morrow. all was unchanged in the square, save that the dog had departed, and the vetturini grown a trifle more noisy; so after a solitary dinner, wherein the landlord figured as sole attendant, and macaroni formed the principal dish, i turned into my room, and consoled myself with concocting an imaginary leader to the _times_ on the fallacy of believing that italian weather was better than english, and so to bed. never was change more complete than that i woke to the next morning. a blazing sun, such as we see in july only, shone in the midst of a blue sky, and streamed brightly in upon the paved bedchamber, and a fresh little breeze rattled cheerfully to and fro the big window-shutters, and hinted at its being time to get up. a glance into the square revealed my vetturino friends cheerfully cracking their whips at imaginary flies, and, seated by the side of the fountain, a brown-skinned maiden in the whitest of linen and heaviest of earrings, was amicably partaking of a chunk of sausage, with the youngest of the party. the very dog had turned up again, and looked at least twice the size that he did yesterday, and was sitting at a respectful distance from the last-named couple, watching for scraps with cheerful confidence. now, if ever, it appeared to me was the time for a first favourable impression of a great artist, and so, hurrying through dressing and breakfast, i started for the chapel. venting the content of my soul as i went along, in the solitary italian phrase i was master of, i waved my hand to the young coachman, and said, _ché bel' tempo_. he looked down at his dark-eyed damsel; she was sitting on the step of the carriage by this time, and if ever a coachman agreed with any one, which is doubtful, that young fellow did with me; though i gathered his assent merely from his eloquent looks, for of what he said i have not the faintest conception. so, like Æneas, with hope and fortune favouring me, i drew near to the great wooden gate which marks the entrance to the arena. the large gates are immovable, but a little lattice door opens if you push it deftly at the right moment after having rung the bell, and on entering, you see a long garden, where currants and apple-trees, acacias and vines, almonds and poplars, are all mixed together in a confusion of greenery. at the end of the narrow gravel walk rises a house, not unlike an english suburban villa, much out of repair, in front of which two or three small children are tumbling about in perilous proximity to an old well, while at what should be the dining-room window, stands a girl twisting up her long, black hair, with the most perfect composure. anything more delightfully unlike the usual aspect of a show place could hardly be imagined, and at first (not being able to see the chapel at all) i thought i had mistaken my direction for the third time, but there was the servant evidently getting ready to receive me, and, as i had undoubtedly rung the bell, i walked boldly up to the house. [illustration: padua. _from a drawing by the author._] a few steps explained the matter. the chapel stands to the right of the house, at the edge of the orchard, and the servant was doing up her hair previous to bringing out the keys. the chapel outside is simply a barn-shaped building, with a gable roof, absolutely undecorated in any way whatever, unless a round-arched door, with the remains of a very small fresco above it, can be called decorative. the entrance is at the west end of the building, which is lighted from the south side only, by six long narrow windows. the gable roof hardly projects at all beyond the walls. the whole appearance of the chapel being somewhat like those box-like constructions drawn by children, to represent a house. if it be a proper criticism to call a thing ugly which has only been constructed for a certain purpose, and which has fulfilled that purpose fairly well for six hundred years, the scrovegni chapel may fairly be called by that name; but personally i must confess to a feeling of gratification at finding there was absolutely no attempt at architectural embellishment in the whole building, and many will probably share this feeling. knowing that the interior was absolutely covered with frescoes, each of which was almost priceless, it seemed to me appropriate, both to the pictures, and the simplicity of style in the master who executed them, that their covering should be not sculptured marble or vaulted stone, but simply plain, honest building. after all the chapel was hardly more to the frescoes than is the canvas to the picture, and it afforded a refreshing contrast to the way in which things are done nowadays, to remember that enrico scrovegni,[ ] wishing to build a temple to the honour, and for the service of, the virgin, thought it more necessary to give her the work of genius within her shrine, than to adorn its exterior with costly materials and sculptured ornament. given that it was a choice between giotto's frescoes and elaborate architectural design (and we may suppose that a plain citizen could not afford both), then we can look at this homely building with pleasure rather than repulsion, as we do at the rough coating of some precious stone. and if we do not grumble at the plainness of the building, still less will we do so at its position in the quaint garden-close, where flickering shadows from the bright leaves of the acacias dot the gravel path, and where from behind the chapel rises the humming of the custodian's bee-hives.[ ] is not this such a surrounding as we might best desire for our painter's work? in front of his masterpieces, an orchard green and gay, with trembling leaves and flashing sunshine, and human with the soft voices of laughing children; and behind, a rich meadow, where a few cattle doze lazily through their time, and long ranges of bee-hives stand in the very shadow of the chapel; and if the eye lifts its gaze from meadow and orchard, with a sense of something wanting to the full agreement of the surroundings and the painter's mind, it meets the great dome of the neighbouring church rising against the cloudless sky, as it might in one of giotto's own frescoes, and is satisfied. so with the rustling of the leaves, and the murmur of the bees in our ears, and something of the bright sunshine in our hearts, we enter the chapel where the custodian waits patiently enough, having had experience of many tourists and their foolish ways. a long vaulted chamber plainly divided by a high arch into nave and chancel, lighted by six high narrow windows, all on the right hand wall, the entire interior surface covered with frescoes, three tiers of which run from the ceiling to within about eight feet of the ground; at intervals, below this lowest tier, there are other frescoes of smaller size in monochrome, symbolical of the various christian virtues and vices, surrounded by craftily painted borders, imitating mosaic of coloured marbles. wherever the eye turns it meets a bewilderment of colour pure and radiant, and yet restful to the eye; tints which resemble in their perfect harmony of brightness the iridescence of a shell, and seem to be possessed of something of the same strange quality of imprisoned light. from the blue ceiling, with its medallions and golden stars, to the lowest range of mosaic, there is literally not a spot where the eye cannot rest with pleasure; and the whole interior, owing perhaps to its perfect simplicity of form, and the absence of all other decoration than the frescoes, presents less the aspect of a building ornamented with paintings, than that of some gigantic opal in the midst of which the spectator stands. it is difficult to speak without seeming exaggeration of the effect produced, or to attempt to convey to those of my readers who are not familiar with the spot, the peculiar qualities of the colouring in these paintings. in england, and to the majority of englishmen, pure colour, bright colour, and _staring_ colour, are almost interchangeable terms, and depth of colour is but too frequently understood to mean depth of _shadow_. now you must quite get rid of the idea that the colouring of these frescoes is crude or violent, because i call it "pure." if there is one quality of our master's work which is more certain than another, it is the general harmony of his tints, the absence of any discordant effect from his paintings. the great difference between his system of colouring and that of later masters is, that his harmony is gained by means of the combination of broad masses of comparatively simple tints, while later artists discovered that by paying greater attention to the gradation of colour, its subtle variations of light and shade, and its enhancement by means of complementary tints, they could produce a greater truth to nature, as well as a greater amount of colour beauty, than in any other way--and one, moreover, which was applicable to all the varying conditions of nature. giotto's system was one which he would have been the first to discard, had it occurred to him to paint a picture save in full daylight, for its beauty is incompatible with any other effect. it must always be remembered in thinking of his work, that he was the successor of men who absolutely banished shadow from their pictures; for the gloomy hues of the older byzantine pictures were not representative of shadow, any more than their rich tones represented light; and giotto's master, cimabue, had revolted from the darkness of his predecessors' pictures to comparatively light tints. it was, of course, impossible for giotto to work out an entire system of chiaroscuro for himself (as a matter of fact it took another two hundred years to accomplish that advance); the marvel is that by his exquisite arrangement of tint he was able to compose pictures which are to this day comparable in colour beauty to those of the great masters of succeeding ages, though they are not comparable in subtlety of colour, nor is there ever such beauty of a special colour gained as in the work of the later artists.[ ] [illustration: paradise. _fresco by giotto._ in the cappella dell' arena, padua. (_greatly restored._)] the series of paintings comprises illustrations of the apocryphal history of joachim and anna, the virgin's parents, the life of the virgin up to the period of the annunciation, and finally, a set of illustrations of the life and passion of jesus christ, culminating in a fresco above the choir showing him enthroned in glory. thus the series forms one connected history, supplementing which there is on the great wall above the door a representation of the last judgment. every fresco is surrounded by a frame, painted in imitation of coloured mosaic, and at intervals, beneath the lowest row of the scenes from the life of christ, there are representations of the virtues, each of which has its corresponding vice facing it upon the opposite side of the chapel. in the arrangement it should be noticed that each virtue has its head turned to the portion of the last judgment fresco representing heaven, or to the fresco of christ in glory; each vice looks towards the portion representing hell. these symbolical figures are in greyish green, with occasionally a background of dull red; the historical works are in various colours. this arrangement is probably due in some measure to the rules of byzantine art, but here the resemblance ends; nothing can be more original, owing less to tradition, than the composition of the various pictures in this series. they are not so much an improvement upon byzantine art, as a wholly new departure; the difference is something like that between the gallop of a horse, and the fierce rush of a locomotive, not only a greater pace, but a changed mode of progression. it is difficult to see how the one could have ever developed into the other, and there is no clue left, save such as may be found in that lonely shepherd life led by the young artist, amidst the olive groves and grey hills of vespignano. i subjoin a table of the subjects of these series in the order in which they here occur; but i do not propose to weary my readers with a description of the composition of each picture; it will be sufficient if i indicate the main features of a few of the most important.[ ] the order of the drawings in the arena chapel is as follows:-- . joachim's offering rejected by the high priest. . joachim retires to the sheepfold. . the angel appears to anna. . the sacrifice of joachim. . the angel appears to joachim. . the meeting of joachim and anna. . the birth of the virgin mary. . the presentation of the virgin. . the rods are brought to the high priest. . the watching of the rods at the altar. . the espousal of the virgin mary. . the virgin mary returns to her home. . the annunciation--the angel gabriel. . the annunciation--the virgin mary. . the marriage of the virgin. . the salutation. . the nativity. . the wise men's offering. . the presentation in the temple. . the flight into egypt. . the massacre of the innocents. . the young christ in the temple. . the baptism of christ. . the marriage in cana. . the raising of lazarus. . the entry into jerusalem. . the expulsion from the temple. . the hiring of judas. . the last supper. . the washing of the feet. . the kiss of judas. . christ before caiaphas. . the scourging of christ. . christ bearing his cross. . the crucifixion. . the entombment. . the resurrection. . the ascension. . the descent of the holy spirit. the first of this series which deserves especial attention is that numbered two in the above table, the representation of joachim's retirement to the sheepfold, after his offering has been rejected by the high priest. this is especially remarkable as being the first of his series of the arena frescoes in which giotto's early training shows itself. nothing can be more marked than the evident delight of the painter in depicting any form of this shepherd life. throughout his works every opportunity of introducing animal nature, especially sheep nature, is eagerly seized and made the most of, and, as in this fresco, the animals have invariably a character of their own, and are by no means walking gentlemen in the scene represented. look, for instance, at the varied action of the sheep in this composition, and the eager welcome that joachim's dog is giving to his master. in the third and fourth pictures, too, of the _sacrifice of joachim_, and the subsequent appearance of the angel, is the delight of the painter in animal idiosyncrasies apparent, as in the two rams butting at one another, and the air of quiet watchfulness in which the dog lies down, with a sense of responsibility strong upon him. [illustration: joachim retires to the sheepfold. by giotto. _in the cappella dell' arena, padua._] the _meeting of joachim and anna_, chiefly remarkable for the grace and beauty of the two leading figures; it is somewhat curious to notice how the position of anna's head suggests that of a famous modern picture, perhaps the most celebrated ever painted in england, the _huguenots_, by mr. j. e. millais, r.a. _a propos_ of this fresco, mr. ruskin remarks, that the artist has heightened the effect of the leading figures by wilfully coarsening the features of the subordinate characters, and that the horizontal lines of the architecture enhance by contrast the beauty of the curved draperies. i am, however, inclined to think that the first of these contrasts is accidental, as the type of face of the servants in this composition, is found throughout the minor characters in giotto's pictures; indeed, it may be noticed that, whether from his own uncomeliness, or some other more recondite reason, the painter had a curious difficulty in depicting beautiful faces, that belongs to him alone of contemporary masters. this does not apply to beauty of gesture or line, to which he was excessively sensitive. . the _presentation of the virgin_--the virgin represented not as a child, but, as lord lindsay remarks, a dwarf woman. the figure of anna in this picture is one of the least graceful in giotto's works. . the _watching of the rods at the altar_.--chiefly characteristic as showing giotto's power of seizing the expression in the simplest actions, which is most characteristic of the subject; in this fresco the eagerness of the watchers is shown with a quite unmistakeable plainness, especially in the three centre figures, though all of these have their backs more or less turned to the spectator. . the _espousal of the virgin_.--some of the figures in this composition are very fine, such, for instance, as those of joseph, the high priest, and the youth behind, who is in the act of breaking the rod over his knee. mr. ruskin remarks of this last figure that in perugino's treatment of the same subject (at cannes) there is "nothing in the action of the disappointed suitors so perfectly true and touching as that of the youth breaking his rod in this composition of giotto." . the _return of the virgin mary to her home._--the figure of the violin-player in this composition is remarkable, not only for its beauty, but for being identical with that of one of the attendants in the fresco of the _daughter of herodias dancing before herod_, in the santa croce at florence. it is a very quiet picture, full of slow movement and dignified grace, but a little wanting in the variety of action which is generally characteristic of giotto's work, and more severe in the lines of the drapery. . the _annunciation_--the angel gabriel and the virgin mary. these are two single figures which together encircle the arch above the entrance to the choir of the chapel, and are as beautiful as any of the compositions; especially fine is the attitude of the lines of drapery of the angel's figure. giotto seems not to have attempted to render the virgin's face beautiful either in expression or feature. . the _salutation_--almost the first fresco where giotto's full powers are seen. i know no two figures more finer in their way than those of the virgin and elizabeth. here the plainness of mary's face seems quite obscured by the beauty of its expression, and every line of the two figures helps to tell the story. this picture is smaller than the others, owing to its place beneath the figure of the virgin in the _annunciation_, and is nearly bare of all background. . the _nativity_.--this nativity is doubly interesting from the fact of the subject being repeated at assisi in the lower church[ ] in the series generally attributed to giotto. the one at padua is as beautiful as any of the arena frescoes, and in every way finer than the assisi rendering, which latter is almost certainly the work of one of giotto's pupils, and is as stiff and mechanical in its general arrangement as the former is easy and natural. i need not enter into the reasons which have convinced me of giotto not having personally executed the assisi nativity, as they are given at length in a subsequent chapter.[ ] the varied action of the angels, the natural gestures of the virgin and the shepherds and the quiet harmony of blue and grey colour (in which this fresco is almost entirely painted), are especially worthy of notice. very noticeable too are the attentive animals, and the natural manner in which the virgin turns half round in her bed to place the child in its attendant's arms. on the right are the shepherds listening to the angels, who fly hither and thither above the mountain background; on the left, the ox and ass stretching their heads towards the virgin's couch. . the _adoration of the magi_.--the composition of this fresco in its leading figures is very fine, and somewhat more elaborate than customary in this series. the artist has tried very hard to get some expression of interest in the camel, who is being held by an attendant on the left of the picture, and has actually succeeded to some extent, despite the noah's-ark-like appearance of the animal, caused no doubt by giotto's insufficient acquaintance with its shape. . the _presentation in the temple_.--there are two incidents in this scene, for the right interpretation of the latter of which i am indebted to mr. ruskin. the first of them is the naturalism of the child, which is evidently struggling to leave the high priest's arms and get back to its mother, who holds out her arms to receive it; the second being the approach of an angel to simeon, who is supposed by mr. ruskin to typify the angel of death, "sent in visible fulfilment of the thankful words of simeon: 'lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.'" the drapery of the virgin in this fresco, though simple, is very fine. . the _flight into egypt_.--one of the simplest of the series. the colour in several places completely gone, as, for instance, in the virgin's robe, which, originally blue, is now a yellowish white, the dark shadow of the drapery alone remaining. the patient pace of the tired ass on which the virgin is seated, if contrasted with that of the one on which christ is riding in the fresco of the _entry into jerusalem_, will show how minute was giotto's observation and appreciation of animal life. . the _murder of the innocents_.--perhaps the least pleasing of the series, though no doubt much of its lack of beauty is owing to the change of colour which this fresco has sustained, a change which, from some unknown cause, has been much more radical than in most of this series. the composition could, however, have been at no time a beautiful one, and the heap of stiff wooden dolls (for such they seem) that represents the slaughtered innocents is simply ugly. the fresco, however, is full of action, and the figure of the leading executioner, who stands drawing back his sword to pierce the child, whom he holds head downwards in his left hand, is one of the most vigorous giotto ever conceived. . the _teaching of christ in the temple_.--this fresco is so much injured by damp as to be practically destroyed. . the _baptism of christ by john_.--wholly byzantine in its arrangement, especially in the water, which is depicted as a heavy green wall, reaching half way up the fresco and covering christ's body as high as the chest. mary and joseph stand on the right bank, attendants on the left, christ in the centre of the picture, with a glory streaming down upon him. it is somewhat curious to observe that giotto has made a compromise in the garments of the apostle john, and while clothing him in a pink robe, for the sake of the fresco's colour, has allowed a little bit of the camel's-hair garment to be seen beneath the long drapery. . the _wedding in cana_.--a touch of nature in the fat butler in the foreground, who is swigging away at the wine before taking it to the table; otherwise this fresco is one of the most commonplace of the series. it is worthy of notice that in all cases where giotto has to represent a scene in which the actors are seated, the artist seems to lose much of his attractiveness; to become more commonplace. it is as if the dramatic instinct in him refused to work freely except when he could depict varied actions. . the _raising of lazarus_.--this is another fresco full of the various attitudes of surprise and energy in which giotto delighted so much. the pose of the principal figure of the disciples should be noticed, as it is very characteristic of our artist, and occurs in many of his frescoes where surprise or grief has to be indicated. the body is bent slightly forward with the arms thrown abruptly back, the hand hollowed with the palm towards the ground, the fingers held together and the thumb as much spread out as possible. the figures of the two attendants in this fresco, who are raising the heavy slab which covered the tomb of lazarus, are of very marked action; the one on the right trying to raise the slab to his shoulder, while the left-hand one, with feet planted firmly wide apart, is just bending to the strain of lifting his end of the stone from the ground, or as a rowing man would say, is just "getting his weight on." . the _entry into jerusalem_.--greatly injured by damp but still interesting. notice the figure of the woman, whose cloak has tumbled over her head in her excitement, and the haste with which the two boys in the background are climbing the palm-trees to get a good view. . the _expulsion of the money-changers_.--like the last this composition is one of varied interest, but the left-hand portion of it having been considerably damaged by damp is scarcely intelligible. the attitude of christ is energetic, and there is a fine contrast in feeling between the two money-changers on the right hand of the picture, one of whom shrinks away, while the other seems inclined to stand his ground, while the precipitation with which the goat is leaping out of the little pen is one of those little semi-burlesque touches of animal life which giotto introduces whenever he gets a chance. [illustration: the entombment of christ. _fresco by giotto._ in the cappella dell' arena, padua.] . the _hiring of judas_.--a small composition of four figures, placed on the wall beneath the arch of the choir, immediately beneath the _angel of the annunciation_. judas has already received the bag of money, and the high priest, with one finger raised, like a sort of ecclesiastical dogberry, is just giving him his last instructions. the devil, too, in the shape of a black hobgoblin, with claws and tail, is also giving the apostate advice, whispering it into his ear. the small fresco beneath this and in the corresponding place on the other side of the choir is simply painted with a representation of an arched ceiling, wall, and window, apparently intended to give the impression from a distance of there being a side transept to the choir. . the _last supper_.--in this, as in all his frescoes of seated figures, giotto is less at home than usual. it is curious to notice that the attitude of john in this fresco is the same as was adopted in all the later renderings of this scene. the moment chosen is the usual one of the saviour's speech--"he that dippeth his hand in the dish with me, the same shall betray me."[ ] . the _washing of the feet_.--very characteristic of giotto and wonderfully true to life in the positions and actions of all concerned. notice the apostle tying his sandal on the left of the picture, and the one who is about to have his feet washed, holding up his long robe lest it should get wet. . the _betrayal_.--this composition is much more thickly filled with figures than most of the series, and is one of the finest, though hardly one of the most beautiful. the figures of christ and judas are both grand in their respective ways, and stand out vividly from the crowd that surrounds them. there is no mistake about what is transpiring; one does not have to look for the action in a middle of graceful lines, but it presents itself strongly and at the first glance. the figure of the high priest who points out christ to the soldiery is also very fine, dignified and yet eager in action, and with a mixed expression of triumph and anxiety. in colour this fresco bears comparison with any in the chapel. . the _trial_.--"and pilate rent his garments," &c. chiefly interesting for the very beautiful figure of christ, who stands with hands tied and body slightly bent, half turned away from his judge, the face expressing resignation, but in an even greater degree removedness from the scene around, possessed by some over-mastering idea. . the _crown of thorns_.--here giotto is again in a somewhat burlesque humour: the delight of those who are here mocking, tickling, pinching, and smiting christ is evidently the ruling motive of the picture. it is noticeable that here there are only servants engaged in the derision and tormenting, not soldiers, according to the commoner rendering. . the _bearing of the cross_.--in this fresco the figures of both christ and mary are fine, that of christ being similar to the attitude at the trial above referred to. . the _crucifixion_.--one of the most beautiful of the series. the magdalen kneels at the foot of the cross, weeping bitterly; st. john, half fainting, is supported by two disciples on the left of the picture; on the right the soldiers squabble over the division of christ's robe; the saviour looks down upon the magdalen, and above the cross fly here and there angels. and . the _entombment_ and the _resurrection_.--these are the two most beautiful frescoes in the chapel, so beautiful that they throw all the others into comparative shade, and fortunately they are both little injured by damp. in the first, christ is being prepared for burial by the disciples and the two maries. the magdalen supports his feet upon her knees; the mother lays one arm upon his breast, whilst she raises his head towards her with the other in a last embrace. st. john bends over the body in giotto's usual attitude of grief and horror; other disciples and attendants stand round weeping and watching; in the background are mountains, and above them a choir of angels. in the _resurrection_, the soldiers sleep beside the red porphyry tomb where christ was laid, and on which, at head and foot, sit the white-winged, white-robed angels. nearly in the centre kneels the magdalen in a long robe of crimson, which shrouds her form from head to foot all but her face; to the extreme right of the picture stands christ, half turning away from the kneeling woman, one arm outstretched as though warning her "_noli me tangere_." and . the _ascension_, and the _descent of the holy spirit_.--the former of these two frescoes, which form the concluding ones of the series, is very formal in its arrangement--the christ being in the centre of the picture, with hands raised to the choir of angels, who hover on both sides. below, the disciples are also in two groups, nor is there very much to dwell upon in their expression or gestures. the whole fresco seems as if giotto had felt himself more fettered by the traditional manner of representing the scene, or less at liberty to treat it in his own peculiar fashion, than in the preceding scenes of the series. the _descent of the holy spirit_ is very similar in the arrangement of the seated figures to that of the _last supper_, and is only remarkable for its very delicate colouring. [illustration: "noli me tangere." _fresco by giotto._ in the cappella dell' arena, padua.] this picture of the _descent of the holy spirit_ completes the series of the history of the virgin and our saviour, and we have only now to mention the symbolical figures in monochrome, which are painted at intervals beneath the lowest row of frescoes, and which it is probable were an after thought of giotto's, possibly suggested to him by dante, who, as i have said, was living at padua during the time when giotto was occupied in painting the arena chapel. be that as it may, it is the fact that in no other place does giotto show much tendency towards symbolical representation; these are the only figures of the kind that we know to have been executed by his hand. in this arrangement all the virtues are painted upon the right side of the chapel, and have their faces turned to the heavenly side of the great fresco above the door; the vices are on the left, and look in like manner to the part of that fresco representing hell. the list is as follows:-- virtues. . hope. . charity. . faith. . justice. . temperance. . fortitude. . prudence. vices. . folly. . inconstancy. . anger. . injustice. . infidelity. . avarice. . despair. this list is in the order in which the frescoes are placed round the chapel, beginning on the right hand of the doorway and returning to the left of the entrance; it will be seen, therefore, that the corresponding virtue and vice face each other throughout the series. some of these allegorical figures are very beautiful; especially there should be noticed _charity_, holding a basket of fruit in one hand and stretching forth the other to the _almighty_, who bends down from heaven to place some fruit in her hand. as mr. ruskin has remarked, the figure is made to trample upon money-bags, as if in contempt. _hope_ also is a very beautiful figure flying upward with outstretched arms, and an expression of rapture and longing upon her face. after these _justice_ and _temperance_ are the finest. of the vices, _injustice_ is perhaps the most interesting, if it is only for the sake of giving a clear example of how far giotto understood the nature of trees. the foreground of this fresco being a wood, behind which sits _injustice_ in a cave, with a sword in his left hand and a grappling-hook in his right, to catch the unwary traveller, who is represented in a small predella to the picture, being robbed and stripped of his clothes. _anger_ too is a fine figure, rending her garment apart in futile wrath, and so is _despair_, with clenched fists and downcast head. on the whole, this series of virtues and vices is a remarkable one for the plainness with which the thing symbolised is shown, and the penetration which has led giotto in almost every case to the real root of the virtue or vice. for a full description of these most interesting frescoes the reader cannot do better than refer to the little book written for the arundel society by mr. ruskin, entitled _giotto and his works in padua_. * * * * * note.--"this chapel, built in, or about, the year , appears to have been intended to replace one which had long existed upon the spot; and in which from the year an annual festival had been held on ladyday, in which the annunciation was represented in the manner of our english mysteries (and under the same title: 'una sacra rappresentazione di quel _mistero_'), with dialogue and music, both vocal and instrumental. scrovegni's purchase of the ground would not be allowed to interfere with the national custom; but he is reported by some writers to have rebuilt the chapel with greater costliness, in order, as far as possible, to efface the memory of his father's unhappy life. but federici, in his history of the cavalieri godenti, supposes that scrovegni was a member of that body, and was assisted by them in decorating the new edifice. the order of cavalieri godenti was instituted in the beginning of the thirteenth century, to defend the 'existence,' as selvatica states it, but, more accurately, the 'dignity' of the virgin against the various heretics by whom it was beginning to be assailed. his knights were at first called 'cavaliers of st. mary;' but soon increased in power and riches to such a degree that from their general habits of life they received the nickname of the 'merry brothers.' "federici gives powerful reasons for his opinion that the arena chapel was employed in the ceremonies of their order; and lord lindsay observes 'that the fulness with which the history of the virgin is recounted on its walls, adds to the plausibility of his supposition.' "enrico scrovegni was, however, towards the close of his life driven into exile, and died at venice in . but he was buried in the chapel he had built, and has one small monument in the sacristy as the founder of the building, in which he is represented under a gothic niche, standing with his hands clasped and his eyes raised, while behind the altar is his tomb, on which, as usual at this period, is a recumbent statue of him. the chapel itself may not unwarrantably be considered as one of the first efforts of popery in resistance to the reformation; for the reformation, though not victorious till the sixteenth, began in reality in the thirteenth century; and the remonstrances of such bishops as our own grossteste, the martyrdom of the albigenses in the dominican crusades, and the murmurs of those 'heretics,' against whose aspersions of the majesty of the virgin this chivalrous order of the cavalieri godenti was instituted, were as truly the signs of the new era in religion, as the opponent work of giotto on the walls of the arena was a sign of the approach of a new era in art."--from _the arena chapel at padua_, by john ruskin. [illustration: justicia. _fresco by giotto._ in the cappella dell' arena, padua.] footnotes: [ ] see note at the end of this chapter for ruskin's account of the chapel's use and its founder. [ ] i beg the custodian's pardon, for on going to the chapel again this year, i find that it is the royal society of api-culture who are responsible for the dozen or so of hives. [ ] it would take me at least a page to justify and define this assertion. i must trust my readers to understand that it is written in no depreciation of later artists, and that it only refers to colour as seen in light, scarcely modified at all by shade. [ ] throughout this book i have purposely avoided, wherever it was possible, long descriptions of the subject matter of the pictures mentioned. the almost inevitable tendency of such description, unless it is done with the greatest reticence as well as skill, is to withdraw the reader's attention from the artist, either to the author or the subject spoken of, and as my main endeavour in writing this book has been to bring the peculiarities of the artist into constant prominence, it would have defeated my purpose to enter into descriptive writing. [ ] see lower church of assisi, chapter x. [ ] see chapter on the lower church of assisi, p. . [ ] almost the only artist who ever thoroughly vanquished the difficulty of representing the last supper, without stiffness of arrangement, was tintoretto in his great picture in the scuola san rocco. the celebrated leonardo fresco at milan of this subject suffers in a measure from the same difficulty as giotto's work, though in a less degree. chapter ix. giotto's style. "there is in truth a holy purity, an innocent _naïveté_, a child-like grace and simplicity, a freshness, a fearlessness, a yearning after all things truthful, lovely, and of good report, in the productions of this early time which invest them with a charm peculiar in its kind, and which few even of the most perfect works of the maturer era can boast of; and hence the risk and danger (which i warn you of at the outset) of becoming too passionately attached to them, of losing the power of discrimination, of admiring and imitating their defects as well as their beauties, of running into affectation in seeking after simplicity, and into exaggeration in our efforts to be in earnest; in a word of forgetting that in art, as in human nature, it is the balance, harmony and co-equal development, of sense, intellect, and spirit, which constitutes perfection."--lord lindsay's _christian art_. i feel my inability to convey to my readers any adequate idea of the general style of giotto's painting, and this not so much because it is a complicated one or difficult to understand, as because of its very simplicity. a few points may be mentioned in which it differed from that of his predecessors in italy, from the pictures of the renaissance period, and lastly from those of our own time; but when all is said, the peculiar beauty of the colouring, the simplicity and purity of the feeling, the strength and directness of the painter's aim, and the unstudied grace of his compositions will remain to baffle any description that can be given. first let me note that previous to the time of giotto (since the decay at least of greek art) colour in painting meant almost exclusively the arrangement of gorgeous hues on a golden background. the tints used being little, if at all, gradated, but laid on more in the manner of a mosaic than a modern picture. derived, as were the traditions of painting, from manuscripts of mount athos and mosaics of byzantium, they were almost wholly confined to the composition of pure colours in pleasing juxtaposition, and these colours were almost invariably full and deep. it may, perhaps, make my meaning clearer if i take an antithetical example from the art of the present day. everybody knows the characteristics of french landscape painting, a beautiful tone of grey and black, and perhaps a few other tertiary tints, and no form or colour whatever, depending entirely on the gradation for its beauty. well, before giotto there was no such thing as tone, save in pure colours; and gradation of colour was practically unknown. the colours used were dark and rich, purples and crimsons and deep blues, and here and there orange and green and heavy blue-blacks. these, laid upon a gold ground, more or less ornamented with chased designs, formed the chief portion of the pictorial art of the centuries preceding giotto. looking into one of these pictures was like looking into a decaying fire, where amidst masses of dark shade there still burnt gloomily here and there, patches of glowing cinders and bright flame. hung in the dim recess of a chapel or an oratory, lighted by the faint glimmer of the silver lamps, these works of christian art may well have harmonised with the dark ages of superstition which gave them life, but they were essentially unsuitable for having any real effect upon men's minds, apart from their religious uses. they had no connection with the real life of the world, full of varying emotions and conflicting passions; they had no affinity with the times when the hardbound earth cracked at the close of winter, and the sun shone once more in a blue sky, and all men's "pulses throbbed together with the fulness of the spring." this was the first change that giotto made in artistic method. "away with the gold background," he said; "let us have the blue sky," and, as in the days of creation, "it was so." this we may fancy was the first step, but with it came many others. with the introduction of the sky came a corresponding lightening of the tones used throughout the picture, a corresponding increase in the amount of light depicted in the composition. and, as over the whole of byzantine art, there had brooded a gorgeous gloom, through which the tints only revealed themselves dimly and slowly, as we may see at the present day, the hues of tropic sea-weed glow faint beneath the waves of the china sea, so over giotto's frescoes there shone a calm, full light, not bathed in sunshine or enhanced by contrasted shade, but a plain clear breadth of day, sufficient to reveal clearly each object in the picture. just think what a change this one alteration in tone must have brought about! what an instrument it was for the correcting of the absurd traditions which then governed the practice of painting. it must have been like that produced by a _times_ leader upon the iniquities of local boards of guardians; namely, delight and amazement to the world at large, horror and consternation to the idiots who had done ill by stealth (though strictly in accordance with rule), and blushed to find it fame. so keep this fact well in view, that the great change effected by giotto was the change from rush-light to daylight, and it was only after this that further advance became possible. do not run away with the idea that he gained thereby the whole truth; far from it. there were two centuries and a half of painters to come after him before the whole truth of light and shade was mastered, for giotto may be said to have practically ignored shade altogether. nor did he advance much further in the _gradation_ of colour than his predecessors had done; his paint is generally put on in broad flat washes, with little attempt at gradation; its beauty depends chiefly upon the exquisite manner in which these washes are combined with one another. thus he never reaches to the utmost beauty of colour, which is only obtainable with the utmost gradation of light and shade; but his work presents itself like a landscape, ere the sun rises, on a fine summer's morning, when each object lies clearly and a little coldly defined, in the shadowless air. it must be remembered that with the attempt to master the intricacies and gradation of light and shade, came also the use of secondary and tertiary tints, to an extent unknown in the time of giotto, who may almost be described as the last of the pure colourists, taking pure in the sense of primary. chiaroscuro went on gradually advancing in importance, relatively to colour and subject, till in the times of rembrandt we find it absolutely thrusting colour and subject out of the field altogether, and making the flash upon a tin pannikin, or the obscurity of a cottage kitchen, of equal importance with the grandest traditions of our race. what is perhaps best known as the special quality of giotto's art is his study of nature; and it is right that i should say a few words upon this somewhat indefinite phrase, and try to show in what giotto's study of nature consisted, and wherein it differed from that of preceding painters. if we were able to return in reality to the old times when our painter lived, i do not fancy we should find--as many good people suppose--that the folk of that day were ignorant that there were such things as domesticated animals and birds, trees and flowers, clouds and sunsets. you may be very sure that mediæval florentines on the ridge of fiesole, have often paused to watch the sun gilding the spires of florence, much as the english traveller does; and young lovers wandering idly amongst the almond-trees by the arno, plucked the blossoms, and admired their loveliness, as we do to-day. it was only that somehow the idea had never occurred to any one that these things were suitable for pictures; there was a notion that it would be a sort of irreverence to put such vulgar details into religious scenes--arising perhaps from a similar feeling to that which makes many well-trained christians dislike to pray for any specially desired object. perhaps it was owing to giotto's early training, or rather no training, in the midst of a wild mountain country, perhaps only to his rough humorous, anti-reverential character, but probably to the combination of circumstance and individuality, that made him introduce into his compositions all sorts of extraneous matter. that to the last he entertained a strong sympathy with his early shepherd life, it is impossible to doubt, and in the designs for the decoration of the base of the campanile, only two of which he lived to execute with his own hand, there is a singularly beautiful bas-relief, illustrating the pastoral life, in which the sheep, and the puppy watching them, are as fine as anything we have from his hand. the great difficulty of accounting for giotto's introduction of hitherto unused matter into his pictures, lies in the fact that it does not seem to have been due especially to any partiality on his part for this or that branch of nature, as to a principle of getting to the bottom of his subject, whatever it was. he appears to have had a power of grasping the spirit of whatever scene he was engaged upon, and illustrating that appropriately, which is, as far as i know, unequalled in the records of painting. and it is noteworthy that this spirit is with him always the reverse of eclectic: no painter can be more entirely free from all principles of aristocracy; his sympathies are always with the people; the view he takes of any subject is the plain, common-sense view, such as plain, common-sense people can understand. connected with this is the third great characteristic of giotto, perhaps the strongest in his whole nature, and certainly the one which was least in accordance with the spirit of his time. this is his strong dramatic power. this power shows itself in almost every work of the master's we have left us, and even survives his death, and lives in the work of his pupils. his pictures are not alone scenes, they are situations, on each the curtain might fall without any sense of incongruity. besides their appropriateness of gesture and oneness of feeling, they possess the great characteristic of dramatic art, in making the scene live before you, subduing its various incidents into one strain of meaning, yet keeping each incident complete and individual, as well as making it help the main purpose. in most of giotto's pictures there will be found a diversity of action and expression, all of which lead up to the main action, and help to enforce and illustrate it. a minor point in which the same quality shows, is in the amount of emotion which this painter is capable of expressing by a single gesture, an amount so great that it occasionally runs some danger of lapsing into caricature. this is especially plain in such pictures as the _betrayal_ and the _entombment_, in the arena chapel. but where this dramatic quality is most strongly marked is in the bas-reliefs on the base of the campanile; in all these giotto has succeeded, not only in choosing the most appropriate figures for illustrating his meaning, but in seizing the very moment which is most significant. to sum up these three main characteristics of giotto's style, they are--first, a lighter, purer tone of colour than had been in use before the time of cimabue, and a greater variety and purity of tint than had been attained by that master, especially in the more distant portions of the picture. second, the introduction into his compositions of a certain amount of natural detail which had been before totally neglected, and the substitution of the portraits of actual men and women for the imaginary beings that had formerly filled up the backgrounds of the byzantine pictures. third, comes the power of illustrating the real meaning of his subject, and not merely suggesting it, as had formerly been the case, allied to which is the dramatic quality of which i have just spoken. i feel how barren is all this description to explain the progress in art made by this artist--the progress from stagnation to movement, from death to life, from symbolical types, to the things themselves. it would appear unnecessary to dwell upon the few points in which his work was technically deficient, or those in which he but repeated the errors of his predecessors, but the following may just be mentioned. the comparative dulness of the reds in use at that time, the lack of depth of hue, and variation of colour in differing aspects of light and shade; the comparative poorness of the drapery, as compared with that of the later venetian and florentine masters; the deficiency in the rendering of form, and the elementary amount of knowledge of perspective and anatomy--on all these points might exception be taken to his work with perfect justice, and yet when each had been given its due amount of criticism, the wonder would still be that he accomplished so much, and not so little. for two hundred years after the death of giotto the advance in the drawing of landscape was so slight as to be almost imperceptible, and yet, compared with his landscape, that of those that preceded him was as "moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine." i have omitted in this description the main characteristic of giotto's style, and i have done so because it is so intangible that it can only be felt, not described. this characteristic, hinted at by lord lindsay in the quotation which is placed at the head of this chapter, is the simple faith in which each of these compositions abounds; the feeling conveyed to the spectator that thus, and no otherwise, did the occurrence take place, and that the painter has not altered it a jot or tittle for his own purposes. this must be felt to be believed, and i only call attention to it here lest it should be supposed that it has failed to impress me. chapter x. giotto at assisi.--the upper church. of all the minor disadvantages of travel which have accompanied the substitution of the locomotive for the coach, perhaps none is so real an evil as the very partial impression an ordinary traveller derives from a short visit to some interesting land. when rome and florence, for instance, are brought within the compass of a day's journey, the tourist is little likely to care to break his journey for comparatively obscure cities, much less villages, scurries past "reedy thrasymene" without recognition, and scarce notices the towers and churches of perugia, rising green and grey on the mountain side. still less likely is our tourist to arrest his comet-like progression at a rough country station, some fourteen miles from the old etruscan city, a station where very obviously, neither guard nor porter expects him to alight, and which he has some difficulty in identifying by the help of a nearly illegible inscription, as assisi. and yet there was a time when this forgotten town played no inconsiderable part in the world's history, and was the central seat of an order that reckoned princes among its followers, and practically divided with the dominicans the spiritual sovereignty of europe.[ ] and even now, if any very strong-minded traveller should be able to defy the ominous silence of bradshaw,[ ] and the neglect of cook, and more regardful of what has been, than what is, spend a few days in the home of poverty, he will not regret, we think, in after years his deviation from the accustomed routine of travel; nay, if he gain no other advantage, he will at least have had a brief space in which to take quiet breath, ere the red-books and the _valet de place_ are again in requisition, ere st. peter's becomes no. in the often consulted plan, and rome takes "at least a week to see properly." for at assisi there is _no hurry_, and so strong is the spirit of the place that the most energetic tourist quickly succumbs to it; even those who rush over here from perugia for a day's excursion, treading softly ere they have been a couple of hours in the city of st. francis. and now we will suppose that "our uncommercial traveller" has safely escaped the clutches of the three or four inn touts whom his arrival has roused into unwonted energy, and consigning his bag to the least ill-favoured, has set out manfully along the dusty road leading from the station to the town; for be it noted that assisi is not strong in equipages, and the solitary rough wooden box denominated omnibus, is hardly an attractive conveyance at first sight, though ere long the traveller begins to look upon it as an old friend, as it is to be found during the greater part of the day, standing about in various unexpected parts of the town, being apparently left wherever it has taken a passenger. one further violence we must do to the mind of the well-instructed tourist, namely, to beg that he will not accept guidance, nor torment himself with details, archæological or otherwise, but simply open his eyes to all the quiet influences of past devotion and present beauty which he will find around him. and first, he will see by the side of the road a vast church, in the most uninteresting style of renaissance architecture, not unlike a small edition of st. peter's. this is st. mary of the angels, little notable, save for its size, and a small chapel it contains, where st. francis first assembled his few followers. in it there is only to be seen--a spoilt fresco, by perugino; walls dark with age, save where, here and there, the dim lamplight falls upon the silver offerings of penitence and thanksgiving; and some carved doors, more curious than beautiful. these need not delay us much from the steep ascent to the town. another dusty mile of road, and assisi lies before and above us, rising a confused mass of tiled roofs and massive walls, from the grey depths of the olive-groves which surround it. not only on a mountain, but of the mountain, does the town seem to be built, the ponderous blocks of dim red and dusty yellow stone, scarcely seeming to have more the characteristics of houses than of the cliffs above, save where, here and there, a square tower of church or fortification lifts itself into clear pre-eminence of definition from the tumbled confusion of roofs, walls, and buttresses. another turn in the long, winding road, and the great attraction of the few sightseers who visit assisi, the convent of st. francis--with what bradshaw calls its "three superb churches," which are, in fact, two--stands revealed. picture to yourself a long mass of building, standing upon a double range of tall arches, and pierced with a multitude of small windows. this is the convent building itself; beyond it, on a level with its roof, rises the church of st. francis, with its square campanile. of the same dull-yellowish colour as the other buildings of the town, there is little beauty in the church from this point of view, save that of massive strength, and a certain simplicity of design which, when carried out upon so large a scale, almost amounts to grandeur. so, leaving the convent on our left, we enter beneath a massive square tower the first street of the city. it is difficult to say whence comes the sense of extreme desolation which oppresses us, not from the absence of life certainly, for at this point there are commonly a few of the villagers and townspeople chatting round an old fountain, and on every side resounds the squeaking of the pigs, that every well-to-do inhabitant of assisi keeps tethered on the ground-floor of his house. nor is it that there are no signs of commercial enterprise, for we notice the hammered brass and copper jars and cauldrons glimmering dimly in the recesses of one of the dark shops, and some strings of onions and other vegetables in another. is it something, we wonder, in the construction of the town itself, in its rough-hewn blocks of dusty stone, its huge buttresses, its blocked-up arches, its weather-beaten tiles, the defacement of its ruined fountains, and the general appearance of enormous toil with which the city must have been constructed? or is it still more the case, that even at the first glance we connect the appearance of the town with the state of the superstition to which it owes its existence; whose power changed the small etrurian village into a shrine of the deepest sanctity and proudest priesthood, and having done its work for good and evil, faded gradually away, and now finds voice only on the trembling lips of the half-dozen monks who are all that remain at assisi of the famous brotherhood? for whatever reason, the place is desolate--desolate as no place can be which has not once been great; and as we ascend the street, the impression deepens. few of the houses have glass to their windows; the old arched entrances are blocked up with rough stone, and low, square doorways supply their place; the ground-floor of the house is commonly used as a store-room, a stable, or a piggery. the upper windows show us nothing within that we are accustomed to connect with ideas of domestic comfort. even the massive ironwork seems to partake of the general desolation, and is coated with the grey dust of centuries. here and there we pass a fountain, generally situated in a small grass-grown open space, with a couple of earthen pitchers left to fill themselves leisurely; and over all there is still the sense of death in life, needing a vigorous effort on our part to endure. we begin to think there was some sense in that philistine american we met at florence, who smiled so scornfully at our determination to visit assisi, and to have thoughts of the next train to a more lively spot. however, food and wine at the modest little hotel quickly dissipate our loneliness; our musings on st. francis and his monks assume a more pleasant complexion, and by the time we find our way down the long street to the convent, we are in a fit mood to appreciate any beauty or pleasure which we may chance to find there. and indeed he would be hard to please who could be discontented with the enjoyment here provided, for whether it be nature or art for which his "thirsty soul doth pine," here he may satiate himself at leisure. [illustration: assisi. _from a drawing by the author._] everything on our way seems to tell the same story of departed grandeur; the city is almost as deserted as one of those we read of in the _arabian nights_. a beautiful arcade, each capital of whose pillars is carved to represent a different species of vegetation, incloses nothing; the house of the poet metastasio is falling into ruins, and scarcely can one decipher his coat of arms sculptured above the door. no dogs bark, nor children scream, nor loungers stare as the unwonted stranger passes through the market-place; the very _café_ has been fain to part with its chairs and little tables, and now is only a gaunt, bare room, in a corner of which sits, in half obscurity, a melancholy woman sewing slowly. the market-place is certainly the most gloomy part of the town, were it only from its contrast to the market-places we are accustomed to see; and so let us hurry down the long, grass-grown street, till at last a sudden breadth of light opens before us, and straight in front, across a patch of green meadow, rises the church of st. francis, while a little to the left a steep incline leads down to the entrance of the lower church, called incorrectly, in some works, the crypt, as the real crypt is beneath this lower edifice. the lower church stands upon a shelf of rock, the side of which slopes abruptly upward, against which one end of the church is built. the position of the two churches may perhaps be understood by thinking of them as situated upon two successive steps of a staircase, the floor of the upper church being merely a continuation of the upper step, and being thus immediately above the roof of the lower church. let us pause before entering the church, and cast our eyes over the scene before us. we stand on a little terrace half-way up the town, looking down upon tiled roofs, grey walls, and greyer olive groves, interspersed with some brighter greens of acacia and poplar. beneath us, winding away in long perspective, is the road to the station, with the tall dome of st. mary of the angels forming a prominent blot upon the landscape, and breaking the level monotony of the plain. on the right a broad river-bed, nearly dry at the present season, stretches a snake-like course towards perugia, the towers of which are just visible in the distance. in front of us, the valley of the tiber stretches away for miles and miles, broken only by long lines of poplars and tiny villages, which, from the height at which we stand, only show as gleaming spots in the sunshine. in the extreme distance, purple mountains enclose the valley on every side, and immediately behind us rises the mountain on which assisi is built, crowned with a ruined citadel, and black against the sky, the sharp pinnacles of cypress-trees. whichever way one turns, there is beauty--in the quaint architecture of the old town, in the wild growth of the ancient olive-trees, and their delicate tints of greyish-green and silver; in the brighter colours of the plain, with its broad stretches of sunshine and little shadows of cloud; in the ranges of mountains, the darkness of the cypresses, and the brightness of the sky. and so murmuring within ourselves that the old monk was no bad judge of scenery, after all, we turn in beneath the broad portico of the church. it is not known when this church first began to receive pictorial adornment; but it is probably true that giunta pisano painted there in , though there can be little doubt that anterior to this period there were paintings the authorship of which is unknown, and whose date is uncertain. the whole question of the authorship of the frescoes at assisi is discussed by crowe and cavalcaselle;[ ] but it is difficult to extract their real conclusion from the mass of verbiage in which it is enveloped, and the limitations with which it is encumbered. nor can i attach much importance to the conclusion which these authors have drawn from frescoes in such a terrible state of decay, as those in the northern and southern transepts of the upper church. but i do not propose to enter here upon the question of the authorship of any of these frescoes, except such as are attributed to giotto; and even this had better be deferred till i have given my readers some idea of the general appearance of the church. its shape is the usual latin cross formed by a nave and transepts, without chapels or side aisles. from the entrance, which is at the _east_ end of the church, to the choir, the building is divided into four portions by grouped shafts, five in number, only half of which project from the walls from the capitals; from each group spring to right and left pointed arches, in the centre of each of which is a long narrow window reaching from the ceiling to within about twenty-four feet of the ground, and from the capitals there also spring arches which cross the building diagonally, and intersect at the summit of the ceiling, thus forming triangular openings with curved bases, each of which is filled with a fresco, most of them greatly obliterated. the shafts and capitals have all been painted in various colours, as have also the spaces within the side arches on each side of the narrow windows above mentioned, and so have the faces and sides of each arch. the four main portions, into which the ceiling is thus divided, are alternately painted blue with golden stars, or filled with medallions and figure subjects. the painting of the arches is in imitation of marble mosaic. the intersecting arches of the roof are round (as in the lower church), not pointed like the side arches, and on the sides of the latter, which are double in width of the centre arches, there are busts of various saints and martyrs of the church connected by rich ornament and involved geometrical design. on either side of the windows, in the second row from the roof, are the frescoes ascribed to cimabue, all of which are considerably defaced; above these are the ones assigned by vasari and lord lindsay to giunta pisano. the roof was, while i was there, in process of utter destruction (by restoration), and its ruin is by this time probably completed. underneath the windows there is a third row of paintings, thirty-six in number, commonly supposed to be the work of giotto, and beneath this again painted bands of mosaic, and so to the floor, which is alternately inlaid with squares and octagons of marble originally red and white, but which has worn into the warm dusty yellow which seems to overspread the whole of assisi. the choir is built and decorated in a similar manner, and its centre occupied by a very elaborately worked iron screen (once bronzed and gilt) erected upon a marble daïs, inlaid with glass mosaic, the patterns of each step being different, but all intricate and beautiful. the daïs is about ten feet high and thirty-eight feet long, and the screen about nine feet high. surmounting the screen there is a narrow marble canopy, supported upon twelve marble pillars, with capitals of acanthus leaves richly gilt, the convex side of the leaves in the upper portion of each capital being very deeply cut and painted vermilion. the screen surrounds a plain marble altar. the arrangement of the choir is similar to that of the body of the church, each of the transepts being similar in size and arrangement to one of the four divisions already spoken of; the only difference is in the size of the windows, which are exactly double of those in the nave, though of identical shape, each having one pointed archivault; but at the choir end of the church the window is treble in size. the two sides of the choir which have no windows, are ornamented with small galleries of tre-foiled gothic arches supporting canopies. underneath these galleries are a row of paintings corresponding with the lowest row of frescoes in the nave. there is a recess of about two feet running the whole length of the church between the groups of shafts just above the lowest row of frescoes, which serves to measure the depth of the side arches, and also as a domain to the two lower rows of frescoes. the colour on the shafts, and on the lowest portion of the side walls, has almost entirely disappeared, and the whole of the paintings in the church are much injured by damp. so much is this the case, that it makes me doubt whether it is worth while going very deeply into the question of their authorship, though this is a favourite battleground with the biographers of early italian painters. vasari boldly ascribes the whole upper portion of the church to cimabue, and the lower to giotto: lindsay asserts that giunta pisano had painted the upper, cimabue the middle, and giotto the lower range of compartments: kugler, though somewhat indefinite, holds that he worked out his apprenticeship in the upper church of assisi, and afterwards came again and laboured in the lower one. to sum up then the discussion of this matter, which is hardly an interesting one to the general reader, my explanation of the probable authorship of the lower row of frescoes would be the following. that they have been painted by a pupil of giotto's at the same time that the master himself was at work on the frescoes in the lower church, and that the only frescoes by giotto in the upper church, are the two almost monochrome compositions that are placed one on each side of the principal entrance. it should be noted that these two are far more conspicuous, owing to their isolated position, than any other frescoes in the church, which may well have been the reason for their execution by the master himself. and it is somewhat curious to observe that they are both painted in little more than two shades of colour, and are the only frescoes in the church so painted, as if giotto were purposely restraining his hand, so as not to spoil by contrast the cruder work of his pupil. this pupil i believe to have been taddeo gaddi; but i have not seen sufficient undoubted works by his hand, to render this more than a mere conjecture, and there is no evidence on the subject whatever, save such as may be inferred from the fact that gaddi was almost certainly present with giotto at the time he painted in the lower church. leaving the question of the actual authorship undecided just now, notice how far this hypothesis, besides having strong internal evidence in its favour, goes to solve the difficulties of this matter; by it we account easily and naturally for the giottesque qualities which we find in these works, and also for their comparative feeble significance. and by the effort to combine the byzantine manner of cimabue with the simplicity of giotto, we account for all the very inferior architecture with which these pictures are crowded: architecture which is to a certain extent giottesque in form, but seems to be wholly conventional in colouring and arrangement. giotto would naturally say to his pupil something of this sort: "look here, gaddi, this a great chance for you to distinguish yourself; mind you make the most of it. don't forget that what you have to do is to complete cimabue's work; you must not make his compositions look more absurd and unnatural than you can help; above all, your work must be in keeping with his in colour, or you'll spoil the church. mind you preserve the character of the architecture, and keep it uniform throughout; and if you let your work be a little conventional, it will be all the better." so we may imagine giotto talking to his pupil; and the compositions are exactly such as might have been produced after such an exhortation, by an earnest, but not very brilliant pupil, in attempting to combine as much as possible of the character of giotto's work, with the form of cimabue's compositions. indeed, these frescoes frequently fall between the two stools of naturalism and conventionalism, and have the merits of neither. the architecture is throughout utterly absurd, worse, because not so refined as that of the byzantine, and quite without the beauty of giotto; an effort towards the simplicity of the buildings in the frescoes of the arena chapel being nevertheless observable, though it results only in a toy-shop architecture of the lowest order, yellow and blue towers being stuck one against another. the figures, too, show the attempt to depict emotion, but without success; and lastly, the colouring, as at present seen, is crude, to the verge of discordancy; but upon this last it would be unsafe to lay much stress, as it is impossible to say what deterioration may not have resulted from the damp, which in some places has actually obliterated the composition altogether. this execution by a pupil would also account for giotto having restricted himself to shades of grey, green, and blue in the two frescoes at the end of the chapel to which i have above referred. the subjects of these are _st. francis preaching to the birds_, and _st. francis' dream_; and amongst all the giottos i have seen, there is no more harmonious piece of colouring than in the last named of these works.[ ] there is one piece of corroborative evidence in favour of these works being by taddeo gaddi that i may quote for what it is worth, which is, that in the series of panels in the gallery at berlin which formerly were part of the frescoes in the santa croce of florence, and which are certainly, according to crowe and cavalcaselle, the work of gaddi; "the subjects are, in fact, more or less repetitions of those in the upper church of assisi." now it seems more probable that gaddi should have repeated his own compositions than that he should have repeated those of some unknown master, especially one of such comparatively feeble powers. here i must leave the consideration of the authorship of these frescoes; as i said in the beginning, it is a much vexed question, and one that there is at present no positive evidence for deciding; the one thing that is certain is that in a very short time, if it has not happened already, the frescoes will, to all intents and purposes, have entirely vanished. crowe and cavalcaselle hold that there were a series of painters who worked at the upper church, and that the whole history of the revival of early italian art is comprised and explained in these paintings, and seem to hold that giotto painted only one or two of these frescoes; while, lastly, in one of dr. dohme's german series of biographies, which is the latest work issued on this subject, we have the author maintaining the thesis that giotto painted all these frescoes (in the lower row), and that when he had finished this series he began again upon those of the lower church. of the various opinions, those of vasari and lindsay can, i think, be shown to be wrong from a comparison of the dates of giotto's works. in the first place there is no evidence whatever to hint at two visits to assisi, except vasari's statement that giotto was invited to assisi by fra mure. now fra mure, who was general of the franciscan order, only held that post between and , and therefore if he invited giotto to complete the frescoes of the upper church, it must have been between those years; but from a register preserved in the vatican, the famous _navicella_ mosaic was executed by giotto in , and that he was still at rome in , is proved by a portion of a fresco representing pope boniface announcing the opening of the jubilee, which took place , and upon the completion of which work giotto betook himself to florence, and painted the famous frescoes in the bargello, in one of which the portrait of dante occurs. dante was exiled in , and this, and many minor considerations, point to the date - for the execution of these frescoes. it is therefore easy to see that giotto could not have had the possibility of accepting fra mure's invitation between the dates of and . the question remains whether the lower row of frescoes were executed by giotto at any subsequent period? now there is a consensus of testimony that in florence, in the year , giotto executed the designs for the façade of the duomo, afterwards carried out by andrea pisano; and that in the same year he married. what happened during the next two years is matter of conjecture: vasari states that he proceeded to avignon, which is contradicted by crowe and cavalcaselle on the authority of abertini; and we can find nothing certain till we discover our painter at padua between - painting in the chapel of the arena. if the frescoes in the upper church be compared at all carefully with those of the arena chapel, it is at once evident that if they be the work of the same hand, it must have worked in a far earlier stage of progress, and it is equally evident, that the transition from the frescoes of the upper church to those of the lower, is marked by an abrupt interval of time. it is impossible that giotto could have so far fallen away in skill as to execute the frescoes in the upper church subsequent to his painting of the arena chapel at padua; and it is nearly impossible from the dates of his work that he could have found time to do them before. the only hypothesis that seems to be left, if we wish to believe that giotto executed this series in the upper church, is that giotto accompanied cimabue when he worked at assisi, and painted the lower row of frescoes under the direction of his master. this theory does not seem to me likely for many reasons; first, it would have been most probable that had giotto and cimabue visited assisi together, some evidence of such a visit would have been discovered; secondly, it seems improbable that cimabue would have allowed his apprentice such license in composition and incident as is here shown; and thirdly, the manner of the pictures is not as was giotto's early manner, semi-byzantine, but rather errs in the opposite direction, and seems a coarse imitation of giotto's natural method of depicting events. it will be noticed, in careful examination of these works, that, as far as can be judged from the damaged state in which they at present exist, the composition, and what artists call motive, of the pictures are, as a rule, very superior to their execution, which is blundering and unmasterly. i am led by this, and other considerations of style and time, to come to the conclusion that these works are not from the hand of giotto himself, but were probably executed by his pupils, while the master himself was painting in the lower church. the likelihood of this hypothesis will be greater if we remember that there are in the castellani chapel of santa croce, frescoes which are undoubtedly by the hand of agnolo gaddi, which betray many of the so-called giottesque traits that we find in these frescoes; and indeed the wonder would rather be demanded if this were not the case, and if the inaugurator of a new style of painting did not have his merits imitated by the students working under his tuition. again, it seems to be a gratuitous assumption on the part of messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle to hold that this lower row of scenes from the life of st. francis must be the work of successive artists merely because they exhibit differences of merit. we should rather expect that the same workman, or workmen, would improve in the course of so long a series, especially if they were painted more or less under the direction of a master like giotto. in any case, a comparison of dates renders it excessively improbable that giotto paid two visits to assisi, and if this be so, we are, i think, justified in concluding that the utmost connection he had with the frescoes of the upper church was through the medium of his pupils. whether or no crowe and cavalcaselle are right in believing that other painters besides giunta and cimabue had a hand in the upper rows of frescoes, and, if so, who those painters were, are questions which are just now beyond our subject; and very soon they will be beyond any one's interest or power to answer, for the last traces of colour yet remaining in these works are rapidly fading away. it is, however, impossible to imagine with vasari that all these upper rows of pictures were executed by one hand, for the very strongest differences in style, composition, and even (traces of) colour exists between them. thus in the fresco of the _creation_, there is not the slightest approach to naturalism of treatment; the almighty stands within a circle of vermilion and gold surrounded by a halo, which is apparently intended to represent the sun; beneath him is the moon, with a man's face in it, so that there should be no mistaking what it was intended for; beneath the moon, floating in the air in a lozenge-shaped patch of red, is adam, while beneath him again are some sheep, and an animal that may be either ox, dog, or fox, for it partakes of the character of all three; and to the right of the picture is the sea, with several gigantic fishes half in, half out of the water. the only other fresco in this compartment which is yet decipherable, represents the building of the ark, and is of like character. compare, however, with these the picture in the next compartment eastwards, representing the sacrifice of isaac. large portions of the left-hand side of this work are destroyed, but sufficient are left to show an attempt, rough, it is true, but quite unmistakable, to represent a mountain landscape, with a temple in the distance. turn to the right hand of the picture: isaac is half sitting, half lying on the sacrificial altar, and abraham stands beside him with one hand upon the child's head, his left foot firmly planted on the step of the altar, and his right arm swung up to its fullest height above his head. seldom have i seen a more vivid bit of arrested motion depicted in any work of art; the painter has actually caught the pause caused by the sudden appearance of the angel, bidding the father to stay his hand. the action of all the limbs is most remarkable in its intensity, even abraham's long robes fly out wildly behind his outstretched arm. it is impossible that these two pictures can belong to the same hand, or even to the same school--the first is entirely byzantine in manner, and might have been copied from a fifth century ms.; the latter lacks nothing but a certain amount of fuller detail and a little more anatomical knowledge, to stand as a faithful representation of the event it depicts. we now come to the question of whether this fresco be one of the works of giotto, and again must answer it in the negative. in none of the undoubted works by this master is there so advanced a naturalism as here, especially in the treatment of the drapery, which is far nearer to that of the renaissance period than that of the byzantine. it will be found on a careful examination of the works in the arena chapel at padua, that the _main_ lines of the drapery are either straight (or very slightly curved), and in some measure stiff; it would have been almost folly to expect that this should be otherwise, remembering that anterior to giotto the treatment of drapery had been exclusively founded upon the formal parallel lines of the byzantine mosaics. in all probability the renaissance painters have here supplied the place of a vacant or faded fresco with one of their own compositions, and this is rendered the more likely as there are in the lower churches several wretchedly bad renaissance pictures. footnotes: [ ] a small portion of this chapter appeared in the _spectator_ last year under the title of "the shrine of poverty," and is here reprinted by the kind permission of the editors of that paper. [ ] i may as well mention that the hotel given by bradshaw, though the largest, is very poor in its accommodation, and the visitor would probably do better to go to the albergo subasio close to the monastery. [ ] pages - and - , vol. i. [ ] in appendix c, at the end of this book, will be found a list of the works attributed to giotto by lord lindsay, crowe and cavalcaselle, ruskin, and dohme. chapter xi. the lower church of assisi. at first sight the church seems of small extent, as the entrance is in a transept at the north side, and the eye looks across the nave without perceiving it; but a few steps forward, and an abrupt turn to the left, brings the church before us--a vast dim cave, glowing with rich colour and subdued light. looking up the nave, the building appears to be lighted only by the narrow windows in the thick wall of the apse, save where here and there a dull gleam from one of the side chapels steals across, but hardly lightens, the gloom. nor is it alone in shape of roof and dimness of light that the resemblance to a cavern exists, for it is visible too in the low walls, whence the arched roof springs in massive curves, and in the seeming absence of all support for the great arches, for the plain stone pillars that support them, half embedded in the walls, and only reaching to a height of eight feet from the ground, attract little notice, and the arches seem to grow out of the walls as if in a building of nature's own construction. the division of the church, and the arrangement of the arches, is the same as in the upper church; but everything which is there arranged so as to give appearance of lightness and unsubstantiality, is here made as ponderous in appearance as possible. the two churches might stand for embodiments of light and shade, of graceful symmetry and rock-hewn strength. and it is easy to see that this is no chance contrast caused by the circumstances of the case, for where the windows give upon the church, they are deep sunken in arched recesses, while the large windows in the side chapel are more than half veiled by the arched entrances to the chapels, which last form almost a separate row of chambers, so wholly are they cut off from the nave. half way up the nave a massive iron grating divides the church, and further on, beneath the centre of the great arches that form the body of the choir, the high altar stands upon a daïs of four steps, its only decoration being six massive candlesticks, whose huge lights reach almost to the roof. the apse is the usual semicircle, pierced with narrow arched windows, and within its shadow, are the desks and pulpits where sit all that are left of the franciscan brethren. we will not attempt to describe more than its general effect, and indeed that is best done by simply saying that it closely resembles that of st. mark, at venice. in detail, there is hardly the least similarity; but in depth of light and shade, in profusion of rich colour gleaming on every hand, in the general effect of its round arches, mosaic pavement, and glimmering lamps, the similarity is striking. if the lover of nature found the prospect without to his mind, the lover of art can hardly fail to be satisfied with the prospect within. above the high-altar shine the four greatest works of giotto, and to right and left of the choir, roof and wall are covered with frescoes by giotto, cimabue, memmi, gaddi, and others, every inch of space being filled with paintings. chapel after chapel opens in long series from the choir, each rich in paintings, even the huge round arches of the nave are painted in delicately-involved patterns to represent mosaics of coloured marble. here our traveller may well rest in silent wonder, that so much beauty remains unvisited, for unvisited it is by nine out of every ten tourists who pass by the gates of assisi. there is, perhaps--we will even say probably--no building within the limits of the civilised world in which so much colour-beauty is concentrated as in that of the lower church. for six hundred years have these walls glowed like jewels through the "dim, religious light," and the setting sun has lighted up with still greater glory the golden halos of their pictured saints; for six hundred years have prayer and praise rung along these massive arches and echoed up the mountain-side; and now prayer and picture are fading alike; the most damaged fresco on the walls is hardly so maimed as the rite it witnesses, the vilest restoration no greater parody on the original than are those few poor monks parodies of their ancient order. it is, we think, impossible for any one with a heart which is not entirely dead to all human sympathies not to be somewhat moved at this combination of fading art and faded faith, but it is a feeling the power of which we can hardly hope to explain to our readers, apart from the influences which produced it. the _religio loci_ is, of all other influences, the one which is least capable of deliberate analysis, and the combination between colour-beauty and a peculiar solemnity of feeling, one of which many people even deny the existence. it is worth noticing that though the whole effect of the church is, as i have said, excessively similar to that of st. mark's at venice, especially in the richness of subdued colouring, the effect which is produced in st. mark's by elaborate byzantine mosaics, and the lavish use of gold and precious marbles, is here gained only by the lovely colouring of the frescoes, which cover every available space, and even are continued on the arches themselves, which are painted in elaborate imitations of marble mosaic. the richness of hue of these painted mosaics is very great, and the patterns frequently of great delicacy and beauty. on the first arch, for instance, there is a running border of vine leaves drawn with a freedom and truth which is remarkable, if we compare it with the representation of natural foliage in the frescoes.[ ] most of the patterns, however, both on the arches and the borders surrounding the pictures are more or less geometrical, and are interspersed with medallions of the heads of various prophets and saints of the church. the most westerly portion of the building, including the entrance, is destroyed by bad renaissance work of the most vulgar type, and any one who wishes to see the two styles (pre- and post-raphael) most strongly contrasted in favour of the former, could hardly have a better opportunity than is given by the series of frescoes (representing the popes) in this part of the church. let us next look in detail at the arrangement of the frescoes. it is in the four triangular spaces of the roof immediately above the altar, that the four great giotto frescoes, illustrating the three vows of the order of st. francis--_obedience_, _chastity_, _poverty_, and one of the _enthronement of st. francis in heaven_, are seen. in the right-hand transept of the choir there are a series of designs by gaddi, memmi, cimabue, and giotto, of various new testament subjects, the most prominent of which is a magnificent _enthronement of the virgin_, by cimabue, underneath which giotto has painted st. francis and four brethren of his order, who gaze at the madonna with reverent ecstasy. the most interesting portion of the church is undoubtedly the choir, though, owing to the narrow arched windows and the altar being placed at the west instead of the east end, it is only towards sundown that there is sufficient light to thoroughly illuminate the frescoes on the roof. first let me give a description of these four works, and then examine the question of the authorship of the other frescoes in the choir which are attributed to giotto. _the frescoes above the high altar in the lower church of assisi._--the subjects chosen for illustration typify, as might be expected, the vows and the reward of the franciscan brotherhood; the four frescoes representing--first, the _vow of poverty_; second, that of _chastity_; third, _obedience_; and fourth, the _enthronement of st. francis in heaven_. the first three of these subjects are all treated in the manner of allegories, the interpretation of which is sufficiently obvious. the first and last frescoes represent st. francis himself as the protagonist of the allegory, the second and third only introduce him incidentally. thus, in the first fresco, the subject is _st. francis wedded to poverty_, typifying the course which must be followed by all disciples of the order. the chief features of this composition are as follows:--towards the centre of the fresco, slightly to the left-hand side, are the three chief actors in the scene--christ, st. francis, and poverty, the saint in the dress of his order, his bride in a thin short robe with naked feet; around the group stand the angels in whose presence the marriage is being solemnised. on the left hand of the composition, in the foreground of the picture, a beggar appeals to a young man for alms, in answer to which the youth is taking off his cloak, while his guardian angel pats him on the shoulder approvingly, and points to the marriage ceremony as if to confirm his charitable intention. on the right hand of the picture two figures, with money-bags clutched firmly in their hands, seem to resist the pleading of an angel, who points to st. francis, and apparently urges them to follow his example. the centre of the foreground is occupied by two figures of children, one of whom, with garments held tightly round him, is throwing stones at poverty, whilst the other is pointing at her scornfully with a long stick. the figure of poverty herself, which is the central one of the fresco, has at her feet a barking dog and a thicket of brambles, the thorns of which have torn rents in her robe, but in the background a flowering rose-tree seems to symbolise the advantages which the saint promises to her followers. the upper part of the composition represents one angel bearing a model of the church up to heaven, and another carrying the cloak which the young man on the left has given to the beggar, to receive both of which gifts the almighty bends down from the clouds.[ ] there is in this fresco a praise of poverty which is by no means in accordance with the ideas which the painter himself entertained, and must have been a very perfunctory performance on his part; for, curiously enough, there is in existence a canzone on the subject of poverty by giotto, in which he clearly states his opinion of it as a very dangerous thing, and one that tended towards vice rather than led to its abstention. this canzone may be found in vasari.[ ] _the vow of chastity._--this fresco also falls into three chief divisions, as follows:--the left-hand group is composed of eight figures, of whom three are aspirants who wish to join the franciscan brotherhood. one of these is being welcomed by st. francis himself, while another, a nun, is presented with a cross by one of the attendant female figures, possibly intended to typify sta. chiara; behind these are two more figures of saints. a soldier, with a shield in one hand and a scourge in the other, stands by the side of st. francis, and indicates the struggle and the means of victory which those who desire to excel in chastity must endure--the rocky ground upon which the group stands showing the difficulty of the first approach. the centre of the foreground is occupied by a group which has in its midst a naked figure in a font being baptised by angels, behind whom stand two attendant angels with the garments of the novice, and two soldiers, holding scourges, seem to wait for the ceremony to be completed. the third group, in the foreground, symbolises the victory of the angels and monks over the evil desires of the flesh, and consists of several figures, the chief of which is a monk, with wings already sprouting out of his brown robe and a halo round his cowled head, who is driving away with his trident a figure symbolical of love--love as understood by the priests--half cupid, half devil. a winged beast, something between horse and pig, has been already vanquished by the same stout monk, and is falling backwards into an abyss of flame; a third figure beyond, also symbolical of lust, is having his arm seized by a winged skeleton, who plants his foot firmly upon the figure's thigh and apparently intends to kick him into the flames below. the background of the picture is filled with the fortress in which chastity sits securely guarded behind double walls, to whom angels are bearing the crown and palm of heavenly victory. beneath her seat two angels offer her banner and shield to the novice below. these are undoubtedly the two finest of the allegorical series, being both more varied in composition and incident and finer in individual figures than the frescoes of _obedience_ and _st. francis in glory_, both of which are a little formal in their arrangement. in the _obedience_ the action takes place within a shrine, divided into three compartments, to the right and left hand of which large groups of ministering angels are kneeling. this shrine symbolises the monastery of st. francis, or the house of all those who join his brotherhood. in its left-hand compartment, which is presided over by a double-faced figure with mirror and shield labelled prudence, a saint with a halo exhorts two monks, who seem to wait their turn to take the required vow. in the centre, obedience, a winged female figure in a man's robe, imposes the yoke of obedience upon a kneeling figure, laying at the same time her finger upon her lips. on the right hand are three figures--a kneeling saint, humility holding a torch in her hand, and a centaur, who, with arm upraised, is witnessing the vow taken by the monk with despair, and whose advance seems checked by a reflection cast upon him from the mirror of prudence. the fourth fresco--_st. francis enthroned in heaven_--represents the saint sitting in a shrine, a sceptre in one hand, and a breviary in the other, above him a legend to the effect that this is his reward, and around groups of angels bearing lilies and palms, trumpets and harps. of all the four frescoes, this is the least interesting, st. francis himself in his heavy robe, covered with gold embroidery, being almost comically stiff and unnatural. having spoken very briefly of the main incidents of these four great frescoes, i must say a few words upon their special characteristics. they are in my opinion the greatest works which giotto has left to us, though a good deal of the _naïf_ grace and freshness of the artist's early work has disappeared. though single figures in the santa croce frescoes may perhaps be favourably compared with any in these assisi compositions, yet for scope of imagination and variety of detail, they stand easily pre-eminent, and owing to their fortunate position beneath the floor of the upper church, they have been almost entirely preserved from the effects of damp, which has ruined nearly all giotto's later works in florence. there is to be seen in these symbolical paintings the fulfilment of all that was promised in the work of the arena chapel; accompanied by a more daring ambition, and a far higher power of realising the conceptions of the artist. the key of colour is the same--pure and delicate; perhaps, as compared with later artists, a trifle faint; but it is here much more extended, and there is much more variety in the individual tints. gradation, that great secret of beautiful colour, is more diligently sought for; tints are more broken up, more numerous, and more skilfully combined, and the effect of the fresco, as a whole, is infinitely richer. similar advance is noticeable in the composition, which is studied with an elaboration suitable to the masses of figures introduced into each work, and which though occasionally a little formal, is in the highest degree excellent, if it be contrasted with that which was prevalent before and contemporary with our painter. other merits there are, such as might have been expected in an older artist, of which the chief are a fuller knowledge of form, and a greater attention to its details, to which must certainly be added an increase in the richness and disposition of the folds of the drapery, and a little concession to the claims of elegance in the arrangement of the attitudes and robes. the old grace is still there, but it is hardly as unconscious as of old; it owes less to feeling, and more to skill; it is more wonderful, but hardly so charming. these frescoes are, we may say in conclusion, by far the most important uninjured works which remain to us from giotto's hand, and fortunately they seem from their position to stand a good chance of preservation. neither dust nor damp can well affect them; the little light that suffices to illumine the poor ritual of assisi, will take many a year to darken the tints of these pictures above the altar; and the old church above them will have crumbled into ruin before any accident can disturb the massive arches on whose interstices giotto has painted these pictures. the only other fresco of giotto's maturity which i have heard of as being of nearly equal importance with these, is one in the shop of francesco pittipaldi, at naples, which was originally a part of the convent of sta chiara. this fresco (which i have not seen) is quoted by crowe and cavalcaselle as being one of those beautiful compositions by giotto which "are his grand claim to the admiration of the world." it represents the miracles of the loaves and fishes, and is symbolical of the almsgiving of the franciscans. i may here mention the other later works of this painter, which circumstances have prevented me from examining, and of which therefore i have given no description. these are:-- st. works in the brera gallery at milan, and in the pinacoteca of bologna--originally parts of an altarpiece for the church of st. maria degli angeli at bologna. nd. _st. francis receiving the stigmata_, now in the louvre, formerly belonging to the convent of st. francesco at pisa. rd. an _entombment of the virgin_, belonging to a mr. martin. these works are given as giotto's on the authority of crowe and cavalcaselle. we may observe generally with regard to the pictures in the north transept, that they are in every way more elaborate than those of the arena at padua, the drapery especially being more varied in its folds and colours. another very characteristic difference in these later pictures is the greater preponderance of the architectural element in the designs. in the arena chapel what little architecture is introduced, is simple in form and excessively plain in colour, serving for little more than a bare indication of the meaning of the composition, and being in no wise an important portion of the picture. but at assisi, in six at least out of the nine pictures attributed to giotto in the northern transept, architecture has a very important place assigned to it, and it is noticeable that the architectural portions of the composition are decorated with mosaic borders in some way corresponding to those used in the decoration of the actual church. the attempt seems to have been at assisi to glorify the building of the church, and to render the pictures subordinate to the architectural unity of decoration, whereas in the arena chapel the attempt was evidently to obliterate the building through the beauty of the pictures, or rather to make the spectator forget the plain shell which inclosed the frescoes in tracing the story which their compositions pictured. the figures, too, in these assisi frescoes are comparatively small, and possess but slight individual interest; here and there we see attempts at animation of gesture, but they are comparatively slight, and the chief interest of the frescoes depends upon the grace of the composition, and the richness of the colouring used. the colouring, too, is perceptibly different from that of the arena chapel, where, though very delicate, it is simple in the extreme, while in many of these pictures, the hues used are deep and rich in general effect, but have lost much of the fresh purity which formerly distinguished them. at the arena chapel the picture stood out at a glance, every superfluous detail giving instant place to the main spirit of the scene; here the treatment is much more elaborate, but a considerable portion of the earnestness and oneness of the arena frescoes is gone; the work, though beautiful, is not striking, not that it is exactly confused, but seems rather to be that of a conscientious workman carrying out directions faithfully, with a little painful effort. of course this alteration in architecture and colour was caused to some considerable extent by the necessity of the work being in harmony with the very elaborate decoration of the church, and by the fact of the construction of the building being far more intricate and elaborate than the plain oblong box of the arena chapel. the simple magnificence of tint which makes each fresco in the latter building tell as if it were of a perfect jewel, and the breadth of composition and treatment, owing to which the picture denotes as forcibly as possible the fact depicted, would perhaps have been out of harmony if adopted here; but there can be little doubt which treatment is the most admirable in itself or most like that of giotto's usual style. however this may be, there is another and a simpler reason for the differences we have noted, which is, that in all probability the only frescoes executed by giotto's own hand were those in the four triangular spaces above the choir, and two others presently to be mentioned; the majority of the works attributed to him were probably executed by taddeo gaddi and simon memmi, under his superintendence. this would render it probable that greater elaboration should be bestowed upon the more mechanical portions of the composition which could be executed almost equally well by the pupil, and would likewise account for the pictures being treated more from the point of view of portions of the building, and the figures being kept subordinate, as it will of course account for the work being both more varied in colouring, and also for its having less of the master's delicate beauty. it must be noted that the scale of colouring in the _vows of st. francis_ is a much more extended one than the painter was possessed of at the time of his decoration of the arena chapel, and this alone should have made messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle hesitate before attributing these works to an earlier period.[ ] very certainly growth in years and genius would be likely to increase the richness and variety of his tints, and no doubt most of these north transept frescoes were executed by his pupils, and only had the final touches laid on by the master. the most noticeable quality in these frescoes, compared with the undoubted work of giotto, both in the arena chapel and the frescoes in the ceiling of assisi, is the lack of that life in every line which was so excellent a merit in giotto's work. in the frescoes of padua every line is perfectly unfaltering and necessary, and endowed with a force and deliberate intention to which it is difficult to find a parallel in the history of art. "no man," says mr. ruskin, somewhere, "has expressed so much action in a single gesture as giotto has done." of this vivid expression the frescoes in the north transept appear to me to retain few traces; they have just the same relation to the early work that a clever imaginary landscape has to a rough sketch from nature. the first may not be _wrong_, but we feel that the latter is right. a good deal of the difference is no doubt also due to the fact of the influence of cimabue, who had painted here before giotto's time, and something perhaps to the _genius loci_; the darkened air, the fragrant incense, the mixed influences of priestcraft and superstition, that fill the place. a painter is but a man after all, and _quâ_ painter he is necessarily a more susceptible man than the rest--an instrument prone to echo to various influences. no doubt there must have been a far different spirit in this half-lighted cave to that which dwelt in the fair open hall of the arena; as different as the somewhat barren mountain, on which the convent stands, was from the bee-haunted, flowery inclosure in which stands scrovegni's chapel. some or all of these various reasons may serve to explain the difference in feeling between these works and those executed by giotto both in earlier and later times, especially the excessive use of gold and lustrous richness; and some of the lifeless expressions of the figures may probably be attributed to the influences of monastic discipline and want of fresh air and sunlight. the pictures in the north transept, attributed to giotto by professor dobbert (the latest writer on this subject, and, as far as critical opinion goes, little more than an echo of crowe and cavalcaselle) are as follows:-- . _the visitation_; . _the adoration of the shepherds_; . _the magi_; . _the presentation in the temple_; . _the flight into egypt_; . _the massacre of the innocents_; . _the return of the family_; . _the crucifixion_. _the salutation_ (or _visitation_).--this composition is in its main figures a repetition of the one in the arena chapel. there are, however, more people introduced; the background is altered, the figures are slighter and stiffer, the lines of the drapery less flowing, and with less action in them. the faces are thinner and larger, and the figures are smaller in proportion to the size of the picture. _the nativity._--this composition is altogether inferior in interest and dramatic power to that in the arena. the natural action of the virgin, as she half turns on her bed to place the child in the nurse's arms, is changed to a stiff sitting posture; the angels are arranged in four groups, instead of flying hither and thither as in the arena picture. indeed the picture is wholly symmetrical in its arrangements, joseph being in one corner, the shepherds and their flocks in another; the two attendants and the child in the centre. above these come again the virgin and child, with a row of angels hovering on each side; and above these again the roof of the shed, with two more groups of angels; down the centre of the picture a glory streams upon the infant christ. it may be noticed that the virgin's face in this and the other pictures in this transept is much more of the greek type than that used by giotto at padua. the only real giottesque traits in this composition are, first, the natural actions and expressions of the two attendants engaged in purifying the child; and, second, the actions of the ox and the ass, who poke their heads across the manger with the patient stupidity, and wonder-what-it's-all-about, look of nature. _the adoration of the magi._--in this and the following fresco of the _presentation in the temple_ we find perhaps the strongest proof of these works being more probably imitations of giotto's manner than original works. i cannot conceive how it is possible for any artist (or indeed any one with an eye for a picture at all) to imagine that these stiff, formal draperies, falling in folds, which seem as if each had a leaden weight attached to it, so straight and stiff are they, and those inexpressive faces, chiefly of the aquiline type, could have proceeded from the same hand as the frescoes of _obedience_ and _poverty_. standing, as i did, here on the steps of the high altar, by the side of the one fresco, and beneath the others, it appeared inconceivable that a question should ever have been raised as to the authorship of the frescoes of the north transept, or at least as to their being by giotto's own hand. the misleading fact has, i suppose, been the reproduction of so many of the master's figures and attitudes in these frescoes; but, rightly understood, this should rather have created the contrary presumption, for it is far more likely that a pupil should repeat his master's figures, than that a man of such inventive genius as giotto undoubtedly was at a later time, should deliberately set himself to copy his earlier work, as he must have done if these pictures were by him. but apart from all such _à priori_ considerations, the difference in the work and the style is so great as to put the matter beyond a question. there is not to be found in any of the hundreds of figures in the four large compositions in the ceiling of this church, one in which the faces are of the same type, the figures of the same long, lean kind, and the drapery of the straight, angular nature that we find in these two frescoes of the _adoration_ and the _presentation_. the same thing applies to the _flight into egypt_, though in this composition there is a greater approach in some respects to the master's manner. it is worthy of notice that the various trees and ferns in this picture are painted without the dark background employed by giotto in his arena pictures; each leaf is now painted dark against the background, instead of light on a background of a dark patch, the rough outside shape of the tree. this is no inconsiderable advance, and a still greater may be noticed in the painting of the bramble in the fresco of _st. francis' wedding to poverty_. the only other picture in this series of which it is necessary to speak is the _crucifixion_, which is incomparably the finest of these paintings, and bears most likeness to the master's work. i am inclined to think that this composition was in great measure, if not wholly, executed by giotto himself, though even this work shows traces of inferiority to that of the arena chapel in some respects; and the painting has suffered a good deal from damp and apparently, in some places, from restoration, though being unable to examine it in a very good light, i am not certain upon the latter point. it only remains to sum up my remarks upon these works. from the considerations i have given, and many other differences on which it were too long to enter here, i am led to the inevitable conclusion, that the only composition actually painted by giotto in the lower church of st. francis at assisi, besides the four allegorical works in the ceiling of the choir, is the _crucifixion_, and a small _predella_ to it in monochrome, representing st. francis and four monks of the order gazing towards the cross in the above picture. professor dobbert's conjecture, that giotto visited assisi a second time, and then designed both the allegorical pictures and those in the transept, and left them to be executed by his pupils, seems to be refuted by the excessive superiority of the ceiling frescoes to those of the transept, and the unlikeness of the former to the work of any of giotto's pupils. it must be repeated here that there is not at present the slightest evidence of giotto having been twice at assisi, and that the professor's conjecture is not supported by anything but crowe's idea that the transept frescoes were done at a later period than those of the ceiling. i should have liked to dwell a little upon the other interesting portions of the town, of its quaint and often beautiful architecture, or of the many glorious walks along the mountain to be taken therefrom, but it would lead me too far from my subject, and i must be content with mentioning that it would be difficult to find more impressive hill scenery than that which surrounds assisi, though it is of a somewhat gloomy character. the olive and the cypress are almost the only trees to be seen on one side of the town, and the mountains slope abruptly down to a narrow valley, through which foams a mountain torrent. in the immediate neighbourhood are the spots connected with the actual life of st. francis and sta chiara (the saint who was the first of his female followers), the most interesting of which is the hermitage of st. francesco, lying in a cleft of the mountain, some two miles from the town. many another church and monument is there of interest in this place, but we have outstayed our space, and, we fear, our readers' patience; so let us take the midnight train to more civilised florence, throw behind us the dreamy idleness of the few hours we have spent amongst traditions of saint and miracle, and leave assisi sleeping upon the mountain-side in its accustomed solitude. in one last look from our comfortable first-class carriage, we see the convent and the sharp points of its surrounding cypresses, dark against the clear starlight, and in another instant the train has swept on out of the shadow of the mountain, and we are in the nineteenth century once more. footnotes: [ ] it would, however, be unsafe to found any conclusion on the naturalism found here, as it is certain that painters of many later periods worked in this lower church. [ ] according to crowe and cavalcaselle, the original drawing for this fresco is in the possession of h.r.h. the duc d'aumale. it is a pen drawing on vellum. [ ] vasari, vol. i. p. . [ ] it is in no spirit of carping criticism that i must here express my inability to discover clearly when crowe and cavalcaselle do intend to make giotto visit assisi. i have found so much difficulty in finding any definite statements throughout their work that i have almost ceased to expect them. i _believe_ they mean that the assisi frescoes were previously executed to those of padua. chapter xii. giotto's later work at florence. "the characteristics of power and beauty occur more or less in different buildings, some in one and some in another; but all together, and all in their highest possible relative degrees, they exist, as far as i know, only in one building in the world, the campanile of giotto."--john ruskin, _the seven lamps_. the later work of giotto at florence falls into two distinct divisions, the one consisting of his frescoes and his great panel picture of the _coronation of the virgin_, the other of his sculpture and architecture, both of which last have as their sole remaining example, the campanile, in the piazza del duomo, better known as "giotto's tower." the limits of my space compel me to speak very briefly upon each of these divisions, which i regret the less because they are by far the best known and most frequently written about of giotto's works; and when mr. ruskin has put forth his whole strength in description, an inferior writer may be well pardoned for unwillingness to make his inferiority manifest. with this brief word of apology then, i speak first of the frescoes in the santa croce. giotto painted four chapels here, but the only remaining frescoes are those in the chapels of the peruzzi and the bardi, the former containing scenes from the lives of st. john the evangelist and st. john the baptist, the latter representations of the life and death of st. francis. both these chapels have suffered a good deal from restoration, especially that of the bardi, which has been so coarsely repainted as to have entirely lost all beauty of colour, and which i shall not therefore dwell upon in detail. the top fresco on the right hand wall of the peruzzi chapel, has also been quite ruined by coarse repainting, and when examined with a good glass shows a coarse black line round every portion of the composition, not unlike that used by the disciples of a certain modern school of decorative painting, who seek to gain the effect which their incompetence otherwise denies them by outlining their compositions in this manner. the two lower frescoes on the right hand wall, however, representing respectively the healing of drusiana by st. john, and the ascension from the grave of that evangelist, though they have been a good bit restored, have had the restoration, carefully and sparingly done, and retain still a beauty of colour as great as is to be found in any of giotto's works. the chief differences observable between these frescoes and those of the earlier years are such as we might expect to find in the later work of an earnest painter, and are briefly as follows:--first, a loss of the semi-burlesque spirit observable in the arena chapel, and not wholly absent from the four great frescoes of the lower church at assisi. all is grave and dignified in treatment; the action proceeds in a still vivid, but not eager, manner; it is the difference between the _stabat mater_ played on the organ, and "the campbells are coming," on the bagpipes of a highland regiment. allied to this change, and dependent upon it, is the loss of a good deal of the incidental drama of the composition, a certain diminution of interest in the spectators, who are now more parts of the general scene, and less individual characters affected in different ways by what is happening. the composition gains, perhaps, in dramatic unity, gains certainly if judged by the canons of later art, but loses in dramatic intensity, and, it seems to me, in truth to life. again, there is much more composition, and that of a more elaborate kind, than in the arena work: the figures are larger proportionately to the fresco in which they are placed, and possessed of a uniform grace and dignity which were absent from the earlier frescoes. increased knowledge of form and power of arrangement, is seen in the figures of the men, and the treatment of the draperies; the latter especially, while still being drawn with comparative breadth and simplicity, have gained in beauty of line, and slightly in attention to the form beneath them. lastly, there is to be noticed an advance in the treatment of colour which is the most important of all the changes. it is with the greatest diffidence i speak upon this point, as it is nearly impossible, in the dim light of this chapel (whose only window is covered with a yellow curtain), to be sure of what is the painter's original work and what is restoration; but while making every allowance for error, it seems to me that there is here shown, in places where the work is almost certainly genuine, a great increase in the power of gradation of colour, a capability of making each portion more beautiful in itself, besides being beautiful as a part of the whole. there is not found in these frescoes (in the peruzzi), any longer those broad masses of comparatively ungradated tint which are so common in the arena series; and there is further to be found an extension of the scale of colouring, a power of combining more delicate and more varied hues than in the earlier frescoes. the whole tone of the picture is sharper and more mellow than before, and though this is by no means an unmixed gain, for much of the crystalline purity and freshness of the earlier pictures is lost thereby, yet on the whole the gain is greater than the loss, much in the same way that though we may regret the absence of the bright eye and ardent impetuosity of youth, we must needs give greater honour to manhood which has fulfilled the promise, though it may have lost something of the freshness, of "the wild gladness of morning." on the left hand wall of this chapel there are also three frescoes of which the uppermost is of comparatively little importance; the remaining two are--first, _the birth of john_; second, _the daughter of herodias dancing before herod_. the lower of these is a good deal faded, but (i believe) not at all restored, and both are of exceeding beauty. in the first, the picture is divided into two parts by pillars supporting the section of a house similar to those of which giotto generally formed his interiors. the larger portion of the fresco represents the mother of the evangelist lying upon her bed surrounded by friends and attendants, and in the smaller part the nurse is presenting the infant to the father, who is apparently deep in thought. the figure of the nurse holding out the child, and all the attendants and friends who press round the bed, are full of interest, and the whole composition of the picture very fine. more beautiful, however, to me, is the lowest fresco of herodias, if it were only for the figure of the violin (for it is a sort of violin) player, a figure whose grace and truth of action has, i think, never been surpassed. in this picture the daughter of herodias is represented twice, the first time in the main body of the fresco, dancing in front of the table at which the king is seated, while in the centre an attendant brings in the baptist's head upon a dish, and offers it to the king; and again on the extreme right of the fresco, where, in a sort of inner room, the dancer kneels to her mother, and presents her with the head. there are in the bardi chapel frescoes of sta. chiara and st. louis, also by giotto; but both have been restored especially the latter,[ ] which is wholly ruined thereby. formerly in the baronzelli chapel, but now in a small room close to the sacristy, hangs the greatest masterpiece of our artist upon panel; indeed the only one of his works executed in that manner which can fairly be called worthy of his powers.[ ] this is the famous _coronation of the virgin_, a picture in five compartments, the four outer ones of which represent a choir of angels with various musical instruments, and an attendant company of saints, prophets, and martyrs, while the centre division shows the virgin dressed as a bride seated upon a throne, and bending her head to receive the crown from christ. it is wholly beyond my power to convey to my readers any idea of the exceeding loveliness of this work, and no description could, i think, give more than a faint shadow of its beauty. descriptions of pictures are stupid things at the best, and when the attempt is made to describe a work whose beauty consists less in any hard tangible perfection of form and colour, than in a delicate purity of feeling and an intense belief in the subject treated of, when we have to catalogue as beauties, the expressions of a choir of angels, and the raptures of the surrounding saints, words seem totally inadequate to the task. perhaps some faint idea of the picture may be gained by likening it to the _paradise_ of fra angelico, which hangs in the uffizi gallery, and which is probably familiar to most of my readers, if only through the medium of the innumerable copies which have been made of the figures of the playing and singing angels which surround its frame. fancy these angelico figures enlarged slightly and made human, instead of angelic; fancy them arranged in rows, one above the other, the first row kneeling, and the second standing behind them, while further in the background, tier above tier, rise the heads of prophets and martyrs almost to the top of the golden background. put two pictures of this sort on each side of a central one of _christ and the virgin_, lower fra angelico's key of colour just a little, till his pinks, blues, and yellows have shades of neutral colour toning them down, let the types of the saints and angels be rather heavier in the jaw, and broader in the face than his, and then you have the bones, so to speak, of giotto's _coronation_. more than this i cannot tell you of the beauty of this picture, and it were useless to dwell upon the tender gravity of the singing angels, the devotion of the listening saints, the exquisite balance of the groups, and the pure brightness of the colouring. in a picture the whole of whose effect depends upon such subtle combination of faith and skill as does this _coronation_, it is worse than useless to attempt to catalogue its merits as if for an auctioneer's programme. it is best to say, simply, that in a devotional age a great painter put forth his whole strength, to embody his faith in the loveliest design he could conceive, and that the result was worthy of him. in the cloisters of the s. maria novella there are some frescoes attributed to giotto much injured by damp, and one, the _birth of the virgin_, spoilt by restoration; one, however, remains, of great beauty, which in its leading figures is as fine as any of giotto's work; this is the _meeting of joachim and anna at the golden gate_. the leading figures here are fortunately comparatively uninjured by the damp, though anna's blue robe has lost a little of its colour; the faces are full of expression, tender and loving to a degree, and the attitudes of both figures both graceful and natural. in this work the painter has gained a nearer approach to female beauty than in any other fresco which i have seen. after a long and careful examination of these frescoes i am unwillingly forced to come to the conclusion that they are not by giotto, but are later works of his school. i say unwillingly, for it is with the greatest reluctance that i differ on this point from mr. ruskin, who has in one of his small series, called _mornings in florence_, expatiated very enthusiastically upon the merit of these works. the technical reasons which have most certainly lead me to this conclusion can hardly be stated so as to interest the general reader, but the main points which are evident upon the surface of the matter are-- st, the comparative crudeness and poorness of colour in three out of the four frescoes, a crudity which is scarcely to be accounted for by any amount of restoration. the colour is not so much violent as it is weak and uninteresting; nd, the exaggeration in gesture never used by giotto in subordinate figures, and a certain wilful ugliness of attitude which i have never found in that painter's works; rd, the difference in the drawing of the drapery, which is sharp and thin in its folds, the folds being far more numerous than in giotto's work, and their angles much more abrupt. the last difference is one of beauty. as far as i know giotto was incapable of drawing a face of the slender rounded type such as anna's in the second of these frescoes which i have referred to. both the drawing of that face and its delicate modelling belong to another and a later hand than his. lastly i may state for whatever it is worth, that i heard only a few days since that it is probably the case, according to the best opinion of the archæologists, that the cloister in which these frescoes are, is of a later date than that of giotto's death. if this be so of course it sets the matter at rest, but whether it be so or not i think a careful examination of the frescoes will satisfy any one interested in the matter that they cannot fairly be attributed to our artist. it must be remembered that the work of the giotteschi, as they are called, is exceedingly puzzling and confused and liable to be mistaken very easily even by one who is devoting his whole attention to the subject. mr. ruskin has in two former instances been led to attribute works to giotto which are not by that artist according to almost indisputable evidence: the instances i allude to are, one in speaking of the frescoes at avignon as by this artist, the other in attributing to him a picture now discovered to be by lorenzo monaco in the uffizi gallery. [illustration: florence. _showing giotto's campanile, and the "duomo."_] the campanile. from my window _au troisième_, in the piazza del duomo, the look-out this gray april afternoon cannot be called altogether gay. the sellers of flowers and oranges have withdrawn well into the shelter of their little awnings, through which the rain slowly trickles upon the bright mass of fruit; in the great square, the restless population of florence move aimlessly to and fro with cloaks muffling their faces; there are five close cabs stationed just beneath my window, the drivers of which sit on their respective boxes, beneath the shelter of four large green umbrellas and one blue one; behind them the baptistery lifts its conical roof by the side of the scaffolding which marks the restoration of the cathedral, and beyond and above everything the campanile[ ] in the square of the signoria raises its grim castellated head, dark and threatening. one building alone refuses to succumb to the influences of cloud and rain, refuses to lose its beauty or be deprived of its colours; its delicate traceries, and its shades of red, yellow, black, white, and green marble still standing out clearly perceptible through the heavy atmosphere. this is the building with the account of which closes the story of giotto's life; this is the last and greatest achievement of that great genius who joined to his skill of hand a heart tender enough to enter into every human weakness, and sympathies which extended to the animal and vegetable creation, and drew, with as much simple fidelity and honest enjoyment the dog watching the sheep and the oxen drawing the wain, as the sufferings of the saviour, or the faith of the disciples. in shape the campanile is a square tower without buttress of any kind, rising feet straight from the pavement of the piazza. it has four stories, but does not diminish towards the top, the only difference being that the windows increase in size, and in this way an appearance of superior lightness is gained by the upper stories. the style of the architecture is gothic in so far as it makes use of the pointed arch, but can hardly be described as such without giving a false impression to those who are accustomed to the gothic of the north; and who think of that style as one of varied, if somewhat gloomy, masses, of irregular arches, pinnacles, and buttresses; colourless save for the lichen that grows between the grey stones, and owing their beauty more to the unwearied inventiveness of their builders' fancy than to any symmetrical unity of design. it seems to me that this campanile, as does the cathedral, partakes much more of the lombardic element than the gothic, especially in its use of coloured marbles, which are here employed throughout the whole surface of the tower. one thing is certain, that whatever be the style of the architecture it has a character of its own which renders it a thing apart. in the course of many years' travel in every quarter of the globe, i have come upon but one building which had at all the same sort of power over the imagination which is possessed by this tower of giotto. that structure was the taj, at agra, which in its exquisiteness of finish, its delicacy of involved ornament, its perfectly unsullied whiteness, and above all, in its completeness of design, resembled the florentine campanile, though for beauty of proportion, no less than for that of colour, the indian tomb must yield precedence to the italian bell-tower. the taj, too, owes much of its effect to the beauty of its surroundings; to the stately entrance, the long paved approach of white marble, the great daïs of the same, on which the tomb stands, and last, not least, to thick rows of dark cypress trees which surround it to right and left, and toss their fretted spires towards the sky, a hundred feet below the great dome. the campanile has no such proud surroundings, no such adventitious helps to its beauty, but stands in simple strength, in the busiest square in florence, in the midst of the fruit-sellers and flower-sellers, where the street boys can play at hide-and-seek round its base, and wonder idly perhaps at the inlaid marbles. in either case the surroundings are such as one should be loth to change; for the tomb which marks the pride and love of an eastern monarch, the quiet inclosed garden, with its marble terraces and clustering groups of cypress; and for the campanile--which was the last gift of a great artist to his native city--the busy square, the thronging people, the hundred cries of florence sounding about its base, and fading into a faint scarce-heard murmur long ere they reach the great overhanging battlements, round whose massive sculpture resound only the whispering of the breeze and the fluttering of white-winged birds. the building is in four stories, the two lowest of which are entirely without windows, the first being adorned with bas-reliefs by giotto, and with statues by donatello and others. intermediate between the lowest series of bas-reliefs and the statues, are four series of bas-reliefs, each seven in number, representing the beatitudes, the works of mercy, the virtues, and the sacraments. the second and third stories have each two pointed-arched windows of the same size and design, each of which is divided in the usual gothic manner by a centre shaft. this shaft is of exquisite delicacy, in design a richly carved spiral, ending in a capital, from which spring two trefoiled arches. the sides of these windows are also enriched with a similar shaft, then a rich border of mosaic, inclosed again by a spiral, terminating in a second pointed arch which forms the outer border to the window, above which is a triangular canopy thickly carved. the whole of these windows, with the exception of the mosaic band, are executed in white marble, and surrounded by slabs of green serpentine and red porphyry. the fourth story has but one window, rather larger than both those in the second or third story, and divided by two spirals instead of one. it is noticeable that the sides and canopy of this highest aperture are comparatively simple in form and devoid of sculpture, which practically ceases with the third story. giotto was too thorough an artist to put elaborate sculpture at a height where it could not be seen, and preferred, instead of substituting coarser work, to depend for the beauty of this upper story, almost entirely upon the effect of boldly designed mosaic. instead, therefore, of a single narrow band of mosaic above the arch of the window, there are in the fourth story four comparatively wide ones, and above this the triangular space beneath the plain arch is filled with the same work, as are also the spaces beside and above the canopy. above the canopy is a still broader band of mosaic, on which the jagged arches of the battlements seem to rest; and above these again, a last band of mosaic is surmounted by a gallery of white marble about six feet high, pierced with quartre-foils along its whole length. it is wholly impossible to describe the delicacy and finish which the crest of this campanile possesses; the eye is led on from story to story, the mosaic being used more and more freely, the sculpture more sparingly, as the ascent is made, till at last the sculpture ends in one perfectly shaped window, and the mosaic blossoms forth like a flower into fullest beauty. gradually the massive base, with its dark bas-reliefs, changes into lighter sculpture, with backgrounds of blue marble, then into figures of the saints, prophets, and patriarchs, breaking the uniformity of which are two long vertical pierced panels of quartre-foils in circles, serving to give light to the interior, but not telling as windows, then two rich bands of mosaic carry on the effect up to the first range of windows. there is no difference between the first and second stories, except that the lower one has a rich band of sculpture beneath the window, which is replaced by plain marble in the second; but above the second, as i have said, the sculpture ceases to be the main feature, the mosaic takes its place, and succeeds in carrying out the unison of rich work and lightness of effect in a way which is as novel as it is beautiful. a few words must be said of the famous range of bas-reliefs, the lowest, all of which were designed by giotto, though he only lived to execute two. this series is twenty-eight in number, exclusive of those on the small half towers which form the corners of the campanile. they represent first the creation of man and woman, then the gradual development of knowledge, the gradual increase of man's power over nature, and discovery of his own capacities. of three of these, illustrations are given which may be relied upon for fidelity to the main points of the design, though they do little justice to the exquisite delicacy of the work. these bas-reliefs are in lozenge form, about eighteen inches in height and slightly less in breadth, and entirely surround the tower; nearly the whole of these were sculptured by luca della robbia and andrea pisano, to whom was entrusted the carrying out of giotto's designs. i shall not endeavour here to classify these reliefs according to their authorship for two reasons; one, that the carrying out of giotto's design, whether by andrea pisano, luca della robbia, or any other sculptor, is as to each special relief a pure matter of conjecture, and is besides little connected with the subject i have in hand; and the other reason is that this classification, though attempted with great ingenuity, and after close investigation by mr. ruskin, in his pamphlet on the "shepherd's tower," appears to me to have yielded no satisfactory results, but rather to have involved the subject in further obscurity, insomuch as it has led him to attribute various reliefs in the series to giotto's own hand, wholly on internal evidence, and that moreover in my judgment of a most unsatisfactory nature. i content myself, therefore, with observing that the three first frescoes of the series and the one representing the drunkenness of noah are almost certainly the work of a different hand to that of the rest of the bas-reliefs, and that that hand has probably modified giotto's original design to a considerable extent in the relative importance of the landscape portions of the composition. in these last designs of giotto's life, there is a curious recurrence to the ideas of his earliest time, a curious delight in depicting natural objects, and treating his subject from the humorously dramatic point of view; such as indeed he never altogether lost, but which lies very much in the shade in the later frescoes of this master. in fact, in some of these bas-reliefs, the comic element almost entirely predominates, as, for instance, in that which is entitled _logic_, in which two furious disputants stand face to face, the countenances inflamed with passion, one apparently being just on the eve of proceeding to the _argumentum ad hominem_, the other rapping an open book querulously with his finger. others show a depth of perception of character which perhaps would hardly have been expected from the artist, as in the relief of _arithmetic_, where a master is instructing two of his pupils in that gentle science. one of the boys is evidently intelligent enough, and bends happily over his book; the other is of a heavy bovine type, and is listening with a puzzled expression to the master's explanation. of all the designs, perhaps the finest are simply narrative, and of such, the three first of the series, the creation of adam, the creation of eve, and the relief called _the first arts_, are singularly beautiful. it should be noticed here that giotto's knowledge of, and skill in depicting, trees, made great advances from the time of the frescoes in the arena to that of these reliefs. no doubt something must be allowed for the genius of those who executed the reliefs; but if they were done from giotto's designs, and there is a concensus of opinion that such was the case, the advance is a very marked one. i am the more inclined to believe in this progress as in the drawing of the brambles, in the great fresco of _st. francis wedding poverty_ in the lower church of assisi, there are the elements of such leaf and bough drawing as are seen here; and even at assisi, the advance from the arena, in the drawing is very evident. especially fine in design, and as far as it goes, true to nature, is the drawing of the vine in the relief of _noah's drunkenness_, or as it is sometimes called, the _convention of wine_. the drawing of the leaves and grapes, and their disposition in the panel, is perhaps the finest piece of good sculptural design to be found at such an early date; and i should have selected this relief for reproduction, had it not been, owing to giotto's intense perception of the essential meaning of his subject, so unpleasing in the degradation of the drunken figure, as to unfit it for purposes of illustration. [illustration: the first arts. bas-relief designed by giotto. _on the campanile, florence._] our artist's sympathy with animal life, also revives in these works in its full force, and may be seen in many instances. look for example at the fresco of ploughing, where the driver is guiding the oxen by the simple, yet perfectly efficient plan, of twisting the tail round his wrist, and pulling it one way or the other, when he wishes to turn. or look at the puppy in the bas-relief of _shepherd life_, as he sits outside the patriarch's tent watching the sheep file past. what a sense of comical responsibility and mischief there is in his face, the quintessence, so to speak, of puppydom. or look, for another kind of truth, at the action of the horse in the fresco of _riding_, and the manner in which the rider is urging him with hand and voice at the same time, and the wind is blowing out his mantle behind. there is a curious circumstance with regard to this last design, which i discovered by chance a few weeks ago when walking in the sculptor's rooms of the british museum. that is, that there is a figure in one of the great friezes there, not that of the parthenon, but the next in beauty, that of the erectheum, which is almost identical in the figure of its man and his action with this of giotto's. the very lines of the cloak blowing out behind are almost identical, and the grasp of the rider's knees, the pose of his figure and the outstretched arm (what is left of it in the greek sculpture, it has been taken just below the elbow) are all exactly similar. the whole spirit of the greek frieze is as vivid in giotto's work as it is in the original sculpture, executed more than a thousand years before. it merely shows the extraordinary unity of all good art, that a mediæval italian, working purely from nature and life, should be able to arrive by himself, at a representation which has all the feeling of that which is acknowledged to be the finest art the world has ever seen. it must be noticed that where giotto falls short of his grecian predecessor, is chiefly in the nobility of the types both of man and horse. giotto's horse is going, and his man is urging him as certainly as in the frieze, but his horse is comparatively a common every-day cabhorse and is going in something of the same rocking-time manner we may see in hyde park any day of the week. and the man is like most of giotto's men, a very ordinary individual, somewhat of what hunting men call "a tailor," perhaps, though he is evidently accustomed to riding. the grecian sculptor has refined the types of both man and horse, and given the latter a grand sweeping action, such as would be promptly stopped by the police, if indulged in within the limits of the park. this difference, however, is a difference in aim, not a difference in feeling; the beauty of line, and the meaning of the scene are given with almost as much intensity by our artist as by the unknown sculptor who preceded him. most unfortunately i only found this similarity too late to permit me to make use of it in the book; for a drawing of these two figures side by side would have shown the likeness and dissimilarity more than pages of description. [illustration: riding. bas-relief designed by giotto. _on the campanile, florence._] many other bas-reliefs of this series are of great interest, but there is no space left for me to dwell upon them, nor are their merits other than those which i have spoken of so frequently throughout this book, of simple truth, of keen discernment, and of genuine feeling. at every step the work seems to say to us, "here is the representation of something true;" and the artist seems to say, "i have only tried to give you facts in the most beautiful arrangement consistent with truth; if you want more, or less, why, you must go elsewhere." and so it is that from the time when he draws the meditations of a puppy, to that in which he hangs his massive tower of coloured marble, between the earth and heaven, his work seems simple, grand, and sincere. he is not painting pictures to aggrandise himself, he is only lovingly recording what he knows, feels, or hopes. he is not above, nor below his work; his work is himself; it is himself, in joy, or sorrow, or curiosity, or surprise; in mirth, or indifference. he is human in his failings as well as in his greatness, and pretends to no greater merit, than that of doing good work in a straightforward manner. therefore we look back across the centuries with pleasure, to catch a glimpse of the homely figure whose dreams of beauty were mingled with tenderness and mirth, who lived in a coarse age, and made coarse jokes at odd times; but who walked hand in hand with dante, as great, if not as sublime a genius, and whose life, as we can read it in his paintings, was one of sympathy with all things living, and perfect devotion to his art. neither a philistine, nor a humbug, he seems to have trod the narrow path of art with secure footsteps, a good workman, as well as a great imaginative painter; a merry as well as an honest man. such are the men whom art wants nowadays, as it wanted them then, those who are men as well as artists, who will not dream in courtly isolation of beauties which never existed, but will go down into the markets, and the streets, where men sin and sorrow, or by the rivers and fields, where they toil and hope, and use their genius to brighten the facts of every day, to interpret the strange gleams of beauty, which fall here and there upon a weary world. i like to think that that campanile of "porphyry and jasper" was not raised by one who dwelt amidst cold dreams of architectural proportion and gave his life to the designing of geometrical ornament, but by the man who could feel the humour of the dog, the patience of the oxen, and love to have such things carved about the base of his tower; and as i sit here in its very shadow, it seems to me as if the most fitting meed of praise with which to conclude an essay on the old painter, is, not that he painted the purest and loveliest frescoes in the world; not that he raised above florence a tower, which has been the wonder and delight of all succeeding ages, but that he was the first to show by his work, that art was useful to man, not only as a teacher, but as a friend. footnotes: [ ] mr. ruskin has here been mistaken in asserting that this fresco has not suffered from restoration; a good opera glass will satisfy any one of this fact, as the restoration has not only been great in amount, but most execrable in the quality of its work. [ ] amongst those with which i am personally acquainted i hear on good authority that the panel picture known as the stefaneschi altarpiece, at rome, is of exceeding beauty. [ ] of the palazzo vecchio. index. page _annunciation._ by giotto, arena chapel, padua, " frescoes in, " note by mr. ruskin on, arnolfo di cambio, arnolfo di lapi (cambio?), assisi, lower church of, assisi, upper church of, byzantine architecture, campanile, the, at florence, cennini, christian architecture, cimabue, _coronation of the virgin._ by giotto, florence, santa croce, , , , " santa maria novella, , " campanile at, fresco painting, frescoes in arena chapel, padua, frescoes at assisi, , frescoes in santa croce, frescoes in santa maria novella, giotto, born at vespignano ( ?), " taken by cimabue to florence, " story of his o, " visits rome, " returns to florence, " paints portrait of dante, " marries ciuta di lapo, " frescoes in the arena chapel at padua, " paints a buckler, " visits assisi, " frescoes in santa croce, florence, " designs the campanile, florence, " dies at florence in , " latest works of, giunta of pisa, , greek art, guido of siena, illuminated manuscripts, lombardic architecture, _madonna enthroned._ by cimabue, _madonna enthroned._ by giotto, , mosaics, , _navicella_, the, , padua, arena chapel at, painting, chief function of, pisa, campo santo of, pisano, andrea, pisano, niccolo, robbia, luca della, ruskin, john, , scrovegni chapel at padua, venice, saint mark's, , , the end. r. clay, sons, and taylor, printers. bread street hill, e.c. _published in monthly volumes._ a new series of illustrated biographies of the great artists. the increasing love of art in our own country and the great desire for knowledge in all matters connected with the literature of art and the lives of the great masters called for the publication of the very important information which modern research has gathered together on every side, and which has now attracted the attention of all students of art-biography both at home and abroad. the intention of the projectors of this series has been to produce, in an easily accessible form and at a price within reach of every one, the results of the recent investigations which have been made by many well-known critics, especially those of germany and the netherlands. dr. woltmann lately published a new edition of his great work on hans holbein; professor carl lemcke on rubens and on van dyck; dr. anton springer on raphael and michelangelo; herr vosmaer has issued a revision of his celebrated treatise on rembrandt, and herr thausing an elaborate life of albrecht dÜrer. these works correct old statements that have been proved to be untrue, impart new facts, and add materially to our interest in the histories of the painters. many of the italian art-critics have likewise recently issued treatises on the great artists of their own country; and in france scarcely a week passes without the appearance of some new contribution to the history of art. all this matter has been carefully studied. the series is issued in the form of handbooks. each work contains a monograph of a great artist--or a brief history of a group of artists of one school--a portrait of the master, and as many examples of his art as could be readily procured. cheapness of price having been especially aimed at, the introduction of expensive new engravings was thought to be unadvisable. arrangements were therefore made with the proprietors of the most important art publications on the continent for the reproduction of many of their costly woodcuts. these have been printed with great care, and each biography of the series has been illustrated with at least twelve to twenty full-page engravings. the price of each volume is _s._ _d._ _the following biographies are now ready:_-- _italian painters._ =leonardo da vinci.= by dr. j. paul richter, author of "die mosaiken von ravenna." with illustrations. from recent researches. =michelangelo.= by charles clÉment, author of "michel-ange, léonard et raphael." with many large engravings. =raphael.= from the text of j. d. passavant. by n. d'anvers, author of "an elementary history of art." with engravings. =titian.= from the most recent researches. by richard ford heath, m.a., hertford college, oxford. with engravings. =tintoretto.= from investigations at venice. by w. roscoe osler, author of occasional essays on art. with many engravings. _german, flemish, dutch, &c._ =holbein.= from the text of dr. a. woltmann. by joseph cundall, author of "life and genius of rembrandt." with engravings. =the little masters of germany.= by w. b. scott, author of "lectures on fine arts." with engravings. *** an _edition de luxe_, containing extra plates from rare engravings in the british museum, and bound in roxburgh style, may be had, price _s._ _d._ =rembrandt.= from the text of c. vosmaer. by j. w. mollett, b.a., officier de l'instruction publique (france). with engravings. =rubens.= from recent authorities. by c. w. kett, m.a., hertford college, oxford. with engravings. =van dyck and hals.= from recent authorities. by percy r. head, lincoln college, oxford. with engravings. =figure painters of holland.= by lord ronald gower, trustee of national portrait gallery. with engravings. =vernet & delaroche.= from charles blanc. by j. ruutz rees, author of various essays on art. with engravings. _english painters._ =hogarth.= from recent researches. by austin dobson, author of "vignettes in rhyme." with illustrations. =reynolds.= from the most recent authorities. by f. s. pulling, m.a., exeter college, oxford. with illustrations. =turner.= from recent investigations. by cosmo monkhouse, author of "studies of sir e. landseer." with engravings. =landseer.= a memoir, by frederick g. stephens, author of "flemish relics," &c. with many illustrations. _the volumes preparing for early publication are:_-- =fra angelico and the early painters of florence.= by catherine phillimore. with illustrations. =fra bartolommeo and albertinelli.= by leader scott, author of "a nook in the apennines." with illustrations. =velazquez.= by edwin stowe, m.a., brasenose college, oxford. with many illustrations. =gainsborough and constable=. by g. m. brock-arnold, hertford college, oxford. with many illustrations. =albrecht dÜrer.= from recent authorities. by r. f. heath, m.a., hertford college, oxford. with many illustrations. =van eyck and the flemish school.= by mary heaton, author of "the history of albrecht dürer." with many illustrations. =giotto.= by harry quilter, m.a., trinity col., cambridge. from recent investigations at padua and assisi. with many illustrations. =cornelius and overbeck.= by j. beavington atkinson, author of "the schools of modern art in germany." notices of the press. . from a review in the _spectator_, july , . "it is high time that some thorough and general acquaintance with the works of these mighty painters should be spread abroad, and it is also curious to think how long their names have occupied sacred niches in the world's heart, without the presence of much popular knowledge about the collective work of their lives.... if the present series of biographies, which seems to be most thoroughly and tastefully edited, succeeds in responding to the wants of modest, if ardent, art-knowledge, its aim will be accomplished." . reprinted from the _times_, january , . "few things in the way of small books upon great subjects, avowedly cheap and necessarily brief, have been hitherto so well done as these biographies of the great masters in painting. they afford just what a very large proportion of readers in these hurrying times wish to be provided with--a sort of concentrated food for the mind. the liebigs of literature, however, especially in that of the fine arts, need no small amount of critical acumen, much experience in the art of system, and something of the bee-like instinct that guesses rightly where the honey lies. the mere 'boiling down' of great books will not result in giving us a good little book, unless the essence is properly diluted and set before us in a form that can be readily assimilated, so to speak, and not in an indigestible lump of details. the writers of these biographies have, on the whole, succeeded in giving an excellent _aperçu_ of the painters and their works, and better where they have adhered to the lives written by acknowledged specialists--such as m. vosmaer for rembrandt, passavant for raphael, and dr. woltmann for holbein. the life of holbein is by the editor, with whom the idea of such a series originated, and to whose great experience is to be attributed the very valuable copies of all the important pictures contained in the different biographies. these have been selected with great taste and judgment, and being taken generally from less well-known works by the masters, they enhance the interest and add much to the practical utility of the books. the chronological lists of the works of the masters are also very useful additions." . from _la chronique des arts_, march , . "a un prix d'extrême bon marché, francs environ, en petits volumes joliment cartonnés, et ornés de quinze à vingt planches, la maison sampson low, marston et cie., à londres, a entrepris de publier une série de biographies des grands artistes, résumées d'après les travaux les plus récents et les plus estimés. une bibliographie, une liste des gravures exécutées par ou d'après l'artiste, une liste de ses oeuvres ou de leurs prix; enfin, un index accompagnant ces résumés confiés à des écrivains distingués versés dans l'histoire de l'art. ont paru ou sont en préparation dans cette série de notices: titien, rembrandt, raphaël, van dyck et hals, holbein, tintoret, turner, rubens, michel-ange, léonard, giotto, gainsborough, velazquez, pérugin, reynolds, landseer, delaroche et vernet, les petit maîtres, les peintres de figure en hollande. "peut-être la maison sampson low, marston et cie, devrait-elle tenter une édition française de ces jolis et intéressants petits volumes sérieusement étudiés, dont la brièveté substantielle et le bon marché deviennent une bénédiction par ce temps d'énormes publications à prix non moins énormes."--duranty. * * * * * sampson low, marston, searle & rivington, crown buildings, . fleet street. * * * * * transcriber's note: inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. obvious typographical errors have been corrected. the errata list has been corrected in this text. transcriber's note: the oe-ligature is represented by [oe] (example: ph[oe]nix). masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare boucher - * * * * * "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. bellini. george hay. botticelli. henry b. binns. boucher. c. haldane macfall. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. chardin. paul g. konody. constable. c. lewis hind. corot. sidney allnutt. da vinci. m. w. brockwell. delacroix. paul g. konody. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. fra angelico. james mason. fra filippo lippi. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. gainsborough. max rothschild. greuze. alys eyre macklin. hogarth. c. lewis hind. holbein. s. l. bensusan. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. ingres. a. j. finberg. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. le brun, vigÉe. c. haldane macfall. leighton. a. lys baldry. luini. james mason. mantegna. mrs. arthur bell. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. millais. a. lys baldry. millet. percy m. turner. murillo. s. l. bensusan. perugino. selwyn brinton. raeburn. james l. caw. raphael. paul g. konody. rembrandt. josef israels. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. romney. c. lewis hind. rossetti. lucien pissarro. rubens. s. l. bensusan. sargent. t. martin wood. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. titian. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. van dyck. percy m. turner. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. watteau. c. lewis hind. watts. w. loftus hare. whistler. t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--madame de pompadour. frontispiece (in the national gallery of scotland) edinburgh is fortunate in possessing this, one of the world-famous examples of boucher's exquisite portraiture. he painted with rare charm more than once this wonderful woman, "the king's morsel," jeanne poisson, madame lenormant d'etioles, who became the notorious marquise de pompadour. he gives us perhaps too dainty a butterfly; for, of a truth, this woman's prettiness masked an iron nerve, an unflinching courage, and a capacity and talents which must have reached to fame in any human being whose frame they illumined. nor is there hint of those hard qualities that robbed her of mercy, nor allowed her to bend an ear to suffering.] boucher by haldane macfall illustrated with eight reproductions in colour london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. the small beginnings ii. the student iii. venus and marriage iv. le monde qui s'amuse v. the châteauroux vi. the pompadour vii. the end list of illustrations plate i. madame de pompadour frontispiece in the national gallery of scotland page ii. madame de pompadour in the wallace collection iii. diana leaving the bath in the louvre iv. pastorale in the louvre v. pastorale in the louvre vi. portrait of a young woman in the louvre vii. interieur de famille in the louvre viii. la modiste in the wallace collection i the small beginnings the year after good queen anne came to rule over us, louis the fourteenth being still king of france, on an autumn day in the october of , that saw the trees of paris shedding their parched leaves as a carpet to the feet of the much-bewigged dandified folk who stepped it swaggeringly down the walks of the palais royal, swinging long canes, and strutting along the shaded promenades of the more fashionable places of the city, there stood in the vestry of the parish church of saint jean-en-grève a little group of the small burgess folk, gathered about a little infant, whilst the tipstaff to the king's palace, one françois prévost, signed solemnly as witness to the birth-certificate and as acknowledged godfather to the aforesaid morsel of humanity, which, as the certificate badly set forth in black and white for ever, was henceforth to be known for good or ill as françois boucher, first-born son, on the th of september, four days past, of the tipstaff's friend, nicolas boucher, "maître-peintre," who stood hard by, and of his wife elizabeth lemesle. the worthy tipstaff's writing done, he bowed in the best court manner to mademoiselle boullenois, daughter to yonder consequential fellow, the law officer from the police court; and handed her the inked quill to bear witness in her turn as godmother. [illustration: plate ii.--madame de pompadour (in the wallace collection) here we have one of the handsomest portraits of his great patron and friend, the notorious marquise de pompadour, painted by boucher at the most brilliant phase of his art. it is a glittering achievement. the figure is superbly placed in its surroundings. the play of limpid light upon the beautifully gowned woman, of which boucher was such a master-painter, proves it to be of his best period. the pompadour stands, wreathed in smiles, as the mistress of a great domain; and masks as usual behind her pretty ways all hint of that calculating hand and remorseless will that sent her enemies without a sigh to the bastille or banishment or worse--she who was past-mistress of the art of the _lettre de cachet_.] the sand being flung upon the wet ink, and the blotting done, there was exchange of compliments in the stilted manner of good-fellowship of the day between priest and party--tapping of snuff-boxes and taking of snuff, with more than a little gossip of the court and some shaking of heads, and under-lips solemnly thrust forth; the gossip is not without authority and weight, for is not godfather prévost tipstaff to the king's majesty, therefore in the whirl of things? the child, indeed, was born into a paris agog with stirring affairs. well might heads be shaken solemnly. the french arms were knowing defeat. the englishman, marlborough, was flinging back the french armies wheresoever he gave them battle. europe was one great armed camp. france was suffering terrible blood-letting. defeat came on defeat. these were sorry times. on land all went wrong. good generals were set aside; intriguing good-for-nothings led the veterans into disaster. but there was still france upon the high seas. then the women folk, bored with high politics, would draw back the talk to the infant françois, and there would be genial banter about the morsel; for was he not a saturday child, therefore bound to be a bit of a scamp! and so, off to monsieur boucher's modest little home in the rue de verrerie to a glass of wine and further compliments and banter, and more vague surmises as to what lay upon the knees of the gods for little françois boucher. ii the student yes, the sun of the grand monarque was setting. louis quatorze was nearing the end of his long lease of splendour. our little françois was not a month old when admiral rooke whipped château-renaud off the high seas, destroying the french and spanish fleets in vigo bay, and carrying off some millions of pieces of eight from the galleons as treasure. the child's first year saw the english troopers ride down the french at blenheim--a day that made "malbrook" a name of dread to every french child, a name to frighten into good behaviour. to the little fellow's home came the horror-spoken talk of ramilies; then of oudenarde; then of lille--to his six-year-old ears the terrible news of malplaquet. but there was paris a-bellringing in his ears at seven; for there was born to the king's grandson a sickly child that was to succeed him as louis the fifteenth. and françois boucher is one day to step from his modest home and stand nearer at this child's side than he thinks. the boy boucher, at sturdy twelve, would recall the death of the old king in his lonely last years, and the setting upon the ancient throne of france of the five-year-old child as louis quinze--a comely little fellow--with orleans as regent. young françois boucher was to spend his youth and grow up to manhood in a france that lay under the regency of this dissolute, brilliant orleans. nicolas boucher, the father, seems to have been an obscure, honest fellow, given to the _trade_ of art, and that too in mediocre fashion enough, designing embroideries, covers for chairs, and the like--"an inferior designer, little favoured by fortune," runs the recorded verdict of his day. but he had the virtue of recognising his mediocrity, and the desire to save his son from the sordid cares of mediocre artistry; since, having himself given the boy his schooling with pencil and brush, and brought the lad up in an atmosphere of art and in the company of artists, he had the astuteness to send him to the studio of lemoyne, a really great painter and rapidly becoming famous--he who painted the ceilings of versailles with gods and goddesses in handsome fashion. lemoyne was a well-chosen master for the promising youth of seventeen. he had founded his art upon that of correggio and veronese, had rid himself of hard academic tendencies, and was painting in a sound french fashion. the youth boucher, with the quick and astounding gift, that he displayed all through his life, of rapidly making his own what he wanted to acquire, picked up from lemoyne at once a french way of stating what he desired to state, in a large, broad manner, without having to go through the long years of drudgery to italian models of style which was then the only schooling for an artist--was therefore enabled to free himself from the equally long years that it would have taken him to rid the italian style from his artistry. in short, the youth of seventeen made lemoyne's art his own in a few weeks; and, on the eve of manhood, he so rivalled his master in accomplishment that it is dangerous to attribute a picture of this time to the master or the pupil without most careful evidence. yet the youth vowed that he was but three months with lemoyne, who, said he, took scant interest in his pupils. but it must be remembered that boucher was a prodigious worker, with a passionate love for his work that lasted until death took the brush from his fingers, and that he had a quick and alert mind and hand, free from the hesitances of a student, and always daring in experiment. to wish to achieve a thing, for boucher, was to set him to its achievement. he rested neither night nor day until he mastered that which he had set out to do. on the day he left lemoyne's studio he stepped out of it a finished artist, a sound painter, fully equipped with all the craftmanship, trade-secrets, and tricks of thumb that it had taken his master his life to learn--and a facile copyist of his style and handling. it was the sincerest form of flattery; and boucher, to the end of his days, held the art of lemoyne in the greatest reverence--as is proved by his answer, when at the very height of his fame, to one who asked him to complete a picture by his master: "such works are to me sacred vessels," said he--"i should dread to profane them by touching them." lemoyne's admiration for his pupil was not lacking in return. the youth painted, whilst with his master, a picture of a "judgment of susanna," before which lemoyne stood astounded, then burst into prophecy of boucher achieving greatness in the years to come. from lemoyne's studio, the young fellow went to live with "père cars," the engraver, whose son, laurent, was a friend of the youth, and who engaged him to design the drawings for his engravers, allowing him in return his food, lodging, and sixty livres (double-florins) a month--some twelve pounds. boucher accounted his fortune made. the cheery youth went at his work with energy and enthusiasm, blithely setting his hand to anything that was wanted of him, bringing charm and invention to all he did--tailpieces, frontispieces, emblems, coats of arms, freemason's certificates, first-communion cards, initial letters. he was soon set to work upon important designs for engravings. he searched out the publishers of books, and let no chance escape of working for them. thus and otherwise he filled his scanty purse--that needed filling, for he was quick at its emptying, being of a free hand and generous disposition. and hard as he worked, so did he play. work and pleasure were his joy in life. and all the time he was taking part in the students' competitions for the academy. it was in his nineteenth year that, in this same paris, in the house of one of its rich families, was born a little girl-child who was to come into boucher's life in after years. the father, a financial fellow, one poisson, was a man of shady repute; indeed he was under banishment for mis-handling the public moneys at the time of the birth of the little girl-child, christened jeanne antoinette poisson--destined to be the jane of the scurrilous street songs of the years to come. but the careless student knew little of it as yet, nor that destiny had put into the pretty child's cradle the sceptre and diadem of france as plaything. boucher, on the eve of manhood, took as little heed of the child's coming as did the thirteen-year-old lad who sat upon the throne, and who, in little jane poisson's first year, was declared to be of man's estate and ruler of france, no longer requiring regent orleans to govern for him. it was in this his nineteenth year that boucher took the first prize at the academy with his picture of "evilmerodach, son and successor of nebuchadnezzar, delivering joachin from chains, in which his father had for a long time held him." this success set the collectors buying pictures by the brilliant youngster. but françois boucher needs no paying orders to make him work--he paints for the love of the thing, declares that his "studio is his church," and seeks to display his art and spread the repute of it abroad. and his fame grows apace, if at a cost. nay, he courts fame even to the extent of hanging his pictures upon the tapestries and carpets and such like draperies that the police oblige the citizens to hang out from their houses along the place dauphin and the pont-neuf during the procession of the fête-dieu--called the _exposition de la jeunesse_. there was a thing happened about this time that was to be of large significance to the young fellow's craftsmanship. watteau had lately died, his eager will burning out the poor stricken body. his friend de julienne, anxious to publish a book to watteau's memory, strolled into the engraving-studio behind "père cars'" shop, where boucher and his comrade, laurent cars, were wont to spend a part of their time; and he commissioned boucher to engrave of the plates after the dead master. watteau's essentially french influence was the impulse above all others to thrust forward the development of boucher's genius along its right path, and sent his art towards its great goal. the business was a rare delight to the young artist, and in the doing of it he learnt many lessons which added greatly to the enhancement of his style; whilst the payment of twenty-four livres (double-florins) a day still further increased his delight and contentment. [illustration: plate iii.--diana leaving the bath (in the louvre) the "diana leaving the bath with one of her companions" is amongst the most beautiful of those so-called venus-pieces that boucher created and painted in large numbers with decorative intent. it shows his art at its most exquisite stage, when his painting of flesh was at its most luminous and subtle achievement; and his treatment of the human figure in relation to the landscape in which it was placed, at its most perfect balance.] he completed the series with his wonted fiery zeal and rapid facility, and thus and otherwise, hotly pursuing his study of nature and his art, he arrived at the moment when his education should receive its inevitable finishing state in the italian tour; so to rome he went with carle van loo and his two nephews, françois and louis van loo. of boucher's wander-years in italy little is known. he seems to have shown scant respect for the accepted standards of the schools and the critics, to have found michael angelo "contorted," raphael "insipid," and carrache "gloomy." he, in fact, was drawn only to such artists as were to his taste, and he had the courage to say so. however, whether he were kept idle from ill-health or not; whether his stay were short or not, he appears again in paris in three years--suspiciously like the three years' conventional italian study of a first-prize winner of the academy--with a large number of religious pictures to his credit--pictures that were hailed by the academicians and critics alike for their beauty, their force, and their virility--pictures which, perhaps fortunately for boucher's repute, have vanished, or hang in galleries under other names. here we see boucher grimly putting aside his own taste and aims in art, and doggedly bending his will and hand to a prodigious effort to win the reputation and standing of a "serious painter," without which he could not hope to attain academic honours. he won them; for, in this his twenty-eighth year, on his return to paris, he was "nominated" to the academy. he had but to present an historical painting in order to take his seat as an academician. iii venus and marriage back in his beloved paris again; thrilled by the atmosphere and gaiety of its merry life; in the full vigour of manhood on the eve of his thirties; amongst congenial friends; done with the drudgery of winning to academic honour, boucher saw that the public were not falling over each other to purchase religious or historic pictures; he straightway turned his back upon these things, and on the edge of his thirtieth year he gave to the world his "marriage of the children of god with the children of men," in which venus is the avowed mistress of his adoration. it caused a fine stir, and greatly increased his repute. in this picture he ends his italian period and strikes his own personal note. both this and the "venus asking arms for aeneas from vulcan," together with the "birth of adonis" and the "death of adonis," of about the same period, still show boucher strongly under the influence of his master, lemoyne. indeed, the "birth" and "death of adonis," their record lost during the scuffle and confusion of the revolution, for long hung side by side as pictures by lemoyne, until, being cleaned about , boucher's initials were discovered upon them, and, contemporary engravings being hunted up, still further proved their origin. but in the venus that now figures in all his works there is that flesh-painting of the nude, and that rosy touch upon the flesh of the female figure, that are a far more certain signature of boucher's handiwork than any written name. unfortunately the salons were closed during boucher's earlier years until he was thirty-four, and the record of his work during these years is difficult to follow; but with his service to venus his personal career begins, and the stream of his venus-pieces steadily flows from his hands. he came to her service rid of all prentice essays in craftsmanship, a finished and consummate artist. he found in his subject a goddess to whom he could devote his great and splendid gifts. he painted her dainty body with a radiant delight and a rare colour-sense such as france had never before seen or uttered. he remains to this day the first painter of the subtle, delicate, and elusive thing that is femininity; he caught her allure, her charm, as he was to catch the fragrance and charm of children and flowers; and he set the statement of these things upon canvas as they have never been uttered. the whole of his life long, boucher gave himself up with equal and passionate devotion to work and to pleasure--working at his easel often twelve hours of his day without losing, to the end when the brush fell from his dead fingers, his blitheness of heart or his generosity of act, and without weakening the pleasure-loving desires of his gadding spirit. out of his splendid toil he made the means to indulge his tastes for pleasure; and the gratifying of his tastes in turn renewed and created the ideas that made the subjects of his artistry. he brought to all he did a joy in the doing that made of his vast labour one long pleasure--of his pleasures a riot of industry. he played as he toiled, scarce knowing which was play and which toil. the gossip of his love-affairs makes no romantic story--they were but commonplace ecstasies with unknown frail women. but hard as he worked and lived and played, he found time to get himself married in his thirtieth year to pretty seventeen-year-old marie jeanne buseau, a little parisian--and for love of her, so far as he understood the business; for she brought him no dowry. the young couple settled down for the next ten years in the rue saint-thomas-du-louvre. here boucher lived through his thirties. madame was a pretty creature, if we had but latour's pastel portrait alone to prove it. but the pretty features were the crown to as pretty a body, for she sat often to her lord; and it is clear from his correspondence with a friend, bachaumont, that she is the psyche of his illustrated fable--and psyche runs much to the altogether. marriage, however, was not likely to imprison boucher's gadding eyes; and it did not. madame boucher seems to have had as frail a heart, and avoided strife by amusing herself, amongst others, with the swedish ambassador, count de tessin, who, to gain access to the lady, commissioned boucher to do the watteau-like illustrations to _acajou_--a dull affair. boucher's pretty wife, herself no mean artist, worked in his studio, and painted several smaller canvases after his pictures, gaining some fame as a miniaturist and engraver. nor did marriage turn boucher from his art. two years were gone by since his nomination to the academy; he had now to paint the formal historical picture and present it in order to take his seat as academician; and it was in this his thirtieth year that he painted and won his academic rank with the "renauld et armide" now at the louvre. here he sufficiently subordinated his own style to the academic to ensure success; and the work was hailed by academicians and critics, including diderot, with enthusiasm. but even here we have his cupids peeping round the mythologic event; and armide herself has pretty french lips that knew no greek. once secure of his position, he straightway flung the last remnants of the academic style out of his studio door; and it is a grim comment on criticism that it was just exactly in proportion as he developed his own personal genius and uttered the france of his day, that he was attacked; whilst the stilted things that he knew were third-rate, and which he wholly rejected from henceforth, were exactly the things that were praised! his election to the academy, and the enthusiasm over the picture that won him his seat thereat, brought his name before the young king; the following year he received his first order from the court whose painter he was destined to become. the decorations in the queen's apartments were gloomy and had grown black; and he painted in their stead the "charity," "abundance," "fidelity," and "prudence" still there to be seen. indeed, with his gay vision, his pretty habit of culling only the flowers from the garden of life, and his quickness to set down the pleasing thing in every prospect, boucher was the destined painter of a court weary of pomposity and the pose of the mock-heroic, and which was wholly giving itself up to pleasure and the elegances. but neither his new dignity of academician nor the royal favour, kept him from the bookshops; and he illustrated, with rare beauty and a charm worthy of watteau, the great edition of the _works of molière_ in his thirty-first year. it is true that he made as free with molière's world as with the gods of olympus; he peoples the plays with characters of his own day, arrayed in the dress and habit of that day, and moving in surroundings that he saw about him. [illustration: plate iv.--pastorale (in the louvre) the "pastorale," painted a few years after the famous "diana," also belongs to boucher's greatest years, and is another of the glories of the louvre. it is one of his masterpieces in the realm of the pastoral which he also created--those pleasant landscapes of france in which he places handsomely dressed dresden shepherds and shepherdesses playing at a dandified comedy of the simple life.] iv le monde qui s'amuse the homely had come upon the town out of holland, painted with most consummate artistry by chardin, and was soon in the vogue. boucher had a quick eye for the mode. and he straightway set himself to the painting of "la belle cuisinière." still-life and homely subjects need an accuracy of realism and a dutch sense of these things, a sense of sincerity and an appreciation of the dignity of the work-a-day life of the people, in which boucher was wholly lacking. above all, it calls for a sense of "character," which, in boucher, was always weak. it was a sneer against him that his very broomsticks called for pompons and ribbons--and there was more than a little truth in the spite. he is more concerned with the accident of the kissing of a kitchen-maid than with the kitchen's habit. he cannot even peep into a scullery without dragging in venus by the skirts, and tricking her out in a property-wardrobe of a scullery-wench, in which the girl is clearly but acting the part. however, these passing vogues and experiments in different methods were only gay asides--he was working the while upon his own subjects; and, to the display by its several members ordered by the academy, he sent four little paintings of fauns and cupids which won him the honour of election as deputy-professor. his brain and hand were very busy, and he turns from one thing to another with amazing facility, bringing distinction to all that he does. but he painted about this time two pictures of infants, "l'amour oiseleur" and "l'amour moissonneur," which were the beginning of that host of cupids that he let fly from his studio; they frolic across his canvases and join the retinue of venus, peeping out from clouds, over waves, round curtains, painted with a perfection that has never been surpassed in the portrayal of infants. he painted their round limbs, their lusty life, their delightful awkwardnesses, their jolly fat grace, their naïve surprise at life and glory in it, as they had never been painted before, and have never been painted since. he also gave forth in this his thirty-third year a "pastoral" and a "shepherd and shepherdess in conversation," with sheep about them and in a pleasant landscape, which were his first essays in the style that he created and which made him famous. his friend meissonnier, the inventor of the rococo, stood godfather to boucher's first-born son in the may of . from the very beginning boucher seems to have been engraved. and these engravings, done by the best gravers of his day, greatly extended his reputation and popularised him; he fully realised the value of the advertisement as well as his profits from it. before his thirty-third year was run out he published his well-known "cries of paris." boucher's description of them, "studies from the low classes," holds the key to that something of failure to realise the dramatic verities that is over all; it gives also the attitude of the france that he knew towards the france that he did not, and could not understand. he created that dainty, pleasant atmosphere that comes floating up to the windows on a fresh morning in paris from the musical cries of the street vendors; but of the deeper significance of the street-sellers--of the miserable accent in their life, of their weary toil, of the dignity of their labour--he knew nothing; his brush could not refrain from making elegance and fine manners peep from behind the street-porter's fustian or the milkmaid's skirt. but his thirty-third year was to contain a more far-reaching significance even than the creation of his cupid-pieces and pastorals. the "cries of paris" were scarce printed when boucher's illustration to "don quixote" appeared--"sancho pursued by the servants of the duke." this design was to have far-reaching results that boucher little suspected. the painter oudry had been called to the conduct of the great tapestry looms at beauvais a couple of years before; and in his efforts to furnish the looms with good designs, he now called boucher to his aid, whose original and fresh style, colour, and arrangement, together with his personal vision, and the enthusiasm and zeal with which he threw himself into the work, at once increased the reputation and the products of the famous looms. this large designing for the tapestries was, in return, of immense value to the development of the genius of the man, enlarging his breadth of style and giving scope to that great decorative sense that was his superb gift. thenceforth he was destined to play a supreme part in the history of the world-famed factories. he now produced painting after painting for the beauvais looms. [illustration: plate v.--pastorale (in the louvre) this pastoral, known as "the shepherd and shepherdesses," is another canvas painted at the height of boucher's career, in which dandified shepherds and shepherdesses seem to have stepped out of the opera in order to play their light comedy of beribboned simple living in a pleasant landscape of france. it was of these pastorals a waggish critic complained that the shepherds and shepherdesses look as if they must soon be off to the opera again. but what the carpers omitted was to praise the painting of the pleasant lands of france in which these dainty comedies were set. boucher has never received his meed of honour as one of the finest landscape-painters of eighteenth-century france.] life is now one long triumph for boucher, only disturbed in this year by the sad news of the suicide of his old master, lemoyne. it was in this, boucher's thirty-fourth year, that the salon was opened for the first time since boucher's infancy, and he contributed several canvases to it. rigaud, the old academician, now close upon eighty, straggling through the great galleries, might well blink and gasp at the change that had come over french art since he last exhibited there, thirty-three years gone by; but his scoffs and regrets held no terrors for the younger academicians gathered about. he stood in a new world. a new generation was in possession. the grand manner, the severe etiquette, formal mock-heroics, and solemn pomposity of louis the fourteenth were vanished, and the agreeable and the pleasant make-believe of louis the fifteenth reigned in their stead. old rigaud might blink indeed! just as the imposing and stilted etiquette of the reception-room had given place to the easy manners and airy etiquette of the dainty boudoir, so had light chatter and gay wit and the quick repartee usurped the heavy splendours of a consequential age. france, weary of an eternal pose of the grand manner, was seeking change in joyousness and amusement. gallantry and gaiety were become the object of the ambition of a dandified and elegant day. france became a coquette; dressed herself as a porcelain shepherdess; and with beribboned crook and sheep, seeking pleasant prospects to stroll through, gave herself to dalliance--her powder-puff and patch-box and fan a serious part of her unseriousness. v the chÂteauroux at thirty-five boucher has arrived. he is in the vogue; in favour at court--as well as in the fashion. in his three years from taking his seat at the academy to the opening of the first salon he has created a new and original style--his cupid pieces, his pastorals, his venus-pieces, his tapestry. boucher's kingdom lay in the realm of the decorative painter--and he has found it. torn from the surroundings for which he designed them, as part and parcel of the general scheme, his pictures are as out of place as an italian altarpiece in an english dining-room, yet they suffer less. several may still be seen, as he set them up in frames of his own planning, as overdoors in the palace of the soubise, now given up to the national archives. the ghost of the prince of soubise, who commissioned them, may haunt his palace, but his kin know the place no longer. the overdoors wrought by boucher's skill look down now on the nation's collection of historic documents. the "three graces enchaining love," the fine pastoral of "the cage," and the pastoral of the "shepherd placing a rose in his shepherdess's hair," were to see a mightier change than the usurpation of louis the fourteenth's pompous age by the elegant years of louis the fifteenth. but this was not as yet. here at least we see boucher's art rid of all outside influences, and at the full tide of creation; here we have the inimitable lightness of touch, the figures and landscape bathed in the airy volume of atmosphere. he seems at this time to have played with pastel, due probably to his friendship with latour, who sent a portrait of boucher's wife to this salon. boucher showed in the use of chalks the artistry and skill that were always at his command. he also was putting to its full use his innate sense of landscape, raising to high achievement that astonishing balance of landscape and figures in his design--a balance that has never been surpassed; his figures never override his landscape; his landscape never overpowers his figures. his earnest counsels to his pupils and his constant deploring of the lack of the landscape art in france prove the great stress he laid upon it. the designing of a frontispiece for the catalogue of a personal friend, one gersaint, a merchant of oriental wares, started boucher in his thirty-third year upon that series of chinese pictures and tapestries known as the "chinoiseries," in which he frittered away only too many precious hours, for they were received with great favour by the public. the paintings of chinese subjects designed for the looms of beauvais are still to be seen at besançon. but busy as were his brain and hand in the exercise of his wide and versatile gifts, pouring out "chinoiseries," illustrations for books, tapestries on a large scale, landscapes, models for the gilt bronze decorations of porcelain vases, scheming handsome frames for his pictures, designing furniture and fans--boucher was true, above all, "to his goddess," and painted the famed "birth of venus," which, thanks to the swedish ambassador's fondness for madame boucher, now hangs at stockholm; our amorous count de tessin, to be just, seems to have had a rare flair for the artistic--besides artist's wives. it was on the th of april in , the last year of his thirties, that the royal favour was marked by the grant of a pension of livres (double florins) to boucher with promise of early benefits to follow. two years afterwards it was raised to livres. this was the year that he painted the beautiful canvas of "diana leaving the bath with one of her companions," now at the louvre. it was also the year that saw his landscape, the "hamlet of issé" at the salon. this "hameau d'issé" was to be enlarged for the opera, proving him to be decorator there, where he was arranging waterfalls, cascades, and the rest of the pretty business, without staying his hand from his art. at forty boucher has come into his kingdom. the ten years of these forties were to be a vast triumph for him. he was to produce masterpiece after masterpiece. his art had caught the taste of the day. he was at the height of his powers. he had done great things--he was to do greater. during these ten years of his forties he poured forth vivid and glowing works of sustained power and originality. we have a picture of him as he was in the flesh at this time--the pastel portrait by lundberg, now at the louvre--a gay, somewhat dissipated, handsomely dressed dandy of the time, smiling out of his careless day, the debonnair man of fashion, the laughing eyes showing signs of the night carousals, which were the rest from the prodigious toil of this vital and forthright spirit. it was in this our artist's fortieth year that the gifted old cardinal fleury, who had guided the fortunes of france with rare skill, died, broken by his ninety years and the blunders of the disastrous war that he had so strenuously opposed; and louis, essaying the strut of kingship, became king by act. his indolent character, unequal to the mighty business, his indeterminate will fretted by the set of quarrelling and intriguing rogues that he gathered about him as his ministers, he fell into the habit that became his thenceforth, the only thing to which he paid the tribute of constancy--he ruled france from behind pretty petticoats. he had early shown the adulterous blood of his great-grandfather; two, if not three, of five sisters of the noble and historic house of de nesle had yielded to his gadding fancy; the youngest now ousted her sister de mailly from the king's favour, was publicly acknowledged as the king's mistress, and became duchess of châteauroux. boucher painted her handsome being as a shepherdess in one of his pastorals. she was no ordinary toy of a king. a woman of talent, with hot ambitions for the king's majesty, fired with the pride of race of the old french noblesse, it was during her short years of ascendancy over the king that he roused from his body's torpor and made an effort to reach the dignity and eminence befitting to the lord of a great and gallant people. he stepped forth awhile from his drunken bouts and manifold mean adulteries, and set himself at the head of the army in flanders, and strutted it as conqueror. poor châteauroux only got the hate of the people for reward, louis the honours; for the people resented the public dishonour of her state. power she found to be a dead-sea apple in her pretty mouth. the glory of it all, the splendours, were not the easily won delights for which she had looked. she had to fight a duel, that never ended, with the king's witty, crafty, and scurrilous prime minister, the notorious maurepas--and maurepas willed that no woman should ever come between him and the king--maurepas who knew no mercy, no decency, no chivalry, no scruple. at châteauroux's urging, louis placed himself at the head of the army; and france went near mad with joy that she had again found a king. crafty maurepas urged on the business; the châteauroux suddenly realised his cunning glee--it separated her from the king. [illustration: plate vi.--portrait of a young woman (in the louvre) of the rare portraits painted by boucher, it is strange that the sitter to this finely painted canvas is now wholly forgotten. but the picture remains to prove to us the wide range of boucher's genius.] out of the whirl of things boucher's fortune was ripening, little as he might suspect it. he was painting masterpieces that make his name live. to his fortieth year belong the famed "birth of venus," the "venus leaving the bath," the "muse clio," the "muse melpomene," and the three well-known pastorals now at the louvre--"the sleeping shepherdess," the "nest," and the "shepherd and shepherdesses." of the many famous venus-pieces that his hand painted during these years it is not easy to write the list. but having signed the "marriage of love and psyche" at forty-one, he turned his experimental hand to the homely, realistic dutch style that was having a wide vogue, and painted the "dejeuner"--a family of the prosperous class of the day at breakfast--showing with rare charm the surroundings and home life of the well-to-do of his time. all goes well with boucher. he changes into better quarters in the rue de grenelle-saint-honoré, where he lived for the next five years, until ; but his eyes are fixed upon a studio and apartments at the old palace of the louvre, though the hard intriguing of his powerful friends at court on his behalf failed for some time. he had, indeed, to make another move before he arrived at his longed-for goal. pensions boucher, like others, had found to be somewhat empty affairs; but rooms at the louvre were a solid possession eagerly sought after by the artists. in this year of boucher created a new fashion at the annual salon by sending studies and sketches instead of finished pictures; and it set a value upon such things not before realised by artists, for success was instant and loud. towards the end of the next, boucher's forty-second year, the swedish ambassador, count de tessin, who was to take his leave of paris, commissioned four pictures to represent the day of a woman of fashion, and to be entitled "morning," "midday," "evening," and "night." boucher painted one of these for him, now known as the "marchande de modes." the others were painted later, and all had a wide vogue as engravings. the correspondence has interest since it reveals boucher's business habits; he was paid for a picture on its delivery, and for each of these he was to receive livres (double florins or dollars)--about a hundred and twenty pounds. in an official document of the director of buildings to the king (or minister of fine art, as we should say), written in this year of , boucher being forty-two, is a "list of the best painters," in which boucher is singled out for distinction as "an historic painter, living in the rue de grenelle-saint-honoré, opposite the rue des deux-ecus, pupil of lemoyne, excelling also in landscape, grotesques, and ornaments in the manner of watteau; and equally skilled in painting flowers, fruit, architecture, and subjects of gallantry and of fashion." not so bad for dry officialdom; the critics could learn a lesson. for he was nothing less. what indeed does he not do? and wondrous well! this painter of the age. and the mighty rush of events is about to sweep him into further prominence; the very things which he probably passed by with a gay shrug are to enrich him, to help him to his highest fulfilment. poor châteauroux saw that she must lose the king's gadding favour in the conflict with maurepas unless she joined her lord, now with the army. she realised full well that she had created the new louis of ambition--that her going must bring the people's hate to her. but she dared not lose the king. and she went. maurepas had overdone his jibings. the indiscretion at once rang through the land; became the jest of the army--and maurepas was not far from the bottom of the business. the discreet indiscretion of covered ways between the king's lodgings and hers only added to the mockeries, and increased the people's hate against, of course, the châteauroux. then upon a day in august the small-pox seized louis at metz; poor châteauroux fought for possession of the king in the sick room, until his fear of death--louis' sole piety--sent her packing--shrinking back in the hired carriage at each halting-place for change of horses, lest she should be seen and torn from her place and destroyed by the populace. but louis recovered; paris rang with bells at joy on his recovery, and he entered the city amidst mad enthusiasm, hailed as the well-beloved. he sent for the châteauroux to find her dying, maurepas having to deliver the message of recall. she died suddenly and in great agony, swearing that maurepas had poisoned her--died in the arms of her poor discarded sister, the de mailly. but this year of boucher hears a mightier scandal that is to mean vast things to all france--and not least of all to françois boucher. vi the pompadour a young bride had become the gossip of the rich merchant society of paris--that class that was ousting the old noblesse from power. she was a beautiful, a remarkable woman; her wit was repeated in the drawing-rooms, she had all the accomplishments; her charming name--madame lenormant d'etioles. draw aside the curtains of the past and we discover our little jeanne poisson--grown into this exquisite creature. it has come about in strange fashion enough. the father--a scandalous fellow--having fingered the commissariat moneys in ugly ways to his own use, had been banished for the ugly business. nor is jeanne's mother any better than she should be; and the wags wink knowingly at the handsome and rich man of fashion, monsieur lenormant de tournehem, who has been the favoured gallant during the absence of the light-fingered poisson. and, of a truth, lenormant de tournehem takes astonishing interest in the little jeanne--watching over her up-growing and giving her the best of education at the convent, where she wins all hearts, and is known as "the little queen." the truth spoken with wondrous prophecy, if unthinkingly, as we shall see. complacent poisson came home, and took the rich and fashionable, bland and smiling lenormant de tournehem to his arms. has he not wealth and estates? therefore as excellent a friend for poisson as for madame poisson. the girl jeanne leaves the convent to be taught the accomplishments by the supreme masters of france, the wits foregather at madame poisson's, and the brilliant jeanne is soon mistress of the arts--coquetry not least of all; has also the most exquisite taste in dress. under all is a heart cold as steel; calculating as the higher mathematics. she has but one hindrance to ambition--her mean birth. lenormant de tournehem rids her even of this slur by making his nephew, lenormant d'etioles, marry her, giving the young couple half his fortune for dowry, and the promise of the rest when he dies--also he grants him a splendid town-house, as splendid a country seat. and consequential self-respecting little lenormant d'etioles is lord of etioles, amongst other seignories. so jane fish appears as madame lenormant d'etioles, seductive, beautiful, accomplished, to whose house repair the new philosophy, the wits, and artists. she has a certain sense of virtue; indeed openly vows that no one but the king shall ever come between her and her lord. but, deep in her heart, she has harboured a fierce ambition--that the king shall help her to keep her bond. she puts forth all her gifts, all her powers, to win to the strange goal; confides it to her worldly mother and "uncle," lenormant de tournehem; finds keen allies therein to the reaching of that strange goal. the death of the châteauroux clears the way. at a masked ball the king is intrigued as to the personality of a beautiful woman who plagues him with her art; he orders the unmasking. madame lenormant d'etioles stands revealed, drops her handkerchief as by accident; the whisper runs through the court that "the handkerchief has been thrown!" the king stoops and picks it up. a few evenings later she is smuggled into the "private apartments." she goes again a month later; in the morning is seized with sudden terror--she daren't go back to her angry lord lest he do her grievous harm; he will have missed her. the king is touched; allows her to hide from henceforth in the secret apartments; promises the beautiful creature a lodging, her husband's banishment, and early acknowledgment as titular mistress--before the whole court at easter, says the pious great one. but he has to join the army to play the conqueror at fontenoy; and it is later in the year (september) before madame d'etioles is presented to the court in a vast company and proceeds to the queen's apartments to kiss hands on appointment. thus was jeanne poisson raised to the great aristocracy of france in her twenty-third year as marquise de pompadour. boucher had been one of the brilliant group of artists of the d'etioles' circle. that the pompadour's influence had much effect upon his position at court for a year or two is unlikely; for she had to fight for possession of the king day and night, as the châteauroux had done, against the queen's party and the unscrupulous enmity of maurepas. to set down boucher's favour at court to her is ridiculous. he was painting for the queen's apartments at thirty-one when the pompadour was a school-girl of twelve. but in the year following her rise to power, boucher painted four pictures for the large room of the dauphin, which were "placed elsewhere"; and, the year after that, he was at work upon two pictures for the bedroom of the king at the castle of marly. it is likely enough that the pompadour directed this order. she had almost immediately secured the office of the director-general of buildings, which covered the direction of the royal art treasures, for "uncle" lenormant de tournehem, who was also a friend of the artist. and from this year it is significant that boucher paints no more for the opposing camp of the queen and dauphin. [illustration: plate vii.--interieur de famille (in the louvre) boucher had a quick ear for the vogue. twice he found the home to be in the artistic fashion; and each time he painted home life in order to be in the mode. this interior, showing a well-to-do french family of the times at the midday meal, is not only rendered with glitter and atmosphere, but it is valuable as a rich record of the manners and furnishments of his day.] he was now giving all his strength to the "rape of europa" that he painted for the competition ordered by the academy at the command of lenormant de tournehem in the king's name, in which ten chosen academicians were to paint subjects in their own style for six prizes and a gold medal, to be awarded in secret vote by the competing artists themselves. boucher won, by his amiable nature, the good-will of them all by proposing that they should so arrange as to share the prizes equally, and thus prevent any sense of soreness inevitable in the losers. but greatly as he won the good-fellowship of his fellow-artists by it, this picture caused a murmur to rise amongst the critics who, aforetime loud in his praise, now began to complain of his "abuse of rose tints" in the painting of the female nude. the fact was that diderot and the men of the new philosophy were turning their eyes to the whole foundations upon which france was built, art as well as society, and were beginning to demand of art "grandeur and morality in its subjects." they were soon to be clamouring for "the statement of a great maxim, a lesson for the spectator." diderot, with bull-like courage, picked out the greatest, and turned upon boucher, blaming him for triviality. the nations, weary of war, concluded the peace of aix-la-chapelle in the october of . no sooner was peace concluded than louis relapsed into his old habit of dandified indolence and profligate ease; and, putting from him his duties as the lord of a great people, he gave himself up to shameless intrigues. he allowed the pompadour to usurp his magnificence and to rule over the land. he yielded himself utterly, if sometimes sulkily, to her domination; and for sixteen years she was the most powerful person at court, the greatest force in the state--making and unmaking ministers, disposing of office, honours, titles, pensions. all political affairs were discussed and arranged under her guidance; ministers, ambassadors, generals transacted their business in her stately boudoirs; the whole patronage of the sovereign was dispensed by her pretty hands; the prizes of the church, of the army, of the magistracy could be obtained solely through her favour and good-will. her energy must have been prodigious. possessed of extraordinary talents and exquisite tastes, she gave full rein to them, and it was in the indulgence of her better qualities that destiny brought boucher into the friendship of this wonderful woman. she became not only his patron but his pupil, engraving several of his designs. but this, her sovereignty over the king, easy and light in its outward seeming, was a haggard nightmare to the calculating woman who had so longed for it. she knew no single hour's rest from the night she won to the king's bed. she had to fight her enemies, secret and open, for possession of the king's will, day and night; and she fought--with rare courage. she won by consummate skill and unending pluck. she made herself an essential part of the king's freedom from care. the court party fought her for power with constant vigilance. maurepas brought all his unscrupulous art, all his ironic mimicry, all his vile jibes and unchivalrous hatred to bear against her. he had made himself a necessity to the king; and he never slept away a chance of injuring her. he knew no mercy, no nobility, no pity. he made her the detested object of the people. with his own hands he penned the witty verses and epigrams that were sung and flung about the streets of paris. but she had an enemy more subtle than any at the court--hour by hour she had to dispute the king with the king's boredom. and it was in the effort to do so that she created her celebrated theatre in the private apartments, calling boucher and others to her aid in the doing of it. here the noblest of france vied with each other to obtain the smallest part to play, an instrument in its orchestra, an invitation to its performances. boucher left the opera to become its decorator in , and did not return until her death. for her, he also decorated her beautiful rooms at bellevue. she bought at high prices many of his greatest masterpieces. the pompadour's power so greatly increased that she openly took command of the king's will; dared and succeeded in getting his favourite maurepas banished; and herself took to the use of the kingly "we." her rascally father was created lord of marigny; her brother, whom the king liked well and called "little brother," was created marquis de vandières; her only child, alexandrine, signed her name as a princess of the blood royal, and would have been married to the blood royal had she not caught the small-pox and died. she amassed a private fortune, castles, and estates such as no mistress had dreamed of; and into them she poured art treasures that cost the nation thirty-six millions of money. she created the porcelain factory of sèvres, kept keen watch over the gobelins looms, and founded the great military school of st. cyr amidst work that would have kept several statesmen busy, and of deadly intrigues at court that would have broken the spirit of many a brilliant man. it was in her hectic desire to keep the king from being bored that she stooped, and made boucher stoop, to the employment of his high artistry in the painting of a series of indecent pictures wherewith to tickle the jaded desires of boredom, and thereby gave rise to the widespread impression that boucher's art was ever infected by base design. but boucher was, at his very worst, but a healthy animal; and even in these secret works for the king he did not reach so low as did many an artist of more pious memory who painted with no excuse but his own pleasure. as a matter of fact, the pompadour has been blamed too much for this evil act, and too much forgotten for her splendid patronage of the man who, under it and during these great years of his forties, produced a series of masterpieces that place him in the foremost rank of the painters of his century. it is impossible to reckon the number of the pastorals and venus-pieces that his master-hand painted and loved to paint, during these the supreme years of his genius. it is significant that they were painted during the years that saw the pompadour in supreme power. boucher was so firmly established in , his forty-seventh year, that he moved into a new house in the rue richelieu, near the palais royal. disappointed in not receiving a studio and apartments at the louvre, he was allowed to use a studio in the king's library. he was now making money so easily that he was able to collect pictures and precious stones and the gaily coloured curiosities that appealed to his tastes. the critics were becoming more and more censorious; and one of them hits true with the comment that in his pastorals his shepherdesses look as if they had stepped over from the opera and would soon be off again thereto. in his forty-eighth year boucher's art was at its most luminous stage--his atmosphere clear and subtle and exquisitely rendered; his yellows golden; his whites satin-like and silvery; his flesh-tones upon the nude bodies of his goddesses unsurpassed by previous art. the beauty of it all was not to last much longer. lenormant de tournehem died suddenly in the november of ; the pompadour's brother, abel poisson de vandières, was appointed director-general in his stead at the age of twenty-five--and soon afterwards, on the death of his father, created marquis de marigny--a shy, handsome youth, a gentleman and an honourable fellow, whom the king liked well, and against whom his sister's sole complaint was that he lacked the brazen effrontery of the courtiers of the day. no man did more for the advancement of the art of his time. a pension of a thousand livres falling vacant, the young fellow secured it for boucher; and almost immediately afterwards, a studio becoming vacant at the louvre owing to the death of coypel, first painter to the king, boucher came to his coveted home, eagerly moving in with his family as soon as its wretched state could be put into repair. the decoration of the new wing to the palace at fontainebleau brought the commission for the painting of the ceiling and the principal picture in the council chamber to boucher, who had already decorated the dining-room. this was the period of his painting the "rising" and the "setting of the sun" for the pompadour, now in the watteau collection, two canvases that were always favourites with the painter, bitterly as they were assailed by the critic grimm. [illustration: plate viii.--la modiste (in the wallace collection) the "modiste" that now hangs at the wallace is a slight variation on the "toilet" that went to stockholm, commissioned by the swedish ambassador as "morning" (with three others, to represent the midday, evening, and night of a fashionable woman's day, but which were never painted). the "modiste" or "morning," was engraved by gaillard as "la marchande de modes," which adds somewhat to the confusion of its title.] he was turning out so much work that it was impossible to give as much care to his pictures as he ought. for he refused sternly, his life long, to raise his prices; by consequence he had to create a larger amount of work in order to meet his expenditure. it was about this time that reynolds, passing through paris, went to visit him and found him painting on a huge canvas without models or sketches. "on expressing my surprise," writes reynolds, "he replied that he had considered the model as necessary during his youth until he had completed his study of art, but that he had not used one for a long time past." he soon had not the time, not only to paint from nature but even to give his pictures the work necessary to complete them. the feverish haste which took possession of him in his frantic endeavour to meet the vast demand for his pictures, and the eager efforts of his engravers to satisfy the public call for engravings after his works, gave him less and less leisure to joy in their doing. and his eyesight began to fail. his flesh-tints deepened to a reddish hue; and he stands baffled before his work, suspecting his sight, since what every one cries out upon as being bright vermilion, he only sees as a dull earthy colour. boucher has topped the height of his achievement; he has to "descend the other side of the hill." boucher begins to grow old. in boucher's fifty-first year an ugly intrigue of the queen's party at court to sap the pompadour's influence over the king by drawing away the king's affections towards madame de choiseul-romanet, a reckless young beauty of the court, brought about a strange alliance. the count de stainville, one of the pompadour's bitterest enemies, was shown the king's letter of invitation to his young kinswoman; and he, deeply wounded in his pride that his kinswoman should have been offered to the king, went to the pompadour and exposed the plot. a close alliance followed; and de stainville thenceforth became her chief guide in affairs of state. it was at her instance that the king called him to be his prime minister, raising him to the duchy of choiseul--a name he made illustrious as one of the greatest ministers of france. in his fifty-second year boucher was appointed to the directorship of the gobelins looms, to the huge delight of the weavers and all concerned with the tapestry factory. this was the year of his painting the famous portrait of the pompadour, to whom he several times paid this "tribute of immorality." for the gobelins looms he produced many handsome designs; and he was painting with astounding industry. but his hand's skill began to falter. his art shows weariness in his sixtieth year, and sickness fell upon him, and held him in servitude now with rare moments of respite. the critics, notoriously diderot, were now attacking him with shameless virulence. boucher passed it all by; but he felt the change that was taking place in the public taste. the ideas of the new philosophy were infecting public opinion; the man of feeling had arisen in the land; and france, humiliated in war, and resenting the follies and the greed of her shameless privileged class, was openly resenting it and all its works. choiseul had planted his strength deep in the people's party, and was come near to being its god. his masterly mind had checked frederick of prussia to the north; and the nations, exhausted by the struggle, signed the peace of paris in . choiseul, with france at peace abroad, turned to the blotting out of the turbulent order of the jesuits at home. their attempt to end the pompadour's relations with the king made this powerful woman eager to complete his design; the chance was soon to come, and the order was abolished from france and its vast property seized by the state. the pompadour lived but a short while to enjoy her triumph. worn out by her superhuman activities, assailed by debt, she fell ill of a racking cough, dying on the th of april, , in her forty-second year, keeping her ascendancy over the king and the supreme power in france to her last hour. death found her transacting affairs of state. louis, weary of his servitude, had only a heartless epigram to cast at the body of the dead woman as she passed to her last resting-place. vii the end the death of the pompadour robbed boucher of a friend; but her brother, marigny, remained faithfully attached to the old artist, and seized every chance to honour him. on the death of carle van loo, boucher, at sixty-two, was made first painter to the king, with all his pensions and privileges that were consistent with this the supreme appointment in the art world. there had been serious intention of making boucher the head of the ecole des elèves protegés; he had the art of making himself liked and of inspiring the love of the arts. he was very popular with the students and artists, owing to his kindliness, his eagerness to render service, his readiness to encourage the youngsters or to console them. when the riot took place, provoked by the academicians by their award of the prix de rome in , the students insulted the academicians, but hailed boucher with enthusiastic applause. the reason was not far to seek. when a student came to the old master for advice he did not "play the pontiff," and, scorning the false dignity of big phrases, he took the brush in his hand and showed the way out of all difficulties by simplehearted example, despising rules, and putting himself out in order to make things clear to a young artist. however, the academicians feared he would be an unorthodox master for youth, and appointed another in his place. a long and serious illness thwarted his keen energies. diderot was giving himself up to outrageous violence against him. if the old painter exhibited at the salon, diderot fiercely assailed his art; if he did not exhibit, diderot as bitterly assailed him for his negligences. above all, he attacked boucher in that he did not paint what diderot would have painted--but could not. "when he paints infants," cries diderot, "you will not find one employed in a real act of life--studying his lesson, reading, writing, stripping hemp." poor unfortunate infants! for whom philosophy could find no happier joy in life than _stripping hemp_! boucher was but an artist. he painted his generation as far as he could see it, and, with all his faults and weaknesses, he never debauched his art with foreign and alien things that had no part in the nation's life; he painted fair france into his landscapes, not a make-believe land he did not know with preposterous greek ruins; and best of all, to his eternal honour, he painted infants glad in their gladness to be alive, with no desire to send their happy little bodies to school, with no sickly ambition to make them into budding philosophers, with no thought of making them pose and lie as men of feeling. he had no joy in setting their little bodies to toil--in making them "teach a lesson to the spectator," in making them stoop their little shoulders to the "picking of hemp." he continued to paint as he had always painted--except that he painted less well. the wreath of roses was wilting on a grey head. the blood jigged less warmly in the frail body. the features showed pallid--the eyes haggard. the sight failed. the hand alone kept something of its cunning. he went to holland with his friend randon du boisset, but health shrank farther from him. diderot had near spent his last jibe. in , boucher's sixty-fifth year, the neglected queen went to her grave. the king's grief and contrition and vows to amend his life came too late, and lasted little longer than the drying of the floods of tears over the body of his dead consort. a year later he was become the creature of a pretty woman of the gutters, whom he caused to be married to the count du barry--the infamously famous madame du barry. but neither the remonstrances of choiseul with the king against this further degradation of the throne of france, nor his unconcealed scorn of the upstart countess, nor the dangerous enemy he made for himself thereby, signified now to boucher, first painter to the king. boucher was failing. his son was a prig and a disappointment. his two favourite pupils, baudoin and deshayes, who had married his two girls, died. to the salon of he sent his "caravan of bohemians." it was his last display. he had been going about for some time like a gaunt ghost of his former self, afflicted with all the ills inevitable to a life feverishly consumed in work and the pursuit of pleasure. they went to his studio at five of the clock one may morning, and found him seated at his easel, before a canvas of venus, dead, with the paint-filled brush fallen out of his fingers. so passed he away on the th of may , in his sixty-seventh year. * * * * * when boucher died, the generation of which he was the limner was near come to its violent end. the rosy carnivals and gay gallantries of his age gave way to the blood-stained romance and fierce tempest of the revolution. the garrets of the old curiosity-shops received the discarded canvases of the master. his shepherds and shepherdesses were put to rout by the romans of his pupil, citizen david. the old order was brought into contempt and overthrown. and with it, boucher's art, like much that was gracious and charming and good in the evil thing, went down also, and was overwhelmed for a while. for a while only. for just as, out of the blood and terror of the revolution, a real france arose, ph[oe]nix-wise, from the ruin, and in being born, whilst putting off the vilenesses of the thing from which she sprang, took on also to herself the gracious and winsome qualities that place her amongst the most fascinating peoples of the ages; so boucher has come into his kingdom again--the most gracious of painters that the years have yielded. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's note: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible, including non-standard spelling and punctuation. some changes of spelling and punctuation have been made. they are listed at the end of the text. italic text has been marked with _underscores_. masterpieces in colour edited by - - t. leman hare turner - "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. corot. sidney allnutt. delacroix. paul g. konody. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--a ship aground. from the oil painting by turner in the tate gallery. (frontispiece) this beautiful sea piece is essentially turner--the result of his personal observation. it was painted after he had freed himself from the desire to rival and outvie his predecessors, and before he became obsessed by the passion to paint pure sunlight. "a ship aground" is a pendant to "the old chain pier, brighton," which also hangs in the tate gallery.] turner five letters and a postscript by c. lewis hind illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents letter i page explanatory letter ii his life: an impression letter iii his art: the furnace doors open letter iv the flame ascends letter v the flame leaps, expands, and expires postscript turner and two others list of illustrations plate i. a ship aground frontispiece from the oil painting by turner in the tate gallery page ii. hastings from the oil painting by turner in the tate gallery iii. norham castle from the oil painting by turner in the tate gallery iv. the fighting téméraire from the oil painting by turner in the national gallery v. venice: grand canal (sunset) from the water-colour by turner in the national gallery vi. arth from the lake of zug from the water-colour by turner in the national gallery vii. lausanne from the water-colour by turner in the national gallery viii. tivoli from the oil painting by turner in the tate gallery [illustration: drawing of turner] letter i explanatory yes: i remember that morning at exeter when i surprised you making a drawing of the west porch of the cathedral. timidly were the unrestored figures of angels, apostles, prophets, kings and warriors--very old, very battered--taking form in your sketch-book: timidly, for even then you were beginning to be troubled by the blur that rose, after an hour's work, between your eyes and the carven kings and saints. your sister passed into the cathedral to her devotions carrying white flowers for the altar: we stayed in the sunlight. i cannot remember how turner became the subject of our talk; but i think it was my mention of his drawing of the west front of salisbury cathedral done when he was twenty-three--one of the set exhibited at the royal academy in , which hastened his election to an associateship of the royal academy. those were the days of the tinted architectural drawings, but in that magnificent salisbury, the details indicated, yet not insistent, the old stones yellow in the sunshine, grey-blue in the shadow, turner was already on the track of light, the goal of his art life. he had not yet formulated any principle, that was not turner's way; but those small, bright eyes of his had already perceived that there is light in shade as in shine. girtin, that marvellous boy, his friend and fellow-student, was still alive; but art was in a poor state in england, in , and we can well believe that this drawing of salisbury made turner a marked man. i could dispense with the lamp-post boys playing with hoops, as indeed with every figure in every picture by turner. but he needed such strong foreground notes, and he, like the older landscape painters, troubled little about figures. claude used to say, with a laugh, that he made no charge for them. their use was to throw back the middle distance. [illustration: plate ii.--hastings. (from the oil painting by turner in the tate gallery) one of the so-called "unfinished" pictures that, after half a century of seclusion in the cellars of the national gallery, were removed to the tate gallery, and opened to public inspection early in february . this great "find," as it was called, of twenty-one turners was the sensation of the year in art circles. hastings was a favourite subject with turner.] then we talked of turner's water-colours. had he never composed the "liber studiorum"; never produced gorgeous dreams of glowing colour in his oil pictures; never with veils of luminous paint flashed sunrise upon white canvases; never done a moonlight, or white sails billowing over a wet sea, he would, in his water-colours, have earned the title of father of modern landscape and of impressionism. you, who had seen nothing of turner's work except the plates, good in their way, but far from being the real thing, in mr. stopford brooke's edition of the "liber studiorum," hinted that you found the master old-fashioned. corot, monet, and harpignies were your idols in landscape. that was not strange when i consider that your childhood was spent in jersey, and your youth at moret and in paris, and that on your twentieth birthday, a few months ago, you were articled to an architect of exeter, your france-loving father's native place. so the master seemed old-fashioned, did he? and you were a little sceptical of my enthusiasm. "ah," i said, "if you could see a range of turner's water-colours from the first boyish drawing of lambeth palace exhibited at the royal academy when he was fifteen, through the plodding period of his development, cumbered with ungainly figures, but set in the turnerian air and against infinite distances, as in the winding thames from richmond hill, ever moving towards the light, on to his later visions when buildings, hills, and clouds shimmer in iridescent vapour! then the figures of men and women disappear, and after fifty years of observation of nature those old eyes see only the chromatic glories of the reflections and refractions of imponderable sun-rays. the lovely colours linger so delicately on odds and ends of paper that it seems as if a breath must blow them away. if you could see the sapphire, opal and amethyst tenderness of his 'study on the rhine,' the misty hills rainbow-tinted, the sun flushing the steep castle rock and making a golden pathway over the sea, you would feel that this barber's son, morose, mean, in whose muddled brain moved until his last day magnificent ideas, has given to the world the whole history of water-colour, from the tinted drawing, to the flame of an effect seen and caught in a moment of ecstasy." you were still sceptical! i acknowledge that there were others in turner's day who also broke new paths--cozens, and of course girtin, of whom turner is reported to have said, "had tom girtin lived i should have starved." as an old man he would mumble of "poor tom's golden drawings." i acknowledge that since turner's day the channel that he flooded has broadened and gushed forth into many tributaries; but he was the first, modelling himself on claude, to start in pursuit of the sun, to break the rays, and flush the land. i quoted a frenchman, m. le sizeranne: "all the torches which have shed a flood of new light upon art--that of delacroix in , those of the impressionists in --have in turn been lit at his flame." i quoted constable--generous constable--"i believe it would be difficult to say that there is a bit of landscape now done that does not emanate from that source." i quoted pisarro, telling how during the war of he and monet came to london, studied turner at the national gallery, and found in turner and constable "practical certitude in matters of technique which they had but vaguely suspected and discussed at the café guerbois." what would they have said had they known that ruskin, the champion of turner, the foe of impressionism, when, in , he sifted the nineteen thousand turner water-colours, drawings, studies, and the "unfinished" paintings, had condemned the sunshine and atmosphere canvases now in the tate gallery to half a century of obscurity, because in his opinion they were "unfinished." turner purposely left them unfinished and elusive as sunrise itself, momentary impressions of the glory of the world. the sun is new each day, ever uncompleted: so are these records of the flame of turner. "they are golden visions," said constable, speaking of the venice pictures, "only visions, but still one would like to live and die with such pictures." turner, to whom the world of men and women was a place to escape from, brooded on scenes that open a pathway to tired eyes leading away somewhere west of the sun and east of the moon; he loved distances, lakes that feel their way round hills to infinity, and sunsets that are a world in themselves. even in his dark "calais pier" he must open the inky clouds to a blue sky swaying above the bituminous sea. in the "unfinished" "chichester canal" you may sail over that happy waterway, beyond the spire, on and on whithersoever your fancy leads; in the "unfinished" "petworth park" you may tramp away with the hunter and the hounds past the sentinel trees to that vast sky flaming and beckoning; in the "unfinished" "norham castle sunrise" the poet-artist dreamed the mystery of dawn, and as he saw the miracle unfolding, he told his dream to you and to me; he saw the blue mists parting before the sun-rays rising behind the castle; saw the opalescent sky reflected in the water; saw, perhaps, in the mind's eye, the strong red note that the picture needed, and quickly set that cow standing knee-deep in the shallows. turner gave all of himself to the making of this lovely impression, for norham castle, which he drew and painted so often, was his mascot. sketching on the tweed with cadell, the edinburgh bookseller, as they passed norham castle, turner suddenly swept off his hat to the ruins. "i made a drawing of norham several years ago," he explained. "it took; and from that day to this i have had as much to do as my hands could execute." there, i remember, i paused, noting that you were again passing your hands about your eyes. troubled, you said that the blur had returned, and that you must work no more that day. so we walked towards the river. on the way we saw italian workmen in blue trousers paving a road from cauldrons of molten asphalt. we watched the little flames leaping from the bubbling mass, and i drew from the sight an image of the art life of turner: how he stoked his furnace with poussin, vandevelde, and de loutherbourg, and so brought to life his dark early works such as "the shipwreck" and "calais pier"; how as he fed his fire with claude, crome, and wilson the furnace glowed, and the world saw the ardour of "ulysses deriding polyphemus," and the splendour of "dido building carthage"; then when the flames leapt towards the sky there was pure turner, the turner of the "téméraire" and the venice dreams, a "hastings" that has lost all earthly form; a dream boat passing between headlands at sunrise, and the later water-colours--the red rigi, the blue rigi, the blue and gold "arth from the lake of zug," the moonlight venice, and the atmospheric magic of the lake of uri. when we regained the cathedral close we met your sister returning from her devotions. she said: "what have you been discussing this summer morning?" "i have been discoursing on the flame of turner," said i. "ah!" said she, "there's a turner in the museum here." we went to the museum and stood before "buttermere lake, with a part of cromach water, cumberland--a shower." you were silent. what a catastrophe--after my dithyrambs about the flame of turner and his slow soar to light, that i should show you, as your first turner, that work of his early stoking period, painted at twenty-two, before he learned the method of oil painting and the ways of the sun. the lake has almost gone, the trees have blackened, only the rainbow dimly lingers. the flame of turner? the chrysalis husk of turner! that poor "buttermere lake" is still the only picture by turner that you have ever seen. and now that you are far from here, walking and digging in sparta, and sailing in insecure little crafts to the islands, i hold it a duty to write you in detachments this interminable letter explaining as well as i can what i mean by the flame of turner. your sister will read the letters to you, ill-starred student, who, at the beginning of your art career, must not use your eyes for twelve months on penalty of blindness. when, after the last visit to the oculist, you hurried from the lawyer's office in lincoln's inn fields, where i witnessed your will, i did not tell you that a few yards away rests a glorious turner, "van tromp's barge entering the texel" and sailing in golden pomp eternally through the soane museum. i saw it on my way to your lawyer's office. the picture is alone and i was alone with what turner loved--a sportive sea, an arching sky, gold overhead, gold on the water, and a ship sailing home golden-hulled beneath golden sails, with flags flying at the mast, and a cunning wraith of indigo cloud sweeping down the sky to give the glamour value. you did not see the golden van tromp. i had not the heart to show it to you. [illustration: plate iii.--norham castle. (from the oil painting by turner in the tate gallery) one of the most beautiful of the impressionistic turners that were removed from the cellars of the national gallery early in , cleaned, and hung in the turner room at millbank. once, when passing norham castle, turner took off his hat to the ruins. his companion inquired the reason. "i made a drawing or painting of norham castle several years since," answered turner. "it took; and from that day to this i have had as much to do as my hands could execute."] now you are far from turner. i can follow your track to olympia, and along the path by the wood, above the excavations, to a rough sign-post, where i stood two years ago and read the words "to arcadia!" somewhere beyond arcadia you are, and some day these letters will fall, one by one, into your hands. letter ii his life: an impression once in our walk from exeter cathedral to the river you paused and asked what kind of a man was this amalgam of poet-artist and suspicious tradesman. and i, who had been so long studying his works, and dipping into the lives of him by thornbury, hamerton, cosmo monkhouse, sir walter armstrong, mr. w. l. wyllie, and others, tried to give an impression of the man turner--a blur of his sayings, letters, habits, and the comments of his biographers. some of them have bewailed that his was not a pattern life, such as would edify a y.m.c.a. audience. nature produces such useful lives by the hundred thousand: she makes but one turner. the church had blessed neither his union with mrs. danby, nor with mrs. booth, and, in his later days, he preferred rum and water with sea-faring men in wapping or rotherhithe to dreary dinner-parties in dreary houses in the west end of london, which does not seem to me strange. we must take him as he was and be grateful. it was nature's whim to link this great artist-soul to the starved soul of a petty tradesman. as an artist he is with the immortals: as a man he was true son of the covetous, kindly barber of maiden lane, strand, keen on halfpennies, a driver of hard bargains. the father haggled with his customers, the son with engravers and picture buyers. secretive, suspicious, ambitious, sometimes mean, yet capable of great kindnesses and sacrifices, was this little hook-nosed man in an ill-cut brown coat, and enormous frilled shirt, with feet and hands notably small. kind? yes. did he not in the academy of cover his glowing picture of "cologne--the arrival of a packet boat--evening" with a wash of lamp-black, because it "killed" two portraits by sir thomas lawrence hanging alongside. "poor lawrence was so unhappy," said turner. "the lamp-black will all wash off after the exhibition." but turner's moods were capricious. like all blessed or cursed with the artistic temperament, the mood of the moment usually governed his actions. six years after the lamp-black incident he had a grey picture hanging beside constable's "opening of waterloo bridge," and turner (you may imagine the fury in his bright eyes) watched his brother artist heightening with vermilion and lake the decorations and flags of his city barges. presently, when constable had gone away, turner put a round daub of red lead upon his grey picture, which he afterwards shaped into a buoy. constable said when he returned, "turner has been here and fired a gun." turner liked a joke, and if it was sometimes at the expense of another, that was but the way of his class. from first to last he loved but one thing with heart and soul--his art. his affection for his father, and for mr. fawkes of farnley hall, were but interludes in his passion to interpret nature, to make her conform to his visions, and to excel his predecessors and contemporaries. certainly, in his way, he loved his "old dad," who lived with him until his death, looking after the picture gallery of unsold works in queen anne street, and helping in the preparation of his canvases. of his father he was wont to chuckle, "dad taught me nothing except to save halfpence." the death of the old man was a great blow. the love affair which thornbury relates amounts to nothing--no human thing ever really interfered with his art. his schooling at brentford and margate was infinitesimal--but for a landscape and sea painter, what education could have been better than the river and the boats at brentford and the sea and ships at margate. he remained illiterate to the end. when he wrote a description of st. michael's mount for the publication called "coast scenery," coombes complained that "mr. t----'s account is the most extraordinary composition i have ever read; in parts it is absolutely unintelligible." as professor of perspective at the royal academy he was unable to express his ideas, but, says thornbury, "he took great pains to prepare the most learned diagrams." throughout his life he extended and amended that amazing poem called "fallacies of hope," portions of which he tagged to his pictures in the royal academy catalogue. it is doggerel with occasional glints of the beauty, pomp, and wonder of the world that showered when he used his rightful methods of self-expression--eye and hand. the romance of the ancient world of myth and architecture tingled in this secretive, slovenly, jewy man; but when he essayed to learn greek, in the happy days at sandycombe, the attempt had to be abandoned. the slow brain could not master the verbs. ambition was strong within him. no toil was too long or too severe. he travelled england and europe, sketched everything, stored the forms of buildings and effects of light and colour; and could recall what he had garnered at an instant's notice. in painting he pitted himself against the dead, against his contemporaries, against twenty miles of country, against the very glory of the sun, wrestling with each in turn, and chuckling as they succumbed. he saved his money and in later years hoarded his pictures. he refused to pass potential purchasers to his studio, but gillott, the pen-maker, bearded the lion in queen anne street, pushed past mrs. danby, joked with the old man when he growled, "don't want to sell!" and carried off in his cab some five thousand pounds worth of pictures. turner re-bought his canvases when they came up for sale at christie's, worked without cessation, practised all manner of petty economies, and finally left his pictures to the nation and his fortune of one hundred and forty thousand pounds to found a home for "decayed male artists of english parents and of lawful issue, with an instruction for a turner medal at the royal academy, and a monument to himself in st. paul's cathedral." the will with its four codicils was a bewildering document. for years it was wrangled over in the courts, and in the end a compromise was effected. the fortune went to the next of kin, the pictures and drawings to the nation, and twenty thousand pounds to the royal academy. ruskin summed up the compromise thus: "the nation buried, with threefold honour, turner's body in st. paul's, his pictures at charing cross, and his purposes in chancery." if turner, as he eyes the landscape of the elysian fields, retains aught of earth-life frailty, he must look angrily down upon the turner section of the national gallery, upon the rooms beneath, reached by a winding staircase, where some of his water-colours are crowded, upon the sunlight canvases at the tate gallery; and at certain provincial exhibitions whither some of his works have overflowed from the national gallery. for he stated explicitly in his will that the pictures should be kept together in a room or rooms to be added to the national gallery, to be called turner's gallery, and to be built within ten years of his demise. i still hope that the turner gallery may be built. perhaps the hope will become a reality. what a sight turner's pictures chronologically arranged would be, from the dim experimental pieces and the "moonlight: a study at millbank," to those four works, splendid failures, now at the tate gallery, that he painted the year before he died, when the mind of the old man, having flamed from the embers to express the opalescent loveliness of venice, the grey tumult of the sea in the whaling series, the glory of the sun flashed in stains of luminous colour upon white canvases, harked back, in the shadow of death, to the old legends he had always loved, and painted them as of yore, but now blurred and tumbling, mighty ruins rising from blue lakes by great rivers and arching pines, with an impossible Æneas relating his story to an unrealised dido, or being admonished by a noah's-ark mercury. the imagination remains gorgeous if chaotic; at seventy-five he still reaches towards the unattainable, still seeks in visions a way of escape from the materialism and stupidity of the world. [illustration: plate iv.--the fighting tÉmÉraire. (from the oil painting by turner in the national gallery) exhibited at the royal academy in . in the previous year a party of friends, including turner, were bound for greenwich by water. they passed a steam-tug towing a superannuated battleship. "that's a fine subject for you, turner." said stanfield. the painter took the hint, and produced "the fighting téméraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up."] what a triumph to see the range of oil pictures with the water-colours stepping daintily through the stages of his development to those latter dreams of the rhine and swiss lakes, fairy scenes that live, as by a miracle, on pieces of mere paper; also the proofs of the "liber," with mr. frank short's interpretations of the drawings that were never engraved, bringing the number up to a round hundred; also the tall books, one cold, beautiful steel engraving on a page, such as "château gaillard" in the volume called "turner's annual tour, ," a view which charms the eyes dulled by grey london and makes the feet impatient to be off to richard coeur-de-lion's castle on the bend of the seine. the portraits, sketches and caricatures, too, of turner of maiden lane, hand's court, hammersmith, twickenham, queen anne and harley streets, chelsea, and of all the world--they should hang near his life-work. you will see him, when the good time of the turner gallery comes, as a pretty youth, painted by himself, no doubt a flattering likeness, which hangs in the national gallery. it is a bust portrait, full-face, with large estimating eyes, somewhat amazed, a heavy nose, and a dropping under-lip. an attractive boy; but you must remember that turner the idealist painted it, and that he had worked for a time in the studio of sir joshua reynolds. nearer to the turner that one visualises is the sturdy middle-aged man seated under a tree, cross-legged, pencil in hand, in the painting by charles turner. the brickdust face is clean-shaven, the nose unmistakably semitic; the hair is long, and the whiskers straggle to the collar. a drawing rests upon his knee; he looks forth with an eye like a sword, considering how he shall change the landscape. the sketch by maclise is a delight. turner sits on a stool up in the clouds, painting; the tail of his coat flaps over towards the earth, his boot is crooked into the support of the easel, and beneath him rises the sun with the word "turner" blazoned amid the rays. but the best of the series, because it has that touch of caricature which often approaches nearer to life than a reasoned drawing, is the portrait by william parrott made on varnishing day at the royal academy in , when he was seventy-one. turner is painting furiously upon his picture. the frame stands on the floor. the top is but an inch shorter than the battered beaver hat crushed over upon his big head. his mrs. gamp umbrella leans against a chair. his fellow-academicians stare at his picture and at his colour-box, puzzled. "how does he do it?" they whisper. in those days the members of the academy were allowed four varnishing days. in his latter years turner would send his pictures merely laid in with white and grey and complete them on the varnishing days. there was brown sherry at luncheon, and wilkie collins describes the old man as "sitting on the top of a flight of steps, or a box, like a shabby bacchus nodding at his picture." but he could paint a "rain, steam, and speed" and "the sun of venice going to sea" in spite of the brown sherry, and his lonely bachelor life. but brown sherry or no brown sherry, to his dying day he never lost interest in the love of his life, light. at seventy years of age, when he is described as stooping, looking down and muttering to himself, he would pump brewster as to all he knew on the subject of light. those were the days of the infancy of photography, and mr. mayall, who was experimenting with daguerreotypes, tells how the old man, whose eyes were then weak and bloodshot, would sit in his studio day after day asking questions. he pretended that he was a master in chancery. [illustration: plate v.--venice: grand canal (sunset) (from the water-colour by turner in the national gallery) this twilight impression of the grand canal is one of the twenty venice water-colours catalogued and described by ruskin, and arranged by him for exhibition in the rooms on the ground floor of the national gallery. "turner's entirely final manner" he calls it "a noble sketch; injured by some change which has taken place in the coarse dark touches on the extreme left."] letter iii his art: the furnace doors open there is a small, neglected room in the national gallery where certain beginnings and failures in art are entombed. if you were to stroll into that sepulchre on a dark day, i fear you would exclaim that "buttermere lake" is bright compared with those other early turners "morning on coniston fells" and "moonlight: a study at millbank." even on early march afternoons, when the sun strikes through the tall windows and falls upon "moonlight at millbank," little is visible on the small, sooty canvas except the full moon, looking like a discoloured white wafer stuck upon the dim sky. turner developed slowly. this veritable nocturne, and the pictures that followed it shows how slow and difficult was his mastery of oil as a medium. in the early nineteenth century claude, the poussins, salvator rosa, and cuyp were the idols of landscape art, which was still regarded as a sort of interloper in the realm swayed by religious and mythological pictures, portraits, genre works, and "dutch drolleries." the academic pioneers in landscape had imposed themselves upon nature and upon the english gentry who were the patrons of art. landscape might be classically beautiful according to claude, classically sublime according to salvator, homely and mildly sunny according to cuyp, conventionally maritime according to vandevelde. turner as a youth was not the man to break tradition. the cunning tradesman in him preferred the well-beaten path. it was his destiny to compete against the popular idols in turn, to sweep past them to nature herself, and so onwards and upwards to the sun, the source of all light and colour. "looked on the sun with hope" is one of the few simple and suggestive lines in his "fallacies of hope." averse in his beginnings, like velazquez, to experimentalising, he was content to bide his time, to plough the furrows of other men, with the indwelling determination to plough them better. he admired with generosity; he never depreciated. "vandevelde made me a painter," he said, years later, and of a golden-brown cuyp he exclaimed, "i would give a thousand pounds to have painted that." if ever, exiled student, we visit the national gallery together on the turner quest, i shall take you first to that room where, from the grave, he challenges claude of lorraine. turner bequeathed "the sun rising in a mist," painted when he was thirty-two, and "dido building carthage," painted when he was forty, to the nation, on condition that they should hang for ever "between the two pictures painted by claude, the 'seaport' and the 'mill.'" there you have a glimpse into the mind of turner, his fine envy of others, his confidence in his own power. a frenchman, m. viardot, incensed at the idea that any one should approach the throne of the lorrainer, suggests that such o'ervaulting pride was a proof of turner's insanity. i will not answer such foolishness, but british candour compels me to say that i do not think claude suffers by the comparison. turner became great when he became himself, not when he was trying to outvie others--titian, morland, gainsborough, crome--to name but four. in the year that he painted "the sun rising in a mist" he was trying in his "country blacksmith" to trip wilkie, and in "the sun rising in a mist," as mr. wyllie shows, the figures are taken almost exactly from teniers, and the snub-nosed, high-pooped ships from vandevelde. his time was not yet. he was learning furiously, brooding upon and correlating his impressions of nature, storing them for future use, shredding the permanent from the trivial. i think of him on that tossing trip to bur island in a half-decked boat with cyrus redding, silently watching the sea, absorbed in contemplation, climbing to the summit of the island in a hurricane of wind, where he "seemed writing rather than drawing." not yet could he say to a companion, looking at a black cow against the sun, "it's purple, not black as it is painted"; not yet had the sun begun to flood his drawings; not yet were the "brown tree school" angry because forms lost their details in the blinding light of his pictures. but in "dido building carthage," painted in , the same year as the popular "crossing the brook," of which he thought so highly that he talked in his ironic, humorous way of being wrapped up in it as a winding-sheet, there are signs that he was feeling the fascination of colour. some day you will stand at the entrance of the great turner room in the national gallery and rest your eyes on the six huge dark pictures on the left wall. the dull and uninspiring "waterloo" is later than the others; but to me it is just as unattractive as its companions--as i think it will be, light lover, to you. "the tenth plague" and "the deluge" i never look at except when i wish to be reminded that from the chrysalis rises the butterfly, from the black furnace the loveliness of the flame. the "death of nelson" is dark and decorative, "calais pier" and "the shipwreck" are dark and tremendous. "nobody is wet," said ruskin, and nobody feels that he is looking on the real calais, or on a real shipwreck, yet what power they have. these funereal wild waves were made in harley street; light, to the slow-developing turner, was still a studio convention. but nobody else could have made those seas. they are by turner, but not by the true turner, who strove through the veiled sun to the source of light itself. in "crossing the brook," which faces the entrance doorway, painted when he was forty, turner has marched onward. the gates have opened to the far horizon, and he now gives us the turnerian fifty miles or so of country outstretching to infinity on a few feet of canvas. if you were with me, i would whisper in your ear my division of "crossing the brook" into pleasing and unpleasing passages--the pleasing being the fleecy clouds in the blue sky, the faint miles of devonshire, the wooded hills rising from the river, and the bridge that spans the water: the unpleasing passages are the worried foreground, the ugly rocks, the figures, and the black mouth of the tunnel. yet it is a picture of which one becomes fond. who can but be entranced by the distance, turner's sign mark, the open gate that lures us away from the troubled foreground of the world. i turn from the sanity of "crossing the brook" to the right wall, and straightway i am elated, it is always so, at the sight of one of the magnificent dreams that the old wizard forced oil paint and brushes to portray. in the centre of the wall hangs "ulysses and polyphemus." the furnace doors are open, from them stream a fury of glow, and in the fire are the dazzling shapes of turnerian romance. letter iv the flame ascends when we visit the national gallery i will place you with your back to the dark "calais pier" and "shipwreck" wall, and waving my hand across to that glorious trio, the "ulysses," the "bay of baiæ," and the "carthage," i will say but one word--"turner!" here indeed is the magician weaving his spells, breaking the laws of light and shade, toying with history, caring nothing so long as he can picture the dreams of the pomp and beauty of the world of imagination that dazzled a sullen man, pottering about in a dingy london studio. "ulysses deriding polyphemus" has been called operatic and melodramatic; it has been remarked that the galley of ulysses, far from the influence of the sun, is in full light, and that the dark shadows thrown by the stone-pines in the "bay of baiæ" are unnatural. turner needed those deep blacks in the foreground; he wanted the galley of ulysses to be in the light: so the old rascal forced truth to suit his vision. his success is his expiation. he never copied nature or followed history. his way was to use nature and history to suit his conception, the right way for a genius; but not for brown, smith, and jones. anachronisms abound in his works; he elongated steeples, rebuilt towers and towns, changed the courses of rivers (he in paint, as leonardo with the pencil); but he caught the spirit of place. to me the "ulysses deriding polyphemus" is the very heart of romance. unlike life, yes; all the best things are unlike life. i withdraw my remark that there is not a figure in a picture by turner which i would not rather have erased, withdraw it in favour of the vast, impotent polyphemus writhing on the cliff. when turner painted the figures of gods and goddesses in the likeness of men and women he was bored; when he painted a giant monster like this polyphemus his imagination inspired him. asked where he found his subject, he invented two silly lines of doggerel and said they came from tom dibdin. his lonely visions were not for the chatter of a dinner party. they may be tracked in that little red book found by thornbury in his studio, where, amid notes about chemistry, memoranda as to colours, and prophylactics against the maltese plague, are certain scraps of verse, something about, "anna's kiss," "a look back," "a toilsome dream," "human joy, ecstasy, and hope." [illustration: plate vi.--arth from the lake of zug. (from the water-colour by turner in the national gallery) "elaborate and lovely," wrote ruskin. "we sleep at arth, and are up, and out on the lake, early in the morning; to good purpose. the sun rises behind the mythens, and we see such an effect of lake and light, as we shall not forget soon."] here i pause to ask myself how i can possibly give you, who have never seen it, an idea of the turner room at the national gallery. i close my eyes and visualise the route. i ascend the stairs, and am detained by two turners that have, against his will, overflowed into an outer room--the beautiful heat-hazy abingdon, and distant london, seen from greenwich. almost reluctantly i walk into the large gallery, and pass from the glorious sunrise in ulysses to the glorious sunset in "the fighting téméraire," painted just ten years later. claude and the others have been left far behind. here is turner the visionary, alone with the sun and the sea, untroubled by the necessity of painting the puny figure of man, but glorying in the symbols of man's power, the new tug dragging the stately old battleship to her last berth, a theme near to his heart--the end of a period in man's history flickering out in the ageless glory of nature. pages, chapters, have been written about the untruth of this picture. "his light and shade," says mr. wyllie, "is very seldom correct. his tones are almost always wrong. the place where the sun is setting in the 'téméraire' is the darkest part of the picture." but what does it matter? this is his vision, of the absolute end of man's work in this daily death of nature. who would have one inch changed? about this, as about almost all the pictures, there is a story. the téméraire "killed" a portrait by geddes hanging above it, whereupon geddes began to lay in a vivid turkey carpet on his canvas. "ho! ho!" cried turner, who loved a fight; and the unfortunate geddes watched him loading on orange, scarlet, and yellow with his palette knife. i close my eyes to the splendour of the "téméraire" and see "the burial of wilkie," a silvery blue sky and sea shimmering with delicate reflections, the mourning, black-sailed vessel severed by the flare of the torches, their brilliancy and the black of the sails forming vast tracks of light and gloom on the water. on varnishing day stanfield urged that the sails were untrue. turner grunted--"wish i had any colour to make 'em blacker." then i see the "snowstorm--steamboat off a harbour's mouth making signals in shallow water and going by the lead," which _punch_ called "a typhoon bursting in a simoon over the whirlpool of maelstrom, norway, with a ship on fire, an eclipse, and the effect of a lunar rainbow." turner is now sixty-seven. he is prepared to push paint to its ultimate limit so that he can achieve the impossible. to study the effect of this hubbub of snowstorm and gale he put to sea in the tempest, and made the sailors lash him to the mast for four hours. it was the hostile reception of this picture following the attacks on others in previous years, the jeers of _punch_, the shafts of _blackwood_, that inspired ruskin to compose "modern painters." the first volume was published the following year, , but that colossal work had its beginnings in a letter ruskin wrote in defending turner's picture of venice called "juliet and her nurse." turner was famous long before "modern painters" was published, and although that pæan of appreciation has carried his fame to the ends of the english-speaking world, the riot of its praise has tipped the pens of some critics with gall. the "slave ship" exalted so eloquently by ruskin, and now in boston, was described by george inness, the american artist, as "the most infernal piece of clap-trap ever painted." the aged turner suffered from the criticisms of the "snowstorm." ruskin tells how he heard the old man one evening muttering to himself "soapsuds and whitewash." on the "graduate of oxford" attempting to soothe him, he burst out--"what would they have? i wonder what they think the sea's like? i wish they'd been in it!" beneath the "snowstorm" at the national gallery hang two pictures, shining with a radiance not of the earth, "the sun of venice going to sea," and "the approach to venice," wrecks perhaps of what they were, but still lovely, in one all the pomp of venice, in the other all her haunting and elusive beauty. a little further along the wall in the direction of the "ulysses" is the parent picture of impressionism, that incomparable presentment of movement, mist, and moisture, aptly named "rain, steam, and speed." the fools called this a phantom picture, complained that the locomotive has not the appearance of metal. turner was not painting the fact of an engine; but the effect of an engine rushing through rain and mist. "my business," he once said to cyrus redding, "is to draw what i see: not what i know is there." in the years and , when his sense of form began to fail, but not his sense of colour, he re-saw the sea and the sun, to the exclusion of other aspects of nature. of the thirteen pictures painted in those two years, all but three were of venice or of whalers. i wish, after our visit to the national gallery, i could have taken you to the old masters exhibition, and there bid you look at his "mercury and hersé," painted in , when he saw with the eyes of claude. pleasant are the blue lakes, the distances and the veiled horizon, the faint hills and the arching sky; but they are derivative as the drawing-master trees and the wooden foreground with its score of dummy figures, its posed mercury, its unrealised hersé, and its architectural litter. when you had absorbed this "mercury and hersé" of , i would have turned your gaze to the "burning of the houses of parliament" of , the real turner, seeing with his own eyes the fury of burning buildings, an orgy of flames roaring up to the star-sown sky. the far end of the stone bridge, a nocturne in the palest blues and yellows, drops into the fire, half the sky is aglow, half is a night blue, and the gold and sapphire are reflected in the water, where dim boats push out from the shade into the dazzle, and thousands of figures, mere suggestions of forms, watch the two towers, molten silver, standing solitary and self-contained like shadrach, meshach, and abed-nego in the flames. it was such spade-work as the "liber studiorum" that enabled him to triumph in such an impossible subject as "the burning of the houses of parliament." imagine what this series of drawings meant! claude's "liber veritatis," to rival which the "liber studiorum" was designed, was a mere record of his pictures. turner's "liber studiorum" was a survey of nature, classified under six heads,--architectural, pastoral, elegant or epic-pastoral, marine, mountainous, and historical or heroic. these divisions were suggested by "dad." "well, gaffer," said turner, "i see there will be no peace till i comply; so give me a piece of paper." he made each drawing in sepia; he etched the essential lines, and he trained a school of engravers (not without quarrelling) to engrave them. men have loved the "liber." connoisseurs, like mr. rawlinson, have specialised in it. i know an enthusiast who spends hours in the course of the year, smoking his pipe, gazing at (a poor impression, but his own) no. vii., "the straw yard," that hangs on his study-wall against a reproduction of girtin's "white house at chelsea," and he wonders which he would save first if the house caught fire. i have been a quarter of an hour late for an appointment through returning twice to a certain house to enjoy again mr. frank short's engravings of two of the unpublished drawings--the "crowhurst" and the "stonehenge." but i never knew what the "liber" really was until i saw mr. rawlinson's collection, the depth and velvety richness of a very early state of the "raglan castle," and the large and still simplicity of the "junction of severn and wye." some day it may be your privilege to see them; but first we will descend to the ground floor of the national gallery and please ourselves by making a choice among the seventy and more sepia drawings for the "liber" that hang on the wall of the first room. but i doubt if you will have patience to go through all, for around, and in little rooms beyond, are the water-colours. [illustration: plate vii.--lausanne. (from the water-colour by turner in the national gallery) it may be lausanne: it may be berne, or merely a turnerian swiss dream of flushed spires, and a dim foreground where anything may be happening. this is one of the water-colours permanently on view at the national gallery. the others are preserved in two large cabinets in an inner room, and shown in detachments at intervals of three months.] letter v the flame leaps, expands, and expires when i think of turner it is the later water-colours that flash before me. the oils are magnificent, tremendous, wrought in rivalry and for fame: the water-colours, lyrical impressions, moods of elation inspired by beauty, are himself. we will go straight to the six studies that hung on the wall by the fireplace, essential effects selected with unerring instinct from the unessential, called "running wave in a cross-tide: evening;" "twilight on the sea;" "sunshine on the sea on a stormy evening;" "breaking wave on beach;" "sunset on the sea;" and "coasting vessels." the very titles are lyrics. yet they are not more beautiful than other interpretations, pushed into the region where feeling and vision merge into ecstasy--those i have already mentioned, and some, my particular favourites, hanging on the wall to the left of ruskin's bust--the "pilatus," the careful alchemy of "carnarvon," and the atmospheric veils that part above the "lake of uri." year by year other of his water-colours shine out momentarily at exhibitions, such as at the last old masters, when we saw the blue and gold "lake of thun," and the visionary "lake of zug" about which ruskin wrote so enthusiastically in "modern painters"; and the "apocalyptic splendour" of the "zurich" at messrs. agnew's. but one never reaches the end of his achievement in the national gallery collection. a selection of the four hundred is permanently on view, but a greater number are stored in cabinets in an inner room, whence once in three months an assortment is withdrawn for exhibition. apart from these there are the thousands of drawings and studies disinterred from the tin boxes which have been arranged chronologically by mr. a. j. finberg, in a hundred vast drawers, preparatory to his long labour on the _catalogue raisonné_. mark their range and you will realise that the whole world was his province. think of the books he illustrated--the rivers, harbours, and southern coast scenery of england, the rivers of france, to name but four--travelling often on foot, with his luggage in a handkerchief tied to the end of a stick, flushing in the inn at night transparent washes of colour on paper, flowing tint into tint, knowing exactly what to do, sponging, scraping, using knife and finger, anything to force the material to express his vision. once after a rhine tour he appeared at farnley hall with a roll of fifty-three water-colours, painted at the rate of three a day. i must show you the map of england and scotland compiled by mr. huish, showing turner's tours. it is covered with the lines of his tracks; you may see where he trudged or coached, and note the fourteen cathedrals, twenty-seven abbeys, and sixty-six castles which he drew. similar maps might be made of france, italy, and switzerland. thinking of his wanderings, i look from the window of one of the turner water-colour rooms near to the bust of ruskin, who arranged and catalogued them; i look from the window and see a line of the new, dandy, taximeter cabs, and plan a little journey through london we two would take, if you were here. we would visit van tromp at the soane, and then drive straight to the south kensington museum, where there are golden dreams by turner such as the "royal yacht squadron, cowes"; but we would not tarry with the oils, for i should be impatient to show you the wall of water-colours, some behind protecting blinds,--the early "wrexham," ageing houses and grey-blue tower; the perfect suggestion of the spirit of place called "sketch of an italian town," and the fairy-like blue, gold, and purple "lake of brienz," pure flame of turner. then we would speed to millbank, enter the tate gallery, and stand in room vii. where the recovered sunshine turners hang in radiant array. ruskin, you will remember, after turner's death, separated the "finished from the unfinished." the "finished" are in the national gallery; the "unfinished" are among the forty-four at millbank. fifty years ago they were deposited, hidden from public gaze, in the national gallery; early in they were examined by order of the trustees, cleaned, restored, and found to be brilliant and fresh, as on the day when the greatest landscape painter the world has known, painted them. these forty-four pictures should be sorted. some show but the tumbling splendour of his decline when he fumbled with his visions, and produced such chaotic failures as the two deluges, the "burning fiery furnace," "the angel standing in the sun," "undine," and "the exile and the rock limpet." the holiday crowd, when i was last at the tate gallery, laughed as their forerunners laughed when the pictures were first exhibited. their laughter enabled me to understand why turner was secretive and boorish in old age, when his imagination outsoared his dwindling power to express his dreams in paint. many visitors giggled and made flippant comments, just as _punch_ did when the old lion's eyes began to fail and his hand to tremble. had turner ceased painting when he was nearing seventy he might have been spared much, but he could not stop. his inward eye still saw gorgeous scenes, and amid the grime of his dingy house in queen anne street he struggled with such unearthly themes as this deluge in the evening and the morning, and napoleon in the sunset of his exile. these are the pictures of his magnificent decline at which the crowd laughed, and at that riot of forms, so glorious in colour, called "interior at petworth." but they did not laugh at the "norham castle, sunrise," a flush of the prismatic varieties of light against the blue mists of dawn, or at "the evening star," a nocturne thrown off long before whistler popularised the word, done at the period when, the crepuscular hour of bats and owls obsessing turner, he produced those small moonlight mezzotints, wonderful, dim, silver things, that were found in his house after he was dead. they did not laugh at the "hastings," delicate blues and golden greys, with splendour in the upper sky, and the whole canvas aflame with the orange sail of the boat drawn up on the beach; or at the yacht racing, an impression of sails against a tumbling sea, or at "a ship aground," the ground-swell rolling by the helpless vessel, and the sun setting angrily behind a bank of cloud; or at the tivoli, an imaginative classical landscape probably painted as a pendant to the "arch of constantine." the setting suggests the scenery of tivoli; but when turner's imagination was fired, he cared little about topographical accuracy. that day i waited until closing time, loth to leave these visions, noting with what art he had piled the chrome on the white ground in "sunrise, with a boat between headlands," the delicacy of the faint hues, the gold in the sky, the gold on the cliff, splashed yonder with blue, and the golden boat sailing ever on. the hour drew near five. the attendant appeared, drew the curtains one by one over the sunshine pictures, hiding them with red hangings, all but the four large valedictory scenes from classical mythology, and the other splendid failures which have no curtains. when i left the gallery and stood upon the terrace overlooking the thames and thence towards chelsea, i saw, in the mind's eye, the print published after turner's death that i had picked years ago from a twopenny portfolio in the brompton road, showing the little house by cremorne pier where he died, under the assumed name of booth. the sun shines upon the building. the thames flows in front of it. it is said that as long as strength held he would rise at daybreak, and wrapped in a blanket, stand upon the roof watching the colour flush the eastern sky. [illustration: plate viii.--tivoli. (from the oil painting by turner in the tate gallery) an imaginative classical landscape probably painted as a pendant to the "arch of constantine, rome," which also hangs in the tate gallery. it has been suggested that the phantom figures are tobit and the angel. the setting suggests the scenery of tivoli; but when turner's imagination was fired, he cared little about topographical or historical accuracy.] the chelsea hiding-place was discovered, but he was sinking when a friend found him. he died on december , , at the window, looking upon the river, propped upon his couch. a full, and, i think, with occasional lapses--the lot of all--a happy life, for his work never ceased to be less than absorbing. he died in the light, having run his race to the goal. the account of that dinner at david roberts' house, not long before his death, when he tried to propose his host's health, "ran short of words and breath, and dropped down in his chair, with a hearty laugh, starting again, and finishing with a 'hip, hip, hurrah!'" shows that the power to enjoy, and the sense of fun, had not withdrawn from the solitary genius, the "very moral of a master carpenter, with lobster red face, large fluffy hat and enormous umbrella," who wrestled with the sun, read ovid, and young's "night thoughts," tramped europe in pursuit of beauty, and who was seen on the old margate steamer studying the movement of the water, and the boiling foam in the wake of the "magnet," and making his luncheon off shrimps strewn over an immense red handkerchief spread across his knee--turner. postscript turner and two others climbing the stairs to the flat, i passed a girl who was toiling upwards. pressing the button of the electric bell i watched her ascend the last flight. she paused. i inferred that our destination was the same, noted that she carried a satchel, a thick notebook, and a paper-covered sixpenny reprint. mildly curious as to the title of the novel, i dissembled, and read "endeavours after the christian life," by james martineau. therewith the stone staircase faded away, the stone walls opened to the past, and i saw my youth, and the figure of my father returning one night to the old home, his face illumined, his eyes shining; heard again the earnest words between him and my mother; how he had been at martineau's valedictory address, how with the teacher's communication telling of deep things of the spirit moving within him he had avoided friends, unable to return suddenly to earth, and how he had walked home as if with wings. those were the days when the "endeavours" was a costly, exclusive, and somewhat revolutionary book. a few quick years, and lo! it becomes one of allenson's sixpenny series, bought by the hundred thousand. the door of the flat opened, martineau slept again with his forefathers, the saints of all time, and the girl and i passed into the modest room dedicated to one who was no saint. yet i do not know. if a saint be he who by his life makes this world for others more wonderful, more beautiful and better worth living in, then joseph mallord william turner was a saint. which is strange. i did not speak of saints to our hostess, for turner is her god, and a god is greater than a half-god. there is one severe note in her room--the bust of cæsar on a pedestal; all the rest is beauty--sheer beauty. i wonder what a far-horizon colonial, who had never seen turner's later water-colours, would feel in this room; walls covered with sensitive copies of those flushes of radiant colour, waning blue dawns, purple mysteries of eve, sunlighted swiss lakes, dream buildings, rainbow reaches of the rhine, opalescent distances stretching past headlands into infinity. the head of cæsar, from his tall pedestal, surveyed these lyrics in colour, as strange to him as would have been the "endeavours after the christian life," that paper book, tightly clutched, hidden from view, in a girl's hand. then twilight came, the lamp was lighted, and i went away to carry out an idea that had just shaped itself. i had never seen the house in queen anne street where turner lived with mrs. danby and the cats. should i find the house changed--houses rather, for he owned three, two in harley street, and one in queen anne street, communicating mysteriously at the back, and leaving the corner building in other hands. as i walked through the bloomsbury squares i thought not of turner, but of another, a man, very old, very frail, bent almost double, with the face of a spirit and the eye of a seer, whom years ago i had met on this very spot, creeping round the railings which encircle the grass and trees--james martineau, still lingering in the world which his spirit had long outsoared. i saw, in the mind's eye, that shrivelled octogenarian figure, and i asked at three shops for the "endeavours after the christian life," found it in the fourth, and under lamp-post and by lighted windows, turned the familiar pages and read fragments. the chapter headings stirred old thoughts, and there was one passage in the discourse on "immortality" that seemed the voice of the dead murmuring as i went westward through the dark squares, saying that we see here only the partial operation of a higher law, that we witness no extinction, but simply migrations of the mind, which survives to fulfil its high offices elsewhere, and find perhaps in seeming death its true nativity. as i walked that voice stilled the tumult of the traffic, companioned me through unfamiliar streets, until i knew by the brass plates on the doors, and the lighted rooms shining through holland blinds in upper stories, that i was in harley street, and near to turner's house. which was it? a frock-coated, shining-hatted, prosperous personage, carrying a small black bag, was inserting a latch-key in one of the brass plate doors. as i advanced, his black bag swung up to cover his watch-chain. "which was turner's house?" said i. "turner! what turner? was he a medical man?" "no! the great turner, i mean the painter." he collected himself, reflected, and said: "ah! i do remember something! yes, there is a tablet on the house yonder." i peered up at the dwelling and saw, half way to the roof, a medallion, and the lamplight shining upon the first letters of the name turner. this was the house of him who interpreted the feel of nature, the movement of sea and wind, the glory of the sun, the mystery of its veiled face, the pomp of the world, the magic influence of light so transcendently that we say: "yes! this magician was initiate! this queer englishman was near to the eternal dream of his maker." as i stood in the dark street and looked up at turner's house, the shades gathered about me. a wizard in words joined this son of a london barber, and that saint whose works have gone into a sixpenny edition. this was the house that ruskin knew. behind these walls, were stored the pictures and water-colours in praise of which the most eloquent, the most inspiring, the most wilful and bewildering book that has ever been written upon art, was composed. book? a library! the index alone of "modern painters" fills one volume. on the doorstep of this house turner once stood and said to his disciple, who was about to start forth on a foreign tour--"don't make your parents anxious. they'll be in such a fidge about you." he did not understand literary enthusiasm, and i doubt if he ever read a page of the copy of "the stones of venice" that ruskin presented to him. three ghosts in a walk through london! three great figures that trailed through the nineteenth century--a wizard in paint, a wizard in words, a wizard in holiness. which is the greatest? ruskin and martineau explained, taught, chided, interpreted, and uplifted. turner just acted, was content merely to express himself, to state his wonder at the wonder of the world. is not his influence the most enduring? a man of few words and those mostly incoherent, who taught nothing, believed nothing, gazed on the sun with hope, and did superhuman things. his prayers were his pictures. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's notes: the following is a list of changes made to the original. the first line is the original line, the second the corrected one. depreciated. "vandevelde made me a painter" depreciated. "vandevelde made me a painter," painter the world has known, painted them painter the world has known, painted them. masterpieces in colour edited by--t. leman hare andrea mantegna - "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. bellini. george hay. botticelli. henry b. binns. boucher. c. haldane macfall. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. chardin. paul g. konody. constable. c. lewis hind. corot. sidney allnutt. da vinci. m. w. brockwell. delacroix. paul g. konody. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. fra angelico. james mason. fra filippo lippi. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. gainsborough. max rothschild. greuze. alys eyre macklin. hogarth. c. lewis hind. holbein. s. l. bensusan. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. ingres. a. j. finberg. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. le brun (vigÉe). c. haldane macfall. leighton. a. lys baldry. luini. james mason. mantegna. mrs. arthur bell. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weals. millais. a. lys baldry. millet. percy m. turner. murillo. s. l. bensusan. perugino. selwyn brinton. raeburn. james l. caw. raphael. paul g. konody. rembrandt. josef israels. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. romney. c. lewis hind. rossetti. lucien pissarro. rubens. s. l. bensusan. sargent. t. martin wood. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. titian. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. van dyck. percy m. turner. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. watteau. c. lewis hind. watts. w. loftus hare. whistler. t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--the madonna della vittoria. frontispiece (in the louvre) this beautiful composition, considered one of mantegna's greatest masterpieces, was painted in - in commemoration of the victory won at fornovo on july , , by the marquis of mantua as generalissimo of the united italian forces. it is now in the louvre, paris, having been carried off by the french in .] mantegna by mrs. arthur bell illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. the madonna della vittoria frontispiece in the louvre page ii. the adoration of the kings in the uffizi gallery, florence iii. portrait of a member of the gonzaga family in the pitti palace, florence iv. the agony in the garden in the national gallery, london v. the madonna and child surrounded by cherubs in the brera gallery, milan vi. the madonna and child of the grotto in the uffizi gallery, florence vii. parnassus in the louvre viii. the triumph of scipio in the national gallery, london [illustration] born at a time of exceptional intellectual and æsthetic activity, when italian humanism was nearing its fullest development, and the art of painting, after a protracted struggle with mechanical difficulties, had at last obtained an almost complete mastery over its media, with a real grasp of the long-neglected science of perspective, andrea mantegna may justly be said to have been a true representative of the early renaissance in italy, an earnest combatant in the arduous struggle for liberty of thought and expression in which so many of his gifted fellow-countrymen were engaged. a true kindred spirit of his greater contemporary, donatello, with whom he was in closer rapport than with any painter, the chief characteristic of his work being the plastic rather than the pictorial treatment of form, he was, like him, imbued from the first with a reverent love of truth and a conscientious desire faithfully to interpret it. mantegna has, indeed, been sometimes charged with a too close imitation of the famous sculptor, but this is manifestly unfair, for, although there can be no doubt that he owed much to donatello, who was the first to lead him into the right path, by showing him how nature should be studied, the secret of the strong resemblance between the styles of the two masters is that both went to the same source for inspiration: the best existing examples of antique sculpture, which appeared to them the noblest extant expression of the ideal in the real. according to some authorities, vicenza was the birthplace of mantegna, whilst others claim that honour for padua; but all agree in stating that he was born in . of his parents scarcely anything is known, but it is generally supposed that they died at padua when andrea was still quite a child, and it is certain that the orphan boy was adopted at once by the artist francesco squarcione, who received him into his own home and began his art education. the true relations between him and his foster-father are, however, very obscure, critics differing greatly with regard to them; but it is very evident that the tastes and ambitions of the two artists were never in real accord, though gratitude for kindness received when he was left alone in the world, long restrained mantegna from an open breach with the protector of his childhood. the probability is that squarcione, whose work, judging from the few specimens that have been preserved, was of a very mediocre character, was merely the nominal head of a bottega, or studio, in which painters of far greater eminence than himself, including jacopo bellini, were visiting masters. however that may have been, it is certain that several hundred students were at different times under his roof, and, whether they did or did not learn much from him, they had the advantage of seeing the drawings after the antique that he had brought back with him from the trips he delighted in taking to greece and the italian towns, that owned collections of classic sculpture. [illustration: plate ii.--the adoration of the kings (in the uffizi gallery, florence) the central composition of a triptych, now in the uffizi gallery, florence, belonging to mantegna's second period of art development. supposed to have been painted for the chapel of the castello at mantua about .] that andrea early showed remarkable talent is proved by his having been made, when he was but ten years old, a member of the guild of paduan artists, to which belonged all the leading painters, sculptors, and craftsmen of the city, and association with them must have done much to aid his art-development. he was, indeed, from the very first surrounded by inspiring influences, for padua, with its noble university, founded in , had long been a leader in antiquarian research, and was already beginning to rival even florence and venice as a centre of literary and artistic activity. the quaint mediæval palace, with its magnificent fifteenth-century roof, the fine basilica of s. antonio and the cappella di s. giorgio both adorned with the frescoes of altichiero and alvanzo, and, above all, the cappella di sta. maria dell' arena, enriched with the wonderful creations of giotto, must have been to the enthusiastic young painter a source of continual delight as well as a spur to emulation; although as yet donatello, destined to give to him the final impulse in the right direction, had not come to padua to put in hand the glorious bas-reliefs of the high altar of s. antonio, and the even more remarkable bronze equestrian statue of gattamelata, that was to inaugurate a new departure in modern realistic sculpture. of the first meeting between the veteran sculptor, who, on his arrival in padua in , was in his fifty-eighth year, and the youthful painter there is no record; but there is no doubt that the latter was privileged to watch the growth of the s. antonio sculptures, and to listen to the discussions concerning them and their author that took place amongst the masters and students in the bottega of squarcione. from his first appearance on the scene donatello dominated the art world of the university city, his personality as well as his work everywhere arousing the greatest enthusiasm. so overwhelming indeed were the attentions heaped upon him that he resisted all invitations to remain after he had completed the work he had actually promised to do, and, even before his monumental piece of sculpture was set up, he fled from the atmosphere of adulation in which he lived back to his native florence, where, to quote his own words, he "got censured continually." he was still, however, at padua when, in , mantegna completed his first independent commission, a "madonna in glory" for s. sofia, now lost, but which is said to have been a wonderful production for a boy still in his teens, clearly betraying the influence both of donatello and jacopo bellini, yet with a marked individuality of its own. the "madonna in glory" is supposed to have been succeeded by other compositions of a similar kind; but the earliest signed work from andrea's hand is a fresco, dated , above the central door of s. antonio, representing saints antony and bernardino holding up a wreath bearing the monogram of christ. in it, as well as in the polyptych of "st. luke," now in the brera gallery, milan,--that betrays a slight affinity with the vivarini,--the "presentation in the temple," of the berlin museum, and the "adoration of the magi," in the collection of lady ashburton--all painted between and --are already noticeable the naturalistic treatment of form, plasticity of modelling, and sombre colouring, that were from first to last characteristic of mantegna, with a suggestion of the dignified restraint and solemn rhythm of movement, which were later further to distinguish his style. it is, moreover, noticeable that in the two last named, as well as in other early representations of the virgin and the holy child, such as that in the poldi-pezzoli museum, milan, it is the purely human relationship between the loving mother and her helpless little one which is most forcibly brought out, there being absolutely no suggestion of the supernatural. in the "presentation in the temple" mary clings to the babe as if unwilling to let him leave her arms for a moment, and in the "adoration" her face expresses a tender yearning that is infinitely touching; whereas in later holy families from the same hand the infant jesus becomes ever more and more aloof and dignified, until at last he appears like a young god conscious of his power to save and bless, whilst his mother withdraws into the background. more important, perhaps, from a technical point of view, than these independent oil-paintings are the series of frescoes in the eremitani chapel, in which can be clearly traced the gradual development of mantegna's style. in them he for the first time proved himself able successfully to carry out a vast and elaborate scheme of decoration, each composition with its appropriate setting, though complete in itself, contributing to the general effect of the whole. exactly when the great undertaking was begun is not known, but it is supposed that the commission for it was given to squarcione about , and its execution entrusted by him to mantegna, who in had signed an agreement binding him to the service of his foster-father for a long term of years. in a will dated january , , the chapel of the eremitani was bequeathed by its then owner, antonio degli ovetari, to jacopo leone, on condition that after the testator's death seven hundred golden ducats should be expended on its decoration with scenes from the lives of saints james and christopher. the subjects, and possibly also the positions they were to occupy, were thus determined beforehand; and it is evident from internal evidence that not all the frescoes are from mantegna's own hand, but his spirit dominates them all, and those for which he is entirely responsible, especially the "st. james led to execution," the "martyrdom" and the "burial of st. christopher," mark a great advance, alike in design and in technical execution, on anything hitherto produced by their author. in the first, mantegna approached more nearly to donatello in the expression of movement than he had previously done, and displayed very great skill in concentrating the attention upon the figure of the martyr, who pauses to bless and heal a lame man kneeling at his feet, the soldiers halting to look on, and the spectators turning back to see what delays the procession. the "martyrdom" and "burial of st. christopher" are also strikingly dramatic, giving very vivid presentments of the final scenes in the long-protracted agony of the twice-martyred victim, who was found to be still living after he was supposed to have been shot to death; but, unfortunately, both compositions are so much defaced that it is difficult to form a true idea of what they originally were. the years during which mantegna was at work on the eremitani frescoes, supposed to have been completed in , coincided with the most interesting period of the artist's life from a personal point of view. in he became engaged to the only daughter of jacopo bellini, nicolasia, whom he had known since she was a child, and to whom he had long been attached. he was married to her in , and the young couple evidently started life together under very happy auspices; but little is really known either of their courtship or their later experiences. neither, unfortunately, is it possible to call up with any semblance of reality the personality of the bride, for although she certainly often posed for her father, husband, and brothers, her portrait cannot be identified in any of their compositions. that she was beautiful and charming is generally taken for granted, that she shared the æsthetic faculty with which the other members of her family were so richly endowed is more than probable, and that she was a good wife to mantegna is incidentally proved by the fact that his money difficulties did not begin till after her death; but that is all that can be gathered concerning her. it is far easier to realise what the bridegroom was like, for andrea has introduced himself among the spectators in the "martyrdom of st. christopher" and in the later "meeting between lodovico gonzaga and his son, cardinal francesco," of the camera degli sposi at mantua, in both of which the painter appears as a handsome, distinguished-looking man whose somewhat stern features, in which, however, there is no suggestion of the irritable temper with which some of his contemporaries charged him, greatly resemble those of the fine bronze bust, of uncertain authorship, that was set up in outside his mortuary chapel in s. andrea, mantua, by one of his grandsons. almost the only comment made by the biographers of mantegna on his marriage is that after it the influence of jacopo bellini over his style became more marked, and nearly all they have to tell concerning him and his wife is that they had three boys, one of whom died in infancy, and two girls. occasionally, it is true, a reference is made to work done in their father's studio by one or the other of the surviving sons, whose names were francesco and lodovico. the marriages of the daughters, laura and taddea, are alluded to _en passant_, and the fact is mentioned that in his old age the great painter had a natural son, to whom he gave the names of giovanni andrea, and whom he confided on his death-bed to the care of the boy's half-brother lodovico; but scarcely any details can be gathered concerning the home life of the master before nicolasia passed away, nor has any one been able to ascertain who was the heroine of the romance of the master's closing years. even dr. paul kristeller in his monumental work, in which is gathered together from an infinite variety of sources everything that can throw light on the character, aims, and work of mantegna, is able to do no more than suggest that he and his family were on affectionate terms with each other, that he had the best interests of his children at heart, and that his wife shared the tender poetic sensibility of her gifted brother, giovanni bellini. [illustration: plate iii.--portrait of a member of the gonzaga family (in the pitti palace, florence) this fine portrait, now in the pitti palace, florence, represents one of the members of the gonzaga family who were introduced in the famous frescoes by mantegna that adorned the camera degli sposi and other apartments in the castello of mantua.] to make up for the meagreness of intimate personal information with which writers on mantegna have to contend, they one and all dwell at great length on every incident of his art career, describing minutely, for instance, the strained relations between him and squarcione, which culminated in in his bringing an action against the latter. it was decided in favour of andrea, who pleaded that he had been under age when he signed the agreement already alluded to above, and that the conditions of the arrangement made had been broken by his foster-father. it is further related that squarcione was from the first bitterly hostile to the intimacy between mantegna and the bellini, resenting the influence jacopo exercised over a pupil he looked upon as his own special protégé. when he heard of the engagement between andrea and nicolasia, he vowed he would never consent to the match, and when he found that his sanction of the marriage was dispensed with, his indignation knew no bounds. he vented his annoyance by making unreasonable demands upon mantegna's time, and by harsh criticism of his work on the eremitani frescoes, in which he all too clearly betrayed his jealousy of the younger artist's superior talent. there was really nothing left for mantegna to do but to sever all connection with so unreasonable an employer, but that he did so with regret, remembering past kindnesses, is proved by his having put off the rupture as long as he did. it was well for him when he finally left the squarcione bottega and became free to work out, unchecked, his own art salvation, and henceforth he may truly be said to have gone on from strength to strength, until at last, in such masterpieces as the "triumph of cæsar" and the "madonna della vittoria," he reached the very zenith of his powers. the second period of mantegna's career begins with the painting of the fine triptych for s. zeno, verona, commissioned by the enlightened papal protonotary, abbot gregorio correr, one of the leading ecclesiastics of his time, the first of the many distinguished patrons who now began to seek to secure the services of the young painter of padua. the altar-piece of s. zeno, the chief composition of which belongs to the class known as "sacro conversazione," in which saints of different periods are grouped about the virgin and child, marks a very considerable advance in the delineation of character. the personalities of men so diverse as saints peter, john the evangelist, augustine, and zeno are realised with great success, and the concentration of the light on the figure of the infant jesus foreshadows the great change that was ere long to take place in the artist's renderings of the holy family. it is much to be regretted that the complete work can no longer be seen as it was when first placed in position, for it was carried off by the french in ; and although after the treaty of vienna the upper portion was restored to s. zeno, where it now hangs in the choir, the three subjects of the predella, that are also of great significance in the study of the development of mantegna's style, remained in france--the "crucifixion," a noble but terribly realistic conception, occupying a place of honour in the louvre, whilst the "agony in the garden" and the "ascension," that originally flanked it on either side, are at tours. whilst engaged in his arduous undertaking for abbot correr, mantegna painted three of his few portraits--that, now at berlin, of cardinal luigi mezzarota, the warlike prelate who led the papal troops against the turks in , defeating them with great loss; that, in the naples museum, of cardinal francesco gonzaga, who received the red hat before he was seventeen; and the famous double likeness of john of czezomicze, better known as janus pannonius, that is unfortunately lost, but won for its author great renown and inspired the beautiful elegy addressed to him by the poet on its completion. between cardinal francesco and andrea a very strong friendship was soon formed, which may possibly have had something to do with the pressing invitations mantegna now began to receive from the father of the young prelate lodovico, the reigning marquis of mantua, who worthily maintained the great traditions of his ancestors, under whose auspices the ancient fortress that was to become so inseparably associated with the memory of the paduan master was enlarged and strengthened, and the grand cathedral with the noble renaissance church of s. andrea were built. the first of lodovico's invitations was probably a verbal one, but it was quickly succeeded by urgent written appeals, some of which have been preserved, in which the writer offers to make mantegna his court painter with a high salary and to accord him certain valuable privileges, the letters reflecting not only the high esteem in which painters of eminence were then held and the eagerness with which their work was competed for, but also the great sacrifices that were demanded from them, and were such as no modern art patron would dream of exacting. again and again mantegna put off his final reply to the marquis, for he loved padua, where he found plenty of congenial employment, and was surrounded with appreciative friends; but at last he yielded, attracted probably partly by the material advantages of the position offered to him, and partly by the exceptional facilities he would have in mantua for the antiquarian research in which he delighted. it was in the latter half of that he arrived, accompanied by nicolasia and their two little children, in the famous city, where he was eagerly welcomed by the marquis and his wife, the marchesa barbara, and their two sons, federico and cardinal francesco. from that time to his death, except for two years spent in rome, mantegna worked almost exclusively for the gonzaga family, becoming ever more and more devotedly attached to them and their interests. from the first, the position of the court painter appears to have been a very enviable one, for, although it is true that the payment of his salary was sometimes delayed, he was evidently on terms of the closest intimacy with his patron, who soon after his arrival granted him a coat of arms embodying his own device, and, as proved by many a still extant letter, was ever ready to help and advise him, whether in matters so trivial as the cut of a coat or so serious as legal disputes concerning the boundaries of property owned by the artist. that the poverty of which mantegna sometimes complained must have been purely nominal is indeed evident from these lawsuits, as well as from the fact that he was able to make a very valuable collection of antiquities and to give large dowries to his daughters when they married. the first pictures painted at mantua were the beautiful triptych of the "adoration of the kings," "circumcision," and "ascension," now in the uffizi, florence; the "death of the virgin," in the prado gallery; and the remarkable "pietà," of the brera gallery; the last probably a study only, as it was still in mantegna's studio when the artist passed away, for which reason it has erroneously been attributed to a later period. unpleasing though it is with its startling realism, the "dead christ" is of special value as a study in perspective, and, in the opinion of dr. kristeller, it was painted with a view to its being seen from below, for he says, "it is only as a ceiling painting, with its perspective point of sight coinciding with the central point of the ceiling, that the figure would appear correctly foreshortened. there can be no doubt," he adds, "that it was painted as a preliminary study for the nude youth standing inside the balustrade on the ceiling decoration of the camera degli sposi and for other figures in ceiling pictures." however that may be, the strange composition stands alone among its author's works, and will probably always remain a subject of contention to critics, so variously do its peculiarities affect different temperaments. [illustration: plate iv.--the agony in the garden (in the national gallery) this beautiful composition, now in the national gallery, london, is supposed to be a replica of the "mount of olives" that originally formed part of the predella of the great altar-piece of san zeno, verona, and to have been painted in for giacomo antonio marcello, then podestà of padua.] in addition to the oil-paintings quoted above, mantegna also produced between and a large number of frescoes for the various residences of the marquis of mantua, but unfortunately no trace of them remains. the earliest extant works of the kind are those of the camera degli sposi in the castello di corte, which were completed in , and in spite of their melancholy condition of decay, the result chiefly of their having been executed on a dry instead of a damp surface, are ranked amongst the most noteworthy examples of fifteenth-century decorative art in existence. not only are they admirably executed and thoroughly suitable for the position they occupy, but they also inaugurate a new departure in historical portraiture, the principal subjects being groups of the various members of the gonzaga family, the most interesting and characteristic of which is, perhaps, that representing the meeting between the marquis lodovico and cardinal francesco, already referred to as containing a portrait of the artist. in the other frescoes of the camera degli sposi the cardinal, who by this time had become papal legate of bologna and bishop of mantua, is conspicuous by his absence, his high position in the church making his visits to his home very rare, and leading to his being received with much pomp and ceremony when he did appear. on this occasion he and his father, who was accompanied by his two eldest grandsons, were each attended by a great retinue, and mantegna has managed with considerable skill, whilst preserving a certain homeliness, to convey an impression of grandeur, the noble figures of the actors in the scene standing out against a fine landscape background, from which rises up the city of mantua. the decorations of the camera degli sposi so delighted the marquis that he presented their author with an estate in the heart of the city, on which mantegna at once began to build a princely mansion, part of which is now converted into a college. long before it was finished, however, he was saddened by the death of lodovico, who passed away in , soon after he had commissioned what was to be his beloved court painter's greatest masterpiece--the series of pictures representing the "triumph of cæsar," that are now at hampton court, having been bought in from the then reigning marquis by charles i. lodovico was succeeded by his son federico, who treated mantegna with the same affectionate consideration as his predecessor had done, taking a deep interest in his welfare and sympathising with him in his domestic anxieties. on october , , he wrote to the artist, who had been unable to complete some work for him through illness, begging him to try and get well as quickly as possible, but not to worry about the delay, and later he did all in his power for mantegna's delicate boy, inquiring constantly after him, and giving his father a letter of introduction to the famous physician, girardo da verona, that is of special interest, affording, as it does, an all-too-rare glimpse of the painter as a man as well as an artist, trembling for the life of his suffering child. the marquis begs the doctor, to consult whom mantegna took his son to venice in , "to show every possible consideration to our noble and well-beloved servant"; and though the journey was all in vain, the patient having died soon after the return to mantua, the solicitude shown on his behalf by the marquis must have touched the heart of his sorrowing parents. [illustration: plate v.--the madonna and child surrounded by cherubs (in the brera gallery, milan) this charming composition, now in the brera gallery, milan, was painted in for the young marquis of mantua, gian francesco gonzaga, as a gift for the duchess eleanora of ferrara, mother of his affianced bride, isabella d'este. it is considered one of the finest of mantegna's later religious pictures.] in the court of mantua was thrown into mourning by the death of the dowager-marchesa barbara, who had from the first been a very kind friend to mantegna, and two years later her son, cardinal francesco gonzaga, to whom the artist was devotedly attached, also passed away. when, in , federico himself died suddenly, and his eighteen-year-old son, gian francesco--generally referred to by his second name only--became marquis in his stead, mantegna seems to have feared that his position at mantua would be adversely affected by all the changes that were taking place, and he hastened to offer his services to lorenzo de' medici, with whom he had some slight acquaintance, and whose liberality as a patron of art and literature was well known. what reply was made by the florentine duke to his suggestion is not known; but it soon became evident that the new ruler of mantua knew as well if not better than his father and grandfather had done before him, how to value his court painter, and one of the first acts of his reign was to ask mantegna to paint a picture for him to present to the duchess eleonora of mantua, mother of his affianced bride, isabella d'este, who was then only ten years old, but was later to become one of the artist's most liberal patrons and faithful admirers. the picture in question is supposed to have been the fine "madonna and child," with a background of cherubs' heads, now in the brera gallery, milan, considered, so far as its colouring is concerned, one of mantegna's most brilliant achievements. according to some authorities, it had already been ordered some months before by the duchess, and all francesco had to do with it was to urge the artist to finish it without further delay; but, in any case, the young marquis was constantly in the studio whilst it was in progress, chatting with the painter now about the work, now about his own private affairs. he was, it is said, deeply in love with his betrothed, or rather with the idea he had formed of her, for it is doubtful whether he had yet seen her, the wooing having been done by proxy as long previously as , when the little maiden of six had delighted the mantuan envoy with her grace and charm. no sooner was the picture signed, before the eager suitor had it packed, and started with it for ferrara, where it was received with the greatest enthusiasm, not only by the duchess herself but by the whole court, which, under the enlightened rule of duke ercole i. was a centre of culture, to which flocked artists, poets, musicians, humanists, and other leaders of the æsthetic and intellectual life of the day. of the actual meeting between the engaged couple no record has been preserved; but it is evident from letters written home by the marquis that his expectations were more than fulfilled, isabella already giving promise of the exceptional qualities which were to make her one of the most fascinating and influential women of her time, the memory of whose sweet and gracious presence still lingers both in ferarra and mantua. it was difficult for her lover to tear himself away when the day came for him to return home, where his presence was greatly needed; but before he left, he exacted a promise from duchess eleonora that she would bring her daughter to mantua in the autumn of the same year. it is easy to imagine how much francesco had to confide to his court painter when he paid his next visit to the studio; how he dwelt on the charms of his beloved isabella, and lamented over the years that must elapse before she could become his wife. he found mantegna eagerly engaged on the preliminary drawings for the "triumph of cæsar," and to the instructions already given by lodovico gonzaga he added a wish that all the distinguished guests who were soon to meet at his court should be introduced in the processions, as well as the chief members of his own family. mantegna, he may have said, would have plenty of opportunities for making studies of them; and now he must put everything else aside for a time to design the decorations in honour of the visit of the bride-elect and her mother, which were to be a kind of foretaste of those in celebration of the wedding. in all the preparations for that great event he relied upon the co-operation of mantegna, who must promise not to accept any invitation or commission that could interfere with his work on them, and, premature as this must have appeared to the artist, he readily gave the required assurance. all passed over as happily as francesco himself could have wished during the brief stay at mantua of eleonora and isabella, who won all hearts by their sympathetic appreciation of everything that was done to please them. after they left, the work on the "triumph of cæsar" proceeded apace, interrupted only now and then for the execution of minor commissions, such as the designing of jewellery, drinking-cups, &c.; but in came a very unwelcome summons for mantegna to go to rome, pope innocent viii., who had heard of the beauty of the frescoes at padua and mantua, wishing to have a chapel in the vatican decorated by their artist. such an invitation had all the force of a command, and the marquis was reluctantly compelled to let his beloved painter go; but before he left, he conferred on him the honour of knighthood, that he might take a better position in the papal court, and once more reminded him of the necessity that he should be back at mantua in january at the very latest. bearing with him a letter to the pope, dated june , , in which francesco spoke of him in the very highest terms, mantegna started for the holy city, where he was welcomed with the greatest eagerness, not only by his new employer but by the ecclesiastical and secular notabilities, who vied with each other in doing him honour. certain letters to the marquis francesco, however, betray discontent with the payment he received from the pope, and also with the facilities for his work afforded him in the vatican, a dissatisfaction that would, indeed, have been intensified could he have foreseen that the frescoes for which he sacrificed so much were to be ruthlessly destroyed in , with the chapel containing them, to make room for the museo pio clementina. it is only from allusions to them by vasari and descriptions by the later critics, agostino taja and giovanni pietro chattard, who lived in the second half of the eighteenth century, and saw the frescoes shortly before their destruction, that any idea can be obtained of what they were; but a supposed copy of a portrait of innocent viii. included in them, is in the collection of the archduke ferdinand of austria. that they were executed by mantegna without any assistance is proved by a letter from him to the marquis francesco, dated june , , in which he says, "the work is heavy for a man alone, intent on obtaining honours, especially in rome, where opinion is expressed by so many able men, and as in the races run by barbary horses the first gets the prize, so i too must gain in the end, if it please god." it is unnecessary to dwell long on works of art that have completely disappeared. suffice it to say that the frescoes were not finished in december , but that mantegna was hoping to get leave of absence from the pope for february , when he was suddenly struck down by fever, just before he would have started for mantua had all been well. the long-talked-of wedding took place, therefore, during his absence, and he had, after all, absolutely nothing to do with the festivities in honour of the marriage, that were evidently of a magnificent description. it must have been, indeed, a keen mortification to him to have missed such a golden opportunity of proving his devotion to his mantuan patron, and it is easy to realise with what mixed feelings he heard of the enthusiastic reception of the bride in her husband's native city. accompanied by isabella's parents, her uncle cardinal d'este, and her three young brothers, and escorted by a brilliant suite, the newly wedded pair entered the city on february th, the one drawback to their happiness, contemporary chroniclers report, having been the absence of the court painter, whose praises had been so often sung by the bridegroom. [illustration: plate vi.--the madonna and child of the grotto (in the uffizi gallery, florence) this severe and dignified group, now in the uffizi gallery, florence, is supposed by some critics to have been painted in mantua about the same time as the frescoes of the camera degli sposi, whilst others assign it to a much later date, declaring it to have been produced between - during the artist's residence in rome.] fortunately, the artist soon recovered from his illness, but it was not until september that he completed his work in rome, and received permission from the pope to return to mantua. innocent viii. expressed himself in his letter of dismissal fully satisfied with the way in which his wishes had been carried out; but whether the artist was equally pleased with the reward for his services is questionable. he was evidently very glad to leave rome, where, strange to say, in spite of his love for antiquity and the opportunities he must have enjoyed for his favourite study, he seems to have felt out of his element. his correspondence with the marquis betrays considerable home-sickness, and contains absolutely no allusions to the art treasures of the vatican. he pleads with his patron for an appointment for his son lodovico, declares he is longing to be at work again on the "triumph of cæsar," and retails various items of court gossip, telling quaint stories, for instance, about the ill-fated prince djem, brother of the reigning sultan of turkey, who was then a prisoner in the vatican, but not a word does he say to throw light on the political situation, which was already causing anxiety to the heads of the great italian states. back again in mantua, mantegna quickly threw off the depression revealed in his letters, resuming his old place as if he had never been away, his studio becoming once more the centre of artistic activity in the ancient town. the court painter was as eagerly welcomed by the young marchesa as by her husband, and for the rest of his life his fortunes were very closely bound up with those of the d'este family, which is equivalent to saying that he was henceforth to be in close touch with the history of his native country, that was even then on the eve of the revolution that was completely to change her position in the polity of nations. the marquis of mantua's bride was the only sister of beatrice d'este, who was married on december , , to the brilliantly gifted but fickle, cruel, and crafty lodovico sforza, surnamed ii moro, who obtained the dukedom of milan through treachery, and was mainly instrumental in bringing about the invasion of italy by the french, a crime for which he was to pay dearly, first with his liberty and in the end with his life, for he died a prisoner in the castle of loches in . no hint of troubles to come saddened the first few months of isabella d'este's life at mantua, her chief anxiety having apparently been concerning her beloved sister, whose lot was far less happy than her own. lodovico sforza had not been nearly so ardent a lover as francesco gonzaga, for he had a mistress, the lovely and learned cecilia gallerani, to whom he was devotedly attached, and who had been for many years treated by him as if she were his legal wife. it is significant of the indulgent manner in which such unions were regarded that his relations with her were not considered any bar to his marriage with an innocent young girl, whose parents did all in their power to hasten her engagement with him. it was very evident, however, that beatrice did not share their eagerness, and it was to isabella, who had hastened to ferrara as soon as the matter was settled, that she turned for comfort in her shrinking dread of what was before her. that the marchesa succeeded in reassuring her and bracing her up for the ordeal is proved by the dignified way in which the child-bride bore herself in the long-drawn-out and brilliant festivities that celebrated her union with a man more than double her own age, and the ease with which she took up the arduous duties of the wife of the leading and most powerful prince of italy. it was with a heart relieved of its most pressing fears that the elder sister returned home, and the letters written to her by beatrice in the months succeeding her departure reveal a growing attachment between the newly married couple, on which a seal was set in january by the birth of their first son. the court of the gonzagas now became the rendezvous of the leading authors, artists, and antiquarians of the day, who vied with each other in their enthusiastic admiration for the beautiful young marchesa, though it is occasionally suggested by contemporary writers that as time went on some of them rather rebelled against her increasing exactions, for she would fain have had every one give up everything to obey her behests. she is even said to have sent imperious messages to such great celebrities as perugino, giovanni bellini, and leonardo da vinci, bidding them come and help mantegna to decorate her apartments, describing the subjects she wished them to interpret, and expressing herself as greatly aggrieved when they failed to appear. on the other hand, there is no doubt that she proved herself a most generous and considerate patron of her own court painter, and the four years after his return from rome were probably among the happiest of mantegna's life. he worked during them almost exclusively at the "triumph of cæsar," receiving no help from any other artist, completing the tenth composition in , and making several sketches for others that were never finished. in these wonderful creations the artist realised the very spirit of antiquity, yet at the same time bequeathed to posterity a marvellously true series of presentments of the contemporary life of his time, full of significant incidents and effective contrasts, the various groups displaying a freedom of execution and force of expression such as mantegna had never before achieved. for the first time realism and idealism were welded into one, and the past seemed actually to become the present, waking into new life not merely as an intellectual abstraction, but as a visible pageant of humanity. the year of the successful conclusion of the "triumph of cæsar" was a disastrous one for italy, for in july the duke of orleans, on the invitation of lodovico sforza, crossed the alps, to be followed almost immediately by charles viii. the french king and the duke of orleans were welcomed with great enthusiasm by il moro, whose wife wrote glowing accounts to her sister at mantua of the rejoicings over their arrival; but those who looked below the surface recognised what a fatal mistake had been made, and sinister rumours soon began to spread abroad as to the real motives of lodovico sforza. the death of his nephew giangaleazzo at a most opportune moment for him led to suspicions of his having caused him to be poisoned, that were confirmed by the way in which he managed to get his claim to the succession recognised and the dead man's young son francesco set aside in his own favour. for all that, he was allowed to assume the supreme authority at milan without opposition, and contemporary chroniclers even comment on the kindness shown by him and his wife to the widowed duchess, to whom apartments were assigned in the palace that had so long been her home. meanwhile, everything had remained quiet at mantua, though all that was going on elsewhere was being watched with eager interest by the gonzagas and mantegna. early in isabella went to milan to be with her sister, who was expecting her second child, and on february th a fine boy was born. in the brilliant festivities held to celebrate the great event the child's beautiful aunt is said to have taken a leading part, now receiving ambassadors from foreign courts to save the young mother fatigue, now advising her brother-in-law in some difficult question of etiquette, capping verses with gaspare visconti, criticising the work of giovanni bellini, or playing with her two-year-old nephew, ercole, who simply worshipped her. suddenly, in the midst of all this light-hearted gaiety, came the news that charles viii. had entered naples and been crowned king of sicily, and though the bells of milan were ostentatiously rung as if in rejoicing, a council was hastily summoned to consult on the best measures to save italy from the french invaders. on april th a league against france was signed between venice, urbino, mantua, milan, king ferdinand of spain and the emperor maximilian; the marquis of mantua was made generalissimo of the united italian forces, and after taking an affectionate farewell of mantegna, who, he said, would soon be called upon to paint a masterpiece in celebration of a victory, he set forth in high spirits at the head of his army. his words turned out to be prophetic, for on july th, at fornovo, he defeated the french with great loss, fighting himself side by side with his soldiers in the front rank. before he went into action he vowed that if he escaped unhurt he would build a church in honour of the virgin at mantua, and as soon as the battle was over he sent instructions to mantegna to make plans of the building, and to design an altar-piece for it. [illustration: plate vii.--parnassus (in the louvre) this charmingly dramatic interpretation of the subjugation of the god of war by the goddess of love is one of a series of allegorical pictures painted for the "studio" of the marchesa isabella gonzaga at mantua, and is a unique example of its artist's deep sympathy with the spirit of classic legend.] the church was finished before the painting, which was not begun until august th, but it was completed in time to be placed in position on the anniversary of the event it commemorated, and is universally considered the artist's finest work of the kind, surpassing even the beautiful s. zeno triptych. it is now one of the chief treasures of the louvre, having been taken to france in , and is known as the "madonna della vittoria," although, as a matter of fact, it represents the marquis of mantua pleading with the virgin for the success of his arms, not returning thanks for victory, the whole composition breathing forth yearning aspiration rather than exultation. in it the holy child occupies the centre of the design, all the light being concentrated on him and on the face of his mother, who embraces him with one hand, and stretches forth the other towards the kneeling suppliant, opposite to whom are st. elizabeth and the infant st. john the baptist. the mantle of the virgin is held back by saints george and michael, and against the ornate background appear the heads of the patrons of mantua, saints andrew and longinus, the whole being admirably proportioned and well balanced. during the years that succeeded the victory of fornovo the marquis of mantua and his wife had to contend not only with great political anxieties but with one of the greatest sorrows of their lives--the sudden death of the duchess of milan, who passed away on january , , after giving birth to a still-born son. her end is said to have been hastened by the fact that her husband, who had hitherto seemed devoted to her, had recently conceived a passion for a lovely girl named lucrezia crivelli, who had been one of her ladies-in-waiting. however that may have been, lodovico's grief at her loss, intensified perhaps by self-reproach, was extreme, and the letter he wrote to his brother-in-law asking him to break the terrible news to isabella is one long cry of anguish. that the young wife had been mercifully taken away from the evil to come soon, however, became apparent, for before she had been dead a year her husband's doom was already sealed. heavy clouds, too, were gathering at mantua, for the marquis fell under the suspicion of having had underhand dealings with the enemy, and in april he was suddenly dismissed from his post as generalissimo of the italian forces. this was a bitter blow to him, to his wife, and to all, including mantegna, who had his interests at heart, but fortunately the storm quickly blew over, and he was soon restored to his command, which he retained to the end of the campaign. the taking of milan by the french in and the triumphant entry into the conquered city of louis xii.--who, the little dauphin having died shortly before his father, had become king of france on the death of charles viii.--with all the terrible consequences to the sforza family, cast a gloom over the court of mantua for the rest of the reign of the marquis francesco, and both he and isabella found their best distraction from their many sorrows in watching their court painter at work. the "madonna della vittoria" was succeeded by the "madonna with saints and angels," now in the collection of prince trivulzio at milan, painted for the monks of s. maria in organo, verona, and the "madonna and child with st. john the baptist," now in the national gallery, with the smaller but no less charming "holy family" of the dresden gallery. to about the same period are supposed to belong the designs for the frescoes in mantegna's mortuary chapel in s. andrea, mantua, of which only two--the "holy family with st. elizabeth, zacharias, and the infant st. john" and the "baptism of christ," the latter almost defaced--are from the hand of the master himself, the rest having been completed after his death by his pupils. in , when andrea was already in his seventieth year, he was commissioned by the marchesa to paint a series of allegorical subjects in what she called her "studio," in the castello of mantua, on the decoration of which several other artists, including perugino and lorenzo da costa, were also engaged. mantegna was, unfortunately, the only one of the painters selected who approached the task with any enthusiasm, or attempted to realise the ambition of isabella--that her sanctum should be a kind of epitome of intellectual and sensuous life, symbolising, as do the trifoni of petrarch in literature, the most ideal aspirations of humanity. the first of the compositions completed by mantegna was the "parnassus," in which the conquest of mars by venus is celebrated, that is unique amongst the master's works, generally characterised as they are by sobriety of expression, as an interpretation of light-hearted gaiety. the figures of the dancing-girls are full of vivacious grace, and that of the goddess of love of seductive charm, contrasting well with the virile and heroic form of her suitor, the stern god of war, whilst the minor actors in the idyllic scene--the neglected husband, vulcan, working at his forge as if indifferent to what is going on, apollo, mercury, and cupid--are all most happily rendered, the various groups combining to give the impression of a living drama, in which the artist, in the fulness of his creative power, for once succeeded in giving visible expression to his lifelong dream of the old olympus, which he had previously seen only in his imagination. it was not until some years after the execution of the "parnassus" that the second of the "studio" pictures, the comparatively uninteresting "triumph of virtue over the vices," was finished. though its details were evidently carefully studied, it shows a lamentable falling off in simplicity and effectiveness of design, mantegna having been greatly hampered by the constant interference of isabella, who insisted on the introduction of a bewildering number of allegorical figures. the third and last composition, an equally unpromising subject, the "triumph of erotic love," was only begun by andrea, and completed by lorenzo da costa, who faithfully endeavoured to fulfil his predecessor's intentions. all three paintings are now in the louvre, where the "parnassus" may be usefully compared with the earlier "madonna della vittoria" and the "crucifixion," the three works being very typical of the various periods of the master's development. to belongs the fine and characteristic monochrome decorative picture of the "triumph of scipio," now in the national gallery, one of the very latest of the master's works, commemorating two important episodes of the second punic war--the welcome given to the image of the goddess cybele brought from rome to ostia by publius scipio, and the miracle wrought by the "mother of the gods" on her arrival, which proved the innocence of the roman matron, claudia quinta, who had been falsely accused of immorality. concerning this fine work, in which the artist tells the well-known classic story with dramatic directness, a very interesting correspondence has been preserved, between isabella d'este and the famous venetian scholar, pietro bembo, who complained to the marchioness that mantegna had long ago pledged himself to paint certain pictures for his friend, francesco cornaro, who had paid twenty-five ducats on account. he begged the master's patroness to induce him to fulfil his engagements, adding that "messer cornaro would not mind about a couple of hundred ducats; he would gladly leave the value of the pictures to her, but he would not allow himself to be jested with, and meant to stand upon his rights." to this the great lady appealed to replied that "she would certainly speak for cornaro to mantegna when opportunity should occur, but that the aged artist was at the moment scarcely recovered from a serious illness, so that it was impossible yet to talk to him about business." that she did intervene soon afterwards, or that mantegna's own conscience reproached him, is, however, proved by the fact that the completed "triumph of scipio" was found in his studio after his death. [illustration: plate viii.--the triumph of scipio (in the national gallery) painted in , this fine decorative picture in monochrome, now in the national gallery, is one of mantegna's latest works, and represents two incidents of the second punic war--the arrival at rome of the image of the goddess cybele, and the supposed miracle wrought by it.] the picture is referred to by the painter's son lodovico in a letter to the marchioness "as that work of scipio cornelio which was undertaken for messer francesco cornaro, and which the cardinal sigismondo gonzaga desired to retain for himself." vainly did andrea's second son protest against this, begging the marquis francesco to let him have it back, "for he wished to keep it as a memorial of his father and for purposes of study," a plea delightfully suggestive of happy relations having existed between the writer and the great master. francesco mantegna added that he would gladly pay back the twenty-five ducats to cornaro, and great was his disappointment when, after a long delay, he received as sole answer to his request a promissory note from the cardinal for one hundred ducats, which in the end turned out to be no more than waste paper, for as long afterwards as november neither he nor his brother had been able to get the money. in the end, the descendants of messer cornaro got possession of the picture, which was bought from one of them by lord george vivian, whose son left it to the national gallery in . with the "triumph of scipio" may justly be ranked the "samson and delilah," also now in the national gallery, that is evidently entirely from the hand of the master himself, and is a very realistic interpretation of the much-exploited incident of the betrayal of the strong man by the weak but cunning woman. other typical drawings are the "judgment of solomon," in the louvre, and the three renderings of judith placing the head of holofernes in a sack that is held open by her handmaiden--one in the possession of mr. john taylor, one at dublin, and the third in the uffizi. the last, signed by the artist with his full name and dated , is a truly admirable rendering of its subject, the shrinking horror felt by the beautiful and heroic girl of the ghastly trophy she is about to let fall, being vividly reflected in her attitude and expression as well as in those of her companion. less satisfactory from a technical point of view are the "mutius scævola" of the munich collection, commemorative of the noble deed of the young roman who had been chosen by lot to slay the etruscan invader, king porsenna, and having failed was condemned to be burnt alive; the group of "mars, venus, and diana," in the british museum; the "vestal virgin tucia," also known as "autumn," and the "greek woman drinking from a cup," sometimes called "summer," in the national gallery. even they, however, as well as the more important drawings, are eminently characteristic of their author, who from first to last was more pictorial in his sketches than in his finished compositions. not only as a painter but as an engraver did mantegna win great renown during his lifetime and abiding fame after his death. he and his gifted contemporary, antonio pollaiuolo, were the first italians to employ copperplate engravings for original work and the reproduction of their drawings, and a very great impulse was given by them to the useful craft. the closing months of mantegna's life are involved in an obscurity as great as that shrouding his early years. it is not even known of what he died, some saying that he was suddenly carried off by the plague which was raging in mantua at the time, others that the end had long been expected, and that old age was his only ailment. the sad event took place at seven o'clock in the evening, on september , , and the news was formally notified to the marquis two days later by francesco mantegna; but, probably because of the great anxieties by which the gonzagas were then oppressed, very little notice was taken of what under other circumstances would have overwhelmed them with grief. andrea mantegna was quietly buried in the chapel in s. andrea, mantua, that he had long since secured as the last resting-place of his family, and which, except for the completion of the unfinished frescoes, remains to the present day very much what it was at the time of his death. it was not until fifty years later that the bronze bust, already referred to, was set up outside the chapel by his grandson andrea, son of lodovico mantegna, who also erected within the building a fine memorial to his grandfather, father, and uncle, bearing the inscription, "ossa andreæ mantineæ famosissimi pictoris cum duobus filiis in hoc sepulcro per andream mantineæ nepotem ex filio constructo reposita mdlx." in addition to the well-authenticated paintings, frescoes, and engravings described above, a very great number of other works, including easel pictures, drawings, and miniatures, have been attributed to mantegna, who is also said to have occasionally practised sculpture. moreover, literary evidence proves that nearly one hundred compositions designed and executed by him have been lost, amongst which are specially to be regretted the portraits of his various patrons of the gonzaga family and, above all, that of the duchess elizabetta of urbino, who was one of the most beautiful and influential women of her time, beloved by young and old, and for whom her brilliant sister-in-law, isabella d'este, had a most fervent admiration. even without these missing treasures, however, the court painter of mantua left behind him masterpieces enough to secure to him a lasting fame as one of the pioneers of the renaissance of painting in italy. the fact that mantegna passed away on the very threshold of the golden age, during which leonardo da vinci, michael angelo, raphael, titian, and correggio, each the founder of a great school, produced their world-famous works, has led to his achievements having been comparatively neglected; but of late years his claims have gradually become more fully recognised, and he now takes high rank as a consistent and persevering exponent of a high ideal. his intense individuality was from the first hostile to imitation, but his influence was long felt in the art world, and many artists who were associated with him in padua and mantua later carried on his traditions to some extent in verona, ferrara, modena, bologna, and milan. jacopo da montagnana was, perhaps, the master who most closely resembled him, some of his work having been actually attributed to mantegna; but francesco benaglio, liberate da verona, francesco moroni, girolamo dai libri, marco zoppo, cosimo tura, and lorenzo da costa owed much to their study of his masterpieces--the last named, who succeeded him as court painter at mantua, reproducing in his later compositions something of the characteristic style of his predecessor in that office. it has even been claimed that correggio, who, according to a long-accepted but now discredited tradition, was supposed to have been the actual pupil of mantegna, derived much of his inspiration from the older painter. "both artists," says dr. kristeller in an able examination of the points of affinity between them, "penetrate to the very core of the subject, to the purely human emotion latent within it: equally sensitive and elevated in spirit, both strive enthusiastically after a superhuman existence, full of an enhanced joy in life.... both seek to break through the confines of the earthly to secure, in immeasurable space, free scope for the power and the magnitude of their figures. the voluptuous swinging lines, the ideally beautiful forms of mantegna's figures in his later works, their sweet and thoughtful expression of tranquil bliss and spiritual emotion is in correggio's creations only heightened by the passionate sensuousness of his own outlook on the world, by the utmost vivacity of movement, and by his ardent surrender of self to the sensuous as well as to the godlike. but," adds the german critic, and here he lays his finger on the essential difference between the art and character of the men compared, "sensuousness in mantegna was neither ignored nor emphasised," for there was no pandering to the love of sensation in the work of the sincere and earnest master of mantua, who never represented passion for its own sake, but combined with a true appreciation of the beauty of physical form and the poetry of motion a stern severity of expression peculiarly his own. both masters pursued the same ideal of beauty, both penetrated to the very heart of their subjects, but the paintings of mantegna are more elevated in spirit than those of the more widely admired successor, whose forerunner he is said to have been. there is, it must be admitted, a certain want of dramatic unity marring the effect even of the greatest compositions of the mantuan painter; but it should not be forgotten that his aim was not the same as that of raphael, titian, holbein, or memlinc. even his severest critics are compelled to admit that he fully realised his own ambition, a truly worthy one, to bring the past into touch with the present, and to pave the way for those who should come after him. his best works display not only consummate draughtsmanship but a power of interpreting intellectual and spiritual emotion, rare amongst his contemporaries, though it was to be bestowed in fullest measure upon many of the masters of the sixteenth century; and he will ever remain, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, one of the greatest of their predecessors. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh masterpieces in colour edited by m. henry roujon rosa bonheur ( - ) * * * * * _in the same series_ reynolds velasquez greuze turner botticelli romney rembrandt bellini fra angelico rossetti raphael leighton holman hunt titian millais luini franz hals carlo dolci gainsborough tintoretto van dyck da vinci whistler rubens boucher holbein burne-jones le brun chardin millet raeburn sargent constable memling fragonard dÜrer lawrence hogarth watteau murillo watts ingres corot delacroix fra lippo lippi puvis de chavannes meissonier gÉrÔme veronese van eyck fromentin mantegna perugino henner * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--the lion meditating (rosa bonheur museum) according to artists, the lion is the most difficult of all animals to paint, on account of the prodigious mobility of his physiognomy. rosa bonheur was able, thanks to her inimitable art, to catch and reproduce the fugitive facial expressions of the kingly beast,--expressions that the artist succeeded in securing during a visit to a certain menagerie, and which she managed to record with a most surprising vigour and fidelity.] rosa bonheur by fr. crastre translated from the french by frederic taber cooper illustrated with eight reproductions in colour frederick a. stokes company new york--publishers copyright, , by frederick a. stokes company [illustration: august, ] the·plimpton·press norwood·mass·u·s·a contents page childhood and youth the first successes the years of glory list of illustrations plate i. the lion meditating frontispiece rosa bonheur museum ii. the ass rosa bonheur studio, at by iii. the horse fair national gallery, london iv. ploughing in the nivernais luxembourg museum, paris v. ossian's dream rosa bonheur studio, peyrol collection vi. the duel collection of messrs. lefèvre, london vii. tigers rosa bonheur studio, at by viii. trampling the grain rosa bonheur studio, at by childhood and youth in , a young painter of brilliant promise was living in bordeaux. his name was raymond bonheur. but the fairies who presided at his birth omitted to endow him with riches, in addition to talent. the hardships of existence compelled him to relinquish his dreams of glory and to pursue the irksome task of earning his daily bread. the artist became a drawing master and went the rounds of private lessons. among his pupils he made the acquaintance of a young girl, mlle. sophie marquis, as penniless as himself, but attractive and gentle, full of courage, and displaying exceptional ability in music. a similarity of tastes and opinions drew these two artistic natures toward each other. they fell in love, and the marriage service united their destinies. the young couple started upon married life with no other fortune than their mutual attachment and equal courage. he continued to teach drawing and she gave lessons in music. but before long she was forced to put an end to these lessons in order to devote herself to new duties. indeed, it was less than a year after their marriage, namely on the th of march, , that a little girl was born into the world: this little girl was rosalie bonheur, better known under the name of rosa bonheur. it is not surprising in such an artistic environment, that the child's taste should have undergone a sort of obscure, yet undoubted impregnation. from the time that she began to understand, she heard art and nothing else discussed around her; her first uncertain steps were taken in her father's studio, and her first playthings were a brush and a palette laden with colours. [illustration: plate ii.--the ass (rosa bonheur studio, at by) rosa bonheur was inimitable in the art of seizing the expression on the face of an animal. here, for instance, is a study of an ass which makes quite a charming picture. note the admirable rendering of the animal's attitude, which is half obstinacy and half resignation, while the worn-out body weighs so heavily on the shrunken legs!] rosalie could hardly walk before she was drawing and painting everywhere. later on, she gave a spirited account of this: "i was not yet four years old when i conceived a veritable passion for drawing, and i bespattered the white walls as high as i could reach with my shapeless daubs: another great source of amusement was to cut objects out of paper. they were always the same, however: i would begin by making long paper ribbons, then with my scissors, i would cut out, in the first place, a shepherd, and after him a dog, and next a cow, and next a ship, and next a tree, invariably in the same order. i have spent many a long day at this pastime." the bonheurs had, at this time, formed a close friendship with a family by the name of silvela, but the latter left bordeaux in in order to assume the direction of an institute for boys in paris. the separation did not break off their intercourse. they corresponded frequently and in every letter the silvelas urged raymond bonheur to come and join them in paris where, they said, he would find an easier and more remunerative way of employing his talent. these repeated appeals strongly tempted the man, but a journey to paris, at this epoch, was not an easy matter. besides, his family had increased to the extent of two more children: auguste bonheur, born in , and isidore bonheur, born in . at last, after much hesitation, he made up his mind to set forth alone to try his luck, prepared to return home if he did not succeed. he went directly to the silvelas' in the capacity of instructor of drawing; the families of some of the pupils took an interest in him and obtained him opportunities. geoffroy saint-hilaire, the great naturalist, entrusted him with the execution of a large number of plates for a natural history. if not a fortune, this was at least an assured living. accordingly, bonheur decided to transfer his entire household to paris. they joined him in and were installed in the rue saint-antoine. little rosa, who was then seven years old, was no sooner settled in paris, than she was placed together with her brothers in a boys' school which happened to be located in the same house where the bonheurs lived. being brought up with young boys of her own age, she acquired those boyish manners that she retained throughout life, and to which she owes, without the slightest doubt, that virile mark which was destined to characterize her painting. she used to go with her comrades, during recess, to play in the place royale. "i was the ring-leader in all the games and i did not hesitate, when necessary, to use my fists." the revolution of ensued and rosa witnessed it develop beneath the windows of her father's dwelling. these were evil hours and the bonheur family suffered in consequence. lessons became rarer and the pinch of poverty was felt within the household, which was forced to migrate again to no. rue des tournelles, a large seventeenth century mansion, solemn and gloomy, of which rosa must have retained the worst possible memories had it not chanced that it was here she acquired a little comrade, mlle. micas, who was destined to become, subsequently, her best friend. the years which followed were equally unfortunate for raymond bonheur: paris had hardly recovered from the shock of the revolution, when in the cholera made its appearance. there was no further question of lessons, for everyone thought solely of his own safety; the rich fled from the city, the others remained closely housed in order to avoid the fatal contagion. to escape the scourge, raymond bonheur once more changed his dwelling and established himself in the rue du helder. variable and impulsive by nature, the painter delighted in change. he was barely installed in the rue du helder when he left the new abode in order to move to ménilmontant in the centre of a hotbed of saint-simonism, the doctrines of which he had enthusiastically espoused. in , we find him installed on the quai des Écoles. this year a great misfortune befell the family: mme. bonheur died and the painter found himself alone and burdened with the responsibility of feeding, tending, and bringing up four children, one of whom, isabelle bonheur, born in , was only three years old. it was at this time that raymond bonheur became anxious to have rosa, who was now eleven years of age, acquire some vocation. inasmuch as she had shown the most violent aversion to study in every school she had attended, her father fancied that perhaps business would be more to her taste. accordingly he apprenticed her to a dressmaker. but the young girl showed no more inclination for sewing than for arithmetic and grammar. at the end of two weeks it became necessary to give up the experiment. raymond bonheur, who was absent all day long giving lessons, was absolutely bent upon finding some occupation for rosa. he made one last attempt to send her to school; so he placed her with mme. gibert in the rue de reuilly. rosa with her boyish manners and her incorrigible turbulence brought revolution into the peaceful precincts of the pension. she engaged her new comrades in games of mimic warfare, combats, cavalry charges across the flower-beds of the garden which was reduced to ruins before the end of the second day. the principal in consternation returned the irrepressible amazon to her father. the latter, in very natural despair, allowed rosa to stay at home, in the rue des tournelles, where he was newly established and where he had fitted up a studio. he even allowed the young girl free entry to the studio and gave her permission to sketch. she asked for nothing better. while her father scoured the city on his round of lessons, she would shut herself into the studio and work with desperate energy, taking in turn every object hanging on the walls for her models. one day on returning home, at the end of his day's work, raymond bonheur discovered on the easel a little canvas representing a bunch of cherries, a well drawn canvas and excellently painted from nature. this was rosa bonheur's first painting; it bore witness to a genuine artistic temperament. her father was delighted, but he hid his pleasure. "that is not so bad," he allowed to rosa. "work seriously, and you may become an artist." this word of encouragement set the young girl's heart to pulsing with emotion. then it needed only application and courage? she felt within her an energy that nothing could rebuff and an ambition that nothing could quench. rosa bonheur had found her path. the first successes not long after this, a serious and determined young girl might be seen in the halls of the louvre, copying with desperate energy the works of the great masters. she wore an eccentric costume, consisting of a sort of dolman with military frogs. it was young rosa bonheur serving her apprenticeship to art. the students and copyists who regularly frequented the museum, not knowing her name, had christened her "the little hussard." but the jests and criticisms flung out by passing strangers in regard to her work, far from discouraging her, only drove her to still more obstinate and persistent study. the hours which she did not consecrate to the louvre, she spent in her father's studio, multiplying her sketches and anatomical studies. even at this period she had already grasped instinctively the truth formulated by ingres, that "honesty in art depends upon line-work." few painters have so far insisted upon this honesty, this conscientiousness, without which the most gifted artist remains incomplete. whatever gifts he may be endowed with by nature, talent cannot be improvised; it is the fruit of independent and sustained toil. later on, when she in her turn became a teacher, rosa bonheur was able to proclaim the necessity of line-work with all the more authority because it had always been the fundamental basis, the very scaffolding of all her works. "it is the true grammar of art," she would affirm, "and the time thus spent cannot fail to be profitable in the future." [illustration: plate iii.--the horse fair (national gallery, london) this painting is considered by some critics to be rosa bonheur's masterpiece. there is no other painting of hers in which she attained the same degree of power, or the same degree of truth in individual expression. what naturalness, and what vigour in this drove of prancing horses, and what movement of those haunches straining under the effort of the muscles!] during this period of study, she was living in the rue de la bienfaisance; her father's mania for changing his residence dragged her successively to the rue du roule, and then to the rue rumford, in the level stretch of the monceau quarter, where raymond bonheur, who had just remarried, installed his new household. at that time the rue rumford was practically in the open country. on all sides there were farms abundantly stocked with cows, sheep, pigs, and poultry. this was an unforeseen piece of good fortune for young rosa, and she felt her passionate love for animals reawaken. equipped with her pencils, she installed herself at a farm at villiers, near to the park of neuilly, and there she would spend the entire day, striving to catch and record the different attitudes of her favourite models. for the sake of greater accuracy, she made a study of the anatomy of animals, and even did some work in dissection. not content with this, she applied herself to sculpture, and made models of the animals in clay or wax before drawing them. this is how she came to acquire her clever talent for sculpture which would have sufficed to establish a reputation if she had not become the admirable painter that we know her to have been. her special path was now determined: she would be a painter of animals. she understood them, she knew them, and loved them. but it did not satisfy her to study them out-of-doors; she wanted them in her own home. she persuaded her father to admit a sheep into the apartment; then, little by little, the menagerie was increased by a goat, a dog, a squirrel, some caged birds, and a number of quails that roamed at liberty about her room. at last, in , after years of devoted toil, rosa ventured to offer to the salon a little painting representing _two rabbits_ and a drawing depicting some _dogs and sheep_. both the drawing and the painting were accepted. it was an occasion of great rejoicing both for rosa bonheur and for her father. the young artist was at this time only nineteen years of age. from this time forward, she sent pictures to the salon annually. during the first years her exhibits passed unnoticed; but little by little her sincerity and the vigour of her talent made an impression upon the critics. the latter were soon forced to admire the intense relief of her method of painting, living animals transcribed in full action, and their different physiognomies rendered with admirable fidelity and art. but what labour it cost to arrive at this degree of perfection! every morning, the young artist made the rounds of slaughter-houses, markets, the museum, anywhere and everywhere that she might see and study animals. and this was destined to continue throughout her entire life. in she sent three paintings to the salon: namely, an _evening effect in a pasture_, a _cow lying in a pasture_, and a _horse for sale_; and in addition to these, a terra-cotta, the _shorn sheep_, which received the approval of the critics. and no less praise was bestowed upon her paintings, which showed a talent for landscape fully equal to her mastery of animal portraiture. her success was progressive. her pictures in the salon of sold to advantage and rosa bonheur was able to travel. she brought home from her trip five works that found a place in the salon of . the following year her exhibits produced a sensation. anatole de la forge devoted an enthusiastic article to her, and the jury awarded her a third-class medal. "in ," rosa bonheur herself relates, "the recipients had to go in person to obtain their medals at the director's office. i went, armed with all the courage of my twenty-three years. the director of fine-arts complimented me and presented the medal in the name of the king. imagine his stupefaction when i replied: 'i beg of you, monsieur, to thank the king on my behalf, and be so kind as to add that i shall try to do better another time.'" rosa bonheur kept her word: her whole life was a long and sustained effort to "do better." after the salon of , where she was represented by five remarkable exhibits, she paid a visit to auvergne, where she was able to study a breed of cattle very different from any that she had hitherto seen and painted: superb animals of massive build, with compact bodies, short and powerful legs, and wide-spread nostrils. the sheep and horses also had a characteristic physiognomy that was strongly marked and noted with scrupulous care, and enabled her to reappear in the salon of with new types that gathered crowds around her canvases, to stare in wonderment at these animals which were so obviously different from those which academic convention was in the habit of showing them. the general public admired, and so did the critics. it was only the jury that remained hostile towards this independent and personal manner of painting, which ignored the established procedure of the schools and based itself wholly upon inspiration and sincerity; accordingly, they always took pains to place her pictures in obscure corners or at inaccessible heights. the public, however, which always finds its way to what it likes, took pains on its part to discover and enjoy them. in rosa bonheur had her revenge. the recently proclaimed republic, wishing to show its generosity towards artists, decreed that all works offered that year to the salon should without exception be received. as to the awards, they were to be determined by a jury from which the official and administrative element was to be henceforth banished. the judges were léon cogniet, ingres, delacroix, horace vernet, decamps, robert-fleury, ary scheffer, meissonier, corot, paul delaroche, jules dupré, isabey, drolling, flandrin, and roqueplan. rosa bonheur exhibited six paintings and two pieces of sculpture. the paintings comprised: _oxen and bulls_ (cantal breed), _sheep in a pasture_, _salers oxen grazing_, a _running dog_ (vendée breed), _the miller walking_, _an ox_. the two bronzes represented a _bull_ and a _sheep_. her success was complete. judged by her peers, in the absence of academic prejudice, she obtained a medal of the first class. this year an event took place in her domestic life. as a result of recent remarriage, her father had a son, germain bonheur. the house had become too small for the now enlarged family; besides, the crying of the child, and the constant coming and going necessitated by the care that it required seriously interfered with rosa's work. accordingly she left her home in the rue rumford and took a studio in the rue de l'ouest. she was accompanied by mlle. micas, the old-time friend of her childhood, whom she had rediscovered, and who from this time forth attached herself to rosa with a devotion surpassing that of a sister, and almost like that of a mother. she also was an artist and took a studio adjoining that of her friend; several times she collaborated on rosa's canvases, when the latter was over-burdened with work. after rosa had sketched her landscape and blocked in her animals, mlle. micas would carry the work forward, and rosa, coming after her, would add the finishing touch of her vigorous and unfaltering brush. but to rosa bonheur mlle. micas meant far more as a friend than as a collaborator. with a devoted and touching tenderness she watched over the material welfare of the great artist, who was by nature quite indifferent to the material things of life. it was the good and faithful nathalie who supervised rosa's meals and repaired her garments. she was also a good counsellor, and on many different occasions rosa bonheur paid tribute to the intelligence and devotion of her friend. [illustration: plate iv.--ploughing in the nivernais (luxembourg museum) this painting shows the artist in the full possession of her vigorous and unfaltering talent. the luxembourg is to-day proud of the possession of such a masterpiece. it testifies to rosa bonheur's equal eminence as an animal painter and a painter of landscapes.] the resplendent successes of recent salons had in no wise diminished rosa bonheur's ardent passion for study. in contrast to many another artist, who think that there is nothing more to learn, as soon as they become known, she persevered without respite in her painful drudgery of research and documentation. every day she covered the distance from the rue de l'ouest to the slaughter-houses in order to catch some hitherto unknown aspect of animal life, and to note the quivering of the wretched beast that scents the blood and foresees its approaching death. there was much that was disagreeable for a young woman in this daily promiscuous contact with butchers, heavy, tactless brutes, who frequently insulted her with their vulgar and suggestive jokes. she pretended not to understand, but nothing short of her unconquerable passion for study would have sustained her courage. together with the success of recognition came the success of prosperity. rosa began to sell her paintings profitably. a certain shirt-manufacturer, m. bourges, who was also an art collector, acquired a goodly number of her works; and after him came m. tedesco, the celebrated picture dealer, who was a keen admirer of her talent. in , the far reaching renown of her _ploughing in the nivernais_ brought her the honour of making a sale to the state, which acquired the celebrated painting for the museum of the luxembourg, where it still remains. the subject of the picture is well known: in a pleasant stretch of rolling country, bounded by a wooded slope, two teams of oxen are dragging their heavy ploughs and turning up a field in which we see the furrows that have already been laid open. the whole interest centres in the team in the foreground. the six oxen which compose it, ponderous and slow, convey a striking impression of tranquil force: and from the different attitudes of the six, we perceive a progression in the degree of effort put forth to drag the plough. the first two move with a heavy nonchalance that bears witness to the slight contribution that they make to the task; the next two, being nearer the plough, are doing more real work; their straining limbs sink deeper into the earth and their lowered heads indicate the greater tension of their muscles. as to the last two, they are sustaining the heaviest part of the toil, as is apparent from the way in which their muscles visibly stand out, and from the contraction of their limbs gathered under them in the effort to drag free the weight of the ploughshare buried in the soil. it is only those who never have witnessed the tilling of the soil who could remain unmoved in the presence of such a work. the oxen are admirable in composition, in action, in modelling, and in strength. and what is to be said of the landscape which is bathed in a clear, bright light, flecked here and there with trails of fleecy cloud? it seemed that after such a picture, it would be impossible for rosa bonheur to rise to a greater height of perfection. nevertheless, three years later she exhibited her _horse fair_, a remarkable achievement which raised her while still living to the pinnacle of glory. the _horse fair_ is not only the artist's masterpiece, but it is one of those productions which do the greatest honour to french painting. celebrated from the day of its first appearance, this canvas has steadily gained in the esteem of the world of art and was destined to bring, even in our own times, the fabulous price attained by certain paintings by rembrandt, raphael, and holbein. [illustration: plate v.--ossian's dream (rosa bonheur studio, peyrol collection) a fantasy by the great artist. during her visit to scotland her soul had thrilled at the recital of poetic legends; and this is one of these dreams that she has rendered in an inspired page, in which she reveals her mastery of a type of subject which she undertook only accidentally.] in preparation for her _horse fair_, rosa bonheur betook herself daily to the spot where the fair was held. but having learned wisdom through the embarrassment of her experiences at the slaughter-house, she assumed masculine garments, in order to attract less attention. she formed the habit of assuming them frequently from that time onward, especially in her studio. in spite of its triumphal success, the _horse fair_ did not immediately find a purchaser and was returned to the artist's studio. it was acquired later on by mr. gambard, the great london picture dealer, for the sum of , francs. this celebrated canvas has a lengthy history which deserves to be related. in coming to terms with mr. gambard, rosa bonheur, who was never avaricious, feared that she had exacted too large a sum in demanding , francs. since the purchaser desired to reproduce the picture in the form of an engraving, and its dimensions were so great as to hamper considerably the work of the engraver, she offered to make mr. gambard, without extra charge, a reduced replica of the _horse fair_, one-quarter the original size. mr. gambard, who was making an excellent bargain, accepted with an eagerness that it is easy to imagine. the reduced copy was delivered and was immediately purchased by an english art fancier, mr. jacob bell, for the sum of , francs. as for the original, it was exhibited in the pall mall gallery, but its vast dimensions discouraged purchasers. it was at last acquired by an american, mr. wright, at the cost of , francs, on condition that mr. gambard might retain possession for two or three years longer, in order to exhibit it in england and the united states. when the moment for delivery arrived, the american claimed that he was entitled to a share of the profits resulting from the exhibition of the work. as a consequence, the picture which was originally purchased by mr. gambard for , francs, eventually brought him in only , , while the reduced replica, which cost him nothing, brought him in , francs. considerably later, the american owner having met with reverses, the _horse fair_ was sold at public auction and was knocked down at $ , ( , francs) to mr. vanderbilt, who presented it to the metropolitan museum of art. as to the reduced copy, the property of mr. jacob bell, the latter bequeathed it, together with his other paintings, to the national gallery, where it now is. the reproduction which we give in the present volume was made from this smaller copy. when rosa bonheur learned that this reduced replica was to find a place in the national gallery, she exhibited a scrupulousness that well illustrates her honesty and disinterestedness. since it was originally painted merely to serve as a model for the engraver, the artist had not given it the finish that she was accustomed to give to her pictures. accordingly, she set to work for the third time to paint the _horse fair_, and bestowed upon it such conscientious work and mature talent that in the opinion of some judges this second replica is superior to the original. when the canvas was finished, she offered it to the london gallery. the english authorities were deeply touched by the scrupulousness of the famous artist, and thanked her cordially, but explained that they felt themselves bound by the terms of the jacob bell bequest, and consequently could not take advantage of her generous offer. the work, nevertheless, remained in england, having been purchased by a mr. macconnel for , francs. after her immense success at the salon of , rosa bonheur gave up her studio in the rue de l'ouest, and installed herself in the rue d'assas, in a studio which she had had built expressly to suit her needs. the years of glory the new studio in the rue d'assas was very far from being a commonplace studio. it was situated in the rear of a large court, and occupied the entire rear building. it was an immense room, with a broad, high window, through which a superb flood of daylight streamed in; and from floor to ceiling the walls were lined with studies, drawings, sketches, rough essays in colour, that the great artist had brought back from her travels. so far, nothing the least out of the ordinary. but what gave the establishment its picturesque and curious character was the court-yard, transformed by rosa bonheur into a veritable farm. under shelters arranged along the walls a variety of animals roamed at will: goats, heifers of pure berri breed, a ram, an otter, a monkey, a pack of dogs, and her favourite mare, margot. mingled with the divers cries of this heterogeneous menagerie, were the bewildering twitterings of an assortment of birds, the clucking of hens, the sonorous quack-quack of ducks, and dominating all the rest, the strident screams of numerous parrakeets. and all this was only one part of her menagerie; the rest was domiciled at her country place at chevilly, where she also had another studio. even in the country rosa bonheur had no chance to rest. she had now become celebrated, and the patrons of art fought among themselves for her productions. the two art firms of tedesco in paris and gambard in london deluged her with orders; and, in spite of her courage, she could hardly keep pace with them. her reputation had overleaped frontiers; she was as celebrated abroad as she was in france. the city of ghent, to which she had loaned the _horse fair_ for its exposition, demonstrated its gratitude by sending her an official delegation headed by the burgomaster himself, to present her with a jewel of much value. her talent was no longer open to question; everyone agreed in recognizing it. the critics saw in her far more than a conscientious and gifted artist; they regarded her as the inspired interpreter of rural life. "the work of rosa bonheur," wrote anatole de la forge in , "might be entitled the _hymn to labour_. here she shows us the tillage of the soil; there, the sowing; further on, the reaping of the hay, and then that of the grain; elsewhere the vintage; always and everywhere, the labour of the field. man, under her inspired touch, appears only as a docile instrument, placed here by the hand of god in order to extract from the bowels of the earth the eternal riches that it contains. also, in depicting him as associated with the toil of animals, she shows him to us only under a useful and noble aspect; now at the head of his oxen, bringing home the wagons heavily laden with the fruit of the harvest; or again, with his hand gripping the plough, cleaving the soil to render it more productive." and mazure, writing at the same period, declared: "next to the old dutch painters, and better than the early landscape artists in france, we have in our own day some very clever painters of cattle. they are messieurs brascassat, coignard, palizzi, and troyon, and more especially a woman, mlle. rosa bonheur, who carries this order of talent to the point of genius. several of them must be praised for the art with which they work their animals into the setting of the landscape; but if we consider the painting of the animals themselves, regardless of the landscape, and if what we are seeking is a monograph on the labour of the fields, nothing can compare with the artist whose name stands last in the above list." [illustration: plate vi.--the duel (collection of messrs. lefêvre, london) this picture is one of the last that rosa bonheur painted. it is celebrated in england because of the reputation of the two horses who are engaged in this passionate duel, on which the artist has expended all the resources of her marvellous talent.] equally enthusiastic over her paintings was mr. gambard, who supplemented his enthusiasm with a very warm personal friendship for the great artist. he had several times invited her to visit england; in rosa bonheur made up her mind to take the journey, accompanied by mlle. micas. it proved to be a triumphal journey. after a sojourn at the rectory at wexham, with mr. gambard as host,--a sojourn marked by official invitations and delicate attentions,--rosa bonheur made a long excursion into scotland, accompanied by friends across the channel. this cattle-raising land stirred her to a passionate interest. in the fields through which her route lay cattle came into view from time to time; and hereupon the artist would have the carriage halted, and take notes upon her drawing tablets. each herd that was encountered meant a new halt and new sketches. the great fair at falkirk, to which herds were brought from every corner of scotland, afforded her a unique opportunity for observations and studies. from morning until evening she plied her pencil feverishly, accumulating material for future paintings. at this same fair she purchased a young bull and five superb oxen, to help complete her menagerie. from this journey she brought back a number of pictures of remarkable vigour and beauty. they include a _morning in the highlands_, _denizens of the highlands_, _changing pasture_, _after a storm in the highlands_, etc., etc. rosa bonheur returned to her studio in the rue d'assas and immediately prepared her exhibits for the universal exposition of . she was represented there by a _hay harvest in auvergne_, which brought her the grand medal of honour. from this time forward rosa bonheur ceased to exhibit at the salons. she believed, and not without reason, that her reputation had nothing more to gain by these annual offerings, which interrupted her more productive work. she had given herself freely to the public; henceforth she sought only to satisfy the demands of the patrons of art, who, in daily increasing numbers, besieged her with their orders. she worked chiefly for the english, who had given her so warm a welcome, and who, perhaps, had a better sense than the french have, of the beauty of the life of the soil. the frenchman, good judge that he is in matters of art, duly admires a beautiful work, regardless of its subject; he is able to appreciate the composition of an agricultural scene, but, being little inclined by nature to the work of the fields, he will rarely feel a desire to adorn the walls of his apartment with a _harvest scene_ or _grazing cattle_; he assumes that it is the business of the museums to acquire pictures of this order. the englishman is quite different. as a landed proprietor deeply attached to his ancestral acres, he appreciates paintings of rural life, less as an artist than professionally, as a gentleman-farmer who knows all the breeds of cattle and sheep and to whom rosa bonheur's paintings were at this epoch veritable documents, quite as much as they were works of art. in , she gave up her studio in the rue d'assas, as well as the one at chevilly, in order to install herself at by, in the chateau of by which she had purchased for , francs and in which she had a vast studio constructed. hither she transferred her imposing menagerie which had grown year by year through new acquisitions. it included sheep, gazelles, stags, does, kids, an eagle, various other birds, horses, goats, watch dogs, hunting dogs, greyhounds, wild boars, lions, a yak (an animal known by the name of the grunting ox of tartary), monkeys, parrakeets, marmosets, squirrels, ferrets, turtles, green lizards, iceland ponies, moufflons, lizards, wild american mustangs, bulls, cows, etc. rosa bonheur worked with desperate energy in the midst of her models and delighted in portraying them in a setting of some one of those picturesque and impressive vistas of the forest of fontainebleau, adjacent to her own residence. she was unremittingly productive; yet france hardly heard her name mentioned save as an echo of her triumphs abroad. england has gone wild over her paintings; and america was not slow in following suit. but the echo was so loud, especially after the universal exposition at london in , that the government three years later made her chevalier of the legion of honour. rosa bonheur has given her own account of the event: "in ," she writes, "i was busily engaged one afternoon over my pictures (i had the _stags at long-rocher_ on my easel), when i heard the cracking of a postillion's whip and the rumble of a carriage. my little maid félicité entered the studio in great excitement: "'mademoiselle, mademoiselle! her majesty the empress!' "i had barely time to slip on a linen skirt and exchange my long blue blouse for a velvet jacket. "'i have here,' the empress told me, 'a little gift which i have brought you on behalf of the emperor. he has authorized me to take advantage of the last day of my regency to announce your appointment to the legion of honour.' "and in conferring the title, she kissed the newly made chevalier and pinned the cross upon my velvet jacket. a few days later i received an invitation to take breakfast at fontainebleau where the imperial court was installed. on the appointed day, they sent to fetch me in gala equipage. on arriving, i mistook the door and was about to lose my way, when m. mocquard came to my rescue and offered his arm to escort me. at breakfast, i was placed beside the emperor and throughout the whole repast he talked to me regarding the intelligence of animals. the empress afterwards took me for an excursion on the lake in a gondola. the prince imperial, who had previously called upon me at by, accompanied us. this visit to the court greatly interested me, but i think that i must have been a disappointment to princess metternich who amused herself with watching my every movement, expecting no doubt to see me commit some breach of etiquette." in acknowledgment of the distinguished honour she had received from the emperor, rosa bonheur felt that she was in duty bound to be represented at the universal exposition of . accordingly, she sent no less than ten remarkable works: _donkey drivers of aragon_, _ponies from the isle of skye_, _sheep on the seashore_, _a ship_, _oxen and cows_, _kids resting_, _a shepherd in béarn_, _the razzia_, etc. all that she obtained was a medal of the second class. the judges owed her a grudge because of her long neglect of twelve years. there could be no question of disputing her talent, but they resented her having employed it solely for the benefit of england. the critics showed her the same coldness, courteous but unmistakable. in some of the articles, she was referred to as _miss_ rosa bonheur. some little injustice was intermingled with this show of hostility; troyon was exalted at her expense; and her animals were criticized as being "purplish and cottony." furthermore, they reproached her with the fact that all the pictures exhibited were owned by englishmen, with the single exception of the _sheep on the seashore_, which was the property of the empress. it is necessary here to open a parenthesis and refer to a period in the life of the great artist which should not be passed over in silence: the period of her art school. for this purpose we must turn back to the year . at that time raymond bonheur who, as we know, gave drawing lessons, was directing a school of design for young girls, situated in the rue dupuytren. one year after his appointment as director, raymond bonheur died and the direction of the school was instructed to rosa, who enlisted the aid of her sister, also a painter of some talent, who was subsequently married to m. peyrol. [illustration: plate vii.--tigers (rosa bonheur studio, at by) rosa bonheur spent entire days in the jardin des plantes, or in menageries in order to catch the attitudes and the mobile physiognomies of the beasts of prey. accordingly no other artist has attained such perfect truth, as is shown in the tigers here portrayed.] rosa bonheur fulfilled her duties with much devotion and intelligence. she herself had too high a regard for line-work to fail to bring to her task as teacher all of her ardent faith as an artist. she divided the scheme of instruction into two series, one of the _great studies_ of animals and the other of _little studies_. rosa bonheur was not always an agreeable teacher; she made a show of authority, not to say severity. she would not excuse laziness or negligence, and when a pupil showed her a drawing that was obviously done in a hurry she would grow indignant: "go back to your mother," she would say, "and mend your stockings or do embroidery work." but this pedagogical rigour was promptly offset by a return of her natural kindliness, a jesting word, a pleasantry, an affectionate term intended to prevent the discouragement of a pupil who often was guilty of nothing worse than thoughtlessness. under her firm and able guidance, the school achieved success. many of her graduate pupils attained an honourable career in painting, and if no name worthy of being remembered is included among the whole number, the reason is that genius cannot be manufactured and that it was not within the power of rosa bonheur to give to her young pupils something of herself. in , the great artist, being overburdened with work and unable to carry on simultaneously the instruction and practice of her art, resigned her position as director. the school passed into the hands of mlle. maraudon de monthycle, who won distinction as a director, but did not succeed in making the name of rosa bonheur forgotten. the time of her retirement as professor of the school of design coincides with that of her installation at by. after having in a measure obeyed the paternal tradition of repeated removals, she was this time definitely established. it was destined to be her last residence; and it certainly was an attractive place, that great chateau of by, with its broad windows and its original style, which called to mind certain dwellings in holland. and what a delightful setting it had in the shape of the forest of fontainebleau, so varied in aspect, so rich in picturesque corners, so alluring with the beauty of its dense woodlands, and the poetry of its open glades! rosa bonheur was always passionately enamoured of nature, of the entire work of creation. she adored animals neither more nor less than she loved beautiful trees and broad horizons; she went into ecstacies before the splendour of the rising sun which day by day brings a renewed thrill of life to all things and creatures; and it was equally one of her joys to watch the diffused light spreading softly through a misty haze over the slumbering earth. rosa bonheur had no sooner withdrawn to the solitude of by than she sought, as we have already seen, to become forgotten, in order to devote herself exclusively to the innumerable tasks which incessant orders from england and america demanded of her. she planned for herself a laborious and tranquil existence, rendered all the pleasanter through the devoted and watchful affection of her old friend, mlle. nathalie micas, who lived with her. we have seen that she came out of her voluntary obscurity in to the extent of sending a few pictures to the universal exposition. from this date onward she ceased to exhibit, and no other canvas bearing her signature was seen in public until the salon of , which was the year of her death. relieved of all outside interruption, rosa bonheur worked with indefatigable energy. yet she could hardly keep pace with the demands of her purchasers, who were constantly increasing in number and constantly more urgent. her paintings had acquired a vogue abroad and brought their weight in gold. certain pictures brought speculative prices in america even before they were finished and while they were still on the easel at by. at this period, it may be added, everything which came from the artist's brush possessed an incomparable and masterly finish. never a suggestion of weakness in design even in her most hastily executed canvases. i must at once add that hasty canvases are extremely rare in the life work of rosa bonheur; she had too high a sense of duty to her art and too great a respect for her own name to slight any necessary work on a canvas. certain pictures appear to have been done rapidly solely because the artist possessed among her portfolios fragmentary studies made from nature and drawn with scrupulous care, and all that she needed to do was to transfer them to her canvas. from the host of works that the artist put forth at this period, we may cite: , _changing pasture_, _a family of roebuck_; , _kids resting_; , _shetland ponies_; , _sheep in brittany_; , _the cartload of stones_. the war of brought consternation to her patriotic soul. she suffered cruelly from the ills which had befallen her country. generous by nature and a french woman to her inmost fibre, she did her utmost to relieve the suffering that she saw around her as a result of the prussian invasion. she spoke words of comfort to the peasants and aided them with donations, distributing bags of grain that were sent to her by her friend gambard, at this time consul at odessa. one day a prussian officer of high rank presented himself at her home in the name of prince karl-frederick. the latter, who was a confirmed admirer of the artist, whom he had met in former years, sent her an order of safe-conduct which would place her and her belongings beyond the danger of any annoyance. rosa bonheur ran her eye over the paper and in the presence of the officer tore it into tiny pieces. nobly and simply the great artist refused to accept any favours, feeling, in view of the existing painful circumstances, that it would be a shameful thing for her to do. a french woman before all else, she submitted in advance to all the abuses and exigencies of the conquerors. on another occasion, a german prince came to by, to pay his respects. she refused to receive him. we should add that the prussians, whose excesses and brutalities were so frequent during that campaign, had the wisdom not to meddle with rosa bonheur. after the treaty of peace was signed, she set herself eagerly to work once more. "i was occupied at that time," she wrote, "in studying the big cats; i made sketches at the jardin des plantes, in the circuses, in the menageries, anywhere and everywhere that i could find lions and panthers." this is the epoch from which dates that admirable series of wild beasts in which rosa bonheur manifests a power of expression and virility of execution that she never before had occasion to display, and that seem absolutely incredible as coming from the brush of a woman. no other painter has rendered with greater truth and force the undulous and elastic movements of the panther or the tiger; barye himself, in his admirable bronzes, has never endowed his lions with greater life or more majestic grandeur than rosa bonheur has done. the latter, with her astounding memory and with an eye as profound and luminous as a photographic lens, caught and retained the most fugitive expressions on the mobile physiognomy of the great cats. she noted them down with rapid and unfaltering pencil; the painting of the picture after this was a mere matter of execution. is there any finer presentment of the tranquil beauty of a lion in repose than _the lion meditating_? beneath the royal mane, his features have a haughty placidity and his eyes a serene intentness that are admirably rendered. _the lion roaring_ is possibly even more beautiful, because of the difficulty which the artist had to overcome in catching the peculiarly rapid and mobile expression which accompanies the act of roaring. under the effort of his tense muscles, the mane rises, bristling, around the powerful neck and above the straining head. there is nothing cruel in the physiognomy of this lion: his roaring is not the cry of the beast of prey scenting his victim, but the call of the desert king, saluting the rising orb of day or the descending night. the artist has admirably expressed this difference in a foreshortening of the head which correggio or veronese might have envied her. [illustration: plate viii.--trampling the grain (rosa bonheur studio, at by) this work, which was her last, is one of the most beautiful of all that rosa bonheur painted because of the intensity of the movement which sweeps the horses in a superb headlong rush, over the heaped-up grain which they trample under foot. this splendid canvas remains unfinished, death having overtaken the noble artist before the final touches had been added.] in all the animals that she painted,--and she painted nearly all the animals there are,--rosa bonheur succeeded in reproducing their separate characteristic expressions, "the amount of soul which nature has bestowed upon them." m. roger milès, the excellent art critic, from whom we have frequently borrowed in the course of this biography, expresses it in the following admirable manner: "through the infinite study that she made of animals, rosa bonheur reached the conviction that their expression must be the interpretation of a soul, and since she understood the types and the species that her brush reproduced, she was able, through an instinct of extraordinary precision, to endow them, one and all, with precisely the glance and the psychic intensity that belongs to them. she takes the animals in the environment in which they live, in the setting with which their form harmonizes, in short, in the conditions that have played an essential part in their evolution, and she records with inflexible sincerity what nature places beneath her eyes and what her patient study has permitted her to understand. it is more especially for this reason, among many others, that the work of rosa bonheur deserves to live, and that the eminent artist stands to-day as one of the most finished animal painters with which the history of our national art is honoured." in the peaceful and laborious atmosphere of by, the years slipped happily away. but before long a cloud came to darken this serenity. the health of her tenderly loved friend, mlle. micas, began to decline; the doctor ordered a southern climate. rosa bonheur did not hesitate; she had a villa built at nice, and every year, during the winter, the artist accompanied her beloved invalid to the land of sunshine. these annual changes of climate and the care with which rosa bonheur surrounded her friend certainly delayed the fatal issue. but the disease had taken too deep a hold. mlle. micas passed away on the th of june, . "this loss broke my heart," wrote the artist. "it was a long time before i could find in my work any relief from my bitter pain. i think of her every day and i bless the memory of that soul which was so closely in touch with my own." from that day onward, rosa bonheur became a prey to melancholy, and her thoughts turned ceaselessly to the tender friend whom she had lost forever. none the less, she continued to work with dogged energy, quite as much to deaden her pain as to satisfy the ever increasing orders. a great joy, however, came to her in the midst of her sorrow. president carnot, imitating the emperor, came in person to bring her the cross of officer of the legion of honour. she was keenly appreciative of such a mark of high courtesy, which was at the same time a well deserved recompense for an entire life consecrated to art. rosa bonheur possessed a number of decorations, notably the cross of san carlos of mexico which was given her by the empress charlotte, the cross of commander of the order of isabella the catholic, the belgian cross of leopold, the cross of saint james of portugal, etc. the noble artist accepted these distinctions gratefully, but was in no way vain of them, for no woman was ever more simple or more modest than she. at about this epoch, she devoted herself for a time to pastel work, and in exhibited four examples of ample dimensions and representing various animals. the whole city of paris flocked to this exhibition and unanimously proclaimed her talent as a pastel painter. it was also about this time that she gained a new friend whose devotion, although it did not make her forget her beloved nathalie micas, at least in a measure softened the bitterness of her loss. a young american, miss anna klumpke, who was an enthusiastic admirer of rosa bonheur, and who herself had some talent for painting, presented herself one day at by and begged the favour of an interview with the artist. the latter received her with her wonted graciousness. the conversation turned upon art. the young girl emboldened, by her hostess's kindness, ventured to ask if she might come to take a few lessons, and at the same time showed a few sketches. rosa bonheur examined them and discovered not merely promise, but what was better, an unmistakable talent. she not only acquiesced to miss klumpke's desire; she did even better, she offered the hospitality of her own home. miss klumpke's visit, which was to have been for only a short time, became permanent; a substantial friendship was formed between the two women; it was miss anna klumpke who closed the eyes of rosa bonheur and who was her sole testamentary legatee. she has piously preserved the memory of her benefactress and she has converted the chateau of by, which she still occupies, into a museum filled with relics of the great artist. she has also published an admirable volume upon the life and work of her eminent friend, that forms a veritable monument of affectionate admiration. rosa bonheur was not slow in reverting again to painting and produced her famous picture: _the duel_, the celebrity of which was almost as great as that of the _horse fair_ and _ploughing in the nivernais_. the duel in question is between two stallions, and what adds to the interest of the scene is that it is historic and perfectly familiar to all the sporting men of england. it was a struggle in which an arabian thoroughbred, godolphin-arabian, overpowered hobgoblin, another thoroughbred of english breed. the mettle of these horses, fired by the heat of battle, is interpreted in a masterly fashion. no less perfect is the canvas representing _the threshing of the grain_, which it took rosa bonheur twenty years to bring to completion. over a field in which the sheaves of grain have been strewn, eleven horses, drawn life-size, are driven at full gallop, trampling the golden tassels under their powerful hoofs. the artist has rarely attained the height of perfection to which this picture bears witness. but at last we come to the close of her career. rosa bonheur was seventy-seven years of age, but in the enjoyment of robust health; her talent still retained its unvarying power and her hand was still firm. her age was not betrayed in any of her works, which had the appearance of having been painted in the flood-tide of youth. such is the impression of critics before her painting, _a cow and bull in auvergne, cantal breed_, which, contrary to her habit, she sent to the salon. the praise was unanimous; they even talked of awarding her the medal of honour which she refused in a letter of great beauty and dignity. it seemed at that time that the artist would enjoy her robust old age for a long time to come, when a congestion of the lungs prostrated her suddenly and the end came in a few days. she died on the th of may, . the concert of regrets which greeted her death was touching in its unanimity. without a dissenting note, without reserve, the entire press paid tribute to the dignity of her life, the nobility of her character, the greatness of her talent. according to her desire, she was interred in the cemetery of père-lachaise; and the cortège which followed her coffin was made up of every eminent figure known to the parisian world of art and letters. strangers came in throngs, especially from england. and this innumerable cortège that followed her bier testified more eloquently than any panegyric to the goodness of this admirable artist who had been able to lead a long and glorious career without creating a single enemy. [illustration: cover] masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare van dyck ====================================================================== plate i.--charles i. frontispiece (in the louvre) certainly the finest portrait of charles i. in existence. it shows van dyck in his most attractive aspect as a painter of the aristocracy. executed before the marked decline in his technical powers, which marred, from an artistic standpoint, the later pictures of his english period, it yet possesses the dignity and distinction he knew so well how to infuse in portraying the nobility of our country. it is one of the best examples of the artist's powers as a colourist, and as such will bear comparison with the productions of the mighty venetians. [illustration: plate i.] ====================================================================== van dyck by percy m. turner illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: title page graphic] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents i. the early days ii. the journey to italy iii. the second flemish manner iv. van dyck in england v. van dyck's position in art list of illustrations plate i. charles i. . . . . . . . . . . . . frontispiece in the louvre ii. charles louis of bavaria and his brother robert, afterwards duke of cumberland in the louvre iii. prince d'arenberg in lord spencer's collection, althorp iv. portrait of van dyck (or the artist) in lord spencer's collection, althorp v. philippe le roy, seigneur de ravel in the wallace collection vi. portrait of one of charles i.'s children in the academy of fine arts, rome vii. portrait of the artist's wife in the pinakothek, munich viii. the marchese cattaneo in the national gallery [illustration: van dyck] i the early days no painter has remained more consistently in favour with both artists and the public than van dyck. his art marks the highest achievement of flanders of the seventeenth century. in making this statement the claims of rubens have not been overlooked, although the latter has been, and probably will always be, considered the head of the flemish school. it is perhaps not too much to say that van dyck possessed in a greater measure than rubens those qualities which go to make a great artist. we can never overlook the seniority of the latter, and to him will always belong the credit of having evolved the style which revolutionised the art of a nation, and there is no doubt that the pupil owed to him much of the knowledge he so well utilised in after-life. ====================================================================== plate ii.--charles louis of bavaria and his brother robert, afterwards duke of cumberland (in the louvre) as an example of direct portraiture this picture would be hard to beat. it shows van dyck in one of his happiest moods dealing with a subject which peculiarly appealed to him. [illustration: plate ii.] ====================================================================== in comparing those two great men it would be well, at first, to rid ourselves of the confusion which often arises through the application of the terms "artist" and "painter." in relation to painting they are only too often considered synonymous, but a little consideration will show us that a man whose technical abilities are of a high order need not necessarily be a great artist. in fact, one of the most truthful charges urged against the best contemporary art is that it demonstrates an astonishing poverty of invention, a lack of message, if you will, coupled with an extraordinarily highly developed technique. to screen as much as possible the dilemma in which he finds himself, many a modern painter has recourse to creating those outbursts of meaningless eccentricity that are so familiar upon the walls of our exhibitions. it is true that some few of the men who are living to-day are equipped almost, if not quite, as well technically as the great majority of the old masters. in a word, they could meet them on nearly equal terms as painters, but they lack invention and conception in which to bring their powers into legitimate play, and consequently they cannot rank with them as artists. it was in the possession of these very qualities that van dyck surpassed rubens. i do not suggest that the latter was devoid of power of conception, for, if i did, would not the great "coup-de-lance" at antwerp, or the "fall of the damned" at munich (the drawing for the latter in the national gallery gives an even better idea than the finished picture) be there to refute me? van dyck, however, though being quite the match of rubens in technique, even in his early days--though still working under him--surpassed him in his middle period. anybody who has closely studied the noble religious pictures at courtrai and malines--the latter, unfortunately, irreparably injured by damp and neglect--can but be impressed with his stupendous power in this direction. granted that he does not appeal in the same measure to our emotions from the spiritual side as do the early painters of italy and flanders, he yet brings the brutal aspect of the scene before us in an intensely human manner. in most subject pictures van dyck painted before his visit to italy it is apparent that rubens had been his sole guide, and he was impelled only with a desire to emulate his master. but, after his return, the influence of the mighty painters he had studied south of the alps had wrought a wondrous change in his method, and although he found himself back again amidst his old surroundings he never quite forsook the path he had been treading in the interval. rubens, who had also spent some years in italy, did not submit to the influence of the southern masters in the same measure, but remained a fleming to the end. there is little alteration to be observed, either in his historical and sacred pictures or in his portraits, after he had studied the italians. from this we may assume either that rubens was less susceptible to extraneous influences, or that he considered his method quite the equal to any that he had seen. van dyck, on the other hand, absorbed, particularly from the venetians, certain qualities which he employed ceaselessly throughout the remainder of his life. it was not, however, solely this cause which raised van dyck as an artist above his master. rather was it to be attributed to the superiority of temperament. thus, whilst we can still consider rubens the head of the flemish school of the seventeenth century, we should accord to van dyck the foremost rank as an artist. anthony van dyck was born at antwerp on march nd, . it was said formerly that his father, frans van dyck, was a painter on glass, but later research has disclosed the fact that he carried on business as a merchant. his mother practised the art of embroidery with no mean skill, and her works appear to have been held in considerable esteem. the young painter had, however, the misfortune of losing her when he arrived at the age of eight. we know but little of his early years, but he must have shown considerable aptitude for drawing, for we find him already the pupil of hendrik van balen in . the latter painter had received instruction in his art from adam van oort, the master of rubens, but he utilised the instruction he had received in a very different way from that of his fellow-pupil. he studied in italy for some time, and upon his return to antwerp became one of the most popular painters in the city. several works still remaining there testify that his sojourn in the south had not entirely effaced his flemish training. he excelled particularly in cabinet pictures, with subjects inspired by the classics, in which the landscapes were sometimes painted by jan brueghel. these are wrought with wonderful finish, and were much admired by his contemporaries for the purity of their colouring. at the same time, whilst being a good craftsman and filling an honourable position in the history of the school, it cannot be claimed that he possessed genius in an extraordinary degree. it is probable, however, that a more suitable master for the young van dyck could not have been found. in the studio of so staid and sober a painter he would not be brought into contact with any of those pyrotechnics which have wrought such havoc with the art of young artists when encountered at the onset of their careers. on the other hand, van balen is likely to have insisted upon great care being exercised in drawing and in the finishing of minutest detail. such rigid training is excellent, for whilst it does not hinder further developments upon other lines in the least degree, it insures that all future progress shall be built upon a solid foundation. at this time, however, rubens, having returned from his wanderings in italy and spain, had settled in antwerp. his new position as court painter to the archduke albert and the archduchess isabella brought him into great prominence and insured him constant occupation. even at this early period his art was approaching maturity, and if he had not yet developed the dazzling brilliancy and facility of his later time, he was still far ahead of any painter modern flanders had produced. we have only to contemplate the works of his contemporaries, and those who immediately preceded him, to imagine what a profound sensation this young man created in antwerp. it seldom fell to the lot of an artist who was but just over thirty to have been in the service of such an illustrious personage as the duke of mantua. the latter, moreover, so highly esteemed his talent that he wished him to return to his service even after he had returned to antwerp. further, the duke had such confidence in rubens' diplomatic ability that he sent him upon important business to philip iii. in madrid. the experience he had gained both in italy and in spain, where he had seen and copied many of the greatest works of the italian renaissance, served to develop a genius which in itself was of the first order, and the fruits were immediately visible upon his arrival in antwerp. we can well picture to ourselves the effect of the masculine vigour, nay, more, the bravado of his brush-work upon the staid and homely flemish artists. their minuteness of finish, delicacy, cool transparencies and silveriness of colouring seem indeed _petit_ when pitted against the irrepressible dash and golden palette of rubens. in spite of this he appears not to have created any enemies. on the contrary, his fellow-artists seem to have recognised his superiority, and many were influenced by his method. to estimate to the full the revolution he wrought we must compare the masters whom we found installed in favour in flanders with the school he so soon created. the older painters being affected in so visible a degree, we can quite imagine how easily one so young and impressionable as van dyck would submit to the new influence. here was a master whose art, glowing with the full-blooded vigour of italy, yet retained the healthy freshness of his native country. restrained and held in leash as he would be in the studio of van balen, we can sympathise with his yearning to migrate to that of rubens. he speedily joined that ever-swelling body of artists who gathered themselves round the great master. for some years he worked side by side with snyders and seghers. the progress he made during this time was considerable; indeed, it is frequently difficult to decide whether certain pictures produced in these years are the work of the master or the pupil, so thoroughly had he acquired rubens' technique. ====================================================================== plate iii.--prince d'arenberg (in lord spencer's collection, althorp) a portrait characteristic of one of the most popular phases of van dyck's art. it exhibits in a remarkable measure his sense of appropriateness as far as the setting of a portrait is concerned. the background has been chosen largely with a view to accentuating the salient points of the picture, and whilst being, in consequence, strictly subservient to the portrait is yet treated in a bold and vigorous manner. [illustration: plate iii.] ====================================================================== in connection with this a story, the details of which have frequently been challenged, is told. it is said that rubens, leaving his studio one day to take a walk, had left a picture in the process of painting upon his easel. the students were anxious to inspect it and observe the method he was employing. finally, they induced his servant to admit them. being a numerous crowd, some amount of struggling took place to get near the canvas. the result was that one of them, it is said van diepenbeck, fell against the canvas and injured the picture. dismay spread throughout the room. when they had recovered their presence of mind, some one proposed that the damage should be repaired before rubens returned. by common consent van dyck was chosen, and he set to work with a will. upon rubens entering his studio next morning, surrounded by his pupils, he selected the repaired part and said that that was by no means the worst piece he had painted the day before. upon a closer examination the damage revealed itself, but so cleverly had van dyck performed his task that rubens decided to leave it as it was. from such tales as this has arisen the tradition that rubens became so jealous of his pupil that he endeavoured to persuade him to abandon historical painting and devote the whole of his time to portraiture. such statements are not only in opposition to all that we know of rubens' character, but there is the further evidence that when he finally parted from van dyck they were on the very best of terms. indeed, rubens went so far as to make him a present of one of his finest horses for the purpose of his journey in italy, whilst van dyck left with his master a portrait of rubens' wife as a souvenir. he further retained the services of van dyck as his assistant, which he would not have done had any jealousy existed between them. it was probably the pressure of commissions, which flowed in upon him in innumerable quantities, that induced him to take this step. it was quite impossible for the master himself to accomplish all the work he undertook. outside italy he was the first master to employ his school as a sort of manufactory on a large scale. so well did he train his assistants that he had only to make the sketch himself, and to superintend its painting, for a large work to be turned out in an incredibly short time. as van dyck was his most capable assistant, he would certainly employ him upon the important parts, and as it has already been pointed out that it is difficult to differentiate between the works of the two men at this time, it would be still more difficult to decide definitely what hand van dyck had in the large number of religious and historical pictures that were being sent out under rubens' name at this time. during this period, however, van dyck had acquired a reputation of his own. he had been elected a master of the antwerp corporation of painters in , that is, whilst still in his twentieth year. ii the journey to italy it was the habit of most northern artists at that time to make a journey in italy. the renown of the works created during the preceding two centuries by the italian renaissance had spread all over europe, and no young artist considered his education complete without having spent a few years in studying them. moreover, they found that patrons patronised them better if they had been through this italian training. these ideas were rather dictated by the prevailing fashion than by any solid good to be derived by the artist who underwent it. we have innumerable examples of dutchmen and flemings whose natural genius became perverted upon italian soil. nicholas berchem and karl dujardin were striking examples of the sad results which frequently accrued from thus transplanting themselves into a country with which their temperament had nothing in common. it is probable that had karl dujardin remained in holland, the world would have been enriched by a landscape painter of the first order, for he had gifts far above even the average painter of his time. but immediately on reaching italy he succumbed to the influences surrounding him, and endeavoured to get rid as far as possible of his early training, and to see things and render them in the italian way. the result was, that whilst he never threw off the dutch character of his scenes and figures, he enveloped them with a conventional atmosphere as monotonous as it is untrue. we have already seen the results the italian journey had upon rubens. there was no inducement for van dyck, comparing, as he would be able to, his master's pictures painted before his journey to italy and those which he executed afterwards, to undertake the same trouble. it is rather to be thought that he was decided to see the artistic mecca for himself, by the glowing accounts of its treasures that he heard from time to time from rubens' own lips. for the latter, small as had been the influence of the great italian masters upon his work, was nevertheless of a disposition peculiarly adapted for keenly appreciating merit whenever it was brought under his notice. we can quite imagine that during those early days in antwerp his pupils whilst at work would hear innumerable accounts of the beauties of this or that picture, and the more enthusiastic of them would consequently only be the more eager to judge of its beauties for themselves. during the execution of the large canvasses that were turned out in such quantities from the studio, rubens doubtlessly prefaced alterations he made by referring to many a master's method, and recounted how the masterpieces upon which his comments were framed had been brought to completion. during the latter portion of the time van dyck stopped with rubens he was only acting as his assistant, and consequently would be free to leave when he liked. he would probably be quite aware that his technique was the equal of his master's, and would realise that he had received all the tuition he possibly could in his present situation. ambitious as he was, there is no doubt that he yearned for an opportunity to learn for himself the message the great masters had to impart to him. whilst we can quite imagine that rubens would be sorry to part with so capable an assistant, there was not any evidence that he did not do everything in his power to assist him to carry out his project. in --when he was but twenty-four years of age--van dyck left antwerp on his journey southward. he appears not to have got any further than a village near brussels, where he succumbed to the attractions of a certain young lady named annah van ophem. at her instigation he painted two pictures for the parish church there. in one, representing st. martin sharing his cloak with a beggar, he took himself as a model for the saint. the parish authorities being, it is said, of a mercenary turn of mind, had it valued, and, hearing that it was worth florins, sold it to a m. hoët. the people of the village, however, hearing of the sale, determined to prevent the removal of the picture at all costs, and when the purchaser arrived he found not only the peasants, but their wives and children, armed, and was obliged to escape ignominiously through the priest's garden and return to brussels without his prize. whilst still residing at the village, van dyck painted the portrait of annah van ophem, surrounded with the dogs belonging to the infanta isabella, of which either she or her father had charge, and a picture of the holy family, in which she figured as the principal personage. ====================================================================== plate iv.--portrait of van dyck (or the artist) (in lord spencer's collection, althorp) one of the most striking portraits of the artist. painted at a fairly late date in his career, it shows the painter prosperous and rich and by no means ill pleased with his lot in the world. full of life and gaiety, his joyous face gives us a good idea of the gratification he found in life almost to the end. indeed, a deal of the fascination of his art arises from his approaching his subjects in this happy frame of mind. [illustration: plate iv.] ====================================================================== rubens, hearing of the prolonged sojourn of his pupil at saveltheim, arrived one day upon the scene, and finally induced van dyck to tear himself from his mistress and continue his journey to italy. the great object of his visit was to study the venetian masters, and accordingly he repaired forthwith to the city of the lagoons. we can picture him standing for the first time before those wonderful portraits of titian and tintoretto, palma-vecchio and moroni, about which he had heard so much in his student days in antwerp. that he was not disappointed is evidenced by the fact that almost immediately a change is observable in his method. he cast aside as speedily as possible the silveriness and coolness which had characterised his palette when working in antwerp, and endeavoured to assimilate in as great a degree as possible the golden luminosity and subtle handling of the mighty venetians. it is probable that titian held the first place in his estimation, for it is rather upon his method that all his subsequent developments in technique are based. but perhaps full justice has not been done to the influence moroni had in moulding his youthful genius. one has only to compare, for example, the full-length portrait of an italian nobleman, no. in the national gallery, with that marvellous representation of philip le roy in the wallace collection, reproduced in this volume, to see the connection between the two painters. there is the same air of distinction in each portrait, and in silveriness of colouring and elegance of pose there is much in common. these are not isolated examples in the life-work of the two masters, but are rather representative of a whole series of portraits in which their genius runs on nearly parallel lines. we cannot wonder that van dyck was not much impressed by such of the umbrian painters as he came in contact with. there was still left in these men the remains of that mysticism which was born of the intimate contact with religion in relation to life that had originally brought it into being. the religious art of the netherlands--i am speaking now of that which arose after the middle of the sixteenth century--was built upon a purely human and materialistic basis. if a scriptural scene was represented it was brought before us as a subject from everyday life; a martyrdom with all its brutality, a crucifixion with all its physical horror, and a madonna and child simply as a peasant girl with a child, set in homely surroundings. our artist, endowed with the same temperament as the men who had created such works, and who moreover was perhaps the best exponent of this school of painting, with the possible exception of rubens himself, could not be expected to be touched with the subtleties of botticelli or filippino lippi. further, it is not unlikely that he found he could learn little from the technique of raphael or andrea del sarto. but with the venetians it was quite otherwise. from the early days of giovanni bellini they seem to have treated religious subjects in just as materialistic a manner, if less grossly and repugnantly, than the flemings themselves. one has but to contemplate the life-work of titian to see how little religious feeling, in the florentine or mystical sense of the term, there was in his art. even the two most impressive religious pictures he ever painted, the "entombment," in the louvre, and the "christ crowned with thorns," at munich, would certainly not have pleased the patrons of ghirlandajo or pollaiuolo. but titian and his contemporaries constitute the zenith attained by italian materialistic art, at any rate in point of technique. ====================================================================== plate v.--philippe le roy, seigneur de ravel (in the wallace collection) the masterpiece of van dyck's second flemish manner. in it we see the culmination of the influences he had brought away with him from italy sobered by a renewed contact with the productions of his illustrious master. the dignity of pose, probably derived from moroni and titian, united with the fact that his immense technical powers are brought into play in an unsurpassed degree, certainly proclaim it as one of the greatest portraits in the world. van dyck executed an etching of philippe le roy, probably based upon this portrait which ranks very high amongst his productions in this way. [illustration: plate v.] ====================================================================== it is more than probable that van dyck found certain points in his master's method crude compared with that of the venetians, and although, as we shall see later, he endeavoured after his return to flanders to retrace his steps in a measure, the influences he brought away with him from italy remained during his whole life. he went from venice to genoa, and there his style created such an impression that he found many of the nobility eager to have their portraits painted by him. formerly, his italian manner, as it is called, was to be best studied in that city, but as years have rolled on many of the finest examples have become scattered over europe and america. the two fine portraits recently added to the national gallery date from this period, and although, owing to their condition, they do not set forth his talents at their best, will give a good idea of the changes his method had undergone since he left antwerp. two of the noblest portraits of the genoese period were formerly in the collection of sir robert peel, but, after being sold at auction in london some few years ago, finally found a permanent home in the berlin gallery. from genoa he went to rome, and, his reputation having preceded him, he was soon loaded with commissions for both historical subjects and portraits. it is said, however, that his residence here was rendered unpleasant by a number of artists persecuting him by reason of his not wishing to fall in with their methods of life. be this as it may, he returned to genoa, and after some time departed for palermo; but the plague breaking out, some time after his arrival, he determined to return to flanders. van dyck had reason to congratulate himself, not only upon the amount of benefit which he had received from his sojourn in italy, but also on account of the flattering manner in which he had been received everywhere. his complete success in these two respects was calculated to infuse confidence in him for the future. he was now fully equipped in every way, and his good luck in the matter of patronage, so lavishly bestowed upon him in italy, was destined to pursue him in his future career, until finally the immense amount of work he undertook in consequence had an adverse influence upon his later productions. iii the second flemish manner the reputation of van dyck, great as it was prior to leaving antwerp, had materially grown during his absence in italy. from time to time reports reached his fellow-townsmen of the brilliant success he was achieving there, the high personages with whom he was mingling, and the flattering praise accorded to his productions. we may be sure that returning travellers would relate the astonishing progress he was making, and consequently his friends would await with eager anticipation the proofs of all they had heard. there could be no doubt that rubens would be amongst those who would be most interested in his progress, and he would be curious to see the influence the italians had exercised upon his technique. his talents were soon put to the essay in the form of a commission for a large picture representing st. augustine in ecstasy, surrounded by angels and saints, for the church of the augustines in antwerp. as a result of this first effort, both his patrons and the public were delighted, and commissions for works of a similar character flowed in upon him from every side. rubens had fairly early in his career instituted an ingenious method for making his works widely known. he employed, under his own direction, a number of engravers whose names have become household words. technically considered, they were as well equipped as any who have ever lived. the names of paul pontius, lucas vorsterman, the two bolswerts, peter de jode are held in reverence by every admirer of engraving. their remarkable fidelity in transcribing the works of rubens render it frequently unnecessary to see the originals themselves in order thoroughly to study them. i am perhaps not going too far when i say that they understood the art of translating colour effects into black and white in a manner unknown previous to their time and never surpassed afterwards. the tone values of the paintings themselves are preserved. there is no doubt that this excellence was due to the guidance of rubens. he superintended each plate in process of preparation and rectified with his own hand any errors that might have crept in. in this way rubens rendered an immense service to art. quantities of these prints went out to foreign countries and were prized by both artists and collectors, serving to stimulate the former to renewed efforts and to improve the taste of the latter. at the same time, he is to be credited with having brought the engraving art to a pitch which has never been surpassed. when rubens saw of what his pupil was now capable, he immediately turned the attention of his engravers to his works, and until van dyck practically ceased historical painting, we have as many plates worked after his designs as from those of his master. it was soon after his return to antwerp that he received the commission to paint the celebrated picture at malines representing the crucifixion. of this remarkable canvas we can but form an inadequate idea to-day. the exceeding negligence with which it has been kept, coupled with the continual covering up of the picture, thus depriving it of light, which every oil-painting requires for its preservation, has contributed to render it a wreck of its former self. the subject, to which we are so accustomed that we are but little moved when we encounter it in the great galleries, is here presented to us in a most terrible and essentially human aspect. the extraordinary expression of physical pain infused into the heads of the two thieves, one on each side of christ, together with the energy of their efforts to detach themselves from their awful position, will cause a shudder to creep over even the most phlegmatic person. this is foiled by the superb treatment of the head of the saviour. in the latter is an extraordinary mixture of pain, mental and physical, combined with a sublime look of resignation. sir joshua reynolds regarded it as one of the masterpieces of the world, and there will be not a few who will concur in his judgment. van dyck was not, however, content simply to exercise his powers in this way. an innumerable series of portraits date from this time, notably the well-known series representing the most prominent contemporary artists of flanders. these productions are well known from the engravings executed after them; the originals are now distributed throughout the world. it is said that van dyck's position in the netherlands, in spite of the quantity of patronage bestowed upon him, was anything but pleasant. the jealousy of his rivals was particularly irksome to a man of his disposition. in the intrigues with which he was surrounded rubens had no part; on the contrary, he always sustained the cause of his brilliant pupil with the utmost enthusiasm and fidelity, and it is probable, in view of this fact and the renown which van dyck himself had attained, that he would have worn down the opposition and caused the calumnies with which he was beset to fall upon the heads of their originators. but the taste for travel which he had developed in italy probably impelled him to seek relief outside his own country. accordingly we find him employed at the hague--certainly not a great distance from the seat of his recent troubles, but sufficiently far to remove him from their reach. here he painted the portrait of the prince of orange and innumerable personages of his court, in addition to receiving ample encouragement from the foreign ambassadors. it was not, however, to be expected that so small a city with its limited scope would long suffice for a man of his ambitions. his eyes were set upon england. ====================================================================== plate vi.--portrait of one of charles i.'s children (in the academy of fine arts, rome) possibly the best known and one of the most deservedly popular of the master's child portraits. it will bear comparison for charm and delicacy of handling with any of the productions of our great english masters. in fact, it was largely after a study of van dyck's wonderful pictures of children that gainsborough formed his last and greatest manner. [illustration: plate vi.] ====================================================================== the encouragement which charles i. extended to the fine arts, and his liberality in patronising them, induced him to think that a suitable field for the exercise of his talents was open to him in our country. accordingly about he arrived in london. england was not, however, quite strange to him, for about eleven years previously--that is, before his departure to italy--he had already been here upon a visit. upon this occasion, however, he does not appear to have succeeded in attracting the attentions of the king, and consequently he did not meet with the success he had counted upon. remaining but a few months, he decided to return to antwerp, fully resolved to make it a permanent place of abode. meanwhile, however, rubens had been sent by the infanta isabella on a diplomatic visit to charles, who received him in the most gracious manner and created him a knight. the flattering attentions bestowed upon rubens during his stay, coupled with his estimation of the king's character and taste, created a most favourable impression upon him, and when he returned to antwerp he probably dispelled in a measure van dyck's antipathy to our country. meanwhile charles had seen the latter's portrait of nicholas lanière, his chapel master, and was so impressed with its qualities that he sent an invitation to van dyck to return. an opportunity so favourable to advancement was not lightly to be passed over, and van dyck decided once more to try his fortune here. this decision constituted a turning-point in the life and style of the artist, and we shall see him in england passing the most prosperous years of his life. iv van dyck in england there never was a time in the history of the english court when such opportunities for advancement were presented to an artist possessing the genius of van dyck as during the reign of charles i. he was one of the few monarchs of england who recognised the civilising influence of art on the nation and encouraged it in a manner quite beyond his means. it mattered not of what period, school, or nationality a work happened to be, so long as it possessed a high degree of merit, it appealed strongly to the king. we have only to consider the superb collection he brought together, only to be ruthlessly dispersed by the commonwealth, to gauge the refinement of his taste. many of the priceless possessions of foreign galleries formed part of his collection, and if england had only been in a position to retain her hold upon them we should no doubt to-day be in possession of the finest assemblage of italian art in the world. i need only enumerate the sumptuous portrait of alfonso of ferrara and laura d'dianti and the "entombment," by titian, in the louvre; the portrait of erasmus, by holbein, in the louvre, and the marvellous portrait of a young woman, for so many years wrongly ascribed to the same master, at the hague; the portrait of albrecht dürer by himself in the prado, and the two masterpieces by geertgen van st. jans in the imperial gallery at vienna, to demonstrate the quality of his many possessions. in england we still have retained a few of his treasures. conspicuous among them are those masterpieces of andrea mantegna, the "triumph of julius cæsar," at hampton court, the albrecht dürer, and the lorenzo lotto, in the same gallery, together with the "mercury, cupid and venus," by correggio, in the national gallery. needless to say that a collector, who had sufficient taste to bring together such a notable assemblage, would demand a very high degree of talent indeed in a painter who was working for the court. charles had, moreover, been brought into contact with the brilliant achievements of rubens, and would in consequence expect a great deal from a pupil whose merits he had heard so extolled. the portrait of nicholas lanière appealed to him immediately. he saw in van dyck a man whose performances, even at this early age, far surpassed those of any painter then working in england. charles, who immensely admired the portraits of rubens, saw in those of his pupil an italian quality lacking in the former, and this would additionally attract him. van dyck's reception was most flattering. he was given a lodging at blackfriars amongst the other painters, and was set to work immediately for the king. charles was quite as much taken with the courtly qualities and conversation of his newly-found painter as by his talent, and greatly enjoyed his company. he was accustomed to go to blackfriars by water, and to chat with van dyck whilst having his portrait painted. from this time date the innumerable portraits of charles and his queen, henrietta maria, with which we are so familiar. the fashion thus set by the king was speedily taken up by his court, and the nobility of england competed with one another for the privilege of having their portraits painted by the brilliant fleming. soon after his arrival van dyck received the honour of knighthood, and, in addition to being appointed painter to his majesty, had an annuity of £ per annum settled upon him. the quantity of commissions which now flowed in upon him was prodigious, and he was sorely taxed to keep pace with them. he was enabled in consequence to raise his prices considerably without in the least diminishing the patronage bestowed upon him. he commenced to entertain on a lavish scale, and his table was frequented by the highest in the land. it is said that after occupying the morning in painting portraits he would invite his sitters to dinner, and then, from the study he had made of their countenances during the meal, would work upon the portraits again in the afternoon. although van dyck had been accustomed to good society and living, the overwhelming good fortune which was now his lot appears to have developed bad habits in him. he soon acquired luxurious habits, which finally undermined his health. passionately fond of music, he liberally encouraged all the professors of that art, and gratuitously painted the portraits of its most celebrated exponents. the demands upon his purse at this time must have been enormous, and in order to increase his output, and consequently his income, he had recourse to the means he had seen rubens so successfully employ in antwerp. he brought together a school of painters, who worked under his directions. the portraits dating from this period consequently not only show the marked deterioration in his technique, but also, beyond the heads and hands and a few other essential details, contained but little of his own work. his assistants were so thoroughly trained that they were enabled to paint the draperies and their accessories in a style which welded perfectly with his own brushwork. these facts have to be carefully remembered whenever we are contemplating a work of the english period of van dyck, for were we to form our judgment solely upon the portraits he had painted prior to going to england we should reject many of the former as not being from his hand. there is further the added difficulty that his assistants executed pictures in his manner on their own account, and it is only by the lack of that spark of genius he was enabled to infuse in those parts of a portrait he executed with his own hand that we are enabled to differentiate between them. many of the portraits of the king and queen which were sent as presents all over europe were but the productions of his studio. ====================================================================== plate vii.--portrait of the artist's wife (in the pinakothek, munich) a remarkably good example of van dyck's power of depicting female character. whenever he is faced with a sitter in whom he is interested he suited his technique to the points he wished to emphasise. it is the possession of this versatility which enables him to infuse so much seductive charm into his women portraits and such trenchant vigour into those of men. [illustration: plate vii.] ====================================================================== it is only in such superb presentations of charles as that in the louvre, at windsor, and in the national gallery that we are enabled to judge of his capabilities at this period. he now almost entirely deserted historical painting. there was no demand for it in england, and his attention was exclusively devoted to portraiture. moreover, if we may judge from the ever-increasing facility with which he was wont to paint, it may be fairly said that his attention during these years was being diverted from painting to pleasure. he never lost interest in his art, but he was impelled to adopt a more facile manner by the pressure of his engagements and his ever-increasing expenses. he kept a country house at eltham in kent, where he spent the summer--a form of extravagance more defensible than many in which he was accustomed to indulge. meanwhile, he had contracted a marriage with mary ruthven, granddaughter of lord ruthven, earl of cowrie, by whom he had one daughter. his wife, however, brought him no dowrie, but was considered one of the greatest beauties of her time. soon after his marriage he left england with his wife for the purpose of showing her his native country. they travelled for some time, visiting his family and friends. then the idea occurred to him that he would proceed to paris, with a view of sharing, if possible, in the contemplated decoration of the louvre, and thus win laurels equal to those rubens had gained by his works in the luxembourg. he arrived, however, too late: nicholas poussin had been brought specially from rome for the purpose, and the work was in hand. disappointed in this, and still desiring to execute some great work by which he might secure a lasting renown, he returned to england and proposed to the king, through the medium of his old and trusty friend sir kenelm digby, to embellish the wall of the banqueting house at whitehall with the history of the order of the garter. the ceiling of this sumptuous chamber had already been painted by rubens, and van dyck no doubt considered that his work would blend admirably with that of his master. the sum he asked for, £ , although considerable, would no doubt not have stood in the way of the execution of the project had it occurred at an earlier date in the reign of the unfortunate charles. the kingdom, however, was already in a turbulent condition. funds were scarce, and such as existed might have to be employed at any moment in raising an army to defend the king's cause. charles was now occupied in a life-and-death struggle with his people, and had no time to devote to artistic pursuits. van dyck consequently waited in vain for an answer, and it is to be supposed that meanwhile commissions did not come to him as easily as formerly. young as he still was, the effects of his past luxurious life were beginning to tell upon him, and, coupled with the disappointment occasioned by the rejection of his proposal, contributed to bring on gout. he began to have financial worries too, but these can hardly have been sufficiently great to have troubled him much, for he left at his death property to the value of £ , . he therefore turned his attention, probably in emulation, or by the advice, of his friend sir kenelm digby, to the pursuit of the philosopher's stone, and, needless to say, the results of his experiments and the money he expended upon them only aggravated the state of his health. he rapidly sickened, and died in london on december th, , when forty-two years of age. he was accorded a magnificent funeral in st. paul's cathedral, and was buried in a tomb beside that of john of gaunt. v van dyck's position in art during the past twenty years the public has become so educated in matters artistic that it wishes at once to definitely assign a certain position to an artist with whose works it is familiar. we live in an age of comparison, and as opportunities for its exercise, owing to the cheapening of travel, are so manifestly improved of recent years, a more just estimation exists in the mind of the public regarding an artist's worth than formerly. van dyck, as i said at the beginning of the opening chapter, has never fallen from the high position he occupied in his own day. he has always appealed to the student and the artist of every nationality, and if we survey portrait painting since his day, we shall see that he has exercised more influence than any other artist who has ever lived. it may be said that titian, for a couple of centuries after his death, was the idol almost exclusively worshipped, and that during the last fifty years velazquez and rembrandt have been the ideals painters have dangled before the public and themselves. but both of these mighty masters have had their ups and downs. the genius of rembrandt was certainly not appreciated until the end of the eighteenth century, and even then his stupendous powers were not recognised as they have been in our own day. the worship of velazquez is quite a modern institution, and it is not at all unlikely, in the opinion of well-informed critics, that if his influence, which has now reached a decadent stage, is not curtailed it will create as much havoc amongst modern portrait painters as the example of constable has had upon certain phases of landscape painting. it can never be laid to the charge of van dyck that any period of his art has exercised a permanently baneful influence. true, immediately after the restoration, a school arose, headed by sir peter lely and sir godfrey kneller, who claimed to have followed the traditions of van dyck. it requires, however, but little comparison between even his later and slighter works and those of lely, who was incomparably the greatest of the portrait painters working in england in the interval between van dyck and hogarth, to see how far below van dyck's standard portrait painting had fallen, and how little of his method there was left in it. van dyck has exercised more influence in england than abroad. many of our greatest eighteenth-century portrait painters have largely formed themselves upon his example. gainsborough was the most conspicuous instance of this. from his earliest days he worshipped the great fleming, and that the spell never left him may be gauged from his dying words: "we are all going to heaven, and van dyck is of the company." even prior to his departure for bath, his portraits possessed many of the qualities of van dyck, but after arriving in the western city, then the centre of a rich and fashionable world, he had manifold opportunities of studying his favourite master. his brushwork became at once more refined, his colouring more transparent, and his method in every way more facile. before leaving bath he had produced portraits which are worthy to be placed alongside those of van dyck, and after a few years' residence in london had created those marvels of the brush which contend for supremacy with the finest works of the fleming. for example, what portrait of the latter master could be cited to surpass the portrait of mrs. graham in the gallery at edinburgh, the superb group at dulwich, or the "blue boy," in the possession of the duke of westminster? reynolds appears to have worked more in emulation of titian than van dyck. he painted in a solider and apparently slower manner, and if the slickness--if i may be allowed an americanism--of the flemish master appealed to him, it yet had no visible effect upon his own technique. the minor masters of our school demonstrate materially how much they owed to van dyck. allan ramsay and cotes bear adequate witness of this. full justice, however, has not been done to the good wrought for english art by his immediate followers and pupils. it is only of late years that the portraits of old stone are beginning to be sorted out from those of the later period of van dyck. stone was occupied in copying or making replicas of the portraits of van dyck, and so well did he succeed in his task that, even to this day, numerous works by him are to be found in the country houses of england passing under the name of the great master. ====================================================================== plate viii.--the marchese cattaneo (in the national gallery) in spite of its somewhat bad condition this portrait is an excellent specimen of van dyck's genoese period. it was achieved about the same time as the two magnificent pictures in the scottish national gallery, the lomellini family and the portrait of an unknown italian nobleman. its recent entry into the national gallery filled a gap in our representation of the great fleming. [illustration: plate viii.] ====================================================================== then we have william dobson, whose works are worthy of yet more study than has hitherto been accorded them. he did not long survive van dyck, dying in at the early age of thirty-six. he was probably the most gifted of all his pupils, and had he lived at any other period would probably have been held in great estimation. there is an excellent example of his brush in the national gallery, the portrait of endymion porter, groom of the bedchamber of charles i. in many of the other examples strewn about the country he shows yet a greater approach to van dyck. still, the trafalgar square picture is a worthy example of his powers at his best. his masculine handling and sense of colour place him, from a purely artistic point of view, far above such men as lely and kneller, who followed him. another painter who wrought excellent work under the commonwealth was robert walker. he was much patronised by oliver cromwell and his party. he appears to have been one of the few portrait painters who flourished at this time. he acquired in a remarkable manner the liquid and transparent style affected by van dyck during his last years in england, and coupling with this remarkable powers of fidelity, his portraits possess great attractions for the artist as well as the student of history. as i have already said, the influence of van dyck upon the painters who flourished throughout the three succeeding reigns was a decadent one. sir peter lely, who came to england, at the age of twenty-three, with the prince of orange, the son-in-law of charles i., was the best of all these men. he was born in westphalia, of dutch parentage, and was educated in the school of pieter fransz de grebber at haarlem. but his entire method was built upon van dyck. he seems not to have had a bad time under the commonwealth, for he was employed to paint cromwell's portrait. it is said that he had instructions upon this occasion to paint him, "warts, pimples, and all." it was not, however, till charles ii. had ascended the throne that he reached the zenith of his fame. then came the long series of ladies of the court with which we are so familiar. they are all set in the same artificial setting, a landscape half conventional, half natural in feeling, a languid and somewhat haughty air about the heads, together with draperies destined to accentuate the artificial appearance of the whole portrait. one can see at a glance that it was from van dyck he had learned the placing and handling of the heads, hands, and backgrounds, but what a monotonous procession it is. in order to appreciate the superficialities of lely a number of his portraits must be seen together. we then see how monotonous he was, how few of those qualities he possessed which go to make up a great artist. that he had a considerable amount of technique at his command can be seen in such portraits as the "duchess of cleveland" in the national portrait gallery, but in others again he fell so far below this level of excellence, that one is sometimes tempted to reject many perfectly glorious pictures as not being from his hand. the art of lely had attained great popularity amongst the aristocracy whose lives called into being the decadent art of this period. all who sought the public favour tried to catch his manner, and hence arose quite a number of imitators. occasionally lely was surpassed by some of his scholars. for example, john greenhill absorbed more of the real qualities of van dyck than his master. the remarkable portrait in the gallery of dulwich college shows unmistakable signs of genius of a high order, and had he not fallen into irregular habits and died at the age of thirty-two he might have achieved great things. sir godfrey kneller, who followed lely, was infinitely inferior to him as an artist. he claimed, too, to continue the van dyck tradition, but by this time the art of portrait painting had sunk into such a deplorable condition, owing to the depravity of public taste and to the slavish imitation of the brilliant fleming, that there are few of his pictures that appeal in the least to the artistic sense. it was not until the great period of english painting, beginning with hogarth, of which i have already spoken, that the downward career of painting in this country was finally checked. so far our attention has been devoted to discovering the visible effect of van dyck's art upon his contemporaries and followers. the fact that on the whole his influence was decadent in this direction must not allow us to detract from his own qualities. we must rather search for the reasons which caused his art to retain such a hold upon generations of english painters. it must not be forgotten that van dyck's profession in england was essentially that of a portrait painter, and he was employed by the aristocracy exclusively. he, indeed, may be called the aristocratic painter _par excellence_, and in this respect does not yield to either titian or velazquez. it was, however, when he strayed from his normal course that he revealed his deficiencies; the few extant portraits of the lower classes demonstrate amply how unsuited he was to portraying any below the upper ranks of life. to every plebeian sitter he imparted an air of gentility and distinction quite out of keeping. until the advent of wilson and gainsborough, portraiture was the sole art, at any rate, as far as painting is concerned, that flourished in england. its patrons were all of the upper classes, and the van dyck manner, which by this time had become a tradition, was recognised by both artists and sitters as the best suited to their purpose. it was only in the eighteenth century that the general financial and educational uplifting of the middle classes called into being that naturalist school which finally drove all others from the field. it is probable, however, that the painters who worked so slavishly in van dyck's english manner had never become acquainted with his finest achievements in portraiture. with few exceptions these were executed before he settled permanently in england. it is practically certain that gainsborough, for example, had never seen such portraits as the philippe le roy and his wife, now among the greatest treasures of hertford house, which date from the years between - . it was then that van dyck had reached his maximum development, and it is by the portraits he made in the ten years round about this date that he will probably be judged by posterity. the facile ease and silvery liquidity of his latter manner may have an irresistible charm for those who have not studied the master very deeply, but for the artist and the student the works he had achieved, before success had crowned his efforts in the same measure that it did shortly after his arrival here, will ever remain the standard by which to judge him. at this time he displayed great assiduity to learn anything he could either from his predecessors or from his contemporaries. in this connection it may not be out of place to relate a story, the truth of which has frequently been challenged. having come across some portraits by franz hals, and being very anxious to see the master at work, he made a journey to haarlem. upon inquiring at the dutchman's studio, he found that hals was at his usual tavern. he accordingly sent word to him that a stranger was waiting to have his portrait painted, and that he had but two hours to give him before leaving the town. hals arrived immediately, and, in view of the shortness of time at his disposal, set to work with a will. van dyck, who, needless to say, had not been recognised, remarked, as hals was putting on the finishing touches, that painting seemed a very easy process, and asked to be allowed to try his hand. accordingly they changed places, and hals soon perceived that the stranger was no novice in the handling of the brush. as the work proceeded his curiosity became more and more whetted, and finally, unable to restrain his curiosity any longer, he went over to see how the work was progressing. one can imagine his surprise when he saw a masterly portrait in process of completion, and, recognising the handling, immediately cried out: "why, you are none other than van dyck, for he alone could have achieved what you have done." as an historical painter he takes a very high rank amongst seventeenth-century masters; he was far ahead in vigour of treatment and in strength of brushwork of any of his contemporaries in italy. the school of bologna, whilst possessing a refinement he never attained, is effeminate in comparison with him. their very eclecticism prevented them giving free rein to their fancy, and consequently the great majority of their works possess a restraint of feeling, coupled with a perfection of execution, which neither rubens nor van dyck surpassed. van dyck certainly stands out as the greatest scholar of rubens in every way. his fellow-pupils whom he left behind in flanders could not compare with him. the works of the cleverest of them, caspar de grayer, appear formal, indeed, when compared with any of the stupendous religious compositions still preserved in the great churches of his native country. their chief merit is, as i have before said, in the exceedingly human presentment of the subject. the sense of physical pain and of human brutality has never been better treated, and, if at times he carries this quality to a painful degree, no charge could be levelled against him on the score of feebleness or of lack of thoroughness in making his meaning quite clear. as compared with similar works by rubens they possess an interest for us which the latter cannot always command, by reason of their being conceived and finished by the master himself, whereas those of rubens, more often than not, were only worked upon by the master after pupils had carried out the greater part of the work. van dyck's religious and historical pictures belong to the period of his career when his execution was at its zenith, and consequently they possess an extraordinary degree of interest to the artist. it is, however, to his early years that one must turn to form a just estimation of his abilities, and in his finest works he takes his place beside titian and velazquez, rembrandt and holbein, amongst the greatest masters of portrait painting who have ever lived. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., london & derby the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. _in preparation_ whistler. t. martin wood. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. j. f. millet. percy m. turner. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. holbein. s. l. bensusan. boucher. c. haldane macfall. vigÃ�e le brun. c. haldane macfall. watteau. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. and others. available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/meissonier barbuoft masterpieces in colour edited by--m. henry roujon meissonier ( - ) * * * * * _in the same series_ reynolds rubens velasquez holbein greuze burne-jones turner le brun botticelli chardin romney millet rembrandt raeburn bellini sargent fra angelico constable rossetti memling raphael fragonard leighton dÜrer holman hunt lawrence titian hogarth millais watteau luini murillo franz hals watts carlo dolci ingres gainsborough corot tintoretto delacroix van dyck fra lippo lippi da vinci puvis de chavannes whistler meissonier montagna _in preparation_ gerome boucher veronese perugino van eyck * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--the flute-player (in the musée du louvre) meissonier's erudition was such that it enabled him to combine the skill of the artist with the utmost fidelity in details of costume. in the _flute-player_, the artist predominates. this figure, with foot slightly raised in the act of beating time, is admirably life-like.] meissonier translated from the french by frederic taber cooper illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] frederick a. stokes company new york--publishers copyright, , by frederick a. stokes company [illustration: may ] the · plimpton · press [w · d · o] norwood · mass · usa contents page introduction early years first success etchings paintings military paintings list of illustrations plate page i. the flute-player frontispiece in the musée du louvre ii. les ordonnances tommy thierry collection, musée du louvre iii. the confidence chauchard bequest, musée du louvre iv. chauchard bequest, musée du louvre v. awaiting in the musée du louvre vi. the players at bowls in the casa-riera collection vii. amateurs of paintings in the musée du louvre viii. napoleon iii at solférino tommy thierry bequest, musée du louvre introduction one day--it was neither in war time nor during manoeuvres--on a july morning, with the sun shining radiantly, a squadron of cuirassiers passed at full gallop across a magnificent field of ripening grain, in the neighbourhood of poissy, although on every side there were wide reaches of fallow land and pasture. when this hurricane of horses and men had, like a blazing meteor, devastated and laid low the splendid gold of the crops, two men remained behind, surveying the scene with visible satisfaction and undisguised interest. one of the two was tall and the other short. the tall man was colonel dupressoir, who had directed the manoeuvre. the other, an elderly man, short of leg, and ruddy of complexion, with a long beard, white and silken, and a singularly expressive eye, was the painter, meissonier. the latter had achieved his object. thanks to long insistence and the payment of indemnities, he had brought about the passage of cavalry across that field, in order that he might make studies from nature, needed for a painting then in hand, _ _, of how standing grain looks after it has been crushed and trampled by the onrush of a charge. the whole artist, whose work we are about to study side by side with his life, is summed up in this anecdote. it reveals one of the most typical sides of his temperament, and, consequently, of his talent: a constant and scrupulous endeavour, maintained even at the price of sacrifices that would seem excessive to the layman, to interpret nature precisely as she is. it was this noble ambition--and we shall find other examples of it in the course of an artistic career in which it was the dominant note--that made him say to his pupils, with a conviction that commanded respect: "if i should sketch a horse from memory i should feel that i had been guilty of an insult to nature!" [illustration: plate ii.--les ordonnances (tommy thierry collection, musée du louvre) every one of meissonier's pictures is a document which may be profitably consulted if one wished to decide a detail of costume or armament. his consciousness in this regard has become proverbial.] and it is because he conceived his ideal after this fashion that this unerring painter of so many military types and scenes never attempted to picture skirmishes or battles. it was not that he did not want to, or had not cherished the dream of doing so. but he had never seen a battle; and a battle is a thing that cannot be reconstructed, like a marching column or a detail of camp life. accordingly he painted none, because he decided, with a certain loftiness, _that he did not really know what a battle was_! let us keep this attitude of mind before us, and even underscore it in our memory. for this alone, in a vague way, would suffice to characterize the artist with whom we are concerned; and his whole long, rich, and fruitful career may be summed up as a successful and varied application of one great principle: devout and inflexible respect for reality. early years when jean-louis-ernest meissonier was born at lyons in , under the fading light of an imperial sunset, these were scarcely the ideas that predominated in the national school of french art. pictorial art, to confine ourselves to that, had, both before and during the first empire, achieved at most a lumbering and trammelled flight; and the influence of antiquity, so perceptible in the language as well as in the manners and fashions at the close of the eighteenth century, served only to confine the inspiration of artists more strictly within the bounds of classic tradition. roman characters, roman costumes, roman virtues,--such was the ideal to which each debutant who did not revolt openly must make surrender! to be sure, the commanding figure of david gave a magnificent prestige to this rather cold and dishearteningly classic programme. but, like all great artists, david was exceptional; and he stands today as the only one who, in an epoch sadly poor in genius, produced a host of living masterpieces, to swell the lists of a school so artificial that it would now be forgotten, save as an echo of his name. it is true that, by way of ransom, he spent much time in painting vast canvases that today hold but a small place in his life work. on the threshold of the nineteenth century, in , eugène delacroix was born. it was he who brought a new spirit into french painting and, single-handed, wrought a great revolution. such is not destined to be the rôle of meissonier! his was neither so tragic a struggle, nor so immense a triumph. unlike delacroix, he did not restore the beautiful nor hand down new forms to glory. he succeeded none the less in inscribing his name in modest yet precise characters--that will long remain legible--upon the marble of the temple. how did the artist get his start? according to the monotonous and mournful formula, "after a hard struggle." the lives of all beloved and admired artists have this in common with fairy tales: they always begin badly and end happily (unluckily, they sometimes end a long time after the death of the principal hero!). the father of meissonier was a dealer in colonial products and chemicals, and kept a drug and provision shop in the rue des ecouffes. beneath the low ceiling of this shop and between walls lined with drawers, bearing strange labels, the childhood of jean-louis-ernest was passed. his mother was a fragile woman. we are told further that she was sensitive to music and that she had learned to paint on porcelain and to make miniatures. are we at liberty to attribute to the tender and brief contact of that mother, who died so young, with the life of her child, the origin of his artistic vocation? it is pleasant at least to fancy so and to try to believe it, even though we are told that parents bequeath to their children, not a vocation--a mysterious gift, of unknown origin--but rather a certain number of necessary aptitudes and qualities, which will enable them to profit by the gift, if perchance it falls to them from heaven. yet the fact remains that in the depths of a cupboard, in the house on the rue des ecouffes, there lay the paint-box which mme. meissonier once used, while taking miniature lessons from the authoritative hands of mme. jacottot. as joyously as other children would have appropriated a jar of jam, the boy possessed himself of the magic box, and on that selfsame day entered, with stumbling fingers, upon the laborious mission which was destined to cease only with his life. he was not a very good student. a report has been preserved of his standing in a school in the rue des francs-bourgeois, at paris, where his later childhood was passed. in this document the proper authorities alleged that the pupil, ernest meissonier, showed "too marked a tendency to draw sketches in his copy-books, instead of paying attention to his teachers." the said tendency did not fail to awaken anxiety in m. meissonier, the father. it should be remembered that, for some years previous, the question of painting in france had been taking on a rather bitter tone. the romantic school was entering boldly into the lists, and among its champions were some who distinguished themselves less by their works than by their long beards and the public challenge they flung at their traditional enemy, the phalanx of david's pupils. and among the latter, it must be owned, the majority made no answer beyond a disdainful silence and some mediocre paintings,--with just one single exception: the admirable, undoubted, impeccable exception of the great jean-dominique ingres. the press, the art clubs, not to mention the salons, were all more or less divided between the romantics and the classicists, the innovators and the traditionalists, and fanned the flames of a quarrel which, in view of the worth of the two leaders--one of whom spelled genius and the other perfection--was destined to appear without sanction to the eyes of posterity. but, as may be imagined, these tumultuous polemics were not calculated to reassure a thoroughly pacific bourgeois, already much alarmed to find that he had begotten an artist. and just at this crisis another damnatory report exploded, this time from a master of the eighth form in a school on the rue de jouy: "ernest has a decided talent for drawing. the mere sight of a picture often takes our attention from our serious duties." this diagnosis, so categoric underneath its familiar form and somewhat faulty grammar, sounded a serious cry of alarm. it was promptly heeded by the father, and young ernest was forthwith entered as a druggist's apprentice, in a house on the rue des lombards. yet it was not long afterwards, thanks to a dogged persistence, that the lad had overcome paternal opposition and was allowed to do head studies in charcoal, at the studio of a certain julien petier, whose slender artistic fame rested solely upon the fact that, once upon a time, he won the _grand prix de rome_. meissonier very shortly quitted this somewhat dull discipline, and he stayed scarcely longer in the studio of léon cogniet, which at that time was quite celebrated. yet during the four months that he remained under the guidance of the worthy author of _the four seasons_, it must be admitted that he laboured greatly to the profit of his art. m. phillippe burty, his contemporary and his first biographer, explains to us that, while at cogniet's, young meissonier did not work like the other students, from casts or nude models: "he passed his days in an enclosure adjoining the studio, where the master was engaged upon his ceiling painting for the louvre, the _expedition into egypt_, and hired by the day soldiers in republican uniform, dragoons, artillerymen and their horses." in the midst of this resurrection of a past that was still quite recent, in the very presence of the stage setting, the reproduction of the napoleonic epic, he suddenly conceived of it as the greatest of all subjects that might tempt his accurate artist fingers. it must have seemed to him, later on, that he himself had witnessed its close. [illustration: plate iii.--the confidence (chauchard bequest, musée du louvre) this painting, given to the louvre in by m. chauchard, is one of the most beautiful in that famous collection, owing to the incomparable naturalness of the attitudes, as well as to the finished art of its composition.] but while waiting to achieve his dream, he had to achieve a living. this was not easy. his father spared him an allowance of fifteen francs a month, not counting the privilege of dining at home once a week, and from time to time allowed himself to be cajoled into buying a small aquarelle. be one's tastes never so modest, it is difficult under such conditions to make both ends meet, and there was many a day of sacrifice and privation for the future painter of canvases destined later to sell at a hundred thousand francs per square decimeter. he shared his poverty light-heartedly with a chosen circle of friends whose fame in after years has made their names familiar: among others daumier, the caricaturist, and daubigny, the great landscape painter, with whom, it is told, meissonier collaborated in manufacturing for the export trade canvases that were generously paid for at five francs a meter! he was unable to enter the classes of paul delaroche, the monthly charge for admission to the studio from which _the princes in the tower_ had issued reaching the exorbitant sum of twenty francs! he had to content himself with frequenting the louvre. unlooked-for windfall: in company with his friend trimolet, a needy artist who succumbed to poverty before his real talent had had time to ripen, he obtained an opportunity to decorate fans. then, some religious figures and emblems of saints for certain publishers in the rue saint-jacques. this meant the assurance of an honest living; they could go to a restaurant twice a day, every day in the week, and proudly pass the paint-shop knowing their account was paid. when only sixteen years of age, meissonier exhibited for the first time. as a matter of fact his name appears in the salon catalogue of , accredited with _a visit to the burgomaster_. in this picture one may find, i will not say _in miniature_ (since all his paintings were destined to be contained in narrow limits) but in a youthful way, an indication of those qualities of relief and of realism which so energetically stamped his productions later on. is there any need of saying that the public failed to distinguish a work which did not sufficiently distinguish itself? the first connoisseurs to pay attention to the newcomer were editors, the severe and imposing editors. not quite at the start, naturally; and the first instalment of illustrations that he offered to a magazine then famous, the name of which is now forgotten--four little sepia drawings--was curtly rejected. but he refused to be discouraged, and not long afterwards deliberately made his way to the celebrated art-publisher, curmer. this bold venture went badly at the start. the publisher, rendered distrustful by so youthful and importunate a face, assured the young man and the friend who had introduced him, that "for the time being he had nothing for him." but by a providential hazard, the short conversation which followed as a matter of civility before leave-taking touched upon the subject of life-masks. at that time life-masks happened to be quite the rage: people had their faces moulded in plaster just as nowadays they sit for a photograph; and young meissonier related, not without vanity, that on the preceding sunday he had taken the mask of the johannot brothers, and he added that he knew those two princes of engraving quite intimately. famous acquaintances are always useful; the proof of this is that m. curmer accepted an invitation to go the following sunday to meissonier's studio, to sit for his life-mask,--and, once there, it was impossible for him not to order an aquarelle. the door of this publishing house, however, was as yet only half-way open to the artist; for when his friend marville, "an etcher in soft-ground, mediocre but prolific," talked of having him collaborate on the curmer edition of _paul and virginia_, the publisher, a prey once more to his original distrust, entrusted him to begin with,--with just one of the special illustrations,--to re-engrave! meissonier acquitted himself brilliantly of this half-task, with the result that he was entrusted with several other illustrations for the celebrated edition of _paul and virginia_, of which no bibliophile can ever speak without enthusiasm. but, on the other hand, he had an entire series to make for an edition, no less sumptuous, of _the indian cabin_, also a work of bernardin de saint-pierre. first success and then, in the words of one of his contemporaries: "the first rays of fame that caressed him streamed from those admirable and diminutive drawings for _the indian cabin_. he had done much sketching in the jardin des plantes, in the conservatories, where the flora of the tropics expanded opulently; also, before the windows of those shops of bric-a-brac, abounding in exotic objects, which in those bygone days stretched in a row facing the entrance to the louvre, on the place du carrousel. all that he had to do was to rummage among those sketches in order to give his composition an inimitable stamp of truth, such as was seldom attempted by illustrators of his nation. it was a simple thing to convert into an ornamental letter a storm-broken lily, a group of indian weapons, some javanese musical instruments. if the text called for the 'emblems of mental toil,' the young artist heaped his table with volumes bound in parchment or full calf, acquired for a few sous from the stands along the quays, and he had only to copy, with all the naïveté of the primitives, the gleam of the edges, the bands on the backs, the slips of paper alternating with the silken bookmarks." and the critic proceeds to cite an example of that "prodigious finish" which théophile gautier subsequently recognized as the most _popular_ characteristic, so to speak, of his noble talent: "in two of these miniature vignettes, measuring less than four centimetres, two engravings can be made out, hanging upon a library wall; one of them interprets quite scrupulously _the pariah thinking of the english doctor_, and the other _the english doctor thinking of the pariah_. between these engravings can be made out, hanging on a nail, and possessing all the characteristics described in the text, _the pipe of english leather, the mouthpiece of which was of yellow amber, and that of the pariah, the stem of which was of bamboo and the bowl of terra-cotta_." the success of this _de luxe_ edition was rapid and important. the first step along the path of glory was taken,--and on that path the first step costs more than anywhere else. henceforth, no more need of soliciting work; far otherwise. the artist still continued to do illustrating. mention must be made of the drawings that he did for _frenchmen painted by themselves_, and later--here ends this chapter of his artistic career--the plates that served as illustrations for _the fallen angel_, by lamartine (edition in two volumes, already unobtainable twenty years ago), and the _contes rémois_, by m. de chevigné; this last series bears date . etchings let us add, for the sake of being complete, without wasting undue space upon side-issues, that meissonier also experimented in etching. authoritative critics assert that these attempts, in which the master modestly refused to see anything more than "essays," will eventually become "the most precious treasures that bear his signature." [illustration: plate iv.-- (chauchard bequest, musée du louvre) this picture, so masterly and so dramatic in composition, is assuredly one of the most widely known in existence. the sombre visage of the emperor, the severity of the landscape, the prevailing tone of sadness, admirably rendered, explain the wide favour enjoyed by this celebrated work, further popularized in engravings.] besides, with one exception,--_the smoker_, popularized by a large printing,--they are quite limited in number, and already eagerly sought after by collectors. and with all the more reason, because, at the fairly distant period of which we speak, the perfected processes for preserving the burined lines on the copper plate in all their original fineness and precision had not yet been invented; accordingly, the later proofs in his series of etchings betray a wearing of the copper which could not fail to lower their value. at the time of meissonier's death, a proof of _the preparations for the duel_, in which the signature was legible, "in the lower left corner," brought upward of one thousand francs. the most beautiful of all meissonier's etchings are, without question: _the violin_, which he engraved with a burin at once powerful, delicate and, as some critics phrase it, "vibrant," to adorn the visiting card of the celebrated lute player, vuillaume; _the signor annibale_, representing, in braggadocio pose and costume, the celebrated actor, régnier, of the comédie-française, in a rôle that is by no means the least celebrated in augier's _adventuress_; and _the troopers_, seven figures whose personalities stand out rather curiously and exhibit a picturesque diversity. _the reporting sergeant_ was a miniature sketch made, in order to try the ground, on the margin of the plate on which _the smoker_ was etched. it is a finished and charming little work, full of expression, of life and actuality, condensed into a microscopic square of paper. but what of his paintings? we left them for a time, in order to clear up certain points regarding meissonier's incursion into the realm of the engraver,--an incursion from which he brought back, incidentally, both fame and fortune. paintings he profited from it above all in being able to continue to paint. for the fact remains that, from the time of his youngest efforts, such as _the patrol removing a body from an outpost_, his earliest known work, one of the collection that his father bought, to swell somewhat that famous monthly income of fifteen francs, he never abandoned his brushes. we left him unsuccessfully exhibiting, at the salon of , a small painting, dealing with a flemish subject. let us add, as a final word, that this _genre_ picture was accompanied by an aquarelle, entered in the catalogue of that date as: _soldier to whom in the citizen's house, a young girl serves a mug of beer_. this aquarelle was purchased for one hundred francs by the society of friends of art. the following year he did not exhibit. this, unfortunately, was not because he had nothing to offer; but the pictures that he sent, consisting of _the chess players_ and _the little messenger_, had not been accepted by the jury. there was an excess of severity in this refusal; and in spite of the fact that the candidate for admission was still under the age of twenty, the two pictures offered possessed certain genuine qualities that rendered the sentence of the jury cruelly unjust. such was the opinion of the artist, who in offered the same pictures over again; it was also the opinion of the jury of that year, for it accepted them. two years later, meissonier exhibited a _monk consoling a dying man_. this canvas attracted the attention of the duke of orleans, who bought it for five hundred francs. (fourteen years later, at the sale consequent upon the duke's death, this same _monk_ was resold for , francs.) in , meissonier attracted the attention of the critics. for example, you may find in a paper called _l'artiste_, in a critique of the salon: "and i almost forgot an adorable little _english doctor_, by m. meissonier, a charming miniature in oil, extraordinarily fine and subtle." these lines were signed by jules janin, who at that time maintained over french criticism a sort of sacerdotal sovereignty, comparable only to that which, so far as the national school of painting was concerned, was afterwards held by the artist whom janin then heralded with an almost exaggerated cordiality. [illustration: plate v.--awaiting (in the musée du louvre) this painting, which is frequently confused with another by the same artist, entitled _the man at the window_, is chiefly noteworthy for its finished detail and prodigious ability of execution. meissonier herein reveals his profound understanding of the principles of chiaroscuro.] but the small size of meissonier's pictures! that is the one thing that, for the world at large, contemporaries and posterity alike, is the keynote of his talent: "meissonier has always painted on such a small scale!" that is what one would begin by saying, if one wanted to explain him, to reveal him to some one who did not know him. and what endless things have been said in addition, by way of praise, criticism, and discussion, regarding the scantiness of the canvases or panels to which the artist applied himself! underlying this whole matter of smallness there is, without any paradox, a rather big question. beyond doubt, material dimensions in works of art are not taken into consideration, so long as these dimensions remain within moderation. it is equally certain that, short of introducing revolutionary modifications into our aesthetic creed, we would refuse to accept as a work of art anything that exceeded too far these limits of moderation, or fell too far below them. is it not the same in life and in society, where exaggerated giants and undersized dwarfs find that they are outcasts, each in his own way, outside the common law, and regarded simply as curiosities? granted: but what is the limit? does meissonier surpass it, and are his pictures _too small_? very well, let us answer categorically: no! no, they are not too small, considering, first of all, their subject; secondly, their mode of presentment, their composition, their treatment as to decoration; and, lastly, the vividness and intensity of their details. one may even go a step further and assert that they have the dimensions that they ought to have, the dimensions that are best calculated to enhance the artist's magnificent gifts, and to make one forget the qualities in which, perhaps, he was lacking. the scenes which he kindles into life, to say nothing of single characters that he portrays, are like stories told in an intimate sort of way; they force one to draw closer. they have not sufficient harmony and amplitude to attract attention from a distance; but, seen from near by, they give their message with exquisite precision. they offer a hundred subtle details for us to seek out and approve; a painstaking grouping for us to admire; and, best of all, expressive physiognomies for us to read. it seems as though the dimensions had been calculated on exactly the right scale to awaken all these impressions at once and blend them as completely as possible. and all this would have been too scattered in an ampler setting. it is because of this perfect proportion that it has been so justly said that "meissonier's pictures never look small excepting before you have really looked at them." but let us make no mistake in this regard. painting on a small scale would not of itself suffice to attain this maximum of intensity. it needed, on the contrary, an enormous amount of talent to avoid an effect of fussiness and preciosity. still other reasons have been given for the great value of this artist's works in spite of their smallness, or rather because of their smallness. m. gustave larroumet has written on this very point a brilliant and ingenious special plea, of which the following is the principal passage: "there is a certain class of subjects in which amplitude is an error of judgment. if you wish to paint the coronation of napoleon, the bridge of tailebourg, or the battle of the cimbri, you have the right to measure your canvas in proportion to the space which such scenes occupy in reality; on the other hand you might conceive of your subject in such fashion that it could be contained completely within a square metre. but why give to an artistic reproduction more relative importance than the originals have in reality? supposing you wish to show me a passer-by, on foot or on horseback. how do they interest me in real life? simply by the rapid impression that they leave upon my eye and mind. i have seen them at a distance, reduced to a few centimetres by perspective. i am satisfied if you show them to me in the same proportion." the argument is specious. perhaps it is more ingenious than it is well founded, and lays itself open to discussion. but it will not do to linger too long over abstract polemics, when we are in the presence of a reality, a type of work, every least portion of which makes its appeal and, by the very fact that it is so full of interest and of life, practically answers the subtle problem that it has raised. in more pictures were sent to the salon: a _reader_, a _saint paul_, an _isaiah_. was the painter beginning to change his manner? those last two pictures might give reason to fear so. they were life size, yet that did not prevent them from being dull and commonplace in execution. doubtless, irritated by his critics, meissonier had wished to prove that he also, if he wanted to, could paint according to the schools. even the artists who are surest of themselves sometimes come to these hasty and impatient determinations. fortunately for him, he made a bad showing, and a painter who had great influence over him, jules chenavard, succeeded in recalling him from the false path into which he was trying to force his talent. on the other hand, the praises bestowed upon his _genre_ painting, _the reader_, which was "genuine meissonier," could not fail to encourage him to remain true to himself. the _revue des deux mondes_, in its critical review of the salon, bestowed upon this picture an enthusiastic tribute, couched in a style that may seem to us today somewhat old-fashioned: "a flemish canvas, if there ever was one. picture to yourself a good old soul, retired from business, his skin as wrinkled as the parchment of his books, ill clad, ill fed, and nevertheless the happiest man in the world: he is a bibliophile, and he is in the midst of old books! you could hardly believe how vividly this noble passion is expressed in that little picture. but where in the world did m. meissonier come across all those delightful little rarities in books? you can almost smell the adorable odour of old bindings!" the young artist--he was at that time only twenty-five--was awarded a third-class medal. the following year he obtained a second-class medal, and his painting, _the game of chess_, won him a brilliant triumph: it was purchased by m. paul périer. it was a material triumph not to be despised: the picture brought two thousand francs, which at that time was considerable. the moral triumph was even bigger, because paul périer was an experienced collector, who acquired only such works as were worthy to take their place in an assemblage where the biggest names of the period were represented by masterpieces. henceforth, success after success followed regularly. each picture that he sent to the salon won increasing distinction: _a smoker_ (they are a goodly number, the smokers and the readers that came from meissonier's brush!); _a young man playing the 'cello_; _the painter in his studio_; _the guard-house_; _the young man looking at sketches_; _the game of piquet_; _the park at saint-cloud_. this last picture was done in collaboration; meissonier painted only the figures, the landscape was the work of français. this mounting success, which so quickly turned into glory, was legitimate. the artist had by this time all his resources admirably at command, and was fully imbued with his ideal. he had learned to give to every face that profundity, to every scene that intensity of action, that constitutes his individual bigness. the arrangement of the _milieu_, the scrupulous devotion to realism that we noted in the opening lines of this study, the prodigious anxiety to give to every one of his personages such play of physiognomy, such expression, glance, and gesture as would best reveal their character and help us to know them better,--all these things combine and harmonize to produce an effect of remarkable power. [illustration: plate vi.--the players at bowls (in the casa-riera collection) this curious composition represents some spanish soldiers playing bowls outside the city wall. the painting, which is hardly larger than the accompanying reproduction, is a little masterpiece of actuality, and the people in it move in a thoroughly faithful landscape, lit by the warm sunlight of spain.] those among meissonier's contemporaries who had assured taste and artistic insight were impressed by the number of qualities revealed in such limited space. let us listen to théophile gautier: "meissonier," he wrote in an article published in the _gazette des beaux-arts_, "composes his pictures with a science unknown to the flemish masters to whom he is compared. take, for example, a smoker! the manner in which he is placed in the centre of the picture, one elbow resting on the table, one leg crossed over the other, one hand hanging idly by his side, his body sunk within his gaping waistcoat, his head bowed forward in revery, or jovially thrown backward,--all this forms a composition which, while not so apparent to the eye as some dramatic scene, nevertheless works its effect upon the spectator. the accessories cleverly play their part to throw more light upon the character of the central figure. here is a smoker, for instance, who is a worthy man, no doubt of it; clad in an ample coat of ancient cut, and of a modest gray, with a well brushed cocked hat upon his head; one foot swings free, encased in a good, stout shoe, with silver buckle; and, with the tranquillity of an honest conscience, he draws in a deep breath of tobacco smoke, which he allows to escape again in little clouds, wishing, thrifty man that he is, to make the pleasure last. close at hand, upon a table with spiral legs, he has placed side by side a flagon and a pewter-lidded tankard of beer. an intimate satisfaction radiates from his face, which is furrowed by deep lines, a face expressive of foresight, orderly habits, and rigid probity. one could trust him with one's cash-box and account books. here is another smoker, clad in red; he also holds a pipe and performs apparently the same action; but his disordered garments, violently rumpled, buttoned askew, his three-cornered hat jammed down upon his eyebrows, his cuffs and frilled shirt crumpled by nervous fingers, his whole attitude expressive of feverish anxiety, his twitching lip straining around the clay stem of his pipe, his hand thrust angrily into an empty pocket,--all these details proclaim the adventurer or the gambler in hard luck. he is evidently saying to himself: 'where the deuce could i borrow a louis or even a crown?' even the background, if we consult it, gives further enlightenment. in this case we no longer have neat plastering of modest gray and substantial brown woodwork, but battered and dirty walls stained with smoke and grease, reeking of tap-room foulness and unclean lodgings. and that shows how far one smoker may fall short of resembling another!" it is precisely this difference between one human being and another, in other words, this quality of individuality, that constitutes the creative gift of the real artist and proves that the honour of this title is really deserved by a painter whose pictures are animated groups, among whom a spectator may wander, studying them with growing interest, and then afterwards call to mind the various types, episodes, scenes, dramas that he has actually _seen_. one can never grow tired of quoting gautier apropos of an artist whose brush always had something in common with his pen. this masterly art critic has described for us, sketched in words, so to speak, still another picture: "a man standing before a window through which the daylight streams flecking his face with silver; in his hand he holds a book which absorbs his entire attention,--this is not a complicated theme, but it grips us like life itself. we want to know the contents of that volume, it seems as though we could almost conjecture it. plenty of other artists have painted marquises and marchionesses, sleek abbés and shameless beauties of the eighteenth century, thanks to the aid of powder and patches and paint, rosettes, paniers, bespangled coats, silken stockings, red-heeled shoes, fans, screens, cameos, crackled porcelain, bonbonnières and other futilities. meissonier rediscovered the decent folk of that period, which was not made up exclusively of mighty lords and fallen women, and of which we get, through chardin, a glimpse on its honest, settled bourgeois side. meissonier introduces us into modest interiors, with woodwork of sober gray, furniture without gilding, the homes of worthy folk, simple and substantial, who read and smoke and work, look over prints and etchings, or copy them, or chat sociably, with elbows on table, separated only by a bottle brought out from behind the faggots." and who can ever forget, in _the confidence_ (the picture which passed from the gallery of m. chauchard to that of the louvre), how tense and attentive the face of the listener is, even in repose, while the relaxation of the body is revealed by his posture, as he leans against the wall with an elbow on the table,--and how naïve the face of his friend--younger and better looking--as he reads the letter: naïve, excited, even somewhat simple, with a nose slightly exceeding the average length and a forehead just a trifle too low. in the _game of cards_, a soldier and a civilian are seated opposite each other, in the midst of a contest. the soldier has a dogged air and he is losing. apparently, he is not a strong adversary, for the man of questionable age who faces him, his small, narrow, foxy head surmounted by a three-cornered hat, his lean body lost in the depths of a huge greatcoat, his thin ankle showing beneath the white stocking, belongs to the race of weaklings who live at the expense of the strong. in _the etcher_, just as in _the man at the window_--two of his most celebrated pictures (the former brought , francs, even during meissonier's lifetime)--the interest of the principal--and only--figure is heightened and singularly beautified by a delicate effect of light, forming an aureole, in the very centre of the picture, respectively around the face of the worker and of the dreamer. note, in _a song_, the moist eye of the musketeer playing the guitar, and in _pascuale_ the half stupid, half poetic air of the central figure engaged in the same occupation; note also in _the alms-giving_ the frowning brow of the horseman as he searches in his pocket; and in _the visit to the chateau_--an ostentation of coaches and gentry--and in _the inn_--three cavaliers who have halted for the moment and are grouped around the serving-maid, as they drink--the reconstruction of an entire epoch with its pomps and its idylls, that justifies us in calling these pictures veritable "stage settings taken from life." one might spend a long time in analyzing the various shades in the gamut of expressions on the faces of the principal and secondary figures in the _game of piquet_, who, scattered all nine of them around the two sides of the tavern table, follow either amusedly or critically or with feverish interest the changing fortunes of the game. and in the _portrait of the sergeant_, what a magnificent collection of different degrees of attention: that of the portrait painter as he studies his model standing in front of him on the pavement, in his finest uniform and his finest pose; that of the model intent only upon doing nothing to disturb his ultra-martial bearing, his gaze menacing, staring, fixed; that of the spectators, some of them drawing near, fascinated, another who casts an amused glance at the picture as he passes by, with some sarcastic remark on his lips; another who no doubt has just been looking, and for the moment, with pipe between his teeth, is thinking of something else as he sits on a bench with his back to the wall and his legs extended in front of him. _the quarrel_, with all the feverish violence that drives the two bravos at each other's throats, has perhaps more amplitude and less realism than any of the previously mentioned works. it is meissonier's one romantic painting, and he professed a great admiration for it, ranking it as one of his four best canvases. it is recorded that the master said one day to a friend: [illustration: plate vii.--amateurs of paintings (in the musée du louvre) this picture, which must not be confused with the _amateurs of paintings_, in the musée cluny at chantilly, is nevertheless a replica of the latter. they are differentiated by a few insignificant details, but they resemble each other in the harmony of the grouping and the truth of the attitudes.] "i have seen my _quarrel_ at secretan's. i looked at it as though i had never seen the picture before. well, do you know, it is really a fine thing!" military paintings mention should be made, before passing on to the military paintings, of just a few other genre paintings: _the reading at diderot's_, _the amateurs_, _the flute players_. but it is the military pictures that loom up largely amongst the artist's prolific output:--_ _, the portrayal of the imperial apotheosis, the army passing by at a gallop, eagerly acclaiming the emperor, as he answers with a salute; _ _, the decline, the retreat from russia; _ _, the cuirassiers of waterloo before the charge. this picture, which formed part of the duc d'aumale's collection, was purchased for , francs, but afterwards twice resold: the first time for , francs, the second for , francs. yet it may be said that the artist fully earned what some of these military paintings brought him. although he mounted successively all the rungs of official honours (he was made knight of the legion of honour at the age of thirty, officer at forty-one, commander at fifty-two, received the grand golden medal at the exposition universelle of , and became a member of the academy of fine arts in ), meissonier nevertheless always led a singularly active and industrious life. not only did he paint a prodigious number of pictures (in , four hundred were already catalogued), but he took part in the italian campaign of and in the franco-prussian war! in he was, at his own request, attached to the imperial staff of the french army, dreaming, as he had himself acknowledged, of becoming "the van der meulen" of the campaign. at all events, he got out of it one of his best canvases: _napoleon iii. at solférino_, which never left the musée du luxembourg until it was transferred to the musée du louvre. he himself has related, with a delightful sense of humour, the machiavelian intrigues to which he resorted in order to secure the emperor's consent to pose. for the idea of painting a figure, and especially the central figure, without a sitting, was a heresy that he could not even contemplate. let us hear his own account: "would napoleon iii. pose for solférino? that was what weighed on my mind most of all. you know my love for exactitude. i had revisited solférino, in order to get the landscape and the battle-field direct from nature. you can understand how essential it was for me to have the emperor give me a sitting, if only for five minutes. i managed things, i think, rather cleverly. i began by blocking in my picture roughly; then i invited an officer whom i happened to know, to come and give me his advice on certain military details. this officer, as i was aware, had served at solférino. i led him on to tell the part he had played in the combat, and when the iron was hot i proposed that he should let me include him among the figures in my picture. he consented eagerly. when the portrait was successfully finished, he talked of it to other officers, who came to see it and, in their turn, offered to serve me as models. one of them was acquainted with maréchal magnan, and it was he who brought me fleury, who in his turn brought me leboeuf. "the latter undertook to show my painting to the emperor, and to that end secured me an invitation to go to fontainebleau. napoleon iii. received me cordially, and after spending a long time in studying my picture, in which only one figure was now lacking, he inquired who, according to my idea, that missing figure should be. 'why, you, sire.' 'then you are going to paint my portrait?' he remarked. 'how will you do that?' 'from memory, and with the help of published documents.' 'but all that is not equal to a single sitting,' replied the emperor. 'do you not agree with me, m. meissonier?' 'undoubtedly, sire, but--' 'very well, nothing is simpler, let us both mount our horses, and go for a short ride, and while we chat, you can study me at your leisure.' "overjoyed at the opportunity afforded, i rapidly formed a most mephistophelian plot. as it happened, it was precisely at fontainebleau that my old friend jadin had his studio. i manoeuvred to guide our course in the direction of that studio, and when we were at his very door, i boldly proposed to the emperor that we should pay a visit to the good jadin. he laughingly consented, and thereupon the two of us descended upon jadin who, unprepared for either of us, was in his painter's blouse, smoking his pipe. the emperor, greatly amused by this adventure, refused to let jadin disturb himself. he rolled a cigarette and, taking his seat astride of a chair, entered into conversation. meanwhile i had seized the first pencil that came to hand, and fell to sketching. the unforeseen sitting lasted for a good half-hour. it served me not only for the completion of solférino, but for another picture besides, a little panel." a fine example of artistic perseverance and diplomacy,--greatly aided, it must be admitted, by the complaisance of the interested emperor. eleven years later--the year of terror--the artist, in spite of his fifty-six years, undertook active service. yielding, however, to the entreaties of his friends, he left the army near sedan, the night before the battle of borny, and set forth alone, on horseback. his journey back to paris was a veritable odyssey. along the road to verdun he was constantly taken for a spy and halted. at etain, he was taken prisoner, and owed his release solely to the universal renown of his name. it took him three days to reach poissy, where he had his country home; and once there, he organized a national guard. but at the news of the investment of paris, meissonier hastened to make his way into the besieged capital. the morning after the fourth of september, he besought the minister of war, léon gambetta, for an appointment as prefect in one of the departments that were either invaded or menaced. his patriotism was only partly satisfied; he was appointed colonel in the staff of the national guard. "the populace of paris," says a witness, "when they saw that little man with florid face and long gray beard, and legs encased in tight leathern breeches, passing back and forth along the boulevards, often cheered him, mistaking him for the major-general of artillery." the painter planned to commemorate the defence of paris in a picture of colossal size. the project never got beyond the stage of an outline sketch, of deep and tragic interest. have we cause to regret this? meissonier was an allegorical painter, and nowhere more than in his military pictures--both scenes and types--do his powerful and delicate qualities of penetrating observation reveal themselves. every one of his soldiers,--trooper, musketeer, french guard, grenadier of the guard,--in full uniform or in fatigue, or even in the disarray of the barrack-room, has his own personal physiognomy, and manner and temperament; they one and all _live_, and in them lives the conscientious and brilliant artist who laboured so faithfully to create them and succeeded so well. is it not because of this expressive relief both of figures and gestures that people were able to compare meissonier to marmot, and to say that "meissonier was worthy to paint the stories of marmot, and marmot worthy to furnish stories to meissonier"? it would be only just, before leaving him, to defend the artist--who after enjoying a vogue that was perhaps a trifle too enthusiastic, has fallen, quite unjustly into slight disfavour--from two criticisms that have frequently been passed upon him. too much stress has been laid on his lack of the gift of colour and the gift of grace. [illustration: plate viii.--napoleon iii. at solfÉrino (tommy thierry bequest, musée du louvre) under any other hand than meissonier's, the group constituting the imperial staff would have been banale in the extreme, but thanks to an ability that has no parallel outside of the great flemish painters, the artist has succeeded in making these miniature figures veritable portraits of the shining military lights of that period.] to be sure, he is not a colourist in the grand, resplendent sense in which the word is associated with the names of titian or paolo veronese; but it has been said with a good deal of reason, that he had a colour sense "suited to his range of vision." in view of the realistic and palpable clearness with which he saw things, he must needs adapt a soberly exact scheme of colour; for in any one of his works the dazzling and magnificent orgies indulged in by lyric poets of the palette would have been as out of place as a character from shakespeare would be in the midst of a prosaic scene in our modern literal-minded drama. the colourists use their tints to paint dreams, transposing into a resplendent and intense register the tranquil harmony of the actual colours; they produce something different from what the rest of the world sees; something more, if you choose, but at any rate something different. the impeccable truthfulness of a meissonier stubbornly adheres to that modest harmony which the others leave behind them in a soaring flight that sometimes verges on folly. one might prefer to have had him totally different; but, granting the serious forethought in his choice of subject and conception of structure, his colouring could not have been different from what it was. as to his lack of charm and grace, that is a reproach which for the most part he took little trouble to avoid, for he hardly ever painted women; but it was a reproach which he in no way deserved when he did transfer them to his canvases. we need to offer no further proof of this than his adorable studies of mme. sabatier and the portrait that he made of her. the strange attraction of that beautiful face, so full of intelligence and fascination, the delicate and matchless suppleness of posture, all blend together in a compelling yet mysterious radiance with which only a great artist could illuminate his paper or his canvas. accordingly one should guard against any judgment too absolute, too definitely peremptory regarding a talent so rich in resources; but undeniably meissonier greatly preferred to paint musketeers or grenadiers, to say nothing of horses. horses, by the way, were one of meissonier's weaknesses. he owned some beautiful ones, and used them not only as models but also for riding. he spoke on many occasions of the incomparable pleasure that he found in directing "those admirable machines," which he defined as "the stupidest of all intelligent animals." but that in no way detracted from their beauty of form. "what a pleasure it is to make their mechanism work!" he confided to one of his distinguished friends. "just think that the slightest movement of the rider, the slightest motion of hand or leg, the slightest displacement of the body have their immediate effect upon the horse's movements, and that a true horseman plays upon his mount as a musician plays upon his instrument. for the painter a horse is a whole gamut of lights and of colours. its eye, now calm and now excited, the quivers of its coat and undulations that run through it, the variety of its lines and the infinite beauty of their combinations afford material for a whole lifetime of study." and here again we meet, as in everything that he said and thought, that same love of detail, that meticulous admiration for reality and that cult of patient labour which is the secret of all that he achieved. furthermore, there was no moment in his remarkable career--which was destined to be crowned by an apotheosis when the artists of the entire world united in choosing him as president of the exposition universelle des beaux-arts in --there was no moment in his career when he sacrificed the sacred principle of exactitude and of documentation which were the foundation of his splendid honesty. of this artistic virtue there are abundant examples. we have already cited one in the opening pages; we will cite another by way of conclusion: one of his friends called upon meissonier at poissy: "the concierge told me," this friend relates, "'meissonier is in the studio opening on the court.' i found my way into that huge studio cumbered with sketches of every sort, with studies of horses modelled in wax and standing on pedestals. i waited a while, and then in trying to discover where a beam of vivid light found its way in through some crack in a door, i discovered, in the little court adjoining the châlet, meissonier out in the blazing sunlight astride of a bench that did duty for a horse; heavy boots, breeches of white cashmere, uniform of grenadier of the imperial guard, decorations on his breast, and, last of all, the 'gray redingote.' he was seated on a saddle lent to him by the son of prince jerome. in his hand he held a tablet on which was fastened a sheet of white paper, and he was carefully sketching himself, studying his reflection in a mirror. it was the middle of summer and the heat was atrocious. 'my model can't pose as napoleon,' he told me, 'but i have exactly napoleon's legs.'" is it necessary to say after this that no painter ever informed himself with such religious zeal in regard to costumes and accessories? of the heroic imperial epoch which he worshipped above all others, he sought and gathered together all sorts of relics: not content with the possession of a white horse closely resembling that of napoleon i., he used to point with pride, both in his collection and in his paintings, to a complete set of trappings that had once served the emperor; and one of the greatest rages that he ever felt in his life was produced by the respectful but firm refusal of the beaux-arts to lend him the "gray redingote." his "working library," as he called it, contained incomparable riches. it included breeches, hats, helmets, boots, shoes, pumps, buckles, walking-sticks, and jewelry. he would have been able, by rummaging there, to clothe from top to toe whole generations of bourgeoise, nobles, and labourers, from any epoch of french history, to say nothing of the various regiments and the staff officers! he quite literally bought out the stock of second-hand dealers in the temple market, which up to the middle of the nineteeth century was the sales place of old clothes once worn by our great-grandparents and their ancestors. and we know,--his fine passion for the truth was always cropping out,--that he actually suffered because he could not clothe his models with genuine old linen. at the end of some very conscientious researches that he had pursued in the imperial library, he considered that he had made a discovery that was useful to his art, when he read in the _encyclopedia_ that in the eighteenth century linen was cut on the bias, and not straight across, as it is today. we must not smile! for herein lay the secret of greater suppleness in the folds. and when, detail by detail, his documentation had been completed, what endless sketches, experiments, rough drafts had to follow! for a single painting he acknowledged that he had to make whole "cubic metres" of preliminary studies. in spite of all this, when the picture was finished and more than finished, it did not always please him. the same friend whose personal testimony we have already cited, informs us that one day, in his presence, the artist violently slashed up a painting which everybody else had pronounced perfect, while at that very moment a purchaser was waiting for it in the vestibule: "i don't know how to paint!" cried the artist in despair, "i shall never learn my craft." there we have an impulse and a sacrifice which few painters would be capable of making in sincerity, and which define better than the longest dissertations could do, the soul of meissonier, his talent and his glory. available by internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/milletocad turnuoft masterpieces in colour edited by--t. leman hare millet - * * * * * "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. _others in preparation._ * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--the wood-cutter. frontispiece (in the louvre) an instance of millet in a less pessimistic mood than we generally find him. the wood-cutter, pursuing his vocation on a warm sunny day, full of life and vigour, brings before us the joyous side of peasant life. we feel that he is happy and contented, and if his lot is somewhat hard, he has none of those distracting ambitions which mar the enjoyment in life to all who fall a prey to them. the wood in the background is a good example of millet's powers in this direction.] millet by percy m. turner illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. introduction ii. millet's early life iii. the migration to paris iv. the struggle for recognition v. millet in his maturity vi. the man and his art list of illustrations plate page i. the wood-cutter frontispiece in the louvre ii. the weed-burner in the louvre iii. the church at gréville in the louvre iv. the gleaners in the louvre v. the straw-binders in the louvre vi. spring in the louvre vii. the sawyers in the south kensington museum viii. the sheep-fold in the glasgow corporation art galleries i introduction amongst the great painters of peasant life the name of jean françois millet stands out prominently. a long interval elapsed betwixt the death of adrian van ostade and the birth of millet, unbroken by a single name, with the solitary exception of chardin, of a painter who grasped the profundity of peasant life. in holland and flanders in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries we find many painters who, whilst living the humblest lives themselves, saw in their surroundings such material for treatment as has handed their names down to posterity. it is only quite recently that one of the greatest of all, pieter brueghel the elder, has come to occupy his proper position in the world of art. formerly he was looked upon as an eccentric painter, whose subjects were generally of rather a coarse nature; who, moreover, contented himself with depicting the droller side of the village life of his period, and consequently was not to be taken seriously. of late years, however, an exhaustive research into his life and works have revealed him as one of the greatest masters in his own sphere of any time. the wonderful series of pictures in vienna, and the solitary examples scattered about the great collections of europe, proclaim him not only a painter, but a philosopher as well. his peasants, grotesque as they may now appear to us, possess a fidelity and vigour of handling such as none of his contemporaries possess. to him, consequently, we must look as the fountain-head of all peasant painting. his influence was immediately felt in the low countries, and there sprang up that wonderful school of which adrian brouwer, jan steen, and adrian van ostade are such brilliant exponents. in their more recent prototype--millet--the same profound and sympathetic rendering of the everyday life of the simple peasant is to be found, tinged with the melancholy fervour of his temperament. their temperament bears the same relation to his as the seventeenth century does to the nineteenth. a more subdued temper had come over all classes of the community, a less boisterous attitude towards life, but the struggle for existence was none the less strenuous or unending. the rollicking and reckless joy of brouwer's peasants, with their hard drinking and lusty bawling, was an essential feature of dutch life of the period. but they are every whit as precious from an artistic and historical standpoint as are the placid interiors of millet. [illustration: plate ii.--the weed-burner (in the louvre) a notable example of the simplicity of motive which characterises millet's finest works. the treatment of the peasant figure in the centre of the picture is dominated by sincerity and sympathy. the half suggested landscape forming the background is symbolical of man's hard struggle with nature. the colour scheme is very subdued, and serves to accentuate the wonderful outline and natural pose of the woman.] during the two centuries which elapsed between these great masters many changes had come over the lives of european people. the spread of education, permeating down even to the lowest classes, had tended to the sobering of habits; and the french peasant, with the partial uplifting and greater contact through more equitable distribution of the land which the revolution had bestowed upon him, was a quieter man than his dutch prototype who had preceded him by a couple of centuries. in millet's rendering of the life he found around him, the same incisive truth and absorbing sincerity is to be found as in the dutchmen with whom i have compared him, and consequently millet can be considered as a direct lineal descendant of the mighty brueghel. the entire absence of the dutchmen's brutality in millet's work is to be accounted for, firstly, by the extreme gentleness of his own disposition; and, secondly, by his study of some of the greatest masters of the italian renaissance. his keenness of perception can be gauged by his enthusiastic appreciation of andrea mantegna at a time when the merits of that master were not understood as they are to-day. many of his noblest inspirations were conceived under the paduan painter's influence, and one could cite many compositions in which the train of thought of the two masters seems to run upon parallel lines. upon first regarding a picture of millet's mature years, one wonders from whence come those subtleties of line and tone. there is nothing analogous to them in the works of his contemporaries. the difference too between his early efforts and those of his later years is stupendous, but the lines which his development pursued are essentially due to the simplicity of the life he led and the high ideal he invariably kept before him. living, as he always did, a life of struggle, a never-ending battle against seemingly overwhelming odds, he was in a position to grasp the sorrows and troubles of the simple folk by whom he was surrounded. he further saw that work, although they themselves were not aware of it, alone made life liveable to them. he shared their struggles in their most intense and poignant form. in fact when one contemplates the life which millet led, both at gréville and at barbizon, with its strenuousness and earnestness, faced, moreover, with the ever-present dread of want, it is to be wondered that he had the courage to live his life as he did. it has become the fashion lately to decry certain phases of his art. a charge of sentimentality is urged against some of his most popular works. the "angelus," about which many hard things have lately been said, is a case in point. it must be remembered that modern life, particularly as lived in great cities such as london or paris, does not tend to foster those simple ideas upon religion, which the peasant, far removed from great centres of population, implicitly accepts. he is, as a rule, a man of but little education, who has heard nothing of the doubts and scepticisms with which townspeople of every grade of society are so familiar. his ideas on religion are exactly those which have come to him from his parents, and he is incapable of doubting the elementary truths he was first taught. such simple ideas have departed from even the peasantry in most parts of france. only in brittany and in la vendée could one to-day encounter the types millet has portrayed for us in the "angelus." the two figures in the foreground are symbolical of all that is most touching in french peasant life. the end of the day has arrived, and after many hours of unremitting toil, the ringing of the bell in the distant tower proclaims the finish of another day. the wonderful still atmosphere which envelops the far-stretching plain, the whole suffused with the effects of a placid and glorious sunset, lends an intensity of poetical feeling which harmoniously blends with the placid nature of the theme. all around us we have evidence of man's perpetual struggle with nature, the grim fight for subsistence, for life itself. the ploughed field has yielded many a crop, the reward of arduous labour expended in sowing and reaping. the small recompense to the labourer himself is symbolised by the extreme poverty with which the man and woman are clothed, whilst the degrading nature of the toil, as in the far famous "man with the hoe," is brought before us in the rugged types of the labourer and his wife. the only softening influence in their lives is that imparted by religion, and in choosing this moment of the angelus for depicting them, millet has brought before us in the most forcible form not only the degrading character of much of the toil which is entailed in producing the necessities of existence, but also the danger of removing by any sudden change, no matter how well intentioned, the consoling influence of religious belief. a work into which such intense earnestness and melancholy truth is infused can never be designated sentimental, except by those who have not freely grasped the immense import of these qualities in the production of great and enduring art. brilliancy of technique and extraordinary facilities, if unsupported by a determination to convey some message, will inevitably find its own level, whilst the painter who possesses this supreme quality will assuredly come into his own. it must never be forgotten that in considering the oil paintings of millet, the subtleties of atmosphere and line can never be appreciated if one is not acquainted with the country he painted. no two countries are alike in atmospheric effect, and it is necessary, therefore, in order to appreciate an artist to the full, to have studied the country he has chosen to depict. the outlines of the landscape, the very shape of the trees, the colour imparted by sunshine and clouds, differ materially in various districts, and consequently it behoves one to exercise caution before condemning this or that effect as being untrue to nature. it may safely be said that as a painter, purely and simply, millet will never occupy a very high position in the world of art. he never bursts forth into any of those pyrotechnics which distinguished many of his contemporaries and some of the painters of our own days. his manner of handling the brush is always restrained to the point of timidity. by this i do not mean to imply that he could not paint in a large and bold manner; indeed on many occasions, as for example in the "sawyers," he has attained an astonishing degree of power. but as his whole thoughts were directed to suppressing any tendencies towards virtuosity, which might divert attention from the point he wished to illustrate, he frequently appears to achieve his ends by holding himself in restraint. another dominant characteristic of millet's art is that the instant he throws off his sadly philosophic mood, he is no longer a great artist. for example, in the well-known picture of "la baigneuse," he endeavours to draw himself into depicting the brighter side of life. in a wood resplendent with the sunlit foliage of a glorious summer day, a young girl is about to enter the small river which runs placidly between the moss-covered banks. in the distance a number of ducks are disporting themselves in the water. here is a theme which would appeal irresistibly to a man of the temperament of diaz; he could impart the glories of colour as they were reflected from the mirror-like surface of the water, the shimmering of the trees and the delicious effect of the balmy breeze as it rustled through the branches. but in the hands of millet it is nothing but a sad composition; the figure is well drawn; the ducks are admirably placed in the composition, and the trees treated with studious fidelity, but there is that great indefinable something lacking which attracts us towards the master when working in a sadder mood. millet can be described as being more a philosopher than a painter. not only in his great paintings, which by the way are not very numerous, but in his drawings and etchings, we discover the mind of a man who has grappled with, and understood the great problems of life. poor as he was, and remained all his life, it is doubtful whether riches or an improvement in circumstances would have brought him any increased happiness. he loved the open country, and still more the solitary peasant whom he found working in the fields, earning a bare subsistence for himself and his little _ménage_ in the neighbouring village. his interest was divided between the man at his work and his wife and children in the _ménage_. the simplest incidents of their everyday life did not escape him, and the smallest duty which would have left unaffected a less observant nature has been made the subject of many a fine canvas. [illustration: plate iii.--the church at grÉville (in the louvre) one of the subtlest landscapes by millet in existence. it shows that on occasions he could leave the beaten track and still remain as great a master as ever. everybody who knows the atmosphere of normandy will appreciate its truth and poetry. the marvellous results he has achieved with such a simple theme is worthy of our praise. the whole effect is so natural that we are apt to forget the keen sense of composition that was needed to present the subject in such an attractive form.] millet seems particularly to have been impressed with the loneliness of the peasant's labour. take, for example, that wonderfully luminous canvas, "the sheep pen." here, in the midst of a vast plain, a large space is marked out in which to enclose the sheep for the night. the sun, sinking low in the horizon, warns the shepherd that the time has arrived for him to call together his flock and place them in safe quarters for the night. accompanied by his faithful dog, he stands at the opening of the pen allowing the sheep to enter two or three at a time. there is no other living soul in sight. alone he has kept guard over the flock during the long day, with no other company than his dog and his own thoughts. he is dead to the beauties of the landscape around him, and sees nothing more in a field than how much corn can be raised each year from it, or in the sheep he tends so carefully how much mutton it will make. he feels nothing of the glorious beauties of the sunset, of which he is so often a witness; how it softens the lines of the horizon and suffuses the distant woods and plain with its golden rays. he sees nothing of the changes momentarily occurring in the sky: how the blues get fainter and fainter, how the clouds are tinged with opalescent hues, the shadows prolonging themselves as the orb sinks deeper and deeper; or how, finally, when the sun has disappeared, the whole heavens are lighted up in one blaze of glory. yet millet would have us understand that in spite of this, the shepherd is performing a duty to humanity not to be underrated. the sheep he has so carefully and conscientiously reared will form food to-morrow for many a hungry town-dweller. further, he would have us follow the peasant as he closes the pen for the night and traces his tired steps towards his simple home in the village. the frugal and hard-earned meal, prepared for him by his wife, who like himself has had her share of duties to occupy her during the day, is partaken of surrounded by a hungry and joyous group of children. such themes suggested by the simplicity of his own life appealed to him with irresistible force, and it is in their portrayal that his greatness is manifested. perhaps no season of the year presented the same attraction for millet as the spring. the period when all the earth after its long winter sleep is about to waken into new life seems to have always been a source of inspiration to him. in "the sower" he emphasises the fact that the fruits of the harvest are not to be had without due labour being expended upon the earth. the sloping field, barren of vegetation, and crowned at the top with a small clump of trees, is being broken up by the distant plough drawn by two horses and guided by a peasant. the latter figure is one of the noblest of millet's creations. by his strained and ever-attentive attitude, by his continuous tramp over the rough and broken ground, he shows us the monotony of his toil. he crosses the field in one direction, only to return at an interval of a few feet. in the foreground we have the sower, a middle-aged man of typical peasant type, on whose left side a bag of seeds is slung. with automatic precision he withdraws a handful, and strews it into the furrows open to receive it. so long as he continues in the same track his labour will be well performed, and hence his task is just as monotonous as that of his fellow-worker higher up in the field. the silhouetting of these two figures against the light is symbolical of the labour to be expended in life before results are forthcoming. from these remarks it will be seen that in considering the works of millet, one must not judge him from the standpoint of a mere painter. his brush is only the means to an end, and by its means he is enabled to bring the fruits of his philosophic observation before us in permanent form. it has been charged against the "angelus" that it was not a remarkably fine piece of painting, that many a young artist of the present generation is infinitely better equipped, technically speaking, than the master who wrought this celebrated canvas. this may in a measure be true, but it must never be forgotten that millet brought into play exactly the means which could illustrate his meaning in the clearest terms. he had not intended, in painting such a picture, to produce a work which would astonish his fellow artists with its brilliancy of handling or magnificence of colour. he wanted to make the beholder forget the painter and absorb the lesson. this quality runs right through the art of millet, and it is from this standpoint that we are obliged to weigh his merits. ii millet's early life jean françois millet was born on october , , that is at the period when french art, at any rate as far as landscape painting is concerned, had reached its lowest ebb. throughout the eighteenth century the landscape painter had been hard put to make a living. the taste of connoisseurs throughout the century had been for portraits and interiors, or for those numerous pastoral subjects which were carried out with so much decorative charm by such men as watteau and boucher. such landscape painting as existed was of the type popularised by vernet; it was built upon a curious mixture of italian influence coming from panini and salvator rosa. the only evidence of revolt against such a state of affairs we find in the works of hubert robert and moreau. these two, and more especially would i direct the reader's attention to the latter, struggled hard to break down the conventionalities of the time. they endeavoured to infuse some sense of atmosphere into their pictures, and whilst frequently their trees and figures are painfully formal, they yet stand alone in the french school as the pioneers of a phase of art which was to attain its zenith in the middle of the nineteenth century. but after the revolution, and during the whole of the time that france was under the domination of napoleon, very rigid principles indeed were enforced with regard to the direction that art should take. the innovation which had its commencement in the reign of louis xvi. swept everything before it as it gained force. classical art and traditions dominated the whole french school, and no artist, however great his reputation, attempted for many years to swim against the stream. in spite of the principles of liberty and equality which were claimed for all under the new _régime_, a terribly strict eye was kept upon any innovations which might break out in the form of a naturalistic art. the directors of this new movement failed to see that the conditions which had produced the great greek and roman sculptors had passed away, and that the latter's supremacy was due to the fact that their productions were symbolical of the loftiest thoughts of their own epoch. the art which expresses the ambitions and noblest thoughts of its time will alone endure. these expressions are not applicable to any other condition than those which called them forth, and hence in attempting to purify the rococo which had existed up to the middle of the eighteenth century, by a return to classical traditions, they were only copying that which their predecessors had done, and in so doing left us without any original expression of their own time. into such a condition of affairs was millet born, and he was numbered amongst that little band of men which included rousseau, corot, dupré, diaz, and daumier, who were to lay the foundations of the modern naturalistic school. at the outset it was seemingly a hopeless struggle they undertook; a struggle against prejudice and influence which was only to be brought to a victorious culmination after years of struggle and disappointment. of this little band, millet was perhaps the best equipped for the privations which were necessary. he came of a peasant stock who inhabited gruchy, a small village situated in the commune of gréville, close to cherbourg. grouped underneath the humble roof was the grandmother, who had been left a widow fifteen years before; her son, jean louis nicolas millet, and his wife and eight children, of which our artist was the second. his grandmother appears to have been a pious old lady, whose chief delight was in her grandchildren, to whom she taught those religious principles which stood them in good stead in after life. we are told that millet's father possessed a force of character one does not often find amongst men in his rank of life. he was of a contemplative disposition, and had a keenly developed feeling for natural beauty. he possessed moreover a keen appreciation of music, which unfortunately he does not appear to have had much opportunity of cultivating. his wife was an excellent housewife and of a religious turn of mind. the house they occupied, situated quite a short distance from the sea, was placed in a tract of country which, whilst it had rugged and picturesque features, was not of a nature which would yield extraordinary results under cultivation. it was, therefore, a hard struggle for existence which millet in his first years saw going on around him. not that the family were any the less happy for having to work laboriously for their livelihood. they had been brought up amidst such surroundings; their wants were simple and easily gratified, and the tranquillity of the _ménage_ more than counterbalanced those doubtful luxuries which easier circumstances would have brought their way. throughout his life millet maintained the extreme simplicity he had seen practised in the home of his childhood, and long years afterwards he was accustomed to look back with pleasureable memories upon his early years. [illustration: plate iv.--the gleaners (in the louvre) one of the most popular pictures of the master, and by many considered his masterpiece. we know that this work involved an unusually large amount of thought and work on the part of the artist. separate studies exist of all the figures in many different poses. not the least wonderful part is the background, with its crowd of harvesters, enveloped in the golden sunlight of a warm summer afternoon. "the gleaners" is one of the best preserved of the large canvases of millet.] gruchy, situated in one of the wildest parts of normandy, feels the full effect of every storm which blows up from the atlantic. there is nothing to shelter the exposed hamlets studded along the coast from the fury of the western gale, and the rocks are but too often strewn with the wrecks of vessels which have come to grief in that terrible sea. millet in his youth must have witnessed many of these catastrophes. quite a number of drawings by him are extant representing succour being extended to some vessel in difficulties, or the hauling up of some wreckage on to the rocks. the studious boy must have been impressed as he saw the sternness of the combat in his native country between men and nature; the wind-swept fields, and hills bare to the point of savageness. the very trees themselves dwarfed and gnarled; in their struggle with the elements they have been made tough and hardy as the inhabitants of the country themselves, and, stunted as they are, yet show well that they can resist the force of the fiercest storm. the brooding and contemplative character of the father having descended to the son, we can quite imagine the effect such surroundings would have upon him. as he looked back in after years upon his roamings in his native country, he appreciated the awe-inspiring character of the scenery in which he had been born. he would doubtless recall many a walk amidst the fields with the wind blowing in his face as it rushed in from the atlantic, the rain beating hard upon the freshly ploughed fields, and the distant figure of the ploughman struggling hard with his team against the stiff sou'wester. the great mass of vapour overhead whirled before the violence of the storm, casting grey and pearly light over the whole scene, whilst far away on the top of the hill a clump of trees, bent with their resistance to the wind, are silhouetted against the sky. many a drawing of this kind we encounter in the later work of millet, which shows how his thoughts harked back in certain moments to the scenes he had left behind him for ever. we know that on one or two occasions he returned to gruchy. once or twice he had urgent business which took him back, but sometimes he went with no other purpose than to renew acquaintance with the scenes of yore. little jean françois was his grandmother's favourite. it was she who taught him the names of things which surrounded him, and perhaps directed his thoughts in the channels to which they were finally to be devoted. her brother charles, who formed one of the family, used to take him for walks, telling him stories on the way. millet was devotedly attached to this old man, and when at the age of seven years he lost him, the gap in his life thus left made an impression upon his memory never to be effaced. five years afterwards he was placed in the hands of the vicar for the purpose of preparing him for his first communion. the good man seems to have been taken with the child; he found him so attentive to all natural phenomenon which was passing around him and intelligent in an unusual degree. he quickly learnt a considerable amount of latin, which introduced him to the great classics. unfortunately for millet, the vicar accepted an offer of transference to a better parish in the vicinity. the boy had made such progress with his master that it was decided that he should go with him to his new abode. he was, however, so missed in his own home, that when he came back for his first holidays it was decided that he should not return. he now gave serious attention to the agricultural pursuits of his father. he threw himself heartily into the work of the farm, and assisted in the work of sowing and harvesting, of pruning and thrashing according to the season. his spare time was occupied in reading with avidity various masterpieces of literature. the authors he found at hand were such as fénélon and bossuet, but he developed a decided preference, which lasted till the end of his life, for virgil and the bible. it was at this time that his taste for art began to be developed. he drew the objects he found around him, and soon acquired sufficient confidence in his skill to execute a large drawing representing two shepherds keeping guard over their sheep. these first efforts date from about his seventeenth year, and foretell the advent of the style in which he was later to become pre-eminent. [illustration: plate v.--the straw-binders (in the louvre) the wonderful capacity of millet for portraying action is demonstrated to the full in this canvas. hard, unremitting toil is the theme millet has wished to bring before us. the heat is intense, but the work goes on with unrelaxing vigour. the masculine energy of the two bending figures are in striking contrast with the figure of the young girl on the left of the picture. the artist shows that he was quite capable of infusing charm into his peasant studies as well as bringing the brutalising aspect of their labour before the spectator.] iii the migration to paris how frequently has it happened that the first years in the life of a genius have been employed in labour quite different from that to which they should have been directed. such a state of affairs the more often occurs when the sense of duty has been strong enough to overcome temporarily the inclination to pursue the natural bent. in the case of millet, however, the early years which he devoted to the farm and its pursuits were by no means wasted. it is on record that he became very proficient in the various duties in which he was engaged, but at the same time we can be quite sure that his extraordinary faculties of observation were constantly being brought into play, and the fruits of his observations are to be seen in the pictures of his mature period. a considerable portion of his spare time was taken up with drawing, not only the persons and objects he found around him, but also subjects suggested to him by the books he was in the habit of reading. his family, so far from throwing any obstacles in his way, encouraged him. in fact it was his father who took him first to cherbourg in order to show a painter of that town, named mouchel, the early products of his son's genius. the decision at which millet _père_ had arrived was prompted by a drawing in charcoal of an old peasant walking along the road, which had struck him forcibly as being a work of extraordinary merit. it says much for mouchel's breadth of mind that he was equally impressed with the drawings. a man who had been brought up in the school of david, and who had lived in one of the most reactionary periods of french art, was hardly to be expected to take kindly to a style so diametrically opposed to all the traditions into which he himself had been inculcated; certainly the young millet, who had now arrived at the age of eighteen, had not developed the extraordinary freedom which his works of ten years later demonstrate. but there was sufficient originality even in his early drawings to call forth condemnation from a man who had been so saturated with the teaching of david. he prevailed upon millet to leave his son with him, and set him to work to copy many well-known works of art which he brought before his pupil by means of engravings. two months were spent in this way when news reached millet that his father had been seized with sudden illness, and he was obliged in the circumstances to return to gréville. he arrived to find the old man unconscious, and very shortly afterwards he died. this misfortune awoke in millet a sense of duty which compelled him to desert his studies in cherbourg and superintend the management of the farm. for some time he devoted himself entirely to his new duties, but the struggle betwixt duty and genius continued; he gave himself to his work with all the energy at his disposal, but his thoughts were ever wandering to his art. added to his own inclinations, his grandmother, who perceived his extraordinary gifts, strongly persuaded him to devote his attention entirely to art, and consequently after some little time he decided to return to cherbourg. here he entered the studio of m. langlois, an artist whose reputation in the town was considerable. again in this worthy man he came in contact with a painter who had been brought up entirely under classical influence. langlois, who had in his early days been a pupil of gros, had absorbed the classical tradition to such an extent as to be incapable of appreciating any other style. he appears to have endeavoured to mould millet in his own method rather than develop the latent genius which the latter possessed. the incompatibility of these two men speedily caused the younger to strike out in his own way. he saw more good in frequenting the museums and making copies of such works as appealed to him than in listening to the advice of his teacher. all this occurred, however, without any breach of friendship occurring. on the contrary, langlois, after perceiving the futility of inducing his pupil to follow in his footsteps, did all he could to advance his interests. by means of his influence some of millet's drawings were brought before the municipal council, and langlois suggested that millet should be sent to paris in order to further his development, and that the council should set aside a modest pension to meet his requirements in that city. the discussion appears to have been very prolonged, and upon the question being put to a vote it was only carried by means of the casting vote of the mayor. four hundred francs was at first allotted to him in this way, which was further increased shortly afterwards to six hundred. such encouragement, meagre though it was, was sufficient to give him a foothold in the metropolis. he left cherbourg in january , on a cold and raw day, the snow falling heavily throughout the entire journey, and arrived in paris in a very disheartened condition. the miserable weather, coupled with the long journey in which he had had time to think of the small sum which lay between him and starvation, going to a city which he had never seen before, had all served to work upon his nerves, and he entered the great city sick at heart and very despondent. one of the first visits he made after he was somewhat settled down in paris was to the louvre. here he was brought into contact for the first time with many masters, who were to mould his yet plastic temperament into the form which enabled him to give to the world, in later years, so many masterpieces. as i have said before, it was mantegna who first captivated him, and the influence of the mighty paduan was never finally to be shaken off. michel angelo awed him with his sublimity; his classical severity tempered with intense humanism, his masculine strength, were bound to have their effect upon so serious a character as millet. strange as it may seem to those who are but superficially acquainted with his art, and are only too apt to judge him by the influence he has had upon modern french painting, he was fascinated with the antique. the traditions of phidias and praxiteles, in the form in which they had been transmitted through the greatest minds of the renaissance, were ever the factors which guided him throughout his career. it was this same spirit which impelled his fervid admiration for nicolas poussin, a master who to-day is sadly underrated and but little understood. it was the mysteries of line, the wonders of pose and composition rather than the magic of colour which appealed to him. he had a profound admiration for the glowing canvases of titian and rubens, but he could never overlook entirely their defects of drawing or, in the case of rubens, the tendency to vulgarity. from his remarks in after years it would appear that he was baffled with the mysticisms of velazquez and rembrandt; pure painting itself could never hold him. he needed to grasp the message which lay behind it before he felt fully taken into the confidence of the painter; and as the minds of the dutchman and the spaniard ran in quite different channels to his own, they spoke with a language he never understood. that he had a perceptive and critically independent mind may be gauged from his enthusiasm for delacroix, whose work he encountered for the first time at the luxembourg. during this period of study he was carefully considering under what master he should place himself. his choice unhappily fell upon delaroche. to any one acquainted with the work of the latter master, a more unsuitable selection could not have been made. delaroche and the painters who surrounded him can be appropriately described as constituting the back-wash of the empire style, which had reached its climax with david. his subjects were always treated with academic reserve. no pyrotechnics were permitted; on the contrary, an everlasting and mistaken striving for finish was encouraged: originality was sternly suppressed. to paint human life as it really was, was too vulgar for any of the painters of this time. they held the public taste enslaved for years. an innovator such as millet was destined to become found his position almost untenable. the band of critics and painters formed a monopoly which it seemed almost impossible to break down, and it was only after years of bitter and determined struggle that the school of nature finally routed its opponent. delaroche doubtlessly found the peasant painter a little rude both in his person and in his ideas about art. he paid but little attention to the young man who had placed himself in his hands, and devoted all his time to students who were more amenable to his influence. a temperament so sensitive as millet's was bound to notice this neglect, and consequently after a time he became so discouraged that he ceased to frequent delaroche's studio. another very good reason for this action was the lack of resources to continue his payments. even during the time he had been with delaroche he lost no opportunity of turning a few honest francs by painting the portraits of any who could be got to sit to him. delaroche, however, had a more kindly heart than millet imagined. he seems to have found out the real distress of the young artist, and to have assisted him pecuniarily in many ways, and there is no doubt that he appreciated the talent of the young norman much more than he cared to own. many of his remarks on record would serve to show that delaroche already felt that his pupil was destined to be one of the leaders of the movement which was finally to overthrow his own style, and doubtlessly felt a great admiration for a man who had the courage and strength to swim against rather than with the current. [illustration: plate vi.--spring (in the louvre) it is probable that millet wished this picture to be regarded rather as a symbolical representation of spring, than as an actual study from nature. the storm that has just passed over has been severe, but of short duration. the sun, breaking through the dense banks of clouds, reveals the splendours of the water-sodden landscape; the apple-trees full of bloom, the verdantly green grass, the young foliage on the distant trees, all reveal the benefit they have received from the downpour.] iv the struggle for recognition freed from all encumbrances save poverty, millet was now to work out his own destiny according to the dictates of his genius. he joined a friend named marolle, and the two together occupying a very small apartment endeavoured to eke out an existence. it was only too soon apparent that young as he was, and the taste of the public being not yet ready for development upon the lines his genius directed him, that his livelihood could not be secured by endeavouring to sell such subjects as appealed to him. in these straits he turned to portrait-painting, just as many great painters before and since him have done. that the struggle was very keen can well be imagined by the fact that he was unable to obtain more than five to ten francs apiece; and, as commissions were very scarce, he was hard put to gain the means of subsistence. this state of affairs lasted until , in which year he endeavoured to obtain admission to the salon with two portraits, one of which was that of his friend. this, however, was rejected, and the other picture, although accepted, was unnoticed by either the critics or the public. having occasion the next year to pay a visit to cherbourg, he felt obliged to report himself to the municipal council who had had the generosity to send him in the first place to paris. its worthy members expressed themselves as but little satisfied with the result of their investment; they claimed that they had had as yet but little to show for their money, and they suggested, partly as a means of demonstrating that they had had some little return, and also, in order to see of what stuff their _protégé_ was made, that he should paint a portrait of the recently deceased mayor. as millet had not been personally acquainted with that worthy citizen, and as the only guide which could be supplied him was a portrait made in miniature when he was a young man of some twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, the task was by no means easy. however, the artist set to work with a will, and finally accomplished the picture to his own satisfaction. upon it being shown to the council, one and all declared, as any one with the slightest knowledge of such matters could have told them before it was commenced, that it bore not the least resemblance to the defunct magistrate. they therefore demurred at the three hundred francs they had agreed to pay him for the portrait, and offered him one-third of that amount instead. millet was deeply offended by the insult, and informed the council that he made them a present of the picture. it was during this short visit to his native country that he met his first wife, a mlle. ono, whose portrait he had painted. from the first she was very delicate, and he lost her after much suffering, three years later. his second wife was mlle. catherine lemaire, who was destined to be the companion of his struggles until the end of his life. meanwhile millet was occupied with subjects which he thought would appeal to the general public. a number of classical pictures date from this epoch. it was an endeavour on his part to fall in as far as possible with the current taste, and so supply means of subsistence for his family. at the same time he did not neglect his favourite subjects, and many are the wonderful studies of peasant life which date from these years. his reputation had so far advanced that he was offered the position of teacher of drawing in the college at cherbourg. it must have been only after prolonged deliberation that he refused the proffered post. here a certain annual stipend was assured him, and if it was not large in itself it would at any rate suffice to keep the wolf from the door. he preferred, however, to return to paris and work out his own destiny as best he might. millet, who lived at this time in the rue rochechouart, began to surround himself with that little group of friends who remained faithful to him until the end of his career. amongst the earliest were charles jacque and diaz: the latter had several clients amongst the small dealers, whom he induced to visit millet's studio and make now and again a small purchase. millet now became a fairly regular contributor to the salon, but generally sent some classical or religious picture as well as one of his peasant subjects. for example, in he sent the marvellous study of "the winnower," which we all know so well, accompanied by a canvas, "the captivity of the jews at babylon." the latter, however, was so badly received that he utilised the canvas upon its return for a large picture of a "shepherdess tending her sheep." in spite of the headway that he was making, the struggle for existence seemed keener than ever, and but for the kindness of friends he and his family would frequently have actually wanted for food. a timely advance of one hundred francs obtained for him from the minister of fine arts, together with a commission from the state, for which he was paid the sum of eighteen hundred francs, were for some time the only relief he obtained from his embarrassments. that he was not particular as to how he earned his daily bread is apparent from the fact that he did not despise an order for a shop sign for a midwife, for which he was paid the miserable amount of thirty francs. the year was not an encouraging one for a painter who was standing on the threshold of his career. the whole of europe was seething with revolution. a repetition of the fearful year of was everywhere expected. the struggle betwixt reaction and property on the one hand, and lawlessness and revolution on the other, was being waged with grim determination. the issue was for long in the balance. one never knew from one day to another what was going to happen. in such a deplorable state of affairs men's minds were running on politics and wars rather than upon art. millet amongst the rest was called upon to shoulder the musket, and it can be easily imagined with what reluctance he did so. paris, the great centre of art, had yet not afforded him much encouragement. life was dear in the big city, and surrounded on all sides by bricks and mortar he was not free to go out into the fields and study the objects which were uppermost in his mind. he resolved to escape from it, and once having put the plan into execution he never returned. v millet in his maturity the barbizon of was a very different place from the barbizon of to-day. the world fame of the men who passed a quiet and strenuous existence in the little village has transformed it into a tourist resort, with restaurants and cafés, the stopping-places for waggonettes which in summer bring their daily load of sightseers, eager to see the homes of the painters whose names are now household words. it would have been well-nigh impossible for the little band to have chosen a more suitable spot for their labours. rousseau and millet, much as they were drawn towards each other by the tie of a sympathetic disposition and by their common interest in art, yet were widely dissimilar from one another in their outlook upon art and their methods of worship at the common shrine. rousseau--one can see it from every picture he painted--loved with all the yearning of a passionate and restless temperament the inanimate in nature. observe with what fidelity he draws his trees, with what caressing tenderness his clouds and skies are treated; solitude appealed to him above all things, and if here and there he was obliged to insert a few figures to complete his composition, one instinctively feels that he would rather have substituted a group of cattle or a flock of sheep. in the glades of the forest, far from the busy haunts of men, with the glorious sunlight penetrating from above, the breeze moaning through the branches, he was happy. a wild and turbulent temperament such as his not infrequently discovers exquisite enjoyment amidst such perfect tranquillity. [illustration: plate vii.--the sawyers (in the south kensington museum) very few of millet's works can rival this superb picture in vigour of handling and magic of line. he has succeeded in infusing an enormous amount of energy into the two figures, without sacrificing refinement. the absolute stillness of the wood beyond is unbroken, save by the monotonous hacking of the wood-cutter, who, axe in hand, is making a determined onslaught upon a venerable tree. as an example of millet's powers as a painter it would be hard to beat, and in it he has preserved those rare qualities of freedom and rhythm of line we find in his best drawings.] barbizon, situated on the fringe of the great forest of fontainebleau, therefore, permitted rousseau to come into daily contact with the scenes which so appealed to him. millet, on the other hand, was absorbed in the peasant. the man who tilled the soil and raised the produce humanity requires for its subsistence by the sweat of his brow; the manifold duties of the labourer, his life and sorrows, appealed to him with irresistible force. an unpeopled track of wild and uncultivated land would not call forth any emotion in him, no matter how sublime the scenery might be. the life of the village, spreading itself into the vast and fertile plain behind, held him absorbed; a peasant himself and living amongst the people he so loved, he was in a position to bring before an unthinking world the poignant monotony of their useful lives. upon their first arrival at barbizon, the two artists put up at a small inn, working all day in a tiny place they had rented from some peasants and fitted up as a studio. the inconveniences of this arrangement were soon apparent, and shortly afterwards millet took a small house which was destined to be his abode for the remainder of his life; an old barn in the immediate vicinity meanwhile provided him with an excellent studio. from this period onward we must date the greatest productions of the master, the works which have induced more thought than those of any other peasant painter. a peasant among peasants, his life was of the most rigid simplicity. behind his little abode a large garden stretched away almost to the fringe of the forest itself, and here he was accustomed to work every morning, growing a portion of the food necessary to the sustenance of his family. the afternoon he devoted to painting, whilst the evening was given over to intercourse with his little circle of friends. the simplicity and tranquillity of his life aroused the whole of his powers to action, and surrounded with everything he valued in life he was supremely happy. the country around barbizon appealed to him irresistibly. the timber-studded plains, the gently undulating, highly cultivated fields, presented a strange contrast to the wild and rugged country amidst which he had spent his childhood, and no doubt conduced to the development of a more refined and contemplative style than he would otherwise have acquired. upon his few visits to his native country he appears to have been more impressed than ever with its austerity, and the drawings which these journeys called forth bore ample evidence of this feeling in him. lack of the necessary funds to carry on even his simple _ménage_ was ever the bane of millet's life. on many occasions sensier, his intimate friend and afterwards his biographer, informs us he dissuaded him from suicide. the sums that he owed, small though they were, rendered him in constant fear of the brokers. with creditors so importunate in their demands for satisfaction, and with the constant lack of recognition, which was his lot, it is astonishing that millet achieved so much. he was relieved more than once by the kind-hearted and ever faithful rousseau, who when his friend was sorest pressed found some delicately hidden means to relieve him. it was he who acquired for francs the wonderful "peasant grafting a tree," when the picture failed to find a purchaser; and in order that millet should not be aware of his generosity, he made the offer in the name of an imaginary american. this sort of goodness he repeated more than once, and it redounds still more to his credit when we remember that rousseau himself was not infrequently in pecuniary difficulties. a constant succession of important works made their appearance during the first ten years millet spent at barbizon. the first was the well-known "sower," which has ever been one of the most popular of his pictures. then came the far finer "peasants going to work," which for many years was in an english collection. the "gleaners," perhaps the noblest canvas the master ever painted, dates from , in which year it was seen at the salon; the celebrated "angelus" followed it two years later. the prices which millet obtained for this series of remarkable works was fantastically small. the "gleaners" brought him a paltry francs, whilst he accounted himself lucky to encounter an amateur who gave him the same sum for the small "woman feeding fowls." the "angelus," which was never exhibited, was sold in the year it was painted to a monsieur feydeau, an architect, for francs. it then passed through several hands before the late monsieur secrétan competed up to , francs before he became possessed of the prize at the john wilson sale. the purchase, however, proved a sound investment, for upon the dispersal of his collection it was knocked down for , francs to a monsieur proust, acting on behalf of the french government. the latter, however, when they gave the commission to buy the picture, had no idea that such a high value would be placed upon it, and consequently refused to ratify the sale; a syndicate now came upon the scene, who took it to america. the price, however, proved greater than even the millionaires of the states were prepared to give, and the canvas again returned to france, where it found a resting-place in the collection of monsieur chauchard, who paid the enormous sum of , francs for its possession. in millet sent two works to the salon, a "woman grazing her cow," and "death and the woodman." the latter, one of the most philosophical of millet's pictures, which to-day is the principal attraction of the jacobsen museum at copenhagen, was rejected. disappointments of this kind came with such systematic regularity to the painter that he must have become proof against them. he always had bitter enemies amongst the critics, who never failed to pour abuse upon his method and his subjects. even a number of his fellow artists joined in the chorus of disapproval. but the vehemence with which he was attacked was striking evidence of the impression he was making and the inward sense of his own powers; and the fact that he was working out his destiny according to the dictates of his own genius supported him against this outpouring of prejudice and malice. the social side of life appealed to him more strongly as the years rolled on, and the murmurings which had been heard in as to the socialistic tendencies of "death and the woodman" swelled to a roar when the stupendous "man with the hoe" was exhibited fourteen years later. the latter, one of the most virile studies of depraved humanity which the world has ever seen, has always been a favourite with social reformers, and has inspired one remarkable poem. even his most implacable critics were disarmed before this canvas; its power was magnetic; it was an inspiration, soul moving and trenchant. his financial difficulties never completely dispersed. at one time, in order to insure himself a little tranquillity, he made a contract with two speculators, whereby they were to become possessors of all the work he produced for three years, in consideration of their assuring him a thousand francs a month. a great number of millet's finest productions passed thus through their hands, including the "return from the fields" and the "man with the hoe." the partners were not long in quarrelling, and after a lawsuit had been fought, millet was left in the hands of a man who frequently would not or could not pay him in ready money, and whose bills he was frequently forced to discount at considerable loss. one little gleam of sunshine rendered his later days happy. this was a commission from a colmar banker, monsieur thomas by name, who required four allegorical compositions representing the seasons, to decorate his rooms. the artist was overjoyed by this piece of good fortune, and immediately commenced a most conscientious study of such mural decoration as was within reach, in order that he might do full justice to his patron. he paid frequent visits to fontainebleau and the louvre, and even desired a friend to inquire if he could not obtain reproductions of the frescoes at herculaneum and pompeii. in spite of all this elaborate preparation, the subjects were not such as appealed to his genius, and in spite of them being well and soundly painted, we are told that they presented no features which called for special comment. he found, however, a much more genial occupation in accomplishing a series of drawings ordered by a monsieur gavet, who paid the artist , , and francs each, according to their size. he made altogether ninety-five drawings in this way, and it is said that this gentleman had in his possession the finest work in black and white and water-colour the artist ever executed. towards the latter end of his life the death of dear relatives and friends cast a sorrowful gloom over him. amongst the latter rousseau, who expired in his presence on the nd of december , was perhaps the loss which seemed to him hardest to bear. a staunch and trusty friend, who was to be relied upon when his prospects seemed the most hopeless, he had been one of the very few who had appreciated millet's talents at their full worth, and who, moreover, scanty as his own means were, was ever ready to stretch out his hand to assist his struggling friend. [illustration: plate viii.-the sheep-fold (in the glasgow corporation art galleries) the poetry of moonlight has never been better realised than by millet. the lonely watch of the shepherd, the huddling together of the sheep, the dreary mystical plain stretching away to the horizon, losing itself finally in the vaporous atmosphere of the chilly night, are all rendered with astonishing fidelity. it is in such works as these that the master reveals his sympathy with the solitude of many phases of peasant life.] shortly afterwards millet paid a visit to his patron, herr hartmann, at münster, and from here he went for a short time into switzerland. upon his return he devoted himself with great earnestness to work, and achieved a certain success at the salons with his exhibits. the outbreak of the war with germany caused him to migrate with his family to cherbourg, where he thought he might continue to work, removed as far as possible from the scenes of carnage and struggle which were going on farther east. transported once more amongst the scenes of his childhood, he felt an increased impetus to production, and when he returned to barbizon late in , he brought with him a number of canvases of the highest quality; conspicuous amongst them was the wonderful "gréville church," now in the louvre. the anxieties of his troublous life were, however, beginning to show their effect upon his constitution; a persistent cough developed, and although an amelioration would occasionally occur, it was always succeeded by a worse condition than before. his health suffered a general decline, and he finally breathed his last on the th of january . he was buried in the little cemetery of chailly, beside his friend rousseau, amidst the scenery they both loved so well. vi the man and his art millet is an instance of an artist working out his own destiny, impelled by irresistible genius, in the teeth of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. he started life with enormous disadvantages; without friends in influential circles to spread his fame or plead his cause; without money to enable him to outlive and triumph over the ignorant fanaticism of critics and artists, so soaked in the conventionalised art of their time that they had not perception enough to appreciate the full meaning of that naturalistic movement, which was finally to sweep away the quasi-classic art they boasted of with such bombastic effusion. the path was hard and thorny, and his triumph was not finally consummated until after his death. he himself found his only satisfaction in the fact that he had lived his life according to the dictates of his genius, and had achieved the maximum of which he was capable. millet and our own cotman were somewhat kindred spirits; there is much more affinity between the work of the two men than is apparent to any one who has not closely studied them. the marvellous "breaking the clod," now happily permanently housed at the british museum, betrays the same tremendous conception and broad outlook which characterises many a drawing of millet's. both highly strung to a painful extent, they were each conscious of their inability to curb the power which prescribed a certain course for them, and in spite of pecuniary difficulties and unpopularity, an inevitable result of their intense originality, they pursued a steady course to the end of their lives. the socialistic doctrines which have been read into the work of millet are rather the outcome of the world's uneasy conscience being brought face to face with a crushing indictment of existing conditions, than of any design on the artist's part to further the cause of a political propaganda by means of his art. this somewhat extravagant reading into his art has certainly been carried to excess. particularly has such been the case in america, where a large number of his finest works are at present to be found, curiously enough in the hands of enormously wealthy people, who are frequently perhaps the least able to understand the real meaning of his message. coming from a peasant stock, his sympathies were always with the peasant; it was the only class he understood or cared for. he lived as one of them, and shared to a large extent in their labour. he has been designated, not inappropriately, the philosopher in sabots. rightly or wrongly he has come to be looked upon as one of the high priests of communistic doctrines. few pictures have been so anathematised as the "man with the hoe," and perhaps none have done more to inculcate sympathy with the degradation of the lower orders of the human race. the revolting brutality and vacancy of that face haunts the imagination. is it possible that fellow-creatures so utterly debased by toil and neglect exist? millet dispels any doubt upon the question by bequeathing to humanity this trenchant portrait. by no means limited to barbizon or france, these poor creatures exist in every country, and curiously enough are considered an essential element in each country's development. this poignantly human note is observable in almost every work millet wrought; his passionate sympathy with his fellow-man is the keynote of his art. the wood-cutter in his arduous toil, the shepherd in his solitariness, the labourer turning the soil with unvarying and laborious monotony, the mother caring for her children--all carry the same message for him of that strange and incomprehensible mingling of joy and sadness we call life. like many great minds before and since his time, our artist found the greatest joy in life in a placid and never changing melancholy. but the peasants he chose knew nothing of the sadness he saw in them. completely inured to their toil, and subdued by it, with no refining or uplifting influence to stimulate them, they knew nothing, aspired to nothing beyond what they were; it was left to millet to supply the "might have been." he saw the inky blackness of the mind of the "man with the hoe," the pathetic inequality between the mounted farmer directing the safe storage of his crop, and the stooping figures of the "gleaners" eager to scrape up the miserable crumbs which had fallen from the rich man's table. he traced the lives of these simple folk until we arrive at the grim and gaunt figure of death, who, as he grasps the woodman by the shoulder, reminds him that his course is finished and that he, in common with all his fellow-men, must enter the great unknown land from which there is no return. it is a sad and melancholy art, vibrating with purity and truth, the outpouring of a great soul yearning to express itself to the utmost of its power. the mind and character of the man can be read in every line and in every touch of the brush. his drawings and etchings are even more searching in their virility than his pictures. there is a spontaneousness about them we search for in vain in his work in oil and pastel. in black and white his intensely emotional mind found a swift method of expression; in the laboriousness of oil painting he was fettered with the complications of the medium. it can be fairly said that only in one or two paintings--a notable example can be cited in the wondrous "sawyers" at south kensington--does he rise to the height of a great painter. millet was a poet, a philosopher, a great thinker, and the means he chose for expressing himself were those which were best fitted to his purpose. his predilections in art were concentrated upon the greatest, and consequently the men who appealed to him were the thinkers of the ages. mantegna and correggio, michel angelo and the mighty greeks, these were the masters who left their impress upon his mind and art. the influence of so sincere and profound an artist has necessarily been profound. he has moulded men who have achieved world-wide fame; segantini, for example, would never have risen to the heights he did had the example of millet not been ever before him. there have been many who, without possessing his genius, have endeavoured to follow in his footsteps, but successfully as his imitators have sometimes caught his style, their productions can never live alongside his, because they lack the real ring of sincerity. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare chardin in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. j. f. millet. percy m. turner. chardin. paul g. konody. _in preparation_ memlinc. w. h. james weale. albert dÜrer. herbert furst. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. boucher. c. haldane macfall. watteau. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. john s. sargent, r.a. t. martin wood. and others. [illustration: plate i.--still-life. (frontispiece) (in the louvre) this "still-life," which is among the fine array of chardin's pictures at the louvre, affords a striking illustration of the master's supreme skill in rendering the surface qualities, textures, plastic properties, and mutual colour relations of the most varied objects and substances, such as porcelain, metals, linen, foodstuffs, wood, and so forth. the composition is somewhat overcrowded, and lacks the sense of order in the apparent disorder, that is so typical of chardin's still-life arrangements.] chardin by paul g. konody illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. ii. iii. list of illustrations plate i. still-life frontispiece in the louvre page ii. la fontaine, or the woman drawing water in the national gallery, london iii. l'enfant au toton, or the child with the top in the louvre iv. le bénédicité, or grace before meat in the hermitage collection at st. petersburg v. la gouvernante, or mother and son in the collection of prince liechtenstein in vienna vi. la mère laborieuse in the stockholm museum vii. le panneau de pêches, or the basket of peaches in the louvre viii. la pourvoyeuse in the louvre [illustration] i jean-baptiste siméon chardin occupies a curious position among the artists of his time and country. his art which, neglected and despised for many decades after his death, is now admitted by those best competent to judge to be supreme as regards technical excellence, and, within the narrow limits of its subject matter, to possess merits of far greater significance than are to be found in the work of any frenchman, save watteau, from the founding of the school of fontainebleau to modern days, is apt to be regarded as an isolated phenomenon, un-french, out of touch, and out of sympathy with the expression of the artistic genius of eighteenth-century france. a grave misconception of the true inwardness of things! rather should it be said that chardin was the one typically french painter among a vast crowd of more or less close followers of a tradition imported from italy; the one painter of the actual life of his people among the artificial caterers for an artificial and often depraved and lascivious taste; a man of the people, of the vast multitude formed by a homely, simple bourgeoisie; painting for the people the subjects that appealed to the people. in order to understand the position of chardin in the art of his country it is necessary to bear in mind that the autochthonous painting of france, the real expression of french genius, was from its early beginnings closely connected with the art of the north, and not with that of italy. the style of the early french miniaturists of the burgundian school, of fouquet and of clouet, is the style of the north; their art is interwoven with the art of flanders. when in the time of françois i. the school of fontainebleau, headed by primaticcio and rosso, promulgated the gospel that artistic salvation could only be found in the emulation of raphael and the masters of the late italian renaissance, and of the bolognese eclectics; when finally degenerated painters like albani were held up as example, official art became altogether italianised and stereotyped; and the climax was reached with the foundation of the school of rome by louis xiv. but, though officially neglected and looked upon with disfavour, the national element was not to be altogether crushed by the foreign importation. poussin remained french in spite of italian training, and held aloof from the coterie of court painters. jacques callot carried on the national tradition, though as a satirist and etcher of scenes from contemporary life, rather than as a painter. and the netherlands continued directly or indirectly to stir up the sluggish stream of national french art--directly through watteau, who, born a netherlander, became the most typically french of all french painters; indirectly, half a century earlier, through the brothers le nain, who drew their subjects and inspiration from the north and their sombre colour from spain; and afterwards through chardin, whose style was so closely akin to that of the flemings that, when he first submitted some pieces of still-life to the members of the academy, largillière himself took them to be the work of some excellent unknown flemish painter. what are the qualities that raise chardin's art so high above the showy productions of the french painters of his generation, placing him on a pedestal by himself, and gaining for him the respect, the admiration, the love of all artists and discerning art lovers? why should this painter of still-life and of small unpretentious domestic genre pieces be extolled without reservation and ranked among the world's greatest masters? [illustration: plate ii.--la fontaine (the woman drawing water) (in the national gallery, london) "la fontaine," or the "woman drawing water," is one of the two examples of chardin's art in the national gallery. it is the subject of which probably most versions are in existence, and figured among the eight pictures sent by the master to the salon of , the first exhibition held since , and the first in which chardin appeared as a painter of genre pictures. the original version, which bears the date , is at the stockholm museum, and other replicas belong to sir frederick cook in richmond, m. marcille in paris, baron schwiter, and to the louvre. the picture was engraved by cochin.] the question finds its simplest solution in the fact that all great and lasting art must be based on the study of nature and of contemporary life; that erudition and the imitation of the virtues of painters that belong to a dead period never result in permanent appeal, especially if they find expression in the repetition of mythological and allegorical formulas which belong to the past, and have long ceased to be a living language. chardin's art is living and sincere, with never a trace of affectation. in his paintings the most unpromising material, the most prosaic objects on a humble kitchen table, the uneventful daily routine of lower middle-class life, are rendered interesting by the warming flame of human sympathy which moved the master to spend his supreme skill upon them; by the human interest with which he knew how to invest even inanimate objects. no painter knew like chardin how to express in terms of paint the substance and surface and texture of the most varied objects; few have ever equalled him in the faultless precision of his colour values; fewer still have carried the study of reflections to so fine a point, and observed with such accuracy the most subtle nuances of the changes wrought in the colour appearance of one object by the proximity of another--but these are qualities that only an artist can fully appreciate, and that can only be vaguely felt by the layman. they belong to the sphere of technique. the strong appeal of chardin's still-life is due to the manner in which he invests inanimate objects with living interest, with a sense of intimacy that enlists our sympathy for the humble folk with whose existence these objects are connected, and who, by mere accident as it were, just happen to be without the frame of the picture. perhaps they have just left the room, but the atmosphere is still filled with their presence. if ever there was a painter to whom the old saying _celare artem est summa ars_ is applicable, surely it was chardin! a slow, meticulously careful worker, who bestowed no end of time and trouble upon every canvas, and whom nothing but perfection would satisfy, he never attempted to gain applause by a display of cleverness or by technical fireworks. the perfection of the result conceals the labour expended upon it and the art by means of which it is achieved. and so it is with the composition. his still-life arrangements, where everything is deliberate selection, have an appearance of accidental grouping as though the artist, fascinated by the colour of some viands and utensils on a kitchen table, had yielded to an irresistible impulse, and forthwith painted the things just as they offered themselves to his delighted vision. how different it all is to the conception of still-life of his compatriots of the "grand century" and even of his own time! it was a sad misconception of the function and range of art that made the seventeenth century draw the distinction between "noble" and "ignoble" subjects. when they "stooped" to still-life it had to be ennobled--that is to say, precious stuffs, elegant furniture, bronzes and gold or silver goblets, choice specimens of hot-house flowers, and such like material were piled up in what was considered picturesque abundance--and the whole thing was as theatrical and tasteless and sham-heroic as a portrait by lebrun, the court favourite. even the dutch and flemish still-life painters of the period, who had a far keener appreciation of nature, catered for the taste that preferred the display of riches to simple truth. their flowers and fruit were carefully chosen faultless specimens, accompanied generally by costly objects and stuffs; and on the whole these large decorative pieces were painted with wonderful accuracy in the rendering of each individual blossom or other detail, but with utter disregard of atmosphere. it has been rightly said that these netherlanders gave the same _kind_ of attention to every object, whilst chardin bestowed upon the component parts of his still-life compositions not the same kind, but the same _degree_ of attention. and above all, whilst suggesting the texture and volume and material of each individual object with faultless accuracy, chardin never lost sight of the ensemble--that is to say, the opposition of values, the interchange that takes place between the colours of two different objects placed in close proximity, the reflections which appear not only where they would naturally be expected, as on shiny copper or other metals, but even those on comparatively dull surfaces, which would probably escape the attention of the untrained eye. chardin looked upon everything with a true painter's vision; and his brush expressed not his knowledge of the form of things, but the visual impression produced by their ensemble. he did not think in outline, but in colour. if proof were needed, it will be found in the extreme scarcity of sketches and drawings from his hand. only very few sketches by chardin are known, and these few proclaim the painter rather than the draughtsman. still, having pointed out the gulf that divides our master from the still-life painters of the _grand siècle_, it is only right to add that he did not burst upon the world as an isolated phenomenon, and that painters like desportes and oudry form the bridge from monnoyer, the best known of the french seventeenth-century compilers of showy monumental still-life, to chardin. monnoyer belongs to a time that knew neither respect nor genuine love for nature and her laws. he simply followed the rules of the grand style, and had no eye for the play of reflections and the other problems, which are the delight of the moderns--and chardin is essentially modern. monnoyer's son baptiste, and his son-in-law belin de fontenay did not depart from his artificial manner. but with oudry, in spite of much that is still traditional in his art, we arrive already at a new conception of still-life painting. in a paper read by this artist to the academy he relates how, in his student days, when asked by largillière to paint some flowers, he placed a carefully chosen, gaily coloured bouquet in a vase, when his master stopped him and said: "i have set you this task to train you for colour. do you think the choice you have made will do for the purpose? get a bunch of flowers all white." oudry did as he was bid, and was then told to observe that the flowers are brown on the shadow side, that on a light ground they appear in half tones, and that the whitest of them are darker than absolute white. largillière then pointed out to him the action of reflections, and made him paint by the side of the flowers various white objects of different value for comparison. oudry was not a little surprised at discovering that the flowers consisted of an accumulation of broken tones, and were given form and relief by the magic of shadows. both oudry and desportes did not consider common objects unworthy of their attention, and in this way led up to the type of work in which chardin afterwards achieved his triumphs. [illustration: plate iii.--l'enfant au toton (the child with the top) (in the louvre) "l'enfant au toton" ("the child with the top") is the portrait of auguste gabriel godefroy, son of the jeweller godefroy, and is the companion picture to the "young man with the violin," which represents the child's elder brother charles. the two pictures were bought in for the louvre, at the high price of , francs. "l'enfant au toton" was first exhibited at the salon of , and was engraved by lépicié in . a replica of the picture was in the collection of the late m. groult. it is one of chardin's most delightful presentments of innocent childish amusement, and illustrates at the same time the master's supreme skill in the painting of still-life.] chardin's still-life pictures never appear to be grouped to form balanced arrangements of line and colour. the manner how the objects are seen in the accidental position in which they were left by the hands that used them holds more than a suggestion of genre painting. indeed, it may be said that all chardin's still-life partakes of genre as much as his genre partakes of still-life. a loaf of bread, a knife, and a black bottle on a crumpled piece of paper; a basket, a few eggs, and a copper pot, and such like material, suffice for him to create so vivid a picture of simple home life, that only the presence of the housewife or serving-maid is needed to raise the painting into the sphere of domestic genre. sometimes this scarcely needed touch of actual life is given by the introduction of some domestic animal; and in these cases we already find a hint of that unity of conception which in chardin's genre pieces links the living creature to the surrounding inanimate objects. take the famous "skate" at the louvre. on a table you see an earthen pot, a saucepan, a kettle, and a knife, grouped in accidental disorder on a negligently spread white napkin on the right; on the left are some fish and oysters and leeks, and from the wall behind is suspended a huge skate. a cat is carefully feeling its way among the oyster-shells, deeply interested in the various victuals which it eyes with eager longing. even more pronounced is this attitude of interest in baron henri de rothschild's "chat aux aguets." here a crouching cat, half puzzled, half excited, is seen in the extreme left corner, crouching in readiness to spring at a dead hare that is lying between a partridge and a magnificent silver tureen, and is obviously the object of the feline's hesitating attention. it is this complete absorption of the protagonists of chardin's genre scenes in their occupations or thoughts that fills his work with such profound human interest. chardin is never anecdotal, never sentimental--in this respect, as well as in the solidity of his technique, and in his scientific search for colour values and atmosphere, he is vastly superior to greuze, whose genre scenes are never free from literary flavour and from a certain kind of affectation. nor does chardin ever fancy himself in the rôle of the moralist like our own hogarth, with whom he has otherwise so much in common. he looks upon his simple fellow-creatures with a sympathetic eye, watching them in the pursuit of their daily avocation, the women conscientiously following the routine of their housework or tenderly occupied with the education of their children, the children themselves intent upon work or play--never posing for artistic effect, but wholly oblivious of the painter's watching eye. chardin was by no means the first of his country's masters to devote himself to contemporary life. just as oudry took the first hesitating steps towards the chardinesque conception of still-life, so jean raoux busied himself in the closing days of the seventeenth century with creating records of scenes taken from the daily life of the people, but he never rid himself of the sugary affected manner that was the taste of his time. it was left to chardin to introduce into the art of genre painting in france the sense of intimacy, the homogeneous vision, the atmosphere of reality which we find in such masterpieces as the "grace before meat," "the reading lesson," "the governess," "the convalescent's meal," "the card castle," the "récureuse," the "pourvoyeuse," and the famous "child with the top," which, after having changed hands in , at the time when chardin was held in slight esteem, for less than £ , was recently bought for the louvre, together with the companion portrait of charles godefroy, "the young man with the violin," for the enormous price of £ , . in the case of each of these pictures the first thing that strikes your attention is the complete absorption of the personages in their occupation. in the picture of the boy building the card castle you can literally see him drawing in his breath for fear of upsetting the fragile structure which he is erecting. you imagine you can hear the sigh of relief with which the "pourvoyeuse"--the woman returning from market--deposits her heavy load of bread on the dresser, whilst the sudden release of the weight that had been supported by her left arm seems to increase the strain on her right. how admirable is the expression of keen attention on the puckered brow of the child who in "the reading lesson" tries to follow with plump finger the line indicated by the school-mistress; or the solicitude of the governess who, whilst addressing some final words of advice or admonition to the neatly dressed boy about to depart for school, has just for the moment ceased brushing his three-cornered hat. there is no need to give further instances. in all chardin's subject pictures he opens a door upon the home life of the simple bourgeoisie to which he himself belonged by birth and character, and allows you to watch from some safe hiding-place the doings of these good folk who are utterly unaware of your presence. having devoted his early years to still-life, and his prime to domestic genre, chardin lived long enough to weary his public and critics, and to find himself in the position of a fallen favourite. but though his eyesight had become affected, and his hands had lost the sureness of their touch, so that he had practically to give up oil-painting, he entered in his last years upon a short career of glorious achievement in an entirely new sphere--he devoted himself to portraiture in pastel, and gained once more the enthusiastic applause of the people, even though the critics continued to exercise their severe and prejudiced judgment, and to blame him for that very verve and violence of technique which later received the goncourt brothers' unstinted praise. "what surprising images. what violent and inspired work; what scrumbling and modelling; what rapid strokes and scratches!" his pastel portraits of himself and of his second wife, and his magnificent head of a jockey have the richness and plastic life of oil-paintings, and have indeed more boldness and virility than the work even of the most renowned of all french pastellists, la tour. in view of their freshness and vigour, it is difficult to realise that they are the work of a suffering septuagenarian. the mention of the hostility shown by chardin's contemporary critics towards the system of juxtaposing touches of different colour in his pastels, opens up a very interesting question with regard to the master's technique of oil-painting and of the eighteenth-century critics' attitude towards it. there is no need to dwell upon the comment of a man like mariette, who discovers in chardin's paintings the signs of too much labour, and deplores the "heavy monotonous touch, the lack of ease in the brushwork, and the coldness of his work"--the "coldness" of the master who, alone among all the painters of his time and country, knew how to fill his canvases with a luscious warm atmosphere, and to blend his tones in the mellowest of harmonies! "his colour is not true enough," runs another of mariette's comments. [illustration: plate iv.--le bÉnÉdicitÉ (grace before meat) (in the louvre) "le bénédicité," or "grace before meat," is perhaps the most popular and best known of all chardin's domestic genre pieces. it combines the highest technical and artistic qualities with a touching simplicity of sentiment that must endear it even to those who cannot appreciate its artistry. several replicas of it are known, but the original is probably the version in the hermitage collection at st. petersburg. the louvre owns two examples--one from the collection of louis xv., another from the la caze collection. this latter version appeared three times in the paris sale-rooms, the last time in , when it realised the sum of £ ! another authentic replica is in the marcille collection, and yet another at stockholm.] let us now listen to diderot, though in fairness it should be stated that the remarks which follow refer to chardin's later work between and . first of all he is set down as "ever a faithful imitator of nature in his own manner, which is rude and abrupt--a nature low, common, and domestic." a strange pronouncement on the part of the same ill-balanced critic who, four years later, condemned boucher because "in all this numberless family you will not find one employed in a real act of life, studying his lesson, reading, writing, stripping hemp." thus chardin's vice is turned into virtue when it is a question of abusing a master who avoided the "low, common, and domestic." in his topical criticism on the salon of diderot tells us of chardin, that it is long since he has "finished" anything; that he shirks trouble, and works like a man of the world who is endowed with talent and skill. in diderot utters the following curious statement: "chardin's technique is strange. when you are near you cannot distinguish anything; but as you step back the objects take form and begin to be real nature." on a later occasion he describes chardin's style as "a harsh method of painting with the thumb as much as with the brush; a juxtaposition of touches, a confused and sparkling accumulation of pasty and rich colours." diderot is borne out by bachaumont who at the same period writes: "his method is irregular. he places his colours one after the other, almost without mixing, so that his work bears a certain resemblance to mosaic, or _point carré_ needlework." this description, given by two independent contemporaries, almost suggests the technique of the modern impressionists and pointillists; and if the present appearance of chardin's paintings scarcely tallies with diderot's and bachaumont's explanation, it should not be forgotten that a century and a half have passed over these erstwhile "rude and violent" mosaics of colour touches, and that this stretch of time is quite sufficient to allow the colours to re-act upon each other--in a chemical sense, to permeate each other, to fuse and blend, and to form a mellow, warm, harmonious surface that shows no trace of harsh and abrupt touches. thus it would appear that chardin discounted the effects of time and worked for posterity. in one of his rare happy moments diderot realised this fact, and took up the cudgels for our master. in his critique of the salon he explains that "chardin sees his works twelve years hence; and those who condemn him are as wrong as those young artists who copy servilely at rome the pictures painted years ago." ii chardin's physical appearance, such as we find it in authentic portraits, his character, as it is revealed to us by his words and his actions, and the whole quiet and comparatively uneventful course of his life, are in most absolute harmony with his art. indeed, chardin's personality might, with a little imagination, be reconstructed from his pictures. he was a bourgeois to the finger-tips--a righteous, kind-hearted, hard-working man who never knew the consuming fire of a great passion, and who was apparently free from the vagaries, inconsistencies, and irregularities usually associated with the artistic temperament. though never overburdened with the weight of worldly possessions, he was never in real poverty, never felt the pangs of hunger. he had as good an education as his father's humble condition would permit, and his choice of a career not only met with no opposition, but was warmly encouraged. in his profession he rose slowly and gradually to high honour, and never experienced serious rebuffs or checks. his disposition was not of the kind to kindle enmity or even jealousy. his early affection for the girl who was to become his first wife was faithful, but not of the kind to prompt him to hasty action--he waited until his financial position enabled him to keep a modest home, and then he married. he married a second time, nine years after his first wife's death, and this time his choice fell upon a widow with a small fortune, a practical shrewd woman, who was of no little help to him in the management of his affairs. it was not exactly a love match, but the two simple people suited each other, were of the same social position, and in similar comfortable circumstances, and managed to live peacefully and contentedly in modest bourgeois fashion. how dull, how bald, how negative the smooth course of this life of virtue and honest labour seems, contrasted with the eventful, stormy, passionate life of a boucher or a fragonard who were in the stream of fashion, and adopted the manner and licentiousness and vices of their courtly patrons. there is never an immodest thought, never a piquant suggestion in chardin's paintings. they reflect his own life; perhaps they represent the very surroundings in which he spent his busy days, for we find in their sequence the clear indication of growing prosperity from a condition which verges on poverty--respectable, not sordid, poverty--to comparative luxury; from drudgery in kitchen and courtyard to tea in the cosy parlour. there can be but little doubt that many a time the master's brush was devoted to the recording of his own home, his own family, the even tenor of his life. [illustration: plate v.--la gouvernante (mother and son) (in the collection of prince liechtenstein in vienna) "la gouvernante," or "mother and son," is one of the most attractive of the many chardin pictures in the collection of prince liechtenstein in vienna. observe the perfectly natural attitude of the woman and the child, in which there is not the slightest hint of posing for the artist. like all chardin's genre pictures, it is, as it were, a glimpse of real life. this picture and its companion "la mère laborieuse" figured at the sale of chardin's works after his death, when his art received such scant appreciation that the pair only realised livres sous!] the man's character--and more than that, his _milieu_--are expressed in no uncertain fashion in his three auto-portraits, two of which are at the louvre, and one in the collection of m. léon michel-lévy. a good, kind-hearted, simple-minded man he appears in these pastel portraits, which all date from the last years of his life, a man incapable of wickedness or meanness, and endowed with a keen sense of humour that lingers about the corners of his mouth. it is a face that immediately enlists sympathy by its obvious readiness for sympathy with others. and so convincing are these portraits in their straightforward bold statement, that they may be accepted as documentary testimony to the man's character, even if we had not the evidence of fragonard's much earlier portrait of chardin, which was until recently in the rodolphe kann collection, and is at present in the possession of messrs. duveen bros. with the exception of such differences as may be accounted for by the differences of age, all these portraits tally to a remarkable degree. the features are the same, and the expression is identical--the same keen, penetrating eyes, which even in his declining years have lost none of their searching intelligence, even though they have to be aided by round horn-rimmed spectacles; the same revelation of a lovable nature, even though in m. michel-lévy's version worry and suffering have left their traces on the features. he is the embodiment of decent middle-class respectability. decency and a high sense of honour marked every act of his life, and decency had to be kept up in external appearances. on his very deathbed, when he was tortured by the pangs of one of the most terrible of diseases, dropsy having set in upon stone, he still insisted upon his daily shave! yet chardin, the bourgeois incarnate, was anything but a philistine. from this he was saved by his life-long devotion to, and his ardent enthusiasm for, his art. he was not given to bursts of the theatrical eloquence that is so dear to the men of his race; but the scanty records we have of his sayings testify to the humble, profound respect in which he held the art of painting. "art is an island of which i have only skirted the coast-line," runs the often quoted phrase to which he gave utterance at a time when he had attained to his highest achievement. to an artist who talked to him about his method of improving the colours, he replied in characteristic fashion: "and who has told you, sir, that one paints with colours?" "with what then?" questioned his perplexed interviewer. "one _uses_ colours, but one paints with feeling." brilliant technician as he was, and admirable critic of his own and other artists' work, chardin lacked the gift to communicate his knowledge to others. he was a bad teacher--he was a wretched teacher. even such pliable material as fragonard's genius yielded no results to his honest efforts. it was boucher who, at the height of his vogue and overburdened with commissions that did not allow him the time to devote himself to the nursing of a raw talent, recommended fragonard to work in chardin's studio; but six months' teaching by the master failed to bring out the pupil's brilliant gifts. chardin knew not how to impart his marvellous technique to young fragonard, and fragonard returned to boucher without having appreciably benefited by chardin's instruction. the master had no better luck with his own son, though in this case the failure was due rather to lack of talent than to bad teaching, for van loo and natoire were equally unsuccessful in their efforts to develop the unfortunate young man's feeble gifts. there is a touch of deepest pathos in the reference made by chardin to his son at the close of an address to his academic colleagues in : "gentlemen, gentlemen, be indulgent! he who has not felt the difficulty of art does nothing that counts; he who, like my son, has felt it too much, does nothing at all. farewell, gentlemen, and be indulgent, be indulgent!" chardin had no artistic progeny to carry on his tradition, partly, perhaps, because he failed as a teacher, more probably because the revolution and the empire were close at hand when he died, and because the social upheavals led to new ideals and to an art that was based on an altogether different æsthetic code. the star of david rose when chardin's gave its last flickers; and chardin himself was among the commissioners who signed on the th of january the highly laudatory report on david's large battle sketch sent to paris by the director of the school of rome. yet who would venture to-day to mention the two in the same breath. david has fallen into well-deserved oblivion, and the example of chardin's glorious paintings has done what was beyond the master's own power--it has created a school that is daily enlisting an increasing number of highly gifted followers. chardin's name is honoured and revered in every modern painter's studio. iii jean-baptiste siméon chardin was born in paris on november , , the second son of jean chardin, cabinetmaker, or to be more strict, billiard-table maker, a hard-working man who rose to be syndic of his corporation, but who, the father of a family of five, was fortunately not sufficiently prosperous to give his son a literary education. i say fortunately, because it was probably his ignorance of mythology and classic lore that made chardin, who often bitterly regretted his educational deficiencies, turn his attention to those subjects which required a keenly observing eye and a sure hand, and not a fertile imagination stimulated by book-knowledge. his lack of education saved chardin from allegorical and mythological clap-trap, and made him the great painter of the visible world of his time. though jean chardin wanted his son to take up his own profession, he was quick in recognising and encouraging the boy's early talent, and finally made him enter the atelier of pierre jacques cazes where siméon received his first systematic training. cazes was a capable enough painter in the traditional grand manner of le brun, which had been taught to him by bon boullogne. he had taken the prix de rome, and issued victorious from several other competitions, but, like rigaud and largillière and several other distinguished painters of the period, never availed himself of the privilege entailed by the award of the prix de rome. indeed, he was not a little proud of this fact, as he showed by his reply to crozat who commiserated with him for having never seen the italian masterpieces--"i have proved that one can do without them." yet whatever merit there may have been in cazes' work, and whatever may have been his own opinion on this subject, prosperity came not his way; and although he was appointed professor at the academy, and rose to great popularity as a teacher, he remained so poor that he could not afford to provide his pupils with living models. they had to learn what they could from copying their master's compositions and studies. the copying of designs, based on literary conceptions and knowledge of the classics, could not possibly be either beneficial or attractive for a youth who lacked the education needed for understanding these subjects, and who was, moreover, deeply interested in the life that came under his personal observation. the tasks set to him by cazes must have appeared to chardin like the drudgery of acquiring proficiency in a hieroglyphic language that conveyed no definite meaning to him. still, chardin made such progress under his first master that noël nicolas coypel engaged him as assistant to paint the details in some decorative over-door panels representing the seasons and the pleasures of the chase. [illustration: plate vi.--la mÈre laborieuse (in the stockholm museum) "la mère laborieuse," which is the companion picture to "la gouvernante," was first exhibited at the salon of , where it attracted the attention of count tessin, who immediately commissioned the replica which is now at the stockholm museum. the picture was engraved by lépicié in the same year in which it was first exhibited.] in coypel chardin found a master of very different calibre--a teacher after his own heart. the systematised knowledge of the principles adopted by the late bolognese masters, rules of composition and of the distribution of light and shade, were certainly of little use to him when, on beginning his work in coypel's studio, he was set the task of painting a gun in the hand of a sportsman. chardin was amazed at the trouble taken by his employer, and at the amount of thought expended by him upon the placing and lighting of the object. the painting of this gun was chardin's first valuable lesson. he was made to realise the importance of a comparatively insignificant accessory. he was shown how its position would affect the rhythm of the design. he was taught to paint with minute accuracy whatever his eye beheld. he was told, perhaps for the first time, that it was not enough to paint a hieroglyphic that will be recognised to represent a gun, but that the paint should express the true appearance of the object, its plastic form, its surface, the texture of the material, the play of light and shade and reflections. the lesson of this gun gave the death blow to traditional recipes, and laid the foundation of chardin's art. chardin did well under the new tuition, so well that jean-baptiste van loo engaged him to help in the restoration of some paintings in the gallery of fontainebleau. it must have been a formidable task, since not only chardin, but j. b. van loo's younger brother charles and some academy students were made to join the master's staff. five francs a day and an excellent dinner on the completion of the work were the wages for the job which in some way was a memorable event in our master's life. with the exception of a visit to rouen in his old age, the trip to fontainebleau afforded chardin the only glimpse he ever had of the world beyond paris and the surrounding district. the first record we have of chardin's independent activity has reference to an astonishing piece of work which has disappeared long since, but is known to us from an etching by j. de goncourt. the work in question was a large signboard, feet inches long by feet inches wide, commissioned from him by a surgeon who was on terms of friendship with chardin's father. perhaps the young artist had seen watteau's famous signboard for gersaint, now in the german emperor's collection. however this may be, like watteau he departed from the customary practice of filling the board with a design made up of the implements of the patron's craft,[ ] and painted an animated street scene, representing the sequel to a duel. the scene is outside the house of a surgeon who is attending to the wound of the defeated combatant, whilst a group of idle folk of all conditions, attracted by curiosity, have assembled in the street, and are watching the proceedings, and excitedly discussing the occurrence. although goncourt's etching naturally gives no indication of the colour and technique of this remarkable and unconventional painting, it enables us to see the very natural and skilful grouping and the excellent management of light and shade which chardin had mastered even at that early period. the sign was put up on a sunday, and attracted a vast crowd whose exclamations induced the surgeon to step outside his house and ascertain the cause of the stir. being a man of little taste, his anger was aroused by chardin's bold departure from convention, but the general approval with which the _quartier_ greeted chardin's original conception soon soothed his ruffled spirit, and the incident led to no further unpleasantness. save for the story of the surgeon's sign, nothing is known of chardin's doings from his days of apprenticeship to his first appearance, in , at the _exposition de la jeunesse_, a kind of open-air salon without jury, held annually in the place dauphine on corpus christi day, between a.m. and midday, "weather permitting." with the exception of the annual salon at the louvre, which was only open to the works of the members of the academy, this _exposition de la jeunesse_ was the only opportunity given to artists for submitting their works to the public. at the time when chardin made his début at this picture fair, the annual academy salon instituted by louis xiv. had been abandoned for some years, so that even the members of the academy were driven to the place dauphine in order to keep in touch with the public. in the contemporary criticisms of the _mercure_ the names of all the greatest french masters of the first half of the eighteenth century are to be found among the exhibitors of the _jeunesse_--the shining lights of the profession, coypel, rigaud, de troy, among the crowd of youngsters eager to make their reputation. lancret, oudry, boucher, nattier, lemoine--none of them disdained to show their works under conditions which had much more in common with those that obtain at an annual fair, than with those we are accustomed to associate with a picture exhibition. the spectacle of dignified academicians thus seeking public suffrage in the street finally induced louis de boullogne, director of the academy, to seek for an amelioration of the prevailing conditions, and thanks to the intervention of the comptroller-general of the king's buildings the salon of the louvre was re-opened in for a term of four days--"outsiders" being excluded as of yore. on corpus christi day, , chardin, then in his twenty-ninth year, availed himself for the first time of the opportunity given to rising talent, and made his appearance at the place dauphine with a dozen still-life paintings, including "the skate" and "the buffet"--the two masterpieces which are counted to-day among the treasured possessions of the louvre. this sudden revelation of so personal and fully developed a talent caused no little stir. chardin was hailed as a master worthy to be placed beside the great netherlandish still-life painters, and was urged by his friends to "present himself" forthwith at the academy. chardin reluctantly followed the advice, and, having arranged his pictures ready for inspection in the first room of the academy at the louvre, retired to an adjoining apartment, where he awaited, not without serious misgivings, the result of his bold venture. his fears proved to be unfounded. a contemporary of chardin's has left an amusing account of what befell our timid artist. m. de largillière entered the first room and carefully examined the pictures placed there by chardin. then he passed into the next room to speak to the candidate. "you have here some very fine pictures which are surely the work of some good flemish painter--an excellent school for colour, this flemish school. now let us see your works." "sir, you have just seen them." "what! these were your pictures?" "yes, sir." "then," said largillière, "present yourself, my friend, present yourself." cazes, chardin's old master, likewise fell into the innocent trap, and was equally complimentary, without suspecting the authorship of the exposed pictures. in fact, he undertook to stand as his pupil's sponsor. when louis de boullogne, director of the academy and painter to the king, arrived, chardin informed him that the exhibited pictures were painted by him, and that the academy might dispose of those which were approved of. "he is not yet 'confirmed' (_agréé_) and he talks already of being 'received' (_reçu_)![ ] however," he added, "you have done well to mention it." he reported the proposal, which was immediately accepted. the ballot resulted in chardin being at the same time, "confirmed" and "received." on sept. , , he was sworn in, and became a full member of the academy. in recognition of his rare genius, and in consideration of his impecunious condition, his entrance fee was reduced to livres. "the buffet" and a "kitchen" piece were accepted as "diploma pictures." [illustration: plate vii.--le panneau de pÊches (in the louvre) "le panneau de pêches," (the basket of peaches) is a magnificent instance of chardin's extraordinary skill in the rendering of textures and substances. note the perfect truth of all the colour-values, the play of light and shade and reflections, such as the opening up of the shadow thrown by the tumbler owing to the refractive qualities of the wine contained in the glass. note, also, the "accidental" appearance of the carefully grouped objects--the manner in which the knife-handle projects from the table. the plate is reproduced from the original painting at the louvre in paris.] in spite of this sudden success, chardin was by no means on the road to fortune. his pictures sold slowly and at very low prices. he always had a very modest opinion of the financial value of his works, and was ever ready to part with them at ridiculously low prices, or to offer them as presents to his friends. the story goes that on one occasion, when his friend le bas wished to buy a picture which chardin was just finishing, he offered to exchange it for a pretty waistcoat. when the king's sister admired one of his pastel portraits and asked the price, he immediately begged her to accept it "as a token of gratitude for her interest in his work." admirably tactful is the form in which chardin gives practical expression to his gratitude for m. de vandières' successful efforts at procuring him a pension from the king. through lépicié, the secretary of the academy, he begs vandières to accept the dedication of an engraving after his "lady with a bird-organ"; and asks permission to state on the margin _that the original painting is in the collection of m. de vandières_. the request was granted. small wonder, then, if in spite of the modesty of his personal requirements chardin, even after his election to the academy, had to wait over two years before he was in a position to marry marguerite sainctar, whom he had met at a dance some years before, and who during the period of waiting had lost her health, her parents, and her modest fortune, and had to go to live with her guardian. chardin's father, who had warmly approved of his son's engagement, now objected to the marriage, but nothing could deter siméon from his honourable purpose, and the marriage took place at st. sulpice on february , . he took his wife to his parents' house at the corner of the rue princesse, where he had been living before his marriage, and before the end of the year he was presented with a son, who was given the name pierre jean-baptiste. two years later a daughter was born--marguerite agnes; but chardin's domestic happiness was not destined to last long, for on april , , he lost both wife and daughter. his son was, however, his greatest source of grief. remembering the imaginary disadvantages he had suffered from his lack of humanistic education, he determined that his boy should be better equipped for the artistic profession, and had him thoroughly well instructed in the classics. he then had him prepared at one of the academy ateliers for competing for the prix de rome. no doubt owing to his father's then rather powerful influence, pierre chardin gained the coveted prize in , and after having passed his three years' probation at the recently established _École des élèves protégés_, which he had entered with the second batch of pupils by whom the first successful "romans" were replaced, he set out for rome in october . but pierre, discouraged perhaps from his earliest attempts by the perfection of his father's art which he could never hope to attain, indolent moreover and intractable, made little progress under natoire, who was then director of the school of rome. pierre worked little, quarrelled with his colleagues, and never produced either a copy or an original work that was considered good enough to be sent to paris. "he does not know how to handle the brush, and what he does looks like a tired and not very pleasing attempt," runs natoire's report to marigny in . he returned to paris in , but his whole life was a failure. he fully realised his inability ever to arrive at artistic achievement. in he went to venice with the french ambassador, the marquis de paulmy, and was never heard of since. it was said that he had found his death in the waters of a venetian canal. but to return to siméon chardin--we find him again among the exhibitors of the place dauphine in , with some pieces of still-life, two large decorative panels of musical trophies, and a wonderfully realistic painting in imitation of a bronze bas-relief after a terra-cotta of duquesnoy. these imitation reliefs were then much in vogue for over-doors and wall decorations in the houses of the great, as, for instance, in the palace of compiègne. two authentic pieces of the kind, executed in grisaille, are in the collection of dr. tuffier. the one of the exhibition was bought by van loo for livres, and is now in the marcille collection. according to contemporary criticism the bronze-tone of the relief was so perfectly rendered that it produced an illusion "which touch alone can destroy." about this time chardin's still-life period comes to a close, and we find him henceforth devoting the best of his power to the domestic genre "à la teniers" (as it was dubbed by his own patrons and contemporaries), though even in later years still-life pieces continue to figure now and then among his salon exhibits. his first triumphs in the new field of action were scored in , when his sixteen contributions to the _jeunesse_ exhibition included the "washerwoman" (now in the hermitage collection), the "woman drawing water" (painted in several versions or replicas, of which the best known are at the stockholm museum, and in the collections of sir frederick cook at richmond and of m. eudoxe marcille in paris); the "card castle" (now in the collection of baron henri de rothschild); and the "lady sealing a letter" (in the german emperor's collection). it is interesting to note that this last named picture is the only genre piece by chardin with life size figures. chardin's new departure immediately found favour, and although he continued to charge ludicrously inadequate prices for his work, which, with the deliberate slowness of his method, prevented him from rising to well deserved prosperity, he not only experienced no difficulty in disposing of his pictures, but had to duplicate and reduplicate them to meet the demand of his patrons, foremost among whom were the swedish count tessin and the austrian prince liechtenstein. in view of the many versions that exist of most of the master's genre pieces it is often difficult or impossible to decide which is the original, and which a replica. the artist's modesty with regard to his charges may be gathered from the fact that, at the time of his highest vogue, he only asked twenty-five louis-d'or a piece for two pictures commissioned by count tessin, whilst the painter wille was able to secure a pair for thirty-six livres. three of the genre pictures of the exhibition were sent by chardin in the following year to a competitive show held by the academicians to fill the vacancies of professor, adjuncts, and councillors of the academy; but chardin was among the unsuccessful candidates, the votes declaring in favour of michel and carle van loo, boucher, natoire, lancret, and parrocel. the regular course of the academy salons, which had been interrupted since , save for the tentative four days' exhibition at the louvre in , was resumed in , first in alternate years, and then annually without break until the present day. at the inaugural exhibition chardin exhibited again the three pieces of the and shows, together with van loo's bronze relief, the portrait of his friend aved (known as "le souffleur," or "the chemist"), and several pictures of children playing, a class of subject in which the master stands unrivalled among the frenchmen of his time. fragonard, of course, achieved greatness as a painter of children, but to him the child was an object for portraiture, whilst chardin, the student of life, painted the _life_, the work and pleasures, of the child, at the same time never losing sight of portraiture. [illustration: plate viii.--la pourvoyeuse (in the louvre) "la pourvoyeuse," of which picture the first dated version, painted in , is in the possession of the german emperor, is one of the most masterly of chardin's earlier pictures of homely incidents of everyday life. the attitude of the woman, who has just returned from market and is depositing her load of victuals, is admirably true to life; and the still-life painting of the black bottles on the ground, the pewter plate, the loaf of bread, and so forth, testifies to the master's supreme skill. from the glimpse of the courtyard through the open door, it can be seen that the setting of the sun is identical with that of "the fountain"--that is to say, that it represents the modest house in the rue princesse, in which chardin lived up to the time of his second marriage. another replica is in the collection of prince liechtenstein in vienna. our plate is reproduced from the version in the louvre.] his success was decisive. his reputation was now firmly established, and still further increased by his next year's exhibit of eight pictures--among them the "boy with the top," and also the "lady sealing a letter," which he had already shown at the jeunesse exhibition in . six pictures followed in the next year, including the "governess," the "pourvoyeuse" (now in the louvre), and the "cup of tea"; and in his popularity reached its zenith with the exhibition of his masterpiece "grace before meat" (_le bénédicité_), in addition to which he showed the two _singeries_--"the monkey painter" and "the monkey antiquary" (now in the louvre)--even chardin could not hold out against the bad taste which applauded this stupid invention of the netherlanders--and several other domestic genre pieces. a replica of the bénédicité was commissioned by count tessin for the king of sweden, and is now at the stockholm museum. the bad state of his health seriously interfered with his work during the next few years, and his contributions to the salon of were restricted to "the morning toilet" and "m. lenoir's son building a card castle," whilst he was an absentee from the following year's exhibition. in chardin lost his mother, with whom he had been living since his wife's death, and who had been looking after his boy's early education. chardin, slow worker as he always was, and overwhelmed with commissions for new pictures and replicas, which he continued to paint at starvation rates, had no time to devote to the bringing up of his son, which was perhaps one of the reasons which induced him to marry, in the year following his mother's death, a musketeer's widow, of thirty-seven, françoise marguerite pouget, a worthy woman of no particular personal charm, to judge from the portrait left by the master's chalks, but an excellent housekeeper who managed to bring a certain degree of order into her husband's affairs, and proved to be of no little assistance to him in his business dealings. it was not exactly a love match, but there is no reason for doubting that the two worthy people lived in complete harmony and enjoyed a fair amount of comfort. the repeated references to his "financial troubles" need not be taken in too literal a sense, since from , the year of his marriage, when he transferred his quarters to his wife's house in the rue princesse, until , when his affairs really took a turn for the bad, he enjoyed the ownership of a house which he was then able to sell for , livres, a by no means paltry amount for these days. moreover, in , lépicié's endeavours resulted in the grant of a pension of livres by the king, which, according to the petitioner's own words, was sufficient to secure chardin's comfort. true enough, when the artist died in , his widow applied for relief on the pretext of being practically left without means of subsistence. but an investigation of the case led to the discovery that she was in enjoyment of an annual income of from to livres! a daughter, who was born to the master by his second wife, died soon after having seen the light of the world. the year was apparently more productive than the five preceding years; but henceforth the number of his subject pictures became more and more restricted, and chardin, perhaps discouraged by the public grumbling at his lack of original invention, returned to the sphere of his early successes--to still-life. meanwhile his probity and uprightness had gained him the highest esteem of his academic colleagues and brought him new honours in his official position. he was appointed treasurer of the academy in , and soon afterwards succeeded j. a. portail as "hanger" of the salon exhibition, a difficult office which needed a man of chardin's tact, fairness, and honesty. when chardin took up his duties as treasurer he found the finances of the academy in a deplorable condition. his predecessor j. b. reydellet, who had acted as "huissier and concierge," had neither been able to exercise a restraining influence upon the rowdy tendencies of the students, nor to keep even a semblance of order in the accounts. on his death his legacy to the academy was a deficit of close on , livres. chardin, assisted by his business-like wife, did his best to wipe off the effects of his predecessor's negligence or incompetence, but the task added very considerably to his worries, especially as, owing to financial stress, the academicians' pensions were frequently kept in arrear, and for years royal support was withheld. matters reached a climax in , when the academy found itself in such straits, that the question of dissolving the institution had to be seriously considered. chardin's appeal to marigny, and through him to the abbé terray, comptroller-general of finances, however, led to the desired result, and the much needed support was granted. the quarters at the louvre, vacated by the death of the king's engraver and goldsmith marteau in march , were given to chardin, who let his house in the rue princesse to joseph vernet--another change which must have contributed considerably to the ageing master's peace of mind. in his wonted slow manner he continued to paint still-life, and received several important commissions for the decoration of royal and other residences. thus, in , his friend cochin procured for him, through marigny, a commission for some over-doors for the château of choisy. they depicted the attributes of science, art, and music, and were exhibited in the salon of . a similar order for two over-doors in the music-room of the château of bellevue--the instruments of civil and of military music--followed in the next year. the payment for the five, which was delayed until , amounted to livres. chardin's last years were saddened by the tragic end of his son and by a terribly painful illness. his duties as treasurer became too much for him, and he resigned this office to the sculptor coustou in . there was a small deficit which he volunteered to make good, but this offer was declined, and a banquet was given to him by his colleagues as an expression of their appreciation of his services. the acute suffering caused by his illness did not prevent him from continuing his artistic work, and we find him at the very end of his career branching out in an entirely new direction. the pastel portraits of his closing years betray no decline in keenness of vision and in power of expression. indeed, they must be counted among his finest achievements. he worked to the very last, and sent some pastel heads to the salon of . on the th of december of the same year he breathed his last. his remains were buried at st. germain-l'auxerrois, in the parish of the louvre. with him died the art of the french eighteenth century. a kind fate had saved him from the misfortune that fell to the share of his contemporaries fragonard and greuze, who outlived him by many years, but who also outlived the _ancien régime_ and died in poverty and neglect and misery. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., london and derby the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh footnotes: [ ] a signboard of the conventional type, but painted with all chardin's consummate mastery, is the one executed for the perfume distiller pinaud, which appeared at the guildhall exhibition in , and at whitechapel in . [ ] the candidates had to pass through a probationary stage before they were definitely received by the academy. transcriber's notes: simple typographical errors were corrected. page : "goncourt brothers'" was printed as "brothers' goncourt". table of contents added by transcriber. masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare van eyck hubert, (?)- john, (?)- * * * * * "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. bellini. george hay. botticelli. henry b. binns. boucher. c. haldane macfall. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. chardin. paul g. konody. constable. c. lewis hind. corot. sidney allnutt. da vinci. m. w. brockwell. delacroix. paul g. konody. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. fra angelico. james mason. fra filippo lippi. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. gainsborough. max rothschild. greuze. alys eyre macklin. hogarth. c. lewis hind. holbein. s. l. bensusan. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. ingres. a. j. finberg. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. le brun, vigÉe. c. haldane macfall. leighton. a. lys baldry. luini. james mason. mantegna. mrs. arthur bell. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. millais. a. lys baldry. millet. percy m. turner. murillo. s. l. bensusan. perugino. selwyn brinton. raeburn. james l. caw. raphael. paul g. konody. rembrandt. josef israels. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. romney. c. lewis hind. rossetti. lucien pissarro. rubens. s. l. bensusan. sargent. t. martin wood. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. titian. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. van dyck. percy m. turner. van eyck. j. cyril m. weale. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. watteau. c. lewis hind. watts. w. loftus hare. whistler. t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--the adoration of the lamb (by hubert van eyck) the centre-piece of the ghent polyptych, in the cathedral of that town. the panel was completed in or before . see page .] van eyck by j. cyril m. weale illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. to my mother in token of reverence and love contents page i. the advent of the van eycks ii. hubert's novitiate iii. the great polyptych iv. in the service of burgundy v. period of great endeavour vi. a note in conclusion list of illustrations plate i. the adoration of the lamb, _c._ frontispiece (by hubert van eyck.--the cathedral, ghent) page ii. choir of angels, _c._ (by hubert van eyck.--royal gallery, berlin) iii. portrait of "tymotheos," (by john van eyck.--national gallery, london, no. ) iv. portrait of the painter's father-in-law, (by john van eyck.--national gallery, london, no. ) v. john arnolfini and joan cenani, his wife, (by john van eyck.--national gallery, london, no. ) vi. the virgin and child, st. donatian and st. george, and canon g. van der paele, (by john van eyck.--town gallery, bruges) vii. portrait of margaret van eyck, the painter's wife, (by john van eyck.--town gallery, bruges) viii. the virgin and child, and chancellor rolin, date uncertain (by -- van eyck.--the louvre, paris) [illustration: john. hubert.] i the advent of the van eycks the advent of the van eycks is the most important landmark in the history of painting in northern europe. with them we open an entirely new chapter, for although the value of oil in various inferior processes of the art had been ascertained and availed of at an earlier period, it was entirely due to their long and painstaking experiments that its use was perfected as the vehicle of colouring matter in picture-painting. unfortunately, time and its worst incidentals have obliterated the evidence which would have enabled us to follow the development of this new method, just as they have robbed us of all the earlier work of its original expounders, leaving us at the same time much too inconsiderable remains for a comprehensive survey of the school of which they were the finished product. it is a disconcerting experience to encounter primarily the lifework of two such eminent painters at a stage when they were already in the plenitude of their powers, and an experience that must always tax the ingenuity of the student and critic of their art. particularly is this the case in respect of the elder brother, for the ascertained facts of hubert's history are restricted to the last two years of his life ( - ), while of the masterpieces he bequeathed to posterity only one can be said to be absolutely authenticated, though of others generally ascribed to him several may safely be accepted as genuine. john's career, on the other hand, can be traced back to , but the chronology from that date to his death in is fairly ample, while he has left us a rich heritage of attested paintings to exemplify the varying aspects of his remarkable genius. [illustration: plate ii.--choir of angels (by hubert van eyck) the first dexter lateral panel in the upper zone of the interior of the great polyptych: now in the royal gallery, berlin. painted in or before . see page .] it was in the nature of things that the monastic institutions, which in the early middle ages were exclusively the nurseries of learning and of the arts and crafts, should have infected these with the mystic spirit induced by the more or less contemplative life its inmates led. more especially must this have been so when we consider that their labours were wholly in the service of religion. as time went on, and monasticism progressed from the pursuit to the dissemination of knowledge, the pupils developed under its influence were naturally imbued with the same spirit, and so a tradition grew up and spread which held undisputed sway for a considerable period in the various centres where artists congregated and formed schools. in the earlier rhenish school of cöln this was the dominant note of its art, which it cherished and sustained in all its purity and simplicity to a later period than any of its offshoots and rivals; for as its teaching extended, more particularly northwards, we are conscious of a weakening of its traditions, of a gradual evolution from the spiritual idealism of its mystic brotherhood to the more humanistic realism that is the distinctive feature of netherlandish art, from the utter sinking of personality to the frank assertion of individuality. nor does this divergence necessarily bespeak a weakening of religious vitality: rather is it to be ascribed to a marked difference of temperament and race characteristics. neither could this change have been as abrupt as might appear from the scant remains of the art of the period. it was a natural growth, the one inherent quality of all such developments, ever tending to the elaboration of a higher type, and eventually producing its finest exemplification in the person of hubert van eyck. in his younger brother, on the other hand, who almost belonged to another generation, we soon note a more striking falling away from the earlier ideals, and in the event an almost total emancipation from the canons of the mystic school, the explanation of which is probably to be sought in an equally marked difference of character and temperament in the two brothers: the one more poetic and imaginative, the other more objective and materialistic; the one drawing his inspiration from a humble and devout cultivation of art by the light of the sanctuary, the other from a devotion to art for art's sole sake, involving all the difference that divides the expression of beauty of thought and mere beauty of form, the spiritual and the intellectual: each nevertheless supreme in his own sphere, and wielding an influence and authority destined to leave their impress on all the after-work of the school. ii hubert's novitiate the small rural town of maaseyck, on the left bank of the maas, in the old duchy of limburg, was the home of the van eycks and the birthplace of the elect of their stock, hubert's coming being traditionally associated with the year , john's with . in the absence of documentary evidence to the contrary, these data are acceptable as founded on reasonable conjecture. there is no record of their parentage, but we know of a third brother, named lambert, and of a kinsman, one henry van eyck, whose exact relationship has not been established. as the early instinct of genius revealed the true bent of the elder lad's disposition, the outstanding advantages of a distinguished school of painting within hail almost of their doors naturally appealed to parents anxious to give effect to their son's aspirations; so to maastricht they turned, where the boy was duly apprenticed to one or other of its recognised masters. having served his articles and in due course been admitted to the rank of journeyman, the youthful artist, now free to qualify for his mastership, entered upon the most interesting period of his education, a period largely spent, according to the custom of the time, in foreign travel; and it is with this stage of hubert's career that criticism first finds legitimate occupation. futile as would be the attempt to trace a definite itinerary, it is allowable to conjecture that the mother school of cöln would mark the first stage in the young artist's travels: in the centre-piece of the great polyptych we discover in the background architectural work distinctly reminiscent of that city, and detail unmistakably rhenish in character, testifying to a close acquaintance with the district. evidence of similar import, such as the cathedral in the louvre picture and the city view with a faithful presentation of old saint paul's as seen from the south in that of baron gustave rothschild's collection, on the confident assumption that these are from the brush of hubert, bespeak visits to france and england; while the landscape work in all his paintings betrays so intimate an acquaintance with central and southern european scenery as almost to compel us into the beaten tracks of the wandering artist-student of the time through switzerland and the south of france, to sunny italy and erubescent spain. the variety of his mountain scenery--undulating hills and snow-capped peaks, rugged crags and alpine heights; the depth of his liquid skies and spacious firmaments, with their marvellous cloud and light effects, melodies in colour that breathe the warmth of a southern sun; and the extent of his botanical lore, embracing the olive and citron, the stone pine and cypress, the date-palm and palmetto, naturalised exotics of the mediterranean slopes--all these and other particulars too numerous to list bear the hall-mark of knowledge garnered in the observant pursuit of local colouring. for so much there is ample warrant, and within the limits of such guarded conclusions the critic incurs little danger from the many pitfalls that beset the by-paths of deductive reasoning. but seeing that the most of our knowledge of hubert's life-work is arrived at by this method of inquiry, it is essential that every inference should at least stand the test of probability. to argue, for example, from the presentation of a particular palm-tree a pilgrimage to the holy land is to offend the laws of proportion; to discern in the picture of the walled city of jerusalem in "the three marys at the sepulchre" work evidently "from a sketch made on the spot" would appear more justifiable, until one is reminded of the fact that the defences of the holy city, pulled down in , were not rebuilt until ; but surely it is speculation run riot, in the attempt to vindicate a preconceived theory, when the simple, unobtrusive artist is made, "after the adventurous manner of his time," to join a crusade and journey to palestine, seeing that the last of these gallant enterprises had taken place full seventy years before he ever saw the light of day. without, however, incurring the reproach of outraging probability, we may apportion the usual four years of hubert's term of journeymanship between the countries already indicated, his wanderings likely enough terminating with the visit to england before his return to the low countries to settle down to his life's work as a master painter, his range of knowledge tremendously enlarged, his technique broadened and perfected in the various schools and workshops through which he had passed, his imagination fertilised, his creative powers strengthened, his faculty of utterance and expression developed--in short, fully equipped at all points to startle the world with the first-fruits of his as yet unrealised genius. iii the great polyptych so, back to maaseyck and to maastricht: to family rejoicings and the generous welcome of old friends, no light matter when ordered on the good old netherlandish scale. anxiety there, of course, and much curiosity here, as to how the promise of early talent would be justified by the ripening fruit. nor could the issue have been long in doubt. the indispensable test triumphantly passed, the customary formalities duly complied with, and hubert van eyck took his place among the master painters of his time, soon to claim rank among the élite of them all. of wife or children not a whisper, but in an age when civism spelt patriotism, and marriage was recognised as one of the prime moral obligations of a loyal citizen, it is inconceivable that a man of his sterling sense of duty should have done other than conform to the established practice. his home and workshop were from the outset probably cheered by the presence of his younger brother john, fired by the born artist's enthusiasm to follow in his senior's footsteps. this maastricht studio no doubt also witnessed the inception of that long series of experiments, secretly shared in by the two brothers until carried to perfection, which gave to the world the new art of oil-painting, and so laid all the after ages under the deepest obligation to them. [illustration: plate iii.--portrait of "tymotheos" (by john van eyck) a presentation portrait, probably from the painter to his friend "timothy," a greek humanist whose christian name only is known. the inscription at the foot reads: "actum anno domini , die octobris, a iohanne de eyck." no. in the national gallery, london. see pages , .] john's apprenticeship ended, and he in turn started on his travels, hubert would appear to have removed to holland, where painters and miniaturists of the early years of the fifteenth century repeatedly exhibit marked traces of his influence; where also miniatures in a book of hours, of date to , to the order of count william for the use of his only daughter, the fair and ill-starred jacqueline, are judged to have been executed by him on the strength of the many points of resemblance they bear to the great polyptych. the commission of the latter work itself is now confidently attributed to the same prince. observe the prominence given to the tower of saint martin's at utrecht and the adjacent view of cöln in the centre-piece, "the adoration of the lamb," and to st. martin himself, the patron saint of utrecht, in the panel of "the knights of christ," the banner in his grasp, moreover, charged with the arms of that town: the count's territory was in the diocese of utrecht and the ecclesiastical province of cöln. so much depends on the origin of this commission in apportioning the respective share each of the brothers had in its execution that the further fact must not be overlooked that ghent, for which the great work was completed, had no sort of connection with either utrecht or cöln, being in the diocese of tournay and the ecclesiastical province of rheims, while the only saint in the altar-piece specially connected with ghent who is characterised by an emblem--st. livin, to wit--was also widely venerated in zeeland. finally, not to labour this aspect of the question unduly, the inscription on the frame attributes, not the picture's inception, but its completion, to jodoc vyt, the eventual donor--a form of words so singular as to admit of no other interpretation than the plain meaning the expression conveys. count william passed away on the st of may , leaving an only child, jacqueline, aged seventeen, by his wife, margaret of burgundy, who had predeceased him. her uncle, john of bavaria, prince-bishop of liège, an unscrupulous ruffian who clearly paid small deference to women's rights, at once set himself to rob the unfortunate princess of her possessions. in september he marched out on dordrecht, where he established his headquarters; gorcum and other strongholds speedily succumbed to his arms, and after an interval, during which he married elizabeth of görlitz, duchess of luxemburg and widow of anthony of burgundy, duke of brabant and limburg, he finally removed to holland and installed himself at the hague, free now to pursue his nefarious projects. for thirteen years the country resounded with the clash of arms and laboured in the rough and tumble of civil warfare: hence an atmosphere the least congenial to the cultivation and patronage of high art. the cities of flanders and brabant were the gainers by the exodus of craftsmen that presently set in. of their number, sooner or later, was hubert, who, prior to at any rate, had already settled at ghent and acquired the freedom of that city. news of the unfinished polyptych remaining on his hands soon came to the ears of jodoc vyt, a wealthy burgher, who eagerly embraced the opportunity of striking the bargain by which he acquired all rights in the picture and so linked his name and personality for all time with this ineffable monument of the painter's art. in the centre-piece, "the adoration of the lamb" (frontispiece), we discover the keynote to the scheme of the work, in the apocalyptic vision of st. john the source of its inspiration. the lamb without spot, the blood from its breast pouring into a chalice, is stood on an altar, the white cloth over which bears on its superfrontal the text from the vulgate, "behold the lamb of god, who taketh away the sins of the world," and on its stole-ends the legend, "jesus, the way, the truth, and the life." worshipping angels gather around, some bearing instruments of the passion, others swinging censers, their smoke laden with the prayers of the saints. in the foreground the fountain of life, flowing down through the ages along the gentle slope of flower-bejewelled sward, or dispensing its waters in vivifying jets from the gurgoyles beneath the feet and from the vases in the hands of the winged angel above its standard. to the four quarters groups of the elect: on the near right those of the old law and among the gentiles who had lived in expectation of the redeemer, the balancing group on the left typical of the new law--prophets, doctors, philosophers, and princes in the former, the apostles, popes, bishops, abbots, deacons, monks, and clerics among the latter. the corresponding groups back of the altar represent the army of martyrs whose blood is the seed of the church, and the multitude of virgins. over all, from the holy dove poised high over the altar, dart rays of light, emblematic of the wisdom which had inspired their lives and of the fire of love that had heartened their sacrifice. a carpet of flowers fills in all the open space fore of the altar, flowering shrubs and trees that of the mid-distance, while the entire background is an exquisite example of the realistic landscape-work that is an abiding charm of the netherlandish school. the wonderful harmony of colour appeals at once to the senses; but more arresting, on nearer acquaintance, for its quality and felicity, is the wide range of portraiture that distinguishes the piece. from the two lateral panels in the dexter shutter the knights of christ and the just judges are pressing forward to the scene of the vision, from the corresponding ones in the sinister shutter the holy hermits and the holy pilgrims: the former on spirited horses--an animal for which the painter evinces a special affection--the latter on foot. these panels are even more remarkable perhaps than the centre-piece for the diversity and multiplicity of the types portrayed, and for the wealth of landscape relieved by bird life lavished in their embellishment. the "adoration of the lamb" is dominated in the upper zone by a triple panel, the centre framing the almighty enthroned in majesty, whose is the kingdom, the power, and the glory--a supreme conception of the eternal father, unequalled for majestic stillness of face, intellectual power of brow, and depth and placidity of vision; on his right is the mother of christ, testifying to the full the lowliness of the handmaiden of the lord, on his left st. john the baptist, an earnest type, long of hair and rugged of beard, barefooted, and in a raiment of brown camel's hair girdled about the loins, intensifying the austerity of life ordained for him who was to prepare the way of the lord and make straight his paths. in the "choir of angels" (plate ii.), which is the subject of the first lateral panel in the dexter shutter, we have one of the choicest gems of the polyptych, and it affords us a measure of the distance the realistic tendencies of the painter had carried him from the traditions of the mystic school. justified by the warrant of scripture, he translates these spirit beings into purely human frames, but with a nerve system attuned to material sensations. in these angels there is no suggestion of trance-like ecstasy in contemplation of the beatific vision; they are angels materialised whose features reflect the strain of sustained effort and the underlying sense of pain which in man is inseparable from the sensing of intense joy. evidently the master had fathomed the secrets of the human heart: the sense possibilities of the spirit world were without his ken, so he humanised his angels and evolved types understandable of the people, and at the same time one of the finest angel groups of all art. so inexpressibly realistic are his conceptions that to the poet-biographer van mander, at any rate, it was actually possible to discern "the different key in which the voice of each is pitched." but poets are privileged beings. accompanying the choir in their song of praise with organ, harp, and viol are the balancing group of angels in the corresponding compartment of the sinister shutter, types that, strangely enough, are in striking contrast to the former, their features moulded in placid contentment. the extreme panels of this zone are occupied by life-size presentations of our first parents after the fall, nude figures painted from the life, with absolute fidelity to nature and masterly conception of type: in a demi-lunette over the figure of adam we see cain and abel making their offerings unto the lord, and in that over eve the slaying of abel at the hands of his brother. there is a tradition extant that the altar-piece was originally furnished with a predella painted in distemper, a picture probably of limbo or of purgatory, but no trace of this remains. [illustration: plate iv.--portrait of the painter's father-in-law (by john van eyck) the subject of this painting has only within recent months been identified as the father of margaret van eyck, with whose portrait, reproduced in plate vii., it should be compared. the framework bears along the upper border the painter's simple motto "als ich can," and at the foot "iohannes de eyck me fecit anno , octobris." no. in the national gallery, london. see page .] the closed shutters display, filling in the full width of the middle zone, the scene of the annunciation. the ethyrean sibyl and the cumaean sibyl occupy the demi-lunettes above the middle portion of the virgin's chamber, the lunettes above the lateral divisions showing half-length figures of the prophets zacharias and micheas. of the four compartments of the lower zone the inner ones contain statues in grisaille of st. john the baptist and st. john the evangelist, the outer ones figures in the attitude of prayer, eminently life-like, of the donor, jodoc vyt, and his wife, elizabeth borluut. jodoc was the second son of sir nicholas vyt, receiver of flanders,--a wealthy citizen who owned the lordships of pamele and leedberghe, besides several mansions in ghent, of which city he was burgomaster in - , after filling various minor municipal offices: by no means a handsome type, though manifestly a capable and kindly burgher, well-set, with a somewhat low forehead, small grey eyes, and a large mouth with broad under-lip; neither do the short-cropped hair and growing baldness or the three warts on upper-lip, nose, and forehead make for attractiveness. in respect of looks his wife is the better favoured, striking the beholder as an indulgent lady, with much of the homely dignity and serenity of the finer type of flemish matron. the great polyptych had not yet reached completion when, on the th of september hubert van eyck passed away after a painful illness. how much of the work remained to be accomplished none can tell with any hope of approach to certainty. a whole volume would not suffice for a critical examination of the mass of contending theories that for the best part of a century has been squandered in the endeavour to allocate to the two brothers their respective shares in the execution of the picture. remember that it had already been some ten years in the making, and that, although it did not receive its final touches from the brush of john van eyck until , nearly six years after his brother's death, this period of john's life, as we shall presently discover, was too fully occupied in the service of duke philip of burgundy to have allowed of his spending any considerable proportion of it in the task of completion. remembering also that john's art had been closely modelled on that of his brother, that none better comprehended his ideals or was more intimately acquainted with the working out of his conceptions, mindful, moreover, of the deep veneration in which he held his master's genius, we must suppose that he realised the obligation of conscientiously adhering to the art and technique of the picture as he found it, any obtruding originality in violation of which would have amounted almost to sacrilege: all this further enhances the difficulty of differentiating between the work of the two painters. indeed, if so minded, the reader is probably as well equipped as the writer to solve the puzzle. [illustration: plate v.--john arnolfini and joan cenani, his wife (by john van eyck) an incomparable example of the master's varied gifts, and a valuable study of contemporary dress and domestic furniture. joan cenani is presumed to have been a younger sister of margaret van eyck, with whose portrait, reproduced in plate vii., it should be compared. the carved frame of the mirror on the far wall enshrines ten small medallions, exquisite miniatures representing the agony in the garden, the betrayal and st. peter's assault on malchus, christ led before pilate, the scourging at the pillar, the carrying of the cross, calvary, the deposition, the entombment, the descent into limbo, and the resurrection. on the wall above the mirror we read the precise statement, "iohannes de eyck fuit hic ." no. in the national gallery, london. see page .] hubert van eyck was laid to rest in the crypt of the chapel for which he had painted his masterpiece, but in , when chapel and crypt had to make way for a new aisle, his remains were transferred to the churchyard, all except the bone of the right fore-arm, which was suspended in an iron casket in the porch of the cathedral. the brass plate bearing the well-known epitaph was at the same time placed in the transept, only to become the spoil of the calvinist iconoclasts in , when already the casket had somehow or other long since disappeared. but what of the painter's fame, to whose workshop laymen of the highest distinction had felt it a privilege to be admitted, about whose easel journeymen painters had flocked, and whom the leading contemporary artists of the netherlands had been proud to call master? during his lifetime, and for a considerable period after his death, his was a dominating influence in the art of the north, and van mander has it on record that whenever the polyptych was freely exposed to the public gaze crowds flocked to it from morning till night "like flies and bees in summer round a basket of figs and grapes." but in the stress and turmoil of succeeding generations his memory gradually faded away; his work, uncared for, lost hold on the imagination; even his great masterwork narrowly escaped destruction. even so it did not escape dismemberment, or profanation at the hands of the "restorer." saved from the fury of the iconoclasts in , and subsequently rescued from the calvinist leaders who contemplated its offer to queen elizabeth in acknowledgment of her subsidies, it eventually became the spoil of the french republicans; but after the battle of waterloo restitution was effected, and the main portion of the altar-piece, all that remains of it in ghent, was reinstated in its present position. the adam and eve panels, which in had offended the unsuspected modesty of joseph ii., and in consequence been deferentially removed, were ultimately ceded to the belgian government, and now rest in the royal gallery at brussels; while the other six shutter panels, which had been safeguarded through the french occupation, were shamelessly sold to a dealer in by the vicar-general and churchwardens--in the absence, it is right to say, of the bishop--for a paltry florins, subsequently changing hands for , francs, and eventually becoming the property of the prussian government for four times that amount. iv in the service of burgundy during the five years that followed the death of william iv., count of holland and zeeland, the usurping john of bavaria had so far succeeded in asserting his power as to be able to permit his interest to wander to the lighter occupations of life, the while the niece he had dispossessed was supplementing the tale of her political woes with all the domestic misery attendant upon a succession of unhappy marriages. thus in we find john van eyck attached to the count's household as painter and "varlet de chambre," and, as we gather from the prince's household accounts, engaged in the decoration of the palace at the hague from the th of october in that year till the th of september . another member of the household at the time was his kinsman, henry van eyck, the record of whose faithful services won him in february the post of master of the hunt to jacqueline's second husband, john iv., duke of brabant. john of bavaria died on the th of january , and, as might have been expected, civil war immediately broke out. the situation proving uncongenial, the whilom court painter lost no time in taking the road to flanders, where philip iii., duke of burgundy, was lording it as the most munificent patron of the arts and sciences and of letters. with a keen eye for available talent, this princely despot at once enlisted him in his service. no doubt he had become acquainted with the van eycks during his residence at ghent in the days of his heir-apparentship and before the younger artist's removal to the hague; probably the portrait of michelle of france, the duke's first wife (who died in july ), copies of which exist, was painted by john: at any rate we have philip's own words for the fact that it was personal knowledge of john's skill that determined his appointment on the th of may as painter and "varlet de chambre," with "all the honours, privileges, rights, profits, and emoluments" attaching to the office; moreover, with characteristic prudence, he secured a first lien on his services by awarding him a retaining fee--call it salary or call it pension--equivalent to £ , s. - / d. in contemporary english currency, or anything from ten to twelve times that sum at the present day. having made good his position, john's first move apparently was in the interest of his kinsman, for whom he secured the position of falconer in the ducal household. as we have no further concern with this member of the van eyck family, it may be said that in he was employed by the duke on a secret mission of some importance, that on the occasion of his marriage in to the daughter of the master-falconer philip made him a present of _l._, and that in he became baillie of the town and territory of termonde, continuing in that office, with the additional distinctions of councillor and chamberlain to the duke, besides a knighthood, until his death in november . the new court painter was something more than a master of his art: a man evidently of sterling qualities of mind and heart, of wide accomplishments and business capacity--in every way _persona grata_ at the most brilliant court of the age. not many months after his appointment he removed to lille by order and at the expense of the duke, by whom also was paid the rent of the house he occupied there from to , from midsummer to midsummer. of his professional work at this period nothing is known. the chroniclers in the duke's service did not concern themselves with such minor matters. as de comines himself boasted, they wrote "not for the amusement of brutes and people of low degree, but for princes and other persons of quality," little bethinking themselves what store the after ages would have set by their gossip had it busied itself with the doings, for example, of court painters. in other respects, however, we are better served, and in the early part of we find john van eyck commissioned, after the pious custom of the time, to undertake a pilgrimage in the interest of the ducal health, and in august of the same year despatched on some distant foreign mission. his return was saddened by tidings of the death of his brother hubert, who had passed away in his absence. further tokens of the ducal favour in took the form of presents of _l._ and _l._ respectively. duke philip's matrimonial ventures hitherto had not been crowned with success. neither his first wife, michelle of france, nor bonne of artois, whom he wedded and lost within the ten months (she died in september ), had provided him with an heir. anxious to secure the succession in the direct line, towards the middle of he despatched ambassadors to the court of alphonsus v., king of aragon, to obtain for him the hand of isabella, eldest daughter of james ii., count of urgel, and john van eyck was attached to the mission. arriving at barcelona in july, only to find that the earthquakes in catalonia had driven the court to escape by sea to valencia, the embassy followed in the royal track and reached this city early in august, in time for the floral games and bull-fight with which the jurats honoured the king. the mission led to nothing, not even to a portrait of the princess, who in september was married to peter, duke of coimbra, third son of john i., king of portugal; but it is interesting to find alphonsus v. in later years acquiring paintings by van eyck for his collection. the return journey included a short halt at tournay, where the magistrates very appropriately paid van eyck the compliment of a wine of honour on the th of october, st. luke's day, the local guild, moreover--robert campin, roger de la pasture, and james daret doubtless distinguished among its members--being favoured with his company in the celebration of the feast of its patron saint. a like wine of honour was presented to the ambassadors on the th. an illuminating dispute between the duke, the receiver of flanders, and john van eyck helped to relieve the tedium of life in the intervals of employment on foreign missions at this stage of the painter's career. philip's munificence was largely tempered by prudent frugality in the ordering of his household, and in the process of curtailing his domestic expenses in he published an edict bearing date december regulating its constitution and the wages of its members. by some inadvertence john's name was omitted from the new roll, and the receiver of flanders summarily stopped payment of his salary. an ineffectual protest was lodged, complaints followed reinforced by threats, to such good purpose that eventually, though not until after many months' persistent badgering, the aggrieved party emerged with flying colours from the triangular duel, securing letters patent under date march , , confirming his appointment and commanding the payment of all arrears. [illustration: plate vi.--the virgin and child, st. donatian and st. george, and canon g. van der paele (by john van eyck) the largest but one of the painter's works, unfortunately damaged by cleaning and clumsy retouching, while the general effect is marred by a thick coating of cloudy varnish. the white shame-cloth about the child's loins is a later addition. at the foot on the original frame we read: "hoc opus fecit fieri magister georgius de pala huius ecclesie canonicus per iohannem de eyck pictorem: ... completum anno °." in the town gallery, bruges. see page .] of the many paintings executed by john van eyck to which no precise date can be attached not one can with certainty be ascribed to this period, and yet it is difficult to believe that his duties in the three years he had already spent in the ducal service were exclusively of a non-professional character: surely the lost portrait of bonne of artois as duchess of burgundy, a copy of which is preserved in the store-room of the royal gallery at berlin, was his work. the years immediately following, however, yielded a rich harvest of brilliant pictures, first among which, chronologically, two portraits of the infanta isabella of portugal. philip, on matrimonial projects still intent, was now turning his attention from the courts of spain to the neighbouring one of portugal, and in the autumn of he decided on an embassy to john i. the mission was a princely one: at its head sir john de lannoy, councillor and first chamberlain; associated with whom were sir baldwin de lannoy, governor of lille--at some later date, too, a subject for our painter's brush--high dignitaries of the court and some of the leading gentry, a secretary, cupbearer, steward, clerk of accounts, and two pursuivants, and last, but not least, john van eyck, whose relative standing may be gathered from the fact that in the distribution of gratuities at the ceremony of leave-taking only that of the chief ambassador exceeded his, the respective sums being _l._ and _l._ the mission, distributed between two venetian galleys, sailed out of sluus harbour on the th of october and arrived the next day at sandwich, where three or four weeks were spent awaiting a further escort of two galleys from london. forced by contrary winds to seek shelter, first at shoreham and then at plymouth and falmouth, it was not till the nd of december that the convoy sailed out into the ocean. nine days later they were at bayona, a small seaport of galicia, where they delayed three days, their long sea journey at length terminating on the th at cascaës, whence they travelled overland to lisbon. in the absence of the court a letter explaining the object of the mission was entrusted to the herald flanders, who pursued the king from estremóz to arrayollos and aviz, in the province of alemtéjo, where the embassy at last had audience of his majesty on the th of january and presented to him the duke's letters soliciting the hand of his daughter isabella. the while the ambassadors were discussing their master's proposals with the king's council john van eyck was at his easel painting the infanta's portrait, two copies of which were executed and despatched to the court of burgundy, one by sea and the other by land, the better to ensure safe delivery, with duplicate accounts of the mission's doings to date. the duke's reply did not arrive until the th of june. a pilgrimage to saint james of compostella, and visits to john ii., king of castile, to the duke of arjona, a prince of the same royal blood, and to mohammed, king of the city of grenada, agreeably filled in the interval of waiting, van eyck naturally missing no opportunity of acquaintance with the leading painters of the day, enlarging the scope of his own observation, and no doubt leaving behind him the impress of his mastery. that the name of van eyck was already one to conjure with in these distant realms appears from the traditional ascription to him of a mass of painting certainly in his manner, but vastly too great to have ever been conceived by him within the limits of his stay in portugal. take that finest of all pictures there, the "fons vitae" in the board-room of the misericordia at oporto, and the series of twelve paintings in the episcopal palace at evoca, locally claimed for van eyck; likewise the pictures in the church of s. francisco at evoca, in the round church of the templars at thomar, and elsewhere, which are at any rate thought there to be not unworthy of his technique, and scarcely inferior to his best masterpieces for brilliancy of colouring and beauty of portraiture. the one regrettable circumstance in relation to this visit to portugal is that both portraits of the infanta are to be numbered among the lost certain treasures of his art. on their return to lisbon in the closing days of may the embassy rejoined the court at cintra on the ensuing th by special request of the king, and the duke of burgundy's reply came to hand the same evening: the princess's portrait had been to the duke's liking. all the preliminaries being now in order events sped on apace, to the signing of the marriage contract at lisbon on the th of july and the solemnisation of the espousals a day later; and after a period of brilliant festivities the bridal party, to the number of some two thousand, set sail for the land of flanders. a fortnight later four weather-beaten ships, the infanta's of the number, lumbered into vivero harbour in galicia, followed later by a fifth: the remainder of the original fleet of fourteen, after battling with contrary winds, had been effectually dispersed in the subsequent storm. again a start was made on the th of november, but the state of prostration to which sir john de lannoy had been reduced by sea-sickness compelled a further delay of over a fortnight at ribadeu. here the convoy was reinforced by two florentine galleys, also bound for flanders, and on the th they eventually made good their leave of portuguese waters. the afflicted ambassador, with members of his suite, had meanwhile transferred to the florentine galleys, a step that nearly cost them their lives, as these vessels narrowly escaped shipwreck in the vicinity of the land's end. the other five ships put into plymouth harbour on the th, but the florentines pushed on to sluus, where they cast anchor on the th of december, sir john de lannoy making all speed to the duke with the glad tidings of the infanta's safe arrival in english waters. the preparations for her reception were quickly followed by the coming of the bride, who safely accomplished her long journey's end on christmas day. in the midst of a carnival of popular rejoicing the union was solemnised at bruges on the th of january . john van eyck's absence had extended to slightly over fourteen months, during which, seemingly, the two portraits of the infanta were the sole yield of his art, except we couple with them the picture known as "la belle portugaloise" and another portrait of a portuguese maiden of which only verbal descriptions have come down to us. in the light of all the compelling evidence of john's consummate love of nature, amply displayed in the mass of landscape work that enriches many of his finest productions, one cannot help but be struck by the fact that he never appears to have realised the possibilities of seascape as an avenue of art. only in one small panel do we remember any deviation from the type of slow-running river water that he usually affected, and there we are shown small craft exposed to the mean spiteful choppiness of a wind-exposed estuary, an unconvincing picture from the utter monotony of treatment of beaten water. is it possible that the sea in all of its countless moods failed in its appeal to the aesthetic sense of the master, with its infinite variety of elemental energy and its chaste exuberance of exquisite colouring, with all the untold modulations, moreover, in that great symphony of the ocean which stirs so deeply the soul of the true poet? or was it that the message baffled the apprehension of the artist, and left him helpless to respond to the call? whatever the answer--or be it that, like his leader de lannoy, he found the sea so severe a taskmaster in the more matter-of-fact sense as to blunt the edge of his finer feelings--whatever the answer, prolific as art had already proved through the centuries by the manifold and luscious fruits it had borne, evidently it had not yet attained to the fulness of time in which it was to bring forth its apocalypse of the sea; nor was john van eyck its consecrate expositor. v period of great endeavour we have now reached the most important period in our painter's career, coinciding from end to end with his residence in the flemish capital, where he died on the th of july --a period of over ten years, in which he produced the ten dated masterpieces we are about to review, besides a large unfinished triptych and a number of other paintings to which no exact date can be affixed. hardly had he taken up his quarters in bruges than the duke summoned him to hesdin to receive instructions with regard to the work on which he was to be employed. meanwhile, no doubt, jodoc vyt had secured his services for the completion of the ghent polyptych: probably it had been an understood thing all along that john was to finish the work at the first opportunity. from the account of his movements during the five years that had elapsed since his brother's death it is obvious that he could have spared but very brief intervals of leisure for what must, after all, have been to him a labour of love; the conclusion being that whatever proportion of the sixteen months immediately following his return from portugal he was able to devote to the picture must stand for his share in the monumental altar-piece that at hubert's death had already been ten years in the making. [illustration: plate vii.--portrait of margaret van eyck the painter's wife (by john van eyck) the daughter of the subject of plate iv. and probably the sister of joan cenani in plate v., with both of which it should be compared. in the town gallery, bruges. see page .] in the early days of december cardinal albergati, special ambassador from pope martin v. to the courts of france, burgundy, and england with a view to bringing about a general peace, spent three days at the charterhouse in bruges as the honoured guest of the duke, from whom van eyck received urgent instructions to paint the portrait that is now the property of the imperial gallery at vienna. the time being all too short for the purpose, john had to be content with the exquisite drawing in silver-point on a white ground which is still preserved in the royal cabinet of prints at dresden, and which is particularly interesting because of the marginal memoranda in pencil embodying the most minute observations in the artist's own handwriting for his guidance in the execution of the painting. a remarkable portrait of a most remarkable man: for this prince of the church, a humble son of the austere order of the carthusians, though raised to the cardinalate and time after time called upon to serve the holy see on important embassies requiring consummate prudence in regard to matters of temporal policy, discarding his family arms for a simple cross, persevered to the end in such austerities of the cloister as the wearing of a hair shirt, total abstinence from flesh-meat, and the use of bare straw for his rude pallet: a type that must have appealed to van eyck, for the picture is a valuable index of the painter's genius for portraiture. in or about august of the following year the burgomasters and town council honoured john with a visit to his workshop, to inspect the various pictures he was then engaged on. among these, probably, was the portrait of "tymotheos," bearing date october , , acquired by the national gallery in for the modest sum of £ , s. (plate iii.), and the "our lady and child" in the collection at ince hall, ince blundell, liverpool, although it was not completed till . the latter is a delightful instance of the singular love of domesticity which van eyck exemplifies with supreme confidence and success in the arnolfini tableau, of which more anon. in the former we have a man verging on middle age, with dark complexion, blue eyes, angular features, heavy jaw, thick lips, prominent cheekbones and uplifted nose; presumably a greek humanist and a friend of the painter, from the man's christian name on the parapet being in greek character and the manuscript roll he holds in his hand, and from the inscription "léal souvenir": by no means a handsome type, but true to nature, and presented with all the charm that van eyck was able to endow his least promising subjects with, the modelling being excellent, and the harmonious colouring aptly relieved by a dark background. somewhere about this time john's thoughts, somewhat later in life than was the custom of the age, must have been turning on matrimony on his own account, for we find him purchasing a house in the parish of saint giles, a quarter much affected by painters, and shortly afterwards engaged on a portrait of the man appointed to be his father-in-law; and we can picture the duke, with whom he was ever a special favourite, being made the confidant of his intentions on the occasion of his visit to van eyck's workshop on the th of february , and pleasantly encouraging him with a promise to stand sponsor for his first-born. at any rate the wedding took place, and in due course sir peter de beaufremont, lord of chargny, held the infant at the baptismal font as proxy for philip, whose present took the form of six silver cups weighing marks, the order for payment of the account, amounting to _l._ _s._, to a local goldsmith, john peutin, bearing date june , ; and this is the nearest approach we can get at to the date of either event. indeed, we have no information as to the sex of the child, nor are we even acquainted with the maiden name of van eyck's wife, though it has been suggested, with some show of reason, that she was a sister of joan cenani, the wife of john arnolfini, already referred to; and it is only within quite recent days that the painting in the national gallery commonly spoken of as "the man with the turban" has been identified, on purely scientific lines, as the portrait of her father. if the reader will compare this likeness (plate iv.) with that of margaret van eyck (plate vii.) he must immediately be struck by the close resemblance that irresistibly suggests the relationship: the marvel is that the absolute identity of features in the two portraits escaped notice so long. the fanciful style of head-dress, except it was intended to symbolise occupation or profession, remains a puzzle; for it is difficult to conceive a man of his earnest and dignified disposition masquerading in strange attire for the mere sake of effect. the best authorities speak of him as a well-to-do merchant--specialising perhaps in eastern wares, such as crowded the marts of the flemish capital in the heyday of its prosperity--apparently about sixty-five years of age, the face being delicately painted in reddish-brown tones, and showing every detail with uttermost faithfulness, even to the pleats of the eyelids and at the root of the nose, and to every vein and wrinkle of the forehead. it is one of the finest exemplifications of john's rare gift of portraiture, the pleasing modesty of the artist--as revealed in the inscription "als ich kan" (to the best of my ability)--adding, indeed, to the charm of the picture, which bears date october , , and passed into the keeping of the national gallery in for the sum of £ . it is difficult to refrain from what would appear an over-use of the superlative in dealing with john van eyck's works, but if the writer might be allowed an indulgence he would unhesitatingly avail himself of it to the full in connection with the exquisite panel (plate v.) for the possession of which we are indebted to the honourable wounds which were the seal of major-general hay's part in the battle of waterloo. after wandering about europe as the cherished possession first of don diego de guevara, councillor of maximilian and archduke charles and major-domo of joan, queen of castile; next of margaret of austria, governess of the netherlands; subsequently of mary of hungary, and eventually of charles iii. of spain, it fell into the acquisitive hands of the french invader of the peninsula, and by some strange freak of fortune strayed to the apartments at brussels in which the gallant major-general was nursed to recovery, from whose landlord he purchased it, the national gallery in the end becoming its owner, in , for the trifling sum of £ . it is the picture of a newly married couple in a homely flemish interior, and in their attempts to solve an imaginary riddle critics have given their somewhat prolific powers of imagination an unusually free rein. for instance, the peculiar manner in which the bride sustains the gathered folds of her skirt--shown by comparison with figures of virgin saints in other of van eyck's paintings to have been a passing fashion of the day, if an ungraceful one--suggested to some the near approach of her lying-in, the bedstead in the background as well as the figure of st. margaret (a favourite of women in expectation of childbirth) surmounting the back of the arm-chair naturally tending to confirm the impression; in corroboration of which the attitude of husband and wife--though the direction of look in neither lends support to the theory--is explained as a venture in chiromancy, the adept bridegroom endeavouring to read in the lines of his wife's hand the future of the coming infant: a variant elucidation representing the husband as solemnly protesting his paternity to an inexistent crowd of neighbours at the open door, seeing that the ingenious reflection of the scene in the circular convex mirror on the far wall reveals but two additional figures, probably the painter and his apprentice. without recourse to fancy, the attitude of bridegroom and bride, hand in hand, might readily have been seen to symbolise the perfect union begot of a happy marriage. john's love of domesticity is abundantly displayed in all the detail of the work--the chandelier, with lighted taper, dependent from the ceiling, the aumbry with its couple of oranges, the cushioned bench by the window, the dainty pair of red shoes on the carpet by the bedside, the pattens of white wood with black leather latchets in the foreground, even to the dusting-brush hung on the arm-chair, and the pet griffin terrier, all helping to heighten the intimacy of the scene; while the cherry-tree in full bloom, seen through the open window against a sky of clear blue, serves to fix the season of the year in which the picture was painted. the portraits are of john arnolfini and joan cenani: the former, in later years, was knighted and appointed a chamberlain at his court by duke philip, and from the circumstance of his burial in the chapel of the lucchese merchants at the austin friars' we may presume both his nationality and calling; the latter, considered in respect of certain features, especially the eyes, eyebrows, and nose, suggests a sufficient likeness to warrant the surmise that she was a younger sister of van eyck's wife. the panel, which is in an almost perfect state of preservation, is a fine example of the painter's vigour of delineation and perfect blending of colour, both as regards the interior and the figures, the transparency of shadow in the flesh-tints showing the utmost delicacy of touch. the picture bears date . [illustration: plate viii.--the virgin and child, and chancellor rolin (by -- van eyck) whether the work of hubert or of john is still in dispute: hence an interesting example for the critical student of their respective arts. nicholas rolin was born in , was created chancellor of burgundy and brabant on december , , and died january , . the landscape in the background is distinctly reminiscent of the scenery about maastricht, the alma mater of the van eycks. the general effect of the picture is marred by an unpleasant coating of yellow varnish. date uncertain. in the louvre, paris. see page .] about this time van eyck was once more in trouble with the receiver of flanders and his officials. philip, adding one more to the many marks of favour reserved for his predilect painter, had bestowed on him a life-pension of _l._ in lieu of the salary of _l._ parisis awarded him at the time of his engagement. in the absence of any explanation of this enormous increase, the mystified accountants at lille declined registration of the letters patent; but they were speedily brought to their senses by john's threat, without further waste of words, to throw up his appointment there and then: so they referred the matter back to the duke, who by letters of march , , commanded immediate registration of the patent and payment of the pension under penalty of his extreme displeasure, protesting that, being about to employ van eyck on works of the highest importance, he "could not find another painter equally to his taste or of such excellence in his art and science." matters being thus satisfactorily composed, john was free to attend to his patron's behests; in addition to which he had the gilding and polychroming in of six of the eight statues of counts and countesses of flanders executed by local sculptors for the front of the new townhouse, probably from his own designs. yet another present of six silver cups, perhaps as a salve for his wounded feelings, and employment on a further secret mission to distant parts in testify to the duke's abiding trust and approbation. these undertakings, however, did not exhaust the painter's marvellous capacity for work, for this year also witnessed the completion of one of the largest of his pictures, the altar-piece to the order of canon van der paele, for the collegiate church of saint donatian at bruges (plate vi.), which since its recovery from the french in has graced the collection of the local town gallery. john's love of the romanesque probably accounts for his neglect of the architecture of that church in designing the apse of the transept in which the virgin and child sit enthroned, but the scenic effect produced by his treatment of the series of round arches on cylindrical columns and of the pillared ambulatory goes far to compensate for the omission; the beauty of the picture being further enhanced by the ornate carving of the capitals and throne, the gorgeous display of cloth-of-gold and tapestry, and the rich variety of dress and costume, culminating in all the splendour of the archiepiscopal vestments, yet not so overpowering as to dwarf interest in the noble countenance of the wearer. howbeit, the artist was singularly unfortunate in the subjects appointed to pose for the virgin and st. george, while the divine child is probably the least pleasing of his infant christs. st. donatian, however, and the homely yet dignified ecclesiastic typified as the donor, largely redeem the figure-work from the charge of insignificance. it would appear that the life-size bust of canon van der paele at hampton court palace was a study for the full-length portrait, for at the time the altar-piece was being executed the worthy canon was already so feeble that since september he had been dispensed by the chapter from attendance in choir on the score of infirmity and advanced age. the "portrait of john de leeuw, goldsmith," in the imperial gallery at vienna ( ), and two charming pictures in the antwerp museum--"saint barbara" ( ) and the "our lady and child by a fountain" ( )--come next in order of the artist's dated pieces, the series closing with the "portrait of margaret van eyck" (plate vii.) in the town gallery at bruges, which bears date june , : a work of marvellous delicacy and finish, and a tribute of love worthy alike of the painter-husband and his devoted wife; the latter an intelligent type of the competent flemish housewife, clear and steady of eye and firm of mouth, portrayed with infinite minuteness and not the least concession to vanity. formerly the property of the guild of painters and saddlers, it used annually to be exhibited in their chapel on st. luke's day, amply secured, if we believe the popular legend, with chain and padlock, because of the companion picture, van eyck's own portrait, having been stolen through lack of similar precautions. the sad loss to art sustained by john van eyck's death on the th of july is accentuated by the unfinished state in which he left the great triptych on which he was engaged for nicholas van maelbeke, provost of saint martin's at ypres, his largest painting and, had he but lived to complete it, in every respect his masterpiece. as a member of the duke's household john was buried within the precincts of the collegiate church of st. donatian, and his remains finally laid to rest some months later within the building, near the font; and an anniversary requiem mass, founded at the time, continued to be celebrated until the french invasion in . in death as in life duke philip never forgot his faithful friend and servant: within a few days of his decease he sought to solace the widow's grief with a gratuity of _l._ in token of his appreciation of the great master whose death they all mourned, and years after he graciously assisted livina, the one surviving child of the marriage, and a sister of his own godchild, to enter the convent of st. agnes at maaseyck. a note in conclusion however representative the great masterpieces which it has been possible to notice within the scope of this monograph, we are far yet from having covered the art of the van eycks; and, strangely enough, the same difficulty that is met in apportioning to each his share in the great polyptych recurs when seeking to ascribe a number of other paintings which are certainly the work of one or other of the brothers. the study of these will always appeal to the intelligent student of their art, and as a typical example of the group we present the altar-piece known as "the blessed virgin and child and chancellor rolin" (plate viii.), in the louvre, paris: a remarkable work in respect of types, of portraiture, and of landscape, every detail of which has been elaborated to a degree scarcely conceivable. many other of their paintings are to be found scattered over europe, along with much that is the work of copyist, pupil, or imitator, too often with idle claims to authenticity; for the influence of the van eycks was coextensive with the art world of their day. truthfulness, it has been observed, was the dominant note of their art, and by their sedulous cultivation of truth they dominated the art of their age. with john this love of truth amounted well-nigh to a passion; and the reproach of the carping critic to whom beauty of feature alone makes for beauty of portraiture fails of its effect on the true artist mind, to whom the faithful record of all trifling blemishes of the face is but an added testimony and guarantee of the fidelity of the portrait as a portrait of the inner as well as of the outer man. even a great painter may enhance his present popularity and widen his clientèle by a flattering suppression of personal disfigurement, but only to the injury of his fame and the hurt of his own self-respect. john van eyck scorned to grovel at the feet of vanity, and with this acknowledgment of the sense and honesty of his sitters he combined the fulfilment of a duty to posterity, for with the true instinct of genius he knew that he was painting not for his own brief day, but for all time, and that, as the founder of a great school of portraiture and the father of landscape art, it behoved him to set an example of the cardinal principle which should direct them. under any conditions john van eyck's genius must have asserted itself, but happily it was fortunate in its setting, for the brilliancy of the great burgundian court and the sumptuous patronage of duke philip in the full blaze of his power and glory were invaluable aids to the production and dissemination of his art. nor did success spoil his sterling nature: amidst all the triumphs of his life his character remained singularly free from the tarnish of empty pride, to the last the exquisite yield of his art being given to the world in a charming spirit of apology so aptly embodied in the simple motto of his choosing, "als ich kan." and who among all the great painters of the after ages has done better? the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh * * * * * transcriber's note: plate iv. reference to page changed to , as that is the page which actually references this plate. masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare fra filippo lippi ( - ) "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. bellini. george hay. botticelli. henry b. binns. boucher. c. haldane macfall. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. chardin. paul g. konody. constable. c. lewis hind. corot. sidney allnutt. da vinci. m. w. brockwell. delacroix. paul g. konody. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. fra angelico. james mason. fra filippo lippi. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. gainsborough. max rothschild. greuze. alys eyre macklin. hogarth. c. lewis hind. holbein. s. l. bensusan. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. ingres. a. j. finberg. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. le brun (vigÉe). c. haldane macfall. leighton. a. lys baldry. luini. james mason. mantegna. mrs. arthur bell. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. millais. a. lys baldry. millet. percy m. turner. murillo. s. l. bensusan. perugino. selwyn brinton. raeburn. james l. caw. raphael. paul g. konody. rembrandt. josef israels. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. romney. c. lewis hind. rossetti. lucien pissarro. rubens. s. l. bensusan. sargent. t. martin wood. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. titian. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. van dyck. percy m. turner. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. watteau. c. lewis hind. watts. w. loftus hare. whistler. t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--the virgin adoring the infant saviour (in the accademia, florence) in this earliest known picture by filippo lippi, the painter is still entirely under the influence of his youthful training. it is just like an illuminated miniature on a large scale, and is lacking in unity of design or pictorial vision. note the way in which the figure of the madonna is detached from the background, without having any real plastic life; and how awkwardly the monk is placed in the corner. the rocky landscape, with its steep perspective, is still quite in the spirit of the early primitives, although certain realistic details, like the cut-down tree-stump behind the virgin, and the reflection of the sky in the water, show his loving observation of nature. the picture was for a long time attributed to masaccio's master, masolino.] filippo lippi by p. g. konody illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. ii. iii. iv. list of illustrations plate i. the virgin adoring the infant saviour frontispiece in the accademia, florence page ii. st. john the baptist with six other saints in the national gallery, london iii. the vision of st. bernard in the national gallery, london iv. the annunciation in the national gallery, london v. the coronation of the virgin in the accademia, florence vi. the virgin and child in the pitti palace, florence vii. the virgin and child with two angels in the uffizi gallery, florence viii. the virgin and child with angels and two abbots in the louvre, paris [illustration] i in vasari's gossipy _lives of the painters_, and indeed in most art histories written before the era of scientific critical research, there is an inclination, in the absence of documentary material, to reconstruct the old masters' characters and lives from the evidence of their extant works. many a charming legend, that was originally suggested by the expression of the painter's personality in his art, and has been handed down from generation to generation, had to be shelved as dusty archives yielded new knowledge of indisputable prosaic facts to the diligent searcher. whilst the serious student owes a debt of deep gratitude to those who devote their time and labour to the investigation of documentary evidence, and to establishing critical standards for the sifting of the great masters' works from those of their followers and imitators, the elimination of romance from the history of art is a hindrance rather than a help to the ordinary person who cares not a jot about morphological characteristics, but loves nevertheless to spend an hour now and then in communion with the old masters. for him, paradoxical though it may seem, there is more significant truth in many an entirely fictitious anecdote, than in the dry facts recorded by the conscientious historian. thus we know now that domenico veneziano outlived andrea dal castagno by several years, and could therefore not have been foully murdered by his jealous rival. but does not the fable of this act of violence, suggested no doubt by the fierceness and rugged strength of andrea's art, help the layman to understand and appreciate the qualities which constitute the greatness of that art? we know now that fra angelico, far from accounting it a sin to paint from the nude, was an eager student of human anatomy; but the stories told of his piety and angelic sweetness have become so fused with everybody's conception of the dominican friar's art, that even those to whom the spiritual significance of art is a sealed book, search almost instinctively for signs of religious fervour and exaltation in fra angelico's paintings. the stories of sodoma's habits of life and of his strange doings at mont' oliveto belong probably to the realm of fiction, but they serve to explain and accentuate the worldly tendencies of his artistic achievement. in these instances, to which many others might easily be added, the artists' personality and manner of life have been fancifully reconstructed from the character of their work. very different is the case of fra filippo lippi. here criticism has seized upon certain authentic facts of the carmelite friar's life and amorous adventures--facts that in their main current have been established beyond the possibility of dispute, even though they have been embroidered upon by imaginative pens--and has dealt with his art in the light of that knowledge, reading into his paintings not only his artistic emotions, but his personal desires and passions. only thus can it be explained that generation after generation of writers on art have misconstrued the exquisite and touching innocence and virgin purity of his madonna type into an expression of sensuality. again and again we read about the pronounced worldliness of fra filippo's religious paintings, about their lack of spiritual significance and devout feeling. [illustration: plate ii.--st. john the baptist with six other saints (in the national gallery, london) the companion picture to the "annunciation" lunette is the first rendering in italian art of a santa conversatione in the open air. it is just an assembly of seven saints, without any real inner connection, the two pairs at the sides--ss. francis and lawrence on the left, and ss. anthony and peter martyr on the right--being absorbed in their own doings and paying no attention to the blessing which st. john apparently bestows upon ss. cosmas and damianus, the patron saints of the medici family. the little glimpse of a landscape background behind the marble bench affords evidence of fra filippo's close study of nature even at that early period.] vasari, of course, is the fountain-head of this misconception of the carmelite's art. according to the aretine biographer, "it was said that fra filippo was much addicted to the pleasures of sense, insomuch that he would give all he possessed to secure the gratification of whatever inclination might at the moment be predominant, but if he could by no means accomplish his wishes, he would then depict the object which had attracted his attention in his paintings, and endeavour by discoursing and reasoning with himself to diminish the violence of his inclination. it was known that, while occupied in the pursuit of his pleasures, the works undertaken by him received little or none of his attention." it so happens that many of the discreditable incidents of the friar's life, recorded by vasari, have been confirmed by documentary evidence. there is not a shadow of doubt that fra filippo did abduct the nun lucrezia buti from her convent; that filippino lippi was the offspring of this illicit union; and that the frate subsequently did not avail himself of the special papal dispensation to wed the nun. there is also abundant proof to show that fra filippo, in spite of the high esteem in which he was held as an artist, and which caused him to be entrusted with many a remunerative commission, was for ever in financial straits, was involved in many vexatious law cases, attempted to cheat his own assistants, and had no hesitation to break faith with his patrons. but all this does not affect his art. to read sensuality into his types of womanhood can only be the result of prejudice, of approaching his pictures in the light of the knowledge gathered from the pages of the chroniclers. worldly he is compared with the pure, exalted spirituality of the dominican fra angelico, but only in so far as he belonged already to the new era which had discovered, and revelled in, the visible beauty of this world of ours, whilst fra angelico, his contemporary, still belongs to the earlier age that looked to the empyrean for all true happiness. the art of both masters is planted in gothic soil, though it bore different fruit, that of fra angelico being still essentially gothic, though often tinged with a renaissance flavour, whilst that of fra filippo has all the richness and fullness of the renaissance, of which he was one of the great initiators. that such conceptions as the virgin in national gallery "annunciation," or the lovely madonna in the _tondo_ at the palazzo pitti, and many other authentic works by the master, are lacking in spirituality of expression, cannot be seriously maintained by anybody who approaches these pictures with an open mind and judges the artist by his achievement, not by his manner of life. even mr. berenson, the most authoritative modern critic of italian art, denies fra filippo a "profound sense of either material or spiritual significance--the essential qualifications of the real artist," although he admits in the same essay[ ] that "his real place is with the genre painters, only his genre _was that of the soul_, as that of others--of benozzo gozzoli, for example--was of the body." browning, with the true poet's intuition, states the case of fra filippo more clearly than the vast majority of professional critics from vasari to the present day, when he makes the friar exclaim: "... now is this sense, i ask? a fine way to paint soul, by painting body so ill, the eye can't stop there, must go further and can't fare worse!... * * * * * why can't a painter lift each foot in turn, left foot and right foot, go a double step, make his flesh liker and his soul more like, both in their order?... * * * * * suppose i've made her eyes all right and blue, can't i take breath and try to add life's flash, and then add soul and heighten them threefold?" ii whereas all questions concerning fra filippo's artistic education remain largely a matter of conjecture and deduction, there is no lack of documentary material for a fairly accurate reconstruction of his life. vasari remains, of course, the basis for any such attempt; but the archives of florence and prato have yielded a rich harvest of contemporary records, on the strength of which it is possible to clear up the contradictions and to correct the numerous errors that have crept into vasari's life of _the florentine painter, fra filippo lippi_. filippo was the son of tommaso di lippo, a butcher in a poor quarter of florence, and of mona antonia di bindo sernigi. none of the various dates given in his wonted loose fashion by vasari for the birth of the artist, accords with ascertainable facts, which point to the years to , with probability favouring the earlier date. according to a document in the archivio di stato in florence, confirmed by an entry in the account books of the convent of the carmine, in which "philippus tomasi" is stated to have received his garments at the expense of that establishment, filippo took the habit in the year . there are no reasons to doubt milanesi's well-reasoned suggestion that the artist was fifteen years of age when he took the vow--which would place the year of his birth about . "by the death of his father," continues vasari, "he was left a friendless orphan at the age of two years, his mother having also died shortly after his birth. the child was for some time under the care of a certain mona lapaccia, his aunt, the sister of his father, who brought him up with great difficulty till he had attained his eighth year, when, being no longer able to support the burden of his maintenance, she placed him in the convent of the carmelites." since, however, an income-tax return, discovered by milanesi, proves mona antonia, filippo's mother, to have been still alive in , and apparently in tolerably comfortable circumstances, this account of filippo's sad childhood must be relegated to the sphere of fiction. destined for the church, he was presumably at the age of eight placed with the carmelites to be prepared for his vocation. that he showed no inclination for book-learning and "manifested the utmost dullness and incapacity in letters," and that he preferred to daub his and the other boys' books with caricatures, need not be doubted, for his extant letters prove him to have been strikingly illiterate even for his days. nor is filippo the only artist who evinced an early inclination for the artistic profession in this manner. [illustration: plate iii.--the vision of st. bernard (in the national gallery, london) the vision of st. bernard, although at present the mere ghost of a picture from which almost every vestige of the original colour has faded away, is an important landmark in fra filippo's life, as it is one of the few works about which we have definite dates. it is mentioned by vasari as being one of two pictures intended to be placed over doors in the palazzo della signoria, florence. a contemporary record states, that on may , , fra filippo received lire for having painted "the figure of the virgin and of st. bernard." the companion picture, which represented the "annunciation," has disappeared.] and now vasari loses himself in a tangle of incorrect and contradictory assertions. first, that the brancacci chapel of the carmine had "then" just been finished by masaccio, and so delighted the young carmelite that he "frequented it daily for his recreation," and so completely absorbed masaccio's style "that many affirmed the spirit of masaccio to have entered the body of fra filippo." at this period he painted several frescoes in the carmine, and one in _terra verde_ in the cloister of that church. as a result of the high praise bestowed upon him for these early efforts, "he formed his resolution at the age of seventeen, and boldly threw off the clerical habit." to begin with, the account books of the carmine show that fra filippo remained at that monastic establishment at least until , when he was about twenty-five years of age. that even then he did not throw off his clerical habit is clearly proved by the fact that he subsequently held the posts of abbot of s. quirico a legnaja, and of chaplain to the nuns of sta. margherita at prato. of the early frescoes recorded by vasari and other writers, every vestige has disappeared, so that it is impossible to trace through them the supposed direct or indirect teaching of masaccio. but there is something wrong about the dates. masaccio wrought his carmine frescoes between and , so that his could not possibly have been the earliest influence upon the young monk's impressionable mind. nor is there even a hint of masaccio's monumental style in the earliest known works by filippo: the two "nativities" in the florence academy, and the "annunciation" in the pinakothek in munich. that fra filippo, like all the masters of the florentine renaissance, was, in his later life, powerfully influenced by the genius of masaccio, is only natural, and cannot be doubted by anybody who has seen his frescoes at prato. for his earliest inspiration, however, one has to look for other sources; and modern criticism is pretty well agreed upon this point, that the pictures painted by the friar in his youthful years are based on the trecento tradition, and that the only late giottesque who could have been his master is the camaldolese, lorenzo monaco. lorenzo monaco's teaching, at any rate, is suggested by fra filippo's first "nativity" at the florence academy, which suggests the methods of the school of miniaturists in which lorenzo had been trained, although these tendencies are clearly tempered by the influence of masolino, masaccio's precursor in the decoration of the brancacci chapel, and also of fra angelico. indeed, this "nativity" was actually for a long time attributed to masolino. throughout his life, fra filippo, in his steady advance from giottism to such triumphantly vital achievement as his prato frescoes, evinced the greatest eagerness to absorb what was newest and best. no doubt he watched masolino at work at the carmine, and later on masaccio, whose influence clearly appears in fra filippo's mature work. but he also learnt from the example of all the other masters who wrought in and near florence in the early part of the fifteenth century. sir frederick cook's _tondo_ clearly shows the influence of gentile da fabriano. of fra angelico we are reminded by the profound devotional feeling and mystic intentness of his early works. from pier dei franceschi he acquired afterwards the feeling for atmospheric effects which was unknown to the giottesques, to fra angelico, and even to masaccio. nor did he fail to study the reliefs of donatello, of which we are forcibly reminded by the "madonna and child with the laughing angel" at the uffizi. and since miss mendelssohn has shown that the dancing salome in the prato fresco is practically copied from the figure of "luna descending from her chariot" in the relief on the endymion sarcophagus, we have proof that lippi was also a student of the antique. the patronage which the powerful medici family, and especially cosimo de' medici, bestowed upon fra filippo lippi, probably dates back to the time when the friar was still working within the walls of the carmine. the "nativity" (no. ) at the florence academy was painted in the early thirties of the fifteenth century for cosimo's wife, who commissioned it for the camaldoli hermitage. for cosimo himself he painted the two lunettes now in the national gallery: "the annunciation" and "st. john the baptist with six other saints," which were originally placed over two doors in the riccardi palace. other pictures by their protégé were sent by members of the medici family as gifts to the king of naples and other italian princes. and there is no lack of documentary evidence that the friar frequently petitioned members of that powerful family for pecuniary or other assistance, for his disorderly habits of life brought him into many a scrape, and resulted in constant financial stress. thus in a letter of august , , to piero de' medici, he describes himself as "one of the poorest friars in florence," whom god left to look after six unmarried, infirm, and useless nieces. the object of the letter was to beg his patron to be supplied with wine and corn on credit. when cosimo was banished from florence in , and took up his residence at padua, he was accompanied by a small army of courtiers and artists. it is very probable that fra filippo was of their number. vasari's brief reference to paintings executed by the master in padua is supported by filarete and the anonimo morelliano, and may therefore be relied upon, although every trace of these works has vanished. there is nothing in the extant records of the artist's movements to make his presence at padua in - appear impossible. on the other hand, vasari's story of filippo's capture by pirates on the coast of the marches of ancona, his long-extended captivity and final liberation by his master whose favour he had gained by the excellence of art, and his visit to naples on the home journey, belongs to the realm of fable. in or before , fra filippo was certainly back in florence, since the _deliberazioni_ of the company of orsanmichele show that in that year he was commissioned to paint the great altarpiece of the "madonna and child, with angels and two abbots" for the barbadori chapel in santo spirito, which is now one of the treasures of the louvre. it is this picture to which domenico veneziano refers in a letter to piero de' medici, dated perugia, april , , asking to be entrusted with the commission for an altarpiece, since "fra filippo and fra giovanni have much work to do, and especially fra filippo has a panel for santo spirito which, should he work day and night, will not be done in five years, so great is the work." yet in the following year we find him writing a begging letter to the same piero de' medici. [illustration: plate iv.--the annunciation (in the national gallery, london) this charming lunette and its companion, "st. john the baptist and six saints," were painted for the decoration of an apartment in the riccardi palace, by order of cosimo de' medici, whose crest--three feathers in a ring--is introduced in the stucco ornamentation of the balustrade. they were painted about , towards the end of fra filippo's first florentine period, and show far greater richness of colour and better management of light than his earlier known works at the florence academy. the perspective is still faulty, and the vase in the centre of the picture is terribly out of drawing. it has been suggested that this picture and the "seven saints" were the very panels on which filippo lippi was at work when he effected his romantic escape from cosimo's palace, which is the subject of browning's well-known poem.] there can be no doubt that the gay friar led the life of a true "bohemian"--that he was fond of women and wine, and wasted his substance in the company of his boon companions. he spent his money as rapidly as he earned it, and was therefore in constant financial difficulties, which involved him in no end of litigation. his most prosperous years apparently began in , when, probably through cosimo's intervention, pope eugene iv. made him rector of the parish church of s. quirico a legnaja, of which post he was deprived by papal decree as a result of an action brought against him by his assistant, giovanni da rovezzano. giovanni sued him for the amount of forty florins due to him for work done, and fra filippo did not shrink from producing a forged receipt. to this at least he confessed on the rack "when he saw his intestines protruding from his wounds." whether much weight can be attached to a confession obtained by such means is another question, but there is nothing in the career of fra filippo to make such disgraceful conduct appear impossible. an appeal to the pope led to another investigation of the case. the judgment of the curia was confirmed, the pope referring on this occasion to fra filippo as a painter _qui plurima et nefanda scelera perpetravit_. nevertheless, some years later, our artist is still mentioned as _rettore e commendatario di san quirico a legnaja_. from which it may be assumed that the judgment deprived him merely of his spiritual office, and left him in enjoyment of the revenue connected with the post. the ups and downs of filippo lippi's career in the fifties of the fourteen-hundreds are more than a little confusing. of commissions there was no lack. and certain emoluments must have come to him from his ecclesiastic appointments. his disgraceful conduct towards giovanni da rovezzano, and the notorious looseness of his morals--one need only recall the well-known anecdote of his escape through a window of the medici palace in search of amorous adventure--did not stand in the way of his being made chaplain to the nuns of s. niccolò de' fieri, in ,[ ] and of santa margherita in prato, in . he bought a little house at prato in , and another in . during this whole period he had so much work on hand that he was unable to fulfil his contracts, which led to further unpleasant litigations. yet in , as we learn from neri di lorenzo di bicci's diaries, he found it advisable to deposit some gold-leaf with the said neri, in order to save it from seizure by his creditors. on july , , he writes to giovanni de' medici to ask for an advance payment for work in hand--the same work, presumably, over the execution of which he was so tardy that francesco cantamanti had to visit his studio daily to urge its completion on behalf of his patron. in his report to giovanni de' medici, dated august , , cantamanti states that on the preceding day fra filippo's studio was seized by his landlord for arrears of rent. [illustration: plate v.--the coronation of the virgin (in the accademia, florence) the crowning achievement of filippo lippi's second florentine period, the great "coronation of the virgin," was commissioned by francesco de maringhi, chaplain to the nuns of sant' ambrogio, who died long before the completion of the picture, having provided in his will of july , , for the manner in which settlement should be effected. thus, in , filippo was already engaged upon this altarpiece, which he did not complete before . on june of that year he was paid the stipulated fee of lire. although the picture has suffered considerably, it is even in its present condition one of the most entrancing creations of florentine art. that the painter himself was proud of the result of his labours, may be gathered from the fact that he introduced his own portrait in a prominent position. in borghini's _riposo_, published in , it is stated that the painter's name, "frater filippus," was then to be seen somewhere near the centre of the picture.] meanwhile the carmelite's art had made prodigious progress. filippo lippi, the pupil of the last giottesque, was now swimming abreast of the mighty current of the renaissance. if his early madonnas recall something of the spirituality and naïve faith of fra angelico, the altarpieces of his later florentine period, and, above all, the superb "coronation of the virgin," painted for sant' ambrogio, and now in the florence academy, are inspired by the beauty of this visible world. the atmosphere is of this earth, and not of the celestial regions. his types are no longer ethereal, but realistically robust. in the "coronation of the virgin" he has left us a portrait of himself at the age of about forty, in the figure of the kneeling monk on the left, towards whom an angel raises a scroll with the lettering is perfecit opus. the features are rather coarse and heavy, but scarcely express that low sensuality which his biographers have tried to read into them. the expression of his eyes in particular is intelligent, frank, and good-natured. iii the sant' ambrogio altarpiece must have added enormously to the reputation which the carmelite painter enjoyed among his contemporaries. it was only natural that he should have been chosen by the _proposto_ gemignano inghirami and by the magistrates of prato to undertake the fresco decoration in the choir of the cathedral of that city, when fra angelico, in spite of repeated urging, refused to accept this important commission, his time being fully occupied by the completion of the series of frescoes at the vatican. in the spring of , fra filippo, accompanied by his assistant, fra diamante, took up his abode at prato, and entered upon the most eventful and artistically the most significant period of his career. as we have seen, he still kept up his workshop in florence, where his temporary presence is repeatedly testified by documentary evidence during the next few years. thus, although he began to work in the choir chapel immediately after his arrival at prato, as may be seen from the entry in the _libra delle spese_ in the _archivio del patrimonio ecclesiastico_ in prato, recording under date of may , , the payment of fifty lire to "fra diamante di feo da terranuova, gharzone di fra filippo di tommaso," his frequent absence and general dilatoriness were the cause of so much delay that the decoration of the chapel was not completed before , a year before the master's death. during this period of sixteen years fra filippo continued to be employed by the members of the medici family, by the _proposto_ gemignano inghirami, and by many other patrons in prato and pistoja. in addition to his frequent absence in florence, he no doubt undertook several other journeys, of one of which at least we have certain knowledge: his sojourn in at perugia, whither he was called to value bonfigli's frescoes in the palazzo del comune--an honourable task which devolved upon him as the sole survivor of the three artists chosen for it by the signory of perugia, the other two being fra angelico, who died in , and domenico veneziano, whose death occurred in the spring of the very year that witnessed the completion of bonfigli's frescoes. but quite apart from such interruptions in the execution of that superb series of frescoes at prato, depicting scenes from the lives of st. john the baptist and st. stephen, as were due to professional causes, there was enough excitement and disturbance in the artist's private life to account at least in part for his tardiness in completing the work which constitutes his greatest claim to immortal fame. for prato was the scene of the great romance of fra filippo's life, by which his name has become familiar even to those who know little of, and care less about, his artistic achievement. the abduction of the nun, lucrezia buti, by the amorous monk, who was then entering upon the sixth decade of his life, is on the whole correctly recorded by vasari, and has formed the subject of many a literary romance and pictorial rendering. subsequent doubts thrown upon it by such eminent critics as, among others, messrs. crowe and cavalcaselle, who maintain that the story rests upon the sole testimony of vasari, and that "contingent circumstances tend to create considerable doubts of vasari's truth," almost succeeded in relegating the amorous friar's daring exploit into the realm of fiction, until milanesi's researches established the substantial truth of the romantic story. the facts, briefly stated, are as follows: on the death of the florentine silk merchant, francesco buti, in , his son, antonio, found himself charged with the responsibility of a not too profitable business, and a large family of twelve brothers and sisters. the eldest of these sisters, margherita, was married off to antonio doffi in , and in the same year two other sisters, spinetta, born , and lucrezia, born , were placed with the nuns of sta. margherita at prato, antonio paying the required fee of fifty florins for each of them. needless to say, the two girls thus committed to a living tomb at the very time when life beckoned to them with all its joys and seductions, were not consulted in this matter any more than was fra filippo when, as a mere child, he had to enter the establishment of the carmelites in florence. presumably the two lively, handsome girls had no more vocation for the cloistral life than the pleasure-loving friar--which circumstance may be pleaded in mitigation of the scandalous offence of which they subsequently became guilty. whether fra filippo had become acquainted with the buti maidens before they entered the nunnery of sta. margherita, which was then in charge of the abbess bartolommea de' bovacchiesi, it is impossible to say. certain it is, on the other hand, that the madonna of the pitti _tondo_, painted in , already bears the features of the model who, in other pictures, has been identified as lucrezia buti. from this it may be assumed that fra filippo, who came to prato only a year after the two sisters, and who lived there in a house opposite the convent of sta. margherita, must have known lucrezia at least four years before she sat to him for the "madonna della cintola" in , the year of her abduction. it is quite possible that the love-struck monk used the influence of his powerful protectors to secure his appointment as chaplain of sta. margherita, so as to facilitate intercourse with the object of his affection and desire. nor did his by no means untainted reputation and the papal stigma (_qui plurima et nefanda scelera perpetravit_) stand in the way of the coveted post being actually conferred upon him in the year . in the same year, as soon as he had entered upon his new duties, the abbess of sta. margherita commissioned the new chaplain to paint an altarpiece for the high altar of the convent church. this afforded fra filippo a welcome opportunity for carrying out what must have been a carefully and cunningly devised scheme. he begged the abbess to allow lucrezia buti, "who was exceedingly beautiful and graceful," to sit for the head of the madonna; and, having obtained this favour, presumably did not fail to advance his cause. his clerical habit and the great difference of age between the monk and the nun--he was then about fifty, and lucrezia twenty-one--may have helped to disarm suspicion: they did not prevent the young nun from taking the fatal step which was bound to bring disgrace and dishonour upon her; which, indeed, was accounted a crime, for lucrezia was not, as vasari has it, "either a novice or a boarder," but one of the eight "choral and professed nuns" who formed the establishment of santa margherita. [illustration: plate vi.--the virgin and child (in the pitti palace, florence) painted at prato, soon after the abduction of lucrezia buti by the amorous monk, the central group of this _tondo_ may be reasonably assumed to portray lucrezia and filippo lippi. the incidents in the background, which have been a source of inspiration for many succeeding artists, including raphael himself, who echoes the figure of the basket-carrying woman in his "incendio del borgo," depict the birth of mary, and the meeting of st. anne and joachim. the motif of the birth of the virgin is in reality a convenient excuse for the painting of a charmingly rendered scene of florentine domestic life. the distribution of light and the harmonising of the strong colour-notes are managed with consummate skill.] the plot came to a successful issue on the st of may , during the celebration of the feast of the madonna della cintola--our lady of the girdle. on that day it was the custom to exhibit at the cathedral a sacred relic, purporting to be the miraculous girdle given to st. thomas by the virgin, who appeared to him after her death. that day was one of the rare occasions when the nuns of sta. margherita left the precincts of their convent to join the worshippers in the duomo. on may , , there were eight nuns who set out to pray before the sacred girdle--but seven only returned to the convent. lucrezia buti had been carried off by her monkish lover to his house; and if any attempts were made to induce her to return, either to sta. margherita, or to her relatives in florence, she lent a deaf ear to these appeals. vasari relates that "the father of lucrezia was so grievously afflicted thereat, that he never more recovered his cheerfulness, and made every possible effort to regain his child." this, of course, is pure invention, since francesco buti had been mouldering in his grave for six years when the abduction took place. and now we come to the most amazing chapter of this fifteenth-century romance. fra filippo lippi, the monk who had broken his vow and was openly living at prato with the equally guilty nun, actually continued to administer to the spiritual welfare of the nuns of the convent that had been so irretrievably disgraced by his conduct! that his misdeed was allowed to pass unpunished and uncensured, may have encouraged others to follow his and lucrezia's example. whether or not the carmelite was instrumental in helping the other nuns to escape, the fact remains that before long spinetta buti had joined her sister in filippo's house, whilst three other nuns deserted the convent to live in illicit union with their lovers. the unfortunate abbess, bartolommea de' bovacchiesi, whose portrait is to be seen as kneeling donor in the so-called "madonna della cintola," now in the municipal palace at prato, died of shame and grief before the year came to a close. the remote resemblance of the figure of st. margaret, on the extreme left of that picture, to lucrezia buti as she appears in authentic works by the master, in addition to the fact that the "madonna della cintola" was originally in the church of sta. margherita, has given colour to the theory that this is the very altarpiece which figures so prominently in the chief romance of filippo lippi's life. the same claim has been advanced for the "nativity" (no. ) at the louvre. much as one would like to identify either the one or the other with the picture referred to by the chroniclers, if only for the sentimental interest that would be attached to it, neither of the two can be accepted as authentic works by our artist. the best recent expert opinion has ascribed the paris panel in turn to fra diamante, pesellino, stefano da zevio, and baldovinetti, agreeing only on the one point, that it cannot be by fra filippo. as regards the "madonna della cintola," critical analysis of the picture can only lead to the conviction that from beginning to end it is inferior bottega work, with never a trace of the master's own brush, although it may well be based on a design by fra filippo. it is true, the time that elapsed between the placing of the commission for the sta. margherita altarpiece and the abduction of lucrezia was so short, that the picture may have been only just begun and left to be finished by some other inferior painter. on the other hand, there is no reason for this assumption, since filippo lippo continued to be connected with the convent in his capacity of chaplain. in the year following that memorable feast of the sacred girdle, lucrezia presented the friar with a son, who was to become known to fame as filippino lippi. the house in which he was born bears a commemorative inscription put up by the citizens of prato in : filippo lippi comprÒ e abitÒ questa casa quando coloriva gli stupendi affreschi del duomo e quÌ nacque nel mcccclix filippino precursore di raffaello "filippo lippi bought and inhabited this house when he painted the stupendous frescoes of the cathedral, and here was born in (it should read ) filippino, the precursor of raphael." if proof were needed that the escape of the other nuns was closely connected with the abduction of lucrezia, it may be found in the fact that, when lucrezia, for some unknown reason, found it advisable to feign repentance and to return to the convent of sta. margherita at the end of , all the other fugitives followed her example. they had to submit to the formality of twelve months' probation before they took the veil again, in a solemn ceremony, in december . perhaps the reason for lucrezia's return is not altogether dissociated from the financial troubles that beset her lover, as we have seen, about the time of filippino's birth. the sincerity of her renewed vow of chastity is to be gathered not only from the fact that in she presented fra filippo with another child--a daughter, who was given the name alessandra--but in the clear indictment set forth by an anonymous accuser in a _tamburazione_ under date of may , . in this _tamburazione_, or secret accusation, addressed to the "officers of the night and monasteries of the city of florence," a pretty state of affairs is revealed at the convent of sta. margherita, which "has been frequented and continues to be frequented by ser piero d'antonio di ser vannozzo," who has "begot a male child in the said convent.... and if you wish to find him, you will find him every day in the convent, together with another man called frate filippo. the latter excuses himself by saying that he is the chaplain, whilst the former says he is the procurator. and the said frate filippo has had a male child by one called spinetta. and he has in his house the said child, who is grown up and is called filippino." the anonymous accuser, of course, was mistaken in mentioning spinetta, instead of her sister, as the mother of filippino, who in his will expressly refers to "domine lucretie ejus delicte matris et filie olim francisci de butis de florentia," and thus removes every possible doubt as to his parentage. the mistake finds an easy explanation in the fact that both the sisters were for some time under fra filippo's roof. [illustration: plate vii.--the virgin and child with two angels (in the uffizi gallery, florence) painted for the chapel in cosimo de' medici's palace, this picture was transferred to the uffizi gallery from the royal store-rooms in . more, perhaps, than in any other work by the master, the whole arrangement of the picture and the management of the planes reveal the influence of the relief sculpture by donatello and his followers. it is particularly akin in spirit to the art of rossellino. the landscape seen through a window opening behind the heads of the madonna and the infant saviour, as well as the laughing angel in the foreground, are entirely new conceptions in florentine painting. that the picture must have been much admired by filippo lippi's contemporaries is proved by the innumerable slightly modified versions of it which were produced by the next generation of florentine painters.] what was the end of lippi's romance? there are no contemporary records to throw clear light upon it. in milanesi's edition of vasari it is stated that pope eugene granted the monk a special dispensation to marry lucrezia. if any such dispensation ever was granted, it must have been by pius ii., and not by eugene. under any circumstances, it seems very improbable that fra filippo, as we learn from the same source, should have refused to avail himself of this permission to legalise his union, because "he preferred to continue living the sort of life that pleased him." he was then a man of considerable age, near the end of his life, and past the times for "sowing his wild oats." the papal dispensation, if actually given, must have been sought for, in which case filippo would presumably have availed himself of it; or, if granted on the pope's own initiative, could not have been lightly set aside by a humble member of the church, who was largely dependent on the emoluments accruing from his clerical appointments. the mere fact that lucrezia's features are to be recognised in the friar's latest works, the frescoes in the cathedral of spoleto, tends to prove that the old man's affection was not transferred to different quarters; and vasari's suggestion that his death was due to the libertinism of his conduct, which led to his being poisoned by certain relatives of a woman with whom he had become entangled, may be dismissed as a fable. vasari is at fault again in ascribing the commission for the decoration of the chapel in the church of our lady at spoleto, fra filippo's last important work, to the influence of cosimo de' medici. fra filippo went to spoleto in , and cosimo had been buried in . if any member of the medici family had acted as mediator, it must have been piero, who had always been a patron and protector of our artist. of the four frescoes at spoleto illustrating the life of the virgin, only the "coronation" and the "annunciation" are, so far as one can judge in their much restored condition, from the master's own hand. "the death of the virgin" and the "nativity," though undoubtedly designed by him, are vastly inferior in execution, and are almost entirely the work of his assistant, fra diamante, who accompanied him to spoleto, and stayed there several months after his master's death to complete the unfinished work. fra filippo died on the th of october , and left his son filippino under the guardianship of fra diamante. he was buried in the church which had witnessed his last labours. the esteem in which he was held by those who knew how to appreciate his art--and among them, surely, the medici must be placed at the top--found expression in the rivalry between florence and spoleto over his remains. when lorenzo the magnificent, some years after the great carmelite's death, passed through spoleto as ambassador of the florentine commonwealth, he demanded fra filippo's body from the spoletans, for re-interment in the duomo of florence. the spoletans' reply is characteristic of the spirit of the age: they begged to be left in possession of the remains of the master, since they were so poorly provided with distinguished men, whereas florence had enough and to spare. lorenzo must have been touched by a request presented in such flattering terms, for he not only allowed filippo lippi's body to remain in its original resting-place, but he commissioned from filippino lippi, the inheritor of the monk's artistic genius, a marble tomb, on which can be seen to this day the jovial features of the master thus honoured, the arms of lorenzo and of the lippi, and the commemorative inscription composed by the great humanist, angelo poliziano. conditvs hic ego svm pictvre fama philippvs nvlli ignota meÆ est gratia mira manvs; artificis potvi digitis animare colores sperataqve animos fallere voce div: ipsa meis stvpvit natvra expressa figvris meqve svis fassa est artibvs esse parem. marmoreo tvmvlo medices lavrentivs hic me condidit, ante hvmili pvlvere tectvs eram. iv it is not within the scope of this brief sketch of the life and art of fra filippo lippi to enter into a detailed critical discussion of his extant works. i am not here concerned with questions of debatable attributions, or with the share that fra diamante and other assistants or pupils may have had in the execution of works that pass generally under his name. all that can here be attempted is, to gather from the cumulative evidence of the pictures that are unquestionably by the master's own hand, the real significance of his great achievement and the place he occupies in the evolution of italian art. in the progress of his style from the early "nativities" to the prato frescoes is reflected the whole course of early renaissance art from gothic awkwardness to full freedom. of course, fra filippo lived in a period of transition and of passionate striving for expression; and to a certain extent every artist is the product of the spirit of his time. the tendencies which resulted in the full blossoming of renaissance art were at work, and would, no doubt, have conquered in the end, even if filippo lippi had never existed. nevertheless, he was one of the greatest initiators of the renaissance in painting; and it is his peculiar merit that, at a period of artistic pupilage, when every painter's training was directed towards the close assimilation of his particular master's peculiarities, and when progress consisted largely in the grafting of some personal note or other on to the inherited tradition, fra filippo not only liberated himself from the narrow confines of his early training by his readiness to benefit from the example of any native or "foreign" master who had added some new word to the language of art, but he was also ever ready to learn direct from the greatest source of artistic inspiration--from nature. [illustration: plate viii.--the virgin and child, with angels and two abbots (in the louvre, paris) this altarpiece was commissioned in by the company of orsanmichele for the barbadori chapel in santo spirito. it is the picture referred to by domenico veneziano in a letter to piero de' medici, dated april , , in which he says that by working day and night fra filippo could not finish it within five years, which was probably a correct estimate of the time actually taken. even in its present state of deterioration this stately altarpiece, which shows how much filippo had learnt from the study of masaccio's carmine frescoes, justifies the high praise bestowed upon it by vasari. the two figures kneeling before the steps of the throne are st. augustine on the right, and st. fredianus on the left.] from his earliest beginnings, which rather suggest illuminated miniatures on a large scale, we see him grow step by step, acquire knowledge of perspective, of design, of colour harmonies, of the effect of light and atmosphere, of movement. we find him initiating advance in many directions. the circular composition, which was scarcely known before his days, is carried by him to such perfection, that it becomes the favourite device of most later florentine painters. he is the first florentine who shows a real appreciation of the beauty of nature, who allows real daylight to enter into his pictures, and who studies reflections. the florentine school was never a school of _painters_ in the strict sense of the word, like the venetian school. its work was always based on linear design, upon which colour was superadded--an afterthought, as it were. the florentine did not think in terms of colour. but fra filippo, without abandoning the essentially florentine insistence on linear design, came nearer the true pictorial conception than any of his contemporaries or successors. in his first "nativity" at the florentine academy he gives not the slightest hint of the astounding development his art was to undergo before he left florence for prato. the colour is purely localised, like the flat tones of the gothic miniaturists in whose school he had been trained. the madonna looks as if she were cut out and pasted on to the landscape. what a step from its hard delineation to the _morbidezza_, and the cool shimmering tones and all-pervading sense of atmosphere in his "coronation of the virgin," which, in this respect, remains a unique achievement in florentine art. both his florentine "nativities" are as awkward and clumsy in design as could be. lopped-off figures of praying monks are squeezed into the extreme corners; the landscape background is seen in steep perspective, almost as in a bird's-eye view, and has no relation to the figures in the foreground; the perspective and the whole arrangement of the ruined building in the one are childish. and a few years later he had arrived at the noble architectonic design of the "virgin enthroned," at the louvre, in which, notwithstanding here and there a reminiscence of gothic awkwardness, the figure of the angel on the left foreshadows the easy grace of similarly poised figures in andrea del sarto's art. again and again fra filippo acts as initiator and sets the fashion for whole generations of artists. he is one of the first to experiment with devices for producing the illusion of depth, either by the interpolation, between the foreground and the background figures, of architectural elements, as in the louvre "madonna"--the idea had already served donatello in the sister-art of sculpture--or by the skilful disposition and lighting of the subsidiary figures in the background, as in the episodes from the life of st. anne, which form the setting to the adorable "madonna and child" of the pitti _tondo_. if michelangelo's nude athletes in the background of his "holy family" _tondo_ are based upon the similar figures in luca signorelli's circular "madonna and child" at the uffizi, signorelli himself clearly derived from filippo lippi the use of the background figures, one of whom turns his back to the spectator just like the women on the extreme right of lippi's _tondo_, for the purpose of enhancing the sense of depth and space. this woman with the boy clinging to the folds of her dress, as well as the one by whom she is preceded--a rapidly moving figure, with clinging diaphanous garments and with a basket poised on her head--will be found again and again during the next half-century of florentine art, just as the uffizi "madonna adoring the divine child," who is supported by two boy-angels, became the prototype of a long succession of similar pictures. in the dancing "salome" of the prato frescoes, again, we have the forerunner of the type of figure and movement that received its highest development in the art of botticelli, filippo lippi's greatest pupil. every phase of the triumphant progress of renaissance art finds an echo in filippo lippi's painting. masaccio helped him to shake off gothic awkwardness and to achieve a certain degree of statuesque dignity. from gentile da fabriano he took the delight in gay, festive attire and sumptuous pageantry, which is clearly expressed in sir frederick cook's _tondo_, and in a modified form in the academy "coronation." pier dei franceschi's great conquest of the realm of light and air did no more fail to leave its mark upon the carmelite's art, than did paolo uccello's discoveries in the science of perspective. the classic thrones of his madonnas and the architectural backgrounds of some of his pictures proclaim his enthusiasm for the forms and decorative details of the renaissance churches and palaces that were then rising, under the influence of the new learning, in every part of florence. nor is it possible to over-estimate the prodigious effect produced upon the artist-monk's receptive mind by his study of the works of donatello. the uffizi "madonna" is in reality a relief by donatello or one of his followers translated into paint. take any photographic reproduction of that picture, and examine the head of the roguishly smiling angel, the arms of the infant saviour and of the madonna, and the way the whole group is set against the window-frame. the illusion is extraordinary. if it were not for the landscape seen through the opening in the background and the transparent folds of the veil over the virgin's head, it would be pardonable to mistake the picture thus reduced to black and white for a bas-relief of the donatello school. thus, with the shrewd intelligence of which his features in the auto-portrait introduced into the "coronation" are so eloquent, fra filippo knew how to take hints and suggestions from the art of all his great contemporaries. but he applied the same keen intelligence to the study of the living world around him. the knowledge imparted to him by other masters was thus allowed to filter through his personal observation of nature. and whilst it is possible to trace in his work the most varied artistic influences, his own personality was never eclipsed or obscured. always ready to learn and to assimilate new principles, he never stooped to the imitation of mere mannerisms. from any such inclination he was saved by his temperament, his human sympathy, his artistic curiosity. only to his earliest madonnas cling reminiscences of giottesque types and formulas. even before he had reached full maturity, the typical had become ousted by the individual. and in this respect he was again an initiator in florentine art. he was one of the first painters of his school who makes us feel that almost every character in his pictures is the result of personal observation--is practically a portrait. he is the first true genre painter of his school. benozzo gozzoli, it is true, went far beyond him as a pictorial raconteur of florentine fifteenth-century life; but the origin of benozzo's genre-like treatment of scriptural incidents, which makes his frescoes at pisa and san gimignano such precious documents, is to be found in fra filippo lippi. the prato frescoes introduce several delicious incidents of this nature, like the leave-taking of st. john from his parents, or the child-birth scene in the episode in the life of st. stephen. but they are not absent either from his altarpieces. the exquisitely recorded happenings in the house of st. anne, which form the background of the pitti "madonna and child," are pure genre-painting, and are, moreover, a daring departure from all the earlier conventions which ruled the rendering of this favourite subject. the earlier "coronation of the virgin" shows something of the same tendency in the charming group of a female saint and two children in front of the kneeling monk. the saint, like the virgin mary herself, is just an elegantly attired florentine lady of the period. the very angels surrounding the throne of the heavenly father are humanised, as it were, by being divested of their wings. even in the stately and formal "virgin enthroned," at the louvre, fra filippo could not resist the temptation to introduce a roguish urchin on each side peeping over the balustrade, and thus transferring the scene from the heavenly region to this earth. fra filippo loved the world in which he found so much beauty. for all that, his art reveals neither sensuality nor worldliness. he was indeed, as mr. berenson so happily describes him, a genre-painter, whose genre was that of the soul, as that of others was of the body. but he expressed the soul through the body. as m. andré maurel has it: "before painting faces, he looked at them, which was a new thing.... he was a great painter, because he was a man." the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh footnotes: [ ] _the florentine painters of the renaissance_, by bernhard berenson (g. p. putnam's sons). [ ] he retained this post until july . transcriber's note: table of contents added by transcriber. masterpieces in colour edited by -- t. leman hare sargent in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent t. martin wood. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--lord ribblesdale. frontispiece (in the collection of lord ribblesdale) a portrait of the author of "the queen's hounds and stag-hunting recollections": esteemed one of the finest of sargent's works.] sargent by t. martin wood illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate page i. lord ribblesdale frontispiece in the collection of lord ribblesdale ii. la carmencita in the luxembourg, paris iii. ellen terry as "lady macbeth" in the national gallery, millbank iv. w. graham robertson, esq. in the collection of w. graham robertson, esq. v. carnation lily, lily rose in the national gallery, millbank vi. lady elcho, mrs. adeane, and lady tennant in the collection of the hon. percy wyndham vii. the misses wertheimer in the collection of asher wertheimer, esq. viii. mrs. a. l. langman in the collection of a. l. langman, esq., c.m.g. [illustration] i was there ever a more romantic time than our own, or a people who took everything more matter-of-factly? the paintings of a period contain all its enthusiasms and illusions. we remember the eighteenth century--at least in england--by reynolds' and gainsborough's art, the seventeenth century by van dyck's; and when we remember the eighteenth century in france, it is to think of watteau, who expressed what his world, drifting towards disaster, cared about--an illusion of a never-ending summer's day. these names are expressive of their times, and sargent's art, with disillusioned outlook, mirrors an obvious aspect of english life to-day. above all others he has taken his world as it is, with the delight in life, in its everyday appearance, with which the representative artists of any period have been gifted. perhaps the next generation will feel that it owes more to him than to any painter of this time. for the ephemeralities of the moment in costume and fashion are the blossoms in which life seeks expression--whatever its fruit. it is agreed that everything is expression, from a spring bud bursting to a ribbon worn for a moment against a woman's hair. and who deals with the surface of life deals with realities, for the rest is guess-work. often enough this content to take the world as it is may result in things which do not charm us, and perhaps sargent has never been one of those as fastidious in selection as in delineation. sometimes he gives his sitters away--for there are traits in human nature, belief in thevery existence of which we are always anxious to forego. nothing escapes him that is written in the face. yet he is not cynical, but man of the world, the felicity of living in a world where everything is charming being only for those with the gift to live in one of their own making. the side of life which he expresses is that in which time seems given over wholly to social amenities, long afternoons spent in pleasant intercourse, hours well ordered and protected, so that the most fragrant qualities in human nature can if they will spring to life. we almost hear the teacups in the other room, and none of his sitters seem really alone. we feel they have left the life to which they belong to sit to the artist but only for an hour or so. the social world to which they belong will absorb them again. this world sargent paints. even in many of his single figures we are conscious always of its existence in the background. in portrait after portrait there is scarcely a suggestion of self-consciousness--but the man or the woman just at the moment of posing, as if environed still in an atmosphere of their own, and of the world from which they have withdrawn for the sitting. for it is sargent's gift to remove the impression that his sitter has posed, that the dress was arranged, and his gift to arrest his sitter's habitual gesture, the impression of sparkling stones, almost the clink of bangles at the wrist in expression of the moment. most unjustly was it said that he could not paint pretty women. it would appear to be within his power to paint almost anything that has its existence in fact, and if in a matter-of-fact way, what more to the point if the facts are so beautiful that fancy itself would have to defer? [illustration: plate ii.--la carmencita (in the luxembourg, paris) painting of a spanish dancer. exhibited at the royal academy in ; acquired by the french government.] supreme is the art of sargent in its appreciation of those pleasures which would almost seem for art alone: pearls upon the colour of flesh; slight transitions of colour charged with great secrets of beauty; pearls painted as they would be regarded by a lover, as ten thousand times more beautiful than if they were lying in a box. and the touches of the brush--for sargent shows every touch--breathe sympathy with every change of colour as the chain of pearls falls first across white silk and then across black velvet, and the little globes take to themselves new variations. a fan is opened, and upon the ivory sticks the light like silver trembles, a web of colour is spun across upon the open ribs; a book is half-open, it may be a bradshaw, but we will believe it is a book of old verse, for everything that comes into the picture, the particular picture of which i am thinking, comes into a charmed circle. there are people for whom the opulent world of sargent's art is their everyday world--whose life competes with the splendour of day-dreams. how essentially romantic--although so matter-of-fact--must be the art that leaves us with this impression! to be matter-of-fact is, we see, far from being unromantic; the reverse indeed is true, for with our face turned from the world romance vanishes. ii i once had occasion to call on mr. sargent, and was shown into a room with a black carpet. only a colourist loves black, and sees it as a colour. and this room, so free from all that was novel and without associations, helped to explain to me why, though his method is so modern and of the moment, his pictures of aristocrats accommodate themselves to ancestral surroundings. for it is true that not only the face and the clothes of his sitters are given, but somehow, in the material of paint, their social position and their distinction. now this is not by any means the least of sargent's qualities; it is not a common one. well-bred people drive up to the door of a modern studio almost visibly cloaked in the traditions of their race, but we are led to believe that they must have left all this behind them in the carriage when we see the portrait in an exhibition; the artist has shown nothing of it, has used his distinguished sitter simply as a model. for lack of inspiration novelties are proffered in its place, _l'art nouveau_ on canvas. sargent does not paint modern people as if they all came into the world yesterday landed from an airship. no, he is like van dyck, who not only painted the beautiful clothes, the long white hands, and the bearing of his sitters sympathetically, but also the very atmosphere of the court around them, painting, as all great painters do, invisible as well as visible things. if there is not in sargent's painting courtesy of touch, if his method has not suavity in painting elegant people, this is rather as it should be in an age which trusts implicitly to the dressmaker and tailor for its elegance. and without a word here as to the worth of some of our modern aims, at least the age is too much in earnest for a pose. the poses and fripperies of the pictures of van dyck and kneller are done with; and besides, the modern baronet is not anxious to show his hands, but is painted gloved, and work goes unimmortalised. meunier the sculptor and other modern artists having gloried in the war of labour, its victories go unsung; its victors surviving only as fashionable men. the portraits of some painters suggest nothing but the foreign atmosphere of a studio, but sargent seems to meet his sitters in the atmosphere of their own daily, fashionable life, and that is why his pictures are romantic, for isn't there romance wherever there is wealth? the people whose wealth is such that they can take as their own background all the beautiful accessories of aristocratic tradition, are entitled to them if they like them well enough to spend their money in this way. and it is the peculiar gift of our age to recognise in ourselves the heirs of the centuries of beautiful handicrafts, which we close with our machines. they certainly are the heirs to any kind of beauty who have the imagination to enjoy it. and the imagination for past associations, who have this more than the americans? we believe in england that all americans are rich, that they can buy whatever they appreciate. so by the divine right of things going to those who appreciate them, the rich american is now, even as sargent paints him, environed by old french and english things and their associations. and in connection with the accessories in sargent's pictures, might we not ask the question whether it could not be considered a test of the worth or worthlessness, from a point of beauty, of any ornament or furniture whether it would survive representation in a picture? how much modern stuff we should have to sweep aside! and now that one thinks of it, modern pictures have left modern furniture rather severely alone--the painters have not been faithful to their brethren the makers of modern tables and chairs. who is more modern than sargent--and i am trying to think has he ever painted a modern room--that is, a room with modern things in it? the rooms that the most modern people live in are oddly enough the ones that are most old-fashioned, filled with eighteenth-century things. this, to reflect upon, has arisen through thinking about sargent's interior paintings, which so very vividly and accurately reflect the attitude of the modern world to its own time. in that word modern, if we are not using it too often, we must seek the nature of sargent's painting, its spirit; it is the most interesting thing in connection with painting to come as close as possible to its spirit. and what a test before any work of art, to ask whether it is worth a search for the incorporeal element; although in vain, in spite of walter pater, does painting aspire "towards the condition of music," since music is as ghostly as the ghosts that it contains. [illustration: plate iii.--ellen terry as "lady macbeth" (in the national gallery, millbank) a portrait of miss ellen terry purchased from the sir henry irving sale at christie's in , and presented to the nation by the late sir jos. duveen, who also bequeathed a sum of money for the erection of the turner room now being added to the national gallery at millbank.] iii dancing has been a theme always appealing to artists because of its rhythm, its grace in reality, its incarnation of femininity. it contains all the inspiration for a painter in any one moment of movement. no two things could be further removed from each other than lancret's "la camargo dansant" and sargent's "carmencita," yet some alliterative resemblance in the name and some resemblance in the dancers' costumes bring these two figures together in my mind--the one the fairy artificial dancer, the princess of an unreal world, the other a vivid sinuous presentment. with both painters the costume has interested them as much almost as the figure, for the dress of a dancer, indeed the dress of any woman, is in a sargent picture a part of herself, nothing mere dead matter, everything expressive, the brush having come at once to the secret that no one material thing is more spiritual than another. for ever carmencita stands, waiting for the beginning of the music, just as la camargo is caught upon the wing of movement, seeming to revive the music that was played for her and cheating us with a sense of a world happier than it is. in carmencita we have that living beauty from which, after all, a dreamer must take every one of his dreams. it is sargent's wisdom to stand thus close to life. in the sense of this reality, and the difficulty of approach to it with anything so constitutionally artificial as a painter's colours, do we apprise the real nature of his gifts. the roses on la camargo's dress are artificial roses, but not more artificial than her face and hands. this figure is only a little nearer to nature than a china shepherdess, it is the fancy of a mind cheating itself with unrealities as realities. sargent himself has painted artificial things, the rouge on lips, the powder on a face; since it is natural for some folk to rouge, that is the nature which he paints. only an imaginative woman makes herself up. a painter with more imagination than sargent would enter into the spirit of her arts. sargent's betrayal of his fashionable sitters has frightened many, but if anything it has increased his vogue; for above everything an imaginative woman is curious to know what she looks like to others, and a sargent's portrait is intimate, unflattering, perfectly candid but perfectly true as an answer to her question. everything on the stage is artificial; what will this art, that has had of the reality of things all its strength and life, make of a purely theatrical picture--miss ellen terry in a famous part? the artificiality of the stage always presents two aspects, that one in which we forget its artificiality and that other in which we remember it. and this latter, to my mind, is the aspect in which sargent has painted this picture, without, as it were, ever stepping over the footlights into the world that only becomes real on the other side of them. but the exactness of his interpretation beautifully explains the scene. "carnation lily, lily rose" was painted in a garden by the thames. two children are lighting up the chinese lanterns, and in their light and with flowers surrounding, sargent sees for a moment life itself by accident made idyllic. the picture is japanese in its sense of decoration, as if decoration and idyllic moments always went together. it would almost seem so from the study of art, for without exception, those painters who have been conscious of the ideal and idyllic element in life, have always shown this through composition which, whilst dealing with a real scene, has taken a little of the reality from it. there must be an essentially musical element in the art which takes a mood as well as a scene from nature, and brings us by way of real scenes to that imaginative country which exists in every nature-lover's mind; a country partly made up of the remembrance of other places which have been like the place where he now stands. great tiger-lilies hang over the children. we almost expect in these surroundings pierettes or fantastic lovers, but we are kept close to the beauty of reality by the naturalism with which the children have been painted. not one touch is given as a concession to their fairy and dramatic background, not one ribbon, nothing in the costume to enable them to enter into the patterned world of art as part of a design. for above everything the painter has wished to persuade us of life itself as a picture, and not of his ability to make these children the motifs of design. their ordinariness irritates me personally, they do not seem quite to belong to their fairy land, but i recognise that this matter-of-factness peculiarly belongs to sargent's art and am interested in the attitude that takes beauty so matter-of-factly. iv no one has encountered the beauty of woman's face more casually than sargent, no one has made us realise more fully its significance as a fact in the world. after all we had thought perhaps we were partly deceived in this matter by the illusions of poets and love-sick painters, but approaching it without ecstasy, art has not been closer to this beauty than here. i am looking at a half-tone reproduction of a lady by sargent, wondering whether in the history of english portrait painting an artist has approached as closely to the thoughts of his sitter. the expression of the face is determined partly by thoughts within, partly by light without. and it is as if with the touch of a brush a thought could be intercepted as it passed the lips. this is the nearest approach that thought has ever had to material definition. thought is the architect of her expression, by accuracy of painting it is copied, just as the back of a fan or bracelet is copied--things so material as that. so after all thoughts are not so far away from the material world with which we are in touch; are scarcely less visible than air. the impressionists have rendered air; and would it be too far-fetched to hint that the shadow on the lips almost serves to bridge one province with another, the atmosphere without and that which reigns within the sitter's mind. it is when sargent's brush hesitates at the lips and eyes, at the threshold of intimate revelation, that we really begin to form an adequate conception of his genius. yes, of things fleeting, a thought flitting across the face, interrupted gestures--and the mysterious suggestion of conversation hanging fire between the sitter and ourself, sargent is the master. sometimes a portrait painter will create a face on canvas, of pleasant expression, which is not like his sitter, and it is as if with every touch he could change the thoughts as he changes the expression in the face he is creating. [illustration: plate iv.--w. graham robertson, esq. (in the collection of w. graham robertson, esq.) a portrait of the writer of the children's play "pinkie and the fairies" and many charming children's books illustrated by their author, himself an artist of high attainment.] sargent's accuracy is such that the expression that passes over the face in his portraits is one which all the sitter's friends recognise; so close is he in touch with the delicate drawing, especially round the lips, that his brush never strays by one little bit into the realm of invention. there are other painters painting as carefully, faces as full of expression, who do not come near a likeness of their sitter. in what provinces close to nature are they wandering, since, striving to paint the face before them, they paint another face? we must not forget, in thinking of sargent's greatness, that he unfailingly is in close touch with his sitters' expression, that is, almost with their thoughts. although sargent has proved in many landscapes his powers in that direction, he too well enters into the spirit of the portraiture to which he has put his hand to attempt to introduce naturalistic effects into backgrounds obviously painted in a london studio. the landscape background is sometimes charming if under these circumstances it remains a convention; for there are moments when nature herself is out of place, pictures in which human nature must be the only form of life,--with the exception perhaps of flowers, for these accompany human nature always, to revelries where sunlight is excluded, and even to the tomb. it is art of little carrying power that is exhausted upon some transcript of beautiful detail, colour of the glazes of a vase, a bunch of flowers. sargent embraces difficulties one after another with energy unexpended. physique, but never genius will give out. energy of this order always goes with a generous, because very human, outlook; success on occasion being modified not through failure to accomplish, but through failure to respond. v the life of a busy portrait painter, with its demand for inspiration every morning, is of the most exacting nature, and the quality of the painter's output must of necessity vary. the nervous strain is great, for sitters are capricious, and always is the temptation present to the one sin that is unforgivable, compromise with the philistine--the concession of genius to stupidity, of perceptions nearly divine to ignorance. genius has always had difficulty in working to order, yet nearly all the great portraiture work in the world has been done to order. but one imagines that the conditions under which the masterpieces of a modern painter, with so great a vogue as sargent's, have been produced must be unparalleled by anything in the history of ancient painting. a crowd streamed through the studios of gainsborough, reynolds, and romney to be painted, but the world was smaller then, and their art was more easily done. they worked within a convention narrower than sargent's, compromising with nature at the very start; a convention more beautiful than his, a garden, beautiful because it was confined and seen in an accustomed light. if things are beautiful at all they become more so when they are no longer unaccustomed, when they fit in with an old frame of mind. sargent deals with the unaccustomed--in which at first perhaps we always see the ugly--whilst, as we have said, he does not destroy, as the vandalistic art of some painters does, the connection between the past and present. it is the present which his art embraces, but we might almost say we are never thoroughly accustomed to the present until it has become the past. so to us sargent's art is not as beautiful as gainsborough's, for it has constantly to throw over some old form of perfection to embrace a new difficulty. in the eighteenth century there was less variety in the life which art encountered. the life of even a gainsborough or a reynolds would be circumscribed in just the same way that their art is circumscribed, uninterrupted in its mood, and beauty is to be found in uninterrupted moods. [illustration: plate v.--carnation lily, lily rose (in the national gallery, millbank) this painting was bought for the nation under the terms of the chantrey bequest in , seven years previous to the painter's election to associateship of the royal academy.] vi something should now be said of sargent's method--of that which is spoken of as his technique. and of method, it is not something to be separated from the painter's temperament, it is always autographic. somehow, temperament shows even in a person's handwriting, giving it what is really its style, though the fashion of writing imposed upon a pupil by his master is also called a style. in art there is no word that is oftener debated. and of those who speak most of style in their own work, the measure of their self-consciousness in the matter is often the measure of their distance from it. they are in the position of a schoolboy taking writing lessons, and their style, if ever they are to have one, does not begin until thinking and painting have become for them almost one process. but this is a difficult matter to make clear, and apology should perhaps be forthcoming for touching on so debatable a point thus hurriedly. i may have said something perhaps to convey to the lay reader the significance of the particular method of treating his subjects which we identify with sargent. the pupil of carolus duran, his method was formed under the most modern influences; whatever effect quite another kind of training might have had on sargent, still nothing but the traceable element of self would have determined for us his style. the method of applying paint to canvas has always resolved itself into more or less a personal question, though certain schools are to be identified with different ways of seeing; every method is a convention, and the difference of conventions always one of vision, affecting handling only in the sense that it has to be accommodated to the vision. it would be out of place here, perhaps, and far too technical, to define the difference between such a method as sargent's and say that of pre-raphaelitism. but roughly, the pre-raphaelite concentrates on each object. for each object, say in a room, is in turn his subject as he paints that room. the impressionist, sargent, only has the one subject, that room, the different objects in it explaining themselves only in so far as their surfaces and character are defined in the general impression by the way they take the light--in short, almost an impression as it would be received on a lens. if we remember all this we can appreciate the extreme sensitiveness both of sargent's vision and touch. for his brush conveys almost with the one touch--so spontaneous in feeling is his work--not only the amount but the shape of the light on any surface. thus the shapes of everything in the picture are finally resolved, and we might also say without curiosity as to their causes. we are given the impression, which would have been our own impression: since in regard to a portrait, for instance, when we meet a person our curiosity does not immediately extend to such details as the character and number of buttons on his coat. with this method always goes spontaneity, sargent's pre-eminent gift. he values it so highly that he does not scruple to recommence a picture more than once and carry it through again in the one mood, if in the first instance his art may have miscarried, not permitting himself to doctor up the first attempt. to the constant sense of freshness in his work which such a way of working must imply, i think a great measure of his vogue is to be attributed, though others have coloured more prettily, flattered more, and subordinated themselves to the amiable ambitions of their sitters. vii is it a fancy?--but i see a resemblance between the art of sargent and that in writing of mr. henry james. the same pleasure in nuances of effect in detail, and the readiness to turn to the life at hand for this. to enjoy sargent is above all to appreciate the means by which he obtains effect in detail, the economy of colour and of brush marks with which he deceives the eye, and the quality of subtle colour in the interpretation of minor phenomena. on the large scale, in the general effect, the quality of his colour is sometimes uninviting. but when at its best it takes the everyday colour of things as if it was colour, without the hysterical exaggeration with which so much youthful contemporary art attempts to cheat itself and other people. if sargent's admirers do not claim that he sees all the colour there is in things, they claim for him that he sees colour and has the reverence for reality which prevents a tawdry emphasis upon it for the sake of sweetness of effect. and after the sweetmeat vagaries, which have followed in the wake of whistler, by those without that master's self-control, this is refreshing. sargent's brush seems to trifle with things that are trifling, to proceed thoughtfully in its approach to lips and eyes. in painting accessories around his sitters there is the accommodation of touch to the importance of the objects suggested, and nowadays, since interior painting is the fashion--to suit the taste of a young man of genius imposing his peculiar gift upon the time--there are many portraits where the sitter is brought into line with an elaborate setting out of _objets d'art_, the painter's pleasure in the treatment of these manifesting itself sometimes at the sitter's expense. translating everything by the methods we have described, sargent preserves throughout his pictures a certain quality of paint. the impression of the characteristic surface of any material is made within this quality, by the responsiveness of his brush to the subtlest modification of effect which differentiates between the nature of one surface and another, as they are influenced by the light upon them at the moment. there are painters who do not translate reality into paint in this way, but who have striven to imitate the surface qualities of objects by varying, imitative ways of applying their paint. sargent is not this kind of realist. [illustration: plate vi.--lady elcho, mrs. adeane, and lady tennant (in the collection of the hon. percy wyndham) a portrait group of the daughters of the hon. percy wyndham. in the background is the famous portrait of lady wyndham, mother of the hon. percy wyndham, painted by the late g. f. watts, o.m.r.a.] he is a realist in the sense that goya, the great spanish painter of the eighteenth century, was one, for the spaniard had just such an eagerness to come closer to the sense of life than the close imitation of its outside could bring him. sargent is more polite, less impetuous, but still it is life as it is, that quickens his brush and informs all his virtuosity. his technique presents life vividly, but presents it to us with a sense of accomplishment in art, the equivalent of the accomplished art of living of the majority of his sitters. i am thinking of a portrait of a lady, and she is turning the leaves of a book, and in the lowered eyes, and the movement of the hand, there is more than arrested movement, there is an expression of an attitude consciously assumed which ordinarily would have been an unconscious one, and so accurate is the painting, that the sitter is detected as it were in this self-consciousness. in portraits of a ceremonial order, for people to sit in a group with a pleasant indispensable air of naturalness, is of course an affair on the artist's part of very thoughtful arrangement. but while composition should not betray the affectation of natural movement, movement must not be conveyed in a merely sensational, snapshot manner. for the slightest reflection on this matter will betray to us that in the latter pretension we are cheated, since we cannot fail to remember that to complete the canvas the sitter must have recovered the pose day after day, hour after hour, in the studio. sargent's instincts are so tuned to the appropriate, having the tact which itself is art, that whilst in this kind of portraiture we do not question the grouping or the movement of his sitters as unreal, we do not accept it as quite natural. we instinctively know that in proportion as it is made to look too natural it would be unreal, untrue to the conditions which the painter's art actually encountered. sargent, who permits nothing to stand between him and nature, will not permit such an inartistic lie to stand between us and the sincerity of his painting. he does not betray us in his love of what is of the moment, by giving us sham of this kind instead of the real thing. at every point at which we take his art and examine it, the evidence all points to one form of success. the sitters posing are really posing, their action is not even made unnaturally real as we have shown, and in the distances in the room round them, there is the reality of space dividing them from things at the other end of the room. reality, within the confines of the particular truths to which his method is subject, has been the evident intention all through his art. from this standpoint it often compels admiration in cases where it would have to be withdrawn were we substituting in our mind another ideal, examining his work, for instance, only in the light of a sensitive colour beauty which the painter has not put first and foremost. some artists have embraced reality only as it justified their imagination. if we look on sargent's art for anything inward except that which looks through the eyes and determines the smile of his sitter, we shall find our sympathies break down. unnecessary perhaps to say this, yet it were as well to make quite clear the light in which we should regard the work of an artist who has wholly succeeded in self-expression, the only known form of success in art. in analysing some men's work, we wish above all to know them, to know the mind that thus environs itself. with others it is their art which tempts us to further and further knowledge of its truths while, as with shakespeare, the artist behind it becomes impersonal. thus it is with sargent's art. it is true that if we wish to know an artist we can never under any circumstances become more intimate with him than in his art, whether we find him in it far away in remote valleys or at the centre of fashionable life. and this though the dreamer may be a man of fashion and the painter of society live a life retired. of sargent's water-colours, much might be said. to some extent they explain his oils, yet he seems to allow himself in them a greater freedom, just as the medium itself is freer than that of oils--more accidental, and the masters of this art control its propensity for accidental effect as its very spirit, guiding it with skill to results which baffle and perplex by the ingenuity with which they give illusion. first, as last, a painter has to accept the fact that he conveys nothing except by illusion; that he can never bring his easel so close to the subject, or his materials to such minuteness of touch, that his art becomes pure imitation; nor can he secure the adjustment of proportion between a large subject and a small panel which would give in every case such imitation. the supreme artist accepts the standpoint first instead of last, and the greater his art becomes, the greater his power in its mysterious control of effect. viii there are some painters whose work we may personally wholly dislike--dislike their outlook--even our favourite subjects becoming intolerable to us in their art. it is something in their nature antipathetic to our own. of course, mediocre work does not assume such proportions in our mind. then there are painters who, through some affinity of temperament with our own, make everything their art touches pleasant to us. and then there are the impersonal artists, velazquez, millais, and sargent, taking apparently quite an impersonal view of life. sargent's world is everybody's world, and if we are affected one way or another by it, it is as life affects us. one has heard a painter say, "i can paint those things because i love them." judged by his treatment of so many things, of nearly everything, how much must sargent love life. one man can paint flowers and another marble--sargent paints everything; and, to paraphrase, almost it might be said that what he doesn't paint isn't worth painting. but all this is nothing if he never penetrates, as meissonier and others never penetrated, below the surface; if he gave no symbols in his art of things invisible. [illustration: plate vii.--the misses wertheimer (in the collection of asher wertheimer, esq.) portraits of the daughters of asher wertheimer, esq., the eminent art-expert. mr. wertheimer is himself the subject of one of the best of sargent's portraits.] we like some of the subjects he has painted, others we dislike so much that we wonder he has painted them; just as in life there are people and surroundings to which we are attracted, and others from whom we keep away. to the realist by temperament the effect of the details of any scene accepted direct from nature provide exciting inspiration, and he least of all is likely to turn to decorative composition, which, with its resemblance to a form imposed in verse, only aids in the interpretation of the subject in proportion as it is imaginatively inspired. a painter pre-occupied with the opportunities which any incident may offer for the interpretation of subtleties, will often accept any scene from nature and almost any point of view as composition. for the old formulas of composition--of the time when composition was regarded as something to be taught--went with a decorative conception of things, was in itself a form of decoration. and whilst it has been said that all art is decorative, it will perhaps be found that the naturalistic painter is too much excited with incident to scheme much for a rhythmic presentation of it in the frame. such a canvas as sargent's "salmon fishing in norway," lately exhibited in the mcculloch collection, a portrait painted in the open, of a youth resting on the bank of a river with caught salmon and tackle beside him, the centre of a skilfully painted piece of landscape, is a case in point. the difficulties which subjects have presented have often seemed sargent's inspiration in landscape: rocks presenting surfaces to the light with a thousand variations; the wet basins of bronze fountains receiving coloured reflections and the diamond lights in the fountain splashes; grey architecture with its soft shadows, architecture white in the sun with its cool blue shadows, like fragments of night in the doorways. it is this mysterious sensation of light and shadow alternating everywhere, changing the colour of the day itself as the day advances, which sargent meets. he is one of the few painters who have faced the noon. he has this great command of art's slender resources, and he is matter-of-fact enough to be happy at this uncompromising time of day, unbelieved in by the workers, so inconsiderate to the lazy with its heat. the noon has not many with its praises, and "all great art is praise." painters have got up at dawn to communicate to us its everyday recurring freshness, as of an eternal spring, and has not evening always been the painter's hour? sargent has faced the noon, which demands so much sensitiveness that the over-sensitive shrink. his brush has given it in water-colours the finest interpretation it has yet received. ix to go back to the matter of composition again. in his portrait groups, where the mere fact that the sitters have to be grouped implies that he is not dealing from the start with an impression direct, we find he is a master of the finest composition, as in his group of mrs. carl meyer and children. and yet to one who will take not one touch with his brush from what is not before him, such a view of his subject must be incalculable in its difficulties. the painter has never made a passage of painting the excuse for incongruity. the arrangements in his pictures are always probable. it is legitimate in many cases that they should only be imaginatively probable. any arrangement is probable in a studio, and affording themselves too much licence in this respect some painters wonder why the public are inclined to discredit most of what they do. the logical quality, the sanity of sargent's art is yet another reason for its vogue; it has not the unreasonableness of studio production, it commends itself to a world that perhaps is not wrong in assuming that the artistic licence is applied for by those who are not sane. sargent has on occasion had to resort to all sorts of devices to obtain effects and composition that he has desired, but he has always kept faith with the public, and had the true artist's regard for their illusions. he allows his sitters to wear their best clothes, but he never dresses them up; no, to please him they must wholly belong to the life of which they are a part, it is the attitude in which they interest him and all of us. we have then to think of sargent not only as a painter, but as the maker of human documents--like balzac, the creator of imperishable characters--with this advantage over balzac, that all his characters have especially sat to him. it is how posterity will undoubtedly regard this array of brilliant pictures. of the people they will know nothing but the legend of their actions and sargent's record of their face. we have undoubtedly felt that when a man of real distinction of mind has worn them, the top hat and cylindrical trouser leg were not so bad. they have indeed, under the influence of personality, seemed on occasions the most august and distinguished garments in the world. but there must come disillusion, the humour of it all will some day dawn, but it will not be before a sargent picture. he has at any rate immortalised those things, just as velazquez has made beautiful for ever the outrageous clothes in which his infantas were imprisoned. we are reconciled to such things in art by the same process as we are in life, in sargent's case by the unforgettable rendering of the distinction of many of his sitters. x it is the work of the secondary artist that is always perfect--of its sort; for it will not accept its reward, to wit, the finished picture, until the last effort has been expended. with the masters of the first order, it is otherwise. we have said they paint as they think; who but the amateur always thinks at his best? when a man's art has become a part of him, it suffers with his moods. he always works, and his work is always his companion, an indulgence. in his exalted moments it rises to heights by which we estimate his genius, but which sensible criticism does not expect him to live up to, any more than we expect a brilliant conversationalist always to be equally brilliant. this is why a master's work is always so interesting. that it has become so flexible an expression of his own nature is its charm, if we really regard it as art, and do not look upon the artist as a manufacturer who must be reliable, who having once turned out of his workshop a work of surpassing perfection, must be expected to keep to that standard or be classed with the defaulting tradesman whose goods do not come up to his sample. a painter makes or mars his own reputation by the care or carelessness of his work, but it is his own work, and he is not under any obligation to us to keep it up to a certain standard if it does not interest him to sacrifice everything for that standard. sargent's work has been splendidly unequal. sometimes it has been disillusioned, tired, at other times all his energy has seemed gathered up into a _tour de force_. an intensity there is about sargent's earlier work which we cannot find in some of his later pictures, sureness of itself has brought freedom and with it freedom's qualities, which we must take pleasure in for their own sake. [illustration: plate viii.--mrs. a. l. langman (in the collection of a. l. langman, esq., c.m.g.) a portrait of the wife of a. l. langman, esq., c.m.g., who served with the langman field hospital, in connection with the equipment of which for the south african war his father, sir john langman, bart., is remembered.] it is frequently enough the weakness of painters to return constantly in their art to some particular gesture or arrangement in which their mastery is complete. this has not been the case with sargent; instead, his mastery has completed itself only through a constant encounter with new difficulties. a quality of all great art is reticence, something which will never let the master, to whom it is not disastrous to be careless, be so; for carelessness nearly always means over-statement, and exaggeration. ah! just the qualities if a work of art is to arrest attention in a modern exhibition. a common question at the royal academy is "where are the sargents?" by some enthusiastic visitor who has passed them several times. no, sargent's victories do not startle, winged victories do not, but advertisements do. xi sargent was born of american parents in florence in , and passed his boyhood there. no art, it would seem at first, is further away than his from all the florentine traditions, and yet in the decorative colour values, which give distinction to his finest works, he is the child of florence. the renaissance attitude towards life itself was highly imaginative, so into visionary art reality was carried. consulting the origin of all their visions, the florentines returned imaginatively to what was real. it is the beauty of reality which is the fervour of their great designs, and as a humanist, sargent is their descendant. when, at the age of nineteen, he came to paris, he was already, we are told, an artist of promise, and he went to carolus duran with youth's conscious, ardent necessity of embracing a fresh view of the world altogether. the lighter touch of carolus duran, the worldly painting, the lively art of things living, if a superficial art, was refreshing, no doubt, to one accustomed only to the beautiful memories of ardour expressed five centuries before. and superficiality, demoralising to the superficial, could only give some added swiftness to a brush inclined to halt with too much intensity whilst life, its one enthusiasm, was racing by. he never experimented under carolus duran. he was beginning that unerring sensitiveness of painting, which is only learnt by drudgery, the almost luxuriously easy virtuosity, before the acquirement of which, complete freedom of expression cannot begin, or sympathy declare itself as from a well-played instrument. an artist with individuality is careless of asserting it, and it is perhaps just the one thing in the world which cannot but assert itself. those who strive for originality through the unaccustomed may without hesitation be put down as those who are without confidence in their own nature. the individuality of sargent, as striking as any in his day, is unself-consciously expressed. if we could strain from a work of art the self-conscious, which is always the unnatural element, all that ever gave it any force would still be left in it. submitted to this test, how much so-called originality would crumble, while the individualism of sargent still remained. when leaving the studio of carolus duran, he painted a portrait of that painter, a summing, as it were, of all he owed to him before he courted another influence. he went to madrid, there to study the living elements of art in the school of a dead master, velazquez, in whose life encompassing art nothing has gone out of fashion--no, not even the farthingale which the children wear. it was early in the eighties that the spanish visit ended and sargent worked in paris, already a man of note, for the carolus duran portrait had been followed by "portrait of a young lady," exhibited in , and "en route pour la pêche" and "smoke of ambergris." in he exhibited the _tour de force_ "el jaleo," the sensation of the season, and immediately afterwards the "portraits of children"--the four children in a dimly-lighted hall, one of the most well-remembered of his pictures of that time. then came the wonderful "madame gautreau." paris was his headquarters but his visits to england were frequent, and they grew more frequent as the time went on and as his reputation grew in london. it was about half-a-dozen years after the spanish visit that he came to this country to live here permanently and make his art our own. he was elected an associate of the royal academy in , a royal academician in . xii we should say something of sargent's influence on contemporary art, which has been immense. it has been thought that, deceived by the brilliance of his results, with their great air of spontaneity, younger painters have been led astray. this, we believe, is a mistake. the weakest go to the wall, but it is probable that the example of sargent has succeeded in lifting the whole standard of painting in the country, bringing--even the great incompetent, within measuring distance of a useful ideal; an ideal of sympathy disciplined with every touch, and an ideal of difficult things. is not art always difficult? it has been so to sargent, with everything at his fingers' ends; with everything so much at his fingers' ends that under special circumstances he once completed a life-size three-quarter length portrait in a single day. he was in america, and had promised to paint the portrait. the sittings were put off, and at last the friend who was to sit was suddenly called away; but sargent came with his materials in the morning, and the sitter gave him the day. they were probably both nearly dead at the end of it, but a large finished painting had been begun and ended. sargent's countrymen have appreciated every manifestation of his gifts. lately he exhibited eighty-three of his water-colours in brooklyn. he will not part with them singly. brooklyn enthusiastically bought the whole collection for its art museum. fame has not spoilt his retiring nature, and even by his art a barrier is raised, in front of which the master will not show himself, but i hope it is an intimacy that we have established with him in his art. mine is but the privilege of murmuring the introduction, and any charges to be brought against me must be laid at sargent's door. for a great artist creates not only his art, but that which it inspires. this is indeed the mysterious province of artistic creation; the artist creating beyond his art that which comes into our minds through contact with it; so framing our thoughts and setting in motion waves infinitely continued in the thoughts that pass through every man to his companions. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber notes: passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. small caps were replaced with all caps. throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe". the illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate. thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the list of illustrations. errors in punctuation and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted. masterpieces in colour edited by--t. leman hare corot - * * * * * "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. corot. sidney allnutt. delacroix. paul g. konody. _others in preparation._ * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--danse des bergers. frontispiece the "danse des bergers" is the living memorial of a happy mood--one of those moments of lyrical ecstasy of which corot experienced so many, and which, by his genius, those less fortunate are enabled to share. the "feeling" in the drawing and painting of the trees is reminiscent of some words spoken by the painter when paris was oppressing him--"i need living boughs. i want to see how the leaves of the willow grow from their branches. i am going to the country. when i bury my nose in a hazel-bush, i shall be fifteen years old. it is good; it breathes love!"] corot by sidney allnutt illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. danse des bergers frontispiece page ii. l'etang iii. les chaumières iv. le soir v. paysage vi. le vallon vii. souvenir d'italie viii. vue du colisée all the illustrations are taken from the louvre, paris [illustration] the work of jean baptiste camille corot has been steadily rising in the estimation of the instructed ever since he won his first notable successes in . during the greater part of the artist's life-time the rise was very gradual, and he would have been astonished indeed if he could have known how rapid it was to be after his death. it is by no means only a rise in the selling prices of such of his works as come into the market--a corot has something more than a collector's value; but figures are in their way eloquent, and when we find a work ("le lac de garde") for which the painter was glad to get francs selling for , francs within thirty years of his death, the rapid growth in the fame of the painter is materially evidenced. there are fashions in art as in everything else: for reasons which the dealers could often disclose if they would, this or that artist's work is suddenly boomed, and for a time commands absurdly big prices in the auction rooms, only to find its proper level again when it is no longer to anybody's interest to maintain an artificial valuation. but it is difficult to believe that the passing of years will do anything to diminish the fame of corot, or lessen the prices which connoisseurs are willing to pay for the possession of his work. rather will both increase, there is reason to think, as under the winnowing of time's wings the chaff is separated from the grain, and many a painter hailed as a master to-day is scorned if not forgotten. for whatever may happen, it is impossible to believe that the work of corot will ever become old-fashioned. there is in it something that does not belong to one time, but to all times; not to one place, but to all places. it is elemental and universal, and instinct with a vitality and youth that unnumbered to-morrows can have no power to destroy. even those critics who most strongly opposed the canons corot professed--and there were many of them--were often unable to condemn a heresy in which faith was so justified by works: coming to curse, like balaam, they remained to bless. a far more trying ordeal the artist had to undergo in the intemperate rhapsodies of enthusiastic admirers. but neither censure or praise, the scepticism of his own people, or the indifference of the picture-buying public, could tempt him to deviate from the path that for him was the right one. "vive la conscience, vive la simplicité!" he used to say. his creed was in the words, and he lived up to it. he claimed for the artist an entire independence. "you must interpret nature with entire simplicity, and according to your personal sentiment, altogether detaching yourself from what you know of the old masters or of contemporaries. only in this way will you do work of real feeling. i know gifted people who will not avail themselves of their power. such people seem to me like a billiard-player, whose adversary is constantly giving him good openings, but who makes no use of them. i think that if i were playing with that man, i would say, 'very well, then, i will give you no more.' if i were to sit in judgment, i would punish the miserable creatures who squander their natural gifts, and i would turn their hearts to cork." again he says--"follow your convictions. it is better not to exist than to be the echo of other painters. as the wise man says, if one follows, one is behind." and again--"art should be an individual expression of the verities, an ardour that concedes nothing." [illustration: plate ii.--l'etang. "beauty in art is truth bathed in the impression, the emotion that is received from nature.... seek truth and exactitude, but with the envelope of sentiment which you felt at first. if you have been sincere in your emotion you will be able to pass it on to others." so said corot to a pupil, and "l'etang" would in itself be sufficient to prove that he knew how to practise what he preached. it is a variant on a simple motive that he was never weary of, and that he knew how to invest with new beauties every time it came to him.] it is on the face of it rather a hopeless task to attempt to trace the artistic pedigree of a painter who, at all costs, will be individual with "an ardour that concedes nothing"; and it would not help much towards an understanding of him. at the same time, it would be a mistake to suppose that corot was quite so independent of the influences around as, perhaps, he imagined himself to be. "artists," says shelley in a notable utterance, "cannot escape from subjection to a common influence which arises out of an infinite combination of circumstances belonging to the times in which they live, though each is in a degree the author of the very influence by which his being is thus pervaded." thus corot took his part in the revolt against classicism in france, with which the name of the little village of barbizon is so inseparably associated. he coloured it, and was coloured by it--so much was inevitable; but his intense individuality none the less preserved him in an aloofness from what i may be permitted to call the broad path of the movement. and as he grew older, so far from becoming more affected by his contemporaries, he only seemed more and more to discover himself. before all things corot was an idealist--a painter of ideas rather than of actualities; which, of course, does not in any way discount his simple sincerity. his landscapes give the idea of a place or an effect rather than its exterior appearance. the rendering of a beautiful passage of colour, of a gracious form, or a delicate play of light and shade, was never held to be sufficient. within the body of phenomena he saw the throbbing heart and luminous soul of nature revealed; and it was the very heart and soul of his subject that he strove to prison in his pigments. at the same time, dreamer as he was, there was always in him a healthiness and sanity rare indeed amongst those who are given to seeing visions. i remember a studio gathering at which corot was discussed. i wish the master, who always loved to be praised by those who could understand and were sincere, could have heard what was said of him. at length some one said, "corot was a great artist. it is true that he also happened to be a great painter." the words seemed to me to have meanings. a painter is a man who does something; an artist one who is something. the statement may not be new, but it is true; and what it involves is, i think, too often forgotten. in considering what a painter has done it is natural enough to be preoccupied with his method, to become immersed in an analysis of his technique. there will be an attempt to determine whether he is faithfully obedient to the accepted canons, or modifying and adapting, if not it may be defying them. in the latter case an endeavour must be made to find a solution for the question whether these progressive or revolutionary activities are justified in their result. it is criticism of this sort that fills innumerable studios with a jargon unintelligible to all but those who are, so to say, "in the trade" in one way or another, and can speak with a craftsman knowledge--of technical terms if of nothing else. such talk is often futile enough, a breaking of butterfly nothings upon a ponderous wheel of words; though it can, on occasion, be useful enough. in any case only a few, comparatively speaking, are likely to be either interested or benefited. it is altogether another matter when an artist is approached. how he conveys his message is of much less importance than what is conveyed. he may be poet, painter, or musician, but the need for understanding what he does is infinitely less than that of learning what he is. this is not to say that, in the case of the artist, technique is beneath consideration; but it is to say that it must not be considered first. trembling script sometimes give the authentic gospel its birth in words, and a true vision may be recorded by an uncertain hand. to lose sight of the artist in contemplating the technique of the work by which he reveals himself is to sacrifice the substance for the shadow. corot was a great artist. to him his art was not a trade or an amusement, still less a trick, but a religion. he worshipped with an unceasing diligence and intensity before the chosen altar of his adoration. less than his best he dared not offer there. nothing that was not wholly honest and true could be acceptable. what a magnificent character he gives to himself, all unconsciously, in confessing to m. chardin an artistic sin! "one day i allowed myself to do something chic; i did some ornamental thing, letting my brush wander at will. when it was done i was seized with remorse; i could not close my eyes all night. as soon as it was day, i ran to my canvas, and furiously scratched out all the work of the previous evening. as my flourishes disappeared, i felt my conscience grow calmer, and once the sacrifice was accomplished i breathed freely, for i felt myself rehabilitated in my own sight." what would some of our painters say to a conscience so tyrannous? it is, for me, impossible to look at corot's work without feeling that his was, if i may put it so, a monastic nature. here is a serene and cloistered art, something secluded from the traffic of the everyday world, a vision intense rather than wide. i think of corot as a priest at the altar of one of nature's innermost sanctuaries celebrating sacramental mysteries. every picture that came from him is an elevation of the host. this is the quality in his work, much more than a fastidious refinement nearer the surface, that gives it so high a distinction. hung in a gallery among other pictures, a corot does not clamour for notice. it is much too quiet in matter and manner for that; but, after awhile, it draws the eye, and when it has done so its hold is secure. the surrounding canvases almost invariably begin to look a little vulgar in its neighbourhood. and this not only because rioting colour might well look blatant by the side of the tender greys and greens and rose flushes that the artist loved so well, but because the spirituality of which those tones are merely the expression places the corot upon another and a higher plane. to come upon a corot in a gallery is like stepping out of the noisy glare of the market-place into the cool stillness of a church. market-places are good things, and the noisy crowd is perhaps only noisy because it is doing its appointed work in a right hearty fashion; but the presence seems nearer in the silence of the church. the silence is not dead, but quick with soundless speech. so with a corot picture; its quietness is the very antipodes of stagnation. it seems to spread far beyond the limits of the frame in ever-widening waves, until everything around is subdued. [illustration: plate iii.--les chaumiÈres luminous and almost uncannily true in tone, "les chaumières" takes high rank among the finest productions of corot's maturer years. it is the work of a man who "knows," who is able to take hold of essentials, and let non-essentials go, with a certainty of discrimination. profound knowledge, so thoroughly assimilated as to be instinctive in its application, can alone account for both the completeness and simplicity of the landscape, the result achieved with apparently so absolute a lack of effort.] the only other works of art which have ever given me quite the same impression in this direction are one or two of those dreaming buddhas that, wherever they may be, seem to be shrined in a stillness emanating from themselves. from first to last corot was as independent as he was industrious. he strove always to see nature with his own eyes, and to keep his vision clear and simple. whether or not other painters had a grander or nobler vision was nothing to him. it mattered only that he should be true to the grace that was his own. "i pray god every day," he said, "that he will keep me a child; that is to say, that he will enable me to see and draw with the eye of a child." that prayer was surely answered, for never did an artist look out upon the world with a more direct simplicity, or with eyes more delicately sensitive to the appeal of beauty. it was seldom the obviously picturesque that appealed to him. he seemed instantly to apprehend the most elusive of the beauties in the scene before him. that death-bed utterance of daubigny is significant: "adieu; i go above to see if friend corot has found me new landscapes to paint." that was it: corot never failed to find new landscapes to paint, for his eye was keen enough to pierce through what seemed commonplace, and discover the underlying beauty. starting off on one of his innumerable sketching excursions, he remarks to a friend that he has heard bad accounts from painters of the country for which he is bound, but adds that he has no doubt he will find pictures there. and, of course, he found them. the pictures are always there, though the faculty of seeing them is rare. no one ever worked more constantly and faithfully from nature, or became more intimately acquainted with the subtle outward expressions of her innermost moods; but the profound knowledge thus gained was only treated as the poet treats a wide vocabulary; as a means of expression, not as in itself worth exploitation. the scene before him was not recorded as a collection of facts, but as it had stirred his emotions, and as it was, in a sense, transformed by his vivid imagination. the resulting picture is the record of an adventure of the soul; the outward reality is not lost, but rather realised in a strange intensity. "see," said corot, pointing to one of his landscapes, "see the shepherdess leaning against the trunk of that tree. see, she turns suddenly. she hears a field-mouse stirring in the grass." of how the artist went to work when he had "found" a new landscape some notion may be gained from m. silvestre's description. "if corot sees two clouds that at first sight appear to be equally dark, he will, before building up the whole harmony of his picture on one or other of them, apply himself to discover the difference he knows must exist. then, when he has decided on the darkest as well as the lightest tone in the scene before him, the intermediate values readily take their places, and subdivide themselves indefinitely before his discerning eyes. these values, from the most positive to the most vague, call to one another and give answer, like echo and voice. when the artist sees he can divide the principal values of the landscape before him into four, he does so by numbering the different parts of his rough sketch from to , standing for the darkest and for the lightest patch, while the intermediate tones are represented by and . this method enables corot, with the help of any old pencil and any scrap of paper, to make records of the most transitory effects seen upon a journey. corot was not a man to make an inventory of his sentiments, and the fact that he made such records proves that they were sufficient for his own purposes. as a rule he first of all puts in his sky, then the more important masses in the middle of the composition, then those to the left and to the right; he then picks out the forms of the reflections in the water, if there is water, and so establishes the planes of his picture, his masses falling in one behind the other while one watches him. sometimes he proceeds in a less orderly way; for it goes without saying that his methods are the methods of freedom, and not the invariable recipes of a pedant. he runs an unquiet eye over every part of the canvas before putting a touch in place, sure that it does no violence to the general effect. if he makes haste he may become clumsy and rough, leaving here and there inequalities of impasto. these he afterwards removes with a razor, as if he were shaving his landscape, and leaving himself free to profit by such accidents of surface as are happy in effect." the picture of corot sketching in shorthand shows him when the long and close study of nature had enabled him to generalise with confidence, and when a memory, always retentive, had been trained to a pitch that made it far more reliable than any sketchbook memoranda. although he always expressed impatience with the idea that anything worth doing could be done merely by taking pains, corot was the least apt of men to spare any pains that were essential to his purpose; and nothing could be farther from the truth than the suggestion sometimes made, that he was wanting in this respect. to generalise as he generalised is not to be careless of detail, but the very reverse: it implies a knowledge so complete of every element in a landscape that those belonging to a particular view of it can be selected with an unerring judgment, and what is non-essential eliminated. "put in as much as you like at first, and afterwards efface the superfluity," is a bit of advice that comes from corot himself. it was not a strikingly original remark, but it could not have been made by other than a conscientious worker. it is certainly a mistake to suppose that corot was careless of details in the sense that he did not give them due consideration; but he always realised that details were details after all. "i never hurry to the details of a picture," he said; "its masses and general character interest me before anything else. when those are well established, i search out the subtleties of form and colour. incessantly and without system i return to any and every part of my canvas." there is a note in mr. george moore's _modern painting_ that seems to throw some illumination upon corot's manner of looking at his subject. mr. moore came upon the artist, an old man then, "in front of his easel in a pleasant glade. after admiring his work, i ventured to say: 'what you are doing is lovely, but i cannot find your composition in the landscape before us.' he said, 'my foreground is a long way ahead.' and sure enough, nearly two hundred yards away, his picture rose out of the dimness of the dell, stretching a little beyond the vista into the meadow." i think corot's foreground had a habit of being a considerable way ahead. [illustration: plate iv.--le soir "my 'soir,' i love it, i love it! it is so firm," said corot, standing before his picture in the exhibition gallery in company with an appreciative friend. it is "firm" enough beyond question, and the sky especially is a marvel of delicate, palpitating colour. but it is much more, a moment of magic beauty, evanescent as the reflected picture on a bubble-bell, seized and made permanent; an emotion of pleasure cast into a material shape.] to most, corot is "the man of greys," the painter of the twilight. without for a moment suggesting that this is true in so far as it seems to hint that his art had very narrow limitations, i am certainly inclined to believe that the general eye has fixed itself upon his most characteristic and most valuable work. the two dawns, as the old egyptians called them, isis and nephthys, the dawn of day and the dawn of night, revealed themselves to corot with a fulness to be measured only perhaps in part by the manner in which he has revealed them to us. the stillness, the freshness, the indescribable tremor of awakening life, the curious sense of a remoteness in familiar things, the expectancy as of some momentous revelation, all that goes to make the mystery and magic of the dawn, he knew how to translate into subtle yet easily understandable terms of form, and tone, and colour. it was a miracle to which he seemed to have found the key--perhaps by means of that prayer to be "kept a child." over and over again he invoked the dawn to appear upon his canvas, and never in vain. in ever-varying robes of loveliness, but the same in all of them, the dawn responded to his call. grey dawn! the words had a cold and gloomy sound until corot interpreted them, taking the gloom away and leaving of the cold only the delicious shiver of the morning freshness. beautiful almost as the dawn itself--born of it as they were--are those wonderful pearly greys of his. his palette seemed to hold an infinite range of them, each pure and perfect in itself, and each in a true harmonic relation to the others. and if the painted dawns are beautiful, they are also true; they carry instant conviction of their absolute verity. there is only one thing that can make a painted canvas do this, and that is truth of tone, and of tone-values corot made himself a master, mainly because he never ceased to be a student. he retained the eye of a child, but his mind became stored with the accumulated experience of many long hours that were only not laborious because the work was a delight. and great as the store grew in process of time, he was adding to it up to the last. here is a picture by albert wolff of the artist at the age of , when the hand of death was already stretched out towards him. "an old man, come to the completion of a long life, clothed in a blouse, sheltered under a parasol, his white hair aureoled in reflections, attentive as a scholar, trying to surprise some secret of nature that had escaped him for seventy years, smiling at the chatter of the birds, and every now and again throwing them the bar of a song, as happy to live and enjoy the poetry of the fields as he had been at twenty. old as he was, this great artist still hoped to be learning." it is altogether an important thing about corot that he was always singing--in season and out of season i was about to say, when i remembered that he would probably have declared that it was always singing-time. he went to his work carolling like a lark, though with a somewhat robuster organ, and snatches of song punctuated his brush strokes. the day's work done, he broke out into melody in earnest, and sang to himself, to his friends, at home or abroad, with equal vigour and enjoyment. we are told that on one occasion his irrepressible song broke out at an official reception, doubtless to the confusion of dignities and the shocking of many most respectable people. i cannot but think that something of music found its way into corot's pictures. they look as if they could have been done in music as well as they were done in paint. in a way they were: if there was always a song on his lips, surely there was also a song at his heart. one may say that his paintings were built to music like the walls of thebes. they are haunted by sweet harmonies, and seem charged with hidden melodies that tremble on the verge of sound. [illustration: plate v.--paysage the play of light filtering through foliage has never been more beautifully rendered upon canvas, or with a closer approximation to the truth of nature, than in the "paysage," reproduced here. the manner in which the tree has been portrayed, the body and soul of it, is not less astonishing. the landscape is a masterpiece among masterpieces, and an impressive witness to corot's amazingly sensitive faculty of apprehending what was in front of him, both with eye and mind.] many of those who read may shake their heads at this attempt to make a confusion of two arts, but my apology shall take the form of a quotation from corot himself. moved to sudden emotion by a magnificent view, he exclaimed, "what harmony! what grandeur! it is like gluck!" i think the man who said that may possibly have painted a little music, without caring for a moment whether he was confusing the arts or not. perhaps he felt that painting and music were more nearly related than a certain school of critics can allow itself to admit. but that is by the way. when in paris he was frequent in his attendances at concerts and the opera, and indeed music always drew him with a power only second to that of his chosen mistress--painting. as the twig is bent the tree will grow--it may be that had the accidents of his early environment been other than they were, his name would be famous as that of a great composer instead of a great painter. fortunately we do not know what we may have missed, while we are fully conscious of what we have gained. * * * * * the father of corot the painter was louis jacques corot, who, if he escaped being altogether a hairdresser, only did so by a narrow margin. one would rather like to imagine him as another "carrousel, the barber of meridian street." "such was his art, he could with ease curl wit into the dullest face; or to a goddess of old greece lend a new wonder and a grace. the curling irons in his hand almost grew quick enough to speak; the razor was a magic wand that understood the softest cheek." such was carrousel, according to aubrey beardsley's ballad, and such louis jacques corot should surely have been, if only to make his son more easily explainable; but, as a matter of fact, he appears at an early age to have forsaken the high art of hairdressing for more strictly commercial pursuits. he became a clerk, and his wife's assistant manager. for madame corot was a business woman--very much so. she was a native of switzerland, and evidently of the practical nature that so often distinguishes the swiss people. a woman of property in a moderate way, and two years older than her husband, as well as a capable manager, she does not appear by any means to have allowed marriage to submerge her own personality. as a _marchande de modes_ she was a distinct success. fashion found its way to her establishment in the rue du bac, and the name corot became a hall-mark of elegance. perhaps her son owed more to his mother than has sometimes been suspected. corot himself remarked that a skill equal to that of the painter was often shown by the costumier in the blending of colours--indeed he went farther, and said as much of a certain flower-seller of his acquaintance and her bouquet-making. really, when one comes to think of it, he may be said to come of artists on both sides, for if his father was scarcely as much of a hairdresser as we should like him to be, his paternal grandfather's claim to the description is beyond criticism. under these circumstances it is a little sad that, when he had completed his educational career without winning any considerable distinction, it was decided to make a draper of him. there is every evidence that, in so far as the attempt went, he made a very bad draper indeed. i do not know how long it took him to come to the conclusion that he would never make a good one--not very long, i should say--but after a trial of six years or so, it would seem that his father had arrived at the same conclusion. when his son declared his intention of abandoning drapery and of becoming a painter, corot _père_ did not offer any strenuous objection. he thought that the young man was a fool, and said so, with possibly a little bitterness, but on the whole with resignation. what was more to the point, he made a small provision, so that his son might live while "amusing himself." the provision in question was certainly a small one-- francs a year--but it prevented corot from ever knowing the extremities of poverty to which some of his brilliant contemporaries were reduced. as he said, he could always count on "shoes and soup"--and shoes and soup, if not much in themselves, can often bridge the gulf that lies between hope, or even content, and despair. moreover, corot's wants were few. throughout his life he had the simplest tastes, and his only extravagance was a charity that gave without measure and never thought about return. however, figure to yourself corot fully embarked on his career as a painter. he is, roughly, twenty-five years of age, and for stock-in-trade has glowing health, a certain familiarity with pencil and brush already acquired, an unquenchable enthusiasm, and so many francs a year. on the whole it is the outfit of a very happy and fortunate young man. once emancipated from the compulsions of drapery he lost no time in setting to work. he went straight to nature, and even at this time produced work that bore a hall-mark as distinctive as that of his later years. he worked also in the studios of michallon and of bertin, and if they did him no good (and there is little reason to suppose such a thing), they at least did him no harm. already he was too keenly engaged upon a line of his own. around ville d'avray, where his father had bought a house, he found numberless subjects ready to his hand, subjects of which nothing that he saw in his wide wanderings could ever make him tired. he also had an experience in morvan. i shall venture to quote from mr. everard meynell's "corot and his friends," concerning it. "he went, presently, to the little hamlet of morvan, whose blacksmith gave him hospitality. as a member of a farrier's numerous family, with the forge for sitting-room, and its fires to assuage the cold of mortals and of metals, and soup for fuel, and the blue smock of the country for raiment, corot saved money. he saved money out of the francs of his allowance; even the cost of canvas and paints did not bring his expenditure to three francs a day. his austerity meant rome, but it was not a hard road for him to follow. never was a man less provoked to any of the pampered ways of living." "it was in morvan that corot picked up with the peasant, and found in him many things fit to be learned. he learnt about soups, and pipes, and blouses, and the habit of the sunrise; and nothing that he learned did he forget. soups, and pipes, and blouses, and the sunrise lasted him till the end of his life. these things, like the honest humour and good-comradeship of a man afield, were in his blood; but morvan and morvan's blacksmith, and daily things done with the morvan peasantry, developed the peasant in the painter. corot's was nearer to the peasant's character than millet's even; for the emotional gloom of millet's outlook, his sense of the price paid for life, his sense of death and toil, of the significance of the seed and the scythe, made him a person too great and dreadful to be familiar with those for whom he thought and felt. corot's laugh and song, his raillery and content, were things to be friends with." [illustration: plate vi.--le vallon "le vallon" is probably one of the best-known and most universally admired of corot's works. it does not record one of those tender twilight effects in which, as may be believed, the painter found his keenest pleasure, but the quiet glory of a golden afternoon. the simple landscape is bathed in the most wonderful of painted sunshine, and possesses an extraordinary verity. the material essentials of the scene are set down with an unerring regard for truth, but it is in interpreting its "sentiment" that the most notable success has been achieved.] i think that in the foregoing passage the influence upon corot of the morvan visit, though it may well have been a memorable one, has been perhaps a trifle exaggerated. surely he must have "picked up" with the peasant long before, and found out how much he had in common with the dweller on the soil. and will the comparison with millet fully bear examination? i doubt it. the extraordinary delicacy and refinement of corot's vision is at least a thing as foreign to the peasant as the tense emotionalism of millet; and i suspect that the deep-rooted content of the one was as much removed as the implicit revolt of the other from the people with whom in their several ways they were both so much in sympathy. that in personal relations corot got nearer than millet to his peasant friends is more than probable. if not more understandable in reality, he seemed so in daily intercourse with those as simple and direct as himself. there was nothing in him to repel. his gay and expansive nature invited a confidence that was seldom withheld, except by those too distrustful and secretive themselves to understand it. the first visit to italy, undertaken in , marks an epoch in the life of corot, as in that of many another painter. but though it widened his outlook, and taught him much that otherwise he might never have learned, it did not tempt him to any deviation from the simple principles that all through his life guided him in the practice of his art. all the inducements which italy could offer were not sufficient to make him incline to use other eyes than his own when painting. he seems to have treated the masters in an unusually cavalier manner. nature in italy interested him much more than art in italy: he was more concerned with sunsets than with michael angelo. as was his custom, corot was always at work in italy, "sitting down" with his usual happy knack in finding the right spot, and painting what he saw as he saw it, with careful fidelity to his own beautiful way of looking at things. sometimes he worked from models in his room, but whether indoors or out, day after day found him painting, painting with unabated enthusiasm and ever-fresh delight. and he made friends, as always--among them d'aligny, who was the first to take the true measure of the then somewhat awkward young man. "d'aligny," says mr. everard meynell, "was the discoverer of his genius and its advertiser; for having found corot at work on the 'vue du colisée,' now hanging in the louvre, he made a formal statement of his admiration at 'il lepre' (a café in rome much frequented by painters) that night. 'corot, who sings songs to you, and to whom you listen or call out your ribald chaff,' said he, 'might be master of you all!'" the friendship lasted until the death of d'aligny in , and corot never forgot the generous praise that had so encouraged him during those early days in rome. in corot exhibited for the first time in the salon. the two pictures which bore his name were not unnoticed, but no one was sufficiently interested to purchase them. it was indeed fortunate on the whole that he was assured of "shoes and soup" from other sources than his art, for it was not until that it brought him any monetary reward worth mentioning. but it would be beside the mark to say that he had to endure any remarkable period of neglect. it must be remembered that his career as a painter did not seriously begin until he was of an age when many artists have already secured something of a position for themselves. his work, too, was not of such a description as to make any sensational impact upon the attention of the art-loving public. before he returned from his first visit to rome he had, however, made his mark in some measure, had been hailed by a few discerning critics as one of the elect. the enthusiastic testimony of d'aligny and one or two others had been endorsed with signatures that carried some weight--only at home was he still held to be an amateur. his right to a place among the more notable artists of his time was no more questioned, except by those whom ignorance or prejudice had rendered incapable of sane judgment. once more, and again, he visited italy, painting as he went, and what was much more to the purpose, filling with magic pictures the tablets of his mind: but i doubt if these subsequent visits carried him far beyond the point he had arrived at during the first. each day he was gaining more knowledge and greater dexterity, but his point of view was never seriously modified. italy gave to his delicacy some of its strength, invested the most tender-hearted of painters with the touch of sternness that could alone save his work from becoming invertebrate: but it could not materially alter his habit of vision, or turn into dramatic shape an inherently lyrical gift. he saw nature as a song in france first of all and last of all; italy only helped him to give the song a more severe metrical basis than it might otherwise have possessed. much that was sweet in corot it would seem that the relentless landscapes and pitiless skies of italy helped to make strong. from onwards one may say that corot was steadily growing into fame. in that year two of his pictures were bought by public authorities, and thus, for the first time, an official imprimatur was set upon his increasing reputation. he never knew the feverish delight of awaking one morning to find himself famous. the value of his work was only very slowly recognised, and as his paintings attracted more and more notice a heavy fire of hostile criticism was opened upon them: with no more effect than to make him smile as he went upon his way. some of these egregious criticisms are so utterly beside the mark that it is difficult to believe them anything but the result of a wilful misapprehension on the part of the critics. they seem to be inspired by venom and spite when read to-day: but in their own time they probably fairly represented the serious opinions of many who thought they were defending legitimate art against a spreading anarchy. it is even possible that such as nieuwerkerke, who, as mr. meynell records, was "overheard describing corot as a miserable creature who smeared canvases with a sponge dipped in mud," honestly believed that he was administering a well-deserved castigation to a charlatan. it is more than likely that many of us are making mistakes almost as serious to-day, so we need not find such an attitude incredible. [illustration: plate vii.--souvenir d'italie corot at the height of his powers is seen in the "souvenir d'italie." the thousand subtle nuances of exquisite colour in the luminous sky, the refined drawing and firm painting of the trees, and the happy confidence revealed by every brush mark upon the canvas, make it one of the most delightful and, we may say, most "lovable" of its creator's works.] there were other critics at this same period who were less hampered by preconceived notions, and came to a very different conclusion than those who were able to dismiss the whole nature school with contempt as "pampered humbugs." delacroix could see that corot was not "only a man of landscapes" but "a rare genius," and he was not alone. every year, as one masterpiece after another appeared at the salon from the "mud-dauber's" brush, the general body of artists and art-lovers were more disposed to give him the rank that was his due. in corot was elected one of the judges for the annual exhibition by his fellow-artists. he himself sent nine pictures, and one of them, a "site d'italie," was purchased by the state. the following year corot was again one of the judges, and in he was elected a member of the "jury de peinture." he had become a personage in the art-world of france. already in he had been decorated with the cross of the legion of honour, to the astonishment of his worthy father, who could not in the least understand on what grounds such an honour had been done to his failure of a son. the history of corot's following years there is no necessity to follow in detail. like the years which had gone before, they were fulfilled with happy labour. he journeyed through the length and breadth of france, to switzerland, and elsewhere, "finding landscapes" with that apprehensive eye of his, and recording them on canvas or on paper, or storing them in the pigeon-holes of a memory that in such matters never failed him. for the rest the record is one of a continually increasing appreciation of his work. it started in a very small circle, extending thence in ever-widening ripples. almost imperceptibly his fame increased until he became an acknowledged master. in view of the sums paid for many of them since, the prices he obtained for his pictures seem ridiculously small, but there is no reason to suppose that he was anything but well content with such material rewards as came his way. indeed, so much to the contrary, for some time he looked upon the increasing prices which purchasers were willing to pay with a mild astonishment and a kind of humorous fear that it was too good to be true. the slighting of his earlier work and the laudation excited by the later had precisely the same effect upon him--that is none at all. if one had asked him, i think he would have said both alike were out of perspective. and he would have spoken without any taint of bitterness: for, from the very first, he was both confident and humble. of the man corot there are many portraits both in pen and pencil, that help to give an outward shape to the more intimate revelation of personality to be found in his work. one of the most interesting is a portrait by the artist of himself as a young man. he is sitting, a burly, broad-shouldered figure, before his easel. the face looks out from the canvas square and strong, but the full-lipped mouth is sensitive, almost tremulous, and betrays the nature of the man even more surely than the alert eyes; though these eyes, on the pounce, one may say, and the forehead drawn in the intense endeavour to _see_--these also tell their own story. a pen-portrait of later date by silvestre describes the artist as "of short but herculean build; his chest and shoulders are solid as an iron chest; his large and powerful hands could throw the ordinary strong man out of the window. attacked once, when with marilhat, by a band of peasants of the midi, he knocked down the most energetic of them with a single blow, and afterwards, gentle again and sorry, he said, 'it is astonishing; i did not know i was so strong.' he is very full-blooded, and his face of a high colour. this, with the bourgeois cut of his clothes and the plebeian shape of his shoes, gives him at first sight a look which disappears in a conversation that is nearly always full of point, of wit, and matter. he explains his principles with great ease, and illustrates the method of his art with anything at hand; and that generally is his pipe. he so loves to talk about his practices in painting that, a student told me, he will talk in his shorts and with bare feet for two hours at a stretch without being once distracted by the cold." many photographs are in existence to present to us corot in his autumn time. says m. gustave geffroy, examining one of these: "the features are clearly marked. the brow, high and bare, crowned with hair in the _coup de vent_ style, is furrowed with lines. his glance goes clear, keen, direct, from beneath the heavy eyelids. the nose, short and fleshy, is attached to the cheeks by two strongly marked creases. there is a smile on the lips, of which the lower is very thick--altogether a good, intelligent, witty face." in general appearance, i may add, these later portraits of corot always remind me of the late mr. lionel brough. to my mind there is something more in these photographs than m. geffroy has called attention to. they are the portraits of a very happy man. a deep spiritual happiness and content make the old, wrinkled face a beautiful one. it is the face of one who, to use a lovely old phrase, "walked with god," and of whom it was said, "_c'est le saint vincent de paul de la peinture_." as one of his friends said, corot was "adorably good." he was a good son, for all that he found himself unable to fall in with his father's desire to make him a successful draper: and the fact that "at home" his outstanding abilities were never recognised, could not in the least abate the warmth of his family affections. and he was a good friend. he never forgot a kindness done to him either in word or deed, although his memory seemed to be singularly incapable of retaining a record of anything done to his hurt. it has been said, and the argument could be powerfully supported, that the same qualities that go to the making of a good friend make a bad enemy. very likely it is true in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred: if so the case of corot was the hundredth. he seemed to have a natural incapacity to bear malice or retain a sense of injury. perhaps he was too simple or too wise; or, maybe, both. not less characteristic of corot than his manner of going about always with a song on his lips, was his incurable habit of giving. the wonder is that he ever had anything at all left for himself, that even shoes and soup did not follow after francs. and very reprehensibly, of course, he gave to almost every one who had recourse to him, as well as to many who did not. his generosity was all but indiscriminate, and conducted in a manner that, it may be supposed, would drive a charity organisation society to distraction. he was victimised often and knew it, but the knowledge never dulled the edge of an insatiable appetite. to give was at once a luxury and a necessity to him, as appears, and he was never so gay as when he had been indulging himself in this direction rather more recklessly than usual. "he would paint" (i quote from meynell), "saying to himself, 'now i am making twice what i have just given.' or, again, having just emptied his cash drawer, he would take up his easel, saying: 'now we will paint great pictures. now we will surprise the nations.'" rather a foolish fellow evidently: but "one of god's fools," as i heard an old priest say of a somewhat similar example. [illustration: plate viii.--vue du colisÉe the "vue du colisée" is a reminiscence of corot's first visit to rome. it plainly shows that even in those early days he had obtained a great mastery of his medium, and could set down with distinction what he so clearly saw. though the subject is a big one, it is handled in such a fashion that simple dignity is its outstanding characteristic. the "vue du colisée" was one of the paintings that first gained for corot the high consideration of the more discerning among his artist friends.] notwithstanding the love that made the keynote of his character, all the investigations of the curious have not discovered an "affair of the heart" in corot's life story. it is a story to all intents and purposes without a woman in it: or, if that is saying too much, certainly without a heroine. there has been some attempt to exalt his relations with "mademoiselle rose" to the level of a romance, but it has failed completely for want of materials. mademoiselle rose was one of his mother's work girls, and in those early days, when he was but newly emancipated from the bondage of drapery, she used to come to see him at his painter-work. she never married, and thirty-five years later corot still counted her among his friends, and she visited him from time to time. it is a little romance of friendship, if you like, it may have been on the part of mademoiselle rose something more--who knows?--but it cannot count as a corot love-affair on the evidence that is available. as far as is known this is the nearest approach to a "love interest" in the life of the artist. it may have been that he looked upon women too much with the eye of an artist ever to be able to see them merely as a man; more probably it was the element of austerity in him that kept him immune from passion. with all his intense delight in life and in living, corot was always detached; always preserved, as by a religious habit, from actual contact with the world around him. through the midst of the follies, the extravagances, and the vices of romanticist circles in paris of the thirties, he passed without coming to any harm, and characteristically enough, without losing his regard for some of the wildest of a wild company. he took part in much of the "fun" that was going on, but though often in the set he was never of it, and so far as can be judged it did not influence him, or colour his outlook upon life, in the slightest degree. i think it was this temperamental detachment, and possibly a sense, unexpressed even to himself, of being vowed to one particular service, that prevented corot from ever "falling in love," as the phrase goes. or, to put it another way, his life was so full of his art, that there was no room within its limits for another dominating interest. simple and single-minded, happily pursuing the occupation that of all others he would have chosen, he made his life a work of art more lovely than the most beautiful of his paintings. no one can live in such a world as this for the allotted span and more without becoming acquainted with grief, but corot knew none of those searing sorrows which scorch their way into heart and brain, until they make existence a burden hardly to be borne. his faith in "the good god," to whom he looked up with so childlike a confidence, was so complete that sorrow for him could hold no bitterness; nor, deeply sympathetic as he was, had it power over an impregnable content and an unfailing serenity. and he died as he had lived. a few days before his death it is recorded "that he told one of his friends how in a dream he had seen 'a landscape with a sky all roses, and clouds all roses too. it was delicious,' he said; 'i can remember it quite well. it will be an admirable thing to paint.' the morning of the day he died, the nd of february, , he said to the woman servant who brought him some nourishment, 'le père corot is lunching up there to-day.'" "it will be hard to replace the artist; the man can never be replaced," was one fine tribute to his memory; and another, "death might have had pity and paused before cutting short so sweet a life-work." a sale of some of corot's works took place in the may and june following his death. it realised nearly two million francs, or £ , . this is, of course, not a fraction of the sum that would be realised were the same pictures to be put up to auction to-day; but it shows that his achievement was beginning to be estimated at something approaching its true value. corot's work, of which at one time he was able to boast he had a "complete collection," is now scattered to the four corners of the earth. paris possesses some splendid examples at the louvre, and there are many not less admirable distributed among the provincial galleries of france. america holds a large number in public and private galleries, and there are in private ownership in this country corots sufficient to make a magnificent collection. lately the national gallery has been enriched, by the salting bequest, with seven fine paintings from the master's hand, eloquent witnesses alike to his individuality and variety. to me it is an added joy, when i stand before a corot picture, to think of the gracious personality of its creator. it is almost as if his eager, happy voice were pointing out the manifold beauties of the miraculously bedaubed canvas, and recalling the "moment," so certainly made permanent there. it is always a "moment" that is seized in corot's paintings, with the exception of some of the earliest. nature is surprised with her fairest charms unveiled, in a passing emotion, of laughter or of tears. there is life, movement, the tremble of being, in everything set down. the air is palpitant with colour, rainbows are dissolved in an atmosphere that clothes everything in magic and mystery. beneath the gay confidence of the painting, subserving the emotion of the moment, what knowledge is shown in these pictures! these tree forms, bold and delicate, with such wonderful subtleties of drawing in them, give more than externals. they reveal a very psychology of trees, the soul that the artist so plainly saw in everything around him. he was concerned to set down far more than the details of the scene before him, not in the least satisfied to be but a reporter. the higher, or, if you like, deeper verities were what he strove for, and the universal verdict to-day is that he did not strive in vain. the figure-painting of corot is comparatively little known, and it is a subject of too much importance to attempt to deal with adequately in small space. an enthusiastic critic claims that it includes the artist's "absolute masterpieces," but i doubt if many would agree, beautiful as some of these figures are. they show the same faculty of apprehending a sudden revelation of beauty as is shown by the more familiar landscapes, the same exquisite sense of graces in form and colour, which elude the eyes of most of us. but it is still in landscape that corot is supreme. i have already stated my conviction that he was not greatly influenced by other artists, his predecessors, or contemporaries. perhaps constable, to mention but one name, helped to open his eyes, but once open he used them as his own. again, the classicism which surrounded him in his youth left gentle memories that in his age were never quite forgotten; but it was worn as sometimes an elderly gentleman wears a bunch of seals, and had about as much to do with the essential personality of the wearer. he was always true to himself. his equipment was simple faith, definite purpose, and unflagging zeal. a clear eye, a dream-haunted brain, and a great loving heart--that was corot. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh the history of modern painting [illustration: anton graff portrait of the artist] the history of modern painting by richard muther professor of art history at the university of breslau in four volumes [illustration] volume one revised edition continued by the author to the end of the xix century london: published by j. m. dent & co. new york: e. p. dutton & co. mcmvii _printed by_ morrison & gibb limited _edinburgh_ contents page list of illustrations ix introduction old and new histories of art.--seeming "restlessness" of the nineteenth century.--to recognise "style" in modern art, and to prove the logic of its evolution, the principles of judgment in the old art-histories are also to be employed for the new.--the question is, what new element the age brought into the history of art, not what it borrowed eclectically from earlier ages book i the legacy of the eighteenth century chapter i commencement of modern art in england the commencement of modern art in england.--two divisions of modern art since the sixteenth century.--classic and naturalistic schools.--english succeed the dutch in the seventeenth century.--william hogarth: his purpose and his inartistic methods.--sir joshua reynolds.--thomas gainsborough.--comparison between them.--reynolds, an historical painter; gainsborough, a painter of landscape.--pictures of richard wilson show the end of classical landscape.--those of gainsborough, the beginning of "paysage intime" chapter ii the historical position of art on the continent english influence upon the art of the continent from the middle of the eighteenth century.--sturm-und-drang period in literature.--rousseau.--goethe's "werther."--schiller's "robbers."--spain: francis goya, his pictures and etchings.--france: antoine watteau frees himself from "baroque" influences, and directs the tendency of french art towards the low countries.--pastel: maurice latour, rosalba carriera, liotard.--society painters: lancrat, pater.--the decorative painters: françois lemoine, françois boucher, fragonard.--"society" turns virtuous.--jean greuze.--middle-class society and its depicter, jean baptiste siméon chardin.--germany: lessing frees the drama from the classical yoke of boileau, and, following the english, produces in "minna" the first domestic tragedy.--daniel chodowiecki as the portrayer of the german middle class.--tischbein goes back to the national past.--posing disappears in portrait painting.--antoine pesne.--anton graff.--christian lebrecht vogel.--johann edlinger.--the revival of landscape.--rousseau's influence.--english garden-style succeeds the french style.--disappearance of "nature choisie" in painting.--hubert robert.--joseph vernet.--salomon gessner.--ludwig hess.--philip hackert.--johann alexander thiele.--antonio canale.--bernardo canaletto.--francesco guardi.--don petro rodriguez de miranda.--don mariano ramon sanchez.--the animal painters: françois casanova, jean louis de marne, jean baptiste oudry, johann elias riedinger.--an event in the history of art: in place of the prevailing cinquecento and the "sublime style of painting" degraded at the close of the seventeenth century, a simple and sincere art succeeds throughout the whole of europe.--return to what dürer and the little masters of the sixteenth century and the dutch of the seventeenth century originated chapter iii the classical reaction in germany the influence of the antique at the end of the eighteenth century shows no advance, but an unnatural retrograde movement, and notes in germany the beginning of the same decadence which had happened in italy with the bolognese, in france with poussin, and in holland with gérard de lairesse.--the teachings of winckelmann, anton rafael mengs, angelica kauffmann.--the younger generation carries out the classical programme in the value it sets upon technical traditions.--asmus jacob carstens.--buonaventura genelli chapter iv the classical reaction in france in france also the classical tendency in art was no new thing, but a revival of the antique which was restored to life by the foundation of the french academy in rome in .--influence of archæological studies.--elizabeth vigée-lebrun.--the revolution heightens the enthusiasm for the antique, and once more gives classicism an appearance of brilliant animation.--jacques louis david.--his portraits and his pictures in relation to contemporary history.--david as an archæologist.--jean baptiste regnault.--françois andré vincent.--guérin book ii the escape into the past chapter v the nazarenes influence of literature.--wackenroder.--tieck.--the schlegels.--instead of the antique, the italian quattrocento appears as the model for the schools.--frederick overbeck.--philip veit.--joseph führich.--edward steinle--julius schnorr von carolsfeld.--their pictures and their drawings chapter vi the art of munich under king ludwig i peter cornelius.--wilhelm kaulbach.--their importance and their limitations chapter vii the dÜsseldorfers on the rhine, a school of painting instead of a school of drawing.--wilhelm schadow, carl friedrich lessing, theodor hildebrandt, carl sohn, heinrich mücke, christian koehler, h. plüddemann, eduard bendemann, theodor mintrop, friedrich ittenbach, ernest deger.--why their pictures, despite technical merits, have become antiquated chapter viii the legacy of german romanticism alfred rethel and moritz schwind oppose the roman with the german tradition.--their pictures and drawings chapter ix the forerunners of romanticism in france last years of the david school wearisome and without character, except in portrait painting.--françois gérard, the "king of painters and painter of kings"; his portraits of the empire and restoration periods.--commencement of the revolt: pierre paul prudhon; his pictures and the story of his life; constance mayer.--revival of colouring.--antoine jean gros and his pictures of contemporary life; discrepancy between his teaching and his practice chapter x the generation of the revolt of the romanticists against classicism in literature and art.--théodore géricault and his early works.--"the raft of the medusa."--eugène delacroix: protest against the conventional, and renewed importance of colour.--delacroix's pictures; influence of the east upon him.--his life and struggles.--the classical reaction.--j. a. d. ingres and the opposition to romanticism.--his classical pictures.--excellence of his portraits and drawings chapter xi juste-milieu moderation the watchword of louis philippe's reign, in politics, literature, and art.--jean gigoux, a follower of delacroix and an inexorable realist.--eugène isabey.--middle position occupied by ary scheffer between the classical and the romantic schools; decline of his popularity.--hippolyte flandrin, as a religious painter a french counterpart to the nazarenes.--paul chenavard, compared to cornelius.--théodore chassériau; his short and brilliant career.--léon benouville.--léon cogniet and his pictures.--transition from the romantic school to the historical painters.--the great writers of history: renewed activity in this field: historical tragedies and romances.--art takes a similar course: popularity and facility of historical painting.--eugène devéria; camille roqueplan.--nicolaus robert fleury; louis boulanger.--paul delaroche; his popularity and its causes; his defects as a painter.--delaroche's pictures.--thomas couture chapter xii the post-romantic generation france under the second empire; the society of the period not represented in french art.--continuation of the old traditions without essential change.--alexandre cabanel.--william bouguereau.--jules lefébure.--henner.--paul baudry: his pictures; decoration of the grand opera house.--Élie delaunay: his pictures, decorative painting, and portraits.--the "genre féroce"; predilection for the horrible in art.--numerous painters of this school.--laurens.--rochegrosse and his pictures.--henri regnault chapter xiii the historical school of painting in belgium belgium to .--david and his school.--navez, matthias van bree.--gustav wappers, nicaise de keyzer, henri decaisne, gallait, bièfve.--ernest slingeneyer, guffens and swerts.--the exhibition of belgian pictures in germany chapter xiv the revolution of the german colourists anselm feuerbach, victor müller.--the berlin school: rudolf henneberg, gustav richter, knille, schrader, and others.--the munich school: piloty, hans makart, gabriel max.--the historical painters and the end of the illustrative painting of history chapter xv the victory over pseudo-idealism the historical picture of manners as opposed to historical painting, an advance in the direction of intimacy of feeling.--the antique picture of manners: charles gleyre, louis hamon, gérôme, gustave boulanger.--the picture of costume from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.--france: charles comte, alexander hesse, camille roqueplan.--belgium: alexander markelbach, florent willems.--germany: l. v. hagn, gustav spangenberg, carl becker.--the importance of hendrik leys, ernest meissonier, and adolf menzel as mediators between the past and ordinary life, between the heroic art of the first half of the nineteenth century and the intimate art of the second half bibliography list of illustrations plates in colour page anton graff: portrait of himself _frontispiece_ reynolds: mrs. siddons gainsborough: the sisters greuze: the milkmaid chardin: the house of cards watteau: fête champêtre angelica kauffmann: portrait of a lady as a vestal elizabeth vigÉe-lebrun: portrait of the painter with her daughter cornelius: "let there be light" schwind: the wedding journey regnault: general prim meissonier: a cavalier in black and white baudry, paul. portrait of baudry charlotte corday truth the pearl and the wave cybele leda edmond about bendemann, eduard. the lament of the jews biÈfve, edouard. portrait of bièfve the league of the nobles of the netherlands bouguereau, william adolphe. brotherly love cabanel, alexandre. portrait of cabanel the shulamite carstens, asmus jacob. portrait of himself scylla and charybdis argo leaving the triton's mere children of the night priam and achilles chardin, jean simÉon. portrait of himself grace before meat chassÉriau, thÉodore. apollo and daphne chodowiecki, daniel. portrait of chodowiecki the family picture all sorts and conditions of women , the morning compliment the artist's nursery cogniet, lÉon. tintoretto painting his dead daughter the massacre of the innocents cornelius, peter. portrait of cornelius from the frescoes in the friedhofshalle, berlin marguerite in prison the apocalyptic host the fall of troy couture, thomas. portrait of couture the love of gold the romans of the decadence the troubadour david, jacques louis. portrait of david madame récamier the oath of the horatii the rape of the sabines helen and paris belisarius asking alms the death of marat delacroix, eugÈne. portrait of delacroix dante's bark hamlet and the grave-diggers tasso in the mad-house entry of the crusaders into constantinople jesus on lake gennesaret horses fighting in a stable medea the expulsion of heliodorus delaroche, paul. portrait of delaroche the assassination of the duke of guise the princes in the tower strafford on his way to execution delaunay, Élie. diana boys singing madame toulmouche feuerbach, anselm. portrait of himself hafiz at the well pieta iphigenia portrait of a roman lady mother's joy medea dante walking with high--born ladies of ravenna fÜhrich, joseph. portrait of führich from the "legend of st. gwendolin" ruth and boaz the departure of the prodigal son jacob and rachel gainsborough, thomas. portrait of gainsborough mrs. siddons wood scene, village of cornard, suffolk the market cart the duchess of devonshire the watering place gallait, louis. portrait of gallait egmont's last moments genelli, bonaventura. the embassy to achilles thetis lamenting the fate of hector odysseus and the sirens portrait of genelli gÉrard, franÇois. portrait of gérard mlle. brongniart madame visconti cupid and psyche madame récamier gÉricault, thÉodore. portrait of géricault the wounded cuirassier chasseur the raft of the medusa the start gÉrÔme, lÉon. the cock-fight gessner, salomon. landscape landscape goya, francisco. portrait of himself the majas on the balcony the maja clothed the maja nude de que mal morira (from "los capriccios") soplones (from "los capriccios") se repulen (from "los capriccios") que pico de oro (from "los capriccios") volaverunt (from "los capriccios") quien lo creyera (from "los capriccios") linda maestra (from "los capriccios") devota profesion (from "los capriccios") otres leyes por el pueblo greuze, jean baptiste. portrait of greuze head of a girl girl carrying a lamb girl looking up girl with an apple gros, antoine jean (baron). saul portrait of gros the battle of eylau guardi, francesco. venice hamon, louis. my sister's not at home henneberg, rudolf. the race for fortune henner, jean jacques. susanna and the elders the sleeper hildebrandt, theodor. the sons of edward hogarth, william. portrait of himself the harlot's progress (plate vi.) the rake's progress (plate ii.) the rake's progress (plate vii.) the rake's progress (plate viii.) marriage à la mode (plate v.) the enraged musician gin lane ingres, jean auguste dominique. portrait of ingres the maid of orleans at rheims portrait of himself as a youth bertin the elder study for the odalisque in the louvre the source oedipus and the sphinx paganini mlle. de montgolfier the forestier family kauffmann, angelica. portrait of herself kaulbach, wilhelm. portrait of kaulbach the deluge prince arthur and hubert marguerite de keyzer. portrait of de keyzer the battle of woeringen laurens, jean paul. the interdict lefÉbure, jules. truth lessing, carl friedrich. the sorrowing royal pair the hussite sermon leys, hendrik. portrait of leys a family festival the armourer mother and child luminais, evariste. les Énervés de jumièges makart, hans. portrait of makart the espousals of catterina cornaro the feast of bacchus max, gabriel. portrait of max a nun in the cloister garden the lion's bride light the spirit's greeting adagio a winter's tale madonna mayer, constance. portrait of mayer the dream of happiness the tomb of prudhon and constance mayer at père-lachaise meissonier, ernest. the man at the window a man reading reading the manuscript polcinello a reading at diderot's a halt mengs, anton rafael. portrait of himself mount parnassus menzel, adolf. portrait of menzel, frederick the great and his tutor the round table at sans-souci frederick the great on a journey illustration to kugler's history of frederick the great portrait of frederick the great reifspiel when will genius awake? overbeck, frederick. portrait of overbeck the annunciation the naming of st. john christ healing the sick christ's entry into jerusalem the resurrection the seven lean years portrait of himself and cornelius pesne, antoine. portrait of himself and daughters piloty, carl. portrait of piloty girdonists on the road to the guillotine under the arena prudhon, pierre paul. portrait of himself joseph and potiphar's wife study directs the flight of genius le coup de patte du chat cupid and psyche the unfortunate family the rape of psyche le midi la nuit l'enjouir marguerite les petits dévideurs the vintage the virgin christ crucified madame copia regnault, henri. salome the moorish headsman rethel, alfred. the emperor otto at the tomb of charlemagne the destruction of the pagan idols hannibal's passage over the alps death at the masked ball death the friend of man reynolds, sir joshua. portrait of himself dr. johnson garrick as abel drugger heads of angels samuel richardson miss reynolds edmund burke mrs. abington edmund malone oliver goldsmith lady cockburn and her daughters bishop percy the girl with the mousetrap dr. burney richter, gustav. portrait of himself a gipsy scheffer, ary. portrait of scheffer marguerite at the well schnorr von carolsfield, julius. portrait of schnorr adam and eve after the fall schrader, julius. cromwell at whitehall schwind, moritz. portrait of schwind from the wartburg frescoes from the wartburg frescoes wieland the smith from the story of the seven ravens a hermit leading horses to a pool nymphs and stag rübezahl the fairies' song slingneyer, ernest. the avenger sohn, carl. the two leonoras the rape of hylas steinbruck, eduard. elves steinle, eduard. the raising of jarius' daughter "i have trodden the winepress alone" portrait of steinle book illustration the violin player sylvestre, joseph noËl. locusta testing in nero's presence the poison prepared for britannicus veit, philip. portrait of veit the arts introduced into germany by christianity the two marys at the sepulchre wappers, gustav. portrait of wappers the sacrifice of burgomaster van der werff at the siege of leyden the death of columbus watteau, antoine. portrait of watteau la partie carrée the music party the return from the chase introduction the historian who wishes to relate the history of painting in the nineteenth century is confronted with quite other demands than await him who undertakes the art of an earlier period. the greatest difficulty with which the latter has to cope is the deficiency of sources. he manifestly gropes in the dark with regard to the works of the masters as well as to the circumstances of their lives. after he has searched archives and libraries in order to collect his biographical material, the real critical problem awaits him. even amongst the admittedly authentic works, those which are undated confront those whose chronology is certain. to these must be added those nameless ones, as to whose history there is a doubt; to these again, those whose origin is to be ascertained. it needs a quick eye to separate the schools and groups, and finally to recognise the notes which are peculiar to the master. with none of these difficulties is the historian of modern art confronted. the painters of the nineteenth century have very seldom forgotten to attach a name and date to their works, and the circumstances of their lives are related with an accuracy that was, earlier, rarely the lot of the foremost men in history. it is all the more difficult, face to face with such a chaos of pictures, to discover the spiritual bond which connects them all, to construct a building out of the immense supply of accumulated bricks, the piled-up mass of rough material. the evolution of modern painting is more complicated and varied than that of the art of an earlier period, just as modern life itself is more complicated and varied than that of any previous age. how quietly, slowly, and surely was the evolution of that older period carried out. one simple proportion was maintained between art and the universal life of culture. customs, views of life and art, were so intimately bound up together, that the knowledge of the age in general naturally comprises that of art. standing before some old altar-piece of the school of cologne, it is as though one were watching in some broad high dome; everything is quiet all round, and the august figures in the picture lead their calm, grave existence in illustrious grandeur. the message of christianity, "my kingdom is not of this world," meets in art, too, with a clear expression. humility and devotion are joined together, making for a refinement in the feeling of life that is unsurpassed in its hieratic tenderness and gracious innocence. in the fifteenth century, the age of discoveries, a new spirit entered the world. commerce and navigation discovered new worlds, painting discovered life. the human spirit grew freer and more joyous; it was no longer satisfied with yearning for the other world alone, it felt itself at home also in this world, in the glory of the earth. pictures, too, were inspired with some of those joyous perceptions with which the citizens of the fifteenth century issued from their narrow walls out under god's free heaven, something of that easter day mood in _faust_. people still went on painting madonnas and saints, subjects of a religion which had spread from the far east over the whole west; but with the severe simplicity of the heavenly, there was universal awakening of all the charm and roguery and energy of the earthly. it is the first virginal contact of the spirit with nature. on men's works there rests the first morning-dew of spiritual life; they remind one of woodlands in spring: botticelli, van eyck, schongauer. after the italians had become vigorous realists in the fifteenth century, they rose in the sixteenth, the century of inspired humanism, to majesty. the time of hard grappling with the overwhelming fulness of actuality is over. those great masterpieces ensue in which the unlaboured effort shines forth in the most felicitous achievement: raphael, michael angelo, titian. at the same time the german manner is most directly opposed to the romance. they disdain to ingratiate themselves into men's minds by outward grace of form, but win the heart by their deep religious feeling and intimate sensibility. they are german to the core, racial even to the stiffness of the german character, but full of feeling and truth to life. dürer in his woodcuts and copper engravings is "_inwendig voller figur_"; in them he offers the "concentrated, homely treasure of his heart." holbein is great by the incomparably real art of his portraits. the century of that joyous revival of paganism, the olympian vivacity of the renaissance, is followed by the age to which the jesuits gave life and character. for those stately churches in the jesuit style, with their _fortissimo_ effect, their huge, sculptured ornaments and their gleaming, gold decorations, the classic quietness of the old masters ceases to be appropriate. it is a question of a more stirring and impressive treatment of sacred subjects, wherein the whole passion of renewed catholicism should be brought to expression. spain, the country of the inquisition, set the classic stamp on this enhanced religious feeling. here all that monarchical and sacerdotal impulse which founded and aggrandised the spanish nation, founded too its true representative in painting. painters endowed their church pictures with a passionate fervour and a flush of extravagant sensuousness of the national, spanish, local colour, such as are found united in the art of no other age or country. necessarily, moreover, such a feudal system as that of spain, with its grandees and princes of the church, involved also an art of portrait painting which ranks with the highest that has issued in this kind from any country whatever: murillo, velasquez. in flanders, the second stronghold of the jesuits, we have the titan rubens. a joyously fleshly fleming, he seizes nature by the throat and drags her there where he stands erect, as though he were lord of the world. freedom had found its way into victorious and protestant holland. here there flourished an art neither courtly nor fostered by the church. it stood in the closest connection with the burgesses, showed clear signs of the struggle through which country and people had won independence. in the first place, painting celebrated as its worthiest subject the free burgher, the tighter in the heroic struggle for freedom. at no time was portrait-painting practised to such an extent, and the sitters not aristocratic courtiers, but proud burgesses of a free community; the men grave, strong, self-reliant; the women faithful, pure, and modest. the workmanship is correspondent: simple, solid, domestic; and soon there followed the glorification of that which they prized the more after their struggles had been accomplished: the quiet, comfortable delight of hearth and home. during the war of independence the dutch had learnt to love their fatherland, and they were the first, as artists, fully to grasp the poetry of landscape. art now no longer shines only upon the eyes of mary and the hosts of heaven: it settles upon arid country hills, streams upon the sea waves, is at home in peasants' houses and the dark woods, wanders through the streets and alleys, makes a temple of every market. the religious sentiments, however, which stirred protestant holland had to find appropriate expression; the living essence of biblical subjects was to be released from a narrow, ecclesiastical sphere, and approached anew with all the deep, german inwardness. these tendencies were all united in rembrandt--perhaps of all masters, since the christian era, the mightiest proclaimer of the great pan; to him the cosmic powers of light and air signified the divinity that michael angelo had painted under a beautiful human form. finally, in the eighteenth century, comes _rococo_, with its rustling _frou-frou_ and its delicate charm. the whole life of that noble society, which exchanged court costume for silken pastoral garments, formality and rank for charm and grace, was a lively play, an extravagant game. the king played with his crown, the priest with his religion, the philosopher with his wisdom, the poet with the art of rhyme. they did not hear as yet the hoarse threatening voice of the disinherited, "_car tel est notre plaisir_." what this age possessed of beauty and charm, its peculiar grace and wanton vivacity, its reckless, inassailable frivolity, was proper also to its art. light and gracious as the whole life of that harmless, merry generation, it glided through the age untroubled, led by cupidons, and kissed by the wandering winds. it is only to-day that we understand once more the charming masters of that elegant century. the painters of every epoch looked at nature with their own eyes, and also with the eyes of their age and of their country. so the art of every period appears as "the mirror and abstract chronicle" of its age. with irresistible majesty, and conscious of its inspiration, it lays hold of the external world, and gives back to it its own picture infinitely exalted. it is the enlightened expression of the age, as upright, as fresh, as fanatic, or as unnatural as its generation. therein lies the strength of the painters of _rococo_, that they painted the artificiality of the time with such unsurpassable naturalness. it is just these infinitely various manners of paying court to nature--unceasingly throughout the course of centuries, now violently, now softly and tenderly, at times, too, not without passing infidelity,--it is just these which determine the beauty and value, the mystery and essence of art, and are in the history of art all that tends to its variety and unsurpassable charm. the nineteenth century not only shows a new age, but probably begins a new section of universal history. it is probable that in contrast with this epoch of stirring movement, during which the readjustment of all political and social relations, the new discoveries in the instruments of commerce, trade, and industry have given an entirely new aspect to the world, the next thousand years will sum up all the previous centuries as the "old world." new men require a new art. one would be inclined to surmise from this that the art of the nineteenth century presented itself as something essentially personal, with a sharply distinctive style. instead of this it offers at first view, in contrast with those old ages of uniform production, a condition like that of babylon. the nineteenth century has no style--the phrase that has been so often quoted as to have become a commonplace. in architecture the forms of all the past ages live again. the day before yesterday we built greek, yesterday gothic; here _baroque_, there japanese: but amidst all these products of imitative styles there rise up stations and market-places which, with the robust elegance of their iron colonnades, herald the greatness of fresh conquests. in the province of painting there are similar extremes. in no other age have minds so diverse flourished side by side as carstens and goya, cornelius and corot, ingres and millet, wiertz and courbet, rossetti and manet. and the existing histories excite a belief that the nineteenth century is a chaos into which it is possible only for some later age to bring order. perhaps, however, it is already quite possible, if one only resolves uncompromisingly to apply to the new age those principles which have been tested in the treatment of the _old_ histories of art, if one endeavours to study those artists who are in part still our contemporaries as objectively as though they were masters long dead. that is to say: one is wont, in a review of an older period in art, not to inquire what it had caught from an earlier age, but rather what it had introduced that was new. it was not because they imitated in their turn that the old masters became great; not because they looked backwards, but rather because they went forwards, that they made the history of art. we are not grateful, for instance, to the dutchmen of the middle of the sixteenth century--frans floris and his contemporaries--that they forsook dutch naturalism, and bootlessly exerted themselves in the way of michael angelo and raphael. we can see no remarkable merit in the fact that the bolognese at the beginning of the seventeenth century gathered their honey from the flowers of the cinquecento. and we are even less inclined to see in the contemporaries of adrian van der werff, who endeavoured to refine the rugged, primeval dutch art by the study of the italians, more than clumsy imitators. just as much will the interest of the historian of the art of the nineteenth century be bestowed in the first degree upon the works which have really created something independent and transcending all the earlier ages. he will not give especial prominence to those domains which had their flowering-time in other days than our own, but he will ask: where is that distinctive element which appertains to the nineteenth century only? what are the new forms which it has found, the new sentiments to which it has given expression? not those whose activity lay in clothing--however cleverly--the artistic necessities of the age in the store of already transmitted forms, but the pathfinders, who went forwards and created anew, require our attention. even if, after the old masters, they can only be granted a place in the third or fourth class, they must nevertheless always take precedence of those others, because they exhibited themselves as they were, instead of making themselves large by standing on the shoulders of the dead. many of those who were once valued highly, who, thriving on the inheritance of the past, accomplished what was apparently of importance, measured by this standard will arouse little interest, because their artistic speech, depending on a foundation of the established canonical works of old, is not their own but borrowed. in others, on the contrary, who, apart from the dominating tendency, had the courage rather to be insignificant, and yet remain themselves, observing with their own eyes nature which surrounded them, or naïvely abandoning themselves to the disposition of their artistic fantasy, in them will be seen the essential vehicles of the modern spirit. and then it will be apparent that the art of the nineteenth century as well as that of every earlier period had its peculiar garment, even if for official occasions it preferred to unpack from its wardrobe the state costumes of earlier ages. it is only because this distinction between the eclectic and the personal, the derived and the independent, has not yet been carried out with sufficient strictness, that it has hitherto, in my opinion, been found so difficult to discover the distinctive _style_ of modern art, and to make clear the logic and sequence of its evolution. book i the legacy of the eighteenth century chapter i commencement of modern art in england if the question arises, why modern art has been compelled to find expression for itself in a form different from that of the art of the earlier centuries, we must first call attention to the change that has taken place in the fundamental conditions of society. formerly, the chief supporters of art were the two leading powers of church and king. the most noted works of raphael and michael angelo, of velasquez and murillo, of rubens and van dyck, were executed either for the churches or for the reigning princes of their country. the patron of modern art is the citizen. the old culture of the clerics and aristocrats has been superseded by that of the middle classes, and the beginnings of modern art must therefore be sought in the country in which this class first developed its distinctive character--in england. england, as early as the eighteenth century, was already a land of citizens. at a time when there was to be found on the continent acute mockery of what was old and outworn, conjoined with the most enthusiastic and joyous faith in the future, the great and wealthy england had established herself in the van of the new age. here voltaire saw with astonishment for the first time, when he arrived in london as an exile at the age of thirty-two, the free, open life of a great people; here he learnt to know a country where there is "much difference of rank, but none that is not based on merit; where one could think freely without being restrained by slavish terror." here was the idea of a modern free state already accomplished at a time when, upon the continent, the thunderclouds of the impending storm hardly cast their first shadow. here the notion of a united family life had first developed, upon the foundation of a civil order and security. here, therefore, were first broken down those barriers around the territory of literature and art within which the spirit of the renaissance had raised its wonderful flowers, and the road was begun along which the nineteenth century should advance. simultaneously with the growth of the middle classes there arose the need for a domestic, practical literature. books were required which people could read by their fireside, in the seclusion of the family circle, in country districts. for that, the stiff and antiquated poetry of courtiers and academicians, which had hitherto been poured out upon the world from france, was hardly suitable. to the cold classicism represented by pope, there succeeded in english literature--far earlier than was the case elsewhere--the delineation of what was immediately contemporary. at the same time that mdlle. de scudéry--when it was a question of describing the court of the great king, the society of louis xiv--felt herself bound to translate her theme into the antique and write a _cyrus_, the english novel had taken its motives from actual life. defoe's _robinson crusoe_ is the first book in which man and nature are depicted without the introduction of antique types or fairies; the first novel in which the details of real life are displayed, and what had been hitherto neglected is granted an exact delineation. at a time when people in other countries were occupied with representations of the antique, the english novelists had embarked on the intimacy of the family circle. after richardson, who laboriously yet with animation described everyday life, followed fielding, with his sharp observation, homely and humorous; then goldsmith, with his serene outlook of untroubled equanimity, his unsurpassed miniatures; smollett, with his crude and satirical character sketching; and the audacious and witty laurence sterne, whom nietzsche has called the most "gallant" of all authors. at the same time tragedy, too, descended from the court and the nobility into the sphere of domestic life; showing that here too were significant fortunes and conflicts, which stories strike a truer human note than those of kings and heroes. painting moved along the same road; and whilst in other countries, with the beginning of the century, the high, aristocratic art, which was the offspring of the renaissance, gradually waned, the plebeian paintings of hogarth laid the foundations of that art which prevailed in the _bourgeois_ nineteenth century. english art had this advantage in playing a pioneering part, that it had no old traditions to stand in its way; it had no great past. in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries england had been content to offer hospitality to holbein and van dyck, and to collect the works of foreign masters in her galleries. her art sprang into existence suddenly and unexpectedly at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and thence developed exclusively on native lines. since the english could not lean either upon an old or a foreign model, nor enter into a round of subjects that had already been brought to perfection, they turned from the outset quite naturally into the road which was only to be trodden later by the other nations still in the bondage of tradition. they took up, to a certain extent, the thread which the dutch, who appeared in the seventeenth century as the most modern people in art, had let drop: the progressive ideas of holland had come over to england with the "glorious revolution," with william of orange and queen anne; whilst in holland itself the french invasion of had caused a reaction to the courtly idea, against which the english took up an attitude of conscious and rigid protest. this opposition is clearly expressed by the english æsthetic writers. the most important name to be mentioned is that of shaftesbury. beneath the favour of the court in france, he says, art has suffered. we englishmen live in an age in which freedom has arisen. such a people does not require, in order that art may prosper, an ambitious king to breed, by means of his pensions, a race of flattering court painters. our civil liberty affords us a sufficient foundation, and our liberty leads us to _absolute verity_ in art. thus did shaftesbury enunciate his leading æsthetic doctrine; it was his constant message, and it was constantly repeated with great emphasis: "all beauty is truth." "the search after truth leads you to nature." "truth is the mightiest thing in the world, since it exercises sovereign rights over the creations of the imagination." but what must art be in order to produce truth? "the strictest imitation of nature." by this word shaftesbury does not understand what we understand by the word "nature"; not, in the first instance, so much the nature surrounding us, in its outward manifestations, but, above all, an intimate human reality. let the painter represent the reality of human _inwardness_. still life, the animal world, landscape,--all that, shaftesbury explains, is most valuable. but another and a higher life exists in man than in the beasts and the woods, and there is the true object of art. in no case should the artist proceed from external vision; for then he will obtain fashionable attitudes, theatrical unreality, or, in the most favourable instance, a formal, decorative embellishment. of what value is that in comparison with a single real presentation of character? how insignificant would every external form seem in contrast to each single feature of this intimate manner! here is the second characteristic of english painting. it proceeds neither, like that of the sixteenth century, from formulas, nor, like the dutch, from the picturesque, but, like to the english novel of character, from an intellectual impulse; it strives not after beauty of form and physical, sensuous grace, but, in the first place, after intellectual expression. and from this there follows immediately a third trait. if art is to make the inwardness of man its subject, the artist cannot remain an indifferent portrayer. he will make great distinctions, will bring into prominence what is meritorious or censurable in every character--he will become a moralist. only so can he conform to that last and highest function which shaftesbury assigns to the painter. the liberty which the english nation had fought for in the "glorious revolution" brought forth, in the course of years, while shaftesbury was writing, a fruitful crop of dissoluteness and licence. the mortification of the flesh of the puritans was followed by so violent a recrudescence of sensuality that it was as though the whole menagerie of the passions had been unchained. london swarmed with criminals; drunkenness was an epidemic. the moral idea awoke amongst the cultivated classes. might it not be possible, with the help of education, for that to be overcome? and so shaftesbury's view of art comprised a third, and very dangerous, element; namely, that to fulfil the most serious mission of that culture which had ensued from the free and natural conditions in england--even in the realm of æsthetics--the painter, like the poet, must appear as the moral teacher of his age. imagine an artist who fulfils these conditions and you have, as a result, _hogarth_, with all his qualities and defects. [illustration: hogarth. portrait of himself.] what marks the greatness of hogarth is his freedom from foreign and ancient influences. the eighteenth century came in as an academic age in art. turning away from life, it spent itself in allegory and the imitation of typical figures that had been inherited from the renaissance and petrified into academic work. gods, in whom no one any longer believed, hovered, at least in paint, over a race which was without enthusiasm. then came hogarth, and his quick vision discovered the new way. he looked out upon the life surrounding him, with its manifold idiosyncrasies, and felt himself with pride to be the son of a new age, in which rigid, conventional forms were everywhere penetrated by the modern ideas of free thought, the rights of man, conformity to nature in morals and manners. this world which confronted him he depicted truly as it was, in all its beauty and its ugliness. with him was the origin of modern art. before his paintings and engravings pale idealism disappeared. it was he who resolved and set out to bring into the world a new and independent observation of life. he was a painter who, with as little aid from foreign influences as from those of the past, went his own way and kept to it, and devoted his art, unblemished by the pallor of a borrowed ideal of beauty, soberly and exclusively to the realities of surrounding life. "it seemed to me unlikely," writes he, "that by copying old compositions i could acquire facility for those new designs which were my first and greatest ambitions." works of old italian masters, artistic contemplations, which went back to raphael and the caracci, were ignored and ridiculed by him. his rude strength of painting, directed to the living truth, was a protest against all that idealism which was the heritage of the renaissance, and had grown quite bombastic under the hands of its imitators. nature, he writes, is simple, plain, and true in all her works; and with this principle he has founded a strong english school on the solid foundation of truth to nature. [illustration: hogarth. the harlot's progress, plate vi.] an englishman by birth, character, and disposition, he depicted his fellow-countrymen; he made his sketches in the midst of the hubbub of the street. his world is london, the world-city, "old merry england," which, in contrast with the puritanism of to-day, still lived through its golden age of riot. in such a world--a world existing to this day, only more decently berouged--moved hogarth; in the company of wine-bibbers, in gambling hells, in rooms of poets, in cellars of highwaymen, in the death-chambers of fallen maidens. "the harlot's progress," which he produced in a series of pictures, brought him his first success. he then published further series of similar careers over crooked courses--"the rake's progress," "marriage à la mode." he painted the rabble of london, their society and their morals; those who went in cotton and rags and those in satin and silk. in his writings he censures the old painters plainly because in their historical style they had quite passed over the middle classes. and he went with great knowledge to these new subjects. in the national gallery, which possesses the originals of "marriage à la mode," one is astounded at the technical qualities of hogarth's painting. whoever has been misled by the engraved reproductions, and looks for bad, distorted drawing, may here learn to know him as a painter in the fullest sense of the word. there is no sign left of the defective caricature which disfigures the engravings; there is a severe, unadorned manifestation of realism, of an art that has from the outset rooted itself in modern life. under the manners and graces of the age hogarth stands a "self-made" man, a healthy anglo-saxon personality, full of sturdy independence and impeccable common sense. he attracts by a sharpness of observation, a penetration into idiosyncrasies of character, a grip upon the most trivial changes in men's emotions and play of features, the like of which is to be found in hardly one of his predecessors. [illustration: hogarth. the rake's progress, plate ii.] against these qualities it must be understood that an equal number of defects is to be set off. the inartistic part of him was that he followed the æsthetic theories of the age, and looked upon art as merely a means to ends alien to itself. with him painting was an instrument to disseminate the inventions of his poetic-satiric humour; it was a form of speech to him. he is not unjustly called on that account a comedian of the pencil, the molière of painting. we look at other pictures, but his we read. the commentaries on them are in some respects the rendering back of the pictures into their proper element. lessing called the drama his pulpit; with hogarth his art was a pulpit. he wanted, like hamlet, to "hold the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." pictures beneath his hands became moral sermons. in the six pictures in "the harlot's progress," with which he started in , and which to-day, since the originals have perished, can be considered only in the copper engravings after them, all these attributes are recognisable. mary hackabout comes innocent from the country to the town with the intention of seeking a situation as a servant-girl. she speedily falls a victim to temptation, becomes the mistress of a jewish banker, whom she soon loses by her infidelity, descends to be a thief, and comes to the work-house. released from there, she becomes the companion of a highwayman, until she ends her pitiful life in a disorderly house, leaving behind her a poor crippled boy, who, at his mother's funeral, is playing with a top. the conclusion of the paintings shows how the other women bid farewell to the corpse, and buoy themselves up for their coming pleasures by drinking from the spirit bottle, which stands on the coffin, while the priest, who is come to give the blessing, announces his visit for the evening. the second series, which is to be seen to-day in the soane museum, describes in eight tableaux the somewhat similar life of a young man, the "rake." as an oxford student he has promised marriage to a pretty but poor girl, when suddenly the death of a wealthy uncle throws him into the vortex of london life. he wishes to buy himself freedom from his sweetheart, but she disdainfully refuses the money and supports herself and her child honestly with the labour of her hands. the seducer, winning fame in the world of women and sport, rapidly paces the road to ruin; yet he repairs his finances once again by a marriage with a rich and one-eyed old lady. once more on his feet, he flings himself into games of chance, and comes to the sponging-house, whither his better half follows him. it is the last straw when a play which he has offered to a manager is refused, and he can no longer buy himself a pint of ale; there remains only the final fall into the misery of frenzy, and in the last picture we find him amongst the lunatics bound in chains as a madman. only his student love, sarah young, of oxford, whom he had treated so scurvily, cannot forget him, and, with tears, seeks him out again in the madhouse. [illustration: hogarth. the rake's progress, plate vii.] the third and most famous series was completed many years after the "rake"--in . hogarth has admittedly taken particular pains with the six oil paintings of "marriage à la mode," which have been placed in the national gallery; and these painted novels reveal in strength and beauty of execution the high-water mark of his work as a painter. the whole is quieter, simpler, less overloaded with ingenious accessories. the impoverished lord has married his son, who is already worn out with excesses, to the strong and healthy daughter of a city alderman. a girl is born; then they go their separate ways. the husband surprises the wife with a lover, and is stabbed by him; the unfaithful wife, moved by this, begs her dying husband for forgiveness. as a young widow, deprived of her woman's honour, she goes back to the _bourgeois_, philistine ennui of her father's house, and when she learns of her lover's condemnation she escapes from the burden of her misery by means of poison. the father is sufficiently provident to take the wedding ring off her finger before the body is cold, lest it should be stolen from the corpse. in the last sequence hogarth passed over completely to the moral sermon and the study of crime. the series "industry and idleness," in , was comprised in twelve sheets, which he produced only in rough engravings, as he wished exclusively to influence the masses. two apprentices enter a cloth-weaving business at the same time, of whom one rises, through his zeal for the interests of the business, to a marriage with his master's beautiful daughter, to the rank of alderman, and finally to be lord mayor of london. the idle apprentice grows, on the down grade, from a gambler into a vagabond. he is transported, comes back again, and ends on the scaffold. the two comrades meet for the last time when the honest man announces his death-warrant to the knave. [illustration: hogarth. the rake's progress, plate viii.] garrick, as we can see from his epitaph on hogarth, has not unjustly characterised his art, in these words-- "farewell, great painter of mankind! who reached the noblest point of art, whose pictured morals charm the mind, and through the eye correct the heart." [illustration: hogarth. marriage À la mode, plate v.] hogarth painted stirring and humorous scenes, full of effective morality, with which he sought to cheer, terrify, and improve humanity. his five-act tragedies end always with the triumph of virtue and the punishment of vice. as one of his contemporaries said, he exercised the art of "hanging in colours." the twelve plates of the parallel biographies of "industry and idleness" he employed as an illustrated weekly sermon for the benefit of the working classes, and he was able to observe with satisfaction that they had an actual influence on the conduct of the people, as instanced in the diminution of gin shops. yet for all that, in the elevation of public morality, the highest aim of art is not, as garrick asserted, fulfilled. who has ever seen such a painter? would he be a painter? it is exactly by this moralising with the brush that hogarth stands in such abrupt opposition to his predecessors, the dutch. they were painters, nothing but painters, and in their painting reckoned on eyes which could appreciate their pictorial subtilty. man was for them a patch of colour; the real delight of their eyes was the rich light that came mellowed through the shadows, and played upon the ruffed garments and the clumsy forms. with hogarth, in the place of the idea of colour, the anecdote is brought in. he saw the world not so much with the eyes of the painter, as with those of the physician, the criminologist, the pastor. the familiar element, that serene and comfortable observation of an everyday occurrence upon which dutch art was based, has altogether disappeared in his pictures. he did not paint because something pictorial urged him, but saw in men the actors of the parts which he had in his mind. this departure from the purely picturesque is in part explained by the predominance of literature in england at that time. in a country where the tragedy of familiar life as well as the domestic novel had arisen there was imminent peril that a young school of painting working without traditions should branch off also on to those lines. hogarth desired to give painting a new manner; he seized upon what was epic or dramatic, and painted the pictorial counter parts to smollett's and richardson's novels. in the age of enlightenment the painter makes way for the writer. with this idea he himself wrote: "i have endeavoured to treat my subjects as a dramatic writer; my picture is my stage, my men and women my players, who, by means of certain actions and gestures, are to exhibit a dumb show." [illustration: hogarth. the enraged musician.] moreover, to explain the growth of this sort of literary hybrid, one is forced to consider the changed conditions under which painting was introduced into england at large. art, which hitherto had shone forth her enchantment upon the few, was conducted from the first in free england along the broad road of popularity, and given over to a public which had to be educated to art by degrees; and this admission of the mass of the people to the enjoyment of art, in a proportion hitherto unheard of, must inevitably have a retrogressive effect upon painting itself. instead of the earlier amateur of really distinguished culture, there stood "the people." but just as in the middle ages works of art were seen to be a sort of picture-writing for the people--_picturis eruditur populus_, said gregory the great,--so now the new patrons could hardly require other than those works of art in which a story was pictorially told. these could be understood even by the man whose understanding was otherwise wholly closed to matters of art; and hence it came about that almost all the _genre_ painters--for very nearly a century--followed with more or less intelligence in the footsteps of hogarth. to treat him, as is frequently done, because of this popularisation of art, because of this transformation of the picture into the picture story, as a pattern instance of tastelessness, would lead to very dangerous consequences, and should be the less employed because hogarth's pictures are, at least, comparatively well painted, whereas many of his successors could escape the deluge only in the noah's ark of their talent for narration. what hogarth could do when he put off the schoolmaster, he has shown moreover in his portraits. there he is an entirely great painter. his pictures have none of that van dyck elegance, which had become the mode in england before him; they are robust, crude, anglo-saxon, strongly and broadly painted withal, sketches, in the best sense of the word. his "shrimp girl," in the national gallery, for instance, is a masterpiece to which the nineteenth century can hardly produce a rival. in the history of painting it is notorious that the latter half of the last century belongs especially to portraiture, and here the english occupy the first rank. neither hogarth nor reynolds nor gainsborough was a genius like titian, velasquez, or even frans hals. their art is not to be compared with that of the greatest of all portrait painters, but they surpassed all the painters of the eighteenth century; they were not only the greatest in england since van dyck, but the first portrait painters in europe at the time. [illustration: hogarth. gin lane.] reynolds and gainsborough lived almost at the same period. the former, born in , died in ; the latter, born in , died in . they had as models men and women of the same society. they went the same road, side by side. many celebrities strayed from one studio to the other, and were painted by reynolds as well as by gainsborough. these are just the pictures which show us so distinctly how widely the two, who were usually mentioned in the same breath, differed from each other in spite of having grown up on the same soil. even their outward man displays this dissimilarity. reynolds appears in his "portrait of himself" in the uffizzi gallery at florence, in the red mantle of the president of the academy, the official cap on his head, while the hand resting on the table holds a copy of his _discourses_; close by is a bust of michael angelo. the complexion is that of a man who sits much within doors. a pair of spectacles with large, round glasses leads one to conclude that he injured his eyesight early with much reading. gainsborough, with his refined roman nose, the haughty, curved sensuous lips, and the expression of his face which speaks at once of innocence and refinement, gives an impression far more than reynolds of the child of nature and the gentleman. his cheeks are fresh and rather ruddy; a depth of soul lies within the large blue eyes, that are somewhat melancholy, yet have such a free outlook upon life. [illustration: reynolds. portrait of himself.] _joshua reynolds'_ father was a clergyman, a most learned man, who kept a latin school. he gave the boy, it is recorded, that most uncommon christian name, for the remarkable reason that he hoped thereby to draw the attention of a great personage, who bore the same name, towards his young namesake. his son was to become a physician. but books on other subjects which he read at his desk at school made a greater impression on the boy. in the well known _treatise on painting_, by richardson, he discovered his vocation. from the perusal of this book he developed a taste for things artistic, studied the works on perspective of pater pozzo, read everything he could find on art, and copied as a preliminary all that fell into his hands in the way of woodcuts and copper engravings. one of the earliest drawings which remain from his childhood represents the interior of a library. at the age of nineteen he came to london to a well-known master, hudson, the favourite painter with the gentry of the day, who required £ with a pupil. he was already convinced that only in london could he find the means to attain fame, and even as early as he took a fine establishment and kept open house in order to attract attention. he was soon in a position to complete his artistic education by means of residence in italy. in he had painted the portrait of a captain keppel, who shortly afterwards was appointed commodore of the mediterranean squadron, and invited the young painter to go for a cruise in his ship. they sailed in , and reynolds was able to spend three years in italy. [illustration: _cassell & co._ reynolds. mrs siddons.] his first impression was one of bitter disappointment. where was that rich colouring in the italian classics which he had been led to expect from english mezzotints? everything struck him as lifeless, pale, insipid. whereupon he affected the opinion that there was no more to be seen in rome. raphael, in particular, appeared to him to be a mediocre painter, whom only a remarkable chance had brought to such a pitch of fame. surrounded by the great masterpieces of the cinquecento, he employed himself in drawing caricatures, and made a sort of travesty of the _school of athens_, in which he drew caricatures of the english colony in rome at that time, in the attitudes of figures in the pictures of raphael. but he very speedily changed his opinion, and began to follow the paths of the great dead. he went indefatigably through the galleries of rome, from rubens to titian, from correggio to guido and raphael. he studied so hard in the vatican, that he took a chill in the cold rooms, which left him all his life a little deaf. that sojourn at rome was to reynolds what, a hundred years later, his visit to spain was to lenbach. he had already at hudson's acquired great facility as a copyist, and of guercino, in particular, he had made numerous copies. during this italian tour, however, he became the greatest connoisseur of old masters that the eighteenth century possessed. it is related that the chevalier van loo, when he was in england in , vaunted himself one day, in reynolds' presence, upon his unfailing discrimination in telling a copy from an original. whereupon reynolds showed him one of his own studies of a head, after rembrandt. the chevalier judged it to be, indisputably, a masterpiece by the great dutchman. [illustration: reynolds. dr. johnson] he left rome in april , and made a further visit to naples, to the cities of tuscany, and to venice. the careless notes of travel that he made on this journey show the clear insight which he had attained into the italian schools. they all deal with questions of technique, on effects of light and shadow, on the mystery of _chiaroscuro_. for titian, in particular, he had an extravagant devotion,--he would ruin himself, he said, if he might only possess one of the great works of titian. when he returned to england in , at the age of thirty, his talent was fully developed, and the connoisseurs were unanimous in hailing him as a new van dyck. with the portrait of miss gunning, afterwards the duchess of hamilton, he appeared in as a power in english art. as early as , when hogarth was compelled to give up portrait painting for lack of patrons, one hundred and twenty-five persons sat for reynolds, and after that about one hundred and fifty people were painted by him annually; and this brought him in a yearly income of about £ , . [illustration: reynolds. garrick as abel drugger.] at first he took up his quarters in st. martin's lane, which was then the most fashionable place of residence for artists; but in he bought a house, no. leicester square, the most select quarter of london, and furnished it with the most palatial splendour. the studio, which he built for himself, was as large as a ballroom, and furnished with a quite modern luxury. the large corridor that led to it had a gallery of pictures by old masters. it was the age of the great literary and dramatic revival in england. garrick stood at the zenith of his popularity, burke had already made himself a name, johnson had produced his _dictionary_, richardson had reached the summit of his fame, smollett had written _peregrine pickle_, gray had attracted notice by his verse. all these and others who set the vogue in literature and the drama, the principal figures in politics, the leaders of fashion, lounged in that luxurious studio and gossiped with reynolds of the theatre, both before and behind the scenes, of the doings in parliament and the scandal of the court, of literature and of art. at the time when goldsmith was putting the finishing touches to his _travels_ he was a guest of the house. gibbon, the historian, and sterne, whose _sentimental journey_ was just then the talk of the town, spent their vacant hours with him; and burke as well, while he discussed with him his treatise on the _sublime and the beautiful_. all these claimed a niche in reynolds' portrait gallery, where all the talents were met together. the whole english nobility also flocked to him. for forty years onwards from it was considered the proper thing to be painted by him. his pictures were multiplied immediately at the hands of the engravers. in the complete catalogue of reynolds' works, hamilton counts, so far back as , no fewer than plates, engraved after reynolds by more than a hundred artists, and amongst these the mezzotints of samuel cousins are by far the finest. only an incredible industry, enabling him for a long succession of years to paint almost without intermission with a facility and regularity like that of rubens, rendered it possible for reynolds to complete, exclusive of portraits, quite a number of religious and mythological pictures, of which he himself was especially proud. he painted with great speed and dexterity, rose very early, breakfasted at nine o'clock, was in his studio punctually at ten; and there till eleven he worked on pictures which had been commenced. on the stroke of eleven the first sitter arrived, who was succeeded by another an hour later. thus he painted till four o'clock, when he made his toilette, and thenceforward belonged to society, for in spite of his scholarly temperament one can by no means consider reynolds as a solitary eccentric. although he remained a bachelor after angelica kauffmann had declined his hand, his house was a central gathering-point for noble london. he gave balls to which the whole of "society" was invited, and drove in a magnificent carriage, with coachmen in blue and silver liveries. the literary club was founded at his instigation, where with johnson, burke, goldsmith, gibbon, and garrick he shared in conversation both profound and brilliant. he was made a baronet, and when the royal academy was founded in , became its first president. the dinners of the academy, which he organised at the distribution of prizes, play a part in the history of english cookery. reynolds had promised that on each of these reunions he would speak on some question of art. in this manner originated, during his twenty-three years of office, those fifteen discourses upon painting which show the highest result of his literary energy. they were not his maiden essays. as far back as johnson had invited him to publish an article upon art in a journal which he had founded, _the idler_. in he made a journey through holland and flanders, upon which, anticipating fromentin, he wrote an exceedingly fine book. in his _discourses_ so high a degree of literary talent was displayed that they were at one time said to be the work of johnson or burke. [illustration: reynolds. heads of angels.] [illustration: reynolds. samuel richardson.] they are æsthetic treatises and essays in the history of art, of an enduring value. originating from a vast insight, and expressed in a precise style, they treat of the laws of classic art, the variation in styles, the causes of the finest bloom in art. certainly eclecticism is preached too. the modern artist, it is declared, can only stand on the shoulders of his forebears. the great italians must be his models, and of these the greatest is michael angelo. his last essay closes with these words: "i reflect, not without vanity, that these discourses bear testimony of my admiration of that truly divine man, and i should desire that the last words which i should pronounce in this academy, and from this place, might be the name of michael angelo." when he died, his friend edmund burke wrote in the funeral oration which he dedicated to him: "sir joshua reynolds was, on many accounts, one of the most memorable men of his time. he was the first englishman who added the praise of the elegant arts to the other glories of his country. in taste, in grace, in facility, in happy invention, and in the richness and harmony of colouring, he was equal to the greatest masters of the renowned ages.... in full affluence of foreign and domestic fame, admired by the expert in art and by the learned in science, courted by the great, caressed by sovereign powers and celebrated by distinguished poets, ... the loss of no man of his time can be felt with more sincere, general, and unmixed sorrow." he was buried with great pomp in st. paul's cathedral. the pictures left unfinished at his death fetched at auction £ , ; the whole fortune which he left is estimated at £ , . the biography of _thomas gainsborough_ reads quite differently. the traveller who rides from london to birmingham passes through some of the fairest scenery in the island. he finds himself in the heart of fresh and tender english nature. small rivulets flow through the gently undulating country. wide meadows clothe the soft hollows in the valleys with abundant green. in grassy enclosures deer and roes are feeding; they push forwards inquisitively as the train passes. fragrant linden trees rise dreamily in the suave, park-like landscape, through which the stour winds along like a riband of silver. on the bank of this enchanting stream thomas gainsborough, the son of a simple clothier, was born. reynolds' vocation had been brought about through the perusal of a book. in the scenery and the woods that were in the neighbourhood of his home, gainsborough, who was so alive to all the beauty of nature, received the decisive impression of his life. here he roamed as a boy, while he neglected his school lessons. "tom will be hung some day," reflected his schoolmaster; "tom will be a genius," thought his parents. he sketched the parks and castles of the neighbourhood. in his later life he used to say that there was no picturesque old tree trunk, no meadow or woodland glade or stream within a four-mile radius of sudbury, that he did not retain a recollection of from his childish years. like constable, when he was an old man, he still thought with gratitude of his home, of all that beauty upon which he had looked, and which had made him a painter. here, in the green woods and fresh pastures of his birthplace, he trained himself. at the age of ten he was a painter. [illustration: reynolds. miss reynolds.] a sojourn of four years in london seems to have added little to his ability. elegant in his manners, lively in his conversation, a born gentleman, he might have become completely the man of fashion. but he was far too diffident, with his naïve simplicity, to force himself amongst the stars of the world of art in london, far too distinguished and retiring to join in the race after the favour of the public, and so at the age of eighteen he returned to his native place with the unencouraging prospect of playing the part of a simple painter in the provinces. first and last, the woods remained his chief delight. one morning, as he was painting there, he looked up from his easel and saw a young and beautiful girl in a light summer dress, peeping coquettishly from behind the trunk of a tree. she blushed, he spoke to her shyly. soon afterwards margaret burr became his wife, and the whole history of his life with her remains a charming idyll, like the spring morning on which he made her acquaintance. married at the age of nineteen, he installed himself at ipswich, his wife's native place, and there he spent fifteen years in great happiness, firm in the conviction that he would end his days there. there he painted his first portraits, which, from , were forwarded by a carrier's cart to london for exhibition in the royal academy. from ipswich he went to bath, the fashionable watering-place, where he painted the visitors who came in the summer for the cure. finally, in the end his portraits met with approval in london. that gave him courage in to proceed thither himself; and there he took very modest rooms. on his arrival he was as yet very little known; he came from the provinces, which he had till then never left, at a time when reynolds stood at the pinnacle of his fame, and had visited italy and spain. yet he gradually won a reputation. franklin was one of the first to sit to him. soon he became the favourite painter of the king and the royal family. george iii was painted eight times by him, pitt seven times, garrick five. lord chancellor camden, sir william blackstone, johnson, laurence sterne, richardson, burke, sheridan, mrs. graham, lady montagu, mrs. siddons, lady vernon, lady maynard, and the names of many other celebrities and beauties are bound up with his. his life-work, excluding sketches, consists of no more than three hundred pictures, of which two hundred and twenty are portraits--a very small number in comparison with the four thousand paintings of joshua reynolds. thomas gainsborough painted irregularly. even when he was in his studio he might be seen standing for hours gazing out of his window dreamily at the grass. in other features of his life too he was equally different from reynolds: unaccountably, he was one moment a brilliant, animated companion, the next plunged in melancholy. he dreamed much, while reynolds painted and wrote. in the evenings he usually sat at home with his dear little wife, completed no treatises or discourses on his art, but made sketches or sometimes music. reynolds was a scholar-painter, gainsborough a painter-musician. it was said of him that he painted portraits for money and landscapes for amusement, but that he made music because he needs must. he collected musical instruments as reynolds did a library. even in his pictures he gives his people, for preference, violins in their hands. to the musical club which he had founded in ipswich he remained faithful all his life, and in that neighbourhood, or in richmond or hampstead, he spent the summer every year. here amidst that green nature it was also his wish to be buried. his funeral was a very quiet one. in the peaceful graveyard at kew, thomas gainsborough sleeps tranquilly under the shady willows, far from the noise and tumult of the great city. sir joshua said at his grave: "should england ever become so fruitful in talent that we can venture to speak of an english school, then will gainsborough's name be handed down to posterity as one of the first." yes, one might say to-day, as the first of all. [illustration: reynolds. edmund burke.] [illustration: reynolds. mrs. abington.] joshua reynolds is certainly a great painter, and deserves the high veneration in which his compatriots hold him. it is not without a certain awe that, in the diploma gallery of the royal academy, one can look upon the armchair that he used during his sittings, upon which all who were famous in eighteenth-century england have sat. reynolds is one of the greatest english portrait painters, and, resembling most the classical masters, showed in the highest degree the qualities we admire in them. his colouring is of an amazing softness, depth, and strength; his _chiaroscuro_ is warm and vaporous. there are portraits by him which, in the subtlety of their tone, resemble the best of rembrandt's; others, whose noble colouring approaches the _chef-d'oeuvres_ of van dyck. master of the whole mechanism of the human body, he possessed in the highest degree the rare art of setting persons surely and unconstrainedly on their feet. his portraits are pictures; one needs no whit to be acquainted with the persons they represent; they satisfy as works of art in themselves, and as psychological studies by a man who had the capacity of sounding the depths of the human heart. the complete catalogue of all those who sat for sir joshua during the space of half a century forms an uninterrupted commentary on the contemporary history of england. [illustration: reynolds. edmund malone.] there we see the skilful portrait of sterne, with his look of witty mockery; the marvellous bohemian, oliver goldsmith, who even then had the manuscript of his _vicar of wakefield_ in his pocket; johnson, who, in one, sits at his writing-table, on which stands an ink-pot and a volume of his _english dictionary_, and in another is peering into a book with his short-sighted eyes screwed up tightly, and his whole posture awkward and unwieldy. garrick, who went from one studio to the other, appears also more than once in reynolds' portrait gallery. amongst his portraits of military dignitaries, that of general lord heathfield, the famous defender of gibraltar, whom he painted in full uniform, is one of the most noticeable. strong as a rock he stands there, with the key of the fortress in his hand. what a contrast between these figures and those of the contemporary french portraits! there, those friendly and smiling ministers, those gallant and dainty ecclesiastics, those scented, graceful marquises, who move with such elegant ease about the parquet floor, and from whose faces a uniform refinement has erased all the roughness of individuality; here, expressive, thoughtful heads, characters hardened in the school of life, many of the faces coarse and bloated, the glance telling of cold resolution, the attitude full of self-reliant dignity and gnarled, plebeian pride. the same _bourgeois_ element predominates in the pictures of the ladies. van dyck's noble, eminently intellectual figures always wore the glamour of the renaissance. in the background an artistically arranged curtain, a column, or the view of the quiet avenues of some broad park. from reynolds we get strong active women in their everyday clothes, and with thoughtful countenances: good mothers, surrounded by their children, whom they kiss and enfold in a tender embrace. the idea of half-symbolical representation has vanished, and in its place is introduced the idea of home and the family. the pictures of children by this childless old bachelor were an artistic revelation to the existing generation, and are the delight of the world of to-day. in other portraits of ladies, that noticeable characteristic of the english nation, their predilection for domestic animals and for sport, finds an expression. the beautiful duchess of devonshire he painted as she gently restrained with her finger her little daughter's caresses, which would fain have disordered her _coiffure_; a whole gallery of noble ladies he represented feeding their poultry or petting their lap-dogs; lady spencer in her riding-habit, her whip in her hand, her horse reined in, her cheeks flushed from her gallop. nelly o'brien looks an actress, a woman who turned men's heads, and she does it still to-day in reynolds' picture. there lurks something enigmatic, perplexing in the smile of this sphinx--only monna lisa had such a smile, but nelly's eyes are deeper, more desirous. one feels that in the three centuries since monna lisa love has taken on a new and subtler _nuance_. the portrait of mrs. siddons is the most famous of the pictures of actresses which reynolds painted, and mrs. siddons, of all the women of that time, is the one whose portrait occupied the painters most. she was the daughter of roger kemble, the actor, and sister of that pretty actress, mrs. twiss, whose portrait by reynolds (in ) we also have, and of the famous john philip kemble, who figures so often in the portrait gallery of lawrence, as hamlet, cato, coriolanus, richard iii, etc. born to the boards, as it were, she had, when still a child, joined her parents on their thespian pilgrimages, and had had many engagements in the provinces, at birmingham, manchester, and bath, before she was recruited by the playwright sheridan for the drury lane company in london. she made her _début_ there on th october , and was hailed forthwith as the greatest actress of her time. lady macbeth was her great part; in that she was painted both by romney and lawrence. reynolds painted her as the tragic muse. a diadem encircles her hair, she sits upon a throne, the throne rests upon clouds. behind her stand two allegorical beings, crime and remorse, two quite unfortunate figures. but the principal figure is truly great, in its noble, regal attitude, and quite unconstrained in its dramatic pose. reynolds had the composition in his mind many weeks before mrs. siddons sat for him in the autumn of . "take your seat upon the throne for which you were born, and suggest to me the idea of the tragic muse." with these words he conducted her to the pedestal. "i made a few steps," the actress relates, "and then took at once the attitude in which the tragic muse has remained." when the picture was finished, says sir joshua, gallant as ever: "i cannot lose this opportunity of sending my name to posterity on the hem of your garment." and he, who hardly ever signed his pictures, wrote in large characters his name and the date on the gold-embroidered border of the dress. the original picture has been in the possession of the grosvenor family since ; a second copy is in the gallery at dulwich. [illustration: reynolds. oliver goldsmith.] reynolds loved to depict his sitters in mythological or historical settings. thus he painted mrs. hartley, her son as a nymph and the youthful bacchus, the three misses montgomery as the three graces crowning a term of hymen, a little girl sitting on the grass as the "age of innocence," lady spencer as a gipsy telling her brother's fortune, mrs. sheridan as st. cecilia. the five "heads of angels," as they are called, in the national gallery, are five different studies of the lovely child-head of little isabella gordon. garrick, in one of his pictures, is set between the allegorical figures of tragedy and comedy. reynolds himself was frankly proud of these portraits in the mood of history. he was, as he said, in general only a portrait painter because the world required it; that which he aspired after was the great manner of historical painting. nevertheless, pictures, such as the "little hercules with the serpent," "cupid unfastening the girdle of venus," "the death of dido," "the forbearance of scipio," "the childhood of the prophet samuel," or "the adoration of the shepherds," do not cause us to deplore too bitterly that he rarely found time for such mythological and historical pictures. his _putti_ are derived from correggio; in the arrangement of drapery he resembles guido; in his "venus" he is a coarser titian. reynolds' own manner in these pictures is merely the eclectic accumulation of the peculiarities of the old masters--he brought no new element into historical painting. [illustration: reynolds. lady cockburn and her daughters.] and herein lies his principal weakness. hogarth declared: "there is only one school, that of nature." reynolds: "there is only one doorway to the school of nature, and of that the old masters hold the key." the great men of old were for him the object of constant and conscious thought. he has endeavoured in his writings to propound a sort of general foundation of painting, has adopted the principles of the best painters in every land, was indefatigable in exploring the secrets of the old masterpieces, and has therefore won the praise of having set the english school, which had hitherto possessed no perfected tradition of painting, technically on firm feet. he was the founder of a scientific technique of painting derived from the ancients,--the lenbach of the eighteenth century. upon the mixture of colours, the gradations of light and shade, technically and æsthetically, no artist has pondered more than he, who knew the great netherlanders, rubens, van dyck, and rembrandt, as well as, or better than, his particular favourites, the italians. he made experiments all his life long to discover the stone of the wise venetians; but he met with the same experience as lenbach. and these experiments in the direction of the colour effects of the old masters were the bane of his pictures' durability. it was well said by walpole: "if sir joshua is content with his own blemished pictures, then he is happier than their possessors, or posterity. according to my view, he ought to be paid in annual instalments, and only so long as his works last." and haydon opined that "reynolds sought by tricks to obtain results which the old masters attained by the simplest means." he endeavoured by means of asphaltum to give his pictures the artistic tones of the galleries, with the result that, to-day, the majority have lost every sign of freshness. [illustration: reynolds. bishop percy] with regard to the pose also, and similar conceptions, one can never quite get away from the thought of van dyck and other old masters. reynolds' chief endeavour, not only as regards colouring, but also in other respects, was to resemble the ancients, and this has brought into his pictures something imitative and laboured. he dearly loved the romans and venetians; we believe to-day that he loved almost too dearly the bolognese. and just that fine, artistic education which he received in italy and holland, and the scientific method in which he practised his art, did harm to reynolds, and brought into his pictures too much reminiscence, too many alien touches. he has in most cases understood it--how to bring into uniformity the numerous borrowings of his palette, all that he had taken from leonardo, correggio, velasquez, and rembrandt. yet he has never quite forgotten the old masters and looked only at his model, for the sake of the very daintiest lady or the freshest english boy. for his children he thought of correggio's "cherubim," for his schoolboys of murillo, for the portrait of mrs. hartley of leonardo da vinci, for that of mrs. sheridan of raphael. there lacked in him that spontaneity which denotes the great master. by his erudition in art, sir joshua elevated himself on the shoulders of all who had preceded him. he obtained thereby the piquant effects in his portraits, but it was at the price of the penalty that from many of his works it is rather a rancid odour of oil and varnish which exhales than the breath of life. [illustration: reynolds. the girl with the mousetrap.] gainsborough can certainly not be compared with reynolds in the mass of his work. he was master neither of his powers of industry nor of his smooth and brilliant methods of painting that were always sure of their effect. in many of his pictures he gives the impression of a self-taught man, who sought to help himself to the best of his power. just as little has he the psychological acuteness of reynolds. a portrait painter puts no more into a head than he has in his own; thus the acute thinker, reynolds, was able to put a great deal into his heads, whilst gainsborough, the dreamer, was often enough quite helpless when he confronted a conspicuously manly character. in his whole temperament a painter of landscape, before his model too he sat as before a landscape, with eyes that perceived but did not analyse. what, with reynolds, was sought out and understood, was felt by gainsborough; and therefore the former is always good and correct, while gainsborough is unequal and often faulty, but in his best pictures has a charm to which those of the president of the academy never attained. gainsborough, too, at his death murmured the name of an old master. "we are all going to heaven, and van dyck is of the company." but what distinguishes him from reynolds, and gives him a character of greater originality, is just his naïve independence of the ancients, which resulted partly from the different nature of his education in art. reynolds had lived for two years in rome and explored all the principal cities of italy, had visited flanders and holland, learnt to wonder at rembrandt, and developed an enthusiasm for _chiaroscuro_. gainsborough in his rural seclusion had been able neither by travel on the continent to study the great masters of the past, nor to assimilate the traditions of the studio. he contented himself with the beauties which he saw in his native country, studied them in their touching simplicity, without troubling himself about academic rules. he lived in london until his death, without once leaving england; and that gives to his pictures a distinct _nuance_. the one studied pictures and books, the other only the "book of nature." his portraits never aim at any external effect, nor are they raised into the historical; they seek to give no other impression than that of a quite subjective truth to nature, both in arrangement and in colouring. nothing intruded between his model and himself, no "sombre old master" obscured his canvas. his execution is more personal, his colour fresher and more transparent. the very personages seem with him to be more elegant, more gracious, more modern than with reynolds, in whose work, through their kinship to the renaissance, they received a suggestion of style, classical and ancient. in his pictures the englishman is clearly revealed, an englishman of that delicacy and noble refinement which is present to a unique degree in the works of english painters of the present day. [illustration: reynolds. dr. burney.] the passage from hogarth to gainsborough marks a chapter in the history of english culture. hogarth is the embodiment of john bull; you can hear him growl, like some savage bull-dog. that brutal, indecorous robustness of england's aggressive youth becomes, in gainsborough's hands, agreeable, refined, gentle, and seductive. reynolds, with his robustness as of the old masters, might be best compared with tintoretto; gainsborough, in his quite modern and fantastic elegance, is a more tender, subtle, and mysterious spirit, poet and magician at once, like watteau. there one listened to the full, swelling chords of the organ; here to the soft, dulcet, silvery notes of the violin. reynolds loved warm, brown and red tones; gainsborough essayed for the first time, in a series of his happiest creations, that scale of colour, coldly green and blue, in which to-day the majority of english pictures are still painted. everything with him is soft and clear; the tone of those blue or light yellow silks, which he loved especially, is that of the most transparent enamel; the background fades away into dreamy vapour, the figures are surrounded with an atmosphere of seduction. what a masterpiece he has created in the "blue boy," his most popular and most individual picture. one can describe every piece of the clothing, but it is impossible to reproduce the harmony of the painting, the rich, pure blue of the costume, which stands out against a lustrous, brown background of landscape. how the stately youth stands, noble from head to foot, in the brown and green autumn landscape, with its canopy of sky! master bootall was by far the most elegant portrait painted in england since van dyck, and withal of a nervosity quite new. see that youthful pride in the gaze, that mobile sensibility in the pose! [illustration: thomas gainsborough.] have men grown different, then, or does the painter see further? one finds in van dyck no such expressively _nervous_ physiognomy. the suggestion of melancholy, the deep reverie, the noble, aristocratic haughtiness,--gainsborough was the first to discover that, and give it its full expression. and the same man who painted the noble elegance of this youthful _grand seigneur_ depicted also peasant children coming fresh from the green fields and woodlands of their village homes. in sir joshua's children there was often something borrowed from correggio; the children of gainsborough breathe a rustic charm, an untamed savagery; they are the very offshoots of nature, who disport themselves as freely as the wild things in the woods. but his women in particular are creatures altogether adorable. while reynolds, the historical painter, liked to promote his into heroines, those of gainsborough, with their pure, transparent skins, their sweet glances (in which there lies so admirable a mixture of languishing fragility, innocence, and coquetry), are the true englishwomen of the eighteenth century. his "mrs. siddons" is not in theatrical costume, but in a simple walking-dress; no tragic muse, but the passionate, loving woman who once, a romantic, impulsive miss, escaped from a convent at the risk of her life, to join a handsome young actor of her father's troupe who had entirely fascinated her. what a charming grace in the pose, what fine taste in the arrangement, what wonderful purity of colouring! with the exception of watteau, i know of no older master who could have painted such moist, dreamy, sensuous, tender eyes. the marvellous "mrs. graham," in the national gallery of scotland, is, from the purely pictorial standpoint, perhaps the greatest of all his works. yet how beautiful is the double portrait of that young married couple, the halletts, who, tenderly holding hands, pass along a deserted path in some secluded garden; or that pale, languishing "mrs. parsons," with her enchanting smile, and that mysterious language of the eyes. gainsborough was no keen observer, but he was a susceptible, sensitive spirit who intercepted the soul itself, the play of the nerves, the slightest suggestion of spiritual commotion. there moves through the majority of his portraits a pathetic tenderness, a breath of dreamy melancholy, that the persons themselves hardly possessed, but which he transfused into them out of himself. melancholy is the veil through which he saw things, as reynolds saw them through the medium of erudition. reynolds was all will and intelligence, gainsborough all soul and temperament; and nothing can show the difference between them better than the fact that reynolds, who had formed his style on early models, when he had no sitters painted historical pictures; whilst gainsborough in like circumstances painted landscapes. herein he was a pioneer, whilst reynolds was an issue of the past. [illustration: _cassell & co._ gainsborough. mrs. siddons.] [illustration: _cassell & co._ gainsborough. wood scene, village of cornard, suffolk.] in the domain of landscape painting, too, the new germs of naturalism, which had ventured above ground on all sides in the fifteenth century, had been again stunted in the great renaissance. the theory had been promulgated in the sixteenth century--in accordance with the idealistic methods of the age--that it behoved the painter to improve upon nature just as much as upon the human body. with the lofty style of the great figure painters, and their artfully pondered composition, there corresponded a school of landscape which was likewise conceived of, in the first degree, as an honourable, architectural framing for a mythological episode. england too possessed, in _richard wilson_, a believer in this doctrine, which became so widely promulgated in the seventeenth century through the influence of claude lorraine. the home of his soul was italy. he scraped together a small sum of money by portrait painting, borrowed the rest, and felt himself in his element for the first time when he had reached venice. here, at the instance of zucarrelli, he became a painter of landscapes, and was aided in his endeavours by joseph vernet in rome. he was on the way to become a painter in great request, and in many of his pictures he shows a most delicate notion of well-balanced and gracious composition in the manner of claude. but his success was of no long duration. wilson, like so many other of his contemporaries, had the fixed idea that the creator had only made nature to serve as a framework for the "grief of niobe" and as a vehicle for classical architecture. the interpolated stage scenery of trees and the classic temples of this english claude, contain nothing which had not been already painted better by the frenchman. when the king, in order to assist him, asked him on one occasion to represent kew gardens in a picture, he composed an entirely imaginary landscape and illuminated it with the sun of tivoli. the king sent him back the picture, mordant epigrams appeared in the journals, and reynolds scoffed at him in his discourses. after that wilson spent his days in the alehouse, until he got delirium, and died half starved at the age of seventy. [illustration: _cassell & co._ gainsborough. the market cart.] the patriotic english were too much bound up with their own soil to acquire a taste for the exotic, ideal scenery of wilson. there existed in them that patriotism, that feeling for home, which had turned the dutch of the seventeenth century into landscape painters. in this province also they were destined to step in, as the inheritors of the dutch, to bring the germ of intimate landscape to its full fruition. lovely and luxuriant valleys with their soft grass, sweet woodlands with their vari-coloured foliage, golden, swaying cornfields and picturesque little cottages, with that indescribable softness of atmosphere, must of themselves direct the eye of the writer and the painter to all these beauties. it was an englishman who in the eighteenth century wrote the most memorable book upon the charms of nature. james thomson, in his _seasons_, is the first great nature painter amongst the poets. taine finds the whole of rousseau anticipated in him. "thirty years before rousseau, thomson had forestalled all the sentiments of rousseau, almost in the same style." he has not only, like rousseau, a profound feeling for the great wild aspects of nature, for the forms of clouds, effects of light and contrasts of colour, but he delights also in the smell of the dairy, in small birds, in the woodland shadows, and the light on the meadows,--in all things sequestered and idyllic. "nature! great parent! whose unceasing hand rolls round the seasons of the changeful year, how mighty, how majestic are thy works! with what a pleasing dread they swell the soul that sees astonished and astonished sings." [illustration: _cassell & co._ gainsborough. the duchess of devonshire.] [illustration: _cassell & co._ gainsborough. the sisters.] [illustration: _cassell & co._ gainsborough. the watering place.] it was a remarkable chance which ordained that thomas gainsborough, the first man who as a painter depicted the gracious charms of the country of his birth, the comeliness of its expanses of deep green lush meadows, the strength of the lofty, wide-spreading trees, as seen with the eyes of a lover, should be born in the spring of the same year in which thomson's _spring_ appeared. that he knew and admired thomson is proved by his dedication to him of that delightful "musidora" in the national gallery, a lovely woman bathing her feet in some shady forest pool. it is said that he only sent half a dozen landscapes to the academy during the eighteen years that he exhibited there. on the other hand, they hung in his house in pall mall in long rows on the walls of his studio. after his death his widow held a sale, at which fifty-six landscapes were sold. gainsborough must be accounted one of the moderns, so naïve and intimate is the impression which his pictures produce. he, who passed his whole youth in the idyllic loveliness of the woods, was fitted to be the delineator of that mellow english nature. he understood the murmur of the brooks and the sighing of the winds. like his own life, so regular and peaceful, gently swaying as though to the friendly elements, are the trees in his pictures, with their peaceful tranquillity; no storm disturbs the calm of a gainsborough picture. his was a contented, harmonious spirit, like corot's. his landscapes know no tempestuous grandeur; they are a playground for children, a place for shepherds to rest. "the calm of mid day, the haze of twilight, the dew and the pearls of morning," said constable, "are what we find in the pictures of this good, kindly, happy man.... as we look at them the tears spring to our eyes, and we know not whence they come. the solitary shepherd with his flock, the peasant returning from the wood with his bundle of faggots, whispering woods and open dales, sweet little peasant children with their pitchers in springtime,--that is what he loved to paint and what he painted, with as much sought-out refinement as with tender truth to nature." his landscapes are like windows opening on the country, not compositions, but pieces taken straight out of that fruitful english nature. every year he used to return to his green pastures, and paint very early, when the sun rose. before him rose a cluster of trees, all round the farm the flocks were grazing, thousands of busy bees flew buzzing from flower to flower; goats, with their kids, were feeding in the meadows, wild doves cooed, and the birds in the wood sang their praises to the creator. thus do the landscapes of gainsborough affect us. they are soft and tender as some sweet melody in their discreet intimacy, without colorist effects, as wonderfully harmonious as nature herself. a thatched cot, that peeps timidly from between the great trees, a silvery dale shut in by weeping willows, a bridge leading to some lush, green meadow,--those are gainsborough's materials. the famous "cottage door" is now at grosvenor house. a young peasant woman, with her youngest child in her arms, is standing by the door of a country cottage, before which her other children are playing, some half naked; deep contentment is all around, huge old oaks spread their sheltering branches over the roof on both sides; golden rays of sunshine dance across the meadow. only frederick walker has, in later days, painted such peasant women and such children, at once so tender and so natural. of the four pictures in the national gallery, "the wood scene," "the watering place," "market carts," and "peasant children," "the watering place" is the most celebrated. in the foreground a quiet pasture with cows, close by the herdsman, a suffolk labourer; in the background a noble old norman castle, perhaps hedingham castle, near sudbury. it is through pictures like these that england has become the native-land of intimate landscape--_paysage intime_. as figure painters, as well as landscape painters, the english in the eighteenth century laid a course of their own, and it was not long before the other nations followed them. chapter ii the historical position of art on the continent goethe compared the history of knowledge with a great fugue: the parts of the nations first come to light, little by little; and this analogy, already once made by hettner, holds true in a very high degree of the history of art during the eighteenth century. the three great nations of culture--the german, the english, and the french--take up their parts in turn, and through all there sounds one common, equal, dominant note. england was in the vanguard of that great period of struggle known as the age of enlightenment. since the middle of the eighteenth century english influences had begun to fertilise the continent. the truth and naturalness of english ideas were introduced as models, and england became in her whole culture the schoolmistress of the continent. in every region war was declared against the pedantry brought over from the past, while new conditions were aimed at. obviously it was not so easy for other nations to take their stand on the basis of modern society. england had accomplished her revolution in the seventeenth century; france was only preparing herself for hers. for all other nations, too, the eighteenth century was a transition period, in which the old and the new civilisation of culture were parting--an age of prodigious controversy, full of _sturm und drang_. men did homage to every kind of extravagance, and went into ecstasies over virtue. the sarcasm of scoffers went hand in hand with the deepest sentimental feeling for nature; superstition flourished by the side of enlightenment and learning; in the _salons_ of the aristocracy courtly abbés file past with the greatest thinkers, glowing with a holy zeal for the rights of man. and, in the midst of all this contradiction, there exists that simple, virtuous middle class which is preparing to make the ascent which will lead it to power. one may imagine oneself in a salon of the _ancien régime_, in which wit is lord, and laughter and merriment reign. into that salon enters abruptly a rough plebeian, with none of the fine tact of that company, yet a great, aristocratic spirit, a man who despised such a society and would make the world anew. such is one's impression of the effect produced at the time by the appearance of jean jacques rousseau. voltaire was the first on the continent to break through social barriers, but none the less he coined his heart for gold in society. rousseau signifies a great advance: he gave up his place, laid aside rapier, silk stockings, and perruque, and clothed himself after the manner of a common man in order to earn his bread as a copier of music. he is, as weigandt has called him, the first man of the _bourgeois_ century, the first pioneer of the new age. against the traditions bequeathed by the past, which in the course of time had become over-refined and corrupt, he set up the natural conditions demanded by reason. his fight against inequalities of rank is, as it were, a foretaste of the revolution. "what hellish monsters are these prejudices. i know no dishonourable inferiority other than that of character or education. a man who is trained to an honourable mind is the equal of the world; there is no rank in which he would not be in his place. it is better to look down upon nobility than upon virtue, and the wife of a charcoal-burner is worthy of more respect than the mistress of a prince." those were words in which the coming revolution was presaged. [illustration: portrait of goya. by himself. _from: "los capriccios."_] the _nouvelle heloise_ appeared in . thirteen years later followed goethe's _werther_, that history of a young titan whose zeal for liberty felt all the partition walls of society to be prison walls, and who rose against everything that was ceremonial, against all the subordinations of the social hierarchy, against all trivial and rigid rules of prudent everyday life. werther abhorred rules in every sphere. "one can say much in favour of rules, about as much as one can say in praise of _bourgeois_ society." he scoffed at the philistines, who daily went along the same measured way. he saw in "society," having hitherto moved in the simple world of the _bourgeois_, "the most sacred and the most pitiful emotions wholly without clothing." and this society outraged him, and sent him with contumely from its midst. "working folk carried him to the grave, and no minister of religion followed him." soon afterwards young schiller came upon the scene with his first works, which were a declaration of war against all the foundations of human society, those manifestoes of revolution which, were they new writings to-day, no court theatre would dare to produce. the fierce, rampant lion, with the inscription "in tyrannos," which was displayed on the title-page of the second edition of the _robbers_, was an intimate symbol of the deep revolutionary spirit that inspired the whole age. "i grew disgusted with this ink-stained age, when i read in my _plutarch_ of great men. fie, fie upon the flaccid, castrated century, that has no other use than to chew over again the deeds of the past. let me imagine an army of fellows like you, and i see a republic arising in germany, in comparison with which those of rome and sparta would be convents of nuns." in a loud voice _ficsco_ proclaims itself on the very title-page to be a "republican" tragedy. _intrigue and love_ even aims full at the rottenness and corruption of the actual time. it can be traced--and brandes has done it in his _haupströmungen_--how in the literature of the age, the life of sensibility and idealism prevailing in the previous century gradually dwindles, and in its stead quite modern progressive views--religious, political, and social--surge up in an ever-increasing wave. the authors were the bold inciters to the battle. they were all leaders in the battle for liberty against fossilised tradition,--some in the field of poetry only, others in the whole sphere of intellectual life. these are they who gave the signal for the war-cry of the revolution--liberty, equality, fraternity; who rent asunder the old society, inaugurated the age of citizenship, and were at the same time the first to lose, as quite modern spirits, their faith in another world. [illustration: goya. the majas on the balcony.] a wonderful chance ordained that, in the province of art, the most powerful figure of that storm and tumult, the one artist of the age of the race of prometheus, to which belonged the young goethe and the young schiller, should be born in the most mediæval country in europe, on spanish soil. against an art that was more catholic than catholicism, courtly and mystical, there came by far the greatest reaction in goya. from roelas, collantes, and murillo to him there is hardly any transition. _francisco goya_ preached nihilism in the home of belief. he denied everything, believed nothing, doubted of everything, even of that peace and liberty which he hoped to be at hand. that old spanish art of religion and dogma was changed under his hands to an art of negation and sarcasm. his attitude is not that of an insolent and impetuous youth, who puts out his tongue at the academy and strikes with audacious hand at the academicians' high powdered perruques; it is the attitude of the modern spirit, which begins by doubting all things which have been honoured hitherto. his church pictures are devoid of religious feeling, and his etchings replete with sneers at everything which was previously esteemed as authority. he scoffs at the clerical classes and the religious orders, laughs at the priestly raiment which covered the passions of humanity. spanish art, which began in a blind piety, becomes in goya revolutionary, free, modern. [illustration: (_laurent, photo._) goya. the maja clothed.] goya is, in his whole nature, a modern man, a restless, feverish soul; nervous as a _décadent_; temperament to his finger-tips. his style in portraiture, his art of composition, his whole method,--all speak to our artists to-day in a language easily understood, and on many of them the influence of goya is unmistakable. he is one of the most fascinating figures of the beginning of the century. as audacious as he was clever, as versatile as he was fantastic, a keen observer as well as a strong creative spirit, he fascinates and astonishes in his pictures, just as in his wonderful etchings, by a remarkable mixture of the bizarre and the original. his pictures, whether they be violent or eccentric, tender or hard, gloomy or joyous, nearly always move and palpitate with life itself, and they will always keep their attraction. there is no one of goya's pictures, not even the flimsiest sketch, at which one can look coldly. he was born in a village in the province of aragon, the son of a small landed proprietor, in . at the age of fourteen, having already painted frescoes in the church of his native-place, he went to saragossa as an apprentice; and there he showed himself to be vivacious and passionate, and soon became the champion among his comrades in all their pastimes and brawls. restless, and always thinking of adventure, he refused every regular kind of education, disarranged everything in his master's studio, worked when he could, drew his sword when he had a mind to, nourished in his head dark thoughts on liberty, came and went and loved, dallied with his knife, snapped his fingers at the inquisition, which was after him, and fled from madrid,--such was he at twenty, and such he remained all his life. [illustration: (_laurent, photo._) goya. the maja nude.] italy, whither he fled on account of a duel, did not alter him. there were new love quarrels. he fought, stabbed a rival, was wounded himself, amused himself extremely, studied little, observed, admired, but neither painted nor copied anything. it was thanks to this indolence that the great past did not take him prisoner. he did not know much, but for what he knew he could thank himself. he loved the old painters, but platonically; their works did not lead him astray. in this lies the explanation of his qualities and his faults: that marvellous mixture of seductive grace and visible weakness, of subtlety and brutality, of refinement and ignorance. he merits equally sympathy and blame, is as genial as he is unequal. but one would not wish him to be otherwise: if there had been more order and proportion in his works his good qualities would have been lost. he would have suffered in spontaneity, vivacity, originality, and quietly taken his anchorage in the sleepy haven of mediocrity. as he is, he is wholly the child of his country: from head to foot a spaniard of the eighteenth century, a son of that downfallen spain that was dying from loss of blood. for hundreds of years a black cloud, extinguishing all joy, had hung over spanish life, a cloud out of which, only here and there in dismal lightning flashes, there emerged obscure figures of sombre despots, sick ascetics, and silent martyrs. all mundane inclinations were suppressed, all sensuous desires prohibited. men spent their nights with their eyes fixed upon the gory histories and passionate exhortations of the old testament, hearing in imagination the menacing, thunderous voice of a dreadful god, until at last in their own hearts the fanatical inspiration of the prophetic seer awoke anew, and their feverish forms were torn asunder by ecstatic visions and religious hallucinations. when goya began his career the sinister country of the inquisition had grown frivolous. a breath of revolution was passing over men's minds. an intoxicating odour of mundane voluptuousness penetrated everywhere, even into the convents themselves; the figures of the french rococo olympus had brought confusion into the christian paradise. spain no longer believed; it laughed at the inquisition, trembled no more when it was threatened with the pains of hell. it had grown frivolous, wanton, epicurean, full of grace and laughter. the rosy-red and blue shepherds of the trianon had made an entry into the sombre court of aranjuez. literature, taste, and art were infected by french influences, parisian sparks of wit, lightning _esprit_, and parisian immorality; and the same rumbling earthquake which wrecked the throne of france was soon to shatter that of spain. in goya's works there is a refulgence of all this. but, like every great artist, he is not only the expression of his epoch, but also its leader; he almost anticipates the age which shall succeed it. like a figure of janus, on the border-line between two centuries, standing in a manner between two worlds, he was the last of the old masters and the first of the moderns--even in that special sense in which we employ the word to-day. [illustration: goya. de que mal morira. _from "los capriccios."_] through a commission to design cartoons for the spanish manufactories of tapestry, he was brought into contact with the court. member of the academy of san fernando in , pintor del rey, with an income of , francs in , he became soon afterwards the director of the madrid academy--the drollest director of an academy that man can imagine! goya, the peasant youth, with his bull neck and matador-like strength, lived at the spanish court in the midst of the enervated scions of a dissolute aristocracy, who, with their sickly and anæmic features, indolent and impotent, skulked through life, young men prematurely old. naturally he was the idol of the women, hated by the courtiers on account of his caustic wit, a terror to all husbands because of his perpetual intrigues, and at the same time feared as the best swordsman in madrid, who drew his rapier with the indifference with which we light a cigarette. it is only as the outcome of such a personality that his works are to be understood. [illustration: goya. soplones. _from "los capriccios."_] goya was far too great a sceptic to put a religious sentiment into matters in which he no longer believed; his talent was far too modern for the religious abstraction to be able to seize him. his "christ on the cross," therefore, in the museo del prado, is simply tedious, a bad academical study. his frescoes in san antonio de la florida, at madrid, exhibit a pretty, decorative motive--considerable movement, grace, and spirit. but amongst them are angels who sit there most irreverently, and, with a laugh of challenge, throw out their legs _à la_ tiepolo. the chief picture represents st. antony of padua raising a man from the dead. but all that interested him in it were the lookers-on. on a balustrade all around he has brought in the lovely, dainty faces of numerous ladies of the court, his _bonnes amies_, who lean their elbows on the balcony and coquette with the people down below. their plump, round, white hands play meaningly with their fans; a thick cluster of ringlets waves over their bared shoulders; their sensual eyes languish with a seductive fire; a faint smile plays round their voluptuous lips. several seem only just to have left their beds, and their vari-coloured, gleaming silks are crumpled. one is just arranging her coiffure, which has come undone and falls over her rosy bosom; another, with a languishing unconsciousness and a careless attitude, is opening her sleeve, whose soft, deep folds expose a snow-white arm. there is much _chic_ in this church picture. one very immodest angel is supposed to be the portrait of the duchess of alba, who was famed for her numerous intrigues. [illustration: goya. se repulen. _from "los capriccios."_] in his portraits, too, he is unequal. he became the fashionable painter at the court. the politicians, poets, scholars, great ladies, actresses, all the famous folk of his epoch, sat to him. he daubed more than two hundred portraits; but they were good only when the subject amused him. his portraits of the royal family have something vicious and plebeian. he is too little in earnest, too little of an official, to paint court pictures. one might imagine that he with difficulty restrained himself from laughing at the pompous futility which stood before him. it irritated him to be obliged to paint these great lords and ladies in poses so ceremonial, instead of making them, like the angels of san antonio, throw up their legs and skip over parapets. the queen, marie louise, is frankly grotesque; and the family of charles iv look like the family of a shopkeeper who have won the big prize in a lottery, and been photographed in their sunday clothes. but, ah! when something gives him pleasure! in the exhibition of portraits at paris, in , there was the portrait of a young man, dressed in gray, which excelled gainsborough for grace. with what a noble nonchalance this young elegant stands there, reminding one, in attitude and costume, of the _incroyables_ of charles vernet. with what equanimity does he look out on life, in his satisfaction at the good fit of his clothes. the wonderful harmony of the grey tones was rendered with all gainsborough's delicacy. the same man who in those pictures of ceremony let himself go in a manner so brusque and frenzied, here revelled, a very proteus in his chameleon-like qualities, in soft and mellow and seductive tones. one might say that he has thought here of prudhon and greuze, and joined their study to the cult of velasquez. [illustration: goya. que pico de oro! _from "los capriccios."_] still more charming was he in his pictures of young girls, when he was himself fascinated by the attractions of his subjects. the infantile donna maria josefa (at the prado) and the twelve-year-old queen isabella of sicily (at seville) are admirable pictures. in them the candour and grace of budding youth, the whole poetry of young maidenhood, have won life and expression from the enamoured tenderness of an artist hand. seduced by beauty, he renounced all irony, thought only of those big, wide-opened eyes of velvet, those rosy young lips; of that warm carnation and the elegant slimness of that soft young neck that rose in delicate contour from the shoulders. or again, that marvellous double portrait of la maja in the academy of san fernando: a young girl painted once clothed and once nude, both pictures in exactly the same pose, and both flooded with the same extraordinary sensuous charm. this is not the uncertain, sarcastic painter of those state pictures. it is an attentive observer, who depicts with sensitive devotion the harmonious lines of the irradiating, young, human body so worthy of celebration. the transparent stuff that covers the body of "la maja clothed" reveals all that it hides; in the other picture the unveiled nudity sings the high pæan of the flesh. the drawing is sure, the modelling of a marvellous tenderness. the heaving bosom, the slender limbs, the tantalising eyes--every part of that nervous body, with its ivory whiteness, stretched out on the milk-white couch made for love, breathes of pleasure and voluptuousness. in pictures of this kind goya is wholly one of us. grown independent of every traditional rule, he abandoned himself entirely to his own impressions, and produced enduring works, vibrating with life, because he was himself fascinated with nature. he showed here an idea of modernity that almost makes him seem a contemporary of our own--that zeal for the pictorial, for colour and light, which attracts us so much to-day. very characteristic also of the changed aspect of the age are his designs for the famous tapestry in santa barbara, with which he made his début at madrid. they are very crude in decoration. two or three neat young girls, with big, black, moist eyes, here and there pleasing details--a couple of men carrying a wounded companion--are unable to gloss over the heaviness of the composition and colour. but it was of great consequence that goya should have had courage for so bold a step as to make use of character scenes in decorative painting at a time when everywhere else, without exception, _fêtes champêtres_ predominated. [illustration: goya. volaverunt. _from "los capriccios."_] in his oil paintings he went much further in this direction. in that impetuous manner peculiar to him he endeavoured to get a firm grip on the pictorial side of spanish life, at home and in the streets, wherever he found it. the most fearful subjects--such as the two great slaughter scenes in the french invasion, painted with such breadth and fierceness--alternate with incidents of the liveliest character. everything is jotted down, under the immediate influence of what has been observed, by rapid methods, and on this account produces an effect of sketches taken with complete directness from nature. in those careless pictures, swept with large strokes of the brush, there rises before us the mad drama of public holiday in the streets and in the circus: processions, bull-fights, brigands, the victims of the plague, assassinations, scenes of gallantry, national types--all observed with the acuteness of a menzel. the majas on the balcony in the montpensier gallery, the "breakfast on the grass," the "flower girl," the "reaper," the "return from market," the "cart attacked by brigands," are the most piquant, vividly coloured of these pictures. the "romeria de san isidoro" is full of such a sparkling, stirring life as the most modern of the impressionists alone have learned again to paint. a few dashes of colour, a few well-placed, bold strokes of the brush, and at once one sees the procession move, the groups passing each other by just as, in the marvellous sketches of the funeral of sardina, in the academy of san fernando, one can see the young couples revolve madly in the dance, and the lances of the bull-fighters redden the sand of the arena. the superabundance of such phantasy could not, of course, be achieved by the tardy brush. he required a quicker medium, that would permit him to express everything. therefore he executed his numerous etchings, by which he was rendered famous, before people had learnt to appreciate him as a painter: the "capriccios," the "malheurs de la guerre," the "bull-fights," the "captives"--those marvellous and fantastic pages in which he expressed everything that his feverish, satirical soul had accumulated for contempt, and hatred, and anger, and scorn. the etcher's needle was the poisoned dagger with which he attacked all that he wished to attack: tyranny, superstition, intrigue, adultery, honour that is sold and beauty that lets itself be bought, the arrogance of the great and the degrading servility of the little. he made an awful and jovial hecatomb of all the vices and the scandals of the age. whomsoever he pilloried was laid bare in all respects; physically and morally, no single trait of him was forgotten. and he did it so wittily that he compelled even the offended person to laugh. neither charles iv himself, nor the court, nor the inquisition, which bled most beneath his thrusts, dared to complain. [illustration: goya. quien lo creyera! _from "los capriccios."_] in his "capriccios" goya stands revealed as a figure without even a forerunner in the history of art. satirical representations of popular superstitions, bitter, mordant attacks on the aristocracy, the government, and all social conditions, unprecedented assaults on the crown, on religion and its doctrines, inexorable satires upon the inquisition and the monastic orders, make up this most remarkable book. it had hardly appeared in before the inquisition seized it. goya parried this stroke, however, by dedicating the plates to the king. a painter and a colorist, in this book he displays his genius as an etcher. the outlines are drawn with light and genial strokes only; then comes the _aquatinta_, the colouring which overspreads the background, and gives localisation, depth, and light. a few scratches of the needle, a black spot, a light produced by a spot of white ingeniously left blank--that sufficed to give life and character to his figures. [illustration: goya. linda maestra! _from "los capriccios."_] the "misères de la guerre" are intrinsically more serious. all the scenes of terror that occurred in spain as a sequel to the french invasion and the glory of napoleon here utter their cry of lamentation. a few plates amongst them are worthy of comparison with the finest of rembrandt's,--the sole classic for whom goya cherished a veneration. all the undertakings which followed these--the "bull-fights," the "proverbs," the "captives," the fantastic landscapes--tell of a long study of the great dutch master. especially celebrated were the seventeen new plates which he added to the "malheurs de la guerre" in , at the time of the restoration of ferdinand vii. they are the political and philosophical testament of the old liberal, the keen free-thinker, the last and utmost fight for all that he loved against all that he hated. with sacred wrath and biting irony he waged war against the intrigues and hypocrisy of the obscurantists who throttle progress and suppress freedom of thought. with passionate wrath he rushed upon kings, priests, and dignitaries. it seems incredible that the plate entitled "nada"--a dead man, who comes out of his grave and writes with his corpse-fingers the word "nada" (nothing)--that this plate can be the work of a spaniard of the eighteenth century. everywhere there is the same hatred of tyranny, of social injustice, of human stupidity, the same incredulous effort after a dimly conceived ideal of truth and liberty. it is neither the amiable fairyland of callot nor the _bourgeois_ pessimism of hogarth. goya is more inexorable and acute; his phantasy, borne on larger wings, takes a higher flight. he sees direful figures in his dreams, his laugh is bitter, his anger rancorous. he is a revolutionist, an agitator, a sceptic, a nihilist. his _chronique scandaleuse_ grows into the epos of the age. one understands why such a man should no longer feel secure in spain, and, towards the close of his life, go into exile in france. there, too, in the home of the revolution, art, ever since the beginning of the century, had freed herself more from the tradition of the renaissance, and betaken herself to the new way, which the dutch, and soon afterwards the english, had laid down in the seventeenth century. [illustration: goya. devota profesion. _from "los capriccios."_] all that had been produced in paris, up to the close of the seventeenth century, had had its birthplace in the italy of leo x. the light of the italian renaissance had suffused france ever since the appearance of rosso and primaticcio. rome had been the cradle of simon vouet and nicolas poussin. france endeavoured, in rich decoration and masterly swing of lines, to overtop the italians, whose formulæ were studied partly in rome and partly in the palace of fontainebleau, that rome _in petto_. those religious pictures of lebrun, arranged in panels, appeared with their theatrically elegant attitudes and their flowing drapery, with their slim, oscillating limbs and their florid gestures. all olympus, all the saints and the heroes, were set to work to do honour to the great king. was it necessary to glorify his acts, then it was done by portraying him as cyrus or alexander. the people of the seventeenth century did not exist for painters. lebrun and mignard, as inheritors of roman culture, hovered over life without seeing it. their ideals were a hundred and fifty years old, ingenious variations on the sixteenth-century pattern. then came the death of the _grand monarque_, and with him the tradition of the renaissance went also to its grave. the old age was outworn, and the new began to supersede it. the world was weary of the majestic, the stiff, and the pompous, whose glamour had blinded it for sixty years. the sun-king was dead, and the sun of the italian renaissance had set. french society breathed once more. the ostentation of the court had become an onerous ceremony, the monarchical principle an unendurable constraint. the nightmare that had oppressed it, the ennui that had come from versailles, disappeared. air and light and mirth penetrated the salons. people shook off the heavy yoke of majesty from their shoulders, abandoned their heroic, ostentatious palaces, and bought themselves _petites maisons_ in the _bois_. they had suffered, they wished to be glad; they had been bored, they wished to be amused. enough of pater-nosters and stately etiquette! they wished to live. away with the antique temples and goddesses of poussin! away with those devoted martyrs who mortified themselves and killed the flesh! away with the semblance of the heroic, with pomp and glamour, with the service of god and the service of lords! here's to the service of the ladies. here's to the thatched roofs of farmhouses; the woods in whose thickets one can lose one's way and exchange a kiss; rosy flesh and little turned-up noses; everything which gave a thrill of voluptuousness after the unapproachable, icy-cold nobility of the past. long live love! [illustration: "_l'art._" goya. otres leyes por el pueblo.] so thought france when louis xiv was dead, and the man was already grown up in the low countries who was chosen to give a shape to these dreams, to abolish the ascendency of gods and kings and heroes, and to show the upper classes their own image reflected in the mirror of art. _antoine watteau_, who guided the stream of french art into this new channel--of the netherlands--was by birth and training a fleming. his birthplace, valenciennes, although french territory since the peace of nymeguen, resembled in its whole character a flemish town. in the church here he first saw any of rubens' pictures. here, through gérin, he became instructed in flemish traditions. rubens and teniers are the two masters from whom his own art sprang. during the years when the war of the spanish succession had changed the french frontier provinces into a huge military camp, he painted soldiers and camp scenes, such as the "march" in the collection of edmund rothschild, where a party of recruits are straggling along a high plain in a fierce storm. later came pictures of country life in the manner of teniers, like the "retour de guinguette," engraved by chedel, a landscape in which on the right a party of rustics are carousing at a table in front of a farmyard, while on the other side half-drunken men and women are going home. louis xiv had made before the pictures of teniers his well-known _mot_: "_otez moi ces magots_." now, through watteau, the _magot_ makes its entrance into french art. thus in his chief picture in this manner, "la vraie gaieté," the figures are unmistakably after teniers. the men are short and sturdy, entirely flemish. only the costumes have changed with the mode. but the women are not in the least flemish. the clean caps and tidy kerchiefs, the freshly ironed aprons, and neat little feet that trip so lightly and quickly along the street that no dirt seems to soil them, give these peasant girls a certain desirability in which it is not hard to discover the transition to french grace. the elegant motions and fine heads point to that watteau who was to become soon afterwards the unsurpassable delineator of feminine coquetry. gillot and rubens led him into the new road. the teniers-like character of his figures disappeared, they became gracious and noble. in place of the _magot_ came elegant french society. gillot was the first in paris to break with the pompous louis xiv style, and to begin the representation of the cheerful life of comedians, to replace the dwellers in olympus by characters of the french and italian stage. rubens had been the first in his "garden of love," of the dresden and madrid galleries, to invite to the embarkation for the island of cythera. watteau acquired something from everyone he studied, and yet resembles none. after having hitherto sought his personages on the highways and in camps, he was now to become the painter of _fêtes galantes_, the painter of "society." for in his shepherds and shepherdesses there lives the elegance of france. the gods of the renaissance, in whom no one any longer believed, glided into the costumes of harlequin and pierrette. in lieu of the great and the pathetic there came the small, the gay, the graceful, the dainty. the architectural symmetry of composition disappeared, and the stiff stage-scenery character of landscape vanished. the grave formality of geometrical construction is changed into freedom and joyousness, just as the rhetorical, exact, measured periods of boileau were relaxed, under the hands of voltaire, into sentences unconstrained, buoyant, and crisp. watteau's art betokened the triumph of naturalism over the mannerism into which the french art of the seventeenth century, based on the italian renaissance, had dwindled. as it is said in an old poem-- "parée à la françoise, un jour dame nature eut le desir coquet de voir sa portraiture. que fit la bonne mère? elle enfanta watteau." watteau became for french art what, a hundred years before, rubens had been for flemish--the deliverer. he delivered them from the oppressive yoke of the italian tradition. in his world, where there were no longer any naked goddesses, but where the corset was opened only just wide enough to reveal a rosy bosom, there was nothing more left of the past. it is no longer antique beauty, no longer the plastic cold of the "venus di milo," no longer the marble perfection of raphael's "galatea." into those tender, feminine hands, into those lace sleeves, out of which snow-white arms come languishingly forth, into those slender waists, and teasing, dimpled chins, something of coquetry, of sensibility, something subtle and spiritual, has entered, that seems to transcend physical beauty. his young men are tall and supple, his women entirely indescribable, with their air of quiet roguishness and their exquisite coiffures. quite modern is that distinguished sense for costume which made him a leader of fashion. mysterious landscapes, that exhale peace and happiness all around! rightly has edmond de goncourt called him a lyric poet, the great poet of the eighteenth century. [illustration: antoine watteau.] [illustration: watteau. la partie carrÉe.] in this way the development proceeded. the pompous representation which portrait painting had practised hitherto was gone. people would no longer be masters of the ceremonies, but human beings. new forms of technique were discovered, such as pastel painting. no other material was capable of rendering the peculiar fragrance of this fugitive flower nature, the graceful appearance of this _rococo_ style, of these ladies with the touch of powder in their hair, and their moist, dreamy eyes, as maurice latour, rosalba carriera, and later the swiss, liotard, painted them. of those who endeavoured, on the model of watteau's style, to depict the life of the fashionable world, none approached the delicacy of that national genius. _lancret_ and _pater_ followed him, but more roughly, more soberly, more drily. lancret in his whole conception, compared with watteau, is a homely, often a somewhat cumbrous journeyman; pater, an artist of greater elegance, has the fickleness of the virtuoso. both in conviction and in art they lacked that poetic, glorifying breath which pervades watteau's creations. in watteau one _believes_ that these gracious beings, these tall and nervous cavaliers, these amiable coquettes and comely women, actually represent originals in noble society; whereas in the works of his disciples it often happens that the paid model, selected from a lower circle of society, appears to us to be not congruous with the elegance of her wardrobe. these dancers, huntsmen, and noble maidens are not wholly what they should represent. but how delicious they are, these french gossips, so long as one is mindful _not_ to think of watteau! what grace is theirs too! what innate tact! with what a pleasant adroitness do they understand how to rivet our attention, and to keep far, far away from the tedium in which their classical ancestors, with their natural heaviness, waded! instinctively and without effort they rejected the rhythmically balanced composition and correct nobility of form of the classics, and found a characteristic expression for unconstrained gestures, pleasing movements, and refined elegance. [illustration: greuze. "_l'art._"] even the decorative painters abandoned more and more the much-worn paths of the italians. _françois lemoine_ gave them, by rubens' aid, the transition to a manner peculiarly french, elegant, sensuous, charming. his pupil, _françois boucher_, followed him. like the sons of the seventeenth century, he made exhaustive use of mythological subjects and was often a superficial artist, and in his later works he became entirely a mannerist; but he was not so at the beginning. it was a great advance for france when boucher gave his pupils the advice to abstain from imitation of the great italian masters, and not to grow "as cold as ice." and what a great naturalist he is in his numerous drawings and etchings, and in those marvellous groups of chubby children who are playing and tumbling about on clouds, or playing musical instruments shooting arrows, or sporting with flowers! "it is not every one who has the stuff to make a boucher" even his great antagonist david has said of him. in _fragonard_, again, there was summed up all the joy of life and the frivolity, the lustrous, luxurious talent, the charming amiability and nimble sureness, of french art in the eighteenth century. fragonard has painted everything. his great decorations are careless inspirations, sparkling with spirit and life. with him pastoral scenes alternate with episodes of everyday life--children, guitar players, women reading. fragonard is a piquant, ingenious painter. perhaps hardly any other painter has so much kissing in his pictures. his etching, "l'armoire," of , is well known. in that he already stood on the sure ground of popular life. the old rustic, who is armed with a formidable cudgel, is beating open, with the assistance of his wife, the doors of a great clothes cupboard, in which a handsome young fellow has hidden himself; close by is a pretty farm girl, weeping in confusion into her apron; in the background the curious and amazed little sisters are looking on. [illustration: greuze. the milkmaid.] [illustration: _cassell & co._ greuze. head of a girl.] _j. f. de troy_ had, at the same time, abandoned himself to a more frolicsome manner, had played upon painting in pictures such as "the proposal of marriage" and "the garter" with something of that frivolity which later came into fashion through baudouin. that, however, was only for a very short time. life was beginning to be in earnest--that is rather the impression one receives much earlier, from turning over the engravings of those years. amongst the elders of the actual _rococo_ age, contentment and gaiety still rule. as the heirs of an old civilisation, the aristocracy understood, with a refined and unique understanding, how to turn life into a feast. silk trains rustle over the parquet, silk shoes trip, eyes gleam, diamonds flash, white bosoms heave. tall cavaliers advance to their sprightly partners, gossip and smiles fly around, knights of malta and abbés hang over the chairs and pay their court. yes, this autumn of the old french culture was of a marvellous beauty for the fortunate, and those fortunate ones knew, as no other generation has ever done, how to enjoy life with serenity, in a fairy glamour of rooms gleaming with venetian chandeliers, where rosy cupidons laughed down bewitchingly from their light, gold moulded panels. under louis xvi the french salon acquired another aspect. its walls, its whole architecture, were more sombre. the cupidons still sported on the ceiling, but they were forgotten, like ghosts of the past; their shafts were already impotent. the vivacious, dancing couples have disappeared. festivity has been banished from the big rooms: here and there is seen an earnest conversational party; gentlemen playing cards or ladies reading philosophical books. social and political interests have sprung up with which people of education prefer to occupy themselves. numerous works on commerce and constitutional methods have appeared during the last fifty years. in place of scandal there crop up arguments, for and against the parliament, for and against the jesuits. enlightenment had won its victory. henceforth development is no longer compatible with sensuous delight. it is still the same society as before, but without pleasure. one almost breathes the air of . gaming is only a struggle against ennui; the foreheads of women are furrowed with reading. society has grown serious and sombre, as it were, with a presentiment of what is to come, as though destiny might thus be set aside. the writings of diderot afford the clearest instance of this changed spirit of the age, and art too must become virtuous, and work for the amelioration of the world. thus diderot upheld the sentimental and emotional subject against the _fêtes galantes_ of the _rococo_ painter. boucher derived his inspiration from the slough of prostitution; only a moral upheaval could tend to a high style. with boucher the idea of honour, of innocence, has become something strange; the new age requires virtue, _bonnes moeurs_. but where are the virtues to be found? naturally, there alone, where rousseau had discovered them. rousseau taught that man by nature was good, that he was noble, conscious of his moral obligations, self-sacrificing and uncorrupted when he came from the hands of his maker, and that it was civilisation which first corrupted him. it followed that the most civilised are the most corrupt, and virtues are to be met with, if anywhere, amongst the lower orders, who are the least affected by culture. not beneath an embroidered waistcoat, only beneath a woollen smock, can a noble heart beat. the happy ignorance of the young savoyard, eating his cheese or his oranges in a church porch, lies nearer to the original perfection of mankind than the most subtle erudition of the most ingenious of the encyclopædists. amongst nature's noblemen one must seek for the secret of virtue, which has been lost by the aristocracy in the stream of civilisation. thus beneath the ægis of rousseau's philosophy the third estate makes its entry into french salons. from the man of the people society wanted to learn how to become once more simple, unassuming, and virtuous; and it was a gruesome irony of fate that this "man of the people" should reveal himself later, when the guillotine stood in the place de la concorde, as by no means so lamblike, modest, and self-sacrificing as that noble society had imagined him. [illustration: _cassell & co._ greuze. girl carrying a lamb.] _greuze_ represented this phase of french art when the riotous carnival of _rococo_ had come to an end, and the ash wednesday of rule and fasting and penitence had ensued. it was considered that the aim of art must be to instruct and elevate, not merely to amuse; it should set an example to raise and inspire the good, to serve as a warning for the bad. "_rendre la vertu aimable, le vice odieux, le ridicule saillant, voilà le projet de tout honnête homme qui prend la plume, le pinceau ou le ciseau._" in these words diderot formulated his programme. it was his wish that the corrupt man, when he went to an exhibition, should feel pricks of conscience at the pictures and read in them his own condemnation. "_si ses pas le conduisent au salon, qu'il craigne d'arrêter ses regards sur la toile._" educational effects, "moral stories told in pictures," that is the keynote of diderot's demands upon the painter, and of the accomplishment of greuze in answer to this claim. he is the french hogarth, whether he paints in sombre colours the misery that the drunkard brings upon his family, and the horrors of poverty, or depicts in brighter tones the love of children for their parents and the works of charity; and with him too, as with the englishman, his title was chosen with a didactic after-thought to heighten the effect of his picture. thus such scenes as these occurred: "the father's curse," "the consolation of age," "the son's correction," "the ungrateful son," "the beloved mother," "the spoilt child," "the lame man tended by his relations," and "the results of good education." he had this, too, in common with hogarth: he liked to develop his moral stories in long series, which invariably ended with the triumph of virtue and the punishment of vice. the didactic story of _bazile et thibaut_ attempted to relate in twenty-six chapters the influence of a good education on the formation of a whole life; and, just as in hogarth's story of the two apprentices, here too, at the conclusion, the well-educated thibaut pronounces sentence of death over his old friend bazile, the badly educated, and now condemned murderer. the fact that in other things the two moral apostles differ greatly from each other is accounted for by the difference in the national characteristics of those to whom they variously appealed. hogarth _scourged_ the vices of the third estate in order to raise them to morality. rape, bloodshed, debauchery, disorderliness, gluttony, and drunkenness--that was the channel through which in england at that day the furious flood of the uncontrolled spirit of the populace poured itself, foaming and raging with fearful natural force. hogarth swung over these human animals the stout cudgel of morality in the manner of a sturdy policeman and puritan _bourgeois_. with such people a delicate forbearance would have been misplaced. at the foot of every prison-scene he inscribed the name of the vice that he had pilloried there, and subjoined the predicted damnation from holy writ. he reveals it in its hideousness, he steeps it in its filth, traces it to its retribution, so that even the most vitiated conscience must recognise it and the most hardened abhor it. [illustration: _cassell & co._ greuze. girl looking up.] [illustration: _cassell & co._ greuze. girl with an apple.] greuze employs the third estate as a _mirror of virtue_, sets forth its noble qualities as an edification to an aristocracy that has grown vicious. less primitive and, for that very reason, less original than hogarth, he never forgets that he lives in the most refined social period in history. he does not strangle his culprits to provide terrifying examples, but nearly always leaves a corner open for repentance. he knew that he dared not exact too much from the nerves of his noble public; he merely wished to stir them to a soft vibration. he did not paint for drunken english people, but for those perfumed marquises who, later on, bowed with so courtly an elegance before the guillotine; for those sensitive ladies in whom virtue now excited the same sensual delight that vice had done before. they welcomed in him the high priest of a sort of orgie of virtue, to whose festivals they had grown reconciled. the century which in its first half had danced as light-heartedly as any other the can-can of life, becomes, in its second half, sad of soul, enthusiastic over the reward of justice, the punishment of transgressors, over honour and the naïveté of innocence. time after time do his contemporaries praise precisely that sense of virtue in the art of greuze. so that in france, as in england, the burden of interest was laid no longer upon the art, but upon an accessory circumstance. for since, in the hands of greuze, the picture had been turned into an argument, in france, as in england, art ceased to be an end--it became only a means. he made painting a didactic poem, the more melodramatic the better, and was driven thereby on the same sandbank upon which hogarth, and all _genre_ painters who _would be_ more than painters, have made shipwreck. in order to bring out his story with the utmost possible distinctness, he was too frequently compelled unduly to accentuate his point. the effect became affected, the pathos theatrical. his picture of the "father's curse" in the louvre, with the infuriated old man, the son hurrying wildly away, and the weeping sisters, resembles the last act of a melodrama. "the country wedding," where the father-in-law has given the young bridegroom the purse with the dowry, and now pathetically observes, "take it, and be happy," might just as well have been entitled "the father's last blessing." in the picture in which a noble dame takes her daughter to the bedside of two poor persons who are ill, to accustom her in early life to works of charity, the personages in the picture, arranged exactly as if upon a stage, must have been themselves uncommonly moved by the touching and praiseworthy action. greuze was the father of _genre_ painting in france--that barbaric, story-telling art which replaced _tableaux vivants_ based upon the literary idea by the dutchmen's picturesque and well-observed selections from nature. beyond that, however, it must not be forgotten that he, like hogarth, psychologically opposed to the earlier art, showed practical progress in many of his works. there were few in french art before him who depicted the emotions of the soul with such refinement as greuze in his "reading of the bible." in proportion to the understanding and character of the individual is the impression of the listener reflected on his countenance. that was something new in comparison with the laughing gods of boucher. and that greuze was also capable of the most highly _pictorial_ magic when he could once bring himself to lay aside the moral teacher is proved by his rosy, inspired heads of young girls. he never grew weary of painting these pretty children in every situation and attitude at that seductive age which hides the charming feet beneath the first long gown. blonde or brunette, with a blue ribbon in the hair, a little cluster of flowers in the bodice, they gaze out upon life with their big, brown child eyes, full of curiosity and misgiving. a light gauze covers the soft lines of the neck, the shoulders are as yet hardly rounded, the pouting lips are fresh as the morning dew, and only the two rosy, budding breasts, that fight lustily against their imprisonment, and seem, like sterne's starling, to cry, "i cannot get out," betray that the woman is already awake in the child. greuze's name will always be associated with these girl types, just as that of leonardo is with the dreamy, smiling sphinx-like head of mona lisa. in them he has given an unsurpassable expression to the ideal of innocence at the end of the eighteenth century, and provided in them a new thrill of beauty for his contemporaries. and a _blasé_ society which had indulged in every licence bathed itself with passionate delight in the unknown mystery of this surging flood. yes, after the stimulating champagne of _rococo_, people had even come to delight in simple black bread. and so, out of _bourgeoisie_ itself, a school of painting was developed as fresh and healthy as this. [illustration: _"gaz. des beaux arts."_ chardin. portrait of himself.] _chardin_, the carpenter's son, is at the head of this domestic art in the eighteenth century. after greuze, the painter of refined taste, he seems, a comfortable, healthy, _bourgeois_ master in whom the dutchman of the best period once more appears upon earth. after the king had, up to the close of the seventeenth century, been the centre round which everything turned, the solitary personality which dared to appear independent, and upon which the rest of the world formed itself; after the circles round the court had next freed themselves, and gained the right to enjoy life and art for themselves, there still remained a third step to surmount. "society" abdicates in favour of a free and healthy _bourgeoisie_. a surgeon's sign was the first work which brought the young man, who had received no systematic education, into notice. the surgeon is in his shop attending to a man who has been wounded in a duel, grouped around are curious bystanders, while the commissary of police investigates the case with a grave countenance. it is the first picture of the parisian life of the people. and chardin, with his middle-class origin, remained the advocate of middle-class domestic life. he is the watteau of the third estate. greuze owes his success, in the first place, to the ingenious manner in which he made himself the spokesman of the moral tendency of his age. it interested contemporary society to be told that it is beautiful to see married folk live together in happiness; that young mothers do a good action in nursing their children, when it is possible, themselves; that man should repent of his sins; and that he who honours his father and mother lives long in the land. nowadays we thank him for these wise counsels, but say, at the same time, that we could have done without them. we no longer see the necessity of illustrating the ten commandments, and notice now all the more the mannerisms, the rhetorical strokes of advocacy which the painter must employ in order to plead successfully. chardin's effect is as fresh to-day as it was a hundred years ago, because he was a sheer artist, who did not seek to tell a story, but only to represent,--a realist of the finest stamp, belonging in his exquisite sense of colour values to the illustrious family of the terburgs. his pictures have no "purpose." the washerwoman, the woman scraping carrots, the housewife at her manifold tasks--that is chardin's world; the atmosphere in which these figures move, the shimmering light that floats in the half-dark kitchen, the wealth of sun-rays that play upon the white tablecloths and brown-panelled walls--those are his fields of study. chardin lived in an old studio, high up near the roof, a quiet, dark room that was usually full of vegetables which he used for his "still life." there was something picturesque about the dusty walls where the moist green of vegetables mingled so harmoniously with the time-worn, sombre brown of the wainscoting, and the white table-cloth was flooded with the silvery green which poured in from a little skylight. in this peaceful and harmoniously toned chamber were laid those small domestic scenes, which he so loved to paint, and which were called by the french, in contrast to the _fétes galantes_, "_amusements de la vie privée_." the clock ticks, the lamp burns, water is boiling on the homely tiled stove. there is an effect in every one of his pictures, as though he had lived them himself, as if they were reminiscences of something dear to him and familiar. in contrast to greuze he shunned all critical moments, and depicted only the quiet life of custom, everyday life as it befell in a constant, regular routine. there are no hasty movements with him, no catastrophes nor complications; he has a preference for "still life" in the world of men, just as in nature. he is _par excellence_ the painter of _intimität_ (intimate life); which is not the same as _a genre_ painter. painters who in the manner of _genre_ have depicted domestic scenes in rooms are to be found in every school; but how few have known how to depict the poetry of the family life with such truth, with such an absence of affectation and insipidity! with chardin art and life are interfused. [illustration: j. b. s. chardin the house of cards] [illustration: chardin. grace before meat.] no dutchman, however, had penetrated into the nursery. chardin, in surprising the child-world at their games, in their joys and sorrows, has opened out to art a new province. and with what affectionate devotion has he not absorbed himself in the spirit of the little people! i know of no one before him who has painted the unconscious spiritual life of the child with such discreet tenderness: the little hands that grasp at something, the lips that a mother would like to kiss, the dreamy wide-open young eyes. in this chardin is a master. it is not only obvious expressions of joy and sorrow, but those refined shades, so difficult to seize, of observation, thoughtfulness, consideration, calm reflection, quaintness, obstinacy or sulking, which he analyses in the eyes of the child. there is the little girl playing with her doll, and lavishing on her all the love and care of a tender mother. there is an elderly, half-grown-up little lady teaching her younger brother the mysteries of the alphabet. then come the games and the tasks. they build card-houses, blow bubbles, or are wholly engrossed in their drawing-books and home-lessons. how attentive the little girl is whose mother has just given her her first embroidery materials. how charmingly embarrassed is the small boy whom she hears his lesson. and what trouble she takes in the morning, that her darling shall be clean and tidy when he goes to school. in one picture the cap on the little girl's head is crooked, and her mother is putting it straight, whilst the child with a pretty pride is peeping curiously in the glass. again, there is the boy just saying good-bye. he is neat and well combed; his playthings, too, have been nicely tidied up, and his books are under his arm. his mother takes his three-cornered hat off again in order to brush it properly. when school is over, you see them sitting at dinner. the table is laid with a snow-white cloth, and the cook is just bringing in a steaming dish. it is touching to see how prettily the small boy clasps his hands and says his grace. and when they are again off to afternoon school the mother sits alone. she looks charming in her simple house-dress, with the loose sleeves, her clean white apron and kerchief, her striped petticoat and coquettish cap. soon she takes her embroidery on her lap and stoops forward to take a ball of wool out of her basket. next she sits before the fire in a cosy corner against a folding screen. a half-opened book rests in her hand, a tea-cup stands close by, a homely atmosphere of the living room hovers round her. then, like a true housewife, she takes up her house-keeping book, or goes into the kitchen to help the cook, while she scrapes carrots or scrubs the cooking utensils or brings in the meat from the larder. it is all rendered with such truth and simplicity that one acquires an affection for chardin, who with his art got to the root of family life and bestowed upon it the subtlest gifts of observation and generous comprehension, while none the less his domesticity never became commonplace. [illustration: daniel chodowiecki.] his contemporary, _Étienne jeurat_, painted scenes at country fairs, and _jean baptiste le prince_ pictures of guardrooms and similar subjects. in holland _cornelis troost_ went on parallel lines with him. he depicted the life of his age and of his nation--comic scenes, banquets, weddings, and the like--in pastels or water colours, and that without seeking inspiration from any of the dutch classics, but with a vivid, intelligent comprehension. even italian art ended in two "_genre_ painters," the venetians rotari and pietro longhi, who have bequeathed to us such charming little pictures of the life of that age--fortune-tellers, dancing-masters, tailors, apothecaries, little boys and girls at play or at their tasks. [illustration: _cassell & co._ chodowiecki. the family picture.] germany presented no such great manifestation as chardin, although there too the tendency was the same. there too, after the devastation of the thirty years' war, a moral, active _bourgeoisie_ had at last sprung up that was prepared to take up the line which had been already laid down by the english. lessing was the first in this magnificent struggle for evolution. he wrote, in his _miss sarah sampson_, the first german tragedy without the support of great mythical or historical heroes, and without the stiff ponderousness of the alexandrine. he declared, like moore, that helmets and diadems do not make tragic heroes; he even in his _minna_ set vividly before the eyes of his contemporaries something in the immediate present, the seven years' war. and just as lessing liberated the german drama from the jurisdiction of boileau, so art began to mutiny against the classicism which had come in through the medium of france, and which had been inherited from the age when it was the pride of german courts to be small copies of versailles. "how exceedingly abhorrent to me are our berouged puppet painters," cries the young goethe, in his essay on german style and art, "i could not sufficiently protest; they have caught the eyes of the women with theatrical poses, false complexions, and gaudy costumes; the wood engravings of manly old albrecht dürer, at whom tyros scoff, are more welcome to me.... only where intimacy and simplicity exist is all artistic vigour to be found, and woe to the artist who leaves his hut to squander himself in academic halls of state." [illustration: _cassell & co._ chodowiecki. all sorts and conditions of women.] _daniel chodowiecki_, with all his commonplaceness, is a genuine expression of this phase of german art. he in germany, hogarth in england, and chardin in france, are products of the same tendency of the age. after lessing had produced in _minna_ the first domestic german tragedy, chodowiecki, following the road of hogarth and chardin, was able to become the painter of the german middle class. he is not a master of such penetrating strength as they were, but he is no less an artist of notable merit. he is certainly no genius--in fact almost a handicraftsman, sober and philistine, but, like hogarth, a self-made man who in his whole artistic and personal outlook was rooted in the soil of his city and of his age. berlin society of that day was the basis of his art, the daily life of house and street his domain. he began by illustrating poems and depicting scenes out of the _seven years' war_ and the _history of charles the great_, and went on from that to the pleasant, homely life of the small _bourgeoisie_. himself of the middle classes, he chiefly worked for them, and with his sensitive and dexterous graving tool he kept the liveliest and most exhaustive chronicle of the german _bourgeoisie_ of that age. at times almost too reasonable and prosaic, a genuine nicolai, he has in other plates an enchanting freshness, and--which should not be forgotten--is more of an artist than hogarth, since he is neither moralist nor satirist. his object, without any moral after-thought, was the true and kindly observation of life as displayed in the world around him. he took the wholly naïve delight of the genuine artist in turning everything he saw into a picture. these chronicles of his have some, it may be but a particle, of the spirit of dürer. simultaneously, the young _tischbein_ delved into the past of the nation, the age of conradin and the hohenstaufen, with the intention of finding there the simplicity which the academic pictures had come to lack; and, later on, he painted in hamburg extremely realistic historical pictures of his own period, such as that which is to be found in the oldenburg gallery: "entry of general benigsen into hamburg, ." he did good work too as a portrait painter. in his best picture, "goethe amongst the ruins of rome," the head of the poet is energetic and full of strength, the colouring of an excellent clear grey. in portrait painting in general, the revolution is reflected with especial clearness. the artificial manner that had been copied from the seventeenth century, the age of long perukes, gives way, slowly but surely, to an ever-growing naturalness, simplicity, and originality. at that time, while the spirit of louis xiv still hovered over everything, the passion of the individual to be king in his own sphere had penetrated into the family. the honest citizen, therefore, would not let himself be painted as such, but only as a prince,--he, himself, in gala dress, with a pompous air, as stately as though he were giving an audience to the spectator, his wife in silk and gold and lace; she has a great mantle of state worn loose over her shoulders and hips, and looks down with an assumption of grandeur on her grandchild, who is half respectful and half inclined to make fun. the frame is as rich as the costume, and probably bears a crown. we are with difficulty persuaded that these are pictures of simple citizens, that the man, apart from the hours during which he sat to the painter, is an industrious tradesman, and the wife, glancing out so haughtily, most probably darned his stockings. their portraits seem to form part of an ancestral gallery. this age of princely state was followed by that of fraternity. in place of berouged and postured portraits with allegorical accessories, there appeared simple, unpretentious likenesses of human beings in their work-a-day clothes; in place of stiff attitudes, _genre_ motives with the easy naturalness of everyday life. [illustration: _cassell & co._ chodowiecki. the morning compliment.] in berlin, ever since , _antoine pesne_ had been for half a century the centre of artistic life, and in his works the revolution may be traced. something familiar and intimate takes the place of that stately pomp. the princes, hitherto, had liked to be represented in mediæval armour or antique equipment; pesne painted them in the costume of the time. and in his portraits of his friends and his family circle he has been still more unconstrained. there is the charming picture of , in the new palace at potsdam, which shows the painter himself with his wife and his two children; the portrait of schmidt the engraver, in the berlin museum; and the beautiful picture of in the collection of colonel von berke, at schemnitz, which depicts him again at the age of seventy-one with his two daughters. pesne is revealed in these characteristic portraits, as well as in his character pictures in the dresden gallery ("the girl with the pigeons," , "the cook with the turkey-hen," ), as a thoroughly sane and strong realist, of a kind which became almost extinct in berlin a hundred years later. in the next generation, in the _sturm-und-drang_ period, _anton graff_, the swiss, took the lead with his simple, domestic, honest, real portraits. it was a happy disposition of fate that graff's activity just corresponded with the great period of the awakening of intellectual life in germany, that lessing and schiller, bodmer and gessner, wieland and herder, bürger and gellert, christian gottfried körner and lippert, moses mendelssohn and sulzer, and a long succession of other poets and scholars of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, found in him a portrait painter whose quick and agile hand left us their features in the truest and most authentic manner. what and how robust his art is, how clear and plastic the execution of the heads, how adroit and infallible the technique! besides graff, there worked in dresden _christian leberecht vogel_, likewise a most independent, picturesque, and sensitive artist, who, if only for his pictures of children, deserves a place of honour in the history of art in the eighteenth century. in the portrait of his two boys, in the dresden gallery, the naïveté of child-life is observed with such tenderness and rendered with such vigour as only reynolds understood. the boys are sitting close together on the ground. one, in a brown frock, is holding a book on his knees, which the other, in a red frock, with a whip in his hand, is looking at. the thoughtful expression of the little ones is quite charming; the execution broad and strong, the colour treatment delightful and tender. in munich lived the excellent _johann edlinger_, the most industrious of these sturdy masters, who were so modest and yet so capable. [illustration: _cassell & co._ chodowiecki. the artist's nursery.] [illustration: _gaz. des beaux arts._ antoine pesne. portrait of himself and daughters.] in the domain of landscape the continent produced no one who could be compared with gainsborough; but here, too, the english influence made itself felt. it can be traced how the same feeling for nature which had given birth to thomson's _seasons_ and gainsborough's landscapes, afterwards found expression in france and germany, and dissipated the prevailing taste in gardens. the seventeenth century--with the exception of the dutch--had set nature in order with the garden shears. as lebrun in his historical compositions endeavoured to outdo the italians, so lenôtre's garden style exemplified the perfection and exaggeration of the gardens of the italian renaissance, which themselves again were laid out on the plan of the old roman gardens from existing descriptions. a garden reminded one more of state apartments, which one could only walk through with measured steps, quietly and respectfully, than of nature, where one is, and dares to be, human. corresponding to this formally planned, correctly measured style of garden there was a school of landscape which improved nature on "artistic" principles, and, by the arrangement of bits of nature, produced a world peculiarly full of style. landscapes were nicely laid-out parks, which, like the figure pictures, made for an abstract beauty of mass and lines, and which, by means of accessories, such as classical ruins, would turn one's thought to the ancient world. nature must not, as batteux taught, be the instructor of the artist, but the artist must select the parts and build up his picture. out of many leaves he takes only the most perfectly developed, puts only such perfect leaves on one tree, and so obtains a perfect tree. let the essential of his production be _nature choisie_, a selection of objects that "are capable of producing agreeable impressions"; his aim "_le beau vrai qui est représenté comme s'il existait réellement et avec toutes les perfections qu'il peut recevoir_." the eighteenth century went back from this "noble," improved nature, step by step to the divine beauty of unimproved nature; just as those masters untouched by the romans, dürer and altdorfer, titian and rubens, brouwer and velasquez, had painted her. the great watteau, too, was here for the most part in advance of his age, in that, instead of the stiffly designed stage scenery of poussin, he gave elysian landscapes,--abodes of love, that now glisten in the sunshine of the young morning, now are suffused with golden light and the misty shadows of the evening twilight. the rose in her young bud is odorous, the nightingale sings, the doves coo, the light boughs whisper to the soft west wind, bright silver rivulets ripple, the wind sighs through the tall branches. watteau knew nature and loved her, and rendered her in her transparent beauty with the intoxicated eyes of a lover. the spirit of nature, not of humanity, dominates in his pictures. it is only because nature is so lovely that man is so happy. [illustration: _cassell & co._ _photo, mansell._ watteau. the music party.] but still more modern is the effect, when instead of painting elysian landscapes with happy inhabitants, he drew mere bits of rural nature, poor solitary regions in the neighbourhood of big towns, where bricklayers are working on the scaffolding of some house, or peasants are riding with their horses over some stony byway. out of a number of spirited drawings, this side of his perception in landscape is especially notable in the picture in the new palace at potsdam, in the left background of which a small stream flows past a farmhouse, whilst in front a peasant is laboriously dragging a two-wheeled cart over the rough ground. [illustration: _cassell & co._ _photo, mansell._ watteau. the return from the chase.] it is interesting to observe, at that time, after watteau and his english predecessors, the widespread growth of this new feeling for nature. thomson was followed by rousseau, who, on his lonely wanderings, looked with moved eyes at "the gold of the corn crop, the purple of the heather, the majesty of the trees, and the wonderful variety of flowers and grasses." he delighted in the blossoming of spring, the copses and rivulets, the song of birds, shady woods, and the landscapes of autumn, where the reapers and vine-dressers were working. he is the author of that lively feeling for nature that henceforth was aroused through the whole of europe. a breath of pure mountain air, a wholesome draught of fresh water from lake leman, were brought suddenly into the sultry atmosphere of salons, and filled people's hearts with a new and charming sensation when rousseau's works appeared. it was over with all efforts of "stylists" as soon as rousseau declared that everything was good just as it came out of the lap of the universal mother, nature. [illustration: watteau. fÊte champÈtre.] goethe, the pupil of rousseau, presages, in his whole conception of nature, something of the manifestation of the school of fontainebleau. he had something of daubigny when, as werther, he lies on the bank of the stream and looks down thoughtfully at the worms and small insects. he makes one think of dupré or corot when he says: "as nature declines upon autumn, within me and around me it grows autumn"; or, "i could not now draw so much as a stroke, and i have never been a greater painter than at the present moment"; or, "never have i been happier, nor has my perception of nature, down to the pebble or the grass beneath me, been fuller and more intimate. yet,--i know not how i can express myself, everything swims and oscillates before my soul, so that i can seize no outline. a great, shadowy whole waves before my soul, my perception grows indistinct before it, even as my eyes do." [illustration: gessner. landscape (etching).] thus were the french gardens delivered by the english. just as figure painting renounced lofty, architectural, formal composition, so those bisected and upholstered gardens were supplanted by irregular and, as it were, accidental bits of nature. people took no more trouble, in rousseau's phrase, "to dishonour nature by seeking to beautify her," but laid out gardens in harmony with goethe's remark in _werther_: "a feeling heart, not a scientific art of gardening, suggested the plan." close to versailles, near the box-tree patterns of lenôtre, lay the petit trianon, with its pond, its brook, and its dairy, where the unfortunate marie antoinette used to dream. and if painting still loitered on its preliminary return to nature, that only implied that the great artists--they only came in !--were not yet born. great artists can only raise themselves on the shoulders of their predecessors, whose value lies in their utility. the french landscapes of the eighteenth century, seen in the light of historical development, are of no importance; but, nevertheless, they gave a considerable stimulus in that they sought to animate the style of poussin with a closer perception of nature. hubert robert is certainly strongly decorative, but he has a light touch; one cannot take him at his word, but he is intelligent, and has sometimes grey and green tones that are soft and beautiful. joseph vernet painted coast scenery, views of harbours, storms at sea, likewise with decorative, superficial effects of light; he let flashes of lightning streak black clouds, sun-rays dance over lightly ruffled waves, silver moonshine play mysteriously upon the water, and caused conflagrations to break out and red flames to shoot up to heaven. he is somewhat inane and motley in his colouring. but he had ceased to see in the parts of nature nothing but materials for the construction of nicely fitting scenery. he no longer attempted to speak to the reason by means of lines, but to touch the soul through humour, and he employed in his scenery not only buildings and ruins, gods and ancient shepherds, but also modern groups of every kind. in switzerland, the charming etchings and water-colours of _solomon gessner_ must be especially mentioned. ludwig richter, indeed, pointed them out as the eighteenth century works which, after the engravings of chodowiecki, he loved the best. gessner venerated claude, and had an enthusiasm for poussin, but his pictures have no traces of the lofty style of the heroic school of landscape. he sketched his native meadows, trees, and brooks; he loved all that was small and secluded and cosy, arbours and hedges, quiet little gardens and idyllic nooks. he approached everything with a very childlike and faithful observation of nature. a second swiss, ludwig hess, dedicated a similar subtile sense of nature and loving zeal as much to his native switzerland as to the roman campagna. [illustration: gessner. landscape (etching).] [illustration: _l'art._ guardi. venice.] the german _philip hackert_ has been prejudiced rather than profited by the monument which goethe erected to him. as goethe's enthusiasm was not in due proportion with hackert's importance, he ceased later to attract attention, though this he did not merit, as he was always a vigorous and healthy landscape painter. he did not see nature with the tender sensibility of the swiss. he looked at a landscape somewhat insipidly, as chodowiecki at his models. but his drawing is sober, the atmosphere of his pictures clear and fresh; he cannot be tedious in his composition. in dresden there lived johann alexander thiele, who roamed through thüringen and mecklenburg as a landscape painter. even in italy landscapes were the most independent performances which the eighteenth century had brought forth there. there worked in rome the netherlander, vanvitelli, who depicted in graceful water-colours roman and neapolitan street life; and giovanni paolo pannini, the _peintre des fêtes publiques_, in whose pictures groups of richly coloured figures moved through splendid palaces. venice was the home of the canaletti. in _antonio canale's_ town pictures of venice, rome, and london there is at once so subtle an atmospheric movement, the water is so clear, the air so transparent, that even if they represent mere streets and buildings, they yet leave an impression of landscape achieved in a broad, pictorial method. _bernardo canaletto_ produces an effect by the fine, cool, damp light of his northern studies even simpler and more intimate, while by his discovery that sunshine does not--as it was hitherto believed--gild but silver the object it falls on, he became one of the fathers of realistic landscape. the most ingenious, however, of the school of canale, not to say one of the cleverest landscape painters of the century, was _francesco guardi_. antonio canale was a great artist, and shows it never better than in his distinguished etchings, but as a painter he interests the collector more than the connoisseur. there his qualities are too often petrified into an excessive formality; he shows something too much of the _camera obscura_. guardi is ingenious and startling. where you have accuracy in canale, in him you find spirit. canale shows us the real venice, guardi shows it as we have dreamed it to be. he has not canale's knowledge of perspective and architecture, but he fascinates us. he is a musician and a poet whose palette resounds with the purest harmonies. in his pictures the whole seductive legend of the fallen queen of the adriatic abides. garlanded gondolas glide peaceful and fairy-like, majestic as vessels in some distant wonderland, over the clear, green water of the canals, beneath the high, marble palaces, which mirror their columns and balconies, their arches and their loggias in the stream. foreign ambassadors pass in great state through the piazza di san marco; all that proud, venetian nobility greets them; and thick throngs of people in their sunday attire move to and fro beneath the hall of the procuration. gay bands of musicians row along the piazzetta and the riva. a moist breeze sweeps over the water; the sunshine, now subdued and mellow, now dancing coquettishly, plays upon the water or on the houses. francesco guardi, the magician of venice, is an animated, exquisite, always ingenious _improvisatore_, strong as few others are in the direct transference of his personal impression to canvas. every stroke of his brush takes effect,--in each one of his pictures one sees the nervous exaltation of the hand; and that gives him a power of attraction which, compared with canale, is like that of the clay model, in which the hand of the sculptor is still perceptible, compared with the cold, marble statue. even spain, which, except for the colossal figure of velasquez, had so far produced no painters of landscape--even spain, after the middle of the century, turned into this road. _don pedro rodriguez de miranda_ painted his broad, clear, and vigorously observed highland studies; _don mariano ramon sanchez_ his small views of towns and harbours. and, as in england, hand in hand with that came paintings of animals. in france, _françois canova_ was working, the painter of huge battle scenes and small pictures of animals; _jean louis de marne_, who was famous for his cattle, market scenes, village pictures, and the like; and the great _jean baptiste oudry_, who painted with breadth and freedom animals alive and dead, wild and tame, still-life of every kind. in augsburg lived _johann elias riedinger_, whose field of activity embraced the entire animal world, dogs and horses, stags and roes, wild boars, chamois, bears, lions, tigers, elephants, and the hippopotamus--which he depicted with fine observation, both in their proud solitude and at strife with men. if we cast one more glance back to the road which art had travelled since the commencement of the century, we can have no doubt as to the end which was proportionately aimed at in all countries. until quite recently a courtly, aristocratic art had shed its light upon the whole of europe. in the seventeenth century the dutch alone had maintained their isolation. they who entered fresh into art, and had to break with no tradition, gave at that time the first expression to the new spirit, in that they resolutely recalled art from its courtly surroundings to the humbler dwellings of the middle classes. they _painted_ what dürer and the "little masters" had only graved upon wood blocks and copper plates. still, they wished to paint these things less for their own sakes than because so intimate a light was shed upon them. through elements of light they contrived to cast over everyday moments a sort of fairy inspiration. watteau and his successors made a further advance in the conquest of the visible world, in that they desired to paint their age, for its own sake, in all its grace; and by the middle of the century we find this new, intimate, familiar art, independent of ancient tradition, triumphing all along the line. "sublime" painting is more and more forsaken. art becomes more and more indigenous to her world and age. aristocratic watteau is succeeded by hogarth, greuze, chardin, and chodowiecki, who treat the third estate no longer in the dutch _chiaroscuro_, but in all its heavy reality as a valid object of art. instead of that lofty, majestic, vainglorious painting of mere representations, which was the outcome of cinquecento, and which at the expiration of the seventeenth century had sunk, through abstraction, into something uniform, trivial, and tedious, there appeared on all sides an art which was simple and sincere, which plunged into the life of every day, observed man in his relations with nature, with his fellows, with his faithful animals, and with his household goods--an art which created the variety of its representations out of its own experience. so with landscape, the most modern branch of art; it reached in the schools of all nations a greater significance--at least, in extent--than it had ever possessed in the history of art. and this development proceeded without its being established that any one country had direct influence on any other. the ideas hung in the atmosphere; they were the ideas of the century. it is as though the departing age would hold a mirror before us--a magic mirror--which foretells the future; as though it would point out that nineteenth century art, advancing further along this road, should be domestic-human, and that it should find in landscape its most appropriate expression. it was not given to painting to proceed straight forward in this course, for through favour, partly of the changed current of literature, partly of the revolution, the flame of reactionary classicism shot up brightly once more before it expired. chapter iii the classical reaction in germany a hundred years ago there lived a man of the name of asmus carstens; and he was the pioneer and founder of the new german art. that has become since fernow a standing maxim in manuals of the history of art. dilettantism, however, is not an element, but an end. it is on this account, therefore, that later times will see in carstens, not a pioneer, but only one of the close followers of that tendency of which the founders were the brothers caracci, and the offshoots lebrun, lairesse, and van der werff. it is, at all events, historically clear that hogarth and gainsborough, watteau, greuze, chardin, and goya were the men to whom the future belonged. their art survived the overthrow of the classicalism represented by mengs and carstens, which, through external circumstances, once more got the upper hand for a short time, and it became the foundation on which, after the disappearance of this tendency inherited from the past, the moderns built further. the former represented progress, because they moved forwards; carstens and david, reaction, because they looked backwards--backwards to an age which had long ago been buried. there is always danger to a living art in the contact with any great art of the past. only those who are themselves highly gifted may hope to emulate the great ones of the earlier centuries; lesser geniuses perish in the attempt. painters like leonardo and raphael, like titian and poussin, taking the greeks as their masters, produced immortal works, and goethe and schiller proved to us that the hellenic spirit is still alive and active in our midst. but would anyone dare to mention mengs and carstens in the same breath with these giants? the close of the eighteenth century was a period of antiquarian revival. the ruins of pæstum had been brought to light, greek vases and roman monuments had become known to the public by the works of hamilton and piranesi. in stuart and revett published their splendid work on the _antiquities of athens_. to a german, however, was to fall the honour of becoming the hero of the archæological period. the _history of ancient art_, by johann joachim winckelmann, appeared in , and this writer devoted his literary energies to the hymning of the glories of the re-discovered treasures of antiquity. in the realm of pictorial art he may also be looked upon as the chosen of fate. already, nine years before the appearance of his _history of_ _art_, he had given, at the age of thirty-eight, his first writing to the world, _thoughts upon the imitation of greek works_, in which the reformation motive is epitomised in this sentence: "the sole means for us to become--ay, if possible, inimitably great--is the imitation of the ancients." from winckelmann the stone kept on rolling. "in greek sculpture the painter can attain to the most sublime conception of beauty, and learn what he must lend to nature in order to give dignity and propriety to his imitation," writes solomon gessner in . in hagedorn of dresden deplored, in his _treatise on painting_, that "terburg and metsu never showed us fair andromache amongst her industrious women, instead of dutch sempstresses." in lessing wrote his _laocoön_, and, like winckelmann, saw in the sculpture of the greeks the ideal to be imitated. from this point forward he despised landscape and _genre_ painting, and especially everything which illustrates intimate emotions and actions, and would confine the composition of pictures to an arrangement of two or three "ideal figures which please by physical beauty." soon afterwards, with almost astonishing partiality, goethe intervened in a notable manner on behalf of classicism with the most flagrant contradiction of the ideas of his youth. "nature alone," he had said in _werther_, "makes the great artist"; and in his essay upon _german method and art_ he aimed this sentence at winckelmann and his followers: "you yourselves, admirable beings, to whom it was given to enjoy the highest beauty, you are hurtful to genius; it will be raised up and borne along on no strange wings, were they even the wings of the dawn." in the same essay occurs the beautiful passage: "if art is produced out of an inward, single, independent conception, untroubled by, unconscious indeed, of, all that is extraneous, then whether she be born of rough wildness or of cultivated sensibility, she is complete and living." soon afterwards he wrote again these great words: "rembrandt appears to me in his biblical subjects as a true saint who saw god present everywhere, at every step, in the chamber and in the fields, and did not need the surrounding pomp of temples and sacrifices to feel drawn towards him,"--an observation made at a time when the academic and erudite writer on art was still for years to perceive in the biblical pictures of the great dutchman only a crude conception of form. in another passage, upon the frescoes of mantegna, in the church of the anchorite, at padua, there occur the following sentences, showing the deepest historical perception: "how sharp and sure a modernity stands out in these pictures! from this modernity, which is quite real, and not merely seeming, with factitious effects, speaking only to the imaginative faculty, but solid, detailed, and conscientiously circumscribed, and which at the same time has something austere and industrious and painstaking--from this issued subsequent painters such as titian; and now the liveliness of their genius, the energy of their nature, enlightened by the spirit of their predecessors, built up through their strength, was able to soar ever higher and higher, to rise from earth and create divine but real figures." but, alas! later on he did not draw the conclusion which followed quite logically from these observations for the judgment of contemporary german art. he came back from italy as a disciple and follower of winckelmann's writings on art. "art has once for all, like the works of homer, been written in greek, and he deceives himself who believes that it is german." something pagan entered into his soul, a breath from the calm of olympus. he derided his earlier gothic inclinations, contemptuous of all that was opposed to greek notions of form, mild and indulgent to all that bore at least the outward semblance of the antique. he preferred a cold ideal manner to what was natural, and held greek art the absolutely valid model. from it should be derived a fixed canon, a table of accepted laws, to be the standard for the artist of our own days, and of every age. the _prize essays_, which he published with heinrich meyer in the _propyläen_, and later in the _jena literary journal_, required the treatment of subjects exclusively from the hellenic legendary cycles, "whereby the artist should become accustomed to come out from his own age and surroundings"; the composition of pictures was to correspond strictly with the style of the antique frieze. amongst his contemporaries voices were not wanting to point out how fatal this programme was. notably, wilhelm heinse, in , wrote this golden sentence: "art can only direct itself to the people with whom it lives. every one works for the people amongst whom fate has thrown him, and seeks to plumb its heart. every country has its own distinctive art, just as it has its own climate, its scenery, its own taste, and its own drink." similarly, klopstock opposed winckelmann's theories in these lines-- "nachahmen soll ich nicht und dennoch nennet, dein ewig lob nur immer griechenland. wem genius in seinem busen brennet, der ahm' den griechen nach!--der griech' erfand." again, in the _german republic of letters_, in the chapter "on high treason": "it is high treason for any one to maintain that the greeks cannot be surpassed." in a letter to goethe, in the year , schiller wrote: "the antique was a manifestation of its age which can never return, and to force the individual production of an individual age after the pattern of one quite heterogeneous, is to kill that art which can only have a dynamic origin and effect." madame de staël, in her book on _germany_, says: "if nowadays the fine arts should be confined to the simplicity of the ancients, we should not then be able to attain to the original strength which distinguished them, while we should lose that intimate, composite feeling for life which is especially found in us. simplicity in art would easily turn with the moderns into coldness and affectation, whereas with the ancients it was full of life." in counsellor hirth published in schiller's _horæ_ his well-known treatise on _beauty in art_, which, in opposition to the inanimate type of beauty of winckelmann, upheld the characteristic as the first principle in art. most remarkable, however, is the breadth of historical outlook which was peculiar to herder, and the stern actuality with which in his _plastik_, and in the _vierten_ _kritischen wäldchen_, he turned against "those pitiful critics, those wretched and narrow rules of art, that bitter-sweet prattle of universal beauty, through which the younger generation is being ruined, which is nauseating to the master, and which, nevertheless, the rabble of connoisseurs takes in its mouth as words of wisdom.... shadows and sunrise, lightning and thunder, the brook and the flame the sculptor cannot model; but is that therefore to be a reason why it should not be done by the painter? what other law has painting, what other power and function, than to depict the great scheme of nature with all her manifestations, in their great and beautiful aspect? and with what magic it does this! they are not clever who despise landscape painting, the fragments of nature of the great harmony of creation, who depreciate it or entirely forbid it to the sincere artist. is a painter not to be a painter? is he to turn statues with his brush, and fiddle with his colours, just as it may please their antique taste? to represent the scheme of creation seems vulgar to them; just as though heaven and earth were not better than an old statue.... doubtless greek sculpture stands in the sea of time like a lighthouse, but it should be only a friend and not a commander. painting is a scheme of magic, as vast as the world and as history, and certainly not every figure in it can or ought to be a statue. in a picture no single figure is everything; and if they are all equally beautiful, no one then is beautiful any longer. they become a dull monotony of long-limbed greek figures with straight noses, who all stand there and parade and take as little part in the action as possible. now, when this misrepresentation of beauty cries scorn at the same time upon the whole conception, upon history, upon character, upon action, and this openly attacks that as a lie, there comes a discord, something insupportable, into painting, which certainly the antique pedant is unaware of, but which is felt all the more by the true friend of the antique. and finally, our own actual age, the most fruitful subjects of history, the liveliest characters, all feeling of a simple truth and precision, will be _antiquarianised_ away. posterity will stand and gape at such fantasies in practice and theory, and will not know what we were, in what age we lived, nor what brought us to this wretched folly, to the wish to live in another age, in another nation and climate, and thereby to abandon, or vitiate deplorably, the whole order of nature and history." these sentences, however, stood in isolation, or else they came too late. immediately after it had been heralded by the literary movement, after the archæologists had verbally announced its aim, formulated its principles and laws, german art turned into the new paths. "it happened for the first time in the history of art," wrote goethe, "that important talents took pleasure in disciplining themselves by the past, and so founding a new epoch in art." "des deutschen künstler's vaterland, ist griechenland, ist griechenland" was sung in the academies. and this violent grasping after the ideal of a foreign race brought a bitter revenge, since not one of the artists who now appeared had the genius to create anything new out of the old. [illustration: _photo union, munich._ mengs. portrait of himself.] the disciples of winckelmann had not been, like goethe and schiller, vigorous naturalists until the spirit of ancient times had looked upon them, and they were consequently still less able to resist her glance. they entered upon the new road not with that generative impulse of the creative mind, whose superabundance did not know what course it should take, what stream it should find. they adopted the forms, as they had been provided by the greater ages, without any doubt as to their absolute excellence, or the least attempt at any happy innovation. and if they "have better understood" the greeks than their predecessors in italy and france were able to do, then one is never less like an original nature than when one imitates them faithfully. winckelmann's road to inimitability led not only to a more hollow and lifeless classicism than there ever had been, to a more cheerless and unpleasant art than any which the school of bologna had produced. it tended, above all, since the thinking people had thought out the classic idea--which the other nations had not--to the sacrifice of all pictorial technique, of the whole knowledge which the age had up till then possessed. there is a legend in the history of the church, that at the time of the donation of constantine a voice was heard from heaven: "this day has poison entered into the body of the church." to the german art of our century this poison was the writings of winckelmann. first of all it was _anton rafael mengs_, whose originally strong and great talent was distorted by the counsels of the learned. as in the works of the caracci, those only are to-day of any interest which reveal themselves least as eclectics and most as children of the seventeenth century, so with mengs--he is only enjoyable now where he did not try to be antique, but sympathised without too much reflection on the traditions of his age. he is particularly so in his fine pastel portraits in the dresden gallery, which are wholly influenced by the taste for _rococo_, and are its last expiring manifestation. they are a testimony that it was not without some justice that the apelles of dresden was called by his contemporaries the most remarkable german painter of the eighteenth century. rosalba carriera and liotard seem weak and insipid beside him; reynolds only at his best had that characteristic clearness, that plastic energy of modelling, and that life-like colouring. there is nothing insipid or affected, nothing of that simpering affability that his successors brought into vogue. and when we remember that they proceeded from a youth of sixteen, the strength and simplicity of intuition seem incredible. in his later portraits, too, painted in oil, the better ones are directly classic; very noble in their clear, subtile, grey tone, strikingly alive, and, withal, of an extraordinary independence which shows no leaning upon any other master whatever. mengs belongs to those portrait painters who look into the souls of their sitters, and he ranks, in works like his portrait of himself, in the munich gallery, amongst the best portrait painters of the eighteenth century. [illustration: mengs. mount parnassus.] in his huge ecclesiastical paintings he is the son of that period which had just commenced to be touched by the pallor of thought, and groped eclectically now in this direction and now in that. "first of all must the weeds be rooted up," wrote zanotti in his _directions to a young man upon painting_. "and then we must go back again to cimabue and giotto, and again, a few years later, to buonarotti and sanzio, and their noble successors whose footsteps are no longer sought or followed by any one. but when such a happy resurrection will take place, god knows!" the old ismael mengs believed that that was his concern; he chose antonio da allegri and rafael sanzio as sponsors for his son. anton rafael should become the eclectic reformer of art, and as he was probably the first painter who, by the express permission of the elector of saxony, was allowed to visit the hitherto inaccessible dresden gallery, this wish was easy of accomplishment. [illustration: angelica kauffmann. _cassell & co._] he was quick in freeing himself from the immediate tradition of the age, and in harmony with the teaching of the caracci, in returning to the so-called "higher" models of painting. when one runs across such of his pictures in some gallery--notably his altar pieces--they strike one as the works of some good master of the seventeenth century whose name one cannot, for the moment, recollect. his famous "holy night," in which he wished to enter into rivalry with correggio, has something of a maratti about it, only the heads are more vacant and insipid. it is that unfortunate "parnassus" in the villa albani which first marks the collapse of this great talent. when, upon the advice of his friend winckelmann, he turned from the study of raphael and correggio to that of the antique, mengs forfeited not only the remnant of all that was essentially natural, but even all the picturesque qualities which had hitherto distinguished him. after painting had so long taken sculpture in tow, now sculpture seemed anxious to be revenged on it, and there was a manifestation of those prettily painted figures in plaster which for some score years afterwards paraded in every german picture. for winckelmann's mistake, as herder had already pointed out with great justice, consisted not only in this, that he set up for imitation a departed ideal for the consciousness of his contemporaries, but notably in that he obtruded principles upon modern painting which might be valid in ancient sculpture. since the antique ideal was solely a plastic one, and neither the greek prussian nor, later, meister ephraim was clear as to the difference between sculpture and painting, they practically recommended the painter to work after plastic models. the fact that lessing, in discussing the limits of painting in his _laocoön_, took a work of sculpture as his starting-point, proves that to him the laws and conditions of both arts were valued as the same. they denounced the confusion of the art of painting with poetry, and instead advocated the confounding of painting with sculpture, which was no less hazardous. [illustration: angelica kauffmann. portrait of a lady as a vestal.] in this manner there came an alien element into mengs' hitherto quite pictorial apprehension; a vain and exclusively reproductive ideality deprived his figures of the last remnant of truth to nature which he had formerly understood how to give them. it is difficult to believe that winckelmann's paroxysm of friendship should have burst out, upon the completion of the "parnassus," into this pæan: "during the whole of the new age a more beautiful work has not appeared in painting; even raphael would have bowed his head." the whole is nothing more than a _mélange_ of plagiarism and _banal_ reminiscences, without soul or perception, without freshness or individuality; a mere plastic warehouse, and not even a painted antique group, but a daubed compilation of solitary statues, colder and more lifeless than any baltoni ever painted. there was an audacious, strong aim, genial strength and an overwhelming flow of fantasy in the contemporary works of the great _décorateur_ tiepolo; here there is a mere work of intellect which with philological aid builds up the composition entirely of borrowed materials. the only thing which even still points in this work to the good old times is a more solid study of form and colour than all that which originated in germany during the next fifty years. the figures are painted with a strength and bloom which are still quite worthy of the _rococo_. the "good _angelica_" is the second representative of this phase of transition. she, too, at the persuasion of her friend winckelmann, clothed herself as an ancient vestal, but her true woman's nature left in her classical raiment still a neat fashion of _rococo_. through her intercourse with winckelmann she became somewhat of a "blue-stocking," and studied the historians of antiquity in order to find there subjects like cornelia, the mother of the gracchi, agrippina with the urn of germanicus, phryne, and the like. still more there were the tender legends of the ancients, out of whose store she satisfied her patrons: adonis at the chase, psyche, ariadne abandoned by theseus or found by bacchus, the death of alcestis, hero and leander. in these she is soft to the point of sentimentality, and pleasant to the point of nausea. goethe says of her with justice: "the forms and traits of the figures have little variety, the expression of the passions no force, the heroes look like gentle boys, or girls in disguise." but he also says of her: "the lightness, grace in form, colour, conception, and treatment is the one ruling quality of the numerous works of our fair artist. no living painter has surpassed her either in grace of representation or in the taste and capacity with which she handles her brush." and this decision, too, can still be endorsed. angelica knew how to impart to those clear lines and forms demanded by winckelmann a grace now coquettish, now sentimental, but always extremely lovable. she has struck soft and--notably in her portraits of women--very tender colour chords. she and mengs were the last who still possessed considerable technical knowledge. almost everything which has survived of the tradition of craftsmanship in germany in the nineteenth century is traceable to mengs' influence, and that fact so offended his successors that they no longer counted him as one of them, but put him contemptuously aside as a "mannerist painter by recipe." "such technical knowledge," wrote goethe, "hinders that complete abstraction and elevation over the real, which is asked of identical representations in sculpture, which merely furnish forms in their highest purity and beauty." "colouring, light and shadows, do not give such value to a painting as noble contour alone," wrote winckelmann, and these sentences became the starting-point of the next generation. winckelmann's error when he recommended the imitation of greek sculpture to the modern painter consisted still further in this, that he confused "noble simplicity and quiet grandeur" with lack of colour and coldness. herder had written well: "in distinction to the compact harmony of form in sculpture, painting has her harmonious unity in colour and light. i do not know why many theorists should have spoken so contemptuously of what is called _chiaroscuro_, the grouping of light and shade; it is the instrument of genius with every scholar and master, the eye with which he sees, the flashing, spiritual sea with which he sprinkles everything, and on which, indeed, every outline also depends. this divine, spiritual sea of light, this fairyland of adjusted light and shade, is the business of painting: why should we fight against nature, and not allow every art to do what it alone can do and do best?" [illustration: _photographic union, munich._ carstens. portrait of himself.] his words died away. the philosophic tendency of the century, which sought to penetrate into the "soul" of things, and to recreate things from the throne of the universe of the abstract, tried its hand also upon painting. by abstracting from the manifestation of colour, and touching upon form and line, it came to believe that in these plastic elements it had discovered the essential of which it was in search. once on the road to execute statues in paint, the question ensued, ought we to paint our statues? and as that age, following in winckelmann's track, understood no word of the significance which the specific, picturesque principles had for the greeks, it was only logical that they should endeavour to reconcile the idea of immaculate whiteness with that of classical beauty, to see pure beauty in absence of colour, and in consequence to accentuate the question, ought we to paint our _pictures_? to painters the most suspicious element in a painting became the paint! there is nothing more urgent for them to do than to deprive themselves ascetically of all coloristic means of expression. painting is shown to be an essential form of corruption--"the brush is become the ruin of our art," wrote cornelius--and there commences the era of a cartoon style hitherto unprecedented, which is to be carried on by the most highly endowed in the most earnest fashion. while during the _rococo_ the sense of colour had reached, through a piquant arrangement of the most tender and variegated tones, its highest point of refinement, there followed now as a reaction an absolute lack of colour. the ideal is seen in an abstract beauty of line, colour as a secondary matter and a vain show. it was of as much value as a vari-coloured dress, which nature could put on or off, without being less nature thereby. amongst painters there was talk of nothing but outlines. this line style, whose world is not the wall or the canvas, but white paper, can do with a proportionately meagre study of nature. why, therefore, when the ideal was so easy of attainment, drudge in the academy, where, moreover, since the introduction of mengs' classicism, universal desolation of the spirit and doctrinaire pedantry reigned? as mengs had broken with the taste of the _rococo_, so the younger generation broke with its technique, whilst they left the academy in open dissatisfaction, and threw off in contempt the whole paraphernalia of technical traditions. _carstens_ plays the momentous rôle in german art as the first who trod this path. he has more individuality than mengs; _antiquarianising_ with him is not exclusively an external derivation and a cold imitation: he lives in the antique; the world of the greek poets is his spiritual home, and their profound thoughts find in him a subtle interpreter. but he has, at the same time, the melancholy fame of being the first of the frivolous to renounce the national inheritance, the knowledge bequeathed by the _rococo_ age, and so definitely to cut the chain which should otherwise have connected german art of the nineteenth century with that of the eighteenth. through the _investigations of beauty in painting_, by daniel webb, which was founded on winckelmann's _thoughts on imitation_, the seed of hellenism was already sown in the youth's soul. he heard talk of the dwarf intelligences of the age; how the studios of inferior artists were full of gaping visitors, whilst the halls of the vatican stood deserted. "learn the taste for beauty in the antique," the cooper's apprentice learns from webb's works. "let us meditate upon the style of the painter's art in the 'laocoön,' with regard to the fighter. notice the sublimity in the divine character of apollo. let us stand hushed before the exquisite beauty of the venus di medici. these are the extreme incentives of the art of drawing.... the belvedere apollo and the daughter of niobe offer us an ideal of nobility and beauty. raphael's drawing never reached to such a height of perfection as we find in the statues of the greeks.... whither do you carry me, gods and demigods and heroes who live in marble? i follow your call, and, imagination! thy eternal laws. i go into the villa medici and breathe there the purest air. i stretch myself on a flowery plot, the shadow of the orange trees covers me;--there, unmolested, i gaze at a group full of the highest feminine beauty. niobe, my beloved, beautiful mother of beautiful children, thou fairest among women, how i love thee!" so dreamed asmus jacob in the wine-cellar at eckernförde, or in his solitary chamber by the dim light of his lamp, as he had been seized with giddiness before all the great and marvellous revelations of art which this book had afforded him. in his enraptured fantasy he painted the hour nearer and nearer when he should attain to a sight of the works which were described. could he have looked into the future, what a picture would have come before his eyes! would he have recognised himself in the broken-down man, with the pale countenance, the grief-marked expression, and the decrepit figure, who in rome gazed spellbound at the colossus of monte cavallo? [illustration: carstens. scylla and charybdis.] our holsteiner was two-and-twenty years old when he discarded the cooper's apron and entered the copenhagen academy, being then too old for any regular training. his head was so full of "inventions" that "it could not enter his mind to begin from the beginning." "drawing from the life did not satisfy me; the fellow, too, who sat as my model, although he was for the rest well built, seemed to me, in contrast with the antique from which i had attained a higher ideal of beauty, so petty and imperfect that i thought i could easily learn to draw a better figure if i only confined myself to that. i resolved not to visit the academy, in spite of the other artists impressing upon me the importance and utility of academic study." he stayed daily, instead, for hours together before the casts in the antique room, and "a holy feeling of adoration, almost compelling me to tears, pervaded me. there i never drew at all after an antique. when i attempted it, it was as though all my emotion was chilled by it. i thought that i should learn more if i gazed at them with great studiousness." [illustration: carstens. argo leaving the triton's mere.] thus he reached, as fernow says, the method whereby he "did not tread the ordinary way of imitation, gradually progressing to a special invention, but began at once with invention." there he was the true child of his age. at a period whose creative power found its highest expression in philosophy and poetry, the painter strove for the reputation only of being the _poet_ of his pictures. and carstens encountered the old tragedians and philosophic writers with a fine, poetic understanding. "the greek heroes with cheiron," "helen at the skæan gate," "ajax," "phoenix and odysseus in the tent of achilles," "priam and achilles," "the fates," "night with her children," "sleep and death," "the passage of megapenthes," "homer before the people," "the golden age"--all these prints have really something of the noble simplicity and quiet harmony of greek art. [illustration: carstens. children of the night.] it can be understood, then, that such subjects should be in the highest degree interesting to an archæologist. when carstens, in april , was organising the famous exhibition of his collected works in rome, fernow published in wieland's _deutscher merkur_ a discourse in which he celebrated him as the creator of a new epoch. from the very first, however, an equally resolute opposition was excited in artistic circles. the painter müller, nicknamed "the devil's miller," who at that time wandered about rome as a cicerone, proves that winckelmann's principles, even at the threshold of the century, by no means met with universal acceptance. the _writing of herr müller, painter in rome, upon the exhibition of herr professor carstens_, with the motto _amicus plato, amicus socrates, magis amica veritas_, was published in in schiller's _horæ_. carstens imitated; he worked rather by reminiscence and understanding than by fantasy. isolated figures do not bring their individuality to an expression. then he pointed out the models, discussed the lack of colour, and proved numerous sins of the draughtsman against nature in detail. the artist must ever seek to find characteristic expression; composition comes in the second degree. technique, even if the previous age has been an epoch of fabrication, must always stand in the foreground; it is not only from the artist, but from the connoisseur, that knowledge is demanded, and in consequence of this exhibition carstens is recommended to forbear from his fantastical geniality, observe nature, and achieve a picture exactly, since it is only from nature that the ideal springs, and consequently nothing can be great and beautiful in the representation which is not right and true. in almost similar words, later on, koch, in his _thoughts on painting_, and with him the majority of artists, has censured carstens. and posterity cannot but allow them to be in the right as against the archæologists. [illustration: carstens. priam and achilles.] admirable in carstens is the zeal with which he defended his ideal, the sacred fire which burned within him and sustained him, even during those years when his sickly frame was weakened by consumption. art was, as he wrote, his element, his religion, his beatitude, his existence. and it is already something great to wear oneself out alone for the sake of an ideal. carstens was a sublime dreamer. it will not be forgotten of him that, in an age when abundant mediocrity and manufacture were all-prevailing, he once more pointed, unfaltering in his noble and pure intention, to the sublimity of artistic creation. the history of art, however, has not to deal with hearts, but to judge logically by results; and it would not be doing justice to the old masters, nor to those earnest _rococo_ painters who sat at their easels with less noble intentions, but with so much greater knowledge of their craft, if one were to proclaim carstens, in consideration of the self-sacrifice and renunciation which he showed in the fight for his ideal, as a martyr and a genius, a pioneer of german art. he was not a genius, as he thought himself, and announced so proudly to heinitz, the minister; for that he possessed too little originality. it is not imagination, but reminiscence, which created his works. the outlines of his plates are done with fine sentiment, but sentiment taken from the greeks, and he required no genius to recognise in his recollection and his hand a transcript of greek forms. what pleases us in carstens is in substance not carstens, but an echo of what we like in the greek statues and vases, in michael angelo and other old masters. [illustration: genelli. the embassy to achilles.] he was not a martyr, because in his struggles he met with assistance and encouragement such as were granted to no old master, and if, in spite of that, he never rose above the cares of life, that is only a proof of the limitations and partiality of his art. he had lost all decorative facility; still more was the inheritance of oil painting first naturally mislaid by him, and by draughtsmanship alone not even dürer nor rembrandt could have lived. this deficiency in technique must even debar him from claiming any higher signification than that of a clever dilettante. he is not an artist who does not in the midst of his exaltation think to put himself in possession of the means which can turn the lispings of genius into a fully intelligible language. carstens' plates seduce by a certain wavy treatment of the lines, but no one of them can sustain critical appreciation. it is inconsistent to work in the beautiful and not to become free of ugliness, to move in the great, in the sublime, and at the same time to fall from one defect of form to another, from coarse uncouthness into the most elementary sins against drawing and proportion. carstens was a draughtsman who could not draw, and, with this limitation of his genius, by no manner of means a founder of german art. one cannot call him a mannerist, because with him art and individuality corresponded; but, nevertheless, like mengs and lairesse, he gave art at second-hand, and only differs from them in that with him commences that complete abandonment of the idea of colour which after him disfigured german art. for the future it was quite indifferent that thorwaldsen took suggestions from carstens, and genelli trod in his footprints as a draughtsman. [illustration: genelli. thetis lamenting the fate of hector.] _bonaventura genelli_, if one takes for once the standpoint of the painters of his time, who desired to be the "poets" of their works, is certainly a not unremarkable poet. in him, who was born in the year of carstens' death, the spirit of the little holsteiner was raised to life, and the figure which he assumed in this new incarnation actually made an impression like a picture out of beauty-illuminated days of hellas. the muscular, thick-set figure of a youthful hercules, with a broad chest and sturdy neck, a head of short brown curly hair, full lips fringed by the compact beard of a sophocles, the short greek nose, grave eyes glancing out from beneath the strong brows--such was genelli, a hellene left stranded in germany, the last centaur, as heyse has depicted him in his novel--"an antediluvian, mythological enigma on four sound legs sprung upon our godless world." thus he sat, as he himself writes, in rome, "in his dirty chamber, bare except for a chair or two, rickety or quite broken down, and on the wall a pair of hawks nailed up, whose pinions served as models for his winged figures." thus he sat later in his little house in the _sendlingergasse_ at munich, and lived in his world of imagination. perhaps, had he been the child of a more fortunate period in art, he might have become a strong and memorable painter; as a successor of carstens he has left behind him a legacy of two suites of copper prints--the two tragedies of the "profligate" and the "witch." he existed, moreover, only in contour; he never rose above harmoniously outlined silhouette. it was only to this point that his talent would sustain him. the more he wished to produce shadow, water-colour, or even oil, the more tedious and pale and vague did he become. and even in his drawing he shares with carstens the desolate generalisation of form, the eternal euphony which so soon becomes wearisome and monotonous. to beauty of line everything is offered up. the blank characterlessness of the faces is even more noticeable with him than with carstens, who had, after all, in his youth drawn excellent portraits in crayons, and on this account was able to give even to his greeks more individual traits and a certain variety of expression. with genelli the heads are treated as no more than parts of the body, and as they gave no opportunity for flowing lines, they have not even the same graciousness as the limbs. his women fared worst, for whilst he could be his own model for his men, he created the _ewig weibliche_ out of his inner consciousness. in men and women the eyes, in particular, are merely animal. [illustration: genelli. odysseus and the sirens.] carstens' influence on german art has been then entirely a negative one. it was not on such a foundation that a german art could arise. he prepared no ground for his successors on which they could build further; but through his abandonment of the whole capital which, since stephen lochner, had been handed down at compound interest from one generation of painters to another, he rather cut away the ground from under their feet. "for very easily can art go astray, but it is a difficult and lengthy process for her to recover herself." the art which was born in that humble studio in rome to the sickly, neurotic man, the "famous draughtsman," needed later, in order to become technically healthy again, an impulse replete with life from abroad. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ bonaventura genelli.] chapter iv the classical reaction in france in france also modern art began with a stream of antiquarianism which flowed from the same archæological source. de brosses published a history of the roman republic, and wrote on herculaneum. leroy produced his _ruines des plus anciens monuments de la grèce_ in . shortly afterwards the _recueils d'antiquité_ of caylus and hamilton were published. the former undertook his great journeys, and presented the academy of inscriptions with a succession of archæological treatises. he is perhaps the first since batteux and coypel who again makes of the modern painter a positive demand for a quiet beauty of lines after the "_manière simple et noble du bel antique_." the architects begin to take counsel of vitruvius, and to work after some model borrowed from the antique. soufflot rebuilt the pantheon, and produced the temple of pæstum. even in grimm could write: "for some years past we have been making keen inquiry for antique ornaments and forms. the predilection for them has become so universal that now everything is to be done _à la grecque_. the interior and exterior decorations of houses, furniture, dress material, and goldsmiths' work all bear alike the stamp of the greeks. the fashion passes from architecture to millinery: our ladies have their hair dressed _à la grecque_, our fine gentlemen would think themselves dishonoured if they did not hold in their hands _une boîte à la grecque_." even diderot's preference for the ethical and emotional, as greuze had painted it--and as diderot himself had dramatised it--veered round at the commencement of the sixties into an enthusiasm for the antique. after he carried on in the salons a war of extermination against poor old boucher, and lectured him in a menacing voice upon the "great and severe taste of antiquity." he twitted him with possessing neither reality nor taste, and produced in proof the fact that, in the whole catalogue of boucher's figures, not four could be found which could be employed in relief, or even as statues. the new taste demanded pure and simple lines, the beauty of sculpture; it went back to the antique. when a french translation of winckelmann appeared in he spoke out, on the occasion of a review of the book, clearly and plainly: "_il me semble qu'il faudrait étudier l'antique pour apprendre à voir la nature_." in the same vein watelet pronounced on boucher: "_jamais artiste n'a plus ouvertement témoigné son mépris pour la vraie beauté telle qu'elle a été sentie et exprimée par les statuaires_ _de l'ancienne grèce_." thus the change in the artistic outlook was heralded long before the curtain went up upon the events of . _madame vigée-lebrun_, the french angelica kauffmann, possessed of a tender, soft, sympathetic talent, is perhaps the truest representative of this gracious, entirely french transition style, over which like a breath, but only like a breath, hovers the antique. she has in her portraits, in an especially refined manner, fixed that age when noble ladies desired to forget the marquise and duchess, to exhibit only the wife and mother, and believed that by unconstraint of attitude in their simple white robe, the scarf thrown modestly over the shoulders, they had effected a return to antique simplicity. boucher, moved to the depths of his consciousness by diderot, resolved to paint a picture taken from ancient history. greuze painted "severus and caracalla," fragonard "choereas and callirhöe." hubert robert grew more and more archæological, and played in his landscapes with ancient remains and classical ruins. vien became enthusiastic over antique gems, and thought he must draw the conclusion, from the noble calm of these figures, that the amiable coquetry and capricious garments of _rococo_ were without nobility. his plan was "to study the antique--raphael, the caracci, domenichino, michael angelo, and, in one word, all those masters whose works convey the character of truth and grandeur." but what gave far other significance to the french classicism of the ensuing period was that great event in the world's history, of which france became the theatre at the close of the eighteenth century. in the secluded gardens of versailles, where the goat-footed pan embraced the tall, white nymphs by an artificial water-fall, the noble lords and ladies, clad as pierrots and columbines, overheard in the midst of their whispered flirtations the menacing earthquake which was announced in thunder from paris. soon they beheld the earth crack and burst asunder, as that time came when the air was filled with the smoke of powder, when the first notes of the marseillaise rang out, and in the place de la concorde, where to-day the loveliest fountains in the world are playing, blood ran from a dozen guillotines. that "_après nous le deluge_" of the marquise de pompadour had become a dire, prophetic truth, and in that flood of blood and horrors the artistic ideal of the eighteenth century was also washed away. the revolution gave the death-blow to _rococo_. at one stroke it overthrew the most pleasant of all french periods, the truest presentiment of french grace and _esprit_, the noble and amiable art of louis xv, which the melancholy, life-emitting watteau, boucher, and fragonard cause to hover before us as in the clouds of a dream. classicism, however, attained through it a new and stronger basis, a certain connection with modern life, since it was transposed by it from the museum of antiquity into the middle of the place de la concorde beneath the guillotine. what the age of the revolution demanded of art was at all events not a "noble style," as vien had required of it, but rather in the first place a spartan virtue. various philosophical writers had drawn a parallel between the organisation of the old and the modern state; they had exerted themselves to show that the old republics were models of an almost absolute perfection, which the modern should, in so far as it was possible, imitate. they had contrasted the moral conditions of sparta and the roman republic with the moral constitution of contemporary, monarchical france. they had quoted on every opportunity the acts of virtue, renunciation, courage, and patriotic sacrifice of the great men of antiquity; they had used these deeds as a means of proving their thesis, and their ideas aroused deep echoes in men's hearts. [illustration: elisabeth vigÉe-lebrun. portrait of the painter with her daughter.] the sentiment of rome had entered into the people as a thing of flesh and blood even before the catastrophe had ensued. "we were more prepared," wrote nodier, "for the particular tone of the language of the revolution than people would have believed, and it cost us little pains to pass from the studies of our _gymnases_ to the strife of the forum. in the schools we had prize compositions set of this kind: who stands higher, the elder brutus who judged his children, or the younger brutus who judged his father? and so livy and tacitus have done more to overthrow the monarchical system than voltaire and rousseau." it was evident then that france, so soon as she had freed herself from her kings, so soon as she had spoken the word "republic," must take the _roman_ republic as her pattern. people lived in an atmosphere of antiquity; the great citizens of rome and athens were ranged with the french national convention; scævola, scipio, cato, cincinnatus, were the idols of the populace. the speakers in the council cited the ancients in preference; madame vigée-lebrun gave _soupers à la grecque_. "everything was ordered according to the _voyage d'anacharsis_--garments, viands, amusements, and the table, all were athenian. madame lebrun herself was aspasia; m. l'abbé barthélémy, in a greek dress with a laurel wreath on his head, recited a poem; m. de cabierès played the golden lyre as memnon, and young boys waited at table as slaves. the table itself was set entirely with greek utensils, and all the viands were actually those of ancient greece." children were given greek and roman names. people called themselves "romans." "_mais, je l'aimais, romains!_" cried coulon at the death of mirabeau. paris is rome. in the theatre the bust of brutus is set opposite that of voltaire, and the actor says: "_o buste réveré de brutus, d'un grand homme, transporté dans paris tu n'as point quitté rome_." and as with the bust of brutus in the theatre, that of mucius scævola appears in the cafés, which parisian journalists, still full of remembrances of ancient history studied in the gymnasium, liken to the lyceum and the porch. in every case ancient rome is set up as the exemplar. the parisian collection of engravings on copper possesses a reproduction of the guillotine, with the inscription: _a similar machine was used for the execution of the roman, titus manlius_. a valet committed suicide, and quoted the illustrious example of seneca. had it been possible, people would have gladly thrown themselves back eighteen hundred years into the past, with all its grandeur, its simplicity, and its ruthlessness. political and social forms did not suffice; even the implements and costume of the ancients were again brought into honour. furniture put on antiquarian shapes; the walls were decorated _à la grecque_. the lively frivolity of _rococo_, with its freaks and fancies, was no longer adapted to the boudoir of the age of revolution, now transformed into the political council-room. twists and curves were no longer permitted: everything had to be straightforward, logical, ungenerous, inexorable. men went clad wretchedly, with red phrygian caps and no breeches. women and girls cast aside their ordinary attire and put on straight, falling drapery, discarded their heeled shoes and bound sandals round their feet, shook the powder from their locks and tied their hair in a greek knot. "dressed in white raiment without adornment, but decked in the virtue of simplicity," they appeared in the cabinet of the president, in order to surrender their jewels for the salvation of their country, like those roman matrons in the time of camillus. and, in co-operation with the building up of this new world, painting also advanced. it was only when it assisted to arouse civic virtue, it was said at a sitting of the jury at the salon of , that painting could possess a right to exist in the new state, and as the handmaid of this patriotism might fulfil an even higher mission than it had done in ancient greece and rome. "the greeks and romans were indeed only slaves, but we french are by nature free, philosophers in character, virtuous in our every perception, and artists through our taste." in proportion as the french republic transcended the old free states, so too must french art take the lead of the antique. "all that stimulated art in greece, the gymnastic exercises, the public games, the national festivals, is also accessible to the french, who possess above all that which the greeks lacked, the feeling for true liberty. to depict the history of a free people is indeed quite another mission for the true genius than to embody scenes out of mythology." through this fresh _nuance_, which classicism thus acquired, the ground was cut from under the feet of those who devoted themselves to the study of the antique as conceived by diderot. the new moral age would have no traffic with those artists in whom the last smile of the eighteenth century was personified. their pictures, full of grace and caprice, fell into the same disrepute into which everything of yesterday had come, and it was only with a bitter smile that they followed the course of events. the younger moreau, that animated master of _rococo_, became academically cold and tedious when he designed his book on the french costume of the revolution. the good fragonard, who was only fifty-nine in , and lived till , saw himself hooted in spite of his "choereas." he, the true representative of frivolous tenderness, of fair and roseate hues, had lost every right to exist in the new world, and ended his life by a sad death when, after the reign of terror, there was no longer a place for _fêtes galantes_. a delightful portrait of himself, which he painted in the first period of the revolution, shows us an old man, clothed entirely in black, softly melancholy, standing in a formal, dusky-brown salon. on the table on which his arm rests lies a guitar, at his feet a portfolio of engravings; but he neither plays the guitar nor looks at the prints. in the shadows of the falling evening he reminds himself forlornly of past days, and his bald forehead, where so many rose-coloured dreams have passed, is overcast with gloomy shadows. greuze, too, outlived himself. it was no use for him to pretend more and more to the utmost virtue, and to paint an "ariadne at naxos." he died in misery and oblivion in . the demands which this new classicism made were able to be satisfied by no one any longer, not even by vien. however loudly he might proclaim himself a student of the greeks, he, nevertheless, remained a very timid and lukewarm revolutionary. an old man, cold and peaceful and stolid, moderate in everything, he had neither the energy nor the audacity of the reformer. he had been the court painter of louis xvi, a most monarchically disposed and loyal man, and was a suspect on this ground alone to those who were in power in . his pictures, too, describe no more than the end of a world. greuze, fragonard, and vien, in spite of their assumed seriousness, survived only as gallant phantoms in the new age, by the side of those men of more rugged countenance who inaugurated the nineteenth century. [illustration: jacques louis david. _l'art._] _jacques louis david_ first satisfied the new requirements, and in so doing lent to french classicism, if only for a few years, a certain touch of far greater vivacity. he it was who carried through, in all its consequence, that reformation in taste which vien had sought in externals, in costume, furniture and decoration; who inspired the gems painted by vien with republican pathos, and became in this way the great herald of that age which read plutarch and made paris into a modern sparta. david, _prix de rome_ after three successive failures, still came from that "corrupt epoch" against which republican prudery was so excited. at the age of twenty-six he had already painted soffits, in the manner of his kinsman "boucher, to say it with respect." but the journey to rome converted saul into paul. in vien, on his appointment as director of the roman academy, had taken him to italy as his best pupil, and hardly dreamt at that time that this young man would strike out on such an entirely new path from his roman studies. he did not wait for the revolution to be converted; when the hour struck he was ready. thus his first pictures were in a manner the prelude to the revolution. in them he had already quite consciously entered upon the road along which he was to go later. his "oath of the horatii" and his "brutus," both painted in rome in , proclaimed his programme. the little, rosy loves, the doves of venus, and all the charming frivolity and gallantry of _rococo_, received their final dismissal, and rough men walked in their stead. he broke his staff over all that he had previously venerated, and declared loudly that he had sinned when in his youth he had believed in the flowery palette of _rococo_, and completed in tender tones those ceiling frescoes which fragonard had commenced in the house of mdlle. guimard. capricious frivolities had to make way for a manlier art, matter "that was worthy to rivet the gaze of a free nation upon itself." already, long before the taking of the bastille, the painting of young david was valued by the rising generation as the artistic embodiment of their political ideas, imbibed while they were still at school. when the "horatii" was completed it was not only old pompeo battoni who exclaimed, when he saw the picture in david's roman studio, "_tu ed io soli siamo pittori, pel rimanente si puo gettarlo nel fiume._" in paris his success was universal; all the critics were unanimous in praise; david was the man after the heart of the age, for his picture was the first which spoke clearly and perceptibly of the pathos of the revolution which stood at the threshold. people saw in it an "example of patriotism which knew no obstacles," since not even love for their sister, who was betrothed to the enemy, prevailed upon the horatii to refrain from combat with the curiati. his next picture, "brutus" as he received the lictors, when they bring him the bodies of his sons who have been implicated in a monarchical conspiracy, was greeted as allegorical of the incorruptible justice of republicanism. the populace saw in it the "glorification of the chastisement of all traitors to liberty," and acclaimed david because he "had founded the sinewy style which should characterise the heroic deeds of the revolutionaries, children of liberty, equality, and fraternity." and one understands--when one also adds the influence of napoleon--this reaction of military simplicity against the effeminacy of _rococo_. [illustration: david. madame rÉcamier.] david, at the outbreak of the revolution, no longer a young man, but forty years old, was the terrible painter of the age, its despotic dictator. as a deputy in the convention he not only ruled over painting, but also imposed his taste upon sculpture, ivory work, goldsmiths' work, and decoration. he designed the new costumes for the deputies and ministers. as organiser of public fêtes, he brought to life again the whole of republican rome. he was one of those rare artists who are the men of their hour. to a new plebeian race, to whose feverishly excited patriotism the soft, luxurious, aristocratically reprehensible art of _rococo_ must seem as a mockery of all the rights of men, he showed, for the first time, the man, the hero who died for an idea or for his country; and he gave this man huge and elastic muscles, like those of a gladiator who struggles in the arena. he was a second hercules, cleansing the augæan stables; with his own strong shoulders he thrust back the petulant band of painters who had tarried too long in the island of cythera. he applied art to the heroism of the day, gave it the martial attitude of patriotism, inspired it with the spirit of robespierre, st. just, and danton. the more obtrusively his heroes paraded their patriotism, the more people saw in them a picture of the french nation, as true as a transposition could hope to be. this strained rhetorical pathos dwelt in the mind of the age. talma moved the people to enthusiasm when he played the "horatii" of corneille in the classic cothurnus. when david painted, the state declamations of the orators still rang in his ears. robespierre is said to have spoken from the tribune slowly, rhythmically, artistically: a bossuet in his rostrum, a boileau in his chair, while the volcano quivered beneath his very feet: his philippics were carefully divided into three sections, like academic discourses: his patriotism resolved itself into tirades with correctly composed periods. in david's pictures we have an exact correspondence with all this: the rigid classicality of his composition, figures grouped as though on parade; his cold pathos, the counterpart to that of the orators' fine sentiments set forth in fine phrases. the great distinction between the beginning of modern art in germany and in france is that in france the new style was not only called forth by the influence of a scientific programme from outside, but stood in conjunction with a great transformation in culture, and that it was compelled at first to concern itself not only with imitation and philological retrospect, but with the free expression of the characteristically modern spirit. german art had no new pronouncement to make through the medium of the antique; it followed, on the other hand, the programme of an artistically barren scholar who forgot that archæology is not art, recommended imitation as the path to perfection, and perpetually reminded the artists who followed him how widely they deviated from the correct lines of the model. "afterwards they rebuke it, and say it is not antique and consequently not good art," as albrecht dürer had complained of such people. in the earnest sentiment, the exalted roman spirit, the declaiming over rugged, masculine virtues, freedom and patriotism, that found expression in david's first pictures, there lived something of the catonian spirit of the terror; and that still gives them historical value. his enthusiasm was not, first and foremost, for antique art, but for the ideas of country, duty, freedom, progress. the words antiquity and democracy were of like meaning to him. [illustration: david. the oath of the horatii.] and how thoroughly this man was permeated with the spirit of his age is shown still more when he discarded the cothurnus, boldly attacked the present, and gave himself up entirely to the delineation of what came under his direct observation in his own life and experience. there he became not only a rhetorician, a revolutionary agitator, but a really great painter. lepelletier on his death-bed, the assassinated marat, and the dead barre, are works of a mighty _naturalist_. lepelletier, one of the many deputies who had voted for the death of louis xvi, was treacherously assassinated in paris, on th january , by a valet of the king's. the body was publicly exhibited; david painted it, and on th march presented the picture to the convention. as the portrait of the "first martyr of liberty," it was hung in the convention chamber. on th july marat, the man-of-terror, fell a victim to the knife of charlotte corday. david was presiding at the jacobin club when the news was brought him, and he embraced the citizen who had arrested the girl. deputations of the people appeared in the convention to express their grief for the heavy loss. suddenly a voice was heard to cry: "_où es tu, david? tu as transmis à la posterité l'image de lepelletier mourant pour la patrie, il te reste encore un tableau à faire._" silence succeeded in the assembly. then david started up: "_je le ferai._" on th october he informed the convention that his "marat" was finished. "the people asked for their murdered man back again, longed to look once more on the features of their truest friend. they cried to me: 'david, take up your brush, avenge marat, so that the enemy may blanch when they perceive the distorted countenance of the man who became the victim of his love for freedom.' i heard the voice of the people, and obeyed." thus david spoke in the assembly when he presented the republic with the picture of the murdered man--one of the most thrilling representations of that awful age. the body is lying in the bath. only the naked upper part of the body, and the head, with a dirty cloth tied round it, and fallen back upon the right shoulder, are visible; one hand, resting back on the side of the bath, still holds a paper in a convulsive grip; the other hangs down limp and dead to the ground. over this head, with the half-closed eyelids, and the mouth distorted from the death-throes, caravaggio would have rejoiced, there is such keen naturalism in every stroke of the brush. like géricault, in later times, david was then a regular visitor at the morgue, attended at executions, and took an interest in the convulsive muscular movements of the guillotined. and the colour, too, like the drawing, is of a naturalistic strength to which he never again attained. the light falls slantingly on the corpse from above and throws the head, shoulder, and one arm into strong relief, while all the rest is left in obscurity. in this awful _still-life_ of uncompromising reality and tragical grandeur he has created a work in the midst of an age of storm which will survive all storms and all changes of taste. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ david. the rape of the sabines.] [illustration: david. helen and paris.] his portraits have no less strikingly survived the fiery ordeal of time. in them, too, he is neither rhetorical nor cold, but full of fire and the freshness of youth. face to face with his model, he forgot the greeks and romans, saw life alone, was rejuvenated in the youth-giving fount of nature, and painted--almost alone of the painters of his generation--the truth. here his effect, when otherwise he was lacking in all naïveté, is actually naïve and intimate. the best painters have never treated flesh better. he had an aversion to palette tones, and sought after nature with unexampled attention. the fine pearl-grey of his colouring is as delicate as it is distinguished; in his portraits, especially, the relief-tones of blue and light rose seem almost to anticipate the delicate, toned-down tints of modern impressionism. himself an ardent revolutionist, he was, as it were, created to be the portrayer of those men of an austerity like cato's, and those women with their free, masculine, proud gaze; that valiant generation that felt within itself a desire to begin civilisation again and found religion anew. the portrait of lavoisier and his wife reminds one in its refinement of madame vigée-lebrun. the chemist is sitting by a table covered with instruments; his wife, in an elegant light gown, bends attentively over him. the picture dates from , and it still looks like some good work of the age of louis xvi. again, how intimate is the effect of the marvellous portrait of michael gérard and his family. the good man, in his shirt-sleeves, seems to feel really at home; a small boy is leaning against his knee, a girl is playing on the clavicorde. there is not the slightest suggestion of pose or a conventional type of beauty in this stout old gentleman sitting so comfortably in his _bourgeois négligé_, and with honest eyes gazing out so inquisitively round him. in a few other pictures the spiritual life of women is portrayed with remarkable tenderness. one of the earliest is the exceptionally fine portrait of his mother-in-law, madame pécoult, in ; then, in , the portrait of the marquise d'orvilliers, with that expression of dreamy languor which plays round the eyes of the beautiful woman. the louvre possesses, in the portrait of madame récamier, perhaps the most charming and attractive woman's portrait that david ever painted. the beautiful juliette lies stretched on a divan of antique pattern. she wears a white dress, her soft rosy feet are bare. the arrangement of the room coquettes primly with that simplicity which was paraded at the time. apart from the divan, there is only a huge bronze candelabra to be seen. then there is barere's portrait. he stands on the tribune, and delivers the speech which is to cost louis xvi his life. the face is small and insignificant, the gaze cold and harsh, and on the mouth there is a shadow of bitter hate and narrow fanaticism. but the triumph of these portraits of men is that of bonaparte. david was one of the first of the men of the revolution to come beneath the spell of the little corporal. one day, while he was working in his studio at the louvre, a pupil rushed in breathlessly: "general bonaparte is outside the door!" napoleon entered in a dark-blue coat "that made his lean yellow face look leaner and yellower than ever." david dismissed his pupils, and drew, in a sitting of barely two hours, the stern head of the corsican. thus he passed into the service of napoleon. this man, who viewed himself only as the coping-stone of the republic--after the example of augustus when he transformed the roman republic into the empire--was unwilling to show any opposition to the republican tastes. the first painter of the republic was appointed to be the imperial court painter. what he had been under robespierre he was under napoleon: the dictator of his age, who maintained a supremacy over the whole of art similar to that which lebrun held beneath louis xiv. the "marat" was the great work of his revolutionary, the "coronation" of his monarchical period,--that colossal picture which, completed between and , has handed down to posterity a true representation of the ceremonial pageants that took place in notre dame on nd december . the moment selected is when napoleon places the crown, which is carried on a velvet cushion by the duc de berg, upon the head of the empress, who kneels before him in a white robe and a crimson mantle. the picture contains portraits of all the personages present at the ceremony, amongst them being david himself, as he stands on a platform and sketches at a small table. the whole composition of this picture and the grouping of the figures is full of stately gravity. real energy and patience must have been required to paint this immense picture, though it shows not the least sign of fatigue. with the exception of menzel's "coronation of william i," i know of no historical picture of the century of as high an artistic value, with the like noble sublimity of colour, with so tender, quivering a light. there are certain portions of the "coronation" in which the white robes, the deep-red velvet of the mantles, and gold embroideries affect us like a symphony in colours. when the picture was completed napoleon visited david's studio, accompanied by the empress, his ministers, and his staff. the court drew up, and the emperor moved up and down in front of the picture, hat in hand, for more than half an hour, examining it in all its details. finally, with one of those dramatic effects of which he was so fond, he lightly raised his hat: "_c'est bien, très bien; david, je vous salue_." [illustration: david. belisarius asking alms.] david had now still better opportunities than at an earlier period of proving his great capacity as a portrait painter. his portraits of the emperor, of the pope, of cardinal caprara, and of murat symbolise the brutal greatness of an age which worshipped strength. even at the close of his life, when the restoration had exiled him from france, there resulted in brussels graceful and tenderly observed portraits, such as that of the daughter of joseph bonaparte, which will perpetuate his name. one, in the praet collection at brussels--three women of indescribable ugliness--marks the pinnacle of his pictorial strength and keen naturalism. they are the "three fates" of , and he has painted them with the true artist's delight, and with a massiveness like that of frans hals. when these works were brought together at the paris exhibition of , universal astonishment prevailed when it was discovered what a great painter this louis david was. he appeared in these pictures as an artist who stood completely within his age, who shared its passions and was permeated by its greatness; he even appeared as a _charmeur_ who handled the phenomena of colour and light as few others have done. it is true, david showed himself in this favourable light at the exhibition only because the entirely archæological side of his talent was not represented. for at the bottom of his heart he too was an archæologist. many of his works, such as "the death of socrates," "brutus," "the oath in the tennis court," and "the rape of the sabines," are specimens of a barren theory. against all the caprice of the eighteenth century, with its charming, alluring grace, he opposed a strict, inexorable system, as he believed he saw it in the antique. simplicity, however, beneath his hands became dryness, nobility formal. he saw in painting a sort of abstract geometry for which there existed hard-and-fast forms. there was something mathematical in his effort after dry correctness and erudite accuracy. the infinite variety of life with its eternal changes was hidden from his sight. the beautiful, he taught with winckelmann, does not exist in a single individual; it is only possible to create a type of it by comparison and through composition. the human being of art ought always to be a copy of that perfect being, primitive man, whom the roman sculptors had still before their eyes, but who had deteriorated in the course of ages. thus in france, too, the sensuous art of painting was converted into an abstract science of æsthetics. the classic ideal weighed upon french art and prescribed for all alike the same "heroic style," the same elevation, the same marble coldness and monotony of colour. _jean-baptiste regnault_, and _françois andré vincent_, whose studios were most frequented after david's, worshipped the same gods. after david's departure, _guérin_, in particular, endeavoured to bequeath to the students those genuinely academic rules which his pupil, delacroix, has summed up in these words: "in order to make an ideal head of a negro, our teachers make him resemble as far as possible the profile of antinous, and then say, 'we have done our utmost; if he is, nevertheless, not beautiful, we must altogether abstain from this freak of nature, with his squat nose and thick lips, so unendurable to the eyes.'" when he had to paint his "insurrection in cairo," therefore, egyptians as well as arabs must first be supplied with heads of antinous and transformed from modern soldiers into ancient warriors, romans of the time of romulus, before they could enter into the kingdom of art. everything was sacrificed to line,--an inflexible, inexorable, correct, and icy line, the conventional, ideal line,--not the true line which follows from observation of the infinite variety of nature. nevertheless, even in works constructed as these were by rule and line, we cannot fail to be impressed by the technical ability displayed by the artist. [illustration: _baschet._ david. the death of marat.] france, who in her outward relations has generally had a feverish longing for change, has been in literary and artistic respects, as a rule, exceedingly conservative, has upheld authority, supported an academy, and prized limitations and proportion above everything. they had upset the monarchy, murdered the hated aristocrats, built up the republic, done away with christianity before they ever thought of touching the three unities of the drama. voltaire, who had a reverence for nothing in heaven or earth, respected the received treatment of the alexandrine verse. and david, the great painter of the revolution, who cast the pictures of boucher out of the louvre, and whose pupils used to shoot bread-crumbs at watteau's masterpiece, the "voyage à cythère," yet conveyed with him into the new age, as an inheritance from _rococo_, its prodigious knowledge. the good old traditions of the technique of french painting were little shaken by him and his school. the academy described by quatremère as the "eternal nursery garden of incurable prejudices," was indeed overthrown, but david became immediately the head of a new one. this age of absorption in politics developed an art to correspond, more disciplined than ever, girt round by an iron cuirass; and this art, notwithstanding multifarious phases, at no time lost its touch, technically, with the acquisitions of former epochs, but evolved itself in its various directions from one centre, distracted from its path by nothing brought into it from outside. géricault, delacroix, courbet, and manet, widely as they differ from one another, are links in one chain of evolution. art comes from knowledge. this maxim, which david held in honour, has remained to the present day a dominant force in french art, and by virtue of this knowledge, which david received from the old masters and guarded as a sacred trust, france became in the nineteenth century the chief school of technique for all other nations. from the french the other nations learned their grammar and syntax; through them they acquired a wider horizon and a deeper insight into the great mystery of nature. [decoration] book ii the escape into the past chapter v the nazarenes herein lies the great difference between france and germany. although following along new lines, the art of france did not thereby suffer as regards the quality of its execution; in spite of all classicism it remained the disciplined art of the schools. these favourable preliminaries were lacking in germany. it was not allotted to german painting to grow up in naïve contentment with the technical inheritance of its forefathers, but, on the contrary, at the entrance of its new career it broke so completely with its predecessor--the art of the eighteenth century--that it could no longer adopt even its technical traditions. it arose out of the negation of earlier art, an absolute negation such as the world had never seen before. it began with a self-made man who had never acquired the charter of craftsmanship, who never learnt to paint. in france, revolutionary pictures inspired with intense pathos, and frankly naturalistic portraits of masterly technique; with carstens, outlines showing refined feeling, but faulty very generally in execution, sketches drawn roughly with the pencil, crayon, or red chalk. it had taken many generations of painters, whose lives had been spent in careful devotion to the work, to collect the technical capital which carstens so carelessly flung to the winds. the next step along this way was taken by the nazarenes. just as it was inevitable that cold and lifeless classicism should follow the brightness and animation of _rococo_, so it was necessary, according to the law of extremes which alternate in every evolution of culture, that, next to the antique, should come its exact opposite, the gothic or middle ages. the antique was so monotonous that people longed for variety of colour again; it was so cold and statuesque that they longed for something soulful, so greek and pagan and severe that they hankered again after something christian, would believe again like children. even in the young days of the old pagan, goethe, religion formed the favourite topic of the _beaux esprits_, and in the same year, , that carstens died, this cult of the emotional life found, for the first time, expression in literature. in every library one finds a dainty, finely printed book in small octavo, without the author's name, with the title _herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden klosterbruders_, and with a sort of head of raphael as a frontispiece, in which, with his prominent eyes, full lips, and long neck, he looks like some intellectual, christ-inspired, consumptive enthusiast. it is the pale, gentle face of wackenroder. [illustration: frederick overbeck.] first winckelmann, then wackenroder. in the very personalities of these two the whole opposition between classicism and the nazarenes is reflected. a student barely twenty years old, a mild, modest, contemplative soul, who had attached himself from early youth with womanly devotion to his more energetic friend tieck, and written letters to him that read like a young girl's effusions to her sweetheart, he entered the erlanger university with his friend at the easter of . they saw nuremberg. more than once they made pilgrimages to the old fashioned town, the treasury of german art; and the spirit of the past powerfully inspired them. whilst for lessing and winckelmann "gothic" art only meant barbarian art, the wonders of nuremberg were now observed with fresh eyes. in a sort of intoxication of art the friends wandered through churches, stood by the graves of albrecht dürer and peter vischer, and a vanished world rose before them. the spires and turrets behind falling walls and ramparts, the old, stately, patrician houses, which jutted out their oriel windows, as it were with curiosity, into the crooked streets, were peopled to their imagination with picturesque figures in bonnet and hose from that great time when nuremberg was "the living, swarming school of native art," when "an exuberant, artistic spirit" governed within its walls, when master hans sachs and adam kraft and peter vischer and albrecht dürer and willibald pirkheymer were alive. shortly after that they came to dresden, and devoted themselves in the gallery there to an enthusiastic cult of the madonna. the _herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden klosterbruders_, which appeared a year before wackenroder's death in his twenty-sixth year, was the result of these wanderings and studies. in this tender production of a visionary youth the spirit of romantic art found expression. winckelmann was an archæologist; wackenroder, an enthusiast of the middle ages; on the one side knowledge only, on the other all feeling; for the one, paganism, for the other, christ. for it is from the first a leading principle of the "_klosterbruder_," that "the finest stream of life only issues from the streams of art and religion when they flow in company." he valued the older painters "because they had made painting the true handmaid of religion"; art was to him an object of devotion. picture galleries, he says, ought to be temples; he would liken the enjoyment of works of art to prayer; let it be a holy feast day to him if he go with a serious and composed mind to their observance; indeed, reverence for art and reverence for god were so closely interwoven that he was fain to kneel down before art, and offer it the homage of an "eternal and boundless love." this devotion to art, of which he himself was full, he found nowhere in his times. the age of enlightenment was to him an undevout and inartistic age. only in his wanderings through the uneven streets of nuremberg did the deepest yearning of his soul seem satisfied. he applied himself to mediæval, and especially to german art. his standpoint is the same which the young goethe had adopted when he intervened with herder for "german style and art," and dedicated his pamphlet on german architecture to the shade of erwin von steinbach. he is reluctant that one should condemn the middle ages because they did not build such temples as the greeks, any more than that one should condemn the indians because they spoke their language and not our own. "it is not only beneath italian skies, under majestic domes and corinthian columns, that true art thrives, it lives too under pointed arches, intricately decorated buildings, and gothic spires." [illustration: overbeck. the annunciation.] it was all said so simply and heartily that soon the whole world began to be "wackenroderite." the ingenious and enthusiastic youth was succeeded by theoretic reasoners. tieck, who published his _phantasies upon art_ in , after wackenroder's death, and amplified it with his own explanations, was no longer a genuine but a counterfeit "_klosterbruder_." he first played with catholicism, and uttered the momentous sentence: "the best of the later masters up to the most recent times have had no other aim than to imitate some one of the primitive or typical artists, or even several together; nor have they easily become great by any other method than by having successfully imitated somebody." his _sternbald_ is still more haunted by the spirit of monastic devotion. [illustration: overbeck. the naming of st. john.] [illustration: overbeck. christ healing the sick.] the particular starting-point was in this case too, as it had been before for winckelmann, the dresden gallery, where, at the turn of the century, augustus william and frederick schlegel, the two "_gotter-buben_," held their cultured rendezvous. "the schlegels had taken possession of the gallery," wrote dora stock, "and with schelling and gries spent almost every morning there. it was a joy to see them writing and teaching there. sometimes they talked to me about art. i felt myself often quite paltry, i was so far from any wisdom. fichte, too, they initiated into their secrets. you would have laughed if you could have seen them drag him about and assail him with their convictions." the journal _europa_, founded by frederick schlegel in , became the rallying-point of the new movement, and his articles published therein contained the germs of all the efforts and errors of the young school. in his discourse on raphael he compares the pre-raphaelite period with that succeeding it, and considers the proposition that "indubitably the corruption of art was originally brought about by the newer school which was marked by raphael, titian, correggio, giulio romano, and michael angelo" so unquestionable that he does not find it in the least necessary to prove it. he casually puts forward as an _obiter dictum_ dropped in amongst a series of quite opposed notions the idea that every art ought to have a national foundation, and that any imitation of a foreign form of art is deleterious. the result follows that it is to be deplored "that an evil genius has alienated artists from the circle of ideas and the subjects of the old painters. culture can only attach itself to what has been constituted. how natural it would be, then, if painters were to go on in the old way, and cast themselves anew into the ideas and disposition of the old painters." the artist should follow the painters prior to raphael, "especially the oldest," should strive to "copy carefully their truth and simplicity long enough for it to become second nature to his eye"; or he may "select the style of the old german school as a pattern." [illustration: overbeck. christ's entry into jerusalem.] [illustration: overbeck. the resurrection.] the latter counsel originated from the discovery in of the cologne cathedral picture, referred to by schlegel in his _europa_. through the secularisation of the monasteries, attention was again directed to the old ecclesiastical pictures which people had hitherto passed by unnoticed. from the monasteries, churches, guild halls, and castles which the french had plundered, countless masses of paintings of every sort were extricated. a great deal perished; nearly all, however, that had hitherto been kept as heirlooms, and for the most part almost inaccessible, now became movable, attainable property. the brothers boisserée began their celebrated collection, which is to be seen to-day in the munich _pinakothek_. while hitherto one had, at the most, known of dürer, now one touched upon an age which lay behind the reformation, an age in which catholicism was flourishing, in which "not great artists but nameless monks represented art," and it was soon all fire and ardour over the sweetness, naïveté, and faith of these pictures. fernow had still pronounced generally against the capacity of the "catholic religion, with its jewish-christian mythology and martyrology," to satisfy the demands of a pure taste in art. carstens had written down for himself the sentence from webb's work: "the art of the ancients was rich in august and captivating figures: their gods had grace, majesty, and beauty. how much meaner is the lot of the moderns! their art is subservient to the priests. their characters are taken from the lowest spheres of life--men of humble descent and uncouth manners. even their divine master is in painting nowhere to be seen according to a great idea; his long, smooth hair, his jewish beard and sickly appearance would deprive the most exalted beings of any semblance of dignity. meekness and humility, his characteristic traits, are virtues edifying in the extreme but in no way picturesque. this lack of dignity in the subject renders it intelligible why we look so coldly at these works in the churches and galleries. the genius of painting expends its strength in vain on crucifixions, holy families, last suppers, and the like." not five years had elapsed after carstens' death when, according to an impression of dorothea veit, "christianity was once more the order of the day." william schlegel's poem, _the church's alliance with the arts_, from which, later, overbeck borrowed the thought for his picture, can be looked upon, as goethe already wrote, as the true profession of faith of the young school. where previously augustus william had described in his sonnets the io, leda, and cleopatra of the dresden gallery, it was now the madonna who received the homage of the gallant poet. by frederick, christianity was recommended to the artist as a formal model and a source of æsthetic enjoyment,--as it was, at the same time, by chateaubriand as _prédilection d'artiste_. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ overbeck. the seven lean years.] even more profound did the tendency become during the war of independence, which at the same time gave the death blow to classicism. distress taught how to pray. in those years of humiliation the young generation abandoned the classic ideal for ever, and schenkendorf cried imperiously: "we would see no more pagan pictures on any german walls." french "frivolity" was contrasted with german seriousness, german christianity with the free-thought of the french; there was a return from the cold philosophy of enlightenment to the vigorous feeling of mediæval faith. frederick schlegel, the author of _lucinde_, who had written as lately as :-- "mein einzig religion ist die, dass ich liebe ein schönes knie, volle brust und schlanke hüften, dazu blumen mit süssen düften," was converted to catholicism. schelling wrote his _philosophy of revelation_; görres, the editor of the _rothen blut_, ended as the author of the _christian mystic_. here set in the period of the nazarenes. what schlegel had said was to become true, that the german artist has either no character at all or he must have the character of the mediæval masters, true-hearted and thoughtful, innocent withal, and somewhat maladroit. in architecture the hellenic school is succeeded by the gothic, painting passes from the reverence of the greek statues to that of old italian pictures. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ julius schnorr von carolsfeld.] rome remained for the nazarenes, too, the centre of influence, only they no longer made pilgrimages, like the classicists, to ancient but to christian rome. _overbeck_ of lübeck came in with pforr of frankfort and vogel of zürich; the düsseldorfer, cornelius, followed in , _schadow_ and _veit_ of berlin in , _schnorr von carolsfeld_ of leipzig in , the viennese _führich_ and _steinle_ in and . in all of them there lived the perception that in such a serious age men should be of high moral endeavour, and art the expression of the religious capacity of their lives. [illustration: _wigand, leipzig._ schnorr. adam and eve after the fall.] there still stands to-day, on a secluded hillock of the monte pincio a small church, whose façade is adorned with the statues of st. isidore, the patron of husbandmen, and of st. patrick, apostle of ireland. a court with weather-beaten cloisters and an old well separates the church from the monastery which lies behind it, where the cells of the monks, irish and italian franciscans, are placed. above, on the terrace of the house, one has a charming view of rome and the campagna, of monte cavo and the heights of tusculum. below stretch the gardens of the capucin convent, and farther back the grounds and avenues of the villa ludovisi. on the first floor is a large hall, the walls of which have been decorated by the hand of some old monk with frescoes, and which, formerly a refectory, is used to-day as a theological lecture-room. this was the room where overbeck and his friends in the first period after their arrival stood for one another as models. lethière, the director of the french academy, had obtained permission for them to install themselves in the deserted rooms of the monastery of san isidoro, which had been spared by napoleon, for which they paid the small sum of three scudi monthly. [illustration: joseph fÜhrich. _graphische kunst._] "we led a truly monastic life," relates overbeck; "held ourselves aloof from all, and lived only for art. in the morning we marketed together; at midday we took it in turns to cook our dinner, which was composed of nothing but a soup and a pudding, or some tasty vegetable, and was seasoned only by earnest conversation on art." overbeck, as a good housekeeper, kept accounts; the principal items of the daily outlay occurred for polenta and risotto, oranges and lemons; every now and then oil, too, was noted down. the afternoons were dedicated to the study of the creations of art in rome. with "beating hearts and holy awe" they passed over the threshold of the _stanze_. in the chapel of san lorenzo they became "familiar with the seraphic fiesole, whose frescoes transcend everything in purity of conception." they shunned the paganism of st. peter's, and marvelled with all the more intimate devotion at the old christian monuments. the churches of san lorenzo and san clemente, the cloisters of st. john lateran and st. paul's-without-the-walls, made an ineffaceable impression upon the young men. at the twilight hour they wandered up on to monte cavo. "and of evenings we drew studies of drapery--glorious folds!--from pforr's big venetian mantle, in which we took turns to pose for one another." their whole hearts, however, first swelled when they undertook a journey to tuscany. in orvieto, luca signorelli awaited them, whose frescoes especially impressed cornelius mightily. at sienna they found teachers who were still more sympathetic to them, duccio and simone martino, those masters of a tender, intimate spirit and a charming sweetness of expression. in the campo santo at pisa they turned their attention to fiesole's pupil, gozzoli. those became their great teachers in art. "just as ardent christians wander to the grave of the princes of the apostles in order to confirm their faith and quicken their zeal, so should zealous young artists derive strength and illumination from the silent and yet so eloquent speech of the sublime geniuses of art. an artist of real worth will find in the masterpieces of painting at rome everything necessary for him in order to reach the right path. but, to be sure, a well-made plait of hair does not certainly constitute one a raphael, because raphael, too, arranged his hair with feeling. study alone leads to nothing. if since raphael's age, as one can almost declare, there has been no painter, that is the fault of nothing else than of the fact that art has been vanquished by workmanship. one learnt at the academies to paint excellent drapery, to draw a correct figure, learnt perspective, architecture--in short, everything, and yet no painter was produced. there is one want in all recent painting--heart, soul, sentiment. let the young painter then watch, before everything, over his sentiments: let him allow neither an impure word on his lips nor an impure thought in his mind. but how can he guard himself from that? by religion, by study of the bible, the one and only study which made raphael. this view now certainly contradicts the accustomed principles that everything must be systematically learnt; mere learning produces certainly an instructed but also a cold artist. on that ground it is not good either to study anatomy from dead bodies, because one dwarfs thereby certain fine sensibilities, or to work from female models, for the same reason. let the painter be inspired by his subject as those of old were, and the result will be the same. like those old painters, let every artist remind himself that the truest use of art is that which leads it heavenwards, its one function that of having a moral effect upon men." "how pure and holy," cries cornelius to xeller, as late as , "was the end at which we aimed! unknown, without encouragement, without aid, except that of our loving father in heaven." [illustration: fÜhrich. from the "legend of st. gwendolin."] it is obvious that between the ascetics of the monastery and the classicists direct friction must ensue. to them the "ever repeated and pale reflexions of greek sculpture" said nothing, while the classicists scoffed at the religionists, for whom the sarcastic brawler, reinhart, invented the nickname of "nazarenes," which has since become a watchword. the opposition was historically immortalised when bunsen, the prussian envoy, invited the whole colony to the christening of his little daughter, and niebuhr touched glasses with thorwaldsen "to the health of old jupiter." only cornelius joined in; the others started and looked upon the young düsseldorfer as a heretic. this positive christian standpoint, which allowed art to be esteemed only as a religious service, pictures only as a means of ecclesiastical edification, irritated also the old man of weimar at the first start. the effort of the nazarenes to make piety the foundation of true artistic activity was to him a continual subject of contempt. religion no more bestows talent for the arts than it gives taste. he spoke with irony of the "valiant artists and ingenious friends of art who had resort to the honourable, naïve, yet somewhat coarse taste" of the fourteenth and fifteenth-century masters. he constantly employed of them the expression "star-gazing." he had already mockingly remarked of wackenroder's _herzensergiessungen_ what an unwarrantable conclusion it was, that because a few monks were artists, all artists should therefore be monks. he called the life of the nazarenes "a sort of masquerade which stood in opposition to the actual day," and wrote in the pages of _art and antiquity_ that manifesto, the _new german religious-patriotic art_, or _history of the new pietistic false art since the eighties_, which so deeply wounded the young enthusiasts. "the doctrine was that the artist needed piety above everything to equal the work of the best. what an attractive doctrine! how eagerly we should accept it! for in order to become religious one need learn nothing." the whole movement reached nothing beyond a slavish imitation of giotto and his immediate followers. of course, it was inconsistent of goethe to reproach contemporary art for imitating that of the middle ages, and to praise the latter only when it imitated the antique. speaking as a man of mengs' school, and merely proposing hellenic art as a canon instead of early italian, he had, after all, no right to be angry if frederick schlegel opposed classical models with mediæval. otherwise, however, even to-day little can be added to goethe's animadversions. [illustration: fÜhrich. ruth and boaz.] as with carstens, so with the nazarenes, we are warned by the idealistic tendency which inspired the young enthusiasts. there are but few painters with whom life and art have been in such complete agreement as with the gentle, mild, and modest overbeck, the "apostle john," as he got to be called, that young man, that serene soul who looked upon art simply as a harp of david for the praise of the lord, to whom the "hope that through his works one soul had been strengthened in faith and piety was of far more value than any fame," and who ended at last in a sort of religious mania. with the nazarenes, too, as with the classicists, it was pure exaltation which drove them to free themselves from the trammels of the school, in order to get back from dead fabrications to creations of art, which, proceeding out of the living spirit, once more had a soul. even the much-despised conversion of the protestants among them to the catholic church arose out of the deep conviction that they also, as well as their art, must be united in religion. [illustration: fÜhrich. the departure of the prodigal son.] in a certain sense they even show an advance in art. they found between themselves and the great painters of the eighteenth century a gulf that could no longer be spanned. after carstens had thrown overboard every colouristic acquisition, it was indeed something that the nazarenes no longer saw the highest aim of painting in black and white design, but turned, though with timidity and hesitation, to the study of the italian quattrocento with its joyous delight in colour, and so became the first real painters after the cartoon period. only that was as yet simply an advance for the nineteenth century, and not especially for the history of art. this was as little enriched with new forms and discoveries by the nazarenes as by the classicists. the former, too, were imitators, and only changed masters when they fled from the antique to the middle ages, and copied the old italians in lieu of the greeks. the classicists had imitated with a certain cold erudition; the nazarenes out of the depths of their emotion. as the former used greeks, so did they use the fourteenth-century painters, as patterns of calligraphy from which they made their copies, cut their stencils after the italian form, and, like mengs, were able to reproduce in their works only a very weak reflection of those departed spirits. as eclectics they would stand on the same rung with the academics of bologna, except that the ideal of the latter school was a combination from leonardo, raphael, michael angelo, correggio, and titian, and that it possessed an incomparably greater facility in technique. [illustration: fÜhrich. jacob and rachel.] the nazarenes abandoned on principle the employment of the model, from fear lest it might entice them away from the ideal representation of the character to be depicted. they sought in a dilettante manner to supply the control over the material which alone makes the artist, by enthusiasm for the material. only cornelius dared to draw from the female form. overbeck refused to do so, from modesty. the virgin mary was to him the highest ideal of womanhood, the paler, the more virtuous, the more akin to the lamb of god; and he would have deemed it a sacrilege to have depicted her as purely womanly. they therefore only occasionally sat to one another for studies of drapery, and, for the rest, "in order not to be naturalistic," painted their pictures from imagination in the seclusion of their cells. as the catholicism of schlegel was an anæmic system, so the painters, too, deprived their figures of blood and being in order to leave them only the abstract beauty of line. they are beings who are exalted above everything, even above correctness of drawing, and who must expire of a lack of blood in their veins. the command, "seek ye therefore first the kingdom of god, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you," was carried out by the nazarenes only too well. [illustration: steinle. the raising of jairus' daughter.] they have created only two works which will survive, and which possess an historical significance as pre-eminent, works of the whole movement in common--the frescoes of the casa bartholdi and of the villa massini. when the intelligence of the battle of waterloo had penetrated even into the silent cells of the monks, they believed that art too should participate in this universal elevation, and become a factor again in the development of the german nation. it must not be used, wrote cornelius in his famous letter to görres, as a mere plaything, or to tickle the senses, not merely for the delectation and pomp of high and rich maecenases, but for the ennoblement and glorification of public life. the means of this artistic elevation, and at the same time a new means of popular culture, was to be the introduction of fresco painting. [illustration: steinle. "i have trodden the winepress alone: and of the people there was none with me."] and thus the brothers of san isidoro re-discovered what had, as a matter of fact, always been quietly practiced by the "rustics painters," but since mengs' time had no longer been employed by the "art painters," and had been forgotten for half a century. the prussian consul at rome, bartholdy, gave them the commission. an old mason, who had last arranged wall-plastering under mengs, was recruited as technical adviser; carl eggers, of neustrelitz, zealously made chemical researches; and it is said to have been veit who, at cornelius' request ("now, philip, you make the first attempt!"), was the first to paint the portrait of a head in fresco, whilst his companions looked on with amazement and delight. then the others set to work, "and painted away at it in the name of god." "yes, believe me, my friend, it is a desperate matter to paint over a whole room in a manner which one has never before practised oneself nor seen practised by others. every day we tell each other that we are fine bunglers, and give each other a regular dressing down. you can have no conception how strange it feels at first when one is confronted by damp plaster and lime. and nevertheless we construct daily fresh castles in the air for painting churches, monasteries, and palaces in germany." the frescoes represent, in six mural paintings and two lunettes, the history of joseph in egypt, from his sale to his recognition by his brethren. the two latter are the work of cornelius and overbeck, the others of veit and schadow. the work was prolonged through many years, interrupted by manifold difficulties, and when one stands to-day before the transferred pictures in the berlin national gallery one cannot refrain from admiring them. [illustration: edward steinle.] there lives within them an unpretentiousness and sincerity of sentiment, and, in spite of all deficiencies and lack of independence, somewhat of that lofty inspiration which raises the pictures of really earnest artists, even if they are faulty, far above any fabricated productions. an association of young men, which, unconcerned about success and material profit, contended only for ideal products, found here for the first time an opportunity to display what it wanted. in the interpretation of pharaoh's dream and in the recognition by the brethren, cornelius, in formal language, full of character, and without any phrases and posture, displayed all that he had derived from the great italians in nobility of grouping and fine arrangement of lines. overbeck reaches the same height in his allegory of the seven lean kine. but it is not only as youthful works of artists, who, if they belonged to a period of decadence, yet were, withal, the greatest representatives of a period of german art, that these pictures are worthy of high esteem; they are essentially the best that these masters have created. cornelius, notably, shows a study, a care for execution, indeed even a harmony of colouring, that stands in surprising opposition to his later negligence. from the conception that the artistic performance is determined in the invention, and the design, but that the pictorial execution is an indifferent, mechanical accessory which could be supplied even by other people, he was at that time still free. [illustration: steinle. book illustration.] when the pictures had been unveiled in a festival of german artists was held in rome. rückert, bunsen, the humboldts, the herzes were there; cornelius, veit, and overbeck had arranged the transparencies. "the centre of all," writes the danish romantic atterbom, was the crown prince ludwig of bavaria, "the idol of every german artist, whose ruling passion is for the fine arts and fair ladies. everything was in old german masques, the ladies in wide ruffs. the crown prince was in the utmost good humour, and treated the artists as his equals. a toast was drunk to german unity. the scene struck me like a beautiful dream out of the middle ages." german unity at a roman fancy ball! the german nation a beautiful dream out of the middle ages! the crown prince ludwig, when he took cornelius and schnorr out of the roman circle, at least created a fatherland for german art, and later on the others also found at home a suitable sphere of activity. philip veit, who went to frankfort in as director of the staedel institute, was the first to settle down, and for all his energy could only for a very short time make that city into a seat of the christian tendency in art. of his pictures there, the fresco painted for the staedel institute, "the introduction of christianity into germany by st. boniface," is by far the most important. the apostle has hewn down the oak of thor, and from where it once stood there flows forth the new spring of christianity. the old germans shrink back timorously, but the youths listen to the preacher, and follow his direction to the figure of religion which approaches with the palm of peace. in the background a church rises, and in the distance, by a limpid river, a flourishing town, in contrast to the sombre, primeval forest to which the germans who reject religion are flying. "the two marys at the sepulchre," in the berlin national gallery, and the "assumption," in the frankfort cathedral, date from a later period. it was of no avail to him that he mingled with his nazarenism a certain air of the world, which found expression in a less ascetic language of form and a somewhat stronger sense of colour. in he had already a feeling that the restless, struggling age had passed him by. he abandoned his post and went to meet oblivion as director of the gallery at mayence. [illustration: _munich, albert._ steinle. the violin player.] overbeck, the only one who could not tear himself from rome, remained, till his death in , the "young german raphael," as his father had called him in a letter from lübeck in : a devout, religious poet, pure of soul and of fine culture, as one-coloured and one-sided as he was mild and tender. at the outset he knew, at least, how to extract from the old masters a certain naïve piety without positive character, whereas later he lost himself more and more in the arid formalism of dead dogmas. what was in his power to give he has given in pictures such as the "entry of christ into jerusalem" and the "weeping over the body of christ"--both in the marienkirche at lübeck, in the "miracle of roses," in santa maria degli angeli at assisi, in the "christ on the mount of olives" in the hospital at hamburg, and the "betrothal of mary" in the berlin national gallery--pictures which expressed nothing that would not have been expressed better at the end of the fifteenth century. his "holy family with st. john and the lamb," of , in the munich pinakothek, is in composition and type a complete imitation of the florentine raphael; his "lamentation of christ" in the lübeck marienkirche is reminiscent of perugino; his "burial" would never have existed but for raphael's picture in the borghese gallery. his sentiment coincided exactly in devotion and godliness with that of fra angelico or of the old masters of cologne, and when he devoted himself to programme-painting he lost all intelligibility. in the "triumph of religion in the arts," which he completed in for the staedel institute, and in which he wished to embody the favourite ideas of romanticism, that art and religion must flow together in one stream, he has copied the upper part from the "disputa," the lower part from the "school of athens," and worked up both into a tedious and scholastically elaborated whole. it is only through a series of unpretentious sketches which he prepared for engravings, lithographs, and woodcuts that his name has still a certain lustre. plates such as the "rest in the flight," the "preaching of st. john," or the series "forty illustrations to the gospel," the "passion," the "seven sacraments," may be contemplated even to-day, since in them at least no tastelessness of colour stands in the way. these plates, too, like his pictures, are less observed than felt--felt, however, with an innocence and cheerfulness of heart often quite childlike. [illustration: philip veit.] it shows above all much self-understanding that all these masters in their later years restricted themselves exclusively to design, which better expressed their character. in compositions and sketches of this kind, which were only _drawn_, and were thus untrammelled by the fruitless struggle with the difficulties of the technique of painting and a complete lack of the notion of colour, they moved more freely and lightly. in their frescoes and oil-paintings, partly through insufficient technique, partly through their all too servile imitation of foreign ideals, they went astray. as draughtsmen, they had more courage to be themselves, and while in the completer paintings many a fine trait, many an intimate reflection of the soul was lost, or through the obduracy of the material did not attain a right expression, here their spiritual and emotional qualities can be better valued. joseph führich, one of the most staunchly convinced champions of these reactionary tendencies, has become, entirely owing to his extensive activity as a draughtsman, somewhat more familiar to our modern knowledge than most of his contemporaries. he had begun as a draughtsman. as a student of the prague academy he was an enthusiast for schlegel, novalis, and tieck; and even before his journey to rome he had etched fifteen plates for tieck's _genoveva_. it was dürer who exercised the deciding influence upon his further development. he had been led to him through wackenroder, and had copied his "marienleben" in . "here i saw," he says in his autobiography, "a form before me which stood in trenchant opposition to that of the classicists, who are anxious to palm off as beauty their smoothness and pomposity borrowed from the misunderstood antique, and their affected delicacy as grace. in contrast with that absence of character which prevailing academic art mistakes for beauty i saw here a keen and mighty characterisation which dominated the figures through and through, making them, as it were, into old acquaintances." the strong and godly german middle age took then in führich's heart the same place which the italian quattrocento had filled in overbeck's range of thought. and this old-german tendency was only temporarily interrupted by his sojourn in rome. after he came to rome in he became a nazarene, and was accustomed there to look back at the tendencies of his youth as an error; and both at prague, where he returned in , after collaborating at the frescoes in the villa massini, and at vienna, where from he held the post of professor in the academy, he found rich opportunity for putting into practice his ecclesiastical and orthodox views of art. [illustration: veit. the arts introduced into germany by christianity.] his frescoes in the johannis-und-altleschenfelder church in vienna are, perhaps, more harmonious in colour, but no more independent in form, than the works of the others. in his old age he returned once more to the impressions of his youth, and so found himself again. as a boy, in his little native village of kratzau, in bohemia, he had tended the cows in summer time and had acquired a certain sincere knowledge of nature and shepherd-life. he had to thank dürer for his preference for the idyllic and patriarchal family scenes in sacred history, and these tendencies found pleasing expression in pictures like "jacob and rachel," or "the passage of mary across the mountains." no matter that the figures in "jacob and rachel" are taken out of the early pictures of pinturicchio and raphael, they are still interwoven, with their background of landscape, into an idyll of great naïveté and charm. more especially, however, did the qualities which he owed to dürer acquire value--a sturdy characterisation, a naïve art in telling the story, and a great wealth of fresh traits, straight from nature--in the serial compositions of his old age. there is no sentimental vagueness, nothing academical. führich had a keen eye for what was intimate, familiar; a tender sense of the individualities of landscape in woodland and meadow, of the charm of everyday life as well as of the animal world; and though an idealist, he knew how to assimilate ingeniously what he had observed with a certain realistic fulness. the old story of boaz and ruth grew beneath his hands into a delicious idyll of country life. from the story of the prodigal son he has extracted with sensitiveness the purely human kernel, and as late as the winter of - , at the age of seventy-one, he illustrated the legend of st. gwendolen, in which he depicted with tender reverence the escape of a human soul, withdrawn from the world and resigned to god's will, into nature and her peace. edward steinle, who went from rome to vienna in , and settled in frankfort in , is called, not very appropriately, by his biographer, constantine wuzbach, "a madonna painter of our time." his name deserves to come down to posterity rather for what he created outside the essential characteristics of his art. in his frescoes in the minster at aachen, in the choir of the cathedrals of strasburg and cologne, he stood firm on the standpoint of the nazarenes; which is as much as to say they contained nothing novel in the history of art. in his fairy pictures, however, imagination broke through the narrow confines of dogma, and entwined itself in creative enjoyment round the vague figures of fable. his "loreley," in the schack gallery, as she looks down, a medusa-like destroyer, from the tall cliff; his watchman who looks dreamily into space over the houses of the old town; his violin player on his tower who plays, forgetful of the world,--these have something musical, poetical, that freshness of sentiment and unsought naïveté which as an inheritance of his viennese home was also peculiar in such a high degree to schwind. the romantic aspiration is revealed in steinle, even, in a certain "yearning after colour." there lives in his works a refined feeling for colour that, especially in his water-colours, rarely forsakes him. take, for instance, the fresh, tinted pen-drawings, engraved by schaffer, in which he displayed with the naïveté of memlinc the life of st. euphrosyne; the five aquarelles of grimm's "snow-white and rose-red"; or his illustrations to brentano's poems, such as the _chronicle of the wandering student_, and the _fairy tale of the rhine and radlauf the miller_, in which he developed a delight in the world and an idea of landscape that in the ascetic nazarene excite astonishment. [illustration: veit. the two marys at the sepulchre.] julius schnorr von carolsfeld went, after the completion of the ariosto room of the villa massini, first to vienna, then in to munich, in order to paint the _nibelungen_ in the halls of the royal residence of that time, and in the imperial halls of the state palace the history of charlemagne, frederick barbarossa, and rudolf of hapsburg. he also, however, created his best work at the close of his life in dresden,--the forcible woodcuts of his _picture bible_, which narrated the world's sacred history in strong and vigorous strokes. strangest to the present-day taste have become the drawings of cornelius. his plates to goethe's _faust_ have, indeed, a certain austere strength of conception, which he learnt from dürer; but also faults of drawing, exaggerations, crudities, and errors in perspective, which he did not find in dürer. in his second work, the nibelungen cycle, an intentional old-german angularity, with an unintentional modern clumsiness, has effected a _mésalliance_ even less attractive. [illustration: overbeck. portrait of himself and cornelius.] chapter vi the art of munich under king ludwig i more than seventeen hundred years ago there reigned a roman emperor who loved art passionately. he looked upon it from an intellectual altitude which few have reached, and he valued it as the monumental consummation of græco-roman culture. standing upon a plane of intellectual elevation, himself gifted with artistic intuition, he knew of no higher enjoyment for a ruler than the cultivation of the architectural and other forms of art. it was he who opened up to the energy of artists a field such as has never been offered to them before or since. he spent upon his works sums incalculable, so that his people grew restless under their emperor's mania for building. his villa at tivoli, which attained to the extent of a town, was in itself a copy of everything that he most loved and admired in the world. it united nearly all the renowned buildings of athens in one masterly reproduction. and then with architecture came the other arts. the most magnificent collections of sculpture were formed, for none had better opportunities of acquiring the antique masterpieces of the greek towns. numberless frescoes, scenes from those cities and regions which had most impressed him on his travels, adorned the walls. and yet subsequent generations have viewed with unconcern this halcyon period in the history of art. though his contemporaries fancied that the splendour of the greek sun was still radiating over them, it was but a borrowed lustre, which never went beyond the reproduction or copying of classic examples. whatever greek temples the emperor might build and decorate, he failed to summon into being a phidias or a polygnotes to revive for him the forms of the antique. the names of the artists who worked for him are forgotten. they had no originality; they copied the types of the grecian and egyptian periods, and their art was but a repetition of old ideals, without character of age or place. the fifteen colossal columns of his olympieion that are still standing impress one as foreign to athens, and would seem more in place at baalbeck or palmyra than in this city of the muses. epictetus would have smiled at the emperor diverting himself with an album of the wonders of the world, as a piece of sentimentality. the age of hadrian produced thousands of buildings, statues, and pictures, but no original works. will a different judgment be pronounced in the lapse of time upon the artistic creations of king ludwig i? ludwig also--his biography reads like that of hadrian--was an enthusiastic admirer of art. after the peace of vienna, when the political aspirations of germany had been frustrated, he alone among the numerous german princes of the old alliance fostered homeless art, and thus fulfilled a noble mission. the king's splendid enthusiasm for the ideal significance of art, which he hoped would lead the german people, then seeking to work out its individuality, from out of its philistine narrow-mindedness to nobler and greater things--this enthusiasm will redound to his enduring honour. schiller's idea of educating humanity by æsthetic means had in him grown into a living and powerful sentiment. all that it was possible to accomplish in the cause of art, on the basis of existing development, his endeavours have fully realised. in the course of twenty-three years he spent more than £ , , from his privy purse, and made munich what it is, the principal art centre of germany; changed it from a boeotia into an athens; founded its art collections, and erected the buildings which give the town its character. then he offered those new walls to the painter cornelius, and commanded him to cover them. "you are my field-marshal, do you provide generals of division." in cornelius had written to bartholdy: "the most powerful and unfailing means to restore german art and bring it into harmony with this great period and the spirit of the nation would be a revival of fresco-painting as it existed in italy from the days of the great giotto to those of the divine raphael." and through this royal command the dream was realised beyond all expectation. no such lively artistic animation had been witnessed since the great periods of italian art; an animation which does not cut the worst figure in german history in those sad times of political stagnation and reaction. but that there was a living soul of art in those days posterity will no more acknowledge than it does in the case of the age of hadrian. "wie bei bartholdy als kind, so in massimis villa als jüngling teutshes fresco wir sehn, aber in münchen als mann," sang king ludwig. now, after two generations, it can be seen that fresco-painting at munich from to produced less original conceptions of the german art of the nineteenth than weak reflections of the italian art of the sixteenth century. various favourable circumstances combined at that time to cause cornelius to be specially looked upon by his contemporaries as an incomparable master. since tiepoli, german monumental art had remained dormant. the frescoes at munich were the first attempts made to revive it. and it seemed as though with cornelius, german art had at once risen to the dizzy heights to which italian art had been led by michael angelo. the lookers-on believed in buonarotti's resurrection. as in the sistine "last judgment," the movement of his heroic figures appeared plastic and pathetic, and his types, not excepting the women, gave that impression of the terrible, which none but signorelli and michael angelo had attained before him. his advent, it was said, might almost make one believe in a kind of metempsychosis; as though the spirit of the great florentine master, that giant of the renaissance, had been restored to humanity. at that very period the italian art of the cinquecento enjoyed the exclusive favour of the german scholars. it alone was worthy of imitation; in it the æsthetic philosophers sought for rules and laws to govern the development of art. and as they thought that all the qualities of this artistic method were to be found in the works of cornelius, it was only logical to arrive at the conclusion which the crown prince ludwig summed up in the following words: "there has been no painter like cornelius since the cinquecento." [illustration: peter cornelius.] at the same time the intellectual character of his work harmonised with the wishes of a period in which the leaders of german thought tried to forget the dreary dulness of life by plunging into the most profound speculations. "what does it matter," writes hallman, "if we lack all joyous, independent national feeling? what though we do not even try to resuscitate this feeling with wars and battles? we strive after something higher! the world is beginning to respect german intellect and learning. we believe that in this we are in advance of other nations, and we seek a mode of expression, we want to give a form to that lofty thought through our art, in order that we may bequeath to posterity an image of our fortunate condition.... therefore it is a remarkable sign of the times that painting strives to make the weighty output of intellectual thought a common treasure of all who are neither able nor disposed to follow speculation to its dizzy heights, nor erudition to its lowest depths; that painters try to transform the results of those investigations into fresh and ever lively conceptions--the element of art." to accomplish this none was better fitted than cornelius. what a weight of thought and learning his works display! in the pinakothek, cornelius' main idea was to paint the life and work of nature as illuminated by the figures of the greek gods. for the series of paintings in the hall of the gods, hesiod's _theogony_ offered a basis upon which to demonstrate the idea of the triumph of the creative mind in heaven and upon earth. in the second room, human passion, power, and tyranny were illustrated in scenes of greek heroic life from the _iliad_. the frescoes in the ludwigskirche were to follow the christian apocalypse as a concatenation, and to depict it in symbolic treatment from the creation to the last judgment. the frescoes for the campo santo at berlin were meant to represent "the universal and most exalted fortunes of humanity, the manifestation of divine grace towards the sins of mankind, the redemption from sin, perdition, and death, the triumph of life and eternity." each of these paintings is a treatise. each fresco bears a definite relation to the other; deep philosophic speculations weave their threads from one to the other. or else the painter revels in a suite of compositions which trace a network of intellectual combinations from one picture to the other. as he himself expressed it, he delivered his diploma lecture through his paintings. and this painted erudition harmonised with the requirements of those times of dominating intellectual tendencies. the scholars saw in cornelius the poet, the doctor-in-philosophy; held that the principal value of the work of art lay in its intellectual contents, and felt that their loftiest mission was to express these contents still more correctly than the painter himself. the idea, they said, was the alpha and omega of the painter's art, and must be accepted at its full value, even when represented in the most shadowy external form. these opinions have now vanished entirely. a more extended intercourse with the old masters and with the art of other countries has gradually cured the germans too of that mental hypertrophy from which they suffered in their view of art--a complaint whose characteristic symptom was the entire lack of sensuousness, of that sensibility to beauty of form and external charm which always has been and always must be the predominating mood of a society in which art is to flourish. they have gradually reached the point at which one interests one's self in a picture for the sake of the painting of it, looks first at the picture, and only then asks what the painter's idea may have been, or what the spectator is to gather from it. no poem will find favour which offers acceptable thoughts in badly worded, halting, unmelodious verse; nor do the loftiest thoughts in themselves suffice to make a work of art. profundity of thought is a thing that has little to do with pure art; and the subject alone, however world-stirring the ideas in it may be, never makes a thing artistic. we have learnt to find the most intense enjoyment in the mere contemplation of titian's "earthly and heavenly love," although we may not yet know what this picture is really meant to convey. and we know none the less that what renders raphael's "school of athens" immortal is not its catalogue of ideas, which has been drawn up by an anonymous pedant, but the master's artistic power, the intensity with which he expresses what was barely showing bud in the material, the self-reliant strength and sureness with which the form and colour have succeeded in outlining and creating every figure and every movement in the picture. [illustration: peter cornelius. 'let there be light'.] [illustration: cornelius. from the frescoes in the friedhofshalle, berlin.] no less has the comparative study of art gradually refined people's sensibility to originality. we are no longer compelled to place an artist on the same level with a master of ancient art because of the outer resemblance of their work. we have progressed so far as to respect in art none but original genius, and to look upon imitation as a _testimonium paupertatis_ though praxiteles or michael angelo be the model. in this we find the explanation of the low esteem in which some of the old masters are now held. the contemporaries of mabuse and marten heemskerk thought that in these painters they had found again the great primeval, titanic nature of michael angelo, his vast motives and majestic forms. to-day we say of them, and with justice, that they produced nothing better than caricatures of michael angelo, that they expressed themselves in shallow phrases, that their religious pictures are cold and inflated, and that their mythological presentations with naked figures impress us as bombastic and repellent. houbraken, in his biography of gérard de lairesse, wrote: "a whole book could be filled with the description of his innumerable pictures and panels, ceilings and frescoes." to-day we dismiss this unattractive mannerist in a few lines. what his contemporaries described as his michaelangelesque and majestic fierceness appears to us, looking back, as a mere pale imitation. [illustration: cornelius. marguerite in prison.] measure cornelius by the same rule, and the result is no less melancholy. merciless history paused for a moment to consider whether it ever saw his equal, and then passed on to the order of the day, as it did with his predecessors. to us he is no longer the original genius that he was to his contemporaries, but an imitator. the retrospective history of art marks a new epoch with him, heinrich hess, and schnorr: the advance from the paths of the early italians, trodden by the nazarenes, to this link with the golden age of the cinquecento. the works of cornelius are mighty shadows cast into our days by the gigantic figures of michael angelo. but only shadows! there is no blood in them. a direct line leads from michael angelo to millet; but i doubt whether the master would delight in cornelius, who has only used him as a _gradus ad parnassum_. the works of cornelius are the products of a civilised yet artistically poor period. the idealism of michael angelo had raised itself upon the naturalistic shoulders of donatello and ghirlandaio; this new cornelian idealism sprang into being full-grown from reminiscences, and was therefore from the outset without backbone. it is the fruit of a decadence, not the mature product of a full-blown art, which has taken centuries to grow and ripen. in michael angelo the aspirations of italian art, from giotto onward, attained their zenith. cornelius, standing solitary in an inartistic period that had lost every tradition and all technical method, believed in the possibility of rising to the same level by making the forms borrowed from michael angelo convey scraps of modern knowledge. in doing this he could not but confirm the experience, thus described by goethe in his _theory of colour_: "even the most perfect models are delusive, by causing us to pass over necessary decrees of culture, and thus generally carrying us beyond the goal into a domain of boundless error." [illustration: cornelius. the apocalyptic host.] at the same time that heinrich hess was carrying on his calligraphic exercises after raphael and andrea del sarto in the basilika at munich, cornelius was making his schoolboy sketches after michael angelo. what is great in his master is empty _pose_ in him; what is _furia_ in the former is a laboured imitation in the latter. while the terrific florentine master found within himself the expression of his superhuman figures, his learned follower copies attitudes, gestures, groups--familiar to anyone who has been to italy and passed a few hours in the sistine chapel. one seems to hear the old florentine's great voice toned down through the telephone, and irritating us with false pathos at moments when pathos is quite superfluous. all the faces are distorted with grimaces, heads of hair are puffed up as though with serpents, garments fly about; people shout instead of speaking, open their mouths wide as though they were giving the word of command to an army, stretch out their arms as though they would embrace the world. a mother bearing a child in her arms squeezes it to death. a cook roasting a leg of mutton bastes it with a herculean gesture, and a butler emptying a leather bottle has the air of a river-god meditating a flood. in order that his human beings may look vigorous and heroic, he makes them walk in seven-league boots, dislocate their limbs, expand the gigantic measurement of the body far beyond the human. every head shows a different colouring: one red as sealing-wax, another rose-pink, a third _caput mortuum_. added to this, the academic drapery arrangements, those florid garments with their rolling, writhing folds, for which there is no real justification, and which have no use but that of ornament. "ah," says goethe, in one of his letters, "how true it is that nothing is remarkable but what is natural: nothing grand but what is natural: nothing beautiful, nothing, etc., etc., but what is natural." michael angelo is not at all easy to understand; and cornelius' study of him resulted in the very same mannerism into which the dutchmen had fallen three hundred years earlier,--the only difference being that he surpassed them in erudition. but although this quality would no doubt have greatly helped him had he written books, we cannot take it into account in discussing his artistic merits, any more than we can judge gérard de lairesse by his literary achievements. nay, more, as he had elected to confine himself to painting, his erudition became a curse to him, bringing him to disregard beauty of form in a manner as yet unknown in the history of art. not only was he filled with ardour for the loftier thoughts, without allowing any other forms for their presentation but those which were mere reminiscences of former art periods--he did not even give himself leisure thoroughly to assimilate the forms borrowed from michael angelo, and to animate them with fresh life. hence the fact that, as an artist, he remains greatly below the level of the dutch copyists, in whose work there is at least no faulty drawing and tasteless colouring to be found. he asked for walls, not as panels to paint on, but as tablets on which to inscribe his thoughts; felt exclusively as a poet, a man of learning, brooding ideas. engrossed in developing these ideas, he valued form and colour no more than an author would the embellishing of his manuscript with flowing letters and an artistic arrangement of inks. it is only by this means that we can explain the unjustifiable carelessness with which he surrendered his cartoons to his pupils, and allowed them a free hand in the carrying them out, or account for the evanescent colouring in the glyptothek and in the ludwigskirche,--a colouring which was even at that time far below the general level, and which could only be excused in the case of a self-trained and quite untutored school. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ cornelius. the fall of troy.] a man of this kind, who had nothing to teach that was worth the learning, and who excelled only in intellectual qualities which could not be imparted to others, must needs prove the most dangerous academy-principal germany has had since she first boasted an academy. so much the more as his pupils readily submitted to the personal fascination of this earnest little man with his black clothes, his pompous appearance, his flashing eagle eye, which made one believe that, dante-like, he had looked upon heaven and hell. "as there are men born to command an army, so cornelius was born to be the head of a school of painting," said king ludwig. we can scarcely help smiling at schwind's account of the trembling awe with which, upon his arrival from vienna, he presented himself to the master. the red-haired stripling, in his outgrown clothes, timidly strolling round the rooms of the glyptothek suddenly sees cornelius himself, high on a scaffolding, in all his glory, in an effulgence such as surrounds the head of phoebus apollo. accustomed to seeing young artists stoop before him, now stammering, now paling, now blushing, the demi-god descends to the level of the unknown mortal. "he is quite a little man, in a blue shirt, with a red belt. he looks very stern and distinguished, and his black, gleaming eyes impress you. he descended from his throne, changed his blue smock for an elegant frockcoat, drank a glass of water with an easy manner, and made my flesh thrill with a short explanation of what had been painted and what was still to be done, tucked a few writing books under his arm, and went upon his business to the academy." [illustration: wilhelm kaulbach.] the reformation of the academy, instigated by him at munich, demonstrated the one-sidedness of his point of view. he turned it into a school for fresco-painting. "a professorship in _genre_ and landscape painting appears to me superfluous," he wrote to the king in ; "true art knows no subdivision." but as he himself had only partially mastered fresco painting, he did not even succeed in establishing a school of fresco painters. it was only one of designers of cartoons. "read the great poets: homer, shakespeare, goethe; do not forget to include the bible. the brush has become the ruin of our art. it has led from nature to mannerism." by means of this teaching cornelius infused all his own defects into his academy, which for that reason was doomed from the outset to an early decease. a war of extermination, often leading to the most burlesque scenes, was declared by the cornelians against the langerians, who were despised because they had retained a few of the technical acquirements of the peruke period. when cornelius's attention was drawn to the fact that in one of his cartoons he had given a greek hero six fingers he answered with indifference: "ay, and if he had had seven, how would it affect the general idea?" [illustration: kaulbach. the deluge.] it was only natural, therefore, that his pupils should feel above using a model. it is said that at the time when they were turning munich into an athens, and the painters were covering the city walls with frescoes, munich possessed but one model, and the poor fellow died of starvation. and then, how they hated colours! they were so difficult to manage! who, pray, wanted to learn fresco painting by hard labour, and swallow the chalk-dust? it was much easier to copy their lord and master, whose name was on their lips, but not a spark of whose genius was in their heads, with every sort of mannerism. "when nature once produces a new birth she does so with a lavish hand. talents, talents enough for centuries!" in these words cornelius himself did honour to his pupils--to carl herrmann, strähuber, hermann anschütz, hiltensperger, and lindenschmit the elder, the mention of whose names evokes a painful memory of the arcades in the palace garden at munich. what survives of cornelius is only the man, the individual. posterity will doubtless always honour him for the unflinching energy with which he upheld his ideal from youth to failing age; for his courage in propounding and defending what seemed right to _him_; for refraining from putting on velvet gloves with the multitude, but frankly showing them his nails. this high-mindedness of cornelius, and his lofty conception of the aims of art, must always command our respect. all his works are the product of a serene, great, and noble soul. his is a physiognomy with a proud, vigorous profile, which expresses an intellectual tendency, and can never be forgotten. he was a man--as a painter, a curse to german art, but a self-conscious, aristocratic mind. as he himself said: "art has its high-priests and also its hedge-priests"; and when at the end of his life he made his profession: "never, under any circumstance of my life, have i lost my pious reverence for the divinity of art; never have i sinned against it," we none of us refuse to accept his word. [illustration: kaulbach. prince arthur and hubert.] this unfailing earnestness which suffuses cornelius's work raises him high above _wilhelm kaulbach_, and secures for him lasting fame, when that of kaulbach shall have been buried with the last of the "cultured" patrons for whom he worked, and by whom he was placed on a pedestal. look at both of them from a purely artistic point of view, comparing them with the old masters, and both of them sink equally into insignificance. but if we come to accept the problem of art criticism as a matter of psychology rather than of æsthetics, if we search for the relations between the work of art and the soul of its author, we cannot but look upon kaulbach as by far the inferior. cornelius endeavoured to raise the masses to his level, paid for his idealism with unpopularity, and was never understood. kaulbach, the humble servant of the public, changed the spartan iron of the art of cornelius for the base coin of the art unions; to tickle the multitude, he clothed voluptuous sensuality in the stately garment of the earnest muse, and was hailed with jubilation throughout his life. but the valise with which alone, according to the fairy-tale, one can enter upon the journey to immortality, was still lighter in his case. idealistic painting, as professed by cornelius, had skimmed all the cream from religious and mythological subjects; so kaulbach tried to give something more actual in its stead. he found this in the philosophy of history, in the images of epochs in the history of the world which were then so much in vogue, and handed his public, eager for knowledge, a printed programme upon which he had catalogued the gigantic thoughts and even weightier references which the picture was said to contain. as the masses were awed by the severity of the cornelian conception of forms, he softened it down with superficial calligraphic elegance: what was sturdy and angular in the former was by him changed into a coquettish effeminacy. this he effected by daubing his pictures, which were in no way colour conceptions, with insipid combinations of colour, and replaced with oleographs cornelius's illuminated monumental woodcuts. by these concessions to the picturesque he drove the axe into the tree which the designers of cartoons had planted. the part he plays is that of a man of compromise between cornelius and piloty; his frescoes are too sugary; his oil-paintings too faulty. it was he who buried the era of cartoons, although the obsequies were conducted with all pomp. a spiritual battle, an aerial battle, the "battle of the huns," is the first of his works. beneath, a real historical event; above, the same reproduced in the spiritual world. the battle is over; the field is hidden beneath the corpses of the slain; but the spirits continue the combat in mid-air, and strive to turn the occasion to account for a display of nudity. next came the "destruction of jerusalem," crammed with ingenious references, and elucidated with long, printed commentaries. this programme-painting played its trump card on the staircase of the berlin museum, where a space of feet by feet is occupied by "the intellectual manifestations of the historical _weltgeist_"; "the total evolution of culture with every people of every period in its principal historical phases"; those incidents "which, in the evolution of universal history, mark the important knots with which the closely entwined threads of the national dramas of the universe are bound together." the "battle of the huns," the "destruction of jerusalem," were included in the series; and to them were added the "tower of babel," the "rise of greece," the "crusades," and the "reformation." the whole of hegel's philosophy was reproduced on the walls. but as the pictures are not new through any novelty or greatness of their conception, we need certainly not enter into the "astounding profundity" of their philosophy. the eye is struck with mere compositions, built up according to certain formulas, and _tableaux vivants_, put together with more or less cleverness, theatrical in effect and crude in colour. of his other large pictures, the "naval battle at salamis" caused a special stir through its sinking harem. in his "nero" he contrasted the orgies of the romans of the decadence with the enthusiasm for death of the early christians. again, in his great cartoon in charcoal of "peter arbue," he inflated to monumental dimensions a drawing suitable for a comic paper. kaulbach is not an artist to be taken seriously. woltmann, who made the same observation twenty years ago, tried at least to vindicate the illustrator, and expressed his regret that a man who had the stuff in him of a german hogarth should unfortunately have been caught in the toils of the cornelian school. but this comparison does little justice to hogarth. there is nothing in the illustrations of kaulbach which many other artists could not have improved upon. in his "reynard the fox" he adapted, for the benefit of the german public, grandville's _scènes de la vie privée et publique des animaux_, published in . his illustrations for _éditions de luxe_ ("the women of goethe," etc.) marked the first steps of the road which ended in thuman. and thuman stands higher than kaulbach. the faint, unaccented drawing, the oval "beauty" of heads, declamatory and expressionless, the academic touch are common to both of them. but only with kaulbach do we find the penetrating perfume of the demi-monde, the voluptuous, satirical laughter which is not even stilled before goethe, the pandering sensuality which cannot touch the purest and tenderest figures in german poetry without using them as a pretext to fling nudities to the public like bones to a dog. in his "dance of death" suite, kaulbach turned into frivolity what rethel had before expressed solemnly and earnestly. like the two augurs, who could not meet without laughing, so at last the satirical designer began to laugh at his own monumental pictures. after completing in his series of mural paintings at the berlin museum his "apotheosis of the evolution of human culture," he explained in his friezes that the whole was, after all, nothing but a dustbin and a lumber-room. when he was commissioned to depict a suite of paintings for the upper walls of the new pinakothek at munich, the artistic life of that town, as glorified by king ludwig--a suite which the weather has since been kind enough to render almost invisible--he fulfilled his task by mocking at what he should have glorified. "all die meister kunstbahnbrecher, wie die herren selbst sich nennen, wahrlich widderköpfe sind sie, mauern damit einzurennen. mit dem loche in der mauer ist's noch lange nicht geschehen, da muss erst der held erscheinen, siegreich dadurch einzugehen. gegen jenes ungeheuer ziehen sie zu feld mit phrasen, wie die sieben schwaben einstmals ritterlich bekämpft den hasen. voran zieht der edle ritter schnorr, der künste don quixote, seine rosinante setzt er, statt des pegasus in trotte; heiliger hess, sein sancho pansa, du nicht liebst das offene streiten, und du lässt dich sachte, sachte, 'rab von deinem esel gleiten. was ist denn so grosses neues in der neuen kunst geschehen? nichts, als was sie nicht der aften, längst vergangnen abgesehen. wände ich auch lorbeerkränze all um diese alltagsfratzen, würden sie sie doch nur zieren zu bedecken hohle glatzen." this is the commentary written by kaulbach himself; and théophile gautier called the suite _un carnaval au soleil_. "the king in his youth spent millions in order to elevate art," says schwind; "and now in his old age he pays another thousand pounds in order to be laughed at for it." heine's loud, scornful laughter resounds over the grave of romantic literature; and so the "monumental period of german art" ends in self-derision. moreover, as the mural paintings of the new pinakothek, like the frescoes in the arcades and most of the other monumental products of the period, are falling into ruin, and only show traces of their past beauty in a few faint spots of colour not yet entirely effaced, it is quite clear that it was an inherent fallacy of cornelius to expect a _renovation_ of national german art from fresco painting. the venetians of the sixteenth century well knew why they did not take up fresco painting. monumental painting, as aimed at by cornelius, must remain an imported plant that cannot possibly thrive in a northern climate; and oil-painting, since the van eycks the medium and basis of art-culture among the teutonic races, took its revenge upon his one-sidedness and his michaelangelesque disdain, in the fact that at munich it had to be learnt again right from the beginning. [illustration: kaulbach. marguerite.] chapter vii the dÜsseldorfers on the rhine there existed a school of painting instead of a school of drawing, a fact which at that time placed düsseldorf next in importance to munich. wilhelm schadow, its first director, was lacking in any personal distinction as an artist, but he had received from his great father a tendency towards perfection of technique, which brought him and his school into direct opposition with the purely philosophical painters of the severe cornelian tradition, and which has even in our days been able to exercise an authoritative influence. in rome he was the only one of the nazarenes amenable to the french influence, while the others nervously held aloof from the members of the french academy. and this formal bent of his talent later gave him the qualifications of a sound teacher. immediately upon his arrival at düsseldorf, in november , he was escorted by a stately throng of students: carl friedrich lessing, julius hübner, theodor hildebrandt, carl sohn, h. mücke, and christian koehler, who were afterwards joined by eduard bendemann, ernest deger, and others. these became the mainstay of the celebrated old düsseldorf school, which was soon supported by the jubilant enthusiasm of its contemporaries. at the berlin exhibitions the new school of painting passed from one triumph to the other. young men fresh from school suddenly made names that were honoured throughout germany, by reason of the remarkable manner in which their works succeeded in expressing the sentimental romanticism of the time. the wars of liberty of , which had caused a gust of joyous enthusiasm to penetrate even into the peaceful seclusion of the nazarenes, were not, like the wars of , the outcome of careful calculation, but the result of a sudden burst of ardour, and the disillusion had now followed upon the enthusiasm. in , with the french bayonets gleaming outside the windows, and the french kettledrums drowning the sound of his voice, fichte delivered at the berlin university his famous speeches which sounded the réveillé for germany. at the same time kleist wrote his _hermannschlacht_: napoleon was to be treated as hermann had treated varus. "_was blasen die trompeten, husaren heraus_," pealed through the air; the song of "_got, der eisen wachsen liess_" rose heavenwards in brazen accords. and not long after, the same lions who had beaten the corsican at leipzig, and had with arndt conceived the idea of a great, united fatherland, had once more become the same easy-going people, drinking their beer and smoking their pipes in their little duodecimo principalities as of old. those dreary times, which saw no prospect of relief in their own days, must needs nourish a devotion to the past. that haughty antiquity, which had been possessed of the ideal to which the present had not been able to attain, became the object of a fanatical adoration. men lost themselves in the old storehouses of faded german reminiscences, and fled for inspiration to the times of a consolidated german empire. this return to the ruins of the past was a protest against the grey, colourless present. the patriotic frenzy of the poets of freedom changed into enthusiasm for the vanished glories of mediæval germany. they remembered with longing and yearning the days when the robber-knights ruled town and country from their strongholds. schenkendorff sang hymns inspired by the old cathedrals, rummaged with holy horror among the skeletons of knights and heroes in the chapel, and wrote a poem in memory of the thousandth anniversary of the death of charlemagne; arndt, the bard of the wars of freedom, violently attacked the "industrialism" of the time, declaiming against steam and machinery; zacharias werner composed his poem, "_das feldgeschrei sei: alte zeit wird neu_." this revival of romanticism opened up a wide field to science and poetry. the apotheosis of the old imperial times was made manifest amid fairy-like glamour. poetry grasped the pilgrim's staff, or rode with beauteous dames on milk-white palfreys through forest and glade. enchanted genii, elves, fairies, and goblins were encountered on the road. nowhere is there so sweet a scent of blossoms, so innocent a sound of children's merriment, as in tieck's delightful and dainty fairy-tales, or in the works of clemens brentano, those precious stories of father rhine, of the water-nymphs and the crystal castles at the bottom of the green current, pictures full of charming wilfulness, dreamily winsome, like summer evenings on the rhine. uhland sang, as once had sung the knightly poets with the golden harps-- "von gottesminne, von kühner helden muth, von lindem liebesinne, von süsser maiengluth." to this day we seem to peep between the weather-beaten castles, standing on their grey rocks along the rhine valley, into the realm of romance as into an enigma propounded by mountain and dale. rhine and romance! no spot in germany was better fitted to become the cradle of a romantic art than düsseldorf, the peaceful town on the legend-haunted banks of the green river. in the fifteenth century, in addition to the school of florence, where flowed a rich current of political and human life, where great buildings, monuments, and frescoes kept architects and sculptors and painters uniformly busied, there existed in the remote umbrian valleys, in the land of miracles and visions, that school of painting in oils which saw its only eternal ideal in the deep eyes and soft aspect of the madonna, and made the visionary aspirations of the soul, emotions, and sentiment the exclusive subject of their pictures. in the same manner, in the nineteenth century, we find in contrast with the munich school, with its numerous architectural products, its massive statuary, and the epic-dramatic fresco painting of cornelius--"wedding the german to the greek, and faust to helen"--that lyrico-sentimental düsseldorf school of painting which embraced madonnas and prophets, knights and robbers, gipsies and monks, water-nymphs and nuns with the same languishing tenderness. in matter and technique it completes the art of cornelius and the nazarenes; that of the munich master by its encouragement of oil-painting; that of the nazarenes by the stress which it lays upon the more worldly side of mediæval life, upon chivalry, and in a less degree upon that other pillar of mediævalism the church. the nazarenes are archæological and ascetic; the düsseldorf school is insipid in a modern way, feeble, colourless, and sentimental. count raczynski and friedrich von uechtritz have given us interesting descriptions of life at düsseldorf at that time, and their story reads like a chapter of tacitus' _germania_. "_grand dieu! bons et affectueux allemands!_" exclaimed a parisian critic of the count's book in sad emotion, and held up this virtuous german life, as an example worthy of imitation, to his compatriots, the decadents of fashionable artistic paris, fallen into modern luxury. undisturbed by the hum of a big city, and without any communication with its surroundings, the düsseldorf colony of artists lived its life of seclusion. the painters saw none but painters. they herded together in the studios, and the sole recreation in the intervals of their work was a visit to another studio. the whole of the day was devoted to painting; when the picture was complete it went to the art union; and the hours of tediousness were overcome with the assistance of a little intrigue. hildebrandt possessed the nucleus of a collection of beetles. lessing, the hunter, collected pipes and antlers, and only felt himself at home in the little room which he occupied with sohn when it assumed the appearance of a gamekeeper's cottage. convinced that politics were the ruin of character, they allowed no questions of the day to interfere with the calmness of their artistic life. few of them ever read a newspaper. in the year of revolution, , their sole interest in the events around them was concentrated in the fear that a war might disturb their idyllic life. the end of the day's work saw them in summer-time bent on a pilgrimage to the stockkämpchen, to refresh themselves with a cup of buttermilk, to play at bowls, or to enjoy a race among the cabbage patches of the garden. in winter they made a point of meeting at seven o'clock every saturday night at the inn for a literary reading. each taking his part they recited the dramas of tieck, of calderon, and lopez; or uechtritz read extracts from german history, the crusades, the period of the emperors, the riots of the hussites. every sunday night there met at schadow's a very distinguished intellectual circle, consisting of judge immermann (the reformer of the stage at düsseldorf), felix mendelssohn the composer, kortum, author of the _jobsiade_, and assessor von uechtritz, with their ladies. but the great gala-days were the theatrical performances which took place twice a week. under the leadership of immermann the theatre had become the place whence the young painters gathered their liveliest suggestions. some of them went even so far as to take part in amateur performances, conducted by immermann, and given in schadow's house, under the auspices of the whole of the distinguished society. and thus the pictures of this school were not conceived under the influence of life, but of the theatre. the düsseldorf artists were youths whose productions were not rooted in life, but in reading and culture; youths who always moved in good society, and who had passed through the great ordeals of life, but only on "the boards representing the universe." _theodor hildebrandt_ became the shakespeare of düsseldorf. the translation of the works of the english poet by schlegel had been published some time earlier, and immermann, in düsseldorf, had been the first to offer shakespeare a home on the german stage. the performances of his tragedies were regarded as red-letter days. during the three years of immermann's leadership ( - ), _hamlet_, _macbeth_, _king john_, _king lear_, _the merchant of venice_, _romeo and juliet_, _othello_, and _julius cæsar_ were performed on fifteen occasions in all.[ ] to give the titles of these plays is at once to characterise the subject-matter of hildebrandt's paintings. he very often had a hand in the staging of the plays, and is said to have shown a remarkable histrionic talent in the performances at schadow's. he rarely went to other poets for his inspiration, as in his "pictures from faust" and his "beware of the water nymph," where he honoured goethe, and in his "brigands," where he may have been inspired by one of the many variations on _rinaldo rinaldini_ that flooded the market at the time, or perhaps also by byron, whose influence was very marked on the düsseldorf school. goethe's _frauengestalten_, more especially the leonoras, were reproduced in oils by old father _sohn_. _eduard steinbruck_ painted genevièves, red riding hoods, elves, and undines, after tieck and fouqué; _h. stilke's_ "pictures from the crusades" introduced walter scott to the german public. uhland's first ballads had brought into fashion the damsels who from the ramparts of their castles wave a sad farewell to the lonely shepherds; the ancestral tombs, in which the last knight of his race takes his everlasting rest; the lists, where melancholy heroes stab themselves. his _love-song of the shepherd to the shepherdess_-- "und halt ich dich in den armen auf freien bergeshöhn, wir sehn in die weiten lande und werden doch nicht gesehn," gave bendemann the motive for his picture of the same name. young lessing had to thank uhland for the subject of his first success, "the sorrowing royal pair," which at one bound made his name one of the most honoured in german art. "wohl sah ich die eltern beide ohne der kronen licht im schwarzen trauerkleide, die jungfrau sah ich nicht." after bürger he painted a leonora--of course in so-called mediæval costume, in order "to avoid the unpicturesque attire in fashion during the seven years' war"; and at the same time as hildebrandt, "a mourning brigand," who, in the full light of the evening sun, sits brooding on a rock over the depravity of the world. that all of them were frantically enthusiastic for the hohenstaufens is due to the publication of von rainer's history in , which took a greater hold of the public than did schiller's _history of the thirty years' war_, and inspired numerous dramas. [illustration: hildebrandt. the sons of edward.] [illustration: steinbruck. elves.] even the idyllic and touching scenes from the old testament and the hebrew elegies are easily traced back to theatrical inspirations. with the exception of the frescoes of the casa bartholdy, the subjects of which were selected with an eye to the religious belief of their purchaser, the nazarenes found all the subject-matter they wanted in the new testament. the passion of our lord was unable to inspire the düsseldorf school. as compared to the few christian paintings by w. schadow, and the dreamy madonnas of deger, ittenbach, and little perugino mintrop, we find a far greater number of scenes from the old testament, which at the time gave birth to numerous dramas. hübner, always inclined to idyllic and melancholy scenes, painted ruth and boaz, his first great picture, which established his reputation. after klingemann had utilised the whole life of moses by turning it into a theatrically effective sequence, christian koehler scored a success with his "moses hidden in the bulrushes" and his "finding of moses," and then, incited by raupach's "semiramis," abandoned his biblical heroines for oriental ones. theodor hildebrandt took tieck's "judith" as an inspiration for his picture of this jewish heroine. kehren's "joseph reveals himself to his brethren" was begun after the opera _joseph in egypt_ had been performed at düsseldorf. bendemann, in , played his trump card with his "lament of the jews," now in the cologne museum, after byron had made his propaganda, suggested by the sad lives of the children of israel, and friedrich von uechtritz had caused his drama, _the babylonians in jerusalem_, to be performed, ending as it does with the sending of the jews into captivity in babylon-- "wein' über die die weinen fern in babel, ihr tempel brach, ihr land ward, ach! zur fabel! wein'! es erstart der heil 'gen harfe ton, im haus jehovas haust der spötter hohn." and his oil-paintings of a later date, "jeremiah on the ruins of jerusalem" ( ), now in the german emperor's collection, and the "sending of the jews into captivity in babylon" ( ), in the berlin national gallery, were variations on the same theme. the productions of the düsseldorf school were thus in perfect harmony with the programme issued by püttmann in his book. pictorial representations may be taken from two ranges, history or poetry; the painter may choose an historical fact as a subject for representation, or reproduce in visible form the rhythmically shaped fancy of a stranger. history shows him figures full of expression, and even a less powerful artist will find it possible to make a true copy of them. if the painter works from poems his representations are sure to meet with approval, as they render the beautiful and the attractive in visible shape. "but the greatest success lies in store for those works which depict in harmony with the mood of the times historical or poetical performances which express human suffering in its various stages, from homely and everyday griefs to the silent sorrow of irretrievable catastrophe." [illustration: sohn. the two leonoras.] thus the scale of sorrow from sad melancholy to painful suffering became the speciality of the düsseldorf school. at the foot of the scale we find the pictures which "represent the common, yet keen sorrow of parents at the death or the sad future of their children." lessing's "royal pair" mourn the death of their daughter; hagar grieves because she is forced to abandon her son ishmael in the desert; genoveva, because the roe is so long in coming to the rescue. the mortal grief of love is represented by lessing's "leonora"; grief of love at separation by sohn's and hildebrandt's pictures of "romeo and juliet." even the murderers of the "sons of edward" mourn at their crime when they see the children-- "girdling one another within their innocent alabaster arms: their lips were four red roses on a stalk, which in their summer beauty kissed each other." job grieves at the downfall of his house; hübner's "ruth," because her weeping mother-in-law entreats her to depart; stilke's "pilgrim in the desert," because his horse has died of thirst; plüddeman's "columbus," because he knows himself to be unworthy of the grace of god which enabled him to discover america; kiederich's "charles v", because he has retired too early to his monastery, and is plagued by the ticking of his watch. the hohenstaufens, of course, appealed more to the pity of the public: the misfortunes of the beautiful enzin, of manfred and conrad, gave birth to a sentiment of profoundest sadness. even brigands mourn at the depravity of the world. the age had come to despise its own philistine situation so deeply that it looked up to the brigands, the adversaries of civil order, as to representatives of justice. all depravity, it was said, originated with the public functionaries, and to the noble brigands was allotted the task of revolutionising existing things. their ally in this was to be the poacher. at a time when a revision of the game-laws was the sole timid wish the people ventured to lay before its princes, it was only logical that the poacher should be looked upon as the victim of injustice, as the rescuer of the small man from the claws of feudal despotism. the numerous pictures that glorify him, as he falls weltering in his blood beneath the guns of the gamekeepers, make pendants to raupach's "smugglers," and to the rest of the highly esteemed literature which turned the life of the poacher into sentimental dramas or novels. [illustration: lessing. the sorrowing royal pair.] fortunately we, in our days, find great difficulty in entering into the spirit which gave birth to these productions. a world lies between it and the present, just as between the germany of to-day and the germany of . men of the younger generation, who were still at school when bismarck spoke his word of blood and iron, can hardly understand how this modern, realistic germany can have been, two generations ago, a sentimental germany. now the significance of the düsseldorf school in the history of civilisation lies in the fact that they are the real representatives of that age of sentimentality. a generation that melted away in tearful dreamings must needs enthusiastically recognise its own flesh and blood in those knights and damsels, squires and pages, monks and nuns, who, infinitely amorous or infinitely religious, were all infinitely sentimental; and things that now only evoke a smile or a shrug must needs have moved them to tears. look where you will, you meet the same world. it hung on the walls, it displayed itself in engravings, lithographs, and coloured prints; if one lay down for a siesta, one found a lovelorn knight and damsel or a praying nun stitched on the cushion; if one put one's foot on a carpet, one trod upon noble hunting-dames on horseback, falcon on wrist; one carried them in one's pockets on cigar-cases and handkerchiefs; the traveller and the cheap tripper took them abroad on their knapsacks. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ bendemann. the lament of the jews.] technically, the pictures of this school were not without their merits. "the greatness of michael angelo" may not have been bendemann's, and sohn's carnations are far removed from "the melting colouring of titian." but as opposed to the one-sidedness to which fresco painting at munich was given up, the encouragement of oil-painting at düsseldorf must be looked upon as praiseworthy. these painters were the first in germany to try again to learn how to paint in oils. the extreme artistic clumsiness that had reigned under cornelius was followed by a period in which, under schadow, earnest studies and serious work were devoted to an effort again to master a technical medium. their friendly emulation led to surprising progress, which assured to the düsseldorf school a technical superiority over all the other german schools of the period. [illustration: sohn. the rape of hylas.] if, nevertheless, their pictures have not maintained their position as vital works of art, it is due to the fact that they were produced under the pressure of that mechanical idealism which makes all their productions so utterly unattractive to us. the ideal "line of beauty" has turned the figures into bloodless shadows and washed-out theatrical forms. as philosophy was to cornelius, so to the düsseldorfers was poetry their noah's ark. the interest aroused by the poet was their ally; the breath of the wind that set their boat afloat; the general poetical tendency made up for the deficiency in artistic interest. had it not been for the support of the poets, their sugary, insipid figures would have from the beginning been unable to hold their own. for after having been retouched by "idealism," nothing vital remained in those romantic kings, fantastic knights, jews, and stage princesses; nothing particular and characteristic in their generalisation, nothing generally human. with them a king is always an heroic prince in black harness, a woolly beard, and a scarlet cloak. a queen is represented as proud and dark, or tender and fair-haired. in the much-beloved "couples" from poems, characterisation goes no further than general contrasts: the _brunette_ in red attire with white sleeves; the tender _blonde_ with the complementary garment of pale violet; the one with luxurious _embonpoint_, the other languidly slender--men brown, women white, youths rosy. knights wear silvery helmets with or without plumes; now with open, now with shut visor; sometimes they sit on poetic palfreys, now of slender, now of sturdy build. the only impressions they are subject to may be interpreted with the assistance of the plaster bust: honour, fidelity, love. and as sentiment and heroism are national virtues of the germans, they are bound to show sentimental expression whilst killing their adversaries. even the brigands are generalised lay figures. the düsseldorf ideal of beauty aimed at a certain tender, vaguely graceful swing of outline that anxiously avoided all manly and strong, energetic and characteristic expression, all that could remind one of nature. they rejected leonardo da vinci's advice, to tug at the nipple of mother nature, but looked upon her merely as their aunt; and for this, despised nature took her revenge by making their figures shapeless and phantom-like. and as their "dread of painted stupidities" did not once bring them to make bold mistakes, we can neither praise nor censure their pictures, cannot enjoy them or take offence at them, but look at them _sine ira et studio_, with a lukewarm feeling of utter indifference. footnote: [ ] as is still the case in most of the german theatres, the programme changed every night. two or three consecutive performances of one play remain a rarity. chapter viii the legacy of german romanticism it was reserved for two younger men to reach the aim that hovered in the far distance before cornelius and the düsseldorfians. and, by one of fortune's remarkable freaks, the greatest german monumental painter of the nineteenth century came from the düsseldorf, the greatest romanticist from the munich school. _alfred rethel_ was twenty-four years old when he received the commission to paint the frescoes in the _kaisersaal_ at aachen, and had previously worked in the düsseldorf academy, and then with veit at frankfort. but the pictures are suggestive neither of his düsseldorfian nor of his nazarene training. the deeds of charlemagne, the ancestor of the german imperial dynasties, are nobly, and, at the same time, vigorously embodied in them. rethel had studied the harsh strength of his albrecht dürer, but only as a kindred spirit studies his kin. neither cornelius nor schnorr has depicted the old german heroic might and the vanished imperial grandeur, the great past, the iron middle ages, with such notable traits. how plain in his heroic greatness stands the mighty conqueror of the saxons by the overthrown pagan idols; how simply and majestically does he march into conquered pavia. what an inexorable and irresistible warrior he seems, as he rages amongst the moors who flock round the cars of their idols; and with what grave phantom dignity does he gaze in death upon the young emperor otto, who has forced his way into his vault, and kneels trembling before the lifeless frame of his great forefather. there is no vestige of pose, nothing superfluous; everywhere simplicity, compression, lucidity. only what is necessary is inscribed here, in the lapidary style. no meaningless phrase interrupts his narrative; the inner meaning is never sacrificed to any external beauty of line; his forms like his thoughts are severe and precise. he draws with a sure hand in crisp lines, like a writer who aims at the utmost brevity and so lays especial emphasis on his sentences and words. the self-revelation in these pictures is admirable--the illuminating clearness with which they tell what they have to say without the aid of any commentator, the directness with which they present in an artistic aspect the substance to be given. and with this substance the painting corresponds. it is to be deplored that rethel himself could carry out in colour only four of his designs, and that the completion of the rest was entrusted to the painter kehren, who spoilt by his effort after charm of colour the collective impression of the series. the pictures painted by rethel himself are, in the simplicity of their colouring, in remarkable accordance with the powerful style of his drawing. rethel's _painting_ has something stern and grey, bare and sombre. he belongs to the stylists whose implement is rather charcoal than the brush; but he had, although no colourist, a free command of colour, and never committed any fault of taste, but with a remarkably sure instinct used colour in the mass, simply, but yet with significant effect. he might have been the man to create a monumental german art. a tragic destiny! heinrich von kleist, the greatest german poet of the post-classical age, who was chosen for so high a vocation, the creation of a new dramatic style, shot himself; and the giant, alfred rethel, was to end in madness. barely forty years old was he when he walked by the warder's side in the courtyard at düsseldorf, picking up flint-stones, a poor, simple madman. only two series of designs ensure, apart from the frescoes at aix, the immortality of his name: "hannibal's passage over the alps," and the "dance of death." as a draughtsman, just as a painter of frescoes, he is the same titan, sounds the same stern, manly note. here the heroic hosts of the carthaginians stand anxious, yet resolved, at the foot of the grim alpine pass; steep, beetling cliffs, precipice, ice and snow, tower before them. now the climb begins, and the struggle with the fierce, barbaric folk of the mountains, who swing themselves on leaping-pole like wild animals over the gaping crevices in the ice. yonder are men, horses, an elephant, hurled into the abyss; some have spitted themselves on jagged branches of trees in their fall, others twine themselves together in horrible coils; at last the most advanced have reached the heights, and the heroic figure of the commander points out proudly to them, as they breathe once more, the plains of italy. over his second work there broods the shadow of that mental darkness which was to surround him. when, in the year , the political storm burst over the soil of europe, rethel's fantasy reaped a rich harvest. he drew his "dance of death," represented death the leveller, who drives poor fools behind the barricades. the ghostly and spectral, that horror of death that breaks in upon us in the midst of life, had been the propensity of german art since dürer and holbein. like them, rethel loved the world of the diabolical, and similarly chose for his embodiment of it the sturdy, simple contours of the old german wood engravings. death as the hero of revolution makes a commencement. there he rides as the town-executioner, a cigar between his lips, his scythe in his hand. he sits shambling in the saddle, his smock and tall boots dangle on his bony figure. dressed like a charlatan, he excites the people before the tavern against the rulers, that he may earn his harvest at the barricade. he himself stands firm and proud, like a general on the field of battle, the flag in his hand, and the bullets of the soldiers whistling harmlessly through his bony ribs. but the artisans who follow him are not invulnerable as he is; the grape-shot sweeps them down off the barricade. the contest is over; triumphant, with a wreath of bay round his skull, mocking venom in his glance, death rides with his banner unfurled across the barricade, where the dying writhe in their gaunt death-struggle, and children bewail their fallen fathers. the plate, "death as the assassin," takes up the story of the outbreak of cholera at a masked ball in paris. in terrified haste the dancers and musicians leave the hall. only one mummy-like spectre, the cholera himself, a shape of horror, keeps his ground, as though turned to stone, and holds the triumphant scourge like a sceptre in his bony hand. death, in a domino, with two bones for a fiddle, plays a call to the dance; and beneath the awful sounds of his tune the people, stretched on the ground, in sick convulsions, grinning with distorted features, behind their jesters' masks, twist and turn. [illustration: rethel. the emperor otto at the tomb of charlemagne.] there is something of th. a. hofmann's wild fantasy of the ague-fit in this picture,--something morbid, satanic, that suggests félicien rops; yet, at the same time, something so pithy and virile, and in form so compressed, well-balanced, and correct, that it brings the old germans, too, to our recollection. and the reconciliation with which the series ends is pathetic. in the high steeple, lit by the rays of the setting sun, the grey old bellringer, his worn hands clasped in prayer, has fallen quietly asleep in his armchair. a calm peace rests upon his good, old, devout countenance. the thin hands, with their marks and furrows, tell a long tale of hard work, sorrow, and longing for rest. and the weary veteran has made a pilgrimage for the health of his poor soul, as prove the pilgrim's hat and staff by the wall; and now death has really come, the well-known presence indeed, but this time with no grin of mockery, rather in profound pity. in his ingenious manner of giving an expression of mockery, cold indifference, or compassion to the head of the skeleton, rethel stands on a level with holbein. to the old ringer, death, who before had grinned so diabolically, is a gentle and trusted friend. quietly and pensively he performs the task that the old man has done so often when he attended the departure of some pilgrim of earth with the solemn notes of his bell. rethel himself had still to drag through many years in an obscure night of the spirit before for him, too, death, as the friend, rang the knell. [illustration: rethel. the destruction of the pagan idols.] and now for him who was the most admirable of them all, lady adventure's true knight. "master _schwind_, you are a genius and a romanticist." this stereotyped compliment was paid by king ludwig to the painter on each occasion that, without buying anything of him, he visited his studio. and with equal regularity schwind, when he had sat down again at his easel, after the royal visit, to smoke his pipe, is said to have muttered something extremely disloyal. in this trait the whole schwind is already revealed,--free from all ambition, every inch an artist. w. h. riehl has described a series of such episodes, which one must know in order to understand schwind, that highly gifted child of nature, who separates himself from the group of philosophical, "meditative" artists of his age, both as an individual and as an audacious, original genius of effervescent wit. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ rethel. hannibal's passage over the alps.] when an æsthetic once hailed him as "the creator of an original, german kind of ideal, romantic art," schwind repeated very slowly, weighing each word: "'an original, german kind of ideal, romantic art.' my dear sir, to me there are only two kinds of pictures, the sold and the unsold; and to me the sold are always the best. those are my entire æsthetics." or a noble amateur comes to him with the request that he would take him just for a few days into his school, and instruct him especially in his masterly art of drawing in pencil. whereupon schwind: "it does not require a day for that, my dear baron; i can tell you in three minutes how i do it, i can give you all the desired information at once. here lies my paper,--kindly remark it, i buy it of bullinger, residenz strasse; these are my pencils, a. w. faber's, i get them from andreas kaut, kaufinger strasse; from the same firm i have this indiarubber too, but i very seldom use it, so that i use this penknife all the more, to sharpen the pencils; it's from tresch, dienersgasse, and very good value. now, i have all these things lying together on the table, and a few thoughts in my head as well; then i sit down here and begin to draw. and now you know all that i can tell you." again he asks "to be decorated with an order," because he "is ashamed to mix in such a naked condition with his bestarred confrères," and after the bestowal of the desired decoration he says: "i wore it only once, at the last new year's levée, but i vowed at the same time that six horses should not drag me there again. before, there was at any rate a beautiful queen there, and then the court ladies laughed at one; but amongst men only, the stupidity of it is not to be endured." when he grumbles over commissions which have been given to others, and adds good-temperedly, "indeed, i'm an envious fellow"; when he paints the most delicate pictures and then growls, "what am i to do with the things, if nobody buys them?" when he indulges in outbursts of wrath, and a minute later has forgotten again the abusive words which the others spitefully bring up against him years afterwards,--then here, too, his happy humour forces its way everywhere, that divine naïveté which forms the soul of his and of all true art. [illustration: rethel. death at the masked ball.] [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ rethel. death the friend of man.] schwind remains a personality by himself--the last of the romanticists, and one of the most amiable manifestations in german art. he was free from the malady of that sham romanticism which sought the salvation of art in the resurrection of the middle ages, misunderstood, and grasped sentimentally, and as it were by stencil. he was spiritually permeated by that which had given romanticism the capacity to exist: the sense of that forgotten and imperishable world of beauty which it has again discovered. the others sought for the "blue flower," schwind found it; resuscitated in all its faëry beauty that "fair night of enchantment which holds the mind captive." he incorporated the romantic idea in painting as weber did in music, and his works, like the _freischütz_, will live for ever. many a man listened to him holding forth upon water-nymphs, gnomes, and tricksy kobolds, as of beings of whose existence he appeared to have no doubt whatever. on one occasion, while out walking near eisenach in the annathal, a friend laughingly observed to him that the landscape really looked as if gnomes had made the pathway and had had their dwellings there. "don't you believe it was so? _i_ believe it," answered schwind in all seriousness. he _lived_ in the world of legend and fairy-tale. if ever a fairy stood beside the cradle of a mortal man, assuredly there was one standing by schwind's; and all his life long he believed in her and raved about her. born in the land where neidhart of neuenthal had sung and the parson of the kahlenberg had dwelt, to his eyes germany was overshadowed with ancient teutonic oaks: for him, elves hovered about watersprings and streams, their white robes trailing behind them through the dewy grass; a race of gnomes held their habitation on the mountain heights, and water-nymphs bathed in every pool. in him part of the middle ages came back to life, not in livid, corpse-like pallor, but fanned by the revivifying breath of the present day. for that is what is noteworthy about schwind; he is a romanticist, yet at the same time a genuine, modern child of vienna. there are three things in each of which vienna stands supreme: hers are the fairest women, the sweetest songs, and the most beautiful waltzes. the atmosphere of vienna sends forth a soft and sensual breath which encircles us as though with women's arms; songs and dances slumber in the air, waiting only for a call to be awakened. vienna is a place for enjoyment rather than for work, for pensive dreaming rather than for sober wakefulness of mind. moritz schwind was a child of this city of beautiful women, songs, and dances, as may be observed in the feminine nature of his art, in its melody and rhythm: in music, indeed, it had its source. in song-singing, bell-ringing vienna it was difficult for him to guess in what direction his talents lay; but all his life long he kept an open eye for the charms of beautiful womanhood. no artist of that time has created lovelier forms of women, beings with so great a charm of maidenly freshness and modest grace. instead of the goddesses, heroines, and nun-like female saints, whose appearance dated from the italy of the cinquecento, schwind depicted modern feminine charm. the group of ladies in "ritter kurt" is, even to the movement of their gloved fingers, graceful in the modern sense. he was a painter of love--a breath of walter von der vogelweide's ideal perfection of womanhood pervades his pictures. "durchsüsset und geblümet sind die reinen frauen, es ward nie nichts so wonnigliches anzuschauen, in lüften, auf erden, noch in allen grünen auen." schwind, too, painted frescoes, and in them he is very unequal. all his life long he complained of the lack of important commissions; it was fortunate for him that he did not get more of them. such a painter as he can execute no orders but his own,--just as good poems do not come to order. a long list of wall paintings--the tieck room and the figure-frieze in the habsburg hall of the new palace at munich, the frescoes in the kunsthall and in the hall of assembly of the upper house at karlsruhe, those in the castle of hohenschwangau, even the theatre pieces in the loggia and in the foyer of the vienna opera house--could be easily struck out of schwind's work, without detriment to his reputation. only when the subject permitted him to strike a simple note of fairy music was he charming even in his wall-paintings, and therefore those which depict scenes from the life of st. elizabeth in the wartburg are rightly the most celebrated. like rethel in the field of the heroic, so schwind in that of romantic legend reached the goal which the former kept before his eyes, for the revivifying of the time when there was an enthusiasm for fresco painting. his paintings are poor in colour, motley, magic-lantern views in the style of the heraldically treated figures seen in the frescoes and stained glass of the romanesque and early gothic middle ages, and yet in every line as delightful as the man himself. nowhere do we find glaring contrasts, nowhere any violent agitation in the expression of the faces. it is by the avoidance of all landscape accessories, and by a hardly noticeable change in the simple plant-ornamentation in the background, that the events represented are made to lose touch with actual reality. in the first picture, bright-hued birds flit here and there among the rose-branches forming the decorative work; in that which treats of st. elizabeth's expulsion, the wartburg rises in the background, while little singing angels are perched upon the boughs of the bare winter-stripped trees that overlook the miserable cell in which st. elizabeth dies. a touch of the true-heartedness of the ancient teuton, a breath of peacefulness, permeates schwind's wartburg pictures like the waft of an angel's wings. [illustration: moritz schwind. _graphische künste._] schwind, like rethel, is numbered among the few artists of that period who were able to preserve their absolute simplicity against the great painters of italy. "i went into the sistine chapel," he says of his journey to rome, "gazed upon michael angelo's work, and sauntered back home to work at my 'ritter kurt.' i take the greatest possible pleasure in my present picture, although the subject is absolutely crazy. i love to paint trees and rocks and old walls, and i have put plenty of them into it, besides a fellow on horseback and in full armour. what does it matter? _one must work according to one's natural capacity. even at the time when i was studying at munich i came to the conclusion that that of which the mind of itself takes hold, and that which takes hold of it, is the one only right thing for every man who has a vocation. art consists of this unconscious taking hold and being taken hold of. deus in nobis._ and therefore the young artist will do well to be careful in visiting the museums. you go to the galleries where the works of the great masters are to be seen. there you see, all at once and all together in confusion, works of every school and of every era. it is extremely likely that you are overwhelmed by the mass, and beauties of every kind, belonging to tendencies and epochs altogether diverse, shake the ground under your budding vocation, and like fifty various climates influencing a single plant, arrest a growth which is possible only in one, and that a favourable one. _the imitation of the italians in especial can as a rule have only the effect of estranging us from our own individuality_, a fact which was once again fully borne in upon me when i saw overbeck's new altar-piece in the cathedral of cologne. it may sound severe and uncalled-for from me, but _every man who has forgotten his mother-tongue is tottering on his feet. the imitation of foreigners is the dangerous blind alley into which our art has betaken itself_. when i exhibited 'ritter kurt' people said, 'it is old german,' and forthwith it stood condemned, as if that were a disgrace, and as if one should not rather have saluted the fact with joy, as the right thing for us germans. the art of painting which i follow is the german, and glass-painting must be taken as its foundation." [illustration: schwind. from the wartburg frescoes.] in schwind one might imagine an old german master of the race of albrecht altdorfer come to life again. in the small, simple pictures of landscape and fairy-tale, which count schack has collected in his private gallery for the quiet and devout enjoyment of thousands, he has given us his best work as a painter. yet even _his_ pictures have the failings of his time. compared with dürer, he seems like a gifted amateur; there are manifold empty, dead spaces to be observed among his figures; their action is at times misconceived and puppet-like; and his sense of colour was always limited. one may be permitted to look forward to some master, at the head of a coming epoch in art, who shall combine with schwind's german fairy imagination the sensuous, dashing colour-elf that possessed boecklin. there might a school of art arise, to follow for the future the path which franz stuck has struck out. as to technique, schwind was a child of the cartoon era; as regards tenderness of feeling, he is a modern. it is difficult to persuade a non-german of schwind's greatness, in presence of the _pictures_; but when they are reduced to black-and-white they appeal to every one. the heliogravure enables one to imagine what the original does not show; it incites the soul to further poetic creation, it announces what schwind would be were he alive to-day. an elfland kingdom of enchantment, full of genuine poetry and beauty, opens out before us; a fairy garden, where the "blue flower" pours forth the whole of its sense-benumbing perfume. count von gleichen; the boy's miraculous horn; the mountain spirit rübezahl, wandering along through the wild mountain forest; the hermits; the elves' dance; the erlking; the knight and the water nymph,--they are flooded with all the enchantment of romanticism, they possess deep feeling without mawkishness, the old-german note of fairy legend and hans memlinc's childlike simplicity, yet at the same time the life of the present day, full of feeling and rich in delicate shades. how strong and brave are the men; how tender, noble, and charming the women! what a modest, maidenly art it is! just as its master was an innocent, harmless, and joyous being. [illustration: schwind. from the wartburg frescoes.] his works, in comparison with those of his contemporaries, who were devising systems by means of which art should be brought back to the classical, bear the stamp of naïve creations in which no hypocrisy, no decorative nothingness finds expression. as against the erudite treatises of the cornelius school, they preached for the first time the doctrine, that in works of art what is important is not the quantity of learning displayed therein, but the quality of the feeling exhibited. with all their inequalities, all their incorrectness, all their weak points, they are inspired, sung, dreamed, and not put together in cold blood according to recipes: in them is the pulsation of a human heart, a tender human heart full of delicate feeling. this it is which constitutes his magical attraction to-day, which makes him the firm bond of connection between the moderns. he was no imitator, no soulless calligraphist performing laborious school exercises after the manner of the old masters; he spoke the language of his time. he was one of the first who at that time laid aside the prejudice against modern costume, and in his "symphony" turned to artistic account, in one fantastic whole, even franz lachner's frockcoat and fräulein hetzenecker's modern society toilette. "if you may paint a man hidden in an iron stove--what is called a knight in armour--you may still more permissibly paint a man in a frockcoat. in general, one can paint what one will, provided always that one wills what one can." and it was only by means of this present-day temper that romanticism could find so full-toned an expression in his works. only because he was truly a citizen of the present day and felt its blood beating in his veins, could he feel the congenial elements of the past. to him the old-time legends were no antiquarian, erudite, pedantic lumber; they were a part of himself, and he interpreted them in more childlike simplicity of manner and with more delicate feeling than any artist of former times, because he observed them with the eye of the present age, with an eye made keen with longing. just as in his "wedding journey" he raised all reality into the poetry of purest romance, so is his romanticism saturated with a sense of reality charged with memories of home. out of his fairy-tale pictures is breathed a charming fragrance of the long-vanished days of earth's first springtide, and yet for that very reason a breath of the most modern décadence. he is distinguished from marées and burne-jones, from puvis de chavannes and gustave moreau, by a very unmodern attribute--he is bursting with health. he is still naïvely childlike, free from that elegiac melancholy, that temper of weary resignation, which the end of the nineteenth century first brought into the world. [illustration: schwind. wieland the smith.] [illustration: _neft, helio._ schwind. from the story of the seven ravens.] yet schwind was one of the first to feel and give expression to that modern sense of longing desire which turns back from a nervous, colourless age, from the prosiness of everyday life, towards a vanished saturnian era, when man still lived at peace and undisturbed in happy union with nature. for even this proclaims him our contemporary, that the temper of his pictures develops itself from the landscape. a landscape painter through and through--almost in boecklin's sense, who transformed the temper of nature into the contemplation of living beings--he spoke of the rest and peace of german forests, of that hour of summer's night when no wind blows, no leaflet moves, when to the solitary wanderer in the woods the mists rising from the meadows are transformed into white veils of the elves, and the gold-rimmed waves of the sea into the yellow hair of mermaids frolicking in the moonlight to the magic notes of their golden harps. he felt and loved his landscapes rather than studied them, yet they are saturated with an entirely modern sentiment for nature. no german, at that time, had caught and understood the interweaving of the forest boughs with such intimate familiarity. the fresh sunshine of the morning breaks through the light green of the young beeches, and leaps from bough to bough, transforming the glittering dewdrops into diamonds, and the beetle, creeping comfortably over the soft moss, into gold and precious stones. "_da gehet leise nach seiner weise der liebe herrgott durch den wald_" ("the dear god holy, he passeth slowly, as his wont is, through the wood"). with a few boldly drawn lines and light colours we are transported into the midst of the forest world, and all around us opening buds and verdurous green, sweet scents, and the murmur of leaves. "when one has set one's love and joy on a beautiful tree so fully," he said to ludwig richter, "one depicts all one's love and joy with it, and then the tree looks quite different from an ass's fine daub of what he thinks it should be." [illustration: _albert, helio._ schwind. a hermit leading horses to a pool.] only so intimate a connection with nature could enable schwind to imagine landscapes, which in their virginal old-world mood form at once the echo of the figures and of their actions. these green meadows and flower-besprent hills, these gloomy wooded slopes, these smooth valleys through which glittering waters glide murmuring along, are fit and suitable dwelling-places for the delicate fabulous beings of the flower-entwined old fairy legends. schwind _lived_ with nature. he gave the name of tanneck (fir-tree corner) to the little country house which he built for himself on the starnberger see, and the fresh scent of pinewood, the rustling sound of german forests, pour forth from his pictures. like young siegfried, he understood the language of birds, and went eavesdropping to hear what the pine trees whispered to one another. [illustration: schwind. the wedding journey.] still freer, more spontaneous, and lighter than in his oil paintings was his touch in his water-colours, in which the colour is only breathed over the forms like a delicate vapour; and quite especially in his illustrations--so far as the word may be employed with respect to him, for he never illustrated, he gave shape to his own thoughts, and that only which moved his innermost being he brought fully formed before one's eye. the _bilderbogen_ and the _fliegende blätter_ of munich obtained from him witty and humorous inventions, such as "the almond tree," "puss in boots," "the peasant and the donkey," "herr winter," and "the acrobat games." his fairest legacy consists of three cyclic works: "cinderella," "the seven ravens," and "the beautiful melusina"; wherein he glorified with praise the beauty and fidelity of women, and their capacity for self-sacrifice. "cinderella," which appeared in , at the munich exhibition, is a fairy-tale, than which poet has seldom, indeed, narrated a chaster, tenderer, or more fragrant. in followed the touching story of the good sister who releases her brothers by dint of unspeakable suffering and endurance, to-day the priceless pearl among the gems of the weimar collection. for twenty years, as he said, the work had been in his thoughts. so far back as in he wrote to genelli: "i believe that it will give something which may please people who have a sense for love and faithfulness, and for a touch of the power of enchantment." when an acquaintance of his gazed upon it with dismay, and ingenuously asked for whom the thing was intended, and whither it was to go, schwind turned his penetrating, flashing little eyes upon him, and then said: "do you know, i painted that for myself; it is the dream of my life; no one shall buy it; some day i shall give it to a friend." it is an imperishable work, full of grace, modesty, and charm. schwind takes the story up at the fateful moment when the lonely maiden, who is determined to release her enchanted brothers by assiduous spinning and constant silence, is discovered by a hunting party. there, amid the enchantment of the forest solitude, she sits in the hollow of a tree and spins away at the seven shirts, to free her seven brothers. thus the king's son catches sight of her. the fire of love kindles in his eyes. in one long kiss the maiden gives herself to him. the wedding takes place, and like another st. elizabeth she is seen standing, soon afterwards, distributing alms to starving beggars. yet, meanwhile, she has fallen under suspicion owing to her continuous silence; even her husband becomes distrustful, because in the quiet of night he has observed that she is not resting by his side, but is quietly up and spinning. and the catastrophe comes when the silent queen gives birth to twins, who, to the horror of all around, fly off in the form of ravens. tranquil and affectionate, the young mother awaits her fate. then follow the sentence of the vehm-tribunal, the pathetic parting from her husband, the preparation for death. there is only one hour more to pass by before the seven years are over and the spellbound brothers set free. the good fairy appears in the air, hour-glass in hand, and brings solace to the hard-pressed heroine. the beggars, too, whose benefactress she had been, bring help, and hold the gate of the dungeon in force. so the time runs out, the spell is broken, and the brothers hasten, on milk-white horses, to save their sister from the stake. in schwind's marvellous drawings the story passes quickly on, stroke by stroke, deeply moving and soul-stirring in its dramatic force. the "beautiful melusina" was the kiss of the water-nymph, with which romanticism led her faithful knight to his death, only to disappear together with him out of german art. "the winter has dealt me a sore blow; i shall never be able to do anything more." carl maria von weber and uhland had already gone before; schwind was lying on his sick-bed when the german victories created a german fatherland. he learned, however, all the long series of glorious tidings that came from the field of war, saw the tumultuous joy and the dazzling sea of fire which surged through munich in january , and heard the joyful news that germany was at last united. then he had a glass of champagne poured out for him, and drank it to the new empire and the future of the nation. in the middle of a wood of lofty beeches in bernrieder park, on the starnberger see, there stands a small rotunda, within is a prattling fountain, right round the walls runs a frieze, depicting the legend of the "beautiful melusina." it is schwind's monument. with him german romanticism perished; reality itself had now become so marvellous. when, in , hübner had to paint a figure of germania for a page in king ludwig's album, he depicted a queenly woman, prone on the ground, with her face in the dust, amidst a desolate landscape and under a cloudy sky. the crown has fallen from her head and a skull lies by her side, while on the frame are inscribed these words from the book of lamentations: "mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people; the crown of our head is fallen." when schwind died, germany had re-arisen. in the very year of his death, lenbach painted his first bismarck pictures: in bismarck was embodied that power by means of which the dream of a nation was fulfilled. [illustration: schwind. nymphs and stag.] thus schwind's works are not only the sign of a completed period in german history, but also at the same time both the climax and the conclusion of an art-epoch. schwind had lived through the entire revolution which german painting had at that time undergone. at his death the sound of the hunting horns of romanticism had died away. he had lived long enough to have the opportunity of criticising neatly, as follows, the dry, unpoetical school of historical painting then making its appearance, as if introduced by gaudily costumed models, a school which made its first hit with lessing's "ezzelino": "i will explain the picture to you. ezzelino is seated in his dungeon, and two monks are attempting to convert him. one of them recognises that all pains are thrown away upon the old sinner, and takes himself off, regretfully desisting from all further endeavour; the other still has hopes, and continues his exhortations. but ezzelino only keeps his angry gaze fixed before him, muttering, 'leave me alone! don't you see that i am--posing as a model!'" he had had occasion to write to his friend bauernfeld: "i have seen so many schools of so-called painting in my time that it is an absolute horror to me"; he had asked piloty: "what calamity are you preparing for us now?" and had thought it his duty to address to one of the younger painters the question: "are we then an academy of the fine or of the ugly arts?" "a man like me, with his ideas, walks like a ghost amid the battle of the virtuosi, in which the whole life of art has gone astray," he used sadly to say. his last wonderful works stand alone in a time which was dazzled by the flash of arms characterising the franco-belgian school of art. it was not till much later that hans thoma took up the threads which connect the work of schwind with the present epoch. when he died he was a solitary, isolated man taking leave of a generation in which he had no part. the period of historical painting which followed him produced no single work distinguished by schwind's sense of fragrant legendary poetry. the charming forest fairy who had appeared to him showed herself to no other; like the betrayed melusina, she had returned to rest again, solitary, in her fountain home. fantasy, tender soul that she is, had taken wings, whither none can tell. "that is why nobody has a single idea," as schwind said in his drastic way. the muse of schwind, the last romanticist, was a chaste, pensive, soulful maiden; while that of piloty, the first colourist, was a noisy, bloodthirsty megæra. yet one can have no doubt as to the necessity of this evolutionary change. [illustration: _albert, helio._ schwind. rubezahl.] schwind himself is among the masters "who have been, and are, and shall be." he was different from all that was arising around him; he embodied the spirit of the future, and exercises over the art of the present day so great an influence that where two or three painters are gathered together in the name of the beautiful, he has his place in the midst of them, and is present, invisible, at every exhibition. but he exercises this influence only spiritually. young artists study him as if he were a primitive master. enraptured, they find in him all those qualities for which there is to-day so ardent a longing--innocent purity and touching simplicity, a mystic, romantic submersion in waves of old-time feeling and a charming youthful fervour. they do not study him in order to _paint_ like him. "our heads are full of poetry, but we cannot give it expression," are the words with which cornelius himself characterised this period. germany had original geniuses indeed, but no fully matured school to compare with the french; as yet the germans did not know how to paint. up to this time the course of painting in germany had been a bold but imprudent flight through the air; in its kaulbach-like cloud-heights it had melted away to a shadow, only to fall again, somewhat roughly, to the ground. it died of an incurable disease--idealism. the painters of that time, one and all, had never become real artists; strictly speaking, they had always remained amateurs. he alone is a great artist in whom the will and the performance, the substance and the form, are in complete accordance. painters who never knew exactly what is meant by painting, artists whose most noticeable characteristic was that they had no art-capacity, were only possible in the first half of the nineteenth century in germany, where for that very reason they were admired and praised. what now began was a necessary making good what had been so long neglected. for craftsmanship is the necessary presupposition of all art, which can no longer suffer any one to be called a master who has not learnt his business. in the atmosphere of incense which surrounded cornelius in munich, the dogma that salvation was to be found in german art alone, and that the german nation was the chosen people of art, had reached a height of self-adoration which came near to megalomania. in the proud enthusiasm of those times, great in their aims as in their errors, the germans had as false an opinion as possible of the art of foreign countries. in the very years when the first railways were ousting the old mail-coaches the mutual interchange of endeavour and ability between the various nations was slower and scantier than ever before. how german artists had wandered abroad in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in that great age when dürer crossed the alps on pirkheymer's pony, and when holbein obtained from erasmus letters of introduction for england! with what joy dürer, in his letters and in his journal, gives an account of the recognition accorded him in artistic circles in italy and the dutch cities! nearly all the german painters had, in the course of their long wanderings, made acquaintance with either the netherlands or italy. they knew exactly what was going on in the world around them. dürer and raphael used to send drawings to each other, "so as to know each other's handwriting." it was only in the first half of the nineteenth century that the germans, once proud in the consciousness of possessing the finest comprehension of, and the greatest receptivity for, foreign intellectual wares, lived apart in timid isolation. into the suburban still-life of the german schools of art not a sound made its way of what was taking place elsewhere. only thus was it possible for the germans to imagine that among all modern nations they alone had a vocation for art. no one had the least idea that in england, the land of machines and beefsteaks, there were men who painted; and people went so far as to proclaim piety, morality, thoroughness, accurate draughtsmanship, and diligent execution the monopoly of german art; and superficiality, frivolity, and "empty straining after effect" the ineradicable national failing of that of france. [illustration: schwind. the fairies' song.] with some such ideas in their heads the majority of the german painters, in the autumn of , found themselves confronted by gallait's "abdication of charles v" and bièfve's "agreement of the dutch nobility"; two belgian pictures which at that time were going the round of the exhibitions in all the larger towns of germany. and it was not long before the belief in the old gods, which had for thirty years held sway in the city of king ludwig, was completely undermined by the younger generation. "even for the great gods, day comes to an end. night of annihilation, descend with the dusk!" diogenes expelled from his philosophic tub could not have felt more uncomfortable than the german painters in presence of the belgian pictures. as till then the incapacity to paint had been belauded as one of the strongest possible proofs of the higher artistic nature and of genuine greatness, so now it was perceived that nevertheless, on the banks of the scheldt and of the seine, a much greater school of painting was in full bloom, and producing splendid fruit. [illustration] chapter ix the forerunners of romanticism in france in france the first decade of the century gave no premonition of the powerful development which was shortly to take place in french art. a legion of characterless pupils issuing from david's studio wearied the world with their aimless works, and hurled their thunderbolts against all rising talent. the austere catalogue of the salon was a pell-mell of belisarii, télémaques, phædras, electras, brutuses, psyches, and endymions. girodet and guérin wearied themselves in putting on canvas the chief scenes in the classical tragedies at that time so frequently performed--pygmalion and galatea, the death of agamemnon, and the like--and painted portraits between times; girodet's dry and poor, guérin's solemnly vacant. the universal note was that of tedium. _françois gérard_ alone, the "king of painters and painter of kings," survives, at least in his portraits. like david he is redeemed only by his portrait painting, and his successes in that direction eclipse even mme. vigée-lebrun, the amiable, gifted, and graceful painter of marie antoinette's days. at the outbreak of the revolution she had left france. everywhere extolled and welcomed with open arms, she painted mme. de staël in switzerland, and at naples lady hamilton, the famous beauty of the time of the directory. but when, in , she returned to paris, she had been forgotten. the day on which marie antoinette picked up her brush for her, as charles v had done for titian, was to remain the happiest in her life. she belonged to the ancien régime, and although her death did not take place till , at the age of eighty-seven, her work was already over in . in her old age she busied herself in writing memoirs of the splendour of her youthful days, from the famous mythological dinner in the rue de cléry, where her husband appeared in the character of pindar and recited his translation of anacreon's odes, to the triumphs which accompanied her journey round europe. gérard took the place which she had left vacant at her departure, and filled it well, especially in his youth. when, in the exhibition of portrait painting held at paris in , there appeared the likeness of mlle. brongniart, from the collection of baron pichon, painted by gérard in , at the age of twenty-five, there was general astonishment at the familiar and intimate grasp of character it displayed. the portrait of this young girl standing in her white dress, so tranquil and without pose, has in the firmness of its draughtsmanship the austere charm and dignity of a bronzino. and later none could give to the aristocracy of europe a nobler or more natural bearing than did gérard, who became their tried and trusted depicter: yet in his last days he descended into theatrical exaggeration. endowed as he was with all the captivating qualities of a cultured man of the world, he had from the beginning avoided as the plague the revolutionary politics in which david was for some time engaged, and when at the instance of the elder master he was appointed a member of the revolutionary tribunal, he alleged illness in order to be absent from its sessions. he was a man of the salons, the born painter of the great world, his house the centre of a distinguished circle of society. not a celebrity, not an emperor or king, but wished to be painted by gérard. and just as he had been the chosen portrait painter of the bonaparte family, so after the restoration he was still the official favourite of the court. josephine took the fashionable painter under her high protection, napoleon's marshals defiled before him, and the aristocracy which returned with louis xviii vied with one another for his favour. [illustration: franÇois gÉrard. _l'art._] gérard's three hundred portraits are a continuous catalogue of all those who in the first quarter of the century played any part in france upon the political, military, or literary stage. a man of supple talent and fine tastes, he completely satisfied the desires of a society which, after the storm of the revolution, opened its salons again and re-established its former hierarchy of rank. the portrait with rich background of upholstery, and the depicting of public ceremonies, were reintroduced by him into the field of art. the people whom he painted are no longer "citizens," as with david, but princes, generals, princesses; and their surroundings allow of no doubt as to whether they are to be addressed as sir, as your serene highness, or as your excellency. no one knew how to flatter in so tactful a manner, particularly in portraits of ladies. it was to him, therefore, that mme. récamier had recourse when she was dissatisfied with david's likeness of her. gérard's, which she destined for prince augustus of prussia, one of her admirers, gave the "fair juliette" the fullest satisfaction. in the former she was represented reposing on a couch, austere and without charm, like a tragic muse. here she sits in a pleasant, lazy attitude upon a chair, in a transparent robe which fully displays her form; about her lips plays a half-melancholy, half-coquettish smile, and she, the great actress who had turned so many men's heads, gazes with gentle child-eyes as innocently upon the world as though she believed the story about babies and the stork. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ gÉrard. mlle. brongniart.] the background, too, that colonnade "leading nowhither," is characteristic of the change in the manner of regarding things. the older schools of painting had, in the case of portraits, managed the treatment of the background in two different ways. the old dutch and germans--jan van eyck and holbein--aimed at showing a man, not only portrayed with the subtlest fidelity to truth, but also in the surroundings in which he was usually or by preference to be found. the italians renounced all representation of such scenes, and gave only a quiet, neutral tone to the background. gorgeous decorative scenery was introduced by the court painter van dyck, and since the second half of the seventeenth century had continually risen in popular favour. mignard, lebrun, and rigaud had brought into fashion, for portraits of princely personages, that stately pillared architecture, with broad velvet curtains swelling and descending in ample folds, which at that time was so remarkably in keeping with the whole cut of the costumes, with the enormous full-bodied wigs and the theatrical attitudinising of that epoch. for the likenesses of generals and warlike princes the favourite background was one which represented, by means of a number of small figures, entire battles, marches, sieges, and so forth. both these methods, and, together with them, that of an ideal, lightly indicated park landscape, were put an end to by the revolution, under the influence of which all extravagant pomp, not only in life, but even in portrait painting, was replaced by an ascetic sobriety. gérard, the court painter of the bourbons, who on their return had "learnt nothing and forgotten nothing," reintroduced the gorgeous pillar decoration, which still remained the authoritative style under stieler and winterhalter, and has only in the _bourgeois_ era of to-day given way to the simple, neutral-toned background of the italians. david, by the way, never forgave mme. récamier for having preferred his pupil to himself. when, in , after the completion of gérard's likeness of her, she approached david on the subject of finishing his, he answered drily: "madame, artists have their caprices as well as women; now it is _i_ who will not." as an historical painter gérard was an imitator of the mannerist girodet. paintings such as "daphnis and chloe," or the famous "psyche" receiving cupid's first kiss ( ), made indeed a great sensation among the ladies, who for some time afterwards painted their faces white, to resemble the gentle psyche; but from the artistic point of view they do not rise above the ordinary level of the classical school. as an historical painter he took much the same course as david; he began as a revolutionist in with the usual "belisarius," and ended as a royalist with a "coronation of charles x." [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ gÉrard. madame visconti.] the more stiff and sober the antique style of david became, the sooner a counter-current was likely to arise, and the change of taste showed itself first in the circumstance that, from on, a master came more and more to the front who, already old, had hitherto lived in obscurity, almost despised by his contemporaries. this was the amiable, sympathetic, charming, sweet, and great _prudhon_, the lineal descendant of correggio, a solitary painter, the gracefulness of whose art was at first unappreciated, but who, as the orthodox academicians began to be more and more tedious, exercised a correspondingly greater influence over the younger generation. he is the one refreshing oasis in the desert wilderness of the classical school. what a difference between him and david! when the elegant grace of watteau fled from the french school, and the new spartans dreamed of founding a greek art, david was the hero of this buskined theatrical school of painting. he painted "the horatii" and "brutus," and thought to bring ancient rome back to life by copying the shapes of old roman chairs and old roman swords. that was the antique style of his first period. later, having made the discovery that, compared with the greeks, the romans were semi-barbarians, he abandoned the roman style, and thought to make a great stride forwards by copying greek statues and carefully transferring them to his pictures. this "pure grecian character" is represented in his "rape of the sabines." later again, he turned to the more ancient greeks, and the result was the most academic of his pictures, his "leonidas." a mixture of dryness and declamatory pathos; diligence without imagination; able draughtsmanship and an absolute incapacity of drawing anything whatever without a model; careful arrangement without the slightest trace of that gift of the inner vision whereby the whole is brought complete and finished before the eye,--these exhaust the list of david's qualities. by means of casting and copying he thought to come near to that art of the antique whose soul he dreamed of embracing, when he held but its skeleton in his hands. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ gÉrard. cupid and psyche.] and meanwhile, away from the broad high-road, and almost unnoticed, was living that painter whom david contemptuously called "the boucher of his time." he it was who truly cherished the gods of greece in his heart, under whose brush the dead statues began to breathe and to feel the blood flowing in their veins, as in the old days when the renaissance dug them out of the ground. his appearance on the stage indicates the first protest against the rigid system pursued by the painter of the horatii and of brutus. prudhon also believed in the antique, but he saw therein a grace which no classicist had ever seen; he also contrasted the simplicity of the grecian profile with the capricious, wrinkled forms of the _rococo_ style; he too had spent his youth in italy, but had not thought it criminal to study leonardo and correggio; he did not bind himself either to cold sculpture or to the delicate _morbidezza_ of the lombards as the only means of grace. he remained a frenchman heart and soul, in that he inherited from watteau's age its womanly softness and elegance. in a cold, ascetic age he still believed in tenderness, gaiety, and laughter--he who as a man had but little reason to take delight in life. prudhon was ten years younger than david, and was born at cluny, the tenth child of a poor stone cutter. he grew up in miserable circumstances, cherished only by a mother who devoted the whole of her love to this her youngest born, and to whom the child, a delicate pliant creature, clung with girl-like tenderness. his parents used often to send him out with the other poor children of the little town to gather faggots for the winter in the wood belonging to the neighbouring benedictine monastery. there the handsome, sprightly boy with the large melancholy eyes attracted the notice of the priest, père besson, who made him a chorister and gave him some instruction. here, in the old abbey of cluny, surrounded by venerable statues carved in wood, by old pictures of saints and artistic miniatures, he recognised his vocation. an inner voice told him that he was to be a painter. and now his latin exercise books began to fill with drawings, and he carved little images with his penknife out of wood, soap, or whatever came to his hand. he squeezed out the juice of flowers, made brushes of horsehair, and began to paint. he was inconsolable on finding that he could not hit off the colouring of the old church pictures. it was a revelation to him when one of the monks said to him one day: "my boy, you will never manage it so: these pictures are painted in oils"; and he straightway invented oil painting for himself. with the help of the instruction which he now received at dijon from an able painter, devosge, he made rapid progress. [illustration: _cassell & co._ gÉrard. madame rÉcamier [detail].] nevertheless a generation was yet to pass before he was really to become a painter. his marriage, on th february , with the daughter of the notary of cluny, became the torment of his life. a linen-weaver and three of his father-in-law's clerks were present at the wedding. his wife was quarrelsome, their income small, and their family rapidly increasing. he betook himself to paris to seek his fortune, with a letter of introduction to the engraver wille. "take pity on this youngster, who has been married for the last three years, and who, were he to come under some low fellow's influence, might easily fall into the most terrible abyss"; so ran the letter, which a certain baron joursanvault had given him. he hired himself a room in the house of m. fauconnier, the head of a firm engaged in the lace trade, who lived in the rue du bac with his wife and a pretty sister. the latter, marie, was eighteen years of age, and, like werther's lotte, was always surrounded by her brother's children, whom she looked after like a little housewife. prudhon, himself young, sensitive, and handsome, loved and was loved, and made her presents of small flattering portraits and pretty allegorical drawings, in which cupid was represented scratching the initials m. f. (marie fauconnier) on the wall with his arrow. that he was married and several times a father she never knew, till one day madame prudhon arrived with the children. "and you never told me!" was her only word of reproach. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ pierre paul prudhon. portrait of himself.] prudhon himself now went to italy--a journey accompanied by serious difficulties. at dijon he had competed for the prix de rome, and had been so simple as to make a sketch for one of his rivals. he owed it to the latter's honesty that the scholarship nevertheless fell to himself. he started on his journey; but when he reached marseilles, and was ready to embark, the vessel was unable to weigh anchor for several weeks, owing to stormy weather. and even on the voyage it became necessary to disembark again, so that months had elapsed before he arrived in rome, penniless, and having embraced, according to classical custom, the land he had come to conquer; for he had fallen out of the carriage on the way. fortunately his dearly bought sojourn in italy did him no harm. he had indeed intended to draw only from the antique and after raphael; but after the lapse of a very few weeks he found his ideal in leonardo. him he calls "his master and hero, the inimitable father and prince of all painters, in artistic power far surpassing raphael!" in a small sketch-book, half torn up, dating from this time, and still in existence, we have already the whole prudhon. it contains copies of ancient statues, made laboriously and without pleasure in the work; then comes correggio's disarmed "cupid," a delicious little sketch, and with the same pencil that drew it he has written down the names of the pictures he purposes painting later on: "love," "frivolity," "cupid and psyche." it is as it were the secret confession of his fantasy, a preliminary announcement of his future works. here and there are found sketches hastily dashed off of beautiful female forms in the graceful attitude which had excited his admiration in the women of the "aldobrandini wedding." but, above all, the young artist observed all that was around him. he lived in unceasing intercourse with the beautiful, and his soul was nurtured by the spirit of the works which surrounded him. he accumulated pictures, not in his sketch-book, but in himself; so much so that, when he was afterwards interrogated as to his italian studies, his only answer was: "i did nothing but study life and admire the works of the masters." he avoided association even with scholars who had taken the prix de rome. the elegant and graceful sculptor canova was the only one with whom he permitted himself any intercourse. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ prudhon. joseph and potiphar's wife.] when his scholarship had run its course, at the end of november , he found himself again in paris, and the struggle against poverty began once more. even while in italy he had sent all his savings to his wife, who had straightway squandered them in drink with her brother, a sergeant in a cavalry regiment. at paris he had to act as parlour-maid and nursery-maid. the faces of two more women rise up in his life like fleeting stars, and both of them died before his eyes. the first was the mysterious stranger who appeared one day in his studio and commissioned him to paint her portrait. she was young, scarcely twenty years of age, with great blue eyes, but her face was weary and wan as though from long sleepless nights. "your portrait?" asked prudhon, "with features so troubled and sad?" he set to work, silent and indifferent; but with every stroke of his brush he felt himself more mystically attracted to this young girl, evidently as unhappy and as persecuted by fate as himself. she promised to return on the morrow; but neither on that day nor on the next did she appear. one afternoon he was wandering dreamily along the street, thinking of the unknown fair one, when his eye almost mechanically caught sight of the guillotine, and he recognised in the unhappy victim at that very moment ending her days the mysterious visitor of his studio. to keep the wolf from the door, prudhon was obliged for some years to draw vignettes on letter-sheets for the government offices, business cards for tradesmen, and even little pictures for _bonbonnières_. for this the representatives of high art held him in contempt. greuze alone treated him amicably, and even he held out no hopes for his future. "you have a family and you have talent, young man; that is enough in these days to bring about one's death by starvation. look at my cuffs." then the old man would show him his torn shirt-sleeves--for even he could no longer find means of getting on in the new order of things. to his anxieties about the necessities of life were added dissensions with his wife. he became the prey of a continual melancholy; he was never seen to smile. even when a separation had been effected his tormentor persecuted him still, until she was relegated to a madhouse. but now a change comes over the scene with the entrance of constance mayer. [illustration: prudhon. study directs the flight of genius.] this amiable young painter, his pupil, was the star that lighted up his old age. she was ugly. with her brown complexion, her broad flat nose, and her large mouth, she had at first sight the appearance of a mulatto. yet to this large mouth belonged voluptuous lips ever ready to be kissed; above this broad nose there were two eyes shining like black diamonds, which by their changeful expression made this irregular, _gamin's_ face appear positively beautiful. she was seventeen years his junior, and he has painted her as often as rembrandt painted his saskia. he has immortalised the dainty upturned nose of his little gipsy, as he called her, in pictures, sketches, pastels, all of which have the same piquant charm, the same elegant grace, the same joyous and merry expression. in her he had found his type, as his namesake rubens did in hélène fourment. constance mayer became the muse of his delicate, graceful work. and she too died before his eyes, having cut her throat with a razor. [illustration: prudhon. le coup de patte du chat.] the master and the pupil loved each other. as sentimental as she was passionate, as gay as she was piquant, nervous and witty, she possessed every quality that was likely to captivate him, as she chattered to him in her lively and original way, and flattered his pride as an artist. this love seemed to promise him rest and a bright ending for his days. he entered into it with the passion of a young man in love for the first time. mlle. mayer, after her father's death, was dependent on no one. her studio in the sorbonne was separated from her master's only by a blind wall. she was with him the entire day, worked at his side, was his housekeeper, and saw to the education of his daughter, to whom she was at once a mother and an elder sister; and prudhon transferred to her all the tender love which as a child he had cherished for his mother. in his gratitude he wished to share his genius with his friend, and to make her famous like himself. it is pathetic to note in mlle. mayer's studies with what patience and devotion he instructed her, how he strove to animate her with his own spirit, and to give her something of his own immortality. even his own work was influenced by the new happiness. to the period of his connection with constance belong his masterpieces, "justice and vengeance," "the rape of psyche," "venus and adonis," and "the swinging zephyr." [illustration: prudhon. cupid and psyche.] these brought him at last even outward success. in the emperor gave him the cross of the legion of honour for his picture of "justice and vengeance," and he became, if not the official, at least the familiar painter of the court. the fine portrait of the empress josephine belongs to this period. when the new empress marie louise wished to learn the art of painting, prudhon, in , became her drawing master; and when on the birth of the king of rome the city of paris presented to the emperor the furniture for a room, he was commissioned to provide the artistic decoration. criticism began to bow its head when his name was mentioned; and the younger generation of painters soon discovered in him, once so contemptuously reviled, the founder of a new religion, the want of which had long been felt. he began to make money. constance mayer seemed to bring him luck: her death affected him all the more deeply. [illustration: constance mayer.] by nature nervous and highly strung, jealous and keenly conscious of her equivocal position, she could not make up her mind, when the painters were ordered to move their studios from the sorbonne, either to leave prudhon or openly to live with him. on the morning of th march she left her model, the little sophie, alone, after giving her a ring. soon afterwards a heavy fall was heard, and she was found lying on the ground in a pool of blood. prudhon lingered on for two years more, two long years spent as it were in exile. solitary, tortured by remorse of conscience, and with continual thoughts of suicide, he lived on only for his recollections of her, in tender converse with the memorials she had left, insensible to the renown which began gradually to gather round his name. the completion of the "unfortunate family," which constance had left unfinished on her easel, was his last _tête-à-tête_ with her, his last farewell. he left his studio only to visit her grave in père-lachaise, or to wander alone along the outer boulevards. an "ascension of the virgin" and a "christ on the cross" were the last works of the once joyous painter of ancient mythology: the mater dolorosa and the crucified--symbols of his own torments. death at length took compassion upon him. on the th of february france lost prudhon. his art was the pure expression of his spiritual life. his life was swayed by women, and something feminine breathes through all his pictures. in them there speaks a man full of soul, originally of a joyous nature, who has gone through experiences which prevented him ever being joyous again. he has inherited from the _rococo_ style its graces and its little cupids, but has also already tasted of all the melancholy of the new age. with his smiles there is mingled a secret sadness. he has learnt that life is not an unending banquet and a perpetual pleasure; he has seen how tragic a morrow follows upon the voyage to the isle of cythera. the bloom has faded from his pale cheeks, his brow is furrowed--he has seen the guillotine. he, the last _rococo_ painter and the first romanticist, would have been truly the man to effect the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century by a path more natural than that followed by david. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ constance mayer. the dream of happiness.] even his fugitive sketches, thrown off in the days of his poverty, have a quite peculiar charm and a thoroughly individual sentiment. there are vignettes of his for letter-sheets, done for the government offices, which in a few pencil touches contain more manly elegance and poetry than do david's most pretentious compositions with all their borrowed classicism. prudhon was the only painter who at that time produced anything of conspicuous merit in the art of ornament. even drawings such as "minerva uniting law and liberty," which from their titles would lead one to expect nothing more than frozen allegories, are imbued, not with david's coldness, but with correggio's charm. french grace and elegance are united, without constraint, to the beauty of line found in ancient cameos. he it was who first felt again the living poetry of that old mythology, which had become a mere collection of dry names. he is commissioned to draw a card of invitation for a ball, and he sends a tender hymn on music and dancing. in extravagant profusion he scatters forth, no matter where, poetic invention and grace such as david in his most strenuous efforts sought for in vain. it was during this time that prudhon became the admirable draughtsman to whom the french school have awarded a place among their greatest masters. these drawings and illustrations were the necessary preparation for the great works which brought him to the front at the beginning of the century. even his first picture, painted in --to-day half-destroyed--"wisdom bringing truth upon the earth, at whose approach darkness vanishes," must, to judge from early descriptions, have been marked by a seductive and delicate grace. and the celebrated work of , "justice and vengeance pursuing crime," belongs certainly, so far as colouring is concerned, rather to the romantic than to the classical era. for during the latter, one faculty especially had been lost, and that was the art of painting flesh. prudhon, by deep study of leonardo and correggio, masters at that time completely out of fashion, won back this capacity for the french school. in wild and desolate scenery, above which the moon, emerging from behind heavy clouds, shines with a ghostly light upon the bare rocks, the murderer is leaving the body of his victim. he strides forth with hasty steps, purse and dagger in hand, glancing back with a shudder at the naked corpse of a young man which has fallen upon a ledge of rock, lying there stiff and with outstretched arms. above, like shapes in the clouds, the avenging goddesses are already sweeping downwards upon him. justice pursues the fugitive with threatening, wrathful glance; while vengeance, lighting the way with her torch, stretches out her hand to grasp the guilty one. in that epoch this picture stands alone for the imposing characterisation of the persons, for its powerful pictorial execution, and the stern and grandiose landscape which serves as setting to the awful scene. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ the tomb of prudhon and constance mayer at pÈre-lachaise.] in general, prudhon was not a tragic painter; his preference was for the more joyous, light and dreamy, delicately veiled myths of the ancients. his misfortunes taught him to flee from reality, and on the wings of art he saved himself, in the realm of legendary love and visionary happiness. so we see psyche borne aloft by zephyr through the twilight to the nuptial abode of eros. a soft light falls upon her snowy body; her head has fallen upon her shoulder, and one arm, bent backwards, enframes her face. silent like a cloud, the group moves onward--a sweet-scented apparition from fairyland. now, enraptured genii visit the slumbering fair one in forest-shadows, under the shimmering moon; now she is stealing secretly down to bathe in a tranquil lake, and gazes with astonishment upon her own likeness in the gloomy mirror. here venus, drawing deep breaths of secret bliss, is seated, full of longing love, by the side of adonis. who else, at that time, could draw nude figures of such faultless beauty, so slender and pure, with lines so supple and yet so firm, and enveloped in so full and soft a light? or again, he paints zephyr swinging roguishly by the side of a stream. a gentle breeze plays through his locks, and the cool darkness of the wood breathes through all things round. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ prudhon. the unfortunate family.] prudhon's work is never a laborious patchwork of fragments of antique forms picked up here and there, never the insipid product of the reason working in accordance with recipes long handed down; it is thoroughly intuitive. never keeping too closely to his model, he gave to his creations the movement and the divine breath of life. in his hands with dreamlike fidelity the antique rose up again renewed, new in the sense of his own completely modern sentiment, and in that of those great masters of the renaissance who had wakened it to life three hundred years before. for prudhon, as is shown by his landscape backgrounds, is altogether jean jacques rousseau's contemporary, the child of that epoch in which nature revealed itself anew; and, as is proved by his figures, he is a congenial spirit to antonio da allegri and vinci. in fresh recollection of correggio, he loves a soft exuberance of flesh and a delicate semi-obscurity; in enthusiastic reverence for leonardo, those heads of women, with deep, sensuously veiled eyes, and that mysterious delicate smile playing dreamily round the wanton mouth. only, the enchanting sweetness of the florentine and the delicious ecstasy of the lombard are toned down by a gentle melancholy which is entirely modern. the psyche borne up to heaven by zephyr changes in the end, when purified and refined, into the soul itself, which, in the form of the madonna, ascends into heaven, transfigured with longing desire; and venus, the goddess of love, is transformed into love immortal, "who, stretched upon the cross, yet reacheth out his hand to thee." [illustration: prudhon. the rape of psyche.] this man, with his soft tenderness and fine feeling for the eternal feminine, was as though fashioned by nature to be the painter of women of his time. if david was the chief depicter of male faces bearing a strong impress of character, delicate, refined, womanly natures found their best interpreter in prudhon. his heads of women charm one by the mysterious language of their eyes, by their familiar smile, and by their dreamy melancholy. no one knew better how to catch the fleeting expression in its most delicate shades, how to grasp the very mood of the moment. how piquant is his smiling antoinette leroux with her dress _à la_ charlotte corday, her coquettish extravagant hat, and all the amusing "chic" of her toilette! madame copia, the wife of the engraver, with her delicately veiled eyes, has become in prudhon's hands the very essence of a beautiful soul. a languishing weariness, a remarkable mingling of creole grace and gentle melancholy, breathes over the portrait of the empress josephine. she is represented seated on a grassy bank in a dignified yet negligent attitude, her head slightly bent, her gaze wandering afar with a look of uncertain inquiry, as though she had some faint presentiment of her coming misfortune; and the dreamy twilight-shadows of a mysterious landscape are gathering around her. [illustration: prudhon. le midi.] coming after a period of colour asceticism, prudhon was the first to show a fine feeling for colour. even during the revolutionary era he protested in the name of the graceful against david's formal stiffness. he sought to demonstrate that human beings do not in truth differ very widely to-day from those in whom leonardo and correggio delighted, that they are fashioned out of delicate flesh and blood, not out of marble and stone. standing beside david, he appealed to the art of colour. but as with andré chénier, a spirit congenial to his, it was long before he attained success. his modesty and his rustic character could effect nothing against the dictatorial power of david, on whom had been showered every dignity that art could offer. people continued to ridicule poor prudhon, who worked only after his own fantasy, who had fashioned for himself in _chiaroscuro_ a poetic language of his own, till the question was raised again from another side, and this time by a young man who came directly out of david's studio. _antoine jean gros_ was one of david's pupils, and stood out among his fellows as the one most submissively devoted to his master; yet it was he who, without wishing it or knowing of it, was preparing the way for the overthrow of david's school. he was born th march , at paris, where his father was a miniature painter. his vocation was determined in the studio of mme. vigée-lebrun, who was a friend of his parents. in the salon of , which contained david's "andromache beside the body of hector," he chose his instructor. he was then the handsome youth of fifteen represented in his portrait of himself at versailles, with delicate features, full of feeling, on which lies an amiable, gentle cast of sentimentality. two large, dark-brown eyes look out upon the world astonished and inquiring, dark hair surrounds the quiet, fresh face, and over it is cocked a broad-brimmed felt hat. in this picture we see a fine-strung, sensitive nature, a soul which would be plunged by bitter experiences into depths of despair, in proportion as success would raise it to heights of ecstasy. in he competed unsuccessfully for the prix de rome, and this failure was the making of him. [illustration: prudhon. la nuit.] he went to italy on his own account, and was an eye-witness of the war which napoleon was there waging. there he beheld scenes in which archæology had no part. for when augereau's foot-soldiers carried the bridge of arcola by assault, they had little thought of imitating an antique bas-relief. gros observed armies on the march, and saw their triumphant entry into festally decorated cities. he learnt his lesson on the field of battle, and on his return placed on record what he had himself gone through. in italy he caught the poetry of modern life, and at the same time was enabled as a painter to supplement david's lectures with the teaching of another surpassing master. it was in genoa that he became acquainted with rubens. as prudhon's originality consisted in the fact that he was the first of that period again to stand dreaming before leonardo and correggio, so did gros' lie in this, that he studied rubens at a time when the antwerp master was also completely out of fashion. his instinct as a painter had at the very commencement guided him to rubens' "st. ignatius," which in his letters he described as a "sublime and magnificent work." when he was subsequently appointed a member of the commission charged with the transference of works of art to paris, he had abundant opportunities of admiring critically the works of the sixteenth and seventeenth century masters. the two impressions thus received had a decisive effect upon his life. gros became the great colourist of the classical school, the singer of the napoleonic epos. compared with david's marmoreal græco-romans, gros' figures seem to belong to another world; his pictures speak, both in purport and in technique, a language which must more than once have astonished his master. [illustration: prudhon. l'enjouir.] he was fortunate enough to be presented to josephine beauharnais, and through her to bonaparte, in the casa serbelloni at milan; and gros, whose earnest desire it was to paint the great commander, was appointed a lieutenant on his staff. he had occasion, in the three days' battle of arcola, to admire the dictator's impetuous heroism; and he made a sketch of the general storming the bridge of arcola at the head of his troops, ensign in hand. it pleased napoleon, who saw in it something of the dæmonic power of the future conqueror of the world; and when the picture was exhibited in paris in it met there also with the most striking success. the greater warmth of colour, the broader sweep of the brush, and the life-like movement of the figures seemed, in comparison with david's monotonous manner, to be far-reaching innovations. with his "napoleon on the bridge of arcola" gros had found his peculiar talent. what his teacher had accomplished as painter to the convention, gros carried to a conclusion in that span of time during which napoleon lived in the minds of his people as a hero. he too made an occasional excursion into the domain of greek mythology, but he did not feel at home there. his field was that living history which the generals and soldiers of france were making. he won for contemporary military life its citizenship in art. david, wishing to remain true to "history" and to "style," had depicted contemporary events with reluctance. what gérard and girodet had produced was interesting as a protest on the part of reality against classical convention, but on the whole it was unsatisfying and wearisome. gros, the famous painter of the "plague of jaffa" and of the "battle of eylau," was the first to attain to high renown in this field. [illustration: prudhon. marguerite.] these are two powerful and genuine pictures, two pre-eminent works which will endure. gros stands far above david and all his rivals in his power of perception. the elder painter is now out of date, while gros remains ever fresh, because he painted under the impulse given by real events, and not under the ban of empty theories. a realist through and through, he did not shrink from representing the horrible, which antique art preferred to avoid. in an epoch when rome and greece were the only sources of inspiration he had the courage to paint a hospital, with its sick, its dying, and its dead. when in the egypto-syrian campaign the plague broke out after the storming of jaffa, napoleon, accompanied by a few of his officers, undertook, on th march , to visit the victims of the pestilence. this act deserved to be celebrated in a commemorative picture. gros took it in hand, and represented napoleon, in the character of consoler, amid the agonising torments of the dying; deviating from historical accuracy only so far as to transfer the scene from the wretched wards of the lazaretto to the courtyard of a pillared mosque. in the shadows of the airy halls sick and wounded men twist and writhe, stare before them in despair, rear themselves up half-naked in mortal pain, or turn to gaze upon the commander-in-chief, a splendid apparition full of youthful power, who is tranquilly feeling the plague boils of one of their comrades. here and there orientals move in picturesque costumes, distributing the food which negro lads are bringing in. and beyond, over the battlements of the moorish arcades, one sees the town with its fortifications, its flat roofs and slender minarets, over which flutter the victorious banners of the french. on one side lies the distant, glittering blue sea, and over all stretches the clear, glowing southern sky. like a new gospel, like the first gust of wind preceding the storm of romanticism, this picture standing in the louvre, surrounded by its stiff classical contemporaries, excites a sensation of pleasure. [illustration: prudhon. les petits dÉvideurs.] gros' heroes know, as david's do, that they are important, and show it perhaps too much, but at least they act. the painter felt what he was painting, and an impulse of human love, an heroic and yet human life, permeates the picture. moreover, gros did not content himself with the scanty palette and the miserable cartoon-draughtsmanship of his contemporaries. this treatment of the nude, these despairing heads of dying men, show none of the stony lifelessness of the classical school; this moorish courtyard has no resemblance to the tragedy peristyle so habitually employed up to that time; this bonaparte laying his hand upon the dying man's sores is no greek or roman hero. the sick men whose feverish eyes gaze upon him as on the star of hope, the negroes going up and down with viands, are no mere supernumeraries; the sea lying in sunshine beyond, full of bustling sails, and the harbour gaily decked with many-coloured flags, point in their joyous splendour of colouring to the dawn of a new era. the young artists were not mistaken when, in the salon of , they fastened a sprig of laurel to the frame of the picture. the state bought it for sixteen thousand francs. a banquet at which vien and david presided was given in honour of the painter. girodet read a poem, of which the conclusion ran as follows-- "et toi, sage vien, toi, david, maître illustre, jouissez de vos succès; dans son sixième lustre, votre élève, déjà de toutes parts cité, auprès de vous vivra dans la postérité." [illustration: prudhon. the vintage.] in his "battle of eylau," exhibited in , gros has given us a companion picture to the "plague of jaffa": in one a visit to a hospital, in the other the inspection of a field of battle after the fight is over. the dismal grey hue of winter rests upon the white sheet of snow stretching desolately away to the horizon, only interrupted here and there by hillocks beneath which annihilated regiments sleep their last sleep. in the foreground lie dead bodies heaped together, and moaning wounded men; and in the midst of this horror of mangled limbs and corrupting flesh he, the conqueror, the master, the emperor, comes to a halt, pale, his eyes turned towards the cities burning on the horizon, in his grey overcoat and small cocked hat, at the head of his staff, indifferent, inexorable, merciless as fate. "_ah! si les rois pouvaient contempler ce spectacle, ils scraient moins avides de conquêtes._" the classical posturing which still lingered, a disturbing element, in the plague picture, has been put aside completely. the conventional horse from the frieze of the parthenon, which david alone knew, has given way to the accurately observed animal, and the colouring too, in its sad harmony, has fully recovered its ancient right of giving character to the picture. it was, beyond all controversy, the chief work in the salon of , rich in remarkable pictures; neither gérard's "battle of austerlitz," nor girodet's "atala," nor david's coronation piece endangered gros' right to the first place. [illustration: prudhon. the virgin.] "napoleon before the pyramids," at the moment when he cries, "soldiers, from the summit of those monuments forty centuries contemplate your actions," constitutes, in , the coping-stone of the cycle. gros alone at that time understood the epic grandeur of war. he became, also, the portrait painter of the great men from whom its events proceeded. his picture of general masséna, with its meditative, slily tenacious expression, is the genuine portrait of a warrior; and how well is heroic, simple daring depicted in the likeness of general lasalle, without the commonplace device of a mantle puffed out by the wind! his portrait of general fournier sarlovèse, at versailles, has a freshness of colouring, the secret of which no one else possessed in those days except the two englishmen, lawrence and raeburn. gros was far in advance of his age. a painter of movement rather than of psychological analysis, he brought out character by means of general effect, and gave the essentials in a masterly way. his portraits, just as much as his historical pictures, have a stormy exposition. in david all is calculation; in gros, fire. almost alone among his contemporaries, he had studied rubens, and like him gave colour the place due to it. at times there is in his pictures a natural flesh-colour and an animation which make this warm-hearted man, who has not been sufficiently appreciated, a genuine forerunner of the moderns. surrounded as he was by orthodox classicists, he cried in a loud voice what prudhon had already ventured to say more timidly: "man is not a statue--not made of marble, but of flesh and bone." [illustration: prudhon. christ crucified.] but as with prudhon, so with gros. this man, of exaggerated nervousness, was lacking in that capacity for persistence which belongs to a strong will conscious of its aim; he lacked confidence in himself and in the initiative he had taken. so long as the great figure of napoleon kept his head above water he was an artist; but when his hero was taken from him he sank. the empire had made gros great, its fall killed him. the incubus of david's antique manner began once more to press upon him, and when david after his banishment (in ) committed to him the management of his studio in paris, gros undertook the office with pious eagerness, on nothing more anxiously intent than as a teacher once more to impose the fetters of the antique upon that art which he had set free by his own works. "it is not i who am speaking to you," he would say to the pupils, "but david, david, always david." the latter had blamed him for having taken the trouble to paint the battles of the empire, "worthless occasional pieces," instead of venturing upon those of alexander the great, and thus producing genuine "historical works." "posterity requires of you good pictures out of ancient history. who, she will cry, was better fitted to paint themistocles? quick, my friend! turn to your plutarch." to depict contemporary life, which lies open before our eyes, was, he held, merely the business of minor artists, unworthy the brush of an "historical painter." and gros, who reverenced his master, was so weak as to listen to his advice: he believed in him rather than in his own genius, in the strength of others rather than his own. he searched his plutarch, and painted nothing more without a previous side-glance towards brussels; introduced allegory into his "battle of the pyramids"; composed in homage to david a "death of sappho"; and painted the cupola of the pantheon with stiff frescoes; while between times, when he looked nature in the face, he was now and then producing veritable masterpieces. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ prudhon. madame copia.] his "flight of louis xviii" in the museum at versailles, shows him once more at his former height. it is "one of the finest of modern works," as delacroix called it in , in an essay contributed to the _revue des deux mondes_; at once familiar and serious. napoleon had left elba, marched on paris, and had reached fontainebleau, when, in the night of the th- th march , louis xviii determined to evacuate the tuileries with all speed. accompanied by a few faithful followers and by the officers of his personal service, he abandons his palace and takes leave of the national guards. there is something pathetic in this sexagenarian with his erudite bourbon profile, immortalised in the large five-franc pieces of his reign, with his protruding stomach and small thick legs, looking like a dropsical patient going to hospital. his bearing is most unkingly. gros has boldly depicted the scene, even to the pathological appearance of the king, just as he saw it, forgetting all that he knew of antique art. he had himself seen the staircase, the murmuring crowd, the lackeys hurrying by, lantern in hand, at their wits' end, and the fat, gouty king, who in his terror has forgotten all kingly dignity. that was an historical picture, and yet as he painted it he reproached himself anew for having forsaken the "real art of historical painting." at the funeral of girodet in the members of the institute talked of their "irreparable loss," and of the necessity of finding a new leader for the school who should avert with a strong hand that destruction which hot-headed young men threatened to bring upon it. "you, gros," observed one of them, "should be the man for the place." and gros answered, in absolute despair; "why, i have not only no authority as leader of a school, but, over and above that, i have to accuse myself of giving the first bad example of defection from real art." the more he thought of david, the more he turned his back upon the world of real life. with his large and wearisome picture of "hercules causing diomedes to be devoured by his own horses" ( ) he sealed his own fate. conventionality had conquered nature. [illustration: gros. saul.] the painters overwhelmed him with ridicule, and a shrill shout of derision rose from all the critics. already, for some time past, a few writers had risen to protest against the classical school. they spoke with fiery eloquence of the rights of humanity, the benefits of liberty, the independence of thought, the true principles of the revolution, and found numerous readers. they fought against rigid laws in the intellectual as well as the social sphere; they pointed out that there were other worlds besides that of antiquity, and that even the latter was not peopled exclusively by cold statues; they delighted in describing the great and beautiful scenes of nature, and opened out once more a new and broad horizon to art and poetry. the spring was awakening; gros felt that he had outlived himself. arming himself against the voices of the new era with the fatal heroism of the deaf, he became the martyr of classicism in french art. he was a classic by education, a romantic by temperament; a man who took his greatest pride in giving the lie as a teacher to the work he had accomplished as an artist, and this discordance was his ruin. on the th of june , being sixty-four years of age, he took up his hat and stick, left his house without a word to any one, and laid himself face-downwards in a tributary of the seine near meudon. it was a shallow place, scarce three feet deep, which a child could easily have waded through. it was not till next day, when he had been dead for twenty-four hours, that he was discovered by two sailors walking home along the bank. one of them struck his foot against a black silk hat. in it there was a white cravat marked with the initial g., carefully folded, and upon it a short note to his wife. on a torn visiting-card could still be read the name, baron gros. a little farther on they saw the corpse, and as they were afraid to touch a drowned man, they drew lots with straws to decide which of them should pull him out. "i feel it within me, it is a misfortune for me to be alone. one begins to be disgusted with one's self, and then all is over," he had once in his youth written to his mother with gloomy foreboding. such was the end of a master every fibre of whose being was in revolt against classicism, and who had so great a love for colour, truth, and life. [illustration: _l'art._ antoine jean, baron gros.] more important events were yet to take place before the signal of deliverance could be expected. it was the young men who had grown up amid the desolate associations of the restoration who were to lead to victory the new movement of which prudhon and gros had been the forerunners. the dictatorship over art of that classical school which had been taken over from the seventeenth century was limited to a single generation--from the birththroes of the revolution to the fall of the napoleonic empire. for although many of david's pupils survived until the middle of the century, yet they were merely academic big-wigs, who, compared with the young men of genius who were storming their positions, represent that mediocrity which had indeed attained to external honours, but had remained stationary, fast bound to antiquated rules. the future belonged to the young, to a youth which from the standpoint of our own days seems even younger than youth commonly is, richer, fresher, more glowing and fiery--the generation of , the "_vaillants de dix-huit cent trente_," as théophile gautier called them in one of his poems. [illustration: _photo, levi._ gros. the battle of eylau.] chapter x the generation of during the years which elapsed between and france produced a great and admirable school of art. after the convulsions of the revolution and the wars of the empire, that generation had arisen, daring and eager for action, which de musset describes in his _confessions d'un enfan du siècle_. and these young men, born between the thunders of one battle and another, who had grown up in the midst of greatness and glory, had to experience, as they ripened into manhood, the ignominy of charles x's reign, the period of clerical reaction. they saw monasteries re-erected, laws of mediæval severity made against blasphemy and the desecration of churches and saints' days, and the doctrine of the divine origin of the monarchy proclaimed anew. "and when young men spoke of glory," says de musset, "the answer was, 'become priests!' and when they spoke of honour, the answer was, 'become priests!' and when they spoke of hope, of love, of strength and life, ever the same answer, 'become priests!'" the only result of this pressure was to intensify all the more the impulse towards freedom. the political and intellectual reaction could only have the effect of impelling the poetic and artistic emotions of young and unquiet spirits into opposition, on principle, to all that was established, into a fiery contempt for public opinion, into the apotheosis of unrestrained passion and unfettered genius. the french romanticists were anti-philistines who regarded the word "bourgeois" as an insult. for them art was the one supreme consideration; it was to them a light and a flame, and its beauty and daring the only things worth living for. for those who put forward such demands as these, the "eunuchism of the classical"--an expression of george sand's--could never suffice. they dreamed of an art of painting which should find its expression in blood, purple, light, movement, and boldness; they held in sovereign contempt the correct, pedantic, colourless tendency of their elders. an inner flame should glow through and liberate the forms, absorb the lines and contours, and mould the picture into a symphony of colour. what was desired and sought for, in poetry and in music, in plastic art and in painting, was colour and passion: colour so energetic, that drawing was, as it were, consumed by it; passion so vehement, that lyrical poetry and the drama were in danger of becoming feverish and convulsive. a movement which reminds one of the renaissance took possession of all minds. it was as though there were something intoxicating in the very air that one breathed. on a political background of grey upon grey, consisting of the cowls of the jesuits of the restoration, there arose a flaming, refulgent, blustering literature and art, scintillating with sparks and bright hues, full of the adoration of passion and of fervid colour. romanticism is protestantism in literature and art--such is vitet's definition of the movement. literature, which, adapting itself to the politics of the government, had begun in chateaubriand with an enthusiastic fervour for catholicism, monarchy, and mediævalism, had in the twenties become revolutionary; and the description of its battles is one of the most glowing chapters in george brandes' classic work. there was a revolt against the pseudo-antique, against the stiff handling of the alexandrine metre, against the yoke of tradition. then arose that mighty race of romantic poets who proclaimed with byronic fire the gospel of nature and passion. de musset, the famous child of the century, the idol of the young generation, the poet with the burning heart, who rushed through life with such eagerness and haste that at the age of forty he broke down altogether, worn out like a man of seventy, deliberately wrote bad rhymes in his first poems, for the purpose of thoroughly infuriating the classicists. so, too, he wrote his dramas, in which love is glorified as a serious and terrible power with which one may not trifle, as the fire with which one must not play, as the electric spark that kills. so george sand, the female titan of romanticism, published her novels, with their subversive tendencies and their sparkling animation of narrative. between these two rises the keen bronze-like profile of prosper mérimée, who prefers to describe the life of gypsies and robbers, and to depict the most violent and desperate characters in history. finally, victor hugo, the great chieftain of the romantic school, the paganini of literature, unrivalled in imposing grandeur, in masterly treatment of language, and in petty vanity, found submissive multitudes to listen to him when he rose in fierce and fiery insurrection against the rigid laws of the bloodless classical style, and substituted for the actionless and ill-contrived declamatory tragedies of his time his own romantic dramas, breathing passion and full of diversified movement. the conflict was deadly. the young generation hailed with applause the new messiah of letters, and grew intoxicated with the harmony of hugo's phrases, which sounded so much fuller and fierier than the measured speech of corneille and racine. the théâtre français, recently benumbed as with the quiet of the grave, became all at once a tumultuous battlefield. there they sat, when hugo's _cromwell_ and _hernani_ were produced on the stage, correct, well dressed, gloved, close shaven, with their neat ties and shirt collars, the representatives of the old generation, whose blameless conduct had raised them to office and place. and in contrast to them, in the pit were crowded together the young men, the "jeune france," as théophile gautier described them, one with his waving hair like a lion's mane, another with his rubens hat and spanish mantle, another in his vest of bright red satin. their common uniform was the red waistcoat introduced by théophile gautier--not the red chosen for their symbol by the men of the revolution, but the scarlet-red which represented the hatred felt by these enthusiastic young men for all that was grey and dull, and their preference for all that is luminous and magnificently coloured in life. they held that the contemplation of a beautiful piece of red cloth was an artistic pleasure. a similar change took place at the same time in ladies' toilettes. as the revolution had in ladies' costumes rejected all colour in favour of the grecian white, so now dresses once more assumed vivid, and especially deep red hues; deep red ribbons adorned the hat and encircled the waist. [illustration: thÉodore gÉricault.] deep red--that was the colour of the romantic school; the flourishing of trumpets and the blare of brass its note. flashes of passion and ferocity, rivers of sulphur, showers of fire, glowing deserts, decaying corpses in horrible phosphorescence, seas at night-time in which ships are sinking, landscapes over which roaring war shakes his brand, and where maddened nations fall furiously upon one another--such are the subjects, resonant with shout of battle and song of victory, which held sway over french romanticism. at the very time when at düsseldorf the young artists of germany were painting with the milk of pious feeling their lachrymose, susceptible, sentimental pictures, utterly tame and respectable; when the nazarene school were holding their post-mortem on the livid corpse of old italian art, and seeking to galvanise it, and with it the christian piety of the middle ages, into life again; at that very time there arose in france a young generation boiling over with fervour, who had for their rallying cry nature and truth, but demanded at the same time, and before all else, contrast, pictorial antithesis, and passion at once lofty and of tiger-like ferocity. in those very years, when in germany, the cartoon style of carstens having died away, progress was limited to a timid and unsuccessful pursuit of that revelry of colour which marked the quattrocentisti, the french took at once, as with the seven-leagued boots of the fairy-tale, the great stride onward towards the flemings. through napoleon, france had grown richer, not only in glory, but in art treasures, gathered together from all countries into paris, as trophies of the victorious general. the abundant collections thus accumulated brought to bear upon that generation the quickening influence of the best that had been done in the art of painting. nowhere could one study either the venetian colourists or rubens to greater advantage than in the louvre, and it was by virtue of this unrestrained intercourse with the masters who represent the most perfect blossom of colouring that the byronic spirits of succeeded in giving full expression to the glowing full-coloured life of things which hovered before their heated imagination. it is unnecessary to say that this was accompanied by a great widening of the range of subjects treated. the romantic school showed that there were other heroes in history and poetry besides the greeks and romans. they painted everything, if only it possessed colour and character, flame, passion, and exotic perfume. romanticism was the protest of painting against the plastic in art, the protest of liberty against the academic teaching of the classical school, the revolution of movement against stiffness. [illustration: gÉricault. the wounded cuirassier.] it was in the studio of guérin, the tame and timid classicist, that the young assailants grew up, "the daubers of ," who called the apollo belvidere a shabby yellow turnip, and who spoke of racine and raphael as of street arabs. they were tired of copying profiles of antinous. the contemplation of a picture by girodet was wearisome to them. it was _théodore géricault_, a hot, hasty passionate nature, of beethoven-like unruliness and of heaven-storming boldness, who spoke the word of deliverance. he was a norman, sturdily built and serious in manner. even while he was studying in guérin's studio he had already grasped some of the ideas which gros had in his mind, and, although not his pupil, géricault may be said to have continued his work, or at least would have been able to do so had he lived longer. like him, he had from his youth up contemplated, full of wonder, the rolling sea and the thunder-laden skies; like him, he had a predilection for fine horses; and, being of a somewhat melancholy disposition, he preferred to treat of the darker aspects of life. his aspiration was to paint the surging sea, proud steeds rushing past at a gallop, suffering and striving humanity, great deeds, pathos and frenzy in every form. his first works were splendid horsemen, whose every muscle twitches with nervous movement. during his short stay in charles vernet's studio he had already taken an interest in cavalry, and begun the studies of such subjects, which he continued to the day of his death. afterwards, while he was working under guérin and before his visit to italy in , he often went to the louvre, copied pictures and studied rubens, to the great annoyance of his teacher, who with horror beheld him entering upon so perilous a path. [illustration: gÉricault. chasseur.] here again he followed in the steps of gros, whose portrait of general fournier sarlovése was hung in the salon of close by géricault's "mounted officer." this picture, a portrait of m. dieudonné, an officer in the chasseurs d'afrique, crossing the battlefield sword in hand on a rearing horse, was the first work exhibited by géricault, then twenty-one years of age. it was an event. gros found himself supported, if not surpassed, by a beginner who had his own enthusiasm for colour and movement, for profiles broadly and boldly delineated. in followed the "wounded cuirassier," staggering across the field of battle and dragging his horse behind him. these were no longer warriors seated on classical steeds foaming with rage, but real soldiers in whom there was nothing of the greek statue. then géricault went to italy, but in this case also it was not to pursue archæological studies in the museums, but to see the race of the _barberi_ during carnival. to this time belong those studies of horses, for the possession of which collectors vie with one another to-day, sketches made in the open air, out in the street or in the stables. "the horses at the manger" and "horses fighting" were among the pearls of the collection of french drawings in the paris exhibition of . in he completed his greatest picture, that which most people alone call to mind--not quite fairly--when his name is mentioned--"the raft of the medusa." what a tragedy is there represented! for twelve days the unfortunate wretches have been on the deep, starving, in utter despair and ready to lift their hands against each other. they were a hundred and fifty, now they are but fifteen. one old man holds upon his knees the corpse of his son; another tears his hair out, left alone in life after seeing all his dear ones perish. in the foreground lie dead bodies which the waves have not yet swept away. but far away in the distance a sail appears. one points it out to another: yes, it is a sail! a mariner and a negro mount upon an empty barrel and wave their handkerchiefs in the air. will they be seen? the anxiety is terrible. and ever higher and higher the grey waves roll on. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ gÉricault. the raft of the medusa.] [illustration: gÉricault. the start.] how must such a scene have impressed a generation which for long years had seen nothing in the salon but dry mythology and painted statues! géricault was the first to free himself from the tyranny of the plaster-of-paris bust, and once again to put passion and truth to nature in the place of cold marble. just as he commissioned the ship's carpenter who had constructed the raft and was one of the saved to make him a model of it, so also he moved into a studio close to the hospital, for the purpose of studying the sick and dying, of sketching dead bodies and single limbs. it must be admitted that one would wish for a yet firmer grasp of the subject. in form, géricault still belongs to the school of david. a good deal of classicism shows itself in the fact that he thought it necessary to depict the majority of the figures naked, in order to avoid "unpictorial" costumes. there is still something academic in the figures, which do not seem to be sufficiently weakened by privation, disease, and the struggle with death; but what man can free himself at one stroke from the influence of his time and environment? even in the colouring there lingers some touch of the classical school. it offends no one, a fact to be insisted on in comparing him with the nazarenes; but as yet it plays no part in expressing the meaning of the picture. from the distance, indeed, whence the rescuing ship is drawing near, a bright light shines forth upon a scene otherwise depicted in dull brown. save for this, the intention of the picture is not expressed by means of colour, and it even shows some retrogression as compared with géricault's earlier works. he had begun with rubens, yet these studies in colouring did not last. in the "wounded cuirassier" of dark tones took the place of the former cheerfulness, and so in the "raft of the medusa" he imagined the tragedy could be represented only in sombre hues. he spread over the whole scene a monotonous unpleasant brown shade, and in his endeavour to lay all weight upon human emotion he went so far as almost to suppress the sea, which nevertheless played the chief part in the drama, and whose deep blue would have afforded a splendid contrast. discoveries are not to be made all at once, but only when their hour is come. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ eugÈne delacroix.] the next step in french art was to be that of reinstating the significance of colour in the full rights conquered for it by titian, so that it should no longer be merely a tasteful tinting of the figures, but should become truly that which gives its temper to the picture. it was not reserved for géricault to effect this. a trip to london, which he made in , in company with his friend charlet, was the last event of his life. there the sportsman awoke in him once more, and he painted the "race for the derby at epsom." soon after his return he was thrown from his horse while riding, but lingered on for two years longer, suffering from a spinal complaint. with a few more years in which to develop he should have been one of the great masters of france, but he died when scarcely in his thirty-second year. yet he lived long enough to observe, in the salon of , the début of one of his comrades from guérin's studio. a greater than himself, to whom with dying voice he had given a few words of advice, arose as the intellectual heir of the young painter so prematurely carried off, and carried to its issue the struggle which he had begun. it was on th april , at midday, that the first genuine painter's eye of the century saw the light, at charenton saint-maurice. géricault had made a beginning, but it was the impetuous, powerful genius of _eugène delacroix_ which entered in and completed his work. what gros had dimly perceived, but had not dared to express, what géricault had barely had time with a courageous hand to point out, a hand too soon stiffened in death--the modern poetry of colour, of fever, and of quivering emotion--it was reserved for delacroix to write. "that child will grow up to be a famous man; his life will be extremely laborious, but also extremely agitated, and always exposed to opposition." thus had a madman prophesied of the boy one day when he and his nurse were taking a walk near the lunatic asylum at charenton. and he was right. [illustration: _l'art._ delacroix. dante's bark.] delacroix was another of the pupils who had grown up in guérin's studio, but he became the latter's antipode. even in his student years he took counsel, not of the antique, but of rubens and veronese; and when géricault was painting his "raft of the medusa," delacroix belonged to the little band of enthusiastic admirers which gathered round the young master. he served as model for the half-submerged man to the left in the foreground of that picture. after busying himself at first almost entirely with caricatures, and studies of horses, and with madonnas in the classical style, he exhibited in his "dante's bark," in a pictorial sense the first characteristic picture of the century. one is inclined even to-day to repeat david's exclamation when he caught sight of the work, the first great epoch-making life-utterance of the revolutionary romanticists: "_d'où vient-il? je ne connais pas cette touche-la._" there were thoughts in it which had not been conceived and expressed in the same manner since the time of tintoretto. dante and virgil, ferried by phlegyas over acheron, are passing among the souls of the damned, who grasp hold of the boat with the energy of despair. a theme taken from a mediæval author; an antique figure, that of virgil, but seen through the prism of modern poetry. while the florentine, stiff with horror, gazes upon the swimming figures which cling to the boat with teeth and nails, virgil, tranquil and serious, turns on them a face which the emotions of life can no longer affect. the work obtained a decisive success. a carpenter in delacroix's house had made for the young painter an inartistic frame of four boards. when he went to the exhibition and looked for his picture in the side-rooms he could not find it. the frame had fallen to pieces during removal, but the picture had been hung in an honourable place in the louvre, in a rich frame ordered for it by baron gros. "you must learn drawing, my young friend, and then you will become a second rubens," was the salute which this remarkable man, whose theory ever gave the lie to his practice, gave the young master. naturally delacroix would not now have been admitted into the school of david, or would have been placed there in the lowest rank--with rubens and a few other immortals, who drew no better than he did. he was absolutely opposed to all the exact, regular, well-balanced, colourless traditions which held sway in david's school with their pedantic erudition and _bourgeois_ discretion. the principle of the classicists was the greek type of beauty, and the translation of sculpture into painting. in delacroix's picture there was no longer anything of that sort. géricault had already broken away from the academic stencilling of form, and had substituted natural expression, life, and emotion for conventional types; delacroix now set aside the sullen colouring of the classical school, and its painted statues made way for the colour-symphonies of the venetians. these reforming qualities found in his second work, a few years later, a much fuller expression than in the "dante's bark." at that time the greeks, that heroic nation, struggling and dying for its religion and independence, had excited everywhere the deepest sympathy and enthusiasm. delacroix was the very man to be inspired by such a theme. from the agitation caused by the martyrdom of greece, and from his taste for byron's poetry, resulted in the celebrated "massacre of chios," on which he was already employed in , before the completion of his "dante's bark," and in which his power of expression as well as of colour was carried much further than in the earlier picture. in the "dante's bark" there were still, both in form and colour, reminiscences of the great florentine masters; as, for instance, in the female figure in the foreground, which is almost an exact reproduction of michael angelo's "night." the event depicted was comparatively quiet and tranquil, and the well-balanced composition would have done honour to the most rigorous follower of david. the only novelty lay in the treatment of colour, and in the substitution of the individual and characteristic for the typical and ideal. but undoubtedly it was now possible not only to produce in colour more powerful chords, but also in expression to strike notes more dramatic, for the academic plaster-of-paris heads of the david school had depicted human emotion only in icy immobility. delacroix had put all these possibilities into the new picture. the pyramidal configuration has resolved itself into an unconstrained grouping of figures. here we have for the first time the artistic spirit intoxicated with colour, the "orlando furioso of colourists," the pupil of rubens, delacroix. an entire world of deep feeling and of painfully passionate poetry, an entire world of tones, which the master under whose eyes he painted his "dante" could not have conceived, lies enclosed within the frame of this picture. the figures, sitting, kneeling, partly reclining, with their half-starved bodies and their gloomy, brooding, hopeless faces; the desperate struggle between the conquerors and their victims in the far distance; the contrast between this scene of horror and the luminous splendour of the atmosphere, and the wealth of colour in the whole, made and still make this fine painting one of the most impressive pictures in the louvre. it is a work which flames in glow of colour more than any that had appeared in france since the days of rubens. the english had been his teachers. "it is here only that colour and effect are understood and felt," géricault had previously written from london. delacroix's work had already been sent off to the salon when constable's first pictures were just arriving there, and the impression which they made upon him was so powerful that, at the very last moment, and in the louvre itself, he gave his picture a brighter and more luminous colouring. [illustration: _baschet._ delacroix. hamlet and the grave-diggers.] [illustration: _l'art._ delacroix. tasso in the mad-house.] and indeed it was not till now that the classicists perceived how great an opponent had arisen against them. not only did the aged gros call the "massacre of chios" "_le massacre de la peinture_," but all the critics talked about barbarism, and prophesied that on this path french painting would hasten to its destruction. the prize of the salon was awarded, not to the "massacre," but to sigalon's "locusta," an unimportant work of compromise, though very clever and well studied in draughtsmanship. it was said that delacroix's picture was lacking in symmetrical arrangement, that he showed too great a contempt for the beautiful, that indeed he appeared systematically to prefer the ugly--that is to say, he was blamed for the very qualities wherein lay his importance as a reformer. accustomed as they had been for many years to an art in which intellect, correctness, and moderation held sway, not one of the critics was in a position to perceive all at once the value of this fiery spirit. delécluze, the indefatigable defender of the sacred dogmas of the classical school, characterised "dramatic expression and composition marked by action" as the reef whereon the grand style of painting must inevitably be wrecked. the modern schools of art, he taught as late as , exist, flourish, and have their being only by the utilisation of what we can learn from the greeks. even acknowledging the progress in colour which the work showed, it nevertheless belonged, he said, to an inferior genus, and all its excellences in colouring could not outweigh the ugliness of its form. therewith began the battles of the romantic school, and all the daring of théophile gautier, thiers, victor hugo, sainte-beuve, baudelaire, bürger-thoré, gustave planche, paul mantz, and others had to be called upon in order to storm the heights held by the batteries of the classical critics. count forbin gave proof of no less courage when he bought the picture, torn to shreds as it was by hostile criticism, for the state, at the price of six thousand francs. this enabled delacroix to visit england. he spent the time from spring to autumn of in london, where he consorted amicably with all the artists of the day. and he took an interest not only in english art, but also in literature and the drama. his preference for shakespeare, byron, and walter scott, who were already his favourite poets, found new sustenance. an english opera made him acquainted with goethe's _faust_; and henceforth these poets entered into the foreground of his works. a picture of "tasso" (the poet in a cell of the madhouse, through the window of which two grinning lunatics look in upon him) in , the "execution of the doge marino faliero" and the "death of sardanapalus," both after byron, in , and "faust in his study" in , followed the "massacre"--all of them obviously the works of a painter who loved bright, glowing colour, had studied rubens and had recently returned from england. in was published, in seventeen plates, his cycle of illustrations to _faust_, to accompany a translation of the poem into french; and this was followed by a number of lithographs on shakespearian subjects. and here we may notice a singular exchange of parts. when the word "romantic" was first heard in germany it had originally much the same sense as "roman." the german romanticists were moved to enthusiasm by roman catholicism and roman church painting. but when romanticism reached france, the word came to mean exactly the opposite: a preference for the german and english spirit as compared with the greek and latin, and an enthusiasm for the great anglo-saxon and german poets, shakespeare and goethe, in whom, contrasting with racine's correctness, were to be found unrestrained genius and glowing passion. this influence of poetry over art may easily become dangerous, if painters sponge, so to speak, upon the poet, as the düsseldorf school did, and make use of his work only for the purpose of enabling works, in themselves valueless, to keep their heads, artistically speaking, above water, by means of their extrinsic poetical interest. but delacroix had no need of any such support. he was not the poets' pupil, but their brother. he did not study them in order to illustrate their works, but was imbued with their spirit and possessed by their souls. he lived with them; he did not borrow his subjects from them, but rather made use of them to express in his own powerful language the strongest emotions of the human heart. nor did he ever forget that painting must, before all, be painting. endowed as he was with a poet's soul, he conceived things as a painter, not laboriously translating passages from the poets, but simply thinking in colour. what the musician hears, what the poet imagines, he saw. the scenes of which he read appeared at once before his eyes as sketches, in great masses of colour. for him, composition, action, and colour ever united together into one inseparable whole. [illustration: delacroix. entry of the crusaders into constantinople.] the journey to morocco, which he made in the spring of , in company with an embassy sent by louis philippe to the emperor muley abderrahman, is noteworthy for a further progress in his ability as a colourist and a new broadening of his range of subjects. when he returned to the port of toulon, on th july , he had seen algiers and spain, and had assimilated an abundance of sunshine and colour. it is in his oriental pictures that his painting first reaches its zenith, just as victor hugo's mastery over language was at its highest point in his _orientales_. goethe, in his _west-östliches divan_, celebrated what is quiet and contemplative in the oriental view of life. obermann sang of the land of legend, of buried treasures, of aladdin and the wonderful lamp; but for byron (who was practically the first to introduce into europe the perfume and colour of the east), for hugo, and for delacroix, it was the distant, bright-hued, barbaric land of the rising sun, the land of sanguinary warfare and overthrow, the home of light and colour. here it was that the french romanticists found the world that realised their dreams of colour. the east became for them what rome had been for the classical school. from the feeble and misty sun of paris, and from the grey skies of the boulevard des italiens, they turned to africa. his enthusiasm for this newly discovered world resounds, full and clear, in delacroix's letters. "were i to leave the land in which i have found them," he wrote, during his stay in morocco, of the men whom he saw about him there, "they would seem to me like trees torn up by the roots. i should forget the impressions i have received, and should be able only in an incomplete and frigid manner to reproduce the sublime and fascinating life which fills the streets here, and attracts one by the beauty of its appearance. think, my friend, what it means to a painter to see lying in the sunshine, wandering about the streets and offering shoes for sale, men who have the appearance of ancient consuls, of the reincarnated spirits of cato and brutus, who lack not even that proud, discontented look which those lords of the world must have had. they possess nothing save a blanket in which they walk, sleep, and are buried, and yet they look as dignified as cicero in his curule chair. what truth, what nobility in these figures! there is nothing more beautiful in the antique. and all in white, as with roman senators or at the greek panathenæa." his palette was thus further enriched in lucid tints, the contrasts he formerly delighted in became less sharp and glaring, the gloomy background hitherto preferred was superseded by a bright serenity and a golden lustre. the colour-effect of his "algerian women" has been not unaptly compared to the impression produced by a glance into an open jewel casket. in his "convulsionaries of tangier" he has depicted with wild, demoniac energy the religious frenzy of a turkish sect. green, blue, red, and violet hues unite to produce an effect as of a sounding flourish of trumpets, recalling the music of the janizaries. the "entry of the crusaders into constantinople" resembles an old delicately tinted carpet, full of powerful, tranquil harmony. even in his old age he wrote: "the aspect of that country will be for ever before my eyes; the types of that vigorous race will move in my memory as long as i live; in them i truly found the antique beauty again." [illustration: _baschet._ delacroix. jesus on lake gennesaret.] the contemplation of such scenes induced delacroix to undertake the representation of antique subjects, which he had hitherto avoided, not because he disliked the antique, but because of the aversion he felt for david's treatment of it. during his sojourn in africa he had come to the conclusion that the painting of scenes from ancient history should not be based upon the imitation of statues and bas-reliefs, as with david and his pupils; but that it should be imbued with the movement and passion of modern life, since the ancient greeks were men of flesh and blood like ourselves. therefore it is that he snatches the marble mask from the faces of david's puppets. flemish blood begins to move in the greek statues, flemish passion to break through their inflexible rhythm. paintings such as the "justice of trajan" of represent the antique in a thoroughly personal and modern paraphrase, just as shakespeare or byron had seen it. the mad "medea" is, from the point of view of colour, certainly the chief work of this group. it was of course impossible that a man so highly endowed with emotional pathos should pass untouched the tragedy of the life of christ and the sufferings of the christian martyrs. by the revolution religious themes had been absolutely excluded from representation, and up to this time the young innovators of the restoration period had also felt an aversion for them. their ideas were as little attuned to catholic as to academic tradition. delacroix was the first to treat once more of biblical subjects, so far as they are imbued with dramatic and passionate movement. like rubens, he regarded the lives of the saints, the story of the gospels, and the tragedy on golgotha as a poetical narrative like any other. his mary, like that of the flemish painters, is a sorrowing woman, the embodiment of unending grief. alongside of these easel pictures he produced, during a period of more than twenty-five years, a long list of monumental and decorative works; and they too were the most inventive, the boldest, and the most original which monumental painting produced during this epoch, not in france only, but in europe. in this sphere also, where, under the pressure of old traditions and conventional types, it is so difficult to avoid plagiarism, delacroix maintained his individuality. in , at the suggestion of his friend thiers, he was commissioned to paint the interior of the chamber of deputies in the palais bourbon--the most important commission which had fallen to the lot of any french artist since gros painted the cupola of the pantheon. not long afterwards he decorated with verve and enthusiasm the ceiling of the louvre, choosing for his subject the "triumph of apollo." in the library of the luxembourg he had recourse to the _divina commedia_, and treated in a masterly manner the theme so familiar and sympathetic to him. in his works there is something of the joyous and sportive energy of rubens' allegorical pictures, but not the least trace of imitation. he understood decorative painting in the sense of the great old masters, giulio romano and veronese, not as wall didactics and lectures on archæology; he knew that descriptive prose has nothing whatever to do with the walls of a building, but that the sole aim of such paintings is to fill the house with their solemn grandeur, to make the whole building resound as it were with sacred organ music. between and came also the wall paintings in the church of saint sulpice, and one would almost think that delacroix finished them in feverish excitement, to show for the last time how enormous a store of passion and power still lay in the soul of a sexagenarian. shortly after their completion, on th august , he died, who was, in the words of silvestre, "the painter of the genuine race, who had the sun in his head and a thunderstorm in his heart, who in the course of forty years sounded the entire gamut of human emotion, and whose grandiose and awe-inspiring brush passed from saints to warriors, from warriors to lovers, from lovers to tigers, from tigers to flowers." [illustration: _baschet._ delacroix. horses fighting in a stable.] in these words delacroix is very aptly characterised. his range of subjects included everything: decorative, historical, and religious painting, landscape, flowers, animals, sea pieces, classical antiquity and the middle ages, the scorching heat of the south and the mists of the north. he left no branch of the art of painting untouched; nothing escaped his lion's claws. but there is one bond uniting all: to all the figures for which he won the citizenship of art he gave passion and movement. his predominant quality is a passion for the terrible, a kind of insatiability for wild and violent action. his over-excited imagination heaps pain, horror, and pathos one upon another. the critics called him "the tattooed savage who paints with a drunken broom." there is nothing pretty or lovable about his art; it is a wild art. he depicted passion wherever he found it, in the shape of wild animals, stormy seas, or battling warriors; and he sought it in every sphere, in nature no less than in poetry and the bible. hardly any painter--not even rubens--has depicted with equal power the passions and movements of animals: lions in which he is own brother to barye; fighting horses, in which he stands side by side with géricault. no other artist painted waves more grand, wind-beaten, foaming, dashing, towering on high. looking at them, one divines all the horrors concealed beneath the roar of the blue surface, horrors which were as yet so insufficiently suggested in géricault's "raft of the medusa." in his historical pictures there reigns now terror and despair, as in the "massacre of chios"; now gloomy horror, as in the "medea"; now feverish movement, as in the "death of the bishop of liège." he passes from dante to shakespeare, from goethe to byron, but only to borrow from them their most moving dramatic situations--hamlet at yorick's grave, his fight with laertes, macbeth and the witches, lady macbeth, gretchen, angelica, the prisoner of chillon, the giaour, and the pasha. all time is his domain, all countries are open to him; he hurries through the broad fields of imagination, a lordly reaper of all harvests. [illustration: _baschet._ delacroix. medea.] and at the same time, in all his great human tragedies, he compels the elements to obey him as if they were his slaves. the passions of men set heaven and earth in motion. the agonising cries of victims find in his paintings an echo in the sullen shadows and the leaden, heavy clouds of the sky. the gloomy shores which dante's boat is approaching are as desolate as the spirits who wander through the night. but where splendour and glory reign, as in the "entry of the crusaders into constantinople," the air, too, glistens and shines as though saturated with dust of gold. in his pictures a human soul which was great and full of meaning, and which possessed such combustibility that it took fire of itself, expressed itself recklessly, with the volcanic strength of an elemental power. this proud self-reliance explains also how it was that this painter of unruly genius was, as a man, very far from being a revolutionist. for delacroix the outer world had no existence; that world alone existed which was within him. after his picture of "the barricades" in he avoided all political allusions, painted, read, and led a tranquil, measured, uniform life. in society polite and reserved, of aristocratic coldness, gentlemanly in appearance, and well-bred; in his speech curt, mordant, emphatic, and occasionally witty, he could nevertheless show himself, when he chose, an amiable, original talker, full of piquant ideas. moreover, he was a great writer and critic, whose essays in the _revue des deux mondes_ have the perfect classic stamp. nevertheless, he was always displeased when any one put him forward as the chief of official romanticism, and saluted him as the victor hugo of painting. surrounded as he was by young assailants of tradition who would allow no merit to anything old, he found pleasure in acknowledging his admiration for racine, whom he knew by heart, and whom, when need was, he defended against the younger generation. he was too diplomatic to stir up against himself unnecessarily the hatred of those whom the long-haired samsons of romanticism called philistines. so far as in him lay, his quiet and methodical life should suffer no interruption. worshipper though he was of light and colour, he was almost always shut up in his gloomy studio, and it was only when he found himself brush in hand that the reserved man became the passionate, vibrating painter. then the memories with which his study of the poets had stored his mind grew in his fantasy into grand pictures glowing with life. by these visions he was excited, set on fire, and filled with enthusiasm. his studio was open but to few, for the intrusion of visitors chilled his inspiration, and he found it difficult to recover the proper frame of mind. not till evening did he take his first meal, for he thought he could work with greater intensity when hungry. during a period of forty years he lived in his various studios, quiet and solitary, inventing, drawing, and painting without intermission, his door always bolted, so that when it suited him he could give out that he was ill of a fever. every morning before work he drew an arm, a hand, or a piece of drapery after rubens. he had formed the habit of taking rubens to himself when other people were drinking their coffee. [illustration: _l'art._ delacroix. the expulsion of heliodorus.] indeed, when one speaks of delacroix, the name of rubens rises almost involuntarily to one's lips; and yet there is a profound difference between him and the great flemish master. rubens has the same passion, the same ever-active fancy; yet all his pictures rest in triumphant repose, while every one of delacroix's seems to resound as with a cry of battle. looking at rubens' works you feel that he was a happy, healthy man; but by the time you have seen half a score of delacroix's it is borne in upon you that the life of the artist was one of strife and suffering. rubens was the very essence of strength, delacroix was a sick man; the former full of fleshly joyous sensuality, the latter consumed by a feverish internal fire. his portrait of himself in the louvre, with its pale forehead, its large dark-rimmed eyes, its lean, hollow face, its parchment-like skin stretched tightly over the bones, explains his pictures better than any critical appreciation. delacroix was one of the _âmes maladives_, the spirits sick unto death, to whom baudelaire addresses himself in his _fleurs du mal_. delicate from his youth up, thoroughly nervous by nature, he prolonged his sickly existence throughout his life by sheer energy of will. even in his childhood he passed through serious illnesses, and later on he suffered in turn from his stomach, throat, chest, and kidneys. like goethe in his old age, he felt well only when the temperature was high. he was short in stature. a leonine head, with a lion's mane, surmounted a body that seemed almost stunted. with his eyes flashing like carbuncles, and his disordered prickly moustache, his was the fascinating ugliness of genius. it was only by the strictest dieting in his quiet retreat at champrosay that he prolonged his life for the last few years. in his youth he hovered like a butterfly from flower to flower; when grown old and hypochondriacal he withdrew into solitary retirement, work was the only medicine for diseased conditions of all kinds, to which he found himself daily more and more a victim. only thus could this sickly man, doomed from his very birth, come to produce no less than two thousand pictures--a number all the more astonishing as delacroix, even when his health permitted him to work at his easel, by no means possessed rubens' sovereign facility of production. the fever of work alternated, in his case, with the extremest exhaustion. there was something morbid, nervous, over-excited in all he did. "even work," he writes, "is merely a temporary narcotic, a distraction; and every distraction, as pascal has said in other words, is only a method which man has invented to conceal from himself the abyss of his suffering and misery. in sleepless nights, in illness, and in certain moments of solitude, when the end of all things discloses itself in its utter nakedness, a man endowed with imagination must possess a certain amount of courage, not to meet the phantom half-way, not to rush to embrace the skeleton." the feverish disposition which he brought with him into the world was heightened by the acrimonious feuds in which, as a painter, he was forced to engage, and which left great bitterness behind them in his mind. his life and his art were in accord, in as much as both were battles. it is not easy to live when one is always ill; not easy to meet with recognition when one proclaims the exact opposite of that which for a generation past all the world has held to be true. and delacroix took not a single step to meet his opponents half-way. he did not trouble himself for a single moment to please the public; and therefore the public did not come to him. controversies such as that which took place over the "massacre of chios" continued decade after decade, and the exhibition of each of his pictures was the signal for a battle. "no work of his," writes thoré, "but called forth deafening howls, curses, and furious controversy. insults were heaped upon the artist, coarser and more opprobrious than one would be justified in applying to a sharper." at charenton, where he was born, is the bedlam of france. hence the epithet continually hurled at him by the critics, who called him the runaway from charenton. until the year his pictures could without difficulty be excluded from the salon. he irritated people by his violence, by the abruptness of his compositions, by his arrangement of figures with a view to pathos at the expense of plastic elegance; he displeased by the incompleteness of his works, which were regarded as sketches, not finished paintings. when louis philippe ordered a picture from his brush, it was on the express condition that it should be as little a delacroix as possible. there was general ill-humour among the academicians when, at thiers' suggestion, he was commissioned to decorate the palais bourbon. and delacroix, ambitious and sensitive as he was, was deeply hurt by every mortification of this kind, and affected by every gust of criticism as by a change of wind. continually denounced in the newspapers, attacked, wounded, delivered over to the wild beasts, as he called it, he never had a moment of rest--he who, with his irritable temperament and fragile health, needed rest more than any man. it was not until almost all his works were brought together in the universal exhibition of that it became evident how great an artist this delacroix was, whom his country for forty years had not understood, and to whom the institute had closed its doors to the last. yet he was no sooner dead than all with one voice proclaimed him a genius; his smallest drawing is to-day worth its weight in gold, while during his lifetime he seldom got more than two thousand francs for his largest paintings. his sketches, great works in small frames, have for the most part found their way to america. the sale of the pictures he left behind him produced three hundred and sixty thousand francs. delacroix, therefore, was victorious, but not as rubens was; and his ceiling of the louvre, with the "triumph of apollo," one of his most remarkable works, strikes one almost as an allegory of his own life. what especially attracted and inspired the artist in this painting were the spasms and convulsions of the misshapen monsters which the god expels from the earth--the serpent twisting itself in movements of pain and fury, raising its head on high, hissing rage, and vomiting venom and blood. the god himself, who in the midst of a sea of light ascends into heaven in a golden chariot drawn by radiant steeds, shows in his sturdy limbs and attitude ready for defence, and in his wrathful face, no trace of the proud majesty and joyous splendour which greece connected with the name of apollo. he is a mortal who has fought and conquered, not a god who triumphs in tranquil power. he is delacroix, not rubens; a titan, not an olympian god. the artistic power in delacroix could in no wise submit to the confinement imposed by the french spirit of his time. it was not possible for a single man, though endowed with the most splendid courage, to overthrow in a moment all the traditions of french art. any one who knows the french must feel that david's latin style could not so suddenly disappear out of their art, that it was not possible at a blow to banish all that had hitherto held sway and to replace it by its opposite. ever since poussin they had sought in roman antiquity the formulæ of their art. the predilection which the parisians have even to-day for the representation of racine's and corneille's tragedies, the admiration which even the most extreme naturalists bestow upon poussin and lesueur, prove abundantly how deep classicism is rooted in the flesh and blood of the french people. brandes has remarked, very acutely, that, strictly speaking, even romanticism was on french soil in many respects a classical phenomenon, a product of french classical rhetoric. "they never saw the dances of the elves, never heard the delicate harmony of their roundelays." in victor hugo, the great opponent of corneille, corneille himself was re-embodied. he too is a draughtsman, constructs his poems like architectural works, chisels the form, polishes the verse, and confines his colouring within powerfully conceived michelangelesque outlines. [illustration: j. a. d. ingres. _l'art._] once the first eager impulse of the romantic school had subsided, these old classical tendencies showed themselves anew and with all the greater vehemence. even hugo's dramas, with their predilection for all that is exuberant and monstrous, with their overflowing lyricism and sonorous pathos, became in the long run wearisome. he, who had hitherto been the idol of the young generation, was now called the pater bombasticus of the literature of the world. classicism found its poet and its muse. an unknown but very worthy young man, not endowed with wealth of imagination, but imbued with the most honourable intentions, came to paris from the provincial town where he had grown to manhood, with a manuscript in his pocket. and françois ronsard's _lucrèce_, a tragedy from the antique, in its style sober and severe, reminding one of racine, was represented amid thunders of applause, shortly after hugo had been hissed off the stage. enthusiastic admirers saw in it a glorious return to the great tragic drama of france, an emanation from the spirit of corneille, and praised its clear, measured, and at once "classic and familiar" language. together with its poet, the classical reaction found its actress. in a young untrained child made her début at the théâtre français--a jewish girl who had sung in the streets to the accompaniment of her harp. rachel appeared upon the boards, and restored its former power of attraction to the old classical repertoire, to the very tragedies which the romantic school had banished from the theatre amid mockery and derision. _the cid_, _mérope_, _chimène_, and _phèdre_ recovered their place upon the stage. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ ingres. the maid of orleans at rheims.] painting took the same course. in opposition to the young painters who had burst into the arena with their gay-coloured uniforms, their gilded helmets and waving banners, _ingres_ came forth in the great tournament of romanticism in the character of the black knight. an old gentleman, a man who in all his being belonged to the generation that was passing away, who was fifty years of age at the time of the revolution of july, stations himself suddenly as the angel of the flaming sword, or, in the phrase of his opponents, as the gendarme of classicism, at the gates of the academy, barring them against every suspicious-looking person. and the young men, eccentric, eager for action as they were, who had recently fought with so much fury, had to retreat before him. golden sunshine and glow of colour were once more tabooed, and their representative heroes, veronese, rubens, and delacroix, regarded as flickering will o' the wisps, whom every aspiring beginner should avoid as serpents and firebrands. one day when ingres was taking his pupils through the louvre he said, on entering the rubens gallery: "_saluez, messieurs, mais ne regardez pas._" the acrimony of the strife was so great that it extended even to the personal relations of the rival chiefs, and ingres was attacked by convulsive spasms whenever he heard the name of the painter of the "massacre of chios." when in he had had a separate room prepared for his own pictures in the universal exhibition of that year, and observed delacroix in the distance, just before the opening ceremony, he asked the attendant: "has not somebody been here?--there is a smell of brimstone." "now the wolf is in the sheepfold" was his observation when delacroix was elected to the institute. he regarded him as the "hangman," as the robespierre of painting. "i used to love that young man, but he has sold himself to the evil one" (rubens), said he, in righteous indignation, to his pupils. [illustration: ingres. portrait of himself as a youth.] "this famous thing, the beautiful," delacroix had once written, "must be--every one says so--the final aim of art. but if it be the only aim, what then are we to make of men like rubens, rembrandt, and, in general, all the artistic natures of the north, who preferred other qualities belonging to their art? is the sense of the beautiful that impression which is made upon us by a picture by velasquez, an etching by rembrandt, or a scene out of shakespeare? or again, is the beautiful revealed to us by the contemplation of the straight noses and correctly disposed draperies of girodet, gérard, and others of david's pupils? a satyr is beautiful, a faun is beautiful. the antique bust of socrates is full of character, notwithstanding its flattened nose, swollen lips, and small eyes. in paul veronese's 'marriage at cana' i see men of various features and of every temperament, and i find them to be living beings, full of passion. are they beautiful? perhaps. but in any case there is no recipe by means of which one can attain to what is called the ideally beautiful. style depends absolutely and solely upon the free and original expression of each master's peculiar qualities. wherever a painter sets himself to follow a conventional mode of expression he will become affected and will lose his own peculiar impress; but where, on the contrary, he frankly abandons himself to the impulse of his own originality, he will ever, whether his name be raphael, michael angelo, rubens, or rembrandt, be sure master of his soul and of his art." as compared with the principles thus laid down, ingres represents the revulsion towards that formalism which had borne sway over the greater part of the history of french art. "painting is nothing more than drawing," said poussin. "had god intended to place colour at the same height as form," wrote charles blanc, "he would not have failed to furnish his masterpiece, man, with all the hues of the humming-bird." once more, instead of the glowing colour of the romantic school, absorbing the form into itself, the firm stroke of the outline was set forth; instead of its pathos, breathing forth passionate emotion, men returned to study the chill tranquillity of stone. once more dramatic composition and mastery over movement were held in abhorrence, as incompatible with that pursuit of plastic beauty which was the highest goal of art. the only point in question was, how to avoid the one-sidedness of classicism. david, as a child of the revolution, had naturally been limited to ancient rome; but now that the legitimate monarchy had been re-established there was no reason why one should not revere, not only pagan, but also christian rome, and in raphael and michael angelo the maturest blossom of the latter. thus the classical school was enriched by ingres with features of greater vivacity. he entered into a direct relationship with the great italian masters, while david had none save with the rigid roman antique. by him the classical severity of david was relaxed, the refractory sharpness of the outlines relieved by a treatment of form which had the effect of making every figure appear to be worked in metal. [illustration: ingres. bertin the elder. (_by permission of m. jules bapst, the owner of the picture._)] ingres was born in , under the _ancien régime_. as a young man he lived through the triumphs of the empire and the classical school, and it was only natural that he should become david's pupil. in he entered his studio, and studied there with such assiduity that he never noticed what was taking place in that of gros. when he went to italy he studied there the masters whom his own teacher had arrogantly despised. he learned from the cinquecento how to draw and model more accurately, more firmly, and at the same time with a more intimate grasp of the subject than was usual in the school of david. this innovation made him a progressive classicist, and gave him, during the early years of the restoration, almost the appearance of an assailant and revolutionary. himself the incarnation of the academic spirit, he had to resign himself to see his first works rejected by the salon, a fact which did not deter him from continuing to work obstinately at his easel. "_je compte sur ma vieillesse; elle me vengea._" and this revenge was granted him in the fullest measure. when one has seen the outward appearance of a man, one knows his character, his spirit, and his genius. ingres' portrait of himself contains the analysis of his art. he was quite a small man, of a swarthy complexion, with features sharp and as if cast in bronze. his thick black hair stood up stubbornly on end, so that he had to grease it carefully every day. under hair of this kind there is almost always an obstinate brain. the jaws projected, as is the case with men endowed with a strong will. the eyes were large and piercing, with that bold eagle-glance which fills parents with fond hopes, but does not touch the hearts of young women. when he appeared to be excited, it was only the excitement of work expressing itself in him. this little man, in his large cloak, seemed to say when he stood at his easel, pencil in hand: "i shall be a great painter, for i am determined to be one." he kept his word. strength of will, hard work, study, obstinacy, patience--these are the elements of which ingres' talent is compounded. "_vouloir, c'est pouvoir_," was his motto. one would think buffon had had him in mind in that passage in which he defines genius as patience. the trinity-in-unity of his qualities consisted of correctness, balance, exactness; qualities which go to make rather a great architect or mathematician than an interesting painter. ingres' range of subjects was unusually wide. pictures on themes taken from antiquity ("oedipus and the sphinx" and "virgil reading the Æneid"); costume pictures ("henry iv and his children" and the "entry of charles v into paris"); religious paintings (madonnas, "christ giving the keys to st. peter," and "st. symphorian"); nude female figures (the "odalisque," the "liberation of angelica," and "the source"); allegories ("the apotheosis of homer" and "the apotheosis of napoleon"); pictures of public functions ("bonaparte as first consul" and "napoleon on the throne"); and even a painting taken from the life ("pius vii in the sistine chapel"), are included in the list. yet, notwithstanding his astonishing diversity of themes, there is hardly an artist more one-sided in his principles. ingres thought exclusively of purely plastic art: beauty of form and harmony of line alone attracted him; he was insensible to the charm of colour. his standpoint was the institute of rome; the italian cinquecento the exclusive object of his worship. he carried this study as far as plagiarism, and as director of the roman academy made free with the intellectual property of the cinquecento masters, as if they had lived only on his account. when delacroix was painting the "expulsion of heliodorus" in saint sulpice, he put forth the whole strength of his creative genius to avoid all reminiscence of raphael's fresco. ingres' power of invention consisted in discovering, with a weird certainty, whether the subject of which he wished to treat had already been painted by an italian or other classical master. the picture "jupiter and thetis," of , is put together after a design on a greek vase, and represents in its studied archaism the Æginetan period of his art. the "vow of louis xiii," of , was his confession of faith as regards the cinquecento. the motive was taken from the madonna di foligno, the curtains from the madonna di san sisto, the floating angels from the madonna del baldacchino, and the candlesticks as well as the little angels with the inscribed tablet are from the same source. it is all beautiful, of course, for it is all raphael; only, it would have been more rational if ingres had lived in the time of raphael instead of in the nineteenth century. one would take the picture to have been painted under raphael's eyes, and it bears to his works the same relation as raphael's earlier pictures do to perugino's. the "christ giving the keys to st. peter" is also put together out of elements derived from the school of urbino. in his "st. symphorian," which was belauded as the _ne plus ultra_ of style, he turned by way of variety to the imitation of michael angelo: the action is violent, the muscles swollen. the "apotheosis of homer" is an admirable lecture in archæology, a sitting of the great academy of genius, in which the poses are so fine and the heads so full of marble idealism that in comparison with it raphael's "school of athens" has the effect of the wildest naturalism. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ ingres. study for the odalisque in the louvre.] thus father ingres stands forth as a cold, stiff, academic painter, as a doctrinaire who has not progressed much further than the much-reviled david. he represents, as th. rousseau said, only to a moderate degree the good old art which we have lost. in the words of diaz: "let him be shut up with me in a tower, without engravings, and i wager that his canvas will remain untouched, whilst i shall succeed in producing a picture." he possessed an arid ability which leaves one cold in presence of even his most important works. how lifeless is the effect produced by his paintings of nude single figures, his "odalisque" and his "freeing of andromeda," which brought him especial fame! ingres could not paint flesh, and in this respect he is indicative of an enormous retrogression as compared with prudhon. the striving after sculpturesque beauty, and, in connection therewith, the repression of all individuality, became in him almost a religion. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ ingres. the source.] one finds it difficult to-day to account for the fame which once belonged to his picture of "the source," the nude figure of a standing girl pouring water out of an urn that rests on her left shoulder and is steadied by her right arm raised over her head. the picture undoubtedly exhibits qualities of draughtsmanship which in recent days ingres alone possessed in so high a degree. but when, in pursuit of his classical conception, he had eliminated every touch of nature, he proceeded to destroy the rest of the impression by the cold violet tones which are not only condemned by colourists, but which even raphael would have considered false and ugly. here, as in all his female figures, he attains to a certain grace, but it is an animal, expressionless grace. skilful as he was in delineating the muscles of the human body, he was yet absolutely incapable of painting heads expressive of feeling or emotion. he depicted the form in itself, the abstract, typical, absolute form. he was dominated only by a love for the _beauté suprême_, so that when he was in presence of nature he could not refrain from purifying and generalising. everywhere we see beautiful lines, bodies modelled with admirable skill, but we never enter into any closer relationship with his figures. they do not live our life or breathe our atmosphere; they have not our thoughts: they are foreign to all that is human. jean auguste dominique ingres, member of the institute, senator, etc., the stylist held in honour as a superior being, the high-priest of pure form and outline, will in all times command the esteem, and in some respects the admiration, of the student of the history of art; the enthusiasm, never. [illustration: _baschet_. ingres. oedipus and the sphinx.] [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ ingres. paganini.] and yet, notwithstanding all this, i am an enthusiastic admirer of ingres. indeed, it has happened to me, in the collection of engravings at the louvre, to catch myself saying: "ingres! great, beloved master! i have much to ask your pardon; for you were one of the greatest and most refined spirits to whom the century has given birth." for i doubt whether any one down to the present time has rightly understood the mysterious figure of ingres, the man who in his youth was enraptured by "_l'esprit, la grâce, l'originalité de vataux et la délicieuse couleur de ses tableaux_," and who, at a later time, not because of failing powers but deliberately and of set purpose, adopted a calmer system of colour tones; of this classicist _par excellence_, who is counted among the greatest artists, in the familiar and graceful style, in the history of art. ingres is one of the rare masters whom even their opponents are forced to admire. in the stern, sculpturesque modelling of his naked figures he displays remarkable power. his painting, also, has a curiously intimate appeal, due to its cool, metallic harmonies of colour--light blue, rose, and pale yellow in particular. but above all ingres commands attention by his portraits. from his first residence at rome, that is, from the beginning of the century, he painted portraits which imprint themselves on the memory like medals struck in metallic sharpness in the style of mantegna. here too he is unequal, at times cold and commonplace, but usually quite admirable. in these paintings, cast as it were in bronze, there is something that comes from the fresh original source of all art; they have that vein of realism by which the vigorous idealism of raphael is distinguished from the conventional idealism of a professor of historical painting. here one finds real treasures, creations of remarkable vital power, and in admirable taste. they show that ingres, apparently so systematic, had a profound love for living nature, and they ensure the immortality of his name. his historical pictures are works which compel our esteem, but his portraits are splendid creations which can truly stand comparison with the great old masters. so far back as there appeared in the salon his likeness of napoleon i, with his bloodless, corpse-like face, enchased with such art that delécluze called it a gothic medal. the emperor is seated like a wax figure upon the throne, surrounded by the attributes of majesty--stiff, motionless as a byzantine idol. it was followed in by the portrait of mme. devauçay, which even to-day impresses the beholder most pleasingly, notwithstanding the pedantic style in which it is painted. one feels in it fire and youthfulness, the enthusiasm and ardour of a new convert, who has for the first time discovered in nature beauties other than those he had learnt to see in the academy. moreover, he possessed a very distinguished and personal taste in drawing. the face is of exquisite grace, the eyes tenderly seductive and delicately veiled. ingres is already announced as he was afterwards to be. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ ingres. mlle. de montgolfier.] in holbein's portraits the whole german community of his time has been handed down to us; in van dyck's, the aristocracy of england under charles i. so also ingres has depicted for us, with all its failings and all its virtues, the middle-class hierarchy of louis philippe's reign, which felt itself to be the first estate, the summit of the nation, felt sure of the morrow, was proud of itself, of its intelligence and energy, which pursued with correctness its moral course of life, revered order and hated all excess--including that of the colourist. the same spirit animated this splendid _bourgeois_ of art. his "bertin the elder" is justly his most celebrated, enduring work; not the mere painted petrifaction of a newspaper potentate, but one of those portraits which bring a whole epoch home to the mind. it tells of the triumph of the _bourgeoisie_ under the monarchy of july more fully and clearly than does louis blanc's _histoire de dix ans_. in the best of humours, with the four-square solidity of a knowledge of his own worth, which is full of character, this modern newspaper demi-god sits on his chair as on a throne, the throne of the _journal des débats_, like a _bourgeois_ jupiter tonans, with his hands on his knees. [illustration: _baschet._ ingres. the forestier family.] but however highly one must estimate the importance of such a work, ingres is nevertheless at his highest, not in his painted likenesses, but in his portrait drawings. in the former the hard colouring is still, at times, offensive. almost always the flesh looks like wood, the dress like metal, blue robes like steel. his drawings, from which this defect is absent, are to be admired without criticism. ingres lived in his youth, at rome, as a drawer of portraits. for eight _scudi_ he did the bust, for twelve the whole figure, raging inwardly the while at being kept from "great art" by such journey-work. there is a story told of him, that when one day an englishman knocked at his door and asked, "does the draughtsman who makes the small portraits live here?" he shut the door in his face, with the words: "no; he who lives here is a painter." to-day these small masterpieces of which he was ashamed sell for their weight in gold. in the paris exhibition of there was mme. chauvin with her chinese eyes; mme. besnard on the terrace of the pincio with her broad hat and her elegant sunshade; mrs. henting with her innocent smile of an "_honnête femme_"; mrs. cavendish, an affected young blonde, with her overladen travelling dress and her crazy coiffure. strange, that a man like ingres should rave so about new fashions and pretty toilettes! in these pieces an artistic eye which was now inexorable, now tender and full of fancy, has looked on nature, and, in flowing pencil-strokes, has caught with spirit and with the certain touch of direct feeling the real fulness of life in what he saw. these drawings, especially the portrait of paganini and "the forestier family," show that father ingres possessed not only a highly cultivated intelligence and an iron strength of will, not only the genius of industry, but also a heart, a genuine, warm, and fine-feeling heart; that he was in his innermost being by no means the cold academician, the stiff doctrinaire he appears in his large pictures, and which he became by his opposition to the romantic school. here we have an enchanter such as the primitives were and the impressionists are, like massys and manet, like dürer and degas, like all who have looked nature in the face. and while these drawings, at once occasional and austere, place him as a draughtsman on a level with the greatest masters in the history of art, they also show him, the reactionary, to be at the same time a man of progress, the connecting link between the great art of the first half and the familiar art which rules over the second half of the nineteenth century. chapter xi juste-milieu as is usually the case, the heroes were succeeded by a generation less heroic and more practical. in this, art was in keeping with the deliberate and tranquil course of the state itself, which had fallen back again into the old groove, and with the homely, philistine character assumed in the course of years by the citizen monarchy of the tricolour. the _bourgeoisie_ which had effected the revolution of was soon appalled at its own temerity. even in literature it inclined towards a temperate and lukewarm mediocrity. it was astonished to find itself admiring casimir delavigne. it found in auber and scribe its ideal of music and comedy, as in guizot, duchâtel, thiers, and odilon barrot its ideal of politics. the intellectual exaltation which had gone before and followed after the revolution of july had calmed down, and that which was to rise out of the revolution of february was as yet latent. the same elder generation which had looked upon napoleon bonaparte's stony cæsarian eye, when, like a god of war, unapproachable in his power he rode by at the head of his staff, now saw the roi citoyen, the long-exiled ex-school-master, homely and fond of law and order, as every day at the same hour he passed alone on foot and in plain clothes through the streets of paris, the famous umbrella in his hand, rewarding each "vive le roi!" with a friendly smile and a grateful hand-shake. the umbrella became the symbol of this deedless monarchy, and the word "juste-milieu," which louis philippe had once employed to indicate the course to be followed, became the nickname of all that was weak and without energy, lustreless and undignified, in the age. the golden mean was triumphant in politics, literature, and painting. the artists who gave this period its peculiar stamp constitute, as compared with the heaven-assaulting generation of , only, as it were, a collateral female branch of that elder male line of good painting. to reconcile opposite tendencies, to avoid harshness, in short, to bring about an artistic compromise between ingres and delacroix, was the end towards which their efforts were chiefly directed. _jean gigoux_, a remarkable artist, has the merit of having given the most effective support which delacroix received in his battle against the _beauté suprême_ of the classical school. when, in the universal exhibition of at paris, his picture of "the last moments of leonardo da vinci," painted in , emerged from the seclusion of a provincial museum, its healthy fidelity to nature was the cause of general astonishment. the personages indeed wear costly costumes, and are surrounded by wealth and magnificence, but they themselves are common, ugly human beings. here there is no trace of idealism, not even in the sense of géricault, who, notwithstanding his love of truth, remained faithful to the heroic type. the faces are, with religious devotion, painted exactly after nature by a man who evidently loved the youthful works of guercino and had zealously studied dürer. at the same time was exhibited the portrait of the polish "general dwernicki," painted in , whom also gigoux depicts as a man, not as a hero. war has made him not lean but fat, and in gigoux's picture his red nose and prominent stomach are reproduced with cruel fidelity to nature. it is a declaration of war against every kind of idealism. even in his religious paintings in saint germain l'auxerrois he held fast to this principle, and this circumstance gives him a place to himself, apart from all the productions of his contemporaries. in a period which, with the solitary exception of delacroix, was still absolutely devoted to the doctrine _exagérer la beauté_, his works are of a healthy, soul-refreshing ugliness. a portion of delacroix's charm in colour descended to _eugène isabey_. he is certainly not a great artist, but a delightful, sympathetic individuality, a painter who affords one pleasure even at this day. amid the group of classicists of his time he has the effect of a beautiful patch of colour, of a palette on which shades of tender blue, mauve, lilac, brilliant green, silver-grey, red faded by sunshine, and opalescent mother-of-pearl combine in subtle harmony. his pretty, picturesquely costumed ladies are grouped together in luminous gardens, sheltered by delicate half-shadows, or ascend and descend the castle stairs, letting their long trains sweep behind them, and toying gracefully with fan or sunshade; while gallant cavaliers do them homage, and with bent head whisper sweet nothings in their ears. the slender greyhound plays a special part in these aristocratic comedies; its straight lines give a counterpoise to the soft flowing costumes of his figures. isabey is altogether in his element when he has to portray a ceremony requiring rich attire. then he binds together, as it were, a bouquet sparkling with colour, shot with the hues of ample damask folds and heavy gold-embroidered silk. now his colouring is _chic_, capricious, and coquettish, now it is that of the most delicate faded gobelin tapestry. if he has to paint a sea-view, he rumples the waves about like a ball-dress and pranks the ships up in bridal attire. his very storms have a festal appearance, like the anger of a beautiful woman. one must not look for life in his pictures; they are to the truth much what gounod's _faust_ is to goethe's. watteau is his spiritual ancestor; but he is not so full of life and wit as the painter of the gallant world of the eighteenth century. he does not depict his contemporaries, but the life of a vanished age; yet he has the same predilection for scenes of high life, and a studied, mannered gracefulness which is often charming and always pleasant to the eye. he shares with delacroix the latter's broad style, freedom from constraint, and delight in colour. but where delacroix is rough and violent, isabey is caressing and insinuating: they are not brothers, but distant cousins. and, like delacroix, he had no imitators; he went on his bright and delightful path in solitude, and remained without companions in the little gilded house, lit up with fantastic lanterns, which he assigned to be the coquettish home of charming beings of both sexes. [illustration: ary scheffer. _l'art._] a curious position, half-way between the romantic and the classical schools, was occupied by _ary scheffer_, who was, a generation ago, the favourite of the greater part of the aristocracy of europe, but is now known, to the german public at least, only because he is said to have painted "with snuff and green soap"--a phrase of heine's, which, however, gives a very false impression of him. a german-dutchman by birth, a classicist by training, scheffer in his youth came also in contact with the leading spirits of the romantic school; and these various influences, of race, education, and intercourse, are clearly reflected in the faces of his figures. his forms are thoroughly classic and generalised; only the expression of the face is ideal, while the eye is romantic, and, scheffer's german blood making itself felt--sentimental. it was precisely this mid-way position which his contemporaries found so much to their liking. they called his painting a great art full of style, uniting the sentiment of ideal beauty with a captivating power of expression. but history cares but little for these men of compromise, and regards this indecision as the chief defect of his genius. scheffer's draughtsmanship is dry and hard, his colouring without tenderness or charm. these failings are ill-assorted with the attitudes and physiognomy of his figures, which have always an affectation of weakness, exhaustion, and moral suffering. he is a sentimental classicist, and his subjects the antithesis of the græco-roman ideal to which he does homage in his technique. his "suliote women" was already, in sentiment, form, and colour, only a subdued and weakened reminiscence of the "massacre of chios." at a later time he entirely forsook historical subjects (such as "gaston de foix" and others), and attached himself with enthusiasm to the gospels and to the works of the poets, especially of one poet. when he had recourse to the bible as a source of inspiration, he selected tender episodes, the sadness of which he transmuted into tearfulness. so also, when he represented scenes from _faust_ or _wilhelm meister_, he gave to goethe's animated and impassioned characters something melancholy, suffering, and contemplative. heine said of his "gretchen": "you are no doubt wolfgang goethe's gretchen, but you have read all friedrich schiller." even before her fall, before she is in love, marguerite is pensive and sad like a fallen angel. mignon, francesca da rimini, and st. monica were also favourite figures for his delicate and contemplative spirit. he alone in french art inclines a little, in his tearful sentimentality, to the romantic school of düsseldorf. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ ary scheffer. marguerite at the well.] _hippolyte flandrin_ was the french counterpart of the german nazarenes. he is an example of how ingres' teaching resulted in stiff conventionality. ingres was a dangerous master to follow. his pupils formed round him a small, faithful, and submissive band, swore like those of cornelius by the master's doctrines, and for that very reason never attained to any distinctive character of their own. none of them possessed ingres' many-sided talent. his empire, like that of alexander the great, was divided among his successors, each of whom governed his own little realm with greater or less ability. hippolyte flandrin devoted himself to religious painting, which in his hands for the first time regained a greater importance in french art; but he followed much more slavishly than ingres in the paths of the italian masters of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. this painter, worthy of respect, full of conviction, learned and of sterling worth, but colourless and cold, who decorated the churches of st. vincent de paul and st. germain des prés, has enriched the history of art by no new gift. an indefatigable worker, but endowed with little intellectual power, he went no further than to follow out strictly the rules which ingres taught his pupils and had himself acquired from the old masters. after flandrin, as winner of the prix de rome in , had become intimately acquainted with the art treasures of italy, he seldom met with any difficulty. his cartoons are flowingly and correctly executed with a firm hand, like the fair copy of a school essay. of draughtsmanship he knew all that is to be learned; he remembered much, arranged his reminiscences, and thought little for himself. he was a miniature copy of his master, at once more poorly endowed and more fanatical, a purely mathematical genius; his art is a cold geometrical knowledge, the adaptation of anatomical studies to conventional forms, an arrangement of groups and draperies in strict accordance with celebrated exemplars. had not the primitive italian masters, the painters of the ancient christian catacombs, the saintly fra angelico, and the mosaic artists of ravenna done their work long before him, flandrin's paintings would never have seen the light, any more than those of the nazarene school. in both cases one can assign almost every face and figure to its original in the pictures of the italian masters. only a certain blond, tender, slightly melancholy, modern face of a christian maiden is flandrin's peculiar property. he transferred these same ascetic and pure principles to portrait painting, and thereby acquired for himself a large practice as the painter of the _femme honnête_. these women conversed with him and blushed in his presence; in his pictures we find grace and delicacy, eyes sparkling or meek, tenderness and mocking laughter, all translated into a nun-like, unapproachable appearance, which under the second empire gained the greater approbation among ladies, since it was seldom found in real life. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ chasseriau. apollo and daphne.] alongside of this overbeck, endowed with greater artistic powers than his german congener, there stands as the french cornelius _paul chenavard_, a man who revolved in his fertile brain philosophical conceptions deeper almost than those of the german master. he dreamed of broad, symbolical, decorative pieces, embracing all time and all space, wherein all the cosmogonies of the universe should be united. like cornelius, he wished to be a michael angelo, but he succeeded no better than the german. he spent fifteen years in the churches and museums of italy, pencil in hand, accumulating a vast collection of studies, from which his great painted history of the world was to be built up. but when he went back to paris his materials from the old masters had grown upon him to such an extent that he never recovered his individuality. for four years he worked with feverish diligence, and completed eighteen cartoons, each six metres in height and four in breadth, intended for the walls of the pantheon. so far as colour is concerned, they have attained no greater success than the campo santo frescoes of cornelius. chenavard could draw much better than the german, but was not much better as a painter; the works of both have a literary rather than an artistic value. brief and brilliant was the career of _théodore chassériau_, who shot across the heavens of art like a gleaming meteor, first as a devotee of form, in ingres' sense of the word, and afterwards, like delacroix, as an enthusiastic lover of sunshine and the clear light of africa. born in at st. domingo, he followed his teacher ingres in to the villa medici; but even in his first picture, the "susanna" of , now in the louvre, he proved himself by no means an orthodox pupil. "he has not the least understanding for the ideas or the changes which have entered into art in our time, and knows absolutely nothing of the poets of recent days. he will live on as a reminiscence and a reproduction of certain ages in the art of the past, without having created anything to hand down to the future. my wishes and my ideas do not in the least correspond with his." in these words chassériau has himself pointed out what it was that distinguished him from ingres. unfortunately he produced but little. personally a very elegant, _blasé_ gentleman, he plunged on his return from italy into the whirlpool of parisian life. he was remarkably ugly; but his black, piercing eyes made him the idol of the ladies, and he hurried through life with such haste that he broke down altogether at the age of thirty-six. beyond various decorative paintings for the church of saint méry and for the salle des comptes in the palais d'orsay, only a few eastern pictures, and, best and most characteristic, a couple of lithographs, remain to represent his work. in these delicate mythological compositions a chord is struck which found no echo until, a generation later, it was heard again in the work of the french new idealists and the english pre-raphaelites: there speaks in them a romantic hellenism, a something dreamily mystic, which makes him a remarkable link between delacroix and the most refined spirit in the modern school, gustave moreau. it was purely an act of gratitude in moreau when he affixed the dedication "to théodore chassériau" to his fine picture of "the young man and death." _léon benouville_ will be remembered only for his picture of the "death of st. francis," in the louvre, a good piece of work in the manner of the quattrocento. _léon cogniet_ deserves to be mentioned because in the fifties he brought together in his studio so many foreign pupils, especially germans. he enjoyed above all others the reputation of being able to initiate beginners both quickly and with certainty into the peculiar mysteries of craftsmanship. all that a master can teach, and that can be learned from his example, was to be obtained from this kind and fatherly instructor. even after he had long given up painting, his grateful pupils used to meet together yearly at a banquet given in the patriarch's honour. as an artist he belongs to the list of the great men who have paid for overpraise in their lifetime by oblivion after their death. his "massacre of the innocents" of --a woman who, mad with terror, thinks to hide herself and her child from the assassins of bethlehem under an open stairway--could give pleasure only in a time which hailed with enthusiasm ary scheffer's heads resembling plaster busts full of expression. occasionally, too, he painted landscapes--the chimerical, vague creations of a man who had lived but little in the open air. his finest picture, "tintoretto painting his dead daughter by lamplight," of , the engravings of which once enraptured france and germany, has to-day a somewhat insipid effect, and shows whither his genius was leading him--in technique a coarser schalcken, in sentiment a weaker delaroche. [illustration: cogniet. tintoretto painting his dead daughter.] delaroche was the titian of louis philippe's age, the spoiled child of the juste-milieu, one of the most insignificant and at the same time one of the most famous painters of the century; and in this double capacity is an interesting proof that in art the "vox populi" is seldom the "vox dei." what a difference between him and the great spirits of the romantic school! they were enthusiastic poets; their predilection for mediævalism was concerned only with its æsthetic charm, with the twilight shadows of its picturesque churches, the sounding presage of its bells, the motley processions of that world gleaming bright with uninterrupted colour. and what further allured their imaginative powers was the unruly character of certain epochs, the destructive war of wild factions, and the blazing, consuming power of passion. the historical motive, as such, was with them only a pretext for launching forth into flashing orgies of colour, according to the example, which they followed merely in externals, of the venetian and flemish masters. they knew, as genuine painters, that only in the pigment on their palette slumbers that power of exciting emotion by means of which the art of painting touches the chords of men's souls. enthusiasts of colour and of passion, they raved about the poets merely because the latter more readily enabled them, by means of the fierce vehemence of the awakened powers of nature, to invest with form the feverish, agitated, and terrible dreams of their fantasy. so it was that delacroix told of conflagration, of battle and warfare, of murder and pillage, of the bitterness and pains of love. at the same time, no doubt, he studied the vari-coloured costumes of past ages--his drawings show as much--but he made use of them simply as a storehouse of bright hues, as a lexicon by means of which he might embody his visions of colour. to manufacture historical vignettes and play the part of a teacher of history would have been in his eyes a thing to be held in contempt as the work of subservient illustrators. yet perhaps it was by taking this very course that far greater successes were to be attained, so far as the verdict of the multitude is considered. the decade following upon was a season of brilliant blossom for the art of writing history in france. by his _history of the english revolution_, in , guizot won for himself a place in the foremost rank of french authors. he began in his famous lectures at the sorbonne, and commenced in the publication of his _sources of french history_. even before him, augustin thierry had written in his _history of the conquest of england by the normans_, followed by _stories from the merovingian times_, and was now engaged in the preparation of his great work, the _history of the origin and progress of the third estate_. not unworthy to be compared with these writers, and soon to stand beside them, were two young men working in collaboration--mignet and thiers--who came to the front in - with their _history of the revolution_. at the impulse thus given, historical societies and unions had arisen in every province of france, and were developing an ever-increasing activity. what learning had begun, poetry carried further. a number of writers, young and old, began to consider what poetic use might be made of the materials which these investigations had brought to light, and few years had passed before the number of historical romances and dramas was hardly to be computed. vitet, the elder dumas, and de vigny put historical tragedy in the place of classical, and the modern novel of george sand, balzac, and beyle was ousted by the historical romance. during the same years was completed the process by which grand opera forsook fantastic for historical subjects, such as auber's _muette de portici_ and rossini's _guillaume tell_. [illustration: cogniet. the massacre of the innocents.] art also sought to turn to account the new materials furnished by historical science, and æsthetic minds hastened to enumerate the advantages which were to be expected of it. on the one hand--and this was nothing new--the artist, whose curse it was to be born in an inactive and colourless age, would find here all that he sought, for history offered him the contemplation of a magnificent life, full of movement. on the other hand--and this was the chief point--painting might also fulfil an important mission on behalf of culture, if by virtue of its more easily understood method it could supplement the science of history, and by recalling the great memories of the past keep alive that patriotism which in unfavourable conjunctures is so frequently found wanting. guizot recommended french history, "the history of chivalry," to painters, as the first and most important source of inspiration. "we want historians in the art of painting," wrote vitet; and his cry was not unheard. while the romanticists had seen in the old costumes nothing more than elements out of which a dashing colour-symphony could be obtained, troubling themselves little about the meaning or the narrative import of their pictures, their successors went over, bag and baggage, into the camp of the historians. in the place of pure painting, there arose an art laden with scientific documents, which busied itself in reconstructing former times with antiquarian exactness. while the former had produced nought but genuinely artistic colour-improvisations, so now a didactic aim, together with historical accuracy, became the main consideration. the painter was commissioned as a chronicler, an official of the state, to console citizens for the lamentable present by an appeal to the glorious past. he became a professor of history, a theatrical costumier who rummaged records, chose masks, cut out dresses, arranged scenic backgrounds, for no other purpose than to depict correctly and legibly on the canvas an historical event. and mme. tout le monde found in these pictures exactly what she required. on the one hand, the didactic aim of historical painting, with its long explanations in the catalogues, answered precisely to the needs of the educated middle classes. under the picture there was always a pretty card on which was printed this or that quotation from some historical writer. one read the description, and then satisfied one's self that the corresponding picture was really there and that it was in keeping with the description. one recalled to mind the lessons in history one had learned at school, and was pleased to be reminded in so pleasant a fashion that before the nineteenth century people did not wear trousers and frock-coats, but knitted hose and mantles. on the other hand, there still survived enough of the romantic unruliness to allow one to be shocked in a decorous and moderate manner, and with the help of the catalogue a picture might be permitted to make one's flesh creep in an agreeable way. for the average painter of mediocre ability historical exercises of this sort must also have been very alluring, inasmuch as they made no demand upon specially artistic qualities--upon any peculiar aptitude of the fancy, eye, or palette. the historian must indeed possess the power of combination, but much more that of sober investigation; too much imagination or too great a sense of humour would be dangerous to him. so also the historical painter required neither fancy, sentiment, nor power of perception; a certain capacity for compiling facts was all that was necessary. it was enough to ferret out of some popular book on history the story of a murder, and to possess a work upon costumes. by such means, men of a certain ability could easily manage, with the help of the studio technique founded by the romantic school, to put together the most imposing show-pieces. and even the critics allowed themselves frequently to be so far misled as to give to those models who were decked out in the finest costumes, and labelled with the names of the most celebrated personages, precedence over their more modest companions. consequently it happened that in the time of the citizen monarchy a great number of painters entirely devoid of talent, whose only merit was that they attached to this or that chapter of universal history pictures showing some laboured animation, became in the twinkling of an eye leaders of the schools. [illustration: paul delaroche. _l'art._ "paul delaroche à la funèbre mine s'entour avec plaisir de cadavres et d'os jane grey, mazarin, héros et héroine chez lui tout meurt ... excepté ces tableaux."] _eugène devéria_ was the first and most important painter deliberately to enter upon this course. when his picture of the "birth of henry iv" was exhibited in the salon of his appearance was welcomed as that of a new veronese, and his work joyfully saluted as the first historical picture in which the local colour of the epoch represented was accurately observed. henceforth devéria dressed always in the style of rubens, and his house became the headquarters of the romantic school. he was perhaps the only member of this group in whom some breath of delacroix's spirit survived, but unfortunately he never found again either the venetian tone or the male accent of his youth, and though he painted many more pictures he never contributed a second notable work to art. [illustration: _cassell & co._ delaroche. the assassination of the duke of guise.] [illustration: _l'art._ delaroche. the princes in the tower.] shortly afterwards _camille roqueplan_ began to alter his manner. up to that time he had been exclusively a painter who, like watteau and terborg, listened with a voluptuous shudder to the piquant rustle of silk, velvet, and satin dresses; now he devoted himself to depicting with perspicuity various scenes from history, renounced his airy and radiant fantasies, and became, in his "scene from the massacre of st. bartholomew," nothing but a tedious schoolmaster. _nicolaus robert fleury_, the painter of "charles v in the monastery of st. just," of the "massacre of st. bartholomew," of the "religious conference at poissy," and of other historical anecdotes, carefully conceived and laboriously executed, devoted himself, like lessing, to the propagation of noble ideas. his pictures were manifestoes against religious fanaticism, and philanthropic discussions concerning the trials and persecutions of the freethinkers. in order to give them the stamp of historical verisimilitude, he buried himself with the zeal of an archivist in the study of the period to be represented; often directly transferred into his pictures figures from diepenbeeck or theodor van thulden; and having the faculty of seizing in old paintings those tones of colour which belong rather to the epoch than the master, he succeeded in giving his works a certain documentary and archaic character for which, on his first appearance, he obtained ample credit. _louis boulanger_, after his "mazeppa" of , was a famous painter. but the highest success was that attained by paul delaroche, inasmuch as he understood better than any other, not only how to cater for the cultured public by the didactic nature and historical accuracy of his pictures, but also how to touch the heart by means of a lachrymose sentimentality. _paul delaroche_ belongs, by the date of his birth, to the eighteenth century. being one of gros' pupils, he had never borne the yoke of the classical school in its fullest weight, and therefore had never had occasion to revolt against it. when the romanticists came to the front, he had gone or rather been dragged along with them, for to his circumspect nature romanticism was an abomination, and his cool and deliberative spirit felt itself much more at home in the society of the classicists. the works of the historians opened to him a welcome outlet by which to avoid a rupture with either party, and delaroche found his vocation. he assumed the rôle of a peacemaker between the quarrelling brothers, placed himself as mediator between montagues and capulets, and thus became--like casimir delavigne in literature--the head of that "school of common sense" on whose banner glittered in golden letters louis philippe's motto of the juste-milieu. ingres was cold, reserved, and colourless; delaroche aspired to an agreeable, sparkling, highly seasoned, bituminous art of painting. delacroix was genial and sketchy; delaroche inscribed carefulness and exactness on his banner. the former had given offence by his boldness; delaroche won the conservatives over to himself by his well-bred bearing and moderate attitude. people thought delacroix too wild and poetical; delaroche took care to give them only a touch of the eagerness of romanticism, and set himself to reduce the passionate vehemence of delacroix to rational, philistine limits, and to soften down his native unruliness into sentimental pathos. this position which he assumed as a mediator made him the man of his age. the life of delacroix was a long struggle. but for the commissions entrusted to him by the state he might have died of starvation, for his sales to dealers and lovers of art brought him scarcely five hundred francs a year. his studio held many pictures, leaning mournfully against each other in corners. delaroche, on the other hand, was overwhelmed with praise and commissions. the representatives of eclecticism in philosophy and of the juste-milieu in politics found themselves compelled to praise an artist who was neither revolutionary nor reactionist, neither romantic nor classical, who had bound himself over neither to draughtsmanship nor to colouring, but united both elements in vulgar moderation. [illustration: _cassell & co._ delaroche. strafford on his way to execution.] [illustration: thomas couture. _l'art._] already in his first notable works, in , "the princes in the tower" and "oliver cromwell," he has fully assumed his lukewarm manner. he might have represented the murder of the princes, but fearing that the public would not stand it, he preferred merely to suggest the approaching death of the weeping and terrified children by placing in front of the bed a small dog, which is looking uneasily towards the door, where the red light of torches indicates the approach of the assassins,--a düsseldorf picture with improved technique. it is just the same with his melodramatic and lachrymose "cromwell." it would be hardly possible to represent one of the greatest figures in universal history in a more paltry manner, and to this day it is not quite certain whether the picture was intended to be serious or humorous. the great statesman in whom was embodied the political and ecclesiastical revolution of england must have been extremely busy on the day of charles i's funeral, and have had better things to do than stealthily to open the coffin and contemplate, with a mixture of childish curiosity and sentimental pity, the corpse of the king whom he had fought and conquered. eugène delacroix had treated this subject in a sketch, in which cromwell, at the funeral of charles, gazes in quiet contempt upon the weak monarch who had not known how to keep either his crown or his head. as a work of art this little water-colour is worth ten times as much as delaroche's great, long-meditated, carefully executed painting. from the very beginning he had no sense for the passionate or dramatic. from the first day, had the tailor who prepared costumes struck work, his artistic greatness would have fallen away to nothing; from the commencement he produced nothing but large, clumsily conceived illustrations for historical novels. planché pointed out long ago that all the costumes are glaringly new, that all the victims look as if they had got themselves up for a masked ball, that this sort of painting is much too clean and pretty to give the argument the appearance of probability. théophile gautier, who had proclaimed the powerful originality of delacroix, fumed with rage against these "saliva-polished representations, this art for the half-educated, disguised in false, philistine realism, this art of historical illustration for the familiar use of the _bourgeois_." to rank timorous, half-hearted talent higher than reckless and awe-inspiring genius--this was in gautier's eyes the sin against the holy ghost, and he sprang like a tiger upon the popularity of talents such as these. he could, as he himself said, have swallowed delaroche, skin, hair, and all, without remorse; meanwhile, the public raised him upon the shield as its declared favourite. he won the intellectual middle class over to himself with a rush, as he industriously went on rummaging in manuals of french and english history for royal murders and battle-deaths of kings. with his "richelieu," "mazarin," and "strafford," but especially with his "execution of lady jane grey" and "murder of the duke of guise in the castle of blois," he made hits such as no other french artist of his time could put to his account. just then, in his youthful work, _the states-general at blois_, ludovic vitet had put the murder of the duke of guise upon the stage. nothing could be better-timed than to transform this operatic scene into colour. the historians of civilisation admired the historical accuracy of the courtiers' dress, all the upholstery of the room, the lofty mantelpiece, the carved wardrobes, the praying-stool with the altar-piece over it, the canopy-bed with its curtains of red silk embroidered with lilies and the king's initials in gold. playgoers compared the scene with that which they had witnessed on the stage in vitet's piece, and the comparison was not unfavourable to the painter. for delaroche, in order to be as far as possible in keeping with the stage representation, was accustomed to commission jollivet, the chief mechanician of the opera house, to prepare for him small models of rooms, in which he then arranged his lay-figures. that is the further great difference between delaroche and delacroix, between the vagrant painter of history and the artist. the latter had the gift of the inner vision, and only painted things which had intellectually laid hold upon him and had assumed firm shape in his imagination. it was while the organ was playing the _dies iræ_ that he saw his "pietà" in a vision--that mighty work which in power of expression almost approaches rembrandt. "is not tasso's life most interesting?" he writes. "you weep for him, swaying restlessly from side to side on your chair, when you read the story of his life; your eyes assume a threatening aspect, and you grind your teeth with rage." such passionate emotion was wholly unknown to delaroche; he painted deeds of murder with the wildness of mieris. delacroix everywhere grasps what is essential, and gives to every scene its poetical or religious character. a couple of lines are for him sufficient means wherewith to produce a deep impression. in presence of his pictures one does not think of costumes; one sees everywhere passion overflowing with love and anger, and is intoxicated with the harmony of sentiment and colour. delaroche, like thierry, had merely a predilection for the historical anecdote which, dramatically pointed, keeps the beholder in suspense, or else, simply narrated, amuses him. the colour and spirit of events had no power over his imagination; he merely apprehended them with a cool understanding, and put them laboriously together in keeping with it. delacroix sought counsel from nature; but in the moment of creation, in front of the canvas, he could not bear direct contact with it. "the influence of the model," he wrote, "lowers the painter's tone; a stupid fellow makes you stupid." delaroche draped his models as was required, made them posture and pull faces, and while he was painting, laboriously screwed them up to the pathos demanded by the situation. such a method of procedure must necessarily become theatrical. just as in his historical pictures he endeavoured to transform delacroix's passion into operatic scenes, so he perfected his position as a man of compromise by imitating the academic style in his "hemicycle." here it was ingres' laurels which robbed him of his sleep. the fame which this picture has acquired is mainly due to henriquel dupont's fine engraving. it does not attain to any kind of solemn or serious effect. one might imagine one's self in some entirely prosaic waiting-room, where all the great men of every age have agreed to meet together for no matter what ceremonial purpose; one sees there a carefully chosen collection of costumes of all epochs, with well-studied but expressionless portraits of the leaders of civilisation. here also delaroche has not risen above respectable mediocrity, and his characteristics remain, as ever, thoroughly middle-class. [illustration: couture. the love of gold.] his likeness of napoleon is perhaps that which shows most clearly how paltry a soul this painter possessed. it is not devastation in human shape, not the man in whom his officers saw the "god of war" and of whom mme. de staël said, "there is nothing human left in him." the intellect of that corsican, with his great thoughts striding as in seven-leagued boots, thoughts each of which would give any single german writer material for the rest of his life, was hidden to the inquisitive glance of a painter who had never seen in the whole of human history anything more than a series of petty episodes. and one who is not able to paint a good portrait is not justified in intruding into other regions of art. for similar reasons the religious paintings with which he busied himself in his last days have likewise enriched art with no new element. they are a philistine remodelling of the biblical drama, in the same style as his historical pictures. in the end he appears himself to have become conscious how little laborious compilations of this kind have in common with art, and since with the best will in the world he could produce nothing better than he had painted in the thirties, he lost all pleasure in his vocation and abandoned himself to gloom and pessimism, from which death set him free in . _thomas couture_, who after delaroche was most in vogue as a teacher in the fifties, was of greater importance as an artist, and in his "romans of the decadence" produced a work which, from the point of view of the juste-milieu, is worthy of consideration even to-day. he was a remarkable man. his parents, shoemakers at senlis, seem to have regarded the thick-headed, slowly developing boy as a kind of idiot, and are said to have treated him with no excessive gentleness. he was sent away from school because he could not understand the simplest things, and studied without success in the studios of gros and delaroche. and yet, after he had made his début in the salon of with the "troubadour," a fine picture in the style of devéria, his "orgie romaine" of made him at one stroke the most celebrated painter in france. pupils thronged to him from every quarter of the globe, and he left a deep and enduring impression upon every one of them. a very short, corpulent, broad-shouldered, thick-set, proletarian figure, with thick disorderly hair, a blouse, a short pipe, and a gruff manner, he used to stride through the lines of his pupils, who regarded him with wonder on account of his ability as a teacher and his remarkable powers. [illustration: _baschet._ couture. the romans of the decadence.] yet, when a few years had elapsed, no one heard of him again. after his "love of gold" and a couple of portraits, he felt that he was unfruitful, and gave up the battle. "the falconer," an excellent picture, with charming qualities of colour, was the last work to give any proof of couture's technical mastery. he fell out with napoleon, who wished to employ him; made many enemies by his writings, especially among the followers of delacroix, whom he criticised beyond measure; and finally, embittered, and abandoning all artistic work, he buried himself in his country place at villers de bel, near paris. thither americans and englishmen used to come to order pictures of him, and were much astonished to hear that the old gardener's assistant, as they took him to be, sitting on the grass and mending shoes or old kettles, was couture. the news of his death in caused general astonishment; it was as if one long buried had come to life again. it had meanwhile become evident that even his "romans of the decadence" was only a work of compromise, the whole novelty of which consisted in forcing the results attained by the romantic school in colouring into that bed of procrustes, the formulæ of idealism. the work is undoubtedly very noble in colouring, but what would not delacroix have made of such a theme! or rubens, indeed, whose flemish "kermesse" hangs not far from it in the louvre. couture's figures have only "absolute beauty," nothing individual; far less do they exhibit the unnerved sensuality of romans of the decline engaged in their orgies. they are merely posing, and find their classical postures wearisome. they are not revelling, they do not love; they are only busied in filling up the space so as to produce an agreeable effect, and in disposing themselves in picturesque groups. even the faces have been vulgarised by idealism: everything is as noble as it is without character. there is something of the hermaphrodite in couture's work. his art was male in its subjects, female in its results. his "decadence" was the work of a decadent, a decadent of classicism. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ couture. the troubadour. (_by permission of m. charles sedelmeyer, the owner of the picture._)] chapter xii the post-romantic generation four years after couture painted his "roman orgy," napoleon iii ascended the throne, and the parisian orgy began. it was a remarkable spectacle that the capital offered in those days--a spectacle of fairy-like, flashing and sparkling splendour. even to-day, when republican paris endeavours as much as possible to obliterate every memory of the empire, napoleon's spirit lives in the external appearance of the city and hovers over every conspicuous point. augustus might say that he had found his capital a city of plaster and lime, and left it one of stone and bronze; napoleon has the right to maintain that he raised palaces where there had been barracks. notwithstanding all the imprecations uttered against his rule, the most thorough-going republicans reluctantly concede to him the possession of one good quality: he knew how to bring prosperity to the shop; "_il faisait marcher le commerce_." one hears it said that the beautiful city on the seine is but the shadow of what it then was. "_le niveau a baissé!_" says the parisian, when he calls to mind the gorgeous days of the empire. the extravagant elegance, the magnificent luxury, which used to roll in superb carriages along the boulevards and the champs elysées towards the bois de boulogne, and exhibited itself in the evening in the boxes of the theatres; the lustre which emanated from the court, and the concourse of all the nabobs of the world,--all this must in those days have given to parisian life a sparkling splendour, a something stupefying and intoxicating, an alacrity of enjoyment which had no parallel elsewhere. to the respectable, pedantic _bourgeoisie_ which ruled under louis philippe had succeeded a new generation of men of the world, which drank to the lees all the refined pleasures that a modern great city has to offer. the gentlefolk of the empire understood the art of living better, cultivated and exhausted it after a more inventive fashion, than any generation that had gone before. in the tuileries sat the man of the second of december, the connoisseur and promoter of all refined tastes. in his person the age was embodied, that age depicted by zola in _la curée_, in the passage where he describes the halls, illumined as if by enchantment, of the imperial palace. there, all the splendour of over-civilisation glitters and gleams, with its bright eyes and sparkling jewels, with its breath of intoxicating perfumes floating from naked shoulders and arms and half-veiled voluptuous bosoms; while the green, sphinx-like eye of napoleon iii rests indifferently on the alabaster sea of white shoulders bowing before him, as he reviews all that he has possessed and all that he can yet enjoy. dumas' _dame aux camélias_, _diane de lys_ and _le demi-monde_, barrière's _filles de marbre_, augier's _mariage d'olympe_, give the impress of the period upon literature, and the single phrase "the lady of the camelias" conjures up a world of forms and of scenery. _la nouvelle babylone_ is the title of the fine book in which joseph pelletan depicted the mysterious paris of those years, the great city which cherished in its bosom the lowest and highest extremes of a refined world of pleasure, and was at the same time an inexhaustible fountain of arduous work. one would have imagined that these new conditions of imperial france would have left their impress, in some way or other, upon the art of painting also; just as in the works of rembrandt, frans hals, jan steen, terborg, ostade, pieter de hooch, and van der meer of delft the entire seventeenth century is reflected, clearly and with animation, treated with charming familiarity or else with grandiose effect, in its spirit, its manner of feeling, its habits and costumes. what a domain painting would have had; from the official festivals and the bustle of public life down to the complete delineation of the family home! literature had entered into this course a quarter of a century before, and had shown the path--a path leading to new worlds. but in french art french society is not reflected. not a single painter has left us a picture of this splendid paris, dancing on a volcano and yet so amiably delightful. classicism and historical painting still held the field, as if turned to stone, and show, in essentials, hardly any modification. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ alexandre cabanel.] so far back as in , charles lenormant wrote of the school of david: "even the great painter ingres was not able to rejuvenate a school which was breaking up from old age, or to restore their full resonance to the slackened and worn-out chords; his only office was to give the old synagogue honourable burial. take away this last scion of the classical school, and the curtain may fall--the farce is ended." he might have said the same thing forty years later, for with cabanel and bouguereau classicism has limped on, almost unchanged, to our own days. its art was a correct, conventional picture-stencilling, which might just as well have flourished a generation earlier. classicism--which in david was hard and spartan, in ingres cold and correct--has become pretty in cabanel and bouguereau, and is completely dissolved in the scent of roses and violets. only a certain perfume of the _demi-monde_ brings the persons who appear as venus, as naiads, as aurora or diana, into complete accord with the epoch which produced them. for ingres the female body itself was the exclusive canon of beautiful form; now the swelling limbs begin to stretch themselves voluptuously forth. ingres still treats the human eye as it was treated in ancient sculpture, as something animal, soulless, and dead; now it begins to twinkle provocatively. a modern refined taste plays round the classical scheme. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ cabanel. the shulamite.] [illustration: bouguereau. brotherly love.] _alexandre cabanel_, the incarnation of the academician, was, under napoleon iii, the head of the École des beaux arts. he was a fortunate man. born at montpellier, the city of professors, nourished from his earliest youth on academic milk, winner of the grand prix de rome in , awarded the first medal at the universal exhibition of , he went on his way, laden with orders and offices, amid the tumultuous applause of the public. among the artists of the nineteenth century none attained in so high a degree all those honours which lie open to a painter in our days. yet, as an artist, he remained all his life on the plane of the school of ingres. even his "death of moses," the first picture which he sent from rome to the salon, was entirely pieced together out of raphael and michael angelo. after that he laid himself out to provide england and america with those women, more or less fully attired, who bore sometimes biblical, sometimes literary names: delilah, the shulamite woman, jephthah's daughter, ruth, tamar, flora, echo, psyche, hero, lucretia, cleopatra, penelope, phædra, desdemona, fiammetta, francesca da rimini, pia dei tolomei--an endless procession. but the only variety in this poetical seraglio lay in the inscriptions on the labels; the way in which the figures were represented was always the same. his works are pictures blamelessly drawn, moderately well painted, which leave one cold and untouched at heart. they possess that unusual polish and that dexterity of exposition which, like good manners in society, create a favourable impression, but are insufficient in themselves to make a man a pleasant companion. nowhere is there anything that takes hold upon the soul, nowhere any touch to prove that the artist has felt anything in his painting, or force the beholder to feel for himself. the unvarying faces of his figures, with their eternal dark-rimmed eyes, resemble not living human beings but painted plaster casts. one would take his "cleopatra," apathetically observing the operation of the poison, to be stuffed, like the panther at her feet. one seeks in vain for a figure that is sincere or interesting, for a face alluring in its truth to nature. his "venus" of made him the favourite painter of the tuileries, and the insipid, rosy tints of that picture became more and more feeble in the course of years, until his works resembled wearisome cartoons, coloured by no matter what process. he was picot's pupil, it is true, but in reality ingres was his grandfather, a grandfather far, far greater than himself, whose portraits alone show the entire littleness of cabanel. all his life long ingres was in his portraits a fresh, animated, and admirable realist. cabanel indeed also painted in his earliest days likenesses of ladies which were full of serious grace, uniting a powerful fidelity to nature with considerable elegance. but his success was fatal to him. moreover, as a portrait-painter, he became the depicter of society, and society ruined him. in order to please his distinguished customers, he devoted himself far more than is good for portrait-painting to smooth rosy flesh, large glassy eyes, and dainty fine hands, and over-idealised his sitters till they lost every appearance of life. [illustration: lefÉbure. truth. (_by permission of messrs. goupil, the owners of the copyright._)] _william bouguereau_, who industriously learnt all that can be assimilated by a man destitute of artistic feeling but possessing a cultured taste, reveals even more clearly, in his feeble mawkishness, the fatal decline of the old schools of convention. he has been compared to octave feuillet, who also never extricated himself from the scented atmosphere of distinguished society; but the comparison is unjust to feuillet. bouguereau is in his madonna-painting a perfumed ary scheffer, in his venus-pictures a greater hamon; and in his perfectly finished and faultless stencilling style of beauty he became from year to year more and more insupportable. his art is a kind of painting on porcelain on a large scale, and he gives to his madonnas and his nymphs the same smooth rosy tints, the same unreal universalised forms, until at last they become a _juste-milieu_ between raphael's "galatea" and the wax models one sees in hairdressers' shops. only in one sense can his religious painting be called modern; it is an elegant lie, like the whole of the second empire. [illustration: _l'art._ henner. susanna and the elders.] close by bouguereau's "venus" in the luxembourg hangs the well-known colossal figure of a beautiful nude woman with unnaturally over-developed thighs, which by the shining mirror in its uplifted right hand proclaims itself to be "truth." _jules lefébure_, the painter of this picture, is also completely a slave to tradition; he came from cogniet's studio, and won the prix de rome in . but he at least possesses more taste, elegance, and character; his painting of the nude is more distinguished, truer, and more powerful. he is in the broader sense of the word a worshipper of nature, and was so in his youth especially. his "sleeping girl" of and his "femme couchée" of are smooth and honest studies from the nude, of delicate, sure draughtsmanship, and have therefore not become antiquated even to-day. unfortunately he did not find this masculine accent again, when at a later time he grouped ideal figures together to make pictures of them. his "diana surprised" of was a very clever composition of well-ordered lines, possessing even fine details, especially one or two charming heads, but as a whole it is lifeless and uninteresting. like bouguereau, he lacks power, and, notwithstanding his distinction and his capacity for arrangement, he is not painter enough to be truthfully entitled a "painter of the nude." [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ henner. the sleeper.] in general, french art, however willingly it took to this sphere during the period we are considering, is rich indeed in well-drawn documents, but poor in works which, considered as painting, can bear the most distant comparison with fragonard and boucher. the revolution had put an end to the joyous flesh-painting of french art. at the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century the painter of tender and life-like flesh-colour was not the reformer david, but the despised prudhon. the former found his ideal in statues, and turned flesh to stone. the latter, a direct descendant of correggio, gave expression to life with a tender mellowness. ingres was again, like david, a very mediocre flesh-painter, and the romanticists entered this sphere but seldom. delacroix indeed has in his "massacre" a couple of excellent touches, but they are isolated phenomena in his work. after the approved system was to give nude female figures the appearance of being made of terra-cotta, biscuit, or ivory. the forgotten art of painting velvety, soft flesh, and of making it vibrate in light, had to be learned over again, and to this meritorious task _henner_ devoted himself--the modern correggio from alsace, who stands to cabanel in the same relation as prudhon to david. even henner in his later days has become very much a mannerist, and has done some very bad work. to-day he prefers a heavy, pasty, buttery style of painting, with faces which look as if they had been pickled in oil, and have an unreal expression; his contrasts of light and shade, once so delicate, have become raw and forced. yet beside cabanel he still appears the true poet of female flesh-painting, the dreamy graceful depicter of refined sensuality. prudhon's delicate ideal and his language of vibrating tenderness are revived in henner. his "nymph resting" in the luxembourg has the same soft _morbidezza_, the same delightful mystery, in which prudhon before him had enveloped the sweetness of smiling faces and the beauty of female forms. he too chose the lombards as his guides. after winning the prix de rome in , he sent to the salon of a "susanna," which already shows his ability as a flesh-painter and his relationship to correggio. and a lombard he has remained all his life. one could with difficulty find a more delicate and smooth study of the nude than his "biblis" of . [illustration: paul baudry.] since that time another tendency highly characteristic of henner has shown itself in his work. in his endeavour to render the tint and tender softness of flesh as delicately as possible, he sought at the same time for light which should intensify the clear tone of the nude body. these he found in that time of evening, which one might call henner's hour, when the landscape, overshadowed by the twilight, gradually loses colour, and only a small blue space in the sky or a silent forest-lake still for a moment preserves the reflection of vanishing daylight. in this tranquil harmony of nature after sunset, the white pallor of the human body seems to have absorbed all the daylight and to be giving it forth again, while the surrounding landscape is already merging into colourless shadow. this is henner's "second manner," and he raised it into a system. every year since then there has appeared in the salon one of those pale nymphs, standing out so mistily against the dark green of an evening landscape, or one of those virgilian eclogues, in which the gloaming rests caressingly upon nude white bodies. and by this method of painting flesh and of throwing light upon it, henner has won for himself an important place in modern art. _paul baudry_, the powerful decorator of the grand opera house at paris, marks the close of this tendency. in his work the endeavours of all those talented artists who sought to found a new school of "ideal painting" upon the basis of the study of the italian classicists came to a crowning height; and at the same time baudry took a further step onward, in that he vivified the classical scheme with a yet more marked cast of "modernity." his first picture, on the murder of marat, was feeble. what david had executed smoothly and forcibly in his dead "marat," baudry spoiled in his "charlotte corday." the bath, the night-table with the inkstand on it, the map on the wall, and all the fittings of the room, are painted with the greatest finish, but the young heroine in her petrified idealism has no more life in her than there is in the furniture. his "pearl and wave," which is hung in the luxembourg close to cabanel's and bouguereau's "birth of venus," gave proof of progress. a deep-blue wave, towering on high and crowned with foam, has washed a charming woman ashore like a costly pearl. she seems to have just awakened out of slumber, and her roguish, moistly gleaming eyes are smiling. saucily she leans forward her fair-haired head under her bended arms, and stretches out in easy motion her youthfully slender yet fully proportioned body. bouguereau's and even cabanel's female beauties are waxen and spoiled by retouching, but baudry's cypris is a living being, and preserves some of the individual charm of the model. [illustration: _baschet._ baudry. charlotte corday.] it is this breath of realism which gives their attractiveness to baudry's pictures in the paris opera house. he cannot indeed be ranked as a truly great master of decorative painting, as the fragonard of the nineteenth century; he was too eclectic. the five years, from to , which as winner of the prix de rome he spent in the villa medici, were the happiest of his life. he saw in the italian galleries neither holbein nor velasquez, neither rembrandt nor botticelli nor caravaggio. he saw nothing and revered nothing save the pure tradition of the cinquecento, which was to him the alpha and omega of art. he dreamed of great decorative works which should place him on an equality with those old masters. it was therefore joyful news to him when, at the suggestion of his old comrade charles garnier, he was commissioned to adorn the opera house. baudry was then thirty-five years old, in possession of his full powers, and yet he thought it necessary to go back to italy to interrogate the masters of the renaissance anew. for a full year he worked ten hours daily in the sistine chapel. as soon as he knew michael angelo by heart, he betook himself to england to copy raphael's cartoons, and then in for the third time to italy, before he felt himself capable of covering the five hundred square metres of canvas. the task took him four years, and when it was exhibited at the palais des beaux-arts in , prior to being placed in its final resting-place, there was general astonishment at a single man's power to produce so much and such great work. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ baudry. truth.] to-day his praise cannot be sounded so high. the place to which he aspired, by the side of the great masters of the renaissance, will not fall to baudry's lot; he is hardly to be reckoned even among the great french masters of the nineteenth century. to rise even so far he lacked the first and most essential gift--originality. he was a model pupil in his youth, and a pupil he remained all his life. he always saw nature through the medium of art, and never had the courage to take a fresh breath and plunge into its fountain of youth. between him and reality there was ever the prism of the old pictures that he loved; brush in hand, he devoted himself, turn by turn, and with equal enthusiasm, to michael angelo, titian, correggio, bronzino, and even ingres. as soon as he returned from italy for the first time, as holder of the prix de rome, he exhibited several pictures which were altogether titian in colouring, altogether raphael in style. each of them, even the most important, calls some other painting to one's mind. his "fortune and the child" is a variation upon titian's "divine and earthly love"; his "death of a vestal virgin" a reminiscence of the "death of peter martyr"; his "warrior" in the opera house is the painted double of rude's "marseillaise." how many gestures, attitudes, and figures could, by a close analysis, be shown to be borrowed in turn from veronese, andrea del sarto, correggio, or raphael! his works are a synthesis of the favourite forms of the cinquecento; they are the testament of the cinquecento masters. he was a parisian primaticcio, a posthumous member of the old school of fontainebleau. in him was embodied the last smile of the renaissance, the results of which he assimilated and reduced to formulæ. he lacked creative imagination, and his pictures are wanting in individual character. the nervous movement and sinewy stretchings of his young men's bodies would never have been painted but for donatello's "david." of his women, the powerful and muscular are descended from michael angelo's "eve," the more slender and elegant come down from rosso. his palette, with its blue and white tints, is bright and flowery, but it is no less artificial than his composition. [illustration: _baschet._ baudry. the pearl and the wave. (_by permission of mr. w. h. stewart, the owner of the picture._)] nevertheless, it would be unjust to speak of baudry's work as merely faded classicism, or as michael angelo and water. he was not merely a pupil of the italians; he contributed something parisian of his own, something pretty, mannered, refined, graceful, seductive, and smiling, and felt himself independent enough to give to his conventional figures this sprightly addition of genuinely modern nervosity. the birth-certificates of his young men were drawn up in florence, those of his young women in rome, three hundred and fifty years ago; yet there is in the latter something of the _parisienne_, in the former something of the modern dandies who know the fevered life of the boulevards. in his delightful art there is french wit, there is a touch of the piquant, of the feminine, of the ambiguous, which almost amounts to indecency. one can still recognise the charming model in the figures of his dancers and muses; you can see that music's or poetry's waist was laced up in a close-fitting corset before she sat for the picture. one may meet these women at any moment, trailing their dresses along the sidewalks of the boulevards, or riding negligently in their carriages back from the bois de boulogne. and still more modern than the wasp-like form of the body is the character of the face and the smile on the lips. thus baudry has given a new shade to the manner in which one can obtain inspiration from the old masters. to all that he borrowed he added a personal and charming note. he possesses an elegance and grace which are neither correggio's, nor raphael's, nor veronese's, but french and parisian. his muses and cupids, his "comedy" and his "judgment of paris," are documents of the french spirit in the nineteenth century, and--together with a few small and fine portraits on a green or blue background _à la_ clouet, among which that of his friend about takes the first rank--they will always assure him an important place in the history of french art. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ baudry. cybele. (_by permission of the marquise arconati-visconti, the owner of the picture._) ] [illustration: baudry. leda.] another artist who worked with baudry at the decoration of the grand opera house was _Élie delaunay_, who painted in a hall leading out of the foyer three large pictures on the myths of apollo, orpheus, and amphion, and was at that time less appreciated than he deserved. delaunay was born in the same year as baudry, and, like him, was a breton. in their genius also they are very similar. he shared in baudry's admiration of the masters of the renaissance, but his worship was less for the cinquecento than the fourteenth century. it was in flandrin's studio that he prepared himself for his entry into the École des beaux arts. his first picture, in , "christ healing a leper," was, with respect to its roman manner of conceiving form and its bronze-like firm draughtsmanship, still entirely in the style of ingres. it was not till he went to italy in , as winner of the prix de rome, that he turned from the works of the roman school to those of the early renaissance masters, to whom he was attracted by their rigorous study of form and their manly severity. his sketch books were filled with drawings after paolo uccello, filippo lippi, pollajualo, ghirlandajo, botticelli, gozzoli, and signorelli. it was just at this time that french sculpture was making its significant revolt against the antique and in favour of donatello, verrocchio, and della robbia; that the prix de florence was founded, and that paul dubois' "florentine singer" appeared. delaunay became as a pupil of the quattrocento masters one of the greatest draughtsmen of the century, a healthy naturalist in the sense in which the primitives were so, with a concise and firm power of design which only ingres amongst modern french painters shares with him. the bodies of his nude male figures are strained in nerve and muscle like those of donatello; they have the essential elegance and powerful rhythm of dubois' statues. even the two pictures which he sent from italy to the salon, "the nymph hesperia fleeing from the pursuit of Æsacus," and the "lesson on the flute" in the museum at nantes, were works of great taste and sincerity, studied with respectful and patient devotion to nature, without striving after sentimental effect and without conventional reminiscences. when in he returned from rome, he completed the frescoes in the church of st. nicholas in nantes, which, in their strict severity, remind one of signorelli's cycle at orvieto. in appeared in the salon his "plague at rome," which afterwards passed into the luxembourg, and which is not devoid of tragic accent. in that collection hangs also his "diana" of , a proud nude figure drawn with firm and manly lines, and full of grave dignity, after the manner of feuerbach. at the same time as his "diana" he exhibited his portrait of a mlle. lechat, seated like one of botticelli's madonnas in front of a trellis of roses--in the style of the old masters, and yet modern, naturalistic, and in excellent taste. thenceforth he took his place among the first portrait painters of his time. there is an inexorable love of truth, a something bronze-like and stony in his pictures, finished as they are with the firm impress of medals. instances of this may be found in his fine portrait of mme. toulmouche, whom he has represented in a white summer costume, with black gloves, seated in the midst of cheerful landscape; and also in several male heads drawn with that firmness of modelling which bronzino in his best days alone possessed. after the completion of the opera paintings he finished, in , twelve decorative pictures for the great hall of the council of state in the palais royal. his last works, which remained unfinished, were designs for the pantheon--scenes from the life of st. geneviève--in which he followed in the footsteps of the great fresco colourists of upper italy, gaudenzio ferrari and pordenone. Élie delaunay was no original genius, and as a pupil of the painters of the quattrocento has not enriched the history of art in any way, but he stands forth, in a time which cared for nothing but external effect, as a very loyal, serious, and honest artist, whose works all bear the stamp of a healthy, manly spirit. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ baudry. edmond about.] though in the works of these masters the classicism of ingres passes away, in part enfeebled and in part imbued with modern elements and vivified by a more direct study of nature, yet on the whole paul delaroche dominates this period also. historical painting takes the highest places in the salon, and shows itself altered only in this respect, that, instead of delaroche's tameness of style, we have sensational subjects, arguments which revel in scenes of horror and display of corpses. literature had already entered upon this path. even mérimée in his last novel, _lokis_, was clearly the forerunner of that tendency in taste which taine characterised by the words, "_depuis dix ans une nuance de brutalité complète l'élégance_." flaubert himself, in his _salambo_, was to some extent carried away by the stream. consider, for instance, the descriptions of gisko crawling, a maimed, shapeless stump, out of the ditch into matho's tent, and of how his head is sawn off; of the tortures inflicted by the carthaginian people upon the captured matho; or of how the mercenaries are starved to death in the rocky valley where they were imprisoned. vying with this tendency of literature, painting attained in its chosen themes an over-excitation which reached the limits of the possible. while delaroche had only in a very timid manner led the way to the tragedies of history, the younger artists hunted up all the most horrible deeds of blood to be found in the great book of martyrs of the story of man, and elaborated them on gigantic canvases. it would be quite impossible to draw up a catalogue of all the murders at that time perpetrated by french art. they might be arranged under various headings, as biblical, historical, political murders; murders in connection with robbery, and murders arising out of revenge; with subdivisions corresponding to the means employed, as poison, the dagger, the halter, broadsword and rapier, the bowstring, strangling, burning, etc. this was the time when, on account of this dominance of the "_genre féroce_," the public used to call the salon the morgue. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ delaunay. diana.] _toudouze_ painted the "fall of sodom" with a dozen copper-coloured abyssinians, larger than life, rolling on the ground in convulsions, while lot's wife, dying and half-consumed by fire, gnashes her teeth as she raises the corpse of her child over her head. in a picture of _george becker's_ were represented the corpses of king saul's sons, delivered over by david to the gibeonites, hanging alongside of each other in a dark forest scene on a cross-shaped framework, like butcher's meat from the shambles. their mother stands beneath the scaffold, swinging a knotted club to protect the corpses from an antediluvian vulture. in a painting by _bréhan_, cyaxares, king of the medes, gives a banquet, and by way of dessert has his guests the scythian leaders massacred by his mercenaries. in one by _matthieu_, heliogabalus has hit upon a yet happier idea, for at the conclusion of the meal he sets half-starved lions and tigers upon his guests. _aimé morot_ depicted in a large picture "the wives of the ambrones" in the battle of aquæ sextiæ. they are hurling themselves like a horde of furies upon the roman horsemen who are attacking the camp. half-naked, or entirely so, with their hair flowing behind them, they throw themselves upon the romans, catch hold of the swords by the blade, tear their eyes out, and are trampled beneath the horses' hoofs. especially popular were the voluptuous and cruel wild beasts from the menagerie of the cæsars. nero in particular suited the atmosphere of the period; his ghost haunted the novel, the stage, sculpture, and painting, and there seemed to be a general agreement to immortalise him and the morally monstrous personality of locusta. in a picture by _sylvestre_ he is represented with florid cheeks, glowing with fat, and gloating over the mortal agony of a slave lying on the ground, upon whom locusta has tested the poison intended for britannicus. _aublet_ varied the same theme by making a negro lad the victim, while several corpses of negroes lying in the background suggest that the emperor was not quite satisfied with locusta's first experiments. round nero, the more entirely to fill his magnificent golden house, the charming shades of his congenial comrades in crime weave their flitting dances. _pelez_ depicted the strangling of the emperor commodus by the gladiator to whom the empress had entrusted the task, and painted with tender interest the marks caused by suffusion of blood which the athlete's hand had left upon the unhappy prince's neck. a very familiar figure is that of seneca, with distorted features, uttering his last words of wisdom while the blood pours from his opened veins. after the madness of the cæsars comes the atrocious history of the merovingian kings. _luminais_, the painter of gauls and barbarians, represented in his large picture "les Énervés de jumièges" the sons of king clovis ii, who, after the muscles of their knees have been destroyed by fire, are set helplessly adrift in a boat on the seine. then followed torture scenes from the time of the inquisition, and saints burning at the stake. the conception which this post-romantic generation had of the east was of cruelty and voluptuousness mixed, a thing pieced together out of white bodies, purple streams of blood, and brown backgrounds. here, the favourite sultana contemplates the severed head of her rival, which stares at her out of its glassy eyes; there, eunuchs are making ready to strangle a woman condemned to death. in works such as these the genius, powerful in composition, of benjamin constant, celebrates its triumphs. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ delaunay. boys singing.] [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ delaunay. madame toulmouche.] yet, notwithstanding all the means of allurement furnished by such themes, these paintings almost invariably fail to produce the anticipated effect. not that it is the brutality of the subjects that makes them unpleasant. art in all times has busied itself with the horrible. how voluptuously does dante depict the horrors of hell! what imagination was ever peopled with figures more dreadful than those conceived by shakespeare? cruelty and death have a poetry of their own: why should art prudishly abstain from depicting them? only, if the result is to be a good picture, the subject must be in strict congruity with the talent employed upon it, and in the majority of these works this conformity is lacking. the subjects alone had become more savage and brutal. in the manner of treatment there is none of the wild effect which the neapolitans of the seventeenth century gave to their scenes of martyrdom. spirits truly wild, like delacroix and caravaggio, are not to be met with every day. the painters who launched out upon these bloodthirsty themes took absolutely no inward "enjoyment in tragical subjects," but simply painted them as if after precepts learned at school. and as they were also deficient in that knowledge of nature which is acquired only by direct study of life, not one of them was in a position to give to his historical scenes that naturalistic weight which alone gives to such themes a character of convincing probability. true, these pictures compel respect on account of their unusual ability. these naked bodies, twisting themselves in the most varying postures of pain, give proof by their correct draughtsmanship of the most painstaking anatomical studies, yet after all they are nothing more than inverted laocoöns. the classical spirit haunts them still, and a discordant effect is produced when subjects so full of wild passion are tranquilly depicted according to cold conventional rules. over all these figures and scenes, even the most horrible, lies the veil of a classical embellishment, which deprives them altogether of that directness which lays hold on the imagination. the pictures are good studies of costume, and make an admirable impression by their resplendent glow of colour; they are show-pieces, brilliant stage effects, as happily conceived as any of sardou's. but the recipe for their production is still that of the school of delaroche: avoidance of all extremes, generalised forms, careful composition, crude lukewarmness, or the affectation of daring. scarce one of these painters has given to his wild subject an equal wildness of treatment; not one has raised himself from the paltry level of delaroche to the artistic height of delacroix. [illustration: _l'art._ sylvestre. locusta testing in nero's presence poison prepared for britannicus.] _laurens_ alone, surnamed by his comrades "the benedictine," because his predilection was for forgotten themes from ecclesiastical history, constitutes in a certain sense an exception to the rule. he too belongs to the group of historical painters whose theory is that a picture should represent an historical fact with absolute accuracy. but he is more masculine than delaroche. his personages are truer to nature, or, if one will, less banal; the general effect is warmer and fuller of life; he has a greater power of attracting attention. there is nothing great in his work, but there is no cold pedantry: the art of combination is more adroit, so that one is less aware of calculation, and may sometimes observe a grim earnestness. he really loves the terrible, while the others merely made use of it for the manufacture of what are nothing more than tableaux. to the inquisition especially he was indebted for notable successes, and at times he was able to depict its dark scenes of horror in a very subtle manner. when he heaps up, in front of a church, corpses to which the priests have refused burial; when he disinters popes in order to place them in the dock before their accusers; when he opens coffins to reveal the decomposed features of some erstwhile beauty, he sets even blunted nerves on the stretch; and as he has therein attained the goal he had proposed to himself, his art is not without its justification. [illustration: _l'art._ luminais. les ÉnervÉs de jumiÈges.] among the younger generation, _rochegrosse_, an artist of daring genius, appeared for a while to have taken to such themes by free choice, and not solely through the traditions of the studio. one seemed to observe in his works a truly emotional temperament flaming behind the trammels of conventionality, and was almost inclined to rank him among the spirits of storm and stress who trace their descent from delacroix. after his first picture, in which "vitellius" is represented dragged through the streets of rome and ill treated by the populace, he achieved success with a scene taken from the destruction of troy. here "andromache," raging with impotent anguish, is struggling against a number of greeks who have snatched her child from her arms to throw it down from the ramparts. this brutal strife is depicted with the highest naturalistic power. neither the heroine nor the warriors belong to the ideal figures of the style of compromise. andromache is of a fulness of form almost approaching corpulence, and the greeks remind one of indians on the warpath. mangled corpses complete the picture, and on the bare wall to the left, over the stairs, hang dead bodies abandoned to corruption and the birds of prey. in his third picture he took for his theme the horrors of the barbarous and ferocious peasants' war in the fourteenth century, as mérimée had described them in his book entitled _la jacquerie_; and his work is all the more effective as there lurks in the subject a certain grim modern touch which reminds one of the social democracy, of the insurrection of the commune, of something which might happen even to-day. the insurgents break into the hall, where the ladies of the castle have taken refuge with their children. one alone stands erect, the grandmother in her nun-like widow's dress, and stretches her arms behind her with a gesture of energy, as if to shield the younger ones at her back. the foremost intruder ironically takes off his cap. another lifts up on his pike the fair-haired, bleeding head of the lord of the castle; a third has similarly transfixed his reeking heart. others are pressing in from without, breaking the window panes with their weapons, which are yet dripping with blood. beneath frightful figures are seen, the most horrible that of a woman standing on the window-sill, her hands propped upon her knees, gazing with insane laughter upon the mortal terror of the aristocratic ladies. [illustration: _baschet._ laurens. the interdict.] in his subsequent pictures rochegrosse did not go so far afield. his "murder of julius cæsar" was a work of art in white upon white, full of crude imagination, with white walls, white reflections of light, white togas, and dark red blotches of blood. his grass-eating "nebuchadnezzar" proved that from the sublime to the ridiculous there is often only a step. between times he painted archæological trifles for ladies of literary culture, such as the "battle of the sparrows" of ; but in his great "fall of babylon" he has proved once more what he can do. no doubt it is not a fine work: it is a mere decorative piece, but an astonishingly spirited performance. the scene is the palace of the babylonian kings, the decorative construction of which the recovered monuments and the recent scientific investigations had rendered it possible to reproduce. rochegrosse consulted with the zeal of an archæologist all the treasures of the louvre and the british museum,--assyrian friezes, ornaments, and costumes,--and then set forth in these surroundings the famous banquet at which the prophet daniel explained the words "mene, tekel, peres." the day begins to break; in the distance the army of the medes advancing to attack the palace has burst open the gate; belshazzar leaves the table in terror, and takes to his weapons; the naked women, still intoxicated, stretch their limbs, or remain lazily indifferent lying on the ground; around is a dazzling confusion of mosaics, of polychrome architecture, of fantastic images of animals, of glittering tapestries shot with many hues and pleasing to the eye; of flowers, vases, fruits, pastry, and nude bodies of women. the grey light of morning strives to overcome that of the half-extinguished lamps, and rests with leaden weight upon the gigantic still-life below. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ regnault. salome. (_by permission of m. georges petit, the owner of the copyright._)] if some portion of delacroix's wild genius appears to have descended upon rochegrosse, yet was _henri regnault_, as a colourist, the greatest of delacroix's heirs--even allowing for the exaggerated renown which came to him in france, from the fact that he was the last to fall in the war of . his portrait of "general prim" of , which, rejected by the sitter, came eventually to the louvre, is somewhat reminiscent of velasquez and delacroix, but is nevertheless, with those of géricault, amongst the finest equestrian portraits of the century. in his "salome" he has depicted a black-haired girl with twitching feet, resting upon a stool after her dance, and contemplating with the cruelty of a tigress the platter which she holds ready for the head of john the baptist, while her glowing red mouth with its dazzling teeth smiles like that of an innocent child. in her he has embodied with infernal subtlety the demon of voluptuous wantonness, and has composed a symphony in yellow of seductive and dazzling charm. she is attired in transparent gold-inwoven robes, which have a caressing congruity with the resplendent texture of the background. [illustration: _l'art._ regnault. the moorish headsman.] his "moorish headsman" is a symphony in red. in his pale rose-red garb the tall moor stands in majestic dignity, wipes a few drops of blood from the blade of his sword, and glances with careless indifference--a type of the dreamy cruelty of oriental fatalism--without anger and without pity, without hatred and without satisfaction, upon the severed head with its distorted eyes, which, rolling down a couple of steps, has stained the white marble with purple patches of blood. "i will cause the genuine moors to rise again, at once rich and great, terrible and voluptuous,"--so the voice of delacroix speaks out of this picture by regnault. his paintings, like those of his master, have the effect of splendid oriental costumes; they are shot with every hue, they lighten and glisten, they are inwoven with magnificent arabesques of gold and silver, with sparkling embroideries and precious stones. the "orlando furioso" of art lives once more in these fascinating harmonies, in the power, splendour, and lustre of the colouring. just as baudry at the close of the classical period produced in his paintings for the opera house the noblest work after the idealist formulæ, so regnault in his "salome" and his "prim" has completed the last defiant works of the formulæ of romanticism. we have thought it advisable to follow this development of the art of painting down to its close, just as in treating of the older periods we have proceeded, not upon chronological principles, but upon those of historical style. now that the old art has been followed to the grave, it will be all the easier, later on, to perceive clearly how the new arose slowly out of its invisible depths. and as france since has become the high school of art for other nations, those paths have at the same time been indicated along which the art of painting was proceeding during these years in other countries. [illustration: henri regnault general prÍm] chapter xiii the historical school of painting in belgium belgian art had gone through the same history as french art since david. when the french patriarch came to brussels to pass the remainder of his days there in honour, he found the ground already well prepared. the classicists had long since made their way into art, and the old flemish tradition was dying out. lens and herreyns are the last colourists in the sense of the good old time, but they are associated with the good old time only through the qualities of their colouring. as a degenerate descendant of van dyck, _lens_ painted with a feeble brush sweet, insipid, sugary work for boudoirs and _prie-dieu_ chairs; and had lost his feeling for nature to such a degree that he gave the aged the same flesh tint as children, and men the full breasts of hermaphrodites. _herreyns_, appointed director of the antwerp academy in , was more masculine; and although likewise conventional and wanting in individuality, he was none the less a painter of breadth and boldness. he was most enraptured with a model with a copper-coloured skin and knotted muscles, or with pretty and ruddy children, and fat nurses with swelling breasts. this bold worker embodied in his own person the art of a great epoch, but did nothing to renew it. these painters, indeed, only mixed for a new hash the crumbs fallen from the table at which giants had once sat. they looked backwards instead of around them, and lighted their modest little lamp at the sun of rubens. france was the only country where art followed the great changes of culture in the age. hence flemish painting had been crossed with french elements long before david's arrival. and paris was for the artists of what italy had been for those of . they made their pilgrimage in troops to the studio of suvée, who had originally come from bruges, but had lived since on the seine. there, and there only, recipes for the composition of great figure pictures were to be obtained. and thus art completed what the empire had in a political sense begun. the artistic barriers fell as the geographical ones had done before, and the belgian painters went back to brussels, antwerp, ghent, and bruges as men annexed by france. david on his arrival needed only to shake the tree and the fruit fell ripe into his lap. he entered flanders like a conqueror, and left the signs of ravage behind him on his triumphal progress. in brussels a court gathered round him as round a banished king, and a gold medal was struck in memory of his arrival. he took flemish art in his powerful hands and crushed it. for, needless to say, he saw nothing but barbarism in the genius of rubens, and inoculated flemish artists with a genuine horror of their great prince of painters. he continued to teach in brussels what he had preached in paris, and became the father-in-law of a deadly tiresome franco-belgian school, to which belonged a succession of correct painters; men such as duvivier, ducq, paelinck, odevaere, and others. for the aboriginal, sturdy, energetic, and carnal flemish art was prescribed the mathematical regularity of the antique canon. the old flemish joyousness of colour passed into a consumptive cacophony. and then was repeated in belgium the tragedy which classicism had played in france. everything became a pretext for draperies, stiff poses, sculptural groupings, and plaster heads. phædra and theseus, hector and andromache, paris and helen, were, as in paris, the most popular subjects. and so great a confusion reigned, that a sculptor from whom a wolf was ordered included the history of romulus and remus gratuitously. the only one whose works are still partially enjoyable is _navez_. he was, like ingres in france, the last prop of this art, chiselled, as it were, out of stone; and even after the fall of classicism he remained in esteem, because, like ingres, he knew how to steer a prudent course between david, the italians, and a certain independent study of nature. a touch of realism was mingled with his mania for the greeks; only to a limited extent did he correct "ugly" nature; he would have ventured to represent socrates with his negro nose and thersites with his hump, and, again, like ingres he has left behind him enduring performances as a portrait painter. his correct, cold, and discreet talent grew warm at the touch of human personality, and his drawings, in particular, prove that he had warmth of feeling as an artist. as his biographer tells us, he seldom laid down the sketch-book in which he fixed his impressions as he talked. every page was filled with sketches of a group, a figure, or a gesture seen in the street and rapidly dashed off, "as realistically as even courbet could desire." and these he transferred, when he painted in the "noble style." as navez had importance as an artist, so had _matthias van bree_--herreyns' successor in the directorate of the antwerp academy--importance as a teacher. he worked in belgium, like gros in paris, only in another way. while gros as an artist was the forerunner of romanticism, and as a teacher an orthodox classicist, van bree is tedious as an artist, but as a teacher he fanned in the young generation a glowing love for old flemish art. no one spoke of rubens, van dyck, and the great art of the seventeenth century with so much warmth and understanding; and whilst with the charcoal in his hand he composed buckram cartoons, he dreamt of a youth who should arise to renew the old flemish tradition. before long this young man had grown up. he had seen the artistic treasures of antwerp and paris. here rubens had delighted his eyes, and there paul veronese. as he admired both in the louvre, he heard behind him the voice of the young romanticists who, like him, had an enthusiasm for colour and movement, and blasphemed the stiff, colourless old david. _gustav wappers_, also, had paid toll to classicism, and painted in a "regulus" after the well-known recipe. all the greater was the astonishment when, in , he came forward with his "burgomaster van der werff": "burgomaster van der werff of leyden, at the siege of the town in , offers his own body as food to the famished citizens." the very subject could not fail to create enthusiasm in the great body of the people, excited as they were by ideas of liberty: the brilliant method of presentation did this no less. what the old van bree looked for, the return to the splendour of colour and sensuous fulness of life of the old masters, was achieved in this picture. in the same year, when belgium had won her nationality and independence once more, a painter also ventured to break away from the french formulæ of classicism, and to treat a national theme in the manner of those painters who in former centuries had been the glory of flanders. wappers was greeted as a national hero; his part it was to bring to an issue with the brush that good fight which others had fought with the musket and sabre. his picture was a sign of the delivery of flemish art from the french house of bondage. whilst older men were horrified, as the followers of the school of delaroche were afterwards horrified at the "stone-breakers" of courbet, the younger generation looked up to wappers as a messiah. everything in the brussels salon faded before the freshness of the new work; a springtide in painting seemed to be at hand, and the wintry rigidity of classicism was warmed by a burst of sunshine, the old gods trembled and felt their olympus quake. gustav wappers was held to be the leader of a new renaissance. in him the great era of the seventeenth century was to be continued. the iridescence of silken stuffs, the whole colour and festal joyousness of the old masters, were found once more. as in france there rose the shout, "an ingres, a delacroix!" so there resounded in belgium the battle-cry, "a navez, a wappers!" the picture was bought by king william ii of holland, and in wappers was made professor of the antwerp academy. [illustration: _bruyllant, brussels._ gustav wappers.] the exhibition of confirmed him in his new position as head of a school. this was a genuine triumph, which he gained by his "episode in the belgian revolution of ." a scene out of the blood-stained days of the street fights in brussels--that glorious final chapter of the struggle of the belgian people for freedom from the french yoke--was nothing less than an event in which every one had recently taken part. at a period when so few realised how closely the great masters of the past were bound to their own time and imbibed from it their strength and nourishment, this new painter, in defiance of all theories, had drawn boldly from life. this picture was regarded as "a hymn of jubilation for what was attained and a threnody for the sacrifice it had cost." and the neighbourhood of the church, where he had laid the action, stamped it almost as the votive picture of the belgian people for its dead. on the right an artisan standing aloft upon a newly thrown up earthwork is reading to his attentive comrades the rejected proclamation of the prince of orange. on the left a reinforcement is coming up. in the foreground boys are tearing up the pavement or beating the drum; and here and there are enacted various tragical family scenes. here a young wife with a child on her arm clings with all the strength of despair to her husband, who resists her and finally tears himself from her grasp and hurries to the barricade--the cry of love is drowned amid the clash of arms. there, supported on the knee of his grey-headed father, rests a handsome young fellow with closing eyes and the death-wound in his heart. it seems as though the horatian _dulce et decorum est_ might be said to wander over his features and to glorify them. for patriotism as well as for mere sentiment, here are noble scenes enough and to spare. not only all brussels, but all belgium, made a pilgrimage to wappers' creation. every mother beheld her lost son in the youth in the foreground whose life has been sacrificed; every artisan's wife sought her husband, her brother, or her father amongst the figures of the fighting-men on the barricades. all the newspapers were full of praise, and a subscription was set on foot to strike a medal in commemoration of the picture. if, up to this time, wappers had been merely praised as the renewer of belgian art, he was now placed alongside of the greatest masters. thiers induced him to exhibit in paris the much discussed work, the fame of which had passed beyond the boundaries of belgium. the "episode" made a triumphal tour of all the great towns of europe before it found its home in the musée moderne; and wappers' fame abroad increased yet more his celebrity in flanders. thanks to him, the neighbouring nations began to interest themselves in the belgian school. all were united in admiration of "the mighty conception and the harmonious scheme of colour." the german _morgenblatt_ published a study of him in . wappers counted as the leading painter of his country. [illustration: _bruyllant, brussels._ wappers. the sacrifice of burgomaster van der werff at the siege of leyden.] yet the same year brought him his first rivals. his entry on the stage had given strength to a group of young painters belonging to the same courageous movement, and the brussels salon of concentrated their efforts. _nicaise de keyzer_ made his appearance in heavy armour. as early as he had come forward with a great picture, a crucifixion, in which he desired to compete with rubens, as it seemed, in the latter's most special province. yet the work merely testified to its author's excellent memory: the majority of the heads, gestures, and draperies had been made use of in old pictures in precisely the same fashion. consciously or not, he had copied fragments direct, and welded them together in a new composition. if, in spite of this, the name of de keyzer already flew from mouth to mouth, he owed it to the nimbus of romance which irradiated his person. the story went that an antwerp lady on one of her walks had seen a young man drawing in the sand, while his flock was at pasture not far off. she stepped up and offered him a pencil, and he, a new cimabue, began forthwith to sketch a picture of the madonna. the drawing was so beautiful (so the tale ran) that the lady would have held it a sin to allow the genius to end his days as a shepherd. he came to town, received instruction, and learned to paint. a little idyll illuminated by the amiability of a lady was quite enough to prepare a friendly reception for de keyzer. and since he, like a tractable, modest young man, hearkened attentively to criticism, he satisfied all desires when, in , he came forward with his "battle of the spurs at courtrai, ." in its quiet elegance the work answered to the peaceful mood which prevailed once more after the days of revolt and political insurrection. he was given special credit for clearness of composition and antiquarian exactness. de keyzer had chosen the moment when the count of artois was expiring on the knees of a flemish soldier; another fleming had his arm raised to protect his general from the approaching french. for the rest, there is a lull in the fight, though the battlefield in the background is indicated with the minuteness of an historian: none of those carnages of blood and smoke of which the world was grown once more weary, but a correct, well-disciplined battle, a skilful composition of fine gestures, helmets, cuirasses, and halberts. even the count's spur, says alvin, is drawn after the original, the only remaining spur out of seven hundred which lay scattered on the field after the day of courtrai. in the same year _henri decaisne_ completed his "belges illustres." the famous past was supposed to give its blessing to the great present. the artist, who in paris had painted portraits with success, had been esteemed there by lamartine, and celebrated by alfred de musset in a brilliant article in the _revue des deux mondes_, now gratified a long cherished desire of the belgian national pride when he united the heroes of the land in an ideal gathering. soon afterwards _gallait_ and _bièfve_ trod the stage of belgian painting. in point of size their pictures surpassed all that that age, accustomed as it was to vast canvases, had yet witnessed. "the abdication of charles v" measured twenty feet; it was hung in the salon carré of the louvre above paul veronese's "marriage at cana." an entire court of great ladies and gentlemen, clad in velvet and brocade, move in the gorgeous hall of state of a king's castle. the solemn moment is represented when charles v, erect and dominating the entire assembly, cedes the government of his possessions to philip: and here is a mine of profound criticism of the philosophy of history. this old man, with one foot in the grave, whose forceful head still bears, like a caryatid, the heavy burden of empire, embodies the splendour, fame, and might of bygone days. faltering, he steps down from the throne, as though hesitating at the last moment whether he should appoint as his successor this son whom he both loves and fears; and, lifting to heaven his tired, sunken eyes, he commends unto god the future of the realm. philip, the only one in the assembly entirely clothed in black, who receives the gift of dominion with an icy coldness, is transformed by the able exegesis of the critics into the satanic demon conjuring up the powers of hell. the picture even gives a glimpse into the future. for as he speaks charles leans his left hand upon the shoulder of another young man, william of orange. this indicates that soon the nation will wrest their independence from the double-tongued jesuitical policy of philip. to the left of this central group, robed in velvet and silk, stand the ladies around margaret, the sister of the emperor; she, in the garb of a nun, sits in her chair as in a _prie-dieu_. to the right, near the throne, are pages and priests, and amidst them egmont and horn, standing aloof and silent, look upon the scene. "the abdication" had a grand success. it confirmed the hopes which had been set on gallait ever since the completion of his "tasso," and it was proudly ranked amongst those works which did special honour to the young nation. wappers saw himself eclipsed, and louis gallait took the lead. [illustration: wappers. the death of columbus.] _edouard de bièfve's_ "treaty of the nobles" formed the historical supplement to this work; after the triumph of the kingdom came the triumph of the people. the picture represents the signing of the defensive league, against the inquisition and other breaches of privilege, which the nobility of the netherlands entered into in , in the castle of cuylenburg, near brussels; it was hailed by the _berliner staatszeitung_ as "a landmark in the chronicle of historical painting." this heroic era of belgian painting was brought to a close in by _ernest slingeneyer_, who, as early as , obtained a brilliant success with his "sinking of the french battleship _le vengeur_." his "battle of lepanto" was the last great historical picture, and the entire vocabulary of admiration known to art criticism was showered upon it by the brussels press. even a new period of religious painting seemed about to dawn. german art, up to that time little regarded in belgium, had since the fifties been discussed with considerable detail in the journals, and such names as overbeck, w. schadow, veit, cornelius, and kaulbach had speedily acquired a favourable reputation. an exhibition of german cartoons instituted in brussels in served--strangely enough--to sustain this high appreciation. the young nation believed that it could not afford to lag behind france and germany, and commissioned two antwerp painters, guffens and swerts, who had early made themselves familiar with the technique of fresco, to found a belgian school of monumental painting. to this end they entered into a correspondence with the german artists, and, after long studies in italy and germany, adorned with frescoes the church of notre dame in st. nicolas in east flanders, st. george's church in antwerp, the town halls of courtrai and ypres, a few churches in england, and the cathedral of prague; and on these frescoes herman riegel, in , published a book in two volumes. [illustration: _bruyllant, brussels._ de keyzer.] at the present day this religious fresco painting, which handed on the doctrine of the german nazarenes--the doctrine that nothing remained to the nineteenth-century artist except to imitate the old italians as well as he could--can no longer command such exhaustive disquisition. and not it alone: the whole "belgian artistic revival of " appears in a somewhat dubious light. after the disconsolate wilderness of classicism this period marked an advance. every salon brought some new name to light. the state had contributed a big budget for art, and extended its protecting hand over the "great painting" which was the glory of the young nation. what could not be got into the musée moderne, founded in , was divided amongst the churches and provincial museums. the number of painters and exhibitions increased very noticeably. beside the great triennial exhibitions in brussels, antwerp, and ghent, there were others in the smaller towns, such as mons and mechlin. the belgian painters of appear, no doubt, as great men, when one considers to what a depth art had sunk before their advent. wappers especially widened the horizon, by breaking the formula of classicism and renewing the tradition of the brilliant colourists of the seventeenth century. de bièfve, de keyzer, slingeneyer, severally contributed to the belgian renaissance. the old flemish race knew itself once more in this fond quest of beautiful and radiant colouring. the historical painting had even a certain actual interest. standing so near to the glorious september days when the country won its independence, the painters wished to draw a parallel between the glorious present and the great past, and to waken patriotic memories by the apotheosis of popular heroes. and yet the musée moderne of brussels is not one of those collections in which one willingly lingers. the works in the old museum, hard by, have remained fresh and living and in touch with us; those in the new gallery seem to be divided from us by centuries. for the mischief with pictures which do not remain for ever young is precisely this--they grow old so very soon. posterity speaks the language of cold criticism; and those powers must be great which are even favoured with a verdict. the luxuriant wreaths of laurel which fall upon the living are no guarantee of enduring fame, while in the crowns awarded after death every leaf is numbered. in how few of these once lauded works there dwells the power to speak in an intelligible language to a generation which tests them, not for their patriotism, but for their intrinsic art. the belgian school of has left behind it the trace of respectable industry, but a supreme work is what it has not brought forth. [illustration: _bruyllant, brussels._ de keyzer. the battle of woeringen.] how hard it is to see anything epoch-making in wappers' "van der werff." how theatrically the figures are posturing, how improbable is the composition, and what an unwholesome dose of sentimentality is to be found in that burgomaster, who is offering himself as a prey to the multitude! the heads are those of troubadours. and these jerkins brought fresh out of the wardrobe, these neatly ironed white ruffles, all this rich velvet and glittering pomp, how little it resembles the torn rags of a half-starved people after a nine months' siege! his revolutionary picture of is an unfortunate transposition into a sentimental key of the "freedom on the barricades" by delacroix. here also are play-actors rather than men and women of the people. this old man who is kissing the banner, the wife who winds her arms about her husband as venus does about tannhäuser, the pale girl who has fallen in a faint, the warrior who, with his eyes turned up to heaven, is breaking his sword--these are figures out of a melodrama, not revolutionaries storming the barricades, nor famishing artisans fighting for their very existence. and the thin, spick-and-span colouring is in just as striking a contrast with the forceful action of the scene. an idyll could not be carried out with more prettiness of manner than is this picture which represents the rising of a people. the artisans are as white as alabaster. a light rouge rests upon the cheeks of the women, as when boucher paints the faltering of virtue. and afterwards wappers' course went further and further down hill. only in these two early works, in which he responded to a political movement by an artistic endeavour, does he seem, in a certain sense, individual and powerful. all the others are stereotyped productions which, having nothing to do with the belgian national movement, have all the more to do with the parisian _École du bon sens_. even his "christ in the grave," painted in , and now in st. michael's church at louvain, with its artificial grace and pietistical sentimentality, might have been painted by ary scheffer. the pathetic scenes from english and french history of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which followed this merely reflect that painting of historical anecdote which was invented by delaroche. agnes sorel and charles vii, abelard and eloise, charles i taking leave of his children, anne bullen's parting from elizabeth, peter the great presenting to his ministers the model of a dutch ship, columbus in prison, boccaccio reading the _decameron_ to joanna of naples, the brothers de witt before their execution, andré chénier in the prison of saint-lazare, louis xvii at simon the shoe-maker's, the poet camoens as a beggar, charles i going to the scaffold--all are subjects treated by others before him in france, and neither in their conception nor their technique have they anything original. in the last-mentioned picture, exhibited in antwerp in , he attained the limit of sugary affectation: a young girl has sunk on her knees, and, with dreamily uplifted eyes, offers to the stuart king who is going to his death--a rose! wappers is merely a reflex of french romanticism, although he cannot be brought into direct comparison with any parisian master. the passion of delacroix stirred him but little: nothing points to a relationship between him and that great spirit. one is rather reminded of alfred johannot, whom he resembles in his entire gamut of emotion as in his treatment and selection of subjects. in both may be found elegance of line, byronic emphasis, histrionic gestures, and the same stage properties borrowed from the theatre; never the genuine movement of feeling, only empty and distorted grimaces. of the others who appeared with him the same may be said. all belgian matadors of the forties and fifties came to grief, and are interesting in the history of art only as symptomatic phenomena, as members of that school of delaroche which encompassed the world. they abandoned the antique marble, the chlamys, and the leaden forms of the classicists, to set in their place a motley picture of the middle ages, made up of cuirasses, mail-shirts, fleshings, and velvet and silken doublets. one convention followed the other, and pedantic dryness was replaced by melancholy sentimentalism. as skilled practitioners they understood the sleights of their art, but never rose to individual creation. amongst many painters there was not a single artist. as regards _de keyzer_, it seems as if throughout his whole life he had wished to remain true to the memory of his benefactress: a simpering feminine trait runs with enervating sweetness through all his works, even through that "battle of the spurs" which founded his reputation. according to old writers, the athletic bodies of the flemings were the terror of the french chivalry at courtrai. de keyzer has made of them mere plaster figures, and the pale, meagre colouring is in keeping with the languid conception. in the battles of woeringen, of senef, and nieuwpoort, which followed on this picture, and were executed for the belgian and dutch government, he succeeded still less in overcoming his affectation; and he first found the fitting province for his mild and correct talent when in later years he began to render little anecdotes of the emperor maximilian or justus lipsius out of the studio of rubens or memlinc. for these there was need of little but a certain superficial play of colour and an elegant painting of textures. [illustration: _bruyllant, brussels._ slingeneyer. the avenger.] _ernest slingeneyer_ is stronger and more masculine. yet what an unrefreshing chaos of blue, red, saffron, and citron-yellow is that "sea-fight at lepanto"! slingeneyer felt that the _chiaroscuro_ with which wappers saturated his "episode" was not in keeping with this action under open sky. but rightly as he felt this, he had not the strength to solve the problem of open-air painting. what a barbaric effect these red, brown, and yellow bodies make in their motley theatrical pomp! how the composition of the picture savours of apotheosis! as for his later work, his thirteen gigantic pictures, "_gloires de la belgique_," in the great hall of the brussels academy, like de keyzer's mural paintings above the staircase of the antwerp museum, they would never have been painted had they not had delaroche's hemicycle as their forerunner. [illustration: _bruyllant, brussels._ louis gallait.] and _gallait's_ "abdication of charles v"--one fails to understand how it was possible that so much able disquisition was suggested by this picture. how slight a smattering of the erudition of a stage manager is necessary for the representation of such a scene: the throne on one side; before it the lords and gentlemen in a semicircle, to the left front the ladies to make a fine effect for the eye, and in the background balconies with curious spectators, to widen out the spectacle. it is all pure theatre; an icy ceremony with prettily got up supernumeraries. all the heads have the discreditable appearance of family portraits painted after death, and then washed over with a faint conventional tinge of red. the whole thing is like a huge piece of still-life, which an adroit painter has put together out of a mixture of heads, gold, jewels, mantles, and perukes. delaroche seems to have contributed the composition, devéria the sumptuous costumery; and as for the colouring, isabey, with his sunbeams shimmering in gold and silver, may not improbably have had something to do with that. what was spontaneous in wappers is replaced in gallait by cold calculation. once and once only did this correct and frigid painter give evidence of a certain dramatic vein; it was when in he painted "the brussels guild of marksmen paying the last honours to egmont and horn." with a brutal audacity the decapitated heads are set to their bodies. bloodless and livid, with clotted and tangled beards, they both really look as if they had been studied direct from nature. but the rest of the picture, the surrounding of theatrical attractions, parade costumes, and false pathos, is all the less in keeping with this study of death. how zurbaran or caravaggio would have treated the theme! they would have veiled the unessential figures in darkness, and irradiated the heads only with a trenchant light. what gallait has made of it is the final tableau of an opera of costume. the two sergeants of alva who are on guard, and the men who are showing their reverence, tread the stage like bad actors, scrupulously arrayed and making pathetic gestures. their action has been studied from drawing-school copies; no genuine cry of passion ever breaks through. heads, hands, and outlines have all a sickly idealism; a studious and sedulously polished manner of painting has ruined the intrinsic spirit of the work as a whole. théophile gautier was right when he wrote of gallait: "_tout le talent_ _qu'on peut acquérir avec du travail, du goût, du jugememt, et de la volonté, m. gallait le possède._" gallait's "last obsequies," hung in that same salon of which contained courbet's "stone-breakers," and the words of recognition accorded to it, were the last obsequies given to the parting genius of historical painting. a few years went by, and gallait's fame died away. after he painted fourteen other great historical pictures ("egmont's last moments," "johanna the mad by the corpse of her husband," "alva at the window during the execution of the two counts," etc.), and, occasionally, sentimental _genre_ pictures, such as "the oblivion of sorrow" in the berlin national gallery; in this a small boy is playing the fiddle for the consolation of his sister, who had sunk upon the high-road exhausted by hunger. he also painted many portraits. but nothing gave him a niche in the memory of his contemporaries. "the pest at tournai," painted in , was a work extremely creditable to his old age; it was nevertheless a picture which appeared to another generation merely as a phantom; and when, on th november , the announcement of his death passed through the land, it came unexpectedly, like that of a person already believed to have been long dead. [illustration: _bruyllant, brussels._ gallait. egmont's last moments.] finally, _edouard de bièfve_, who in shared gallait's triumph in germany, and was afterwards named in the same breath with him, is the man who marks the complete corruption of this tendency. if the sturdy wappers, the emasculate de keyzer, and the eclectic gallait tricked out their pathetic heroes with noble heads like that of the antinous, and offered their contemporaries an adroit theatrical art, a parade, and a hollow pathos, the incapable bièfve never got beyond the painting of _tableaux vivants_ laboriously presented. terrible and of shakespearian impressiveness is the scene in which the half-famished ugolino hurls himself upon his son in an appalling ecstasy of frenzy, a curse against god and man upon his lips. upon the canvas, six metres wide, which bièfve in devoted to this theme, there is represented an old gentleman, who, though certainly a little pale, contrives to maintain in perfection the punctilious bearing of a cavalier, and in the midst of his fasting cure has picturesquely draped round his shoulders an ermine mantle, as if he had been asked out to dinner. before him stands a young man, possessing that graceful outline beloved of paul delaroche. devéria, ary scheffer, and johannot were better painters of such monumental illustrations of the classics. as yet the shivering art of belgium had learnt only to warm itself at the parisian fireside. even bièfve's "league of the nobles of the netherlands," despite its national subject-matter, was no more than a lucky hit, which he owed to his long residence in paris. and how tiresomely is the scene played out! one would wish to catch the mutterings of insurrection from these men who personify the belgian people; but bièfve's picture is restful and dignified. egmont and horn, the lions of the occasion, are conducting themselves like honest citizens who are bored at a party. seated in his chair, the handsome egmont thinks merely of showing his fine profile to the ladies in the gallery, and horn, who steps towards the table to make his signature, does it with the elegance of a lover inscribing verses in a young lady's album. three brothers with clasped hands swear the well-known oath to die together. [illustration: _bruyllant, brussels._ edouard biÈfve.] it is a little irony in the history of art that in these two same pictures set all germany in tumult, and diverted the whole stream of painting into a new course. but how was it possible that the german painters stood before them as if struck by lightning? it must be remembered that for a whole generation germany had seen nothing but coloured cartoons, and that the enthusiasm for franco-belgian art had been so prepared that the least touch was enough to set it in flames. [illustration: _bruyllant, brussels._ biÈfve. the league of the nobles of the netherlands.] since the wars of liberation germany had been very reserved in her attitude towards the french. until the year original works of the french and belgian school had never been hung in any german exhibition. but in spite of this, a high, even enthusiastic, appreciation of french and belgian painting was being spread, especially amongst the younger generation. even in engravings and lithographs after french pictures it was believed that qualities of colour were discoverable which were wanting in german painting. heine and other authors, who had wandered to paris, "the lofty tower of freedom," to escape from the depressing condition of german affairs, had done what in them lay for the dissemination of this cult. the rising generation of the forties had been driven by heine's notices of the salon into an almost hostile attitude towards the dominant art schools of germany, the schools of düsseldorf and munich. the stylists on the isar and the sentimental elegiac painters on the rhine met with the same antipathy from the younger generation. the appearance of the two belgian historical pictures, which were really nothing more than offshoots of the great french school, gave nourishment of doubled strength to this tendency to seek salvation in paris. the german painters were startled out of contentment with their beloved cartoons, and to many a man it seemed as if the scales had fallen from his eyes. they perceived what an admirable thing it is that a painter should be able to paint. what they could have learnt long before from any good old picture, and in their turbulent enthusiasm for ideas had not learnt, was made suddenly clear to them by these new paintings. they came to the conclusion that it was impossible for god almighty to have poured light and colour over the objective world with the intention that painters should transform it into a world of shadowless contours. they recognised that the style of cartoon work had led away from all painting, and that it was therefore necessary to do honour once more to the despised handiwork and technique of art, as the fundamental condition of its well-being. however much the æsthetic party might warn them not to renounce "the reformation of painting, which had been begun and perfected forty years before," and not "with modern technique to sink back into the pre-cornelian, ornamental model painting," the demand for colour, which had been so long neglected, asserted its rights more and more loudly. king ludwig's saying was repeated as though it were a new revelation: "the painter must be able to paint." colour was the battle-cry of the day, the battle-cry of youth, to whom the world belongs. in place of the ideal of contour came the ideal of hue and pigment. cartoons, in the sense of the old cartoon school, no one would draw any longer. to paint pictures, finished pictures, was the tendency of the day. and since painting is to be learnt from the living only, and such as could paint lived in germany no longer, they packed their trunks, and set out to learn from the "go-ahead neighbour." as rome had been hitherto, so was paris now, the high school of german art. "to paris!" and "painting!" were the cries throughout all germany. chapter xiv the revolution of the german colourists from dates the pilgrimage of the german artists to paris, antwerp, and brussels. in delaroche, cogniet, and couture, in wappers and gallait, they believed they could discover the secrets of art which were hidden from german teachers. the history of art can scarcely offer another example of such a sudden overthrow of dogmas hitherto dominant by dogmas directly opposed to them. during the first half of the century the painters of germany were pious men, humorous, witty, and intelligent men; they had a sharply cut profile, and so enchained the multitude by their human qualities that nobody remarked how little they understood of their craft, or that they were too superior to learn to draw correctly, held colour unchaste, and made virtues of all their failings. the next generation was condemned to learn painting during the whole of its natural life. the former were "problematic natures": beings who united with a titanic force of will an actual achievement which is hardly worth mentioning; who regarded the mere handicraft of art as beneath their dignity; who, in their revelations to mankind, were resolved to burden their spirit as little as possible with any sensuous expression of their genius, and, above all, meant not to degrade themselves by the manual labour of learning to paint, and thereby wasting their valuable time. the latter were not ashamed of painting. by devoting themselves with vehemence to the colouring and technique of oil-painting, they accomplished the necessary revolution against the abstract idealism of the school of cornelius. in their opulence of ideas the draughtsmen of cartoons had made a notch in the history of art by casting the technical tradition overboard. to have reinstated this as far as they could, with the aid of the french, is the peculiar merit of the generation of . "_règle générale: si vous rencontrez un bon peintre allemamd, vous pouvez le complimenter en français._" so runs the motto--not complimentary to germany, but quite unassailable--which edmond about prefixed to his notices on the paris universal exhibition of . _anselm feuerbach_ was the first distinguished german artist who made the journey to paris with a proper knowledge of the necessity of this step. in germany he was the greatest representative of that classicism of which the principal master in france was ingres, and the continuator thomas couture. and he succeeded in accomplishing that which the german classicists of the beginning of the century strove after in vain. whilst they contented themselves with suggestions and an indeterminate symbolisation of poetical ideas after the greek writers, german classicism achieved in feuerbach's "symposium of plato" a great, noble, and faultless work, which will live. he moved upon classic ground more naturally and freely and with more of the hellenic spirit than even the french. for the classic genius was begotten in him, and not inoculated from without. in the _vermächtniss_ the son calls his father's book the prophetic seal of his own original being. he inherited the classic spirit from the enthusiastic scholar, the subtile author of the vatican apollo, to whom the genius of greece had so fully and completely revealed itself. [illustration: _hanfstängl._ anselm feuerbach. portrait of himself.] a remarkable nature: philologer and dreamer, german and greek, one who rejoiced in beauty and in the life of the senses, and whose proud muse strayed through life solitary and with leaden weights upon her feet,--such was anselm feuerbach, and by that division of his being he was ruined. equipped with a superior education, an appearance of singular nobility, and with proud family traditions, he emerged like a shining meteor in düsseldorf, when he began his career at the age of sixteen, brilliant, precocious, and already a favourite amongst women. this was in . he ran through all the schools in germany, belgium, and france. in regard to the living, he believed himself to be indebted to the french alone, and eagerly claimed the merit of having been the first to seek them out. but it was in italy that he had passed through his novitiate as an artist. a glorious hour it must have been when feuerbach, full-blooded and dedicated to the worship of beauty, entered venice in , in company with that cheerful and convivial poet victor scheffel. in the town of the lagoons, whither he had come on a commission from the court of karlsruhe to copy the assumption of titian, feuerbach made the second determining step of his life. the third he made when his stipendium was withdrawn, and, full of youthful confidence in his luck and his good star, he undertook his journey to rome. [illustration: _albert, munich._ feuerbach. hafiz at the well.] [illustration: _albert, munich._ feuerbach. pieta.] he was handsome, small, and refined, and rather pale and spare--of that delicacy which in highly bred families is found in the last heirs with whom the race dies out--and he had dark locks which clustered wildly round his head. the moulding of his features was feminine, and his complexion southern; his eyes, shadowed by long lashes, were brown, sometimes fiery, sometimes sad and earnest, and his glance was swift. he loved to sing italian songs to the guitar in his fine, deep voice, and boecklin and reinhold begas would join in. the impressions he received in italy were formative of his life. for he learnt to understand the divine simplicity and noble dignity of antique art better than couture was capable of understanding them; and he achieved a simple amplitude to which the french classicism had never risen. from his first works, to which the düsseldorf egg-shell is still sticking, down to the "symposium of plato"--what a route it is, and through what phases he passes. "hafiz at the well," surrounded by voluptuous, half-naked girls, painted at paris in , was his first eminent achievement. in subject it is a late fruit from daumer's study of hafiz: as a work of art it is one of the most genuine products of the school of couture. no other german artist has surrendered himself so entirely to the french. with a large brush, never losing sight of the complete effect, feuerbach has painted his canvas, almost for the sake of showing that he has assimilated everything that was to be learnt in paris. the same influence preponderates in the "death of pietro aretino," done in . but, side by side with the parisian master, the later venetians have an unmistakable share in this work. the capacity to grasp things in a monumental largeness is already announced. evidently feuerbach has studied paul veronese, and realised how high he stands above the french painters. at the same time he has examined the other venetians for their technique, and discovered something which has appealed to him in bordone's colouring. but "dante walking with high-born ladies of ravenna," finished at rome in , was the ripest fruit of his venetian impressions. in sunny warmth of colour, fine golden tone, and quiet simplicity of pictorial treatment, no modern has come so near to palma and bordone. and in "dante's death," of , there predominates a still greater depth and golden glow, a grave and devout beauty. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ feuerbach. iphigenia.] in the following works, however, feuerbach, with a conscious purpose, denies himself the quality to which the dante pictures owe a principal part of their powerful effect: the mild glow, the sunny beaming of colour. he confines himself to a cool scheme of tone, reduced to grey, almost to the point of colourlessness; to a glimmer of leaden blue, a moonlight pallor. at the same time he has concentrated the whole life of his figures in their inward being, whilst every movement has been taken from their limbs. even the expression of spiritual emotion in the eyes and features has been subdued in the extreme. the "pietà," both the "iphigenias," and the "symposium of plato" are the world-renowned proofs of the height of classic inspiration which he touched in italy. measure, nobility, unsought and perfected loftiness characterise the "pietà," that mother of the saviour who bows herself in silent agony over the body of her divine son, and those three kneeling women, whose silent grief is of such thrilling power, precisely because of its emotionlessness. for "iphigenia" feuerbach has given of his best. she is in both examples--the first of , the second of --a figure sublime beyond human measure, grand like the figure of the greek tragedy. but the "symposium of plato" will always assert its high value as one of the finest pictorial creations of an imagination nourished on the great art of the ancients, and filled brimful with the splendour of the antique world. there is nothing in it superfluous, nothing accidental. the noblest simplicity of speech, a greek rhythm in all gradations, the beautiful lines of bas-relief, decisive colour and stringent form--that is the groundwork of feuerbach's art. and through it there speaks a spirit preoccupied with greatness and heroism. thus he created his "medea" in the munich pinakothek, that picture of magnificent, sombre melancholy that affects one like a monologue from a sophoclean tragedy. thus he painted his "battle of the amazons," one of the few "nude" pictures of the century which possesses the perfectly unconcerned and unsexual nudity of the antique. italy had set him free from all the insincere and calculated methods which had deformed french art since delaroche; it had set him free from all theatrical sentiment, by which he had accustomed himself to understand everything that was forced in costume, pigment, pose and movement, light and scenery. in the place of the ordinary treatment from the model, with its set gestures and grimaces, he gave an expression of form which was great, simple, and plastic. his study seems to have been an incessant exercise of the eye, to see and to hold fast to the essential, to the great lines of nature as of the human body. [illustration: _albert, munich._ feuerbach. portrait of a roman lady.] in the full possession of these powers, which he acquired amid the elementary simplicity and heroic majesty of roman landscape by constant intercourse with the great painters of the past, he determined in the summer of to accept an invitation from the vienna academy. his friends rejoiced. at last this worker, who had been abandoned in a foreign land, seemed to have found in his native country a place which offered him a new life. he was but little more than forty: yet all was so soon to be over. from rome he came to the restless capital which had just lived through the birththroes of a new epoch; from the side of michael angelo to the side of makart! the sketches for a series on the wars of the titans, which he began after his arrival, promised the greatest things. they display a sureness and majesty which find no parallel in the german art of those years. but they were destined never to be completed. feeling himself, like antæus, strong only on roman soil, he lost his power in vienna. reserved, innately delicate, a mystical, ideal nature like that of faust, and one which only with reluctance permitted to a stranger a glimpse of its inner being; in his life, as in his art, high-bred and simple, hating both as painter and as man everything overstrained or sentimental; in his judgment harsh, severe, and uncompromising, lonely and proud, he was but little adapted to make friends for himself. the indifference with which his study for the "fall of the titans" was received in the vienna exhibition wounded him mortally. vienna, which is so much disposed to laughter, laughed. criticism was rough and unfavourable. he left vienna and went to venice. the tragical fate of a party of voyagers, drowned as they were playing and singing together on a night journey to the lido, gave him the motive for his last picture, "the concert," which was found unfinished after his death, and came into the possession of the berlin national gallery. on th january he died, alone in a venetian hotel. "hier ruht anselm feuerbach, der im leben manches malte, fern vom vaterlande, ach, das ihn immer schlecht bezahlte." so runs the epitaph which he made for himself. and posterity might alter it into-- "hier ruht ein deutscher maler, bekannt im deutschen land; nennt man die besten namen, wird auch der seine genannt." however, one must not go too far. in familiar conversation feuerbach once said of himself that when the history of art in the nineteenth century came to be written, mention would be made of him as of a meteor. so isolated, and so much out of connection with the artistic striving of his contemporaries, did he believe himself to be, that he held himself justified in saying: "believe me, after fifty years my pictures will possess tongues, and tell the world what i was and what i meant." in truth, he owes his resurrection less to his pictures than to the _vermächtniss_. a book has opened the eyes of germany to feuerbach's greatness, and since that time the worship of feuerbach has gone almost into extremes. throughout his lifetime--like almost every great artist who has died before old age--he was handled by the press without much comprehension. the critics blamed his grey tones, the connoisseurs complained of his unpatriotic subjects or missed the presence of anecdote. his admirers were the refined, quiet people who do not praise at the top of their voices. he never met with recognition, and that poisoned his life. it is generous of posterity to make up for the want of contemporary appreciation. but when he is set up as a pioneer, whose work pointed out the art of the future, the judgment becomes one which a _later_ posterity will subscribe to only with hesitation. [illustration: feuerbach. mother's joy.] feuerbach presents a problem for psychological rather than artistic analysis. whoever has read the _vermächtniss_ feels the personal element in these works, sees in them the confessions of a proud, unsatisfied, and suffering soul, and in their author no son of the renaissance born out of due season, but a modern who has been agitated through and through by the _décadent_ fever. in his book feuerbach appears as one of the first who felt to his inmost fibre all the intellectual and spiritual contradictions which are bred by the nineteenth century, and who cherished them even with a sort of tenderness, as contributing to a high and more subtilised condition of soul. he was one of the first who, in the same way as bourget and verlaine, studied moral pathology under the microscope, and who, with a tired soul and worn-out feelings, sought for the last refinement of simplicity. and this weary resignations seems also to speak from his pictures. not one of the old painters has this modern melancholy, this air of dejection which hovers over his works. even the ladies round dante are filled with that sadness which comes over youth on the evenings of sultry summer days, when it is struck by a presentiment of the transitoriness of earthly things. it is as if these figures would all some day or other vanish into the cloister, or, like iphigenia, sit lonely upon the shore of a sea, whither no ship should ever come to release them. and it is certainly not by chance that iphigenia had such a hold upon the artist; he repeatedly set himself to render her figure afresh, and, later, medea steps beside her as the impersonation of the still more intense sense of desertion which filled the artist's spirit. the woman of colchis, who sits shivering on the shore of the sea, chilled through and through by the consciousness of her abandonment; the daughter of agamemnon, who in spirit is seeking the land of the greeks, with the boundless sea spreading wide and grey before her, like her own yearning,--both are images of the lonely feuerbach, who, like hölderlin, the werther of greece, flies to a dreamy hellas as to a happy shore, to find peace for his sick spirit. his "symposium of plato" has not that exuberant sensuousness, that mixture of _esprit_ and voluptuousness, of temperance and intemperance, which marks the athenian life under pericles; nor has it the olympian blitheness with which raphael would have executed the subject. a breath of monkish asceticism is over every joy, subduing it. these greeks have tasted of the pains which christianity brought into the world. or take his "judgment of paris" in hamburg. nude women life-size, loves, southern landscape, gay raiment, golden vessels, brilliant ornament, beauty--those are the elements of the picture; and how little have such words the power to render the impression! but feuerbach's three goddesses have an uneasiness, as if each one of them knew beforehand that she would not receive the apple; paris is sitting just as cheerlessly there. and by borrowing his loves from boucher, feuerbach has shown the more sharply the opposition between the hellenic legend which he interprets and the funereal mien with which he does it. the blitheness of the antique spirit is tempered by the sadness of the modern mind. he tells these old myths as never a greek and never a master of the renaissance would have told them. olympus is filled with mist, with the colouring of the north, with the melancholy of a later and more neurotic age, the moods of which are for that very reason more rich in _nuances_--an age which is at once graver and more disturbed by problems than was the old hellas. feuerbach's pictures are octaves in the language of tasso, but of a repining lyrical mood which tasso would not have given them. the brightest sunshine laughed over the greece of the renaissance; over that of feuerbach there rests a rainy, overcast november mood. even works of his like the "children on the sea-shore" and the "idyll" reveal a pained and suffering conception of nature, that tender and subdued spirit that burne-jones has; it is as if these blossoms of humanity were there to waste away in buds that never come to fruition, as if it were no longer possible to breathe into creation the true joyousness of youth. even the five girls, making music out of doors, in the picture "in spring," look like young widows, putting the whole tenderness of their souls into elegiac complaints for their lost husbands. [illustration: _hanfstängl._ feuerbach. medea.] to this resigned and mournful expression must be added the uncomfortable motionlessness of his figures. they do not speak, and do not laugh, and do not cry; they know no passions and sorrows which express themselves by the straining of the limbs. everything bears the impress of sublime peace, of that same peace by which the works of gustave moreau, puvis de chavannes, and burne-jones are to be distinguished from the ecstatic and sentimental tirades of the romanticists. in feuerbach's works this is the stamp of his own nature. the antique beauty becomes shrouded in a mysterious veil; and life is illuminated as by a mournful light, which rests over bygone worlds. what heart-rending keenness is often in the effect of the melancholy tinge of these subdued bluish tones! that colour is the genuine expression of the temperament reveals itself clearly enough in feuerbach. when he began his career, his head full of ideals and his heart full of hopes, his pictures exulted in a venetian splendour, in full and luxuriant golden harmonies; as "joy after joy was shipwrecked in the stream of time" they became leaden, sullen, and corpse-like. as frans hals in his last days, when his fellow-creatures allowed him only the bare necessities of life, accorded to the figures in his pictures only so much colour as would give them the appearance of living human beings; as rembrandt's magical golden tone changed in the sad days of his bankruptcy into a sullen, monotonous brown, so a deep sadness broods over the pictures of feuerbach,--something that savours of memory and remorse, the mournful atmosphere and dark mood of evening which the bat loves. even as a colourist he has the melancholy lassitude of the end of the century. that is what distinguishes him from his contemporaries. the other idealists of those years painted their pictures without hesitation and with the facility of a professor of calligraphy; they remembered, arranged their reminiscences, and rubbed their hands with self-complacency when they came near their model. they did not yet feel the throb of the nineteenth century, and impersonality was their note. feuerbach, the neurotic brooder, was a personality. after a long mortification, the human spirit, the living, suffering, human spirit, celebrated its renaissance in his works. under its influence the jejune painting of prettiness practised by others was changed to modern pessimism and sorrowful resignation. the more he gave way to these moods the more modern he became, the more he was feuerbach and the further he departed from the works of art which were regarded by his contemporaries and himself as eternal exemplars. he has been reproached with oddities and strange eccentricities. the critics reminded him how far he departed from the lines of his models; indignantly they asked him why he, the pale, delicate, sick, neurotic, and overstrained man, the uncertain, faltering, and tortured spirit, did not paint like the blithe, improvising raphael, like the jubilant and convivial veronese, like the sensuous, exuberant rubens. and feuerbach himself becomes perplexed. like gros in france, he is conscious both of his strength and his weakness. he does not stand sovereign above the old painters, like boecklin and those other idealists of the present. he runs through life in ever fresh astonishment at the novelty which is revealed to him in the works of earlier centuries. the nerves of this latter day vibrate, the blood of the nineteenth century throbs in him--yet he has the wish to imitate. the history of every one of his works is a fight, a desperate struggle, between the individuality of the artist, his own inward feeling, and the "absolute beauty" which hovered beyond him cold and unpliable. in his first drawings he begins boldly; one knows his hand and says: "only feuerbach can have done that." and then one is able to trace, step by step, and from sketch to sketch, what pains he takes that the finished picture may be as little of a feuerbach as possible. the personal and individual element in the drawings is lost, what is feuerbachian in the composition, the personal contribution of the artist, is effaced, and finally there is produced in the picture the marvellous look of having been painted by a genuine old venetian as a ghost. and feuerbach felt the dissonance. he feels that he fully expresses himself no more, and also that he does not reach the level of the old masters. he adds borrowed, conventional figure, like the boucher cupids in the "judgment of paris"--figures against which every fibre of his being revolts--just to arrive at an outward resemblance to the old pictures, an impression of exultation and joyousness and the spirit of the renaissance. and when he stands opposite his work he seems to himself like a gravedigger in a harlequin's jacket. he scrutinises himself in despair, and one day comes to feel that his power of production is exhausted. splendid and unapproachable, from the walls of the galleries, the art of the classic masters stares him in the face; and he enters into a dramatic life-and-death struggle with it. he will not be feuerbach, and cannot become a classic. the curtain falls and the tragedy is over. such destinies have been before in the world, no doubt; but in our time they have multiplied, and seem so much the sadder because they never come to the average man, but only to great and peculiarly gifted natures. [illustration: _albert, munich._ feuerbach. dante walking with high-born ladies of ravenna.] these matters--a silent historical sermon--one reads, with the help of the _vermächtniss_, out of feuerbach's works. there "his pictures possess tongues"; there comes out of them a sound like the cry of a human heart; the whole tragedy of his career becomes present--what he succeeded in doing and what remained unapproachable. yet later generations, which will judge him no longer psychologically, but only as an artist, generations with which he no longer stands in touch through his ethical greatness, will they also feel this in the presence of his finished pictures? to them will he be pioneer or imitator, forerunner or continuator? will he take his place by boecklin and watts, or by couture and ingres? it is perhaps a happy chance that in the history of art one sometimes stumbles upon personalities that mock at all chemical analysis. feuerbach, at any rate, is a great figure in the german art of these years. his is a high-bred, aristocratic art, free from any illustrative undertone, and from loud and motley colour. it is true that his figures also pose, but never clumsily or without expression, never theatrically. at a time when declamation was universal he did not declaim, at least he never did so with a forced pathos; and it is principally this which gives him a very high and special place amongst the german painters of the transitional period. he is always simple, grave, majestic. everything that he does has style, and that makes him so peculiar in an art which is so often petty. [illustration: henneberg. the race for fortune. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., the owners of the copyright._)] but a different judgment is formed when one compares him with the french and the old masters. a meteor feuerbach was not; for he stood on the ground of the couture school, and raised himself later to yet greater simplicity, going back to purer sources, to the venetians and the romans. he is more austere and manly than couture, but he is, as he stands in his finished pictures, a roman of the cinquecento, who has been in venice; not an original genius of the nineteenth century, like boecklin. boecklin paints the antique figures in their eternal fulness and youth; but he is quite modern in sentiment and in his highly developed technique. feuerbach in regard to technique stands now on french soil, now on venetian or roman; and in his sentiment he is an imitator of the cinquecentists, or, if you will, a phenomenon of atavism. his writings and drawings show him concerned with the present, his paintings with the past. the modern temperament, artistically restrained, breaks out no more, the nerves have no rôle, no human sound is forced from his figures. he learnt through the spectacles of the great old masters to look away from everything petty in life, but he never laid those spectacles down. this modern man, who was so neurotic as a writer, sought as a painter, for the sake of the ideal, to have no nerves at all. before many of his pictures one wishes for a fire; they make an effect so cold that one shivers. the quality in them which calls for boundless admiration is his splendid artistic earnestness. there speaks out of them a sacred peace. yet, when he is set up as a pioneer, it must never be forgotten that he is not self-sufficient as, shall we say, millet, but has attained his majesty of conception only in the leading-strings of masterpieces of a great period, and precisely in the leading-strings of those masterpieces from the numbing influence of which modern art was forced to set itself free, before it could come to the consciousness of itself. [illustration: gustav richter. portrait of himself.] together with feuerbach--and having, like him, previously received enlightenment as to colouring at the antwerp academy--_victor müller_, of frankfort, had gone to couture in . he resided until on the banks of the seine, and was especially influenced by delacroix, and perhaps also a little affected by courbet. at least his "wood nymph"--a voluptuous woman lying in a wood--which first made him known in germany in , seems but little removed from the healthy realism and exuberant vigour of the master of ornans. otherwise, like delacroix, he has occupied himself almost exclusively with shakespeare. "hamlet at the grave of yorick," "ophelia," "romeo and juliet," "hero and leander," were pictures of a deep, sonorous glow of colour; the characters in them were seized with great intellectual concentration, and the surrounding landscape filled with that sombre poetry of nature which in the hands of delacroix so mystically heightens the impression of human tragedies. victor müller was of a bold, uncompromising talent, full of southern glow and wild romanticism; a powerful, forcible realist, who never sought the empty, sentimental, ideal beauty known to his age. in a period dominated almost from end to end by a jejune and rounded beauty, he gives pleasure by a healthy, refreshing "ugliness." all the heads in his pictures were painted after nature with a religious devoutness; painted by a man who openly loved the youthful works of riberas and caravaggio. and just as surprising is the power of expression, the deep and earnest sentiment, which he attained in gestures and physiognomy. while makart, in his balcony scene from _romeo and juliet_, never got away from a hollow, theatrical affectation, müller's picture glows throughout with a sensuous passion that saps the blood. a new delacroix seemed to have been born; an extraordinary talent seemed to be rising above the horizon of our art, but germany had to follow to the grave her greatest offshoot of romanticism before he had spoken a decisive word, just as she lost rethel, the greatest son of the cartoon era, in the flower of his age. of the others who made the pilgrimage to paris with feuerbach and müller, not one has a similar importance as an artist. their merit was that they made themselves comparatively able masters of technique, and taught the new gospel when they returned to germany. to their superiority in technique and colour, given them by a sound french schooling, they owed their brilliant success in the fifties. they were, at the time, the best german painters, and great at a time when ability was novel and infrequent. as soon as it became customary and commonplace, there remained little to raise them above the average. [illustration: richter. a gipsy.] that is true of the entire berlin school of the fifties and sixties. the most independent of the many artists who journeyed from the spree to the seine is, probably, _rudolf henneberg_, who died young. his technique he owed to couture, in whose studio he worked from , and his subject-matter to the german classical authors. born a brunswicker, he felt himself specially attracted by his countryman bürger, and became a northern ballad painter with french technique. movement, animation, wildness, and a certain romantic eeriness, proper to the northern ballad--these are henneberg's prominent features, as they are bürger's. his pictures have a bold caprice and a peculiarly powerful and sombre poetry. the hunting party storm past irresistibly, like a whirlwind, in his "wild hunt," the illustration to bürger's ballad, which in won him the gold medal in paris. "und hinterher bei knall and klang der tross mit hund und ross und mann." a düsseldorfian romanticism, from the wolf's glen, is united to couture's nobleness of colouring in his "criminal from lost honour," of . and a part--even if only a small one--of the spirit which created dürer's "the knight, death, and the devil" lives in his masterpiece "the race for fortune," a picture breathed on by the spirit of sombre, mediæval romanticism, which made his name the most honoured in the exhibition of . [illustration: schrader. cromwell at whitehall.] the negation of power, an almost feminine painter of no distinctive character, a new edition of winterhalter, was _gustav richter_. his popularity is connected with the fisher-boys and odalisques, the reproduction of which every sempstress at one time used to wear on her brooch, while in printed colours they added splendour to all the bonbon and handkerchief boxes. the accomplished workmanship and sparkling treatment of material which he acquired in paris made him in , after eduard magnus had made his exit, the most famous painter of feminine beauty. a pleasure-loving man of the world, elegant in appearance, fame, honour, and distinction were showered upon him, and he became the shining spoilt darling of society, the central point of an extensive and animated convivial intercourse. his works were carried out in a style which, at that time, had not been learnt in berlin, and had an air of court life which was held to be exceedingly fashionable. it was later that the banal emptiness and insipid taste of his toilette portraits first became obvious, and that their everlastingly sweet and doll-like smirk, and their kind and winning eyes, always the same, began to grow tiresome. in all his life-size chromolithographs there is a distinction of build and appearance, which in the originals was perhaps to have been desired, although the originals unquestionably looked like something that was more human and individual. in riper years, after the happiness of family life had been given him, he executed works which assure his name a certain endurance; this he did in some of his family portraits,--for instance, in those of his boys and his wife. to this last period belongs the ideal portrait of the baroness ziegler as queen louisa, which became such a popular picture in prussia. but richter's "great" compositions, which once charmed the visitors at exhibitions, are now forgotten. in "jairus's daughter"--admired in as a fine performance in colouring--what strikes one now that its colouring has long been surpassed is the inadequacy and theatricality of its characterisation, the outward show, and the banality of this handsome young man who performs his miracle with a declamatory pose. the "building of the pyramids," painted for the maximilianeum in munich, with its swarming crowd of dark-coloured people, and the royal pair come to inspect with an endless train, is a gigantic ethnographical picture-sheet, which did not repay the expenditure of twelve long years of work. in paris _otto knille_ learnt to approach huge canvas and wall spaces with fearlessness, and by executing the many monumental commissions which fell to his share in prussia, he put this french talent to usury in a manner which was as blameless as it was uninteresting. some good paintings by _julius schrader_, such as the historical pictures with which his fame is associated, have remained fresh for a longer period. the "death of leonardo da vinci," as well as the "surrender of calais to edward iii," "wallenstein and seni at their astrological studies," "the dying milton," and "charles i parting from his children," are only a collection of what the parisian studios had transmitted to him. delaroche and the illustrative and theatrical painting of history, having gone the rounds in belgium, in the next decade demanded their sacrifice in germany. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ lessing. the hussite sermon.] here also similar political and literary conditions were prescribed. a backward people, uncontent with itself, pined for deeds and glory. through the presentment of the great dramas of the past the spirit of the present was to be quickened, as a relaxed body by massage. here also the knowledge of history levelled the ground for painting, as it did in france. while, in the imagination of the romanticists, different ages melted dreamily into each other, and the hohenstauffen period, because of its tender melancholy character, gave the keynote for all german history, the scientific writing of history had, since the thirties, entered as a power into literature. schlosser began his _universal-historische uebersicht der geschichte der alten welt_, which swelled to nine volumes, and represented with a completeness hitherto unapproached the civilisation of antiquity. his history of the eighteenth century was a still greater departure, for, after the example of voltaire, he included manners, science, and literature in his account of political events. on the uncompromising subjectivity of schlosser followed the scientific objectivity of ranke, who, a master of the criticism of sources, delineated with delicate, silver-point portraits the papacy after the reformation, the french court, the policy of the princes of the age of the reformation, cromwell, and the heroes of the rising power of prussia. luden, giesebrecht, leo, hurter, dahlmann, gervinus, and many others began their great labours. german painting, like french, sought to take advantage of the results of these scientific investigations; and schnaase was the first who, in the _kunstblatt_ in , described historical painting as the pressing demand of the age, and the cultivation of the historical sense in such a disconsolate epoch as a "truly religious necessity." soon afterwards vischer began to preach historical painting as a new gospel. history, he says, is the revelation of god. his being is revealed in it as much as in the sacred writings of religion. historical painting is therefore the completion and full exemplification of those principles which, five centuries back, in giotto, led to the movement of the new christian painting. it is called forth by the development of all forms of life and knowledge, and is the last and highest step which sacred painting is able to reach: it is the final completion of sacred painting itself. "who represents the holy ghost with more dignity? he who paints him as a dove upon a sheaf of sunbeams, or he who places before me a great and lofty man, a luther or a huss in the flame of divine enthusiasm?" something of the sort had been in the mind of strauss when he advocated the worship of genius as a substitute for religion. the infidel idealistic painting and satire had been followed by a religious art which evaporated in nazareanism; pure history in boots and spurs was next preached as a religion. "we stand," says hotho in his history of german and netherlandish painting, "with our knowledge, culture, and insight, on a summit from which we overlook the whole past. the orient, greece and rome, the middle ages, the reformation, and modern times, with their religion, literature, and art, their deeds and their life, spread like a universal panorama before us; and it is one that we must grasp with a universal feeling for the distinctiveness of every people, of every epoch, and of every character. in this fashion to bury one's self in the past, to get at the most essential meaning of its life by knowledge, to awaken what is dead, and by art to renew what is vanished, and thus to elevate the present to the level of the still living, kindred mnemosyne of the past, such is the vivifying work of our time; and to that work its best powers must be devoted." [illustration: carl piloty.] the first who worked with these principles in germany was _lessing_. he was a great landscape painter, and a clever and amiable man, whose house in karlsruhe was for many years a meeting-place for the polite world, and every beginner, every young man of talent, visited it to seek protection. during the winter of - menzel's _geschichte der deutschen_ fell into his hands. in it he read the story of huss and the hussites, and with "the hussite sermon" he soon afterwards began the sequence of pictures which had as their theme the battle between church and state, the struggle of the popes with the emperors, the conflict between binding tradition and free personal conviction--a sequence to be viewed in connection with the opposition between authority and freedom which had actually arisen through strauss' _life of jesus_. "huss before the council," "huss on his way to the stake," "the burning of the papal ban," were found on their appearance exceedingly seasonable by the orthodox, protestant side. for people were determined to see in them, at one time, the protests of a protestant against the catholic art tendencies of the nazarenes, at another, biting epigrams on the catholic and pietistic bias, ruling in prussia under friedrich wilhelm iv. they are of historical interest in so far as lessing, before the period of french influence, anticipated in them the path on which the german historical painting--whose centre through piloty came to be munich--moved in the following years. [illustration: piloty. girondists on the road to the guillotine. (_by permission of the berlin photographic co., owners of the copyright._)] [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ piloty. under the arena.] _piloty's_ glory is to have planted the banner of colour on the citadel of the idealistic cartoon drawers. true, it was only the discarded fleshings of delaroche; but since he possessed, side by side with a solid ability, pedagogic capacities of the first rank, and thus brought to german art, in his own person, all the qualities which it had wanted during half a century, his appearance was none the less most important in its consequences. even to-day, beside kaulbach's "jerusalem" and schnorr's "deluge" in the new pinakothek, his "seni" is indicative of the beginning of a new period. before him the most celebrated men of the munich school made a boast of not being able to paint, and looked down upon the "colourers" with a contemptuous shrug; so here everything was attained which the young generation had admired in gallait and bièfve. this astounding revelation of colour was in praised in germany as something unheard of and absolutely perfect. there was no more of the petty, motley, bodyless painting which had hitherto been dominant. the manner in which the grey of morning falls upon the murdered man in the eerie chamber, the way the clothes and the silken curtains glimmer, were things which enchanted artists, whilst the lay public philosophised with the thoughtful seni over the greatness of heroes and the destiny of the world. at one bound piloty took rank as the first german "painter"; he was the future, and he became the leader to whom young munich looked up with wonder. before him no one had known how to paint a head, a hand, or a boot in such a way. no one could do so much, and by virtue of this technical strength he founded such a school as munich had never yet seen. the consequence of his advent was that the town could soon boast of many painters who thoroughly understood their business. what an academical professor can give his pupils (thorough groundwork in drawing and colour), that the young generation received from piloty, who at his death might have said with more right than cornelius: "we have left a better art than we found." he who discovered and guided so many men of talent, left behind him when he died a well-drilled generation of painters; and far beyond the boundaries of munich they assure him the honourable title of a preceptor of germany. the munich movement does not offer the example of passionate and embittered battles, like those which the parisian romanticists maintained against the classicists of the school of david. the guard did not die, but surrendered, and retired into an _otium cum dignitate_. without a contest the ground was left to the new generation, which was united by no bond of tradition with that which had just been driven from the field; it was left to an unphilosophic, unpoetic generation, whose only endeavour was to bind together the threads of technical art which had been torn by unalterable circumstances. this revolution was accomplished with almost unnatural swiftness. in the lifetime of cornelius himself the franco-belgian dogma of colour reached its end and summit in makart, with whom colour is an elementary power, overflowing and levelling everything with the might of absolutism. in the same year that cornelius died "the pest in florence" made its tour through the world. already schwind and steinle, those two children of vienna, had separated themselves from the thoughtful stringency of form and plastic clearness of their german comrades, by a certain coloured and lyrically musical element in their work. and now also it was an austrian who again habituated the colour-blind eyes of the germans to the splendour of pigment. michael angelo's expression of form, as it had been imitated by cornelius, was opposed by the colour-symphonies of the venetians: drapery and jewels, brocade and velvet, and the voluptuous forms of women. [illustration: hans makart.] _hans makart_ was a genius most picturesque in his mode of life. whether this life was enacted in his studio, fitted up like a ballroom, in the ring-strasse, converted into a stage, or upon his canvas, everything was transformed for him into decoration gleaming with colour. and through this delight in colour the most important impulses were given in the most diverse provinces of life. against the dowdy lack of taste and the harsh gaiety of ladies' fashions in that era he set his distinguished costume pictures, carried out in iridescent satin tones; and the enterprising modistes translated them into fact. the makart hat, the makart roses, the makart bouquet--very old-fashioned, no doubt, at the present time--were disseminated over the world. under the influence of makart the whole province of the more artistic trades was regarded from a pictorial point of view. oriental carpets, heavy silken stuffs, japanese vases, weapons and inlaid furniture, became henceforth the principal elements of decoration. the fashionable world surrounded itself with brilliant colours; papers were supplemented by _portières_ and gobelins, ceilings were painted, and gay umbrellas stood in the fireplace. the bald, honest city-alderman style gave way, and a bright triumph of colour took its place. in the studio of the master were the finest blossoms of all epochs of art; richly ornamented german chests of the renaissance stood near chinese idols and greek terra-cotta, smyrna carpets and gobelins, and old italian and netherlandish pictures were mingled with antique and mediæval weapons. and amid this rich still-life of splendid vessels, weapons, sculpture, and costly stuffs and costumes, which crowded all the walls and corners, there rose to the surface as further pieces of decoration a velvet coat, a pair of riding breeches, and a smart pair of wallenstein boots. their wearer was a little man with a black beard, two piercing dark eyes, and one of those splendid broad-browed heads which are universally accepted as the sign of genius. makart's pictures are similar studies of still-life out of which human figures rise to the surface. one hears the rustle of silk and satin, and the crackle of costly robes of brocade; one sees velvet door-hangings droop in heavy folds, but the figures which have their being in the midst are merely bodies and not souls, flesh and no bones, colour and no drawing. sometimes he draws better and sometimes worse, but never well. and therefore he seems unspeakably small by the side of the old venetians, who in such representation combined a highly developed knowledge of form with luxuriant brilliancy of colour. but even his colour, that flaunting, piquant, bituminous painting derived from delaroche, which once threw all germany into ecstasies, no longer awakes any cordial enthusiasm; and the fault is only partially due to the rapid decay, the sadly dilapidated appearance of his pictures. there is not much more remaining of them than of that shining festal procession which for a forenoon set the streets of vienna in uproar. tone and colouring have not become finer and more mellow with the years, as in old gobelins, but ever more spotty and dead. and even if they had remained fresh, would they yet appeal to the present generation, so much more discriminating in their appreciation of colour? makart, so much lauded as a painter of flesh, was never really able to paint flesh at all. his feminine flesh tints are often bloodlessly white, and often tinged by an unpleasant, sugary rose hue. the fresh fragrance of life is not to be found in his figures, for they have been begotten, not by contact with nature, but by commerce with old pictures. he was often reproached with immorality by the prudish critics of earlier years; heaven knows how stagnant and stereotyped this nudity seems in the present day, and how tame this sensuousness, even when one's thoughts do not happen to have been raised to the great, carnal, and divine sensuousness of rubens. like robert hamerling, allied to him by his intoxication in colour, makart had a great momentary success; but, like the former, the brilliancy of his work has swiftly paled, and it is now seen how poor and sickly was the theme hidden behind the lavish instrumentation. because a correct and solid anatomy was wanting to his creations from their birth upwards, they can live no longer now that their blooming flesh is withered. in fact, makart's painting was a weakly and superficial art. he had a sense for nothing but what was external. it is said that in chile there are huge and splendid façades on which are written _museo nacional_, _theatro nacional_, and there is nothing behind. and so for makart the world was a house with a splendid façade glowing with colour, but without dwelling-rooms in which the sorrow and joy of humanity make their abode. his men do not think and do not live; they are only lay figures for splendid garments, or materially circumscribed spaces of rosy flesh colour; they make a stuffed, brainless, animal effect. all his women heave up their eyes in the same meaningless fashion, and have a vapid, doll-like trait about their white teeth, laid bare as if for the dentist. it makes no difference whether they are meant to be portraits or merely embody a feminine plastic lyricism. it was not wise of makart to paint a portrait. he might drape his original after palma vecchio, after rubens or rembrandt, as semiramis or a japanese; his intellectual incapacity remained always the same; the poetry of the psychical nature evaporated from his art. [illustration: makart. the espousals of catterina cornaro.] but all that cannot alter the fact that makart takes a very high place amongst his contemporaries, in that epoch dominated by the historical painting, and not yet arrived at an original conception of nature. poussin said of raphael: if you compare him with the moderns he is an eagle, but if you place him by the greeks he is a sparrow. so when one thinks of veronese or rubens, one finds on makart the feathers of a sparrow, but amongst his contemporaries in germany he seems like an eagle. while all those from whom he derived, those pilotys, gallaits, and delaroches, were no more than skilled historians in painting, makart, though much tamer and smaller, has a relationship with delacroix in his sovereign artistry. that joy in the purely pictorial which expressed itself in the festal procession in the ring-strasse and in the furnishing of his studio was, moreover, the ground-principle of his art. with the naïveté of the old masters he has boldly set himself above all historical truth; with absolute want of respect for books of history he has committed anachronisms at which any critic would be irritated. revelling in splendid revelations of colour, all that he concerned himself about was that his costumed figures should render a fine harmony of hues. so exclusively was his eye organised for colour that every picture was first conceived by him on the palette as a luxuriant mass of colour, and he invented afterwards the theme which was proper for it. if delaroche transformed painting into the flat, sober, and scientifically pedantic illustration of history, makart gave it again a bright and splendid play of colour. the nazarenes were philosophers and theosophers, the romanticists revelled in lyrical sentiment. kaulbach was a philosophic historical student of the hegelian school, piloty a prosaic and declamatory professor of history, makart was the first german _painter_ of the century. his personages weary themselves out in the enjoyment of their own dazzling outward personality. free as the ancients with their gods and legends, he pours forth his cupids, beautiful women, genii, bacchantes, and historical figures, and at the same time draws into his kingdom of art all nature with its variety of plants, flowers, and fruits, all civilisation with its fulness of splendid vessels and jewels, of shining stuffs, emblems, weapons, and masks. all that he created breathes the naïve, sensuous satisfaction of the genuine painter. "the pest in florence" undoubtedly had its origin in boccaccio's description of the great epidemic which visited the town on the arno; but the picture is a free fantasy of sensuous enjoyment and naked flesh, a colour symposium in which there really lives an atom of the flaming vital energy of rubens. take "the espousals of catterina cornaro," that gay procession of representatives from cyprus and venice, of dignified men, of procurators of st. mark, of women in foreign garb, of bright colour, who crowd round their young mistress, the queen of the feast, rejoicing amid the splendid architecture of the piazza. to the anger of the historian, he removes the scene from the fifteenth century to the blossoming period of the sixteenth, when the creations of sansovino, titian, and veronese adorned the queen of the adriatic. "the entry of charles v into antwerp" derived only its external impulse from dürer's diary. the picture with the naked girls strewing flowers might almost as well represent the triumphal entry of alexander into babylon. in the magic land by the nile it is not the history of civilisation and ethnography that attracts him, nor the monumental world of the pyramids and the temples of the gods, but the sensuous glow of southern nature and the still-life and artistic accessories out of which the beautiful serpent cleopatra is seen to rise. female bodies, animals, and fruits, set in the midst of rich, luxuriant landscapes, painted with oil and bitumen, such are the elements of which his pictures of the old world of legend--the hunt of the amazons and of diana--are composed. with these capacities makart was scenical painter _par excellence_. his abundantia pictures in the munich pinakothek and the ceiling-pieces of the palais tumba in vienna are among his best creations. there lives in them something of the olympian blitheness of the ancients, of that easy joyousness which since tiepolo seemed to have been buried in melancholy reflection and constrained brooding. they fulfil their purpose, as an invitation to the enjoyment of life, precisely because they carry no intrinsic thought to burden the sensuous display. moreover, the unctuous and gorgeous colouring, with the animated contrasts of warm brown and light blue, mediated by the deep, glowing makart red, corresponds to the mood they have been designed to awaken--one which called forth the joy of life, luxuriant, full-blooded, and foaming over. the great, fiery red flower, which sprouts out of the ground at the feet of the nymph in "spring," was the last thing touched by makart's brush, the last flare of the marvellous colour-demon by which he was possessed. [illustration: makart. the feast of bacchus.] was _possessed_! for makart's whole artistic endeavour had something unconscious. one might say in a variant reading from lessing: "if makart had been born without a brain he would nevertheless have been a great painter." it is as if one who lies buried in antwerp had once more felt the instinct of production, and let himself down into the great head of the little salzburger; and the head, being a somewhat imperfect medium, only stammered out the intentions of the sublime master. there is something remarkable in the career of this son of the poor servant, on whom fortune showered with full hands all it had to offer a child of the nineteenth century, and who in the midst of his splendour in vienna remained always the same harmless child of nature that he had been in munich, when, after receiving his first hundred florins, he drove in a cab the two steps from oberpollinger to the academy. one must take him as he is--a product of nature. makart was a scene painter, and that not in his scenical pictures only; but he was an inspired scene painter, of an enviable facility, who poured forth in play what others fabricate with pains. his merit it is to have announced to the germans afresh, in an overwhelming style, that revelation of colour which had been forgotten since the venetians and rubens. he has not advanced the history of art, as such. what he gave had been given better before. but the history of german art in the nineteenth century has to honour in him the most perfect representative of the period in which colour-blindness was succeeded by exuberance of colour, and the cartoon style by the delight in painting. [illustration: gabriel max. _graphische kunst._] beside makart, the child of nature, _gabriel max's_ seems a calculating, tormented, unhealthy talent. in the manner in which makart did his work there lay a certain elementary, logical necessity; in max there is a great deal of speculation and over-refinement. makart's home was the town on the lagoons. max is by education and temperament a disciple of piloty--that is to say, a painter of disasters; by birth he was a bohemian. and that resulted in his case in a very interesting mixture. when he exhibited his first pictures it was as if one heard a refined music after the tom-tom of piloty. in his "martyr on the cross," which appeared in the spring of in the munich kunstverein, he first struck that bitter-sweet, half-torturing, half-ensnaring tone in which he afterwards continued to sound. it is dawn; a soft grey light rests, beaming mildly, over the lonely campagna. here stands a cross on which a girl-martyr has ended her struggles. a young roman coming home from a feast is so thrilled by the heavenly peace in the expression of the unhappy girl's face that he lays a crown of roses at the foot of the cross, and becomes a convert to the faith for which she has suffered. the mysterious mortuary sentiment in the subject is strengthened by the almost ghostly pallor of the colouring. everything was harmonised in white, except that one dark lock, falling across the pale forehead with great boldness, sounded like a shrill dissonance in the soft harmony, like a wild scream; it had come there apparently quite by chance, but was nevertheless calculated to a hair's breadth. the terribly touching vision of the martyr aroused in every visitor to the kunstverein a shudder of delight. it was even a fine variation, and one which invited pity, that the victim should not have been a hero, as in conventional catastrophes, but a soft and sweet girl, made for love and never for the cross. and it was the more absorbing, too, because it was impossible to say whether the young roman was looking up to the beautiful woman with the desecrating sensuality of a _décadent_ or with the fervid ecstasy of a convert. the same horrified fascination was wakened again and again in the presence of the later pictures of the painter. almost every one contained a scene of martyrdom, in which the tormented and sinking heroine was a helpless child or a weak and defenceless woman. the passion for tragic subjects brought into full swing by the historical painters was directed in max against the purest and tenderest, the most chaste and the most lovely. the type was always the same, with its bohemian nose and one eye larger than the other, by which was attained a curiously visionary or hysterically enthusiastic expression. and the pictorial treatment corresponded to it: there was always a flesh-tint of poignant mortal pallor, a white clinging drapery, a black veil, a light grey background, all harmonised in one very delicate chord. goethe's gretchen made the beginning. in the zwinger she lifted up her eyes in frightened anguish to the countenance of the madonna. she sat in her cell, her face altered by madness and lit up with a wild laughter, and in a reverie passed her hand through faust's locks. or as a phantom she wandered in the walpurgis night, in her long, flowing shroud, with a blood-red stripe round her throat. this picture, exhibited with electric light, was especially effective. max had brought into the earnest corpse-like eyes an expression that was terribly demoniacal, and had been attained to the same degree by no earlier illustrator of _faust_. a raven, pecking at the lost ring, was her ghostly escort. max showed great invention in hitting upon such things. bürger's _pfarrertochter von taubenhain_ gave him the material for his "child-murderess"--a young girl who, by the bank of a lonely pool, overgrown with reeds, stabs her child to the heart with a needle, and in a sudden rush of maternal love presses a kiss on the stiff little body before committing it to the water. here the sombre, disconsolate character of the landscape accorded finely with the action, and the pale body of the child made an exceedingly bright, pungent spot of colour on the dark-green rushes. "the lion's bride" illustrated chamisso's ballad of the jealous lion who killed his mistress before her wedding, because he would not give her over to another. majestically he lies behind her, with one paw on the arm of the slain, and the other struck into her thigh. the stones of the floor are reddened with her blood. but far more frequently than blood max employed the tints of corruption, the true _nature morte_. in its colour-values and subtle shades the dead human body, just at the point where corruption begins, was better suited to the painter's pallid scale of colour than the light and brutally effective red of freshly poured-out blood. among these paintings of mortification must be reckoned "ahasuerus by the body of a child" and "the anatomist"; the latter meditatively regards at the dissecting-table the corpse, covered with white linen, of a young girl who has committed suicide. in his "raising of jairus's daughter" the effect of mortification was most cleverly heightened by a small detail, which made an extraordinary impression: this was a fly on the naked arm of the girl, put there to remind the spectator of the unconsciousness of the body. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ max. a nun in the cloister garden.] the secrets of death are always certain of their effect on the nerves; but by means of the broken hearts of women, with annihilated hopes and agonised hysterical sufferings, he succeeded again in calling forth a bitter-sweet sympathy. "mary magdalene" and "the maid of orleans" were the masterpieces of this group. the underlying idea of the picture "light" is that a blind young christian girl, at the portal of the roman catacombs, offers lamps to the entering christians for the illumination of their dark way. the blind woman as the giver of light! even in his youth, with cruel irony, he had had sung by a blind quartet the song, "_du hast die schönsten augen_." a touch of delaroche is in the other young martyr, who, between the bloodthirsty beasts of the roman circus, looks up amazed to the rows of spectators, from the midst of which a young roman has flung her a rose as a last greeting. in the next moment she will be lying on the earth torn to shreds by the beasts. as he succeeded here in giving a presentiment of the horrible, so in another group of pictures max attained a yet more demoniacal charm by the ghostly. he had early made himself familiar with schopenhauer and buddha and the indian fakirs; the mystical and spiritualistic movement had just at that time been set going by the writings of carl du prels. justinus kerner and the prophetess of prevorst were the order of the day. max became the painter of hypnotism and spiritualism. "the spirit's greeting" made a special sensation: the young girl at the piano, in this picture, is interrupted in her playing by the touch of a materialised ghostly hand, which stretches towards her from a soft cloudy mist. the mixture of horror, joy, devotion, and ecstasy in the face of the young player was very effective. in order to render effects of the kind he made extensive studies from the hypnotised model, and in this way he sometimes reached an extraordinary intensity of expression. he took a decided position with regard to another question which at the time was very acute--vivisection. this he did in the picture of the man of science from whom an allegorical female figure, "the genius of pity," takes away a little dog doomed to be dissected, showing by a pair of scales that the human heart has more weight than the human understanding. all this goes to show that max is the opposite of artless. he knows how to calculate an effect on the nerves with extreme subtlety, and most skilfully at times to give his pictures the attraction of the freshly printed newspaper. he appeals to compassion rather than imagination. he would set the heart beating violently. he triumphs generally by his subjects, and his effects are much purer in those few works in which he renounces the piquant adjunct of the demoniacal, the tragical, and the mystical, and becomes merely a painter. amongst those works is to be reckoned that beautiful "madonna" on the altar, painted in , and so tenderly illustrating the verses of heine-- "und wer eine wachshand opfert, dem heilt an der hand die wund, und wer ein wachsherz opfert, dem wird das herz gesund." and so too does that charming "spring tale" of , which breathes only of gaiety, happiness, and peace; a young girl sits under the blossoming bushes, and listens enraptured to the warbling of a nightingale. [illustration: _hanfstängl._ max. the lion's bride.] those pictures, the "mood" of which grows out of the landscape around--"the nun in the cloister garden," "adagio," "the spring tale," and "autumn dance"--give max a very high and peculiar place in the work of his period. he appears in them as a tender poet who expresses his emotions through a pictorial medium; as an adorer of nature of a soft melancholy and subtle delicacy, which are to be found in like manner only in the works of the englishmen frederick walker, george mason, and george h. boughton. nature sings a hymn to the soul of the painter, and through his figures it is breathed forth in low, vibrating cadences. a tender landscape of earliest spring gave the ground-tone to his charming picture "adagio." young trees with trembling stems raise their slender crowns into the pale blue sky flecked with clouds. as yet the branches are almost naked; only here and there appears the embroidery of fresh yellowish green. and in this soft, tender nature which shyly reveals itself as with a slight shudder after its long winter sleep, there are seated two beings: a boy and his young mother--she looks almost a child--dreamily meditating. their eyes look strangely into vacancy, as though their thoughts are wandering. nature works on them, and a melancholy _warte nur balde_ runs through their souls. a spring landscape of blissful gaiety, where nightingales warble, butterflies sip at the flowers, and sunbeams play coquettishly round the budding rosebushes, is the setting of the "spring tale." everything laughs and rejoices, shines and scents the air in the early sunlight. pearls of dew sparkle on the meadows, gnats hum and leaves murmur. she thinks of him. all the joy of a first love-dream sets her heart quivering with a delicious tremor. in her heart as in nature it is spring. yet even as a landscape painter max generally has that tender, suffering trait which runs through his creative work elsewhere. twilight, autumn, pale sky and dead leaves have made the deepest impression on his spirit. thin, half-stunted trees, in the leaves of which the evening wind is playing, grow upon an undulating, poverty-stricken soil. the landscape spreads around with a kind of lyrical melancholy: a region which gives no exuberant assurance of being beautiful, but which, in its poverty, attunes the mind to melancholy; a region, however, which knows not of storms and loneliness, but is the peaceful dwelling of quiet and resigned men. these beings belong to no age; their costume is not modern, but neither is it taken from any earlier period. they do not act and they tell no story; they dream their time away meditatively and gravely. max has divested them of everything fleshly and vulgar, so that only a shadow of them remains, a soul that vibrates in exquisite, dying, elusive chords. "the autumn dance" is such an unearthly picture, and one of indefinable magic. children and women are dancing, yet one feels them to be religious dreamers whom a melancholy world-weariness and a yearning after the mystical have drawn together to this secret and sequestered corner of the earth. the pale, transparent air, the tender tints of the dresses, delicate as fading flowers, the flesh tint giving the figures something ghostly and ethereal--it all strikes a note at once blythe and sentimental, happy and sad. "the nun in the cloister garden" is in point of landscape one of his finest productions. in the cloister garden, despite the budding spring, there reigns a disconsolate dreariness. on the thin grass sits a young nun, who follows dreamily the gay fluttering of two butterflies, which flit around at her feet. a black dress, harshly and abruptly crossed by a white cape, envelops the youthfully delicate form. the dying sapling on which she is leaning bends helplessly against the stubborn paling to which it is fastened with iron clamps. the weather-stained wall stretches along in a dreary monotonous grey. an old sundial relentlessly indicates the slow dragging hours. but the deep blue heaven, in which a pair of larks poise exulting, looks in across the wall, from which a scrubby growth climbs shivering in the breeze. [illustration: _graphische kunst._ max. light.] in such pictures, too, max has a morbid inclination to a mystical delicacy of sentiment. he gives what is real an exquisite subtlety which transplants it into the world of dreams, and his tender sense of pain perhaps appeals only to spirits of an æsthetic temper. he is the antithesis of robust health; and yet there lies in the excess of nervous sensibility--in the pathological trait in his art--precisely the quality which inspires the characteristic delicacy of his earlier works. here is no pupil of piloty, but our contemporary. in their anæmic colour his pictures have the effect of a song of high, fine-drawn, and tremulous violin tones, at once dulcet and painful. with their refinement and polish, their subtle taste and intimate emotion, so wonderfully mingled, they reach the music of painting. they paint the invisible, they revel in dreams. in a period which played only _fortissimo_, and was at pains to drum on all the senses at once with a distorting passion, max was, next to feuerbach, the first who prescribed for his compositions _dolce_, _adagio_, and _mezza voce_; who sought for the refined, subdued emotions in place of the _emotions fortes_. [illustration: _hanfstängl._ max. the spirit's greeting.] [illustration: _gräphische kunst._ max. adagio.] these pictures, the more subdued the better, make him the forerunner of the most modern artists, and assure his name immortality much more certainly than the great figure resting on an historical or literary basis. their delicate black, green, and white simplicity has a nobleness of colouring which stands quite alone in the german painting of the century, and this, together with their refined musical sentiment, is probably to be set rather to the account of his bohemian blood than of his munich training. and whilst in the heads of his figures elsewhere a certain monotonous vacuity disturbs one's pleasure, he appears here as a psychic painter of the highest mark; one who analysed with the most subtle delicacy all the fleeting _nuances_--so hard to catch--of melancholy, silent resignation, yearning, and hopelessness. only the figures of the english new pre-raphaelites have the same sad-looking, dove-like eyes, the same spiritual lips, tremulous as though from weeping. there must have been a divine moment in his existence when he first filled the loveliest form with the expression of the holiest suffering, the sweetest reverie, the deepest devotion, and the most rapt ecstasy. and if later, when people could not weary of this expression, he took to producing it without real feeling and by purely stereotyped means, that is, at any rate, a weakness of temperament which he shares with others. gabriel max is an individuality, not of the first rank indeed, but he is one; and there are not many painters of the nineteenth century of whom that can be said. he has often underlined too heavily, printed too much in italics, and done more homage to crude than to fine taste. but he has, in advance of his contemporaries, in whose works the good was so seldom new, the priceless virtue that he always gave something new, if not something good. his art was without ancestry, an entirely personal art; something which no one had before max, and which after him few will produce again. a province which had not yet been trodden, the province of the enigmatic and ghostly, was opened up by him; he set foot in it because he is a philosophic brooder, fascinated by the magic of the uncanny. his studio is like a chapel in which a mysterious service for the dead is being held, or the chamber of an anatomist, rather than the workroom of a painter. the investigation of dead birds occupied him after his prague days just as much as the sounding of the life of the human spirit. he lived at the time with his parents in an old, ghostly house, and roamed about a great deal in the picture gallery of the strahow foundation; and here in lonely nights and mysterious picture-rooms there arose that grave and sombre spirit which runs through his work. as a child at the death of his father he had his first "vision." his earliest picture, which he finished while at the prague academy, and sold afterwards to the art union there for ninety florins, showed that he had begun to move on his later course: "richard the lion-heart steps to the corpse of his father and it bleeds." he was thus inwardly ripe when, in , he came to piloty in munich, and, equipped with the technique of the latter, refined in so delicate a manner on the traditional painting of disasters. and if a conscious design on the nerves of the multitude frequently entered into his work, it was, as a rule, veiled by captivating beauty and excellence of painting. his older good pictures fascinate the most jaded eye by their remarkably tender sentiment, and the mystical spirituality of his soft and lovely girlish heads has been reached by few in his century. he is at the same time a colourist of complete individuality, who made pigments the subtilised and ductile means of expression for his visionary moods of soul. he has brought into the world a numerous stock of works prepared for the market; and he has not disdained to paint glorified wonders of the fair, like the christ's head upon the handkerchief of veronica, whose eyes seem to be closed by their lids and are looking out at the same time wide open. but much as he sinned, he always remained an artist. a curious, interesting, characteristic mind, one of the few who ventured even forty years ago to give themselves out as children of their time, in the firmament of german, and indeed of european art, he appears as a star shining by its own and not by borrowed light, as one whose incommensurable magnitude it is that his talent cannot be compared with any other. that is what gives him his artistic importance. [illustration: max. a winter's tale.] all the less room can be claimed by the many who, likewise following in their subject-matter the lines of piloty, get no further than the traditional catastrophe. not munich only, but all germany, lay for more than a decade after the middle of the century under the shadow of historical painting, which here, as in other countries, came as the logical product of an unhappy time, dissatisfied with its own existence when germany was merely a geographical expression, and in the pitiable misery of that age of state-confederations, dreamt of a better future at singing contests, athletic tournaments, and rifle meetings. the more poverty-stricken the time was in real action, the more vehement was the desire to read of action in books or to see it on canvas; and in this respect historical painting rendered at that time important political services, which are to be acknowledged with gratitude; just as the historical drama, the historical ballad and the historical novel were, all and several, means for the expression of the deep-seated longing of a backward people for political labours, for deeds and for fame. but the artistic yield was not greater than elsewhere. when the learned in the thirties laid it down in doctrinaire fashion that, with the destruction of religious fervour begun by science, the old traditionary sacred painting would fall away of itself and the painting of profane history take its place, they overlooked from the very beginning the fact that, so long as the much discussed worship of genius had not actually become a reality the painting of history had to fight against insuperable obstacles. what constitutes the prime condition of all art--that its contents must be some fact vivid in consciousness--should, at any rate, determine its limitations, and ought to have confined the historical picture to the nearest universally known subjects. and what happened was just the contrary. when delaroche had skimmed the cream, his successors were forced to search in the great martyr book of history for events which were more and more unknown and indifferent. piloty took from ancient history "the death of alexander the great," "the death of cæsar," "nero at the burning of rome," and "the triumphal progress of germanicus"; and from mediæval history, "galileo in his prison observing the periodic return of a solar ray," and "columbus sighting land"; from the history of the thirty years' war, "the foundation of the catholic league by duke maximilian of bavaria," "seni before the body of wallenstein" (the morning before the battle at the white mountain, seni has come to carry away wallenstein's body), "wallenstein on the way to eger," and "the news of the battle at the white mountain"; from english history, "the death sentence of mary stuart"; and from french history, "the girondists on their way to the scaffold." after these pictures were painted and had had their success the turn came, in the years immediately following, for subjects growing steadily more and more dreary. and as goethe held the historical to be "the most ungrateful and dangerous field," so it now appeared as though laurels were to be gathered there only. from the political dismemberment of the present, german artists were glad to seek refuge as far back as possible in the past, and they flung themselves on the new province with such fiery zeal that, after a few decades, there was a really appalling number of historical pictures, illustrating every page of schlosser's great history of the world. _max adamo_ painted "the netherlandish nobles before the tribunal of alva," "the fall of robespierre in the national convention," "the prince of orange's last conversation with egmont," "charles i meeting cromwell at childerley," "the dissolution of the long parliament," and "charles i receiving the visit of his children at maidenhead"; _julius benczur_: "the departure of ladislaus hunyadi," and "the baptism of vajk," afterwards king stephen the holy of hungary; _josef fluggen_: "the flight of the landgravine elizabeth," "milton dictating paradise lost," and "the landgravine margarethe taking leave of her children"; by _carl gustav hellquist_ there were "the death of the wounded sten sture after the battle of bogesund in the mälarsee," "the embarkment of the body of gustavus adolphus," and the forced contribution of "wisby and huss going to the stake." _ernst hildebrand_ had the electress of brandenburg secretly taking the sacrament in both kinds, and tullia driving over the corpse of her father; _frank kirchbach_ displayed "duke christopher the warrior"; _ludwig von langenmantel_: "the arrest of the french chemist lavoisier under the reign of terror," and "savonarola's sermon against the luxury of the florentines"; _emanuel leutze_: a "columbus before the council of salamanca," "raleigh's departure," "cromwell's visit to milton," "the battle of monmouth," and "the last festival of charles i"; _alexander liezenmayer_: "the coronation of charles durazzo in stuhlweissenburg," and "the canonisation of the landgravine elizabeth of thüringen"; _wilhelm lindenschmit_: "duke alva at the countess of rudolstadt's," "francis i at pavia," "the death of franz von sickingen," "knox and the scottish image-breakers," "the assassination of william of orange," "walter raleigh visited in his cell by his family," "luther before cardinal cajetan," "anne boleyn giving her child elizabeth to the care of matthew parker," and "the entrance of alaric into rome"; _alexander wagner_: "the departure of isabella zapolya from siebenbürgen," "the entry into aschaffenburg of gustavus adolphus," "the wedding of otto of bavaria," "the death of titus dugowich," "matthias corvinus with his hunting train," and many more of the same description. [illustration: _hanfstängl._ max. madonna.] was it at all possible to make works of art out of such material? perhaps it was. the real artist can do anything. what he touches becomes gold, for he has the hand of midas. but just as certain it is that the "historical painting," carried on by a joint-stock company, almost never got any further than stage pathos, tailoring, and glittering splendour of material. like many another thing which the nineteenth century brought to birth, it was an artistic error, which countless persons paid for by the waste of their lives. the older art knew nothing of such a reconstruction of the past. if historical subjects were painted, the artists were almost throughout contemporaries of the subject that was to be treated; seldom did the materials belong to an epoch already past. but in both cases the work was done by immediate intuition, since even in the treatment of matters long gone by the painters never dreamed of painting them in the spirit of past times. they might depict jews, or greeks, or romans, but they always represented their own countrymen in the surroundings and costume of their own time. the scientific nineteenth century made the first demand for historical accuracy. in dress and furniture this could be attained with the assistance of a cabinet of engravings and a work on costume. whoever went to work in a very scientific spirit could even borrow from a museum the genuine costumes of egmont and wallenstein. but it was all the harder artistically to quicken into life the men themselves who had felt, lived, and suffered in the past. the painter could not proceed otherwise than by draping a modern, professional model, having consulted portraits, drawings, or busts, and having sought the aid of a peruke and false beard. an entirely realistic reproduction of this masquerade, however, made only too evident the contrast between the splendid old garment and the member of the proletariat who was dressed up in it. for, granted that men of the present have much in common with those of the past, every period has none the less its own type, even its own gestures, which no costume can make one forget. and speaking merely of general humanity, there is no question that a statesman at all times looked different from a professional model. in a very bad suit of clothes, but in one which, at any rate, fitted him, and in which he was able to behave himself naturally, the poor fellow came to the studio, to feel, for a few hours, in satin hose and a velvet doublet, like a carnival figure. who was to give him the easy knightly bearing to play his part suitably to the occasion? it was not possible in this way ever to attain the naturalness and fulness of life of the old painters. in terborg's "peace of westphalia" everything is genuine and true and simple; here wig and woollen beard have got the upper hand. and if the painter proceeded not as a theatrical tailor, but as an historian of civilisation, the result was an archaic dryness. for then he was merely thrown back on the great masters of those periods in which the action took place, and, while he enlarged and coloured old busts or engraved portraits, his art was only second-hand. and so the only way out of the difficulty was to use the model, but to idealise him by generalising and sinking the individual in the universally human, noble, and heroic. in this way the remarkable family likeness of all these heads becomes comprehensible, and it is still further heightened by that preference for a monotonous type of beauty which, from the period of classicism, entered, as it were, into the blood of these painters. the human physiognomy, in reality so various, had then only one mask for the many characters which life creates. there was a fear of "ugliness," as if it were a spot of dirt, and the personages portrayed received, one and all, an icy trait of "the beautiful." the various egmonts, wallensteins, and charles the firsts of gallait and bièfve, delaroche, and piloty have not the blood of human beings, they have not the scars which are made by fate, but are all alike in their byronic turn of the head. one knows the so-called character-heads--luther gazing upwards with the look of one strong in faith, columbus discovering america, and milton in whose head are seething all the thoughts which dying men are wont to have in their last moments,--one knows them as thoroughly by heart as one knows all the opened folios and overturned settles, the picturesquely draped tapestry reserved for tragic funereal service, and that little box, covered with brass and catching the flashing lights, which constitutes in belgium, france, and germany the iron casket of all historical pieces. in the place of the inward shakespearian truth of the figures, peculiar to the old masters, is the outward truth of costume; and the historical "property man," whose highest aim is to "dress" the great moments of universal history in the prescribed manner, has stepped into the place of the artist. in the works of the old masters the historical figures stand out with sincerity as characters of flesh and blood, despite the want of "local colour," whilst in the moderns the costumes certainly are correct, but the figures are so much the less credible and vital. "beautiful may be the folds of the garment, but more beautiful must be that which they contain." clothes do not make people, and costumes heighten no passions. thus difficulties were heaped on difficulties, when impassioned situations and moments of dramatic intensity were to be painted. whoever has reached that height of artistic power where the artist may with impunity put his model out of his head--like delacroix, grand, volcanic, stormy, and excited to a fever heat by his inspiration,--that man will be capable of giving the effect of truth to such scenes, and of running through the whole gamut of emotion with a crushing power of conviction. but the joint-stock historical painter had to get his models to pull faces, and then no less laboriously to render with his oils those grimaces so laboriously produced. hence the monotonous and petrified histrionic ecstasy of these pictures, the noble indignation put on for show, and that distressing gesticulation. as the actor gives emphasis to his words far more by gestures than is the case in ordinary life, so here also the artificially impassioned air of the heads was conventionally interpreted by corresponding motions of the arms. and thus the closing tableau was made ready: the dancers lay their hands on their hearts with tender and deep feeling; the tenor heroes sing that they are prepared to die; the tyrants let their deep basses vibrate, and the orchestra rages, to close with a shattering chord at the moment when the hero sets his foot upon the chest of the traitor; then come the bengal lights, and then the curtain falls. what a spectacle!--but, alas, a spectacle and nothing more. all the emotions are artificial; they are opera emotions: the painters are only clever fellows, manufacturers of librettos and gay canvas; they show a great deal of knowledge and dexterity, but they have only a head and no heart. stage requisites and professional models can never take the place of the free, creative force of imagination. and if german pictures of this sort have an effect almost more insincere and theatrical than the french, the reason probably is that gesture--that external aid to the expression of feeling--is always more natural to the latin than the teutonic races, and has therefore, of itself, an effect of affectation in every german picture. we know that bismarck, the teuton incarnate, even in the most excited of parliamentary speeches, never made any other movement than to rap nervously with his pencil. "the german only becomes impassioned when he lies." the most genuine masters of german blood have felt that right well, and they have been honest enough to say it out. a pervading trait of old german art is simplicity, the avoidance of everything impassioned even in the grandest conception, such as dürer has. if in leonardo's "last supper" terror, indignation, curiosity, and sorrow are reflected by twelve heads and twenty-four hands in movements of agitation which are always new, in dürer's woodcut all the limbs and senses of the disciples are paralysed at the sorrowful revelation of the saviour; it seemed to them desecration to break the solemn, oppressive stillness by noisy utterances of opinion and hasty gestures. and the same thing is to be remarked in every similar picture of rembrandt's; here too are only quiet and subdued movements, delicate suggestions and silence. the effect is great and sublime, the features of the saviour earnest and expressive, but his mien is without any ecstatic emphasis such as a painter of romance blood would have given him. only in the nineteenth century--partly through imitation of the italians in cornelius and kaulbach, and then through imitation of the french in piloty and his disciples--has this impassionedness, so opposed to german nature, entered into german art; and it has borrowed from the opera the distortions by which it has expressed the agitations of the spirit. no one works with impunity against the grain of his temperament. exaggerated and violent movements, "ostentatious gestures of false dignity," have replaced the natural expressions of life. less pose, parade, and theatricality, more ease, truth, and quietude; less insipid, generalised "beauty," more forcible, characteristic "ugliness": if art was not to be drowned in a surge of phrases, this was the path to be taken; and the transition was accomplished in "the historical picture of manners." chapter xv the victory over pseudo-idealism immediately upon the epoch-making labours of the historians followed the first romances that were archæological and dealt with the history of civilisation; and hand in hand with these literary productions there was developed--by the side of historical painting proper, in france, belgium, and germany--a tendency to represent the life of the past, not in its grand dramatic action, but in its familiar concerns. in the one case there was history in its state uniform, in the other history in undress. and while the former class of painters saw the past only in a condition of unrest and violent movement, the latter began to enter into the details of daily life, and to represent it as it flowed by in times of peace. those who had the romantic bias turned to the old artistic crafts. as yet that bias consisted only in an enthusiasm for the tasteful civilisation of a bygone age, with its polished charm of luxurious household appointments and pleasing costume. rooms were filled with gobelins and rich stuffs, handsome furniture and old pictures. by the rapid sale of their productions painters were placed in a position to acquire for themselves at the second-hand dealers all the beautiful things they painted. they placed their dressed-up models in front of their tapestries, and between their cabinets and tables. stress was laid on historical accuracy in the representation of the usages and costumes of the past, not on dramatic action, and in this respect the historical picture of manners, as opposed to historical painting, marked an advance towards intimacy of feeling. the latter still worked from the abstract. the painter read a book and looked out for telling passages. he idealised models, to lend his picture the character of "great art." it was always the illustration of underlying ideas. in this new kind of picture, on the contrary, the conception of a work of art was given, by the perfected representation of any part of the visible world, were it only the corner of a studio elaborately and artificially arranged. the historical picture of manners no longer depicted "the meeting of hostile forces," but either the heroes of history or the nameless men of the past in their daily act and deed, and so accustomed the public gradually to interest themselves in people who did not act with histrionic passion, but conducted themselves quietly and soberly like men of the present time. the place of the dramatic was taken by those phases of life which are pleasant and smooth. at the same time there was no need to be thrown back on conventional idealisation, and it was possible to bring people dressed up for the occasion directly into the picture, just as they sat there, since the contrast between the professional model and the old-fashioned dress made itself less felt on this smaller scale of art. thus was achieved the transition from the heroic historical art of the first half of the nineteenth century to that familiar and more human art of the second half, which no longer fled for help to the past, but sought a simpler ideal in reality. first of all in france, from the side of the solemnly earnest group of academicians, there stepped forward certain artists who moved in the old world quite at their ease, and began to paint simple little pictures from the daily life of antiquity, instead of the great ostentatious canvases of david and ingres. in literature their parallels are ponsard and augier, who in their comedies brought antique life upon the stage, the one in _horace et lydie_, the other in _la ciguë_ and _le joueur de flûte_. _charles gleyre_ approached nearest to the strict academical style of ingres. not even by a tour in the east did he allow himself to be led away from the classical manner, and as head of a great and leading studio he recognised it as the task of his life to hand on to the present generation the traditions of the school of ingres. gleyre was a man of sound culture, who during a sojourn in italy which lasted for years, had examined etruscan vases and greek statues with unintermittent zeal, studied the italian classics, and copied all raphael. having come back to paris, he never drew a line without having first assured himself how raphael would have proceeded in the given case. and this striving after purity of form has robbed his works ("nymph echo," "hercules at the feet of omphale," and the like) almost entirely of ease, freshness, and naturalness. gleyre became, like ary scheffer, a victim to style. he had in him--his "evening" of is sufficient to show it--a tender, dreamy, and contemplative spirit. the feelings to which he wished to give expression were his own, and the more fragrant, romantic, and vaporously indistinct they were, the more did they suffer from the stiff academical line in which he so mercilessly bound them. only in his "orpheus torn by the bacchantes" has he raised himself to a certain neo-greek elegance. _louis hamon_ stands at the end of this path, which led gradually from the strictness of form characteristic of the idealism of ingres to incidents thought out in perfectly modern fashion and laid in a primitive era only because of the advantages of costume offered by the antique. the grace of his pictures is modern; their classicism is a disguise. to robust natures his art can make but little appeal. he has deprived nature of her strength and marrow, and painting of its peculiar qualities, transforming them into a coloured dream, a tinted mist. in hamon's modelling there is an uncertainty, in his colour a sickly weakness and meagre effeminacy, which give to his figures and landscapes the appearance of being dissolved in vapour. everything firm is taken from them; the stones look like wadding, the plants like soap, the figures like china dolls which would fly into the air at the least gust of wind. nevertheless there are times when his confectionery has a sympathetic grace. what distinguishes him is something simple, pure, youthful, fresh, and childlike. his colour is lighter and more delicate than gleyre's. none but blended colours such as light blue and light yellow mingle in the harmony of white tones. the severe antique style has been given a pretty _rococo_ turn: his greek girls, women, and children are like figures of sèvres porcelain; the scenes in which he groups them are pleasing,--sports of fancy brought forward in a grecian garb, of an affected sensuousness and a coquettish grace. his prettiest picture was probably "my sister's not at home"--greece seen through a gauze transparency in the theatre. [illustration: _gaz des beaux-arts._ hamon. my sister's not at home. (_by permission of messrs. boussod, valadon & co., the owners of the copyright._)] _léon gérôme_ has also a taste for borrowing his subjects from the antique; being a pupil of delaroche, however, he has treated not mythological but historical episodes of antiquity. his "cock-fight," "phryne before the areopagus," "the augurs," "the gladiators," "alcibiades at the house of aspasia," and "the death of cæsar," together with pictures from egypt, are his most characteristic works: ingres and delaroche upon a smaller scale. he shares with the one his learnedly pedantic composition, and with the other his taste for anecdote. it may be remarked that in these same years emile augier was active in literature, but that augier, living in the same epoch of modern life, is far more powerful and animated in his classical pieces. gérôme's art is an intelligent, frigid, calculating art. in execution he does not rise above a petty study of form and an academic discipline. his drawing is accurate, and he has even succeeded in giving his figures a certain natural truth which is in advance of the generalisation of the classic ideal; yet from first to last he is wanting in every quality as a painter. his pictures of the east are hard landscapes, in which men or animals, harder still--unfortunate, eternally petrified beings--stand out abruptly. he draws and stipples, he works like an engraver in line, and goes over what he has painted again and again with a fine and feeble brush. he has an eye for form, but the effect of light upon the body escapes him. his pictures therefore give the impression of china, and his colour is hard and dead. what distinguishes him is a watchful observation, a chilling correctness, enclosing everything in characterless outlines. and this marble coldness remained with him later when, moving with the development of historical painting, he gradually took to working on more tragical subjects. even the most violent subjects are depicted with a dainty grace, and with a smile he serves up decapitated heads, prepared with a painting _à la maitre d'hôtel_, upon a gold-rimmed porcelain plate as smooth as glass. another painter of archæological _genre_ is _gustave boulanger_, who after extensive studies in pompeii gave a vogue to those antique interiors and scenes of pompeian street life now associated with the name of alma-tadema. direct descendants of delaroche and robert fleury were those who threw themselves enthusiastically into treating the physiognomy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and devoted the most ardent study to the weapons, costumes, and furniture of those epochs. they never wearied in representing françois i and henri iv in the most varied situations of life, nor in searching the biographies of great artists and scholars for episodes worth painting. especially popular subjects were those of celebrated painters at their meeting with contemporaries of high station: raphael and michael angelo coming across each other in the vatican, murillo as a boy, the young ribera found drawing in the street by a cardinal, bellini in his studio amid all manner of precious objects, charles v and titian, michael angelo tending his servant, and others of the same kind. the number of painters who were active in this province is as great as the number of anecdotes which are told of distinguished men. they spread themselves over various countries, like the swarms of insects hatched on a summer's day amid luxuriant vegetation, and thereby they render the task of selection more difficult to the historian. in france there worked _alexander hesse_, _camille roqueplan_, and _charles comte_; in belgium, _alexander markelbach_ and _florent willems_. markelbach, a pupil of wappers, in addition to episodes from english history, specially devoted himself to painting the shooting festivals of the old netherlandish city guards, in which enterprise the doelen pieces of frans hals did him excellent service in the matter of costume. florent willems, who, as a restorer, saturated himself with the manner of the old masters, was particularly popular on account of the smooth finish he gave to his modish ladies, cavaliers, soldiers, painters, soubrettes, and patrician matrons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. all the richly coloured satin, brocade, and velvet costumes of these personages, together with the tapestry, the curtains, and the furniture of their dwellings, he had the secret of reproducing in such a fashion that he was long esteemed a modern terborg. amongst the germans, _l. von hagn_ was the most delicate of these artists, and the graceful comedies of real life which he painted, transplanting them into the italian renaissance or the french _rococo_ period, have often great distinction of colouring. _gustav spangenberg_, after the lucky but isolated success he had made with "the track of death," devoted himself to the reformation period; and _carl becker_ to the venetian renaissance, from which he occasionally made an excursion into the german. these and many others could be discussed with more particularity if their pictures, smooth as coloured prints, and neatly finished in their own paltry way, were not so much below the standard of galleries. for them also the incident to be represented, with the personages concerned in it, was the principal matter, and not pure painting. these fetters upon true art were first shaken off by the hands of the following painters. [illustration: _cassell & co._ gÉrÔme. the cock-fight.] of the generation of the eminent flemish artists of _hendrik leys_ is the one whose fame has been most enduring. born in antwerp on th february , at first destined for the priesthood, and then in admitted to the studio of ferdinand de braekeleers, he had made his début in the beginning of the thirties with a pair of historical pictures. these indeed revealed little of the power which he evinced later, but they furnished some indication of what he was aiming at. here were none of the skirmishes--so popular at the time--in which blood flows as from the pipes of a fountain; the combatants fought with decorum and moderation, and less from conviction than to justify the helmets and cuirasses which had been fetched from the wardrobe. in both of them, on the other hand, the background--a mediæval town with tortuous alleys, lanterns, and picturesque taverns--was most lovingly treated. here was revealed a thoroughly german delight in minute detail. instead of subordinating the accessories as others did, with the object of throwing the principal personages into relief, leys represented an entire corner of the world at once, giving full distinctness to the smallest things, down to the implements of daily life, the grasses and flowers of the landscape, and the variegated corner-stones of the old house-fronts, whose picturesque porches and lattices bulge into the crooked lanes. his next picture, "the massacre of the löwen magistrates," was a still further departure from precedent, since--quite in callot's manner--it mingled with the principal drama a mass of grotesque episodes. the born _genre_ painter was announced by these traits; and not less striking was the form of the art, which was a thorough departure from the manner of the "painters of the grand style." the resuscitation of a national art, which had been the life-long aim of gustav wappers, who was twelve years his senior, was what leys also set up as the goal of his artistic endeavours. but their ways divided. wappers was principally inspired by rubens, while leys attached himself at first to the dutch painters. a visit made to amsterdam in had helped him to an understanding of rembrandt and pieter de hoogh. he followed them when, in , he painted his "wedding in the seventeenth century"--a rich display of gleaming hangings, golden plate, and red-plush furniture, amid which move handsomely dressed people, wedding guests, and violin players. the effort to approach pieter de hoogh or jan van der meer is apparent in the management of light; the treatment of drapery reminds one of mieris and metsu. another pair of anecdotic pictures from the seventeenth century allow one to follow the progress by which leys, under the influence of dutch models, gradually developed that power and mastery of colouring, that completeness of pictorial effect, and that soft treatment of subdued light which were justly admired in his first works. in particular, certain works founded on the legends of painters and monarchs--rubens, rembrandt, or frans floris visited in their studio by some personage of high station--made him the lion of the paris salon. in he stood at the summit of his fame; he was recognised as one of the first of painters, both in belgium and in other countries, and was everywhere loaded with honours. then he cast his slough and entered on his "second manner." [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ hendrik leys.] after he had followed rembrandt for more than a decade he turned from him to cast himself suddenly into the arms of the german masters of the sixteenth century, and, according to his own saying, "from that time forward to become an artist." during a tour through germany, in , he had become familiar with dürer and cranach; in dresden, wittenberg, and eisenach there hovered round him the great figures of the reformation period. half-effaced memories of his countrymen, the brothers van eyck and quentin matsys, became once more fresh, and drove him decisively forward on his new course. "the festival at otto venius's" and "erasmus in his study" were the first steps in this direction, and when soon afterwards he came forward with his costume pictures, "luther as a chorister in eisenach" and "luther in his household at wittenberg," every one was enraptured with the exquisite truthfulness of his portrayal of archaic life. at the world's exhibition of he had another magnificent success with three pictures executed in old german style. these were "the mass in honour of the antwerp burgomaster barthel de haze," "the walk before the gate," and "new year's day in flanders." his return from paris, where he was the only foreigner except cornelius who had received the great gold medal, took the form of a triumphal progress in antwerp, where he was greeted with illuminations, torchlight processions, and laurel wreaths made in gold. he was held to be the most eminent master since quentin matsys, the jan van eyck of the nineteenth century. in the brussels salon he appeared as a prince of art, before whom criticism made obeisance, and for whose pictures special shrines were erected. he was striking, not merely as an artist, but as a man: his stately figure was known to every one in antwerp, and was pointed out to strangers as one of the sights of the place. in , when he again received the medal in paris, the antwerp cercle artistique had a medal struck to commemorate an event of such importance in belgian art. his decease, on th august , threw the whole town into mourning; the windows in the town hall, where he had painted his last pictures, were hung with black, and the announcement of his death pasted up on great placards at the street corners. "_leys is ons_" ran the phrase in the speech made by the burgomaster over his open grave. to-day his statue stands on the boulevard leys, and his house is noted down in baedecker, like those of matsys and floris, rubens and jordaens. leys was thus a favourite child of fortune. enthusiastic applause showered him with fame and laurels. but it is natural that posterity should find a good deal to cancel in these titles of honour. [illustration: _seemann, leipzig._ leys. a family festival.] through leys the history of art was not enriched with anything new. his delicate art--severe in outline--which goes back directly to the peculiar manner of the fifteenth century, is in itself not without merit. but how much of it belongs to the nineteenth century? to what extent has the painter stood independent and on his own peculiar ground? he could draw a van eyck which might be taken for an original. he seems like an old master gone astray by chance amongst the moderns. his knowledge of the sixteenth century is marvellous. in fact, he was a visionary who saw the past as clearly as though he had lived in the midst of it. the men he paints are his contemporaries. he has drawn them from life in the year of grace , and they make no gesture nor grimace which might not be four hundred years old. yet that means that he was not an original genius, but merely one who gave an adroit reproduction of a formula already in existence. and much as he affected to be the contemporary of lucas cranach and quentin matsys, he had not their simplicity: where they painted life he painted the shadow of their realism. surrounded by old pictures, breviaries, and missals, he contented himself with copying the still forms of gothic miniatures instead of living nature. he went so deeply into the pictures of the antwerp town hall that he followed the old masters in their very errors of perspective; and though even the most childish confusion between foreground and background does not disturb one's pleasure in them, because they knew no better, it is an affectation in him, with his modern knowledge, intentionally to make the same mistakes. instead of being an imitator of nature, he is an imitator of their imitation--a _gourmet_ in pictorial archaism. [illustration: leys. the armourer.] yet it was exactly this uncompromising archaism which was of importance for his time, and amongst his contemporaries it gives him significance as a reformer. he is the only one amongst them who really represents the flemish race. wappers was merely a fleming from paris, who shook off the yoke of the greeks to bear that of the french. delaroche lived again in louis gallait, the pupil of david. their works had the sentiment of french tragedies, and an artificial neatness which completely departed from the truth of nature; the figures were combed and washed and brushed and polished, the gestures were histrionic, the colours toned in a stereotyped fashion to effect a pleasing _ensemble_. leys endeavoured to be true. in his pictures he had no wish to express ideas, but merely to bring back a fragment of "the good old time" in all its brightness of life and colour. and whilst as a colourist he was bent upon avoiding uniformity of tone and giving everything its natural character, as a draughtsman, too, he set up, in opposition to the more patrician fluency of others, the citizen-like angularity of an art uninfluenced by the cinquecento. as in cranach, dürer, and holbein, one finds in his pictures profiles that are vividly true; harsh and often unwieldy heads, wrinkled faces, and heavy, massive shoulders resting on stunted bodies. the human form, with fat stomach and great horny hands, seems almost deformed. everything which the struggle for existence has made of the image of god is expressed in the works of leys for the first time since david. even his "massacre of the löwen magistrates" showed sharp, naturalistic physiognomies in the midst of its confused composition, and his "barthel de haze," fifteen years after, fully exemplified this striving after characteristic and truthful expression. none of his contemporaries has shown himself more cool and indifferent to conventional and graceful profile and "beauty" in the drawing of heads. hatred of the academic model made leys bring art back to its sources. the hideousness, so often childish, in primitive pictures was dearer to him than all raphael. by this emphasising of the characteristic in attitude and the expression of the face he shows himself, although he painted historical subjects, the very antipode of the painter of the historical school, and, at the same time, one of those who effected the transition which led to the modern style. in setting up quaintness and far-fetched archaism against the mannerism of the idealists, leys accustomed the eye again to recognise that there was something truer than nobility of line and aristocratic pose; and, as he appealed to the old masters as accomplices, it was impossible for æsthetic criticism to be offended. [illustration: leys. mother and child.] in france the transition from the absolutely beautiful to the characteristic, from types to individuals, was brought about from various sides. on the one side romanticism had opposed to the antique style that of the flemish painters. on the other side, within classicism itself, there had been a change from the antique and the cinquecento to the early italian renaissance. a new world was opened to sculpture by the "florentine singer" of paul dubois. the more artists buried themselves in the study of those early pioneers of realism, donatello, verrochio, della robbia, and the other masters of the quatrocento, the more they found themselves fascinated by the sparkling animation of these creations, and sought to transfer it freely into their own work. the fifteenth century, with the energetic force of its figures, its close grasp of nature, and its pithy characterisation, which did not even shrink from ugliness, induced painters to go back more than they had formerly done to the sources of real life and to bring something of its directness into their creations. Élie delaunay began to look on nature with an eye less bent on making abstractions and regarding all things from the standpoint of style; he began to apprehend more clearly her individual peculiarities and to reproduce them more truly than had been done by the frigid school which cast everything into the mould of classicism. but _ernest_ _meissonier_ went a step further when by his _rococo_ pictures he set the dutch tradition on a level with the flemish and early italian as a formative influence. [illustration: _baschet._ meissonier. the man at the window.] a picture must either be very big or very small if it is to attract attention amid the bustle of exhibitions. this was probably the consideration which led meissonier to his peculiar class of subjects, and induced him to come forward with minute netherlandish cabinet-pieces at the time when the romanticists were issuing their huge manifestoes. he came of a family of petty tradespeople, and in his youth he is said to have taken over his father's business, a trade in colonial produce. every morning at eight o'clock punctual he was at the shop desk, and kept the books and copied business letters, and in this way accustomed himself to that painstaking and uniform carefulness which was characteristic of him to the end of his life. his teacher, cogniet, was without influence on him. even in his youth, when there went forth the battle-cry of "a guelf, a ghibelline! a delacroix, an ingres!" meissonier sat quietly in the louvre and copied jan van eyck's madonna from autun. and a netherlandish "little master" did he remain all his days. he first earned his bread as an illustrator, but after he began to exhibit all manner of pieces from the time of louis xiv and louis xv--the "bourgeois hollandais rendant visite au bourgmestre" of , the "chess players of holbein's time," , the "monk at the sickbed," , the "english doctor" and the "man reading," . the salon of was for him what that of had been for delacroix and ingres, and that of for delaroche: the cradle of his fame. "the chess party" ( cm. high and cm. broad) was the most celebrated picture of the exhibition. the great netherlandish "little masters" of the seventeenth century, till then scarcely known and little appreciated, were brought out for comparison. "has terborg or mieris or meissonier done the greater work?" was the question. people marvelled at the sharpness of this short-sighted eye which had a perception for the smallest details. "good heavens! look at the way that's been done," said the philistine, taking a magnifying glass; and felt himself a connoisseur if the curator at his elbow called out, "not too near!" even his first pictures had an accuracy and finish which defies description. it seemed as if a most admirable netherlandish painter in miniature scale had arisen. the execution of his design in colours was as slow, careful, and laborious as were his preparatory studies for costume: every touch was altered and altered again; many a picture which was almost ready was thrown aside, scraped out, and completely recast. not hot-headed enthusiasts, but "connoisseurs," has meissonier conquered in this fashion. those readers, philosophers, card-players, drinkers, smokers, flute-players and violin-players, engravers, painters and amateurs, horsemen and farm-servants, brawlers and bravoes, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which he painted year after year, were soon the most coveted pictures in every superior private collection. in he was able to celebrate his jubilee as an artist with an exhibition of one hundred and fifty pictures of the kind. and as they would have gone dirt cheap if they had been bought for their weight in gold, the public accustomed itself to buy them for their weight in thousand-franc notes. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ meissonier. a man reading.] the present age no longer looks up to these exercises of patience with the same vast admiration, but it should not therefore be forgotten what meissonier was for his time. to begin with, though painted at a time when painting was regarded as an auxiliary, and an invaluable one, to history, his pictures tell no story. these personages of meissonier's take part in no comedy; they occupy themselves, some in smoking, some in drinking, others in playing cards, and others again in doing nothing whatever. whether they made their entry as musketeer or philosophers, as lackeys or gallants, as scholars or _bonvivants_, they did not pose and had no ambition to seem men of wit and spirit, they plunged into no adventurous deeds and related no anecdotes: they were content to be well painted. and so amongst all the french painters of the historical picture of manners meissonier was the one who had the secret of giving his works an entirely peculiar _cachet_ of striking and realistic truth to nature. his figures, marvellously painted, and at the same time animated and natural in expression, wear the costume of our ancestors with the utmost self-possession, and fit into their modish _rococo_ surroundings as if they had been poured into a mould. meissonier reached the truth of nature in the total effect of his pictures by first in reality arranging his interiors, and the still-life they contained, as a congruous whole. the rooms, window niches, and firesides which he reproduced in his pictures were in his own house and his studios, with every detail ready to hand. he bought bronzes, trinkets, and ornaments, genuine productions of the _rococo_ period, by the hundred thousand, and kept them by him. his models were obliged, for weeks and often for months, actually to wear the velvet and silken costumes in which he made use of them; then he painted them with the greatest fidelity to nature, and without troubling himself about anecdotic incident. what he rendered was not a story invented and put together piecemeal, but a wholesome piece of reality, pictorially conceived. and if this was primarily composed of costumes and furniture belonging to the eighteenth century, the transition to the natural treatment of modern life was at the same time made possible, and was accomplished by meissonier himself, at a later period, in his battle pieces. [illustration: _gaz. des beaux-arts._ meissonier. reading the manuscript.] but he had only painted men: the physiognomy of the feminine sphinx remained for him an eternal riddle. a wide field was here offered to his followers. fauvelet, chavet, and brillouin stepped into meissonier's shoes, and gave his _rococo_ fine gentlemen their better halves. the first two made simple imitations. brillouin devoted himself to the comic _genre_: he arranged his pictures prettily, was a good observer, and painted tolerably well. the last of these meissonierists is vibert, chiefly known in the present day by his cardinals and other scarlet dignitaries, whom he represents in water-colours and oils with a certain touch of malice. he paints them gouty, gluttonising, or tipsy, in one or more cases in every picture--which does not contribute to make his works interesting. but originally he had a sympathetic superior talent, and will always claim a modest place in the group of the modern "little masters." his "gulliver bound," and also the spanish and turkish scenes which occupied him after a tour in the east, are extremely pleasing and delicately painted costume pieces, gleaming in sunlight; and in their sparkling, capricious workmanship they sometimes almost verge on fortuny. on the german side of the rhine _adolf menzel_ was the great pioneer of truth. the history of german art must do him honour as one who first had the genius and courage to break away from conventional forms of phrasing, and bring the truth of nature into art: at first, as in the case of meissonier, it was nature in masquerade; but it was nature seen and rendered with all the sincerity of a man to whom the art of pose was wanting from the very first. [illustration: _cassell & co._ meissonier. polcinello.] [illustration: _l'art._ meissonier. a reading at diderot's. (_by permission of baron edmond de rothschild, owner of the picture, and of m. georges petit, owner of the copyright._)] even in the thirties, at a time when "the sorrowing royal pair" and the "leonora" by lessing, "the soldier and his child," "the sick councillor," and "the sons of edward" by hildebrandt, and "the lament of the jews" by bendemann, together with the works of cornelius, met with the enthusiastic applause of the million, menzel looked into the world with a sharp glance, undisturbed by idealism; and what enabled him to do this was his unwavering and thoroughly prussian healthiness, which knew no touch of sentimentalism--a certain coldness and hardness, that sensible, reflective north german trait, which often expresses itself in these days (when german art has become subtle and superior) by a crude naturalism in the berlin painting. in the beginning of the century, however, it set the berlin painting, as art of the healthy human understanding, in salutary contrast to the sickliness of munich and düsseldorf. even eighty years ago the people of berlin were too acute and practical to be romanticists. the artists whom menzel found active and honoured at his arrival were schadow and rauch, and beside them, as representatives of the _grande peinture_, begas and wach. but even these, who were most under the influence of the sentimental tendency, were justly recognised by the thorough-going romanticists on the rhine as never having given an unqualified homage to their flag. a clear, realistic method was dominant in the art of berlin. and in this respect it was as much a corrective--and one by no means to be undervalued--against the inflated sentiment of munich as against the weak and sickly sentimentalism of düsseldorf, with its knights and monks and noble maidens. even cornelius, who had been called to berlin by frederick william iv--that king of the romanticists on the throne of the eminently unromantic hohenzollerns--found himself helpless against the ruling taste. and here only, in the stronghold of sharply accentuated common sense, where the old prussian sobriety set bounds to the twilight kingdom of romanticism, could adolf menzel attain to greatness. his berlinism kept him from lingering in empty space. to the taste of to-day, formed from fontainebleau, he will seem too much a creature of the understanding and too little a creature of feeling. boecklin hit him off admirably when, on being asked what he thought of menzel, he answered: "he is a great scholar." a comparison between him and mommsen especially suggests itself--a great scholar, a mordant satirist, and a brilliant journalist. but this sober scepticism, this cool spirit of investigation, this "heartlessness" observing all things with the eye of a judge in a court of judicial inquiry, were what cleared the ground for modern art. no one has done more than menzel for those rulers in the kingdom of dreams who from pure dreaming have never been able to learn anything. he has helped to set them steadily on their feet, and to accustom their sight, vitiated by idealism, once more to truth and nature. [illustration: _l'art._ meissonier. a halt.] [illustration: _mansell._ meissonier. a cavalier.] menzel was almost the only one in germany who could draw and paint in the time before the french influence had made itself felt. the struggle for existence had forced him to learn. in the year of bismarck's birth there was born in breslau the man destined to glorify, first the greatness of the old kingdom of the fredericks, and then that of new imperial prussia. cast out at an early age on the inhospitable wilderness of life, he came to berlin, poor and lonely, and not so much for the sake of art as for gain. there he sat in his cheerless attic, without a servant; and wrapped up in his plaid, with a coffee-pot on one side and a pencil on the other, he looked out over the roofs of the vast town, the most brilliant epoch of which he was predestined to depict and to conquer by his art. since it brought in profit sooner than anything else, he had made himself familiar with the technique of reproduction; and having devoted himself in particular to the newly discovered art of lithography, he turned out _ménus_, new year cards, vignettes for occasional poems, etc., and in things of this sort displayed a genuine affinity of spirit with chodowiecki and gottfried schadow. from his twelfth year onwards he had not only assured his own existence, but even supported his family by such work; and in the hours he spent over it he laid the groundwork for becoming the master of masters amongst the moderns. menzel is not merely a man who owed to himself everything which he afterwards became, who learnt to draw by his own unassisted endeavours, who mastered oil-painting without a teacher, and went further in it than any one of his generation--a man who found out entirely by himself new methods and combinations in water-colours and gouache; but if it is asked who was the greatest german illustrator, the man who did most in germany to advance the art of woodcut engraving, the one german historical painter of the century who was entirely original, who really knew a bygone period so exactly that he could venture on painting it, the name of menzel is invariably uttered. [illustration: _baschet._ adolf menzel, .] even in the twelve simple lithographs which appeared in , "memorable events from prussian history in the brandenburg era," the "scholar" menzel stands ready as the actual historian of the prussian kingdom. in an age which took its pleasure in a vaporous, sentimental enthusiasm for the mediæval splendour of the empire, he was the one who as a youth of twenty pointed to the corner-stones of prussian history in the brandenburg times; he was the only man of his age who refused to blow the horn of the mawkish romanticists, and still less that of the impassioned historical painters who came after them. for his were no theatrically tricked out scenes of tragedy, no touching situations; they had nothing poetical; and just as little were they tedious pictures of ceremonies or spectacular pieces. striking characterisation and sparkling vividness were united here to the most painstaking study of nature and history, carried down to the peculiarities of costume and weapons. history was not arranged in accordance with academic formulæ, but delineated as if from life with absorbing truthfulness. everything was expressed simply and sincerely, without exciting passages, and without conventional sentiment pumped out of models. every epoch had its historical physiognomy, and costume was reduced to its proper subordinate place. franz kugler was the first who understood this sincere and pithy art. the life of napoleon had appeared, at that time, in paris, with illustrations by horace vernet, and it had a considerable sale in germany also. this gave a berlin publisher the idea of a similar german work, and kugler commissioned menzel to illustrate his biography of frederick the great. it is almost impossible to pay sufficient honour to the influence which this book on frederick has had on german art. it made an epoch in the history of wood engraving. the technique of this craft had been completely forgotten in germany ever since the beginning of the century, or used only for the production of rough trade-marks for tobacco; menzel had to invent it afresh and teach an engraving school of his own before the four hundred masterly plates of the book were made possible. but it became more revolutionary still for the æsthetic ideas of the time. menzel had not set himself to produce a sequence of pictures, displaying events and heroes in the most ideal situations possible, but made it his business to sift the entire life of frederick the great to its minutest particulars. and here began that philological study of records which menzel has carried on with the strenuous labour of an archivist down to the present day. old fritz had been caught by chodowiecki in the way in which he has since lived in the popular imagination: as the old man on horseback, with his bent shoulders and his crutch-stick, holding a review, and as the philosopher, the statesman, the warrior and hero in the most manifold situations. menzel, in whom the spirit of chodowiecki lived again, only needed to begin where the latter left off. stepping on the antiquarian material of chodowiecki, he worked his way into the great period on which frederick and voltaire have set the stamp of their spirit, as mommsen worked his way into roman history. he read through whole libraries; he copied all attainable portraits. with scientific pedantry he did not forget to study the buttons and the cut of the trousers in the uniforms, and did not rest until he knew the old grenadiers as a corporal knows his men. using these labours as preparation, he proceeded to call up old fritz and his time with the objectivity of an historian, just as they were, and not as they had better have been. sureness of treatment even in the finest details, accurate mastery of the surroundings, and everything which had made meissonier's appearance so important for france, was attained at one stroke for germany. but the very simplicity of what was offered--both in style and technique--prevented menzel from being at the beginning accepted in his own country as an "historical painter." he was blamed for disregarding "beauty," and it was said that a "higher" artistic perception was sealed from him. on the other hand, the book laid the foundation of menzel's position in france, and was, moreover, the work on which, for a long time, the appreciation of modern german art in foreign countries was based. [illustration: menzel. frederick the great and his tutor.] [illustration: menzel. the round table at sans-souci.] thenceforth menzel had a kind of monopoly in this subject, and when in frederick william iv had the works of the great king published in an _édition de luxe_, menzel, amongst others, was entrusted with the illustration. every one of the thirty volumes contains portraits of frederick's contemporaries which were engraved by mandel and others after original pictures of the period. menzel had an apparently subordinate task. he was commissioned to make two hundred drawings for wood engraving; these, however, do not appear on separate pages, but were destined to be incorporated in the text as tail-pieces, vignettes, and the like. this was the great work which occupied him during the forties; and in these headings and tail-pieces to the works of frederick the great he showed, for the first time, that he was not merely a learned investigator of sources, but was full of brilliant _aperçus_. one has to read frederick the great before one can do full justice to the acuteness and ready resource, the subtlety and pungency of the artist's pencil. all æsthetic categories of realistic and idealistic art are scattered like dust before these creations, in which the most fantastic ideas are embodied with the whole force of the realistic power of our days. when he had done honour to the military comrades of the great ruler in his work of wood engraving, "heroes of war and peace in the time of king frederick," and thus made the epoch his own through a decade of busy labour, menzel, draughtsman though he was, turned round and became the painter of frederick the great. in the history of art there have never been two names more intimately connected with each other. menzel was a strenuous worker, who never knew the passion for woman, either because he had no time for it, or because he despised women after being despised by them as a poor, hard-featured student of art; a man whose great bald head appeared at berlin subscription-balls amid groups of brilliant cavaliers and queens of beauty, fashion, and grace, surrounded by the rustle of their silks and in the whirlpool of a dancing throng, gleaming with colour and sparkling with gold and jewels; and appeared there simply because this world interested him as something to be painted. he was a recluse who went into society solely to make observations for his art, and when there was chary of speech and much feared. he was always a busy experimentalist, so that his two hands gradually became equally dexterous; at the age of eighty he could still sketch with firm and accurate strokes while travelling in a railway carriage. though he had hitherto devoted himself to drawing, he had also by his own independent study made himself familiar with the technique of oils; and he now became such a master of colour as few were at that time. in the middle of the century were painted those two masterpieces which now hang in the berlin national gallery, "the round table at sans-souci" and "the concert of frederick the great." these are historical pictures, the authority and importance of which cannot be shaken by even the most modern of critics. if what is called the spirit of an age has ever been embodied in pictures, it is embodied here, where the master-minds of the eighteenth century are assembled at their genial round table. the scene is the oval dining-room of the castle. the meal is over, and there reigns a genial after-dinner mood, champagne sparkles in the glasses and a smart rivalry of wit is in progress. afternoon has crept on, and a cold, subdued daylight floods the room, in which every fragment of the architecture, from the inlaid floor to the gilded capitals of the pillars and the stucco of the arched ceiling, every piece of furniture and every chandelier, bears the wayward grace of the high-_rococo_ period; all is comprehended with the most intimate knowledge. in the second picture a fine candlelight is glimmering over the scene. frederick is just beginning to play the flute, and the musicians of the string quartet pause, to strike in again after the solo. the court is grouped to the left: the ladies in gilded easy-chairs, and their cavaliers behind them. the tapers of the chandelier and the sconces branching from the wall shed over everything their prismatic, broken light reflected by the mirrors, and fill the fantastic, capricious, graceful, comfortable apartment, here with streaming brightness, there with a finely modulated twilight. only menzel could have conjured up in so convincing a manner the brilliancy of this court festival of the past. [illustration: _hanfstängl._ menzel. frederick the great on a journey.] here is that exactness which an historical picture must have if it makes any claim to intrinsic worth. whilst the ordinary historical painters were content to transmute dressed-up models into types of the universally human, and to put historical labels on their frames, menzel succeeded in really penetrating a bygone age in an artistic spirit, and in making it live again for the present generation. he did not burrow to discover another dim historical personage every year, but confined himself to one hero--to the figure of the prussian hero-king, familiar to every child, and still living in the popular imagination; and he learnt to master the time of this favourite hero as if he had been old fritz himself. menzel had never heard him blowing on his flute, and never sat at table with him in sans-souci, but the painting of these scenes comes out true and life-like in the artist's work, because the past history of his country had become as vivid to him as his own age. his "battle of hochkirch" rises to tragical grandeur, precisely because everything that is outwardly impassioned is far from him. his "frederick the great on a journey," where the king is inspecting territories alter the war and ordering the rebuilding of demolished houses, his "frederick's meeting with joseph ii in niesse," and all the other pictures of the sequence, by their marvellous naturalness and intense vividness, and by their freedom from pompous phrasing, stand alone in an age dominated by empty sentiment. menzel, who never laid his sketch-book down from the time he was twelve years old, found a subject of pictorial interest in everything that he saw around him, until finally he acquired the power of moving with natural self-possession in a period that was not his own. by the roundabout way through the _rococo_ period he has taught us to understand ourselves. in his pictures an apparently paradoxical problem has been solved. an intense feeling for modern reality waked to new life the past, that same past which no one had approached with success by the way of idealism. [illustration: menzel. illustration to kugler's history of frederick the great.] and if we look over the whole development of modern art it strikes us as a remarkable fact that the most concrete spirits, the most thorough masters of technique, like meissonier and menzel, were precisely those who ventured to advance into the present. when they had crossed the province of the _rococo_ period, avoided by all scholastic art, they had arrived again at the epoch when mengs and david had interrupted the natural course of the history of art, one hundred years before. about the fateful movement towards the antique had been accomplished; in the middle ages had the upper hand; in the cinquecento was in the ascendant with cornelius and ingres; in the seventeenth century was awakened through delacroix and wappers; and in , after "the courses of the centuries were sphered"--to use the phrase of cornelius--meissonier and menzel painted things which had not appeared worth representing to the painters of , blinded, as they were, by the glory of the antique. not less striking is it that the nearer the historical subject came to the present the truer to nature did the picture become, and the more did it outwardly change in its features. it has shrivelled from the huge scale of david and cornelius to the miniature scale of meissonier and menzel, and to some extent it thus leaves its further development to be guessed. at no distant time the historical picture will be overthrown, and the picture from modern life, hitherto but shyly handled and on the smallest scale, will swell to life size. history itself, serious history, clings merely to the rock-bed of old costume. one generation had used it with an abstract purpose as a substratum for philosophical ideas; others had made scenical pieces with its aid; a third generation turned it over for piquant traits and anecdotes. the last and greatest generation had finally come to handle it quite familiarly and humanly and without affected dignity. their works protested against all idealism; and this expressed itself, in drawing, by their making use of the true instead of the "beautiful" line; in colour, by a fresher tint corresponding with nature rather than with the conventional ideal of beauty. [illustration: menzel. portrait of frederick the great.] [illustration: menzel. reifspiel.] nobility of line was paramount in gallait and piloty, movement with grand, kingly gestures, lofty dignity, aristocratic bearing, knightliness, and a conventional piling up of rich stuffs, alluring to the eye. leys, menzel, and meissonier were the first who sacrificed beauty to truth, or, more properly, who perceived that a beauty without truth is not really beautiful. they came gradually and by an indirect way to this knowledge as they studied german and netherlandish masters instead of the italians, and set up the angular, natural outlines of the germans against the grace of the latin masters, which had become banal through a lengthy course of imitation. and thus a return was made to the manner of our true ancestors, which had been forgotten during half a century. the place of the antinous heads of gallait was taken by physiognomies of vigorous characterisation; gesticulating heroes made way for peaceful, quiet persons, who did not consider themselves under an obligation to acquire artistic citizenship by a parade of attitude, but appeared in their picture as they were in reality. impassioned movement yielded quietly to arms hanging downwards and natural postures. even the traditional rules of concave and convex composition were broken so that the free play of life might more easily come to its rights. not less did all three show themselves true painters by preferring rightness of observation and truth and delicacy of reproduction to anecdote and richness of invention, and by feeling the need of painting figures in their real surroundings. instead of the conventional velvet and brocade stuffs, and the folios everywhere and nowhere in place, the settles and the brass caskets, there was a naturally painted fragment of reality, authentically reflecting the whole atmosphere of the period. the treatment of nature, hitherto idealistic and arbitrary, became synthetic and naturalistic. there was no more abstraction, but direct observation of the man and his _milieu_. and if, for the time being, this _milieu_ was a _rococo milieu_, artificially reconstructed so that it could be realistically transferred to the picture, menzel and meissonier, even on account of this realism, would have to be reckoned as outposts of the modern tendency, and as having very decided points of contact with it; and this, even if they had not themselves actually become the pioneers of modernity, forcing their way through against the literary and historical movement. it is owing to their works in the past that the preference of the public turned less and less to compositions of fine sentiment, even though grounded on more attentive observation, and that artists began to regard reality as the most important element, the point of departure for every picture. thus life itself came to be painted, and preparation was made for the coming demand of a new generation, who wished no more to see old heroes, but themselves, in the mirror of art. 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(studies of wilson, wilkie, landseer, and others.) london, . harry quilter: french and english art, "universal review," and . w. e. henley: a century of artists. a memorial of the glasgow international exhibition, . with illustrations. glasgow, . hermann helferich: ueber die kunst in england, "kunst für alle," iv, , pp. , . paul meyerheim: die englische malerie in den letzten jahren, "nord und süd," , p. . j. a. crowe, continental and english painting, "nineteenth century," april . t. de wyzewa: les grands peintres de l'espagne et de l'angleterre. histoire sommaire de la peinture japonaise. illustrations. paris, . t. h. shepherd: short history of the british school of painting. london, . robert de la sizeranne: la peinture anglaise contemporaine. paris, . g. temple: the art of painting in the queen's reign. london, . richard muther: die englische malerei im jahrhundert. berlin, . _see also_ h. thomas buckle: history of civilisation in england. h. taine: notes sur l'angleterre. paris, . h. taine: histoire de la littérature anglaise. periodicals: "art journal," "portfolio," and "magazine of art," _passim._ hogarth: w. hogarth: analyse de la beauté. vols. paris, . john nichols: biographical anecdotes of w. hogarth. london, . second edition, . g. c. lichtenberg: erklärung der hogarth'schen kupferstiche, mit verkleinerten copien derselben v. riepenhausen. göttingen, - . w. hogarth: complete works, including the analysis of beauty. london, . francis wey: w. hogarth. londres il y a cent ans. paris, . j. hannay: complete works of hogarth. plates. london, . g. a. sala: w. hogarth, painter, engraver, and philosopher. illustrations. london, . c. justi: w. hogarth, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," vii, . a. dobson: hogarth. london, low, new and enlarged edition, . (illustrated biographies of great artists.) th. gautier: guide de l'amateur, . hogarth's shrimp girl, "portfolio," , p. . f. rabbe in the compilation, "les artistes célèbres." _reproductions:_ the original and genuine works of w. hogarth. atlas fol. london, . graphic illustrations of hogarth: from pictures, drawings, etc. vols. royal vo. london, - . the works of w. hogarth: from the original plates, restored by james heath, r.a. atlas fol. london, . the works of w. hogarth: reproduced from the original engravings in permanent photographs. with an essay on hogarth by charles lamb. vols. royal vo. london, . j. ireland and j. nichols: hogarth's works, with life and anecdotal descriptions of his pictures. vols. london. no date. reynolds: j. northcote: the life of sir joshua reynolds. london. . joseph farrington: memoirs of sir joshua reynolds, with some observations on his talent and character. london, . edm. wheatley: a descriptive catalogue of all the prints, etc., from original portraits and pictures by sir joshua reynolds. london, . new edition, . th. reynolds: life of joshua reynolds, by his son. london, . joshua reynolds: discourses on the fine arts. edinburgh, . joshua reynolds: discourses, illustrated by explanatory notes and plates by j. burnet. london, . edm. malone: the literary works of sir joshua reynolds. seven editions. london, - . new editions by h. w. beechey. london, and . w. cotton: sir joshua reynolds and his works, edited by john burnet. london, . new edition, . j. timbs: anecdotal biography. (hogarth, reynolds, etc.) . ch. rob. leslie and tom taylor: life and times of sir joshua reynolds. london, . reynolds and the portrait painters of the last century: "blackwood's magazine," november . sidney colvin: joshua reynolds, "portfolio," , pp. - . j. c. collins: sir joshua reynolds as a portrait painter. an essay, with portraits. london, . edw. hamilton: a catalogue raisonné of the engraved works of joshua reynolds, - . london, . frederick wedmore: sir joshua reynolds, "temple bar," july . f. s. pulling; sir joshua reynolds. london, sampson low, . th. gautier; guide de l'amateur, . f. g. stephens: english children as painted by sir joshua reynolds. london, . th. duret: sir joshua reynolds et gainsborough aux expositions de la royal academy et de la grosvenor gallerie, "gazette des beaux arts," , i . (the same reprinted and enlarged. paris, .) various articles in the "athenæum," and . helen zimmern: sir joshua reynolds, in "westermanns monatsheften," may . william martin conway: the artistic development of reynolds and gainsborough. london, seeley & co., . ernest chesneau: joshua reynolds. with illustrations. paris, (in the compilation "les artistes célèbres"). lady blennerhasset: joshua reynolds' discourses, "allgemeine zeitung," . ed. leisching: zur aesthetik u. technik der bildenden künste. akademische reden von sir j. r., uebersetzt u. mit einleitung, anmerkungen, register u. textvergleichung versehen von dr. e. l. leipzig, . c. phillips: sir joshua reynolds. with illustrations from pictures by the master. london, . w. armstrong: sir joshua reynolds. with photogravures and lithographic facsimiles in colour, ; popular edition, with plates. london, . lord ronald gower: sir joshua reynolds. his life and art (with illustrations). british artists' series, . j. sime: reynolds. london, . f. benoit: reynolds. paris, . gainsborough: rob. pratt: sketch of the life and paintings of thomas gainsborough. london, . george william fulcher: life of thomas gainsborough. london, . sidney colvin: thomas gainsborough, "portfolio," , pp. , . j. comyns carr: thomas gainsborough, "the english illustrated magazine," december . george m. brock-arnold: gainsborough. london, sampson low, . walter armstrong in the compilation, "les artistes célèbres." mrs. bell: thomas gainsborough: a record of his life and works, with illustrations, etc. london, . w. armstrong: gainsborough and his place in english art. with photogravures and lithographic facsimiles in colour. london, . popular edition (with plates), . lord ronald gower: thomas gainsborough (with illustrations). british artists' series, . _reproductions:_ studies of landscapes by thomas gainsborough. engraved from the originals by l. francia. london, . studies of figures by gainsborough, in exact imitation of the originals, by richard lane. london, . selected works of thomas gainsborough. one hundred engravings in mezzotint. fol. london, . wilson: the works of richard wilson, r.a., landscape painter. a volume of engravings. fol. no date. t. wright: some account of the life of richard wilson. london, . chapter ii general: georg brandes: hauptströmungen der literatur des jahrhunderts, bd. i, aufl. leipzig, . wilhelm weigand: essays. (voltaire, rousseau, zur psychologie des jahrhunderts, etc.) münchen, . goya: théophile gautier: cabinet de l'amateur, . laurent matheron: biographie de fr. goya. paris, . carderera: "gazette des beaux arts," and . p. lefort: "gazette des beaux arts," . charles yriarte: goya, sa biographie, etc. paris, . d. f. zapater y gomez: goya, noticias biograficas. zaragoza, . paul lefort: "gazette des beaux arts," , ii ; , i ; ii . reprinted and enlarged under the title of francisco goya, Étude biographique et critique, suivie de l'essai d'un catalogue raisonné de son oeuvre gravé et lithographié. paris, . charles yriarte: goya, aquafortiste, "l'art," , ii , , , . p. g. hamerton: fr. goya, "portfolio." , - . muñoz y manzano: francesco de goya y lucientes, "revista contemporanea," september . lucien solvay: l'art espagnol. paris, . (bibliothèque internationale de l'art.) con. de la viñaza: goya, su tiempo, su vida, sus obras. madrid, . p. lafond: goya. paris, . w. rothenstein: goya (with illustrations). london, . valerian von loga: francisco de goya. berlin, . richard muther in der sammlung der kunst, , berlin. _more recent reproductions:_ los desastres de la guerra. colleccion de laminos. madrid, . los proverbios. colleccion de laminos. madrid, . los caprichos. gravures fac-similé de m. segui y riera. notice biographique et étude critique par ant. de nait. barcelone, . french art in the eighteenth century: edmond et jules de goncourt: l'art du xviii siècle. paris, . rd edition, paris, . edmond et jules de goncourt: la femme au xviii siècle. paris, . charles blanc: les peintres des fêtes galantes. (watteau, lancret, pater, boucher.) paris, . arsène houssaye: histoire de l'art français du xviii siècle. portraits. paris, . e. b. de la chavignerie: les artistes français du xviii siècle oubliés ou dédaignés. paris, . a. v. wurzbach: die französischen maler des jahrh. stuttgart, . auguste nicaise: l'école française au xviii siècle. chalons-sur-marne, . paul seidel: friedrich d. gr. u. die französische kunst seiner zeit. berlin, . watteau: figures de différents caractères de paysage et d'études dessinées d'après nature par a. watteau. vols., pl. paris. no date. d'argenville: abrégé de la vie des plus fameux peintres. paris, . mariette: abecedario. published in the archives of french art by chennevières. , etc. caylus: la vie d'antoine watteau. read on rd february before the paris academy. cited by goncourt, l'art du xviii siècle, . julienne in the preface to his book of plates, . cellier: antoine watteau, son enfance, ses contemporains. valenciennes, . edmond de goncourt: a. watteau. paris, . by the same author, catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé d'a. watteau. paris, . theodor volbehr: antoine watteau, ein beitrag zur kunstgeschichte des jahrh. münchen, . emil hannover: a. watteau. kopenhagen, . deutsch von alice hannover. berlin, . g. dargenty in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . paul mantz: "gazette des beaux arts," , i , , ; ii , , . reprinted . boucher: p. mantz: françois boucher, lemoyne et natoire (with engravings from their works). paris, . andré michel in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . lancret: g. dargenty in "les artistes célèbres." pater: g. dargenty in "les artistes célèbres." fragonard: baron roger portalis: honoré fragonard, sa vie et ses oeuvres. paris, . felix naquet in "les artistes célèbres." . c. mauclair: fragonard, biographie critique illustrée de vingt-quatre reproductions hors texte (les grands artistes, etc.), . baudouin: ch. normand in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . greuze: edmond et jules de goncourt: l'art du xviii siècle. charles blanc: histoire de peintres des toutes les écoles, ii. jules renouvier: histoire de l'art pendant la révolution, p. . charles normand in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . quentin la tour: clement de ris: l'oeuvre de maurice quentin de latour, "gazette des beaux arts," , ii . champfleury in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . h. lapauze. with plates. paris, . la tour et son oeuvre au musée de saint-quentin, . liotard: f. guye: jean Étienne liotard, - . zofingen, . chardin: edmond et jules de goncourt: l'art du xviii siècle. g. dargenty: "l'art," , ii . h. de chennevières: chardin au musée du louvre, "gazette des beaux arts," , i . charles normand in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . g. schéfer: chardin ... biographie critique illustrée de vingt-quatre reproductions hors texte (les grands artistes, etc.), . cornelis troost: a ver huell: cornelis troost en zÿn werken. arnhem, . changes of taste in germany: hermann hettner: literaturgeschichte des jahrhunderts, bd. iii. braunschweig, . chodowiecki: w. engelmann: daniel chodowieckis sämmtliche kupferstiche. leipzig, . alfred woltmann: hogarth und chodowiecki. from vier jahrhunderte niederländisch-deutscher kunstgeschichte. berlin, . ferdinand meyer: daniel chodowiecki der peintre-graveur. berlin, . w. von oettingen. berlin, . l kämmerer: bd. der künstlermonographien von knackfuss. bielefeld, . see selection from the artist's finest engravings, in photography, by a. frisch. berlin, . d. chodowiecki: von berlin nach danzig, eine künstlerfahrt im jahre . facsimiledrucke nach ch.'s zeichnungen. berlin, . tischbein: aus meinem leben. an autobiography, published by g. g. w. schiller. leipzig, . fr. v. alten: ans tischbeins leben und briefwechsel. leipzig, . edmond michel: Étude biographique sur les tischbein. lyon, . pesne: paul seidel: "gazette des beaux arts," . paul seidel: die berliner kunst unter friedrich wilhelm i. "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , p. . anton graft: r. muther: anton graff, ein beitrag zur kunstgeschichte des jahrhunderts. leipzig, . julius vogel: a. g., mit tafeln. leipzig, . joseph vernet: amedée durande: joseph, carl, et horace vernet, correspondence et biographie. paris, . l. lagrange: j. vernet et la peinture au xviii siècle. paris, . a. genevay: "l'art," , iii , ; iv . albert maire: les vernet in "les artistes célèbres." hubert robert: c. gabillot in "les artistes célèbres." canaletto: rudolph meyer: die beiden canaletti. dresden, . francesco guardi: paul leroi: "l'art," , i . gessner: heinrich wölfflin: salomon gessner. frauenfeld. . oudry und desportes: charles normand in "les artistes célèbres." riedinger: georg aug. wilh. thienemann: leben und wirken j. el. riedingers. leipzig, . chapter iii german art in general: raczynski: geschichte der neueren deutschen kunst, übersetzt von k. hagen. bde. text, bd. tafeln. berlin, . anton hallmann: kunstbestrebungen der gegenwart. berlin, . théophile gautier: les beaux arts en europe, . paris, . a. hagen: die deutsche kunst in unserm jahrhundert. berlin, . e. förster: geschichte der neueren deutschen kunst. leipzig, . anton springer: die bildende kunst des jahrhunderts. leipzig, . j. gérard: considérations sur l'art allemand, ses principes et tendances à propos de l'exposition de munich. bruxelles, . hermann riegel: geschichte des wiederauflebens der deutschen kunst seit carstens. hannover, . friedr. pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts, studien und erinnerungen. nördlingen, beck, - . j. beavington-atkinson: the schools of modern art in germany. with numerous illustrations. london, seeley, . a. f. graf v. schack: meine gemäldesammlung. stuttgart, cotta, . neue ausgabe als einleitung zu den albertschen heliogravuren der galerie schack. münchen, . kunst und künstler des jahrhunderts, unter mitwirkung von fachgenossen, herausgegeben von r. dohme. leipzig, seemann, ff. d. duncker, moderne meister. charakteristiken aus kunst und leben. berlin, . franz reber: geschichte der neueren deutschen kunst, mit excursen über die parallele kunstentwicklung der übrigen länder. bde. aufl. leipzig, . anton springer: die wege und ziele der gegenwärtigen kunst, in seinen bildern aus der neueren kunstgeschichte. aufl. bonn, . adolf rosenberg: die münchener malerschule seit . leipzig, . adolf rosenberg: geschichte der modernen malerei. bd. und , deutschland. leipzig, ff. hermann becker: deutsche maler von carstens bis auf die neuere zeit. leipzig, . l. pfau in "kunst und kritik," bd. . stuttgart, , pp. - . friedrich pecht: geschichte der münchener kunst. münchen, . hubert janitscheks, final chapter in his geschichte der deutschen malerei. berlin, grote, . m. de la mazelière: la peinture allemande au xix siècle. paris, . cornelius gurlitt: die deutsche kunst des jahrhunderts. berlin, . max schmid: kunstgeschichte des jahrhunderts. leipzig, . friedrich haack: die kunst des jahrhunderts. stuttgart, . periodicals chiefly: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," leipzig, . "die kunst für alle," münchen, . "die kunst unserer zeit" (specially the work of h. e. v. berlepsch and corn. gurlitt), münchen, . "der kunstwart," dresden, . "die gegenwart" (articles by floerke, lichtwark, gurlitt, etc.), berlin, ff. "die nation" (articles by helferich, elias, etc.), berlin, ff. "die freie bühne" (articles by helferich, b. becker, etc.), berlin, ff. "die preussischen jahrbücher" (articles by carl neumann, etc.). all cited in particular in the appropriate place. the classical reaction: hermann helferich: classicität, "freie bühne," . carl neumann: christian rauch, betrachtungen über ursprung und anfänge der modernen deutschen plastik, "preuss. jahrbücher," bd. , . heinr. v. stein: die entstehung der neueren aesthetik. stuttgart, . the theories of gérard de lairesse: carl lemcke in his study of adriean van der werff in "kunst and künstler deutschlands und der niederlande," vol. ii. leipzig, . winckelmann: carl justi: winckelmann, sein leben, seine werke, seine zeitgenossen. bd. , leipzig, ; bd. , leipzig, . the influence of archæological studies upon art: k. bernh. stark: handbuch der archaeologie, bd. . leipzig, . lessing: danzel-guhrauer: lessings leben und werke. leipzig. no date. heinr. fischer: lessings laokoon und die gesetze der bildenden kunst. berlin, . goethe's relations to the plastic arts: h. hettner: goethes stellung zur bildenden kunst seiner zeit, "westermanns monatshefte," , . h. hettner in his "deutsche literaturgeschichte," ii . r. v. eithelberger: goethe als kunstschriftsteller, in seinen gesammelten kunsthistorischen schriften. wien, . bd. , pp. - . gustav ebe: goethes beziehungen zur bildenden kunst, "gegenwart," xxvii. heft und . c. urlichs: ueber goethes verhältniss zur alten kunst. "goethe-jahrbuch," iii. hermann uhde: goethe, j. g. quandt und der sächsische kunstverein. stuttgart, cotta, . a. heusler: goethe und die italienische kunst. basel, reich, . e. dobbert: goethe und die berliner kunst, "nationalzeitung," , und febr. bode: goethes asthetik. berlin, . julius vogel: aus goethes römischen tagen. leipzig, . mengs: bianconi: elogio storico del cavaliere anton r. mengs. pavia, . mengs: gedanken über die schönheit und über den geschmack in der malerei. zürich, . seine sämmtlichen hinterlassenen schriften. bonn, - . franz reber in "kunst und künstler deutschl. u. der niederlande," . friedrich pecht: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xiv, , pp. u. . woermann: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," . angelica kauffmann: giov. gher. de rossi: vita di angelica kauffmann. firenze, . german by a. weinhart, bregenz, . j. e. wessely in "kunst und künstler deutschlands und der niederlande," . a. w. grube: angelika kauffmann. bregenz, . wilh. schram: die malerin angelika kauffmann. brünn, . fr. a. gérard: angelica kauffmann. london, . _see also_ f. guhl: die frauen in der kunstgeschichte. berlin, . oeser: alphons dürr: a. f. oeser, ein beitrag zur kunstgeschichte des jahrh. leipzig, dürr, . carstens: karl ludwig fernow: leben des künstlers j. a. carstens. leipzig, . neuherausgegeben von hermann riegel. hannover, . hermann grimm: ausgewählte essays zur einführung in das studium der neueren kunst. aufl. berlin, , p. . f. v. alten: a. f. carstens. schleswig, . h. grimm: ueber künstler und kunstwerke, i. berlin, , pp. - . schöne: beiträge zur lebensgeschichte des malers carstens. leipzig, . fr. eggers: vier vorträge aus der neueren kunstgeschichte. berlin, , p. . carstens' werke, in kupferstichen von w. müller, herausgegeben von hermann riegel. leipzig, bd. , ; bd. , ; bd. , . jul. lange: nutids kunst. kopenhagen, , pp. - . fr. pauli: a. carstens. berlin, . hermann riegel: kunstgeschichtliche vorträge und aufsätze, p. , "carstensiana." braunschweig, . alfr. woltmann, from vier jahrhunderte niederländisch-deutscher kunstgeschichte. berlin, , p. . fr. pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts. iii reihe. nördlingen, , p. ff. august sach: asmus jacob carstens' jugend und lehrjahre nach urkundliche quellen. halle, . d. schnittgen: a. j. carstens, "christliches kunstblatt," , . hermann lücke in "kunst und künstler des jahrh." leipzig, . the painter müller: c. seuffert: maler müller. berlin, . sauer in "deutscher nationallitteratur," bd. . müller's article against carstens is in schiller's horen, , iii , iv . luise seidler: hermann uhde: erinnerungen aus dem leben der malerin luise seidler, aus handschriftliche nachlass zusammengestellt und bearbeitet, auflage. berlin, hertz, . wächter: dav. friedr. strauss: kleine schriften. leipzig, , pp. - . a. haakh: beiträge aus württemberg zur neueren deutschen kunstgeschichte. stuttgart, , pp. vii ff., ff., ff. schick: dav. friedr. strauss: kleine schriften, pp. - . fr. eggers: "deutsches kunstblatt," , pp. - . a. haakh: beiträge aus württernberg zur neueren deutschen kunstgeschichte, pp. xiv ff., - , - . h. kindt: zu gottlieb schicks jährigem geburtstag. gegenwart, , . winterlin: württenbergische künstler. stuttgart, . genelli: h. riegel: deutsche kunststudien. hannover, , pp. ff. m. jordan: bonaventura genelli, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," v pp. - . h. riegel: kunstgeschichtliche vorträge und aufsätze. braunschweig, , pp. - . l. v. donop: briefe von bonaventura genelli und karl rahl, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xii pp. ii.; xiii pp. ff. letters from schwind to genelli, do. xi p. . fr. pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts, ii reihe. nördlingen, , pp. - . a. f. graf v. schack: meine gemäldesammlung. stuttgart, , pp. - . o. berggruen: die gallerie schack in münchen. wien, . also in "die graph. künste," iv, , . o. baisch: einzelheiten aus genellis leben und briefwechsel, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xviii pp. - . chapter iv french art in general: charles blanc: histoire des peintres français au xix siècle. paris, . gustave planché; portraits d'artistes. paris, . gustave planché: Études sur l'école française, - . paris, . a. de la forge: la peinture contemporaine en france. paris, . t silvestre: histoire des artistes vivants français et étrangers. paris, . théodore pelloquet: dictionnaire de poche des artistes contemporains. paris, . l. laurent-pichat: l'art et les artistes en france. paris, . moritz hartmann; bilder und büsten. frankfurt-am-main, . ch. lenormant: beaux arts et voyages. paris, . olivier merson: la peinture en france. paris, . e. chesneau: la peinture française au xix siècle. les chefs d'École, l. david gros, géricault, decamps, meissonier, ingres, h. flandrin, e. delacroix. paris, . new edition, paris, . charles blanc: histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles. paris, - . l. pfau: französische maler und bilder, in "freie studien." stuttgart, . enlarged in "kunst und kritik," bd. , pp. - . stuttgart, . charles clement: Études sur les beaux arts en france. paris, . second edition, . julius meyer: geschichte der modernen französischen malerei seit . leipzig, . julius meyer: die französische malerei seit , "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," ii pp. , , , . leipzig, . a. bonnin: Études sur l'art contemporain. les Écoles françaises et étrangères en . paris, . p. g. hamerton: contemporary french painters. london, . h. o'neil: modern art in england and france. london, . p. g. hamerton: painting in france. london, . w. b. scott: gems of french art, with an essay on the french school. plates. london, . m. chaumelin: l'art contemporain. la peinture à l'exposition universelle de . salon de , , . paris, . th. gautier: portraits contemporains. paris, . pierre petroz: l'art et la critique en france depuis . paris, . l. dussieux: les artistes français à l'étranger. paris, lecoffre fils et cie, . r. ménard: french artists of the present day. notices of some contemporary painters. engravings. london, . charles blanc: les artistes de mon temps. paris, . jules claretie: l'art et les artistes français contemporains, avec un avant-propos sur le salon de . paris, . deuxième série, paris, . philippe burty: maîtres et petits maîtres. paris, . marquet de vasselot: recherches sur l'art français. architecture, peinture, sculpture. paris, . lucien double: promenade à travers deux siècles et quatorze salons. paris, . g. berger: l'école française de peinture. paris, . victor champier: les beaux arts en france et à l'Étranger. paris, . e. bellier de la chavignerie et l. auvray; dictionnaire générale des artistes de l'École française. paris, . ernest chesneau: peintres et statuaires romantiques. paris, . maurice du seigneur: l'art et les artistes au salon de . paris, . marquet de vasselot: histoire du portrait en france. paris, . george lafenestre: l'art vivant, la peinture et la sculpture aux salons de à . paris, . e. leclerq: caractères de l'École française moderne de peinture. paris, . f. gosselin: histoire anecdotique des salons de peinture depuis . paris, dentu, . l. de pesquidoux: l'art au xix siècle. l'art dans les deux mondes, peinture et sculpture. vols. paris, . eugène montrasier. les artistes modernes: . les peintres de genre; . les peintres militaires et les peintres de nu. biogr., tables. vols. paris, . adolf rosenberg: geschichte der modernen kunst. abtheilung. die franz. kunst leipzig, . h. houssaye: l'art français depuis dix ans. paris, . henri de clenzion: l'art national en france. paris, - . f. henriet: peintres contemporains. paris, a. levy, . raf. sinset et jules d'auriac: histoire du portrait en france. paris, . v. fournal: les artistes contemporains français, peintres, sculpteurs. with illustrations. tours, mame et fils, . jean gigoux: causeries sur les artistes de mon temps. paris, . albert wolff: la capitale de l'art. second edition. paris, . victor d'halle: histoire de la peinture en france. paris, . paul marmottan: l'école française de peinture ( - ). paris, . j. comyns carr: art in provincial france. . henri jouin: maîtres contemporains. paris, . charles bigot: peintres français contemporains. paris, . c. h. stranahan: a history of french painting. new york, . la peinture française à l'exposition centennaire de . ouvrage publié sous la direction de antonin proust. paris, . les chefs d'oeuvres de l'art au xix siècle. vols. paris, ff. . l'école française de david à delacroix, par andré michel. . l'école française de delacroix à h. regnault, par alfred de lostalot. . la peinture française actuelle, par paul lefort. . les écoles étrangères aux xix siècle, par th. de wyzewa. . la sculpture et la gravure en france au xix siècle, par louis gonse. richard muther, ein jahrhundert französischer malerei. berlin, . a. julius meier-gräfe: der entwichlungsgeschichte der modernen kunst. (with illustrations and a volume of plates.) stuttgart, . periodicals specially to be noted: "gazette des beaux arts," paris, . "l'art," paris, . the art of the revolution period: jules renouvier: histoire de l'art pendant la revolution. paris, . edmond et jules de goncourt: histoire de la société française pendant la révolution. paris, . new edition, . edmond et jules de goncourt: histoire de la société française pendant le directoire. paris, . anton springer: die kunst während der französischen revolution, bilder aus der neueren kuntsgeschichte. bonn, . paul marmottan: l'école française de peinture - . paris, . carl v. lützow: die französische kunst vor jahren, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xxiv, , p. . madame vigée-lebrun: her autobiography: souvenirs de ma vie. paris, - . sophia beale: elisabeth louise vigée-lebrun, "portfolio," , . charles pillet in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . vien: h. cozik: vien, sa vie et ses oeuvres. paris. no date. elie roy: vien et son temps. paris. no date. david: p. a. coupin: essai sur j. l. david. paris, . e. j. delécluze: louis david. paris, . jules david: le peintre louis david ( - ), souvenirs et documents inédits. paris, havard, . c. a. regnet in "kunst und künstler spaniens, frankreichs, und englands." leipzig, . g. nieter: le peintre david, "revue générale," march . "l'art," , ii p. . c. brun: louis david und die französische revolution. zürich, . charles normand in "les artistes célèbres." l. rosenthal: david. paris, . chapter v the parallel movement in literature: georg brandes, haupströmungen der literatur des jahrhunderts. vol. ii, die deutsche romantische schule. leipzig, . georg haim: die romantische schule. berlin, . hermann hettner: die romantische schule in ihrem zusammenhang mit goethe und schiller. braunschweig, . on the nazarenes in general: veit valentin in "kunst und künstler des jahrh." leipzig, . alfred woltmann: cornelius und seine genossen in rom. aus vier jahrhunderte, etc. berlin, , pp. ff. fr. haack: die deutschen romantiker in der bildenden kunst des jahrhunderts. erlangen, . overbeck: a. v. zahn: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," vi, , pp. - . j. r. beavington-atkinson, overbeck (great artists). london, low, . margaret howitt: friedrich overbeck. sein leben u. schaffen, etc. . amongst minor works: j. n. sepp: friedrich overbeck, gedächtnissrede. augsburg, .--franz binder: zur erinnerung an friedrich overbeck. münchen, .--h. holland: zu friedrich overbeck's heimgang, .--g. fr. v. hertling: zur erinnerung an friedrich overbeck. köln, . führich: autobiography in the "libussa." prag, . new edition, vienna, sartori, . r. zimmermann: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," vii, , pp. , . f. pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrh., iii. nördlingen, , pp. - . lucas v. führich: "graphische künste," viii pp. - , - . also separate. c. v. lützow, from führichs nachlass, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xvii, , p. . die führich-ausstellung in frankfurt: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xx, beiblatt, . l. r. von kurz: t. von führich. graz, . veit: veit valentin: kunst, künstler, und kunstwerke; also in "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xv . martin spahn: philipp veit. (with illustrations.) bielefeld, . the frescoes in the casa bartholdy: l. v. donop: die wandgemälde der casa bartholdy in der nationalgalerie. berlin, . steinle: o. berggruen: die galerie schack, "graph. künste," iv. and . constantin v. wurzbach: ed. steinle, ein madonnenmaler unserer zeit. biographische studie. wien, . veit valentin: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xxiii and . l. christiani: plaudereien über kunstinteressen der gegenwart. berlin, . a. reichensperger: erinnerungen an steinle. frankfurt, . a. m. von steinle: e. von steinle und august reichensperger. köln, . _reproductions:_ ausgewählte werke e. v. steinles. frankfurt, . ed. steinles bilder zu parcival. frankfurt, . schnorr: m. jordan: aus julius schnorrs lehr-und wanderjahren, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , pp. ff. h. riegel, "kunstgeschichtliche vorträge und aufsätze." braunschweig, , pp. - . m. jordan: ausstellung von werken julius schnorrs in der berliner nationalgalerie, . veit valentin in "kunst und künstler des jahrhunderts." friedrich haack in "das jahrhundert in bildnissen." berlin. photographische gesellschaft, . briefe aus italien von julius schnorr v. carolsfeld, geschrieben in den jahren - . ein beitrag zur gesch. seines lebens und der kunstbestrebungen seiner zeit, herausgegeben von franz schnorr v. carolsfeld. gotha, . _compare_ "bibel in bildern." leipzig, - . zeichnungen von jul. schnorr v. carolsfeld, mit einleitung von jordan. leipzig, dürr, . chapter vi the art of munich under king ludwig i.: alfred woltmann, from "vier jahrhunderte niederländisch-deutscher kunstgeschichte." berlin, , pp. ff. hans reidelbach: könig ludwig i und seine kunstschöpfungen. münchen, . cornelius: herm. riegel: cornelius, der meister der deutschen malerei. hannover, . m. carrière: denkrede auf cornelius. leipzig, . a. teichlein: betrachtungen über riegels buch, "cornelius, der meister der deutschen malerei," "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," ii. , pp. ff., ff. alfred frhr. v. wolzogen: peter v. cornelius. berlin, . max lohde: gespräche mit cornelius, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," iii , , . . w. lübke: kunsthistorische studien. stuttgart, . ernst förster: peter cornelius, ein gedenkbuch aus seinem leben und wirken. vols. berlin, . herm. grimm: berlin und p. v. cornelius (die cartons von p. v. cornelius, cornelius und die ersten jahre nach ), in " essays." berlin, . v. kaiser: cornelius und kaulbach in ihren lieblingswerken. basel, . fr. pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrh., bd. . nördlingen, . a. woltmann, from "vier jahrhunderte niederländisch-deutscher kunst." berlin, , pp. - . fr. pecht: p. v. cornelius. "gartenlaube," , . m. carrière in "deutscher plutarch," bd. vii. leipzig, , pp. - . a. rosenberg: cornelius im lichte der gegenwart. grenzboten, , i. a. berggruen: die galerie schack, p. v. cornelius, "die graph. künste," , , . rossmann: briefe von peter cornelius. grenzboten, , . g. portig: die sixtinische madonna und die camposanto cartons von cornelius. leipzig, . v. valentin in "kunst und künstler des jahrh." leipzig, - . herm. riegel: peter cornelius, festschrift zu des grossen künstlers geburtstage. berlin, . carl v. lützow: zur erinnerung an p. v. cornelius, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , . der geburtstag von cornelius, "allegemeine zeitung," , b. . cornelius, ein maler von gottes gnaden. hamburg, . h. grimm: cornelius betreffend, "deutsche rundschau," march . l. v. urlichs: beiträge zur kunstgeschichte. leipzig, , p. . cornelius in münchen und rom. a. frantz in "kunst und literatur." berlin, , pp. - . kaulbach: guido görres: das narrenhaus von w. kaulbach. münchen. no date. max schasler: die wandgemälde wilhelm von kaulbachs im treppenhause des neuen museums zu berlin. berlin, . w. v. kaulbachs shakespeare-galerie, by m. carrière. berlin, . v. kaiser: kaulbachs bilderkreis der weltgeschichte. berlin, . ed. dobbert: die monumentale darstellung der reformation durch rietschel und kaulbach. "sammlung gemeinverständlicher wissenschaftlicher vorträge," no. . berlin, . a. teichlein: zur charakteristik w. v. kaulbachs, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xi, , pp. - . v. kaiser: macbeth und lady macbeth in shakespeare's dichtungen und in kunstwerken von cornelius und kaulbach. basel, schweighauser, . a. woltmann, from "vier jahrhunderte niederländisch-deutscher kunstgeschichte." berlin, , pp. - . fr. pecht: "deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts," ii. nördlin gen, , pp. - . kaulbachs wandgemälde im treppenhause des neuen museums zu berlin, in kupfer gestochen von g. eilers, h. merz, j. l. raab, a. schultheiss. mit erläuterndem text herausgegeben unter den auspicien des meisters. neue ausgabe. berlin, a. duncker, . hans müller: w. kaulbach. berlin, . chapter vii the düsseldorfers: w. schadow: gedanken über folgerichtige ausbildung des malers, "berliner kunstblatt," , pp. - . a. fahne: die düsseldorfer malerschule, - . düsseldorf, . h. püttmann: die düsseldorfer malerschule und ihre leistungen seit der errichtung des kunstvereins in jahre . leipzig, . fr. v. uechtritz: blicke in das düsseldorfer künst- und künstlerleben. düsseldorf, . wolfg. müller v. königswinter: düsseldorfer künstler ans den letzten jahren. leipzig, . w. v. schadow: der moderne vasari, erinnerungen aus dem künstlerleben. berlin, . r. wiegmann: die königliche kunstakademie zu düsseldorf, ihre geschichte, einrichtung und wirksamkeit und die düsseldorfer künstler. düsseldorf, . j. hübner: schadow und seine schule, festrede bei enthüllung des schadowdenkmals zu düsseldorf, . bonn, . m. blanckarts: düsseldorfer künstler, nekrologe aus den letzten zehn jahren. stuttgart, . k. woermann: zur geschichte der düsseldorfer kunstakademie. düsseldorf, . a. rosenberg: die düsseldorfer schule. grenzboten, , ff. mor. blanckarts: der künstlerverein malkasten in düsseldorf, "allgemeine kunstchronik," , . a. rosenberg: die düsseldorfer schule. leipzig, seemann, . schaarschmidt: geschichte der düsseldorfer kunst, . bendemann: die ausstellung der werke von e. bendemann in der königliche nationalgalerie v. nov. bis dez. . berlin, . l. bund: ed. bendemann, "illustrirte zeitung," , . hübner: m. blanckarts: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , . reumont, "archiv. storico italiano," xi . a. ehrhardt, "z. f. museologie," , , "allg. kunstchronik," , . mintrop: ferd. laufer: th. mintrop, der ackersknecht und maler, "allg. kunstchronik," , . chapter viii rethel: wolfgang müller v. königswinter: alfred rethel. blätter der erinnerung. leipzig, . friedr. theodor vischer: altes und neues. drittes heft. stuttgart, , pp. - . kaulen: der historienmaler a. rethel, "deutsches kunstblatt," , ii . veit valentin: a. rethel, eine charakteristik, "aesthet. schriften i." berlin, . max schmid: bd. der künstlermonographien von knackfuss. bielefeld, . schwind: l. v. führich: moriz v. schwind, eine lebensskizze. leipzig, . ed. ille: dem andenken m. schwinds. münchen, . a. w. müller: m. v. schwind. eisenach, . hermann dalton: "sechs vorträge." st. petersburg, . ludwig hevesi: m. schwind. "gegenwart," . h. holland: m. v. schwind. stuttgart, . a. v. zahn: zur charakteristik m. v. schwinds, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," vii , p. . f. pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrh. nördlingen, , i - . bauernfeld: moriz schwind zum gedächtniss, "nord und süd," iii, , p. . bernh. schädel: briefe von moriz schwind, "nord und süd," xiv, , p. ; xv, , p. . graf v. schack: meine gemäldesammlung. stuttgart, , pp. - . o. berggruen: die galerie schack. wien, . mit radirungen. alph. dürr: ein halbvergessenes werk von schwind (wandmalereien in hohenschwangau) in der festschrift zu ehren anton springers. leipzig, , pp. - . veit valentin: kunst, künstler, und kunstwerke. leipzig, . briefwechsel zwischen schwind u. ed. mörike, mitgeth. v. j. baechtold. leipzig, . h. w. riehl: studien und charakteristiken. stuttgart, . friedrich haack: bd. der künstlermonographien von knackfuss. bielefeld, . otto grantoff, in "muthers sammlung die kunst." berlin, . julius naue: worte u. wirken v. m. von schwind. (with a portrait and illustrations.) münchen, . _reproductions:_ aschenbrödel, bildercyclus von m. v. schwind. holzschnittausgabe nach den theaterschen stichen, mit text von h. lücke. . die sieben raben u. die schöne melusine, zuletzt unter dem titel "deutsche märchen" bei neff in stuttgart erschienen. operncyclus im foyer des k. k. opernhauses in wien. compositionen von moritz schwind. mit text von ed. hanslick. münchen, . almanach von radirungen mit erklärungen. text von feuchtersleben. zürich, . schwinds wandgemälde in hohenschwangau. compositionen nach den aquarellentwürfen gestochen von j. naue und k. walde. leipzig. schwind-album. münchen, . chapter ix gérard: charles lenormant: françois gérard, peintre d'histoire. essai de biographie et de critique. paris, . adam: l'oeuvre du baron gérard. paris, - . correspondance de françois gérard, peintre d'histoire. publiée par henri gérard, son neveu, et précédée d'une notice sur la vie de gérard par adolphe viollet le duc. paris, . charles ephrussi: françois gérard d'après les lettres publiées par m. le baron gérard, "gazette des beaux arts," , ii . , i , . prudhon (besides jul. meyer, renouvier, and rosenberg): voiart: notice historique sur la vie et les oeuvres de p. p. prudhon, peintre. paris, . quatremère de quincy: notice lue à l'institut, octobre . eug. delacroix: "revue des deux mondes," . charles clement (chief work): prudhon, sa vie, ses oeuvres, et sa correspondance, first in - , then in "gazette des beaux arts," , with illustrations. paris, didier & co., rd edition, . edm. et j. de goncourt: l'art au xviii siècle. paris, . new edition, , vol. ii, p. . edm. de goncourt: catalogue raisonné de l'oeuvre peint, dessiné et gravé de prudhon. paris, . ph. burty: l'oeuvre de p. p. prudhon, "l'art," , i p. . alfred sensier: le roman de prudhon, "revue internationale de l'art et de la curiosité," dec. . arséne houssaye: artiste, janvier-juin . article in "l'art," , i p. . charles gueullette: mlle. constance mayer et prudhon, "gazette des beaux arts," , p. . , p. . charles blanc: histoire des peintres, vol. iii. aug. schmarsow in "kunst und künstler der ersten hälfte des jahrhunderts," published by robert dohme, vol. ii. leipzig, seemann, . pierre gauthiez: prudhon in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . almost all the works of prudhon are photographed by braun of dornach. gros (besides charles blanc, jul. meyer, and rosenberg): jean baptiste delestre (pupil of gros): gros, sa vie et ses ouvrages. with illustrations. nd edition. paris, . j. tripier le franc: histoire de la vie et de la mort du baron gros, le grand peintre. paris, . eugène delacroix: "revue des deux mondes," . also in a separate reprint. ernest chesneau: les chefs d'école. rd edition, , pp. - . on gros' paintings in the pantheon: ph. de chennevières in the "gazette des beaux arts," xxiii pp. - . g. dargenty: les chefs-d'oeuvre de gros, "l'art," , ii p. , and , ii p. . richard graul in "kunst und künstler der ersten hälfte des jahrhunderts," vol. . leipzig, seemann, . g. dargenty: le baron gros. paris, , in "les artistes célèbres." the chief pictures of gros are photographed by braun of dornach. chapter x on the parallel movement in literature: georg brandes: die literatur des jahrhunderts in ihren hauptströmungen, auflage bd. . leipzig, . on the romantic movement in general: e. chesneau: peintres et statuaires romantiques (huet, boulanger, préault, delacroix, th. rousseau, millet, etc.). paris, charavay frères, . géricault: charles blanc: th. géricault, . charles clement: th. géricault, Étude biographique et critique, avec le catalogue raisonné. paris, . new edition, . delacroix: e. galichon: les peintures de m. e. delacroix à saint-sulpice, "gazette des beaux arts," xi, , p. . amédée cantaloube: eugène delacroix, l'homme et l'artiste. paris, . henri de cleurion: l'oeuvre de delacroix. paris, . piron: e. delacroix, sa vie et ses oeuvres. paris, . adolphe moreau: e. delacroix et son oeuvre. paris, . lettres de e. delacroix ( - ), recueillies et publiées par phil. burty. paris, quantin, . alfred robaut: peintures décoratives de e. delacroix. le salon du roi au palais legislatif. paris, a. levy, . alfred robaut: peintures décoratives de e. delacroix, "l'art," , . m. vachon: e. delacroix à l'école des beaux arts. paris, . ph. burty: eugène delacroix à alger, "l'art," , . ernest chesneau: eugène delacroix, "l'art," , . ernest chesneau: l'oeuvre complet de e. delacroix, commenté par e. chesneau. paris, . g. dargenty: eug. delacroix par lui-même. paris, . henri guet: l'oeuvre de e. delacroix, "le salon" de , etc. paris, . maurice tourneux: eug. delacroix, devant ses contemporains, ses écrits, ses biographes, ses critiques. paris, . (bibliothèque internationale de l'art, sér. ii, vol. vi.) véron: eugène delacroix. paris, . _see_ eugène delacroix: journal de e. d. (with introductory study, etc., by m. paul flat and rené piot, etc.) vols., - . berlin, . ingres: a. magimel: oeuvres de j. a. i., gravées par a. réveil. [ copperplates.] paris, . charles lenormant: beaux arts et voyages. paris, . ernest chesneau: les chefs d'école. paris, , p. . henri delaborde: ingres, sa vie et ses travaux. paris, . charles blanc: ingres, sa vie et ses ouvrages. paris, . amaury duval: l'atelier d'ingres. souvenirs. paris, . th. silvestre: les artistes français. paris, , p. . r. balze: ingres, son école, son enseignement du dessin: avec des notes recueillies par p. et a. flandrin, lehman, delaborde, etc. paris, pillet et dumoulin, . ernest chesneau: peintres et statuaires romantiques. paris, , p. . eugène montrosier; peintres modernes: ingres, h. flandrin, robert fleury. paris, baschet, . august schmarsow in "kunst und künstler des jahrhunderts." leipzig, . jules mommeja in "les artistes célèbres." chapter xi ary scheffer: blanche de saffray: ary scheffer. paris, . antoine etex: ary scheffer, étude sur sa vie et ses ouvrages. paris, . miss grote: memoir of the life of a. scheffer. nd edition. london, . l. vitet: l'oeuvre de ary scheffer reproduit en photographie par bingham. paris, . charles lenormant: beaux arts et voyages, vol. i. paris, . hofstede de groot: ary scheffer, ein charakterbild. berlin, . m. e. im-thurn; scheffer et decamps. nîmes, . johannot: charles lenormant: les johannot, beaux arts et voyages, vol. i. paris, . flandrin: f. a. gruyer: les conditions de la peinture en france et les peintures murales de h. flandrin. paris, . j. b. poucet: hippolyte flandrin. paris, . a. galimard: examen des peintures de l'eglise de st. germain des prés. paris, . charles clement: Études sur les beaux arts en france. paris, , p. . anon.: hippolyte flandrin, a christian painter of the nineteenth century. london, . m. de montrond: h. flandrin, Étude biographique et historique. rd edition, with plates. paris, lefort, . ernest chesneau: les chefs d'école, p. . charles blanc: les artistes de mon temps, p. . henri delaborde: lettres et pensées d'hippolyte flandrin. paris, . eng. montrosier: peintres modernes; ingres, flandrin, robert-fleury. paris, . hermann helferich: etwas über französische neuidealisten, "kunst für alle," . louis flandrin: hippolyte flandrin, sa vie et son oeuvre, etc. paris, . chenavard: abel peyrouton: paul chenavard et son oeuvre. paris, . l. riesener: les cartons de m. chenavard, "l'art," , i . charles blanc: les artistes de mon temps, p. . th. silvestre: les artistes français, p. . th. chassériau: arthur baignières: "gazette des beaux arts," , i . cogniet: "chronique des arts," , . paul mantz: "gazette des beaux arts," , i . léon bonnat: "chronique des arts," , . also separate. ernest vinet: léon cogniet. paris. without date. h. delaborde: notice sur la vie de l. cogniet. paris, . devéria: j. guiffrey: achille et eugène devéria, "l'art," , p. . delaroche: oeuvre de paul delaroche: reproduit en photographie par bingham, accompagné d'une notice par h. delaborde et jules goddé. paris, . henri delaborde: Études sur les beaux arts, vol. ii. paris, . charles blanc: p. delaroche in "histoire des peintres." charles lenormant in "beaux arts et voyages." paris, . j. runtz-rees: p. delaroche. london, . adolf rosenberg in "kunst und künstler des jahrhunderts." couture: méthodes et entretiens d'atelier, par thomas couture. paris, . jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains. paris, , p. . h. billung: "kunst-chronik," , . "l'art," xvii p. . . paul leroy: "l'art," , . also separate. clara biller: zur erinnerung an thomas couture, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xvi, , p. . h. c. angel: th. couture, "american art review," , . chapter xii cabanel: georges lafenestre: "gazette des beaux arts," , i . bouguereau: artistes modernes. "dictionnaire illustré des beaux arts." paris, . parts i-v. baudry: emile bergerat: peintures décoratives de paul baudry au grand foyer de l'opéra. avec preface de th. gautier. paris, . edmond about: paul baudry, "l'art," , iv . jules claretie: l'art et les artistes contemporains. paris, , p. . edmond about: peintures décoratives de paul baudry. photogr. goupil. paris, . g. berger: les peintures de paul baudry dans le foyer de l'opéra, "chronique des arts," . charles ephrussi: l'exposition des oeuvres de m. p. baudry, "gazette des beaux arts," , ii . g. dargenty: paul baudry à propos de l'exposition de ses oeuvres à l'orangerie des tuileries, "courrier de l'art," , . dubufe: paul baudry, "la nouvelle revue," juli . henri delaborde: notice sur la vie et les ouvrages de m. p. baudry. paris, . ernest toudouze: p. baudry, notes intimes. bordeaux, . charles ephrussi: paul baudry, sa vie et son oeuvre. paris, . richard graul: paul baudry, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xxii, , pp. and . a. bonnin: paul baudry. vannes, . benjamin constant: victor champier: benjamin constant, "art journal," august . f. naquet: "l'art," xlviii, . . laurens: ferdinand fabre: le roman d'un peintre. paris, . regnault: h. cazalis: henri regnault, sa vie et son oeuvre. paris, . h. baillière: h. regnault. paris, . arthur duparc: correspondence de henri regnault. paris, . charles blanc: les artistes de mon temps. paris, , p. . roger-ballu: le monument de henri regnault à l'école des beaux arts. "l'art," , iii . philip g. hamerton: modern frenchmen, biographies. london, , p. . a. angelier: Étude sur henri regnault. paris, boulanger, . hermann billung: henri regnault, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xv . "l'art," , ii . roger marx: henri regnault, in "les artistes célèbres." paris, . gustave larroumet: henri regnault, - . paris, . chapter xiii the historical school in belgium: principal work: camille lemonnier: histoire des beaux-arts en belgique. cinquante ans de liberté. bruxelles, , vol. iii. neue ausgabe. . likewise: von hasselt: la belgique, in "l'art moderne en allemagne," iii. paris, . felix bogaerts: esquisse d'une histoire des arts en belgique depuis jusqu'à . anvers, . l. pfau: die zeitgenössische kunst in belgien, "freie studien." stuttgart, . f. reber: die belgische malerei, "deutsche revue," vii, , p. . "patria belgica," tome iii, les expositions de tableaux depuis . bruxelles, . annuaire de l'académie royale des sciences, lettres, et beaux arts, passim. j. a. wauters: la peinture flamande, éd. paris, quantin, . compare also the final chapter in max rooses' "geschichte der malerschule antwerpens," deutsch von reber. ausgabe. münchen, . m. j. van bree: l. gerrits: levensbeschrijving van m. j. van bree. antwerp, . wappers: hermann billung: gustav wappers, historisches taschenbuch, folge, x. , p. . de keyzer: henri hymans: nicaise de keyzer. bruxelles, . guffens and swerts: hermann riegel: geschichte der wandmalerei in belgien seit . nebst briefen von cornelius, kaulbach, overbeck, schnorr, schwind, u. a. an gottfried guffens und jan swerts. berlin, wasmuth, . gallait: a. teichlein: l. gallait und die malerei in deutschland. münchen, . henne, louis gallait: annales de l'académie d'arch. de belgique, , . nekrolog in "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," . bièfve: obituary in "l'art moderne," , . "journal des beaux arts," , . chapter xiv the germans in paris: edmond about: voyage à travers l'exposition des beaux arts, , p. . feuerbach: ein vermächtniss von anselm feuerbach. auflage. wien, . aufl, . fr. pecht: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," viii, , p. . fr. pecht: deutsche künstler des jahrhunderts. nördlingen, , pp. - . katalog der ausstellung des künstlerischen nachlasses in der berliner nationalgalerie, mit biographie von max jordan. berlin, . graf v. schack: meine gemäldesammlung. stuttgart, , pp. - . o. berggruen: die galerie schack in münchen. wien, . mit radirungen. (also in "graphische künste," , iii .) a. wolf: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xv beiblatt, . w. v. seidlitz: a. feuerbach, im heft der "stichausgabe moderner meister der dresdener galerie." marc schüssler: zum gedächtniss an a. feuerbach. nürnberg, . h. grimm in " essays," folge. berlin, , p. . feuerbachs handzeichnungen. münchen, hanfstängl, . carl neumann: a. feuerbach, "preussische jahrbücher," bd. , . c. allgeyer: a. feuerbach, "nord und süd," . emil hannover: a. feuerbach, "tilskueren." copenhagen, . hauptwerk: karl allgeyer, anselm feuerbach, sein leben und seine kunst. aufl. besorgt von karl neumann. berlin, . the berlin school since : a. rosenberg: die berliner malerschule - , "studien und kritiken." berlin, . r. henneberg: h. riegel: kunstgeschichtliche vorträge und aufsätze. braunschweig, , p. . gustav richter: ludwig pietsch: g. richter, "westermanns monatshefte," , oct. and nov. steffeck: nekrolog in "kunstchronik," , . l. v. donop: ausstellung der werke karl steffecks in der berliner nationalgalerie. berlin, mittler, . historical painting in general: ernst guhl: die neuere geschichtliche malerei und die akademien. stuttgart, . r. v. eitelberger: geschichte und geschichtsmalerei, mittheilungen des österreichischen museums, , . lessing: r. redtenbacher: erinnerungen an carl fr. lessing, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xvi, , p. . piloty: f. pecht: "westermanns monatshefte," , april. karl stieler: die pilotyschule. berlin, . f. pecht: "künstler des jahrhunderts." iii reihe. nördlingen, . c. a. regnet: münchener künstlerbiographien, bd. . a. rosenberg: die hauptströmungen in der bildenden kunst der gegenwart. grenzboten, . h. helferich, neue kunst. berlin, . peter jessen: piloty und die deutsche kunst, "gegenwart," xxxi . makart: c. landsteiner: h. makart und robert hamerling. wien, . c. v. lützow; makarts entwürfe für den wiener festzug, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , . s. feldmann: hans makarts neuestes bild, "die gegenwart," , . b. worth: hans makart and his studio, "art journal," , . makart-album, in lieferungen, holzschnitte, und lichtdrucke, mit text. wien, bondy, . h. makart als architekt. "wochenblatt für architekten," , , . mrs. schuyler van rensselaer: hans makart, "portfolio," , pp. - . carl v. lützow: "zeitschrift fir bildende kunst," xxi, , pp. , . robert stiassny: h. makart und seine bleibende bedeutung, "sammlung kunstgewerblicher und kunsthistorischer vorträge," nr. . leipzig, . max: friedrich pecht: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," , xiv , . agathon klemt: "graphische künste," ix - , - . j. beavington-atkinson: gabriel max, "art journal," , . adolf kohut: gabriel max, "westermanns monatshefte," , mai. nic. mann: gabriel max, eine kunsthistorische skizze. aufl. leipzig, . chapter xv gleyre: charles clement: gleyre; Étude biographique. paris, . paul mantz: "gazette des beaux arts," , i . fr. berthoud: ch. gleyre. genève, ("bibliothèque universelle," vol. ). e. montégut: ch. gleyre, "revue des deux mondes," . hofmeister: das leben des kunstmalers karl gleyre. zürich, . ch. berthoud: ch. gleyre. lausanne, . hamon: walther fol: jean louis hamon, "gazette des beaux arts," , i . georges lafenestre, "l'art," , i . gérôme: charles timbal: "gazette des beaux arts," , ii , . leys: hermann billung: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xv , . . ludwig pfau: "freie studien," p. . meissonier: ernest chesneau: les chefs d'école, p. . otto mündler: "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," . charles clement: Études sur les beaux arts en france. paris, , p. . jules claretie: peintres et sculpteurs contemporains. paris, , pp. , . roger-ballu: " ," le meissonier de m. alexander t. stewart. "l'art," , i . charles blanc: les artistes de mon temps. paris, , p. . j. claretie: e. meissonier. paris, . john w. mollet: meissonier, in "the great artists." london, . h. heinecke: e. meissonier, "westermanns monatshefte," january . lionel robinson: j. l. e. meissonier, his life and work. "art annual" for . ch. bigot: peintres français contemporains. paris, . l. gonse: meissonier, "gazette des beaux arts," , i . g. larroumet: meissonier. (study followed by a biography by philippe burty.) paris, . gréard: jean-louis-ernest meissonier, ses souvenirs--ses entretiens. (with a study of his life and work by m. o. gréard; with plates and a catalogue of the artist's work.) paris, . e. hubbard: meissonier. new york, . formentin: c. meissonier: sa vie, son oeuvre. paris, . menzel: bruno meyer: adolf menzel, "zeitschrift für bildende kunst," xi, , . . alfred woltmann: das preussenthum in der neueren kunst, "nord und süd," , p. . ludwig pietsch: a. menzel, "nord und süd," , p. . duranty: adolphe menzel, "gazette des beaux arts," , ii . j. beavington-atkinson: adolph menzel, "art journal," may , ff. j. beavington-atkinson: menzel's illustrations to the works of frederick the great, "art journal," november . l. gonse: illustrations d'adolphe menzel pour les oeuvres de frédéric le grand, "gazette des beaux arts," , i . das werk a. menzels. text by jordan and dohme. münchen, , ff. cornelius gurlitt: a. menzel, "die kunst unserer zeit," . sondermann: adolph menzel, monographie. magdeburg, . knackfuss: menzel. (with illustrations), künstler monographien, vii. bielefeld, . h. von tschudi: das werk adolf menzels. berlin, . julius meyer-gräfe: der junge menzel. stuttgart, . _printed by_ morrison & gibb limited, _edinburgh_ masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare holbein plate i.--george gisze. frontispiece (in the royal museum, berlin) this picture of a leading merchant of the steelyard was painted in , and constituted the artist's successful attempt to capture the patronage of one of the wealthiest merchant communities in the world. that the patronage was forthcoming quickly is suggested by the picture of another merchant of the steelyard dated the same year, and now in the windsor collection. [illustration] holbein by s. l. bensusan illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london. t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. introduction ii. the artist's life iii. holbein in england list of illustrations plate page i. george gisze frontispiece in the royal museum, berlin ii. the ambassadors in the national gallery, london iii. portrait of a man in the imperial gallery, vienna iv. jane seymour in the imperial gallery, vienna v. anne of cleves in the louvre vi. erasmus in the louvre vii. sir richard southwell in the uffizi gallery, florence viii. sir henry wyatt in the louvre [illustration] i introduction hans holbein the younger is perhaps the most outstanding figure in the history of german art. in the eyes of some he may yield place to his great contemporary albert dürer, but it is impossible to deny that for all his indisputable genius dürer stood for a time that was passing, and holbein for one that was to come. the younger man touched art at every point, nowhere without mastery; and whether we consider him as a draughtsman, a decorator, a painter of frescoes, a portrait painter, an architect, a modeller, a designer of jewellery, a book illustrator, or a miniaturist, we find ourselves face to face with such an extraordinary measure of achievement, that the claim to remembrance and admiration could be sustained if his art gift had been single instead of universal. plate ii.--the ambassadors (in the national gallery, london) this picture, painted by holbein when he was at the zenith of his powers, is well known to visitors to our national gallery. the figures have been identified by some authorities as jean de dinteville and george de selve, one was the french ambassador to king henry's court, the other a great scholar who also served diplomacy. both died young. the picture has roused controversy, as certain writers are of opinion that the subjects are henry and philip, counts palatine of the rhine. [illustration] some men are echoes of their own time. circumstance has made them what they are; their work, however greatly it may please their generation, does nothing to probe the future, to indicate the direction that thought or taste will follow, nor does it set an example for those who are to come. hans holbein the younger is of the smaller and more distinguished class that accepts tradition just so far as it is useful or indispensable, and can face the problems of changing seasons and new thought with perfect confidence and unerring instinct, finding no terror in change. his father was an artist, and this fact would seem to have marked out his path in life. but, considering the work he did, in its extent and quality, we have every reason to believe that the artist was born to succeed, and that had he been an engineer, a general, or a statesman, he would have left the same indelible mark upon his generation, and would have been remembered with gratitude and admiration by those who came after him. for he was the strong man armed at all points, who chose to be an artist, though many another path before him would have led to fame. it is not difficult, if one has a certain measure of talent, to impose upon one's contemporaries. criticism is seldom exhaustive or final until time has taken its stand between man and his labours, adjusting the earlier perspective that is seldom correct and never exact, but with holbein the case was different. his generation recognised a genius to which we pay tribute after years have passed away. "i could make six peers out of six ploughmen," said henry viii., who was no mean judge; "but out of six peers i could not make one holbein." we who come to pay our tribute of admiration so long after opinion, good or bad, has ceased to concern the artist, are at no small disadvantage. we can learn little or nothing about the personal details of his life; the year of his birth and even the place are in dispute, while between the various authorities who deal with the date of his death there is a difference of no less than twelve years, although the balance of evidence is greatly in favour of the earlier date and shorter life. moreover, a great part of the artist's output is lost. in these days, when the work of old masters is being discovered so frequently, and many a forgotten _chef d'oeuvre_ is being rescued from oblivion, there is every reason to hope that the future has something valuable in store for us. but we know that, as far as this country is concerned, much of the labour of holbein's hands has passed beyond recall. during the commonwealth many of the artist's pictures were sent to the continent, the great fire in the whitehall destroyed some priceless works, and the drawings that attract so many artists to windsor have had a very chequered career. as far as we can learn, they were collected in the first place by king edward vi., and were then sold in france, where their owner sold them back to charles i., who, in his turn, disposed of them to the earl of pembroke, from whom they passed to the earl of arundel, who disposed of them to king charles ii., who was probably advised in the transaction by sir peter lely. then they were taken to kensington palace, thrown into a drawer and forgotten until, in the time of the georges, queen caroline discovered some and king george iii. found the rest. when queen victoria ruled over us the prince consort gave these masterpieces their present frames and places, and we may presume that they will never be disturbed. it is not unreasonable to suppose that the experience of this famous collection is typical of that which has befallen many other works from the same hand. our interest in fine art is comparatively modern; only in the last hundred years have the rank and file of cultured, wealthy, or leisured people bethought them of the great treasures that lay neglected in the highways and byways of big cities; and we must not forget that damp, neglect, and indifference are troubles that have a very serious and unfavourable effect upon works of art. the favour extended to a fine picture must be enduring, nor will ten generations of careful attention atone for ten years of bad housing and neglect. we owe a great deal to holbein, because he was one of the few great painters of the sixteenth century who pictured the commercial age that others had held in contempt. he seems to have seen that europe had reached the parting of the ways, and that war was no longer to stand as the greatest interest of national life. to realise how the temper of the world has changed, we need do no more than remember that if the sword is drawn in the twentieth century it is in the service of commerce. the renaissance that worked so many wonders in italy opened holbein's eyes and broadened his point of view, but after the first few years he turned aside from the italian influence and looked upon the life around him with eyes that had been aided rather than blinded by the bright light that shone over milan, florence, and venice. he was a realist with an exquisite sense of proportion, and a definite certainty of intention and expression, that kept him from playing tricks with his art. as great opportunities came to him, he took such complete advantage of them that to-day we may turn to his work and read in it the history of his own fascinating times. he has left us a gallery of the people who ruled a considerable section of middle and western europe in the first half of the sixteenth century, when the near east was still untouched by christian civilisation, and few artists looked beyond the adriatic for sitters or for patronage. no small part of the tudor period lives again under holbein's hand. he gives us the vivid and enduring impression of an age that had found itself, and his subjects walk with fact, just as the creations of his great contemporary albert dürer had walked with fancy. as he saw them so he portrayed them, and history brings no charge of flattery against him save in the case of anne of cleves, whose portrait he painted for king henry viii. before that much married monarch had seen her. here he is said to have been guilty of flattery, but it was generally believed at the time that thomas cromwell, who was his patron and had commissioned the portrait, was responsible for it. the fact that king henry himself accepted this view, and that cromwell suffered for it, suggests that there must be no little foundation for the story, though the king certainly understood the worth of a great artist too well to quarrel with him. plate iii.--portrait of a man (in the imperial gallery, vienna) research has not availed to identify this man, who sits at a table, book in hand, though he has a commanding personality. few artists have left more portraits beyond the reach of identification than has holbein. other remarkable but unnamed studies are to be found in basle and darmstadt, at the berlin royal museum, at windsor castle, and elsewhere. [illustration] apart from this work, we look to holbein for a long roll of kings, princes, churchmen, statesmen, doctors, lawyers, men of letters, reformers, and social celebrities all in their habit as they lived, and vested with the dignity that seems to have been an integral part of the tudor period. it would seem to have been a curiously practical and business-like age, with rather less imagination than we associate with elizabethan times. in dealing with one and all of his varied sitters, the painter seems to have preserved the essential characteristics, and, if we must admit the holbein touch, there is at least no holbein type. he started his work under the influence of the renaissance, and with an almost childish delight in decorative effects. as he progressed he threw aside one by one the details that he had ceased to regard as essential, until in the end he could express everything he saw in the simplest possible manner, without any suggestion of superfluity or redundancy, without concession to the merely superficial side of picture-making that stood lesser men in good stead. the extraordinary success of his portraiture is best understood when we learn that for most of his work he did not trouble sitters after the modern fashion. they sat to him for a sketch, and then he took the sketch away with him and produced in due course the finished portrait. when we look at the portraits in the great european galleries, at windsor or basle, the louvre or munich, we may be astonished that such results should be achieved from mere sketches. but the study of these sketches themselves avails to explain much; and as there are more than eighty of them at windsor, and these have been reproduced very finely in several volumes, the lover of holbein has no occasion to leave this country in order to understand the technique of this branch of the master's work. naturally an artist is judged very readily by his efforts in portraiture, for they are the things that appeal most readily to the eye; but in the case of holbein, who would have been a great master if he had never painted a portrait, it is well to look in other directions for evidences of his many gifts. what manner of man he was, how and when he lived and died, is, as we have hinted already, a matter of conjecture; and in setting down the facts of his life that are generally accepted, it is necessary to admit reservations at short intervals. of course, we would give much to know the full story of his progress, to learn the conditions under which some of his most notable achievements were accomplished, to catch some really reliable glimpses of his domestic life, but in all these matters we have nothing but stray facts and countless conjectures. even the portrait in basle that is said to stand for him is a doubtful authority, because it is not clear from the original inscription whether it is of holbein or by holbein. we know that he painted it, but we do not know whether he was painting himself. happily, perhaps, the satisfaction of this curiosity, though it be human and reasonable enough, is not of the first importance. it may suffice us amply that the great artist left many and varied monuments of his achievements, and that the most, or very many, of these are open to our inspection to this day, that they have preserved their quality and their power to teach as well as to charm succeeding generations. ii the artist's life if we may accept the balance of evidence, hans holbein was born in the last years of the fifteenth century in augsburg, then a city of great importance. the visitor to bavaria to-day will find few traces of its vanished prosperity, but in the years when hans holbein was a little boy augsburg held merchant princes by the dozen, and men of distinction by the score, and enjoyed the favour of the emperor maximilian, himself no mean patron of the arts. in such a city at the beginning of the sixteenth century there would have been a certain community of interest between the leaders of state, commerce, and religion, who, keenly conscious of the honour that had come to italy through the revival of learning and the practice of the arts, would do all that in them lay to devote a part of their wealth and leisure to placing their city in an honourable position. civic pride was rampant throughout the great cities of europe in the middle ages, and augsburg was no exception to the rule. holbein's father, whose work may be studied to great advantage in berlin, was an artist of repute. he belonged to the guild of painters that had been successfully established in the city, and enjoyed the patronage of the leisured classes to an extent that brought a measure of prosperity to all its members. the practice of the arts was comparatively new to augsburg, and doubtless the story of italian prosperity had lost nothing on its journey across the tyrol. the bavarian city would expect its prosperous guild to achieve distinction, and was ready and able to respond to progress, so that the conditions were very favourable to endeavour and to success. every great city sought to achieve renown by raising in its midst, or attracting to its circle, scholars and artists of world-wide repute. hans holbein had a double advantage. not only was the time ripe for his achievements, but the family surroundings were of the kind calculated to develop his powers early. his father, nephew, and brothers were painters, and from his earliest years he would have been brought into intimate touch with the life and work of artists. he would have had access to the hall of the painters' guild, where as much as could be secured of the world's fine work was to be seen. the guild was the centre of a great city's enthusiasms; the work was criticised and studied. great financiers of augsburg brought artists and craftsmen from other towns, and it is safe to assume that the best of them would have been found in the hall of the guild from time to time exhibiting their own work, and telling an interested gathering of the wonders of other cities in days when the journey across the frontiers of one's own country was not to be safely or lightly undertaken. the elder holbein would have introduced his son into the best artistic circles of his time and place; for although he does not seem to have been the leading artist of his city, he received important commissions from the religious houses, and the collection of sketches in the berlin national gallery shows how much the son owed to the father, and what a clever fellow the father was. plate iv.--jane seymour (in the imperial gallery, vienna) this portrait is one of the masterpieces of the vienna gallery. the queen is painted almost life size, and wears a dark red dress over a petticoat of silver brocade. the marvellous complexion for which she was noted and the fine jewels she wore are rendered with rare skill by the painter. [illustration] unfortunately history has nothing to tell us of the boyhood of young hans, though we may gather that his father was in straitened circumstances and not on the best of terms with members of his family who were better off than he. perhaps we may assume that the _res angusta domi_ turned young han's steps from his father's house while he was yet little more than a boy, for when he could have been no more than seventeen, and was perhaps younger, he and his brother ambrosius would seem to have left augsburg for basle, where so much of his work is to be found to-day. here in his first youth he painted a rather poor madonna and christ, which was discovered little more than thirty years ago after centuries of neglect, and is remarkable chiefly for the tiny renaissance cherubs on the frame, figures painted with so much freshness, ease, and vigour that one is inclined to overlook the poor quality of the picture they enshrine. it would seem that at the time when this work was painted the elder holbein had taken his family from augsburg to lucerne, and that he was at once admitted to the painters' guild there. it was well for holbein that he selected basle as a place of residence, for the chances of his life threw him at a very impressionable age into the company of men who found a fresh field for his talents, and widened very considerably the scope of his achievement. he was not destined to remain constant to painting. in frobenius and amerbach the great printers were at basle, erasmus had been and gone, and frobenius must have been attracted by some of the clever sensational work with which holbein made his artistic debut, for when the third edition of the famous "breve ad erasmum" was published by frobenius, the title-page was designed by holbein. he was not turning his attention to this class of work to the detriment of others, for we associate with the stay in basle some half-dozen of the second-rate efforts in paint of a man who is striving to find himself and is at the stage in his life where he is little more than the echo of greater men who have influenced him. holbein was already a man of all art work; he prepared the title-page of sir thomas more's "utopia," and painted religious pictures or table tops with equal assurance and facility. he was never one of the young men with a mission who shun delights and live laborious days working from dawn to dusk in pursuit of an ideal, and wake one morning to find fame has arrived overnight. and yet on a sudden he found himself, as his sketches for the portrait of jacob meier and dorothea kannegiesser testify. darmstadt and dresden hold the ripe fruits of his friendship with jacob meier, and it would seem that his earliest commission there served to bring him the measure of inspiration that lifts uncertain talent to the height of a great achievement, never to fall back to the ranks of those who struggle year in year out, achieving nothing of permanent value. certainly he was well served by his sitters, for the man and the woman seem to have been born to be painted. plate v.--anne of cleves (in the louvre) this is the portrait that holbein was said to have made too flattering, at the instance of thomas cromwell. if the story be true, this unfortunate consort of henry viii. must have been singularly homely in appearance. this oil-painting on vellum reproduced here gives the suggestion of a woman who could not have roused interest in anybody, and the peculiar quality of something akin to inspiration that holbein brought to nearly all portrait painting is conspicuous by its absence. [illustration] we do not know what followed when holbein had found himself. it is stated by some authorities that he left basle for lucerne, where he had some trouble with the authorities, and did a certain amount of decorative work. altdorf is named as a city in which he resided for a time, and it is suggested, not without justification, that he went into northern italy and studied some of the master-works of the renaissance. but by the time he had reached man's estate he had returned to basle, bringing with him a reputation that he was destined to develop steadily for the rest of his life, and hand down to posterity to be the glory of german art. his history after being lost for a time finds some record in , when he was admitted to the art guild of basle, and a year later he became a free man of the city and married a widow with two children. her portrait may be seen in basle to-day, and there is one that is said to stand for the painter himself, also a work of his hand. the drawing depicts a strong man, who looks out upon the world with serene consciousness that he can play a full and worthy part in it. when he was a married man and a citizen of basle, holbein developed to a very considerable extent his earlier acquaintance with the humanists. his work was always at the service of the great printers, and, not unnaturally, the authors who were in touch with them took an interest in the young artist who added so much to the attractions of their books. his religious feelings we do not know, but he associated himself with the publication of certain lutheran pamphlets of marked scurrility, and would seem to have taken his full share in the contest between the reformers and their opponents. the history of the differences that ultimately drove erasmus from the city is full of interest and instruction, but the limits of space forbid the disgression necessary to deal with them. erasmus lives for us in several portraits by holbein, and there can be no doubt but that association with the leading literary men of the city must have done a great deal to develop in the painter the measure of culture that was to serve him in good stead when he left the city of basle for places more important and the service of exalted patrons. his designs for wood engravings in the years following his marriage are of the first importance, and include the famous dance of death series. he painted among many works of the first class a portrait of his patron boniface amerbach, the famous "dead man," said by some to be a picture of the dead christ, a portrait of erasmus and the "zetter madonna." of these the "dead man" is in basle, one of erasmus is there, and another is in the louvre, while the "zetter madonna" is at soluthurn. of course he did a great deal of work that cannot be enumerated here--work of the most varied description and almost unvarying excellence, and it is clear that he owed not a little of his achievement to the steadiness of his labours. we may reasonably suppose that some of the output is lost, but what is left to this day in basle amazes us. the museum is a monument of his talent and industry. half faded frescoes, panel paintings, subject pictures, portraits, drawings, studies of costume, the eight scenes of the passion--there is enough in the museum to console the stranger for all the season of his stay in a singularly unattractive city. we owe the existing collection in a very large extent to boniface amerbach, the artist's friend and early patron, who, recognising the permanent value of his output, collected all he could secure, and established the nucleus of a collection that forms to-day basle's chief claim to distinction. if others had been equally far seeing, many a treasure now lost or destroyed would remain to inspire and to teach; but we must be content with the thought that the work lost through carelessness was probably not the best, and for the rest fire and puritans are jointly responsible, and it is impossible to argue satisfactorily with either. fame travelled slowly in the sixteenth century, but it had not so far to go as it must to-day. the art centres were small and few, they belonged exclusively to the western world, and there were no swarms of influential mediocrities to secure work that belonged of right to better men. then again, even in those days, when war was still considered in certain quarters to be the only occupation for a gentleman, art knew no boundaries in the civilised world, and the artist, as a valued contributor to the beauty of life, could pass through countries in which his countrymen of other pursuits would have received scant welcome. of course there were exceptions to this general rule, and curiously enough basle, in which the lutherans were gaining ground so rapidly, had become an impossible place for holbein by the summer of . moreover, there was trouble with the famous or notorious dorothea offenburg, who would seem to have been a mistress of the painter. apparently his marriage was dictated more by convenience than affection, and the catholicity of his taste was not limited to things of art. holbein painted the fair dorothea twice, apparently in , once as "venus" and once as "lais of corinth." each portrait may be seen in the large salon of the museum, and the attractions of the lady must have been more apparent to the painter than they are to us. some say that it was his desire to flee from before the face of his inamorata that turned holbein's feet towards london, others that it was the strength of the lutheran movement that made men look askance at the arts. be that as it may he came to town, and basle's loss was england's gain. it may be remarked here, that while holbein's long stay in basle had not been interrupted, there is evidence to suggest, if not to prove, that he followed amerbach to france. doubtless his position enabled him to gratify any reasonable desire to travel; and in houses long since demolished, for families long fallen from their high estate if not altogether lost, he may have painted portraits and decorated private chapels or turned his rare gift as miniaturist to good account. no _flâneur_ on the high-road of sixteenth-century life, no chronicler of the times and changes of his generation, has anything to record, because the world then took no count of the coming or going of the great men who claimed fame through the arts. plate vi.--erasmus (in the louvre) this marvellous piece of portraiture dates from the year . holbein painted many portraits of his friend and patron, and at least three belong to this year, one being at longford castle. a study for the one reproduced here may be seen in the basle museum. the great scholar is treated with a master-hand. pallid skin, greying hair, dark clothes, and brown panelling go to the making of wonderful colour harmony. [illustration] iii holbein in england if we cannot say with any certainty why holbein came to england, we may at least presume that sir thomas more was his earliest patron in these islands, and his famous "household of sir thomas more" would seem to have been the first intimation to a considerable section of english art lovers that a new light had arisen. it was of course most fortunate for the painter that he could command the attention of the highest in the land with his first serious effort, for the future was at once assured; and if it was well for the painter, it is better still for us. how many notable men has he rescued from the comparative oblivion of the printed record? in how many cases has he helped us to correct or justify the impressions of the historian? the human face tells its own story, and, when it is set down by a master-hand, we know something at least of the brain that worked behind it. holbein was a realist. it was no part of his artistic intention to make a portrait a mere beautiful picture, to treat his subject pictorially in fashion that would flatter a sitter's vanity. perhaps he had not the dangerous quality of imagination that would make such a procedure possible. he saw clearly, fully, dispassionately, and set down on paper or canvas just what he had seen--neither more nor less. even the renaissance decorations that had delighted him as a boy were laid aside long before he came from basle to london, and such mere cleverness as he permitted himself was done obviously enough to attract custom, and was to be seen in the skilful composition of his portrait groups. he was a hard-headed, serious artist, and appealed to a singularly level-headed generation, that had not been educated up or down to the special genius of the renaissance portrait painters of italy. for in spite of the exquisite and well-nigh inimitable quality of the italian masters, their work would have seemed rather exotic in our colder clime. moreover, the days of revolt against the spirit that so many of them expressed were upon the land. we cannot say with any certainty when or why holbein decided to try his fortune in england. it is likely that one of the english noblemen travelling on the continent, the earl of surrey or the earl of arundel, was the first to advise him to visit this island; and when the troubles that beset art in basle made a change imperative, the painter applied to erasmus for introductions and received one to sir thomas more, to whom he was advised to take one of his portraits of erasmus as a sample of his talent. apparently the good folks of basle were a little startled, and even vexed, to find that their premier artist was leaving them. they are said to have put obstacles in the way of his departure, but he would not be denied. holbein travelled by way of antwerp, attracted by the works of quentin matsys, and in he reached london, presented himself to the chancellor, and made such a favourable impression that he was received forthwith and installed in his home at chelsea. his gratitude was expressed quickly and significantly. sir thomas himself was the first in the long roll of distinguished men who have perhaps obtained a larger measure of immortality from holbein's brush than from the work of their own hands. but for erasmus and lord surrey, the painter might have languished for lack of opportunity to show his powers. he might even have returned to the continent, where his varied gifts commanded a certain market, and in that case the long roll of tudor worthies would not have been preserved to us, and the bright light that he has thrown upon a fascinating period of our history would have been lost. but the chancellor himself, apparently no mean judge of good work, moved in the centre of the most select and refined circle in christendom, and as soon as he had expressed his satisfaction with the painter's work there was no lack of sitters. perhaps an artist would say that the quality of the sitter's face does not matter, and that personality is of small account, but from the layman's point of view this is not the case. the born ruler, the administrator, scholar, soldier, poet, must be more interesting to most of us than the person whose only qualification for an appearance on canvas is the capacity to pay for it. holbein's sitters were worthy of his brush, and between and the artist made an enduring reputation in london, where, according to some at least of his chroniclers, he came under the notice of king henry, although he does not appear to have done any work for him on the occasion of his first visit. the sojourn of nearly three years completed, the painter returned to his home in basle, and occupied himself in that city until . he would seem to have made up his mind to try the continent again before yielding to the invitations he had received in england. then again he had domestic affairs to settle, and they were not of the easiest, for his wife had certain good reasons to feel aggrieved, and holbein did not regard constancy as one of the indispensable conditions of married life. in order that he might not be troubled overmuch on his return to our shores, he decided to leave his wife and family in basle, where he left provision for all their wants. he never failed to look after his children and do his best for them. in days when there was neither regular postal service nor telegrams nor newspapers, he could live his own life without fear of any remonstrances; and we know enough of his progress in these islands to be satisfied that, had he brought his wife over, she would have had sound and sufficient reason to complain. the religious squabbles in basle would seem to have made it hard for any artist to earn a living, and between the dates of his return and his second visit to this country he found little work for his brush. happily he was equipped in every branch, and as his work as a painter was not in great demand, he went to the gold workers and the printers, and did not go to them in vain. they were happy enough to employ him, and work that he executed at this period of his career is one of the prizes of the collector and the connoisseur. plate vii.--sir richard southwell (in the uffizi gallery, florence) this striking portrait of one of holbein's contemporaries is one of the best examples of the master's work in italy. a study for the finished picture may be seen at windsor, and there is another copy in the louvre. it was sir richard southwell who did much to bring about the fall of sir thomas more. [illustration] when in the painter returned to england he could stand alone, and this was well for him, since sir thomas more was born to learn that the favour of princes is not remarkable for a quality of permanence. there would seem to have been no lack of work for holbein as long as he lived. here we may remark that the date of his death is in dispute, some authorities placing it as early as , while others grant him another eleven years--a very valuable concession to any poor mortal, but one that the fates do not appear to have granted, being the probable date of his death, and the plague the cause. he was not satisfied with portraits for long. the steelyard, of which we shall soon speak at length, gave him subject pictures to paint. king henry took him into his service with a retainer of £ a year, no inconsiderable sum in those days, and payment for all works done, and he soon became a painter of the pictures that are produced to commemorate state occasions. happily he painted them better than some more modern men have been able to. it is hardly a reproach to a man that he cannot invest with special interest a picture that is to all intent and purpose composed for him, a canvas on which the figures must be handled less with regard to composition than precedence, and really holbein did very well. his education was certain to tell in his favour; he began to enjoy the fruits of his association with the humanists. great painters employed at european courts enjoyed a certain ambassadorial rank: the interest taken in art was so considerable, that the gift of a picture by a great artist was as fine a present as could be given or received, and when artists were sent to foreign courts they were often entrusted with missions not associated directly or indirectly with their profession. to be sure, holbein did not hold the same high position that fell to peter paul rubens, but he was entrusted on two occasions with missions of a very delicate character, being instructed to paint the portraits of ladies whom the king had married or was prepared to marry. the dowager duchess of milan was one of the few who declined to become queen of england, and anne of cleves was one who was less discriminating. there can be no doubt that holbein's capacity for expressing strength in the most delicate fashion imaginable appealed very strongly to his sitters. the rugged character of one man's head, the delicate lines of a woman's face, could be expressed without violence in the one case or excess of sentiment in the other, and he does not seem to have done more than present his sitters in their most attractive aspect, and with due regard to their salient characteristics. he did not flatter and he did not shock, but would seem to have found something at once pleasant and true to express about all his sitters. although it does not seem unreasonable to believe that holbein would have lacked work on his return to england, even if the social troubles of the time had been even greater than they were, it must be admitted that the painter was very fortunate in securing the patronage of the steelyard, the great german or anglo-german trading company established on the banks of the thames. it was associated with the hanseatic league; its buildings extended over a large part of the city in the neighbourhood of thames street and cannon street; its members had a guildhall with beautiful garden in a place where london is almost at its ugliest to-day, and the steelyard tavern was a very noted house. to the steelyard came all the traffic of the orient, all the spices of the merchant. as much of europe as had the desire to trade with england--then only a second-rate power--relied largely upon the agency of the steelyard. the corporation that governed the undertaking would seem to have been a very capable body, and in return for the privileges granted to it by successive rulers, every member was sworn to play a man's part in the defence of london. we have nothing like the steelyard in great britain to-day, but the east india company probably had much in common with it; and had rhodesia proved worthy of the highest hopes entertained by its founder, the chartered company might have been conducted on similar lines. such associations are apt to spring up when an old country discovers a new one. german trading associations were as pushful in renaissance times as they are to-day, and more artistic. it should be remembered that bellini, titian, and tintoretto worked for german merchants in venice. when holbein came back to london to find warham and colet dead, and sir thomas more, with but a little space of life left, retiring from the high office of chancellor, he seems to have found new friends in the steelyard; and perhaps because he was anxious to establish a position among the members of the richest trading guild of his time, he seems to have devoted a great deal of care and time to his world-famous portrait of george gisze, one of the merchants of the steelyard. the picture, in an admirable condition of preservation, is to be seen in the berlin gallery, and is one of the richest, most decorative portraits ever painted by the artist. it will be found reproduced in these pages, and perhaps there will be some who will wonder whether the artist did not work deliberately to interest and astonish his new clients, and whether, for that purpose, he did not depart from his usual reticence and good taste. the portrait of gisze himself, a handsome man, wearing a bright scarlet doublet under a black cloak, is admirable, it arrests and holds the attention. but the heterogeneous mass of accessories startles and tires the spectator. vase and flowers, scissors, book, scales, letters, golden balls, inscription, keys, watches, seals--there seems to be no limit to the material with which holbein has loaded his canvas, and the accessories are all so well painted that they seem to be wasted. there is no reason to doubt that holbein was deliberately painting a picture for purpose of advertisement, and that he intended to make his appeal to a class that, for all its business acumen and commercial intelligence, was not on the same intellectual plane as the men of sir thomas more's world. plate viii.--sir henry wyatt (in the louvre) this portrait of sir henry wyatt, a bust on panel with green background, was long thought to stand for the painter's friend and patron sir thomas more, and it has been left for modern research to discover the mistake. holbein painted this portrait twice. there is a replica in the national gallery of ireland. [illustration] if this was his intention, he can at least plead that it was entirely successful. not only did it delight the magnates of the steelyard, who showered commissions upon him as long as he could execute them, it carried the story of his fame to the last corner of the earth where the story of a man's achievement can obtain a generous hearing, that is to his own city. burgomaster meier zum hirten, not to be confused with that other meier who married dorothea kannegiesser and looks at us to-day from the walls of the basle museum, wrote to holbein in london inviting him to return, with the promise of a retainer of thirty gulden annually. but the painter had learned that the tender mercies of the inartistic are cruel, and he was now beyond the need for any of the service that basle could offer. of holbein's work for the steelyard, the greater part has been lost. it will be remembered that the guild fell on troublous times in the reign of queen elizabeth, and its hall suffered a long period of neglect. we may say that we should not have a very complete knowledge of the artist's output had his sketches been no better preserved than his finished work. we know, too, that the council of the steelyard recognised in the painter of george gisze a man whose attainments covered every field of art; and a year after he had distinguished himself in their service for the first time, he was put in charge of the pageant arranged by the steelyard in honour of the coronation of the unfortunate anne boleyn. he painted the "triumph of riches" and "triumph of poverty" for the steelyard, but nothing remains of these pictures save a sketch for the former that may be studied to-day in paris. whether holbein's work outside the circle of the merchants was the result of his earlier association, or came to him through the intimate connection between the great guild and a certain section of the aristocracy, is a disputed point; but we incline to the belief that the painter's position was fully recognised, and that if work was rather slow in reaching him from the ranks of the men he had known on the occasion of his first visit, the times were to blame. statesmen and churchmen had been his patrons, now they were fighting for their lives. but very soon after he had painted the portrait of george gisze, holbein gave to the world the famous picture known as "the ambassadors," now hanging in our national gallery, and reproduced here. the man on the left is generally held to be sieur jean de dinteville, french ambassador to the court of henry viii., and his companion is said to be george de selve, who was french ambassador to the court of the great emperor charles v. when anne boleyn had suffered the fullest possible penalty for marrying henry viii., holbein painted her successor. he prepared a chalk drawing of the unfortunate jane seymour and painted two portraits from it, one being in vienna and the other at woburn abbey; and he painted henry himself for the privy chamber, which was burnt out in the closing years of the seventeenth century. the usual study in chalks was made for this picture, and is now in munich. in the bodleian library there is a drawing by holbein of his exquisite design for the gold cup that was made when edward vi. was born; and as soon as jane seymour was dead the painter went to milan to paint his striking portrait of the young christina of denmark, who was duchess of milan, and a widow at the early age of sixteen. she it is who is said to have declined the offer of king henry's hand, on the ground that she had but one head and wished to keep it on her shoulders. so she became the duchess of lorraine instead--small blame to her. we have referred already to the portrait of anne of cleves, now in the louvre; before that was painted holbein had given the world what is often regarded as his greatest effort in portraiture, the portrait of the goldsmith hubert morett, now to be seen in the dresden gallery. for many years this picture was supposed to be the work of leonardo da vinci. it is one of the special functions of art criticism to give the credit of unknown pictures to da vinci or giorgione--apparently to allow the next generation of criticism to take that credit away again. one may remark in passing that leonardo da vinci has fared very badly of late, but doubtless he will soon be restored to critical favour. thomas howard, duke of norfolk, and twice uncle to the king by marriage, was painted when anne of cleves had been retired on a pension, and the star of catherine howard was in its brief ascendant. holbein is said to have painted the new queen. there is a miniature as well as a chalk drawing in windsor that is said to stand for her. and doubtless the king would have continued to find new wives, and holbein would have continued to paint them, but for the fact that both king and painter were nearing their end. the portraits of the doctors of the royal household, dr. butt and dr. chambers, are among the last of the great works he accomplished. in the month of october , at the time when the plague was in london, the artist made a will which was found some years ago in the city of london. by this document hans holbein sought to protect two of his illegitimate children of tender age, directing that all his goods should be sold, and the proceeds applied for their benefit as soon as certain debts had been paid. curiously enough, we have no means of finding out who the children were, we do not know the mother's name, all is obscure. but we know that holbein had settled an earlier legacy upon his wife and legitimate issue, that he had apprenticed his eldest son to a jeweller in paris, and that he had never been unmindful of his legal obligations to his family. for the rest, he had made a hasty marriage that was not founded upon affection so much as upon convenience--and it is not for us to judge him save as an artist, and then modestly and with due thought of our own limitations. he was buried either in the church of st. andrew undershaft or st. catherine cree; in the hour of his death there was no anxiety to do more than get the dead underground as soon as possible. it will be remembered that another of the world's great painters, titian vecelli, died of the plague too, but titian had reached a very great age, while holbein was in the prime of life, capable, had he been spared, of much more work in every branch of art. he worked for about thirty years in the light of history for the "virgin and child," the picture with panels in the renaissance mood is dated , and the picture of dr. chambers belongs to the early forties. to sum up his known achievements with no more than a brief description would exhaust all the pages of this little sketch. his work retains much of its freshness, although time and the restorer have combined to do it wrong; and there are pictures that pass for the work of holbein's hand, though it is more than likely that he never saw them. he must have been a man of infinite capacity, untiring industry, and considerable strength of character; he owed little to outside help, for when he left augsburg for basle he was almost without friends and influence, while, when he left london for the bourn from which no traveller returns, he had made a reputation that has lasted to this hour, and will never be destroyed while western civilisation endures. * * * * * the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. _in preparation_ burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. j. f. millet. percy m. turner. memlinc. w. h. james weale. albert dÜrer. herbert furst. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. boucher. c. haldane macfall. watteau. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. and others. * * * * * transcriber's note: the booklist advertisement above has been moved from physical page ii to the end of the text. august, giotto price, cents masters in art a series of illustrated monographs issued monthly giotto part volume bates and guild company publishers congress street boston masters in art a series of illustrated monographs: issued monthly part august, volume giotto contents plate i. madonna enthroned academy: florence plate ii. allegory of poverty lower church of st. francis: assisi plate iii. allegory of chastity lower church of st. francis: assisi plate iv. the nativity arena chapel: padua plate v. the entombment arena chapel: padua plate vi. the resurrection arena chapel: padua plate vii. the death of st. francis bardi chapel, church of s. croce: florence plate viii. the birth of st. john the baptist peruzzi chapel, church of s. croce: florence plate ix. the feast of herod peruzzi chapel, church of s. croce: florence plate x. the raising of drusiana peruzzi chapel, church of s. croce: florence portrait of giotto by paolo uccello: louvre, paris page the life of giotto page julia cartwright the art of giotto page criticisms by vasari, van dyke, colvin, ruskin, symonds, e. h. and e. w. blashfield, quilter the works of giotto: descriptions of the plates and page a list of paintings giotto bibliography page _photo-engravings by folsom & sunergren: boston. press-work by the everett press: boston._ publishers' announcements masters in art is a series of concise handbooks, each uniform in style with this one, devoted to all of the great painters and sculptors. the price, per copy, postage paid to any country in the postal union, is twenty-five cents. remittances should be made by postal or express money-order, registered letter, or, in amounts up to $ . , in one or two cent stamps. on personal checks drawn on banks outside of boston or new york, cents should be added to cover collection charges. bound volumes of nine complete years are offered at $ . for cloth, and $ . for half-morocco, express charges prepaid. a full list of subjects, with illustrations of the bound volumes, will be sent on request. bates & guild company, publishers congress street, boston, mass. _copyright, , by bates & guild company, boston_ [illustration: masters in art plate i giotto madonna enthroned academy, florence ] [illustration: masters in art plate ii photograph by alinari giotto allegory of poverty lower church of st. francis, assisi ] [illustration: masters in art plate iii photograph by alinari giotto allegory of chastity lower church of st. francis, assisi ] [illustration: masters in art plate iv giotto the nativity arena chapel, padua ] [illustration: masters in art plate v photograph by raya giotto the entombment arena chapel, padua ] [illustration: masters in art plate vi photograph by raya giotto the resurrection arena chapel, padua ] [illustration: masters in art plate vii photograph by anderson giotto the death of st. francis bardi chapel, church of s. croce, florence ] [illustration: masters in art plate viii photograph by anderson giotto the birth of st. john the baptist peruzzi chapel, church of s. croce, florence ] [illustration: masters in art plate ix photograph by anderson giotto the feast of herod peruzzi chapel, church of s. croce, florence ] [illustration: masters in art plate x photograph by anderson giotto the raising of drusiana peruzzi chapel, church of s. croce, florence ] [illustration: portrait of giotto by paolo uccello louvre, paris this portrait of giotto was painted in the first half of the fifteenth century by paolo uccello, a florentine artist. it is a detail of a picture containing five heads, representing, besides giotto, uccello himself, donatello, brunelleschi, and manetti. vasari took the engraving for his biography of giotto from this likeness, which was probably based upon some older portrait of the artist. he is here represented in a red cloak and head covering; and it would seem that uccello's brush has somewhat flattered him, for we are told that he was "singularly ill-favored" in outward appearance.] giotto di bondone born (?): died florentine school julia cartwright 'the painters of florence' "in a village of etruria," writes ghiberti, the oldest historian of the florentine renaissance, "painting took her rise." in other words, giotto di bondone[ ] was born, between and , at colle, in the commune of vespignano, a village of the val mugello fourteen miles from florence. there the boy, who had been called angiolo, after his grandfather, and went by the nickname of angiolotto, or giotto, kept his father's flocks on the grassy slopes of the apennines, and was found one day by cimabue, as he rode over the hills, drawing a sheep with a sharp stone upon a rock. full of surprise at the child's talent for drawing, the great painter asked him if he would go back with him to florence; to which both the boy and his father, a poor peasant named bondone, gladly agreed. thus, at ten years old, giotto was taken straight from the sheepfolds and apprenticed to the first painter in florence. such is the story told by ghiberti and confirmed by leonardo da vinci, who, writing half a century before vasari, remarks that giotto took nature for his guide, and began by drawing the sheep and goats which he herded on the rocks. [footnote : pronounced jot´toe dee bon-doe´nay.] another version of the story of giotto's boyhood is that he was apprenticed to a wool-merchant of florence, but that instead of going to work he spent his time in watching the artists in cimabue's shop; upon which his father applied to the master who consented to teach the boy painting. the natural vivacity and intelligence of the young student soon made him a favorite in cimabue's workshop, while his extraordinary aptitude for drawing became every day more apparent. the legends of his marvelous skill, the stories of the fly that cimabue vainly tried to brush off his picture, of the round o which he drew before the pope's envoy with one sweep of his pencil, are proofs of the wonder and admiration which giotto's attempts to follow nature more closely excited among his contemporaries. this latter story is told by vasari as follows: "the pope sent one of his courtiers to tuscany to ascertain what kind of man giotto might be, and what were his works; that pontiff then proposing to have certain paintings executed in the church of st. peter. the messenger spoke first with many artists in siena; then, having received designs from them, he proceeded to florence, and repaired one morning to the workshop where giotto was occupied with his labors. he declared the purpose of the pope, and finally requested to have a drawing that he might send it to his holiness. giotto, who was very courteous, took a sheet of paper and a pencil dipped in a red color, then, resting his elbow on his side to form a sort of compass, with one turn of the hand he drew a circle, so perfect and exact that it was a marvel to behold. this done, he turned smiling to the courtier, saying, 'here is your drawing.' 'am i to have nothing more than this?' inquired the latter, conceiving himself to be jested with. 'that is enough and to spare,' returned giotto. 'send it with the rest, and you will see if it will not be recognized.' the messenger, unable to obtain anything more, went away very ill-satisfied and fearing that he had been fooled. nevertheless, having despatched the other drawings to the pope with the names of those who had done them he sent that of giotto also, relating the mode in which he had made his circle, without moving his arm and without compasses; from which the pope, and such of the courtiers as were well versed in the subject, perceived how far giotto surpassed all the other painters of his time." no doubt the boldness and originality of his genius soon led giotto to abandon the purely conventional style of art then in use, and to seek after a more natural and lifelike form of expression. and early in his career he was probably influenced by the example of the sculptor giovanni pisano, who was actively engaged on his great works in tuscany and umbria at this time. the earliest examples of giotto's style that remain to us are some small panels at munich; but a larger and better-known work is the 'madonna enthroned,' in the academy at florence, which, although archaic in type, has a vigor and reality that are wholly wanting in cimabue's madonna in the same room. but it is to assisi that we must turn for a fuller record of giotto's training and development. here, in the old umbrian city where st. francis had lived and died, was the great double church which the alms of christendom had raised above his burial-place. unfortunately the records of the franciscan convent are silent as to the painters of the frescos which cover its walls, and neither cimabue nor giotto is once mentioned. but ghiberti, vasari, and the later franciscan historian, rudolphus, all agree in saying that giotto came to assisi with his master cimabue and there painted the lower course of frescos in the nave of the upper church.... in giotto was invited to rome by cardinal stefaneschi, the pope's nephew and a generous patron of art. at his bidding giotto designed the famous mosaic of the 'navicella,' or 'ship of the church,' which hangs in the vestibule of st. peter's. little trace of the original work now remains. more worthy of study is the altar-piece which he painted for the cardinal, and which is still preserved in the sacristy of st. peter's. pope boniface, we are told by vasari, was deeply impressed by giotto's merits, and loaded him with honors and rewards; but the frescos which he was employed to paint in the old basilica of st. peter's perished long ago, and the only work of his now remaining in rome besides the 'navicella,' is the damaged fresco of pope boniface proclaiming the jubilee, on a pillar of the lateran church. this last painting proves that giotto was in rome during the year , when both his fellow-citizens dante and the historian giovanni villani were present in the eternal city. the poet was an intimate friend of the painter; and, after his return to florence, giotto introduced dante's portrait in an altar-piece of 'paradise' which he painted for the chapel of the podestà palace. but since this chapel was burned down in , and not rebuilt until after giotto's death, the fresco of dante, which was discovered some years ago on the walls of the present building, must have been copied by one of his followers from the original painting. it was probably during an interval of his journey back to florence, or on some other visit to assisi during the next few years, that giotto painted his frescos in the lower church of st. francis in that city. chief among these are the four great allegories on the vaulted roof above the high altar, illustrating the meaning of the three monastic virtues, obedience, chastity, and poverty, whom, according to the legend, the saint met walking on the road to siena in the form of three fair maidens, and whom he held up to his followers as the sum of evangelical perfection. these allegories are not the only works which giotto executed in the lower church of assisi. ghiberti's statement that he painted almost the whole of the lower church is confirmed by rudolphus, who mentions the series of frescos of the childhood of christ and the 'crucifixion' in the right transept as being by his hand. in their present ruined condition it is not easy to distinguish between the work of the master and that of his assistants; but the whole series bears the stamp of giotto's invention. the next important works which he painted were the frescos in the arena chapel at padua, built in , by enrico scrovegno, who two years later invited giotto to decorate the interior with frescos. when dante visited padua, in , he found his friend giotto living there with his wife, madonna ciutà, and his young family, and was honorably entertained by the painter in his own house. the poet often watched giotto at work, with his children, who were "as ill-favored as himself," playing around, and wondered how it was that the creations of his brain were so much fairer than his own offspring. giotto's small stature and insignificant appearance seem to have been constantly the subject of his friends' good-humored jests; and petrarch and boccaccio both speak of him as an instance of rare genius concealed under a plain and ungainly exterior. but this unattractive appearance was redeemed by a kindly and joyous nature, a keen sense of humor, and unfailing cheerfulness, which made him the gayest and most pleasant companion.... the fame which giotto already enjoyed beyond the walls of florence was greatly increased by his works in padua, and before he left there he received and executed many commissions. from padua, vasari tells us, he went on to the neighboring city of verona, where he painted the portrait of dante's friend and protector, can grande della scala, as well as other works in the franciscan church, and then proceeded to ferrara and ravenna at the invitation of the este and polenta princes. all his works in the cities of north italy, however, have perished, and it is to florence that we must turn for the third and last remaining cycle of his frescos. the great franciscan church of santa croce had been erected in the last years of the thirteenth century, and the proudest florentine families hastened to build chapels at their own expense as a mark of their devotion to the popular saint. four of these chapels were decorated with frescos by giotto's hand, but were all whitewashed in , when santa croce underwent a thorough restoration. the frescos which he painted in the guigni and spinelli chapels have been entirely destroyed; but within the last fifty years the whitewash has been successfully removed from the walls of the bardi and peruzzi chapels, and the finest of giotto's works that remain to us have been brought to light. here his unrivaled powers as a great epic painter are revealed, and we realize his intimate knowledge of human nature and his profound sympathy with every form of life. the exact date of these frescos remains uncertain, but they were probably painted soon after . recent research has as yet thrown little light upon the chronology of giotto's life, and all we can discover is an occasional notice of the works which he executed, or of the property which he owned in florence. vasari's statement, that he succeeded to cimabue's house and shop in the via del cocomero, florence, is borne out by the will of the florentine citizen rinuccio, who, dying in , describes "the excellent painter giotto di bondone" as a parishioner of santa maria novella, and bequeathes a sum of "five pounds of small florins" to keep a lamp burning night and day before a crucifix painted by the said master in the dominican church. of giotto's eight children, the eldest, francesco, became a painter, and when his father was absent from florence managed the small property which giotto had inherited at his old home of vespignano. the painter's family lived chiefly at this country home, of which giotto himself was very fond; and contemporary writers give us pleasant glimpses of the great master's excursions to val mugello. boccaccio tells us how one day, as giotto and the learned advocate messer forese, who, like himself, was short and insignificant in appearance, were riding out to vespignano, they were caught in a shower of rain and forced to borrow cloaks and hats from the peasants. "well, giotto," said the lawyer, as they trotted back to florence clad in these old clothes and bespattered with mud from head to foot, "if a stranger were to meet you now would he ever suppose that you were the first painter in florence?" "certainly he would," was giotto's prompt reply, "if beholding your worship he could imagine for a moment that you had learned your a b c!" and the novelist sacchetti relates how the great master rode out to san gallo one sunday afternoon with a party of friends, and how they fell in with a herd of swine, one of which ran between giotto's legs and threw him down. "after all, the pigs are quite right," said the painter as he scrambled to his feet and shook the dust from his clothes, "when i think how many thousands of crowns i have earned with their bristles without ever giving them even a bowl of soup!" a more serious instance of giotto's power of satire is to be found in his song against voluntary poverty, in which he not only denounces the vice and hypocrisy often working beneath the cloak of monastic perfection, but honestly expresses his own aversion to poverty as a thing miscalled a virtue. the whole poem is of great interest, coming as it does from the pen of the chosen painter of the franciscan order, and as showing the independence of giotto's character. the extraordinary industry of the man is seen by the long list of panel-pictures as well as wall-paintings which are mentioned by early writers. these have fared even worse than his frescos. the picture of 'the commune' in the great hall of the podestà palace, which vasari describes as of very beautiful and ingenious invention, the small tempera painting of the 'death of the virgin,' on which michelangelo loved to gaze, in the church of ognissanti, florence, the 'madonna' which was sent to petrarch at avignon, and which he left as his most precious possession to his friend francesco di carrara, have all perished. one panel, however, described by vasari, is still in existence--an altar-piece originally painted for a church in pisa, and now in the louvre. in giotto was invited to naples by king robert, who received him with the highest honor, and issued a decree granting this chosen and faithful servant all the privileges enjoyed by members of the royal household. ghiberti tells us that giotto painted the hall of king robert's palace, and petrarch alludes in one of his epistles to the frescos with which he adorned the royal chapel of the castello dell' uovo. "do not fail," he writes, "to visit the royal chapel, where my contemporary, giotto, the greatest painter of his age, has left such splendid monuments of his pencil and genius." all these works have been destroyed, and another series of frescos, which he executed in the franciscan church of santa chiara, were whitewashed in the last century by order of a spanish governor, who complained that they made the church too dark! king robert appreciated the painter's company as much as his talent, and enjoyed the frankness of his speech and ready jest. "well, giotto," he said, as he watched the artist at work one summer day, "if i were you i would leave off painting while the weather is so hot." "so would i were i king robert," was giotto's prompt reply. another time the king asked him to introduce a symbol of his kingdom in a hall containing portraits of illustrious men, upon which giotto, without a word, painted a donkey wearing a saddle embroidered with the royal crown and scepter, pawing and sniffing at another saddle lying on the ground bearing the same device. "such are your subjects," explained the artist, with a sly allusion to the fickle temper of the neapolitans. "every day they seek a new master." in giotto was still in naples, and king robert, it is said, promised to make him the first man in the realm if he would remain at his court; but early in the following year he was summoned back to florence by the signory, and, on the twelfth of april, , was appointed chief architect of the state and master of the cathedral works. since the death of its architect, arnolfo, in , the progress of the cathedral had languished; but now the magistrates declared their intention of erecting a bell-tower which in height and beauty should surpass all that the greeks and romans had accomplished in the days of their greatest pride. "for this purpose," the decree runs, "we have chosen giotto di bondone, painter, our great and dear master, since neither in the city nor in the whole world is there any other to be found so well fitted for this and similar tasks." giotto lost no time in preparing designs for the beautiful campanile which bears his name; and on the eighth of july the foundations of the new tower were laid with great solemnity. villani describes the imposing processions that were held and the immense multitudes which attended the ceremony, and adds that the superintendent of works was maestro giotto, "our own citizen, the most sovereign master of painting in his time, and the one who drew figures and represented action in the most lifelike manner." giotto received a salary of one hundred golden florins from the state "for his excellence and goodness," and was strictly enjoined not to leave florence again without the permission of the signory. in , however, we hear of him in milan, whither he had gone by order of the signory at the urgent request of their ally azzo visconti, lord of milan. here, in the old ducal palace, giotto painted a series of frescos of which no trace now remains, and then hurried back to florence to resume his work on the campanile. another invitation reached him from pope benedict xii., who offered him a large salary if he would take up his residence at the papal court at avignon. but it was too late; and, as an old chronicler writes, "heaven willed that the royal city of milan should gather the last fruits of this noble plant." soon after his return to florence giotto fell suddenly ill, and died on the eighth of january, . he was buried with great honor in the cathedral. more than a hundred years later, when florence had reached the height of splendor and prosperity under the rule of the medici, lorenzo the magnificent placed a marble bust on giotto's tomb, and employed angelo poliziano to compose the latin epitaph which gave proud utterance to the veneration in which the great master was held alike by his contemporaries and by posterity: "lo, i am he by whom dead painting was restored to life; to whose right hand all was possible; by whom art became one with nature. none ever painted more or better. do you wonder at yon fair tower which holds the sacred bells? know that it was i who bade her rise towards the stars. for i am giotto--what need is there to tell of my work? long as verse lives, my name shall endure!" the art of giotto giorgio vasari 'lives of the painters' the gratitude which the masters in painting owe to nature is due, in my judgment, to the florentine painter giotto, seeing that he alone--although born amidst incapable artists and at a time when all good methods in art had long been entombed beneath the ruins of war--yet, by the favor of heaven, he, i say, alone succeeded in resuscitating art, and restoring her to a path that may be called the true one. john c. van dyke 'history of painting' it would seem that nothing but self-destruction could come to the struggling, praying, throat-cutting population that terrorized italy during the medieval period. the people were ignorant, the rulers treacherous, the passions strong; and yet out of the dark ages came light. in the thirteenth century the light grew brighter. the spirit of learning showed itself in the founding of schools and universities. dante, petrarch, and boccaccio, reflecting respectively religion, classic learning, and the inclination toward nature, lived and gave indication of the trend of thought. finally the arts--architecture, sculpture, painting--began to stir and take upon themselves new appearances. in painting, though there were some portraits and allegorical scenes produced during the gothic period, the chief theme was bible story. the church was the patron, and art was only the servant, as it had been from the beginning. it had not entirely escaped from symbolism. it was still the portrayal of things for what they meant rather than for what they looked. there was no such thing then as art for art's sake. it was art for religion's sake. the demand for painting increased, and its subjects multiplied with the establishment at this time of the two powerful orders of dominican and franciscan monks. the first exacted from the painters more learned and instructive work; the second wished for the crucifixions, the martyrdoms, the dramatic deaths wherewith to move people by emotional appeal. in consequence painting produced many themes, but, as yet, only after the byzantine style. the painter was more of a workman than an artist. the church had more use for his fingers than for his creative ability. it was his business to transcribe what had gone before. this he did, but not without signs here and there of uneasiness and discontent with the pattern. there was an inclination toward something truer to nature, but as yet no great realization of it. the study of nature came in very slowly. the advance of italian art in the gothic age was an advance through the development of the imposed byzantine pattern. when people began to stir intellectually the artists found that the old byzantine model did not look like nature. they began not by rejecting it but by improving it, giving it slight movements here and there, turning the head, throwing out a hand, or shifting the folds of drapery. the eastern type was still seen in the long pathetic face, oblique eyes, green flesh-tints, stiff robes, thin fingers, and absence of feet; but the painters now began to modify and enliven it. more realistic italian faces were introduced; architectural and landscape backgrounds encroached upon the byzantine gold grounds; even portraiture was taken up. the painters were taking notes of natural appearances. no one painter began this movement. the whole artistic region of italy was at that time ready for the advance. cimabue seems the most notable instance in early times of a byzantine-educated painter who improved upon the traditions. he has been called the father of italian painting; but italian painting had no father. cimabue was simply a man of more originality and ability than his contemporaries, and departed further from the art teachings of the time without decidedly opposing them. he retained the byzantine pattern, but loosened the lines of drapery somewhat, turned the head to one side, and infused the figure with a little appearance of life. cimabue's pupil, giotto, was a great improver on all his predecessors because he was a man of extraordinary genius. he would have been great in any time, and yet he was not great enough to throw off wholly the byzantine traditions. he tried to do it. he studied nature in a general way, changed the type of face somewhat, and gave it expression and nobility. to the figure he gave more motion, dramatic gesture, life. the drapery was cast in broader, simpler masses with some regard for line, and the form and movement of the body were somewhat emphasized through it. in methods giotto was more knowing, but not essentially different from his contemporaries; his subjects were from the common stock of religious story, but his imaginative force and invention were his own. bound by the conventionalities of his time, he could still create a work of nobility and power. he came too early for the highest achievement. he had genius, feeling, fancy--almost everything except accurate knowledge of the laws of nature and of art. his art was the best of its time, but it was still lacking, nor did that of his immediate followers go much beyond it technically. sydney colvin 'encyclopÆdia britannica' giotto, relatively to his age one of the greatest and most complete of artists, fills in the history of italian painting a place analogous to that which seems to have been filled in the history of greek painting by polygnotus. that is to say, he lived at a time when the resources of his art were still in their infancy, but considering the limits of those resources his achievements were the highest possible. at the close of the middle age he laid the foundations upon which all the progress of the renaissance was afterwards securely based. in the days of giotto the knowledge possessed by painters of the human frame and its structure rested only upon general observation and not upon any minute, prolonged, or scientific study; while to facts other than those of humanity their observation had never been closely directed. of linear perspective they possessed few ideas, and these elementary and empirical, and scarcely any ideas at all of aërial perspective or of the conduct of light and shade. as far as painting could ever be carried under these conditions, so far it was carried by giotto. in its choice of subjects his art is entirely subservient to the religious spirit of his age. even in its mode of conceiving and arranging those subjects, it is in part still trammeled by the rules and consecrated traditions of the past. thus it is as far from being a perfectly free as from being a perfectly accomplished form of art. many of those truths of nature to which the painters of succeeding generations learned to give accurate and complete expression, giotto was only able to express by way of imperfect symbol and suggestion. but in spite of these limitations and shortcomings, and although he had often to be content with expressing truths of space and form conventionally or inadequately, and truths of structure and action approximately, and truths of light and shadow not at all, yet among the elements over which he had control he maintained so just a balance that his work produces in the spectator less sense of imperfection than that of many later and more accomplished masters. he is one of the least one-sided of artists, and his art, it has been justly said, resumes and concentrates all the attainments of his time not less truly than all the attainments of the crowning age of italian art are resumed and concentrated in raphael. in some particulars the painting of giotto was never surpassed,--in the judicious division of the field and massing and scattering of groups, in the union of dignity in the types with appropriateness in the occupations of the personages, in strength and directness of intellectual grasp and dramatic motive, in the combination of perfect gravity with perfect frankness in conception, and of a noble severity in design with a great charm of harmony and purity in color. the earlier byzantine and roman workers in mosaic had bequeathed to him the high abstract qualities of their practice--their balance, their impressiveness, their grand instinct of decoration; but while they had compassed these qualities at an entire sacrifice of life and animation, it is the glory of giotto to have been the first among his countrymen to breathe life into art, and to have quickened its stately rigidity with the fire of natural incident and emotion. it was this conquest, this touch of the magician, this striking of the sympathetic notes of life and reality, that chiefly gave giotto his immense reputation among his contemporaries, and made him the fit exponent of the vivid, penetrating, and practical genius of emancipated florence. his is one of the few names in history which, having become great while its bearer lived, has sustained no loss of greatness through subsequent generations. john ruskin 'giotto and his works in padua' in the one principle of close imitation of nature lay giotto's great strength and the entire secret of the revolution he effected. it was not by greater learning, nor by the discovery of new theories of art; not by greater taste, nor by "ideal" principles of selection that he became the head of the progressive schools of italy. it was simply by being interested in what was going on around him, by substituting the gestures of living men for conventional attitudes, and portraits of living men for conventional faces, and incidents of every-day life for conventional circumstances, that he became great, and the master of the great. john addington symonds 'renaissance in italy' the tale told about giotto's first essay in drawing might be chosen as a parable: he was not found beneath a church roof tracing a mosaic, but on the open mountain, trying to draw the portrait of the living thing committed to his care. what, therefore, giotto gave to art was, before all things else, vitality. his madonnas are no longer symbols of a certain phase of pious awe, but pictures of maternal love. the bride of god suckles her divine infant with a smile, watches him playing with a bird, or stretches out her arms to take him when he turns crying from the hands of the circumcising priest. by choosing incidents like these from real home life, giotto, through his painting, humanized the mysteries of faith, and brought them close to common feeling. nor was the change less in his method than his motives. before his day painting had been without composition, without charm of color, without suggestion of movement or the play of living energy. he first knew how to distribute figures in the given space with perfect balance, and how to mass them together in animated groups agreeable to the eye. he caught varied and transient shades of emotion, and expressed them by the posture of the body and the play of feature. the hues of morning and of evening served him. of all painters he was most successful in preserving the clearness and the light of pure, well-tempered colors. his power of telling a story by gesture and action is unique in its peculiar simplicity. there are no ornaments or accessories in his pictures. the whole force of the artist has been concentrated on rendering the image of the life conceived by him. relying on his knowledge of human nature, and seeking only to make his subject intelligible, no painter is more unaffectedly pathetic, more unconsciously majestic. while under the influence of his genius we are sincerely glad that the requisite science for clever imitation of landscape and architectural backgrounds was not forthcoming in his age. art had to go through a toilsome period of geometrical and anatomical pedantry before it could venture, in the frescos of michelangelo and raphael, to return with greater wealth of knowledge on a higher level to the divine simplicity of its childhood in giotto. in the drawing of the figure giotto was surpassed by many meaner artists of the fifteenth century. nor had he that quality of genius which selects a high type of beauty and is scrupulous to shun the commonplace. the faces of even his most sacred personages are often almost vulgar. in his choice of models for saints and apostles we already trace the florentine instinct for contemporary portraiture. yet, though his knowledge of anatomy was defective and his taste was realistic, giotto solved the great problem of figurative art far better than more learned and fastidious painters. he never failed to make it manifest that what he meant to represent was living. even to the non-existent he gave the semblance of reality. we cannot help believing in his angels leaning waist-deep from the blue sky, wringing their hands in agony above the cross, pacing like deacons behind christ when he washes the feet of his disciples, or sitting watchful and serene upon the empty sepulcher. he was, moreover, essentially a fresco-painter, working with rapid decision on a large scale, aiming at broad effects, and willing to sacrifice subtlety to clearness of expression. the health of giotto's whole nature and his robust good sense are every-where apparent in his solid, concrete, human work of art. there is no trace of mysticism, no ecstatic piety, nothing morbid or hysterical in his imagination. imbuing whatever he handled with the force and freshness of actual existence, he approached the deep things of the christian faith and the legend of st. francis in the spirit of a man bent simply on realizing the objects of his belief as facts. his allegories of 'poverty,' 'chastity,' and 'obedience,' at assisi, are as beautiful and powerfully felt as they are carefully constructed. yet they conceal no abstruse spiritual meaning, but are plainly painted "for the poor laity of love to read." the artist-poet who colored the virginal form of poverty, with the briars beneath her feet and the roses blooming round her forehead, proved by his well-known _canzone_ that he was free from monastic quixotism and took a practical view of the value of worldly wealth. his homely humor saved him from the exaltation and the childishness that formed the weakness of the franciscan revival. giotto in truth possessed a share of that power which belonged to the greek sculptors. he embodied myths in physical forms adequate to their intellectual meaning. e. h. and e. w. blashfield 'italian cities' when we ask, where did giotto get the wonderful power of expression that he shows in his work? we reply, a little from masters and a great deal from himself; but if we are asked, how did he learn to make a wall effective by color and patterns? we must answer that he worked upon traditional lines, that some of his immediate forerunners were nearly as effective as he, and that some of his remote forerunners were more effective. when we say enthusiastically of giotto, "there was a decorator for you! there was a muralist far more purely _decorative_ than some later and even greater men!" we are thinking, not of the superiority of his drawing and composition, but of the simple flatness of his masses, free from any elaborate modeling, the lightness and purity of his color, the excellence of his silhouette and his pattern. but the essentially decorative qualities did not belong especially to giotto; they belonged to the history and development of mural painting, to the greeks, the romans, the byzantines, who had learned--centuries before st. francis, centuries even before the master whom francis served, came into the world--had learned, we say, that dimly lighted interiors require flat, pure colors with little modeling. now nearly all the interiors of the ancient world were dimly lighted; the medieval italian churches with their narrow lancet windows of low toned jewel-like glass were as dark as any of the antique buildings, so that the use of flat masses of pure color, the planning of an agreeable disposition of spots and of a handsome silhouette to these spots, became the canons of medieval painting. these early artists had mastered thoroughly the great controlling principle of decoration, the principle of the harmony of the painting with the surrounding architecture. because the fourteenth century had not gone beyond this fortunate simplicity to the complexity of the fifteenth, and because it had attained to a science of draughtsmanship unknown to the thirteenth century and earlier times, we call the fourteenth century the golden age of the mural painter. the layman not infrequently supposes that this condition of things obtained because giotto deliberately eschewed elaborate modeling, and said to mural painting, "thus far and no farther shalt thou go!" in eight cases out of ten this misconception comes because the layman has been reading ruskin; in the other two cases, because he has been reading rio or lord lindsay. in reality, giotto said nothing of the sort; he was a great artist, he saw and felt with simplicity and dignity; doubtless he would, under any circumstances, have modeled with restraint, but if he had known how to do so he would have put more modeling in his figures than he did. fifty years ago john ruskin made giotto the fashion. the connoisseurs of the seventeenth century, the men whose fathers had perhaps seen raphael, had surely seen the urbinate's great rival, made small account of the earlier painters; to them the _giotteschi_ were barbarous, rubbish. with ruskin, however, the great son of bondone took his place upon a throne. he sat there rightfully by virtue of the greatest talent which was given to any painter between masaccio and the last great greek or roman artist of imperial days; but his ministrant swung the censer before him with such misplaced enthusiasm that the face of the great tuscan was clouded for half a century, until modern criticism dared to say nay to the poet of the 'stones of venice' and the 'modern painters.' ruskin never admired anything that was unworthy, though he often fiercely contemned the worthy. he saw and praised giotto's simplicity of treatment, but how strangely he praised, how utterly he misunderstood the artist's aim and insisted upon bringing back to the marksman game that was no spoil of his! ruskin mistook timidity for reverence, and ascribed to the painter as a deliberate choice that which was in reality forced upon him by inexperience. the reasoning which ruskin, rio, and others of their school followed is peculiar. we will take as an example a fresco in which heavily draped figures stand before a city gate upon greensward. in the said greensward every little blade and leaf is made out; there is no effect; you and i with our modern ideas would not like it at all. the critic, on the contrary, is enraptured. he cries, "only see, giotto has painted every leaf; he felt that everything that god made should be lovingly and carefully studied!" the draperies, on the contrary, are rather broadly and simply handled, and the author implies that it is because the artist knew that the stuffs, which were only artificial, not natural, were unworthy the careful study he had given the leaves. such criticism as this utterly misled a portion of the english reading world for at least thirty years. the right treatment by the painter was wrongly praised by the writer. giotto was lauded especially for leaving out that which he was incapable of putting in; his figures are but little modeled, and this slight modeling happens to be admirably suited to the kind of decoration which he was doing, but it was slight because he did not know how to carry it further. when he painted a madonna on a panel to be seen and examined at close quarters that which was a virtue in his decoration became a fault in his easel-picture. take the grass and draperies just mentioned; giotto had not yet learned to paint drapery realistically, but he had the sentiment of noble composition, and he arranged his folds simply and grandly and painted them as well as he knew how, pushing them as far as he could. when he came to the grass, he found it much easier to draw a lot of little hard blades and leaves than to generalize them into an effect. he did not know how to generalize complicated detail. the drapery was one piece, and he could arrange it in a few folds, but the blades of grass were all there, and he thought he must draw every one. ruskin, and rio, and lord lindsay, all regard this incapacity as a special virtue based upon a spiritual interpretation of the relative importance of things in nature and art. they account as truth in giotto what was really the reverse of truth. in looking at such a scene as that represented in the fresco no human being could see every blade of grass separately defined. a general effect of mass would be truth, and giotto would have grasped it if he could have done so, but he was not yet a master of generalization. a whole class of writers upon christian art is like the prior in browning's poem, who says to fra lippo lippi:-- "your business is to paint the souls of men. "give us no more of body than shows soul;" but these writers, while appreciating the effect of certain qualities in giotto and his followers, wholly misunderstood their intention. he did not leave his figures half modeled for the praise of god or for the sake of expressing soul. we might just as well say that it was for the sake of spiritual aspiration that his foreshortened feet stood on the points of their toes, or that his snub profiles were intended to suggest meekness.... it is an important fact in painting, especially in decorative painting, that in measure as an artist refines his work he may with advantage suppress one detail after another of its modeling. but this knowing what to leave out is one of the most subtle, one of the last kinds of knowledge that come to the painter. this system of elimination argues upon his part the possession of a high degree of technical accomplishment. when he can draw and paint every detail of his subject, then, and not till then, he can suppress judiciously. great painters have thus instinctively commenced by making minutely detailed studies. now, giotto never made one such in his life; he did not know how. he was a beginner possessing magnificent natural gifts, still a beginner, a breaker of new paths. he drew and painted the human body exactly as well as he knew how to, leaving out elaborate modeling simply because he was unable to accomplish it. one lifetime would not have sufficed this pioneer of art for the achievement of all that he did and for the compassing of a skilful technique as well.... if we pass on to those qualities of a painter which were particular to giotto, not merely as a muralist but as an individual man, we find that like other masters of his time he cannot yet subtly differentiate expression, but that, unlike others, his expression is more intense, more forceful, more varied. his heads have long narrow eyes, short snub noses, firm mouths, square jaws, and powerful chins; he divides them, not individually, but typically, into adolescent, adult, and aged heads. his feet are unsteady; his hands not yet understood; his draperies are for their time wonderful--simply, even grandly arranged, and if they do not express the body, at least they suggest it and echo its movements. his animals, too small and often faulty enough, are sometimes excellent; and, like every other medieval artist, if he wanted to put in a sheep or a horse or a camel, he put it in without any misgivings as to knowledge of the subject. neither did this architect entertain any scruples regarding architecture when he chose to paint it, and, like his fellows, he set greek temple of assisi, romanesque convent, and gothic church, all upon the same jackstraw-like legs,--that is to say, columns which made toys of all buildings, big or little. first and last and best, we see him as a miracle of compositional and dramatic capacity, and with this last quality he took his world by storm. men before him had tried to tell stories, but had told them hesitatingly, even uncouthly; giotto spoke clearly and to the point. this shepherd boy, whose mountain pastures could be seen from her campanile, taught grammar to the halting art of florence. he taught the muse of the fourteenth century to wear the buskin, so that his followers, however confused their composition might be, were at least clear in the telling of their story. indeed he was such a dramaturgist that men for a full hundred years forgot, in the fascination of the story told, to ask that the puppets should be any more shapely, that they should look one whit more like men and women. harry quilter 'giotto' the main characteristics of giotto's style are, first, a lighter, purer tone of color than had been in use before the time of cimabue, and a greater variety and purity of tint than had been attained by that master; second, the introduction into his compositions of a certain amount of natural detail which had been before totally neglected, and the substitution of the portraits of actual men and women for the imaginary beings that had formerly filled up the backgrounds of the byzantine pictures; third, the power of illustrating the real meaning of his subject, not merely suggesting it as had formerly been the case; and fourth, his unrivaled dramatic power. this dramatic power shows itself in almost every work that giotto has left us, and even survives in the achievements of his pupils. his pictures are not scenes alone, they are _situations_. besides their appropriateness of gesture and oneness of feeling, they possess the great characteristic of dramatic art in making the scene live before you, subduing its various incidents into one strain of meaning, yet keeping each incident complete and individual, as well as making it help the main purpose. a minor point in which the same quality shows is in the amount of emotion which this painter is capable of expressing by a single gesture--an amount so great that it occasionally runs some danger of lapsing into caricature, as is especially plain in such pictures as 'the entombment' in the arena chapel. but in all his scenes giotto has succeeded, not only in choosing the most appropriate figures for illustrating his meaning, but in seizing the very moment which is most significant. but, after all, the main characteristic of giotto's style is so intangible that it can only be felt, not described. this characteristic is the simple faith in which each of these compositions abounds; the feeling conveyed to the spectator that thus, and not otherwise, did the occurrence take place, and that the painter has not altered it a jot or tittle for his own purpose. the works of giotto descriptions of the plates 'madonna enthroned' plate i this panel-picture, an early work, was painted for the church of ognissanti, florence, and is now in the academy of that city. notwithstanding the fact that giotto has adhered to the conventional composition of the byzantine masters, there is a freshness and more lifelike appearance in this work than is observable in those of his predecessors; and in the more natural attitudes of the figures--notably in the kneeling angels--as well as in the greater freedom in the treatment of the draperies, we see the advance that he has already made in the development of art. the madonna, clad in a white robe and long bluish mantle, and holding the child, whose tunic is of a pale rose color, upon her knee, is seated upon a throne placed against a gold background. the angels kneeling in front with vases of lilies in their hands are robed in white; those just above them, bearing a crown and box of ointment, are in green. saints and angels are grouped on either side. the color of the picture has darkened and lost much of its original freshness, and shows little of the purity of tint seen in many of giotto's frescos. 'allegory of poverty' plate ii among giotto's most famous works are the four frescos which cover the arched compartments of the vaulting of the lower church of st. francis at assisi. one represents the saint enthroned in glory; the others are allegorical depictions of the three vows of the franciscan order,--poverty, chastity, and obedience. the finest of the series is that reproduced in this plate, in which giotto has represented the mystic marriage of st. francis with poverty. hope and love are the bridesmaids, angels are the witnesses, and christ himself blesses the union. the bride's garments are patched, ragged and torn by brambles, children throw stones at her and mock her, and a dog barks at her; but the roses and lilies of paradise bloom about her, and st. francis looks with love upon his chosen bride. to the left a young man gives his cloak to a beggar; on the opposite side a miser grasps his money-bag, and a richly clad youth scornfully rejects the invitation of the angel at his side to follow in the train of holy poverty. above, two angels, one bearing a garment and a bag of gold, the other a miniature palace--symbolical of worldly goods given up in charity--are received by the hands of the almighty. 'allegory of chastity' plate iii this fresco, in the lower church of st. francis at assisi, is one of the series to which that reproduced in the previous plate also belongs. it represents the different stages of perfection in the religious life. on the left st. francis receives three aspirants to the franciscan order; on the right three monks are driving evil spirits into the abyss below; and in the central group angels pour purifying water upon the head of a youth standing naked in a baptismal font. two figures leaning over the wall behind present him with the banner of purity and shield of fortitude, and two angels standing near bear the convert's garments. the mail-clad warriors, holding lash and shield, are emblematic of the warfare and self-mortification of those who follow st. francis. in the tower of the crenelated fortress in the background is seated chastity, veiled and in prayer, to whom two angels bring an open book and the palm of holiness. 'nativity,' 'entombment,' and 'resurrection' plates iv, v, and vi the arena chapel, padua, was built in the year by enrico scrovegno, a wealthy citizen of that place, upon the site of a roman amphitheater or arena. the outside of this little building is devoid of all architectural embellishment, but any exterior bareness is more than counterbalanced by the interior, the decoration of which was, in or , intrusted to giotto, at that time the acknowledged master of painting in italy. with the exception of the frescos in the choir, which were added by his followers in later years, all the paintings in the chapel--thirty-eight in number--are by his hand, and present a scheme of decoration that is unsurpassed even in the churches of italy. "though they lack the subtleties of later technical development," write vasari's recent editors, "these frescos of the arena chapel, in their composition, their simplicity, their effectiveness as pure decoration, and in their dramatic force, are some of the finest things in the whole history of art, ancient or modern." arranged in three tiers on the side walls of the chapel, giotto's frescos illustrate the apocryphal history of joachim and anna, the life of the virgin, scenes from the life of christ, and below, allegorical figures of the virtues and vices. on the entrance wall is a 'last judgment,' and opposite, a 'christ in glory.' the vaulted ceiling, colored blue and studded with gold stars, is adorned with medallions of christ and the virgin, saints and prophets. "wherever the eye turns," writes mr. quilter, "it meets a bewilderment of color pure and radiant and yet restful to the eye, tints which resemble in their perfect harmony of brightness the iridescence of a shell. the whole interior, owing perhaps to its perfect simplicity of form and absence of all other decoration than the frescos, presents less the aspect of a building decorated with paintings than that of some gigantic opal in the midst of which the spectator stands." 'the nativity,' reproduced in plate iv, is the first of the second tier of frescos. it is painted almost wholly in a quiet harmony of blue and gray. ruskin has called attention to the natural manner in which the virgin turns upon her couch to assist in laying down the child brought to her by an attendant, and to the figure of st. joseph seated below in meditation. on the right are the shepherds, their flocks beside them, listening to the angels who, "all exulting, and as it were confused with joy, flutter and circle in the air like birds." on the left the ox and ass stretch their heads towards the virgin's couch. 'the entombment,' plate v, is impressive in its passionate intensity. the women seated on the ground supporting the dead christ are overwhelmed with grief, other mourners are grouped around; and in the figure of st. john with his arms extended giotto has preserved the antique gesture of sorrow. angels wheel and circle through the air in a frenzied agony of grief. in the background a barren hill and the leafless branches of a tree are relieved against a darkening sky. 'the resurrection,' plate vi, shows us the soldiers in deep sleep beside the red porphyry tomb on which two majestic, white-robed angels are seated. mary magdalene, in a long crimson cloak, kneels with outstretched arms at the feet of the risen christ, who by his expressive gesture warns her, "noli me tangere!" this fresco and that of 'the resurrection' are among the most impressive in the chapel, and are comparatively little injured by time and dampness. 'the death of st. francis' plate vii the last in the series of eight frescos painted by giotto in the bardi chapel of the church of santa croce, florence, this picture, which is by many considered his masterpiece, shows us the closing scene in the life of st. francis of assisi. julia cartwright writes of it: "the great saint is lying dead on his funeral bier, surrounded by weeping friars who bend over their beloved master and cover his hands and feet with kisses. at the head of the bier a priest reads the funeral rite; three brothers stand at the foot bearing a cross and banner, and the incredulous girolamo puts his finger into the stigmatized side, while his companions gaze on the sacred wounds with varying expressions of awe and wonder; and one, the smallest and humblest of the group, suddenly lifts his eyes and sees the soul of st. francis borne on angel wings to heaven. even the hard outlines and coarse handling of the restorer's brush have not destroyed the beauty and pathos of this scene. in later ages more accomplished artist often repeated the composition, but none ever attained to the simple dignity and pathetic beauty of giotto's design." 'the birth of st. john the baptist' plate viii the peruzzi chapel in the church of santa croce, florence, was decorated by giotto with scenes from the lives of st. john the baptist and st. john the evangelist. "the frescos in this chapel have suffered greatly from repainting," writes mr. f. mason perkins, "but the monumental style in which they were originally conceived is still unmistakably apparent; and they are certainly to be considered as products of the most mature period of giotto's activity, in all probability later in date by some years at least than those in the bardi chapel. the fresco here reproduced represents the birth and the naming of st. john the baptist. in one room st. elizabeth is seen reclining on her couch and waited upon by her attendants; in an adjoining chamber zacharias is seated writing upon a tablet the name by which the new-born child is to be called." 'the feast of herod' plate ix this fresco in the peruzzi chapel in the church of santa croce, florence, is one of the most celebrated of giotto's works. herod and his guests are represented at table under a portico suggestive in its classic decorations of the later renaissance. salome, a lyre in her hand, has been dancing to the music of a violin played by a youth in a striped tunic--a figure which has been the subject of enthusiastic praise from mr. ruskin and other writers. the girl pauses in her dance as a soldier in a roman helmet brings the head of john the baptist into the hall and presents it to herod. through an open door salome is seen again, kneeling before her mother and bearing the charger upon which rests the head of st. john. in the distance, at the other side of the picture, we see the barred window of the tower where the baptist has been imprisoned. "although little more than its outlines are left," writes kugler, "this work unites with all giotto's grander qualities of arrangement, grouping, and action, a closer imitation of nature than he had before attained. seldom, even in later times, have fitter action and features been rendered that those which characterize the viol-player as he plies his art and watches the dancing salome." 'the raising of drusiana' plate x the story of the incident which giotto has here portrayed has been told as follows: "when st. john had sojourned in the island of patmos a year and a day he returned to his church at ephesus; and as he approached the city, being received with great joy by inhabitants, lo! a funeral procession came forth from the gates; and of those who followed weeping he inquired, 'who is dead?' they said, 'drusiana.' now when he heard that name he was sad, for drusiana had excelled in all good works, and he had formerly dwelt in her house; and he ordered them to set down the bier, and having prayed earnestly, god was pleased to restore drusiana to life. she arose up and the apostle went home with her and dwelt in her house." "this fresco in the peruzzi chapel in the church of santa croce, florence, shows giotto in all his strength and greatness," write crowe and cavalcaselle. "life and animation are in the kneeling women at the evangelist's feet, but particularly in the one kneeling in profile, whose face, while it is obvious that she cannot see the performance of the miracle on drusiana, expresses the faith which knows no doubt. see how true are the figure and form of the cripple; how fine the movement of drusiana; how interesting the group on the right in the variety of its movements; how beautiful the play of lines in the buildings which form the distance; how they advance and recede in order to second the lines of the composition and make the figures stand out." a list of the principal paintings by giotto, with their present locations transcriber's note: subsection headings surrounded by '=' characters; for example, =paris, louvre= england. =alnwick castle, duke of northumberland's collection=: panel with sposalizio, st. francis receiving the stigmata, etc.--france. =paris, louvre=: st. francis receiving the stigmata--germany. =munich gallery=: small panels of crucifixion, last supper, etc.--italy. =assisi, church of st. francis, upper church=: frescos from the life of st. francis; =lower church=: allegorical frescos of chastity, obedience, and poverty, and st. francis in glory (see plates ii and iii); frescos from the lives of christ and the virgin, and miracles of st. francis--=bologna, academy=: saints and angels--=florence, academy=: madonna enthroned (plate i)--=florence, church of santa croce, bardi chapel=: frescos from the life of st. francis (see plate vii); =peruzzi chapel=: frescos from the lives of st. john the baptist and st. john the evangelist (see plates viii, ix, and x)--=padua, arena chapel=: frescos from the lives of christ and the virgin (see plates iv, v, and vi); last judgment; christ in glory; allegorical figures of the virtues and vices; =sacristy=: crucifix--=padua, church of sant' antonio=: frescos of saints--=rome, church of san giovanni laterano=: pope boniface viii. proclaiming the jubilee--united states. =boston, mrs. j. l. gardner's collection=: presentation in the temple. giotto bibliography a list of the principal books and magazine articles dealing with giotto alexandre, a. histoire populaire de la peinture: école italienne. (paris, )--baldinucci, f. notizie dei professori del disegno da cimabue in quà. (florence, )--berenson, b. florentine painters of the renaissance. (new york, )--blashfield, e. h. and e. w. italian cities. (new york, )--breton, e. ambrogio bondone dit le giotto. (st. germain-en-laye, )--burckhardt, j. der cicerone, edited by w. bode. (leipsic, )--callcott, lady. description of the chapel of the annunziata dell' arena in padua. (london, )--cartwright, j. the painters of florence. (london, )--cennini, c. treatise on painting: trans. by mrs. merrifield. (london, )--colvin, s. 'giotto' in 'encyclopædia britannica.' (edinburgh, )--crowe, j. a., and cavalcaselle, g. b. history of painting in italy. (london, )--dobbert, e. 'giotto' in 'dohme's kunst und künstler,' etc. (leipsic, )--fea, c. descrizione della cappella di s. francesco d'assisi. (rome, )--fÖrster, e. beiträge zur neuern kunstgeschichte. (leipsic, )--frantz, e. geschichte der christlichen malerei. (freiburg im breisgau, - )--ghiberti, l. commentario sulle arti. (extracts from manuscript copy are quoted by milanesi, cicognara, perkins, and frey)--gordon, l. d. the story of assisi. (london, )--hoppin, j. m. great epochs in art history. (boston, )--jameson, a. memoirs of italian painters. (boston, )--janitschek, h. die kunstlehre dante's und giotto's kunst. (leipsic, )--kugler, f. t. italian schools of painting. revised by a. h. layard. (london, )--kuhn, p. a. allgemeine kunst-geschichte. (einsiedeln, et seq.)--lee, v. euphorion. (london, )--lindsay, lord. sketches of the history of christian art. (london, )--lÜbke, w. history of art. (new york, )--mantz, p. chefs-d'oeuvre de la peinture italienne. (paris, )--mÜntz, e. histoire de l' art pendant la renaissance: les primitifs. (paris, )--oliphant, mrs. the makers of florence. (london, )--perkins, f. m. giotto. (london, )--quilter, h. giotto. (london, )--rio, a. f. de l' art chrétien. (paris, - )--rumohr, c. f. v. italienische forschungen. (berlin, )--ruskin, j. giotto and his works in padua. (london, )--ruskin, j. fors clavigera. (orpington, )--ruskin, j. mornings in florence. (orpington, )--ruskin, j. modern painters. (london, - )--sacchetti, f. delle novelle. (florence, )--schnaase, c. geschichte der bildenden künste. (düsseldorf, - )--selvatico, p. e. sulla cappellina degli scrovegni nell' arena di padova. (padua, )--stillman, w. j. old italian masters. (new york, )--symonds, j. a. renaissance in italy. (london, )--taine, h. voyage en italie. (paris, )--thode, h. franz von assisi. (berlin, )--thode, h. giotto. (leipsic, )--tikkanen, j. j. der malerische styl giotto's. (helsingfors, )--vasari, g. lives of the painters. (new york, )--woltmann, a., and woermann, k. history of painting: trans. by clara bell. (new york, )--zimmermann, m. g. giotto und die kunst italiens in mittelalter. (leipsic, ). magazine articles archivio storico dell'arte, : 'die kunstlehre dante's und giotto's kunst' di janitschek (c. de fabriczy)--century magazine, : giotto (w. j. stillman)--jahrbuch der preussischen kunstsammlungen, and : studien zu giotto (k. frey)--monthly review, : art before giotto (r. e. fry). : giotto (r. e. fry). : giotto (r. e. fry)--nuova antologia, : giotto (c. laderchi). : aneddoto dell' o e la supposta gita di giotto ad avignone (g. b. cavalcaselle). : la chiesa di giotto nell' arena di padova (c. boito). : san francesco, dante e giotto (g. mestica). : dante e giotto (a. venturi)--penn monthly, : cimabue and giotto (w. de b. fryer)--portfolio, : assisi (j. cartwright)--repertorium fÜr kunstwissenschaft, : die heimath giotto's (r. davidsohn). : die fresken im querschiff der unterkirche san francesco (p. schubring)--revue de l'art chrÉtien, : evolutions de l'art chrétien (g. d. saint-laurent). : giotto. naturalisme et mysticisme (e. cartier). : le poème de giotto. (e. cartier)--zeitschrift fÜr bildende kunst, and : die malerische dekoration der s. francesco-kirche in assisi (a. aubert). three beautiful books by philip l. hale three valuable handbooks on great portraits and madonnas of the world. printed in beautiful type, on heavy antique paper with broad margins, and daintily bound in buckram of special weave, with title-design stamped in gold. each book contains about pages × inches in size, including twenty exquisite full-page reproductions of famous paintings, some of which have rarely been reproduced. the author, mr. philip l. hale, a son of the late edward everett hale, is himself a painter and art critic of reputation. the text is unique, comprising a critical analysis and comparison of the work of the master painters, not from the too common view-point of a critic who walks the galleries, but from that of a painter, who with brushes in hand is even now working on the same problems those he writes about have worked on. it has all the charm and spontaneity of an informal studio chat; and gives a new and fresh appreciation of art. price, each, boxed and postage prepaid, $ . the madonna a critical analysis of the way the master painters pictured the madonna, illustrated with full-page reproductions of the following masterpieces: sistine madonna, madonna of the chair, madonna of the house of alba, raphael; virgin of the rocks, st. anne, the virgin, and christ-child, da vinci; assumption of the virgin, madonna of the pesaro family, madonna with the cherries, titian; virgin adoring the christ-child, correggio; madonna of the sack, del sarto; immaculate conception, murillo; virgin and child, crivelli; nativity, correggio; meyer madonna, holbein; madonna of castelfranco, giorgione; madonna of the two trees, bellini; vow of louis xiii., ingres; coronation of the virgin, botticelli; madonna and child with two angels, fra filippo lippi; madonna and three dominican saints, tiepolo. great portraits: women an essay on the painting of women's portraits, illustrated by twenty full-page plates reproducing the following great portraits: mona lisa, da vinci; countess potocka, artist unknown; mrs. sheridan, mrs. siddons, gainsborough; nelly o'brien, reynolds; unknown princess, da vinci; bust of unknown lady, in louvre; parson's daughter, romney; sarah bernhardt, bastien-lepage; his mother, whistler; madame destouches, ingres; madame molé-raymond, lebrun; miss farren, lawrence; shrimp girl, hogarth; madame récamier, david; violante, palma vecchio; doña isabel corbo de porcel, goya; princess christina, holbein; his daughter lavinia, titian; queen henrietta, van dyck. great portraits: children a treatment of the subject of children's portraits similar to that of women's portraits, with twenty full-page plates of these beautiful canvases: portrait of countess mollien, greuse; louis, dauphin of france, la tour; madame louise of france, nattier; rubens's sons, rubens; the blue boy, gainsborough; don garcia with a bird, bronzino; queen of sicily, goya; boy with a sword, manet; strawberry girl, reynolds; st. john the baptist, donatello; william ii. of nassau, van dyck; holbein's wife and children, holbein; madame vigée lebrun and daughter, lebrun; the broken pitcher, greuse; portrait of miss alexander, whistler; king of rome, lawrence; infanta margarita, maids of honor, don baltasar carlos on horseback, velasquez; child with blond hair, fragonard. bates & guild company congress st., boston, mass. klassiker der kunst the german series of art monographs each volume contains practically the complete work of the painter to whom it is devoted, with a biographical sketch (in german). we recommend these books, on account of their completeness in the way of illustrations, as supplementary to masters in art. prices given are net, and on mail orders postage must be added. the list to date follows. new volumes are constantly being published, and prices of these will be sent on request. i raphael ( pictures) $ . , postage extra, cents ii rembrandt, paintings ( pictures) . " " " iii titian ( pictures) . " " " iv dürer ( pictures) . " " " v rubens ( pictures) . " " " vi velasquez ( pictures) . " " " vii michelangelo ( pictures) . " " " viii rembrandt, etchings ( pictures) . " " " ix schwind ( , pictures) . " " " x correggio ( pictures) . " " " xi donatello ( pictures) . " " " xii uhde ( pictures) . " " " xiii van dyck ( pictures) . " " " xiv memlinc ( pictures) . " " " xv thoma ( pictures) . " " " xvi mantegna ( pictures) . " " " xvii rethel ( pictures) . " " " bates & guild company congress street, boston masterpieces in colour edited by - - t. leman hare rossetti -- "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--the daydream from the oil painting ( ½ in. by in.) painted in and first exhibited in the royal academy in . (frontispiece) this picture was painted from mrs. william morris and was left to south kensington by constantine ionidès, esq.] rossetti by lucien pissarro illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. the daydream frontispiece from the ionidès collection at south kensington museum page ii. ecce ancilla domini from the oil painting in the tate gallery iii. dante drawing the angel from the water-colour in the taylorian museum, oxford iv. beata beatrix from the oil painting in the tate gallery v. the bower meadow from the oil painting in the collection of the late sir john milburn, bart., acklington, northumberland vi. the borgia family from the water-colour in south kensington museum vii. dante's dream from the oil painting in the walker art gallery, liverpool viii. astarte syriaca from the oil painting in the manchester art gallery [illustration: rossetti] i about the middle of the nineteenth century europe woke to the fact that art, despite its pretention, had lost all touch with tradition and, like a blind man deprived of his staff, stood fumbling for direction. the necessary "point d'appui" took shape in a return to nature. this return was effected by very different means according to the country and artistic milieu in which it occurred. in england it was really a revival of the schools of painting that preceded raphael and resulted in grafting the complicated passions of our century upon the naïve outlook of the early italians. the more logical mind of the frenchman saw that it was not enough to look at nature through the eyes of the primitives. the point of view had perforce changed and all that it was necessary to borrow from the early schools was the sincerity they brought to the interpretation of phenomena. we have been told that, in contrast to the continental movement, the realism of the pre-raphaelites was applied only to noble subjects. but what is a noble subject? the distinction is a purely literary one. there are no noble subjects in art; there are only harmonies of line and colour. for example this school would prefer the rose to the cabbage as a subject, on account of the symbols attached to it. it is the queen of flowers, the mystic rose, &c., &c. but is the rose greater than the cabbage from a purely pictorial point of view? it depends entirely upon how far the painter is able to reveal the beauty, the harmony of form and colour of either. the symbolistic appanage of the rose will not suffice of itself to make a picture, nor for the lack of these symbols may we condemn the cabbage. the realism of the pre-raphaelites developed an absorption in detail, a "bit by bit" painting that was too often detrimental to the whole. in the best works of the early italians the unity is, in spite of that attention to detail, admirably maintained--in other words the values are preserved. it was not long, however, before rossetti quitted the path of the pre-raphaelites for a broader one. his paintings are entirely symbolistic, therefore literary. given the personality of an artist equally gifted as painter and poet, this need not surprise us. indeed, seeing that rossetti's pictorial conceptions are exclusively literary, he might be considered as more dominantly a writer than a painter; and this is the light in which he saw himself. we might say he painted "sentiments" and add that sentiment is the property of literature, but in rossetti's case they have at least the advantage of intensity. they come straight from life, for all his art is more or less connected with the tragedy of his own existence. herein lies the value of rossetti's works as artistic creations. ii rossetti's family, as his name indicates, was of italian origin. his ancestors on his father's side belong to vasto d'ammone, a small city of the abruzzi. the original name of the family was della guardia. probably the diminutive rossetti was given to some red-haired ancestor and retained in spite of the disappearance of that peculiarity. the grandfather of the poet, dominico rossetti, was in the iron trade, his son gabriel rossetti, born at vasto, became a custodian of the bourbon museum at naples. he was an ardent patriot and one of the group of reformers who obtained a constitution from ferdinand, king of the two sicilies, in . the return of the king with the austrian army obliged gabriel rossetti, who was compromised by his actions as well as by his patriotic songs, to make his escape from italy. he did this by the help of the english admiral, commanding the fleet in the bay. indeed he left italy disguised in an english uniform. [illustration: plate ii.--ecce ancilla domini from the oil painting ( ½ in. by in.) painted in and is now in the tate gallery this picture was first exhibited in at the "free exhibition" in portland place. it was very slightly retouched in for the then owner, mr. graham. it is rightly considered the most typical of rossetti's "pre-raphaelite" period.] after passing three years in malta ( - ), he came to england bearing introductions from john hookham frere, then governor of malta. a year after his arrival he married frances mary livinia polidori, whose mother was an english lady of the name of pierce, while her father was gaetano polidori, the translator of milton. gabriel rossetti was appointed professor of italian literature at king's college in ; but owing to the failure of his eyesight he had to resign that position in . he died nine years after, on april th, . he is the author of several works, the best known in england are: _comento analitico sulla divina commedia_ ( - ); _sullo spirito anti-papale_ ( ); and _il mistero dell' amor platonic_ ( ). in italy, particularly in his own province, his name is held in veneration for services in the cause of liberty. he had four children, the eldest, maria francesca, the author of "a shadow of dante," died in . dante gabriel was the second and was born the th of may at charlotte street, great portland place, london. william michael was the third, and christina was the youngest. very little is known of the early life of rossetti. he received some instruction at a private school in foley street, portland place, studying there from the autumn of to the summer of . he was afterwards sent to king's college school. there he learned latin, french, and a little greek. naturally enough he knew italian very well from home and also a little german. in his home surroundings the young child's taste for literature was developed very early; at five years old he wrote a drama called "the slave." towards his thirteenth year he began a romantic tale in prose, "roderick and rosalba." somewhere about he wrote a legendary tale entitled "sir hugh le heron," founded on a tale by allan cunningham. his grandfather gaetano polidori printed it himself for private circulation, but the work contains no sign of his ultimate development and has been justly omitted from his collected works. soon the wish to be a painter took possession of dante gabriel and, on leaving school, he began his technical education in art at cary's academy in bloomsbury. in he joined the classes of the antique school of the royal academy. it is worth pointing out that he never followed the life school of that institution. conventional methods of study were distasteful to him. he decided to throw up the academy training and wrote to a painter, not very well known at that date but whose work he admired, asking to be admitted to his studio as a pupil. the painter was madox brown, and young rossetti, given his needs and mode of thought, could not have chosen a more suitable master. madox brown was only seven years older than rossetti, but he had studied at ghent, antwerp, paris, and rome. he had exhibited some fine cartoons during the early forties for the decoration of the house of lords. among these was one that rossetti had greatly admired at the exhibition of the competitive cartoons in westminster hall. it was "harold's body brought before william the conqueror." in march rossetti entered upon his new experience and madox brown agreed to teach him painting, not for a fee but for the mere pleasure of meeting and training a sympathetic spirit. rossetti did not long remain a regular attendant in the studio. he left after a few months. on the opening day of the exhibition (may ), "rossetti," says mr. hunt, "came up boisterously and in loud tongue made me feel very confused by declaring that mine was the best picture of the year. the fact that it was from keats ('the eve of st. agnes') made him extra enthusiastic, for, i think, no painter had ever before painted from that wonderful poet, who then, it may scarcely be credited, was little known." rossetti wished so earnestly to become more intimate with hunt that he agreed to work with him, sharing a studio that the latter had just taken in cleveland street, fitzroy square. here he began to paint his first composition, having hitherto done no more than studies, sketches, a number of portraits, some of which reveal excellent work. at this time his literary development was somewhat ahead of his artistic growth. he had already translated the _vita nuova_ which is alone a monumental achievement, introducing wonderfully into the english the warmth of the southern language; and he had written some of his best known poems, including "the blessed damozel," "my sister's sleep," "the portrait," a considerable portion of "ave," "a last confession," and the "bride's prelude." millais and holman hunt, whose friendship dated from the academy schools, found ground for sympathetic union with rossetti in their common distaste for contemporary art. they were convinced it was necessary to abandon the conventional style of the day and return to a severe and conscientious study of nature. they were for a while uncertain as to the path to pursue. where should they turn for precept and guidance on the line of their new-found principles? looking through a book of engravings from the campo santo of pisa one day at millais' house, they thought they had found there the direction they sought. mr. holman hunt tells us that the foundation of the pre-raphaelite brotherhood was the immediate result of coming across the book at that particular time. while holman hunt was painting "rienzi swearing revenge over his brother's corpse," and millais, "lorenzo and isabella," rossetti began his "girlhood of mary virgin." as can well be imagined that first composition gave him endless trouble and was the cause of the most violent fits of alternate depression and energy. but the following spring ( ), the three pictures were ready for exhibition. millais and hunt were hung in the royal academy exhibition and rossetti's in the so-called free exhibition, which was held in a gallery at hyde park corner. in the "girlhood of mary virgin," he represents a room in the virgin's home with a balcony on which her father, st. joachim, is seen tending a vine which grows up towards the top of the picture. on the right, against a dark green curtain, are the figures of st. anna and the virgin sitting at an embroidery frame. the mother, in dark green and brown garments with a dull red head-dress, is watching with clasped hands the work in front of her. the young girl, a quite unconventional madonna dressed in grey, pauses with a needle in her hand gazing in front of her at a child angel holding a white lily. underneath the pot in which the white lily grows are six big books bearing the names of the six cardinal virtues. the figures, as well as the dove which is perched on the trellis, bear halos, their names being inscribed within. rossetti painted his mother for st. anna and his sister christina for the virgin. changing her dark brown hair to golden, he broke a rule of the brotherhood, which decrees that the artist shall copy his model most scrupulously. the picture was signed with his name, followed by the three letters p.r.b. rossetti having revealed the meaning of these three letters to a friend it was soon generally known and no peace was given to those who dared to stand up against traditional authority. it is necessary to explain that, at that time, raphael was considered the greatest of all painters. all who came before him were ignored and a set of fixed rules supposed to have been deduced from his work was taught in all the schools. the revolt of the "brethren" was directed much more against those rules than against raphael's work which, in all probability, they hardly knew. [illustration: plate iii.--dante drawing the angel from the water-colour ( ½ in. by in.) painted in and first exhibited in the pre-raphaelite exhibition at russell place in . it is now in the taylorian museum at oxford the subject of this water-colour is taken from the following passage in the vita nuova: "on that day which fulfilled the year since my lady had been made of the citizens of eternal life, remembering me of her as i sat alone, i betook myself to draw the resemblance of an angel upon certain tablets. and while i did thus, chancing to turn my head i perceived that some were standing beside me, to whom i should have given courteous welcome, and that they were observing what i did: also i learned afterwards that they had been there awhile before i perceived them. perceiving whom, i arose for salutation and said: 'another was with me.'" the same incident has been commemorated by robert browning in his "one word more."] at about the same time that he painted "mary's girlhood," rossetti did a portrait in oils of his father, his first work of this kind. he also drew an outline design of a lute player and his lady, a subject taken from coleridge's "genevieve"; a pen-and-ink drawing of "gretchen in the chapel," with mephistopheles whispering in her ear, and "the sun may shine and we be cold," a sketch of a girl near a window, apparently a prisoner. to this period also belongs the important pen-and-ink drawing, "il saluto di beatrice," representing in two parts the meeting of dante and beatrice, first in a street of florence and secondly in paradise. the most important of rossetti's pre-raphaelite work during the two years following is the "ecce ancilla domini," quite in keeping in sentiment with the picture of the previous year. both these pictures are a little timid in treatment. in the "ecce ancilla domini," the virgin clad in white is sitting on her bed, as if just awakened, and sees with awe the full length of an angel, also clad in white, floating in front of her and holding a white lily in his hand. the walls are white but there is a blue curtain behind the virgin's head and a red embroidery on its frame is standing in the foreground at the foot of the bed. the drapery of the angel is a little stiff and the whole effect rather hard, but notwithstanding this youthful fault the whole work is restrained and full of charm both in drawing and colour. this picture was exhibited in at the same free exhibition, which was moved this year from hyde park corner to portland place. the pre-raphaelites were now attacked by the press still more fiercely than before, but they found a champion in ruskin who took up their defence in a series of letters to the _times_, and in so doing laid down an elaborate statement of principles. thus it came about that the broad and possibly nebulous ideas of the brethren became transmuted into hard and fast rules, which the young painters had to accept, partly out of gratitude to their benefactor, partly because they agreed with them. rossetti painted only three pictures strictly according to the pre-raphaelite rules. curiously enough the best genuine pre-raphaelite picture is "work" by ford madox brown, who not believing in cliques refused to join the group. round rossetti were grouped his brother, william michael, his sister christina, with woolner, collinson, deverell, millais, hunt, madox brown, william bell scott, and coventry patmore. of all these hunt and millais alone showed no inclination for writing. the group naturally formed a school of literary thought of which "the germ," originated by rossetti to propagate the ideas of the p.r.b., was the outcome. the cumbrous title "monthly thoughts in literature, poetry, and art," was first intended to be the title of this special publication of the brotherhood, but at a meeting held in rossetti's studio, newman street, in december , when the first number was just ready for publication it was decided to change the name for the simple title "the germ." this was proposed by mr. cave thomas, an intimate friend of the group. to the first number rossetti contributed "my sister's sleep," and a prose romance "hand and soul." following numbers contained "the blessed damozel," "the carillon," "sea limits" (under the title "from the cliffs"), and several sonnets. only the first two numbers of the publication were called "the germ." the publication was known as "art and poetry" in the third and fourth issues. "the germ," as its short career showed, did not meet with success, but it served to establish rossetti's reputation among a small group of artists and admirers. rossetti's literary contributions were far more matured than his paintings and it is surprising that they did not attract more attention. "hand and soul" is specially valuable as bearing a record of psychological experiences which gives a clear glimpse of rossetti's mind. iii the storm of abuse caused by his two first pictures assisted a natural inclination to give up his first source of religio-mystical inspiration. gradually the young painter groped his way towards romantic subjects and discovered a rich mine of them in the works of browning, dante, keats, and the "morte d'arthur" of malory. he may be said to have found there the subjects of most of his compositions, and his works inspired by these poets are delightfully full of originality and ingenuity. he tried first a large canvas from the page's song in "pippa passes" but had to abandon it. the composition of it remains in a little painting called "hist, said kate the queen," dated . he executed two other pen-and-ink designs from browning entitled "taurellos' first sight of fortune" and the "laboratory," at about the same time. probably the latter was his first essay in water-colour, it is very different from those for which he is popularly known. in "beatrice at the wedding feast, denying her salutation to dante," a small water-colour of from the "vita nuova," the central figure is a portrait of miss elizabeth siddal who became acquainted with rossetti at about this date. she was the daughter of a sheffield cutler and was working in a milliner's shop. walter deverell discovered her one day, when he was shopping with his mother. he persuaded her to sit for him for his "viola" and later to rossetti. her portrait can be seen in a picture by holman hunt and in millais' ophelia. miss siddal sat for most of the women in rossetti's earliest and finest water-colours. to belongs the beautiful little composition called "borgia," in which lucrezia can be seen dressed in an ample white gown brightened all over with coloured ribbons and bows, sitting with a lute in her hands. in the foreground two children are dancing. leaning over her left shoulder is the pope alexander vi., while her brother cæsar stands on the other side beating time with a knife against a wine-glass on the table. rossetti was not long in discovering that miss siddal had a strong aptitude for art. with his special gift of influencing others the position of model was soon merged into that of a pupil. under his guidance miss siddal made rapid progress and her water-colours show a fine sense of colour. the sympathy between artist and pupil ripened into affection. the exact date of their engagement is not known, but it was probably in , certainly not later than , and was at first kept secret at miss siddal's request. to the year belongs the water-colour, "king arthur's tomb," in which lancelot and guenevere are seen bidding farewell over the tomb of king arthur; and to the following year belong the three water-colours, "the nativity," "la belle dame sans merci," and the "annunciation," as well as the drawing for a wood-cut, illustrating a poem called "the maids of elfen-mere" by william allingham. [illustration: plate iv.--beata beatrix from the oil painting ( in. by in.) painted in for lord mount-temple, now in the tate gallery though undoubtedly inspired by the death of his wife, the motive of this picture was ostensibly taken from the vita nuova. the latin quotation inscribed on the frame, which was designed by rossetti himself, is taken from the following passage: "after this most gracious creature had gone out from among us, the whole city came to be as it were widowed and despoiled of all dignity. then i, left mourning in this desolate city, wrote unto the principal persons thereof, in an epistle, concerning its condition; taking for my commencement those words of jeremias: quomodo sedet sola civitas! etc." the date of the death of beatrice is also inscribed on the frame.] the artistic and romantic force which had produced the pre-raphaelite movement had another important work to do five or six years later, when a fusion of two movements took place: the early pre-raphaelites represented by rossetti, holman hunt, and millais, joined the later movement inaugurated by morris and burne-jones. the second of these groups originated at exeter college, oxford. it took shape like the first one in a revolt against the art formulæ of the age. the oxford group, like the p.r.b., had a magazine to express their views. at christmas burne-jones came up to london and was introduced to rossetti, whom he and morris admired greatly. rossetti contributed "the burden of nineveh," and a little altered version of "the blessed damozel" to the "oxford and cambridge magazine," the organ of william morris. one year later burne-jones and morris settled in london in rooms at red lion square. both young men were soon completely under rossetti's influence, and their studio became a sort of centre for all members of his circle. there, in order to furnish and decorate these rooms, the first essays in designing furniture were made. rossetti painted a pair of panels for a cabinet. he made use of the subject of his early pen-and-ink drawing, "the salutation of beatrice," representing, in two divisions, dante meeting beatrice in florence and again in paradise, with a figure of love standing between them in the midst of symbols. besides those panels rossetti painted on the backs of two arm-chairs, "gwendolen in the witch-tower" and the "arming of a knight," both subjects from poems by william morris. to belongs the charming series of water-colours acquired by william morris: "the damsel of the st. grael," "the death of breuse sans pitié," "the chapel before the lists," "the tune of seven towers," and "the blue closet." the two last were special favourites with morris who used their romantic titles for two of his poems. this year also, he painted the "wedding of st. george," "the gate of memory," "the garden bower," and a "christmas carol." during the vacation of rossetti went to oxford with morris to visit the architect, benjamin woodward, who was constructing a debating-hall for the union society. rossetti saw an opportunity for mural decoration, and arrangements were made with the building committee in charge that seven artists including rossetti, burne-jones, and morris, should undertake the decoration gratuitously, the union only defraying their expenses at oxford and providing all necessary material. rossetti took for subjects, "launcelot asleep before the chapel of the sanc grael" and "sir galahad, sir bors, and sir percival, receiving the sanc grael." before the pictures were finished they began to fade, the walls having been badly prepared and rossetti's designs were never completed. while at oxford, in the summer of , at the theatre, rossetti was very much impressed one night by the striking beauty of miss burden, the daughter of an oxford resident. he obtained an introduction in order to ask for sittings. a pen-and-ink head called "queen guinevere," probably meant to replace the earlier studies done for "launcelot at the shrine," was the first result of the new acquaintance. several years later, after the death of his wife, miss burden, then mrs. william morris, again sat to rossetti for several of his important pictures. [illustration: plate v.--the bower meadow from the oil painting ( in. by in.) in the collection of the late sir john milburn, bart., acklington, northumberland of this charming composition the landscape background was painted at sevenoaks in , and the figures were added and the whole finished in .] iv on the rd of may , the long delayed marriage of rossetti to miss siddal took place in st. clement's church, hastings, and the married couple went to paris for their honeymoon. while staying there rossetti did two pen-and-ink drawings one of which called "how they meet themselves," was done to replace the one made in and lost; the other representing a scene from the "life of johnson" by boswell, quite an unusual subject for the artist. to the same year belongs the picture representing lucrezia borgia washing her hands after preparing poison for her husband the duke alphonso of bisceglia. in rossetti's translation from the italian poets was at last published with the "vita nuova" in a volume entitled "the italian poets from cuillo d'alcamo to dante alighieri ( , , )." the painter poet was enabled to publish this book through messrs. smith, elder & co. by the generous assistance of ruskin who advanced £ to the publisher, but the sale of the first edition was only just sufficient to pay that sum back, leaving a balance of about £ to the author. he proposed to etch for the frontispiece a charming design of which various pen-and-ink versions exist, but being displeased with the plate he destroyed it. in the same year he painted a small portrait of his wife called "regina cordium." the head with ruddy hair hanging loose on the shoulders against a gold background, fills nearly all the canvas and a hand is seen on the left side of the picture holding a pansy. more than one replica of that portrait exists, and several heads from different sitters are called "regina cordium." another important production of the year is "cassandra." the subject is a scene on the walls of troy before hector's last battle. he has been warned in vain by the prophetess, who is seen leaning against a pillar, tearing her clothes in despair. hector is rushing down the steps, and the whole composition is full of soldiers, every space being filled with some incident related to the central subject, giving that aspect of concentrated composition so special to rossetti. the two years following his marriage ( - ) were amongst the most prolific of rossetti's life both in ideas and invention. besides "cassandra" he planned the composition for a large picture which was commissioned but never finished, representing perseus with the medusa's head; and he made the first pencil studies for his famous "beata beatrix." with is associated the water-colour, "bethlehem gate." it is also about this time ( - ) that the now famous firm of morris, marshall, faulkner & co. was established with the co-operation of william morris, faulkner, burne-jones, madox brown, webb, and others as active members. the idea of the commercial attempt on the artistic lines to reform the art of decoration and furniture-making was, says mr. mackail, largely due to madox brown, but perhaps more to rossetti, who, in spite of his artistic qualities, was a very good business man and had the scent of a trained financier for anything likely to pay. the little band of original artists and designers took in hand tapestry, furniture, wall papers, stained-glass, and later on, carpet weaving and dyeing. the terms under which they worked were very simple. each member was to be paid for the work commissioned by the firm, and the profits were to be divided in a proper ratio at the end. the new firm had plenty to do owing to the demand for ritual decorations caused by the anglo-catholic movement. amongst the first commissions were those for adorning two new churches then being built--st. martin-on-the-hill, scarborough, and st. michael at brighton. for the first one rossetti made a design for two pulpit panels and several windows. in dealing with stained-glass rossetti who was specially gifted as a decorator, understood his medium, and in making his design took into account all the limitations of the material. he did not seek to paint a picture on glass, but maintained that idea of a mosaic of coloured-glass that is seen to so much advantage in the early _vitraux_. amongst works designed by him for the firm morris & co. the following may be mentioned: "adam and eve," two designs for stained-glass, and "st. george and the dragon," six designs for stained-glass. one of them representing the princess drawing the fatal lot he painted as a water-colour. "king rene's honeymoon," a design for one of four panels representing the arts, was done for a gothic cabinet that mr. j. p. seddon ordered from morris & co. rossetti's design for "music" shows the king bent over a chamber-organ kissing his bride while she is playing. he designed also one of the minor panels "gardening." there is a water-colour of the same subject under the title of "spring." "amor, amans, amata," were three small figures in ovals, done for the back of a sofa, which rossetti had made for himself. he kept it for many years in his house at chelsea. "sir tristran and la belle iseult drinking the love potion" was a fine design intended to be one of a series of stained-glass windows. "king rene's honeymoon" was done for a series of stained-glass windows. "the annunciation" is a design for a window, quite different from the early version of the same subject. "threshing" is a design for a glazed tile. "the sermon on the mount" was done for a memorial window in christ church, albany street, erected in to the memory of his aunt, miss polidori. in either or rossetti designed two illustrations for his sister christina's book of poems "goblin market." they were engraved on wood and appear in messrs. macmillan's edition. in may mrs. rossetti gave birth to a still-born child. her recovery was slow, and this trouble did not improve her consumptive tendencies. she suffered, too, from a very severe form of neuralgia, for which laudanum was prescribed. on the night of the th of february she took an overdose and rossetti, returning home from lecturing at the working men's college, found her dying. in a terrible state of anxiety, after seeking one doctor after another, he called in madox brown for help, but all in vain. the following morning his wife died, after only two years of married life. the grief of rossetti was overwhelming and the touching scene in which he buried the manuscript of his poems with his beloved wife has been told many a time. v after this tragic event rossetti could no longer live in the rooms he had occupied at chatham place. he looked for some others, living meanwhile for a few months in a house in lincoln's inn fields. then he took a lease of the house at no. cheyne walk, sharing it at first with swinburne and meredith. mr. meredith did not stay long and after awhile mr. swinburne also gave up his tenancy, leaving rossetti sole occupant of the premises. one of the last works he did before his misfortune, and the last picture for which his wife sat to him, was the water-colour of "st. george and the princess sabra." for sometime after the blow of his wife's death he was idle. the first things he did after his recovery was a crayon portrait of his mother ( ) followed by "the girl at a lattice," "joan of arc," and a replica of his early "paolo and francesca." [illustration: plate vi.--the borgia family from the water-colour painted in and lately purchased by the south kensington museum rossetti first painted this subject in --a smaller size ½ by in. it is one of the richest of his small compositions.] the celebrated picture of "beata beatrix," now in the tate gallery is dated , but was finished later, being only partly painted in that year. in rossetti's own words the following is a description of the picture: "the picture illustrates the _vita nuova_, embodying symbolically the death of beatrice as treated in that work. the picture is not intended at all to represent death, but to render it under the semblance of a trance in which beatrice, seated at a balcony overlooking the city, is suddenly rapt from earth to heaven...." the whole strikes a sombre note apart from its symbolic representation through its delicious purple harmony. the city in the sunset light in the distance, supposed to be florence, is very like london in atmospheric effect. beatrice is seen sitting at the balcony against the sunset background, with the light playing round her golden auburn hair, in fashion suggesting an aureole. she is dressed in green with dull purple sleeves. a bright red bird holding in its beak a dim purple poppy, emblem of death, is flying towards her. in the misty distance the figures of dante and love are watching her. rossetti painted in a replica of that picture, adding to the main subject the meeting of dante and beatrice in paradise, with maidens bearing instruments of music. he was rather reluctant to send out that replica, but the unwillingness was overcome. he painted several others, none of them being equal in quality to the original. in rossetti painted an oil picture called "helen of troy," and the last of the st. george subjects, representing st. george killing the dragon, which is a water-colour version of the stained-glass series. then come three small subjects, "belcolore," a girl in a circular frame biting a rosebud. of this there is a red chalk study and a water-colour version, "brimfull," a water-colour showing a lady stooping to sip from a full glass, and a picture called "a lady in yellow." rossetti now gave up painting those quaint little romantic subjects so intense in literary feeling and dramatic expression, and devoted himself to large single figures upon a background of rich accessories. when a painter makes a single figure the central interest of his picture, he must, to a certain extent, avail himself of psychological facts in the model before him, for if he recognises no limits to the foreign sentiment and character he may impose, he will, little by little, fall to the creation of a type which is not far short of a monstrosity. although the first of his pictures in this new style are among his finest works we see this inevitable degeneration in rossetti's latest paintings. the first pictures of this kind and some of the best are, "fazio's mistress," and "lady lilith." the former is dated , but was altered and repainted ten years later, and rossetti changed its title to "aurelia." in he painted the latter which is a modern conception of that first wife of adam mentioned in the old talmudic legend. the lady lilith is seated against a background covered with roses. dressed in white, she holds a mirror in her hand, and combs her long fair hair. although dated it was really not finished until . the face as it is now was repainted in from a different model, and is said to be quite inferior to the former one. rossetti at that time seemed to be a victim of a mania for repainting his earlier work. the next great picture, begun in , is "venus verticordia," the oil version of which was not finished before . it represents the nude bust of a massively built woman surrounded by roses and honeysuckle. she holds an arrow in her right hand and in the left an apple on which a yellow butterfly has alighted. the face is conventionally pretty and lacks character. "morning music," an elaborate little water-colour; "monna pomona," a girl holding an apple with roses on her lap and in a basket at her side; "how sir galahad, sir bors, and sir percival received the holy grael" (done in his earlier manner); "roman de la rose," a water-colour version of the earlier panel, and "the madness of ophelia," represent the remaining production of . there is little to mention in . the most important productions of that year were "the blue bower," and "the merciless lady." in the "merciless lady," a water-colour in the style of his earlier romantic manner, a man sits on a bank of turf between two maidens, with a sunlit meadow behind. he seems attracted by the one on his left who is fair and plays a lute, the other, his lady love, holds his hand and with a sad expression tries to win him back to her. "a fight for a woman," the composition of which is of a very early date, and the oil-painting, "bella e buona," but renamed "il ramoscello," were also painted in . after these came "the beloved," finished in , but worked again in , this time without being spoiled. in writing to the owner of this picture rossetti said: "i mean it to be like jewels," and he carried out his intention. in the middle of the picture is the fair-haired bride radiant in rich stuffs, her gown is green, with large sleeves embroidered in gold and red. she is surrounded by four dark-haired maidens, on the foreground a little negro, adorned with a head-band and a necklace showing the beautiful invention of rossetti's taste in decorative art, is holding a golden vase of roses. next comes the "monna vanna," which represents a lady dressed in a magnificent embroidered robe with large sleeves, holding a fan of black and yellow plumes. her luxuriant hair is falling from each side of her face on to her shoulders, a bunch of roses is seen in a vase on the left top corner of the picture. "the sibylla palmifera," and "monna vanna," were not completed before . the latter represents a sibyl sitting underneath a stone canopy, which is carved on one side with a cupid's head wreathed with roses, and on the other with a skull crowned with red poppies. the sibyl is clad in crimson, her brown hair is parted and falling each side of her face, a green coif spreads from her head over her shoulder and she holds a palm-leaf in her hand. there is a replica of the head of "sibylla palmifera." in the same year ( ) he painted in oils a portrait of his mother, and made a large crayon drawing of his sister christina. he also made two illustrations for her volume of poems, "the prince's progress." in rossetti painted in oils "the christmas carol," of which a crayon study exists; "monna rosa," and the "loving cup." for the water-colour, "the return of tibullus to delia," there are numerous sketches made from miss siddal sitting on a couch biting a tress of her hair, which show that the design must have been of a much earlier date. the water-colours, "aurora," "tessa la bionda;" the crayons, "magdalene," "peace," "contemplation," and the crayon replica, "venus verticordia," bear the same date. unfortunately about this time rossetti began to have serious trouble with his eyesight, and had probably to reduce his hours of work. all the same in he painted a portrait of mrs. morris, who has kindly lent it to the tate gallery, where it can now be seen. several chalk crayon studies have been done for this portrait. then he began the picture of "the daydream," representing mrs. morris sitting on the lower branches of a sycamore tree, a replica in water-colour of "bocca baciate," called "bionda del balcone"; "the rose," a water-colour; a crayon drawing, "aurea catena," some studies for "la pia," which was begun about this time, and a water-colour replica of "venus verticordia." [illustration: plate vii.--dante's dream from the oil painting ( ft. by ft. ½) now in the walker art gallery, liverpool this picture which is considered by some to be rossetti's most important work, illustrates the following passage in the vita nuova: "then my heart that was so full of love said unto me: 'is it true that our lady lieth dead'; and it seemed to me that i went to look upon the body wherein that blessed and most noble spirit had had its abiding-place. and so strong was this idle imagining, that it made me behold my lady in death, whose head certain ladies seemed to be covering with a white veil." this picture, painted in , passed through several hands and was taken back by rossetti from mr. valpy, on account of its large size in exchange for several smaller works. it was eventually bought by the liverpool corporation. rossetti first treated this subject in a little water-colour painted for miss heaton in .] rossetti had now reached his fortieth year and for about a twelvemonth had been suffering from insomnia. this was the cause of the break-up of his health, for to gain relief he acquired the habit of taking chloral, a drug of which the properties were then little known. vi during a visit to penkill the thought of publishing his early poems occurred to him. towards the end of he was busy with their preparation. some of them were in circulation in manuscript in a more or less finished condition and some others were buried with his wife. as a relief from the strain of painting he began to write again. "the ballad of troy town," part of "eden bower," and the "stream's secret," were among the new poems. he thought at first to collect as many of the earlier works as he could remember, together with those of which friends had manuscript copies, and to have them set up in type as the foundation of a possible volume. but he was persuaded with difficulty to apply for permission to open the grave of his wife in order to recover the buried manuscript. in the book, under the title, "poems by dante gabriel rossetti," was published by mr. f. s. ellis, then in king street, covent garden. round rossetti and his buried poems a sort of legend had been growing up which, aided by his fame as a painter, guarded his work against the indifference with which a volume of verses by an unknown poet is bound to be received. the book proved a great success and within a week or two rossetti found himself in possession of £ . this success was not achieved without raising some jealousy. mr. buchanan, under the pseudonym of "thomas maitland" rushed into print with the damning essay that appeared in the _contemporary review_ for october , under the title "the fleshly school of poetry." this attack was repeated by the same writer in a pamphlet. rossetti in ill health and suffering from nervous fancies, considered that there was a conspiracy against him, a view that, had his health been stronger, he would not perhaps have adopted. the publication of the article aggravated his insomnia. dr. gordon hake offered him his house at roehampton in order to procure a change for the sufferer, who either by accident or of set purpose had taken the contents of a phial of laudanum, and lay for two days between life and death. prompt treatment, and his strong constitution helped recovery. he was taken to scotland where he resumed work on a replica of "beata beatrix." out-of-door exercise, early hours, and absence of worries, helped a great deal to bring about his partial recovery. in september he left scotland and went to kelmscott where he shared a fine elizabethan manor house with william morris. his work during - consisted mostly in repainting many of his earlier pictures. he worked again on "lilith," "beloved," "monna vanna," and others. in july he left kelmscott and came back to london, never to return to the quiet manor house, which from this time was in possession of morris alone. besides retouching his earlier work during the time of his stay at kelmscott, rossetti started a number of new canvases, and made a certain number of studies for use in future work. among them are: "rosa triplex," three heads from the same sitter, miss may morris. this drawing is one of four or five versions. a portrait in red chalk on grey-green paper of mrs. w. j. stillman, "la donna de la fiamma," and "silence," probably studies for pictures never painted, the little head of a lady holding a small branch of rose-leaves called "rose-leaf." "mariana," an oil painting, its title taken from a scene of "measure for measure," and "a lady with a fan," being a portrait of mrs. schott, were all prepared about this time. he also started the first studies for his big picture, "dante's dream," among them a study from mrs. morris for the head of the dead beatrice, a head of dante, and studies for the two maidens holding the pall. "troy town," after his own ballad, and "the death of lady macbeth," are two designs for pictures never painted. "pandora" was completed in . "water willow," a portrait of mrs. morris is specially interesting because the river landscape behind represents kelmscott. a coloured chalk study for that picture exists, the only difference between the portrait and the study being that the background of the latter represents a river without the view of kelmscott. the "dante's dream" begun in was finished towards the end of . it is the largest picture rossetti ever painted, the subject is that of the early water-colour of , and the picture illustrates the following: "then love spoke thus: 'now all shall be made clear; come and behold our lady where she lies.' * * * * * then carried me to see my lady dead; and standing at her head her ladies put a veil over her; and with her was such very humbleness that she appeared to say, 'i am at peace.'" in the composition dante is led by love to where beatrice lies dead, and love bends down to kiss her. on either side of the bier where she lies, two maidens dressed in green are holding a pall covered with may flowers and the floor is strewed with poppies, emblem of death. on each side of the picture there are winding staircases through which one sees the sunny streets of florence. love is dressed in flame colour and birds of the same hue are flying about to suggest that the place is filled with the spirit of love. proserpine was the next picture rossetti undertook. it was begun on four canvases. the fourth when finished was sold. rossetti, who at that time had assistants to help him in making the replicas of his earlier work, painted to satisfy the demand of his patrons, and much controversy raged round this picture. it is impossible to say if it was entirely painted by him, but he owned to it although it was not a good one. the purchaser was dissatisfied so he agreed to take it back. the three unfinished versions were cut down and transformed into heads, one of which, with the adding of some floral accessories, and a slight change in the hands, was called "blanziflore" or "snowdrops." one cannot help being a little puzzled by the notion of beginning four canvases of the same picture at the same time, it suggests too much of the commercial spirit. in "veronica veronese," and the "bower meadow," were painted, the former illustrating the following lines, supposed to be a quotation taken from girolamo ridolfi's letters which are inscribed on the frame: "se penchant vivement la véronica jeta les premières notes sur la feuille vierge. ensuite elle prit l'archet du violon pour réaliser son rêve; mais avant de décrocher l'instrument suspendu, elle resta quelques instants immobile en écoutant l'oiseau inspirateur, pendant que sa main gauche errait sur les cordes cherchant le motif suprême encore éloigné. c'était le mariage des voix de la nature et de l'âme--l'aube d'une création mystique." the lady veronica, dressed in green, is sitting in front of a little table on which is her music manuscript. behind her on the left-hand top corner is a canary perched on a cage and at her side stands a glass of daffodils. she is leaning forward as if listening to the bird, plucking with her left hand the strings of a violin hanging on the wall in front of her while she holds the bow in her right hand. [illustration: plate viii.--astarte syriaca from the oil painting ( in. by in.) now in the corporation art gallery at manchester this picture was painted for mr. clarence fry of the firm elliot and fry, in and was first exhibited at the royal academy in .] the "bower meadow" represents two women playing instruments and two dancing figures, for which he made charming crayon studies. all these figures were painted on an old background study of trees and foliage he had painted in , in his pre-raphaelite days when he was working with holman hunt. the next great oil canvas is dated , and is called "the ghirlandata." to this year belongs "ligeia siren," a drawing of a sea-maiden playing on a musical instrument, a preliminary study for "sea spell." "the damsel of the sanc grael" was painted in ; it is a second version of that subject strangely showing the psychological change in rossetti. the primitive simplicity so characteristic of the mediæval legend and also of his early work has disappeared. the austere damsel has become a "pretty" girl, with fair flowing hair, who holds a goblet. the unfinished "boat of love" was also begun in . rossetti came back to london in that year as has already been stated. the dissolution of the firm morris, marshall, faulkner & co. took place at that time and was reconstituted under the sole management of morris. the dissolution did not take place without a certain amount of friction, caused by the disagreement between morris and brown. rossetti seems to have taken brown's part, and although rossetti and morris did not quarrel, they saw very little of one another from that date. but it is well to remember that rossetti lived a very secluded life, seeing very few people and labouring under the delusion that a widespread conspiracy existed against him. this was apparently one of the hallucinations resulting from the habitual use of chloral. the end of and beginning of were passed first in a house at bognor and after at a friend's in hampshire. the artist was then working on his pictures, "the blessed damozel," "the spirit of the rainbow," and "forced music." in serious illness kept him two months in bed, and when better he was taken to a little cottage near herne bay. there he was able to resume his work and drew a crayon group of his mother and sister as well as two separate drawings of his sister and one of his mother. to that year belongs the "astarte syriaca" (now in the corporation art gallery of manchester). the syrian venus stands against a red sunset sky in which the moon is rising, gazing full face, with large dreamy eyes. on the right and left two angel figures, holding torches, look upwards. in that year the grosvenor gallery was founded and madox brown, rossetti, and burne-jones were asked to exhibit. madox brown and rossetti refused, but burne-jones accepted. the exhibition of his work there brought him the enormous popularity he enjoyed. down to that time the public curiosity which had been roused by the controversies following the forming of the p.r.b. had not been satisfied. vii after rossetti kept strictly to his house at cheyne walk visited only by a few faithful friends. he began to write again in . by march he had enough material for a new volume, "ballads and sonnets," the ms. of which was offered to and accepted by messrs. ellis & white on the same terms as his first book, now out of print after running into a sixth edition. the "ballads and sonnets" met with quite as great success as the earlier volume, this time without any discordant note of criticism. in this year rossetti sold his great picture of "dante's dream" to the corporation of liverpool. the two finished works of are: "a vision of fiametta," and a water-colour called "bruna brunelleschi." to that year must be added the unfinished design called "desdemona's death song," various studies for the figure of desdemona, a design of the entire composition done on a scale about half-life size, as well as a beginning of the picture on canvas, which was not continued. the faust subject that he intended to paint, "gretchen, or risen at dawn," was not more advanced. as time went on and his health failed his output diminished. in rossetti painted a replica of the "blessed damozel" with its predella, changing the background of lovers and substituting two angels' heads. "la donna de la fenestra" was also completed in that year. in and rossetti was working on three large pictures, "the day dream," "the salutation of beatrice," and "la pia," as well as on "found," the early attempt at a modern subject that he was never able to finish. he painted several replicas, the most important being a smaller version of "dante's dream." the "daydream" begun in was also completed at this time and the picture has since been given to the south kensington museum by its owner mr. ionidès. "the salutation of beatrice" is quite different from the earlier design of the same name and shows those defects of his later work that we have pointed out; it was not quite finished at the time of his death. "la pia" is the last picture painted and shows the same faults as the last mentioned. in september rossetti went for a trip in the lake district of cumberland accompanied by mr. hall caine, but after a month his health grew worse and he returned in haste to london. a few days later he became so ill that he required very careful nursing. after a partial recovery from this illness he was once more interrupted in his work by an attack of nervous paralysis, which seized him suddenly. this last attack was due to the chloral he had been in the habit of taking for so long and it was then strictly forbidden. the habit of so many years was not to be broken without much discomfort and suffering, but he gradually got better. as soon as he was well enough he was taken to birchington-on-sea in february , there he managed to work a little, but was soon attacked by an old disorder, and in his weakened state of health he could not throw it off. he grew weaker and worse. death came with the th of april , and the painter poet is buried in the little churchyard of birchington. in the last days of his life, when he could paint no more, he made an attempt to finish the story of "st. agnes of intercession" which was begun for the "germ," he also completed the ballad of "jan van hunks," and wrote a couple of sonnets for his drawing called the "question." most of the critics who have written on rossetti deplore the fact that he did not learn to paint, but to artists one of the greatest charms of his pictures (especially the early ones) is the unexpectedness of their composition. we owe that charm in a great measure to the fact that happily he had not been spoiled by the sophisticated teaching of academic schools, but had kept the bloom of his poetical inspiration. we must thank the instinct of the young man, which made him avoid a teaching which is bound to be fatal to both realism and romanticism. it may be that he himself deplored the lack of training at certain moments of discouragement in his life, but the kind of training available at the time of his début would not have added much to his achievement. he managed to say what he had to say, and in many cases to say it well. he saved himself the loss of time necessary to forget certain of the artistic préjugés then in vogue, they would have been very much in his way, even if he had quite succeeded in getting rid of them. the rather amateurish side to rossetti's art is vastly compensated for by the precious qualities he has been able to preserve. it is unfortunate that, through his refusal to exhibit, the public has been acquainted first with his later work, which shows the decline of his faculties caused by his ill health. neither the fresh creations of his early work nor the gorgeous pieces of his middle period are as well known as they deserve to be. as a young man rossetti possessed an extraordinary influence over the members of the group round him. later when his work became less sincere his influence declined and what promised to be at the beginning a great renaissance of the english school has ended with him. such a disaster is certain to befall the school or the artists who do not refresh themselves continually by the "communion" with nature. ruskin says in his pre-raphaelitism: "if they adhere to their principles, and paint nature as it is around them, with the help of modern science, with the earnestness of the men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they will, as i said, found a new and noble school in england. if their sympathies with the early artists lead them into mediævalism or romanism, they will of course come to nothing." these words were prophetic. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's note text in italics was surrounded by _underscores_ and text in small capitals was changed to all capitals. a few apparently missing periods were added. otherwise the original was preserved. masterpieces in colour edited by--t. leman hare bernardino luini in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. _in preparation_ van dyck. percy m. turner. whistler. t. martin wood. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. j. f. millet. percy m. turner. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. holbein. s. l. bensusan. boucher. c. haldane macfall. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. watteau. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. and others. [illustration: plate i.--madonna and child. frontispiece (in the wallace collection) this is another admirably painted study of the artist's favourite subject. the attitude of the child is most engaging, the painting of the limbs is full of skill, and the background adds considerably to the picture's attractions. it will be noted that luini appears to have employed the same model for most of his studies of the madonna.] bernardino luini by james mason illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. madonna and child frontispiece in the wallace collection page ii. il salvatore in the ambrosiana, milan iii. salomé and the head of st. john the baptist in the uffizi gallery, florence iv. the mystic marriage of st. catherine in the brera, milan v. the madonna of the rose in the brera, milan vi. detail of fresco in the brera, milan vii. head of virgin in the ambrosiana, milan viii. burial of st. catherine in the brera, milan [illustration] i a retrospect in the beginning of the long and fascinating history of italian art we see that the spirit of the renaissance first fluttered over the minds of men much as the spirit of life is said have moved over the face of the waters before the first chapter of creation's marvellous story was written. beginnings were small, progress was slow, and the lives of the great artists moved very unevenly to their appointed end. there were some who rose to fame and fortune during their life, and then died so completely that no biography can hope to rouse any interest in their work among succeeding generations. there were others who worked in silence and without _réclame_ of any sort, content with the respect and esteem of those with whom they came into immediate contact, indifferent to the plaudits of the crowd or the noisy praises of those who are not qualified to judge. true servants of the western world's religion, they translated work into terms of moral life, and moral life into terms of work. merit like truth will out, and when time has sifted good work from bad and spurious reputations from genuine ones, many men who fluttered the dovecotes of their own generation disappear from sight altogether; some others who wrought unseen, never striving to gain the popular ear or eye, rise on a sudden to heights that might have made them giddy had they lived to be conscious of their own elevation. they were lowly, but their fame inherits the earth. bernardino luini, the subject of this little study, calls us away from the great art centres--from venice and florence and rome; his record was made and is to be found to-day amid the plains of lombardy. milan is not always regarded as one of the great art centres of italy in spite of the brera, the ambrosiana, and the poldi pezzoli palace collections, but no lover of pictures ever went for the first time to the galleries of milan in a reverent spirit and with a patient eye without feeling that he had discovered a painter of genius. he may not even have heard his name before, but he will come away quite determined to learn all he may about the man who painted the wonderful frescoes that seem destined to retain their spiritual beauty till the last faint trace of the design passes beyond the reach of the eye, the man who painted the panel picture of the "virgin of the rose trees," reproduced with other of his master-works in these pages. [illustration: plate ii.--il salvatore (in the ambrosiana, milan) this picture, one of the treasures of the beautiful collection in the pinacoteca of ambrosiana in the piazza della rosa, hangs by the same artist's picture of "john the baptist as a child." the right hand of christ is raised in the attitude of benediction, and the head has a curiously genuine beauty. the preservation of this picture is wonderful, the colouring retains much of its early glow. the head is almost feminine in its tenderness and bears a likeness to luini's favourite model.] to go to the brera is to feel something akin to hunger for the history of bernardino luini or luino or luvino as he is called by the few who have found occasion to mention him, although perhaps luini is the generally accepted and best known spelling of the name. unfortunately the hungry feeling cannot be fully satisfied. catalogues or guide books date the year of luini's birth at or about , and tell us that he died in , and as this is a period that giorgio vasari covers, we turn eagerly to the well-remembered volumes of the old gossip hoping to find some stories of the lombard painter's life and work. we are eager to know what manner of man luini was, what forces influenced him, how he appeared to his contemporaries, whether he had a fair measure of the large success that attended the leading artists of his day. were his patrons great men who rewarded him as he deserved--how did he fare when the evening came wherein no man may work? surely there is ample scope for the score of quaint comments and amusing if unreliable anecdotes with which vasari livens his pages. we are confident that there will be much to reward the search, because bernardino luini and giorgio vasari were contemporaries after a fashion. vasari would have been twenty-one years old when luini died, the writer of the "lives" would have seen frescoes and panel pictures in all the glory of their first creation. he could not have failed to be impressed by the extraordinary beauty of the artist's conceptions, the skill of his treatment of single figures, the wealth of the curious and elusive charm that we call atmosphere--a charm to which all the world's masterpieces are indebted in varying degrees--the all-pervading sense of a delightful and refined personality, leaves us eager for the facts that must have been well within the grasp of the painter's contemporaries. alas for these expectations! vasari dismisses bernardino del lupino, as he calls him, in six or eight sentences, and what he says has no biographical value at all. the reference reads suspiciously like what is known in the world of journalism as padding. indeed, as vasari was a fair judge, and bernardino luini was not one of those venetians whom vasari held more or less in contempt, there seems to be some reason for the silence. perhaps it was an intimate and personal one, some unrecorded bitterness between the painter and one of vasari's friends, or between vasari himself and luini or one of his brothers or children. whatever the cause there is no mistake about the result. we grumble at vasari, we ridicule his inaccuracies, we regret his limitations, we scoff at his prejudices, but when he withholds the light of his investigation from contemporary painters who did not enjoy the favour of popes and emperors, we wander in a desert land without a guide, and search with little or no success for the details that would serve to set the painter before us. many men have taken up the work of investigation, for luini grows steadily in favour and esteem, but what vasari might have done in a week nobody has achieved in a decade. a few unimportant church documents relating to commissions given to the painter are still extant. he wrote a few words on his frescoes; here and there a stray reference appears in the works of italian writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but our knowledge when it has been sifted and arranged is remarkably small and deplorably incomplete. dr. j. c. williamson, a painstaking critic and a competent scholar, has written an interesting volume dealing with the painter, and in the making of it he has consulted nearly fifty authorities--italian, french, english, and german--only to find it is impossible to gather a short chapter of reliable and consecutive biography from them all. our only hope lies in the discovery of some rich store of information in the public or private libraries of milan among the manuscripts that are the delight of the scholars. countless documents lie unread, many famous libraries are uncatalogued, the archives of several noble italian houses that played an important part in fifteenth and sixteenth century italy have still to be given to the world. it is not unreasonable to suppose that records of luini's life exist, and in these days when scholarship is ever extending its boundaries there is hope that some scholar will lay the ever growing circle of the painter's admirers under lasting obligations. until that time comes we must be content to know the man through the work that he has left behind him, through the medium of fading frescoes, stray altarpieces, and a few panel pictures. happily they have a definite and pleasant story to tell. we must go to milan for luini just as we must go to rome for raphael and to madrid for velazquez and titian and to venice for jacopo robusti whom men still call the little dyer (tintoretto). in london we have one painting on wood, "christ and the pharisees," brought from the borghese palace in rome. the head of christ is strangely feminine, the four pharisees round him are finely painted, and the picture has probably been attributed to leonardo da vinci at some period of its career. there are three frescoes in south kensington and a few panel pictures in private collections. the louvre is more fortunate than our national gallery, it has several frescoes and two or three panels. in switzerland, in the church of st. mary and the angels in lugano, is a wonderful screen picture of the "passion of christ" with some hundreds of figures in it, and the rest of luini's work seems to be in italy. the greater part is to be found in milan, some important frescoes having been brought to the brera from the house of the pelucca family in monza, while there are some important works in florence in the pitti and uffizi galleries. in the church of st. peter at luino on the shores of lake maggiore, the little town where benardino was born and from which he took his name, there are some frescoes but they are in a very faded condition. the people of the lake side town have much to say about the master who has made luino a place of pilgrimage but their stories are quite unreliable. [illustration: plate iii.--salomÉ and the head of st. john the baptist (in the uffizi gallery, florence) in this striking and finely preserved picture bernardino luini has contrived to avoid all sense of horror. the head of the dead john the baptist is full of beauty, and even herodias is handled without any attempt to make her repulsive. sufficient contrast is supplied by the executioner on the right.] it might be held, seeing that the artist's work is scanty, and often in the last stages of decay, while his life story has faded quite from the recovered records of his contemporaries, that luini is hardly fit subject for discussion here. in a series of little books that seeks to introduce great artists to new friends through the medium of reproductions that show the work as it is, and a brief concise description that aims at helping those who are interested to study the master for themselves, there is a temptation to deal only with popular men. these give no trouble to their biographer or his readers, but after all it is not the number of pictures that an artist paints or the wealth of detail that his admirers have collected that establishes his claim to be placed among the immortals. his claim rests upon the quality of the work done, its relation to the times in which it was painted, the mood or spirit it reveals, the light it throws upon the mind that conceived and the hand that executed it. we know enough and to spare of the more flamboyant personalities of the venetian and florentine schools. long periods of study will not exhaust all there is to learn about men like titian, michelangelo, raphael of urbino, and the rest, but luini, though he left no written record, will not be denied. we dare not pass him by, seeing that we may introduce him to some admirers who will, in days to come, seek and find what remains beyond our reach at present. his appeal is so irresistible, the beauty of his work is so rare and so enduring that we must endeavour to the best of our ability, however small it be, to declare his praise, to stimulate inquiry, enlarge his circle, and give him the place that belongs to him of right. there are painters in plenty whose work is admired and praised, whose claims we acknowledge instantly while admitting to ourselves that we should not care to live with their pictures hanging on round us. the qualities of cleverness and brilliance pall after a little time, the mere conquest of technical difficulties of the kind that have been self-inflicted rouses admiration for a while and then leaves us cold. but the man who is the happy possessor of a fresco or a panel picture by luini is to be envied. even he who lives in the neighbourhood of some gallery or church and only sees the rare master's works where, "blackening in the daily candle smoke, they moulder on the damp wall's travertine," will never tire of luini's company. he will always find inspiration, encouragement, or consolation in the reflection of the serene and beautiful outlook upon life that gave the work so much of its enduring merit. luini, whatever manner of man he may have been, was so clearly enamoured of beauty, so clearly intolerant of what is ugly and unrefined, that he shrank from all that was coarse and revolting either in the life around him or in certain aspects of the bible stories that gave him subjects for his brush. beauty and simplicity were the objects of his unceasing search, his most exquisite expression. like all other great painters he had his marked periods of development, his best work was done in the last years of his life, but there is nothing mean or trivial in any picture that he painted and this is the more to his credit because we know from the documents existing to-day that he lived in the world and not in the cloister. we admire the perennial serenity of beato angelico, we rejoice with him in his exquisite religious visions. the peaceful quality of his painting and the happy certainty of his faith move us to the deepest admiration, but we may not forget that angelico lived from the time when he was little more than a boy to the years when he was an old man in the untroubled atmosphere of the monastery of san marco in florence, that whether he was at home in that most favoured city or working in the vatican at rome, he had no worldly troubles. honour, peace, and a mind at peace with the world were with him always. bernardino luini on the other hand travelled from one town in italy to another, employed by religious houses from time to time, but always as an artist who could be relied upon to do good work cheaply. he could not have been rich, he could hardly have been famous, it is even reasonable to suppose that his circumstances were straitened, and on this account the unbroken serenity of his work and his faithful devotion to beauty are the more worthy of our praise. what was beautiful in his life and work came from within, not from without, and perhaps because he was a stranger to the cloistered seclusion that made fra angelico's life so pleasantly uneventful his work shows certain elements of strength that are lacking from the frescoes that adorn the walls of san marco to this day. to his contemporaries he was no more than a little planet wandering at will round those fixed stars of the first magnitude that lighted all the world of art. now some of those great stars have lost their light and the little planet shines as clear as hesperus. ii as we have said already nothing is known of luini's early life, although the fact that he was born at luino on the lago maggiore seems to be beyond dispute. the people of that little lake side town have no doubt at all about the matter, and they say that the family was one of some distinction, that giacomo of luino who founded a monastery in his native place was the painter's uncle. perhaps the wish was father to the thought, and because every man who sets out to study the life and work of an artist is as anxious to know as was miss rosa dartle herself, there are always facts of a sort at his service. he who seeks the truth can always be supplied with something as much like it as paste is to diamonds, and can supplement the written word with the aid of tradition. the early life of the artist is a blank, and the authorities are by no means in agreement about the year of his birth. would seem to be a reasonable date, with a little latitude on either side. many men writing long years after the painter's death, have held that he was a pupil of leonardo da vinci, indeed several pictures that were attributed to da vinci by the authorities of different european galleries are now recognised as luini's work, but the mistake is not at all difficult to explain. if we turn to "la joconda," a portrait by da vinci that hangs in the louvre to-day, and is apparently beyond dispute in the eyes of the present generation of critics, and then go through the brera in milan with a photograph of "la joconda's" portrait in our hand, it will be impossible to overlook the striking resemblance between luini's types and da vinci's smiling model. leonardo had an academy in milan, and it is reasonable to suppose that luini worked in it, although at the time when he is supposed to have come for the first time to the capital of lombardy, leonardo da vinci had left, apparently because louis xii. of france, cousin and successor of that charles viii. who had troubled the peace of italy for so long, was thundering at the city gates, and at such a time great artists were apt to remember that they had good patrons elsewhere. the school may, however, have remained open because no great rulers made war on artists, and luini would have learned something of the spirit that animated leonardo's pictures. for other masters and influence he seems to have gone to bramantino and foppa. bramantino was a painter of milan and ambrosio foppa known as caradosso was a native of pavia and should not be reckoned among milanese artists as he has so often been. he was renowned for the beauty of his medals and his goldsmith's work; and he was one of the men employed by the great family of bentivoglio. [illustration: plate iv.--the mystic marriage of st. catherine (in the brera, milan) this is a singularly attractive picture in which the child christ may be seen placing the ring upon the finger of st. catherine. the little open background, although free from the slightest suggestion of palestine, is very charming, and the head of the virgin and st. catherine help to prove that luini used few models.] it may be mentioned in this place that many italian artists, particularly those of the florentine schools, suffered very greatly from their unceasing devotion to the art of the miniaturist. they sought to achieve his detail, his fine but cramped handling, and this endeavour was fatal to them when they came to paint large pictures that demanded skilled composition, and the subordination of detail to a large general effect. the influence of the miniature painter and the maker of medals kept many a fifteenth-century painter in the second grade and luini never quite survived his early devotion to their methods, often making the fatal mistake of covering a large canvas with many figures of varying size but equal value. it may be remarked that tintoretto was the first great painter of the renaissance who learned to subordinate parts to the whole, and he had to face a great deal of unpopularity because he saw with his own eyes instead of using those of his predecessors. [illustration: plate v.--the madonna of the rose (in the brera, milan) modern criticism proclaims this picture of the virgin in a bower of roses to be the finest of the master's paintings. not only is it delightfully composed and thought out but the background is painted with rare skill, and the colour is rich and pleasing to this day.] it may be suggested, with all possible respect to those who hold different opinions, that luini, though he responded to certain influences, had no master in the generally accepted sense of the term. one cannot trace the definite relation between him and any older painter that we find between titian and gian bellini, for example. he took a certain type from leonardo, his handling from time to time recalls the other masters--we have already referred to the most important of these--but had he studied in the school of one man, had he served an apprenticeship after the fashion of his contemporaries, his pictures would surely have been free from those faults of composition and perspective that detract so much from the value of the big works. he seems to have been self-taught rather than to have been a schoolman. while his single figures are wholly admirable whether on fresco or on panel, his grouping is nearly always ineffective, one might say childish, and his sense of perspective is by no means equal to that of his greatest contemporaries. as a draughtsman and a colourist luini had little to learn from anybody, and the poetry of his conceptions is best understood when it is remembered that he was a poet as well as a painter. he is said to have written poems and essays, though we are not in a position to say where they are to be found, and it is clear that he had a singularly detached spirit and that the hand of a skilled painter was associated with the mind of a little child. in some aspects he is as simple as those primitive painters of umbria whose backgrounds are all of gold. like so many other painters of the renaissance luini's saints and angels are peasant folk, the people he saw around him. he may have idealised them, but they remain as they were made. a few records of the prices paid for luini's work exist among the documents belonging to churches and religious houses, and while they justify a belief that at the time he came to milan luini had achieved some measure of distinction in his calling, they seem to prove that he was hardly regarded as a great painter. the prices paid to him are ridiculously small, no more than a living wage, but he had the reputation of being a reliable and painstaking artist and he would seem to have been content with a small reward for work that appealed to him. his early commissions executed in and around milan when he first came from luini were numerous and consisted very largely of frescoes which are the work of a young man who has not yet freed his own individuality from the influence of his elders. one of the most charming works associated with this period is the "burial of st. catherine," which is reproduced in these pages. the composition is simple enough, the handling does not touch the summit of the painter's later achievements, but the sentiment of the picture is quite delightful. st. catherine is conceived in a spirit of deepest reverence and devotion, but the angels are just lombardy peasant girls born to labour in the fields and now decorated with wings in honour of a great occasion. and yet the man who could paint this fresco and could show so unmistakably his own simple faith in the story it sets out, was a poet as well as a painter even though he had never written a line, while the treatment of his other contemporary frescoes and the fine feeling for appropriate colour suggest a great future for the artist who had not yet reached middle age. we see that luini devoted his brush to mythological and sacred subjects, touching sacred history with a reverent hand, shutting his eyes to all that was painful, expressing all that was pitiful or calculated to strengthen the hold of religion upon the mass in fashion destined to appeal though in changing fashion for at least four centuries. where the works have failed to triumph as expressions of a living faith they have charmed agnostics as an expression of enduring beauty. from milan luini seems to have gone to monza, a city a few miles away from the capital of lombardy where the rulers of united italy come after their coronation to receive the iron crown that has been worn by the kings of lombardy for nearly a thousand years. this is the city in which the late king umberto, that brave and good man, was foully murdered by an anarchist. to-day one reaches monza by the help of a steam-tram that blunders heavily enough over the wide flat lombardy plain. the milanese go to monza for the sake of an outing, but most of the tourists who throng the city stay away, and it is possible to spend a few pleasant hours in the cathedral and churches with never a flutter of red-covered guide book to distract one's attention from the matters to which the hasty tourist is blind. here luini painted frescoes, and it is known that he stayed for a long time at the house of one of the strong men of monza and painted a large number of frescoes there. to-day the fortress, if it was one, has become a farmhouse, and the frescoes, more than a dozen in all, have been taken away to the royal palace in milan. dr. williamson in his interesting volume to which the student of luini must be deeply indebted, says that there is one left at the casa pelucca. the writer in the course of two days spent in monza was unfortunate enough to overlook it. it has been stated that the facts relating to luini's life are few and far between. fiction on the other hand is plentiful, and there is a story that luini, shortly after his arrival in milan, was held responsible by the populace for the death of a priest who fell from a hastily erected scaffolding in the church of san giorgio where the artist was working. the rest of the legend follows familiar lines that would serve the life story of any leading artist of the time, seeing that they all painted altar-pieces and used scaffolding. he is said to have fled to monza, to have been received by the chief of the pelucca family, to have paid for his protection with the frescoes that have now been brought from monza to the brera, to have fallen violently in love with the beautiful daughter of the house, to have engaged in heroic contests against great odds on her behalf, and so on, _ad absurdum_. if we look at the portraits the painter is said to have made of himself and to have placed in pictures at saronna and elsewhere we shall see that luini was hardly the type of man to have engaged in the idle pursuits of chivalry in the intervals of the work to which his life was given. we have the head of a man of thought not that of a man of action, and all the character of the face gives the lie to the suggestions of the storytellers. it is clear, however, that the painter made a long stay in monza and when he came back to milan he worked for the churches of st. maurizio, santa maria della pace, santa maria di brera, and st. ambrosia. [illustration: plate vi.--detail of fresco (in the brera, milan) this prettily posed figure is at the base of a fresco of the virgin with saints in the brera. part of the artist's signature (bernardinus louinus) may be seen below. it will be remembered that carpaccio painted a very similar subject. the fresco is not too well preserved.] in milan he found a great patron, no less a man than giovanni bentivoglio who had been driven from his rule over bologna by the "terrible pontiff" julius ii., that life-long opponent and bitter enemy of the borgia pope alexander vi. alessandro bentivoglio, the son of the ruined giovanni, married ippolita sforza, daughter of one of the house that had done so much to rule rome until pope alexander vi. broke its power. alessandro bentivoglio commissioned luini to paint altar-pieces in st. maurizio where his father was buried, and the painter included in his work a portrait of ippolita sforza with three female saints. he did much other work in this church; some of it has faded almost beyond recognition. at the same time there is no need to think that we have recovered the last work of luini or indeed of the great masters even in the churches of italy. only a few months ago the writer was in a small italian church that had suffered a few years ago from disastrous floods. the water unable to find no outlet had risen for a time almost to the top of the supporting columns. the smooth wall above was plastered, and when the waters had subsided it was found that the plaster had become so damaged that it was necessary to remove it. happily the work was done carefully, for under the whitewash some excellent frescoes were discovered. they would seem to have profited by their covering for as much as has been uncovered is rich and well preserved. it may be that in days when the state of italy was seriously disturbed, and napoleon, greatest of highwaymen and conquerors, after being crowned in milan with the famous monza crown, was laying his hand on all that seemed worth carrying away, some one in authority thought of this simple method of concealment, and obtained expert advice that enabled the frescoes to be covered without serious damage. under similar conditions we may yet discover some of the earlier work of luini, because it is clear that the years in which his reputation was in the making must have been full of achievement of which the greater part has now been lost. he could hardly have been less than thirty years of age when he came to milan with a reputation sufficient to gain commissions for work in churches; that reputation must have taken years to acquire, and must have been associated with very definite accomplishment. the lack of all record was essentially the misfortune that beset men who were not very high in the esteem of their contemporaries. a painter like luini would have executed a great many pictures for people who could not pay very well, and had no great gallery or well-built church to harbour the work, and in the course of time the work would tend inevitably to disappear before the devouring candle-smoke, or to be carried away by unscrupulous purchasers who chanced to be better equipped with taste than conscience. on the other hand, painters who led the various movements of their time would be honoured by successive generations and their work would be stored in the best and safest places. to be sure, fire was never a respecter of palaces or persons, and the flames have consumed more work than a collection of the finest renaissance pictures in existence could show, but even then the odds seem to be in favour of the bigger men because special efforts would be made to save their paintings while those of lesser men would be left with few regrets to take their chance. when luini was engaged to work in the church of st. maurizio there was a fair chance that his altar-pieces and frescoes would be well looked after, but when he worked for a small provincial family like the pelucca the house sank with the family fortunes till at last it became a farm, and in the early years of the nineteenth century the frescoes were taken from the walls with as much care as was deemed advisable. doubtless luini worked for many men whose worldly position was not as considerable as that of the pelucca family, and that work may have disappeared altogether. the painter, as we have seen, did not enjoy the patronage of many great men before alessandro bentivoglio, and large institutions were not numbered among his early clients. but he was not altogether without valuable patronage in the latter days, and in the early 'twenties of the sixteenth century the influential brotherhood of the holy crown, one of the leading charitable institutions of milan, would seem to have given him some official connection with their institution; a recognised position without fixed salary. for them he painted the magnificent frescoes now in the ambrosian library. the great work there was divided by the artist into three parts separated by pillars. in the centre luini has depicted the crowning with thorns, christ being seated upon a throne while thorns are being put upon his head; his arms are crossed; his expression one of supreme resignation. above him little angels look down or point to a cartouche on which is written "caput regis gloriæ spinis coranatur." in the left hand division of the fresco and on the right, the fore-ground is filled with kneeling figures whose heads are supposed to be portraits of the most prominent members of the society. clearly they are all men who have achieved some measure of honour and distinction. above the kneeling figures on the left hand side st. john is pointing out the tragedy of the central picture to the virgin mary, while on the right hand side a man in armour and another who is seen faintly behind him call the attention of a third to what is happening. a crown of thorns hangs above the right and the left hand compartment and there is a landscape for background. it is recorded that this work took about six months, and was finished in march at a cost to the society of soldi. so luini's work looks down to-day upon a part of the great ambrosian library, and it may well be that the library itself will yield to patient investigation some record, however simple, of the painter's life, sufficient perhaps to enable us to readjust our mental focus and see his lovable figure more clearly. [illustration: plate vii.--head of virgin (in the ambrosiana, milan) here we have another well painted and finely preserved head painted from one of luini's favourite models. the artist must have known most of the secrets of colour preparation, for his work has survived much that was painted centuries later. unfortunately his frescoes were exposed to the elements and have suffered accordingly.] it may be urged that for those of us who are content to see with the spiritual eye luini is expressed more eloquently by his work, and particularly by this great picture in the ambrosian library, than he could hope to be by the combined efforts of half-a-dozen critics, each with his own special point of view and his properly profound contempt for the views of others. the painter's low tones and subtle harmonies, his pure but limited vision, speak to us of a gentle, refined, and delicate nature, of an achievement that stopped short of cleverness and consequently limited him to the quieter byways of artistic life, while those whose inspiration was less, and whose gifts were more, moved with much pomp and circumstance before admiring contemporaries. the refined mind, the sensitive soul, shrank from depicting the tragedy of the crown of thorns in the realistic fashion that would have proved acceptable to so many other artists. luini forgets the blood and the spikes, he almost forgets the physical pain, and gives us the man of sorrows who has forgiven his tormentors because "they know not what they do." continental galleries show us many treatments of the same familiar theme, they have none to show that can vie with this in a combination of strength and delicacy that sets out an immortal story while avoiding the brutal realism to which so many other artists have succumbed. we may suppose that the objects of the society roused luini's sympathy to an extent that made it easy for him to accept the somewhat paltry remuneration with which the brotherhood of the holy crown rewarded him, and so the picture makes its own appeal on the painter's behalf, and tells a story of his claims upon our regard. a man may lie, in fact it may be suggested on the strength of the psalmist's statement that most men do, but an artist's life work tells his story in spite of himself, and if he labour with pen or brush his truest biography will be seen in what he leaves behind him. it is not possible to play a part throughout all the vicissitudes of a long career, and no man could have given us the pictures that luini has left unless he chanced to be a choice and rare spirit. we may remember here and now that the time was richer in violent contrasts than any of its successors, the most deplorable excesses on the one hand, the most rigid virtues on the other, seem to have been the special product of the renaissance. while there were men who practised every vice under the sun there were others who sought to arrest divine retribution by the pursuit of all the virtues, and while the progress of the years has to a certain extent made men neutral tinted in character, the season of the renaissance was one of violent contrasts. on behalf of the section that went in pursuit of righteousness let it be remembered that heaven and the saints were not matters for speculation, they were certainties. every man knew that god was in heaven, and that if the workers of iniquity flourished, it was that they might be destroyed for ever. every man knew that the saints still exerted their supernatural powers and would come down to earth if need be to protect a devotee. satan, on the other hand, went armed about the earth seeking whom he might devour, and hell was as firmly fixed as heaven. in order to understand luini, his life and times, these facts must be borne in mind. the greater the unrest in the cities the more the public attention would be turned to statesmen and warriors, and when the personalities of artists began to be considered, those who lived and thrived in the entourage of popes and rulers monopolised the attention. hundreds of men were at work earning a fair living and some local repute, it was left to foreign favour to set a seal upon success. had luini chanced to be invited to venice or to rome he would have been honoured throughout lombardy; but a painter like a prophet is often without honour in his own country. luini's gifts were of a more quiet and domestic order than those of his great contemporaries leonardo da vinci and michelangelo, for example, were more than painters, and perhaps it was only in venice that painting stood by itself and managed to thrive alone. luini would have come into his kingdom while he lived had venice been his birthplace. the genius of the florentine school sought to express itself in half-a-dozen different ways, no triumph in one department of work could satisfy men whose longing for self-expression was insatiable. in those days it was possible for a man to make himself master of all knowledge, literally he could discourse _de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis_. and this diffusion of interests was fatal to many a genius that might have moved to amazing triumph along one road. it is clear that bernardino luini never travelled very far from his native country either physically or mentally. in the eyes of his contemporaries he was not a man of sufficient importance to receive commissions from the great art centres of italy. this, of course, may be because he did not have the good fortune to attract the attention of the connoisseurs of his day, for we find that outside milan, and the little town of luino where he was born and whence he took his name, his work was done in comparatively small towns like como, legnano, lugano, ponte, and saronno. milan and monza may be disregarded because we have already dealt with the work there. saronno, which lies some fourteen miles north-west of milan, is little more than a village to-day, and its chief claim upon the attention of the traveller is its excellent gingerbread for which it is famous throughout lombardy. it has a celebrated church known as the sanctuary of the blessed virgin and here one finds some very fine examples of our painter's frescoes. some of the frescoes in the church are painted by cesare del magno others by lanini, and the rest are from the hand of bernardino luini. round these frescoes, which are of abiding beauty, and include fine studies of the great plague saint, st. roque, and that very popular martyr st. sebastian, many legends congregate. it is said that luini having killed a man in a brawl fled from milan to the church of the blessed virgin in monza to claim sanctuary at the hand of the monks. they gave him the refuge he demanded, and, says the legend, he paid for it with frescoes. this is little more than a variant of the story that he went to monza under similar circumstances and obtained the protection of the pelucca family on the same terms. in the absence of anything in the nature of reliable record this story has been able to pass, but against it one likes to put the tradition that one of the heads in the frescoes is that of luini himself. we find that head so simple, so refined, and so old--the beard is long and the hair is scanty--and so serene in its expression that it is exceedingly difficult to believe that brawling could have entered into the artist's life. [illustration: plate viii.--burial of st. catherine (in the brera, milan) this is one of the frescoes painted by luini for the casa pelucca and transferred to milan in the beginning of the nineteenth century. it will be seen that although the three angels bearing the saint to her grave are obviously peasant girls from the plains of lombardy winged for the occasion, the artist has handled his subject with faith and reverence. the fresco is better preserved than others from the same house.] the subjects of the pictures in saronno's sanctuary are all biblical. we have an adoration of the magi, showing the same muddled composition that detracts from the other merits of the artist's work; a beautiful presentation in the temple in which the composition is a great deal better; and a perfectly delightful nativity. there is a christ is disputing with the doctors, and this is the picture in which we find the head that is said to be a portrait of the painter himself. two female saints figure in another picture, and luini's favourites st. roque and st. sebastian are not forgotten. certainly if the monks obtained all that work at the price of the painter's safety they were very fortunate in his choice of sanctuary. como is, of course, a more important town with large industries and important factories, and one of the finest cathedrals in northern italy. for the interior luini painted another adoration of the magi and another of his favourite nativities. it is not easy to speak about the conditions under which this work was done, and the inhabitants have so many more profitable matters to attend to that they do not seem to trouble themselves about the history of the painter who helped to make their beautiful cathedral still more beautiful. legnano, with its memories of frederick barbarossa, is within twenty miles of milan, and for the church of san magno luini painted one of his finest altar-pieces. it is in seven divisions and has earned as much critical admiration as any work from the master's brush. lugano is of course in switzerland, well across the italian border. it is a popular place enough to-day, and so far as we can tell, it was the city in which luini painted his last pictures. he must have left milan about or , and he would seem to have gone there to execute commissions, for in the church of santa maria degli angioli we find some of his latest and finest work. the crucifixion and the passion, on the wall of the screen, contains several hundred figures arranged in lines in most archaic fashion. at first sight the work appears as a mere mass of figures without any central point in the composition, and with very little relief for the eye of the spectator who may come to the church surfeited with the bewildering riches of many italian galleries. but for those who will take the trouble to study the details of this fine work there is very much to admire. in the scene of the picture christ is seen on the cross surrounded by angels. on his right hand the penitent thief on the cross is guarded by an angel, while on the left the impenitent one is watched by a devil with a curly tail and spiked wings. below in perfectly bewildering fashion are many figures that may be recognised with little effort--mary magdalen, the madonna, joseph of arimathæa, roman soldiers, some of the general public--a confused crowd. the whole picture is supported by figures of san sebastian and st. roque seen on either side of the arch. stories from the life of christ are depicted in the upper parts of the picture, all are painted with the skill of a great artist and the fervour of a devotee, but the arrangement is hopelessly confused. luini also painted a "last supper" for this church and a "madonna with the infant christ and st. john." this is signed "bernardino luini, anno ." from until the career of the artist cannot be traced, but in he was in lugano again, and after that year he passes altogether from our sight. stray writers mention his name, some venture to carry the date of his life into the 'forties, but we have no proof save their word, no work to record the later years, and all our conjecture is vain. it must suffice for us that luini's life as far as his art was concerned ends for us with the year . if he lived and worked after that date the facts relating to the following years and the work done in the latter days are left for future students to discover. it is well to remember that the saronno portrait makes the painter look much older than he is supposed to have been. to his contemporaries it is clear that luini was a man of small importance. his best work is seen outside the radius of the great art centres of italy, and it was only when he attracted the attention of great critics and sound judges like morelli, john ruskin, and john addington symonds that the lovers of beautiful pictures began to go out of their way to find his best work in the little towns whose churchmen were his patrons. so many of the lesser men had all his faults--that is to say, lack of perspective and inability to compose a big picture--that he was classed with them by those critics whose special gift lies in the discovery of faults. the qualities that make the most enduring appeal to us to-day were those that were least likely to make a strong impression upon the strenuous age of physical force in which he lived. when great conquerors and men who had accomplished all that force could achieve felt themselves at liberty to turn to prolonged consideration of the other sides of life they employed other masters. then as now there were fashions in painters. the men for whom luini strove were of comparatively small importance. a conqueror could have gathered up in the hollow of his hand all the cities, milan excepted, in which luini worked throughout his well-spent life, and in the stress and strife of the later years when great pictures did change hands from time to time by conquest, luini's panel pictures in the little cities of his labours passed quite unnoticed, while even if the frescoes were admired it was not easy to move them. when at last his undoubted merits began to attract attention of connoisseurs, these connoisseurs were wondering why leonardo da vinci had left such a small number of pictures. they found work that bore a great resemblance to leonardo and they promptly claimed that they had discovered the lost masterpieces. consequently leonardo received the credit that was due to the man who may have worked in his milanese school and was undoubtedly under his influence for a time. and many of the beautiful panel pictures that show luini at his best were attributed to leonardo until nineteenth-century criticism proved competent enough to render praise where it was due, and to say definitely and with firm conviction that the unknown painter from luino, who lived sometime between and , was the true author. if, in dealing with the life of bernardino luini, we are forced to content ourselves with meagre scraps of biography and little details that would have no importance at all in dealing with a life that was traceable from early days to its conclusion, it is well to remember that the most important part of the great artist is his work. beethoven's nine symphonies, milton's "paradise lost," the landscapes of corot, the portraits of velazquez, and the carving of grinling gibbons are not more precious to us because we know something of the life of the men who did the work. nor are the "iliad" and the fragments that remain of the works of the great greek sculptors less to us because a shadowy tradition is all that surrounds the lives of the men who gave immortal work to the world. we must remember that it is as difficult to deal with art in terms of literature as it is to express the subtle charm of music in words. had luini's years boasted or regretted a series of gossiping newspapers we should have gathered a rich harvest of fact, but the facts would have left the painter where he is. there is enough of luini left in milan and the smaller places we have named to tell us what the man was and the spirit in which he worked, and while we will welcome the new-comer who can add to our scanty store of authenticated facts we can hardly expect that they will deepen our admiration of work that for all its shortcomings must be remembered when we turn to ponder the greatest achievements of italian art. it forms "a magic speculum, much gone to rust, indeed, yet in fragments still clear; wherein the marvellous image of his existence does still shadow itself, though fitfully, and as with an intermittent light." the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's note: table of contents added by transcriber. masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare tintoretto in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. _in preparation_ van dyck. percy m. turner. franz hals. t. e. staley. whistler. j. martin wood. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. j. f. millet. percy m. turner. luini. james mason. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. haldane m'fall. holbein. s. l. bensusan. boucher. haldane m'fall. vigÉe le brun. haldane m'fall. watteau. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. and others. [illustration: plate i.--a knight of malta. frontispiece (from hampton court) this portrait (note the maltese crosses on the cloak) is a splendid example of tintoretto's gifts as a portrait painter. it should be remembered that three or four hundred years have helped the restorer's arts to spoil much of the painter's work.] tintoretto by s. l. bensusan illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents i. ii. iii. list of illustrations plate i. a knight of malta frontispiece from hampton court page ii. the doge alvise mocenigo in the venetian academy iii. the origin of "the milky way" in the national gallery iv. st. george and the dragon in the national gallery v. the procurator battista morosini in the venetian academy vi. queen esther fainting before ahasuerus in hampton court palace vii. the risen christ blessing three senators in the venetian academy viii. adam and eve in the venetian academy [illustration] i sometime in the second decade of the sixteenth century there was born to one battista robusti, cloth-dyer of venice, a boy to whom the name jacopo was given. we know nothing of the childhood of the lad who, because his father's business was that of a "tintore" or dyer, was known to his companions as tintoretto. but one, carlo ridolfi, who was born about the time when tintoretto died, towards the close of the sixteenth century, tells us that the "little dyer," whose name is written so large in the history of sixteenth-century art, started very early to practise drawing, and used his father's working material in order to give his productions the colour they seemed to need. that he must have shown signs of uncommon talent at an early age is shown by the fact that he found his way to the studio or workshop of titian, the greatest painter in the venice of his time; a man whose position enabled him to require, from all who sought to become his pupils, a measure of proficiency that promised to make their work useful when the demands of patrons were more than one painter could hope to satisfy unaided. only the lad who possessed undeniable gifts or powerful patrons could find a place in the workshop of the greatest painter of the day, and tintoretto was quite without patronage. the story-tellers of the period assure us that pupil and master quarrelled, they even hint that titian was jealous of the young student, and this of course is not impossible because we have plenty of instances on record in which jealousy has been found thriving within the studio. then, again, clever lads are not always tactful, and an unbridled tongue may make hosts of enemies, and destroy the atmosphere of repose in which alone good work is possible. a brilliant painter might well have been a little intolerant of precocious pupils. entering into detail, ridolfi tells us in his life of the painter that when tintoretto was at work in titian's studio he copied some of the master's pictures so cleverly that titian told one of his other pupils to send the boy away, and robusti was dismissed from the studio without explanation. it is a significant fact, at the service of those who accept the theory of jealousy, that throughout the years when tintoretto was struggling for recognition titian had no eyes for his young pupil's work, and was only led to praise a picture by seeing it unsigned and exhibited in the open. there were times when the elder painter could have placed commissions in the young man's way, but he seems to have preferred to help others, of whom paolo cagliari, known as the veronese, is the only man whose work retains a large place in the public eye. but clearly titian must have had some other motive as well as jealousy, for he himself had more work than he could possibly do, and the help of a clever pupil like tintoretto would have been valuable in times of great stress when patrons were waxing impatient. whatever the other motive may have been it escaped ridolfi, and no other record of the early days is extant. [illustration: plate ii.--the doge alvise mocenigo this portrait, to be seen to-day in the accademia at venice, is one of the most striking of the long series of the leading citizens of the republic. tintoretto painted many of these portraits, for he was for many years one of the official painters to the republic. venice holds the best of this work.] looking at the work of the "little dyer" it seems reasonable to suggest that he acted as all great painters before and after him have done--that is to say, he sought what was best in the work around him, and having collected all the material he required, evolved his own artistic personality from a judicious selection. artists do not come into this world ready made, and the period of the making depends upon the man. for many, life is not long enough, and it is one of the tragedies of art work that the mastery over technical difficulties is sometimes delayed until the eye is becoming dim and the hand uncertain. from the very first we find that tintoretto was immersed in the affairs of his art, that he could not hold his hand, that he laboured with feverish energy, that no commission was despised, and that nothing was too large or too small for him to undertake. throughout the days of his youth his industry was devoted entirely to mastering the difficult technique of his work, until foreshortening, perspective, correct anatomy, relative values, light, shadow, and relief, were his subjects rather than his masters. then he was prepared to begin where so many great venetian artists had left off. it had been a reproach to the venetians that for all their colour they were poor draughtsmen. needless to add that this rebuke came from the schools of florence, where men were more concerned with correct drawing than rich colour. but tintoretto removed the reproach from venice, and, while he learned to draw in fashion that left the florentine schools nothing to teach, he followed gian bellini and titian into the domain of colour, and his work to-day reveals many of the best qualities of the two italian schools of art in happy combination. when he was fully equipped according to his lights, and was prepared to enter into competition with the men around him, tintoretto set out boldly to achieve the best results--he knew what he could do even if he did not know what the accomplishment was worth. it was not a part of his mental attitude to rest content with work done for those who sought the service of second-class men. "the form of michelangelo, the colour of titian;" these were the achievements he sought to realise, and he wrote these words on the wall of his workshop in the same spirit as that in which pious hebrews still put the declaration of their faith upon the doorposts of their houses. he understood that michelangelo buonarotti had said the last word in form, and that titian had gone as far in the direction of colour. not until he was armed with patiently acquired skill, extraordinary natural aptitude, and a temperament that could not be satisfied with anything less than complete success, did he feel prepared to take the world of art by storm, and then he had put to the credit of his record a measure of hard work that no other painter could show. for the first few years tintoretto had to strive in the ranks of men who, whatever their gifts, had more chances than he. venice was full of artists; commissions did not always depend upon merit, influence and favour counted for a great deal, and the clever son of an obscure dye-worker could hardly reach the goal of his ambitions without a long period of waiting. things had altered from the days when titian came from the mountains of cadore to the studio of gian bellini, there was now so much talent in venice that a man might have good gifts and yet go hungry. art had widened its boundaries, developed the importance of its expression and the scope of its appeal, offering wealth and reputation to those who could succeed in impressing the statesman, churchman, or conqueror who held the patronage of the arts to be one of the special privileges of their state. in florence the tendency was to treat art as one branch of the many-sided profession of life. the artist of the day was sculptor and architect as well; sometimes he was engineer and statesman, he took every field of activity for his labours, and certainly the success of the great men whose range of endeavour was so wide was quite remarkable. happily the venetians were less ambitious. bellini, who is, in the colour sense, the father of venetian art, had a comparatively restricted outlook. titian, his pupil, went farther afield and divorced art from the church, doubtless giorgione had he lived would have helped to make that divorce more effective. tintoretto, who was titian's pupil, just as titian had been bellini's, was content to give all his energies, his extraordinary industry, and his great gifts to the service of painting. he could not enlarge the boundaries because titian had carried them already into the domain of mythology, allegory, and portrait painting, and the time had not yet come when landscape could stand by itself. but tintoretto, though he could not develop the theme, managed to develop the treatment, and became in a sense to be discussed later on the "father" of impressionism. this was his special service to art, and must be regarded as a remarkable discovery when we see how firmly fixed were the ordinary painters' conventions in handling subjects. titian had broken away from the restrictions on subject matter, it was left to tintoretto to revolt against the conventional handling, but this revolt was of course the product of late years. he began where his masters were leaving off, and he ended by being a law to himself. it will be seen, judging by the statements of his biographers, and particularly that of ridolfi to whom we have referred, that the young painter's gifts and his habit of thinking for himself and following his theories into the realm of practice were in the way of his advancement. he worked so rapidly that the people to whom he applied in the first instance for commissions were a little suspicious. they could not understand how a man who painted with lightning rapidity and was prepared to sell his labour for any price, however small, could claim to be taken seriously. his cleverness made them afraid. they do not seem to have understood the type of artist that works because work is the very first law of life, and is content with a small return, knowing that when once the proper chance has come it will be possible to command a better price. [illustration: plate iii.--the origin of "the milky way" this extraordinary painting to be seen to-day at the national gallery reveals not only the artist's vivid imagination but the wonderful skill with which he can present a flying figure and leave it as though supported in mid air. students of tintoretto will not fail to note the resemblance between the flying figure here and the one in "the miracle of the slave" in the venetian academy.] the general feeling about jacopo robusti is perhaps summed up by giorgio vasari in his "lives." "he is a great lover of the arts," says our gossip; "he delights in playing on various musical instruments; he is a very agreeable person, but as far as painting is concerned he has the most capricious hand, and the boldest, most extravagant, and most obstinate brain that ever belonged to painter. of this the proof lies in his works and in their fantastic composition so different from the usage of other painters. indeed, robusti becomes more than ever extravagant in his recent inventions, and the strange fancies that he has executed as it were almost without design, as though he aimed to show that art is but a jest. he will sometimes present as finished, sketches which are just such mere outlines that the spectator sees before him pencil marks made by chance, the result of a bold carelessness rather than the fruits of design and judgment." these are significant words only when we consider that they were written at a time when tintoretto was alive, and vasari must have been moved to great excess of zeal to have gone so far in the painter's dispraise. indeed he closes his little sketch by remarking that tintoretto after all is a very clever man and a highly commendable painter. the special interest of the criticism lies in its revelation of the attitude of his contemporaries towards tintoretto. for more than a century art had been moving, pictures had ceased to be flat, the difficulties of chiaroscuro were being faced rather than shirked. atmosphere was growing, the problems of perspective were deemed worthy of careful study. colour was not only brilliant, but the secret of mixing colours long since lost and apparently irrecoverable was known in the studios of the leading men. but the very earliest lessons of impressionism had yet to be taught, and realism had rendered dull and lifeless pictures that were hung rather beyond the reach of the spectator's close scrutiny. tintoretto saw that work must be handled in such a fashion that the spectator who stood some distance away could get an impression of the whole of the subject treated. he knew that if objects were painted with equal values and the meticulous care of the miniaturist the canvas would only yield its fruit to those who could stare right into it. these facts were a pleasant revelation to him and an unpleasant one to his contemporaries. his work was destined to influence velazquez--velazquez influenced goya, the mantle of goya fell upon edouard manet, and manet founded the great impressionist school of france that has been doing work of extraordinary merit and enduring interest while schoolmen of contemporary generations have been concerned with telling stories in terms of paint and harking back to the pre-raphaelities. the modern work suffers more from neglect and disregard than that of the great masters of old time, because nowadays it is possible to multiply the lowest and most popular class of picture and scatter it broadcast among those who have no knowledge of the aims and objects of art. they think that a picture is bound to be a good one if it should chance to appeal to them, forgetful that their lack of taste may have as much as anything to do with the appeal of the work. a picture may please an observer because the picture is great or because the observer is small, but the latter alternative is hardly popular with those who go conscientiously to galleries. vasari tells us many stories of tintoretto's inexhaustible activity. ridolfi does the same, and it is easy to understand why a man who could not keep his brush from his hand for any length of time, and would accept any price or any commission rather than remain idle, was rather a terror to his contemporaries, and earned the title of "il furioso" by which he was widely known. few artists in the world's history have achieved so much, for although we know of countless frescoes and pictures that have perished utterly, we still have something like six hundred works left to stand for the seventy-five years of the painter's life, and some of these, such as the works in the doges' palace, are crowded with figures. indeed the work in the doges' palace might well stand for the life's monument of any artist however long-lived and industrious. it is no fault of tintoretto that his work baffles the tired eye. he cannot be studied in a day, or two days, or even three; you cannot go to him from other painters. he demands the closest and most enduring attention together with some expert guidance on the occasion of the first visit in order that the countless points in crowded canvas may not be overlooked. he was a man of such breadth of vision, his conceptions were so magnificent that he must be approached with something akin to reverence. we cannot go to him as to titian or bellini and feel that we can bring to the merit of each canvas the necessary amount of appreciation. while the "paradiso" took years to complete, some of tintoretto's smaller canvases took many months in the making, although the painter has never been excelled in the rapidity of execution. he who hopes to digest in half-an-hour the work that took tintoretto half a year imagines a vain thing. to read some of the criticism that has been meted out to tintoretto is to realise that their own limitations have given serious trouble to some of his critics, because he is so vast and so splendid in his themes, and so extraordinarily brilliant in his treatment, he has baffled one generation after another. his theory of relative values has been misunderstood and misinterpreted, but to see him in his true light it is necessary to consider how many of his successors could paint a large figured picture on anything approaching the same scale with an equal measure of intelligence. nowadays we do not look for heroic achievement; and it is perhaps as well, seeing that there is none to be had. [illustration: plate iv.--st. george and the dragon (national gallery, london) this remarkable work is one of the finest examples of tintoretto in england. composition and colouring are alike masterly and though some of the beauty of paint has passed, the st. george and the dragon remains a striking work.] ii thanks to carlo ridolfi we can form a fairly correct idea of the conditions under which young tintoretto lived in the early days. the expulsion from titian's studio must have been a very serious blow to his hopes and ambitions, but he did not repine unduly--he was made of sterner stuff. he took a small apartment and began those unremitting labours that were to land him in the first rank of draughtsmen. through daniele da volterra, a pupil of michaelangelo, he secured the models of the master's work that were to teach him so much about anatomy, and were to be used for experiments in foreshortening, and the treatment of light and shade. he had one friend, an artist known as schiavone, a man almost as poor as himself in those first days of struggle and disappointment--a man who had likewise sought instruction in titian's studio but had left it without incurring that great master's ill-will. one of the earliest commissions that fell to schiavone was for the decoration of st. mark's library, but tintoretto had to wait longer for work, and some years would seem to have passed before he realised his ambition and received a commission to paint altar-pieces. there are some workers to whom enforced idleness would be fatal, and tintoretto might have been one of them, but for the fact that he had no capacity for indolence, and would work even though he worked for nothing. the first church to give him a commission would seem to be that of santa maria del carmine, and the impression that he gave to his masters must have been a very favourable one, for we find that the churches of st. benedetto and santo spirito gave him orders soon after. then the scuola della trinita recognised his talent, and gave him an order for certain pictures, including the famous "death of abel" and the equally famous "adam and eve," of which john ruskin said, "this in absolute power of painting is the supremest work in all the world." these scuoli or confraternities were both wealthy and powerful bodies, able and eager to give valuable commissions to artists. they would often grant permanent pay and regular work to the man whose accomplishment satisfied their requirements, and the work that remains to us shows that the directors of the scuoli were men of taste and discretion. as soon as tintoretto felt that he was within sight of the goal of his ambitions he married, choosing for his wife one faustina of vescovi, the daughter of a patrician house, and a woman who seems to have realised that her husband's devotion to the ideals of art were likely to make him a very bad business man. like many of the wives of clever men she played the tyrant in matters that did not concern the studio, and the painter would seem to have evaded some of her regulations for his comfort by saying the thing that was not. we would not say that he originated the habit, but it is said to have become popular and traces of it are still found among husbands in the twentieth century. tintoretto took a house in the west end of venice on the fondamenta dei mori overlooking murano, and there he worked hard and lived simply. he must have been a man of engaging manner and amusing conversation, because ridolfi has recorded many amusing little facts about him in his famous volume of biographies. [illustration: plate v.--the procurator morosini (from the venetian academy) this is another of tintoretto's official pictures. the procurator, a man whose singular dignity is not affected by his rather coarse and heavy features, is wearing beautiful robes that are now beginning to fade.] clearly tintoretto believed that titian was his enemy, although we do not find that the younger man took any steps to demonstrate his ill-will. it would seem that many men who came to tintoretto's studio could talk of nothing but titian's virtues, and that this conversation tired the younger man, who at last put an end to the gossip very cleverly. he secured an incomplete canvas by titian and painted a figure into it, then he sent the picture to the house of his friend contarino, where the gossips who dabbled in literature and art were accustomed to assemble. all who saw the picture praised it to the skies, and when they had finished chattering tintoretto remarked that the work they admired so much was painted partly by himself. thereafter the gossips seem to have found some other topics of conversation, and tintoretto was able to pursue his paths in peace without suffering from comparisons that must have been odious. the painter's union was blessed with children, of whom his daughter marietta was perhaps his favourite. until she was fifteen years of age she used to accompany her father through venice dressed as a boy. she learned a great deal from him, and became a portrait painter, dying some little time before her father, to his great grief. some few of tintoretto's remarks have come down to us. he is said to have held that black and white are the most beautiful colours, and with the record of this opinion it becomes curious to see in tintoretto's pictures how the splendid colouring that was needed to express his work in the days when he was young grew more and more sombre as time passed on, until the dominant tone became the golden brown that is familiar to students of his pictures. as a young man he revelled in bright colours, but in middle and old age their charm passed. there is something very human about this attitude towards externals. tintoretto placed a very great importance upon drawing, more importance indeed than any of the venetians had placed upon it before his time. he thought very little of copies from the nude, being no believer in the beauty of the average nude form, and holding that the hand of the artist is necessary in order to express to the full the beauty that the lines of the body suggest. one pauses to wonder how he would have regarded schopenhauer's criticism of the female form. tintoretto had two sons, who became his pupils when they were old enough; he was more fortunate in his family than was his great master and rival, and his home life would seem to have been a tranquil one, because we have learned from vasari that he was a good musician, and played well on several instruments. music does not flourish in unhappy homes. he could not have entertained as titian did, because throughout his life he was a comparatively poor man, but he gathered round him some of the most interesting people in his native city and, with the exception of titian and aretino, all seemed to have been well pleased with him. aretino, of course, being the greatest gossip of his century, could not keep his tongue quiet under any circumstances, and never hesitated to say an unpleasant thing as long as it had wit or humour. tintoretto bore with his old master's factotum as long as he could, and then his patience giving out, invited him to the studio and proceeded to take his measure with a naked dagger, recording it as though he was going to paint a portrait. aretino, who seems to have been an arrant coward, took the hint and controlled his unruly tongue. perhaps he realised that it was unnecessary as well as unwise to provoke a man who asked for nothing better than to be allowed to spend his life in hard work free from interruption. it is quite likely that tintoretto's amazing gifts, together with his capacity for hard work, would have brought him very rapidly to the front, had not titian been the pride of the venetians, but while the great painter from cadore dominated the city of the lagoons no other man could hope to stand beside him, and certainly tintoretto did not improve his own chances by his violent early search for work, and his startling offers to paint pictures of any size for any price. inasmuch as he did not place a high value upon his own work, it was unreasonable to expect that his patrons would fall into the error of over-praising it. in setting a value upon their own work most men remember that they are sellers, nor is it the business of buyers to raise the price. it is no easy task to hunt out tintoretto's countless pictures in venice. including panels, altar-pieces, and portraits, the work in the doges' palace, in the accademia, and the collections of private owners, there must be of this painter's work well-nigh three hundred examples whose authenticity is beyond dispute, while, needless to say, there are plenty of pictures to be found in the collections of dealers and amateurs that have rather more than a suspicion of robusti's hand, though they can hardly claim to be painted by him alone. like all other masters tintoretto had his pupils, and his children and pupils between them would appear to be very largely responsible for some of the pictures that bear his name. to add to the difficulties of the visitor, tintoretto has suffered more than most men from exposure, neglect, and repainting. the salt-savoured air of venice is by no means the best in the world for pictures; and candles, though they may save their pious purchasers from many years' suffering in purgatory, have an awkward habit of smoking and spoiling the altar pictures that stand before them. candle smoke respects neither madonna nor saint, and though raised with the best intentions, will destroy masterpiece or daub with equal certainty and indifference. in tintoretto's time piety was more fashionable than art criticism, and his pictures have suffered very much from the devotion they have inspired in the breasts of those to whom candles were a short-cut to salvation. happily the scuola of st. roque, with its countless beautiful works of the master on panel and ceiling and staircase, still preserves a great deal of its original beauty. the doges' palace has a splendid collection, including the famous "paradise" in the hall of council, while other apartments in the palace boast specimens of the master's most inspired work. the royal palace, and that of prince giovanelli, are very rich in the fruit of tintoretto's labours, while the academy of fine arts from which a part of the pictures given here were taken, holds some of the painter's masterpieces in really favourable positions. in the doges' palace the neck and back of the man who wishes to study tintoretto must endure constant strain, and the great compositions are so hard to understand that headache often anticipates comprehension, and appreciation gets no chance. the academy is not too crowded, save at the season of the great american invasion, and there it is possible to enjoy tintoretto quietly. [illustration: plate vi.--queen esther fainting before ahasuerus (hampton court palace) here we have one of tintoretto's spirited compositions in which he makes no attempt to adapt his costumes to the period of the bible story. one and all the figures are sixteenth-century venetians.] the more we study tintoretto the more his mastery for every branch of his art becomes apparent. his composition is the more marvellous because he had not had the advantage of receiving inspiration from other masters. he carried composition farther than it had gone before, bringing to his aid in that work a certain dramatic instinct that does not seem to have been associated with the painter's workshop before his time. he redeemed venetian painting from the charge of bad drawing that had been levied against it by the florentines, and when we come to colour we find that tintoretto has little or nothing to yield in this department even to titian himself, and that he gets many of his finest effects from lower tones than those that appealed to his master. some of his colour effects are less daring, less theatrical, less immediate in their appeal than those of titian, but when they are understood they are hardly to be less admired, although we have to admit that in many cases they have been restored, and retouched by many well-meaning fools who did not understand the extraordinary delicacy of treatment that gave the canvas its pristine quality. a picture by tintoretto in which the rich golden brown tints have survived the passages of the years and the hand of the restorer, is at once a thing to wonder at and be grateful for. like all great painters tintoretto had little use for drawings. he did not believe in making elaborate studies; we can learn this from his first work for the scuola of st. roque, when he entered into competition with several big painters, and managed to present a finished picture to his startled patrons and competitors in the shortest possible time. vasari tells the story, how the brotherhood decided to have some "magnificent and honourable work" on the ceiling of the scuola, and asked salviati, zucchero, paolo cagliari (veronese), and tintoretto to prepare a design. "while the artists were giving themselves with all diligence to the preparations of their designs," writes vasari, "tintoretto made an exact measurement of the space for which the picture was required, and taking a large canvas he painted it at his usual speed, without taking any one into his confidence, and fixed it in the place destined to receive it. on the morning when the brotherhood assembled to see the designs and determine the matter, they found that tintoretto had completed his work, that he had even fixed it in its place. at this they were very angry, saying that they desired designs, and had not commissioned him to do more than prepare one. robusti replied that this was his method of preparing designs, and that he knew no other, that all designs and models for a work should be executed in this fashion to the end that persons interested might see what would be offered to them, and might not be deceived. finding the brethren were still displeased, tintoretto added that if they did not think fit to pay for the work, he would make a present of it to them for the sake of the saint from whom he had received much kindness. the brotherhood could say no more, for they dare not refuse a gift offered to their patron, and so the picture was accepted, and the brethren had to make their peace as best they could with the angry and disappointed competitors." it would be pleasing to write at length about the work that tintoretto contributed to the buildings of the brotherhood, but in the appendix to his third volume of the "stones of venice," john ruskin has dealt so completely and so admirably with the master that those who are interested will find all they seek in his pages. in the lower hall are an "annunciation," an "adoration of the magi," an "assumption of the virgin," a "presentation of jesus," and several others. in the upper hall there is the wonderful masterpiece of "st. roque in heaven," together with many pictures of the great heroes of bible history, and the "last supper" that velazquez copied. the refectory holds the great "crucifixion," and eleven panels devoted almost entirely to single figures. tintoretto had a hard struggle to become the painter for the wealthy brotherhood, which had already commissioned work from titian, giorgione, schiavone, and other men of light and leading, but when he had once secured a footing he did not lose the confidence of the brethren. they realised that the master was second to none in the honourable ranks of their painters, and indeed the brotherhood is best remembered to-day because it chose tintoretto to paint so many of its masterpieces. it would have been a pleasant task to reproduce some of these works here, but it would have been impossible to put on a small page, with any hope of conveying a fair idea of their extraordinary fascination, the "massacre of the innocents," "christ before pilate," the "crucifixion," or other pictures of that size. it has seemed better on this account to rest content for the most part with single figures, and to emphasise the one aspect of the painter's many merits. his mastery of composition must be left for those who go to venice or to some other of the cities wherein the work is seen in all its glory. [illustration: plate vii.--the risen christ appearing to three senators (in the venetian academy) this is a curious work remarkable for the splendid handling of the figure of christ. the three senators are so obviously standing for their portraits that they do not interest us.] some five years would seem to have elapsed between the time when tintoretto forced his picture of st. roque upon the astonished brotherhood, and the time when he painted the "crucifixion" for the scuola in return for a fee of ducats, becoming thereafter a member of the brotherhood. he worked for them for ten years or more, leaving the question of terms to their judgment, but receiving a very fair price. by the middle of the 'sixties his position in venice was assured. he was accepted on every hand as a man who honoured the churches and brotherhoods, civil or religious, that employed him. unlike titian he was very reliable, and does not seem to have accepted commissions and then to have ignored them because better work came along unexpectedly. his work in the churches is very varied and is scattered throughout venice. ridolfi refers to his early pictures in the church of st. benedict, but they are not to be found there now. santa maria dell 'orto, which was one of the first to employ his brush, holds his famous "last judgment," a composition of singular nobility, painted with great technical skill, and the wonderful imagination that inspired all the painter's efforts. unfortunately the details on the canvas are not easily seen, and the whole work would appear to have been handed over more than once to the renovator whose tender mercies, like those of the wicked, are cruel. in the same church there are two "martyrdoms," one of st. paul or st. christopher, and another of st. agnes, and there is the fascinating "presentation of the virgin," which ranks side by side with titian's masterpiece in the venetian academy. tintoretto's colour scheme is more subdued, but the composition is singularly attractive, and the painter's knowledge of perspective, his gift of conveying atmosphere, his skill in handling the human figure in any position have hardly been seen to greater advantage than in this master work. perhaps because the church santa maria dell 'orto received the artist's earliest work he loved it above all other churches, for it held the vault of the vescovis and he chose to be buried there. clearly he was one for whom his wife's family held no terrors. many other painters figure in this church, which lies well away from the city's main thoroughfares, by the canal rio della madonna dell 'orto. palma vecchio is to be seen there and that girolamo who is said to have acted for titian when he wished to expel tintoretto from his workshop. the church also has a "pieta" by lorenzo lotto, and a "madonna" by gian bellini. tintoretto's burial in the church is recorded on a tablet. the church of san cassiano has two or three pictures by tintoretto, and that of san francisco della vigna is said to have another, but it is not to be seen, and the brethren of st. francis who pace to and fro along the broken-down cloisters can give no information to intruders armed with red guide-books. san giorgio maggiore is rich in tintorettos, and has one or two attractive works by bassano. a very famous "last supper" was painted for this church, but the work will not vie with much that tintoretto did elsewhere. santa maria dei frari has a beautiful "massacre of the innocents." san marziale has an "ascension," and two "annunciations," together with a work that the painter did not live to finish. on the giudecca in the old franciscan church of the redentore, where a famous water festival is held throughout one night in the summer, there are two splendid examples of the painter's work, and in the church of the madonna della salute there is a "marriage of cana." this church holds several pictures by titian and other masters of renown. santo stefano is said to have some famous pictures by tintoretto in the sacristy, but the writer has not seen them. the list of church pictures is by no means exhausted. it would not be easy to deal with them without giving these pages a suspicious resemblance to a catalogue. the visitor to venice may be well advised to visit as many churches as he can, and to remember that many a building of little latter-day significance holds priceless work belonging to the sixteenth century. in florence there are a score or more of tintoretto's pictures in the galleries of the uffizi and the pitti palace; in the former there is a striking replica of the "wedding at cana" in the venetian church of the madonna della salute, but all these have their crowd of admirers; they are catalogued and clearly seen. in venice, on the other hand, many a church from which the hurried tourist turns aside holds one or more of tintoretto's masterpieces, and if it is well hung and has escaped the troublesome attentions of restorer and candle-burner, it will well repay quiet study. the story that a great picture has to tell travels far beyond its own subject-matter, and the quality of that imagination which is associated with all great work is seen in a very high degree in many a church picture by the great venetian master. perhaps he owes his heroic achievements to michelangelo. the full story of his indebtedness has been treated at length by john ruskin, for whom the painter's work held great attractions; but it may be said, without fear of contradiction, that where a picture has survived its surroundings, the vigour of mind, the breadth of view, the dramatic sense of the painter, his splendid power of seeing the great stories of old or new testament in their most dramatic aspect, will satisfy the most critical sense of the onlooker almost as much as the conquest of difficulties in light, shade, foreshortening, composition, and graded tones please the man who has mastered the technicalities of the painter's art. looking at tintoretto's work and remembering that he hardly stirred beyond the limits of the republic, it is impossible not to reflect upon the chance and luck that beset the lives of men. tintoretto, with his splendid gifts, his rapid accomplishment, his courteous manner, remains in venice; his fame suffering because he could see far beyond the limits that beset the view of his great and popular master. had tintoretto not been able to see quite so clearly, had he not alarmed contemporary criticism by groping successfully after the first truths of impressionism, he might have been in the fulness of time the court painter of popes and emperors. his splendour might have been diffused throughout italy; it might have travelled to spain, then the greatest of all world powers. titian, for all his extraordinary gifts, had certain conventional limitations. tintoretto, equally gifted, could see more deeply into the truths that underlie painting, so he did not prosper in like degree. happily for him he was a man who worked for work's sake, as long as his hands were full and he could labour from morning until night, the pecuniary and social results hardly seemed worth bothering about. we know that titian, whose income was much larger than tintoretto's, was loud in his complaints of bad times and inadequate payments, but if tintoretto complained, ridolfi has forgotten to record the fact. there is no attempt here to belittle titian or to praise tintoretto; each was a man for whom the sixteenth century and its successors must need be grateful. the difference between them was temperamental, and is worth recording, though it is not set down in any spirit of unfriendly criticism. [illustration: plate viii.--adam and eve (from the venetian academy) this picture, representing eve in the act of offering the apple to adam, is remarkable for the beauty of the flesh painting. john ruskin was moved to express his admiration for it in terms of enthusiasm.] iii it would seem that the pictures for the brotherhood of st. roque secured for tintoretto the crowning honour of his life, the commission to bring his brush to the service of the doges' palace. it is hardly too much to say that just as the doges' palace is the most remarkable monument of the venetian republic left in venice to-day, so tintoretto's pictures are the most remarkable decorations in the palace itself. there must be fifty or more of them, if we include the hall of grand council, the hall of scrutiny, the college, the entrance and the passage to the council of ten, the ante-room to the chapel, the senate and the salon of the four doors; but the task of painting fifty pictures, stupendous though it may seem, is not realised until we remember the size and quality of some of these works. the "paradise," for example, in the council hall, is more than twenty-five yards long, and is such a work as many a painter would have given the greater part of his life to; but tintoretto had little more than six years to live when he undertook the work, and there is no doubt that while the brain behind the picture was always his, the hand was sometimes that of his son or one of his pupils. it may be supposed that most painters, who have reached tintoretto's age when they received their commission for the ducal palace, would have hesitated to begin work on such a colossal scale. they would have felt that the span of their life could hardly stretch much farther, and knowing that much was to be done in the way of portraits and small pictures, would have been content with these. it was characteristic of tintoretto that he should at once undertake pictures on the largest scale known to painters. not only did he undertake the work, but he accomplished it. the student of tintoretto who finds himself in venice should, we think, endeavour to leave the doges' palace alone until he has watched the painter's development in the various venetian churches. then he should study the work done for the brotherhood of st. roque, and finally should go to st. mark's to see the crowning achievement of one of the greatest men who ever took a paint-brush in hand. students of opera will have noticed how a great singer will sometimes keep his voice back until the work is nearly over, in order to put all his energy into the last act, and so leave an impression that will not be forgotten easily. so it was with tintoretto. he did splendid work in many directions, but saved himself for the last act, and the crowning achievement of his life was reserved for the doges' palace. there all the inspiration that had blossomed in the venetian churches, and budded in the scuola of st. roque, came suddenly into flower, and the visitor to the palace will look in vain throughout the civilised world for an equally enduring monument to any one man. other great artists have left their traces in many cities, but it may be doubted whether michelangelo and raphael in the vatican have left a more enduring record than tintoretto gave to the palace of the doges. so vast was his achievement, so brilliant was his imagination, that our eyes, trained down to see small things, and unaccustomed to realise the full idea underlying great pictures, tremble before the "paradise" and "venice with the gods and the doge nicolo da ponte," or the "capture of zara," or "st. mark introducing the doge mocenigo to christ," or the splendid "descent from the cross," in the senate, or the pagan picture in the salon of the four doors, in which jupiter gives venice the empire of the sea. any one of these pictures might have been regarded as the crowning achievement in the life of a very considerable painter. before them all imagination stops. certainly tintoretto was a long time coming into his kingdom, but there could have been few to dispute his supremacy when he arrived. in tintoretto applied to the fondaco de tedeschi for a broker's patent, and thus history repeated itself, for it will be remembered that titian had endeavoured to secure bellini's place in the great house of the german merchants, and now tintoretto was supplanting titian. the application seems to have been quite successful. the house to-day serves as a general post-office, and still shows some slight trace of the frescoes of giorgione and titian. there does not seem to be any record of work that tintoretto did for the german merchants, but the appointment was largely an honorary one as far as the work went, although it brought a certain income to the fortunate owner of the office. tintoretto had now reached the time when his work could no longer be ignored, and even florence which looked askance at art in venice elected the painter a member of its academy, an honour that was conferred also upon titian, paul veronese, and a few smaller men. throughout all the years in which the painter's art was maturing, and the circle of his patrons was widening, he seems to have lived a quiet and uneventful life in venice, seeking friends in his own circle, labouring diligently in his studio, and never permitting the claims of affairs lying outside his work to tempt him to be idle. a man of happy disposition, with no vices, and no extravagant tastes, he would seem to have found his earning sufficient for his need, and to have been happy in his home life, although we have already recorded the fact upon ridolfi's authority that like so many other good men tintoretto was in the habit of telling lies to his wife. signora robusti must have been a little trying when she sought to regulate her husband's expenditure, the times of his going out and coming in, and other trifles of the sort that good women delight to take an interest in. the great grief of tintoretto's life was happily delayed until , when the well-beloved marietta, who had been her father's friend and companion for so long, died. the shock must have been a very serious one, for tintoretto himself was well over seventy, but it does not seem to have diminished his activity. he would appear to have given all his days to his own labour, or the superintendence of the labours of others, and so the years crept on uneventfully for him, until the last day of may when his strenuous, vigorous, and brilliant career found its closing hour, and those whom he left behind, together with a great concourse of admiring citizens, took him to the tomb of his wife's house in the church of the madonna dell 'orto, which he had enriched with so much fine painting. his daughter, having predeceased him--as we have seen, she was a portrait painter, and her father's dearest friend--his son domenico carried on the family work, and completed his father's commissions, but neither brain, nor hand, nor eye could compare with those that were now at rest, and the younger tintoretto makes small claim upon the attention of artist or historian. so a very great man passed out of the life of venice, and for a brief while his fame slumbered, but in years to come great artists, velazquez foremost among them, made the great city of the adriatic a place of pilgrimage for his sake. his influence, travelling on another road, extended as far as van dyck. we have already traced the descent to the modern school of impressionism, but he would be a bold man who would say that the influence of tintoretto is exhausted, or holds that he has nothing to teach the twentieth century. his light will hardly grow dim as long as his painting has a claim upon the attention of civilised men. the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's notes: simple typographical errors were corrected. defective printing of names of authors of some other titles in the series was remedied by reference to another title in the series, whose list was well-printed. masterpieces in colour edited by--t. leman hare fragonard * * * * * * in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. _in preparation_ whistler. t. martin wood. rubens. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. j. f. millet. percy m. turner. chardin. paul g. konody. holbein. s. l. bensusan. boucher. c. haldane macfall. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. watteau. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. and others. * * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--chiffre d'amour. frontispiece (in the wallace collection) fragonard, like his master boucher, soon found that the pompous, historical, and religious pictures which the critics demanded of him, pleased no one but the critics. it was a fortunate day for him when he turned his back upon them, and employed his charming gifts upon the statement of the life of his day. and in few paintings that created his fame has he surpassed the fine handling of this scene, in which the girl cuts her lover's initials on the trunk of a tree--the dainty figure silhouetted against the dreamlike background of sky and tree that he loved so well. there is over all the glamour of the poetic statement supremely done.] fragonard by haldane macfall illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. to my friend walter emanuel list of illustrations plate i. chiffre d'amour frontispiece in the wallace collection page ii. the music lesson in the louvre iii. l'etude in the louvre iv. the schoolmistress in the wallace collection v. figure de fantasie in the louvre vi. le voeu à l'amour in the louvre (new acquisition) vii. the fair-haired boy in the wallace collection viii. le billet doux in the collection of m. wildenstein, paris [illustration] i the beginnings high up, amongst the sea-alps that stretch along the southern edge of france, where romantic provence bathes her sunburnt feet in the blue waters of the mediterranean, high on the mountain's side hangs the steep little town of grasse, embowered midst grey-green olive-trees. in as sombre a narrow street as there is in all her dark alleys, on the fifth day of april in the much bewigged and powdered year of , there was born to a glovemaker of the town, worthy mercer fragonard, a boy-child, whom the priest in the gloomy church christened jean honoré fragonard. as the glovemaker looked out of his sombre house over the sunlit slopes of the grey-green olive-trees that stretched away to the deep blue waters of the sea, he vowed his child to commerce and a thrifty life in this far-away country place that was but little vexed with the high ambitions of distant, fickle, laughing paris, or her splendid scandals; nay, scarce gave serious thought to her gadding fashions or her feverish vogues--indeed, the attenuated ghosts of these once frantic things wriggled southwards through the provinces on but sluggish feet to the high promenades of grasse--as the worthy mercer was first in all the little town to know by his modest traffic in them; and that, too, only long after the things they shadowed were buried under new millineries and fopperies and fantastic riot in the gay capital. as a fact, the dark-eyed, long-nosed folk that trudged these steep and narrow thoroughfares were a sluggish people; and sunlit grasse snored away its day in drowsy fashion. but if the room where the child first saw the light were gloomy enough within, the skies were wondrous blue without, and the violet-scented slopes were robed in a tender garment of silvery green, decked with the gold of orange-trees, and enriched with bright embroidery of many-coloured flowers that were gay as the gayest ribbons of distant paris. and the glory of it bathed the lad's eyes and heart for sixteen years, so that his hands got them itching to create the splendour of it which sang within him; and the wizardry of the flower-garden of france never left him, casting its spell over all his thinking, and calling to him to utter it to the world. it stole into his colour-box, and on to his palette, and so across the canvas into his master-work, and was to lead him through the years to a blithe immortality. the small boy with the big head was born in the year after françois boucher came back to paris from his italian wanderings on the eve of his thirties and won to academic honour. the child grew up in his provençal home, whilst boucher, turning his back upon academic art on gaining his seat at the academy, was creating the pastorals, venus-pieces, and cupid-pieces that changed the whole style of french art from the pompous and mock-heroic manner of louis quatorze's century of the sixteen hundreds to the gay and elegant pleasaunces that fitted so aptly the elegant pleasure-seeking days of louis the fifteenth's seventeen hundreds. gossip of high politics came trickling down to grasse as slowly as the fashions, yet the eleven-year-old boy's ears heard of the death of the minister, old cardinal fleury, and of the effort of louis to become king by act. though louis had small genius for the mighty business, and fell thenceforth into the habit of ruling france from behind petticoats, raising the youngest of the daughters of the historic and noble house of de nesle to be his accepted consort under the rank and honours of duchess of chateauroux. all tongues tattled of the business, the very soldiery singing mocking songs; when--louis strutting it as conqueror with the army, got the small-pox at metz, and sent the chateauroux packing at the threat of death. he recovered, to enter paris soon after as the well-beloved, and to be reconciled with the frail chateauroux before she died in the sudden agony in which she swore she had been poisoned. [illustration: plate ii.--the music lesson (in the louvre) fragonard had a profound admiration for the dutch painters. whether he went to holland shortly after his marriage is not known; but he seems suddenly to have employed his brush as if he had come across fine examples of the dutch school. "the music lesson" at the louvre is one of these, and the dutch influence is most marked both as to subject, treatment, and handling of the paint, if we allow for fragonard's own strongly french personality.] at thirteen the boy listened to the vague rumours of a new scandal that set folk's tongues wagging again throughout all france. the king raised madame lenormant d'etioles, a daughter of the rich financier class, to be marquise de pompadour, and yielded up to her the sceptre over his people. the nations, weary of war, agreed to sign the peace of aix-la-chapelle in . in this, our artist's sixteenth year, the pompadour had been the king's acknowledged mistress for three years. from this time, the peace being signed, louis the fifteenth laid aside all effort to fulfil the duties of the lord over a great people; gave himself up to shameless and riotous living, and allowed the pompadour to usurp the splendour of his throne and to rule over the land. for the next sixteen years she was the most powerful person at court, the greatest personality in the state--making and unmaking ministers like a sovereign, and disposing of high offices, honours, titles, and pensions. the king squandered upon her some seventy odd millions of the public money as money is now valued. her energy and her industry must have been colossal. her intelligence saved the king from the boredom of decision in difficult affairs. she made herself a necessity to his freedom from care. every affair of state was discussed and settled under her guidance. ministers, ambassadors, generals, transacted their business in her handsome boudoirs. she dispensed the whole patronage of the sovereign with her pretty hands. the prizes of the army, of the church, of the magistracy, could only be secured through her good-will. as though these things were not load enough to bow the shoulders of any one human being she kept a rein upon every national activity. she created the porcelain factory of sèvres, thereby adding a lucrative industry to france. she founded the great military school of saint cyr. she mothered every industry. she was possessed of a rare combination of talents and accomplishments, and of astounding taste. but her deepest affection was for the arts. the pompadour had gathered about her, as the beautiful madame d'etioles, the supreme wits and artists and thinkers of her day; voltaire and boucher and latour and the rest were her friends, and the new thought that was being born in france was nursed in her drawing-rooms. as the pompadour she kept up her friendships. she was prodigal in her encouragement of the arts, in the furnishment of her own and the king's palaces and castles. and it was in the exercise and indulgence of her better qualities that she brought out the genius and encouraged to fullest achievement the art of boucher, and of the great painters of her time. so boucher brought to its full blossom the art that watteau had created--the picture of "fêtes galentès"--and added to the artistic achievement of france the pastorals wherein dresden shepherds and shepherdesses dally in pleasant landscapes, and the venus-pieces wherein cupids flutter and romp--a world of elegance and charm presided over by the goddess of love. ii rome all this was but paris-gossip amidst the olive-trees and steep streets of far-away grasse, where the large-headed, small-bodied lad was idling through his fifteen summers, living and breathing the beauty of the pleasant land of romance that bred him, when, like bolt from the blue, fell the news upon him that his father, tearing aside the fabric of the lad's dreams, had articled him as junior clerk to a notary. but the french middle-class ideal of respectability meant no heaven for this youth's goal, no ultimate aim for his ambition. he idled his master into despair; "wasting his time" on paint-pots and pencil-scribblings until that honest man himself advised that the lad should be allowed to follow his bent. so it came about--'twas in that year of the treaty of aix-la-chapelle, the year that saw the pompadour come to supreme power (she had been for three years the king's acknowledged mistress)--the youth's mother, with all a french mother's shrewdness and common-sense, gathered together the sixteen-year-old lad's sketches, and bundled off with him in a diligence to paris. arrived in paris she sought out the greatest painter of the day, and burst with the shy youth into the studio of the dandified favourite artist of the king's majesty, pompadour's boucher--large-hearted, generous, much-sinning, world-famed boucher, then at the very summit of his career--he was at that time living in the rue grenelle-saint-honoré, which he was about to leave, and in which fragonard in his old age was destined to end his days. the lad glanced with wonder, we may be sure, at the great "rape of europa" that stood upon the master's easel, whilst his mother poured out in the rough accent of provence the tale of the genius of her son--stole, too, a stealthy scrutiny of the venus-pieces and pastorals that stood about the studio, and was filled with awed admiration. the mother besought the genius of france to make a genius of her son; and boucher, with kindly smile upon his lips, glancing over the immature work of the prodigy, told the lad that he might come back to him in six months' time, pointing out to him, with all that large-hearted friendliness and sympathy that made him the loved idol of the art-students, that he lacked sufficient dexterity in the use of his tools to enter his studio or to benefit by apprenticeship to him, and advising the anxious mother to take him to chardin as the supreme master in france from whom to learn the mastery of his craft. to chardin the youth went; and france's consummate master in the painting of still-life, putting the palette on the youngster's thumb straightway, from the very first day--as his custom was--and making him use sienna upon it as his only pigment, advising him as he went, set him to the copying of the prints from the masterpieces of his own time, insisting on his painting large and broad and solid and true. young fragonard made so little progress that chardin wrote to his parents that he could get nothing out of him; and sent the lad, bag and baggage, out of his studio. thrown upon his own resources, the young fellow haunted the churches of paris, brooded over the masterpieces that hung therein, fixed them in his mind's eye, and, returning to his lodging, painted them, day by day, from memory. at the end of six months he called again upon boucher, his sketches under his arm; and this time he was not sent away. astounded at the youth's progress, struck by his enthusiasm, boucher took him into his studio, and set him to work to prepare the large decorative cartoons that artists had to make from their paintings for use at the gobelins and beauvais looms. the artist painted his picture "in little"; he was also required to paint an "enlargement" of the size that the weavers had to make into tapestry--this enlargement was mostly done by pupils, the state demanding, however, that the artist should work over it sufficiently to sign his name upon it--the head of the factory keeping custody of the "painting in little" to guide him; the weavers working from the enlargement. this work upon the enlargement of boucher's paintings was an ideal training for fragonard. the director-general of buildings to the king (or, as we should nowadays call him, minister of fine arts), lenormant de tournehem, kinsman to the pompadour, died suddenly in the november of ; the pompadour promptly caused to be appointed in his place her brother abel poisson de vandières--a shy, handsome youth, a gentleman, a man of honour, who brought to his office an exquisite taste, a loyal nature, and marked abilities. the king, who liked him well, and called him "little brother," soon afterwards created him marquis de marigny--and fragonard, like many another artist of his day, was to be beholden to him. after a couple of years' training under boucher, fragonard's master, with that keen interest that he ever took in the efforts and welfare of youth, and particularly of his own pupils, urged the young fellow to compete for the prix de rome, pointing out to him the advantages of winning it. at twenty, without preparation, and without being a pupil of the academy, fragonard won the coveted prize with his "jeroboam sacrificing to idols." it was in this year that boucher was given a studio and apartments at the louvre. for three years thereafter, fragonard was in the king's school of six _élèves protégés_ under carle van loo. he continued to work in boucher's studio, as well as painting on his own account; and it is to these years that belong his "blind man's buff" and several pictures in this style. meanwhile the quarrels between priests and parliaments had grown very bitter. the king took first one side, then the other. it was in , louis having got foul of his parliament, that the unfortunate and foolish damiens stabbed the king with a penknife slightly under the fifth rib of his left side, as he was stepping into his carriage at versailles, and suffered by consequence the terrible tortures and horrible death that were meted out to such as attempted the part of regicide. this was the year when, at twenty-four, fragonard was entitled to go to rome at the king's expense--the italian tour being a necessary part of an artist's training who desired to reach to academic distinction, and honours in his calling. he started on his journey to italy with boucher's now famous farewell advice ringing in his ears: "my dear frago, you go into italy to see the works of raphael and michael angelo; but--i tell you in confidence, as a friend--if you take those fellows seriously you are lost." ("lost" was not the exact phrase, boucher being a rabelaisian wag, but it will pass.) [illustration: plate iii.--l'etude (in the louvre) the picture of a young woman sometimes known as "l'etude" (but perhaps better known as "la chanteuse" or "song") at the louvre is another of those little canvases painted by fragonard under the strong influence of the dutch school, as we may see not only in the handling of the paint, and in the arrangement of the figure, but in the very ruffle about the girl's neck, the lace cuffs to the sleeves, and the treatment of the dress.] arrived in rome, fragonard, like his master before him, was torn with doubts and uncertainties and warring influences. for several months he did no work, or little work; and though he stood before the masterpieces of michael angelo and raphael, stirred by the grandeur of their design, and eager to be busy with his brush, he was too much of a frenchman, too much in sympathy with the french genius, too much enamoured of the art of his master, to be affected creatively by them. his hesitations saved him, and won france a master in her long roll of fame. he escaped the taint of learning to see through the eyes of others, evaded the swamping of his own genius in an endeavour to utter his art in halting italian. rome was not his grave, as it has been the grave of so many promising young sons of france; and he came out of the danger a strong and healthy man. tiepolo brought him back vision and inspiration, and the solid earth of his own age to walk upon. and the french utterance of his master boucher called back his dazed wits to the accents of france. at last the genius that was in him quickened and strove to utter itself. the bright colours of italy, the glamour of her landscapes, these were the living lessons that bit deeper into his art than all the works of her antique masters; and the effort to set them upon his canvas gave to his hand's skill an ordered grace and dignity that were of more vital effect upon his achievement than the paintings of the great dead. so it came about that natoire, then director of the royal school in the villa mancini, having written his distress to marigny at the young fellow's beginnings, was soon writing enthusiastically about him, and procured a lengthening of his stay in rome. here began that lifelong friendship with hubert robert, already making his mark as an artist, and with the abbé de saint-non, a charming character, who was to engrave the work of the two young painters, and greatly spread their names abroad thereby. saint-non's influential relations procured him free residence in the villa d'este, where the other two joined him, and a delightful good-fellowship between the three men followed--the abbé's artistic tastes adding to the bond of comradeship. so two years passed pleasantly along at the villa d'este, one of the most beautiful places in all italy--the ancient ruins hard by, and the running waters and majestic trees leaving an impression upon fragonard's imagination, which passed to his canvases, and never left his art--developing a profound sense of style, and a knowledge of light and air that bathed the scenes he was to paint with such rare skill and insight. here grew that love of stately gardens which are the essence of his landscapes, and which won to the heart of a child of provence. in distant paris the making of history was growing apace. gossip of it reached to italy. a backstairs intrigue almost dislodged the pompadour from power. d'argenson and the queen's party threw the beautiful and youthful madame de choiseul-romanet, not wholly unflattered at the adventure, into the king's way to lure him from the favourite. the king wrote her a letter of invitation. the girl consulted her noble kinsman, the comte de stainville, of the maurepas faction or queen's party, a bitter enemy to the pompadour. de stainville, his pride of race wounded that a kinswoman of his should be offered to the king, went to the pompadour, exposed the plot, and forthwith became her ally--soon her guide in affairs of state. in the midst of disasters by sea and land the pompadour persuaded the king to send for de stainville, and to make him his prime minister. he was created duc de choiseul in december . he had as ally one of the most astute and subtle and daring minds in eighteenth-century france--his sister beatrice, the famous duchesse de grammont. the king found a born leader of men. choiseul brought back dignity to the throne. he came near to saving france. choiseul was the public opinion of the nation. he founded his strength on parliament and on the new philosophy. he became a national hero. he could do no wrong. he rose to power in ; and at once stemmed the tide of disaster to france. the parliament men took courage. philosophy, with one of its men in power, spoke out with no uncertain voice. all france was listening. fragonard had at last to turn his face homewards; and dawdling through italy with saint-non, staying his feet at bologna and venice awhile, the two friends worked slowly towards paris, fragonard entering his beloved city, after five wander-years, in the autumn of , in his twenty-ninth year, untainted and unspoiled by academic training, his art founded upon that of boucher, enhanced by his keen study of nature. he reached paris, rich in plans for pictures, filled with ardour and enthusiasm for his art, ambitious to create masterpieces, and burning to distinguish himself. iii the du barry when fragonard came back to paris on the edge of his thirtieth year it was to find that a great change had come over his master boucher. the old, light-hearted, genial painter was showing signs of the burning of the candle of life at both ends. his art also was being bitterly assailed by the new critics--the new philosophy was asking for ennobling sentiments from the painted canvas, and the teaching of a moral lesson from all the arts. boucher stood frankly bewildered, blinking questioning eyes at the frantic din. old age had come upon him, creeping over the shrewd kindly features, dulling the exquisite sight. he could not wholly ignore the change that was taking place in public taste. the ideas of the philosophers were penetrating public opinion. the man of feeling had arisen and walked in the land. they were beginning to speak of the great antique days of greece and rome. fickle fashion was about to turn her back upon dresden shepherds and shepherdesses and leafy groves, and to take up her abode awhile with heroes and amongst picturesque ruins. arrived in paris, fragonard at once set himself to the task of painting the historic or mythologic academy-piece expected from the holder of the prix de rome on return from the italian tour. he painted "the high priest coresus slaying himself to save callirhoë," which, though badly hung at the salon, and still to be seen at the louvre, was hailed with high praise by the academicians and critics. the only adverse criticisms of coldness and timidity levelled against it sound strange in the light of his after-career, which, whatever its weaknesses, was not exactly marked with coldness nor eke with timidity. for two years thereafter he essayed the academic style. but the praises of diderot and grimm failed to fill his pockets; and he decided to paint no more academic pieces for the critics' praise. he had indeed no taste for such things, no sympathy with ancient thought nor with the dead past. he was, like his master, a very son of france--a child of his own age, glorying in the love of life and the beauty of his native land. having done his duty by his school, he turned his back upon it gleefully, as boucher had also done before him, and set himself joyously to the painting of the life about him. his great chance soon came, and in strange guise. it so happened that a young blood at the court, one baron de saint-julien, went to the painter doyen with his flame, and asked him to paint a picture of the pretty creature being swung by a bishop whilst he himself watched the display of pretty ankles as the girl went flying through the air. doyen had scruples; but recommended fragonard for the naughty business. fragonard seized the idea readily enough, except that he made the frail girl's husband swing the beauty for her lover's eyes, using the incident, as usual, but as the trivial theme for a splendid setting amidst trees, glorying in the painting of the foliage--as you may see, if you step into the wallace galleries, where is the exquisite thing that brought fragonard fame--the world-famous "les hazards heureux de l'escarpolette." the effect was prodigious. de launay's brilliant engraving of it popularised it throughout the land. nobles and rich financiers, and all the gay world of fashion besides, now strove to possess canvases signed by fragonard. boucher was grown old and ailing; and just as boucher had been the painter of the france of fashion under the pompadour, so fragonard was now to become the mirror of the court, of the theatre, of the drawing-room, of the boudoir, of the age of du barry. finding a ready market for subjects of gallantry, he gave rein to his natural bent, and straightway leaped into the vogue. pictures were the hobby of the nobility and the rich; and france under the pompadour, and particularly at this the end of her reign, was madly spendthrift upon its hobbies and fickle fancies. the pretty house, delicately tinted rooms, fine furniture, dainty decorations, and charming pictures, were a necessity for such as would be in the fashion. [illustration: plate iv.--the schoolmistress (in the wallace collection) after his marriage fragonard's brush turned to the glorification of family life; and one of the most beautiful designs he conceived in this exquisite series was the picture of the schoolmistress and her small pupils--here chasteness of feeling has taken the place of levity; and purity of statement is evidenced even in the half-nude little fellow who is receiving his first lesson in culture.] you shall look in vain for the affected innocence, the naïve mawkishness, the chaste sentimentality of greuze in the master-work of fragonard. he knew nothing of these things--cared less. his was an ardent brush; and he used it ardently; but always you shall find him using his subject, however naughty, as the mere excuse for a glorious picture of trees. he is one of the great landscape-painters of france. he had many qualities that go to make a decorative painter. indeed, it is to the frenchmen of the seventeen-hundreds to whom we may safely go for pictures that make the walls of a drawing-room a delight. unlike the italians, they are pleasing to live with. his painting of "la fête de st. cloud," in the dining-room of the governor of the bank of france, is one of the decorative landscapes of the world. he was now producing works in considerable numbers--it is his first, his detailed period, somewhat severe in arrangement and style as to composition and handling--the years of "love the conqueror," the "bolt," the "fountain of love," of "le serment d'amour," the "gimblette," "les baigneuses," the "sleeping bacchante," the "début du modèle," and the like. his master, boucher, was grown old; he could not carry out the commissions for the decoration of rooms and for paintings with which he was overwhelmed; and it was in order to help forward his brilliant pupil, his "frago," that he now introduced him to his old friend and patron the farmer-general bergeret de grandcour--a man of great wealth, a lover of art, and an honorary member of the royal academy--who became one of fragonard's most lavish patrons and most intimate friends. bergeret de grandcour commissioned several panels in this, fragonard's thirty-fifth year--the year of his painting the superb "fête de st. cloud." this is towards the end of that period of minute and detailed painting which he did with such consummate skill, yet without bringing pettiness into his largeness of conception. meantime, choiseul's masterly mind, having secured peace abroad, saw that france, if she were to keep her sovereign state, must be first cleansed from the dangers that threatened from within. he turned to the blotting out of the turbulent order of the jesuits, whose vindictive acts against, and quarrels with, the parliaments, and whose galling and oppressive tyranny, had roused the bitter hatred of the magistracy and of the people throughout the land. choiseul they treated as their bitterest enemy. he decided to blot them out, root and branch, from france. the popular party closed up its ranks. choiseul had not long to wait. the chance came in odd fashion enough. an attempt by the order to end the pompadour's scandalous relations with the king was the quaint thing--the match that started the explosion. with all his skill of state-craft, choiseul leaped to the weapon. in secret concert with the king's powerful favourite he struck at them through the bankruptcy of their banking concerns in the west indies, caused by their losses in the wars with england; and louis abolished the society out of the land, secularising its members, and seizing its property. the pompadour lived but a short while to enjoy her triumph. worn-out by her vast activities, and assailed by debt, she fell ill of a cough that racked her shrunken body. she died, transacting the king's business and affairs of state, on the th of april , in her forty-second year. whatever may be said of this cold-blooded, calculating, grasping woman, who crushed down every nice instinct of womanhood to win a king's favour, who knew no scruple, who was without mercy, without pardon or forgiveness, without remorse; bitter and adamant in revenge; who turned a deaf ear to the cries from the bastille; whose heart knew no love but for self; it must be allowed that at least for art she did great and splendid service. she not only encouraged and brought out the best achievement of her age; she did art an even more handsome benefit. she insisted on artists painting their age and not aping the dead past. to fragonard personally she rendered no particular service. his real achievement began on the eve of her death, when she was a worn-out and broken woman. nor had fragonard ever that close touch with the royal house or its favourites during any part of his lifetime that meant so much to the fortunes of his master, boucher. there were two patrons for whom fragonard was about to create a series of masterpieces in the decoration of their splendid and luxurious homes--works of art which were to have strange adventures and histories. they were both women. [illustration: plate v.--figure de fantasie (in the louvre) here we have one of the rare examples of fragonard's painting of a man's portrait. it is in strange contrast to his more delicate handling of domestic subjects.] for the prodigal and eccentric dancer, the notorious mademoiselle guimard, he undertook the painting of a series of panels. the guimard was the rage of paris--she of the orgic suppers and the naughty dances with her comrade vestris. frago, who is said to have been more than a friend of the reckless one of the nimble feet, undertook the decoration of her house in the chaussée d'antin, known to the bloods as the temple of terpsichore. he painted for the same room a portrait of the frail beauty as an opera-shepherdess--the simple pastoral life was the pose of this unsimple age. he was engaged upon the business, off and on, for several years; and the many delays at last fretted the light one. fragonard, anything but energetic, liked always to take his own time at his work. the guimard got to pestering him--she had a sharp tongue--and at last, one fine day, upbraided him roundly, taunting him with a sneer that he would never get the work finished. fragonard lost patience and temper, goaded by her ill-manners, her abuse, and her biting tongue. "it _is_ finished," said he; and walked out of the house. the guimard could never get him back; but one day he slipped in alone, painted the set dancer's-smile from the dancer's mouth, and placed there instead a snarl upon her lips. before this breach between them fragonard had painted several portraits of the guimard. however, the work for the lady was to have far-reaching results little dreamed of. for the completion of the room, fragonard procured the commission for david, then twenty-five; and david never forgot the service rendered. he was to repay it tenfold when black days threatened; and with rare courage, when even the courage of gratitude was a deadly dangerous commodity. however, this was not as yet; the sun shone in the skies; and all was gaiety and laughter still. the "chiffre d'amour," the picture of a pretty girl who cuts her lover's monogram in the bark of a tree's trunk, the shadowed tree and figure telling darkly against the glamorous half light beyond, was one of fragonard's happiest inspirations of these years, as any one may see who steps into the wallace galleries. here also may be seen to-day the exquisite "fair-haired boy." the boldly painted "l'heure de berger" was wet upon the canvas about this year, though its boldness of handling foretells his later manner, whilst the spirit of boucher is over all. four years after the death of the pompadour the patient neglected queen, amiable dull marie leczinska, followed her supplanter to the grave. the king's grief and contrition and his solemn vows to mend his ways came somewhat over-late; they lasted little longer than the drying of his floods of tears over the body of his dead consort. on the eve of candlemas, the first day of february , at a convivial party in paris that was not wholly without political significance, a jesuit priest raised his glass _to the presentation!_ adding after the toast--"to that which has taken place to-day, or will take place to-morrow, the presentation of the new esther, who is to replace haman and release the jewish nation from oppression!" he spoke figuratively--it was safer so. but 'twas understood. indeed, the pretty sentiment was well received by the old aristocrats and young bloods about the table; and they drank a bumper to the pretty madame du barry. for the jesuits had no love for the king's minister choiseul--and the madcap girl was but the lure whereby the king was to be drawn from his great minister. so religion rallied about the frail beauty, and hid behind her extravagant skirts--one of which cost close on £ --and, with the old nobility, drank damnation to the king's minister and to the devil with the new thought and with parliaments. long live the king and the divine right of kings! our worthy priest seems to have had the ear of destiny, though he dated his certainty near upon a couple of months too soon. so it came about that before a year was out the old king was become the doting creature of a light-o'-love of paris, the transfigured milliner and street-pedlar, jeanne, natural child of one anne béqus, a low woman of vaucouleurs. this jeanne, of no surname and unknown father, a pretty, kindly, vulgar child of the gutters, with fair hair and of madcap habits, was some twenty-six years of age, when--being reborn under a forged birth-certificate at the king's ordering, as anne de vaubernier, and being married by the same orders to the count du barry, an obliging nobleman of the court--she appeared at versailles as the immortally frail countess du barry. the remonstrances of choiseul with the king against this new degradation of the throne of france, and his unconcealed scorn and disgust of the upstart countess, made a dangerous enemy for france's great minister, and was to cost him and his france very dear. the king's infatuation brought royalty into utter contempt amongst the people. it was to cost france a terrible price--and fragonard not least of all. one of the first gifts from the king to the du barry was the little castle of louveciennes; and she proceeded with reckless extravagance to furnish her handsome home. drouais, the artist, sold to her for livres (double florins), as overdoors for one of the rooms, four panels that he had bought from fragonard. they have vanished; but they served fragonard a good turn--he received an order to decorate du barry's luxurious pavilion of luciennes, which she had had built to entertain the king at her "little suppers." thus it chanced that for this wilful light-o'-love fragonard painted the great master-work of his life--the five world-famous canvases of the series of "the progress of love in the heart of maidenhood," or, as they are better known, "the romance of love and youth"--the old king masquerading therein as a young shepherd, and the du barry as a shepherdess. in "the ladder" ("l'escalade" or "le rendezvous") the du barry plays the part of a timid young girl who starts as she sees her shepherd-lover to be the king; the "pursuit" follows; then the "souvenirs" and "love crowned." the last of the five, the discarded mistress in "deserted," was only begun; and was not completed by fragonard until twenty years later at grasse, to complete the set. what it was that struck a chill into the frail du barry's favour, so that the masterpieces of fragonard never entered within her doors, is not fully known. whatsoever the cause, these canvases were rejected by her. it is said that the work was found to be disappointing, being lacking as to the indecencies by the du barry and the king, who preferred the more suggestive panels of vien. it is true that fragonard's earlier four panels which she possessed were in questionable taste, and that these five were pure; indeed, their trivial story matters little amidst the massy foliage and the majestic trees that spring into the swinging heavens. fragonard suspected, and somewhat resented the suspicion, that he was being made to paint in a sort of artistic duel with vien. at any rate, vien was chosen. so it came that the discarded pictures lay in fragonard's studio for over twenty years, when we shall see them, rolled up, making a chief part of the strange baggage of fragonard's flight from his beloved paris. the fact was that the du barry was of the gutter. she had the crude love of fineries of the girl promoted from the gutter. she loved display. but into her home she brought the vulgar singers of the lowest theatres, where the pompadour had brought the wits and leading artists of her time. the old culture was gone. louis laughed now at ribald songs, and was entertained by clowns. it is part of the irony of life that fragonard, who never entered into the favourite's friendship, should have become the recognised artist of her day. it was a part of that grim irony that caused the du barry, whose age he honours, to reject the most exquisite work of his hands--in which his art is seen at its highest achievement, the tender half-melancholy of the thing stated with a lyric beauty that displays his genius in its supreme flight. a search through the du barry's bills--and there are four huge bound volumes of them--reveals the list of pictures painted by boucher, by vien, by greuze, and by others, for the spendthrift woman; but of transaction with fragonard there is no slightest hint. iv marriage there lived in grasse, with its rich harvests of flowers, and given to the distilling of perfumes therefrom, a family that had come from avignon--its name, gérard, and on friendly terms with the fragonards. it so chanced that a young woman of the family, the seventeen-year-old marie anne gérard, was sent to paris, to the care of fragonard, in order to earn her living in the shop of a scent-seller, one isnard. the girl had artistic leanings, and fell a-painting of fans and miniatures. she had need of a teacher; and who better qualified for the business than her townsman, the famous fragonard? what more natural than that fragonard should become her master? she was a jovial girl. so they would talk of home, and the people amongst whom they had been bred. she was no particular beauty, as her picture by fragonard proves; she had the rough accent of provence; was thick-set and clumsy of figure, and of heavy features, but she had the youth and freshness and health of a young woman's teens, that hide the blemishes and full significance of these coarsenesses. she and fragonard fell a-kissing. fragonard, now thirty-seven, married marie anne gérard in her eighteenth year; and she bore him a much loved daughter, rosalie--and ten years later, in , a son, alexandre evariste fragonard. there came to live with the newly married couple his wife's younger sister marguerite and her young brother henri gérard, who was learning engraving. [illustration: plate vi.--le voeu À l'amour (in the louvre) this is an example of fragonard in his grand-manner mood--a picture of the large decorative years that produced such masterpieces as the "serment d'amour," in which we see him ever interested above all things in the painting of bosky leafage and the dignity of great trees for background.] fragonard's marriage at once affected his habits and his art. the wild oats of his artistic career were near sown. the naughtinesses of girls of pleasure gave place to the grace and tenderness of the home-life--the cradle took the place of the bed of light adventures; and children blossomed on to his canvases. he set aside the make-believe shepherds and shepherdesses of the vogue; and henceforth painted the "real thing" in rural surroundings. he brought to his homeliest pictures a beauty of arrangement, a sense of style, and a dignity worthy of the most majestic subjects. he came at this time under the influence of the dutch landscapists, and stole from them the solidity of their massing in foliage, the truth of their character-drawing, the close observation of their cattle and animal-life, their cloudy skies, and the finish and force of their craftsmanship. whether he went into holland is disputed. he was too keen an artist, his was too original a genius, to imitate their style or take on their dutch accent. he simply took from them such part of their craftsmanship as could enter into the facile gracious genius of france without clogging its grace. he is now content with his house and garden for scenery, with his family for models. he realises that an artist has no need to go abroad to find "paintable things." the "heureuse fécondité," the "visit to the nurse" (the second one), the "schoolmistress," the "good mother," the "retour au logis," the "l'education fait tout," the "dites donc, si'l vous plaît," are of this period. in all he did he proves himself an artist, incapable of mediocrity, bringing distinction and style to all that he touches. fragonard also excelled in the painting of miniatures. and there are small portraits under fancy names to be seen at the louvre, painted with a breadth and force that prove him to have known the work of franz hals. the figure of a man, known as "figure de fantaisie" or "inspiration," is stated with a directness and vividness worthy of the great dutch master. indeed, there is much in the direct handling of the paint and the life of the thing that recalls franz hals--the very arrangement of the dress and the treatment of the hand being a careless attempt to recall the habits and fashions of the dutchman. "la musique" repeats the impression. and even the more pronouncedly french style of the pretty woman in "la chanteuse" does not disguise the inspiration of franz hals in the painting of the bodice, the cuffs, and the details--the high ruffle is "dragged in" from hals's day. the "music lesson" at the louvre was painted about the same time. fragonard's old master, boucher, for some time had been "going about like a shadow of himself." the year after fragonard's marriage the old painter was found dead, sitting at his easel before an unfinished picture of venus, the brush fallen out of his fingers--the light of the "glory of paris" gone out. boucher died a few months before that christmas eve of that saw choiseul driven from power by the trio of knaves who used the vulgar but kindly woman du barry as their tool--indeed she refused to pull the great minister down until she had made handsome terms on his behalf; choiseul was too astute a man not to recognise what lay beyond the shadow of her pretty skirts--nay, does he not turn in the courtyard as he leaves the palace to go into banishment, his _lettre de cachet_ in his pocket, and, seeing a woman looking out from a window at the end of an alley, bow and kiss his hand to the window where gazes out of tear-filled eyes this strange doomed beauty who has won to the sceptre of france? 'twas four years before the small-pox took the king--four years during which this same du barry, with her precious trio, d'aiguillon, maupeou, and terray, sent the members of parliament into banishment--years that launched royal france on its downward rushing, with laughter and riot, to its doom, whilst the apathetic louis shrugged his now gross royal shoulders at all warnings of catastrophe, which to give him due credit, he was scarce witless enough or blind enough not to foresee. nay, did he not even admit it in his constantly affirmed, if cynical, creed that "things, as they were, would last as long as he; and he that came after him must shift for himself"? ay; he came even nearer to the kernel of the significance of things, when, shrugging his no longer well-beloved shoulders, as the pompadour had done, he repeated her cynical saying of "_après nous le déluge_." it was to be a deluge indeed--scarlet red. wit and ruthless fatuity were the order of the day; these folk were wondrous full of the neatly turned phrase and the polished epigram. most fatuous of them all, and as ruthless as any, was terray--he who tinkered with finance, with crown to his many infamies the scandalous _pacte de famille_, that mercantile company that was to produce an artificial rise in the price of corn by buying up the grain of france, exporting it, and bringing it back for sale at vast profit--with louis of france as considerable shareholder. had not the owners of the land the right to do what they would with their own? 'twas small wonder that the well-beloved became the highly-detested of the groaning people--he and his precious privileged class. yet louis of france spake prophecy--if unwitting of it. the guillotine was not to have him. in he was stricken down with the small-pox, and the sick-room in the palace saw the du barry and her party fight a duel with choiseul's party for his possession--never, surely, was a more grim, more fantastic warfare than that bitter intrigue to get the confessor to the king's bedside, that meant the dismissal of the favourite before he should be allowed to receive the absolution--in which the strange blasphemy was enacted of the eucharist being hustled about the passages, whilst the bigots strove against its administration, and the freethinkers demanded the last consolation of the church. on the th of may the small-pox took his distempered body, "already a mass of corruption," that was hastily flung into a coffin and hurried without pomp, or circumstance, or pretence of honours to st. denis--being rattled thereto at the trot, the crowd that lined the way showering epigrams not wholly friendly upon its passing; and was buried amongst the bones of the ancient kings of his race, unattended by the court, and amidst the contempt and loud curses of his people. even the poor weeping du barry was gone, hustled from the palace at the wandering orders of the dying delirious king. d'aiguillon also, and maupeou and terray were gone. and the court was hailing the new king and his queen--ill-fated louis the sixteenth and tactless marie antoinette. the scandalous levity of the privileged class of the day, and its ruthless vindictiveness when thwarted, had near done their work. a proud and gallant people touched bottom in humiliation. the pens of the wits and thinkers sent the new opinion broadcast amongst a people wholly scandalised and punished by the corruption of their governors. these writings made astounding and alarming way. the "intellectuals" were all on the side of the people--montesquieu, voltaire, diderot, rousseau, d'alembert, helvetius, condillac, the abbé raynal. with wit and sarcasm and invective and argument, they stirred passions, appealing to self-respect and dignity and honour and the innate love of freedom in the strong; they appealed to common-sense, to the craving for liberty in man's being, to the rights of the individual; and the printing-press scattered their wit and wisdom throughout the land to the uttermost corners of france. they sneered away false aristocracy, false religion. they wrought to overthrow the old order, and brought it into contempt. and they needed to manufacture no evidence. france had lain supine, a mighty people as they proved themselves when their right arms were freed--lain in chains under the heel of a king who had been capable of setting their necks under the feet of a trivial and foolish woman, whose nursery had been the gutter. yet du barry, when all her faults are set against her, suffered undue execration. she had no grain of ill-will in her nature. during her reign the bastille received no prisoner at her ordering--vengeance was not in her. she was the tool of unscrupulous men; but she came between them and their base vengeances, and kept the court free from the brutalities that the pompadour meted out to her enemies without a pang of remorse. during the whole of her reign, she visited her old mother every fortnight, and lavished benefits on her kin--whom most women, thus suddenly raised to the noblesse, would have avoided like a plague. the scoundrels who made her their toy were responsible for every evil deed that she was accused of committing. and even the new king, whose sharp _lettre de cachet_, written two days after he came to the throne, banished her to a convent, soon relented, and allowed her to go back to her home at luciennes. the du barry had striven to abolish the _lettre de cachet_; the new king brought it back, inaugurating his reign by having one sent to the woman whose gentleness and kindliness had shrunk from the accursed thing. it was a fit omen of the well-meaning but incompetent king's tragic reign which was about to begin. to fragonard these things were but tattle; yet the doing of them was to reach to his hearth; the consequences of them were to strip him bare and wreck him--he was to see his wife and womenkind dragging through the streets of paris to beg bread and meat at the gates of the city. but the future was mercifully hidden from him. he was now at the height of his career; and was to taste wider success. [illustration: plate vii.--the fair-haired boy (in the wallace collection) to the visitor to the wallace collection the picture by fragonard next best known after the "chiffre d'amour" and the "swing," is this exquisite study of a fair-haired boy--the child is painted with a subtle grace and consummate delicacy rarely combined with the directness and impressionism here displayed by fragonard.] fragonard's name will always be linked with that of his friend and patron, a wealthy man, the farmer-general bergeret de grandcour. his family visited at the rich man's houses in town and country. now the career of a rich man was incomplete without the making of the grand tour. at the least the gentleman of means must have roamed through italy. and it was thus that, with bergeret de grandcour, fragonard now made his second journey into italy in his forty-second year. fragonard was delighted at the prospect of seeing his loved italy again after twelve years. it was a family party--fragonard and his wife, with bergeret de grandcour and his son, to say nothing of bergeret's servants and cook and following. it was a happy, merry journeying in extravagant luxury. fragonard had aforetime gone into italy as a penniless student and an unknown man; he now travelled in the grand style as the guest of a man of affairs, visiting palaces and churches, received in state by the highest in the land, dining with the ambassador of france, having audience of the pope, advising bergeret de grandcour in the buying of art-treasures. he tasted all the delights of great wealth. he went to a concert "chez le lord hamilton," seeing and speaking with _la belle emma_--nelson's emma. he stood in naples; he tramped up vesuvius. it was at naples the news came that louis the fifteenth lay dying of the small-pox--a few days later the old king died. the party at once turned their faces homewards, returning to paris in leisurely fashion by way of venice, vienna, and germany, only to know, at the journey's ending, one of those miserable and sordid quarrels that seem to dog the friendships of men of genius. going to bergeret de grandcour's house in paris to get his portfolios of sketches, made throughout the journey, fragonard found to his amazement and consternation that bergeret de grandcour angrily refused to give them up, claiming them as payment for his outlay upon him during the italian journey. the sorry business ended in the law-courts, and in the loss of the lawsuit by bergeret de grandcour, who was condemned to give up the drawings or to pay a , livres fine (£ ). the ugly breach that threatened to open between them, however, was soon healed by reconciliation; and bergeret de grandcour's son became one of fragonard's closest and most intimate friends. v the terror louis the sixteenth, third son of the dauphin who had been louis the fifteenth's only lawful son, ascended the throne in his twentieth year, a pure-minded young fellow, full of good intentions, sincerely anxious for the well-being of his people; but of a diffident and timid character, and under the influence of a young consort, the beautiful queen marie antoinette, of imperious temper and of light and frivolous manners, who brought to her counsels a deplorable lack of judgment. the du barry sent a-packing, and d'aiguillon and the rest of their crew, the young king recalled the crafty old maurepas who had been banished by the pompadour, an ill move--though the setting of turgot over the finances augured well. and when the great minister turgot fell, he gave way to as good a man, the worthy honest banker, neckar. in a happy hour fragonard was granted by the king the eagerly sought haven of the artists of his time--a studio and apartments at the old palace of the louvre, as his master boucher had been granted them before him. settling in with his wife, his girl rosalie, his son alexandre evariste, and his talented sister-in-law marguerite gérard, he lived thereat a life almost opulent, making large sums of money, some eight thousand pounds a year, at this time. he joyed in decorating his rooms. he was the life and soul of a group of brilliant men who gathered about him, having the deepest affection for him. his sister-in-law, marguerite gérard, was as gay and distinguished in manners, and as beautiful, as his jovial wife was dull and vulgar and coarse--the vile accent of grasse, that made his wife's speech horrible to the ear, becoming slurred into a shadow of itself on marguerite's tongue, and turned by the enchanting accents of the younger sister's lips into seduction. this girl's friendship and companionship became an ever-increasing delight to the aging painter. their correspondence, when apart, was passionately affectionate. ugly scandals got abroad--scandals difficult to prove or disprove. the man and woman were of like tastes, of like temperaments; it was, likely enough, little more than that. the girl was of a somewhat cold nature; and we must read her last letters as censoriously as her first--when, in reply to fragonard, evil days having fallen upon him, and being old and next to ruined, on his asking her for money to help him, she, who owed everything to him, refused him with the trite sermon: "to practise economy, to be reasonable, and to remember that in brooding over fancies one only increases them without being any the happier." but this was not as yet. fragonard, happy in his home at the louvre, free from cares, content amongst devoted friends, reached his fifty-fifth year when he had suddenly to gaze horrified at the first ugly hint that, in the years to come, he must expect to hear the scythe of the great reaper--know the passing of friends and loved ones. he was to reel under the first serious blow of his life. his bright, witty, winsome girl rosalie died in her eighteenth year. it nearly killed him. but there was a blacker, a vaster shadow came looming over the land--a threat that boded ill for such as took life too airily. in an unfortunate moment for the royal house, and against the will of the king and of neckar, the nation went mad with enthusiasm over england's revolted american colonies; and the alliance was formed that france swore not to sever until america was declared independent. it started the war with england. the successes of the revolted colonies made the coming of the revolution in france a certainty. the fall of neckar and the rise of the new minister, calonne, sent france rushing to the brink. the distress of the people became unbearable. the royal family and the court sank in the people's respect, and the people were no longer the people of the decade before--they had watched the revolution in america, and they had seen the revolution victorious. the fall of calonne only led to the rise of the turbulent and stupid cardinal de brienne; and the court was completely foul of the people when de brienne threw up office in a panic and fled across the frontier, leaving the government in utter confusion. the king recalled neckar. the calling of the states-general now became assured. paris rang with the exultation of the third estate. the states-general met at versailles on the th of may . the monarchy was at an end. in little over a month the states-general created itself the national assembly. the revolution was begun. the th of july saw the fall of the bastille. on the nd the people hanged foulon to the street-lamp at the corner of the place de grève--and _à la lanterne!_ became the cry of fashion. fragonard was in his fifty-seventh year when he heard in his lodging at the louvre the thunderclap of this th of july --saw the dawn of the revolution. the rose of the dawn was soon to turn to blood-red crimson. the storm had been muttering and growling its curses for years before the death of louis the fifteenth. it came up in threatening blackness darkly behind the dawn, and was soon to break with a roar upon reckless paris. it came responsive to the rattle of musketry in the far west, hard by boston harbour. fragonard and his friends were of the independents--they were liberals whom love of elegance had not prevented from sympathising with the sufferings of the people, and who had thrilled with the new thought. fragonard's intelligence drew him naturally towards the new ideas; indeed he owed little to the court; and when france was threatened by the coalition of europe against her, he, with gérard, david, and others, went on the th of september with the artist's womenfolk to give up their jewelry to the national assembly. but the storm burst, and soon affairs became tragic red. there came, for the ruin of the cause of a constitutional monarchy and to end the last hope of the court party, the unfortunate death of mirabeau--the hesitations of the king--his foolish flight to varennes--his arrest. the constitutional party in the legislative assembly, at first dominant, became subordinate to the more violent but more able _girondists_, with their extreme wing of _jacobins_ under robespierre, and _cordeliers_ under danton, marat, camille desmoulins, and fabre d'eglantine. the proscription of all emigrants quickly followed. it was as unsafe to leave as to stay in paris. the queen's insane enmity towards lafayette finished the king's business. on the night of the th of august the dread tocsin sounded the note of doom to the royal cause--herald to the bloodshed of the morrow. three days afterwards, the king and the royal family were prisoners in the temple. the national convention met for the first time on the st of september ; decreed the first year of the republic, abolished royalty and the titles of courtesy, decreed in their place _citoyen_ and _citoyenne_, and the use of _tu_ and _toi_ for _vous_. [illustration: plate viii.--le billet doux (in the collection of m. wildenstein, paris) here we see fragonard in his phase of sentimental recorder of love-scenes so typical of the art of louis the fifteenth's day.] the national convention also displayed the antagonism of the two wings of the now all-powerful girondist party--the girondists and the jacobins or montagnards. the conflict began with the quarrel as to whether the king could be tried. the th of january saw the king's head fall to the guillotine--the jacobins had triumphed. war with europe followed, and the deadly struggle between the girondists and jacobins for supreme power. the th of may witnessed the appointment of the terrible and secret committee of public safety. by june the girondists had wholly fallen. charlotte corday's stabbing of marat in his bath left the way clear for robespierre's ambition. the jacobins in power, the year of the reign of terror began--july to july --with robespierre as the lord of the hellish business. the scaffolds reeked with blood--from that of marie antoinette and egalité orleans to that of the girondist deputies and madame roland, and the most insignificant beggar suspected of the vague charge of "hostility to the republic." in a mad moment the du barry, who had shown the noblest side of her character in befriending the old allies of her bygone days of greatness, published a notice of a theft from her house. it drew all eyes to her wealth. and she went to the guillotine shrieking with terror and betraying all who had protected her. then came strife amongst the jacobins. robespierre and danton fought the scoundrel hébert for life, and overthrew him. the hebertists went to the guillotine, dying in abject terror. danton, with his appeals for cessation of the bloodshed of the terror, alone stood between robespierre and supreme power. danton, camille desmoulins, eglantine and their humane fellows, were sent to the guillotine. between the th of june and the th of july, in , fourteen hundred people in paris alone died on the scaffold. fragonard dreaded to fly from the tempest. it was as safe to remain in paris as to leave the city. any day he might be taken. sadness fell upon him and ate into his heart. the old artist could not look without uneasiness upon the ruin of the aristocracy, of the farmers-general, and of the gentle class, now in exile or prison or under trial--his means of livelihood utterly gone. without hate for royalty or for the republic, the artists, by birth plebeian and in manners bourgeois, many of them old men, could but blink with fearful eyes at the vast upheaval. their art was completely put out of fashion--a new art, solemn and severe, classical and heroic, was born. for half a century the charming art of france of the eighteenth century lay wholly buried--a thing of contempt wherever it showed above the ashes. fragonard's powerful young friend david, the painter, now stood sternly watchful over the old man's welfare; and david was at the height of his popularity--he was a member of the convention. he took every opportunity to show his friendship publicly, visited fragonard regularly, secured him his lodgings at the louvre, brought about his election to the jury of the arts created by the convention to take the place of the royal academy. but the old artist was bewildered. the national enthusiasm was not in him. the artists were ruined by the destruction of their pensions. the buyers of fragonard's pictures were dispersed, their power and their money gone, their favour dissipated. fragonard worked on without conviction or truth. the new school uprooted all his settled ideals. he struggled hard to catch the new ideas, and failed. he helped to plant a tree of liberty in the court of the louvre, meditating the while how he could be gone from paris--it was a tragic farce, played with his soul. the glories of the revolution alarmed the old man. he saw the kinsfolk of his friends dragged off to the guillotine. he had guarded against suspicion and arrest by giving a certificate early in , the year of the terror, stating that he had no intention of emigrating, adding a statement of residence, and avowing his citizenship. he felt that even these acts were not enough protection in these terrible years. no man knew when or where the blow might fall--at what place or moment he might be seized, or on what charge, and sent to the guillotine. friends were taken in the night. hubert robert was seized and flung into saint lazare, escaping death but by an accident. the state of misery and want amongst the artists and their wives and families at this time was pitiable. fragonard gladly snatched at the invitation of an old friend of his family, monsieur maubert, to go to him at grasse during these anxious times of the travail that had come upon france. shortly after that sunday in december when the du barry went shrieking to her hideous death at the guillotine, fragonard, turning his face to the south of his birth, was rolling up amongst his baggage the four finished canvases of "the romance of love and youth," and the unfinished fifth canvas, "deserted," ordered and repudiated by the du barry. he bundled his family into a chaise, and lumbered out of paris, rumbling on clattering wheels through the guards at the gates, and making southwards towards provence for his friend's house at grasse. here, far away from the din and strife, fragonard set up his world-famous decorative panels in the salon of his host, which they admirably fitted, painting for the overdoors, "love the conqueror," "love-folly," "love pursuing a dove," "love embracing the universe," and a panel over the fireplace, "triumph of love." he also painted during his stay the portraits of the brothers maubert; and, to keep his host safe from ugly rumours and unfriendly eyes, he decorated the vestibule with revolutionary emblems, phrygian bonnet, axes and faggots, and the masks of robespierre and the abbé gregoire, and the like trickings of red republicanism.... his host was the maternal grandfather of the malvilan, at whose death in , the room and its decorations were sold to an american collector for a huge sum of money. meanwhile, able and resolute men had determined that robespierre and the terror must end. robespierre went to the guillotine. the revolution of the ninth thermidor put an end to the terror in july . all this time the armies of france were winning the respect of the world by their gallantry and skill. the rd of september , saw france establish the directory--the th of october, the day of the sections, saw the stiff fight about the church of st. roch, and napoleon bonaparte appointed second-in-command of the army. the young general was soon commander-in-chief. and france thenceforth advanced, spite of the many blunders of the directory, with all the genius of her race, to the splendid recovery of her fortunes, and to a greatness which was to be the wonder and admiration and dread of the world. the revolution of the th and th of brumaire ( th and th of november ) destroyed the directory and set the people's idol, napoleon bonaparte, at the helm of her mighty state. vi the end to paris fragonard crept back, he and his family, to his old quarters at the louvre, when napoleon was come to power, and the guillotine was slaked with blood. he returned to paris a poor old man. the enthusiasm was gone out of his invention, the volition out of his hand's cunning, the breath out of his career. he was out of the fashion; a man risen from the dead. his efforts to catch the spirit of the time were pathetic. he painted rarely now. he won a passing success with an historic canvas or so, done in the new manner. but what did fragonard know of political allegories? what enthusiasm had he for the famous days of the revolution? what were caricature or satire to him, any more than the heroic splendour of greece and rome? the gods of elegance were dead; a severe and frigid morality stood upon their altars. we have a pen-picture of the old painter at this time--short, big of head, stout, full-bodied, brisk, alert, ever gay; he has red cheeks, sparkling eyes, grey hair very much frizzed out; he is to be seen wandering about the louvre dressed in a cloak or overcoat of a mixed grey cloth, without hooks or eyes or buttons--a cloak which the old man, when he is at work, ties at the waist with it does not matter what--a piece of string, a crumpled chiffon. every one loves "little father fragonard." through every shock of good and evil fortune he remains alert and cheerful. the old face smiles even through tears. thus, walking with aging step towards the end, he saw napoleon created emperor of the french, his triumphant career marred only at rare intervals by such disasters as trafalgar--heard perhaps of the suicide of the unfortunate but gallant villeneuve at the disgrace of trial by court-martial for this very loss of trafalgar. in the year of , on the new year's day of which were abolished the republican reckonings of the years as established at the revolution, suddenly came the suppression of the artists' lodging at the louvre by decree of the emperor. the fragonards went to live hard by in the house of the restaurant-keeper very, in the rue grenelle saint-honoré. the move was for fragonard but the prelude to a longer journey. the old artist walks now more sluggishly than of old, his four-and-seventy years have taken the briskness out of his step. returning from the champ de mars on a sultry day in august he becomes heated--enters a café to eat an ice; congestion of the brain sets in. at five of the clock in the morning of the nd day of august , fragonard enters into the eternal sleep--at the hour that his master boucher had gone to sleep. thus passed away the last of the great painters of france's gaiety and lightness of heart. madame fragonard lived to be seventy-seven, dying in . marguerite gérard had a happy career as an artist under the empire and the restoration, but never married--dying at seventy-six, loaded with honours and in comfortable circumstances in the year that queen victoria came to the throne of england. thus peacefully ended the days of fragonard and his immediate kin after the turmoil and fierce tragic years of the terror. painting with prodigal hand a series of elegant masterpieces in a century that made elegance its god, fragonard disappeared, neglected and well-nigh discredited for years, with watteau and boucher and greuze for goodly company; but with them, he is come into his own again, lord of a very realm of beauty. to understand the atmosphere of the france of the seventeen-hundreds before the revolution it is necessary to understand the art of watteau, of boucher, of fragonard, and of chardin. of its pictured romance, watteau and boucher and fragonard hold the keys. to shut the book of these is to be blind to the revelation of the greater part of that romance. watteau states the new france of light airs and gaiety and pleasant prospects, tinged with sweet melancholy, that became the dream of a france rid of the pomposity and mock-heroics of the grand monarque; boucher fulfils the century; fragonard utters its swan's note. the art of fragonard embodies astoundingly the pulsing evening of a century of the life of france, uttering its gay blithe note, skimming over the dangerous deeps of its mighty significance, yet not wholly disregarding the deeps as did the art of his two great forerunners. his is the last word of that mock-heroic france that louis the fourteenth built on stately and pompous pretence; that louis the fifteenth still further corrupted by the worship of mere elegance; that louis the sixteenth sent to its grave--a suffering people out of which a real france arose, from mighty and awful travail, like a giant, and stood bestriding the world, a superb reality. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare dÜrer - * * * * * "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. hogarth. c. lewis hind. _others in preparation._ * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--portrait of hieronymus holzschuer. frontispiece (from the oil-painting in the berlin museum. painted in ) holzschuer was one of dürer's nuremberg friends--a patrician, and councillor of the city. dürer's portraits are remarkable for their strength in characterisation.] dÜrer by herbert e. a. furst illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. list of illustrations plate i. portrait of hyeronymus holzschuer frontispiece from the oil-painting in the berlin museum page ii. portrait of a woman from the oil-painting in the berlin museum iii. portrait of the artist from the oil-painting in the alte pinakothek, munich iv. portrait of the painter's father from the oil-painting in the national gallery v. portrait of oswalt krel from the oil-painting in the alte pinakothek, munich vi. the madonna with the siskin from the oil-painting in the berlin museum vii. ss. john and peter from the oil-painting in the alte pinakothek, munich viii. ss. paul and mark from the oil-painting in the alte pinakothek, munich [illustration] this is a wonderful world! and not the least wonderful thing is our ignorance of it. i would chat with you, reader, for a while; would discuss dürer, whom i have known and loved for many a year, and whom i want to make beloved by you also. here i sit, pen in hand, and would begin. begin--where? with the beginnings? the beginnings? where do things begin; when and why? so our ignorance, like a many-headed monster, raises its fearsome heads and would bar the way. by most subtle links are all things connected--cause and effect we call them; and if we but raise one or the other, fine ears will hear the clinking--and the monster rises. there are so many things we shall never know, cries the poet of the unsaid, maeterlinck. let us venture forth then and grope with clumsy fingers amongst the treasures stored; let us be content to pick up a jewel here and there, resting our minds in awe and admiration on its beauty, though we may not readily understand its use and meaning. foolish men read books and dusty documents, catch a few dull words from the phrasing of long thoughts, and will tell you, these are facts! wise men read books--the books of nature and the books of men--and say, facts are well enough, but oh for the right understanding! for between sunrise and sunset, between the dusk of evening and the dusk of dawn, things happen that will never happen again; and the world of to-day is ever a world of yesterdays and to-morrows. reader, i lift my torch, and by its dim light i bid you follow me. for it is a long journey we have to make through the night of the past. many an encumbrance of four and a half centuries we shall have to lay aside ere we reach the treasure-house of dürer's art. from the steps of kaiser wilhelm ii.'s throne we must hasten through the ages to kaiser maximilian's city, nuremberg--to the days when wilhelm's ancestors were but margraves of brandenburg, scarcely much more than the burggraves of nuremberg they had originally been. from the days of the maxim gun and the lee-metford to the days of the howitzer and the blunderbuss. when york was farther away from london than new york is to-day. when the receipt of a written letter was fact but few could boast of; and a secret _billet-doux_ might cause the sender to be flung in gaol. when the morning's milk was unaccompanied by the morning news; for the printer's press was in its infancy. when the stranding of a whale was an event of european interest, and the form of a rhinoceros the subject of wild conjecture and childish imagination. when this patient earth of ours was to our ancestors merely a vast pancake toasted daily by a circling sun. [illustration: plate ii.--portrait of a woman (from the oil-painting in the berlin museum) this beautiful portrait represents, artistically, the zenith of dürer's art. it shows venetian influence so strongly, and is painted with so much serenity of manner, that one is almost inclined to doubt its ascription.] when the woods were full of hobgoblins, and scaly beelzebubs were busily engaged in pitching the souls of the damned down a yawning hell-mouth, and the angels of the lord in crimson and brocade carried the blessed heavenward. in those days scholars filled their books with a curious jumble of theology, philosophy, and old women's talk. dr. faustus practised black magic, and the besom-steeds carried witches from the brocken far and wide into all lands. then no one ventured far from home unaccompanied, and the merchants were bold adventurers, and kings of scotland might envy nuremberg burgesses--so Æneas sylvius said. and that a touch of humour be not lacking, i bid you remember that my lady dipped her dainty fingers into the stew, and, after, threw the bare bones to the dogs below the table; and i also bid you remember that satins and fine linen oft clothed an unwashed body. cruel plagues, smallpox, and all manner of disease and malformations inflicted a far greater number than nowadays, and the sad ignorance of doctors brewed horrid draughts amongst the skulls, skeletons, stuffed birds, and crocodiles of their fearsome-looking "surgeries." in short, it was a "poetic" age; when all the world was full of mysteries and possibilities, and the sanest and most level-headed were outrageously fantastic. there are people who will tell you that the world is very much the same to-day as it was yesterday, and that, after all, human nature is human nature in all ages all the world over. but, beyond the fact that we all are born and we all must die, there is little in common between you and me--between us of to-day and those of yesterday--and we resemble each other most nearly in things that do not matter. frankly, therefore, albrecht dürer, who was born on may , , is a human being from another world, and unless you realise that too, i doubt you can understand him, much less admire him. for his art is not beautiful. germans have never been able to create anything beautiful in art: their sense of beauty soars into song. but even whilst i am writing these words it occurs to me that they are no longer true, for the german of to-day is no longer the german of yesterday, "standing peaceful on his scientific watch-tower; and to the raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere solemnly, from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of cow-horn emit his 'höret ihr herren und lasst's euch sagen' ..." as carlyle pictures him; he is most certainly not like the lutheran german with a child's heart and a boy's rash courage. frankly i say you cannot admire dürer if you be honestly ignorant or ignorantly honest. we of to-day are too level-headed; our brains cannot encompass the world that crowded dürer's dreams. for the german's brain was always crowded; he had not that nice sense of space and emptiness that makes italian art so pleasant to look upon, and which the japanese employ with astonishing subtlety. you remember wagner's words in goethe's "faust"-- "zwar weiss ich viel; doch möcht ich alles wissen." (i know a lot, yet wish that i knew all.) it is not only his eagerness to show you all he knows, but also his ravenous desire to know all that is to be known. hence we speak of german thoroughness, at once his boast and his modesty. here again i have to pull up. generalisations are so easy, appear so justified, and are more often than not misleading. dürer was not a pure-blooded teuton; his father came from eytas in hungary.[ ] [ ] eytas translated into german is thür (door), and a man from thür a thürer or dürer. that german music owes a debt of gratitude to hungary is acknowledged. does dürer owe his greatness to the strain of foreign blood? possibly; but it does not matter. he was a man, and a profound man, therefore akin to all the world, as dante and michelangelo, as shakespeare and millet. born into german circumstances he appears in german habit--that is all. his father albrecht was a goldsmith, and albrecht the son having shown himself worthy of a better education than his numerous brothers, was, after finishing school, apprenticed to and would have remained a goldsmith, had his artistic nature not drawn him to art; at least so his biographer, _i.e._ the painter himself, tells us. it was not the artist alone who longed for freer play, for freer expression of his faculties. it was to a great extent, i feel sure, the thinker. dürer took himself tremendously seriously; were it not for some letters that he has left us, and some episodes in his graphic art, one might be led to imagine that dürer knew not laughter, scarcely even a smile. he consequently thought it of importance to acquaint the world with all the details of his life and work, recording even the moods which prompted him to do this or that. in dürer the desire to live was entirely absorbed in the desire to think. he was not a man of action, and the records of his life are filled by accounts of what he saw, what he thought, and what others thought of him; coupled with frequent complaints of jealousies and lack of appreciation. dürer was deep but narrow, and in that again he reflects the religious spirit of protestantism, not the wider culture of humanism. his ego looms large in his consciousness, and it is the salvation of the soul rather than the expansion of the mind which concerns him; but withal he is like luther--a _man_. his idea then of art was, that it "should be employed," as he himself explained, "in the service of the church to set forth the sufferings of christ and such like subjects, and it should also be employed to preserve the features of men after their death." a narrow interpretation of a world-embracing realm. the scope of this little volume will not admit of a detailed account of dürer's life. we may not linger on the years of his apprenticeship with michael wolgemut, where he suffered much from his fellow-'prentices. we must not accompany him on his wanderjahre, these being the three years of peregrination which always followed the years of apprenticeship. neither may we record details, as of his marriage with agnes frey--"mein agnes," upon his return home in . "his agnes" was apparently a good housewife and a shrewd business woman, to whom he afterwards largely entrusted the sale of his prints. he had a great struggle for a living. and here an amusing analogy occurs to me. painting does not pay, he complains at one time, and therefore he devotes himself to "black and white." was it ever thus? would that some of our own struggling artists remembered dürer, and even when they find themselves compelled to do something to keep the pot aboiling, at any rate do their best. [illustration: plate iii.--portrait of the artist (from the oil-painting in the alte pinakothek, munich) this picture bears the date and a latin inscription, "i, albert dürer, of nuremberg, painted my own portrait here in the proper colours, at the age of twenty-eight." according to thausing, this picture had a curious fate. the panel on which it was painted was sawn in two by an engraver to whom it was lent, and who affixed the back to his own poor copy of the picture--thus using the seal of the nuremberg magistrates, which was placed upon it, to authenticate his copy as a genuine work of the master.] we have it on dürer's own authority that he took up etching and wood-engraving because it paid better. and strange--into this bread-and-butter work he put his best. it is not his painting that made his fame and name, though in that branch of art he was admired by a raphael and a bellini. agnes frey bore him no children; this fact, i think, is worthy of note. even a cursory glance at dürer's etchings and woodcuts will reveal the fact that he was fond of children--"kinderlieb," as the germans say. i do not doubt that he would have given us even more joy and sunshine in his art had he but called a child his own. instead, we have too often the gloomy reflection of death throughout his work. the gambols and frolics of angelic cupids are too often obscured by the symbols of suffering, sin, and death. again, we must not allow a logical conclusion to be accepted as an absolute truth. dürer was certainly more familiar with death and suffering than we are. unless the grey lady and the dark angel visit our own homes, most of us--of my readers, at any rate--have to seek deliberately the faces of sorrow in the slums and the grimaces of death in the coroner's court. but in dürer's days death lurked beyond the city walls; the sight of the slain or swinging victims of knightly valour, and peasant's revenge, blanched the cheeks of many maidens, and queer plagues and pestilences mowed the most upright to the ground. the dance of death was a favourite subject with the old painters, not because their disposition was morbid, but because the times were more out of joint than they are now. all these points have to be realised before one can hope to understand dürer even faintly. again, when we examine more closely the apparently quaint and fantastic form his mode of visualising takes, we must make allowances for the habits and customs and costumes of the times--as indeed one has to, in the case of all old masters, and for which reason i humbly submit that the study of old masters properly belongs to the few, not the many. a great deal of erroneous opinions are held simply because it is difficult to disentangle the individual from the typical. dürer, whose wanderjahre had taken him to strasburg and bâle and venice, returned home again apparently uninfluenced. critics from raphael's age down to the last few years have lamented this fact; have thought that "knowledge of classic antiquity" might have made a better artist of him. now, dürer was not an artist in its wider sense; he was a craftsman certainly, but above all a thinker. dürer uses his eyes for the purposes of thought; he could close them without disturbing the pageants of his vision. but whereas we have no hint that his dreams were of beauty, we have every indication that they were literal transcriptions of literary thoughts. when he came to put these materialisations into the form of pictures or prints, the craftsman side, the practical side of his nature, resolved them into scientific problems, with the remarkable result that these visions are hung on purely materialistic facts. from our modern point of view dürer was decidedly lacking in artistic imagination, which even such men as goya and blake, or "si parva licet comparere magnis" john martin and gustave doré, and the delightful arthur rackham of our own times possess. his importance was his craftsmanship, whilst the subject-matter of his pictures--the portraits excepted--and particularly of his prints, are merely of historic interest--"von kulturhistorischer bedeutung," the german would say. in and he visited venice, as already stated, gracefully received by the nobles and giovanni bellini, but disliked by the other painters. he returned home apparently uninfluenced by the great venetians, titian, remember, amongst them. gentile bellini and vittore carpaccio were then the only painters at venice who saw the realistic side of nature; but they were prosaic, whilst our dürer imbued a wooden bench or a tree trunk with a personal and human interest. those of my readers who can afford the time to linger on this aspect of dürer's activity should compare carpaccio's rendering of st. jerome in his study with dürer's engraving of the same subject. dürer the craftsman referred in everything he painted or engraved to nature. but of course it was nature as he and his times saw it; neither hals, rembrandt, neither ribera, velazquez, neither chardin nor constable, neither monet nor whistler had as yet begun to ascend the rungs of progress towards truthful--that is, "optical sight." dürer's reference to nature means an intricate study of theoretical considerations, coupled with the desire to record everything he knew about the things he wished to reproduce. his was an analytical mind, and every piece of work he produced is a careful dovetailing of isolated facts. consequently his pictures must not be looked _at_, but looked _into_--must be _read_. again an obvious truth may here mislead us. the analytical juxtaposition of facts was a characteristic of the age. dürer's art was a step forward; he--like raphael, like titian--dovetailed, where earlier men scarcely joined. dürer has as yet not the power that even the next generation began to acquire--he never suggests anything; he works everything out, down to the minutest details. there are no slight sketches of his but such as suggest great travail of sight, encumbranced by an over-thoughtful mind. to understand dürer you require time; each print of the "passions," "the life of mary," the "apokalypse," should be read like a page printed in smallest type, with thought and some eye-strain. that of course goes very much against the grain of our own age; we demand large type and short stories. the study of his work entails considerable self-sacrifice. your own likes and dislikes you have to suppress, and try to see with eyes that belong to an age long since gone. do not despise the less self-sacrificing, who refuse the study of old art; and distrust profoundly those others who laud it beyond measure. the green tree is the tree to water; the dead tree--be its black branches and sere leaves never so picturesque--is beyond the need of your attentions. the scylla and charybdis of æsthetic reformers is praise of the old, and poor appraising of the new. [illustration: plate iv.--portrait of the painter's father (from the oil-painting in the national gallery. painted in ) an interesting picture, which has unfortunately suffered by retouching. it is the only portrait by dürer the nation possesses. other works of his may be seen at south kensington and at hampton court.] now the old italians thought dürer a most admirable artist, blamed what they called the defects of his art on the ungainliness of his models, and felt convinced that he might have easily been the first among the italians had he lived there, instead of the first among the "flemings." they were of course wrong, for it is the individual reflex-action of dürer's brain which caused his art to be what it is; in italy it would still have been an individual reflex-action, and dürer had been in venice without the desired effect. dürer might, however, himself seem to confirm the italians' opinion: he strayed into the barren fields of theoretical speculations--barren because some of his best work was done before he had elaborated his system, barren because speculation saps the strength of natural perception. dürer sought a "canon of beauty," and the history of art has proved over and over again that beauty canonised is damned. one more remark: his contemporaries and critics praised the extraordinary technical skill with which he could draw straight lines without the aid of a ruler, or the astounding legerdemain with which he reproduced every single hair in a curl--the "paganini" worship which runs through all the ages; which in itself is fruitless; touches the fiddle-strings at best or cerebral cords, not heart-strings. out of all the foregoing, out of all the mortal and mouldering coverings we have now to shell the real, the immortal dürer--the dürer whose mind was longing for truth, whose soul was longing for harmony, and who out of his longings fashioned his art, as all great men have done and will do until the last. on the title-page of the "small passion" is a woodcut--the "man of sorrows." there, reader, you have, in my opinion, the greatness of dürer; he never surpassed it. it is the consciousness of man's impotence; it is the saddest sight mortal eyes can behold--that of a man who has lost faith in himself. if dürer were here now i am sure he would lay his hand upon my shoulder, and, his deep true eyes searching mine, his soft and human lips would say:-- you are right, my friend; this is my best, for it is the spirit of my age that spoke in me then. in front of the pantheon at paris is a statue called the thinker. a seated man, unconscious of his bodily strength, for all his consciousness is in the iron grip of thought. he looks not up, not down--he looks before him; and methinks, reader, i can hear an unborn voice proclaim: this too was once the spirit of an age. two milestones on the path of human progress; an idle fancy if you will--no more. of the man of sorrows then we spoke: it is a small thing, but done exceeding well, for in the simplicity of form it embraces a world of meaning; and whilst you cannot spare one iota from the words of the passion, on account of this picture, yet all the words of christ's suffering seem alive in this plain print. could there be a better frontispiece? in judging, not enjoying, a work of art, one should first make sure that one understands the methods of the artist; one should next endeavour to discover his evident purpose or aim, or "motif," and forming one's judgment, ask: has the artist succeeded in welding aim and result into one organic whole? neither the "motif" nor its form are in themselves of value, but the harmony of both--hence we may place dürer's "man of sorrows" by the side of michelangelo's "moses," as of equal importance, of equal greatness. this "man of sorrows" we must praise as immortal art, and the reason is evident; dürer, who designed it during an illness, had himself suffered and knew sorrow--_felt_ what he visualised. [illustration: plate v.--portrait of oswalt krel (from the oil-painting in the alte pinakothek, munich. painted in ) a striking portrait; somewhat cramped in expression, but full of interest. the trees in the background stamp it at once as a work of german origin. dürer's attempt to portray more than the flesh is particularly noticeable here, because not quite successful.] if we compare another woodcut, viz. the one from "die heimliche offenbarung johannis," illustrating revelations i. - , we will have to draw a different conclusion. let us listen to the passage dürer set himself to illustrate: . and i turned to see the voice that spake with me. and being turned, i saw seven golden candlesticks; . and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle. . his head and hairs white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes as a flame of fire; . and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. . and he had in his right hand many stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. . and when i saw him, i fell at his feet as dead. assuming that a passage such as this _can_ be illustrated, and that without the use of colour, is his a good illustration? does it reproduce the spirit and meaning of st. john, or only the words? look at the two-edged sword glued to the mouth, look at the eyes "as a flame of fire"; can you admit more than that it pretends to be a literal translation? but it is not even literal; verse says distinctly, "and when i saw him, i fell at his feet as dead." but st. john is here represented as one praying. then what is the inference? that dürer was unimaginative in the higher sense of the word; that he, like the spirit of the reformation, sought salvation in the word. throughout dürer's art we feel that it was constrained, hampered by his inordinate love of literal truthfulness; not one of his works ever rises even to the level of raphael's "madonna della seggiola." like german philosophy, his works are so carefully elaborated in detail that the glorious whole is lost in more or less warring details. his art suffers from insubordination--all facts are co-ordinated. he himself knew it, and towards the end of this life hated its complexity, caused by the desire to represent in one picture the successive development of the spoken or written word; a desire which even in our days has not completely disappeared. dürer therefore appeals to us of to-day more through such conceptions as the wings of the paumgaertner altar-piece, or the four temperaments (st. peter, st. john, st. mark, and st. paul), than through the crowded centre panels of his altar-pieces; and the strong appeal of his engravings, such as the "knight of the reformation" ( ) or the "melancholia" ( ), is mainly owing to the predominant big note of the principal figures, whilst in the beautiful st. jerome ("hieronymus im gehäus") it is the effect of sunshine and its concomitant feeling of well-being--_gemüthlichkeit_, to use an untranslatable german word--which makes us linger and dwell with growing delight on every detail of this wonderful print. in spite of appearances to the contrary, dürer was, as i have said, unimaginative. he needed the written word or another's idea as a guide; he never dreamt of an art that could be beautiful without a "mission"--he never "created." try to realise for a moment that throughout his work--in accordance with the conception of his age--he mixes purely modern dress with biblical and classical representation, as if our leightons, tademas, poynters, were to introduce crinolines, bustles, or "empire" gowns amongst venuses and apollos. in the pathetic "deposition from the cross" the magdalen is just a "modern" nuremberg damsel, and the virgin's headwrap is slung as the northern housewife wore it, and not like an oriental woman's; joseph of arimathea and nicodemus are clad as nuremberg burghers, and only in the figure of john does he make concession to the traditional "classic" garment. such an anachronistic medley could only appear logical so long as the religious spirit and the convictions of the majority were at one. i dare scarcely hint at, much less describe, the feelings that would be stirred in you if a modern painter represented the crucifixion with nicodemus and the man from arimathea in frock-coats, mary and the magdalen in "walking costume," and a company of horse-guards in attendance. the abyss of over four centuries divides us from dürer; my suggestion sounds blasphemous almost, yet it is a thought based on fact and worthy of most careful note. owing to a convention--then active, now defunct--dürer grasped the hands of all the living, bade them stop and think. not one of those who beheld his work could pass by without feeling a call of sympathy and understanding. "everyman" dürer!--that is his grandeur. to this the artists added their appreciation; what he did was not only _truly_ done, but on the testimony of all his brothers in art _well_ done. so with graver, pen, and brush he gave his world the outlines of belief. in his pictures the illiterate saw, as by revelation, that which they could not read, and the literate, the literati--erasmus, pirkheimer, melanchthon amongst the most prominent--saw the excellence of the manner of his revelations. i cannot think of any better way of explaining the effect of dürer's art as an illustrator upon his time, than to beg you to imagine the delight a short-sighted man experiences when he is given his first pair of spectacles. everything remains where it is; he has not lost his sense of orientation, but on a sudden he sees everything more clearly, more defined, more in detail: and where he previously had only recognised vague effects he begins to see their causes. such was the effect of dürer's art: features, arms, hands, bodies, legs, feet, draperies, accessories, tree-trunks and foliage, vistas, radiance and light, not suggested but present, truly realised. when i say dürer was not imaginative i mean to convey that imagination was characteristic of the age, not of him alone, but the materialisation, the realisation of fancy, that is his strength. all these considerations can find, unfortunately, no room for discussion in these pages, for it were tedious to refer the reader to examples which are not illustrated. we must perforce accept the limitations of our programme, and devote our attention to his paintings--far the least significant part of his activity. dürer was the great master of line--he thinks in line. this line is firstly the outline or contour in its everyday meaning; secondly, it is the massed army of lines that go to make shadow; thirdly, it is line in its psychical aspect, as denoting direction, aim, tendency, such as we have it in the print of the "melancholia." no one before him had ever performed such wonderful feats with "line," not even mantegna with his vigorous but repellent parallels. this line was the greatest obstacle to his becoming a successful painter. for his line was not the great sweep, not the graceful flow, not the spontaneous dash, not the slight touch, but the heavy, determined, reasoned move, as of a master-hand in a game of chess. to him, consequently, the world and his art were problems, not joys. consider one of his early works--the portrait of his father, the honest, god-fearing, struggling goldsmith. the colour of this work is monotonous, a sort of gold-russet. it might almost be a monochrome, for the interest is centred in the wrinkles and lines of care and old age with which father time had furrowed the skin of the old man, and which dürer has imitated with the determination of a ploughshare cleaving the glebe. [illustration: plate vi.--the madonna with the siskin (from the oil-painting in the berlin museum. painted about ) although this picture shows that it was painted under venetian influence, it betrays the unrest of dürer's mind, which makes nearly all his work pleasanter to look _into_ than to look _at_. dürer's works generally should be _read_]. when we come to his subject pictures, we will have to notice at once that they have been constructed, not felt. it has been remarked that dürer did for northern art, or at least attempted, what leonardo did for italian art, viz., converted empirical art into a theoretical science. whether such conversion was not in reality a perversion, is a question that cannot be discussed here. we have, at any rate, in dürer a curious example of an artist referring to nature in order to discard it; the idealist become realist in order to further his idealism. most of his pictures contain statements of pictorial facts which are in themselves most true, but taken in conjunction with the whole picture quite untrue. dürer lacked the courage to trust his sense of sight, his optic organ: beauty with him is a thing which must be thought out, not seen. dürer had come into direct contact with italian art, had felt himself a gentleman in venice, and only a "parasite" in nuremberg. from italy he imported a conception of beauty which really was quite foreign to him. italy sowed dissension in his mind, for he was ever after bent on finding a formula of beauty, which he could have dispensed with had he remained the simple painter as we know him in his early self-portrait of . there can be no doubt that dürer was principally looking towards italy for approval, as indeed he had little reason to cherish the opinions of the painters in his own country, who were so greatly his inferiors both in mind as in their art. much has been made of the fact that painting was a "free" art, not a "guild" in nuremberg. now carpentering was also a "free" art at nuremberg, and painting was not "free" in italy, so the glory of freedom is somewhat discounted; but whatever art was, dürer, at any rate, was not an artist in raphael's, bellini's, or titian's sense. he was pre-eminently a thinker, a moralist, a scientist, a searcher after absolute truth, seeking expression in art. once this is realised his pictures make wonderfully good reading. the "deposition," for example, is full of interest. the dead christ, whose still open lips have not long since uttered "into thy hands, o lord," is being gently laid on the ground, his poor pierced feet rigid, the muscles of his legs stiff as in a cramp. the magdalen holds the right hand of the beloved body, and the stricken mother of christ is represented in a manner almost worthy of the classic niobe. wonderfully expressive, too, are all the hands in this picture. dürer found never-ending interest in the expressiveness of the hand. but if we were to seek in his colour any beauty other than intensity, we should be disappointed, as we should for the matter of that in any picture painted before the advent of titian. again that monster ignorance stirs. for as i speak of colour, as i dogmatise on titian, i am aware that colour may mean so many different things, and any one who wished to contradict me would be justified in doing so, not because i am wrong and he is right, but because of my difficulty in explaining colour, and his natural wish to aim at my vulnerable spot. because i am well-nigh daily breaking bread with painters who unconsciously reveal the workings of their mind to me, i know that all the glibly used technical terms of their art are as fixed as the colour of a chameleon. different temperaments take on different hues. there is colour in van eyck and crivelli, in bellini and botticelli, but deliberate colour harmonies, though arbitrary in choice, belong to titian. dürer is no colourist, because, as we have already said, painting was the problem, not the joy of expression--in that he is mantegna's equal, and beato angelico's inferior. thus looking on the "madonna mit dem zeisig" at berlin, we may realise its beauty with difficulty. for whatever it may have been to his contemporaries, to us it means little, by the side of the splendid madonnas from italy, or even compared with his own engraved work. this "madonna with the siskin" is a typical dürer. in midst of the attempted italian repose and "beauty" of the principal figures, we have the vacillating, oscillating profusion of gothic detail. the fair hair of the madonna drawn tightly round the head reappears in a gothic mass of crimped curls spread over her right shoulder. on her left hangs a piece of ribbon knotted and twisted. the cushion on which the infant saviour sits is slashed, laced, and tassled. the infant holds a prosaic "schnuller" or baby-soother in his right hand, whilst the siskin is perched on the top of his raised forearm. of the wreath-bearing angels, one displays an almost bald head, and the background is full of unrest. even the little label bearing the artist's name, by which old masters were wont to mark their pictures, and which in bellini's case, for instance, appears plain and flatly fixed, bends up, like the little films of gelatine, which by their movements are thought to betray the holder's temperament. one of the tests of great art is its appearance of inevitableness: in that the artist vies with the creator: "the moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on; nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line." there are a good many "lines" in the "siskin" madonna which bear cancelling: not one in the madonna of the title-page of the "marieenleben," which for that reason is a work of greater art. the fact is, that whilst his engraved and black and white work reaches at times monumental height, great in _saecula saeculorum_, there are too few of his painted pictures that have the power to arrest the attention of the student of art, who must not be confounded with the student of art-history. as a painter he is essentially a primitive; as a graver he overshadows all ages. thus we see his great pictures one after the other: his paumgaertner altar-piece, his "deposition"--both in munich; "the adoration of the magi" in the uffizi; the much damaged but probably justly famed "rosenkranz fest" in prague, with his own portrait and that of his friend pirckheimer in the background, and emperor max and pope julius ii. in the foreground; the dresden altar-piece, or the "crucifixion," with the soft body of the crucified christ and the weirdly fluttering loin-cloth; the strangely grotesque "christ as a boy in the temple" in the barberini palace; the "adam and eve"; the "martyrdom of the , christians"--thus, i say, we see them one after the other pass before us, and are almost unmoved. [illustration: plate vii.--ss. john and peter (from an oil-painting in the alte pinakothek, munich. finished in ) this, with the "ss. paul and mark," originally formed one picture, and was painted for the council of his beloved city, nuremberg, as a gift, two years before his death. dürer had inscribed lengthy quotations from the bible below the picture; these quotations, proving the militant fervour of his protestant faith, were subsequently removed on that account. dürer's works were always more than works of _art_.] true, the paumgaertner altar-piece has stirred us on account of the wing-pictures, but there is good reason for that, and we will revert to this reason later. the "adoration of the magi" seems reminiscent of venetian influence. not until we reach the year do we encounter a work that must arrest the attention of even the most indolent: it is the "adoration of the holy trinity," or the all saints altar-piece, painted for matthew landauer, whom we recognise, having seen dürer's drawing of his features, in the man with the long nose on the left of the picture. this picture is without a doubt the finest, the greatest altar picture ever painted by any german. it is not by any means a large picture, measuring only ft. in. × ft. - / in., but it is so large in conception that it might well have been designed to cover a whole wall. dürer has here surpassed himself; he has for once conceived with the exuberance of a michelangelo, for it is more serious than a raphael, it is less poetic than a fra angelico: but personally i state my conviction, that if ever all the saints shall unite in adoration of the trinity, this is the true and only possibility, this is instinct with verisimilitude, this might be taken for "documentary evidence." this communion of saints was beholden by man. if ever a man was a believer irrespective of church, creed, or sect--dürer was he. i confess to a sense of awe in beholding this work, akin to fra angelico in its sincerity, akin to michelangelo in its grandeur, and german wholly in the naturalness of its mystery. with more than photographic sharpness and minuteness of detail does dürer materialise the vision: god-father, an aged king--a charlemagne; god-son, the willing sufferer; the holy ghost, the dove of sancgrael; the heavenly hosts above; the saints beside and below--saints that have lived and suffered, and are now assembled in praise--for the crowd is a living, praying, praising, and jubilant crowd. well might the creator of this masterpiece portray himself, and proudly state on the tablet he is holding: albertus dürer noricus faciebat. this picture is not a vision--it is the statement of a dogmatic truth; as such it is painted with all the subtlety of doctrinal reasoning; not a romantic vision, nor a human truth, such as we find in rembrandt's religious works. it is a ceremonial picture, only the ceremony is full, not empty; full of conviction, reverence, and faith! such pictures are rare amongst italians--in spite of all their sense of beauty; more frequent amongst the trans-alpine peoples, but never built in so much harmony. unfortunately it has suffered, and is no longer in its pristine condition; it were fruitless therefore to discuss the merits of its colour. mindful of my intention only to pick up a jewel here and there, i will not weary the reader with the enumeration of his altar-pieces, nativities, entombments, piétàs and madonnas. i can do this with an easy mind, because in my opinion (and you, reader, have contracted by purchase to accept my guidance) his religious paintings are of historical rather than art interest. the "adams and eves" of the uffizi and the prado cannot rouse my enthusiasm either. in these pictures dürer makes an attempt to create something akin to dr. zamenhof's esperanto; a universal standard for the language of art in the one case, of life in the other: and in either case this language, laboriously and admirably constructed but lacking in vitality, leaves the heart untouched. dürer's attempts to paint a classical subject, such as hercules slaying the stymphalian birds, are unsatisfying. i cannot see any beauty of conception in a timid and illogical mixture of realism and phantasy--it is not whole-hearted enough. even rembrandt's ridiculous "rape of ganymede" has reason and art on his side. imagination was not dürer's "forte"; it is therefore with all the greater pleasure that we turn to his portraits. portraits are always more satisfactory than subject pictures, a fact which is particularly noticeable to-day. there are scores of painters whose portrait-painting is considerably more impressive than their subject-painting--not because portrait-painting is less difficult, but because it is more difficult to detect the weaknesses of painting in a portrait. from the early goethe-praised self portrait of down to the wonderful portraits of there are but few that are not rare works of art, and of the few quite a goodly proportion may not be genuine at all. dürer's ego loomed large in his consciousness, and therefore, unlike rembrandt (who also painted his own likeness time and again, though only for practice), dürer was really proud of his person--as to be sure he had reason to be. the portrait of shows us the young dürer, who was in all probability betrothed to his "agnes"; he is holding the emblem of fidelity--man's troth as it is called in german--which on goethe's authority i may explain is "eryngo," or _anglice_ sea-holly, in his hand. five years later this same dürer, having probably returned from venice, appears in splendid array, a true gentleman, gloved, and his naturally wavy hair crisply crimped, clad in a most fantastic costume. as his greatest portrait the munich one, dated , has always been acclaimed. his features here bear a striking resemblance to the traditional face of christ, and no doubt the resemblance was intentional. the nose, characterised in other pictures by the strongly raised bridge, loses this disfigurement in its frontal aspect. there is an almost uncanny expression of life in his eyes; dark ages of byzantine belief and art spring to the mind, and compel the spectator into an attitude of reverence not wholly due to the merits of the painting. the comparison with holbein's work naturally obtrudes itself, when dürer's portraits are the subject of discussion. in the wallace collection is a most delightful little miniature portrait of holbein, by his own hand. compare the two heads. what a difference! holbein the craftsman _par excellence_; the man to whom drawing came as easily as seeing comes to us. with shrewd, cold, weighing eyes he sizes himself up in the mirror. he, too, is a man of knowledge; he does his work faithfully and exceedingly well, but leaves it there. he never moralises, draws no conclusions, infers nothing, states merely facts--and if the truth must be said, is the greater craftsman. dürer's mind was deeper; one might say the springs of his talent welling upwards had to break through strata of cross-lying thought, reaching his hand after much tribulation, and teaching it to set down all he knew. so the paumgaertner portraits, at one time supposed to represent ulrich von hutten and franz von sickingen--the reformation knights--show a marvellous grasp of character, wholly astonishing in the unconventional attitude, whilst the portrait of his aged master, michael wohlgemut, overstates in its anxiety not to understate. his portrait of kaiser maximilian, quiet, dignified, is yet somewhat small in conception. two years later, however, he painted a portrait now in the prado, representing presumably the nuremberg patrician, hans imhof the elder. purely technically considered this picture appears to be immeasurably above his own portrait of , and above any other excepting the marvellous works of . whoever this hans imhof was, dürer has laid bare his very soul. these later portraits show that dürer stood on the threshold of the modern world. [illustration: plate viii.--ss. paul and mark (from an oil-painting in the alte pinakothek, munich. finished in ) see note preceding plate vii.] hieronymus holzschuer is another of dürer's strikingly successful efforts to portray both form and mind, and although the colour of the man's face is of a conventional pink, yet the pale blue background, the white hair, the pink flesh, and the glaring eyes stamp themselves indelibly on the mind of the beholder, much to the detriment of the other picture in the berlin gallery, jacob muffel. jacob muffel, contrary to jerome holzschuer, looks a miser, a hypocrite, and the more unpleasant, as he does not by any means look a fool. but dürer's craftsmanship here exceeds that of the holzschuer portrait, whom we love for the sake of his display of white hair and flaming eyes. the enigma to me is how a man who had painted the three last portraits mentioned, could have fallen to the level of the "madonna with the apple" of the same year. the finest portrait under his name is the "portrait of a woman" at berlin. this indeed is a brilliant piece of portraiture, absolutely modern in feeling, exceeding holbein; and unless my eyes, which have not rested upon its surface for over ten years, deceive me, it is quite unlike any portrait painted by him before--the nearest perhaps being the man's portrait at munich of . the picture is supposed to show venetian influence, and might therefore belong to this epoch; but, to my thinking, documentary evidence alone could make this picture in its not dürer-like mode of seeing an undoubted work from his hand. space forbids further enumeration, further discussion of his work. as to details of his biography the reader will find in almost every library some reliable records of his life, and several inexpensive books have also appeared of recent years. dürer's life was in reality uneventful. he died suddenly on april , , in nuremberg, having in all probability laid the foundations of his illness on his celebrated journey into flanders in - , where he was fêted everywhere, and right royally received both by the civic authorities and his own brothers of the palette. his stay at venice as a young man, and this last-mentioned journey, were the greatest adventures of his body. his mind was ever adventurous, seeking new problems, overcoming new difficulties. it is so tempting to liken him to his own "jerome in his study," yet st. jerome's life was the very antithesis of our dürer. in dürer there was nothing of the "faust-natur," as the germans are fond of expressing an ill-balanced, all-probing mind. dürer's moral equilibrium was upheld by his deep and sincere religious convictions. he is firmly convinced that god has no more to say to humanity than the bible records. dürer's difficulties end where faust's began. the last years of dürer's life were spent in composing books on the theory and practice of art. to write an adequate "life of dürer" then is impossible in so small a compass. and if anything i said were wise, it were surely the fact that i wanted you, reader, in the very beginning to expect no more than a dim light on the treasure store of dürer's thought and dürer's art. but however dim the light, i hope it has been a true light. and here my conscience smites me! all along i may have appeared querulous, seeking to divulge dürer's limitations rather than his excellences. perhaps! there are so many misconceptions about dürer. he was a deep-thinking man; he was like the churches of the north--narrow, steep, dimly religious within, full of traceries, lacework, gargoyles, and grotesques without. i have read that it used to be said in italy: all the cities of germany were blind, with the exception of nuremberg, which was one-eyed. true! true also of dürer and german art. in , two years before his death, dürer presented a panel to his native city, now cut in two, robbed of its protestant inscription, and hanging in the alte pinakothek at munich. dürer's last great work! it is as though he felt that the divine service of his life was drawing to its close. his life and art i have likened to a gothic cathedral; his last works were as the closed wings of a gigantic altar-piece, before which he leaves posterity gazing overawed. the life-size figures of this great work represent the four apostles: st. john in flaming red, with st. peter, st. mark in white, with st. paul. dürer's greatest work: here for once his mind and his hand were at one. menacing, colossal in conception these figures rise, simple with the simplicity dürer aimed for, and at last attained; byzantine in their awe-inspiring grandeur. but instead of the splendour of byzantine gold he places his figures upon a jet-black ground, as if he wished to instil the knowledge that there is no light except that which the four apostles reflect. he had said as much indeed himself years ago. these four figures, "painted with greater care than any other," are his artistic last will and testament. in the letter, by which he humbly begs acceptance of these pictures from the council, he quotes the words of the four apostles, which his pictures illustrate, viz:-- st. peter, in his second epistle in the second chapter. st. john, in the first epistle in the fourth chapter. st. paul, in the second epistle to timothy in the third chapter. st. mark, in his gospel in the twelfth chapter. read them and behold: the book and the sword! the religion of love in saracenic fierceness. the menacing guardians of the word. dürer with finality excludes the faithless from all hope. it is this finality, this absolute faith in the word, this firm conviction of the finiteness of all things, which characterise the whole of his art. the spirit which brooks no uncertainty and suffers no metaphor, glues a veritable sword to the lips of the "son of man." this finality is the cause of dürer's isolation. he has no followers in the world of creative _art_. close the doors of dürer's cathedral and the world rolls on, rolls by unheeding. after dürer and luther had gone--luther, on whose behalf dürer uttered so touching a prayer--germany, the holy empire, fell upon evil times. after the death of maximilian the fields of the cloth of gold and the fields of golden harvest were turned into rude jousting places of ruder rabble. the hand of time was set back for centuries. we have a shrewd suspicion that carlyle's german, with his cowhorn blasts, did not tell the universe "what o'clock it really is." we have a shrewd suspicion that in the beginning of last century the clocks in germany had only just begun ticking after centuries of rest. i am straying, reader. what was it that dürer had inscribed on the apostle panels? "all worldly rulers in these times of danger should beware that they receive not false teaching for the word of god. for god will have nothing added to his word nor yet taken away. hear, therefore, these four excellent men, peter, john, paul, and mark, their warning." the narrow outlook of his time speaks here! for words which bear addition or suffer subtraction, can never be the words of god. god's words are worlds. our words are stammerings, scarcely articulate. reader! look you, my torch burns dimly; let us back unto the day. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., london and derby the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's note: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. "scherijver" has been changed to "schrijver" at each occurrence. italic text has been marked with _underscores_. oe ligatures have been expanded. masterpieces in colour edited by-- t. leman hare franz hals in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. _in preparation_ van dyck. percy m. turner. whistler. t. martin wood. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. j. f. millet. percy m. turner. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. holbein. s. l. bensusan. boucher. c. haldane macfall. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. watteau. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. and others. [illustration: plate i.--the laughing cavalier. frontispiece (wallace collection, london) painted in . hals called it "portrait of an officer," and why, and how, it gained its present title, no one knows. on the back of the canvas we read--"aeta suæ ao. ." the "officer" is _not_ laughing; he is merely showing good conceit of himself in particular, and disdain of the world in general! it is a rare study in expression, now a scowl, now a leer, alternating as one looks upon the handsome young face. whilst the details of the costume are as rich as may be, the colours are few and beautifully blended, a _tour de force_ in technical skill. the picture was purchased by its original owner, mijnheer m. meuwlehuys of haarlem, for £ ; at the pourtalës sale, in , sir richard wallace gave £ for it.] franz hals by edgcumbe staley illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. foreword "franz hals was a great painter; for truth of character, indeed, he was the greatest painter that ever existed.... he _made_ no beauties, his portraits are of people such as we meet every day in the streets.... he possessed one great advantage over many other men--his mechanical power was such that he was able to hit off a portrait on the instant. he was able to shoot the bird flying--so to speak--with all its freshness about it, which even titian does not seem to have done.... if i had wanted an _exact likeness_ i should have preferred franz hals." so said james northcote, the royal academician, talking with his friend james ward, upon art and artists, in the little back parlour of his humble dwelling, argyll street, long ago absorbed in the premises of a great drapery establishment. list of illustrations plate i. the laughing cavalier frontispiece wallace collection, london page ii. old hille bobbe royal museum, berlin iii. the merry trio in america (a copy by dirk hals, royal museum, berlin) iv. franz hals and his wife rijks museum, amsterdam v. the officers of the shooting guild of st adriaen town hall, haarlem vi. the jolly mandolinist (der naar) collection of baron g. rothschild, paris (a copy by dirk halls in rijks museum, amsterdam) vii. the market girl (la bohémienne) louvre gallery, paris viii. nurse and child royal museum, berlin [illustration: picture of hals] hals was an ancient and honourable patrician family, intimately connected with haarlem for well-nigh three hundred years. the name first appears in the annals of the city in , and again and again individuals bearing it held the offices of burgomaster, treasurer, and _schepen_--alderman or magistrate. pieter claes hals, franz' father, was appointed a magistrate in . in he was one of the _regenten_, or governors of the city orphanage, and in he became president of that famous institution. his profession has not been indicated, but that he was a loyal and influential citizen is proved by his holding a command in the garrison which so heroically defended the city against the spaniards in . wholesale pillage by the hated invader, however, reduced many a wealthy burgher family to penury, and compelled them to seek the recovery of their fortunes elsewhere. the venerable city of antwerp, by reason of the enterprise of her merchants, offered great attractions. thither fled many a haarlemer, and among them went forth mijnheer schepen hals and his newly married wife. it must have been a great trial to domesticated lysbeth coper to have to pack up what was left of their household crocks and seek a new home. it was in the spring of , a little more than a year after their wedding day, that they started upon their journey. they made first for mechlin, where a branch of the family was settled, and they were welcomed with cordial hospitality by their relatives. [illustration: plate ii.--old hille bobbe (royal museum, berlin) painted in . this ancient, wrinkled dame was what they call in seaport towns "a sailor's mother," rather a dubious compliment to mariners! she was a "merry toper," like many of hals' companions, and went from tavern to tavern to get a drink. her real name was alle, or alice boll--easily transposed. the owl is probably a painter's skit of the screeching, scolding old hussy! the portrait is quite remarkable for poverty of colour. franz was out of funds and out of paints, but he has made the old bloodless flesh look like life. he often painted her: he loved her odd look, if he liked not well her scorn!] one whole year the couple spent in the city of lace, and a little son was born to them, whom they registered in the name of dirk. the greater opportunities offered to labour and capital in the city on the scheldt, however, were so evident, that they once more packed up their goods and chattels and resumed their pilgrimage. antwerp was already renowned as an art city--its painters and engravers were of wide world fame; and pieter claes hals, in full possession of certain artistic proclivities of his family, considered that he might more profitably make use of them there. besides this, another branch of the family was established in antwerp, and members thereof were in good positions. the journey from mechlin, short as it was, partook of the pathetic character of that of joseph and mary to bethlehem, inasmuch as they were no sooner housed in temporary lodgings than mevrouw lysbeth brought into the world another little son. vincenzius laurenszoon van der vinne--a devoted pupil in after years of this very baby boy--says he was born late in . there is no official record of the day of birth, but he was registered in the good old family name of franz. "franz of antwerp" was a designation which stuck to the great painter right on to the end of his long career. nothing whatever is known of his youth, his education, or his pursuits. for twenty years neither he, nor his parents, are named by biographers or historians. in mijnheer and mevrouw hals found themselves once more at haarlem, with what thankfulness it would not be difficult to narrate. their two sons accompanied them, but two baby girls--cornelia and geertruid--were left buried in flemish soil. both lads--they were grown men--at once entered painters' studios--dirk that of abraam bloemaert, and franz that of karel van mander. this statement brings us up smartly, for there has been nothing to indicate that the brothers had served apprenticeships in art. we must then proceed by presumption and surmise in the story of their training, for we may be quite sure that these eminent artists would not accept raw, untaught youths as pupils. dirk and franz had, of course, been reared in antwerp, where the most conspicuous teachers of painting were otho van veen ( - ), a painter of churches and portraits; adam van noort ( - ), history, large portraits, and genre; and tobie verghaegts ( - ), landscape and architecture. the brothers profited by their studies under such able masters, and at van noort's they doubtless made the acquaintance of their fellow-pupils, pieter paul rubens and his friend, hendrik van balen. at antwerp the two hals would also be thrown into the company of martin de vos, erasmus guellinus, crispin van der broeck, the galles, the van de passes, the wieriexes, antonie van liest, geenart van kampen, and other draughtsmen, painters, and engravers. probably mijnheer pieter hals himself was one of the company of specialists--scholars, writers, readers, correctors, draughtsmen, painters, etchers, scratchers, cutters, and the like, gathered together by the enterprise of christopher plantin and other leading publishers. the two sons, therefore, had great opportunities for the development of their family talents. karel van mander, franz hals' master, the son of a noble family, was born at meulebeke, in flanders, in . he settled at haarlem in , where he established himself as a teacher of drawing, and founded an academy of painting in . his style was historical, and he did large-sized portraits and groups as well. in addition to his celebrity as a painter van mander was noteworthy as a man of many parts: a historian of the netherlands, an annotator of the classics, a poet in the vernacular, a musician, a linguist. his most valuable contribution to literature was his splendid "het schilder boeck" or "book of painters," dutch and flemish. his poem on art, entitled "den handt der edelvry schilderconst," is full of sage advice with respect to the manner and spirit in which a student should approach his work; and he sums up his exhortations by saying: "success is only to be found in painstaking and constant observation of all externals." he gives, as a wholesome motto to an aspiring artist, "i will be a good painter," and, as a salutary warning against carnal excess, the oppositive reflection: "hoe schilder--hoe wifder"--"as demoralised as a painter!" van mander's "counsels of perfection" for the behoof of his pupils are as excellent as they are characteristic. "avoid," says he, "little taverns and bad company.... don't let anybody see that you have much money about you.... be careful never to say where you are going.... be straight and courteous, and keep out of brawls.... get up early and set to work.... be on your guard against light-hearted beauties!" three years before the hals left antwerp for their dear old home, karel van mander had been joined by two assistants in the work of the academy--cornelis cornelissen ( - ), and hendrik goltzius ( - ). the former was a painter of allegory, mythology, and portraits, a member of a celebrated artist family, and a native of haarlem; and the latter, the celebrated flemish engraver, a native of meulebeke, famed too as a painter of landscape, history, and the nude. at haarlem were flourishing, at the time of the return of mijnheer and mevrouw hals, several distinguished artists, and among them cornelis vroom ( - ), a marine painter, gifted in seafaring genre--a merry fellow, and an habitué of low taverns, although he lived in a fine house, with a frescoed front, in the zijlstraat. he introduced the young hals to his friends and models. very many of the well-to-do citizens affected artistic studies, and several became efficient painters. of these jan van heemsen ( - ), a wealthy burgher and a friend of the hals family, patronised van mander and his pupils. he had considerable skill in painting life-size figures, remarkable for easy pose, and animated manner--very much in the style adopted by franz hals. these antwerp and haarlem worthies were the "makers" of franz hals in the elementals of his art; but no sooner did he pass within the portals of van mander's academy than the door was shut and fast-barred--for all we know of him, his life, his work, and his associates, for eleven years; and then, we behold him assisting at a homely and interesting function. in the baptismal registers of the groote keerke is the entry of a new-born child--herman, the son of franz hals and anneke hermanszoon, in march . apparently he had been in no hurry to unite the bonds of matrimony, and yet he had cause to repent at leisure, for his early married life does not appear to have been very happy. within five years, namely, in february , the name of the unfortunate anneke crops up again, and this time in the police records. franz is charged with ill-treating his wife, and with intemperance; and the charges seem to have been proven, for he was reprimanded, and only released under solemn promise of amendment of conduct, and, further, he was admonished to forsake drunken company! poor anneke died that self-same year, but we must not charge franz as the direct cause of her premature death; if he had become something of a wastrel, as many affirm, she was probably a weakling, and they had little in common. twelve months passed, and then, with due regard to mourning conventions, franz hals married lysbeth reyniers, of spaedam, and took her to live in the peeuselaarsteeg. they were kindred souls, and lived happily together for fifty years. to them were born many children--pledges of mutual love and home restraint--sara, in ; jan, in ; franz, in ; adriaenjen, in ; jacobus, in ; reynier, in ; nicolaes, in ; maria, in ; and pieter, in ; herman, anneke's son, making up the ten olive branches. what a happy, merry home must that have been in the peeuselaarsteeg! how greatly must his domestic joys have heartened the worthy father, and given vein and tone to his work! * * * * * [illustration: plate iii.--the merry trio (in america. a copy by dirk hals, royal museum, berlin) painted in . a girl of the town gaily dressed, with open bosom--a thing abhorred by all worthy dutch _vrouwen_--sits willy-nilly between the knees of a falstaffian lover. he was probably the very pork-butcher who, in after years, became one of hals' heaviest creditors. a saucy apprentice is holding over the amorous pair a coronal, not of orange-blossom but of sausages! he has gripped his master's shoulders to make him release his hold upon the girl's arm. hals' treatment of the group was doubtless a remembrance of an allegorical picture he had seen at antwerp, "the feast of love," by franz pourbus ( - ), and which now hangs in the wallace collection.] haarlem story is blank--haarlem tradition is silent with respect to franz hals' young manhood. the only hint that we have of his existence is in , when it is recorded that he was working still in van mander's academy. there is not the least tint of local colour, nor the faintest trace of romance to be seen or heard until we are brought face to face with the "portrait of dr. pieter schrijver," now at monsieur warnecks' in paris. upon the picture we see "f. h." and the date, . this then is the first intimation that franz hals had blossomed out as a painter of portraits! the doctor was a well-known haarlem poet, writer, chemical student, and art critic. he flourished between the years and . the portrait shows us a middle-aged man of serious mien, but with no peculiar characterisation of expression or figure. it is a sombre production--black and grey, with merely a little brick-red here and there; but the shadows upon the skin strike one as clever. franz hals was thirty-three years of age in --an age when artists have either dismally failed and turned aside to more suitable employment, or when they have established some sort of reputation and their work is recognised, and examples of their style are broadcast. not so franz hals; but then there are, to be sure, scores of portraits "attributed" to him of men and women and children to which no dates are attached, and many of these are comparable with the portraits of schrijver in technique, colour, and finish. that he worked laboriously to maintain his family, if for no other reason--and artists had to work hard in those days of small payments--is evident both directly and indirectly. a few--very few--studies are extant, in black crayon upon dull blue paper, which are noteworthy for simplicity and firmness. two of these are in the teyler museum at haarlem, but they are evidently sketches for his first great "group of shooters," in the stadhuis. three or four are in england--one at the british museum, and the albertina collection at vienna has a few, and that seems to be all. where, may we ask, are his studio canvases, his early panel portraits, and all the thousand-and-one sketches and freaks of a young artist? perchance destroyed--possibly otherwise attributed--probably hidden away in the high-pitched lofts of old haarlem houses and _hofjes_ or asylums, and in many an oaken chest and press. indirectly we are assured that he had been, all the thirteen years of his residence in haarlem, an indefatigable worker in the art of portraiture--from the simple fact of his intimacy with mijnheer aert jan druivesteen ( - ), who five times served the high office of burgomaster of haarlem. he was a man of independent means and refined tastes, a lover of artists, and himself also a very passable painter of landscape and animals, which he painted solely for amusement. druivesteen was a personal friend of franz hals' father, and a constant visitor at his house. from the first he greatly encouraged the young art student, and many a time sat to him for his portrait. alas! those portraits have all disappeared or are undistinguishable. from the influential position of his patron it is only a fair deduction to suppose that other city magnates and leading townspeople also sought their portraits at the hands of the burgomaster's _protégé_. the vogue of portraiture has always been the token of worldly success, and eminent personages--and the reverse--from the days of the pharaohs to our own, have been eager that their physiognomies should be handed down to posterity. this fashion took fast hold upon the opulent burghers of the netherlands, and they valued a painter in proportion as his work ministered to their self-esteem. franz hals, we may be sure, became very soon quite alive to this, perhaps pardonable exhibition of personal vanity. no doubt the favourite pose in his serious portraits--arms akimbo, and his favourite facial expression--contemptuous satisfaction, were the natural, yet tactful, outcome of his observations of men and manners! but we are getting on a little too fast, for we must turn aside for a moment and look at the "portrait of professor jan hogaarts" of the faculty of theology in the university of leyden, who was an able teacher and protagonist, and a considerable student and writer of latin. franz hals painted his portrait in , with similar treatment as that of dr. schrijver. these are the only two works, signed and dated, during fourteen years, and then our eyes are fastened in mute astonishment upon the walls of the haarlem stadhuis, where, in , was unveiled a stupendous composition. this is a revelation unique and overwhelming. we are in the grip of a master-hand, and we must bow down before a genius who has, comet-like, flashed upon us from the great unknown! there is nothing tentative, nothing meretricious, in this masterpiece. it is a portrait group, half-length, life-size, of eleven "officers of the shooting guild of st. joris" (st. george). the demand for great group portraits had just set in. the men who had ridden in on the top of the waves of new institutions looked to have their personalities placed in juxtaposition to those of monarchs, rulers, and generals. hence, go where you will in holland--through churches, museums, galleries, or town halls, you are faced by portrait groups of life-size figures, whether they be of governments and corporations, or guilds and institutions. but, we are standing just inside the great audience hall of haarlem stadhuis, and we hesitate to advance, for eighty-four vigorous and solemn gentlemen and ladies are bending their steadfast gaze upon us, as though resenting our intrusion! eight picture groups by hals cover the walls--a pageant of portraits--five are _schutters-stuken_ (shooting groups), and three _regenten-stuken_ (governors of alms houses). guilds of marksmen in the netherlands originated at a period when there were no standing armies, and when the trade guilds were at the full height of their prosperity. they served as rallying bases in times of public danger, and as happy _rendezvous_ in days of pleasure--"soldier-socials" we might call them. annual shooting contests for prizes were held at the _schutters-doelen_, or butts--hence the name usually attached to the portrait-groups--and periodical banquets provided, where good fellowship accompanied good cheer, and where the toast of "women, wine, and wit" never sated! the commission to paint the first of these groups, "the annual banquet of the officers of the shooting guild of st. joris" (st. george), was, no doubt, given to hals at the instance of his good friend burgomaster druivesteen, who was himself a member of the guild. there are twelve officers, including _overste_, or colonel, pieter schoutts jacobsen, who sits in front of the table with his arms akimbo. they are middle-aged men, some aging, and are full-bearded and moustached, except the two smart young standard-bearers. the party has just finished dinner and toasts are being drunk. through the window of the room is a view of trees and buildings. the blacks and greys and greens of the picture are relieved by the brilliant scarlet silken scarves. the effect of this splendid picture upon the men of haarlem was emphatic, and every shooting guild wished to follow suit; but the painter was in no humour to wear himself out with toil, he preferred the relaxation of convivial society. in all the dutch centres of population were numbers of "social" and political clubs--some perhaps were merely drinking clubs. among their guests the most popular was the "rederijkers-kammer de wijngaar-drankes," which had branches everywhere. although nominally "the guild of rhetoricians," the study of rhetoric _per se_ had nothing whatever to do with its objects. it was, in short, a free-and-easy artists' club. as "heminnaars," or fellows, franz and dirk hals were admitted to membership in . the men of haarlem were merry fellows--they only put on their serious manners with their sunday clothes--and every tavern had its clientèle, with flute, viol, and mandoline. they entered impromptu into the ranks of entertainers. no _kermiss_, or fair, the country round, but had its rollicking company of students. they played high jinks with jolly gipsy girls, and drank with festive yokels. this life exactly suited the two hals brothers; moreover, it gave them opportunities, which franz used significantly, for studying character, and he gathered golden laurels in his orgies. [illustration: plate iv.--franz hals and his wife (rijks museum, amsterdam) painted in . no painter has left a more charming and more characteristic portrait of himself and his wife than this. there they sit, all in a garden green, as happy as happy can be. the "idea" was lysbeth's. she knew franz was painting other couples and getting wealth and fame--why not their own? she put on her best go-to-groote-keerke gown and a new cap, and made franz don his town hall suit; she gauffered very carefully his cuffs, and tied round his neck his finest van dyck collar. the pose is splendidly realistic--good-humouredly she smiles, but he is in restless mood, as was his wont, and so she just grasps his shoulder--a reminder of the sweet restraint of happy married life! for fifty years they lived together, sharing their sorrows and their joys.] still the hals, and their companions of the tankard and the brush, were downright, loyal honest citizens, and all were enrolled in the ranks of the civic guard--franz and dirk in . "the banquet of the shooting guild of st. joris" was not the only work which franz hals signed and dated in ; at least two other very striking portraits were finished. "pieter van der morsch," now labelled "the herring seller," was a beadle in the service of the municipality of leyden, and a member of the "guild of rhetoric" of that city--an oldish man with sparse locks and furrowed face. he is holding up a herring, and on the canvas some one has scratched, "wie begeert?"--"who'll buy?" this portrait is the earliest dated work which exhibits hals' speciality--_characterisation_. it now belongs to the earl of northbrook, but it sold in at a public auction in leyden for the ridiculous sum of £ , s. "the merry trio" belongs to the same year, . a girl of the town in gala dress is seated, willy-nilly, between the knees of a falstaffian lover, whilst a saucy apprentice boy holds over the couple a mock coronal of sausages! the man was evidently a pork butcher; probably one of hals' creditors later on. the pose and play were probably suggested by an allegorical picture which had charmed the young artist in antwerp--"the feast of love," by frans pourbus ( - ), now in the wallace collection. this humorous composition is in america; but a good copy, said to be by dirk hals, hangs in the royal museum in berlin. but years pass on once more, and there is little enough of episode to record in the life of our accomplished, jovial painter. hals was now a happy father, and his heart went out to children--his own were growing fast, and their infant moods arrested him. down by the sea-dunes, too, were lads and lasses--strong and lithe of build, bronzed with the sun and spray, full of life's gaiety. of these he took liberal toll--just as did leonardo da vinci of posturing peasant youths and maidens in tuscan villages. a merry suite of "fisher-boys" and "fisher-girls" danced off his palette, and now they display his genre delightfully in many a picture gallery. there were also dignified patrons of hals' brush in haarlem, and rich burghers and their wives sat to him by scores. at cassel, dated , are portraits of a haarlem gentleman and his spouse--the leading pair in his procession of full-dress mijnheers and mevrouws "posed for posterity," but rich in characterisation of face and hands--the latter a very marked feature. the years , , and are "red-lettered" for the historian of franz hals, for among the portraits he dated then are three of surpassing interest--"his own likeness," "himself and his wife," and "the laughing cavalier." the first of these belongs to the duke of devonshire; it hangs at devonshire house in piccadilly, and has never been exhibited. this is "franz hals" as he wished to be known to posterity. his head, slightly on one side, is marked by strong features--a nose which shows strength of purpose, a mouth which indicates quiet decision, and dreamy eyes, looking craftily for new impressions. it is a self-satisfied, reflective face, with nothing base about it. the folded arms show grasp of purpose and individuality of action, whilst the figure of the man is in repose. the costume is sumptuous, full sleeves of heavy black silk brocade, with the latest conceits in buttons and ruffled cuffs. he wears the jewelled token of his shooting guild and the be-buttoned cloak of a gentleman of the period. his frill is full, and it is of the finest edged cambric--quite an ultra-mark of fashion! his hat is black velvet--slouched, and steeple-crowned.[ ] [ ] see page . merry groups and jovial couples were, of course, quite in hals' way, though probably he painted them for his own pleasure rather than for love of gain. "junkheer rampf and his lass" ( )--somewhere in paris, mons. cocret's "merry supper party," and a number of "rommel-pot-speelers"--perhaps "drinks all round!" in english--at the hague, berlin, and elsewhere, offer ample evidence of the painter's free-and-easy manners and humorous genre. [illustration: plate v.--the officers of the shooting guild of st. adriaen (town hall, haarlem) painted in . this, the second group of the st. adriaen officers, is the finest of all the five "schutters-doelen" at haarlem. for clever arrangement of the figures and instantaneous catch of character it is unsurpassed. the armourer had furbished up the old halberds of the company, which, with the banners, are quite significant features. the costumes are peculiarly rich and the sashes gaily ample; whilst the variety of ruffs and collars, and the trimming of the beards, indicate the vagaries of fashion. the colonel--jan claesz van loo, with his hunt-stick--no doubt he was getting gouty!--sits, looking at you full in the face. the other officers have all their eyes upon you; they are inviting you to join in their conviviality. the background of trees and farm-buildings suggests the delights of a picnic in the open air.] mevrouw lysbeth knew all about these junketings, and, good soul, she made no complaint, but on the contrary she challenged franz to add his own portrait with hers to the suite of jolly partners. she put on her best black brocade gown, with its modish heliotrope bodice, and went to the expense of the newest things in ruffs and cuffs. her hair--she was not richly dowered that way!--she coiffed neatly round her head, and tied on the nattiest of little lace caps. with franz, no doubt, she had some trouble. he disliked very much fashionable garments, but inasmuch as he had something of a position to keep up as a member of the haarlem municipality, she persuaded him to get into his groote keerke and stadhuis suit of black silk and stuff. she brushed well his best beaver hat, carefully gauffered his cambric cuffs, and pinned round his throat the best mechlin lace collar he possessed. his shoes were new and neatly bowed, and he, worthy fellow, responded to his loving wife's playful whim by putting on--a thing quite unusual for him--a pair of white kid gloves. and there they sit, franz and lysbeth, all in a garden green, under a shady oak tree, with a vision of architectural gardens and open fertile country beyond. the pose was most certainly her idea, not his, for she is smiling most good-humouredly at having gained her end! he would be up and off, but she checks his movement, and the hand-grasp upon his shoulder is a reminder of the sweet restraint of happy married life. when this masterpiece was painted, the hals were in comfortable circumstances. the success of the "group of shooters" had greatly enriched franz, and his studio was thronged by opulent patrons, each clamouring for his portrait. the third picture of note in was "the laughing cavalier." why, and when, it gained its title nobody knows--in most catalogues it is correctly called "portrait of an officer," a member of one of the shooting guilds. whoever the gentleman may be, he had an uncommonly good conceit of himself. he is not laughing, but expressing disdain of the world in general, and amused contempt of you and me, who go to look at him, in particular. the characterisation is so cleverly managed that one almost fancies his expression changes; he appears to scowl and then to relax, just as in actual life our features involuntarily keep up an incessant play. his dress is unusually decorative, the colours are few but superlatively arranged, the whole effect is wonderfully lifelike. it was the happiest of happy thoughts which suggested the placing side by side, at the wallace collection, masterpieces of the three greatest portrait painters the world has seen--velazquez, rembrandt, and hals. "the laughing cavalier" loses nothing by proximity to "the lady with a fan" and "the unmerciful servant." but hals had a mind to paint simpler subjects than these, and he turned to children once more, as exhibiting most naturally and spontaneously variety of character and expression. "singing boys," "singing girls," "flute players," "mandolinists," and others, playing only pranks and tricks, he welcomed to his studio--another leonardo da vinci trait! he noted their expanding cheeks, he heard their melodious notes, he understood the motions of their limbs, and fixed them all. they make us smile with pleasure, so natural and lifelike are they at haarlem, berlin, brussels, cologne, cassel, and königsberg--many of , and more elsewhere undated, but similarly characterised. two or three "_zechbruders_" or "jolly topers," and some gay young sparks with mandolines--"_schalks naar_" or "buffoon," as each is quite erroneously styled--walked out of hals' studio in . doubtless they were skits or caricatures of fellow-artists, for the clever painters of haarlem were not quite "fools" or "buffoons," nor were they all only "jolly topers." all this time hals was making arrangements with his old patrons of st. joris' guild for another great portrait-group to be put up in the stadhuis. this was finished in --it represents eleven officers. on comparing this group with its predecessor we are struck with its greater freedom and freshness. hals was now painting more brilliantly, and his colours blend more naturally. the success of the first st. joris' group had fired the imagination of members of a rival company, the st. adriaen's guild; and it was determined that their officers should also adorn the walls of the stadhuis. consequently hals had two great groups to do, and no sooner had the carpenter hangers got st. joris no. into position than their services were requisitioned for the st. adriaen's group. if profitable, nevertheless the painting of such portrait groups was very troublesome, and no doubt hals was very thankful to see the last in his studio of these pictures. the jealousies, the corrections, and the interruptions, in dealing with a lot of conceited officers, must have almost maddened him. each man had his own ideas--and hals had his. each wished to be as prominent as possible, and to cut a dash at his brother officers' expense. arrangement after arrangement failed. at last hals decided the matter once and for all. he declined positively to paint a row of figures--he intended to make a picture. therefore he proposed an admirable plan, and one which recouped him well to boot--those who paid most should have the places of honour! the colonel--generally one of the wealthiest members of the guild--paid the highest fee, and he is the most conspicuous figure in all the "_doelen_" pictures. captains paid for second places, lieutenants for third, and sergeants looked out from the back. the standard-bearers were exceptional individuals--the sons of rich fathers, who paid well for good stations. again, a shooting-brother was mulcted higher for a full-face than one who had to put up with a three-quarter likeness--profiles were ruled out. once more, notice the cunning of the painter, every one of his "_schutters_" is an athlete, with a striking face! each wears his best dress, his sword hilt is of the latest italian pattern, and each is showing himself off to the greatest advantage--all the drakes are swans! the st. adriaen's group of consists of twelve officers, with colonel jan claesz van loo in the place of honour. dinner is over, and the diners are discussing the latest bit of gossip before separating. one of the sergeants has been caught in the act of pocketing a bunch of grapes, and his fellow is holding out a silver dish for its restoration. fashions, both of hair and clothes, of course, are similar to those worn by the st. joris' schutters, except that the younger men are quite _à la mode_ with respect to their slashed and puffed full sleeves. of the two groups this is the least mannered, and there is more atmosphere and greater animation. crude contrasting colours are softened down, and luminous grey shadows make play around the men. each individual's expression is personal and original, and the characterisation of each is so wonderfully full of life that, if any one of them was to walk off the wall and greet us, we should feel that we knew just what sort of a man he was. this is perfect portraiture; it is more--it is clairvoyancy in paint. * * * * * in the decade - franz hals was acknowledged as first painter in holland. he stood head and shoulders above everybody else in his freedom of treatment, unconventionality of pose, manipulative facility, fidelity of colouring, boldness of shadow, and the marvellous certainty of his flesh tones. his technique, in short, was unrivalled, and the emphasis with which he expressed feature and mood was astounding. his illumination was golden, and the animation of his figures extraordinary. like michael angelo he preferred men to women, as exhibiting more character and less liable to affectation. he neither wasted time in making studies for his compositions, nor frittered it away in elaborate corrections. his brush knew one stroke only--his impasto was laid on at once. simply in details of hair, lace, and brocade did he elaborate. the same decade was the most brilliant period of the dutch school generally; the greatest painters were all working away on canvas and panel, making world's records in art. every town, and many a country place, had its studios and schools of painting, but haarlem was easily first as the home and headquarters of painters. "boldness and truth" was the municipal motto, and this is eloquent in all the work of franz hals. [illustration: plate vi.--the jolly mandolinist (der naar) (collection of baron g. rothschild, paris. a copy by dirk hals in rijks museum, amsterdam) painted in . this is a very jolly fellow! it is a portrait of one of hals' favourite pupils, adriaen brouwer, who was also renowned for his musical gifts and his love of practical jokes; he painted pictures too sometimes! his nickname in the studios was "_der naar_"--"funny man!" the "jolly mandolinist" must have caught sight of one of his lady-loves at a window, or a painting chum. his _staccato_ note ends in a genial smile, and he is ready for a joke or a hand-tossed kiss. this has hals splendidly fixed, a snapshot would not have had a more instantaneous effect. the spanish costume suggests the celebration of one of the famous haarlem masquerades.] and haarlem was the most prosperous of cities. between - the tulip mania was at its height, and haarlem was the metropolis of the bulb. it is said that in one year the florists of the city cleared twelve million golden florins. to haarlem, as to an artists' mecca, flocked teachers, students, and connoisseurs from all lands, and among the rest came a notable pilgrim, anthonie van dyck. mincing along in his courtier-like manner, in search of impressions, he wished to see for himself the master about whom gossip had spun such wonderful stories, and to watch him at work. he was at the hague, the honoured guest of frederick of nassau, prince of orange, painting princely patrons, and it was not more than a sabbath-day's journey to haarlem. so one bright morning in june that year, , van dyck, unannounced, knocked at franz hals' front door. vrouw hals greeted the stranger courteously--"my husband," she said, "is not at home, maybe he is at the life school; will the gentleman step in and rest." jan, who was just twelve years old, was sent to look for his father, and at last discovered him, not at his studio, but with some boon companions in the little back room of his favourite tavern hard by. perhaps among the "merry topers" there were famous admiral van tromp, killed in , and his jolly comrade, jan barentz, the entertaining cobbler--late a lieutenant in the fleet, whose portrait hals painted many a time as a "jolly toper," with his great big hands and grinning face, squinting at the liquor level of his tell-tale glass. "there is a smart gentleman, all the way from antwerp, to see you, dad, and he wants you to paint his portrait," so ran on the lad. hals bid his boy go home, finished his tankard and his pipe, and leisurely sauntered along. he was in no good-humour at the interruption, and gave the stranger a cool welcome. at first he demurred at being called upon to paint a man he had never seen before, and whose features and figure he had had no opportunity of studying. van dyck, without revealing his identity, begged him to proceed, and offered him a tempting fee. without more ado hals snatched up the first old canvas lying on the floor, and in a couple of hours he had painted, in a manner which greatly astonished his sitter, a telling likeness. van dyck laid down the amount he had promised, but asked hals whether he might, in return, attempt to paint his portrait. hals was astounded, and more so as the visitor progressed, for it was borne in upon him that such a stylish _virtuoso_ could be none other than his famous rival, the great flemish master. "who the devil are you?" he exclaimed. "why, you must be anthonie van dyck!" van dyck was exigeant that hals should accompany him to england, where he had been summoned by the king. no words and no inducement could move hals out of holland--it was his home, it was his world; dutch of the dutch was he, bred in the bone! van dyck departed much disappointed, but he charmed the vrouw lysbeth and the kiddies by leaving behind for them twenty silver florins. as for hals, he went back to his pots and his paints. in the schwerin gallery is a "portrait of a man" with a good deal of franz hals about it, variously attributed to him and to van dyck. maybe it is the one painted in haarlem that hot june day in . eight superb portraits by hals were dated this self-same year: "the group of the beresteyn family," and "the gipsy girl" (la bohémienne), at the louvre; "the mandoline player"--_der schalksnaar_, in baron gustave rothschild's collection in paris; "nurse and child," and "the jolly toper," at the royal gallery in berlin; "portrait of a man" ("_ætat suæ_ ") at buckingham palace; mijnheer willem van heythuysen, at the belvedere gallery in vienna--the full-length, velazquez-like standing portrait; and "portrait of a young girl," of the beresteyn family at haarlem. _der schalksnaar_--called also "the fool," "the buffoon," "the jester," and, far more suitably, "the mandoline player"--is allowed to be the finest character-portrait in the world. velazquez and rembrandt never did anything so acutely life-like. it is a "snapshot," so to speak, of adriaen brouwer, one of hals' favourite and most distinguished pupils, whose renown as a painter of peasant genre was equalled by his fame as an archplayer of practical jokes and as a brilliant musician and _improvisatore_. here he is, in fancy spanish dress, red and yellow, with a real old hispano-moorish mandoline. his nickname in the studios was "_der naar!_" "funny fellow!" his face--clean-shaven, but still something of a stranger to soap and water--reflects, with amazing truthfulness and vitality, the emotions of the moment. he laid a wager that he would make his _innamorata_ peep out of her window and wave her hand at him. the _staccato_ notes of the serenade have not yet quite died away, the strummer's hand has not relaxed its tension on the strings of the instrument, as the singer throws up a rapid glance of recognition. "nurse and child" is as charming as anything in all the works of franz hals. nothing can be imagined more natural, more simple, more appealing. at first sight the woman--she may be thirty--appears posed, but her expression is that of momentary abstraction from the restless exigencies of nursing. she is goodness and gentleness personified, and her pinned-up cap lappels tell of busy little fingers close by. the baby is to the life. he is a vigorous youngster, the latest little son of the ancient north holland family of ilpenstein, prominent in haarlem story. he has grabbed his nurse's brooch whilst he turns to have a good look at you, and, presto, he will bury his head in her kindly bosom with a merry laugh. his face is a _tour de force_--that of a rare critic, as all healthy babies are. i question whether any painter has painted a child's _coming_ smile as hals has done here. the dress, a splendid piece of gold brocade in colours, must be an inspiration from pieter breughel, "le velours" ( - ), whose mastery of glossy patterned stuffs is almost inimitable. the lace looks as if hals had just cut lengths of rare mechlin point and pasted them upon his canvas. why, we can count every thread and knot! the year that gave date to these widely differing, but admirably agreeing, character-portraits also witnessed the foundation of franz hals' life school. very soon after the death of van mander, in , the famous academy of painting began to decline in popularity. the dissolution of partnership between cornelissen and goltzius, and their departure from haarlem, caused its doors to be closed. whether he wished it or not, a goodly company of artists looked to franz hals as their leader, and so the mantle of van mander fell upon the shoulders of his most distinguished pupil. among those who foregathered in the new academy were pieter soutman ( - ), pieter potter, father of paul ( - ), willem claesz heda ( - ), jan cornelisz verspronett ( - ), hendrik gerritsz pot ( - ), pieter molyn ( - ), pieter fransz de grebber ( - ), antonie palamedesz stevaerts ( - ), adriaen brouwer ( - ), dirk van deelen ( - ), cæsar van everdingen ( - ), pieter codde ( - ), bartholomeus van der helst ( - ), adriaen van ostade ( - ), philippe wouwermans ( - ), isaac van ostade ( - ), pieter roestraeten ( - ), who married sara, franz hals' eldest daughter; vincenzius laurenszoon van der vinne ( - ), and job berckheijde ( - ), with hals' five sons and his brother dirk. there is in haarlem stadhuis a very interesting painting by the last of these, which shows franz hals' life school and some of his pupils in the year . work is in full swing, and five of the master's sons--the youngest, nicolaes, being twenty-four years old--and dirk hals with van deelen, molyn, berckheijde himself, and his little brother gerritsz, seated at a table, are drawing from a nude model. the master is by the door, chatting with philippe wouwermans, who has just popped in to see how things are getting on. it is said that hals "sweated" his pupils by making them draw and paint subjects for which he paid them little or nothing, and which he sold at fair prices to meet his weekly tavern reckonings. adriaen brouwer is named as "living-in" at the halsian establishment, with an uncomfortable bed, insufficient food, and scanty clothing! be these tales what they may, there is characteristic evidence that hals and his pupils lived on good terms. an amusing story is told by the haarlem historian and biographer, jacob campo weyerman, in his "sevens-beschrijoingen der nederlondsche konst-schilders," of the goings on at the life school. [illustration: plate vii.--the market girl (la bohÉmienne) (louvre gallery, paris) painted in . they call her "la bohémienne" in paris, but why we do not know. she is _not_ a gipsy girl, but a slut out of haarlem fish-market, wholly bereft of all sense of appearance, and caring only for passing joke and gibe. the girl was a favourite studio model also, for studies of a figure and face like hers abound in the work of haarlem painters. thinly painted, in simple colours, this is a masterpiece of pigment snapshots. its sauciness is as natural as may be. no doubt she and hals exchanged many a bit of racy banter; perhaps she dared him to paint her just as she was.] the master's addiction to strong drink called for energetic action, and the older pupils were accustomed of an evening to take it in turn to fetch him home from his cups, undress him, and tuck him comfortably into bed. "now when franz, lying in bed, thought he was alone in his room, his piety came to the surface; for however tipsy he might be he generally closed his halting prayer with this petition: 'dear lord, take me soon up into heaven!' some pupils who heard him repeat this request night after night decided to test one day whether their master was really in earnest, and adriaen brouwer--that ape of humanity--undertook to carry out the joke. brouwer, in company with another pupil called dirk van deelen, bored four holes in the ceiling, right above franz' bedstead, and through these lowered four strong ropes, which they fastened to the four corners of the bed, and then waited eagerly for their master's return home. hals returned towards night in merry mood, and his pupils helped him to bed according to their wont, took away the light, and then crept quietly upstairs to set their plan in motion. as soon as franz began his usual orison, 'lord, take me up soon into heaven,' they drew him and his bedstead gently up a little, whereupon hals, half dazed, fancying that his prayer was being answered literally, altered his tone, and began to cry out lustily: 'not so fast, dear lord! not so fast!'" hardly able to restrain their mirth the mischievous young dogs quietly let their burden down, slipped off the ropes, and themselves slipped away, to tell their fellows the joke. "franz," continues weyerman, "did not discover the trick until several years after!" the years and were lean years in hals' output, but the year , which gave us "portrait of a man" at the national gallery--a fresh complexioned, easy going gentleman about thirty to forty years of age, in an astonishingly voluminous ruff, quite a bygone fashion in that year--saw a _chef-d'oeuvre de chefs-d'oeuvres_, another "_schutters-stuk_," put up in the stadhuis at haarlem. "the st adriaen's doelen," no. , consists of fourteen officers, nearly all of whom are gazing good-humouredly right out at their visitors, and inviting all and sundry to join in the conviviality. each face is a pleasant character-study, for each man has dined well and is content. colonel jan claesz van loo is seated on the left, holding a stout walking-stick--probably he has contracted gout since his appearance in ! seven of the officers hold halberds--a decided novelty in accessories, which adds greatly to the picturesque effect. one wonders whether anybody had whispered to hals the news that velazquez had painted his "surrender of breda" with halberds and lances _galore_! anyhow hals would not be caught napping by an intrusive spaniard! the group is far and away the most easily arranged of all the _schutters-stuken_. the waving foliage and smiling landscape predicate breeze and sun, for the gathering is _al fresco_ in the gardens of roosendaal, the hampton court of haarlem. the officer seated upon the table is lieutenant hendrik pot--a favourite pupil--a speaking likeness. fashions have changed, they are richer and more decorative with silken stitching and laced scarves. the colours, greys, greens, browns, and dull blues are softened by the leafy environment. "_en plein air_" is the cry of modern impressionists, but here we have it, where, perhaps, we should not look for it. this is in truth one of the world's chief masterpieces, and the efforts its execution called forth told greatly upon its creator. certainly he went on painting, and probably he went on carousing too; but silence again settles down upon him, and a meagre list of fifteen signed and dated portraits completes his work until . we find him now not at haarlem, but at amsterdam; not drinking, but painting--painting what dr. bürgher, the art critic, asserts is "the most astounding picture of the dutch school." probably hals frequently visited the capital of the chief province, there to see what other artists were doing, and to sample the pleasures of its convivial life. his visit in was of considerable duration, for he was painting "the officers of the civic guard" under their commander, colonel reynier reaels. there are sixteen full-length, life-size figures, posed after the manner of the haarlem _schutters-stuken_. they are clad in dark-blue uniforms, with the exception of the standard-bearer--a gorgeous individual in golden brown, with leggings, laced and bowed, his arms akimbo, bearing himself with such a swagger as only franz hals knew how to paint. this splendid portrait group hangs at the rijks museum in amsterdam, at no great distance from rembrandt van rijn's "night watch," so we can take stock of both together. it is not a little significant that amsterdamers, famed for what the tuscans used to call "_il spirito del campanile_," should have had to go to haarlem for their man! were there not painters on the spot, and what about rembrandt, he was not very busy in ? no; no one could do this sort of thing so well as hals. in he completed his quintet of _schutters-stuken_ or _doelen_--portrait groups in haarlem stadhuis; his patrons were once more "the officers of st. joris' shooting guild." here we are in the open with the wind swaying the unfurled banners and rustling the leaves of the trees. the _rendezvous_ is the orchard of the hofje van oud alkemude de xii. apostelen, with its garden-pavilion, in the tower of which hals is said to have painted a _schutters-stuk_; beyond are the haarlem woods. the group consists of nineteen officers, with colonel jan van loo. the men are arranged in two somewhat stiff lines--perhaps they all asked front places and paid well! with his usual modesty hals has put himself in the back row, but in much better guise than his next neighbour, a distinctly _blasé_ individual. they are all well-set-up men, and dressed in the new fashion, tending rather to effeminacy. the atmosphere and illuminations are vibrant, but the colours are restrained, the shadows are grey, and the animation does not equal that of the group. perhaps hals was degenerating with the passing age--certainly he was ageing. however, he finished off his best decade with a remarkable little snapshot portrait, a fisher-lad of katwyk. "_de strandlooper_" he has called it; it hangs in antwerp museum. he saw the boy running up and down the dunes; he was an odd-looking bit of humanity. "sit down just where you are," said hals, "fold your arms, and don't take your eyes off me." a rough drawing was soon knocked off, just to fix values, and then the master added, "come along with me now to haarlem, and half a carolus guelder for you." then he fixed the oddest of odd smiles, and the "beach urchin" remains to prove that the old man, vigorous, had lost very little of his cunning after all. * * * * * the last twenty-five years of hals' life were marked by experiences wholly unlike the circumstances of the preceding decade. if between - he approached velazquez and painted dignified magnates and others, with a brush dipped in gold and a palette of luminous colours, in the end of his days he was near rembrandt with no less characteristic groups and individuals, and his hues are silvery and his shadows impressive. the _regenten stuken_, the "five governors of the st. elizabeth almshouse" or _oudemaanenhuis_, exposed in the haarlem stadhuis in , might, for all the world, be the work of the great amsterdam master, just as the latter's "staalmeester's" of might be his. the group in question consists of five most serious and reverent city fathers, seated comfortably at their board table. not a bit of worldly conceit, not a decorative adjunct of any kind, adorns the composition, but it is a perfect achievement. the sombre black garments and steeple-crown hats have a lustre of their own, and, standing well out of the greyish-green wall behind, they throw up wonderfully facial expression and manual dexterity. the plain linen collars and well-starched cuffs tone down the ashen-red shadows upon the skin, and the clustering locks of long black hair, tinged with grey, form halos around the wrinkles. [illustration: plate viii.--nurse and child (royal museum, berlin) painted in . this is one of the very best of all hals' compositions. the nurse is a buxom lass of north holland, and the child, the little son of mijnheer julius ilpensteen, a wealthy german merchant, settled at haarlem, and engaged in tulip-growing. the expression of the youngster, just about to explode with laughter at something droll which has caught his eye, and then shyly to bury his head in his crooning nurse's bosom, has been caught quite wonderfully. the dress is rich, and the mechlin lace collar is so actual that it might really be a "piece" cut off and pasted on the canvas! it is said that hals had been twitted with his fondness for dirty, unkempt children as models for his snapshots of character, here he has vindicated his sense of elegance. compare this charming subject with the character-portrait of the "strandlooper" at antwerp, and hals' grip of children's expressions is seen to be emphatic and unlimited.] haarlem possessed many charitable institutions to which the general title "_hofjes_" was attached. it became the happy custom, well on in the seventeenth century, for wealthy citizens to build and endow almshouses, hospitals, and the like--in the first instances as monuments of individual prominence and ultimately as memorials of family pride. founders and their relatives were the earliest governors, and then administrative powers were merged in trusts and municipal offices, and foremost citizens formed their boards. franz hals' great good-nature and his merry haphazard way of life made him a favourite everywhere--he was everybody's friend. his appointment in as "vinder" of the haarlem lodge of the artists' guild of st. luke was very popular. the functions of the office exactly suited the free-and-easy master-painter; they were analogous to those which attached to the corresponding italian office of _provvidetore_--controller, caterer, and perhaps toast-master, all rolled into one. nobody has testified to vrouw lysbeth's satisfaction at this promotion; it was a real ray of sunshine in the gathering clouds of age and anxiety. no doubt she still smiled--not as naïvely as in that garden green in , but hopefully. but hals was already beginning to grow indolent. was it the natural change of life, or was it the effect of self-indulgence? who shall say? charity thinks and speaks kindly we know. anyhow nine long years steal quietly along, and all the signed and dated work he did was just nine portraits and not one of them of marked excellence. poverty began to look in at the windows of the house in the peeuselaarsteeg, what time silence or indolence settled there, but what cared the merry old painter, for love opened the door, and kept it upon the latch--lysbeth did not chide franz, and franz did not vex lysbeth. twenty years or so before hals had picked up many a splendid subject for his portrait-characterisation or portrait-caricature in haarlem markets, and many a flighty _markt-deern_, besides the untidy fish-girl of , had been his model. then he loved young girls--at seventy his friends were _viele deerne_ of the _kraegs_ or common taverns. one old lady had for many a long day taken his fancy, not that she was comely, sober, or fair spoken, quite the reverse, nevertheless her striking play of features and the wrinkling of her leathery skin had an occult fascination for franz. they called her "hille bobbe," but her name was aletta or alle bol or bollij; and she lived in a hovel by the fish-market. nobody ever got the better of old hille, but she let everybody know what she thought of him and his! at lille is a "laughing hussy," painted by hals in ; at berlin is the old lady with her tankard and an owl, done in ; and at dresden the same _viele deern_ is scolding a yokel, who is smoking over her stall of unboiled lobsters, (?). they are all three most simply painted in black and grey, and just faint traces of ochre and red. the deep shadows point to a meagre palette and a brush worn down, but the result is striking and original. nobody knows what the owl had to do with the old lady, probably a painters' joke at the model's expense. in ten more years franz hals signed and dated no more than ten pictures. was he idle? was he ill? was he dissolute? we cannot say; we have no data to go upon. the next note we have is an alarm signal, for, in , one jan ykess, a baker, obtained a warrant whereby he sued hals for two hundred carolus guilders on account of comestibles supplied to him and his wife. a distress was issued, and the forced sale of three thin mattresses and bolsters, a ricketty armoire, and an old oak-table, with five oil paintings, barely sufficed to clear the bill. other creditors, and there were not a few, got nothing; apparently there were no other assets. but two years later hals gave his butcher of "the merry trio," a painting by jan razet, "st. john the baptist preaching," by way of compensation. this is indeed a sad revelation, and its sadness is intensified by the apparent want of filial piety on the part of franz' sons and daughters. they were all living, and, except pieter, domiciled in haarlem. only maria was unmarried. all were in good circumstances. nicolaes, "_vinder_" in , had been a member of the corporation since . why they did nothing to assist their parents in their distress nobody has recorded. there is no note of family feuds: perhaps franz' pride refused natural assistance. in , and again in , hals painted and dated many portraits, as though he was forced to do something to keep the wolf from the door. many of these are remarkable, not only as the work of an old man, but as exhibitions of new methods. "rené descartes," at the louvre, and "tyman oosdorp," at berlin--reminiscent perhaps of "jan hornebeeck of leyden," at brussels, painted in --have fixed unhappy faces, all in dull black and grey, with dark shadows suffusing everything. surely they are reflections of the painter's darkening view of life in grumbling, unmerry mood. the clouds, however, appear to have been at least partially dissipated, for in the latter year we have a smiling face again, and, perhaps, one of the last which smiled on "hals of antwerp!" the _schlapphut_, "the slouch hat," now at cassel, is a real _chef-d'oeuvre_. a young man, seated sideways, with his arm across the back of his chair, looks out of the grey-green-black background with a saucy air. he is saying, "i wonder what you think of me!" it takes a little time to focus this impression, for hals has dashed on his pigments almost too liberally, and he has gashed and smeared the mass with his hardest brush. when we do get the point of view, we feel disposed immediately to snub the young upstart for his impertinence. in spite of these spurts, and others, misfortune fell the way of franz and lysbeth hals. in the spring of the old man applied to the municipal council for assistance. his plea was not in vain, for, with characteristic good-fellowship, a dole was immediately forthcoming--fuel and aliment--and with them a benefaction of carolus guilders (circa £ ). old hals could still, vigorous old fellow that he was, hold his palette and his brush--and to good use too--nor did he quite lack for patrons. upon the board of the _oudevrouwenhuis_ (old women's alms house) were several old chums of his who, in solemn conclave met, agreed unanimously to commission the aged master to paint two portrait-groups--one of themselves, and the other of the lady governors of the béguinage for old and reduced gentlewomen, which mijnheer nicolaes van beresteyn had founded in . this was a noble act of charity conceived in the best possible spirit, for any fear of franz' ability was quite outweighed by the wish to minister, so as not to offend in any way, his _amour propre_. and hals set to work upon the last efforts of his life, and finished and dated both groups in . he was eighty-four; and thus they are in the stadhuis, side by side with his five festive _schutters-stuken_. the _regentessen van der oudevrouwenhuis_ (the lady governors of the old women's alms house) are not distinguishable for youth or beauty, and yet the five old faces are very attractive in their sternness. probably they were quite prepared to resent any impropriety on the part of the jovial old artist. their pursed-up lips, their peering gaze, and the muscular contraction of their hands convey this impression. their garments are as plain as their persons, and there is nothing decorative in the composition--everything is subdued black and grey, but the illumination and animation are splendidly evident although held in check. the _regenten van der oudemannenhuis_ (the governors of the old men's alms house), on the other hand, has much less force, and, compared with the earlier group of , it is nerveless and moribund. the five governors are old, weary, and sad. the colours are greyish, the brushwork feeble, and expressionless faces match the ashen pallor of the skin. their hands, too, have lost their grip, and there is no curl in their hair. humour is no longer hals' painting mixture, the pathos of "the passing" is upon him; and yet, with an evident expiring effort, the youngest of the five old men actually displays the gaiety of a scarlet knee-ribbon--it is the last impression of a parting touch! and now the brush falls from the painter's hand; the few colours left upon his palette are dry; and his enfeebled vigour is tired out. no doubt the emolument he received for these two most impressive, most touching portrait-groups was in the nature of a pension to keep him and his old wife in something like comfort till the end. for that end franz hals had not long to wait. perhaps it is as well that we have no account of his sufferings and his death. only one more historical note can be adduced to complete the life's story of "hals of haarlem"--the notice of his burial. on september , , all that remained of him was buried, with some amount of circumstance, in the groote keerke of st. bavon. his body rests in the choir, with the ashes of haarlem's most famous sons, and, if no meretricious sculptured memorial exists to fix the very spot, the monogram, upon a flat stone underfoot, "f. h.," reminds the pilgrim to the painter's shrine of all he was and all he did--simple and unaffected. * * * * * poor old lysbeth survived her husband many years, as poor as poor could be. in she made a pathetic appeal for relief, and the miserable pittance of fourteen _sous_ a week was accorded her. the dear old soul languished and died, with apparently no child at hand to comfort her. no record of her last hours tells where she died--probably in some _oudevrouwenhuis_ or other, and of her grave no man knoweth. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh masterpieces in colour edited by--m. henry roujon veronese ( - ) * * * * * * _in the same series_ reynolds holbein velasquez burne-jones greuze le brun turner chardin botticelli millet romney raeburn rembrandt sargent bellini constable fra angelico memling rossetti fragonard raphael dÜrer leighton lawrence holman hunt hogarth titian watteau millais murillo luini watts franz hals ingres carlo dolci corot gainsborough delacroix tintoretto fra lippo lippi van dyck puvis de chavannes da vinci meissonier whistler gerome rubens veronese boucher van eyck mantegna _in preparation_ fromentin perugino * * * * * * [illustration: plate i.--jupiter destroying the vices (in the musée du louvre) this large composition shows a method rarely employed by veronese. the great imaginative artist here tried his hand at the more vigorous school of painting, and with complete success. it is especially admired for certain remarkable effects of foreshortening. this picture, painted for the ducal palace, served as a ceiling decoration in louis xivth's chamber at versailles, until it was finally transferred to the louvre.] veronese by franÇois crastre translated from the french by frederic taber cooper with eight facsimile reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] frederick a. stokes company new york--publishers copyright, , by frederick a. stokes company august, the·plimpton·press [w·d·o] norwood·mass·u·s·a contents page introduction the first years the sojourn in venice the wedding at cana veronese and the inquisition the journey to rome the return to venice the decoration of the ducal palace the last years list of illustrations plate i. jupiter destroying the vices frontispiece in the musée du louvre ii. the disciples at emmaus in the musée du louvre iii. the holy family in the musée du louvre iv. the wedding at cana in the musée du louvre v. the family of darius in the national gallery, london vi. calvary in the musée du louvre vii. the marriage of st. catherine in the accademia delle belle arti, venice viii. the vision of st. helena in the national gallery, london [illustration] introduction it has been said of veronese that he was the most absurd and the most adorable of the great painters. paradoxical as it sounds, this judgment is perfectly true. absurd, veronese undoubtedly was, in his disdain of logic and common sense, in his complete indifference to historic truth and school traditions, and in his anachronistic habit of garbing antiquity in modern raiment. "i paint my pictures," he said, "without taking these matters into consideration, and i allow myself the same license which is granted to poets and to fools." and it is precisely his riotous fantasy, his naïve self-confidence, his own peculiar way of understanding mythology and religion that have made him the adorable artist whose glory has been consecrated by the centuries. thanks to the rare power of his genius, the most audacious improbabilities vanish beneath the magic adornments with which he covers them, and it hardly occurs to one to notice his glaring historical errors or the superficialities of his pictorial conceptions in the continual delight inspired by the sense of concentrated life in his characters, the splendour of his colouring, the caressing charm of his draperies, the brilliance of his skies, and the impression of youth and of joy that radiates from his work. veronese was neither a thinker nor an historian, nor a moralist; he was quite simply a painter, but he was a very great one. if his preference is for the joyous scenes of life, that is because life treated him indulgently from his earliest years; if he delights in giving to his pictures a sumptuous setting, in which silk, brocades and precious vases abound, it is because he acquired a taste for these things in that matchless venice of the sixteenth century, marvellous treasury of sun-bathed, gaily bedecked palaces, wherein all the opulence of the east had been brought together. what these paintings of veronese reproduce for us are the thick, rich carpets of smyrna, newly unladen from musselman _feluccas_, monkeys imported from tropic islands, greyhounds brought from asia, and negro pages purchased on the riva dei schiavoni, the quay of the slaves, to bear the trains of the patrician beauties of venice. but, above all, one finds in them venice herself, venice the glorious, queen of the sea, venice sated with gold and lavish of it, sowing her lagunes broadcast with palaces, and the robes of her women with diamonds. more truly than titian or tintoretto, veronese is the chosen painter of the most serene republic. he not only decorated the ceilings of her palaces and the walls of her churches: but he took the city of his adoption as the setting for all his compositions; it is at venice that the _feast at the house of simon the pharisee_, the _feast at the house of levi_ take place; it is in venetian surroundings that jesus presides over the _wedding feast at cana_. [illustration: plate ii.--the disciples at emmaus (in the musée du louvre) this biblical scene, as treated by veronese, in no wise resembles the same subject as treated by the primitives or by rembrandt. the venetian master does not trouble himself about tradition; for him, this feast is simply an opportunity for a beautiful picture, brilliant in colour, and embellished with rich accessories and architectural drawing.] one can understand how the painters of the venetian school, nurtured in the dazzling and joyous light of the sea-born city, transferred to their palette that vibrant colour with which their artist eyes were filled; nor is it surprising that veronese, passionately enamoured of venice, achieved, through his wish to glorify her, that magnificence of colour and of expression which remains his distinctive mark. the first years nevertheless, veronese was not a native of venice but of verona, as is indicated by the surname that was bestowed upon him during his life and that has adhered to him ever since. his rightful name was paolo caliari. he was born at verona in and not in , as is asserted by several of his biographers, notably by carlo ridolfi. the correct date is now verified by the discovery, in san samuele of venice, veronese's parish church, of the register of deaths wherein the decease of the great painter is entered as having occurred the th of april, , the very day when he completed his sixtieth year. paolo caliari belonged to a family of artists. his father, gabriele caliari, was a sculptor and enjoyed some little reputation in his own city. veronese's uncle, antonio badile, was a painter, and in such pictures as are known to be his we find evidence not only of a good deal of ability, but of a certain facile grace that justifies the high esteem in which his compatriots held him. veronese's father, being of a logical turn of mind, wished, since he himself was a sculptor, to make a sculptor of his son. veronese learned to model statuettes in clay, and, aided by his precocious intelligence, he acquired a real dexterity in this art, quite remarkable in one so young. but this was not his vocation. frequent visits to the studio of his uncle badile had awakened in him an enthusiasm for painting. he applied himself to learn to paint with so much zeal and imagination that his father made no attempt to check his inclination, but entrusted him to badile. the latter was veronese's real teacher, though not the only one, for young "paolino" also attended the studio of another veronese painter, giovanni carotto. from the outset, veronese applied himself energetically to perfecting his skill in line drawing. the future genial painter of wondrous fantasy yielded himself without a murmur to the rude but salutary exigencies of technique. strange caprice on the part of an artist who was destined to show so much dexterity in execution and lavishness in decoration, his tastes turned towards the most severe and least imaginative of masters, albert durer and lucas van leyden. it was through copying the engravings of these illustrious masters that he learned how to draw. such lessons always bear their fruit. in this laborious apprenticeship, veronese acquired that steadiness of hand, that firmness of line that was later to be noted even in his most exuberant paintings, despite the enormous quantity of canvases that he produced in the course of his life. even his earliest attempts reveal his abundant and facile genius; and these first, and one might almost say immature, works already foreshadow the great artist. the affectionate patronage of his uncle badile greatly facilitated his début. at an age when young folk have not usually begun to form dreams of the future, young caliari had already forced himself upon the attention of verona, and the chapter of the church of san bernardino commissioned him to paint a madonna. he acquitted himself well of this task. the work proved satisfactory, other orders followed, and the name of the young artist swiftly spread beyond the confines of his native city. a short time later, the cardinal ercole di gonzaga decided to decorate the cathedral at mantua, recently rebuilt by giulio romano. he sent a summons to caliari, as well as to three other veronese painters who enjoyed a big reputation: battista del moro, paolo farinato degli uberti, and brusasorci, who was regarded as the titian of verona. the cardinal instituted a sort of rivalry between these four artists, and gave them orders for four pictures, destined to be competitive. the subject entrusted to paolo caliari was a representation of the _temptations of st. anthony_. the young painter applied himself resolutely to the task. far from intimidating him, the redoubtable competition of his three elders served only to excite his ardour and stimulate his imagination. he painted the saintly anchorite defending himself against the blows which the devil is dealing him with a stick and repulsing the advances of a woman who has been raised up from hell itself to tempt him. the cardinal, delighted with this picture, gave preference to veronese over his three competitors. veronese lost no time in returning to verona, but, however flattering the esteem with which his compatriots surrounded him might be, he was not long in finding that the limited scope afforded by his native city was too narrow for his activity. he had a boyhood friend, battista zelotti, a painter like himself, and also like himself tormented by dreams of glory. together they quitted verona and betook themselves to tiene, in the duchy of vicenza. here they had the good luck to meet a man of discrimination, in the person of the paymaster-general portesco, who entrusted them with the decoration of his palace. the two friends apportioned the work between them; while zelotti, who had studied at venice under titian, undertook the fresco painting, veronese decorated the intervening panels in _grisaille_, or gray monochrome. the result of this friendly collaboration was a complete series of paintings, of great diversity: hunting scenes, banquets, dances and numerous subjects borrowed from mythology or from history, the _loves of venus and vulcan_, the _heroism of mucius scaevola_, the _festival of cleopatra_, and a remarkable _sophonisba_. this work in common was not without profit to veronese. zelotti's manner closely resembled his own; they both show the same qualities of colouring and composition, and the same broad and facile touch. they collaborated once again on fresco work in the home of a certain eni, in the village of fanzolo, in the neighbourhood of trevise. after this they separated, zelotti going to vicenza, whither he had been summoned, while caliari betook himself to venice, the promised land towards which he was impelled by his ardent desire for glory. when he arrived in the most serene republic, caliari was not yet twenty-five years old. we have no reliable document regarding these first years of his residence there, nor even of the impressions produced upon him by the opulent and magnificent city. but these impressions are easy to conceive. to anyone so sensitive as he to externals, venice must have seemed enchanted ground. how could he have failed to be dazzled, in acquainting himself with that gorgeous city, enthroned upon the adriatic, like a pearl in a casket of velvet? with what joyous eagerness his colour-enraptured eye must have rested upon those white marble palaces, moulded and filagreed in arabesque, those churches paved with precious mosaics, those quays swarming ceaselessly with a picturesque and motley crowd of armenians, greeks and moors, spreading the sun-bathed pavements with a glittering display of spangled ornaments, turquoise-inlaid cutlery, and multicoloured fabrics. [illustration: plate iii.--the holy family (in the musée du louvre) in this work, one of the most beautiful in the salon carré, veronese has grouped his figures in a charming manner. following his customary formula, he has clothed them in the venetian style, but the faces of the virgin and the child are remarkable for their tenderness. it is a matter of regret that time has faded the colours of this magnificent painting.] if the models that passed in endless procession before his eyes impressed him as magnificent opportunities, the sight of what other painters had already wrought from this material aroused his artist soul to keen enthusiasm. the whole constellation of the great venetians had converted the city of the doges into an incomparable museum: giorgione, with his melancholy compositions, full of vague dreams; carpaccio, with his naïve and picturesque reproductions of venetian life. among the living, sansovino, simultaneously architect and artist, who built marvellous palaces and adorned them with graceful frescoes; tintoretto, sombre genius whose creative power largely redeemed the somewhat obscure tints of his palette; and above them all, titian, the great titian, who at that time was already eighty years of age, yet still manipulated his brush with the firm hand of youth. all these masters veronese admired indiscriminately, as was fitting in a young painter who had never known other models than those of his own small city. he ran the danger of acquiring mannerisms and becoming an imitator. by a special grace accorded to genius alone, veronese succeeded in remaining himself and borrowing nothing either from his predecessors or his contemporaries. from his contemplation of the works of the others he gained only a nobler passion for his art; and he altered nothing in the personal vision which he already formed of men and of things. vigorous, blessed with good health, jovial by nature, and much enamoured of the bright and sparkling side of life, veronese fashioned his paintings in the image of his own temperament. his work was always an exaltation of the joy of living, an apology for those agreeable externals that render existence pleasant and easy; fine dwellings, flowers, copious repasts, women luxuriously apparelled, precious fabrics, horses and dogs of fine breed. if he wished to paint a _last supper_, it mattered little to him that legend and history agree regarding the simplicity and the humble station of jesus and his disciples: history and tradition did not count with him. a repast, whatever it would be, he could not conceive of, unless around a sumptuous table, covered with costly vessels, served by attendants in picturesque costumes and enlivened by the antics of buffoons or the harmonies of music. it was thus that he painted christ, it was after this original conception that he worked out his immortal compositions. accordingly no one could justly appraise veronese, without first setting aside, as he did, all those historic data which he voluntarily ignored. the sojourn in venice there are few painters of whose private life so little is known as of that of veronese. the contemporary documents have disappeared and scarcely anything more remains than a few of his letters; and even those are silent as to his day-by-day existence. all that it is possible to know--and to this his paintings abundantly bear witness--is that he was possessed of an agreeable humour, and a pleasing personality;--worthy gentleman, somewhat quick of temper and permitting no slight to be put upon his dignity, still less upon his honour. he was neither a sycophant nor a courtier, accepting commissions but never soliciting them. his "disinterestedness," writes charles yriarte, "has remained celebrated; during one entire period of his life, the greater part of the contracts which he signed with communities and with convents stipulate barely the value of his time as a remuneration for his work. this was before the time when painters were expected to furnish their colours and their canvases, but demanded only the price of their toil. later on, having become, if not rich--that he never was,--at least celebrated and independent, he acquired a taste for personal luxury; he delighted in brilliant fabrics and wore them with ostentation; he loved horses, dogs, and hunting; he frequented high society, and brought to it that italian open-heartedness which makes the company of the illustrious a relaxation and a pleasure rather than an embarrassment or an effort. he won valuable friendships and was able to retain them until his death." of these friendships, the most efficacious was that of the prior of the convent of san sebastiano, bernardo torlioni, a veronese by birth, to whom he had brought letters of introduction. no sooner had young caliari arrived in venice at the beginning of , than he presented himself to his venerable compatriot, who promptly took a fancy to him, and bestirred himself to serve him. thanks to torlioni, paolo obtained an order for five pictures, including one large composition, the _coronation of the virgin_ and four dependent panels. these paintings were destined to adorn the sacristy of the church of san sebastiano, of which bernardo torlioni was prior. when the work was done, the chapter expressed itself as so well pleased that it entrusted him with the decoration of the church itself, including the ceiling. it was here that veronese painted his admirable series of episodes from the _history of esther and ahasuerus_. the success of this series was so great that the edifice was placed unconditionally in his hands, and he was free to follow his fantasy unhampered. following a method which was habitual with him, he enhanced the effect of the large panels painted in fresco, by means of smaller intervening scenes in chiaroscuro. here also one finds him indulging his hobby for architectural painting, such as always occupies a large place in his pictures; all around the church he painted truncated columns, ornamented with arabesques and foliage, "with a richness and a pomp that were already an inseparable feature of his style." in the works of veronese, the accessories always play a highly important part; and it is not difficult to understand the reason. his main object being to delight the eye, he attributed considerable space to vases, furniture, armour, fruits, flowers, graceful draperies, brilliant costumes, mettlesome horses, and more especially dogs, with which it was his special whim to embellish his paintings. the dog was his favourite animal, and even at that epoch its presence was to be noted in every picture. when the church, completely decorated, was opened to the public, there was general rejoicing; veronese received the unanimous vote of approval, from the populace as well as from the artists. from that day forth, the ability of the young painter was openly acknowledged, and his fortune assured. furthermore, he had arrived in venice at a propitious hour. it was the moment when the most serene republic, victorious over the seas and surfeited with wealth, attained the zenith of her glory. in her opulence venice chose to employ her treasures in self-adornment; palaces arose on all sides, the ducal palace itself was redecorated; sansovino was just completing the new government offices. the wealthy brotherhoods and equally wealthy parishes were seeking out every painter of repute to decorate their churches and their convents. accordingly, veronese had arrived at the crucial moment to satisfy the demands of art. his rivals were negligible: salviati, battista franco, lo schiavone, zelotti, orazio vocelli the son of titian, could none of them hold their own against him. bordone was at the court of francis i. tintoretto alone, at the height of his powers, could counterbalance veronese's glory. as to the aged titian, he was no longer producing pictures with his old-time fertility; furthermore, he had already divined the genius of veronese and conceived a friendship for him. and so, throughout thirty-three years, from to , the masterpieces that were born beneath veronese's fingers succeeded one another without interruption. the walls of his adopted city became overspread with his luminous canvases, eloquent of the joyousness of italy, resplendent with the triumphant beauty of venice. shortly after the decoration of san sebastiano was completed, daniele barbaro, patriarch of aquileia and wealthy patrician of venice, had a splendid residence built him at masiera by palladio, a celebrated architect of the period. being a man of artistic taste, he wished to embellish it with paintings and statues worthy of its imposing architecture. for the sculpture he summoned alessandro vittoria; the paintings were entrusted to paolo veronese. the patriarch barbaro was one of his friends, and accordingly allowed him a free hand, and even left the choice of subjects to him. [illustration: plate iv.--the wedding at cana (in the musée du louvre) this immense composition is the most celebrated work by veronese. it is considered as one of the masterpieces of all painting. the greater number of the guests at this feast are portraits of illustrious characters of the sixteenth century, and the artist has included himself, along with tintoretto and titian, in the group of musicians in the foreground.] veronese, who was a prodigiously fertile artist, left not a single space in barbaro's house unoccupied with colour. wherever space would not permit of large compositions, he painted trophies, garlands, flowers, even statues, possessing all the lustre and relief of marble. elsewhere he sketched in architectural fantasies, simulating colonnades and porticoes, opening upon landscapes borrowed from the realm of dreams; he conceived imaginary doors, before which fictitious lacqueys appeared to be standing. the principal subjects treated by veronese at masiera include _nobility_, _honour_, _magnificence_, _vice_, _virtue_, _flora_, _pomona_, _ceres_ and _bacchus_; then in the ceiling of the cupola he gathered together all the gods of olympus, grouped around jupiter. the decorations in the palace at masiera further augmented veronese's fame. he was now acknowledged to be the foremost painter of venice, next to titian. barbaro had been so delighted with his talents that he determined to do him a service. standing well at court, he recommended him to the signoria. as a result of this, the latter entrusted him with the task of redecorating the halls and chambers of the doge's palace, in conjunction with tintoretto and orazio titian. which of the three artists proved superior it is impossible to decide to-day, because a fire, occurring in , destroyed their paintings along with the palace. but public opinion of that period gave the palm to veronese. it seems as though this verdict must have been justified, in view of the esteem in which his name was held. shortly afterwards, sansovino having completed the construction of the library, the procurators instructed the architect to arrange with titian as to a choice of painters to decorate it in competition. veronese was immediately designated, together with zelotti, batista franco, giuseppe salviati, lo schiavene and il fratina, who were to divide the twenty-one ceiling panels between them. three round compartments fell to the lot of veronese, who filled them with figures representing _music_, _geometry with arithmetic_, and _honour_. under veronese's brush these cold abstractions took on the most charming forms; they were represented by graceful women, each surrounded by the attributes of the science which she symbolized. a recompense was promised by the procurators to the artist whose paintings should be adjudged most beautiful. titian was enthusiastic over those of veronese. loyal and noble artist that he was, he himself solicited the votes of the painters who had taken part in the competition, and thus veronese was declared winner by the voice of his own competitors. the senate offered him a golden chain which he delighted to wear on solemn occasions. these great official works did not diminish the number of his productions for churches, convents, or private persons of wealth. no other artist affords an example of similar fecundity. and what verges upon prodigy is that he never employed collaborators, as so many other celebrated painters have done; the only one that he is known to have had is his brother benedetto caliari, whose artistic aid was limited to painting in the prospective of the vast architectural designs with which it pleased veronese to embellish all his canvases. the epoch of his most fertile production was between and ; it was also the period in which he executed his largest and most celebrated paintings, notably his famous canvas of the _wedding at cana_, his _feast at the house of the pharisee_, his _feast at the house of the leper_, and his _feast at the house of simon_. these four pictures are known under the name of the four _feasts_. two of them belong to france and hang in the museum of the louvre, in the room known by the name of the _salon carré_; these are the _feast at the house of simon the pharisee_ and the _wedding at cana_. the wedding at cana veronese has treated this subject twice. accordingly the picture in the louvre must not be confounded with that of the same name in the brera museum at milan. in spite of the value of the latter, it bears no comparison to the gigantic canvas in the national museum of france. [illustration: plate v.--the family of darius (in the national gallery, london) this picturesque painting is one of the most curious of all veronese's works. it was painted in return for the hospitality which he received from the pisani family, and all the figures in it are portraits of members of the household. another point worthy of note is the anachronism of the warriors clad in roman armour standing before the kneeling women, who are dressed in the manner of the sixteenth century.] this picture of the _wedding at cana_ was painted by veronese for the refectory of the convent of san giorgio maggiore, on the island that faces the _riva dei schiavoni_. it remained there until the time of napoleon's italian campaign. bonaparte, who loved the arts without understanding them, laid profane hands on the great majority of italian masterpieces. this painting by veronese was one of the number, and found a place in the louvre. the treaty of obliged france to restore these treasures, but the austrian commissioners, appointed to accomplish the restitution, became alarmed at the difficulties of transportation which the _wedding at cana_ presented. they accordingly consented to exchange this canvas for a painting by le brun, _the feast at the house of the pharisee_. veronese's masterpiece remained in the louvre, in which it is one of the most flawless gems. the contract drawn up between veronese and the prior of san giorgio maggiore for the execution of this picture has been preserved. the painter bound himself to deliver it within a year, since the contract was signed june , and the delivery of the canvas took place of september , . he was to be furnished with canvas and colours, to be entitled to take his meals at the convent and receive a cask of wine as additional recompense. as to remuneration for his work, it was fixed by mutual agreement at ducats, which, in the th century, corresponded to francs in the coin of france. taking into consideration the enhanced value of money since that epoch, these francs would represent to-day , francs. such is the price which the greatest artist of his time received for a masterpiece which to-day commands the admiration of the entire world. never did veronese display so much brilliance, dispense so much imagination as in the _wedding at cana_; never did he show a greater dexterity in execution; for, however considerable the dimensions of the canvas may be, it demanded nothing less than genius to distribute without clash or disproportion the hundred and thirty-two personages which compose it. a painter less thoroughly sure of himself would have made a sorry mess of this feast; veronese has produced a composition that is admirable for its balance, in abounding charming details, and unexpected and picturesque episodes, that do not in the least detract from the effect of the painting as a whole. on this picture, as on so many others from the brush of veronese, one cannot, as has already been said, pass an equitable judgment, unless one accepts, without question, the master's method. veronese had no more respect for religious tradition than he had for mythological legend. to take issue with the incongruities and anachronisms of the _wedding at cana_, is voluntarily to debar oneself from discussing it. if historic exactitude is the one thing that counts in a painting, then this picture simply does not exist. but happily painting has no need to justify itself to history; it is amply sufficient to itself, without borrowing anything from history, and loses nothing of its beauty if perchance it does violence to history. and of this the _wedding at cana_ furnishes a most eloquent proof. the composition of this famous picture is well known. jesus is seated in the middle focus, at the centre of the table, which is curved on each side in the form of a horse-shoe. to fill this immense table, veronese did not go to the scriptures in search of personages; he drew them from his surroundings and from his own imagination. the groom, a handsome, black bearded young man, clad in purple and gold, is no other than alphonso d'avalos, marquis del vasto, and the bride is a portrait of eleanora of austria, sister of charles v., and queen of france. on the left, one discovers, with some surprise, francis i., charles v., the sultan achmed ii., and queen mary of england. beside the sultan is a woman richly robed and holding a tooth-pick; she is vittoria colonna, marchesa di pescara; then, further on are monks, cardinals, and personal friends of the artist. standing up, clad in brocade and holding a cup in his hand, is veronese's brother, benedetto caliari. in the centre are a group of musicians. the octogenarian bending over his viol, is a portrait of titian; bassano is playing the flute; tintoretto and veronese himself draw their bow across the strings of a 'cello. the success of the _wedding at cana_ was triumphal. the great painters of venice, contemporaries of veronese, overwhelmed him with proofs of their admiration; even morose tintoretto found some extremely amiable words in which to praise his rival in fame, and titian embraced the happy painter when he chanced to meet him in the city streets. these praises were merited; the _wedding at cana_ is quite truly one of the most beautiful masterpieces in the world's collection of paintings. the renown obtained by this admirable work brought veronese a host of orders. the various cities vied with each other to secure him to decorate their churches or their convents. his first patron, the prior torlioni, ordered a picture from him for the convent of san sebastiano, the church of which he had already decorated. veronese, by no means ungrateful, painted for him the _feast at the house of the leper_, in ; three years later he painted for the dominican monastery of san giovanni e paolo the _feast at the house of levi_, to decorate one side of the refectory. the monks had only a modest sum at their disposal and tremblingly offered it to the now celebrated painter; they naïvely added the donation of a few casks of wine. veronese exhibited the most complete disinterestedness by accepting these humble offers of the prior. this was his third _feast_. the fourth, known under the name of the _feast at the house of simon the pharisee_, was executed for the refectory of the brotherhood of servites. it represents magdalen on her knees, wiping the feet of christ with her hair. this painting now hangs in the louvre, opposite the _wedding at cana_. it has been the property of france for two centuries, and the history of its acquisition by louis xiv is curious enough to be worth the telling. colbert, having learned that spain had negotiated for the purchase of the _feast at the house of simon_, resolved to go to any lengths in order to acquire it himself, on behalf of louis xiv. the french ambassador to venice, pierre de bonzi, was charged with the negotiations. to address himself directly to the servites was impossible, since there was a law in the venetian republic forbidding the sale and exportation of any native works of art. bonzi pursued the course of informing the signoria of his royal master's wish. the signoria, desirous of securing the good will of the great king, without violating her own laws, purchased with public funds the picture from the servites, and straightway offered it to louis xiv, who returned warm thanks to his "very dear and great friends, allies and confederates, after having seen this rare and most perfect original." veronese and the inquisition these four _feasts_ of veronese won him a widespread renown. but there were certain hostile spirits, uncompromising traditionalists, to whom the fantastic elements which he introduced into the composition of his religious pictures were necessarily strongly displeasing. to introduce dwarfs, buffoons, men at arms under the influence of liquor, at a feast where jesus and his disciples take part,--did not this savour of irreverence, nay, worse than that, of heresy? the _feast at the house of levi the publican_, executed for the convent of san giovanni e paolo, in which veronese had given free rein to his imagination, was denounced to the holy office, and on july , , the artist was summoned before the tribunal of the inquisition. in the most serene republic this tribunal scarcely had the same redoubtable power with which the sombre fanaticism of philip ii had armed it in spain. it was none the less a grave risk to incur its displeasure at an epoch when the papacy still held undisputed sway over the guidance of souls. consequently this prosecution caused veronese serious alarm. m. armand baschet discovered quite recently in the archives of the frari, at venice, the official record of the trial with all the questions put to him and his answers. the judges took special exception to his _feast at the house of levi_, which seemed to them an outrage upon religion. each one of the figures in the picture was brought up separately for discussion, and the luckless veronese was required to make explanation. what was the significance of that man who was bleeding at the nose? why were those two soldiers, on the steps of the stairway, one of them drinking and the other eating, clad in german uniform? and, at a repast where the saviour figures, what was that ridiculous buffoon doing with a parroquet on his wrist? [illustration: plate vi.--calvary (in the musée du louvre) in painting this subject, which so many artists have treated in a lugubrious tone, veronese, while preserving the intense sadness of the scene on calvary, has none the less succeeded in lavishing upon it his habitual qualities as a colourist. all the actors in the divine drama wear gloomy countenances and resplendent robes.] veronese defended himself as best he could. he assumed a sort of injured innocence and apparently failed to understand the enormity of the irreverence with which he was charged. next, he took shelter behind the precedent established by the great masters. he cited michelangelo and his _last judgment_: "at rome, in the pope's own chapel, michelangelo has represented our lord, his mother, saint john, saint peter and the celestial choir, and he has represented them all naked, even the virgin mary, and that, too, in diverse attitudes, such as were certainly not inspired by our greatest of religions." finally, veronese emphatically denied the charge of any intentional irreverence toward the church; he declared that he had simply permitted himself, perhaps wrongfully, a certain amount of license such as is accorded to poets and to fools. his contrite attitude won him the indulgence of the tribunal. but the judges demanded that he should correct his picture, and he was obliged to remove the dwarfs and the fools and to modify the attitude of his men at arms. this is the picture that may be seen to-day at the accademia delle belle arti, at venice, retouched in accordance with the orders of the holy office. the journey to rome in spite of his keen desire to pay a visit to rome, veronese was kept in venice by his ceaseless productivity, and he attained the age of forty without ever having had the chance of a sight of the eternal city. of all the masterpieces in that home of the pontiffs, he knew nothing, excepting of such as he had seen copied in the form of engravings. the appointment of his friend and patron as ambassador to the holy see, afforded him an opportunity to make the journey so many times projected and deferred. no documents exist regarding veronese's sojourn in rome, but at all events it was fairly brief. beyond this, we are reduced to mere conjecture. furthermore, there is no extant evidence to sustain the idea that he practised his art in the eternal city. if he had painted any pictures there, some trace of them would surely have been discovered. it must therefore be concluded that he contented himself with admiring the masterpieces with which his illustrious predecessors, raphael and michelangelo, had enriched the capital of the pontiffs. but his temperament was too peculiar, his manner too individual, and we may as well acknowledge, his nature too superficial, to permit of his experiencing those profound and overwhelming impressions that radically modify an artistic career. and for this we ought rather to be thankful than to complain, since it was only his obstinate insistence upon remaining himself that saved veronese from shipwreck upon the ever threatening reef of imitation. the return to venice from the moment of his return to venice, veronese was besieged from all sides; once again he found himself enslaved to forced labor by the incessant contracts demanded of him by his fellow citizens. the scantiness of documents which we possess regarding his life does not permit us to name the chronological order in which he painted his pictures. we shall therefore gather them into groups for the sake of convenience in studying his more important works. furthermore, to study one by one, all of his paintings, is not to be thought of; for this painter was one of the most prolific producers of which the history of art makes mention. in every one of his pictures will be found, more or less accentuated, those qualities of composition, of picturesqueness, and of colour which together constitute his glory. accordingly we shall limit ourselves to indicating, at the different stages of his career, those pictures which show most deeply the imprint of his genius and which also are most closely related to the life of venice of which he was, in a certain way, together with tintoretto, the official painter. for the rest the reader may be referred to the complete catalogue of the works of veronese given at the close of this book. concerning the private life of the artist we are as poorly informed as concerning the date of his pictures. we know only that he married and that he had two sons, gabriele and carletto. when they were old enough to hold a brush he entrusted them to bassano, a venetian painter whose talent he held in high esteem. as regards himself, the documents of the period vaunt his uprightness, his honesty and his keen sense of honour. ridolfi, one of his biographers, who wrote sixty years after veronese's death, and relied upon the recollections of people who knew him personally, pictured him as a man of strict principles and settled habits, and economical almost to the point of avarice. he cites, as an example of this, that the artist rarely employed ultramarine, which was very costly at that time, and thus condemned his works to premature deterioration. his fortune, the extent of which we learn from the fiscal records of venice, consisted in a few holdings of real estate at castelfranco in trevisano. in he purchased a small estate at santa maria in porto, not far from the pineta of ravenna. he also possessed a bank account representing approximately six thousand sequins. but what was that for a man who was the most famous and the most fertile artist of his time? we have already given examples of his disinterestedness. many a time he refused opportunities of great wealth. he even declined the offers made him by philip ii, who tried to lure him to spain and would have entrusted him with decorating the escurial. it was about the period of his return to venice that veronese completed his celebrated picture: _the family of darius at the feet of alexander after the battle of issus_, now in the national gallery at london. the episode is well known; darius iii., king of persia, conquered at issus by alexander, sends his wife and children to beg for clemency from the victor. admitted to the conqueror's tent, the unfortunate wife perceives a warrior in resplendent garments whom she takes for alexander, and throws herself at his feet. the warrior, however, is only ephestion, alexander's lieutenant and friend. the wife of darius apologizes for her mistake, but alexander raises her up and says: "you made no mistake, he also is alexander." such is the historic theme. but what matters history to veronese? upon this classic subject he has built the most fantastic, the most improbable, and at the same time the most fascinating of his compositions. the picture was painted for the pisani family which had given him hospitality, and every one of the figures contained in it represents a member of that household. it is related that, in order to spare his hosts the necessity of thanking him or the obligation of making some return, he rolled up his canvas and slipped it behind his bed in such a way that it would not be discovered in his room until after his departure. it is scarcely probable that veronese could have painted so large a canvas--fourteen metres by seven--in the necessarily brief space of a friendly visit, or that he could have painted in his figures, which are all of them portraits, without the knowledge of the pisani family. but the anecdote is so pretty that it is pleasant to accept it as true. it was a direct descendant of the venetian procurator, count victor pisani, who sold the painting to england in . the decoration of the ducal palace in a violent conflagration destroyed the greater part of the ducal palace. in this disaster all the pictures perished with which tintoretto, horatio the son of titian, and veronese, had decorated it. desiring to restore the palace promptly and give it a new splendour, the senate appointed a committee, authorized to distribute orders among the painters and decorators of venice. the competitors were numerous and eager to secure a chance to collaborate in so glorious an enterprise; and to this end they paid eager court to the committee. veronese alone made no advances, being unwilling to appear solicitous. this dignified course was looked upon as excess of pride, and one day when jacopo contanari met him in the street he reproached him with it. veronese replied that it was not his business to seek for honours but to be deserving of them, and that he had less skill in soliciting work than in executing it. [illustration: plate vii.--the marriage of st. catherine (in the accademia delle belle arti, venice) there is, perhaps, no other religious subject which has so often stimulated the inspiration of the great italian painters. veronese himself has treated the same scene several times. the painting here reproduced is considered, in view of the picturesqueness of its composition, the beauty of the faces, and the brilliance of the colouring, to be one of the best works of the illustrious artist.] but they could not exclude veronese, whose fame had now become universal. accordingly he was chosen with tintoretto, and to them were added francisco bassano and the younger palma. the ducal palace is therefore a sort of museum of the works of these masters, and forms the most brilliant collection of paintings relating to the public life and the glorification of venice. veronese was entrusted with the decoration of the great central oval of the ceiling, and the lateral panels. in these he painted the _defence of scutari_, the _taking of smyrna_, and the _triumph of venice_. this last named painting is considered by many as veronese's crowning achievement. venice is here represented in the form of a superb and smiling woman, seated upon the clouds, her eyes raised towards glory, who offers her a crown. at her side, renown celebrates her grandeur; at her feet are grouped honour, liberty, peace, juno, and ceres; lower down an ethereal structure of admirable daring and architectural beauty sustains a great assemblage of gentlemen and ladies richly clad, of cardinals and bishops, all emulously uniting in the glorification of venice. on the ground level standards, trophies, and cavaliers add the finishing touch to the composition, and are treated with incomparable vigour and skill both in chiaroscuro and in perspective. although of more modest dimensions, the _taking of smyrna_ and the _defence of scutari_ are in no wise inferior to the great central composition. in this same hall of the grand council, veronese painted two other great canvases, representing the military expedition of the doges, loredan and mocenigo. but for that matter there is not a room in the palace of the doges in which veronese is not represented by one or more canvases; in the hall of the anticollegio, there is a ceiling painting representing _venice enthroned_, a work that has unfortunately deteriorated; in the hall of the collegio, a _battle of lepanto_, a _christ in glory_, _venice and the doge venier_, a _faith_, a _st. mark_, and a ceiling which is considered as the most beautiful in the whole palace of the doges: _venice upon the terrestrial globe, between justice and peace_. the hall of the council of ten contains, in the oval ceiling panel: _an old man resting his head on his hand_ and _a young woman_. in the hall of the "bussola," _st. mark crowning the theological virtues_, the original of which is at the present time in the louvre. mention should also be made of: the _triumph of the doge venier over the turks_; the _return of contanari_, _victor over the genoese at chioggia_; the _emperor frederick at the feet of alexander iii._, and, in the hall of the ambassadors, a magnificent allegory of venice, personified as a patrician lady seen from behind, robed in white satin and of marvellous grace. veronese also had a share in the decoration of another of venice's monumental buildings, situated near the bridge of the rialto and known by the name of the fondaco dei tedeschi. this building, which is to-day occupied by the post office, formerly served as warehouse for german business men having commercial relations with the republic. these rich merchants had had the palace adorned by the greatest painters in venice. giorgione and titian had decorated its walls not only within, but also on the exterior, where traces of the paintings can still be seen. veronese was entrusted with four compositions, one of which is an allegory representing _germany receiving the imperial crown_. it is believed that the canvas now in the museum at berlin, entitled _jupiter, fortune and germany_, once formed part of the decoration of the fondaco dei tedeschi. it was purchased at verona in . veronese's celebrity, about the year , had become world-wide. every sovereign who prided himself on his art gallery wished to possess some of his work. the indefatigable artist endeavoured to satisfy them all; he even corresponded personally with several of them. for the duke of savoy, he painted _the queen of sheba visiting solomon_; to the duke of mantua, who had honoured him with his friendship, he sent a _moses saved from the waters_; to the emperor rudolph ii. he gave a _cephale and procris_ and a _poem of venus_. these last two canvases, of which the german emperor was very proud, were taken from him by gustavus adolphus, when that triumphant conqueror passed through vienna. throughout his life, veronese remained faithful to the pompous, brilliant, ornamental school of painting. not that he was incapable of essaying other types, but because it was his own preference to paint ease and luxury on a broad scale. he sometimes had occasion to handle more vigorous subjects, and in this he was completely successful, as the magnificent painting entitled _jupiter destroying the vices_ abundantly bears witness. the surprise experienced in the presence of this noble work, executed with the energy of a master-hand, is surpassed only by admiration for the versatility of a genius which could at will adapt itself to unfamiliar formulas. this famous painting, proud and virile in style, was taken from italy by the victorious armies of france, and placed in versailles in the chamber of louis xiv., where for a long period it served as the ceiling decoration. it was finally removed and now hangs in the louvre, in company of other masterpieces by the same artist. the last years the execution of his large official canvases did not prevent veronese from responding to all the appeals which came to him from every side. his unequalled activity, his prodigious facility made it possible for him to satisfy these demands. no one knows all the pictures which he painted for private individuals, nor all the frescoes with which he adorned certain dwellings that have since disappeared. nevertheless what a formidable list the works of this painter would make if the attempt were made to draw up such a list without omissions! ridolfi devotes not less than thirty pages to a simple enumeration of the pictures which veronese painted for the neighbouring islands of venice, such as murano and torcello, for the country house of the grimani at orlago, for that of the duke of tuscany at artemino, or for the palace of the pisani. to verona, to brescia, to vicenza, to treviso, to padua; to venice also, to the frari, to ognissanti, to the umilta, to san francisco del orto, to santa catarina, for which he painted his famous _marriage of st. catherine_, everywhere, in short, where they required him, he sent marvellous canvases, magic with colour and with life;--canvases for which to-day museums vie with each other for their weight in gold. but veronese was no longer young; he had entered well into the fifties; yet nothing in his craftsmanship betrayed fatigue or waning powers. a genius almost unique, he went steadily forward and no one could say of him, in the presence of his latest productions, what has so often been said of other illustrious painters: "that is a work of his old age!" veronese had the rare privilege of remaining young to the end. one day, while following a procession on foot, veronese contracted a cold, and after a brief illness he died. his obsequies took place in the parish church of san samuele, april , . on that day he would have completed his sixtieth year. when we remember that, up to the eve of his death, veronese continued to paint with as steady a hand as at the age of twenty, his death seems premature, and it is only natural to deplore that this matchless artist should have failed to obtain the ripe age of titian. what masterpieces he might still have painted! such as they are, brilliant and luxuriant, his works remain the most abundant that have ever come from the palette of any one painter, and veronese stands lastingly, in the history of art, as the most amazing of all masters, both in colour and in composition. [illustration: plate viii.--the vision of st. helena (in the national gallery, london) this picture has often been attributed to zelotti, who was a friend and at one time a collaborator of veronese. but the composition, the colouring, the finish of detail, and the sumptuousness of decoration betray the hand of the immortal author of the _wedding at cana_.] the works of paolo veronese the works of paolo veronese france paris (museum of the louvre): the wedding at cana.--the feast at the house of simon the pharisee.--jupiter destroying the vices.--portrait of a young woman.--susannah and the elders.--the disciples at emmaüs.--the fainting of esther.--the burning of sodom.--two holy families.--calvary.--jesus stumbling beneath the weight of the cross.--st. mark crowning the theological virtues.--jesus curing peter's mother-in-law. montpellier (museum): the virgin in the clouds.--the marriage of st. catherine.--st. francis receiving the stigmata. rennes (museum): perseus delivering andromeda. lille (museum): science and eloquence.--the martyrdom of st. george. rouen (museum): st. barnabas curing the sick. england london (national gallery): the rape of europa.--the family of darius.--magdalen at the feet of the saviour.--the vision of st. helena.--the adoration of the magi.--the consecration of st. nicholas. edinburgh (national gallery): venus and adonis.--mars and venus. dulwich college: a cardinal pronouncing benediction. italy venice (accademia delle belle arti): st. mark and st. matthew.--the feast at the house of levi--st. luke and st. john.--st. christina fed by the angels.--st. christina thrown into the lake of bolsena.--the virgin, st. joseph and several saints.--the virgin and st. dominique.--st. christina before the false gods.--the annunciation.--the coronation of the virgin.--isaiah.--ezechiel.--the battle of cursolari.--the flagellation of st. christina.--the angels of the passion.--jesus and the two thieves. venice (ducal palace): the triumph of venice.--the rape of europa.--peace and justice. asolo (villa barbaro): fresco decorations. rome (vatican): st. helena. florence (uffizzi gallery): esther before ahasuerus.--portrait of a man.--jesus crucified.--prudence, hope, and love.--the annunciation to the virgin.--the martyrdom of st. justine.--the martyrdom of st. catherine.--the madonna and the infant jesus (sketch).--study for a st. paul.--gentleman in a white robe (sketch).--holy family with st. catherine. florence (pitti palace): portrait of veronese's wife.--portrait of daniele barbaro.--the baptism of christ.--portrait of a child.--christ taking leave of his mother. bergamo (carrara academy): reunion in a garden.--episode from the life of st. catherine. turin (royal museum): magdalen washing the feet of christ.--moses saved from the waters. naples (national museum): the circumcision. genoa (doria palace): susannah and the elders.--the same subject.--allegorical figures. modena (royal gallery of este): st. peter and st. paul.--portrait of veronese.--a captain. milan (brera museum): the feast at the house of the pharisee.--the adoration of the magi.--the last supper.--the baptism of christ.--st. gregory and st. jerome glorified.--st. ambrose and st. augustine glorified.--christ on the mount of olives.--st. anthony, st. cornelius and st. cyprian. belgium brussels (royal museum): the adoration of the magi.--the holy family with st. theresa and st. catherine.--juno lavishing her treasures on venice. spain madrid (museum of the prado): four portraits of women of rank.--calvary.--the woman taken in adultery.--magdalen repentant.--venus and adonis.--jesus and the centurion.--the infant jesus, st. lucia and st. sebastian.--the martyrdom of st. genesius.--jesus in the midst of the doctors.--cain wandering with his family.--the sacrifice of abraham.--the adoration of the magi.--moses saved from the waters.--portrait of a venetian woman in mourning.--young man between vice and virtue.--susannah and the two elders. germany dresden (gallery): christ on the cross.--moses saved from the waters.--the rape of europa.--the wedding at cana (reduced size).--christ and the two thieves.--the good samaritan.--the adoration of the magi.--portraits of daniele barbaro (replica).--the presentation at the temple.--christ cures the servant of caharnaum.--jesus carrying the cross.--the resurrection of christ.--the adoration of the virgin. berlin (museum): jupiter, fortune and germany.--mars and minerva.--apollo and juno.--jupiter, juno, cybile and neptune.--christ and the two angels.--four canvases representing geniuses.--saturn and olympe. munich (pinacothek): faith and religion.--the death of cleopatra.--woman taken in adultery.--portrait of a woman.--justice and prudence.--the rest in egypt.--love holding chained dogs.--a mother and three children.--strength and temperance.--holy family.--the cure of the servant of caharnaum. austria vienna (belvedere): the rape of dejanire.--catherine cornaro.--christ and the woman taken in adultery.--christ and the samaritan woman.--the adoration of the magi.--the marriage of st catherine.--the resurrection.--st. nicholas.--quintus curtius throwing himself into the chasm.--portrait of marco antonio barbaro.--young man caressing a dog.--annunciation to the virgin.--adam and eve and their first-born.--venus and adonis.--st. sebastian.--the death of lucrece.--st john the baptist--judith.--christ entering the house of zaira.--st. catherine and st. barbara present two nuns to the virgin and the infant jesus. sweden stockholm (national museum): the circumcision.--magdalen.--a holy family.--a madonna. russia st. petersburg (hermitage): the flight into egypt.--the adoration of the magi.--holy family.--diana and minerva.--mars and venus.--portrait of a man.--lazarus and the rich man.--christ in the midst of the doctors.--the dead christ upheld by the virgin and an angel.--the marriage of st. catherine.--various sketches. leuchtemberg gallery: the adoration of the magi.--the widow of the spanish ambassador at venice presenting her son to philip ii. masterpieces in colour edited by m. henry roujon puvis de chavannes ( - ) _in the same series_ reynolds rubens velasquez holbein greuze burne-jones turner le brun botticelli chardin romney millet rembrandt raeburn bellini sargent fra angelico constable rossetti memling raphael fragonard leighton dÜrer holman hunt lawrence titian hogarth millais watteau luini murillo franz hals watts carlo dolci ingres gainsborough corot tintoretto delacroix van dyck fra lippo lippi da vinci puvis de chavannes whistler meissonier montagna _in preparation_ gerome boucher veronese perugino van eyck [illustration: plate i.--saint genevieve keeping watch over sleeping paris. frontispiece (in the panthéon, paris) this composition, so great in its simplicity and so beautiful in execution, is the last work of the great artist. the model who posed for the saint watching over the city was puvis de chavannes' own wife. both he and she died very shortly after its completion.] puvis de chavannes illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] new york: frederick a. stokes co. copyright, , by frederick a. stokes company [illustration: april ] the·plimpton·press [w·d·o] norwood·mass·u·s·a contents page introduction the first years the glorious years the last years the landscape painter list of illustrations plate i. saint genevieve keeping watch over sleeping paris frontispiece in the panthéon, paris page ii. the piety of saint genevieve in the panthéon, paris iii. the poor fisherman in the musée de luxembourg, paris iv. ludus pro patria in the museum, amiens v. repose in the museum, amiens vi. the sacred wood dear to the arts and the muses in the museum, amiens vii. letters, sciences, and arts in the amphitheatre of the sorbonne viii. war in the museum, amiens [illustration] introduction glory does not dispense her favours to the deserving with an equal bounty. painters as well as authors often suffer from the caprices of the inconstant goddess. while there are some who, guided by her benevolent hand, attain the pinnacle of fortune at the first attempt and almost without effort, other artists with a genius akin to that of millet live in a state bordering upon penury and die in destitution. renown seeks them out later, much too late, and tardy laurels flower only upon their tomb. puvis de chavannes for a long time fared scarcely better than these illustrious mendicants of art. he experienced the bitter pangs of injustice, the hostility of ignorance, the discouragement of finding himself misunderstood. if he was spared the extreme distress of millet, it was solely because he was the more fortunate of the two in possessing a small private income. but nothing can crush the spirit of the born artist; neither contempt nor ridicule can hold him back. puvis de chavannes was endowed with a valiant and a tenacious spirit. entrenched within the loftiness of his artistic ideal, as within a tower of bronze, he was steadfastly scornful of critics, affecting not to hear them; and never would he consent to disarm them by concessions that in his eyes would have seemed dishonourable. yet this rare probity brought its own reward. the great painter attained the joy of seeing himself at last understood, and not only understood but admired during his life-time. he must even have derived an ironic satisfaction from counting among his warmest adherents certain ones who had formerly been conspicuous as his most violent detractors. [illustration: plate ii.--the piety of saint genevieve (in the panthéon, paris) in this composition, exceptionally fine in feeling, puvis de chavannes shows how much importance he attached to landscape, which was the natural setting of his paintings, and which he treated with as much care as his personages themselves.] today the glory of puvis de chavannes shines forth in uncontested splendour. no one dreams of comparing him with any of his contemporaries, because his art reveals no kinship with that of any one of them. he is recognized as the successor and the equal of the great fresco painters of the italian renaissance. even to these he owes nothing, having borrowed nothing from them. but he shares with them his passionate love of truth, his nobility of inspiration and sincerity of execution. there are no longer insinuating and derisory shakings of the head in the presence of his works. one must be devoid of soul in order not to sense their beauty. even the ignorant, in the presence of this form of art which they do not understand, gaze upon it with respectful wonder, as upon something very great, the content of which they fail to make out, although they realize its power from the inner emotion they experience. "my dear boy," wrote puvis de chavannes to one of his pupils, "direct your soul compass-like, towards some work of beauty; that is the way to achieve it in its entirety." it is because he directed his own soul, compass-like, only towards works of a noble and pure beauty, surrendering himself with all the ardour of his impetuous and vibrant nature, that puvis de chavannes has taken his place as one of the noblest figures, not only in contemporary painting, but also in the painting of all times. the first years pierre puvis de chavannes was born at lyons, december , . his parents were in affluent circumstances and were connected with one of the old burgundian families. his father pursued the vocation of chief engineer of mines, at lyons. in the registry of births, in which the new-born child was entered, the father is designated simply by the name of marie-julien-césar puvis. the honourable title of "de chavannes," claimed later and with good right by the family, was confirmed to him by a decree of the court of lyons, bearing date of may , . young puvis de chavannes was sent, first to the lycée at lyons, later to the lycée henri iv, at paris. but nothing either in the boy's tastes or in his aptitudes gave any hint of his future vocation; he showed no special inclination for drawing, nor even for art in general. son of a mining engineer, he applied himself naturally to the exact sciences; and he would probably have donned the uniform of a polytechnic student, had it not been for an illness which the family looked upon as most unfortunate, but which posterity regards as providential. the young man was forced to interrupt his studies and bid good-bye to mathematics. two years later he took a trip to italy, in the company of a young married couple. in true tourist fashion he made the rounds of museums and churches; he conscientiously inspected the great masterpieces in which the peninsula abounds; but, by his own admission, he brought back no real profit from his travels. they were not, however, entirely futile, since they awakened in him the desire to become a painter. upon returning to france he announced his determination to his family, and having won their consent, entered the studio of henri scheffer, brother of ary scheffer. italy, seen too hastily, had taught puvis de chavannes nothing: the studio hardly served him to better purpose. but, through contact with henri scheffer, he acquired a respect not only for art but for the conception which each one must form of it for himself. the young neophyte, who was destined in later years to be himself a living example of fidelity to an ideal, remained forever thankful to the author of _charlotte corday_ for having imbued him with this noble sentiment. he always retained of him, throughout life, an affectionate and grateful memory. scheffer's paintings, however, were far from satisfying his personal conception of art. before very long he left his studio and betook himself to that of delacroix. the latter admitted him readily; but the new pupil was not slow in discovering that here again he was out of his element. the great romantic painter, although an admirable artist, was a mediocre instructor. he alone, for that matter, could risk the violent colour schemes with which he covered his canvases; his pupils succeeded only in accentuating a debauch of thick-spread pigments by coupling together tones that cried aloud from the walls of the studio. the instinct of harmony and of proportion which was already awakening in puvis de chavannes, revolted against these audacities: he found himself ill at ease in the midst of this orgy of colour. it was after no such fashion that nature appeared to his eyes. he had about made up his mind to leave the studio of delacroix when the latter, angered by criticisms and piqued at seeing the attendance falling off, decided to close his doors. it was at this time that young puvis entered the studio of couture. there again his stay was brief, and we find in his work few traces of the lessons there received. once again it was only the conventional and artificial that were held up as object lessons for that young soul enamoured of the truth, for those wide-opened eyes that saw nature precisely as she is, and not under the tinsel glitter of fantasy under which the studio of the period draped her. it followed that he learned nothing from that school; nevertheless, he did not disown it. in the annual salon catalogue, puvis de chavannes continued to proclaim himself a pupil of scheffer and of couture. once again the young painter found himself without a master, yet still eager to learn and as yet equipped with only a mediocre and highly defective rudimentary training. convinced that he would never obtain the right start in any of the studios of the french capital, he determined, in company of one of his friends, beauderon de vermeron, to go in search of definite guidance, back to that same italy which he had visited the first time with such small profit. this time he studied all the periods, all the schools, all the methods of italian painting; he visited both rome and florence; and yet all his sympathies, as he himself declared, went out instinctively to the venetian school which had produced titian, tintoretto, and, greatest of all, veronese, inimitable prince of fresco and of decoration. returning to paris, puvis de chavannes no longer dreamed of soliciting the guidance of any school; henceforth he was to pursue his own path, to give heed only to his own temperament, to draw his inspiration only from nature herself. in the place pigalle he hired a studio, the same which he was destined to occupy for forty-four years, and which he quitted only two years before his death. later on he possessed another, at neuilly, in which to work upon his larger compositions, since there would not have been space enough for them in the montmartre studio. whatever the weather, through cold and through heat, puvis de chavannes could be seen, for more than thirty years, making his way on foot, with long, rapid strides, from the place pigalle to neuilly or in the reverse direction. this daily promenade grew to be a necessity; it was the sole recreation of this painter so enslaved by his art that in a certain sense he might be called a benedictine of painting. in , the date when his real career began, puvis de chavannes was twenty-eight years of age. he was at this time a handsome young fellow, tall of stature and large of frame, quick-witted, jovial and enthusiastic, and combining the whole-souled simplicity of the artist with the polished manners of a man of the world, inherited from his father. many people conceive of puvis de chavannes as melancholy and sombre. nothing could be further from the truth. he was fond of all the joys of living, friendly gatherings, abundant good cheer. but what he prized above all, thanks to the perfect balance of his physique, was the ability to apply his robust health to incessant work, which he pursued without intermission up to the day of his death. in , puvis de chavannes made his début by sending to the salon a _pietà_, which was accepted. his joy was great, for it was the joy of the first step. later on, his satisfaction in that picture diminished. it had certain defects, and gave evidence of inexperience, which the young painter was quick to perceive. that same year he painted _jean cavalier at the bed-side of his mother_, and an _ecce homo_, bold in execution and violent in tone. [illustration: plate iii.--the poor fisherman (in the musée de luxembourg, paris) no one else, excepting millet, had the skill to render with so much truth the physical and moral distress of the unfortunate. this resigned fisherman, bending his back under the inclement sky, is a veritable masterpiece, both in execution and in observation.] in , the pictures which he submitted to the salon were rejected by the jury, and this ostracism continued for several years. it was an epoch when every effort towards artistic independence was officially and systematically repressed. the young artist was not alone in disfavour; he shared it with a number of his friends, some of whom were already famous, or at least well known. equally with himself, courbet, dupré, barye, rousseau, millet, troyon, corot, diaz and delacroix found themselves ejected from the doors of the temple. in the eyes of the academy, they were all of them madmen or revolutionaries; for his part, he was treated with less honour: he was regarded as a maniac of no importance. his exclusion lasted for nine years, during which the critics and the public united in making him the target for their sarcasms. puvis de chavannes was always keenly sensitive to criticism; it cut him to the quick, but he prided himself on showing no outward sign. he repaid it by affecting the most complete disdain. when anyone in his presence bestowed only a qualified praise on one of his works, his lips would betray his scorn in a faint crease, which rodin, another misunderstood giant, has admirably caught in his buste of the painter. as it happened, however, puvis de chavannes was rarely fortunate in having the encouragement and support of such an admirable companion as the princess cantacuzène. that splendid woman, of exceptional intelligence and distinction, enjoyed art and understood it; she fell in love with puvis de chavannes and became his wife. "whatever i am and whatever i have done," wrote the painter, "is all due to her." throughout more than forty years, she filled the rôle of beneficent genius to the artist, the egeria whose voice he never failed to heed. puvis de chavannes had worshipped faithfully at her shrine; and when she died, he felt that the term of his own life had reached its end. he survived her scarcely more than a few months. under the shelter of her far-sighted affection, the artist closed his ears to hostile comments, and followed his bent, without trying to modify his manner of seeing and feeling nature. none the less, the paintings of this period are far from perfect; a certain constraint is apparent in them, due to inexperience and also to some lingering influence either of his studio training or of italy. _the martyrdom of st. sebastian_, _the village firemen_, _meditation_, _herodiade_, _julie_, _saint camilla at the_ _bedside of a dying man_, while they reveal some very genuine personal qualities, are none the less somewhat reminiscent of the manner of couture, by whom he seems to have been most directly influenced. his first real picture, the one which first marked and fixed for all time the artist's personality, was _peace_, now in the museum at amiens. so much knowledge and so much harmony were displayed in this picture that the jury simply did not dare reject it. what is more, it won for its author a medal of the second class. he was not slow in giving it a companion piece, in the shape of a painting entitled _war_, which is now also at amiens. in the first of these pictures, the one consecrated to the pleasures of _peace_, everything seems quite academic, the poses, the composition, the countenances: and yet, there is no stiffness, everything is vibrant, alive, palpitating in a serene and luminous atmosphere. the artist has herein magnificently demonstrated the truth of a phrase which he wrote to ary renan, in the course of a trip which the latter took to italy: "just as you yourself feel and have very well expressed, no study of other artists' work can trammel one's originality." neither the memory of italy nor the influence of couture had prevented him from asserting himself, and that, too, vigorously. _war_ is, if anything, superior to _peace_. the painter is here wholly himself. there is no longer in his work any trace of outside influence. and what vigour there is, what eloquence, in the simplicity of the composition! is there in existence a more admirable argument against war and its horrors? beside the corpse of a young warrior, a father and mother are prostrated, voicing aloud their anguish; and meanwhile the conquerors, approaching from the far horizon black with devastation and slaughter, blow their victorious trumpets and urge their horses forward towards the group of mourners. from that moment, puvis de chavannes began to command attention. he was discussed more acrimoniously, more passionately than ever; no one could neglect him nor pretend not to have heard of him. the government bought _peace_, but refused to purchase _war_, in spite of the fact that the two paintings were companion pieces. in order to prevent them from being separated, the artist generously donated the second picture. in came a new series representing _labour_ and _rest_. faithful to his principles, the author gathers together on his canvas the entire cycle of actions and ideas suggested by his subject. in _labour_ he has placed in the foreground a group of blacksmiths, representing, in his eyes, the fully developed type of the worker, because of the degree of their exertion, the vigour of their action. while two of them stir the fire, the others, armed with heavy sledges, strike alternate blows upon the anvil. at no great distance, some carpenters are squaring the trunks of trees; beyond, on the plain, a peasant can be seen, guiding his ploughshare through its furrow. in the foreground there is also a woman, nursing a young child. the entire cycle of human toil is glorified in this single painting. _repose_ shows us an old man seated, giving to the young folk grouped around him wise counsel, drawn from his long experience. nothing could be more graceful than the relaxed postures of the different figures, who, we feel, are listening with real attention. since these four pictures, _peace_, _war_, _labour_, _repose_, were the interpretation of general ideas, the artist could not give them any precise setting, any local colour. the nude, which is employed for all the figures, was his sole means of obtaining absolute truth. already at this period one perceives in puvis an anxious endeavour to sacrifice all the little easy methods of winning acclaim, in order to be free to concern himself solely with the harmony of his subject as a whole. throughout his entire life, he was destined to have no greater preoccupation than that of effacing himself completely, and forcing the public, when in the presence of his work, to see nothing but the work itself and to give not a thought to the painter. during the year , the results of puvis de chavannes' industry were fairly abundant. at the salon, he exhibited two very beautiful canvases, _autumn_ and _sleep_. the first of these two pictures is symbolic and represents the different ages of life in the form of women of unequal years. one of them, her pensive face already marked with lines, watches her companions gathering flowers and fruit, symbols of youth. this work, charming in composition, is now in the collection of the museum at lyons. _sleep_, a large decorative composition, after the manner of _peace_ and _war_, is in the museum at lille. the glorious years all these works, acrimoniously discussed and unjustly attacked by the critics, made the name of puvis de chavannes widely known without augmenting his reputation. the general public, habituated to the stereotyped, elaborate, ornate school, understood nothing of such deceptive simplicity. his canvases would not sell. even the government had made no more purchases since its acquisition of _peace_. it had even refused to acquire _war_, when the artist offered it. as we have already said, sooner than have the two pictures separated, puvis made up his mind to donate it. commissions failed to come in, and nothing afforded hope that this condition of affairs was likely to change, when chance threw in the path of puvis de chavannes a man whose providential intervention completely transformed his destiny. at about this epoch the city of amiens had started to build a museum. the architect of this enterprise, m. diot, came to see puvis de chavannes and said to him: "i saw your paintings in the salon of , and was greatly pleased with them. in the edifice which i am at present constructing, there are some vast surfaces to be covered. are your two pictures, _peace_ and _war_, still in your possession? i could find immediate use for them." puvis de chavannes replied that the two paintings in question belonged to the state. the city of amiens immediately solicited the concession of them, which was courteously granted. [illustration: plate iv.--ludus pro patria (in the museum, amiens) this great composition, of which the present plate gives only a fragment, is numbered among the most beautiful productions of puvis de chavannes, because of the harmony of its parts, the nobility of the postures and the charm of its detail.] the paintings were placed in the grand gallery on the first floor, where they produced a most beautiful decorative effect. puvis de chavannes, delighted at this unhoped-for good fortune, offered to complete the decoration of the gallery, by painting the panels occupying the spaces between the windows. the illumination is exceedingly bad, but with infinite art the painter succeeded in harmonizing his compositions with the atmosphere and light of the room. it should be noted further that the subjects treated in the panels on the right gallery relate to the picture of _war_, which faces them; they are a _standard-bearer_ and a _woman weeping over the ruins of her home_. the same holds true of the painting consecrated to _peace_, the corresponding panels being a _harvester_ and a _woman spinning_. puvis de chavannes considered himself fortunate in having two of his works which he so greatly loved find a place in a museum. the municipality of amiens was none the less delighted in possessing them; it gave proof of this by once more sending its municipal architect to him on a special embassy: "i need two more mural paintings to decorate the main staircase of the museum. do you happen to have what i need ready made, as you did the other time?" the architect was jesting. puvis de chavannes betook himself to a corner of his studio, and unrolling two canvases, presented them to m. diot: "here are what you want. these two pictures are of the same dimensions as _peace_ and _war_; they represent _repose_ and _labour_ and form part of the same series. will they serve your purpose?" they served the architect's purpose to perfection. unfortunately the city of amiens did not have the money to pay for them. the difficulty was explained to the artist who, with his customary disinterestedness, made a present of both the paintings. they were soon stretched in the places for which they were intended, in a framework of fruits and flowers, and produced an admirable effect. the municipality of amiens was so well satisfied with these paintings that it decided at the cost of great sacrifices to commission puvis de chavannes to prepare a large composition destined to occupy the entire upper panel of the staircase on the side of the grand gallery. this panel was intersected by two doorways. puvis de chavannes set to work immediately. in the salon of he exhibited his _ave picardia nutrix_, destined for the museum of amiens. the painting produced a veritable sensation. even the unskilled in art experienced an instinctive emotion in the presence of this important canvas which they did not fully understand, but which they felt to be sincere; as to the artists, they were obliged to acknowledge that the painter whom they had scoffed and derided, and who had now produced the _picardia nutrix_, was unquestionably a master. the _ave picardia nutrix_ is a glorification of the fertility and richness of the land of picardy. the artist has wished to represent in a succession of episodes, harmoniously related one to another, all the products of the soil and all the local industries from which picardy draws its prosperity. to this end he has grouped his figures in the setting of a picardian landscape, quite faithful in colour and in line. m. marius vachon analyzes the painting as follows: "beneath the orchard of a vast estate some peasants are turning a flour mill; women are bringing apples for a keg of cider; masons are building the walls of a house, and an old woman is spinning on her distaff the native hemp. along the banks of a stream, women are weaving fish nets; carpenters are constructing a bridge; boatmen are steering heavy-laden barges. add to these professional labours the incidents of work-a-day life, which are taking place on every side, charming incidents, picturesque and touching; a little lad, carrying a heavy basket of fruit on his head, eager to show his strength before his elders; a mother, nursing her youngest born; some women bathing under the shadow of the willows. the composition is abundantly suggestive of delicate impressions; and it forms a magnificent decoration for the edifice in which it has been placed." when the painting had been installed in its position in the vestibule of honour on the main floor, the municipality of amiens perceived that the fourth side of the staircase, the only one not decorated, was precisely the one that best lent itself to the development of a painting, because of its considerable surface. the ceiling, it is true, darkened this vestibule, owing to its insufficient window space. it was, furthermore, adorned by a painting by barrias. nevertheless the city determined to replace the ceiling by a skylight, on condition that puvis de chavannes would paint the vacant panel thus made available. [illustration: plate v.--repose (in the museum, amiens) this work is one of the earliest by this great artist. it is very interesting, because it still shows the influence of couture's studio, where puvis de chavannes had been a pupil. it serves as a point of comparison for determining the evolution of the artist's talent.] however, the resources of the municipality did not permit it to incur so great an expense. it appealed to the state, which curtly refused its coöperation. the city fathers of amiens were in despair, the painter not less so. what was to be done? wait until the municipality, through slow economies, was in a position to order the picture? puvis de chavannes, who had grown enthusiastic over the task, was boiling with impatience and listened day by day, as he expressed it, to hear if no breeze was blowing his way from amiens. but when the breeze remained persistently unfavourable, puvis de chavannes, growing tired of waiting, decided to execute the panel in any case, come what might. and he composed the admirable fresco which bears the name of _ludus pro patria_. everyone knows the subject of this painting, which has passed into a legend. in a plain traversed by a running stream, some young men are engaged in a game of rivalry with spears. on a knoll, an old man, surrounded by women, serves as umpire. he follows, with attentive eye, the fluctuations of the game, while a young lad, in a pose charming for its relaxation, rests one arm around his neck. behind him a young woman holds out her baby for its father to kiss. on the left of the picture, seated at the foot of a tree, or grouped around a fountain, young girls await the end of the game in which their brothers or their betrothed take part. one of them leans towards an aged minstrel and begs him to play some dance music after the game is over. all these groups are harmoniously disposed in an open-air setting, dotted over with cottages and stately trees, enveloped in a soft and mellow light. this picture reveals the artist's predilection for children, a very curious and touching predilection to discover in a painter whose own fireside was never gladdened by childish laughter. let us examine the _ludus pro patria_; in this picture puvis de chavannes has been lavish of childhood games and pastimes. notwithstanding that his art was before all else synthetic, and gained its effects from harmony of attitude rather than from finish of figures, he plainly expended loving care in modelling those delicate and charming little bodies, which he has endowed with infinite grace. is there anything more adorably exquisite than the gesture of the infant stretching out its plump arms towards its father? and does not the child standing before the group by the fountain reveal the master's tender solicitude for these little beings whose absence from his domestic life he probably regretted? the distinguished custodian of the museum at amiens showed me the corner of the balustrade on which the painter rested his elbows, in front of the group of which that child forms part. after some moments of contemplation, he might be seen to mount his scaffolding, brush in hand, to add a few strokes, some new tint to that delightfully modelled little form. the _ludus pro patria_ is something more and something better than a beautiful picture; it is a symbolic work in which the noblest conceptions of patriotism are exalted. with his incomparable synthetic art, puvis de chavannes has endeavoured to show all the diverse manners of serving usefully one's native land. young women, bearing the tender burden of nursing children, are rearing for their country a valiant generation, which before long will be augmented through the robust girls grouped on the left, awaiting the advent of husbands. the children, grown to manhood, will practise games of strength and skill which will render them capable of defending their common patrimony. the old man himself has his rôle assigned in this ideal commonwealth; ripened by experience of life, he supplements the feebleness of his arms by the wisdom of his lessons; he is the honoured counsellor, the arbiter of full justice, who restrains the ardor of youth within the path of reason. the cartoon for this magnificent panel was exhibited in the salon of ; it achieved a unanimous success. the state acquired it, and at the same time commissioned puvis to paint the picture itself for the museum of picardy. the finished work, in its proper dimensions, found a place in the salon the following year, and gained its author the medal of honour from the society of french artists. we have followed puvis de chavannes in his decoration of the museum of amiens, from the beginning to the end of his artistic career, without regard to chronological order, because of the interest which he himself took in this extensive work, which was, one might say, his constant preoccupation. accordingly we must go back in point of time and follow step by step this astonishing and genial worker whose accomplishment is disconcerting in its power and its fecundity. the first works executed for the museum of amiens had attracted public attention to him. the municipality of marseilles had just crowned the important enterprise of bringing the waters of the durance into the city, by erecting a sumptuous public waterworks, bearing the name of the palace of longchamps. two great mural surfaces enclose the principal staircase. it was decided to decorate them with paintings. and when the time came to choose the artist, a unanimous agreement was reached on the name of puvis de chavannes. the latter, being notified, accepted joyfully, as he accepted all occasions of converting a noble vision of art into a reality. and what finer fortune could come to an artist that to celebrate marseilles, the sun-bathed city, vibrant with light, crouching royally on the azure mantle of the mediterranean? puvis de chavannes hastened to the ancient ligurian city. he calculated the difficulties of composing a great decorative composition, free from banality, out of the habitual elements of a seaport,--a subject a thousand times treated and perilous of execution. he sought, he studied, he promenaded the quays, he strode the length and breadth of the city. at last the enlightening flash he awaited came in the course of a trip to the chateau d'if. in the presence of that noble panorama of the city seen from the sea, he remained as if dazed, realizing that he had found what he was in search of. he would not paint marseilles with the sea as a decorative background; it was the city herself that should form the background, and not the sea. he had his two pictures in his grasp. and without stirring from the spot, while his friends took luncheon, he remained seated on the rocks, making notes and sketches, in order to fix fully in his mind "the line and colour of that marvellous maritime landscape." the first of these pictures, _marseilles the greek colony_, stands for the entire history of the phocian city from its foundation to the present time. but, following his essentially synthetic method, he painted, not the successive transformations of marseilles, but symbolic figures of the sources to which she owes her grandeur and her prosperity. in the background is the strand, which as yet is only a natural harbour. along the shore, vessels are seen building; these are the symbol of activity. further off, horses are bringing merchandise towards the boats about to sail, symbol of the commercial instinct; masons, carpenters, stonecutters, are zealously plying their craft; and palaces, storehouses, and churches arise, symbols of wealth and of taste in art. among the accessory features are a woman vendor spreading before other women rich fabrics and pearls, and some slaves conveying towards the city jars of oil and skins filled with wine. in _marseilles, gateway of the east_, a ship is seen, laden with travellers, making its way into port. all these passengers are orientals, recognizable by the gaudiness of their garments: they admire the panorama of the rich city whose fortifications, churches, and palaces stand out in bold relief against the ruddy light of evening. an atmosphere of warmth and brilliance emanates from these two paintings, of which the city of marseilles has shown herself justly proud. when puvis de chavannes received a commission for a mural painting he gave himself ardently to his task, but at the same time intermittently. contrary to a generally accepted belief, his genius was not the result of "long patience," but rather the realization of a vision. he never applied himself to a painting if some external cause, no matter what, had deadened in him the essential inspiration. in such a case, he would revert to some other work which his mind could "see better" on that particular day. in this way we can understand how he could carry forward simultaneously several works of equal importance, and at the same time paint in addition occasional easel pictures. [illustration: plate vi.--the sacred wood, dear to the arts and the muses (in the museum, amiens) this painting, admirable in execution, is quite interesting to study, because it serves to show in what a purely personal manner, wholly detached from mythological traditions, puvis de chavannes interpreted antiquity.] following the example of marseilles and amiens, the city of poitiers, which in had just completed the building of a city hall, commissioned puvis de chavannes to decorate the main staircase. the two subjects chosen by the artist, with the approbation of the municipality, were as follows: first panel:--"radegonde, having retired to the convent of the holy cross, offers an asylum to the poets and protects literature against the barbarism of those days." second panel:--"the year : charles martel saves christendom by his victory over the saracens near poitiers." the legend of radegonde is well known: "the virtuous spouse of clotaire, fleeing from the brutality of that crowned free-booter and hiding in a convent in order to escape his pursuit." but this convent is by no means a cloister; the practice of arts and letters is pursued alternately with the singing of psalms. the door stands open to poets. one of them, fortunatus, passing through poitiers, stops there and is received with cordial hospitality, and conceiving for the saintly queen a delicate and chaste love, he remains for twenty years in this abode in which he purposed to spend only a few days. puvis de chavannes has magnificently rendered the poetic beauty of this historic episode by representing one of the fêtes given by radegonde in the convent of the holy cross. in the second panel, we see charles martel returning to poitiers, victorious over the saracens and receiving the benediction of the bishops. here the artist's brush attains a vigour of expression such as in all his life he found but few occasions to employ. the countenances of the bishops, notably, stand out with a relief and an energy that are remarkable. m. marius vachon relates that he once asked the artist, who was a personal friend, to what documents he had recourse in order to give such forbidding features to the prelates in his painting: "i got the suggestion for them," he replied, laughing, "from an old set of chess men, consisting of the coarse and grouchy faces of knights and jesters." the last years in the days following the franco-prussian war and the commune, the government conceived the project of decorating the panthéon, which had just been once more secularized, in order to convert it into a temple wherein all the shining lights of the nation could be brought together and honoured. m. de chennevières, who at that time was director of the beaux arts gave the first place, in that illustrious line, to the noble and serene genevieve, patron saint of paris, incarnate ideal of patriotism. accordingly it was a series of religious paintings that m. de chennevières required of puvis de chavannes, when he entrusted him with a large share of the decoration. this type of painting, although new to puvis de chavannes, failed to intimidate him. he had too much patriotic fire, more than enough christian faith, and above all too thorough a mastery of his profession not to approach this task with full confidence. it is enough to visit the panthéon just once in order to be convinced of this. a more magnificent realization of saint genevieve could not be conceived of, even in dreams. but are these paintings to be classed with religious art? one would hesitate to assert it, if the pictures habitually consecrated to religious themes are to be taken as a standard. but they are something better than that, because the virgin protectress of paris is in these pictures profoundly human; she is brought very close to us, and we see her despoiled of the aureole that would have removed her too far from our vision and our hearts. the whole world knows, at least through reproductions, the series of paintings consecrated to the life of this saint. first of all, we have saint genevieve as a child, singled out from a crowd by saint germain, because she is marked with the divine seal. "i chose the hour," wrote puvis de chavannes, "at which history claimed possession of this heroic woman. these two are not an old man and a child, they are two great souls face to face. the glance which they ardently exchange is, in its moral significance, the culminating point of the composition." next in order comes the _piety of saint genevieve_. the pious child is at her prayers before a cross formed by two interlacing branches. this is the prologue of a life filled with miracles, divine recompense accorded only to supernatural virtue. the artist has admirably reproduced the mystic fervour of that child whose future was foreordained to be so beautiful. subsequently, in , the government entrusted puvis de chavannes with the execution of two new panels, likewise dedicated to the life of saint genevieve. the two themes chosen were the following: "ardent in her faith and in her charity, genevieve, whom the greatest perils could not swerve from her duty, brings sustenance to paris, besieged and threatened with famine." "genevieve, sustained by her pious solicitude, keeps watch over sleeping paris." these noble paintings were the last productions of the great artist. a sort of premonition told him that the end was near, in spite of his robust health. "how i shall devote myself to the panthéon," he wrote, "when i am finished with the hôtel de ville! i intend it to be a sort of last will and testament." in these last paintings, saint genevieve is no longer a child. having attained womanhood, her saintliness is such that, from all sides, people come to take shelter behind her veil, like children around their mother, as soon as danger is announced. for the purpose of portraying this hieratic and inspired figure, puvis de chavannes found the ideal model close at hand, in the noble woman who had associated her entire life with his. _genevieve bringing sustenance to paris_ is the artist's wife who, already mortally ill, inflicted upon herself the most cruel suffering, in order to pose in her husband's studio. the disease which was killing her was known only to herself, and she had the heroism to conceal it up to the supreme hour when, conquered at last, she was stricken down. in painting the pensive and dolorous attitude of _genevieve watching over sleeping paris_, the poor artist never once suspected that he was tracing for the last time the portrait of her who had been the consolation and the joy of his whole existence. the unfortunate woman lacked the strength to play her rôle to the end; she was forced to take to her bed. the artist, no less heroic than she, feeling that his own life was slipping away with hers, yet wishing to complete this last work,--his testament--transported his easel beside the dying woman's bed, and there finished the sketches for his picture. in the intervals of time between the paintings executed for the panthéon, puvis de chavannes produced certain other large compositions in no wise inferior either in importance or in merit, notably, in , a large painting for the palace of arts, at lyons. the municipal government of that city, wishing to have the main staircase of the palace decorated, entrusted the execution to the great artist who was at the same time a compatriot. he felt a very special joy in accepting this commission, for he had always retained a vivid memory of the city of his birth. he endowed it with three pictures of a very high order, one of which, _the sacred wood, dear to the arts and the muses_, is considered by many to be the artist's masterpiece. puvis de chavannes breaks away from the mythological theme so often treated that it has become hackneyed. it is not on helicon that he groups his muses, but on the shore of a lake, in a setting of verdure softly illuminated by the rays of the moon. at the foot of a portico, calliope is seen declaiming verses before her sisters. some of the muses appear attentive; others converse together; one of them is reclining lazily upon the grass. euterpe and thalia, heralded from the sky by song and the accompanying lyre, approach to join the group. [illustration: plate vii.--letters, sciences and arts (detail) (in the amphitheatre of the sorbonne) in this immense composition, in which the groups are balanced with admirable harmony, there is an exalted and pervading beauty. it makes itself felt in the prevailing mood of the subject as a whole, in the expressions of the several characters, in the naturalness of their attitudes and in the luminous clarity of the landscape.] antiquity, as treated by puvis de chavannes, loses nothing of its nobility, but quite the contrary. it even gains in real beauty, because his muses profit by being despoiled of those conventional attitudes, in which an immutable tradition has trammelled them. the artist has retained only such of their attitudes as cannot detract in any way from the naturalness of their movements or their lines. in the same palace of arts, puvis de chavannes painted two additional allegorical panels representing _the rhone and the saône_, both of which are admirably effective. to about the same period belongs his well known painting, _the poor fisherman_, at present in the musée du luxembourg. in this work, which he painted as a relaxation from his more extensive efforts, puvis de chavannes has tried to portray, as millet so often did, all the sordid and lamentable misery of the slaves of toil, who bend their poor aching backs beneath the burden of physical distress and mental degradation. this work is a fine and eloquent lesson in humanity. in , the hôtel de ville, in paris, proceeding with the still unfinished decoration of its numerous halls and chambers, entrusted puvis de chavannes with the task of decorating the main staircase and the first salon in the suite of reception rooms. on one wall of this salon, he painted _winter_, on the other _summer_. these two compositions are of imposing dimensions and admirable in execution. _winter_ shows us a snow-clad stretch of forest landscape. woodsmen are hauling the trunks of trees which others of their number have just felled. nothing could be more impressive than his rendering of the desolation of winter; and the truth, the exactitude of the physical effort these men are putting forth, with every muscle straining tensely on the rope. _summer_ shows us a delightful and smiling landscape flooded with light; bathing women plunge their nude forms beneath the water, while a mother, seated on the grass, nurses her new born child. in this picture puvis de chavannes, who was a landscape painter of the first order, has surpassed himself; the work is a miracle of open air and grateful shade. unfortunately, the room in which these two magnificent pictures are placed suffers from a deplorable want of light, and its scanty dimensions make it impossible to stand back at a sufficient distance to see them to advantage. the hôtel de ville should for its own credit assign them a place more in keeping with their worth. for the museum at rouen, puvis de chavannes painted an allegory entitled _inter artes et naturam_, charming in fantasy and poetic feeling. according to his habit, he has grouped together in synthetic form the various things which constitute the wealth or serve to mark the characteristics of the province of normandy. labourers heaping up architectural fragments preserved from all the various epochs proclaim the variety and antiquity of its monuments; its special art is represented by a young girl painting a tulip on a porcelain plate and by a lad carrying a tray of pottery; its principal agricultural richness is revealed by the action of a woman, bending down a branch of an apple-tree, in order that her child may reach the fruit. and at the bottom of the picture flows the seine, rolling its flood past a long sequence of manufactories, and bearing in its course heavily laden boats. this picture is one of puvis de chavannes' most ingenious conceptions; furthermore, it possesses great charm of detail. in , the trustees of the boston museum approached puvis de chavannes with a request to decorate the main staircase of that edifice. the negotiations were troublesome. in spite of his delight at having a new work to produce, in spite of the legitimate pride he felt in this homage paid to french art, puvis de chavannes hesitated to accept the commission. for the first time he faced the necessity of painting a canvas without having studied beforehand the physiognomy, the environment, the illumination of the space he was to decorate, and his artist's conscience suffered. besides, certain misunderstandings had arisen between american trustees and the painter; several times relations were on the point of being broken off; and no definite agreement was reached until after the lapse of four years. puvis de chavannes began this work in ; he did not finish it until . the surface to be covered was to be divided into nine large panels, three facing the entrance, three to the right, three to the left. the choice of subjects was left to him. for the central panel puvis de chavannes chose a theme already treated twice by him: _the inspiring muses acclaim genius, messenger of light_. against a background of sea and of blue sky, a genius with the radiant features of a child advances, holding a torch in each hand. at sight of the genius the muses run forward and range themselves on each side. the ninth muse, still floating through the air, hastens to rejoin her companions. this whole charming group of women is deliciously painted and one is at a loss which to admire the more; the originality of the artistic conception, or the peculiarly rare delicacy of the painter's skill. the eight subordinate panels represent _bucolic poetry_, _dramatic poetry_, _epic poetry_, _history_, _astronomy_, _physics_, _chemistry_ and _philosophy_. all these paintings produce a decorative effect of the highest order, and many critics consider, not without reason, that this group of frescoes in the boston library constitutes the masterpiece of puvis de chavannes. however that may be, the authorities of the great american city are very proud of this absolutely unique decorative ensemble, and whenever any distinguished stranger passes through boston he is conducted to admire it. is not this a beautiful homage to french art, of which puvis de chavannes was one of the most glorious exponents? the landscape painter there is, in the work of puvis de chavannes, so much harmony and balance; the place occupied by each figure is so perfectly planned to accord the unity of the whole, that one does not perceive at first, because of the wise ordering of the assembled parts, how many-sided the artist's genius was. and so it happens that the landscape painter in him does not appear excepting under analysis. yet few artists have advanced the science of landscape so far; indeed, in all his compositions it holds a position, if not of first importance, at least one equal to that of his figures. in his eyes it was not a matter of convention, a decoration, an accessory, but an indispensable part of the picture, so indispensable indeed that, without the landscape the picture would not exist. in short, it is in his landscape that puvis de chavannes has always placed the local colour of his compositions, and not in his figures. the latter are generally clad in antique fashion, in order to remain representative of humanity in general, but the setting is local: his _ave, picardia nutrix_, for instance, shows us the land of picardy with its level plains and its melancholy horizons: similarly, the two frescoes in the palace of longchamps reproduce faithfully the sun-flooded coast of marseilles and the animation of its quays;--and yet the hurrying crowds upon them belong to no definite race nor to any determinable epoch. it is always so in the paintings of puvis de chavannes: the landscape and the living figures harmonize, fit in, complete each other, and the consummate art of the landscape painter yields in no way to that of the painter of figures. [illustration: plate viii.--war (in the museum, amiens) this work dates from the same period as _repose_ and _peace_. it marks the début of puvis de chavannes in his career as an artist. in spite of some reminiscences of his training, his individuality already asserts itself, and the originality of composition is unmistakable.] puvis de chavannes has been criticized on the ground that in such of his pictures as evoke antiquity, he sacrificed accepted tradition and acquired knowledge. from this to a direct charge of ignorance was an easy step; and it was quickly taken. that the artist attached a mediocre importance to accuracy in decoration or antique costume, there can be no question. truth, in his eyes, consisted less in the detailed reconstruction of garments than in the faithful representation of that eternally living model, the human soul, over which whole centuries have passed, without availing to modify it. all else is merely accessory and secondary, if not actually negligible. at the same time, no one was ever more truly impregnated with the spirit of antiquity, as he had imbibed it from his readings, from his travels and from his own meditations. contrary to what has been thought, he was not proud; nor held himself aloof from all other schools of painting except his own. nothing could be further from the truth. puvis was acquainted with all the schools; and no one admired more sincerely than he the great masters of each and every country. he had traversed italy, germany, and the netherlands, examining, studying, admiring. and here is precisely wherein his great glory consists; that having studied all methods, analyzed all processes, he still remained true to himself,--in other words, that he was a painter of inimitable originality. puvis de chavannes kept abreast of all the ideas that stand for personality and progress. far from being a recluse, solely concerned with his own painting, he followed the contemporary literary movement, and none of the happenings that took place around him escaped his knowledge. nevertheless, his chief preoccupation was his art and his desire to express, with his brush, the greatest possible degree of human nature. this he achieved in his magnificent series of immortal works; but it was only at the cost of a vast amount of conscientious labour. few masters have had so keen an intuition of beauty, or a higher and more spontaneous inspiration; and no one, perhaps, has been so distrustful of himself, of his inspiration, of his intuition. he did not surrender himself to them until he had submitted them to the test of searching argument and uncompromising common sense. it is due to this careful weighing in the balance, to this wise mingling of youthful enthusiasm and mature severity that the work of puvis de chavannes owes that harmonious beauty that insures it an eternal glory. and so, when in he passed away, not a dissenting voice was raised amid the concert of eulogies and of regrets which marked his end. for a long time previous, puvis de chavannes had ceased to have detractors; admiration had stifled envy. and, from the moment that he crossed beyond the threshold of life, puvis de chavannes entered fully into immortality. catalogue of the works of puvis de chavannes musée du luxembourg; _the poor fisherman_. panthéon; _saint genevieve marked with the divine seal_.--_the piety of saint genevieve._--_saint genevieve providing for besieged paris._--_saint genevieve watching over sleeping paris._--two decorative friezes, including _faith, hope, and charity_, and a series of _saints_. hôtel de ville; _summer, winter_.--_victor hugo offering his lyre to the city of paris._ amphitheatre of the sorbonne; _letters, sciences and arts_. museum at amiens; _peace_.--_war._--_labour._--_repose._--_a standard-bearer._--_a harvester._--_a woman weeping over the ruins of her house._--_a woman spinning._--_ave, picardia nutrix._--_ludus pro patria._ church at campagnat; _ecce homo_. palace of longchamps (marseilles): _marseilles, a greek colony_.--_marseilles, gateway of the orient._ museum at marseilles: _the return from the hunt_. hôtel de ville, poitiers: _saint radegonde gives asylum to the poets_.--_charles martel re-enters poitiers after his conquest of the saracens._ palace of fine arts, lyons: _the sacred wood dear to the arts and the muses_. museum at rouen: _inter artes et naturam_. public library, boston: _the inspiring muses acclaim genius, messenger of light_. museum at chartres: _summer_. private collections: _herodiade_.--_autumn._--_sleep._ * * * * * transcriber's notes: simple typographical errors were corrected. punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). a carat character is used to denote superscription: a single character or bracketed group following the carat is superscripted (examples: xviij^o s^{te}). images of the original plates are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/illuminatedmanu midd * * * * * illuminated manuscripts in classical and mediaeval times, their art and their technique by j. henry middleton, slade professor of fine art, director of the fitzwilliam museum, and fellow of king's college, cambridge; author of "ancient rome in ", "the engraved gems of classical times" &c. cambridge: at the university press: [_all rights reserved._] table of contents. preface and list of authorities. page xiii to xix. list of illustrations. page xxi to xxiv. chapter i. page to . classical manuscripts written with a stilus. survival of classical methods in mediaeval times; epigraphy and palaeography; manuscripts on metal plates; lead rolls; tin rolls; gold amulets; petelia tablet; waxed tablets and diptychs; tablets shown on gems and coins; tablets found in tombs; tablets from pompeii; consular diptychs; many-leaved tablets; the form of the waxed tablets; whitened boards used by the greeks; late survival of tablets; "bidding the beads;" lists of members of guilds; wooden book in norway; ivory tablets and diptychs; inscribed anglo-saxon lead tablet; "horn-books." chapter ii. page to . classical manuscripts written with pen and ink. two forms of manuscripts, the roll and the codex; egyptian books of the dead; book of ani; existing manuscripts on papyrus; the library of papyrus rolls found at herculaneum; herodotus on manuscripts; use of parchment; manuscripts on linen; inscribed potsherds or _ostraka_; manuscripts on leaves of trees; greek libraries; roman libraries; a list of the public libraries in rome; roman library fittings and decorations; recently discovered library in rome; authors' portraits; closed bookcases; booksellers' quarter; cost of roman books; slave scribes; librarii of rome. the technique of ancient manuscripts; parchment and vellum; palimpsests; papyrus manuscripts; process of making papyrus paper; use of papyrus in greece and rome; ancient papyrus manuscripts; the qualities of papyrus paper; the form of papyrus rolls; the wooden roller; inscribed titles; coloured inks; use of cedar oil; black carbon ink, its manufacture and price; red inks and rubrics; purple ink; double inkstands; pens of reeds and of metal; egyptian scribes' palettes, pen-cases, and pens. chapter iii. page to . classical illuminated manuscripts. use of minium; egyptian miniatures; illuminations in roman manuscripts; greek illuminations; two sources of knowledge about classical illuminations; the ambrosian _iliad_; the vatican virgil; the style of its miniatures; later copies of lost originals; picture of orpheus in a twelfth century _psalter_; another _psalter_ with copies of classical paintings; the value of these copied miniatures. chapter iv. page to . byzantine manuscripts. the very compound character of byzantine art; love of splendour; _gospels_ in purple and gold; monotony of the byzantine style; hieratic rules; fifth century manuscript of _genesis_; the dioscorides of the princess juliana; the style of its miniatures; imitations of enamel designs; early picture of the crucifixion in the _gospels_ of rabula; the splendour of byzantine manuscripts of the _gospels_; five chief pictures; illuminated "canons"; persian influence; the altar-textus used as a pax; its magnificent gold covers; the durham textus; byzantine figure drawing, unreal but decorative; byzantine mosaics; the iconoclast schism, and the consequent decadence of byzantine art. chapter v. page to . manuscripts of the carolingian period. the age of charles the great; the school of alcuin of york; the _gospels_ of alcuin; the _golden gospels_ of henry viii.; the _gospels_ of the scribe godesscalc; persian influence; technical methods; the later carolingian manuscripts; continuance of the northumbrian influence; beginning of life-study; the _gospels_ of otho ii.; period of decadence in the eleventh century. chapter vi. page to . the celtic school of manuscripts. the irish church; celtic goldsmiths; technical processes of the metal-workers copied by illuminators of manuscripts; the _book of kells_, its perfect workmanship and microscopic illuminations; copies of metal spiral patterns; the "trumpet pattern;" moslem influence; absence of gold in the irish manuscripts; the _book of durrow_; the monks of iona; the celtic missionaries to northumbria; the _gospels_ of st cuthbert; the viking pirates; the adventures of st cuthbert's _gospels_; the anglo-celtic school; improved drawing and use of gold; italian influence; the early _gospels_ in the corpus library; the _gospels_ of macdurnan; the _book of deer_; the _gospels_ of st chad; the celtic school on the continent; the _psalter_ of st augustine; scandinavian art; the _golden gospels_ of stockholm and its adventures; the struggle between the celtic and the roman church; the synod of whitby; the roman victory, and the growth of italian influence; the school of baeda at durham. chapter vii. page to . the anglo-saxon school of manuscripts. the danish invasions; revival of art under king alfred; the _benedictional_ of aethelwold; signs of carolingian influence; the winchester school; st dunstan as an illuminator; anglo-saxon drawings in coloured ink; roll of st guthlac; the great beauty of its drawings; canute as a patron of art; the norman conquest. chapter viii. page to . the anglo-norman school. the norman invasion; development of architecture and other arts; creation of the anglo-norman school; magnificent _psalters_; the angevin kingdom; the highest development of english art in the thirteenth century; henry iii. as an art patron; the rebuilding and decorating of the church and palace of westminster; paintings copied from manuscripts; the painted chamber; english sculpture; the fitz-othos and william torell; english needlework (_opus anglicanum_); the lateran and pienza copes; anglo-norman manuscripts of the _vulgate_; the style of their illuminations; manuscripts produced in benedictine monasteries; unity of style; various kinds of background in miniatures; magnificent manuscripts of the _psalter_; the tenison _psalter_; manuscripts of the _apocalypse_; their extraordinary beauty; their contrast to machine-made art; english manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the results of the black death; the poyntz _horae_; the _lectionary_ of lord lovel; the characteristics of english ornament; the introduction of portrait figures; the shrewsbury manuscript; "queen mary's prayer-book;" the works of dan lydgate; specially english subjects; manuscripts of _chronicles_ and _histories_. chapter ix. page to . french manuscripts. the age of saint louis; archaism of costume in miniatures; french manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; historiated bibles; the ivy-pattern; the _horae_ of the duc de berri; the _treasure-book_ of origny abbey; the anjou _horae_; costly and magnificent french _horae_; their beautiful decorations; their numerous miniatures; the bedford _breviary_; the bedford _missal_; various styles in the same manuscript; manuscripts in _grisaille_; manuscripts of secular works; cristina of pisa; _chronicles_ and _travels_; _romances_ and _poems_; italian influence in the south of france; the growth of secular illuminators; the inferiority of their work; cheap and coarsely illuminated _horae_; manuscripts of the finest style; use of flowers and fruit in borders and initials; influence of the italian renaissance; the _horae_ of jehan foucquet of tours. chapter x. page to . printed books with painted illuminations. _horae_ printed on vellum in paris; their woodcut decorations; the productions of the earliest printers; the mazarine bible; the mentz _psalter_; illuminators becoming printers; italian printed books with rich illuminations; the colophons of the early printers; the books of aldus manutius; invention of italic type; manuscripts illustrated with woodcuts; block-books; the long union of the illuminators' and the printers' art. chapter xi. page to . illuminated manuscripts of the teutonic school after the tenth century. revival of art in germany in the eleventh century; the _missal_ of the emperor henry ii.; the designs used for stained glass; the advance of manuscript art under frederic barbarossa; grotesque monsters; examples of fine german illuminations of the twelfth century; their resemblance to mural paintings; the school of the van eycks; the grimani _breviary_; gérard david of bruges; examples of flemish miniatures; the use of gold; grotesque figures; the influence of manuscript art on the painters of altar-pieces; the school of cologne; triptych by the elder holbein; book illuminated by albert dürer; dutch fifteenth century manuscripts; their decorative beauty; their realistic details; illumination in pen outlines in blue and red. chapter xii. page to . the illuminated manuscripts of italy and spain. italian art slow to advance; its degraded state in the twelfth century; illuminators mentioned by dante; _missal_ in the chapter library of saint peter's; the monk don silvestro in the middle of the fourteenth century; his style of illumination; the monk don lorenzo; fra angelico as an illuminator; italian _pontifical_ in the fitzwilliam library; manuscripts of the works of dante and petrarch; motives of decoration; italian manuscripts after ; introduction of the "roman" hand; great perfection of writing, and finest quality of vellum; the illuminators attavante, girolamo dai libri, and liberale of verona; manuscripts of northern italy; their influence on painting generally; italian manuscripts of the sixteenth century, a period of rapid decadence; giulio clovio a typical miniaturist of his time; the library of the vatican; its records of the cost of illuminating manuscripts. the manuscripts of spain and portugal; the manuscripts of moslem countries, especially persia. chapter xiii. page to . the writers of illuminated manuscripts. monastic scribes; the great beauty of their work, and the reasons for it; their quiet, monotonous life; examples of monastic humour; no long spells of work in a monastery; care in the preparation of pigments; variety of the schemes of decoration; the _scriptoria_ of benedictine monasteries; their arrangement in one alley of the cloister; the row of _armaria_; the row of _carrels_; the _carrels_ in the durham cloister described in _the rites of durham_; the scribes of other regular orders. secular scribes; the growth of the craft-guilds; the guilds of bruges; their rules, and advantages to both buyer and seller; the production of cheap _horae_; wealthy patrons who paid for costly manuscripts; women illuminators, such as the wife of gérard david; the high estimation of fine manuscripts. extract from the fourteenth century accounts of st george's at windsor showing the cost of six manuscripts. similar extract from the parish books of st ewen's at bristol in the fifteenth century, giving the cost of a _lectionary_. chapter xiv. page to . the materials and technical processes of the illuminator. the vellum used by scribes, its cost and various qualities; paper made of cotton, of wool and of linen; the dates and places of its manufacture; its fine quality. the metals and pigments used in illuminated manuscripts; fluid gold and silver; leaf gold, silver and tin; the highly burnished gold; leaf beaten out of gold coins; the goldsmith's art practised by many great artists; the _mordant_ on which the gold leaf was laid; how it was applied; a slow, difficult process; laborious use of the burnisher; old receipts for the mordant: the _media_ or vehicles used with it; tooled and stamped patterns on the gold leaf; the use of tin instead of silver; a cheap method of applying gold described by cennino cennini. chapter xv. page to . the materials and technical processes of the illuminator (_continued_). the coloured pigments. the vehicles used; blue pigments, ultramarine; its great value; story told by pliny and vasari; _smalto_ blues; "german blue;" indigo and other dye-colours; how they were made into pigments; green pigments; terra verde, verdigris, smalt, leek-green; red pigments, _minium_ red lead, vermilion, red ochre (_rubrica_); _murex_ and _kermes_ crimson; kermes extracted from scraps of red cloth by illuminators; madder-red; lake-red; purples; yellow pigments, ochre, arsenic and litharge; white pigments, pure lime (_bianco di san giovanni_), white lead, _biacca_ or _cerusa_. black inks, carbon ink and iron ink (_incaustum_ or _encaustum_ and _atramentum_); red and purple inks; writing in gold; the illuminator's pens and pencils; the lead-point and silver-point; red chalk and _amatista_. pens made of reeds, and, in later times, of quills; brushes of ermine, minever and other hair, mostly made by each illuminator for himself; list of scribes' implements and tools. miniatures representing scribes; the various stages in the execution of an illuminated manuscript; ruled lines; writing of the plain text; outline of ornament sketched in; application of the gold leaf; the painting of the ornaments and miniatures; preparation for the binder. chapter xvi. page to . the bindings of manuscripts. costly covers of gold, enamel and ivory; the more usual forms of binding; oak boards covered with parchment and strengthened by metal bosses and corners; methods of placing the title on the cover; pictures on wood covers; stamped patterns on leather; english stamped bindings; bag-like bindings for portable manuscripts; bindings of velvet with metal mounts; the costly covers of the grimani _breviary_ and other late manuscripts. the present prices of mediaeval manuscripts; often sold for barely the value of their vellum; modern want of appreciation of the finest manuscripts. appendix. page to . directions to scribes, from a thirteenth century manuscript at bury st edmund's. note on service-books by the late henry bradshaw. extract from the cistercian _consuetudines_. [illustration: painting on panel by a fifteenth century artist of the prague school; it represents st augustine as an episcopal scribe. the background and the ornaments of the dress are stamped in delicate relief on the _gesso_ ground and then gilt. this picture, which is now in the vienna gallery, was originally part of the painted wall-panelling in the chapel of the castle of karlstein.] preface. the object of this book is to give a general account of the various methods of writing, the different forms of manuscripts and the styles and systems of decoration that were used from the earliest times down to the sixteenth century a.d., when the invention of printing gradually put an end to the ancient and beautiful art of manuscript illumination. i have attempted to give a historical sketch of the growth and development of the various styles of manuscript illumination, and also of the chief technical processes which were employed in the preparation of pigments, the application of gold leaf, and other details, to which the most unsparing amount of time and labour was devoted by the scribes and illuminators of many different countries and periods. an important point with regard to this subject is the remarkable way in which technical processes lasted, in many cases, almost without alteration from classical times down to the latest mediaeval period, partly owing to the existence of an unbroken chain of traditional practice, and partly on account of the mediaeval custom of studying and obeying the precepts of such classical writers as vitruvius and pliny the elder. to an english student the art-history of illuminated manuscripts should be especially interesting, as there were two distinct periods when the productions of english illuminators were of unrivalled beauty and importance throughout the world[ ]. in the latter part of this volume i have tried to describe the conditions under which the illuminators of manuscripts did their work, whether they were monks who laboured in the _scriptorium_ of a monastery, or members of some secular guild, such as the great painters' guilds of bruges or paris. the extraordinary beauty and marvellous technical perfection of certain classes of manuscripts make it a matter of interest to learn who the illuminators were, and under what daily conditions and for what reward they laboured with such astonishing patience and skill. the intense pleasure and refreshment that can be gained by the study of a fine mediaeval illuminated manuscript depend largely on the fact that the exquisite miniatures, borders and initial letters were the product of an age which in almost every respect differed widely from the unhappy, machine-driven nineteenth century in which we now live. with regard to the illustrations, i have to thank mr john murray for his kindness in lending me a _cliché_ of the excellent woodcut of the _scriptorium_ walk in the cloisters of the benedictine abbey of gloucester, which was originally prepared to illustrate one of mr murray's valuable _guides to the english cathedrals_. the rest of the illustrations i owe to the kindness of mr kegan paul. they have previously appeared in the english edition of woltmann and woermann's valuable _history of painting_, - . i have to thank my friend and colleague mr m. r. james for his kindness in looking through the proofs of this book. he is not responsible for the opinions expressed or for the errors that remain, but he has corrected some of the grosser blunders. j. henry middleton. king's college, cambridge. books on illuminated mss. the following are some of the most important works on this subject, and the most useful for the purposes of a student. many others, which deal with smaller branches of the subject, are referred to in the following text. bastard, _peintures et ornemens des manuscrits, classés dans un ordre chronologique_, imper. folio, paris, , &c.; a very magnificent book, with plates, mostly coloured. birch and jenner, _early drawings and illuminations_, london, ; this is a useful index of subjects which occur in manuscript miniatures. bradley, j. w., _dictionary of miniaturists and illuminators_, vols. vo. london, - . chassant, _paléographie des chartes et des manuscrits du xime au xviiime siècle_, mo.; a useful little handbook, together with the companion volume, _dictionnaire des abbréviations latines et françaises_, paris, . denis, f., _histoire de l'ornementation des manuscrits_; vo. paris, . fleury, e., _les manuscrits de la bibliothèque de laon étudiés au point de vue de leur illustration_, vols., laon, . with plates. humphreys, noel, _illuminated books of the middle ages_, folio, london, ; a handsome, well-illustrated book. humphreys, noel, _the origin and progress of the art of writing_; sm. to., with plates; london, . kopp, _palaeographia critica_, vols. to., manheim, - ; a book of much historical value for the student of palaeography. lamprecht, k., _initial-ornamentik des viii.-xiii. jahrh._, leipzig, . langlois, _essai sur la calligraphie des manuscrits du moyen age et sur les ornements des premiers livres imprimés_, vo. rouen, . monte cassino, _paleografia artistica di monte cassino_, published by the benedictine monks of mte. cassino, , and still in progress. this work contains a very valuable series of facsimiles and coloured reproductions of selected pages from many of the most important manuscripts in this ancient and famous library, that of the mother-house of the whole benedictine order. reiss, h., _sammlung der schönsten miniaturen des mittelalters_, vienna, - . riegl, a., _die mittelalterl. kalenderillustration_, innsbruck, . seghers, l., _trésor calligraphique du moyen age_, paris, ; with coloured plates of illuminated initials. shaw, henry, _illuminated ornaments of the middle ages from the sixth to the seventeenth century_; with descriptions by sir fred. madden; to. with coloured plates, london, . a very fine and handsome work. " " _the art of illumination_, to. london, ; with well-executed coloured plates. " " _hand-book of mediaeval alphabets and devices_, imp. vo. london, ; with coloured plates. silvestre, _paléographie universelle_, vols., atlas folio, paris, - . this is the most magnificent and costly work on the subject that has ever been produced. the english edition in vols., atlas folio, translated and edited by sir fred. madden, london, , is very superior in point of accuracy and judgment to the original french work. a smaller edition with selected plates has also been published, in vols. vo. and one fol., london, . waagen, g. f., _on the importance of manuscripts with miniatures in the history of art_, vo. london ( ). westwood, j. o., _palaeographia sacra pictoria_, royal to. london, - . this is a very fine work, with coloured plates of manuscript illuminations selected from manuscripts of the bible of various dates from the fourth to the sixteenth century. " " _illuminated illustrations of the bible_, royal to. london, . this is a companion work to the last-mentioned book. " " _miniatures and ornaments of anglo-saxon and irish manuscripts_, fol., london, ; with very finely executed coloured plates of remarkable fidelity in drawing. the reproductions of pages from the _book of kells_ and similar celtic manuscripts are specially remarkable. wyatt, m. digby, _the art of illuminating as practised in europe from the earliest times_; to. london, ; with plates in gold and colours. the best work on the form of books in ancient times is th. birt, _das antike buchwesen in seinem verhältniss zur literatur_, vo., . the publications of the palaeographical society, from the year , and still in progress, are of great value for their well-selected and well-executed photographic reproductions of pages from the most important manuscripts of all countries and periods. list of illustrations. fig. , page . part of the drawing engraved on the bronze _cista_ of ficoroni, dating from the early part of the fourth century b.c. a beautiful example of greek drawing. " " . miniature of classical design from a twelfth century _psalter_ in the vatican library. " " . painting in the "house of livia" on the palatine hill in rome. " " . a pompeian painting of hellenic style, as an example of greek drawing and composition. " " . the prophet ezechiel from a byzantine manuscript of the ninth century a.d. " " . miniature from the vienna manuscript of _genesis_. " " . miniature from the manuscript of the work on _botany_ by dioscorides, executed at constantinople about a.d. for the princess juliana. " " . mosaic of the sixth century in the apse of the church of ss. cosmas and damian in rome. " " . miniature from a byzantine manuscript of the eleventh century; a remarkable example of artistic decadence. " " . an initial p of the celtic-carolingian type, of the school of alcuin of york. " " . an initial b of the celtic-carolingian type. " " . miniature of christ in majesty from a manuscript of the school of alcuin, written for charles the great. " " . a cope made of silk from the loom of an oriental weaver. " " . king lothair enthroned; a miniature from a manuscript about the year a.d. " " . illumination in pen outline, from a manuscript written in the ninth century at st gallen. it represents david riding out against his enemies. figs. and , pages and . subject countries doing homage to the emperor otho ii.; from a manuscript of the _gospels_. fig. , page . miniature of the evangelist saint mark; from a manuscript of the _gospels_. " " . miniature of the crucifixion from a german manuscript of the eleventh century; showing extreme artistic decadence. " " . miniature from the _gospels_ of macdurnan of the ninth century. " " . miniature from the _benedictional_ of aethelwold; written and illuminated by a monastic scribe at winchester. " " . a page from the _psalter_ of saint louis, written about the year , by a french scribe. " " . miniature representing king conrad of bohemia, with an attendant, hawking. " " . scene of the martyrdom of saint benedicta from a _martyrology_ of about . " " . miniature of the birth of the virgin painted by the illuminator jacquemart de odin for the duc de berri. the border is of the characteristic french or franco-flemish style. " " . miniature executed for king rené of anjou about . " " . miniature of the marriage of the b. v. mary from a french manuscript of about , with details in the style of the italian renaissance. " " . border illumination from a _book of hours_ by jacquemart de odin which belonged to the duc de berri; see fig. . " " . a page from the _missal_ of the emperor henry ii. " " . figure of king david from a stained glass window in the cathedral of augsburg, dating from . " " . miniature from an eleventh century manuscript of the _gospels_, by a german illuminator. " " . an initial s, illuminated with foliage of the northumbrian type, from a german manuscript of the twelfth century. " " . miniature of the annunciation from a german manuscript of the beginning of the thirteenth century. " " . page of a kalendar from a german _psalter_ of about a.d. " " . initial y from a german manuscript of the beginning of the thirteenth century, with a most graceful and fanciful combination of figures and foliage. " " . paintings on the vault of the church of st michael at hildesheim, closely resembling in style an illuminated page in a manuscript. " " . miniatures of italian style from a german manuscript of , showing the influence of florentine art on the illuminators of southern france. " " . miniature symbolizing the month of april from the kalendar of the grimani _breviary_, executed about . " " . a page from the _book of hours_ of king rené, painted about . " " . a page from a _book of hours_ at vienna, of the finest flemish style. " " . marginal illumination of very beautiful and refined style from a manuscript executed for king wenzel of bohemia about the year . " " . miniature of duke baldwin, painted about the year by an illuminator of the school of the van eycks of bruges. " " . retable painted by martin schöngauer, in the style of a manuscript illumination. " " . an altar-piece of the cologne school, showing the influence of manuscript illumination on the painters of panel-pictures, especially retables. " " . wing of a triptych, with a figure of st elizabeth of hungary, painted by the elder hans holbein; this illustrates the influence on painting of the styles of manuscript illumination at the beginning of the sixteenth century. " " . illuminated border drawn by albert dürer in . " " . illumination from an italian manuscript executed for the countess matilda in the twelfth century; this illustrates the extreme decadence of art in italy before the thirteenth century. " " . miniature of saint george and the dragon from a _missal_, illuminated about to by a painter of the school of giotto. " " . an illuminated border from a manuscript by attavante, of characteristic north-italian style. " " . a miniature from the bible of duke borso d'este, painted between and by illuminators of the school of ferrara. " " . a venetian retable by giovanni and antonio di murano, in the style of an illuminated manuscript. " " . grotesque figure from a french manuscript of the fourteenth century. " " . miniature of a comic subject from a german manuscript of the twelfth century, representing a monastic scribe worried by a mouse. " " . view of the scriptorium alley of the cloisters at gloucester, showing the recesses to hold the wooden _carrels_ for the scribes or readers of manuscripts. " " . picture by quentin matsys of antwerp, showing a lady selling or pawning an illuminated manuscript. frontispiece. painting on panel by a fifteenth century artist of the prague school; it represents saint augustine as an episcopal scribe. the background and the ornaments of the dress are stamped in delicate relief on the _gesso_ ground and then gilt. this picture, which is now in the vienna gallery, was originally part of the painted wall-panelling in the chapel of the castle of karlstein. chapter i. classical manuscripts written with a stilus. before entering upon any discussion of the styles and methods of decoration which are to be found in mediaeval manuscripts and of the various processes, pigments and other materials which were employed by the mediaeval illuminators it will be necessary to give some account of the shapes and kinds of books which were produced among various races during the classical period. _survival of methods._ the reason of this is that classical styles of decoration and technical methods, in the preparation of paper, parchment, pigments and the like, both survived to greater extent and to a very much later period than is usually supposed to have been the case, and, indeed, continued to influence both the artistic qualities and the mechanical processes of the mediaeval illuminator almost down to the time when the production of illuminated manuscripts was gradually put an end to by the invention of printing. _the pen and the stilus._ the word _manuscript_ is usually taken to imply writing with a pen, brush or _stilus_ to the exclusion of inscriptions cut with the chisel or the graver in stone, marble, bronze or other hard substance. the science of _palaeography_ deals with the former, while _epigraphy_ is concerned with the latter. the inscribed clay tablets of assyria and babylon might be considered a sort of link between the two, on account of the cuneiform writing on them having been executed with a stilus in soft, plastic clay, which subsequently was hardened by baking in the potter's kiln, but it will be needless to describe them here. _writing on metal._ _manuscripts on metal plates._ another form of writing especially used by the ancient greeks, which falls more definitely under the head of manuscripts, consists of characters scratched with a sharp iron or bronze _stilus_ on plates of soft tin, lead or pewter, which, when not in use, could be rolled up into a compact and conveniently portable cylinder. a considerable number of these inscribed lead rolls have been found in the tombs of cyprus; but none of them unfortunately have as yet been found to contain matter of any great interest. _lead rolls._ _tin rolls._ for the most part they consist either of monetary accounts, or else of formulae of imprecations, curses devoting some enemy to punishment at the hands of the gods. we know however from the evidence of classical writers that famous poems and other important literary works were occasionally preserved in the form of these inscribed tin or lead rolls. pausanias, for example, tells us that during his visit to helicon in boeotia he was shown the original manuscript of hesiod's _works and days_ written on plates of lead; see paus. ix. . again at iv. , pausanias records the discovery at ithome in messenia of a bronze urn (_hydria_) which contained a manuscript of the "mysteries of the great deities" written on "a thinly beaten plate of tin, which was rolled up like a book," [greek: kassiteron elêlasmenon es to leptotaton, epeilikto de hôsper ta biblia]. this method of writing would be quite different from the laborious method of cutting inscriptions on bronze plates with a chisel and hammer, or with a graver. a scribe could write on the soft white metal with a sharp stilus almost as easily and rapidly as if he were using pen and ink on paper, and the manuscript thus produced would have the advantage of extreme durability. we may indeed hope that even now some priceless lost work of early greece may be recovered by the discovery of similar lead rolls to those which cesnola found in cyprus. _gold amulets._ some very beautiful little greek manuscripts, written on thin plates of gold, have also been discovered at various places. the most remarkable of these were intended for amulets, and were rolled up in little gold or silver cylinders and worn round the neck during life. after death they were placed with the body in the tomb. several of these, discovered in tombs in the district of sybaris in magna graecia, are inscribed with fragments from the mystic orphic hymns, and give directions to the soul as to what he will find and what he must do in the spirit-world. _petelia tablet._ the most complete of these little gold manuscripts, usually known as the petelia tablet, is preserved in the gem-room in the british museum. the manuscript consists of thirteen hexameter lines written on a thin plate of pure gold measuring ½ inches by - / inches in width; it dates from the third century b.c.[ ] in classical times, manuscripts were of two different forms; first, the _book_ form, [greek: pinax], [greek: pinakion] or [greek: deltion], in latin _codex_ (older spelling _caudex_); and secondly the roll, [greek: kylindros], [greek: biblos] or [greek: biblion], latin _volumen_[ ]. _waxed tablets._ _manuscripts on tablets._ both the greeks and the romans used very largely tablets ([greek: pinakes], lat. _tabulae_ or _cerae_) of wood covered with a thin coating of coloured wax, on which the writing was formed with a sharp-pointed _stilus_ ([greek: graphis]) of wood, ivory or bronze. the wax was coloured either black or red in order that the writing scratched upon it might be clearly visible. the reverse end of the stilus was made flat or in the shape of a small ball so that it could be used to make corrections by smoothing out words or letters which had been erroneously scratched in the soft wax. _waxed diptychs._ these tablets were commonly about ten to fourteen inches in length by about half that in width. the main surface of each tablet was sunk from / to / of an inch in depth to receive the wax layer, leaving a rim all round about the size of that round a modern school-boy's slate. the object of this was that two of these tablets might be placed together face to face without danger of rubbing and obliterating the writing on the wax, which was applied in a very thin coat, not more than / of an inch in thickness. as a rule these tablets were fastened together in pairs by stout loops of leather or cord. these double tablets were called by the greeks [greek: pinakes ptyktoi] or [greek: diptycha] (from [greek: dis] and [greek: ptyssô]) and by the romans _pugillares_ or _codicilli_. homer (_il._ vi. ) mentions a letter written on folding tablets-- [greek: poren d' ho ge sêmata lygra] [greek: grapsas en pinaki ptyktô.] _tablets on coins and gems._ representations of these folding tablets occur frequently both in greek and in roman art, as, for example on various sicilian coins, where the artist's name is placed in minute letters on a double tablet, which in some cases, as on a _tetradrachm_ of himera, is held open by a flying figure of victory. a gem of about b.c., a large scarabaeoid in chalcedony, recently acquired by the british museum, is engraved with a seated figure of a lady holding a book consisting of four leaves; she is writing lengthwise on one leaf, while the other three hang down from their hinge. some of the beautiful terra-cotta statuettes from the tombs of the boeotian tanagra represent a girl reading from a somewhat similar double folding tablet. on greek vases and in roman mural paintings the _pugillares_ are frequently shown, though the roll form of manuscript is on the whole more usual. _tablets from tombs._ some examples of these tablets have been found in a good state of preservation in graeco-egyptian tombs and during recent excavations in pompeii. part of a poem in greek written in large uncial characters is still legible on the single leaf of a pair of tablets from memphis in egypt, which is now in the british museum. though the coating of wax has nearly all perished, the sharp stilus has marked through on to the wood behind the wax, so that the writing is still legible. its date appears to be shortly before the christian era[ ]. _pompeian tablets._ some well preserved _pugillares_ found in pompeii are now in the museum in naples; the writing on them is of less interest, consisting merely of accounts of expenditure. though the wood is blackened and the wax destroyed, the writing is still perfectly visible on the charred surface. a more costly form of _pugillares_ was made of bone or ivory[ ]; in some cases the back of each ivory leaf was decorated with carving in low relief. _consular diptychs._ a good many examples of these tablets, dating from the third to the sixth century a.d., still exist. these late highly decorated _pugillares_ are usually known as _consular diptychs_, because, as a rule, they have on the carved back the name of a consul, and very frequently a representation of the consul in his _pulvinar_ or state box presiding over the games in the circus. it is supposed that these ivory diptychs were inscribed with complimentary addresses and were sent as presents to newly appointed officials in the time of the later empire. _many-leaved tablets._ in some cases the ancient writing-tablets consisted of three or more leaves hinged together ([greek: triptycha], [greek: pentaptycha] &c.); this was the earliest form of the _codex_ or _book_ in the modern sense of the word. the inner leaves of these _codices_ had sinkings to receive the wax on both sides; only the backs of the two outer leaves being left plain or carved in relief to form the covers. _waxed tablets._ when the written matter on these tablets was no longer wanted, a fresh surface for writing was prepared either by smoothing down the wax with the handle of the stilus, or else by scraping it off and pouring in a fresh supply. this is mentioned by ovid (_ar. am._ i. ); "cera ... rasis infusa tabellis[ ]." these tablets were sometimes called briefly _cerae_; the phrases _prima cera_, _altera cera_, meaning the first page, the second page. the best sorts of wooden writing-tablets were made of box-wood, and hence they are sometimes called [greek: pyxion]. in addition to the holes along one edge of each tablet through which the cord or wire was passed to hold the leaves together and to form the hinge, additional holes were often made along the opposite edge in order that the letter or other writing on the _tabulae_ might be kept private by tying a thread through these holes and then impressing a seal on the knot. plautus (_bacch._ iv. iv. ) alludes to this in mentioning the various things required to write a letter, _effer cito stilum, ceram, et tabellas et linum._ in some cases wooden tablets of this kind were used without a coating of wax, but had simply a smooth surface to receive writing with ink and a reed pen. many examples of these have been found in egypt. the writing could be obliterated and a new surface prepared by sponging and rubbing with pumice-stone. _whitened boards._ among the greeks wooden boards, whitened with chalk or gypsum, were often used for writing that was intended to be of temporary use only. charcoal was used to write on these boards, which were called [greek: leukômata] or [greek: grammateia leleukômena][ ]. public advertisements and official announcements were frequently written in this way and then hung up in a conspicuous place in the _agora_ or market-place of the city. _sacred accounts._ thus some of the inscriptions of the fourth century b.c., found at delos mention that every month a [greek: leukôma] was suspended in the _agora_, on which was written a statement of the financial management and all the expenses of the temple of the delian apollo during the past month. finally, at the end of the year, an abstract of the accounts of the temple was engraved as a permanent record on a marble _stele_. this was also the custom with regard to the financial records of the athenian parthenon, and probably most of the important greek temples. in connection with the sacred records, the delian inscriptions mention, in addition to the [greek: leukômata], other forms of tablets, the [greek: deltos] and the [greek: pinax], and also [greek: chartai] or writings on _papyrus_; manuscripts of this last kind will be discussed in a subsequent section[ ]. _late survivals._ _late survivals of writing on tablets._ before passing on to describe other forms of classical manuscripts, it may be interesting to note that the ancient waxed tablets or _pugillares_ continued to be used for certain purposes throughout the whole mediaeval period, down to the sixteenth century or even later. many of the principal churches, especially in italy, but also in other countries, possessed one or more diptychs on which were inscribed the names of all those who had in any way been benefactors either to the ecclesiastical foundation or to the building. in early times, during the daily celebration of mass, the list of names was read out from the _diptych_ by the deacon standing in the gospel ambon; and the congregation was requested or "bid" to pray for the souls of those whose names they had just heard. "_bidding the beads._" the "bidding prayer" before university sermon at oxford and cambridge is a survival of this custom, which in the fifteenth century was termed "bidding the beads," that is "praying for the prayers" of the congregation. in some cases fine specimens of the old ivory _consular diptychs_ were used for this purpose in italian churches till comparatively late times, but as a rule they fell into disuse before the eleventh or twelfth century, as the list of names became too long for the waxed leaves of a diptych, and so by degrees vellum rolls or else _codices_, often beautifully written in gold and silver letters, were substituted. one of the most splendid of these lists, the _liber vitae_ of durham, is now preserved in the british museum; _cotton manuscripts_, domit. . . for many other purposes, both ecclesiastical and secular, the classical waxed tablets were used in england and on the continent, especially for lists of names, as for example in great cathedral or abbey churches the list for the week of the various priests who were appointed to celebrate each mass at each of the numerous altars. _list of guild-members._ the british museum possesses a very interesting late example of a waxed tablet which in shape, size and general appearance is exactly like the roman _pugillares_. this is an oak tablet, about inches long by inches wide, covered with a thin layer of wax protected by the usual slightly raised margin about half an inch wide. along one edge are three holes with leather loops to form the hinges; the other leaf is lost. on the wax is inscribed a list of the names of the members of a flemish guild; each name is still as sharp and legible as the day it was written. the form of the writing shows that it belongs to the end of the fifteenth century. such tablets were used both by the trade guilds of the middle ages and by the religious guilds formed for the cult of some special saint. _wooden book._ the most interesting mediaeval example of the classical form of manuscript made up of several leaves of waxed tablets was found a few years ago in a blocked-up recess in the old wooden church at hopperstad in norway. it was enclosed in a casket of wood covered with leather, and thus it still remains in a very perfect state of preservation; it is now in the university museum at christiania. the book consists of six tablets of box-wood, coated with wax within the usual raised margin, and hinged with leather thongs. the outer leaves are decorated on the back with carving mixed with inlay of different coloured woods. _bestiary._ the manuscript itself which is written on the wax is a _bestiary_, dating, as its style shows, from the latter part of the thirteenth century, though the book itself is probably older. it contains lists of animals in latin with a norwegian translation, and it is copiously illustrated with drawings of scenes from agricultural and domestic life, executed in fine outline on the wax with a sharply pointed stilus. in every detail, except of course in the character of the writing and drawings, this book exactly resembles an ancient greek or roman many-leaved wooden book, [greek: polyptychon], a very striking example of the unaltered survival of ancient methods for an extraordinarily long period. _ivory tablets._ during the mediaeval period, sets of ivory tablets hinged together were frequently made for devotional purposes. this form of manuscript has no layer of wax, but the writing is executed with a pen on the thin smooth leaf of ivory. each leaf has its margin raised, like the ancient _pugillares_, to prevent the two adjacent surfaces from rubbing together. these ivory tablets usually contain a set of short prayers, and they are frequently illustrated with painted miniatures of sacred subjects exactly like those in the vellum manuscripts of the same date. _tablet with eight leaves._ the south kensington museum possesses a very beautiful example of these ivory books; it is of northern french workmanship dating from about the middle of the fourteenth century. it consists of eight leaves of ivory, measuring - / inches by - / inches in width. the six inner pages are extremely thin, no thicker than stout paper, and have paintings on both sides, the two covers are of thicker substance, about a quarter of an inch, and are decorated on the outside with beautiful carved reliefs. this remarkable work of art has on the inner leaves fourteen very delicately executed miniatures of sacred subjects, single figures of saints and scenes from christ's passion, painted in gold and colours in the finest style of french fourteenth century art, evidently executed by some very skilful illuminator. _ivory diptychs._ tablets like this with as many as eight ivory leaves are rare, but a very large number of beautiful ivory diptychs still exist, with carved reliefs on the outside of very graceful style and delicate execution. most of these diptychs date from the fourteenth century, and are of french workmanship, but they were also produced in england at the same time and of quite equal merit in design and execution. _inscribed lead tablet._ _manuscripts on lead plates_, like those of the ancient greeks, were occasionally used in mediaeval times. a single lead leaf of an anglo-saxon manuscript from lord londesborough's collection is illustrated in _archaeologia_, vol. xxxiv, plate , page . this leaf measures ½ inches by inches in width. on it is incised with a stilus in fine bold semi-uncial writing the beginning of aelfric's preface to his first collection of _homilies_, which in modern english runs thus:--"i, aelfric, monk and mass-priest, was sent in king aethelred's time from aelfeage the bishop, the successor of aethelwold, to a certain minster which is called cernel, &c." at the top of the page there is a heading in large runic characters. aelfric was sent by aelfeage bishop of winchester to be abbot of cerne in or , and this interesting page appears to be of contemporary date. it was found by a labourer while digging in the precincts of the abbey of bury st edmunds. along one edge of the leaden page there are three holes to receive the loops which hinged the plates together, but the other leaves were not found. _horn-books._ _horn-books._ one form of wooden tablet continued in use, especially in boys' schools, till the sixteenth century. this was a wooden board, rather smaller than an ordinary school-boy's slate, with a long handle at the bottom; on it was fixed a sheet of vellum or paper on which was written or (in the latest examples) printed _the alphabet_, _the creed_, _the lord's prayer_ or such like. over this a thin sheet of transparent horn was nailed, whence these tablets were often called "horn-books." a good example dating from the sixteenth century is now preserved in the bodleian library at oxford. chapter ii. classical manuscripts written with pen and ink. to return now to classical forms of manuscripts, it appears to have been a long time before the _book_ or _codex_ form of manuscript was extended from the wood and ivory tablets to writings on parchment or paper. _the roll form of ms._ _the codex form._ it seems probable that throughout the greek period manuscripts on paper or vellum were usually, if not always, in the shape of a long roll; and that it was not till about the beginning of the roman empire that leaves of parchment or paper were sometimes cut up into pages and bound together in the form of the older tablets. during the first two or three centuries of the empire, manuscripts were produced in both of these forms--the _codex_ and the _volumen_; but the _roll_ form was by far the commoner, almost till the transference of the seat of government to byzantium. the roll form of book is the one shown in many of the wall paintings of pompeii; but on some sarcophagi reliefs of the second century a.d. books both of the _roll_ and the _codex_ shape are represented[ ]. _writing with a pen._ having given some account of the various classical forms of manuscript in which the writing is incised with a sharp _stilus_, we will now pass on to the other chief forms of manuscript which were written with a pen and with ink or other pigment. _books of the dead._ _manuscripts on papyrus_; the oldest existing examples of this class are the so-called _rituals of the dead_ found in the tombs of egypt, especially in those of the theban dynasties; the oldest of these date as far back as the sixteenth or fifteenth century b.c.[ ] they are executed with a reed pen in hieroglyphic writing on long rolls of papyrus, and are copiously illuminated with painted miniatures illustrating the subject of the text, drawn with much spirit and coloured in a very finely decorative way. immense numbers of these egyptian illuminated manuscripts still exist in a more or less fragmentary condition. one of the most perfect of these is the _book of the dead of ani_, a royal scribe, dating from the fourteenth century b.c., now in the british museum. an excellent facsimile of the whole of this fine illuminated manuscript has been edited by dr budge and published by the trustees of the british museum in . _egyptian psalter._ manuscripts of this important class are not very accurately described as _rituals of the dead_; as dr budge points out they really consist of collections of _psalms_ or _sacred hymns_ which vary considerably in different manuscripts. they appear to have been written in large numbers and kept in stock by the egyptian undertakers ready for purchasers. blank spaces were left for the name and titles of the dead person for whom they were bought. thus we find that the names are often filled in carelessly by another hand than that of the writer of the manuscript, and some examples exist in which the spaces for the name are still left blank. another of the finest and most complete of the funereal _papyri_ is preserved in the museum in turin; see pierret, _le livre des morts des anciens egyptiens_, paris, . _use of papyrus._ _existing greek mss._ papyrus seems to have been used for manuscripts more than any other substance both by the greeks from the sixth century b.c. and by the romans down to the time of the later empire. some very valuable greek manuscripts on papyrus are preserved in the british museum; among them the most important for their early date are some fragments of homer's _iliad_ of the third or second century b.c. another papyrus manuscript in the same collection dating from the first century b.c. contains four _orations_ of the athenian orator hyperides, a contemporary and rival of demosthenes. in the last few years the important discovery has been made that in certain late tombs in egypt, dating from the roman period, the mummied bodies are packed in their coffins with large quantities of what was considered waste paper. this packing in some cases has been found to consist of papyrus manuscripts, some of which are of great importance. in this way the newly discovered treatise by aristotle on the _political constitution of athens_, and the _mimes_ of herondas were saved from destruction by being used as inner wrappings for a coffin of about the year a.d.[ ] other important manuscripts may yet be found, now that careful search is being made in this direction. _herculaneum library._ unfortunately the large library of manuscripts, consisting of nearly papyrus rolls, which was discovered about the middle of the last century in the lava-buried town of herculaneum, has not as yet been found to contain any works of much value or interest. these rolls are all charred by the heat of the lava, which overwhelmed the town, and the work of unrolling and deciphering the brittle carbonized paper necessarily goes on very slowly. the owner of this library appears to have been an enthusiastic student of the epicurean philosophy in its later development, and his books are mainly dull, pedantic treatises on the various sciences such as mathematics, music and the like, treated from the epicurean point of view, or rather from that of the graeco-roman followers of epicurus. _papyrus rolls._ all these manuscripts appear to be of about the same date, not many years older, that is, than the year a.d., when the eruption of vesuvius overwhelmed herculaneum and pompeii in the same catastrophe. they are written in fine bold uncial characters without illumination or ornament of any kind on rolls of papyrus nine or ten inches in breadth. in their present burnt and shrunken condition the rolls average about two inches in diameter, but they were probably larger than that in their original state; see _palaeo. soc._ pl. , ; the other published 'facsimiles' of the herculaneum manuscripts are not perfectly trustworthy. _herodotus on mss._ in the time of herodotus (c. b.c.) _papyrus paper_ ([greek: biblia] or [greek: chartai])[ ] appears to have been used by the greeks almost to the exclusion of parchment or other kinds of skin. in his interesting section on the introduction of the art of writing into greece by the phoenicians, herodotus (v. ) remarks that the ionians in old times used to call _papyrus rolls_ [greek: diphtherai] or "_parchment_," because they had once been in the habit of using skins of sheep or goats for manuscripts, at a time when _papyrus_ paper was not to be had; and, herodotus goes on to say, "barbarians even now are accustomed to write their manuscripts on parchment." _use of parchment._ _manuscripts on parchment_; this old use of parchment for manuscripts was again introduced among the greeks by eumenes ii., king of pergamus from to b.c. at this time men had forgotten that parchment had ever been used for books, and so varro, quoted by pliny (_hist. nat._ xiii. ), tells us that eumenes _invented_ this use of parchment; the real fact being that he re-introduced an old custom, and stimulated the careful preparation of parchment for the sake of the great library which he was anxious to make the most important collection of manuscripts in the world. _pergamena._ varro tells us that he was driven to this use of parchment by the jealousy of the egyptian king ptolemy epiphanes, whose enormous library at alexandria was the only existing rival to the pergamene collection. one of the greek names for parchment, _pergamena_, was derived from the fact of its being so largely made for the pergamene kings eumenes and attalus, both of whom were not only great patrons of literature and collectors of ancient manuscripts, but were also enthusiastic buyers of pictures, statues, rich textiles and works of art of every class. the other word for parchment used for manuscripts is _membrana_. _linen mss._ _manuscripts on linen_; in ancient egypt hieroglyphic manuscripts with sacred hymns and portions of the so-called _ritual of the dead_ were frequently written with a reed pen on fine linen. these manuscripts, which are often found among the mummy wrappings of burials under the theban dynasties, are usually illustrated with pen drawings in outline, not painted miniatures like those on the papyrus rolls. these drawings are executed with much spirit and with a beautiful, clean, certain touch. _early mss. in italy._ the early italian races, latins, samnites and others, appear to have used linen very frequently for their manuscript records and sacred books. among the public records mentioned by livy as having once been preserved with the archives in the capitoline temple of juno moneta were some of these early linen manuscripts (_libri lintei_); see liv. iv. , , . livy also (x. ) describes an ancient manuscript, containing an account of the ritual customs of the samnites, as a _liber vetus linteus_. in historic times, however, _papyrus_ and _parchment_ appear to have superseded _linen_ in ancient rome. _inscribed potsherds._ _ostraka manuscripts._ for ephemeral purposes, such as tradesmen's accounts and other business matters, writing was often done with a pen and ink on broken fragments of pottery ([greek: ostraka]). an enormous number of these inscribed potsherds, mostly dating from the ptolemaic period, have been found in egypt, and especially on the little island of elephantine in the nile a short distance below the first cataract. among the greeks too, writing on potsherds was very common; especially when the athenian tribes met in the agora to record their votes for the exile of some unpopular citizen, whence is derived the term _ostracism_ ([greek: ostrakismos]). the word _liber_ as meaning a _book_ is supposed to be derived from a primitive custom of writing on the smooth inner bark of some tree, such as the birch, which supplies a fine silky substance, not at all unsuited for manuscripts. _mss. on leaves._ the large broad leaves of some varieties of the palm tree have also been used for manuscript purposes, more especially among the inhabitants of india and ceylon. in early times the questions asked of the oracle of the pythian apollo at delphi were said to have been written on leaves of the laurel plant. pali manuscripts in ceylon are even now frequently written on palm-leaves; and we have the evidence of pliny that this custom once existed among some of the ancient classical races: see _hist. nat._ xiii. , "ante non fuisse chartarum usum, in palmarum foliis primo scriptitatum; deinde quarundam arborum libris. postea publica monumenta plumbeis voluminibus, mox et privata linteis confici coepta aut ceris. pugillarium enim usum fuisse etiam ante trojana tempora invenimus apud homerum." in this passage pliny gives a list of all the chief materials that had been used for manuscripts in ancient times, the _leaves_ and _bark of trees_, _plates of lead_, _linen cloth_ and _waxed tablets_, he then goes on to describe at considerable length the methods of making paper from the pith of the papyrus plant; see page . _greek libraries._ _ancient libraries_; among the greeks and romans of the historic period books do not appear to have been either rare or costly as they were during the greater part of the mediaeval period. in the time of alexander, the latter part of the fourth century b.c., large libraries had already been formed by wealthy lovers of literature, and in the second century b.c. the rival libraries of ptolemy epiphanes at alexandria and of king eumenes ii. at pergamus were said to have contained between them nearly a million volumes. _roman libraries._ among the romans of the empire books were no less common. the owner of the above mentioned library at herculaneum, consisting of nearly rolls or volumes, does not appear to have been a man of exceptional wealth; his house was small and his surroundings simple in character. _the great libraries of rome._ as early as the reign of augustus, rome possessed several large public libraries (_bibliothecae_). the first of these was instituted in b.c. by asinius pollio both for greek and latin manuscripts. the second was the _bibliotheca octaviae_ founded by augustus in the campus martius in honour of his sister. the third was the magnificent double _library of apollo palatinus_, which augustus built on the palatine hill. the fourth, also on the palatine, the _bibliotheca tiberiana_ was founded by tiberius. the fifth was built by vespasian as part of the group of buildings in his new _forum pacis_. the sixth and largest of all was the double library, for greek and latin books built by trajan in his forum close to the _basilica ulpia_. to some extent a classification of subjects was adopted in these great public libraries, one being mainly legal, another for ancient history, a third for state papers and modern records, but this classification appears to have been only partially adhered to. _parish libraries._ in addition to these state libraries, rome also possessed a large number of smaller "parish libraries" in the separate _vici_, and the total number, given in the _regionary catalogues_ as existing in the time of constantine, is enormous; see séraud, _les livres dans l'antiquité_. _library fittings._ with regard to the arrangement and fittings of roman libraries, the usual method appears to have been this. cupboards (_armaria_), fitted with shelves to receive the rolls or _codices_ and closed by doors, were placed against the walls all round the room. these _armaria_ were usually rather low, not more than from four to five feet in height, and on them were placed busts of famous authors; while the wall-space above the bookcases was decorated with similar portrait reliefs or paintings designed to fill panels or circular medallions. _library decorations._ pliny (_hist. nat._ xxxv. ), speaks of it being a new fashion in his time to adorn the walls of libraries with ideal portraits of ancient writers, such as homer, executed in gold, silver or bronze relief. the public library of asinius pollio was, pliny says, decorated with portraits, but whether the great libraries of pergamus and alexandria were ornamented in this way, pliny is unable to say. magnificent medallion portraits in gold and silver were fixed round the walls of the two great libraries of apollo on the palatine hill, and probably in the other still larger public libraries which were founded by subsequent emperors. _recent discovery._ _authors' busts._ the ordinary private libraries of rome were decorated in a similar way, but with reliefs of less costly materials. a very interesting example of this has recently been discovered and then destroyed on the esquiline hill in rome. the house in which this library was discovered was one of no very exceptional size or splendour. the _bibliotheca_ itself consisted of a handsome room; the lower part of its walls, against which the _armaria_ fitted, was left quite plain. above that the walls were divided into square panels by small fluted pilasters, and in the centre of each space there was, or had been, a medallion relief-portrait about two feet in diameter enclosed in a moulded frame. all this was executed in fine, hard marble-dust stucco (_opus albarium_ or _marmoreum_). the names of the authors whose portraits had filled the medallions were written in red upon the frames. only one was legible--apollonivs thyan.... no doubt the works of apollonius of thyana were kept in the _armarium_ below the bust. the library at herculaneum, which contained the famous papyrus rolls, was a much smaller room. besides the bookcases all round the walls, it had also an isolated _armarium_ in the centre of the room; and this, no doubt, was a usual arrangement. the room at herculaneum was so small that there can only have been just enough space to walk between the central bookcase and the _armaria_ ranged all round against the wall. _closed bookcases._ as the comm. lanciani has pointed out (_ancient rome_, p. ), it is interesting to note that the ancient roman method of arranging books in low, closed cupboards is still preserved in the great library of the vatican in rome; which is unlike most existing libraries in the fact that on first entering no one would guess that it was a library, not a single book being visible. of the ancient _armaria_ themselves no example now exists. they were of wood, and therefore, of course, perishable. but we may, i think, argue from analogy, that the doors of the cupboards were richly ornamented with painted decorations, thus forming an elaborate dado or _podium_ below the row of portrait reliefs which occupied the upper part of the walls. _booksellers' quarter._ the principal quarter in rome for the shops of booksellers (_bibliopolae_ or _librarii_) appears to have been the _argiletum_, which (in imperial times) was an important street running into the forum romanum between the curia and the basilica aemilia; see mart. i. , [ ]. for ancient manuscripts or autograph works of famous authors large prices were often paid. aristotle is said to have given three talents (about £ ) for an autograph manuscript of speusippus, and a manuscript of virgil's second book of the _aeneid_, thought to be the author's own copy, sold for twenty _aurei_, more than £ in modern value; see aul. gell. iii. , and ii. . _cost of new books._ _slave scribes._ but ordinary copies of newly published works, even by popular authors, appear to have been but little more expensive than books of this class are at the present day. the publisher and bookseller tryphon could sell martial's first book of _epigrams_ at a profit for two _denarii_--barely two shillings in modern value; see mart. xiii. . it may seem strange that written manuscripts should not have been much more costly than printed books, but when one considers how they were produced the reason is evident. atticus, the sosii and other chief publishers of rome owned a large number of slaves who were trained to be neat and rapid scribes. fifty or a hundred of these slaves could write from the dictation of one reader, and thus a small edition of a new volume of horace's _odes_ or martial's _epigrams_ could be produced with great rapidity and at very small cost[ ]. little capital would be required for the education of the slave-scribes, and when once they were taught, the cost of their labour would be little more than the small amount of food which was necessary to keep them alive and in working order. cicero (_att._ ii. ) speaks of the publisher atticus selling manuscripts produced in this way by slave labour on a large scale. _librarii._ the name _librarius_ was given not only to the booksellers, but also to slave librarians, and to scribes, the latter being sometimes distinguished by the name _scriptores librarii_. _librarii antiquarii_ were writers who were specially skilled in copying ancient manuscripts. the word _scriba_ commonly denotes a _secretary_ rather than what we should now call a _scribe_. in athens a class of booksellers, [greek: bibliographoi], appears to have existed as early as the fifth century b.c.; see poll. vii. . the name [greek: bibliopôlai] was subsequently used, and adopted by the romans. the technique of ancient manuscripts[ ]. _parchment and vellum._ _erasures._ _parchment._ with regard to the preparation of parchment and other kinds of skin for writing on (_pergamena_ and _membrana_) there is little to be said. the skins of many different animals have been used for this purpose both in classical and mediaeval times, especially skins of calves, sheep, goats and pigs. unlike manuscripts on papyrus, parchment or vellum[ ] manuscripts were usually covered with writing on both sides, since the ink does not show through from one side to the other, as it is liable to do on the more absorbent and spongy papyrus paper. for this reason complete or partial erasures were much easier to execute on vellum than on papyrus. the writing was first sponged so as to remove the surface ink, and the traces that still remained were got rid of by rubbing the surface of the vellum with pumice stone. in some cases the manuscript was erased from the whole of a vellum codex or roll, and the cleaned surface then used to receive fresh writing. _palimpsests._ _palimpsests_; manuscripts of this class, on twice-used vellum, were called _palimpsests_ ([greek: palimpsêstos]); see cic. _fam._ vii. . several important texts, such as the legal work of gaius, have been recovered by laboriously deciphering the not wholly obliterated writing on these palimpsests. during the early mediaeval period, when classical learning was little valued, many a dull treatise of the schoolmen or other theological work of small interest was written over the obliterated text of some much earlier and more valuable classical author. _papyrus mss._ in some cases it appears that papyrus manuscripts were made into palimpsests, but probably not very often, as it would be difficult to erase the ink on a roll of papyrus without seriously injuring the surface of the paper. moreover as papyrus manuscripts were only written on one side of the paper, the back was free to receive new writing without any necessity to rub out the original text. the recently discovered treatise by aristotle on the _political constitution of athens_ has some monetary accounts written on the back of the papyrus by some unphilosophical man of business not many years later than the date of the original treatise. _papyrus paper._ _papyrus paper._ the ancient methods employed in the preparation of papyrus paper (_charta_) can be clearly made out by the evidence of existing examples aided by the minute but not wholly accurate description given by pliny, _hist. nat._ xiii. to . _papyrus plant._ the papyrus plant, the _cyperus papyrus_ of linnaeus, (greek [greek: byblos]) is a very tall, handsome variety of reed which grows in marshes and shallows along the sides of streams of water. the plant has at the top a very graceful tufted bunch of foliage; its stem averages from three to four inches in diameter, and the total height of the plant is from ten to twelve feet. it grows in many places in syria, in the euphrates valley and in nubia. in egypt itself it is now extinct, but it was abundant there in ancient times, especially in the delta of the nile. the only spot in europe where the papyrus plant grows in a wild state is near syracuse in the little river anapus, where it was probably introduced by the arab conquerors in the eighth or ninth century a.d. it grows here in great abundance and sometimes nearly blocks up the stream so that a boat can scarcely get along. the stem of the papyrus consists of a soft, white, spongy or cellular pith surrounded by a thin, smooth, green rind. papyrus paper ([greek: biblia] or [greek: chartês]) was wholly made from the cellular pith. the method of manufacture was as follows. _process of manufacture._ the long stem of the plant was first cut up into convenient pieces of a foot or more in length; the pith in each piece was then very carefully and evenly cut with a sharp knife into thin slices. these slices were then laid side by side, their edges touching but not overlapping, on the smooth surface of a wooden table which was slightly inclined to let the superfluous sap run off, as it was squeezed out of the slices of pith by gentle blows from a smooth wooden mallet. when by repeated beating the layer of pith had been hammered down to a thinner substance, and a great deal of the sap had drained off, some fine paste made of wheat-flour was carefully brushed over the whole surface of the pith. a second layer of slices of pith, previously prepared by beating, was then laid crosswise on the first layer made adhesive by the paste, so that the slices in the second layer were at right angles to those of the first. the beating process was then repeated, the workmen being careful to get rid of all lumps or inequalities, and the beating was continued till the various slices of pith in the two layers were thoroughly united and amalgamated together. _use of many layers._ _sizes of papyrus._ for the best sort of papyrus these processes were repeated a third and sometimes even a fourth time, the separate slices in each layer being cut much thinner than in the coarser sorts of paper which consisted of two layers only. the next process was to dry and press the paper; after which its surface was carefully smoothed and polished with an ivory burnisher[ ]; its rough edges were trimmed, and it was then ready to be made up into sheets or rolls. there was nothing in the method of manufacture to limit strictly the size of the papyrus sheets ([greek: selides], _paginae_) either in breadth or length; the workmen could lay side by side as many slices of the pith as he liked, and slices of great length might have been cut out of the long stem of the _papyrus_. practically, however, it was found convenient to make the paper in rather small sheets; twelve to sixteen inches are the usual widths of papyrus manuscripts. _union of the sheets._ _long rolls._ the reason of this obviously was that it would have been impossible to cut slices of great length to the requisite thinness and evenness of substance, and so papyrus manuscripts are always made up of a large number of separate sheets carefully pasted together. this was very skilfully done by workmen who (in pliny's time) were called _glutinatores_; cf. cic. _att._ iv. . the two adjacent edges of the sheets, which were to be joined together by lapping, were thinned down by careful rubbing to about half their original substance. the two laps were then brushed over with paste, accurately applied together, and the union was then completed by beating with the wooden mallet. when the pasted joint was dry it was rubbed and polished with the ivory burnisher till scarcely any mark of the joining remained. in this way long rolls were formed, often fifty feet or more in length; as a rule, however, excessive length for a single roll was inconvenient. pliny mentions sheets as being an ordinary limit. thus, for example, in such works as homer's _iliad_ or virgil's _aeneid_, each _book_ would form a separate _volumen_ or roll (greek [greek: kylindros] or [greek: tomos]). the invention of papyrus paper dates from an early period in the history of egypt. examples still exist which are as early as b.c., and its manufacture was probably known long before that. _papyrus used in greece._ in later times egyptian papyrus was an important article of export into many countries. an attic inscription of the year b.c. tells us what the cost of paper then was in athens; two sheets ([greek: chartai duo]) cost two drachmae and four obols, equal in modern value to about four shillings; see _c. i. a._ i. . the [greek: chartai] in this case probably mean, not a single page, but several sheets pasted together to form a roll. _papyrus made in rome._ _old mss. on papyrus._ in pliny's time paper was made not only in egypt but also in rome and at other places in italy[ ]. the best kind was formerly called _hieratica_, because it was used in egypt for sacred hieroglyphic writing only. in later times this finest quality, in rome at least, was called _augusta_, and the second quality _liviana_, from livia the wife of augustus. a coarse variety used for wrapping up parcels and the like was called "shop-paper," _emporetica_. pliny also tells us that paper was manufactured of many different breadths, varying from about four to eighteen inches. the commonest width was about twelve inches; see pliny, _hist. nat._ xiii. to . in the last of these paragraphs pliny mentions examples of old papyrus manuscripts existing in his time, such as manuscripts in the handwriting of tiberius and gaius gracchus, which were nearly two centuries old. manuscripts written by cicero, augustus and virgil are, he says, still frequently to be seen. with regard to the antiquity of paper pliny's views are far from correct. he thinks paper was first made in egypt in the time of alexander the great (_hist. nat._ xiii. ), whereas, as is mentioned above, papyrus paper of fine quality was certainly made in egypt nearly years before the time of alexander, and probably much earlier. _paper of fine quality._ the best kinds of papyrus paper are close in texture, with a smooth surface, very pleasant to write upon with a reed pen, and adapted to receive miniature paintings of great refinement and delicacy of touch. to prevent the ink spreading or soaking into the paper, it was as a final process sometimes soaked in size made of fish-bones or gum and water, exactly as modern linen paper is sized. the colour of the papyrus is a pale brown, very pleasant to the eye, and excellent as a background to the painted decorations. _fibrous texture._ when it was first made, papyrus paper must have been extremely durable and tough owing to its compound structure with two or more fibrous layers placed cross-wise. the parallel fibrous lines of the pith are very visible on the surface of papyrus paper; and these regular lines served as a guide to the scribe when writing, so that when papyrus was used it was not necessary to cover the page with ruled lines to keep the writing even, as had to be done when the manuscript was on vellum. in a papyrus manuscript the pages of writing are set side by side, across the roll, with a small margin between each page or column. _greek examples of papyrus rolls._ a small terra-cotta statuette[ ] of about the fifth or fourth century b.c. found at salamis in cyprus in , shows a greek scribe writing on a long papyrus roll placed on a low table before which he is sitting. among greek vase paintings of the same date a not uncommon subject is the poetess sappho reading from a papyrus roll. a fourth century vase with this subject in the central museum in athens shows sappho holding a manuscript on which the following words are inscribed (supplying missing letters and correcting blunders) [greek: theoi ÊeriÔn epeÔn erchomai] [greek: angelos neÔn umnÔn.] by the figure of sappho is inscribed the beginning of her name, [greek: sap] in letters of archaistic form. _sappho reading._ a very similar design occurs on a beautiful gem in the british museum (b.m. _cat. of gems_, no. ), which appears to date from the latter part of the fifth century b.c. a very graceful female figure, probably meant for sappho, is represented seated on a chair with high curved back. she is reading from a manuscript roll which she holds by the two rolled up ends, holding one in each hand. this method of holding a papyrus manuscript is shown very clearly on a vase in the british museum on which the same motive is painted. the lady (sappho) holds the two rolled up portions of the manuscript, stretching tight the intermediate portion on which is the column of writing which she is reading. _umbilicus or roller._ as the reader progressed the paper was unrolled from the roll held in the right hand, and the part just read was rolled up in the left-hand roll. these greek representations do not usually show any stick or roller for the manuscript to be rolled round; but in roman times a wooden or ivory roller ([greek: omphalos], _umbilicus_) was used as the core of the roll; and the end of the long strip of papyrus by the last page or column of text was pasted on to it. the ends of the _umbilicus_ were often fitted with a round knob or boss, which was decorated with gilding or colour. the edges of the papyrus roll were smoothed with pumice-stone (_pumice mundus_), and the whole manuscript was often provided with a vellum case, which was stained a bright colour, red, purple or yellow. tibullus (_el._ iii. i. ) alludes to these ornamental methods, _lutea sed niveum involvat membrana libellum. pumex et canas tondeat ante comas;_ _atque inter geminas pingantur cornua frontes._ the _frontes_ are the edges of the roll, and the _cornua_ are the projecting portions of the two wooden rollers. _inscribed titles._ the title of the manuscript was written on a ticket or slip of vellum, which hung down from the closed roll like the pendant seal of a mediaeval document. thus when a number of manuscripts were piled on the shelf of an _armarium_ the pendants hanging down from the ends of the rolls indicated plainly what the books were, without the necessity of pulling them from their place. small numbers of rolls, especially manuscripts which had to be carried about, were often kept in round drum-like boxes (_capsae_ or _scrinia_), with loop handles to carry them by. _coloured inks._ much of the beauty of an ancient manuscript depended on the use of red or purple ink for _headings_, _indices_ and _marginal glosses_. as pliny says (_hist. nat._ xxxiii. ) _minium in voluminum quoque scriptura usurpatur_. the use of purple ink for the _index_ is mentioned by martial in his epigram _ad librum suum_ (iii. ) where he sums up the various methods of decoration which in his time were applied to manuscripts, _cedro nunc licet ambules perunctus, et frontis gemino decens honore pictis luxurieris umbilicis; et te purpura delicata velet, et cocco rubeat superbus index._ _use of oil._ the oil of cedar wood, mentioned in the first of these lines, was smeared over the back of papyrus manuscripts to preserve them from book-worms. the act of unrolling a manuscript to read it was called _explicare_, and when the reader had come to the end it was _opus explicitum_. in mediaeval times from the false analogy of the word (_hic_) _incipit_, a verb _explicit_ was invented, and was often written at the end of _codices_ to show that the manuscript was complete to the end, though, strictly speaking the word is only applicable to a _roll_. _mediaeval use of papyrus._ the use of papyrus paper for manuscripts to some extent continued till mediaeval times. papyrus manuscripts of the sixth and seventh century a.d. are not uncommon, and, long after vellum had superseded papyrus paper for the writing of books, short documents, such as letters, papal deeds and the like, were still frequently written on papyrus. papal _briefs_ on papyrus still exist which were written as late as the eleventh century. _black ink._ _carbon ink._ the _black ink_ which was used for classical manuscripts was of the kind now known as "indian" or more correctly "chinese ink," which cannot be kept in a fluid state, but has to be rubbed up with water from day to day as it is required. one of the menial offices which aeschines when a boy had to perform in his father's school was "rubbing the ink," [greek: to melan tribôn]; see demos. _de corona_, p. . this kind of ink ([greek: melan] or [greek: melanion], _atramentum librarium_) simply consists of finely divided particles of carbon, mixed with gum or with size made by boiling down shreds of parchment. it was obtained by burning a resinous substance and collecting the soot on a cold flat surface, from which it could afterwards be scraped off. the soot had then to be very finely ground, mixed with a gummy medium and then moulded into shape and dried. the process is described by pliny, _hist. nat._ xxxv. ; and better still by vitruvius, vii. . _black pigment._ a variety of this carbon pigment used for pictures on stucco by wall-painters was called _atramentum tectorium_, modern "lamp-black"; the only difference between this and writing ink was in the kind of glutinous medium used with it. careful scribes probably prepared their own ink, as the writers of mediaeval manuscripts usually did. the common commercial black ink of about a.d. was sold at a very cheap rate, as is recorded in an inscription containing part of diocletian's famous edict which was found at megalopolis and published by mr loring (_jour. hell. stud._ vol. xi., , p. , line ). under the heading "pens and ink," [greek: peri kalamôn kai melaniou], the price of ink, [greek: melanion], is fixed at small copper coins the pound. very great skill is required to prepare carbon ink of the finest quality. though it is now largely manufactured in europe, none but the chinese can make ink of the best sort. in some places sepia ink from the cuttle-fish was used in ancient times; see persius, _sat._ iii. ; and cf. pliny, _hist. nat._ xi. , and xxxii. . _red inks._ the _red ink_ used for ancient manuscripts was of three different kinds, namely red lead, vermilion or sulphuret of mercury, and red ochre. the ancient names for these red pigments were used very indiscriminately, [greek: miltos], _minium_, _cinnabaris_ and _rubrica_. in some cases [greek: miltos] certainly means the costly vermilion; and again the word is also used both for red lead and for the much cheaper red ochre. the latter appears to be always meant by the name [greek: miltos sinôpis]; see choisy, _inscrip. lebadeia_, p. . the latin words _minium_ and _rubrica_ are used in the same vague way; see vitruv. vii. ; and pliny, _hist. nat._ xxxv. to . in mediaeval manuscripts red ink (_rubrica_) was largely used not only for headings and glosses, but also in service books for the ritual directions, which have hence taken the name of _rubrics_. _purple ink._ the purple ink (_coccus_), which martial mentions in the passage quoted above at page , was made from the _kermes_ beetle, which lives on the ilex trees of greece and asia minor. this was one of the most important of the ancient dyes for woven stuffs and it was also used as a pigment by painters; see below, page . _double inkstands._ the inkstands of ancient scribes were commonly made double, to hold both black and red ink. many examples of these from egypt and elsewhere still exist, and they are shown in many of the pompeian wall-paintings. they usually are in the form of two bronze cylinders linked together, each with a lid which is attached by a little chain. other inkstands are single, little round boxes of bronze, in shape like a large pill-box. another method, specially common in ancient egypt, was for the scribe to carry about his ink, both black and red, in a solid form; he then rubbed up with water just as much as he needed at the time. the box and palette mentioned below was made for this use of solid inks, except that the whole thing, handle and all, is made out of one piece of metal. _reed pens._ the pens used by ancient writers of manuscripts were mainly some variety of reed ([greek: kalamos], _calamus_ or _canna_), cut diagonally to a point like a modern quill pen. great numbers of reed pens have been found in egyptian tombs and also in pompeii; they exactly resemble those still used in egypt and in oriental countries generally. _metal pens._ metal pens were also used by greek and roman scribes. examples both in silver and bronze have been found in greece and in italy, shaped very much like a modern steel pen[ ]. _scribes' palettes._ in some cases manuscripts were written with a fine brush instead of a pen, especially the hieroglyphic manuscripts of ancient egypt. many combined scribes' palettes and brush cases have been found in egyptian tombs. these are long slips of wood, partly hollowed to hold the brushes, and with two cup-like sinkings at one end for the writer to rub up his cakes of black and red ink. in egyptian manuscripts red ink is used much more copiously than either in greek or latin manuscripts. very often the scribe writes his columns alternately in black and red for the sake of the decorative appearance of the page. _pen-cases._ egyptian pen-cases in the form of a bronze tube about ¾ inch in diameter and inches long with a tightly fitting cap have frequently been found. the british museum possesses good examples of these, and of the other writing implements here described. _reed pens._ the above-mentioned passage in the _edict of diocletian_ (see page ) gives the prices of reed pens ([greek: kalamoi]) of various qualities. the difference is very great between the best and the inferior kinds of pens; the best quality appears to have been made from the long single joint of a reed. there is no evidence that quill pens were used in classical times, but it is difficult to believe that so natural an expedient never occurred to any ancient scribe, especially when the use of vellum for manuscripts came in; for papyrus paper the softer reed pen would be more convenient than a quill, and indeed for all the earlier sort of greek and latin writing in large _uncial_ characters. it is only for the smaller _cursive_ writing that a quill would be as suitable as a reed pen. the inscription mentioned at p. as giving the cost of paper in athens in b.c. is part of a record of the expenses of building the erechtheum. it also mentions the purchase for drachmae of wooden writing-tablets, [greek: chartai eônêthêsan duo, es has ta antigrapha enegrapsamen] |- |- | | | | [greek: sanides tettares] |- |- |- |- chapter iii. classical illuminated manuscripts. _illumination._ the mediaeval phrase _illuminated manuscript_ means a manuscript which is "lighted up" with coloured decoration in the form of ornamental initial-letters or painted miniatures. dante speaks of "the art which in paris is called illuminating," _... quell' arte che alluminare è chiamata in parisi_; _purg._ xi. . _use of minium._ the important use that was made of red paint (_minium_) in the decoration of manuscripts led to the painter being called a _miniator_, whence the pictures that he executed in manuscripts were called _miniature_ or _miniatures_. finally the word _miniature_ was extended in meaning to imply any painting on a _minute_ scale[ ]. originally, however, it was only applied to the painted decorations of manuscripts. _egyptian miniatures._ the egyptian manuscript "books of the dead" are very copiously illuminated with painted miniatures, both in the form of ornamental borders along the edge of the papyrus, and also with larger compositions which occupy the whole depth of the roll. it is difficult to say to what extent illuminated manuscripts were known to the ancient greeks, but they were certainly not uncommon in rome towards the close of the republic; and it may fairly be assumed that it was from the greeks that the very inartistic romans derived the custom of decorating manuscripts with painted miniatures. _illustrations in roman mss._ pliny tells us (_hist. nat._ xxxv. ) that a number of manuscripts in the library of m. varro in the first century b.c. contained no less than portraits of illustrious personages. that the original manuscript of vitruvius' work on _architecture_ was illustrated with explanatory pictures is shown by the frequent reference in the text to these lost illustrations which are mentioned as being at the end of the work; _e.g._ see iii., _praef._, . a manuscript written in letters of gold is mentioned by suetonius (_nero_, ); this was a copy of nero's own poem which was publicly read aloud to an audience on the capitol, and was then deposited in the temple of jupiter capitolinus. _writing in gold._ again, two centuries later the mother of maximus, who was titular caesar from to a.d., is said to have given him a manuscript of homer's poems written in gold letters on purple vellum; see jul. capit., _max. vita_. there is, in short, abundant evidence to show that illuminated manuscripts were common among the romans of the imperial period; and there is a very strong probability that manuscripts decorated with miniatures were no less frequent in the great libraries of the ptolemies and of the attalid kings, in fact throughout the greek world from the time of alexander the great downwards, if not earlier still. _greek miniatures._ some notion of the great beauty of the illustrations in greek manuscripts may perhaps be gathered from an examination of the masterly and delicately graceful drawings incised in outline which decorate the finest of the greek bronze _cistae_. nothing could surpass the perfect beauty of the outline engravings on the so-called _ficoronian cista_, which is now preserved in the museo del collegio romano in rome. part of this series representing scenes from the adventures of the argonauts is shown on fig. . _two sources of knowledge._ with regard to the general scheme of decoration in classical manuscripts, we have the evidence of a few existing examples dating from about the time of constantine, and also a large number of copies of roman manuscript-pictures of earlier date than the third century a.d., which are to be seen in various italian and byzantine manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. [illustration: fig. . part of the drawing engraved on the bronze _cista_ of ficoroni, dating from the early part of the fourth century b.c. a beautiful example of greek drawing.] _isolated pictures._ _mediaeval method._ the evidence derived from these two sources leads to the conclusion that as a rule the illuminations in classical manuscripts were treated as separate pictures, each surrounded with a simple painted frame, and not closely linked to the text in the characteristic mediaeval fashion. the mediaeval method, by often introducing miniature paintings within the boundary of large initial letters, and by surrounding the page with borders of foliage which grow out of the chief initials of the text, makes the decoration an essential part of the whole and creates a close union between the literary and the ornamental parts of the book, which is very unlike the usual ancient system of having a plainly written text with isolated miniature paintings introduced at intervals throughout the pages of the book. _iliad of the th century._ _manuscript of the iliad at milan_; of all existing greek or latin manuscripts none gives a better notion of the style of illuminations used in manuscripts of the best graeco-roman period than the fragments of homer's _iliad_ which are preserved in the biblioteca ambrogiana in milan. these fragments consist of fifty-eight miniature paintings, which have been cut out of a folio manuscript on vellum of homer's _iliad_, dating probably from the latter part of the fourth century a.d. the mutilator of this _codex_ seems only to have cared to preserve the pictures, and the only portion of the text which still exists is about eight hundred not consecutive lines which happen to be written on the backs of the paintings. great additional interest is given to this priceless fragment by the fact that the miniatures are much older in style than the date of the manuscript itself, and have evidently been copied from a much earlier greek original. _older greek style._ and more than that; these paintings take one back further still; their rhythmical composition, the dignity of their motives, the simplicity of the planes, and the general largeness of style which is specially noticeable in some of the miniatures representing fighting armies of gods and heroes, all suggest that we have here a record, weakened and debased though it may be, of some grand series of mural decorations on a large scale, dating possibly from the best period of greek art. _hellenic models._ as is naturally the case with copies of noble designs executed at a period of extreme decadence these paintings are very unequal in style, combining feebleness of touch and coarseness of detail with great spirit in the action of the figures and great dignity in the compositions, which have numerous figures crowded without confusion of line, thus suggesting large scale though the paintings are actually miniatures only five or six inches long. the treatment of gods and heroes, especially zeus, apollo, achilles and others, has much that recalls fine hellenic models. and some of the personifications, such as _night_ and the river _scamander_, possess a gracefulness of pose and beauty of form which was far beyond the conception of any fourth century artist. it should, however, be observed that a fine hellenic origin is not suggested by all the fifty-eight pictures from this _iliad_. some of them are obviously of later and inferior style, with weak scattered compositions, very unlike the nobility and decorative completeness of the best among the miniatures. _scheme of colour._ with regard to the arrangement of these pictures, each is surrounded by a simple frame formed of bands of blue and red; in most cases the miniatures reach across the whole width of the page. the colouring is heavy, painted in opaque _tempera_ pigments with an undue preponderance of _minium_ or red lead. white lead, yellow, brown and red ochres are largely used, together with a variety of vegetable colours and the purple-red of the _kermes_ beetle (_coccus_), but no gold is used, a bright yellow ochre being employed as a substitute[ ]. the costumes are partly ancient greek and partly of later roman fashion. a nimbus encircles each deity's head, and different colours are used to distinguish them. the nimbus of zeus is purple, that of venus is green; those of the other gods are mostly blue. to a large extent the backgrounds of the pictures are not painted, but the creamy white of the vellum is left exposed[ ]. _the vatican virgil._ _the virgil of the vatican_; next in importance to the ambrosian _iliad_, among the existing examples of classical illuminated manuscripts, comes the manuscript of virgil's poems (_vat._ no. ) which is supposed to have been written in the third or more probably the fourth century a.d. the text is written in large handsome capitals, well formed except that all the cross lines are too short, t, for example being written thus [symbol: t with short curled arms]. the whole manuscript, but especially the _aeneid_, is decorated with pictures, fifty in all, each framed by a simple border of coloured bands. the style of these miniatures is very different and artistically very inferior to that of the ambrosian _iliad_. _miniatures of the th century._ the whole of the designs, in composition and drawing and in the costumes of the figures, are those of the fourth century. the details are coarse, the attitudes devoid of spirit, and the figures clumsy. the backgrounds are painted in and the colouring is dull in tone and heavy in texture, put in with a considerable body of pigment (_impasto_). gold, not in leaf but as a fluid pigment, is largely used for high lights on trees, mountains, roofs of buildings, and for the folds of drapery, especially where the stuff is red or purple. the male figures have flesh of a reddish-brown tint like many of the pompeian wall paintings; they wear short tunics with cloaks thrown over the shoulders. other figures wear a long _dalmatica_ or tunic, ornamented with two vertical purple stripes, closely resembling the tunics which have recently been found in such abundance in the late roman tombs of the fayoum in upper egypt. _period of decadence._ on the whole the miniatures are neither graceful nor highly decorative; they were executed at about the low water mark of classical artistic decadence shortly before the byzantine revival under justinian. much that has been written in their praise must be attributed to antiquarian enthusiasm rather than to just criticism[ ]. [illustration: fig. . miniature of classical design from a twelfth century _psalter_ in the vatican library.] before passing on to another class of manuscripts it should be noted that there is in existence one manuscript of the fourth or fifth century a.d. which is of special interest on account of its being ornamented, not only with miniature pictures, but also with some decorative designs of a stiff conventional character. this is a roman _kalendar_, which forms part of a manuscript in the imperial library in vienna. the ornaments have but little decorative merit, but they are of interest as showing that the illuminations in classical manuscripts were not always confined to the subject pictures. _copies of lost originals._ it has not as a rule been sufficiently noticed that the style of miniature paintings in manuscripts of a considerably earlier date than either the ambrosian _iliad_ or the vatican virgil is very fairly represented in various manuscripts of the tenth to the twelfth century, the illuminators of which have evidently copied, as accurately as they were able, miniatures in manuscripts of the first or second century a.d. the originals of these early roman manuscripts do not now exist, and therefore the information as to their style and composition, which is given in the mediaeval copies, is of great interest. _classical design._ _graeco-roman design._ a greek twelfth century _psalter_ in the vatican library (no. ) has one special picture which is obviously a careful copy of a miniature painting of the first century a.d. or even earlier: see fig. . the subject is orpheus seated on a rock playing to a circle of listening beasts together with two nymphs and a youthful faun or shepherd. these figures are arranged so as to form a very graceful composition in a landscape with hills and trees. the figures are extremely graceful both in outline and in pose, showing a considerable trace of greek influence. the whole design closely resembles in style some of the wall paintings in the so-called "house of livia" on the palatine hill in rome, of which fig. shows the scene of io watched by argus, and those in the now destroyed villa which was discovered by the tiber bank in the farnesina gardens[ ], and many of the better class of paintings on the walls of the houses of pompeii. of the latter a good example is shown in fig. , a painting the design of which has much fine hellenic feeling in the grace of its form and the simplicity of the composition. [illustration: fig. . painting in the "house of livia" on the palatine hill in rome.] _orpheus made into david._ returning now to the above mentioned _psalter_ of the vatican, the scribe, probably a greek monk, who in the twelfth century painted this miniature[ ], converted it into quite a different subject, that of david playing on the harp, by the simple device of ticketing each figure with a newly devised name. orpheus is called "david," one of the nymphs who sits affectionately close to orpheus, probably meant for his wife eurydice, is labelled "sophia", "wisdom"; while the other two figures are converted into local personifications to indicate the locality of the scene. it is not often that a mediaeval copyist has thus preserved unaltered the composition of a whole subject of classical and pre-christian date, but it is not uncommon to find single figures or parts of pictorial designs of equally early date among the illuminations of the ninth to the twelfth centuries. _graeco-roman personifications._ as an example of this we may mention one painting in a greek _psalter_ of the tenth century in the paris library (_bibl. nat._ no. ). this represents the prophet isaiah standing, gazing up to heaven, in a very beautiful landscape with trees growing from a richly flower-spangled sward. the somewhat stiff figure of the prophet is byzantine[ ] rather than classical in style, but the other two figures which are introduced are purely graeco-roman in design. on one side is a personification of night ([greek: nux]), a very graceful standing female figure with part of her drapery floating in the wind, forming a sort of curved canopy over her head, such as is so often represented above the heads of goddesses or nymphs on the reliefs of fine graeco-roman sarcophagi. on the other side of the prophet is a winged boy, like a youthful eros, bearing a torch to symbolize the dawn. [illustration: fig. . a pompeian painting of hellenic style, as an example of greek drawing and composition.] _classical style._ the bold and very decorative, yet almost realistic treatment of the foliage of the trees and of the flowers which are sprinkled among the grass is purely classical in style, and the whole miniature shows that the tenth century illuminator had before him some very fine manuscript of early imperial date. from this he has selected a picture which might by omissions and modifications be adapted to his subject; and for the figure of the prophet he has fallen back on another less ancient original, but still one which must have been several centuries older than his own time. this is the explanation of what at first seems so strange a union in the same painting of very graceful single figures by the side of others which are rigid and awkward; and again, great skill shown in the drawing of the individual figures combined with a feeble and clumsy arrangement of the whole composition. _byzantine style._ fig. shows a miniature of very similar style representing the prophet ezechiel in the valley of dry bones. it is taken from a manuscript of the _sermons_ of saint gregory nazianzen, which was written for the byzantine emperor basil who reigned from to . this figure chiefly illustrates the byzantine, not the classical element in the miniatures of this mixed style of art, though there is also a clear trace of graeco-roman influence in the finely designed drapery of the prophet. the curious union of two utterly different styles is well exemplified in another of the miniatures in the last mentioned _psalter_. here david is represented like a byzantine emperor crowned and wearing the richly embroidered _toga picta_, and holding an open book. the figure might well pass for a representation of the emperor justinian, and the original painting was probably of that date, of the early part of the sixth century. _graeco-roman figures._ on each side of the byzantine david is a female figure draped with most gracefully designed folds of pure graeco-roman style, a most striking contrast to the central figure. who these ladies represented in the original manuscript it is impossible to say, but the painter who in the tenth century illuminated the _psalter_ called them _wisdom_ and _prophecy_, writing by them the names _sophia_ and _prophetia_. [illustration: fig. . the prophet ezechiel from a byzantine manuscript of the ninth century a.d.] _value of late copies._ many other examples might be given to show that a truer notion of classical illuminated manuscripts of the best graeco-roman style can be gained from a study of the works of mediaeval copyists than from manuscripts which, though older, are of late and debased style like the famous illuminated virgil of the vatican[ ]. after rome had ceased to be the seat of government, constantinople became the chief centre for the production of illuminated manuscripts[ ], but nevertheless the older classical style of drawing to some extent did survive in italy, though in a very debased form, down to the thirteenth century, when cimabue and his pupil giotto inaugurated the brilliant renaissance of italian painting. _classical survival._ the _gospels_, for example, which st augustine is said to have brought with him to britain in a.d., have paintings, enthroned figures of the evangelists, which in design and colour are purely of late roman style, unchanged by the then wide-spread influence of byzantine art. chapter iv. byzantine manuscripts. _byzantine style._ the history of the origin, development and decay of the byzantine style in manuscripts, as in other branches of art, is a long and strange one[ ]. the origin of the byzantine style dates from the time when christianity had become the state religion, and when constantine transferred the capital of the world from rome to byzantium. in russia and other eastern portions of europe the byzantine style still exists, though in a sad state of decay, not as an antiquarian revival, but as the latest link in a chain of unbroken tradition, going back without interruption to the age of constantine, the early part of the fourth century after christ. _many strains of influence._ during the early years of the eastern empire, constantinople, or "new rome" as it was commonly called, became the chief world's centre for the practice of all kinds of arts and handicrafts. owing to its central position, midway between the east and the west, the styles and technique of both met and were fused into a new stylistic development of the most remarkable kind. western europe, asia minor, persia and egypt all contributed elements both of design and of technical skill, which combined to create the new and for a while vigorously flourishing school of byzantine art. the dull lifeless forms of roman art in its extreme degradation were again quickened into new life and beauty in the hands of these byzantine craftsmen, who became as it were the heirs and inheritors of the art and the technique of all the chief countries of antiquity. _technical skill._ in architecture, in mosaic work, in metal work of all kinds, in textile weaving, the craftsmen of new rome reached the highest level of technical skill and decorative beauty. so also a new and brilliant school of manuscript illumination was soon formed, and constantinople became for several centuries the chief centre for the production of manuscripts of all kinds. the oriental element in byzantine art shows itself in a love of extreme splendour, the most copious use of gold and silver and of the brightest colours. _murex purple._ manuscripts written in burnished gold, on vellum stained with the brilliant purple from the _murex_ shell, were largely produced, especially for the private use of the byzantine emperors. this _murex_ purple, produced with immense expenditure of labour, came to be considered the special mark of imperial rank[ ]. a golden inkstand containing purple ink was kept by a special official in waiting, and no one but the emperor himself might, under heavy penalties, use for any purpose the purple ink; and the sumptuous gold and purple manuscripts were for a long time written only for imperial use. _gold and purple gospels._ the principal class of manuscripts which were written either in part or wholly in this costly fashion were _books of the gospels_; and of these a good many magnificent examples still exist, dating not only from the early byzantine period, but down to the ninth or tenth century. in these manuscripts the burnished gold and the brilliantly coloured pigments which are used for the illuminations are still as bright and fresh in appearance as ever, but the _murex_ purple with which the vellum leaves were, not painted, but dyed, has usually lost much of its original splendour of colour. _monotony of style._ before describing the characteristics of byzantine illuminated manuscripts it may be well to note that the byzantine style is unique in the artistic history of the world from the manner in which it rapidly was crystallized into rigidly fixed forms, and then continued for century after century with marvellously little modification or development either in colour, drawing or composition. this absence of any real living development was due to the fact that paintings of all kinds in the eastern church, from a colossal mural picture down to a manuscript miniature, were produced by ecclesiastics and for the church, under a strictly applied series of hieratic rules. _hieratic rules._ the drawing, the pose, the colours of the drapery of every saint, and the scheme of composition of all sacred figure subjects came gradually to be defined by ecclesiastic rules, which each painter was bound to obey. thus it happens that during the many centuries which are covered by the byzantine style of art, though there are periods of decay and revival of artistic skill, yet in style there is the most remarkable monotony. this makes it specially difficult to judge from internal evidence of the date of a byzantine painting. in manuscripts the palaeographic, not the artistic evidence, is the best guide, aided of course by various small technical peculiarities, and also by the amount of skill and power of drawing which is displayed in the paintings. _absence of change._ long after the capture of constantinople by the ottoman turks in , the byzantine style of painting survived; and even at the present day the monks of mt athos execute large wall paintings, which, as far as their style is concerned, might appear to be the work of many centuries ago. m. didron found the monastic painters in one of the mount athos monasteries using a treatise called the [greek: hermêneia tês zôgraphikês], in which directions are given how every figure and subject is to be treated, and which describes the old traditional forms without any perceptible modification[ ]. the proportions of the human form are laid down after the characteristic slender byzantine models, the complete body, for example, being nine heads in height. _ th century ms. of genesis._ _weak drawing._ the earliest byzantine manuscript which is now known to exist is a fragment of the _book of genesis_, now in the imperial library of vienna, which dates from the latter part of the fifth century. this fragment consists of twenty-four leaves of purple-dyed vellum, illuminated with miniatures on both sides. in the main the designs are feeble in composition and weak in drawing, belonging rather to the latest decadence of roman classical art than to the yet undeveloped byzantine style, which was soon to grow into great artistic spirit and strong decorative power, a completely new birth of aesthetic conceptions, the brilliance of which is the more striking from its following so closely on the degraded, lifeless, worn-out art of the western empire. in this manuscript of _genesis_ there is but little promise of the renaissance that was so near at hand. the drawing of each figure, though sometimes graceful in pose, is rather weak, and the painter has hardly aimed at anything like real composition; his figures merely stand in long rows, with little or nothing to group them together. fig. shows examples of two of the best miniatures, representing the story of the accusation of joseph by potiphar's wife. in every way this _genesis_ manuscript forms a striking contrast to the delicate beauty and strongly decorative feeling which are to be seen in a work of but a few years later, the famous _dioscorides_ of the princess juliana. _the dioscorides of c. _ a.d. among all the existing byzantine manuscripts perhaps the most important for its remarkable beauty as well as its early date is this greek _codex_[ ] of dioscorides' work on _botany_, which is now in the imperial library in vienna[ ], no. in the catalogue. the date of this manuscript can be fixed to about the year a.d. by the record which it contains of its having been written and illuminated for the princess juliana anicia, the daughter of flavius anicius olybrius who was emperor for part of the year , and his wife galla placidia: juliana anicia died in . [illustration: fig. . miniature from the vienna manuscript of _genesis_.] this beautiful manuscript, which was executed in constantinople, contains five large and elaborate miniatures, and a great number of vignettes representing varieties of plants. the fifth of the large miniatures consists of a central group framed by two squares interlaced within a circle. the plait pattern on the bands which form the framework, and the whole design closely resemble a fine mosaic pavement of the second century a.d. the resemblance is far too close to be accidental; and indeed this manuscript is not the only example we have of miniature painters copying patterns and motives from mosaic floors of earlier date. _portrait figure._ the central group in this beautiful full page painting represents juliana anicia, for whom the manuscript was written, enthroned between standing allegorical female figures. minutely painted figures of cupids, engaged in a variety of handicrafts and arts, fill up the small spaces in the framework. _inferior paintings._ in these paintings we have a curious combination of different styles; the enthroned figure of the princess is of the stiff byzantine style, while the attendant figures and the little cupids are almost purely classical in drawing. this manuscript forms a link between the classical or graeco-roman and the christian or byzantine style. other paintings in the same manuscript are very inferior in design, partaking of the late roman decadence, rather than of the better and earlier art of the above mentioned picture. fig. shows one of these. it represents dioscorides seated on a sort of throne; in front is a female figure _euresis_ (_discovery_) presenting to him the magic plant _mandragora_ (mandrake). the dying dog refers to the popular belief, given by josephus, as to the manner in which the mandrake was gathered. when plucked from the ground the mandrake uttered a scream which caused the death of any living creature that heard it; it was therefore usual to tie a dog to the plant and retire to a safe distance before calling it, and so causing the dog to drag the plant out of the ground. on hearing the scream the dog dropped down dead. cf. shaks., _romeo and juliet_, iv. iii. [illustration: fig. . miniature from the manuscript of the work on _botany_ by dioscorides, executed in constantinople about a.d.] _colours and gold._ the colours used in the _dioscorides_ of juliana are very brilliant, especially the gorgeous ultramarine blue, and are glossy in surface owing to the copious use of a gum medium. gold is very largely and skilfully used, especially to light up and emphasize the chief folds of the drapery, a method which is very widely used in byzantine art, both in the colossal pictures of the wall-mosaics, and also in most of the finest class of illuminated manuscripts. _cloisonné enamel._ in this use of gold, in thin delicate lines which strengthen the drawing, we have a very distinct copyism of another quite different art, that of the worker in enamelled gold, an art which was practised in constantinople with wonderful taste and skill. the kind of enamel which was so often imitated by the manuscript illuminator is now called cloisonné enamel from the thin slips of gold or _cloisons_ which separate one colour from another, and mark out the chief lines of the design. so closely did many of the illuminators copy designs in this cloisonné that very often one sees manuscript miniatures which look at first sight as if they were actual pieces of enamel. in other ways too the art of the goldsmith had considerable influence on byzantine illuminations; and the designs of the mosaic-worker and the miniaturist acted and reacted upon each other, so that we sometimes see an elaborate painting in a book which looks like a design for a wall-mosaic; or again the gorgeous glass mosaics with gold grounds on the vaults and walls of byzantine churches frequently look like magnified leaves cut out of some gorgeously illuminated manuscript. _the pure byzantine style._ it was only for a short period that manuscripts were executed at constantinople which, in their miniatures, were links between the classical and the byzantine style. thus we find that the famous greek manuscript of _cosmas indopleustes_ in the vatican library (no. ) is of the pure and fully developed byzantine style, with its formal attitudes, its rigid drapery, its lengthy proportions of figure, and stiff monotonous schemes of composition, such as grew to be accepted as the one sacred style, and as such has been preserved by the eastern church down to the present century. this manuscript of cosmas is certainly a work of justinian's time, the first half of the sixth century a.d., though it has usually been attributed to the ninth century; it really is but little later than the dioscorides of juliana, and yet it has but little trace of the older classical style, either in drawing, composition or colour[ ]. the laurentian library in florence possesses a manuscript of the _gospels_ which, though poor as a work of art, has several points of special interest. a contemporary note in the _codex_ records that it was written in the year by the priest rabula in the monastery of st john at zagba in mesopotamia. _early crucifixion._ its illuminations are weak in drawing, coarse in execution and harsh in colouring, but one of them, representing the crucifixion of our lord between the two thieves, is noticeable as being the earliest known example of this subject. the primitive christian church avoided scenes representing christ's death and passion, preferring to suggest them only by means of types and symbols taken from old testament history. this and other subsequent paintings of the crucifixion treat the subject in a very conventional way, and it is not till about the thirteenth century that we find the death of christ represented with anything like realism. in the _gospels_ of the priest rabula, christ is represented crowned with gold, not with thorns; he wears a long tunic of imperial purple reaching to the feet. the arms are stretched out horizontally, an impossible attitude for a crucified person, and four nails are represented piercing the hands and both feet separately. _oriental influence._ it appears to have been the gloomy oriental influence that gradually introduced scenes of martyrdom, with horrors of every description into christian art, which originally had been imbued with a far healthier and more cheerful spirit, a survival from the wholesome classical treatment of death and the grave. hell with its revolting horrors and hideous demons was an invention of a still later and intellectually more degraded period. _mss. of the gospels._ _evangeliaria or manuscripts of the gospels._ one of the most important classes of byzantine manuscripts, and the one of which the most magnificent examples now exist are the _books of the gospels_ already mentioned at page as being occasionally, either wholly or in part, written in letters of gold on leaves of purple-dyed vellum. _the four evangelists._ these imperially magnificent manuscripts are usually decorated with five full page paintings, placed at the beginning of the codex. these five pictures represent the four evangelists, each enthroned like a byzantine emperor under an arched canopy supported on corinthian columns of marble or porphyry. each evangelist sits holding in his hand the manuscript of his _gospel_; or, in some cases, he is represented writing it. in the earlier manuscripts, st john is correctly represented as an aged white-bearded man, but in later times st john was always depicted as a beardless youth, even in illuminations which represent him writing his gospel in the island of patmos, as at the beginning of the fifteenth century _books of hours_. next comes the fifth miniature representing "christ in majesty," usually enthroned within an oval or vesica-shaped aureole; he sits on a rainbow, and at his feet is a globe to represent the earth, or in some cases a small figure of _tellus_ or atlas with the same symbolical meaning. _the canons of eusebius._ _sasanian style._ other highly decorated pages in these byzantine _gospels_ are those which contain the "canons" of bishop eusebius, a set of ten tables giving lists of parallel passages in the four gospels. these tables are usually framed by columns supporting a semicircular arch, richly decorated with architectural and floral ornaments in gold and colours. frequently birds, especially doves and peacocks, are introduced in the spandrels over the arches; they are often arranged in pairs drinking out of a central vase or chalice--a motive which occurs very often among the reliefs on the sarcophagi and marble screens of early byzantine churches both in italy and in the east[ ]. these birds appear to be purely ornamental, in spite of the many attempts that have been made to discover symbolic meanings in them. other birds, such as cocks, quails and partridges, are commonly used in these decorative illuminations, and this class of ornament was probably derived from persia, under the sasanian dynasty, when decorative art and skilful handicrafts flourished to a very remarkable extent[ ]. among the most sumptuous and beautiful illuminations which occur in these byzantine _gospels_ are the headings and beginnings of books written in very large golden capitals, so that six or seven letters frequently occupy the whole page. these letters are painted over a richly decorated background covered with floreated ornament, and the whole is framed in an elaborate border, all glowing with the most brilliant colours, and lighted up by burnished gold of the highest decorative beauty[ ]. _textus for the high altar._ these sumptuous _evangeliaria_, or _textus_ as they were often called, soon came to be something more than merely a magnificent book. they developed into one of the most important pieces of furniture belonging to the high altar in all important cathedral and abbey churches[ ]. throughout the whole mediaeval period every rich church possessed one of these magnificently written _textus_ or _books of the gospels_ bound in costly covers of gold or silver thickly studded with jewels. this _textus_ was placed on the high altar before the celebration of mass, during which it was used for the reading of the gospel. _textus used as a pax._ the jewel-studded covers had on one side a representation of christ's crucifixion, executed in enamel or else in gold relief, and the book was used to serve the purpose of a _pax_, being handed round among the ministers of the altar for the ceremonial kiss of peace, which in primitive times had been exchanged among the members of the congregation themselves. one of the most magnificent examples of these _textus_ is the one now in the possession of lord ashburnham, the covers of which are among the most important and beautiful examples of the early english goldsmith's and jeweller's art which now exist[ ]. _the textus at durham._ an interesting description of the _textus_ which, till the reformation, belonged to the high altar of durham cathedral, is given in the _rites and monuments of durham_ written in by a survivor from the suppressed and plundered abbey[ ], who in his old age wrote down his recollections of the former glories of the church. he writes, "the gospeller[ ] did carrye a marvelous faire booke, which had the epistles and gospels in it, and did lay it on the altar, the which booke had on the outside of the coveringe the picture of our saviour christ, all of silver, of goldsmith's worke, all parcell gilt, verye fine to behould; which booke did serve for the pax in the masse." these _textus_ were not unfrequently written wholly in gold on purple stained vellum, not only during the earliest and best period of byzantine art but also occasionally by the illuminators of the age of charles the great. _weak drawing of the figure._ returning now to the general question of the style of byzantine art, it should be observed that, though little knowledge of the human form is shown by the miniaturists, yet they were able to produce highly dignified compositions, very strong in decorative effect. study of the nude form was strictly prohibited by the church; and the beauty of the human figure was regarded as a snare and a danger to minds which should be fixed upon the imaginary glories of another world. what grace and dignity there is in byzantine figure painting depends chiefly on the skilful treatment of the drapery with simple folds modelled in gracefully curving lines. _livid flesh colour._ the utmost splendour of gold and colour is lavished on this drapery, and on the backgrounds, border-frames and other accessories, while the colouring of the flesh, in faces, hands and feet, is commonly unpleasant; with, in many cases, an excessive use of green in the shadows, which gives an unhealthy look to the faces. this copious use of green in flesh tints is especially apparent in the later byzantine paintings, and again in the italian imitations of byzantine art. even paintings by cimabue and some of his followers, in the second half of the thirteenth century, are disfigured by the flesh in shadow being largely painted with _terra verde_[ ]. _monastic bigotry._ the monastic bigotry, which prohibited study either of the living model or of the beauties of classical sculpture, tended to foster a strongly conventional element in art, which for certain decorative purposes was of the highest possible value. anything like realism is quite unsuited both for colossal mural frescoes or mosaics and for miniature paintings in an illuminated manuscript. _fine early mosaics._ thus, for example, the existing mosaics on the west front of st mark's basilica in venice[ ], which were copied from noble paintings by titian and tintoretto, are immeasurably inferior to the earlier mosaics with stiff, hieratic forms designed after byzantine models, as for example the mosaics in the apse of ss. cosmas and damian in rome, executed for pope felix iv. to ; see fig. . so, again, the skilfully drawn and modelled figures in a manuscript executed by giulio clovio in the sixteenth century are not worthy to be compared, for true decorative beauty and fitness, with the flat, rigid forms, full of dignity and simple, rhythmical beauty which we find in any byzantine manuscript of a good period[ ]. [illustration: fig. . mosaic of the sixth century in the apse of the church of ss. cosmas and damian in rome.] _limitations of byzantine art._ it should, however, be remarked that in byzantine art this conventional treatment of the human form is carried too far, and therefore, splendid as a fine byzantine manuscript usually is, it falls far short of the almost perfect beauty that may be seen in anglo-norman and french illuminated manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, such marvels of beauty, for example, as french manuscripts of the _apocalypse_ executed in the first half of the fourteenth century in northern france; see below, page . _edict against statues._ till the eighth century, byzantine art, both in manuscripts and in other branches of art, continued to advance in technical skill, though little change or development of style took place. in the eighth century the iconoclast schism, fostered by the emperor leo iii. the isaurian, an uncultured and ignorant soldier who began by issuing an edict against image-worship in the year a.d., gave a blow to byzantine art which brought about a very serious decadence during the ninth and tenth centuries, more especially in constantinople, which up to that time had been one of the chief literary and artistic centres of the christian world. pictures of all kinds, as well as statues, were destroyed by the iconoclast fanatics, and the cause of learning suffered almost as much as did the arts of painting and sculpture. _frankish mss._ one result of this schismatic outbreak was that constantinople ceased to be one of the chief centres for the production of beautiful illuminated manuscripts, and various frankish cities, such as aix-la-chapelle and tours, took its place under the enlightened patronage of charles the great the emperor of the west, who, in the second half of the ninth century, by the aid of the famous northumbrian scholar and scribe alcuin of york, brought about a wonderful revival of literature and of the illuminator's art in various cities and monasteries within the western empire. _byzantine decadence._ at the end of the eleventh century byzantine art, practised in its original home, had reached the lowest possible level. thus, for example, a manuscript of some of the works of st chrysostom (paris, _bibl. nat. coislin._, ) contains miniatures the figures in which are mere sack-like bundles with little or no suggestion of the human form. the whole skill of the artist has been expended on the painting of the elaborate patterns on the dresses; drawing and composition he has not even attempted. fig. shows a miniature from this manuscript, representing the greek emperor enthroned between four courtiers, and two allegorical figures of _truth_ and _justice_. the emperor is nicephoros botaniates, who reigned from to . an equally striking example of the degradation of byzantine art in germany is illustrated on page . [illustration: fig. . miniature from a byzantine manuscript of the eleventh century; a remarkable example of artistic decadence.] _want of life in byzantine art._ after this period of decay during the tenth and eleventh centuries, byzantine art began to revive, largely under the influence of the west; the original life and spirit had, however, passed away, and the subsequent history of byzantine art is one of dull monotony and growing feebleness, the inevitable result of a continuing copying and recopying of older models. it is rather as a modifying influence on the art of the west that byzantine painting continued to possess real importance. as a distinct and isolated school, constantinople fell into the background at the time of the iconoclasts and never again came to the front as an artistic centre of real importance[ ]. chapter v. manuscripts of the carolingian period. _the age of charles the great._ _the age of charles the great and his successors._ charles the great, who was elected king of the franks in , and in the year became emperor of the west, did much to foster all branches of art--architecture, bronze-founding, goldsmith's work, and more especially the art of writing and illuminating manuscripts. the imperial capital, aix-la-chapelle (aachen), became a busy centre for arts and crafts of all kinds, and various monasteries throughout the frankish kingdom became schools of manuscript illumination of a very high order of excellence. [illustration: fig. . an initial p. of the celtic-carolingian type, of the school of alcuin of york.] _alcuin of york._ _the gospels of alcuin._ _northumbrian influence._ it was specially with the aid of a famous english scholar and manuscript writer, alcuin of york[ ], that charles the great brought about so remarkable a revival both of letters and of the illuminator's art, and created what may be called the anglo-carolingian school of manuscripts. from till his death in alcuin was abbot of the benedictine monastery of st martin at tours; and there he carried out various literary works for charles the great, and superintended the production of a large number of richly illuminated manuscripts. alcuin's most important literary work was the revision of the latin text of the bible, the _vulgate_, which since saint jerome's time had become seriously corrupted. the british museum possesses (_add. manuscripts_, no. ) a magnificently illuminated copy of the _vulgate_ as revised by alcuin, which, there is every reason to believe, is the actual manuscript which was prepared for charles the great either by alcuin himself or under his immediate supervision. this splendid manuscript is a large folio in delicate and beautifully formed _minuscule_ characters, with the beginnings of chapters in fine _uncials_; it is written in two columns on the purest vellum. the miniature paintings in this manuscript show the united influence of various schools of manuscript art. the figure subjects are mainly classical in style, with fine architectural backgrounds of roman style, drawn with unusual elaboration and accuracy, and even with fairly correct perspective. the initial letters and all the conventional ornaments show the northern artistic strain which alcuin himself introduced from york. delicate and complicated interlaced patterns, such as were first used in the wonderful sixth and seventh century manuscripts of the celtic monks, are freely introduced into the borders and large capitals. [illustration: fig. . an initial b. of the celtic-carolingian type.] _celtic influence._ in alcuin's time northumbria and especially york was one of the chief centres in the world, for the production of manuscripts, and the dean of york naturally introduced into france the style and influence of his native school, which had grown out of a combination of two very different styles, that of rome, as introduced by st augustine, and the celtic style which the monks of ireland and lindisfarne had brought to such marvellous perfection in the seventh century. fig. shows an initial of the celtic-carolingian type, with a goldsmith's pattern on the shaft of the _p_, and a bird of oriental type forming the loop; and fig. gives a large initial _b_ in which the oriental element is very strong, cf. fig. , page . _henry viii's gospels._ the carolingian class of manuscripts in this way combined many different strains of influence--native frankish, classical, oriental and english, all modified by the byzantine love for gorgeous colours, shining gold and silver, and purple-dyed vellum. a considerable number of manuscripts were written in the reign of charles the great in letters of gold on purple vellum like those prepared in earlier times for the byzantine emperors. a manuscript _book of the gospels_ of this magnificent class was given by pope leo x. to henry viii. of england in return for the presentation copy of his work against luther, entitled _assertio septem sacramentorum_, which the king had sent in to the pope as a proof of his allegiance to the catholic faith and the holy see. this magnificent _textus_ afterwards came into the hamilton collection through mr beckford of fonthill, and was subsequently bought by mr quaritch[ ]. [illustration: fig. . miniature of christ in majesty from a manuscript of the school of alcuin, written for charles the great.] _carolingian gospels._ _gospels of godesscalc._ as was the case with the earlier byzantine manuscripts, the most magnificent books produced in the carolingian period were this kind of _evangeliaria_ or _books of the gospels_. though differing in the details of their ornamentation, these later _gospels_ are decorated with the same set of miniature subjects that occur in the byzantine gospels. the library of paris possesses a fine typical example of this (_bibl. nat. nouv. acq. lat. _), a richly decorated and signed _evangeliarium_, which was written for charles the great in by the scribe and illuminator godesscalc. every page is sumptuously ornamented with large initials and a border in brilliant burnished gold, and silver, and bright colours; and there are also six full-page miniatures, the first four representing the four evangelists enthroned in the usual way. the fifth has a painting of _christ in majesty_ with one hand holding a book, the other raised in blessing; see fig. . the sixth miniature represents the fountain of life. in all these paintings the backgrounds are very rich and decorative, with a greater variety and more fancifully designed ornament than is to be found in byzantine manuscripts of a similar class, owing, of course, to the introduction of the many different elements of design which were combined with great taste and skill by the carolingian illuminators. _oriental influence._ in this and many other manuscripts of the same class a very distinct semitic or persian strain of influence can be traced in much of the rich conventional ornament. very beautiful and highly decorative forms and patterns were derived from oriental sources[ ], owing to the active import into france and germany of fine persian carpets and textile stuffs from moslem looms in syria, sicily (especially palermo) and from other parts of the arab world; all these textiles were designed with consummate taste and skill both in colour and drawing. _sicilian silk cope._ fig. shows a fine specimen of woven silk from the arab looms of syria. it was used as an imperial cope or mantle by various german emperors; in the centre is a palm-tree, and on each side a lion devouring a camel, treated in a very decorative and masterly manner. the form of the conventional foliage on the lions' bodies is imitated in many manuscript illuminations, as, for example, in the ornaments of the initial _b_ shown in fig. , page . [illustration: fig. . a cope made of silk from the loom of an oriental weaver.] _splendour of mss._ one important characteristic of the carolingian manuscripts is their extreme splendour. the freely used burnished gold is often made more magnificent by the contrast of no less brilliant silver. purple-stained vellum was largely used, and all the pigments are of the most gorgeous hues that great technical skill could produce. and yet in spite of all this magnificence of shining metals and bright colours the effect is never harsh or gaudy, owing to the taste and judgment shown by the illuminators in the way they broke up their colours, avoiding large unrelieved masses, and in the arrangement of the colours so as to give a general effect of harmony in spite of the great chromatic force of the separate parts. _technical methods._ the somewhat realistic way of representing the evangelists as aged white-haired men, which occurs in byzantine manuscripts, in the carolingian _gospels_ is replaced by a more conventional treatment, and thus they are as a rule represented as youthful, beardless men of an idealized type. the general treatment of the figure is flat, with little or no light and shade or modelling of any kind. the drapery is represented by strong, dark lines applied over a flatly laid wash of pigment. the painter first drew in his outlines with a fine brush dipped in red, and then filled in the intermediate spaces with a wash of colour mixed with a large proportion of gummy medium, so that a very glossy, lustrous surface was produced. the folds of the drapery and the rest of the internal drawing of the figures were put in after the application of the flat ground colour. this method very much resembles the process of the early greek vase-painters. in order to give richness of effect by the use of a thick body of colour the illuminator commonly applied his flat tints in two or even three distinct washes, a method which is recommended by theophilus[ ] and other early writers on the technique of illumination. _gospels at vienna._ another _book of the gospels_ which belonged to charles the great, now preserved in the imperial treasury at vienna, is decidedly inferior as a work of art to the paris manuscript mentioned above. in it the influence of the enfeebled roman style is much stronger; the detail is far less refined and decorative, in spite of a copious use of burnished gold. this inferiority is due mainly to the absence of that northumbrian influence, to which the best carolingian manuscripts owe so much of their beauty. _successors of charles._ _manuscripts of the later carolingian school._ under charles the great's successors the art of illuminating manuscripts continued to flourish, and, in the ninth century, under his grandsons lothair and charles the bald, reached the climax of its development. during this century decorative splendour of a very high order was reached, in spite of there being very little advance in the power of rendering the human form. gold, silver, ultramarine and brilliant pigments of all kinds were skilfully used; the subjects for miniatures became more varied, and detail was more delicate and highly finished[ ]. _portrait figures._ portraits of the kings are often introduced at the beginning of books of this period, a fashion which in later times was extended to other than royal patrons of art and learning. a great number of places, chiefly benedictine monasteries in france, became active centres for the production of fine illuminated manuscripts. among them some of the principal places were paris, st denis, rheims, verdun, fontanelle, and the two abbeys of st martin at tours and metz. fig. shows a miniature from a manuscript of the _gospels_ in the paris library representing king lothair enthroned between two guards. this manuscript was written about the year in the monastery of st martin at metz. in this picture a strong classical influence is apparent; the illuminator must have been familiar with manuscripts written in rome or elsewhere in italy. _celtic influence._ some of the finest manuscripts of this period show a strongly marked northern influence, imitated from the old celtic illuminations of ireland and lindisfarne. less gold is used in this class of manuscripts; and the intricate interlaced patterns of the celtic monks are used with much skill and great beauty of effect. the figures of christ and the evangelists are sometimes hardly human in form, but are worked up into a kind of conventional scroll-pattern, just as they are in the older celtic illuminations. the paris library possesses two manuscripts of the _gospels_, which are good examples of this revived celtic style (_bibl. nat. lat._ nos. and ). the borders and initial letters in these manuscripts are remarkable for their intricate delicacy of design, and for their rich colour, tastefully arranged; while the figure drawing is of the purely ornamental scroll type. [illustration: fig. . king lothair enthroned; a miniature from a manuscript of about the year a.d.] _classical school of st gall._ in the ninth century the benedictine monastery of st gallen in switzerland, which had formerly produced manuscripts of a purely celtic type, now developed a very strange school of miniature art[ ]. the pictures in these st gallen manuscripts have figure subjects drawn in outline and then faintly coloured with transparent washes, very like the anglo-saxon (classical) style of illumination during the ninth and tenth centuries. these rather weak drawings, which have but little decorative value, show the influence of the roman school of illuminators, who still mainly adhered to the old debased form of classical art, modified by some observation and even careful study of the actual life and movement which the painters saw around them. in this curious class of manuscripts, though the figure subjects are devoid of much vigour and artistic force, yet the decorative details of the initials and borders are extremely fine, full of invention and delicacy of detail. fig. shows a pen drawing from a st gallen manuscript of the ninth century, the magnificent _psalterium aureum_[ ]; it represents david going forth to battle. _studies from life._ with regard to studies from the life, either of men or animals, it should be remembered that an artist is always biased by tradition and association to a degree which is now very difficult to realise. even when looking at the same object two painters of different race and education might receive very different impressions on their retina. thus in the very interesting sketch-book of villard de honecourt, a french sculptor and architect of the thirteenth century, there are studies of men, lions and other animals, which he has noted as being from the life; and yet these drawings look to us like the purely imaginative conceptions of a heraldic draughtsman, in spite of the fact that villard certainly represented them as faithfully as he was able, putting down on his vellum the subjective visual and mental impression that he had received[ ]. [illustration: fig. . illumination in pen outline, from a manuscript written in the ninth century at st gallen. it represents david riding out against his enemies.] [illustration: figs. and . subject countries doing homage to the emperor otho ii; from a manuscript of the _gospels_.] [illustration] in the same way a modern japanese artist evidently sees the nobler animals, such as men and horses, in a very subjective and distorted manner, whereas when he is dealing with fishes, reptiles, plants and the like he is able to depict them with the most wonderful grace, accuracy and realistic spirit. _personal equation._ for this reason in examining an illuminated manuscript, or other early work of art, to discover what use the artist has made of actual study from nature, one should always take into account the influences which made him see each natural object in a special, personal way, and we must not argue that because the drawing now looks very unreal that it may not possibly have been as careful and accurate a study from life as the painter's eye and hand could produce. _byzantine influence._ during the later carolingian period there was a marked revival of byzantine influence, which did not tend to delay the advancing decadence[ ]. figs. and show a very striking example of this, a two-page miniature from a magnificent purple and gold manuscript of _the gospels_, which was executed for the emperor otho ii., and is now in the munich library. on the right-hand page is the emperor enthroned holding the long sceptre and the orb, with an archbishop and some armed courtiers beside him. on the opposite page, personifications of _rome_, _gaul_, _germany_ and _slavonia_ are doing homage and offering gifts. the whole motive and design is borrowed from a much earlier byzantine work, such as the mosaics of justinian's time (c. a.d.) in the churches of ravenna. _classical influence._ fig. from another fine manuscript of _the gospels_ is far nobler in style; here the influence is rather classical than byzantine. the figure illustrates one of the usual four miniatures of the evangelists, saint mark dipping his pen into the ink. the saint is robed in the _alb_, _dalmatic_ with two stripes, _chasuble_ and _pall_ as being archbishop of alexandria. the figure is very dignified, and is evidently copied from a much earlier italian _textus_, such as that which saint augustine received from pope gregory or brought from italy to canterbury. [illustration: fig. . miniature of the evangelist st mark; from a manuscript of the _gospels_.] _later emperors._ throughout the tenth century, and especially under the patronage of the three emperor othos and henry the fowler, fine and richly decorative manuscripts continued to be produced, with little change in the style of ornament employed. after a long period of great artistic brilliance and wonderful fertility of production the carolingian style of illumination came to an end when charles the great's empire was (in france) divided among various feudal lords. then a serious decadence of art set in, and lasted till the beginning of a most magnificent artistic revival in the twelfth century. [illustration: fig. . miniature of the crucifixion from a german manuscript of the eleventh century; showing extreme artistic decadence.] to a large extent the illuminations of french manuscripts during the latter part of the eleventh century consisted of rude pen drawings with no washes of colour. the subsequent history of the illuminator's art in france is discussed below, see page . _extreme decadence._ fig. gives an example of the extreme artistic decadence that in many places followed the brilliant carolingian period. this miniature of the crucifixion is copied from a german early eleventh century manuscript, now at berlin. the ludicrous ugliness of the drawing is not atoned for by any decorative beauty of colour; the whole miniature is dark and heavy in tone, with yellow and green flesh-tints of the most cadaverous hues. chapter vi. the celtic school of manuscripts. one of the most extraordinary artistic developments that ever took place in the history of the world has been the celtic monastic school of art which in the seventh century reached its highest aesthetic and technical climax, more especially in the production of exquisitely minute gold jewellery and no less minute and richly illuminated manuscripts. _the irish church._ the christian church in the east of ireland dated from an earlier period than the establishment of christianity in england[ ]. it was founded about the year a.d., and the monks of ireland, owing to their remote position, were able for a long period to develope peacefully their artistic skill, undisturbed by such successive foreign invasions as those which for so many years kept britain in a constant tumult of war and massacre. _celtic goldsmiths._ _gold jewellery._ thus it happened that by the middle or latter part of the seventh century the celtic monks of ireland had learned to produce goldsmiths' work and manuscript illuminations with such marvellous taste and skill as has never been surpassed by any age or country in the world[ ]. not even the finest greek or etruscan jewellery, enriched with enamels and studded with gems, can be said to surpass the amazing perfection shown in such a masterpiece of the goldsmith's art as the so-called "tara brooch"[ ] in the museum of the royal irish academy. as a rule the skill of these irish goldsmiths was devoted to the service of the church in the manufacture of such objects as croziers, morses (or cope-brooches), shrines, chalices, textus-covers, receptacles for bishops' bells, and other pieces of ecclesiastical furniture. _technical processes._ these precious objects are decorated by a variety of technical processes, such as applied filagree, repoussé or beaten reliefs, enamels, both _champlevé_ and _cloisonné_, and inlay of precious stones, especially the carbuncle in minute slices, set in delicate gold _cloisons_ and backed with shining gold-leaf. all these and other decorative processes were employed with unrivalled skill by the monastic goldsmiths of eastern ireland, a fact which it is important to notice, since nearly all the methods and styles of ornament which occur in the irish illuminated manuscripts of the same period are clearly derived from prototypes in gold jewelled work. it is in fact often possible to trace in a fine irish manuscript of the class we are now concerned with, ornamental patterns of several quite distinct classes, one being derived from the patterns of spiral or plaited form produced by soldering delicate gold wire on to plain surfaces of gold, another being copied from gold _champlevé_ enamels, and a third no less clearly derived from the inlaid rectangular bits of carbuncle framed in delicate gold strips or _cloisons_. _influence on illuminations._ this strongly marked influence of the technique of one art on the designs of another is due to the fact that the arts both of the goldsmith and the manuscript illuminator were carried on side by side in the same monastery or group of monastic dwellings[ ], and in some cases we have written evidence that the scribe who wrote and illuminated an elaborate manuscript and the goldsmith who wrought and jewelled its gold cover were one and the same person[ ]. _the book of kells._ it was in the second half of the seventh century that the celtic art of eastern ireland reached its highest point of perfection. to this period belongs the famous _book of kells_, now in the library of trinity college, dublin, which was probably written between and , and for many years was, with its jewelled gold covers, the principal treasure of the cathedral church at kells[ ]. this church had been founded by saint columba, and so in old times this marvellous manuscript was usually known as "the great gospels of saint columba." _perfect workmanship._ no words can describe the intricate delicacy of the ornamentation of this book, lavishly decorated as it is with all the different varieties of pattern mentioned above, the most remarkable among them being the ingeniously intricate patterns formed by interlaced and knotted lines of colour, plaited in and out, with such amazingly complicated lines of interlacement that one cannot look at the page without astonishment at the combined taste, patience, unfaltering certainty of touch and imaginative ingenuity of the artist. the wonderful minuteness of the work, examined through a microscope, fills one with wonder at the apparently superhuman eyesight of the scribe. _complex interlacings._ with regard to the intricate interlaced ornaments in which (with the aid of a lens) each line can be followed out in its windings and never found to break off or lead to an impossible loop of knotting, it is evident that the artist must have enjoyed, not only an aesthetic pleasure in the invention of his pattern, but must also have had a distinct intellectual enjoyment in his work, such as a skilful mathematician feels in the working out of a complicated geometrical problem. _microscopic intricacy._ the combined skill of eye and hand shown in the minute plaits of the _book of kells_ places it among the most wonderful examples of human workmanship that the world has ever produced. by the aid of a microscope mr westwood counted in the space of one inch no less than interlacements of bands or ribands, each composed of a strip of white bordered on both sides with a black line. giraldus cambrensis, who visited ireland in as secretary to prince john, writes in the most enthusiastic language of the splendour of a similar manuscript of the _gospels_ which he saw in kildare cathedral. it shows, he says, superhuman skill, worthy of angels' hands, and he was lost in wondering admiration at the sight. _copies of jewellery._ _primitive spiral patterns._ one class of ornament in the _book of kells_ and in other manuscripts of this class consists of bands or diapers formed with step-like lines enclosing small spaces of brilliant colour. it is this class of pattern which is derived from the _cloisonné_ inlay with bits of transparent carbuncle used in gold jewellery. other ornaments consist of various spiral forms derived from the application of gold wire to flat surfaces of gold, a class of pattern which appears to have come, as it were, naturally to the gold-workers of many different periods and countries. many of these spiral designs in the irish manuscripts are almost identical with forms which occur so frequently among the gold ornaments of the greek "mycenean period," one among many examples in the art history of the world, which show the remarkable sameness of invention in the human mind at a certain stage of development whatever the time or the place may be[ ]. it should moreover be noticed that this close imitation of metal-work is not limited to the separate details of the manuscripts. the main lines and divisions of the decoration on whole pages are accurately copied from the enamelled and jewelled gold or silver covers in which these precious _gospels_ were bound. thus, the same design might appear in delicate goldsmiths' work on the covers of a _textus_, and also might be seen represented by the illuminator in brilliant colours on a page within. _trumpet pattern._ one form of ornament, which occurs very frequently in the irish manuscripts, is what is often called "the trumpet pattern" from its supposed resemblance to a curved metal trumpet. this kind of spiral ornament is used not only in the celtic manuscripts and goldsmiths' work, but also on bronze shields and other pieces of metal-work on a large scale. this special ornament is not peculiar to the irish, but was commonly used by the celtic tribes of britain from a very early date. _arab influence._ united with these purely native types of ornament, we find in these celtic manuscripts one curious class of foreign ornament derived from the patterns on imported pieces of textile stuffs woven in arab looms[ ]. among many strange forms of serpents, dragons and other monsters of northern origin, other animals, such as lions, eagles and swans, occur which resemble closely those represented with such perfect conventional skill on the rich silk stuffs and early oriental carpets woven in syria, in the arab towns of sicily and in other moslem centres. these beautiful stuffs were imported largely into northern europe for ecclesiastical purposes, such as for the vestments of priests or to form wrappings round some sacred reliquary[ ]. _the human form._ though these celtic manuscripts show such marvellous dexterity of touch and unerring firmness of line in every minute and complicated pattern, yet the monastic artist appears to have been absolutely incapable of representing the human form. the figures of christ and the saints, which sometimes do occur in these manuscripts, are treated in a purely ornamental and (in its stricter sense) conventional way; the hair and beard, for example, are worked up into scrolls or spiral ornaments, and the draperies are merely masses of varied colour, with little or no resemblance to the folds of a dress. _colours without gold._ the pigments used by the celtic monks are very varied and of the most brilliant tints, prepared with such skill that after more than a thousand years they seem as fresh and bright as ever. among these pigments is included the fine _murex_ purple which the irish monks used occasionally to stain sheets of vellum like those in the _golden gospels_ of the byzantines. we are told by the venerable bede that the irish monks had learnt how to extract this beautiful dye from a variety of the _murex_ shell-fish which is not uncommon on both shores of the irish channel. splendid as they are in colour, there is one curious feature in the early irish manuscripts of the finest class, such as the _book of kells_; that is, that no gold or silver either in the form of leaf or as a fluid pigment is used. this seems specially strange when we remember the close connection there was between the arts of the goldsmith and of the illuminator of manuscripts among the irish artists. _celtic art in britain._ in later times, when the celtic style of illumination was transplanted to england, gold was to some extent introduced, but in the finest irish manuscripts of the best period, the latter half of the seventh century, gold is completely absent. nevertheless, so great was the decorative genius of these irish monks that, even without burnished gold and silver, their illuminated pages quite equal, not only in artistic beauty, but even in mere splendour of effect, any illuminations that have ever been produced. _the book of durrow._ in addition to the _book of kells_ another manuscript of similar style and date and of almost equal splendour should be mentioned, the _book of durrow_[ ], which, like the _book of kells_, was also known as the "gospels of saint columba," who is said to have left behind him, at his death in , no less than three hundred manuscripts written with his own hand. it is not impossible that the _book of durrow_ is one of these, as it bears some signs of being earlier in date than the _book of kells_. _monks of iona._ from ireland the art of illuminating manuscripts was carried by monkish colonists to the western coasts of scotland, and especially to the island of iona, where a monastery had been founded by saint columba in the latter part of the sixth century[ ]. great numbers of manuscripts resembling in style the _book of kells_ were produced in iona; and offshoots from the monastery of iona, established at various places on the mainland, became similar centres for the writing of richly decorated manuscripts. no less than thirteen monasteries in scotland and twelve in england were founded by irish monks from the mother settlement in iona. in fact the whole of britain seems to have owed its christianity, during the anglo-saxon period, to the irish missionaries from iona, with the important exception of the kingdom of kent, which was occupied by the roman mission of saint augustine. _celtic missionaries._ in the year , at the request of oswald king of northumbria, the scottish king sent an irish monk from iona, named aidan, to preach christianity to the northumbrian worshippers of thor and odin. aidan selected the little island of lindisfarne as the head-quarters of his missionary church, which, at first consisting mainly of a few irish monks from iona, rapidly grew in size and importance. in a few years, saint aidan, bishop and abbot of lindisfarne, was able to establish a number of monastic houses throughout the northumbrian kingdom, and his own abbey of lindisfarne became one of the chief centres of northern europe for the production of fine illuminated manuscripts of the celtic type. after the death of saint aidan other irish monks succeeded him as bishop of lindisfarne, and the school of manuscript illumination continued to flourish. _gospels of st cuthbert._ one of the most beautiful existing examples of the lindisfarne branch of the irish school of miniature work is the famous "book of the gospels of saint cuthbert[ ]" as it is called, now in the british museum (_cotton manuscripts, nero_, d. iv). the history of this manuscript is a very curious one; it was written some years after saint cuthbert's death in , not during his lifetime as was formerly believed. eadfrith, a monk of lindisfarne in saint cuthbert's time, and subsequently eighth bishop of lindisfarne ( to ), was the writer of these _gospels_, "in honour of god and of saint cuthbert," as he records in a note. the illuminations were added by the monk aethelwold, afterwards ninth bishop of lindisfarne, and the elaborate gold, gem-studded cover of this magnificent _textus_ was the work of a third monk of the same abbey named bilfrith. _viking piracy._ _travels of the gospels._ in the ninth century the viking pirates were constantly harrying the shores of northumbria; more than once the abbey of lindisfarne was plundered and many of the monks were slain, till at last, in the year , the small remnant who had escaped the cruelty of the northmen decided to leave lindisfarne and seek a new settlement in the original home of the founders of lindisfarne, the eastern coast of ireland. in the survivors set off, carrying with them the body of saint cuthbert, and the magnificent manuscript of the _gospels_, which was the chief treasure of their abbey, and which had been successfully hidden in saint cuthbert's grave at the time of the invasion of the northmen. the monks crossed to the western shore of northumbria, and there took ship for ireland. a great storm, however, arose; their boat shipped a heavy sea which washed overboard the precious gospels of saint cuthbert, which had been carefully packed in a wooden box. eventually the little ship was driven back, and finally was stranded on the northumbrian shore. soon after reaching the land the fugitive monks, wandering sadly along the beach, found, to their great joy, the lost box with its precious manuscript thrown up by the waves and lying on dry land. according to the chronicle of symeon[ ] (chapter xxvii.), the brilliant illuminations were quite uninjured by the sea-water; this is not literally the case; some of the pages are a good deal stained, but wonderfully little injured considering what the book has gone through. _minster of durham._ when after many wanderings the successors of the exiles from lindisfarne found, in , a final resting-place for the body of saint cuthbert in the minster which they founded at durham, the manuscript of the gospels was laid on the coffin of the saint. there it remained till , when saint cuthbert's body was exhumed, and soon after it was sent back to lindisfarne, where a benedictine monastery had been founded in by some monks from durham on the site of saint cuthbert's ruined abbey. there it was safely preserved till the dissolution of the monasteries under henry viii. the gold covers were then stripped off and melted, but the still more precious manuscript escaped destruction; it was subsequently acquired by sir robert cotton, and is now one of the chief manuscript treasures of the british museum. _anglo-celtic school._ in point of style the "gospels of saint cuthbert" are a characteristic example of the irish school of illumination, modified by transplantation to english soil. the intermediate stage in iona and other monasteries of western scotland seems to have introduced no change of style into the primitive irish method of ornament. whether produced in eastern ireland or in western scotland the manuscripts were the work of the same celtic race, the scots, who, at first inhabiting the north-east of ireland, passed over to the not very distant shores of northern britain to which these irish settlers gave the name scotland. _improved drawing._ when however the irish monks passed from iona to northumbria the case was different; they were surrounded with a new set of artistic influences mainly owing to the introduction into northumbria of fine byzantine and italian manuscripts. the result of this was that though the lindisfarne manuscripts continued to be decorated with exactly the same class of patterns that had been used in the _book of kells_ and other irish manuscripts for initials, borders and the like, yet in the treatment of the human figure a very distinct advance was made. thus in saint cuthbert's _gospels_ the seated figures of the evangelists are drawn with much dignity of form and with some attempt at truth in the pose, the proportions and in the disposition of the folds of the drapery. the monk aethelwold who painted these miniatures must have had before him some fine manuscripts of the gospels probably both of byzantine and italian style. _use of metal leaf._ the whole result is a very splendid one, the _gospels_ of saint cuthbert in richness of invention and minute intricacy of pattern almost equal the _book of kells_; while the figure subjects, instead of being grotesque masses of ornament, are paintings with much beauty of line as well as extreme splendour of colour. another modification is the introduction of gold and silver leaf, which are wholly wanting in the _book of kells_ and the other finest purely irish manuscripts. _ms. of bede._ _italian influence._ other typical examples of this combined celtic and english style are the magnificent _gospels_ in the imperial library in st petersburg, and a manuscript of the commentary on the psalms by cassiodorus now in the chapter library at durham. this latter manuscript, which dates from the eighth century, is traditionally said to have been written by bede himself. the illuminations in this manuscript are specially rich with interlaced patterns, dragon monsters and diapers of the most minute scale, all purely celtic in style, and all showing with special clearness their derivation from originals in goldsmiths' work. not only the distinctly metallic motives of ornament are faithfully copied, but even the manner in which the gold-workers built up their elaborate manuscript covers by the insertion of separate little plates of gold filagree and enamel side by side on a large plate or matrix is exactly reproduced by the illuminator. as in the case of the lindisfarne _gospels_, the figures of the psalmist which are introduced are very superior to any figures which occur in the purely irish manuscripts, showing the distinct influence of italian manuscripts of debased classical style. _the corpus gospels._ another very interesting example of the anglo-celtic school of illumination, with fine initials and a painting of an eagle of the characteristic northern type, is in the possession of corpus christi college, cambridge; no. cxcvii. this is an imperfect manuscript of the _gospels_ containing only the gospels of saint luke and saint john. the decorative borders and initials have the interlaced irish class of ornament. this interesting manuscript was (in the sixteenth century) in the library of archbishop parker, who inserted a note stating that it was one of the manuscripts which were sent by pope gregory to saint augustine. the actual date of the manuscript is probably not earlier than the eighth century, in spite of the ancient appearance of the figure painting. an earlier copy of the _gospels_ in the same library has full page miniatures of the two evangelists of purely classical style, surrounded with architectural framework of debased roman form, very little modified from similar roman miniatures of the fifth century a.d. _gospels of macdurnan._ returning for the moment to the irish school of celtic art, it should be observed that richly illuminated manuscripts continued to be produced in ireland till the ninth and tenth centuries, but these later manuscripts, fine as they are, do not equal in beauty the _book of kells_ and other works of the seventh and eighth century. the book of the _gospels of macdurnan_[ ], who was archbishop of armagh from to , is a good example of the later school of irish art, in which the figures of the evangelists are no less grotesque than those in the earlier manuscripts, while the interlaced and diapered patterns of the borders and initials are inferior in minute delicacy of execution to such masterpieces as the _book of kells_; see fig. . _book of deer._ another still stronger proof of artistic decadence among the celtic illuminators of this period is afforded by the _book of deer_[ ] in the cambridge university library. this is a small octavo copy of the _latin gospels_ after the itala version[ ]. in style it is a mere shadow of the glories of early irish art, with comparatively coarse and feebly coloured decorative patterns. it appears to have been written in scotland by an irish scribe during the ninth century[ ]. [illustration: fig. . miniature from the _gospels_ of macdurnan of the ninth century.] _gospels of macregol._ one of the finest of the manuscripts of the later irish type is the book of _the gospels of macregol_ in the bodleian library (d. . no. ) executed in the ninth century. the ornaments and the very conventional figures of the evangelists are of the purely irish type, unmodified by any imitation of the superior figure drawing in byzantine and italian miniatures[ ]. _gospels of st chad._ the manuscript _gospels of saint chad_ in the chapter library of lichfield cathedral is another example of the irish school and of the same date as the last-mentioned book. it is named after ceadda or chad who, in the seventh century, was the first bishop of lichfield, nearly two hundred years before the date of this manuscript of the _gospels_[ ]. _celtic school on the continent._ during the most flourishing period of celtic art in ireland its influence was by no means limited to the northumbrian school of illuminators. the irish types of ornament were adopted by the scribes of canterbury and other places in the south of england; and on the continent of europe celtic art was widely spread by irish missionaries such as saint columbanus, and by the founding of irish monasteries during the sixth century in various countries, as, for example, at bobbio in northern italy, at st gallen in switzerland, at wurtzburg in germany, and at luxeuil in france. in these and in other places irish monastic illuminators worked hard at the production of manuscripts and spread the celtic style of ornament over a large area of western europe. the library of st gallen possesses a number of richly illuminated manuscripts of the later irish type, exactly similar in style to those which during the eighth and ninth centuries were produced in the monasteries of ireland and scotland[ ]. _psalter of st augustine._ the result of this spread of celtic influence was that borders, initial letters and similar ornaments of pure irish style were used in many manuscripts in which the figures of saints were designed after an equally pure italian or debased classic style. a good example of this is the so-called _psalter of saint augustine_[ ] (brit. mus. _cotton manuscripts vesp._ a. i) which for many centuries belonged to the cathedral of canterbury. this is a manuscript of the eighth century; one of its chief miniature paintings represents david enthroned, playing on a harp with a group of attendant musicians and two dancing figures round his throne. these figures are purely italian in style, of the debased roman school; but the arched frame which borders the picture is filled in with ornament of the irish metal type, closely similar in style, except that gold and silver are largely used, to those in the _book of kells_, though inferior in minute delicacy of execution. it is of course very possible that the illuminations in this _psalter_ are the work of two hands, the figures being painted by an italian illuminator and the borders by an english or irish monk. _scandinavian art._ in later times, especially during the ninth century, the celtic art of ireland appears to have been largely introduced into scandinavia by means of the viking pirates who harried the whole circuit of the shores of britain and ireland, and finally in the ninth century established a norse kingdom in eastern ireland with the newly founded dublin as its capital[ ]. the norsemen were far from being a literary race and it was not in the form of manuscript illuminations that irish art was introduced into norway and denmark, but rather in the rich gold and silver jewellery with which the viking chiefs adorned themselves, and also on a larger scale in the magnificently decorative reliefs which were carved on the wooden planks which formed the frames or architraves of the doors of the scandinavian wooden churches in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, after the worship of the thunderer had been replaced by the faith of the white christ. lindisfarne, iona and the other chief irish monasteries suffered again and again from the inroads of the vikings, who found rich and easily won plunder in the form of gold and silver chalices, reliquaries and book-covers in the treasuries of the monastic churches undefended by any except unarmed and peaceful monks. _the golden gospels of stockholm._ one curious record of viking plunder is preserved in the royal library of stockholm. this is a very magnificent manuscript book of the _gospels_ of the eighth century, commonly known as the _codex aureus_ of stockholm. it is mostly written with alternate leaves of purple vellum, the text on which is in golden letters. in general style and in the splendour of its ornaments it closely resembles the lindisfarne "_gospels of saint cuthbert_," described above at page , and most probably, like the latter, was also written in the monastery of lindisfarne. the interlaced ornaments of the irish type are marvels of beauty, while the dignified drawing of the enthroned figures of the four evangelists shows clearly the influence of continental manuscript art. in this case the celtic or english illuminator must have had before him a copy of the _gospels_ not of the italian but of the byzantine style, since the evangelists and other figures in the book which are represented in the act of benediction do so in the oriental not in the latin fashion[ ]. _viking robbers._ on the margin of the first page of saint matthew's gospel an interesting note has been written about the year by the owner of the gospels, an english ealdorman named aelfred; this note records that the manuscript had been stolen by norse robbers and that aelfred had purchased it from them for a sum in pure gold in order that the sacred book might be rescued from heathen hands. aelfred then presented it to the cathedral church of canterbury, and new gold covers appear then to have been made for this _textus_, as there is another note in a ninth century hand requesting the prayers of the church for three goldsmiths, probably those who replaced the original gold covers which the viking pirates had torn off[ ]. _the two churches in britain._ returning now to the manuscripts of the celtic church in northumbria, in order to understand the gradual introduction into northern england of the italian or classical style of painting it is necessary to remember the struggle which took place during the seventh century between the adherents of the older celtic church and those who supported the papal claims for supremacy throughout britain. on the one hand the see of canterbury, founded by the roman saint augustine, claimed jurisdiction in the north as well as in the south of britain, in opposition to the celtic abbot of iona, who was then the real metropolitan of the church in the north of england. _long struggle._ wilfrid of york and benedict biscop of jarrow spent many years in a series of embassies, between and , backward and forward between northumbria and rome striving to introduce the papal authority, by the aid of imported books, relics and craftsmen skilled in building stone churches in place of the simple wooden structures which at that time were the only ecclesiastical buildings in northumbria[ ]. very large numbers of illuminated manuscripts were brought to england during the many journeys of wilfrid and benedict biscop; and important libraries were created at york and at jarrow which led to these places becoming literary and artistic centres of great and european importance. _synod of whitby._ _defeat of the celtic party._ in the end, after many failures, wilfrid, archbishop[ ] of york, was successful in bringing northumbria under the supremacy of canterbury and rome. in a great council was held at whitby in the presence of the northumbrian king oswiu. bishop colman, the successor of saint aidan at lindisfarne, represented the celtic church and the authority of saint columba, while wilfrid appeared to support the authority of saint peter and the bishop of rome. after hearing that saint peter possessed the keys of heaven and hell, while saint columba could claim no such marvellous power, king oswiu decided in favour of the roman supremacy. this decision, though based on such fanciful grounds, was a fortunate one for the english church, since, in the main, learning, culture and established order generally were on the side of the italian church. the practical result of this roman victory at the synod of whitby in was that a classical influence gradually extended itself in all the english centres for the production of illuminated manuscripts. it has already been noted that the splendid manuscripts of lindisfarne and other northumbrian monasteries, though of celtic origin, show a distinct roman influence in the improvement of the drawing of their figures of saints. by degrees the irish element in the illuminations grew less and less; though the interlaced patterns and fantastic dragon and serpent forms lasted for many centuries in all the chief countries of western europe and form an important decorative element till the thirteenth century[ ]. _baeda of durham._ one of the chief schools of english manuscript illumination, that of the benedictine abbey at durham, was raised to a position of european importance by the northumbrian monk baeda, afterwards called the venerable bede, who was born in , a few years after the synod of whitby. as the author of a great _ecclesiastical history of the english nation_, baeda ranks as the father of english history; he did much to foster the study of ancient classical authors, was himself a skilful writer of manuscripts, and made the abbey of jarrow, where he lived till his death in , an active centre for the production of richly illuminated manuscripts of many different literary classes. _northumbrian school._ _celtic and classic styles._| in the eighth century the schools of illumination in the abbeys of jarrow, wearmouth and york in northumbria, and of canterbury and winchester in the south were among the most active and artistically important in the world[ ]. in these schools of miniature painting was gradually created a special english style of illumination, partly formed out of a combination of two very different styles, that of the irish celtic illuminators and that of the italian classical scribes. this english school of illumination, which had been partially developed before the close of the tenth century, became, for real artistic merit, the first and most important in the whole of europe, and for a considerable period continued to occupy this foremost position[ ]. chapter vii. the anglo-saxon school of manuscripts[ ]. _danish invasions._ the ninth century in england was one of great turmoil and misery, on account of the fearful havoc wrought by the danish northmen throughout the whole length and breadth of the land. in northumbria the thriving literary and artistic school which had been raised to such preeminence by baeda was utterly blotted out from existence by the invading danes; and when at last king alfred, who reigned from to , secured an interval of peace he was obliged to seek instructors in the art of manuscript illumination from the frankish kings. _time of king alfred._ in this way the wave of influence flowed back again from france to england. in charles the great's time the carolingian school of manuscripts had been largely influenced by the celtic style, which alcuin of york introduced from northumbria, and now the later art of anglo-saxon england received back from france the forms of ornament and the technical skill which in northumbria itself had become extinct. alfred was an enthusiastic patron of literature and art, especially the art of manuscript illumination, and before long a new school of manuscript art was created in many of the benedictine monasteries of england and especially among the monks of the royal city of winchester, which in the tenth century produced works of extraordinary beauty and decorative force. _benedictional of aethelwold._ as an example of this we may mention the famous _benedictional_ of aethelwold, who was bishop of winchester from to [ ]. the writer of this sumptuously decorated manuscript was bishop aethelwold's chaplain, a monk named godemann, who afterwards, about the year , became abbot of thorney. unlike the manuscripts of earlier date in which the illuminated pictures are usually few in number, this _benedictional_ contains no less than thirty full page miniatures, mostly consisting of scenes from the life of christ. each picture is framed by an elaborate border, richly decorated in gold and brilliant colours, with conventional leaf-work of classical style. the drawing of the figures is dignified, and the drapery is usually well conceived and treated in a bold, decorative way, showing much artistic skill on the part of the illuminator. fig. shows one of the miniatures, representing the ascension; the colouring is extremely beautiful and harmonious, enhanced by a skilful use of burnished gold. _foreign influence._ though the figures and especially the delicately modelled faces have a character of their own, peculiarly english in feeling, yet in the general style of the miniatures, and in their elaborate borders there are very distinct signs of a strong carolingian influence, owing, no doubt, to the introduction of frankish illuminators and the purchase of carolingian manuscripts during the reign of alfred the great, more than half a century before the date of this manuscript. [illustration: fig. . miniature from the _benedictional_ of aethelwold; written and illuminated by a monastic scribe at winchester.] there is, for example, much similarity of style in the miniatures of this _benedictional_ and those in a carolingian manuscript of _the gospels_ written for king lothaire in the monastery of st martin at metz soon after [ ]; see above fig. , p. . _winchester charter._ another very fine example of the winchester school of illumination is the manuscript _charter_ which king edgar granted to the new minster at winchester in . the first page consists of a large miniature, painted in gold and brilliant colours on a purple-stained leaf of vellum[ ], with christ in majesty supported by four angels in the upper part of the picture, and, below, standing figures of the b. v. mary and saint peter, with king edgar in the middle offering his charter to christ. the whole picture is very skilfully designed so as to fill the whole page in the most decorative way, and it is framed in a border with richly devised conventional leaf-forms. in artistic power this tenth century winchester school of illuminators appears, for a while at least, to have been foremost in the world. both in delicacy of touch and in richness of decorative effect the productions of this school are superior to those of any contemporary continental country. _st dunstan as an artist._ saint dunstan, the great ecclesiastical statesman of the ninth century, created another school of illumination in the benedictine abbey of glastonbury. dunstan himself was no mean artist, as may be seen from a fine drawing of christ, which he executed[ ]; the saint has represented himself as a small monkish figure prostrate at the feet of christ. at the top of the page is inscribed in a twelfth century hand, "pictura et scriptura hujus pagine subtus visa est de propria manu sancti dunstani." _coloured ink drawings._ during the tenth century a large number of illuminated manuscripts were executed in the southern parts of england, the miniatures in which are very unlike and, as decoration, very inferior to the manuscripts of the anglo-carolingian style, as represented by the magnificent _benedictional_ of aethelwold. this class of illumination consists of drawings, often with a large number of small figures, executed with a pen in red, blue and brown outline. the drawing of these figures is very mannered, the heads are small, the attitudes awkward, and the draperies are represented in numerous small, fluttering folds, drawn with an apparently shaky line, as if the artist had lacked firmness of hand. this, however, is a mere mannerism, as wherever he wished for a steady line, as, for example, in the drawing of the faces, the artist has drawn with the utmost decision and firmness of touch. the costumes of these curious outline drawings, the architectural accessories and other details, all show clearly the influence of the very debased forms of classical roman art, which still survived among the manuscript illuminations of italy[ ]. this degraded form of classical art was far from being a good model for the anglo-saxon illuminator to imitate, and the blue and red outline miniatures are very inferior to the sumptuous anglo-carolingian manuscripts which were being produced at winchester by contemporary illuminators. _mss. of the xiith century._ _roll of st guthlac._ _beauty of line._ in the eleventh century anglo-saxon miniatures in coloured outline improved greatly in beauty of form and in gracefulness of pose; till at the beginning of the twelfth century extremely fine miniatures of this class were produced. a very beautiful example of this is a long vellum roll illuminated with eighteen circular miniatures, mostly drawn with a pen in dark brown ink. these outline miniatures represent scenes from the life of saint guthlac, the hermit of crowland. the series begins with a drawing of the youthful guthlac receiving the tonsure from hedda, bishop of winchester ( to ), in the presence of the abbess ebba and two nuns. the whole composition is very skilfully arranged to fill the circular medallion, and there is great dignity and even delicate beauty in the separate figures. the precision of touch shown in the drawing is most admirable, recalling the perfect purity of line seen in the finest vase-paintings of the greeks, in which, as in these miniatures, the greatest amount of effect is produced with the fewest possible touches. a few flat washes are introduced into the backgrounds, but all the principal part of the miniatures is executed with this pure outline. there are no grounds for the suggestion that these medallion drawings were intended as designs for stained glass. there is much similarity of style in stained glass paintings and manuscript illuminations during the twelfth to the fourteenth century in england, just as in the early byzantine manuscripts the same design serves for a miniature painting and a colossal wall-mosaic. the same simplicity of drawing and flatness of composition were preserved in both classes of art, and there is nothing exceptional in the fact that these miniatures of saint guthlac might have served as excellent motives for a glass-painter[ ]. _pontifical of st dunstan._ the _pontifical_ of saint dunstan (brit. mus. _cott. claud._ a. ), executed in the early part of the eleventh century, is a magnificent example of decorative art, both in its noble designs and richness of colour. though no gold is used, the greatest splendour of effect is produced, especially in a large miniature representing saint gregory enthroned under an elaborate architectural canopy, with prostrate figures at his feet of archbishop dunstan and the benedictine scribe of this beautiful manuscript; see westwood, _irish manuscripts_, pl. . _byzantine decadence._ the beauty of the best english manuscripts of the twelfth century is a remarkable contrast to the once splendid byzantine school of illumination, which by this time had sadly degenerated from its former vigorous splendour, and had become weak in drawing, clumsy in pose and inharmonious in colour. the english school on the other hand, all through the twelfth century, was making rapid advances towards a perfection both of design and technique which culminated in the anglo-norman style of the latter part of the thirteenth century, which for beauty of all kinds remained for a long time quite without rival in any european country. _canute a patron of art._ _feeble colouring._ to return to the anglo-saxon school of manuscripts in the eleventh century, it should be observed that the danish king canute, unlike his destructive predecessors, did all that he could to encourage literature and art in england. with a view to fostering the production of fine illuminated manuscripts he introduced into this country, and especially into the royal and monastic libraries of winchester, a large number of roman manuscripts with the usual illuminations of the debased classic type. this, no doubt, helped to encourage the production of miniatures in outline such as those in the _utrecht psalter_[ ]. another variety of anglo-saxon manuscript illumination, executed during the first half of the eleventh century, consists first of all of a pen drawing in brown outline; to which subsequently the artist added with a brush narrow bands of blue or red laid on in a thin wash as a sort of edging to the brown outlines, apparently with the object of giving roundness to the drawing[ ]. this class of illumination is, however, very inferior in beauty and decorative splendour to the finest works of the monks of winchester and glastonbury, in which solid colour in great variety of tint is used, as, for example in the above-mentioned _benedictional_ of aethelwold and the _pontifical_ of saint dunstan. _the anglo-norman school._ the norman conquest of england in soon put an end to the anglo-saxon school of illumination, with its weak imitations of the debased classical style of italy. in place of this the magnificent anglo-norman schools of miniature painting were developed on both sides of the british channel. england and normandy became one country, and as long as this union lasted manuscripts of precisely similar character were produced both in normandy and in england, as is described in the following chapter. chapter viii. the anglo-norman school of manuscripts. the twelfth century in england and northern france was a period of rapid artistic development in almost all branches of the arts, from a miniature illumination to a great cathedral or abbey church. _the norman invasion._ _robert of gloucester._ with regard, however, to the art of illuminated manuscripts and other branches of art in england it should be observed that though the conquered english and the norman conquerors with remarkable rapidity were amalgamated with great solidarity into one united people[ ], yet for a long period after the conquest it was distinctly the norman element that took the lead in all matters of art and literature. the bishops, abbots and priors of the great english ecclesiastical foundations were for a long period wholly or in the main men of the norman race, and thus (intellectually) the native english took a lower place, and did far less to advance the arts of england than did the normans who formed the upper and more cultivated class. as robert of gloucester the benedictine monkish chronicler of the thirteenth century says, of the normannes beth thys hey men, that beth of thys lond, and the lowe men of saxons, as ych understonde[ ]. _architectural growth._ in the eleventh century building in stone on a large scale for military and ecclesiastical purposes had been introduced into england by the normans in place of the frail wooden structures of the anglo-saxons. towards the close of the twelfth century the gothic style of architecture, with its pointed arches and quadripartite vaults, was brought to england by the cistercian monks of northern france, and soon spread far and wide throughout the kingdom. the artists of this century began to study the human form, its pose and movement, and also in their drapery learnt to depict gracefully designed folds with much truth and with a keen sense of beauty[ ]. _anglo-norman school._ manuscripts of various classes were now richly illuminated with many varied series of picture subjects, and the old hieratic canons of byzantine conservatism were soon completely thrown aside. in the ornaments of the anglo-norman manuscripts of the twelfth century rich foliage is used made of conventionalized forms which recall the old acanthus leaf, the half expanded fronds of various ferns and other plants, all used with great taste in their arrangement, and wonderful life and spirit in every line and curve of the design. older celtic motives are also used; ingeniously devised interlaced work of straps and bands, plaited together in complicated knots, and terminating frequently in strange forms of serpents, dragons and other grotesque monsters[ ]. these ornaments are strongly decorative both in form and colour, and, though delicately painted, are treated somewhat broadly, very unlike the microscopic minuteness of the earlier irish and anglo-celtic school. _illuminated psalters._ _martyrdom of st thomas._ at this time a large number of very magnificently illuminated _psalters_ were produced; and the use of gold leaf both for the backgrounds of pictures and in combination with brilliant pigments began to come into more frequent use. a fine typical example of english manuscript art at the close of the twelfth century is to be seen in the so-called _huntingfield psalter_, which was executed, probably in some monastic house in yorkshire, a little before a.d.[ ] it contains miniatures of very fine style, delicately painted on backgrounds partially of gold; the subjects are taken from both the old and the new testament, beginning with the creation of the world. the general style of the illuminations in this _psalter_ is more exclusively english in character and less norman than is usual in manuscripts of this date. the book is interesting as containing one of the earliest representations of the martyrdom of thomas à becket, who subsequently became so popular a saint in england and normandy. in this case the painting is not quite of the same date as the bulk of the manuscript, but it evidently was added not many years after becket's death, which occurred in ; saint thomas was canonized only two years later[ ]. one of the earliest representations of this subject is a miniature painted by matthew paris on the border of a page of his _greater chronicle_ in the library of corpus christi college, cambridge, no. xxvi. _the angevin kingdom._ though i have used the phrase "anglo-norman" to denote the school of manuscript illumination which, from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, existed on both sides of the channel, it should be observed that manuscripts of a similar type to those of normandy were produced in many places far to the south, and indeed almost throughout the whole dominions of the angevin kings, including the whole western half of france down to gascony and the pyrenees. the fact is that to a great degree all forms of norman art extended throughout the whole angevin dominions, so that, for example, we find a cathedral as far south as bayonne (not far from the spanish frontier) resembling closely both in general design and details of mouldings and carving the ecclesiastical architecture of canterbury and caen. _english art in the xiiith century._ _english art at its highest period of development._ the thirteenth century was the culminating period of anglo-norman art of all kinds; and indeed for a brief period england occupied the foremost position in the world with regard to nearly all the principal branches of the fine arts. _henry iii. as an art patron._ the early years of the thirteenth century were a time of war and tumult, little favourable to artistic advance, but during the long reign of henry iii., which lasted from to , progress of the most remarkable kind was made. the king himself was an enthusiastic patron of all the arts, ranging from manuscript illumination to the construction of such a fabric as westminster abbey; and the lesser arts of life, such as weaving, embroidery, metal work, together with stained glass, mural painting and other forms of decoration, were all brought in england to a wonderful pitch of perfection between and . _houses of henry iii._ immense sums were spent by the king in improving and decorating his palaces and manor houses all over the kingdom with an amount of refinement and splendour that had hitherto been unknown. many interesting contemporary documents still exist giving the expenses of the many works which henry iii. carried out. he spent large sums on fitting the windows with glass casements, laying down floors of "painted tiles," and in panelling the walls with wainscot which was richly decorated with painting in gold and colours. large mural paintings were executed by a whole army of painters on the walls of the chief rooms; and decorative art both for domestic and ecclesiastical purposes was in england brought to a pitch of perfection far beyond that of any continental country. _chief works of henry iii._ the chief works of henry iii. were the building of a magnificent palace at westminster in place of the ruder structure of the earlier norman kings; the reconstruction of westminster abbey, and the providing for the body of edward the confessor a great shrine of pure gold, richly studded with jewels of enormous value. a long and interesting series of accounts of these and other lavish expenditures of money still exist in the record office[ ]. _wall-paintings at westminster._ a magnificent series of wall-paintings, with subjects from sacred and profane history and from the apocryphal books of the old testament, were executed by various artists, both monks and laymen, on the walls of the chief rooms in the new palace of westminster. in style these paintings were very like the miniatures in an illuminated manuscript of the time; they were simply designed, flat in treatment, and executed with the most minute and delicate detail. great richness of effect was produced by the use of wooden stamps with which delicate diapers and other patterns were stamped over the backgrounds of the pictures on the thin coat of _gesso_ which covered the stone wall. these minutely executed reliefs were then thickly gilt, forming rich gold backgrounds, such as are so commonly used in the manuscripts of the anglo-norman school; see fig. , p. . _paintings copied from mss._ the close connection between these magnificent wall paintings and the illuminated miniatures in manuscripts is borne witness to by an interesting record that, in the year , the king ordered richard de sanford, master of the knights templars, to lend an illuminated manuscript in french of "_the gestes of antioch and the history of the crusades_" to the painter edward of westminster, so that he might copy the miniatures, using the designs to paint the walls of "the queen's low room in the new palace of westminster" with a series of historical pictures. from these paintings of "the gestes of antioch" the queen's room was thenceforth known as "the antioch chamber[ ]". _the painted chamber._ the largest of the halls in the westminster palace, decorated with a marvellous series of exquisitely finished paintings, was known as "the painted chamber" _par excellence_ from its great size and the immense number of pictures which covered its walls. the system of decoration adopted in the thirteenth century was not to paint large pictures in a large hall, but simply to multiply the number of small ones, keeping the figures as delicate in execution and small in scale as if the room had been of the most limited dimensions. this had the effect of enormously adding to the apparent scale of the room, a great contrast to the method of decoration which was employed in later times of decadence, when large halls were dwarfed and rendered insignificant by covering the walls with figures of colossal size. the sixteenth century tapestry in the great hall at hampton court is a striking example of the way in which gigantic figures may destroy the scale of an interior. _existing fragments._ the great beauty and extreme minuteness of the work can be seen in some few damaged fragments, now in the british museum, which were not completely destroyed when the royal palace of westminster, the seat of the two houses of parliament, was burnt in . in the second half of the thirteenth century, during the reigns of henry iii. and edward i., the painting of england was unrivalled by that of any other country[ ]. even in italy, cimabue and his assistants were still labouring in the fetters of byzantine conventionalism, and produced no works which for jewel-like beauty of colour and grace of form were quite equal to the paintings of england under edward i. _english sculpture._ _william torell._ in sculpture too england was no less pre-eminent; no continental works of the time are equal in combined dignity and beauty, both of the heads and of the drapery, to the bronze effigies of henry iii. and queen eleanor of castile on the north side of edward the confessor's chapel at westminster. these noble examples of bronze sculpture were the work of the goldsmith citizen of london william torell, who executed them by the beautiful _cire perdue_ process with the utmost technical skill[ ]; see page on their gilding, which was executed by the old "mercury process." _the fitz-othos._ one of the chief english families of the thirteenth century, among whom the practice of various arts was hereditary, was named otho or fitz-otho. various members of this family were goldsmiths, manuscript illuminators, cutters of dies for coins and makers of official seals, as well as painters of mural decorations. the elaborate gold shrine of the confessor, one of the most costly works of the middle ages, was made by the otho family. the great royal seals of more than one king were their handiwork, and it should be observed that the seals of england, not only of the thirteenth century but almost throughout the mediaeval period, were far the most beautiful in the world, both for splendour and elaboration of design, and for exquisite minuteness of detail. _english needlework._ another minor branch of art, in which england during the thirteenth century far surpassed the rest of the world, was the art of embroidering delicate pictures in silk, especially for ecclesiastical vestments. the most famous embroidered vestments now preserved in various places in italy are the handiwork of english embroiderers between the years and , though their authorship is not as a rule recognized by their present possessors[ ]. the embroidered miniatures on these marvellous pieces of needlework resemble closely in style the illuminations in fine anglo-norman manuscripts of the thirteenth century, and in many cases have obviously been copied from manuscript miniatures. _decay of english art._ there is, in short, ample evidence to show that the anglo-norman art of the thirteenth century, in almost all branches, and more especially on english soil, had reached a higher pitch of perfection, aesthetic and technical, than had been then attained by any other country in the world. in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, owing largely to the black death and the protracted wars of the roses, the arts of england fell into the background, but it should not be forgotten that there was one period, from about to or , when england occupied the foremost place in the artistic history of the world. with regard to the anglo-norman manuscripts of the thirteenth and early part of the fourteenth century, the most remarkable class, both for beauty of execution and for the extraordinary number that were produced, consists of copies of the _vulgate_, richly decorated with a large number of initial letters containing minute miniatures of figure subjects[ ]. _ms. bibles._ _historiated bibles._ these bibles vary in size from large quartos or folios down to the most minute _codex_ with writing of microscopic character. in the latter it appears to have been the special aim of the scribe to get the whole of the _vulgate_, including the _apocrypha_, the _prologue of st jerome_, and an explanatory _list of hebrew names_, into the smallest possible space. the thinnest uterine vellum of the finest quality is used[ ], the text is frequently much contracted, and the characters are of almost microscopic size[ ]. in these smallest bibles the initials are mostly ornamented with conventional leaves and grotesque dragon monsters; but in the larger manuscripts the initials at the beginning of every book, about in number, are illuminated with a miniature picture of the most exquisite workmanship, a perfect model of beauty and refined skill. the drawing of the faces and hair is specially beautiful, being executed with a fine, crisp line with the most precise and delicate touch, worthy of a greek artist of the best period. the drawing of the hair and beard of the male figures is most masterly, with waving curls full of grace and spirit, in spite of the extreme minuteness of the scale. _method of execution._ the miniatures of this school are executed in the following manner: first of all a slight outline is lightly sketched with a lead or silver point; the main masses are then put in with flat, solid colour; the internal drawing of the folds of the drapery, the hair and features and the like, are then added with a delicate pointed brush, capable of drawing the finest possible line; and finally some shading is added to give roundness to the forms, especially of the drapery, a broader touch being used for this, unlike the first drawing of the details, which is executed with a thin, though boldly applied line. as a rule the portions which are in shadow are put in with a pure pigment; the high lights being represented with white, and the half lights with a mixture of white and the same pigment that is used for the dark shadows. by this somewhat conventional system of colouring, the local colour is never lost, and the whole effect is highly decorative, and far more suitable for painting on such a minute scale than a more realistic system of colour would have been[ ]. _bible of mainerius._ _benedictine scribes._ one of the larger and more magnificent manuscripts of this class, in the library of s^{te} géneviéve in paris, is a historiated _vulgate_ in three large volumes, which is of special interest from the fact that it is signed by its scribe, a monk named mainerius of the benedictine abbey of canterbury. most of these bibles and other sacred manuscripts of this period appear to have been written and illuminated in the great benedictine abbeys of england and normandy. on this side of the channel york, norwich, bury st edmunds, winchester, st albans, and canterbury were specially famed for their schools of illumination[ ]. and probably some work of the kind was done in every benedictine house[ ]. the unity of a great monastic order like that of st benedict, and the fact that monks were often transferred from a monastery in one country to one of the same order in another country, had an important influence on the artistic development of mediaeval europe. _monastic unity._ this unity of feeling was of course encouraged by the existence of a common language (latin) among all the ecclesiastics of western europe; and to a great extent the old traditions of a great western empire, uniting various races under one system of government, survived in the organization of the catholic church. this unity of life, of custom and of thought, which was so striking a feature of the monastic system, was, to a great extent, the cause why we find a simultaneous change of artistic style taking place at several far distant centres of production[ ]. hence also it is usually impossible, from the style of illumination in an anglo-norman manuscript of the thirteenth century, to judge whether it was executed in normandy or in england. _backgrounds of sheet gold._ one extremely magnificent class of illumination of this date and school, specially used for _psalters_, _missals_ and other service-books, has the background behind the figures formed of an unbroken sheet of burnished gold of the most sumptuously decorative effect. _chequer backgrounds._ in the fourteenth century the plain gold background was mostly superseded by delicate diapers of lozenge and chessboard form, with alternating squares of gold and blue or red, very rich and beautiful in effect, and sometimes of extreme minuteness of scale, so that each lozenge or square of the diaper is not larger than an ordinary pin's head. in france these diapered patterns were used with great frequency, and their use survived in some cases till the early part of the fifteenth century. _scroll patterns._ another form of background, used in anglo-norman miniatures, consists of delicate scroll patterns or outlined diapers put in with a fine brush and with fluid gold over a ground of flat opaque colour. gold scroll-work of this kind on a _pink_ ground is specially characteristic of miniatures painted in england during the fourteenth and first half of the fifteenth century. _architectural backgrounds._ a fourth style of background, used in miniature pictures of this date, consists of architectural forms, which frequently enshrine the whole miniature, with background, frame, and canopy in one rich architectural composition. this is often painted in gold, with details in firm, dark lines, and, though conventionally treated, gives not unfrequently a representation of an exquisitely beautiful gothic structure[ ]. _realistic backgrounds._ last of all come the realistic backgrounds, with pictorial effects of distance and aerial perspective, often very skilful and even beautiful in effect, but not so strongly decorative or so perfectly suited to manuscript illumination as the more conventional backgrounds of an earlier date. these realistic surroundings began to be introduced in the fourteenth century, but are more especially characteristic of the fifteenth century. in the sixteenth century, when the illumination of manuscripts had ceased to be a real living art, though painfully and skilfully practised by such masters of technique as giulio clovio and various italian and french painters, the pictorial character of the backgrounds was carried to an excessive degree of elaboration and decadence. _psalter at burlington house._ among the most magnificent of the anglo-norman manuscripts of the thirteenth century are copies of the _psalter_. one in the library of the society of antiquaries in burlington house is of extraordinary beauty for the delicate and complicated patterns of interlaced scroll-work which fill its large initials. the first letter _b_ of the beginning of the psalms (_beatus vir_ etc.) is in this and some other illuminated _psalters_ of the same class, of such size and elaboration that it occupies most of the first page. among its ingeniously devised interlaced ornaments various little animals, rabbits, squirrels and others are playing--marvels of minute and delicate painting. round the border which frames the whole are ten minute medallion pictures, some of them representing musicians playing on various instruments, one of which is a kind of barrel organ, called an _organistrum_, worked by two players. this magnificent manuscript dates from about the middle of the thirteenth century. _the tenison psalter._ another still more beautiful _psalter_ in the british museum, called from its former owner _archbishop tenison's psalter_, was illuminated for queen eleanor of castile, the wife of edward i., about the year . it was intended as a marriage gift for their third son alphonso, who, however, died in august , a few days after the signing of his marriage contract. the manuscript was for this reason unfortunately left unfinished, and was afterwards completed by a very inferior illuminator. the letter _b_ on the first page is filled by an exquisite miniature of the royal psalmist; and in the lower part of the border is the slaying by an infantile david, of goliath, represented as a gigantic knight in chain armour. at intervals round the border are minute but very accurately painted birds of various kinds, including the gull, kingfisher, woodpecker, linnet, crane and goldfinch. in places where the text does not reach to the end of the line the space is filled up by a narrow band of ornament in gold and colours, occupying the same space that a complete line of words would have done. this method of avoiding any blank spaces in the page, and making the whole surface one unbroken mass of beauty was employed in the finest manuscripts of this and of other classes, especially the manuscripts of france and flanders. _tenison psalter._ the _tenison psalter_ appears to have been written and illuminated in the monastic house of the blackfriars in london; it is quite one of the noblest existing examples of english art during the thirteenth century, and is unsurpassed in beauty and skilful technique by the manuscripts of any age or country[ ]. _mss. of the apocalypse._ _manuscripts of the apocalypse._ the anglo-norman and french manuscripts of the _apocalypse_, executed during the fourteenth century, are on the whole the most beautiful class of illuminated manuscripts that the world has ever produced[ ]. for combined decorative splendour, exquisite grace of drawing, and poetry of sentiment they are quite unrivalled. during several years before and after a considerable number of these copiously illustrated manuscripts of the _apocalypse_ seem to have been produced with a certain uniformity of style and design, which shows that, as in the case of the historiated bibles, one model must have been copied and passed on from hand to hand through the _scriptoria_ of many different monastic houses. _perfect beauty._ no words can adequately express the refined and poetical beauty of these miniatures of apocalyptic scenes, glowing with the utmost splendour of burnished gold, ultramarine and other brilliant pigments. the whole figures of the angels, their beautiful serene faces, their exquisitely pencilled wings with feathers of bright colours, the simple dignified folds of their drapery, all are executed with the most wonderful certainty of touch and the highest possible sense of romantic beauty. the accessories are hardly less beautiful; the gothic arches and pinnacles of the new jerusalem, the vine plants and other trees and flowers, designed with a perfect balance between decorative conventionalism and realistic truth, and last of all the sumptuous backgrounds covered with delicate diapers or scroll-work in gold and blue and crimson, all unite the whole composition into one perfect harmony, like a mosaic of gleaming gems, fixed in a matrix of pure, shining gold. _machine-made art._ nothing perhaps could better exemplify the gulf that separates the artistic productions of this feverish, steam-driven nineteenth century from the serene glories of the art of bygone days than a comparison of such a book as the trinity _apocalypse_ with that masterpiece of commercial art called "the victoria psalter," which, printed in a steam-press on machine-made paper, illuminated by chromolithography, and bound in a machine-embossed leather cover, produces a total effect which cannot adequately be described in polite language[ ]. _english monasteries._ _the later english manuscripts._ in the fourteenth century a more distinctly english style of illumination began to branch off from the anglo-norman style. something like separate schools of painting gradually grew up in the great benedictine monasteries, such as those at st albans, norwich, glastonbury and bury saint edmunds. the type of face represented in english miniatures from about the middle of the fourteenth century onwards is rather different from the french type with its long oval face and pointed nose[ ]. in english manuscripts the faces are rounder and plumper, and the backgrounds are very frequently formed by gold scroll-work over a peculiar pink, made by a mixture of red lead with a large proportion of white. _the black death._ on the whole the style of figure painting in english manuscripts deteriorated very distinctly after the ravages caused by the black death in the middle of the fourteenth century; that is to say the average of excellence became lower; and, especially in the fifteenth century, a good deal of very coarse and inferior manuscript illumination was produced. on the other hand there were some illuminators in england whose work is not surpassed by that of any contemporary french or flemish artist. _outline drawings._ one very beautiful class of english illumination, executed about the middle of the fourteenth century, has very small and delicate figures, drawn in firm outline with a pen and brown ink; relief is then given to the figures by the partial application of transparent washes of delicate colour, producing an effect of great beauty and refinement. _the poyntz book of hours_ in the fitzwilliam library has no less than miniature paintings of this very beautiful style. the book was written for a friend and companion of the black prince about the year . its delicate paintings have unfortunately, in many places, been coarsely touched up with gold and colours by a later hand. _lectionary of sifer was._ a very fine characteristic example of english art towards the close of the fourteenth century is preserved in the british museum (_harl. manuscripts_ ). this is a noble folio manuscript _lectionary_[ ], unfortunately imperfect, which was written and illuminated by a monk named sifer was for lord lovel of tichmersh, who died in ; it was presented by him to the cathedral church of salisbury, as is recorded by a note which asks for prayers for the donor's soul. the text is written in a magnificent large gothic hand, such as was imitated by the printers of early _missals_[ ] and _psalters_. on the first page is a large, beautifully painted miniature representing the scribe sifer was presenting the manuscript to lord lovel. the figures are large in scale, and the heads are carefully executed portraits, evidently painted with great eiconic skill. each page of the text has a richly decorative border with conventional foliage of the characteristically bold english type. figures of angels are introduced at the sides, and an exquisitely minute little painting is placed at the top, by the initial letter of the page. _english foliage._ the english foliated borders and capitals in manuscripts of this type are very bold and decorative in effect, with a simple form of leaf with few serrations, twining in most graceful curves and broadly painted in blue and red with very good effect, even in many manuscripts where the execution is not of the most refined kind. a variety of what is commonly known as "the pine-apple design"[ ] is frequently introduced into these very effective pieces of ornament. _portrait figures._ it should be noticed that the first growth of portrait painting in western europe seems to have arisen out of this custom of introducing portrait figures of patrons and donors at the beginning of important manuscripts. in french and burgundian manuscripts especially we find many very interesting portraits of kings and princes together with those of the authors or the illuminators of richly decorated manuscripts. _altar-pieces._ donors' portraits are also commonly introduced into votive altar-pieces, usually in the form of small kneeling figures. as time went on these figures of donors gradually became more important in scale and position. thus, for example, the magnificent altar-piece in the brera gallery in milan, painted by piero della francesca about the year [ ], has, in the most conspicuous place in the foreground, a kneeling figure of the donor, duke federigo da montefeltro of urbino, which is actually larger in scale than the chief figures of the picture--the madonna and attendant angels. during the fourteenth century, both in altar-pictures and in manuscript illuminations, the portraits of living people are treated in a more subordinate way. _portrait of richard ii._ a fine example of portraiture in a manuscript is to be seen in the _epistre au roy richard ii. d'angleterre_ (brit. mus. _royal manuscripts_ b. vi) written by a hermit of the celestin order in paris. the upper half of the first page is occupied by an exquisite miniature of richard ii. on his throne, surrounded by courtiers, accepting the bound copy of the manuscript from the monastic author, who kneels on one knee, presenting his book with one hand, while in the other he holds a sacred banner embroidered with the agnus dei. the background is of the sumptuous chess-board pattern in gold, blue and red, and the whole page is surrounded with the so-called ivy-leaf border. _portraits of henry vi. and his queen._ the _shrewsbury manuscript_, containing a collection of chivalrous _romances_ (brit. mus. _royal manuscripts_ e vi), has another beautiful example of miniature portraiture. the first painting represents john talbot, earl of shrewsbury, for whom this interesting manuscript was illuminated, kneeling to present the book to queen margaret of anjou on the occasion of her marriage with henry vi. the king and queen are represented side by side on a double throne, and around is a group of courtier attendants. the kneeling figure of earl talbot is interesting for its costume; the mantle which the earl wears is powdered (semée) with small garters embroidered in gold; an early but now obsolete form of state robe worn by knights of the order of the garter. both these manuscripts, though executed for english patrons, are of french workmanship. some of the most magnificent manuscripts of the fifteenth century and earlier were, like lord lovel's _lectionary_, illuminated at the cost of some wealthy layman for the purpose of presentation to a cathedral or abbey church. in return for the gift the church often agreed to keep a yearly _obiit_ or annual mass for the donors soul, which in england was called "the years mind"; and this kind of gift thus often served to provide a "chantry" of a limited kind. _queen mary's prayer-book._ one of the finest examples of english manuscript art in the fourteenth century is a _psalter_ commonly known as "queen marys prayer-book". this exquisite manuscript, which is in the british museum, contains, before the _psalter_, a large number of miniatures of biblical scenes executed in outline, treated with delicate washes of transparent colour. the _psalter_ is illuminated in quite a different style, with brilliant gold and colours in all the miniatures and borders, which are painted with wonderful delicacy of touch, unsurpassed by the best french work. a _bestiary_ is introduced into the margins of the _psalter_; and at the end there are beautiful paintings of new testament scenes. the date of this book is c. ; in it was given to queen mary. _mss. of dan lydgate._ another english manuscript of special interest both for its text and its beautiful illuminations is a copy in the british museum of dan lydgate's _life of saint edmund_, which was written and illuminated in by a monk in the benedictine monastery at bury saint edmunds; it is an early and very beautiful example of a manuscript in the vulgar tongue. in style the illuminated borders are not unlike those in "queen mary's prayer-book." another very similar manuscript both in date and style was sold at the perkins sale, in june, , for £ [ ]. this is a magnificently illuminated folio of "the siege of troye compiled by dann john lydgate, monke of bury"; it contains seventy miniature paintings, chiefly of battle scenes, in which the combatants wear armour of the first half of the fifteenth century. the illuminated borders are of the boldly decorative english type mentioned above, and the miniatures are large in scale, in many cases extending across the whole width of the page with its double column of text. _woodcut initials._ in england the introduction of the art of printing in seems to have brought the illuminator's art to an end more quickly than was the case in continental countries. caxton's later books have printed initials[ ], instead of blank spaces left for the illuminator, as in most of the early printed books of germany, france and italy; and english book-buyers appear to have been soon satisfied with simple illustrations in the form of rather rudely executed woodcuts. the subjects represented in english miniatures are for the most part the same as those in contemporary french manuscripts; but the martyrdom of saint thomas of canterbury occurs more frequently in english than in any continental manuscripts[ ]. almost immediately after the event in this scene began to be represented; see above, page . _st george and the dragon._ another specially english subject is saint george, who was at first the crusaders' patron and then the national saint of england. he is usually represented as a knight on horseback slaying the dragon with a lance. this subject did not come into popular use till the fourteenth century[ ]. both in england and in france, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, manuscript _chronicles_ and _histories_ of both ancient and modern times formed a large and important class of manuscripts; and these were usually copiously illustrated with miniatures. the _chronicles_ of sir john froissart was justly a very favourite book on both sides of the channel[ ], and many richly illuminated manuscripts of it still exist; see below, page . _ms. chronicles._ the british museum possesses a magnificent manuscript of the _chronicles of england_ in seven large folio volumes, which were compiled and written at the command of edward iv. the miniatures which decorate this sumptuous work are partly anglo-norman and partly flemish, in the style of the school of the van eycks at bruges. one favourite form of _chronicle_, giving an abstract of the whole world's history, was in the shape of a long parchment roll, illuminated with miniatures in the form of circular medallions. some of these great rolls were written and illuminated by english miniaturists, but they appear not to have been as common in england as they were in france; see below, page . on these rolls the writing usually continues down the strip, not at right angles to the long sides, as on classical papyrus rolls. chapter ix. french manuscripts. _psalter of st louis._ during the thirteenth century "the art of illumination as it is called in paris"[ ] flourished under the saintly king louis ix. ( - ) as much as it did in england under henry iii. manuscripts of most exquisite beauty and refinement were produced in paris, in style little different from those of the anglo-norman school. one of the most beautiful and historically interesting is a _psalter_ (paris, _bibl. nat._) which is said to have been written for st louis about . this is a large folio, copiously illustrated with sacred subjects minutely painted on a ground of burnished gold enriched by tooling. many of the miniatures are framed in a beautiful architectural composition of cusped arches, with delicate open tracery supported by slender columns. _perfect finish._ fig. gives the bare design of one of the historiated initials in this lovely manuscript, the capital _b_ at the beginning of the psalms. in the upper part is the scene of david watching bathsheba bathing; and below is a kneeling figure of the king adoring christ in majesty. no reproduction can give any notion of the exquisitely delicate painting, or of the splendour of its burnished gold and colours. the historical scenes from the old testament have, after the usual fashion of the time, the hebrew warriors and their enemies represented as mediaeval knights in armour. [illustration: fig. . a page from the _psalter_ of saint louis, written about the year , by a french scribe.] _archaism of detail._ it should, however, be observed that in this and many other french and english miniatures of the time the ancient warriors are represented not in the armour of the actual date of the execution of the manuscript, but with the dress and arms of a couple of generations earlier. the monastic artists were not skilled archaeologists, but they wished to suggest that the scene they were painting was one that had happened long ago, and therefore they introduced what was probably the oldest armour they were acquainted with--that of their grandfathers' or great-grandfathers' time. this is an important point, as in many cases a wrong judgment has been formed as to the date of a manuscript from the mistaken supposition that contemporary dress and armour were represented in it. it is just the same with the thirteenth century art of england. paintings executed for henry iii. in his palace at westminster had representations of knights in the armour of william the conqueror's time or a little later. in later times, especially in the fifteenth century, this _naïve_ form of archaeology was given up, and the heroes of ancient and sacred history are represented exactly like kings and warriors of the artist's own time. _ms. bibles._ the historiated bibles of paris in the thirteenth century were equal in beauty and very similar in style to those of the anglo-norman miniaturists, but they do not appear to have been produced in such immense quantities as they were in the more northern monasteries. in the fifteenth century the influence of the church tended to check the study of the bible on the part of the laity, and very few manuscripts of the bible were then written. their place was to some extent taken by the _books of hours_, enormous numbers of which were produced in france and the netherlands, all through the fifteenth century; see page . _french illuminated manuscripts of the xivth and xvth centuries._ to this class belong a great many of the magnificent manuscripts of _the apocalypse_ which have been described under the head of anglo-norman manuscripts. no hard and fast line can be drawn between the manuscript styles of normandy and the northern provinces of france. _archaism of style._ in the fourteenth century paris and saint denis were important centres for the production of manuscripts of the most highly finished kind. historiated bibles, both in latin and in french, continued to be produced in great number till past the middle of the fourteenth century. some of these french translations, executed as late as , are what may be called archaistic in style; that is to say, the subjects selected and the method of their treatment and execution continued to be almost the same as that of the historiated _vulgates_ of france and normandy at the beginning of the century. the miniatures are very minute in scale, and are often painted on backgrounds of the brilliant chess-board and other diapers in red, blue and gold. though extremely decorative and beautiful, the miniatures of this class are not quite equal to those of the thirteenth century bibles, either in vigour of drawing or in delicacy of touch. _the ivy pattern._ on the whole, in the fourteenth century, the french schools of illumination were the finest in the world, and the manuscripts of northern france were the most sumptuously decorated of all. one specially beautiful style of ornament was introduced early in the century and lasted with little modification for more than a hundred years. this was the method of writing on a wide margined page, and then covering the broad marginal space by delicate flowing scrolls or curves of foliage, leaves and small blossoms of various shapes being used, but more especially one form of triple-pointed leaf which is known commonly as the "ivy" or "thorn-leaf pattern." brilliant effect is given to these rich borders by forming some of the leaves in burnished gold; and variety is given to the foliage by the introduction of minutely painted birds of many kinds, song-birds, game-birds and others, treated with much graceful realism[ ]. [illustration: fig. . miniature representing king conrad of bohemia, with an attendant, hawking; from a manuscript of the fourteenth century, showing the influence of french art.] fig. shows part of a border from a manuscript of this class, a _book of hours_ executed for the duke de berri; the typical pointed "ivy-leaves" grow from each of the quatrefoils which are introduced to hold the arms and initials of the owner. it comes from the same manuscript as the illumination shown in fig. . _decorative unity._ these elaborate borders are usually made to grow out of the ornaments of the illuminated initials in the text, and thus a sense of unity is given to the whole page, the decorations of which thus become, not an adjunct, but an essential part of the text. fig. shows a miniature from a french manuscript of this magnificent class, the _treasure-book_ of the abbey of origny in picardy, executed about for the abbess héloise. it contains fifty-four large miniatures of scenes from the life and martyrdom of saint benedicta. the shaded part of the border is of the richest burnished gold, and the whole effect is magnificently decorative. the scene represented is the murder of the saint, whose soul is being borne up to heaven by two angels, held in the usual conventional loop of drapery. _horae of the duc d'anjou._ as an example of this class of illumination we may mention the famous _book of hours_ of the duke of anjou (paris, _bibl. nat._) illuminated about the year . every page has a rich and delicate border covered with the ivy foliage[ ], and enlivened by exquisitely painted birds, such as the goldfinch, the thrush, the linnet, the jay, the quail, the sparrow-hawk and many others; and at the top of the page, at the beginning of each division of the _horae_, is a miniature picture of most perfect grace and beauty, the decorative value of which is enhanced by a background, either of gold diaper, or else of delicate scroll-work in light blue painted over a ground of deep ultramarine. enormous prices were frequently paid by wealthy patrons for sumptuously illuminated manuscripts, especially in the fifteenth century for _books of hours_. [illustration: fig. . scene of the martyrdom of saint benedicta from a _martyrology_ of about .] _horae of the duc de berri._ the paris library possesses (_bibl. nat._ lat. ) a very magnificent manuscript _horae_, which was painted for the duc de berri at the beginning of the century by a french miniaturist named jaquemart de odin. at the duke's death this _book of hours_ was valued at no less than four thousand livres tournois, equal in modern value to quite two thousand pounds. it is mentioned thus in the inventory of the duke's personal property, _item, unes tres belles heures tres richement enluminees et hystoriees de la main de jaquemart de odin...._ like all books of this class, specially painted for a distinguished person, the arms and badges of the owner are introduced among the foliated ornaments of the borders of many pages; as the inventory states, _par les quarrefors des feuilles en plusieurs lieux faictes des armes et devises_[ ]. fig. shows part of a page from this lovely book, with a miniature of the birth of the virgin, painted by jacquemart de odin, within a beautiful architectural framing of the finest style. space will not allow any attempt to describe even in outline the many splendid classes of illuminated manuscripts which were produced by the french artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. a few notable points only can be briefly mentioned. _architectural framing._ one special beauty of french illumination of this date is due to the exquisite treatment of architectural frames and backgrounds which are used to enshrine the whole picture. the loveliest gothic forms are introduced, with the most delicate detail of tracery, pinnacles, canopy-work, shafts and arches, all being frequently executed in gold with subtle transparent shading to give an effect of relief. from the technical point of view these manuscripts reach the highest pitch of perfection; the burnished gold is thick and solid in appearance, and is convex in surface so as to catch high lights, and look, not like gold leaf, but like actual plates of the purest and most polished gold[ ]. the pigments are of the most brilliant colours, so skilfully prepared and applied that they are able to defy the power of time to change their hue or even dim their splendour. [illustration: fig. . miniature of the birth of the virgin painted by the illuminator jacquemart de odin for the duc de berri. the border is of the characteristic french and franco-flemish style; see fig. on page .] _survival of style._ another noticeable point about the french and franco-flemish illumination is the manner in which certain modes of decoration survived with very little alteration for more than a century. thus we find the blue, red and gold diapers used for backgrounds, and the ivy-leaf pattern and its varieties[ ], which had been fully developed before the middle of the fourteenth century, still surviving in manuscripts of the second half of the fifteenth century, and continuing in use till the growing decadence of taste caused them to be superseded by borders and backgrounds painted in a naturalistic rather than a decorative manner[ ]. _costly horae._ the franco-flemish manuscripts of the fifteenth century were in some cases remarkable for the amazing amount of laborious illumination and the enormous number of miniatures which they contain. some of these, which were executed for royal or princely patrons and liberal paymasters, engaged the incessant labour of the illuminator for many years. in these cases he was usually paid a regular salary, and so was relieved from the incentive to hasty work which caused so much inferior illumination to be produced in the fifteenth century. _the bedford breviary._ one of the most famous examples of this lavish expenditure of time on one book is the _breviary_ of the duke of bedford, who was regent of france from to [ ]. this wonderful manuscript, in addition to countless elaborate initials, and borders round every page, contains more than miniature paintings, all delicately and richly executed in burnished gold and brilliant colours, with backgrounds, in many cases, of the fourteenth century type, with chess-board patterns and other diapers of the most elaborate and sumptuous kind. the figures are of the finest franco-flemish style, showing the influence of the van eycks, who were then becoming the most skilful painters, technically at least, in the world. _the bedford missal._ another no less famous manuscript is the _bedford missal_ in the british museum, which was painted for the duke of bedford, and was presented by his wife to henry vi. of england, when he was crowned king of france in paris in the year . the _bedford missal_ contains no less than fifty-nine large miniatures and about a thousand smaller ones, not counting initials and borders. one point of special interest about this gorgeous manuscript is that the illuminations have evidently been executed by at least three different miniaturists, who represent three different schools, the parisian-french, the franco-flemish and the english. _mss. by various hands._ it is by no means uncommon to find the work of several different illuminators in one manuscript. naturally, when a wealthy patron ordered a magnificent book, he was not always willing to wait several years for its completion, as must have been necessary when the whole of a sumptuous manuscript was the work of one man. again, it was not an uncommon thing for unfinished manuscripts to be sent to bruges, ghent and other centres of the illuminator's art from various distant towns and countries, especially from france, italy and spain, in order that they might be decorated with borders and miniatures by one of the flemish miniaturists. in some cases it was only the miniature subjects which were left blank; so that we have the text with the illuminated borders and initials executed in the style of one country, while the miniatures are of another quite different school. moreover, we find from the guild records of bruges that a certain number of italian and spanish scribes had taken up their residence in bruges, and become members of the guild of saint john and saint luke, so that some manuscripts actually written in flanders have a text which in style is italian or spanish. various other combinations of style occur not unfrequently. many english manuscripts, for example, have miniature paintings which are french or flemish in style, united with bold decorative borders of the most thoroughly english type. _mss. in grisaille._ _manuscripts in grisaille._ in addition to the illuminations glowing with gold and colour of jewel-like brilliance, a peculiar class of miniature painting came into use in france during the fourteenth century and to some extent lasted till the close of the fifteenth. this was a system of almost monochromatic painting in delicate bluish grey tints with high lights touched in with white or fluid gold; this is called painting in _grisaille_ or _camaieu-gris_[ ]; it frequently suggests the appearance of an onyx _cameo_ or other delicate relief. the earliest examples of _grisaille_, dating from the first half of the fourteenth century, sometimes have grounds of the brilliant gold, red and blue diapers, the figures themselves being painted in _grisaille_; but in its fully developed form no accessories of colour are used, and no burnished gold is introduced, only the _mat_, glossless fluid gold being used in some cases for the high lights. _delicacy of grisaille._ some of the miniatures of this class are extremely beautiful for the delicacy of their modelling and the great refinement of the design, and are evidently the work of artists of the highest class. this system of illumination, being unaided by the splendours of shining gold and bright colours, requires a rather special delicacy of treatment, and was of course quite unsuited for the cheap and gaudy manuscripts which were mere commercial products. in some cases the _grisaille_ pictures are clearly the work of a different hand from the rest of the book, and thus we sometimes see them combined with richly illuminated initials and ivy-leaf borders of the usual gorgeously coloured type. in some late manuscripts the _grisaille_ miniatures are distinctly intended to imitate actual bas-reliefs, and are painted with deceptive effects of roundness. this led to the introduction into manuscript ornaments of imitations of classical reliefs of gilt bronze or veined marbles, such as occur so often in the very sculpturesque paintings of the great paduan, andrea mantegna. _secular mss._ till the early part of the fourteenth century the art of the illuminator had been mostly devoted to books on sacred subjects, but at this time manuscripts of _chronicles_, accounts of _travel_, _romances_ and other secular works, often in the vulgar tongue, were largely written and illuminated in the most sumptuous way, especially for the royal personages of france and burgundy. philip the bold of burgundy, who died in , was an enthusiastic patron of literature and of the miniaturists art; as was also charles v. of france ( - ). a typical example of this school of manuscripts is a magnificent folio, formerly in the perkins collection[ ], of _les cent histoires de troye_, a composition in prose and verse written by christina of pisa[ ] about . this magnificent volume contains one hundred and fifteen delicately executed miniatures, the first of which represents christina presenting her book to philip of burgundy. _interesting details._ these miniatures and others of the same class are very interesting for their accurate representations of contemporary life and customs. the costumes, the internal fittings and furniture of rooms, views in the streets and in the country, feasts, tournaments, the king amidst his courtiers, scenes in the court of justice, and countless other subjects are represented with much minuteness of detail and great realistic truth. we have in fact in the miniatures of this class of manuscripts the first beginning of an early school of _genre_ painting, which in its poetic feeling and sense of real beauty ranks far higher than the ignoble realism of the later dutch painters. _ms. chronicles._ one rather abnormal class of manuscript, which belongs both to this period and the following (the fifteenth) century, consists of french or latin _chronicles of the world_ beginning with the creation and reaching down to recent times, written and illuminated with numerous miniature paintings on great rolls of parchment, often measuring from fifty to sixty feet in length. these are usually rather coarse in execution. sir john froissart's _chronicles_, and their continuation from the year by enguerrand de monstrelet, were favourite manuscripts for sumptuous illumination among the courtier class both of france and england. _ms. travels._ among the many illuminated books of travel which were produced during the latter part of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries one noble example in the paris library may be selected as a typical example. this is a large folio manuscript entitled _les merveilles du monde_, containing accounts in french of the travels of sir john mandeville, marco polo and others. this manuscript was written about the year for the duke of burgundy and was given by him to his uncle the duc de berri. its numerous miniatures are very delicate and graceful, of elaborate pictorial style, with views of landscapes and carefully painted buildings, street scenes and other realistic backgrounds to the figure subjects, all executed with great patience and much artistic feeling. the richly illuminated borders to the text are filled with elaborate foliage, in which real and conventional forms are mingled with fine decorative results. _ms. poems._ in the fourteenth century the growing love for national poetry and the more widely spread ability to read and write, which in previous centuries had been mostly confined to ecclesiastics, led to the production of a large number of illuminated manuscripts of works such as the _quest of the holy grail_, including the whole series of the _chansons de geste_ with the lancelot and arturian romances, the _roman de la rose_, one of the most popular productions of the fourteenth century, and a whole class of _fabliaux_ or short stories in verse dealing with subjects of chivalrous and romantic character. romances based on ancient history and mythology, such as _les cent histoires de troye_ written by christina of pisa[ ] about - , became very popular among the knightly courtiers of the rulers of france and burgundy[ ]. in manuscripts of this class the miniature illuminations play a very important part, and give great scope to the fancy and skill of the illuminator. _italian influence._ in southern france the style of manuscript illumination differed a good deal from that of the northern provinces. during the fourteenth century there was a considerable strain of italian influence, partly due to the establishment of the papal court at avignon, and the introduction there of simone martini or memmi, and other painters from florence and siena, to decorate the walls of the pope's palace[ ]. on the whole, however, manuscripts were not produced in such abundance or with such skill in southern france as they were in the north. paris, burgundy and the french districts of flanders were the chief homes of the illuminator's art. _secular miniaturists._ by this time the production of illuminated manuscripts ceased to be almost wholly in the hands of monastic scribes, as it had been in earlier days when manuscripts dealing with profane subjects were scarcely known. in paris, brussels, antwerp, bruges, ghent, arras and other french and flemish cities, large classes of secular writers and illuminators of manuscripts grew up, and special guilds of illuminators were formed, exactly like the guilds of other arts and crafts[ ]. before long this great extension of the art of illumination, and the fact that it became a trade, a method of earning a livelihood, like any other craft, led to a serious decadence in the art. though wealthy patrons were able to pay large prices for richly illuminated manuscripts, thus keeping up the production of very elaborate and artistically valuable works of miniature art, yet the practical result was a growing decadence of style and workmanship. _decay of the art._ no illuminator working mainly for a money reward could possibly rival the marvellous productions of the earlier monastic scribes, who, labouring for the glory of god, and the credit to be won for themselves and for their monasteries, could devote years of patient toil to the illumination of one book, free from all sense of hurry, and finding in their work the chief joy and relaxation of their lives[ ]. in most even of the best productions of the guild-scribes of the fifteenth century one sees occasional signs of weariness and haste; and in the cheap manuscripts, which were turned out by the thousand in france and flanders during the latter part of the fifteenth century, there is a coarseness of touch and a mechanical monotony of style, which remind one of the artistic results of the triumphant commercialism of the nineteenth century. _cheap mss._ it is more especially in the cheap _books of hours_ of the second half of the fifteenth century that the lowest artistic level is reached in france, flanders and holland. education had gradually been extended among various classes of laymen, and by the middle of the fifteenth century it appears to have been usual not only for all men above the rank of artisans to be able to read, but even women of the wealthy bourgeois class could make use of prayer-books. hence arose a great demand for pictured _books of hours_[ ], which appear to have been produced in enormous quantities by the trade-scribes of towns such as bruges, paris and many others. these common manuscript _horae_ are monotonous in form and detail; they nearly always have the same set of miniatures, which are often coarse in detail and harsh in colour; and the illuminated borders, with which they are lavishly though cheaply decorated, have the same forms of foliage and fruit repeated again and again in dozens of manuscripts, which all look as if they had come out of the same workshop. [illustration: fig. . miniature executed for king rené of anjou about .] it must not however be supposed that all the later french manuscripts, even of the latter half of the fifteenth century, were of this inferior class. though the best figure painting was far inferior to the glorious miniatures in the _apocalypses_ of the fourteenth century, yet in their own way, as pictorial rather than decorative illustrations, the french miniatures of this date are often very remarkable for their beauty, their refinement and their interesting and very elaborate details. _king rené's romance._ some very fine manuscript illuminations of the highly pictorial type were executed for king rené of anjou, who died in . fig. shows a good example of this, with a carefully painted landscape background, one of sixteen fine miniatures in a manuscript of the _roman de la très douce mercy du cueur damour épris_, one of the poetical and allegorical romances which were then so popular in france. this miniature represents the meeting of the knight _humble requeste_ with the squire _vif désir_. this manuscript is now at vienna, in the imperial library, no. . _beauty of fruit and flowers._ the illuminated borders are also not unfrequently of very great merit and high decorative value; they are formed of rich and fanciful combinations of various plants and flowers, treated at first with just the due amount of conventionalism, but tending, towards the end of the fifteenth century, to an excessive and too pictorial realism. as late as the middle of the fifteenth century the "ivy pattern" of the previous century survived with little modification, and very beautiful borders occur with branches of the vine, the oak, the maple and other trees, together with a great variety of flowers, such as the rose, the daisy, the columbine, the clove-pink or carnation, the pansy, the lily, the iris or blue flag, the cornflower, the anemone, the violet, the thistle; and with many kinds of fruit, especially the grape, the strawberry, the pomegranate and the mulberry. among this wealth of fruit and foliage, variety is given by the introduction of birds, insects, animals, and grotesque monsters half beast and half human, or else living figures growing out of flower blossoms, all designed with much graceful fancy and decorative beauty. _later style._ _imitation of relief._ towards the close of the fifteenth century one skilfully treated but less meritorious style of illuminated border became very common in france and flanders. this consisted of isolated objects, such as sprigs of various kinds of flowers and fruits, especially strawberries, together with butterflies and other insects, shells, reptiles and the like scattered over the margin of the page, very frequently on a background of dull fluid gold[ ]. a deceptive effect of relief is commonly attempted by the painting of strong shadows, as if each object were lying on the gold ground and casting its shadow on the flat surface. this attempt at relief of course marks a great decadence of taste, and yet it occurs in manuscripts which show much artistic feeling and great technical skill; as, for example, in the magnificent grimani _breviary_, mentioned below at p. , see fig. . _use of fluid gold._ in french and flemish miniatures of this period, gold, applied with a brush, is often used to touch in the high lights, not only in the _grisaille_ miniatures, but also in paintings with brilliant pigments, much in the same way as in the umbrian and florentine pictures of contemporary date. many manuscripts of the early part of the sixteenth century have elaborate architectural borders, consisting of tiers of canopied niches containing statuettes, all executed in fluid, _mat_ gold. _harsh colours._ the use of a very harsh emerald green is characteristic of this period of decadence in france and in flanders; and generally there is a want of harmony of colour in the miniatures of this time, in which gaudiness rather than real splendour gradually becomes the main characteristic. _renaissance style._ at the end of the fifteenth century the influence of the classical renaissance of art in italy began to affect the french manuscript illuminations, and especially those by parisian miniaturists. the introduction of architectural forms of italian classic style into the backgrounds of miniatures was the first sign of this, examples of which occur as early as the year or . fig. shows a characteristic example of a french miniature executed under italian influence. this is a scene of the marriage of the b. v. mary to the elderly joseph, who holds in his hand the dry rod which had blossomed. one of the unsuccessful suitors is breaking his rod across his knee, as in raphael's early _sposalizio_ in the brera gallery at milan. [illustration: fig. . miniature of the marriage of the b. v. mary from a french manuscript of about , with details in the style of the italian renaissance.] _horae of jehan foucquet._ the painting represented in fig. is from a manuscript _book of hours_ illuminated by the famous miniaturist jehan foucquet of tours, whose services were secured by louis xi. from to . this manuscript _horae_, which has been horribly mutilated, the miniatures being cut out of the text, was originally executed for maître etienne chevalier. foucquet and other french illuminators of his time were largely influenced not only by italian art, but also by the flemish school of miniaturists who were followers of memlinc and rogier van der weyden; but by the end of the fifteenth century the italian influence reigned supreme and soon destroyed all remaining traces of the older mediaeval or gothic style. fig. shows part of a border from the same ms. that is illustrated in fig. on page . [illustration: fig. . border illumination from a _book of hours_ by jacquemart de odin; see fig. .] chapter x. printed books with painted illuminations. during the last few years of the fifteenth century and the first twenty or thirty years of the sixteenth century paris was remarkable for the production of a beautiful class of books which form a link between printed books and illuminated manuscripts. _paris horae on vellum._ _effect of colouring._ these are the numerous _books of hours_ printed on vellum, richly decorated with wood-cut[ ] borders and pictures, and frequently illuminated by painting in gold and opaque colours over the engravings. one of the earliest of these vellum-printed _horae_ was produced by pigouchet for the bookseller simon vostre in [ ]; the pictures and borders are very simply treated in broad outline, which the illuminator was meant to fill in with colour, aided only in the general design by the wood-cut[ ]. in pigouchet began to execute for s. vostre _books of hours_ of quite a different and still finer style, with engravings of the most exquisite beauty of design and delicacy of detail, perfect masterpieces of the engraver's art. the decorative borders in these lovely books have dotted (_criblée_) backgrounds, and the whole effect, though merely in black and white, is rich and decorative in the highest degree. the comparatively coarse touch of the illuminator ruins the beauty of these _horae_; but luckily a good many copies have escaped this tasteless treatment, which must have appealed only to a very ignorant love of gold and gaudy colour on the part of the purchasers. _decadence of style._ in the early part of the sixteenth century immense numbers and varieties of these vellum-printed _horae_[ ] were issued by pigouchet and vostre, antoine verard[ ], thielman kerver and his widow, the brothers hardouyn, and other paris printers and publishers. the cuts from the earlier, fifteenth century editions[ ], were reproduced, and a great number of new ones were cut; but after the year there was a most rapid deterioration of style. even between the cuts of and those of a very marked change for the worse is apparent, the fine mediaeval french style being replaced by somewhat feeble imitations of the works of the italian renaissance. these parisian prayer-books gradually superseded the coarse manuscript _horae_ which were still produced in the early part of the sixteenth century; and the latest examples of these vellum-printed books, the work of geoffroi tory and others as late as , came to be sold without any assistance from the hand, one can hardly say the art, of the illuminator in his extreme decadence. _latest decadence._ in a feeble way the art of writing and illuminating manuscripts, as a sort of plaything for the wealthy, lingered on in paris till the seventeenth century. an illuminated _book of hours_ (_office de la sainte vierge_), with four miniatures and many floriated head-pieces of very minute workmanship, which was in the perkins collection[ ], is signed _n. jarry parisinus scribebat_, . other elaborate examples of nicholas jarry's work exist in the paris library, mostly painted in _grisaille_. _early printing._ _the mentz psalter._ a few words on the connection between early printing and the art of manuscript illumination may not here be out of place. the inventors of printing, gutenberg, fust and schoeffer, appear to have had no idea of producing cheap books by their new art, but that for a fixed sum they could produce a more magnificent and beautiful book than a scribe could for the same price. such a finished masterpiece of art as the _mazarine bible_, issued by gutenberg in the year , was not sold at a lower rate than the price of a manuscript bible; but it was cheaper than a manuscript of equal splendour. so also very few scribes of the fifteenth century could with the utmost labour have produced such a marvel of beauty as the _mentz psalter_ of , printed on the finest vellum and illuminated with large initials printed in blue and red--perfect marvels of technical skill in the perfect fit of the two colours, or _registration_ as it is now called[ ]. it is not known at what price this magnificent psalter was originally sold, but existing records show that copies of the _vulgate_ produced in at mentz by the same printers, fust and schoeffer, were sold in paris for no less than sixty gold crowns, equal in modern value to double that number of sovereigns. _illumination and printing._ _the various arts of the printer._ for this reason, as beauty rather than cheapness was aimed at by the inventors of printing, they left spaces for the introduction of richly illuminated and historiated initials, which were frequently inserted by the most skilful miniaturists of the time. thus the art of printing and illumination for more than half a century walked hand in hand. some of the earliest printers had originally been illuminators of manuscripts, as, for example, peter schoeffer de gernsheim[ ], mentelin of strasburg, bämler of augsburg and many others[ ]. the workshop of an early printer included not only compositors and printers, but also cutters and founders of type, illuminators of borders and initials, and skilful binders who could cover books with various qualities and kinds of binding[ ]. a purchaser in gutenberg's shop having bought, for example, his magnificent bible[ ] in loose sheets would then have been asked what style of illumination or rubrication he was prepared to pay for, and then what kind of binding and how many brass bosses and clasps he wished to have[ ]. _early italian printing._ in central and northern italy especially, the printed books of the fifteenth and first decade of the sixteenth century were decorated with illuminations of the most beautiful kind. books printed in venice about - by nicolas jenson of paris and vendelin of spires, and florentine books, even of a few years later date, frequently contain masterpieces of the illuminator's art. the magnificent lorenzo de' medici and others of his family were liberal patrons of this class of work; as were also many of the venetian doges and prelates, especially various members of the grimani family. _early colophons._ there are no grounds whatever for the belief that the early printed books were passed off as manuscripts, or that fust was accused of having multiplied books by magical arts. the early printers usually inserted a statement in their _colophon_ to the effect that the book was produced "without the aid of a pen (either of reed, quill or bronze), by a new and complicated invention of printing characters." many different varieties of this statement occur. in the mentz _psalter_ printed by fust and schoeffer in the printer's statement at the end is, _presens psalmorum codex venustate capitalium decoratus, rubricationibusque sufficienter distinctus, adinvencione artificiosa imprimendi ac characterizandi; absque ulla calami exaracione sic effigiatus et ad laudem dei...._ in the mentz _catholicon_ of the phrase is used, _non calami, stili aut penne suffragio...._ it was not till about half a century after the invention of printing that the new art grew into an important means for the increase of knowledge through the copious production of cheap books. _aldine books._ no other typographer did so much for the advancement of learning as aldus manutius, a venetian scholar and printer, who, in the year , initiated a new and cheaper form of book by the printing of his virgil in small mo. size, with a new and more compact form of character, now commonly known as the _italic_ type[ ]. as aldus records in three verses at the beginning of the virgil, the new italic fount of type was designed and cut by francesco francia, the famous bolognese painter, goldsmith and die-cutter. these small _italic_ books of aldus were not all intended for sale at a low rate; many copies exist which are magnificently illuminated, and some are even printed on vellum. the issue of the cheaper aldine classics gave the death-blow to the illuminator's art, which the early large and costly printed folios had done little or nothing to supersede. _wood-cuts in mss._ it should also be noticed that half a century before the invention of printing with moveable types, quite at the beginning of the fifteenth or towards the close of the fourteenth century, some few manuscripts of a cheap and inferior sort had their miniature illustrations not drawn by hand, but printed from rudely cut wood-blocks. these prints were afterwards coloured by hand. manuscripts of this class are very rare, and are now chiefly of value as supplying the earliest known european examples of wood engraving[ ]. one of the most notable examples of these manuscripts illustrated with wood-cuts is described by mr quaritch in his catalogue no. of [ ]. this is a south-german manuscript of about the year , containing certain pious _weekly meditations_ written on leaves of coarse vellum; throughout the manuscript text are scattered wood-cuts of saints and prophets, with biblical and other sacred scenes, averaging in size three inches by two inches and a quarter. these miniature designs are all richly illuminated with gold and colours; some of them have names and other inscriptions forming part of the engraved block. _block-books._ this method of combining printing and manuscript very soon led to the next stage, that of _xylographic_ printing or "block-books"; in which not only the illustrations but the text itself was cut on blocks of wood and printed like the wood-cut pictures; each page occupying a separate plank of wood[ ]. these block-book illustrations were coloured by hand in a very decorative and effective way, very superior to the coarse gaudy painting in opaque pigments with which the parisian illuminators so often spoilt the exquisite miniatures and the borders in the vellum-printed _horae_. the block-books are not painted over with _opaque_ pigment, but delicately washed in with _transparent_ tints, without obliterating the outlines of the printed pictures, which, though simple and even rude in treatment, are often full of real beauty and great decorative charm[ ]. _illumination and printing._ thus we see that as early as about the year the printer's art had begun to supplement that of the manuscript illuminator[ ]; and the two arts continued to work, as it were, hand in hand till after the close of the fifteenth century when the illumination of manuscripts ceased to be a real living art and gradually degenerated into a mere appendage to individual pomp and luxury. chapter xi. illuminated manuscripts of the teutonic school after the tenth century. _german mss. of the xith century._ though in the main the eleventh century was a period of artistic decadence, mentioned above as having succeeded the brilliant carolingian period (see page ), yet we find that in certain places in germany there was a very distinct beginning of artistic revival, especially in the illumination of manuscripts, about the middle of the eleventh century and even earlier. a school of magnificently decorative art began then to be developed, and though the drawing of the human figure was still weak, yet effects of the noblest decorative character were produced by manuscript illuminators, foreshadowing that marvellous climax of manuscript art which was reached in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. _missal of henry ii._ fig. shows a sumptuously decorative page from an eleventh century manuscript _missal_ which was executed for the emperor henry ii. (now in the munich library). on a brilliant diapered background in gold, red and blue, a standing figure of the emperor is crowned by christ, who sits within a _vesica_ aureole. the emperor receives from two angels the great cross standard of the empire and a sword. his arms are supported by a saint on each side, saints ulrich and emmeram. the whole page is a superb piece of decoration, and is specially interesting because illuminations of this type were evidently used by the earliest painters of stained glass windows to supply them with designs. [illustration: fig. . a page from the _missal_ of the emperor henry ii.] fig. illustrates a stained glass figure of king david, one of five lancet-windows from the cathedral of augsburg, executed about , when the church was consecrated, and probably about the oldest existing example of a figure in stained glass. the manuscript-like type of the design is very evident. [illustration: fig. . figure of king david from a stained glass window in the cathedral of augsburg, dating from .] _gospels of the xith century._ fig. is from a magnificently decorated book of the _gospels_, executed in the eleventh century for uota, abbess of the convent of niedermünster, at ratisbon, in the reign of the emperor henry ii. the whole page is a superbly decorative composition; in the centre is a crucifixion with figures of life and death at the foot of the cross. in the lower angles are minute paintings of the rent veil of the temple, and the opened sepulchres; above, at the sides, are symbolical figures of the church and the synagogue, or grace and law. at the upper angles are the sun and moon veiling their faces before the passion of christ. graceful scroll foliage, of the oriental textile type, fills in the spandrels. [illustration: fig. . miniature from an eleventh century manuscript of the _gospels_, by a german illuminator.] _revival of art._ in the twelfth century the revival of manuscript art in germany progressed with great rapidity, and an immense number of magnificently illuminated manuscripts were produced, especially in the chief benedictine monasteries, which had always been the principal homes of learning and the chief centres of the illuminator's art in germany as in other european countries[ ]. _grotesque forms._ frederic i. (barbarossa), b. -d. , imitated the example of charles the great in his patronage of art and especially of the art of the illuminator. the manuscripts of his time are remarkable for the richness and fancy of their twining masses of conventional foliage, mingled with dragons, monkeys, human forms and monsters of all kinds, designed with extreme beauty in their strong sweeping curves and coloured with brilliant and yet harmonious tints in a superbly decorative way. though the figure drawing of the illuminators had not reached the perfection which was attained a century later, yet in point of decorative ornament nothing could surpass the best german manuscripts of the twelfth century[ ]. figs. and give good examples of the illuminations of this date. [illustration: fig. . an initial s, illuminated with foliage of the northumbrian type, from a german manuscript of the twelfth century.] [illustration: fig. . miniature of the annunciation from a german manuscript of the beginning of the thirteenth century.] [illustration: fig. . page of a kalendar from a german _psalter_ of about a.d.] fig. shows a fine initial s formed out of a winged dragon, and ornamented with conventional foliage of the noblest type. this initial shows the surviving celtic or rather northumbrian influence, which in the time of charles the great had been so important in the german empire. _painting of the annunciation._ fig. illustrates a miniature of the annunciation from a fine manuscript _evangeliarium_ or book of the _gospels_, which is now in the library at carlsruhe. the drawing, though stiff in pose, is noble in style; and the whole miniature, with its graceful scroll-work background, is of high decorative value, a prototype of the perfect style of the french and anglo-norman illuminations of the second half of the thirteenth century. in this painting, as in many other manuscripts of early date, the b. v. mary is represented as occupied in spinning with a distaff while the angel gabriel approaches to announce the birth of the messiah. _page of a kalendar._ fig. shows a very beautifully designed page of the kalendar at the beginning of a _psalter_ executed about the year for the landgrave of thüringen. on the left is the space in which the scribe inserted the days of the months, and on the right is a noble and gracefully drawn figure of saint matthew. the interlaced foliage of the initial k is of characteristic german type. fig. shows a very elaborate and graceful initial y, from another manuscript of the same date, decorated by a vine-plant from which a youth is gathering grapes, while a monkey, sitting in the branches, is eating some of the fruit. the whole design is a masterpiece of decorative beauty, elaborately worked out in gold and colours. _mural paintings._ the fine _mural paintings_ of this date are frequently identical in style and design with pages from illuminated manuscripts. this is most remarkably the case with the late twelfth century paintings on the walls and vault of the church of st michael at hildesheim; in which the figures, the conventional foliage and the general arrangement of the whole have evidently been copied from manuscript illuminations[ ]. _vault of st michael's._ fig. shows a striking example of this, painted about on the vault of saint michael's. the whole treatment of this grandly decorative painting is precisely like that of the page of an illuminated book. [illustration: fig. . initial y from a german manuscript of the beginning of the thirteenth century, with a most graceful and fanciful combination of figures and foliage.] _the fall of man._ in the centre is the fall of man in a medallion frame with a conventionally treated tree on each side; all round are smaller paintings, including the great rivers of paradise and the jordan, two evangelists and their symbols, with a series of medallion busts of old testament saints linked together by scroll-work of foliage exactly like that in illuminations of contemporary date. [illustration: fig. . paintings on the vault of the church of st michael at hildesheim, closely resembling in style an illuminated page in a manuscript.] the german manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth century are less purely national in style. the finest illuminations of this date show in some cases a marked french influence, and, especially during the fourteenth century, a strong italian influence was prevalent. _ms. of the xivth century._ fig. gives a good example of this from a manuscript _passionale_, written in for the abbess of the convent of st george at prague. the figures in this manuscript resemble those in some of the florentine illuminated manuscripts of dante's _divina commedia_, executed about to . the subject of the miniatures shown in fig. is a romantic story of a bride who was carried off by brigands and flung into a blazing furnace, from which, by the aid of the b. v. mary, she was rescued unhurt by the knight, her husband. _school of the van eycks._ in the fifteenth century an important development of teutonic art took place under the van eycks and their pupils. in flanders, especially in bruges, antwerp and ghent, a very elaborate and beautiful class of illumination was produced, in some respects different in style from the franco-flemish school of art. _school of memlinc._ in the latter part of the century magnificent manuscripts were produced by illuminators of the memlinc and van der weyden school, such as the famous grimani _breviary_ in the venetian ducal library, so-called from its having been bought from a sicilian dealer in for gold ducats by cardinal grimani, a member of the venetian grimani family, who were liberal patrons of this class of art; this sum was quite equal to £ in modern value. the miniatures in this manuscript were ascribed by the dealer to hans memlinc, gérard of bruges and lieven of antwerp; they were probably by the two latter illuminators, not by memlinc, who died in or . [illustration: fig. . miniatures of italian style from a german manuscript of , showing the influence of florentine art on the illuminations of southern france.] _gérard david._ _the horae of prince albert._ gérard or gheeraert of bruges was a native of oudewater in holland; he was born about the middle of the fifteenth century, and settled in bruges in the year , when he became a member of the guild of saint john and saint luke, to which all painters and manuscript illuminators were obliged to belong. gérard took the surname of david, and became a famous painter of triptychs and altar-pieces, as well as a skilful illuminator of manuscripts. many fine panel-paintings by him still exist in bruges and elsewhere[ ]. there are also several fine manuscripts with miniatures by his hand in addition to those in the grimani _breviary_. among these are two _books of hours_ in the collection of the late baron anselm rothschild of vienna, and another manuscript _horae_, which was written and illuminated for the cardinal prince albert, elector of brandenburg, who was consecrated archbishop of magdeburg in the year at the age of twenty-three. an interesting monograph, with photographic reproductions of the miniatures, was written by mr w. h. j. weale for mr f. s. ellis, the owner of the manuscript. this lovely manuscript is almost equal in beauty to the grimani _breviary_; it is rather later in date, having been illuminated between and . _the grimani breviary._ the miniatures in the sumptuous grimani _breviary_, which dates from the latter years of the fifteenth century, probably about , are very pictorial in style, with figures which are larger than usual, proportionally to the size of the page. in some of the miniatures the figures are shown only in half length, so that the elaborately finished heads are painted to a large scale. the borders which surround the pages, enclosing both text and miniatures, are of the franco-flemish style, with realistic flowers, fruit, insects and the like, scattered over a flat gold ground, as is described above at page . the butterflies, dragon-flies, strawberries, irises and lilies are perfect marvels of naturalistic skill and beauty. _the month of april._ _the grimani breviary._ fig. illustrates one of the miniatures in the grimani _breviary_; it is one of the lovely series representing the characteristic occupations of the twelve months in the kalendar, which commonly occur as small pictures at the tops of pages in manuscript kalendars of the fifteenth century, but in this exceptionally magnificent book are full page miniatures. the one copied in fig. represents the month of april, a time for love-making and out-door parties of pleasure; here illustrated by a most beautiful and dignified group of ladies and gentlemen, enlivened by the humour of the scene in the left-hand corner, with a little dog barking jealously at another pet dog which is being petted on a lady's lap. [illustration: fig. . miniature symbolizing the month of april from the kalendar of the grimani _breviary_, executed about .] the background, with trees and cathedral spires like those of antwerp or malines, is specially beautiful and highly finished. though marvels of minute and beautiful workmanship these late teutonic manuscripts belong to a period of decadence. as has already been remarked, neither in poetic feeling nor in decorative value do they approach the masterpieces of french art during the fourteenth century. _horae of king rené._ fig. shows a page from a _book of hours_ (paris, _bibl. nat. lat._ , ) which was illuminated for king rené ii. of lorraine ( to ). the figure of the virgin shows the influence of italian art, which about this time, , was largely modifying and adding grace to the paintings of flanders. the border, with lupines or vetch-plant realistically painted on a gold ground, is a good typical specimen of the style. _horae of anne of brittany._ the famous _prayer-book of anne of brittany_, painted about , after her second marriage to louis xii., is a work of the same magnificent style, with an immense variety of the most exquisitely painted fruits and flowers treated with the most minute realism. it is now in the paris library[ ]. fig. gives a page from a magnificent _book of hours_ in the imperial library of vienna (no. ); the miniatures in which are of the finest teutonic type, in some cases suggesting the school of van der weyden, and in others that of hans memlinc. the conventional scroll-work of foliage with long serrated leaves in the border is very characteristic of the german and dutch manuscripts of the fifteenth century. [illustration: fig. . a page from the _book of hours_ of king rené, painted about .] [illustration: fig. . a page from a _book of hours_ at vienna, of the finest flemish style.] _technical methods._ in some cases this foliage is painted with fluid gold; the high lights being touched in with white, and the shadows with a _grisaille_ blue. another beautiful style of decoration in manuscripts of this class has conventional flower forms painted in transparent lake with white lights over a sheet of burnished gold. the skilful use of gold both in the pigment form, and in leaf on a raised enamel-like ground, is specially characteristic of german and dutch manuscripts of the fifteenth century. in some manuscripts very beautiful borders are executed in delicate scroll-work with fine lines and dots, all of burnished gold, the effect of which is very magnificent. the borders and long marginal ornaments, which grow out of the large illuminated initials, are often diversified with figures of a naturalistic or grotesque type, devised with greater fancy and variety than the similar figures of the same sort which occur in so many french manuscripts. _ms. of the emperor wenzel._ fig. shows a beautiful example of this, which dates from the last years of the fourteenth century, c. . it is an ornament at the foot of one of the pages in a manuscript which was illuminated for the emperor wenzel of bohemia. two scenes, a prisoner in the stocks, and a man being bathed by two attendant girls, are placed in the centre of the grand sweeping lines of foliage. the backgrounds with their delicate scroll-work and diaper patterns are imitated from those in the fine french and anglo-norman manuscripts of the earlier part of the fourteenth century. in some marginal illuminations, miniature figures of knights jousting are introduced charging through the scrolls of foliage; and angels gracefully drawn are very frequently introduced into the elaborate borders, as is shown on fig. . _grotesque figures._ grotesque figures were great favourites with the teutonic illuminators; devils and monkeys, pigmies fighting cranes, or strange monsters made up (like the roman _grylli_) of several animals and birds united, are of frequent occurrence in german and dutch illuminated manuscripts, more especially in _books of hours_, where such fancies were probably a relief from the gravity of the text both to the illuminator and to the owner of the book: see below, page . [illustration: fig. . marginal illumination of very beautiful and refined style from a manuscript executed for king wenzel of bohemia about the year .] [illustration: fig. . miniature of duke baldwin, painted about the year by an illuminator of the school of the van eycks of bruges.] the finest teutonic manuscripts of the fifteenth century show in their miniatures the influence of the van eycks; as is also the case with many of the manuscripts which fall rather under the head of the franco-flemish than the teutonic school[ ]. _school of the van eycks._ fig. gives a fine example of a miniature by an illuminator who must have been an actual pupil of the van eycks. it is taken from a fragment of a manuscript of the _croniques de jherusalem_, now in the imperial library of vienna (no. ). it represents duke baudouin (or baldwin), who was crowned king of jerusalem, in the guise of a fifteenth century german knight, under a graceful gothic canopy of characteristically german style. the date of this sumptuous manuscript is about . _influence on painting generally._ as is remarked below with regard to italian art, it is interesting to observe the strong influence that miniature painting in manuscripts had upon the larger pictures of teutonic artists. in many cases the german and flemish painters of altar-pieces were also illuminators of manuscripts, like liberale of verona and girolamo dai libri, who are mentioned below, see page [ ]. and even without this reason for similarity, it was not uncommon for the painter of a retable to borrow his composition and general decorative scheme from an illuminated manuscript by some skilful artist. fig. shows a good example of this, the central panel of a retable dated , in the church of st martin at colmar, which is almost certainly the work of martin schoen or schöngauer. _the cologne school._ in the art of the cologne school more especially, the relationship between the panel paintings and the miniature illuminations of manuscripts is very close, both in the general decorative schemes and also in the extreme minuteness and delicacy of the larger paintings. [illustration: fig. . retable painted by martin schöngauer, in the style of a manuscript illumination.] [illustration: fig. . all altar-piece of the cologne school, showing the influence of manuscript illumination on the painters of panel-pictures, especially retables.] _retable at cologne._ fig. shows a beautiful example of this, a small panel, now in the archiepiscopal museum at cologne, representing the virgin and child seated on a flowery sward with a trellis covered with roses as a background, and lovely child-angels playing on musical instruments all round. the whole panel is a perfect gem of brilliantly decorative art of the purest and most perfect kind, quite free from the too pictorial realism which at this time, about , was growing rapidly among the miniaturists of france and the netherlands. half a century later, in the early part of the sixteenth century, the same tendency to paint pictures like a magnified manuscript illumination is frequently to be observed. _triptych by the elder holbein._ fig. represents one wing of an altar triptych by hans holbein the elder, painted about the year . this beautiful figure of saint elizabeth of hungary is interesting as showing the influence of italian art, which at that time was widely spread throughout germany and france; it also, in its minutely delicate touch and in the grotesque ornaments at the top and bottom, shows a strong tendency to use the forms and methods of the manuscript illuminator. _illuminations by a. dürer._ manuscripts of the teutonic school, which are known to be by the hand of a famous painter, are of rare occurrence; there is therefore special interest in the book of which one of the border-illuminations is illustrated in fig. . the text itself (a book of prayers) is _printed_ on vellum, but forty-five of the pages are decorated with borders drawn by the masterly hand of albert dürer in red, green and violet ink, a method possibly suggested to dürer by the sight of one of the tenth or eleventh century manuscripts which were illuminated with outline drawings in inks of these three colours. this beautiful prayer-book was decorated by albert dürer in for the emperor maximilian; it is now in the munich library[ ]. there is much that is grotesque and humorous introduced among the finely designed scroll-work of these borders; and their firm strong touch, united to much fanciful grace of form in the varied forms of leafage, makes the whole well worthy of its illuminator's artistic fame. [illustration: fig. . wing of a triptych, with a figure of st elizabeth of hungary, painted by the elder hans holbein; this illustrates the influence on painting of the styles of manuscript illumination at the beginning of the sixteenth century.] [illustration: fig. . illuminated border drawn by albert dürer in .] the border illustrated here has, at the foot, a spirited group of musicians, and a beautiful background, with a river and castle-crowned hill, such as dürer loved to introduce into paintings and engravings of all kinds. on one of the kettledrums in the foreground are the initials of the artist and the date . _dutch fifteenth century manuscripts._ in the main the manuscripts of holland resemble those either of the other contemporary teutonic or of the franco-flemish schools. in the fifteenth century an enormous number of _books of hours_ and other works for private devotion, such as "the book of christian belief," _den boeck van den kersten ghelove_, and others of the same class, were produced in holland. many of these are written in the vulgar tongue. _dutch methods of ornament._ the miniature illuminations are on the whole inferior to the exquisite paintings in flemish manuscripts; but they are usually very decorative in treatment, of a simple, homely style, which is not without charm. the decorative initials are often very large and beautiful, in some cases occupying a large proportion of the page; and the borders, which grow gracefully out of these large capitals, are magnificently rich both in design and execution. gold is used profusely and with remarkable taste and skill in these dutch illuminations, which frequently have a combination of _mat_, fluid gold applied with the brush over a ground of brilliantly burnished gold leaf. very beautiful initials are also formed by painting with a transparent lake red over a ground of burnished gold, which shines through the red pigment, thus producing a brilliantly decorative effect. _realistic details._ the miniatures of the fifteenth century dutch manuscripts are noticeable for their realistic architectural details, with interiors of rooms full of elaborate furniture, bookshelves, sideboards covered with silver plate, or the humbler jugs and dishes of pewter, with countless other kinds of fittings and furniture. dutch miniatures with ecclesiastical scenes frequently have elaborately rendered interior views of churches, which are usually very interesting from their illustration of the choir and altar fittings, the retables, the "riddles" or altar-curtains, the tabernacles for the reserved host, and many other valuable records of mediaeval church furniture and ritual[ ]. one very delicate and beautiful kind of illumination, which occurs in many of the best dutch manuscripts, is by no means peculiar to holland, but is also found in many english, french, flemish and italian manuscripts. _skilful use of the pen._ this consists of capitals, often of large size, decorated with rich ornamentation executed wholly with thin lines of blue and red drawn with a very fine pen. the firmness of touch and spirited quality of this pen illumination is often very remarkable, showing the most perfect training of hand and eye on the part of the illuminator. though not as gorgeous as the usual initials painted with gold and colours, this line ornament is sometimes of the richest and most delicate quality that can be imagined. in some cases a purple or violet ink is used, as well as the brighter blue and red, especially in italian manuscripts. the form of the pen ornaments used in this class of illumination is very much the same in all the chief european classes of manuscripts; a somewhat exceptional circumstance, since, as a rule, each country has its own peculiar types of decoration. illuminations in printed books. this beautiful pen-work reached its highest point of perfection in the first half of the fifteenth century. it is frequently used for the illuminated initials in the early printed books of germany. books printed at strasburg by mentelin, about to , are often decorated with very elaborate and skilfully drawn ornament of this type; in many cases probably by mentelin's own hand, since he was a skilful manuscript illuminator before he began to practise the art of printing[ ]. the printed books of koburger of nuremberg are also remarkable for the beauty of their illuminations, both in the blue and red pen-work and also with painted ornaments in gold and colour. chapter xii. the illuminated manuscripts of italy and spain. _classic survival._ as has been already mentioned, the old classical forms survived in the manuscript miniatures of italy for many centuries with but little alteration. a slow, but steady degradation in the forms of classic art began to take place about the fifth or sixth century; the fact being that no art can for long remain stationary; there must be either advance or decay, and when the habit of copying older forms has once become the established rule an artistic degradation soon becomes inevitable. _italian decadence._ just as the manuscript art of the byzantine illuminators first lost its vitality and then rapidly deteriorated, so in italy the late surviving classical style of miniature became weaker and weaker in drawing, feebler in touch, and duller in composition, till in the eleventh and twelfth century a very low stage of degradation was reached, at the very period when the illuminator's art in more northern countries was growing into the most vigorous development of power and decorative beauty. the great renaissance of art in italy, which led to such magnificent results in the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, in its first beginnings lagged behind the artistic movement in the north, so that during the thirteenth century, when england, france and germany had almost reached their climax of artistic growth, italy had hardly begun to advance[ ]. _ms. of donizo._ as an example of the degraded state of italian art during the twelfth century i may mention a manuscript in the vatican library (_vat._ )[ ] of a poem in honour of the countess matilda written by a monk of canossa named donizo, which has a number of miniature illustrations. these are of the lowest type, utterly feeble in the drawing of the human form and quite without any feeling for the folds of drapery; the figures are mere shapeless masses without any decorative beauty of colour to make up for the helpless ignorance of the draughtsman; see fig. . later on in the twelfth century, and during the first half of the thirteenth century, art in italy was mainly a feeble reflection of the then degraded art of the byzantines. this was partly due to the introduction into italy of mosaic-workers from constantinople, such as those who decorated the vault of the old cathedral of florence (now the baptistery) with badly drawn but grandly decorative mosaics of the day of doom[ ]. _oderisi of gubbio._ little is known of the two illuminators of manuscripts who are immortalized by dante (_purg._ xi. - ). oderisi of gubbio, whom dante calls the "honour of the art that in paris is called _alluminare_," is said to have been employed by pope boniface viii. to illuminate manuscripts in rome about the time of the great jubilee of , when dante visited rome as an envoy from florence. _franco of bologna._ franco (francesco) of bologna is the other miniaturist mentioned by dante as an artist of great merit; nothing is known of him or of his works. during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries bologna was one of the chief italian centres for the production of manuscripts, partly on account of its being the seat of one of the oldest and most important universities of europe. [illustration: fig. . illumination from an italian manuscript executed for the countess matilda in the twelfth century; this illustrates the extreme decadence of art in italy before the thirteenth century.] _ms. of giotto's school._ one of the finest manuscripts of the florentine school, executed by an unknown _miniatore_ of the school of giotto, is a _missal_ in the chapter library of the canons of saint peter's in rome. the arms of the donor, repeated several times among the floreated borders, show that the manuscript was illuminated for giotto's patron cardinal gaetano stefaneschi, probably between and . the same volume contains, by the same illuminator's hand, a richly illuminated _life of saint george_, with large historiated capitals of great beauty and finely decorative colouring. fig. shows one of the initials with saint george slaying the dragon, and the princess saba kneeling at the side. _italian art in france._ in some cases, especially during the fourteenth century, skilful italian illuminators appear to have worked in france. many french and even flemish manuscripts, such as some of those executed for philip of burgundy and the duc de berri towards the end of the century, show distinctly two styles of painting, french and italian, the book evidently being the work of two different artists. some of these italian paintings in french manuscripts suggest the hand of a disciple of simone martini (memmi), or some artist of the very decorative sienese school; this was probably in many cases due to the introduction of italian painters into avignon when the papal court was resident there; see page . _late artistic revival._ it was, however, not till nearly the middle of the fourteenth century that italy produced many illuminated manuscripts of any remarkable beauty. those executed under the immediate influence of giotto, between and about , were not as a rule to be compared to the illuminations of northern europe either for decorative value or for minute beauty of detail. by the middle of the fourteenth century, however, the illuminator's art in italy, and especially in florence, had reached a very high degree of excellence. [illustration: fig. . miniature of st george and the dragon from a _missal_, illuminated about to by a painter of the school of giotto.] _monastic painters._ _don silvestro._ vasari, in his life of don lorenzo monaco[ ], mentions a camaldolese monk of the monastery of santa maria degli angeli near florence, who, about the year , wrote and illuminated a number of magnificent choir-books for his monastery, which were very highly valued; so much so that after the death of the monk, whose name was don silvestro, his hand was preserved in a shrine as a sacred relic of the dead monk's piety and skill[ ]. some of don silvestro's manuscripts are now preserved in the laurentian library in florence, and a number of miniatures cut out of his choir-books were acquired by w. young ottley[ ]. _mss. of don silvestro._ _methods of decoration._ the existing works of don silvestro show that the enthusiasm of his fellow monks was not exaggerated. the miniatures are noble in style, finished with the most exquisitely minute touch, splendidly brilliant in colour, and in every way masterpieces of the illuminator's art. these choir-books are of enormous size, being intended to be placed on the central choir lectern so that the whole body of monks standing round could chant the _antiphonalia_ from the same book, and the initials are proportionately large to the size of the page. thus some of the figures of saints which fill the central spaces of the large initials are as much as from six to seven inches in height, and yet they are painted with the minute detail of an ordinary sized miniature. the grounds of these splendid figures are usually of burnished gold, decorated by incised tooling of diapers or scroll-work; and the floreated borders, which surround the letters and form marginal ornaments to the pages, consist of nobly designed conventional foliage in vermilion, ultramarine and other fine pigments, relieved and lighted up by bosses of burnished gold thickly sprinkled among the sumptuous coloured foliage. tooled and burnished gold is also used largely for the decoration of the dresses of the figures, their crowns, jewelled ornaments and the apparels and orphreys of their vestments. the whole effect is magnificent in the extreme, and yet, in spite of the dazzling brilliance of the gold and colours, the whole effect is perfectly harmonious and free from the harsh gaudiness which disfigures so much of the late fifteenth century work of the french and flemish manuscript painters. _italian ornament._ the special style of ornament used by don silvestro survived in italian illumination for nearly a century and a half. in italy realistic forms of fruit and flowers, such as were painted with such taste and skill by the northern miniaturists, were scarcely ever used. all through the fifteenth century, alike in the manuscripts of the florentine, sienese and venetian schools, the same purely conventional forms of foliage were used, with great curling leaves, alternately blue and red, lighted up by the jewel-like studs and bosses of burnished gold. _the monk don lorenzo._ according to vasari, the same camaldolese monastery produced another manuscript illuminator whose skill was hardly inferior to that of don silvestro. this was don lorenzo, who appears to have been born about , and to have died about [ ]. examples of his skill, also in the form of large choir-books, are preserved in the laurentian library at florence; they are rich with miniatures of great beauty, and, like don silvestro's paintings, show a lavish expenditure of time and patience in the exquisite minuteness with which they are finished. vasari tells us that his hand also was preserved as a sacred relic in the treasury of santa maria degli angeli. _visit of leo x._ in later times pope leo x., who, like other members of the medici family, was an enthusiastic lover of illuminated manuscripts, when on a visit to the monastery, desired to carry away to the basilica of saint peter in rome some of these choir-books by the hand of don lorenzo[ ]. _dominican painters._ the dominican convent of san marco in florence, where the famous florentine painter fra beato angelico[ ] was a friar, possesses, or till quite recently did possess, a magnificent collection of choir-books richly illuminated with miniatures by various members of the convent. some of these are said to have been painted by fra angelico himself, others by a brother of his who was a friar in the same convent[ ]. the records of the dominican convent at fiesole, where fra angelico was born, show that he was working there as a painter of illuminated manuscripts in the year and for some time subsequently. _fra angelico's style._ it is noticeable that fra angelico's style, even when painting a colossal mural fresco, was essentially that of the manuscript illuminator. he is utterly unrealistic in drawing and still more so in colour; he deals with no possible effects of light and shade, but paints all his figures glowing with the most brilliant effects of gold and colour, in a style far earlier than that of his own date, and with certain technical peculiarities which, as a rule, are to be found only in the illuminations of manuscripts[ ]. _mss. of northern italy._ _renaissance in italy._ in the fifteenth century the manuscript art of central and northern italy, especially siena, florence, venice and milan, rose to a pitch of beauty and perfection which left it quite without rival in any country in the world. as was the case in writing of the glories of such manuscripts as the french _apocalypses_ of the fourteenth century, words are inadequate to describe the refined beauty of the best italian manuscripts of this period. as has been already pointed out italy was late in beginning her artistic renaissance; and now, just when the rest of europe was sinking into a more or less rapid and complete state of decadence, italy blossomed out into one of the most magnificent artistic periods that the world has ever seen[ ]. the manuscripts of this period are not unworthy of the general artistic glories of the time, and in some cases their technical qualities bear witness to an almost superhuman amount of dexterity and patience. during the first half of the century, by far the greater proportion of the manuscripts written in italy were for ecclesiastical purposes. among the most magnificent, but at the same time also the rarest, are folio manuscript _pontificals_[ ], executed for wealthy ecclesiastics of episcopal rank. _the fitzwilliam pontifical._ an italian folio _pontifical_, dating from early in the fifteenth century, in the library of the fitzwilliam museum, is of its kind, one of the most beautiful manuscripts in the world. the delicacy of execution of the figures and especially the faces is little short of miraculous, and the numerous historiated initials, each representing some episcopal act of consecration or benediction, scattered thickly all through the volume, are a remarkable proof of the patient, unwearied skill which through years of labour must have been devoted to this one superb volume. _italian poems._ _the owner's arms._ among the illuminated manuscripts with secular texts the most important are copies of dante's _divine comedy_, the works of boccaccio and the poems of petrarch. the first page of such works as these is usually richly decorated with a wide border of scroll foliage, studded with the usual gold bosses. frequently small miniatures in medallion frames are set at intervals among the conventional leafage; and at the bottom is a shield to receive the owner's coat of arms, surrounded with a delicately painted leafy wreath, which is supported on each side by a graceful figure of a flying angel or cupid[ ]. in many cases the shield is still left blank; the book not having been written for any special purchaser and the owner having neglected to insert his arms[ ]. the painting of the wreath which surrounds the shield is usually very beautiful, and the two flying angels or _amorini_ are models of grace. this motive of the wreath held by two flying figures was largely used by the florentine sculptors of the fifteenth century, such as ghiberti and luca della robbia; it was suggested by the similar design, of very inferior execution, which occurs on so many ancient roman sarcophagi. _classical influence._ some of the most elaborate italian manuscripts of the second half of the fifteenth century are decorated with very minutely and cleverly painted copies of antique classical gems, cameos, coins and medals, or reliefs in marble and bronze. wonderful skill is often shown by the way in which the illuminator has given the appearance of relief and the actual texture of the metal or stone[ ]. beautiful as the borders of this class are, they belong to a period of decadence of taste, though not of skill, and they paved the way for the elaborate futilities of giulio clovio and other miniaturists of the sixteenth century period of decadence. _capture of constantinople._ the influx of greek exiles into florence, after the conquest of constantinople by the ottoman turks in , led to the famous revival of classical learning, and for a while made florence not only the artistic but the intellectual centre of the world. many of these fugitive greeks brought with them both greek and latin manuscripts of ancient date, and a new development of manuscript art took place in consequence of this. _copyism of early writing._ though manuscripts of service books and other sacred works continued to be written in the mediaeval "gothic" form of character, for secular manuscripts[ ] a very beautiful kind of "roman" hand was largely used by the scribes of florence, venice and other italian centres of the illuminator's art. this newly developed mode of writing was based on the beautiful clear form of character which had been used by the most skilful northern scribes of the ninth and tenth century; and at the same time a style of illumination for borders and initials was imitated or rather adapted, with the utmost taste and skill from the characteristic interlaced patterns of england, france and germany during the twelfth century. _celtic style of ornament._ this beautiful kind of ornament consists of delicately interlaced and plaited bands of white or gold, thrown into relief by filling in the background, or spaces between the laced bands, with alternating colours, blue, red and green. this style of initial was also largely used for the early printed books of rome, florence and venice[ ], many copies of which were illuminated in the most magnificent way, quite equal to the ornaments of the finest vellum manuscripts. some of the italian manuscripts of the second half of the fifteenth century, for delicate beauty and for exquisite refinement of detail, are unrivalled by the illuminated manuscripts of any other country or age. _italian horae._ among the greatest marvels of human skill that have ever been produced are some of the very small _books of hours_ which were executed for the merchant princes of florence and venice and for other wealthy italian patrons. the borders in these frequently have minute figures of cupid-like angels (amorini) playing among decorative foliage, or birds and animals, such as fawns, cheetahs and the like, designed with an amount of grace and modelled with a microscopic refinement of touch that no words can adequately describe. _beauty of the text._ and it is not only the unequalled beauty of the painted decorations and miniatures for which these late italian manuscripts are so remarkable; the mere writing of the text in the most brilliant black and red ink is of striking beauty in the form of the letters and the perfect regularity of the whole. last of all the vellum used by the italian scribes of this period is far more beautiful, from its ivory-like perfection of tint and surface, than that of any other class of manuscripts. though not, of course, as exquisitely thin as the uterine vellum of the anglo-norman thirteenth century scribes, it is more beautiful in texture, and does much to complete the artistic perfection of the manuscripts of fifteenth century italy, by its exquisitely polished surface and perfect purity of tint. _mss. of n. italy._ the provinces of florence, pisa, siena, bologna and venice, including verona, were all important centres for the production of fine illuminated manuscripts. on the whole florence was the most famous in this as in other branches of art, and it was especially to florence that wealthy foreign princes sent their commissions when they desired to possess exceptionally beautiful manuscripts. _corvinus a patron of art._ one of the most enthusiastic art patrons of europe, matthias corvinus, king of hungary from to , had a large number of most magnificent manuscripts written and illuminated for him by various _miniatori_ of florence; some of these are now in the imperial library of vienna. so also federigo da montefeltro, duke of urbino about the same time, purchased from a florentine that most superbly illuminated bible, in two large folio volumes, dated , which is now in the vatican library[ ]. _attavante the miniaturist._ among the miniaturists who worked for king corvinus, the most famous was a florentine named attavante di gabriello, who was born in . vasari mentions him as a pupil and friend of fra angelico[ ], and describes at great length and with much enthusiasm a sumptuous manuscript of silius italicus, belonging to the dominican monastery of san giovanni e paolo in venice, as being the work of attavante. this once magnificent manuscript still exists, but in a much mutilated state, in the venetian biblioteca marciana (cl. xii. cod. lxviii.); all the large miniatures have been cut out, but the borders with winged cupids, birds and animals among decorative scroll-work are marvels of beauty and minute delicacy of touch. though quite worthy of attavante's fame, this manuscript cannot be his work, as it was executed many years too early, in the time of pope nicholas v., who reigned from to . _mss. at venice._ the same library does, however, possess real examples of attavante's wonderful illuminations. the borders are specially remarkable for the minute medallion heads which are introduced among the conventional foliage. these minute pictures occur in many of the finest manuscripts of this class; and other _miniatori_ painted them with a microscopic refinement of detail, quite equal to the best illuminations of attavante. fig. gives a good typical example of this style of border, with two cupid-like angels and busts of saints in quatrefoil medallions. some of the borders of this class, especially in venetian and florentine manuscripts, are decorated with very cleverly painted representations of jewels, such as the emerald and ruby, set at intervals along each margin. these are often wonderful examples of skilful realism, the transparency of the gem, and its bright reflected lights, being rendered with an almost deceptive appearance of reality. _the miniaturists called dai libri._ in the fifteenth century verona was one of the chief italian centres for the production of magnificent manuscripts. various members of one family, known from their occupation as "dai libri," were specially famous as miniaturists. stefano the eldest was born about ; he and his younger brother francesco were both skilled miniaturists, and francesco's son girolamo dai libri ( to ) was famous not only as a _miniatore_, but also as a painter of altar-pieces and other sacred pictures on a large scale[ ]. [illustration: fig. . an illuminated border from a manuscript by attavante of characteristic north italian style.] _liberale of verona._ another veronese painter, liberale di giacomo, who was born in , was in his youth a very skilful miniaturist. he spent some years in illuminating large choir-books for the benedictine monastery of monte oliveto near siena, and then after he was for long occupied in the illumination of similar choir-books for the cathedral of siena[ ]. the miniatures in these great _antiphonals_ are most exquisitely finished, rich in fancy, brilliant in colour, but wanting decorative breadth of style. with a far greater expenditure of labour and eyesight, these wonderful illuminations are far inferior to the works of the fourteenth century french miniaturists, and show signs of that decadence of taste, which, in the sixteenth century, led to the destruction of the true illuminator's art[ ]. _mss. of n. italy._ in addition to venice, padua and ferrara were both important centres of manuscript illumination of a very high order during the fifteenth century. the paduan miniatures show strongly the influence of andrea mantegna and gian bellini, whose styles also appear in the contemporary manuscripts of venice. the british museum possesses a magnificent example of the work of one of the ablest _miniatori_ of padua, a _missal_ by benedetto bordone, who also illuminated the great choir-books of the convent of santa justina in padua. [illustration: fig. . a miniature from the bible of duke borso d'este, painted between and by illuminators of the school of ferrara.] _school of ferrara._ ferrara too produced many very beautiful manuscripts, especially under the patronage of duke borso d'este. it was for this duke of ferrara that the magnificent choir-books, now in the municipal library at ferrara were executed. fig. shows a miniature from a very splendid bible, which was illuminated for duke borso d'este between and by taddeo di crivelli and franco di messer giovanni da russi, two very talented miniaturists of the ferrarese school, though they were natives of the neighbouring city of mantua. _parma and modena._ parma, modena and cremona also were thriving centres of the illuminators art; in fact wherever in italy there was a school of painting a subsidiary school of manuscript miniaturists seems also to have existed. the two classes of painting acted and reacted upon one another; and in some cases, as is indicated below[ ], the more important art of painting on a large scale owed more to the manuscript illuminators than has commonly been acknowleged. _school of milan._ milan, especially under duke ludovico and other members of the sforza family, was an active centre of manuscript illumination. some very beautiful late manuscripts exist with miniatures which show the influence of leonardo da vinci and his pupil bernardino luini; a _book of hours_ in the fitzwilliam museum is a good example of this. _illuminated documents._ one rather exceptional class of richly illuminated manuscripts was largely produced in italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; these were state documents, university diplomas and licences, patents of nobility and legal instruments of various kinds, often very elaborately decorated with illuminations and miniatures in gold and colours. in venice especially immense numbers of these were produced; the most elaborate are appointments of governors, commissions of officials of rank, patriarchal briefs, together with state records and documents of the most varied kinds. bologna, padua, pisa and others of the chief universities of italy issued diplomas for doctors degrees, and licences to give lectures, which were frequently very magnificently decorated with letters of gold and richly illuminated capitals and borders. _retables like mss._ before passing on to the italian _miniatori_ of the last period, it is worth while to notice the strong influence that the art of manuscript illumination had on the painters of large retables and other sacred pictures in italy and especially in venice; just as was the case with the contemporary painters of germany and flanders[ ]. many of the venetian altar-pieces, from their minute detail, their use of burnished gold enriched with tooled patterns, their decorative treatment of flowers and their architectural backgrounds and framework, look exactly like a page from an illuminated manuscript. _retable at venice._ fig. shows a characteristic example of this, a magnificent retable glowing with brilliant colours and burnished gold, now in the accademia of venice, which was painted in in the little island of murano by two painters named johannes and antonius de murano[ ]. the same strongly marked influence of the decorative style of illuminated manuscripts is to be seen in nearly all the works of carlo crivelli, another venetian painter of the latter part of the fifteenth century, and in the gorgeous retables of gentile da fabriano[ ], a follower of fra angelico's richly decorative and brilliantly coloured method of painting. _the xvith century._ _italian manuscripts of the sixteenth century._ by about the end of the first decade of the sixteenth century the art of manuscript illumination had ceased in italy to be a real living art; and, though it continued to be practised with great technical skill for more than half a century later, the art, which once had been one of the most beautiful and dignified of all branches of art, sank into the production of costly toys to please a few popes and luxurious princes who were willing to pay very large prices for manuscripts illuminated by the skilful hands of giulio clovio and other miniaturists, whose patience, eyesight and technical skill were superior to their sense of what was fitting and beautiful in an illuminated manuscript. [illustration: fig. . a venetian retable by giovanni and antonio di murano, in the style of an illuminated manuscript.] _giulio clovio._ of all the illuminators of this class the dalmatian giulio clovio[ ] ( - ) was the most famous and technically the most skilful. he found many wealthy patrons in italy and was employed by charles v. of france. the soane museum in london possesses a characteristic example of his style, a _commentary on the epistles of saint paul_, executed for giulio's early patron, cardinal marino grimani of venice, the brother of the owner of the grimani _breviary_ mentioned above. clovio's miniatures are marvels of minute execution, but not truly decorative in style, and in design usually quite unsuited to their purpose. in most cases they resemble large oil paintings reduced to a microscopic scale; the figures are commonly feeble imitations either of large pieces of contemporary tapestry or else of painting in michel angelo's grandiose style, both of which of course were utterly unsuited for miniatures in a manuscript[ ]. _the vatican mss._ _the manuscripts in the vatican library._ the archives of the vatican library contain a number of records of the development of the library during the sixteenth century and later[ ]. in mediaeval times manuscripts were rare and costly, so that even kings, popes and universities possessed libraries which in size were very insignificant compared to those of ancient alexandria, rome and byzantium. _the vatican library._ even in leo x.'s time ( - ) the vatican library, which was probably the largest in the world, contained only , manuscripts and printed books. a century earlier, before the invention of printing, two or three hundred volumes would have constituted an enormous library. as a rule even royal and public libraries were contained in a few iron-bound chests or _armaria_; and borrowers had to deposit a pledge--a gold ring, a silver cup or some other valuable article, which was retained by the librarian till the manuscript had been restored. in the vatican this practice survived till the sixteenth century, and books exist among the archives in which were recorded the date, the title of the book, the borrower's name and a short description of the deposited pledge. when the book was returned the word "restituit" was written in the margin. _payments to scribes._ the same archives contain a number of accounts giving the sums paid to various illuminators of manuscripts, especially in the time of pope paul iii. (alex. farnese, to ), who was a great patron of giulio clovio and other miniaturists. in a number of _scriptores et miniatores_ employed in the vatican library received as pay gold ducats each monthly, of julii to the ducat, equal to about £ in modern value. in messer paolo received gold ducats for writing and illuminating four volumes. _del piombo as an illuminator._ it is interesting to note that the famous painter sebastiano del piombo[ ] ("fra bastiano piombator") received payment "pro libris miniatis" in the year from pope paul iii. in federigo mario di perugia received ½ ducats a month for his labour "in scribendis et ornandis seu pingendis libris." this is the same miniaturist who illuminated some choir-books for the roman monastery of saint' agostino[ ]. it was especially for the great choir-books that the art of the scribe and illuminator survived, the reason being that no printers' fount of type had characters of sufficient size to be read by a whole circle of singers. thus we find italian and spanish manuscript _antiphonals_[ ] and the like, which have the grand gothic writing of the fifteenth century executed as late as the year or even later[ ]. _spanish mss._ _the manuscripts of spain, portugal and the east._ little need be said about the manuscript illuminations of the spanish peninsula since they contain little that is native or original. in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries many magnificent illuminations were produced in spain and portugal, but they are mainly imitations either of italian or of flemish miniatures. in earlier times in northern spain the influence of france was paramount, and in southern spain the beautiful "saracenic" art of the moorish conquerors influenced all branches of the fine arts, including that of manuscript illumination. _moslem influence._ to some extent the same moslem influence is apparent in the decorative borders of sicilian and venetian manuscripts, especially during the fifteenth century. the illuminations of oriental manuscripts do not fall within the limits of this brief treatise, but it should be noted that during the mediaeval period, and down to the present century, persian and arabic manuscripts with decorative illuminations of extraordinary beauty and skilful execution have been largely produced in syria, persia and india under the moslem conquerors. for delicacy of touch, for intricate beauty of ornament, and for decorative splendour in the use of gold and colour, these oriental manuscripts are, in their own way, unsurpassed. _persian mss._ in the orthodox sunni manuscripts miniatures with figure subjects do not occur, but are lavishly used in the manuscripts of the persians and other members of the sufi sect. the drawing of the human form is without the dignity and grace that is to be seen in western manuscripts, but as pieces of decoration the oriental miniatures are of high merit. copies of the _koran_, and the works of the favourite persian poets are among the most common kinds of oriental manuscripts. it is the latter that are so often sumptuously decorated with figure subjects. chapter xiii. the writers of illuminated manuscripts. _the beauty of mss._ _the monastic scribes._ it may be interesting to consider what were the causes that made the illuminated manuscripts of the mediaeval period among the most perfect and beautiful works of art that the world has ever produced. no one can examine the manuscripts of any of the chief european countries down to the fourteenth century without a feeling of amazement at their almost unvarying perfection of execution, the immense fertility of fancy in their design, and the utterly unsparing labour that was lavished on their production. moreover the manuscripts of this earlier period, before their production became a commercial art in the hand of secular scribes, are especially remarkable for their uniform excellence of workmanship, and their complete freedom from any signs of haste or weariness on the part of their scribes and illuminators. _conditions of life._ _absence of hurry._ now the fact is that the countless illuminated manuscripts which were produced in so many of the benedictine and other monastic houses of europe were executed under very exceptionally favourable circumstances[ ]. in the first place the monastic scribe lived in a haven of safety and rest in the middle of a tumultuous and war-harassed world. while at work in the _scriptorium_ he was troubled with no thoughts of any necessity to complete his task within a limited time in order to earn his daily bread. food and clothing of a simple though sufficient kind were secured to him, whether he finished his manuscript in a year or in twenty years. he worked for no payment, but for the glory of god and the honour of his monastic foundation, and last, but not least, for the intense pleasure which the varying processes of his work gave him. _pleasant work._ no one who examines a fine mediaeval manuscript can help seeing in it the strongest marks of the delight which the illuminator had in his work; and this sort of retrospective sympathy with the pleasure of the workman in his work is an important element in the beauty of ancient works of art of many different kinds and dates, from the simple but beautiful wheel-turned vase of the greek potter, down to the carved foliage in a gothic church, or the complicated ornamentation of an illuminated initial. _relief from monotony._ again, it should be remembered that the life of a mediaeval monk was a very uneventful and monotonous one, and even the most pious soul must at times have felt a weariness in the oft-repeated and lengthy _offices_ which made him spend so large a proportion of each day within the choir of his monastic church. thus it was that his work as an illuminator of manuscripts provided the one great relief from his otherwise grey and monotonous life, from which he turned to revel in every variety of fanciful shape and of varied arrangement of gleaming gold and brilliant pigments. here at least was no monotony, but the fullest scope for imaginative fancy and the love of variety which is inborn in the human mind. _scope for humour._ _grotesque figures._ in the illumination of his manuscript the monastic scribe, even when decorating a sacred book, could lay aside for a moment the solemn religious thoughts to which his vows had bound him; he could sport with every variety of grotesque monster and of pagan imagery, and could find vent for his repressed sense of fun and humour by the introduction of caricatures and pictorial jokes of all kinds among the foliage of his borders and initials without any fear of reproof on the part of his superiors[ ]. fig. from a french fourteenth century manuscript shows a characteristic example of an illuminators humorous fancy, a grotesque bishop, with a mitre made out of a pair of bellows. [illustration: fig. . grotesque figure from a french manuscript of the fourteenth century.] very frequently the jealousy which existed between the regular and the secular clergy is expressed in the pictorial sarcasms of the monastic illuminators. this feeling, on the secular side, is vividly set forth in the amusing latin poems of walter map[ ], who, toward the close of the twelfth century, was the parish priest of a little church in the forest of dean[ ]. walter map's satire is mainly directed against the cistercian order of monks, with whom he was specially brought into contact owing to his parish being situated near the cistercian abbey of flaxley. _humorous scene._ fig. . from a german manuscript of the end of the twelfth century, now in the chapter library of prague cathedral, gives an interesting example of the introduction of a humorous scene into a grave work, saint augustine's _de civitate dei_. the illuminator, who was named hildebert, has been worried by a mouse, which stole his food; and here on the last leaf of the manuscript he represents himself interrupted in his work and throwing something at the mouse which is nibbling at his food. these explanatory words are written on the open page of his book, _a wicked mouse._ pessime mus, sepius me probocas ad iram, ut te deus perdat. "you wicked mouse, too often you provoke me to anger, may god destroy you." [illustration: fig. . miniature of a comic subject from a german manuscript of the twelfth century, representing a monastic scribe worried by a mouse.] _portrait of the scribe._ at the feet of the scribe a lad named everwinus, possibly a monastic novice, is seated on a low stool, drawing a piece of ornamental scroll-work. the monk hildebert's desk is in the form of a lectern supported by a carved lion; in it are holes to hold the black and red inkhorns, and two pens or brushes. in his left hand the scribe holds the usual penknife, and another pen is stuck behind his ear. _short hours of labour._ there is yet another of the conditions under which the monastic scribe worked which was not without important effect on the unvarying excellence of his work, and that was that he could never remain long enough at work, at any one time, for his hand or eye to get wearied. owing to the constantly recurring choir services, the _seven hours_, which he had to attend, the monastic scribe could probably never continue labouring at his illumination for more than about two hours at a time. _no weariness._ the importance of this fact is very clearly seen when we compare one of the earlier monastic manuscripts with one of the fifteenth century french or flemish _books of hours_, executed by a professional secular scribe. thus in the older manuscripts the firmness of line and delicate, crisp touch never relaxes, and the artist's evident sense of power and the joy in his manual dexterity lasts without diminution from the first to the last page of his book. _variety of labour._ additional beauty is given to the mediaeval manuscripts by the fact that each scribe commonly did much important work in the preparation of his inks and pigments; in some cases even to the beating out of the gold leaf he was about to use in his miniatures and borders[ ]. no colours bought of a dealer in a commercial age could ever equal in beauty or in durability the pigments that an illuminator made or at least prepared for his own use. and his command over the materials of his art would greatly enhance his pleasure in using them, to say nothing of the relief given by the variety of his labours. _varied schemes of ornament._ all these influences, combined with others which it might be wearisome to dwell upon, combined to make the manuscripts of the pre-commercial period works of the most unvarying perfection of technique, unspeakably rich in the varied wealth of fancy shown in their decorative schemes, as well as in the minute detail of each part. the illuminated ornament in one place is concentrated into a gem-like miniature within the narrow limit of a small initial letter. at another place it spreads out into the splendour of a full-page picture, which swallows up most of the text, and covers the whole page with one mass of burnished gold and brilliant colour. or again, springing from its roots in an illuminated capital, it grows over the margin and frames the text with a mass of richly designed and exquisitely graceful foliage. every possible scheme of decoration is to be found in these manuscripts; but in all cases the illuminator is careful to make his painted ornament grow out of and form, as it were, an integral part of the written text, which thus becomes not merely a book ornamented with pictures, but is a close combination of writing and illumination, forming one harmonious whole in a united scheme of decorative beauty[ ]. _monastic scriptoria._ _the scriptoria of monasteries._ as i have previously mentioned, it was more especially the benedictine monasteries[ ] that were the centres for the production of mediaeval manuscripts[ ]. i will therefore describe the usual arrangements of the _scriptorium_ in a benedictine house. in early times, in the eighth and ninth centuries for example, the scriptorium and library appear usually to have been a separate room, near or over the sacristy, and adjoining the choir of the church[ ]. _scriptoria in cloisters._ during most of the mediaeval period, however, and in england down to the suppression of the abbeys by henry viii., the system was to devote one whole walk or alley of the cloister, that nearest to the church, to the double purpose of a scriptorium and library. this was naturally the warmest and dryest portion of the cloister, at least in most cases when the usual arrangement was followed of placing the cloister on the south side of the nave of the abbey church[ ]. _monastic library._ this north walk (as it commonly was) of the cloister faced south and so received plenty of sun; at each end of it a screen was placed to shut it off from the rest of the cloister, which formed a sort of common living-room for the monks[ ]. along one side of this alley of the cloister were fixed, against the wall of the church, oak cupboards (_armaria_), with strong locks and hinges, to receive the manuscripts which formed the library of the monastery[ ]. at westminster and in other benedictine monasteries the marks showing where these _armaria_ were fixed are visible on the cloister wall or rather along the wall of the church, which forms one side of this walk of the cloister. [illustration: fig. . view of the scriptorium alley of the cloisters at gloucester, showing the recesses to hold the wooden _carrels_ for the scribes or readers of manuscripts.] _scribes' carrels._ down the middle of the alley a clear passage was left, and the other side of the passage, that opposite the bookcases, was occupied, at least in the fourteenth century, and probably much earlier, by a row of little wooden box-like rooms called _carrels_[ ], each of which was devoted to the use of one scribe. as a rule there were either two or three of these carrels to each bay or compartment of the cloister. they were commonly made of wainscot oak, about six by eight feet in plan or even less; just big enough to hold the seated scribe and his large desk, on which rested the manuscript he was copying, and the one he was writing, with some extra shelf space for his black and red inkhorns, his colours and other implements; see fig. on p. . these little rooms were provided with wooden floors and ceilings, so as to be warm and dry; they were set close against the traceried windows, which in most cloisters ran all along the internal sides of the four alleys. _cloister at gloucester._ the cloister of gloucester abbey[ ] has a slightly different arrangement. here a series of stone recesses, each intended to hold a carrel, extends all along the side of this walk[ ] of the cloister. there are two of these recesses to each bay, and the lower part of the outer wall, instead of consisting of open tracery, is of solid masonry, pierced only by a small glazed window to give light to the scribe; above the carrel recess there is the usual large arch filled in with tracery; see fig. [ ]. when provided with these and other wooden fittings, the cloister of a benedictine abbey would not have been either in appearance or fact as cold and comfortless as such places usually look now. with a small portable brazier the monastic scribe in his little wooden cell was safe from damp and probably fairly warm even in cold weather. _cloister at durham._ _the rites and monuments of durham_[ ] (cap. xli.) give the following very interesting description of the _carrels_ with which the durham cloister was fitted up; "in the northe syde of the cloister, from the corner over againste the church dour to the corner over againste the dorter (dormitory) dour, was all fynely glased, from the hight to the sole (sill) within a little of the ground into the cloister garth. and in every windowe iij pewes or carrells, where every one of the old monks had his carrell, severall by himselfe, that, when they had dyned, they did resorte to that place of cloister and there studyed upon there books, every one in his carrell, all the afternonne, unto evensong tyme. this was there exercise every daie. all there pewes or carrells was all fynely wainscotted (with oak) and verie close, all but the forepart which had carved wourke that gave light in at ther carrell doures of wainscott. and in every carrell was a deske to lye there bookes on. and the carrells was no greater then from one stanchell (mullion) of the windowe to another. _the durham armaria._ and over againste the carrells against the church wall did stande certaine great almeries (_armaria_ or cupboards) of wainscott all full of bookes, with great store of ancient manuscripts to help them in their study, wherein did lye as well the old auncyent written doctors of the church as other prophane authors, with dyverse other holie men's wourkes, so that every one dyd studye what doctor pleased them best, havinge the librarie at all tymes to goe studie in besydes there carrells." in the sixteenth century, owing to the introduction of printed works, the books in the benedictine monastery of durham had become too numerous for the row of _almeries_ along the north walk of the cloister to hold them; and so a separate room was provided as a second library. the present library at durham is the old dormitory or _dorter_ of the monks with all its "cubicles" or _sleeping-carrels_ removed. _other monastic scriptoria._ in the houses of other religious foundations the arrangements for the writing of manuscripts were different from those of the benedictines. in a convent of dominican friars, for example, each friar worked in his own cell where he slept, and in a carthusian monastery each monk had a complete little house and garden with a small study and oratory and a larger room, where his labours, literary or mechanical, were carried on. the dominican house of san marco in florence, of which fra beato angelico was a member, throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was famous for the magnificent manuscripts that were illuminated there; see above, p. . and various other convents of dominican friars in italy were important centres of manuscript illumination. some of the regular canons were also famous as illuminators, especially the austin canons. the secular scribes and illuminators. _growth of guilds._ towards the latter part of the thirteenth and throughout the fourteenth century, secular artisans in all varieties of arts and crafts were gradually throwing off the bonds of the old feudal serfdom under which they had for long been bound. the growth in number and importance of the trade-guilds, which in england developed so rapidly under henry iii., was one of the chief signs of the growing importance of the artisans of the chief towns of this and other european countries. _importance of the trade-guilds._ at the end of the thirteenth century, in london, in florence, and in many other cities no man could possess the rights of a citizen and a share in the municipal government without becoming a member of one of the established trade-guilds. edward i., edward iii. and others of the english kings set the example of enrolling themselves as members of one of the london guilds[ ]; and in florence it was necessary for dante to become a member of a guild[ ] before he could serve the republic as one of the _priori_. at first the scribes and illuminators (_librorum scriptores et illuminatores_[ ]) were members of one general guild including craftsmen in all the decorative arts and their subsidiary processes, such as leather-tanning, vellum-making, and even saddlery[ ]. _guilds in the xvth century._ by degrees the guilds became more numerous and more specialized in character, till their fullest development was reached in the first half or middle of the fifteenth century. much interesting information about the miniaturists' guild in bruges during the second half of the century has been published by mr weale[ ]. this was the guild of saint john and saint luke; and every painter, miniaturist, illuminator, rubricator, copyist, maker of vellum, binder or seller of books who lived and worked in bruges was obliged to belong to this guild. this rule, which existed in ghent, antwerp and most artistic centres, had a double use; on the one hand it protected the individual illuminator from wrong and oppression of any kind; and, on the other hand, it tended to keep up a good standard of excellence in the work which was executed by the guild-members. _rules of the guilds._ no miniaturist could be admitted till he had laid before the dean of the guild a sufficiently good sample of his skill, and all members were liable to be fined if they used inferior materials of any kind, such as impure gold, adulterated ultramarine or vermilion and the like. in this way the officers of the guild acted as moderators between the artisan and his patrons, securing reasonable pay for the artist, and, in return for that, reasonably good workmanship for his employer or customer. the guilds also prevented anything like commercial slave-driving by limiting very strictly the number of apprentices or workmen that each master might employ. _decadence of ms. art._ thus it happened that, though fine manuscripts were still written and illuminated in many of the principal monasteries of europe, a large class of secular illuminators grew up, especially in paris and the chief towns of flanders and northern germany. in this way the production of manuscripts, especially illuminated _books of hours_, became a regular commercial process, with the inevitable result that a great deal of work of a very inferior character was turned out to meet the rapidly growing demand for cheap and showy books. an immense number of these cheap manuscript _horae_ were produced after a few fixed patterns, with some mechanical dulness of repetition in every border and miniature with which they were decorated. _costly horae._ at the same time manuscripts were still produced, mostly at the special order of some royal patron or wealthy merchant, which, in elaborate beauty and in unsparing labour of execution, are hardly surpassed by the work of the earlier monastic scribes[ ]. examples of this are mentioned above at pages and . the dukes of burgundy and the kings of france, towards the close of the fourteenth and the first half of the fifteenth century, numbered many illuminators among their regular paid adherents. in some cases the artist was permanently engaged, and passed his whole life in the service of one prince; while in other cases famous illuminators were hired for a few months or years, when the patron wanted a specially magnificent manuscript either for his own use, or as a royal gift on the occasion of a marriage, a coronation or other great event. _women artists._ in some cases, we find that women learnt to be manuscript illuminators of great skill and artistic taste. for example cornelia, the wife of gérard david of bruges[ ], was, like her husband, both an illuminator of manuscripts and a painter of altar retables. a fine triptych painted by cornelia, in the possession of mr h. willett of brighton, is a work of great beauty and refinement, which it would be difficult to distinguish from a painting by gérard david himself. _costly gifts._ in the fifteenth century the commercial value of sumptuously illuminated manuscripts rose to the highest point. no object was thought more suited for a magnificent wedding present to a royal personage than a costly manuscript[ ]. and large sums were often advanced by money-lenders or pawnbrokers on the security of a fine illuminated manuscript. [illustration: fig. . picture by quentin matsys of antwerp, showing a lady selling or pawning an illuminated manuscript.] _painting by matsys._ fig. shows a lady of the bourgeois class negociating for the sale or pawn of a _book of hours_ or some such manuscript, illuminated with a full-page miniature of the virgin and child. the money-lender appears to be weighing out to her the money. this beautiful painting which is commonly called the "money-changer and his wife" is signed and dated by quentin massys or matsys of antwerp. it is now in the louvre. in the sixteenth century, especially in italy, during the last decadence of the illuminator's art, very magnificent and costly manuscripts were produced by professional miniaturists, but these are merely monuments of wasted labour. some account is given at page of giulio clovio, the most skilful though tasteless miniaturist of his age. _accounts of st george's, windsor._ mr j. w. clark, the registrary of the university of cambridge, has procured and kindly allows me to print the following very interesting record of the cost of writing and illuminating certain manuscripts during the fourteenth century. the extract is taken from the manuscript records of the expenses of the collegiate church of st george at windsor. the date is approximately given by the fact that john prust was a canon of windsor from to . "compotus johannis prust de diuersis libris per eum factis videlicet j antiphonarium, j textus evangelij, j martilogium, iij processionalia. in primis onerat se de x li. vj s. viij d. receptis de ricardo shawe per indenturam. item onerat se de xx s. receptis de corpore prebende edmundi clouille. item onerat se de l s. receptis de dicto edmundo pro officio suo videlicet precentoris. summa totalis receptorum xiij li. xvj s. viij d. in xix quaternionibus pergamenti vituli emptis pro libro euangelij precio quaternionis viij d. xij s. viij d. item solutum pro uno botello ad imponendum incaustum x d. item solutum pro incausto xiiij d. item pro vermulione ix d. item pro communibus scriptoris pro xviij^o. septimanis solutum per septimanam x d. xv s. item pro stipendio dicti scriptoris per idem tempus xiij s. iiij d. item solutum ade acton ad notandum "liber generacionis" et "passion[es]" in dicto libro[ ] viij d. item pro examinacione et ad faciendum literas capitales gloucas [for glaucas] iij s. item pro illuminacione dicti libri iij s. iiij d. item pro ligacione dicti libri iij s. iiij d. item auri fabro pro operacione sua xx s. item in uno equo conducto pro petro jon per ij vices london pro dicto libro portando et querendo viij d. item pro expensis dicti petri per ij vices xj d. summa lxxv s. viij d. item in vij quaternionibus pergamenti vituli emptis pro libro martilogij precio quaternionis viij d. iiij s. viij d. et non plures quia staur[o]. item pro scriptura xij quaternionum precio quaternionis xv d. xv s. item pro illuminacione dicti libri v s. x d. item pro ligacione dicti libri ij s. ij d. item ad faciendum literas capitales gloucas viij d. summa xxviij s. iiij d. item in xxxiiij quaternionibus pergamenti vituli emptis pro vno anthiphonario precio quaternionis xv d. xlij s. vj d. item xij quaterniones de stauro item pro scriptura xl. quaternionum pro nota precio quaternionis xv d. l s. item pro scriptura vj quaternionum de phalterio[ ] precio quaternionis ij s. ij d. xiij s. item ad notandum antiphonas in phalterio vj d. item ad notandum xl. quaterniones pro antiphonis precio vj d. xx s. item ad faciendum literas capitales gloucas xij d. item pro illuminacione xv s. xj d. item pro ligacione v s. summa vij li. vij s. xj d. item in xlvj quaternionibus pergamenti multonis emptis pro iij libris processionalium precio quaternionis ij d. ob. ix s. vij d. item pro scriptura dictarum xlvj quaternionum xv s. item ad notandum dictas quaterniones vij s. vj d. item pro illuminacione ij s. ix d. item pro ligacione ij s. vj d. summa xxxvij s. iiij d. summa totalis expensarum xiiij li. ix s. iij d. et sic debentur computanter xij s. vij d. probatur per auditores quos r[ecepit] de ricardo shawe tunc precentore. et sic equatur." from these accounts we learn that six manuscripts were written, illuminated and bound, one of them with gold or silver clasps or bosses, at a total cost of £ . _s._ _d._, more than £ in modern value. the books were a _textus_ or _evangeliarium_, a _martyrologium_, an _antiphonale_ and three _processionals_. £ s. d. the _evangeliarium_ was written on _quaternions_ (quires)[ ] of vellum, costing _d._ each, total black ink a bottle to hold the ink vermilion the scribe's "commons" (food) for eighteen weeks payment to the scribe corrections and adding coloured initials illumination binding goldsmith's work (on the binding) two journeys to london and other smaller items, making a total of £ . _s._ _d._ the _martyrologium_ was partly written on quaternions of vellum[ ], costing _d._ each quaternion payment to the scribe illumination binding coloured initials ----------- total the _antiphonale_ was written on quaternions of larger and more expensive sheets of vellum, costing _d._ a quaternion[ ] payments to the scribe adding the musical notation coloured initials illumination binding ----------- total the three _processionals_ only cost £ . _s._ _d._, being written on quaternions of cheap parchment made of sheep-skin which cost only ½_d._ the quaternion. _accounts of st ewen's, bristol._ the following extracts from the parish accounts of the church of st ewen, in bristol[ ], give some details as to the cost of writing, illuminating and binding a manuscript _lectionary_ during the years and . the total expense is £ . _s._ _d._, quite equal to £ in modern value. - . "item, for j dossen and v quayers of vellom to perform the legend [i.e. to write the lectionary on] x^s vj^d item, for wrytyng of the same xxv^s item, for ix skynnys and j quayer of velom to the same legend v^s vj^d item, for wrytyng of the forseyd legend iiij^s ij^d - . item for a red skynne to kever the legent v^d also for the binding and correcting of the seid boke v^s also for the lumining of the seid legent xiij^s vj^d chapter xiv. the materials and technical processes of the illuminator. _finest vellum._ _vellum for scribes[ ]._ the most remarkable skill is shown by the perfection to which the art of preparing vellum[ ] for the scribe was brought. the exquisitely thin uterine vellum, which was specially used for the minutely written anglo-norman _vulgates_ of the thirteenth century, has been already described; see page . for ivory-like beauty of colour and texture nothing could surpass the best italian vellum of the fifteenth century. one occasional use of the very thin uterine vellum should be noted. for example in a german twelfth century copy of the _vulgate_, now in the corpus library in cambridge, some of the miniature pictures have been painted on separate pieces of uterine vellum, and then pasted into their place on the thicker vellum pages of the manuscript. this, however, is an exceptional thing. _high price of vellum._ the vellum used for illuminated manuscripts appears to have been costly, partly on account of the skill and labour that were required for its production, and, in the case of uterine vellum on account of the great number of animals' skins that were required to provide enough material for the writing of a single manuscript such as a copy of the _vulgate_. _cost of vellum._ even the commoner kind of parchment used for official documents was rather a costly thing. the roll with the visitation expenses of bishop swinfield, bishop of hereford from to , shows that sheets of parchment cost _s._ _d._, about £ in modern value[ ]. the vellum used for manuscripts has a different texture on its two sides. one side, that on which the hair grew, has a _mat_, unglossy surface; the other (interior) side of the skin is perfectly smooth and, in the case of the finest vellum, has a beautifully glossy texture like that of polished ivory. in writing a manuscript the scribe was careful to arrange his pages so that two glossy and two dull pages came opposite each other[ ]. _bad modern vellum._ the art of preparing vellum of the finest kind is now lost; the vellum made in england is usually spoilt first by rubbing down the surface to make it unnaturally even, and then by loading it with a sort of priming of plaster and white lead, very much like the paper of a cheap memorandum book. the best modern _vellum_ is still made in italy, especially in rome. good, stout, undoctored vellum of a fine, pure colour can be procured in rome, though in limited quantities, and at a high price[ ], but nothing is now made which resembles either the finest ivory-textured vellum of fifteenth century italian manuscripts, or the exquisitely thin uterine vellum of the anglo-norman bibles. _use of paper._ _paper[ ]._ though by far the majority of the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages are written on vellum, yet paper was occasionally used, long before the fifteenth century, when its manufacture was largely developed to supply the demand created by the invention of printing. paper made from the papyrus pith has been already described, see chap. ii. page . _mode of making paper._ a very different process was used for the various kinds of paper which were made in mediaeval and modern times. the essence of the process consists in making a fine pulp of cotton or linen rags by long-continued pounding with water sufficient to give the mixture the consistency of thick cream. a handful of this fluid pulp is then spread evenly and thinly over the bottom of a fine wire sieve, through which the superfluous water drains away, leaving a thin, soft mass which is then turned out of the sieve, pressed, dried and finally soaked with size to make the paper fit to write on. this process leaves the wire-marks of the sieve indelibly printed on to the paper. these marks are of two kinds, _first_, those of the stouter wires which run longitudinally along the sieve at intervals of about an inch or a little more, and _secondly_, very fine cross wires, placed close together, and woven in at right angles to the first-mentioned stouter wires. _water-marks._ in the fourteenth century what are called _water-marks_ came into use, together with the invention of linen paper. some simple device indicating the city or province where the paper was made was woven with fine wire into the bottom of the sieve, and this mark was impressed upon the paper, like that of the other (parallel) wires of the sieve. a double-headed eagle, a vase, a letter or a bull's head are among the earliest paper-marks which occur in manuscripts and books of the fifteenth century[ ]. in later times, during the sixteenth century, each manufacturer adopted his own mark[ ]; and then still more recently the year-date has been added[ ]. _evidence of date._ these paper-marks in some cases afford useful evidence as to the origin and date of a manuscript or printed book; but too much reliance should not be placed on such evidence, since paper often remained for a long time in stock, and the productions of one manufactory were frequently exported for use by the scribes and printers of more than one distant country[ ]. paper of oriental make has no water-mark, but the earliest linen-paper of the fourteenth century made in christian europe always has a water-mark of some kind, very clearly visible. _earliest cotton paper._ _the dates of paper manufacture._ the earliest paper appears to have been made in china at a date even before the christian era. its manufacture was next extended in syria, and especially to damascus[ ]. this early paper was made of the cotton-plant, the "tree-wool" of herodotus. hence it was called _charta bombycina_ or _damascena_, or, from its silky texture, _charta serica_. paper of this class, almost as beautiful in texture as vellum, is still made in the east and used for the fine illuminated manuscripts of india, persia and other moslem countries. _arab mss. on paper._ many arab manuscripts written on cotton-paper of as early a date as the ninth century still exist. the moslem conquerors of spain and sicily introduced the manufacture of this _charta bombycina_ into western europe, and to some small extent it was used for greek and latin manuscripts during the tenth and eleventh centuries. it was, however, rarely used in christian europe till the thirteenth century. _wool-paper._ at first cotton only was used in the manufacture of paper, but gradually a mixture first of wool and then of flax or linen was introduced. peter, who was abbot of cluny from to , in his treatise _adversus judaeos_ mentions manuscripts written on wool-paper, made "ex rasuris veterum pannorum." _linen paper._ in the fourteenth century linen-paper began to be made; at first mixed with wool, and then of pure linen. this fourteenth century paper is distinguishable by its stoutness, its close texture, and its thick wire-marks; the water-mark being especially clear and transparent. paper was frequently used for official documents, charters and the like before it came into use for manuscript books[ ]. _early ms. on paper._ the british museum possesses one of the oldest known books on paper (_arundel manuscripts_, ); this is a collection of _astronomical treatises_ written by an italian scribe early in the thirteenth century. in the fourteenth century the spanish manufactories of _cotton_-paper were on the decline, and the first manufactory of _linen_-paper was started at fabriano in northern italy. in another manufactory was set up in padua, and before the close of the fourteenth century paper was made in nearly all the chief cities of northern italy, especially in milan and venice, and as far south as florence and siena. in germany paper-making began in mentz in about ; and in a manufactory was started at nuremberg with the aid of italian workmen. south germany, however, was supplied with paper from northern italy till the fifteenth century. in paris and other places in france paper began to be made soon after the first manufactories in italy were started. _paper in england._ in england cotton-paper, especially for legal documents, was largely used in the fourteenth century. in oxford, in the year , a quire of paper, small folio size, cost five pence, equal in modern value to eight or nine shillings. in the fifteenth century its value had decreased to three pence or four pence the quire. paper does not appear to have been made in england till the reign of henry vii.; before that time it was mainly imported from germany and the netherlands. _earliest english paper._ all caxton's books are printed on foreign paper, and the first book printed on paper which was made in england was wynkyn de worde's bartholomaeus, _de proprietatibus rerum_, printed about the year , four years after caxton's death, with the following interesting _colophon_, which alludes to the first paper manufactory in england, set up by john tate at hertford. this _colophon_, which does not do credit to wynkyn de worde's literary style, runs thus: and also of your charyte call to remembraunce the soule of william caxton first prynter of this boke in laten tongue at coleyn hymself to auance that every wel disyosyd man may theron loke and john tate the yonger joye mote he broke whiche late hathe in englond doo make this paper thynne that now in our englyssh this boke is prynted inne. during the fifteenth century the making of paper reached its highest degree of perfection, and in the following century its excellence began to decline. _beauty of venetian paper._ the venetian paper of about , used, for example, in the printed books of nicolas jenson and other printers in venice, is a substance of very great beauty and durability, inferior only in appearance to the very best sort of vellum. it is very strong, of a fine creamy tint, and sized[ ] with great skill, so as to have a beautiful glossy texture. for the illuminator's purpose it appears to have been almost as good as vellum. it even receives the raised mordant for burnished gold of the highest beauty and brilliance. the very small quantity of good paper that is now manufactured, mainly for artistic purposes, is made by hand in exactly the same way that was employed in the fourteenth or fifteenth century. most paper is now made by machinery, and as a rule contains more esparto grass than pure linen fibre. the metals and pigments used in illuminated manuscripts[ ]. _fluid and leaf gold._ _gold and silver or tin._ the splendour of illuminated manuscripts of almost all classes, except manuscripts of the irish school such as the _book of kells_, is largely due to the very skilful use of gold and silver. these metals were applied by the illuminator in two ways, _first_, as a fluid pigment, and _secondly_ in the form of leaf. the fluid method appears to have been the older. it is easier to apply, but is not comparable in splendour of effect to the highly burnished leaf gold, which was used with such perfection of skill by the illuminators of the fourteenth century. _method of grinding._ _fluid gold_ was made by laboriously grinding the pure metal on a porphyry slab into the finest possible powder. this powdered gold, mixed with water and a little size, was applied with a brush like any other pigment; see theophilus, i. to [ ]. when dry, it could be to some extent polished by burnishing, but as it was laid directly on to the comparatively uneven and yielding surface of the vellum it never received a very high polish. as a rule therefore fluid gold was left unburnished, and its surface remained dull or _mat_ in appearance. _dull and burnished gold._ for this reason it was not unfrequently used in conjunction with burnished leaf gold, a fine decorative effect being produced by the contrast of the _mat_ and polished surfaces. thus, for example, in fourteenth and fifteenth century manuscripts a delicate diaper of scroll pattern is sometimes painted with a fine brush over a ground of burnished gold leaf. in the fifteenth century, during the decadence of the illuminator's art, the use of fluid gold, which had previously greatly diminished, was much revived, especially for the background of the realistic borders in flemish manuscripts[ ], for touching in the high lights of miniatures, and for many other purposes. when used to cover large surfaces, it is always unsatisfactory in effect and has little decorative value. _cistercian severity._ the preparation of this gold pigment was a very slow and laborious matter. the severe cistercian rule regarded this process as a waste of precious time; and indeed the use of gold in any form was prohibited in the manuscripts used in cistercian abbeys. in the dialogue between a cistercian and a cluniac monk, _de diversis utriusque ordinis observantiis_ (_thesaur. nov. anecdot._ vol. v. ), the cistercian asks "what use there can be in grinding gold and painting large capitals with it"; _aurum molere et cum illo molito magnas capitales pingere litteras, quid est nisi inutile et otiosum opus_? st bernard himself had an even stronger objection, not only to gold in manuscripts, but to any ornaments with grotesque dragons and monsters, on the ground that they did not tend to edification. _fluid silver._ _fluid silver_ was prepared and applied in the same way, but it was much less used than gold pigment. a very beautiful effect is produced in some of the gorgeous carolingian manuscripts by using in the same ornament both gold and silver, which mutually enhance each other's effect by contrast of colour. _leaf gold._ _mordant ground._ _burnished gold leaf._ the extraordinary splendour of effect produced by skilfully applied gold leaf depends mainly on the fact that it was laid, not directly on to the vellum, but on to a thick bed of a hard enamel-like substance, which gradually set (as it got dry) and formed a ground nearly as hard and smooth as glass; this enabled the gold leaf laid upon it to be burnished to the highest possible polish, till in fact the gold gave a reflexion like that of a mirror. this enamel-like ground, or _mordant_ as it was called, was commonly as thick as stout cardboard, and its edges were rounded off, which has the double result of making the gold leaf laid upon it look not like a thin leaf, but like a thick plate of gold[ ], and at the same time the rounded edges catch the light and so greatly increase the decorative splendour of the metal. _convex surface._ thus, for example, the little bosses and studs of gold, which are strewn so thickly among the foliage in the illuminated borders of italian manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, are convex in shape, like an old-fashioned watch-glass, and each boss reflects a brilliant speck of light whatever the direction may be in which the light falls upon the page. perhaps the most sumptuous use of gold leaf is to be seen in some of the early fourteenth century french manuscripts, in which large miniatures are painted with an unbroken background of solid-looking burnished gold, with a mirror-like power of reflexion. it was only by slow degrees that the illuminators reached the perfect technical skill of the fourteenth century in their application of gold leaf. _purity of the gold._ in the first place the purest gold had to be beaten out, not the alloy of gold, silver and copper which now is used for making the gold leaf of what is called "the finest quality." the english illuminators at the close of the thirteenth and in the fourteenth century frequently got their gold in the form of the beautiful florins of florence, lucca[ ] or pisa, which were struck of absolutely pure gold[ ]. in england there was no gold coinage till the series of _nobles_ was begun by edward iii.[ ], but these were of quite pure gold, like the italian florins, and so answered the purpose of the illuminator. another important point was that the gold leaf was not beaten to one twentieth part of the extreme tenuity of the modern leaf. the leaves were very small, about three by four inches at the most, and not more than from fifty to a hundred of these were made out of the gold ducat of italy, which weighed nearly as much as a modern sovereign[ ]. in many cases, we find, the illuminator prepared his own gold leaf, and it was not uncommon for the crafts of the goldsmith and the illuminator to be practised by the same man. for example the fitz-othos, mentioned at page as a distinguished anglo-norman family of artists in the thirteenth century, were skilful both as makers of gold shrines and as illuminators of manuscripts. many interesting notes about the fitz-othos and other artists employed at westminster during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries are to be found among the royal accounts now preserved in the record office: see _vetusta monumenta_, vol. vi., p. seq. among the accounts of the expenses of decorating with painting the royal chapel of saint stephen at westminster in edward iii.'s reign, we find that john lightgrave paid for six hundred leaves of gold at the rate of five shillings the hundred, equal to about £ or £ in modern value. and john "tynbeter" received six shillings for six dozen leaves of tin used instead of silver, not because it was cheap, but because tin was not so liable to tarnish. these accounts are in latin, which is not always of ciceronian purity; a classical purist might perhaps carp at such phrases as these, _item. pro reparatione brushorum_, viij^d, under the date ; and, in the following year, _item. unum scarletum blanketum_, ij^s vij^d. the scarlet blanket was not bought to keep the artist warm, but to make a red pigment from, as is described below at page . _goldsmith artists._ this close connection between the arts of the goldsmith and the illuminator had its parallel in other branches of the arts, and with results of very considerable importance. many of the chief painters and sculptors of italy, during the period of highest artistic development, were also skilful goldsmiths, as for example ghiberti, verrocchio, ant. pollaiuolo, francesco francia and many others. this habit of manipulating the precious metals gave neatness and precision of touch to the painter, and in the art of illuminating manuscripts taught the artist to use his gold so as to produce the richest and most decorative effect. _the gold mordant._ _the mordant._ we now come to the most difficult part of the illuminator's art, that of producing a ground for his gold leaf of the highest hardness and smoothness of surface. it is a subject dealt with at much length by all the chief writers on the technique of the illuminator, from theophilus in the eleventh century, down to cennino cennini at the beginning of the fourteenth[ ]. though differing in details, the general principle of the process is much the same in all; the finest possible sort of _gesso_, plaster, gypsum or whitening, was very finely ground to an impalpable powder, and then worked up with albumen or size to the consistency of cream, so that it could be applied with a brush. after the first coat was dry, a second and a third coat were added to bring up the mordant to the requisite thickness of body, so that it stood out in visible relief upon the surface of the vellum. in order that the illuminator might see clearly where his brush was going, and keep his mordant accurately within the required outline, it was usual to add some colouring matter, such as bole armeniac (red ochre), to the white _gesso_, which otherwise would not have shown out very clearly on the cream-white vellum. in many cases, however, this colouring matter is omitted. _application of leaf._ when the last coat of the _gesso-mordant_ was dry and hard, its surface was carefully polished with the burnisher and it was then ready to receive the gold leaf; several days' waiting would often be required before the whole body of the mordant had set perfectly hard. white of egg was then lightly brushed over the whole of the raised mordant, and while the albumen was still moist and sticky, the illuminator gently slid on to it the piece of gold leaf, which he had previously cut approximately to the required shape. he then softly dabbed the gold leaf with a pad or bunch of wool, till it had completely adhered to the sticky mordant, working it with special care so as completely to cover the rounded edges. after the albumen was quite dry, and the gold leaf firmly fixed in its place, the artist brushed away with a stiff brush all the superfluous gold leaf; all the leaf, that is, under which there was no mordant-ground to hold it fast. _burnishing process._ the gold was then ready to be polished. for this purpose various forms of burnisher were used, the best being a hard highly polished rounded pencil of crystal or stone, such as haematite, agate, chalcedony and the like; or in lack of those, the highly enamelled tooth of a dog, cat, rat or other carnivorous animal was nearly as good[ ]. in fact patience and labour were the chief requisites; one receipt, in jehan le begue's manuscript, § [ ], directs the illuminator to burnish and to go on burnishing till the sweat runs down his forehead. but caution, as well as labour, was required; it was very easy to scratch holes in the gold leaf, so that the mordant showed through, unless great care was used in the rubbing. in that case the illuminator had to apply another piece of leaf to cover up the scratches, and do his burnishing over again. to secure the highest polish, illuminators burnished the hard mordant as described above before laying on the gold leaf. in most cases two layers of gold leaf were applied, and sometimes even more, in order to insure a perfect and unbroken surface. _application of gold._ all writers speak of this burnishing as being a very difficult and uncertain process even to a skilled hand, requiring exactly the right temperature and amount of moisture in the air, or else it was liable to go wrong. if the gold was to be applied in minute or intricate patterns the illuminator did not attempt to cut his leaf to fit the mordant-ground, but laid it in little patches so as to cover a portion of the ornament. the superfluous gold between the lines of the pattern was then brushed away, as the leaf only remained where it was held by the mordant. with all possible care and skill, it was hardly possible always to ensure a sharp clean outline to each patch of gold; and so one commonly finds that the illuminator has added a black outline round the edge of each patch of gold, in order to conceal any little raggedness of the edge. _receipts for the mordant._ as examples of mediaeval receipts for making the mordant i may mention the following:-- "mix gypsum, white marble, and egg-shells finely powdered and coloured with red ochre or _terra verde_; to be mixed with white of egg and applied in thin coats, and to be burnished before the application of the gold." when dry, this mixture slowly set into a beautiful, hard and yet not brittle substance, capable of receiving a polish like that of marble, and forming the best possible ground to receive the gold leaf. much of its excellence depended on the patience of the illuminator in applying it in very thin coats; each of which was allowed to dry completely before the next was laid on. when ready to receive the gold leaf, after the burnishing of the mordant was finished, some purified white of egg was brushed over to make the gold leaf adhere firmly so as not to work loose or tear under the friction of the burnisher. _receipts for the mordant._ in some cases white lead (_ceruse_) was added to the _gesso_, as, for example, in a receipt, given by cennino cennini (§ to , and ,) for a mordant made of fine gypsum, ceruse and sugar of candia, that is ordinary pure white sugar[ ]. this is to be ground up with white of egg, applied in thin coats and burnished. to colour the mordant cennino adds _bole armeniac_, or _terra verde_, or verdigris green. giovanni da modena, a bolognese illuminator, gives the following receipt for a different gold-mordant to be used with oil instead of albumen or size[ ]. instead of _gesso_ it is to be made of a mixture of white and red lead, red ochre, bole armeniac and verdigris; the whole is to be ground first with water, then thoroughly dried, and again ground up with a mixture of linseed oil and amber or mastic varnish. this variety of mordant appears to have been used in a good many fifteenth century italian manuscripts. it is not such a good mixture as the _gesso_ and white of egg, as the oil used to mix with it is liable to stain the vellum through to the other side of the page, and even to print off a mark on the opposite page, especially when the book has been severely pressed by the binder. _tooled patterns._ _stamped patterns._ _tooled patterns on gold leaf._ in many italian and french manuscripts, especially of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, a very rich and brilliant effect is produced with tooled lines impressed into the surface of the flat gold. diapered and scroll-work backgrounds, the nimbi of saints, the orphreys and apparels on vestments, and many other kinds of decoration were skilfully executed with a pointed bone or ivory tool, impressed upon the gold leaf after it was burnished, and through the gold into the slightly elastic body of the _gesso-mordant_. patterns were also produced by the help of minute punches, which stamped dots or circles; these, when grouped together, formed little rosettes or powderings, like those used in the panel paintings of the same time. gold treated in this way had to be of considerable thickness, and in some cases, when a large flat surface of mordant was to be gilt, as many as three layers of stout gold leaf were employed to give the requisite body of metal. _silver leaf._ _burnished silver leaf_ was occasionally used by the mediaeval illuminators, though not very often, as it was very liable to tarnish and blacken. for this reason _leaf tin_ was not unfrequently used instead of silver, as tin does not oxydize in such a conspicuous way; see above, p. . the use of all three metals, gold, silver and tin, is described by theophilus, _schedula diversarum artium_, i. , and . theophilus speaks of laying the gold leaf directly on to the vellum with the help only of white of egg. this method was not uncommon in early times, and it was not till the end of the thirteenth century that the full splendour of effect was reached by the help of the thick, hard mordant-ground. _cheap methods._ inferior processes were sometimes used for the cheap manuscripts of later times. thus tin leaf burnished and then covered with a transparent yellow lacquer or varnish made from saffron was used instead of gold. cennino and other writers describe a curious method of applying gold easily and cheaply. the illuminator was first to paint his design with a mixture of size and pounded glass or crystal; this, when dry, left a surface like modern sandpaper or glass-paper, the artist was then to rub a bit of pure gold over the rough surface, which ground off and held a sufficient amount of gold to produce the effect of gilding. only a very coarse effect, worthy of the nineteenth century, could have been produced by this process. chapter xv. the materials and technical processes of the illuminator (_continued_). _vehicles used._ _the coloured pigments of the illuminators._ though mediaeval manuscripts are splendid and varied in colour to the highest possible degree, yet all this wealth of decorative effect was produced by a very few pigments, and with the simplest of _media_, such as _size_ made by boiling down shreds of vellum or fish-bones[ ], or else gum-arabic, or occasionally white of egg or a mixture both of the yoke and the white[ ]. in the main the technique of manuscript illumination is the same as that of panel pictures executed in distemper (_tempera_). an oil medium was unsuited to manuscript work because the oil spoilt the beautiful opaque whiteness of the vellum and made the painting show through to the other side[ ]. _ultramarine blue._ _blue pigments._ the most important blue pigment, both during classical and mediaeval times, was the costly and very beautiful _ultramarine_ (_azzurrum[ ] transmarinum_), which was made from _lapis lazuli_, a mineral chiefly imported from persia. this _ultramarine_ blue was the _cyanus_ or _coeruleum_ of theophrastus and pliny. it is not only the most magnificent of all blue pigments, but is also the most durable, even when exposed to light for a very long period. _its manufacture._ the general principle of the manufacture of ultramarine is very simple; consisting merely in grinding the _lapis lazuli_ to powder, and then separating, by repeated washing, the deep blue particles from the rest of the stone[ ]. the process of extracting the blue was made easier if the _lapis lazuli_ was first calcined by heat. this is the modern method, and was occasionally done in mediaeval times, but it injures the depth and brilliance of the pigment, and in the finest manuscripts ultramarine was used which had been prepared by the better though more laborious process without the aid of heat. _its great value._ the proportion of pure blue in a lump of _lapis lazuli_ is much smaller than it looks; the stone was and is rare and costly, and thus the finest ultramarine of the mediaeval painters was often worth considerably more than double its weight in gold[ ]. both in classical and mediaeval times it was usual for the patron who had ordered a picture to supply the necessary _ultramarine_ to the artist, who was only expected to provide the less costly pigments in return for the sum for which he had contracted to execute the work. _method of theft._ pliny (_hist. nat._ xxxiii. ) tells a story of a trick played by a painter on his employer, who suspiciously watched the artist to see that he did not abstract any of the precious _ultramarine_ which had been doled out to him. at frequent intervals the painter washed his brush, dipped in the ultramarine, in a vessel of water; the heavy pigment sank to the bottom, and at the end of the day the artist poured off the water and secured the mass of powdered ultramarine at the bottom. it is interesting to note that vasari, in his _life of perugino_, tells precisely this story about pietro, who was annoyed at the suspicions expressed by a certain prior for whom he was painting a fresco[ ]. the prior was in despair at the enormous amount of pigment that the thirsty wall sucked in, and he was agreeably surprised when, at the conclusion of the work, perugino returned to him a large quantity of _ultramarine_, as a lesson that he should not suspect a gentleman of being a thief. _ultramarine scraped off._ the library of corpus christi college, cambridge, possesses a manuscript which affords a curious proof of the great value of ultramarine to the mediaeval illuminator. this is a magnificent copy of the _vulgate_ by a german scribe of the twelfth century, copiously illustrated with miniature pictures, many of which had backgrounds, either partially or wholly, covered with ultramarine. all through the book the ultramarine has in mediaeval times been very carefully and completely scraped off, no doubt for use in another manuscript. this theft has been accomplished with such skill that wonderfully little injury has been done to the beautiful illuminations, except, of course, the loss of splendour caused by the abstraction of the ultramarine. _impasto._ in illuminated manuscripts _ultramarine_ is very freely used. it is specially noticeable for the thick body (_impasto_) in which it is applied, so as very often to stand out in visible relief. the reason of this is that this, and some other blue pigments, lose much of their depth of colour if they are ground into very fine powder. hence both the ultramarine and _smalto_ blues are always applied in comparatively coarse grained powder; and this of course necessitates the application of a thick body of colour. _ancient cyanus._ _smalto blues._ next in importance to the real ultramarine come the artificial _smalto_ or "_enamel_" blues, which were used largely in egypt at a very early date under the name of artificial _cyanus_; see pliny, _hist. nat._ xxxvii. . among the greeks and romans too this was a pigment of great importance, and when skilfully made is but little inferior in beauty to the natural ultramarine. _vitreous pigment._ _smalto blue_ is simply a powdered blue glass or vitreous enamel, coloured with an oxide or carbonate of copper. vitruvius (vii. xi. ) describes the method of making it by fusing in a crucible the materials for ordinary bottle-glass, mixed with a quantity of copper filings. the alcaline silicate of the glass frit acts upon the copper, which slowly combines with the glass, giving it a deep blue colour. the addition of a little oxide of tin turns it into an opaque blue enamel, which when cold was broken up with a hammer, and then powdered, but not too finely, in a mortar. smalto blue is largely used for the simple blue initials which alternate with red ones in an immense number of manuscripts. the glittering particles of the powdered glass can easily be distinguished by a minute examination. like the ultramarine, the smalto blue is always applied in a thick layer. the monk theophilus (ii. ), who wrote during a period of some artistic and technical decadence, the eleventh century, advises the glass-painter who wants a good blue to search among some ancient roman ruins for the fine coloured _tesserae_ of glass mosaics, which were so largely used by the romans to decorate their walls and vaults, and then to pound them for use. _german blue._ _azzurro tedesco_ or _azzurro della magna_, german blue, was much used by the illuminators as a cheap substitute for ultramarine. this appears to have been a native compound of carbonate of copper of a brilliant blue colour. it was occasionally used to adulterate the costly ultramarine, but this fraud was easily discovered by heating a small quantity of the pigment on the blade of a knife; it underwent no change if it was pure; but if adulterated with _azzurro della magna_ it showed signs of blackening[ ]. _indigo._ _indigo blue._ the above-mentioned blues are all of a mineral character, and are durable under almost any circumstances. to some extent however the vegetable _indigo_ blue was also used for manuscript illuminations, both alone and also to make a compound purple colour. _method of using dyes._ colours of all kinds prepared from vegetable or animal substances required a special treatment to fit them for use as pigments in solid or _tempera_ painting. though indigo and other colours of a similar class are the best and simplest of dyes for woven stuffs, yet they are too thin in body to use alone as pigments. thus both in classical and mediaeval times these dye-pigments were prepared by making a small quantity of white earth, powdered chalk or the like absorb a large quantity of the thin dye, which thus was brought into a concentrated and solid, opaque form, not a mere stain as it would otherwise have been. these kinds of pigments are described by pliny, _hist. nat._ xxxv. and ; and by vitruvius, vii. xiv. eraclius in his work on technique, _de artibus romanorum_, calls them _colores infectivi_, "dyed colours," an accurately expressive phrase. one method, occasionally used for the cheaper class of manuscripts, was to paint on to the vellum with white lead, and then to colour it by repeated application of a brush dipped in the thin dye-pigment. many of the colours mentioned below belong to this class. _terra verde._ _green pigments._ a fine soft green much used in early manuscripts is a natural earthy pigment called _terra verde_ or green _verona earth_. this needs little preparation, except washing, and is of the most durable kind; it is a kind of ochre, coloured, not with iron, but by the natural presence of copper. _verdigris green._ a much more brilliant green pigment was made of _verdigris_ (_verderame_) or carbonate of copper, produced very easily by moistening metallic copper with vinegar or by exposing it to the fumes of acetic acid in a closed earthen vessel; see theophilus, i. . _verdigris green_ was much used by manuscript illuminators, especially during the fifteenth century, when a very unpleasant harsh and gaudy green appears to have been popular. when softened by an admixture of white pigment, verdigris gives a pleasanter and softer colour. _chrysocolla._ a native carbonate of copper, which was called by the romans _chrysocolla_[ ], was also used for mediaeval manuscripts. it is, however, harsh in tint if not tempered with white. both the last-named pigments were specially used with yoke of egg as a medium. _prasinum_, a vegetable green made by staining powdered chalk with the green of the leek, was sometimes used. cennino cennini also recommends a grass green made by mixing orpiment (sulphuret of arsenic) and indigo. one of the best and most commonly used greens was made by a mixture of smalto blue and yellow ochre; other mixtures were also used. _red pigments._ red and blue are by far the most important of the colours used in illuminated manuscripts, and it is wonderful to see what variety of effect is often produced by the use of these two colours only. _vermilion and minium._ the chief red pigments used by illuminators are vermilion (_cinnabar_ or sulphuret of mercury) and red lead (_minium_), from which the words _miniator_ and _miniature_ were derived, as is explained above at page [ ]. both these pigments are very brilliant and durable reds, the more costly vermilion is the more beautiful of the two; it has a slightly orange tint. _mixed reds._ illuminators commonly used the two colours mixed. one receipt recommends one-third of red lead combined with two-thirds of vermilion; jehan le begue's manuscript, § (mrs merrifield's edition, vol. i. page ). vermilion was prepared by slowly heating together metallic mercury with sulphur. red lead (a protoxide of lead) was made by roasting white lead or else _litharge_ (ordinary lead oxide) till it absorbed a larger proportion of oxygen. _ochre reds._ _rubrica_ or _indian red_ was a less brilliant pigment, which also was largely used in illuminated manuscripts, especially for headings, notes and the like, which were hence called _rubrics_. _rubrica_ is a fine variety of _red ochre_, an earth naturally coloured by oxide of iron[ ]; another variety was called bole armeniac. in classical times the _rubrica of sinope_ was specially valued for its fine colour. in addition to these mineral and very permanent reds there were some more fugitive vegetable and animal scarlets and reds which were used in illuminated manuscripts. _murex._ _murex._ one of these, the _murex_ shell-fish, has already been mentioned for its use as a dye for the vellum of the magnificent byzantine and carolingian gold-written manuscripts. the _murex_ was also used as a _color infectivus_ by concentrating it on powdered chalk[ ]. _kermes._ _kermes._ another very beautiful and important carmine-red pigment was made from the little _kermes_[ ] beetle (_coccus_) which lives on the ilex oaks of syria and the peloponnese. it is rather like the _cochineal_ beetle of mexico, but produces a finer and more durable colour, especially when used as a dye. for the woven stuffs of classical and mediaeval times, and in the east even at the present day, the kermes is one of the most beautiful and important of all the colours used for dyeing. the mediaeval name for the kermes red was _rubeum de grana_; when required for use as a pigment it appears to have been usual, not to extract the colour directly from the beetle, but to get it out of clippings of red cloth which had been dyed with the kermes, by boiling the cloth in a weak solution of alkali and precipitating the red pigment from the water with the help of alum. the reason for this method is not apparent. possibly it was first done as a means of utilizing waste clippings of the costly red cloth, and then, when the habit was established, no other method was known to the colour-makers, who in some cases bought pieces of cloth on purpose to cut them up and use in this way[ ]. the _scarletum blanketum_ mentioned at page was bought for this purpose. _madder._ _madder-red_ was also used as a pigment by boiling the root of the madder-plant (_rubia-tinctorium_), and then using the concentrated extract to dye powdered chalk. various red and purple flowers, such as the violet, were used in the same way as _colores infectivi_. _lac._ _lake-red_ (_lacca_ or _lac_) was made and called after a natural gum or resin, the _lach_ of india; see cennino cennini, § . this is a beautiful transparent colour, which, in some fine manuscripts of the fifteenth century, is used as a transparent glaze over burnished gold, the effect of which is very magnificent, as the metallic gleam of the gold shines through the deep transparent red of the over-painting. lake was also used as an opaque, solid pigment by mixing it with white, which at once gave it "body," and destroyed its transparency. _purple_ of a very magnificent tint was occasionally made by a mixture of _ultramarine_ with the carmine-red of the kermes beetle; this was specially used by the illuminators of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. _yellows._ _yellow ochre_, a fine earth pigment coloured by iron, was the principal yellow of the illuminators. in late manuscripts _orpiment_ (sulphuret of arsenic), which is a more brilliant lemon-yellow, was occasionally used; see cennino cennini, § . _litharge yellow_, an oxide of lead, was another important colour, but more especially for the painter in oil, who used it very largely as a drier[ ]. another fine ochreous earth of a rich brown colour was the _terra di siena_ or "raw siena"; the colour of this was made warmer in tint by roasting, thus producing "burnt siena." _use of white._ _white pigments_ were perhaps the most important of all to the illuminator, who usually only used pure colours for his deepest shadows; all lights and half tints, both in miniature pictures and in decorative foliage, being painted with a large admixture of white. the use of this system of colouring by fra angelico and many painters of the sienese school has been already referred to; see page . for this reason it was very important to use a pure and durable white pigment which would combine well with other colours. lime white. _bianco di san giovanni_ was in all respects one of the best of the whites used by illuminators. this was simply pure _lime-white_, made by burning the finest white marble; the lime was then washed in abundance of pure water, then very fine ground and finally dried in cakes of a convenient size; see cennino cennini, § ; and theophilus, i. . the medium used with it was the purest size or gum arabic of the most colourless kind. another white pigment was made of powdered chalk and finely ground egg-shells; this was a less cold white than the bianco di san giovanni. _white lead._ _white lead_ (_cerusa_ or _biacca_) was also used[ ], especially by the later illuminators, but with very unfortunate results, since white lead is liable to turn to a metallic grey or even black if exposed to any impure sulphurous atmosphere. many beautiful manuscripts have suffered much owing to the blackening of their high lights which had been touched in with white lead; especially manuscripts exposed to the gas- and smoke-poisoned air of london or other large cities. _process of manufacture._ the _biacca_ of the mediaeval illuminator was made in exactly the same way that vitruvius and pliny describe; see vitr. vii. xii.; and pliny, _hist. nat._ xxxiv. . a roll of lead was placed in a clay _dolium_ or big vase, which had a little vinegar at the bottom. the top was then luted down, and the jar was left in a warm place for a week or so, till the fumes of the acetic acid had converted the surface of the lead into a crust of carbonate. this carbonate of lead was then flaked off and purified by repeated grinding and washing. in order to keep the white pigments perfectly pure, some illuminators used to keep them under water, so that no dust could reach them. _black inks._ two inks of quite different kinds were used for the ordinary text of mediaeval manuscripts. _carbon ink._ one of these was a pure carbon-black (modern indian or chinese ink); this has been described under the classical name _atramentum librarium_[ ]; see above, page . the great advantage of this carbon ink is that it never fades; it is not a _dye_ or _stain_, but it consists of very minute particles of carbon which rest on the surface of the vellum. _iron ink._ the other variety was like modern black writing ink, only of very superior quality. this acts as a dye, staining the vellum a little below the surface. unfortunately it is liable to fade, though when kept from the light (as in most manuscripts) it has stood the test of time very well. sometimes the mediaeval illuminators distinguished these two kinds of black ink, calling the first _atramentum_ and the second _encaustum_; but frequently the names are used indifferently for either: see theophilus, i. . the _encaustum_ was made by boiling oak-bark or gall-nuts, which are rich in tannin, in acid wine with some iron filings or vitriol (sulphate of iron). the combination of the iron and the tannin gives the inky black[ ]. both these black inks were used with gum arabic. _beauty of the plain text._ a great part of the beauty of mediaeval manuscripts is quite unconnected with their illumination. the plain portion of the text, from the exquisite forms of its letters and the beautiful glossy black of the ink on the creamy ivory-like vellum page, lighted up here and there by the crisp touch of the rubricator's red, is a thing of extraordinary beauty and charm. this perfection of technique in the writing and beauty of the letters lasted considerably longer than did the illuminator's art. hence in some of the manuscripts of the period of decadence, executed during the fifteenth century, the plain black and red text is very superior in style to the painted ornament; and one cannot, in some cases, help regretting that the manuscript has not escaped the disfigurement of a coarse or gaudy scheme of illumination. _red inks_ were of three chief kinds, namely the _vermilion_, _red lead_, and _rubrica_ or red ochre, which have been already mentioned. _purple ink._ _purple ink_ was used largely, not often for writing, but for the delicate pen ornaments of the initials in certain classes of late italian and german manuscripts. a vegetable pigment seems to have been used for this; the lines appear to be stained, and do not consist of a body-colour resting on the surface of the vellum. _gold writing_ is usually executed with the fluid gold pigment, but in later manuscripts very gorgeous titles and headings are sometimes done with burnished leaf gold applied on the raised mordant, the writing being first done with a pen dipped in the fluid mordant. _the pencils and pens of the illuminator._ two quite different classes of pencils were used for lightly sketching in the outline of the future floral design or miniature. _lead point._ one of these was the silver-point or lead-point[ ], very much like the metallic pencil of a modern pocket-book. the use of the silver-point was known in classical times; pliny (_hist. nat._ xxxiii. ) remarks as a strange thing that a white metal like silver should make a black line when used to draw with. it is, however, rather a faint grey than a black line that a point of pure silver makes, especially on vellum, and so it was more usual for illuminators to use a softer pencil of mixed lead and tin; cennino recommends two parts of lead to one of tin[ ] for making the lead point, _piombino_. _red pencil._ another kind of pencil was made of a soft red stone, which owed its colour to oxide of iron. from its fine blood-red tint the illuminators called it _haematita_, _lapis amatista_ or _amatito_, hence an ordinary lead pencil is now called either _lapis_ or _matita_ in italy. this stone is quite different from the hard _haematite_ which was used in classical times for the early cylinder-signets of assyria. _burnisher._ the harder varieties of the _amatista_ or _haematite_ were used to burnish the gold leaf in manuscripts, small pieces being polished and fixed in a convenient handle. they were also used as a red pigment, the stone being calcined, quenched in water and finely ground; see cennino cennini, § . besides the hard red chalky stone (_amatita rossa_) used for outlines by the illuminators, a somewhat similar black stone (_amatita nera_) was also used, but not so commonly as the red. _reed pens._ _the pens of illuminators._ in early times, throughout, that is, the whole classical period and probably till about the time of justinian, the sixth century a.d., scribes' pens were mostly made of reeds (_calamus_ or _canna_); and occasionally silver or bronze pens were used; see above, page . but certainly as early as the eighth century a.d. and probably before that, quill-pens came into use and superseded the blunter and softer reed-pen. _fine quills._ such exquisitely fine lines as those in many classes of mediaeval manuscripts could only have been made with some very fine and delicate instrument like a skilfully cut crow's quill or other moderately small feather. the pen was a very important instrument for the illuminator, not only when his pictures were mainly executed in pen outline, like many of those in the later anglo-saxon manuscripts, but also in such microscopically delicate miniature work as that in the anglo-norman _historiated bibles_ of the thirteenth century; in these much of the most important drawing, such as the features and the hair of the figures, was executed, not with a brush, but with a quill-pen, which in the illuminator's skilful hand could produce a quality of line which for delicacy and crisp precision of touch has never been surpassed by the artists of any other class or age. _brushes._ _brushes_ were, as a rule, made by the illuminators themselves, so as to suit their special needs and system of working. cennino (§§ to ) and other writers give directions for the selection of the best hair and the mode of fixing it so as to give a finely pointed brush. ermine, minever and other animals of that tribe supplied the best hair for the brushes required for very minute work. but a great number of other animals provided useful material to the craftsman who knew the right places to select the hair from, and, a still more important thing, understood how to arrange and fix it in a bundle of the best form. _list of tools._ _the implements of scribes and illuminators._ the following is a list of the principal tools and materials required by the illuminator of manuscripts, including those which have been already described[ ]. pens, pencils and chalk of various sorts, as described above. brushes made of minever, badger and other kinds of hair. grinding-slabs and rubbers of porphyry or other hard stone, and a bronze mortar. sharp penknife and palette knife. rulers, and a metal ruling-pen. dividers to prick out the guiding-lines of the text. scissors for shaping the gold leaf. burnishers, stamps, and _stili_ for ornamenting the gold. small horns to hold black and red ink; see fig. on page . colour-box, palette, pigments, gold leaf and _media_ of various kinds. sponge and pumice-stone for erasures. _paintings of scribes._ miniatures representing a scribe writing a manuscript are the commonest of all subjects in several classes of illuminated manuscripts. for example the first capital of saint jerome's _prologue_ in the historiated anglo-norman _vulgates_ almost always has a very minute painting of a monastic scribe[ ], seated, writing on a sloping desk, with his pen in one hand and his penknife in the other[ ]. _the scribes' processes._ in one respect such scenes are always treated in a conventional way; that is, the scribe is represented writing in a complete and bound book, whereas both the writing of the text and the illuminations were done on loose sheets of vellum, which could be conveniently pinned down flat on the desk or drawing-board. the processes employed in the execution of an illuminated manuscript of the fourteenth or fifteenth century were the following; _first_, if the text were to be in one column, four lines were ruled marking the boundaries of the patch of text and the margin. these four lines usually cross at the angles and are carried to the extreme edge of the vellum[ ]. _ruled lines._ next, the scribe, with a pair of dividers or compasses, pricked out at even distances the number of lines which were to be ruled to serve as a guide in writing the text. these pricked holes were, as a rule, set at the extreme edge of the vellum, and were intended to be cut off by the binder, but in many manuscripts they still remain. the scribe then filled the space within the first four marginal lines with parallel ruled lines at the intervals indicated by the pricks at the edge. _stilus lines._ in early manuscripts the guiding lines to keep the text even are usually ruled, not with colour or ink, but simply traced with a pointed _stilus_, which made a sufficiently clear impressed line on the vellum, showing through from one side to the other. _lead lines._ _red lines._ in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the practice began of ruling the lines with a _lead point_; and then, from the fourteenth century onwards, they were usually ruled with bright red pigment[ ]; this has a very decorative effect in lighting up the mass of black text, and thus we find in many early printed books[ ] these red guiding lines have been ruled in merely for the sake of their ornamental appearance. this ruling was nearly always done with special metal ruling-pens, very like those now used for architectural drawing; and thus the lines are perfectly even in thickness throughout. _the plain text._ the next stage in the work was the writing of the plain black text. in early times it appears to have been usual, or at least not uncommon, for the same hand to write the text and add the painted illuminations, but when the production of illuminated manuscripts came mostly into secular hands, the trades of the scribe and the illuminator were usually practised by different people; and in late times a further division still took place, and the miniaturist frequently became separated from the decorative illuminator. _guiding letters._ thus we find that in many manuscripts the scribe has introduced in the blank spaces minute guiding letters[ ] to tell the illuminator what each initial was to be, and, especially in fifteenth century italian manuscripts, instructions are added for the miniaturist, telling him what the subject of each picture was to be. these instructions were commonly written on the edge of the page so that they were cut off by the binder, but in many cases they still exist, not obliterated by the subsequent painting. but to return to the progress of the page, when the scribe had finished the plain text, leaving the necessary blank spaces for the illuminated capitals and miniatures, the work of decoration then began. _decoration._ as a rule the decorative foliage and the like was finished before the separate miniatures, if there were any, were begun. first the illuminator lightly sketched in outline the design of the ornament, using a lead point. next, wherever burnished gold was to be introduced, the thick mordant-ground was laid on; the gold leaf was then applied and finished with tooling and burnishing. _gold leaf._ the reason why the gold was applied before any of the painting was begun was this; the long rubbing with the burnisher acted not only on the gold leaf, but also naturally rubbed the vellum a little way all round it. this would have smudged the painting round the gold if it had been applied first. moreover, the burnisher was liable to carry small particles of gold on to the surrounding vellum, which would have given a ragged look to the design, if the adjacent surfaces had not been subsequently covered with pigment. in cases where there is an isolated gold boss there is usually a slight disfigurement from the burnisher rubbing the vellum all round the gold. in these cases the outline of the gold was made clean and definite by the addition of a strong black outline, as is mentioned above. _the painting._ when the whole of the burnished gold was finished, the painting was then executed. if any fluid gold pigment were used, that was usually added last of all. _transferred patterns._ in some cases, in the later and cheaper french and flemish manuscripts, the ornaments in the borders were not specially designed and sketched in for the manuscripts but previously used outline patterns were transferred on to the vellum by a bone _stilus_ and ordinary transfer paper, made by rubbing red chalk all over its surface. in some of the better class of manuscripts with the "ivy-leaf" border, the illuminator has made the general design of one page serve for the next one in this way; when he had drawn in the main lines of the scroll-pattern on the borders of one page, he held the vellum up to the light and so was able to trace the pattern through from the other side of the leaf. to prevent monotony he varied the design by introducing different little blossoms among the repeated scroll-work which formed the main pattern. _preparation for binding._ when the _scribe_, the _rubricator_, the _illuminator_ and the _miniaturist_ (either as one or as several different people) had completed the manuscript it was ready for the _binder_. as an indication of the order in which the leaves of the manuscript were to be bound, the scribe usually placed on the lower margin of the last page of each "gathering" of leaves a letter or number. in the earliest printed books these guiding letters, or _signatures_ as they are called, were added by hand in the same way[ ]; but in a few years the regular and more developed system of printed _signatures_ was introduced[ ]. _scribes' signatures._ scribes' signatures at the end of manuscripts are comparatively rare, but they do occasionally occur in various interesting forms. my friend mr w. j. loftie kindly sends me the following: in a sarum _missal_ of the fifteenth century at alnwick castle, "librum scribendo jon whas[ ] monachus laborabat, et mane surgendo multum corpus macerabat." more commonly manuscripts terminate with a vague phrase invoking a blessing on the scribe, such as this, from a bible in the bodleian (no. ), "qui scripsit hunc librum fiat collectum in paradisum." or this, which occurs in several manuscripts, "qui scripsit scribat, semper cum deo vivat." _owner's name._ in another manuscript _vulgate_ in the bodleian (no. ), the owner of the book, who was named _gerardus_, has recorded the fact in this fanciful way,-- "ge ponatur et rar simul associatur et dus reddatur cui pertinet ita vocatur." chapter xvi. the bindings of manuscripts. _costly bindings._ for the more magnificent classes of manuscripts, such as the _textus_ (_gospels_) used as altar ornaments, every costly and elaborate artistic process was employed. in addition to the sumptuous gold and jewelled covers mentioned above at page , manuscripts were bound in plates of carved ivory set in gold frames, in plaques of limoges enamel, especially the _chamlevé_ enamels with the heads of the figures attached in relief, such as were produced with great skill at limoges during the eleventh to the thirteenth century. some _evangeliaria_ were bound in covers made of the ancient roman or byzantine ivory diptychs, a custom to which we owe the preservation of the most important existing examples of these.[ ] such costly methods of binding were of course exceptional, and most manuscripts were covered in a much simpler manner. _common bindings._ the commonest form of binding was to make the covers of stout oak boards, which were covered with parchment, calf-skin, pig-skin or some other leather. five brass or bronze bosses were fixed on each cover, arranged thus :·: and two or four stout clasps made of leather straps with brass catches were firmly nailed on to the oak. the angles of the covers were often strengthened by brass or _latten_ cornerpieces, and in some cases metal edgings were nailed all along the edges of the oak, making a very strong, massive and heavy volume. large pieces of rock crystal, amethyst or other common gem were frequently set in the five bosses of the covers. these were always cut in rounded form _en cabochon_, not faceted as is the modern custom. the small amount of decoration, which was usually employed on early bindings, was often limited to tooled lines joining the five bosses on the covers[ ]. _titles of mss._ if the title of the manuscript was placed on the binding, a not very common practice, it was usually written on the upper part of one of the covers. in some cases the title was written on a separate slip of vellum and was protected by a transparent slice of horn, fixed with little brass nails. this appears to have been the usual system as long as books were kept in coffers or _armaria_; but when open bookshelves with chained books came into use, about the time when printing was invented, the title of a book was usually written on the front edges of the leaves. at that time books were set on the shelves in the opposite way to that now used, so that, not the back, but the edge of the volume was visible. _painted edges._ towards the close of the fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century, the front edges of printed books and manuscripts were sometimes decorated with painted illumination, usually a portrait figure of the author of the work or some object illustrating its subject[ ]. the parchment which was used to cover the oak bindings of manuscripts was often coloured by staining or painting; red and purple being the favourite colours. chaucer, in the prologue to the _canterbury tales_, describing the clerke of oxenford says, for him was lever have at his beddes heed, twenty bookes, clothed in blak and reed of aristotil and of his philosophie then robes riche or fithul or sawtrie. _painted bindings._ in some cases the oak covers of manuscripts were not hidden by leather, but were decorated by elaborate paintings. a very interesting series of folio account-books of the cathedral of siena, now preserved in the _opera del duomo_, are specially remarkable for their pictured bindings. these manuscripts date from about to , one volume being devoted to the expenses and records of each year. on one of the covers of each is a large painting on the oak, frequently of a view of some part of siena or of the interior of the cathedral. very interesting evidence with regard to the old fittings of the high altar, with duccio di buoninsegna's great retable, and the original position of the magnificent pulpit are given by some of these pictured covers. one volume of this sienese series is now in the south kensington museum. _stamped leather._ in the fourteenth century bindings of books began to be decorated by stamping patterns with dies or punches on the vellum or pigskin covering of the oak board; a method of decoration which was greatly elaborated and developed in the sixteenth century, especially by the german and dutch bookbinders. the earlier stamped designs were of a much simpler character, usually consisting of powderings all over the surface of the cover, with small flowers or animals, such as lions, eagles, swans and dragons of heraldic character. in many cases these punches, or at least their designs, continued in use for a long time, and so one occasionally meets with a fifteenth century book, the binding of which is decorated with stamps of fourteenth or even thirteenth century style. _stamped bindings._ the later class of stamped bindings, belonging rather to printed books than to manuscripts, is often very beautiful and decorative in character, the whole surface of the cover being completely embossed in relief by the skilful application of a great number of punches used in various combinations, so as to form one large and perfectly united design. in these later times, from about the middle of the sixteenth century the tendency was to cut larger designs on one punch or die; and the leather or parchment was softened by boiling so that a large surface could be embossed at one operation. this process was much aided by the invention of the screw-press, which enabled the workman to apply a steady and long-continued pressure. but in the older stamped bindings, as a rule, small punches were used, and the force was simply applied by the blow of a hammer[ ]. _english bindings._ in england very fine stamped bindings of this class were made even in the first half of the fifteenth century. and, just as in earlier times the operations of the binder and the manuscript illuminator had been carried on by the same man, or at least in the same workshop, so we find that some of the earliest english printers, such as julian notary, were also skilful binders of their own printed books. the very fine stamped bindings of julian notary and other english craftsmen are commonly decorated on one side with the tudor arms and badges supported by angels, and on the other side with a pictorial scene of the annunciation of the b. v. mary with i. n. or other maker's initials. _wallet bindings._ returning now to the earlier bindings of manuscripts, we should mention one system which was frequently applied to _books of hours_, _breviaries_ (_portiforia_), and other _portable_ books. this system was to extend the leather covering far beyond the edges of the wooden boards, which formed the main covers of the manuscripts, so that the book, edges and all were protected, very much as if it were kept in a bag. in fact this sort of binding really was a leather bag to the inside of which the book was attached. the mouth of the bag was closed by a running thong, a loop or some other fastening, and the book was thus carried about, hung from its owner's girdle[ ]. in bindings of this class the leather covering was frequently dressed with the hair on. corpus christi college at oxford possesses a very well-preserved example of this, a manuscript of the thirteenth century in a contemporary bag-covering made of deer's skin, with its soft brown fur in a perfect state of preservation. _velvet._ bindings of red or violet velvet were also frequently used for manuscripts. plain red velvet, with elaborate clasps and corner-pieces of chased gold or silver, was perhaps the most usual form of binding for costly manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. fine gems, especially the carbuncle and turquoise, were set in the gold mounts of some of these princely books. _dyed vellum._ vellum dyed with the _murex_ was used to cover the oak boards of manuscripts at a time when purple-stained vellum was no longer used for the pages of manuscripts. a fine green dye and other colours were also used for vellum bindings. the vatican records of books borrowed (and returned) usually mention how each volume was bound. among the earliest of these records, dating from the pontificate of leo x. ( to ) the commonest descriptions of bindings are _in tabulis_, _in rubio_, _in albo_, _in nigro_, and _in gilbo_, indicating the colour of the skin or velvet in which the manuscript was bound. _later bindings._ _gold mounts._ in the sixteenth century, when private luxury and pomp were taking the place of the earlier religious feelings and beliefs which had so greatly fostered the decorative arts, bindings as costly as those of the _altar-textus_ of the great cathedral and abbey churches were again made at the command of wealthy patrons. thus, for example, cardinal grimani had his famous _breviary_[ ] bound in crimson velvet, the greater part of which is concealed by the most elaborate mounts, clasps, corner-pieces and borders of solid gold, of the most exquisite workmanship, decorated with a medallion portrait head of the cardinal himself. so also the very similar _horae_ of albert of brandenburg[ ] is decorated with clasps and other mounts of pure gold; and an immense number of other sumptuous bindings, rich with embossed and chased gold, studded with precious gems, were made to enshrine the costly manuscripts of giulio clovio and other famous miniaturists of the sixteenth century period of decadence. _bindings of needlework._ at the close of the fifteenth century or rather earlier, the custom became popular of having _horae_ and other manuscripts owned by wealthy secular personages bound in velvet, richly decorated with embroidery in gold and silver thread and silk mixed with a great number of seed pearls. the arms, badges and initials of the owner are the commonest designs for these embroideries. some of the german examples of this class of binding are especially elaborate and magnificent; but on the whole this method of decoration is not at all suited for covering books. _works on bindings._ with regard to books on the subject of early bindings; it is much to be regretted that existing works, of which there are a great many, especially in french, all begin just about the period when bindings of the greatest interest and the truest artistic value were no longer made. plenty has been written about the costly bindings in which grolier, maioli, and other wealthy book-buyers had their purchases encased, but no work exists on the bindings of the mediaeval period, when, frequently, the covers of a manuscript were as much a labour of love as the illuminated pages within. the sixteenth century binders, who worked for grolier and other rich patrons of art, lived at the verge of a commercial epoch, and though their works are often very pretty and technically of high merit, yet they cannot be compared, as true works of art, with the bindings of the period before printing was invented. _small cost of mss._ _the present value of illuminated manuscripts._ on the whole a fine manuscript may be regarded as about the cheapest work of art of bygone days that can now be purchased by an appreciative collector. many of the finest and most perfectly preserved manuscripts which now come into the market are actually sold for smaller sums than they would have cost when they were new, in spite of the great additional value and interest which they have gained from their antiquity and comparative rarity. for example, a beautiful and perfectly preserved historiated anglo-norman _vulgate_ of the thirteenth century, with its full number of eighty-two pictured initials, written on between six and seven hundred leaves of the finest uterine vellum, can now commonly be purchased for from £ to £ . this hardly represents the original value of the vellum on which the manuscript is written. manuscripts of a simpler character, however beautifully written, if they are merely decorated with blue and red initials, commonly sell for considerably less than the original cost of their vellum[ ]. again, the more costly manuscripts of fine style, which now fetch several hundred pounds, usually contain a wealth of pictorial decoration and laborious execution far in excess of that which could be purchased for a similar sum in any other branch of art. _want of taste._ another noticeable point is that the modern pecuniary values of manuscripts, even those which are bought only as works of art, are by no means in proportion to their real artistic merits. manuscripts of the finest period of the illuminator's art, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are now sold for very much smaller sums than the immeasurably inferior but more showy and over-elaborated manuscripts of the period of decadence in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. _modern want of taste._ a melancholy example of the existing want of taste and lack of appreciation of what is beautiful in art is afforded by the fact that such a thing as a manuscript signed and illuminated by giulio clovio would fetch a far larger sum than so perfect a masterpiece of poetic art as a fine example of a fourteenth century anglo-norman _apocalypse_. so also the late and inferior _horae_ of about to often sell for much higher prices than simpler but far more beautiful manuscripts of earlier date. of course i am here speaking of the values of manuscripts regarded simply as works of art, not of those which are mainly of importance from the interest of their text. the result of this is that a collector with some real knowledge and appreciation of what is artistically fine can perhaps lay out his money to greater advantage in the purchase of manuscripts than by buying works of art of any other class, either mediaeval or modern. appendix. mr jenkinson, the librarian of the university of cambridge, has kindly supplied me with the following interesting extracts, from a manuscript of the thirteenth century in the parish library of st james' at bury st edmunds (m + b )[ ], which gives instructions to scribes and illuminators of manuscripts as to the various tools they are to use. "scriptor habeat rasorium siue nouaculam ad radendum sordes pergameni vel membrane. habeat etiam pumicem mordacem et planulam ad pactandum (?) et equandum superficiem pergameni. plumbum habeat et linulam quibus liniet pergamenum, margine circumquaque tam ex parte tergi quam ex parte carnis existente libera...... scriptor autem in cathedra resideat ansis utrimque eleuatis pluteum siue ait'em (?) sustinentibus, scabello apte pedibus posito. scriptor habeat epicaustorium^{.i.asserem} centone copertum. arcanum habeat quo pennam formet ut habilis sit et ydonea ad scribendum...... habeat dentem canis (?) sive apri ad polliandum pergamenum...... et spectaculum habeat ne ob errorem moram disspendiosam (?). habeat prunas in epicausterio ut cicius in tempore nebuloso vel aquoso desicari possit...... et habeat etiam mineum ad formandas literas puniceas, vel rubeas, vel feniceas et capitales. habeat etiam fuscum pulverem; et azuram a salamone repertam[ ]." _translation._ "the scribe should have a sharp scraper or knife to rub down the roughnesses of his parchment or vellum. he should also have a piece of 'biting' pumice-stone and a flat tool to smooth down and make even the surface of his parchment. he should have a lead pencil and a ruler with which to rule lines on the parchment, leaving a margin free (from lines) on both sides of the parchment, on the back of the leaf as well as on the flesh side.... the scribe should sit in an arm chair, with arms raised on each side to support a desk or ?; a footstool should be conveniently placed under his feet. the scribe should have an _epicaustorium_[ ] covered with leather; he should have an _arcanum_ (pen-knife ?) with which to shape his pen, so that it may be well formed and suitable for writing.... he should have the tooth of a dog (?) or of a wild boar for the polishing of his parchment.... and he should have spectacles lest troublesome delay be caused through blunders. he should have hot coals in a brazier so that [his ink] may dry quickly [even] in cloudy or rainy weather.... he should also have mineum (_minium_) for the painting of red, crimson or purple letters and initials. he should also have a dark powder (pigment), and the azure which was invented by solomon." the following excellent description of the chief kinds of service-books which were used during the later mediæval period was originally written in by henry bradshaw, the cambridge university librarian, for _the chronicles of all saints' church, derby_, by the rev. j. c. cox and mr w. h. st john hope. it is by the kind permission of mr cox and mr hope that i am able to reprint mr bradshaw's valuable note, which, with admirable clearness and conciseness, explains the character of each of the principal classes of service-books used in english churches and the manner in which these books became differentiated and multiplied down to the time of the reformation. note by henry bradshaw. _the hours._ in the old church of england, the services were either-- . for the different hours (mattins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, and compline), said in the choir, . for processions, in the church or churchyard, . for the mass, said at the altar, or . for occasions, such as marriage, visitation of the sick, burial, &c., said as occasion required. of these four all have their counterparts, more or less, in the english service of modern times, as follows: . the hour-services, of which the principal were mattins and vespers, correspond to our morning and evening prayer. _processions._ . the procession services correspond to our hymns or anthems sung before the litany which precedes the communion service in the morning, and after the third collect in the evening, only no longer sung in the course of procession to the churchyard cross or a subordinate altar in the church; the only relic (in common use) of the actual procession being that used on such occasions as the consecration of a church, &c. . the mass answers to our communion service. _occasional services._ . the occasional services are either those used by a priest, such as baptism, marriage, visitation and communion of the sick, burial of the dead, &c., or those reserved for a bishop, as confirmation, ordination, consecration of churches, &c. all these services but the last mentioned are contained in our "prayer-book" with all their details, except the lessons at mattins and evensong, which are read from the bible, and the hymns and anthems, which are, since the sixteenth century, at the discretion of the authorities. this concentration or compression of the services into one book is the natural result of time, and the further we go back the more numerous are the books which our old inventories show. to take the four classes of services and service-books mentioned above: _the breviary._ . the hour-services were latterly contained, so far as the text was concerned, in the _breviarium_, or _portiforium_, as it was called by preference in england[ ]. the musical portions of this book were contained in the _antiphonarium_. but the breviary itself was the result of a gradual amalgamation of many different books: _the breviary._ (_a_) the _antiphonarium_, properly so called, containing the anthems (_antiphonae_) to the psalms, the responds (_responsoria_) to the lessons (_lectiones_), and the other odds and ends of verses and responds (_versiculi et responsoria_) throughout the service; (_b_) the _psalterium_, containing the psalms arranged as used at the different hours, together with the litany as used on occasions; (_c_) the _hymnarium_, or collection of hymns used in the different hour-services; (_d_) the _legenda_, containing the long lessons used at mattins, as well from the bible, from the _sermologus_, and from the _homiliarius_, used respectively at the first, second, and third nocturns at mattins on sundays and some other days, as also from the _passionale_, containing the acts of saints read on their festivals; and (_e_) the _collectarium_, containing the _capitula_, or short lessons used at all the hour-services except mattins, and the _collectæ_ or _orationes_ used at the same. _procession services._ . the procession services were contained in the _processionale_ or _processionarium_. it will be remembered that the rubric in our "prayer-book" concerning the anthem ("in quires and places where they sing, here followeth the anthem") is _indicative_ rather than _imperative_, and that it was first added in . it states a fact; and, no doubt, when processions were abolished, with the altars to which they were made, cathedral choirs would have found themselves in considerable danger of being swept away also, had they not made a stand, and been content to sing the processional anthem without moving from their position in the choir. this alone sufficed to carry on the tradition; and looked upon in this way the modern anthem book of our cathedral and collegiate churches, and the hymn book of our parish churches, are the only legitimate successors of the old _processionale_. it must be borne in mind, also, that the morning and evening anthems in our "prayer-book" do not correspond to one another so closely as might at first sight appear to be the case. the morning anthem comes immediately before the litany which precedes the communion service, and corresponds to the processional anthem or respond sung at the churchyard procession before mass. the evening anthem, on the other hand, follows the third collect, and corresponds to the processional anthem or respond sung "_eundo et redeundo_," in going to, and returning from, some subordinate altar in the church at the close of vespers. _the mass._ . the mass, which we call the communion service, was contained in the _missale_, so far as the text was concerned. the epistles and gospels, being read at separate lecterns, would often be written in separate books, called _epistolaria_ and _evangeliaria_. the musical portions of the altar service were latterly all contained in the _graduale_ or grayle, so called from one of the principal elements being the _responsorium graduale_ or respond to the _lectio epistolae_. in earlier times, these musical portions of the missal service were commonly contained in two separate books, the _graduale_ and the _troparium_. the _graduale_, being in fact the _antiphonarium_ of the altar service (as indeed it was called in the earliest times), contained all the passages of scripture, varying according to the season and day, which served as introits (_antiphonae et psalmi ad introitum_) before the collects, as gradual responds or graduals to the epistle, as _alleluia_ versicles before the gospel, as _offertoria_ at the time of the first oblation, and as _communiones_ at the time of the reception of the consecrated elements. the _troparium_ contained the _tropi_, or preliminary tags to the introits; the kyries; the _gloria in excelsis_; the sequences or _prosae ad sequentiam_ before the gospel; the _credo in unum_; the _sanctus_ and _benedictus_; and the _agnus dei_; all, in early times, liable to have insertions or _farsuræ_ of their own, according to the season or day, which, however, were almost wholly swept away (except those of the _kyrie_) by the beginning of the thirteenth century. even in lyndewode's time (a.d. ), the _troparium_ was explained to be a book containing merely the sequences before the gospel at mass, so completely had the other elements then disappeared or become incorporated in the _graduale_. this definition of the _troparium_ is the more necessary, because so many _old_ church inventories yet remain, which contain books, even at the time of writing the inventory long since disused, so that the lists would be unintelligible without some such explanation. _occasional services._ . the occasional services, so far as they concerned a priest, were of course more numerous in old days than now, and included the ceremonies for _candle_mas, _ash_ wednesday, _palm_ sunday, &c., besides what were formerly known as the sacramental services. the book which contained these was in england called the _manuale_, while on the continent the name _rituale_ is more common. no church could well be without one of these. the purely episcopal offices were contained in the _liber pontificalis_ or pontifical, for which an ordinary church would have no need. _the ordinale._ . besides these books of actual services there was another, absolutely necessary for the right understanding and definite use of those already mentioned. this was the _ordinale_, or book containing the general rules relating to the _ordo divini servitii_. it is the _ordinarius_ or _breviarius_ of many continental churches. its method was to go through the year and show what was to be done; what days were to take precedence of others; and how, under such circumstances, the details of the conflicting services were to be dealt with. the basis of such a book would be either the well-known sarum _consuetudinarium_, called after st. osmund, but really drawn up in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, the lincoln _consuetudinarium_ belonging to the middle of the same century, or other such book. by the end of the fifteenth century clement maydeston's _directorium sacerdotum_, or priests' guide, had superseded all such books, and came itself to be called the sarum _ordinale_, until, about , the shorter ordinal, under the name of _pica sarum_, "the rules called the pie," having been cut up and re-distributed according to the seasons, came to be incorporated in the text of all the editions of the sarum breviary. h. b. cambridge, _march , _. mr micklethwaite has kindly pointed out to me the following passage from the cistercian _consuetudines_ (guignard, _documents inédits_, dijon, , p. ), cap. lxxii, "nullus ingrediatur coquinam excepto cantore et scriptoribus ad planandam tabulam, ad liquefaciendum incaustum, ad exsiccandum pergamenum...." that is, the kitchen fire might be used for melting the wax on the tablets, so that a fresh list of names could be written (see above, p. ), for liquefying frozen ink, and for drying the vellum skins ready for writing on. cambridge: printed by c. j. clay, m.a. and sons, at the university press. some publications of the cambridge university press. the engraved gems of classical times, with a catalogue of the gems in the fitzwilliam museum, by j. henry middleton, m.a., slade professor of fine art, and director of the fitzwilliam museum, cambridge. royal vo. buckram, _s._ _d._ the lewis collection of gems and rings in the possession of corpus christi college, cambridge, with an introductory essay on ancient gems by j. henry middleton, m.a. royal vo. buckram, _s._ the types of greek coins. by percy gardner, litt.d., f.s.a. with autotype plates, containing photographs of coins of all parts of the greek world. impl. to. cloth extra, £ . _s._ _d._; roxburgh (morocco back), £ . _s._ essays on the art of pheidias. by c. waldstein, litt. d., reader in classical archæology in the university of cambridge. royal vo. plates. buckram, _s._ a catalogue of ancient marbles in great britain, by prof. adolf michaelis. translated by c. a. m. fennell, litt. d. royal vo. roxburgh (morocco back), £ . _s._ the literary remains of albrecht dÜrer, by w. m. conway. with transcripts from the british museum mss., and notes by lina eckenstein. royal vo. buckram, _s._ (_the edition is limited to copies._) the woodcutters of the netherlands during the last quarter of the fifteenth century. in parts. i. history of the woodcutters. ii. catalogue of their woodcuts. iii. list of books containing woodcuts. by w. m. conway. demy vo. _s._ _d._ london: c. j. clay and sons, cambridge university press warehouse, ave maria lane. notes. [ ] see pages and . [ ] see _jour. hell. stud._ vol. iii. p. . [ ] it was not till quite a late period that the word [greek: biblos] was used to mean another form of book than the roll. the word [greek: sanis] is also used for a tablet; see p. . [ ] a fine set of five tablets is preserved in the coin room in the paris bibliothèque nationale; see _revue archéol._ viii. p. . [ ] a well-preserved example of roman _pugillares_ formed of two leaves of ivory, now in the capitoline museum in rome, is illustrated by baumeister, _denkmäler_, i. p. . [ ] lucian, who lived in the second century a.d., mentions (_vita luc._ ii.) that when he was a boy he was in the habit of scraping the wax off his writing-tablets and using it to model little figures of men and animals. probably he was not the only roman school-boy who amused himself in this way. [ ] charcoal or crayon-holders of bronze with a spring clip and sliding ring, exactly like those now used, have been found in pompeii. these and other writing materials are illustrated by baumeister, _denkmäler_, vol. iii. p. . [ ] an athenian inscription (_c. i. a._ i. ) mentions accounts and other documents written on [greek: pinakia kai grammateia]. [ ] see, for example, a relief on the sarcophagus of a _scriba librarius_ or library curator which is illustrated by daremberg and saglio, _dict. ant._ i. p. . the scribe is represented seated by his book-case _armarium_, on the shelves of which both _volumina_ and _codices_ are shown. [ ] the ancient method of manufacturing papyrus paper is described below, see page . [ ] some very interesting fragments of the _antiope_ of euripides have been brought to england by mr flinders petrie, and have been edited by dr mahaffy in a collection entitled _the flinders petrie papyri_, dublin, . [ ] the book-market in athens was called [greek: ta biblia], i.e. [greek: hou ta biblia ônia]; see pollux ix. . lucian, in his treatise _adversus indoctum_, gives an interesting account of the greek book-buyers and book-sellers in his time; see § and § . [ ] the end of the argiletum is shown in the plan of the forum romanum in middleton, _ancient rome_, , vol. i. [ ] one reason of this was that even the most popular authors did not receive large sums for the copyright of their works. [ ] a good deal of what is said in this section with regard to the technique of classical manuscripts will apply also to manuscripts of the mediaeval period. many of the processes had been inherited in an unbroken tradition from ancient times, and others were revived in the middle ages through a study of various classical writers on pigments and the like, especially pliny and vitruvius. [ ] the words _parchment_ and _vellum_ are used vaguely to imply many different kinds of skins. strictly speaking _vellum_ implies calf-skin, but the word is commonly used to denote the finer and smoother qualities of skin; the name _parchment_ being given to the coarse varieties; see peignot, _l'histoire du parchemin_, paris, . [ ] in some cases the paper was _sized_, before the final smoothing; but as a rule sufficient _size_ was supplied by the flour used to paste the layers together. [ ] some of the enormous ranges of store-houses for goods imported into rome and landed on the tiber quay were specially devoted to the use of paper warehouses, _horrea chartaria_; extensive remains of these have recently been discovered near monte testaccio; see middleton, _remains of ancient rome_, , vol. ii. pp. - . [ ] now in the fitzwilliam museum. [ ] a silver pen was found by dr waldstein in in the tomb of the aristotle family at chalcis. [ ] there is, of course, no etymological connection between the words _miniature_ and _minute_; the latter being derived from the latin _minutus_, _minus_. [ ] further details with regard to these pigments are given below, see pages to . [ ] reproductions of these miniatures were published by cardinal mai, _picturae antiquissimae bellum iliacum repraesentantes_, milan, . far more accurate copies of some of the miniatures, but without colour, are given by _palaeo. soc._, plates , , and . [ ] some fairly accurate reproductions of these miniatures were published by bartoli, _antiquissimi virgiliani codicis fragmenta bibl. vat._, roma, and . examples from this and two other ancient but un-illuminated codices of virgil in the vatican library are given by the _palaeo. soc._, plates to . [ ] the chief of these paintings were cut off the walls of the villa, and are now placed in the museo delle terme in rome. the painting shown in fig. is still in situ; that given in fig. is now in the museum at naples. [ ] see above, fig. . [ ] the term byzantine as applied to art is commonly used to denote the style which was developed in the eastern empire soon after constantine had transferred the seat of government from old to "new rome," or constantinople as it was also called instead of byzantium, which was the ancient name. [ ] several manuscripts of this class are described by h. bordier, _manuscrits grecs de la bibliothèque nationale_, paris, . [ ] a great public library was founded by constantine in new rome and partially stocked by manuscripts transferred from the old capital. this library was rapidly enlarged by his sons and successors, and it was rebuilt on a grander scale by the emperor zeno after the building had been injured by fire about the year a.d. [ ] for a valuable account of byzantine manuscripts, see kondakoff, _histoire de l'art byzantin_, paris, - . [ ] the title _porphyro-genitus_, "born in the purple," referred to the fact that byzantine empresses brought forth their children in a magnificent room lined with slabs of polished porphyry. [ ] a translation of this curious treatise was published by didron and durand, in their _manuel d'iconographie chrétienne_; paris, . [ ] all manuscripts described in this book, from the byzantine school onwards, may be understood to be in the _codex_ form and written on _vellum_, unless they are otherwise described. [ ] published by lambecius, _comment. sur la bibl. de vienne_, , vol. iii. [ ] copies of some of the miniatures in the vatican _cosmas_ are given by n. kondakoff, _histoire de l'art byzantin_, paris, , vol. i. pp. to . [ ] st mark's in venice and the churches of ravenna and constantinople are full of examples of this design. [ ] this sasanian art was an inheritance from ancient babylon and assyria, and was the progenitor of what in later times has been called arab art, though the quite inartistic arabs appear to have derived it from the persians whom they conquered and forcibly converted to the moslem faith. [ ] the mere gold of even the finest byzantine manuscripts is never as sumptuous or as highly burnished as that in manuscripts of the fourteenth century, owing to its being usually applied as a fluid pigment, or at least not over the best kind of highly raised ground or _mordant_, which is described below at p. . [ ] in early times and indeed throughout the whole mediaeval period very few objects of any kind were placed upon the high altar even in the most magnificently furnished churches. in addition to the chalice and paten, and the _textus_, the only ornaments usually allowed were a small crucifix and two candlesticks. the modern system of crowding the _mensa_ of the altar with many candles and flowers did not come in till after the reformation. in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the _pax_ was usually a separate thing, of more convenient size and weight than the heavy, gold-covered _textus_. [ ] fine coloured plates of this wonderful _textus_-cover were published in by the society of antiquaries in their _vetusta monumenta_. [ ] published in by the surtees society of durham. [ ] the "gospeller" was the officiating deacon; the sub-deacon being called the "epistoller." [ ] the remarkable artistic advance which was made by giotto is to be seen not only in his improved and more realistic drawing, but also in his freedom from the long-established abuse of green in his flesh painting, for which he substituted a warmer and healthier tint. [ ] of the original mosaics on the west façade of saint mark's only one remains of the original highly decorative twelfth century mosaics. the rest, shown in gentile bellini's picture of saint mark's, have all been replaced by later mosaics. inside the church, happily, the old mosaics still, in most places, exist; see p. . [ ] see page for an account of giulio clovio. [ ] mr m. r. james has pointed out to me an interesting example of similar designs being used by illuminators of manuscripts and by mosaic-workers. the designs of the miniatures in a fifth or sixth century manuscript of _genesis_ in the british museum (_otho_, b, vi) are in many cases identical with those of the twelfth and thirteenth century mosaics in saint mark's at venice; see tikkanen, _genesisbilder_, berlin. [ ] alcuin, when dean of york, was sent by offa, king of mercia, about , as an envoy to charles the great. a large number of manuscripts were written under his guidance and influence, not only in tours, but also at soissons, metz, fulda, and in other benedictine monasteries. [ ] it is priced in mr quaritch's catalogue of at £ . this manuscript was probably written at tours in the school of alcuin of york; see wattenbach, _die mit gold auf purpur geschriebenen evangelienhandschriften der hamilton'schen bibliothek_, berlin, . [ ] see for example the beautiful patterns of the woven hangings behind the enthroned figure of christ shown on fig. ; cf. also page . [ ] theophilus, _schedula diversarum artium_, i. ; this work is frequently quoted in chapter xv. [ ] see janitschek, _die künstlerische ausstattung des ada-evangeliars und die karolingische buchmalerei_; fol. leipzig, . [ ] see weidmann, _geschichte der bibliothek von st gallen_, vo, st gall, . [ ] see j. r. rahn, _das psalterium aureum von st gallen, ein beitrag zur geschichte der karolingischen miniaturmalerei_, folio, st gall, . [ ] an excellent edition with facsimiles of villard de honecourt's _album_ or sketch-book was produced by professor willis, london, ; it is superior to the french edition issued by j. b. lassus, paris, . [ ] see l. delisle, _l'evangéliaire d'arras et la calligraphie franco-saxonne du ix^{me} siècle_, vo, paris, . [ ] earlier that is than the conversion of the saxon conquerors; to some extent a romano-british church had been established in britain during the period of roman domination, but this native church appears to have been almost wholly eradicated by the saxon conquest. [ ] celtic manuscripts of all periods are well illustrated by westwood, _miniatures and ornaments of anglo-saxon and irish manuscripts_, london, ; see also westwood, _palaeographia sacra pictoria_, - , and the companion volume, _illuminated illustrations of the bible_, . [ ] tara was the ancient inland capital of ireland before dublin was founded by the viking pirates. [ ] the irish monasteries of this date appear, frequently at least, to have consisted of a group of a dozen or more separate wooden huts or stone "bee-hive" cells, with one small central chapel of rectangular plan; the whole being enclosed within a wooden fence or a stone circuit wall, in which there was only one door of approach; see _arch. jour._ xv. p. seq. [ ] for example, in an early cashel _kalendar_ the monk dagaeus, who died in , is recorded to have been both a goldsmith (_aurifex_) and an illuminator of manuscripts. westwood, _miniatures in irish manuscripts_, gives a number of excellent coloured reproductions of illuminations of this school and also of the anglo-celtic school of northumbria. [ ] it was formerly believed that this manuscript had once belonged to saint columba, who lived from to , but it is shown by the internal evidence of its style to be a century later than saint columba's time. [ ] see westwood, _irish manuscripts_, plate . [ ] see fig. on page . [ ] when the grave of saint cuthbert in durham cathedral was opened in , it was found that the saint's body had been wrapped in rich siculo-arab silk of the eleventh century at the time when his body was moved, in a.d. see raine, _st cuthbert_, durham, , p. seq. [ ] library of trinity college, dublin, manuscripts a, iv. . [ ] see jamieson, _history of the ancient culdees of iona_; edinburgh, . [ ] saint cuthbert was a monk of irish descent, at first a member of the celtic monastery of melrose, and afterwards sixth bishop of lindisfarne from to . in later times his gold, gem-studded shrine in durham cathedral was one of the most magnificent and costly in the world; see _rites and monuments of durham_, surtees soc., , pp. and . [ ] the works of symeon dunelmensis were published by the surtees society in . [ ] now in the archbishop of canterbury's library at lambeth. [ ] the _book of deer_ was first brought to light by mr henry bradshaw, and has been published by the spalding club, ed. john stuart, edinburgh, . the monastery at deer in aberdeenshire was founded by saint columba as a branch house from iona. [ ] the so-called _itala_ version is the older latin translation of the bible, which existed previous to the recension of saint jerome. [ ] a very interesting _psalter_ of similar style and date is preserved in the library of st john's college, cambridge; its ornaments are of the unmixed celtic style, broad in treatment without any of the marvellous minuteness of the _book of kells_ and the _book of durrow_. [ ] see westwood, _irish manuscripts_, pl. . [ ] this is one of many examples of books being called after some earlier saint who was connected with the monastery where the manuscript was written; for example the gospels of saint augustine in the corpus library at cambridge, the gospels of saint cuthbert, and the gospels of saint columba, are all later than the dates of the saints they are called after. [ ] see weidmann, _geschichte der bibliothek von st gallen_; st gall, . [ ] this manuscript was formerly believed to have been once in the possession of saint augustine, but it is clearly a good deal later in date than his time. [ ] eventually there were three norse kingdoms in ireland, the capitals of which were dublin, waterford and limerick; and the three chief ports of ireland, dublin, cork and belfast were all founded by the viking invaders; see c. f. keary's valuable work, _the vikings in western christendom_, london, , pp. to . [ ] the blessing in the greek church is given by raising three fingers; in the western church two fingers and the thumb are used. [ ] see westwood, _miniatures of irish manuscripts_, london, , pl. i. and ii. [ ] the points of difference between the roman and celtic churches were very trivial, the chief being the date for the celebration of easter and the shape of the monastic tonsure. [ ] see _note _ on page . [ ] this very decorative class of ornament not only survived till the thirteenth century but was again revived in italy at the close of the fifteenth century; see below, page . [ ] it is mentioned above, see page , how alcuin of york in the reign of charles the great created the anglo-carolingian style of illumination by introducing in the eighth century into the kingdom of the franks manuscripts and manuscript illuminators from the monasteries of northumbria. [ ] canon g. f. browne tells me that it is very doubtful whether wilfrid ever received the _pall_ from rome. it may therefore be more correct to speak of him as bishop rather than archbishop of york. [ ] the word "anglo-saxon" is a convenient one to use, and is supported by various ancient authorities; for example in a manuscript _benedictional_ (in the library of corpus college, cambridge) england is called "regnum anglo-saxonum," and the english king is entitled "rex anglorum vel saxonum." [ ] this splendid manuscript is in the possession of the duke of devonshire; a good description of it, with engravings of all its miniatures, is published in _archæologia_, vol. xxiv. , pp. to , and a coloured copy of one of the miniatures is given by westwood, _irish manuscripts_, plate . the library of trinity college, cambridge, possesses a book of the _gospels_ which in style is very similar to the _benedictional_ of aethelwold. [ ] the gospels of lothaire are in paris, _bibl. nat. lat._ . [ ] this is one of the latest examples of the use of vellum dyed with the _murex_ purple; the purple grounds occasionally used in fifteenth century manuscripts are usually produced by laying on a coat of opaque purple pigment. [ ] now preserved in the bodleian library at oxford. [ ] the celebrated "utrecht psalter" is the best known example of a fine manuscript of this date with outline drawings of the revived classical style. some northern influence is shown in the interlaced ornaments of the large initials. facsimiles of some pages have been published by w. g. birch, london, . [ ] this beautiful roll is now in the british museum, _harl._, roll y, ; two of the miniatures are photographically illustrated by birch and jenner, _early drawings and illuminations_, london, , p. . [ ] this _psalter_, which is now in the public library at utrecht, may possibly be one of the very manuscripts which canute brought from abroad. it was certainly in england for many centuries before it passed into the possession of sir robert cotton, from whose library it must have been stolen, else it would have passed into the library of the british museum along with the rest of the great cotton collection of manuscripts. the _utrecht psalter_ has been thought to be the work of an anglo-saxon artist, but, most probably, it is the work of a french scribe, though the miniatures are mainly of the debased classical style of rome, and the character of the writing is even more distinctly classical, differing very little in fact from that of the fourth century virgil of the vatican written several centuries earlier. [ ] good examples of this curious style of miniature are to be seen in a manuscript in the british museum, _cotton, tib._ c. vi. [ ] indeed it was not very long before the tables were turned and normandy was reconquered by an english army under a king, who, though of norman blood, was distinctly an english king. the victory of henry i. over robert, duke of normandy, at tenchebray in , went far to wipe out any feeling on the part of the english that they were a nation under the rule of a conqueror. [ ] _chronicles_ of robert of gloucester, hearne's edition, (reprinted in ), vol. i. p. . [ ] an interesting example of this revived study from the life is afforded by the sketch-book of villard de honecourt, which is mentioned above at page . [ ] see below, page , on the revival of this class of ornament in italy in the second half of the fifteenth century. [ ] this beautiful manuscript is now in the possession of mr quaritch, who prices it at £ in his catalogue of december, . it appears once to have belonged to sir roger huntingfield, who died about a.d. [ ] it is noticeable that even the earliest miniatures of saint thomas' death represent him in mass vestments, officiating at the high altar, whereas he was really killed late in the afternoon, and on the north side of the church. [ ] see _vetusta monumenta_, vol. vi. pp. to , and plates to ; illustrations are given here of "the painted chamber" and its decorations before the fire of , and a number of interesting extracts are quoted from the accounts now preserved in the record office. [ ] _the gestes of antioch_ probably means the capture of antioch in under the crusader leaders tancred and godfrey of bouillon. in the same way the "jerusalem" and "jericho chambers" in the house of the abbot of westminster were so called from the paintings on their walls. the curious "archaism" of these paintings, with figures of knights in the armour of the eleventh century, is explained below; see page . [ ] see, for example, that wonderful frontal, covered with miniature paintings, from the high altar of westminster abbey, which is now preserved in the south ambulatory of the sanctuary. [ ] various attempts have been made to show that torell was an italian, and that the painted retable at westminster was the work of a foreign artist, but there is not the slightest foundation for either of these theories. [ ] as examples of this i may mention the famous "lateran cope" in rome, the "piccolomini cope" at pienza, and two others of similar date and style in the museums of florence and bologna. on many occasions we find that the popes of this period, on sending the pall to a newly elected english archbishop, suggested that they would like in return embroidered vestments of english work, _opus anglicanum_. it should be observed that in almost all published works on the subject the above mentioned copes are wrongly described as being of italian workmanship. [ ] both before and after this period manuscripts of the _vulgate_ were comparatively rare, but between and about many thousands of manuscript bibles must have been produced, all closely similar in style, design, choice of subject and character of writing. there is no other large class of manuscripts in which such remarkable uniformity of style is to be seen. [ ] as an example of the wonderful thinness of this uterine vellum, i may mention a bible of about in my own possession which consists of leaves, and yet measures barely an inch and a half in thickness. in spite of its extreme thinness this vellum is sufficiently opaque to prevent the writing on one side from showing through to the other. [ ] for example a bible of this class in the cambridge university library, dating from about , has from thirteen to seventeen lines to an inch! [ ] this method of painting the shadows in pure colour, and using the same pigment mixed with white for the rest, was employed on a large scale by many of the sienese painters in the fourteenth century, and by the florentine fra angelico in the fifteenth. fra angelico's earliest works were manuscript illuminations, executed about the year in the dominican convent at fiesole. [ ] the bodleian library (_douce_, ) possesses a specially beautiful manuscript _psalter_, which belonged to robert of ormsby, a monk of norwich abbey. [ ] in all periods the benedictines were the chief monastic scribes and miniaturists; the mother house at monte cassino was one of the chief centres in italy for the production of manuscripts, and wherever the benedictines settled they brought with them the art of manuscript illumination; see page . [ ] this is specially noticeable in the development of the architectural styles; not only general forms, but details of mouldings and the like seem to spring up all over england almost simultaneously. [ ] see below, fig. , page . [ ] the first pages of the two last-mentioned _psalters_ are illustrated by shaw, _the art of illumination_, london, , pp. to . [ ] an example of the most marvellous beauty and perfection was presented by lady sadleir to trinity college library in cambridge. [ ] the _victoria psalter_ is however frequently described in booksellers' catalogues, not only in polite, but in enthusiastic language. as an example i may quote the following, the beautiful victoria psalter: psalms of david illuminated by owen jones, _beautifully printed in large type, on thin cardboards, on pages, each of which is surrounded by_ sumptuous borders _in_ gold _and_ colours, _with the_ capitals illuminated, _and some of the pages consisting of large and most beautifully illuminated texts_, columbier to. _elegantly bound in morocco, the sides elaborately carved, leathern joints, and gilt edges_ (a very handsome volume), £ . _s._ _n. d._ [ ] these same characteristics of face are very noticeable in the beautiful carved ivory diptychs and statuettes of the virgin and child made during the fourteenth century in france and england. [ ] a _lectionary_ contained the _gospels_ and _epistles_ arranged for use at the celebration of mass. [ ] especially for the canon of the mass. the famous _mentz psalter_ of is printed in characters of this size and style; see below, page . [ ] the pine-apple was not known in europe before the discovery of america, and this very decorative form, which occurs so largely on the fine woven velvets of florence and northern italy, was probably suggested by the artichoke plant, largely assisted by the decorative invention of the designer. [ ] in the brera catalogue this very beautiful painting is wrongly ascribed to fra carnovale, a pupil of piero della francesca. [ ] this very important english manuscript was bought by mr quaritch and priced at £ in his catalogue, no. , . it was written in or soon after when lydgate completed writing his work; it may possibly have been written and illuminated by the author himself. [ ] caxton appears to have begun to use woodcut initials in the year or , but most continental printers continued to use hand-painted capitals many years later than that. [ ] this scene and the name of saint thomas, wherever it occurs, are frequently obliterated in english manuscripts. this was done by the special order of henry viii., who, after his quarrel with the pope, appears to have regarded thomas à becket as a sort of personal enemy. [ ] see page for a fine italian example of this subject. it is interesting to note that the popular legend of saint george and the dragon is simply a mediaeval version of the old classical myth of perseus and andromeda. in the more genuine oriental lives of saint george this episode is not introduced. [ ] it should be remembered that norman-french continued to be the court language of england till late in the fifteenth century, and for certain legal purposes even later. its use still survives in the law-courts of quebec and montreal. [ ] dante, _purg._ xi. ; see above, p. . [ ] in the magnificent english embroideries of the thirteenth century, such as the lateran and pienza copes, mentioned at page , we see birds of exactly similar style and kinds introduced among the scroll-work of the grounds and borders. [ ] the phrase _ivy pattern_ is a convenient one to use, as it expresses a very common and well-defined type of ornament, but the leaf is too conventionally treated to be recognized as that of the ivy or any other plant: and the pattern is varied with blossoms of different forms and colours. [ ] see laborde, _les ducs de bourgogne_, vol. ii. p. , and note to p. . [ ] the manner in which this splendid effect is produced is described below, see page . [ ] shown, for example, in fig. , page . [ ] the border from the grimani breviary shown on page , is an example, though a very beautiful one, of this decadence of taste. [ ] now in paris, _bibl. nat. lat._ , . john, duke of bedford, was a son of henry iv.; he married in anne, daughter of the duke of burgundy. very fine portraits of the duke and duchess of bedford occur in the _bedford missal_ mentioned below. [ ] the italians call it _chiaro-scuro_ or "light and shade" painting; its use in manuscripts may have been suggested by the _grisaille_ stained glass windows which were introduced by the cistercian monks, whose rule prohibited the use of brightly coloured figure subjects either in their windows, on their walls, or in their books. [ ] it was sold for £ at the perkins sale in june, . [ ] christina was one of the most famous authors of her time; she produced thirteen different works; one of which, _the fayts of armes and chivalry_, was translated and printed by caxton about a century after it was written, in . [ ] a fine manuscript of christina's _romance_ is mentioned above, see page . [ ] these chivalrous romances were no less popular in england; dan lydgate's _boke of the siege of troy_, adapted and translated from guido de' colonna's romance, was one of the most popular english books in the fifteenth century; see page . [ ] see muntz, _les peintres d'avignon_, - , tours, ; and _les peintures de simone martini à avignon_, paris, . many of these paintings still exist in a good state of preservation, especially those on the vault of the small private chapel of the popes. [ ] this subject is discussed at greater length in chapter xiii. [ ] see page on the favourable conditions under which the monastic illuminators did their work. [ ] _books of hours_ were the prayer-books of the laity, as the _breviary_, _portiforium_, or "_portoos_" was the prayer-book of the priest. [ ] see below, page , for an explanation of the difference between "mat" gold applied as a fluid pigment with a brush, and burnished gold leaf laid over a raised "mordant" or enamel-like ground. [ ] in point of technique these beautiful miniatures are exactly like very delicate wood-cuts, though in most cases they appear to have been cut (in relief) on blocks of soft metal, treated just as if it had been wood. [ ] perhaps the earliest was one issued in by antoine verard. [ ] in these earliest parisian printed _horae_ the backgrounds of the borders are left plain white; unlike the later ones, in which the borders have dotted or _criblée_ backgrounds. [ ] they include many different _uses_, especially that of paris, rome, rouen and sarum. [ ] both verard and pigouchet produced _horae_ for the publisher simon vostre. [ ] it is incorrect to speak of _editions_ of these _books of hours_; hardly any two copies appear to have been quite the same; fresh arrangements and combinations of a large stock of engraved blocks were made for the printing of almost every copy, and thus the long list given by brunet is very incomplete; see the last volume of brunet's _manuel du libraire_, paris, . [ ] sold in june, , for £ , with the rest of the perkins library. [ ] a copy of this glory of the printer's art in mr quaritch's possession is priced in his catalogue of at £ ; only eight copies are known to exist. [ ] in schoeffer was a young illuminator of manuscripts residing in paris. [ ] mentelin was enrolled as an illuminator in the painters' guild at strasburg in ; and colard mansion, caxton's master in the art of typography, belonged, as a scribe and illuminator, to the guild of st john and st luke at bruges. in he was elected warden or _doyen_ of his guild. [ ] in some cases goldsmiths and engravers of coin-dies became printers owing to their knowledge of the technical process necessary for cutting the punches for type. the great french printer nicolas jenson, who produced the most magnificent printed books in venice, was, until the year , master of the mint at tours. and bernardo neri, the printer of the florentine _editio princeps_ of homer, was originally a goldsmith, and had assisted ghiberti in his work on the famous bronze doors of the florentine baptistery. [ ] the glorious copy on vellum of the _mazarine bible_ in the british museum has illuminated borders and initial miniatures of the finest style and execution. this earliest of printed books is commonly called after the copy in the library of cardinal mazarin which contains the illuminator's note that his work was finished in . sir john thorold's copy on paper was sold in for £ . [ ] italian books frequently had clasps at the top and bottom as well as two at the side. [ ] the first or almost the first book printed by aldus was the _hero and leander_ of musaeus of in small to. the virgil of was followed rapidly by a juvenal and a martial, issued in the same year. [ ] chinese wood engravings of considerably earlier date do exist. [ ] see page ; this remarkable manuscript was then (in ) priced at £ . [ ] early wood-cuts were not cut on the cross ends of the grain, but on the "plank side" of a wooden board. [ ] the _cantica canticorum_ of about has most lovely designs, and the _apocalypse_, the _ars moriendi_, the _speculum humanae salvationis_, and the _biblia pauperum_ all have wood-cut illustrations of great vigour and spirit, produced between about and . [ ] even before initial letters in manuscripts had been occasionally printed from wooden stamps covered with red or blue pigment. [ ] much of the german bronze-work of this period is extremely fine and skilful in execution, such as the fonts and doors of churches at hildesheim, augsburg and other places. the bronze font at liége, cast about by a sculptor of the german school, is a work of most wonderful grace and beauty. [ ] till the thirteenth century the art of the netherlands and flanders was german in character; after that flanders was, artistically, as well as politically, partly teutonic and partly french. [ ] see above, page , for an english example of wall paintings being copied from manuscript miniatures. [ ] the national gallery in london possesses a magnificent panel by gérard david, a kneeling canon with three standing figures of saints, and an exquisitely painted landscape background. this is one wing of an altar triptych which was painted for st donatian at bruges. it is numbered in the catalogue. paintings by gérard david's wife are mentioned below, see page . [ ] the whole of this gorgeous manuscript was published in fairly good "facsimile" by curmer, _le livre d'heures de la reine anne de bretagne_, vols. imp. ., paris, ; see also laborde, _ducs de bourgogne_, vol. . p. xxiv. [ ] a very interesting account of the flemish illuminators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is given by weale, _le beffroi_, vol. iv. , in which he publishes the accounts of the guild of st john and st luke between the years and . [ ] gérard david of bruges was a notable example of skill in both branches of art; see above, page . gérard's wife also practised both these arts, and produced manuscript illuminations and panel paintings of almost equal beauty to those of her husband; see below, page . [ ] maximilian's prayer-book has been described (with copies of the borders) by stoeger, _vignettes d'albert dürer_; munich, . [ ] these minutely rendered ecclesiastical scenes occur frequently in other classes of teutonic illumination. [ ] the fitzwilliam library possesses a beautiful example of this class of pen illumination in a large folio volume of the _summa_ of aquinas printed by mentelin about or . mentelin in his youth was an illuminator of manuscripts in paris at the same time that he was a student in the university; see page . [ ] such work as the pisan baptistery pulpit of niccola pisano, executed in about , was an almost isolated phenomenon, and it was not till about half a century later that giotto and his pupils produced paintings of equal merit to those of france and england during the second half of the thirteenth century. [ ] see _mon. germ. hist._ xii. p. seq.; and agincourt, _hist. d'art_, pl. . [ ] partly owing to the necessarily decorative beauty of the glass _tesserae_, byzantine mosaics, even of a degraded period, are usually fine and rich in effect. [ ] see vasari, _vite dei pittori_, edition of , parte i. p. seq.; and _ib._ milanesi's edition, , vol. ii. pp. to . [ ] this enshrined hand, and another, said to be that of a later _miniatore_ of the same monastery, don lorenzo, still exist in the sacristy of the church of santa maria degli angeli. [ ] these magnificent miniatures were sold with the rest of the hailstone collection in ; one of them, in the possession of the present writer, is a magnificent initial o, measuring eight by nine inches, enclosing a very beautiful seated figure of saint stephen in a violet dalmatic with richly decorated gold _apparels_. [ ] see vasari, milanesi ed. vol. ii. p. . vasari also mentions a monk of the same monastery named don jacopo, a contemporary of don silvestro, who illuminated twenty large choir-books of extraordinary beauty. [ ] he appears to have abstained from purchasing these choir-books because they were of the special camaldolese _use_, and could not therefore be used in the vatican basilica. [ ] fra angelico's works were executed throughout the first half of the fifteenth century. vasari mentions some magnificent manuscripts illuminated by him for the cathedral of florence, but they are not now known to exist. [ ] this is very doubtful. fra angelico's brother fra benedetto da fiesole was a scribe rather than a miniaturist, and probably only wrote the fine large text; the illuminations were probably added by a pupil of fra angelico, named zanobi strozzi, who died in . [ ] as an example of this i may mention fra angelico's system of painting the shadows of drapery in pure colour, using the same colour mixed with white for the rest of the folds. to some extent this method was used by the sienese school of painting, which in other respects resembles in style the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts; see above, p. . [ ] taking it all round, in painting, sculpture, the medallist's art and other branches of the fine arts, no country and no period except athens in the time of pericles can ever have quite equalled the artistic glories of florence under cosimo the elder and lorenzo de' medici. [ ] _pontificals_ contain such services as only bishops or archbishops could celebrate, and therefore comparatively few would be required. [ ] a beautiful manuscript of about in the fitzwilliam museum has its first page surrounded with a border of this class of design, the interest of which is much increased by the minutely written signature, "jacopo da fabriano," introduced among the leavy ornaments of the margin. [ ] this kind of design, with a blank space for the owner's arms, is used for many of the beautiful wood-cut borders in the early printed books of florence and venice. [ ] decorative accessories of this sculpturesque kind are largely used in the paintings of andrea mantegna of padua. [ ] and to some extent for manuscripts of religious works as well. this archaic form of letter was also used by sweynheim and pannartz and other prototypographers at subiaco and in rome; hence it got the name of _roman_ as opposed to _gothic_ letter. [ ] one of the finest examples of this style of illumination is in a volume of the italian translation of pliny's _natural history_, printed on vellum by nicolas jenson in venice in ; now in the bodleian at oxford. [ ] see wattenbach, _schriftwesen_, ed. , pp. and ; and romer, _les manuscrits de la bibl. corvinienne_, in _l'art_, vol. x. . [ ] see vasari's life of fra giovanni da fiesole, ed. milanesi, vol. ii. p. seq. [ ] the national gallery in london possesses (no. in the catalogue) a good example of girolamo's work, a madonna altar-piece, signed _hieronymus a libris f._ no. in the same collection is an example of a panel picture by liberale da verona. the bodleian contains an exquisite _book of hours_ illuminated by girolamo dai libri for the duke of urbino. [ ] the _antiphonals_ which liberale illuminated at monte oliveto are now preserved in the chapter library at chiusi. those which he painted at siena are now in the cathedral library. records of money paid to liberale for these choir-books are published by milanesi, _documenti per la storia dell' arte sanese_, vol. ii. pp. - ; and milanesi's edition of vasari, vol. v. pp. - . [ ] examples of attavante's and liberale's miniatures are illustrated by eug. müntz, _la renaissance en italie et en france_, paris, , p. seq. [ ] see page , and compare pages and for examples of similar influence due to the manuscript illuminators of germany and italy. [ ] for examples of this see above, page . [ ] each of these painters (in some pictures) also signs himself _alamanus_, meaning not necessarily that they were germans, but possibly natives of lombardy, who were often called _alamani_ by their italian neighbours. [ ] especially in his magnificently decorative altar-piece of the adoration of the magi in the florentine academy, dated . [ ] clovio is the italianized form of a harsh croatian name; the artist adopted the name giulio as a compliment to his friend and teacher giulio romano, raphael's favourite pupil. j. w. bradley, _life of giulio clovio_, london, , gives an interesting account of him and of his times; see also vasari, ed. milanesi, vol. vii. p. . [ ] the ex-king of naples' library possesses a _book of hours_, on the illuminations of which (vasari tells us) giulio clovio spent nine years. it certainly is a marvel of human patience and misdirected skill; the text was written by a famous scribe named monterchi, who was specially renowned for the beauty of his writing. [ ] an interesting little volume on this subject has been published by eug. müntz, _la bibliothèque du vatican_, paris, ; it deals chiefly with the growth of the library during the sixteenth century. [ ] fra sebastiano was called "del piombo" from his office as superintendant of the pendant lead seals, _piombi_ or _bullae_, which were attached to papal briefs and other documents, one class of which were called _bulls_ from their lead _bullae_. [ ] see montault, _livres de choeur des églises de rome_, arras, , p. . [ ] the fitzwilliam museum possesses two noble vellum choir-books of this class dated and . though the miniatures are poor, the writing of the text and the music might well pass for the work of a fifteenth century scribe. [ ] a valuable but by no means exhaustive list of manuscript illuminators is given by j. w. bradley, _dictionary of miniaturists, illuminators and caligraphers_, london, . the names of italian miniaturists are specially numerous, partly because italian manuscripts are more frequently signed by their illuminators than the manuscripts of other countries. see also bernasconi, _studj sopra la storia della pittura italiana dei secoli xiv e xv_, verona, . [ ] j. r. green, in his _short history of the english people_, chap. iii., gives an interesting sketch of the development of literature and the art of the scribe in the great monasteries of england, especially from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. [ ] the carvings on the _misericords_ (or turn-up seats) of choir-stalls were frequently a vent for the pent-up humour and even spite of many a monastic carver. [ ] the poems of walter map were edited by thos. wright for the camden society, . [ ] walter map subsequently obtained various degrees of preferment, and in became archdeacon of oxford. [ ] theophilus, _schedula diversarum artium_, i. - , writes as if every illuminator had to beat out or grind his own gold. [ ] in this respect, as is noted above at page , the manuscripts of classical date appear to have been inferior to those of the mediaeval period. [ ] monte cassino the first and chief of the benedictine monasteries, founded by saint benedict himself, was for many centuries one of the chief centres in italy for the writing and illumination of manuscripts. [ ] according to the severe cistercian rule richly illuminated manuscripts were not allowed to be written or even used in houses of that order, which in england from the end of the twelfth century came next in size and importance to the monasteries of the parent benedictine order. [ ] see the plan of the abbey of st gallen, published by prof. willis, _arch. jour._, vol. v. page seq. [ ] the abbey of westminster is a well preserved example of the typical benedictine plan. [ ] one walk of the benedictine cloister, usually that on the west, was used as the school-room where the novices repeated their "donats" and other lessons. hence in many cloisters one sees the stone benches cut with marks for numerous "go-bang" boards--a favourite monastic game. [ ] no monk could borrow a book to read without the express permission of his superiors given in the chapter house. [ ] the word _carrel_ is probably a corruption of the french _carré_, from the _square_ form of these little rooms. [ ] when the great benedictine abbey of gloucester was suppressed, henry viii. made the church into a cathedral by creating a new see; and so, happily, the very beautiful cloister was saved from destruction. [ ] gloucester is exceptional in having the cloister on the north side of the church; and also in having these stone recesses in the _scriptorium_ alley. [ ] the gloucester cloister and the carrel recesses shown in this woodcut date from the latter part of the fourteenth century. [ ] published by the surtees society, london, ; see p. . [ ] frequently in the linen-armourers' guild, that of makers of defensive armour of linen padded and quilted, a very important protection against assassination, which was used till the seventeenth century. [ ] dante selected the apothecaries' and physicians' guild. [ ] this phrase was used in the twelfth century by ordericus vitalis, _hist. eccles._ lib. iii. p. , ed. le prevost. [ ] mediaeval saddlery, with its cut, gilt and stamped leather (_cuir bouillé_), rich and elaborate in design, was a decorative art of no mean character; and in technique was akin to that of the bookbinder, which in most places was included in the same guild. [ ] see _le beffroi_, bruges, vol. iv. . [ ] in poetic beauty, however, they cannot be compared to the glory of the french _apocalypses_ such as that in the library of trinity college, cambridge. [ ] gérard david is mentioned above as one of the illuminators of the famous grimani _breviary_; see page . [ ] see pages and for examples of this. [ ] that is, for noting or writing the plain song of certain parts of the service which were sung at christmas and during holy week. this explanation i owe to my friend mr j. t. micklethwaite. [ ] evidently mis-spelt for _psalterio_; and again in the next item. [ ] the _quaternion_ was a gathering of four sheets of vellum, each folded once; thus forming sixteen pages. [ ] this book was partly written on sheets of vellum which were _in stauro_ (in stock), and therefore do not come into the accounts. [ ] twelve quires of vellum which were in stock were also used for this _antiphonale_. [ ] see _trans. bristol and glouces. arch. soc._ vol. xv. , pp. and . [ ] see peignot, _essai sur l'histoire du parchemin et du vélin_, paris, . [ ] strictly speaking the word _vellum_ should denote parchment made from calfskin, but the word is commonly used for any of the finer qualities of parchment which were used for manuscripts. [ ] quoted by hook, _lives of archbishops of canterbury_, vol. iii. p. ; the rev. canon g. f. browne kindly called my attention to this passage. other examples of the cost of vellum are given in the preceding chapter. [ ] the same arrangement is to be seen in books printed on vellum. [ ] for example, the mere vellum required to print a small thick folio, such as caxton's _golden legend_, would now cost about £ . [ ] i owe many of the facts in the following account of early paper to the excellent article on that subject in the _encyclopædia britannica_, ninth edition, vol. xviii. by mr e. maunde thompson. see also e. egger, _le papier dans l'antiquité et dans les temps modernes_, paris, . [ ] a good illustrated account of early water-marks is given by sotheby, _principia typographia_, london, . [ ] some fifteenth century paper has a special maker's mark, but more usually a general town or district mark was used, such as the cross-keys, a cardinal's hat, an imperial crown or double-eagle. [ ] what is now called "foolscap paper" originally took its name from a paper-mark in the form of a _fool's cap and bells_, a device which was frequently used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. [ ] some of caxton's books, printed in westminster, bear many different paper-marks of germany and flanders, even in the same volume. [ ] paper was also made at an early date in constantinople, through its intimate relationship with the east. hence the monk theophilus, writing in the eleventh century, calls linen-paper "greek vellum," _pergamena graeca_; see i. . [ ] this old paper is almost as stout, tough and durable as parchment--very unlike modern machine-made paper. [ ] the size was made by boiling down shreds of vellum. blotting-paper is paper that has not been sized. a coarse grey variety was used as early as the fifteenth century, though, as a rule, fine sand was used for this purpose till about the middle of the present century, especially on the continent. [ ] modern "shell gold" is practically the same thing as the fluid gold of the mediaeval illuminators, except that it is not made with the pure, unalloyed metal. [ ] the following are the most useful and easily accessible books on the technical processes of the illuminator; theophilus, _schedula diversarum artium_, hendrie's edition with a translation, london, ; cennino cennini, _trattato della pittura_, , edited, with a translation, by mrs merrifield, london, ; and a large and valuable collection of early manuscripts on the same subject, edited and translated by mrs merrifield under the title of _original treatises on the arts of painting_, vols., london, . [ ] see page . [ ] that is to say, it looks as if the whole substance, mordant and all, were one solid mass of gold, nearly as thick as a modern half-sovereign; see theophilus, i. and . [ ] so when william torell was about to gild the bronze effigy of queen eleanor in westminster abbey he procured a large number of gold florins from lucca. [ ] not even the smallest admixture of alloy was permitted in the gold coinages of the middle ages. dante (_inf._ xxx. ) mentions the coiner maestro adamo who had been burnt at romena in for issuing florins which had scarcely more alloy than a modern sovereign. [ ] the gold penny of henry iii. and the florin and its parts of edward iii. were only struck as patterns. the gold noble was first issued in ; its value was _s._ _d._ or half a _mark_. so many nobles were destroyed to make gold leaf for illuminating, and for other purposes, that an act was passed prohibiting, under severe penalties, the use of the gold coinage for any except monetary purposes. [ ] in the same way the gold leaf used by the greeks was comparatively thick. the famous erechtheum inscription of b.c. gives one drachma as the cost of each leaf ([greek: petalon]) used for gilding the marble enrichments; see _cor. ins. att._ i. , fragment c, col. ii. lines and . eighteen-pence will now buy leaves of gold. [ ] the best account of the way to make the mordant was given about by a lombard illuminator called johannes archerius; see mrs merrifield's interesting collection of _treatises on painting_, vol. i. page seq. [ ] see theophilus, i. . [ ] see mrs merrifield, _op. cit._ vol. i. p. . [ ] in cennino's time, the early part of the fourteenth century, in europe, sugar was sold by the ounce as a costly drug. apothecaries, not grocers, dealt in it. in persia, syria and some other moslem countries cane sugar was made and used in comparatively large quantities throughout the mediaeval period; but in europe it did not come into use as an article of food till the th century, and even then it was very expensive. [ ] the date of this receipt is about ; it is quoted in jehan de begue's manuscript published by mrs merrifield, vol. i. pp. , , and ; see also theophilus, i. , who speaks of burnishing fluid gold laid on a mordant of red lead and cinnabar. [ ] see theophilus, i. and ; he recommends white of egg as a medium for ceruse, minium and carmine, and for most other pigments, ordinary vellum _size_. jehan le begue's manuscript gives the same advice as to the use of white of egg, but advises the use of gum arabic with other pigments; see § . [ ] the british museum possesses an interesting manuscript on pigments, entitled _de coloribus illuminatorum_ (sloane manuscripts, ); see also eraclius, _de artibus romanorum_, published by raspe, london, and ; and the twelfth century _mappae clavicula_ printed in _archæologia_, vol. xxxii. pp. to . the first book of theophilus, _diversarum artium schedula_, written in the eleventh century, contains much interesting matter on this subject; see also the works mentioned above at page . [ ] _the journal of the society of arts_, dec. , , and jan. and , , has a valuable series of papers on "the pigments and vehicles of the old masters" by mr a. p. laurie, who throws new light on the treatises edited by mrs merrifield with the help of his own chemical investigations. [ ] this word is spelt in many different ways. [ ] in mediaeval times this was done by first embedding the powdered stone in a lump of wax and resin, from which the blue particles were laboriously extracted by long-continued kneading and washing. the theory of this apparently was that the wax held the colourless particles and allowed the blue to be washed out; see mrs merrifield, _treatises on painting_, vol. i. pp. , and to . [ ] the modern value of ultramarine is about equal to its weight in gold. sir peter lely, in the time of charles ii., paid £ . _s._ an ounce for it. [ ] the prior in question was the superior of the convent of the frati gesuati in florence. [ ] the german blue was also liable to turn to a bright emerald green if exposed to damp air. this change has taken place in a great part of the painted ceilings of the villa madama, which raphael designed for cardinal de' medici (afterwards clement vii.) on the slopes of monte mario, a little distance outside the walls of rome. [ ] because it was used by goldsmiths in _soldering gold_. [ ] _minium_ was largely used in the manuscripts of classical times; this is mentioned by pliny (_hist. nat._ xxxiii. ) who says _minium in voluminum quoque scriptura usurpatur_. [ ] all natural earthy pigments owe their colours to the various metals, which in combinations with different substances give a great variety of tints. thus, _iron_ gives red, brown, yellow and black; _copper_ gives many shades of brilliant blues and greens; and _manganese_ gives a quiet purple, especially in combination with an alcaline silicate. [ ] plutarch (_de defec. or._ § ) mentions flour made from beans as being used with _murex_ purple and _kermes_ crimson to give them sufficient body for the painter's purpose. [ ] kermes is the arabic name for this insect. [ ] it should be remembered that a large number of the mediaeval receipts and processes were not based on any reasonable principle, and endless complications were often introduced quite needlessly; this is well shown in a very interesting paper by prof. john ferguson of glasgow on _some early treatises on technological chemistry_, read before the philos. soc. glasgow, jan. , . [ ] the use of litharge as a drier was one of the most important improvements made in the technique of oil painting by the van eycks of bruges in the first half of the fifteenth century. before then, oil paintings on walls had often been laboriously dried by holding charcoal braziers close to the surface of the picture. among the accounts of the expenses of painting the royal palace of westminster in the thirteenth century (see above, page ) charcoal for this purpose is an important item in the cost. paintings on panel, being moveable, were usually dried by being placed in the sun; but, in every way, a good drier like litharge answers better than heat, either of the fire or of sunshine. [ ] see theophilus, i. . [ ] see vitruvius, vii. ; and pliny, _hist. nat._ xxxv. ; and dioscorides, v. . [ ] sometimes accidentally produced in domestic life by some overdrawn tea remaining on a steel knife. [ ] the modern "lead-pencil" is wrongly named, being made of _graphite_, which is pure carbon. this does not appear to have been used in mediaeval times. [ ] the vellum was not prepared in any way to receive the silver-point drawing; but when an artist wanted to make a finished study in silver-point he covered his vellum or paper with a priming of fine _gesso_, powdered marble, or wood-ashes; this gave a more biting surface to the paper, and made the silver rub off more easily and mark much more strongly. in the case of manuscript illuminations a strongly marked line was not needed, as the outline was only intended as a guide to the painter. [ ] see above, pages and , on the pens and inkstands of the classical scribes. [ ] usually meant for saint jerome translating or revising the latin edition of the bible. [ ] again, the first miniature in the french and flemish _horae_ usually represents _saint john in patmos_ writing his gospel. the eagle stands by patiently holding the evangelist's inkhorn. in some manuscripts the devil, evidently in much awe of the eagle's beak, makes a feeble attempt to upset the ink. in the latest manuscript _horae_ this scene is replaced by the one of _saint john at the latin gate._ [ ] a two-columned page of text had, of course, two sets of framing lines, one for each patch of writing. [ ] in some manuscripts lines are ruled in blue or purple, but much less frequently than in the more decorative vermilion. [ ] in certain classes of books, such as large bibles and prayer-books, the custom of ruling red lines lasted till the present century. [ ] these guiding letters were used in all the early printed books which had initials painted in by an illuminator. [ ] as a rule these manuscript signatures in printed books were written close to the edge of the page, and so have been cut off by the binder; in some tall copies, however, they still exist. [ ] the next stage was the numbering of each _folio_ or leaf, and the last system was to number each page. folios appear to have been first numbered in books printed at cologne about the year . a further modification has recently been introduced, namely, in two column pages, to number each column separately. [ ] the _lectionary_ mentioned on p. was written and signed by a monastic scribe called sifer was. [ ] some fine examples of magnificently bound manuscripts are illustrated by libri, _monumens inédits_; _hist. ornam._ paris, - . [ ] in geyler's _fatuorum navicula_, of which many editions, copiously illustrated with woodcuts, were published shortly before and after the year , the cut showing the first fool of the series, the bibliomaniac, represents him surrounded with books, all of which are bound after this design. [ ] a complete sixteenth century venetian library, consisting of a hundred and seventy volumes, all with painted illuminations on their edges, is now in the library of mr thos. brooke, at armitage bridge, near huddersfield. the whole collection forms a beautiful array of delicately painted miniatures, mostly the work of cesare vecellio, a venetian illuminator of the latter part of the sixteenth century; see _catalogue of mr brooke's library_, london, , vol. ii., pp. to . [ ] an analogous change took place in the reign of elizabeth in england when coins, which up to that time had always been made by hammering, were first struck by the "mill and screw." [ ] in the miniature pictures in manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries one often sees ladies represented with their _horae_ suspended in this way from their girdle. [ ] see page . [ ] see page . [ ] the same want of appreciation extends to bindings. as a rule a book in a fine mediaeval binding sells for no more than if it were in a modern binding by bedford. it is only the sixteenth century bindings of so-called "grolier style" and the like which add largely to the value of a book. [ ] this library is now deposited in the guildhall; the press-mark is probably that of an old monastic library. [ ] probably a blundered version of pliny's statement (_hist. nat._ xxxvii. ) that azure blue (_cyanus_) was invented by a king of egypt. [ ] this is evidently a different thing from the _epicausterium_ or brazier for hot coals mentioned below. my friend mr j. t. micklethwaite suggests that it was a board covered with leather on which to stretch and dry vellum before writing on it. [ ] an explanation of the nature and constitution of the breviary will be found in the preface to the psalter-volume of the cambridge university press edition of the sarum breviary, lately published. masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare fra angelico - "masterpieces in colour" series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. luini. james mason. franz hals. edgcumbe staley. van dyck. percy m. turner. leonardo da vinci. m. w. brockwell. rubens. s. l. bensusan. whistler. t. martin wood. holbein. s. l. bensusan. burne-jones. a. lys baldry. vigÉe le brun. c. haldane macfall. chardin. paul g. konody. fragonard. c. haldane macfall. memlinc. w. h. j. & j. c. weale. constable. c. lewis hind. raeburn. james l. caw. john s. sargent. t. martin wood. lawrence. s. l. bensusan. dÜrer. h. e. a. furst. millet. percy m. turner. watteau. c. lewis hind. hogarth. c. lewis hind. murillo. s. l. bensusan. watts. w. loftus hare. ingres. a. j. finberg. corot. sidney allnutt. delacroix. paul g. konody. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--a group of angels. (frontispiece) this panel from the uffizi gallery in florence is an example of fra angelico's most popular work. it is painted in his earliest manner and the figures are stiff and conventional, but the simplicity and beauty that can be found in the group connect it with the paintings of the primitives who were in a sense angelico's forebears.] fra angelico by james mason illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. introduction ii. the painter's early days iii. in san marco iv. later years v. a retrospect vi. conclusion list of illustrations plate i. a group of angels frontispiece in the uffizi gallery, florence page ii. a figure of christ in the san marco convent, florence iii. two angels with trumpets in the uffizi gallery, florence iv. christ as a pilgrim met by two dominicans in the san marco convent, florence v. the coronation of the virgin in the san marco convent, florence vi. detail from the coronation of the virgin in the uffizi gallery, florence vii. the infant christ in the san marco convent, florence viii. st. peter the martyr in the san marco convent, florence [illustration] i introduction round the peaceful life and delicately imaginative work of guido da vicchio, the florentine artist who is known to the world at large as fra angelico, critics and laymen continue to wage a fierce controversy. while few are heard to deny the merit of the artist's exquisite achievement, it is hard to find, even among those who are interested in early florentine religion and art, men who can agree about fra angelico's positions between the monastery and the studio. "he was a man with a beautiful mind," says one; "a light of the church, a saint by temperament, and he chanced to be a painter." "you are entirely wrong," says the supporter of the opposing theory; "he was a heaven-sent artist who chanced to take the vows." so the schools of art and theology rage furiously together, after the fashion of the two men who approached a statue from opposite sides and quarrelled because one said that the shield carried by the bronze figure was made of gold, and the other said it was made of silver. incensed by each other's obstinacy they drew swords and fought until they both fell helpless to the ground, only to be assured by a third traveller, who chanced to pass by, that the shield had gold on one side and silver on the other. [illustration: plate ii.--a figure of christ detail from san marco's convent in florence. this striking example of the master's mature art reveals in most favourable light his exquisite conception of christ. although this is no more than part of a picture, it has been reproduced here in order that the details of the handling may be appreciated.] standing well apart from the enthusiasts of both sides, the average man sees that fra angelico was an artist of remarkable attainments and at the same time a devout, god-fearing friar, who seems to have deserved a great part at least of the praise he received from the honeyed pen of giorgio vasari. naturally enough the modern artist finds in fra angelico, or "beato" angelico as he is sometimes called, one of the most interesting painters of the fifteenth century, and he does not bother about the fact that his hero chanced to be a dominican brother. very devout catholics, on the other hand, will approach fra angelico's work on the literary side, and will be profoundly conscious of the fact that he was the first great artist of italy who, realising the maternity of the madonna, represented her as a mother full of human affection, and the holy child as a beautiful baby boy. it is the painter's abiding claim to our regard that he brought life to his walls and panels, that they present the living, palpitating sentiment of men and women and children, that he painted for us the flowers that blossomed round him and the countryside through which he wandered in his hours of ease. the technical achievement, the gradual but steady improvement in dealing with composition and masses of colour, the extraordinary change from the stiff early figures to the supple ones of the later years, the splendid growth of the artistic sense, from all these things the devotee turns aside. he is not unconscious of the change, for the results achieved by the painter account for the spectator's riper and fuller appreciation, but he cannot analyse it. of far more moment to him is the thought that all fra angelico's life and art were given to the service of the church, that he laboured without ceasing to present the gospel stories in the most attractive form, despising the material rewards that awaited such achievements as his. ease, luxury and the praise of the world at large the dominican dismissed with fine indifference, believing that his reward would come when his task was ended, and the work of his hands should praise him in the gates. "here," his orthodox latter-day admirers say, "is the man of noble convictions and pure life, who stood for all that was best in religion. as he chanced to have the gifts of a painter, he used those gifts to develop his mission. painting with him was no more than a means to an end, and that end was the glorification of god." the dispute must needs be endless; for we cannot see through the four centuries that separate us from the artist, and every man takes from a picture some echo of what he brought to it. in sober truth the matter is of far less importance than the makers of controversy imagine. it should suffice both parties to agree that fra angelico was a great painter and a great man, that his association with the church afforded him the opportunity of leaving behind him work that has a spiritual as well as artistic quality. his altar-pieces and frescoes seem to breathe the serene atmosphere of an age of faith; they tell of a quiet retired life amid surroundings that remain unrivalled to-day, even though our horizon is widened and we know the new world as well as the old. there are examples of the painter's art in the national gallery and in the louvre, in rome and in perugia; but florence holds by far the greatest number. in florence we find the series painted to decorate the "silver press" of the annunziata, and more than a dozen other works of importance. the uffizi guards the famous "madonna dei linajuoli" and the "coronation of the virgin" from santa maria nuova. the convent of san marco, to which the brotherhood of san dominico went in from fiesole, holds the famous frescoes in cloister, chapter-house, and cells, and offers an illuminating guide to the painter's ideals and intentions, in work that is the ripe product of middle age. so it is to florence that one must go to study the painter, though there are one or two works from his hands in fiesole across the valley, while the collection in perugia is not to be overlooked, and rome holds some of the best work of the artist's hand, painted in the closing years. for all the surging waves of tourists that break upon florence, month in, month out, filling streets and galleries with discordant noises, and giving them an air of unrest strangely out of keeping with their traditional aspect, the city preserves sufficient of its old-time character to enable the student to study fra angelico's pictures in an atmosphere that would not have been altogether repugnant to the artist himself. save in seasons when the city is full to overflowing the convent of san marco receives few visitors, while in the academy and at the uffizi there are so many expressions of a more flamboyant art that there is seldom any lack of space round the panels angelico painted. there are some days when san marco is altogether free from visitors, and then the frescoed cells, through which the great white glare of the day steals softly and subdued, seem to be waiting for the devotees who will return no more, and one looks anxiously to cloisters, and garden and chapter-house for some signs of the life that rose so far above the varied emptiness of our own. ii the painter's early days when guido da vicchio was born in the little fortified town from which he takes his name, the town that looks out upon the apennines on the north and west, and towards monte giovo on the south, the medici family was just beginning to raise its head in florence. salvestro di medici had originated the "tumult of the ciompi"; the era of democratic government in the city was drawing to a close. beyond the boundaries of florence the various states into which italy was divided were quarrelling violently among themselves. the throne of st. peter was rent by schism, pope and anti-pope were striving one against the other in fashion that was amazing and calculated to bring the papal power into permanent disrepute. it was a period of uncertainty and unrest, prolific in saints and sinners, voluptuaries and ascetics. no student of history will need to be reminded that it is to periods such as this that the world has learned to look for its remarkable men. [illustration: plate iii.--two angels with trumpets these panels from the uffizi gallery in florence are very popular examples of the master's early work, and although they do not compare favourably with his later efforts, they have achieved an extraordinary measure of popularity in italy, and are to be seen on picture postcards in every italian city from genoa to naples. (see p. .)] doubtless some echo of the surrounding strife penetrated beyond the walls of vicchio when guido was a little boy, for he lived in a fortified town built for purposes of war. it is not unreasonable to suppose that he may have seen enough of the stress and strife peculiar to the age to have turned his thoughts to other things. if a lad, born with a peaceable and affectionate disposition, be brought into contact with violence at an early age, his peaceful tendencies will be strengthened, he will avoid all sources and scenes of strife. we know nothing of the painter's boyhood, but, looking round at the conditions prevailing in florence, it seems more than likely that the years were not quite restful. in the absence of authentic information one may do no more than suggest that, when the lad was newly in his teens, he served in the studio of some local painter and discovered his own talent. attempts have been made to give the teacher a name and a history, but these efforts, for all that they are interesting, lack authenticity. far away in florence the first faint light of the revival of learning was shining upon the more intelligent partisans of all the jarring factions. the claims of the religious life were being put forward with extraordinary fervour and ability by a great teacher and preacher, john the dominican, who appears to have reformed the somewhat lax rules of his order. we are told that he travelled on foot from town to town after the fashion of his time, calling upon sinners to repent, and summoning to join the brotherhood all those who regarded life as a dangerous and uncertain road to a greater and nobler future. clerics looked askance at the signs of the times, for although art and literature were coming into favour, although florence was becoming the centre of a great humanist movement, the change was associated with a recrudescence of pagan luxury and vices that boded ill for the maintenance of moral law. perhaps john the dominican preached in vicchio, perhaps guido and his younger brother benedetto heard him elsewhere, but wherever the message was delivered it went home, for it is recorded that in the year , when fra angelico would have been just twenty years old, he and benedetto travelled to the dominican convent on the hillside at fiesole and applied for admission to the order. the brothers were welcomed and sent to serve their novitiate at cortona, where some of fra angelico's earliest known work was painted. they returned to fiesole in the following year, but the dominican establishment there was soon broken up because the florentines had acknowledged alexander v. as pope, and the dominican brotherhood supported his opponent, gregory xi. foligno and cortona were visited in turn. in the former city the church of the dominicans remains to-day; and so the brethren sought peace beyond fiesole, until in the council of constance healed the wounds of mother church. then pope martin v. came to live in florence, where john xxiii. paid him obeisance, and the dominican friars returned to their hillside home beyond the city, that was then, according to the historian bisticci, "in a most blissful state, abounding in excellent men in every faculty, and full of admirable citizens." and now fra angelico, as he must be called in future, settled down to his first important work. he had learned as much as his associates could teach him, and had gathered sufficient strength of purpose, intelligence and judgment, to enable him to deal with the problems of his art as he thought best. it may be said that fra angelico built the bridge by which mediæval art travelled into the country of the renaissance. indeed, he did more than this, for having built the bridge, he boldly passed over it in the last years of his life. we can see in his work the unmistakable marks of the years of his labour. he started out equipped with the heavy burden of all the conventions of mediævalism. against that drawback he could set independence of thought, and a goodly measure of that florentine restlessness that led men to express themselves in every art-form known to the world. no florentine artist of the quattrocento held that painting was enough if he could add sculpture to it, or that sculpture would serve if architecture could be added to that. had there been any other form of art-expression to their hands, the florentines would have used it, because they were as men who seek to speak in many languages. this restlessness, this prodigality of effort, was to find its final expression in leonardo da vinci, who entered the world as the dominican friar was leaving it. in the early days fra angelico must have been a miniaturist. vasari speaks of him as being pre-eminent as painter, miniaturist, and religious man, and the painting of miniatures cramped the painter's style in fashion that detracts from the merits of the earlier pictures, but of course fra angelico is by no means the only artist to whom miniature painting has been a pitfall. professor langton douglas has pointed out, in his admirable and exhaustive work on fra angelico, that the artist was profoundly influenced by the great painters and architects of his time, and has even used this undisputed fact as an aid to ascertain the approximate date of certain pictures. we can hardly wonder that the influence should be felt by a sensitive artist, who responded readily to outside forces, when we consider the quality of the work that sculpture and architecture were giving to the world in those early days of the quattrocento. men of genius dominated every path in life and florence held far more than a fair share of them. among the works belonging to the years before fra angelico went to san marco, and painted the frescoes that stand for his middle period at its best, are the altar-piece at cortona, "the annunciation" and "the last judgment," in the academy of florence, and the famous "madonna da linajuoli," with its twelve angels playing divers musical instruments on the frame round the central panel. these angels have made the madonna of the flax-workers the best known of all the painter's works. so long the delight of the public eye they are very harshly criticised to-day, and not without reason, for doubtless they are flat and stiff productions enough. but they have a certain naïve beauty of their own, and because they have done more than work of far greater merit to spread the fame of fra angelico, because they have been the source of great delight to countless people despised and rejected of art critics, it has seemed reasonable to present some of them in this little volume, side by side with those more important works of the master to which so many artists of the renaissance are indebted. we may rest assured that to the painter the angels were very real angels indeed, the best that his art and devotion could express. [illustration: plate iv.--christ as a pilgrim met by two dominicans this is a fresco in the cloister of san marco at florence. it will be seen that christ holds a pilgrim's staff which cuts the picture in half, and the right hand of the foremost dominican and the left hand of christ, extended across the staff, form a cross.] other important works of this first period, which may be taken to range from to , are the altar-pieces known as the madonna of cortona, the madonna of perugia, and the madonna of the annelena, the last-named being in the academy at florence. critics and artists can divide the painter's life into four or more divisions expressed to them by changes in his style; but a simpler division suffices here. looking at fra angelico with eyes that the nineteenth century has trained, we speak of this early work as of less importance than what followed, but in so doing it is quite easy to speak or write as several of his critics have done in very unreasonable fashion. certainly the artist, who in the last years of his life painted the picture of st. lorenzo distributing alms, and the scenes in the life of st. stephen, has travelled very far from the painter of the "last judgment" that may be seen in florence; but, even in the early days of cortona, fra angelico was a modern of the moderns. he was a man who worked and thought far in advance of his times, who had the wide outlook that we have learned to associate with all the florentine artists of the quattrocento, and he left the boundaries of the painter's art far wider than he found them. doubtless many of his contemporaries found his work daring and even immoral in so far as it departed from the traditions that had satisfied his predecessors. he had an individuality that expressed itself in fashion unmistakable before he was thirty years of age, and developed steadily down to the last year of his life. divorced by his calling from the cares and joys of other men, he responded with delight to the larger and more general aspects of life. fra angelico had a keen and eager eye for natural beauty; he seems to have gone to the countryside for all the inspiration that remained to seek when the sacred writings were laid aside. the maternal aspect with which he endowed the madonna, who had hitherto been as stiff and formless as though carved out of wood, testifies to the artist's recognition of maternity as he saw it among the simple peasants his order served. he restored humanity to mother and child. the child-like christ, no longer a doll but a real _bambino_, tells us how deeply the painter entered into the spirit of a life that the rules of his order forbade him to share. just as some women who do not marry seem to keep for the world at large the measure of loving sympathy that would have been concentrated upon their children; so this painter monk, who had paid his vows to poverty, chastity, and obedience, could express upon his canvas the affection and the sentiment that would have been bestowed under other circumstances upon a chosen helpmate. lacking the joys of healthy domesticity he turned to nature with a loving eye and an intelligence that cannot be over-estimated and, if he knew hours wherein, manlike, he mourned for the life forbidden, the consolation was at hand. the earth mother consoled him. in his earliest canvases he expresses his love of flowers, the love of a child for the sights that make the earliest appeal to our sense of beauty. his angels are set in flowering fields, they carry blossoms that bloom in the fields beyond cortona, and upon the hillside of fiesole. clearly the painter saw paradise around him. roses and pinks seem to be his favourite flowers, he paints them with a loving care, knowing them in bud and in full leaf and, just as he went to nature for the decorative side of his art, so in a way he may be said to have gone to nature in her brightest and most joyous moods for his colours. his palette seems to have borrowed its glory from the rainbow--the gold, the green, the blue, and the red are surely as bright and clear in his pictures as they are in the great and gleaming arch that easterns call in their own picturesque fashion "the bride of the rain." [illustration: plate v.--the coronation of the virgin this is a detail of a famous picture in san marco. it is a fresco in a cell of the south corridor. christ is seen crowning the virgin, the clouds surrounding them are rainbow tinted, and below the rainbow six saints are ranged in a semi-circle.] in all his work fra angelico showed himself an innovator, a man who, in thinking for himself, would not allow his own clear vision to be obscured by the conventions that bound men of smaller mentality and less significant achievement. at the same time he was very observant of the progress of his peers, particularly in architecture, and students of this branch of art cannot fail to notice his response to the developments brought about by michelozzo and brunelleschi. even in the first period of his art he would have seemed a daring innovator to his contemporaries for, all unconsciously he was taking his share in shaping the great renaissance movement that left so many timid souls outside the radius of its illumination. in the early days he approached the human body with some diffidence, and though a greater courage in this regard is the keynote of renaissance painting, the earlier timidity is hardly to be wondered at when we consider the attitude of the religious houses towards humanity in its physical aspect, and how necessary it was to avoid anything approaching sensuous imagery throughout that anxious period of transition. as he grew older and more confident of his powers, fra angelico seems to have freed himself from some of the restrictions that beset an artist who is also a religious. he, too, learned to glorify the human form. his love for nature remained constant throughout all the years of his life; he was sufficiently daring to introduce real landscape into his pictures, and by so doing, to become one of the fathers of landscape painting. his angels have a setting in the italy he knew best, the flowers that strew their paths are those he may have gathered in the convent garden; for even his vivid and exalted imagination could not create aught more beautiful than those that grew so freely and wild by the wayside, or were tended by his brethren in san marco. we find throughout the pictures a suggestion that the life of the artist was a serene and tranquil one that, while he was actively concerned with things of art throughout the district he knew best, he was sheltered by the house of the brotherhood from the tumult and turmoil that beset fiesole, cortona, and foligno in the days of his youth. when he went to san marco in florence, where his most enduring memorial remains to this day, fra angelico was a man of experience and an independence so far in advance of his time, that some of the work he had accomplished comes to us to-day with a suggestion of absolute modernity in thought if not in treatment. no beauty that our more sophisticated age can reveal to us had passed him by, he paints nature as milton painted it when he wrote the "masque of comus" and "l'allegro." and this manner of painting, so different from that of men who mix themselves with the world and surrender to its fascinations, is the painting that endures. iii in san marco it was in , and fra angelico was approaching his fiftieth year, when the brotherhood of san dominico quitted their convent in fiesole and went to find a new home in florence. with the turn of the year they left a temporary resting-place in san giorgio oltr' arno and went into the ruined monastery of san marco. this house appears to have belonged to the brotherhood of san silvestro whose behaviour had been quite fitted to the fifteenth century in florence, but was not altogether creditable to a religious house. pope eugenius iv., anxious to purify all the religious houses, gave san marco to the dominicans with the consent of cosimo di medici, and a very poor gift it was at the time, for the dormitory had been destroyed by fire, and hastily-made wooden cabins could not keep out the rain and cold wind. there was a great mortality among the brethren. once again the pope eugenius interceded with the powerful ruler of florence, and cosimo sent for his well-beloved architect michelozzo and commissioned him to rebuild the monastery. naturally enough fra angelico, whose feeling for architecture was finely developed, came under the influence of the architect, and when the building was complete he was commissioned to adorn the walls with frescoes that should keep before the brethren the actualities of the religious life, and enable them to feel that the spiritual presence was in their midst. cosimo's munificence had not stopped with the presentation of the building to the brotherhood. he equipped the monastery with a famous library, provided all the service books that were necessary, and gave the brethren for librarian a man who was destined to ascend the fisherman's throne and keep the keys of heaven. the books were illuminated by fra angelico's brother benedetto, who had taken the vows with him, indeed some critics are of opinion that fra angelico himself assisted in the work, but for this belief there appears to be but a very small foundation. the pope eugenius, compelled by the quarrels of the great houses in rome to leave the eternal city, came to florence and saw fra angelico's work there, and this visit paved the way for the painter's sojourn in rome in the last years of his life. like so many of his contemporaries, eugenius could find time amid the distractions of a stormy and difficult existence to keep a well-trained eye upon the artistic developments going on around him, and he did but wait for peace and opportunity to show himself as keen a patron of art as that "terrible pontiff," julius della rovere, for whom michelangelo was to work in the sistine chapel. [illustration: plate vi.--detail from the coronation of the virgin this is a detail from one of the pictures that have excited a great deal of criticism. professor douglas calls the work "the last and greatest of fra angelico's glorified miniatures." in the work as it stands in the uffizi to-day, christ is seen placing a jewel in the virgin's crown. right and left stretches the angelic choir, below there is a great gathering of saints.] to realise the life that the painter saw around him in the days when the dominican brotherhood first went to san marco, it is necessary to turn to some historian of florence in an endeavour to recall the splendour and stateliness of the city's life. the limits of space forbid any attempt, however modest, to picture florence in detail as it was in those days, though the subject could scarcely be more tempting to the pen. the pomp and circumstance of life were not passed over by the painter, whose extraordinary receptivity found so much more in florence than in fiesole for its exercise. some echo, however, subdued to convent walls, lingers in the city to-day where san marco preserves its great painter's reputation, and tells us that he was not indifferent to the sights and sounds beyond its gates. a few of the frescoes have lost a little of their pristine beauty and yet, for all the ravages of time, the most faded among them can suggest much of the charm they possessed when they were painted. it is in the open cloisters, of course, that the greatest damage has been done, and the great "crucifixion" in the chapter-house has not escaped lightly; but in the cells where the work is more protected, time has dealt lightly with the frescoes and the two or three little panels that help to make the friar's lasting monument. good judges have pointed out that the great "crucifixion" in the chapter-house, the largest work of the painter, was never completed, and that the red background was intended to serve as a bed for the blue that was never put on. nobody can say why this fine work was abandoned, and reproduction in colour is impossible. even a detail would be unsatisfactory, but one of the lunettes from the cloister is given here. it represents christ as a pilgrim meeting two dominican brothers, and gives an excellent suggestion of fra angelico at his best, revealing the deep feeling of the religious man, and the skill of the artist blended together in happiest and most inspired union. to have seen the picture in his mind, the artist must have been a deeply religious man; to have expressed the vision as he has expressed it in terms of line and colour, the devotee must have been a great artist. from one of the cells in san marco the chief part of another picture has been reproduced in these pages. it represents the "coronation of the virgin." christ seated upon a white cloud is placing a crown upon the virgin's head; there is a rainbow border with six saints. in order that the beauty of the central figures may be seen, no more than a part of the picture is given here. it is the more important part, for the saints are conventional figures, each with the hands uplifted in adoration, each with a halo round his head. the beauty of the stories that fra angelico sets before us was as true to him as the beauty of the flowers he painted, and the landscape that met his eyes whenever he walked abroad. the modern world, whether it doubt or believe, cannot but recognise that the artist of san marco has succeeded as much by his faith as by his art. the other frescoes of the dominican house must be left for the fortunate minority who can visit them, but these two will be found to represent well and truthfully both the religious idea and the artistic achievement. to realise their merits to the full one must not fail to bear in mind the development of painting at the time when they were painted. for the men who came after angelico the task was easier; he had paved the way for them. in the days when san marco was decorated, the painter had very little to add to his technical knowledge, and nothing at all to his feeling for the beauty of the gospel stories, and few artists of the fifteenth century have been so fortunate as to collect their best work in one place where it could remain undisturbed throughout the ages. naturally enough it must pass--cloisters and chapter-house show signs of the times all too clearly. "the crucifixion" is faded not so badly as leonardo's "last supper" in the santa maria della grazie of milan, but still seriously, nor can all the _lire_ of faithful but hurried tourists restore its charm. it is in the cells that the work of fra angelico will linger longest, and it is pleasant to speculate upon the debt that devout monks must have owed to their artist brother, who could give them such exquisite embodiments of the truth as he saw it to brighten their hard lives and assure them, even in hours of doubt and mental trouble, of the joys that would be associated with the latter end. san marco, then, may be regarded as an exquisite and enduring memorial of the middle period of fra angelico's life. the saint that was in him dreamed dreams and saw visions, the artist that was in him expressed them in fashion that calls for admiration even in these days when the work done is nearly four hundred years old, and the thought that gave it birth is no longer held in such universal esteem. the devotion that inspired the themes, the simplicity of his handling, the beauty of his colour, the love of nature that was expressed as often as the picture would permit, the reverential feeling in treatment that was bound to communicate itself to the spectator, all these qualities make the work remarkable, and help us to see how strong was the faith that inspired and kept the artist happy in the cloisters when, had he wished to turn his talent to other purposes, he might have had riches and honour. leading rulers of men were building palaces in every great city, conquerors and statesmen were seeking to excel one another in tasteful and costly display. of those who could have commanded wealth, honour, and comfort, the dominican friar was among the first. but it sufficed fra angelico to serve neither kings nor princes, but to choose for his worship the king of kings "who made the heavens and the earth and all that is therein." iv later years there is a great temptation to linger awhile in san marco with the friar, for even to-day the place has not lost its appeal, and there are sufficient landmarks in the surrounding city to enable us to trace the influence of men who were at once the contemporaries and inspirers of his genius. only the limits of space intervene to forbid too long a stay in florence, and as the painter's later years were spent in rome we must follow him there. for those who wish to linger in the monastery there are books in plenty, some dealing with the quattrocento, others dealing with the popes, others with fra angelico himself. this outline of a painter's life seeks to do no more than introduce him to those who may be interested; it is not intended for those who wish to follow him beyond the limits of a modest appreciation. vasari, crowe, and cavalcaselle, professor langton douglas, bernhard berenson and others will supply the more complete and detailed accounts of the painter's life and works, and the careful reader will find sufficient references to other writers to direct him to every side issue. [illustration: plate vii.--the infant christ from the convent of san marco. this picture gives a fair idea of the exquisite sweetness and delicacy with which the painter handled the subject of the child christ. he does not treat this subject very often, but when he does the result is in every way delightful.] pope eugenius iv., who visited florence when he was exiled from rome, had settled for a while in bologna until the anti-pope felix v. fell from power, and had then hastened back to rome, and settled down to beautify the vatican. like all the great men of his generation he felt the spirit of the renaissance in the air, and desired no more than leisure in order to respond to it. he remembered the clever artist, whose work had charmed him in the days of his florentine exile, and sent an invitation to fra angelico to come to rome and decorate one of the chapels in the vatican. in those days one travelled in italy, even more slowly than one does to-day by the italian express trains--strange as the statement may seem to moderns who know the country well--and by the time that the friar had received the summons and had responded to it, eugenius iv. would appear to have relinquished the keys to his successor. happily the new pope nicholas v. was a scholar, a gentleman, and a statesman, as responsive to the new ideas as his predecessor in office. he gathered the best men of his time to the vatican, which he proposed to rebuild, and he entered upon a programme that could scarcely have been carried out had he enjoyed a much longer lease of life than providence granted. unfortunately he had no more than eight years to rule at st. peter's, and that did not serve for much more than a beginning of his great scheme. he was succeeded by tomaso parentucelli, that ardent scholar whom cosimo di medici had appointed custodian of the collection of mss. that he gave to san marco in florence when the dominicans took possession. as it happened parentucelli himself was in the last year of his life when he ascended the throne of st. peter, and his schemes, whether for the aid and development of scholarship or art, saw no fruition. but for all that nicholas v. ruled for no more than eight years in rome, he did much for fra angelico, who painted the frescoes in the pope's private studio, and decorated a chapel in st. peter's that was afterwards destroyed. this loss is of course a very serious one, and suggests that those who ruled in the vatican were not always as careful as they might have been of works that would have outlived them so long had they been fairly treated. it is very unfortunate that art should suffer from the caprices of the unintelligent. when savonarola, also a dominican monk, roused the florentines to a sense of their lapses from grace a few years after fra angelico's death, they made a bonfire in the streets of florence of art work that was considered immoral. to sacrifice great work in the name of morality is bad enough, to destroy it for the sake of building operations is quite unpardonable. in rome the summer heat is well-nigh unbearable. even to-day the voluntary prisoner of the vatican retires to a villa in the far end of his gardens towards the end of june, and none who can leave the city cares to remain in it when may has gone, and the tiber becomes a thread, and fever haunts its banks. fra angelico felt the burden of the summer and wished to suspend his work for a while. it so happened that he received an invitation from orvieto to decorate the duomo there during the months of june, july, and august. the first arrangement was that he should go there every summer to escape the dog-days in rome, but for reasons not known to us the visit did not extend beyond one year, and the frescoes that he had painted were seriously injured by rain, and were not completed until luca signorelli took them in hand half a century later. the little work that is attributed to the painter's brush to-day in orvieto need not detain us here. the frescoes in rome represent the summit of fra angelico's achievement, but they have not escaped the somewhat destructive hand of nineteenth-century german criticism; one eminent authority having declared that they are not by fra angelico at all, but have been painted by pupils, benozzo gozzoli receiving special mention in this connection. it is not necessary to take this criticism too seriously. the hands may be the hands of esau, but "the voice is jacob's voice." the artist may have received some assistance from pupils, the backgrounds may owe something to another hand; there was no feeling, ethical or artistic, to keep assistants from coming to the aid of their master, but the whole composition and the whole feeling of the frescoes proclaim the friar. the subjects are incidents in the life of st. stephen and st. lorenzo, ending, of course, after the inevitable fashion of the time, with a representation of the martyrdom. for once these martyrdoms have a suggestion of reality. in the early days of fra angelico's work his representations of martyrdoms and suffering were so naïve that they could hardly do more than provoke a smile. his idea of hell was very simple, and when he wished to be very bitter indeed--to express his anger at its fullest--he peopled the nether world with brothers of the great rival order of st. francis. for the founder of that order, angelico had the greatest love and admiration; who indeed could refuse to pay such tribute even to-day? but all the brethren did not live up to the rule of their founder, and the dominican painter's rebuke seems very quaint in our eyes, though doubtless it made a great sensation when it was administered. [illustration: plate viii.--st. peter the martyr this is a fresco from the cloisters of san marco and represents st. peter, a saint whose appeal to the artist was very great the fact that the saint has his finger to his lips may be taken as the artist's method of emphasising the rule of silence of his order. in fact the st. peter martyr is generally called the "silenzio," and like so many of the artist's pictures must be taken to have a special spiritual significance.] in rome the painter's feeling for natural beauty reaches the height of its expression, indeed one feels that every department of his work is at its best and highest there. after his departure from the eternal city, the frescoes finished, and himself on the shady side of his sixtieth year, the intervening centuries descend like a cloud, blotting out the greater part of the record. the cloud lifts for a moment to show us "beato" angelico, prior of the dominican monastery at fiesole, to which more than forty years ago he had claimed admission as a novice, and then he is back again in rome in the chief convent of his order, santa maria sopra minerva. there the light that had burned so brilliantly for nearly half a century, illuminating the most alluring aspects of the christian faith, paled and went out. the body was laid to rest in the convent church, near the tomb of st. catherine, and it is said that the epitaph was composed by the pope. thereafter the order of st. dominic produced no great personality until it gave to the world a man of very different stamp in fra girolamo savonarola. v a retrospect in art as in music and literature the path of the innovator is beset by difficulties, and if, among all the movements that claim our attention to-day, that of the renaissance in fifteenth-century italy is the most fascinating, it is because the difficulties were conquered so brilliantly. the century seemed to breed a race of men that enjoyed the inestimable advantage of knowing what they wanted, and were determined to succeed. it did not matter that the paths they trod were new. each man had mapped out a line of development for himself and went strenuously along his chosen road, quite certain that he would find the goal of his ambition at the journey's end. curiously enough when the paths were those of conquest there was always a road leading from them to patronage of the arts. this may be because art in those days was largely devoted to the service of the church, and when a man had acquired all that theft or conquest could give him, and realised that he could not hope to wage successful war upon time, he began to think of his latter days. few men of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries could approach death with confidence, and they sought to put something to their credit against the day of judgment. to beautify religious houses, to build houses for holy brotherhoods, these were the simplest and most obvious ways of placating the recording angel, and to the uneasiness of rich and unscrupulous men the church owes not a few of her most remarkable monuments. moreover, even the tyrants wished to have some enduring memorial. cosimo di medici, who gave san lorenzo and san marco to florence, remarked to his historian bisticci, "fifty years will not pass before we are driven out of florence, but these buildings will remain." after all we can forget and forgive the superstition and self-glorification that gave so much enduring wealth to the great cities of italy. doubtless there were many failures among the renaissance artists; it is hardly an exaggeration to say that in painting alone there are scores of men belonging to the quattrocento who have left us nothing but their names. victory was to the fittest; they alone survived and left the impress of their genius upon their own and succeeding generations. if we look for a moment to fra angelico's contemporaries we see at once that it was an age of great men. filippo brunelleschi was born ten years before angelico, and lived until the year . he designed the dome of the cathedral of florence, the cloisters of san lorenzo, the sagrestia vecchia, the church of st. lawrence, and other works too numerous to mention. donatello, whose work to this hour is "all a wonder and a great desire;" ghiberti, to whom florence owes the gates of the baptistery; michelozzo, who built the medici palace and the convent of san marco, and was associated with luca della robbia in making the bronze gates of the sacristy of the duomo, belong to the same period, and were intimately associated with brunelleschi in much of the work that makes florence one of the show-places of the world to-day. luca della robbia was born when fra angelico was no more than twelve years old. masolino, masaccio, and fra filippo lippi were among the painters of fra angelico's own time, while, when he was approaching middle age, gian bellini and andrea mantegna were growing up, and when fra angelico died, florence was full of great artists who were destined to carry on his work. of course, the literary activity was as great as the activity of the artists; one recalls with a thrill of emotion that petrarch and boccaccio were only just numbered among the dead--their work held all its earliest freshness. if at first sight these matters seem to be outside the scope of a brief consideration of fra angelico's life and work, second thought will justify the inclusion even in these narrow limits. every artist is in a sense an echo of his environment and, although fra angelico must have passed the greater part of his life within monastery walls, yet the evidence of his pictures must convince all who look with discerning eyes, that he was profoundly influenced by the life that went on around him. the artistic and literary movements of the time affected him deeply and, in his own modest way he was constantly striving to enlarge the boundaries of his art, to develop its achievements in a manner that must have made even his early pictures appear as dangerous as the works of artists like manet and degas seemed to their contemporaries. had he lived in other times, had his lines been cast in some quiet city to which no echo of the new movement in art and letters could penetrate, fra angelico might still have painted interesting pictures; but he would not have got beyond his earliest manner, indeed he might not have attained to what is best in that. it would have been so very easy for a narrow-minded superior to say that the innovations were wrong, that the human figure in all its beauty must not be expressed by a painter when presenting virgin and child, that the old formal way was the right one. there could have been no appeal against such a judgment. doubtless many a budding genius has been nipped in this fashion by short-sighted authority. how happy then was the friar with time and place united in his service. vi conclusion fra angelico has placed artists and laymen in his debt, and as far as the latter are concerned the cause is obvious enough. a certain conviction of the truth of every story he had to tell shines like a bright light through all his pictures; they are a force for the development and strengthening of belief. even to-day one finds among the crowd of tourists that "does" san marco in half-an-hour or more, a few visitors whose interest is of another kind, while there is no lack of admirers for the work to be seen in the uffizi, though much of it belongs to the earliest part of the artist's life. so it happens that the pictures have a well-defined literary and spiritual value, and it is not surprising to think that the church has granted posthumous honours to the man whose work has brought so much honour in its train. artists acknowledge a great debt to the friar, but a debt of another kind. as professor langton douglas has pointed out in his admirable and exhaustive work upon fra angelico, the friar, with his contemporaries, hubert and jan van eyck, are the fathers of modern landscape. the new movement was continued and developed by verrocchio and da vinci on the one side, and by perugino and raphael on the other. then again fra angelico made a definite movement towards portrait painting, by giving the likeness of some of his friends and patrons to saints and martyrs. this was yet another of the daring innovations that marked the opening of the quattrocento and, to realise how much it stood for we must consider for a moment the comparative barrenness of modern art, which in the hands of its most popular artists has little or nothing that is new to say to us. indeed it may be remarked with regret that great praise often attaches to the man who goes back to the fifteenth and sixteenth century, although a little reflection would enable every thoughtful person to see that an art, forced to fall back upon traditions of the past, is far from being in a flourishing condition. the plates are printed by bemrose & sons, ltd., derby and london the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh masterpieces in colour edited by t. leman hare carlo dolci in the same series artist. author. velazquez. s. l. bensusan. reynolds. s. l. bensusan. turner. c. lewis hind. romney. c. lewis hind. greuze. alys eyre macklin. botticelli. henry b. binns. rossetti. lucien pissarro. bellini. george hay. fra angelico. james mason. rembrandt. josef israels. leighton. a. lys baldry. raphael. paul g. konody. holman hunt. mary e. coleridge. titian. s. l. bensusan. millais. a. lys baldry. carlo dolci. george hay. gainsborough. max rothschild. luini. james mason. tintoretto. s. l. bensusan. _others in preparation._ [illustration: plate i.--virgin and child (frontispiece). this work, which is the only one by dolci in the national gallery, represents the virgin presenting flowers to the divine infant. in composition and drawing it is one of the most happy efforts of dolci. a small canvas of feet inches, it came into the possession of the national gallery in through the wynn ellis bequest.] carlo dolci by george hay illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] london: t. c. & e. c. jack new york: frederick a. stokes co. contents page i. introduction ii. the artist's life iii. the artist's work list of illustrations plate i. virgin and child frontispiece national gallery, london page ii. poetry in the uffizi gallery, florence iii. the magdalen in florence iv. the eternal father part of an alter-piece in fresco, florence v. angel of the annunciation in florence vi. the magdalen in the corsini palace, rome vii. portrait of the artist in the uffizi gallery, florence viii. the sleep of st. john in the pitti palace, florence [illustration] i introduction if, in dealing with the life and work of carlo dolci, a writer sets down an apology by way of preface, it is in recognition of the fact that the art form of this painter, for all that it is serious and beautiful, is one of the first that we outgrow. there are artists in plenty, and their names are written large in the roll of fame, whose work makes no immediate appeal to us. rembrandt, velazquez, tintoretto, one and all must be approached with an eye that has received some measure of training, and then the beauty of their work brings perennial enjoyment, though at first it could not be easily seen. other men who lived and thought and wrought on quite a different plane appeal to the eye right away. their work conceals nothing, its beauties are patent and entirely free from reticence or subtlety; such painters bear the same relation to the really great masters of the art as the writers of the songs sung at ballad concerts bear to the composers of the pastoral, unfinished or pathetic symphonies. yet in their way it must be admitted that both the writer of ballads, and the painter of pictures that please, do a certain service. they help the uninitiated along the path that leads to higher things; they are a support that the timid explorer may rely upon until he has learnt to walk alone. there comes a time when the painter of pretty pictures and the writer of pretty songs cease to please us; we have mastered what we are pleased to regard as the tricks of both, and feel a little contempt for them. then, perhaps, some of us are even anxious to forget our former attitude towards the men who charmed our youthful fancy. we think we have become as gods, knowing good from evil, and in this mood we ignore the fine points of work we criticise. carlo dolci was in many ways a man who never grew up, but he had a keen and almost childish sense of beauty and of righteousness, and he sought to express it on canvas, leaving the deeper truths of art, and the more important aspects of life, to be treated by those who cared to deal with them. beauty obvious, palpable; sentimental virtue as broad and unblushing as that of edmund spenser's heroines, were the themes that the artist chose to dwell upon, and it would be in the last degree unwise to forget that such a message as his will make a strong appeal to the rising generation as long as the world endures, and that by the time those who have been pleased are pleased no longer, there will be others waiting to take their place. moreover carlo dolci laboured with a certain measure of sincerity until the message he had chosen to deliver to his generation became as true to him as the visions that helped fra angelico while he laboured in the cells of st. mark's convent in florence. to-day in florence and in rome the younger generation seek the pictures of carlo dolci and find in them a realisation of certain ideals. we may be a little shocked or even contemptuous, but to recognise the claims of those who are coming on as well as the claims of those who are passing, is to keep a sane outlook on life. for the world was not made for the middle-aged and the experienced, any more than it was created for the immature enthusiasts. there is a place on this planet for us all. [illustration: plate ii.--poetry this canvas was painted for the head of the corsini family in rome, when dolci was a young man. it is one of a series that included hope, patience, and painting. it is now in the uffizi gallery, florence.] carlo dolci painted, or over-painted, the romance of life. it was his misfortune that he always saw it in the same way. he was like a musician who, having all the keys of the piano at his disposal, regards anything more than the simplest modulation from tonic to dominant and back again as an extravagance to which he must not surrender. nowadays the horizon of art has widened very considerably; even in literature the obvious has passed out of fashion, but in the rather degenerate days when carlo dolci lived physical beauty was in a sense the keynote of all art work. no heroine could reach the last chapter of a romance in safety unless she chanced to be equipped with a measure of beauty that defied the assaults of time. beauty other than physical was entirely overlooked, or was associated deliberately with good looks. handsome sinners were as far removed from the public ken as ugly saints. in many senses the world was younger than it is to-day; indeed, it has aged more in the past two hundred years than in five hundred that went before. consequently the living painter of prettiness stands now at a certain disadvantage. perhaps he is more handicapped in the struggle for recognition now than he will be a hundred years hence, because we have but recently taken possession of our heritage of culture and judgment and are a little anxious to forget that we have been young. it may be granted that while a large collection of the works of a painter who laboured for all time pleases our every mood, it would be hard to live in a room in which dolci's pictures dominated the walls. swinburne has expressed the position very simply in the first volume of his famous "poems and ballads": "a month or twain to live on honeycomb is pleasant; but one tires of scented time." we suffer from the painter's excess of sweetness, from a sentiment that comes dangerously near to sentimentality, from a quality that is almost as cloying as saccharine; but taken in the proper proportions, relegated to their proper place, the pictures of carlo dolci are bound to please, and we feel perhaps a little envious of the man who throughout his life could see nothing that was not gracious and pleasing, and moral and sweet. as we have said, he has his counterpart in literature and in music, and had he not been forced by circumstances he could not control into the immediate neighbourhood of men who had so much more to say than he, dolci would have received more attention from his contemporaries and from succeeding generations. but, perhaps unfortunately for himself, dolci is to be found only in the best artistic company of the world. his work hangs in florence and in rome cheek by jowl with that of the world's great masters; before the flame of their genius his light pales and becomes insignificant. yet he is by no means to be despised, for he saw through his own little window a view of the pageantry of life that must have made him happy, and was destined to stimulate generations that have passed and generations still unborn. his pictures do not lack sincerity, and do not fail to express the best that was in him. he saw holy families and saints and living sitters with an eye that insisted upon beauty and righteousness. he painted with exquisite finish, with delicate colouring, and with a measure of enthusiasm that the years have not dimmed. in short, though many men have done better, he did his best, and the pictures that are reproduced in these pages indicate very fairly the measure of his achievement, even while they do nothing to conceal his limitations. moreover, while greater artists have had their biographers by the score, it is hard to find in the literature of great britain, france, or italy any work dealing even in the simplest fashion with this painter's life, though it does not deserve to be neglected. dolci would seem to have been ignored altogether, and this attitude of contempt is quite unfair, because no man who has pleased so many simple minds is unworthy of our attention, and it is more reasonable to praise a man for the gifts that were his than to ignore him on account of what he lacked. ii the artist's life as was said on a previous page, few people seem to have been at pains to deal with the life and work of our painter, and while the curators of the italian museums can tell you little about him, save the approximate dates of his life and death, and a few stories relating to events that would perhaps have occurred if they could, the catalogue of the british museum has no more than one reference to his name. tracing the reference to its source, we find a little paper-covered pamphlet, written in the closing years of the seventeenth century and published in florence some quarter of a century ago. in the british museum library it is bound with two or three other booklets relating to totally different matters. the pamphlet that concerns us was written by carlo dolci's friend and patron, signor baldinucci, and has never been translated into english. baldinucci was one of dolci's intimates, evidently a good friend and an ardent admirer, a man who praises generously, but is rather reticent about the painter's artistic shortcomings, just as though reticence would avail to keep them hidden from the understanding eye. however, it is no bad thing for us that signor baldinucci should have been an enthusiast, because without enthusiasm the bounteous harvest of facts to which we can turn would not have been gathered, and we should have been left in such a state of doubt with regard to the incidents of the painter's life as besets us in dealing with so many of the earlier and more notable men of his art and country. [illustration: plate iii.--the magdalen this is an early picture, painted for one of the florentine religious houses, finished with the utmost care. it has preserved its colour remarkably, and is now to be seen in florence.] signor baldinucci's work describes the artist's pictures in terms of quaint enthusiasm, and happily, too, it does not despise biographical details. this is as well, for, while there is no call for very subtle criticism in the case of dolci, it is of great interest for us to discover what manner of man he was and how he came to paint so many pretty pictures all in the same key, why he never sought to enlarge the boundaries of his art, or to see "with dilated eye." our biographer is generous; he gives us facts in plenty, and writes just enough about art to enable us to understand that his knowledge and his enthusiasm stood in inverse ratio to one another. that the author had a following is proved by the fact that the little pamphlet is now out of print, and though the writer sought diligently throughout florence to procure a copy, he was quite unsuccessful. carlo dolci was born about the year . his father was a highly respected tailor of florence, andrea dolci by name, his mother a daughter of pietro marinari, a painter (says baldinucci) of repute. carlo's parents seem to have been an exemplary couple, who earned the esteem of all who knew them and raised a family of five children to follow the straight and narrow paths of probity. carlo is said to have been born on the th of may , a day devoted to the honour of st. zenobius and santa maria maddalena de pazzi. the elder dolci died when carlo was four years old, and his mother was left in straitened circumstances, with which she struggled bravely and not without success. carlo seems to have been in every respect a model boy; in fact, if his biographer is strictly reliable, he was almost too good for the wicked world he lived in. it would be a relief to hear that he had moments when he was not on his best behaviour, that he robbed orchards, or played truant, or got into one or other of the scrapes that are associated with boyhood; but, alas, he did nothing of the kind. he was not even content to be good, but wanted all his schoolfellows to follow his example, and used to persuade them to tell their beads and say their prayers even when they were out walking. at the early age of nine carlo dolci gave unmistakable signs of possessing an artist's gifts, and was entrusted by his mother to the care of jacopo vignali and matteo rosselli. he worked very hard under these masters, and was so good that mr. barlow of "sandford and merton" fame would have been moved to tears of joy had he belonged to the seventeenth century and flourished in the neighbourhood of florence, while master harry sandford would have hidden a diminished head and confessed that he had found a greater saint than himself. at the age of eleven carlo dolci painted his first heads of christ, one as a child, and the other crowned with thorns; he also painted a full-length figure of st. john. then he painted a portrait of his mother, who was so pleased with the work that she took it to his master's studio, where, as good luck would have it, pietro de medici was in the habit of passing some of his idle hours. this patron of the arts was so pleased with the boy's work that he ordered a portrait of himself and another of a friend, the musician antonio landini. he also took the pictures that little carlo had just painted and showed them to the leaders of society in florence, presenting the young artist to the duke, who could hardly believe that the work before him had been accomplished by one so young. in order to assure himself, he told the boy to sketch two heads in his presence, only to be so pleased with the work that he rewarded him handsomely for it. florence, of course, began to talk of the boy painter, for a prodigy is neither to be despised nor overlooked in any wealthy city. his reputation passed from palace to studio, gathering commissions on its travels, and in a very little time young dolci had all the work he could do. he painted the portrait of the head of the bardi family, and that of his nephew john de bardi. he painted a portrait of raphael ximenes. when he was not painting portraits he turned his attention to still life, painting some fruit and flower pictures for his confessor, canon carpanti. his next work was for lorenzo de medici, an "adoration," for which he asked twenty scudi and received forty, and then he painted the subject again on a rather larger canvas for one of the genitori family, who paid seventy scudi. this picture was sold at the owner's death and realised just four times the sum that had been paid for it, while some pictures of the evangelists painted by dolci for one of his confessors realised nearly twenty times as much as he had received. it may be suggested without much fear of contradiction, that the success of the painter's earliest work was not the best thing that could have happened to him. if he had been compelled to develop slowly and in the face of adverse circumstance, it is more likely that carlo dolci would have given the world work of more lasting merit, but circumstance forced him to paint for patrons at a time when he should have been studying for himself. the style and method of his labours were settled for him, his development was limited and circumscribed; with his native gifts he might have travelled far had he not been hampered by these early successes. [illustration: plate iv.--the eternal father this plate, so characteristic of the sentiment of dolci, is only part of an altar-piece in fresco, painted for one of the religious houses in the middle of the artist's career.] from his youth carlo dolci had been devout, the rules of the brotherhood of st. benedict appealed to him very strongly. he passed much of his scanty leisure within the walls of the brethren in florence, and, probably under the influence of his advisers there, made a firm resolve to paint nothing but religious subjects, or those that illustrated some one of the cardinal virtues. at the back of each canvas it was his custom to write the date upon which he had started the work and the name of the saint to whom the day was dedicated. in holy week his brush was devoted entirely to subjects relating to the passion. one of his greatest early successes was a picture of the madonna with the infant christ and st. john, painted for signor grazzini. this work added so much to his commissions that he could no longer stay in vignali's studio, finding it more convenient to work at home, where there was more accommodation in his mother's house. here he painted his beautiful picture of st. paul for one of the family of strozzi, and his picture of st. girolamo writing, and the penitence of mary magdalen. he also painted the picture of christ blessing the bread, a head of st. philip of neri, and the picture of st. francis and st. george. for one of his corsican patrons he painted a woman with weights and scales in her hand as justice, and for one of the corsini he painted the hope, patience, poetry, and painting, of which series the poetry is reproduced here. in carlo dolci was elected a member of the florentine academy, and, in accordance with the custom that prevailed, was required to present one of his pictures to the academy on election. not unnaturally, perhaps, his thoughts turned to the man with whose art he sympathised most, fra angelico of fiesole--the man whose exquisite work has made the florentine convent of st. mark a place of pilgrimage to this day. oddly enough there was no portrait of fra angelico in the academy. it was necessary to send to rome to procure a drawing from which the portrait could be painted. the public demand for carlo dolci's work at this time was very greatly in excess of the supply, but the painter was hardly a man who sought or obtained the highest price for his labours. a very little would seem to have contented him; cases might be multiplied in which his work was re-sold at far higher prices than he received for it. for example, he painted a picture of mary magdalen washing the feet of christ, and sold the work to his doctor for scudi. the marquis niccolini offered the doctor scudi for it, but could not tempt him to give it up. by this time the fame of carlo dolci had spread well beyond the boundaries of florence; he was known and taken seriously in art circles of italy, and his work had special attractions for the religious houses whose heads saw that its influence was bound to be beneficial. we find the monks of the italian monastery dedicated to santa lucia of vienna commissioning him to copy one of their pictures of the virgin. he made several drawings and started work on the picture, but did not finish it for a long time, and some eight years later he sold it to some distinguished visitors to florence for scudi. dolci was never idle, and his brush was always busy on canvas or wood, always setting out some sacred story or seeking to glorify some virtue. among the important pictures belonging to this period are one of the martyrdom of st. andrew, which was taken to venice, and one of the flight into egypt, painted for andrea rosselli, a rather graceful if not original composition, in which the virgin is seen riding with the infant christ in her arms. the same subject was commissioned by lord exeter and sent to england. [illustration: plate v.--angel of the annunciation this was painted about for the house of the benedictines in florence. it is one of the most popular of the artist's work, and has been widely reproduced.] the picture of an angel pointing out to christian souls the road to heaven attracted great comment and praise when it was painted; so too did two oval pictures, one of the archbishop of florence, and the other of st. philip of neri. a half-length figure of st. catherine was another of the painter's notable works that may be referred to his middle life. he had acquired the art of giving to his canvas the high finish of a miniature, and his colours were very fresh and glowing. indeed, it may be said of carlo dolci's work that it has preserved its freshness to a very remarkable extent; some of the pictures painted more than years ago are still glowing with colour, while the work of many men who came after dolci has lost all its original brightness and has become muddy. this suggests that dolci had found time to study the composition of paint with great care, and that some of the secrets of glazing surfaces had been revealed to him. belonging to the middle period is the picture of st. andrew embracing the cross and the picture in octagon shape called charity, presenting a beautiful woman nursing a sleeping babe, and holding a flaming heart in her right hand. a small picture of hagar and ishmael belongs to these years. in carlo dolci's teacher, rosselli, passed away, and in the following year the artist completed the painting of a standard that his master had begun. the subject is st. benedict on a cloud in a blue sky, and dolci is said to have made studies of it from a picture that was already in possession of another brotherhood. composition was never his strong point. he painted another standard for the benedictines, to their great delight, and in the following year a st. dominic on wood, and the famous angel of the lily. carlo dolci was now a married man, for in , apparently on the advice of his friends, he married the signora teresa di giovanni. the suggestion that carlo dolci married to order is supported to some extent by the incidents of the marriage day. baldinucci tells us that the painter's friends and family, together with the friends and family of his wife, were all gathered together, but carlo did not keep his appointment, and messengers were despatched all over the city to find him. he was not at home, he was not with the benedicts, he was not in the churches he favoured most, and dinner-time had come round when some happy searcher found the painter in a church that the others had overlooked. having scolded him for forgetting his appointment, the bride forgave her absent-minded partner, and the marriage took place. it was a very happy one. some time after this alliance, and when he had passed his fortieth year, carlo dolci turned his attention to fresco, and painted a figure of god the father, the holy ghost, and four archangels. we learn that one of his pupils painted in the other angels, and this little fact is worth noting, because it shows that carlo dolci had reached the period of his life in which the demands for his work could not be satisfied without assistance, and he had been forced to follow the example of great predecessors. we know that titian and tintoretto and other masters of the renaissance period in italy never scrupled to avail themselves of the services of clever pupils, and many a picture that left the studio with the master's name upon it did not receive more than the slightest touch of the master's brush. this scandal, for so we must describe it, has been common to nearly every period in the development of art, and was perhaps justified to some small extent in days when artists were not rewarded on a generous scale. while their commissions came from patrons who would not brook delay, and were quite well able to make their anger effective, it was unwise to be too scrupulous about the means to an end. for the preparation of a canvas and the painting in of draperies for portraits the use of pupils may escape adverse criticism, but when the pressure of commission became very serious, too many great artists have succumbed to the temptation of leaving the bulk of the work to be painted by a pupil, trusting to a few skilled touches to give the completed canvas the stamp of their own individuality. we have no means of saying how far carlo dolci indulged in a custom that was common to his time. we are quite sure that had he thought it an immoral one he would have abandoned it without hesitation. after turning his attention to fresco work the painter sent a st. agatha to venice, together with a portrait of st. john the evangelist, and a picture entitled sincerity, a woman garlanded with lilies. for another picture sent to venice, representing christ crowned with flowers and sitting at the entrance of a garden, dolci received scudi, a rather considerable sum when it is compared with those that were generally paid for his pictures. this picture was so successful that he painted another version of it in for a daughter of the archduke ferdinand and anna de medici. for this he received no less than scudi, and the marquis runecini paid the same price for a picture of st. john, in which the saint sees in a vision a lady trampling a dragon under foot. among other works belonging to this period are a st. girolamo, a st. luke, and a st. benedict, all commissioned by his doctor, signor lorenzo. for one of the corsini family dolci painted st. anthony with a skull in his hand, and for signor corbinelli the full-length life-size canvas of the figure of st. peter. for the scalzi brotherhood he painted the picture of the eternal father that was placed over the high altar, and a picture of herodiade with the head of st. john the baptist. a david with the head of goliath was painted for the marquis runecini, and a copy was made for the english ambassador in florence. this picture created a sensation when it was sent to england, and brought the painter many commissions for the portraits of englishmen. the head of the corsini house had given dolci certain commissions, and they were so well executed that requests followed for another st. john, and a picture of king casimir of poland. the st. cecilia playing the organ, which was sent to poland, was painted shortly afterwards. [illustration: plate vi.--the magdalen this picture, painted for a roman patron, is at present to be in the corsini palace, rome. it has, however, not been so well preserved as some of the best work from the same hand.] about this time sustermans, a painter some of whose work may be seen and admired in florence to-day, was commissioned to paint a portrait of claudia, daughter of the grand-duke ferdinand and anna de medici, on the occasion of her marriage with the emperor leopold. but sustermans on account of his great age could not accept the commission, and it was then offered to carlo dolci, who, although he had lived so long, and had achieved so large a measure of renown, had never travelled beyond the walls of florence. however, he did not hesitate, but started out for innsbrück in the spring of the year. he arrived in holy week, when, according to his rule of life, he would not paint secular subjects, but as soon as easter had come to an end he began the portrait commissioned, and was then asked by the duke to paint a second one of the same subject in a different pose. at innsbrück dolci received another commission of the sort that throws a strong light upon the ethics of the art world of his time. he was asked to repaint or touch up several devotional pictures by great masters who had passed away, and he does not seem to have hesitated. it was sufficient for him that the pictures were of a kind that met his approval; he asked nothing more, but set to work on the canvases of other men without a qualm. he was the guest at innsbrück of the abbé viviani, and by way of expressing his gratitude for his host's unvarying attention and kindness he painted a beautiful head of st. philip of neri and gave it to him. dolci remained at innsbrück from april until the end of august, and received in addition to a considerable sum of money a gift of valuable jewels from his grateful patrons. it was characteristic of the man that on his return to his native city and before he took the picture he had painted to the palace of the medici, he went to the church in florence at which he was accustomed to pray, and returned thanks for the happy termination of his travels. then he was instructed by the medici family to finish the portrait, so that it might stand for santa galla placidia, the empress whose famous tomb may be seen in ravenna to this day, and, indeed, is one of the show-places of that quaint old city. dolci then painted a very charming picture reproduced in these pages, the sleeping st. john with st. zacharias and st. elizabeth, and following the painting of this picture is associated the great misfortune of a life that had hitherto been pleasant and peaceful. the religious feelings that had been with him since the days when he was a little boy busily instructing his schoolfellows to turn from profane to sacred thoughts now degenerated into melancholy, and dolci suffered from the true melancholia which baffles physicians to-day, and was then, of course, quite beyond the reach of palliative or cure. he could not speak without deep sighs; he was convinced that he had lost all his ability as a painter, and that the world had no more use for him. his wife, who gave up much of her time and attention to him, suffered in health from the premature birth of a child, and then baldinucci, who wrote the little biography of the artist that was printed in florence in the early 'eighties, and is the foundation of our knowledge of the artist's life, took the painter away from florence to the country to the house of one domenico valdinotti. this man, an artist, had one or two pictures in his studio commissioned for wealthy patrons. he took up a palette with colours mixed, and gave it to dolci, commanding him in sternest tones to finish a veil on one of the pictures of the virgin. the painter obeyed, and succeeded so well in his task that all the doubt and fear that had clouded his life for the greater part of a year vanished in an hour, and he returned to florence with a perfectly healthy mind to finish the santa galla placidia, and one or two altar-pieces, including one for the church of san francesco. dolci then received a commission from the empress claude to paint a canvas for the imperial palace, but as she died in the following april this work was not completed. but he painted a fine martyrdom of st. lorenzo and a striking picture of st. francis of assisi for the duke. then came more commissions from venice, and the painter worked at half-a-dozen well-known pictures for that city. these pictures showed, perhaps, even more finish than those that had gone before, because concentration seems to have been the keynote of the painter's life, and while other men in all ages have used art as a means to an end, and have been unable to avoid the social temptations that have beset them in the day of their success, carlo dolci, like tintoretto before him, had no care for anything save his work. so long as health was good he desired nothing better than to devote the whole day to labour, and his closest and most complete attention to what he had in hand. of course, one only compares dolci with tintoretto in point of industry; all the developments that the great venetian had made, all the truths he had discovered, were either unknown to dolci or ignored by him. he was painting for a public that knew very little about art, and regarded exquisite finish as the surest sign of artistic accomplishment. consequently the painter did not seek to develop along lines of independent thought; he had no pressing need to do so while everything he could reasonably require in the way of patronage and commission was at his command. in luca giordano came to florence to paint frescoes in the chapel of the corsini palace. he admired carlo dolci's work very much, but used to rally him about the time he spent on it. "you do beautiful work, my carlo," he said; "but how can you make it pay when you give hours and hours to that close finish? when i think of the , scudi i have earned since i took up the brush, i begin to fear that you will die hungry." [illustration: plate vii.--portrait of the artist this is one of the collection of portraits of artists painted, each by his own hand. as may be seen from the canvas, dolci executed it in when he was approaching his sixtieth year. the canvas hangs in the uffizi gallery, florence.] it was perhaps a little unwise to talk in this fashion to a man who had been suffering from some form of brain disease, but it is certain that the words, though they were only spoken in jest, made a very deep impression upon the painter. dolci had just finished an adoration of the magi, and had sent it to the palace of the duchess vittoria. receiving a summons from the palace, he went there and heard the duchess express herself to him in terms of high praise. then she sent his adoration back to its wall and ordered one of giordano's pictures to be brought to her. "what do you think of this," she said to dolci; "is it not a wonderful piece of work? can you believe that it was really painted in such a short time?" and she named the dates of its commission and completion. this unlucky remark brought back all the painter's forebodings. his friend and biographer tells us that the duchess did not mean to hurt his feelings, she had admired his work for the qualities it possessed, and in praising giordano's she had commented upon what had struck her most about it--that is, the rapidity with which it had been executed. from that hour the painter went about silent and miserable, he was seldom heard to speak, and then to add to his troubles, his wife, to whom he had been devoted so passionately, died. his melancholy returned, and his confessor, remembering how successfully he had been treated in the country beyond florence, ordered him to turn to a picture of st. ludovic and paint the vestments of one of the figures on the canvas. dolci did as he was told, but this time the effort was in vain. doubtless his brain had been weakened by the first attack of melancholia, and fears for the future, coupled with the shock of a beloved wife's death, were altogether too much for the enfeebled constitution of a man of seventy. he took to his bed, and died on the th of january , leaving a family of seven daughters and one son. dolci was buried in the family vault in the church of the santissima nunziata, where he had worshipped so long, and where one of his friends had found him on his marriage day when he should have been with his bride. he did not leave much money behind him, but quite a large number of pictures that doubtless served his family in lieu of legacies at a time when the painter's work would be in greater demand than ever, because the limit of his output had been reached. iii the artist's work when we turn from a résumé of the chief events of the painter's comparatively uneventful life to an endeavour to estimate the place he takes in the history of his country's art we have, in the first place, to consider the season in which he was born. looking at the art history of florence we see that dolci came very late into the world. from the close of the fourteenth century, when fra angelico was born, down to the late years of the sixteenth century, when the last of the great masters seemed to pass away, florence had enjoyed the services of a long series of distinguished artists. lippo lippi, botticelli, ghirlandajo, da vinci, michelangelo, raphael, lorenzo di credi, andrea del sarto, bronzino, cigoli, all these and many others whose names can hardly be recalled without delight flourished in florence, and while they lived there the city's reputation filled all the rest of italy with envy. but neither a man nor his influence is everlasting; the great ones passed and left no successors; when carlo dolci appeared upon the scene the last trace of their influence had disappeared. consequently he brought his gifts to a city from which inspiration had departed. the great achievements of the art world were no more than echoes. florence had excelled herself in all directions. painting had served her greatest men as no more than one form of expression. the greatest of them had sought to give their message to the world through the medium of more arts than one, and consequently, he who was a simpler painter was of comparatively small account. when carlo dolci was born, the time of great men having passed, no great forces were at work in his native city. he did not have the advantage of travel, he was never called upon to struggle hard and anxiously for the necessities of life. in some ways he was regarded as an infant prodigy and treated as such, and it would be hard to say that the premature development of gifts however great has ever served their possessor in the long run. no man's work can be judged properly save in relation to his circumstances and his time, and, in order that we may avoid the danger of underrating carlo dolci's achievement and dismissing for obvious faults what we should praise for merit, we are forced to consider the case carefully lest we treat a deserving man with injustice. bearing time, place, and limitations in mind, it is possible then to consider the painter without the prejudice that the most glaring defects of his art are calculated to arouse. we have seen in the course of our necessarily short survey that carlo dolci lived to the established age of man, and started his work before he was in his teens, that no long journeys or extended sojourns in foreign countries withdrew him from the area of his normal activities; we have seen that he never left florence save on one occasion. and, as he was working throughout his life, his output would have been uncomfortably large but for the fact that he never allowed a canvas to leave his studio until every stroke that his brain could suggest, and his hand execute, had been added to it. his conscientiousness alone availed to check his output, and so intent was he upon expressing himself as well as he could within the obvious limitations of his gift that he never attempted to grapple with the problems that beset bigger men. in composition, for example, carlo dolci was distinctly deficient; there is no more serious charge against him as an artist than that he could not compose a large figure picture. if he had to devote himself to one, under the terms of some commission from a wealthy patron, he would not hesitate to go to other masters in search of a composition that would suit his purpose. it may be put to his credit that he did these things openly, he does not seem to have claimed for himself the work that he borrowed from his contemporaries. in fact, it is quite probable that he knew his gifts did not lie in the direction of composition; he regarded it as something that did not matter very much, and was quite content with the praises that his single figure subjects received. one cannot help thinking that he would have been very successful as a painter of miniatures. dolci impresses us to-day with the feeling that he was a man who struggled valiantly and conscientiously with a very considerable gift, which he had neither the time nor the will to develop along the lines that lead from mediocrity to remarkable achievement. then again we must remember that the fates were not auspicious, he was not taken in the early days to the studio of a first-class master, he did not have the inspiration of great work. by the time the seventeenth century had travelled over a third of its appointed course florentine art, as we have seen, was hardly in a very flourishing condition. the days of great experiments and earnest striving had passed, and, although venice is comparatively close to florence, and was full even in carlo dolci's days of some of the world's most inspiring work, although the venetians were delighted by carlo dolci's rich vivid colouring, and commissioned many pictures from his brush, there is no evidence to show that he ever visited the great city of the adriatic, or that he found the time or the inclination to learn any of the lessons she has to teach. [illustration: plate viii.--the sleep of st. john this is one of the last efforts of dolci. it was painted after his return from innsbrück, just before he was taken ill. it hangs in the pitti palace, florence.] we cannot, then, look upon carlo dolci's life or work as being complete. he seems to afford an example of what talent will do when it lacks adequate direction, and we see too the danger into which the art of the painter falls when his inclinations are too literary. for it was no part of carlo dolci's aim in life to express harmonies in colour and line, although such expression may be taken to be the beginning and end of all that is greatest in painting. dolci was always keen on telling a story, always intent upon preaching a sermon in paint, always forgetful that the provinces of art and literature have a very wide boundary line. it is rather interesting to compare the lives of carlo dolci and fra angelico of fiesole, because each was a man who sought to express moral principles, sentiments, and belief on canvas, and, while the one succeeded beyond all possibility of doubt, the other has met with only a modified success. beato angelico was influenced by the dominicans as dolci was by the benedictines; each gave his life work to the service of the church and the pursuit of virtues that the church teaches man to practise. one laboured in the cloister and the other outside it, but oddly enough, he who came first and decorated the walls of st. mark's convent knew the more about life and more about art, more about perspective and more about composition, than his successor, who followed so many years later. the truth is, perhaps, that when fra angelico came to the convent of the dominicans the renaissance was just blossoming in italy. it was a season of great inspiration. man and learning were being discovered, and although some aspects of the discovery were hidden from the good brother of st. dominic, all the attendant enthusiasms came to him. moreover, angelico travelled and mingled freely with scholars and great artists, so that we can divide his life work into three stages, of which the second is better than the first, and the last is best of all. on the other hand, when dolci came on the scene the renaissance had blossomed and budded and filled the face of the earth with fruit, but the fruit was already overripe. the great stimulus had passed; degeneration had set in, not only in the world of art. the mere fact that carlo dolci's gifts found an immediate acceptance shows that the times were not distinguished, and we do not find in baldinucci's life of his friend one solitary suggestion that any of the great rulers who employed his brush ever turned to him with the request that he should enter into competition with those who had gone before, that he should take a course of study and learning to strengthen the weak points of his work, sacrificing a little of its sweetness to gain some small measure of strength. at the same time we must not underrate carlo dolci's work because we have outgrown it, since, as was suggested on an early page of this little essay, his charm in certain aspects is perennial, and although its powers to hold us must pass when we have turned to higher things, those who are following us will find pleasure and inspiration in the painter's art when they visit for the first time the galleries of italy. they will travel by easy degrees from pictures that please to those that call in the first place for study, and then for admiration and the recognition of masterpieces. carlo dolci's place in art is not altogether unlike that of some of his living countrymen in the world of music. there are italian musicians known to all of us who have such a gift of sweetness that we cannot endure their melodies for long. a song now and again, or some sparkling little work for piano or violin, gives us a passing thrill of pleasure, and then we turn with complete content to the clearer atmosphere and more serene moods of the great masters whose works endure for all time. so it is with carlo dolci; we go to him now and again, if only for a little while, conscious that sweetness as well as strength has its place in the world of art as in the world of music and letters. and we know, too, that criticism can say nothing worse about carlo dolci's gifts than that he was never able to turn them to the best account, that the rough diamond of his talent was never in the hands of a competent lapidary. his life is not one we are called upon to overlook, for his achievement, though it has little variety, is marked by certain definite qualities that call for recognition, even though these qualities are often moral rather than artistic. dolci was eminently a sentimentalist; he had no redeeming vices; a little of the devilry of a benvenuto cellini would have been invaluable to him and to his art. but it is futile to complain of a man for being as nature made him, and if we will turn to carlo dolci's pictures for pretty, agreeable, and highly finished interpretations of moral ideas in terms of paint, we shall find no small amount of momentary satisfaction. we must not forget that the world at large had suffered not a little when carlo dolci came upon the scene from the excessive daring and superb initiative of the renaissance. its eyes were a little dimmed by the splendour of the great men who had gone before, and had travelled to heights beyond the ken of the average citizen. carlo dolci helped to bring his greatly dazzled fellow-countrymen back to earth, pleasantly and in fashion that flattered their vanity. in the eyes of hundreds of his contemporaries the devout, god-fearing, conscientious florentine must have been regarded as the greatest artist italy had ever seen, and if such a thought pleases some of the unsophisticated among their descendants, who should desire to complain? let us rather put to dolci's credit the facts that he did not pose as a heaven-born genius, that he was not greedy or grasping, that he did not seek to found a school. the portrait he painted of himself suggests that he was not altogether deficient in humour; perhaps there were hours when he laughed with himself at those who praised him for the gifts he lacked. if we could but be sure that he laughed now and again at himself and his pictures, recognising the limitations that are so patent to us to-day, the most superior critic could refuse no longer to have some regard for carlo dolci. the plates are printed by bemrose dalziel, ltd., watford the text at the ballantyne press, edinburgh transcriber's note: text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). * * * * * [illustration] the history, theory, and practice of illuminating. sketched by m. digby wyatt, v.p.r.i.b.a. etc. with illustrations by w. r. tymms. condensed from "the art of illuminating," by the same illustrator and author. _london_: day and son, _lithographers to the queen_, gate street, lincoln's inn fields. historical manual. list of plates. plate i.--from the fragments of the bible of charles the bald, preserved in the british museum, harleian . in most of the mss. of the date of charlemagne and his immediate successors, the ornamental forms are generally compounded of anglo-saxon and semi-classical details; thus, fig. presents us with a lunette, or arch-filling, borrowed from some latin type; while in figs. , , , the interlaced knots, and in figs. and the "zoomorphic" terminations, are equally characteristic of celtic art. this class of conventional design, although apparently complicated, is of comparatively easy execution, and on that account forms a suitable style for the young illuminator to try his "'prentice hand" upon. plate ii. gives the outline of the preceding plate, and the beginner may make his first attempt at practical illumination in an endeavour to make it resemble plate i. as closely as possible. plate iii., from the same source as plate i., gives, in figs. and , two alphabets, and in fig. one sentence, in the characters in which the latin text of the original is written throughout the volume, with the usual form of initial letter; together with, in fig. , an ornament showing, on a largish scale, the principle upon which the most common interlacement of the saxon school is usually worked out. it may be here noted that, considering it as likely to be more useful to the student, throughout these illuminations the characters, which in the originals express latin, french, or barbarous english, have been arranged to exhibit scripture texts of simple language, such as may be frequently desired for the embellishment of churches or schoolrooms. plate iv., from the british museum, reg. , c. vii. this manuscript consists of the books of joshua, judges, and ruth, in the vulgate version, with st. jerome's prologues. it is probably of german execution, and is attributed by sir frederick madden to the middle of the th century. in its illustrations may be recognised a series of good specimens of romanesque forms. in these the scroll may be observed as having almost entirely superseded the carlovingian interlacement, while in the foliated ends of the leading stems (more particularly in fig. ) the germination of gothic is distinctly perceptible. the student will scarcely fail to observe how entirely dependent this style of illumination is upon the steadiness with which the pen is handled for all its charm of expression. plate v. gives the outline of the preceding plate, to be coloured as a lesson in shading with the brush. plate vi. provides an alphabet of capital letters, some initials, and a complete sentence, taken from the same ms. which has furnished materials for the two preceding plates. plate vii. contains fully-coloured examples from the british museum, reg. d, fully described at pages and . in these we meet with the plenitude of english mediæval illumination,--its freedom of drawing, its vigour of colour, its exquisite delicacy, and the general facility of design its wayward lines attest. in the best work there is a playfulness not to be often found in the productions of the contemporary european schools. it needs but little ingenuity to expand such features as those which constitute figs. , , , , , from small book embellishments to large _motives_ of elegant mural decoration. plate viii. is the corresponding outline to plate vii. plate ix. supplies the student with models taken from the same ms. (reg. d), of capital and initial letters, and ordinary text, suitable for combination with the rich ornaments of plate vii. in this, as in all corresponding plates, the object aimed at is to provide forms of lettering, at once tolerably legible, well-proportioned, and adapted to harmonize, both historically and artistically, with the styles of pictorial illumination given in connection with them. there are few faults more common in modern work, or more offensive to the educated eye, than the association of styles of lettering and styles of ornamentation warring with each other in the proprieties of both time and form. against such it is our earnest object to guard the student, both by precept and example. plate x. furnishes some specimens of the beautiful borderings which enrich the pages of that most precious relic of the th century, the "bedford missal," or, more properly speaking, "book of hours." this exquisite volume has been so fully dwelt upon at pages and , that it is necessary only to refer the reader to the notice given thereat. in the examples collected on this plate, it is manifest that the pictorial has not been allowed to usurp the proper province of the conventional element of design, as it too frequently does in many works of the same period, particularly in italy,--undoubtedly beautiful as much of the illumination of the th century was in that country. plate xi. provides an outline of plate x., for fully colouring in facsimile. plate xii. shows the general style of the lettering, both capital and lower-case, the initials, and the borders which pervade this beautiful triumph of flemish art. of these, figs. , , , , , and are especially adapted for mural decoration, on, of course, a greatly enlarged scale. m. d. w. , tavistock place, london. _april, ._ technical manual. list of plates. plate i. is from the speyer passavant charlemagne bible, british museum add. , , described at page of the "historical manual." the student cannot fail to observe how distinctly legible, and indeed how entirely roman in character, the alphabet of capitals remained so long after the augustan period as the ninth century after christ. in the lower-case letters, in which the text is written, the legibility is evident; but the classical derivation through the uncial form of writing is not equally manifest. desiring to guide the beginner in the class of exercises most likely to lead him on satisfactorily, we have in this technical manual in every case allowed the outline illustrations of each style of writing to precede the fully-coloured specimens of the corresponding ornament of the leading epochs of the art of illumination; enforcing thereby our conviction that the study and practice of that, which of old fell more directly within the province of the scribe than within that of the miniature painter, should invariably receive the student's first and chief attention--for, let it always be remembered that good writing looks well if enhanced by little, or the very simplest, ornament, while in illumination the effect of the best possible painting is irretrievably marred if the writing is irregular and badly formed or spaced. plate ii., from the same precious volume, provides some simple but excellent conventional forms, suitable for execution both on a small and on an enlarged scale. by repeating either one of the three borders at the bottom of the plate, very pretty margins may be produced, suitable either for surrounding a page of writing or for enclosing a panel in mural decoration. plate iii. is an outline for practising colouring upon. in using these outlines, it may be a profitable exercise occasionally to vary the colours from those given on the corresponding plate. a comparison of the effect produced by the original, and by its copy with variations, will tend to fix on the memory of the artist the exact degree of merit of the original and of the altered combinations of colour. the practical value of an educated eye, no less than of an educated mind, is dependent on the force and intelligence of the memory, and every exercise which can assist in fixing a fleeting image on the brain is no less efficacious in strengthening the one than it can be in developing the other. plate iv., from the harleian ms. no. , , gives one of our usual exercises upon the main structural features of all illumination--the alphabets, initial letters, and small borderings. these, in this case in the romanesque style, have been taken from a very remarkable bible formerly belonging to the church of st. mary, near worms. for further notice of this and similar volumes, see "historical manual," page . the main use to the student of this class of lesson is to give him steadiness of hand in the use of the pen; a word or two of counsel upon which may not be altogether unprofitable to him. firstly, then, let him avoid the habit of allowing the pen to touch the paper before he has clearly made up his mind where it is to go and when it is to be taken off. an ill-directed line instantly reveals a listless mind, and a careful master can generally detect the exact points in his work at which the attention of a usually diligent pupil has been abstracted from it. secondly, he should never express by half a dozen or more separate strokes forms which may be defined by a single continuous line. thirdly, let him practise moving the pen or pencil, not up and down only, but in every direction, until equal facility is acquired in drawing spirals from left to right and from right to left. fourthly, it is well to hold the pen or pencil nearly vertical, just touching, but scarcely ever pressing heavily on, the surface of the drawing. fifthly, he should by no means aim at dash or spirit until he is quite sure that his lines are correct: nothing betrays the ill-educated artist more surely and readily to those who know better than a bold stroke where a delicate one would be more appropriate, or a dark touch in the wrong place. it is the ignorant only who are misled by an appearance of _bravura_, vigour, and facility. plate v., fully coloured from the same source as plate iv., offers in figs. , , , , , and , some easy borders, well adapted for enriching string courses or filling in long upright panels or pilasters. the initial letters (figs. and ) are designed with great spirit, and the student may profitably amuse himself by endeavouring to invent other capital letters made up as these are of apocryphal animals writhing in convoluted scrollwork. plate vi. gives the outline for colouring in _fac simile_ of plate v. plate vii., from a latin bible of fine english illumination early in the fourteenth century (british museum, reg. , d. ), corresponds in the general character of both its technical and chronological peculiarities with those shown on plates vii., viii., and ix., of the "historical manual." the two mss., however, from which the two series of plates have been taken, differ in some material respects, and it will be well for the student to practise the leading characteristics of each. one is of extraordinary delicacy, the other of great vigour of execution. the latter stamps the ms. from which the plate under consideration is taken. the student is invited to observe the grace and freedom with which the floral terminations of the principal initial (fig. ) dash away, extending to both the top and bottom of the page, and not unfrequently in similar examples embracing, as it were, the text on two or more sides. (see "historical manual," page .) great attention must now be bestowed upon the writing; so that neither the true mediæval character may be destroyed, nor so exaggerated as to lose clearness and legibility: a little care and dexterity may preserve both. plate viii. is intended to draw out all the capabilities of the illuminator. raised, burnished, and engraved, or indented gold, are essential to a proper realization of a revival of such old work; and the student who would rival in his productions the sober richness of the brushes of the artist monks of the fourteenth century, must carefully study the combinations of colour given in the "mappæ clavicula." figs. , , and , offer examples of the tesselated burnished diaper grounds, and fillings in, which superseded to a great extent the flat burnished golden grounds of earlier dates. such diapers are little less well adapted for walls or ceilings than they are for book decoration. it can be scarcely necessary to dwell upon what must be perfectly obvious, the great beauty of the initial letters (figs. , , and ) given on this sheet. plate ix. is a careful outline of the above. plate x., from the missal of ferdinand and isabella (british museum, add. ), described at page of the "historical manual," introduces us to the pictorial, or rather miniature style,--one, which can only be excelled in by those who are prepared to devote themselves to painting as no longer a decorative, but as essentially a "fine art." far am i from saying that the highest possible art was not brought to bear upon much mediæval illumination; all that i would convey is, that care and neatness may produce very respectable reproductions of ordinary ornamental work, such as was commonly used during the fourteenth, and early in the fifteenth centuries; but that they alone will be found quite inadequate to imitate successfully the highly modelled and fully shadowed foliage, landscape, architectural groups, and figure subjects, which incessantly recur in books illuminated at periods corresponding with the great renaissance of art under the van eycks and memlings of flanders, the durers of germany, and the peruginos, pinturicchios, and raffaelles, of italy. plate xi., fully coloured from the same source as plate x., can only be satisfactorily copied by the student, who may have learnt to shadow with the brush from either objects "in the round," or from really good copies, either by very great personal devotion and perseverance, or under an experienced master. plate xii. gives a careful outline of the preceding plate. m. d. w. , tavistock place, london. _april, ._ [illustration] part i. what illuminating was. in the following pages an attempt has been made to concentrate into limited dimensions that which has generally been treated very voluminously. few authors, who have tried both, will feel inclined to deny, that it is a much more difficult task to compress a great subject into a little book successfully, than it is to expand a little subject into a great book. where materials of the highest interest, historically, artistically, and intellectually, abound, the danger is lest suppression and condensation may not break the links essential to bind a perspicuous narrative together. i must, therefore, on these grounds claim the indulgence of the reader, who may, i trust, be induced by the very imperfections of my story, to recur to the pages of those more copious and learned writers on the subjects, who have bestowed upon its elucidation long lives of exemplary and pertinacious industry. before, however, entering on my theme, it is my duty to point out to the reader, that although, for popular convenience and simplicity, it has been deemed expedient to divide the history of the art of illuminating from the theory of its use and practice, i have considered that each of the subdivided parts would be made more valuable by association, and by being made mutually suggestive and illustrative--by being, in fact, cast as two parts of one work, rather than as two separate works. i have not, therefore, hesitated to refer in this, the "historical manual," to the historical interest of plates contained in the technical, nor in the "technical manual" to the technical interest of plates contained in the historical. much, indeed, of the matter contained in both should be considered as common to the two. thus the ancient technical processes are no less historically interesting, than they may be likely, by a judicious revival of such as may be worthy, to prove practically valuable in the present day. again, whatever proficiency a student may attain in the manipulation of his or her drawing, gilding, or painting, it will be in vain to hope to be enabled to produce a work of art which shall be satisfactory to the educated eye and taste, until a very considerable acquaintance has been made with the peculiarities of the various styles in which our forefathers delighted. no originality can ever be permanently agreeable which does not discard the precise conventional form of a period, which is but a mode or transient fashion, in favour of the principles which pervade all synchronous works of art, and which, transmute them as we may, must ever remain permanent through all time. historically we should remember that miniature ornament of every period reflects on a diminished scale, and frequently in a highly concentrated form, the leading spirit which may have pervaded the greater revolutions of monumental art. owing to the license which the diminished scale afforded, the imagination of the artist in these works was restricted by none of those material impediments which, in the execution of the major monuments of art, protracted the realization of the changing fashions of the day, frequently until long after the period when the original impulse may have been communicated to the art in which those variations were possibly but transient fluctuations. thus it is that in these relics of the past may frequently be traced artistic impulses destined to find no other embodiment than the form in which they are presented to us in the pages of a manuscript. the copiousness, then, of such documentary illustrations of the invention of remote periods is one of the most valuable features of the teaching they should convey to us. no revival nowadays of any historical style by the architect can be satisfactory which is not based upon a knowledge, not of the purely architectural features of the period alone, but of the condition and characteristics of all those decorative details which distinguished it as a living reality from the effete and denuded relic which may now only present itself for our information. thus even the saxon and romanesque styles of architecture may, through the architect's careful attention to the decorative features exhibited to us in the pages of ancient illuminated books, be revived, not in their rude and structural nudity, but as glowing with those colours, and decorated with those forms, which we may observe as peculiarly affected in the ornamental and pictorial embellishments of the best artists of the days when those styles were the only ones popularly adopted. and not only are the beautiful ornaments and decorative features of illuminated manuscripts valuable as supplying us with correct information as to the system of embellishment regarded by the best artists of each period as harmonizing most perfectly with the structural styles prevalent in their days; but in the measure of their permanent beauty they are no less valuable to us as indications of what is excellent for all time. thus, then, they may be used, either as enabling us to restore the most brilliant features of the historic styles with an accuracy to be acquired from no other sources of information, or they may be regarded as providing us with materials for that more extended system of eclectic selection which must afford the only basis of perfection and originality in any styles which we may desire now or hereafter to originate; and the origination and perfection of which we may desire to bequeath to succeeding generations, as testimonies that, in the nineteenth century, there lived men as capable of the creation of beauty as any whose happiest inventions are to be found in the pages of these ancient and most precious volumes. in opening this historical sketch, i need scarcely recall the facts, that not only was that which we know as the earliest type of writing the most pictorial, but that it was also embellished with colour from the most remote ages. a glance at the pages of rosselini or lepsius will suffice to convince us that the monumental hieroglyphics of the egyptians were almost invariably painted with the liveliest tints; and when similar hieroglyphics were executed on a reduced scale, and in a more cursive form upon papyri, or scrolls made from the leaves of the papyrus, the common flowering rush of the nile, illumination was also employed to make the leading pages more attractive to the eye. nor was such illumination peculiar to hieroglyphic characters; it prevailed also, but not to the same extent, in the hieratic and demotic modes of writing. of such papyri notable specimens may be seen in the british museum; the most wonderful in existence, however, is the remarkably interesting and graphic illustration of the funeral of a pharaoh, preserved in the royal museum at turin. extraordinary dexterity was acquired in a conventional mode of expressing complicated forms by a few rapid touches, and the life and spirit with which familiar scenes are represented, and ornaments executed, in both the early and late papyri, are truly remarkable. the precise extent to which the greeks and romans were indebted to the egyptians for the origination and use of alphabetic symbols, the learned have not yet agreed upon. they have, however, concurred in recognizing the fact that egypt certainly supplied the principal materials by means of which writing was ordinarily practised. the primitive books of the ancients were no other than rolls formed of papyri, prepared in the following manner:--two leaves of the rush were plastered together, usually with the mud of the nile, in such a fashion that the fibres of one leaf should cross the fibres of the other at right angles; the ends of each being then cut off, a square leaf was obtained, equally capable of resisting fracture when pulled or taken hold of in any direction. in this form the papyri were exported in great quantities. in order to form these single leaves into the "scapi," or rolls of the ancients (the prototypes of the rotuli of the middle ages), about twenty were glued together end to end. the writing was then executed in parallel columns a few inches wide, running transversely to the length of the scroll. to each end of the scrolls were attached round staves similar to those we use for maps. to these staves, strings, known as "umbilici," were attached, to the ends of which bullæ or weights were fixed. the books when rolled up, were bound up with these umbilici, and were generally kept in cylindrical boxes or capsæ, a term from which the mediæval "capsula," or book-cover, was derived. the mode in which the students held the rolls in order to read from them is well shown in a painting in the house of a surgeon at pompeii. one of the staves, with the papyrus rolled round it, was held in each hand, at a distance apart equal to the width of one or more of the transverse columns of writing. as soon as the eye was carried down to the bottom of a column, one hand rolled up and the other unrolled sufficient of the papyrus to bring a fresh column opposite to the reader's eye, and so on until the whole was wound round one of the staves, when, of course, the student had arrived at the end of his book. eumenes, king of pergamus, being unable to procure the egyptian papyrus, through the jealousy of one of the ptolemies, who occupied himself in forming a rival library to the one which subsequently became so celebrated at pergamus, introduced the use of parchment properly "dressed" for taking ink and pigments; and hence the derivation of the word "pergamena" as applied to parchment or vellum; the former substance being the prepared skin of sheep, and the latter of calves.[ ] the sheets of parchment were joined end to end, as the sheets of papyrus had been, and when written upon, on one side only, and in narrow columns across the breadth of the scroll, were rolled up round staves and bound with strings, to which seals of wax were occasionally attached, in place of the more common leaden bullæ. the custom of dividing books into pages is said by suetonius to have been introduced by julius cæsar, whose letters to the senate were so made up, and after whose time the practice became usual for all documents either addressed to, or issuing from, that body, or the emperors. as that form subsequently crept into general use, the books were known as "codices;" and hence the ordinary term as applied to manuscript volumes. all classes of books, the reeds for writing in them, the inkstands, and the "capsæ" or "scrinia," the boxes in which the "scapi" or rolls were kept, are minutely portrayed in ancient wall-paintings and ivory diptychs. the inkstands are generally shown as double, no doubt for containing both black and red ink, with the latter of which certain portions of the text were written.[ ] nearly two thousand actual rolls were discovered at herculaneum, of course in a highly-carbonized condition, and of them some hundreds have been unrolled. none appear to have been embellished with illumination;[ ] so that for proof of the practice of the art in classical times, we are thrown back upon the classical authors themselves. the allusions in their writings to the employment of red and black ink are frequent. martial, in his first epistle, points out the bookseller's shop opposite the julian forum, in which his works may be obtained "smoothed with pumice-stone and decorated with purple." seneca mentions books ornamented "cum imaginibus." varro is related by pliny to have illustrated his works by likenesses of more than seven hundred illustrious persons. pliny again informs us that writers on medicine gave representations in their treatises of the plants which they described. martial dwells on the editions of virgil, with his portrait as a frontispiece. the earliest recorded instance of the richer adornments of golden lettering on purple or rose-stained vellum, is given by julius capitolinus in his life of the emperor maximinus the younger. he therein mentions that the mother of the emperor presented to him, on his return to his tutor (early in the rd century), a copy of the works of homer, written in gold upon purple vellum. whether derived from egypt or the east, this luxurious mode of embellishment appears to have been popular among the later greeks, a class of whose scribes were denominated "writers in gold." from greece it was, no doubt, transplanted to rome, where, from about the nd century, it, at first slowly, and ultimately rapidly, acquired popularity. st. jerome, indeed, writing in the th century, in a well-known passage in his preface to the book of job, exclaims:--"habeant qui volunt veteres libros vel in membranis purpureis auro argentoque descriptos vel uncialibus, ut vulgo aiunt, literis, onera magis exarata quam codices; dummodo mihi meisque permittant pauperes habere scedulas, et non tam pulchros codices quam emendatos."[ ] this almost pathetic appeal of the great commentator was scarcely necessary to assure us that such sumptuous volumes were executed for the rich alone, since the value of the gold and vellum, irrespective of the labour employed, must necessarily have taken them, as he indicates, altogether out of the reach of the poor. evidence indeed is not wanting, that many of the fathers of the church laboured with their own hands to supply themselves with writings, which no golden letters or purpled vellums could make more valuable to them or their primitive followers: thus, pamphilus, the martyr, who suffered in the year , possessed, in his own handwriting, twenty-five stitched books, containing the works of origen. st. ambrose, st. fulgentius, and others, themselves transcribed many volumes, precious to themselves and most edifying to the faithful. whatever ornaments or pictures these volumes contained, no doubt reproduced the style of art fostered, if not engendered, in the catacombs. roman illuminated manuscripts would appear, therefore, to have been mainly divisible into two classes; firstly, those in which the text, simply but elegantly written in perfectly-formed, or rustic (that is, inclined) capitals, mainly in black and sparingly in red ink, was illustrated by pictures, usually square, inserted in simple frames, generally of a red border only; and secondly, the richer kind, in which at first gold letters, on white and stained vellum grounds, and subsequently black and coloured letters and ornaments on gold grounds, were introduced. the first of these appears to have been the most ancient style, and to have long remained popular in the western empire, while the second, which, as sir frederick madden has observed, no doubt came originally to the romans from the greeks, acquired its greatest perfection under the early emperors of the east. of both styles there are still extant some invaluable specimens, which, although not of the finest periods of art, may still be regarded as typical of masterpieces which may have existed, and which fire or flood, goth or vandal, may have destroyed. before proceeding, however, to an enumeration of any of these, it may be well to define certain terms which must be employed to designate the peculiarities of character in which the different texts were written, some slight knowledge of which is of great assistance in arriving at a proximate knowledge of the dates at which they may have been executed. such a definition cannot be more succinctly given than in the following passage, extracted from mr. noel humphrey's interesting work "on the origin and progress of the art of writing:"--[ ] "nearly all the principal methods of ancient writing may be divided into square capitals, rounded capitals, and cursive letters; the square capitals being termed simply _capitals_, the rounded capitals _uncials_, and the small letters, or such as had changed their form during the creation of a running hand, _minuscule_. capitals are, strictly speaking, such letters as retain the earliest settled form of an alphabet; being generally of such angular shapes as could conveniently be carved on wood or stone, or engraved in metal, to be stamped on coins. the earliest latin mss. known are written entirely in capitals, like inscriptions in metal or marble. "the uncial letters, as they are termed, appear to have arisen as writing on papyrus or vellum became common, when many of the straight lines of the capitals, in that kind of writing, gradually acquired a _curved_ form, to facilitate their more rapid execution. however this may be, from the th to the th, or even th century, these uncials or partly-rounded capitals prevail. "the modern minuscule, differing from the ancient cursive character, appears to have arisen in the following manner. during the th and th centuries, a kind of transition style prevailed in italy and some other parts of europe, the letters composing which have been termed _semi-uncials_, which, in a further transition, became more like those of the old roman cursive. this manner, when definitively formed, became what is now termed the minuscule manner; it began to prevail over uncials in a certain class of mss. about the th century, and towards the th its general use was, with few exceptions, established. it is said to have been occasionally used as early as the th century; but i am unable to cite an authentic existing monument. the psalter of alfred the great, written in the th century, is in a small roman cursive hand, which has induced casley to consider it the work of some italian ecclesiastic." to return from this digression on the character of ancient handwriting, to the examples still extant of the two great sections into which the manuscripts of classical ages may be divided, i would observe, that, first in importance and interest of the first class may certainly be reckoned the vatican square virgil with miniatures, which has been referred by many of the best palæographers to the rd century. it is written throughout in majuscule roman capitals, which, although mm. champollion and sylvestre[ ] describe them as of an "elegant but careless form," appeared to me, when i examined the volume minutely in ,[ ] to exhibit great care and regularity. the miniatures, many engravings from drawings traced from which are given in d'agincourt's "histoire de l'art par les monuments,"[ ] are altogether classical, both in design and in the technical handling of the colours, which are applied with a free brush, and apparently in the true antique manner, _i.e._, with scarcely any previous or finishing outline. these miniatures have also been engraved by pietro santo bartoli, but not with his usual accuracy of style. a complete set of coloured tracings made by him are in the british museum (lansdowne coll.), but they even are not quite satisfactory. the terence of the vatican, which is without miniatures, is in a somewhat similar writing, and belongs to about the same period. the third in importance of the ancient vatican manuscripts of this class, is in the rustic instead of elegant capital lettering, and is supposed to be of the th century; certainly not later. it is a virgil, decorated throughout with pictures executed in apparent imitation of the square virgil, but in a much more barbarous and lifeless style.[ ] from an entry of the th century contained in the volume,[ ] and from our knowledge of its having been long and at a remote period, preserved in france, it would appear to have belonged to the parisian monastery of st. denis, if not to the saint himself. so far as antiquity, irrespective of merit in point of illumination is concerned, the most remarkable ancient roman manuscript[ ] existing belongs to the curious class known as "palimpsests," or books from which the colouring matter of an original writing has been discharged, in order to prepare the vellum for receiving an altogether different text, the latter being generally written at right angles to the former.[ ] this precious document is the celebrated treatise "de republicâ," by cicero, written in uncial characters, evidently in an augustan period, and was discovered by cardinal angelo mai, under a copy of st. augustine's commentary on the psalms, made previous to the th century. the ambrosian library at milan contains a codex of homer, of equal antiquity with the cicero, with fifty-eight pictures, much in the style of the vatican square virgil. this important ms. has been commented upon by the same distinguished antiquary.[ ] the vienna roman calendar, supposed to have been executed in the th century, and embellished with eight allegorical figures of the months, is both an early and very important specimen of roman illumination, not only on account of the elegance and dexterous execution of these figures, but because it is the most ancient manuscript in which anything like ornament, independent of pictured illustration of the author's text, is introduced. of little less note in the history of art, is the celebrated dioscorides of the same imperial library, the date of which is fixed by the fact of its being enriched with a very graceful portrait of the empress juliana anicia, for whom it is known to have been written at the commencement of the th century. both lambecius[ ] and d'agincourt give various facsimiles (omitting colour) of the fine illustrations which decorate this remarkable volume. another th century virgil of remarkable purity in the text, although without miniatures, is the well-known "medicean" of the laurentian library at florence. the paris prudentius, in elegant rustic capitals of the th century, is another fine codex of the same type. there are, in addition to those already cited, various other early texts of the classics contained in the different public libraries of europe; and it is singular to remark, that (so far as i have been able to ascertain) none of them are embellished with those richer decorations, which appear to have been reserved after the end of the th century, for the great text-books of the christian, and more particularly of the eastern church. of these sacred volumes, that which is generally supposed to be the oldest complete version of the bible in greek,[ ] is the codex alexandrinus of the british museum, attributed, by consent of all the best palæographers, to the commencement of the th century. it is without gold altogether, and has no other illumination than the occasional contrast of red and black inks, and a line slightly flourished, at the close of each book.[ ] the next fragment of the scriptures, in point of probable date, is the once celebrated cottonian genesis, or at least its ghost; for unfortunately a few charred and shrunken fragments are all that have been saved from the disastrous fire which destroyed so many of sir robert cotton's precious volumes in . in its original state, as we know from several collations made previous to the fire, it contained, on pages, no less than miniatures, each about four inches square. astle[ ] has given a facsimile of a page, which, on comparison with the existing shrivelled fragments, proves that in their present state they are just about one half their original size. the paintings are in all respects antique, and correspond in general character with contemporary secular miniatures. dr. waagen[ ] remarks that "only the hatched gold upon the borders, the glories, and the lights on the crimson mantle indicate the commencement of byzantine art." the great rival to the "codex cottonianus geneseos" is the "codex vindobonensis geneseos," which consists of twenty-six leaves with eighty-eight miniatures. it forms one of the four great lions of the vienna imperial library. these two remarkable versions of genesis are supposed to be of nearly equal date, and correspond as to the character of the truly antique miniatures very fairly; the fact, however, of the text of the english version being in black ink with very regularly-formed letters, while that of the vienna one is, for the most part, written in gold and silver, and in less evenly-distributed characters, induces a fair presumption in favour of the greater antiquity of the cottonian fragments. in the more gorgeous details of the vienna genesis, coupled with its square and unadorned classic pictures, we may thus clearly recognize the transition from our first or latin class of ancient illumination, to our second or purely byzantine style. we especially designate this class as "byzantine," because as art in illumination, as in all other branches, declined in the seven-hilled city, it rose in the seat of empire founded in the east by the first great christian emperor. it is true that ideal art degenerated almost contemporaneously in the capitals of both empires; but in decorative art, at least, there can be no question but that byzantium gained, as rome lost, ground. the former no doubt drew fresh inspiration from her close intercourse with the persian and other nations of the east, while the latter was content to produce little, and that little in slavish reminiscence of the past. italy no doubt fed the earliest monastic libraries of western europe with the quantities of texts of ancient authors we know them to have contained; but we may fairly assume those texts to have been but rarely illustrated, since the original styles of illumination produced in those countries to which the classic volumes travelled, would unquestionably have betrayed an antique influence more strongly than they did, had the means of deriving that influence been brought copiously within their reach. i proceed now to a slight notice of the second class of ancient codices, that on which the ultimate splendour of the byzantine school was founded. fortunately, time has spared to our days several brilliant specimens of the richest of these quasi-classic manuscripts. of such, the principal are, as sir frederick madden observes,[ ] "the celebrated codex argenteus of ulphilas, written in silver and gold letters on a purple ground, about a.d. , which is, perhaps, the most ancient existing specimen of this magnificent mode of caligraphy; after it, may be instanced the copy of genesis at vienna," already mentioned, the psalter of st. germain des prés, at paris, and the fragment of the new testament in the cottonian library, titus c. xv., all executed in the th and th centuries. the first-named of these contains, on about leaves, a considerable portion of the four gospels, and is now preserved in the royal library of upsal, in sweden. it is the earliest version of any part of the sacred writings in the moesogothic or ancient wallachian dialect.[ ] the second of sir frederick madden's notabilities has been alluded to as of transition character. the third, the psalter of st. germain des prés, is ascribed by m. champollion figeac, who has given a portion of it in coloured facsimile in the "moyen age et la renaissance"[ ] to the th century. it is unquestionably a beautiful specimen of gold writing on purple; but neither in the size of the letters nor in the ample spacing of the lines, will it bear comparison with the, no doubt, earlier example, the cottonian, titus c. xv. our greatest authority upon all matters connected with early illuminated versions of the holy scriptures, mr. westwood, remarks, in speaking of this last-named manuscript, that "codices purpureo-argentei are much rarer than those in golden writing, the latter material being used not only on purple, but also on white vellum; whereas the silver letters would not easily be legible except on a dark ground. the writing is in very large and massive greek uncials; the words denoting god, father, jesus, lord, son, and saviour, being, for dignity's sake, written in golden letters. the colour of the stain has faded into a dingy reddish purple, and the silver is greatly tarnished and turned black. this fragment is stated by horne to be one of the oldest (if not the most ancient) manuscripts of any part of the new testament that is extant, and is generally acknowledged to have been executed at the end of the th, or, at the latest, at the beginning of the th century." the vienna gold, silver, and purple gospels, the lettering of which corresponds closely with that last described, may be regarded as certainly next in importance, and are of about equal antiquity. in none of these relics of magnificence are we enabled to trace the eastern or persian influence, which unquestionably imported a previously unknown originality and character into the art of byzantium during the reign of justinian the great, a.d. to . it is, no doubt, true, as dr. waagen remarks,[ ] that "the style of painting up to his time, both in conception, form, and colour, was much the same as that which has been preserved to us in the paintings at pompeii; while the spirit of christianity, operating upon the artistic greek nature, stimulated it anew to beautiful and original inventions. in a few single instances this style of art was maintained until the th century; but, generally speaking, a gradual degeneracy ensued, which may be dated from justinian's period. the proportions of the figures gradually became exaggerated, elongated, the forms contracted with excessive meagreness, the motives of the drapery grew paltry, appearing either in narrow parallel folds stiffly drawn together, or so overladen with barbaric pearls and jewels as to exclude all indication of form. the flesh assumed a dark tone, the other colours became heavy, gaudy, and hard; while in glories, hatchings, and grounds, gold was called into requisition. in these qualities, united to a gloomy and ascetic character of heads, consist the elements of the byzantine school." but, on the other hand, it is ever to be remembered that the mortification of the old flesh was but a symptom of the more active life beneath it, sloughing off the pagan tradition, and gradually replacing it by that new and healthy christian vigour which, for many centuries, nourished and aided the northern and western nations of europe in their efforts to organize those national styles of christian art which are commonly designated as gothic.[ ] to return to justinian, and his direct influence on the change of style which took place during his reign, it may be noted as a curious fact, that the year in which the great church of sta. sophia was commenced was the very year in which he concluded an eternal peace with chosroes nushirvan, king of persia. in one or two reigns antecedent to his, greek artists had been employed in persia, and there had been a friendly communication between the two countries. it may be therefore assumed, that when justinian proposed to build this structure in so short a time, he not only enlisted the ability of those about him, but that he recalled those straying greeks who had gone to seek their fortunes in other countries. he most likely, indeed, employed not only his own subjects, but foreigners; and in that way probably a considerable portion of what no one can fail to recognize as oriental art, was mixed with that known as byzantine. certain it is that in many of the mosaic ornaments of sta. sophia a very marked oriental character is still to be traced. on a close comparison of these mosaics[ ] with the unique eusebian canons on an entirely gold ground, two leaves of which, painted on both sides, are preserved in the british museum (addit. no. ),[ ] the student will certainly, i think, be induced rather to agree with sir frederick madden, in ascribing them to the th century, than with dr. waagen, who considers that they "can scarcely be older than the th century." to the practical illuminator, these fragments are of far higher importance than all the others to which we have as yet alluded, since, while of equal archæological interest, they constitute the earliest specimens from which really decorative illumination can be studied.[ ] another illustration of the eastern influence brought to bear upon christian manuscripts of the age of justinian, is furnished by the celebrated syriac gospels of the th century, written in the year (one-and-twenty years after the emperor's death), by rabula, a scribe in the monastery of st. john, in zagba, a city of mesopotamia, and now preserved in the laurentian library at florence. mr. westwood regards this as "so important a manuscript in respect to the history of the arts of illumination and design in the east," and by reflection in the west, that he is induced[ ] to give an elaborate description of its embellishments, from which the following is a short extract:-- "the first illumination represents christ and the twelve apostles seated in a circle, with three lamps burning beneath a wide arch supported by two plain columns, with foliated capitals, and with two birds at the top. the second illumination represents the virgin and child standing within a double arch, the columns supporting which are tessellated, and the upper arch with several rows of zigzags, and peacocks standing at the top. the third represents eusebius and ammonius standing beneath a kind of tent-like canopy, supported by three columns, with undulated ornament, two peacocks with expanded tails standing at the top. the nineteen following plates are occupied by the tables of the eusebian canons, arranged in columns, between pillars supporting rounded arches, generally enclosed between larger and more ornamented columns supporting a large rounded arch, on the outsides of which are represented various groups of figures illustrating scriptural texts, plants, and birds. in some of these, however, the smaller arches are of the horseshoe character. the capitals are, for the most part, foliated; but in one or two they are composed of human faces, and a few of birds' heads. the arches, as well as the columns by which they are supported, are ornamented with chevrons, lozenges, nebules, quatrefoils, zigzags, flowers, fruit, birds, &c.; many of which singularly resemble those found in early anglo-saxon manuscripts, especially in the columns supporting the eusebian canons in the purple latin gospels of the british museum (ms. reg. i. e. ). there is, however, none of the singular interlacing of the patterns so characteristic of the anglo-saxon and irish manuscripts." i have dwelt thus in detail upon these greek pictorial and decorative features, because there can be no doubt that the exportation of books so adorned, by the early missionaries, who carried christianity and a degree of civilization to the northern and western countries, supplied the original types from which, however barbaric the imitations, the first attempts were made to rival, in the extreme west, the arts and spiritual graces of the east. on this plea, i hope i may be pardoned for dwelling yet further upon some of the leading distinctions between the byzantine and latin (that is, between the eastern and western) modes of working out religious conceptions, which were, that in the western or latin mode symbolism was universal; the art of the catacombs was followed distinctly, though frequently remotely, developing itself in mythical and sentimental forms, and systems of parallelism between type and prototype. in the greek church, the exposition of faith, through art, took a more tangible form. symbolism was avoided on all possible occasions, and the direct representation of sacred themes led to a partial transfer to the representation of the adoration due to the thing represented. iconoclasm was the reaction to this abuse. in the advanced periods of greek art, this realistic tendency led to a painful view of the nature of religion, more particularly in connection with the martyrdom of saints, and the physical sufferings of our saviour and his followers, which are frequently represented in the most positive and repellent forms. long, however, before byzantine art had time to deviate much from its ancient traditions, and even while it maintained an easy supremacy over the western empire, the lombard kingdom, and all the visi- and moeso-gothic and frankish races, a formidable competitor for the leadership in the art of illumination had sprung up in the extreme west, in the island homes of the celtic races. it is not necessary now to prove, what historians have freely admitted, that ireland was certainly christianized for a long time previous to the date of the mission of augustine to england. the disputes which arose between the followers of that saint and the irish priests, so soon as they clearly apprehended the nature of the supremacy claimed by the church of rome, assure us of their early isolation in the christian world. even in their, at first entire, and ultimately partial, rejection of the vulgate text of the gospels, and their retention of the older versions, from which no doubt their formulas of faith were derived, they steadily maintained their ecclesiastical freedom from the dogmatism of rome. as their creed was independent, so was their art original; nothing resembling it can be traced previous to it. before proceeding to examine the precise form assumed by this "original art," it may be well to remind the student that, with the exception of a few manuscripts decorated in the style of the laurentian syriac gospels and the british museum golden fragments, the general character of the decoration of all writings, previous to the origination of the celtic style in ireland, had been limited to the use of different-coloured, golden, and silver inks, on stained purple and white vellum grounds, to the occasional enlargement of, and slight flourishing about, initial letters; to the introduction of pictures, generally square, or oblong, enclosed in plain, or slightly bordered, frames; and, occasionally, to the scattering about, throughout the volumes, of a few lines and scrolls. let us now see--in the words of mr. westwood, who has done more than any previous writer had done to vindicate the honour of the irish school of caligraphy[ ]--what features of novelty it was mainly reserved for that school to originate. "its peculiarities,"[ ] he states, "consist in the illumination of the first page of each of the sacred books,--the letters of the first few words, and more especially the initial, being represented of a very large size, and highly ornamented in patterns of the most intricate design, with marginal rows of red dots; the classical acanthus being never represented. the principles of these most elaborate ornaments are, however, but few in number, and may be reduced to the four following:-- st. one or more narrow ribbons, diagonally but symmetrically interlaced, forming an endless variety of patterns. nd. one, two, or three slender spiral lines, coiling one within another till they meet in the centre of the circle, their opposite ends going off to other circles. rd. a vast variety of lacertine animals and birds, hideously attenuated, and coiled one within another, with their tails, tongues, and top-knots forming long narrow ribbons irregularly interlaced. th. a series of diagonal lines, forming various kinds of chinese-like patterns. these ornaments are generally introduced into small compartments, a number of which are arranged so as to form the large initial letters and borders, or tessellated pages, with which the finest manuscripts are decorated. the irish missionaries brought their national style of art with them from iona to lindisfarne in the th century, as well as their fine, large, very characteristic style of writing; and as these were adopted by their anglo-saxon converts, and as most of the manuscripts which have been hitherto described are of anglo-saxon origin, it has been the practice to give the name of anglo-saxon to this style of art. thus several of the finest facsimiles given by astle as anglo-saxon, are from irish manuscripts; and thus sylvestre, who has copied them (without acknowledgment), has fallen into the same error; whilst wanley, casley, and others, appear never to have had a suspicion of the existence of an ancient school of art in ireland." the monks of iona, under the great irish saint and scribe columba, or columbkill, and their anglo-saxon disciples at lindisfarne, under his friend st. aidan, together with the irish monks at glastonbury, spread celtic ornament in england, from whence it had, to a great extent, retired with the expulsion of the ancient british. st. boniface, the principal awakener of germany to christianity, carried with him his singularly-ornamented book of gospels, which is still preserved as a relic at fulda. similar evidence of the transmission of the art prevalent during the early centuries of the church in ireland, to other lands, by means of the missionaries who left her shores, is to be found in the books of st. kilian, the apostle of franconia, still preserved at wurtzburg; in those of st. gall, now in the public library of st. gall, in the canton of switzerland which still bears his name; and in the very important series, of which muratori has given an interesting catalogue, connected with the monastic institution founded by st. columbanus, at bobbio, in italy, and now principally in the ambrosian library at milan. many of these pious men were themselves scribes, and their autograph copies of the holy gospels are still in existence, with the name of the writers, in some cases, identifying the volumes, and absolutely fixing their date. thus we have the gospels of st. columba, the leabhar dhimma, or gospels of st. dhimma macnathi, and the macregol gospels in the bodleian library. all of these are anterior to the th century, and are distinguished by an elaborate style of ornament unlike any other european type. the extent of influence exercised by these eminent men and the "episcopi vagantes," or missionaries, is strongly insisted upon by m. libri, unquestionably one of the most eminent and correctly-informed bibliographers of the present day. speaking of the latitudinarianism of some among these christian men, he observes, "no doubt certain pious but narrow minds hoped to open the door to ecclesiastical literature only; but the exclusion sometimes pronounced against the classics was never general amongst writers who, even in their rudeness, always showed themselves imitators of antiquity. thus we find that the celebrated manuscript of livy, in the imperial library at vienna, belonged to sutbert, an irish monk, one of those wandering bishops who, towards the close of the seventh century, had gone to preach christianity, and, as it would seem also, to teach roman history in belgium. one cannot help remarking, that the most celebrated of these pious missionaries, st. columbanus, laid the foundations at luxeuil in france, at st. gall in switzerland, and at bobbio in italy, of three monasteries which afterwards became famous for their admirable manuscripts, in many of which the influence of the irish and anglo-saxon schools can be recognized at a glance. the library of st. gall is too celebrated to require mention. the bobbio manuscripts are known everywhere by the discoveries which have been made in the _palimpsests_ which once belonged to that collection. as for the manuscripts of luxeuil, they have been dispersed; but the specimens of them which are to be found in the libri collection, joined to what has been published on the subject by mabillon, o'conor, and others, prove unanswerably that in this abbey, as well as in that of stavelot in belgium, and other ancient monasteries on the continent, a school of writing and _miniature_ had sprung up as remarkable for the beauty of its caligraphy, as for the care applied to reproduce the forms of the anglo-irish schools."[ ] in delicacy of handling, and minute but faultless execution, the whole range of palæography offers nothing comparable to these early irish manuscripts, and those produced in the same style in england. when in dublin, some years ago, i had the opportunity of studying very carefully the most marvellous of all--"the book of kells;" some of the ornaments of which i attempted to copy, but broke down in despair. of this very book, mr. westwood examined the pages, as i did, for hours together, without ever detecting a false line, or an irregular interlacement. in one space of about a quarter of an inch superficial, he counted, with a magnifying-glass, no less than one hundred and fifty-eight interlacements, of a slender ribbon pattern, formed of white lines, edged by black ones, upon a black ground. no wonder that tradition should allege that these unerring lines should have been traced by angels.[ ] however "angelic" the ornaments may be, but little can be said in favour of the figure subjects occasionally introduced. in some manuscripts, such as the book of kells, in pose and motive it is generally obvious that some ancient model has been held in view; but nothing can be more barbaric than the imitation; while in the other specimens, such as the so-called autograph gospels of st. columba, or columbkill, who died a.d. , two years before the advent of st. augustine--the book of st. chads, or the gospels of macregol--no such evidence of imitation is to be met with, and the figures are altogether abortive. i was enabled some years ago, by the kindness of the rev. j. h. todd, the learned librarian of trinity college, dublin, to compare the so-called autograph gospels of st. columba, with the book of kells, which is traditionally supposed to have belonged to that saint, and remained strongly impressed with the superior antiquity of the former to the latter. the one may have been his property, and the other illuminated in his honour after his death, as was the case with the gospels of st. cuthbert. in none of them, at any period, were shadows represented otherwise than by apparent inlayings under the eyes and beside the nose; and yet, at the same time, the ornaments were most intricate, and often very beautiful, both in form and colour. the purple stain is frequently introduced, and is of excellent quality; but gold appears, so far as i have been able to observe, only in the durham book, and in that even most sparingly.[ ] it is the most celebrated production of the anglo-hibernian monastery of lindisfarne, founded by st. aidan and the irish monks of iona, or icolumkille, in the year . st. cuthbert, who was made bishop of lindisfarne in , was renowned as well for his piety as for his learning; he died in , and, as a monument to his memory, his successor, bishop eadfrith, caused to be written this noble volume, generally called the durham book, and known also as st. cuthbert's gospels, now in the british museum. this manuscript, surpassed in grandeur only by the book of kells, in the same style, was greatly enriched by Æthelwald, bishop of lindisfarne, who succeeded eadfrith in , and caused st. cuthbert's book to be richly illuminated by the hermit bilfrith, who prefixed an elaborate painting of an evangelist to each of the four gospels, and also illuminated the capital letters at the commencement of each book. the bishop caused the whole to be encased in a splendid binding of gold, set with precious stones; and in , a priest named aldred rendered the book still more valuable by interlining it with a saxon version of the original manuscript, which is the latin text of st. jerome. want of space alone prevents our following simeon of durham in his touching narrative of the circumstances which attended the translation of this volume, together with the body of the much-loved saint, to durham cathedral, in which both were long and profoundly venerated. the peculiar importance of this volume in the history of illumination, consists in its clearly establishing, by its coincidence with earlier examples, the class of caligraphy practised by that primitive church[ ] and people, to whom gregory the great despatched st. augustine, at the end of the th century. with the mission, which reached its destination, and effected the conversion of ethelbert and of many of his subjects, in the year , gregory forwarded certain sacred volumes, of which the following were long preserved with the greatest veneration:--a bible in two volumes; two psalters; two books of the gospels; a book of martyrology; apocryphal lives of the apostles, and expositions of certain epistles and gospels. the first--the bible--which was beautifully written on purple and rose-coloured leaves, with rubricated capitals, was certainly in existence in the reign of james i. mr. westwood ("palæographia sacra," - ) looks upon the magnificent purple latin gospels of the british museum (royal library, e ) as "no other than the remains of the gregorian bible." in this, with the utmost respect for his opinion, i cannot concur, since the fragment exhibits far too many genuine saxon features to have been possibly executed in the eastern or western empires previous to the date of the mission of st. augustine. that it may have been produced in this country, in imitation of the more classical original, by the immediate followers of the saint, is, i consider, highly probable. the second--the two psalters--have disappeared. several learned men have indeed looked upon the british museum cottonian mss. vesp. a , as one of these celebrated books, but, as i venture to think, erroneously; for it is difficult to believe that ornaments, so entirely of the anglo-irish school of lindisfarne, as those which decorate this volume, could have been executed at rome during either the th or even the th century. nothing is more probable than that, out of the forty persons who are believed to have constituted augustine's mission, several should have been skilled, as most ecclesiastics then were, in writing and in the embellishment of books; and in any school, established by st. augustine for the multiplication of those precious volumes, without which ministrations and teachings in consonance with roman dogmas could not be carried on in the new churches and monastic institutions founded among the converts, it is most likely that the native scribes, on their conversion, should be employed to write and decorate the holy texts, with every ornament excepting those of a pictorial nature. in the execution of these, they could scarcely prove themselves as skilful as the followers of st. augustine would, from their retention of some classical traditions, be likely to be. thus, and thus only, as i believe, can we account for the singular combination of semi-antique with saxon writing, and of latin body-colour pictures, executed almost entirely with the brush, and regularly shadowed (such as david with his attendants, in the frontispiece to the vespasian a psalter), with ornaments of an absolutely different character, such as the arch and pilaster which form the framework for this very picture of king david. another argument, which weighs greatly in my mind against the probability of such a psalter as vespasian a being a prototype, is the fact, that the utrecht and harleian psalters, to both of which i shall have occasion again to allude, in their pictorial illustrations, present us with evident copies, in outline, of some classic coloured original; just, in fact, of such a manuscript of the psalms as the celebrated vatican roll[ ] is of the book of joshua. what more likely than that one of the venerated psalters brought from rome should have been such a manuscript, and should have been the very one copied in the case of the utrecht psalter, in the "rustic capitals" of the original, and in the later harleian replica in the current saxon uncial? as respects the third class of augustinian books--the gospels--the case is far different; for the accredited and traditional originals are, in every respect, such as would be likely to have been produced at rome or at constantinople, but most probably the former, during the pontificate of gregory the great. fragments of the most important of these gospels are preserved in the library of corpus christi college, cambridge. they are written in black ink generally, with occasional lines in red, in the ancient manner. two pages only of illuminations are left, though it is evident that the volume once contained a large and complete series. the most important of these represents st. luke, clad in tunic and toga, seated under just such a triumphal arch as is frequently to be met with in the roman mosaics of the th and th centuries.[ ] the second illuminated page comprises a series of small square pictures, framed round with the simple red line of the oldest latin manuscripts. the other augustinian fragmentary gospel is to be found among the hatton manuscripts in the bodleian library, oxford: it is without any other illumination than the contrast of red and black ink, and a few ornaments about some of the initial letters. the evidence, upon which it may be assumed that these volumes were either brought to this country by st. augustine, or formed some of the "codices multos,"[ ] sent by gregory the great to the mission on its establishment, rests not only upon the antiquity and purely latin character of the fragments, but on the fact that both gospels contain entries in saxon of upwards of one thousand years old, connecting them with the library of the abbey of st. augustine at canterbury; and, furthermore, they correspond with the description given by a monk of that monastery, who, writing in the reign of henry v., dwells upon the "primitie librorum totius ecclesie anglicane" preserved in that library, as the very gospels in the version of st. jerome, brought to england by st. augustine himself. the martyrology, the apocryphal lives of the apostles, and the expositions which completed the series, cannot be now identified. to rapidly multiply copies of these text-books of the church of rome, was, no doubt, one of the first and most important duties of the monks of canterbury; and from the traces we may detect in various manuscripts of the anglo-saxon mode of writing and ornamenting writing, combined with paintings such as the anglo-saxons were incompetent to execute for some time after the close of the th century, we may safely infer that the monks both worked themselves and largely employed the native scribes. thus, as mr. westwood observes in a recent article in the "archæological journal," "we have sufficient evidence that, soon after the settlement of the followers of st. augustine, there must have been established a _scriptorium_, where some of the most beautiful manuscripts were written in the purest uncial or rustic capitals, but decorated with initials in the anglo-saxon or irish style. of such mss. we can now record-- " . the purple gospels at stockholm, written in very large uncials, but with illuminated title-pages, with pure anglo-saxon ornaments, and grand figures of the evangelists in a mixed classical and anglo-saxon style. " . the utrecht gospels. " . the gospels in the cathedral library, durham; astle's 'origin and progress of writing,' pl. , fig. b, p. . " . the utrecht psalter. " . the so-called psalter of st. augustine, mss. cotton., vespasian, a ; astle, pl. , fig. . " . the bodleian ms. of the rule of st. benedict, lord hatton's mss., no. ; astle, pl. , fig. , p. . "were it not for the initials, and other illuminations in the genuine anglo-saxon style, not one of these mss. could be supposed to have been executed in england. they are, nevertheless, among the finest specimens of early caligraphic art in existence." one of the most important of this interesting class of manuscripts is, unquestionably, that of the psalms, now preserved in the public library at utrecht. it was formerly in the possession of sir robert cotton, and should be now with the rest of his library in the british museum. the volume contains, besides the psalms, the "pusillus eram," the credo, and the canticles, with a few leaves from the gospel of st. matthew. it is written upon vellum, and each psalm has a pen-and-ink illustration, in the same style as those in the harleian psalter, no. , which was written in the th century; and similar also to those in the cambridge psalter of the th century. the writing in the utrecht psalter is executed in roman rustic capitals; it is arranged in three columns in each page; and the elegance with which the letters are formed, would place the manuscripts amongst those of the th or th century: but the illustrations before mentioned, with the large uncial b, heightened with gold, in the saxon interlaced style, which commences the first psalm, would give it a later date, certainly not earlier than the th or th century; and the pen-and-ink drawings were probably executed a century later. mr. westwood, to whose highly interesting "archæological notes of a tour in denmark, prussia, and holland," published in the "archæological journal," i am indebted for the above information, tells us that the date of the few pages of the gospel, mentioned as being bound up in this volume, is as uncertain as that of the psalter; the text being written in a style which would place it amongst the works of the th or th century, whilst the word "liber," with which it commences, is written in large square roman capitals, in gold, with the remains of ornament similar to that in vespasian, a . that which gives, however, its greatest value to the utrecht psalter, is the remarkable freedom and cleverness of the pen-and-ink drawings with which it is embellished. in them may be recognized, i believe, the earliest trace of those peculiar fluttered draperies, elongated proportions, and flourished touches, which became almost a distinct style in later anglo-saxon illumination. so different is it, both from the anglo-hibernian work, prevalent in england up to the advent of st. augustine, and from the contemporary imitation of the antique, practised by byzantine, latin, lombard, or frankish illuminators, that the conclusion seems, as it were, forced upon us, that it can have been originated in no other way than by setting the already most skilful penman, but altogether ignorant artist, to reproduce, as he best could, the freely-painted miniatures of the books, sacred and profane, imported, as we know, in abundance, from rome, during the th and th centuries. to so great an extent do antique types and features prevail in the earlier specimens of this class of anglo-saxon volumes, that, until comparatively recently, the catalogue of the utrecht library has designated the illustrations of the psalter now under notice, as evidently productions of the reign of valentinian;[ ] while the outline subjects, in a similar style, and of considerably later date, which are introduced in the british museum "aratus," were attributed, by even mr. ottley's critical judgment, to a somewhat similar period. the harleian psalter (no. ), to which allusion has been already made, although written in later characters, is decorated with many pictures, all but identical with those in the utrecht manuscript, thereby demonstrating, with comparative certainty, that both were taken from some popular prototype, possibly one of the augustinian psalters already alluded to.[ ] the bodleian cædmon's, or pseudo-cædmon's, "metrical paraphrase of the book of genesis," written and illustrated in outline,[ ] during the th or th century, and the Ælfric's heptateuch of the british museum, "cottonian, claudius b iv.," of a somewhat later date, afford excellent illustrations of the enduring popularity of this peculiar mode of outline-drawing. the striking difference may, however, be noted between these later and the earlier specimens in the same style, that whereas the types of the latter are, with scarcely any exception, antique, those of the former are comparatively original, and exhibit that strong inclination to caricature, which has always formed one of the leading features of english illumination. while, in this class of anglo-saxon manuscripts, the influence of latin art may be traced on the original hiberno-british school of scribes, a corresponding change was effected, through the introduction into this country of specimens of the more brilliant examples of byzantine execution or derivation. thus, as sir frederick madden observes,[ ] "the taste for gold and purple manuscripts seems only to have reached england at the close of the th century, when wilfrid, archbishop of york, enriched his church with a copy of the gospels thus adorned; and it is described by his biographer, eddius (who lived at that period or shortly after), as 'inauditum ante seculis nostris quoddam miraculum,'--almost a miracle, and before that time unheard of in this part of the world. but in the th and th centuries the art of staining the vellum appears to have declined, and the colour is no longer the same bright and beautiful purple, violet, or rose-colour of the preceding centuries. it is rare also to meet with a volume stained throughout; the artist contenting himself with colouring a certain portion, such as the title, preface, or canon of the mass. manuscripts written in letters of gold, on white vellum, are chiefly confined to the th, th, and th centuries. of these, the bible and hours of charles the bald, preserved in the royal library at paris, and the gospels of the harleian collection, no. , are probably the finest examples extant. in england, the art of writing in gold seems to have been but imperfectly understood in early times, and the instances of it very uncommon. indeed, the only remarkable one that occurs of it is the charter of king edgar to the new minster at winchester, in the year . this volume is written throughout in gold." although but few books were thus gorgeously written, many were sumptuously decorated; and, indeed, there exist no more brilliant volumes than some of those produced by anglo-saxon scribes. of these several have been preserved; but if two or three only are noticed, it will be quite sufficient to establish the leading characteristics of the school, which appears to have been organized under ethelwold, bishop of winchester, at new minster, or hyde abbey, near winchester, during the th century. the names of several leading masters of that great nursery of illumination have been handed down to us. thus ethric and wulfric--monks--are recorded as having been "painters;" but godemann is spoken of as the greatest of all. fortunately, a magnificent specimen of his art is preserved in the celebrated benedictional of st. ethelwold, in the library of the duke of devonshire, and engraved _in extenso_, with great care, in the twenty-fourth volume of the "archæologia."[ ] this is one of the most sumptuous manuscripts which has been executed in any age by any scribe, and differs widely from the anglo-saxon mss. previously described. the text is generally enclosed within a rich framework, formed by wide and solid bars of gold, about and over which twine and break elegantly-shaded masses of conventional foliation. in the initial letters, and occasionally in the ornament, the peculiarly saxon interlacing and knotwork is retained; but in most of the embellishments, a reaction can be traced from the carlovingian manuscripts themselves, originally acted upon, as will be hereafter seen, by the saxon school of caligraphy.[ ] the figure subjects in this volume are cramped in style and action, exhibit but little classical influence, and possess, as a leading merit, only a singularly sustained brilliancy of tint and even execution throughout. next to this great masterpiece, and from the same fountain-head, come the following, several of which are exceedingly beautiful:--the two rouen gospels; the gospels of king canute, in the british museum, reg. d ; the cottonian psalter, tib. c vi.; the hyde abbey book, lately in the stowe library; and the gospels of trinity college, cambridge. the ornaments in all these volumes are painted in thick body-colours, and with a vehicle so viscid in texture, that dr. dibdin[ ] infers from its character, as evidenced in the benedictional, "the possibility or even probability of oil being mixed up in the colours of the more ancient illuminations." in this opinion i do not concur, as i believe the peculiar body and gloss of the pigment to be produced by the use of white of egg. if the character of anglo-saxon architecture and sculpture agreed with the representations of both given in the benedictional of ethelwold--as i have every reason to believe it did--it must have been massive and elaborate in the highest degree; and there is no reason to suppose that a people who were capable of drawing so well as they assuredly could, should have limited their productions in the sister arts to the rude and clumsy, long and short, and other similar work, which we are in the habit of supposing, characterized all their principal productions. i have dwelt in some detail upon saxon illumination, for two reasons: firstly, because it is a theme on which some national self-gratulation may be justifiably entertained;[ ] and, secondly, because it is one on which, although much has been written, comparatively little light has as yet been thrown. before leaving it, however, some general observations should be made upon the classes of books most in demand, and the means by which they were multiplied in this country; and, indeed, with slight local differences, on the great continent of europe as well,--byzantium, ravenna, rome, monte cassino, subiaco, paris, tours, limoges, arles, soissons, blois, aix-la-chapelle, cologne, hildesheim, worms, treves, glastonbury, canterbury, winchester, york, durham, lindisfarne, wearmouth, jarrow, croyland, and peterborough, being the great centres of production. from the earliest period religious zeal was much shown in its offerings to the church, by laymen, more or less pious,--the least pious being, in fact, sometimes the most liberal donors,--and very large sums were expended in illuminating and ornamenting manuscripts for that purpose. many of these books were remarkable for the extreme beauty of the paintings and ornamental letters enriched with gold and silver, which decorate them, as well as for the execution of the writing, the most precious bindings frequently adding greatly to their cost. gospels, books of anthems, and missals, were most frequently chosen for such gifts; but they were not confined to sacred subjects, including occasionally the best writings of greece and rome, which were eagerly sought after as models of eloquence, and, still more, as often being supposed to contain prophecies of the coming of christ, and proofs of the truth of his doctrines. the piety of individuals often led them to expend large sums in the preparation of their offerings to the church; the finest and best parchment which could be procured being used for manuscripts. when black ink was used in liturgical writings, the title-page and heads of the chapters were written in _red ink_; whence comes the term rubric. green, blue, and yellow inks were used, sometimes for words, but chiefly for ornamental capital letters; the writers and miniature-painters exercising their own taste and judgment in the decoration, and heightening its effect with gold and the most expensive colours, such as azure and the purest cinnabar or vermilion. the greater part of these works were intrusted to monks and their clerks, who were exhorted, by the rules of their order, to learn writing, and to persevere in the work of copying manuscripts, as being one most acceptable to god; those who could not write being recommended to learn to bind books. alcuin entreats all to employ themselves in copying books, saying, "it is a most meritorious work, more useful to the health than working in the fields, which profits only a man's body, whilst the labour of a copyist profits his soul."[ ] home production could, however, by no means suffice to multiply books, and especially religious books, with sufficient rapidity to satisfy the eager demand for them. long journeys appear to have been taken to foreign countries, by learned ecclesiastics, for scarcely any other purpose than the collection of manuscripts; while quantities were imported into england from abroad. thus bede tells us, that wilfrid, bishop of wearmouth and jarrow, and acca, wilfrid's successor, collected many books abroad for their libraries, at the end of the seventh century. thus theodore of tarsus brought back an extensive library of grecian and roman authors, on his return to canterbury, in , from a mission to rome; and thus, as we are told by mr. maitland,[ ] when "aldhelm, who became bishop of schireburn in the year , went to canterbury, to be consecrated by his old friend and companion berthwold (pariter literis studuerant, pariterque viam religionis triverant), the archbishop kept him there many days, taking counsel with him about the affairs of his diocese. hearing of the arrival of the ships at dover during this time, he went there to inspect their unloading, and to see if they had brought anything in his way (_si quid forte commodum ecclesiastico usui attidissent nautæ qui e gallico sinu in angliam, provecti librorum copiam apportassent_). among many other books, he saw one containing the whole of the old and new testaments, which he at length bought: and william of malmesbury, who wrote his life in the twelfth century, tells us it was still preserved at that place." how deeply must all lovers of illumination regret the infinite destruction of books that has prevailed in all ages! of all this "librorum copiam," how few survive. even in the days of alfred the great, the danes had destroyed the majority of them; for, as that great royal bibliomaniac exclaims, in his preface to the "pastoral of gregory,"--"i saw, before _all_ were spoiled and burnt, how the churches throughout britain were filled with treasures and books." i now leave our own country for a while, and return to the general continent of europe; having, i trust, satisfactorily established the individuality of those three great styles of illumination, from the fusion of which the romanesque, and ultimately the mediæval, system sprang,--viz., the roman, or pictorial; the greek, or golden; and the hiberno-saxon, or intricate. the commencement of that fusion has been traced in the later anglo-saxon work, and it now remains to observe the circumstances under which a similar, and even more marked, amalgamation took place on the continent, under the auspices of charlemagne, the greatest patron of the art who ever lived. much has been assumed by early palæographers, and even some recent ones, with respect to the influence exercised by the lombard mss. executed between the establishment of the lombard kingdom in the year , and its absorption a.d. , in the empire of charlemagne, on the class of illumination introduced under his auspices; but the specimens which have descended to these days exhibit such an entire decrepitude of style, as to justify the belief that, with the exception of a peculiar broken-backed letter, known as "lombard brisé," the lombards themselves contributed little or nothing to the results which attended the efforts made by that great sovereign to raise the art of book-decoration in his day to its highest pitch. it was mainly by the aid, and through the direct instrumentality, of the learned anglo-saxon, alcuin, that charlemagne carried out his laudable design. this industrious ecclesiastic, who was born in the year , received his education under egbert and elbert, successive archbishops of the see of york,--having been appointed at an early age "custodian" to the library collected by the former. on the death of elbert, he was sent to rome to receive the pallium of investiture for the new archbishop enbalde. on his journey home, in , he passed through parma, where charlemagne happened to be at the time. the consequence of their meeting in that city was, that alcuin received and accepted an invitation to take up his residence at the court of the frankish sovereign. during four-and-twenty years, until his death, indeed, in , he retained the affection and respect of his royal patron, and occupied himself in incessant labour for the advancement of learning, and the multiplication of pure texts of the holy scriptures and other good books. several of alcuin's letters to charlemagne are still extant, in which the supremacy of the english schools and libraries is distinctly recognized, as well as the direct influence exercised by them on frankish literature, and, as in those days literature and illumination were inseparable, on illumination also. thus, in one place he begs his master to give him "those exquisite books of erudition which i had in my own country by the good and devout industry of my master egbert, the archbishop." again, referring to the same "treasures of wisdom," he proposes,--"if it shall please your wisdom, i will send some of our boys, who may copy from thence whatever is necessary, and carry back into france the flowers of britain; that the garden may not be shut up in york, but the fruits of it may be placed in the paradise of tours." one of the evidences of the eagerness with which this task of multiplying the sources of learning was carried on, is to be found in the attempts made to abridge and expedite labour. thus, as m. chassant[ ] observes in his useful little manual of abbreviations[ ] used during the middle ages, the texts of all documents of importance were comparatively free from contractions from the period when justinian the great banished them, by an imperial edict, from all legal instruments, until the accession of charlemagne, "during whose reign, either to save time or vellum, the scribes revived the ancient roman practice of using initials, and frequently arbitrary signs, to represent whole words of frequent recurrence." it is, however, in the quality, rather than the quantity, of carlovingian mss. that the reader is most likely to be interested; and i therefore hasten to note two or three of the most imposing specimens. the earliest of the grand class is believed to be the evangelistiarium, long preserved in the abbey of st. servin, at toulouse, and ultimately presented to napoleon i., on the baptism of the king of rome, in the name of the city. from contemporary entries, it appears to have been completed, after eight years' labour, in the year , by the scribe godescalc. of whatever nation "godescalc" may have been, the volume[ ] exhibits far too many composite features to justify the belief that any one individual, or even many individuals of one nation, could have executed the whole. the paintings are probably by an italian hand, being executed freely with the brush, in opaque colours, in the antique manner. many of the golden borders are quite greek in style, while the initial letters, and others of the borders, are thoroughly hiberno-saxon. a nearly similar dissection would apply to most of the manuscripts executed for charlemagne's descendants, to the third generation. the volume contains leaves, every leaf, not entirely filled with illumination, being stained purple, with a white margin, and covered with a text, written in golden initials, in two columns, separated by very graceful and delicately-executed borders. our plates, technical manual, nos. and , taken from the great charlemagne bible of the british museum, give a good idea of the nature of the ornament usually employed in similar mss. to fill up such borders and to form and decorate initial letters. they will serve to show also the common type of the alphabets in use. from charlemagne's "scriptorium," which was no doubt the head-quarters of the best artists of all nations in his time, proceeded many other volumes of scarcely less interest and magnificence. among these, the most noteworthy are, the gospels of st. medard de soissons,[ ] so called because believed to have been presented by charlemagne to that abbey;[ ] the vienna psalter, written for pope hadrian; the gospels preserved in the library of the arsenal at paris, and formerly belonging to the abbaye of st. martin des champs;[ ] the gospels found upon the knees of the emperor on opening his tomb at aix-la-chapelle; the harleian ms. no. , known as the "codex aureus";[ ] and last, not least, the bible, known as that of san calisto, preserved in the benedictine monastery of that saint at rome, and formerly in the monastery of san paolo fuori le mura. the frontispiece to this volume, which is no less than one foot four inches high, by one foot one inch wide, represents a sitting emperor holding a globe, on which are inscribed various letters, arranged in the peculiar form adopted by charlemagne in his signs manual. the learned have disputed hotly whether this portrait is intended for that of charlemagne, or of charles the bald, his grandson. whether this manuscript, which, in all respects, except beauty in the figure-subjects, i look upon as the finest i have ever seen, was executed in the days of the former or latter monarch, is of no very great moment, as its leading features would harmonize very well with accredited reliques of either. it still contains no less than pages, and is one blaze of illumination from the first page to the last.[ ] the large initial letters are quite saxon in form; the borders, of which there are endless and beautiful varieties, are more strictly classic in character than is usual in caroline manuscripts; and the pictures are in an indeterminate style, between greek, latin, and that original frankish, which subsequently absorbed in western europe all previous tradition, and grew into the peculiar type of french th century work--the progenitor of the pure gothic of the th. ample materials happily exist for tracing the gradual development of this frankish element; at first through the works of the immediate descendants of charlemagne, and subsequently through various liturgical works, collected from suppressed abbeys, and preserved for the most part in the imperial library at paris. of these, some of the most important are, the bible of louis le debonnaire, executed in the eighth year of his reign; the gospels of the same monarch; and the sacramentaire de metz,--all produced for sons of charlemagne. the first-named is of the barbaric style, on which alcuin and others improved; the second contains some very curious symbolic initial letters; and the third, a good deal of originality, both in ornaments and figures. the principal volumes still preserved, once belonging to the grandsons of charlemagne, appear less original in several respects, than do those executed for his sons. thus, in the case of louis le debonnaire's eldest son lothaire, whose gospels, written and decorated at the abbey of st. martin, at tours, exhibit a mixed latin and saxon style, with but little specifically frankish work,--and thus also in the person of lothaire's youngest brother, charles the bald, whose two celebrated bibles, the one known as the bible of st. denis, and the other as that presented to the monarch by count vivien, abbot of the same monastery at which the gospels of lothaire were executed,--illustrate a similar composite, but scarcely original, style. the former manuscript is illuminated with intertwined lacertine monsters, knotwork, single (but not the three-whorl) spirals, and rows of red dots following many of the leading outlines, all of which may be regarded as distinctive features of the hiberno-saxon school; while the latter, with several of the above peculiarities freely introduced, combines an unmistakable classicality, shown in the various figure-subjects, and especially in the arcading which encloses the eusebian canons at the commencement of the volume. the british museum is fortunate in possessing in the harleian ms.--no. --a curious collection of ancient biblical fragments, and amongst these are a few pages taken from a bible executed for charles the bald. from these mr. tymms has selected the elegant alphabets, initial letters, and ornaments which are to be found in plates , , and , of this manual. in these the student will not fail to recognize what he may have already observed in studying the specimens given from the charlemagne bible (technical manual, plates , , and ), that while the form of the text and the ornamental borderings are founded on antique models, the initial letters scarcely ever fail to exhibit in their celtic animals' heads and interlaced strap-work the influence of alcuin and the saxon scribes. we can feel but little surprise at the production of such works at the abbey of st. martin, at tours, for it was within the walls of that "paradise," as alcuin calls it, that the saxon sage gave all the latter years of his life to the recension of the holy scriptures,[ ] and to the organization of a "scriptorium" worthy of his affectionate patron. the impulse given to the art of illumination in that celebrated establishment was speedily communicated to rival scriptoria in other localities; thus from the abbeys of st. martial, at limoges, from metz, mans, st. majour in provence, rheims, st. germain and st. denis at paris, issued, from the age of charlemagne to the th century, an almost uninterrupted series of highly-illuminated volumes, many of which still remain to attest the vigorous efforts by which the foreign elements were gradually thrown aside in france, to make way for that expressive and original outline style[ ] which achieved its greatest power in the early part of the th century. the throes and struggles by which this was achieved, are singularly well shown by a page engraved in count bastard's splendid work from the "apocalypse of st. sever," written during the first half of the th century. the page presents a curious emblematical frontispiece, the general form of which is perfectly oriental; the border ornaments are founded on cufic inscriptions; the animals which decorate the arabian framework are classical; and the interlacing fretwork of several portions of the design is purely saxon. many byzantine features were brought into french illumination through the schools at st. martial's and the other abbeys of limoges, but it was at paris itself that the greatest changes and improvements were effected; thus, at st. germain and st. denis were produced, during the first half and middle of the th century, two volumes, still existing in the imperial library of france, which distinctly show the budding of "gothic." the st. germain "mysteries of the life of christ" is illustrated by many original and very spirited outline compositions, some of which are slightly coloured; while the "missal of st. denis," of a few years later, displays that peculiar grace and _naïveté_ in the action and expression of the figures, together with that soft elegance in foliated ornament, which for several centuries remained a dominant excellence in the best french illuminations. as classical tradition and hiberno-saxon intricacies died out in france to make way for the true mediæval styles, so did they, although somewhat more slowly, in england, germany, spain, and the netherlands. in italy, a degeneracy occurred, from which the revival at length, under cimabue and giotto, was as rapid and brilliant as the previous collapse appears to have been fatal.[ ] alike from any such complete change, complete degeneracy, or ultimate attainment of life and perfection, the genuine greek style of the byzantine empire was exempted. that oriental splendour of gold and colour by which so early as the days of justinian the great, it sought to gloss over the feebleness of its reminiscences of classical beauty, remained the unchanged leading characteristic of its illuminations down to the final extinction of the empire in . in such an essay as the present, it is quite impossible to convey any idea of the minute, but extremely interesting varieties of type adopted in byzantine manuscripts; it must suffice to state, in general terms,--that the dispersion of many of the most skilful greek artists, by the iconoclastic emperors (commencing with leo the isaurian, a.d. ), gave a great impetus to the arts of design in those countries in which they took refuge, and no doubt contributed specially to the improvements effected under charlemagne,--that on the abandonment of such religious persecutions, in the middle of the th century, a fresh start appears to have been taken,[ ]--and that from the date of that revival, which may be specially noted under the reign of basil the macedonian, until about the year , many very noble and dignified pictures[ ] were executed. from the last-named era, until the taking of constantinople by the turks, although the treatment of figure-subjects became more and more weak and mannered, much beautiful ornament was painted upon gold grounds, and the influence originally communicated to arabian art from the eastern empire, was reflected back upon its later productions from the contemporary schools of saracenic and moorish decoration.[ ] it is scarcely necessary to remark, that in all these inflexions of style the russian, syrian, and armenian illuminators closely followed the example set them by the byzantine scribes and painters. returning from the east to the extreme west of europe, it is worthy of note how entirely the primitive saxon styles, which wrought so important an influence upon the rest of europe, were lost in the country from which they had been mainly promulgated. the successive social and political changes wrought by the ascendancy of the danes, and ultimately of the normans, put an almost total stop to saxon illumination; and so complete was the abandonment of the saxon character, that ingulphus, in describing the fire which destroyed the noble library of his abbey at croyland, in the year , after dwelling on the splendour of the "chirographs written in the roman character, adorned with golden crosses and most beautiful paintings," and especially "the privileges of the kings of mercia, the most ancient and the best, in like manner beautifully executed with golden illuminations, but written in the saxon character," goes on to state: "all our documents of this kind, greater and less, were about four hundred in number; and in one moment of a most dismal night, they were destroyed and lost to us by this lamentable misfortune. a few years before, i had taken from our archives a good many chirographs, written in the saxon character, because we had duplicates, and in some cases triplicates, of them; and had given them to our cantor, master fulmar, to be kept in the cloister, to help the juniors to learn the saxon character, because that letter had for a long while been despised and neglected by reason of the normans,[ ] and was now known only to a few of the more aged; that so the younger ones, being instructed to read this character, might be more competent to use the documents of their monastery against their adversaries in their old age." the normans, a warlike but unlettered race, did but little for the first century after the conquest, to restore the taste for learning which they and the danes had displaced. while english progress in illumination was thus comparatively paralyzed, in france and germany new styles, corresponding with those known in architecture as romanesque, rapidly sprang into popularity. of the leading decorative features of such styles, as well as of the corresponding alphabets and initial letters, we have endeavoured to give some elegant reductions in plates , , and of this manual, and in plates , , and of its technical companion. the illustrations in the former have been taken from the british museum, "reg. , c. vii.," a folio ms., of bold rather than beautiful execution, but containing throughout many well-designed initial letters and ornaments. the volume comprises the vulgate version of the books of joshua, judges, and ruth, and it is believed by sir frederick madden, no doubt the most competent judge in this country, to have been executed about the middle of the th century. the materials for the plates in the technical manual, nos. , , and have been gleaned from a manuscript of rather later date, preserved in the harleian collection, nos. and . there can be little doubt that the numerous ornaments which decorate this great bible were the work of german industry, for, independently of the evidences of style offered by the writing and illumination, an entry in the volume informs us that it once belonged to the church of the blessed virgin, in one of the suburbs of worms. all of the ornaments in this series of illustrations show a manifest disposition on the part of their designers to break away from the rigidity of pure convention into a class of foliation, which, if not directly copied from nature, at least recalls the general aspect of her germinating, growing, and, finally, luxuriant forms of vegetation. the combination, with reminiscences of carlovingian knotted ends to the initial letters, of foliated ornament, during the th century, may be frequently found developed, in germany especially, into a fresh luxuriant, and complete system. the complicated conventionality of foliage shown in many teutonic manuscripts, and greatly encouraged by the emperor frederick barbarossa, a.d. to , was never entirely abandoned by the germans in their ornament; and at the end of the th and early part of the th centuries, when france and england were successfully imitating nature, they continued to cling to that peculiarly crabbed style of crinkled foliation, which they reluctantly abandoned only in the th century. with the accession of the plantagenets, in , and especially through the marriage of henry ii. with eleanor of guienne, french influence acquired a marked predominance in english illumination; and for about one hundred years from that date, the progress of style in england and france was parallel and almost identical. gradually, in each, the romanesque features disappeared, and by the middle of the th century, the fulness of mediæval illumination, as reflecting the perfection of gothic architecture, was attained. the rapid growth of the dominican and franciscan orders during the first half of the century, and their eagerness to dispel the drowsiness into which the old well-to-do monastic establishments were fast slipping, gave a new life to all arts, including, of course, that of the transcription and illumination of the sources of learning, and in those days, consequently, of power. the present appears to be the most fitting place for a few notes, derived chiefly from the "consuetudines" of the regulars,[ ] on the general mediæval practice in relation to monastic libraries, of which england, france, germany, and italy possessed many during the th, th, and th centuries, rich, not only in sacred and patristic, but in profane literature as well. the libraries of such establishments were placed by the abbot under the sole charge of the "armarian," an officer who was made responsible for the preservation of the volumes under his care: he was expected frequently to examine them, lest damp or insects should injure them; he was to cover them with wooden covers to preserve them, and carefully to mend and restore any damage which time or accident might cause; he was to make a note of any book borrowed from the library, with the name of the borrower; but this rule applied only to the less valuable portion of it, as the "great and precious books" could only be lent by the permission of the abbot himself. it was also the duty of the armarian to have all the books in his charge marked with their correct titles, and to keep a perfect list of the whole. some of these catalogues are still in existence, and are curious and interesting, as showing the state of literature in the middle ages, as well as giving us the names of many authors whose works have never reached us. in perusing these catalogues, it is impossible not to be struck by the assiduous collection of classical authors, whose works sometimes equal, and at others actually preponderate over, the books of scholastic divinity. it was also the duty of the armarian, under the orders of his superior, to provide the transcribers of manuscripts with the writings which they were to copy, as well as with all the materials necessary for their labours; to make bargains as to payment, and to superintend the works during their progress. these books were not always destined for the library of the monastery in which they were transcribed, but were often eagerly bought by others, or by some generous layman, for the purpose of presenting to a monastic library; and their sale, particularly at an early period, added largely to the revenues of the establishment in which they were written or illuminated. the different branches of the transcribing trade were occasionally united in the same person, but were more generally divided and practised separately, and by secular as well as by religious copyists. of the former, there were at least three distinct branches--the illuminators, the notarii, and the librarii antiquarii. the last-mentioned were employed chiefly in restoring and repairing old and defaced manuscripts and their bindings. the public scribes were employed chiefly by monks and lawyers, sometimes working at their own houses; and at others, when any valuable work was to be copied, in that of their employer, where they were lodged and boarded during the time of their engagement. a large room, as has been already stated, was in most monasteries set apart for such labours, and here the general transcribers pursued their avocation; but there were also, in addition, small rooms or cells, known also as scriptoria, which were occupied by such monks as were considered, from their piety and learning, to be entitled to the indulgence,[ ] and used by them for their private devotions, as well as for the purpose of transcribing works for the use of the church or library. the scriptoria were frequently enriched by donations and bequests from those who knew the value of the works carried on in them, and large estates were often devoted to their support. the tithes of wythessy and impitor, two shillings and twopence,--and some land in ely, with two parts of the tithes of the lordship of pampesward, were granted by bishop nigellus to the scriptorium of the monastery of ely, the charter of which still exists in the church there. a norman named robert gave to the scriptorium of st. alban's the tithes of redburn, and two parts of the tithes of hatfield; and that of st. edmondesbury was endowed with two mills, by the same person. during the whole of the th and th centuries the pen played a more distinguished part than the brush in the art of illumination; since, not only was the former almost exclusively employed in outlining both foliage and figures, but the use of the latter was generally limited to filling up, and heightening with timid shadowing, the various parts defined by the former, and which were altogether dependent upon it for expression. in fact, it appears as if the principal patterns in th century illumination had been designed by stained-glass painters, the black outlines being equivalent in artistic result to the lead lines which, in the best specimens of grisaille and mosaic windows, keep the forms and colours distinct and perfect. this firm dark outlining was retained in england later than in france, and was combined in the former country with a more solid and somewhat less gay tone of colour than ever prevailed in the latter. so late as the th century, this correspondence between stained glass work and illumination still obtained; thus, as mr. scharf remarks, in a note to his interesting paper on the king's college, cambridge, windows, in the transactions of the archæological institute for , "the forty windows of the monastery of horschau contained a series of subjects minutely corresponding to those of the biblia pauperum," &c. the initial letters which in romanesque illumination had expanded into very large proportions as a general rule,[ ] diminished; but, in compensation, effloresced, as it were, into floreated terminations, which were at last not only carried down the side of the page, but even made to extend right across both the top and bottom of it. during the reigns of the three first edwards in england, the tail, as it might be called, of the initial letter, running down the side of the page, gradually widened, until at length it grew into a band of ornament, occasionally panelled, and with small subjects introduced into the panels. in such cases, the initial letter occupying the angle formed by the side and top ornaments of the page, became subsidiary to the bracket-shaped bordering, which, in earlier examples, had been decidedly subsidiary to the initial letter. as no one can doubt that the th century was the period during which illumination attained its highest perfection, not only in point of artistic spirit in design, but in the dexterous processes of execution as well, it has been considered that it might prove useful to the english student to supply him or her with as large a proportion as possible of illustration of that which we may really regard in matter of illuminating as our national style. thus our plates in this manual, nos. , , and , have been taken from a latin bible (b. m. reg. , d. ), exquisitely written on uterine vellum, about the commencement of the th century, by an english scribe, whose autograph at the end of the holy text declares that "wills. devoniensis scripsit istum librum." well may the pious writer render thanks as he does, in a paragraph just preceding the colophon, "to god, to jesus christ, to the blessed virgin mary, and to all saints," on the completion of such a volume, in every respect a model of what illuminated writing may be. it is somewhat deficient in pictures, although in the prologue and in that part of the psalms in which david prophesies concerning our saviour, specimens of the artist's abilities on a more extended scale than usual may be met with. in these, as in the initials and borders, manual dexterity is pushed to perfection, and combined with that occasional feeling for beauty and constant appreciation of humour, which form leading characteristics of that english school of illumination, of which "william of devon" must ever be ranked among the worthiest. the expression of the little heads, and of the hands and feet, which are unusually well drawn for the period, is invariably given with the pen, scarcely any attempt being made at shading with the brush. the high lights are touched on most delicately with pure white; and deep blue, and burnished gold grounds looking like solid metal, are universal throughout the volume. our plates, technical manual, nos. , , , also from a latin bible in the royal collection (no. , d ), are of nearly the same period and style, but not quite so delicately wrought perhaps as the illuminations are which we meet with in reg. , d . the former offer, however, the least exceptional aspect of english illumination of the edwardian period--one in which vigorous but rather heavy colouring and firm but rather loaded outline dominate. in these specimens we at length see natural leafage of the vine, maple, &c., introduced, but scarcely yet allowed to throw itself about in nature's wildly wilful way. from the th century onwards, important illuminated manuscripts exist to the present day in such profusion as to deter me from individualizing in this necessarily brief essay. i shall rather dwell upon general characteristics of style, and upon the influence of the leading patrons of the art, in its palmiest days, in england, france, germany, and the netherlands. in these countries the infinite activity of the mendicant friars kept up a steady demand for manuscripts of all kinds: thus richard de bury, bishop of durham, the greatest bibliophile of his age, and the tutor when prince, and friend while sovereign, of edward iii., relates, that in all his book-hunting travels: "whenever we happened to turn aside to the towns and places where the aforesaid paupers had convents, we were not slack in visiting their chests and other repositories of books; for there, amidst the deepest poverty, we found the most exalted riches treasured up; there, in their satchels and baskets, we discovered not only the crumbs that fell from the masters table for the little dogs, but, indeed, the show-bread without leaven,--the bread of angels, containing in itself all that is delectable." these mendicant friars were looked upon with great jealousy by the clergy, who attributed to them the decrease in the number of students in the universities. fitz ralph, archbishop of armagh and chaplain to richard de bury, accuses them of doing "grete damage to learning:" curiously enough, his accusation, contained in an oration denouncing them, bears testimony to their love of books and to their industry in collecting them. "for these orders of beggers, for endeles wynnynges that thei geteth by beggyng of the foreside pryvyleges of schriftes and sepultures and othere, thei beth now so multiplyed in conventes and in persons. that many men tellith that in general studies unnethe, is it founde to sillynge a pfitable book of ye faculte of art, of dyvynyte, of lawe canon, of phisik, other of lawe civil, but all bookes beth y bougt of freres so that en ech convent of freres is a noble librarye and a grete, and so that ene sech frere that hath state in schole, siche as thei beth nowe, hath an hughe librarye. and also y sent of my sugettes to schole thre other foure persons, and hit is said me that some of them beth come home agen for thei myst nought find to selle ovn goode bible; nother othere couenable books." richard de bury's example gave a stimulus to those who succeeded him, both at durham and elsewhere. as the styles of architecture varied in england and france,--agreeing in leading particulars, but each acquiring for itself a set of distinctive characteristics,--so did the art of illumination. in the purely gothic work, such as prevailed from to , extreme _finesse_ in execution, tenderness of colour, gentleness of expression, piquancy of ornament, and elegance of composition, may be regarded as almost invariable attributes of french productions. in england, on the other hand, the style was not so harmonious but more vigorous, the colouring was fuller and deeper, the action of the figures more intense, the power of expression more concentrated, and reaching occasionally in its energy almost to caricature, the sense of humour always freely developed, and a more generally active sentiment of life impressed upon design, not only in figure subjects, but in ornament. in the latter, monkeys and other animals, dragons, and comic incidents, are very frequently intermingled with graceful foliage and heraldic embellishments. in fact it is to the credit of both countries that, with so much that is excellent in common, they should still have displayed such free and distinctive features as marked the works of each respectively. about the year , in both countries the mechanical reproduction of the accredited types and leading incidents of scripture and of catholic faith began to be abandoned; and, mainly from the necessity of giving to the historical personages introduced in secular romances and chronicles individual force and vigour, an attention to portraiture and a transcription of characteristic traits of active life are freely developed. considering how few traces of the art of painting, as exhibited either in panel pictures or in mural embellishments, remain to attest the condition of the arts in england and france in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, it is impossible for the student of gothic art to overestimate the extreme interest which attaches to the chronological series of specimens of the painter's art which may be examined in the great metropolitan libraries of either country. it is very fortunate for our reputation that we are enabled, through so large a series of volumes as still exist, to trace such distinctive and national characteristics as enable us to assert, without fear of error, that so far as graphic dexterity is concerned, the english artificers were fully competent to execute all the artistic productions which have as yet been found upon our soil. that foreigners were freely employed there can be no doubt, but that the works which were executed by them could not have been executed by englishmen, no one can with safety assert, who has traced with any considerable care the gradual development of english art through a series of english illuminated manuscripts. that illumination was excessively popular in england during the th century among the leading families, is proved by the numbers of coats of arms emblazoned in many of the most remarkable english manuscripts. thus in the salisbury lectionary, in the douce, in queen mary's, and in the braybrooke psalters, appear the ancient coats of some of the best blood in the country. a most interesting contemporary illustration of the precise terms upon which these noble patrons employed the best illuminators of the day has been furnished me by a kind and learned antiquarian friend,[ ] in the shape of an extract from the fabric rolls of "york minster,"[ ] of which the following is a translation:-- "august th, .--there appeared robert brekeling, scribe, and swore that he would observe the contract made between him and sir john forbor, viz., that he the said robert would write one psalter with the kalender for the work of the said sir john for _s._ and _d._; and in the same psalter, in the same character, a _placebo_ and a _dirige_, with a hymnal and collectary, for _s._ and _d._ and the said robert will illuminate ('luminabit') all the psalms with great gilded letters, laid in with colours; and all the large letters of the hymnal and collectary will he illuminate with gold and vermilion, except the great letters of double feasts, which shall be as the large gilt letters are in the psalter. and all the letters at the commencement of the verses shall be illuminated with good azure and vermilion; and all the letters at the beginning of the _nocturns_ shall be great uncial (unciales) letters, containing v. lines, but the _beatus vir_ and _dixit dominus_ shall contain vi. or vii. lines; and for the aforesaid illumination and for colours he [john] will give _s._ _d._, and for gold he will give _d._, and _s._ for a cloak and fur trimming. item one robe--one coverlet, one sheet, and one pillow."[ ] under such contracts, and on much more extravagant terms, were no doubt produced the finest of those "specimens of english miniature painting" of the edwardian period, which dr. waagen considers "excel those of all other nations of the time, with the exception of the italian, and are not inferior even to these."[ ] there is probably no document in existence which better illustrates the nature, cost, and classification of illuminated and other manuscripts during the th and th centuries, than the catalogue of the library founded by william of wykeham, himself one of the greatest english patrons of literature, at the college of st. mary, near winchester. this catalogue has been printed _in extenso_ in the "archæological journal" (vol. xv. pp. to ), with notes by the rev. w. h. gunner. it is essentially a _catalogue raisonné_, divided into the following classes, which give a good idea of the staple commodities in mediæval and monastic libraries:-- "ordinalia, antiphonaria, portiphoria, legendæ, collectaria, graduales, manualia, processionalia, gradales, pontificates et epistolares, libri theologiæ, doctores super bibliam, libri sententiarum, doctores super sententias, libri historiales, psalteria glossata, libri augustini, libri gregorii, libri morales diversorum doctorum [to which in many libraries might, i fear, be added, libri immorales diversorum auctorum], libri chronici, libri philosophiæ [strange to say, a total blank in the winchester collection], libri juris canonici, decreta et doctores super decreta, decretales, libri sexti cum doctoribus, clementinæ, summæ et alii tractatus diversorum doctorum juris canonici, libri juris civilis, and libri grammaticales." most of the volumes in this library were donations from both laity and clergy, but mainly from the former. the price of every volume is given. the founder himself presented one missal valued at £ , and john yve, "formerly a fellow of this college, bequeathed a great portiphoriam for laying before the senior fellow standing on the right hand of the upper stall," valued at an equal amount. the york contract, previously quoted, shows precisely how much illumination could be obtained for much less than one pound; and we may therefore form from it a tolerable idea of the magnificence of volumes upon the production of which such large sums were expended. the student will find this catalogue well repay his careful examination. during the last half of the th century and the beginning of the th, the art of illumination received a great impulse in france, from the magnificent patronage bestowed upon it by jean, duc de berri, brother of charles v. of his unique library, which excited the envy of all the princes of his time, and stimulated especially philip the bold, duke of burgundy, and the great duke of bedford, to enter into competition with him, many magnificent specimens still remain--such as his psalter, his two prayer-books, and his copy of the "merveilles du monde."[ ] french illumination attained perfection in these works, and in some few specimens of the more decidedly renaissance period, such as the unsurpassed "hours of anne of brittany," executed about the year : all of these are models for the study of the illuminator of the th century, since in them gaiety and charm of ornament will be found united to a style of miniature-painting of real excellence in art. in the mss. of the period of jean de berri, we meet with the perfection of that lace-like foliation known as the ivy pattern--one that attained an extraordinary popularity in france, england, and the netherlands. in the illuminations of both france and england, during the th and first half of the th centuries, the application of raised and highly-burnished gold became a leading feature, and reached its highest pitch of perfection. when used, as it frequently was, as a ground for miniature subjects and ornaments, it was frequently diapered in the most brilliant and delicate manner. this diapered background gave way at length to an architectural, and, ultimately, under the influence of the italian school and that of the van eycks, to a landscape one. it may be well now to advert to those styles of illumination which, through the flemings settled in this country, greatly affected english art; and which, through the house of burgundy, equally powerfully wrought upon the french styles, not so much of ornament, as of miniature-painting. as m. hippolyte fortoul[ ] justly remarks, "the powerful school established at bruges by the van eycks, at the close of the th century, exercised an immense influence on all the schools of europe, not excepting those of italy;"--an influence which was, indeed, not altogether dissimilar from that brought to bear upon mannerism in art by the pre-raffaelitism of the present day. the foundations of the netherlandish school were sufficiently remote, but may be satisfactorily traced through existing miniatures and paintings. herr heinrich otte, in his "handbuch der kirchlichen kunst-archäologie" (p. ), gives a chronological list of the principal mss. of germanic production from the carlovingian period to the commencement of the th century. up to that period the byzantine manner prevailed, mixed with a peculiar rudeness, such as may be recognised in the works of the great saint and bishop, bernward of hildesheim, whom fiorillo and other writers look upon, with willigis of mainz, as the great animator of german art in the th century.[ ] the conversion of this latter element into gothic originality appears to have taken place during the th century, and a fine manuscript in the british museum (b. r , b. ), ascribed by dr. waagen to a period between and , illustrates the transition.[ ] with the commencement of the th century appear the "lay of the minnesingers," one of the most peculiar of the paris manuscripts, and others cited by dr. kugler, which carry on the evidence of progressive development until the power of expression obtained in painting by meisters wilhelm and stephen of cologne, is reflected in the contemporary miniatures. even did not the celebrated "paris breviary," and the british museum "bedford missal," or, more correctly speaking, "book of hours," both executed in part by the three van eycks, hubert, jan, and margaretha, for the great regent of france, exist, the style of the panel-pictures painted by them would be quite sufficient to show that they must have been illuminators before they became world-renowned _oil-painters_. through their conscientious study of nature, both in landscape and in portrait subjects, a complete change was wrought in the miniatures of all manuscripts produced after their influence had had time to penetrate into the scriptoria and ateliers of the contemporary artist-scribes. had not the invention of printing rapidly supervened, there can be no doubt that even more extraordinary results than followed the general appreciation of their graces as illuminators would have been ensured. it is not in publications such as this little manual that any attempts could be successfully made to reproduce the pictorial results achieved by such masters in such volumes; but an attempt may certainly be made to convey some idea both of the general character of the handwriting and of the ornamental adjuncts by which its effect, and that of the beautiful little pictures framed in by its brilliant playfulness, was so greatly heightened. in plates , , and of this manual, mr. tymms has collected from the "bedford book of hours" much that the student will find worthy of his careful attention. well, indeed, may the enthusiastic dr. dibdin soar off into the most transcendental raptures over a volume which, tested even by the ignoble touchstone of a public sale in , was not knocked down to its eager purchaser, the then marquis of blandford, for a less sum than £ . s. it has now happily found a final resting-place in the british museum (ranking as "add. , "), of which it must always remain as, probably, the greatest treasure, both from its historical association and its intrinsic excellence and beauty--containing, as it does, not less than fifty-nine whole-page miniatures, and about a thousand smaller ones, enriched throughout with gilded lace-work, and ornaments of the description of that shown in our plates, and commended to the student's diligent observation. the later manuscripts of the german and netherlandish schools of miniature-painting generally reflect the mixed cleverness and angularities of such masters as rogier van der weyde the elder, lucas van leyden, martin schongauer, &c.; where, however, the manner of hemling prevailed, spiritual beauty and refinement followed. to dwell upon spanish illuminated manuscripts would be comparatively profitless to the practical student; for all the peculiarities and excellencies they would appear to have at any time possessed, may be found more perfectly developed at first in french, subsequently in netherlandish, and ultimately in italian volumes.[ ] in one most remarkable and indeed historical volume, the actual alliance of spanish writing and initial illumination with flemish subject-painting and arabesque is clearly to be recognized. the result of the union is certainly most happy, for few more beautiful books exist than the exquisite missal which in a passage of golden letters and honied words francesco de roias offers to isabella "the catholic." this magnificent volume, from which our plates (technical manual) nos. , , and , have been taken, was purchased by the authorities of the british museum, in whose catalogue it figures as add. , , of messrs. w. and t. boone in . in this work the brush triumphs over the pen, its decorations are essentially pictorial, and many of them recall, if not the hand, at least the style, of memling and van eyck. unlike volumes of earlier periods in which the illustrations are generally the work of one hand throughout, in this elaborate volume, a division of labour obtains. in this, as in many others of about the same period, not only are the penman and the painter two individuals, but the latter especially becomes half a dozen. this was, no doubt to a great extent, occasioned by the almost universal substitution of lay for clerical illuminators in the latter part of the th century, and by the production at that date of illuminated books for dealers adopting the principles and practice of that system of economic production which ultimately permitted manufacture to almost universally supersede art throughout europe. it remains now only to sketch, with a brevity altogether out of proportion to the great interest of the subject, the progress of the art in italy. if the delineation of naïve and graceful romantic incident, combined with elegant foliated ornament, reached perfection in the illuminations of the french school; if blazoning on gilded grounds was carried to its most gorgeous pitch in oriental and byzantine manuscripts; if intricate interlacements and minute elaboration may be regarded as the special characteristics of hiberno-saxon scribes; and if a noble tone of solid colour, combined with great humour and intense energy of expression, marked england's best productions,--it may be safely asserted, that it was reserved for the italians to introduce into the embellishment of manuscripts those higher qualities of art, their peculiar aptitude for which so long gave them a pre-eminence among contemporaneous schools. i therefore proceed to trace the names and styles of some few of the most celebrated among their illuminators; premising by a reminder to the student of the miserably low pitch to which art had been reduced in italy during the th century. even the most enthusiastic and patriotic writers agree in the all but total dearth of native talent. greeks were employed to reproduce byzantine mannerisms in pictures and mosaics, and to a slight extent no doubt as scribes. illumination was scarcely known or recognized as an indigenous art; for dante, even writing after the commencement of the th century, speaks of it as "quell' arte, che alluminar è chiamata a parisi."[ ] probably the earliest italian manuscript showing signs of real art, is the "ordo officiorum senensis ecclesiæ," preserved in the library of the academy at sienna, and illuminated with little subjects and friezes with animals, by a certain oderico, a canon of the cathedral, in the year . the padre della valle[ ] expressly cautions the student against confounding this odericus with the oderigi of dante,[ ] who died about the year . the latter was unquestionably an artist of some merit, for vasari[ ] speaks of him as an "excellente miniatore," whose works for the papal library, although "in gran parte consumati dal tempo," he had himself seen and admired. some drawings by the hand of this "valente uomo," as he is styled, vasari speaks of possessing in his own collection. baldinucci makes out oderigi to have been of the florentine school on no other grounds than because vasari describes him as "molto amico di giotto in roma;" and because dante appears to have known him well. lanzi,[ ] however, more correctly classes him with the bolognese school, from his teaching franco bolognese at bologna, and on the strength of the direct testimony of one of the earliest commentators on dante--benvenuto da imola. this same franco worked much for benedict ix., and far surpassed his master. vasari especially commends the spirit with which he drew animals, and mentions a drawing in his own possession of a lion tearing a tree as of great merit. thus oderigi, the contemporary of cimabue, and franco, the pupil of oderigi and contemporary of giotto, appear to have been to the art of illumination what cimabue and his pupil giotto were to the art of painting,--the pupil in both cases infinitely excelling the master. to them succeeded, about the middle of the th century, a scarcely less celebrated pair--don jacopo fiorentino, and don silvestro, both monks in the camaldolese monastery, "degli angeli," at florence. the former, baldinucci tells us, "improving, with infinite study, every moment not devoted to his monastic duties, acquired a style of writing greatly sought after for choral books." the latter, who was rather an artist than a scribe, enriched the productions of his friend with miniatures so beautiful, as to cause the books thus jointly produced to excite, at a later period, the special admiration of lorenzo the magnificent, and his son, the no less magnificent leo x.[ ] so proud were their brother-monks of the skill of frati jacopo and silvestro, that after their death they preserved their two right hands as honoured relics. about a century later, the leading illuminators were bartolomeo and gherardo,--the former abbot of san clemente, at arrezzo, and the latter a florentine painter and "miniatore," whom vasari confounds with attavante, a painter, engraver, and mosaicist. of all the italian artists who adopted the style of the illuminators, if they did not themselves illuminate, the most celebrated certainly are fra angelico da fiesole[ ] and gentile da fabriano. the majority of the works of both are little else than magnified miniatures of the highest merit. the school of siennese illumination was scarcely less distinguished than that of florence. m. rio dwells with enthusiasm on the books of the kaleffi and leoni, still preserved in the archivio delle riformazioni, and especially on those decorated by nicolo di sozzo, in . the greatest master of the school, simone memmi,[ ] the intimate friend of petrarch, was himself an illuminator of extraordinary excellence, as may be seen by the celebrated virgil of the ambrosian library at milan, which contains, amongst other beautiful miniatures by his hand, the fine portrait of virgil, and a very remarkable allegorical figure of poetry, quite equal in artistic merit to any of the artist's larger and better-known works in fresco or tempera.[ ] it is, however, in the library of the cathedral at sienna, which retains many of the magnificent choir-books executed by fra benedetto da matera, a benedictine of monte cassino, and fra gabriele mattei of sienna, that the greatest triumphs of the school are still to be recognized. this series of volumes, although much reduced from its original extent by the abstractions made by cardinal burgos, who carried off a vast quantity to spain, is still the finest belonging to any capitular establishment in italy, and worthily represents the grandeur of italian illumination in "cinque cento" days. the series of similar volumes next in importance to those of sienna, is attached to the choir of the church and monastic establishment of the benedictines at perugia, known as "san de' casinensi." of these, nothing more need be said than that they are worthy of the stalls of the same choir, the design of which is attributed to raffaelle, and the execution to stefano da bergamo, and fra damiano, of the same town, the great "intarsiatore." formerly, as m. rio observes,[ ] "ferrara could boast of possessing a series of miniatures, executed principally in the seclusion of its convents, from the time of the benedictine monk serrati, who in ornamented the books of the choir with figures of a most noble character,[ ] till that of fra girolamo fiorino, who, towards the beginning of the th century, devoted himself to the same occupation in the monastery of san bartolomeo, and formed in his young disciple cosmè a successor who was destined to surpass his master, and to carry this branch of art to a degree of perfection till then unknown. even at the present day we may see, in the twenty-three volumes presented by the bishop bartolomeo delia rovere to the cathedral, and in the twenty-eight enormous volumes removed from the certosa to the public library, how much reason the ferrarese have to be proud of the possession of such treasures, and to place them by the side of the manuscripts of tasso and ariosto. the "subjects generally treated by these mystical artists were marvellously adapted to their special vocation: they were the life of the holy virgin, the principal festivals celebrated by the church, or popular objects of devotion; in short, all the dogmas which were susceptible of this mode of representation, works of mercy, the different sacraments, the imposing ceremonies of religion, and, in general, all that was most poetical in liturgy or legend. in compositions of so exclusive a character, naturalism could only be introduced in subordination to the religious element."[ ] while this was the case with the majority of illuminations executed under the auspices of the church, in those of a secular nature, undertaken for the great princes and nobles, another set of characteristics prevailed. for the gonzagas, sforzas, d'estes, medici, strozzi, visconti, and other great families, the best artists were constantly employed in decorating both written and printed volumes, in which portraiture is freely introduced, and picturesque and historical subjects are represented with great vivacity and attention to costume and local truth. thus in the truly exquisite "grant of lands," by ludovico il moro to his wife beatrice d'este, dated january th, , and preserved in the british museum, speaking portraits of both ludovico and beatrice are introduced, with their arms and beautiful arabesques.[ ] again, in the hanrot "sforziada," the first page contains exquisite miniatures of three members of the princely family of the sforzas, by the hand of the all-accomplished girolamo dai libri.[ ] this artist, a truly celebrated veronese and worthy fellow-townsman, with the almost equally able fra liberale, whose work in the manner of giovanni bellini excited the utmost envy on the part of the siennese illuminators, was himself the son of a miniature-painter, known as francesco dai libri, and bequeathed the name and art of his father to his own son,--thus maintaining the traditions of good design acquired in the great school of padua, under andrea mantegna[ ] and squarcione, during three generations of illuminators. girolamo was by far the most celebrated of the three. as a painter, his works possess distinguished merit, and there still remain good samples of his abilities in the churches of san zeno and sant' anastasia, at verona. he also derives some credit from the transcendent merits of his pupil giulio clovio. vasari's description of the talents of girolamo[ ] gives so lively a picture of the style which reached its highest vogue at the end of the th, and during the first half of the th centuries in italy, that i am tempted to translate it. "girolamo," he says, "executed flowers so naturally and beautifully, and with so much care, as to appear real to the beholder. in like manner he imitated little cameos and other precious stones and jewels cut in intaglio, so that nothing like them, or so minute, was ever seen. among his smallest figures, such as he represented on gems or cameos, some might be observed no larger than little ants, and yet in all of them might be made out every limb and muscle, in a manner which to be believed must needs be seen." mr. ottley supposes that giulio clovio (born , died ) worked previous to his receipt of the instruction of girolamo in a drier manner, in which no evidence appears of that imitation of michael angelesque pose in his figures, which in his subsequent production became so leading a characteristic of his style. it is in his earlier manner that giulio is believed to have illuminated for clement vii.[ ] ( - ), while for his successor, paul iii. ( - ), he worked abundantly, and gradually acquired that which is best known as his later manner, in which he continued to labour, according to vasari, until , at the great age of eighty years. mr. ottley, however, recognizes his hand in mss. which must have been at least five years later--during the pontificate of gregory xiii.[ ] it is obviously impossible, in such an essay as the present, to dwell in detail upon the merits of so accomplished a master of his art. fortunately we possess in this metropolis two fine specimens of his skill, both tolerably accessible--one in the soane[ ] and the other in the british museum.[ ] a third, of great splendour, is in the possession of mr. towneley, and a fourth, in the shape of an altar-card, attributed to him, is to be found in the kensington museum; and several fragments, formerly in mr. rogers's possession, have passed to mr. whitehead and to the british museum. all of these exhibit a refinement of execution, combined with a brilliancy of colour and excellence of drawing, which has never been surpassed by any illuminator. vasari gives a complete list and description of his principal works, and proves him to have been not less industrious than able. a contemporary of giulio's, whose name has been overpowered by the greater brilliancy of that of the cellini of illumination, was a certain apollonius of capranica, or, as he signs himself, "apollonius de bonfratellis de capranica, capellæ et sacristiæ apostolicæ miniator." mr. ottley most justly states,[ ] "that it is impossible to speak in too high terms of the beauty of his borders, wherein he often introduces compartments with small figures, representing subjects of the new testament, which are touched with infinite delicacy and spirit." his drawing, which is of a decidedly michael-angelesque character, is of less merit when the nude is represented on a larger scale. his harmony of colour is extraordinary, rather lower in tone than giulio clovio's, but equally glowing, and more powerful. some beautiful specimens of his handicraft remain in the possession of mr. t. m. whitehead. the late mr. rogers possessed many fragments, the most precious of which have found their way into the national collection. his work is usually dated, and the dates appear to range from to . apollonius having been official illuminator to the very institution from which celotti derived his richest spoils, it may readily be imagined that his collection included an unprecedented series of beautiful examples of buonfratelli's style. long after the invention of printing, the apostolic chamber retained its official illuminators; and among them one of the most noteworthy is unquestionably the artist who signs his works, "ant. maria antonotius auximas"--a native of osimo, and a _protégé_ of the princely house of the barberini and its magnificent head, urban viii. ( - ). he was a pupil of pietro da cortona, and an artist of great skill and refinement.[ ] for still more recent popes artists of great excellence continued to be employed, including for alexander vii. the celebrated magdalena corvina, who worked from to ; and for innocent xi ( to ) a german, who signs his productions "joann, frid-heribach." as the popes retained their illuminators for the decoration of precious documents, so did the doges of venice; and probably the most magnificent of all illumination, executed after the general spread of printed books had checked, although not extinguished, the art, may be found in the precious "ducales," wrought indeed by several of the greatest venetian painters.[ ] i need scarcely remind the reader, that the earliest wood-cut and printed books were made to imitate manuscripts so closely as to deceive the inexperienced eye. "artes moriendi," "specula," "bibliæ pauperum," and "donatuses,"--the principal types of block books,[ ]--represent illuminated manuscripts in popular demand at the date of the introduction into europe of xylographic art. spaces were frequently left, both in the block books and in the earliest books printed with movable type, for the illumination, by hand, of initial letters, so as to carry the illusion as far as possible. this practice was abandoned as soon as the learned discovered the means by which such wonderfully cheap apparent transcripts of voluminous works could be brought into the market; and the old decorated initial and ornamental letters were reproduced from type and wood blocks. the mainz psalter of , and other books printed by fust and schoeffer, required only the addition of a little colour here and there to delude any inexperienced eye into the belief that they were really hand-worked throughout. such imitations were but poor substitutes for the originals in point of beauty, however excellent when regarded from a utilitarian point of view. every country has more or less cause to mourn the senseless destruction of many noble old volumes which the printing-press never has, and now, alas! never can replace; but none more than england, in which cupidity and intolerance destroyed recklessly. thus, after the dissolution of monastic establishments, persons were appointed to search out all missals, books of legends, and such "superstitious books," and to destroy or sell them for waste paper; reserving only their bindings, when, as was frequently the case, they were ornamented with massive gold and silver, curiously chased, and often further enriched with precious stones; and so industriously had these men done their work, destroying all books in which they considered popish tendencies to be shown by illumination, the use of red letters, or of the cross, or even by the--to them--mysterious diagrams of mathematical problems--that when, some years after, leland was appointed to examine the monastic libraries, with a view to the preservation of what was valuable in them, he found that those who had preceded him had left little to reward his search. bale, himself an advocate for the dissolution of monasteries, says: "never had we bene offended for the losse of our lybraryes beyng so many in nombre and in so desolate places for the moste parte, yf the chief monuments and moste notable workes of our excellent wryters had bene reserved, yf there had bene in every shyre of englande but one solemyne lybrary to the preservacyon of those noble workes, and preferrements of good learnynges in our posteryte it had bene yet somewhat. but to destroye all without consyderacion is and wyll be unto englande for ever a most horryble infamy amonge the grave senyours of other nations. a grete nombre of them wych purchased of those superstycyose mansyons reserved of those lybrarye bokes, some to serve their jaks, some to scoure theyr candelstyckes, and some to rubbe theyr bootes; some they solde to the grossers and sope sellers, and some they sent over see to the bokebynders, not in small nombre, but at tymes whole shippes ful. i know a merchant man, whyche shall at thys tyme be namelesse, that boughte the contents of two noble lybraryes for xl shyllyngs pryce, a shame it is to be spoken. thys stuffe bathe he occupyed in the stide of greye paper for the space of more than these ten years, and yet hathe store ynough for as manye years to come. a prodyguous example is thys, and to be abhorred of all men who love theyr natyon as they shoulde do." wherever the reformation extended throughout europe, a corresponding destruction of ancient illuminated manuscripts took place, and in localities where fanaticism failed to do its work of devastation, indifference proved a consuming agent of almost equal energy; and, indeed, there is no more forcible illustration of the untiring zeal and industry of the illuminators of old, than the fact, that, after all that has been done to stamp out the sparks still lingering in their embers, their works should still glow with such shining lights in all the great public libraries of europe. despite all this ruthless destruction, and the universal extension of the art of printing, ornamental penmanship has never been altogether extinguished as a pictorial art. the apostolic chamber, as we have remarked, retained, until quite recently, its official illuminator. the luxuriant magnates of the court of the "grande monarque" still provided employment for men like jary and prévost, while in england many heraldic and genealogical mss. of the th, and even th centuries, still exist to prove that the art was dormant rather than extinct. that it has a brilliant future yet in store for it no one can hesitate to believe who is enabled to recognize the power of design, and the capability to execute--either on paper or vellum--with the brush or pen--by hand, or by calling in the aid of the printer and lithographer for the rapid multiplication and dissemination of beautiful specimens--manifested by owen jones, his pupil albert warren, and many other able artists and amateurs, still gracing this th century of ours with works, many of which will doubtless survive to our honour and credit so long as arts and states may endure. it is in a humble effort to assist in such a consummation that these little manuals have been written, illustrated, and published. m. digby wyatt. end of part i. what illuminating should be in the present day. illumination, in whatever form practised, can never be properly regarded as any other than one of the genera into which the art of polychromatic decoration may be subdivided. what was originally termed illumination, was simply the application of minium or red lead, as a colour or ink, to decorate, or draw marked attention to, any particular portion of a piece of writing, the general text of which was in black ink. the term was retained long after the original red lead was almost entirely superseded by the more brilliant cinnabar, or vermilion. as ornaments of all kinds were gradually superadded to the primitive distinctions, marked in manuscripts by the use of different-coloured inks, the term acquired a wider significance, and, from classical times to the present, has always been regarded as including the practice of every description of ornamental or ornamented writing. because such embellishments were, during the early and middle ages, and, in fact, until long after the invention of printing, almost invariably executed on vellum, there is no reason whatever why illumination should be applied to that material, or to paper, which has taken its place, only; wood, metal, slate, stone, canvass, plaster, all may be made to receive it. again: because ancient illumination was almost entirely executed in colours, in the use of which water and some glutinous medium were the only "vehicles," there is no reason why modern illumination should not be worked in oil, turpentine, encaustic, fresco, tempera, varnish, and by every process in which decorative painting is ever wrought in these days. it is in such an extension that the most valuable functions of the art are likely to consist in all time to come. that utilitarian application which it, originally and for so many centuries, found in the production of beautiful books, copies of which could be elaborated by no other means than hand labour, has been, to a great extent, superseded by chromolithography and chromotypy. no doubt a wide field for useful, and even productive labour, is still left to the practical illuminator on paper and vellum, in designing and preparing exquisite originals for reproduction by those processes, as well as in the rich and tasteful blazoning of pedigrees, addresses, family records and memorials, and in the illustration for presentation, or for private libraries, of transcripts from favourite authors; but, at the same time, an equally elegant and useful application of the art would be to enrich ceilings, walls, cornices, string-courses, panels, labels round doors and windows, friezes, bands, chimney-pieces, and stained and painted furniture in churches, school-rooms, dwellings, and public buildings of all kinds, with beautiful and appropriate inscriptions, of graceful form and harmonious colouring. such illumination would form, not only an agreeable, but an eminently useful decoration. how many texts and sentences, worthy, in every sense, of being "written in letters of gold," might not be thus brought prominently under the eyes of youth, manhood, and old age, for hope, admonition, and comfort. no more skill, energy, and taste are requisite for the production of this class of illumination than are essential for satisfactory work upon vellum and paper; and while in the one case the result of the labour may be made an incessant enjoyment for many, in the other, it is seldom more than a nine-days' wonder, shut up in a book or portfolio, and seen so seldom as scarcely to repay the amateur for the expense and trouble involved in its execution. this, if i may be allowed the term, manifold application of forms, primarily available for book decoration only, has not been lost sight of in the selection and arrangement of the illustrations, both in this and in the "historical manual." mr. tymms has, with excellent judgment, so arranged them as to lead the student who may occupy himself in copying them, or enlarging from them, gradually onwards from the comparatively easy to the more difficult varieties of the art. adopting, in all cases, the alphabet of capital letters as a starting-point, the beginner will do well to learn to write before attempting to learn to draw: he should copy the alphabet, say on plate i., fig. , on waste paper--common cartridge, or paper-hanger's lining paper, will be best--many time; at first, in fac-simile, then twice the size as printed, then four times, then eight times, until he may be able to form letters as much as six inches high, correctly. having so far mastered the capitals, let him try in exactly the same way to produce and reproduce the same text, or lower-case letters in which the passages from scripture, say plate no. , fig. , have been written. let him then try a sentence not given in the plates, using for it the capital and lower-case letters he has been learning how to form, and let him work out his own sentence in as many different sizes as he has previously tried mr. tymms's in. by the time he has drawn the enriched initial letters of the same plate several times, he will find that his eye and hand will have probably gained sufficient command to justify his attempting to copy, in outline as before, on waste paper, and both on a small and large scale, the ornaments given on plate no. . in the intervals between his outline studies, the young illuminator may occupy himself in mastering the instructions given in this volume, so that he may have a general idea of the theory of the different processes before be commences an attempt to put them in practice. his first lesson in colouring should then commence by his attempting to colour plate no. , in fac-simile of plate no. . it will be well to begin gilding and silvering with shell-gold and aluminium, reserving for more advanced experiments the use of gold or silver paper and leaf. the student may then with advantage copy in outline, first of all the outline plate no. , inking it in so as to produce, on fine-grained drawing paper or card, a fac-simile of the printed plate. he should next proceed to colour the printed plate to correspond with plate no. . avoiding any defects he may have made in this operation, he may colour his own outline as he had done the printed one; he will then find himself able to copy both outline and colour on a small scale. in his next set of lessons a much heavier demand will be made on his capabilities. to satisfactorily reproduce, either upon the same or upon an enlarged scale, the compact black letter of plate vii., and the solid brilliant colours of plate viii., with the golden grounds, which should in this case be highly burnished, will be found a much more difficult task than any yet encountered. the student must not be discouraged by a little failure at first. the technical operations of illumination are essentially manipulative, and like the fingering of a musical instrument, must be learnt by frequent and active exercise. the mere degree of skill requisite to enable the artist to lay on a perfectly flat tint of very strong or of very delicate colour, is only likely to be acquired after he may have washed some fifty different tints, more or less cloudy and muddled. few hands will be found capable of tracing out a pure, firm, even outline, of equal thickness and force in every part, with either pen, pencil, or brush, which have not made many a score of ragged, feeble, or blotched attempts at steadiness. to keep a number of lines perfectly upright, parallel, or evenly spaced, demands an amount of dexterity which can only be gained by laborious practice. the student must not therefore feel discouraged if at first his hand may scarcely answer to the call made upon it. the failure of to-day, with proper attention and perseverance, may become the germ of the success of to-morrow; all that is essential is never on one day to repeat the fault of its predecessor. nothing will tend to give the beginner greater confidence than the habit of working out the same forms and processes upon various scales. taking, for instance, such an initial letter as the p, fig. , plate x.; it would be an improving lesson to copy it in pen-and-ink outline, exactly as it is shown, and then to copy it, say six times the size given on the plate, thickening the lines, of course, in proportion. then let the student once again try to copy it in fac-simile, and he will himself be probably surprised to find how much better and more easily he will accomplish his task than he was enabled to do on his first trial. a corresponding experiment, involving the application of gold and brilliant colours, such as would be essential to a reproduction of figs. , , , , or , of plate ii., on various scales, will be found probably no less useful and satisfactory. a similar technical principle to that which has governed the selection and order of the plates in this manual has also determined those in its companion, the "historical manual." beginning with the simpler conventional styles of the carlovingian school, in plates i., ii., and iii. (from the fragments of the bible of charles the bald, harleian, , ), involving outline and flat tinting only, the student may advance to the lightly-shaded pen-work and foliation of the romanesque style given in plates iv., v., and vi., from the british museum, reg. , c. vii. in the purely mediæval illumination of the th century, plates vii., viii., and ix., from the british museum (reg. , d ), the tints become more solid; while the raised and embossed gold, the complicated diapers, and more fully-shaded foliage, demand both considerable mechanical dexterity, and some real artistic capability on the part of the amateur, who would successfully revive the brilliant and powerful execution of the master-scribes of the edwardian age. towards the end of the th century, the miniatures of the illuminated books reflected the general advance made all over europe in the art of painting. imitative art rapidly superseded conventional, and although much ornament is freely introduced in combination with small pictures, it is made to participate in the general system of light and shade and arrangement of colour which dominates over the more essentially-pictorial portions of the decoration. such a style of ornament is well shown in plates x., xi., and xii., from the bedford (so called) missal, and in the three last plates of this manual, from the beautiful missal of ferdinand and isabella--british museum, add. , . thus the student will find, that his own progress will tally with the transitional changes of the art, from its infancy to its most artistic phase, and that long before he may have learnt enough to enable him to imitate successfully the miniature style of the th century, he may be in a position to produce tolerably satisfactory reproductions of the early and mediæval work. having thus suggested the most profitable mode in which the student can, i believe, make use of the beautiful examples mr. tymms has prepared for his assistance, i consider it well to proceed to offer to his notice such counsel, as may, i trust, tend to induce him not to rest contented with reproduction of old examples upon a small scale, but rather to extend the sphere of his studies and operations into the origination of a fresh and expanded system of decoration, based as a starting-point upon the labours of the most zealous masters of the craft. in the few remarks i am about to offer in respect to what the art of illumination really should be now, i propose to treat briefly, but specifically, of its application to each of the different substances on which it may be most satisfactorily worked, in the following series: vellum, paper, tracing-paper, canvass, plaster, stone, metal, wood. dealing with design only in this section of my essay, i propose, in the following and concluding one, to adhere to the same order in noticing the best processes by which amateurs may carry out the class of work i would recommend to their notice. to commence, therefore, with vellum: it is obvious that good copies of ancient illuminated manuscripts can be made on this material only, for there is a charm about the colour and texture of well-prepared calf-skin, which no paper can be made to possess. for the same reason, and on account of its extraordinary toughness and durability, it is especially suitable for pedigrees, addresses, and other documents which it may be considered desirable to preserve for future generations. to transcribe on vellum and decorate the writings of ancient and modern authors so as to form unique volumes, appears to me--nowadays, when god gives to every man and woman so much good hard work to do, if they will but do it--little else than a waste of human life. in days when few could read, and pictures drawn by hand were the only means within the reach of the priesthood, of bringing home to the minds of the ignorant populace the realities of biblical history, and of stimulating the eye of faith by exhibiting to the material eye pictures of those sufferings and triumphs of saints and martyrs, on which the church of rome during the middle ages mainly based its assertions of supremacy, it was all very well to spend long lives of celibacy and monastic seclusion in such labours; but the same justification can never be pleaded again. i am quite ready to admit that the exceptional manufacture of these pretty picture-books may be not only agreeable, but even useful: it is the abuse, and not the occasional resort to the practice, i would venture to denounce. for instance, a mother could scarcely do a thing more likely to benefit her children, and to fix the lessons of love or piety she would desire to plant in their memories, than to illuminate for them little volumes, which, from their beauty or value, they might be inclined to treasure through life. interesting her children in her work as it grew under her hand, how many precious associations in after-life might hang about these very books. again: for young people, the mere act of transcription, independent of the amount of thought bestowed upon good words and pure thoughts, and the selection of ornament to appropriately illustrate them, would tend to an identification of the individual with the best and highest class of sentiments. all that has been said with respect to illumination on vellum applies, with equal force, to illumination on paper. there has to be borne in mind, however, the essential difference that exists between the relative durability of the two substances. elaboration is decidedly a great element of beauty in illumination: and neatly-wrought elaboration cannot be executed without care, patience, and a considerable sacrifice of time: why, therefore, bestow that care, patience, and time upon a less permanent material, when one only a trifle more costly, but infinitely more lasting, is as easily procured? work on paper, therefore, only as you would write exercises or do sums upon a slate; learn and practise upon paper, but reserve all more serious efforts for vellum only. no effect can be got upon the former material, which cannot, with a little more dexterity, be attained upon the latter. as none of the other substances mentioned as those on which illumination may be executed are available for making up into books, before proceeding to a consideration of the special conditions under which the art may be applied to them, i beg to offer the following recommendations with respect to design, as suitable for book-illustration generally.[ ] firstly:--take care that your text be perfectly legible; for, however cramped and confused the contents of many of those volumes we most admire may now appear, it is to be remembered that they were all written in the handwriting most easily read by the students of the periods in which they were written. the old scribes never committed the solecism of which we are too often guilty, of bestowing infinite pains on writing that which, when written, not one in a hundred could, or can, decipher. secondly:--fix the scale of your writing and ornament with reference to the size of your page, and adhere to it throughout the volume. this rule, which was rigidly observed in all the best periods of the art, is incessantly disregarded in the present day; and to such an extent, that not only does scale frequently differ, as we turn page after page, but the same page will frequently exhibit scroll-work, derived from some great choral folio, interwreathed with leafage borrowed from some pocket missal or book of hours. thirdly:--if you adopt any historical style or particular period as a basis on which your text, miniatures, or ornamentation are to be constructed, maintain its leading features consistently, so as to avoid letting your work appear as though it had been begun in the th century, and only completed in the th; or, as i have once or twice seen, _vice versâ_. for however erratic changes of style may appear to be in art, as they run one another down along the course of time, it will be invariably found that there exists a harmony between all contemporary features, which cannot be successfully disregarded; and this it is which has ever rendered eclecticism in art a problem,--not impossible, perhaps, to solve, but one which, as yet at least, has never met with a satisfactory practical solution. fourthly:--sustain your energies evenly throughout your volume; for, remember, your critics will estimate your powers, not by your best page, but by a mean struck between your best and your worst. book illumination is generally looked upon as microscopic work, demanding the greatest exactitude; and whatever merits any page may display, they will go for little, if that page is disfigured by a crooked line, or a single leaf insufficiently or incorrectly shadowed; and the greater the merit, the more notable the drawback. fifthly:--rigidly avoid contrasting natural with conventional foliage. adopt which you like, for by either beautiful effects may be produced; but mix them, and the charm of both is gone. natural foliage may be successfully combined with any other varieties of conventional ornament, excepting those based upon natural foliage. sixthly:--take care that some at least of your dominant lines and borders are kept parallel to the rectangular sides of your pages; for unless your flowing and wayward ornaments are corrected by this soberer contrast, they will, however beautiful in themselves, have a straggling and untidy appearance in the volume. where the lines of text are strongly marked, as in black ink on a white ground, and the page is so far filled with text as to leave but little space for ornament, this rule may be, to a great extent, disregarded, for the lines of the text will themselves supply the requisite contrast to the flowing forms; but where the page is nearly filled with ornament, or when the text is faint only, as in gold lettering on a white ground, it becomes imperative. seventhly:--be decided, but temperate, in your contrasts of colour. it would obviously exceed the limits of these notes to attempt in them to enter upon the principles of the "harmony of colour;" they must be studied from treatises specially devoted to the subject. such study must, however, be accompanied by constant experiment and practice; for it would be as foolish to expect a man to be a good performer upon any instrument, because he had learnt the theory of music, as it would be to suppose that he must necessarily paint in harmonious colouring, because he studied the theory of balance in combination. to the experienced eye and hand, functions become intuitive, which, to the mere theorist, however profound, are toil and weariness of spirit. such are a few of the rules, by attention to which the illuminators of old achieved some of their happiest effects, and which can never be safely disregarded by those who would emulate their efforts. in taking up the class of substances on which illumination, as applied to general decoration, may be best executed, we meet, firstly, with one occupying a somewhat intermediate position,--viz., tracing-paper. i term its position intermediate, because, it may be wrought upon in either oil or water colour; and because, when so wrought upon, it may be either mounted on paper or card, and so made to contribute to book or picture enrichment; or attached to walls or other surfaces, brought forward in oil-colours, and be so enlisted in a general system of mural illumination. how this may best be done technically will be hereafter described; here i may notice only the use which may be made of this convenient material, by many not sufficiently advanced in design or drawing to be able to invent or even copy correctly by free hand, and yet desirous of embellishing some particular surface with decorative illumination. for instance, let it be desired to fill a rectangular panel of any given dimension with an illuminated inscription. take a sheet of tracing-paper the exact size, double it up in both directions, and the creases will give the vertical and horizontal guidelines for keeping the writing square and even: then set out the number of lines and spaces requisite for the inscription, fixing upon certain initial letters or alphabets for reproduction on an enlarged scale, from this work, or any other of a similar kind, and making the height of the lines correspond therewith. then lay the tracing over either the original or the rough enlargement, and trace with pen, pencil, or brush, each letter in succession, taking care to get each letter into its proper place, in reference to the whole panel, to the letter last traced, and to the other letters remaining to be traced. when this is completed, trace on whatever ornaments may best fill up the open spaces and harmonize with the style of lettering. when the tracing is completed, with a steady hand pick in all the ground-tint, keeping it as even as possible; and heighten the letters or ornaments in any way that may be requisite to make them correspond with the models from which they may have been taken. by adopting this method of working, with care and neatness of hand, very agreeable results may be obtained, without its being indispensable for the illuminator to be a skilful draughtsman. the tracing-paper may be ultimately attached to its proper place, and finished off, as will be hereafter recommended; and, if cleverly managed, it will be impossible to detect that that material has ever been employed. the special convenience of illuminating upon canvass is, that instead of the operator having to work either from a ladder or scaffold, or on a vertical or horizontal surface, he may do all that is necessary at an easel or on a table on terra firma. his work when completed may be cut out of the sheet of canvass on which it has been painted, and may be fastened to the wall, ceiling, or piece of furniture for the decoration of which it may have been intended. all that is essential, with respect to the designs which may be wrought upon it, is, to take care that they are fitted for the situations they may be ultimately intended to occupy. thus it must be obvious that it would be an entire waste of time to elaborate designs destined to be fixed many yards from the eye, as minutely as those which would be in immediate proximity to it. no branch of designing illuminated or other ornament requires greater experience to succeed in than the adjustment of the size of parts and patterns to the precise conditions of light, distance, foreshortening, &c., under which they are most likely to be viewed. illumination on plaster may be executed either in distemper, if the walls or ceiling have been sized only, or in oil if they have been brought forward in oil-colours. the former is the most rapid, but least durable process. hence decoration is usually applied in oil to walls which are liable to be rubbed and brushed against, and in distemper, to ceilings, which are, comparatively speaking, out of harm's way. very pretty decorations on plaster may be executed by combining hand-worked illumination with diapered or other paper-hangings. thus, for instance, taking one side of a room, say about eleven feet high, to the under-side of the plaster cornice, mark off about a foot in depth on the wall from the bottom of the cornice, set out the width of the wall into three or more panels, dividing the panels by upright pilasters of the same width as the depth of the top border. at the height of about four feet from the ground mark off the top edge of another horizontal band, which make also one foot deep; continue on the lines of the pilasters to within six inches of the top of the skirting, and draw in a horizontal border, six inches high, running all round upon the top edge of the skirting: then paint, in a plain colour, a margin, three or four inches wide, all round the panels formed by the bands and pilasters, and let the paper-hanger fill in the panels with any pretty diapered paper which may agree with the style and colour in which you may desire to work your illumination. the side of your room will then present two horizontal lines--one next the cornice, and one at about dado-height, suitable for the reception of illuminated inscriptions. in setting these out, care must be taken to bring a capital letter into a line with the centre of each pilaster, so that a foliated ornament, descending from the upper inscription, and ascending from the lower one, may meet and intertwine on the pilasters, forming panelled compartments for the introduction of subjects, if thought desirable.[ ] it is by no means necessary for the sides of these pilasters, or the bounding lines of the bands containing inscriptions, to be kept straight; they may be varied at pleasure, so long as they are kept symmetrical in corresponding parts, and uniformly filled up with foliation emanating from, or connected with, the illuminated letters. agreeable results may be produced by variations of such arrangements as the one suggested. frequently round doors, windows, fireplaces, &c., inscriptions may be executed with very good effect, either on label-scrolls or simple borders, and with greater or less brilliancy of colour, according to the circumstances of the case. often simplicity and quiet have greater charms than glitter or brilliancy; thus black and red, on a light-coloured ground, the most primitive combination in the history of writing, is always sure to produce an agreeable impression: blue, crimson, or marone on gold, or _vice versâ_, are no less safe: black, white, and gold, counterchanged, can hardly go wrong. few amateurs will be likely to attempt illuminations upon plaster ceilings, owing to the great difficulty they will experience in working overhead with a steady hand. they will generally do wisely--to execute the principal portions on paper, tracing-paper, or canvas,--to fasten them up, as will be hereafter directed,--and to confine the decoration actually painted on the ceiling, to a few panels, lines, or plain bands of colour, which may be readily executed by any clever house-painter or grainer, even if altogether ignorant of drawing and the art of design. the most beautiful illuminated ceiling of mediæval times i believe to be that of the chapel in the celebrated jacques coeur's house, at bourges, in france. it is vaulted, and each compartment contains inscribed labels held by floating angels. the white draperies of the angels are relieved on a delicate blue ground only, so that the stronger contrast of the black writing on the white labels gives a marked predominance to the inscriptions; which, being arranged symmetrically, produce in combination agreeable geometrical figures. most of the preceding remarks apply equally to stone; but in reference to that material, there is one point to specially enforce,--namely, the advisability of not covering the whole of the surface with paint. there is about all stone a peculiar granulation, and in many varieties a slight silicious sparkle, which it is always well to preserve as far as possible. illuminate, by all means, inscriptions, panels, friezes, &c., colour occasionally the hollows of mouldings, and gild salient members sufficiently to carry the colour about the monument, whether it may be a font, a pulpit, a tomb, a reredos, a staircase, a screen, or a doorway, and prevent the highly-illuminated portion from looking spotty and unsupported; but by no means apply paint all over. it is not necessary to produce a good effect; it destroys the surface and appearance of the stone, making it of no more worth than if it were plaster, and it clogs up all the fine arrises and angles of the moulded work or carving. wherever stained glass is inserted in stonework, the application of illumination, or at any rate of coloured diaper-work of an analogous nature, is almost an imperative necessity, in order to balance the appearance of chill and poverty given to the stonework by its contrast with the brilliant translucent tints of the painted glass. in illuminating stonework, it seldom answers to attempt to apply decoration executed on paper or canvass; it should in all cases (excepting when it is at a great distance from the eye) be done upon the stone itself. the only exception is the one to which i shall allude in speaking of metal. slate, although from its portability and non-liability to change its shape under variations of temperature, a convenient material for filling panels, and forming slabs for attachment to walls, is not to be recommended to the amateur, owing to the difficulty he will experience in effecting a good and safe adhesion between his pigments and the surface of the slate. in what is called enamelled slate, an excellent attachment is secured by gradually and repeatedly raising the slate to a high temperature; but the process would be far too troublesome and expensive for practice by the great majority of amateurs. metal in thin sheets is liable only to the objection from which slate is free,--namely, that it is difficult to keep its surface from undulation in changes of temperature. in all other respects, both zinc, copper, lead, and iron, bind well with any oleaginous vehicle, and offer the great convenience that they may be cut out to any desired shape, and attached to any other kind of material by nails, screws, or even by strong cements, such as marine glue. zinc is, perhaps, the best of all, as it cuts more readily than copper or iron, and keeps its shape better than lead; care should, however, be always taken to hang it from such points as shall allow it to freely contract and expand. if this is not attended to, its surface will never remain flat. it is a material particularly well adapted for cutting out into labels to surmount door and window arches, or to fill the arcading of churches and chapels, and to be illuminated with texts or other inscriptions. very beautiful effects may be produced by combining illumination with the polished brass-work which is now so admirably manufactured by messrs. hardman, hart, and others. care should, however, be taken not to overdo any objects of this nature. let the main lines of construction always remain unpainted, so that there may be no question as to the substance in which the article is made, and restrict the application of coloured ornament or lettering to panels, and, generally speaking, to the least salient forms. of course, where it can be afforded, enamelling offers the most legitimate mode of illuminating metal-work; and ere long it is to be hoped that the beautiful series of processes by means of which so much durable beauty of colour was conferred on mediæval metal-work may be restored to their proper position in british industry, and popularized as they should, and, i believe, might readily be. to woodwork, illumination may be made a most fitting embellishment; and the application of a very little art will speedily be found to raise the varnished deal cabinet or bookcase far above the majority of our standard "institutions" in the way of heavy and expensive mahogany ones, in interest at least, if not in money value. almost every article of furniture may thus be made, as it were, to speak and sympathize; for the return every decorated object makes to the decorator is always in direct proportion to the amount of life and thought he has put into his work. it is a common saying, that, "what comes from the heart goes to the heart;" and in nothing does it hold good more than in the production of works of art of all kinds, including illumination, which, through its special dealing with written characters, has so direct an access to the intellect and affections. in all appeals the decorative artist can make to the brain through the eye, he has open to him two distinct channels of communication in making out the scheme of his ornamentation,--the one by employing conventional forms,--and the other by introducing representations of natural objects. in the former he usually eschews light, shade, and accidental effects altogether; and in the latter he aims at reproducing the aspect of the object he depicts as nearly as possible as it appears to him. both modes have found favour in the eyes of the great illuminators of old, and by the best they have been frequently and successfully blended. under the "conventional" series maybe classed all productions dependent on either an oriental or hiberno-saxon origin; among the "natural," the later, netherlandish, italian, and french illuminations may be generally grouped; and, in a mixed style, the majority of the book-decorations of the mediæval period. to be enabled to recognize intuitively how to blend or contrast, to adopt or avoid, these different modes of treatment of ornament, is given to but few, and is revealed to those few only, after years of study and of practice. rules may assist,[ ] but can never suffice to communicate the power; work of the most arduous kind, and persistent observation, can alone bestow it. still, with good models upon which to base his variations, and goodwill, the amateur may do much, and will probably best succeed by recurring incessantly to nature, and combining direct, or nearly direct, imitation of nature with geometrical lines and masses of colour symmetrically disposed. to aid his footsteps in this direction, i know no more convenient councillor than mr. llewellyn jewitt, whose historical introduction to his brother's "manual of illuminated and missal painting" contains some just remarks upon the subject.[ ] having thus rapidly touched upon the series of materials upon which the art may be brought to bear, and the leading principles of design suitable under different circumstances, i proceed to suggest the class of "legends," as the mediæval decorators called them, likely to prove most fitting for special situations. no doubt many more apt and piquant may suggest themselves to some practical illuminators than the few i have culled (with the assistance of one or two kind friends), principally from old english writers; but to others, those i now present may not be without, at any rate, a convenient suggestiveness. something similar to the following i would recommend for the embellishment of ceilings, friezes, string-courses, or flat walls of the different apartments indicated. of some i have given four lines--one, say, for each side of a room; of others but a line, such as might go over a door. between the two are many suitable for panels or irregular situations; and in one or two cases passages of many lines have been chosen, fit for illumination on vellum or paper, and for framing to hang up in the apartments specified, or to be inserted in panels or furniture or on screens. for drawing-rooms. "for trouble in earth take no melancholy; be rich in patience, if thou in goods be poor. who lives merry, he lives mightily; without gladness avails no treasùre." wm. dunbar. "since earthly joy abideth never, work for the joy that lestis ever; for other joy is all in vain; all earthly joy returns in pain." _idem._ "who shuts his hand hath lost his gold; who opens it, hath it twice told." george herbert. "no bliss so great but cometh to an end; no hap so hard but may in time amend." robert southwell. "freedom all solace to man gives; he lives at ease, that freely lives." john barbour. "that which is not good, is not delicious to a well-governed and wise appetite." milton. for a studio. "order is nature's beauty, and the way to order is by rules that art hath found." gwillim. for a family portrait-gallery or hall. "boast not the titles of your ancestors, brave youths: they're their possessions, none of yours. when your own virtues equall'd have their names, 'twill be but fair to lean upon their fames, for they are strong supporters; but till then the greatest are but growing gentlemen." ben jonson. for breakfast or dining rooms. "a good digestion turneth all to health." wordsworth. "if anything be set to a wrong taste, 'tis not the meat there, but the mouth's displeased. remove but that sick palate, all is well." ben jonson. "nature's with little pleased, enough's a feast; a sober life but a small charge requires; but man, the author of his own unrest, the more he has, the more he still requires." "to bread or drink, to flesh or fish, yet welcome is the best dish." john heywood. "it is the fair acceptance, sir, creates the entertainment perfect, not the cates." ben jonson, _epigrams_, ci. "no simple word that shall be utter'd at our mirthful board, shall make us sad next morning." _ibid._ "to spur beyond its wiser will the jaded appetite, is this for pleasure? learn a juster taste, and know that temperance is true luxury." armstrong, _art of preserving health_, book ii. "what an excellent thing did god bestow on man, when he did give him a good stomach!" beaumont and fletcher. "the stomach is the mainspring of our system. if it be not sufficiently wound up to warm the heart and support the circulation, we can neither _think_ with precision, _sleep_ with tranquillity, _walk_ with vigour, or sit down with comfort." dr. kitchener. "the destiny of nations has often depended upon the digestion of a prime minister."--dr. kitchener. "is't a time to talk when we should be munching?" justice greedy, in massinger's _new way to pay old debts_. "no roofs of gold o'er riotous tables shining, whole days and sums devoured with endless dining." crashaw's _religious house_. "now good digestion wait on appetite, and health on both." shakspere. "when you doubt, abstain." zoroaster. "where there is no peace, there is no feast." clarendon. "not meat, but cheerfulness, makes the feast." "who carves, is kind to two; who talks, to all." george herbert. for kitchens. "a feast must be without a fault; and if 'tis not all right, 'tis nought." king's _art of cookery_. "good-nature will some failings overlook, forgive mischance, not errors of the cook." _ibid._ for supper-rooms. "oppress not nature sinking down to rest with feasts too late, too solid, or too full." armstrong, _art of preserving health_. "as men do walk a mile, women should talk an hour after supper: 'tis their exercise." ben jonson, _philaster_, act , sc. . for still-rooms. "the nature of flowers dame physic doth show; she teaches them all to be known to a few." tusser, _five hundred points of good husbandry_. "the knowledge of stilling is one pretty feat, the waters be wholesome, the charges not great." _id. ibid._ for a store-room. "he that keeps nor crust nor crumb, weary of all, he shall want some." shakspere. for music-rooms. "music removeth care, sadness ejects, declineth anger, persuades clemency; doth sweeten mirth, and heighten piety, and is to a body, often ill inclined, no less a sovereign cure than to the mind." ben jonson. "here will we sit, and let the sounds of music creep in our ears." shakspere, _merchant of venice_. "play on and give me surfeit." _ibid._ for smoking-rooms. "tobacco's a physician, good both for sound and sickly; 'tis a hot perfume, that expels cold rheum, and makes it flow down quickly." barten holliday. "tobacco hic! tobacco hic! if you are well, 'twill make you sick; tobacco hic! tobacco hic! twill make you well, if you are sick." for drinking-rooms. "backe and syde goo bare goo bare, both hande and fote goo colde; but belly, god sende the gode ale inoughe, whether hyt be newe or olde." bp. still, in _gammer gurton's needle_. "the first draught serveth for health, the second for pleasure, the third for shame, the fourth for madness." "the greatness that would make us grave is but an empty thing; what more than mirth would mortals have: the cheerful man's a king." isaac bickerstaff. for public coffee-rooms. "if you your lips would keep from slips, five things observe with care: of whom you speak, to whom you speak, and how, and when, and where." "every creature was decreed to aid each other's mutual need." gay. for billiard-rooms. "the love of gaming is the worst of ills; with ceaseless storms the blacken'd soul it fills, inveighs at heaven, neglects the ties of blood, destroys the power and will of doing good; kills health, poisons honour, plunges in disgrace." young, _ th satire_. "play not for gain, but sport: who plays for more than he can lose with pleasure, stakes his heart, perhaps his wife too, and whom she hath bore." geo. herbert, _the church porch_. for bedrooms. "rise with the lark, and with the lark to bed; the breath of night's destructive to the hue of every flower that blows. * * * oh, there is a charm which morning has, that gives the brow of age a smack of youth, and makes the life of youth shed perfume exquisite. expect it not, ye who till noon upon a down bed lie, indulging feverous sleep." hurdis, _village curate_. "watch and ward, and stand on your guard." izaak walton. "sleep is nature's second course." upon a looking-glass. "since as you know, you cannot see yourself so well as by reflection, i your glass will modestly discover to yourself that of yourself which you yet know not of." shakspere. for ladies' boudoirs. "_birth_, _beauty_, _wealth_, are nothing worth alone. all these i would for good additions take: tis the mind's beauty keeps the _others_ sweet." sir thomas overbury, _the wife_. "'tis beauty that doth oft make women proud; 'tis virtue that doth make them most admired; 'tis modesty that makes them seem divine." shakspere. for a dressing-room. "the apparel oft proclaims the man." for schoolrooms. "extend generosity, it is profuseness; confine economy, it is avarice; unbridle courage, it is rashness; indulge sensibility, it is weakness." "catch time by the forelock; he's bald behind." "nothing is truly good that may be excell'd." _motto of king arthur's table._ "he may do what he will that will but do what he may." arthur warwick. "god dwelleth near about us, ever within, working the goodness, consuming the sin." fulke greville, lord brooke, born . for libraries, studies, and book-rooms. "reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge: it is thinking makes what we read ours. we are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections: unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength or nourishment."--locke. "crafty men contemn studies; simple men admire them; and wise men use them."--bacon. "read not to contradict and refute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider."--_idem._ "some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention."--_idem._ "in reading, we hold converse with the wise; in the business of life, generally with the foolish."--bacon. "that place that does contain my books, the best companions, is to me a glorious court, where hourly i converse with the old sages and philosophers." j. fletcher. "bookes are a part of man's prerogative, in formal inke they thoughts and voyces hold, that we to them our solitude may give, and make time present travel that of old. our life fame peceth longer at the end, and bookes it farther backward doe extend." sir thomas overbury, _the wife_. "books should for one of these four ends conduce,-- for wisdom, piety, delight, or use." sir john denham. "cease not to learne until thou cease to live; think that day lost wherein thou draw'st no letter, nor gain'st no lesson, that new grace may give to make thyself learneder, wiser, better." _quadrains of pibrac_, translated by joshua sylvester. "who readeth much and never meditates, is like a greedy eater of much food, who so surcloyes his stomach with his cates, that commonly they do him little good." _ibid._ "reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man."--bacon's _essays--of studies_. "calm let me live, and every care beguile,-- hold converse with the great of every time, the learn'd of ev'ry class, the good of ev'ry clime." rev. samuel bishop. "of things that be strange, who loveth to read, in these books let him range his fancy to feed." richard robinson. for museums or laboratories. "o mickle is the powerful grace that lies in herbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities: for nought's so vile that on the earth doth live, but to the earth some special good doth give." shakspere. "speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee." solomon. for a surgical museum. "there is no theam more plentifull to scan, than is the glorious, goodly frame of man." joshua sylvester's _du bartas_, th day. for justice-rooms. "'tis not enough that thou do no man wrong,-- thou even in others must suppress the same, righting the weake against th' unrighteous strong, whether it touch his life, his goods, his name." _quadrains of pibrac_, trans. by joshua sylvester. "upon the law thy judgments always ground, and not on man: for that's affection-less. but man in passions strangely doth abound; th' one all like god: th' other too like to beasts." _id. cod._ for casinos or summer-houses. "abusèd mortals, did you know where joy, heart's ease, and comfort grow, you'd scorn proud towers, and seek them in these bowers; where winds, perhaps, sometimes our woods may shake, but blustering care can never tempest make." sir henry wotton. "we trample grasse, and prize the flowers of may; yet grasse is greene when flowers doe fade away." robert southwell. "blest who no false glare requiring, nature's rural sweets admiring, can, from grosser joys retiring, seek the simple and serene." isaac bickerstaff. for a counting-house. "omnia somnia." "gae, silly worm, drudge, trudge, and travell, so thou maist gain some honour or some golden gravell: but death the while to fill his number, with sudden call takes thee from all, to prove thy daies but dream and slumber." joshua sylvester, _mottoes_. for offices or workshops. "have more than thou showest; speak less than thou knowest; lend more than thou owest; learn more than thou trowest." shakspere. "a spending hand that always poureth out, had need to have a bringer-in as fast; and on the stone that still doth turn about there groweth no moss: these proverbs yet do last." sir t. wyatt. "how many might in time have wise been made, before their time, had they not thought them so? what artist e'er was master of his trade yer he began his prenticeship to know? "to some one act apply thy whole affection, and in the craft of others seldom mell; but in thine own strive to attain perfection, for 'tis no little honour to excell." _quadrains of pibrac_, translated by joshua sylvester. "if youth knew what age would crave, youth would then both get and save." "flee, flee, the idle brain; flee, flee from doing nought; for never was there idle brain, but bred an idle thought." "get to live; then live to use it, else it is not true that thou hast gotten."--g. herbert. "to him that is willing, ways are not wanting." for shops. "whoso trusteth ere he know, doth hurt himself and please his foe." sir thomas wyatt. "think much of a trifle, though small it appear; small sands make the mountain, and moments the year." for a bell-turret. "we take no note of time but from its loss; to give it then a tongue is wise in man." young's _night thoughts_. for a bathing-house. "do not fear to put thy feet naked in the river sweet; think nor leach, or newt, or toad will bite thy foot, where thou hast trod." beaumont and fletcher, _faithful shepherdess_. with those still more admirable "legends" which may be selected from the bible i do not meddle. in it golden words of comfort and admonition lie strewn so thickly, that error cannot be made by a selector. it may not be amiss, also, for the illuminator to remember, that not unfrequently "a verse may find him whom a sermon flies." i cannot quit this portion of my theme without one word of summary, in the way of advice, to the designer of illumination, on whatever material applied. briefly, then, let him eschew quaintness, and aim at beauty; let him not shrink from beauty in old times because it was masked in quaintness; but with a discriminating eye let him learn to winnow the chaff from the wheat, and, scattering the one to the winds, let him garner up the other in the storehouse of his memory, and for the sustenance of his artistic life; and let him rest assured that the best designers, in all ages, have been usually those who have gathered most widely and profoundly from the failures, successes, and experiences of their predecessors. part ii. how illuminating may be practised. on analysis it will be found that this section of my essay resolves itself into three divisions, embracing respectively, stly, the ancient processes; ndly, the modern processes; and, rdly, the possible processes, not yet introduced into common use. of the last, i do not propose speaking in the present work. notices of the first of these might of course have been presented in the historical manual; but, upon reflection, i considered it would be most useful to the student to introduce them, in a collected form, in this place; and for the following reasons:-- stly, in order that they might not interrupt the thread of the narrative; and, ndly, because i considered it desirable to put the ancient and modern processes in direct contrast, so that the amateur might be the better enabled to reject what is obsolete in the former, and to revive any which might appear to promise greater technical excellence or facility than he might be enabled to obtain through the employment of the latter. i commence, therefore, with the _ancient processes_. sir charles eastlake, who has profoundly studied the history and theory of the subject, has justly remarked[ ] the intimate relation which, in the classical ages, existed between the physician and the painter,--the former discovering, supplying, and frequently preparing, the materials used by the latter. this ancient connection was not broken during those ages when almost all knowledge and practice of either medicine or art were limited to the walls of the cloister. the zealous fathers not only worked themselves to the best of their ability, but delighted in training up their younger brethren to perpetuate the credit and revenue derived from their skill, knowledge, and labour, by the monasteries to which they were attached. "nor was it merely by oral instruction that technical secrets were communicated: the traditional and practical knowledge of the monks was condensed in short manuscript formulæ, sometimes on the subject of the arts alone, but oftener mixed up with chemical and medicinal receipts. these collections, still more heterogeneous in their contents as they received fresh additions from other hands, were afterwards published by secular physicians, under the title of 'secreta.' the earliest of such manuals serve to show the nature of the researches which were undertaken in the convents for the practical benefit of the arts. various motives might induce the monks to devote themselves with zeal to such pursuits. it has been seen that their chemical studies were analogous; that their knowledge of the materials fittest for technical purposes, derived as it was from experiments which they had abundant leisure to make, was likely to be of the best kind. painting was holy in their eyes; and, although the excellence of the work depended on the artist, it was for them to ensure its durability. by a singular combination of circumstances, the employers of the artist, the purchasers of pictures (for such the fraternities were in the majority of cases), were often the manufacturers of the painter's materials. here, then, was another plain and powerful reason for furnishing the best-prepared colours and vehicles. the cost of the finer pigments was, in almost every case, charged to the employer; but economy could be combined with excellence of quality, when the manufacture was undertaken by the inmates of the convent." all that is asserted in this passage with respect to painting, holds equally good with regard to the materials requisite for the practice of the art of illumination; and the same treatises which are illustrative of art generally, almost invariably include specific instructions with regard to the particular branch of it that i am now endeavouring to illustrate. fortunately, the series of these "secreta" both commences from a remote date, and is tolerably complete from that to a quite recent period. scattered allusions to the processes of art and industry may be met with in the writings of several authors of the alexandrian neo-platonic school in the early ages of the church, from whom the byzantine greeks, no doubt, learnt much; but the most ancient collection on the subject is the treatise of heraclius, or eraclius, "de artibus romanorum."[ ] it would appear not to have been written earlier than the th or later than the th century,[ ] its art being, as mr. robert hendrie, the learned translator and editor of the essay of theophilus, of whom mention will presently be made, observes, "of the school of pliny, increased, it is true, by byzantine invention, but yet essentially roman."[ ] the next collection, in point of age, is that published by muratori,[ ] and well known as the "lucca manuscript," ascribed by mabillon to the age of charlemagne, and by muratori himself to a period certainly not later than the th century. its latinity is barbarous, but i scarcely think i can do wrong in following the translation of so careful a writer as sharon turner in the following extracts, which treat of illumination, and give us a clear insight into the practice of the school founded under the patronage of the great frankish emperor of the west. the first i select refers to the preparation of the calf-skin. "put it under lime and let it lie for three days; then stretch it, scrape it well on both sides, and dry it; then stain it with the colours you wish." the second directs how skins may be gilt. "take the red skin and carefully pumice and temper it in tepid water, and pour the water on it till it runs off limpid; stretch it afterwards, and smooth it diligently with clean wood. when it is dry, take the whites of eggs and smear it therewith thoroughly; when it is dry, sponge it with water, press it, dry it again, and polish it; then rub it with a clean skin, and polish it again and gild it." such gilding was effected with gold _leaf_, beaten out between small sheets of "greek parchment, which is made from linen cloth" (_i.e._ paper), enclosed in vellum. white of egg was used as the mordant for fixing on the gold. the following two passages instruct the student in preparing gold for writing:-- "file gold very finely, put it in a mortar, and add the sharpest vinegar; rub it till it becomes black, and then pour it out. put to it some salt or nitre, and so it will dissolve. so you may write with it; and thus all the metals may be dissolved. "take thin plates of gold and silver, rub them in a mortar with greek salt or nitre till it disappears. pour on water and repeat it; then add salt, and so wash it. when the gold remains even, add a moderate portion of the flowers of copper and bullock's gall; rub them together, and write and burnish the letters." the next and last, alludes to the amalgam, which appears to have been for many centuries a favourite method of applying gold to parchment and other surfaces. "melt some lead, and frequently immerse it in cold water. melt gold, and pour that into the same water, and it will become brittle. then rub the gold filings carefully with quicksilver, and purge it carefully while it is liquid. before you write, dip the pen in liquid alum, which is best purified by salt and vinegar." in these instructions the student may distinctly recognize the processes adopted in the production of those gilt texts on stained vellum grounds which were so highly prized in the carlovingian age. in the writings of an ecclesiastic, probably nearly contemporary with the norman conquest, the monk rugerus, or "theophilus," we arrive at a really perfect picture[ ] of the arts of the th century. the first of the three books into which his "schedule of different arts" is divided, is dedicated entirely to painting. it contains forty chapters, of which thirty refer to the preparation and application of pigments generally, both for oil, tempera, and fresco painting, and ten to the various processes connected with illumination. of these, the following are the most important:-- chapter xxx. of grinding gold for books, and of casting the mill. when you have traced out figures or letters in books, take pure gold and file it very finely in a clean cup or small basin, and wash it with a pencil in the shell of a tortoise, or a shell which is taken out of the water. have then a mill with its pestle, both cast from metal of copper and tin mixed together, so that three parts may be of pure copper, and the fourth of pure tin, free from lead. with this composition the mill is cast in the form of a small mortar, and its pestle round about an iron in the form of a knot, so that the iron may protrude of the thickness of a finger, and in length a little more than half a foot, the third part of which iron is fixed in wood carefully turned, in length about one yard, and pierced very straightly; in the lower part of which, however, of the length of four fingers from the end, must be a revolving wheel, either of wood or of lead, and in the middle of the upper part is fixed a leather strap, by which it can be pulled, and, in revolving, be drawn back. then this mill is placed in a hollow, upon a bench fitted for it, between two small wooden pillars firmly fixed into the same bench, upon which another piece of wood is to be inserted, which can be taken out and replaced, in the middle of which, at the lower part, is a hole in which the pestle of the mill will revolve. these things thus disposed, the gold, carefully cleansed, is put into the mill, a little water added, and the pestle placed, and the upper piece of wood fitted, the strap is drawn and is permitted to revolve, again pulled, and again it revolves, and this must so be done for two or three hours. then the upper wood is taken off, and the pestle washed in the same water with a pencil. afterwards the mill is taken up, and the gold, with the water, is stirred to the bottom with the pencil, and is left a little, until the grosser part subsides; the water is presently poured into a very clean basin, and whatever gold comes away with the water is ground. replacing the water and the pestle, and wood above being placed, again it is milled in the same way as before, until it altogether comes away with the water. in the like manner are ground silver, brass, and copper. but gold is ground most carefully, and must be lightly milled; and you must often inspect it, because it is softer than the other metals, that it may not adhere to the mill or the pestle, and become heaped together. if through negligence this should happen, that which is conglomerate is scraped together and taken out, and what is left is milled until finished. which being done, pouring out the upper water with the impurities from the basin, wash the gold carefully in a clean shell; then pouring the water from it, agitate it with the pencil, and when you have had it in your hand for one hour, pour it into another shell, and keep that very fine part which has come away with the waters. then again, water being placed with it, warm it and stir it over the fire, and, as before, pour away the fine particles with the water, and you may act thus until you shall have purified it entirely. after this wash with water the same refined part, and in the same manner a second and a third time, and whatever gold you gather mix with the former. in the same way you will wash silver, brass, and copper. afterwards take the bladder of a fish which is called _huso_ (sturgeon), and washing it three times in tepid water, leave it to soften a night, and on the morrow warm it on the fire, so that it does not boil up until you prove with your finger if it adhere, and when it does adhere strongly, the glue is good. chapter xxxi. how gold and silver are laid in books. afterwards take pure minium (red lead), and add to it a third part of cinnabar (vermilion), grinding it upon a stone with water. which being carefully ground, beat up the clear of the white of an egg, in summer with water, in winter without water; and when it is clear, put the minium into a horn and pour the clear upon it, and stir it a little with a piece of wood put into it, and with a pencil fill up all places with it upon which you wish to lay gold. then place a little pot with glue over the fire, and when it is liquefied, pour it into the shell of gold and wash it with it. when you have poured which into another shell, in which the purifying is kept, again pour in warm glue, and holding it in the palm of your left hand, stir it carefully with the pencil, and lay it on where you wish, thick or thin, so, however, that there be little glue, because, should it exceed, it blackens the gold and does not receive a polish; but after it has dried, polish it with a tooth or bloodstone carefully filed and polished, upon a smooth and shining horn tablet. but should it happen, through negligence of the glue not being well cooked, that the gold pulverizes in rubbing, or rises on account of too great thickness, have near you some old clear of egg, beat up without water, and directly with a pencil paint slightly and quickly over the gold; when it is dry again rub it with the tooth or stone. lay in this manner silver, brass, and copper in their place and polish them. the raised gold was not always produced by the mixture of red lead and white of egg recommended by theophilus. it was, especially in italy, frequently made of a composition of "gesso," or plaster, and in the th century was often punctured all over by way of ornament. it may be occasionally met with stamped over in patterns, with intaglio punches. this "gesso raising," though very brilliant, possessed little tenacity, and in many examples it has scaled off, while the more ancient "raising" prescribed by theophilus has adhered perfectly. chapter xxxii. how a picture is ornamented in books with tin and saffron. but if you have neither of these (gold, silver, brass, or copper), and yet wish to decorate your work in some manner, take tin pure and finely scraped, mill it and wash it like gold, and apply it with the same glue, upon letters or other places which you wish to ornament with gold or silver; and when you have polished it with a tooth, take saffron, with which silk is coloured, moistening it with clear of egg without water, and when it has stood a night, on the following day cover with a pencil the places which you wish to gild, the rest holding the place of silver. then make fine traits round the letters and leaves, and flourishes from minium, with a pen, also the stuffs of dresses and other ornaments. chapter xxxiii. of every sort of glue for a picture of gold. if you have not a bladder (of the sturgeon), cut up thick parchment or vellum in the same manner,--wash and cook it. prepare also the skin of an eel carefully scraped, cut up and washed in the same manner. prepare thus also the bones of the head of the wolf-fish washed and dried, carefully washed in water three times. to whichever of these you have prepared, add a third part of very transparent gum, simmer it a little, and you can keep it as long as you wish. chapter xxxiv. how colours are tempered for books. these things thus accomplished, make a mixture of the clearest gum and water as above, and temper all colours except green, and ceruse, and minium, and carmine. salt green is worth nothing for books. you will temper spanish green with pure wine, and if you wish to make shadows, add a little sap of iris, or cabbage, or leek. you will temper minium, and ceruse, and carmine, with clear of egg. compose all preparations of colours for a book as above, if you want them for painting figures. all colours are laid on twice in books, at first very thinly, then more thickly; but twice for letters. the next extract i give is of great interest in the technical history of illumination, on three accounts: firstly, because it guides the student to recognize in madder the purple stain and colour, so highly prized in the early periods of the art; secondly, because it shows him the manner in which fugitive vegetable tints were protected from the decomposing influence of the atmosphere by an albuminous varnish; and thirdly, because it illustrates the ordinary modern processes of under painting, and glazing with transparent colour. the "folium" of the greek illuminators was procured from plants growing abundantly near athens, while that of the hiberno-saxon scribes was obtained from the "norma" or "gorma" of the celts. mr. hendrie, in his learned notes to theophilus, has traced successive recipes for the preparation of "folium," in which the identity of the base giving the colouring matter is clearly established. it is curious that the collections of "secreta" should give as the only countries supplying the materials for making "folium," those two in which the use of the bright purple stain ascends to the very earliest of their decorated manuscripts. the following is the description given by theophilus:-- chapter xxxv. of the kinds and the tempering of folium. there are three kinds of folium, one red, another purple, a third blue, which you will thus temper. take ashes, and sift them through a cloth, and, sprinkling them with cold water, make rolls of them in form of loaves, and placing them in the fire, leave them until they quite glow. after they have first burnt for a very long time, and have afterwards cooled, place a portion of them in a vessel of clay, pouring urine upon them and stirring with wood. when it has deposed in a clear manner, pour it upon the red folium, and, grinding it slightly upon a stone, add to it a fourth part of quick lime, and when it shall be ground and sufficiently moistened, strain it through a cloth, and paint with a pencil where you wish, thinly; afterwards more thickly. and if you wish to imitate a robe in a page of a book, with purple folium; with the same tempering, without the mixture of lime, paint first with a pen, in the same page, flourishes or circles, and in them birds or beasts, or leaves; and when it is dry, paint red folium over all, thinly, then more thickly, and a third time if necessary; and afterwards paint over it some old clear of egg. paint over also with glaire of egg, draperies, and all things which you have painted with folium and carmine. you can likewise preserve the burned ashes which remain for a long time, dry. i conclude the series of receipts extracted from theophilus[ ] by one not further bearing upon the art of illumination, than as proving the nature of the ink which has generally retained its colour so wonderfully in the ancient manuscripts. chapter xl. of ink. to make ink, cut for yourself wood of the thorn-trees in april or may, before they produce flowers or leaves, and collecting them in small bundles, allow them to lie in the shade for two, three, or four weeks, until they are somewhat dry. then have wooden mallets, with which you beat these thorns upon another piece of hardwood, until you peel off the bark everywhere, put which immediately into a barrelful of water. when you have filled two, or three, or four, or five barrels with bark and water, allow them so to stand for eight days, until the waters imbibe all the sap of the bark. afterwards put this water into a very clean pan, or into a cauldron, and fire being placed under it, boil it; from time to time, also, throw into the pan some of this bark, so that whatever sap may remain in it may be boiled out. when you have cooked it a little, throw it out, and again put in more; which done, boil down the remaining water unto a third part, and then pouring it out of this pan, put it into one smaller, and cook it until it grows black and begins to thicken, add one third part of pure wine, and putting it into two or three new pots, cook it until you see a sort of skin show itself on the surface; then taking these pots from the fire, place them in the sun until the black ink purifies itself from the red dregs. afterwards take small bags of parchment carefully sewn, and bladders, and pouring in the pure ink, suspend them in the sun until all is quite dry; and when dry, take from it as much as you wish, and temper it with wine over the fire, and, adding a little vitriol, write. but, if it should happen through negligence that your ink be not black enough, take a fragment of the thickness of a finger, and putting it into the fire, allow it to glow, and throw it directly into the ink. the next collection of "secreta," in point of importance and probably antiquity, is the "mappæ clavicula," or "little key to drawing," a manuscript treatise on the preparation of pigments, and on various processes of the decorative arts practised during the middle ages, in the possession of sir thomas phillipps, of middle hill.[ ] the proprietor of the volume, mr. hendrie, sir charles eastlake, and (last, not least) mr. albert way, agree in considering it highly probable that it may be an english collection, probably of about the reign of henry ii. like the "schedula" of theophilus, it presents a very miscellaneous series of recipes, and tends to prove, what is very generally believed by the learned, that the "masters of arts" of old were frequently skilled, not in special departments of production, such as the modern division-of-labour system has created, but in multifarious avocations, such as we should not now readily recognize as likely to be practised by any single individual. these collections remarkably illustrate the class of knowledge likely to have been possessed by such apparently versatile geniuses as st. dunstan, st. eloi, bernward of hildesheim, tutilo the monk of st. gall, and many others. the author of the "mappæ clavicula," in a few lines of poetical introduction to his teachings, defines the first necessity for painters to be, a knowledge of the manufacture of colours, then a command over the various modes of mixing them, then dexterity in using and heightening them in different kinds of work; and, ultimately, he commends to their attention a variety of information for the advancement of art generally, derived from the writings of many learned men.--"sicut liber iste docebit." thus under two hundred and nine heads, but with some tautology, he proceeds to treat, as sir thomas phillipps observes, not only of the composition of colours, but "of a variety of other subjects, in a concise and simple manner, and generally very intelligibly; as for instance, architecture, mensuration of altitudes, the art of war, &c." among the recipes, in addition to those referring to pigments, are many relating to illuminating. the following, for instance, is curious as defining clearly what were the best and most important tints for illumination:-- _of different colours._ "these colours are clear and full-bodied for vellum:--azorium (azure), vermiculum (vermilion), sanguis draconis (dragon's blood), carum (yellow ochre), minium (red lead), folium (madder purple), auripigmentum (orpiment), viride græcum (acetate of copper), gravetum indicum (indigo), brunum (brown), crocus (yellow), minium rubeum vel album (red or white lead), nigrum optimum ex carbone vitis (the best black made from carbonized vine twigs); all these colours are mixed with white of egg." the mixture of colours appears to have been reduced to a perfect system, each hue having others specially adapted and used, for heightening and lowering the pure tint; thus the author gives directions which are likely to be scarcely less useful to the illuminator of the present day than they were to those of old. _of mixtures._ "if, therefore, you should desire to know the natures and mixtures of these [the above given] colours, and which are antagonistic to each other, lend your ear diligently. "mix azure with white lead, lower with indigo, heighten with white lead. pure vermilion you may lower with brown or with dragon's blood, and heighten with orpiment. mix vermilion with white lead, and make the colour which is called _rosa_, lower it with vermilion, heighten it with white lead. item, you may make a colour with dragon's blood and orpiment, which you may lower with brown, and heighten with orpiment. yellow ochre you may lower with brown, and heighten with red lead (query, with white). item, you may make rosam[ ] of yellow ochre and white lead, deepen with yellow ochre, heighten with white lead. reddish purple (folium) may be lowered with brown, and heightened with white lead. item, mix folium with white lead, lower with folium, and heighten with white lead. orpiment may be lowered with vermilion, but cannot be heightened, because it stains all other colours." _of tempering._ "greek green you will temper with acid, deepen with black, and heighten with white, made from stag's horn (ivory black). mix green with white lead, deepen with pure green, and heighten with white lead. greenish blue, deepen with green, heighten with white lead. yellow, deepen with vermilion, heighten with white lead. indigo, deepen with black, heighten with azure. item, mix indigo with white, deepen with azure, heighten with white lead. brown, deepen with black, heighten with red lead. item, make of brown and white lead a drab (rosam), lower with brown, heighten with white lead. item, mix yellow with white lead, lower with yellow, heighten with white lead. lower red lead with brown, heighten with white lead. item, red lead with brown, deepen with black, heighten with red lead. item, you may make flesh-colour of red lead and white, lower with vermilion, heighten with white lead." _which colours are antagonistic._ "if you wish to know in what manner colours are antagonistic, this is it. orpiment (sulphuret of arsenic) does not agree with purple (folio), nor with green (acetate of copper), nor with red lead, nor white lead. green does not agree with purple.[ ] "if you wish to make grounds, make a fine rose-colour of vermilion and white. item, make a ground of purple mixed with chalk. item, make a ground of green mixed with vinegar. item, make a ground of the same green, and when it shall have become dry, cover it with size ('caule'). "if you wish to write in gold, take powder of gold and moisten it with size, made from the very same parchment on which you have to write; and with the gold and size near to the fire; and, when the writing shall be dry, burnish with a very smooth stone, or with the tooth of a wild boar. item, if then you should wish to make a robe or a picture, you may apply gold to the parchment, as i have above directed, and shade with ink or with indigo, and heighten with orpiment." the above are the principal passages in the "mappæ clavicula," which supply deficiencies in most other books of secreta; and i have translated them at length, both on account of the accuracy with which i have found the directions followed in ancient illuminated manuscripts, and because i believed that a knowledge of this ancient scale of colours might greatly facilitate accurate copying from old examples. i need scarcely say, that as the art of painting improved in italy and the netherlands, the illuminator's palette became enriched with several new and very brilliant colours;--such as the ultramarines and carmines (exceedingly scarce in early manuscripts) which make the books produced at rome and in northern italy, during the th and th centuries, glow with a vivacity never previously attained. every improvement made in one country was, however, speedily, communicated through these very art-treatises to other countries, and thus we find lakes and carmines freely used in england during the th century.[ ] ultramarine, indeed, forms the special subject of an essay by a norman, comprised among the le bègue mss. (already referred to), under the following title, which proves its novelty in western europe, at the beginning of the th century:-- "anno , johannes de ... [illegible] normannus de _azurro novo_, lapidis lazulli ultramarini." the next collection of secreta in importance, and probably in date to the "mappæ clavicula," is that of a frenchman, peter de st. audemar. "with this treatise," observes sir charles eastlake, "may be classed a similar one in the british museum, written in the th century," but treating of a somewhat earlier practice in art. the identity of the colours for, and practice of, painters on wall and panel, and illuminators on vellum, is proved by the instructions to both being almost invariably given in the same books. thus, the volume last mentioned commences--"incipit tractatus de coloribus illuminatorum _seu_ pictorum"--as though there existed no practical distinction between the two. another manuscript, of later date, also in the le bègue collection, exhibits, in its title even, a curious picture of the industry with which the art of illumination was studied in the principal countries of europe,--introducing the student to a scribe, actually keeping a school at milan. thus, "liber johannis acherius, a.d. . ut accessit a jacobo cona, flamingo pictore:--capitula de coloribus ad illuminandum libros ab eodem archerio sive alcherio, ut accessit ab antonio de compendio illuminatore librorum in parisiis et a magistro alberto pozotto perfectissimo in omnibus modis scribendi, mediolani scholas tenente." here we have, in a few lines, evidence of the concurrence of no less, probably, than four distinct nationalities to make up one set of instructions. however illuminated manuscripts may differ in style from each other, according to the countries in which they may have been produced, the technical processes, from the commencement of the th century, scarcely differed at all, probably through the general spread of these "handbooks of the middle ages." from the th century onwards, the treatises, or rather probably composite transcripts from earlier treatises, multiply greatly; so far, however, as i have been able to make out from the able analysis made by sir c. eastlake, mr. hendrie, and mrs. merrifield, of many, they contain little more information than is conveyed in the extracts already given. some curious details, however, may be gathered as to the london practice in the th century, which may interest the reader. a manuscript, written in german, as is believed at that date, is preserved in the public library at strasburg, which distinctly proves that the colours for illuminating were commonly preserved by steeping small pieces of linen in the tinted extracts, sometimes mixed with alkaline solutions. the process is minutely described in this ms.; the dyes so prepared are there called "tüchlein varwen," literally "clothlet colours." the following passage from another compendium, a venetian ms., gives the result in few words:--"when the aforesaid pieces of cloth are dry, put them in a book of cotton paper, and keep the book under your pillow, that it may take no damp; and when you wish to use the colours, cut off a small portion [of the cloth], and place it in a shell with a little water, the evening before. in the morning the tint will be ready, the colour being extracted from the linen." this practice is alluded to by cennini, when he says:--"you can shade with colours, and by means of small pieces of cloth, according to the process of the illuminators." the german compiler, speaking of the preparation of a blue colour in this mode, says, "if you wish to make a beautiful clothlet blue colour according to the london practice," &c. after describing the method of preparing it, he adds:--"these [pieces of cloth] may be preserved fresh and brilliant, without any change in their tints, for twenty years; and this colour, in paris and in london, is called [blue] for missals, and here in this country clothlet blue; it is a beautiful and valuable colour." "the place denominated _lampten_, mentioned together with _paris_, can be no other than london."[ ] as pursuing the subject of ancient processes further than i have now done, would scarcely he profitable to the student, i proceed to the second division of this part of my subject, and accordingly take up _the modern processes_. in offering the following details on this subject, however, to the amateur's attention, i would not for one moment let it be supposed that a knowledge of them alone will be sufficient to make him an efficient illuminator. fortunately many very excellent artists have of late devoted themselves to giving instruction in the practical manipulation of the art, and amateurs cannot do better than place themselves at once in communication with masters, whose addresses may be obtained at the shops of the principal artists' colourmen. there will still be, no doubt, in different parts of the country, many desirous of illuminating, and yet unable to obtain the benefit of seeing a practised hand work before them, or even to pick up information as to the _modus operandi_. to such, at least, the following observations may prove useful.[ ] the two great sections into which all the processes by which illumination of any kind may be executed, divide themselves, are-- st, those in which water and glutinous substances soluble in water form the vehicles for applying the pigments, and causing them to adhere to the surfaces on which they may be applied; and ndly, those in which oil or spirit, and resins, or other substances which combine readily with such fluids, are made to perform corresponding functions. the pigments, reduced to an impalpable powder, are the same in both classes of processes, which are commonly known as watercolour-painting and oil-painting. that which was of old the artist's greatest stumbling-block--the manufacture and preparation of his pigments--need now no longer occasion him the slightest embarrassment; for every colour with which his palette could be enriched is to be bought, ready prepared, of the principal artists' colourmen. in like manner every other essential for his use is now freely at his command; and all that is required on his part is knowledge how to employ the materials which others most dexterously and carefully place at his disposal. in commencing the collection of that information which i am now endeavouring to communicate, i felt it my duty to enter into correspondence with all those manufacturers whose products i had at different times personally tested; and i accordingly addressed myself to the following, whose materials, with insignificant exceptions, i have invariably found satisfactory, both in nature and quality. r. ackerman, , regent-street, w. l. barbe, , quadrant, regent-street, w. j. barnard, , oxford-street, w. messrs. brodie & middleton, , long-acre, w.c. h. miller, , long-acre, w.c. j. newman, , soho-square, w. messrs. reeves & sons, , cheapside, e.c. messrs. roberson, , long-acre, w.c. messrs. rowney & co., , rathbone-place, w. messrs. sherborne & tillyer, , oxford-street, w. messrs. winsor & newton, , rathbone-place, w. from each of the above-mentioned firms i have obtained valuable information, and from several, excellent samples of their products. i am glad, therefore, to take the present opportunity of expressing my obligations to them. from messrs. winsor & newton, especially, i have received the kindest and most intelligent co-operation; and i am happy to be the channel of making public the results of a series of experiments, on the combinations of colours and the use of various materials for illuminating purposes, suggested by me, and made with great tact and judgment by mr. w. h. winsor. messrs. winsor & newton and mr. barnard have, up to the present time, done most to smooth away the difficulties which beset the illuminator. messrs. newman, messrs. rowney & co., messrs. reeves & sons, and mr. barbe, have also recently contributed valuable improvements or special adaptations.[ ] the colours best suited for illuminating i believe to be as follows:-- b lemon yellow } a gamboge } yellow. a cadmium yellow } d mars yellow } b rose madder } a crimson lake } c carmine } red. c orange vermilion } a vermilion } a cobalt } a french blue } blue. d smalt } d mars orange } orange. b burnt sienna } c burnt carmine } purple. d indian purple } a emerald green } green. c green oxide of chromium } b vandyke brown brown. a lampblack black. a chinese white white. these colours are selected from the list of water-colours made at the present day (upwards of eighty), and will, i think, be found to be all that can well be required for illuminating. the whole number is by no means indispensable, and i have therefore marked by different letters of the alphabet,-- st, a, those without which it would be useless to commence work; ndly, b, those which should first be added; rdly, c, those which are required for very great brilliancy in certain effects; and, thly, d, those which may be regarded as luxuries in the art. the c are really important; the d are much less so. messrs. winsor & newton have arranged them into four different lists, which are placed in boxes (complete with colours and materials for working in water-colours), of the respective retail values of £ . _s._, £ . _s._ _d._, £ . _s._, and £ . _s._ boxes corresponding with, or slightly varying from these, in selection of colours and materials, may be obtained from other artists' colourmen. i now proceed to notice these colours _seriatim_, in reference to their tints, both when used alone and when mixed with other colours. yellows. _lemon yellow._--a vivid high-toned yellow, semi-opaque, is extremely telling upon gold. mixed with cadmium yellow it furnishes a range of brilliant warm yellows. it mixes well with gamboge, orange vermilion, cobalt, emerald green, and oxide of chromium, and with any of these produces clean and useful tints. _gamboge._--a bright transparent yellow of light tone; works freely, and is very useful for glazing purposes. in combination with lemon yellow it affords a range of clean tints. when mixed with a little mars yellow it produces a clear, warm, transparent tone of colour. _cadmium yellow._--a rich glowing yellow, powerful in tint, and semi-transparent. this is a most effective colour for illuminating. when judiciously toned with white, it furnishes a series of useful shades. mixed with lemon yellow it produces a range of clean vivid tints. it does not, however, make good greens--they are dingy. mixed with carmine, or glazed with it, it gives a series of strong luminous shades. _mars yellow._--a semi-transparent warm yellow, of slightly russet tone, but clean and bright in tint. useful where a quiet yellow is required; mixes well with gamboge; does not make good greens. reds. _rose madder._--a light transparent pink colour of extremely pure tone. it is delicate in tint, but very effective, on account of its purity. mixed with cobalt, it affords clean, warm, and cold purples. the addition of a little carmine materially heightens the tone of this colour, though at the same time it somewhat impairs its purity. _crimson lake._--a rich crimson colour, clean and transparent; washes and mixes well. more generally useful than carmine, though wanting the intense depth and brilliancy of the latter colour. _carmine._--a deep-toned luminous crimson, much stronger than crimson lake; is clean and transparent. the brilliancy of this powerful colour can be increased, by using it over a ground of gamboge. _orange vermilion._--a high-toned opaque red, of pure and brilliant hue, standing in relation to ordinary vermilion as carmine to crimson lake. it is extremely effective, and answers admirably where vivid opaque red is required; it works, washes, and mixes well. its admixture with cadmium results in a fine range of warm luminous tints. when mixed with lemon yellow, it furnishes a series of extremely clean and pure tints; when toned with white, the shades are clear and effective. this is a most useful colour. _vermilion._--a dense, deep-toned red, powerful in colour, and opaque. it is not so pure in tone as orange vermilion, and is of most service when used alone; it can, however, be thinned with white and with yellows. blues. _cobalt blue._--a light-toned blue, clean and pure in tint, and semi-transparent. this is the lightest blue used in illuminating, and by the addition of white can he "paled" to any extent, the tints keeping clear and good. mixed with lemon yellow, it makes a clean useful green. its admixture with gamboge is not so satisfactory, and the green produced by its combination with mars yellow is dirty and useless. with rose madder it produces middling, warm and cold purples (_i.e._, marones, and lilacs or violets); with crimson lake, strong and effective ones; with carmine, ditto. a series of quiet neutral tints can be produced by its admixture with orange vermilion. the tints in question are clean and good, and might occasionally be useful. _french blue._--a deep rich blue, nearly transparent; is the best substitute for genuine ultramarine. the greens it makes with lemon yellow, gamboge, cadmium, and mars yellow, are not very effective or useful. the violets and marones it forms with rose madder are granulous and unsatisfactory; with carmine they are somewhat better; but those formed with crimson lake are very good. _smalt._--a brilliant, full-toned blue; deep in tone, and nearly transparent; luminous and very effective when used alone. it is granulous, and does not wash or mix well. the greens it makes are not particularly useful. oranges. _mars orange._--a brilliant orange of very pure tone, transparent and lighter in colour than burnt sienna; and is not so coarse or staring. an effective and useful colour. _burnt sienna._--a deep rich orange, transparent and effective; works well and mixes freely. purples. _indian purple._--a rich deep-toned violet, or cold purple colour; most effective when used alone. can be lighted with french blue or cobalt, and the tints will be found useful. _burnt carmine._--a rich deep-toned marone or warm purple colour; transparent and brilliant; luminous and effective when used alone; mixed with orange vermilion, it produces a strong rich colour, and a quiet fleshy one when mixed with cadmium yellow. greens. _emerald green._--an extremely vivid and high-toned green, opaque. no combination of blue and yellow will match this colour, which is indispensable in illuminating. it can be "paled" with white, and the tints thus produced are pure and clean. the tints afforded by its admixture with lemon-yellow are also clear and effective. _green oxide of chromium._--a very rich deep green, opaque, but effective. the tone of this green renders it extremely useful in illuminating; mixed with emerald green, it furnishes a series of rich semi-transparent tints. mixed with lemon-yellow, it gives quiet, useful shades of green; and when this combination is brightened with emerald green, the shades are luminous and effective. brown. _vandyke brown._--a deep, rich, transparent, brown, luminous and clear in tint; works, washes, and mixes well. the best of all the browns for illuminating. black. _lampblack._--the most dense and deep of all the blacks, free from any shade of brown or grey. white. _chinese white._--a preparation of oxide of zinc, permanent, and the white best adapted for illuminating. it is not only useful _per se_, but is indispensable for toning or reducing other colours. in making the list of the colours just described, i have assumed as a _sine quâ non_ that the colours used in illuminating should be permanent. all those enumerated are so (in water-colours), with the exception of carmine and crimson lake; and these, though theoretically not permanent, are yet found in practice to be _very_ lasting, especially when not too much exposed to the light. it is a curious fact, that crimson lake, though a weaker colour than carmine, is yet more permanent, in consequence of its different base, and that it will better stand exposure to light. i here take the opportunity of warning amateurs, allured by their evident brilliancy, against the use, in illumination, of the following five colours, viz.--pure scarlet, red lead, chrome yellow, deep chrome, and orange chrome. none of these are permanent; the first-named being fugitive, and the others in time turning black; but this is the less to be regretted, as there are permanent colours answering equally well for illumination. of course, these are less fugitive in books, which are generally protected from the action of light and air, than they would be in pictures. the preceding remarks on pigments apply, with no difference worth noting, to colours prepared either for oil or for water-colour; which may therefore be laid on, by varying the vehicle for their proper application, to the surfaces of any of those materials which have been specified in the second part of this essay, as available for different kinds of illumination. i now proceed to notice the special processes requisite in each case, commencing with those which may be best employed for vellum. this substance consists of calf-skin, carefully cleansed and scraped, and repeatedly washed in diluted sulphuric acid. the surface is rubbed down with fine pumice-stone to a smooth face, and in that condition it is fit for working upon. it is sold, prepared for use, at all the principal shops. if it has not been previously strained, or if many tints are likely to be floated over the surface, it will be well to strain it down upon a strainer or board before attempting to draw upon it. this may be done by damping the vellum, and then either gluing or nailing its edges down. when dry, it will be found to lie perfectly flat and smooth. it may be well, then, to wash it over with a dilute preparation of ox gall, to overcome any possible greasiness, and prepare it to receive colour freely. mr. barnard, and, i believe, other artists' colourmen, supply vellum mounted in block-books, similar to those made up of drawing-paper for sketching on; and by providing himself with one of those, the amateur may avoid the trouble of having to mount his own vellum. as it is by no means easy to remove pencil-marks from vellum (and indeed it is never wise to attempt it, for the black-lead unites with the animal fat, which can never be entirely got out of the material, and rubs under the action of indian-rubber or bread into a greasy smudge), it is always well to set out the design in the first instance upon drawing-paper. the best mode for good work is to complete the outline on drawing-paper, and then to trace it carefully with a hard pencil on a piece of tracing-paper, about one inch larger each way than the entire surface of the vellum; then cut out, the exact size of the vellum, a piece of tracing or tissue paper, rubbed evenly over with powdered red chalk.[ ] lay the tracing down (pencilled side upwards) in its right place upon the vellum, and fasten down one edge with pins, gum, or mouth-glue. then slip the transfer-paper, with the chalked side downwards, between the vellum and the tracing until it exactly covers the former--touching the back of the transfer-paper with two or three drops of gum on its margin. then lay the tracing over, and fasten down another of its edges. the gum drops will prevent the transfer-paper slipping away from the tracing-paper, when the drawing-board or strainer is placed upon a sloping desk or easel. taking care to keep a piece of stout card or pasteboard under the hand, go over all the lines of the tracing with a blunted etching-point, or very hard pencil cut sharp. this having been done, on removing both the tracing and the transfer-paper, it will be found that a clear red outline has been conveyed to the surface of the vellum. at this stage of the work, as nothing dirties more readily than this material, it will be well to fasten over the surface a clean sheet of paper with a flap cut in it, by raising up and folding back portions of which, the artist may get to the part of the surface upon which he may desire to work without exposing any of the rest. as the effect of the writing on the page gives as it were the key-note for the general effect of the illuminated ornaments, it will be well to complete the former before proceeding to the latter.[ ] if the lines of the writing fixed upon are fine and delicate, they will look best, and work most freely with indian ink; but if they are bold and solid, involving some extent of black surface, they will present a better appearance if wrought in lampblack; the principal difference between the two being that indian ink is finer, and, if good, always retains a slight gloss, while lampblack gives a fuller tint, and dries off quite mat, or with a dead surface, corresponding with that of most other body-colour tints used in illuminating. great care must be taken to keep the writing evenly spaced, upright, and perfectly neat, as it is almost impossible to erase without spoiling the vellum, and as no beauty of ornament will redeem an untidy text. if a portion of the writing is to be in red, it should be in pure vermilion; and if in gold, it should be highly burnished, as will be hereafter directed. the writing being satisfactorily completed, the artist may proceed to lay in his ground tints, generally mixing them with more or less white to give them body and solidity. colours prepared with water are best adapted for illumination on vellum; and those known as _moist_ colours are to be preferred for this work, as they give out a greater volume of colour, and possess more tenacity or power of adhering to the surface of the material on which they are used than the dry colours. of moist colours there are two descriptions, viz., solid and liquid; and of these i give the preference to the former, as some colours, such as lemon yellow and smalt, will not keep well in tubes; added to which, there is waste in using them in this form where only small quantities are required, as the colour cannot be replaced in the tube when once squeezed out. the tube colours possess, however, the valuable property of being always clean when a bit of pure colour is required. the solid moist colours are apt to get dirtied in rapid working, and occasionally mislead an eye which is not quick at detecting a lowered tint. mr. barbe's body-colours, which are of very good quality, are prepared in powder, combined with a glutinous substance, on moistening which with water, the tints are fit for application. messrs. winsor & newton's body-colours are also very excellent. flatness of tint is best secured by using the first colour well mixed with body, and put on boldly; this forms the brightest tint; then shade with pure transparent colour, and finish off with the high lights. very useful models, both on a small scale for book illumination, and on an enlarged one for wall decoration, are now prepared by several of the artists' colour-men, for teaching amateurs the different modes of shading, &c. they consist of outline plates partially coloured by hand. the beginner will find it a very useful exercise to complete a few of these before trying his hand upon more original works upon vellum. the greatest care must be taken to have every implement perfectly clean. experience alone can teach the artist the value of what are called glazing or transparent colours, such as the lakes, carmine, madders, gamboge, &c. some tints may be used either as glazing colours, or as body-tints, according to their preparation, and according to the degree of thickness with which they are applied. as a general principle, all shades should be painted in transparent colour, all lights in opaque. reflected lights may often be best given by scumbling thin body-colour over transparent shade. in order to prepare the tints for these operations, it may be well to use a little of newman's or miller's preparations with them. the less tints are retouched after the first application, the more clear and brilliant they are likely to remain. above all things never let the paint-brush go near the mouth, and never attempt to correct or retouch a tint while it is in process of drying, as doing so will infallibly make it look streaky and muddy. in all these processes of manipulation, however, practice, good example, and good tuition, must teach what the minutest directions would fail to satisfactorily convey. the principal colours having been applied, the next difficulty will be to heighten them with gold and silver. any large surfaces of gilding it will be well to apply previously to commencing colouring, and as much as possible intended for burnishing. the principal metallic preparations used in illumination may be enumerated as follows:--gold leaf, gold paper, shell gold, saucer gold, gold paint, silver leaf, shell silver, and shell aluminium. of these, the leaves, paper, and paint, are of english, and the shells and saucers of french manufacture. occasionally gold and silver powder and german-metal leaf are employed, though too rarely to make them important enough to claim general notice. the first-mentioned preparation of gold--gold-leaf--is the pure metal beaten into very thin leaves, generally - / inches, ¼ inches, or - / inches square; but for illuminating purposes it should be still smaller--say ½ inches square, as it is easier to handle than a larger size. for the same reason it is better to have the leaf double as thick as it is usually beaten. gold leaf is sold in "books," each of which contains twenty-five gold "leaves," and for ordinary and general purposes, it is by far the best and most useful metallic preparation; but the difficulty of handling and laying it on deters amateurs from employing it, and it is difficult in writing to furnish a practical description of the _modus operandi_. the following is the usual mode:-- "carefully open the book of gold, and if in so doing you disturb the leaf, gently blow it down flat again. if a whole leaf be required, take a rounded 'tip,' and quietly so place it on the leaf that the top of the tip be close to the edge of the leaf. in so doing, the sides of the tip will be brought down upon the side edges of the leaf, which then can be securely taken up and placed where required. if a small piece of gold leaf only be wanted, cautiously take up a leaf from the book by passing a 'gilder's knife' underneath, and place it on a 'gilders cushion;'[ ] lay it flat with the knife, with which then cut the piece of the size required. if when you have laid gold leaf down with the tip it be wrinkly, blow it down flat." the "gilder's tip" spoken of in the above extract is a very thin camel-hair brush, and for unskilled hands a semicircular tip is to be preferred to one of the ordinary form; as with it a leaf of gold may be firmly laid hold of, balanced, adjusted, and placed, without needing any particular knack. for long narrow pieces of gold, the ordinary gilder's tip is probably the best. gold paper consists of leaves of gold placed upon thin paper, a sheet of which, measuring about inches by ¾ inches, requires one book of gold. the mat or dead gold is most frequently used in illumination; but, when required, the bright or burnished gold can be procured. gold paper is usually plain at the back, and when used, is required to be gummed on to the work; but it is far better to have it prepared on the back with a mixture of clear glue, sugar, &c., which can be laid on evenly and thickly, and yet is very strong. paper thus prepared needs only to have a wet flat camel-hair brush passed over the back; it can then be laid down, and will adhere very firmly. in laying down gold paper, it is well to place a piece of white glazed paper on its face, then firmly to pass over it the edge of a flat rule or burnisher, in order to press down all inequalities and render the surface perfectly smooth. shell gold is gold powder mixed up and placed in mussel-shells for use. it is removed from the shell by the application of water, like moist colours, and is adapted for small work and fine lines, in which latter case a quill or reed pen will be found useful. when the work is dry, the gold can be brightened with a burnisher. saucer gold only differs from shell gold in being placed in china saucers instead of shells. gold paint is a preparation of bronze in imitation of gold, and is usually sold in two bottles, one of powder and the other of liquid; which two ingredients, when mixed together, form the "paint," the use of which i do not recommend, as in course of time it turns black. the same objection unfortunately applies more or less, also, to the preparations of silver, which, however, are still occasionally used in illumination. silver leaf is made in the same manner as gold leaf, and the remarks made in reference to that are generally applicable to silver leaf. shell silver is not really silver, but an amalgam of tin and mercury prepared and placed in mussel-shells, and used with water in the same way as gold shells. shell aluminium is a preparation of aluminium placed in mussel-shells for use, and is warranted to keep its colour without tarnishing. _if_ this be the case, it will form a valuable addition to the list of materials for illumination, as it will be the only white metal known that can be depended upon for not tarnishing. the preparation is at present a comparatively new one, but bids fair to be very serviceable. water-mat gold size is a preparation for laying down gold leaf, _i.e._, causing it to adhere to a given surface. the mode of using it is as follows:--take a small brush saturated with water, and thoroughly charge it with the size. with the brush so charged, trace out the required form or pattern, and upon this lay the gold leaf, pressing it lightly down with cotton-wool. when all is dry, gently rub off the superfluous gold with cotton-wool. "burnish gold size" is a preparation for laying down the gold leaf that is intended afterwards to be burnished (_i.e._, polished with a tooth or agate burnisher). that prepared by messrs. winsor & newton may be used as follows:--place the bottle in warm water to dissolve its contents, which, however, must not be allowed to get hot, but merely be made liquid. stir up the preparation with a hogs-hair brush, which then thoroughly charge with the mixture; with it trace out the pattern required to be burnished, then let the work dry. when quite dry, let the surface of the pattern be wetted with clean cold water, and on it (while damp) place the gold leaf. let all get perfectly dry, and then burnish as required. when a very bright surface is wanted, two coats of the size should be used; the second being put on after the first is dry. the "raising preparation" made by the same firm, is adapted for raising the surface of the work, so as to obtain relief, and is particularly required for imitating rich mss. of the th and th centuries. it is used as follows:--place the bottle in hot water, and when its contents are dissolved, stir it well up with a small hogs-hair brush, then fully charge it, draw out the form intended to be raised, and deposit the "raising" on the surface. if the height thus attained be not sufficient, wait till the preparation is dry, and go over it again, and so on until you gain the height you require, when it must be allowed to become quite hard; then go over it with the water-mat gold-size, and while this is wet put on the gold; press gently down with cotton-wool, and when dry brush off the superfluous gold with cotton-wool; when putting on the "raising," take care to keep the surface level, unless it may be required to be hollowed or indented. mr. barnard has also prepared a gold size and raising preparation, adapted for laying gold on vellum or paper, which answers well both for mat and burnish gilding. the mode of using it is as follows:--wash a little of the gold size off with a brush dipped in water, using it thinly for the flat parts of your design, and in greater body for that portion of the drawing which you wish to appear raised; after allowing it to remain for a few minutes, till nearly dry, apply the gold, and press it down with a piece of cotton-wool. it must now remain untouched for about an hour, when the superfluous gold may be removed by means of the wool, and in case of defect, the gold size and gold must be again applied. preparations of a somewhat similar nature are sold by messrs. rowney, newman, and other artists' colourmen.[ ] very pretty effects may be obtained by partial burnishing of the gold in patterns, and dotting it over with the point of the sharp burnisher in indentations, arranged in geometrical forms. the best manuscripts of the edwardian period were often highly wrought after this fashion. when finished, it is scarcely necessary to recommend that the vellum sheet should be either put carefully away until enough of others corresponding with it are done to make up a volume, or should be glazed so as to protect its surface. one dirty or greasy finger laid upon it, and the effect of much beautiful work, which may have taken weeks to elaborate, is fatally marred. all the above instructions apply as well for working on paper or cardboard as on vellum. the amateur who has once succeeded on vellum, is not likely to take again to the humbler practice of working on the less noble materials, which, however, will always be exceedingly useful for practising and sketching upon. i have occasionally seen printed volumes gracefully illustrated by hand with borders, and with elegant inventions, in the form of head and tail pieces, insertions, &c., applicable to the subject of the volume. many of the works of old english authors are peculiarly suited for this class of embellishment. how beautiful might not a walton's "angler" or a bunyan's "pilgrim's progress" be made if appropriately enriched in this style. tracing-paper, and the facilities it offers to those little gifted with talents for drawing, i have already noticed. it remains, however, to observe, that it possesses an additional practical convenience in being ready for taking colour, either with oil, water, or varnish, as vehicles, without the previous application of any special preparation. hence it may be fastened up when completed, either by pasting as ordinary paper, by gluing, if for attachment to wood, or by paying over the back with boiled oil and copal varnish, or with white lead ground in oil with some litharge, and then pressing down until it may be made to lie perfectly flat and adhere to any surface previously painted in oil-colour. being very thin, its edges will scarcely show at all, even if applied to the middle of a flat panel; but, to make sure, it is always well to run a line with a full brush of thick colour, either in oil or distemper, over the edge, extending for one half of its width upon the tracing-paper, and for the other half upon the surface to which it may have been applied. of the remaining materials on which illumination for the decoration, not of books but of apartments, may be readily executed, canvas, stone, metal, and wood, are generally wrought upon by the ordinary processes of oil-painting; while plaster, especially in the form of ceilings, is more frequently treated by means of distemper-painting. i propose, therefore, to give, firstly, some general directions as to the setting out work, &c., applicable to both methods; secondly, a notice of the processes generally required for oil-colour illumination; thirdly, a brief description of the mode of working in distemper; and fourthly, to wind up with some instructions as to the application of varnish which may be employed to heighten and preserve illumination executed by either of the above methods. the operation of setting out lines upon walls or other surfaces is by no means easy. it involves care and judgment, a quick eye, and a very steady hand. it is the indispensable preliminary before ornamental work or illumination can be executed, as it can alone correctly give the forms of panels, borders, &c., for which cartoons may have to be prepared. lines may be either drawn with pencil or prepared charcoal, or chalk, or else struck by means of a chalked string. for lines which are vertical, a weight called a plumb-bob must be attached to one end of the string. the best shape for this is that of half an egg, as the flat side will then lie close to the wall. two persons are required in setting out these lines,--one working above and the other below. the one at the top marks the points at the distance each line is required to be from others. the string being chalked either black or white,--according as the line has to show upon a light or dark ground,--he holds it to one of the points, and lets fall the weighted end, which, when quite steady, the person who is below strains tight, and raising the string between his finger and thumb in the middle, lets it fall back sharply on the wall. the result, if carefully executed, is a perfectly straight and vertical line. the horizontal lines require to be drawn with a straight-edge or ruler, and may be either set out at a true right angle to the vertical lines geometrically by the intersection of arcs of circles, or by a large square, or may be defined, irrespectively of mathematical correctness, by measuring up or down from a ceiling or floor line. the distances apart are as before measured out, but in long lines must be marked as many times as the length of the straight-edge may require. this being set at each end to the points marked, the line is drawn along it. circles and curved lines may be struck from their proper centres with large wooden compasses, one leg carrying a pencil. drawing lines with the brush requires great practice. a straight-edge is placed upon the chalk lines, with the edge next the line slightly raised, and the brush, well filled with colour, drawn along it, just touching the wall, the pressure being never increased, and the brush refilled whenever it is near failing; but great care must be taken that it be not too full, as in that case it will be apt to blotch the line, or drop the colour upon the lower portions of the wall. drawing lines in colour overhead upon a ceiling is even more difficult, and is beyond the capabilities of most amateurs. the patterns of ornament are executed either by means of stencils cut in oiled paper, according to the method which will be next described, or else by pounces, which are the full-sized drawings pricked along all the lines with a needle upon a flat cushion; powdered charcoal, tied up in a cotton bag, is then dabbed upon the paper which has been set up on the wall, or else the back is rubbed over with drawing-charcoal and brushed well with a flat brush, like a stove brush. in both cases the result is that the dust passes on to the walls through the pricked holes, and forms are thus sufficiently indicated to the painter. stencilling is a process by which colour is applied through interstices cut in a prepared paper, by dabbing with a brush. the design to be stencilled is drawn upon paper which has been soaked with linseed oil and well dried. the pattern is then cut out with a sharp knife upon a sheet of glass, care being taken to leave such connections as will keep the stencil together. the next tint is then to be laid on in the same manner, and so on till the darkest tint is done, each tint being allowed to dry before a second is applied. i do not purpose dwelling in detail on the preparation, or "bringing forward," as it is called, of surfaces to receive oil-colour; since, for such mechanical work, it will be always well to employ a good house-painter. i may observe, however, that the first operation, where the surface is absorbent, is to stop the suction, either by a plentiful application of boiled oil alone, boiled oil and red lead, or size. several successive coats of paint should then be applied, and in order to obtain smoothness, the surface of each should be well rubbed down. the last coat should be mixed with turpentine, and no oil, in order to kill the gloss, or, as it is termed, to "flat" the surface. for most decoration and illumination, the work should be brought forward in white, as, by shining partially through most of the pigments ultimately applied, it will greatly add to their brilliancy. zinc white will stand much better than white lead. messrs. roberson, of long acre, prepare an excellent wax medium, which dries with a perfectly dead encaustic surface, and answers admirably for mural-painting of all kinds. i caused it to be employed for all the decoration executed under my direction at the sydenham crystal palace. miller's glass medium will also be found very useful to artists and amateurs. in laying on all ground tints, great care should be taken to keep them flat; and the less, as a general rule, tints are mixed, worked over and over, and messed about, the brighter they will be. the principal colours having dried, the setting out of the lettering, &c., may be proceeded with; the following directions being duly attended to. _the setting-out of letters._[ ] in regard to the proportion of roman capital letters, it may be taken as a general rule, that the whole of the letters, with the exception of s, j, i, f, m, and n, are formed in squares. the top and bottom of the letters should project the width of the thick line. the letters i and j are formed in a vertical parallelogram, half the width of the square; the letters m and n in a horizontal parallelogram, one third larger than the square. the letters a, b, e, f, h, x, and y, are either divided, or have projections from the middle. this rule may be varied, and the division placed nearer the top than the base of the square. capitals in the same word should have a space equal to half a square between them; at the beginning of a word, a whole square, and between the divisions of a sentence two squares should be left. this is the general rule for the proportions of the letters; but they may be made longer or wider, as may be deemed expedient. the small letters are half the size of the capitals; the long lines of the letters b, d, f, h, k, and l, are the same height as the capitals; the tails of j, p, q, and y, descending in like proportion. the letter s is founded on the form of two circles at a tangent to each other. these rules are applicable to sloping as well as to upright letters. in _italic_ letters it is usual to make the capitals three times the height of the smaller letters, and the long strokes of the small letters nearly equal to the capitals. the letters having been duly set out, and painted on the walls, the amateur must next either himself encounter, or employ some experienced hand to overcome, the technical difficulties of successfully gilding those portions of his work he may desire to remain in gold. the following directions may assist him; but he is not likely to succeed until practice shall have given him considerable dexterity and confidence:-- _gilding for walls, &c._ the implements with which the gilder should provide himself are not numerous, nor are they expensive, as they consist merely of a cushion of particular form, a knife for cutting the gold-leaf, a tip for transferring it, and a cotton ball or pad for pressing it down; these and a few brushes are all the requisites, with the addition of an agate burnisher when burnish gilding is desired. the cushion is a species of palette made of wood, about inches by inches, having on the upper surface a covering of leather stuffed with wool, and on the under side a loose band, through which the thumb being passed, the cushion is kept firmly resting on the left hand. to prevent the gold flying off (for, being extremely light, this very readily takes place), a margin of parchment is fixed on the edge of the cushion, rising about three inches, and enclosing it on three sides. the knife very much resembles a palette-knife, the blade is about four inches long and half an inch wide, perfectly straight, and cutting on one edge only. the "tip" is the brush with which the gold-leaf is applied. it is formed by placing a line of badger-hair between two thin pieces of cardboard, and is generally about three inches wide. the "dabber" is merely a pinch of cotton-wool, lightly tied up in a piece of very soft rag, or, what is better, the thin silk called persian. it is often used without covering, but is then very apt to take up the uncovered gold-size, and so to soil the leaf already laid down. camel-hair brushes are useful for intricate parts, and for cleaning off the superfluous gold a long-haired brush, called a "softener," is requisite. there should be also at hand a small stone and muller (these are also made in glass, which is cleaner) for grinding up the oil and gold-size. the operator, having stocked himself with the above tools, may now proceed to lay the gold-leaf upon the work he desires to gild. there are two methods of doing this, known in the trade as "oil-gilding" and "water-gilding;" and so called from the composition of the size which serves as a vehicle for making the gold-leaf adhere to the work. the following is the usual process in oil-gilding:--this method costs less and will wear much better than water-gilding, which will be presently described; but has not its delicate appearance and finish, nor can it be burnished or brightened up. though the oil gold-size can always be purchased of good quality, it may be well to describe the fat oil of which it is principally composed. linseed oil, in any quantity, is exposed during the summer in the open air, but as much away from dust as possible, for about two months, during which time it must be often stirred, and it will become as thick as treacle. it is a good practice to pour into the pot a quantity of water, so that the oil may be lifted from the bottom of it, as all the impurities of the oil sink into the water, and do not again mix when it is stirred. when of the consistency above mentioned, the oil is separated from the water, and being put into a bottle, is subjected to heat till it becomes fluid again, when all remaining impurities will sink, and the oil, being carefully poured off from the sediment, forms what is termed "fat oil." the gilder commences by priming the work, should it not have been painted, using for the purpose a small portion of yellow ochre and vermilion, mixed with drying oil. when this is quite dry, a coat of the oil gold size, compounded with the fat oil just described, japanner's gold-size, and yellow ochre, is laid on, and when this is perfectly dry, a second should be given, or even a third. a superior finish is produced by going over the work, before using the size, with dutch rushes or fish-skin, which gives a finer surface to it. after the last coat of size is applied, the work must be left for about a day, to set, taking care to keep it from dust; and the proper state for receiving the gold-leaf is known by touching the size with the finger, when it should be just "tacky," that is adhesive, without leaving the ground on which it has been laid. the gilder then, taking on his left hand his cushion, transfers to it the gold-leaves from the books in which they are purchased. this is not very easy to a beginner, as the gold cannot be touched except by the knife. gilders manage it by breathing under the leaf in the direction it is desired to send it, and flatten it on the cushion by the same gentle blowing or breathing. it is now cut to the required shape, and applied to the sized surfaces by means of the tip, which, if drawn across the hair or face each time it is used, will slightly adhere to the gold. the whole leaves are sometimes transferred from the books to the work at once; and when there is much flat space, it facilitates the process. as the leaves are laid on the size, they are pressed gently down with the cotton ball, or in sunken parts with camel-hair brushes; and when perfectly dry, the loose leaf is removed by gently brushing over the work with the softener, when if there should be found any places ungilt, such spots are touched with japanners' gold-size, and the leaf applied as before. the process of oil-gilding is then complete. water or burnish-gilding differs from the former in the use of parchment instead of oil size, and has received its name from being moistened with water in rendering the size adhesive, and also from its fitness for burnishing. its superior beauty, however, is balanced by its being less durable than oil-gilding, and, unlike the latter, unfit to be exposed to damp air; it is therefore only used for indoor work or ornamentation. the parchment size is made by boiling down slips of parchment or cuttings of glovers' leather, till a strong jelly be formed, the proportions being one pound of cuttings to six quarts of water, which must be boiled till it shrinks to two quarts. while hot, the liquid should be strained through flannel; and when cold, the jelly required will be fit for use. the work to be gilded will require several coats of composition: the first, or priming coat, is made of size thinned with water, and a little whiting; with this the work is brushed over, using a thicker mixture when there are defects which need to be stopped. successive coats are then laid on to the number of seven or eight, and the last, being moistened with water, is worked over and smoothed on the plain parts with dutch rushes. after this is completed, a coating is laid on, composed of bol ammoniac pound, black lead ounces, ground up on the stone with ounces of olive oil. this is one out of many receipts; all, however, are diluted for use with parchment size warmed up with two-thirds water, and forming what is called water gold-size. two coats of this should be laid on; the part about to be burnished should then be again rubbed with a soft cloth till quite even, and care taken that each coat be perfectly dry before the subsequent one be laid on. the work is now moistened in successive portions with a camel-hair brush and water, and while moist covered with gold-leaf in precisely the same manner as described in the directions for oil-gilding, great caution being observed in order to avoid wetting the leaf already laid down, as a discoloration would be the result. the work is now left for about four-and-twenty hours, when the parts which are to be burnished may be tried in two or three places. care should be taken not to let the work get too dry, as in that case it would require more burnishing, and yet not give a good result. this state is known by its polishing slowly, and if it be too wet it will peel off; but should the places where the trials are made all polish quickly and evenly, the work may then be finished; for which purpose agates cut in proper forms and set into handles, are sold at the artists' colour-shops.[ ] the gilding satisfactorily accomplished, the artist or amateur has only to add the finishing tints and touches to his work, and then either to leave it alone, or to varnish it in accordance with the directions which will be given presently. if the work has been executed on canvass, it will remain only to apply it to the surface for which it may have been destined. this may be done by painting that surface with thick white lead, in two or three coats, and by also similarly painting the back of the canvass. the latter being then pressed evenly down upon the former, while the white lead upon both is still tacky, and, left for a few days, will be found to have attached itself with the greatest tenacity. scrolls and panels cut out of zinc sheets may be painted upon just as though they were cut out of canvass, and may be fixed in their places by nails or screws. in illuminating on wood, pretty effects may be obtained by varnishing partially with transparent colours, such as the lakes, umber, prussian blue, burnt sienna, &c., so as to allow the grain of the wood to show through,--restricting the use of opaque colour and gilding to a few brilliant points. distempering is a method of colouring walls and ceilings in which powder colour, ground up in water, and mixed with sufficient size to fix the colour, is used instead of paint made with oil. the most simple employment of distemper is in whitening ceilings, but it is also very much used in theatrical decoration and scene-painting; and rooms are sometimes so ornamented, the process being much less expensive than oil-painting. the foundation of all the colours is whiting, which, having been set to soak in water and break up of itself, is (when the top water is poured off) in a fit state for use; common double size is then added, with as much of the colour as will make the desired tint; but as this, when dry, will be many shades lighter than it appears when wet, trials should be made on paper, and dried by the fire till the colour required be attained. a gentle heat is required for melting the size. old walls are prepared for distemper by being scraped and cleaned, and a coat of "clearcole" given to them. this is merely thin size and water with a little whiting: it serves to wash and smooth the walls and stop suction. should there be any cracks or holes, a thick paste of size-water and whiting is laid in them with a palette-knife, and, when dry, smoothed down with pumice-stone, and another coat of clearcole given, when the wall is in a proper state to receive the ground tint; for new walls one coat of clearcole is sufficient. if it is intended to lay on lines of various colours, the wall is, previous to the laying on of the ground tint, set out as previously described; and the appropriate colours put on in succession, according to the design to be followed. all the colours required should be ground up, and kept ready prepared in galley-pots well covered over, so as to be at hand at once. the colour should be of the consistency of thick cream, and should run from the brush on being raised from the pot in one thread; if it run in several, it is too thin. if too thick, add more size and water; if too thin, more whiting. the pots used are the common red paint-pots. varnishing. varnish is a solution of resin in oil or spirits of wine.[ ] surfaces which are to be varnished should be of the greatest smoothness and polish which it is possible to attain. dark colours are best calculated for varnishing; the lighter colours, such as sky-blue, apple-green, rose-colour, delicate yellow, &c., will not bear varnishing so well, and in spite of the greatest care are liable to get dirty. the best preparation for stopping suction in absorbent surfaces, and so rendering them fit to take varnish, is made of isinglass or parchment size; for the darker colours it may be made of common clear glue. four or five coats will be necessary for the brighter colours; two or three will be sufficient for the darker ones. great care must be taken not to wash up water or distemper colours in laying on the first coat, nor to lay on a second coat before the first is perfectly dry; nor must the varnishing be proceeded with before the last coat of size is thoroughly dry. varnish may be applied on surfaces brought forward in oil without any special preparation, provided the oil has become thoroughly dry and hard. this process serves both to enhance and preserve the beauty of the colours, and in some degree to counteract the destructive influence of the atmosphere and of insects. varnishes suitable for the work in hand, such as clear copal spirit varnish, oil copal varnish, white hard varnish, &c., may be procured from any one who supplies drawing materials. the varnishing itself requires some little care. it should be performed in a place perfectly free from dust, in a bold manner with large brushes, steadily, rapidly, and uniformly, not returning too frequently to the same spot, more especially when using spirit varnish, which loses its fluidity much sooner than oil varnish. whichever varnish is used, it should be very thin: if spirit varnish, the room must be of a moderate temperature; for if too cold, the varnishing is apt to be rough, white, and unequal; if too hot, it is liable to have air-bladders, and to crumble and spoil. oil varnishing may be done in a room of warmer temperature. a second coat of varnish must on no account be laid on before the first coat is quite dry. if the work is to be polished, the spirit varnish must be applied from five to eight times, oil varnish three or four; but if the work is not to be polished, then four coats of the former and two of the latter will generally be found sufficient. when thoroughly dry, the face of the varnish may be polished with pumice-stone, tripoly, water, and sweet oil. if it be an oil varnish, procure some of the finest pulverized pumice-stone, and mix it with water to about the consistence of cream; with a piece of linen rag dipped in this mixture rub the work till all inequalities disappear, and the surface is as smooth as glass; then dry it with a cloth, and polish once more with tripoly and sweet oil; then dry it with a piece of soft linen, rub it with starch reduced to a fine powder, and finish with a clean soft linen cloth, until the varnish assumes a dazzling appearance. if it is a spirit varnish, omit the pumice-stone, and begin with the tripoly and water; after this use the tripoly and sweet oil, and finish as before described for the oil varnish. the difference is so striking between the polished and unpolished surfaces, as to amply repay the additional trouble required in the polishing. the polishing powders must be kept in thoroughly clean vessels, a single grain of sand being sufficient to spoil the polish. m. digby wyatt. , tavistock place, w.c. _april, ._ footnotes. [ ] m. gabriel peignot, in his "essai sur l'histoire da parchemin et du vélin," paris, , and in his paper on the same subject in "le moyen age et la renaissance," vol. ii. paris, , produces evidence of the use of parchment for writing upon anterior to the age of eumenes; and consequently limits his interpretation of pliny's words, "varro membranas pergami tradidit repertas," to an assertion of the discovery of improved processes by which parchment was rendered more available for writing upon than it had been previous to the accession of eumenes. [ ] a good representation of a scrinium and scapi, from a painting in the "casa falkener," described in the "museum of classical antiquities," vol. ii. p. , is given in one of the cubicula of the pompeian court at sydenham. [ ] see gell's "pompeiana" appendix; and the "memoir of the canonico iorio." [ ] "let those who will have old books written in gold and silver on purple parchment, or, as they are commonly called, in uncial letters,--rather ponderous loads than books,--so long as they permit me and mine to have poor copies, and rather correct than beautiful books." [ ] p. . ingram, cooke, & co., london, . [ ] "universal palæography." london, bohn. [ ] through the kindness of the late mr. dennistoun, of dennistoun, and cardinal acton, who obtained the requisite facilities for me. [ ] tome v. pl. lxv.; tome iii. p. . [ ] d'agincourt's famous mistake in attributing these miniatures to the th or th century, and ottley's ascription of those in the saxon "aratus" of the th century to the nd or rd, are among those slips of the learned which prove that even great men are fallible. [ ] "iste liber est beati dionysii." [ ] the palimpsest homer of the british museum, discovered by mr. cureton, is of equal importance in grecian palæography. [ ] in the case of the "de republicâ," they are written in the same direction. see facsimiles in sylvestre and ferdinand seré. [ ] "iliadis fragmenta antiquissima cum picturis," ed. angelo maio. [ ] petri lambecii "commentaria de bibliotheca vindobonensi," vol. ii. [ ] the bible formerly belonging to theodore beza, now at cambridge, and one in the vatican, are rival claimants to this honour. [ ] it was given to charles i. of england, by cyrillus lucaris, patriarch of constantinople. [ ] in his "origin and progress of writing." [ ] "treasures of art in great britain," vol. i. p. . [ ] text to "shaw's illuminated ornaments," page . [ ] for a full description, with references to numerous commentators, see westwood's "palæographia sacra pictoria," cap. . [ ] tome ii. article "manuscrits," fig. . [ ] "treasures of art in great britain," vol. i. p. . [ ] dr. kugler ("handbuch der kunstgeschichte," p. ), in speaking of anglo-saxon illuminated manuscripts, observes, "dass wir diese arbeiten als ein der ersten zeugnisse des germanischen kunstgeistes in seiner selbständigkeit, und zugleich als das vorspiel oder als den ersten beginn des romanischen kunststyles, zu betrachten haben." [ ] as represented in the plates to salzenberg's fine work, "alt-christliche baudenkmale von constantinopel, vom v. bis xii. jahrhundert." folio, berlin, . [ ] the whole are given in shaw's "illuminated ornaments," plates , , , and . [ ] it is on this account that we have refrained from giving any specimens of manuscripts anterior to the th century. [ ] "palæographia sacra pictoria," cap. syriac mss. [ ] o'conor and others were of course earlier in the field. [ ] "palæographia sacra pictoria," book of kells, page . [ ] catalogue of the libri collection of mss., introduction by m. libri, pages xiv. and xxvi. london, . [ ] giraldus cambrensis, speaking probably of this very book, says, "sin autem ad perspicacius intuentum oculorum aciem invitaveris, et longe penitus ad artis arcana transpenetraveris, tam delicatas et subtiles, tam actas et arctas, tam nodosas et vinculatim colligatas, tamque recentibus adhuc coloribus illustratas, notare poteris intricaturas, ut vere hæc omnia angelica potius quam humana diligentia jam asseveraveris esse composita." [ ] it is more abundantly used in vesp. a , which, as we shall have occasion to notice hereafter, is in a very mixed style. [ ] bede expressly says, that at augustine's synod, held at the commencement of the th century, the bishops and learned men attending it, "after a long disputation, refused to comply with the entreaties, exhortations, or rebukes of the saint and his companions, but preferred their own traditions before all the churches in the world, which in christ agree among themselves." [ ] d'agincourt, "painting," plates xxviii. xxix. xxx. [ ] this precious volume and its illustrations were first figured and described by mr. westwood. [ ] "life of gregory the great," by johannes diaconus, lib. ii. cap. . [ ] the words are, "quæ omnia illustrantur romano habitu, figuris, et antiquitate. imperatoris valentiniani tempora videntur attingere." this mistake of the old librarian has been corrected with much care and learning by the baron van tiellandt.--see his "naspeuringen nopens zekeren codex psalmorum in de utrechtsche boekerij berustende, door w. h. j. baron van westreeinen van tiellandt." [ ] the ms. department of the british museum possesses some tracings from the utrecht psalter, and on confronting them with the harleian , it requires a sharp eye to detect the slight differences existing between several of the illustrations to each of the volumes. in the harleian volume, all the subjects have not been filled in; some are left out altogether, spaces being reserved for them in the text, and others are faintly traced with a leaden or silver point, preparatory to inking in: very few artists of the present day could block in the general forms in so peculiar a style with greater freedom or more complete conveyance of expression, by similarly slight indications. [ ] the whole of the illuminations are given in the twenty-fourth volume of the "archæologia." the manuscript stands in the bodleian catalogue, "junius, no. ii." [ ] introduction to shaw's "illuminated ornaments," pages and . [ ] the following inscription, written in letters of gold on the reverse of the fourth leaf and the bottom of the recto of the fifth, identifies both the artist and the patron under whose auspices the volume was executed, between the years and , the term of ethelwold's occupation of the see of winchester:-- "presentem biblum jussit perscribere presul wintoniæ dñs que[m] fecerat esse patronum magnus _Æthelwoldus_ * * * * * * * * * atque patri magno jussit qui scribere librum hunc omnes cernentes biblum hunc semper rogitent hoc post meta carnis valeam celis in herere obnixe hoc rogitat scriptor supplex _godemann_." [ ] if the celebrated coronation book of the anglo-saxon kings should turn out to have been written and illuminated in this country, it would afford a striking illustration of this reaction. the general opinion, however, appears to be, among the learned, that it may have been given to athelstan by otho of germany, who married his sister, and by matilda, otho's mother. the arguments in favour of, and against, the anglo-saxon origin of the volume would be too long to discuss in this place. the writing is mainly carlovingian. [ ] "bib. dec." vol. i. p. cxxii. [ ] it is to be regretted that the propriety of those just and learned remarks of muratori, in which he exhibited himself as one of the earliest foreign scholars inclined to do justice to the ancient irish and british schools,--"neque enim silenda laus britanniæ, scotiæ, et hiberniæ, quæ studio liberalium artium eo tempore antecellebant reliquis occidentalibus regnis; et cura præsertim monachorum, qui literarum gloriam, alibi aut languentem aut depressam, in iis regionibus impigrè suscitarent atque tuebantur" (murat. "antiq. ital." diss. ),--should have been impugned by the rev. mr. berington in his "literary history of the middle ages," pages , . [ ] these pious monks, until probably some time after the norman conquest, generally worked together in an apartment capable of containing many persons, and in which many persons did, in fact, work together at the transcription of books. the first of these points is implied in a curious document, which is one of the very few specimens extant of french visi-gothic ms. in uncial characters, of the th century. it is a short but beautiful form of consecration or benediction, barbarously entitled "orationem in scripturio," and is to the following effect: "vouchsafe, o lord, to bless _this scriptorium of thy servants and all that dwell therein_; that whatsoever sacred writing shall be here read or written by them, they may receive with understanding, and bring the same to good effect, through our lord," &c.--see merryweather's "bibliomania in the middle ages." [ ] "dark ages," second edition, p. . [ ] librarian of the town of evreux. [ ] cornemillot, evreux, . [ ] du sommerard, in "les arts du moyen age," has given copies of all the illuminations, and mr. westwood a page of specimens. [ ] count bastard gives no less than six grand facsimiles from this volume, which is one of the greatest lions of the bibliothèque impériale at paris. [ ] one of the most curious illuminations in the book, the celebrated "fontaine mystique" of the church, is altogether antique in style and execution. [ ] the colouring in this ms. is very elegant, being mainly restricted to gold, purple, white, and a little very brilliant vermilion;--the forms are principally saxon. [ ] described at length by dr. waagen, "treasures of art in great britain," pages - . [ ] many illustrations, but unfortunately without colour, are given by d'agincourt, "pittura," plates to inclusive. [ ] the folio vulgate (b. m. addl. mss. no. ) purchased by the british museum authorities from m. speyer passavant, of basle, in , for £ , was considered by its late possessor to have been the original transcript "diligently emended" by alcuin himself, for presentation to charlemagne on his coronation as emperor of rome, in the year . it is a very fine and interesting volume, but has been referred, by more recent authorities, to the reign of charles the bald. mr. westwood, however, considers that "it appears to have better claims than any of the several caroline bibles now in existence, to be considered as the volume so presented." its chief rival is the great bible of the fathers of sta. maria, in vallicella, at rome. sir frederick madden has entered into a minute analysis of the claims of the speyer passavant volume, in a series of most learned articles in the "gentleman's magazine" for . see also westwood's "palæographia sacra," and the pamphlet, by its late possessor, j. h. de speyer passavant, "description de la bible écrite par alchuine, &c." par. , pp. . [ ] it is singular, considering how generally hiberno-saxon ornament was adopted by continental illuminators, that the peculiar saxon _fluttering_ outline never obtained a footing. [ ] the learned and most eloquent author of the "poésie chrétienne," m. rio (from whom it was my privilege, while yet a youthful student, to receive many a valuable lesson), in noting this "total eclipse," remarks that "two rolls of parchment, one of which is preserved in the library of the barbarini palace, the other in the sacristy of the cathedral of pisa, are ornamented with miniatures which may serve to give us an idea of the state into which the arts of design had fallen in italy in the th century. those which were executed rather later, in the manuscript of a poem on the countess matilda (written by a certain 'donizo,' in ), which is preserved in the vatican, display no trace either of chiaroscuro or of correct imitation of form. "the romano-christian school ceased from this time to exist, after having fulfilled the whole of its mission, which had been to form the connecting link between the primitive inspirations of christian art and the new schools which were destined to reap the harvest of this rich inheritance, and turn it to good account. "as for the germano-christian school, it may be compared to a vigorous shoot severed from a dying trunk, to revive and flourish in a better soil." [ ] the "menologion" of the vatican, a magnificent volume, containing no less than miniatures of remarkable interest and excellence, is the standing illustration of this assertion. the work was engraved and published at urbino, in three folio volumes, in , under the auspices of three pontiffs, clement xi., innocent xiii., and benedict xiii. [ ] it would be difficult to find in the production of the best roman age anything nobler than several of the compositions in the paris "psalter," with commentaries (imperial library, gr. no. ), a greek manuscript of the th century. one of the finest of the figures contained in it, that of "night," i caused to be enlarged, and painted on the exterior of the byzantine court at sydenham, as giving a more favourable impression of greek art than any other pictorial representation i could meet with. a replica of this subject occurs in the vatican "prophecies of isaiah." the two may be compared from the works of d'agincourt and seré. most noteworthy also among the best of this class of byzantine manuscripts, are the paris "commentaries of gregory nazianzen," the british museum psalter (egerton, no. . ) of early th century work, and the bodleian "codex ebnerianus." [ ] of this ornamental style the most remarkable specimens are the vatican "acts of the apostles," and a beautiful volume in the library of the duke of hamilton. from the former, i have given some facsimiles in "the geometrical mosaics of the middle ages" (plate ), in order to show the similarity of design between the gold ground mosaics of the greeks and early italians, and the embellishments of the illuminated manuscripts of the former. [ ] ingulphus was at that very time indebted directly to the conqueror, his early patron, for his abbacy. [ ] see martene const. canon. reg. in "de ant. eccl. ritibus," tom. iii., for full details. [ ] this indulgence was, after all, not very luxurious, for, as mr. maitland remarks ("dark ages," nd edition, p. ), "many a scribe has, i dare say, felt what lewis, a monk of wessobrun, in bavaria, records as his own experience during his sedentary and protracted labours. in an inscription appended to a copy of jerome's commentary on daniel, among other grounds on which he claims the sympathy and the prayers of the readers, he says,-- "'dum scripsit friguit, et quod cum lumine solis scribere non potuit, perfecit lumine noctis.'" for whilst he wrote he froze, and that which by daylight he could not bring to perfection, he worked at again by the aid of the moonlight. [ ] in italy the propensity for large letters was never relinquished. [ ] w. h. blaauw, esq. [ ] edited by james raine, jun., for the surtees society. vo. durham, . [ ] the same series of rolls contain many very interesting entries; as, for instance,-- " a.d. soluti--de _l._ _s._ _d._ sol. hoc anno fratri willelmo ellerker pro scriptura duorum gradalium pro choro. de _s._ solutis domino ricardo de styrton pro eluminacione dictorum duorum gradalium--de _s._ ½_d._ solutis dicto willelmo pro pergameno empto per ipsum willelmum. "a.d. . roberto bukebinder pro ligatura unius magni gradalis pro choro ex convencione facta _s._ eidem pro iiii. pellibus pergameni pro eadem custodiendo _d._ eidem pro i. pelle cervi pro coopertura dicti libri _s._ _d._ fratri willelmo ellerker pro pergameno _s._ domino ricardo de styrton in plenam solucionem _alumpnyng_ tryum gradalium, _s._ de _s._ _d._ solutis domino johanni brignale pro viii. pellibus pergameni emptis pro magno gradali predicto." "domino ricardo de styrton pro alumpnacione magni gradalis novi in choro, _s._ "a.d. . in expensis in _alumpnacione_ magni gradalis in choro per dominum ricardum de stretton, _s._" throughout these accounts, and others too lengthy to note, it will be noticed that the value of the parchment, gold, colours, and current expenses, falls not very far short of the total cost of the labour of the illuminator. [ ] "treasures of art in great britain," vol. i. p. . the same distinguished critic, who has made a special study of the illuminated mss. of europe, and especially of the french (see his "kunstwerken und kunstlern in paris"), in describing some of the pictures in queen mary's psalter (unquestionably english), observes (p. ), "upon the whole, i am acquainted with no miniatures, either netherlandish, german, or french, of this time" (the th century) "which can compare in artistic value with the pictures executed by the best hand in this manuscript." [ ] it is to be regretted that count bastard failed to complete more than thirty-two plates of the splendid work he announced under the title of "librairie de jean de france, duc de berri, frère de charles v., publié en son entier pour la première fois." paris, . fol. max. &c. [ ] "de l'art en allemagne," tome ii. page . paris, . [ ] see casts from his bronze doors and columns in the crystal palace, and his three gospels in the treasury of the cathedral at hildesheim. in dr. f. h. müller's "beiträge zur teutschen kunst und geschichtskunde," very careful engravings of the plastic art of bernward and willigis may be compared with facsimiles of contemporary german illumination. [ ] the steps of the transition are also well indicated, and illustrated by reference to special mss. in kugler's "kunstgeschichte," in his article on the "nord., vornehml. deutsche malerei der roman. periode." [ ] the subject is one that i am unable to find has been treated with any great ability. the reader may, however, be referred to the following old spanish works on the subject:--andres merino de jesu-cristo, "escuela palæographica, ó de leer letras universas, antiguas y modernas, desde la entrada de los godos en españa" (madrid, , in fol. fig.);--estev. de terreros, "palæographia española, que contiene todos los modos conocidos, que ha habido de escribir en españa, desde su principio y fundación" (madrid, ibarra, , in to. fig.); and rodriguez-christ., "bibliotheca universal de la polygraphia española" (madrid, , fol. fig.). [ ] that art which is called "illumination" in paris. [ ] "lettere sanese," tom. i. p. . [ ] the well-known passage in which dante alludes to oderigi occurs in the eleventh canto of the "paradiso," and is as follows:-- "oh, dissi lui, non se' tu oderisi, l' onor d' agubbio, e l' onor di quell' arte che alluminar è chiamata a parisi? frate, diss' egli, più ridon le carte che pennelegia franco bolognese: l' onor è tutto or suo, e mio in parte. ben non sarei stato si cortese mentre ch' io vissi per lo gran disio dell' excellentia, ove mio cor intese. di tal superbia qui si paga il fio." [ ] vita di giotto. [ ] "storia pittorica," vol xi. p. , ed. pisa, ; and vol. v. pp. , , . [ ] lanzi speaks of these choral books as "de' più considerabili che abbia l'italia." [ ] the kensington museum possesses two splendid leaves from a great "chorale," which contain miniatures completely in the manner of fra angelico. [ ] the duke of hamilton possesses some beautiful mss. illuminated by, or in the manner of memmi. mr. layard is the fortunate owner of one leaf of surpassing grandeur and elevation of style. [ ] the style, if not the hand, of taddeo bartolo, another of the great early masters of the siennese school, may be distinctly traced in several existing miniatures. [ ] "poetry of christian art," p. . [ ] "ornò i libri corali di figure nobillissime."--cittadella, "catalogo dei pittori e scultori ferraresi," vol. i. pp. - . [ ] rio. it must be a matter of delight to all lovers of true art that that most useful society, the "arundel," has been of late turning its attention to the production, by means of chromo-lithography, of some of the finest examples extant of italian quattro and cinque-cento illumination. [ ] a small volume, which passed from the hands of the late mr. dennistoun into the collection of lord ashburnham, contains a series of arabesques and miniatures of the most interesting character, recalling in different pages, and in the highest perfection, the varied styles of pietro perugino, pinturicchio, lo spagna, and others. the duke of hamilton's library is extraordinarily rich in italian mss.; his grace's dante with outline illustrations being of great importance. [ ] _see_ mr. shaw's truly beautiful reproduction, in that gentleman's "illuminated ornaments," &c., of a portion of arabesque border from this volume, containing a medallion portrait, plate xxxv. a very beautiful sforza ms. has lately been transferred from the possession of mr. henry farrer to that of the marquis d'azeglio. [ ] that andrea exercised a great influence upon miniature-painting may be recognized in the works of girolamo: a grand leaf from a folio, on which is painted a seated allegorical figure of "rome," in the possession of mr. t. whitehead, is so noble in every way, and so entirely in andrea's manner, that it seems almost impossible to doubt its being by his hand. it may, however, possibly have been executed by his contemporary in the mantuan school, "giovanni dei russi," who in illuminated the great bible of the house of este, for borso, duke of modena. [ ] "vita di fra giocondo e di liberale, e d'altri veronesi." [ ] the celotti sale, which took place at christie's on the th of may, , and which included by far the most important collection of italian illuminations ever brought to the hammer, contained no less than nineteen beautiful specimens extracted from the choral books of that pope. [ ] _see_ baglioni, "vite dei pittori ed architetti fioriti in roma, dal sino al ,"--vita di giulio clovio. [ ] facsimiles of the exquisite pages of this volume are given in mr. noel humphrey's work; they are perfect triumphs of chromolithographic skill, and their production by mr. owen jones formed what germans may hereafter call a "standpunkt" in the history of that art, of which this volume presents no unfavourable sample. [ ] grenville collection. [ ] in his catalogue of the sale of the celotti collection. [ ] the kensington museum possesses a beautiful specimen by this artist, formerly in mr. ottley's collection. two others of equal excellence are treasured among other gems of art, by mr. ram, of ramsfort, ireland. they all came from celotti. [ ] mr. whitehead's small but choice collection of specimens includes one quite worthy of the hand of tintoretto. [ ] mr. s. leigh sotheby, in his admirable "principia typographica," dr. dibdin in his "bibliotheca spenceriana," and the baron de heinecken in his "idée générale d'une collection complète d'estampes, &c.," give the best literary and graphic illustrations of the block books of the middle ages. [ ] our good fortune in possessing at the present time, and in common use, a remarkably clear and easily intelligible set of alphabets, was thus admirably noted in an article in the _times_ newspaper of december th, :-- "happily for us, the written symbols employed by the romans, which are now the chief medium of expression for all the languages of europe, america, australia, and the greater part of civilized africa, reflect exactly the rough and stalwart energy which made rome to europe what we are to the world. they have bestowed on us an alphabet as practically effective, and as suited to the capabilities of human vision, as any that could have been devised. this alphabet of ours is like an englishman's dress--plain and manageable; not very artistically arranged, it may be, nor remarkable for copiousness or flow of outline, but sufficiently elastic and capable of extension. its symbols have certainly no graceful curves like the picturesque persian; but, better than all flourishes, each letter has plain, unmistakable features of its own. the vowels, which are to the rest of the alphabet what the breath, or rather life itself, is to the body, are assigned their legitimate position, and are formed to be written continuously with the consonants. lastly, though scanty in itself, it is abundantly equipped with capital letters, stops, italics, and every appliance for securing rapid legibility, so that the eye can take in the subject of a page at a glance. oriental alphabets are the very reverse of all this. they are complex, cumbersome, unmanageable." much the same might have been said of many of the mediæval ones. [ ] for excellent examples, see plates technical manual, nos. and ; and historical manual, nos. and . [ ] the best are contained in the writings of de quincy, owen jones, winkellman, pugin, and sir charles eastlake. [ ] _see_ especially pages to inclusive, from which i transcribe a few elegant and suggestive passages:-- "the student should keep," says mr. jewitt, "both in form and colour, as near to nature as possible. no fantastic design can be so elegant as one copied and studied from nature. what, for instance, can be more beautiful or more appropriate for intertwining with rich scroll-work than the convolvulus, the maurandia, the woodbine, the tropeolum, or the passion-flower? these painted upon a rich groundwork of diapered gold, or upon one of the beautiful grounds of the th century, composed of gold and blue or green, in fine waved or winding lines, crossing each other in every conceivable direction, form truly elegant studies, for almost all varieties of ornamentation. whenever birds, insects, &c., are introduced, they should, as a general rule, be drawn true to nature; but they may, nevertheless, be turned and twisted into almost any position or shape. for instance, a lizard, with its beautiful emerald-green back, its yellow underparts, and rich brown mottlings, might be introduced with its long tail wrapped and twisted round the stem of a plant, and its little head, with brilliant eyes, shown just peeping out from under one of the beautiful flowers. the ladybird, with its bright red wings, covered with small black spots, might also be well introduced, creeping upon a leaf or stem. hairy caterpillars, ants, beetles, snails, glow-worms, and even spiders, form also beautiful additions to a design, and may be introduced in almost any form or shape. butterflies and moths, in their endless and beautiful variety, with their wings of every conceivable colour and shade, and of the most exquisite forms, are truly amongst the most beautiful and appropriate objects which the student can have for his mind to dwell upon. but not only these,--for occasionally a squirrel might be introduced perched upon the scroll-work; a cat, a goat, a dog, a monkey peeping out from behind a leaf; or, indeed, any animal, if artistically and naturally treated, may be introduced with really good effect. flowers, fruits, shells, corn, &c., all add their beauties to a design; and, indeed, there is nothing in nature, no, not one object, but which may well be introduced into ornamental designing, and may be so translated and poeticised as to become appropriate to any subject." [ ] "materials for a history of oil-painting," by charles lock eastlake: london, . [ ] the most copious text of heraclius is contained in the le bègue collection of writers on art, brought together by master john le bègue, of paris, in the th century. [ ] sir charles eastlake does not place heraclius so early as raspe and mr. hendrie do. i incline to agree with the last-named critics. [ ] the text of heraclius is given not from the le bègue manuscript, but from one less perfect, formerly at cambridge, but now in the british museum, egerton a, in raspe's work--"a critical essay on oil-painting." london, . [ ] muratori, "antiq. ital. medii Ævi," p. . [ ] the title he himself gives to his work illustrates its comprehensive character--"theophili qui et rugerus, presbyteri et monachi libri iii. de diversis artibus, seu diversarum artium schedula." translations, with excellent critical comments, have been made by the count de l'escalopier into french, and by mr. robert hendrie into english. in the extracts here given i have followed the accurate text of the last-named gentleman. [ ] i cannot take leave of this good old monk, the influence exercised by whose writings during the whole of the middle ages is proved by the numerous transcripts of them executed at different periods, still preserved in most of the chief european libraries, without giving him credit for a pure and liberal philanthropy worthy of imitation in all ages. nothing can be more dignified and noble than the words in which he concludes the introduction to his work. after reciting the various arts he has endeavoured to illustrate, and the sufferings and labour through which the knowledge he desires to convey to others had been acquired by himself, he winds up by saying:-- "when you shall have re-read this often, and have committed it to your tenacious memory, you shall thus recompense me for this care of instruction, that, as often as you shall successfully have made use of my work, you pray for me for the pity of omnipotent god, who knows that i have written these things which are here arranged, neither through love of human approbation, nor through desire of temporal reward, nor have i stolen anything precious or rare through envious jealousy, nor have i kept back anything reserved for myself alone; but, in augmentation of the honour and glory of his name, i have consulted the progress and hastened to aid the necessities of many men." [ ] it will be found given in extenso in the nd vol. of "the archæologia," pp. - , with an elaborate letter from its possessor. [ ] there is some confusion about this word, for it is used to denote mixtures which would produce real rose-colour, light warm yellow, and a perfect drab. [ ] that is, the mineral green with the vegetable madder. [ ] a beautiful example may be found in dan lydgate's legends of st. edmund and st. fremund, ms. harleian, . [ ] "materials for a history of oil-painting," by charles lock eastlake (lond. ), pp. , . [ ] mr. edwin jewitt's little "manual of illuminated and missal painting," mr. randle harrison's, mr. albert warren's, and mr. henry m. lucien's, published by messrs. barnard, of oxford-street; mr. j. w. bradley's, and mr. t. g. goodwin's, published by messrs. winsor & newton, of rathbone place; and mr. noel humphrey's hand-book on the same subject, have no doubt proved useful to many, and helped to produce the quantity of good illumination now executed. [ ] for illumination in water-colour on paper, cardboard, or vellum, messrs. winsor & newton, rowney, barnard, newman, and others, fit up boxes with special selections of all requisite materials; including all that can be wanted for the application and burnishing of gold and other metals. messrs. miller's "glass mediums, nos. and ," and newman's "preparation for sizing albumenized papers," are exceedingly useful for mixing with illuminating colours; giving great hardness and body to them, and preventing them from "washing up," in working over with glazing and other tints. i have found mr. barbe's powder body-colours give remarkably solid tints, with great freedom in working. [ ] this had better be bought ready prepared, since some experience is requisite in so applying the red chalk as to prevent its depositing under the weight of the hand, and yet coming off sufficiently in the line traced by the point. [ ] the experienced illuminator will generally do his writing before he gets in the outline of his ornament, and he will frequently dispense with the transferring process altogether; but it would be by no means safe for a beginner to do so. [ ] both the cushion and tip will be described in detail under the head of oil-gilding. [ ] the amateur may of course prepare mordants of different degrees of tenacity and body for his own use, by the employment, and various combinations, of leather and parchment size, isinglass, red lead, gum arabic, sugar, honey, glycerine, borax, plaster of paris, bol ammoniac, glaire, and similar substances; but his time will be more profitably spent in improving himself in design than it could be (nowadays) in experimenting on the "materia technica" of art. [ ] this information is principally derived from nathaniel whittock's "decorative painter's and glazier's guide." it gives the usual practice of "writers to the trade," but must, of course, be modified according to the specialities of any of the historical styles adopted. [ ] japanners' gilding is a branch of oil-gilding, the size or ground being made with pound of linseed oil, to which, while boiling, is added gradually ounces of gum animi in powder, the whole being stirred until the gum is completely dissolved, and kept boiling till the mixture is of a thick consistence, in which state it should be strained through a thick flannel, and stored in a wide-mouthed stoppered bottle. vermilion is ground up with the size before it is applied, to render it opaque; and if it does not leave the brush freely, it should be thinned with oil of turpentine. the gold powder may be either real gold, or what is called dutch metal, or imitation gold. gold powder is produced by grinding the leaf gold with pure honey on the stone till it is perfectly reduced to powder, and afterwards dissolving the mixture in water till the honey is completely removed, and for this several waters are necessary; the water is then poured off, and the powder dried. if this gold be mixed up with weak gum-water and spread upon cockle-shells, it is then called shell gold, which is used in drawings only. the dutch gold powder is made by reducing the dutch leaf gold by exactly the same process; and if well protected by varnishing, its appearance is little inferior to the genuine metal. there is another method of procuring gold powder, which is by precipitating grain gold into powder by means of aqua regia, which is made by dissolving four parts of pure spirit of nitre and one part of sal ammoniac in powder. this process was (as has been already stated) well known to the mediæval illuminators. in ounces of this compound, ½ an ounce of grain gold is dissolved under the action of a slight heat; a solution of green vitriol, consisting of copperas dram, water ounce, being gradually added. when the precipitation has ceased, the gold powder must be carefully washed and dried, and will be found to be more brilliant than that made from leaf gold. the use of japanners' gold-size is very similar to oil-gilding, and is equally simple. if the material to be gilded is brought to a smooth and clean face, the size may be laid on at once without other preparation; using great care, however, not to touch any part but what you wish to gild, as the gold will adhere wherever there is size. priming with a mixture of chalk and size is sometimes used for a first coat, but not by the best japanners, as the work is liable to chip off; no material should therefore be japanned which cannot be made smooth. for hard or close-grained wood, metal, leather, or paper, one or two coats of varnish will answer all requirements; very great care being observed that each coat of varnish be perfectly dry and hard before it is again touched. it is a good practice to allow the work to stand a day or two between the applications; then the japanners' gold-size may be added, and touching with the finger as before described will indicate the proper state for applying the gold, whether in leaf or powder. either may be employed; but in the case of colours being intermixed and subsequently varnished, the powder is usually adopted; it is easily laid on by means of a camel-hair brush, the work being set aside to get thoroughly dry, when the superfluous metal is removed with a soft brush. in case more size should have been prepared than is needed, the remainder, if water be poured over it, will keep for future use. [ ] the superiority of the chinese and japanese varnishing is chiefly owing to the excellence of a particular species of resin found in china and japan. the varnishes made with oil are longer drying than those made with spirits of wine, but are of greater durability. the spirits of wine should be highly rectified: if oil is used, it should be linseed. it is safer to purchase the varnish ready prepared than to attempt the making of it, as the solution of resin, particularly in oil, is somewhat dangerous. library edition the complete works of john ruskin modern painters volume iv--of mountain beauty / of leaf beauty volume v < of cloud beauty \ of ideas of relation national library association new york chicago modern painters. volume v., completing the work and containing parts vi. of leaf beauty.--vii. of cloud beauty. viii. of ideas of relation. . of invention formal. ix. of ideas of relation. . of invention spiritual. preface. the disproportion, between the length of time occupied in the preparation of this volume, and the slightness of apparent result, is so vexatious to me, and must seem so strange to the reader, that he will perhaps bear with my stating some of the matters which have employed or interrupted me between and . i needed rest after finishing the fourth volume, and did little in the following summer. the winter of was spent in writing the "elements of drawing," for which i thought there was immediate need; and in examining with more attention than they deserved some of the modern theories of political economy, to which there was necessarily reference in my addresses at manchester. the manchester exhibition then gave me some work, chiefly in its magnificent reynolds' constellation; and thence i went on into scotland, to look at dumblane and jedburgh, and some other favorite sites of turner's; which i had not all seen, when i received notice from mr. wornum that he had obtained for me permission, from the trustees of the national gallery, to arrange, as i thought best, the turner drawings belonging to the nation; on which i returned to london immediately. in seven tin boxes in the lower room of the national gallery i found upwards of nineteen thousand pieces of paper, drawn upon by turner in one way or another. many on both sides; some with four, five, or six subjects on each side (the pencil point digging spiritedly through from the foregrounds of the front into the tender pieces of sky on the back); some in chalk, which the touch of the finger would sweep away;[ ] others in ink, rotted into holes; others (some splendid colored drawings among them) long eaten away by damp and mildew, and falling into dust at the edges, in capes and bays of fragile decay; others worm-eaten, some mouse-eaten, many torn half-way through; numbers doubled (quadrupled, i should say) up into four, being turner's favorite mode of packing for travelling; nearly all rudely flattened out from the bundles in which turner had finally rolled them up and squeezed them into his drawers in queen anne street. dust of thirty years' accumulation, black, dense, and sooty, lay in the rents of the crushed and crumpled edges of these flattened bundles, looking like a jagged black frame, and producing altogether unexpected effects in brilliant portions of skies, whence an accidental or experimental finger mark of the first bundle-unfolder had swept it away. about half, or rather more, of the entire number consisted of pencil sketches, in flat oblong pocket-books, dropping to pieces at the back, tearing laterally whenever opened, and every drawing rubbing itself into the one opposite. these first i paged with my own hand; then unbound; and laid every leaf separately in a clean sheet of perfectly smooth writing paper, so that it might receive no farther injury. then, enclosing the contents and boards of each book (usually ninety-two leaves, more or less drawn on both sides, with two sketches on the boards at the beginning and end) in a separate sealed packet, i returned it to its tin box. the loose sketches needed more trouble. the dust had first to be got off them (from the chalk ones it could only be blown off); then they had to be variously flattened; the torn ones to be laid down, the loveliest guarded, so as to prevent all future friction; and four hundred of the most characteristic framed and glazed, and cabinets constructed for them which would admit of their free use by the public. with two assistants, i was at work all the autumn and winter of , every day, all day long, and often far into the night. the manual labor would not have hurt me; but the excitement involved in seeing unfolded the whole career of turner's mind during his life, joined with much sorrow at the state in which nearly all his most precious work had been left, and with great anxiety, and heavy sense of responsibility besides, were very trying; and i have never in my life felt so much exhausted as when i locked the last box, and gave the keys to mr. wornum, in may, . among the later colored sketches, there was one magnificent series, which appeared to be of some towns along the course of the rhine on the north of switzerland. knowing that these towns were peculiarly liable to be injured by modern railroad works, i thought i might rest myself by hunting down these turner subjects, and sketching what i could of them, in order to illustrate his compositions. as i expected, the subjects in question were all on, or near, that east and west reach of the rhine between constance and basle. most of them are of rheinfelden, seckingen, lauffenbourg, schaffhausen, and the swiss baden. having made what notes were possible to me of these subjects in the summer (one or two are used in this volume), i was crossing lombardy in order to examine some points of the shepherd character in the vaudois valleys, thinking to get my book finished next spring; when i unexpectedly found some good paul veroneses at turin. there were several questions respecting the real motives of venetian work that still troubled me not a little, and which i had intended to work out in the louvre; but seeing that turin was a good place wherein to keep out of people's way, i settled there instead, and began with veronese's queen of sheba;--when, with much consternation, but more delight, i found that i had never got to the roots of the moral power of the venetians, and that they needed still another and a very stern course of study. there was nothing for it but to give up the book for that year. the winter was spent mainly in trying to get at the mind of titian; not a light winter's task; of which the issue, being in many ways very unexpected to me (the reader will find it partly told towards the close of this volume), necessitated my going in the spring to berlin, to see titian's portrait of lavinia there, and to dresden to see the tribute money, the elder lavinia, and girl in white, with the flag fan. another portrait, at dresden, of a lady in a dress of rose and gold, by me unheard of before, and one of an admiral, at munich, had like to have kept me in germany all summer. getting home at last, and having put myself to arrange materials of which it was not easy, after so much interruption, to recover the command;--which also were now not reducible to a single volume--two questions occurred in the outset, one in the section on vegetation, respecting the origin of wood; the other in the section on sea, respecting curves of waves; to neither of which, from botanist or mathematicians, any sufficient answer seemed obtainable. in other respects also the section on the sea was wholly unsatisfactory to me: i knew little of ships, nothing of blue open water. turner's pathetic interest in the sea, and his inexhaustible knowledge of shipping, deserved more complete and accurate illustration than was at all possible to me; and the mathematical difficulty lay at the beginning of all demonstration of facts. i determined to do this piece of work well, or not at all, and threw the proposed section out of this volume. if i ever am able to do what i want with it (and this is barely probable), it will be a separate book; which, on other accounts, i do not regret, since many persons might be interested in studies of the shipping of the old nelson times, and of the sea-waves and sailor character of all times, who would not care to encumber themselves with five volumes of a work on art. the vegetation question had, however, at all cost, to be made out as best might be; and again lost me much time. many of the results of this inquiry, also, can only be given, if ever, in a detached form. during these various discouragements, the preparation of the plates could not go on prosperously. drawing is difficult enough, undertaken in quietness: it is impossible to bring it to any point of fine rightness with half-applied energy. many experiments were made in hope of expressing turner's peculiar execution and touch by facsimile. they cost time, and strength, and, for the present, have failed; many elaborate drawings, made during the winter of , having been at last thrown aside. some good may afterwards come of these; but certainly not by reduction to the size of the page of this book, for which, even of smaller subjects, i have not prepared the most interesting, for i do not wish the possession of any effective and valuable engravings from turner to be contingent on the purchasing a book of mine.[ ] feebly and faultfully, therefore, yet as well as i can do it under these discouragements, the book is at last done; respecting the general course of which, it will be kind and well if the reader will note these few points that follow. the first volume was the expansion of a reply to a magazine article; and was not begun because i then thought myself qualified to write a systematic treatise on art; but because i at least knew, and knew it to be demonstrable, that turner was right and true, and that his critics were wrong, false, and base. at that time i had seen much of nature, and had been several times in italy, wintering once in rome; but had chiefly delighted in northern art, beginning, when a mere boy, with rubens and rembrandt. it was long before i got quit of a boy's veneration for rubens' physical art-power; and the reader will, perhaps, on this ground forgive the strong expressions of admiration for rubens, which, to my great regret, occur in the first volume. finding myself, however, engaged seriously in the essay, i went, before writing the second volume, to study in italy; where the strong reaction from the influence of rubens threw me at first too far under that of angelico and raphael, and, which was the worst harm that came of that rubens influence, blinded me long to the deepest qualities of venetian art; which, the reader may see by expressions occurring not only in the second, but even in the third and fourth volumes, i thought, however powerful, yet partly luxurious and sensual, until i was led into the final inquiries above related. these oscillations of temper, and progressions of discovery, extending over a period of seventeen years, ought not to diminish the reader's confidence in the book. let him be assured of this, that unless important changes are occurring in his opinions continually, all his life long, not one of those opinions can be on any questionable subject true. all true opinions are living, and show their life by being capable of nourishment; therefore of change. but their change is that of a tree--not of a cloud. in the main aim and principle of the book, there is no variation, from its first syllable to its last. it declares the perfectness and eternal beauty of the work of god; and tests all work of man by concurrence with, or subjection to that. and it differs from most books, and has a chance of being in some respects better for the difference, in that it has not been written either for fame, or for money, or for conscience-sake, but of necessity. it has not been written for praise. had i wished to gain present reputation, by a little flattery adroitly used in some places, a sharp word or two withheld in others, and the substitution of verbiage generally for investigation, i could have made the circulation of these volumes tenfold what it has been in modern society. had i wished for future fame, i should have written one volume, not five. also, it has not been written for money. in this wealth-producing country, seventeen years' labor could hardly have been invested with less chance of equivalent return. also, it has not been written for conscience-sake. i had no definite hope in writing it; still less any sense of its being required of me as a duty. it seems to me, and seemed always, probable, that i might have done much more good in some other way. but it has been written of necessity. i saw an injustice done, and tried to remedy it. i heard falsehood taught, and was compelled to deny it. nothing else was possible to me. i knew not how little or how much might come of the business, or whether i was fit for it; but here was the lie full set in front of me, and there was no way round it, but only over it. so that, as the work changed like a tree, it was also rooted like a tree--not where it would, but where need was; on which, if any fruit grow such as you can like, you are welcome to gather it without thanks; and so far as it is poor or bitter, it will be your justice to refuse it without reviling. footnotes: [ ] the best book of studies for his great shipwrecks contained about a quarter of a pound of chalk débris, black and white, broken off the crayons with which turner had drawn furiously on both sides of the leaves; every leaf, with peculiar foresight and consideration of difficulties to be met by future mounters, containing half of one subject on the front of it, and half of another on the back. [ ] to mr. armytage, mr. cuff, and mr. cousen, i have to express my sincere thanks for the patience, and my sincere admiration of the skill, with which they have helped me. their patience, especially, has been put to severe trial by the rewardless toil required to produce facsimiles of drawings in which the slightness of subject could never attract any due notice to the excellence of workmanship. aid, just as disinterested, and deserving of as earnest acknowledgment, has been given me by miss byfield, in her faultless facsimiles of my careless sketches; by miss o. hill, who prepared the copies which i required from portions of the pictures of the old masters; and by mr. robin allen, in accurate line studies from nature, of which, though only one is engraved in this volume, many others have been most serviceable, both to it and to me. table of contents. part vi. on leaf beauty. page preface v chapter i.--the earth-veil " ii.--the leaf orders " iii.--the bud " iv.--the leaf " v.--leaf aspects " vi.--the branch " vii.--the stem " viii.--the leaf monuments " ix.--the leaf shadows " x.--leaves motionless part vii. of cloud beauty. chapter i.--the cloud balancings " ii.--the cloud-flocks " iii.--the cloud-chariots " iv.--the angel of the sea part viii. of ideas of relation:--i. of invention formal. chapter i.--the law of help " ii.--the task of the least " iii.--the rule of the greatest " iv.--the law of perfectness part ix. of ideas of relation:--ii. of invention spiritual. chapter i.--the dark mirror " ii.--the lance of pallas " iii.--the wings of the lion " iv.--durer and salvator " v.--claude and poussin " vi.--rubens and cuyp " vii.--of vulgarity " viii.--wouvermans and angelico " ix.--the two boyhoods " x.--the nereid's guard " xi.--the hesperid Æglé " xii.--peace local index. index to painters and pictures. topical index. list of plates to vol. v. drawn by engraved by frontispiece, ancilla domini _fra angelico_ wm. hall plate facing page . the dryad's toil _j. ruskin_ j. c. armytage . spirals of thorn _r. allen_ r. p. cuff . the dryad's crown _j. ruskin_ j. c. armytage . dutch leafage _cuyp and hobbima_ j. cousen . by the way-side _j. m. w. turner_ j. c. armytage . sketch by a clerk of the works _j. ruskin_ j. emslie . leafage by durer and veronese _durer and veronese_ r. p. cuff . branch curvature _r. allen_ r. p. cuff . the dryad's waywardness _j. ruskin_ r. p. cuff . the rending of leaves _j. ruskin_ j. cousen . richmond, from the moors _j. m. w. turner_ j. c. armytage . by the brookside _j. m. w. turner_ j. c. armytage . the cloud flocks _j. ruskin_ j. c. armytage . cloud perspective (rectilinear) _j. ruskin_ j. emslie . " " (curvilinear) _j. ruskin_ j. emslie . light in the west, beauvais _j. ruskin_ j. c. armytage . clouds _j. m. w. turner_ j. c. armytage . monte rosa _j. ruskin_ j. c. armytage . aiguilles and their friends _j. ruskin_ j. c. armytage . the graiæ _j. ruskin_ j. c. armytage . "venga medusa" _j. ruskin_ j. c. armytage . the locks of typhon _j. m. w. turner_ j. c. armytage . loire side _j. m. w. turner_ j. ruskin . the mill stream _j. m. w. turner_ j. ruskin . the castle of lauffen _j. m. w. turner_ r. p. cuff . the moat of nuremberg _j. ruskin_ j. h. le keux . quivi trovammo _j. m. w. turner_ j. ruskin . hesperid Æglé _giorgione_ wm. hall . rocks at rest / _j. ruskin, from j. m._ \ j. c. armytage \ _w. turner_ / . rocks in unrest / _j. ruskin, from j. m._ \ j. c. armytage \ _w. turner_ / . the nets in the rapids _j. m. w. turner_ j. h. le keux . the bridge of rheinfelden _j. ruskin_ j. h. le keux . peace _j. ruskin_ j. h. le keux separate engravings on wood. figure , to face page " , " " to , " " , " " , " " to , " " , " " , " [illustration: ancilla domini.] modern painters. part vi. of leaf beauty. chapter i. the earth-veil. § . "to dress it and to keep it." that, then, was to be our work. alas! what work have we set ourselves upon instead! how have we ravaged the garden instead of kept it--feeding our war-horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees into spear-shafts! "and at the east a flaming sword." is its flame quenchless? and are those gates that keep the way indeed passable no more? or is it not rather that we no more desire to enter? for what can we conceive of that first eden which we might not yet win back, if we chose? it was a place full of flowers, we say. well: the flowers are always striving to grow wherever we suffer them; and the fairer, the closer. there may indeed have been a fall of flowers, as a fall of man; but assuredly creatures such as we are can now fancy nothing lovelier than roses and lilies, which would grow for us side by side, leaf overlapping leaf, till the earth was white and red with them, if we cared to have it so. and paradise was full of pleasant shades and fruitful avenues. well: what hinders us from covering as much of the world as we like with pleasant shade and pure blossom, and goodly fruit? who forbids its valleys to be covered over with corn, till they laugh and sing? who prevents its dark forests, ghostly and uninhabitable, from being changed into infinite orchards, wreathing the hills with frail-floretted snow, far away to the half-lighted horizon of april, and flushing the face of all the autumnal earth with glow of clustered food? but paradise was a place of peace, we say, and all the animals were gentle servants to us. well: the world would yet be a place of peace if we were all peacemakers, and gentle service should we have of its creatures if we gave them gentle mastery. but so long as we make sport of slaying bird and beast, so long as we choose to contend rather with our fellows than with our faults, and make battlefield of our meadows instead of pasture--so long, truly, the flaming sword will still turn every way, and the gates of eden remain barred close enough, till we have sheathed the sharper flame of our own passions, and broken down the closer gates of our own hearts. § . i have been led to see and feel this more and more, as i considered the service which the flowers and trees, which man was at first appointed to keep, were intended to render to him in return for his care; and the services they still render to him, as far as he allows their influence, or fulfils his own task towards them. for what infinite wonderfulness there is in this vegetation, considered, as indeed it is, as the means by which the earth becomes the companion of man--his friend and his teacher! in the conditions which we have traced in its rocks, there could only be seen preparation for his existence;--the characters which enable him to live on it safely, and to work with it easily--in all these it has been inanimate and passive; but vegetation is to it as an imperfect soul, given to meet the soul of man. the earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of slow crystalline change; but at its surface, which human beings look upon and deal with, it ministers to them through a veil of strange intermediate being; which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its appointed place; passes through life without consciousness, to death without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth, without its passion; and declines to the weakness of age, without its regret. § . and in this mystery of intermediate being, entirely subordinate to us, with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power as we have the less responsibility for our treatment of the unsuffering creature, most of the pleasures which we need from the external world are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, all kinds of precious grace and teaching being united in this link between the earth and man: wonderful in universal adaptation to his need, desire, and discipline; god's daily preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful means of life. first a carpet to make it soft for him; then, a colored fantasy of embroidery thereon; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade him from sunheat, and shade also the fallen rain, that it may not dry quickly back into the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among the moss. stout wood to bear this leafage: easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temper); useless it had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less elastic. winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. the seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service: cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, preserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm: and all these presented in forms of endless change. fragility or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and aspects; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of summer streamlet. roots cleaving the strength of rock, or binding the transience of the sand; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave; foliage far tossing in entangled fields beneath every wave of ocean--clothing with variegated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest passion and simplest joy of humanity. § . being thus prepared for us in all ways, and made beautiful, and good for food, and for building, and for instruments of our hands, this race of plants, deserving boundless affection and admiration from us, become, in proportion to their obtaining it, a nearly perfect test of our being in right temper of mind and way of life; so that no one can be far wrong in either who loves the trees enough, and every one is assuredly wrong in both, who does not love them, if his life has brought them in his way. it is clearly possible to do without them, for the great companionship of the sea and sky are all that sailors need; and many a noble heart has been taught the best it had to learn between dark stone walls. still if human life be cast among trees at all, the love borne to them is a sure test of its purity. and it is a sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the "country," in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been the source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the words "countryman," "rustic," "clown," "paysan," "villager," still signify a rude and untaught person, as opposed to the words "townsman," and "citizen." we accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, somewhat too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and natural that country-people should be rude, and towns-people gentle. whereas i believe that the result of each mode of life may, in some stages of the world's progress, be the exact reverse; and that another use of words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we may find ourselves saying: "such and such a person is very gentle and kind--he is quite rustic; and such and such another person is very rude and ill-taught--he is quite urbane." § . at all events, cities have hitherto gained the better part of their good report through our evil ways of going on in the world generally;--chiefly and eminently through our bad habit of fighting with each other. no field, in the middle ages, being safe from devastation, and every country lane yielding easier passage to the marauders, peacefully-minded men necessarily congregated in cities, and walled themselves in, making as few cross-country roads as possible: while the men who sowed and reaped the harvests of europe were only the servants or slaves of the barons. the disdain of all agricultural pursuits by the nobility, and of all plain facts by the monks, kept educated europe in a state of mind over which natural phenomena could have no power; body and intellect being lost in the practice of war without purpose, and the meditation of words without meaning. men learned the dexterity with sword and syllogism, which they mistook for education, within cloister and tilt-yard; and looked on all the broad space of the world of god mainly as a place for exercise of horses, or for growth of food. § . there is a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the earth's beauty, by reason of the passions of men, in that picture of paul uccello's of the battle of sant' egidio,[ ] in which the armies meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender red flowers tossing above the helmets, and glowing between the lowered lances. for in like manner the whole of nature only shone hitherto for man between the tossing of helmet-crests; and sometimes i cannot but think of the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, in that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves in the warm spring-time, in vain for men; and all along the dells of england her beeches cast their dappled shade only where the outlaw drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase; and by the sweet french rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only to show the flames of burning cities, on the horizon, through the tracery of their stems: amidst the fair defiles of the apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on their valley meadows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn were washed with crimson at sunset. § . and indeed i had once purposed, in this work, to show what kind of evidence existed respecting the possible influence of country life on men; it seeming to me, then, likely that here and there a reader would perceive this to be a grave question, more than most which we contend about, political or social, and might care to follow it out with me earnestly. the day will assuredly come when men will see that it is a grave question; at which period, also, i doubt not, there will arise persons able to investigate it. for the present, the movements of the world seem little likely to be influenced by botanical law; or by any other considerations respecting trees, than the probable price of timber. i shall limit myself, therefore, to my own simple woodman's work, and try to hew this book into its final shape, with the limited and humble aim that i had in beginning it, namely, to prove how far the idle and peaceable persons, who have hitherto cared about leaves and clouds, have rightly seen, or faithfully reported of them. footnote: [ ]: in our own national gallery. it is quaint and imperfect, but of great interest. chapter ii. the leaf orders. § . as in our sketch of the structure of mountains it seemed advisable to adopt a classification of their forms, which, though inconsistent with absolute scientific precision, was convenient for order of successive inquiry, and gave useful largeness of view; so, and with yet stronger reason, in glancing at the first laws of vegetable life, it will be best to follow an arrangement easily remembered and broadly true, however incapable of being carried out into entirely consistent detail. i say, "with yet stronger reason," because more questions are at issue among botanists than among geologists; a greater number of classifications have been suggested for plants than for rocks; nor is it unlikely that those now accepted may be hereafter modified. i take an arrangement, therefore, involving no theory; serviceable enough for all working purposes, and sure to remain thus serviceable, in its rough generality, whatever views may hereafter be developed among botanists. § . a child's division of plants is into "trees and flowers." if, however, we were to take him in spring, after he had gathered his lapful of daisies, from the lawn into the orchard, and ask him how he would call those wreaths of richer floret, whose frail petals tossed their foam of promise between him and the sky, he would at once see the need of some intermediate name, and call them, perhaps, "tree-flowers." if, then, we took him to a birch-wood, and showed him that catkins were flowers, as well as cherry-blossoms, he might, with a little help, reach so far as to divide all flowers into two classes; one, those that grew on ground; and another, those that grew on trees. the botanist might smile at such a division; but an artist would not. to him, as the child, there is something specific and distinctive in those rough trunks that carry the higher flowers. to him, it makes the main difference between one plant and another, whether it is to tell as a light upon the ground, or as a shade upon the sky. and if, after this, we asked for a little help from the botanist, and he were to lead us, leaving the blossoms, to look more carefully at leaves and buds, we should find ourselves able in some sort to justify, even to him, our childish classification. for our present purposes, justifiable or not, it is the most suggestive and convenient. plants are, indeed, broadly referable to two great classes. the first we may, perhaps, not inexpediently call tented plants. they live in encampments, on the ground, as lilies; or on surfaces of rock, or stems of other plants, as lichens and mosses. they live--some for a year, some for many years, some for myriads of years; but, perishing, they pass as the tented arab passes; they leave _no memorials of themselves_, except the seed, or bulb, or root which is to perpetuate the race. § . the other great class of plants we may perhaps best call building plants. these will not live on the ground, but eagerly raise edifices above it. each works hard with solemn forethought all its life. perishing, it leaves its work in the form which will be most useful to its successors--its own monument, and their inheritance. these architectural edifices we call "trees." it may be thought that this nomenclature already involves a theory. but i care about neither the nomenclature, nor about anything questionable in my description of the classes. the reader is welcome to give them what names he likes, and to render what account of them he thinks fittest. but to us, as artists, or lovers of art, this is the first and most vital question concerning a plant: "has it a fixed form or a changing one? shall i find it always as i do to-day--this parnassia palustris--with one leaf and one flower? or may it some day have incalculable pomp of leaves and unmeasured treasure of flowers? will it rise only to the height of a man--as an ear of corn--and perish like a man; or will it spread its boughs to the sea and branches to the river, and enlarge its circle of shade in heaven for a thousand years?" § . this, i repeat, is the _first_ question i ask the plant. and as it answers, i range it on one side or the other, among those that rest or those that toil: tent-dwellers, who toil not, neither do they spin; or tree-builders, whose days are as the days of the people. i find again, on farther questioning these plants who rest, that one group of them does indeed rest always, contentedly, on the ground, but that those of another group, more ambitious, emulate the builders; and though they cannot build rightly, raise for themselves pillars out of the remains of past generations, on which they themselves, living the life of st. simeon stylites, are called, by courtesy, trees; being, in fact, many of them (palms, for instance) quite as stately as real trees.[ ] these two classes we might call earth-plants, and pillar-plants. § . again, in questioning the true builders as to their modes of work, i find that they also are divisible into two great classes. without in the least wishing the reader to accept the fanciful nomenclature, i think he may yet most conveniently remember these as "builders with the shield," and "builders with the sword." builders with the shield have expanded leaves, more or less resembling shields, partly in shape, but still more in office; for under their lifted shadow the young bud of the next year is kept from harm. these are the gentlest of the builders, and live in pleasant places, providing food and shelter for man. builders with the sword, on the contrary, have sharp leaves in the shape of swords, and the young buds, instead of being as numerous as the leaves, crouching each under a leaf-shadow, are few in number, and grow fearlessly, each in the midst of a sheaf of swords. these builders live in savage places, are sternly dark in color, and though they give much help to man by their merely physical strength, they (with few exceptions) give him no food, and imperfect shelter. their mode of building is ruder than that of the shield-builders, and they in many ways resemble the pillar-plants of the opposite order. we call them generally "pines." § . our work, in this section, will lie only among the shield-builders, sword-builders, and plants of rest. the pillar-plants belong, for the most part, to other climates. i could not analyze them rightly; and the labor given to them would be comparatively useless for our present purposes. the chief mystery of vegetation, so far as respects external form, is among the fair shield-builders. these, at least, we must examine fondly and earnestly. footnote: [ ] i am not sure that this is a fair account of palms. i have never had opportunity of studying stems of endogens, and i cannot understand the description given of them in books, nor do i know how far some of their branched conditions approximate to real tree-structure. if this work, whatever errors it may involve, provokes the curiosity of the reader so as to lead him to seek for more and better knowledge, it will do all the service i hope from it. chapter iii. the bud. § . if you gather in summer time an outer spray of any shield-leaved tree, you will find it consists of a slender rod, throwing out leaves, perhaps on every side, perhaps on two sides only, with usually a cluster of closer leaves at the end. in order to understand its structure, we must reduce it to a simple general type. nay, even to a very inaccurate type. for a tree-branch is essentially a complex thing, and no "simple" type can, therefore, be a right one. this type i am going to give you is full of fallacies and inaccuracies; but out of these fallacies we will bring the truth, by casting them aside one by one. [illustration: fig. .] § . let the tree spray be represented under one of these two types, a or b, fig. , the cluster at the end being in each case supposed to consist of three leaves only (a most impertinent supposition, for it must at least have four, only the fourth would be in a puzzling perspective in a, and hidden behind the central leaf in b). so, receive this false type patiently. when leaves are set on the stalk one after another, as in a, they are called "alternate;" when placed as in b, "opposite." it is necessary you should remember this not very difficult piece of nomenclature. if you examine the branch you have gathered, you will see that for some little way below the full-leaf cluster at the end, the stalk is smooth, and the leaves are set regularly on it. but at six, eight, or ten inches down, there comes an awkward knot; something seems to have gone wrong, perhaps another spray branches off there; at all events, the stem gets suddenly thicker, and you may break it there (probably) easier than anywhere else. that is the junction of two stories of the building. the smooth piece has all been done this summer. at the knot the foundation was left during the winter. the year's work is called a "shoot." i shall be glad if you will break it off to look at; as my a and b types are supposed to go no farther down than the knot. the alternate form a is more frequent than b, and some botanists think includes b. we will, therefore, begin with it. § . if you look close at the figure, you will see small projecting points at the roots of the leaves. these represent buds, which you may find, most probably, in the shoot you have in your hand. whether you find them or not, they are there--visible, or latent, does not matter. every leaf has assuredly an infant bud to take care of, laid tenderly, as in a cradle, just where the leaf-stalk forms a safe niche between it and the main stem. the child-bud is thus fondly guarded all summer; but its protecting leaf dies in the autumn; and then the boy-bud is put out to rough winter-schooling, by which he is prepared for personal entrance into public life in the spring. [illustration: fig. .] let us suppose autumn to have come, and the leaves to have fallen. then our a of fig. i, the buds only being left, one for each leaf, will appear as a b, in fig. . we will call the buds grouped at b, terminal buds, and those at _a_, _b_, and _c_, lateral buds. this budded rod is the true year's work of the building plant, at that part of its edifice. you may consider the little spray, if you like, as one pinnacle of the tree-cathedral, which has taken a year to fashion; innumerable other pinnacles having been built at the same time on other branches. § . now, every one of these buds, _a_, _b_, and _c_, as well as every terminal bud, has the power and disposition to raise himself in the spring, into just such another pinnacle as a b is. this development is the process we have mainly to study in this chapter; but, in the outset, let us see clearly what it is to end in. [illustration: fig. .] each bud, i said, has the power and disposition to make a pinnacle of himself, but he has not always the opportunity. what may hinder him we shall see presently. meantime, the reader will, perhaps, kindly allow me to assume that the buds _a_, _b_, and _c_, come to nothing, and only the three terminal ones build forward. each of these producing the image of the first pinnacle, we have the type for our next summer bough of fig. ; in which observe the original shoot a b, has become thicker; its lateral buds having proved abortive, are now only seen as little knobs on its sides. its terminal buds have each risen into a new pinnacle. the central or strongest one b c, has become the very image of what his parent shoot a b, was last year. the two lateral ones are weaker and shorter, one probably longer than the other. the joint at b is the knot or foundation for each shoot above spoken of. [illustration: fig. .] knowing now what we are about, we will go into closer detail. [illustration: . the dryad's toil.] § . let us return to the type in fig. , of the fully accomplished summer's work: the rod with its bare buds. plate , opposite, represents, of about half its real size, an outer spray of oak in winter. it is not growing strongly, and is as simple as possible in ramification. you may easily see, in each branch, the continuous piece of shoot produced last year. the wrinkles which make these shoots look like old branches are caused by drying, as the stalk of a bunch of raisins is furrowed (the oak-shoot fresh gathered is round as a grape-stalk). i draw them thus, because the furrows are important clues to structure. fig. is the top of one of these oak sprays magnified for reference. the little brackets, _x_, _y_, &c., which project beneath each bud and sustain it, are the remains of the leaf-stalks. those stalks were jointed at that place, and the leaves fell without leaving a scar, only a crescent-shaped, somewhat blank-looking flat space, which you may study at your ease on a horse-chestnut stem, where these spaces are very large. § . now if you cut your oak spray neatly through, just above a bud, as at a, fig. , and look at it with a not very powerful magnifier, you will find it present the pretty section, fig. . [illustration: fig. .] that is the proper or normal section of an oak spray. never quite regular. sure to have one of the projections a little larger than the rest, and to have its bark (the black line) not quite regularly put round it, but exquisitely finished, down to a little white star in the very centre, which i have not drawn, because it would look in the woodcut black, not white; and be too conspicuous. [illustration: fig. .] the oak spray, however, will not keep this form unchanged for an instant. cut it through a little way above your first section, and you will find the largest projection is increasing till, just where it opens[ ] at last into the leaf-stalk, its section is fig. . if, therefore, you choose to consider every interval between bud and bud as one story of your tower or pinnacle, you find that there is literally not a hair's-breadth of the work in which the _plan_ of the tower does not change. you may see in plate that every shoot is suffused by a subtle (in nature an _infinitely_ subtle) change of contour between bud and bud. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . but farther, observe in what succession those buds are put round the bearing stem. let the section of the stem be represented by the small central circle in fig. ; and suppose it surrounded by a _nearly_ regular pentagon (in the figure it is quite regular for clearness' sake). let the first of any ascending series of buds be represented by the curved projection filling the nearest angle of the pentagon at . then the next bud, above, will fill the angle at ; the next above, at , the next at , the next at . the sixth will come nearly over the first. that is to say, each projecting portion of the section, fig. , expands into its bud, not successively, but by leaps, always to the _next but one;_ the buds being thus placed in a nearly regular spiral order. § . i say nearly regular--for there are subtleties of variation in plan which it would be merely tiresome to enter into. all that we need care about is the general law, of which the oak spray furnishes a striking example,--that the buds of the first great group of alternate builders rise in a spiral order round the stem (i believe, for the most part, the spiral proceeds from right to left). and this spiral succession very frequently approximates to the pentagonal order, which it takes with great accuracy in an oak; for, merely assuming that each ascending bud places itself as far as it can easily out of the way of the one beneath, and yet not quite on the opposite side of the stem, we find the interval between the two must generally approximate to that left between and , or and , in fig. .[ ] [illustration: fig. .] § . should the interval be consistently a little _less_ than that which brings out the pentagonal structure, the plant seems to get at first into much difficulty. for, in such case, there is a probability of the buds falling into a triangle, as at a, fig. ; and then the fourth must come over the first, which would be inadmissible (we shall soon see why). nevertheless, the plant seems to like the triangular result for its outline, and sets itself to get out of the difficulty with much ingenuity, by methods of succession, which i will examine farther in the next chapter: it being enough for us to know at present that the puzzled, but persevering, vegetable _does_ get out of its difficulty and issues triumphantly, and with a peculiar expression of leafy exultation, in a hexagonal star, composed of two distinct triangles, normally as at b, fig. . why the buds do not like to be one above the other, we shall see in next chapter. meantime i must shortly warn the reader of what we shall then discover, that, though we have spoken of the projections of our pentagonal tower as if they were first built to sustain each its leaf, they are themselves chiefly built by the leaf they seem to sustain. without troubling ourselves about this yet, let us fix in our minds broadly the effective aspect of the matter, which is all we want, by a simple practical illustration. § . take a piece of stick half-an-inch thick, and a yard or two long, and tie large knots, at any _equal_ distances you choose, on a piece of pack-thread. then wind the pack-thread round the stick, with any number of equidistant turns you choose, from one end to the other, and the knots will take the position of buds in the general type of alternate vegetation. by varying the number of knots and the turns of the thread, you may get the system of any tree, with the exception of one character only--viz., that since the shoot grows faster at one time than another, the buds run closer together when the growth is slow. you cannot imitate this structure by closing the coils of your string, for that would alter the positions of your knots irregularly. the intervals between the buds are, by this gradual acceleration or retardation of growth, usually varied in lovely proportions. fig. shows the elevations of the buds on five different sprays of oak; a and b being of the real size (short shoots); c, d, and e, on a reduced scale. i have not traced the cause of the apparent tendency of the buds to follow in pairs, in these longer shoots. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . lastly: if the spiral be constructed so as to bring the buds nearly on opposite sides of the stem, though alternate in succession, the stem, most probably, will shoot a little away from each bud after throwing it off, and thus establish the oscillatory form _b_, fig. , which, when the buds are placed, as in this case, at diminishing intervals, is very beautiful.[ ] § . i fear this has been a tiresome chapter; but it is necessary to master the elementary structure, if we are to understand anything of trees; and the reader will therefore, perhaps, take patience enough to look at one or two examples of the spray structure of the second great class of builders, in which the leaves are opposite. nearly all opposite-leaved trees grow, normally, like vegetable weathercocks run to seed, with north and south, and east and west pointers thrown off alternately one over another, as in fig. . [illustration: fig. .] this, i say, is the normal condition. under certain circumstances, north and south pointers set themselves north-east and south-west; this concession being acknowledged and imitated by the east and west pointers at the next opportunity; but, for the present, let us keep to our simple form. the first business of the budding stem, is to get every pair of buds set accurately at right angles to the one below. here are some examples of the way it contrives this. a, fig. , is the section of the stem of a spray of box, magnified eight or nine times, just where it throws off two of its leaves, suppose on north and south sides. the crescents below and above are sections through the leaf-stalks thrown off on each side. just above this joint, the section of the stem is b, which is the normal section of a box-stem, as fig. is of an oak's. this, as it ascends, becomes c, elongating itself now east and west; and the section next to c, would be again a turned that way; or, taking the succession completely through two joints, and of the real size, it would be thus: fig. . [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] the stem of the spotted aucuba is normally hexagonal, as that of the box is normally square. it is very dexterous and delicate in its mode of transformation to the two sides. through the joint it is a, fig. . above joint, b, normal, passing on into c, and d for the next joint. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] while in the horse-chestnut, a larger tree, and, as we shall see hereafter, therefore less regular in conduct, the section, normally hexagonal, is much rounded and softened into irregularities; a, fig. , becoming, as it buds, b and c. the dark diamond beside c is a section through a bud, in which, however small, the quatrefoil disposition is always seen complete: the four little infant leaves with a queen leaf in the middle, all laid in their fan-shaped feebleness, safe in a white cloud of miniature woollen blanket. § . the elementary structure of all important trees may, i think, thus be resolved into three principal forms: three-leaved, fig. ; four-leaved, figs. to ; and five-leaved, fig. . or, in well-known terms, trefoil, quatrefoil, cinqfoil. and these are essential classes, more complicated forms being usually, it seems to me, resolvable into these, but these not into each other. the simplest arrangement (fig. ), in which the buds are nearly opposite in position, though alternate in elevation, cannot, i believe, constitute a separate class, being only an accidental condition of the spiral. if it did, it might be called difoil; but the important classes are three:-- trefoil, fig. : type, rhododendron. quatrefoil, fig. : type, horse-chestnut. cinqfoil, fig. : type, oak. § . the coincidences between beautiful architecture and the construction of trees must more and more have become marked in the reader's mind as we advanced; and if he will now look at what i have said in other places of the use and meaning of the trefoil, quatrefoil, and cinqfoil, in gothic architecture, he will see why i could hardly help thinking and speaking of all trees as builders. but there is yet one more subtlety in their way of building which we have not noticed. if the reader will look carefully at the separate shoots in plate , he will see that the furrows of the stems fall in almost every case into continuous spiral curves, carrying the whole system of buds with them. this superinduced spiral action, of which we shall perhaps presently discover the cause, often takes place vigorously, producing completely twisted stems of great thickness. it is nearly always existent slightly, giving farther grace and change to the whole wonderful structure. and thus we have, as the final result of one year's vegetative labor on any single spray, a twisted tower, not similar at any height of its building: or (for, as we shall see presently, it loses in diameter at each bud) a twisted spire, correspondent somewhat in principle to the twisted spire of dijon, or twisted fountain of ulm, or twisted shafts of verona. bossed as it ascends with living sculpture, chiselled, not by diminution but through increase, it rises by one consistent impulse from its base to its minaret, ready, in spring-time, to throw round it at the crest at once the radiance of fresh youth and the promise of restoration after that youth has passed away. a marvellous creation: nay might we not almost say, a marvellous creature full of prescience in its infancy, foreboding even, in the earliest gladness of its opening to sunshine, the hour of fainting strength and falling leaf, and guarding under the shade of its faithful shields the bud that is to bear its hope through winter's shieldless sleep? men often look to bring about great results by violent and unprepared effort. but it is only in fair and forecast order, "as the earth bringeth forth her bud," that righteousness and praise may spring forth before the nations. footnotes: [ ] the added portion, surrounding two of the sides of the pentagon, is the preparation for the stalk of the leaf, which, on detaching itself from the stem, presents variable sections, of which those numbered to , fig. , are examples. i cannot determine the proper normal form. the bulb-shaped spot in the heart of the uppermost of the five projections in fig. is the root of the bud. [ ] for more accurate information the reader may consult professor lindley's _introduction to botany_ (longman, ), vol. i. p. , _et seqq._ [ ] fig. is a shoot of the line, drawn on two sides, to show its continuous curve in one direction, and alternated curves in another. the buds, which may be seen to be at equal heights in the two figures, are exquisitely proportioned in their distances. there is no end to the refinement of system, if we choose to pursue it. chapter iv. the leaf. § . having now some clear idea of the position of the bud, we have next to examine the forms and structure of its shield--the leaf which guards it. you will form the best general idea of the flattened leaf of shield-builders by thinking of it as you would of a mast and sail. more consistently with our classification, we might perhaps say, by thinking always of the arm sustaining the shield; but we should be in danger of carrying fancy too far, and the likeness of mast and sail is closer, for the mast tapers as the leaf-rib does, while the hand holding the uppermost strap of the buckler clenches itself. whichever figure we use, it will cure us of the bad habit of imagining a leaf composed of a short stalk with a broad expansion at the end of it. whereas we should always think of the stalk as running right up the leaf to its point, and carrying the expanded, or foliate part, as the mast of a lugger does its sail. to some extent, indeed, it has yards also, ribs branching from the innermost one; only the yards of the leaf will not run up and down, which is one essential function of a sailyard. § . the analogy will, however, serve one step more. as the sail must be on one side of the mast, so the expansion of a leaf is on one side of its central rib, or of its system of ribs. it is laid over them as if it were stretched over a frame, so that on the upper surface it is comparatively smooth; on the lower, barred. the understanding of the broad relations of these parts is the principal work we have to do in this chapter. § . first, then, you may roughly assume that the section of any leaf-mast will be a crescent, as at _a_, fig. (compare fig. above). the flat side is the uppermost, the round side underneath, and the flat or upper side caries the leaf. you can at once see the convenience of this structure for fitting to a central stem. suppose the central stem has a little hole in the centre, _b_, fig. , and that you cut it down through the middle (as terrible knights used to cut their enemies in the dark ages, so that half the head fell on one side, and half on the other): pull the two halves separate, _c_, and they will nearly represent the shape and position of opposite leaf-ribs. in reality the leaf-stalks have to fit themselves to the central stem, _a_, and as we shall see presently, to lap round it: but we must not go too fast. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . now, _a_, fig. , being the general type of a leaf-stalk, fig. is the general type of the way it expands into and carries its leaf;[ ] this figure being the enlargement of a typical section right across any leaf, the dotted lines show the under surface foreshortened. you see i have made one side broader than the other. i mean that. it is typically so. nature cannot endure two sides of a leaf to be alike. by encouraging one side more than the other, either by giving it more air or light, or perhaps in a chief degree by the mere fact of the moisture necessarily accumulating on the lower edge when it rains, and the other always drying first, she contrives it so, that if the essential form or idea of the leaf be _a_, fig. , the actual form will always be _c_, or an approximate to it; one half being pushed in advance of the other, as at _b_, and all reconciled by soft curvature, _c_. the effort of the leaf to keep itself symmetrical rights it, however, often at the point, so that the insertion of the stalk only makes the inequality manifest. but it follows that the sides of a straight section across the leaf are unequal all the way up, as in my drawing, except at one point. [illustration: fig. .] § . i have represented the two wings of the leaf as slightly convex on the upper surface. this is also on the whole a typical character. i use the expression "wings of the leaf," because supposing we exaggerate the main rib a little, the section will generally resemble a bad painter's type of a bird (_a_, fig. ). sometimes the outer edges curl up, _b_, but an entirely concave form, _c_, is rare. when _b_ is strongly developed, closing well in, the leaf gets a good deal the look of a boat with a keel. [illustration: fig. .] § . if now you take this oblique form of sail, and cut it into any number of required pieces down to its mast, as in fig. , a, and then suppose each of the pieces to contract into studding-sails at the side, you will have whatever type of divided leaf you choose to shape it for. in fig. , a, b, i have taken the rose as the simplest type. the leaf is given in separate contour at c; but that of the mountain ash, a, fig. , suggests the original oval form which encloses all the subdivisions much more beautifully. each of the studding-sails in this ash-leaf looks much at first as if he were himself a mainsail. but you may know him always to be a subordinate, by observing that the inequality of the two sides which is brought about by accidental influences in the mainsail, is an organic law in the studding-sail. the real leaf tries to set itself evenly on its mast; and the inequality is only a graceful concession to circumstances. but the subordinate or studding-sail is always _by law_ larger at one side than the other; and if he is himself again divided into smaller sails, he will have larger sails on the lowest side, or one more sail on the lowest side, than he has on the other. he always wears, therefore, a servant's, or, at least, subordinate's dress. you may know him anywhere as not the master. even in the ash leaflet, of which i have outlined one separately, b, fig. , this is clearly seen; but it is much more distinct in more finely divided leaves.[ ] [illustration: fig. ] § . observe, then, that leaves are broadly divisible into mainsails and studding-sails; but that the word _leaf_ is properly to be used only of the mainsail; leaflet is the best word for minor divisions; and whether these minor members are only separated by deep cuts, or become complete stalked leaflets, still they are always to be thought of merely as parts of a true leaf. it follows from the mode of their construction that leaflets must always lie more or less _flat_, or edge to edge, in a continuous plane. this position distinguishes them from true leaves as much as their oblique form, and distinguishes them with the same delicate likeness of system; for as the true leaf takes, accidentally and partially, the oblique outline which is legally required in the subordinate, so the true leaf takes accidentally and partially the flat disposition which is legally required in the subordinate. and this point of position we must now study. henceforward, throughout this chapter, the reader will please note that i speak only of true _leaves_, not of _leaflets_. [illustration: fig. .] § . law i. the law of deflection.--the first law, then, respecting position in true leaves, is that they fall gradually back from the uppermost one, or uppermost group. they are never set as at _a_, fig. , but always as at _b_. the reader may see at once that they have more room and comfort by means of the latter arrangement. the law is carried out with more or less distinctness according to the habit of the plant; but is always acknowledged. [illustration: fig. .] in strong-leaved shrubs or trees it is shown with great distinctness and beauty: the phillyrea shoot, for instance, fig. , is almost in as true symmetry as a greek honeysuckle ornament. in the hawthorn shoot, central in plate , opposite, the law is seen very slightly, yet it rules all the play and fantasy of the varied leaves, gradually depressing their lines as they are set lower. in crowded foliage of large trees the disposition of each separate leaf is not so manifest. for there is a strange coincidence in this between trees and communities of men. when the community is small, people fall more easily into their places, and take, each in his place, a firmer standing than can be obtained by the individuals of a great nation. the members of a vast community are separately weaker, as an aspen or elm leaf is thin, tremulous, and directionless, compared with the spear-like setting and firm substance of a rhododendron or laurel leaf. the laurel and rhododendron are like the athenian or florentine republics; the aspen like england--strong-trunked enough when put to proof, and very good for making cartwheels of, but shaking pale with epidemic panic at every breeze. nevertheless, the aspen has the better of the great nation, in that if you take it bough by bough, you shall find the gentle law of respect and room for each other truly observed by the leaves in such broken way as they can manage it; but in the nation you find every one scrambling for his neighbor's place. this, then, is our first law, which we may generally call the law of deflection; or, if the position of the leaves with respect to the root be regarded, of radiation. the second is more curious, and we must go back over our ground a little to get at it. [illustration: . spirals of thorn.] § . law ii. the law of succession.--from what we saw of the position of buds, it follows that in every tree the leaves at the end of the spray, taking the direction given them by the uppermost cycle or spiral of the buds, will fall naturally into a starry group, expressive of the order of their growth. in an oak we shall have a cluster of five leaves, in a horse-chestnut of four, in a rhododendron of six, and so on. but observe, if we draw the oak-leaves all equal, as at _a_, fig. , or the chestnut's (_b_), or the rhododendron's (_c_), you instantly will feel, or ought to feel, that something is wrong; that those are not foliage forms--not even normally or typically so--but dead forms, like crystals of snow. considering this, and looking back to last chapter, you will see that the buds which throw out these leaves do not grow side by side, but one above another. in the oak and rhododendron, all five and all six buds are at different heights; in the chestnut, one couple is above the other couple. [illustration: fig. .] § . now so surely as one bud is above another, it must be stronger or weaker than that other. the shoot may either be increasing in strength as it advances, or declining; in either case, the buds must vary in power, and the leaves in size. at the top of the shoot, the last or uppermost leaves are mostly the smallest; of course always so in spring as they develope. [illustration: fig. .] let us then apply these conditions to our formal figure above, and suppose each leaf to be weaker in its order of succession. the oak becomes as _a_, fig. , the chestnut shoot as _b_, the rhododendron, _c_. these, i should think, it can hardly be necessary to tell the reader, are true normal forms;--respecting which one or two points must be noticed in detail. § . the magnitude of the leaves in the oak star diminishes, of course, in alternate order. the largest leaf is the lowest, in figure , p. . while the largest leaf forms the bottom, next it, opposite each other, come the third and fourth, in order and magnitude, and the fifth and second form the top. an oak star is, therefore, always an oblique star; but in the chestnut and other quatrefoil trees, though the uppermost couple of leaves must always be smaller than the lowermost couple, there appears no geometrical reason why the opposite leaves of each couple should vary in size. nevertheless, they always do, so that the quatrefoil becomes oblique as well as the cinqfoil, as you see it is in fig. . [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] the normal of four-foils is therefore as in fig. , a (maple): with magnitudes, in order numbered; but it often happens that an opposite pair agree to become largest and smallest; thus giving the pretty symmetry, fig. , b (spotted aucuba). of course the quatrefoil in reality is always less formal, one pair of leaves more or less hiding or preceding the other. fig. is the outline of a young one in the maple. [illustration: fig. .] § . the third form is more complex, and we must take the pains to follow out what we left unobserved in last chapter respecting the way a triplicate plant gets out of its difficulties. draw a circle as in fig. , and two lines, ab, bc, touching it, equal to each other, and each divided accurately in half where they touch the circle, so that ap shall be equal to pb, bq, and qc. and let the lines ab and bc be so placed that a dotted line ac, joining their extremities, would not be much longer than either of them. [illustration: fig. .] continue to draw lines of the same length all round the circle. lay five of them, ab, bc, cd, de, ef. then join the points ad, eb, and cf, and you have fig. , which is a hexagon, with the following curious properties. it has one side largest, cd, two sides less, but equal to each other, ae and bf; and three sides less still, and equal to each other, ad, cf, and be. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] now put leaves into this hexagon, fig. , and you will see how charmingly the rhododendron has got out of its difficulties. the next cycle will put a leaf in at the gap at the top, and begin a new hexagon. observe, however, this geometrical figure is only to the rhododendron what the _a_ in fig. is to the oak, the icy or dead form. to get the living normal form we must introduce our law of succession. that is to say, the five lines a b, b c, &c., must continually diminish, as they proceed, and therefore continually approach the centre; roughly, as in fig. . [illustration: fig. .] § . i dread entering into the finer properties of this construction, but the reader cannot now fail to feel their beautiful result either in the cluster in fig. , or here in fig. , which is a richer and more oblique one. the three leaves of the uppermost triad are perfectly seen, closing over the bud; and the general form is clear, though the lower triads are confused to the eye by unequal development, as in these complex arrangements is almost always the case. the more difficulties are to be encountered the more licence is given to the plant in dealing with them, and we shall hardly ever find a rhododendron shoot fulfilling its splendid spiral as an oak does its simple one. here, for instance, is the actual order of ascending leaves in four rhododendron shoots which i gather at random. [illustration: fig. .] of these, a is the only quite well-conducted one; b takes one short step, c, one step backwards, and d, two steps back and one, too short, forward. [illustration: fig. .] § . law iii. the law of resilience.--if you have been gathering any branches from the trees i have named among quatrefoils (the box is the best for exemplification), you have perhaps been embarrassed by finding that the leaves, instead of growing on four sides of the stem, did practically grow oppositely on two. but if you look closely at the places of their insertion, you will find they indeed spring on all four sides; and that in order to take the flattened opposite position, each leaf twists round on its stalk, as in fig. , which represents a box-leaf magnified and foreshortened. the leaves do this in order to avoid growing downwards, where the position of the bough and bud would, if the leaves regularly kept their places, involve downward growth. the leaves always rise up on each side from beneath, and form a flattened group, more or less distinctly in proportion to the horizontality of the bough, and the contiguity of foliage below and above. i shall not trouble myself to illustrate this law, as you have only to gather a few tree-sprays to see its effect. but you must note the resulting characters on _every_ leaf; namely, that not one leaf in a thousand grows without a fixed turn in its stalk; warping and varying the whole of the curve on the two edges, throughout its length, and thus producing the loveliest conditions of its form. we shall presently trace the law of resilience farther on a larger scale: meanwhile, in summing the results of our inquiry thus far, let us remember that every one of these laws is observed with varying accuracy and gentle equity, according not only to the strength and fellowship of foliage on the spray itself, but according to the place and circumstances of its growth. § . for the leaves, as we shall see immediately, are the feeders of the plant. their own orderly habits of succession must not interfere with their main business of finding food. where the sun and air are, the leaf must go, whether it be out of order or not. so, therefore, in any group, the first consideration with the young leaves is much like that of young bees, how to keep out of each other's way, that every one may at once leave its neighbors as much free-air pasture as possible, and obtain a relative freedom for itself. this would be a quite simple matter, and produce other simply balanced forms, if each branch, with open air all round it, had nothing to think of but reconcilement of interests among its own leaves. but every branch has others to meet or to cross, sharing with them, in various advantage, what shade, or sun, or rain is to be had. hence every single leaf-cluster presents the general aspect of a little family, entirely at unity among themselves, but obliged to get their living by various shifts, concessions, and infringements of the family rules, in order not to invade the privileges of other people in their neighborhood. § . and in the arrangement of these concessions there is an exquisite sensibility among the leaves. they do not grow each to his own liking, till they run against one another, and then turn back sulkily; but by a watchful instinct, far apart, they anticipate their companions' courses, as ships at sea, and in every new unfolding of their edged tissue, guide themselves by the sense of each other's remote presence, and by a watchful penetration of leafy purpose in the far future. so that every shadow which one casts on the next, and every glint of sun which each reflects to the next, and every touch which in toss of storm each receives from the next, aid or arrest the development of their advancing form, and direct, as will be safest and best, the curve of every fold and the current of every vein. § . and this peculiar character exists in all the structures thus developed, that they are always visibly the result of a volition on the part of the leaf, meeting an external force or fate, to which it is never passively subjected. upon it, as on a mineral in the course of formation, the great merciless influences of the universe, and the oppressive powers of minor things immediately near it, act continually. heat and cold, gravity and the other attractions, windy pressure, or local and unhealthy restraint, must, in certain inevitable degrees, affect the whole of its life. but it is _life_ which they affect;--a life of progress and will,--not a merely passive accumulation of substance. this may be seen by a single glance. the mineral,--suppose an agate in the course of formation--shows in every line nothing but a dead submission to surrounding force. flowing, or congealing, its substance is here repelled, there attracted, unresistingly to its place, and its languid sinuosities follow the clefts of the rock that contains them, in servile deflexion and compulsory cohesion, impotently calculable, and cold. but the leaf, full of fears and affections, shrinks and seeks, as it obeys. not thrust, but awed into its retiring; not dragged, but won to its advance; not bent aside, as by a bridle, into new courses of growth: but persuaded and converted through tender continuance of voluntary change. § . the mineral and it differing thus widely in separate being, they differ no less in modes of companionship. the mineral crystals group themselves neither in succession, nor in sympathy; but great and small recklessly strive for place, and deface or distort each other as they gather into opponent asperities. the confused crowd fills the rock cavity, hanging together in a glittering, yet sordid heap, in which nearly every crystal, owing to their vain contention, is imperfect, or impure. here and there one, at the cost and in defiance of the rest, rises into unwarped shape or unstained clearness. but the order of the leaves is one of soft and subdued concession. patiently each awaits its appointed time, accepts its prepared place, yields its required observance. under every oppression of external accident, the group yet follows a law laid down in its own heart; and all the members of it, whether in sickness or health, in strength or languor, combine to carry out this first and last heart law; receiving, and seeming to desire for themselves and for each other, only life which they may communicate, and loveliness which they may reflect. footnotes: [ ] i believe the undermost of the two divisions of the leaf represents vegetable tissue _returning_ from the extremity. see lindley's _introduction to botany_ ( ), vol. i. p. . [ ] for farther notes on this subject, see my _elements of drawing_, p. . chapter v. leaf aspects. § . before following farther our inquiry into tree structure, it will rest us, and perhaps forward our work a little, to make some use of what we know already. it results generally from what we have seen that any group of four or five leaves presenting itself in its natural position to the eye, consists of a series of forms connected by exquisite and complex symmetries, and that these forms will be not only varied in themselves, but every one of them seen under a different condition of foreshortening. the facility of drawing the group may be judged of by a comparison. suppose five or six boats, very beautifully built, and sharp in the prow, to start all from one point, and the first bearing up into the wind, the other three or four to fall off from it in succession an equal number of points,[ ] taking each, in consequence, a different slope of deck from the stem of the sail. suppose, also, that the bows of these boats were transparent, so that you could see the under sides of their decks as well as the upper;--and that it were required of you to draw all their five decks, the under or upper side, as their curve showed it, in true foreshortened perspective, indicating the exact distance each boat had reached at a given moment from the central point they started from. if you can do that, you can draw a rose-leaf. not otherwise. § . when, some few years ago, the pre-raphaelites began to lead our wandering artists back into the eternal paths of all great art, and showed that whatever men drew at all, ought to be drawn accurately and knowingly; not blunderingly nor by guess (leaves of trees among other things): as ignorant pride on the one hand refused their teaching, ignorant hope caught at it on the other. "what!" said many a feeble young student to himself. "painting is not a matter of science then, nor of supreme skill, nor of inventive brain. i have only to go and paint the leaves of the trees as they grow, and i shall produce beautiful landscapes directly." alas! my innocent young friend. "paint the leaves as they grow!" if you can paint _one_ leaf, you can paint the world. these pre-raphaelite laws, which you think so light, lay stern on the strength of apelles and zeuxis; put titian to thoughtful trouble; are unrelaxed yet, and unrelaxable for ever. paint a leaf indeed! above-named titian has done it: correggio, moreover, and giorgione: and leonardo, very nearly, trying hard. holbein, three or four times, in precious pieces, highest wrought. raphael, it may be, in one or two crowns of muse or sibyl. if any one else, in later times, we have to consider. § . at least until recently, the perception of organic leaf form was absolutely, in all painters whatsoever, proportionate to their power of drawing the human figure. all the great italian designers drew leaves thoroughly well, though none quite so fondly as correggio. rubens drew them coarsely and vigorously, just as he drew limbs. among the inferior dutch painters, the leaf-painting degenerates in proportion to the diminishing power in figure. cuyp, wouvermans, and paul potter, paint better foliage than either hobbima or ruysdael. § . in like manner the power of treating vegetation in sculpture is absolutely commensurate with nobleness of figure design. the quantity, richness, or deceptive finish may be greater in third-rate work; but in true understanding and force of arrangement the leaf and the human figure show always parallel skill. the leaf-mouldings of lorenzo ghiberti are unrivalled, as his bas-reliefs are, and the severe foliage of the cathedral of chartres is as grand as its queen-statues. § . the greatest draughtsmen draw leaves, like everything else, of their full-life size in the nearest part of the picture. they cannot be rightly drawn on any other terms. it is impossible to reduce a group so treated without losing much of its character; and more painfully impossible to represent by engraving any good workman's handling. i intended to have inserted in this place an engraving of the cluster of oak-leaves above correggio's antiope in the louvre, but it is too lovely; and if i am able to engrave it at all, it must be separately, and of its own size. so i draw, roughly, instead, a group of oak-leaves on a young shoot, a little curled with autumn frost: plate . i could not draw them accurately enough if i drew them in spring. they would droop and lose their relations. thus roughly drawn, and losing some of their grace, by withering, they, nevertheless, have enough left to show how noble leaf-form is; and to prove, it seems to me, that dutch draughtsmen do not wholly express it. for instance, fig. , plate , is a facsimile of a bit of the nearest oak foliage out of hobbima's scene with the water-mill, no. , in the dulwich gallery. compared with the real forms of oak-leaf, in plate , it may, i hope, at least enable my readers to understand, if they choose, why, never having ceased to rate the dutch painters for their meanness or minuteness, i yet accepted the leaf-painting of the pre-raphaelites with reverence and hope. [illustration: . the dryad's crown.] [illustration: . dutch leafage.] § . no word has been more harmfully misused than that ugly one of "niggling." i should be glad if it were entirely banished from service and record. the only essential question about drawing is whether it be right or wrong; that it be small or large, swift or slow, is a matter of convenience only. but so far as the word may be legitimately used at all, it belongs especially to such execution as this of hobbima's--execution which substitutes, on whatever scale, a mechanical trick or habit of hand for true drawing of known or intended forms. so long as the work is thoughtfully directed, there is no niggling. in a small greek coin the muscles of the human body are as grandly treated as in a colossal statue; and a fine vignette of turner's will show separate touches often more extended in intention, and stronger in result, than those of his largest oil pictures. in the vignette of the picture of ginevra, at page of roger's italy, the forefinger touching the lip is entirely and rightly drawn, bent at the two joints, within the length of the thirtieth of an inch, and the whole hand within the space of one of those "niggling" touches of hobbima. but if this work were magnified, it would be seen to be a strong and simple expression of a hand by thick black lines. § . niggling, therefore, essentially means disorganized and mechanical work, applied on a scale which may deceive a vulgar or ignorant person into the idea of its being true:--a definition applicable to the whole of the leaf-painting of the dutch landscapists in distant effect, and for the most part to that of their near subjects also. cuyp and wouvermans, as before stated, and others, in proportion to their power over the figure, drew leaves better in the foreground, yet never altogether well; for though cuyp often draws a single leaf carefully (weedy ground-vegetation especially, with great truth), he never felt the connection of leaves, but scattered them on the boughs at random. fig. in plate is nearly a _facsimile_ of part of the branch on the left side in our national gallery picture. its entire want of grace and organization ought to be felt at a glance, after the work we have gone through. the average conditions of leafage-painting among the dutch are better represented by fig. , plate , which is a piece of the foliage from the cuyp in the dulwich gallery, no. . it is merely wrought with a mechanical play of brush in a well-trained hand, gradating the color irregularly and agreeably, but with no more feeling or knowledge of leafage than a paperstainer shows in graining a pattern. a bit of the stalk is seen on the left; it might just as well have been on the other side, for any connection the leaves have with it. as the leafage retires into distance, the dutch painters merely diminish their _scale_ of touch. the touch itself remains the same, but its effect is falser; for though the separate stains or blots in fig. , do not rightly represent the forms of leaves, they may not inaccurately represent the number of leaves on that spray. but in distance, when, instead of one spray, we have thousands in sight, no human industry, nor possible diminution of touch can represent their mist of foliage, and the dutch work becomes doubly base, by reason of false form, and lost infinity. § . hence what i said in our first inquiry about foliage, "a single dusty roll of turner's brush is more truly expressive of the infinitude of foliage than the niggling of hobbima could have rendered his canvas, if he had worked on it till doomsday." and this brings me to the main difficulty i have had in preparing this section. that infinitude of turner's execution attaches not only to his distant work, but in due degree to the nearest pieces of his trees. as i have shown in the chapter on mystery, he perfected the system of art, as applicable to landscape, by the introduction of this infiniteness. in other qualities he is often only equal, in some inferior, to great preceding painters; but in this mystery he stands alone. he could not paint a cluster of leaves better than titian; but he could a bough, much more a distant mass of foliage. no man ever before painted a distant tree rightly, or a full-leaved branch rightly. all titian's distant branches are ponderous flakes, as if covered with seaweed, while veronese's and raphael's are conventional, being exquisitely ornamental arrangements of small perfect leaves. see the background of the parnassus in volpato's plate. it is very lovely, however. [illustration: . by the way-side.] § . but this peculiar execution of turner's is entirely uncopiable; least of all to be copied in engraving. it is at once so dexterous and so keenly cunning, swiftest play of hand being applied with concentrated attention on every movement, that no care in facsimile will render it. the delay in the conclusion of this work has been partly caused by the failure of repeated attempts to express this execution. i see my way now to some partial result; but must get the writing done, and give undivided care to it before i attempt to produce costly plates. meanwhile, the little cluster of foliage opposite, from the thicket which runs up the bank on the right-hand side of the drawing of richmond, looking up the river, in the yorkshire series, will give the reader some idea of the mingled definiteness and mystery of turner's work, as opposed to the mechanism of the dutch on the one side, and the conventional severity of the italians on the other. it should be compared with the published engraving in the yorkshire series; for just as much increase, both in quantity and refinement, would be necessary in every portion of the picture, before any true conception could be given of the richness of turner's designs. a fragment of distant foliage i may give farther on; but, in order to judge rightly of either example, we must know one or two points in the structure of branches, requiring yet some irksome patience of inquiry, which i am compelled to ask the reader to grant me through another two chapters. footnote: [ ] i don't know that this is rightly expressed; but the meaning will be understood. chapter vi. the branch. § . we have hitherto spoken of each shoot as either straight or only warped by its spiral tendency; but no shoot of any length, except those of the sapling, ever can be straight; for, as the family of leaves which it bears are forced unanimously to take some given direction in search of food or light, the stalk necessarily obeys the same impulse, and bends itself so as to sustain them in their adopted position, with the greatest ease to itself and comfort for them. in doing this, it has two main influences to comply or contend with: the first, the direct action of the leaves in drawing it this way or that, as they themselves seek particular situations; the second, the pressure of their absolute weight after they have taken their places, depressing each bough in a given degree; the leverage increasing as the leaf extends. to these principal forces may frequently be added that of some prevalent wind, which, on a majority of days in the year, bends the bough, leaves and all, for hours together, out of its normal position. owing to these three forces, the shoot is nearly sure to be curved in at least two directions;[ ] that is to say, not merely as the rim of a wine-glass is curved (so that, looking at it horizontally, the circle becomes a straight line), but as the edge of a lip or an eyebrow is curved, partly upward, partly forwards, so that in no possible perspective can it be seen as a straight line. similarly, no perspective will usually bring a shoot of a free-growing tree to appear a straight line. § . it is evident that the more leaves the stalk has to sustain, the more strength it requires. it might appear, therefore, not unadvisable, that every leaf should, as it grew, pay a small tax to the stalk for its sustenance; so that there might be no fear of any number of leaves being too oppressive to their bearer. which, accordingly, is just what the leaves do. each, from the moment of his complete majority, pays a stated tax to the stalk; that is to say, collects for it a certain quantity of wood, or materials for wood, and sends this wood, or what ultimately will become wood, _down_ the stalk to add to its thickness. § . "down the stalk?" yes, and down a great way farther. for, as the leaves, if they did not thus contribute to their own support, would soon be too heavy for the spray, so if the spray, with its family of leaves, contributed nothing to the thickness of the branch, the leaf-families would soon break down their sustaining branches. and, similarly, if the branches gave nothing to the stem, the stem would soon fall under its boughs. therefore, by a power of which i believe no sufficient account exists,[ ] as each leaf adds to the thickness of the shoot, so each shoot to the branch, so each branch to the stem, and that with so perfect an order and regularity of duty, that from every leaf in all the countless crowd at the tree's summit, one slender fibre, or at least fibre's thickness of wood, descends through shoot, through spray, through branch, and through stem; and having thus added, in its due proportion, to form the strength of the tree, labors yet farther and more painfully to provide for its security; and thrusting forward into the root, loses nothing of its mighty energy, until, mining through the darkness, it has taken hold in cleft of rock or depth of earth, as extended as the sweep of its green crest in the free air. § . such, at least, is the mechanical aspect of the tree. the work of its construction, considered as a branch tower, partly propped by buttresses, partly lashed by cables, is thus shared in by every leaf. but considering it as a living body to be nourished, it is probably an inaccurate analogy to speak of the leaves being taxed for the enlargement of the trunk. strictly speaking, the trunk enlarges by sustaining them. for each leaf, however far removed from the ground, stands in need of nourishment derived from the ground, as well as of that which it finds in the air; and it simply sends its root down along the stem of the tree, until it reaches the ground and obtains the necessary mineral elements. the trunk has been therefore called by some botanists a "bundle of roots," but i think inaccurately. it is rather a messenger to the roots.[ ] a root, properly so called, is a fibre, spongy or absorbent at the extremity, which secretes certain elements from the earth. the stem is by this definition no more a cluster of roots than a cluster of leaves, but a channel of intercourse between the roots and the leaves. it can gather no nourishment. it only carries nourishment, being, in fact, a group of canals for the conveyance of marketable commodities, with an electric telegraph attached to each, transmitting messages from leaf to root, and root to leaf, up and down the tree. but whatever view we take of the operative causes, the external and visible fact is simply that every leaf does send down from its stalk a slender thread of woody matter along the sides of the shoot it grows upon; and that the increase of thickness in stem, proportioned to the advance of the leaves, corresponds with an increase of thickness in roots, proportioned to the advance of their outer fibres. how far interchange of elements takes place between root and leaf, it is not our work here to examine; the general and broad idea is this, that the whole tree is fed partly by the earth, partly by the air;--strengthened and sustained by the one, agitated and educated by the other;--all of it which is best, in substance, life, and beauty, being drawn more from the dew of heaven than the fatness of the earth. the results of this nourishment of the bough by the leaf in external aspect, are the object of our immediate inquiry. § . hitherto we have considered the shoot as an ascending body, throwing off buds at intervals. this it is indeed; but the part of it which ascends is not seen externally. look back to plate . you will observe that each shoot is furrowed, and that the ridges between the furrows rise in slightly spiral lines, terminating in the armlets under the buds which bore last year's leaves. these ridges, which rib the shoot so distinctly, are not on the ascending part of it. they are the contributions of each successive leaf thrown out as it ascended. every leaf sent down a slender cord, covering and clinging to the shoot beneath, and increasing its thickness. each, according to his size and strength, wove his little strand of cable, as a spider his thread; and cast it down the side of the springing tower by a marvellous magic--irresistible! the fall of a granite pyramid from an alp may perhaps be stayed; the descending force of that silver thread shall not be stayed. it will split the rocks themselves at its roots, if need be, rather than fail in its work. so many leaves, so many silver cords. count--for by just the thickness of one cord, beneath each leaf, let fall in fivefold order round and round, the shoot increases in thickness to its root:--a spire built downwards from the heaven. [illustration: fig. .] and now we see why the leaves dislike being above each other. each seeks a vacant place, where he may freely let fall the cord. the turning aside of the cable to avoid the buds beneath, is one of the main causes of spiral curvature, as the shoot increases. it required all the care i could give to the drawing, and all mr. armytage's skill in engraving plate , to express, though drawing them nearly of their full size, the principal courses of curvature in even this least graceful of trees. § . according to the structure thus ascertained, the body of the shoot may at any point be considered as formed by a central rod, represented by the shaded inner circle, _a_, fig. , surrounded by as many rods of descending external wood as there are leaves above the point where the section is made. the first five leaves above send down the first dark rods; and the next above send down those between, which, being from younger leaves, are less liable to interstices; then the third group sending down the side, it will be seen at a glance how a spiral action is produced. it would lead us into too subtile detail, if i traced the forces of this spiral superimposition. i must be content to let the reader peruse this part of the subject for himself, if it amuses him, and lead to larger questions. § . broadly and practically, we may consider the whole cluster of woody material in fig. as one circle of fibrous substance formed round a small central rod. the real appearance in most trees is approximately as in _b_, fig. , the radiating structure becoming more distinct in proportion to the largeness and compactness of the wood.[ ] [illustration: fig. .] now the next question is, how this descending external coating of wood will behave itself when it comes to the forking of the shoots. to simplify the examination of this, let us suppose the original or growing shoot (whose section is the shaded inner circle in fig. ) to have been in the form of a letter y, and no thicker than a stout iron wire, as in fig. . down the arms of this letter y, we have two fibrous streams running in the direction of the arrows. if the depth or thickness of these streams be such as at _b_ and _c_, what will their thickness be when they unite at _e_? evidently, the quantity of wood surrounding the vertical wire at _e_ must be twice as great as that surrounding the wires _b_ and _c_. § . the reader will, perhaps, be good enough to take it on my word (if he does not know enough of geometry to ascertain), that the large circle, in fig. , contains twice as much area as either of the two smaller circles. putting these circles in position, so as to guide us, and supposing the trunk to be bounded by straight lines, we have for the outline of the fork that in fig. . how, then, do the two minor circles change into one large one? the section of the stem at _a_ is a circle; and at _b_, is a circle; and at _c_, a circle. but what is it at _e_? evidently, if the two circles merely united gradually, without change of form through a series of figures, such as those at the top of fig. , the quantity of wood, instead of remaining the same, would diminish from the contents of two circles to the contents of one. so for every loss which the circles sustain at this junction, an equal quantity of wood must be thrust out somehow to the side. thus, to enable the circles to run into each other, as far as shown at _b_, in fig. , there must be a loss between them of as much wood as the shaded space. therefore, half of that space must be added, or rather pushed out on each side, and the section of the uniting branch becomes approximately as in _c_, fig. ; the wood squeezed out encompassing the stem more as the circles close, until the whole is reconciled into one larger single circle. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . i fear the reader would have no patience with me, if i asked him to examine, in longitudinal section, the lines of the descending currents of wood as they eddy into the increased single river. of course, it is just what would take place if two strong streams, filling each a cylindrical pipe, ran together into one larger cylinder, with a central rod passing up every tube. but, as this central rod increases, and, at the same time, the supply of the stream from above, every added leaf contributing its little current, the eddies of wood about the fork become intensely curious and interesting; of which thus much the reader may observe in a moment by gathering a branch of any tree (laburnum shows it better, i think, than most), that the two meeting currents, first wrinkling a little, then rise in a low wave in the hollow of the fork, and flow over at the side, making their way to diffuse themselves round the stem, as in fig. . seen laterally, the bough bulges out below the fork, rather curiously and awkwardly, especially if more than two boughs meet at the same place, growing in one plane, so as to show the sudden increase on the profile. if the reader is interested in the subject, he will find strangely complicated and wonderful arrangements of stream when smaller boughs meet larger (one example is given in plate , vol. iii., where the current of a smaller bough, entering upwards, pushes its way into the stronger rivers of the stem). but i cannot, of course, enter into such detail here. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . the little ringed accumulation, repelled from the wood of the larger trunk at the base of small boughs, may be seen at a glance in any tree, and needs no illustration; but i give one from salvator, fig. (from his own etching, _democritus omnium derisor_), which is interesting, because it shows the swelling at the bases of insertion, which yet, salvator's eye not being quick enough to detect the law of descent in the fibres, he, with his usual love of ugliness, fastens on this swollen character, and exaggerates it into an appearance of disease. the same bloated aspect may be seen in the example already given from another etching, vol. iii., plate , fig. . [illustration: fig. .] § . i do not give any more examples from claude. we have had enough already in plate , vol. iii., which the reader should examine carefully. if he will then look forward to fig. here, he will see how turner inserts branches, and with what certain and strange instinct of fidelity he marks the wrinkled enlargement and sinuous eddies of the wood rivers where they meet. and remember always that turner's greatness and rightness in all these points successively depend on no scientific knowledge. he was entirely ignorant of all the laws we have been developing. he had merely accustomed himself to see impartially, intensely, and fearlessly. [illustration: fig. .] § . it may, perhaps, be interesting to compare, with the rude fallacies of claude and salvator, a little piece of earliest art, wrought by men who could see and feel. the scroll, fig. , is a portion of that which surrounds the arch in san zeno of verona, above the pillar engraved in the _stones of venice_, plate , vol. i. it is, therefore, twelfth, or earliest thirteenth century work. yet the foliage is already full of spring and life; and in the part of the stem, which i have given of its real size in fig. , the reader will perhaps be surprised to see at the junctions the laws of vegetation, which escaped the sight of all the degenerate landscape-painters of italy, expressed by one of her simple architectural workmen six hundred years ago. we now know enough, i think, of the internal conditions which regulate tree-structure to enable us to investigate finally, the great laws of branch and stem aspect. but they are very beautiful; and we will give them a separate chapter. footnotes: [ ] see the note on fig. , at page , which shows these two directions in a shoot of lime. [ ] i find that the office and nature of cambium, the causes of the action of the sap, and the real mode of the formation of buds, are all still under the investigation of botanists. i do not lose time in stating the doubts or probabilities which exist on these subjects. for us, the mechanical fact of the increase of thickness by every leaf's action is all that needs attention. the reader who wishes for information as accurate as the present state of science admits, may consult lindley's _introduction to botany_, and an interesting little book by dr. alexander harvey on _trees and their nature_ (nisbet & co., ), to which i owe much help. [ ] in the true sense a "mediator," ([greek: mesitês]). [ ] the gradual development of this radiating structure, which is organic and essential, composed of what are called by botanists medullary rays, is still a great mystery and wonder to me. chapter vii. the stem. § . we must be content, in this most complex subject, to advance very slowly: and our easiest, if not our only way, will be to examine, first, the conditions under which boughs would form, supposing them all to divide in one plane, as your hand divides when you lay it flat on the table, with the fingers as wide apart as you can. and then we will deduce the laws of ramification which follow on the real structure of branches, which truly divide, not in one plane, but as your fingers separate if you hold a large round ball with them. the reader has, i hope, a clear idea by this time of the main principle of tree-growth; namely, that the increase is by addition, or superimposition, not extension. a branch does not stretch itself out as a leech stretches its body. but it receives additions at its extremity, and proportional additions to its thickness. for although the actual living shoot, or growing point, of any year, lengthens itself gradually until it reaches its terminal bud, after that bud is formed, its length is fixed. it is thenceforth one joint of the tree, like the joint of a pillar, on which other joints of marble may be laid to elongate the pillar, but which will not itself stretch. a tree is thus truly edified, or built, like a house. § . i am not sure with what absolute stringency this law is observed, or what slight lengthening of substance may be traceable by close measurement among inferior branches. for practical purposes, we may assume that the law is final, and that if we represent the state of a plant, or extremity of branch, in any given year under the simplest possible type, fig. , _a_, of two shoots, with terminal buds, springing from one stem, its growth next year may be expressed by the type, fig. , _b_, in which, the original stems not changing or increasing, the terminal buds have built up each another story of plant, or repetition of the original form; and, in order to support this new edifice, have sent down roots all the way to the ground, so as to enclose and thicken the inferior stem. [illustration: fig. .] but if this is so, how does the original stem, which never lengthens, ever become the tall trunk of a tree? the arrangement just stated provides very satisfactorily for making it stout, but not for making it tall. if the ramification proceeds in this way, the tree must assuredly become a round compact ball of short sticks, attached to the ground by a very stout, almost invisible, stem, like a puff-ball. for if we take the form above, on a small scale, merely to see what comes of it, and carry its branching three steps farther, we get the successive conditions in fig. , of which the last comes already round to the ground. [illustration: fig. .] "but those forms really look something like trees!" yes, if they were on a large scale. but each of the little shoots is only six or seven inches long; the whole cluster would but be three or four feet over, and touches the ground already at its extremity. it would enlarge if it went on growing, but never rise from the ground. § . this is an interesting question: one, also, which, i fear, we must solve, so far as yet it can be solved, with little help. perhaps nothing is more curious in the history of human mind than the way in which the science of botany has become oppressed by nomenclature. here is perhaps the first question which an intelligent child would think of asking about a tree: "mamma, how does it make its trunk?" and you may open one botanical work after another, and good ones too, and by sensible men,--you shall not find this child's question fairly put, much less fairly answered. you will be told gravely that a stem has received many names, such as _culmus_, _stipes_, and _truncus_; that twigs were once called _flagella_, but are now called _ramuli_; and that mr. link calls a straight stem, with branches on its sides, a _caulis excurrens_; and a stem, which at a certain distance above the earth breaks out into irregular ramifications, a _caulis deliquescens_. all thanks and honor be to mr. link! but at this moment, when we want to know _why_ one stem breaks &# ;at a certain distance," and the other not at all, we find no great help in those splendid excurrencies and deliquescencies. &# ;at a certain distance?" yes: but why not before? or why then? how was it that, for many and many a year, the young shoots agreed to construct a vertical tower, or, at least, the nucleus of one, and then, one merry day, changed their minds, and built about their metropolis in all directions, nobody knows where, far into the air in free delight? how is it that yonder larch-stem grows straight and true, while all its branches, constructed by the same process as the mother trunk, and under the mother trunk's careful inspection and direction, nevertheless have lost all their manners, and go forking and flashing about, more like cracklings of spitefullest lightning than decent branches of trees that dip green leaves in dew? § . we have probably, many of us, missed the point of such questions as these, because we too readily associated the structure of trees with that of flowers. the flowering part of a plant shoots out or up, in some given direction, until, at a stated period, it opens or branches into perfect form by a law just as fixed, and just as inexplicable, as that which numbers the joints of an animal's skeleton, and puts the head on its right joint. in many forms of flowers--foxglove, aloe, hemlock, or blossom of maize--the structure of the flowering part so far assimilates itself to that of a tree, that we not unnaturally think of a tree only as a large flower, or large remnant of flower, run to seed. and we suppose the time and place of its branching to be just as organically determined as the height of the stalk of straw, or hemlock pipe, and the fashion of its branching just as fixed as the shape of petals in a pansy or cowslip. § . but that is not so; not so in anywise. so far as you can watch a tree, it is produced throughout by repetitions of the same process, which repetitions, however, are arbitrarily directed so as to produce one effect at one time, and another at another time. a young sapling has his branches as much as the tall tree. he does not shoot up in a long thin rod, and begin to branch when he is ten or fifteen feet high, as the hemlock or foxglove does when each has reached its ten or fifteen inches. the young sapling conducts himself with all the dignity of a tree from the first;--only he so manages his branches as to form a support for his future life, in a strong straight trunk, that will hold him well off the ground. prudent little sapling!--but how does he manage this? how keep the young branches from rambling about, till the proper time, or on what plea dismiss them from his service if they will not help his provident purpose? so again, there is no difference in mode of construction between the trunk of a pine and its branch. but external circumstances so far interfere with the results of this repeated construction, that a stone pine rises for a hundred feet like a pillar, and then suddenly bursts into a cloud. it is the knowledge of the mode in which such change may take place which forms the true natural history of trees:--or, more accurately, their moral history. an animal is born with so many limbs, and a head of such a shape. that is, strictly speaking, not its history, but one fact of its history: a fact of which no other account can be given than that it was so appointed. but a tree is born without a head. it has got to make its own head. it is born like a little family from which a great nation is to spring; and at a certain time, under peculiar external circumstances, this nation, every individual of which remains the same in nature and temper, yet gives itself a new political constitution, and sends out branch colonies, which enforce forms of law and life entirely different from those of the parent state. that is the history of the state. it is also the history of a tree. § . of these hidden histories, i know and can tell you as little as i did of the making of rocks. it will be enough for me if i can put the difficulty fairly before you, show you clearly such facts as are necessary to the understanding of great art, and so leave you to pursue, at your pleasure, the graceful mystery of this imperfect leafage life. i took in the outset the type of a _triple_ but as the most general that could be given of all trees, because it represents a prevalently upright main tendency, with a capacity of branching on both sides. i would have shown the power of branching on _all_ sides if i could; but we must be content at first with the simplest condition. from what we have seen since of bud structure, we may now make our type more complete by giving each bud a root proportioned to its size. and our elementary type of tree plant will be as in fig. . [illustration: fig. .] § . now these three buds, though differently placed, have all one mind. no bud has an oblique mind. every one would like, if he could, to grow upright, and it is because the midmost one has entirely his own way in this matter, that he is largest. he is an elder brother;--his birthright is to grow straight towards the sky. a younger child may perhaps supplant him, if he does not care for his privilege. in the meantime all are of one family, and love each other,--so that the two lateral buds do not stoop aside because they like it, but to let their more favored brother grow in peace. all the three buds and roots have at heart the same desire;--which is, the one to grow as straight as he can towards bright heaven, the other as deep as he can into dark earth. up to light, and down to shade;--into air and into rock:--that is their mind and purpose for ever. so far as they can, in kindness to each other, and by sufferance of external circumstances, work out that destiny, they will. but their beauty will not result from their working it out,--only from their maintained purpose and resolve to do so, if it may be. they will fail--certainly two, perhaps all three of them: fail egregiously;--ridiculously;--it may be agonizingly. instead of growing up, they may be wholly sacrificed to happier buds above, and have to grow _down_, sideways, roundabout ways, all sorts of ways. instead of getting down quietly into the convent of the earth, they may have to cling and crawl about hardest and hottest angles of it, full in sight of man and beast, and roughly trodden under foot by them;--stumbling-blocks to many. yet out of such sacrifice, gracefully made--such misfortune, gloriously sustained--all their true beauty is to arise. yes, and from more than sacrifice--more than misfortune: from _death_. yes, and more than death:--from the worst kind of death: not natural, coming to each in its due time; but premature, oppressed, unnatural, misguided--or so it would seem--to the poor dying sprays. yet, without such death, no strong trunk were ever possible; no grace of glorious limb or glittering leaf; no companionship with the rest of nature or with man. [illustration: fig. .] § . let us see how this must be. we return to our poor little threefold type, fig. , above. next year he will become as in fig. . the two lateral buds keeping as much as may be out of their brother's way, and yet growing upwards with a will, strike diagonal lines, and in moderate comfort accomplish their year's life and terminal buds. but what is to be done next? forming the triple terminal head on this diagonal line, we find that one of our next year's buds, _c_, will have to grow down again, which is very hard; and another, _b_, will run right against the lateral branch of the upper bud, a, which must not be allowed under any circumstances. what are we to do? [illustration: fig. .] § . the best we can. give up our straightness, and some of our length, and consent to grow short, and crooked. but _b_ shall be ordered to stoop forward and keep his head out of the great bough's way, as in fig. , and grow as he best may, with the consumptive pain in his chest. to give him a little more room, the elder brother, _a_, shall stoop a little forward also, recovering himself when he has got out of _b_'s way; and bud _c_ shall be encouraged to bend himself bravely round and up, after his first start in that disagreeable downward direction. poor _b_, withdrawn from air and light between _a_ and a, and having to live stooping besides, cannot make much of himself, and is stunted and feeble. _c_, having free play for his energies, bends up with a will, and becomes handsomer, to our minds, than if he had been straight; and _a_ is none the worse for his concession to unhappy _b_ in early life. [illustration: fig. .] so far well for this year. but how for next? _b_ is already too near the spray above him, even for his own strength and comfort; much less, with his weak constitution, will he be able to throw up any strong new shoots. and if he did, they would only run into those of the bough above. (if the reader will proceed in the construction of the whole figure he will see that this is so.) under these discouragements and deficiencies, _b_ is probably frostbitten, and drops off. the bough proceeds, mutilated, and itself somewhat discouraged. but it repeats its sincere and good-natured compliances, and at the close of the year, new wood from all the leaves having concealed the stump, and effaced the memory of poor lost _b_, and perhaps a consolatory bud lower down having thrown out a tiny spray to make the most of the vacant space near the main stem, we shall find the bough in some such shape as fig. . § . wherein we already see the germ of our irregularly bending branch, which might ultimately be much the prettier for the loss of _b_. alas! the fates have forbidden even this. while the low bough is making all these exertions, the boughs of a, above him, higher in air, have made the same under happier auspices. every year their thicker leaves more and more forbid the light; and, after rain, shed their own drops unwittingly on the unfortunate lower bough, and prevent the air or sun from drying his bark or checking the chill in his medullary rays. slowly a hopeless languor gains upon him. he buds here or there, faintly, in the spring; but the flow of strong wood from above oppresses him even about his root, where it joins the trunk. the very sap does not turn aside to him, but rushes up to the stronger, laughing leaves far above. life is no more worth having; and abandoning all effort, the poor bough drops, and finds consummation of destiny in helping an old woman's fire. when he is gone, the one next above is left with greater freedom, and will shoot now from points of its sprays which were before likely to perish. hence another condition of irregularity in form. but that bough also will fall in its turn, though after longer persistence. gradually thus the central trunk is built, and the branches by whose help it was formed cast off, leaving here and there scars, which are all effaced by years, or lost sight of among the roughnesses and furrows of the aged surface. the work is continually advancing, and thus the head of foliage on any tree is not an expansion at a given height, like a flower-bell, but the collective group of boughs, or workmen, who have got up so far, and will get up higher next year, still losing one or two of their number underneath. § . so far well. but this only accounts for the formation of a vertical trunk. how is it that at a certain height this vertical trunk ceases to be built; and irregular branches spread in all directions? first: in a great number of trees, the vertical trunk never ceases to be built. it is confused, at the top of the tree, among other radiating branches, being at first, of course, just as slender as they, and only prevailing over them in time. it shows at the top the same degree of irregularity and undulation as a sapling; and is transformed gradually into straightness lower down (see fig. ). the reader has only to take an hour's ramble, to see for himself how many trees are thus constructed, if circumstances are favorable to their growth. again, the mystery of blossoming has great influence in increasing the tendency to dispersion among the upper boughs: but this part of vegetative structure i cannot enter into; it is too subtle, and has, besides, no absolute bearing on our subject; the principal conditions which produce the varied play of branches being purely mechanical. the point at which they show a determined tendency to spread is generally to be conceived as a place of _rest_ for the tree, where it has reached the height from the ground at which ground-mist, imperfect circulation of air, &c., have ceased to operate injuriously on it, and where it has free room, and air, and light for its growth. [illustration: fig. .] § . i find there is quite an infinite interest in watching the different ways in which trees part their sprays at this resting-place, and the sometimes abrupt, sometimes gentle and undiscoverable, severing of the upright stem into the wandering and wilful branches; but a volume, instead of a chapter or two, and quite a little gallery of plates, would be needed to illustrate the various grace of this division, associated as it is with an exquisitely subtle effacing of undulation in the thicker stems, by the flowing down of the wood from above; the curves which are too violent in the branches being filled up, so that what was at _a_, fig. , becomes as at _b_, and when the main stem is old, passes at last into straightness by almost imperceptible curves, a continually gradated emphasis of curvature being carried to the branch extremities. [illustration: fig. .] § . hitherto we have confined ourselves entirely to examination of stems in one plane. we must glance--though only to ascertain how impossible it is to do more than glance--at the conditions of form which result from the throwing out of branches, not in one plane, but on all sides. "as your fingers divide when they hold a ball," i said: or, better, a large cup, without a handle. consider how such ramification will appear in one of the bud groups, that of our old friend the oak. we saw it opened usually into five shoots. imagine, then (fig. ), a five-sided cup or funnel with a stout rod running through the centre of it. in the figure it is seen from above, so as partly to show the inside, and a little obliquely, that the central rod may not hide any of the angles. then let us suppose that, where the angles of this cup were, we have, instead, five rods, as in fig. , a, like the ribs of a pentagonal umbrella turned inside out by the wind. i dot the pentagon which connects their extremities, to keep their positions clear. then these five rods, with the central one, will represent the five shoots, and the leader, from a vigorous young oak-spray. put the leaves on each; the five-foiled star at its extremity, and the others, now not quite formally, but still on the whole as in fig. above, and we have the result, fig. , b--rather a pretty one. [illustration: fig. .] § . by considering the various aspects which the five rods would take in fig. , as the entire group was seen from below or above, and at different angles and distances, the reader may find out for himself what changes of aspect are possible in even so regular a structure as this. but the branchings soon take more complex symmetry. we know that next year each of these five subordinate rods is to enter into life on its own account, and to repeat the branching of the first. thus, we shall have five pentagonal cups surrounding a large central pentagonal cup. this figure, if the reader likes a pretty perspective problem, he may construct for his own pleasure:--which having done, or conceived, he is then to apply the great principles of subjection and resilience, not to three branches only, as in fig. , but to the five of each cup;--by which the cups get flattened out and bent up, as you may have seen vessels of venetian glass, so that every cup actually takes something the shape of a thick aloe or artichoke leaf; and they surround the central one, not as a bunch of grapes surrounds a grape at the end of it, but as the petals grow round the centre of a rose. so that any one of these lateral branches--though, seen from above, it would present a symmetrical figure, as if it were not flattened (a, fig. )--seen sideways, or in profile, will show itself to be at least as much flattened as at b. [illustration: fig. .] § . you may thus regard the whole tree as composed of a series of such thick, flat, branch-leaves; only incomparably more varied and enriched in framework as they spread; and arranged more or less in spirals round the trunk. gather a cone of a scotch fir; begin at the bottom of it, and pull off the seeds, so as to show one of the spiral rows of them continuously, from the bottom to the top, leaving enough seeds above them to support the row. then the gradual lengthening of the seeds from the root, their spiral arrangement, and their limitation within a curved, convex form, furnish the best _severe_ type you can have of the branch system of all stemmed trees; and each seed of the cone represents, not badly, the sort of flattened solid leaf-shape which all complete branches have. also, if you will try to draw the spiral of the fir-cone, you will understand something about tree-perspective, which may be generally useful. finally, if you note the way in which the seeds of the cone slip each farther and farther over each other, so as to change sides in the middle of the cone, and obtain a reversed action of spiral lines in the upper half, you may imagine what a piece of work it would be for both of us, if we were to try to follow the complexities of branch order in trees of irregular growth, such as the rhododendron. i tried to do it, at least, for the pine, in section, but saw i was getting into a perfect maelström of spirals, from which no efforts would have freed me, in any imaginable time, and the only safe way was to keep wholly out of the stream. [illustration: fig. .] § . the alternate system, leading especially to the formation of forked trees, is more manageable; and if the reader is master of perspective, he may proceed some distance in the examination of that for himself. but i do not care to frighten the general reader by many diagrams: the book is always sure to open at them when he takes it up. i will venture on one which has perhaps something a little amusing about it, and is really of importance. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: j. ruskin j. emslie . sketch by a clerk of the works.] § . let x, fig. , represent a shoot of any opposite-leaved tree. the mode in which it will grow into a tree depends, mainly, on its disposition to lose the leader or a lateral shoot. if it keeps the leader, but drops the lateral, it takes the form a, and next year by a repetition of the process, b. but if it keeps the laterals, and drops the leader, it becomes first, c and next year, d. the form a is almost universal in spiral or alternate trees; and it is especially to be noted as bringing about this result, that in any given forking, one bough always goes on in its own direct course, and the other leaves it softly; they do not separate as if one was repelled from the other. thus in fig. , a perfect and nearly symmetrical piece of ramification, by turner (lowest bough but one in the tree on the left in the "château of la belle gabrielle"), the leading bough, going on in its own curve, throws off, first, a bough to the right, then one to the left, then two small ones to the right, and proceeds itself, hidden by leaves, to form the farthest upper point of the branch. the lower secondary bough--the first thrown off--proceeds in its own curve, branching first to the left, then to the right. the upper bough proceeds in the same way, throwing off first to left, then to right. and this is the commonest and most graceful structure. but if the tree loses the leader, as at c, fig. (and many opposite trees have a trick of doing so), a very curious result is arrived at, which i will give in a geometrical form. § . the number of branches which die, so as to leave the main stem bare, is always greatest low down, or near the interior of the tree. it follows that the lengths of stem which do not fork diminish gradually to the extremities, in a fixed proportion. this is a general law. assume, for example's sake, the stem to separate always into two branches, at an equal angle, and that each branch is three quarters of the length of the preceding one. diminish their thickness in proportion, and carry out the figure any extent you like. in plate , opposite, fig. , you have it at its ninth branch; in which i wish you to notice, first, the delicate curve formed by every complete line of the branches (compare vol. iv. fig. ); and, secondly, the very curious result of the top of the tree being a broad flat line, which passes at an angle into lateral shorter lines, and so down to the extremities. it is this property which renders the contours of tops of trees so intensely difficult to draw rightly, without making their curves too smooth and insipid. observe, also, that the great weight of the foliage being thrown on the outside of each main fork, the tendency of forked trees is very often to droop and diminish the bough on one side, and erect the other into a principal mass.[ ] § . but the form in a perfect tree is dependent on the revolution of this sectional profile, so as to produce a mushroom-shaped or cauliflower-shaped mass, of which i leave the reader to enjoy the perspective drawing by himself, adding, after he has completed it, the effect of the law of resilience to the extremities. only, he must note this: that in real trees, as the branches rise from the ground, the open spaces underneath are partly filled by subsequent branchings, so that a real tree has not so much the shape of a mushroom, as of an apple, or, if elongated, a pear. § . and now you may just begin to understand a little of turner's meaning in those odd pear-shaped trees of his, in the "mercury and argus," and other such compositions: which, however, before we can do completely, we must gather our evidence together, and see what general results will come of it respecting the hearts and fancies of trees, no less than their forms. footnote: [ ] this is harding's favorite form of tree. you will find it much insisted on in his works on foliage. i intended to have given a figure to show the results of the pressure of the weight of all the leafage on a great lateral bough, in modifying its curves, the strength of timber being greatest where the leverage of the mass tells most. but i find nobody ever reads things which it takes any trouble to understand, so that it is of no use to write them. chapter viii. the leaf monuments. § . and now, having ascertained in its main points the system on which the leaf-workers build, let us see, finally, what results in aspect, and appeal to human mind, their building must present. in some sort it resembles that of the coral animal, differing, however, in two points. first, the animal which forms branched coral, builds, i believe, in calm water, and has few accidents of current, light, or heat to contend with. he builds in monotonous ramification, untormented, therefore unbeautiful. secondly, each coral animal builds for himself, adding his cell to what has been before constructed, as a bee adds another cell to the comb. he obtains no essential connection with the root and foundation of the whole structure. that foundation is thickened clumsily, by a fused and encumbering aggregation, as a stalactite increases;--not by threads proceeding from the extremities to the root. § . the leaf, as we have seen, builds in both respects under opposite conditions. it leads a life of endurance, effort, and various success, issuing in various beauty; and it connects itself with the whole previous edifice by one sustaining thread, continuing its appointed piece of work all the way from top to root. whence result three great conditions in branch aspect, for which i cannot find good names, but must use the imperfect ones of "spring," "caprice," "fellowship." § . i. spring: or the appearance of elastic and progressive power, as opposed to that look of a bent piece of cord.--this follows partly on the poise of the bough, partly on its action in seeking or shunning. every branch-line expresses both these. it takes a curve accurately showing the relations between the strength of the sprays in that position (growing downward, upward, or laterally), and the weight of leaves they carry; and again, it takes a curve expressive of the will or aim of those sprays, during all their life, and handed down from sire to son, in steady inheritance of resolution to reach forward in a given direction, or bend away from some given evil influence. and all these proportionate strengths and measured efforts of the bough produce its loveliness, and ought to be felt, in looking at it, not by any mathematical evidence, but by the same fine instinct which enables us to perceive, when a girl dances rightly, that she moves easily, and with delight to herself; that her limbs are strong enough, and her body tender enough, to move precisely as she wills them to move. you cannot say of any bend of arm or foot what precise relations of their curves to the whole figure manifest, in their changeful melodies, that ease of motion; yet you feel that they do so, and you feel it by a true instinct. and if you reason on the matter farther, you may know, though you cannot see, that an absolute mathematical necessity proportions every bend of the body to the rate and direction of its motion; and that the momentary fancy and fire of the will measure themselves, even in their gaily-fancied freedom, by stern laws of nervous life, and material attraction, which regulate eternally every pulse of the strength of man, and every sweep of the stars of heaven. § . observe, also, the balance of the bough of a tree is quite as subtle as that of a figure in motion. it is a balance between the elasticity of the bough and the weight of leaves, affected in curvature, literally, by the growth of _every_ leaf; and besides this, when it moves, it is partly supported by the resistance of the air, greater or less, according to the shape of leaf;--so that branches float on the wind more than they yield to it; and in their tossing do not so much bend under a force, as rise on a wave, which penetrates in liquid threads through all their sprays. [illustration] [illustration: . leafage by durer and veronese.] [illustration: fig. . _to face page ._] § . i am not sure how far, by any illustration, i can exemplify these subtle conditions of form. all my plans have been shortened, and i have learned to content myself with yet more contracted issues of them after the shortening, because i know that nearly all in such matters must be said or shown, unavailably. no saying will teach the truth. nothing but doing. if the reader will draw boughs of trees long and faithfully, giving previous pains to gain the power (how rare!) of drawing _anything_ faithfully, he will come to see what turner's work is, or any other right work, but not by reading, nor thinking, nor idly looking. however, in some degree, even our ordinary instinctive perception of grace and balance may serve us, if we choose to pay any accurate attention to the matter. § . look back to fig. . that bough of turner's is exactly and exquisitely poised, leaves and all, for its present horizontal position. turn the book so as to put the spray upright, with the leaves at the top. you ought to see they would then be wrong;--that they must, in that position, have adjusted themselves more directly above the main stem, and more firmly, the curves of the lighter sprays being a deflection caused by their weight in the horizontal position. again, fig. represents, enlarged to four times the size of the original, the two scotch firs in turner's etching of inverary.[ ] these are both in perfect poise, representing a double action: the warping of the trees away from the sea-wind, and the continual growing out of the boughs on the right-hand side, to recover the balance. turn the page so as to be horizontal, and you ought to feel that, considered now as branches, both would be out of balance. if you turn the heads of the trees to your right, they are wrong, because gravity would have bent them more downwards; if to your left, wrong, because the law of resilience would have raised them more at the extremities. § . now take two branches of salvator's, figs. and .[ ] you ought to feel that these have neither poise nor spring: their leaves are incoherent, ragged, hanging together in decay. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] immediately after these, turn to plate , opposite. the branch at the top is facsimiled from that in the hand of adam, in durer's adam and eve.[ ] it is full of the most exquisite vitality and spring in every line. look at it for five minutes carefully. then turn back to salvator's, fig. . are you as well satisfied with it? you ought to feel that it is not strong enough at the origin to sustain the leaves; and that if it were, those leaves themselves are in broken or forced relations with each other. such relations might, indeed, exist in a partially withered tree, and one of these branches is intended to be partially withered, but the other is not; and if it were, salvator's choice of the withered tree is precisely the sign of his preferring ugliness to beauty, decrepitude and disorganization to life and youth. the leaves on the spray, by durer, hold themselves as the girl holds herself in dancing; those on salvator's as an old man, partially palsied, totters along with broken motion, and loose deflection of limb. § . next, let us take a spray by paul veronese[ ]--the lower figure in plate . it is just as if we had gathered one out of the garden. though every line and leaf in the quadruple group is necessary to join with other parts of the composition of the noble picture, every line and leaf is also as free and true as if it were growing. none are confused, yet none are loose; all are individual, yet none separate, in tender poise of pliant strength and fair order of accomplished grace, each, by due force of the indulgent bough, set and sustained. § . observe, however, that in all these instances from earlier masters, the expression of the universal botanical law of poise is independent of accuracy in rendering of species. as before noticed, the neglect of specific distinction long restrained the advance of landscape, and even hindered turner himself in many respects. the sprays of veronese are a conventional type of laurel; albert durer's an imaginary branch of paradisaical vegetation; salvator's, a rude reminiscence of sweet chestnut; turner's only is a faithful rendering of the scotch fir. [illustration: . branch curvature.] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. _to face page ._] § . to show how the principle of balance is carried out by nature herself, here is a little terminal upright spray of willow, the most graceful of english trees (fig. ). i have drawn it carefully; and if the reader will study its curves, or, better, trace and pencil them with a perfectly fine point, he will feel, i think, without difficulty, their finished relation to the leaves they sustain. then if we turn suddenly to a piece of dutch branch-drawing (fig. ), facsimiled from no. , dulwich gallery (berghem), he will understand, i believe, also the qualities of that, without comment of mine. it is of course not so dark in the original, being drawn with the chance dashes of a brush loaded with brown, but the contours are absolutely as in the woodcut. this dutch design is a very characteristic example of two faults in tree-drawing; namely, the loss not only of grace and spring, but of woodiness. a branch is not elastic as steel is, neither as a carter's whip is. it is a combination, wholly peculiar, of elasticity with half-dead and sapless stubbornness, and of continuous curve with pauses of knottiness, every bough having its blunted, affronted, fatigued, or repentant moments of existence, and mingling crabbed rugosities and fretful changes of mind with the main tendencies of its growth. the piece of pollard willow opposite (fig. ), facsimiled from turner's etching of "young anglers," in the liber studiorum, has all these characters in perfectness, and may serve for sufficient study of them. it is impossible to explain in what the expression of the woody strength consists, unless it be felt. one very obvious condition is the excessive fineness of curvature, approximating continually to a straight line. in order to get a piece of branch curvature given as accurately as i could by an unprejudiced person, i set one of my pupils at the working men's college (a joiner by trade) to draw, last spring, a lilac branch of its real size, as it grew, before it budded. it was about six feet long, and before he could get it quite right, the buds came out and interrupted him; but the fragment he got drawn is engraved in flat profile, in plate . it has suffered much by reduction, one or two of its finest curves having become lost in the mere thickness of the lines. nevertheless, if the reader will compare it carefully with the dutch work, it will teach him something about trees. § . ii. caprice.--the next character we had to note of the leaf-builders was their capriciousness, noted, partly, in vol. iii. chap. ix. § . it is a character connected with the ruggedness and ill-temperedness just spoken of, and an essential source of branch beauty: being in reality the written story of all the branch's life,--of the theories it formed, the accidents it suffered, the fits of enthusiasm to which it yielded in certain delicious warm springs; the disgusts at weeks of east wind, the mortifications of itself for its friends' sakes; or the sudden and successful inventions of new ways of getting out to the sun. the reader will understand this character in a moment, by merely comparing fig. , which is a branch of salvator's,[ ] with fig. , which i have traced from the engraving, in the yorkshire series, of turner's "aske hall." you cannot but feel at once, not only the wrongness of salvator's, but its dulness. it is not now a question either of poise, or grace, or gravity; only of wit. that bough has got no sense; it has not been struck by a single new idea from the beginning of it to the end; dares not even cross itself with one of its own sprays. you will be amazed, in taking up any of these old engravings, to see how seldom the boughs _do_ cross each other. whereas, in nature, not only is the intersection of extremities a mathematical necessity (see plate ), but out of this intersection and crossing of curve by curve, and the opposition of line it involves, the best part of their composition arises. look at the way the boughs are interwoven in that piece of lilac stem (plate ). [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: . the dryad's waywardness.] § . again: as it seldom struck the old painters that boughs must cross each other, so it never seems to have occurred to them that they must be sometimes foreshortened. i chose this bit from "aske hall," that you might see at once, both how turner foreshortens the main stem, and how, in doing so, he shows the turning aside, and outwards, of the one next to it, to the left, to get more air.[ ] indeed, this foreshortening lies at the core of the business; for unless it be well understood, no branch-form can ever be rightly drawn. i placed the oak spray in plate so as to be seen as nearly straight on its flank as possible. it is the most uninteresting position in which a bough can be drawn; but it shows the first simple action of the law of resilience. i will now turn the bough with its extremity towards us, and foreshorten it (plate ), which being done, you perceive another tendency in the whole branch, not seen at all in the first plate, to throw its sprays to its own right (or to your left), which it does to avoid the branch next it, while the _forward_ action is in a sweeping curve round to your right, or to the branch's left: a curve which it takes to recover position after its first concession. the lines of the nearer and smaller shoots are very nearly--thus foreshortened--those of a boat's bow. here is a piece of dutch foreshortening for you to compare with it, fig. .[ ] [illustration: fig. .] § . in this final perfection of bough-drawing, turner stands _wholly alone_. even titian does not foreshorten his boughs rightly. of course he could, if he had cared to do so; for if you can foreshorten a limb or a hand, much more a tree branch. but either he had never looked at a tree carefully enough to feel that it was necessary, or, which is more likely, he disliked to introduce in a background elements of vigorous projection. be the reason what it may, if you take lefèvre's plates of the peter martyr and st. jerome--the only ones i know which give any idea of titian's tree-drawing, you will observe at once that the boughs lie in flakes, artificially set to the right and left, and are not intricate or varied, even where the foliage indicates some foreshortening;--completing thus the evidence for my statement long ago given, that no man but turner had ever drawn the stem of a tree. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . it may be well also to note, for the advantage of the general student of design, that, in foliage and bough drawing, all the final grace and general utility of the study depend on its being well foreshortened; and that, till the power of doing so quite accurately is obtained, no landscape-drawing is of the least value; nor can the character of any tree be known at all until not only its branches, but its minutest extremities, have been drawn in the severest foreshortening, with little accompanying plans of the arrangements of the leaves or buds, or thorns, on the stem. thus fig. is the extremity of a single shoot of spruce foreshortened, showing the resilience of its swords from beneath, and fig. is a little ground-plan, showing the position of the three lowest triple groups of thorn on a shoot of gooseberry.[ ] the fir shoot is carelessly drawn; but it is not worth while to do it better, unless i engraved it on steel, so as to show the fine relations of shade. § . iii. fellowship.--the compactness of mass presented by this little sheaf of pine-swords may lead us to the consideration of the last character i have to note of boughs; namely, the mode of their association in masses. it follows, of course, from all the laws of growth we have ascertained, that the terminal outline of any tree or branch must be a simple one, containing within it, at a given height or level, the series of leaves of the year; only we have not yet noticed the kind of form which results, in each branch, from the part it has to take in forming the mass of the tree. the systems of branching are indeed infinite, and could not be exemplified by any number of types; but here are two common types, in section, which will enough explain what i mean. [illustration: fig. .] § . if a tree branches with a concave tendency, it is apt to carry its boughs to the outer curve of limitation, as at a, fig. , and if with a convex tendency, as at b. in either case the vertical section, or profile, of a bough will give a triangular mass, terminated by curves, and elongated at one extremity. these triangular masses you may see at a glance, prevailing in the branch system of any tree in winter. they may, of course, be mathematically reduced to the four types _a_, _b_, _c_, and _d_, fig. , but are capable of endless variety of expression in action, and in the adjustment of their weights to the bearing stem. § . to conclude, then, we find that the beauty of these buildings of the leaves consists, from the first step of it to the last, in its showing their perfect fellowship; and a single aim uniting them under circumstances of various distress, trial, and pleasure. without the fellowship, no beauty; without the steady purpose, no beauty; without trouble, and death, no beauty; without individual pleasure, freedom, and caprice, so far as may be consistent with the universal good, no beauty. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . tree-loveliness might be thus lost or killed in many ways. discordance would kill it--of one leaf with another; disobedience would kill it--of any leaf to the ruling law; indulgence would kill it, and the doing away with pain; or slavish symmetry would kill it, and the doing away with delight. and this is so, down to the smallest atom and beginning of life: so soon as there is life at all, there are these four conditions of it;--harmony, obedience, distress, and delightsome inequality. here is the magnified section of an oak-bud, not the size of a wheat grain (fig. ). already its nascent leaves are seen arranged under the perfect law of resilience, preparing for stoutest work on the right side. here is a dogwood bud just opening into life (fig. ). its ruling law is to be four square, but see how the uppermost leaf takes the lead, and the lower bends up, already a little distressed by the effort. here is a birch-bud, farther advanced, fig. . who shall say how many humors the little thing has in its mind already; or how many adventures it has passed through? and so to the end. help, submission, sorrow, dissimilarity, are the sources of all good;--war, disobedience, luxury, equality, the sources of all evil. [illustration: fig. .] § . there is yet another and a deeply laid lesson to be received from the leaf-builders, which i hope the reader has already perceived. every leaf, we have seen, connects its work with the entire and accumulated result of the work of its predecessors. their previous construction served it during its life, raised it towards the light, gave it more free sway and motion in the wind, and removed it from the noxiousness of earth exhalation. dying, it leaves its own small but well-labored thread, adding, though imperceptibly, yet essentially, to the strength, from root to crest, of the trunk on which it had lived, and fitting that trunk for better service to succeeding races of leaves. we men, sometimes, in what we presume to be humility, compare ourselves with leaves; but we have as yet no right to do so. the leaves may well scorn the comparison. we who live for ourselves, and neither know how to use nor keep the work of past time, may humbly learn,--as from the ant, foresight,--from the leaf, reverence. the power of every great people, as of every living tree, depends on its not effacing, but confirming and concluding, the labors of its ancestors. looking back to the history of nations, we may date the beginning of their decline from the moment when they ceased to be reverent in heart, and accumulative in hand and brain; from the moment when the redundant fruit of age hid in them the hollowness of heart, whence the simplicities of custom and sinews of tradition had withered away. had men but guarded the righteous laws, and protected the precious works of their fathers, with half the industry they have given to change and to ravage, they would not now have been seeking vainly, in millennial visions and mechanic servitudes, the accomplishment of the promise made to them so long ago: "as the days of a tree are the days of my people, and mine elect shall long enjoy the work of their hands; they shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the lord, and their offspring with them." § . this lesson we have to take from the leaf's life. one more we may receive from its death. if ever in autumn a pensiveness falls upon us as the leaves drift by in their fading, may we not wisely look up in hope to their mighty monuments? behold how fair, how far prolonged, in arch and aisle, the avenues of the valleys; the fringes of the hills! so stately,--so eternal; the joy of man, the comfort of all living creatures, the glory of the earth,--they are but the monuments of those poor leaves that flit faintly past us to die. let them not pass, without our understanding their last counsel and example: that we also, careless of monument by the grave, may build it in the world--monument by which men may be taught to remember, not where we died, but where we lived. footnotes: [ ] they are enlarged, partly in order to show the care and minuteness of turner's drawing on the smallest scale, partly to save the reader the trouble of using a magnifying glass, partly because this woodcut will print safely; while if i had facsimiled the fine turner etching, the block might have been spoiled after a hundred impressions. [ ] magnified to twice the size of the original, but otherwise facsimiled from his own etching of oedipus, and the school of plato. [ ] the parrot perched on it is removed, which may be done without altering the curve, as the bird is set where its weight would not have bent the wood. [ ] the largest laurel spray in the background of the "susanna," louvre--reduced to about a fifth of the original. the drawing was made for me by m. hippolyte dubois, and i am glad it is not one of my own, lest i should be charged with exaggerating veronese's accuracy. this group of leaves is, in the original, of the life-size; the circle which interferes with the spray on the right being the outline of the head and of one of the elders; and, as painted for distant effect, there is no care in completing the stems:--they are struck with a few broken touches of the brush, which cannot be imitated in the engraving, and much of their spirit is lost in consequence. [ ] the longest in "apollo and the sibyl," engraved by boydell. (reduced one-half.) [ ] the foreshortening of the bough to the right is a piece of great audacity; it comes towards us two or three feet sharply, after forking, so as to look half as thick again as at the fork;--then bends back again, and outwards. [ ] hobbima. dulwich gallery, no. . turn the book with its inner edge up. [ ] their change from groups of three to groups of two, and then to single thorns at the end of the spray, will be found very beautiful in a real shoot. the figure on the left in plate is a branch of blackthorn with its spines (which are a peculiar condition of branch, and can bud like branches, while thorns have no root nor power of development). such a branch gives good practice without too much difficulty. chapter ix. the leaf shadows. [illustration: fig. .] § . it may be judged, by the time which it has taken to arrive at any clear idea of the structure of shield-builders, what a task would open to us if we endeavored to trace the more wonderful forms of the wild builders with the sword. not that they are more complex; but they are more definite, and cannot be so easily generalized. the conditions which produce the spire of the cypress, and flaked breadth of the cedar, the rounded head of the stone pine, and perfect pyramid of the black spruce, are far more distinct, and would require more accurate and curious diagrams to illustrate them, than the graceful, but in some degree monotonous branching of leaf-builders. in broad principle they are, however, alike. the leaves construct the sprays in the same accumulative way: the only essential difference being that in the sword-builders the leaves are all set close, and at equal intervals. instead of admitting extended and variable spaces between them, the whole spray is one tower of leaf-roots, set in a perfect spiral. thus, fig. , at a, represents a fragment of spray of scotch fir of its real size. b is the same piece magnified, the diamond-like spaces being the points on which the leaves grew. the dotted lines show the regularity of the spiral. as the minor stems join in boughs, the scars left by the leaves are gradually effaced, and a thick but broken and scaly bark forms instead. § . a sword-builder may therefore be generally considered as a shield-builder put under the severest military restraint. the graceful and thin leaf is concentrated into a strong, narrow, pointed rod; and the insertion of these rods on them is in a close and perfectly timed order. in some ambiguous trees connected with the tribe (as the arbor vitæ) there is no proper stem to the outer leaves, but all the extremities form a kind of coralline leaf, flat and fern-like, but articulated like a crustacean animal, which gradually concentrates and embrowns itself into the stem. the thicker branches of these trees are exquisitely fantastic; and the mode in which the flat system of leaf first produces an irregular branch, and then adapts itself to the symmetrical cone of the whole tree, is one of the most interesting processes of form which i know in vegetation. § . neither this, however, nor any other of the pine formations, have we space here to examine in detail; while without detail, all discussion of them is in vain. i shall only permit myself to note a few points respecting my favorite tree, the black spruce, not with any view to art criticism (though we might get at some curious results by a comparison of popular pine-drawing in germany, america, and other dark-wooded countries, with the true natural forms), but because i think the expression of this tree has not been rightly understood by travellers in switzerland, and that, with a little watching of it, they might easily obtain a juster feeling. § . of the many marked adaptations of nature to the mind of man, it seems one of the most singular, that trees intended especially for the adornment of the wildest mountains should be in broad outline the most formal of trees. the vine, which is to be the companion of man, is waywardly docile in its growth, falling into festoons beside his cornfields, or roofing his garden-walks, or casting its shadow all summer upon his door. associated always with the trimness of cultivation, it introduces all possible elements of sweet wildness. the pine, placed nearly always among scenes disordered and desolate, brings into them all possible elements of order and precision. lowland trees may lean to this side and that, though it is but a meadow breeze that bends them, or a bank of cowslips from which their trunks lean aslope. but let storm and avalanche do their worst, and let the pine find only a ledge of vertical precipice to cling to, it will nevertheless grow straight. thrust a rod from its last shoot down the stem;--it shall point to the centre of the earth as long as the tree lives. § . also it may be well for lowland branches to reach hither and thither for what they need, and to take all kinds of irregular shape and extension. but the pine is trained to need nothing, and to endure everything. it is resolvedly whole, self-contained, desiring nothing but rightness, content with restricted completion. tall or short, it will be straight. small or large, it will be round. it may be permitted also to these soft lowland trees that they should make themselves gay with show of blossom, and glad with pretty charities of fruitfulness. we builders with the sword have harder work to do for man, and must do it in close-set troops. to stay the sliding of the mountain snows, which would bury him; to hold in divided drops, at our sword-points, the rain, which would sweep away him and his treasure-fields; to nurse in shade among our brown fallen leaves the tricklings that feed the brooks in drought; to give massive shield against the winter wind, which shrieks through the bare branches of the plain:--such service must we do him steadfastly while we live. our bodies, also, are at his service: softer than the bodies of other trees, though our toil is harder than theirs. let him take them as pleases him, for his houses and ships. so also it may be well for these timid lowland trees to tremble with all their leaves, or turn their paleness to the sky, if but a rush of rain passes by them; or to let fall their leaves at last, sick and sere. but we pines must live carelessly amidst the wrath of clouds. we only wave our branches to and fro when the storm pleads with us, as men toss their arms in a dream. and finally, these weak lowland trees may struggle fondly for the last remnants of life, and send up feeble saplings again from their roots when they are cut down. but we builders with the sword perish boldly; our dying shall be perfect and solemn, as our warring: we give up our lives without reluctance, and for ever.[ ] § . i wish the reader to fix his attention for a moment on these two great characters of the pine, its straightness and rounded perfectness; both wonderful, and in their issue lovely, though they have hitherto prevented the tree from being drawn. i say, first, its straightness. because we constantly see it in the wildest scenery, we are apt to remember only as characteristic examples of it those which have been disturbed by violent accident or disease. of course such instances are frequent. the soil of the pine is subject to continual change; perhaps the rock in which it is rooted splits in frost and falls forward, throwing the young stems aslope, or the whole mass of earth around it is undermined by rain, or a huge boulder falls on its stem from above, and forces it for twenty years to grow with weight of a couple of tons leaning on its side. hence, especially at edges of loose cliffs, about waterfalls, or at glacier banks, and in other places liable to disturbance, the pine may be seen distorted and oblique; and in turner's "source of the arveron," he has, with his usual unerring perception of the main point in any matter, fastened on this means of relating the glacier's history. the glacier cannot explain its own motion; and ordinary observers saw in it only its rigidity; but turner saw that the wonderful thing was its non-rigidity. other ice is fixed, only this ice stirs. all the banks are staggering beneath its waves, crumbling and withered as by the blast of a perpetual storm. he made the rocks of his foreground loose--rolling and tottering down together; the pines, smitten aside by them, their tops dead, bared by the ice wind. § . nevertheless, this is not the truest or universal expression of the pine's character. i said long ago, even of turner: "into the spirit of the pine he cannot enter." he understood the glacier at once; he had seen the force of sea on shore too often to miss the action of those crystal-crested waves. but the pine was strange to him, adverse to his delight in broad and flowing line; he refused its magnificent erectness. magnificent!--nay, sometimes, almost terrible. other trees, tufting crag or hill, yield to the form and sway of the ground, clothe it with soft compliance, are partly its subjects, partly its flatterers, partly its comforters. but the pine rises in serene resistance, self-contained; nor can i ever without awe stay long under a great alpine cliff, far from all house or work of men, looking up to its companies of pine, as they stand on the inaccessible juts and perilous ledges of the enormous wall, in quiet multitudes, each like the shadow of the one beside it--upright, fixed, spectral, as troops of ghosts standing on the walls of hades, not knowing each other--dumb for ever. you cannot reach them, cannot cry to them;--those trees never heard human voice; they are far above all sound but of the winds. no foot ever stirred fallen leaf of theirs. all comfortless they stand, between the two eternities of the vacancy and the rock: yet with such iron will, that the rock itself looks bent and shattered beside them--fragile, weak, inconsistent, compared to their dark energy of delicate life, and monotony of enchanted pride:--unnumbered, unconquerable. § . then note, farther, their perfectness. the impression on most people's minds must have been received more from pictures than reality, so far as i can judge;--so ragged they think the pine; whereas its chief character in health is green and full roundness. it stands compact, like one of its own cones, slightly curved on its sides, finished and quaint as a carved tree in some elizabethan garden; and instead of being wild in expression, forms the softest of all forest scenery; for other trees show their trunks and twisting boughs: but the pine, growing either in luxuriant mass or in happy isolation, allows no branch to be seen. summit behind summit rise its pyramidal ranges, or down to the very grass sweep the circlets of its boughs; so that there is nothing but green cone and green carpet. nor is it only softer, but in one sense more cheerful than other foliage; for it casts only a pyramidal shadow. lowland forest arches overhead, and chequers the ground with darkness; but the pine, growing in scattered groups, leaves the glades between emerald-bright. its gloom is all its own; narrowing into the sky, it lets the sunshine strike down to the dew. and if ever a superstitious feeling comes over me among the pine-glades, it is never tainted with the old german forest fear; but is only a more solemn tone of the fairy enchantment that haunts our english meadows; so that i have always called the prettiest pine glade in chamouni, "fairies' hollow." it is in the glen beneath the steep ascent above pont pelissier, and may be reached by a little winding path which goes down from the top of the hill; being, indeed, not truly a glen, but a broad ledge of moss and turf, leaning in a formidable precipice (which, however, the gentle branches hide) over the arve. an almost isolated rock promontory, many-colored, rises at the end of it. on the other sides it is bordered by cliffs, from which a little cascade falls, literally down among the pines, for it is so light, shaking itself into mere showers of seed pearl in the sun, that the pines don't know it from mist, and grow through it without minding. underneath, there is only the mossy silence, and above, for ever, the snow of the nameless aiguille. § . and then the third character which i want you to notice in the pine is its exquisite fineness. other trees rise against the sky in dots and knots, but this in fringes.[ ] you never see the edges of it, so subtle are they; and for this reason, it alone of trees, so far as i know, is capable of the fiery change which we saw before had been noticed by shakespeare. when the sun rises behind a ridge crested with pine, provided the ridge be at a distance of about two miles, and seen clear, all the trees, for about three or four degrees on each side of the sun, become trees of light, seen in clear flame against the darker sky, and dazzling as the sun itself. i thought at first this was owing to the actual lustre of the leaves; but i believe now it is caused by the cloud-dew upon them,--every minutest leaf carrying its diamond. it seems as if these trees, living always among the clouds, had caught part of their glory from them; and themselves the darkest of vegetation, could yet add splendor to the sun itself. § . yet i have been more struck by their character of finished delicacy at a distance from the central alps, among the pastoral hills of the emmenthal, or lowland districts of berne, where they are set in groups between the cottages, whose shingle roofs (they also of pine) of deep gray blue, and lightly carved fronts, golden and orange in the autumn sunshine,[ ] gleam on the banks and lawns of hill-side,--endless lawns, mounded, and studded, and bossed all over with deeper green hay-heaps, orderly set, like jewellery (the mountain hay, when the pastures are full of springs, being strangely dark and fresh in verdure for a whole day after it is cut). and amidst this delicate delight of cottage and field, the young pines stand delicatest of all, scented as with frankincense, their slender stems straight as arrows, and crystal white, looking as if they would break with a touch, like needles; and their arabesques of dark leaf pierced through and through by the pale radiance of clear sky, opal blue, where they follow each other along the soft hill-ridges, up and down. § . i have watched them in such scenes with the deeper interest, because of all trees they have hitherto had most influence on human character. the effect of other vegetation, however great, has been divided by mingled species; elm and oak in england, poplar in france, birch in scotland, olive in italy and spain, share their power with inferior trees, and with all the changing charm of successive agriculture. but the tremendous unity of the pine absorbs and moulds the life of a race. the pine shadows rest upon a nation. the northern peoples, century after century, lived under one or other of the two great powers of the pine and the sea, both infinite. they dwelt amidst the forests, as they wandered on the waves, and saw no end, nor any other horizon;--still the dark green trees, or the dark green waters, jagged the dawn with their fringe, or their foam. and whatever elements of imagination, or of warrior strength, or of domestic justice, were brought down by the norwegian and the goth against the dissoluteness or degradation of the south of europe, were taught them under the green roofs and wild penetralia of the pine. § . i do not attempt, delightful as the task would be, to trace this influence (mixed with superstition) in scandinavia, or north germany; but let us at least note it in the instance which we speak of so frequently, yet so seldom take to heart. there has been much dispute respecting the character of the swiss, arising out of the difficulty which other nations had to understand their simplicity. they were assumed to be either romantically virtuous, or basely mercenary, when in fact they were neither heroic nor base, but were true-hearted men, stubborn with more than any recorded stubbornness; not much regarding their lives, yet not casting them causelessly away; forming no high ideal of improvement, but never relaxing their grasp of a good they had once gained; devoid of all romantic sentiment, yet loving with a practical and patient love that neither wearied nor forsook; little given to enthusiasm in religion, but maintaining their faith in a purity which no worldliness deadened and no hypocrisy soiled; neither chivalrously generous nor pathetically humane, yet never pursuing their defeated enemies, nor suffering their poor to perish: proud, yet not allowing their pride to prick them into unwary or unworthy quarrel; avaricious, yet contentedly rendering to their neighbor his due; dull, but clear-sighted to all the principles of justice; and patient, without ever allowing delay to be prolonged by sloth, or forbearance by fear. § . this temper of swiss mind, while it animated the whole confederacy, was rooted chiefly in one small district which formed the heart of their country, yet lay not among its highest mountains. beneath the glaciers of zermatt and evolena, and on the scorching slopes of the valais, the peasants remained in an aimless torpor, unheard of but as the obedient vassals of the great bishopric of sion. but where the lower ledges of calcareous rock were broken by the inlets of the lake lucerne, and bracing winds penetrating from the north forbade the growth of the vine, compelling the peasantry to adopt an entirely pastoral life, was reared another race of men. their narrow domain should be marked by a small green spot on every map of europe. it is about forty miles from east to west; as many from north to south: yet on that shred of rugged ground, while every kingdom of the world around it rose or fell in fatal change, and every multitudinous race mingled or wasted itself in various dispersion and decline, the simple shepherd dynasty remained changeless. there is no record of their origin. they are neither goths, burgundians, romans, nor germans. they have been for ever helvetii, and for ever free. voluntarily placing themselves under the protection of the house of hapsburg, they acknowledged its supremacy, but resisted its oppression; and rose against the unjust governors it appointed over them, not to gain, but to redeem, their liberties. victorious in the struggle by the lake of egeri, they stood the foremost standard-bearers among the nations of europe in the cause of loyalty and life--loyalty in its highest sense, to the laws of god's helpful justice, and of man's faithful and brotherly fortitude. § . you will find among them, as i said, no subtle wit nor high enthusiasm, only an undeceivable common sense, and an obstinate rectitude. they cannot be persuaded into their duties, but they feel them; they use no phrases of friendship, but do not fail you at your need. questions of creed, which other nations sought to solve by logic or reverie, these shepherds brought to practical tests: sustained with tranquillity the excommunication of abbots who wanted to feed their cattle on other people's fields, and, halbert in hand, struck down the swiss reformation, because the evangelicals of zurich refused to send them their due supplies of salt. not readily yielding to the demands of superstition, they were patient under those of economy; they would purchase the remission of taxes, but not of sins; and while the sale of indulgences was arrested in the church of ensiedlen as boldly as at the gates of wittenberg, the inhabitants of the valley of frütigen[ ] ate no meat for seven years, in order peacefully to free themselves and their descendants from the seigniorial claims of the baron of thurm. § . what praise may be justly due to this modest and rational virtue, we have perhaps no sufficient grounds for defining. it must long remain questionable how far the vices of superior civilization may be atoned for by its achievements, and the errors of more transcendental devotion forgiven to its rapture. but, take it for what we may, the character of this peasantry is, at least, serviceable to others and sufficient for their own peace; and in its consistency and simplicity, it stands alone in the history of the human heart. how far it was developed by circumstances of natural phenomena may also be disputed; nor should i enter into such dispute with any strongly held conviction. the swiss have certainly no feelings respecting their mountains in anywise correspondent to ours. it was rather as fortresses of defence, than as spectacles of splendor, that the cliffs of the rothstock bare rule over the destinies of those who dwelt at their feet; and the training for which the mountain children had to thank the slopes of the muotta-thal, was in soundness of breath, and steadiness of limb, far more than in elevation of idea. but the point which i desire the reader to note is, that the character of the scene which, if any, appears to have been impressive to the inhabitant, is not that which we ourselves feel when we enter the district. it was not from their lakes, nor their cliffs, nor their glaciers--though these were all peculiarly their possession, that the three venerable cantons or states received their name. they were not called the states of the rock, nor the states of the lake, but the states of the _forest_. and the one of the three which contains the most touching record of the spiritual power of swiss religion, in the name of the convent of the "hill of angels," has, for its own, none but the sweet childish name of "under the woods." § . and indeed you may pass under them if, leaving the most sacred spot in swiss history, the meadow of the three fountains, you bid the boatman row southward a little way by the shore of the bay of uri. steepest there on its western side, the walls of its rocks ascend to heaven. far, in the blue of evening, like a great cathedral pavement, lies the lake in its darkness; and you may hear the whisper of innumerable falling waters return from the hollows of the cliff, like the voices of a multitude praying under their breath. from time to time the beat of a wave, slow lifted, where the rocks lean over the black depth, dies heavily as the last note of a requiem. opposite, green with steep grass, and set with chalet villages, the fron-alp rises in one solemn glow of pastoral light and peace; and above, against the clouds of twilight, ghostly on the gray precipice, stand, myriad by myriad, the shadowy armies of the unterwalden pine.[ ] i have seen that it is possible for the stranger to pass through this great chapel, with its font of waters, and mountain pillars, and vaults of cloud, without being touched by one noble thought, or stirred by any sacred passion; but for those who received from its waves the baptism of their youth, and learned beneath its rocks the fidelity of their manhood, and watched amidst its clouds the likeness of the dream of life, with the eyes of age--for these i will not believe that the mountain shrine was built, or the calm of its forest-shadows guarded by their god, in vain. footnotes: [ ] "croesus, therefore, having heard these things, sent word to the people of lampsacus that they should let miltiades go; and, if not, he would cut them down like a pine-tree."--_herod._ vi. . [ ] keats (as is his way) puts nearly all that may be said of the pine into one verse, though they are only figurative pines of which he is speaking. i have come to that pass of admiration for him now, that i dare not read him, so discontented he makes me with my own work: but others must not leave unread, in considering the influence of trees upon the human soul, that marvellous ode to psyche. here is the piece about pines:-- "yes, i will be thy priest, and build a fane in some untrodden region of my mind, where branchéd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain, instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind: far, far around shall those dark-clustered trees _fledge the wild-ridged mountains_, steep by steep; and there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, the moss-lain dryads shall be lull'd to sleep; and in the midst of this wide quietness a rosy sanctuary will i dress with the wreath'd trellis of a working brain, with buds, and bells, and stars without a name, with all the gardener fancy e'er could feign, who, breeding flowers, will never breed the same. and there shall be for thee all soft delight that shadowy thought can win; a bright torch, and a casement ope, at night, to let the warm love in." [ ] there has been much cottage-building about the hills lately, with very pretty carving, the skill in which has been encouraged by travellers; and the fresh-cut larch is splendid in color under rosy sunlight. [ ] this valley is on the pass of the gemmi in canton berne, but the people are the same in temper as those of the waldstetten. [ ] the cliff immediately bordering the lake is in canton uri: the green hills of unterwalden rise above. this is the grandest piece of the shore of lake lucerne; the rocks near tell's chapel are neither so lofty nor so precipitous. chapter x. leaves motionless. § . it will be remembered that our final inquiry was to be into the sources of beauty in the tented plants, or flowers of the field; which the reader may perhaps suppose one of no great difficulty, the beauty of flowers being somewhat generally admitted and comprehended. admitted? yes. comprehended? no; and, which is worse, in all its highest characters, for many a day yet, incomprehensible: though with a little steady application, i suppose we might soon know more than we do now about the colors of flowers,--being tangible enough, and staying longer than those of clouds. we have discovered something definite about colors of opal and of peacock's plume; perhaps, also, in due time we may give some account of that true gold (the only gold of intrinsic value) which gilds buttercups; and understand how the spots are laid, in painting a pansy. art is of interest, when we may win any of its secrets; but to such knowledge the road lies not up brick streets. and howsoever that flower-painting may be done, one thing is certain, it is not by machinery. § . perhaps, it may be thought, if we understood flowers better, we might love them less. we do not love them much, as it is. few people care about flowers. many, indeed, are fond of finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a child cares about a kaleidoscope. many, also, like a fair service of flowers in the greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. many are scientifically interested in them, though even these in the nomenclature rather than the flowers. and a few enjoy their gardens; but i have never heard of a piece of land, which would let well on a building lease, remaining unlet because it was a flowery piece. i have never heard of parks being kept for wild hyacinths, though often of their being kept for wild beasts. and the blossoming time of the year being principally spring, i perceive it to be the mind of most people, during that period, to stay in towns. § . a year or two ago, a keen-sighted and eccentrically-minded friend of mine, having taken it into his head to violate this national custom, and go to the tyrol in spring, was passing through a valley near landech, with several similarly headstrong companions. a strange mountain appeared in the distance, belted about its breast with a zone of blue, like our english queen. was it a blue cloud? a blue horizontal bar of the air that titian breathed in youth, seen now far away, which mortal might never breathe again? was it a mirage--a meteor? would it stay to be approached? (ten miles of winding road yet between them and the foot of its mountain.) such questioning had they concerning it. my keen-sighted friend alone maintained it to be substantial: whatever it might be, it was not air, and would not vanish. the ten miles of road were overpassed, the carriage left, the mountain climbed. it stayed patiently, expanding still into richer breadth and heavenlier glow--a belt of gentians. such things may verily be seen among the alps in spring, and in spring only. which being so, i observe most people prefer going in autumn. § . nevertheless, without any special affection for them, most of us, at least, languidly consent to the beauty of flowers, and occasionally gather them, and prefer them from among other forms of vegetation. this, strange to say, is precisely what great painters do _not_. every other kind of object they paint, in its due place and office, with respect;--but, except compulsorily and imperfectly, never flowers. a curious fact, this! here are men whose lives are spent in the study of color, and the one thing they will not paint is a flower! anything but that. a furred mantle, a jewelled zone, a silken gown, a brazen corslet, nay, an old leathern chair, or a wall-paper if you will, with utmost care and delight;--but a flower by no manner of means, if avoidable. when the thing has perforce to be done, the great painters of course do it rightly. titian, in his early work, sometimes carries a blossom or two out with affection, as the columbines in our bacchus and ariadne. so also holbein. but in his later and mightier work, titian will only paint a fan or a wristband intensely, never a flower. in his portrait of lavinia, at berlin, the roses are just touched finely enough to fill their place, with no affection whatever, and with the most subdued red possible; while in the later portrait of her, at dresden, there are no roses at all, but a belt of chased golden balls, on every stud of which titian has concentrated his strength, and i verily believe forgot the face a little, so much has his mind been set on them. § . in paul veronese's europa, at dresden, the entire foreground is covered with flowers, but they are executed with sharp and crude touches like those of a decorative painter. in correggio's paintings, at dresden, and in the antiope of the louvre, there are lovely pieces of foliage, but no flowers. a large garland of oranges and lemons, with their leaves, above the st. george, at dresden, is connected traditionally with the garlanded backgrounds of ghirlandajo and mantegna, but the studious absence of flowers renders it almost disagreeably ponderous. i do not remember any painted by velasquez, or by tintoret, except compulsory annunciation lilies. the flowers of rubens are gross and rude; those of vandyck vague, slight, and subdued in color, so as not to contend with the flesh. in his portraits of king charles's children, at turin, an enchanting picture, there is a rose-thicket, in which the roses seem to be enchanted the wrong way, for their leaves are all gray, and the flowers dull brick-red. yet it is right. § . one reason for this is that all great men like their inferior forms to follow and obey contours of large surfaces, or group themselves in connected masses. patterns do the first, leaves the last; but flowers stand separately. another reason is that the beauty of flower-petals and texture can only be seen by looking at it close; but flat patterns can be seen far off, as well as gleaming of metal-work. all the great men calculate their work for effect at some distance, and with that object, know it to be lost time to complete the drawing of flowers. farther, the forms of flowers being determined, require a painful attention, and restrain the fancy; whereas, in painting fur, jewels, or bronze, the color and touch may be varied almost at pleasure, and without effort. again, much of what is best in flowers is inimitable in painting; and a thoroughly good workman feels the feebleness of his means when he matches them fairly with nature, and gives up the attempt frankly--painting the rose dull red, rather than trying to rival its flush in sunshine. and, lastly, in nearly all good landscape-painting, the breadth of foreground included implies such a distance of the spectator from the nearest object as must entirely prevent his seeing flower detail. § . there is, however, a deeper reason than all these; namely, that flowers have no sublimity. we shall have to examine the nature of sublimity in our following and last section, among other ideas of relation. here i only note the fact briefly, that impressions of awe and sorrow being at the root of the sensation of sublimity, and the beauty of separate flowers not being of the kind which connects itself with such sensation, there is a wide distinction, in general, between flower-loving minds and minds of the highest order. flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity: children love them; quiet, tender, contented ordinary people love them as they grow; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered: they are the cottager's treasure; and in the crowded town, mark, as with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the workers in whose heart rests the covenant of peace. passionate or religious minds contemplate them with fond, feverish intensity; the affection is seen severely calm in the works of many old religious painters, and mixed with more open and true country sentiment in those of our own pre-raphaelites. to the child and the girl, the peasant and the manufacturing operative, to the grisette and the nun, the lover and monk, they are precious always. but to the men of supreme power and thoughtfulness, precious only at times; symbolically and pathetically often to the poets, but rarely for their own sake. they fall forgotten from the great workmen's and soldiers' hands. such men will take, in thankfulness, crowns of leaves, or crowns of thorns--not crowns of flowers. § . some beautiful things have been done lately, and more beautiful are likely to be done, by our younger painters, in representing blossoms of the orchard and the field in mass and extent. i have had something to do with the encouragement of this impulse; and truly, if pictures are to be essentially imitative rather than inventive, it is better to spend care in painting hyacinths than dead leaves, and roses rather than stubble. such work, however, as i stated in my first essay on this subject, in the year ,[ ] can only connect itself with the great schools by becoming inventive instead of copyist; and for the most part, i believe these young painters would do well to remember that the best beauty of flowers being wholly inimitable, and their sweetest service unrenderable by art, the picture involves some approach to an unsatisfying mockery, in the cold imagery of what nature has given to be breathed with the profuse winds of spring, and touched by the happy footsteps of youth. § . among the greater masters, as i have said, there is little laborious or affectionate flower-painting. the utmost that turner ever allows in his foregrounds is a water-lily or two, a cluster of heath or foxglove, a thistle sometimes, a violet or daisy, or a bindweed-bell; just enough to lead the eye into the understanding of the rich mystery of his more distant leafage. rich mystery, indeed, respecting which these following facts about the foliage of tented plants must be noted carefully. § . two characters seem especially aimed at by nature in the earth-plants: first, that they should be characteristic and interesting; secondly, that they should not be very visibly injured by crushing. i say, first, characteristic. the leaves of large trees take approximately simple forms, slightly monotonous. they are intended to be seen in mass. but the leaves of the herbage at our feet take all kinds of strange shapes, as if to invite us to examine them. star-shaped, heart-shaped, spear-shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, cleft, furrowed, serrated, sinuated; in whorls, in tufts, in spires, in wreaths endlessly expressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same from footstalk to blossom; they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness, and take delight in outstripping our wonder. § . secondly, observe, their forms are such as will not be visibly injured by crushing. their complexity is already disordered: jags and rents are their laws of being; rent by the footstep they betray no harm. here, for instance (fig. ), is the mere outline of a buttercup-leaf in full free growth; which, perhaps, may be taken as a good common type of earth foliage. fig. is a less advanced one, placed so as to show its symmetrical bounding form. but both, how various;--how delicately rent into beauty! as in the aiguilles of the great alps, so in this lowest field-herb, where rending is the law of being, it is the law of loveliness. [illustration: fig. .] § . one class, however, of these torn leaves, peculiar to the tented plants, has, it seems to me, a strange expressional function. i mean the group of leaves rent into _alternate_ gaps, typically represented by the thistle. the alternation of the rent, if not absolutely, is effectively, peculiar to the earth-plants. leaves of the builders are rent symmetrically, so as to form radiating groups, as in the horse-chestnut, or they are irregularly sinuous, as in the oak; but the earth-plants continually present forms such as those in the opposite plate: a kind of web-footed leaf, so to speak; a continuous tissue, enlarged alternately on each side of the stalk. leaves of this form have necessarily a kind of limping gait, as if they grew not all at once, but first a little bit on one side, and then a little bit on the other, and wherever they occur in quantity, give the expression to foreground vegetation which we feel and call "ragged." [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: . the rending of leaves.] § . it is strange that the mere alternation of the rent should give this effect; the more so, because alternate leaves, completely separate from each other, produce one of the most graceful types of building plants. yet the fact is indeed so, that the alternate rent in the earth-leaf is the principal cause of its ragged effect. however deeply it may be rent symmetrically, as in the alchemilla, or buttercup, just instanced, and however finely divided, as in the parsleys, the result is always a delicate richness, unless the jags are alternate, and the leaf-tissue continuous at the stem; and the moment these conditions appear, so does the raggedness. § . it is yet more worthy of note that the proper duty of these leaves, which catch the eye so clearly and powerfully, would appear to be to draw the attention of man to spots where his work is needed, for they nearly all habitually grow on ruins or neglected ground: not noble ruins, or on _wild_ ground, but on heaps of rubbish, or pieces of land which have been indolently cultivated or much disturbed. the leaf on the right of the three in the plate, which is the most characteristic of the class, is that of the sisymbrium irio, which grows, by choice, always on ruins left by fire. the plant, which, as far as i have observed, grows first on earth that has been moved, is the colts-foot: its broad covering leaf is much jagged, but only irregular, not alternate in the rent; but the weeds that mark habitual neglect, such as the thistle, give clear alternation. § . the aspects of complexity and carelessness of injury are farther increased in the herb of the field, because it is "herb yielding seed;" that is to say, a seed different in character from that which trees form in their fruit. i am somewhat alarmed in reading over the above sentence, lest a botanist, or other scientific person, should open the book at it. for of course the essential character of either fruit or seed being only that in the smallest compass the vital principle of the plant is rendered portable, and for some time, preservable, we ought to call every such vegetable dormitory a "fruit" or a "seed" indifferently. but with respect to man there is a notable difference between them. a seed is what we "sow." a fruit, what we "enjoy." fruit is seed prepared especially for the sight and taste of man and animals; and in this sense we have true fruit and traitorous fruit (poisonous); but it is perhaps the best available distinction,[ ] that seed being the part necessary for the renewed birth of the plant, a fruit is such seed enclosed or sustained by some extraneous substance, which is soft and juicy, and beautifully colored, pleasing and useful to animals and men. § . i find it convenient in this volume, and wish i had thought of the expedient before, whenever i get into a difficulty, to leave the reader to work it out. he will perhaps, therefore, be so good as to define fruit for himself. having defined it, he will find that the sentence about which i was alarmed above is, in the main, true, and that tented plants principally are herb yielding seed, while building plants give fruit. the berried shrubs of rock and wood, however dwarfed in stature, are true builders. the strawberry-plant is the only important exception--a tender bedouin. § . of course the principal reason for this is the plain, practical one, that fruit should not be trampled on, and had better perhaps be put a little out of easy reach than too near the hand, so that it may not be gathered wantonly or without some little trouble, and may be waited for until it is properly ripe: while the plants meant to be trampled on have small and multitudinous seed, hard and wooden, which may be shaken and scattered about without harm. also, fine fruit is often only to be brought forth with patience; not by young and hurried trees--but in due time, after much suffering; and the best fruit is often to be an adornment of old age, so as to supply the want of other grace. while the plants which will not work, but only bloom and wander, do not (except the grasses) bring forth fruit of high service, but only the seed that prolongs their race, the grasses alone having great honor put on them for their humility, as we saw in our first account of them. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. . _to face page ._] § . this being so, we find another element of very complex effect added to the others which exist in tented plants, namely, that of minute, granular, feathery, or downy seed-vessels, mingling quaint brown punctuation, and dusty tremors of dancing grain, with the bloom of the nearer fields; and casting a gossamered grayness and softness of plumy mist along their surfaces far away; mysterious evermore, not only with dew in the morning or mirage at noon, but with the shaking threads of fine arborescence, each a little belfry of grain-bells, all a-chime. § . i feel sorely tempted to draw one of these same spires of the fine grasses, with its sweet changing proportions of pendent grain, but it would be a useless piece of finesse, as such form of course never enters into general foreground effect.[ ] i have, however, engraved, at the top of the group of woodcuts opposite (fig. ), a single leaf cluster of durer's foreground in the st. hubert, which is interesting in several ways; as an example of modern work, no less than old; for it is a facsimile twice removed; being first drawn from the plate with the pen, by mr. allen, and then facsimiled on wood by miss byfield; and if the reader can compare it with the original, he will find it still come tolerably close in most parts (though the nearest large leaf has got spoiled), and of course some of the finest and most precious qualities of durer's work are lost. still, it gives a fair idea of his perfectness of conception, every leaf being thoroughly set in perspective, and drawn with unerring decision. on each side of it (figs. , ) are two pieces from a fairly good modern etching, which i oppose to the durer in order to show the difference between true work and that which pretends to give detail, but is without feeling or knowledge. there are a great many leaves in the piece on the left, but they are all set the same way; the draughtsman has not conceived their real positions, but draws one after another as he would deliver a tale of bricks. the grasses on the right look delicate, but are a mere series of inorganic lines. look how durer's grass-blades cross each other. if you take a pen and copy a little piece of each example, you will soon feel the difference. underneath, in the centre (fig. ), is a piece of grass out of landseer's etching of the "ladies' pets," more massive and effective than the two lateral fragments, but still loose and uncomposed. then underneath is a piece of firm and good work again, which will stand with durer's; it is the outline only of a group of leaves out of turner's foreground in the richmond from the moors, of which i give a reduced etching, plate , for the sake of the foreground principally, and in plate , the group of leaves in question, in their light and shade, with the bridge beyond. what i have chiefly to say of them belongs to our section on composition; but this mere fragment of a turner foreground may perhaps lead the reader to take note in his great pictures of the almost inconceivable labor with which he has sought to express the redundance and delicacy of ground leafage. § . by comparing the etching in plate with the published engraving, it will be seen how much yet remains to be done before any approximately just representation of turner foreground can be put within the reach of the public. this plate has been reduced by mr. armytage from a pen-drawing of mine, as large as the original of turner's ( inches by inches). it will look a little better under a magnifying glass; but only a most costly engraving, of the real size, could give any idea of the richness of mossy and ferny leafage included in the real design. and if this be so on one of the ordinary england drawings of a barren yorkshire moor, it may be imagined what the task would be of engraving truly such a foreground as that of the "bay of baiæ" or "daphne and leucippus," in which turner's aim has been luxuriance. [illustration: . richmond from the moors.] [illustration: . by the brookside.] § . his mind recurred, in all these classical foregrounds, to strong impressions made upon him during his studies at rome, by the masses of vegetation which enrich its heaps of ruin with their embroidery and bloom. i have always partly regretted these roman studies, thinking that they led him into too great fondness of pandering luxuriance in vegetation, associated with decay; and prevented his giving affection enough to the more solemn and more sacred infinity with which, among the mightier ruins of the alpine rome, glow the pure and motionless splendors of the gentian and the rose. § . leaves motionless. the strong pines wave above them, and the weak grasses tremble beside them; but the blue stars rest upon the earth with a peace as of heaven; and far along the ridges of iron rock, moveless as they, the rubied crests of alpine rose flush in the low rays of morning. nor these yet the stillest leaves. others there are subdued to a deeper quietness, the mute slaves of the earth, to whom we owe, perhaps, thanks, and tenderness, the most profound of all we have to render for the leaf ministries. § . it is strange to think of the gradually diminished power and withdrawn freedom among the orders of leaves--from the sweep of the chestnut and gadding of the vine, down to the close shrinking trefoil, and contented daisy, pressed on earth; and, at last, to the leaves that are not merely close to earth, but themselves a part of it; fastened down to it by their sides, here and there only a wrinkled edge rising from the granite crystals. we have found beauty in the tree yielding fruit, and in the herb yielding seed. how of the herb yielding _no_ seed,[ ] the fruitless, flowerless lichen of the rock? § . lichen, and mosses (though these last in their luxuriance are deep and rich as herbage, yet both for the most part humblest of the green things that live),--how of these? meek creatures! the first mercy of the earth, veiling with hushed softness its dintless rocks; creatures full of pity, covering with strange and tender honor the scarred disgrace of ruin,--laying quiet finger on the trembling stones, to teach them rest. no words, that i know of, will say what these mosses are. none are delicate enough, none perfect enough, none rich enough. how is one to tell of the rounded bosses of furred and beaming green,--the starred divisions of rubied bloom, fine-filmed, as if the rock spirits could spin porphyry as we do glass,--the traceries of intricate silver, and fringes of amber, lustrous, arborescent, burnished through every fibre into fitful brightness and glossy traverses of silken change, yet all subdued and pensive, and framed for simplest, sweetest offices of grace. they will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love-token; but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the wearied child his pillow. and, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us. when all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichen take up their watch by the head-stone. the woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time, but these do service for ever. trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave. § . yet as in one sense the humblest, in another they are the most honored of the earth-children. unfading, as motionless, the worm frets them not, and the autumn wastes not. strong in lowliness, they neither blanch in heat nor pine in frost. to them, slow-fingered, constant-hearted, is entrusted the weaving of the dark, eternal, tapestries of the hills; to them, slow-pencilled, iris-dyed, the tender framing of their endless imagery. sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance; and while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip-gold,--far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen-spots rest, star-like, on the stone; and the gathering orange stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand years. footnotes: [ ] _pre-raphaelitism._ the essay contains some important notes on turner's work, which, therefore, i do not repeat in this volume. [ ] i say the "best available distinction." it is, of course, no real distinction. a peapod is a kind of central type of seed and seed-vessel, and it is difficult so to define fruit as to keep clear of it. pea-shells are boiled and eaten in some countries rather than pease. it does not sound like a scientific distinction to say that fruit is a "shell which is good without being boiled." nay, even if we humiliate ourselves into this practical reference to the kitchen, we are still far from success. for the pulp of a strawberry is not a "shell," the seeds being on the outside of it. the available part of a pomegranate or orange, though a seed envelope, is itself shut within a less useful rind. while in an almond the shell becomes less profitable still, and all goodness retires into the seed itself, as in a grain of corn. [ ] for the same reason, i enter into no considerations respecting the geometrical forms of flowers, though they are deeply interesting, and perhaps some day i may give a few studies of them separately. the reader should note, however, that beauty of form in flowers is chiefly dependent on a more accurately finished or more studiously varied development of the tre-foil, quatre-foil, and cinq-foil structures which we have seen irregularly approached by leaf-buds. the most beautiful six-foiled flowers (like the rhododendron-shoot) are composed of two triangular groups, one superimposed on the other, as in the narcissus; and the most interesting types both of six-foils and cinq-foils are unequally leaved, symmetrical on opposite sides, as the iris and violet. [ ] the reader must remember always that my work is concerning the _aspects_ of things only. of course, a lichen has seeds, just as other plants have, but not effectually or visibly for man. part vii. of cloud beauty. chapter i. the cloud-balancings. § . we have seen that when the earth had to be prepared for the habitation of man, a veil, as it were, of intermediate being was spread between him and its darkness, in which were joined, in a subdued measure, the stability and insensibility of the earth, and the passion and perishing of mankind. but the heavens, also, had to be prepared for his habitation. between their burning light,--their deep vacuity, and man, as between the earth's gloom of iron substance, and man, a veil had to be spread of intermediate being;--which should appease the unendurable glory to the level of human feebleness, and sign the changeless motion of the heavens with a semblance of human vicissitude. between earth and man arose the leaf. between the heaven and man came the cloud. his life being partly as the falling leaf, and partly as the flying vapor. § . has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are? we had some talk about them long ago, and perhaps thought their nature, though at that time not clear to us, would be easily enough understandable when we put ourselves seriously to make it out. shall we begin with one or two easiest questions? that mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an inundation--why is _it_ so heavy? and why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendor of morning, when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more? those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks--why are _they_ so light,--their bases high over our heads, high over the heads of alps? why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear, while the valley vapor gains again upon the earth like a shroud? or that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of pines; nay, which does _not_ steal by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet round them, and yet--and yet, slowly: now falling in a fair waved line like a woman's veil; now fading, now gone: we look away for an instant, and look back, and it is again there. what has it to do with that clump of pines, that it broods by them and weaves itself among their branches, to and fro? has it hidden a cloudy treasure among the moss at their roots, which it watches thus? or has some strong enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within those bars of bough? and yonder filmy crescent, bent like an archer's bow above the snowy summit, the highest of all the hill,--that white arch which never forms but over the supreme crest,--how is it stayed there, repelled apparently from the snow--nowhere touching it, the clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving it--poised as a white bird hovers over its nest? or those war-clouds that gather on the horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire;--how is their barbed strength bridled? what bits are these they are champing with their vaporous lips; flinging off flakes of black foam? leagued leviathans of the sea of heaven, out of their nostrils goeth smoke, and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. the sword of him that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. where ride the captains of their armies? where are set the measures of their march? fierce murmurers, answering each other from morning until evening--what rebuke is this which has awed them into peace? what hand has reined them back by the way by which they came? § . i know not if the reader will think at first that questions like these are easily answered. so far from it, i rather believe that some of the mysteries of the clouds never will be understood by us at all. "knowest thou the balancings of the clouds?" is the answer ever to be one of pride? "the wondrous works of him which is perfect in knowledge?" is _our_ knowledge ever to be so? it is one of the most discouraging consequences of the varied character of this work of mine, that i am wholly unable to take note of the advance of modern science. what has conclusively been discovered or observed about clouds, i know not; but by the chance inquiry possible to me i find no book which fairly states the difficulties of accounting for even the ordinary aspects of the sky. i shall, therefore, be able in this section to do little more than suggest inquiries to the reader, putting the subject in a clear form for him. all men accustomed to investigation will confirm me in saying that it is a great step when we are personally quite certain what we do _not_ know. § . first, then, i believe we do not know what makes clouds float. clouds are water, in some fine form or another; but water is heavier than air, and the finest form you can give a heavy thing will not make it float in a light thing. _on_ it, yes; as a boat: but _in_ it, no. clouds are not boats, nor boat-shaped, and they float in the air, not on the top of it. "nay, but though unlike boats, may they not be like feathers? if out of quill substance there may be constructed eider-down, and out of vegetable tissue, thistle-down, both buoyant enough for a time, surely of water-tissue may be constructed also water-down, which will be buoyant enough for all cloudy purposes." not so. throw out your eider plumage in a calm day, and it will all come settling to the ground: slowly indeed, to aspect; but practically so fast that all our finest clouds would be here in a heap about our ears in an hour or two, if they were only made of water-feathers. "but may they not be quill-feathers, and have air inside them? may not all their particles be minute little balloons?" a balloon only floats when the air inside it is either specifically, or by heating, lighter than the air it floats in. if the cloud-feathers had warm air inside their quills, a cloud would be warmer than the air about it, which it is not (i believe). and if the cloud-feathers had hydrogen inside their quills, a cloud would be unwholesome for breathing, which it is not--at least so it seems to me. "but may they not have nothing inside their quills?" then they would rise, as bubbles do through water, just as certainly as, if they were solid feathers, they would fall. all our clouds would go up to the top of the air, and swim in eddies of cloud-foam. "but is not that just what they do?" no. they float at different heights, and with definite forms, in the body of the air itself. if they rose like foam, the sky on a cloudy day would look like a very large flat glass of champagne seen from below, with a stream of bubbles (or clouds) going up as fast as they could to a flat foam-ceiling. "but may they not be just so nicely mixed out of something and nothing, as to float where they are wanted?" yes: that is just what they not only may, but must be: only this way of mixing something and nothing is the very thing i want to explain or have explained, and cannot do it, nor get it done. § . except thus far. it is conceivable that minute hollow spherical globules might be formed of water, in which the enclosed vacuity just balanced the weight of the enclosing water, and that the arched sphere formed by the watery film was strong enough to prevent the pressure of the atmosphere from breaking it in. such a globule would float like a balloon at the height in the atmosphere where the equipoise between the vacuum it enclosed, and its own excess of weight above that of the air, was exact. it would, probably, approach its companion globules by reciprocal attraction, and form aggregations which might be visible. this is, i believe, the view usually taken by meteorologists. i state it as a possibility, to be taken into account in examining the question--a possibility confirmed by the scriptural words which i have taken for the title of this chapter. § . nevertheless, i state it as a possibility only, not seeing how any known operation of physical law could explain the formation of such molecules. this, however, is not the only difficulty. whatever shape the water is thrown into, it seems at first improbable that it should lose its property of wetness. minute division of rain, as in "scotch mist," makes it capable of floating farther,[ ] or floating up and down a little, just as dust will float, though pebbles will not; or gold-leaf, though a sovereign will not; but minutely divided rain wets as much as any other kind, whereas a cloud, partially always, sometimes entirely, loses its power of moistening. some low clouds look, when you are in them, as if they were made of specks of dust, like short hairs; and these clouds are entirely dry. and also many clouds will wet some substances, but not others. so that we must grant farther, if we are to be happy in our theory, that the spherical molecules are held together by an attraction which prevents their adhering to any foreign body, or perhaps ceases only under some peculiar electric conditions. § . the question remains, even supposing their production accounted for,--what intermediate states of water may exist between these spherical hollow molecules and pure vapor? has the reader ever considered the relations of commonest forms of volatile substance? the invisible particles which cause the scent of a rose-leaf, how minute, how multitudinous, passing richly away into the air continually! the visible cloud of frankincense--why visible? is it in consequence of the greater quantity, or larger size of the particles, and how does the heat act in throwing them off in this quantity, or of this size? ask the same questions respecting water. it dries, that is, becomes volatile, invisibly, at (any?) temperature. snow dries, as water does. under increase of heat, it volatilizes faster, so as to become dimly visible in large mass, as a heat-haze. it reaches boiling point, then becomes entirely visible. but compress it, so that no air shall get between the watery particles--it is invisible again. at the first issuing from the steam-pipe the steam is transparent; but opaque, or visible, as it diffuses itself. the water is indeed closer, because cooler, in that diffusion; but more air is between its particles. then this very question of visibility is an endless one, wavering between form of substance and action of light. the clearest (or least visible) stream becomes brightly opaque by more minute division in its foam, and the clearest dew in hoar-frost. dust, unperceived in shade, becomes constantly visible in sunbeam; and watery vapor in the atmosphere, which is itself opaque, when there is promise of fine weather, becomes exquisitely transparent; and (questionably) blue, when it is going to rain. § . questionably blue: for besides knowing very little about water, we know what, except by courtesy, must, i think, be called nothing--about air. is it the watery vapor, or the air itself, which is blue? are neither blue, but only white, producing blue when seen over dark spaces? if either blue, or white, why, when crimson is their commanded dress, are the most distant clouds crimsonest? clouds close to us may be blue, but far off, golden,--a strange result, if the air is blue. and again, if blue, why are rays that come through large spaces of it red; and that alp, or anything else that catches far-away light, why colored red at dawn and sunset? no one knows, i believe. it is true that many substances, as opal, are blue, or green, by reflected light, yellow by transmitted; but air, if blue at all, is blue always by transmitted light. i hear of a wonderful solution of nettles, or other unlovely herb, which is green when shallow,--red when deep. perhaps some day, as the motion of the heavenly bodies by help of an apple, their light by help of a nettle, may be explained to mankind. § . but farther: these questions of volatility, and visibility, and hue, are all complicated with those of shape. how is a cloud outlined? granted whatever you choose to ask, concerning its material, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminousness,--how of its limitation? what hews it into a heap, or spins it into a web? cold is usually shapeless, i suppose, extending over large spaces equally, or with gradual diminution. you cannot have, in the open air, angles, and wedges, and coils, and cliffs of cold. yet the vapor stops suddenly, sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself across the gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar; or braids itself in and out, and across and across, like a tissue of tapestry; or falls into ripples, like sand; or into waving shreds and tongues, as fire. on what anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay? by what hands is the incense of the sea built up into domes of marble? and, lastly, all these questions respecting substance, and aspect, and shape, and line, and division, are involved with others as inscrutable, concerning action. the curves in which clouds move are unknown;--nay, the very method of their motion, or apparent motion, how far it is by change of place, how far by appearance in one place and vanishing from another. and these questions about movement lead partly far away into high mathematics, where i cannot follow them, and partly into theories concerning electricity and infinite space, where i suppose at present no one can follow them. what, then, is the use of asking the questions? for my own part, i enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. i think he ought. he should not be less grateful for summer rain, or see less beauty in the clouds of morning, because they come to prove him with hard questions; to which, perhaps, if we look close at the heavenly scroll,[ ] we may find also a syllable or two of answer illuminated here and there. footnotes: [ ] the buoyancy of solid bodies of a given specific gravity, in a given fluid, depends, first on their size, then on their forms. first, on their size; that is to say, on the proportion of the magnitude of the object (irrespective of the distribution of its particles) to the magnitude of the particles of the air. thus, a grain of sand is buoyant in wind, but a large stone is not; and pebbles and sand are buoyant in water in proportion to their smallness, fine dust taking long to sink, while a large stone sinks at once. thus, we see that water may be arranged in drops of any magnitude, from the largest rain-drop, about the size of a large pea, to an atom so small as not to be separately visible, the smallest rain passing gradually into mist. of these drops of different sizes (supposing the strength of the wind the same), the largest fall fastest, the smaller drops are more buoyant, and the small misty rain floats about like a cloud, as often up as down, so that an umbrella is useless in it; though in a heavy thunder-storm, if there is no wind, one may stand gathered up under an umbrella without a drop touching the feet. secondly, buoyancy depends on the amount of surface which a given weight of the substance exposes to the resistance of the substance it floats in. thus, gold-leaf is in a high degree buoyant, while the same quantity of gold in a compact grain would fall like a shot; and a feather is buoyant, though the same quantity of animal matter in a compact form would be as heavy as a little stone. a slate blows far from a house-top, while a brick falls vertically, or nearly so. [ ] there is a beautiful passage in _sartor resartus_ concerning this old hebrew scroll, in its deeper meanings, and the child's watching it, though long illegible for him, yet "with an eye to the gilding." it signifies in a word or two nearly all that is to be said about clouds. chapter ii. the cloud-flocks. § . from the tenor of the foregoing chapter, the reader will, i hope, be prepared to find me, though dogmatic (it is said) upon some occasions, anything rather than dogmatic respecting clouds. i will assume nothing concerning them, beyond the simple fact, that as a floating sediment forms in a saturated liquid, vapor forms in the body of the air; and all that i want the reader to be clear about in the outset is that this vapor floats in and with the wind (as, if you throw any thick coloring matter into a river, it floats with the stream), and that it is not blown before a denser volume of the wind, as a fleece of wool would be. § . at whatever height they form, clouds may be broadly considered as of two species only, massive and striated. i cannot find a better word than massive, though it is not a good one, for i mean it only to signify a fleecy arrangement in which no _lines_ are visible. the fleece may be so bright as to look like flying thistle-down, or so diffused as to show no visible outline at all. still if it is all of one common texture, like a handful of wool, or a wreath of smoke, i call it massive. on the other hand, if divided by parallel lines, so as to look more or less like spun-glass, i call it striated. in plate , fig. , the top of the aiguille dru (chamouni) is seen emergent above low striated clouds, with heaped massive cloud beyond. i do not know in the least what causes this striation, except that it depends on the nature of the cloud, not on the wind. the strongest wind will not throw a cloud, massive by nature, into the linear form. it will toss it about, and tear it to pieces, but not spin it into threads. on the other hand, often without any wind at all, the cloud will spin itself into threads fine as gossamer. these threads are often said to be a prognostic of storm; but they are not produced by storm. [illustration: j. ruskin j.c. armytage . the cloud-flocks.] § . in the first volume, we considered all clouds as belonging to three regions, that of the cirrous, the central cloud, and the rain-cloud. it is of course an arrangement more of convenience than of true description, for cirrous clouds sometimes form low as well as high; and rain sometimes falls high as well as low. i will, nevertheless, retain this old arrangement, which is practically as serviceable as any. allowing, also, for various exceptions and modifications, these three bodies of cloud may be generally distinguished in our minds thus. the clouds of upper region are for the most part quiet, or seem to be so, owing to their distance. they are formed now of striated, now of massive substance; but always finely divided into large ragged flakes or ponderous heaps. these heaps (cumuli) and flakes, or drifts, present different phenomena, but must be joined in our minds under the head of central cloud. the lower clouds, bearing rain abundantly, are composed partly of striated, partly of massive substance; but may generally be comprehended under the term rain-cloud. our business in this chapter, then, is with the upper clouds, which, owing to their quietness and multitude, we may perhaps conveniently think of as the "cloud-flocks." and we have to discover if any laws of beauty attach to them, such as we have seen in mountains or tree-branches. § . on one of the few mornings of this winter, when the sky was clear, and one of the far fewer, on which its clearness was visible from the neighborhood of london,--which now entirely loses at least two out of three sunrises, owing to the environing smoke,--the dawn broke beneath a broad field of level purple cloud, under which floated ranks of divided cirri, composed of finely striated vapor. it was not a sky containing any extraordinary number of these minor clouds; but each was more than usually distinct in separation from its neighbor, and as they showed in nearly pure pale scarlet on the dark purple ground, they were easily to be counted. § . there were five or six ranks, from the zenith to the horizon; that is to say, three distinct ones, and then two or three more running together, and losing themselves in distance, in the manner roughly shown in fig. . the nearest rank was composed of more than rows of cloud, set obliquely, as in the figure. i counted which was near the mark, and then stopped, lest the light should fail, to count the separate clouds in some of the rows. the average number was in each row, rather more than less. [illustration: fig. .] there were therefore × , that is, , , separate clouds in this one rank, or about , in the field of sight. flocks of admetus under apollo's keeping. who else could shepherd such? he by day, dog sirius by night; or huntress diana herself--her bright arrows driving away the clouds of prey that would ravage her fair flocks. we must leave fancies, however; these wonderful clouds need close looking at. i will try to draw one or two of them before they fade. § . on doing which we find, after all, they are not much more like sheep than canis major is like a dog. they resemble more some of our old friends, the pine branches, covered with snow. the three forming the uppermost figure, in the plate opposite, are as like three of the fifty thousand as i could get them, complex enough in structure, even this single group. busy workers they must be, that twine the braiding of them all to the horizon, and down beyond it. and who are these workers? you have two questions here, both difficult. what separates these thousands of clouds each from the other, and each about equally from the other? how can they be drawn asunder, yet not allowed to part? looped lace as it were, richest point--invisible threads fastening embroidered cloud to cloud--the "plighted clouds" of milton,--creatures of the element-- "that in the colors of the rainbow live and play in the plighted clouds." compare geraldine dressing:-- "puts on her silken vestments white, and tricks her hair in lovely plight." and britomart's-- "her well-plighted frock she low let fall, that flowed from her lanck side down to her foot, with careless modesty." and, secondly, what bends each of them into these flame-like curves, tender and various, as motions of a bird, hither and thither? perhaps you may hardly see the curves well in the softly finished forms; here they are plainer in rude outline, fig. .[ ] [illustration: fig. .] § . what is it that throws them into these lines? eddies of wind? nay, an eddy of wind will not stay quiet for three minutes, as that cloud did to be drawn; as all the others did, each in his place. you see there is perfect harmony among the curves. they all flow into each other as the currents of a stream do. if you throw dust that will float on the surface of a slow river, it will arrange itself in lines somewhat like these. to a certain extent, indeed, it is true that there are gentle currents of change in the atmosphere, which move slowly enough to permit in the clouds that follow them some appearance of stability. but how to obtain change so complex in an infinite number of consecutive spaces;--fifty thousand separate groups of current in half of a morning sky, with quiet invisible vapor between, or none--and yet all obedient to one ruling law, gone forth through their companies;--each marshalled to their white standards, in great unity of warlike march, unarrested, unconfused? "one shall not thrust another, they shall walk every one in his own path." [illustration: fig. .] § . these questions occur, at first sight, respecting every group of cirrus cloud. whatever the form may be, whether branched, as in this instance, or merely rippled, or thrown into shield-like segments, as in fig. --a frequent arrangement--there is still the same difficulty in accounting satisfactorily for the individual forces which regulate the similar shape of each mass, while all are moved by a general force that has apparently no influence on the divided structure. thus the mass of clouds disposed as in fig. , will probably move, mutually, in the direction of the arrow; that is to say, sideways, as far as their separate curvature is concerned. i suppose it probable that as the science of electricity is more perfectly systematized, the explanation of many circumstances of cloud-form will be rendered by it. at present i see no use in troubling the reader or myself with conjectures which a year's progress in science might either effectively contradict or supersede. all that i want is, that we should have our questions ready to put clearly to the electricians when the electricians are ready to answer us. § . it is possible that some of the loveliest conditions of these parallel clouds may be owing to a structure which i forgot to explain, when it occurred in rocks, in the course of the last volume. [illustration: fig. .] when they are finely stratified, and their surfaces abraded by broad, shallow furrows, the edges of the beds, of course, are thrown into undulations, and at some distance, where the furrows disappear, the surface looks as if the rock had flowed over it in successive waves. such a condition is seen on the left at the top in fig. , in vol. iv. supposing a series of beds of vapor cut across by a straight sloping current of air, and so placed as to catch the light on their edges, we should have a series of curved lights, looking like independent clouds. § . i believe conditions of form like those in fig. (turn the book with its outer edge down) may not unfrequently be thus, owing to stratification, when they occur in the nearer sky. this line of cloud is far off at the horizon, drifting towards the left (the points of course forward), and is, i suppose, a series of nearly circular eddies seen in perspective. which question of perspective we must examine a little before going a step farther. in order to simplify it, let us assume that the under surfaces of clouds are flat, and lie in a horizontal extended field. this is in great measure the fact, and notable perspective phenomena depend on the approximation of clouds to such a condition. [illustration: . cloud perspective. (rectilinear.)] [illustration: . cloud perspective. (curvilinear.)] § . referring the reader to my elements of perspective for statements of law which would be in this place tiresome, i can only ask him to take my word for it that the three figures in plate represent limiting lines of sky perspective, as they would appear over a large space of the sky. supposing that the breadth included was one-fourth of the horizon, the shaded portions in the central figure represent square fields of cloud,[ ] and those in the uppermost figure narrow triangles, with their shortest side next us, but sloping a little away from us. in each figure, the shaded portions show the perspective limits of cloud-masses, which, in reality, are arranged in perfectly straight lines, are all similar, and are equidistant from each other. their exact relative positions are marked by the lines connecting them, and may be determined by the reader if he knows perspective. if he does not, he may be surprised at first to be told that the stubborn and blunt little triangle, _b_, fig. , plate , represents a cloud precisely similar, and similarly situated, to that represented by the thin triangle, _a_; and, in like manner, the stout diamond, _a_, fig. , represents precisely the same form and size of cloud as the thin strip at _b_. he may perhaps think it still more curious that the retiring perspective which causes stoutness in the triangle, causes leanness in the diamond.[ ] § . still greater confusion in aspect is induced by the apparent change caused by perspective in the direction of the wind. if fig. be supposed to include a quarter of the horizon, the spaces, into which its straight lines divide it, represent squares of sky. the curved lines, which cross these spaces from corner to corner, are precisely parallel throughout; and, therefore, two clouds moving, one on the curved line from _a_ to _b_, and the other on the other side, from _c_ to _d_, would, in reality, be moving with the same wind, in parallel lines. in plate , which is a sketch of an actual sunset behind beauvais cathedral (the point of the roof of the apse, a little to the left of the centre, shows it to be a summer sunset), the white cirri in the high light are all moving eastward, away from the sun, in perfectly parallel lines, curving a little round to the south. underneath, are two straight ranks of rainy cirri, crossing each other; one directed south-east; the other, north-west. the meeting perspective of these, in extreme distance, determines the shape of the angular light which opens above the cathedral. underneath all, fragments of true rain-cloud are floating between us and the sun, governed by curves of their own. they are, nevertheless, connected with the straight cirri, by the dark semi-cumulus in the middle of the shade above the cathedral. [illustration: fig. .] § . sky perspective, however, remains perfectly simple, so long as it can be reduced to any rectilinear arrangement; but when nearly the whole system is curved, which nine times out of ten is the case, it becomes embarrassing. the central figure in plate represents the simplest possible combination of perspective of straight lines with that of curves, a group of concentric circles of small clouds being supposed to cast shadows from the sun near the horizon. such shadows are often cast in misty air; the aspect of rays about the sun being, in fact, only caused by spaces between them. they are carried out formally and far in the plate, to show how curiously they may modify the arrangement of light in a sky. the woodcut, fig. , gives roughly the arrangement of the clouds in turner's pools of solomon, in which he has employed a concentric system of circles of this kind, and thus lighted. in the perspective figure the clouds are represented as small square masses, for the sake of greater simplicity, and are so beaded or strung as it were on the curves in which they move, as to keep their distances precisely equal, and their sides parallel. this is the usual condition of cloud: for though arranged in curved ranks, each cloud has its face to the front, or, at all events, acts in some parallel line--generally another curve--with those next to it: being rarely, except in the form of fine radiating striæ, arranged on the curves as at _a_, fig. ; but as at _b_, or _c_. it would make the diagram too complex if i gave one of intersecting curves; but the lowest figure in plate represents, in perspective, two groups of ellipses arranged in equidistant straight and parallel lines, and following each other on two circular curves. their exact relative position is shown in fig. , plate . while the uppermost figure in plate represents, in parallel perspective, a series of ellipses arranged in radiation on a circle, their exact relative size and position are shown in fig. , plate , and the lines of such a sky as would be produced by them, roughly, in fig. , facing page .[ ] [illustration: fig. .] § . and in these figures, which, if we look up the subject rightly, would be but the first and simplest of the series necessary to illustrate the action of the upper cirri, the reader may see, at once, how necessarily painters, untrained in observance of proportion, and ignorant of perspective, must lose in every touch the expression of buoyancy and space in sky. the absolute forms of each cloud are, indeed, not alike, as the ellipses in the engraving; but assuredly, when moving in groups of this kind, there are among them the same proportioned inequalities of relative distance, the same gradated changes from ponderous to elongated form, the same exquisite suggestions of including curve; and a common painter, dotting his clouds down at random, or in more or less equal masses, can no more paint a sky, than he could, by random dashes for its ruined arches, paint the coliseum. § . whatever approximation to the character of upper clouds may have been reached by some of our modern students, it will be found, on careful analysis, that turner stands more absolutely alone in this gift of cloud-drawing, than in any other of his great powers. observe, i say, cloud-_drawing_; other great men colored clouds beautifully; none but he ever drew them truly: this power coming from his constant habit of drawing skies, like everything else, with the pencil point. it is quite impossible to engrave any of his large finished skies on a small scale; but the woodcut, fig. , will give some idea of the forms of cloud involved in one of his small drawings. it is only half of the sky in question, that of rouen from st. catherine's hill, in the rivers of france. its clouds are arranged on two systems of intersecting circles, crossed beneath by long bars very slightly bent. the form of every separate cloud is completely studied; the manner of drawing them will be understood better by help of the plate opposite, which is a piece of the sky above the "campo santo,"[ ] at venice, exhibited in . it is exquisite in rounding of the separate fragments and buoyancy of the rising central group, as well as in its expression of the wayward influence of curved lines of breeze on a generally rectilinear system of cloud. [illustration: fig. . _to face page ._] [illustration: . clouds.] § . to follow the subject farther would, however, lead us into doctrine of circular storms, and all kinds of pleasant, but infinite, difficulty, from which temptation i keep clear, believing that enough is now stated to enable the reader to understand what he is to look for in turner's skies; and what kind of power, thought, and science are involved continually in the little white or purple dashes of cloud-spray, which, in such pictures as the san benedetto, looking to fusina, the napoleon, or the temeraire, guide the eye to the horizon more by their true perspective than by their aërial tone, and are buoyant, not so much by expression of lightness as of motion.[ ] § . i say the "white or purple" cloud-spray. one word yet may be permitted me respecting the mystery of that color. what should we have thought--if we had lived in a country where there were no clouds, but only low mist or fog--of any stranger who had told us that, in his country, these mists rose into the air, and became purple, crimson, scarlet, and gold? i am aware of no sufficient explanation of these hues of the upper clouds, nor of their strange mingling of opacity with a power of absorbing light. all clouds are so opaque that, however delicate they may be, you never see one through another. six feet depth of them, at a little distance, will wholly veil the darkest mountain edge; so that, whether for light or shade, they tell upon the sky as body color on canvas; they have always a perfect surface and bloom;--delicate as a rose-leaf, when required of them, but never poor or meagre in hue, like old-fashioned water-colors. and, if needed, in mass, they will bear themselves for solid force of hue against any rock. facing p. , i have engraved a memorandum made of a clear sunset after rain, from the top of milan cathedral. the greater part of the outline is granite--monte rosa--the rest cloud; but it and the granite were dark alike. frequently, in effects of this kind, the cloud is darker of the two.[ ] and this opacity is, nevertheless, obtained without destroying the gift they have of letting broken light through them, so that, between us and the sun, they may become golden fleeces, and float as fields of light. now their distant colors depend on these two properties together; partly on the opacity, which enables them to reflect light strongly; partly on a spongelike power of gathering light into their bodies. § . long ago it was noted by aristotle, and again by leonardo, that vaporous bodies looked russet, or even red, when warm light was seen through them, and blue when deep shade was seen through them. both colors may, generally, be seen on any wreath of cottage smoke. whereon, easy conclusion has sometimes been founded by modern reasoners. all red in sky is caused by light seen through vapor, and all blue by shade seen through vapor. easy, indeed, but not sure, even in cloud-color only. it is true that the smoke of a town may be of a rich brick red against golden twilight; and of a very lovely, though not bright, blue against shade. but i never saw crimson or scarlet smoke, nor ultramarine smoke. even granting that watery vapor in its purity may give the colors more clearly, the red colors are by no means always relieved against light. the finest scarlets are constantly seen in broken flakes on a deep purple ground of heavier cloud beyond, and some of the loveliest rose-colors on clouds in the east, opposite the sunset, or in the west in the morning. nor are blues always attainable by throwing vapor over shade. especially, you cannot get them by putting it over blue itself. a thin vapor on dark blue sky is of a warm gray, not blue. a thunder-cloud, deep enough to conceal everything behind it, is often dark lead-color, or sulphurous blue; but the thin vapors crossing it, milky-white. the vividest hues are connected also with another attribute of clouds, their lustre--metallic in effect, watery in reality. they not only reflect color as dust or wool would, but, when far off, as water would; sometimes even giving a distinct image of the sun underneath the orb itself;--in all cases becoming dazzling in lustre, when at a low angle, capable of strong reflection. practically, this low angle is only obtained when the cloud seems near the sun, and hence we get into the careless habit of looking at the golden reflected light as if it were actually caused by nearness to the fiery ball. [illustration: . light in the west, beauvais.] § . without, however, troubling ourselves at all about laws, or causes of color, the visible consequences of their operation are notably these--that when near us, clouds present only subdued and uncertain colors; but when far from us, and struck by the sun on their under surfaces--so that the greater part of the light they receive is reflected--they may become golden, purple, scarlet, and intense fiery white, mingled in all kinds of gradations, such as i tried to describe in the chapter on the upper clouds in the first volume, in hope of being able to return to them "when we knew what was beautiful." the question before us now is, therefore, what value ought this attribute of clouds to possess in the human mind? ought we to admire their colors, or despise them? is it well to watch them as turner does, and strive to paint them through all deficiency and darkness of inadequate material? or, is it wiser and nobler--like claude, salvator, ruysdael, wouvermans--never to look for them--never to portray? we must yet have patience a little before deciding this, because we have to ascertain some facts respecting the typical meaning of color itself; which, reserving for another place, let us proceed here to learn the forms of the inferior clouds. footnotes: [ ] before going farther, i must say a word or two respecting method of drawing clouds. absolutely well no cloud _can_ be drawn with the point; nothing but the most delicate management of the brush will express its variety of edge and texture. by laborious and tender engraving, a close approximation may be obtained either to nature or to good painting; and the engravings of sky by our modern line engravers are often admirable;--in many respects as good as can be, and to my mind the best part of their work. there still exist some early proofs of miller's plate of the grand canal, venice, in which the sky is the likest thing to turner's work i have ever seen in large engravings. the plate was spoiled after a few impressions were taken off by desire of the publisher. the sky was so exactly like turner's that he thought it would not please the public, and had all the fine cloud-drawing rubbed away to make it soft. the plate opposite page , by mr. armytage, is also, i think, a superb specimen of engraving, though in result not so good as the one just spoken of, because this was done from my copy of turner's sky, not from the picture itself. but engraving of this finished kind cannot, by reason of its costliness, be given for every illustration of cloud form. nor, if it could, can skies be sketched with the completion which would bear it. it is sometimes possible to draw one cloud out of fifty thousand with something like fidelity before it fades. but if we want the arrangement of the fifty thousand, they can only be indicated with the rudest lines, and finished from memory. it was, as we shall see presently, only by his gigantic powers of memory that turner was enabled to draw skies as he did. now, i look upon my own memory of clouds, or of anything else, as of no value whatever. all the drawings on which i have ever rested an assertion have been made without stirring from the spot; and in sketching clouds from nature, it is very seldom desirable to use the brush. for broad effects and notes of color (though these, hastily made, are always inaccurate, and letters indicating the color do nearly as well) the brush may be sometimes useful, but, in most cases, a dark pencil, which will lay shade with its side and draw lines with its point, is the best instrument. turner almost always outlined merely with the point, being able to remember the relations of shade without the slightest chance of error. the point, at all events, is needful, however much stump work may be added to it. now, in translating sketches made with the pencil point into engraving, we must either engrave delicately and expensively, or be content to substitute for the soft varied pencil lines the finer and uncloudlike touches of the pen. it is best to do this boldly, if at all, and without the least aim at fineness of effect, to lay down a vigorous black line as the limit of the cloud form or action. the more subtle a painter's finished work, the more fearless he is in using the vigorous black line when he is making memoranda, of treating his subject conventionally. at the top of page , vol. iv., the reader may see the kind of outline which titian uses for clouds in his pen work. usually he is even bolder and coarser. and in the rude woodcuts i am going to employ here, i believe the reader will find ultimately that, with whatever ill success used by me, the means of expression are the fullest and most convenient that can be adopted, short of finished engraving, while there are some conditions of cloud-action which i satisfy myself better in expressing by these coarse lines than in any other way. [ ] if the figures are supposed to include less than one-fourth of the horizon, the shaded figures represent diamond-shaped clouds; but the reader cannot understand this without studying perspective laws accurately. [ ] in reality, the retiring ranks of cloud, if long enough, would, of course, go on converging to the horizon. i do not continue them, because the figures would become too compressed. [ ] i use ellipses in order to make these figures easily intelligible; the curves actually _are_ variable curves, of the nature of the cycloid, or other curves of continuous motion; probably produced by a current moving in some such direction as that indicated by the dotted line in fig. , plate . [ ] now in the possession of e. bicknell, esq., who kindly lent me the picture, that i might make this drawing from it carefully. [ ] i cannot yet engrave these; but the little study of a single rank of cirrus, the lowest in plate , may serve to show the value of perspective in expressing buoyancy. it is not, however, though beautifully engraved by mr. armytage, as delicate as it should be, in the finer threads which indicate increasing distance at the extremity. compare the rising of the lines of curve at the edges of this mass, with the similar action on a larger scale, of turner's cloud, opposite. [ ] in the autobiography of john newton there is an interesting account of the deception of a whole ship's company by cloud, taking the aspect and outline of mountainous land. they ate the last provision in the ship, so sure were they of its being land, and were nearly starved to death in consequence. chapter iii. the cloud-chariots. § . between the flocks of small countless clouds which occupy the highest heavens, and the gray undivided film of the true rain-cloud, form the fixed masses or torn fleeces, sometimes collected and calm, sometimes fiercely drifting, which are, nevertheless, known under one general name of cumulus, or heaped cloud. the true cumulus, the most majestic of all clouds, and almost the only one which attracts the notice of ordinary observers, is for the most part windless; the movement of its masses being solemn, continuous, inexplicable, a steady advance or retiring, as if they were animated by an inner will, or compelled by an unseen power. they appear to be peculiarly connected with heat, forming perfectly only in the afternoon, and melting away in the evening. their noblest conditions are strongly electric, and connect themselves with storm-cloud and true thunder-cloud. when there is thunder in the air, they will form in cold weather, or early in the day. § . i have never succeeded in drawing a cumulus. its divisions of surface are grotesque and endless, as those of a mountain;--perfectly defined, brilliant beyond all power of color, and transitory as a dream. even turner never attempted to paint them, any more than he did the snows of the high alps. nor can i explain them any more than i can draw them. the ordinary account given of their structure is, i believe, that the moisture raised from the earth by the sun's heat becomes visible by condensation at a certain height in the colder air, that the level of the condensing point is that of the cloud's base, and that above it, the heaps are pushed up higher and higher as more vapor accumulates, till, towards evening, the supply beneath ceases; and at sunset, the fall of dew enables the surrounding atmosphere to absorb and melt them away. very plausible. but it seems to me herein unexplained how the vapor is held together in those heaps. if the clear air about and above it has no aqueous vapor in it, or at least a much less quantity, why does not the clear air keep pulling the cloud to pieces, eating it away, as steam is consumed in open air? or, if any cause prevents such rapid devouring of it, why does not the aqueous vapor diffuse itself softly in the air like smoke, so that one would not know where the cloud ended? what should make it bind itself in those solid mounds, and stay so:--positive, fantastic, defiant, determined? § . if ever i am able to understand the process of the cumulus formation,[ ] it will become to me one of the most interesting of all subjects of study to trace the connection of the threatening and terrible outlines of thunder-cloud with the increased action of the electric power. i am for the present utterly unable to speak respecting this matter, and must pass it by, in all humility, to say what little i have ascertained respecting the more broken and rapidly moving forms of the central clouds, which connect themselves with mountains, and may, therefore, among mountains, be seen close and truly. § . yet even of these, i can only reason with great doubt and continual pause. this last volume ought certainly to be better than the first of the series, for two reasons. i have learned, during the sixteen years, to say little where i said much, and to see difficulties where i saw none. and i am in a great state of marvel in looking back to my first account of clouds, not only at myself, but even at my dear master, m. de saussure. to think that both of us should have looked at drifting mountain clouds, for years together, and been content with the theory which you will find set forth in § , of the chapter on the central cloud region (vol. i.), respecting the action of the snowy summits and watery vapor passing them. it is quite true that this action takes place, and that the said fourth paragraph is right, as far as it reaches. but both saussure and i ought to have known--we both did know, but did not think of it--that the covering or cap-cloud forms on hot summits as well as cold ones;--that the red and bare rocks of mont pilate, hotter, certainly, after a day's sunshine than the cold storm-wind which sweeps to them from the alps, nevertheless have been renowned for their helmet of cloud, ever since the romans watched the cloven summit, gray against the south, from the ramparts of vindonissa, giving it the name from which the good catholics of lucerne have warped out their favorite piece of terrific sacred biography.[ ] and both my master and i should also have reflected, that if our theory about its formation had been generally true, the helmet cloud ought to form on every cold summit, at the approach of rain, in approximating proportions to the bulk of the glaciers; which is so far from being the case that not only (a) the cap-cloud may often be seen on lower summits of grass or rock, while the higher ones are splendidly clear (which may be accounted for by supposing the wind containing the moisture not to have risen so high), but (b) the cap-cloud always shows a preference for hills of a conical form, such as the mole or niesen, which can have very little power in chilling the air, even supposing they were cold themselves, while it will entirely refuse to form round huge masses of mountain, which, supposing them of chilly temperament, must have discomforted the atmosphere in their neighborhood for leagues. and finally (c) reversing the principle under letter a, the cap-cloud constantly forms on the summit of mont blanc, while it will obstinately refuse to appear on the dome du goûte or aiguille sans-nom, where the snow-fields are of greater extent, and the air must be moister, because lower. [illustration: j. ruskin. j. c. armytage. . aiguilles and their friends.] [illustration: fig. .] § . the fact is, that the explanation given in that fourth paragraph can, in reality, account only for what may properly be termed "lee-side cloud," slightly noticed in the continuation of the same chapter, but deserving most attentive illustration, as one of the most beautiful phenomena of the alps. when a moist wind blows in clear weather over a cold summit, it has not time to get chilled as it approaches the rock, and therefore the air remains clear, and the sky bright on the windward side; but under the lee of the peak, there is partly a back eddy, and partly still air; and in that lull and eddy the wind gets time to be chilled by the rock, and the cloud appears as a boiling mass of white vapor, rising continually with the return current to the upper edge of the mountain, where it is caught by the straight wind, and partly torn, partly melted away in broken fragments. in fig. the dark mass represents the mountain peak, the arrow the main direction of the wind, the curved lines show the directions of such current and its concentration, and the dotted lines enclose the space in which cloud forms densely, floating away beyond and above in irregular tongues and flakes. the second figure from the top in plate represents the actual aspect of it when in full development, with a strong south wind, in a clear day, on the aiguille dru, the sky being perfectly blue and lovely around. so far all is satisfactory. but the true helmet cloud will not allow itself to be thus explained away. the uppermost figure in plate represents the loveliest form of it, seen in that perfect arch, so far as i know, only over the highest piece of earth in europe. § . respecting which there are two mysteries:--first, why it should form only at a certain distance above the snow, showing blue sky between it and the summit. secondly, why, so forming, it should always show as an arch, not as a concave cup. this last question puzzles me especially. for, if it be a true arch, and not a cup, it ought to show itself in certain positions of the spectator, or directions of the wind, like the ring of saturn, as a mere line, or as a spot of cloud pausing over the hill-top. but i never saw it so. while, as above noticed, the lowest form of the helmet cloud is not white as of silver, but like dolon's helmet of wolf-skin,--it is a gray, flaky veil, lapping itself over the shoulders of a more or less conical peak; and of this, also, i have no word to utter but the old one, "electricity," and i might as well say nothing. § . neither the helmet cloud, nor the lee-side cloud, however, though most interesting and beautiful, are of much importance in picturesque effect. they are too isolated and strange. but the great mountain cloud, which seems to be a blending of the two with independent forms of vapor (that is to say, a greater development, in consequence of the mountain's action, of clouds which would in some way or other have formed anywhere), requires prolonged attention, as the principal element of the sky in noblest landscape. § . for which purpose, first, it may be well to clear a few clouds out of the way. i believe the true cumulus is never seen in a great mountain region, at least never associated with hills. it is always broken up and modified by them. boiling and rounded masses of vapor occur continually, as behind the aiguille dru (lowest figure in plate ); but the quiet, thoroughly defined, infinitely divided and modelled pyramid never develops itself. it would be very grand if one ever saw a great mountain peak breaking through the domed shoulders of a true cumulus; but this i have never seen. § . again, the true high cirri never cross a mountain in europe. how often have i hoped to see an alp rising through and above their level-laid and rippled fields! but those white harvest-fields are heaven's own. and, finally, even the low, level, cirrus (used so largely in martin's pictures) rarely crosses a mountain. if it does, it usually becomes slightly waved or broken, so as to destroy its character. sometimes, however, at great distances, a very level bar of cloud will strike across a peak; but nearer, too much of the under surface of the field is seen, so that a well-defined bar across a peak, seen at a high angle, is of the greatest rarity. [illustration: j. ruskin. j. c. armytage. . the graiæ.] [illustration: . "venga medusa."] [illustration: fig. . _to face page ._] § . the ordinary mountain cloud, therefore, if well defined, divides itself into two kinds: a broken condition of cumulus, grand in proportion as it is solid and quiet,--and a strange modification of drift-cloud, midway, as i said, between the helmet and the lee-side forms. the broken, quiet cumulus impressed turner exceedingly when he first saw it on hills. he uses it, slightly exaggerating its definiteness, in all his early studies among the mountains of the chartreuse, and very beautifully in the vignette of st. maurice in rogers's italy. there is nothing, however, to be specially observed of it, as it only differs from the cumulus of the plains, by being smaller and more broken. § . not so the mountain drift-cloud, which is as peculiar as it is majestic. the plates and show, as well as i can express, two successive phases of it on a mountain crest; (in this instance the great limestone ridge above st. michel, in savoy.) but what colossal proportions this noble cloud assumes may be best gathered from the rude sketch, fig. , in which i have simply put firm black ink over the actual pencil lines made at the moment, giving the form of a single wreath of the drift-cloud, stretching about five miles in a direct line from the summit of one of the alps of the val d'aosta, as seen from the plain of turin. it has a grand volcanic look, but i believe its aspect of rising from the peak to be almost, if not altogether, deceptive; and that the apparently gigantic column is a nearly horizontal stream of lee-side cloud, tapered into the distance by perspective, and thus rising at its apparently lowest but in reality most distant point, from the mountain summit whose shade calls it into being out of the clear winds. whether this be so or not, the apparent origin of the cloud on the peak, and radiation from it, distinguish it from the drift-cloud of level country, which arranges itself at the horizon in broken masses, such as fig. , showing no point of origin; and i do not know how far they are vertical cliffs or horizontally extended fields. they are apt to be very precipitous in aspect, breaking into fragments with an apparently concentric motion, as in the figure; but of this motion also--whether vertical or horizontal--i can say nothing positive. § . the absolute scale of such clouds may be seen, or at least demonstrated, more clearly in fig. , which is a rough note of an effect of sky behind the tower of berne cathedral. it was made from the mound beside the railroad bridge. the cathedral tower is half-a-mile distant. the great eiger of grindelwald is seen just on the right of it. this mountain is distant from the tower thirty-four miles as the crow flies, and ten thousand feet above it in height. the drift-cloud behind it, therefore, being in full light, and showing no overhanging surfaces, must rise at least twenty thousand feet into the air. § . the extreme whiteness of the volume of vapor in this case (not, i fear, very intelligible in the woodcut[ ]) may be partly owing to recent rain, which, by its evaporation, gives a peculiar density and brightness to some forms of clearing cloud. in order to understand this, we must consider another set of facts. when weather is thoroughly wet among hills, we ought no more to accuse the mountains of forming the clouds, than we do the plains in similar circumstances. the unbroken mist buries the mountains to their bases; but that is not their fault. it may be just as wet and just as cloudy elsewhere. (this is not true of scottish mountain, by the way.) but when the wet weather is breaking, and the clouds pass, perhaps, in great measure, away from the plains leaving large spaces of blue sky, the mountains begin to shape clouds for themselves. the fallen moisture evaporates from the plain invisibly; but not so from the hill-side. there, what quantity of rain has not gone down in the torrents, ascends again to heaven instantly in white clouds. the storm passes as if it had tormented the crags, and the strong mountains smoke like tired horses. § . here is another question for us of some interest. why does the much greater quantity of moisture lying on the horizontal fields send up no visible vapor, and the less quantity left on the rocks glorify itself into a magnificent wreath of soaring snow? first, for the very reason, that it is less in quantity, and more distributed; as a wet cloth smokes when you put it near the fire, but a basin of water not. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. . _to face page ._] the previous heat of the crags, noticed in the first volume, p. , is only a part of the cause. it operates only locally, and on remains of sudden showers. but after any number of days and nights of rain, and in all places exposed to returning sunshine and breezes, the _distribution_ of the moisture tells. so soon as the rain has ceased, all water that can run off is of course gone from the steep hill-sides; there remains only the thin adherent film of moisture to be dried; but that film is spread over a complex texture--all manner of crannies, and bosses, and projections, and filaments of moss and lichen, exposing a vast extent of drying surface to the air. and the evaporation is rapid in proportion. § . its rapidity, however, observe, does not account for its visibility, and this is one of the questions i cannot clearly solve, unless i were sure of the nature of the vesicular vapor. when our breath becomes visible on a frosty day, it is easily enough understood that the moisture which was invisible, carried by the warm air from the lungs, becomes visible when condensed or precipitated by the surrounding chill; but one does not see why air passing over a moist surface quite as cold as itself should take up one particle of water more than it can conveniently--that is to say, invisibly--carry. whenever you _see_ vapor, you may not inaccurately consider the air as having got more than it can properly hold, and dropping some. now it is easily understood how it should take up much in the lungs, and let some of it fall when it is pinched by the frost outside; but why should it overload itself there on the hills, when it is at perfect liberty to fly away as soon as it likes, and come back for more? i do not see my way well in this. i do not see it clearly, even through the wet cloth. i shall leave all the embarrassment of the matter, however, to my reader, contenting myself, as usual, with the actual fact, that the hill-side air does behave in this covetous and unreasonable manner; and that, in consequence, when the weather is breaking (and sometimes, provokingly, when it is not), phantom clouds form and rise in sudden crowds of wild and spectral imagery along all the far succession of the hill-slopes and ravines. [illustration: fig. .] § . there is this distinction, however, between the clouds that form during the rain and after it. in the worst weather, the rain-cloud keeps rather high, and is unbroken; but when there is a disposition in the rain to relax, every now and then a sudden company of white clouds will form quite low down (in chamouni or grindelwald, and such high districts, even down to the bottom of the valley), which will remain, perhaps, for ten minutes, filling all the air, then disappear as suddenly as they came, leaving the gray upper cloud and steady rain to their work. these "clouds of relaxation," if we may so call them, are usually flaky and horizontal, sometimes tending to the silky cirrus, yet showing no fine forms of drift; but when the rain has passed, and the air is getting warm, forms the true clearing cloud, in wreaths that ascend continually with a slow circling motion, melting as they rise. the woodcut, fig. , is a rude note of it floating more quietly from the hill of the superga, the church (nearly as large as st. paul's) appearing above, and thus showing the scale of the wreath. [illustration: fig. .] § . this cloud of evaporation, however, does not always rise. it sometimes rests in absolute stillness, low laid in the hollows of the hills, their peaks emergent from it. fig. shows this condition of it, seen from a distance, among the cenis hills. i do not know what gives it this disposition to rest in the ravines, nor whether there is a greater chill in the hollows, or a real action of gravity on the particles of cloud. in general, the position seems to depend on the temperature. thus, in chamouni, the crests of la côte and taconay continually appear in stormy weather as in plate , vol. iv., in which i intended to represent rising drift-cloud, made dense between the crests by the chill from the glaciers. but in the condition shown in fig. , on a comparatively open sweep of hill-side, the thermometer would certainly indicate a higher temperature in the sheltered valley than on the exposed peaks; yet the cloud still subsides into the valleys like folds of a garment; and, more than this, sometimes conditions of morning cloud, dependent, i believe, chiefly on dew evaporation, form first on the _tops_ of the soft hills of wooded switzerland, and droop down in rent fringes, and separate tongues, clinging close to all the hill-sides, and giving them exactly the appearance of being covered with white fringed cloth, falling over them in torn or divided folds. it always looks like a true action of gravity. how far it is, in reality, the indication of the power of the rising sun causing evaporation, first on the hill-top, and then in separate streams, by its divided light on the ravines, i cannot tell. the subject is, as the reader perceives, always inextricably complicated by these three necessities--that to get a cloud in any given spot, you must have moisture to form the material of it, heat to develop it, and cold[ ] to show it; and the adverse causes inducing the moisture, the evaporation, and the visibility are continually interchanged in presence and in power. and thus, also, the phenomena which properly belong to a certain elevation are confused, among hills at least, with those which in plains would have been lower or higher. i have been led unavoidably in this chapter to speak of some conditions of the rain-cloud; nor can we finally understand the forms even of the cumulus, without considering those into which it descends or diffuses itself. which, however, being, i think, a little more interesting than our work hitherto, we will leave this chapter to its dulness, and begin another. footnotes: [ ] one of the great difficulties in doing this is to distinguish the portions of cloud outline which really slope upwards from those which only appear to do so, being in reality horizontal, and thrown into apparent inclination by perspective. [ ] _pileatus_, capped (strictly speaking, with the cap of liberty;--stormy cloud enough sometimes on men's brows as well as on mountains), corrupted into pilatus, and pilate. [ ] i could not properly illustrate the subject of clouds without numbers of these rude drawings, which would probably offend the general reader by their coarseness, while the cost of engraving them in facsimile is considerable, and would much add to the price of the book. if i find people at all interested in the subject, i may, perhaps, some day systematize and publish my studies of cloud separately. i am sorry not to have given in this volume a careful study of a rich cirrus sky, but no wood-engraving that i can employ on this scale will express the finer threads and waves. [ ] we might say light, as well as cold; for it wholly depends on the degree of light in the sky how far delicate cloud is seen. the second figure from the top in plate shows an effect of morning light on the range of the aiguille bouchard (chamouni). every crag casts its shadow up into apparently clear sky. the shadow is, in such cases, a bluish gray, the color of clear sky; and the defining light is caused by the sunbeams showing mist which otherwise would have been unperceived. the shadows are not irregular enough in outline--the sketch was made for their color and sharpness, not their shape,--and i cannot now put them right, so i leave them as they were drawn at the moment. chapter iv. the angel of the sea. § . perhaps the best and truest piece of work done in the first volume of this book, was the account given in it of the rain-cloud; to which i have here little, descriptively, to add. but the question before us now is, not who has drawn the rain-cloud best, but if it were worth drawing at all. our english artists naturally painted it often and rightly; but are their pictures the better for it? we have seen how mountains are beautiful; how trees are beautiful; how sun-lighted clouds are beautiful; but can rain be beautiful? i spoke roughly of the italian painters in that chapter, because they could only draw distinct clouds, or violent storms, "massive concretions," while our northern painters could represent every phase of mist and fall of shower. but is this indeed so delightful? is english wet weather, indeed, one of the things which we should desire to see art give perpetuity to? yes, assuredly. i have given some reasons for this answer in the fifth chapter of last volume; one or two, yet unnoticed, belong to the present division of our subject. § . the climates or lands into which our globe is divided may, with respect to their fitness for art, be perhaps conveniently ranged under five heads:-- . forest-lands, sustaining the great mass of the magnificent vegetation of the tropics, for the most part characterized by moist and unhealthy heat, and watered by enormous rivers, or periodical rains. this country cannot, i believe, develop the mind or art of man. he may reach great subtlety of intellect, as the indian, but not become learned, nor produce any noble art, only a savage or grotesque form of it. even supposing the evil influences of climate could be vanquished, the scenery is on too large a scale. it would be difficult to conceive of groves less fit for academic purposes than those mentioned by humboldt, into which no one can enter except under a stout wooden shield, to avoid the chance of being killed by the fall of a nut. . sand-lands, including the desert and dry-rock plains of the earth, inhabited generally by a nomade population, capable of high mental cultivation and of solemn monumental or religious art, but not of art in which pleasurableness forms a large element, their life being essentially one of hardship. . grape and wheat lands, namely, rocks and hills, such as are good for the vine, associated with arable ground forming the noblest and best ground given to man. in these districts only art of the highest kind seems possible, the religious art of the sand-lands being here joined with that of pleasure or sense. . meadow-lands, including the great pastoral and agricultural districts of the north, capable only of an inferior art: apt to lose its spirituality and become wholly material. . moss-lands, including the rude forest-mountain and ground of the north, inhabited by a healthy race, capable of high mental cultivation and moral energy, but wholly incapable of art, except savage, like that of the forest-lands, or as in scandinavia. we might carry out these divisions into others, but these are i think essential, and easily remembered in a tabular form; saying "wood" instead of "forest," and "field" for "meadow," we can get such a form shortly worded:-- wood-lands shrewd intellect no art. sand-lands high intellect religious art. vine-lands highest intellect perfect art. field-lands high intellect material art. moss-lands shrewd intellect no art. § . in this table the moss-lands appear symmetrically opposed to the wood-lands, which in a sort they are; the too diminutive vegetation under bleakest heaven, opposed to the too colossal under sultriest heaven, while the perfect ministry of the elements, represented by bread and wine, produces the perfect soul of man. but this is not altogether so. the moss-lands have one great advantage over the forest-lands, namely, sight of the sky. and not only sight of it, but continual and beneficent help from it. what they have to separate them from barren rock, namely, their moss and streams, being dependent on its direct help, not on great rivers coming from distant mountain chains, nor on vast tracts of ocean-mist coming up at evening, but on the continual play and change of sun and cloud. § . note this word "change." the moss-lands have an infinite advantage, not only in sight, but in liberty; they are the freest ground in all the world. you can only traverse the great woods by crawling like a lizard, or climbing like a monkey--the great sands with slow steps and veiled head. but bare-headed, and open-eyed, and free-limbed, commanding all the horizon's space of changeful light, and all the horizon's compass of tossing ground, you traverse the moss-land. in discipline it is severe as the desert, but it is a discipline compelling to action; and the moss-lands seem, therefore, the rough schools of the world, in which its strongest human frames are knit and tried, and so bent down, like the northern winds, to brace and brighten the languor into which the repose of more favored districts may degenerate. § . it would be strange, indeed, if there were no beauty in the phenomena by which this great renovating and purifying work is done. and it is done almost entirely by the great angel of the sea--rain;--the angel, observe, the messenger sent to a special place on a special errand. not the diffused perpetual presence of the burden of mist, but the going and returning of intermittent cloud. all turns upon that intermittence. soft moss on stone and rock;--cave-fern of tangled glen; wayside well--perennial, patient, silent, clear; stealing through its square font of rough-hewn stone; ever thus deep--no more--which the winter wreck sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, incapable of stain as of decline--where the fallen leaf floats undecayed, and the insect darts undefiling. cressed brook and ever-eddying river, lifted even in flood scarcely over its stepping-stones,--but through all sweet summer keeping tremulous music with harp-strings of dark water among the silver fingering of the pebbles. far away in the south the strong river gods have all hasted, and gone down to the sea. wasted and burning, white furnaces of blasting sand, their broad beds lie ghastly and bare; but here the soft wings of the sea angel droop still with dew, and the shadows of their plumes falter on the hills: strange laughings, and glitterings of silver streamlets, born suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trickling tinsel, answering to them as they wave.[ ] § . nor are those wings colorless. we habitually think of the rain-cloud only as dark and gray; not knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, though not the most dazzling of the hues of heaven. often in our english mornings, the rain-clouds in the dawn form soft level fields, which melt imperceptibly into the blue; or when of less extent, gather into apparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader cloud above; and all these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-color, and purple, and amber, and blue; not shining, but misty-soft; the barred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or tresses of cloud, like floss silk; looking as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted rain. no clouds form such skies, none are so tender, various, inimitable. turner himself never caught them. correggio, putting out his whole strength, could have painted them, no other man.[ ] § . for these are the robes of love of the angel of the sea. to these that name is chiefly given, the "spreadings of the clouds," from their extent, their gentleness, their fulness of rain. note how they are spoken of in job xxxvi. v. - . "by them judgeth he the people; he giveth meat in abundance. with clouds he covereth the light.[ ] he hath hidden the light in his hands, and commanded that it should return. he speaks of it to his friend; that it is his possession, and that he may ascend thereto." that, then, is the sea angel's message to god's friends; _that_, the meaning of those strange golden lights and purple flushes before the morning rain. the rain is sent to judge, and feed us; but the light is the possession of the friends of god, and they may ascend thereto,--where the tabernacle veil will cross and part its rays no more. § . but the angel of the sea has also another message,--in the "great rain of his strength," rain of trial, sweeping away ill-set foundations. then his robe is not spread softly over the whole heaven, as a veil, but sweeps back from his shoulders, ponderous, oblique, terrible--leaving his sword-arm free. the approach of trial-storm, hurricane-storm, is indeed in its vastness as the clouds of the softer rain. but it is not slow nor horizontal, but swift and steep: swift with passion of ravenous winds; steep as slope of some dark, hollowed hill. the fronting clouds come leaning forward, one thrusting the other aside, or on; impatient, ponderous, impendent, like globes of rock tossed of titans--ossa on olympus--but hurled forward all, in one wave of cloud-lava--cloud whose throat is as a sepulchre. fierce behind them rages the oblique wrath of the rain, white as ashes, dense as showers of driven steel; the pillars of it full of ghastly life; rain-furies, shrieking as they fly;--scourging, as with whips of scorpions;--the earth ringing and trembling under them, heaven wailing wildly, the trees stooped blindly down, covering their faces, quivering in every leaf with horror, ruin of their branches flying by them like black stubble. § . i wrote furies. i ought to have written gorgons. perhaps the reader does not know that the gorgons are not dead, are ever undying. we shall have to take our chance of being turned into stones by looking them in the face, presently. meantime, i gather what part of the great greek story of the sea angels, has meaning for us here. nereus, the god of the sea, who dwells in it always (neptune being the god who rules it from olympus), has children by the earth; namely, thaumas, the father of iris; that is, the "wonderful" or miracle-working angel of the sea; phorcys, the malignant angel of it (you will find him degraded through many forms, at last, in the story of sindbad, into the old man of the sea); ceto, the deep places of the sea, meaning its bays among rocks, therefore called by hesiod "fair-cheeked" ceto; and eurybia, the tidal force or sway of the sea, of whom more hereafter. § . phorcys and ceto, the malignant angel of the sea, and the spirit of its deep rocky places, have children, namely, first, graiæ, the soft rain-clouds. the greeks had a greater dislike of storm than we have, and therefore whatever violence is in the action of rain, they represented by harsher types than we should--types given in one group by aristophanes (speaking in mockery of the poets): "this was the reason, then, that they made so much talk about the fierce rushing of the moist clouds, coiled in glittering; and the locks of the hundred-headed typhon; and the blowing storms; and the bent-clawed birds drifted on the breeze, fresh, and aërial." note the expression "bent-clawed birds." it illustrates two characters of these clouds; partly their coiling form; but more directly the way they tear down the earth from the hill-sides; especially those twisted storm-clouds which in violent action become the waterspout. these always strike at a narrow point, often opening the earth on a hill-side into a trench as a great pickaxe would (whence the graiæ are said to have only one beak between them). nevertheless, the rain-cloud was, on the whole, looked upon by the greeks as beneficent, so that it is boasted of in the oedipus coloneus for its perpetual feeding of the springs of cephisus,[ ] and elsewhere often; and the opening song of the rain-clouds in aristophanes is entirely beautiful:-- "o eternal clouds! let us raise into open sight our dewy existence, from the deep-sounding sea, our father, up to the crests of the wooded hills, whence we look down over the sacred land, nourishing its fruits, and over the rippling of the divine rivers, and over the low murmuring bays of the deep." i cannot satisfy myself about the meaning of the names of the graiæ--pephredo and enuo--but the epithets which hesiod gives them are interesting: "pephredo, the well-robed; enuo, the crocus-robed;" probably, it seems to me, from their beautiful colors in morning. § . next to the graiæ, phorcys and ceto begat the gorgons, which are the true storm-clouds. the graiæ have only one beak or tooth, but all the gorgons have tusks like boars; brazen hands (brass being the word used for the metal of which the greeks made their spears), and golden wings. their names are "steino" (straitened), of storms compressed into narrow compass; "euryale" (having wide threshing-floor), of storms spread over great space; "medusa" (the dominant), the most terrible. she is essentially the highest storm-cloud; therefore the hail-cloud or cloud of cold, her countenance turning all who behold it to stone. ("he casteth forth his ice like morsels. who can stand before his cold?") the serpents about her head are the fringes of the hail, the idea of coldness being connected by the greeks with the bite of the serpent, as with the hemlock. § . on minerva's shield, her head signifies, i believe, the cloudy coldness of knowledge, and its venomous character ("knowledge puffeth up." compare bacon in advancement of learning). but the idea of serpents rose essentially from the change of form in the cloud as it broke; the cumulus cloud not breaking into full storm till it is cloven by the cirrus; which is twice hinted at in the story of perseus; only we must go back a little to gather it together. perseus was the son of jupiter by danaë, who being shut in a brazen tower, jupiter came to her in a shower of gold: the brazen tower being, i think, only another expression for the cumulus or medusa cloud; and the golden rain for the rays of the sun striking it; but we have not only this rain of danaë's to remember in connection with the gorgon, but that also of the sieves of the danaïdes, said to represent the provision of argos with water by their father danaüs, who dug wells about the acropolis; nor only wells, but opened, i doubt not, channels of irrigation for the fields, because the danaïdes are said to have brought the mysteries of ceres from egypt. and though i cannot trace the root of the names danaüs and danaë, there is assuredly some farther link of connection in the deaths of the lovers of the danaïdes, whom they slew, as perseus medusa. and again note, that when the father of danaë, acrisius, is detained in seriphos by storms, a disk thrown by perseus is carried _by the wind against his head_, and kills him; and lastly, when perseus cuts off the head of medusa, from her blood springs chrysaor, "wielder of the golden sword," the angel of the lightning, and pegasus, the angel of the "wild fountains," that is to say, the fastest flying or lower rain-cloud; winged, but racing as upon the earth. § . i say, "wild" fountains; because the kind of fountain from which pegasus is named is especially the "fountain of the great deep" of genesis; sudden and furious, (cataracts of heaven, not windows, in the septuagint);--the mountain torrent caused by thunderous storm, or as our "fountain"--a geyser-like leaping forth of water. therefore, it is the deep and full source of streams, and so used typically of the source of evils, or of passions; whereas the word "spring" with the greeks is like our "well-head"--a gentle issuing forth of water continually. but, because both the lightning-fire and the gushing forth, as of a fountain, are the signs of the poet's true power, together with perpetuity, it is pegasus who strikes the earth with his foot, on helicon,[ ] and causes hippocrene to spring forth--"the horse's well-head." it is perpetual; but has, nevertheless, the pegasean storm-power. § . wherein we may find, i think, sufficient cause for putting honor upon the rain-cloud. few of us, perhaps, have thought, in watching its career across our own mossy hills, or listening to the murmur of the springs amidst the mountain quietness, that the chief masters of the human imagination owed, and confessed that they owed, the force of their noblest thoughts, not to the flowers of the valley, nor the majesty of the hill, but to the flying cloud. yet they never saw it fly, as we may in our own england. so far, at least, as i know the clouds of the south, they are often more terrible than ours, but the english pegasus is swifter. on the yorkshire and derbyshire hills, when the rain-cloud is low and much broken, and the steady west-wind fills all space with its strength,[ ] the sun-gleams fly like golden vultures: they are flashes rather than shinings; the dark spaces and the dazzling race and skim along the acclivities, and dart and dip from crag to dell, swallow-like;--no graiæ these,--gray and withered: grey hounds rather, following the cerinthian stag with the golden antlers. § . there is one character about these lower rain-clouds, partly affecting all their connection with the upper sky, which i have never been able to account for; that which, as before noticed, aristophanes fastened on at once for their distinctive character--their obliquity. they always fly in an oblique position, as in the plate opposite, which is a careful facsimile of the first advancing mass of the rain-cloud in turner's slave ship. when the head of the cloud is foremost, as in this instance, and rain falling beneath, it is easy to imagine that its drops, increasing in size as they fall, may exercise some retarding action on the wind. but the head of the cloud is not always first, the base of it is sometimes advanced.[ ] the only certainty is, that it will not shape itself horizontally, its thin drawn lines and main contours will always be oblique, though its motion is horizontal; and, which is still more curious, their sloping lines are hardly ever modified in their descent by any distinct retiring tendency or perspective convergence. a troop of leaning clouds will follow one another, each stooping forward at the same apparent slope, round a fourth of the horizon. § . another circumstance which the reader should note in this cloud of turner's, is the witch-like look of drifted or erected locks of hair at its left side. we have just read the words of the old greek poet: "locks of the hundred-headed typhon;" and must remember that turner's account of this picture, in the academy catalogue, was "slaver throwing overboard the dead and dying. _typhoon_ coming on." the resemblance to wildly drifted hair is stronger in the picture than in the engraving; the gray and purple tints of torn cloud being relieved against golden sky beyond. [illustration: . the locks of typhon.] § . it was not, however, as we saw, merely to locks of hair, but to serpents, that the greeks likened the dissolving of the medusa cloud in blood. of that sanguine rain, or of its meaning, i cannot yet speak. it is connected with other and higher types, which must be traced in another place.[ ] but the likeness to serpents we may illustrate here. the two plates already given, and (at page ), represent successive conditions of the medusa cloud on one of the cenis hills (the great limestone precipice above st. michel, between lanslebourg and st. jean di maurienne).[ ] in the first, the cloud is approaching, with the lee-side cloud forming beyond it; in the second, it has approached, increased, and broken, the medusa serpents writhing about the central peak, the rounded tops of the broken cumulus showing above. in this instance, they take nearly the forms of flame; but when the storm is more violent, they are torn into fragments, and magnificent revolving wheels of vapor are formed, broken, and tossed into the air, as the grass is tossed in the hay-field from the toothed wheels of the mowing-machine; perhaps, in common with all other inventions of the kind, likely to bring more evil upon men than ever the medusa cloud did, and turn them more effectually into stone.[ ] § . i have named in the first volume the principal works of turner representing these clouds; and until i am able to draw them better, it is useless to say more of them; but in connection with the subject we have been examining, i should be glad if the reader could turn to the engravings of the england drawings of salisbury and stonehenge. what opportunities turner had of acquainting himself with classical literature, and how he used them, we shall see presently. in the meantime, let me simply assure the reader that, in various byways, he had gained a knowledge of most of the great greek traditions, and that he felt them more than he knew them; his mind being affected, up to a certain point, precisely as an ancient painter's would have been, by external phenomena of nature. to him, as to the greek, the storm-clouds seemed messengers of fate. he feared them, while he reverenced; nor does he ever introduce them without some hidden purpose, bearing upon the expression of the scene he is painting. § . on that plain of salisbury, he had been struck first by its widely-spacious pastoral life; and secondly, by its monuments of the two great religions of england--druidical and christian. he was not a man to miss the possible connection of these impressions. he treats the shepherd life as a type of the ecclesiastical; and composes his two drawings so as to illustrate both. in the drawing of salisbury, the plain is swept by rapid but not distressful rain. the cathedral occupies the centre of the picture, towering high over the city, of which the houses (made on purpose smaller than they really are) are scattered about it like a flock of sheep. the cathedral is surrounded by a great light. the storm gives way at first in a subdued gleam over a distant parish church, then bursts down again, breaks away into full light about the cathedral, and passes over the city, in various sun and shade. in the foreground stands a shepherd leaning on his staff, watching his flock--bare-headed; he has given his cloak to a group of children, who have covered themselves up with it, and are shrinking from the rain; his dog crouches under a bank; his sheep, for the most part, are resting quietly, some coming up the slope of the bank towards him.[ ] § . the rain-clouds in this picture are wrought with a care which i have never seen equalled in any other sky of the same kind. it is the rain of blessing--abundant, but full of brightness; golden gleams are flying across the wet grass, and fall softly on the lines of willows in the valley--willows by the watercourses; the little brooks flash out here and there between them and the fields. turn now to the stonehenge. that, also, stands in great light; but it is the gorgon light--the sword of chrysaor is bared against it. the cloud of judgment hangs above. the rock pillars seem to reel before its slope, pale beneath the lightning. and nearer, in the darkness, the shepherd lies dead, his flock scattered. i alluded, in speaking before of this stonehenge, to turner's use of the same symbol in the drawing of pæstum for rogers's italy; but a more striking instance of its employment occurs in a study of pæstum, which he engraved himself before undertaking the liber studiorum and another in his drawing of the temple of minerva, on cape colonna: and observe farther that he rarely introduces lightning, if the ruined building has not been devoted to religion. the wrath of man may destroy the fortress, but only the wrath of heaven can destroy the temple. § . of these secret meanings of turner's, we shall see enough in the course of the inquiry we have to undertake, lastly, respecting ideas of relation; but one more instance of his opposed use of the lightning symbol, and of the rain of blessing, i name here, to confirm what has been noted above. for, in this last instance, he was questioned respecting his meaning, and explained it. i refer to the drawings of sinai and lebanon, made for finden's bible. the sketches from which turner prepared that series were, i believe, careful and accurate; but the treatment of the subjects was left wholly to him. he took the sinai and lebanon to show the opposite influences of the law and the gospel. the rock of moses is shown in the burning of the desert, among fallen stones, forked lightning cleaving the blue mist which veils the summit of sinai. armed arabs pause at the foot of the rock. no human habitation is seen, nor any herb or tree, nor any brook, and the lightning strikes without rain.[ ] over the mount lebanon an intensely soft gray-blue sky is melting into dewy rain. every ravine is filled, every promontory crowned, by tenderest foliage, golden in slanting sunshine.[ ] the white convent nestles into the hollow of the rock; and a little brook runs under the shadow of the nearer trees, beside which two monks sit reading. § . it was a beautiful thought, yet an erring one, as all thoughts are which oppose the law to the gospel. when people read, "the law came by moses, but grace and truth by christ," do they suppose that the law was ungracious and untrue? the law was given for a foundation; the grace (or mercy) and truth for fulfilment;--the whole forming one glorious trinity of judgment, mercy, and truth. and if people would but read the text of their bibles with heartier purpose of understanding it, instead of superstitiously, they would see that throughout the parts which they are intended to make most personally their own (the psalms) it is always the law which is spoken of with chief joy. the psalms respecting mercy are often sorrowful, as in thought of what it cost; but those respecting the law are always full of delight. david cannot contain himself for joy in thinking of it,--he is never weary of its praise:--"how love i thy law! it is my meditation all the day. thy testimonies are my delight and my counsellors; sweeter, also, than honey and the honeycomb." § . and i desire, especially, that the reader should note this, in now closing the work through which we have passed together in the investigation of the beauty of the visible world. for perhaps he expected more pleasure and freedom in that work; he thought that it would lead him at once into fields of fond imagination, and may have been surprised to find that the following of beauty brought him always under a sterner dominion of mysterious law; the brightness was continually based upon obedience, and all majesty only another form of submission. but this is indeed so. i have been perpetually hindered in this inquiry into the sources of beauty by fear of wearying the reader with their severities. it was always accuracy i had to ask of him, not sympathy; patience, not zeal; apprehension, not sensation. the thing to be shown him was not a pleasure to be snatched, but a law to be learned. § . it is in this character, however, that the beauty of the natural world completes its message. we saw long ago, how its various _powers_ of appeal to the mind of men might be traced to some typical expression of divine attributes. we have seen since how its _modes_ of appeal present constant types of human obedience to the divine law, and constant proofs that this law, instead of being contrary to mercy, is the foundation of all delight, and the guide of all fair and fortunate existence. § . which understanding, let us receive our last message from the angel of the sea. take up the th psalm and look at it verse by verse. perhaps to my younger readers, one word may be permitted respecting their bible-reading in general.[ ] the bible is, indeed, a deep book, when depth is required, that is to say, for deep people. but it is not intended, particularly, for profound persons; on the contrary, much more for shallow and simple persons. and therefore the first, and generally the main and leading idea of the bible, is on its surface, written in plainest possible greek, hebrew, or english, needing no penetration, nor amplification, needing nothing but what we all might give--attention. but this, which is in every one's power, and is the only thing that god wants, is just the last thing any one will give him. we are delighted to ramble away into day-dreams, to repeat pet verses from other places, suggested by chance words; to snap at an expression which suits our own particular views, or to dig up a meaning from under a verse, which we should be amiably grieved to think any human being had been so happy as to find before. but the plain, intended, immediate, fruitful meaning, which every one ought to find always, and especially that which depends on our seeing the relation of the verse to those near it, and getting the force of the whole passage, in due relation--this sort of significance we do not look for;--it being, truly, not to be discovered, unless we really attend to what is said, instead of to our own feelings. § . it is unfortunate also, but very certain, that in order to attend to what is said, we must go through the irksomeness of knowing the meaning of the words. and the first thing that children should be taught about their bibles is, to distinguish clearly between words that they understand and words that they do not; and to put aside the words they do not understand, and verses connected with them, to be asked about, or for a future time; and never to think they are reading the bible when they are merely repeating phrases of an unknown tongue. § . let us try, by way of example, this th psalm, and see what plain meaning is uppermost in it. "the heavens declare the glory of god." what are the heavens? the word occurring in the lord's prayer, and the thing expressed being what a child may, with some advantage, be led to look at, it might be supposed among a schoolmaster's first duties to explain this word clearly. now there can be no question that in the minds of the sacred writers, it stood naturally for the entire system of cloud, and of space beyond it, conceived by them as a vault set with stars. but there can, also, be no question, as we saw in previous inquiry, that the firmament, which is said to have been "called" heaven, at the creation, expresses, in all definite use of the word, the system of clouds, as spreading the power of the water over the earth; hence the constant expressions dew of heaven, rain of heaven, &c., where heaven is used in the singular; while "the heavens," when used plurally, and especially when in distinction, as here, from the word "firmament," remained expressive of the starry space beyond. § . a child might therefore be told (surely, with advantage), that our beautiful word heaven may possibly have been formed from a hebrew word, meaning "the high place;" that the great warrior roman nation, camping much out at night, generally overtired and not in moods for thinking, are believed, by many people, to have seen in the stars only the likeness of the glittering studs of their armor, and to have called the sky "the bossed, or studded;" but that others think those roman soldiers on their might-watches had rather been impressed by the great emptiness and void of night, and by the far coming of sounds through its darkness, and had called the heaven "the hollow place." finally, i should tell the children, showing them first the setting of a star, how the great greeks had found out the truest power of the heavens, and had called them "the rolling." but whatever different nations had called them, at least i would make it clear to the child's mind that in this th psalm, their whole power being intended, the two words are used which express it: the heavens, for the great vault or void, with all its planets, and stars, and ceaseless march of orbs innumerable; and the firmament, for the ordinance of the clouds. these heavens, then, "declare the _glory_ of god;" that is, the light of god, the eternal glory, stable and changeless. as their orbs fail not--but pursue their course for ever, to give light upon the earth--so god's glory surrounds man for ever--changeless, in its fulness insupportable--infinite. "and the firmament showeth his _handywork_." § . the clouds, prepared by the hand of god for the help of man, varied in their ministration--veiling the inner splendor--show, not his eternal glory, but his daily handiwork. so he dealt with moses. i will cover thee "with my hand" as i pass by. compare job xxxvi. : "remember that thou magnify his work, which men behold. every man may see it." not so the glory--that only in part; the courses of these stars are to be seen imperfectly, and but by a few. but this firmament, "every man may see it, man may behold it afar off." "behold, god is great, and we know him not. for he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof." § . "day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge. they have no speech nor language, yet without these their voice is heard. their rule is gone out throughout the earth, and their words to the end of the world." note that. their rule throughout the earth, whether inhabited or not--their law of right is thereon; but their words, spoken to human souls, to the end of the inhabited world. "in them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun," &c. literally, a tabernacle, or curtained tent, with its veil and its hangings; also of the colors of his desert tabernacle--blue, and purple, and scarlet. thus far the psalm describes the manner of this great heaven's message. thenceforward, it comes to the matter of it. § . observe, you have the two divisions of the declaration. the heavens (compare psalm viii.) declare the eternal glory of god before men, and the firmament the daily mercy of god towards men. and the eternal glory is in this--that the law of the lord is perfect, and his testimony sure, and his statutes right. and the daily mercy in this--that the commandment of the lord is pure, and his fear is clean, and his judgments true and righteous. there are three oppositions:-- between law and commandment. between testimony and fear. between statute and judgment. § . i. between law and commandment. the law is fixed and everlasting; uttered once, abiding for ever, as the sun, it may not be moved. it is "perfect, converting the soul:" the whole question about the soul being, whether it has been turned from darkness to light, acknowledged this law or not,--whether it is godly or ungodly? but the commandment is given momentarily to each man, according to the need. it does not convert: it guides. it does not concern the entire purpose of the soul; but it enlightens the eyes, respecting a special act. the law is, "do this always;" the commandment, "do _thou_ this _now_:" often mysterious enough, and through the cloud; chilling, and with strange rain of tears; yet always pure (the law converting, but the commandment cleansing): a rod not for guiding merely, but for strengthening, and tasting honey with. "look how mine eyes have been enlightened, because i tasted a little of this honey." § . ii. between testimony and fear. the testimony is everlasting: the true promise of salvation. bright as the sun beyond all the earth-cloud, it makes wise the simple; all wisdom being assured in perceiving it and trusting it; all wisdom brought to nothing which does not perceive it. but the fear of god is taught through special encouragement and special withdrawal of it, according to each man's need--by the earth-cloud--smile and frown alternately: it also, as the commandment, is clean, purging and casting out all other fear, it only remaining for ever. § . iii. between statute and judgment. the statutes are the appointments of the eternal justice; fixed and bright, and constant as the stars; equal and balanced as their courses. they "are right, rejoicing the heart." but the judgments are special judgments of given acts of men. "true," that is to say, fulfilling the warning or promise given to each man; "righteous altogether," that is, done or executed in truth and righteousness. the statute is right, in appointment. the judgment righteous altogether, in appointment and fulfilment;--yet not always rejoicing the heart. then, respecting all these, comes the expression of passionate desire, and of joy; that also divided with respect to each. the glory of god, eternal in the heavens, is future, "to be _desired_ more than gold, than much fine gold"--treasure in the heavens that faileth not. but the present guidance and teaching of god are on earth; they are now possessed, sweeter than all earthly food--"sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. moreover by them" (the law and the testimony) "is thy servant warned"--warned of the ways of death and life. "and in keeping them" (the commandments and the judgments) "there is great reward:" pain now, and bitterness of tears, but reward unspeakable. § . thus far the psalm has been descriptive and interpreting. it ends in prayer. "who can understand his errors?" (wanderings from the perfect law.) "cleanse thou me from secret faults; from all that i have done against thy will, and far from thy way, in the darkness. keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins" (sins against the commandment) "against thy will when it is seen and direct, pleading with heart and conscience. so shall i be undefiled, and innocent from the great transgression--the transgression that crucifies afresh. "let the words of my mouth (for i have set them to declare thy law), and the meditation of my heart (for i have set it to keep thy commandments), be acceptable in thy sight, whose glory is my strength, and whose work, my redemption; my strength, and my redeemer." footnotes: [ ] compare the beautiful stanza beginning the epilogue of the "golden legend." [ ] i do not mean that correggio is greater than turner, but that only _his_ way of work, the touch which he has used for the golden hair of antiope for instance, could have painted these clouds. in open lowland country i have never been able to come to any satisfactory conclusion about their height, so strangely do they blend with each other. here, for instance, is the arrangement of an actual group of them. the space at a was deep, purest ultramarine blue, traversed by streaks of absolutely pure and perfect rose-color. the blue passed downwards imperceptibly into gray at g, and then into amber, and at the white edge below into gold. on this amber ground the streaks p were dark purple, and, finally, the spaces at b b, again, clearest and most precious blue, paler than that at a. the _two_ levels of these clouds are always very notable. after a continuance of fine weather among the alps, the determined approach of rain is usually announced by a soft, unbroken film of level cloud, white and thin at the approaching edge, gray at the horizon, covering the whole sky from side to side, and advancing steadily from the south-west. under its gray veil, as it approaches, are formed detached bars, darker or lighter than the field above, according to the position of the sun. these bars are usually of a very sharply elongated oval shape, something like fish. i habitually call them "fish clouds," and look upon them with much discomfort, if any excursions of interest have been planned within the next three days. their oval shape is a perspective deception dependent on their flatness; they are probably thin, extended fields, irregularly circular. [illustration: fig. .] [ ] i do not copy the interpolated words which follow, "and commandeth it _not to shine_." the closing verse of the chapter, as we have it, is unintelligible; not so in the vulgate, the reading of which i give. [ ] i assume the [greek: aupnoi krênai nomades] to mean clouds, not springs; but this does not matter, the whole passage being one of rejoicing in moisture and dew of heaven. [ ] i believe, however, that when pegasus strikes forth this fountain, he is to be regarded, not as springing from medusa's blood, but as born of medusa by neptune; the true horse was given by neptune striking the earth with his trident; the divine horse is born to neptune and the storm-cloud. [ ] i have been often at great heights on the alps in rough weather, and have seen strong gusts of storm in the plains of the south. but, to get full expression of the very heart and meaning of wind, there is no place like a yorkshire moor. i think scottish breezes are thinner, very bleak and piercing, but not substantial. if you lean on them they will let you fall, but one may rest against a yorkshire breeze as one would on a quickset hedge. i shall not soon forget,--having had the good fortune to meet a vigorous one on an april morning, between hawes and settle, just on the flat under wharnside,--the vague sense of wonder with which i watched ingleborough stand without rocking. [ ] when there is a violent current of wind near the ground, the rain columns slope _forward_ at the foot. see the entrance to fowey harbor, of the england series. [ ] see part ix. chap. , "the hesperid Æglé." [ ] the reader must remember that sketches made as these are, on the instant, cannot be far carried, and would lose all their use if they were finished at home. these were both made in pencil, and merely washed with gray on returning to the inn, enough to secure the main forms. [ ] i do not say this carelessly, nor because machines throw the laboring man "out of work." the laboring man will always have more work than he wants. i speak thus, because the use of such machinery involves the destruction of all pleasures in rural labor; and i doubt not, in that destruction, the essential deterioration of the national mind. [ ] you may see the arrangement of subject in the published engraving, but nothing more; it is among the worst engravings in the england series. [ ] hosea xiii. , . [ ] hosea xiv. , , . compare psalm lxxii. - . [ ] i believe few sermons are more false or dangerous than those in which the teacher professes to impress his audience by showing "how much there is in a verse." if he examined his own heart closely before beginning, he would often find that his real desire was to show how much he, the expounder, could make out of the verse. but entirely honest and earnest men often fall into the same error. they have been taught that they should always look deep, and that scripture is full of hidden meanings; and they easily yield to the flattering conviction that every chance idea which comes into their heads in looking at a word, is put there by divine agency. hence they wander away into what they believe to be an inspired meditation, but which is, in reality, a meaningless jumble of ideas; perhaps very proper ideas, but with which the text in question has nothing whatever to do. part viii. of ideas of relation:--first, of invention formal. chapter i. the law of help. § . we have now reached the last and the most important part of our subject. we have seen, in the first division of this book, how far art may be, and has been, consistent with physical or material facts. in its second division, we examined how far it may be and has been obedient to the laws of physical beauty. in this last division we have to consider its relations of art to god and man. its work in the help of human beings, and service of their creator. we have to inquire into the various powers, conditions, and aims of mind involved in the conception or creation of pictures; in the choice of subject, and the mode and order of its history;--the choice of forms, and the modes of their arrangement. and these phases of mind being concerned, partly with choice and arrangement of incidents, partly with choice and arrangement of forms and colors, the whole subject will fall into two main divisions, namely, expressional or spiritual invention; and material or formal invention. they are of course connected;--all good formal invention being expressional also; but as a matter of convenience it is best to say what may be ascertained of the nature of formal invention, before attempting to illustrate the faculty in its higher field. § . first, then, of invention formal, otherwise and most commonly called technical composition; that is to say, the arrangement of lines, forms, or colors, so as to produce the best possible effect.[ ] i have often been accused of slighting this quality in pictures; the fact being that i have avoided it only because i considered it too great and wonderful for me to deal with. the longer i thought, the more wonderful it always seemed; and it is, to myself personally, the quality, above all others, which gives me delight in pictures. many others i admire, or respect; but this one i rejoice in. expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential; but all these are not enough. i never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed i can hardly leave off looking at it. "well composed." does that mean according to rule? no. precisely the contrary. composed as only the man who did it could have done it; composed as no other picture is, or was, or ever can be again. every great work stands alone. § . yet there are certain elementary laws of arrangement traceable a little way; a few of these only i shall note, not caring to pursue the subject far in this work, so intricate it becomes even in its first elements: nor could it be treated with any approach to completeness, unless i were to give many and elaborate outlines of large pictures. i have a vague hope of entering on such a task, some future day. meantime i shall only indicate the place which technical composition should hold in our scheme. and, first, let us understand what composition is, and how far it is required. § . composition may be best defined as the help of everything in the picture by everything else. i wish the reader to dwell a little on this word "help." it is a grave one. in substance which we call "inanimate," as of clouds, or stones, their atoms may cohere to each other, or consist with each other, but they do not help each other. the removal of one part does not injure the rest. but in a plant, the taking away of any one part does injure the rest. hurt or remove any portion of the sap, bark, or pith, the rest is injured. if any part enters into a state in which it no more assists the rest, and has thus become "helpless," we call it also "dead." the power which causes the several portions of the plant to help each other, we call life. much more is this so in an animal. we may take away the branch of a tree without much harm to it; but not the animal's limb. thus, intensity of life is also intensity of helpfulness--completeness of depending of each part on all the rest. the ceasing of this help is what we call corruption; and in proportion to the perfectness of the help, is the dreadfulness of the loss. the more intense the life has been, the more terrible is its corruption. the decomposition of a crystal is not necessarily impure at all. the fermentation of a wholesome liquid begins to admit the idea slightly; the decay of leaves yet more; of flowers, more; of animals, with greater painfulness and terribleness in exact proportion to their original vitality; and the foulest of all corruption is that of the body of man; and, in his body, that which is occasioned by disease, more than that of natural death. § . i said just now, that though atoms of inanimate substance could not help each other, they could "consist" with each other. "consistence" is their virtue. thus the parts of a crystal are consistent, but of dust, inconsistent. orderly adherence, the best help its atoms can give, constitutes the nobleness of such substance. when matter is either consistent, or living, we call it pure, or clean; when inconsistent, or corrupting (unhelpful), we call it impure, or unclean. the greatest uncleanliness being that which is essentially most opposite to life. life and consistency, then, both expressing one character (namely, helpfulness, of a higher or lower order), the maker of all creatures and things, "by whom all creatures live, and all things consist," is essentially and for ever the helpful one, or in softer saxon, the "holy" one. the word has no other ultimate meaning: helpful, harmless, undefiled: "living" or "lord of life." the idea is clear and mighty in the cherubim's cry: "helpful, helpful, helpful, lord god of hosts;" _i.e._ of all the hosts, armies, and creatures of the earth.[ ] § . a pure or holy state of anything, therefore, is that in which all its parts are helpful or consistent. they may or may not be homogeneous. the highest or organic purities are composed of many elements in an entirely helpful state. the highest and first law of the universe--and the other name of life, is, therefore, "help." the other name of death is "separation." government and co-operation are in all things and eternally the laws of life. anarchy and competition, eternally, and in all things, the laws of death. § . perhaps the best, though the most familiar example we could take of the nature and power of consistence, will be that of the possible changes in the dust we tread on. exclusive of animal decay, we can hardly arrive at a more absolute type of impurity than the mud or slime of a damp over-trodden path, in the outskirts of a manufacturing town. i do not say mud of the road, because that is mixed with animal refuse; but take merely an ounce or two of the blackest slime of a beaten footpath on a rainy day, near a large manufacturing town. § . that slime we shall find in most cases composed of clay (or brickdust, which is burnt clay) mixed with soot, a little sand, and water. all these elements are at helpless war with each other, and destroy reciprocally each other's nature and power, competing and fighting for place at every tread of your foot;--sand squeezing out clay, and clay squeezing out water, and soot meddling everywhere and defiling the whole. let us suppose that this ounce of mud is left in perfect rest, and that its elements gather together, like to like, so that their atoms may get into the closest relations possible. § . let the clay begin. ridding itself of all foreign substance, it gradually becomes a white earth, already very beautiful; and fit, with help of congealing fire, to be made into finest porcelain, and painted on, and be kept in kings' palaces. but such artificial consistence is not its best. leave it still quiet to follow its own instinct of unity, and it becomes not only white, but clear; not only clear, but hard; not only clear and hard, but so set that it can deal with light in a wonderful way, and gather out of it the loveliest blue rays only, refusing the rest. we call it then a sapphire. such being the consummation of the clay, we give similar permission of quiet to the sand. it also becomes, first, a white earth, then proceeds to grow clear and hard, and at last arranges itself in mysterious, infinitely fine, parallel lines, which have the power of reflecting not merely the blue rays, but the blue, green, purple, and red rays in the greatest beauty in which they can be seen through any hard material whatsoever. we call it then an opal. in next order the soot sets to work; it cannot make itself white at first, but instead of being discouraged, tries harder and harder, and comes out clear at last, and the hardest thing in the world; and for the blackness that it had, obtains in exchange the power of reflecting all the rays of the sun at once in the vividest blaze that any solid thing can shoot. we call it then a diamond. last of all the water purifies or unites itself, contented enough if it only reach the form of a dew-drop; but if we insist on its proceeding to a more perfect consistence, it crystallizes into the shape of a star. and for the ounce of slime which we had by political economy of competition, we have by political economy of co-operation, a sapphire, an opal, and a diamond, set in the midst of a star of snow. § . now invention in art signifies an arrangement, in which everything in the work is thus consistent with all things else, and helpful to all else. it is the greatest and rarest of all the qualities of art. the power by which it is effected is absolutely inexplicable and incommunicable; but exercised with entire facility by those who possess it, in many cases even unconsciously.[ ] in work which is not composed, there may be many beautiful things, but they do not help each other. they at the best only stand beside, and more usually compete with and destroy, each other. they may be connected artificially in many ways, but the test of there being no invention is, that if one of them be taken away, the others are no worse than before. but in true composition, if one be taken away, all the rest are helpless and valueless. generally, in falsely composed work, if anything be taken away, the rest will look better; because the attention is less distracted. hence the pleasure of inferior artists in sketching, and their inability to finish; all that they add destroys. § . also in true composition, everything not only helps everything else a _little_, but helps with its utmost power. every atom is in full energy; and _all_ that energy is kind. not a line, nor spark of color, but is doing its very best, and that best is aid. the extent to which this law is carried in truly right and noble work is wholly inconceivable to the ordinary observer, and no true account of it would be believed. § . true composition being entirely easy to the man who can compose, he is seldom proud of it, though he clearly recognizes it. also, true composition is inexplicable. no one can explain how the notes of a mozart melody, or the folds of a piece of titian's drapery, produce their essential effect on each other. if you do not feel it, no one can by reasoning make you feel it. and, the highest composition is so subtle, that it is apt to become unpopular, and sometimes seem insipid. § . the reader may be surprised at my giving so high a place to invention. but if he ever come to know true invention from false, he will find that it is not only the highest quality of art, but is simply the most wonderful act or power of humanity. it is pre-eminently the deed of human creation; [greek: poiêsis], otherwise, poetry. if the reader will look back to my definition of poetry, he will find it is "the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions" (vol. iii. p. ), amplified below (§ ) into "assembling by help of the imagination;" that is to say, imagination associative, described at length in vol. ii., in the chapter just referred to. the mystery of the power is sufficiently set forth in that place. of its dignity i have a word or two to say here. § . men in their several professed employments, looked at broadly, may be properly arranged under five classes:-- . persons who see. these in modern language are sometimes called sight-seers, that being an occupation coming more and more into vogue every day. anciently they used to be called, simply, seers. . persons who talk. these, in modern language, are usually called talkers, or speakers, as in the house of commons, and elsewhere. they used to be called prophets. . persons who make. these, in modern language, are usually called manufacturers. anciently they were called poets. . persons who think. there seems to be no very distinct modern title for this kind of person, anciently called philosophers; nevertheless we have a few of them among us. . persons who do: in modern language, called practical persons; anciently, believers. of the first two classes i have only this to note,--that we ought neither to say that a person sees, if he sees falsely, nor speaks, if he speaks falsely. for seeing falsely is worse than blindness, and speaking falsely, than silence. a man who is too dim-sighted to discern the road from the ditch, may feel which is which;--but if the ditch appears manifestly to him to be the road, and the road to be the ditch, what shall become of him? false seeing is unseeing,--on the negative side of blindness; and false speaking, unspeaking,--on the negative side of silence. to the persons who think, also, the same test applies very shrewdly. theirs is a dangerous profession; and from the time of the aristophanes thought-shop to the great german establishment, or thought-manufactory, whose productions have, unhappily, taken in part the place of the older and more serviceable commodities of nuremberg toys and berlin wool, it has been often harmful enough to mankind. it should not be so, for a false thought is more distinctly and visibly no thought than a false saying is no saying. but it is touching the two great productive classes of the doers and makers, that we have one or two important points to note here. § . has the reader ever considered, carefully, what is the meaning of "doing" a thing? suppose a rock falls from a hill-side, crushes a group of cottages, and kills a number of people. the stone has produced a great effect in the world. if any one asks, respecting the broken roofs, "what did it?" you say the stone did it. yet you don't talk of the deed of the stone. if you inquire farther, and find that a goat had been feeding beside the rock, and had loosened it by gnawing the roots of the grasses beneath, you find the goat to be the active cause of the calamity, and you say the goat did it. yet you don't call the goat the doer, nor talk of its evil deed. but if you find any one went up to the rock, in the night, and with deliberate purpose loosened it, that it might fall on the cottages, you say in quite a different sense, "it is his deed: he is the doer of it." § . it appears, then, that deliberate purpose and resolve are needed to constitute a deed or doing, in the true sense of the word; and that when, accidentally or mechanically, events take place without such purpose, we have indeed effects or results, and agents or causes, but neither deeds nor doers. now it so happens, as we all well know, that by far the largest part of things happening in practical life _are_ brought about with no deliberate purpose. there are always a number of people who have the nature of stones; they fall on other persons and crush them. some again have the nature of weeds, and twist about other people's feet and entangle them. more have the nature of logs, and lie in the way, so that every one falls over them. and most of all have the nature of thorns, and set themselves by waysides, so that every passer-by must be torn, and all good seed choked; or perhaps make wonderful crackling under various pots, even to the extent of practically boiling water and working pistons. all these people produce immense and sorrowful effect in the world. yet none of them are doers: it is their nature to crush, impede, and prick: but deed is not in them.[ ] § . and farther, observe, that even when some effect is finally intended, you cannot call it the person's deed, unless it is _what_ he intended. if an ignorant person, purposing evil, accidentally does good, (as if a thief's disturbing a family should lead them to discover in time that their house was on fire); or _vice versâ_, if an ignorant person intending good, accidentally does evil (as if a child should give hemlock to his companions for celery), in neither case do you call them the doers of what may result. so that in order to be a true deed, it is necessary that the effect of it should be foreseen. which, ultimately, it cannot be, but by a person who knows, and in his deed obeys, the laws of the universe, and of its maker. and this knowledge is in its highest form, respecting the will of the ruling spirit, called trust. for it is not the knowledge that a thing is, but that, according to the promise and nature of the ruling spirit, a thing will be. also obedience in its highest form is not obedience to a constant and compulsory law, but a persuaded or voluntary yielded obedience to an issued command; and so far as it was a _persuaded_ submission to command, it was anciently called, in a passive sense, "persuasion," or [greek: pistis], and in so far as it alone assuredly did, and it alone _could_ do, what it meant to do, and was therefore the root and essence of all human deed, it was called by the latins the "doing," or _fides_, which has passed into the french _foi_ and the english _faith_. and therefore because in his doing always certain, and in his speaking always true, his name who leads the armies of heaven is "faithful and true,"[ ] and all deeds which are done in alliance with those armies, be they small or great, are essentially deeds of faith, which therefore, and in this one stern, eternal, sense, subdues all kingdoms, and turns to flight the armies of the aliens, and is at once the source and the substance of all human deed, rightly so called. § . thus far then of practical persons, once called believers, as set forth in the last word of the noblest group of words ever, so far as i know, uttered by simple man concerning his practice, being the final testimony of the leaders of a great practical nation, whose deed thenceforward became an example of deed to mankind: [greek: Ô xein', angellein lakedaimoniois, hoti têde keimetha, tois keinôn rhêmasi peithomenoi.] "o stranger! (we pray thee), tell the lacedæmonians that we are lying here, having _obeyed_ their words." § . what, let us ask next, is the ruling character of the person who produces--the creator or maker, anciently called the poet? we have seen what a deed is. what then is a "creation"? nay, it may be replied, to "create" cannot be said of man's labor. on the contrary, it not only can be said, but is and must be said continually. you certainly do not talk of creating a watch, or creating a shoe; nevertheless you _do_ talk of creating a feeling. why is this? look back to the greatest of all creation, that of the world. suppose the trees had been ever so well or so ingeniously put together, stem and leaf, yet if they had not been able to grow, would they have been well created? or suppose the fish had been cut and stitched finely out of skin and whalebone; yet, cast upon the waters, had not been able to swim? or suppose adam and eve had been made in the softest clay, ever so neatly, and set at the foot of the tree of knowledge, fastened up to it, quite unable to fall, or do anything else, would they have been well created, or in any true sense created at all? § . it will, perhaps, appear to you, after a little farther thought, that to create anything in reality is to put life into it. a poet, or creator, is therefore a person who puts things together, not as a watchmaker steel, or a shoemaker leather, but who puts life into them. his work is essentially this: it is the gathering and arranging of material by imagination, so as to have in it at last the harmony or helpfulness of life, and the passion or emotion of life. mere fitting and adjustment of material is nothing; that is watchmaking. but helpful and passionate harmony, essentially choral harmony, so called from the greek word "rejoicing,"[ ] is the harmony of apollo and the muses; the word muse and mother being derived from the same root, meaning "passionate seeking," or love, of which the issue is passionate finding, or sacred invention. for which reason i could not bear to use any baser word than this of invention. and if the reader will think over all these things, and follow them out, as i think he may easily with this much of clue given him, he will not any more think it wrong in me to place invention so high among the powers of man.[ ] or any more think it strange that the last act of the life of socrates[ ] should have been to purify himself from the sin of having negligently listened to the voice within him, which, through all his past life, had bid him "labor, and make harmony." footnotes: [ ] the word composition has been so much abused, and is in itself so inexpressive, that when i wrote the first part of this work i intended always to use, in this final section of it, the word "invention," and to reserve the term "composition" for that false composition which can be taught on principles; as i have already so employed the term in the chapter on "imagination associative," in the second volume. but, in arranging this section, i find it is not conveniently possible to avoid the ordinary modes of parlance; i therefore only head the section as i intended (and as is, indeed, best), using in the text the ordinarily accepted term; only, the reader must be careful to note that what i spoke of shortly as "composition" in the chapters on "imagination," i here always call, distinctly, "false composition;" using here, as i find most convenient, the words "invention" or "composition" indifferently for the true faculty. [ ] "the cries of them which have reaped have entered into the ears of the lord of sabaoth (of all the creatures of the earth)." you will find a wonderful clearness come into many texts by reading, habitually, "helpful" and "helpfulness" for "holy" and "holiness," or else "living," as in rom. xi. . the sense "dedicated" (the latin _sanctus_), being, of course, inapplicable to the supreme being, is an entirely secondary and accidental one. [ ] by diligent study of good compositions it is possible to put work together so that the parts shall help each other, a little, or at all events do no harm; and when some tact and taste are associated with this diligence, semblances of real invention are often produced, which, being the results of great labor, the artist is always proud of; and which, being capable of learned explanation and imitation, the spectator naturally takes interest in. the common precepts about composition all produce and teach this false kind, which, as true composition is the noblest, being the corruption of it, is the ignoblest condition of art. [ ] we may, perhaps, expediently recollect as much of our botany as to teach us that there may be sharp and rough persons, like spines, who yet have good in them, and are essentially branches, and can bud. but the true thorny person is no spine, only an excrescence; rootless evermore,--leafless evermore. no crown made of such can ever meet glory of angel's hand. (in memoriam, lxviii.) [ ] "true," means, etymologically, not "consistent with fact," but "which may be trusted." "this is a true saying, and worthy of all acceptation," &c., meaning a trusty saying,--a saying to be rested on, leant upon. [ ] [greek: chorous te ônomakenai para tês charas emphyton onoma]. (dé leg. ii. .) [ ] this being, indeed, among the visiblest signs of the divine or immortal life. we have got a base habit of opposing the word "mortal" or "deathful" merely to "_im_-mortal;" whereas it is essentially contrary to "divine" (to [greek: theios], not to [greek: athanatos], phaedo, ), that which is deathful being anarchic or disobedient, and that which is divine ruling and obedient; this being the true distinction between flesh and spirit. [ ] [greek: pollakis moi phoitôn to auto enypnion en tô parelthonti biô, allot' en allê opsei phainomenon, ta auta de legon, Ô sôkra tes, ephê, mousikên poiei kai ergazou]. (phaedo, .) chapter ii. the task of the least. § . the reader has probably been surprised at my assertions made often before now, and reiterated here, that the _minutest_ portion of a great composition is helpful to the whole. it certainly does not seem easily conceivable that this should be so. i will go farther, and say that it is inconceivable. but it is the fact. we shall discern it to be so by taking one or two compositions to pieces, and examining the fragments. in doing which, we must remember that a great composition always has a leading emotional purpose, technically called its motive, to which all its lines and forms have some relation. undulating lines, for instance, are expressive of action; and would be false in effect if the motive of the picture was one of repose. horizontal and angular lines are expressive of rest and strength; and would destroy a design whose purpose was to express disquiet and feebleness. it is therefore necessary to ascertain the motive before descending to the detail. § . one of the simplest subjects, in the series of the rivers of france, is "rietz, near saumur." the published plate gives a better rendering than usual of its tone of light; and my rough etching, plate , sufficiently shows the arrangement of its lines. what is their motive? to get at it completely, we must know something of the loire. the district through which it here flows is, for the most part, a low place, yet not altogether at the level of the stream, but cut into steep banks of chalk or gravel, thirty or forty feet high, running for miles at about an equal height above the water. [illustration: . loire-side.] these banks are excavated by the peasantry, partly for houses, partly for cellars, so economizing vineyard space above; and thus a kind of continuous village runs along the river-side, composed half of caves, half of rude buildings, backed by the cliff, propped against it, therefore always leaning away from the river; mingled with overlappings of vineyard trellis from above, and little towers or summer-houses for outlook, when the grapes are ripe, or for gossip over the garden wall. § . it is an autumnal evening, then, by this loire side. the day has been hot, and the air is heavy and misty still; the sunlight warm, but dim; the brown vine-leaves motionless: all else quiet. not a sail in sight on the river,[ ] its strong, noiseless current lengthening the stream of low sunlight. the motive of the picture, therefore, is the expression of rude but perfect peace, slightly mingled with an indolent languor and despondency; the peace between intervals of enforced labor; happy, but listless, and having little care or hope about the future; cutting its home out of this gravel bank, and letting the vine and the river twine and undermine as they will; careless to mend or build, so long as the walls hold together, and the black fruit swells in the sunshine. § . to get this repose, together with rude stability, we have therefore horizontal lines and bold angles. the grand horizontal space and sweep of turner's distant river show perhaps better in the etching than in the plate; but depend wholly for value on the piece of near wall. it is the vertical line of its dark side which drives the eye up into the distance, right against the horizontal, and so makes it felt, while the flatness of the stone prepares the eye to understand the flatness of the river. farther: hide with your finger the little ring on that stone, and you will find the river has stopped flowing. that ring is to repeat the curved lines of the river bank, which express its line of current, and to bring the feeling of them down near us. on the other side of the road the horizontal lines are taken up again by the dark pieces of wood, without which we should still lose half our space. next: the repose is to be not only perfect, but indolent: the repose of out-wearied people: not caring much what becomes of them. you see the road is covered with litter. even the crockery is left outside the cottage to dry in the sun, after being washed up. the steps of the cottage door have been too high for comfort originally, only it was less trouble to cut three large stones than four or five small. they are now all aslope and broken, not repaired for years. their weighty forms increase the sense of languor throughout the scene, and of stability also, because we feel how difficult it would be to stir them. the crockery has its work to do also;--the arched door on the left being necessary to show the great thickness of walls and the strength they require to prevent falling in of the cliff above;--as the horizontal lines must be diffused on the right, so this arch must be diffused on the left; and the large round plate on one side of the steps, with the two small ones on the other, are to carry down the element of circular curvature. hide them, and see the result. as they carry the arched group of forms down, the arched window-shutter diffuses it upwards, where all the lines of the distant buildings suggest one and the same idea of disorderly and careless strength, mingling masonry with rock. § . so far of the horizontal and curved lines. how of the radiating ones? what has the black vine trellis got to do? lay a pencil or ruler parallel with its lines. you will find that they point to the massive building in the distance. to which, as nearly as is possible without at once showing the artifice, every other radiating line points also; almost ludicrously when it is once pointed out; even the curved line of the top of the terrace runs into it, and the last sweep of the river evidently leads to its base. and so nearly is it in the exact centre of the picture, that one diagonal from corner to corner passes through it, and the other only misses the base by the twentieth of an inch. if you are accustomed to france, you will know in a moment by its outline that this massive building is an old church. without it, the repose would not have been essentially the laborer's rest--rest as of the sabbath. among all the groups of lines that point to it, two are principal: the first, those of the vine trellis: the second, those of the handles of the saw left in the beam:--the blessing of human life and its labor. whenever turner wishes to express profound repose, he puts in the foreground some instrument of labor cast aside. see, in roger's poems, the last vignette, "datur hora quieti," with the plough in the furrow; and in the first vignette of the same book, the scythe on the shoulder of the peasant going home. (there is nothing about the scythe in the passage of the poem which this vignette illustrates.) § . observe, farther, the outline of the church itself. as our habitations are, so is our church, evidently a heap of old, but massive, walls, patched, and repaired, and roofed in, and over and over, until its original shape is hardly recognizable. i know the kind of church well--can tell even here, two miles off, that i shall find some norman arches in the apse, and a flamboyant porch, rich and dark, with every statue broken out of it; and a rude wooden belfry above all; and a quantity of miserable shops built in among the buttresses; and that i may walk in and out as much as i please, but that how often soever, i shall always find some one praying at the holy sepulchre, in the darkest aisle, and my going in and out will not disturb them. for they _are_ praying, which in many a handsomer and highlier-furbished edifice might, perhaps, not be so assuredly the case. § . lastly: what kind of people have we on this winding road? three indolent ones, leaning on the wall to look over into the gliding water; and a matron with her market panniers, by her figure, not a fast rider. the road, besides, is bad, and seems unsafe for trotting, and she has passed without disturbing the cat, who sits comfortably on the block of wood in the middle of it. § . next to this piece of quietness, let us glance at a composition in which the motive is one of tumult: that of the fall of schaffhausen. it is engraved in the keepsake. i have etched in plate , at the top, the chief lines of its composition,[ ] in which the first great purpose is to give swing enough to the water. the line of fall is straight and monotonous in reality. turner wants to get the great concave sweep and rush of the river well felt, in spite of the unbroken form. the column of spray, rocks, mills, and bank, all radiate like a plume, sweeping round together in grand curves to the left, where the group of figures, hurried about the ferry boat, rises like a dash of spray; they also radiating: so as to form one perfectly connected cluster, with the two gens-d'armes and the millstones; the millstones at the bottom being the root of it; the two soldiers laid right and left to sustain the branch of figures beyond, balanced just as a tree bough would be. § . one of the gens-d'armes is flirting with a young lady in a round cap and full sleeves, under pretence of wanting her to show him what she has in her bandbox. the motive of which flirtation is, so far as turner is concerned in it, primarily the bandbox: this and the millstones below, give him a series of concave lines, which, concentrated by the recumbent soldiers, intensify the hollow sweep of the fall, precisely as the ring on the stone does the loire eddies. these curves are carried out on the right by the small plate of eggs, laid to be washed at the spring; and, all these concave lines being a little too quiet and recumbent, the staggering casks are set on the left, and the ill-balanced milk-pail on the right, to give a general feeling of things being rolled over and over. the things which are to give this sense of rolling are dark, in order to hint at the way in which the cataract rolls boulders of rock; while the forms which are to give the sense of its sweeping force are white. the little spring, splashing out of its pine-trough, is to give contrast with the power of the fall,--while it carries out the general sense of splashing water. [illustration: . the mill-stream.] [illustration: painted by j. n. w. turner. drawn by j. ruskin. engraved by r. p. cuff. . the castle of lauffen.] § . this spring exists on the spot, and so does everything else in the picture; but the combinations are wholly arbitrary; it being turner's fixed principle to collect out of any scene whatever was characteristic, and put it together just as he liked. the changes made in this instance are highly curious. the mills have no resemblance whatever to the real group as seen from this spot; for there is a vulgar and formal dwelling-house in front of them. but if you climb the rock behind them, you find they form on that side a towering cluster, which turner has put with little modification into the drawing. what he has done to the mills, he has done with still greater audacity to the central rock. seen from this spot, it shows, in reality, its greatest breadth, and is heavy and uninteresting; but on the lauffen side, exposes its consumed base, worn away by the rush of water, which turner resolving to show, serenely draws the rock as it appears from the other side of the rhine, and brings that view of it over to this side. i have etched the bit with the rock a little larger below; and if the reader knows the spot, he will see that this piece of the drawing, reversed in the etching, is almost a bonâ fide unreversed study of the fall from the lauffen side.[ ] finally, the castle of lauffen itself, being, when seen from this spot, too much foreshortened to show its extent, turner walks a quarter of a mile lower down the river, draws the castle accurately there, brings it back with him, and puts it in all its extent, where he chooses to have it, beyond the rocks. i tried to copy and engrave this piece of the drawing of its real size, merely to show the forms of the trees, drifted back by the breeze from the fall, and wet with its spray; but in the endeavor to facsimile the touches, great part of their grace and ease has been lost; still, plate may, if compared with the same piece in the keepsake engraving, at least show that the original drawing has not yet been rendered with completeness. § . these two examples may sufficiently serve to show the mode in which minor details, both in form and spirit, are used by turner to aid his main motives; of course i cannot, in the space of this volume, go on examining subjects at this length, even if i had time to etch them; but every design of turner's would be equally instructive, examined in a similar manner. thus far, however, we have only seen the help of the parts to the whole: we must give yet a little attention to the mode of combining the smallest details. i am always led away, in spite of myself, from my proper subject here, invention formal, or the merely pleasant placing of lines and masses, into the emotional results of such arrangement. the chief reason of this is that the emotional power can be explained; but the perfection of formative arrangement, as i said, cannot be explained, any more than that of melody in music. an instance or two of it, however, may be given. § . much fine formative arrangement depends on a more or less elliptical or pear-shaped balance of the group, obtained by arranging the principal members of it on two opposite curves, and either centralizing it by some powerful feature at the base, centre, or summit; or else clasping it together by some conspicuous point or knot. a very small object will often do this satisfactorily. if you can get the complete series of lefèbre's engravings from titian and veronese, they will be quite enough to teach you, in their dumb way, everything that is teachable of composition; at all events, try to get the madonna, with st. peter and st. george under the two great pillars; the madonna and child, with mitred bishop on her left, and st. andrew on her right; and veronese's triumph of venice. the first of these plates unites two formative symmetries; that of the two pillars, clasped by the square altar-cloth below and cloud above, catches the eye first; but the main group is the fivefold one rising to the left, crowned by the madonna. st. francis and st. peter form its two wings, and the kneeling portrait figures, its base. it is clasped at the bottom by the key of st. peter, which points straight at the madonna's head, and is laid on the steps solely for this purpose; the curved lines, which enclose the group, meet also in her face; and the straight line of light, on the cloak of the nearest senator, points at her also. if you have turner's liber studiorum, turn to the lauffenburg, and compare the figure group there: a fivefold chain, one standing figure, central; two recumbent, for wings; two half-recumbent, for bases; and a cluster of weeds to clasp. then turn to lefèbre's europa (there are two in the series--i mean the one with the two tree trunks over her head). it is a wonderful ninefold group. europa central; two stooping figures, each surmounted by a standing one, for wings; a cupid on one side, and dog on the other, for bases; a cupid and trunk of tree, on each side, to terminate above; and a garland for clasp. [illustration: fig. .] § . fig. , page , will serve to show the mode in which similar arrangements are carried into the smallest detail. it is magnified four times from a cluster of leaves in the foreground of the "isis" (liber studiorum). figs. and , page , show the arrangement of the two groups composing it; the lower is purely symmetrical, with trefoiled centre and broad masses for wings; the uppermost is a sweeping continuous curve, symmetrical, but foreshortened. both are clasped by arrow-shaped leaves. the two whole groups themselves are, in turn, members of another larger group, composing the entire foreground, and consisting of broad dock-leaves, with minor clusters on the right and left, of which these form the chief portion on the right side. [illustration: fig. .] [illustration: fig. .] § . unless every leaf, and every visible point or object, however small, forms a part of some harmony of this kind (these symmetrical conditions being only the most simple and obvious), it has no business in the picture. it is the necessary connection of all the forms and colors, down to the last touch, which constitutes great or inventive work, separated from all common work by an impassable gulf. by diligently copying the etchings of the liber studiorum, the reader may, however, easily attain the perception of the existence of these relations, and be prepared to understand turner's more elaborate composition. it would take many figures to disentangle and explain the arrangements merely of the leaf cluster, fig. , facing page ; but that there _is_ a system, and that every leaf has a fixed value and place in it, can hardly but be felt at a glance. it is curious that, in spite of all the constant talkings of "composition" which goes on among art students, true composition is just the last thing which appears to be perceived. one would have thought that in this group, at least, the value of the central black leaf would have been seen, of which the principal function is to point towards, and continue, the line of bank above. see plate . but a glance at the published plate in the england series will show that no idea of the composition had occurred to the engraver's mind. he thought any leaves would do, and supplied them from his own repertory of hack vegetation. § . i would willingly enlarge farther on this subject--it is a favorite one with me; but the figures required for any exhaustive treatment of it would form a separate volume. all that i can do is to indicate, as these examples do sufficiently, the vast field open to the student's analysis if he cares to pursue the subject; and to mark for the general reader these two strong conclusions:--that nothing in great work is ever either fortuitous or contentious. it is not fortuitous; that is to say, not left to fortune. the "must do it by a kind of felicity" of bacon is true; it is true also that an accident is often suggestive to an inventor. turner himself said, "i never lose an accident." but it is this not _losing_ it, this taking things out of the hands of fortune, and putting them into those of force and foresight, which attest the master. chance may sometimes help, and sometimes provoke, a success; but must never rule, and rarely allure. and, lastly, nothing must be contentious. art has many uses and many pleasantnesses; but of all its services, none are higher than its setting forth, by a visible and enduring image, the nature of all true authority and freedom; authority which defines and directs the action of benevolent law; and freedom which consists in deep and soft consent of individual[ ] helpfulness. footnotes: [ ] the sails in the engraving were put in to catch the public eye. there are none in the drawing. [ ] these etchings of compositions are all reversed, for they are merely sketches on the steel, and i cannot sketch easily except straight from the drawing, and without reversing. the looking-glass plagues me with cross lights. as examples of composition, it does not the least matter which way they are turned; and the reader may see this schaffhausen subject from the right side of the rhine, by holding the book before a glass. the rude indications of the figures in the loire subject are nearly facsimiles of turner's. [ ] with the exception of the jagged ledge rising out of the foam below which comes from the north side, and is admirable in its expression of the position of the limestone-beds, which, rising from below the drift gravel of constance, are the real cause of the fall of schaffhausen. [ ] "individual," that is to say, distinct and separate in character, though joined in purpose. i might have enlarged on this head, but that all i should care to say has been already said admirably by mr. j. s. mill in his essay on _liberty_. chapter iii. the rule of the greatest. § . in the entire range of art principles, none perhaps present a difficulty so great to the student, or require from the teacher expression so cautious, and yet so strong, as those which concern the nature and influence of magnitude. in one sense, and that deep, there is no such thing as magnitude. the least thing is as the greatest, and one day as a thousand years, in the eyes of the maker of great and small things. in another sense, and that close to us and necessary, there exist both magnitude and value. though not a sparrow falls to the ground unnoted, there are yet creatures who are of more value than many; and the same spirit which weighs the dust of the earth in a balance, counts the isles as a little thing. § . the just temper of human mind in this matter may, nevertheless, be told shortly. greatness can only be rightly estimated when minuteness is justly reverenced. greatness is the aggregation of minuteness; nor can its sublimity be felt truthfully by any mind unaccustomed to the affectionate watching of what is least. but if this affection for the least be unaccompanied by the powers of comparison and reflection; if it be intemperate in its thirst, restless in curiosity, and incapable of the patient and self-commandant pause which is wise to arrange, and submissive to refuse, it will close the paths of noble art to the student as effectually, and hopelessly, as even the blindness of pride, or impatience of ambition. § . i say the paths of noble art, not of useful art. all accurate investigation will have its reward; the morbid curiosity will at least slake the thirst of others, if not its own; and the diffused and petty affections will distribute, in serviceable measure, their minute delights and narrow discoveries. the opposite error, the desire of greatness as such, or rather of what appears great to indolence and vanity;--the instinct which i have described in the "seven lamps," noting it, among the renaissance builders, to be an especial and unfailing sign of baseness of mind, is as fruitless as it is vile; no way profitable--every way harmful: the widest and most corrupting expression of vulgarity. the microscopic drawing of an insect may be precious; but nothing except disgrace and misguidance will ever be gathered from such work as that of haydon or barry. § . the work i have mostly had to do, since this essay was begun, has been that of contention against such debased issues of swollen insolence and windy conceit; but i have noticed lately, that some lightly-budding philosophers have depreciated true greatness; confusing the relations of scale, as they bear upon human instinct and morality; reasoning as if a mountain were no nobler than a grain of sand, or as if many souls were not of mightier interest than one. to whom it must be shortly answered that the lord of power and life knew which were his noblest works, when he bade his servant watch the play of the leviathan, rather than dissect the spawn of the minnow; and that when it comes to practical question whether a single soul is to be jeoparded for many, and this leonidas, or curtius, or winkelried shall abolish--so far as abolishable--his own spirit, that he may save more numerous spirits, such question is to be solved by the simple human instinct respecting number and magnitude, not by reasonings on infinity:-- "le navigateur, qui, la nuit, voit l'océan étinceler de lumière, danser en guirlandes de feu, s'égaye d'abord de ce spectacle. il fait dix lieues; la guirlande s'allonge indéfiniment, elle s'agite, se tord, se noue, aux mouvements de la lame; c'est un serpent monstrueux qui va toujours s'allongeant, jusqu'à trente lieues, quarante lieues. et tout cela n'est qu'une danse d'animalcules imperceptibles. en quel nombre? a cette question l'imagination s'effraye; elle sent là une nature de puissance immense, de richesse epouvantable.... que sont ces petits des petits? rien moins que les constructeurs du globe où nous sommes. de leurs corps, de leurs débris, ils ont préparé le sol qui est sous nos pas.... et ce sont les plus petits qui ont fait les plus grandes choses. l'imperceptible rhizopode s'est bâti un monument bien autre que les pyramides, pas moins que l'italie centrale, une notable partie de la chaîne des apennins. mais c'était trop peu encore; les masses énormes du chili, les prodigieuses cordillères, qui regardent le monde à leurs pieds, sont le monument funéraire où cet être insaisissable, et pour ainsi dire, invisible, a enseveli les débris de son espèce dïsparue."--(michelet: _l'insecte_.) § . in these passages, and those connected with them in the chapter from which they are taken, itself so vast in scope, and therefore so sublime, we may perhaps find the true relations of minuteness, multitude, and magnitude. we shall not feel that there is no such thing as littleness, or no such thing as magnitude. nor shall we be disposed to confuse a volvox with the cordilleras; but we may learn that they both are bound together by links of eternal life and toil; we shall see the vastest thing noble, chiefly for what it includes; and the meanest for what it accomplishes. thence we might gather--and the conclusion will be found in experience true--that the sense of largeness would be most grateful to minds capable of comprehending, balancing, and comparing; but capable also of great patience and expectation; while the sense of minute wonderfulness would be attractive to minds acted upon by sharp, small, penetrative sympathies, and apt to be impatient, irregular, and partial. this fact is curiously shown in the relations between the temper of the great composers and the modern pathetic school. i was surprised at the first rise of that school, now some years ago, by observing how they restrained themselves to subjects which in other hands would have been wholly uninteresting (compare vol. iv., p. ); and in their succeeding efforts, i saw with increasing wonder, that they were almost destitute of the power of feeling vastness, or enjoying the forms which expressed it. a mountain or great building only appeared to them as a piece of color of a certain shape. the powers it represented, or included, were invisible to them. in general they avoided subjects expressing space or mass, and fastened on confined, broken, and sharp forms; liking furze, fern, reeds, straw, stubble, dead leaves, and such like, better than strong stones, broad-flowing leaves, or rounded hills: in all such greater things, when forced to paint them, they missed the main and mighty lines; and this no less in what they loved than in what they disliked; for though fond of foliage, their trees always had a tendency to congeal into little acicular thorn-hedges, and never tossed free. which modes of choice proceed naturally from a petulant sympathy with local and immediately visible interests or sorrows, not regarding their large consequences, nor capable of understanding more massive view or more deeply deliberate mercifulness;--but peevish and horror-struck, and often incapable of self-control, though not of self-sacrifice. there are more people who can forget themselves than govern themselves. this narrowly pungent and bitter virtue has, however, its beautiful uses, and is of special value in the present day, when surface-work, shallow generalization, and cold arithmetical estimates of things, are among the chief dangers and causes of misery which men have to deal with. § . on the other hand, and in clear distinction from all such workers, it is to be remembered that the great composers, not less deep in feeling, are in the fixed habit of regarding as much the relations and positions, as the separate nature, of things; that they reap and thrash in the sheaf, never pluck ears to rub in the hand; fish with net, not line, and sweep their prey together within great cords of errorless curve;--that nothing ever bears to them a separate or isolated aspect, but leads or links a chain of aspects--that to them it is not merely the surface, nor the substance, of anything that is of import; but its circumference and continence: that they are pre-eminently patient and reserved; observant, not curious;--comprehensive, not conjectural; calm exceedingly; unerring, constant, terrible in steadfastness of intent; unconquerable: incomprehensible: always suggesting, implying, including, more than can be told. § . and this may be seen down to their treatment of the smallest things. for there is nothing so small but we may, as we choose, see it in the whole, or in part, and in subdued connection with other things, or in individual and petty prominence. the greatest treatment is always that which gives conception the widest range, and most harmonious guidance;--it being permitted us to employ a certain quantity of time, and certain number of touches of pencil--he who with these embraces the largest sphere of thought, and suggests within that sphere the most perfect order of thought, has wrought the most wisely, and therefore most nobly. § . i do not, however, purpose here to examine or illustrate the nature of great treatment--to do so effectually would need many examples from the figure composers; and it will be better (if i have time to work out the subject carefully) that i should do so in a form which may be easily accessible to young students. here i will only state in conclusion what it is chiefly important for all students to be convinced of, that all the technical qualities by which greatness of treatment is known, such as reserve in color, tranquillity and largeness of line, and refusal of unnecessary objects of interest, are, when they are real, the exponents of an habitually noble temper of mind, never the observances of a precept supposed to be useful. the refusal or reserve of a mighty painter cannot be imitated; it is only by reaching the same intellectual strength that you will be able to give an equal dignity to your self-denial. no one can tell you beforehand what to accept, or what to ignore; only remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life, the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful, and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim. chapter iv. the law of perfectness. § . among the several characteristics of great treatment which in the last chapter were alluded to without being enlarged upon, one will be found several times named;--reserve. it is necessary for our present purpose that we should understand this quality more distinctly. i mean by it the power which a great painter exercises over himself in fixing certain limits, either of force, of color, or of quantity of work;--limits which he will not transgress in any part of his picture, even though here and there a painful sense of incompletion may exist, under the fixed conditions, and might tempt an inferior workman to infringe them. the nature of this reserve we must understand in order that we may also determine the nature of true completion or perfectness, which is the end of composition. § . for perfectness, properly so called, means harmony. the word signifies, literally, the doing our work _thoroughly_. it does not mean carrying it up to any constant and established degree of finish, but carrying the whole of it up to a degree determined upon. in a chalk or pencil sketch by a great master, it will often be found that the deepest shades are feeble tints of pale gray; the outlines nearly invisible, and the forms brought out by a ghostly delicacy of touch, which, on looking close to the paper, will be indistinguishable from its general texture. a single line of ink, occurring anywhere in such a drawing, would of course destroy it; placed in the darkness of a mouth or nostril, it would turn the expression into a caricature; on a cheek or brow it would be simply a blot. yet let the blot remain, and let the master work up to it with lines of similar force; and the drawing which was before perfect, in terms of pencil, will become, under his hand, perfect in terms of ink; and what was before a scratch on the cheek will become a necessary and beautiful part of its gradation. all great work is thus reduced under certain conditions, and its right to be called complete depends on its fulfilment of them, not on the nature of the conditions chosen. habitually, indeed, we call a colored work which is satisfactory to us, finished, and a chalk drawing unfinished; but in the mind of the master, all his work is, according to the sense in which you use the word, equally perfect or imperfect. perfect, if you regard its purpose and limitation; imperfect, if you compare it with the natural standard. in what appears to you consummate, the master has assigned to himself terms of shortcoming, and marked with a sad severity the point up to which he will permit himself to contend with nature. were it not for his acceptance of such restraint, he could neither quit his work, nor endure it. he could not quit it, for he would always perceive more that might be done; he could not endure it, because all doing ended only in more elaborate deficiency. § . but we are apt to forget, in modern days, that the reserve of a man who is not putting forth half his strength is different in manner and dignity from the effort of one who can do no more. charmed, and justly charmed, by the harmonious sketches of great painters, and by the grandeur of their acquiescence in the point of pause, we have put ourselves to produce sketches as an end instead of a means, and thought to imitate the painter's scornful restraint of his own power, by a scornful rejection of the things beyond ours. for many reasons, therefore, it becomes desirable to understand precisely and finally what a good painter means by completion. § . the sketches of true painters may be classed under the following heads:-- i. _experimental._--in which they are assisting an imperfect conception of a subject by trying the look of it on paper in different ways. by the greatest men this kind of sketch is hardly ever made; they conceive their subjects distinctly at once, and their sketch is not to try them, but to fasten them down. raphael's form the only important exception--and the numerous examples of experimental work by him are evidence of his composition being technical rather than imaginative. i have never seen a drawing of the kind by any great venetian. among the nineteen thousand sketches by turner--which i arranged in the national gallery--there was, to the best of my recollection, _not one_. in several instances the work, after being carried forward a certain length, had been abandoned and begun again with another view; sometimes also two or more modes of treatment had been set side by side with a view to choice. but there were always two distinct imaginations contending for realization--not experimental modifications of one. § . ii. _determinant._--the fastening down of an idea in the simplest terms, in order that it may not be disturbed or confused by after work. nearly all the great composers do this, methodically, before beginning a painting. such sketches are usually in a high degree resolute and compressive; the best of them outlined or marked calmly with the pen, and deliberately washed with color, indicating the places of the principal lights. fine drawings of this class never show any hurry or confusion. they are the expression of concluded operations of mind, are drawn slowly, and are not so much sketches, as maps. § . iii. _commemorative._--containing records of facts which the master required. these in their most elaborate form are "studies," or drawings, from nature, of parts needed in the composition, often highly finished in the part which is to be introduced. in this form, however, they never occur by the greatest imaginative masters. for by a truly great inventor everything is invented; no atom of the work is unmodified by his mind; and no study from nature, however beautiful, could be introduced by him into his design without change; it would not fit with the rest. finished studies for introduction are therefore chiefly by leonardo and raphael, both technical designers rather than imaginative ones. commemorative sketches, by great masters, are generally hasty, merely to put them in mind of motives of invention, or they are shorthand memoranda of things with which they do not care to trouble their memory; or, finally, accurate notes of things which they must _not_ modify by invention, as local detail, costume, and such like. you may find perfectly accurate drawings of coats of arms, portions of dresses, pieces of architecture, and so on, by all the great men; but you will not find elaborate studies of bits of their pictures. [illustration: fig. .] § . when the sketch is made merely as a memorandum, it is impossible to say how little, or what kind of drawing, may be sufficient for the purpose. it is of course likely to be hasty from its very nature, and unless the exact purpose be understood, it may be as unintelligible as a piece of shorthand writing. for instance, in the corner of a sheet of sketches made at sea, among those of turner, at the national gallery, occurs this one, fig. . i suppose most persons would not see much use in it. it nevertheless was probably one of the most important sketches made in turner's life, fixing for ever in his mind certain facts respecting the sunrise from a clear sea-horizon. having myself watched such sunrise, occasionally, i perceive this sketch to mean as follows:-- (half circle at the top.) when the sun was only half out of the sea, the horizon was sharply traced across its disk, and red streaks of vapor crossed the lower part of it. (horseshoe underneath.) when the sun had risen so far as to show three-quarters of its diameter, its light became so great as to conceal the sea-horizon, consuming it away in descending rays. (smaller horseshoe below.) when on the point of detaching itself from the horizon, the sun still consumed away the line of the sea, and looked as if pulled down by it. (broken oval.) having risen about a fourth of its diameter above the horizon, the sea-line reappeared; but the risen orb was flattened by refraction into an oval. (broken circle.) having risen a little farther above the sea-line, the sun, at last, got itself round, and all right, with sparkling reflection on the waves just below the sea-line. this memorandum is for its purpose entirely perfect and efficient, though the sun is not drawn carefully round, but with a dash of the pencil; but there is no affected or desired slightness. could it have been drawn round as instantaneously, it would have been. the purpose is throughout determined; there is no scrawling, as in vulgar sketching.[ ] § . again, fig. is a facsimile of one of turner's "memoranda," of a complete subject,[ ] lausanne, from the road to fribourg. [illustration: fig. . _to face page ._] this example is entirely characteristic of his usual drawings from nature, which unite two characters, being _both_ commemorative and determinant:--commemorative, in so far as they note certain facts about the place: determinant, in that they record an impression received from the place there and then, together with the principal arrangement of the composition in which it was afterwards to be recorded. in this mode of sketching, turner differs from all other men whose work i have studied. he never draws accurately on the spot, with the intention of modifying or composing afterwards from the materials; but instantly modifies as he draws, placing his memoranda where they are to be ultimately used, and taking exactly what he wants, not a fragment or line more. § . this sketch has been made in the afternoon. he had been impressed as he walked up the hill, by the vanishing of the lake in the golden horizon, without end of waters, and by the opposition of the pinnacled castle and cathedral to its level breadth. that must be drawn! and from this spot, where all the buildings are set well together. but it lucklessly happens that, though the buildings come just where he wants them in situation, they don't in height. for the castle (the square mass on the right) is in reality higher than the cathedral, and would block out the end of the lake. down it goes instantly a hundred feet, that we may see the lake over it; without the smallest regard for the military position of lausanne. § . next: the last low spire on the left is in truth concealed behind the nearer bank, the town running far down the hill (and climbing another hill) in that direction. but the group oi spires, without it, would not be rich enough to give a proper impression of lausanne, as a spiry place. turner quietly sends to fetch the church from round the corner, places it where he likes, and indicates its distance only by aërial perspective (much greater in the pencil drawing than in the woodcut). § . but again: not only the spire of the lower church, but the peak of the rochers d'enfer (that highest in the distance) would in reality be out of sight; it is much farther round to the left. this would never do either; for without it, we should have no idea that lausanne was opposite the mountains, nor should we have a nice sloping line to lead us into the distance. with the same unblushing tranquillity of mind in which he had ordered up the church, turner sends also to fetch the rochers d'enfer; and puts _them_ also where he chooses, to crown the slope of distant hill, which, as every traveller knows, in its decline to the west, is one of the most notable features of the view from lausanne. § . these modifications, easily traceable in the large features of the design, are carried out with equal audacity and precision in every part of it. every one of those confused lines on the right indicates something that is really there, only everything is shifted and sorted into the exact places that turner chose. the group of dark objects near us at the foot of the bank is a cluster of mills, which, when the picture was completed, were to be the blackest things in it, and to throw back the castle, and the golden horizon; while the rounded touches at the bottom, under the castle, indicate a row of trees, which follow a brook coming out of the ravine behind us; and were going to be made very round indeed in the picture (to oppose the spiky and angular masses of castle) and very consecutive, in order to form another conducting line into the distance. § . these motives, or motives like them, might perhaps be guessed on looking at the sketch. but no one without going to the spot would understand the meaning of the vertical lines in the left-hand lowest corner. they are a "memorandum" of the artificial verticalness of a low sandstone cliff, which has been cut down there to give space for a bit of garden belonging to a public-house beneath, from which garden a path leads along the ravine to the lausanne rifle ground. the value of these vertical lines in repeating those of the cathedral is very great; it would be greater still in the completed picture, increasing the sense of looking down from a height, and giving grasp of, and power over, the whole scene. § . throughout the sketch, as in all that turner made, the observing and combining intellect acts in the same manner. not a line is lost, nor a moment of time; and though the pencil flies, and the whole thing is literally done as fast as a piece of shorthand writing, it is to the full as purposeful and compressed, so that while there are indeed dashes of the pencil which are unintentional, they are only unintentional as the form of a letter is, in fast writing, not from want of intention, but from the accident of haste. § . i know not if the reader can understand,--i myself cannot, though i see it to be demonstrable,--the simultaneous occurrence of idea which produces such a drawing as this: the grasp of the whole, from the laying of the first line, which induces continual modifications of all that is done, out of respect to parts not done yet. no line is ever changed or effaced: no experiment made; but every touch is placed with reference to all that are to succeed, as to all that have gone before; every addition takes its part, as the stones in an arch of a bridge; the last touch locks the arch. remove that keystone, or remove any other of the stones of the vault, and the whole will fall. § . i repeat--the power of mind which accomplishes this, is yet wholly inexplicable to me, as it was when first i defined it in the chapter on imagination associative, in the second volume. but the grandeur of the power impresses me daily more and more; and, in quitting the subject of invention, let me assert finally, in clearest and strongest terms, that no painting is of any true imaginative perfectness at all, unless it has been thus conceived. one sign of its being thus conceived may be always found in the straightforwardness of its work. there are continual disputes among artists as to the best way of doing things, which may nearly all be resolved into confessions of indetermination. if you know precisely what you want, you will not feel much hesitation in setting about it; and a picture may be painted almost any way, so only that it can be a straight way. give a true painter a ground of black, white, scarlet, or green, and out of it he will bring what you choose. from the black, brightness; from the white, sadness; from the scarlet, coolness; from the green, glow: he will make anything out of anything, but in each case his method will be pure, direct, perfect, the shortest and simplest possible. you will find him, moreover, indifferent as to succession of process. ask him to begin at the bottom of the picture instead of the top,--to finish two square inches of it without touching the rest, or to lay a separate ground for every part before finishing any;--it is all the same to him! what he will do if left to himself, depends on mechanical convenience, and on the time at his disposal. if he has a large brush in his hand, and plenty of one color ground, he may lay as much as is wanted of that color, at once, in every part of the picture where it is to occur; and if any is left, perhaps walk to another canvas, and lay the rest of it where it will be wanted on that. if, on the contrary, he has a small brush in his hand, and is interested in a particular spot of the picture, he will, perhaps, not stir from it till that bit is finished. but the absolutely best, or centrally, and entirely _right_ way of painting is as follows:-- § . a light ground, white, red, yellow, or gray, not brown, or black. on that an entirely accurate, and firm black outline of the whole picture, in its principal masses. the outline to be exquisitely correct as far as it reaches, but not to include small details; the use of it being to limit the masses of first color. the ground-colors then to be laid firmly, each on its own proper part of the picture, as inlaid work in a mosaic table, meeting each other truly at the edges: as much of each being laid as will get itself into the state which the artist requires it to be in for his second painting, by the time he comes to it. on this first color, the second colors and subordinate masses laid in due order, now, of course, necessarily without previous outline, and all small detail reserved to the last, the bracelet being not touched, nor indicated in the last, till the arm is finished.[ ] § . this is, as far as it can be expressed in few words, the right, or venetian way of painting; but it is incapable of absolute definition, for it depends on the scale, the material, and the nature of the object represented, _how much_ a great painter will do with his first color; or how many after processes he will use. very often the first color, richly blended and worked into, is also the last; sometimes it wants a glaze only to modify it; sometimes an entirely different color above it. turner's storm-blues, for instance, were produced by a black ground, with opaque blue, mixed with white, struck over it.[ ] the amount of detail given in the first color will also depend on convenience. for instance, if a jewel _fastens_ a fold of dress, a venetian will lay probably a piece of the jewel color in its place at the time he draws the fold; but if the jewel _falls upon_ the dress, he will paint the folds only in the ground color, and the jewel afterwards. for in the first case his hand must pause, at any rate, where the fold is fastened; so that he may as well mark the color of the gem: but he would have to check his hand in the sweep with which he drew the drapery, if he painted a jewel that fell upon it with the first color. so far, however, as he can possibly use the under color, he will, in whatever he has to superimpose. there is a pretty little instance of such economical work in the painting of the pearls on the breast of the elder princess, in our best paul veronese (family of darius). the lowest is about the size of a small hazel-nut, and falls on her rose-red dress. any other but a venetian would have put a complete piece of white paint over the dress, for the whole pearl, and painted into that the colors of the stone. but veronese knows beforehand that all the dark side of the pearl will reflect the red of the dress. he will not put white over the red, only to put red over the white again. he leaves the actual dress for the dark side of the pearl, and with two small separate touches, one white, another brown, places its high light and shadow. this he does with perfect care and calm; but in two decisive seconds. there is no dash, nor display, nor hurry, nor error. the exactly right thing is done in the exactly right place, and not one atom of color, nor moment of time spent vainly. look close at the two touches,--you wonder what they mean. retire six feet from the picture--the pearl is there! § . the degree in which the ground colors are extended over his picture, as he works, is to a great painter absolutely indifferent. it is all the same to him whether he grounds a head, and finishes it at once to the shoulders, leaving all round it white; or whether he grounds the whole picture. his harmony, paint as he will, never can be complete till the last touch is given; so long as it remains incomplete, he does not care how little of it is suggested, or how many notes are missing. all is wrong till all is right; and he must be able to bear the all-wrongness till his work is done, or he cannot paint at all. his mode of treatment will, therefore, depend on the nature of his subject; as is beautifully shown in the water-color sketches by turner in the national gallery. his general system was to complete inch by inch; leaving the paper quite white all round, especially if the work was to be delicate. the most exquisite drawings left unfinished in the collection--those at rome and naples--are thus outlined accurately on pure white paper, begun in the middle of the sheet, and worked out to the side, finishing as he proceeds. if, however, any united effect of light or color is to embrace a large part of the subject, he will lay it in with a broad wash over the whole paper at once; then paint into it using it as a ground, and modifying it in the pure venetian manner. his oil pictures were laid roughly with ground colors, and painted into with such rapid skill, that the artists who used to see him finishing at the academy sometimes suspected him of having the picture finished underneath the colors he showed, and removing, instead of adding, as they watched. § . but, whatever the means used may be, the certainty and directness of them imply absolute grasp of the whole subject, and without this grasp there is no good painting. this, finally, let me declare, without qualification--that partial conception is no conception. the whole picture must be imagined, or none of it is. and this grasp of the whole implies very strange and sublime qualities of mind. it is not possible, unless the feelings are completely under control; the least excitement or passion will disturb the measured equity of power; a painter needs to be as cool as a general; and as little moved or subdued by his sense of pleasure, as a soldier by the sense of pain. nothing good can be done without intense feeling; but it must be feeling so crushed, that the work is set about with mechanical steadiness, absolutely untroubled, as a surgeon,--not without pity, but conquering it and putting it aside--begins an operation. until the feelings can give strength enough to the will to enable it to conquer them, they are not strong enough. if you cannot leave your picture at any moment;--cannot turn from it and go on with another, while the color is drying;--cannot work at any part of it you choose with equal contentment--you have not firm enough grasp of it. § . it follows also, that no vain or selfish person can possibly paint, in the noble sense of the word. vanity and selfishness are troublous, eager, anxious, petulant:--painting can only be done in calm of mind. resolution is not enough to secure this; it must be secured by disposition as well. you may resolve to think of your picture only; but, if you have been fretted before beginning, no manly or clear grasp of it will be possible for you. no forced calm is calm enough. only honest calm,--natural calm. you might as well try by external pressure to smoothe a lake till it could reflect the sky, as by violence of effort to secure the peace through which only you can reach imagination. that peace must come in its own time; as the waters settle themselves into clearness as well as quietness; you can no more filter your mind into purity than you can compress it into calmness; you must keep it pure, if you would have it pure; and throw no stones into it, if you would have it quiet. great courage and self-command may, to a certain extent, give power of painting without the true calmness underneath; but never of doing first-rate work. there is sufficient evidence of this, in even what we know of great men, though of the greatest, we nearly always know the least (and that necessarily; they being very silent, and not much given to setting themselves forth to questioners; apt to be contemptuously reserved, no less than unselfishly). but in such writings and sayings as we possess of theirs, we may trace a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy. rubens' letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. reynolds, swiftest of painters, was gentlest of companions; so also velasquez, titian, and veronese. § . it is gratuitous to add that no shallow or petty person can paint. mere cleverness or special gift never made an artist. it is only perfectness of mind, unity, depth, decision, the highest qualities, in fine, of the intellect, which will form the imagination. § . and, lastly, no false person can paint. a person false at heart may, when it suits his purposes, seize a stray truth here or there; but the relations of truth,--its perfectness,--that which makes it wholesome truth, he can never perceive. as wholeness and wholesomeness go together, so also sight with sincerity; it is only the constant desire of, and submissiveness to truth, which can measure its strange angles and mark its infinite aspects; and fit them and knit them into the strength of sacred invention. sacred, i call it deliberately; for it is thus, in the most accurate senses, humble as well as helpful; meek in its receiving, as magnificent in its disposing; the name it bears being rightly given to invention formal, not because it forms, but because it finds. for you cannot find a lie; you must make it for yourself. false things may be imagined, and false things composed; but only truth can be invented. footnotes: [ ] the word in the uppermost note, to the right of the sun, is "red;" the others, "yellow," "purple," "cold" light gray. he always noted the colors of the skies in this way. [ ] it is not so good a facsimile as those i have given from durer, for the original sketch is in light pencil; and the thickening and delicate emphasis of the lines, on which nearly all the beauty of the drawing depended, cannot be expressed in the woodcut, though marked by a double line as well as i could. but the figure will answer its purpose well enough in showing turner's mode of sketching. [ ] thus, in the holy family of titian, lately purchased for the national gallery, the piece of st. catherine's dress over her shoulders is painted on the under dress, after that was dry. all its value would have been lost, had the slightest tint or trace of it been given previously. this picture, i think, and certainly many of tintoret's, are painted on dark grounds; but this is to save time, and with some loss to the future brightness of the color. [ ] in cleaning the "hero and leander," now in the national collection, these upper glazes were taken off, and only the black ground left. i remember the picture when its distance was of the most exquisite blue. i have no doubt the "fire at sea" has had its distance destroyed in the same manner. part ix. of ideas of relation:--ii. of invention spiritual. chapter i. the dark mirror. § . in the course of our inquiry into the moral of landscape (vol. iii., chap. ), we promised, at the close of our work, to seek for some better, or at least clearer, conclusions than were then possible to us. we confined ourselves in that chapter to the vindication of the probable utility of the _love_ of natural scenery. we made no assertion of the usefulness of _painting_ such scenery. it might be well to delight in the real country, or admire the real flowers and true mountains. but it did not follow that it was advisable to paint them. far from it. many reasons might be given why we should not paint them. all the purposes of good which we saw that the beauty of nature could accomplish, may be better fulfilled by the meanest of her realities than by the brightest of imitations. for prolonged entertainment, no picture can be compared with the wealth of interest which may be found in the herbage of the poorest field, or blossoms of the narrowest copse. as suggestive of supernatural power, the passing away of a fitful rain-cloud, or opening of dawn, are in their change and mystery more pregnant than any pictures. a child would, i suppose, receive a religious lesson from a flower more willingly than from a print of one, and might be taught to understand the nineteenth psalm, on a starry night, better than by diagrams of the constellations. whence it might seem a waste of time to draw landscape at all. i believe it is;--to draw landscape mere and solitary, however beautiful (unless it be for the sake of geographical or other science, or of historical record). but there _is_ a kind of landscape which it is not inexpedient to draw. what kind, we may probably discover by considering that which mankind has hitherto contented itself with painting. § . we may arrange nearly all existing landscape under the following heads:-- i. heroic.--representing an imaginary world, inhabited by men not perhaps perfectly civilized, but noble, and usually subjected to severe trials, and by spiritual powers of the highest order. it is frequently without architecture; never without figure-action, or emotion. its principal master is titian. ii. classical.--representing an imaginary world, inhabited by perfectly civilized men, and by spiritual powers of an inferior order. it generally assumes this condition of things to have existed among the greek and roman nations. it contains usually architecture of an elevated character, and always incidents of figure-action and emotion. its principal master is nicolo poussin. iii. pastoral.--representing peasant life and its daily work, or such scenery as may naturally be suggestive of it, consisting usually of simple landscape, in part subjected to agriculture, with figures, cattle, and domestic buildings. no supernatural being is ever visibly present. it does not in ordinary cases admit architecture of an elevated character, nor exciting incident. its principal master is cuyp. iv. contemplative.--directed principally to the observance of the powers of nature, and record of the historical associations connected with landscape, illustrated by, or contrasted with, existing states of human life. no supernatural being is visibly present. it admits every variety of subject, and requires, in general, figure incident, but not of an exciting character. it was not developed completely until recent times. its principal master is turner.[ ] § . these are the four true orders of landscape, not of course distinctly separated from each other in all cases, but very distinctly in typical examples. two spurious forms require separate note. (a.) picturesque.--this is indeed rather the degradation (or sometimes the undeveloped state) of the contemplative, than a distinct class; but it may be considered generally as including pictures meant to display the skill of the artist, and his powers of composition; or to give agreeable forms and colors, irrespective of sentiment. it will include much modern art, with the street views and church interiors of the dutch, and the works of canaletto, guardi, tempesta, and the like. (b.) hybrid.--landscape in which the painter endeavors to unite the irreconcileable sentiment of two or more of the above-named classes. its principal masters are berghem and wouvermans. § . passing for the present by these inferior schools, we find that all true landscape, whether simple or exalted, depends primarily for its interest on connection with humanity, or with spiritual powers. banish your heroes and nymphs from the classical landscape--its laurel shades will move you no more. show that the dark clefts of the most romantic mountain are uninhabited and untraversed; it will cease to be romantic. fields without shepherds and without fairies will have no gaiety in their green, nor will the noblest masses of ground or colors of cloud arrest or raise your thoughts, if the earth has no life to sustain, and the heaven none to refresh. § . it might perhaps be thought that, since from scenes in which the figure was principal, and landscape symbolical and subordinate (as in the art of egypt), the process of ages had led us to scenes in which landscape was principal and the figure subordinate,--a continuance in the same current of feeling might bring forth at last an art from which humanity and its interests should wholly vanish, leaving us to the passionless admiration of herbage and stone. but this will not, and cannot be. for observe the parallel instance in the gradually increasing importance of dress. from the simplicity of greek design, concentrating, i suppose, its skill chiefly on the naked form, the course of time developed conditions of venetian imagination which found nearly as much interest, and expressed nearly as much dignity, in folds of dress and fancies of decoration as in the faces of the figures themselves; so that if from veronese's marriage in cana we remove the architecture and the gay dresses, we shall not in the faces and hands remaining, find a satisfactory abstract of the picture. but try it the other way. take out the faces; leave the draperies, and how then? put the fine dresses and jewelled girdles into the best group you can; paint them with all veronese's skill: will they satisfy you? § . not so. as long as they are in their due service and subjection--while their folds are formed by the motion of men, and their lustre adorns the nobleness of men--so long the lustre and the folds are lovely. but cast them from the human limbs;--golden circlet and silken tissue are withered; the dead leaves of autumn are more precious than they. this is just as true, but in a far deeper sense, of the weaving of the natural robe of man's soul. fragrant tissue of flowers, golden circlets of clouds, are only fair when they meet the fondness of human thoughts, and glorify human visions of heaven. § . it is the leaning on this truth which, more than any other, has been the distinctive character of all my own past work. and in closing a series of art-studies, prolonged during so many years, it may be perhaps permitted me to point out this specialty--the rather that it has been, of all their characters, the one most denied. i constantly see that the same thing takes place in the estimation formed by the modern public of the work of almost any true person, living or dead. it is not needful to state here the causes of such error: but the fact is indeed so, that precisely the distinctive root and leading force of any true man's work and way are the things denied concerning him. and in these books of mine, their distinctive character, as essays on art, is their bringing everything to a root in human passion or human hope. arising first not in any desire to explain the principles of art, but in the endeavor to defend an individual painter from injustice, they have been colored throughout,--nay, continually altered in shape, and even warped and broken, by digressions respecting social questions, which had for me an interest tenfold greater than the work i had been forced into undertaking. every principle of painting which i have stated is traced to some vital or spiritual fact; and in my works on architecture the preference accorded finally to one school over another, is founded on a comparison of their influences on the life of the workman--a question by all other writers on the subject of architecture wholly forgotten or despised. § . the essential connection of the power of landscape with human emotion is not less certain, because in many impressive pictures the link is slight or local. that the connection should exist at a single point is all that we need. the comparison with the dress of the body may be carried out into the extremest parallelism. it may often happen that no part of the figure wearing the dress is discernible, nevertheless, the perceivable fact that the drapery is worn by a figure makes all the difference. in one of the most sublime figures in the world this is actually so: one of the fainting marys in tintoret's crucifixion has cast her mantle over her head, and her face is lost in its shade, and her whole figure veiled in folds of gray. but what the difference is between that gray woof, that gathers round her as she falls, and the same folds cast in a heap upon the ground, that difference, and more, exists between the power of nature through which humanity is seen, and her power in the desert. desert--whether of leaf or sand--true desertness is not in the want of leaves, but of life. where humanity is not, and was not, the best natural beauty is more than vain. it is even terrible; not as the dress cast aside from the body; but as an embroidered shroud hiding a skeleton. § . and on each side of a right feeling in this matter there lie, as usual, two opposite errors. the first, that of caring for man only; and for the rest of the universe, little, or not at all, which, in a measure, was the error of the greeks and florentines; the other, that of caring for the universe only;--for man, not at all,--which, in a measure, is the error of modern science, and of the art connecting itself with such science. the degree of power which any man may ultimately possess in landscape-painting will depend finally on his perception of this influence. if he has to paint the desert, its awfulness--if the garden, its gladsomeness--will arise simply and only from his sensibility to the story of life. without this he is nothing but a scientific mechanist; this, though it cannot make him yet a painter, raises him to the sphere in which he may become one. nay, the mere shadow and semblance of this have given dangerous power to works in all other respects unnoticeable; and the least degree of its true presence has given value to work in all other respects vain. the true presence, observe, of sympathy with the spirit of man. where this is not, sympathy with any higher spirit is impossible. for the directest manifestation of deity to man is in his own image, that is, in man. § . "in his own image. after his likeness." _ad imaginem et similitudinem suam._ i do not know what people in general understand by those words. i suppose they ought to be understood. the truth they contain seems to lie at the foundation of our knowledge both of god and man; yet do we not usually pass the sentence by, in dull reverence, attaching no definite sense to it at all? for all practical purpose, might it not as well be out of the text? i have no time, nor much desire, to examine the vague expressions of belief with which the verse has been encumbered. let us try to find its only possible plain significance. § . it cannot be supposed that the bodily shape of man resembles, or resembled, any bodily shape in deity. the likeness must therefore be, or have been, in the soul. had it wholly passed away, and the divine soul been altered into a soul brutal or diabolic, i suppose we should have been told of the change. but we are told nothing of the kind. the verse still stands as if for our use and trust. it was only death which was to be our punishment. not _change_. so far as we live, the image is still there; defiled, if you will; broken, if you will; all but effaced, if you will, by death and the shadow of it. but not changed. we are not made now in any other image than god's. there are, indeed, the two states of this image--the earthly and heavenly, but both adamite, both human, both the same likeness; only one defiled, and one pure. so that the soul of man is still a mirror, wherein may be seen, darkly, the image of the mind of god. these may seem daring words. i am sorry that they do; but i am helpless to soften them. discover any other meaning of the text if you are able;--but be sure that it _is_ a meaning--a meaning in your head and heart;--not a subtle gloss, nor a shifting of one verbal expression into another, both idealess. i repeat, that, to me, the verse has, and can have, no other signification than this--that the soul of man is a mirror of the mind of god. a mirror dark, distorted, broken, use what blameful words you please of its state; yet in the main, a true mirror, out of which alone, and by which alone, we can know anything of god at all. "how?" the reader, perhaps, answers indignantly. "i know the nature of god by revelation, not by looking into myself." revelation to what? to a nature incapable of receiving truth? that cannot be; for only to a nature capable of truth, desirous of it, distinguishing it, feeding upon it, revelation is possible. to a being undesirous of it, and hating it, revelation is impossible. there can be none to a brute, or fiend. in so far, therefore, as you love truth, and live therein, in so far revelation can exist for you;--and in so far, your mind is the image of god's. § . but consider farther, not only _to_ what, but _by_ what, is the revelation. by sight? or word? if by sight, then to eyes which see justly. otherwise, no sight would be revelation. so far, then, as your sight is just, it is the image of god's sight. if by words,--how do you know their meanings? here is a short piece of precious word revelation, for instance. "god is love." love! yes. but what is _that_? the revelation does not tell you that, i think. look into the mirror, and you will see. out of your own heart you may know what love is. in no other possible way,--by no other help or sign. all the words and sounds ever uttered, all the revelations of cloud, or flame, or crystal, are utterly powerless. they cannot tell you, in the smallest point, what love means. only the broken mirror can. § . here is more revelation. "god is just!" just! what is that? the revelation cannot help you to discover. you say it is dealing equitably or equally. but how do you discern the equality? not by inequality of mind; not by a mind incapable of weighing, judging, or distributing. if the lengths seem unequal in the broken mirror, for you they are unequal; but if they seem equal, then the mirror is true. so far as you recognize equality, and your conscience tells you what is just, so far your mind is the image of god's: and so far as you do _not_ discern this nature of justice or equality, the words "god is just" bring no revelation to you. § . "but his thoughts are not as our thoughts." no: the sea is not as the standing pool by the wayside. yet when the breeze crisps the pool, you may see the image of the breakers, and a likeness of the foam. nay, in some sort, the same foam. if the sea is for ever invisible to you, something you may learn of it from the pool. nothing, assuredly, any otherwise. "but this poor miserable me! is _this_, then, all the book i have got to read about god in?" yes, truly so. no other book, nor fragment of book, than that, will you ever find;--no velvet-bound missal, nor frankincensed manuscript;--nothing hieroglyphic nor cuneiform; papyrus and pyramid are alike silent on this matter;--nothing in the clouds above, nor in the earth beneath. that flesh-bound volume is the only revelation that is, that was, or that can be. in that is the image of god painted; in that is the law of god written; in that is the promise of god revealed. know thyself; for through thyself only thou canst know god. § . through the glass, darkly. but, except through the glass, in nowise. a tremulous crystal, waved as water, poured out upon the ground;--you may defile it, despise it, pollute it at your pleasure, and at your peril; for on the peace of those weak waves must all the heaven you shall ever gain be first seen; and through such purity as you can win for those dark waves, must all the light of the risen sun of righteousness be bent down, by faint refraction. cleanse them, and calm them, as you love your life. therefore it is that all the power of nature depends on subjection to the human soul. man is the sun of the world; more than the real sun. the fire of his wonderful heart is the only light and heat worth gauge or measure. where he is, are the tropics; where he is not, the ice-world. footnote: [ ] i have been embarrassed in assigning the names to these orders of art, the term "contemplative" belonging in justice nearly as much to the romantic and pastoral conception as to the modern landscape. i intended, originally, to call the four schools--romantic, classic, georgic, and theoretic--which would have been more accurate; and more consistent with the nomenclature of the second volume; but would not have been pleasant in sound, nor to the general reader, very clear in sense. chapter ii. the lance of pallas. § . it might be thought that the tenor of the preceding chapter was in some sort adverse to my repeated statement that all great art is the expression of man's delight in god's work, not in _his own._ but observe, he is not himself his own work: he is himself precisely the most wonderful piece of god's workmanship extant. in this best piece not only he is bound to take delight, but cannot, in a right state of thought, take delight in anything else, otherwise than through himself. through himself, however, as the sun of creation, not as _the_ creation. in himself, as the light of the world.[ ] not as being the world. let him stand in his due relation to other creatures, and to inanimate things--know them all and love them, as made for him, and he for them;--and he becomes himself the greatest and holiest of them. but let him cast off this relation, despise and forget the less creation around him, and instead of being the light of the world, he is as a sun in space--a fiery ball, spotted with storm. § . all the diseases of mind leading to fatalest ruin consist primarily in this isolation. they are the concentration of man upon himself, whether his heavenly interests or his worldly interests, matters not; it is the being _his own_ interests which makes the regard of them so mortal. every form of asceticism on one side, of sensualism on the other, is an isolation of his soul or of his body; the fixing his thoughts upon them alone: while every healthy state of nations and of individual minds consists in the unselfish presence of the human spirit everywhere, energizing over all things; speaking and living through all things. § . man being thus the crowning and ruling work of god, it will follow that all his best art must have something to tell about himself, as the soul of things, and ruler of creatures. it must also make this reference to himself under a true conception of his own nature. therefore all art which involves no reference to man is inferior or nugatory. and all art which involves misconception of man, or base thought of him, is in that degree false, and base. now the basest thought possible concerning him is, that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has or should have, no animal nature. for his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual--coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other. all great art confesses and worships both. § . the art which, since the writings of rio and lord lindsay, is specially known as "christian," erred by pride in its denial of the animal nature of man;--and, in connection with all monkish and fanatical forms of religion, by looking always to another world instead of this. it wasted its strength in visions, and was therefore swept away, notwithstanding all its good and glory, by the strong truth of the naturalist art of the sixteenth century. but that naturalist art erred on the other side; denied at last the spiritual nature of man, and perished in corruption. a contemplative reaction is taking place in modern times, out of which it may be hoped a new spiritual art may be developed. the first school of landscape, named, in the foregoing chapter, the heroic, is that of the noble naturalists. the second (classical), and third (pastoral), belong to the time of sensual decline. the fourth (contemplative) is that of modern revival. § . but why, the reader will ask, is no place given in this scheme to the "christian" or spiritual art which preceded the naturalists? because all landscape belonging to that art is subordinate, and in one essential principle false. it is subordinate, because intended only to exalt the conception of saintly or divine presence:--rather therefore to be considered as a landscape decoration or type, than an effort to paint nature. if i included it in my list of schools, i should have to go still farther back, and include with it the conventional and illustrative landscape of the greeks and egyptians. § . but also it cannot constitute a real school, because its first assumption is false, namely, that the natural world can be represented without the element of death. the real schools of landscape are primarily distinguished from the preceding unreal ones by their introduction of this element. they are not at first in any sort the worthier for it. but they are more true, and capable, therefore, in the issue, of becoming worthier. it will be a hard piece of work for us to think this rightly out, but it must be done. § . perhaps an accurate analysis of the schools of art of all time might show us that when the immortality of the soul was practically and completely believed, the elements of decay, danger, and grief in visible things were always disregarded. however this may be, it is assuredly so in the early christian schools. the ideas of danger or decay seem not merely repugnant, but inconceivable to them; the expression of immortality and perpetuity is alone possible. i do not mean that they take no note of the absolute fact of corruption. this fact the early painters often compel themselves to look fuller in the front than any other men: as in the way they usually paint the deluge (the raven feeding on the bodies), and in all the various triumphs and processions of the power of death, which formed one great chapter of religious teaching and painting, from orcagna's time to the close of the purist epoch. but i mean that this external fact of corruption is separated in their minds from the main conditions of their work; and its horror enters no more into their general treatment of landscape than the fear of murder or martyrdom, both of which they had nevertheless continually to represent. none of these things appeared to them as affecting the general dealings of the deity with his world. death, pain, and decay were simply momentary accidents in the course of immortality, which never ought to exercise any depressing influence over the hearts of men, or in the life of nature. god, in intense life, peace, and helping power, was always and everywhere. human bodies, at one time or another, had indeed to be made dust of, and raised from it; and this becoming dust was hurtful and humiliating, but not in the least melancholy, nor, in any very high degree, important; except to thoughtless persons, who needed sometimes to be reminded of it, and whom, not at all fearing the things much himself, the painter accordingly did remind of it, somewhat sharply. § . a similar condition of mind seems to have been attained, not unfrequently, in modern times, by persons whom either narrowness of circumstance or education, or vigorous moral efforts have guarded from the troubling of the world, so as to give them firm and childlike trust in the power and presence of god, together with peace of conscience, and a belief in the passing of all evil into some form of good. it is impossible that a person thus disciplined should feel, in any of its more acute phases, the sorrow for any of the phenomena of nature, or terror in any material danger which would occur to another. the absence of personal fear, the consciousness of security as great in the midst of pestilence and storm, as amidst beds of flowers on a summer morning, and the certainty that whatever appeared evil, or was assuredly painful, must eventually issue in a far greater and enduring good--this general feeling and conviction, i say, would gradually lull, and at last put to entire rest, the physical sensations of grief and fear; so that the man would look upon danger without dread,--accept pain without lamentation. § . it may perhaps be thought that this is a very high and right state of mind. unfortunately, it appears that the attainment of it is never possible without inducing some form of intellectual weakness. no painter belonging to the purest religious schools ever mastered his art. perugino nearly did so; but it was because he was more rational--more a man of the world--than the rest. no literature exists of a high class produced by minds in the pure religious temper. on the contrary, a great deal of literature exists, produced by persons in that temper, which is markedly, and very far, below average literary work. § . the reason of this i believe to be, that the right faith of man is not intended to give him repose, but to enable him to do his work. it is not intended that he should look away from the place he lives in now, and cheer himself with thoughts of the place he is to live in next, but that he should look stoutly into this world, in faith that if he does his work thoroughly here, some good to others or himself, with which, however, he is not at present concerned, will come of it hereafter. and this kind of brave, but not very hopeful or cheerful faith, i perceive to be always rewarded by clear practical success and splendid intellectual power; while the faith which dwells on the future fades away into rosy mist, and emptiness of musical air. that result indeed follows naturally enough on its habit of assuming that things must be right, or must come right, when, probably, the fact is, that so far as we are concerned, they are entirely wrong; and going wrong: and also on its weak and false way of looking on what these religious persons call "the bright side of things," that is to say, on one side of them only, when god has given them two sides, and intended us to see both. § . i was reading but the other day, in a book by a zealous, useful, and able scotch clergyman, one of these rhapsodies, in which he described a scene in the highlands to show (he said) the goodness of god. in this highland scene there was nothing but sunshine, and fresh breezes, and bleating lambs, and clean tartans, and all manner of pleasantness. now a highland scene is, beyond dispute, pleasant enough in its own way; but, looked close at, has its shadows. here, for instance, is the very fact of one, as pretty as i can remember--having seen many. it is a little valley of soft turf, enclosed in its narrow oval by jutting rocks and broad flakes of nodding fern. from one side of it to the other winds, serpentine, a clear brown stream, drooping into quicker ripple as it reaches the end of the oval field, and then, first islanding a purple and white rock with an amber pool, it dashes away into a narrow fall of foam under a thicket of mountain ash and alder. the autumn sun, low but clear, shines on the scarlet ash-berries and on the golden birch-leaves, which, fallen here and there, when the breeze has not caught them, rest quiet in the crannies of the purple rock. beside the rock, in the hollow under the thicket, the carcass of a ewe, drowned in the last flood, lies nearly bare to the bone, its white ribs protruding through the skin, raven-torn; and the rags of its wool still flickering from the branches that first stayed it as the stream swept it down. a little lower, the current plunges, roaring, into a circular chasm like a well, surrounded on three sides by a chimney-like hollowness of polished rock, down which the foam slips in detached snow-flakes. round the edges of the pool beneath, the water circles slowly, like black oil; a little butterfly lies on its back, its wings glued to one of the eddies, its limbs feebly quivering; a fish rises and it is gone. lower down the stream, i can just see, over a knoll, the green and damp turf roofs of four or five hovels, built at the edge of a morass, which is trodden by the cattle into a black slough of despond at their doors, and traversed by a few ill-set stepping-stones, with here and there a flat slab on the tops, where they have sunk out of sight; and at the turn of the brook i see a man fishing, with a boy and a dog--a picturesque and pretty group enough certainly, if they had not been there all day starving. i know them, and i know the dog's ribs also, which are nearly as bare as the dead ewe's; and the child's wasted shoulders, cutting his old tartan jacket through, so sharp are they. we will go down and talk with the man. § . or, that i may not piece pure truth with fancy, for i have none of his words set down, let us hear a word or two from another such, a scotchman also, and as true hearted, and in just as fair a scene. i write out the passage, in which i have kept his few sentences, word for word, as it stands in my private diary:--" nd april ( ). yesterday i had a long walk up the via gellia, at matlock, coming down upon it from the hills above, all sown with anemones and violets, and murmuring with sweet springs. above all the mills in the valley, the brook, in its first purity, forms a small shallow pool, with a sandy bottom covered with cresses, and other water plants. a man was wading in it for cresses as i passed up the valley, and bade me good-day. i did not go much farther; he was there when i returned. i passed him again, about one hundred yards, when it struck me i might as well learn all i could about watercresses: so i turned back. i asked the man, among other questions, what he called the common weed, something like watercress, but with a serrated leaf, which grows at the edge of nearly all such pools. 'we calls that brooklime, hereabouts,' said a voice behind me. i turned, and saw three men, miners or manufacturers--two evidently derbyshire men, and respectable-looking in their way; the third, thin, poor, old, and harder-featured, and utterly in rags. 'brooklime?' i said. 'what do you call it lime for?' the man said he did not know, it was called that. 'you'll find that in the british 'erba,' said the weak, calm voice of the old man. i turned to him in much surprise; but he went on saying something drily (i hardly understood what) to the cress-gatherer; who contradicting him, the old man said he 'didn't know fresh water,' he 'knew enough of sa't.' 'have you been a sailor?' i asked. 'i was a sailor for eleven years and ten months of my life,' he said, in the same strangely quiet manner. 'and what are you now?' 'i lived for ten years after my wife's death by picking up rags and bones; i hadn't much occasion afore.' 'and now how do you live?' 'why, i lives hard and honest, and haven't got to live long,' or something to that effect. he then went on, in a kind of maundering way, about his wife. 'she had rheumatism and fever very bad; and her second rib grow'd over her hench-bone. a' was a clever woman, but a' grow'd to be a very little one' (this with an expression of deep melancholy). 'eighteen years after her first lad she was in the family-way again, and they had doctors up from lunnon about it. they wanted to rip her open and take the child out of her side. but i never would give my consent.' (then, after a pause:) 'she died twenty-six hours and ten minutes after it. i never cared much what come of me since; but i know that i shall soon reach her; that's a knowledge i would na gie for the king's crown.' 'you are a scotchman, are not you?' i asked. 'i'm from the isle of skye, sir; i'm a mcgregor.' i said something about his religious faith. 'ye'll know i was bred in the church of scotland, sir,' he said, 'and i love it as i love my own soul; but i think thae wesleyan methodists ha' got salvation among them, too.'" truly, this highland and english hill-scenery is fair enough; but has its shadows; and deeper coloring, here and there, than that of heath and rose. § . now, as far as i have watched the main powers of human mind, they have risen first from the resolution to see fearlessly, pitifully, and to its very worst, what these deep colors mean, wheresoever they fall; not by any means to pass on the other side looking pleasantly up to the sky, but to stoop to the horror, and let the sky, for the present, take care of its own clouds. however this may be in moral matters, with which i have nothing here to do, in my own field of inquiry the fact is so; and all great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness. if, having done so, the human spirit can, by its courage and faith, conquer the evil, it rises into conceptions of victorious and consummated beauty. it is then the spirit of the highest greek and venetian art. if unable to conquer the evil, but remaining in strong, though melancholy war with it, not rising into supreme beauty, it is the spirit of the best northern art, typically represented by that of holbein and durer. if, itself conquered by the evil, infected by the dragon breath of it, and at last brought into captivity, so as to take delight in evil for ever, it becomes the spirit of the dark, but still powerful sensualistic art, represented typically by that of salvator. we must trace this fact briefly through greek, venetian, and dureresque art; we shall then see how the art of decline came of avoiding the evil, and seeking pleasure only; and thus obtain, at last, some power of judging whether the tendency of our own contemplative art be right or ignoble. § . the ruling purpose of greek poetry is the assertion of victory, by heroism, over fate, sin, and death. the terror of these great enemies is dwelt upon chiefly by the tragedians. the victory over them by homer. the adversary chiefly contemplated by the tragedians is fate, or predestinate misfortune. and that under three principal forms. a. blindness, or ignorance; not in itself guilty, but inducing acts which otherwise would have been guilty; and leading, no less than guilt, to destruction.[ ] b. visitation upon one person of the sin of another. c. repression, by brutal or tyrannous strength, of a benevolent will. § . in all these cases sorrow is much more definitely connected with sin by the greek tragedians than by shakspere. the "fate" of shakspere is, indeed, a form of blindness, but it issues in little more than haste or indiscretion. it is, in the literal sense, "fatal," but hardly criminal. the "i am fortune's fool" of romeo, expresses shakspere's primary idea of tragic circumstance. often his victims are entirely innocent, swept away by mere current of strong encompassing calamity (ophelia, cordelia, arthur, queen katharine). this is rarely so with the greeks. the victim may indeed be innocent, as antigone, but is in some way resolutely entangled with crime, and destroyed by it, as if it struck by pollution, no less than participation. the victory over sin and death is therefore also with the greek tragedians more complete than with shakspere. as the enemy has more direct moral personality,--as it is sinfulness more than mischance, it is met by a higher moral resolve, a greater preparation of heart, a more solemn patience and purposed self-sacrifice. at the close of a shakspere tragedy nothing remains but dead march and clothes of burial. at the close of a greek tragedy there are far-off sounds of a divine triumph, and a glory as of resurrection.[ ] § . the homeric temper is wholly different. far more tender, more practical, more cheerful; bent chiefly on present things and giving victory now, and here, rather than in hope, and hereafter. the enemies of mankind, in homer's conception, are more distinctly conquerable; they are ungoverned passions, especially anger, and unreasonable impulse generally ([greek: atê]). hence the anger of achilles, misdirected by pride, but rightly directed by friendship, is the subject of the _iliad_. the anger of ulysses ([greek: odysseus] "the angry"), misdirected at first into idle and irregular hostilities, directed at last to execution of sternest justice, is the subject of the _odyssey_. though this is the central idea of the two poems, it is connected with general display of the evil of all unbridled passions, pride, sensuality, indolence, or curiosity. the pride of atrides, the passion of paris, the sluggishness of elpenor, the curiosity of ulysses himself about the cyclops, the impatience of his sailors in untying the winds, and all other faults or follies, down to that--(evidently no small one in homer's mind)--of domestic disorderliness, are throughout shown in contrast with conditions of patient affection and household peace. also, the wild powers and mysteries of nature are in the homeric mind among the enemies of man; so that all the labors of ulysses are an expression of the contest of manhood, not only with its own passions or with the folly of others, but with the merciless and mysterious powers of the natural world. § . this is perhaps the chief signification of the seven years' stay with calypso, "the concealer." not, as vulgarly thought, the concealer of ulysses, but the great concealer--the hidden power of natural things. she is the daughter of atlas and the sea (atlas, the sustainer of heaven, and the sea, the disturber of the earth). she dwells in the island of ogygia ("the ancient or venerable"). (whenever athens, or any other greek city, is spoken of with any peculiar reverence, it is called "ogygian.") escaping from this goddess of secrets, and from other spirits, some of destructive natural force (scylla), others signifying the enchantment of mere natural beauty (circe, daughter of the sun and sea), he arrives at last at the phæacian land, whose king is "strength with intellect," and whose queen, "virtue." these restore him to his country. § . now observe that in their dealing with all these subjects the greeks never shrink from horror; down to its uttermost depth, to its most appalling physical detail, they strive to sound the secrets of sorrow. for them there is no passing by on the other side, no turning away the eyes to vanity from pain. literally, they have not "lifted up their souls unto vanity." whether there be consolation for them or not, neither apathy nor blindness shall be their saviours; if, for them, thus knowing the facts of the grief of earth, any hope, relief, or triumph may hereafter seem possible,--well; but if not, still hopeless, reliefless, eternal, the sorrow shall be met face to face. this hector, so righteous, so merciful, so brave, has, nevertheless, to look upon his dearest brother in miserablest death. his own soul passes away in hopeless sobs through the throat-wound of the grecian spear. that is one aspect of things in this world, a fair world truly, but having, among its other aspects, this one, highly ambiguous. § . meeting it boldly as they may, gazing right into the skeleton face of it, the ambiguity remains; nay, in some sort gains upon them. we trusted in the gods;--we thought that wisdom and courage would save us. our wisdom and courage themselves deceive us to our death. athena had the aspect of deiphobus--terror of the enemy. she has not terrified him, but left us, in our mortal need. and, beyond that mortality, what hope have we? nothing is clear to us on that horizon, nor comforting. funeral honors; perhaps also rest; perhaps a shadowy life--artless, joyless, loveless. no devices in that darkness of the grave, nor daring, nor delight. neither marrying nor giving in marriage, nor casting of spears, nor rolling of chariots, nor voice of fame. lapped in pale elysian mist, chilling the forgetful heart and feeble frame, shall we waste on forever? can the dust of earth claim more of immortality than this? or shall we have even so much as rest? may we, indeed, lie down again in the dust, or have our sins not hidden from us even the things that belong to that peace? may not chance and the whirl of passion govern us there; when there shall be no thought, nor work, nor wisdom, nor breathing of the soul?[ ] be it so. with no better reward, no brighter hope, we will be men while we may: men, just, and strong, and fearless, and up to our power, perfect. athena herself, our wisdom and our strength, may betray us;--phoebus, our sun, smite us with plague, or hide his face from us helpless;--jove and all the powers of fate oppress us, or give us up to destruction. while we live, we will hold fast our integrity; no weak tears shall blind us, no untimely tremors abate our strength of arm nor swiftness of limb. the gods have given us at least this glorious body and this righteous conscience; these will we keep bright and pure to the end. so may we fall to misery, but not to baseness; so may we sink to sleep, but not to shame. § . and herein was conquest. so defied, the betraying and accusing shadows shrank back; the mysterious horror subdued itself to majestic sorrow. death was swallowed up in victory. their blood, which seemed to be poured out upon the ground, rose into hyacinthine flowers. all the beauty of earth opened to them; they had ploughed into its darkness, and they reaped its gold; the gods, in whom they had trusted through all semblance of oppression, came down to love them and be their helpmates. all nature round them became divine,--one harmony of power and peace. the sun hurt them not by day, nor the moon by night; the earth opened no more her jaws into the pit; the sea whitened no more against them the teeth of his devouring waves. sun, and moon, and earth, and sea,--all melted into grace and love; the fatal arrows rang not now at the shoulders of apollo the healer; lord of life and of the three great spirits of life--care, memory, and melody. great artemis guarded their flocks by night; selene kissed in love the eyes of those who slept. and from all came the help of heaven to body and soul; a strange spirit lifting the lovely limbs; strange light glowing on the golden hair; and strangest comfort filling the trustful heart, so that they could put off their armor, and lie down to sleep,--their work well done, whether at the gates of their temples[ ] or of their mountains;[ ] accepting the death they once thought terrible, as the gift of him who knew and granted what was best. footnotes: [ ] matt. v. . [ ] the speech of achilles to priam expresses this idea of fatality and submission clearly, there being two vessels--one full of sorrow, the other of great and noble gifts (a sense of disgrace mixing with that of sorrow, and of honor with that of joy), from which jupiter pours forth the destinies of men; the idea partly corresponding to the scriptural--" in the hand of the lord there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full mixed, and he poureth out of the same." but the title of the gods, nevertheless, both with homer and hesiod, is given not from the cup of sorrow, but of good; "givers of good" ([greek: dotêres heaon]).--_hes. theog._ : _odyss._ viii. . [ ] the alcestis is perhaps the central example of the _idea_ of all greek drama. [ ] [greek: tô kai tethneiôti noon pore persephoneia, oiô pepnusthai; toi de skiai aissousin]. od. x. . [ ] [greek: ouketi anestesan, all' en telei toutô eschonto.] herod, i. . [ ] [greek: ho de apopempomenos, autos men ouk apelipeto ton de paida sustrateuomenon, eonta oi mounogenea, apepempse.] herod, vii. . chapter iii. the wings of the lion. § . such being the heroic spirit of greek religion and art, we may now with ease trace the relations between it and that which animated the italian, and chiefly the venetian, schools. observe, all the nobleness, as well as the faults, of the greek art were dependent on its making the most of this present life. it might do so in the anacreontic temper--[greek: ti pleiadessi, kamoi]; "what have i to do with the pleiads?" or in the defiant or the trustful endurance of fate;--but its dominion was in this world. florentine art was essentially christian, ascetic, expectant of a better world, and antagonistic, therefore, to the greek temper. so that the greek element, once forced upon it, destroyed it. there was absolute incompatibility between them. florentine art, also, could not produce landscape. it despised the rock, the tree, the vital air itself, aspiring to breathe empyreal air. venetian art began with the same aim and under the same restrictions. both are healthy in the youth of art. heavenly aim and severe law for boyhood; earthly work and fair freedom for manhood. § . the venetians began, i repeat, with asceticism; always, however, delighting in more massive and deep color than other religious painters. they are especially fond of saints who have been cardinals, because of their red hats, and they sunburn all their hermits into splendid russet brown. they differed from the pisans in having no maremma between them and the sea; from the romans, in continually quarrelling with the pope; and from the florentines in having no gardens. they had another kind of garden, deep-furrowed, with blossom in white wreaths--fruitless. perpetual may therein, and singing of wild, nestless birds. and they had no maremma to separate them from this garden of theirs. the destiny of pisa was changed, in all probability, by the ten miles of marsh-land and poisonous air between it and the beach. the genoese energy was feverish; too much heat reflected from their torrid apennine. but the venetian had his free horizon, his salt breeze, and sandy lido-shore; sloped far and flat,--ridged sometimes under the tramontane winds with half a mile's breadth of rollers;--sea and sand shrivelled up together in one yellow careering field of fall and roar. § . they were, also, we said, always quarrelling with the pope. their religious liberty came, like their bodily health, from that wave-training; for it is one notable effect of a life passed on shipboard to destroy weak beliefs in appointed forms of religion. a sailor may be grossly superstitious, but his superstitions will be connected with amulets and omens, not cast in systems. he must accustom himself, if he prays at all, to pray anywhere and anyhow. candlesticks and incense not being portable into the maintop, he perceives those decorations to be, on the whole, inessential to a maintop mass. sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day, and it is found that no harm comes of it. absolution on a lee-shore must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all, and they give it plenary and brief, without listening to confession. whereupon our religious opinions become vague, but our religious confidences strong; and the end of it all is that we perceive the pope to be on the other side of the apennines, and able, indeed, to sell indulgences, but not winds, for any money. whereas, god and the sea are with us, and we must even trust them both, and take what they shall send. § . then, farther. this ocean-work is wholly adverse to any morbid conditions of sentiment. reverie, above all things, is forbidden by scylla and charybdis. by the dogs and the depths, no dreaming! the first thing required of us is presence of mind. neither love, nor poetry, nor piety, must ever so take up our thoughts as to make us slow or unready. in sweet val d'arno it is permissible enough to dream among the orange-blossoms, and forget the day in twilight of ilex. but along the avenues of the adrian waves there can be no careless walking. vigilance, might and day, required of us, besides learning of many practical lessons in severe and humble dexterities. it is enough for the florentine to know how to use his sword and to ride. we venetians, also, must be able to use our swords, and on ground which is none of the steadiest; but, besides, we must be able to do nearly everything that hands can turn to--rudders, and yards, and cables, all needing workmanly handling and workmanly knowledge, from captain as well as from men. to drive a nail, lash a spear, reef a sail--rude work this for noble hands; but to be done sometimes, and done well, on pain of death. all which not only takes mean pride out of us, and puts nobler pride of power in its stead; but it tends partly to soothe, partly to chasten, partly to employ and direct, the hot italian temper, and make us every way greater, calmer, and happier. § . moreover, it tends to induce in us great respect for the whole human body; for its limbs, as much as for its tongue or its wit. policy and eloquence are well; and, indeed, we venetians can be politic enough, and can speak melodiously when we choose; but to put the helm up at the right moment is the beginning of all cunning--and for that we need arm and eye;--not tongue. and with this respect for the body as such, comes also the sailor's preference of massive beauty in bodily form. the landsmen, among their roses and orange-blossoms, and chequered shadows of twisted vine, may well please themselves with pale faces, and finely drawn eyebrows, and fantastic braiding of hair. but from the sweeping glory of the sea we learn to love another kind of beauty; broad-breasted; level-browed, like the horizon;--thighed and shouldered like the billows;--footed like their stealing foam;--bathed in cloud of golden hair, like their sunsets. § . such were the physical influences constantly in operation on the venetians; their painters, however, were partly prepared for their work by others in their infancy. associations connected with early life among mountains softened and deepened the teaching of the sea; and the wildness of form of the tyrolese alps gave greater strength and grotesqueness to their imaginations than the greek painters could have found among the cliffs of the Ægean. thus far, however, the influences on both are nearly similar. the greek sea was indeed less bleak, and the greek hills less grand; but the difference was in degree rather than in the nature of their power. the moral influences at work on the two races were far more sharply opposed. § . evil, as we saw, had been fronted by the greek, and thrust out of his path. once conquered, if he thought of it more, it was involuntarily, as we remember a painful dream, yet with a secret dread that the dream might return and continue for ever. but the teaching of the church in the middle ages had made the contemplation of evil one of the duties of men. as sin, it was to be duly thought upon, that it might be confessed. as suffering, endured joyfully, in hope of future reward. hence conditions of bodily distemper which an athenian would have looked upon with the severest contempt and aversion, were in the christian church regarded always with pity, and often with respect; while the partial practice of celibacy by the clergy, and by those over whom they had influence,--together with the whole system of conventual penance and pathetic ritual (with the vicious reactionary tendencies necessarily following), introduced calamitous conditions both of body and soul, which added largely to the pagan's simple list of elements of evil, and introduced the most complicated states of mental suffering and decrepitude. § . therefore the christian painters differed from the greek in two main points. they had been taught a faith which put an end to restless questioning and discouragement. all was at last to be well--and their best genius might be peacefully given to imagining the glories of heaven and the happiness of its redeemed. but on the other hand, though suffering was to cease in heaven, it was to be not only endured, but honored upon earth. and from the crucifixion, down to a beggar's lameness, all the tortures and maladies of men were to be made, at least in part, the subjects of art. the venetian was, therefore, in his inner mind, less serious than the greek: in his superficial temper, sadder. in his heart there was none of the deep horror which vexed the soul of Æschylus or homer. his pallas-shield was the shield of faith, not the shield of the gorgon. all was at last to issue happily; in sweetest harpings and seven-fold circles of light. but for the present he had to dwell with the maimed and the blind, and to revere lazarus more than achilles. § . this reference to a future world has a morbid influence on all their conclusions. for the earth and all its natural elements are despised. they are to pass away like a scroll. man, the immortal, is alone revered; his work and presence are all that can be noble or desirable. men, and fair architecture, temples and courts such as may be in a celestial city, or the clouds and angels of paradise; these are what we must paint when we want beautiful things. but the sea, the mountains, the forests, are all adverse to us,--a desolation. the ground that was cursed for our sake;--the sea that executed judgment on all our race, and rages against us still, though bridled;--storm-demons churning it into foam in nightly glare on lido, and hissing from it against our palaces. nature is but a terror, or a temptation. she is for hermits, martyrs, murderers,--for st. jerome, and st. mary of egypt, and the magdalen in the desert, and monk peter, falling before the sword. § . but the worst point we have to note respecting the spirit of venetian landscape is its pride. it was observed in the course of the third volume how the mediæval temper had rejected agricultural pursuits, and whatever pleasures could come of them. at venice this negation had reached its extreme. though the florentines and romans had no delight in farming, they had in gardening. the venetian possessed, and cared for, neither fields nor pastures. being delivered, to his loss, from all the wholesome labors of tillage, he was also shut out from the sweet wonders and charities of the earth, and from the pleasant natural history of the year. birds and beasts, and times and seasons, all unknown to him. no swallow chattered at his window,[ ] nor, nested under his golden roofs, claimed the sacredness of his mercy;[ ] no pythagorean fowl taught him the blessings of the poor,[ ] nor did the grave spirit of poverty rise at his side to set forth the delicate grace and honor of lowly life.[ ] no humble thoughts of grasshopper sire had he, like the athenian; no gratitude for gifts of olive; no childish care for figs, any more than thistles. the rich venetian feast had no need of the figtree spoon.[ ] dramas about birds, and wasps, and frogs, would have passed unheeded by his proud fancy; carol or murmur of them had fallen unrecognized on ears accustomed only to grave syllables of war-tried men, and wash of songless wave. § . no simple joy was possible to him. only stateliness and power; high intercourse with kingly and beautiful humanity, proud thoughts, or splendid pleasures; throned sensualities, and ennobled appetites. but of innocent, childish, helpful, holy pleasures, he had none. as in the classical landscape, nearly all rural labor is banished from the titianesque: there is one bold etching of a landscape, with grand ploughing in the foreground, but this is only a caprice; the customary venetian background is without sign of laborious rural life. we find indeed often a shepherd with his flock, sometimes a woman spinning, but no division of fields, no growing crops nor nestling villages. in the numerous drawings and woodcuts variously connected with or representative of venetian work, a watermill is a frequent object, a river constant, generally the sea. but the prevailing idea in all the great pictures i have seen, is that of mountainous land with wild but graceful forest, and rolling or horizontal clouds. the mountains are dark blue; the clouds glowing or soft gray, always massive; the light, deep, clear, melancholy; the foliage, neither intricate nor graceful, but compact and sweeping (with undulated trunks), dividing much into horizontal flakes, like the clouds; the ground rocky and broken somewhat monotonously, but richly green with wild herbage; here and there a flower, by preference white or blue, rarely yellow, still more rarely red. § . it was stated that this heroic landscape of theirs was peopled by spiritual beings of the highest order. and in this rested the dominion of the venetians over all later schools. they were the _last believing_ school of italy. although, as i said above, always quarrelling with the pope, there is all the more evidence of an earnest faith in their religion. people who trusted the madonna less, flattered the pope more. but down to tintoret's time, the roman catholic religion was still real and sincere at venice; and though faith in it was compatible with much which to us appears criminal or absurd, the religion itself was entirely sincere. § . perhaps when you see one of titian's splendidly passionate subjects, or find veronese making the marriage in cana one blaze of worldly pomp, you imagine that titian must have been a sensualist, and veronese an unbeliever. put the idea from you at once, and be assured of this for ever;--it will guide you through many a labyrinth of life, as well as of painting,--that of an evil tree, men never gather good fruit--good of any sort or kind;--even good sensualism. let us look to this calmly. we have seen what physical advantage the venetian had, in his sea and sky; also what moral disadvantage he had, in scorn of the poor; now finally, let us see with what power he was invested, which men since his time have never recovered more. § . "neither of a bramble bush, gather they grapes." the great saying has twofold help for us. be assured, first, that if it were bramble from which you gathered them, these are not grapes in your hand, though they look like grapes. or if these are indeed grapes, it was no bramble you gathered them from, though it looked like one. it is difficult for persons, accustomed to receive, without questioning, the modern english idea of religion, to understand the temper of the venetian catholics. i do not enter into examination of our own feelings; but i have to note this one significant point of difference between us. § . an english gentleman, desiring his portrait, gives probably to the painter a choice of several actions, in any of which he is willing to be represented. as for instance, riding his best horse, shooting with his favorite pointer, manifesting himself in his robes of state on some great public occasion, meditating in his study, playing with his children, or visiting his tenants; in any of these or other such circumstances, he will give the artist free leave to paint him. but in one important action he would shrink even from the suggestion of being drawn. he will assuredly not let himself be painted praying. strangely, this is the action, which of all others, a venetian desires to be painted in. if they want a noble and complete portrait, they nearly always choose to be painted on their knees. § . "hypocrisy," you say; and "that they might be seen of men." if we examine ourselves, or any one else, who will give trustworthy answer on this point, so as to ascertain, to the best of our judgment, what the feeling is, which would make a modern english person dislike to be painted praying, we shall not find it, i believe, to be excess of sincerity. whatever we find it to be, the opposite venetian feeling is certainly not hypocrisy. it is often conventionalism, implying as little devotion in the person represented, as regular attendance at church does with us. but that it is not hypocrisy, you may ascertain by one simple consideration (supposing you not to have enough knowledge of the expression of sincere persons to judge by the portraits themselves). the venetians, when they desired to deceive, were much too subtle to attempt it clumsily. if they assumed the mask of religion, the mask must have been of some use. the persons whom it deceived must, therefore, have been religious, and, being so, have believed in the venetians' sincerity. if therefore, among other contemporary nations with whom they had intercourse, we can find any, more religious than they, who were duped, or even influenced, by their external religiousness, we might have some ground for suspecting that religiousness to be assumed. but if we can find no one likely to have been deceived, we must believe the venetian to have been, in reality, what there was no advantage in seeming. § . i leave the matter to your examination, forewarning you, confidently, that you will discover by severest evidence, that the venetian religion was true. not only true, but one of the main motives of their lives. in the field of investigation to which we are here limited, i will collect some of the evidence of this. for one profane picture by great venetians, you will find ten of sacred subjects; and those, also, including their grandest, most labored, and most beloved works. tintoret's power culminates in two great religious pictures: the crucifixion, and the paradise. titian's in the assumption, the peter martyr, and presentation of the virgin. veronese's in the marriage in cana. john bellini and basaiti never, so far as i remember, painted any other than sacred subjects. by the palmas, vincenzo, catena, and bonifazio, i remember no profane subject of importance. § . there is, moreover, one distinction of the very highest import between the treatment of sacred subjects by venetian painters and by all others. throughout the rest of italy, piety had become abstract, and opposed theoretically to worldly life; hence the florentine and umbrian painters generally separated their saints from living men. they delighted in imagining scenes of spiritual perfectness;--paradises, and companies of the redeemed at the judgment;--glorified meetings of martyrs;--madonnas surrounded by circles of angels. if, which was rare, definite portraitures of living men were introduced, these real characters formed a kind of chorus or attendant company, taking no part in the action. at venice all this was reversed, and so boldly as at first to shock, with its seeming irreverence, a spectator accustomed to the formalities and abstractions of the so-called sacred schools. the madonnas are no more seated apart on their thrones, the saints no more breathe celestial air. they are on our own plain ground--nay, here in our houses with us. all kind of worldly business going on in their presence, fearlessly; our own friends and respected acquaintances, with all their mortal faults, and in their mortal flesh, looking at them face to face unalarmed: nay, our dearest children playing with their pet dogs at christ's very feet. i once myself thought this irreverent. how foolishly! as if children whom he loved _could_ play anywhere else. § . the picture most illustrative of this feeling is perhaps that at dresden, of veronese's family, painted by himself. he wishes to represent them as happy and honored. the best happiness and highest honor he can imagine for them is that they should be presented to the madonna, to whom, therefore, they are being brought by the three virtues--faith, hope, and charity. the virgin stands in a recess behind two marble shafts, such as may be seen in any house belonging to an old family in venice. she places the boy christ on the edge of a balustrade before her. at her side are st. john the baptist, and st. jerome. this group occupies the left side of the picture. the pillars, seen sideways, divide it from the group formed by the virtues, with the wife and children of veronese. he himself stands a little behind, his hands clasped in prayer. § . his wife kneels full in front, a strong venetian woman, well advanced in years. she has brought up her children in fear of god, and is not afraid to meet the virgin's eyes. she gazes steadfastly on them; her proud head and gentle, self-possessed face are relieved in one broad mass of shadow against a space of light, formed by the white robes of faith, who stands beside her,--guardian, and companion. perhaps a somewhat disappointing faith at the first sight, for her face is not in any way exalted or refined. veronese knew that faith had to companion simple and slow-hearted people perhaps oftener than able or refined people--does not therefore insist on her being severely intellectual, or looking as if she were always in the best company. so she is only distinguished by her pure white (not bright white) dress, her delicate hand, her golden hair drifted in light ripples across her breast, from which the white robes fall nearly in the shape of a shield--the shield of faith. a little behind her stands hope; she also, at first, not to most people a recognizable hope. we usually paint hope as young, and joyous. veronese knows better. that young hope is vain hope--passing away in rain of tears; but the hope of veronese is aged, assured, remaining when all else had been taken away. "for tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope;" and _that_ hope maketh not ashamed. she has a black veil on her head. then again, in the front, is charity, red-robed; stout in the arms,--a servant of all work, she; but small-headed, not being specially given to thinking; soft-eyed, her hair braided brightly, her lips rich red, sweet-blossoming. she has got some work to do even now, for a nephew of veronese's is doubtful about coming forward, and looks very humbly and penitently towards the virgin--his life perhaps not having been quite so exemplary as might at present be wished. faith reaches her small white hand lightly back to him, lays the tips of her fingers on his; but charity takes firm hold of him by the wrist from behind, and will push him on presently, if he still hangs back. § . in front of the mother kneel her two eldest children, a girl of about sixteen, and a boy a year or two younger. they are both wrapt in adoration--the boy's being the deepest. nearer us, at their left side, is a younger boy, about nine years old--a black-eyed fellow, full of life--and evidently his father's darling (for veronese has put him full in light in the front; and given him a beautiful white silken jacket, barred with black, that nobody may ever miss seeing him to the end of time). he is a little shy about being presented to the madonna, and for the present has got behind the pillar, blushing, but opening his black eyes wide; he is just summoning courage to peep round, and see if she looks kind. a still younger child, about six years old, is really frightened, and has run back to his mother, catching hold of her dress at the waist. she throws her right arm round him and over him, with exquisite instinctive action, not moving her eyes from the madonna's face. last of all, the youngest child, perhaps about three years old, is neither frightened nor interested, but finds the ceremony tedious, and is trying to coax the dog to play with him; but the dog, which is one of the little curly, short-nosed, fringy-pawed things, which all venetian ladies petted, will not now be coaxed. for the dog is the last link in the chain of lowering feeling, and takes his doggish views of the matter. he cannot understand, first, how the madonna got into the house; nor, secondly, why she is allowed to stay, disturbing the family, and taking all their attention from his dogship. and he is walking away, much offended. § . the dog is thus constantly introduced by the venetians in order to give the fullest contrast to the highest tones of human thought and feeling. i shall examine this point presently farther, in speaking of pastoral landscape and animal painting; but at present we will merely compare the use of the same mode of expression in veronese's presentation of the queen of sheba. § . this picture is at turin, and is of quite inestimable value. it is hung high; and the really principal figure--the solomon, being in the shade, can hardly be seen, but is painted with veronese's utmost tenderness, in the bloom of perfect youth, his hair golden, short, crisply curled. he is seated high on his lion throne; two elders on each side beneath him, the whole group forming a tower of solemn shade. i have alluded, elsewhere, to the principle on which all the best composers act, of supporting these lofty groups by some vigorous mass of foundation. this column of noble shade is curiously sustained. a falconer leans forward from the left-hand side, bearing on his wrist a snow-white falcon, its wings spread, and brilliantly relieved against the purple robe of one of the elders. it touches with its wings one of the golden lions of the throne, on which the light also flashes strongly; thus forming, together with it, the lion and eagle symbol, which is the type of christ throughout mediæval work. in order to show the meaning of this symbol, and that solomon is typically invested with the christian royalty, one of the elders, by a bold anachronism, holds a jewel in his hand of the shape of a cross, with which he (by accident of gesture) points to solomon; his other hand is laid on an open book. § . the group opposite, of which the queen forms the centre, is also painted with veronese's highest skill; but contains no point of interest bearing on our present subject, except its connection by a chain of descending emotion. the queen is wholly oppressed and subdued; kneeling, and nearly fainting, she looks up to solomon with tears in her eyes; he, startled by fear for her, stoops forward from the throne, opening his right hand, as if to support her, so as almost to drop the sceptre. at her side her first maid of honor is kneeling also, but does not care about solomon; and is gathering up her dress that it may not be crushed; and looking back to encourage a negro girl, who, carrying two toy-birds, made of enamel and jewels, for presenting to the king, is frightened at seeing her queen fainting, and does not know what she ought to do; while lastly, the queen's dog, another of the little fringy-paws, is wholly unabashed by solomon's presence, or anybody else's; and stands with his fore legs well apart, right in front of his mistress, thinking everybody has lost their wits; and barking violently at one of the attendants, who has set down a golden vase disrespectfully near him. § . throughout these designs i want the reader to notice the purpose of representing things as they were likely to have occurred, down to trivial, or even ludicrous detail--the nobleness of all that was intended to be noble being so great that nothing could detract from it. a farther instance, however, and a prettier one, of this familiar realization, occurs in a holy family, by veronese, at brussels. the madonna has laid the infant christ on a projecting base of pillar, and stands behind, looking down on him. st. catherine, having knelt down in front, the child turns round to receive her--so suddenly, and so far, that any other child must have fallen over the edge of the stone. st. catherine, terrified, thinking he is really going to fall, stretches out her arms to catch him. but the madonna looking down, only smiles, "he will not fall." § . a more touching instance of this realization occurs, however, in the treatment of the saint veronica (in the ascent to calvary), at dresden. most painters merely represent her as one of the gentle, weeping, attendant women; and show her giving the handkerchief as though these women had been allowed to approach christ without any difficulty. but in veronese's conception, she has to break through the executioners to him. she is not weeping; and the expression of pity, though intense, is overborne by that of resolution. she is determined to reach christ; has set her teeth close, and thrusts aside one of the executioners, who strikes fiercely at her with a heavy doubled cord. § . these instances are enough to explain the general character of the mind of veronese, capable of tragic power to the utmost, if he chooses to exert it in that direction, but, by habitual preference, exquisitely graceful and playful; religious without severity, and winningly noble; delighting in slight, sweet, every-day incident, but hiding deep meanings underneath it; rarely painting a gloomy subject, and never a base one. § . i have, in other places, entered enough into the examination of the great religious mind of tintoret; supposing then that he was distinguished from titian chiefly by this character. but in this i was mistaken; the religion of titian is like that of shakspere--occult behind his magnificent equity. it is not possible, however, within the limits of this work, to give any just account of the mind of titian: nor shall i attempt it; but will only explain some of those more strange and apparently inconsistent attributes of it, which might otherwise prevent the reader from getting clue to its real tone. the first of these is its occasional coarseness in choice of type of feature. § . in the second volume i had to speak of titian's magdalen, in the pitti palace, as treated basely, and that in strong terms, "the disgusting magdalen of the pitti." truly she is so as compared with the received types of the magdalen. a stout, redfaced woman, dull, and coarse of feature, with much of the animal in even her expression of repentance--her eyes strained, and inflamed with weeping. i ought, however, to have remembered another picture of the magdalen by titian (mr. rogers's, now in the national gallery), in which she is just as refined, as in the pitti palace she is gross; and had i done so, i should have seen titian's meaning. it had been the fashion before his time to make the magdalen always young and beautiful; her, if no one else, even the rudest painters flattered; her repentance was not thought perfect unless she had lustrous hair and lovely lips. titian first dared to doubt the romantic fable, and reject the narrowness of sentimental faith. he saw that it was possible for plain women to love no less than beautiful ones; and for stout persons to repent as well as those more delicately made. it seemed to him that the magdalen would have received her pardon not the less quickly because her wit was none of the readiest; and would not have been regarded with less compassion by her master because her eyes were swollen, or her dress disordered. it is just because he has set himself sternly to enforce this lesson that the picture is so painful: the only instance, so far as i remember, of titian's painting a woman markedly and entirely belonging to the lowest class. § . it may perhaps appear more difficult to account for the alternation of titian's great religious pictures with others devoted wholly to the expression of sensual qualities, or to exulting and bright representation of heathen deities. the venetian mind, we have said, and titian's especially, as the central type of it, was wholly realist, universal, and manly. in this breadth and realism, the painter saw that sensual passion in man was, not only a fact, but a divine fact; the human creature, though the highest of the animals, was, nevertheless, a perfect animal, and his happiness, health, and nobleness depended on the due power of every animal passion, as well as the cultivation of every spiritual tendency. he thought that every feeling of the mind and heart, as well as every form of the body, deserved painting. also to a painter's true and highly trained instinct, the human body is the loveliest of all objects. i do not stay to trace the reasons why, at venice, the female body could be found in more perfect beauty than the male; but so it was, and it becomes the principal subject therefore, both with giorgione and titian. they painted it fearlessly, with all right and natural qualities; never, however, representing it as exercising any overpowering attractive influence on man; but only on the faun or satyr. yet they did this so majestically that i am perfectly certain no untouched venetian picture ever yet excited one base thought (otherwise than in base persons anything may do so); while in the greatest studies of the female body by the venetians, all other characters are overborne by majesty, and the form becomes as pure as that of a greek statue. § . there is no need, i should think, to point out how this contemplation of the entire personal nature was reconcilable with the severest conceptions of religious duty and faith. but the fond introduction of heathen gods may appear less explicable. on examination, however, it will be found, that these deities are never painted with any heart-reverence or affection. they are introduced for the most part symbolically (bacchus and venus oftenest, as incarnations of the spirit of revelry and beauty), of course always conceived with deep imaginative truth, much resembling the mode of keats's conception; but never so as to withdraw any of the deep devotion referred to the objects of christian faith. in all its roots of power, and modes of work;--in its belief, its breadth, and its judgment, i find the venetian mind perfect. how, then, did its art so swiftly pass away? how become, what it became unquestionably, one of the chief causes of the corruption of the mind of italy, and of her subsequent decline in moral and political power? § . by reason of one great, one fatal fault;--recklessness in aim. wholly noble in its sources, it was wholly unworthy in its purposes. separate and strong, like samson, chosen from its youth, and with the spirit of god visibly resting on it,--like him, it warred in careless strength, and wantoned in untimely pleasure. no venetian painter ever worked with any aim beyond that of delighting the eye, or expressing fancies agreeable to himself or flattering to his nation. they could not be either unless they were religious. but he did not desire the religion. he desired the delight. the assumption is a noble picture, because titian believed in the madonna. but he did not paint it to make any one else believe in her. he painted it because he enjoyed rich masses of red and blue, and faces flushed with sunlight. tintoret's paradise is a noble picture, because he believed in paradise. but he did not paint it to make any one think of heaven; but to form a beautiful termination for the hall of the greater council. other men used their effete faiths and mean faculties with a high moral purpose. the venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an ante-chamber, or heighten the splendors of a holiday. § . strange, and lamentable as this carelessness may appear, i find it to be almost the law with the great workers. weak and vain men have acute consciences, and labor under a profound sense of responsibility. the strong men, sternly disdainful of themselves, do what they can, too often merely as it pleases them at the moment, reckless what comes of it. i know not how far in humility, or how far in bitter and hopeless levity, the great venetians gave their art to be blasted by the sea-winds or wasted by the worm. i know not whether in sorrowful obedience, or in wanton compliance, they fostered the folly, and enriched the luxury of their age. this only i know, that in proportion to the greatness of their power was the shame of its desecration and the suddenness of its fall. the enchanter's spell, woven by centuries of toil, was broken in the weakness of a moment; and swiftly, and utterly, as a rainbow vanishes, the radiance and the strength faded from the wings of the lion. footnotes: [ ] anacreon, ode th. [ ] herod, i. . [ ] lucian (micyllus). [ ] aristophanes, plutus. [ ] hippias major, . chapter iv. durer and salvator. "emigravit." § . by referring to the first analysis of our subject, it will be seen we have next to examine the art which cannot conquer the evil, but remains at war with, or in captivity to it. up to the time of the reformation it was possible for men even of the highest powers of intellect to obtain a tranquillity of faith, in the highest degree favorable to the pursuit of any particular art. possible, at least, we see it to have been; there is no need--nor, so far as i see, any ground, for argument about it. i am myself unable to understand how it was so; but the fact is unquestionable. it is not that i wonder at men's trust in the pope's infallibility, or in his virtue; nor at their surrendering their private judgment; nor at their being easily cheated by imitations of miracles; nor at their thinking indulgences could be purchased with money. but i wonder at this one thing only; the acceptance of the doctrine of eternal punishment as dependent on accident of birth, or momentary excitement of devotional feeling. i marvel at the acceptance of the system (as stated in its fulness by dante) which condemned guiltless persons to the loss of heaven because they had lived before christ, and which made the obtaining of paradise turn frequently on a passing thought or a momentary invocation. how this came to pass, it is no part of our work here to determine. that in this faith, it was possible to attain entire peace of mind; to live calmly, and die hopefully, is indisputable. § . but this possibility ceased at the reformation. thenceforward human life became a school of debate, troubled and fearful. fifteen hundred years of spiritual teaching were called into fearful question, whether indeed it had been teaching by angels or devils? whatever it had been, there was no longer any way of trusting it peacefully. a dark time for all men. we cannot now conceive it. the great horror of it lay in this:--that, as in the trial-hour of the greek, the heavens themselves seemed to have deceived those who had trusted in them. "we had prayed with tears; we had loved with our hearts. there was no choice of way open to us. no guidance from god or man, other than this, and behold, it was a lie. 'when he, the spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all truth.' and he has guided us into _no_ truth. there can be no such spirit. there is no advocate, no comforter. has there been no resurrection?" § . then came the resurrection of death. never since man first saw him, face to face, had his terror been so great. "swallowed up in victory:" alas! no; but king over all the earth. all faith, hope, and fond belief were betrayed. nothing of futurity was now sure but the grave. for the pan-athenaic triumph and the feast of jubilee, there came up, through fields of spring, the dance of death. the brood of weak men fled from the face of him. a new bacchus and his crew this, with worm for snake and gall for wine. they recoiled to such pleasure as yet remained possible to them--feeble infidelities, and luxurious sciences, and so went their way. § . at least, of the men with whom we are concerned--the artists--this was almost the universal fate. they gave themselves to the following of pleasure only; and as a religious school, after a few pale rays of fading sanctity from guido, and brown gleams of gipsy madonnahood from murillo, came utterly to an end. three men only stood firm, facing the new dionysiac revel, to see what would come of it. two in the north, holbein and durer, and, later, one in the south, salvator. but the ground on which they stood differed strangely; durer and holbein, amidst the formal delights, the tender religions, and practical science, of domestic life and honest commerce. salvator, amidst the pride of lascivious wealth, and the outlawed distress of impious poverty. § . it would be impossible to imagine any two phases of scenery or society more contrary in character, more opposite in teaching, than those surrounding nuremberg and naples, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. what they were then, both districts still to all general intents remain. the cities have in each case lost their splendor and power, but not their character. the surrounding scenery remains wholly unchanged. it is still in our power, from the actual aspect of the places, to conceive their effect on the youth of the two painters. [illustration: . the moat of nuremberg.] § . nuremberg is gathered at the base of a sandstone rock, rising in the midst of a dry but fertile plain. the rock forms a prolonged and curved ridge, of which the concave side, at the highest point, is precipitous; the other slopes gradually to the plain. fortified with wall and tower along its whole crest, and crowned with a stately castle, it defends the city--not with its precipitous side--but with its slope. the precipice is turned to the town. it wears no aspect of hostility towards the surrounding fields; the roads lead down into them by gentle descents from the gates. to the south and east the walls are on the level of the plain; within them, the city itself stands on two swells of hill, divided by a winding river. its architecture has, however, been much overrated. the effect of the streets, so delightful to the eye of the passing traveller, depends chiefly on one appendage of the roof, namely, its warehouse windows. every house, almost without exception, has at least one boldly opening dormer window, the roof of which sustains a pulley for raising goods; and the underpart of this strong overhanging roof is always carved with a rich pattern, not of refined design, but effective.[ ] among these comparatively modern structures are mingled, however, not unfrequently, others, turreted at the angles, which are true gothic of the fifteenth, some of the fourteenth, century; and the principal churches remain nearly as in durer's time. their gothic is none of it good, nor even rich (though the façades have their ornament so distributed as to give them a sufficiently elaborate effect at a distance); their size is diminutive; their interiors mean, rude, and ill-proportioned, wholly dependent for their interest on ingenious stone cutting in corners, and finely-twisted ironwork; of these the mason's exercises are in the worst possible taste, possessing not even the merit of delicate execution; but the designs in metal are usually meritorious, and fischer's shrine of st. sebald is good, and may rank with italian work.[ ] § . though, however, not comparable for an instant to any great italian or french city, nuremberg possesses one character peculiar to itself, that of a self-restrained, contented, quaint domesticity. it would be vain to expect any first-rate painting, sculpture, or poetry, from the well-regulated community of merchants of small ware. but it is evident they were affectionate and trustworthy--that they had playful fancy, and honorable pride. there is no exalted grandeur in their city, nor any deep beauty; but an imaginative homeliness, mingled with some elements of melancholy and power, and a few even of grace. this homeliness, among many other causes, arises out of one in chief. the richness of the houses depends, as i just said, on the dormer windows: but their deeper character on the pitch and space of roofs. i had to notice long ago how much our english cottage depended for expression on its steep roof. the german house does so in far greater degree. plate is engraved[ ] from a slight pen-and-ink sketch of mine on the ramparts of nuremberg, showing a piece of its moat and wall, and a little corner of the city beneath the castle; of which the tower on the extreme right rises just in front of durer's house. the character of this scene approaches more nearly that which durer would see in his daily walks, than most of the modernized inner streets. in durer's own engraving, "the cannon," the distance (of which the most important passage is facsimiled in my elements of drawing, p. ) is an actual portrait of part of the landscape seen from those castle ramparts, looking towards franconian switzerland. § . if the reader will be at the pains to turn to it, he will see at a glance the elements of the nuremberg country, as they still exist. wooden cottages, thickly grouped, enormously high in the roofs; the sharp church spire, small and slightly grotesque, surmounting them; beyond, a richly cultivated, healthy plain bounded by woody hills. by a strange coincidence the very plant which constitutes the staple produce of those fields, is in almost ludicrous harmony with the grotesqueness and neatness of the architecture around; and one may almost fancy that the builders of the little knotted spires and turrets of the town, and workers of its dark iron flowers, are in spiritual presence, watching and guiding the produce of the field,--when one finds the footpaths bordered everywhere, by the bossy spires and lustrous jetty flowers of the black hollyhock. § . lastly, when durer penetrated among those hills of franconia he would find himself in a pastoral country, much resembling the gruyère districts of switzerland, but less thickly inhabited, and giving in its steep, though not lofty, rocks,--its scattered pines,--and its fortresses and chapels, the motives of all the wilder landscape introduced by the painter in such pieces as his st. jerome, or st. hubert. his continual and forced introduction of sea in almost every scene, much as it seems to me to be regretted, is possibly owing to his happy recollections of the sea-city where he received the rarest of all rewards granted to a good workman; and, for once in his life, was understood. § . among this pastoral simplicity and formal sweetness of domestic peace, durer had to work out his question concerning the grave. it haunted him long; he learned to engrave death's heads well before he had done with it; looked deeper than any other man into those strange rings, their jewels lost; and gave answer at last conclusively in his great knight and death--of which more presently. but while the nuremberg landscape is still fresh in our minds, we had better turn south quickly and compare the elements of education which formed, and of creation which companioned, salvator. § . born with a wild and coarse nature (how coarse i will show you soon), but nevertheless an honest one, he set himself in youth hotly to the war, and cast himself carelessly on the current of life. no rectitude of ledger-lines stood in his way; no tender precision of household customs; no calm successions of rural labor. but past his half-starved lips rolled profusion of pitiless wealth; before him glared and swept the troops of shameless pleasure. above him muttered vesuvius; beneath his feet shook the solfatara. in heart disdainful, in temper adventurous; conscious of power, impatient of labor, and yet more of the pride of the patrons of his youth, he fled to the calabrian hills, seeking, not knowledge, but freedom. if he was to be surrounded by cruelty and deceit, let them at least be those of brave men or savage beasts, not of the timorous and the contemptible. better the wrath of the robber, than enmity of the priest; and the cunning of the wolf than of the hypocrite. § . we are accustomed to hear the south of italy spoken of as a beautiful country. its mountain forms are graceful above others, its sea-bays exquisite in outline and hue; but it is only beautiful in superficial aspect. in closer detail it is wild and melancholy. its forests are sombre-leafed, labyrinth-stemmed; the carubbe, the olive, laurel, and ilex, are alike in that strange feverish twisting of their branches, as if in spasms of half human pain:--avernus forests; one fears to break their boughs, lest they should cry to us from their rents; the rocks they shade are of ashes, or thrice-molten lava; iron sponge, whose every pore has been filled with fire. silent villages, earthquake-shaken, without commerce, without industry, without knowledge, without hope, gleam in white ruin from hill-side to hill-side; far-winding wrecks of immemorial walls surround the dust of cities long forsaken: the mountain streams moan through the cold arches of their foundations, green with weed, and rage over the heaps of their fallen towers. far above, in thunder-blue serration, stand the eternal edges of the angry apennine, dark with rolling impendence of volcanic cloud. § . yet even among such scenes as these, salvator might have been calmed and exalted, had he been, indeed, capable of exaltation. but he was not of high temper enough to perceive beauty. he had not the sacred sense--the sense of color; all the loveliest hues of the calabrian air were invisible to him; the sorrowful desolation of the calabrian villages unfelt. he saw only what was gross and terrible,--the jagged peak, the splintered tree, the flowerless bank of grass, and wandering weed, prickly and pale. his temper confirmed itself in evil, and became more and more fierce and morose; though not, i believe, cruel, ungenerous, or lascivious. i should not suspect salvator of wantonly inflicting pain. his constantly painting it does not prove he delighted in it; he felt the horror of it, and in that horror, fascination. also, he desired fame, and saw that here was an untried field rich enough in morbid excitement to catch the humor of his indolent patrons. but the gloom gained upon him, and grasped him. he could jest, indeed, as men jest in prison-yards (he became afterwards a renowned mime in florence); his satires are full of good mocking, but his own doom to sadness is never repealed. § . of all men whose work i have ever studied, he gives me most distinctly the idea of a lost spirit. michelet calls him "ce damné salvator," perhaps in a sense merely harsh and violent; the epithet to me seems true in a more literal, more merciful sense,--"that condemned salvator." i see in him, notwithstanding all his baseness, the last traces of spiritual life in the art of europe. he was the last man to whom the thought of a spiritual existence presented itself as a conceivable reality. all succeeding men, however powerful--rembrandt, rubens, vandyke, reynolds--would have mocked at the idea of a spirit. they were men of the world; they are never in earnest, and they are never appalled. but salvator was capable of pensiveness, of faith, and of fear. the misery of the earth is a marvel to him; he cannot leave off gazing at it. the religion of the earth is a horror to him. he gnashes his teeth at it, rages at it, mocks and gibes at it. he would have acknowledged religion, had he seen any that was true. anything rather than that baseness which he did see. "if there is no other religion than this of pope and cardinals, let us to the robber's ambush and the dragon's den." he was capable of fear also. the gray spectre, horse-headed, striding across the sky--(in the pitti palace)--its bat wings spread, green bars of the twilight seen between its bones; it was no play to him--the painting of it. helpless salvator! a little early sympathy, a word of true guidance, perhaps, had saved him. what says he of himself? "despiser of wealth and of death." two grand scorns; but, oh, condemned salvator! the question is not for man what he can scorn, but what he can love. § . i do not care to trace the various hold which hades takes on this fallen soul. it is no part of my work here to analyze his art, nor even that of durer; all that we need to note is the opposite answer they gave to the question about death. to salvator it came in narrow terms. desolation, without hope, throughout the fields of nature he had to explore; hypocrisy and sensuality, triumphant and shameless, in the cities from which he derived his support. his life, so far as any nobility remained in it, could only pass in horror, disdain, or despair. it is difficult to say which of the three prevails most in his common work; but his answer to the great question was of despair only. he represents "umana fragilita" by the type of a skeleton with plumy wings, leaning over a woman and child; the earth covered with ruin round them--a thistle, casting its seed, the only fruit of it. "thorns, also, and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." the same tone of thought marks all salvator's more earnest work. § . on the contrary, in the sight of durer, things were for the most part as they ought to be. men did their work in his city and in the fields round it. the clergy were sincere. great social questions unagitated; great social evils either non-existent, or seemingly a part of the nature of things, and inevitable. his answer was that of patient hope; and twofold, consisting of one design in praise of fortitude, and another in praise of labor. the fortitude, commonly known as the "knight and death," represents a knight riding through a dark valley overhung by leafless trees, and with a great castle on a hill beyond. beside him, but a little in advance, rides death on a pale horse. death is gray-haired and crowned;--serpents wreathed about his crown; (the sting of death involved in the kingly power). he holds up the hour-glass, and looks earnestly into the knight's face. behind him follows sin; but sin powerless; he has been conquered and passed by, but follows yet, watching if any way of assault remains. on his forehead are two horns--i think, of sea-shell--to indicate his insatiableness and instability. he has also the twisted horns of the ram, for stubbornness, the ears of an ass, the snout of a swine, the hoofs of a goat. torn wings hang useless from his shoulders, and he carries a spear with two hooks, for catching as well as wounding. the knight does not heed him, nor even death, though he is conscious of the presence of the last. he rides quietly, his bridle firm in his hand, and his lips set close in a slight sorrowful smile, for he hears what death is saying; and hears it as the word of a messenger who brings pleasant tidings, thinking to bring evil ones. a little branch of delicate heath is twisted round his helmet. his horse trots proudly and straight; its head high, and with a cluster of oak on the brow where on the fiend's brow is the sea-shell horn. but the horse of death stoops its head; and its rein catches the little bell which hangs from the knight's horse-bridle, making it toll, as a passing bell.[ ] § . durer's second answer is the plate of "melencholia," which is the history of the sorrowful toil of the earth, as the "knight and death" is of its sorrowful patience under temptation. salvator's answer, remember, is in both respects that of despair. death as he reads, lord of temptation, is victor over the spirit of man; and lord of ruin, is victor over the work of man. durer declares the sad, but unsullied conquest over death the tempter; and the sad, but enduring conquest over death the destroyer. § . though the general intent of the melencholia is clear, and to be felt at a glance, i am in some doubt respecting its special symbolism. i do not know how far durer intended to show that labor, in many of its most earnest forms, is closely connected with the morbid sadness, or "dark anger," of the northern nations. truly some of the best work ever done for man, has been in that dark anger;[ ] but i have not yet been able to determine for myself how far this is necessary, or how far great work may also be done with cheerfulness. if i knew what the truth was, i should be able to interpret durer better; meantime the design seems to me his answer to the complaint, "yet is his strength labor and sorrow." "yes," he replies, "but labor and sorrow are his strength." § . the labor indicated is in the daily work of men. not the inspired or gifted labor of the few (it is labor connected with the sciences, not with the arts), shown in its four chief functions: thoughtful, faithful, calculating and executing. thoughtful, first; all true power coming of that resolved, resistless calm of melancholy thought. this is the first and last message of the whole design. faithful, the right arm of the spirit resting on the book. calculating (chiefly in the sense of self-command), the compasses in her right hand. executive--roughest instruments of labor at her feet: a crucible, and geometrical solids, indicating her work in the sciences. over her head the hour-glass and the bell, for their continual words, "whatsoever thy hand findeth to do." beside her, childish labor (lesson-learning?) sitting on an old millstone, with a tablet on its knees. i do not know what instrument it has in its hand. at her knees, a wolf-hound asleep. in the distance, a comet (the disorder and threatening of the universe) setting, the rainbow dominant over it. her strong body is close girded for work; at her waist hang the keys of wealth; but the coin is cast aside contemptuously under her feet. she has eagles' wings, and is crowned with fair leafage of spring. yes, albert of nuremberg, it was a noble answer, yet an imperfect one. this is indeed the labor which is crowned with laurel and has the wings of the eagle. it was reserved for another country to prove, for another hand to portray, the labor which is crowned with fire, and has the wings of the bat. footnotes: [ ] to obtain room for the goods, the roofs slope steeply, and their other dormer windows are richly carved--but all are of wood; and, for the most part, i think, some hundred years later than durer's time. a large number of the oriel and bow windows on the façades are wooden also, and of recent date. [ ] his piece in the cathedral of magdeburg is strangely inferior, wanting both the grace of composition and bold handling of the st. sebald's. the bronze fountains at nuremberg (three, of fame, in as many squares) are highly wrought, and have considerable merit; the ordinary ironwork of the houses, with less pretension, is, perhaps, more truly artistic. in plate , the right-hand figure is a characteristic example of the bell-handle at the door of a private house, composed of a wreath of flowers and leafage twisted in a spiral round an upright rod, the spiral terminating below in a delicate tendril; the whole of wrought iron. it is longer than represented, some of the leaf-links of the chain being omitted in the dotted spaces, as well as the handle, which, though often itself of leafage, is always convenient for the hand. [ ] by mr. le keux, very admirably. [ ] this was first pointed out to me by a friend--mr. robin allen. it is a beautiful thought; yet, possibly, an after-thought, i have some suspicion that there is an alteration in the plate at that place, and that the rope to which the bell hangs was originally the line of the chest of the nearer horse, as the grass-blades about the lifted hind leg conceal the lines which could not, in durer's way of work, be effaced, indicating its first intended position. what a proof of his general decision of handling is involved in this "repentir"! [ ] "yet withal, you see that the monarch is a great, valiant, cautious, melancholy, commanding man"--friends in council, last volume, p. ; milverton giving an account of titian's picture of charles the fifth. (compare ellesmere's description of milverton himself, p. .) read carefully also what is said further on respecting titian's freedom, and fearless with holding of flattery; comparing it with the note on giorgione and titian. chapter v. claude and poussin. § . it was stated in the last chapter that salvator was the last painter of italy on whom any fading trace of the old faithful spirit rested. carrying some of its passion far into the seventeenth century, he deserved to be remembered together with the painters whom the questioning of the reformation had exercised, eighty years before. not so his contemporaries. the whole body of painters around him, but chiefly those of landscape, had cast aside all regard for the faith of their fathers, or for any other; and founded a school of art properly called "classical,"[ ] of which the following are the chief characteristics. § . the belief in a supreme benevolent being having ceased, and the sense of spiritual destitution fastening on the mind, together with the hopeless perception of ruin and decay in the existing world, the imagination sought to quit itself from the oppression of these ideas by realizing a perfect worldly felicity, in which the inevitable ruin should at least be lovely, and the necessarily short life entirely happy and refined. labor must be banished, since it was to be unrewarded. humiliation and degradation of body must be prevented since there could be no compensation for them by preparation of the soul for another world. let us eat and drink (refinedly), for to-morrow we die, and attain the highest possible dignity as men in this world, since we shall have none as spirits in the next. § . observe, this is neither the greek nor the roman spirit. neither claude, nor poussin, nor any other painter or writer, properly termed "classical," ever could enter into the greek or roman heart, which was as full, in many cases fuller, of the hope of immortality than our own. on the absence of belief in a good supreme being, follows, necessarily, the habit of looking to ourselves for supreme judgment in all matters, and for supreme government. hence, first, the irreverent habit of judgment instead of admiration. it is generally expressed under the justly degrading term "good taste." § . hence, in the second place, the habit of restraint or self-government (instead of impulsive and limitless obedience), based upon pride, and involving, for the most part, scorn of the helpless and weak, and respect only for the orders of men who have been trained to this habit of self-government. whence the title classical, from the latin _classicus_. § . the school is, therefore, generally to be characterized as that of taste and restraint. as the school of taste, everything is, in its estimation, beneath it, so as to be tasted or tested; not above it, to be thankfully received. nothing was to be fed upon as bread; but only palated as a dainty. this spirit has destroyed art since the close of the sixteenth century, and nearly destroyed french literature, our english literature being at the same time severely depressed, and our education (except in bodily strength) rendered nearly nugatory by it, so far as it affects common-place minds. it is not possible that the classical spirit should ever take possession of a mind of the highest order. pope is, as far as i know, the greatest man who ever fell strongly under its influence; and though it spoiled half his work, he broke through it continually into true enthusiasm and tender thought.[ ] again, as the school of reserve, it refuses to allow itself in any violent or "spasmodic" passion; the schools of literature which have been in modern times called "spasmodic," being reactionary against it. the word, though an ugly one, is quite accurate, the most spasmodic books in the world being solomon's song, job, and isaiah. § . the classical landscape, properly so called, is therefore the representative of perfectly trained and civilized human life, associated with perfect natural scenery and with decorative spiritual powers. i will expand this definition a little. . perfectly civilized human life; that is, life freed from the necessity of humiliating labor, from passions inducing bodily disease, and from abusing misfortune. the personages of the classical landscape, therefore, must be virtuous and amiable; if employed in labor, endowed with strength such as may make it not oppressive. (considered as a practicable ideal, the classical life necessarily implies slavery, and the command, therefore, of a higher order of men over a lower, occupied in servile work.) pastoral occupation is allowable as a contrast with city life. war, if undertaken by classical persons, must be a contest for honor, more than for life, not at all for wealth,[ ] and free from all fearful or debasing passion. classical persons must be trained in all the polite arts, and, because their health is to be perfect, chiefly in the open air. hence, the architecture around them must be of the most finished kind, the rough country and ground being subdued by frequent and happy humanity. § . . such personages and buildings must be associated with natural scenery, uninjured by storms or inclemency of climate (such injury implying interruption of the open air life); and it must be scenery conducing to pleasure, not to material service; all cornfields, orchards, olive-yards, and such like, being under the management of slaves,[ ] and the superior beings having nothing to do with them; but passing their lives under avenues of scented and otherwise delightful trees--under picturesque rocks, and by clear fountains. § . . the spiritual powers in classical scenery must be decorative; ornamental gods, not governing gods; otherwise they could not be subjected to the principles of taste, but would demand reverence. in order, therefore, as far as possible, without taking away their supernatural power, to destroy their dignity, they are made more criminal and capricious than men, and, for the most part, those only are introduced who are the lords of lascivious pleasures. for the appearance of any great god would at once destroy the whole theory of the classical life; therefore, pan, bacchus, and the satyrs, with venus and the nymphs, are the principal spiritual powers of the classical landscape. apollo with the muses appear as the patrons of the liberal arts. minerva rarely presents herself (except to be insulted by judgment of paris); juno seldom, except for some purpose of tyranny; jupiter seldom, but for purpose of amour. § . such being the general ideal of the classical landscape, it can hardly be necessary to show the reader how such charm as it possesses must in general be strong only over weak or second-rate orders of mind. it has, however, been often experimentally or playfully aimed at by great men; but i shall only take note of its two leading masters. § . i. claude. as i shall have no farther occasion to refer to this painter, i will resume, shortly, what has been said of him throughout the work. he had a fine feeling for beauty of form and considerable tenderness of perception. vol. i., p. ; vol. iii., p. . his aërial effects are unequalled. vol. iii., p. . their character appears to me to arise rather from a delicacy of bodily constitution in claude, than from any mental sensibility; such as they are, they give a kind of feminine charm to his work, which partly accounts for its wide influence. to whatever the character may be traced, it reads him incapable of enjoying or painting anything energetic or terrible. hence the weakness of his conceptions of rough sea. vol. i., p. . ii. he had sincerity of purpose. vol. iii., p. . but in common with other landscape painters of his day, neither earnestness, humility, nor love, such as would ever cause him to forget himself. vol. i., p. . that is to say, so far as he felt the truth, he tried to be true; but he never felt it enough to sacrifice supposed propriety, or habitual method to it. very few of his sketches, and none of his pictures, show evidence of interest in other natural phenomena than the quiet afternoon sunshine which would fall methodically into a composition. one would suppose he had never seen scarlet in a morning cloud, nor a storm burst on the apennines. but he enjoys a quiet misty afternoon in a ruminant sort of way (vol. iii., p. ), yet truly; and strives for the likeness of it, therein differing from salvator, who never attempts to be truthful, but only to be impressive. § . iii. his seas are the most beautiful in old art. vol. i., p. . for he studied tame waves, as he did tame skies, with great sincerity, and some affection; and modelled them with more care not only than any other landscape painter of his day, but even than any of the greater men; for they, seeing the perfect painting of sea to be impossible, gave up the attempt, and treated it conventionally. but claude took so much pains about this, feeling it was one of his _fortes_, that i suppose no one can model a small wave better than he. iv. he first set the pictorial sun in the pictorial heaven. vol. iii., p. . we will give him the credit of this, with no drawbacks. v. he had hardly any knowledge of physical science (vol. i., p. ), and shows a peculiar incapacity of understanding the main point of a matter. vol. iii., p. . connected with which incapacity is his want of harmony in expression. vol. ii., p. . (compare, for illustration of this, the account of the picture of the mill in the preface to vol. i.) § . such were the principal qualities of the leading painter of classical landscape, his effeminate softness carrying him to dislike all evidences of toil, or distress, or terror, and to delight in the calm formalities which mark the school. although he often introduces romantic incidents and mediæval as well as greek or roman personages, his landscape is always in the true sense classic--everything being "elegantly" (selectingly or tastefully), not passionately, treated. the absence of indications of rural labor, of hedges, ditches, haystacks, ploughed fields, and the like; the frequent occurrence of ruins of temples, or masses of unruined palaces; and the graceful wildness of growth in his trees, are the principal sources of the "elevated" character which so many persons feel in his scenery. there is no other sentiment traceable in his work than this weak dislike to entertain the conception of toil or suffering. ideas of relation, in the true sense, he has none; nor ever makes an effort to conceive an event in its probable circumstances, but fills his foregrounds with decorative figures, using commonest conventionalism to indicate the subject he intends. we may take two examples, merely to show the general character of such designs of his. § . . st. george and the dragon. the scene is a beautiful opening in woods by a river side, a pleasant fountain springs on the right, and the usual rich vegetation covers the foreground. the dragon is about the size of ten bramble leaves, and is being killed by the remains of a lance, barely the thickness of a walking-stick, in his throat, curling his tail in a highly offensive and threatening manner. st. george, notwithstanding, on a prancing horse, brandishes his sword, at about thirty yards' distance from the offensive animal. a semicircular shelf of rocks encircles the foreground, by which the theatre of action is divided into pit and boxes. some women and children having descended unadvisedly into the pit, are helping each other out of it again, with marked precipitation. a prudent person of rank has taken a front seat in the boxes,--crosses his legs, leans his head on his hand, and contemplates the proceedings with the air of a connoisseur. two attendants stand in graceful attitudes behind him, and two more walk away under the trees, conversing on general subjects. § . . worship of the golden calf. the scene is nearly the same as that of the st. george; but, in order better to express the desert of sinai, the river is much larger, and the trees and vegetation softer. two people, uninterested in the idolatrous ceremonies, are rowing in a pleasure boat on the river. the calf is about sixteen inches long (perhaps, we ought to give claude credit for remembering that it was made of ear-rings, though he might as well have inquired how large egyptian ear-rings were). aaron has put it on a handsome pillar, under which five people are dancing, and twenty-eight, with several children, worshipping. refreshments for the dancers are provided in four large vases under a tree on the left, presided over by a dignified person holding a dog in a leash. under the distant group of trees appears moses, conducted by some younger personage (nadab or abihu). this younger personage holds up his hands, and moses, in the way usually expected of him, breaks the tables of the law, which are as large as an ordinary octavo volume. § . i need not proceed farther, for any reader of sense or ordinary powers of thought can thus examine the subjects of claude, one by one, for himself. we may quit him with these few final statements concerning him. the admiration of his works was legitimate, so far as it regarded their sunlight effects and their graceful details. it was base, in so far as it involved irreverence both for the deeper powers of nature, and carelessness as to conception of subject. large admiration of claude is wholly impossible in any period of national vigor in art. he may by such tenderness as he possesses, and by the very fact of his banishing painfulness, exercise considerable influence over certain classes of minds; but this influence is almost exclusively hurtful to them. § . nevertheless, on account of such small sterling qualities as they possess, and of their general pleasantness, as well as their importance in the history of art, genuine claudes must always possess a considerable value, either as drawing-room ornaments or museum relics. they may be ranked with fine pieces of china manufacture, and other agreeable curiosities, of which the price depends on the rarity rather than the merit, yet always on a merit of a certain low kind. § . the other characteristic master of classical landscape is nicolo poussin. i named claude first, because the forms of scenery he has represented are richer and more general than poussin's; but poussin has a far greater power, and his landscapes, though more limited in material, are incomparably nobler than claude's. it would take considerable time to enter into accurate analysis of poussin's strong but degraded mind; and bring us no reward, because whatever he has done has been done better by titian. his peculiarities are, without exception, weaknesses, induced in a highly intellectual and inventive mind by being fed on medals, books, and bassi-relievi instead of nature, and by the want of any deep sensibility. his best works are his bacchanalian revels, always brightly wanton and wild, full of frisk and fire; but they are coarser than titian's, and infinitely less beautiful. in all minglings of the human and brutal character he leans on the bestial, yet with a sternly greek severity of treatment. this restraint, peculiarly classical, is much too manifest in him; for, owing to his habit of never letting himself be free, he does nothing as well as it ought to be done, rarely even as well as he can himself do it; and his best beauty is poor, incomplete, and characterless, though refined. the nymph pressing the honey in the "nursing of jupiter," and the muse leaning against the tree, in the "inspiration of poet" (both in the dulwich gallery), appear to me examples of about his highest reach in this sphere. § . his want of sensibility permits him to paint frightful subjects, without feeling any true horror: his pictures of the plague, the death of polydectes, &c., are thus ghastly in incident, sometimes disgusting, but never impressive. the prominence of the bleeding head in the triumph of david marks the same temper. his battle pieces are cold and feeble; his religious subjects wholly nugatory, they do not excite him enough to develop even his ordinary powers of invention. neither does he put much power into his landscape when it becomes principal; the best pieces of it occur in fragments behind his figures. beautiful vegetation, more or less ornamental in character, occurs in nearly all his mythological subjects, but his pure landscape is notable only for its dignified reserve; the great squareness and horizontality of its masses, with lowness of tone, giving it a deeply meditative character. his deluge might be much depreciated, under this head of ideas of relation, but it is so uncharacteristic of him that i pass it by. whatever power this lowness of tone, light in the distance, &c., give to his landscape, or to gaspar's (compare vol. ii., chapter on infinity, § ), is in both conventional and artificial. i have nothing, therefore, to add farther, here, to what was said of him in vol. i. (p. ); and, as no other older masters of the classical landscape are worth any special note, we will pass on at once to a school of humbler but more vital power. footnotes: [ ] the word "classical" is carelessly used in the preceding volumes, to signify the characters of the greek or roman nations. henceforward, it is used in a limited and accurate sense, as defined in the text. [ ] cold-hearted, i have called him. he was so in writing the pastorals, of which i then spoke; but in after-life his errors were those of his time, his wisdom was his own; it would be well if we also made it ours. [ ] because the pursuit of wealth is inconsistent at once with the peace and dignity of perfect life. [ ] it is curious, as marking the peculiarity of the classical spirit in its resolute degradation of the lower orders, that a sailing-vessel is hardly admissible in a classical landscape, because its management implies too much elevation of the inferior life. but a galley, with oars, is admissible, because the rowers may be conceived as absolute slaves. chapter vi. rubens and cuyp. § . the examination of the causes which led to the final departure of the religious spirit from the hearts of painters, would involve discussion of the whole scope of the reformation on the minds of persons unconcerned directly in its progress. this is of course impossible. one or two broad facts only can be stated, which the reader may verify, if he pleases, by his own labor. i do not give them rashly. § . the strength of the reformation lay entirely in its being a movement towards purity of practice. the catholic priesthood was hostile to it in proportion to the degree in which they had been false to their own principles of moral action, and had become corrupt or worldly in heart. the reformers indeed cast out many absurdities, and demonstrated many fallacies, in the teaching of the roman catholic church. but they themselves introduced errors, which rent the ranks, and finally arrested the march of the reformation, and which paralyze the protestant church to this day. errors of which the fatality was increased by the controversial bent which lost accuracy of meaning in force of declamation, and turned expressions, which ought to be used only in retired depth of thought, into phrases of custom, or watchwords of attack. owing to which habits of hot, ingenious, and unguarded controversy, the reformed churches themselves soon forgot the meaning of the word which, of all words, was oftenest in their mouths. they forgot that [greek: pistis] is a derivative of [greek: peithomai], not of [greek: pisteuô], and that "fides," closely connected with "fio" on one side, and with "confido" on the other, is but distantly related to "credo."[ ] § . by whatever means, however, the reader may himself be disposed to admit, the reformation _was_ arrested; and got itself shut up into chancels of cathedrals in england (even those, generally too large for it), and into conventicles everywhere else. then rising between the infancy of reformation, and the palsy of catholicism;--between a new shell of half-built religion on one side, daubed with untempered mortar, and a falling ruin of outworn religion on the other, lizard-crannied, and ivy-grown;--rose, on its independent foundation, the faithless and materialized mind of modern europe--ending in the rationalism of germany, the polite formalism of england, the careless blasphemy of france, and the helpless sensualities of italy; in the midst of which, steadily advancing science, and the charities of more and more widely extended peace, are preparing the way for a christian church, which shall depend neither on ignorance for its continuance, nor on controversy for its progress; but shall reign at once in light, and love. § . the whole body of painters (such of them as were left) necessarily fell into the rationalistic chasm. the evangelicals despised the arts, while the roman catholics were effete or insincere, and could not retain influence over men of strong reasoning power. the painters could only associate frankly with men of the world, and themselves became men of the world. men, i mean, having no belief in spiritual existences; no interests or affections beyond the grave. § . not but that they still painted scriptural subjects. altar-pieces were wanted occasionally, and pious patrons sometimes commissioned a cabinet madonna. but there is just this difference between the men of this modern period, and the florentines or venetians--that whereas the latter never exert themselves fully except on a sacred subject, the flemish and dutch masters are always languid unless they are profane. leonardo is only to be seen in the cena; titian only in the assumption; but rubens only in the battle of the amazons, and vandyck only at court. § . altar-pieces, when wanted, of course either of them will supply as readily as anything else. virgins in blue,[ ] or st. johns in red,[ ] as many as you please. martyrdoms also, by all means: rubens especially delights in these. st. peter, head downwards,[ ] is interesting anatomically; writhings of impenitent thieves, and bishops having their tongues pulled out, display our powers to advantage, also.[ ] theological instruction, if required: "christ armed with thunder, to destroy the world, spares it at the intercession of st. francis."[ ] last judgments even, quite michael-angelesque, rich in twistings of limbs, with spiteful biting, and scratching; and fine aërial effects in smoke of the pit.[ ] § . in all this, however, there is not a vestige of religious feeling or reverence. we have even some visible difficulty in meeting our patron's pious wishes. daniel in the lion's den is indeed an available subject, but duller than a lion hunt; and mary of nazareth must be painted, if an order come for her; but (says polite sir peter), mary of medicis, or catherine, her bodice being fuller, and better embroidered, would, if we might offer a suggestion, probably give greater satisfaction. § . no phenomenon in human mind is more extraordinary than the junction of this cold and worldly temper with great rectitude of principle, and tranquil kindness of heart. rubens was an honorable and entirely well-intentioned man, earnestly industrious, simple and temperate in habits of life, high-bred, learned, and discreet. his affection for his mother was great; his generosity to contemporary artists unfailing. he is a healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased--animal--without any clearly perceptible traces of a soul, except when he paints his children. few descriptions of pictures could be more ludicrous in their pure animalism than those which he gives of his own. "it is a subject," he writes to sir d. carleton, "neither sacred nor profane, although taken from holy writ, namely, sarah in the act of scolding hagar, who, pregnant, is leaving the house in a feminine and graceful manner, assisted by the patriarch abram." (what a graceful apology, by the way, instantly follows, for not having finished the picture himself.) "i have engaged, as is my custom, a very skilful man in his pursuit to finish the landscapes solely to augment the enjoyment of y. e.!"[ ] again, in priced catalogue,-- " florins each.--the twelve apostles, with a christ. done by my scholars, from originals by my own hand, each having to be retouched by my hand throughout. " florins.--a picture of achilles clothed as a woman; done by the best of my scholars, and the whole retouched by my hand; a most brilliant picture, and full of many beautiful young girls." § . observe, however, rubens is always entirely honorable in his statements of what is done by himself and what not. he is religious, too, after his manner; hears mass every morning, and perpetually uses the phrase "by the grace of god," or some other such, in writing of any business he takes in hand; but the tone of his religion may be determined by one fact. we saw how veronese painted himself and his family, as worshipping the madonna. rubens has also painted himself and his family in an equally elaborate piece. but they are not _worshipping_ the madonna. they are _performing_ the madonna, and her saintly entourage. his favorite wife "en madone;" his youngest boy "as christ;" his father-in-law (or father, it matters not which) "as simeon;" another elderly relation, with a beard, "as st. jerome;" and he himself "as st. george." § . rembrandt has also painted (it is, on the whole, his greatest picture, so far as i have seen) himself and his wife in a state of ideal happiness. he sits at supper with his wife on his knee, flourishing a glass of champagne, with a roast peacock on the table. the rubens is in the church of st. james at antwerp; the rembrandt at dresden--marvellous pictures, both. no more precious works by either painter exist. their hearts, such as they have, are entirely in them; and the two pictures, not inaptly, represent the faith and hope of the th century. we have to stoop somewhat lower, in order to comprehend the pastoral and rustic scenery of cuyp and teniers, which must yet be held as forming one group with the historical art of rubens, being connected with it by rubens' pastoral landscape. to these, i say, we must stoop lower; for they are destitute, not of spiritual character only, but of spiritual thought. rubens often gives instructive and magnificent allegory; rembrandt, pathetic or powerful fancies, founded on real scripture reading, and on his interest in the picturesque character of the jew. and vandyck, a graceful dramatic rendering of received scriptural legends. but in the pastoral landscape we lose, not only all faith in religion, but all remembrance of it. absolutely now at last we find ourselves without sight of god in all the world. § . so far as i can hear or read, this is an entirely new and wonderful state of things achieved by the hollanders. the human being never got wholly quit of the terror of spiritual being before. persian, egyptian, assyrian, hindoo, chinese, all kept some dim, appalling record of what they called "gods." farthest savages had--and still have--their great spirit, or, in extremity, their feather idols, large-eyed; but here in holland we have at last got utterly done with it all. our only idol glitters dimly, in tangible shape of a pint pot, and all the incense offered thereto, comes out of a small censer or bowl at the end of a pipe. of deities or virtues, angels, principalities, or powers, in the name of our ditches, no more. let us have cattle, and market vegetables. this is the first and essential character of the holland landscape art. its second is a worthier one; respect for rural life. § . i should attach greater importance to this rural feeling, if there were any true humanity in it, or any feeling for beauty. but there is neither. no incidents of this lower life are painted for the sake of the incidents, but only for the effects of light. you will find that the best dutch painters do not care about the people, but about the lustres on them. paul potter, their best herd and cattle painter, does not care even for sheep, but only for wool; regards not cows, but cowhide. he attains great dexterity in drawing tufts and locks, lingers in the little parallel ravines and furrows of fleece that open across sheep's backs as they turn; is unsurpassed in twisting a horn or pointing a nose; but he cannot paint eyes, nor perceive any condition of an animal's mind, except its desire of grazing. cuyp can, indeed, paint sunlight, the best that holland's sun can show; he is a man of large natural gift, and sees broadly, nay, even seriously; finds out--a wonderful thing for men to find out in those days--that there are reflections in water, and that boats require often to be painted upside down. a brewer by trade, he feels the quiet of a summer afternoon, and his work will make you marvellously drowsy. it is good for nothing else that i know of: strong; but unhelpful and unthoughtful. nothing happens in his pictures, except some indifferent person's asking the way of somebody else, who, by their cast of countenance, seems not likely to know it. for farther entertainment perhaps a red cow and a white one; or puppies at play, not playfully; the man's heart not going even with the puppies. essentially he sees nothing but the shine on the flaps of their ears. § . observe always, the fault lies not in the thing's being little, or the incident being slight. titian could have put issues of life and death into the face of a man asking the way; nay, into the back of him, if he had so chosen. he has put a whole scheme of dogmatic theology into a row of bishops' backs at the louvre. and for dogs, velasquez has made some of them nearly as grand as his surly kings. into the causes of which grandeur we must look a little, with respect not only to these puppies, and gray horses, and cattle of cuyp, but to the hunting pieces of rubens and snyders. for closely connected with the dutch rejection of motives of spiritual interest, is the increasing importance attached by them to animals, seen either in the chase or in agriculture; and to judge justly of the value of this animal painting it will be necessary for us to glance at that of earlier times. § . and first of the animals which have had more influence over the human soul, in its modern life, than ever apis or the crocodile had over egyptian--the dog and horse. i stated, in speaking of venetian religion, that the venetians always introduced the dog as a contrast to the high aspects of humanity. they do this, not because they consider him the basest of animals, but the highest--the connecting link between men and animals; in whom the lower forms of really human feeling may be best exemplified, such as conceit, gluttony, indolence, petulance. but they saw the noble qualities of the dog, too;--all his patience, love, and faithfulness; therefore veronese, hard as he is often on lap-dogs, has painted one great heroic poem on the dog. § . two mighty brindled mastiffs, and beyond them, darkness. you scarcely see them at first, against the gloomy green. no other sky for them--poor things. they are gray themselves, spotted with black all over; their multitudinous doggish vices may not be washed out of them,--are in grain of nature. strong thewed and sinewed, however,--no blame on them as far as bodily strength may reach; their heads coal-black, with drooping ears and fierce eyes, bloodshot a little. wildest of beasts perhaps they would have been, by nature. but between them stands the spirit of their human love, dove-winged and beautiful, the resistless greek boy, golden-quivered; his glowing breast and limbs the only light upon the sky,--purple and pure. he has cast his chain about the dogs' necks, and holds it in his strong right hand, leaning proudly a little back from them. they will never break loose. § . this is veronese's highest, or spiritual view of the dog's nature. he can only give this when looking at the creature alone. when he sees it in company with men, he subdues it, like an inferior light in presence of the sky; and generally then gives it a merely brutal nature, not insisting even on its affection. it is thus used in the marriage in cana to symbolize gluttony. that great picture i have not yet had time to examine in all its bearings of thought; but the chief purpose of it is, i believe, to express the pomp and pleasure of the world, pursued without thought of the presence of christ; therefore the fool with the bells is put in the centre, immediately underneath the christ; and in front are the couple of dogs in leash, one gnawing a bone. a cat lying on her back scratches at one of the vases which hold the wine of the miracle. § . in the picture of susannah, her little pet dog is merely doing his duty, barking at the elders. but in that of the magdalen (at turin) a noble piece of bye-meaning is brought out by a dog's help. on one side is the principal figure, the mary washing christ's feet; on the other, a dog has just come out from beneath the table (the dog under the table eating of the crumbs), and in doing so, has touched the robe of one of the pharisees, thus making it unclean. the pharisee gathers up his robe in a passion, and shows the hem of it to a bystander, pointing to the dog at the same time. § . in the supper at emmaus, the dog's affection is, however, fully dwelt upon. veronese's own two little daughters are playing, on the hither side of the table, with a great wolf-hound, larger than either of them. one with her head down, nearly touching his nose, is talking to him,--asking him questions it seems, nearly pushing him over at the same time:--the other, raising her eyes, half archly, half dreamily,--some far-away thought coming over her,--leans against him on the other side, propping him with her little hand, laid slightly on his neck. he, all passive, and glad at heart, yielding himself to the pushing or sustaining hand, looks earnestly into the face of the child close to his; would answer her with the gravity of a senator, if so it might be:--can only look at her, and love her. § . to velasquez and titian dogs seem less interesting than to veronese; they paint them simply as noble brown beasts, but without any special character; perhaps velasquez's dogs are sterner and more threatening than the venetian's, as are also his kings and admirals. this fierceness in the animal increases, as the spiritual power of the artist declines; and, with the fierceness, another character. one great and infallible sign of the absence of spiritual power is the presence of the slightest taint of obscenity. dante marked this strongly in all his representations of demons, and as we pass from the venetians and florentines to the dutch, the passing away of the soul-power is indicated by every animal becoming savage or foul. the dog is used by teniers, and many other hollanders, merely to obtain unclean jest; while by the more powerful men, rubens, snyders, rembrandt, it is painted only in savage chase, or butchered agony. i know no pictures more shameful to humanity than the boar and lion hunts of rubens and snyders, signs of disgrace all the deeper, because the powers desecrated are so great. the painter of the village ale-house sign may, not dishonorably, paint the fox-hunt for the village squire; but the occupation of magnificent art-power in giving semblance of perpetuity to those bodily pangs which nature has mercifully ordained to be transient, and in forcing us, by the fascination of its stormy skill, to dwell on that from which eyes of merciful men should instinctively turn away, and eyes of high-minded men scornfully, is dishonorable, alike in the power which it degrades, and the joy to which it betrays. § . in our modern treatment of the dog, of which the prevailing tendency is marked by landseer, the interest taken in him is disproportionate to that taken in man, and leads to a somewhat trivial mingling of sentiment, or warping by caricature; giving up the true nature of the animal for the sake of a pretty thought or pleasant jest. neither titian nor velasquez ever jest; and though veronese jests gracefully and tenderly, he never for an instant oversteps the absolute facts of nature. but the english painter looks for sentiment or jest primarily, and reaches both by a feebly romantic taint of fallacy, except in one or two simple and touching pictures, such as the shepherd's chief mourner. i was pleased by a little unpretending modern german picture at dusseldorf, by e. bosch, representing a boy carving a model of his sheep-dog in wood; the dog sitting on its haunches in front of him, watches the progress of the sculpture with a grave interest and curiosity, not in the least caricatured, but highly humorous. another small picture, by the same artist, of a forester's boy being taught to shoot by his father,--the dog critically and eagerly watching the raising of the gun,--shows equally true sympathy. § . i wish i were able to trace any of the leading circumstances in the ancient treatment of the horse, but i have no sufficient data. its function in the art of the greeks is connected with all their beautiful fable philosophy; but i have not a tithe of the knowledge necessary to pursue the subject in this direction. it branches into questions relating to sacred animals, and egyptian and eastern mythology. i believe the greek interest in _pure_ animal character corresponded closely to our own, except that it is less sentimental, and either distinctly true or distinctly fabulous; not hesitating between truth and falsehood. achilles' horses, like anacreon's dove, and aristophanes' frogs and birds, speak clearly out, if at all. they do not become feebly human, by fallacies and exaggerations, but frankly and wholly. zeuxis' picture of the centaur indicates, however, a more distinctly sentimental conception; and i suppose the greek artists always to have fully appreciated the horse's fineness of temper and nervous constitution.[ ] they seem, by the way, hardly to have done justice to the dog. my pleasure in the entire odyssey is diminished because ulysses gives not a word of kindness or of regret to argus. § . i am still less able to speak of roman treatment of the horse. it is very strange that in the chivalric ages, he is despised; their greatest painters drawing him with ludicrous neglect. the venetians, as was natural, painted him little and ill; but he becomes important in the equestrian statues of the fifteenth and sixteenth century, chiefly, i suppose, under the influence of leonardo. i am not qualified to judge of the merit of these equestrian statues; but, in painting, i find that no real interest is taken in the horse until vandyck's time, he and rubens doing more for it than all previous painters put together. rubens was a good rider, and rode nearly every day, as, i doubt not, vandyck also. some notice of an interesting equestrian picture of vandyck's will be found in the next chapter. the horse has never, i think, been painted worthily again, since he died.[ ] of the influence of its unworthy painting, and unworthy use, i do not at present care to speak, noticing only that it brought about in england the last degradations of feeling and of art. the dutch, indeed, banished all deity from the earth; but i think only in england has death-bed consolation been sought in a fox's tail.[ ] i wish, however, the reader distinctly to understand that the expressions of reprobation of field-sports which he will find scattered through these volumes,--and which, in concluding them, i wish i had time to collect and farther enforce--refer only to the chase and the turf; that is to say, to hunting, shooting, and horse-racing, but not to athletic exercises. i have just as deep a respect for boxing, wrestling, cricketing, and rowing, as contempt of all the various modes of wasting wealth, time, land, and energy of soul, which have been invented by the pride and selfishness of men, in order to enable them to be healthy in uselessness, and get quit of the burdens of their own lives, without condescending to make them serviceable to others. § . lastly, of cattle. the period when the interest of men began to be transferred from the ploughman to his oxen is very distinctly marked by bassano. in him the descent is even greater, being, accurately, from the madonna to the manger--one of perhaps his best pictures (now, i believe, somewhere in the north of england), representing an adoration of shepherds with nothing to adore, they and their herds forming the subject, and the christ being "supposed" at the side. from that time cattle-pieces become frequent, and gradually form a staple art commodity. cuyp's are the best; nevertheless, neither by him nor any one else have i ever seen an entirely well-painted cow. all the men who have skill enough to paint cattle nobly, disdain them. the real influence of these dutch cattle-pieces, in subsequent art, is difficult to trace, and is not worth tracing. they contain a certain healthy appreciation of simple pleasure which i cannot look upon wholly without respect. on the other hand, their cheap tricks of composition degraded the entire technical system of landscape; and their clownish and blunt vulgarities too long blinded us, and continue, so far as in them lies, to blind us yet, to all the true refinement and passion of rural life. there have always been truth and depth of pastoral feeling in the works of great poets and novelists; but never, i think, in painting, until lately. the designs of j. c. hook are, perhaps, the only works of the kind in existence which deserve to be mentioned in connection with the pastorals of wordsworth and tennyson. we must not, however, yet pass to the modern school, having still to examine the last phase of dutch design, in which the vulgarities which might be forgiven to the truth of cuyp, and forgotten in the power of rubens, became unpardonable and dominant in the works of men who were at once affected and feeble. but before doing this, we must pause to settle a preliminary question, which is an important and difficult one, and will need a separate chapter; namely, what is vulgarity itself? footnotes: [ ] none of our present forms of opinion are more curious than those which have developed themselves from this verbal carelessness. it never seems to strike any of our religious teachers, that if a child has a father living, it either _knows_ it has a father, or does not: it does not "believe" it has a father. we should be surprised to see an intelligent child standing at its garden gate, crying out to the passers-by: "i believe in my father, because he built this house;" as logical people proclaim that they believe in god, because he must have made the world. [ ] dusseldorf. [ ] antwerp. [ ] cologne. [ ] brussels. [ ] brussels. [ ] munich. [ ] original papers relating to rubens; edited by w. sainsbury. london, : page . y. e. is the person who commissioned the picture. [ ] "a single harsh word will raise a nervous horse's pulse ten beats a minute."--mr. rarey. [ ] john lewis has made grand sketches of the horse, but has never, so far as i know, completed any of them. respecting his wonderful engravings of wild animals, see my pamphlet on pre-raphaelitism. [ ] see "the fox-hunter's death-bed," a popular sporting print. chapter vii. of vulgarity. § . two great errors, coloring, or rather discoloring, severally, the minds of the higher and lower classes, have sown wide dissension, and wider misfortune, through the society of modern days. these errors are in our modes of interpreting the word "gentleman." its primal, literal, and perpetual meaning is "a man of pure race;" well bred, in the sense that a horse or dog is well bred. the so-called higher classes, being generally of purer race than the lower, have retained the true idea, and the convictions associated with it; but are afraid to speak it out, and equivocate about it in public; this equivocation mainly proceeding from their desire to connect another meaning with it, and a false one;--that of "a man living in idleness on other people's labor;"--with which idea, the term has nothing whatever to do. the lower classes, denying vigorously, and with reason, the notion that a gentleman means an idler, and rightly feeling that the more any one works, the more of a gentleman he becomes, and is likely to become,--have nevertheless got little of the good they otherwise might, from the truth, because, with it, they wanted to hold a falsehood,--namely, that race was of no consequence. it being precisely of as much consequence in man as it is in any other animal. § . the nation cannot truly prosper till both these errors are finally got quit of. gentlemen have to learn that it is no part of their duty or privilege to live on other people's toil. they have to learn that there is no degradation in the hardest manual, or the humblest servile, labor, when it is honest. but that there _is_ degradation, and that deep, in extravagance, in bribery, in indolence, in pride, in taking places they are not fit for, or in coining places for which there is no need. it does not disgrace a gentleman to become an errand boy, or a day laborer; but it disgraces him much to become a knave, or a thief. and knavery is not the less knavery because it involves large interests, nor theft the less theft because it is countenanced by usage, or accompanied by failure in undertaken duty. it is an incomparably less guilty form of robbery to cut a purse out of a man's pocket, than to take it out of his hand on the understanding that you are to steer his ship up channel, when you do not know the soundings. § . on the other hand, the lower orders, and all orders, have to learn that every vicious habit and chronic disease communicates itself by descent; and that by purity of birth the entire system of the human body and soul may be gradually elevated, or by recklessness of birth, degraded; until there shall be as much difference between the well-bred and ill-bred human creature (whatever pains be taken with their education) as between a wolf-hound and the vilest mongrel cur. and the knowledge of this great fact ought to regulate the education of our youth, and the entire conduct of the nation.[ ] § . gentlemanliness, however, in ordinary parlance, must be taken to signify those qualities which are usually the evidence of high breeding, and which, so far as they can be acquired, it should be every man's effort to acquire; or, if he has them by nature, to preserve and exalt. vulgarity, on the other hand, will signify qualities usually characteristic of ill-breeding, which, according to his power, it becomes every person's duty to subdue. we have briefly to note what these are. § . a gentleman's first characteristic is that fineness of structure in the body, which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate sympathies--one may say, simply, "fineness of nature." this is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy. elephantine strength may drive its way through a forest and feel no touch of the boughs; but the white skin of homer's atrides would have felt a bent rose-leaf, yet subdue its feeling in glow of battle, and behave itself like iron. i do not mean to call an elephant a vulgar animal; but if you think about him carefully, you will find that his non-vulgarity consists in such gentleness as is possible to elephantine nature; not in his insensitive hide, nor in his clumsy foot; but in the way he will lift his foot if a child lies in his way; and in his sensitive trunk, and still more sensitive mind, and capability of pique on points of honor. § . and, though rightness of moral conduct is ultimately the great purifier of race, the sign of nobleness is not in this rightness of moral conduct, but in sensitiveness. when the make of the creature is fine, its temptations are strong, as well as its perceptions; it is liable to all kinds of impressions from without in their most violent form; liable therefore to be abused and hurt by all kinds of rough things which would do a coarser creature little harm, and thus to fall into frightful wrong if its fate will have it so. thus david, coming of gentlest as well as royalest race, of ruth as well as of judah, is sensitiveness through all flesh and spirit; not that his compassion will restrain him from murder when his terror urges him to it; nay, he is driven to the murder all the more by his sensitiveness to the shame which otherwise threatens him. but when his own story is told him under a disguise, though only a lamb is now concerned, his passion about it leaves him no time for thought. "the man shall die"--note the reason--"because he had no pity." he is so eager and indignant that it never occurs to him as strange that nathan hides the name. this is true gentleman. a vulgar man would assuredly have been cautious, and asked "who it was?" § . hence it will follow that one of the probable signs of high-breeding in men generally, will be their kindness and mercifulness; these always indicating more or less fineness of make in the mind; and miserliness and cruelty the contrary; hence that of isaiah: "the vile person shall no more be called liberal, nor the churl said to be bountiful." but a thousand things may prevent this kindness from displaying or continuing itself; the mind of the man may be warped so as to bear mainly on his own interests, and then all his sensibilities will take the form of pride, or fastidiousness, or revengefulness; and other wicked, but not ungentlemanly tempers; or, farther, they may run into utter sensuality and covetousness, if he is bent on pleasure, accompanied with quite infinite cruelty when the pride is wounded, or the passions thwarted;--until your gentleman becomes ezzelin, and your lady, the deadly lucrece; yet still gentleman and lady, quite incapable of making anything else of themselves, being so born. § . a truer sign of breeding than mere kindness is therefore sympathy; a vulgar man may often be kind in a hard way, on principle, and because he thinks he ought to be; whereas, a highly-bred man, even when cruel, will be cruel in a softer way, understanding and feeling what he inflicts, and pitying his victim. only we must carefully remember that the quantity of sympathy a gentleman feels can never be judged of by its outward expression, for another of his chief characteristics is apparent reserve. i say "apparent" reserve; for the sympathy is real, but the reserve not: a perfect gentleman is never reserved, but sweetly and entirely open, so far as it is good for others, or possible, that he should be. in a great many respects it is impossible that he should be open except to men of his own kind. to them, he can open himself, by a word, or syllable, or a glance; but to men not of his kind he cannot open himself, though he tried it through an eternity of clear grammatical speech. by the very acuteness of his sympathy he knows how much of himself he can give to anybody; and he gives that much frankly;--would always be glad to give more if he could, but is obliged, nevertheless, in his general intercourse with the world, to be a somewhat silent person; silence is to most people, he finds, less reserved than speech. whatever he said, a vulgar man would misinterpret: no words that he could use would bear the same sense to the vulgar man that they do to him; if he used any, the vulgar man would go away saying, "he had said so and so, and meant so and so" (something assuredly he never meant); but he keeps silence, and the vulgar man goes away saying, "he didn't know what to make of him." which is precisely the fact, and the only fact which he is anywise able to announce to the vulgar man concerning himself. § . there is yet another quite as efficient cause of the apparent reserve of a gentleman. his sensibility being constant and intelligent, it will be seldom that a feeling touches him, however acutely, but it has touched him in the same way often before, and in some sort is touching him always. it is not that he feels little, but that he feels habitually; a vulgar man having some heart at the bottom of him, if you can by talk or by sight fairly force the pathos of anything down to his heart, will be excited about it and demonstrative; the sensation of pity being strange to him, and wonderful. but your gentleman has walked in pity all day long; the tears have never been out of his eyes: you thought the eyes were bright only; but they were wet. you tell him a sorrowful story, and his countenance does not change; the eyes can but be wet still; he does not speak neither, there being, in fact, nothing to be said, only something to be done; some vulgar person, beside you both, goes away saying, "how hard he is!" next day he hears that the hard person has put good end to the sorrow he said nothing about;--and then he changes his wonder, and exclaims, "how reserved he is!" § . self-command is often thought a characteristic of high-breeding: and to a certain extent it is so, at least it is one of the means of forming and strengthening character; but it is rather a way of imitating a gentleman than a characteristic of him; a true gentleman has no need of self-command; he simply feels rightly on all occasions: and desiring to express only so much of his feeling as it is right to express, does not need to command himself. hence perfect ease is indeed characteristic of him; but perfect ease is inconsistent with self-restraint. nevertheless gentlemen, so far as they fail of their own ideal, need to command themselves, and do so; while, on the contrary, to feel unwisely, and to be unable to restrain the expression of the unwise feeling, is vulgarity; and yet even then, the vulgarity, at its root, is not in the mistimed expression, but in the unseemly feeling; and when we find fault with a vulgar person for "exposing himself," it is not his openness, but clumsiness; and yet more the want of sensibility to his own failure, which we blame; so that still the vulgarity resolves itself into want of sensibility. also, it is to be noted that great powers of self-restraint may be attained by very vulgar persons, when it suits their purposes. § . closely, but strangely, connected with this openness is that form of truthfulness which is opposed to cunning, yet not opposed to falsity absolute. and herein is a distinction of great importance. cunning signifies especially a habit or gift of over-reaching, accompanied with enjoyment and a sense of superiority. it is associated with small and dull conceit, and with an absolute want of sympathy or affection. its essential connection with vulgarity may be at once exemplified by the expression of the butcher's dog in landseer's "low life." cruikshank's "noah claypole," in the illustrations to oliver twist, in the interview with the jew, is, however, still more characteristic. it is the intensest rendering of vulgarity absolute and utter with which i am acquainted.[ ] the truthfulness which is opposed to cunning ought, perhaps, rather to be called the desire of truthfulness; it consists more in unwillingness to deceive than in not deceiving,--an unwillingness implying sympathy with and respect for the person deceived; and a fond observance of truth up to the possible point, as in a good soldier's mode of retaining his honor through a _ruse-de-guerre_. a cunning person seeks for opportunities to deceive; a gentleman shuns them. a cunning person triumphs in deceiving; a gentleman is humiliated by his success, or at least by so much of the success as is dependent merely on the falsehood, and not on his intellectual superiority. § . the absolute disdain of all lying belongs rather to christian chivalry than to mere high breeding; as connected merely with this latter, and with general refinement and courage, the exact relations of truthfulness may be best studied in the well-trained greek mind. the greeks believed that mercy and truth were co-relative virtues--cruelty and falsehood co-relative vices. but they did not call necessary severity, cruelty; nor necessary deception, falsehood. it was needful sometimes to slay men, and sometimes to deceive them. when this had to be done, it should be done well and thoroughly; so that to direct a spear well to its mark, or a lie well to its end, was equally the accomplishment of a perfect gentleman. hence, in the pretty diamond-cut-diamond scene between pallas and ulysses, when she receives him on the coast of ithaca, the goddess laughs delightedly at her hero's good lying, and gives him her hand upon it; showing herself then in her woman's form, as just a little more than his match. "subtle would he be, and stealthy, who should go beyond thee in deceit, even were he a god, thou many-witted! what! here in thine own land, too, wilt thou not cease from cheating? knowest thou not me, pallas athena, maid of jove, who am with thee in all thy labors, and gave thee favor with the phæacians, and keep thee, and have come now to weave cunning with thee?" but how completely this kind of cunning was looked upon as a part of a man's power, and not as a diminution of faithfulness, is perhaps best shown by the single line of praise in which the high qualities of his servant are summed up by chremulus in the plutus--"of all my house servants, i hold you to be the faithfullest, and the greatest cheat (or thief)." § . thus, the primal difference between honorable and base lying in the greek mind lay in honorable purpose. a man who used his strength wantonly to hurt others was a monster; so, also, a man who used his cunning wantonly to hurt others. strength and cunning were to be used only in self-defence, or to save the weak, and then were alike admirable. this was their first idea. then the second, and perhaps the more essential, difference between noble and ignoble lying in the greek mind, was that the honorable lie--or, if we may use the strange, yet just, expression, the true lie--knew and confessed itself for such--was ready to take the full responsibility of what it did. as the sword answered for its blow, so the lie for its snare. but what the greeks hated with all their heart was the false lie; the lie that did not know itself, feared to confess itself, which slunk to its aim under a cloak of truth, and sought to do liars' work, and yet not take liars' pay, excusing itself to the conscience by quibble and quirk. hence the great expression of jesuit principle by euripides, "the tongue has sworn, but not the heart," was a subject of execration throughout greece, and the satirists exhausted their arrows on it--no audience was ever tired hearing ([greek: to euripideion ekeino]) "that euripidean thing" brought to shame. § . and this is especially to be insisted on in the early education of young people. it should be pointed out to them with continual earnestness that the essence of lying is in deception, not in words; a lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a syllable, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence; and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly worded; so that no form of blinded conscience is so far sunk as that which comforts itself for having deceived, because the deception was by gesture or silence, instead of utterance; and, finally, according to tennyson's deep and trenchant line, "a lie which is half a truth is ever the worst of lies." § . although, however, ungenerous cunning is usually so distinct an outward manifestation of vulgarity, that i name it separately from insensibility, it is in truth only an effect of insensibility, producing want of affection to others, and blindness to the beauty of truth. the degree in which political subtlety in men such as richelieu, machiavel, or metternich, will efface the gentleman, depends on the selfishness of political purpose to which the cunning is directed, and on the base delight taken in its use. the command, "be ye wise as serpents, harmless as doves," is the ultimate expression of this principle, misunderstood usually because the word "wise" is referred to the intellectual power instead of the subtlety of the serpent. the serpent has very little intellectual power, but according to that which it has, it is yet, as of old, the subtlest of the beasts of the field. § . another great sign of vulgarity is also, when traced to its root, another phase of insensibility, namely, the undue regard to appearances and manners, as in the households of vulgar persons, of all stations, and the assumption of behavior, language, or dress unsuited to them, by persons in inferior stations of life. i say "undue" regard to appearances, because in the undueness consists, of course, the vulgarity. it is due and wise in some sort to care for appearances, in another sort undue and unwise. wherein lies the difference? at first one is apt to answer quickly: the vulgarity is simply in pretending to be what you are not. but that answer will not stand. a queen may dress like a waiting maid,--perhaps succeed, if she chooses, in passing for one; but she will not, therefore, be vulgar; nay, a waiting maid may dress like a queen, and pretend to be one, and yet need not be vulgar, unless there is inherent vulgarity in her. in scribe's very absurd but very amusing _reine d'un jour_, a milliner's girl sustains the part of a queen for a day. she several times amazes and disgusts her courtiers by her straightforwardness; and once or twice very nearly betrays herself to her maids of honor by an unqueenly knowledge of sewing; but she is not in the least vulgar, for she is sensitive, simple, and generous, and a queen could be no more. § . is the vulgarity, then, only in trying to play a part you cannot play, so as to be continually detected? no; a bad amateur actor may be continually detected in his part, but yet continually detected to be a gentleman: a vulgar regard to appearances has nothing in it necessarily of hypocrisy. you shall know a man not to be a gentleman by the perfect and neat pronunciation of his words: but he does not pretend to pronounce accurately; he _does_ pronounce accurately, the vulgarity is in the real (not assumed) scrupulousness. § . it will be found on farther thought, that a vulgar regard for appearances is, primarily, a selfish one, resulting, not out of a wish, to give pleasure (as a wife's wish to make herself beautiful for her husband), but out of an endeavor to mortify others, or attract for pride's sake;--the common "keeping up appearances" of society, being a mere selfish struggle of the vain with the vain. but the deepest stain of the vulgarity depends on this being done, not selfishly only, but stupidly, without understanding the impression which is really produced, nor the relations of importance between oneself and others, so as to suppose that their attention is fixed upon us, when we are in reality ciphers in their eyes--all which comes of insensibility. hence pride simple is not vulgar (the looking down on others because of their true inferiority to us), nor vanity simple (the desire of praise), but conceit simple (the attribution to ourselves of qualities we have not), is always so. in cases of over-studied pronunciation, &c., there is insensibility, first, in the person's thinking more of himself than of what he is saying; and, secondly, in his not having musical fineness of ear enough to feel that his talking is uneasy and strained. § . finally, vulgarity is indicated by coarseness of language or manners, only so far as this coarseness has been contracted under circumstances not necessarily producing it. the illiterateness of a spanish or calabrian peasant is not vulgar, because they had never an opportunity of acquiring letters; but the illiterateness of an english school-boy is. so again, provincial dialect is not vulgar; but cockney dialect, the corruption, by blunted sense, of a finer language continually heard, is so in a deep degree; and again, of this corrupted dialect, that is the worst which consists, not in the direct or expressive alteration of the form of a word, but in an unmusical destruction of it by dead utterance and bad or swollen formation of lip. there is no vulgarity in-- "blythe, blythe, blythe was she, blythe was she, but and ben, and weel she liked a hawick gill, and leugh to see a tappit hen;" but much in mrs. gamp's inarticulate "bottle on the chumley-piece, and let me put my lips to it when i am so dispoged." § . so also of personal defects, those only are vulgar which imply insensibility or dissipation. there is no vulgarity in the emaciation of don quixote, the deformity of the black dwarf, or the corpulence of falstaff; but much in the same personal characters, as they are seen in uriah heep, quilp, and chadband. § . one of the most curious minor questions in this matter is respecting the vulgarity of excessive neatness, complicating itself with inquiries into the distinction between base neatness, and the perfectness of good execution in the fine arts. it will be found on final thought that precision and exquisiteness of arrangement are always noble; but become vulgar only when they arise from an equality (insensibility) of temperament, which is incapable of fine passion, and is set ignobly, and with a dullard mechanism, on accuracy in vile things. in the finest greek coins, the letters of the inscriptions are purposely coarse and rude, while the relievi are wrought with inestimable care. but in an english coin, the letters are the best done, and the whole is unredeemably vulgar. in a picture of titian's, an inserted inscription will be complete in the lettering, as all the rest is; because it costs titian very little more trouble to draw rightly than wrongly, and in him, therefore, impatience with the letters would be vulgar, as in the greek sculptor of the coin, patience would have been. for the engraving of a letter accurately[ ] is difficult work, and his time must have been unworthily thrown away. § . all the different impressions connected with negligence or foulness depend, in like manner, on the degree of insensibility implied. disorder in a drawing-room is vulgar, in an antiquary's study, not; the black battle-stain on a soldier's face is not vulgar, but the dirty face of a housemaid is. and lastly, courage, so far as it is a sign of race, is peculiarly the mark of a gentleman or a lady: but it becomes vulgar if rude or insensitive, while timidity is not vulgar, if it be a characteristic of race or fineness of make. a fawn is not vulgar in being timid, nor a crocodile "gentle" because courageous. § . without following the inquiry into farther detail,[ ] we may conclude that vulgarity consists in a deadness of the heart and body, resulting from prolonged, and especially from inherited conditions of "degeneracy," or literally "un-racing;"--gentlemanliness, being another word for an intense humanity. and vulgarity shows itself primarily in dulness of heart, not in rage or cruelty, but in inability to feel or conceive noble character or emotion. this is its essential, pure, and most fatal form. dulness of bodily sense and general stupidity, with such forms of crime as peculiarly issue from stupidity, are its material manifestation. § . two years ago, when i was first beginning to work out the subject, and chatting with one of my keenest-minded friends (mr. brett, the painter of the val d'aosta in the exhibition of ), i casually asked him, "what is vulgarity?" merely to see what he would say, not supposing it possible to get a sudden answer. he thought for about a minute, then answered quietly, "it is merely one of the forms of death." i did not see the meaning of the reply at the time; but on testing it, found that it met every phase of the difficulties connected with the inquiry, and summed the true conclusion. yet, in order to be complete, it ought to be made a distinctive as well as conclusive definition; showing _what_ form of death vulgarity is; for death itself is not vulgar, but only death mingled with life. i cannot, however, construct a short-worded definition which will include all the minor conditions of bodily degeneracy; but the term "deathful selfishness" will embrace all the most fatal and essential forms of mental vulgarity. footnotes: [ ] we ought always in pure english to use the term "good breeding" literally; and to say "good nurture" for what we usually mean by good breeding. given the race and make of the animal, you may turn it to good or bad account; you may spoil your good dog or colt, and make him as vicious as you choose, or break his back at once by ill-usage; and you may, on the other hand, make something serviceable and respectable out of your poor cur or colt if you educate them carefully; but ill bred they will both of them be to their lives' end; and the best you will ever be able to say of them is, that they are useful, and decently behaved ill-bred creatures. an error, which is associated with the truth, and which makes it always look weak and disputable, is the confusion of race with name; and the supposition that the blood of a family must still be good, if its genealogy be unbroken and its name not lost, though sire and son have been indulging age after age in habits involving perpetual degeneracy of race. of course it is equally an error to suppose that, because a man's name is common, his blood must be base; since his family may have been ennobling it by pureness of moral habit for many generations, and yet may not have got any title, or other sign of nobleness attached to their names. nevertheless, the probability is always in favor of the race which has had acknowledged supremacy, and in which every motive leads to the endeavor to preserve their true nobility. [ ] among the reckless losses of the right service of intellectual power with which this century must be charged, very few are, to my mind, more to be regretted than that which is involved in its having turned to no higher purpose than the illustration of the career of jack sheppard, and of the irish rebellion, the great, grave (i use the words deliberately and with large meaning), and singular genius of cruikshank. [ ] there is this farther reason also: "letters are always ugly things"--(seven lamps, chap. iv. s. ). titian often wanted a certain quantity of ugliness to oppose his beauty with, as a certain quantity of black to oppose his color. he could regulate the size and quantity of inscription as he liked; and, therefore, made it as neat--that is, as effectively ugly--as possible. but the greek sculptor could not regulate either size or quantity of inscription. legible it must be, to common eyes, and contain an assigned group of words. he had more ugliness than he wanted, or could endure. there was nothing for it but to make the letters themselves rugged and picturesque; to give them--that is, a certain quantity of organic variety. i do not wonder at people sometimes thinking i contradict myself when they come suddenly on any of the scattered passages, in which i am forced to insist on the opposite practical applications of subtle principles of this kind. it may amuse the reader, and be finally serviceable to him in showing him how necessary it is to the right handling of any subject, that these contrary statements should be made, if i assemble here the principal ones i remember having brought forward, bearing on this difficult point of precision in execution. it would be well if you would first glance over the chapter on finish in the third volume; and if, coming to the fourth paragraph, about gentlemen's carriages, you have time to turn to sydney smith's memoirs and read his account of the construction of the "immortal," it will furnish you with an interesting illustration. the general conclusion reached in that chapter being that finish, for the sake of added truth, or utility, or beauty, is noble; but finish, for the sake of workmanship, neatness, or polish, ignoble,--turn to the fourth chapter of the seven lamps, where you will find the campanile of giotto given as the model and mirror of perfect architecture, just on account of its exquisite completion. also, in the next chapter, i expressly limit the delightfulness of rough and imperfect work to developing and unformed schools (pp. - , st edition); then turn to the th page of the stones of venice, vol. iii., and you will find this directly contrary statement:-- "no good work whatever can be perfect, and the demand for perfection is always a sign of the misunderstanding of the end of art." ... "the first cause of the fall of the arts in europe was a relentless requirement of perfection" (p. ). by reading the intermediate text, you will be put in possession of many good reasons for this opinion; and, comparing it with that just cited about the campanile of giotto, will be brought, i hope, into a wholesome state of not knowing what to think. then turn to p. , where the great law of finish is again maintained as strongly as ever: "perfect finish (finish, that is to say, up to the point possible) is always desirable from the greatest masters, and is always given by them."--§ . and, lastly, if you look to § of the chapter on the early renaissance, you will find the profoundest respect paid to completion; and, at the close of that chapter, § , the principle is resumed very strongly. "as _ideals of executive perfection_, these palaces are most notable among the architecture of europe, and the rio façade of the ducal palace, as an example of finished masonry in a vast building, is one of the finest things, not only in venice, but in the world." now all these passages are perfectly true; and, as in much more serious matters, the essential thing for the reader is to receive their truth, however little he may be able to see their consistency. if truths of apparent contrary character are candidly and rightly received, they will fit themselves together in the mind without any trouble. but no truth maliciously received will nourish you, or fit with others. the clue of connection may in this case, however, be given in a word. absolute finish is always right; finish, inconsistent with prudence and passion, wrong. the imperative demand for finish is ruinous, because it refuses better things than finish. the stopping short of the finish, which is honorably possible to human energy, is destructive on the other side, and not in less degree. err, of the two, on the side of completion. [ ] in general illustration of the subject, the following extract from my private diary possesses some interest. it refers to two portraits which happened to be placed opposite to each other in the arrangement of a gallery; one, modern, of a (foreign) general on horseback at a review; the other, by vandyck, also an equestrian portrait, of an ancestor of his family, whom i shall here simply call the "knight:" "i have seldom seen so noble a vandyck, chiefly because it is painted with less flightiness and flimsiness than usual, with a grand quietness and reserve--almost like titian. the other is, on the contrary, as vulgar and base a picture as i have ever seen, and it becomes a matter of extreme interest to trace the cause of the difference. "in the first place, everything the general and his horse wear is evidently just made. it has not only been cleaned that morning, but has been sent home from the tailor's in a hurry last night. horse bridle, saddle housings, blue coat, stars and lace thereupon, cocked hat, and sword hilt--all look as if they had just been taken from a shopboard in pall mall; the irresistible sense of the coat having been brushed to perfection is the first sentiment which the picture summons. the horse has also been rubbed down all the morning, and shines from head to tail. "the knight rides in a suit of rusty armor. it has evidently been polished also carefully, and gleams brightly here and there; but all the polishing in the world will never take the battle-dints and battle-darkness out of it. his horse is gray, not lustrous, but a dark, lurid gray. its mane is deep and soft: part of it shaken in front over its forehead--the rest, in enormous masses of waving gold, six feet long, falls streaming on its neck, and rises in currents of softest light, rippled by the wind, over the rider's armor. the saddle cloth is of a dim red, fading into leathern brown, gleaming with sparkles of obscure gold. when, after looking a little while at the soft mane of the vandyck horse, we turn back to the general's, we are shocked by the evident coarseness of its hair, which hangs, indeed, in long locks over the bridle, but is stiff, crude, sharp pointed, coarsely colored (a kind of buff); no fine drawing of nostril or neck can give any look of nobleness to the animal which carries such hair; it looks like a hobby-horse with tow glued to it, which riotous children have half pulled out or scratched out. the next point of difference is the isolation of vandyck's figure, compared with the modern painter's endeavor to ennoble his by subduing others. the knight seems to be just going out of his castle gates; his horse rears as he passes their pillars; there is nothing behind but the sky. but the general is reviewing a regiment; the ensign lowers its colors to him; he takes off his hat in return. all which reviewing and bowing is in its very nature ignoble, wholly unfit to be painted: a gentleman might as well be painted leaving his card on somebody. and, in the next place, the modern painter has thought to enhance his officer by putting the regiment some distance back, and in the shade, so that the men look only about five feet high, being besides very ill painted to keep them in better subordination. one does not know whether most to despise the feebleness of the painter who must have recourse to such an artifice, or his vulgarity in being satisfied with it. i ought, by the way, before leaving the point of dress, to have noted that the vulgarity of the painter is considerably assisted by the vulgarity of the costume itself. not only is it base in being new, but base in that it cannot last to be old. if one wanted a lesson on the ugliness of modern costume, it could not be more sharply received than by turning from one to the other horseman. the knight wears steel plate armor, chased here and there with gold; the delicate, rich, pointed lace collar falling on the embossed breastplate; his dark hair flowing over his shoulders; a crimson silk scarf fastened round his waist, and floating behind him; buff boots, deep folded at the instep, set in silver stirrup. the general wears his hair cropped short; blue coat, padded and buttoned; blue trowsers and red stripe; black shiny boots; common saddler's stirrups; cocked hat in hand, suggestive of absurd completion, when assumed. "another thing noticeable as giving nobleness to the vandyck is its feminineness: the rich, light silken scarf, the flowing hair, the delicate, sharp, though sunburnt features, and the lace collar, do not in the least diminish the manliness, but _add_ feminineness. one sees that the knight is indeed a soldier, but not a soldier only; that he is accomplished in all ways, and tender in all thoughts: while the general is represented as nothing but a soldier--and it is very doubtful if he is even that--one is sure, at a glance, that if he can do anything but put his hat off and on, and give words of command, the anything must, at all events, have something to do with the barracks; that there is no grace, nor music, nor softness, nor learnedness, in the man's soul; that he is made up of forms and accoutrements. "lastly, the modern picture is as bad painting as it is wretched conceiving, and one is struck, in looking from it to vandyck's, peculiarly by the fact that good work is always _enjoyed_ work. there is not a touch of vandyck's pencil but he seems to have revelled in--not grossly, but delicately--tasting the color in every touch as an epicure would wine. while the other goes on daub, daub, daub, like a bricklayer spreading mortar--nay, with far less lightness of hand or lightness of spirit than a good bricklayer's--covering his canvas heavily and conceitedly at once, caring only but to catch the public eye with his coarse, presumptuous, ponderous, illiterate work." thus far my diary. in case it should be discovered by any one where these pictures are, it should be noted that the vulgarity of the modern one is wholly the painter's fault. it implies none in the general (except bad taste in pictures). the same painter would have made an equally vulgar portrait of bayard. and as for taste in pictures, the general's was not singular. i used to spend much time before the vandyck; and among all the tourist visitors to the gallery, who were numerous, i never saw one look at it twice, but all paused in respectful admiration before the padded surtout. the reader will find, farther, many interesting and most valuable notes on the subject of nobleness and vulgarity in emerson's essays, and every phase of nobleness illustrated in sir kenelm digby's "broad stone of honor." the best help i have ever had--so far as help depended on the sympathy or praise of others in work which, year after year, it was necessary to pursue through the abuse of the brutal and the base--was given me, when this author, from whom i had first learned to love nobleness, introduced frequent reference to my own writings in his "children's bower." chapter viii. wouvermans and angelico. § . having determined the general nature of vulgarity, we are now able to close our view of the character of the dutch school. it is a strangely mingled one, which i have the more difficulty in investigating, because i have no power of sympathy with it. however inferior in capacity, i can enter measuredly into the feelings of correggio or of titian; what they like, i like; what they disdain, i disdain. going lower down, i can still follow salvator's passion, or albano's prettiness; and lower still, i can measure modern german heroics, or french sensualities. i see what the people mean,--know where they are, and what they are. but no effort of fancy will enable me to lay hold of the temper of teniers or wouvermans, any more than i can enter into the feelings of one of the lower animals. i cannot see why they painted,--what they are aiming at,--what they liked or disliked. all their life and work is the same sort of mystery to me as the mind of my dog when he rolls on carrion. he is a well enough conducted dog in other respects, and many of these dutchmen were doubtless very well-conducted persons: certainly they learned their business well; both teniers and wouvermans touch with a workmanly hand, such as we cannot see rivalled now; and they seem never to have painted indolently, but gave the purchaser his thorough money's worth of mechanism, while the burgesses who bargained for their cattle and card parties were probably more respectable men than the princes who gave orders to titian for nymphs, and to raphael for nativities. but whatever patient merit or commercial value may be in dutch labor, this at least is clear, that it is wholly insensitive. the very mastery these men have of their business proceeds from their never really seeing the whole of anything, but only that part of it which they know how to do. out of all nature they felt their function was to extract the grayness and shininess. give them a golden sunset, a rosy dawn, a green waterfall, a scarlet autumn on the hills, and they merely look curiously into it to see if there is anything gray and glittering which can be painted on their common principles. § . if this, however, were their only fault, it would not prove absolute insensibility, any more than it could be declared of the makers of florentine tables, that they were blind or vulgar because they took out of nature only what could be represented in agate. a dutch picture is, in fact, merely a florentine table more finely touched: it has its regular ground of slate, and its mother-of-pearl and tinsel put in with equal precision; and perhaps the fairest view one can take of a dutch painter is, that he is a respectable tradesman furnishing well-made articles in oil paint: but when we begin to examine the designs of these articles, we may see immediately that it is his inbred vulgarity, and not the chance of fortune, which has made him a tradesman, and kept him one;--which essential character of dutch work, as distinguished from all other, may be best seen in that hybrid landscape, introduced by wouvermans and berghem. of this landscape wouvermans' is the most characteristic. it will be remembered that i called it "hybrid," because it strove to unite the attractiveness of every other school. we will examine the motives of one of the most elaborate wouvermans existing--the landscape with a hunting party, no. in the pinacothek of munich. § . a large lake in the distance narrows into a river in the foreground; but the river has no current, nor has the lake either reflections or waves. it is a piece of gray slate-table, painted with horizontal touches, and only explained to be water by boats upon it. some of the figures in these are fishing (the corks of a net are drawn in bad perspective); others are bathing, one man pulling his shirt over his ears, others are swimming. on the farther side of the river are some curious buildings, half villa, half ruin; or rather ruin dressed. there are gardens at the top of them, with beautiful and graceful trellised architecture and wandering tendrils of vine. a gentleman is coming down from a door in the ruins to get into his pleasure-boat. his servant catches his dog. § . on the nearer side of the river, a bank of broken ground rises from the water's edge up to a group of very graceful and carefully studied trees, with a french-antique statue on a pedestal in the midst of them, at the foot of which are three musicians, and a well-dressed couple dancing; their coach is in waiting behind. in the foreground are hunters. a richly and highly-dressed woman, with falcon on fist, the principal figure in the picture, is wrought with wouvermans' best skill. a stouter lady rides into the water after a stag and hind, who gallop across the middle of the river without sinking. two horsemen attend the two amazons, of whom one pursues the game cautiously, but the other is thrown headforemost into the river, with a splash which shows it to be deep at the edge, though the hart and hind find bottom in the middle. running footmen, with other dogs, are coming up, and children are sailing a toy-boat in the immediate foreground. the tone of the whole is dark and gray, throwing out the figures in spots of light, on wouvermans' usual system. the sky is cloudy, and very cold. § . you observe that in this picture the painter has assembled all the elements which he supposes pleasurable. we have music, dancing, hunting, boating, fishing, bathing, and child-play, all at once. water, wide and narrow; architecture, rustic and classical; trees also of the finest; clouds, not ill-shaped. nothing wanting to our paradise: not even practical jest; for to keep us always laughing, somebody shall be for ever falling with a splash into the kishon. things proceed, nevertheless, with an oppressive quietude. the dancers are uninterested in the hunters, the hunters in the dancers; the hirer of the pleasure-boat perceives neither hart nor hind; the children are unconcerned at the hunter's fall; the bathers regard not the draught of fishes; the fishers fish among the bathers, without apparently anticipating any diminution in their haul. § . let the reader ask himself, would it have been possible for the painter in any clearer way to show an absolute, clay-cold, ice-cold incapacity of understanding what a pleasure meant? had he had as much heart as a minnow, he would have given some interest to the fishing; with the soul of a grasshopper, some spring to the dancing; had he half the will of a dog, he would have made some one turn to look at the hunt, or given a little fire to the dash down to the water's edge. if he had been capable of pensiveness, he would not have put the pleasure-boat under the ruin;--capable of cheerfulness, he would not have put the ruin above the pleasure-boat. paralyzed in heart and brain, he delivers his inventoried articles of pleasure one by one to his ravenous customers; palateless; gluttonous. "we cannot taste it. hunting is not enough; let us have dancing. that's dull; now give us a jest, or what is life! the river is too narrow, let us have a lake; and, for mercy's sake, a pleasure-boat, or how can we spend another minute of this languid day! but what pleasure can be in a boat? let us swim; we see people always drest, let us see them naked." § . such is the unredeemed, carnal appetite for mere sensual pleasure. i am aware of no other painter who consults it so exclusively, without one gleam of higher hope, thought, beauty, or passion. as the pleasure of wouvermans, so also is his war. that, however, is not hybrid, it is of one character only. the best example i know is the great battle-piece with the bridge, in the gallery of turin. it is said that when this picture, which had been taken to paris, was sent back, the french offered twelve thousand pounds ( , francs) for permission to keep it. the report, true or not, shows the estimation in which the picture is held at turin. § . there are some twenty figures in the mêlée whose faces can be seen (about sixty in the picture altogether), and of these twenty, there is not one whose face indicates courage or power; or anything but animal rage and cowardice; the latter prevailing always. every one is fighting for his life, with the expression of a burglar defending himself at extremity against a party of policemen. there is the same terror, fury, and pain which a low thief would show on receiving a pistol-shot through his arm. most of them appear to be fighting only to get away; the standard-bearer _is_ retreating, but whether with the enemies' flag or his own i do not see; he slinks away with it, with reverted eye, as if he were stealing a pocket-handkerchief. the swordsmen cut at each other with clenched teeth and terrified eyes; they are too busy to curse each other; but one sees that the feelings they have could be expressed no otherwise than by low oaths. far away, to the smallest figures in the smoke, and to one drowning under the distant arch of the bridge, all are wrought with a consummate skill in vulgar touch; there is no good painting, properly so called, anywhere, but of clever, dotty, sparkling, telling execution, as much as the canvas will hold, and much delicate gray and blue color in the smoke and sky. § . now, in order fully to feel the difference between this view of war, and a gentleman's, go, if possible, into our national gallery, and look at the young malatesta riding into the battle of sant' egidio (as he is painted by paul ucello). his uncle carlo, the leader of the army, a grave man of about sixty, has just given orders for the knights to close: two have pushed forward with lowered lances, and the mêlée has begun only a few yards in front; but the young knight, riding at his uncle's side, has not yet put his helmet on, nor intends doing so, yet. erect he sits, and quiet, waiting for his captain's orders to charge; calm as if he were at a hawking party, only more grave; his golden hair wreathed about his proud white brow, as about a statue's. § . "yes," the thoughtful reader replies; "this may be pictorially very beautiful; but those dutchmen were good fighters, and generally won the day; whereas, this very battle of sant' egidio, so calmly and bravely begun, was lost." indeed, it is very singular that unmitigated expressions of cowardice in battle should be given by the painters of so brave a nation as the dutch. not but that it is possible enough for a coward to be stubborn, and a brave man weak; the one may win his battle by a blind persistence, and the other lose it by a thoughtful vacillation. nevertheless, the want of all expression of resoluteness in dutch battle-pieces remains, for the present, a mystery to me. in those of wouvermans, it is only a natural development of his perfect vulgarity in all respects. § . i do not think it necessary to trace farther the evidences of insensitive conception in the dutch school. i have associated the name of teniers with that of wouvermans in the beginning of this chapter, because teniers is essentially the painter of the pleasures of the ale-house and card-table, as wouvermans of those of the chase; and the two are leading masters of the peculiar dutch trick of white touch on gray or brown ground; but teniers is higher in reach, and more honest in manner. berghem is the real associate of wouvermans in the hybrid school of landscape. but all three are alike insensitive; that is to say, unspiritual or deathful, and that to the uttermost, in every thought,--producing, therefore, the lowest phase of possible art of a skilful kind. there are deeper elements in de hooghe and gerard terburg; sometimes expressed with superb quiet painting by the former; but the whole school is inherently mortal to all its admirers; having by its influence in england destroyed our perception of all purposes of painting, and throughout the north of the continent effaced the sense of color among artists of every rank. we have, last, to consider what recovery has taken place from the paralysis to which the influence of this dutch art had reduced us in england seventy years ago. but, in closing my review of older art, i will endeavor to illustrate, by four simple examples, the main directions of its spiritual power, and the cause of its decline. § . the frontispiece of this volume is engraved from an old sketch of mine, a pencil outline of the little madonna by angelico, in the annunciation preserved in the sacristy of santa maria novella. this madonna has not, so far as i know, been engraved before, and it is one of the most characteristic of the purist school. i believe through all my late work i have sufficiently guarded my readers from over-estimating this school; but it is well to turn back to it now, from the wholly carnal work of wouvermans, in order to feel its purity: so that, if we err, it may be on this side. the opposition is the most accurate which i can set before the student, for the technical disposition of wouvermans, in his search after delicate form and minute grace, much resembles that of angelico. but the thoughts of wouvermans are wholly of this world. for him there is no heroism, awe, or mercy, hope, or faith. eating and drinking, and slaying; rage and lust; the pleasures and distresses of the debased body--from these, his thoughts, if so we may call them, never for an instant rise or range. § . the soul of angelico is in all ways the precise reverse of this; habitually as incognizant of any earthly pleasure as wouvermans of any heavenly one. both are exclusive with absolute exclusiveness;--neither desiring nor conceiving anything beyond their respective spheres. wouvermans lives under gray clouds, his lights come out as spots. angelico lives in an unclouded light: his shadows themselves are color; his lights are not the spots, but his darks. wouvermans lives in perpetual tumult--tramp of horse--clash of cup--ring of pistol-shot. angelico in perpetual peace. not seclusion from the world. no shutting out of the world is needful for him. there is nothing to shut out. envy, lust, contention, discourtesy, are to him as though they were not; and the cloister walk of fiesole no penitential solitude, barred from the stir and joy of life, but a possessed land of tender blessing, guarded from the entrance of all but holiest sorrow. the little cell was as one of the houses of heaven prepared for him by his master. "what need had it to be elsewhere? was not the val d'arno, with its olive woods in white blossom, paradise enough for a poor monk? or could christ be indeed in heaven more than here? was he not always with him? could he breathe or see, but that christ breathed beside him and looked into his eyes? under every cypress avenue the angels walked; he had seen their white robes, whiter than the dawn, at his bedside, as he awoke in early summer. they had sung with him, one on each side, when his voice failed for joy at sweet vesper and matin time; his eyes were blinded by their wings in the sunset, when it sank behind the hills of luni." there may be weakness in this, but there is no baseness; and while i rejoice in all recovery from monasticism which leads to practical and healthy action in the world, i must, in closing this work, severely guard my pupils from the thought that sacred rest may be honorably exchanged for selfish and mindless activity. § . in order to mark the temper of angelico, by a contrast of another kind, i give, in fig. , a facsimile of one of the heads in salvator's etching of the academy of plato. it is accurately characteristic of salvator, showing, by quite a central type, his indignant, desolate, and degraded power. i could have taken unspeakably baser examples from others of his etchings, but they would have polluted my book, and been in some sort unjust, representing only the worst part of his work. this head, which is as elevated a type as he ever reaches, is assuredly debased enough; and a sufficient image of the mind of the painter of catiline and the witch of endor. [illustration: fig. .] § . then, in fig. , you have also a central type of the mind of durer. complete, yet quaint; severely rational and practical, yet capable of the highest imaginative religious feeling, and as gentle as a child's, it seemed to be well represented by this figure of the old bishop, with all the infirmities, and all the victory, of his life, written on his calm, kind, and worldly face. he has been no dreamer, nor persecutor, but a helpful and undeceivable man; and by careful comparison of this conception with the common kinds of episcopal ideal in modern religious art, you will gradually feel how the force of durer is joined with an unapproachable refinement, so that he can give the most practical view of whatever he treats, without the slightest taint or shadow of vulgarity. lastly, the fresco of giorgione, plate , which is as fair a type as i am able to give in any single figure, of the central venetian art, will complete for us a series, sufficiently symbolical, of the several ranks of art, from lowest to highest.[ ] in wouvermans (of whose work i suppose no example is needed, it being so generally known), we have the entirely carnal mind,--wholly versed in the material world, and incapable of conceiving any goodness or greatness whatsoever. [illustration: fig. . _to face page ._] in angelico, you have the entirely spiritual mind, wholly versed in the heavenly world, and incapable of conceiving any wickedness or vileness whatsoever. in salvator, you have an awakened conscience, and some spiritual power, contending with evil, but conquered by it, and brought into captivity to it. in durer, you have a far purer conscience and higher spiritual power, yet, with some defect still in intellect, contending with evil, and nobly prevailing over it; yet retaining the marks of the contest, and never so entirely victorious as to conquer sadness. in giorgione, you have the same high spiritual power and practical sense; but now, with entirely perfect intellect, contending with evil; conquering it utterly, casting it away for ever, and rising beyond it into magnificence of rest. footnote: [ ] as i was correcting these pages, there was put into my hand a little work by a very dear friend--"travels and study in italy," by charles eliot norton;--i have not yet been able to do more than glance at it; but my impression is, that by carefully reading it, together with the essay by the same writer on the vita nuova of dante, a more just estimate may be formed of the religious art of italy than by the study of any other books yet existing. at least, i have seen none in which the tone of thought was at once so tender and so just. i had hoped, before concluding this book, to have given it higher value by extracts from the works which have chiefly helped or guided me, especially from the writings of helps, lowell, and the rev. a. j. scott. but if i were to begin making such extracts, i find that i should not know, either in justice or affection, how to end. chapter ix. the two boyhoods. § . born half-way between the mountains and the sea--that young george of castelfranco--of the brave castle:--stout george they called him, george of georges, so goodly a boy he was--giorgione. have you ever thought what a world his eyes opened on--fair, searching eyes of youth? what a world of mighty life, from those mountain roots to the shore;--of loveliest life, when he went down, yet so young, to the marble city--and became himself as a fiery heart to it? a city of marble, did i say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. for truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, its eddies of green wave. deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea,--the men of venice moved in sway of power and war; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers and maidens; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights; the low bronzed gleaming of sea-rusted armor shot angrily under their blood-red mantle-folds. fearless, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable,--every word a fate--sate her senate. in hope and honor, lulled by flowing of wave around their isles of sacred sand, each with his name written and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead. a wonderful piece of world. rather, itself a world. it lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at evening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away; but, for its power, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened through ether. a world from which all ignoble care and petty thoughts were banished, with all the common and poor elements of life. no foulness, nor tumult, in those tremulous streets, that filled, or fell, beneath the moon; but rippled music of majestic change, or thrilling silence. no weak walls could rise above them; no low-roofed cottage, nor straw-built shed. only the strength as of rock, and the finished setting of stones most precious. and around them, far as the eye could reach, still the soft moving of stainless waters, proudly pure; as not the flower, so neither the thorn nor the thistle, could grow in the glancing fields. ethereal strength of alps, dream-like, vanishing in high procession beyond the torcellan shore; blue islands of paduan hills, poised in the golden west. above, tree winds and fiery clouds ranging at their will;--brightness out of the north, and balm from the south, and the stars of the evening and morning clear in the limitless light of arched heaven and circling sea. such was giorgione's school--such titian's home. § . near the south-west corner of covent garden, a square brick pit or well is formed by a close-set block of houses, to the back windows of which it admits a few rays of light. access to the bottom of it is obtained out of maiden lane, through a low archway and an iron gate; and if you stand long enough under the archway to accustom your eyes to the darkness, you may see on the left hand a narrow door, which formerly gave quiet access to a respectable barber's shop, of which the front window, looking into maiden lane, is still extant, filled in this year ( ), with a row of bottles, connected, in some defunct manner, with a brewer's business. a more fashionable neighborhood, it is said, eighty years ago than now--never certainly a cheerful one--wherein a boy being born on st. george's day, , began soon after to take interest in the world of covent garden, and put to service such spectacles of life as it afforded. § . no knights to be seen there, nor, i imagine, many beautiful ladies; their costume at least disadvantageous, depending much on incumbency of hat and feather, and short waists; the majesty of men founded similarly on shoebuckles and wigs;--impressive enough when reynolds will do his best for it; but not suggestive of much ideal delight to a boy. "bello ovile dov' io dormii agnello:" of things beautiful, besides men and women, dusty sunbeams up or down the street on summer mornings; deep furrowed cabbage leaves at the greengrocer's; magnificence of oranges in wheelbarrows round the corner; and thames' shore within three minutes' race. § . none of these things very glorious; the best, however, that england, it seems, was then able to provide for a boy of gift: who, such as they are, loves them--never, indeed, forgets them. the short waists modify to the last his visions of greek ideal. his foregrounds had always a succulent cluster or two of greengrocery at the corners. enchanted oranges gleam in covent gardens of the hesperides; and great ships go to pieces in order to scatter chests of them on the waves. that mist of early sunbeams in the london dawn crosses, many and many a time, the clearness of italian air; and by thames' shore, with its stranded barges and glidings of red sail, dearer to us than lucerne lake or venetian lagoon,--by thames' shore we will die. § . with such circumstance round him in youth, let us note what necessary effects followed upon the boy. i assume him to have had giorgione's sensibility (and more than giorgione's, if that be possible) to color and form. i tell you farther, and this fact you may receive trustfully, that his sensibility to human affection and distress was no less keen than even his sense for natural beauty--heart-sight deep as eye-sight. consequently, he attaches himself with the faithfullest child-love to everything that bears an image of the place he was born in. no matter how ugly it is,--has it anything about it like maiden lane, or like thames' shore? if so, it shall be painted for their sake. hence, to the very close of life, turner could endure ugliness which no one else, of the same sensibility, would have borne with for an instant. dead brick walls, blank square windows, old clothes, market-womanly types of humanity--anything fishy and muddy, like billingsgate or hungerford market, had great attraction for him; black barges, patched sails, and every possible condition of fog. § . you will find these tolerations and affections guiding or sustaining him to the last hour of his life; the notablest of all such endurances being that of dirt. no venetian ever draws anything foul; but turner devoted picture after picture to the illustration of effects of dinginess, smoke, soot, dust, and dusty texture; old sides of boats, weedy roadside vegetation, dung-hills, straw-yards, and all the soilings and stains of every common labor. and more than this, he not only could endure, but enjoyed and looked for _litter_, like covent garden wreck after the market. his pictures are often full of it, from side to side; their foregrounds differ from all others in the natural way that things have of lying about in them. even his richest vegetation, in ideal work, is confused; and he delights in shingle, débris, and heaps of fallen stones. the last words he ever spoke to me about a picture were in gentle exaltation about his st. gothard: "that _litter_ of stones which i endeavored to represent." § . the second great result of this covent garden training was, understanding of and regard for the poor, whom the venetians, we saw, despised; whom, contrarily, turner loved, and more than loved--understood. he got no romantic sight of them, but an infallible one, as he prowled about the end of his lane, watching night effects in the wintry streets; nor sight of the poor alone, but of the poor in direct relations with the rich. he knew, in good and evil, what both classes thought of, and how they dwelt with, each other. reynolds and gainsborough, bred in country villages, learned there the country boy's reverential theory of "the squire," and kept it. they painted the squire and the squire's lady as centres of the movements of the universe, to the end of their lives. but turner perceived the younger squire in other aspects about his lane, occurring prominently in its night scenery, as a dark figure, or one of two, against the moonlight. he saw also the working of city commerce, from endless warehouse, towering over thames, to the back shop in the lane, with its stale herrings--highly interesting these last; one of his fathers best friends, whom he often afterwards visited affectionately at bristol, being a fish-monger and glueboiler; which gives us a friendly turn of mind towards herring-fishing, whaling, calais poissardes, and many other of our choicest subjects in after life; all this being connected with that mysterious forest below london bridge on one side;--and, on the other, with these masses of human power and national wealth which weigh upon us, at covent garden here, with strange compression, and crush us into narrow hand court. § . "that mysterious forest below london bridge"--better for the boy than wood of pine, or grove of myrtle. how he must have tormented the watermen, beseeching them to let him crouch anywhere in the bows, quiet as a log, so only that he might get floated down there among the ships, and round and round the ships, and with the ships, and by the ships, and under the ships, staring and clambering;--these the only quite beautiful things he can see in all the world, except the sky; but these, when the sun is on their sails, filling or falling, endlessly disordered by sway of tide and stress of anchorage, beautiful unspeakably; which ships also are inhabited by glorious creatures--redfaced sailors, with pipes, appearing over the gunwales, true knights, over their castle parapets--the most angelic beings in the whole compass of london world. and trafalgar happening long before we can draw ships, we, nevertheless, coax all current stories out of the wounded sailors, do our best at present to show nelson's funeral streaming up the thames; and vow that trafalgar shall have its tribute of memory some day. which, accordingly, is accomplished--once, with all our might, for its death; twice, with all our might, for its victory; thrice, in pensive farewell to the old temeraire, and, with it, to that order of things. § . now this fond companying with sailors must have divided his time, it appears to me, pretty equally between covent garden and wapping (allowing for incidental excursions to chelsea on one side, and greenwich on the other), which time he would spend pleasantly, but not magnificently, being limited in pocket-money, and leading a kind of "poor-jack" life on the river. in some respects, no life could be better for a lad. but it was not calculated to make his ear fine to the niceties of language, nor form his moralities on an entirely regular standard. picking up his first scraps of vigorous english chiefly at deptford and in the markets, and his first ideas of female tenderness and beauty among nymphs of the barge and the barrow,--another boy might, perhaps, have become what people usually term "vulgar." but the original make and frame of turner's mind being not vulgar, but as nearly as possible a combination of the minds of keats and dante, joining capricious waywardness, and intense openness to every fine pleasure of sense, and hot defiance of formal precedent, with a quite infinite tenderness, generosity, and desire of justice and truth--this kind of mind did not become vulgar, but very tolerant of vulgarity, even fond of it in some forms; and, on the outside, visibly infected by it, deeply enough; the curious result, in its combination of elements, being to most people wholly incomprehensible. it was as if a cable had been woven of blood-crimson silk, and then tarred on the outside. people handled it, and the tar came off on their hands; red gleams were seen through the black, underneath, at the places where it had been strained. was it ochre?--said the world--or red lead? § . schooled thus in manners, literature, and general moral principles at chelsea and wapping, we have finally to inquire concerning the most important point of all. we have seen the principal differences between this boy and giorgione, as respects sight of the beautiful, understanding of poverty, of commerce, and of order of battle; then follows another cause of difference in our training--not slight,--the aspect of religion, namely, in the neighborhood of covent garden. i say the aspect; for that was all the lad could judge by. disposed, for the most part, to learn chiefly by his eyes, in this special matter he finds there is really no other way of learning. his father taught him "to lay one penny upon another." of mother's teaching, we hear of none; of parish pastoral teaching, the reader may guess how much. § . i chose giorgione rather than veronese to help me in carrying out this parallel; because i do not find in giorgione's work any of the early venetian monarchist element. he seems to me to have belonged more to an abstract contemplative school. i may be wrong in this; it is no matter;--suppose it were so, and that he came down to venice somewhat recusant, or insentient, concerning the usual priestly doctrines of his day,--how would the venetian religion, from an outer intellectual standing-point, have _looked_ to him? § . he would have seen it to be a religion indisputably powerful in human affairs; often very harmfully so; sometimes devouring widows' houses, and consuming the strongest and fairest from among the young; freezing into merciless bigotry the policy of the old: also, on the other hand, animating national courage, and raising souls, otherwise sordid, into heroism: on the whole, always a real and great power; served with daily sacrifice of gold, time, and thought; putting forth its claims, if hypocritically, at least in bold hypocrisy, not waiving any atom of them in doubt or fear; and, assuredly, in large measure, sincere, believing in itself, and believed: a goodly system, moreover, in aspect; gorgeous, harmonious, mysterious;--a thing which had either to be obeyed or combated, but could not be scorned. a religion towering over all the city--many buttressed--luminous in marble stateliness, as the dome of our lady of safety shines over the sea; many-voiced also, giving, over all the eastern seas, to the sentinel his watchword, to the soldier his war-cry; and, on the lips of all who died for venice, shaping the whisper of death. § . i suppose the boy turner to have regarded the religion of his city also from an external intellectual standing-point. what did he see in maiden lane? let not the reader be offended with me; i am willing to let him describe, at his own pleasure, what turner saw there; but to me, it seems to have been this. a religion maintained occasionally, even the whole length of the lane, at point of constable's staff; but, at other times, placed under the custody of the beadle, within certain black and unstately iron railings of st. paul's, covent garden. among the wheelbarrows and over the vegetables, no perceptible dominance of religion; in the narrow, disquieted streets, none; in the tongues, deeds, daily ways of maiden lane, little. some honesty, indeed, and english industry, and kindness of heart, and general idea of justice; but faith, of any national kind, shut up from one sunday to the next, not artistically beautiful even in those sabbatical exhibitions; its paraphernalia being chiefly of high pews, heavy elocution, and cold grimness of behavior. what chiaroscuro belongs to it--(dependent mostly on candlelight),--we will, however, draw considerately; no goodliness of escutcheon, nor other respectability being omitted, and the best of their results confessed, a meek old woman and a child being let into a pew, for whom the reading by candlelight will be beneficial.[ ] § . for the rest, this religion seems to him discreditable--discredited--not believing in itself, putting forth its authority in a cowardly way, watching how far it might be tolerated, continually shrinking, disclaiming, fencing, finessing; divided against itself, not by stormy rents, but by thin fissures, and splittings of plaster from the walls. not to be either obeyed, or combated, by an ignorant, yet clear-sighted youth; only to be scorned. and scorned not one whit the less, though also the dome dedicated to _it_ looms high over distant winding of the thames; as st. mark's campanile rose, for goodly landmark, over mirage of lagoon. for st. mark ruled over life; the saint of london over death; st. mark over st. mark's place, but st. paul over st. paul's churchyard. § . under these influences pass away the first reflective hours of life, with such conclusion as they can reach. in consequence of a fit of illness, he was taken--i cannot ascertain in what year--to live with an aunt, at brentford; and here, i believe, received some schooling, which he seems to have snatched vigorously; getting knowledge, at least by translation, of the more picturesque classical authors, which he turned presently to use, as we shall see. hence also, walks about putney and twickenham in the summer time acquainted him with the look of english meadow-ground in its restricted states of paddock and park; and with some round-headed appearances of trees, and stately entrances to houses of mark: the avenue at bushy, and the iron gates and carved pillars of hampton, impressing him apparently with great awe and admiration; so that in after life his little country house is,--of all places in the world,--at twickenham! of swans and reedy shores he now learns the soft motion and the green mystery, in a way not to be forgotten. § . and at last fortune wills that the lad's true life shall begin; and one summer's evening, after various wonderful stage-coach experiences on the north road, which gave him a love of stage-coaches ever after, he finds himself sitting alone among the yorkshire hills.[ ] for the first time, the silence of nature round him, her freedom sealed to him, her glory opened to him. peace at last; no roll of cart-wheel, nor mutter of sullen voices in the back shop; but curlew-cry in space of heaven, and welling of bell-toned streamlet by its shadowy rock. freedom at last. dead-wall, dark railing, fenced field, gated garden, all passed away like the dream of a prisoner; and behold, far as foot or eye can race or range, the moor, and cloud. loveliness at last. it is here then, among these deserted vales! not among men. those pale, poverty-struck, or cruel faces;--that multitudinous, marred humanity--are not the only things that god has made. here is something he has made which no one has marred. pride of purple rocks, and river pools of blue, and tender wilderness of glittering trees, and misty lights of evening on immeasurable hills. § . beauty, and freedom, and peace; and yet another teacher, graver than these. sound preaching at last here, in kirkstall crypt, concerning fate and life. here, where the dark pool reflects the chancel pillars, and the cattle lie in unhindered rest, the soft sunshine on their dappled bodies, instead of priests' vestments; their white furry hair ruffled a little, fitfully, by the evening wind, deep-scented from the meadow thyme. § . consider deeply the import to him of this, his first sight of ruin, and compare it with the effect of the architecture that was around giorgione. there were indeed aged buildings, at venice, in his time, but none in decay. all ruin was removed, and its place filled as quickly as in our london; but filled always by architecture loftier and more wonderful than that whose place it took, the boy himself happy to work upon the walls of it; so that the idea of the passing away of the strength of men and beauty of their works never could occur to him sternly. brighter and brighter the cities of italy had been rising and broadening on hill and plain, for three hundred years. he saw only strength and immortality, could not but paint both; conceived the form of man as deathless, calm with power, and fiery with life. § . turner saw the exact reverse of this. in the present work of men, meanness, aimlessness, unsightliness: thin-walled, lath-divided, narrow-garreted houses of clay; booths of a darksome vanity fair, busily base. but on whitby hill, and by bolton brook, remained traces of other handiwork. men who could build had been there; and who also had wrought, not merely for their own days. but to what purpose? strong faith, and steady hands, and patient souls--can this, then, be all you have left! this the sum of your doing on the earth!--a nest whence the night-owl may whimper to the brook, and a ribbed skeleton of consumed arches, looming above the bleak banks of mist, from its cliff to the sea? as the strength of men to giorgione, to turner their weakness and vileness, were alone visible. they themselves, unworthy or ephemeral; their work, despicable, or decayed. in the venetian's eyes, all beauty depended on man's presence and pride; in turner's, on the solitude he had left, and the humiliation he had suffered. § . and thus the fate and issue of all his work were determined at once. he must be a painter of the strength of nature, there was no beauty elsewhere than in that; he must paint also the labor and sorrow and passing away of men; this was the great human truth visible to him. their labor, their sorrow, and their death. mark the three. labor; by sea and land, in field and city, at forge and furnace, helm and plough. no pastoral indolence nor classic pride shall stand between him and the troubling of the world; still less between him and the toil of his country,--blind, tormented, unwearied, marvellous england. § . also their sorrow; ruin of all their glorious work, passing away of their thoughts and their honor, mirage of pleasure, fallacy of hope; gathering of weed on temple step; gaining of wave on deserted strand; weeping of the mother for the children, desolate by her breathless first-born in the streets of the city,[ ] desolate by her last sons slain, among the beasts of the field.[ ] § . and their death. that old greek question again;--yet unanswered. the unconquerable spectre still flitting among the forest trees at twilight; rising ribbed out of the sea-sand;--white, a strange aphrodite,--out of the sea-foam; stretching its gray, cloven wings among the clouds; turning the light of their sunsets into blood. this has to be looked upon, and in a more terrible shape than ever salvator or durer saw it. the wreck of one guilty country does not infer the ruin of all countries, and need not cause general terror respecting the laws of the universe. neither did the orderly and narrow succession of domestic joy and sorrow in a small german community bring the question in its breadth, or in any unresolvable shape, before the mind of durer. but the english death--the european death of the nineteenth century--was of another range and power; more terrible a thousand-fold in its merely physical grasp and grief; more terrible, incalculably, in its mystery and shame. what were the robber's casual pang, or the rage of the flying skirmish, compared to the work of the axe, and the sword, and the famine, which was done during this man's youth on all the hills and plains of the christian earth, from moscow to gibraltar. he was eighteen years old when napoleon came down on arcola. look on the map of europe, and count the blood-stains on it, between arcola and waterloo. § . not alone those blood-stains on the alpine snow, and the blue of the lombard plain. the english death was before his eyes also. no decent, calculable, consoled dying; no passing to rest like that of the aged burghers of nuremberg town. no gentle processions to churchyards among the fields, the bronze crests bossed deep on the memorial tablets, and the skylark singing above them from among the corn. but the life trampled out in the slime of the street, crushed to dust amidst the roaring of the wheel, tossed countlessly away into howling winter wind along five hundred leagues of rock-fanged shore. or, worst of all, rotted down to forgotten graves through years of ignorant patience, and vain seeking for help from man, for hope in god--infirm, imperfect yearning, as of motherless infants starving at the dawn; oppressed royalties of captive thought, vague ague-fits of bleak, amazed despair. § . a goodly landscape this, for the lad to paint, and under a goodly light. wide enough the light was, and clear; no more salvator's lurid chasm on jagged horizon, nor durer's spotted rest of sunny gleam on hedgerow and field; but light over all the world. full shone now its awful globe, one pallid charnel-house,--a ball strewn bright with human ashes, glaring in poised sway beneath the sun, all blinding-white with death from pole to pole,--death, not of myriads of poor bodies only, but of will, and mercy, and conscience; death, not once inflicted on the flesh, but daily, fastening on the spirit; death, not silent or patient, waiting his appointed hour, but voiceful, venomous; death with the taunting word, and burning grasp, and infixed sting. "put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe." the word is spoken in our ears continually to other reapers than the angels--to the busy skeletons that never tire for stooping. when the measure of iniquity is full, and it seems that another day might bring repentance and redemption,--"put ye in the sickle." when the young life has been wasted all away, and the eyes are just opening upon the tracks of ruin, and faint resolution rising in the heart for nobler things,--"put ye in the sickle." when the roughest blows of fortune have been borne long and bravely, and the hand is just stretched to grasp its goal,--"put ye in the sickle." and when there are but a few in the midst of a nation, to save it, or to teach, or to cherish; and all its life is bound up in those few golden ears,--"put ye in the sickle, pale reapers, and pour hemlock for your feast of harvest home." this was the sight which opened on the young eyes, this the watchword sounding within the heart of turner in his youth. so taught, and prepared for his life's labor, sate the boy at last alone among his fair english hills; and began to paint, with cautious toil, the rocks, and fields, and trickling brooks, and soft, white clouds of heaven. footnotes: [ ] liber studiorum. "interior of a church." it is worthy of remark that giorgione and titian are always delighted to have an opportunity of drawing priests. the english church may, perhaps, accept it as matter of congratulation that this is the only instance in which turner drew a clergyman. [ ] i do not mean that this is his first acquaintance with the country, but the first impressive and touching one, after his mind was formed. the earliest sketches i found in the national collection are at clifton and bristol; the next, at oxford. [ ] "the tenth plague of egypt." [ ] "rizpah, the daughter of aiah." chapter x. the nereid's guard. § . the work of turner, in its first period, is said in my account of his drawings at the national gallery to be distinguished by "boldness of handling, generally gloomy tendency of mind, subdued color, and perpetual reference to precedent in composition." i must refer the reader to those two catalogues[ ] for a more special account of his early modes of technical study. here we are concerned only with the expression of that gloomy tendency of mind, whose causes we are now better able to understand. § . it was prevented from overpowering him by his labor. this, continual, and as tranquil in its course as a ploughman's in the field, by demanding an admirable humility and patience, averted the tragic passion of youth. full of stern sorrow and fixed purpose, the boy set himself to his labor silently and meekly, like a workman's child on its first day at the cotton-mill. without haste, but without relaxation,--accepting all modes and means of progress, however painful or humiliating, he took the burden on his shoulder and began his march. there was nothing so little, but that he noticed it; nothing so great but he began preparations to cope with it. for some time his work is, apparently, feelingless, so patient and mechanical are the first essays. it gains gradually in power and grasp; there is no perceptible _aim_ at freedom, or at fineness, but the force insensibly becomes swifter, and the touch finer. the color is always dark or subdued. [illustration: . quivi trovammo.] § . of the first forty subjects which he exhibited at the royal academy, thirty-one are architectural, and of these twenty-one are of elaborate gothic architecture (peterborough cathedral, lincoln cathedral, malmesbury abbey, tintern abbey, &c.). i look upon the discipline given to his hand by these formal drawings as of the highest importance. his mind was also gradually led by them into a calmer pensiveness.[ ] education amidst country possessing architectural remains of some noble kind, i believe to be wholly essential to the progress of a landscape artist. the first verses he ever attached to a picture were in . they are from paradise lost, and refer to a picture of morning, on the coniston fells:-- "ye mists and exhalations, that now rise from hill or streaming lake, dusky or gray, till the sun paints your fleecy skirts with gold, in honor to the world's great author rise." by glancing over the verses, which in following years[ ] he quotes from milton, thompson, and mallet, it may be seen at once how his mind was set, so far as natural scenes were concerned, on rendering atmospheric effect;--and so far as emotion was to be expressed, how consistently it was melancholy. he paints, first of heroic or meditative subjects, the fifth plague of egypt; next, the tenth plague of egypt. his first tribute to the memory of nelson is the "battle of the nile," . i presume an unimportant picture, as his power was not then availably developed. his first classical subject is narcissus and echo, in :-- "so melts the youth and languishes away, his beauty withers, and his limbs decay." the year following he summons his whole strength, and paints what we might suppose would be a happier subject, the garden of the hesperides. this being the most important picture of the first period, i will analyze it completely. § . the fable of the hesperides had, it seems to me, in the greek mind two distinct meanings; the first referring to natural phenomena, and the second to moral. the natural meaning of it i believe to have been this:-- the garden of the hesperides was supposed to exist in the westernmost part of the cyrenaica; it was generally the expression for the beauty and luxuriant vegetation of the coast of africa in that district. the centre of the cyrenaica "is occupied by a moderately elevated table-land, whose edge runs parallel to the coast, to which it sinks down in a succession of terraces, clothed with verdure, intersected by mountain streams running through ravines filled with the richest vegetation; well watered by frequent rains, exposed to the cool sea breeze from the north, and sheltered by the mass of the mountain from the sands and hot winds of the sahara."[ ] the greek colony of cyrene itself was founded ten miles from the sea-shore, "in a spot backed by the mountains on the south, and thus sheltered from the fiery blasts of the desert; while at the height of about feet an inexhaustible spring bursts forth amidst luxuriant vegetation, and pours its waters down to the mediterranean through a most beautiful ravine." the nymphs of the west, or hesperides, are therefore, i believe, as natural types, the representatives of the soft western winds and sunshine, which were in this district most favorable to vegetation. in this sense they are called daughters of atlas and hesperis, the western winds being cooled by the snow of atlas. the dragon, on the contrary, is the representative of the sahara wind, or simoom, which blew over the garden from among the hills on the south, and forbade all advance of cultivation beyond their ridge. whether this was the physical meaning of the tradition in the greek mind or not, there can be no doubt of its being turner's first interpretation of it. a glance at the picture may determine this: a clear fountain being made the principal object in the foreground,--a bright and strong torrent in the distance,--while the dragon, wrapped in flame and whirlwind, watches from the top of the cliff. § . but, both in the greek mind and turner's, this natural meaning of the legend was a completely subordinate one. the moral significance of it lay far deeper. in the second, but principal sense, the hesperides were not daughters of atlas, nor connected with the winds of the west, but with its splendor. they are properly the nymphs of the sunset, and are the daughters of night, having many brothers and sisters, of whom i shall take hesiod's account. § . "and the night begat doom, and short-withering fate, and death. "and begat sleep, and the company of dreams, and censure, and sorrow. "and the hesperides, who keep the golden fruit beyond the mighty sea. "and the destinies, and the spirits of merciless punishment. "and jealousy, and deceit, and wanton love; and old age, that fades away; and strife, whose will endures." § . we have not, i think, hitherto quite understood the greek feeling about those nymphs and their golden apples, coming as a light in the midst of cloud; between censure, and sorrow,--and the destinies. we must look to the precise meaning of hesiod's words, in order to get the force of the passage. "the night begat doom;" that is to say, the doom of unforeseen accident--doom essentially of darkness. "and short-withering fate." ill translated. i cannot do it better. it means especially the sudden fate which brings untimely end to all purpose, and cuts off youth and its promise; called, therefore (the epithet hardly ever leaving it), "black fate." "and death." this is the universal, inevitable death, opposed to the interfering, untimely death. these three are named as the elder children. hesiod pauses, and repeats the word "begat" before going on to number the others. "and begat sleep, and the company of dreams." "and _censure_." "momus," the spirit of blame--the spirit which desires to blame rather than to praise; false, base, unhelpful, unholy judgment;--ignorant and blind, child of the night. "and sorrow." accurately, sorrow of mourning; the sorrow of the night, when no man can work; of the night that falls when what was the light of the eyes is taken from us; lamenting, sightless sorrow, without hope,--child of night. "and the hesperides." we will come back to these. "and the destinies, and the spirits of merciless punishment." these are the great fates which have rule over conduct; the first fate spoken of (short-withering) is that which has rule over occurrence. these great fates are clotho, lachesis, atropos. their three powers are--clotho's over the clue, the thread, or connecting energy,--that is, the conduct of life; lachesis' over the lot--that is to say, the chance which warps, entangles, or bends the course of life. atropos, inflexible, cuts the thread for ever. "and jealousy," especially the jealousy of fortune, in balancing all good by evil. the greeks had a peculiar dread of this form of fate. "and deceit, and sensual love. and old age that fades, and strife that endures;" that is to say, old age, which, growing not in wisdom, is marked only by its failing power--by the gradual gaining of darkness on the faculties, and helplessness on the frame, such age is the forerunner of true death--the child of night. "and strife," the last and the mightiest, the nearest to man of the night-children--blind leader of the blind. § . understanding thus whose sisters they are, let us consider of the hesperides themselves--spoken of commonly as the "singing nymphs." they are four. their names are Æglé,--brightness; erytheia,--blushing; hestia,--the (spirit of the) hearth; arethusa,--the ministering. o english reader! hast thou ever heard of these fair and true daughters of sunset, beyond the mighty sea? and was it not well to trust to such keepers the guarding of the golden fruit which the earth gave to juno at her marriage? not fruit only: fruit on the tree, given by the earth, the great mother, to juno (female power), at her marriage with jupiter, or _ruling_ manly power (distinguished from the tried and _agonizing_ strength of hercules). i call juno, briefly, female power. she is, especially, the goddess presiding over marriage, regarding the woman as the mistress of a household. vesta (the goddess of the hearth[ ]), with ceres, and venus, are variously dominant over marriage, as the fulfilment of love; but juno is pre-eminently the housewives' goddess. she, therefore, represents, in her character, whatever good or evil may result from female ambition, or desire of power: and, as to a housewife, the earth presents its golden fruit to her, which she gives to two kinds of guardians. the wealth of the earth, as the source of household peace and plenty, is watched by the singing nymphs--the hesperides. but, as the source of household sorrow and desolation, it is watched by the dragon. we must, therefore, see who the dragon was, and what kind of dragon. § . the reader will, perhaps, remember that we traced, in an earlier chapter, the birth of the gorgons, through phorcys and ceto, from nereus. the youngest child of phorcys and ceto is the dragon of the hesperides; but this latest descent is not, as in northern traditions, a sign of fortunateness: on the contrary, the children of nereus receive gradually more and more terror and power, as they are later born, till this last of the nereids unites horror and power at their utmost. observe the gradual change. nereus himself is said to have been perfectly _true_ and _gentle_. this is hesiod's account of him:-- "and pontus begat nereus, simple and true, the oldest of children; but they call him the aged man, in that he is errorless and kind; neither forgets he what is right; but knows all just and gentle counsel." § . now the children of nereus, like the hesperides themselves, bear a twofold typical character; one physical, the other moral. in his physical symbolism, nereus himself is the calm and gentle sea, from which rise, in gradual increase of terror, the clouds and storms. in his moral character, nereus is the type of the deep, pure, rightly-tempered human mind, from which, in gradual degeneracy, spring the troubling passions. keeping this double meaning in view, observe the whole line of descent to the hesperides' dragon. nereus, by the earth, begets ( ) thaumas (the wonderful), physically, the father of the rainbow; morally, the type of the enchantments and dangers of imagination. his grandchildren, besides the rainbow, are the harpies. . phorcys (orcus?), physically, the treachery or devouring spirit of the sea; morally, covetousness or malignity of heart. . ceto, physically, the deep places of the sea; morally, secretness of heart, called "fair-cheeked," because tranquil in outward aspect. . eurybia (wide strength), physically, the flowing, especially the tidal power of the sea (she, by one of the sons of heaven, becomes the mother of three great titans, one of whom, astræus, and the dawn, are the parents of the four winds); morally, the healthy passion of the heart. thus far the children of nereus. § . next, phorcys and ceto, in their physical characters (the grasping or devouring of the sea, reaching out over the land and its depth), beget the clouds and storms--namely, first, the graiæ, or soft rain-clouds; then the gorgons, or storm-clouds; and youngest and last, the hesperides' dragon--volcanic or earth-storm, associated, in conception, with the simoom and fiery african winds. but, in its moral significance, the descent is this. covetousness, or malignity (phorcys), and secretness (ceto), beget, first, the darkening passions, whose hair is always gray; then the stormy and merciless passions, brazen-winged (the gorgons), of whom the dominant, medusa, is ice-cold, turning all who look on her to stone. and, lastly, the consuming (poisonous and volcanic) passions--the "flame-backed dragon," uniting the powers of poison, and instant destruction. now, the reader may have heard, perhaps, in other books of genesis than hesiod's, of a dragon being busy about a tree which bore apples, and of crushing the head of that dragon; but seeing how, in the greek mind, this serpent was descended from the sea, he may, perhaps, be surprised to remember another verse, bearing also on the matter:--"thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters;" and yet more surprised, going on with the septuagint version, to find where he is being led: "thou brakest the head of the dragon, and gavest him to be meat to the ethiopian people. thou didst tear asunder the strong fountains and the storm-torrents; thou didst dry up the rivers of etham, [greek: pêgas kai cheimarrhous], the pegasus fountains--etham on the edge of the wilderness." § . returning then to hesiod, we find he tells us of the dragon himself:--"he, in the secret places of the desert land, kept the all-golden apples in his great knots" (coils of rope, or extremities of anything). with which compare euripides' report of him:--"and hercules came to the hesperian dome, to the singing maidens, plucking the apple fruit from the golden petals; slaying the flame-backed dragon, who twined round and round, kept guard in unapproachable spires" (spirals or whirls, as of a whirlwind-vortex). farther, we hear from other scattered syllables of tradition, that this dragon was sleepless, and that he was able to take various tones of human voice. and we find a later tradition than hesiod's calling him a child of typhon and echidna. now typhon is volcanic storm, generally the evil spirit of tumult. echidna (the adder) is a descendant of medusa. she is a daughter of chrysaor (the lightning), by calliröe (the fair flowing), a daughter of ocean;--that is to say, she joins the intense fatality of the lightning with perfect gentleness. in form she is half-maiden, half-serpent; therefore she is the spirit of all the fatalest evil, veiled in gentleness: or, in one word, treachery;--having dominion over many gentle things;--and chiefly over a kiss, given, indeed, in another garden than that of the hesperides, yet in relation to keeping of treasure also. § . having got this farther clue, let us look who it is whom dante makes the typical spirit of treachery. the eighth or lowest pit of hell is given to its keeping; at the edge of which pit, virgil casts a _rope_ down for a signal; instantly there rises, as from the sea, "as one returns who hath been down to loose some anchor," "the fell monster with the deadly sting, who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls, and firm embattled spears; and with his filth taints all the world." think for an instant of another place:--"sharp stones are under him, he laugheth at the shaking of a spear." we must yet keep to dante, however. echidna, remember, is half-maiden, half-serpent;--hear what dante's fraud is like:-- "forthwith that image vile of fraud appear'd, his head and upper part exposed on land, but laid not on the shore his bestial train. his face the semblance of a just man's wore, so kind and gracious was its outward cheer; the rest was serpent all: two shaggy claws reach'd to the armpits; and the back and breast, and either side, were painted o'er with nodes and orbits. colors variegated more nor turks nor tartars e'er on cloth of state with interchangeable embroidery wove, nor spread arachne o'er her curious loom. as oft-times a light skiff moor'd to the shore, stands part in water, part upon the land; or, as where dwells the greedy german boor, the beaver settles, watching for his prey; so on the rim, that fenced the sand with rock, sat perch'd the fiend of evil. in the void glancing, his tail upturn'd, its venomous fork with sting like scorpion's arm'd." § . you observe throughout this description the leaning on the character of the _sea_ dragon; a little farther on, his way of flying is told us:-- "as a small vessel backing out from land, her station quits; so thence the monster loos'd, and, when he felt himself at large, turn'd round there, where the breast had been, his fork'd tail. thus, like an eel, outstretch'd at length he steer'd, gathering the air up with retractile claws." and lastly, his name is told us: geryon. whereupon, looking back at hesiod, we find that geryon is echidna's brother. man-serpent, therefore, in dante, as echidna is woman-serpent. we find next that geryon lived in the island of erytheia, (blushing), only another kind of blushing than that of the hesperid erytheia. but it is on, also, a western island, and geryon kept red oxen on it (said to be near the red setting sun); and hercules kills him, as he does the hesperian dragon: but in order to be able to reach him, a golden boat is given to hercules by the sun, to cross the sea in. § . we will return to this part of the legend presently, having enough of it now collected to get at the complete idea of the hesperian dragon, who is, in fine, the "pluto il gran nemico" of dante; the demon of all evil passions connected with covetousness; that is to say, essentially of fraud, rage, and gloom. regarded as the demon of fraud, he is said to be descended from the viper echidna, full of deadly cunning, in whirl on whirl; as the demon of consuming rage, from phorcys; as the demon of gloom, from ceto;--in his watching and melancholy, he is sleepless (compare the micyllus dialogue of lucian); breathing whirlwind and fire, he is the destroyer, descended from typhon as well as phorcys; having, moreover, with all these, the irresistible strength of his ancestral sea. § . now, look at him, as turner has drawn him (p. ). i cannot reduce the creature to this scale without losing half his power; his length, especially, seems to diminish more than it should in proportion to his bulk. in the picture he is far in the distance, cresting the mountain; and may be, perhaps, three-quarters of a mile long. the actual length on the canvas is a foot and eight inches; so that it may be judged how much he loses by the reduction, not to speak of my imperfect etching,[ ] and of the loss which, however well he might have been engraved, he would still have sustained, in the impossibility of expressing the lurid color of his armor, alternate bronze and blue. § . still, the main points of him are discernible enough; and among all the wonderful things that turner did in his day, i think this nearly the most wonderful. how far he had really found out for himself the collateral bearings of the hesperid tradition i know not; but that he had got the main clue of it, and knew who the dragon was, there can be no doubt; the strange thing is, that his conception of it throughout, down to the minutest detail, fits every one of the circumstances of the greek traditions. there is, first, the dragon's descent from medusa and typhon, indicated in the serpent-clouds floating from his head (compare my sketch of the medusa-cloud, plate ); then note the grovelling and ponderous body, ending in a serpent, of which we do not see the end. he drags the weight of it forward by his claws, not being able to lift himself from the ground ("mammon, the least erected spirit that fell"); then the grip of the claws themselves as if they would clutch (rather than tear) the rock itself into pieces; but chiefly, the designing of the body. remember, one of the essential characters of the creature, as descended from medusa, is its coldness and petrifying power; this, in the demon of covetousness, must exist to the utmost; breathing fire, he is yet himself of ice. now, if i were merely to draw this dragon as white, instead of dark, and take his claws away, his body would become a representation of a greater glacier, so nearly perfect, that i know no published engraving of glacier breaking over a rocky brow so like the truth as this dragon's shoulders would be, if they were thrown out in light; there being only this difference, that they have the form, but not the fragility of the ice; they are at once ice and iron. "his bones are like solid pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron; by his neesings a light doth shine." § . the strange unity of vertebrated action, and of a true bony contour, infinitely varied in every vertebra, with this glacial outline;--together with the adoption of the head of the ganges crocodile, the fish-eater, to show his sea descent (and this in the year , when hardly a single fossil saurian skeleton existed within turner's reach), renders the whole conception one of the most curious exertions of the imaginative intellect with which i am acquainted in the arts. § . thus far, then, of the dragon; next, we have to examine the conception of the goddess of discord. we must return for a moment to the tradition about geryon. i cannot yet decipher the meaning of his oxen, said to be fed together with those of hades; nor of the journey of hercules, in which, after slaying geryon, he returns through europe like a border forager, driving these herds, and led into farther battle in protection or recovery of them. but it seems to me the main drift of the legend cannot be mistaken; viz., that geryon is the evil spirit of wealth, as arising from commerce; hence, placed as a guardian of isles in the most distant sea, and reached in a golden boat; while the hesperian dragon is the evil spirit of wealth, as possessed in households; and associated, therefore, with the true household guardians, or singing nymphs. hercules (manly labor), slaying both geryon and ladon, presents oxen and apples to juno, who is their proper mistress; but the goddess of discord, contriving that one portion of this household wealth shall be ill bestowed by paris, he, according to coleridge's interpretation, choosing pleasure instead of wisdom or power;--there issue from this evil choice the catastrophe of the trojan war, and the wanderings of ulysses, which are essentially, both in the iliad and odyssey, the troubling of household peace; terminating with the restoration of this peace by repentance and patience; helen and penelope seen at last sitting upon their household thrones, in the hesperian light of age. § . we have, therefore, to regard discord, in the hesperides garden, eminently as the disturber of households, assuming a different aspect from homer's wild and fierce discord of war. they are, nevertheless, one and the same power; for she changes her aspect at will. i cannot get at the root of her name, eris. it seems to me as if it ought to have one in common with erinnys (fury); but it means always contention, emulation, or competition, either in mind or in words;--the final work of eris is essentially "division," and she is herself always double-minded; shouts two ways at once (in iliad, xi. ), and wears a mantle rent in half (Æneid, viii. ). homer makes her loud-voiced, and insatiably covetous. this last attribute is, with him, the source of her usual title. she is little when she first is seen, then rises till her head touches heaven. by virgil she is called mad; and her hair is of serpents, bound with bloody garlands. § . this is the conception first adopted by turner, but combined with another which he found in spenser; only note that there is some confusion in the minds of english poets between eris (discord) and até (error), who is a daughter of discord, according to hesiod. she is properly--mischievous error, tender-footed; for she does not walk on the earth, but on heads of men (iliad, xix. ); _i.e._ not on the solid ground, but on human vain thoughts; therefore, her hair is glittering (iliad, xix. ). i think she is mainly the confusion of mind coming of pride, as eris comes of covetousness; therefore, homer makes her a daughter of jove. spenser, under the name of até, describes eris. i have referred to his account of her in my notice of the discord on the ducal palace of venice (remember the inscription there, _discordia sum, discordans_). but the stanzas from which turner derived his conception of her are these-- "als, as she double spake, so heard she double, with matchlesse eares deformed and distort, fild with false rumors and seditious trouble, bred in assemblies of the vulgar sort, that still are led with every light report: and as her eares, so eke her feet were odde, and much unlike; th' one long, the other short, and both misplast; that, when th' one forward yode, the other backe retired and contrárie trode. "likewise unequall were her handës twaine; that one did reach, the other pusht away; that one did make the other mard againe, and sought to bring all things unto decay; whereby great riches, gathered manie a day, she in short space did often bring to nought, an their possessours often did dismay: for all her studie was, and all her thought how she might overthrow the thing that concord wrought. "so much her malice did her might surpas, that even th' almightie selfe she did maligne, because to man so mercifull he was, and unto all his creatures so benigne, sith she herself was of his grace indigne: for all this worlds faire workmanship she tride unto his last confusion to bring, and that great golden chaine quite to divide, with which it blessed concord hath together tide." all these circumstances of decrepitude and distortion turner has followed, through hand and limb, with patient care: he has added one final touch of his own. the nymph who brings the apples to the goddess, offers her one in each hand; and eris, of the divided mind, cannot choose. § . one farther circumstance must be noted, in order to complete our understanding of the picture,--the gloom extending, not to the dragon only, but also to the fountain and the tree of golden fruit. the reason of this gloom may be found in two other passages of the authors from which turner had taken his conception of eris--virgil and spenser. for though the hesperides in their own character, as the nymphs of domestic joy, are entirely bright (and the garden always bright around them), yet seen or remembered in sorrow, or in the presence of discord, they deepen distress. their entirely happy character is given by euripides:--"the fruit-planted shore of the hesperides,--songstresses,--where the ruler of the purple lake allows not any more to the sailor his way, assigning the boundary of heaven, which atlas holds; where the ambrosial fountains flow, and the fruitful and divine land increases the happiness of the gods." but to the thoughts of dido, in her despair, they recur under another aspect; she remembers their priestess as a great enchantress; who _feeds the dragon_ and preserves the boughs of the tree; sprinkling moist honey and drowsy poppy; who also has power over ghosts; "and the earth shakes and the forests stoop from the hills at her bidding." § . this passage turner must have known well, from his continual interest in carthage: but his diminution of the splendor of the old greek garden was certainly caused chiefly by spenser's describing the hesperides fruit as growing first in the garden of mammon:-- "there mournfull cypresse grew in greatest store; and trees of bitter gall; and heben sad; dead sleeping poppy; and black hellebore; cold coloquintida; and tetra mad mortal samnitis; and cicuta bad, with which th' uniust atheniens made to dy wise socrates, who, thereof quaffing glad, pourd out his life and last philosophy. * * * * * "the gardin of prosèrpina this hight: and in the midst thereof a silver seat, with a thick arber goodly over dight, in which she often usd from open heat herselfe to shroud, and pleasures to entreat: next thereunto did grow a goodly tree, with braunches broad dispredd and body great, clothed with leaves, that none the wood mote see, and loaden all with fruit as thick as it might bee. "their fruit were golden apples glistring bright, that goodly was their glory to behold; on earth like never grew, ne living wight like ever saw, but they from hence were sold; for those, which hercules with conquest bold got from great atlas daughters, hence began. * * * * * "here eke that famous golden apple grew, the which emongst the gods false até threw." there are two collateral evidences in the picture of turner's mind having been partly influenced by this passage. the excessive darkness of the stream,--though one of the cyrene fountains--to remind us of cocytus; and the breaking of the bough of the tree by the weight of its apples--not healthily, but as a diseased tree would break. § . such then is our english painter's first great religious picture; and exponent of our english faith. a sad-colored work, not executed in angelico's white and gold; nor in perugino's crimson and azure; but in a sulphurous hue, as relating to a paradise of smoke. that power, it appears, on the hill-top, is our british madonna; whom, reverently, the english devotional painter must paint, thus enthroned, with nimbus about the gracious head. our madonna,--or our jupiter on olympus,--or, perhaps more accurately still, our unknown god, sea-born, with the cliffs, not of cyrene, but of england, for his altar; and no chance of any mars' hill proclamation concerning him, "whom therefore ye ignorantly worship." § . this is no irony. the fact is verily so. the greatest man of our england, in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the strength and hope of his youth, perceives this to be the thing he has to tell us of utmost moment, connected with the spiritual world. in each city and country of past time, the master-minds had to declare the chief worship which lay at the nation's heart; to define it; adorn it; show the range and authority of it. thus in athens, we have the triumph of pallas; and in venice the assumption of the virgin; here, in england, is our great spiritual fact for ever interpreted to us--the assumption of the dragon. no st. george any more to be heard of; no more dragon-slaying possible: this child, born on st. george's day, can only make manifest the dragon, not slay him, sea-serpent as he is; whom the english andromeda, not fearing, takes for her lord. the fairy english queen once thought to command the waves, but it is the sea-dragon now who commands her valleys; of old the angel of the sea ministered to them, but now the serpent of the sea; where once flowed their clear springs now spreads the black cocytus pool; and the fair blooming of the hesperid meadows fades into ashes beneath the nereid's guard. yes, albert of nuremberg; the time has at last come. another nation has arisen in the strength of its black anger; and another hand has portrayed the spirit of its toil. crowned with fire, and with the wings of the bat. footnote: [ ] notes on the turner collection at marlborough house. . catalogue of the sketches of j. m. v. turner exhibited at marlborough house. . [ ] the regret i expressed in the third volume at turner's not having been educated under the influence of gothic art was, therefore, mistaken; i had not then had access to his earlier studies. he _was_ educated under the influence of gothic architecture; but, in more advanced life, his mind was warped and weakened by classical architecture. why he left the one for the other, or how far good influences were mingled with evil in the result of the change, i have not yet been able to determine. [ ] they may be referred to with ease in boone's catalogue of turner's pictures, . [ ] smith's dictionary of greek and roman geography. art. "cyrenaica." [ ] her name is also that of the hesperid nymph; but i give the hesperid her greek form of name, to distinguish her from the goddess. the hesperid arethusa has the same subordinate relation to ceres; and erytheia, to venus. Æglé signifies especially the spirit of brightness or cheerfulness including even the subordinate idea of household neatness or cleanliness. [ ] it is merely a sketch on the steel, like the illustrations before given of composition; but it marks the points needing note. perhaps some day i may be able to engrave it of the full size. chapter xi. the hesperid ÆglÉ. § . five years after the hesperides were painted, another great mythological subject appeared by turner's hand. another dragon--this time not triumphant, but in death-pang; the python, slain by apollo. not in a garden, this slaying, but in a hollow, among wildest rocks, beside a stagnant pool. yet, instead of the sombre coloring of the hesperid hills, strange gleams of blue and gold flit around the mountain peaks, and color the clouds above them. the picture is at once the type, and the first expression of a great change which was passing in turner's mind. a change, which was not clearly manifested in all its results until much later in his life; but in the coloring of this picture are the first signs of it; and in the subject of this picture, its symbol. § . had turner died early, the reputation he would have left, though great and enduring, would have been strangely different from that which ultimately must now attach to his name. he would have been remembered as one of the severest of painters; his iron touch and positive form would have been continually opposed to the delicacy of claude and richness of titian; he would have been spoken of, popularly, as a man who had no eye for color. perhaps here and there a watchful critic might have shown this popular idea to be false; but no conception could have been formed by any one of the man's real disposition or capacity. it was only after the year that these were determinable, and his peculiar work discerned. § . he had begun by faithful declaration of the sorrow there was in the world. it is now permitted him to see also its beauty. he becomes, separately and without rival, the painter of the loveliness and light of the creation. [illustration: . the hesperid Æglé.] of its loveliness: that which may be beloved in it, the tenderest, kindest, most feminine of its aspects. of its light: light not merely diffused, but interpreted; light seen pre-eminently in color. claude and cuyp had painted the sun_shine_, turner alone the sun _color_. observe this accurately. those easily understood effects of afternoon light, gracious and sweet so far as they reach, are produced by the softly warm or yellow rays of the sun falling through mist. they are low in tone, even in nature, and disguise the colors of objects. they are imitable even by persons who have little or no gift of color, if the tones of the picture are kept low and in true harmony, and the reflected lights warm. but they never could be painted by great colorists. the fact of blue and crimson being effaced by yellow and gray, puts such effect at once out of the notice or thought of a colorist, unless he has some special interest in the motive of it. you might as well ask a musician to compose with only three notes, as titian to paint without crimson and blue. accordingly the colorists in general, feeling that no other than this yellow sunshine was imitable, refused it, and painted in twilight, when the color was full. therefore, from the imperfect colorists,--from cuyp, claude, both, wilson, we get deceptive effect of sunshine; never from the venetians, from rubens, reynolds or velasquez. from these we get only conventional substitutions for it, rubens being especially daring[ ] in frankness of symbol. § . turner, however, as a landscape painter, had to represent sunshine of one kind or another. he went steadily through the subdued golden chord, and painted cuyp's favorite effect, "sun rising through vapor," for many a weary year. but this was not enough for him. he must paint the sun in his strength, the sun rising _not_ through vapor. if you glance at that apollo slaying the python, you will see there is rose color and blue on the clouds, as well as gold; and if then you turn to the apollo in the ulysses and polyphemus--his horses are rising beyond the horizon,--you see he is not "rising through vapor," but above it; gaining somewhat of a victory over vapor, it appears. the old dutch brewer, with his yellow mist, was a great man and a good guide, but he was not apollo. he and his dray-horses led the way through the flats, cheerily, for a little time; we have other horses now flaming out "beyond the mighty sea." a victory over vapor of many kinds; python-slaying in general. look how the python's jaws smoke as he falls back between the rocks:--a vaporous serpent! we will see who he was, presently. the public remonstrated loudly in the cause of python: "he had been so yellow, quiet, and pleasant a creature; what meant these azure-shafted arrows, this sudden glare into darkness, this iris message; thaumantian;--miracle-working; scattering our slumber down in cocytus?" it meant much, but that was not what they should have first asked about it. they should have asked simply, was it a true message? were these thaumantian things so, in the real universe? it might have been known easily they were. one fair dawn or sunset, obediently beheld, would have set them right; and shown that turner was indeed the only true speaker concerning such things that ever yet had appeared in the world. they would neither look nor hear;--only shouted continuously, "perish apollo. bring us back python." § . we must understand the real meaning of this cry, for herein rests not merely the question of the great right or wrong in turner's life, but the question of the right or wrong of all painting. nay, on this issue hangs the nobleness of painting as an art altogether, for it is distinctively the art of coloring, not of shaping or relating. sculptors and poets can do these, the painter's own work is color. thus, then, for the last time, rises the question, what is the true dignity of color? we left that doubt a little while ago among the clouds, wondering what they had been made so scarlet for. now turner brings the doubt back to us, unescapable any more. no man, hitherto, had painted the clouds scarlet. hesperid Æglé, and erytheia, throned there in the west, fade into the twilights of four thousand years, unconfessed. here is at last one who confesses them, but is it well? men say these hesperids are sensual goddesses,--traitresses,--that the graiæ are the only true ones. nature made the western and the eastern clouds splendid in fallacy. crimson is impure and vile; let us paint in black if we would be virtuous. § . note, with respect to this matter, that the peculiar innovation of turner was the perfection of the color chord by means of _scarlet_. other painters had rendered the golden tones, and the blue tones, of sky; titian especially the last, in perfectness. but none had dared to paint, none seem to have seen, the scarlet and purple. nor was it only in seeing this color in vividness when it occurred in full light, that turner differed from preceding painters. his most distinctive innovation as a colorist was his discovery of the scarlet _shadow_. "true, there is a sunshine whose light is golden, and its shadow gray; but there is another sunshine, and that the purest, whose light is white, and its shadow scarlet." this was the essentially offensive, inconceivable thing, which he could not be believed in. there was some ground for the incredulity, because no color is vivid enough to express the pitch of light of pure white sunshine, so that the color given without the true intensity of light _looks_ false. nevertheless, turner could not but report of the color truly. "i must indeed be lower in the key, but that is no reason why i should be false in the note. here is sunshine which glows even when subdued; it has not cool shade, but fiery shade."[ ] this is the glory of sunshine. § . now, this scarlet color,--or pure red, intensified by expression of light,--is, of all the three primitive colors, that which is most distinctive. yellow is of the nature of simple light; blue, connected with simple shade; but red is an entirely abstract color. it is red to which the color-blind are blind, as if to show us that it was not necessary merely for the service or comfort of man, but that there was a special gift or teaching in this color. observe, farther, that it is this color which the sunbeams take in passing through the _earth's atmosphere_. the rose of dawn and sunset is the hue of the rays passing close over the earth. it is also concentrated in the blood of man. [illustration: . rocks at rest.] § . unforeseen requirements have compelled me to disperse through various works, undertaken between the first and last portions of this essay, the examination of many points respecting color, which i had intended to reserve for this place. i can now only refer the reader to these several passages,[ ] and sum their import: which is briefly, that color generally, but chiefly the scarlet, used with the hyssop, in the levitical law, is the great sanctifying element of visible beauty inseparably connected with purity and life. [illustration: . rocks in unrest.] i must not enter here into the solemn and far-reaching fields of thought which it would be necessary to traverse, in order to detect the mystical connection between life and love, set forth in that hebrew system of sacrificial religion to which we may trace most of the received ideas respecting sanctity, consecration, and purification. this only i must hint to the reader--for his own following out--that if he earnestly examines the original sources from which our heedless popular language respecting the washing away of sins has been borrowed, he will find that the fountain in which sins are indeed to be washed away, is that of love, not of agony. § . but, without approaching the presence of this deeper meaning of the sign, the reader may rest satisfied with the connection given him directly in written words, between the cloud and its bow. the cloud, or firmament, as we have seen, signifies the ministration of the heavens to man. that ministration may be in judgment or mercy--in the lightning, or the dew. but the bow, or color, of the cloud, signifies always mercy, the sparing of life; such ministry of the heaven, as shall feed and prolong life. and as the sunlight, undivided, is the type of the wisdom and righteousness of god, so divided, and softened into color by means of the fundamental ministry, fitted to every need of man, as to every delight, and becoming one chief source of human beauty, by being made part of the flesh of man;--thus divided, the sunlight is the type of the wisdom of god, becoming sanctification and redemption. various in work--various in beauty--various in power. color is, therefore, in brief terms, the type of love. hence it is especially connected with the blossoming of the earth; and again, with its fruits; also, with the spring and fall of the leaf, and with the morning and evening of the day, in order to show the waiting of love about the birth and death of man. § . and now, i think, we may understand, even far away in the greek mind, the meaning of that contest of apollo with the python. it was a far greater contest than that of hercules with ladon. fraud and avarice might be overcome by frankness and force; but this python was a darker enemy, and could not be subdued but by a greater god. nor was the conquest slightly esteemed by the victor deity. he took his great name from it thenceforth--his prophetic and sacred name--the pythian. it could, therefore, be no merely devouring dragon--no mere wild beast with scales and claws. it must possess some more terrible character to make conquest over it so glorious. consider the meaning of its name, "the corrupter." that hesperid dragon was a treasure-guardian. this is the treasure-destroyer,--where moth and rust doth corrupt--the worm of eternal decay. apollo's contest with him is the strife of purity with pollution; of life, with forgetfulness; of love, with the grave. § . i believe this great battle stood, in the greek mind, for the type of the struggle of youth and manhood with deadly sin--venomous, infectious, irrecoverable sin. in virtue of his victory over this corruption, apollo becomes thenceforward the guide; the witness; the purifying and helpful god. the other gods help waywardly, whom they choose. but apollo helps always: he is by name, not only pythian, the conqueror of death; but pæan--the healer of the people. well did turner know the meaning of that battle: he has told its tale with fearful distinctness. the mammon dragon was armed with adamant; but this dragon of decay is a mere colossal worm: wounded, he bursts asunder in the midst,[ ] and melts to pieces, rather than dies, vomiting smoke--a smaller serpent-worm rising out of his blood. § . alas, for turner! this smaller serpent-worm, it seemed, he could not conceive to be slain. in the midst of all the power and beauty of nature, he still saw this death-worm writhing among the weeds. a little thing now, yet enough; you may see it in the foreground of the bay of baiæ, which has also in it the story of apollo and the sibyl; apollo giving love; but not youth, nor immortality: you may see it again in the foreground of the lake avernus--the hades lake--which turner surrounds with delicatest beauty, the fates dancing in circle; but in front, is the serpent beneath the thistle and the wild thorn. the same sibyl, deiphobe, holding the golden bough. i cannot get at the meaning of this legend of the bough; but it was, assuredly, still connected, in turner's mind, with that help from apollo. he indicated the strength of his feeling at the time when he painted the python contest, by the drawing exhibited the same year, of the prayer of chryses. there the priest is on the beach alone, the sun setting. he prays to it as it descends;--flakes of its sheeted light are borne to him by the melancholy waves, and cast away with sighs upon the sand. how this sadness came to be persistent over turner, and to conquer him, we shall see in a little while. it is enough for us to know at present that our most wise and christian england, with all her appurtenances of school-porch and church-spire, had so disposed her teaching as to leave this somewhat notable child of hers without even cruel pandora's gift. he was without hope. true daughter of night, hesperid Æglé was to him; coming between censure, and sorrow,--and the destinies. § . what, for us, his work yet may be, i know not. but let not the real nature of it be misunderstood any more. he is distinctively, as he rises into his own peculiar strength, separating himself from all men who had painted forms of the physical world before,--the painter of the loveliness of nature, with the worm at its root: rose and cankerworm,--both with his utmost strength; the one _never_ separate from the other. in which his work was the true image of his own mind. i would fain have looked last at the rose; but that is not the way atropos will have it, and there is no pleading with her. so, therefore, first of the rose. § . that is to say, of this vision of the loveliness and kindness of nature, as distinguished from all visions of her ever received by other men. by the greek, she had been distrusted. she was to him calypso, the concealer, circe, the sorceress. by the venetian, she had been dreaded. her wildernesses were desolate; her shadows stern. by the fleming, she had been despised; what mattered the heavenly colors to him? but at last, the time comes for her loveliness and kindness to be declared to men. had they helped turner, listened to him, believed in him, he had done it wholly for them. but they cried out for python, and python came;--came literally as well as spiritually;--all the perfectest beauty and conquest which turner wrought is already withered. the cankerworm stood at his right hand, and of all his richest, most precious work, there remains only the shadow. yet that shadow is more than other men's sunlight; it is the scarlet shade, shade of the rose. wrecked, and faded, and defiled, his work still, in what remains of it, or may remain, is the loveliest ever yet done by man, in imagery of the physical world. whatsoever is there of fairest, you will find recorded by turner, and by him alone. § . i say _you_ will find, not knowing to how few i speak; for in order to find what is fairest, you must delight in what is fair; and i know not how few or how many there may be who take such delight. once i could speak joyfully about beautiful things, thinking to be understood;--now i cannot any more; for it seems to me that no one regards them. wherever i look or travel in england or abroad, i see that men, wherever they can reach, destroy all beauty. they seem to have no other desire or hope but to have large houses and to be able to move fast. every perfect and lovely spot which they can touch, they defile.[ ] § . nevertheless, though not joyfully, or with any hope of being at present heard, i would have tried to enter here into some examination of the right and worthy effect of beauty in art upon human mind, if i had been myself able to come to demonstrable conclusions. but the question is so complicated with that of the enervating influence of all luxury, that i cannot get it put into any tractable compass. nay, i have many inquiries to make, many difficult passages of history to examine, before i can determine the just limits of the hope in which i may permit myself to continue to labor in any cause of art. nor is the subject connected with the purpose of this book. i have written it to show that turner is the greatest landscape painter who ever lived; and this it has sufficiently accomplished. what the final use may be to men, of landscape painting, or of any painting, or of natural beauty, i do not yet know. thus far, however, i _do_ know. § . three principal forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. religious asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake (as supposed) of religion; seen chiefly in the middle ages. military asceticism, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of sparta and rome. and monetary asceticism, consisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of money; seen in the present days of london and manchester. "we do not come here to look at the mountains," said the carthusian to me at the grande chartreuse. "we do not come here to look at the mountains," the austrian generals would say, encamping by the shores of garda. "we do not come here to look at the mountains," so the thriving manufacturers tell me, between rochdale and halifax. § . all these asceticisms have their bright, and their dark sides. i myself like the military asceticism best, because it is not so necessarily a refusal of general knowledge as the two others, but leads to acute and marvellous use of mind, and perfect use of body. nevertheless, none of the three are a healthy or central state of man. there is much to be respected in each, but they are not what we should wish large numbers of men to become. a monk of la trappe, a french soldier of the imperial guard, and a thriving mill-owner, supposing each a type, and no more than a type, of his class, are all interesting specimens of humanity, but narrow ones,--so narrow that even all the three together would not make a perfect man. nor does it appear in any way desirable that either of the three classes should extend itself so as to include a majority of the persons in the world, and turn large cities into mere groups of monastery, barracks, or factory. i do not say that it may not be desirable that one city, or one country, sacrificed for the good of the rest, should become a mass of barracks or factories. perhaps, it may be well that this england should become the furnace of the world; so that the smoke of the island, rising out of the sea, should be seen from a hundred leagues away, as if it were a field of fierce volcanoes; and every kind of sordid, foul, or venomous work which in other countries men dreaded or disdained, it should become england's duty to do,--becoming thus the off-scourer of the earth, and taking the hyena instead of the lion upon her shield. i do not, for a moment, deny this; but, looking broadly, not at the destiny of england, nor of any country in particular, but of the world, this is certain--that men exclusively occupied either in spiritual reverie, mechanical destruction, or mechanical productiveness, fall below the proper standard of their race, and enter into a lower form of being; and that the true perfection of the race, and, therefore, its power and happiness, are only to be attained by a life which is neither speculative nor productive; but essentially contemplative and protective, which (a) does not lose itself in the monk's vision or hope, but delights in seeing present and real things as they truly are; which (b) does not mortify itself for the sake of obtaining powers of destruction, but seeks the more easily attainable powers of affection, observance, and protection; which (c), finally, does not mortify itself with a view to productive accumulation, but delights itself in peace, with its appointed portion. so that the things to be desired for man in a healthy state, are that he should not see dreams, but realities; that he should not destroy life, but save it; and that he should be not rich, but content. § . towards which last state of contentment, i do not see that the world is at present approximating. there are, indeed, two forms of discontent: one laborious, the other indolent and complaining. we respect the man of laborious desire, but let us not suppose that his restlessness is peace, or his ambition meekness. it is because of the special connection of meekness with contentment that it is promised that the meek shall "inherit the earth." neither covetous men, nor the grave, can inherit anything;[ ] they can but consume. only contentment can possess. § . the most helpful and sacred work, therefore, which can at present be done for humanity, is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching must be done) not how "to better themselves," but how to "satisfy themselves." it is the curse of every evil nation and evil creature to eat, and _not_ be satisfied. the words of blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied. and as there is only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all hunger, the bread of justice or righteousness; which hungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of heaven; but hungering after the bread, or wages, of unrighteousness, shall not be filled, that being the bread of sodom. § . and, in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art and joy of humble life,--this, at present, of all arts or sciences being the one most needing study. humble life--that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance; not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days: so, also, not excluding the idea of providence, or provision,[ ] but wholly of accumulation;--the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure;--therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world. § . what length and severity of labor may be ultimately found necessary for the procuring of the due comforts of life, i do not know; neither what degree of refinement it is possible to unite with the so-called servile occupations of life: but this i know, that right economy of labor will, as it is understood, assign to each man as much as will be healthy for him, and no more; and that no refinements are desirable which cannot be connected with toil. i say, first, that due economy of labor will assign to each man the share which is right. let no technical labor be wasted on things useless or unpleasurable;[ ] and let all physical exertion, so far as possible, be utilized, and it will be found no man need ever work more than is good for him. i believe an immense gain in the bodily health and happiness of the upper classes would follow on their steadily endeavoring, however clumsily, to make the physical exertion they now necessarily take in amusements, definitely serviceable. it would be far better, for instance, that a gentleman should mow his own fields, than ride over other people's. § . again, respecting degrees of possible refinement, i cannot yet speak positively, because no effort has yet been made to teach refined habits to persons of simple life. the idea of such refinement has been made to appear absurd, partly by the foolish ambition of vulgar persons in low life, but more by the worse than foolish assumption, acted on so often by modern advocates of improvement, that "education" means teaching latin, or algebra, or music, or drawing, instead of developing or "drawing out" the human soul. it may not be the least necessary that a peasant should know algebra, or greek, or drawing. but it may, perhaps, be both possible and expedient that he should be able to arrange his thoughts clearly, to speak his own language intelligibly, to discern between right and wrong, to govern his passions, and to receive such pleasures of ear or sight as his life may render accessible to him. i would not have him taught the science of music; but most assuredly i would have him taught to sing. i would not teach him the science of drawing; but certainly i would teach him to see; without learning a single term of botany, he should know accurately the habits and uses of every leaf and flower in his fields; and unencumbered by any theories of moral or political philosophy, he should help his neighbor, and disdain a bribe. § . many most valuable conclusions respecting the degree of nobleness and refinement which may be attained in servile or in rural life may be arrived at by a careful study of the noble writings of blitzius (jeremias gotthelf), which contain a record of swiss character not less valuable in its fine truth than that which scott has left of the scottish. i know no ideal characters of women, whatever their station, more majestic than that of freneli (in ulric le valet de ferme, and ulric le fermier); or of elise, in the tour de jacob; nor any more exquisitely tender and refined than that of aenneli in the fromagerie and aenneli in the miroir des paysans.[ ] § . how far this simple and useful pride, this delicate innocence, might be adorned, or how far destroyed, by higher intellectual education in letters or the arts, cannot be known without other experience than the charity of men has hitherto enabled us to acquire. all effort in social improvement is paralyzed, because no one has been bold or clear-sighted enough to put and press home this radical question: "what is indeed the noblest tone and reach of life for men; and how can the possibility of it be extended to the greatest numbers?" it is answered, broadly and rashly, that wealth is good; that knowledge is good; that art is good; that luxury is good. whereas none of them are good in the abstract, but good only if rightly received. nor have any steps whatever been yet securely taken,--nor, otherwise than in the resultless rhapsody of moralists,--to ascertain what luxuries and what learning it is either kind to bestow, or wise to desire. this, however, at least we know, shown clearly by the history of all time, that the arts and sciences, ministering to the pride of nations, have invariably hastened their ruin; and this, also, without venturing to say that i know, i nevertheless firmly believe, that the same arts and sciences will tend as distinctly to exalt the strength and quicken the soul of every nation which employs them to increase the comfort of lowly life, and grace with happy intelligence the unambitious courses of honorable toil. thus far, then, of the rose. § . last, of the worm. i said that turner painted the labor of men, their sorrow, and their death. this he did nearly in the same tones of mind which prompted byron's poem of childe harold, and the loveliest result of his art, in the central period of it, was an effort to express on a single canvas the meaning of that poem. it may be now seen, by strange coincidence, associated with two others--caligula's bridge and the apollo and sibyl; the one illustrative of the vanity of human labor, the other of the vanity of human life.[ ] he painted these, as i said, in the same tone of mind which formed the childe harold poem, but with different capacity: turner's sense of beauty was perfect; deeper, therefore, far than byron's; only that of keats and tennyson being comparable with it. and turner's love of truth was as stern and patient as dante's; so that when over these great capacities come the shadows of despair, the wreck is infinitely sterner and more sorrowful. with no sweet home for his childhood,--friendless in youth,--loveless in manhood,--and hopeless in death, turner was what dante might have been, without the "bello ovile," without casella, without beatrice, and without him who gave them all, and took them all away. § . i will trace this state of his mind farther, in a little while. meantime, i want you to note only the result upon his work;--how, through all the remainder of his life, wherever he looked, he saw ruin. ruin, and twilight. what was the distinctive effect of light which he introduced, such as no man had painted before? brightness, indeed, he gave, as we have seen, because it was true and right; but in this he only perfected what others had attempted. his own favorite light is not Æglé, but hesperid Æglé. fading of the last rays of sunset. faint breathing of the sorrow of night. § . and fading of sunset, note also, on ruin. i cannot but wonder that this difference between turner's work and previous art-conception has not been more observed. none of the great early painters draw ruins, except compulsorily. the shattered buildings introduced by them are shattered artificially, like models. there is no real sense of decay; whereas turner only momentarily dwells on anything else than ruin. take up the liber studiorum, and observe how this feeling of decay and humiliation gives solemnity to all its simplest subjects; even to his view of daily labor. i have marked its tendency in examining the design of the mill and lock, but observe its continuance through the book. there is no exultation in thriving city, or mart, or in happy rural toil, or harvest gathering. only the grinding at the mill, and patient striving with hard conditions of life. observe the two disordered and poor farm-yards, cart, and ploughshare, and harrow rotting away; note the pastoral by the brook side, with its neglected stream, and haggard trees, and bridge with the broken rail, and decrepit children--fever-struck--one sitting stupidly by the stagnant stream; the other in rags, and with an old man's hat on, and lame, leaning on a stick. then the "hedging and ditching," with its bleak sky and blighted trees--hacked, and bitten, and starved by the clay soil into something between trees and firewood; its meanly-faced, sickly laborers--pollard laborers, like the willow trunk they hew; and the slatternly peasant-woman, with worn cloak and battered bonnet--an english dryad. then the water-mill, beyond the fallen steps overgrown with the thistle: itself a ruin, mud-built at first, now propped on both sides;--the planks torn from its cattle-shed; a feeble beam, splintered at the end, set against the dwelling-house from the ruined pier of the watercourse; the old millstone--useless for many a day--half buried in slime, at the bottom of the wall; the listless children, listless dog, and the poor gleaner bringing her single sheaf to be ground. then the "peat bog," with its cold, dark rain, and dangerous labor. and last and chief, the mill in the valley of the chartreuse. another than turner would have painted the convent; but he had no sympathy with the hope, no mercy for the indolence of the monk. he painted the mill in the valley. precipice overhanging it, and wildness of dark forest round; blind rage and strength of mountain torrent rolled beneath it,--calm sunset above, but fading from the glen, leaving it to its roar of passionate waters and sighing of pine-branches in the night. § . such is his view of human labor. of human pride, see what records. morpeth tower, roofless and black; gate of old winchelsea wall, the flock of sheep driven _round_ it, not through it; and rievaulx choir, and kirkstall crypt; and dunstanborough, wan above the sea; and chepstow, with arrowy light through traceried windows; and lindisfarne, with failing height of wasted shaft and wall; and last and sweetest, raglan, in utter solitude, amidst the wild wood of its own pleasance; the towers rounded with ivy, and the forest roots choked with undergrowth, and the brook languid amidst lilies and sedges. legends of gray knights and enchanted ladies keeping the woodman's children away at the sunset. these are his types of human pride. of human love: procris, dying by the arrow; hesperie, by the viper's fang; and rizpah, more than dead, beside her children. § . such are the lessons of the liber studiorum. silent always with a bitter silence, disdaining to tell his meaning, when he saw there was no ear to receive it, turner only indicated this purpose by slight words of contemptuous anger, when he heard of any one's trying to obtain this or the other separate subject as more beautiful than the rest. "what is the use of them," he said, "but together?"[ ] the meaning of the entire book was symbolized in the frontispiece, which he engraved with his own hand: tyre at sunset, with the rape of europa, indicating the symbolism of the decay of europe by that of tyre, its beauty passing away into terror and judgment (europa being the mother of minos and rhadamanthus).[ ] [illustration: j. m. w. turner j. h. le keux . the nets in the rapids.] [illustration: . the bridge of rheinfelden.] § . i need not trace the dark clue farther, the reader may follow it unbroken through all his work and life, this thread of atropos.[ ] i will only point, in conclusion, to the intensity with which his imagination dwelt always on the three great cities of carthage, rome, and venice--carthage in connection especially with the thoughts and study which led to the painting of the hesperides' garden, showing the death which attends the vain pursuit of wealth; rome, showing the death which attends the vain pursuit of power; venice, the death which attends the vain pursuit of beauty. how strangely significative, thus understood, those last venetian dreams of his become, themselves so beautiful and so frail; wrecks of all that they were once--twilights of twilight! § . vain beauty; yet not all in vain. unlike in birth, how like in their labor, and their power over the future, these masters of england and venice--turner and giorgione. but ten years ago, i saw the last traces of the greatest works of giorgione yet glowing, like a scarlet cloud, on the fondaco de tedeschi.[ ] and though that scarlet cloud (sanguigna e fiammeggiante, per cui le pitture cominciarono con dolce violenza a rapire il cuore delle genti) may, indeed, melt away into paleness of night, and venice herself waste from her islands as a wreath of wind-driven foam fades from their weedy beach;--that which she won of faithful light and truth shall never pass away. deiphobe of the sea,--the sun god measures her immortality to her by its sand. flushed, above the avernus of the adrian lake, her spirit is still seen holding the golden bough; from the lips of the sea sibyl men shall learn for ages yet to come what is most noble and most fair; and, far away, as the whisper in the coils of the shell, withdrawn through the deep hearts of nations, shall sound for ever the enchanted voice of venice. [illustration: . peace.] [illustration: . monte rosa. sunset.] footnotes: [ ] there is a very wonderful, and almost deceptive, imitation of sunlight by rubens at berlin. it falls through broken clouds upon angels, the flesh being chequered with sunlight and shade. [ ] not, accurately speaking, shadow, but dark side. all shadow proper is negative in color, but, generally, reflected light is warmer than direct light; and when the direct light is warm, pure, and of the highest intensity, its reflection is scarlet. turner habitually, in his later sketches, used vermilion for his pen outline in effects of sun. [ ] the following collected system of the various statements made respecting color in different parts of my works may be useful to the student:-- st. abstract color is of far less importance than abstract form (vol. i. chap. v.); that is to say, if it could rest in our choice whether we would carve like phidias (supposing phidias had never used color), or arrange the colors of a shawl like indians, there is no question as to which power we ought to choose. the difference of rank is vast; there is no way of estimating or measuring it. so, again, if it rest in our choice whether we will be great in invention of form, to be expressed only by light and shade, as durer, or great in invention and application of color, caring only for ungainly form, as bassano, there is still no question. try to be durer, of the two. so again, if we have to give an account or description of anything--if it be an object of high interest--its form will be always what we should first tell. neither leopard spots nor partridge's signify primarily in describing either beast or bird. but teeth and feathers do. . secondly. though color is of less importance than form, if you introduce it at all, it must be right. people often speak of the roman school as if it were greater than the venetian, because its color is "subordinate." its color is not subordinate. it is bad. if you paint colored objects, you must either paint them rightly or wrongly. there is no other choice. you may introduce as little color as you choose--a mere tint of rose in a chalk drawing, for instance; or pale hues generally--as michael angelo in the sistine chapel. all such work implies feebleness or imperfection, but not necessarily error. but if you paint with full color, as raphael and leonardo, you must either be true or false. if true, you will paint like a venetian. if false, your form, supremely beautiful, may draw the attention of the spectator from the false color, or induce him to pardon it--and, if ill-taught, even to like it; but your picture is none the greater for that. had leonardo and raphael colored like giorgione, their work would have been greater, not less, than it is now. . to color perfectly is the rarest and most precious (technical) power an artist can possess. there have been only seven supreme colorists among the true painters whose works exist (namely, giorgione, titian, veronese, tintoret, correggio, reynolds, and turner); but the names of great designers, including sculptors, architects, and metal-workers, are multitudinous. also, if you can color perfectly, you are sure to be able to do everything else if you like. there never yet was colorist who could not draw; but faculty of perceiving form may exist alone. i believe, however, it will be found ultimately that the _perfect_ gifts of color and form always go together. titian's form is nobler than durer's, and more subtle; nor have i any doubt but that phidias could have painted as nobly as he carved. but when the powers are not supreme, the wisest men usually neglect the color-gift, and develope that of form. i have not thought it worth while at present to enter into any examination of the construction of turner's color system, because the public is at present so unconscious of the meaning and nature of color that they would not know what i was talking of. the more than ludicrous folly of the system of modern water-color painting, in which it is assumed that every hue in the drawing may be beneficially washed into every other, must prevent, as long as it influences the popular mind, even incipient inquiry respecting color-art. but for help of any solitary and painstaking student, it may be noted that turner's color is founded more on correggio and bassano than on the central venetians; it involves a more tender and constant reference to light and shade than that of veronese; and a more sparkling and gem-like lustre than that of titian. i dislike using a technical word which has been disgraced by affectation, but there is no other word to signify what i mean in saying that turner's color has, to the full, correggio's "morbidezza," including also, in due place, conditions of mosaic effect, like that of the colors in an indian design, unaccomplished by any previous master in painting; and a fantasy of inventive arrangement corresponding to that of beethoven in music. in its concurrence with and expression of texture or construction of surfaces (as their bloom, lustre, or intricacy) it stands unrivalled--no still-life painting by any other master can stand for an instant beside turner's, when his work is of life-size, as in his numerous studies of birds and their plumage. this "morbidezza" of color is associated, precisely as it was in correggio, with an exquisite sensibility to fineness and intricacy of curvature: curvature, as already noticed in the second volume, being to lines what gradation is to colors. this subject, also, is too difficult and too little regarded by the public, to be entered upon here, but it must be observed that this quality of turner's design, the one which of all is best expressible by engraving, has of all been least expressed, owing to the constant reduction or change of proportion in the plates. publishers, of course, require generally their plates to be of one size (the plates in this book form an appalling exception to received practice in this respect); turner always made his drawings longer or shorter by half an inch, or more, according to the subject; the engravers contracted or expanded them to fit the books, with utter destruction of the nature of every curve in the design. mere reduction necessarily involves such loss to some extent; but the degree in which it probably involves it has been curiously exemplified by the st plate in this volume, reduced from a pen-drawing of mine, inches long. fig. is a facsimile of the hook and piece of drapery, in the foreground, in my drawing, which is very nearly true to the turner curves: compare them with the curves either in plate , or in the published engraving in the england series. the plate opposite ( ) is a portion of the foreground of the drawing of the llanberis (england series), also of its real size; and interesting as showing the grace of turner's curvature even when he was drawing fastest. it is a hasty drawing throughout, and after finishing the rocks and water, being apparently a little tired, he has struck out the broken fence of the watering-place for the cattle with a few impetuous dashes of the hand. yet the curvature and grouping of line are still perfectly tender. how far the passage loses by reduction, may be seen by a glance at the published engraving. [illustration: fig. .] . color, as stated in the text, is the purifying or sanctifying element of material beauty. if so, how less important than form? because, on form depends existence; on color, only purity. under the levitical law, neither scarlet nor hyssop could purify the deformed. so, under all natural law, there must be rightly shaped members first; then sanctifying color and fire in them. nevertheless, there are several great difficulties and oppositions of aspect in this matter, which i must try to reconcile now clearly and finally. as color is the type of love, it resembles it in all its modes of operation; and in practical work of human hands, it sustains changes of worthiness precisely like those of human sexual love. that love, when true, faithful, well-fixed, is eminently the sanctifying element of human life: without it, the soul cannot reach its fullest height of holiness. but if shallow, faithless, misdirected, it is also one of the strongest corrupting and degrading elements of life. between these base and lofty states of love are the loveless states; some cold and horrible; others chaste, childish, or ascetic, bearing to careless thinkers the semblance of purity higher than that of love. so it is with the type of love--color. followed rashly, coarsely, untruly, for the mere pleasure of it, with no reverence, it becomes a temptation, and leads to corruption. followed faithfully, with intense but reverent passion, it is the holiest of all aspects of material things. between these two modes of pursuing it, come two modes of refusing it--one, dark and sensual; the other, statuesque and grave, having great aspect of nobleness. thus we have, first, the coarse love of color, as a vulgar person's choice of gaudy hues in dress. then, again, we have the base disdain of color, of which i have spoken at length elsewhere. thus we have the lofty disdain of color, as in durer's and raphael's drawing: finally, the severest and passionate following of it, in giorgione and titian. . color is, more than all elements of art, the reward of veracity of purpose. this point respecting it i have not noticed before, and it is highly curious. we have just seen that in giving an account of anything for its own sake, the most important points are those of form. nevertheless, the form of the object is its own attribute; special, not shared with other things. an error in giving an account of it does not necessarily involve wider error. but its color is partly its own, partly shared with other things round it. the hue and power of all broad sunlight is involved in the color it has cast upon this single thing; to falsify that color, is to misrepresent and break the harmony of the day: also, by what color it bears, this single object is altering hues all round it; reflecting its own into them, displaying them by opposition, softening them by repetition; one falsehood in color in one place, implies a thousand in the neighborhood. hence, there are peculiar penalties attached to falsehood in color, and peculiar rewards granted to veracity in it. form may be attained in perfectness by painters who, in their course of study, are continually altering or idealizing it; but only the sternest fidelity will reach coloring. idealize or alter in that, and you are lost. whether you alter by abasing, or exaggerating,--by glare or by decline, one fate is for you--ruin. violate truth wilfully in the slightest particular, or, at least, get into the habit of violating it, and all kinds of failure and error will surround and haunt you to your fall. therefore, also, as long as you are working with form only, you may amuse yourself with fancies; but color is sacred--in that you must keep to facts. hence the apparent anomaly that the only schools of color are the schools of realism. the men who care for form only, may drift about in dreams of spiritualism; but a colorist must keep to substance. the greater his power in color enchantment, the more stern and constant will be his common sense. fuseli may wander wildly among gray spectra, but reynolds and gainsborough must stay in broad daylight, with pure humanity. velasquez, the greatest colorist, is the most accurate portrait painter of spain; holbein, the most accurate portrait painter, is the only colorist of germany; and even tintoret had to sacrifice some of the highest qualities of his color before he could give way to the flights of wayward though mighty imagination, in which his mind rises or declines from the royal calm of titian. [ ] compare the deaths of jehoram, herod, and judas. [ ] thus, the railroad bridge over the fall of schaffhausen, and that round the clarens shore of the lake of geneva, have destroyed the power of two pieces of scenery of which nothing can ever supply the place, in appeal to the higher ranks of european mind. [ ] "there are three things that are never satisfied, yea, four things say not, it is enough: the grave; and the barren womb; the earth that is not filled with water; and the fire, that saith not, it is enough!" [ ] a bad word, being only "foresight" again in latin; but we have no other good english word for the sense into which it has been warped. [ ] i cannot repeat too often (for it seems almost impossible to arouse the public mind in the least to a sense of the fact) that the root of all benevolent and helpful action towards the lower classes consists in the wise direction of purchase; that is to say, in spending money, as far as possible, only for products of healthful and natural labor. all work with fire is more or less harmful and degrading; so also mine, or machine labor. they at present develope more intelligence than rural labor, but this is only because no education, properly so called, being given to the lower classes, those occupations are best for them which compel them to attain some accurate knowledge, discipline them in presence of mind, and bring them within spheres in which they may raise themselves to positions of command. properly taught, a ploughman ought to be more intelligent, as well as more healthy, than a miner. every nation which desires to ennoble itself should endeavor to maintain as large a number of persons as possible by rural and maritime labor (including fishing). i cannot in this place enter into consideration of the relative advantages of different channels of industry. any one who sincerely desires to act upon such knowledge will find no difficulty in obtaining it. i have also several series of experiments and inquiries to undertake before i shall be able to speak with security on certain points connected with education; but i have no doubt that every child in a civilized country should be taught the first principles of natural history, physiology, and medicine; also to sing perfectly, so far as it has capacity, and to draw any definite form accurately to any scale. these things it should be taught by requiring its attendance at school not more than three hours a day, and less if possible (the best part of children's education being in helping their parents and families). the other elements of its instruction ought to have respect to the trade by which it is to live. modern systems of improvement are too apt to confuse the recreation of the workman with his education. he should be educated for his work before he is allowed to undertake it; and refreshed and relieved while he practises it. every effort should be made to induce the adoption of a national costume. cleanliness and neatness in dress ought always to be rewarded by some gratification of personal pride; and it is the peculiar virtue of a national costume that it fosters and gratifies the wish to look well, without inducing the desire to look better than one's neighbors--or the hope, peculiarly english, of being mistaken for a person in a higher position of life. a costume may indeed become coquettish, but rarely indecent or vulgar; and though a french bonne or swiss farm-girl may dress so as sufficiently to mortify her equals, neither of them ever desires or expects to be mistaken for her mistress. [ ] this last book should be read carefully by all persons interested in social questions. it is sufficiently dull as a tale, but is characterized throughout by a restrained tragic power of the highest order; and it would be worth reading, were it only for the story of aenneli, and for the last half page of its close. [ ] "the cumæan sibyl, deiphobe, was, in her youth, beloved by apollo; who, promising to grant her whatever she would ask, she took up a handful of earth, and asked that she might live as many years as there were grains of dust in her hand. she obtained her petition. apollo would have granted her perpetual youth in return for her love, but she denied him, and wasted into the long ages--known, at last, only by her voice."--(see my notes on the turner gallery.) [ ] turner appears never to have desired, from any one, care in favor of his separate works. the only thing he would say sometimes was, "keep them together." he seemed not to mind how much they were injured, if only the record of the thought were left in them, and they were kept in the series which would give the key to their meaning. i never saw him, at my father's house, look for an instant at any of his own drawings: i have watched him sitting at dinner nearly opposite one of his chief pictures--his eyes never turned to it. but the want of appreciation, nevertheless, touched him sorely; chiefly the not understanding his meaning. he tried hard one day for a quarter of an hour to make me guess what he was doing in the picture of napoleon, before it had been exhibited, giving me hint after hint in a rough way; but i could not guess, and he would not tell me. [ ] i limit myself in this book to mere indication of the tones of his mind, illustration of them at any length being as yet impossible. it will be found on examining the series of drawings made by turner during the late years of his life, in possession of the nation, that they are nearly all made for the sake of some record of human power, partly victorious, partly conquered. there is hardly a single example of landscape painted for its own abstract beauty. power and desolation, or soft pensiveness, are the elements sought chiefly in landscape; hence the later sketches are nearly all among mountain scenery, and chiefly of fortresses, villages or bridges and roads among the wildest alps. the pass of the st. gothard, especially, from his earliest days, had kept possession of his mind, not as a piece of mountain scenery, but as a marvellous road; and the great drawing which i have tried to illustrate with some care in this book, the last he made of the alps with unfailing energy, was wholly made to show the surviving of this tormented path through avalanche and storm, from the day when he first drew its two bridges, in the liber studiorum. plate , which is the piece of the torrent bed on the left, of the real size, where the stones of it appear just on the point of being swept away, and the ground we stand upon with them, completes the series of illustrations of this subject, for the present, sufficiently; and, if compared with plate , will be serviceable, also, in showing how various in its grasp and its delight was this strange human mind, capable of all patience and all energy, and perfect in its sympathy, whether with wrath or quietness. though lingering always with chief affection about the st. gothard pass, he seems to have gleaned the whole of switzerland for every record he could find of grand human effort of any kind; i do not believe there is one baronial tower, one shattered arch of alpine bridge, one gleaming tower of decayed village or deserted monastery, which he has not drawn; in many cases, round and round, again and again, on every side. now that i have done this work, i purpose, if life and strength are spared to me, to trace him through these last journeys, and take such record of his best-beloved places as may fully interpret the designs he left. i have given in the three following plates an example of the kind of work which needs doing, and which, as stated in the preface, i have partly already begun. plate represents roughly two of turner's memoranda of a bridge over the rhine. they are quite imperfectly represented, because i do not choose to take any trouble about them on this scale. if i can engrave them at all, it must be of their own size; but they are enough to give an idea of the way he used to walk round a place, taking sketch after sketch of its aspects, from every point or half-point of the compass. there are three other sketches of this bridge, far more detailed than these, in the national gallery. a scratched word on the back of one of them, "rheinfels," which i knew could not apply to the rheinfels near bingen, gave me the clue to the place;--an old swiss town, seventeen miles above basle, celebrated in swiss history as the main fortress defending the frontier toward the black forest. i went there the moment i had got turner's sketches arranged in , and drew it with the pen (or point of brush, more difficult to manage, but a better instrument) on every side on which turner had drawn it, giving every detail with servile accuracy, so as to show the exact modifications he made as he composed his subjects. mr. le keux has beautifully copied two of these studies, plates and ; the first of these is the bridge drawn from the spot whence turner made his upper memorandum; afterwards, he went down close to the fishing house, and took the second; in which he unhesitatingly divides the rhine by a strong pyramidal rock, in order to get a group of firm lines pointing to his main subject, the tower (compare § , p. , above); and throws a foaming mass of water away to the left, in order to give a better idea of the river's force; the modifications of form in the tower itself are all skilful and majestic in the highest degree. the throwing the whole of it higher than the bridge, taking off the peak from its gable on the left, and adding the little roof-window in the centre, make it a perfectly noble mass, instead of a broken and common one. i have added the other subject, plate ,--though i could not give the turner drawing which it illustrates,--merely to show the kind of scene which modern ambition and folly are destroying throughout switzerland. in plate , a small dark tower is seen in the distance, just on the left of the tower of the bridge. getting round nearly to the foot of it, on the outside of the town, and then turning back so as to put the town walls on your right, you may, i hope, still see the subject of the third plate; the old bridge over the moat, and older wall and towers; the stork's nest on the top of the nearest one; the moat itself, now nearly filled with softest grass and flowers; a little mountain brook rippling down through the midst of them, and the first wooded promontory of the jura beyond. had rheinfelden been a place of the least mark, instead of a nearly ruinous village, it is just this spot of ground which, costing little or nothing, would have been made its railroad station, and its refreshment-room would have been built out of the stones of the towers. [ ] i have not followed out, as i ought to have done, had the task been less painful, my assertion that turner had to paint not only the labor and the sorrow of men, but their death. there is no form of violent death which he has not painted. pre-eminent in many things, he is pre-eminent also, bitterly, in this. durer and holbein drew the skeleton in its questioning; but turner, like salvator, as under some strange fascination or captivity, drew it at its work. flood, and fire, and wreck, and battle, and pestilence; and solitary death, more fearful still. the noblest of all the plates of the liber studiorum, except the via mala, is one engraved with his own hand, of a single sailor, yet living, dashed in the night against a granite coast,--his body and outstretched hands just seen in the trough of a mountain wave, between it and the overhanging wall of rock, hollow, polished, and pale with dreadful cloud and grasping foam. and remember, also, that the very sign in heaven itself which, truly understood, is the type of love, was to turner the type of death. the scarlet of the clouds was his symbol of destruction. in his mind it was the color of blood. so he used it in the fall of carthage. note his own written words-- "while o'er the western wave the _ensanguined_ sun, in gathering huge a stormy signal spread, and set portentous." so he used it in the slaver, in the ulysses, in the napoleon, in the goldau; again and again in slighter hints and momentary dreams, of which one of the saddest and most tender is a little sketch of dawn, made in his last years. it is a small space of level sea shore; beyond it a fair, soft light in the east; the last storm-clouds melting away, oblique into the morning air; some little vessel--a collier, probably--has gone down in the night, all hands lost; a single dog has come ashore. utterly exhausted, its limbs failing under it, and, sinking into the sand, it stands howling and shivering. the dawn-clouds have the first scarlet upon them, a feeble tinge only, reflected with the same feeble blood-stain on the sand. the morning light is used with a loftier significance in a drawing made as a companion to the goldau, engraved in the fourth volume. the lake of zug, which ripples beneath the sunset in the goldau, is lulled in the level azure of early cloud; and the spire of aart, which is there a dark point at the edge of the golden lake, is, in the opening light, seen pale against purple mountains. the sketches for these two subjects were, i doubt not, made from the actual effects of a stormy evening, and the next following daybreak; but both with earnest meaning. the crimson sunset lights the valley of rock tombs, cast upon it by the fallen rossberg; but the sunrise gilds with its level rays the two peaks which protect the village that gives name to switzerland; and the orb itself breaks first through the darkness on the very point of the pass to the high lake of egeri, where the liberties of the cantons were won by the battle-charge of morgarten. [ ] i have engraved, at the beginning of this chapter, one of the fragments of these frescos, preserved, all imperfectly indeed, yet with some feeling of their nobleness, by zanetti, whose words respecting them i have quoted in the text. the one i saw was the first figure given in his book; the one engraved in my plate, the third, had wholly perished; but even this record of it by zanetti is precious. what imperfections of form exist in it, too visibly, are certainly less giorgione's than the translator's; nevertheless, for these very faults, as well as for its beauty, i have chosen it, as the best type i could give of the strength of venetian art; which was derived, be it remembered always, from the acceptance of natural truth, by men who loved beauty too well to think she was to be won by falsehood. the words of zanetti himself respecting giorgione's figure of diligence are of great value, as they mark this first article of venetian faith: "giorgione per tale, o per altra che vi fosse, contrassegnolla con quella spezie di mannaja che tiene in mano; per altro tanto ci cercava le sole bellezze della natura, che poco pensando al costume, ritrasse qui una di quelle donne friulane, che vengono per servire in venezia; non alterandone nemmeno l'abito, è facendola alquanto attempata, quale forse ci la vedea; senza voler sapere che per rappresentare le virtù, si suole da pittori belle è fresche giovani immaginare." compare with this what i have said of titian's magdalen. i ought in that place to have dwelt also upon the firm endurance of all terribleness which is marked in titian's "notomie" and in veronese's "marsyas." in order to understand the venetian mind entirely, the student should place a plate from that series of the notomie always beside the best engraving he can obtain of titian's "flora." my impression is that the ground of the flesh in these giorgione frescos had been pure vermilion; little else was left in the figure i saw. therefore, not knowing what power the painter intended to personify by the figure at the commencement of this chapter, i have called her, from her glowing color, hesperid Æglé. chapter xii. peace. § . looking back over what i have written, i find that i have only now the power of ending this work; it being time that it should end, but not of "concluding" it; for it has led me into fields of infinite inquiry, where it is only possible to break off with such imperfect result as may, at any given moment, have been attained. full of far deeper reverence for turner's art than i felt when this task of his defence was undertaken (which may, perhaps, be evidenced by my having associated no other names with his--but of the dead,--in my speaking of him throughout this volume),[ ] i am more in doubt respecting the real use to mankind of that, or any other transcendent art; incomprehensible as it must always be to the mass of men. full of far deeper love for what i remember of turner himself, as i become better capable of understanding it, i find myself more and more helpless to explain his errors and his sins. § . his errors, i might say, simply. perhaps, some day, people will again begin to remember the force of the old greek word for sin; and to learn that all sin is in essence--"missing the mark;" losing sight or consciousness of heaven; and that this loss may be various in its guilt: it cannot be judged by us. it is this of which the words are spoken so sternly, "judge not;" which words people always quote, i observe, when they are called upon to "do judgment and justice." for it is truly a pleasant thing to condemn men for their wanderings; but it is a bitter thing to acknowledge a truth, or to take any bold share in working out an equity. so that the habitual modern practical application of the precept, "judge not," is to avoid the trouble of pronouncing verdict, by taking, of any matter, the pleasantest malicious view which first comes to hand; and to obtain licence for our own convenient iniquities, by being indulgent to those of others. these two methods of obedience being just the two which are most directly opposite to the law of mercy and truth. § . "bind them about thy neck." i said, but now, that of an evil tree men never gathered good fruit. and the lesson we have finally to learn from turner's life is broadly this, that all the power of it came of its mercy and sincerity; all the failure of it, from its want of faith. it has been asked of me, by several of his friends, that i should endeavor to do some justice to his character, mistaken wholly by the world. if my life is spared, i will. but that character is still, in many respects, inexplicable to me; the materials within my reach are imperfect; and my experience in the world not yet large enough to enable me to use them justly. his life is to be written by a biographer, who will, i believe, spare no pains in collecting the few scattered records which exist of a career so uneventful and secluded. i will not anticipate the conclusions of this writer; but if they appear to me just, will endeavor afterwards, so far as may be in my power, to confirm and illustrate them; and, if unjust, to show in what degree. § . which, lest death or illness should forbid me, this only i declare now of what i know respecting turner's character. much of his mind and heart i do not know;--perhaps, never shall know. but this much i do; and if there is anything in the previous course of this work to warrant trust in me of any kind, let me be trusted when i tell you, that turner had a heart as intensely kind, and as nobly true, as ever god gave to one of his creatures. i offer, as yet, no evidence in this matter. when i _do_ give it, it shall be sifted and clear. only this one fact i now record joyfully and solemnly, that, having known turner for ten years, and that during the period of his life when the brightest qualities of his mind were, in many respects, diminished, and when he was suffering most from the evil-speaking of the world, i never heard him say one depreciating word of living man, or man's work; i never saw him look an unkind or blameful look; i never knew him let pass, without some sorrowful remonstrance, or endeavor at mitigation, a blameful word spoken by another. of no man but turner, whom i have ever known, could i say this. and of this kindness and truth[ ] came, i repeat, all his highest power. and all his failure and error, deep and strange, came of his faithlessness. faithlessness, or despair, the despair which has been shown already (vol. iii., chap. xvi.) to be characteristic of this present century, and most sorrowfully manifested in its greatest men; but existing in an infinitely more fatal form in the lower and general mind, reacting upon those who ought to be its teachers. § . the form which the infidelity of england, especially, has taken, is one hitherto unheard of in human history. no nation ever before declared boldly, by print and word of mouth, that its religion was good for show, but "would not work." over and over again it has happened that nations have denied their gods, but they denied them bravely. the greeks in their decline jested at their religion, and frittered it away in flatteries and fine arts; the french refused theirs fiercely, tore down their altars and brake their carven images. the question about god with both these nations was still, even in their decline, fairly put, though falsely answered. "either there is or is not a supreme ruler; we consider of it, declare there is not, and proceed accordingly." but we english have put the matter in an entirely new light: "there _is_ a supreme ruler, no question of it, only he cannot rule. his orders won't work. he will be quite satisfied with euphonious and respectful repetition of them. execution would be too dangerous under existing circumstances, which he certainly never contemplated." i had no conception of the absolute darkness which has covered the national mind in this respect, until i began to come into collision with persons engaged in the study of economical and political questions. the entire naïveté and undisturbed imbecility with which i found them declare that the laws of the devil were the only practicable ones, and that the laws of god were merely a form of poetical language, passed all that i had ever before heard or read of mortal infidelity. i knew the fool had often said in his heart, there was _no_ god; but to hear him say clearly out with his lips, "there is a foolish god," was something which my art studies had not prepared me for. the french had indeed, for a considerable time, hinted much of the meaning in the delicate and compassionate blasphemy of their phrase "_le bon dieu_," but had never ventured to put it into more precise terms. . now this form of unbelief in god is connected with, and necessarily productive of, a precisely equal unbelief in man. co-relative with the assertion, "there is a foolish god," is the assertion, "there is a brutish man." "as no laws but those of the devil are practicable in the world, so no impulses but those of the brute" (says the modern political economist) "are appealable to in the world." faith, generosity, honesty, zeal, and self-sacrifice are poetical phrases. none of these things can, in reality, be counted upon; there is no truth in man which can be used as a moving or productive power. all motive force in him is essentially brutish, covetous, or contentious. his power is only power of prey: otherwise than the spider, he cannot design; otherwise than the tiger, he cannot feed. this is the modern interpretation of that embarrassing article of the creed, "the communion of saints." . it has always seemed very strange to me, not indeed that this creed should have been adopted, it being the entirely necessary consequence of the previous fundamental article;--but that no one should ever seem to have any misgivings about it;--that, practically, no one had _seen_ how strong work _was_ done by man; how either for hire, or for hatred, it never had been done; and that no amount of pay had ever made a good soldier, a good teacher, a good artist, or a good workman. you pay your soldiers and sailors so many pence a day, at which rated sum one will do good fighting for you; another, bad fighting. pay as you will, the entire goodness of the fighting depends, always, on its being done for nothing; or rather, less than nothing, in the expectation of no pay but death. examine the work of your spiritual teachers, and you will find the statistical law respecting them is, "the less pay, the better work." examine also your writers and artists: for ten pounds you shall have a paradise lost, and for a plate of figs, a durer drawing; but for a million of money sterling, neither. examine your men of science: paid by starvation, kepler will discover the laws of the orbs of heaven for you;--and, driven out to die in the street, swammerdam shall discover the laws of life for you--such hard terms do they make with you, these brutish men, who can only be had for hire. § . neither is good work ever done for hatred, any more than hire--but for love only. for love of their country, or their leader, or their duty, men fight steadily; but for massacre and plunder, feebly. your signal, "england expects every man to do his duty," they will answer; your signal of black flag and death's head, they will not answer. and verily they will answer it no more in commerce than in battle. the cross bones will not make a good shop-sign, you will find ultimately, any more than a good battle-standard. not the cross bones, but the cross. § . now the practical result of this infidelity in man, is the utter ignorance of all the ways of getting his right work out of him. from a given quantity of human power and intellect, to produce the least possible result, is a problem solved, nearly with mathematical precision, by the present methods of the nation's economical procedure. the power and intellect are enormous. with the best soldiers, at present existing, we survive in battle, and but survive, because, by help of providence, a man whom we have kept all his life in command of a company forces his way at the age of seventy so far up as to obtain permission to save us, and die, unthanked. with the shrewdest thinkers in the world, we have not yet succeeded in arriving at any national conviction respecting the uses of life. and with the best artistical material in the world, we spend millions of money in raising a building for our houses of talk, of the delightfulness and utility of which (perhaps roughly classing the talk and its tabernacle together), posterity will, i believe, form no very grateful estimate;--while for sheer want of bread, we brought the question to the balance of a hair, whether the most earnest of our young painters should give up his art altogether, and go to australia,--or fight his way through all neglect and obloquy to the painting of the christ in the temple. § . the marketing was indeed done in this case, as in all others, on the usual terms. for the millions of money, we got a mouldering toy: for the starvation, five years'work of the prime of a noble life. yet neither that picture, great as it is, nor any other of hunt's, are the best he could have done. they are the least he could have done. by no expedient could we have repressed him more than he has been repressed; by no abnegation received from him less than we have received. my dear friend and teacher, lowell, right as he is in almost everything, is for once wrong in these lines, though with a noble wrongness:-- "disappointment's dry and bitter root, envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk to the tough hearts that pioneer their kind." they are not so; love and trust are the only mother-milk of any man's soul. so far as he is hated and mistrusted, his powers are destroyed. do not think that with impunity you can follow the eyeless fool, and shout with the shouting charlatan; and that the men you thrust aside with gibe and blow, are thus sneered and crushed into the best service they can do you. i have told you they _will_ not serve you for pay. they _cannot_ serve you for scorn. even from balaam, money-lover though he be, no useful prophecy is to be had for silver or gold. from elisha, savior of life though he be, no saving of life--even of children's, who "knew no better,"--is to be got by the cry, go up, thou bald-head. no man can serve you either for purse or curse; neither kind of pay will answer. no pay is, indeed, receivable by any true man; but power is receivable by him, in the love and faith you give him. so far only as you give him these can he serve you; that is the meaning of the question which his master asks always, "believest thou that i am able?" and from every one of his servants--to the end of time--if you give them the capernaum measure of faith, you shall have from them capernaum measure of works, and no more. do not think that i am irreverently comparing great and small things. the system of the world is entirely one; small things and great are alike part of one mighty whole. as the flower is gnawed by frost, so every human heart is gnawed by faithlessness. and as surely,--as irrevocably,--as the fruit-bud falls before the east wind, so fails the power of the kindest human heart, if you meet it with poison. § . now the condition of mind in which turner did all his great work was simply this: "what i do must be done rightly; but i know also that no man now living in europe cares to understand it; and the better i do it, the less he will see the meaning of it." there never was yet, so far as i can hear or read, isolation of a great spirit so utterly desolate. columbus had succeeded in making other hearts share his hope, before he was put to hardest trial; and knew that, by help of heaven, he could finally show that he was right. kepler and galileo could demonstrate their conclusions up to a certain point; so far as they felt they were right, they were sure that after death their work would be acknowledged. but turner could demonstrate nothing of what he had done--saw no security that after death he would be understood more than he had been in life. only another turner could apprehend turner. such praise as he received was poor and superficial; he regarded it far less than censure. my own admiration of him was wild in enthusiasm, but it gave him no ray of pleasure; he could not make me at that time understand his main meanings; he loved me, but cared nothing for what i said, and was always trying to hinder me from writing, because it gave pain to his fellow artists. to the praise of other persons he gave not even the acknowledgment of this sad affection; it passed by him as murmur of the wind; and most justly, for not one of his own special powers was ever perceived by the world. i have said in another place that all great modern artists will own their obligation to him as a guide. they will; but they are in error in this gratitude, as i was, when i quoted it as a sign of their respect. close analysis of the portions of modern art founded on turner has since shown me that in every case his imitators misunderstood him:--that they caught merely at superficial brilliancies, and never saw the real character of his mind or his work. and at this day, while i write, the catalogue allowed to be sold at the gates of the national gallery for the instruction of the common people, describes calcott and claude as the greater artists. § . to censure, on the other hand, turner was acutely sensitive, owing to his own natural kindness; he felt it, for himself, or for others, not as criticism, but as cruelty. he knew that however little his higher powers could be seen, he had at least done as much as ought to have saved him from wanton insult; and the attacks upon him in his later years were to him not merely contemptible in their ignorance, but amazing in their ingratitude. "a man may be weak in his age," he said to me once, at the time when he felt he was dying; "but you should not tell him so." § . what turner might have done for us, had he received help and love, instead of disdain, i can hardly trust myself to imagine. increasing calmly in power and loveliness, his work would have formed one mighty series of poems, each great as that which i have interpreted,--the hesperides; but becoming brighter and kinder as he advanced to happy age. soft as correggio's, solemn as titian's, the enchanted color would have glowed, imperishable and pure; and the subtle thoughts risen into loftiest teaching, helpful for centuries to come. what we have asked from him, instead of this, and what received, we know. but few of us yet know how true an image those darkening wrecks of radiance give of the shadow which gained sway over his once pure and noble soul. § . not unresisted, nor touching the heart's core, nor any of the old kindness and truth: yet festering work of the worm--inexplicable and terrible, such as england, by her goodly gardening, leaves to infect her earth-flowers. so far as in it lay, this century has caused every one of its great men, whose hearts were kindest, and whose spirits most perceptive of the work of god, to die without hope:--scott, keats, byron, shelley, turner. great england, of the iron-heart now, not of the lion-heart; for these souls of her children an account may perhaps be one day required of her. § . she has not yet read often enough that old story of the samaritan's mercy. he whom he saved was going down from jerusalem to jericho--to the accursed city (so the old church used to understand it). he should not have left jerusalem; it was his own fault that he went out into the desert, and fell among the thieves, and was left for dead. every one of these english children, in their day, took the desert bypath as he did, and fell among fiends--took to making bread out of stones at their bidding, and then died, torn and famished; careful england, in her pure, priestly dress, passing by on the other side. so far as we are concerned, that is the account _we_ have to give of them.[ ] § . so far as _they_ are concerned, i do not fear for them;--there being one priest who never passes by. the longer i live, the more clearly i see how all souls are in his hand--the mean and the great. fallen on the earth in their baseness, or fading as the mist of morning in their goodness; still in the hand of the potter as the clay, and in the temple of their master as the cloud. it was not the mere bodily death that he conquered--that death had no sting. it was this spiritual death which he conquered, so that at last it should be swallowed up--mark the word--not in life; but in victory. as the dead body shall be raised to life, so also the defeated soul to victory, if only it has been fighting on its master's side, has made no covenant with death; nor itself bowed its forehead for his seal. blind from the prison-house, maimed from the battle, or mad from the tombs, their souls shall surely yet sit, astonished, at his feet who giveth peace. § . who _giveth_ peace? many a peace we have made and named for ourselves, but the falsest is in that marvellous thought that we, of all generations of the earth, only know the right; and that to us, at last,--and us alone,--all the scheme of god, about the salvation of men, has been shown. "this is the light in which _we_ are walking, those vain greeks are gone down to their persephone for ever--egypt and assyria, elam and her multitude,--uncircumcised, their graves are round about them--pathros and careless ethiopia--filled with the slain. rome, with her thirsty sword, and poison wine, how did she walk in her darkness! we only have no idolatries--ours are the seeing eyes; in our pure hands at last, the seven-sealed book is laid; to our true tongues entrusted the preaching of a perfect gospel. who shall come after us? is it not peace? the poor jew, zimri, who slew his master, there is no peace for him: but, for us? tiara on head, may we not look out of the windows of heaven?" § . another kind of peace i look for than this, though i hear it said of me that i am hopeless. i am not hopeless, though my hope may be as veronese's, the dark-veiled. veiled, not because sorrowful, but because blind. i do not know what my england desires, or how long she will choose to do as she is doing now;--with her right hand casting away the souls of men, and with her left the gifts of god. in the prayers which she dictates to her children, she tells them to fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil. some day, perhaps, it may also occur to her as desirable to tell those children what she means by this. what is the world which they are to "fight with," and how does it differ from the world which they are to "get on in"? the explanation seems to me the more needful, because i do not, in the book we profess to live by, find anything very distinct about fighting with the world. i find something about fighting with the rulers of its darkness, and something also about overcoming it; but it does not follow that this conquest is to be by hostility, since evil may be overcome with good. but i find it written very distinctly that god loved the world, and that christ is the light of it. § . what the much-used words, therefore, mean, i cannot tell. but this, i believe, they _should_ mean. that there is, indeed, one world which is full of care, and desire, and hatred: a world of war, of which christ is not the light, which indeed is without light, and has never heard the great "let there be." which is, therefore, in truth, as yet no world; but chaos, on the face of which, moving, the spirit of god yet causes men to hope that a world will come. the better one, they call it: perhaps they might, more wisely, call it the real one. also, i hear them speak continually of going to it, rather than of its coming to them; which, again, is strange, for in that prayer which they had straight from the lips of the light of the world, and which he apparently thought sufficient prayer for them, there is not anything about going to another world; only something of another government coming into this; or rather, not another, but the only government,--that government which will constitute it a world indeed. new heavens and new earth. earth, no more without form and void, but sown with fruit of righteousness. firmament, no more of passing cloud, but of cloud risen out of the crystal sea--cloud in which, as he was once received up, so he shall again come with power, and every eye shall see him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. kindreds of the earth, or tribes of it![ ]--the "earth-begotten," the chaos children--children of this present world, with its desolate seas and its medusa clouds: the dragon children, merciless: they who dealt as clouds without water: serpent clouds, by whose sight men were turned into stone;--the time must surely come for their wailing. . "thy kingdom come," we are bid to ask then! but how shall it come? with power and great glory, it is written; and yet not with observation, it is also written. strange kingdom! yet its strangeness is renewed to us with every dawn. when the time comes for us to wake out of the world's sleep, why should it be otherwise than out of the dreams of the night? singing of birds, first, broken and low, as, not to dying eyes, but eyes that wake to life, "the casement slowly grows a glimmering square;" and then the gray, and then the rose of dawn; and last the light, whose going forth is to the ends of heaven. this kingdom it is not in our power to bring; but it is, to receive. nay, it has come already, in part; but not received, because men love chaos best; and the night, with her daughters. that is still the only question for us, as in the old elias days, "if ye will receive it." with pains it may be shut out still from many a dark place of cruelty; by sloth it may be still unseen for many a glorious hour. but the pain of shutting it out must grow greater and greater:--harder, every day, that struggle of man with man in the abyss, and shorter wages for the fiend's work. but it is still at our choice; the simoom-dragon may still be served if we will, in the fiery desert, or else god walking in the garden, at cool of day. coolness now, not of hesperus over atlas, stooped endurer of toil; but of heosphorus over sion, the joy of the earth.[ ] the choice is no vague or doubtful one. high on the desert mountain, full descried, sits throned the tempter, with his old promise--the kingdoms of this world, and the glory of them. he still calls you to your labor, as christ to your rest;--labor and sorrow, base desire, and cruel hope. so far as you desire to possess, rather than to give; so far as you look for power to command, instead of to bless; so far as your own prosperity seems to you to issue out of contest or rivalry, of any kind, with other men, or other nations; so long as the hope before you is for supremacy instead of love; and your desire is to be greatest, instead of least;--first, instead of last;--so long you are serving the lord of all that is last, and least;--the last enemy that shall be destroyed--death; and you shall have death's crown, with the worm coiled in it; and death's wages with the worm feeding on them; kindred of the earth shall you yourself become; saying to the grave, "thou art my father;" and to the worm, "thou art my mother, and my sister." i leave you to judge, and to choose, between this labor, and the bequeathed peace; this wages, and the gift of the morning star; this obedience, and the doing of the will which shall enable you to claim another kindred than of the earth, and to hear another voice than that of the grave, saying, "my brother, and sister, and mother." footnotes: [ ] it is proper, however, for the reader to know, that the title which i myself originally intended for this book was "_turner and the ancients_;" nor did i purpose to refer in it to any other modern painters than turner. the title was changed; and the notes on other living painters inserted in the first volume, in deference to the advice of friends, probably wise; for unless the change had been made, the book might never have been read at all. but, as far as i am concerned, i regretted the change then, and regret it still. [ ] it may perhaps be necessary to explain one or two singular points of turner's character, not in defence of this statement, but to show its meaning. in speaking of his truth, i use the word in a double sense;--truth to himself, and to others. truth to himself; that is to say, the resolution to do his duty by his art, and carry all work out as well as it could be done. other painters, for the most part, modify their work by some reference to public taste, or measure out a certain quantity of it for a certain price, or alter facts to show their power. turner never did any of these things. the thing the public asked of him he would do, but whatever it was, only as _he_ thought it ought to be done. people did not buy his large pictures; he, with avowed discontent, painted small ones; but instead of taking advantage of the smaller size to give, proportionally, less labor, he instantly changed his execution so as to be able to put nearly as much work into his small drawings as into his large ones, though he gave them for half the price. but his aim was always to make the drawing as good as he could, or as the subject deserved, irrespective of price. if he disliked his theme, he painted it slightly, utterly disdainful of the purchaser's complaint. "the purchaser must take his chance." if he liked his theme, he would give three hundred guineas' worth of work for a hundred, and ask no thanks. it is true, exceptionally, that he altered the engravings from his designs, so as to meet the popular taste, but this was because he knew the public could not be got otherwise to look at his art at all. his own drawings the entire body of the nation repudiated and despised: "the engravers could make something of them," they said. turner scornfully took them at their word. if that is what you like, take it. i will not alter my own noble work one jot for you, but these things you shall have to your minds;--try to use them, and get beyond them. sometimes, when an engraver came with a plate to be touched, he would take a piece of white chalk in his right hand and of black in his left: "which will you have it done with?" the engraver chose black or white, as he thought his plate weak or heavy. turner threw the other piece of chalk away, and would reconstruct the plate, with the added lights or darks, in ten minutes. nevertheless, even this concession to false principles, so far as it had influence, was injurious to him: he had better not have scorned the engravings, but either done nothing with them, or done his best. his best, in a certain way, he did, never sparing pains, if he thought the plate worth it: some of his touched proofs are elaborate drawings. of his earnestness in his main work, enough, i should think, has been already related in this book; but the following anecdote, which i repeat here from my notes on the turner gallery, that there may be less chance of its being lost, gives, in a few words, and those his own, the spirit of his labor, as it possessed him throughout his life. the anecdote was communicated to me in a letter by mr. kingsley, late of sidney college, cambridge; whose words i give:--"i had taken my mother and a cousin to see turner's pictures; and, as my mother knows nothing about art, i was taking her down the gallery to look at the large richmond park, but as we were passing the sea-storm, she stopped before it, and i could hardly get her to look at any other picture: and she told me a great deal more about it than i had any notion of, though i had seen many sea-storms. she had been in such a scene on the coast of holland during the war. when, some time afterwards, i thanked turner for his permission for her to see the pictures, i told him that he would not guess which had caught my mother's fancy, and then named the picture; and he then said, 'i did not paint it to be understood, but i wished to show what such a scene was like: i got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe it; i was lashed for four hours, and i did not expect to escape, but i felt bound to record it if i did. but no one had any business to like the picture.' 'but,' said i, 'my mother once went through just such a scene, and it brought it all back to her.' 'is your mother a painter?' 'no.' 'then she ought to have been thinking of something else.' these were nearly his words; i observed at the time, he used 'record' and 'painting,' as the title 'author' had struck me before." he was true to others. no accusation had ever been brought forward against turner by his most envious enemies, of his breaking a promise, or failing in an undertaken trust. his sense of justice was strangely acute; it was like his sense of balance in color, and shone continually in little crotchets of arrangement of price, or other advantages, among the buyers of his pictures. for instance, one of my friends had long desired to possess a picture which turner would not sell. it had been painted with a companion; which was sold, but this reserved. after a considerable number of years had passed, turner consented to part with it. the price of canvases of its size having, in the meantime, doubled, question arose as to what was then to be its price. "well," said turner, "mr. ---- had the companion for so much. you must be on the same footing." this was in no desire to do my friend a favor; but in mere instinct of equity. had the price of his pictures fallen, instead of risen in the meantime, turner would have said, "mr. ---- paid so much, and so must you." but the best proof to which i can refer in this character of his mind is in the wonderful series of diagrams executed by him for his lectures on perspective at the royal academy. i had heard it said that these lectures were inefficient. barely intelligible in expression they might be; but the zealous care with which turner endeavored to do his duty, is proved by a series of large drawings, exquisitely tinted, and often completely colored, all by his own hand, of the most difficult perspective subjects; illustrating not only directions of line, but effects of light, with a care and completion which would put the work of any ordinary teacher to utter shame. in teaching generally, he would neither waste his time nor spare it; he would look over a student's drawing, at the academy,--point to a defective part, make a scratch on the paper at the side, saying nothing; if the student saw what was wanted, and did it, turner was delighted, and would go on with him, giving hint after hint; but if the student could not follow, turner left him. such experience as i have had in teaching, leads me more and more to perceive that he was right. explanations are wasted time. a man who can see, understands a touch; a man who cannot, misunderstands an oration. one of the points in turner which increased the general falseness of impression respecting him was a curious dislike he had to _appear_ kind. drawing, with one of his best friends, at the bridge of st. martin's, the friend got into great difficulty over a colored sketch. turner looked over him a little while, then said, in a grumbling way--"i haven't got any paper i like; let me try yours." receiving a block book, he disappeared for an hour and a half. returning, he threw the book down, with a growl, saying--"i can't make anything of your paper." there were three sketches on it, in three distinct states of progress, showing the process of coloring from beginning to end, and clearing up every difficulty which his friend had got into. when he gave advice, also, it was apt to come in the form of a keen question, or a quotation of some one else's opinion, rarely a statement of his own. to the same person producing a sketch, which had no special character: "what are you in _search_ of?" note this expression. turner knew that passionate seeking only leads to passionate finding. sometimes, however, the advice would come with a startling distinctness. a church spire having been left out in a sketch of a town--"why did you not put that in?" "i hadn't time." "then you should take a subject more suited to your capacity." many people would have gone away considering this an insult, whereas it was only a sudden flash from turner's earnest requirement of wholeness or perfectness of conception. "whatever you do, large or small, do it wholly; take a slight subject if you will, but don't leave things out." but the principal reason for turner's having got the reputation of always refusing advice was, that artists came to him in a state of mind in which he knew they could not receive it. virtually, the entire conviction of the artists of his time respecting him was, that he had got a secret, which he could tell, if he liked, that would make them all turners. they came to him with this general formula of request clearly in their hearts, if not definitely on their lips: "you know, mr. turner, we are all of us quite as clever as you are, and could do all that very well, and we should really like to do a little of it occasionally, only we haven't quite your trick; there's something in it, of course, which you only found out by accident, and it is very ill-natured and unkind of you not to tell us how the thing is done; what do you rub your colors over with, and where ought we to put in the black patches?" this was the practical meaning of the artistical questioning of his day, to which turner very resolvedly made no answer. on the contrary, he took great care that any tricks of execution he actually did use should not be known. his _practical_ answer to their questioning being as follows:--"you are indeed, many of you, as clever as i am; but this, which you think a secret, is only the result of sincerity and toil. if you have not sense enough to see this without asking me, you have not sense enough to believe me, if i tell you. true, i know some odd methods of coloring. i have found them out for myself, and they suit me. they would not suit you. they would do you no real good; and it would do me much harm to have you mimicking my ways of work, without knowledge of their meaning. if you want methods fit for you, find them out for yourselves. if you cannot discover them, neither could you use them." [ ] it is strange that the last words turner ever attached to a picture should have been these:-- "the priest held the poisoned cup." compare the words of with those of . [ ] compare matt. xxiv. . [ ] ps. xlviii. .--this joy it is to receive and to give, because its officers (governors of its acts) are to be peace, and its exactors (governors of its dealings), righteousness.--is. lx. . the end. local index to modern painters. aiguille blaitière, iv. , , ; bouchard, iv. , , , - ; de chamouni, iv. , ; des charmoz, iv. , , , , ; du gouté, iv. ; dumoine, iv. (note); du plan, iv. ; pourri (chamouni), iv. , ; de varens (chamouni), iv. . aletsch glacier, ravine of, iv. . alps, angle buttress of the chain of jungfrau and gemmi, iv. . amiens, poplar groves of, iii. , iv. ; banks of the somme at, iv. (note). annecy, lake of, cliffs round, iv. . apennine, the lombard, iii. plate . ardon (valais), gorge of, iv. . beauvais, destruction of old houses at, ii. (note). berne, scenery of lowland districts of, v. , iv. . bietschhorn, peak of, iv. . bolton abbey (yorkshire), iv. . breven (chamouni), precipices of, iv. . calais, tower of, iv. . carrara mountains, peaks of, iv. ; quarries of, iv. . chamounix, beauty of pine-glades, v. . see valley. chartres, cathedral, sculpture on, v. . cluse, valley of, iv. . col d'anterne, iv. . col de ferret, iv. . cormayeur, valley of, iv. . cumberland, hills of, iv. . cyrene, scenery of, v. . dart, banks of, iv. . dent de morcles (valais), peaks of, iv. . dent du midi de bex, structure of, iv. . derbyshire, limestone hills of, iv. . derwent, banks of, iv. . eiger (grindelwald), position of, iv. . engelberg, hill of angels, v. . faïdo, pass of (st. gothard), iv. . finster-aarhorn (bernese alps), peak of, iv. , . florence, destruction of old streets and frescoes in, ii. (note). france, scenery and valleys of, i. , ; iv. , . fribourg, district surrounding, iv. ; towers of, iv. . geneva, restorations in, ii. (note). goldau, valley of, iv. . grande jorasse (col de ferret), position of, iv. . grindelwald valley, iv. . highland valley, described, v. . il resegone (comasque chain of alps), structure, iv. . jedburgh, rocks near, iv. . jura, crags of, iv. , . lago maggiore, effect of, destroyed by quarries, iv. . langholme, rocks near, iv. . lauterbrunnen cliffs, structure of, iv. . loire, description of its course, v. . lucca, san michele, mosaics on, i. ; tomb in cathedral of, ii. . lucerne, wooden bridges at, iv. , ; lake, shores of, the mountain-temple, v. , . matlock, via gellia, v. . matterhorn (mont cervin), structure of, iv. , , , ; from zermatt, iv. , ; from riffelhorn, iv. . milan, sculpture in cathedral, ii. . montanvert, view from, iv. . montagne de la côte, crests of, iv. , , , ; v. . montagne de taconay, iv. , , , ; v. . montagne de tacondy (chamouni), ridges of, i. . montagne de vergi, iv. . mont blanc, arrangement of beds in chain of, iv. (note), . monte rosa, iv. . mont pilate, v. ; iv. . monte viso, peak of, iv. . niagara, channel of, iv. . normandy, hills of, iv. . nuremberg, description of, v. - . oxford, queen's college, front of, i. . pélerins cascade (valley of chamouni), iv. . pisa, destruction of works of art in, ii. (note); mountain scenery round, iv. . petit salève, iv. . rhone, valley of, iv. . rheinfelden (switzerland), description of, v. (note). riffelhorn, precipices of, iv. . rochers des fys (col d'anterne), cliff of, iv. . rome, pursuit of art in, i. ; temple of antoninus and faustus, griffin on, iii. . rouen, destruction of mediæval architecture in, ii. (note). saddleback (cumberland), i. . sallenche, plain of the arve at, i. ; walk near, iii. . savoy, valleys of, iv. . salisbury crags (edinburgh), structure of, iv. . schauffhausen, fall of, i. ; v. . schreckhorn (bernese alps), iv. . scotland, hills of, iv. , . sion (valais), description of (mountain gloom), iv. - . switzerland, character of, how destroyed by foreigners, iv. ; railways, v. . taconay, tacondy. see montagne. tees, banks of, iv. . thames, description of, v. . tours, destruction of mediæval buildings in, ii. (note). trient, valley of (mountain gloom), iv. , . twickenham, meadows of, v. . underwalden, pine hills of, v. . valais, canton, iv. ; fairies' hollow in, v. . valley of chamouni, iv. , ; formation of, iv. ; how spoiled by quarries, iv. ; of cluse, iv. ; of cormayer, iv. ; of grindewald, iv. ; of frütigen (canton of berne), v. . venice, in the eighteenth century, i. ; modern restorations in, ii. (note); quay of the rialto, market scene on, i. ; st. mark's, mosaics on, i. ; described, v. . see topical index. verona, griffin on cathedral of, iii. ; san zeno, sculpture on arch in, v. . villeneuve, mountains of, iv. , . vosges, crags of, iv. . wales, hills of, iv. . weisshorn, peak of, . wetterhorn (grindelwald), iv. , . wharfe (yorkshire), shores of, iv. , . yorkshire, limestone hills of, iv. , ; v. . zermatt, valley of, chapel in, iv. . zmutt glacier, iv. . index to painters and pictures referred to in "modern painters." angelico da fiesole, angel choirs of, ii. ; attained the highest beauty, ii. ; cramped by traditional treatment, ii. ; decoration of, ii. ; distances of, iv. ; finish of, ii. , iii. ; his hatred of fog, iv. ; influence of hills upon, iv. ; introduction of portraiture in pictures by, ii. , iii. ; his purity of life, iii. ; spiritual beauty of, iii. ; treatment of passion subjects by, ii. ; unison of expressional with pictorial power in, iii. ; contrast between, and wouvermans, v. ; contrast between, and salvator, v. ; pictures referred to-- annunciation, ii. ; crucifixion, i. , ii. ; infant christ, ii. ; last judgment, i. ; last judgment and paradise, ii. , iii. ; spirits in prison at the feet of christ, fresco in st. mark's, ii. (note); st. dominic of fiesole, ii. ; vita di christo, ii. . art-union, christian vanquishing apollyon (ideal stones), iv. . bandinelli, cacus, ii. ; hercules, ii. . bartolomeo, introduction of portraiture by, ii. . bartolomeo, fra. pictures referred to-- last judgment, ii. ; st. stephen, ii. . basaiti, marco, open skies of, i. . picture--st. stephen, ii. . bellini, gentile, architecture of the renaissance style, i. , ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. . bellini, giovanni, finish of, ii. ; hatred of fog, iv. ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. ; landscape of, i. , iv. ; luminous skies of, ii. ; unison of expressional and pictorial power in, iii. ; use of mountain distances, iv. ; refinement and gradation, i. . pictures referred to-- madonna at milan, i. ; san francesco della vigna at venice, i. ; st. christopher, ii. ; st. jerome, ii. ; st. jerome in the church of san. chrysostome, i. . berghem, landscape, dulwich gallery, i. , iii. , v. . blacklock, drawing of the inferior hills, i. . blake, illustrations of the book of job, iii. . bonifazio, camp of israel, iii. ; what subjects treated by, v. . both, failures of, i. , v. . bronzino, base grotesque, iii. . pictures referred to-- christ visiting the spirits in prison, ii. . buonarotti, michael angelo, anatomy interfering with the divinity of figures, ii. ; conception of human form, ii. , ; completion of detail, iii. ; finish of, ii. ; influence of mountains upon, iv. ; use of symbol, ii. ; repose in, ii. (note); impetuous execution of, ii. (note); expression of inspiration by, ii. . pictures referred to-- bacchus, ii. (note); daniel, i. ; jonah, ii. ; last judgment, ii. , ; night and day, ii. , iii. ; pietà of florence, ii. ; pietà of genoa, ii. ; plague of the fiery serpents, ii. (note); st. matthew, ii. ; twilight i. ; vaults of sistine chapel, i. - . callcott, trent, i. . canaletto, false treatment of water, i. ; mannerism of, i. ; painting in the palazzo manfrini, i. ; venice, as seen by, i. ; works of, v. . canova, unimaginative work of, ii. ; perseus, i. . caracci, the, landscape of, iii. , iv. ; use of base models of portraiture by, ii. . caravaggio, vulgarity of, iii. ; perpetual seeking for horror and ugliness, ii. ; a worshipper of the depraved, iii. . carpaccio, vittor, delineation of architecture by, i. ; luminous skies of, ii ; painting of st. mark's church, i. . castagno, andrea del, rocks of, iii. . cattermole, g., foliage of, i. ; fall of the clyde, i. ; glendearg, i. . claude, summary of his qualities, v. ; painting of sunlight by, iii. , v. ; feeling of the beauty of form, i. , iii. , v. ; narrowness of, contrasted with vastness of nature, i. ; aërial effects of, iii. , v. ; sincerity of purpose of, iii. , v. ; never forgot himself, i. , v. ; true painting of afternoon sunshine, iii. , v. , ; effeminate softness of, v. ; landscape of, iii. , i. xxxviii. preface, v. ; seas of, i. , , v. , ; skies of, i. , ; tenderness of perception in, iii. ; transition from ghirlandajo to, iv. ; absence of imagination in, ii. ; waterfalls of, i. ; treatment of rocks by, iv. , , iii. ; tree drawing of, iii. , ; absurdities of conception, iii. ; deficiency in foreground, i. , ; distances of, i. ; perspective of, i. . pictures referred to-- morning, in national gallery (cephalus and procris), i. ; enchanted castle, i. ; campagna at rome, i. xl. preface; il mulino, i. xxxix. preface, v. , ii. ; landscape, no. , dulwich gallery, i. ; landscape, no. , dulwich gallery, i. ; landscape in uffizii gallery, i. ; seaport, st. ursula, no. , national gallery, i. ; queen of sheba, no. , national gallery, i. ; italian seaport, no. , national gallery, i. ; seaport, no. , national gallery, i. ; marriage of isaac and rebecca, i. , , , , ; moses at the burning bush, iii. ; narcissus, i. ; pisa, iv. ; st. george and the dragon, v. ; worship of the golden calf, v. ; sinon before priam, i. , ; liber veritatis, no. , iv. ; liber v., no. , iv. ; l. v., no. , iv. , ; l. v., no. , iii. ; l. v., no. , iii. ; l. v., no. , iii. . conegilano, cima da, entire realization of foreground painting, iii. ; painting in church of the madonna dell' orto, i. . constable, landscape of, iii. ; simplicity and earnestness of, i. ; aspen drawing of, iv. ; helmingham park, suffolk, iii. ; lock on the stour, iii. ; foliage of, i. , iii. ; landscape of, iv. . correggio, choice of background, iii. ; painting of flesh by, iii. ; leaf drawing of, v. ; power of, to paint rain-clouds, v. (note); love of physical beauty, iii. ; morbid gradation, ii. ; morbid sentimentalism, ii. ; mystery of, iv. ; sensuality of, ii. , ; sidelong grace of, iii. ; tenderness of, iii. . pictures referred to-- antiope, iii. , v. , , ; charioted diana, ii. ; madonna of the incoronazione, ii. ; st. catherine of the giorno, ii. . cox, david, drawings of, i. xliii. preface, i. ; foliage of, i. ; rain-clouds of, i. ; skies of, in water-color, i. ; sunset on distant hills, i. . creswick, tree-painting of, i. . pictures referred to-- nut-brown maid, i. ; weald of kent, i. . cruikshank, g., iv., ; noah claypole ("oliver twist"), v. . cuyp, principal master of pastoral landscape, v. ; tone of, i. ; no sense of beauty, i. ; sky of, i. , , ; cattle painting of, v. ; sunlight of, v. , ; water of, i. ; foliage of, v. , ; and rubens, v, , . pictures referred to-- hilly landscape, in dulwich gallery, no. , i. , ; landscape, in national gallery, no. , i. , v. ; waterloo etchings, i. ; landscape, dulwich gallery, no, , i. , no. , v. . dannaeker, ariadne, iii. . dighton, w. e., hayfield in a shower, ii. ; haymeadow corner, ii. . dolci, carlo, finish for finish's sake, iii. ; softness and smoothness, iii. ; st. peter, ii. . domenichino, angels of, ii. ; landscape of, iii. ; madonna del rosario, and martyrdom of st. agnes, both utterly hateful, i. , ii. . drummond, banditti on the watch, ii. . durer, albert, and salvator, v. , ; deficiency in perception of the beautiful, iv. ; education of, v. - ; mind of, how shown, v. ; decision of, iv. , ii. ; tree-drawing, v. ; finish of, iii. , ; gloomily minute, i. ; hatred of fog, iv. ; drawing of crests, iv. ; love of sea, v. . pictures referred to-- dragon of the apocalypse, iv. ; fall of lucifer, iv. ; the cannon, v. ; knight and death, iii. , v. , ; melancholia, iv. , iii. , v. , ; root of apple-tree in adam and eve, iii. , v. ; st. hubert, v. , ; st. jerome, v. . etty, richness and play of color of, ii. ; morning prayer, ii. ; still life, ii. ; st. john, ii. . eyck, van, deficiency in perception of the beautiful, iv. . fielding, copley, faithful rendering of nature, i. ; feeling in the drawing of inferior mountains, i. ; foliage of, i. ; water of, i. ; moorland foreground, i. ; use of crude color, i. ; love of mist, iv. ; rain-clouds of, i. ; sea of, i. ; truth of, i. . picture referred to--bolton abbey, i. . flaxman, alpine stones, iv. ; pool of envy (in his dante), iv. . francia, architecture of the renaissance style, i. ; finish of, iii. ; treatment of the open sky, ii. ; madonnas of, ii. ; nativity, iii. . gaddi, taddeo, treatment of the open sky, ii. . gainsborough, color of, i. ; execution of i. xxii. preface; aërial distances of, i. ; imperfect treatment of details, i. . ghiberti, lorenzo, leaf-moulding and bas-reliefs of, v. . ghirlandajo, architecture of the renaissance style, i. ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. ; reality of conception, iii. ; rocks of, iii. , ; symmetrical arrangement of pictures, ii. ; treatment of the open sky, ii. ; quaintness of landscape, iii. ; garlanded backgrounds of, v. . pictures referred to-- adoration of the magi, iii. ; baptism of christ, iii. ; pisa, iv. . giorgione, boyhood of, v. - ; perfect intellect of, v. ; landscape of, i. ; luminous sky of, ii, ; modesty of, ii. , ; one of the few who has painted leaves, v. ; frescoes of, v. , ; sacrifice of form to color by, ii. ; two figures, or the fondaco de'tedeschi, i. ; one of the seven supreme colorists, v. (note). giotto, cramped by traditional treatment, ii. ; decoration of, ii. ; influence of hills upon, iv. ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. ; landscape of, ii. ; power in detail, iii. ; reality of conception, iii. ; symmetrical arrangement in pictures, ii. ; treatment of the open sky, ii. ; unison of expressional and pictorial power in detail, iii. ; use of mountain distances, iv. . pictures referred to-- baptism of christ, ii. ; charity, iii. ; crucifixion and arena frescoes, ii. ; sacrifice for the friedes, i. . gozzoli benozzo, landscape of, ii. ; love of simple domestic incident, iii. ; reality of conception, iii. ; treatment of the open sky, ii. . guercino, hagar, ii. . guido, sensuality, ii. , ; use of base models for portraiture, ii. . picture-- susannah and the elders, ii. . harding, j. d., aspen drawing of, iv. ; execution of, i. , , iv. ; chiaroscuro of, i. , ; distance of, i. ; foliage, i. , ; trees of, v. (note), i. ; rocks of, i. ; water of, i. . pictures referred to-- chamouni, i. ; sunrise on the swiss alps, i. . hemling, finish of, iii. . hobbima, niggling of, v. , ; distances of, i. ; failures of, i. , ; landscape in dulwich gallery, v. . holbein, best northern art represented by, v. - ; the most accurate portrait painter, v. ; dance of death, iii. ; glorious severity of, ii. ; cared not for flowers, v. . hooghe, de, quiet painting of, v. . hunt, holman, finish of, i. (note). pictures referred to-- awakened conscience, iii. ; claudio and isabella, iii. ; light of the world, iii. , , , , , iv. (note); christ in the temple, v. . hunt, william, anecdote of, iii. ; farmer's girl, iii. ; foliage of, i. ; great ideality in treatment of still-life, ii. . landseer, e., more a natural historian than a painter, ii. (note); animal painting of, v. ; dog of, ii. ; old cover hack, deficiency of color, ii. ; random shot, ii. ; shepherd's chief mourner, i. , ; ladies' pets, imperfect grass drawing, v. ; low life, v. . laurati, treatment of the open sky, ii. . lawrence, sir thomas, satan of, ii. . lewis, john, climax of water-color drawing, i. ; success in seizing spanish character, i, . linnell, cumuli of, i. (note). picture referred to-- eve of the deluge, ii. . lippi, filippino, heads of, ii. ; tribute money, iii. . mantegna, andrea, painting of stones by, iv. ; decoration of, ii. . masaccio, painting of vital truth from vital present, iii. ; introduction of portraiture into pictures, ii. ; mountain scenery of, i. , iv. ; deliverance of peter, ii. ; tribute money, i. , , iii. . memmi, simone, abstract of the duomo at florence, at santa maria novella, i. ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. . millais, huguenot, iii. . mino da fiesole, truth and tenderness of, ii. ; two statues by, ii. . mulready, pictures by-- the butt, perfect color, ii. ; burchell and sophia, ii. ; choosing of the wedding gown, ii. ; gravel pit, ii. . murillo, painting of, ii. . nesfield, treatment of water by, i. . orcagna, influence of hills upon, iv. ; intense solemnity and energy of, iii. ; unison of expressional and pictorial power in detail of, iii. ; inferno, ii. ; last judgment, ii. , iii. ; madonna, ii. ; triumph of death, iii. , . perugino, decoration of, ii. ; finish of, ii. ; formalities of, iii. , ; hatred of fog, iv. ; landscape of, ii. ; mountain distances of, iv. ; right use of gold by, i. ; rationalism of, how affecting his works, v. ; sea of, i. ; expression of, inspiration by, ii. . pictures referred to-- annunciation, ii. ; assumption of the virgin, ii. ; michael the archangel, ii. ; nativity, iii. ; portrait of himself, ii. ; queen-virgin, iii. ; st. maddelena at florence, i. . pickersgill, contest of beauty, ii. . pinturicchio, finish of, ii. ; madonnas of, ii. . pisellino, filippo, rocks of, iii. . potter, paul, landscape, in grosvenor gallery, ii. ; landscape, no. , dulwich gallery, i. ; foliage of, compared with hobbima's and ruysdael's, v. ; best dutch painter of cattle, v. . poussin, gaspar, foliage of, i. - ; distance of, i. ; narrowness of, contrasted with vastness of nature, i. ; mannerism of, i. , ii. , iv. ; perception of moral truth, i. ; skies of, i. , ; want of imagination, ii. ; false sublimity, iv. . pictures referred to-- chimborazo, i. ; destruction of niobe's children, in dulwich gallery, i. ; dido and Æneas, i. , , ii. ; la riccia, i. , , ii. ; mont blanc, i. ; sacrifice of isaac, i. , , , ii. . poussin, nicolas, and claude, v. - ; principal master of classical landscape, v. , ; peculiarities of, v. ; compared with claude and titian, v. ; characteristics of works by, v. ; want of sensibility in, v. ; landscape of, v. ; trees of, i. ; landscape of, composed on right principles, i. , iii. , ii. . pictures referred to-- the plague, v. ; death of polydectes, v. ; triumph of david, v. ; the deluge, v. ; apollo, ii. ; deluge (louvre), i. , iv. ; landscape, no. , dulwich gallery, i. ; landscape, no. , dulwich gallery, i. ; phocion, i. , , , ; triumph of flora, iii. . procaccini, camillo. picture referred to-- martyrdom (milan), ii. . prout, samuel, master of noble picturesque, iv. ; influence on modern art by works of, i. ; excellent composition and color of, i. , ; expression of the crumbling character of stone, i. , , . pictures referred to-- brussels, i. ; cologne, i. ; flemish hotel de ville, i. ; gothic well at ratisbon, i. ; italy and switzerland, i. ; louvain, i. ; nuremberg, i. ; sion, i. ; sketches in flanders and germany, i. ; spire of calais, iv. ; tours, i. . punch, instance of modern grotesque from, iv. . pyne, j. b. drawing of, i. . raffaelle, chiaroscuro of, iv. ; completion of detail by, i. , iii. ; finish of, ii. ; instances of leaf drawing by, v. ; conventionalism of branches by, v. ; his hatred of fog, iii. , iv. ; influence of hills upon, iv. ; influenced by masaccio, iii. ; introduction of portraiture in pictures by, ii. ; composition of, v. ; lofty disdain of color in drawings of, v. (note); landscape of, ii. ; mountain distance of, iv. ; subtle gradation of sky, ii. , ; symbolism of, iii. . pictures referred to-- baldacchino, ii. ; charge to peter, iii. , ; draught of fishes, i. preface, xxx., ii. ; holy family--tribune of the uffizii, iii. ; madonna della sediola, ii. , iii. ; madonna dell' impannata, ii. ; madonna del cardellino, ii. ; madonna di san sisto, iii. ; massacre of the innocents, ii. , ; michael the archangel, ii. ; moses at the burning bush, iii. ; nativity, iii. ; st. catherine, i. preface, xxxi., i. , , ii. , ; st. cecilia, ii. , , iii. , ; st. john of the tribune, ii. ; school of athens, iii. ; transfiguration, iii. (note). rembrandt, landscape of, i. ; chiaroscuro of, iii. , iv. - ; etchings of, i. (note); vulgarity of, iii. . pictures referred to-- presentation of christ in the temple, ii. ; spotted shell, ii. ; painting of himself and his wife, v. . rethel, a. pictures referred to-- death the avenger, iii. ; death the friend, iii. . retsch. pictures referred to-- illustrations to schiller's fight of the dragon, ii. . reynolds, sir joshua, swiftest of painters, v. ; influence of early life of, on painting of, v. ; lectures quoted, i. , , iii. ; tenderness of, iv. (note). picture referred to-- charity, iii. . roberts, david, architectural drawing of, i. ; drawings of the holy land, i. ; hieroglyphics of the egyptian temples, i. ; roslin chapel, i. . robson g., mountain scenery of, i. , iii. . rosa, salvator, and albert durer, v. - ; landscape of, i. ; characteristics of, v. , ; how influenced by calabrian scenery, v. ; of what capable, v. ; death, how regarded by, v. ; contrast between, and angelico, v. ; leaf branches of, compared with durer's, v. , ; example of tree bough of, v. ; education of, v. , ; fallacies of contrast with early artists, v. ; narrowness of, contrasted with freedom and vastness of nature, i. ; perpetual seeking for horror and ugliness, ii. , , v. - ; skies of, i. , ; vicious execution of, i. , ii. ; vigorous imagination of, ii. ; vulgarity of, iii. , iii. , . pictures referred to-- apollo and sibyl, v. ; umana fragilita, v. ; baptism of christ, ii. (note); battles by, ii. ; diogenes, ii. ; finding of oedipus, iii. , v. ; landscape, no. , dulwich gallery, i. , , , ; landscape, no. , dulwich gallery, i. ; sea-piece (pitti palace), i. ; peace burning the arms of war, i. ; st. jerome, ii. ; temptation of st. anthony, ii. , (note); mercury and the woodman (national gallery), i, . rubens and cuyp, v. - ; color of, i. ; landscape of, i. , , iii. , ; leaf drawing of, v. ; flowers of, v. ; realistic temper of, iii. ; symbolism of, iii. ; treatment of light, ii. , i. ; want of feeling for grace and mystery, iv. ; characteristics of, v. ; religion of, v. ; delight in martyrdoms, v. ; painting of dogs and horses by, v. , ; descriptions of his own pictures by, v. ; imitation of sunlight by, v. (note); hunts by, v. . pictures referred to-- adoration of the magi, i. ; battle of the amazons, v. ; landscape, no. , dulwich gallery, iv. ; his family, v. ; waggoner, iii. ; landscapes in pitti palace, i. ; sunset behind a tournament, iii. . ruysdael. pictures referred to-- running and falling water, i. , ; sea-piece, i. . schöngauer, martin, joy in ugliness, iv. ; missal drawing of, iv. . snyders, painting of dogs by, v. . spagnoletto, vicious execution of, ii. . stanfield, clarkson, architectural drawing of, i. ; boats of, i. ; chiaroscuro of, i. ; clouds of, i. , ; a realistic painter, i. , iv. (note); knowledge and power of, i. . pictures referred to-- amalfi, ii. ; borromean islands, with st. gothard in the distance, i. ; botallack mine (coast scenery), i. ; brittany, near dol, iv. ; castle of ischia, i. ; doge's palace at venice, i. ; east cliff, hastings, i. ; magra, ii. ; rocks of suli, i. ; wreck on the coast of holland, i. . taylor, frederick, drawings of, power of swift execution, i. , . teniers, scenery of, v. ; painter of low subjects, v. . pictures referred to--landscape, no. , dulwich gallery, i. . tintoret, coloring of, iii. ; delicacy of, iii. ; painting of vital truth from the vital present, iii. ; use of concentrically-grouped leaves by, ii. ; imagination, ii. , , , ; inadequacy of landscapes by, i. ; influence of hills upon, iv. ; intensity of imagination of, ii. , iv. ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. ; luminous sky of, ii. ; modesty of, ii. ; neglectful of flower-beauty, v. ; mystery about the pencilling of, ii. ; no sympathy with the humor of the world, iv. ; painter of space, i. ; realistic temper of, iii. ; sacrifice of form to color by, ii. ; slightness and earnest haste of, ii. (note), (note); symbolism of, iii. . pictures referred to-- agony in the garden, ii. ; adoration of the magi, iii. , , iv. ; annunciation, ii. ; baptism, ii. ; cain and abel, i. (note); crucifixion, ii. , , iii. , v. , ; doge loredano before the madonna, ii. ; entombment, ii. , iii. ; fall of adam, i. (note); flight into egypt, ii. , ; golden calf, ii. ; last judgment, ii. ; picture in church of madonna dell' orto, i. ; massacre of the innocents, ii. , , ; murder of abel, i. ; paradise, i. , iv. , v. , ; plague of fiery serpents, ii. ; st. francis, ii. ; temptation, ii. , . titian, tone of, i. ; tree drawing of, i. ; want of foreshortening, v. ; bough drawing of, i. ; good leaf drawing, v. ; distant branches of, v. ; drawing of crests by, iv. ; color in the shadows of, iv. ; mind of, v. , ; imagination of, ii. ; master of heroic landscape, v. ; landscape of, i. , iii. ; influence of hills upon, iv. ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. ; home of, v. , ; modesty of, ii. ; mystery about the pencilling of, iv. ; partial want of sense of beauty, ii. ; prefers jewels and fans to flowers, v. ; right conception of the human form, ii. , v. ; sacrifice of form to color by, ii. ; color of, v. , ; stones of, iv. , ; trees of, i. , ii. . pictures referred to-- assumption, iv. (note), v. , , , ; bacchus and ariadne, i. , , iii. , v. ; death of abel, i. (note); entombment, iii. ; europa (dulwich gallery), i. ; faith, i. ; holy family, v. (note); madonna and child, v. ; madonna with st. peter and st. george, v. ; flagellation, ii. ; magdalen (pitti palace), ii. , v. , (note); marriage of st. catherine, i. ; portrait of lavinia, v. , preface, viii.; older lavinia, preface, viii.; st. francis receiving the stigmata, i. (note); st. jerome, i. , ii. ; st. john, ii. ; san pietro martire, ii. , ; supper at emmaus, iii. , ; venus, iii. ; notomie, v. . turner, william, of oxford, mountain drawings, i. . turner, joseph mallord william, character of, v. , , ; affection of, for humble scenery, iv. , ; architectural drawing of, i. , ; his notion of "eris" or "discord," v. , ; admiration of, for vandevelde, i. ; boyhood of, v. , ; chiaroscuro of, i. , , , , , iv. - ; only painter of sun-color, v. ; painter of "the rose and the cankerworm," v. ; his subjection of color to chiaroscuro, i. ; color of, i. , , , , , , , ii. , iii. (note), iv. , v. (note); composition of, iv. , ; curvature of, i. , iii. , iv. , ; tree drawing of, i. , v. , , , ; drawing of banks by, iv. , ; discovery of scarlet shadow by, v. , , ; drawing of cliffs by, iv. ; drawing of crests by, iv. , , ; drawing of figures by, i. ; drawing of reflections by, i. , , , ; drawing of leaves by, v. , ; drawing of water by, i. , ; exceeding refinement of truth in, i. ; education of, iii. , v. (note); execution of, v. ; ruin of his pictures by decay of pigments, i. (note); gradation of, i. ; superiority of intellect in, i. ; expression of weight in water by, i. , ; expression of infinite redundance by, iv. ; aspects, iii. , ; first great landscape painter, iii. , v. ; form sacrificed to color, ii. ; head of pre-raphaelitism, iv. ; master of contemplative landscape, v. ; work of, in first period, v. ; infinity of, i. , , iv. ; influence of yorkshire scenery upon, i. , iv. , , , ; his love of stones and rocks, iii. , iv. ; love of rounded hills, iv. ; master of the science of aspects, ; mystery of, i. , , , iv. , , v. ; painting of french and swiss landscape by, i. ; spirit of pines not entered into by, v. , ; flowers not often painted by, v. ; painting of distant expanses of water by, i. ; rendering of italian character by, i. ; skies of, i. , , , ; storm-clouds, how regarded by, v. ; study of clouds, by, i. , , , , , v. ; study of old masters by, iii. ; sketches of, v. , , , , (note), v. preface, v. vi.; system of tone of, i. , , ; treatment of foregrounds by, i. , v. ; treatment of picturesque by, iv. - ; treatment of snow mountains by, iv. ; memoranda of, v. , , (note); topography of, iv. - ; unity of, i. ; views of italy by, i. ; memory of, iv. , ; ideal conception of, i. ; endurance of ugliness by, v. , ; inventive imagination of, dependent on mental vision and truth of impression, iv. - , ; lessons to be learnt from liber studiorum, v. , ; life of, v. ; death of, v. . pictures referred to-- Æsacus and hesparie, i. ; acro-corinth, i. ; alnwick, i. , ; ancient italy, i. ; apollo and sibyl, v. ; arona with st. gothard, i. ; assos, i. (note); avenue of brienne, i. ; babylon, i. ; bamborough, i. ; bay of baiæ, i. , , iii. , v. , ; bedford, i. ; ben lomond, i. ; bethlehem, i. ; bingen, i. ; blenheim, i. ; bolton abbey, i. , iii. , iv. ; bonneville in savoy, i. ; boy of egremont, i. ; buckfastleigh, i. , iv. ; building of carthage, i. , , , , , iii. ; burning of parliament house, i. ; cærlaverock, i. (note), ; calais, i. ; calder bridge, i. ; caldron snout fall, i. ; caliglula's bridge, i. , v. ; canale della guidecco, i. ; carew castle, i. ; carthages, the two, i. , v. ; castle upnor, i. , ; chain bridge over the tees, i. , ; château de la belle gabrielle, i. , v. ; château of prince albert, i. ; cicero's villa, i. , , , ; cliff from bolton abbey, iii. ; constance, i. ; corinth, i. ; coventry, i. , ; cowes, i. , , ; crossing the brook, i. , , ; daphne and leucippus, i. , (note), , , iv. , v. ; dartmouth (river scenery), i. ; dartmouth cove (southern coast), i. ; dazio grande, i. ; departure of regulus, i. ; devenport, with the dockyards, i. (note), ; dragon of the hesperides, iii. , v. , ; drawing of the spot where harold fell, ii. ; drawings of the rivers of france, i. ; drawings of swiss scenery, i. ; drawing of the chain of the alps of the superga above turin, iii. ; drawing of mount pilate, iv. , ; dudley, i. (note), ; durham, i. , ; dunbar, i. ; dunstaffnage, i. , ; ely, i. ; eton college, i. ; faïdo, pass of, iv. , ; fall of carthage, i. , ; fall of schaffhausen, v. , (note); flight into egypt, i. ; fire at sea, v. (note); folkestone, i. , ; fort augustus, i. ; fountain of fallacy, i. ; fowey harbor, i. , , v. (note); florence, i. ; glencoe, i. ; goldau (a recent drawing) i. (note); goldau, i. , iv. , v. (note); golden bough, iv. ; gosport, i. ; great yarmouth, i. (note); hannibal passing the alps, i. ; hampton court, i. ; hero and leander, i. , , , , , v. (note); holy isle, iii. ; illustration to the antiquary, i. ; inverary, v. ; isola bella, iii. ; ivy bridge, i. , iii. ; jason, ii. ; juliet and her nurse, i. , (note), ; junction of the greta and tees, i. , iv. ; kenilworth, i. ; killie-crankie, i. ; kilgarren, i. ; kirby lonsdale churchyard, i. , , iv. , ; lancaster sands, i. ; land's end, i. (note), , , , ; laugharne, i. ; llanberis, i. , , v. (note) (english series); llanthony abbey, i. , (note), , , ; long ship's lighthouse, i. ; lowestoft, i. , , (note); lucerne, iv. ; "male bolge"(of the splugen and st. gothard), iv. ; malvern, i. ; marly, i. , ; mercury and argus, i. , , (note), , , , , , v. ; modern italy, i. , (note), iv. ; morecambe bay, i. ; mount lebanon, i. ; murano, view of, i. ; napoleon, i. , , , , , , , v. , (note); napoleon at st. helena, iv. ; narcissus and echo, v. ; nemi, i. ; nottingham, i. , , iv. ; oakhampton, i. , , , ; oberwesel, i. , ; orford, suffolk, i. ; ostend, i. ; palestrina, i. ; pas de calais, i. , ; penmaen mawr, i. ; picture of the deluge, i. ; pools of solomon, i. , , v. ; port ruysdael, i. ; pyramid of caius cestius, i. ; python, v. , ; rape of proserpine, i. ; rheinfels, v. (note); rhymer's glen, i. ; richmond (middlesex), i. ; richmond (yorkshire), i. , iv. , v. ; rome from the forum, i. , v. ; salisbury, v. ; saltash, i. , ; san benedetto, looking toward fusina, i. , , v. ; scarborough, iii. ; shores of wharfe, iv. ; shylock, i. , ; sketches in national gallery, v. , ; sketches in switzerland, i. ; slave ship, i. , (note), , , , , , ii. , iv. , v. , ; snowstorm, i. , , , v. (note); st. gothard, iv. , , ; st. herbert's isle, i. ; st. michael's mount, i. , ; stonehenge, i. , , v. (english series); study (block of gniess at chamouni), iii. ; study (pæstum) v. ; sun of venice going to sea, i. , ; swiss fribourg, iii. ; tantallon castle, i. ; tees (upper fall of), i. , , , iv. ; tees (lower fall of), i. , ; temptation on the mountain (illustration to milton), ii. ; temple of jupiter, i. , iii. ; temple of minerva, v. ; tenth plague of egypt, i. , v. (note), ; the old téméraire, i. , iv. , v. , ; tivoli, i. ; towers of héve, i. ; trafalgar, v. ; trematon castle, i. ; ulleswater, i. , , iv. ; ulysses and polypheme, iv. , v. (note); various vignettes, i. ; venices, i. , , v. , ; walhalla, i. (note); wall tower of a swiss town, iv. ; warwick, i. , ; waterloo, i. , ; whitby, iii. ; wilderness of engedi, i. (note), ; winchelsea (english series), i. (note), ; windsor, from eton, i. ; wycliffe, near rokeby, iv. . finden's bible series:-- babylon, i. ; bethlehem, i. ; mount lebanon, i. , v. ; sinai, v. ; pyramids of egypt, i. ; pool of solomon, i. , v. ; fifth plague of egypt, i. , v. . illustrations to campbell:-- hohenlinden, i. ; second vignette, i. ; the andes, i. ; vignette to the beech-tree's petition, i. ; vignette to last man, i. . illustrations to rogers' "italy:"-- amalfi, i. ; aosta, i. ; battle of marengo, i. , ; farewell, i. ; lake of albano, i. ; lake of como, i. ; lake of geneva, i. , ; lake of lucerne, i. , ; perugia, i. ; piacenza, i. , ; pæstum, i. , ; second vignette, i. , ; the great st. bernard, i. ; vignette to st. maurice, i. , (note), v. . illustrations to rogers' "poems:" bridge of sighs, i. ; datur hora quieti, i. , , v. ; garden opposite title-page, i. ; jacqueline, i. , ii. ; loch lomond, i. ; rialto, i. , ; sunset behind willows, i. ; sunrise, i. ; sunrise on the sea, i. , ; the alps at daybreak, i. , , , ; vignette to human life, i. ; vignette to slowly along the evening sky, i. ; vignette to the second part of jacqueline, ii. ; villa of galileo, i. ; voyage of columbus, i. , , ii. . illustrations to scott:-- armstrong's tower, i. ; chiefswood cottage, i. ; derwentwater, i. ; dryburgh, i. ; dunstaffnage, i. , ; glencoe, i. , ; loch archray, i. ; loch coriskin, i. , , iv. ; loch katrine, i. , ; melrose, i. ; skiddaw, i. , . liber studiorum:-- Æsacus and hesperie, i. , (note), ii. ; ben arthur, i. , iv. , ; blair athol, i. ; cephalus and procris, i. , (note), ii. , , iii. , v. ; chartreuse, i. , , iii. ; chepstow, v. ; domestic subjects of l. s., i. ; dunstan borough, v. ; foliage of l. s., i. ; garden of hesperides, iii. , v. ; gate of winchelsea wall, v. ; raglan, v. ; rape of europa, v. ; via mala, v. (note), iv. ; isis, v. , ; hedging and ditching, i. , , v. ; jason, i. , ii. , , iii. ; juvenile tricks, i. ; lauffenbourg, i. , iii. , v. ; little devil's bridge, i. , iv. ; lianberis, i. ; mer de glace, i. , , iv. ; mill near grande chartreuse, iv. , v. ; morpeth tower, v. ; mont st. gothard, i. , (note); peat bog, iii. , v. ; rivaulx choir, v. ; rizpah, i. , iii. , iv. , v. , ; solway moss, iii. ; source of avernon, iv. , v. ; study of the lock, iv. , v. ; young anglers, v. ; water mill, v. . rivers of france, i. ; amboise, i. , ; amboise (the château), i. ; beaugency, i. ; blois, i. ; blois (château de), i. , , ; caudebec, i. , , ; château gaillard, i. ; clairmont, i. , ; confluence of the seine and marne, i. ; drawings of, i. ; havre, i. ; honfleur, i. ; jumièges, i. , ; la chaise de gargantua, i. ; loire, i. ; mantes, i. ; mauves, i. ; montjan, i. ; orleans, i. ; quilleboeuf, i. , ; reitz, near saumur, v. , ; rouen, i. , v. ; rouen, from st. catherine's hill, i. , ; st. denis, i. , ; st. julien, i. , ; the lantern of st. cloud, i. ; troyes, i. ; tours, i. , ; vernon, i. . yorkshire series:-- aske hall, i. , v. ; brignall church, i. ; hardraw fall, iv. ; ingleborough, iv. ; greta, iv. , ; junction of the greta and tees, i. , , iv. ; kirkby lonsdale, i. , , iv. , ; richmond, i. , iv. , v. ; richmond castle, iii. ; tees (upper fall of), i. , , , iv. ; zurich, i. . uccello, paul, battle of sant' egidio, national gallery, v. , . uwin's vineyard scene in the south of france, ii. . vandevelde, reflection of, i. ; waves of, iii. ; vessels becalmed, no. , dulwich gallery, i. . vandyke, flowers of, v. ; delicacy of, v. (note). pictures-- portrait of king charles' children, v. ; the knight, v. (note). veronese, paul, chiaroscuro of, iii. , iv. , ; color in the shadows of, iv. ; delicacy of, iii. ; influence of hills upon, iv. ; love of physical beauty, iii. ; mystery about the pencilling of, iv. ; no sympathy with the tragedy and horror of the world, iv. ; sincerity of manner, iii. ; symbolism of, iii. ; treatment of the open sky, ii. ; tree drawing of, v. ; foreground of, v. ; religion of, (love casting out fear), v. ; animal painting, compared with landseer's, ii. ; pictures-- entombment, ii. ; magdalen washing the feet of christ, iii. , ; marriage in cana, iii. , iv. , v. , , ; two fresco figures at venice, i. ; supper at emmaus, iii. , ; queen of sheba, v. preface, vii. ; family of veronese, v. , ; holy family v. ; veronica, v. ; europa, v. , ; triumph of venice, v. ; family of darius, national gallery, v. . vinci, leonardo da, chiaroscuro of, iv. (and note); completion of detail by, iii. ; drapery of, iv. ; finish of, ii. , iii. ; hatred of fog, iv. ; introduction of portraiture in pictures, ii. ; influence of hills upon, iv. ; landscape of, i. ; love of beauty, iii. ; rocks of, iii. ; system of contrast of masses, iv. . pictures-- angel, ii. ; cenacolo, ii. ; holy family (louvre), i. ; last supper, iii. , ; st. anne, iv. , iii. . wallis, snow scenes of, i. (note). wouvermans, leaves of, v. ; landscape of, v. ; vulgarity of, v. , ; contrast between, and angelico, v. . pictures referred to-- landscape, with hunting party, v. ; battle piece, with bridge, v. . zeuxis, picture of centaur, v. . topical index. abstraction necessary, when realization is impossible, ii. . Æsthetic faculty, defined, ii. , . age, the present, mechanical impulse of, iii. , ; spirit of, iii. , ; our greatest men nearly all unbelievers, iii. , ; levity of, ii. . see modern. aiguilles, structure of, iv. ; contours of, iv. , ; curved cleavage of, iv. , , , - ; angular forms of, iv. , ; how influencing the earth, iv. ; dez charmoz, sharp horn of, iv. ; blaitière, curves of, iv. - ; of chamouni, sculpture of, , . see local index. alps, tyrolese, v. ; aërialness of, at great distances, i. ; gentians on, v. ; roses on, v. ; pines on, iv. , v. ; ancient glaciers of, iv. ; color of, iii. ; influence of, on swiss character, iv. , v. ; general structure of, iv. ; higher, impossible to paint snow mountains, iv. ; precipices of, iv. , ; suggestive of paradise, iv. ; sunrise in, i. . see mountains. anatomy, development of, admissible only in subordination to laws of beauty, ii. ; not to be substituted for apparent aspect, iv. . animals, proportion in, ii. (note), ; moral functions of, ii. , , ; lower ideal form of, ii. ; noble qualities of, v. . animal painting, of the dutch school, v. , ; of the venetian, , ; of the moderns, v. , . architecture, influence of bad, on artists, iii. ; value of signs of age in, i. , ; importance of chiaroscuro in rendering of, i. , ; early painting of, how deficient, i. ; how regarded by the author, v. ; renaissance chiefly expressive of pride, iii. ; lower than sculpture or painting, the idea of utility being dominant, ii. (note); and trees, coincidences between, v. ; of nuremberg, v. ; venetian, v. . art, definition of greatness in, i. , , iii. - , ; imitative, noble or ignoble according to its purpose, iii. , ; practical, ii. ; theoretic, ii. ; profane, iii. ; ideality of, ii. ; in what sense useful, ii. , ; perfection of, in what consisting, i. ; first aim of, the representation of facts, i. , ; highest aim of, the expression of thought, i. , ; truth, a just criterion of, i. ; doubt as to the use of, iii. ; laws of, how regarded by imaginative and unimaginative painters, ii. ; neglect of works of, ii. , (note); nobleness of, in what consisting, iii. , ; noble, right minuteness of, v. ; meaning of "style," different selection of particular truths to be indicated, i. ; bad, evil effects of the habitual use of, iv. ; love of, the only effective patronage, ii. ; sacred, general influence of, iii. ; misuse of, in religious services, iii. , ; religious, of italy, abstract, iii. , , v. ; religious, of venice, naturalistic, iii. , v. , ; christian, divisible into two great masses, symbolic and imitative, iii. ; christian, opposed to pagan, ii. , ; "christian," denied, the flesh, v. ; high, consists in the truthful presentation of the maximum of beauty, iii. ; high, modern ideal of, iii. ; highest, purely imaginative, iii. ; highest, dependent on sympathy, iv. ; highest, chiaroscuro necessary in, i. ; modern, fatal influence of the sensuality of, iii. ; allegorical, iii. ; essays on, by the author, distinctive character of, v. preface, x. v. ; influence of climate on, v. ; influence of scenery on, v. , , , ; venetian, v. , , ; classical defined, v. ; angelican, iii. - , v. ; greek, v. ; dutch, v. . see painting, painters. art, great, definition of, i. - , iii. , , ; characteristics of, i. , iii. - , , v. , , , ; not to be taught, iii. , ; the expression of the spirits of great men, iii. , v. ; represents something seen and believed, iii. ; sets forth the true nature and authority of freedom, v. ; relation of, to man, v. . see style. artists, danger of spirit of choice to, ii. ; right aim of, i. , , iii. ; their duty in youth, to begin as patient realists, i. ; choice of subject by, ii. , iii. , , iii. , iv. , iv. (note); should paint what they love, ii. ; mainly divided into two classes, i. , ; necessity of singleness of aim in, i. , , v. . see painters. artists, great, characteristics of, i. , , , ii. , iii. - ; forgetfulness of self in, i. ; proof of real imagination in, i. ; calmness of, v. ; delight in symbolism, iii. ; qualities of, v. ; keenness of sight in, iv. ; sympathy of, with nature, ii. , iii. , iv. , , ii. ; with humanity, iv. , , , iii. , ii. , v. , ; live wholly in their own age, iii. . artists, religious, ii. , , , , iii. - , iv. ; imaginative and unimaginative, distinction between, ii. , ; history of the bible has yet to be painted, iii. . asceticism, ii. , three forms of, v. . association, of two kinds, accidental and rational, ii. , ; unconscious influence of, ii. ; power of, iii. , ii. , v. ; charm of, by whom felt, iii. , ; influence of, on enjoyment of landscape, iii. . bacon, master of the science of essence, iii. ; compared with pascal, iv. . banks, formation of, iv. ; curvature of, iv. , , ; luxuriant vegetation of, iv. . beauty, definition of the term (pleasure-giving) i. , ; sensations of, instinctive, i. , ii. , , ; vital, ii. , , ; typical, ii. , , , , ; error of confounding truth with, iii. (note); of truths of species, i. ; of curvature, ii. , iv. , , , , , ; love of, in great artists, iii. , v. ; moderation essential to, ii. ; ideas of, essentially moral, ii. , ; repose, an unfailing test of, ii. , ; truth the basis of, i. , ii. ; how far demonstrable by reason, ii. ; ideas of, exalt and purify the human mind, i. , ; not dependent on the association of ideas, ii. , ; the substitution of, for truth, erroneous, iii. , ; sense of, how degraded and how exalted, ii. , , v. ; of the sea, v. ; influence of moral expression on, ii. , ; lovers of, how classed, iii. ; consequences of the reckless pursuit of, iii. ; modern destruction of, v. ; renaissance, principles of, to what tending, iii. ; false opinions respecting, ii. , , , ; arising out of sacrifice, v. ; sense of, often wanting in good men, ii. , ; false use of the word, ii. ; not necessary to our being, ii. ; unselfish sympathy necessary to sensations of, ii. , ; degrees of love for, in various authors, iii. , ; and sublimity, connection between, i. ; custom not destructive to, ii. ; natural, scott's love of, iii. , ; natural, lessons to be learnt from investigation of, v. ; natural, when terrible, v. ; of animal form, depends on moral expression, ii. , ; alison's false theory of association, ii. , ; sense of, how exalted by affection, ii. ; abstract of form, how dependent on curvature, iv. , ; ideal, definition of, i. ; physical, iii. ; physical, venetian love of, v. ; vulgar pursuit of, iii. . beauty, human, ancient, and mediæval admiration of, iii. , ; venetian painting of, v. ; consummation not found on earth, ii. ; greek love of, iii. , , ; culture of, in the middle ages, iii. . beauty of nature, character of minds destitute of the love of, iii. . benevolence, wise purchase the truest, v. (note). browning, quotation on renaissance spirit, iv. . buds, typical of youth, iii. ; difference in growth of, v. ; formation and position of, v. , , , ; of horse-chestnut, v. ; accommodating spirit of, v. ; true beauty of, from what arising, v. ; sections and drawings of, v. , , . business, proper, of man in the world, iii. , . byron, use of details by, iii. ; character of works of, iii. , , , , , i. (note); love of nature, iii. , , , ; use of color by, iii. ; death, without hope, v. . carlyle, iii. ; on clouds, v. . cattle, painting of, v. , . change, influence of, on our senses, ii. ; love of, an imperfection of our nature, ii. , . charity, the perfection of the theoretic faculty, ii. ; exercise of, its influence on human features, ii. . chasteness, meaning of the term, ii. . chiaroscuro, truth of, i. - ; contrasts of systems of, iv. ; great principles of, i. , ; necessity of, in high art, i. ; necessity of, in expressing form, i. , ; nature's contrasted with man's, i. ; natural value of, i. ; rank of deceptive effects in, i. ; fatal effects of, on art, iii. (note); treatment of, by venetian colorists, iv. , . chiaroscurists, advantages of, over colorists, iv. . choice, spirit of, dangerous, ii. , iv. (note); of love, in rightly tempered men, ii. ; importance of sincerity of, iii. , ; effect of, on painters, iii. ; of subject, when sincere, a criterion of the rank of painters, iii. ; difference of, between great and inferior artists, iii. ; of subject, painters should paint what they love, ii. ; error of pre-raphaelites, iv. . city and country life, influence of, v. , . classical landscape, iii. , ; its features described, v. ; spirit, its resolute degradation of the lower orders, v. (note). clay, consummation of, v. . cliffs, formation of, iv. , , , ; precipitousness of, iv. , ; alpine, stability of, iv. ; alpine, sublimity of, iv. , , v. ; common mistake respecting structure of, iv. . see mountains. clouds, questions respecting, v. - , - ; truth of, i. , ; light and shade in, iv. ; scriptural account of their creation, iv. - ; modern love of, iii. , ; classical love of, iii. ; connected with, not distinct from the sky, i. ; balancings, v. - ; high, at sunset, i. ; massive and striated, v. ; method of drawing, v. (note); perspective of, v. - ; effects of moisture, heat, and cold, on formation of, v. ; "cap-cloud," v. ; "lee-side cloud," v. , ; mountain drift, v. , ; variety of, at different elevations, i. ; brighter than whitest paper, iv. ; never absent from a landscape, iv. ; supremacy of, in mountain scenery, iv. ; level, early painters' love of, iii. ; love of, by greek poets, iii. ; as represented by aristophanes, iii. , v. ; dante's dislike of, iii. ; wave-band, sign of, in thirteenth century art, iii. ; cirrus, or upper region, extent of, i. , v. ; color of, i. , v. , , ; purity of color of, i. ; sharpness of edge of, i. ; symmetrical arrangement of, i. ; multitude of, i. , v. , ; stratus, or central region, extent of, i. ; connection of with mountains, v. ; majesty of, v. ; arrangement of, i. ; curved outlines of, i. , ; perfection and variety of, i. , v. , ; rain, regions of, definite forms in, i. , v. - ; difference in colors of, i. , v. ; pure blue sky, only seen through the, i. ; heights of, v. (note); functions of, v. , ; condition of, on yorkshire hills, v. ; influence of, on high imagination, v. . color, truth of, i. - , , ; purity of, means purity of colored substance, ii. , ; purity of in early italian masters, ii. ; the purifier of material beauty, v. (note); associated with purity, life, and light, iv. , , v. ; contrasts of, iv. ; gradation of, ii. , ; dulness of, a sign of dissolution, iv. ; effect of distance on, iv. , ; effect of gradation in, iv. ; noble, found in things innocent and precious, iv. ; pale, are deepest and fullest in shade, iv. ; sanctity of, iv. , v. (note), , ; true dignity of, v. , (note), effect of falsifying, v. (note); venetian love of, v. ; rewards of veracity in, v. (note); of sunshine, contrasted with sun color, v. , ; perfect, the rarest art power, v. (note); pleasure derived from, on what depending, i. ; chord of perfect, iii. , v. , , iii. , iv. ; anything described by words as visible, may be rendered by, iii. ; variety of, in nature, i. , ; no brown in nature, iii. ; without texture, veronese and landseer, ii. ; without form, ii. ; faithful study of, gives power over form, iv. , v. (note); perception of form not dependent on, ii. , v. (note); effect of atmosphere on distant, i. , iv. ; less important than light, shade, and form, i. , , v. (note); sombreness of modern, iii. , ; sentimental falsification of, iii. ; arrangement of, by the false idealist and naturalist, iii. ; done best by instinct (hindoos and chinese), iii. ; use of full, in shadow, very lovely, iv. , v. ; ground, use of, by great painters, v. , ; nobleness of painting dependent on, v. ; a type of love, v. , (note); use of, shadowless in representing the supernatural, ii. ; right splendor of in flesh painting, ii. ; delicate, of the idealists, ii. ; local, how far expressible in black and white, i. ; natural, compared with artificial, i. ; destroyed by general purple tone, i. ; manifestation of, in sunsets, i. , ; quality of, owes part of its brightness to light, i. , ; natural, impossibility of imitating (too intense), i. , ; imitative, how much truth necessary to, i. ; effect of association upon, i. ; delight of great men in, iii. ; cause of practical failures, three centuries' want of practice, iii. ; mediæval love of, iii. ; greek sense of, iii. ; brightness of, when wet, iv. ; difference of, in mountain and lowland scenery, iv. , ; great power in, sign of art intellect, iv. ; why apparently unnatural when true, iv. , v. ; of near objects, may be represented exactly, iv. ; of the earth, iv. ; in stones, iv. , ; in crystalline rocks and marbles, iv. , , , , ; of mosses, iv. , v. ; solemn moderation in, ii. , ; of mountains, i. , , , iv. ; on buildings, improved by age, i. ; of the open sky, i. ; of clouds, v. , , , ; reflected, on water, i. , ; of form, i. ; of old masters, i. ; of the apennines, contrasted with the alps, iii. ; of water, i. ; the painter's own proper work, v. . colorists, contrasts of, iv. ; advantages of, over chiaroscurists, iv. - ; great, use of green by, i. (note); seven supreme, v. (note); great, painting of sun color, v. , . completion, in art, when professed, should be rigorously exacted, ii. ; of portraiture, iii. ; on what depending, v. ; meaning of, by a good painter, v. , ; right, v. (note); abused, v. . composers, great, habit of regarding relations of things, v. , ; determinate sketches of, v. . composition, definition of, v. ; use of simple conception in, ii. ; harmony of, with true rules, ii. , iii. ; transgression of laws allowable in, iv. ; true not produced by rules, v. ; necessity of every part in, v. ; true, the noblest condition of art, v. ; law of help in, v. , ; great, has always a leading purpose, v. ; law of perfectness, v. . conception, simple, nature of, ii. ; concentrates on one idea the pleasure of many, ii. ; how connected with verbal knowledge, ii. ; of more than creature, impossible to creature, ii. , , , ; of superhuman form, ii. ; use of, in composition, ii. ; ambiguity of things beautiful changes by its indistinctness, ii. ; partial, is none, v. . conscience, power of association upon, ii. . consistence, is life, v. ; example of its power, jewels out of mud, v. . crests, mountain, formation of, i. , iv. , ; forms of, i. , iv. - ; beauty of, depends on radiant curvature, iv. , ; sometimes like flakes of fire, i. . crimean war, iii. - . criticism, importance of truth in, i. ; qualifications necessary to good, i. , iii. ; technical knowledge necessary to, i. ; how it may be made useful, iii. ; judicious, i. , ; modern, general incapability and inconsistency of, i. ; general, iii. ; when to be contemned, i. ; true, iii. . curvature, a law of nature, ii. , iv. ; two sorts of, finite and infinite, iv. ; infinity of, in nature, ii. , iv. ; curves arranged to set off each other, iv. ; beauty of, ii. , iv. , , ; beauty of moderation in, ii. ; value of apparent proportion in, ii. , ; laws of, in trees, i. ; in running streams and torrents, i. ; approximation of, to right lines, adds beauty, iv. , ; in mountains, produced by rough fracture, iv. ; beauty of catenary, iv. ; radiating, the most beautiful, iv. (note); measurement of, iv. (note); of beds of slaty crystallines, wavy, iv. ; of mountains, iv. , , ; of aiguilles, iv. , ; in stems, v. , ; in branches, v. , ; loss of, in engraving, v. (note). custom, power of, ii. , , ; twofold operation, deadens sensation, confirms affection, ii. , , ; wordsworth on, iii. . dante, one of the creative order of poets, iii. ; and shakspere, difference between, iv. (note); compared with scott, iii. ; demons of, v. ; statement of doctrine by (damnation of heathen), v. . dante's self-command, iii. ; clear perception, iii. ; keen perception of color, iii. , , , , ; definiteness of his inferno, compared with indefiniteness of milton's, iii. ; ideal landscape, iii. ; poem, formality of landscape in, iii. , ; description of flame, ii. ; description of a wood, iii. ; makes mountains abodes of misery, iii. , and is insensible to their broad forms, iii. ; conception of rocks, iii. , ; declaration of mediæval faith, iii. ; delight in white clearness of sky, iii. ; idea of the highest art, reproduction of the aspects of things past and present, iii. ; idea of happiness, iii. ; representation of love, iii. ; hatred of rocks, iii. , ; repugnance to mountains, iii. ; symbolic use of color in hewn rock, iv. (note); carefulness in defining color, iii. ; vision of leah and rachel, iii. ; use of the rush, as emblem of humility, iii. ; love of the definite, iii. , , ; love of light, iii. , ; spirit of treachery, v. ; geryon, spirit of fraud, v. ; universality, straw street and highest heavens, iv. . david, king, true gentleman, v. . dead, the, can receive our honor, not our gratitude, i. . death, fear of, v. , ; conquest over, v. ; vulgarity, a form of, v. ; english and european, v. ; following the vain pursuit of wealth, power, and beauty (venice), v. ; mingled with beauty, iv. ; of moses and aaron, iv. - ; contrasted with life, ii. . débris, curvature of, iv. , , ; lines of projection produced by, iv. ; various angles of, iv. ; effect of gentle streams on, iv. ; torrents, how destructive to, iv. . deception of the senses, not the end of art, i. , , . decision, love of, leads to vicious speed, i. . decoration, architectural effects of light on, i. ; use of, in representing the supernatural, ii. . deity, revelation of, iv. ; presence of, manifested in the clouds, iv. , ; modes of manifestation of, in the bible, iv. ; his mountain building, iv. ; warning of, in the mountains, iv. ; art representations of, meant only as symbolic, iii. ; purity, expressive of the presence and energy of, ii. , ; finish of the works of, ii. , ; communication of truth to men, ii. ; greek idea of, iii. , ; modern idea of, as separated from the life of nature, iii. ; presence of, in nature, i. , iii. , , v. , ; manifestation of the, in nature, i. , iii. ; love of nature develops a sense of the presence and power of, iii. , ; directest manifestation of the, v. . deflection, law of, in trees, v. , . delavigne, casimir, "la toilette de constance," iii. . details, use of variable and invariable, not the criterion of poetry, iii. - ; byron's use of, iii. ; careful drawing of, by great men, iii. ; use of light in understanding architectural, i. ; swift execution secures perfection of, i. ; false and vicious treatment of, by old masters, i. . devil, the, held by some to be the world's lawgiver, v. . "discord," in homer, spenser, and turner, v. - . distance, effect of, on our perception of objects, i. , , ; must sometimes be sacrificed to foreground, i. ; effect of, on pictorial color, iv. ; expression of infinity in, ii. ; extreme, characterized by sharp outlines, i. ; effect of, on mountains, i. , ; early masters put details into, i. . dog, as painted by various masters, v. , . dragon, of scripture, v. ; of the greeks, v. , ; of dante, v. ; of turner, v. , - , , , . drawing, noble, mystery and characteristic of, iv. , , , ; real power of, never confined to one subject, i. ; of mountain forms, i. , , iv. - , ; of clouds, v. (note), ; necessary to education, v. (note); figure, of turner, i. ; questions concerning, v. ; landscape of old and modern painters, iii. ; of artists and architects, difference between, i. ; distinctness of, iii. ; of swiss pines, iv. ; modern, of snowy mountains, unintelligible, i. ; as taught in encyclopædia britannica, iv. ; inviolable canon of, "draw only what you see," iv. ; should be taught every child, iii. . earth, general structure of, i. ; laws of organization of, important in art, i. ; past and present condition of, iv. , ; colors of, iv. ; the whole not habitable, iv. , ; noblest scenes of, seen by few, i. ; man's appointed work on, v. ; preparation of, for man, v. ; sculpturing of the dry land, iv. . economy of labor, v. . education, value of, iii. ; its good and bad effect on enjoyment of beauty, iii. ; of turner, iii. , v. - ; of scott, iii. ; of giorgione, v. , , ; of durer, v. , ; of salvator, v. , ; generally unfavorable to love of nature, iii. ; modern, corrupts taste, iii. ; logical, a great want of the time, iv. ; love of picturesque, a means of, iv. ; what to be taught in, v. (note); what it can do, iii. ; can improve race, v. ; of persons of simple life, v. (note). emotions, noble and ignoble, iii. ; true, generally imaginative, ii. . enamel, various uses of the word, iii. - . energy, necessary to repose, ii. ; purity a type of, ii. ; how expressed by purity of matter, ii. ; expression of, in plants, a source of pleasure, ii. . english art culminated in the th century, iv. . engraving, influence of, i. ; system of landscape, i. , v. , , . evil, the indisputable fact, iv. ; captivity to, v. , ; contest with, v. ; conquered, v. ; recognition and conquest of, essential to highest art, v. - , ; war with, v. . exaggeration, laws and limits of, ii. - ; necessary on a diminished scale, ii. . excellence, meaning of the term, i. , (note); in language, what necessary to, i. ; the highest, cannot exist without obscurity, iv. ; passing public opinion no criterion of, i. , ; technical, superseding expression, iii. . execution, meaning of the term, i. ; three vices of, ii. (note); qualities of, i. , , (note); dependent upon knowledge of truth, i. ; essential to drawing of water, i. ; swift, details best given by, i. ; legitimate sources of pleasures in, i. , ; mystery of, necessary in rendering space of nature, i. ; rude, when the source of noble pleasure, ii. (note); determinate, v. , . expression, three distinct schools of--great, pseudo, and grotesque-expressional, iv. ; subtle, how reached, iv. ; influence of moral in animal form, ii. , ; perfect, never got without color, iv. (note); unison of expressional, with technical power, where found, iii. ; superseded by technical excellence, iii. ; of inspiration, ii. ; of superhuman character, how attained, ii. . eye, focus of, truth of space dependent on, i. - ; what seen by the cultivated, iv. ; what seen by the uncultivated, iv. ; when necessary to change focus of, i. , ; keenness of an artist's, how tested, iv. . faculty theoretic, definition of, ii. , . faculty Æsthetic, definition of, ii. , . faith, derivation of the word, v. ; developed by love of nature, iii. ; want of, iii. - ; our ideas of greek, iii. ; of the scotch farmer, iii. ; source and substance of all human deed, v. ; want of, in classical art, v. ; right, looks to present work, v. ; brave and hopeful, accompanies intellectual power, v. ; tranquillity of, before the reformation, v. ; want of, in dutch artists, v. ; of venetians, v. ; how shown in early christian art, iii. - , v. ; in god, in nature, nearly extinct, iii. . fallacy, pathetic defined, iii. ; not admitted by greatest poets, iii. ; pope's, iii. ; emotional temperament liable to, iii. ; instances illustrating the, iii. , ; characteristic of modern painting, iii. . fancy, functions of, ii. ; never serious, ii. ; distinction between imagination and, ii. - ; restlessness of, ii. ; morbid or nervous, ii. . fear, destructive of ideal character, ii. ; distinguished from awe, ii. ; expressions of, only sought by impious painters, ii. ; holy, distinct from human terror, ii. . ferocity, always joined with fear, ii. ; destructive of ideal character, ii. . field sports, v. . fields. see grass. finish, two kinds of--fallacious and faithful, iii. ; difference between english and continental, iii. , ; human often destroys nature's, iii. ; nature's, of rock, iii. ; of outline, iii. ; vain, useless conveying additional facts, iii. , , v. , (note); in landscape foregrounds, i. ; mysteriousness of, i. ; esteemed essential by great masters, ii. , v. , (note); infinite in god's work, ii. ; how right and how wrong, i. - , iii. ; of tree stems, iii. (plate). firmament, definition of, iv. , v. . flowers, mediæval love of, iii. ; mountain variety of, iv. ; typical of the passing and the excellence of human life, iii. ; sympathy with, ii. , v. ; no sublimity in, v. ; alpine, v. ; neglected by the great painters, v. ; two chief peculiarities, v. , ; beauty of, on what depending, v. (note). foam, two conditions of, i. ; difficulty of representing, i, ; appearance of, at schaffhausen, i. ; sea, how different from the "yeast" of a tempest, i. (note). foliage, an element of mountain glory, iv. ; unity, variety, and regularity of, , ; as painted on the continent, i. ; and by pre-raphaelites, i. ; study of, by old masters, i. . forbes, professor, description of mountains, quoted, iv. , . foreground, finer truths of, the peculiar business of a master, i. ; lesson to be received from all, i. ; mountain attractiveness of, i. ; of ancient masters, i. , ; increased loveliness of, when wet, iv. ; turner's, i. , ; must sometimes be sacrificed to distance, i. . form, chiaroscuro necessary to the perception of, i. , ; more important than color, i. - , ii. , iv. , v. (note); multiplicity of, in mountains, i. ; animal, typical representation of, ii. , ; without color, ii. ; without texture, veronese and landseer, ii. ; natural curvature of, ii. , ; animal beauty of, depends on moral expression, ii. ; what necessary to the sense of beauty in organic, ii. , ; ideal, ii. , iii. ; animal and vegetable, ii. ; ideal, destroyed by pride, sensuality, etc., ii. , ; rendering of, by photography, iv. ; mountain, iv. , , - ; natural, variety of, inconceivable, iv. ; of aiguilles, how produced, iv. ; beauty of, dependent upon curvature, ii. . french art culminated in th century, iv. . fuseli, quotations from, i. , ii. , . genius, unrecognized at the time, i. ; not the result of education, iii. ; power of, to teach, i. . gentility, an english idea, iv. . gentleman, the characteristics of a, sensibility, sympathy, courage, v. - . german religious art, "piety" of, iii. . glacier, description, iv. ; action of, iv. ; gradual softener of mountain form, iv. ; non-rigidity of, v. . gloom, of savoyard peasant, iv. ; appearance of, in southern slope of alps, iv. . see mountain. gneiss, nature of, iv. , ; color of, iv. ; matterhorn composed of, iv. . god. see deity. gotthelf, works of, iv. , v. . gracefulness, of poplar grove, iii. ; of willow, v. ; of venetian art, . gradation, suggestive of infinity, ii. ; constant in nature, ii. ; necessary to give facts of form and distance, i. ; progress of the eye shown in sensibility to effects (turner's swiss towers), iv. ; of light, turnerian mystery, iv. ; in a rose, iv. . granite, qualities of, iv. , ; color of, iv. . grass, uses of, iii. ; type of humility and cheerfulness, and of the passing away of human life, iii. , , v. ; greek mode of regarding as opposed to mediæval, iii. , ; enamelled, dante's "green enamel" description of, iii. , ; damp, greek love of, iii. ; careful drawing of, by venetians, iii. ; mystery in, i. , iii. ; man's love of, iii. ; first element of lovely landscape, iii. . gratitude, from what arising, ii. ; a duty to the living can't be paid to the dead, i. . greatness, tests of, i. , iii. , , v. . see art, artists. greek, conception of godhead, iii. , ; art, spirit of, v. , ; poetry, purpose of, the victory over fate, sin, and death, v. , ; religion, the manful struggle with evil, v. - ; ideas of truthfulness, v. , ; mythology, v. , , , ; distrust of nature, v. ; culture of human beauty, iii. , , , ; landscape, composed of a fountain, meadow, and grove, iii. ; belief in the presence of deity in nature, iii. - ; absence of feeling for the picturesque, iii. ; belief in particular gods ruling the elements, iii. - ; and mediæval feeling, difference between, iii. ; ideal of god, ii. ; faith, compared with that of an old scotch farmer, iii. ; feeling about waves, iii. ; indifference to color, iii. , ; life, healthy, iii. ; formalism of ornament, iii. ; not visionary, iii. ; delight in trees, meadows, gardens, caves, poplars, flat country, and damp grass, iii. - , ; preference of utility to beauty, iii. , ; love of order, iii. , ; coins, v. ; description of clouds, v. - ; design, v. . grief, a noble emotion, ii. , iii. . grotesque, third form of the ideal, iii. - ; three kinds of, iii. ; noble, iii. , ; true and false (mediæval and classical) griffins, iii. - ; spenser's description of envy, iii. ; how fitted for illumination, iii. ; modern, iv. - . grotesque expressional, iv. ; modern example of, "gen. fèvrier turned traitor," iv. . habit, errors induced by; embarrasses the judgment, ii. ; modifying effects of, ii. ; power of, how typified, iv. . see custom. heavens, fitfulness and infinity of, i. ; means in scripture, clouds, iv. ; relation of, to our globe, iv. , v. ; presence of god in, iv. ; hebrew, greek, and latin names for, v. - ; meaning of, in th psalm, v. . help, habit of, the best part of education, v. (note). helpfulness, law of, v. - ; of inventive power, v. . see consistence. homer, a type of the greek mind, iii. ; poetical truth of, iii. ; idea of the sea-power, iii. ; intense realism, iii. ; conception of rocks, iii. , - ; pleasure in woody-scenery, iii. , ; love of aspens, iii. , ; love of symmetry, iii. ; pleasure in utility, iii. , , ; ideal of landscape, iii. - ; feelings traceable in his allusion to flowers, iii. ; michael angelo compared to, by reynolds, iii. ; poetry of, v. ; iliad and odyssey of, v. , , ; his "discord," v. ; the victory over fate, sin, and death, v. ; heroic spirit of, v. , ; pride of, v. ; faith of, v. . hooker, his definition of a law, ii. ; referred to, ii. , , ; quotation from, on divine unity, ii. ; quotation on exactness of nature, ii. . horse, greek and roman treatment of, v. ; vandyke, first painter of, v. . humility, means a right estimate of one's own powers, iii. ; how symbolized by dante, iii. ; a test of greatness, iii. ; inculcated by science, iii. ; necessity of, to enjoyment of nature, iii. , iv. ; grass, a type of, iii. , , v. ; of inventive power, v. ; distinguishing mark between the christian and pagan spirit, iii. . ideal, definition of the word, i. ; its two senses referring to imagination or to perfection of type, ii. , ; how to be attained, i. ; form in lower animals, ii. ; form in plants, ii. ; of form to be preserved in art by exhibition of individuality, ii. , ; the bodily, effect of intellect and moral feelings on, ii. - ; form, of what variety susceptible, ii. ; of human form, destroyed by expression of corrupt passions, ii. , ; of humanity, how to be restored, ii. , , ; form to be obtained only by portraiture, ii. , iii. ; form, necessity of love to the perception of, ii. , ; pictures, interpreters of nature, iii. ; general, of classical landscape, v. ; modern pursuit of the, iii. , , ; angelican, iii. , , v. , i. ; false raphaelesque, iii. - . ideal, the true, faithful pursuit of, in the business of life, iii. ; relation of modern sculpturesque to the, iii. ; operation of, iii. ; three kinds of--purist, naturalist, and grotesque (see below), iii. . ideal, true grotesque, iii. - ; limited expression of, iii. , . ideal, true naturalist, character of, iii. - ; high, necessity of reality in, iii. , , ; its operation on historical art, iii. - ; in landscape produces the heroic, v. . ideal, true purist, iii. - . ideal, false, various forms of, iii. , iv. , (plates); results of pursuit of the, iii. , ; religious, iii. , ; well-executed, dulls perception of truth, iii. - ; profane, iii. - ; of the modern drama, iv. . ideal, superhuman, ii. , ; expression of, by utmost degree of human beauty, ii. . ideality, not confined to one age or condition, ii. - ; expressible in art, by abstraction of form, color, or texture, ii. . illumination, distinguished from painting by absence of shadow, iii. ; pigments used in, iii. ; decline of the art of, to what traceable, iv. ; of mss. in thirteenth century, illustrating treatment of natural form, iii. , , iv. ; of mss. in fifteenth century, illustrating treatment of landscape art, iii. ; of mss. in sixteenth century, illustrating idea of rocks, iii. ; of missals, illustrating later ideas of rocks and precipices, iv. ; of missal in british museum, illustrating german love of horror, iv. ; of mss. in fifteenth century, german coarseness contrasted with grace and tenderness of thirteenth century, iv. ; representation of sun in, iii. . imagination, threefold operation of, ii. ; why so called, iii. ; defined, ii. ; functions of, ii. , , , iii. , iv. ; how strengthened by feeding on truth and external nature, i. , ii. ; tests of presence of, ii. , , ; implies self-forgetfulness, i. ; importance of in art, iii. ; dugald stewart's definition of, ii. , ; conscious of no rules, ii. ; makes use of accurate knowledge, ii. , iii. ; noble only when truthful, ii. , iii. , iv. ; entirety of its grasp, ii. , , v. , ; its delight in the character of repose, ii. ; verity of, ii. , , , iii. , , ; power of, ii. , , iii. , , , , iv. , ; calmness essential to, v. ; always the seeing and asserting faculty, iii. ; charm of expectant, iv. ; pleasure derived from, how enhanced, iii. ; highest form of, ii. ; always right when left to itself, iii. ; how excited by mountain scenery, iv. , , v. , ; influence of clouds on, v. ; searching apprehension of, ii. , , , , , , iii. ; distinguished from fancy, ii. - , , ; signs of, in language, ii. ; how shown in sculpture, ii. - ; work of, distinguished from composition, ii. - ; what necessary to formation of, v. - . imagination, penetrative, ii. - ; associative, ii. - ; contemplative, ii. - . imitation, power of deceiving the senses, i. ; why reprehensible, i. , , , , , , iv. ; no picture good which deceives by, i. ; when right, in architectural ornament, ii. ; of flowers, v. ; was least valued in the thirteenth century, iii. , , ; general pleasure in deceptive effects of, iii. ; when made an end of art, i. , ; began, as a feature of art, about , iii. ; of what impossible, i. , , , , , ii. , iii. , , v. ; definition of ideas of, i. , . infinity, typical of redeemed life, iv. ; expressed in nature by curvature and gradation, ii. - ; of gradation, i. , , ii. ; of variety in nature's coloring, i. , , , iv. ; of nature's fulness, i. , v. ; of clouds, i. , , v. , ; of detail in mountains, i. , ; of curvature, i. , ii. , iv. - , v. ; expressed by distance, ii. ; not implied by vastness, ii. ; the cause of mystery, iv. ; of mountain vegetation, iv. ; absence of, in dutch work, v. ; general delight in, ii. - . inspiration, the expression of the mind of a god-made great man, iii. ; expression of, on human form, ii. ; as manifested in impious men, ii. , ; revelations made by, how communicable, ii. ; condition of prophetic, iii. . intellect, how affected by novelty, ii. ; how connected with pleasure derived from art, i. , ; its operation upon the features, ii. - ; connection of beauty with, i. ; how influenced by state of heart, ii. , ; affected by climatic influences, v. ; how rendered weak, v. , ; abuse of, v. (note); culture of, in mechanical arts, v. (note); comparison between angelico's, salvator's, durer's, and giorgione's, v. , ; beauty of animal form increased by expression of, ii. ; decay of, shown by love of the horrible, iv. ; popular appreciation of, i. ; influence of mountain scenery on, iv. , - ; condition of, in english and french nations, from thirteenth to sixteenth century, iv. ; great humility of, iii. ; seriousness of, iii. ; sensibility of, iii. , ; power of, in controlling emotions, iii. ; sees the whole truth, v. ; greater, not found in minds of purest religious temper, v. . intemperance, nature and application of the word, ii. , . invention, characteristic of great art, i. , iii. , ; greatest of art-qualities, v. ; instinctive character of, ii. , iii. , , v. , ; evil of misapplied, i. ; liberty of, with regard to proportion, ii. ; operation of (turnerian topography), iv. , , ; "never loses an accident," v. ; not the duty of young artists, i. ; verity of, v. ; absence of, how tested, v. ; grandeur of, v. ; material, v. - ; spiritual, v. - ; sacred, a passionate finding, v. ; of form, superior to invention of color, v. (note). joy, a noble emotion, ii. , iii. ; necessity of, to ideas of beauty, ii. , ; of youth, how typified in bud-structure and flowers, iii. , ; of humble life, v. . judgment, culture and regulation of, i. - , ii. - ; distinguished from taste, i. , ii. ; right moral, necessary to sense of beauty, ii. , ; right technical knowledge necessary to formation of, ii. ; equity of, illustrated by shakspere, iv. ; substitution of, for admiration, the result of unbelief, v. . keats, subdued by the feeling under which he writes, iii. ; description of waves by, iii. ; description of pine, v. ; coloring of, iii. ; no real sympathy with, but a dreamy love of nature, iii. , ; death of, v. ; his sense of beauty, v. . knowledge, connection of, with sight, i. ; connection of, with thought, i. ; pleasure in, iv. ; communication of, railways and telegraphs, iii. ; what worth teaching, iii. , v. ; influence of, on art, i. , , ; necessary to right judgment of art, i. , , ; feeling necessary to fulness of, v. ; highest form of, is trust, v. ; coldness of, v. ; how to be employed, v. ; refusal of, a form of asceticism, v. . labor, healthful and harmful, v. , . lands, classed by their produce and corresponding kinds of art, v. - . landscape, greek, iii. - , v. - ; effect of on greek mind, iv. ; of fifteenth century, iii. ; mediæval, iii. , , , iv. - ; choice of, influenced by national feeling, i. ; novelty of, iii. - ; love of, iii. , ; scott's view of, iii. ; of switzerland, iv. , (see mountains, alps, &c.); of southern italy, v. ; swiss moral influences of, contrasted with those of italy, iv. - ; colors of, iv. , ; lowland and mountain, iv. ; gradation in, i. ; natural, how modified by choice of inventive artists, iv. , (note); dependent for interest on relation to man, v. , ; how to manufacture one, iv. . landscape painters, aims of great, i. , iv. ; choice of truths by, i. - ; in seventeenth century, their vicious and false style, i. , , , ; german and flemish, i. ; characteristics of dutch, v. , ; vulgarity of dutch, v. ; english, i. , - . landscape painting, modern, i. ; four true and two spurious forms of, v. , ; true, dependent for its interest on sympathy with humanity (the "dark mirror"), v. - , iii. , , , , iv. ; early italian school of, i. - , , ii. ; emancipation of, from formalism, iii. ; venetian school of, expired , iii. , v. , ; supernatural, ii. - ; purist ideal of, iii. - ; delight in quaint, iii. ; preservation of symmetry in, by greatest men, ii. ; northern school of, iii. ; doubt as to the usefulness of, iii. , v. ; symbolic, iii. ; topographical, iv. ; dutch school of, i. ; modern love of darkness and dark color, the "service of clouds," iii. - . landscape painting, classical, v. - ; absence of faith in, v. ; taste and restraint of, v. ; ideal of, v. . landscape painting, dutch, v. - . landscape painting, heroic, v. - . landscape painting, pastoral, v. - . language of early italian pictures, i. ; of dutch pictures, i. ; distinction between ornamental and expressive, i. ; painting a, i. ; accuracy of, liable to misinterpretation, iii. . law, david's delight in the, v. ; helpfulness or consistence the highest, v. . laws of leaf-grouping, v. , , ; of ramification, v. - ; of vegetation, how expressed in early italian sculpture, v. . leaf, leaves, how treated by mediæval ornamental artists, iii. ; of american plane, iii. ; of alisma plantago, iii. ; of horse-chestnut, iii. ; growth of, iv. , v. ; laws of deflection, radiation, and succession, v. , ; ribs of, law of subordination in, iii. , v. ; lessons from, v. , , ; of the pine, v. ; of earth-plants, shapes of, v. - ; life of, v. , , , , ; structure of, - ; variety and symmetry of, i. , ii. , ; drawing of, by venetians, iii. ; drawing of, by dutch and by durer, v. , ; curvature in, iv. - ; mystery in, i. , ; strength and hope received from, ii. . leaflets, v. . liberty, self-restrained, ii. ; love of, in modern landscapes, iii. ; scott's love of, iii. ; religious, of venetians, v. ; individual helplessness (j. s. mill), v. . lichens. see moss. life, intensity of, proportionate to intensity of helpfulness, v. ; connection of color with, iv. , , v. ; man's, see man, mediæval. light, power, gradation, and preciousness of, iv. , , , , - ; mediæval love of, iii. ; value of, on what dependent, ii. ; how affected by color, i. , ; influence of, in architecture, i. ; table of gradation of different painters, iv. ; law of evanescence (turner), iv. ; expression of, by color, i. , ; with reference to tone, i. , ; a characteristic of the thirteenth century, iv. ; love of, ii. , , iii. ; a type of god, ii. ; purity of, i. , ii. ; how related to shadows, i. , ; hues of, i. , , ; high, how obtained, i. , , ii. ; high, use of gold in, i. ; white of idealists to be distinguished from golden of titian's school, ii. ; dutch, love of, v. , ; effects of, as given by turner, iv, . limestone, of what composed, i. ; color of, iii. - ; tables, iv. - . lines of fall, iv. ; of projection, iv. ; of escape, iv. ; of rest, iv. ; nature of governing, iv. ; in faces, ii. ; undulating, expressive of action, horizontal, of rest and strength, v. ; horizontal and angular, v. ; grandeur of, consists in simplicity with variation, iv. ; curved, iv. ; apparent proportion in, ii. ; all doubtful, rejected in armorial bearings, iii. . literature, greatest not produced by religious temper, v. ; classical, the school of taste or restraint, v. ; spasmodic, v. ; world of, divided into thinkers and seers, iii. ; modern temper of, iii. , - ; reputation of, on what dependent (error transitory) i. , . locke, quoted (hard to see well), i. , . love, a noble emotion, iii. ; color a type of, v. (note); source of unity, ii. ; as connected with vital beauty, ii. ; perception quickened by, i. ; want of, in some of the old landscape painters, i. ; finish proceeding from, i. ; nothing drawn rightly with out, iv. ; of brightness in english cottages, iv. ; of horror, iv. ; characteristic of all great men, ii. ; higher than reason, ii. ; ideal form, only to be reached by, ii. ; loveliest things wrought through, ii. , v. ; good work only done for, v. - ; and trust the nourishment of man's soul, v. . lowell, quotation from, v. . lowlander, proud of his lowlands (farmer in "alton locke"), iii. . magnitude, relation of, to minuteness, v. - ; love of mere size, v. ; influence of, on different minds, v. . man, his use and function, ii. ; his business in the world, iii. , v. ; three orders of, iii. ; characteristics of a great, iii. ; perfection of threefold, v. ; vital beauty in, ii. - ; present and former character of, iii. - ; intelligibility necessary to a great, iv. ; adaptation of plants to needs of, v. , ; influence of scenery on, v. - ; lessons learnt by, from natural beauty, v. ; result of unbelief in, v. ; how to get noblest work out of, v. - ; love and trust necessary to development of, v. ; divided into five classes, v. - ; how to perceive a noble spirit in, iv. ; when intemperate, ii. ; pursuits of, how divided, ii. , v. - ; life of, the rose and cankerworm, v. , ; not intended to be satisfied by earthly beauty, i. , iv. ; his happiness, how constituted, iii. , v. - ; his idea of finish, iii. ; society necessary to the development of, ii. ; noblest tone and reach of life of, v. . marble, domestic use of, iv. ; fitted for sculpture, iv. ; colors of, iv. . mediæval, ages compared with modern, iii. ; not "dark," iii. ; mind, how opposed to greek, iii. ; faith, life the expression of man's delight in god's work, iii. ; admiration of human beauty, iii. ; knights, iii. - ; feeling respecting mountains, iii. , , , iv. ; want of gratitude, iii. ; sentimental enjoyment of nature, iii. ; dread of thick foliage, iii. ; love for color, iii. , ; dislike of rugged stone, iv. ; love of cities, v. ; love of gardens, iii. ; love of symmetry, iii. ; neglect of earth's beauty, v. , iii. ; love of definition, iii. ; idea of education, v. ; landscape, the fields, iii. - ; the rocks, iii. - . mica, characteristics of, iv. ; connected with chlorite, iv. ; use of the word, iv. ; flake of, typical of strength in weakness, iv. . michelet, "l'insecte," quoted on magnitude, v. . middle ages, spirit of the, iii. ; deficiency in shakspere's conception of, iv. - ; baronial life in the, iii. , ; neglect of agriculture in, iii. ; made earth a great battlefield, v. . see mediæval. mill, j. s., "on liberty," v. . milton, characteristics of, ii. , iii. , ; his use of the term "expanse," iv. ; and dante's descriptions, comparison between, ii. , iii. ; misuse of the term "enamelled" by, iii. ; instances of "imagination," ii. . mind, independence of, ii. ; visibleoperation of, on the body, ii. . minuteness, value of, v. - ; influence of, on different minds, v. . see magnitude. mist, of what typical, iv. ; copley fielding's love of, iv. . mistakes, great, chiefly due to pride, iv. . moderation, value of, ii. . modern age, characteristics of, iii. , , , ; costume, ugliness of, iii. , v. (note); romance of the past, iii. ; criticism, iv. ; landscape, i. , ii. , iii. ; mind, pathetic fallacy characteristic of, iii. . moisture, expressed by fulness of color, iv. . moss, colors of, iv. , v. ; beauty and endurance of, v. . mountaineer, false theatrical idea of, iv. ; regarded as a term of reproach by dante, iii. ; same by shakspere, iv. ; his dislike of his country, iii. ; hardship of, iv. ; his life of, "gloom," iv. . mountains (see also banks, crests, débris, &c.), uses and functions of, iv. ; influences of, on artistic power, iv. ; influence on purity of religion, doctrine, and practice, iv. ; monkish view of, iv. , iii. ; structure of, i. , iv. ; materials of, i. , iv. ; principal laws of, i. , ; spirit of, i. ; false color of (salvator and titian), i. ; multiplicity of feature, i. ; fulness of vegetation, iv. ; contours of, i. , iv. , , , , ; curvature of, i. , iv. , , , ; appearances of, i. , ; foreground, beauty of, i. , iv. ; two regions in, iv. ; superior beauty of, iv. , , ; false ideal of life in, iv. ; decomposition, iv. , , , ; sanctity of, iii. ; lessons from decay of, iv. ; regularity and parallelism of beds in, iv. ; exaggeration in drawing of, ii. , iv. , ; love of, iii. , , , iv. ; mentions of, in scripture, iii. , iv. ; moses on sinai, iv. ; transfiguration, iv. ; construction of northern alpine, iv. , iv. ; glory, iv. , ; lift the lowlands on their sides, iv. ; mystery of, unfathomable, iv. , ; material of alpine, a type of strength in weakness, iv. ; dante's conception of, iii. , , ; dante's repugnance to, iii. ; influence of the apennines on dante, iii. ; mediæval feeling respecting, iii. , ; symbolism of, in dante, iii. ; not represented by the greeks, iii. ; scenery not attempted by old masters, i. ; influence of, iv. , ; the beginning and end of natural scenery, iv. . mountains, central, their formation and aspect, i. - . mountain gloom, iv. - ; life in alpine valleys, iv. ; love of horror, iv. - ; romanism, iv. ; disease, iv. ; instance, sion in the valais, iv. . mountains, inferior, how distinguished from central, i. ; individual truth in drawing of, i. . mystery, of nature, i. , iv. , ; never absent in nature, iv. ; noble and ignoble, iv. , , ; of execution, necessary to the highest excellence, i. , iv. ; in pre-raphaelitism, iv. ; sense of delight in, iv. ; turnerian, essential, iv. - ; wilful, iv. - . mythology, renaissance paintings of, iii. ; apollo and the python, v. ; calypso, the concealer, v. ; ceto, deep places of the sea, v. , ; chrysaor, angel of lightning, v. ; danae's golden rain, v. ; danaïdes, sieves of, v. ; dragon of hesperides, v. , , ; eurybia, tidal force of the sea, v. , ; fates, v. ; garden of hesperides, v. - ; goddess of discord, eris, v. - ; gorgons, storm-clouds, v. , ; graiæ, soft rain-clouds, , ; hesperides, v. , ; nereus, god of the sea, v. , ; minerva's shield, gorgon's head on, v. ; muses, v. ; pegasus, lower rain-clouds, v. ; phorcys, malignant angel of the sea, v. , ; thaumas, beneficent angel of the sea, v. , . nature, infinity of, i. , , - , , , , iii. (drawing of leafage), iv. , , , i. ; variety of, i. , , , v. - ; gradation in, ii. , iv. , ; curvature in, ii. , , iv. , ; colors of, i. , , , iii. ; finish of, iii. , , ; fineness of, iv. ; redundancy of, iii. , v. ; balance of, v. ; inequality of, v. ; pathetic treatment of, v. ; always imaginative, ii. ; never distinct, never vacant, i. ; love of, intense or subordinate, classification of writers, iii. ; love of, an indication of sensibility, iii. ; love of (moral of landscape), iii. - ; want of love of in old masters, i. , iii. ; lights and shadows in, i. , , iv. ; organic and inorganic beauty of, i. , ii. ; highest beauty rare in, i. , iv. ; sympathy with, iii. , , ii. , , iv. - ; not to be painted, i. ; imagination dependent on, ii. ; how modified by inventive painters, v. ; as represented by old masters, i. , ; treatment of, by old landscape painters, i. ; feeling respecting, of mediæval and greek knight, iii. , , , , v. ; drawing from (encyclopædia britannica), iv. . see beauty, deity, greek, mediæval, mystery, also clouds, mountains, etc. neatness, modern love of, iii. , iv. - ; vulgarity of excessive, v. . nereid's guard, the, v. - . niggling, ugly misused term, v. ; means disorganized and mechanical work, v. . obedience, equivalent of, "faith," and root of all human deed, v. ; highest form of, v. , ; law of, v. . obscurity, law of, iv. ; of intelligible and unintelligible painters, iv. . see mystery. ornament, abstract, as used by angelico, ii. ; realized, as used by filippino lippi, etc., ii. ; language of, distinct from language of expression, i. ; use of animal form in, ii. ; architectural, i. , , ii. ; symbolic, ii. - ; vulgar, iv. ; in dress, iv. ; curvature in, iv. , ; typical, iii. ; symmetrical, iii. ; in backgrounds, iii. ; floral, iii. - . outline exists only conventionally in nature, iii. . painters, classed by their objects, st, exhibition of truth, nd, deception of senses, i. ; classed as colorists and chiaroscurists, iv. ; functions of, iii. ; great, characteristics of, i. , , , ii. , iii. - , iv. , v. , , ; great, treatment of pictures by, v. ; valgar, characteristics of, i. , ii. , , , iii. , , , , ; religious, ii. , , , , iii. , , iv. ; complete use of space by, i. ; duty of, with regard to choice of subject, ii. , iv. (note); interpreters of nature, iii. ; modern philosophical, error respecting color of, iii. ; imaginative and unimaginative, ii. - ; should be guides of the imagination, iii. ; sketches of, v. ; early italian, i. , iii. ; dutch, i. xxxii. preface, iii. ; v. , , ; venetian, i. , , v. , , ; value of personification to, iii. ; contrast between northern and italian, in drawing of clouds, v. ; effect of the reformation on, v. . see art, artists. painting, a language, i. ; opposed to speaking and writing, not to poetry, iii. ; classification of, iii. ; sacred, iii. ; historical, iii. , ; allegorical, delight of greatest men, iii. ; of stone, iv. ; kind of conception necessary to, v. ; success, how found in, v. ; of the body, v. ; differs from illumination in representing shadow, iii. ; mode of, subordinate to purpose, v. ; distinctively the art of coloring, v. ; perfect, indistinctness necessary to, iv. ; great, expressive of nobleness of mind, v. , . see landscape painting, animal painting, art, artist, truth, mediæval, renaissance. past and present, sadly sundered, iv. . peace, v. - ; of monasticism, v. ; choice between the labor of death and the peace of obedience, v. . perfectness, law of, v. - . perspective, aërial, iii. ; aërial, and tone, difference between, i. ; despised in thirteenth century art, iii. ; of clouds, v. , ; of turner's diagrams, v. (note). pharisaism, artistic, iii. . photographs give turnerian form, and rembrandtesque chiaroscuro, iv. . pictures, use of, to give a precious, non-deceptive resemblance of nature, iii. - ; noblest, characteristic of, iii. ; value of estimate by their completeness, i. , ; venetian, choice of religious subjects in, v. ; dutch, description of, v. , advantages of unreality in, iii. , ; as treated by uninventive artists, iii. ; finish of, iii. ; of venice at early morn, i. ; of mountaineer life, iv. - . see realization, finish. picturesque, nobleness of, dependent on sympathy, iv. ; turnerian, iv. - ; dependent on absence of trimness, iv. ; and on actual variety of form and color, iv. ; lower, heartless delight in decay, iv. ; treatment of stones, iv. ; calais spire an instance of noble, iv. . plagiarism, greatest men oftenest borrowers, iii. . plains, structure of, i. ; scenery of compared with mountains, iv. , ; spirit of repose in, i. ; effect of distance on, i. . see lowlander. plants, ideal of, ii. - ; sense of beauty in, ii. , ; typical of virtues, iii. ; influence of constructive proportion on, ii. ; sympathy with, ii. ; uses of, v. , ; "tented" and "building," earth-plants and pillar-plants, v. ; law of succession in, v. ; seed of, v. ; roots of, v. ; life of, law of help, v. ; strawberry, v. ; sisymbrium irio, v. ; oxalis acetosella, i. (note); soldanella and ranunculus, ii. , ; black hollyhock, v. . pleasure of overcoming difficulties, i. ; sources of, in execution, i. ; in landscape and architecture, iv. . see pictures. pleasures, higher and lower, ii. - ; of sense, ii. ; of taste, how to be cultivated, ii. . poetry, the suggestion by the imagination of noble ground for noble emotion, iii. , v. ; use of details in, iii. ; contrasted with history, iii. - ; modern, pathetic fallacy characteristic of, iii. . poets, too many second-rate, iii. ; described, v. ; two orders of (creative and reflective), iii. (note), ; great, have acuteness of, and command of, feeling, iii. ; love of flowers by, v. ; why not good judges of painting, iii. . poplar grove, gracefulness of, homer's love of, iii. , , . popularity, i. . porphyry, characteristics of, iv. - . portraits, recognition, no proof of real resemblance, i. . portraiture, use of, by painters, ii. , iii. , , , iv. ; necessary to ideal art, ii. ; modern foolishness, and insolence of, ii. ; modern, compared with vandyke's, v. (note); venetians painted praying, v. . power, ideas of, i. , ; ideas of, how received, i. ; imaginative, iii. ; never wasted, i. ; sensations of, not to be sought in imperfect art, i. ; importance technical, its relation to expressional, iii. . precipices, how ordinarily produced, i. , iv. ; general form of, iv. ; overhanging, in inferior alps, iv. ; steepness of, iv. ; their awfulness and beauty, iv. , ; action of years upon, iv. ; rarity of high, among secondary hills, i. . pre-raphaelites, aim of, i. ; unwise in choice of subject, iv. ; studies of, iii. , (note); rank of, in art, iii. , iv. ; mystery of, iv. , iii. , - ; apparent variance between turner and, iii. ; love of flowers, v. ; flower and leaf-painting of, i. , v. . pride, cause of mistakes, iv. ; destructive of ideal character, ii. ; in idleness, of mediæval knights, iii. ; in venetian landscape, v. . proportion, apparent and constructive, ii. - ; of curvature, ii. , iv. , ; how differing from symmetry, ii. ; of architecture, ii. ; burke's error, ii. - . prosperity, evil consequences of long-continued, ii. - . psalm th, meaning of, v. - . purchase, wise, the root of all benevolence, v. (note). puritans and romanists, iii. . purity, the expression of divine energy, ii. ; type of sinlessness, ii. ; how connected with ideas of life, ii. ; of color, ii. ; conquest of, over pollution, typified in apollo's contest, v. ; of flesh painting, on what dependent, ii. ; venetian painting of the nude, v. . see sensuality. python, the corrupter, v. . rays, no perception of, by old masters, i. ; how far to be represented, i. . realization, in art, iii. ; gradually hardened feeling, iv. - ; not the deception of the senses, iii. ; dante's, iii. . see pictures. refinement, meaning of term, ii. ; of spiritual and practical minds, v. - ; unconnected with toil undesirable, v. . reflection, on distant water, i. et seq.; effect of water upon, i. - ; to what extent visible from above, i. . reformation, strength of, v. ; arrest of, v. ; effect of, on art, iii. , v. . relation, ideas of, i. , , . religion, of the greeks, v. - ; of venetian painters, v. ; of london and venice, v. ; english, v. . renaissance, painting of mythology, iii. ; art, its sin and its nemesis, iii. ; sensuality, iii. ; builders, v. ; spirit of, quotation from browning, iv. . repose, a test of greatness in art, ii. - , , ; characteristic of the eternal mind, ii. ; want of, in the laocoon, ii. ; in scenery, i. ; turner's "rietz" (plate), v. , ; instance of, in michael angelo's "plague of serpents," ii. (note); how consistent with ideal organic form, ii. . reserve, of a gentleman (sensibility habitual), v. . resilience, law of, v. , . rest, lines of, in mountains, iv. , , . revelation, v. . reverence, for fair scenery, iii. ; false ideas of (sunday religion), iii. ; for mountains, iii. ; inculcated by science, iii. ; venetian, the madonna in the house, v. . reynolds, on the grand style of painting, iii. ; on the influence of beauty, iii. . rocks, iv. - ; formation of, iv. ; division of, iv. , , ; curvature of, iv. , , , i. ; color of, iv. , , , , , , i. ; cleavages of, iv. ; great truths taught by, iv. ; aspect of, i. , , iv. , , , ; compound crystalline, iv. , ; compact crystalline, characteristics of, iv. , , , , ; slaty coherent, characteristics of, iv. , , ; compact coherent, iv. , ; junction of slaty and compact crystalline, iv. , , ; undulation of, iv. , , ; material uses of, iv. , ; effect of weather upon, iv. ; effect of water on, iv. ; power of, in supporting vegetation, iv. , ; varied vegetation and color of, i. ; contortion of, iv. , , , ; débris of, iv. ; lamination of, iv. , , i. ; limestone, iv. , , , , ; sandstone, iv. ; light and shade of, i. ; overhanging of, iv. , , ; mediæval landscape, iii. - ; early painters' drawing of, iii. ; dante's dislike of, iii. ; dante's description of, iii. , ; homer's description of, iii. , ; classical ideal of, iii. ; scott's love of, iii. , . see stones. romanism, modern, effect of on national temper, iv. , and puritanism, iii. , . saussure, de, description of curved cleavage by, iv. ; quotation from, iv. ; on structure of mountain ranges, iv. ; love of alps, iv. . scenery, interest of, rooted in human emotion, v. ; associations connected with, iii. , ; classical, claude and poussin, v. ; highland, v. ; two aspects of, bright and dark, v. ; of venice, effects of, v. ; of nuremberg, effect of, v. ; of yorkshire hills, effect of, i. , v. ; swiss influence of, iv. - , v. - ; of the loire, v. ; effect of mountains on, iv. - . see nature, pictures. scent, artificial, opposed to natural, ii. ; different in the same flower, i. - . science, subservient to life, ii. ; natural, relation to painting, iii. ; interest in, iii. ; inculcates reverence, iii. ; every step in, adds to its practical applicabilities, ii. ; use and danger of in relation to enjoyment of nature, iii. ; gives the essence, art the aspects, of things, iii. ; may mislead as to aspects, iv. . scott, representative of the mind of the age in literature, iii. , , ; quotations from, showing his habit of looking at nature, iii. , ; scott's love of color, iii. - ; enjoyment of nature associated with his weakness, iii. - ; love of liberty, iii. ; habit of drawing slight morals from every scene, iii. , ; love of natural history, iii. ; education of, compared with turner's, iii. , ; description of edinburgh, iii. ; death without hope, v. . scripture, sanctity of color stated in, iv. , v. ; reference to mountains in, iv. , , ; sermon on the mount, iii. , ; reference to firmament, iv. , (note), ; attention to meaning of words necessary to the understanding of, v. - ; psalms, v. , . sculpture, imagination, how manifested in, ii. , ; suitability of rocks for, iv. , , ; instances of gilding and coloring of (middle ages), ii. ; statues in medici chapel referred to, ii. ; at the close of th century devoted to luxury and indolence, iii. ; of th century, fidelity to nature in, iii. - , v. - . sea, painting of, i. - ; has never been painted, i. ; stanfield's truthful rendering of, i. ; turner's heavy rolling, i. ; seldom painted by the venetians, i. ; misrepresented by the old masters, i. ; after a storm, effect of, i. , ; dutch painting of, i. ; shore breakers inexpressible, i. ; homer's feeling about the, iii. ; angel of the, v. - . see foam, water. seer, greater than thinker, iii. , . sensibility, knowledge of the beautiful dependent on, i. ; an attribute of all noble minds, i. ; the essence of a gentleman, v. ; want of, is vulgarity, v. ; necessary to the perception of facts, i. ; to color and to form, difference between, i. ; want of, in undue regard to appearance, v. ; want of, in dutch painters, v. . sensitiveness, criterion of the gentleman, v. , ; absence of, sign of vulgarity, v. ; want of, in dutch painters, v. , . sensuality, destructive of ideal character, ii. ; how connected with impurity of color, ii. ; various degrees of, in modern art, ii. , iii. ; impressions of beauty, not connected with, ii. . see purity. seriousness of men of mental power, iii. ; want of, in the present age, ii. . shade, gradation of, necessary, ii. ; want of, in early works of nations and men, i. ; more important than color in expressing character of bodies, i. ; distinctness of, in nature's rocks, i. ; and color, sketch of a great master conceived in, i. ; beautiful only when showing beautiful form, ii. (note). shadow, cast, importance of, i. - ; strangeness of cast, iv. ; importance of, in bright light, i. - ; variety of, in nature, i. ; none on clear water, i. ; on water, falls clear and dark, in proportion to the quantity of surface-matter, i. ; as given by various masters, iv. ; of colorists right, of chiaroscurists untrue, iv. ; exaggeration of, in photography, iv. ; rejection of, by mediævals, iii. . shakspere, creative order of poets, iii. (note); his entire sympathy with all creatures, iv. - ; tragedy of, compared with greek, v. ; universality of, iii. , ; painted human nature of the sixteenth century, iii. , iv. ; repose of, ii. ; his religion occult behind his equity, v. ; complete portraiture in, iii. , , iv. ; penetrative imagination of, ii. ; love of pine trees, iv. , v. ; no reverence for mountains, iv. , ; corrupted by the renaissance, iv. ; power of, shown by his self-annihilation, i. xxv. (preface). shelley, contemplative imagination a characteristic of, ii. ; death without hope, v. . sight, greater than thought, iii. ; better than scientific knowledge, i. ; impressions of, dependent on mental observations, i. , ; elevated pleasure of, duty of cultivating, ii. ; of the whole truth, v. ; partial, of dutch painters, v. ; not valued in the present age, ii. ; keenness of, how to be tested, ii. ; importance of, in education, iv. , v. . simplicity, second quality of execution, i. ; of great men, iii. . sin, greek view of, v. ; venetian view of, v. ; "missing the mark," v. ; washing away of (the fountain of love), v. . sincerity, a characteristic of great style, iii. . singing, should be taught to everybody, v. (note), . size. see magnitude. sketches, experimental, v. ; determinant, v. ; commemorative, v. . sky, truth of, i. , ; three regions of, i. , cannot be painted i. , iv. ; pure blue, when visible, i. ; ideas of, often conventional, i. ; gradation of color in, i. ; treated of by the old masters as distinct from clouds, i. ; prominence of, in modern landscape, iii. ; open, of modern masters, i. ; lessons to be taught by, i. , ; pure and clear noble painting of, by earlier italian and dutch school, very valuable, ii. , i. , ; appearance of, during sunset, i. ; effect of vapor upon, i. ; variety of color in, i. ; reflection of, in water, i. ; supreme brightness of, iv. ; transparency of, i. ; perspective of, v. ; engraving of, v. , (note). snow, form of, on alps, i. , ; waves of, unexpressible, when forming the principal element in mountain form, iv. ; wreaths of, never properly drawn, i. . space, truth of, i. - ; deficiency of, in ancient landscape, i. ; child-instinct respecting, ii. ; mystery throughout all, iv. . spiritual beings, their introduction into the several forms of landscape art, v. ; rejected by modern art, v. . spenser, example of the grotesque from description of envy, iii. , ; description of eris, v. ; description of hesperides fruit, v. . spring, our time for staying in town, v. . stones, how treated by mediæval artists, iv. ; carefully realized in ancient art, iv. ; false modern ideal, iv. ; true drawing of, iv. . see rock. style, greatness of, iii. - ; choice of noble subject, iii. ; love of beauty, iii. ; sincerity, iii. ; invention, iii. ; quotation from reynolds on, iii. ; false use of the term, i. ; the "grand," received opinions touching, iii. - . sublimity, the effect on the mind of anything above it, i. ; burke's treatise on, quoted, i. ; when accidental and outward, picturesque, iv. , , . sun, first painted by claude, iii. ; early conventional symbol for, iii. ; color of, painted by turner only, v. . sunbeams, nature and cause of, i. ; representation of, by old masters, i. . sunsets, splendor of, unapproachable by art, i. ; painted faithfully by turner only, i. ; why, when painted, seem unreal, i. . superhuman, the, four modes of manifestation, always in the form of a creature, ii. , . superiority, distinction between kind and degrees of, i. . surface, examples of greatest beauty of, ii. ; of water, imperfectly reflective, i. ; of water, impossible to paint, i. . swiss, character, iv. , , ; the forest cantons ("under the woods"), v. , . symbolism, passionate expression of, in lombardic griffin, iii. ; delight of great artists in, iii. ; in calais tower, iv. . symmetry, type of divine justice, ii. - ; value of, ii. ; use of, in religious art, ii. , iv. ; love of, in mediæval art, iii. ; appearance of, in mountain form, i. ; of curvature in trees, i. , v. ; of tree-stems, v. , ; of clouds, i. . sympathy, characteristics of, ii. , ; condition of noble picturesque, iv. , , ; the foundation of true criticism, iii, ; cunning associated with absence of, v. ; necessary to detect passing expression, iii. ; with nature, ii. , , iii. , , iv. , ; with humanity, ii. , iv. ; absence of, is vulgarity, iii. , v. ; mark of a gentleman, v. , . system, establishment of, often useless, iii. ; of chiaroscuro, of various artists, iv. . taste, definition of, i. ; right, characteristics of, ii. ; a low term, indicating a base feeling for art, iii. , ; how developed, ii. ; injustice and changefulness of public, i. ; purity of, how tested, ii. ; classical, its essence, v. ; present fondness for unfinished works, i. , ii. . temperate, right use of the word, ii. . tennyson, rich coloring of, iii. ; subdued by the feelings under which he writes, iii. ; instances of the pathetic fallacy in, iii. , ; sense of beauty in, v. ; his faith doubtful, iii. . theoretic faculty, first perfection of, is charity, ii. ; second perfection of, is justice of moral judgment, ii. ; three operations of, ii. ; how connected with vital beauty, ii. ; how related to the imagination, ii. ; should not be called æsthetic, ii. ; as concerned with moral functions of animals, ii. , . theoria, meaning of, ii. , ; derivation of, ii. ; the service of heaven, ii. ; what sought by christian, ii. . thought, definition of, i. ; value of, in pictures, i. ; representation of the second end of art, i. - ; how connected with knowledge, i. ; art, in expression of individual, i. ; choice of incident, expressive of, i. ; appreciation of, in art, not universal, i. . thoughts, highest, depend least on language, i. ; various, suggested in different minds by same object, iii. , . tone, meaning of, right relation of shadows to principal light, i. ; truth of, i. - ; a secondary truth, i. ; attention paid to, by old masters, i. , ; gradation more important than, i. ; cause of want of, in pictures, i. . topography, turnerian, iv. - ; pure, preciousness of, iv. , ; slight exaggeration sometimes allowed in, iv. ; sketch of lausanne, v. . torrents, beneficent power of, iv. ; power of, in forcing their way, iv. , , ; sculpture of earth by, iv. ; mountains furrowed by descent of, i. , iv. ; curved lines of, i. , iv. . transparency, incompatible with highest beauty, ii. ; appearance of, in mountain chains, i. ; wanting in ancient landscape, not in modern, i. , ; of the sky, i. ; of bodies, why admired, ii. ; ravelling, best kind of, iii. . tree, aspen, iv. , ; willow, v. ; black spruce, v. . tree boughs, falsely drawn by claude and poussin, i. , , v. ; rightly drawn by veronese and durer, v. , ; complexity of, i. ; angles of, i. ; not easily distinguished, i. ; diminution and multiplication of, i. - ; appearance of tapering in, how caused, i. ; loveliness of, how produced, v. ; subtlety of balance in, v. ; growth of, v. ; nourishment of, by leaves, v. ; three conditions of branch-aspect--spring, caprice, and fellowship, v. - . trees, outlines of, iii. ; ramifications of, i. , v. , , ; the most important truth respecting (symmetrical terminal curve), i. ; laws common to forest, i. ; poplar, an element in lovely landscape, i. , iii. ; superiority of, on mountain sides, iv. , v. - ; multiplicity of, in swiss scenery, iv. , ; change of color in leafage of, iv. ; classical delight in, iv. , iii. ; examples of good and bad finish in (plates), iii. , ; examples of turner's drawing of, i. ; classed as "builders with the shield" and "with the sword," v. ; laws of growth of, v. , , ; mechanical aspect of, v. ; classed by leaf-structure--trefoil, quatrefoil, and cinqfoil, v. ; trunks of, v. , ; questions concerning, v. ; how strengthened, v. ; history of, v. ; love of, v. ; dutch drawing of, bad, v. , ; as drawn by titian and turner, i. , ; as rendered by italian school, i. . trees, pine, v. - , , ; shakspere's feeling respecting, iv. , v. ; error of painters in representing, iv. (note); perfection of, v. - ; influence on swiss and northern nations, v. . truth, in art, i. , , , , iii. ; greek idea of, v. ; blindness to beauty of, in vulgar minds, v. ; half, the worst falsehood, v. ; standard of all excellence, i. ; not easily discerned, i. , , ; first quality of execution, i. ; many-sided, the author's seeming contradiction of himself, v. (note); essential to real imagination, ii. , ; essential to invention, v. ; highest difficulty of illustrating the, i. ; laws of, in painting, iii. vii. (preface); ideas of, i. , ; infinity essential to, i. ; sometimes spoken through evil men, ii. ; imaginative preciousness of, iv. ; individual, in mountain drawing, i. ; wisely conveyed by grotesque idealism, iii. ; no vulgarity in, iii. ; dominion of, universal, iii. ; error of confounding beauty with, ii. , iii. (note); pictures should present the greatest possible amount of, iii. ; sacrifice of, to decision and velocity, i. ; difference between imitation and, i. , ; absolute, generally attained by "colorists," never by "chiaroscurists," iv. , ; instance of imaginative (the two griffins), iii. . truths, two classes of, of deception and of inner resemblance, iii. ; most precious, how attained, iv. ; importance of characteristic, i. , ; of specific form most important, i. ; relative importance of, i. ; nature's always varying, i. ; value of rare, i. ; particular, more important than general, i. ; historical, the most valuable, i. ; the finer, importance of rendering, i. ; accurate, not necessary to imitation, i. , ; geological, use of considering, i. ; simplest, generally last believed, iii. ; certain sacred, how conveyed, iii. , ; choice of, by artists, the essence of "style," iii. , iv. ; as given by old masters, i. ; selected by modern artists, i. . types--light, ii. ; purity, ii. - , v. ; impurity, v. ; clouds, v. , ; sky, ii. - ; mountain decay, iv. ; crags and ravines, iv. ; rocks, ii. , iv. , ; mountains, iv. ; sunlight, v. ; color, v. (note), ; mica flake, iv. ; rainbow, v. ; stones, weeds, logs, thorns, and spines, v. ; dante's vision of rachel and leah, iii. ; mythological, v. , , ; beauty, ii. , , v. ; symmetry, divine justice, ii. , ; moderation, ii. - ; infinity, ii. , iv. ; grass, humility and cheerfulness, iii. , ; rush, humility, iii. ; buds, iii. , v. , , ; laws of leaf growth, v. , , , , ; leaf death, v. , ; trees, v. , , ; crystallization, v. . ugliness, sometimes permitted in nature, i. ; is a positive thing, iii. ; delight in, martin schöngauer, iv. , ; of modern costume, v. (note), iii. , ; of modern architecture, iii. , v. . unbelief, characteristic of all our most powerful men, iii. ; modern english, "god is, but cannot rule," v. . unity, type of divine comprehensiveness, ii. , , , , ; in nature, i. ; apparent proportion, a cause of, ii. , ; instinct of, a faculty of the associative imagination, ii. . utility, definition of, ii. ; of art, ii. ; of details in poetry, iii. ; of pictures, iii. , ; of mountains, iv. . valleys, alpine beauty of, iv. , ; gloom in, iv. ; english, iv. ; french, i. , iv. . variety, necessity of, arises out of that of unity, ii. - ; love of, ii. ; when most conspicuous, i. ; in nature, i. , , , , , , . vapor, v. , , , . vegetables, ideal form in, ii. . vegetation, truth of, i. , ; process of form in, v. ; in forest-lands, v. ; appointed service of, v. ; in sculpture, v. . velocity in execution, i. , ii. (note); sacrifice of truth to, i. . venetian art ("the wings of the lion"), v. , ; conquest of evil, v. , seq., , ; scenery, v. , ; idea of beauty, v. ; faith, v. ; religious liberty, v. ; mind, perfection of, v. ; contempt of poverty, v. ; unworthy purposes of, v. ; reverence, the madonna in the house, v. - . virtue, effect of, on features, ii. ; set forth by plants, iii. ; of the swiss, v. , . vulgarity of mind, v. - ; consists in insensibility, v. - ; examples of, v. , ; seen in love of mere physical beauty, iii. ; in concealment of truth and affectation, iii. , ; inconceivable by the greatest minds, iii. ; of renaissance builders, v. ; "deathful selfishness," v. ; among dutch painters, v. - ; how produced by vicious habits, v. . see gentlemen. war, a consequence of injustice, iii. ; lessons to be gathered from the crimean, iii. ; at the present day of what productive, iii. ; modern fear of, iii. . water, influence of, on soil, i. ; faithful representation of, impossible, i. - ; effect produced by mountains on, iv. ; functions of, i. ; laws of reflection in, i. , ; clear, takes no shadow, i. ; most wonderful of inorganic substances, i. ; difference in the action of continuous and interrupted, i. ; in shade most reflective, i. ; painting of, optical laws necessary to, i. ; smooth, difficulty of giving service to, i. , ; distant, effect of ripple on, i. ; swift execution necessary to drawing of, i. ; reflections in, i. ; motion in, elongates reflections, i. - ; execrable painting of, by elder landscape masters, i. ; as painted by the modern, i. - ; as painted by turner, i. - ; as represented by mediæval art, iii. ; truth of, i. - . see sea, torrents, foam. waves, as described by homer and keats, iii. ; exaggeration of size in, ii. ; grander than any torrent, iv. ; breakers in, i. ; curves of, i. . wordsworth, his insight into nature (illustration of turner), i. ; love of plants, ii. ; good foreground described by, i. - ; skies of, i, ; description of a cloud by, ii ; on effect of custom, iii ; fancy and imagination of, ii. - ; description of the rays of the sun, i. . work, the noblest done only for love, v. . masterpieces in colour edited by - - m. henry roujon gÉrÔme ( - ) _in the same series_ reynolds holbein velasquez burne-jones greuze le brun turner chardin botticelli millet romney raeburn rembrandt sargent bellini constable fra angelico memling rossetti fragonard raphael dÜrer leighton lawrence holman hunt hogarth titian watteau millais murillo luini watts franz hals ingres carlo dolci corot gainsborough delacroix tintoretto fra lippo lippi van dyck puvis de chavannes da vinci meissonier whistler gerome rubens veronese boucher van eyck mantegna _in preparation_ fromentin perugino [illustration: plate i.--young greeks engaged in cock fighting pierre lafitte & cie, paris (in the luxembourg museum, paris) this was gérôme's first picture. it was exhibited at the salon of , and achieved a brilliant success. théophile gautier, who was a critic hard to please, bestowed upon it some enviable praise. in later years the artist found much to censure in his early work; but the public, less severely critical, admired the graceful nudity of the young forms and the combative ardour of the two adversaries.] gÉrÔme by albert keim translated from the french by frederic taber cooper illustrated with eight reproductions in colour [illustration: in sempiternum.] frederick a. stokes company new york--publishers copyright, , by frederick a. stokes company _printed in the united states of america_ contents page introduction life of gérôme the artist's work the art of gérôme list of illustrations plates i. young greeks engaged in cock fighting frontispiece (in the luxembourg museum) page ii. reception of the siamese ambassadors (in the versailles museum) iii. anacreon, with bacchus and cupid (in the toulouse museum) iv. pollice verso (in a private collection, united states) v. the prisoner (in the nantes museum) vi. the last prayer (in a private collection, united states) vii. the vendor of rugs (in a private collection, united states) viii. the two majesties (in a private collection, united states) i introduction gérôme has his allotted place among the illustrious french painters of the nineteenth century. he achieved success, honours, official recognition; and he deserved them, if not for the compelling personality of his temperament, at least for his assiduous industry, his accurate, methodical, and picturesque way of seeing people and things, and the amazing and fertile variety both of his choice and his interpretation of subjects. he was a pupil of paul delaroche and seems to have inherited the latter's adroitness in seizing upon the one salient and emotional detail in a composition. like that historian-painter of the _death of the duc de guise_, gérôme excelled in always giving a dramatic stage setting to the persons and the events which he knew how to conjure up with such learned and scrupulous care. in spite of his versatility, and notwithstanding that many a vast canvas has demonstrated his ingenious and resourceful talent, he takes his place beside meissonier because of the extreme importance that he attached to accuracy and precise effects. [illustration: plate ii.--reception of the siamese ambassadors pierre lafitte & cie, paris (in the museum at versailles) this picture possesses a curious interest because it shows in what a picturesque manner gérôme could execute a painting officially ordered. he received the commission in , through the imperial household. he has rendered with much felicity all the pompous and highly coloured aspect of the scene, very effective in the sumptuous setting of the salle des fêtes at fontainebleau.] although it is some years since he passed away, gérôme has left behind him living memories among his friends and pupils, many of whom have in their turn become masters. both as man and as artist he was and still continues to be profoundly regretted, independently of all divergences of opinion, method, and temperament. a master of oriental lore, a curious and subtle antiquarian, a chronicler of ancient and modern life, rigorous at times, but more often distinguished for his charm and delicacy,--such is gérôme as he has revealed himself to us through the medium of his abundant works. whether he paints us the men of the desert and the almas of egypt, or shows us the gladiators of the circus, the death of caesar, the leisure hours of frederick ii, the dreams of a bonaparte, or takes us to the _winter duel in the bois de boulogne after the masked ball_, a picture that achieved much popularity, gérôme never fails to catch and hold attention by startling contrasts of colour combined with a fine accuracy of line work. but what matter the means through which an effect is sought if they prove successful both in the general impression produced by the work as a whole and in the charm of the separate details,--in other words, if the result justifies the effort? effort, in gérôme's case, meant literally a valiant and noble persistence. he was ceaselessly in search of something new. in spite of assured fame, he never repainted the same subject. during the later years of his life, his ambition was to be at the same time an illustrious painter and a sculptor of recognized merit; and in this he succeeded. his attempt to revive, after a fashion of his own, the precious lost art of antique sculpture, although greeted with a wide divergence of opinions, remains a noteworthy achievement. on the eve of his eightieth year and abrupt decease, gérôme still laboured with the ardour and the splendid faith of youth. he sets an encouraging example, as fine and as stimulating as the best of his splendid pictures. the life of gÉrÔme jean-léon gérôme was born at vesoul on may , . throughout his life he retained a slight trace of the franche-compté accent, which gave a keener relish to his witty anecdotes and piquant retorts. he belonged to a family holding an honoured place among the bourgeoisie. his excellent biographer, m. moreau-vauthier, relates that his grandfather was on the point of taking orders when the revolution broke out. his father was a watchmaker and goldsmith at vesoul. as a child, he himself was in delicate health. nevertheless, he proved himself a good student at the college in the city of his birth. while there he studied both greek and latin. his instructor in drawing, cariage, having noticed his early efforts, gave him much good advice and encouragement. at the age of fourteen, he copied a picture by decamps, which had found its way to vesoul from paris. the story goes that his father forthwith favoured the idea that he should take up the vocation of an artist. there is no use in exaggerating. as a matter of fact, his family dreaded the hardships of so hazardous a career. but, upon receiving his bachelor's degree at the age of sixteen, a degree which at that epoch was by no means common, he obtained permission to go to the capital and pursue his studies under the auspices of paul delaroche, to whom he was provided with a letter of introduction. it is pleasant to picture the young man setting forth alone by _diligence_ and applying himself bravely to the task of acquiring talent and renown. he was most faithful in his attendance at the studio of delaroche, who, being the son-in-law of horace vernet, possessed at that time not only a wide reputation as professor, but also an enormous influence both at the École des beaux-arts and at the court of louis-philippe. delaroche, who has aptly been called the casimir delavigne of painting, a romanticist who stopped short of being a revolutionary, parted company with the cold traditionalists of the older school in the profound importance that he attached to accuracy and to the truth and interest of movement. gérôme was destined to draw his inspiration from analogous principles. while interesting himself profoundly in costumes, in surroundings, in local colour, he always avoided excess and maintained an almost classic restraint even in the most modern of his fantasies. delaroche's pupils were a lively set. gérôme found life pleasant in the studio where cham amused himself by passing himself off upon strangers as "the patron," and where his comrades were such men as alfred arago, hébert, hamon, jalabert, landelle, picou, and yvon. he won their regard by his flow of spirits and his caustic humour. at this period he supported himself by copying paintings and making drawings for the newspapers; but, although a small monthly income of a hundred francs assured him comparative security, he was uneasy. although only eighteen, the young man was impatient to show what he could do. he was seeking his path. he took his first step towards finding it when he accompanied his teacher to italy after the latter had closed his studio. he remained there for an entire year. upon his return, he studied for a time under gleyre, after which he worked for some months on delaroche's _bonaparte crossing the alps_. in , gérôme made his début at the salon with a veritable master-stroke. at an exposition where delacroix's _shipwrecked bark_ and couture's _roman orgy_ monopolized the public gaze, the young artist attracted keen attention by his _young greeks engaged in cock fighting_. théophile gautier enthusiastically proclaimed the merits of this work, which brought gérôme much valued praise and some influential supporters. we shall revert again to this significant canvas, which since has hung in the luxembourg museum, and with which the artist, when he later attained full mastery of his art, found all manner of fault. the first meeting between this painter of twenty-three, upon whom renown had just begun to smile, and gautier, magnanimous prince of criticism and poetry, took place under circumstances that deserve to be recorded. gérôme was betaking himself to the offices of the _artiste_, at that time presided over by arsène houssaye; in his hand he held a line drawing of his own recent idyll of classic times. on the staircase he encountered gautier who had paused there, and who began to talk to him in glowing terms of the salon and especially of a painting by a newcomer, named gérôme. "but that is i, myself!" cried the young man with keen emotion, and he showed his drawing to the author of _enamels and cameos_. continuing to draw his inspiration from antiquity, he set to work with a stouter heart, in a studio on the rue de fleurus, which he shared with hamon and picou, associating with artists and with musicians such as lalo and membrée. his labours were twice interrupted: first, by an attack of typhoid fever, through which his mother came to nurse him; and secondly, by the revolution of when, in compliance with the expressed desire of his comrades, he was appointed adjutant major of the national guards. it was about this same period that he received a first class medal and found himself well advanced upon the road to fame. "i have always had the nomadic instinct," gérôme used to declare, and complacently questioned whether he did not have a strain of gypsy blood among his ancestors. in his notes and souvenirs, which he entrusted to his relative and friend, the painter timbal, he confesses, along with his various artistic scruples, his passionate love of travel. [illustration: plate iii.--anacreon with bacchus and cupid pierre lafitte & cie, paris (in the museum at toulouse) gérôme had a magic brush that permitted him to undertake all types of painting with the same facility. this is how he so often happened to treat subjects taken from antiquity and was able to render them in all their classic beauty. it is not without interest to compare him, in this style of painting, with nicholas poussin, whom he admired, and with puvis de chavannes, whose method he execrated.] he was haunted by a longing to visit greece, and more especially the orient, with its marvellous skies, its resplendent colours, its barbaric and motley races of men. in , in the company of a number of friends, he traversed germany and hungary, planning a lengthy visit to constantinople. owing to the war, he was forced to cut short his trip at galatz. but he brought back a collection of energetic and striking sketches of russian soldiers, which later served good purpose in his _recreation in camp, souvenir of moldavia_. and in like manner, in all his distant journeyings, he invariably showed the same eagerness to seize and transcribe his original documents, content to let them speak for themselves, without his having to distort them to fit the special purpose that he had in view. this painting found a place in the exposition of , together with _the age of augustus_, a notable achievement in which gérôme revealed the measure, if not of his true personality, at least of his lofty conscience and his integrity as an artist enamoured of accuracy and truth, even in the imaginary element inseparable from this type of allegorical apotheosis. notwithstanding a few dissenting opinions, these two works were judged at their true value, and gérôme received the cross of the legion of honour. at this time he was scarcely more than thirty years old. a most brilliant career henceforth lay open before him. gérôme remains, beyond question, the unrivalled painter of egypt, whose aspects, enchanting and sinister alike, he has reproduced in a series of pictures of finished workmanship and vibrant colouring. it was in that, together with a few friends, among others bartholdi, then twenty-two years old, he undertook his long tour through egypt. to-day, one can go to cairo or up the nile as casually as to nice or italy and with almost as little trouble. in those days it was not a question of a simple excursion, of which any and every amateur tourist would be capable, but of a veritable expedition. unforeseen adventures appealed to gérôme, for he was brave, energetic, and eager for new sensations. m. frédéric masson, the eminent historian, who was one of his companions through the desert, has since shown him to us, in a series of graphic recollections, as perpetually on his feet, indefatigable, ready to endure any and every vicissitude for the sake of sketching a site or a silhouette. his stay in egypt was for gérôme a period of enchantment. he has left, in regard to it, some hasty but expressive notes. he passed four months on the nile, well filled months, consecrated to fishing, hunting, and painting, all the way from diametta to philae. he remained the four succeeding months at cairo, in an old dwelling that suliman pasha rented to the young frenchmen. "happy epoch!" wrote the painter, "care-free, full of hope, and with the future before us. the sky was blue." he returned to paris with an ample harvest of sketches, a supply of curious, novel, and striking themes to work up. m. moreau-vauthier shows him to us at that period of his existence, full of unflagging energy and pleasant enthusiasm, in the company of brion, lambert, schutzenberger, and toulmouche,--not to forget his monkey jacques, who took his place at the family table arrayed in coat and white cravat, but would slink away and hide himself in shame when, as a punishment for some misdeed, they decked him out as a ragpicker. what jolly parties were held in that "tea chest," in which gérôme then had his studio, rue de notre-dame-des-champs! it was the scene of many a festival, entertainment, and joyous puppet show, attended by spectators such as rachel (whose portrait gérôme painted in ), her sister, george sand, baudry, cabanel, hébert, and others. this was, nevertheless, an epoch of prolific work and constant research. gérôme passed ceaselessly from one type of painting to another; one might say that he rested from his exotic landscapes by evoking, with an ever new lavishness of detail, curious or affecting scenes from greek and roman antiquity. thus rewards and successes multiplied, and he experienced all the joys of triumph. already honorary member of the academy of besançon, he was appointed professor at the École des beaux-arts in , and in , member of the institut, where he succeeded heim. meanwhile he fought a duel with revolvers and was gravely wounded. his mother hastened once again to his bedside and saved his life a second time. since the ball had passed through his right arm, complications affecting his hand were feared. the artist declared that if necessary he would learn to paint with his left. no sooner was he cured than off he started again, bound for egypt, whence he passed to arabia and, more venturesome than ever, continued on his way, as one of his biographers phrased it, "making sketches clear to the summit of mt. sinai." he was destined to make still other journeys, notably that of in company of messrs. bonnet, frédéric masson, and lenoir; and his companions paid tribute to his unfailing spirits and his powers of endurance. but at the age of forty he married. the bride was mlle. goupil, daughter of the well-known picture dealer. he was a thorough man of the world and a favoured guest of the duc d'aumale, who appreciated his ready wit and bought his _after the masquerade_ for the sum of , francs. in he received from the beaux-arts and the imperial household an order for _the reception of the siamese ambassadors at fontainebleau_. gérôme was also numbered among compiègne's habitual visitors, along with berlioz, gustave doré, guillaume, merimée, viollet-le-duc, and others. m. moreau-vauthier, who with pious zeal has collected the more interesting anecdotes of his life, relates that he had a special gift for organizing charades: he was scene setter and costumer. at fontainebleau, he took the empress out alone in a row-boat. surrounded by devoted friends, such as augier, charles blanc, dumas, clery, his brother-in-law, frémiet, gérôme continued his laborious and tranquil life in his vast atelier on the boulevard de clichy. his days were passed in drawing and painting in his canvases. towards the end of the afternoon he would mount his horse and take a turn in the bois. he exhibited annually up to the year of the war. after that, he lived in a sort of retirement until , when, after a trip to algeria with g. boulanger and poilpot, he won a medal of honour. _a collaboration_, _rex tibicen_ (the king flutist), and _his gray eminence_, exhibited simultaneously, revealed him in full possession of his ingenious and many-sided art. new and resounding triumphs awaited him at the exposition universelle of , where he first revealed himself as a sculptor. as a matter of fact, he had for a long time amused himself at modelling in clay. he used to go to frémiet's studio to do his modelling, and frémiet, by way of exchange, would come to paint in his. his two groups, _gladiators_ and _anacreon, bacchus and cupid_, won him a second class medal to take its place beside the medal of honour he had previously received for his paintings. that same year, at the age of fifty-four, he was raised to the rank of commander. cham expressed the joy of all his friends by writing to him wittily: "i follow the example of your ribbon, i fall upon your neck." he was yet to gain still further honours: a first class medal as sculptor, in ; to be declared _hors concours_ (not entered for competition) at the expositions of and ; and to be named grand officer of the legion of honour. from onward, excepting for a few flying visits to spain and italy, gérôme lived at his hotel in paris, where he kept up a rather lavish establishment, including horses and dogs, up to the time of the successive deaths of his father and his son. it was the latter for whose tomb he carved a touching figure of _grief_. [illustration: plate iv.--pollice verso pierre lafitte & cie, paris (in a private collection, united states) the scenes from roman antiquity repeatedly appealed to gérôme's talent, notably in the case of the games of the circus, the dramatic value and brilliant colour of which he fully appreciated. in _pollice verso_, he shows us the victorious gladiator, who, in order to know whether or not he is to despatch his adversary, turns a questioning glance towards the vestals, who invert their thumbs, decreeing death for the vanquished and gasping opponent.] his studio at bougival held him for many a long day, while the season lasted. while there, he worked with extraordinary assiduity, barely giving himself time enough to appear among his guests and hastily swallow a few mouthfuls of the mid-day meal. he owned at one time another country house at coulevon, near vesoul, but this he sold to one of his former pupils, muenier. he remained none the less the chief pride of his native town, where, even during the artist's life, there was a street bearing the name of gérôme. his favourite summering place, however, was in the heart of normandy at saint-martin, near to pont-lévêque, where he possessed a delightful property. "he is a charming man, of rare integrity and fascination. very simple, too, like all men of real power, who need not exert themselves in order to prove their strength." it is after this fashion that m. jules claretie sums him up in his exquisite study of _contemporary painters and sculptors_. m. frédéric masson, his faithful friend, has drawn the following excellent portrait of gérôme: "a head firmly set upon a long neck, features vigorously modelled in acute angles, sunken cheeks, complexion bronzed, eyes brilliant and strangely black, moustache obstinate and bristling, hair almost kinky, and sprouting in massive clumps, ... a straight nose set in a lean face, ... figure exceedingly slender and flexible, waist medium, but well modelled." such he appears in his painting of himself as a sculptor in his studio, absorbed, in his alert and perennially youthful old age, by his new task of making polychrome statues. m. aimé morot, his son-in-law, has shown him to us in his intimate life, simple, natural, and at one and the same time alert and caustic. we find him also thoroughly alive in the fine bust by carpeaux and in the medal by chaplain, now in the luxembourg. m. dagnan-bouveret saw him under another aspect. in the portrait he has given us, we have the master authoritatively proclaiming his convictions. this distinguished artist, by the way, was formerly a pupil of gérôme's. one day when he was complimenting the latter upon his method of teaching, gérôme replied, in his loud, assertive voice: "when i undertake to do a thing, i do it to the very end. i am a man with a sense of duty." as professor at the École des beaux-arts he continued to fulfil his duty for a period of forty years. while conducting his classes he showed himself grave and stern, even sardonic when so inclined. in front of a canvas too thickly coated, he would exclaim: "the paint shop man will be pleased"; or perhaps he would move around to get a side view and then play upon his words, saying: "how that picture stands out!" he had a good many foreigners in his studio, spaniards such as la gandara, americans like bridgman and harrison, and russians such as the celebrated and courageous verestschagen who, according to m. léon coutil, declared, in speaking of gérôme, "next to my dear skobelof, he is the most resolute man that i have ever met." gérôme was frank and unreserved in his opinions. having become, so to speak, the official representative of french painting, he was exposed to repeated attacks. he did not hesitate to flout unmercifully and to pursue with a veritable hatred such artists as had adopted formulas opposed to his own,--and among them some of the biggest and the ones least open to discussion. m. besnard, who was not a pupil of his, nevertheless owed him his prix de rome. many were the circumstances under which he showed his energetic firmness; for example, when the prince de la moskowa wished to fix a quarrel on him and prevent him from exhibiting _the death of mareschal ney_, he evoked this noble declaration from gérôme: "the painter has his rights as much as the historian." [illustration: plate v.--the prisoner pierre lafitte & cie, paris (in the museum of nantes) gérôme had travelled extensively in the east, for he loved its vigorous colouring and picturesque customs. here is a scene glimpsed from the banks of the nile, and he has transcribed it in this superb picture, vibrant with colour and harmonious in composition.] and when a prominent politician criticised the official curriculum without proposing anything to take its place, it was, according to m. moreau-vauthier, again gérôme who replied: "gentlemen, it is easier to be an incendiary than a fireman!" this firmness, however, did not prevent him, so this same biographer points out, from being sensitive to such a degree that he could not bear to watch a cat of frémiet's preparing to devour a nest of sparrows. he used to bring champagne and dainty viands as presents to his pupils. his humour, so m. moreau-vauthier goes on to say, served as a mask to hide his sentiment. poilpot, to whom gérôme was destined later to give useful counsels for his panorama of reischoffen, was working prior to in his studio. one day he went to show him some drawings. his master, having looked him over, inquired: "so, then, you have no shirt?" "no, patron," he replied, "i never wear any." the next day, poilpot received a commission for a copy of an official portrait of napoleon iii, together with an advance payment of francs. this pretty anecdote does as much honour to the pride of the one as to the delicacy of the other. gérôme sincerely loved the youth, the fantasy, the gaiety of france, and more especially of paris. one perceives it in reading the sparkling preface which he wrote for m. miguel zamacoïs' _articles of paris_, blithely illustrated by m. guillaume. he was not too proud to appear at costume balls, nor to continue to take an interest in them even after he had ceased to attend them. he once put his name to a picturesque sign for a doll shop in the "old paris" exhibit at the exposition. for an advertisement contest he painted a dog wearing a monocle, with this amusing inscription and play on words, "_o pti cien_" (_ petit chien_, i.e., o little dog). he amused himself by sending to a toy competition, organized by the prefect of police, a little pompeiian saleswoman holding a basket of various toys, and a diminutive police officer brandishing a white club. gérôme had always wished for a sudden and brusque death, "without physic and without night-cap." he was spared both physical and moral decline. at the age of seventy-nine he climbed the stairs, four steps at a time, and sprang upon moving omnibuses running. he died suddenly of a cerebral congestion, on his return from a dinner which he had attended together with his colleagues of the institut, january , . the artist's work it is difficult to enumerate in detail all the works of gérôme, whose originality and energy were inexhaustible. only a short time before his death he declared that with the help of the sketches contained in his cupboards he had material enough to keep him busy for twenty-five years longer. instead of attempting to draw up a chronological list of his paintings, which would be only approximately correct, even if limited to the more important, it is more profitable to study this conscientious artist under his principal aspects. although he made some talented attempts, gérôme neither was nor wished to be a portrait painter, any more than a painter of modern life. he had, however, as has been pointed out, all the necessary qualities for this type which demands so much precision and assurance. in _the emperor napoleon iii receiving the siamese ambassadors at the palace of fontainebleau_, now in the museum at versailles, there are eighty portraits. the artist has represented himself, side by side with meissonier, and the story is told that a certain general accorded him a sitting of only ten minutes. besides the large and somewhat sombre portrait of rachel, which adorns the stairway of artists at the comédie-française, and which was painted from existing likenesses and from memory, there is scarcely anything else to cite than the portrait of his brother while a student in the polytechnic school, a _head of a woman_ ( , at the museum of nantes), those of m. leblond, at vesoul, mentioned by m. guillaumin, of m. a. t. ( ), of cléry, the great lawyer, and of charles garnier, the celebrated architect of the opéra. as a sculptor, gérôme has left some admirable busts, among others those of mme. sarah bernhardt, bequeathed to the national museum, of _general cambriels_, of _henri lavoix_, the _monument of paul baudry_ destined for la roche-sur-yon, and, most important of all, the _equestrian statue of the duc d'aumale_, which is now to be seen at chantilly, and the model for which is at the museum of besançon. gérôme had a sincere and profound love for antiquity; with him it was not the enjoyment of a contemplative mind, a tranquil amateur art, but that of an historian, an archaeologist coupled with the instinct of a dramatist, a psychologue, let us say, who is eager to discover, in any scene whatever, in the graceful or violent gestures of such and such personages of bygone days, some general application. he was certainly most anxious to suggest interesting or amusing parallels to modern life, for, in spite of the dissimilarity of the settings, the tinsels, the decorations, over which the artist laboured with an almost devout care of minute detail, human nature to-day is always more or less close to the human nature of greece or rome. "exhibit that picture, it will bring you honour," said paul delaroche to his pupil, who had shown him, with much misgiving, the _young greeks occupied in cock fighting_. "it shows originality and style." and that was his first success ( ). the grace of the young figures won much admiration. planche praised the harmony of the composition as a whole. as to théophile gautier, he showed himself, as we have already said, highly enthusiastic; he declared that the features of the boy were drawn with extreme subtlety. "as to the cocks," he added, "they are true prodigies of drawing, animation, and colour; neither snyders, nor woenic, nor oudry, nor desportes, nor rousseau, nor any of the known animal painters have attained, after twenty years of labour, the perfection which m. gérôme has reached at the first attempt." let us note immediately that gérôme was, as a matter of fact, a very great painter of animals. his dogs, his horses, and his lions are the work of a masterly observer. closely following upon the _cock fight_, we must recall _anacreon with bacchus and cupid_ ( , toulouse museum) which gérôme himself characterized as a "lifeless picture," and which nevertheless earned him a second class medal. later on he was destined to treat this same subject in marble (salon of ). the polished and somewhat affected grace of _anacreon_ must have especially pleased the painter, because in he produced a whole series of compositions of delicious daintiness, entitled _cupid tipsy_. on the same order of ideas, mention must be made of _bacchus and cupid intoxicated_ ( , bordeaux museum), and in addition to these, under the head of what may be called his hellenic canvases,--in which he succeeded in conjuring up with magic skill the splendours and graces of that immortal mother of letters and arts, greece beloved by the gods,--the following pictures, _the idyll_ ( ), full of charm and solid erudition; _the greek interior_ ( ), of sure and penetrating art; _king candaules_ ( ), in which the sumptuous beauty of nyssia illumines the bed-chamber of a heraclid, years b.c., and in which the interest of the picturesque anecdote is enhanced by the artist's marvellous documentary knowledge. in the same group must be mentioned _phryne before the tribunal_ ( , reëxhibited in ), of charming subtlety, but with a little too much emphasis, perhaps, on the irony of its psychology; and, of course, _socrates seeking alcibiades at the house of aspasia_, analogous in inspiration, and, as it happens, belonging to the same year; and lastly _daphnis and chloe_ ( ). [illustration: plate vi.--the last prayer pierre lafitte & cie, paris (in a private collection, united states) the amphitheatre is filled to overflowing with the crowd that has gathered to witness the martyrdom of the christians. around the vast circle, unhappy victims agonize upon the cross. in one corner of the arena, a group of men and women, condemned to die, confess their new faith in an ardent prayer, while from the opened subterraneous passage the ravenous beasts are advancing upon their human prey.] italy also, with all her memories, furnished gérôme with scenes of striking contrast, evoked from the vanished past, spectacles at once sumptuous and barbaric. he caught this atmosphere with rare felicity. _paestum_ ( ) commands attention because of its group of buffaloes, which the goncourts praised for "their ponderous weight of head, the solidity of their huge bulk, the grouping of their attitudes, the shagginess of their coats, the prevailing sense of grateful coolness." it is necessary to assign a place apart, in this series, for the _augustan age, birth of christ_ ( , amiens museum). in his own private opinion, confided to his cousin timbal, gérôme held that this enormous composition, measuring ten metres in length by seven in height, lacked inventiveness and originality. it is true that the artist's personality is not clearly revealed in this picture, which is a sort of vast commentary on a phrase by bossuet, and indisputably draws its inspiration from the _apotheosis of homer_ by ingres. nevertheless, no one can dispute its noble qualities, and to borrow a phrase from théophile gautier, its "high philosophic significance." beside augustus caesar deified appears rome, in the form of a woman, helmeted, armed with a buckler, and clad in a red chlamys; then tiberius, standing on the right, then statesmen and poets, caesar, cleopatra, anthony, brutus, and cassius grouped together; lastly the throng of all nations on their knees, admirably rendered. in the centre, relatively unimportant in this immense assemblage, are the virgin mary, the infant jesus, and st. joseph, treated in a curious fashion, modelled on the manner of giotto. "it is the chief ornament of the amiens museum," gérôme would say jestingly; for he had largely lost respect for this prolonged and important effort which represented two years' work of a serious and diligent student of history. the two flawless masterpieces of gérôme, the eloquent interpreter of ancient rome, are unquestionably his _ave caesar, morituri te salutant_ ( ), purchased by mathews, in which, in the presence of a bloated, overfed vitellius, sitting pacifically in his imperial box, not far from the white vestals, crowned with verbena, gladiators are fighting and dying in the circus, and _pollice verso_ ( ) in which these same gladiators are represented, no longer as roman soldiers, but in the exact costume that they wear at the moment when the emperor and the crowd, ravenous for carnage, turn down their thumbs as signal for the death stroke. this work, published by goupil, did not appear at the salon. we must cite further _gaius maximus_, the _chariot race_, which aroused legitimate enthusiasm in america; the _wild beasts entering the arena_ ( ) and we must not forget that gérôme also expended his energy as a sculptor upon these same attractive gladiatorial figures. striking and pathetic contrast is also earnestly striven for and strongly rendered in _the death of caesar_ ( , ). one almost needs to be an incomparable "stage manager" in order to show the body of caesar after this fashion, in the foreground, in the chamber deserted by the senators; one conscript father, as a touch of satire, has fallen asleep. the effect is powerful, even though it has been sought for with too obvious care. undoubtedly nadar had the laugh on his side when he compared the body of caesar to a bundle of linen and called the picture "the day of the washerwoman." gérôme appreciated the humour of this pleasantry. it is equally true that baudelaire applauded the picture, exclaiming: "certainly this time m. gérôme's imagination has outdone itself; it passed through a fortunate crisis when it conceived of caesar alone, stretched upon the ground before his overturned throne ... this terrible epitome tells everything." the clever erudition of the painter, who had already revealed himself as an adherent of the so-called group of "pompeiians," in the _gyneceum_ ( ),--in which we perceive a group of nude women in the court of a house in herculaneum,--asserts itself once more, coupled with an incisive touch of epigram in _two augurs unable to look at each other without laughing_, and similarly in the _cave canem_, now at vesoul (in front of a roman house a slave is playing the role of watch dog), in the _sale of slaves at rome_ ( ), etc. a similar ingenuity, with greater amplitude, constitutes the charm and the surprise of _cleopatra and caesar_ ( ). cleopatra has had herself brought into caesar's cabinet in the palace at alexandria, concealed in a bundle of clothing. "her appearance there," said maxime du camp, who also praised the interest of the accessories, treated with exquisite care, "is perfectly chaste, in spite of her nudity." all the details are executed with a masterly command of picturesqueness and accuracy. as a religious painter gérôme has to his credit the _virgin, infant jesus, and st. john_ ( ), a youthful work imitated from perugino, a _st. george_, in the church of saint-georges at vesoul, a _st. martin cutting his mantle_, in the ancient refectory of saint-martin-des-champs, a _death of st. jerome_ ( ) at saint-séverin, a _moses on mt. sinai_, and _the plague at marsailles_, and, most important of all, _golgotha consummatum est_, intensely lugubrious and symbolic in aspect, with christ and the two thieves appearing, through the desolate atmosphere, like writhing shadows on the cross. this conception cost the author a violent diatribe from veuillot, while edmund about, although making certain reservations, wrote on the other side: "the entire sum of qualities that are distinctive of m. gérôme will be found in this picture." as a painter of exotic life gérôme remains an observer of the highest order. if he has not wholly revealed italy to us in his _guardians of the herd_ and his _pifferari_ ( , ), he has at least done so in the case of egypt, still deeply impregnated with an ancient and splendid civilization, naïve and at the same time venerable, egypt before the advent of tourists, a luminous land where the nile and the desert reign supreme, a land of magnificence and of savagery. landscapes of this egypt of poetic mystery, and of palestine as well, childish or perverse _almas_, rude albanian chiefs, turbaned turks,--one never wearies of these decorative effects, these clear visions, these scenes of animation, whether violent or delicate, the people, the vegetation, the fabrics, all resplendent under the marvellous sky of the orient. in the company of this intrepid, venturesome and observant traveller, we witness the passage of _egyptian recruits crossing the desert_, we are present at _prayers in the house of an albanian chief_, we pause in the _plain of thebes_, not far from _memmon and sesostris_, and we watch the _camels at the drinking trough_, so admirably realized. gérôme, who had a gift for finding the right and pleasing phrase, gave this rather neat definition of a camel: "the ship of the sea of sand." similarly, the _egyptian straw-chopper_ ( , again exhibited in , and purchased by m. werlé) symbolizes, simply yet forcefully, agricultural egypt, and all the varied shadings of her pastoral poetry. then again, there is _the prisoner_ ( ), in which a boat is making its way along the vast and pacific nile. two negro oarsmen, the master, a bashibazouk, are in the prow; and in the stern, beside a buffoon, who apparently derides him, while twanging the strings of a guitar, the prisoner lies cross-wise, fast bound, and abandons himself to his cruel destiny. there, in a setting of enchanted beauty, we have the chief actors in this original drama, in which dream and reality are blended. what a horde of types, some of them bizarre, others simply comic! there are, taking them as they come, a _turkish butcher in jerusalem_ ( ), _the alma_ (professional singing girl-- ), _the slaves in the market place_, _the clothing merchant at cairo_, _the albanians playing chess_ ( ), the _itinerant merchant at cairo_ ( ). then there is the _promenade of the harem_, and still others, the _santon_ (turkish monk) _at the door of the mosque_ and _women at the bath_ ( ), the _arab and his courser_ and _the return from the hunt_ ( ). [illustration: plate vii.--the vendor of rugs pierre lafitte & cie, paris (in a private collection, united states) from his numerous journeys to the east, gérôme brought back many curious memoranda of picturesque scenes, which he subsequently converted into brilliant canvases. he excelled in reproducing the caressing beauty of shimmering carpets and the rippling sheen of silken textures.] in the company of this experienced and reliable guide, we wander from _jerusalem_ ( ) to the _great bath at broussa_ ( ), from a _corner of cairo_ to _medinet_ and _fayoum_. here we have the severed heads in the _mosque of el hecanin_, the nude woman in the _moorish bath_, all the barbarity and all the grace of the orient,--and invariably the anecdote, whether agreeable or sinister, blends with the matchless splendour of the landscape. to this list must be added _recreation in camp, a souvenir of moldavia_ (salon of ), in which a soldier is dancing before his assembled comrades, to the sound of drums, fifes, and violins. a sentinel keeps watch. it is a picture taken in the act, and intensely real. it is easy to detect the historian, or, to adopt the expression of m. jules claretie, the "memoir maker," possessed of the true gift, agreeable and individual, lurking behind every one of the works of this authoritative orientalist. he dedicated himself quite naturally and with great success to the interpretation of history and of the historic and literary anecdote. his love of contrasts, his gift for depicting locality and somehow conveying the very atmosphere belonging to the varied scenes that are to be brought before the spectator's eye, give amplitude to such attractive little compositions as _louis xiv. and molière_ ( ), and _a collaboration_ ( ); evoke the whole sombre tragedy of the death of maréchal ney, _december , , nine o'clock in the morning_ ( ); and appeal successively to our curiosity, our sympathy, or our admiration, with a frederick ii., conqueror of silesia, playing on his flute, the _king flutist_ ( , purchased by m. h. oppenheim), _his gray eminence_ ( ), in which the austere and dominant father joseph is making his way alone, down the stairway, in the presence of the obsequious courtiers; a bonaparte day-dreaming before the sphinx, _oedipus_ ( ), a _bonaparte at cairo_ gazing at the town from the back of his arab horse, a _bonaparte in egypt_, mounted on a white dromedary, dreaming of his omnipotence, of his conquest of the universe, and surrounded by his overdriven soldiers. as a matter of fact, gérôme made a sort of hero-worship of napoleon and the napoleonic epic, resembling in this respect his friend, m. frédéric masson, the celebrated historian of the emperor, who was better qualified than any other writer to pay an eloquent tribute to this _bonaparte in egypt_. "bonaparte is no longer on the road to syria, he is on the road to india; he is hesitating between the two halves of the world that he holds in his hands; he is weighing the destiny of alexander against the destiny of cæsar; he is asking himself whether asia, to which he holds the key, is a fair exchange for europe which he has just quitted; and while his dream embraces the universe, he leaves his human rubbish heap to suffer." gérôme is wholly himself when he has an anecdote to give us, whether it be subtle, humorous, kindly, or dramatic, and even,--why not use the word?--melodramatic. classified thus, _the duel after the masquerade_ fully deserves its brilliant reputation. reproduced, not only in lithographs and engravings, but even transferred to the theatre (given at the gymnase, in , by mme. fould), its subject has become a matter of general knowledge. it is winter in the bois de boulogne. a number of people in fancy costume are bending over a wounded pierrot, while one of the witnesses of this improvised duel is leading away the murderer, the harlequin. one can see at once what a tremendous appeal a subject like this would have for the general public. this singular drama, taking place in the snow, all this joyousness ending in bloodshed and perhaps death, is so fantastic that it leaves a lasting impression. it was, by the way, as m. guillaumin has explained, suggested by an actual duel that took place between deluns-montaud, the harlequin, and the prefect of police bortelle, the pierrot. undoubtedly there was, and still is, ground for criticism. alexandre dumas thought, not unreasonably, that serious-minded men of that age would not go out to fight each other in such a costume. edmond about criticized the pose of crispin supporting on his knee an entire group of spectators, along with the body of poor pierrot. but paul de saint-victor praised the "truthfulness of the postures, the etching-like precision of the heads, the wise planning of the whole composition." in order to appreciate better the daring fantasy and the wise and invariably picturesque inventiveness of gérôme, we have only to study further such works as the frieze destined to be reproduced upon a vase commemorative of the exposition of london ( ), _rembrandt etching_ (exhibited in , purchased by m. e. fould), which has been admired for its golden half-shadows and freely compared to gerard dow, the _reception of the siamese ambassadors_ ( ), _the first kiss of the sun_ ( ), the _poet_, _thirst_ ( ), and fantasies, such as, _the amateur of tulips_, _whoever you are, here is your master_; anecdotal portraits throwing side lights on history, such as: _they are conspiring_, or _not convenient_, _louis xi. visiting cardinal balue_, _promenade of the court in the gardens of versailles_ ( ); animals full of life and prowess, such as: _the lioness meeting a jaguar_ and _ego nominor leo_, a lion rendered life size; lastly, his studio interiors, in which he has chosen to depict himself exactly as he was, that is to say, a sincere, clear-sighted, and indefatigable workman. in the most recent of these studio pictures, he appears, wearing a sculptor's blouse and occupied in modelling a statuette of a woman. he astonished his friends and admirers, during his last years, by his earnest labours in sculpture. his two groups, _the gladiators_ and _anacreon, bacchus and cupid_, claimed the attention of the public at the exposition of ; and it was the same with his marble statue of _omphale_ ( ), his _tanagra_, his _dancing girl_, his bronze _lion_ ( , ), etc. his efforts to revive the art of coloured or polychrome sculpture, the so-called chryselephantine sculpture, which invokes the aid of various precious elements, constitute one of the most curious and important artistic experiments of modern times, even though the result did not always come up to the expectation. on february , , in an unpublished letter addressed to m. germain bapst, who desired information concerning the artist's experiment, gérôme wrote: "i have always been struck with a sense of the coldness of statues if, when the work is once finished, it is left in its natural state. i have already made some experiments and am continuing my efforts, for i am anxious to bring before the eyes of the public a few demonstrations that i hope will be conclusive. i know that there are a great many protests. the world always protests against anything which is, i will not merely say new, but even renewed; for it disturbs a good many people in their tranquillity and their routine." and after having first shown that ancient architecture was adorned with colours and that in chryselephantine sculpture the greeks combined gold, tin, and ivory, that they painted the marble and united it with various metals, gérôme added: "shall i succeed? at least i shall have the honour of having made the attempt." in the interesting study which m. germain bapst devoted to this question, after having, as we have seen, consulted the artist himself, he recalled the fact that both in chateaux and in churches the mediæval statuary was coloured. in greece, the minerva parthenos contained a weight of gold equivalent to more than , , francs in the french currency of to-day. the statue of jupiter at olympus was partly of ivory and partly of gold. [illustration: plate viii.--the two majesties pierre lafitte & cie, paris (in a private collection, united states) in the mournful immensity of african solitudes, the king of planets mounts towards the zenith, darting his fires upon the arid land that he consumes, while the other king of the desert, the lion, contemplates the triumphant ascension of his rival in the sky. gérôme has rendered the scene with an eloquence all the greater because he has employed such simple means.] towards the middle of the nineteenth century, the duc de luynes undertook, in collaboration with the architect dubau, to produce an example of chryselephantine sculpture, which cost him more than , francs and was placed on view at the exposition universelle held in the palais de l'industrie in . gérôme in his turn made a like attempt, in his _bellona_, in which, to remedy the cold immobility of the material, he coloured both the ivory and the marble and at the same time invoked the aid of silver, bronze, gold, and enamel. he had associated with him several experienced collaborators, such as m. siot-decauville, who was to cast the face of bellona in bronze, messrs. moreau-vauthier and delacour to point the ivory, m. gautruche to attend to the verde-antique and the electroplating. lastly, gallé, and m. lalique as well, made a number of trial models for the little head of medusa. among the other examples of gérôme's sculpture, mention must be made of _the entrance of bonaparte into cairo_ ( ), _bonaparte_, a bust ( ), _timour-lang, the lion tamer_ ( ), _frederick the great_ ( ), _washington_ ( ), _the expiring eagle of waterloo_, _the bowlers_ ( ), _cupid the metallurgist_, a statue in bronze, _corinth_, a statue in polychrome marble and bronze ( ). the art of gÉrÔme "if you wish to be happy," gérôme used to say to his pupils, "remain students all your lives." for his own part he applied himself ceaselessly to his studies, trusting nothing to chance. he had an extraordinarily methodical and orderly mind, even in regard to the smallest details. it is related that, when he was absent on his travels, he would notify his models several months in advance, so that they would be on hand to pose for him in his studio, from the very day of his arrival. being partly a traditionalist and partly an independent, he did not always possess the gift of pleasing the critics, and he loved them none too well. and when one of them asked him one day for a sketch, he replied, "i do not pay to be applauded." but he was exceedingly strict in his self-criticism. in one of his notes entrusted to his relative timbal, he wrote: "i am my own severest critic.... i am under no delusion regarding my works." on the other hand, and it is well to dwell upon this in order to grasp his personality, gérôme was far from being an eclectic. of the work of puvis de chavannes he said with virulence: "it won't stand analysis, it is a series of mannikins set on the ground all out of plumb, and nothing seems to fit in." and he made a play upon words by employing, in place of puvis, the latin word _pulvis_, which signifies dust. after his appointment as professor at the École des beaux-arts, he did his best to have manet banished from it. he couched his protest in the following energetic terms: "i am certain that manet was capable of painting good pictures. but he chose to be the apostle of a decadent fashion, the scrap-work school of art. i, for my part, have been chosen by the state to teach the orthography of art to young students.... i do not think it right to offer them as a model the extremely arbitrary and sensational work of a man who, although gifted with rare qualities, did not develop them." in his opinion, it would have been more suitable to exhibit such works in a bar-room than at the beaux-arts. m. coutil relates that gérôme said further on this same subject: "the first merit a painting should have is to be luminous and alluring in colour, and not dull and obscure." he had, for that matter, no more tolerance for millet than for sisley, monet, and pissaro. on one occasion, he assured m. jules claretie that if millet could return and again send his canvases to the salon, he would refuse them over again! and, when his distinguished interlocutor protested, "oh, come now, gérôme, you don't mean that!" he declared unhesitatingly, "i mean just that, and nothing else." messrs. moreau-vauthier and dagnan-bouveret have given some very accurate and useful details regarding his methods of instruction and of work. they have shown him to us at his task, both as painter and professor. he emphasized the importance of construction, and of the character of the form, rather than the form itself, which is a matter of temperament. he insisted that a scene must be visualized in its completeness, as a harmonious and fully significant whole. emile augier, for instance, with whom he felt no annoyance at being compared, the excellent comedian, got, the younger dumas, gounod,--all of these he loved for their absolute clarity, and he demanded it of them. he declared that one has no right to paint off-hand, without a model; and he also held that one has no right to make hasty, careless sketches. his method was distinguished by its scrupulous and admirable precision. impeccable order always reigned in his studio. m. dagnan-bouveret writes that his palette and brushes were scrupulously cared for. he used to overspread his canvases with a uniform foundation of half-tones more or less warm or cold, using preparations made by troigras. he roughed in the whole picture very rapidly, and this first rough draft, according to connoisseurs, was always extremely interesting. in his paintings, he proved that the strength of colouring is in inverse proportion to the intensity of light. he had a marvellous faculty for making the delicate shadings of nature correspond with the psychological sentiments that their aspects evoke. from this comes his amazing variety. a man of wide reading and deep culture, gérôme had a profound love for the truth, for reality just as it is, holding that it is the artist's first duty to know his place, his time, his episode, and the one special angle of vision that will give the rarest and most fruitful results. on the eve of his death, he was still lauding the merits of photography, which has the advantage of being able to snatch a document straight out of life, without falsifying it by giving it a personal interpretation that must always be more or less inaccurate. whatever allowance must be made for what we may call the personal equation of an artist, his own individual temperament, it is not unprofitable to recall this opinion of gérôme's, for it helps us to acquire a better conception of his art, based as it was upon accuracy and unwavering truth. truth, which he once depicted in her well, killed by liars and mountebanks (_mendacibus in histrionibus occisa in puteo jacet alma veritas_, salon of ), always charmed and inspired him. he rendered it more attractive by his admirable sincerity, by his chivalrous and imaginative spirit, as well as by his archeological and ethnographic learning. thanks to this lofty conscientiousness in research, his work, erudite and entertaining at the same time, making distant and vanished civilizations live again, and reproducing atmospheres and local settings with a delicacy that at times is a trifle specious, but always incomparably picturesque, cannot fail to please and charm to-day as it did yesterday, and to-morrow as it does to-day. accordingly, it is with good reason that m. soubies has lauded his fine attention to detail, and that m. thiebaut-sisson has summed him up in the following terms: "the artist created his formula for himself. he extracted from it the maximum effect that it contained." and even while we glorify and venerate those painters gifted with a graver or more lyric vision, a bolder or more laboured craftsmanship, we must freely subscribe to the opinion of edmond about when he said of gérôme: "he is the subtlest, the most ingenious, the most brilliant ... of his generation." transcriber's note: the following correction have been made: p. honoured placed among -> placed changed to place illustrations were moved to paragraph breaks and a missing comma was added. everything else has been retained as printed (including ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines). italics is represented with underscore. transcriber's note: ################### this e-text is based on the edition. the original spelling has been retained, as well as inconsistencies, such as 'musquetry'/'musketry', 'du frêne'/'du fresne', 'melzio'/'meltio'/'melzi', etc. uncommon or old-style spelling has not been altered, such as 'opake' (opaque), 'verdegris' (verdigris), 'dutchess' (duchess), etc. errors due to bad print, as well as minor punctuation errors have been tacitly corrected. in the text, the plates are referenced by using roman numerals, whereas the captions of the plates show arabic numerals; the same applies to the table of chapters and the chapter headings, respectively. this inconsistency has been retained. footnotes related to introductory chapters have been prefixed with the letter 'i' ([i ]-[i ]); footnotes in da vinci's own text, however, are shown in plain arabic numerals ([ ]-[ ]). italic passages in the original version have been placed between underscores (_text_); text in small caps has been symbolised by forward slashes (/small caps/). a superscript character has been denominated by a preceding caret symbol (^). the following typographical errors have been corrected: # p. xviii: 'overspead' --> 'overspread'; 'vincius ast oculis' --> 'vincius est oculis' # p. lxxxiii: 'vasari, ,' --> 'vasari, p. ' # p. lxxxv: 'maestrodi' --> 'maestro di' # p. xcii: 'fontainbleau' --> 'fontainebleau' # p. : plate : original caption points to page ; corrected to page . # p. : 'pully' -->'pulley' # p. : 'andso' --> 'and so' # p. : 'a b e d' --> 'c b e d' # p. : 'that that' --> 'than that' # footnote : 'tranferred' --> 'transferred' the table of chapters has been moved to the beginning of the text for reasons of clarity and comprehensibility. a treatise on painting, by leonardo da vinci. printed by /s. gosnell/, little queen street, holborn, london. [illustration: leonardo da vinci, from a picture in the florentine museum. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn_] a treatise on painting, by _leonardo da vinci_. faithfully translated from the original italian, and now first digested under proper heads, /by/ john francis rigaud, /esq./ academician of the royal academy of painting at london, and also of the academia clementina at bologna, and the royal academy at stockholm. illustrated with twenty-three copper-plates, and other figures. to which is prefixed _a new life of the author_, drawn up from authentic materials till now inaccessible, /by/ john sidney, hawkins, /esq./ f.a.s. ars est habitus quidam faciendi verâ cum ratione. aristot. ethic. lib. . london: printed for j. taylor, at the architectural library, high holborn. m.dccc.ii. table of chapters. _the number at the end of each title refers to the corresponding chapter in the original edition in italian._ drawing. proportion. chap. . what the young student in painting ought in the first place to learn. chapter . . rule for a young student in painting. . . how to discover a young man's disposition for painting. . . of painting, and its divisions. . . division of the figure. . . proportion of members. . . of dimensions in general. . . motion, changes, and proportion of members. . . the difference of proportion between children and grown men. . . the alterations in the proportion of the human body from infancy to full age. . . of the proportion of members. . . that every part be proportioned to its whole. . . of the proportion of the members. . . the danger of forming an erroneous judgment in regard to the proportion and beauty of the parts. . . another precept. . . the manner of drawing from relievos, and rendering paper fit for it. . . of drawing from casts or nature. . . to draw figures from nature. . . of drawing from nature. . . of drawing academy figures. . . of studying in the dark, on first waking in the morning, and before going to sleep. . . observations on drawing portraits. . . the method of retaining in the memory the likeness of a man, so as to draw his portrait, after having seen him only once. . . how to remember the form of a face. . . that a painter should take pleasure in the opinion of every body. . anatomy. . what is principally to be observed in figures. . . mode of studying. . . of being universal. . . a precept for the painter. . . of the measures of the human body, and the bending of members. . . of the small bones in several joints of the human body. . . memorandum to be observed by the painter. . . the shoulders. . . the difference of joints between children and grown men. . . of the joints of the fingers. . . of the joint of the wrist. . . of the joint of the foot. . . of the knee. . . of the joints. . . of the naked. . . of the thickness of the muscles. . . fat subjects have small muscles. . . which of the muscles disappear in the different motions of the body. . . of the muscles. . . of the muscles. . . the extension and contraction of the muscles. . . of the muscle between the chest and the lower belly. . . of a man's complex strength, but first of the arm. . . in which of the two actions, pulling or pushing, a man has the greatest power, _plate ii._ . . of the bending of members, and of the flesh round the bending joint. . . of the naked body. . . of a ligament without muscles. . . of creases. . . how near behind the back one arm can be brought to the other. _plate iii._ and _iv._ . . of the muscles. . . of the muscles. . . of the bending of the body. . . the same subject. . . the necessity of anatomical knowledge. . motion and equipoise of figures. . of the equipoise of a figure standing still. . . motion produced by the loss of equilibrium. . . of the equipoise of bodies, _plate v._ . . of positions. . . of balancing the weight round the centre of gravity in bodies. . . of figures that have to lift up, or carry any weight. . . the equilibrium of a man standing upon his feet, _plate vi._ . . of walking, _plate vii._ . . of the centre of gravity in men and animals. . . of the corresponding thickness of parts on each side of the body. . . of the motions of animals. . . of quadrupeds and their motions. . . of the quickness or slowness of motion. . . of the motion of animals. . . of a figure moving against the wind, _plate viii._ . . of the balance of a figure resting upon its feet. . . a precept. . . of a man standing, but resting more upon one foot than the other. . . of the balance of figures, _plate ix._ . . in what manner extending one arm alters the balance. . . of a man bearing a weight on his shoulders, _plate x._ . . of equilibrium. . . of motion. . . the level of the shoulders. . . objection to the above answered, _plate xi._ and _xii._ . . of the position of figures, _plate xiii._ . . of the joints. . . of the shoulders. . . of the motions of a man. . . of the disposition of members preparing to act with great force, _plate xiv._ . . of throwing any thing with violence, _plate xv._ . . on the motion of driving any thing into or drawing it out of the ground. . . of forcible motions, _plate xvi._ . . the action of jumping. . . of the three motions in jumping upwards. . . of the easy motions of members. . . the greatest twist which a man can make, in turning to look at himself behind, plate _xvii._ . . of turning the leg without the thigh. . . postures of figures. . . of the gracefulness of the members. . . that it is impossible for any memory to retain the aspects and changes of the members. . . the motions of figures. . . of common motions. . . of simple motions. . . complex motions. . . motions appropriated to the subject. . . appropriate motions. . . of the postures of women and young people. . . of the postures of children. . . of the motion of the members. . . of mental motions. . . effect of the mind upon the motions of the body, occasioned by some outward object. . linear perspective. . of those who apply themselves to the practice, without having learnt the theory of the art. . . precepts in painting. . . of the boundaries of objects called outlines or contours. . . of linear perspective. . . what parts of objects disappear first by distance. . . of remote objects. . . of the point of sight. . . a picture is to be viewed from one point only. . . of the dimensions of the first figure in an historical painting. . . of objects that are lost to the sight, in proportion to their distance. . . errors not so easily seen in small objects as in large ones. . . historical subjects one above another on the same wall to be avoided. . . why objects in painting can never detach as natural objects do. . . how to give the proper dimension to objects in painting. . . how to draw accurately any particular spot. . . disproportion to be avoided, even in the accessory parts. . invention /or/ composition. . precept for avoiding a bad choice in the style or proportion of figures. . . variety in figures. . . how a painter ought to proceed in his studies. . . of sketching histories and figures. . . how to study composition. . . of the attitudes of men. . . variety of positions. . . of studies from nature for history. . . of the variety of figures in history painting. . . of variety in history. . . of the age of figures. . . of variety of faces. . . a fault in painters. . . how you may learn to compose groups for history painting. . . how to study the motions of the human body. . . of dresses, and of draperies and folds. . . of the nature of folds in draperies. . . how the folds of draperies ought to be represented, _plate xviii._ . . how the folds in draperies ought to be made. . . fore-shortening of folds, _plate xix._ . . of folds. . . of decorum. . . the character of figures in composition. . . the motion of the muscles, when the figures are in natural positions. . . a precept in painting. . . of the motion of man, _plate xx._ and _xxi._ . . of attitudes, and the motions of the members. . . of a single figure separate from an historical group. . . on the attitudes of the human figure. . . how to represent a storm. . . how to compose a battle. . . the representation of an orator and his audience. . . of demonstrative gestures. . . of the attitudes of the by-standers at some remarkable event. . . how to represent night. . . the method of awakening the mind to a variety of inventions. . . of composition in history. . expression /and/ character. . of expressive motions. . . how to paint children. . . how to represent old men. . . how to paint old women. . . how to paint women. . . of the variety of faces. . . the parts of the face, and their motions. . . laughing and weeping. . . of anger. . . despair. . light /and/ shadow. . the course of study to be pursued. . . which of the two is the most useful knowledge, the outlines of figures, or that of light and shadow. . . which is the most important, the shadow or outlines in painting. . . what is a painter's first aim and object. . . the difference of superficies, in regard to painting. . . how a painter may become universal. . . accuracy ought to be learnt before dispatch in the execution. . . how the painter is to place himself in regard to the light, and his model. . . of the best light. . . of drawing by candle-light. . . of those painters who draw at home from one light, and afterwards adapt their studies to another situation in the country, and a different light. . . how high the light should be in drawing from nature. . . what light the painter must make use of to give most relief to his figures. . . advice to painters. . . of shadows. . . of the kind of light proper for drawing from relievos, or from nature. . . whether the light should be admitted in front or sideways; and which is the most pleasing and graceful. . . of the difference of lights according to the situation. . . how to distribute the light on figures. . . of the beauty of faces. . . how, in drawing a face, to give it grace, by the management of light and shade. . . how to give grace and relief to faces. . . of the termination of bodies upon each other. . . of the back-grounds of painted objects. . . how to detach and bring forward figures out of their back-ground. . . of proper back-grounds. . . of the general light diffused over figures. . . of those parts in shadows which appear the darkest at a distance. . . of the eye viewing the folds of draperies surrounding a figure. . . of the relief of figures remote from the eye. . . of outlines of objects on the side towards the light. . . how to make objects detach from their ground, that is to say, from the surface on which they are painted. . contraste and effect. . a precept. . . of the interposition of transparent bodies between the eye and the object. . . of proper back-grounds for figures. . . of back-grounds. . reflexes. . of objects placed on a light ground, and why such a practice is useful in painting. . . of the different effects of white, according to the difference of back-grounds. . . of reverberation. . . where there cannot be any reverberation of light. . . in what part the reflexes have more or less brightness. . . of the reflected lights which surround the shadows. . . where reflexes are to be most apparent. . . what part of a reflex is to be the lightest. . . of the termination of reflexes on their grounds. . . of double and treble reflexions of light. . . reflexes in the water, and particularly those of the air. . colours /and/ colouring. colours. . what surface is best calculated to receive most colours. . . what surface will shew most perfectly its true colour. . . on what surface the true colour is least apparent. . . what surfaces shew most of their true and genuine colour. . . of the mixture of colours. . . of the colours produced by the mixture of other colours, called secondary colours. . . of verdegris. . . how to increase the beauty of verdegris. . . how to paint a picture that will last almost for ever. . . the mode of painting on canvass, or linen cloth. . . of lively and beautiful colours. . . of transparent colours. . . in what part a colour will appear in its greatest beauty. . . how any colour without gloss, is more beautiful in the lights than in the shades. . . of the appearance of colours. . . what part of a colour is to be the most beautiful. . . that the beauty of a colour is to be found in the lights. . . of colours. . . no object appears in its true colour, unless the light which strikes upon it be of the same colour. . . of the colour of shadows. . . of colours. . . whether it be possible for all colours to appear alike by means of the same shadow. . . why white is not reckoned among the colours. . . of colours. . . of the colouring of remote objects. . . the surface of all opake bodies participates of the colour of the surrounding objects. . . general remarks on colours. . colours in regard to light and shadow. . of the light proper for painting flesh colour from nature. . . of the painter's window. . . the shadows of colours. . . of the shadows of white. . . which of the colours will produce the darkest shade. . . how to manage, when a white terminates upon another white. . . on the back-grounds of figures. . . the mode of composing history. . . remarks concerning lights and shadows. . . why the shadows of bodies upon a white wall are blueish towards the evening. . . of the colour of faces. . . a precept relating to painting. . . of colours in shadow. . . of the choice of lights. . colours in regard to back-grounds. . of avoiding hard outlines. . . of outlines. . . of back-grounds. . . how to detach figures from the ground. . . of uniformity and variety of colours upon plain surfaces. . . of back-grounds suitable both to shadows and lights. . . the apparent variation of colours, occasioned by the contraste of the ground upon which they are placed. . contraste, harmony, and reflexes, in regard to colours. . gradation in painting. . . how to assort colours in such a manner as that they may add beauty to each other. . . of detaching the figures. . . of the colour of reflexes. . . what body will be the most strongly tinged with the colour of any other object. . . of reflexes. . . of the surface of all shadowed bodies. . . that no reflected colour is simple, but is mixed with the nature of the other colours. . . of the colour of lights and reflexes. . . why reflected colours seldom partake of the colour of the body where they meet. . . the reflexes of flesh colours. . . of the nature of comparison. . . where the reflexes are seen. . perspective of colours. . a precept of perspective in regard to painting. . . of the perspective of colours. . . the cause of the diminution of colours. . . of the diminution of colours and objects. . . of the variety observable in colours, according to their distance or proximity. . . at what distance colours are entirely lost. . . of the change observable in the same colour, according to its distance from the eye. . . of the blueish appearance of remote objects in a landscape. . . of the qualities in the surface which first lose themselves by distance. . . from what cause the azure of the air proceeds. . . of the perspective of colours. . . of the perspective of colours in dark places. . . of the perspective of colours. . . of colours. . . how it happens that colours do not change, though placed in different qualities of air. . . why colours experience no apparent change, though placed in different qualities of air. . . contrary opinions in regard to objects seen afar off. . . of the colour of objects remote from the eye. . . of the colour of mountains. . . why the colour and shape of objects are lost in some situations apparently dark, though not so in reality. . . various precepts in painting. . aerial perspective. . aerial perspective. . . the parts of the smallest objects will first disappear in painting. . . small figures ought not to be too much finished. . . why the air is to appear whiter as it approaches nearer to the earth. . . how to paint the distant part of a landscape. . . of precise and confused objects. . . of distant objects. . . of buildings seen in a thick air. . . of towns and other objects seen through a thick air. . . of the inferior extremities of distant objects. . . which parts of objects disappear first by being removed farther from the eye, and which preserve their appearance. . . why objects are less distinguished in proportion as they are farther removed from the eye. . . why faces appear dark at a distance. . . of towns and other buildings seen through a fog in the morning or evening. . . of the height of buildings seen in a fog. . . why objects which are high, appear darker at a distance than those which are low, though the fog be uniform, and of equal thickness. . . of objects seen in a fog. . . of those objects which the eye perceives through a mist or thick air. . . miscellaneous observations. . miscellaneous observations. landscape. . of objects seen at a distance. . . of a town seen through a thick air. . . how to draw a landscape. . . of the green of the country. . . what greens will appear most of a blueish cast. . . the colour of the sea from different aspects. . . why the same prospect appears larger at some times than at others. . . of smoke. . . in what part smoke is lightest. . . of the sun-beams passing through the openings of clouds. . . of the beginning of rain. . . the seasons are to be observed. . . the difference of climates is to be observed. . . of dust. . . how to represent the wind. . . of a wilderness. . . of the horizon seen in the water. . . of the shadow of bridges on the surface of the water. . . how a painter ought to put in practice the perspective of colours. . . various precepts in painting. . . the brilliancy of a landscape. . miscellaneous observations. . why a painted object does not appear so far distant as a real one, though they be conveyed to the eye by equal angles. . . how to draw a figure standing upon its feet, to appear forty braccia high, in a space of twenty braccia, with proportionate members. . . how to draw a figure twenty-four braccia high, upon a wall twelve braccia high. _plate xxii._ . . why, on measuring a face, and then painting it of the same size, it will appear larger than the natural one. . . why the most perfect imitation of nature will not appear to have the same relief as nature itself. . . universality of painting. a precept. . . in what manner the mirror is the true master of painters. . . which painting is to be esteemed the best. . . of the judgment to be made of a painter's work. . . how to make an imaginary animal appear natural. . . painters are not to imitate one another. . . how to judge of one's own work. . . of correcting errors which you discover. . . the best place for looking at a picture. . . of judgment. . . of employment anxiously wished for by painters. . . advice to painters. . . of statuary. . . on the measurement and division of statues into parts. . . a precept for the painter. . . on the judgment of painters. . . that a man ought not to trust to himself, but ought to consult nature. . preface to the present translation. the excellence of the following treatise is so well known to all in any tolerable degree conversant with the art of painting, that it would be almost superfluous to say any thing respecting it, were it not that it here appears under the form of a new translation, of which some account may be expected. of the original work, which is in reality a selection from the voluminous manuscript collections of the author, both in folio and quarto, of all such passages as related to painting, no edition appeared in print till , though its author died so long before as the year ; and it is owing to the circumstance of a manuscript copy of these extracts in the original italian, having fallen into the hands of raphael du fresne; that in the former of these years it was published at paris in a thin folio volume in that language, accompanied with a set of cuts from the drawings of nicolo poussin, and alberti; the former having designed the human figures, the latter the geometrical and other representations. this precaution was probably necessary, the sketches in the author's own collections being so very slight as not to be fit for publication without further assistance. poussin's drawings were mere outlines, and the shadows and back-grounds behind the figures were added by errard, after the drawings had been made, and, as poussin himself says, without his knowledge. in the same year, and size, and printed at the same place, a translation of the original work into french was given to the world by monsieur de chambray (well known, under his family name of freart, as the author of an excellent parallel of ancient and modern architecture, in french, which mr. evelyn translated into english). the style of this translation by mons. de chambray, being thought, some years after, too antiquated, some one was employed to revise and modernise it; and in a new edition of it, thus polished, came out, of which it may be truly said, as is in general the case on such occasions, that whatever the supposed advantage obtained in purity and refinement of language might be, it was more than counterbalanced by the want of the more valuable qualities of accuracy, and fidelity to the original, from which, by these variations, it became further removed. the first translation of this treatise into english, appeared in the year . it does not declare by whom it was made; but though it professes to have been done from the original italian, it is evident, upon a comparison, that more use was made of the revised edition of the french translation. indifferent, however, as it is, it had become so scarce, and risen to a price so extravagant, that, to supply the demand, it was found necessary, in the year , to reprint it as it stood, with all its errors on its head, no opportunity then offering of procuring a fresh translation. this last impression, however, being now also disposed of, and a new one again called for, the present translator was induced to step forward, and undertake the office of fresh translating it, on finding, by comparing the former versions both in french and english with the original, many passages which he thought might at once be more concisely and more faithfully rendered. his object, therefore, has been to attain these ends, and as rules and precepts like the present allow but little room for the decorations of style, he has been more solicitous for fidelity, perspicuity, and precision, than for smooth sentences, and well-turned periods. nor was this the only advantage which it was found the present opportunity would afford; for the original work consisting in fact of a number of entries made at different times, without any regard to their subjects, or attention to method, might rather in that state be considered as a chaos of intelligence, than a well-digested treatise. it has now, therefore, for the first time, been attempted to place each chapter under the proper head or branch of the art to which it belongs; and by so doing, to bring together those which (though related and nearly connected in substance) stood, according to the original arrangement, at such a distance from each other as to make it troublesome to find them even by the assistance of an index; and difficult, when found, to compare them together. the consequence of this plan, it must be confessed, has been, that in a few instances the same precept has been found in substance repeated; but this is so far from being an objection, that it evidently proves the precepts were not the hasty opinions of the moment, but settled and fixed principles in the mind of the author, and that he was consistent in the expression of his sentiments. but if this mode of arrangement has in the present case disclosed what might have escaped observation, it has also been productive of more material advantages; for, besides facilitating the finding of any particular passage (an object in itself of no small importance), it clearly shews the work to be a much more complete system than those best acquainted with it, had before any idea of, and that many of the references in it apparently to other writings of the same author, relate in fact only to the present, the chapters referred to having been found in it. these are now pointed out in the notes, and where any obscurity has occurred in the text, the reader will find some assistance at least attempted by the insertion of a note to solve the difficulty. no pains or expense have been spared in preparing the present work for the press. the cuts have been re-engraven with more attention to correctness in the drawing, than those which accompanied the two editions of the former english translation possessed (even though they had been fresh engraven for the impression of ); and the diagrams are now inserted in their proper places in the text, instead of being, as before, collected all together in two plates at the end. besides this, a new life of the author has been also added by a friend of the translator, the materials for which have been furnished, not from vague reports, or uncertain conjectures, but from memoranda of the author himself, not before used. fortunately for this undertaking, the manuscript collections of leonardo da vinci, which have lately passed from italy into france, have, since their removal thither, been carefully inspected, and an abstract of their contents published in a quarto pamphlet, printed at paris in , and intitled, "essai sur les ouvrages physico-mathematiques de leonard de vinci;" by j. b. venturi, professor of natural philosophy at modena; a member of the institute of bologna, &c. from this pamphlet a great deal of original intelligence respecting the author has been obtained, which, derived as it is from his own information, could not possibly be founded on better evidence. to this life we shall refer the reader for a further account of the origin and history of the present treatise, conceiving we have already effected our purpose, by here giving him a sufficient idea of what he is to expect from the ensuing pages. the life of _leonardo da vinci_. leonardo da vinci, the author of the following treatise, was the natural son of pietro da vinci, a notary of vinci, in tuscany[i ], a village situated in the valley of arno, a little below florence, and was born in the year [i ]. having discovered, when a child, a strong inclination and talent for painting, of which he had given proofs by several little drawings and sketches; his father one day accidentally took up some of them, and was induced to shew them to his friend andrea verocchio, a painter of some reputation in florence, who was also a chaser, an architect, a sculptor, and goldsmith, for his advice, as to the propriety of bringing up his son to the profession of painting, and the probability of his becoming eminent in the art. the answer of verocchio was such as to confirm him in that resolution; and leonardo, to fit him for that purpose, was accordingly placed under the tuition of verocchio[i ]. as verocchio combined in himself a perfect knowledge of the arts of chasing and sculpture, and was a deep proficient in architecture, leonardo had in this situation the means and opportunity of acquiring a variety of information, which though perhaps not immediately connected with the art to which his principal attention was to be directed, might, with the assistance of such a mind as leonardo's, be rendered subsidiary to his grand object, tend to promote his knowledge of the theory, and facilitate his practice of the profession for which he was intended. accordingly we find that he had the good sense to avail himself of these advantages, and that under verocchio he made great progress, and attracted his master's friendship and confidence, by the talents he discovered, the sweetness of his manners, and the vivacity of his disposition[i ]. of his proficiency in painting, the following instance is recorded; and the skill he afterwards manifested in other branches of science, on various occasions, evidently demonstrated how solicitous he had been for knowledge of all kinds, and how careful in his youth to lay a good foundation. verocchio had undertaken for the religious of vallombrosa, without florence, a picture of our saviour's baptism by st. john, and consigned to leonardo the office of putting in from the original drawing, the figure of an angel holding up the drapery; but, unfortunately for verocchio, leonardo succeeded so well, that, despairing of ever equalling the work of his scholar, verocchio in disgust abandoned his pencil for ever, confining himself in future solely to the practice of sculpture[i ]. on this success leonardo became sensible that he no longer stood in need of an instructor; and therefore quitting verocchio, he now began to work and study for himself. many of his performances of this period are still, or were lately to be seen at florence; and besides these, the following have been also mentioned: a cartoon of adam and eve in the garden, which he did for the king of portugal[i ]. this is highly commended for the exquisite gracefulness of the two principal figures, the beauty of the landscape, and the incredible exactitude of the shrubs and fruit. at the instance of his father, he made a painting for one of his old neighbours at vinci[i ]; it consisted wholly of such animals as have naturally an hatred to each other, joined artfully together in a variety of attitudes. some authors have said that this painting was a shield[i ], and have related the following particulars respecting it. one of pietro's neighbours meeting him one day at florence, told him he had been making a shield, and would be glad of his assistance to get it painted; pietro undertook this office, and applied to his son to make good the promise. when the shield was brought to leonardo, he found it so ill made, that he was obliged to get a turner to smooth it; and when that was done, he began to consider with what subject he should paint it. for this purpose he got together, in his apartment, a collection of live animals, such as lizards, crickets, serpents, silk-worms, locusts, bats, and other creatures of that kind, from the multitude of which, variously adapted to each other, he formed an horrible and terrific animal, emitting fire and poison from his jaws, flames from his eyes, and smoke from his nostrils; and with so great earnestness did leonardo apply to this, that though in his apartment the stench of the animals that from time to time died there, was so strong as to be scarcely tolerable, he, through his love to the art, entirely disregarded it. the work being finished, leonardo told his father he might now see it; and the father one morning coming to his apartment for that purpose, leonardo, before he admitted him, placed the shield so as to receive from the window its full and proper light, and then opened the door. not knowing what he was to expect, and little imagining that what he saw was not the creatures themselves, but a mere painted representation of them, the father, on entering and beholding the shield, was at first staggered and shocked; which the son perceiving, told him he might now send the shield to his friend, as, from the effect which the sight of it had then produced, he found he had attained the object at which he aimed. pietro, however, had too much sagacity not to see that this was by much too great a curiosity for a mere countryman, who would never be sensible of its value; he therefore privately bought for his friend an ordinary shield, rudely painted with the device of an heart with an arrow through it, and sold this for an hundred ducats to some merchants at florence, by whom it was again sold for three hundred to the duke of milan[i ]. he afterwards painted a picture of the virgin mary, and by her side a vessel of water, in which were flowers: in this he so contrived it, as that the light reflected from the flowers threw a pale redness on the water. this picture was at one time in the possession of pope clement the seventh[i ]. for his friend antonio segni he also made a design, representing neptune in his car, drawn by sea-horses, and attended by tritons and sea-gods; the heavens overspread with clouds, which were driven in all directions by the violence of the winds; the waves appeared to be rolling, and the whole ocean seemed in an uproar[i ]. this drawing was afterwards given by fabio the son of antonio segni, to giovanni gaddi, a great collector of drawings, with this epigram: pinxit virgilius neptunum, pinxit homerus, dum maris undisoni per vada flectit equos. mente quidem vates illum conspexit uterque, vincius est oculis, jureque vincit eos[i ]. in english thus: virgil and homer, when they neptune shew'd, as he through boist'rous seas his steeds compell'd, in the mind's eye alone his figure view'd; but vinci _saw_ him, and has both excell'd[i ]. to these must be added the following: a painting representing two horsemen engaged in fight, and struggling to tear a flag from each other: rage and fury are in this admirably expressed in the countenances of the two combatants; their air appears wild, and the drapery is thrown into an unusual though agreeable disorder. a medusa's head, and a picture of the adoration of the magi[i ]. in this last there are some fine heads, but both this and the medusa's head are said by du fresne to have been evidently unfinished. the mind of leonardo was however too active and capacious to be contented solely with the practical part of his art; nor could it submit to receive as principles, conclusions, though confirmed by experience, without first tracing them to their source, and investigating their causes, and the several circumstances on which they depended. for this purpose he determined to engage in a deep examination into the theory of his art; and the better to effect his intention, he resolved to call in to his aid the assistance of all such other branches of science as could in any degree promote this grand object. vasari has related[i ], that at a very early age he had, in the short time of a few months only that he applied to it, obtained a deep knowledge of arithmetic; and says, that in literature in general, he would have made great attainments, if he had not been too versatile to apply long to one subject. in music, he adds, he had made some progress; that he then determined to learn to play on the lyre; and that having an uncommonly fine voice, and an extraordinary promptitude of thought and expression, he became a celebrated _improvisatore_: but that his attention to these did not induce him to neglect painting and modelling in which last art he was so great a proficient, that in his youth he modelled in clay some heads of women laughing, and also some boys' heads, which appeared to have come from the hand of a master. in architecture, he made many plans and designs for buildings, and, while he was yet young, proposed conveying the river arno into the canal at pisa[i ]. of his skill in poetry the reader may judge from the following sonnet preserved by lomazzo[i ], the only one now existing of his composition; and for the translation with which it is accompanied we are indebted to a lady. sonnetto morale. chi non può quel vuol, quel che può voglia, che quel che non si può folle è volere. adunque saggio è l'uomo da tenere, che da quel che non può suo voler toglia. però ch'ogni diletto nostro e doglia sta in sì e nò, saper, voler, potere, adunque quel sol può, che co 'l dovere ne trahe la ragion suor di sua soglia. ne sempre è da voler quel che l'uom puote, spesso par dolce quel che torna amaro, piansi gia quel ch'io volsi, poi ch'io l'ebbi. adunque tu, lettor di queste note, s'a te vuoi esser buono e a' gli altri caro, vogli sempre poter quel che tu debbi. translation. a moral sonnet. the man who cannot what he would attain, within his pow'r his wishes should restrain: the wish of folly o'er that bound aspires, the wise man by it limits his desires. since all our joys so close on sorrows run, we know not what to choose or what to shun; let all our wishes still our duty meet, nor banish reason from her awful seat. nor is it always best for man to will ev'n what his pow'rs can reach; some latent ill beneath a fair appearance may delude and make him rue what earnest he pursued. then, reader, as you scan this simple page, let this one care your ev'ry thought engage, (with self-esteem and gen'ral love 't is fraught,) wish only pow'r to do just what you ought. the course of study which leonardo had thus undertaken, would, in its most limited extent by any one who should attempt it at this time, be found perhaps almost more than could be successfully accomplished; but yet his curiosity and unbounded thirst for information, induced him rather to enlarge than contract his plan. accordingly we find, that to the study of geometry, sculpture, anatomy, he added those of architecture, mechanics, optics, hydrostatics, astronomy, and nature in general, in all her operations[i ]; and the result of his observations and experiments, which were intended not only for present use, but as the basis and foundation of future discoveries, he determined, as he proceeded, to commit to writing. at what time he began these his collections, of which we shall have occasion to speak more particularly hereafter, is no where mentioned; but it is with certainty known, that by the month of april , he had already completely filled two folio volumes[i ]. notwithstanding leonardo's propensity and application to study, he was not inattentive to the graces of external accomplishments; he was very skilful in the management of an horse, rode gracefully, and when he afterwards arrived to a state of affluence, took particular pleasure in appearing in public well mounted and handsomely accoutred. he possessed great dexterity in the use of arms: for mien and grace he might contend with any gentleman of his time: his person was remarkably handsome, his behaviour so perfectly polite, and his conversation so charming, that his company was coveted by all who knew him; but the avocations to which this last circumstance subjected him, are one reason why so many of his works remain unfinished[i ]. with such advantages of mind and body as these, it was no wonder that his reputation should spread itself, as we find it soon did, over all italy. the painting of the shield before mentioned, had already, as has been noticed, come into the possession of the duke of milan; and the subsequent accounts which he had from time to time heard of leonardo's abilities and talents, induced lodovic sforza, surnamed the moor, then duke of milan, about, or a little before the year [i ], to invite him to his court, and to settle on him a pension of five hundred crowns, a considerable sum at that time[i ]. various are the reasons assigned for this invitation: vasari[i ] attributes it to his skill in music, a science of which the duke is said to have been fond; others have ascribed it to a design which the duke entertained of erecting a brazen statue to the memory of his father[i ]; but others conceive it originated from the circumstance, that the duke had not long before established at milan an academy for the study of painting, sculpture, and architecture, and was desirous that leonardo should take the conduct and direction of it[i ]. the second was, however, we find, the true motive; and we are further informed, that the invitation was accepted by leonardo, that he went to milan, and was already there in [i ]. among the collections of leonardo still existing in manuscript, is a copy of a memorial presented by him to the duke about , of which venturi has given an abridgment[i ]. in it he offers to make for the duke military bridges, which should be at the same time light and very solid, and to teach him the method of placing and defending them with security. when the object is to take any place, he can, he says, empty the ditch of its water; he knows, he adds, the art of constructing a subterraneous gallery under the ditches themselves, and of carrying it to the very spot that shall be wanted. if the fort is not built on a rock, he undertakes to throw it down, and mentions that he has new contrivances for bombarding machines, ordnance, and mortars, some adapted to throw hail shot, fire, and smoke, among the enemy; and for all other machines proper for a siege, and for war, either by sea or land, according to circumstances. in peace also, he says he can be useful in what concerns the erection of buildings, conducting of water-courses, sculpture in bronze or marble, and painting; and remarks, that at the same time that he may be pursuing any of the above objects, the equestrian statue to the memory of the duke's father, and his illustrious family, may still be going on. if any one doubts the possibility of what he proposes, he offers to prove it by experiment, and ocular demonstration. from this memorial it seems clear, that the casting of the bronze statue was his principal object; painting is only mentioned incidentally, and no notice is taken of the direction or management of the academy for painting, sculpture, and architecture; it is probable, therefore, that at this time there was no such intention, though it is certainly true, that he was afterwards placed at the head of it, and that he banished from it the barbarous style of architecture which till then had prevailed in it, and introduced in its stead a more pure and classical taste. whatever was the fact with respect to the academy, it is however well known that the statue was cast in bronze, finished, and put up at milan, but afterwards demolished by the french when they took possession of that place[i ] after the defeat of lodovic sforza. some time after leonardo's arrival at milan, a design had been entertained of cutting a canal from martesana to milan, for the purpose of opening a communication by water between these two places, and, as it is said, of supplying the last with water. it had been first thought of so early as [i ]; but from the difficulties to be expected in its execution, it seems to have been laid aside, or at least to have proceeded slowly, till leonardo's arrival. his offers of service as engineer in the above memorial, probably induced lodovic sforza, the then duke, to resume the intention with vigour, and accordingly we find the plan was determined on, and the execution of it intrusted to leonardo. the object was noble, but the difficulties to be encountered were sufficient to have discouraged any mind but leonardo's; for the distance was no less than two hundred miles; and before it could be completed, hills were to be levelled, and vallies filled up, to render them navigable with security[i ]. in order to enable him to surmount the obstacles with which he foresaw he should have to contend, he retired to the house of his friend signior melzi, at vaverola, not far distant from milan, and there applied himself sedulously for some years, as it is said, but at intervals only we must suppose, and according as his undertaking proceeded, to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and every branch of science that could at all further his design; still continuing the method he had before adopted, of entering down in writing promiscuously, whatever he wished to implant in his memory: and at this place, in this and his subsequent visits from time to time, he is supposed to have made the greater part of the collections he has left behind him[i ], of the contents of which we shall hereafter speak more at large. although engaged in the conduct of so vast an undertaking, and in studies so extensive, the mind of leonardo does not appear to have been so wholly occupied or absorbed in them as to incapacitate him from attending at the same time to other objects also; and the duke therefore being desirous of ornamenting milan with some specimens of his skill as a painter, employed him to paint in the refectory of the dominican convent of santa maria delle gratie, in that city, a picture, the subject of which was to be the last supper. of this picture it is related, that leonardo was so impressed with the dignity of the subject, and so anxious to answer the high ideas he had formed of it in his own mind, that his progress was very slow, and that he spent much time in meditation and thought, during which the work was apparently at a stand. the prior of the convent, thinking it therefore neglected, complained to the duke; but leonardo assuring the duke that not less than two hours were every day bestowed on it, he was satisfied. nevertheless the prior, after a short time, finding the work very little advanced, once more applied to the duke, who in some degree of anger, as thinking leonardo had deceived him, reprimanded him in strong terms for his delay. what leonardo had scorned to urge to the prior in his defence, he now thought fit to plead in his excuse to the duke, to convince him that a painter did not labour solely with his hands, but that his mind might be deeply studying his subject, when his hands were unemployed, and he in appearance perfectly idle. in proof of this, he told the duke that nothing remained to the completion of the picture but the heads of our saviour and judas; that as to the former, he had not yet been able to find a fit model to express its divinity, and found his invention inadequate of itself to represent it: that with respect to that of judas, he had been in vain for two years searching among the most abandoned and profligate of the species for an head which would convey an idea of his character; but that this difficulty was now at length removed, since he had nothing to do but to introduce the head of the prior, whose ingratitude for the pains he was taking, rendered him a fit archetype of the perfidy and ingratitude he wished to express. some persons have said[i ], that the head of judas in the picture was actually copied from that of the prior; but mariette denies it, and says this reply was merely intended as a threat[i ]. a difference of opinion has also prevailed concerning the head of our saviour in this picture; for some have conceived it left intentionally unfinished[i ], while others think there is a gradation of resemblance, which increasing in beauty in st. john and our saviour, shews in the dignified countenance of the latter a spark of his divine majesty. in the countenance of the redeemer, say these last, and in that of judas, is excellently expressed the extreme idea of god made man, and of the most perfidious of mortals. this is also pursued in the characters nearest to each of them[i ]. little judgment can now be formed of the original beauty of this picture, which has been, and apparently with very good reason, highly commended. unfortunately, though it is said to have been in oil, the wall on which it was painted not having been properly prepared, the original colours have been so effectually defaced by the damp, as to be no longer visible[i ]; and the fathers, for whose use it was painted, thinking it entirely destroyed, and some years since wishing to heighten and widen a door under it, leading out of their refectory, have given a decided proof of their own want of taste, and how little they were sensible of its value, by permitting the workmen to break through the wall on which it was painted, and, by so doing, entirely to destroy the lower part of the picture[i ]. the injury done by the damp to the colouring has been, it is true, in some measure repaired by michael angelo bellotti, a painter of milan, who viewing the picture in , made an offer to the prior and convent to restore, by means of a secret which he possessed, the original colours. his proposition being accepted, and the experiment succeeding beyond their hopes, the convent made him a present of five hundred pounds for his labour, and he in return communicated to them the secret by which it had been effected[i ]. deprived, as they certainly are by these events, of the means of judging accurately of the merit of the original, it is still some consolation to the lovers of painting, that several copies of it made by leonardo's scholars, many of whom were very able artists, and at a time when the picture had not been yet injured, are still in existence. a list of these copies is given by p. m. guglielmo della valle, in his edition of vasari's lives of the painters, in italian, vol. v. p. , and from him it is here inserted in the note[i ]. francis the first was so charmed on viewing the original, that not being able to remove it, he had a copy made, which is now, or was some years since, at st. germains, and several prints have been published from it; but the best which has yet appeared (and very fine it is) is one not long since engraven by morghen, at rome, impressions of which have found their way into this country, and been sold, it is said, for ten or twelve guineas each. in the same refectory of the dominicans at milan is, or was, also preserved a painting by leonardo, representing duke lodovic, and beatrix his duchess, on their knees; done no doubt about this time[i ]. and at or near this period, he also painted for the duke the nativity, which was formerly, and may perhaps be still, in the emperor of germany's collection[i ]. as leonardo's principal aim, whenever he was left at liberty to pursue the bent of his own inclination, seems to have been progressive improvement in the art of painting, he appears to have sedulously embraced all opportunities of increasing his information; and wisely perceiving, that without a thorough acquaintance with anatomy, a painter could effect but little, he was particularly desirous of extending his knowledge in that branch. for that purpose he had frequent conferences on the subject with marc antonio della torre, professor of anatomy at pavia[i ], and not only was present at many dissections performed by him, but made abundance of anatomical drawings from nature, many of which were afterwards collected into a volume by his scholar francisco melzi[i ]. such perseverance and assiduity as leonardo's, united as they were with such uncommon powers as his, had already formed many artists at that time of distinguished reputation, but who afterwards became still more famous, and might probably have rendered milan the repository of some of the most valuable specimens of painting, and raised it to a rank little, if at all, inferior to that which florence has since held with the admirers of the polite arts, had it not happened that by the disastrous termination of a contest between the duke of milan and the french, all hopes of further improvement were entirely cut off; and milan, at one blow, lost all the advantages of which it was even then in possession. for about this time the troubles in italy began to break in on leonardo's quiet, and he found his patron, the duke, engaged in a war with the french for the possession of his dukedom; which not only endangered the academy, but ultimately deprived him both of his dominions and his liberty; as the duke was, in , completely defeated, taken prisoner, and carried into france, where, in , he died a prisoner in the castle of loches[i ]. by this event of the duke's defeat, and the consequent ruin of the sforza family, all further progress in the canal of martesana, of which much still remained to be done[i ], was put a stop to; the academy of architecture and painting was entirely broken up; the professors were turned adrift, and the arts banished from milan, which at one time had promised to have been their refuge and principal feat[i ]. italy in general was, it is true, a gainer by the dispersion of so many able and deeply instructed artists as issued from this school, though milan suffered; for nothing could so much tend to the dissemination of knowledge as the mixing such men among others who needed that information in which these excelled. among the number thus separated from each other, we find painters, carvers, architects, founders, and engravers in crystal and precious stones, and the names of the following have been given, as the principal: cesare da sesto, andrea salaino, gio. antonio boltraffio, bernardino lovino, bartolommeo della porta, lorenzo lotto[i ]. to these has been added gio. paolo lomazzo; but della valle, in a note in his edition of vasari, vol. v. p. , says this last was a disciple of gio. battista della cerva, and not of leonardo. du fresne mentions besides the above, francis melzi, mark uggioni gobbo, an extraordinary painter and carver; annibal fontana, a worker in marble and precious stones; and bernazzano, an excellent painter of landscapes; but omits della porta, and lorenzo lotto. in , the year before duke lodovic's defeat, leonardo being at milan, was employed by the principal inhabitants to contrive an automaton for the entertainment of lewis xii. king of france, who was expected shortly to make a public entry into that city. this leonardo did, and it consisted of a machine representing a lion, whose inside was so well constructed of clockwork, that it marched out to meet the king, made a stand when it came before him, reared up on its hinder legs, and opening its breast, presented an escutcheon with fleurs de lis quartered on it[i ]. lomazzo has said that this machine was made for the entry of francis the first; but he is mistaken, that prince having never been at milan till the year [i ], at which time leonardo was at rome. compelled by the disorders of lombardy, the misfortunes of his patron, and the ruin of the sforza family, to quit milan, leonardo betook himself to florence, and his inducements to this resolution seem to have been the residence there of the medici family, the great patrons of arts, and the good taste of its principal inhabitants[i ], rather than its vicinity to the place of his birth; for which, under the circumstances that attended that event, it is not probable he could entertain much, if any predilection. the first work which he here undertook was a design for an altar-piece for the chapel of the college of the annunciati. its subject was, our saviour, with his mother, st. ann, and st. john; but though this drawing is said to have rendered leonardo very popular among his countrymen, to so great a degree, that numbers of people went to see it, it does not appear that any picture was painted from it, nor that the undertaking ever proceeded farther than a sketch of a design, or rather, perhaps, a finished drawing. when leonardo some years afterwards went into france[i ], francis the first was desirous of having a picture from this drawing, and at his desire he then put it into colours; but whether even this last was a regular picture, or, which is more probable, only a coloured drawing, we are not informed. the picture, however, on which he bestowed the most time and labour, and which therefore seems intended by him as the completest specimen of his skill, at least in the branch of portrait-painting, was that which he did of mona lisa, better known by the appellation of la gioconda, a florentine lady, the wife of francisco del giocondo. it was painted for her husband, afterwards purchased by francis the first, and was till lately to be seen in the king of france's cabinet. leonardo bestowed four entire years upon it, and after all is said to have left it unfinished[i ]. this has been so repeatedly said of the works of this painter, that we are here induced to inquire into the evidence of the fact. an artist who feels by experience, as every one must, how far short of the ideas of perfection he has formed in his own mind, his best performances always fall, will naturally be led to consider these as but very faint expressions of his own conceptions. leonardo's disposition to think nothing effected while any thing remained to be done, and a mind like his, continually suggesting successive improvements, might therefore, and most probably did produce in him an opinion that his own most laboured pieces were far from being finished to that extent of beauty which he wished to give them; and these sentiments of them he might in all likelihood be frequently heard to declare. comparing his productions, however, with those of other masters, they will be found, notwithstanding this assertion to the contrary, as eminent in this particular also, as for the more valuable qualities of composition, drawing, character, expression, and colouring. about the same time with this of la gioconda, he painted the portraits of a nobleman of mantua, and of la ginevra, a daughter of americus benci[i ], much celebrated for her beauty; and is said to have finished a picture of flora some years since remaining at paris[i ]; but this last mariette discovered to be the work of melzio, from the circumstance of finding, on a close inspection, the name of this last master written on it[i ]. in the year , he was elected by the florentines to paint their council-chamber. the subject he chose for this, was the battle against attila[i ]; and he had already made some progress in his work, when, to his great mortification, he found his colours peel from the wall[i ]. with leonardo was joined in this undertaking, michael angelo, who painted another side of the room, and who, then a young man of not more than twenty-nine, had risen to such reputation, as not to fear a competition with leonardo, a man of near sixty[i ]. the productions of two such able masters placed in the same room, begun at the same time, and proceeding gradually step by step together, afforded, no doubt, occasion and opportunity to the admirers and critics in painting to compare and contrast with each other their respective excellencies and defects. had these persons contented themselves simply with comparing and appreciating the merits of these masters according to justice and truth, it might perhaps have been advantageous to both, as directing their attention to the correction of errors; but as each artist had his admirers, each had also his enemies; the partisans of the one thinking they did not sufficiently value the merit of their favourite if they allowed any to his antagonist, or did not, on the contrary, endeavour to crush by detraction the too formidable reputation of his adversary. from this conduct was produced what might easily have been foreseen; they first became jealous rivals, and at length open and inveterate enemies[i ]. leonardo's reputation, which had been for many years gradually increasing, was now so firmly established, that he appears to have been looked up to as being, what he really was, the reviver and restorer of the art of painting; and to such an height had the curiosity to view his works been excited, that raphael, who was at that time young, and studying, thought it worth his while to make a journey to florence in the month of october [i ], on purpose to see them. nor was his labour lost, or his time thrown away in so doing; for on first seeing the works of leonardo's pencil, he was induced to abandon the dry and hard manner of his master perugino's colouring, and to adopt in its stead the style of leonardo[i ], to which circumstance is owing no small portion of that esteem in the art, to which raphael afterwards very justly arrived. his father having died in [i ], he in consequence of that event became engaged with his half-brothers, the legitimate sons of pietro da vinci, in a law-suit for the recovery of a share of his father's property, which in a letter from florence to the governor of milan, the date of which does not appear, he speaks of having almost brought to a conclusion[i ]. at florence he continued from to [i ], and in the course of that time painted, among other pictures of less note, a virgin and child, once in the hands of the botti family; and a baptist's head, formerly in those of camillo albizzi[i ]; but in , and the succeeding year, he was at milan, where he received a pension which had been granted him by lewis xii.[i ]; and in the month of september , he, in company with his scholar francesco melzi, quitted milan[i ], and set out for rome (which till that time he had never visited), encouraged perhaps to this resolution by the circumstance that his friend cardinal john de medicis, who was afterwards known by the assumed name of leo x. had a few months before been advanced to the papacy[i ]. his known partiality to the arts, and the friendship which had subsisted between him and leonardo, held out to the latter a well-founded expectation of employment for his pencil at rome, and we find in this expectation he was not deceived; as, soon after his arrival, the pope actually signified his intention of setting him to work. upon this leonardo began distilling oils for his colours, and preparing varnishes, which the pope hearing, said pertly and ignorantly enough, that he could expect nothing from a man who thought of finishing his works before he had begun them[i ]. had the pope known, as he seems not to have done, that oil was the vehicle in which the colours were to have been worked, or been witness either to the almost annihilation of the colours in leonardo's famous picture of the last supper, owing to the damp of the wall, or to the peeling of the colours from the wall in the council-chamber at florence, he probably would have spared this ill-natured reflection. if it applied at all, it could only be to a very small part of the pursuit in which leonardo was occupied, namely, preparing varnish; and if age were necessary to give the varnish strength, or it were the better for keeping, the answer was in an equal degree both silly and impertinent; and it is no wonder it should disgust such a mind as leonardo's, or produce, as we find it did, such a breach between the pope and him, that the intended pictures, whatever they might have been, were never begun. disgusted with his treatment at rome, where the former antipathy between him and michael angelo was again revived by the partisans of each, he the next year quitted it; and accepting an invitation which had been made him by francis the first, he proceeded into france[i ]. at the time of this journey he is said to have been seventy years old[i ], which cannot be correct, as he did not live to attain that age in the whole. probably the singularity of his appearance (for in his latter years he permitted his beard to grow long), together with the effect which his intense application to study had produced in his constitution, might have given rise to an opinion that he was older than he really was; and indeed it seems pretty clear, that when he arrived in france he was nearly worn out in body, if not in mind, by the anxiety and application with which he had pursued his former studies and investigations. although the king's motive to this invitation, which seems to have been a wish to profit by the pencil of leonardo, was completely disappointed by his ill state of health, which the fatigues of his journey and the change of the climate produced, so that on his arrival in france no hopes could be entertained by the king of enriching his collection with any pictures by leonardo; yet the french people in general, and the king in particular, are expressly said to have been as favourable to him as those of rome had been injurious, and he was received by the king in the most affectionate manner. it was however unfortunately too soon evident that these symptoms of decay were only the forerunners of a more fatal distemper under which for several months he languished, but which by degrees was increasing upon him. of this he was sensible, and therefore in the beginning of the year , he determined to make his will, to which he afterwards added one or more codicils. by these he first describes himself as leonardo da vinci, painter to the king, at present residing at the place called cloux, near amboise, and then desires to be buried in the church of st. florentine at amboise, and that his body should be accompanied from the said place of cloux to the said church, by the college of the said church, and the chaplains of st. dennis of amboise, and the friars minor of the said place; and that before his body is carried to the said church, it should remain three days in the chamber in which he should die, or in some other; he further orders that three great masses and thirty lesser masses of st. gregory, should be celebrated there, and a like service be performed in the church of st. dennis, and in that of the said friars minor. he gives and bequeaths to franco di melzio, a gentleman of milan, in return for his services, all and every the books which he the testator has at present, and other instruments and drawings respecting his art: to baptista de villanis, his servant, the moiety of the garden which he has without the walls of milan; and the other moiety of the said garden to salay his servant. he gives to the said francesco meltio the arrears of his pension, and the sum of money owing to him at present, and at the time of his death, by the treasurer m. johan sapin; and to the same person all and singular his clothes and vestments. he orders and wills, that the sum of four hundred crowns of the sum which he has in the hands of the chamberlain of santa maria nuova, at florence, should be given to his brethren residing at florence, with the profit and emolument thereon. and lastly, he appoints the said gia. francesco de meltio, whole and sole executor[i ]. this will bears date, and appears to have been executed on the d of april . he however survived the making of it more than a year; and on the d of april [i ], the day twelvemonth on which it had been originally made, he, though it does not appear for what reason, re-executed it; and the next day added a codicil, by which he gave to his servant, gio. battista de villanis, the right which had been granted him in return for his labours on the canal of martesana, of exacting a certain portion of all the wood transported on the ticino[i ]. all this interval of time between the making and re-execution of his will, and indeed the whole period from his arrival in france, he seems to have been struggling under an incurable illness. the king frequently during its continuance honoured him with visits; and it has been said, that in one of these leonardo exerting himself beyond his strength, to shew his sense of this prince's condescension, was seized with a fainting fit, and that the king stooping forward to support him, leonardo expired in his arms, on the d of may [i ]. venturi has taken some pains to disprove this fact, by shewing[i ], that though in the interval between the years and , the french court passed eleven months at different times at amboise; yet on the st of may , it was certainly not here, but at st. germains. history, however, when incorrect, is more frequently a mixture of true and false, than a total fabrication of falsehood; and it is therefore not impossible, or improbable, that the king might shew such an act of kindness in some of his visits when he was resident at amboise, and that leonardo might recover from that fit, and not die till some time after; at which latter time the court and the king might be absent at st. germains. this is surely a more rational supposition than to imagine such a fact could have been invented without any foundation for it whatever. it is impossible within the limits that can here be allowed, to do any thing like justice to the merits of this extraordinary man: all that can in this place be effected is to give the principal facts respecting him; and this is all, therefore, that has been attempted. a sufficient account, however, at least for the present purpose, it is presumed has been given above of the author, and the productions of his pencil, and it now remains therefore only to speak of those of his pen. with what view the author engaged in this arduous course of study, how eager he was in the pursuit of knowledge, how anxious to avail himself of the best means of obtaining complete information on every subject to which he applied, and how careful to minute down whatever he procured that could be useful, have been already shewn in the course of the foregoing narrative; but in order to prevent the necessity of interrupting there the succession of events, it has been reserved for this place to describe the contents and extent of his collections, and to give a brief idea of the branches to which they relate. on inquiry then we learn, that leonardo's productions of this kind consist of fourteen manuscript volumes, large and small, now in the library of the national institute at paris, whither they have been some few years since removed from the ambrosian library at milan; and of one folio volume in manuscript also, in the possession of his majesty the king of great britain. of those at paris, j. b. venturi, professor of natural philosophy at modena, and of the institute of bologna, &c. who was permitted to inspect them, says[i ], that "they contain speculations in those branches of natural philosophy nearest allied to geometry; that they are first sketches and occasional notes, the author always intending afterwards to compose from them complete treatises." he adds further, "that they are written backwards from right to left, in the manner of the oriental writers, probably with intention that the curious should not rob him of his discoveries. the spirit of geometry guided him throughout, whether it were in the art of analysing a subject in the connexion of the discourse, or the care of always generalizing his ideas. as to natural philosophy, he never was satisfied on any proposition if he had not proved it by experiment." from the extracts given from these manuscripts by venturi himself, and which he has ranged under the different heads mentioned in the note[i ], the contents of these volumes appear to be extremely miscellaneous; and it is evident, as venturi has marked by references where each extract is to be found in the original, that from the great distance at which passages on the same subject are placed from each other, they must have been entered without any regard to method or arrangement of any kind whatever. the volume in the possession of his britannic majesty is described as consisting "of a variety of elegant heads, some of which are drawn with red and black chalks on blue or red paper, others with a metal pencil on a tinted paper; a few of them are washed and heightened with white, and many are on common paper. the subjects of these drawings are miscellaneous, as portraits, caricatures, single figures, tilting, horses, and other animals; botany, optics, perspective, gunnery, hydraulics, mechanics, and a great number of anatomical subjects, which are drawn with a more spirited pen, and illustrated with a variety of manuscript notes. this volume contains what is of more importance, the very characteristic head of leonardo, as it was sketched by himself, and now engraved by that eminent artist mr. bartolozzi[i ]." specimens from this volume have been published some years since by mr. dalton, and more recently and accurately by mr. chamberlaine; and though it must be confessed, that the former are extremely ill drawn, and betray the grossest ignorance of the effect which light and shadow were intended to produce, yet some of the subjects which the volume contains may be ascertained by them; and among them is also a fac simile of a page of the original manuscript, which proves this, like the other volumes, to be in italian, and written backwards. the latter is a very beautiful work, and is calculated to give an accurate idea of leonardo's talents as a draughtsman[i ]. from these two publications it appears, that this volume also is of a very miscellaneous nature, and that it consists of manuscript entries, interspersed with finished drawings of heads and figures, and slight sketches of mechanical engines and anatomical subjects, some of which are intermixed with the writing itself. it has been already seen, that these volumes were originally given by the will of leonardo to francisco melzi; and their subsequent history we are enabled to state on the authority of john ambrose mazenta, through whose hands they passed. du fresne, in the life prefixed to the edition which he published in italian, of leonardo da vinci's treatise on painting, has, in a very loose way, and without citing any authority, given their history; but venturi has inserted[i ] a translation into french, from the original manuscript memoir of mazenta; and from him a version of it into english is here given, with the addition of venturi's notes, rendered also into english. "it is near fifty years[i ] since there fell into my hands thirteen volumes of leonardo da vinci in folio and quarto, written backwards. accident brought them to me in the following manner: i was residing at pisa, for the purpose of studying the law, in the family of aldus manutius the younger, a great lover of books. a person named lelio gavardi, of asola, prevost of s. zeno, at pavia, a very near relation of aldus, came to our house; he had been a teacher of the _belles lettres_ in the family of the melzi of milan, called de vavero, to distinguish them from other families of the same name in that city. he had, at their country house at vavero, met with several drawings, instruments, and books of leonardo. francisco melzi[i ] approached nearer than any one to the manner of de vinci; he worked little, because he was rich; his pictures are very much finished, they are often confounded with those of his master. at his death he left the works of leonardo in his house at vavero, to his sons, who having tastes and pursuits of a different kind, neglected these treasures, and soon dispersed them; lelio gavardi possessed himself of as many of them as he pleased; he carried thirteen volumes to florence, in hopes of receiving for them a good price from the grand duke francis, who was eager after works of this sort; and the rather as leonardo was in great reputation in his own country. but this prince died[i ] as soon as gavardi was arrived at florence. he then went to pisa, to the house of manutius. i could not approve his proceeding; it was scandalous. my studies being finished, i had occasion to return to milan. he gave me the volumes of vinci, desiring me to return them to the melzi: i acquitted myself faithfully of my commission; i carried them all back to horatio, the chief of the family of melzi, who was surprised at my being willing to give myself this trouble. he made me a present of these books, telling me he had still many drawings by the same author, long neglected in the garrets of his house in the country. thus these books became my property, and afterwards they belonged to my brothers[i ]. these latter having made too much parade of this acquisition, and the ease with which i was brought to it, excited the envy of other amateurs, who beset horatio, and obtained from him some drawings, some figures, some anatomical pieces, and other valuable remains of the cabinet of leonardo. one of these spungers for the works of leonardo, was pompeo aretin, son of the cavalier leoni, formerly a disciple of bonaroti, and who was about philip ii. king of spain, for whom he did all the bronzes which are at the escurial. pompeo engaged himself to procure for melzi an employment to the senate of milan, if he succeeded in recovering the thirteen books, wishing to offer them to king philip, a lover of such curiosities. flattered with this hope, melzi went to my brother's house: he besought him on his knees to restore him his present; he was a fellow-collegian, a friend, a benefactor: seven volumes were returned to him[i ]. of the six others which remained to the mazenta family, one was presented to cardinal frederic borromeo, for the ambrosian library[i ]. my brother gave a second to ambrose figini, a celebrated painter of his time, who left it to his heir hercole bianchi, with the rest of his cabinet. urged by the duke of savoy, i procured for him a third; and in conclusion, my brother having died at a distance from milan[i ], the three remaining volumes came also into the hands of pompeo aretin; he re-assembled also others of them, he separated the leaves of them to form a thick volume[i ], which passed to his heir polidoro calchi, and was afterwards sold to galeazzo arconati. this gentleman keeps it now in his rich library; he has refused it to the duke of savoy, and to other princes who were desirous of it." in addition to this memoir, venturi notices[i ], that howard earl of arundel made ineffectual efforts to obtain this large volume, and offered for it as far as , francs, in the name of the king of england. arconati would never part with it; he bought eleven other books of da vinci, which came also, according to appearance, from leoni; in he made a gift of them all to the ambrosian library[i ], which already was in possession of the volume e, from mazenta, and received afterwards the volume k from horatio archinto, in [i ]. venturi says, this is the history of all the manuscripts of vinci that are come into france; they are in number fourteen, because the volume b contains an appendix of eighteen leaves, which may be separated, and considered as the fourteenth volume[i ]. in the printed catalogue of the library of turin, one does not see noticed the manuscript which mazenta gave to the duke of savoy: it has then disappeared. might it not be that which an englishman got copied by francis ducci, library-keeper at florence, and a copy of which is still remaining in the same city[i ]? the trivulce family at milan, according to venturi[i ], possess also a manuscript of vinci, which is in great part only a vocabulary. of the volume in the possession of his britannic majesty, the following account is given in the life of leonardo, prefixed to that number already published from it by mr. chamberlaine: "it was one of the three volumes which became the property of pompeo leoni, that is now in his majesty's cabinet. it is rather probable than certain, that this great curiosity was acquired for king charles i. by the earl of arundel, when he went ambassador to the emperor ferdinand ii. in , as may indeed be inferred from an instructive inscription over the place where the volumes are kept, which sets forth, that james king of england offered three thousand pistoles for one of the volumes of leonardo's works. and some documents in the ambrosian library give colour to this conjecture. this volume was happily preserved during the civil wars of the last century among other specimens of the fine arts, which the munificence of charles i. had amassed with a diligence equal to his taste. and it was discovered soon after his present majesty's accession in the same cabinet where queen caroline found the fine portraits of the court of henry viii. by hans holbein, which the king's liberality permitted me lately to lay before the public. on the cover of this volume is written, in gold letters, what ascertains its descent; _disegni di leonardo da vinci, restaurati da pompeo leoni_." although no part of the collections of leonardo was arranged and prepared by himself, or others under his direction, for publication, some extracts have been made from his writings, and given to the world as separate tracts. the best known, and indeed the principal of these, is the following treatise on painting, of which there will be occasion to say more presently; but besides this, edward cooper, a london bookseller, about the year , published a fragment of a treatise by leonardo da vinci, on the motions of the human body, and the manner of drawing figures, according to geometrical rules. it contains but ten plates in folio, including the title-page, and was evidently extracted from some of the volumes of his collections, as it consists of slight sketches and verbal descriptions both in italian and english, to explain such of them as needed it. mr. dalton, as has been before noticed, several years since published some engravings from the volume in our king's collection, but they are so badly done as to be of no value. mr. chamberlaine therefore, in , took up the intention afresh, and in that year his first number came out, which is all that has yet appeared. of the treatise on painting, venturi[i ] gives the following particulars: "the treatise on painting which we have of vinci is only a compilation of different fragments extracted from his manuscripts. it was in the barberini library at rome, in [i ]: the cav. del pozzo obtained a copy from it, and poussin designed the figures of it in [i ]. this copy, and another derived from the same source, in the possession of thevenot, served as the basis for the edition published in , by raphael du frêne. the manuscript of pozzo, with the figures of poussin, is actually at paris, in the valuable collection of books of chardin[i ]. it is from this that i have taken the relation of mazenta; it is at the end of the manuscript under this title: "some notices of the works of leonardo da vinci at milan, and of his books, by j. ambrose mazenta of milan, of the congregation of the priests regular of st. paul, called the barnabites." mazenta does not announce himself as the author of the compilation; he may however be so; it may also happen, that the compilation was made by the heir himself of vinci, francisco melzo. vasari, about , says[i ], that a painter of milan had the manuscripts of vinci, which were written backwards; that this painter came to him, and afterwards went to rome, with intention to get them printed, but that he did not know what was the result. however it may be, du frêne confesses that this compilation is imperfect in many respects, and ill arranged. it is so, because the compiler has not seized the methodical spirit of vinci, and that there are mixed with it some pieces which belong to other tracts; besides, one has not seen where many other chapters have been neglected which ought to make part of it. for example, the comparison of painting with sculpture, which has been announced as a separate treatise of the same author, is nothing more than a chapter belonging to the treatise on painting, a. . all this will be complete, and put in order, in the treatise on optics[i ]. in the mean time, however, the following are the different editions of this compilation, such as it is at present: "trattato della pittura di leonardo da vinci, nuovamente dato in luce, con la vita dell' autore da raphaele du frêne, parigi , in fol.; reprinted at naples in , in folio; at bologna, in , in folio; at florence, in , in to. this last edition has been given from a copy in the hand-writing of stephano della bella. "----translated into french by roland freart de chambray, paris , fol. reprinted ibid. , in mo, and , in vo. "----translated into german, in to. nuremberg , weigel. "----translated into greek by panagiotto, manuscript in the nani library at venice. "another manuscript copy of this compilation was in the possession of p. orlandi, from whence it passed into the library of smith[i ]. "cellini, in a discourse published by morelli, says[i ], that he possessed a copy of a book of de vinci on perspective, which he communicated to serlio, and that this latter published from it all that he could comprehend. might not this be the tract which gori announces to be in the library of the academy of cortona[i ]?" the reputation in which the treatise on painting ought to be held, is not now for the first time to be settled; its merit has been acknowledged by the best judges, though at that time it laboured under great disadvantage from the want of a proper arrangement. in the present publication that objection is removed, and the attempt has been favourable to the work itself, as it has shewn it, by bringing together the several chapters that related to each other, to be a much more complete and connected treatise than was before supposed. notwithstanding however the fair estimation in which it has always stood, and which is no more than its due, one person has been found hardy enough to endeavour, though unsuccessfully, to lessen its credit: a circumstance which it would not have been worth while to notice, if it had not been intimated to us, that there are still some persons in france who side with the objector, which, as he was a frenchman, and leonardo an italian, may perhaps be ascribed, in some measure at least, to the desire which in several instances that people have lately shewn of claiming on behalf of their countrymen, a preference over others, to which they are not entitled. abraham bosse, of the city of tours, an engraver in copper, who lived in the last century, is the person here alluded to; and it may not be impertinent in this place to state some of the motives by which he was induced to such a conduct. at the time when this treatise first made its appearance in france, as well in italian as in french, bosse appears to have been resident at paris, and was a member of the academy of painting, where he gave the first lessons on perspective, and, with the assistance of mons. desargues, published from time to time several tracts on geometry and perspective, the manner of designing, and the art of engraving, some of which at least are described in the title-page, as printed at paris for the author[i ]. this man, in his lectures, having, it is said, attacked some of the pictures painted by le brun, the then director of the academy, had been very deservedly removed from his situation, and forced to quit the academy, for endeavouring to lessen that authority, which for the instruction and improvement of students it was necessary the director should possess, and attempting thus to render fruitless the precepts which his situation required him to deliver. as this treatise of leonardo had in the translation been adopted by le brun, who fully saw its value, and introduced it into the academy for the advantage of the students, by which means the sale of bosse's work might be, and probably was, affected; bosse, at the end of a treatise on geometry and perspective, taught in the royal academy of painting and sculpture, published by him in octavo in , has inserted a paper with this title, which in the original is given in french, but we have preferred translating it: "_what follows is for those who shall have the curiosity to be acquainted with a part of the procedings of mons. desargues, and myself, against some of our antagonists, and part of their skill; together with some remarks made on the contents of several chapters of a treatise attributed to leonardo de vinci, translated from italian into french by mons. freart sieur de chambray, from a manuscript taken from that which is in the library of the illustrious, virtuous, and curious mons. le chevalier du puis at rome_." after the explanation of his motives above given, it is not wonderful to find him asserting, that this treatise of leonardo was in a number of circumstances inferior to his own; nor to observe, that in a list of some of the chapters which he has there given, we should be frequently told by him that they are false, absurd, ridiculous, confused, trifling, weak, and, in short, every thing but good. it is true that the estimation of leonardo da vinci was in france too high for him to attack without risking his own character for judgment and taste, and he has therefore found it necessary for his purpose insidiously to suggest that these chapters were interpolations; but of this he has produced no proof, which, had it been the fact, might have been easily obtained, by only getting some friend to consult leonardo's manuscript collections in the ambrosian library. that he would have taken this step if he had expected any success from it, may fairly be inferred from the circumstance of his writing to poussin at rome, apparently in hopes of inducing him to say something to the disadvantage of the work; and his omitting to make this inquiry after the enmity he has shewn against the book, fully justifies an opinion that he forbore to inquire, because he was conscious that such an investigation would have terminated in vindicating his adversaries from his aspersions, and have furnished evidence of their fidelity and accuracy. what the letter which he wrote to poussin contained, he has not informed us; but he has given us, as he says, poussin's answer[i ], in which are some passages relating to this treatise, of which we here give a translation: "as to what concerns the book of leonard vinci, it is true that i have designed the human figures which are in that which mons. le chevalier du puis has; but all the others, whether geometrical or otherwise, are of one man, named gli alberti, the very same who has drawn the plants which are in the book of subterraneous rome; and the awkward landscapes which are behind some of the little human figures of the copy which mons. du chambray has caused to be printed, have been added to it by one errard, without my knowing any thing of it. "all that is good in this book may be written on one sheet of paper, in a large character, and those who believe that i approve all that is in it, do not know me; i who profess never to give sanction to things of my profession which i know to be ill done and ill said." whoever recollects the difference in the course of study pursued and recommended by leonardo (that of nature), from that observed by poussin (that of the antique), and remembers also the different fortunes of le brun and poussin, that the one was at the head of his profession, enjoying all its honours and emoluments, while the other, though conscious of his own great powers, was toiling for a daily subsistence in comparative obscurity, may easily conceive why the latter could not approve a work which so strongly inculcates the adopting nature as the guide throughout; and which was at the same time patronized by one whom he could not but consider as his more fortunate rival. it may however be truly affirmed, that even the talents of poussin, great as they certainly were, and his knowledge and correctness in drawing, would have been abundantly improved by an attention to the rules laid down in this treatise, and that the study of nature would have freed his pictures from that resemblance to statues which his figures frequently have, and bestowed on them the soft and fleshy appearance for which leonardo was so remarkable; while a minute investigation of leonardo's system of colouring would have produced perhaps in him as fortunate a change as we have seen it did in the case of raphael. though bosse tells us[i ], that he had seen in the hands of mons. felibien, a manuscript copy of this tract on painting, which he said he had taken from the same original mentioned before, for the purpose of translating it into french; and that on bosse's pointing out to him some of these errors, and informing him that mons. de chambray was far advanced in his translation, he abandoned his design, and assigned to the sieur de chambray the privilege he had obtained for it; we have no intention here to enumerate or answer bosse's objections, merely because such an undertaking would greatly exceed the limits which can here be allowed us. most of them will be found captious and splenetic, and, together with the majority of the rest, might be fully refuted by a deduction of facts; it is however sufficient on the present occasion to say, that wherever opportunity has been afforded of tracing the means by which leonardo procured his materials for any great composition, he is found to have exactly pursued the path which he recommends to others[i ]; and for the success of his precepts, and what may be effected by them, we need only appeal to his own example. to this enumeration of the productions of leonardo's pen, and in contradiction to the fact already asserted, that no part of his collections was ever arranged or prepared for publication by himself, it is probable we may be told we should add tracts on motion; on the equilibrium of bodies; on the nature, equilibrium, and motion of water; on anatomy; on the anatomy of an horse; on perspective; and on light and shadow: which are either mentioned by himself in the treatise on painting, or ascribed to him by others. but as to these, there is great reason for supposing, that, though they might be intended, they were never actually drawn up into form. certain it is, that no such have been ever given to the world, as those before noticed are the only treatises of this author that have yet appeared in print; and even they have already been shewn to be no more than extracts from the immense mass of his collections of such passages as related to the subjects on which they profess to give intelligence. if any tracts therefore in his name, on any of the above topics, are any where existing in manuscript, and in obscurity, it is probable they are only similar selections. and indeed it will be found on inspection, that his collections consist of a multitude of entries made at different times, without method, order, or arrangement of any kind, so as to form an immense chaos of intelligence, which he, like many other voluminous collectors, intended at some future time to digest and arrange, but unfortunately postponed this task so long, that he did not live to carry that intention into effect. under these circumstances, should it happen, as perhaps it may, that any volume of the whole is confined exclusively to any one branch of science, such as hydrostatics for instance, it was not the consequence of a designed plan, but only arose from this accident, that he had then made that branch the object of his pursuit, and for a time laid aside the rest. in proof of this assertion it may be observed, that the very treatise of light and shadow above mentioned, is described as in the ambrosian library at milan, and as a folio volume covered with red velvet, presented by signior mazzenta to cardinal borromeo[i ]; from all which circumstances it is evidently proved to be one of the volumes now existing in france[i ], which were inspected and described by venturi in the tract so often cited in the course of this life. although the principal of leonardo's productions have been already mentioned, it has been thought proper, for the satisfaction of the curious, here to subjoin a catalogue of such of them as have come to our knowledge; distinguishing in it such as were only drawings, from such as were finished pictures, and noticing also which of them have been engraven, and by whom. catalogue of the works of _leonardo da vinci_. architecture. many _designs for plans and buildings_, made by him in his youth[i ]. _a model_ made by him for raising the roof of the church of st. john, at florence[i ]. _the house of the family of melzi at vaprio_, supposed by della valle to be designed by leonardo[i ]. models /and/ sculpture. some _heads of laughing women_, modelled by him in clay, in his youth[i ]. some _boys' heads_ also, which appeared to have come from the hand of a master[i ]. _three figures in bronze_, over the gate on the north side of the church of st. john, at florence, made by gio. francesco rustici, but designed with the advice of leonardo da vinci[i ]. _a model in clay_, in alto relievo. it is a circle of about two palms in diameter, and represents st. jerom in a grotto, old, and much worn out by prayer. it was in the possession of sig. ignazio hugford, a painter at florence, who was induced to buy it in consequence of the great praises which in his youth he had heard bestowed on it by the celebrated anton. dominico gabbiani, his master, who knew it to be of the hand of leonardo. this model appears to have been much studied in the time of pontormo and rosso; and many copies of it, both drawings and pictures, are to be found throughout florence, well painted in their manner[i ]. the _equestrian statue_ in memory of the duke of milan's father, which was not only finished and exposed to view, but broken to pieces by the french when they took possession of milan. it has been said by some, that the model only was finished, and the statue never cast, and that it was the model only which the french destroyed[i ]. vasari, p. , mentions a little _model_ by leonardo in wax, but he does not say what was its subject. drawings. /vasari/, p. , says, that it was leonardo's practice to model figures from the life, and then to cover them with fine thin lawn or cambric, so as to be able to see through it, and with the point of a fine pencil to trace off the outlines in black and white; and that some such drawings he had in his collection. _a head in chiaro oscuro_, in the possession of vasari, and mentioned by him as divine, a drawing on paper[i ]. _a carton of adam and eve in paradise_, made by him for the king of portugal. it is done with a pen in chiaro oscuro, and heightened with white, and was intended to be worked as tapestry in silk and gold; but vasari says it was never executed, and that in his time the carton remained at florence, in the house of ottaviano de medici. whether this carton is still existing is unknown[i ]. _several ridiculous heads of men and women_, formerly in vasari's collection, drawn in pen and ink[i ]. aurelio lovino had, says lomazzo, a book of sketches by leonardo, of odd and ridiculous heads. this book appears to have contained about figures of countrymen and countrywomen laughing, drawn by the hand of leonardo. card. silvio valenti had a similar book, in which were caricature heads drawn with a pen, like that engraven by count caylus. of these caricatures mention is made in the second volume of the lettere pittoriche, p. [i ]. the passage in the lettere pittoriche here referred to, is part of a letter without any name or date, addressed _al sig. c. di c._; but a note of the editor's explains these initials, as meaning sig. conte di caylus, and supposes the author to have been the younger mariette. the letter mentions a collection of heads from leonardo's drawings, published by the count; and the editor, in another note, tells us, that they are caricature heads drawn in pen and ink; that the originals were bought in holland, from sig. cardin. silvio valenti, and that the prints of which the letter speaks, are in the famous collection of the corsini library. the author of the letter supposes these caricatures to have been drawn when vinci retired to melzi's house, that he invented them as a new sort of recreation, and intended them as a subject for the academy which he had established at milan. in another part of the same letter, p. , , this collection of drawings of heads is again mentioned, and it is there said, that it might be that which belonged to the earl of arundel. this conjecture is founded on there being many such heads engraven formerly by hollar. in fact, the number of the plates which he has done from drawings of this painter, are near one hundred, which compose different series. the author of the letter adds, that, if a conjecture might be permitted, we might affirm, that this is the collection of heads of which paul lomazzo speaks; at least the description which he gives of a similar collection which was in the hands of aurelio lovino, a painter of milan, corresponds with this as well in the number of the drawings as their subjects. it represents, like this, studies from old men, countrymen, wrinkled old women, which are all laughing. another part of this letter says, it is easy to believe that the collection of drawings of heads which occasioned this letter, might be one of those books in which leonardo noted the most singular countenances. in p. of the same letter, hollar's engravings are said to be about an hundred, and to have been done at antwerp in , and the following year; and in p. , count caylus's publication is said to contain plates in aqua fortis, done in , and that this latter is the work so often mentioned in the letter. _another collection of the same kind of caricature heads_ mentioned in mariette's letter[i ], as existing in the cabinet of either the king of spain or the king of sardinia. _four caricature heads_, mentioned, lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. , as being in the possession of sig. crozat. they are described as drawn with a pen, and are said to have come originally from vasari's collection of drawings. of this collection it is said, in a note on the above passage, that it was afterwards carried into france, and fell into the hands of a bookseller, who took the volume to pieces, and disposed of the drawings separately, and that many of them came into the cabinets of the king, and sig. crozat. others say, and it is more credible, that vasari's collection passed into that of the grand dukes of medici. _a head of americo vespucci_, in charcoal, but copied by vasari in pen and ink[i ]. _a head of an old man_, beautifully drawn in charcoal[i ]. _an head of scarramuccia, captain of the gypsies_, in chalk; formerly belonging to pierfrancesco giambullari, canon of st. lorenzo, at florence, and left by him to donato valdambrini of arezzo, canon of st. lorenzo also[i ]. _several designs of combatants on horseback_, made by leonardo for gentil borri, a master of defence[i ], to shew the different positions necessary for a horse soldier in defending himself, and attacking his enemy. _a carton of our saviour, the virgin, st. ann, and st. john._ vasari says of this, that for two days, people of all sorts, men and women, young and old, resorted to leonardo's house to see this wonderful performance, as if they had been going to a solemn feast; and adds, that this carton was afterwards in france. it seems that this was intended for an altar-piece for the high altar of the church of the annunziata, but the picture was never painted[i ]. however, when leonardo afterwards went into france, he, at the desire of francis the first, put the design into colours. lomazzo has said, that this carton of st. ann was carried into france; that in his time it was at milan, in the possession of aurelio lovino, a painter; and that many drawings from it were in existence. what was the fate this carton of st. ann underwent, may be seen in a letter of p. resta, printed in the third volume of the lettere pittoriche, in which he says, that leonardo made three of these cartons, and nevertheless did not convert it into a picture, but that it was painted by salai, and that the picture is still in the sacristy of st. celsus at milan[i ]. _a drawing of an old man's head, seen in front_, in red chalk; mentioned lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. . _a carton_ designed by him _for painting the council-chamber at florence_. the subject which he chose for this purpose was, the history of niccolo piccinino, the captain of duke philip of milan, in which he drew a group of men on horseback fighting for a standard[i ]. mariette, in a note, lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. , mentions this carton, which he says represented two horsemen fighting for a standard; that it was only part of a large history, the subject of which was the rout of niccolo piccinino, general of the army of philip duke of milan, and that a print was engraven of it by edelinck, when young, but the drawing from which he worked was a bad one. in the catalogue of prints from the works of leonardo, inserted lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. , this print is again mentioned and described more truly, as representing four horsemen fighting for a standard. it is there supposed to have been engraven from a drawing by fiammingo, and that this drawing might have been made from the picture which du fresne speaks of as being in his time in the possession of sig. la maire, an excellent painter of perspective. _a design of neptune drawn in his car by sea horses, attended by sea gods_; made by him for his friend antonio segni[i ]. _several anatomical drawings_ made from the life, many of which have been since collected into a volume, by his scholar francesco melzi[i ]. _a book of the anatomy of man_, mentioned by vasari, p. , the drawings for which were made with the assistance of marc antonio della torre, before noticed in the present life. it is probably the same with the preceding. a beautiful and well-preserved study in red and black chalk, of the _head of a virgin_, from which he afterwards painted a picture. this study was at one time in the celebrated villa de vecchietti, but afterwards, in consequence of a sale, passed into the hands of sig. ignazio hugford[i ]. _two heads of women in profile_, little differing from each other, drawn in like manner in black and red chalk, bought at the same sale by sig. hugford, but now among the elector palatine's collection of drawings[i ]. _a book of the anatomy of a horse_, mentioned by vasari, p. , as a distinct work; but probably included in leonardo's manuscript collections. see the account before given of them. several designs by leonardo were in the possession of sig. jabac, who seems to have been a collector of pictures, and to have bought up for the king of france several excellent pictures particularly by leonardo da vinci[i ]. _a drawing of a young man embracing an old woman_, whom he is caressing for the sake of her riches. this is mentioned, lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. , as engraven by hollar, in . _a head of a young man seen in profile_, engraven in aqua fortis by conte di caylus, from a drawing in the king of france's collection[i ]. _a fragment of a treatise on the motions of the human body_, already mentioned in the foregoing life. in the lettere pittoriche, vol. ii. p. , mention is made of a print representing _some intertwisted lines upon a black ground_, in the style of some of albert durer's engravings in wood. in the middle of this, in a small compartment, is to be read, "/academia leonardi vin/." vasari, it is there said, has noticed it as a singularity. in p. of the same work, a similar print is also noticed, which differs only in the inscription from the former. in this last it is /academia leonardi vici/. both this and the former print are said to be extremely rare, and only to have been seen in the king of france's collection. it does not however appear from any thing in the lett. pitt. that they were designed by leonardo. the abate di villeloin, in his catalogue of prints published in , speaks, under the article of leonardo da vinci, of a print of the taking down from the cross; but the lett. pitt. says it was engraven from eneas vico, not from leonardo[i ]. _two drawings of monsters_, mentioned by lomazzo, consisting of a boy's head each, but horribly distorted by the misplacing of the features, and the introduction of other members not in nature to be found there. these two drawings were in the hands of francesco borella, a sculptor[i ]. _a portrait_ by leonardo, _of artus, maestro di camera to francis i._ drawn in black lead pencil[i ]. _the head of a cæsar crowned with oak_, among a valuable collection of drawings in a thick volume in folio, in the possession of sig. pagave[i ]. _the proportions of the human body._ the original of this is preserved in the possession of sig. pagave. at the head and foot of this drawing is to be read the description which begins thus: _tanto apre l'uomo nelle braccia quanto è la sua altezza, &c._ and above all, at the head of the work is the famous last supper, which he proposes to his scholars as the rule of the art[i ]. _the circumcision_, a large drawing mentioned lett. pitt. vol. ii. , as the work of leonardo, by nicolo gabburri, in a letter dated florence, th oct. , and addressed _al sig. pietro mariette_. gabburri says he saw this drawing, and that it was done on white paper a little tinted with indian ink, and heightened with ceruse. its owner then was alessandro galilei, an architect of florence. _a drawing consisting of several laughing heads, in the middle of which is another head in profile, crowned with oak leaves._ this drawing was the property of the earl of arundel, and was engraven by hollar in [i ]. _a man sitting, and collecting in a looking-glass the rays of the sun, to dazzle the eyes of a dragon who is fighting with a lion._ a print of this is spoken of, lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. , as badly engraven by an anonymous artist, but it is there said to have so little of leonardo's manner as to afford reason for believing it not designed by him, though it might perhaps be found among his drawings in the king of france's collection. another print of it, of the same size, has been engraven from the drawing by conte de caylus. it represents a pensive man, and differs from the former in this respect, that in this the man is naked, whereas in the drawing he is clothed. paintings. _a madonna_, formerly in the possession of pope clement the seventh[i ]. _a small madonna and child_, painted for baldassar turini da pescia, who was the datary[i ] at lyons, the colours of which are much faded[i ]. it is not known where this now is. _a virgin and child_, at one time in the hands of the botti family[i ]. _the virgin sitting in st. ann's lap, and holding her little son_, formerly at paris[i ]. this has been engraven in wood, in chiaro oscuro, by an unknown artist. the picture was in the king of france's cabinet, and a similar one is in the sacristy of st. celsus at milan[i ]. _another virgin with her son, st. john, and an angel_, mentioned by du fresne, as at paris[i ]. _a madonna and child_, in the possession of the marquis di surdi[i ]. _a madonna and child_, painted on the wall in the church of st. onofrio at rome[i ]. _a madonna kneeling_, in the king's gallery in france[i ]. _an holy family, with st. michael, and another angel_, in the king of france's collection[i ]. _a madonna_, in the church of st. francis at milan, attributed to leonardo by sorman[i ]. _a virgin and child_, by leonardo, in piacenza, near the church of our lady in the fields. it was bought for chequins by the principe di belgioioso[i ]. _a madonna, half length, holding on her knee the infant jesus, with a lily in his hand._ a print of this, engraven in aqua fortis by giuseppe juster, is mentioned lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. . the picture is there said to have been in the possession of charles patin, and was supposed by some to have been painted for francis i. _an herodiade_, some time in cardinal richelieu's possession[i ]. _the daughter of herodias, with an executioner holding out to her the head of st. john_, in the barberini palace[i ]. _an herodiade with a basket, in which is the head of john the baptist._ a print of this in aqua fortis, by gio. troven, under the direction of teniers, is mentioned lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. , and is there said to have been done from a picture which was then in the cabinet of the archduke leopold, but had been before in that of the emperor. another picture of the same subject, but differently disposed. it is also an half length. a print from it, in aqua fortis, by alessio loyr, is mentioned lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. ; but it is not there said in whose possession the picture ever was. _the angel_ in verrochio's picture before mentioned[i ]. _the shield_, mentioned by vasari, p. , as painted by him at the request of his father, and consisting of serpents, &c. _a head of medusa_, in oil, in the palace of duke cosmo. it is still in being, and in good preservation[i ]. _a head of an angel raising one arm in the air_, in the collection of duke cosmo[i ]. whether this is a picture, or only a drawing, does not appear; but as vasari does not notice any difference between that and the head of medusa, which he decidedly says is in oil, it is probable that this is so also. _the adoration of the magi_: it was in the house of americo benci, opposite to the portico of peruzzi[i ]. _the famous last supper_, in the refectory of the dominican convent of santa maria delle grazie[i ]. a list of the copies made from this celebrated picture has, together with its history, been given in a former page. a print has been engraven from it under the direction of pietro soutman; but he being a scholar of rubens, has introduced into it so much of rubens's manner[i ], that it can no longer be known for leonardo da vinci's. besides this, mariette also mentions two other prints, one of them an engraving, the other an etching, but both by unknown authors. he notices also, that the count di caylus had etched it in aqua fortis[i ]. the print lately engraven of it by morghen has been already noticed in a former page. _a nativity_, sent as a present from the duke of milan to the emperor[i ]. _the portraits of lodovic sforza, duke of milan, and maximilian his eldest son, and on the other side beatrix his dutchess, and francesco his other son_, all in one picture, in the same refectory with the last supper[i ]. _the portraits of two of the handsomest women at florence_, painted by him as a present to lewis xii[i ]. _the painting in the council-chamber at florence_[i ]. the subject of this is the battle of attila[i ]. _a portrait of ginevra_, daughter of americo benci[i ]. _the portrait of mona lisa_, the wife of francesco del giocondo, painted for her husband[i ]. lomazzo has said, she was a neapolitan, but this is supposed a mistake, and that she was a florentine[i ]. in a note of mariette's, lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. , this picture is said to have been in the collection of francis i. king of france, who gave for it crowns. _a small picture of a child_, which was at pescia, in the possession of baldassar turini. it is not known where this now is[i ]. _a painting of two horsemen struggling for a flag_, in the palais royal at paris[i ]. _a nobleman of mantua_[i ]. _a picture of flora_, which du fresne mentions as being in his time at paris. this is said to have been once in the cabinet of mary de medicis[i ], and though for some time supposed to have been painted by leonardo da vinci, was discovered by mariette to have been the work of francisco melzi, whose name is upon it[i ]. in the supplement to the life of leonardo, inserted in della valle's edition of vasari, this picture is said to have been painted for the duke de s. simone. _a head of john the baptist_, in the hands of camillo albizzo[i ]. _the conception of the blessed virgin_, for the church of st. francis at milan[i ]. this was esteemed a copy, and not worth more than chequins, till an englishman came there, who thought a large sum of money well employed in the purchase of it[i ]. _st. john in the wilderness_, said to be at paris[i ]. in lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. , mention is made of a print of st. john the baptist, half length, by sig. jabac, who had the original picture, which was formerly in the king of france's cabinet. _joseph and potiphar's wife_, which mons. de charmois, secretary to the duke of schomberg, had[i ]. _a portrait of raphael_, in oil, in the medici gallery. this is mentioned in vasari, p. ; and though not expressly there said to be by leonardo, is so placed as to make it doubtful whether it was or not. _a nun, half length_, by leonardo, in the possession of abbate nicolini[i ]. _two fine heads_, painted in oil by leonardo, bought at florence by sig. bali di breteuil, ambassador from malta to rome. one of these, representing a woman, was in his first manner. the other, a virgin, in his last[i ]. _a leda_, which lomazzo says was at fontainebleau, and did not yield in colouring to the portrait of joconda in the duke's gallery. richardson says it was in the palace mattei[i ]. _the head of a dead man_, with all its minute parts, painted by leonardo, formerly in the mattei palace, but no longer there[i ]. a picture containing a study of _two most delicate female heads_, in the barberini palace at rome[i ]. _a portrait of a girl with a book in her hand_, in the strozzi palace in rome[i ]. _the dispute of jesus with the doctors_, half length, in the panfili palace[i ]. five pictures in the ambrosian library at milan, the subjects not mentioned[i ]. some in the gallery of the archbishopric at milan, the number and subjects equally unnoticed[i ]. one picture in the sacristy of santa maria, near st. celsus at milan[i ]. _a small head of christ_, while a youth, mentioned by lomazzo. probably this may be the study for the picture of jesus disputing with the doctors, at the panfili palace[i ]. _st. michael with a man kneeling_, in the king of france's collection[i ]. _a bacchus_, in the same collection[i ]. _the fair ferraia_, in the same collection[i ]. _a portrait of a lady_, there also[i ]. _a christ with a globe in his hand_[i ]. a very fine picture, half length, now in the possession of richard troward, esq. of pall mall. this was engraven by hollar in , in aqua fortis[i ]. _the fall of phaeton_, in the gallery of the grand duke of tuscany, of which scannelli speaks, but it is mentioned by no one else[i ]. _st. catherine with a palm-branch_, in the gallery of the duke of modena[i ]. _the head of a young man armed_, in the same collection, very graceful, but inferior to the st. catherine[i ]. _a portrait of the queen of naples_, which was in the aldobrandini gallery, but afterwards to be found in a chamber of portraits in the panfili palace. it is not equal in colouring to the dispute of jesus with the doctors[i ]. _a portrait in profile of the dutchess of milan_, mentioned by richardson as being in a chamber leading to the ambrosian library[i ]. _a beautiful figure of the virgin, half length_, in the palace of vaprio. it is of a gigantic size, for the head of the virgin is six common palms in size, and that of the divine infant four in circumference. della valle speaks of having seen this in the year , and says he is not ignorant that tradition ascribes this madonna to bramante, notwithstanding which he gives it to leonardo[i ]. _a laughing pomona with three veils_, commended by lomazzo. it was done for francis i. king of france[i ]. _the portrait of cecilia gallarani_, mentioned by bellincione in one of his sonnets, as painted by leonardo[i ]. _another of lucrezia cavelli_, a celebrated performer on the lute, ascribed to him on the same authority. copies of both this and the former may be seen at milan[i ]. _our saviour before pilate_, in the church of s. florentino, at amboise. it is thought that the carton only of this was leonardo's, and that the picture was painted by andrea salai, or melzi[i ]. _a portrait of leonardo_ by himself, half length, in the ambrosian library at milan[i ]. della valle has inserted a copy of this before the supplement to leonardo's life, in his edition of vasari, for which purpose sig. pagave transmitted him a drawing from the original picture. but leonardo's own drawing for the picture itself, is in the possession of his britannic majesty, and from that mr. chamberlaine has prefixed to his publication before mentioned, a plate engraven by bartolozzi. a treatise, _&c._ drawing. proportion. /chap. i./--_what the young student in painting ought in the first place to learn._ /the/ young student should, in the first place, acquire a knowledge of perspective, to enable him to give to every object its proper dimensions: after which, it is requisite that he be under the care of an able master, to accustom him, by degrees, to a good style of drawing the parts. next, he must study nature, in order to confirm and fix in his mind the reason of those precepts which he has learnt. he must also bestow some time in viewing the works of various old masters, to form his eye and judgment, in order that he may be able to put in practice all that he has been taught[ ]. /chap. ii./--_rule for a young student in painting._ /the/ organ of sight is one of the quickest, and takes in at a single glance an infinite variety of forms; notwithstanding which, it cannot perfectly comprehend more than one object at a time. for example, the reader, at one look over this page, immediately perceives it full of different characters; but he cannot at the same moment distinguish each letter, much less can he comprehend their meaning. he must consider it word by word, and line by line, if he be desirous of forming a just notion of these characters. in like manner, if we wish to ascend to the top of an edifice, we must be content to advance step by step, otherwise we shall never be able to attain it. a young man, who has a natural inclination to the study of this art, i would advise to act thus: in order to acquire a true notion of the form of things, he must begin by studying the parts which compose them, and not pass to a second till he has well stored his memory, and sufficiently practised the first; otherwise he loses his time, and will most certainly protract his studies. and let him remember to acquire accuracy before he attempts quickness. /chap. iii./--_how to discover a young man's disposition for painting._ /many/ are very desirous of learning to draw, and are very fond of it, who are, notwithstanding, void of a proper disposition for it. this may be known by their want of perseverance; like boys, who draw every thing in a hurry, never finishing, or shadowing. /chap. iv./--_of painting, and its divisions._ /painting/ is divided into two principal parts. the first is the figure, that is, the lines which distinguish the forms of bodies, and their component parts. the second is the colour contained within those limits. /chap. v./--_division of the figure._ /the/ form of bodies is divided into two parts; that is, the proportion of the members to each other, which must correspond with the whole; and the motion, expressive of what passes in the mind of the living figure. /chap. vi./--_proportion of members._ /the/ proportion of members is again divided into two parts, viz. equality, and motion. by equality is meant (besides the measure corresponding with the whole), that you do not confound the members of a young subject with those of old age, nor plump ones with those that are lean; and that, moreover, you do not blend the robust and firm muscles of man with feminine softness: that the attitudes and motions of old age be not expressed with the quickness and alacrity of youth; nor those of a female figure like those of a vigorous young man. the motions and members of a strong man should be such as to express his perfect state of health. /chap. vii./--_of dimensions in general._ /in/ general, the dimensions of the human body are to be considered in the length, and not in the breadth; because in the wonderful works of nature, which we endeavour to imitate, we cannot in any species find any one part in one model precisely similar to the same part in another. let us be attentive, therefore, to the variation of forms, and avoid all monstrosities of proportion; such as long legs united to short bodies, and narrow chests with long arms. observe also attentively the measure of joints, in which nature is apt to vary considerably; and imitate her example by doing the same. /chap. viii./--_motion, changes, and proportion of members._ /the/ measures of the human body vary in each member, according as it is more or less bent, or seen in different views, increasing on one side as much as they diminish on the other. /chap. ix./--_the difference of proportion between children and grown men._ /in/ men and children i find a great difference between the joints of the one and the other in the length of the bones. a man has the length of two heads from the extremity of one shoulder to the other, the same from the shoulder to the elbow, and from the elbow to the fingers; but the child has only one, because nature gives the proper size first to the seat of the intellect, and afterwards to the other parts. /chap. x./--_the alterations in the proportion of the human body from infancy to full age._ /a man/, in his infancy, has the breadth of his shoulders equal to the length of the face, and to the length of the arm from the shoulder to the elbow, when the arm is bent[ ]. it is the same again from the lower belly to the knee, and from the knee to the foot. but, when a man is arrived at the period of his full growth, every one of these dimensions becomes double in length, except the face, which, with the top of the head, undergoes but very little alteration in length. a well-proportioned and full-grown man, therefore, is ten times the length of his face; the breadth of his shoulders will be two faces, and in like manner all the above lengths will be double. the rest will be explained in the general measurement of the human body[ ]. /chap. xi./--_of the proportion of members._ /all/ the parts of any animal whatever must be correspondent with the whole. so that, if the body be short and thick, all the members belonging to it must be the same. one that is long and thin must have its parts of the same kind; and so of the middle size. something of the same may be observed in plants, when uninjured by men or tempests; for when thus injured they bud and grow again, making young shoots from old plants, and by those means destroying their natural symmetry. /chap. xii./--_that every part be proportioned to its whole._ /if/ a man be short and thick, be careful that all his members be of the same nature, viz. short arms and thick, large hands, short fingers, with broad joints; and so of the rest. /chap. xiii./--_of the proportion of the members._ /measure/ upon yourself the proportion of the parts, and, if you find any of them defective, note it down, and be very careful to avoid it in drawing your own compositions. for this is reckoned a common fault in painters, to delight in the imitation of themselves. /chap. xiv./--_the danger of forming an erroneous judgment in regard to the proportion and beauty of the parts._ /if/ the painter has clumsy hands, he will be apt to introduce them into his works, and so of any other part of his person, which may not happen to be so beautiful as it ought to be. he must, therefore, guard particularly against that self-love, or too good opinion of his own person, and study by every means to acquire the knowledge of what is most beautiful, and of his own defects, that he may adopt the one and avoid the other. /chap. xv./--_another precept._ /the/ young painter must, in the first instance, accustom his hand to copying the drawings of good masters; and when his hand is thus formed, and ready, he should, with the advice of his director, use himself also to draw from relievos; according to the rules we shall point out in the treatise on drawing from relievos[ ]. /chap. xvi./--_the manner of drawing from relievos, and rendering paper fit for it._ /when/ you draw from relievos, tinge your paper of some darkish demi-tint. and after you have made your outline, put in the darkest shadows, and, last of all, the principal lights, but sparingly, especially the smaller ones; because those are easily lost to the eye at a very moderate distance[ ]. /chap. xvii./--_of drawing from casts or nature._ /in/ drawing from relievo, the draftsman must place himself in such a manner, as that the eye of the figure to be drawn be level with his own[ ]. /chap. xviii./--_to draw figures from nature._ /accustom/ yourself to hold a plummet in your hand, that you may judge of the bearing of the parts. /chap. xix./--_of drawing from nature._ /when/ you draw from nature, you must be at the distance of three times the height of the object; and when you begin to draw, form in your own mind a certain principal line (suppose a perpendicular); observe well the bearing of the parts towards that line; whether they intersect, are parallel to it, or oblique. /chap. xx./--_of drawing academy figures._ /when/ you draw from a naked model, always sketch in the whole of the figure, suiting all the members well to each other; and though you finish only that part which appears the best, have a regard to the rest, that, whenever you make use of such studies, all the parts may hang together. in composing your attitudes, take care not to turn the head on the same side as the breast, nor let the arm go in a line with the leg[ ]. if the head turn towards the right shoulder, the parts must be lower on the left side than on the other; but if the chest come forward, and the head turn towards the left, the parts on the right side are to be the highest. /chap. xxi./--_of studying in the dark, on first waking in the morning, and before going to sleep._ /i have/ experienced no small benefit, when in the dark and in bed, by retracing in my mind the outlines of those forms which i had previously studied, particularly such as had appeared the most difficult to comprehend and retain; by this method they will be confirmed and treasured up in the memory. /chap. xxii./--_observations on drawing portraits._ /the/ cartilage, which raises the nose in the middle of the face, varies in eight different ways. it is equally straight, equally concave, or equally convex, which is the first sort. or, secondly, unequally straight, concave, or convex. or, thirdly, straight in the upper part, and concave in the under. or, fourthly, straight again in the upper part, and convex in those below. or, fifthly, it may be concave and straight beneath. or, sixthly, concave above, and convex below. or, seventhly, it may be convex in the upper part, and straight in the lower. and in the eighth and last place, convex above, and concave beneath. the uniting of the nose with the brows is in two ways, either it is straight or concave. the forehead has three different forms. it is straight, concave, or round. the first is divided into two parts, viz. it is either convex in the upper part, or in the lower, sometimes both; or else flat above and below. /chap. xxiii./--_the method of retaining in the memory the likeness of a man, so as to draw his profile, after having seen him only once._ /you/ must observe and remember well the variations of the four principal features in the profile; the nose, mouth, chin, and forehead. and first of the nose, of which there are three different sorts[ ], straight, concave, and convex. of the straight there are but four variations, short or long, high at the end, or low. of the concave there are three sorts; some have the concavity above, some in the middle, and some at the end. the convex noses also vary three ways; some project in the upper part, some in the middle, and others at the bottom. nature, which seems to delight in infinite variety, gives again three changes to those noses which have a projection in the middle; for some have it straight, some concave, and some convex. /chap. xxiv./--_how to remember the form of a face._ /if/ you wish to retain with facility the general look of a face, you must first learn how to draw well several faces, mouths, eyes, noses, chins, throats, necks, and shoulders; in short, all those principal parts which distinguish one man from another. for instance, noses are often different sorts[ ]. straight, bunched, concave, some raised above, some below the middle, aquiline, flat, round, and sharp. these affect the profile. in the front view there are eleven different sorts. even, thick in the middle, thin in the middle, thick at the tip, thin at the beginning, thin at the tip, and thick at the beginning. broad, narrow, high, and low nostrils; some with a large opening, and some more shut towards the tip. the same variety will be found in the other parts of the face, which must be drawn from nature, and retained in the memory. or else, when you mean to draw a likeness from memory, take with you a pocket-book, in which you have marked all these variations of features, and after having given a look at the face you mean to draw, retire a little aside, and note down in your book which of the features are similar to it; that you may put it all together at home. /chap. xxv./--_that a painter should take pleasure in the opinion of every body._ /a painter/ ought not certainly to refuse listening to the opinion of any one; for we know that, although a man be not a painter, he may have just notions of the forms of men; whether a man has a hump on his back, a thick leg, or a large hand; whether he be lame, or have any other defect. now, if we know that men are able to judge of the works of nature, should we not think them more able to detect our errors? anatomy. /chap. xxvi./--_what is principally to be observed in figures._ /the/ principal and most important consideration required in drawing figures, is to set the head well upon the shoulders, the chest upon the hips, the hips and shoulders upon the feet. /chap. xxvii./--_mode of studying._ /study/ the science first, and then follow the practice which results from that science. pursue method in your study, and do not quit one part till it be perfectly engraven in the memory; and observe what difference there is between the members of animals and their joints[ ]. /chap. xxviii./--_of being universal._ /it/ is an easy matter for a man who is well versed in the principles of his art, to become universal in the practice of it, since all animals have a similarity of members, that is, muscles, tendons, bones, &c. these only vary in length or thickness, as will be demonstrated in the anatomy[ ]. as for aquatic animals, of which there is great variety, i shall not persuade the painter to take them as a rule, having no connexion with our purpose. /chap. xxix./--_a precept for the painter._ /it/ reflects no great honour on a painter to be able to execute only one thing well, such as a head, an academy figure, or draperies, animals, landscape, or the like, confining himself to some particular object of study; because there is scarcely a person so void of genius as to fail of success, if he apply earnestly to one branch of study, and practise it continually. /chap. xxx./--_of the measures of the human body, and the bending of members._ /it/ is very necessary that painters should have a knowledge of the bones which support the flesh by which they are covered, but particularly of the joints, which increase and diminish the length of them in their appearance. as in the arm, which does not measure the same when bent, as when extended; its difference between the greatest extension and bending, is about one eighth of its length. the increase and diminution of the arm is effected by the bone projecting out of its socket at the elbow; which, as is seen in figure a b, plate i. is lengthened from the shoulder to the elbow; the angle it forms being less than a right angle. it will appear longer as that angle becomes more acute, and will shorten in proportion as it becomes more open or obtuse. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. xxxi./--_of the small bones in several joints of the human body._ /there/ are in the joints of the human body certain small bones, fixed in the middle of the tendons which connect several of the joints. such are the patellas of the knees, and the joints of the shoulders, and those of the feet. they are eight in number, one at each shoulder, one at each knee, and two at each foot under the first joint of the great toe towards the heel. these grow extremely hard as a man advances in years. /chap. xxxii./--_memorandum to be observed by the painter._ /note/ down which muscles and tendons are brought into action by the motion of any member, and when they are hidden. remember that these remarks are of the greatest importance to painters and sculptors, who profess to study anatomy, and the science of the muscles. do the same with children, following the different gradations of age from their birth even to decrepitude, describing the changes which the members, and particularly the joints, undergo; which of them grow fat, and which lean. /chap. xxxiii./--_the shoulders._ /the/ joints of the shoulders, and other parts which bend, shall be noticed in their places in the treatise on anatomy, where the cause of the motions of all the parts which compose the human body shall be explained[ ]. /chap. xxxiv./--_the difference of joints between children and grown men._ /young/ children have all their joints small, but they are thick and plump in the spaces between them; because there is nothing upon the bones at the joints, but some tendons to bind the bones together. the soft flesh, which is full of fluids, is enclosed under the skin in the space between the joints; and as the bones are bigger at the joints than in the space between them, the skin throws off in the progress to manhood that superfluity, and draws nearer to the bones, thinning the whole part together. but upon the joints it does not lessen, as there is nothing but cartilages and tendons. for these reasons children are small in the joints, and plump in the space between, as may be observed in their fingers, arms, and narrow shoulders. men, on the contrary, are large and full in the joints, in the arms and legs; and where children have hollows, men are knotty and prominent. /chap. xxxv./--_of the joints of the fingers._ /the/ joints of the fingers appear larger on all sides when they bend; the more they bend the larger they appear. the contrary is the case when straight. it is the same in the toes, and it will be more perceptible in proportion to their fleshiness. /chap. xxxvi./--_of the joint of the wrist._ /the/ wrist or joint between the hand and arm lessens on closing the hand, and grows larger when it opens. the contrary happens in the arm, in the space between the elbow and the hand, on all sides; because in opening the hand the muscles are extended and thinned in the arm, from the elbow to the wrist; but when the hand is shut, the same muscles swell and shorten. the tendons alone start, being stretched by the clenching of the hand. /chap. xxxvii./--_of the joint of the foot._ /the/ increase and diminution in the joint of the foot is produced on that side where the tendons are seen, as d e f, _plate i._ which increases when the angle is acute, and diminishes when it becomes obtuse. it must be understood of the joint in the front part of the foot a b c. /chap. xxxviii./--_of the knee._ /of/ all the members which have pliable joints, the knee is the only one that lessens in the bending, and becomes larger by extension. /chap. xxxix./--_of the joints._ /all/ the joints of the human body become larger by bending, except that of the leg. /chap. xl./--_of the naked._ /when/ a figure is to appear nimble and delicate, its muscles must never be too much marked, nor are any of them to be much swelled. because such figures are expressive of activity and swiftness, and are never loaded with much flesh upon the bones. they are made light by the want of flesh, and where there is but little flesh there cannot be any thickness of muscles. /chap. xli./--_of the thickness of the muscles._ /muscular/ men have large bones, and are in general thick and short, with very little fat; because the fleshy muscles in their growth contract closer together, and the fat, which in other instances lodges between them, has no room. the muscles in such thin subjects, not being able to extend, grow in thickness, particularly towards their middle, in the parts most removed from the extremities. /chap. xlii./--_fat subjects have small muscles._ /though/ fat people have this in common with muscular men, that they are frequently short and thick, they have thin muscles; but their skin contains a great deal of spongy and soft flesh full of air; for that reason they are lighter upon the water, and swim better than muscular people. /chap. xliii./--_which of the muscles disappear in the different motions of the body._ /in/ raising or lowering the arm, the pectoral muscles disappear, or acquire a greater relievo. a similar effect is produced by the hips, when they bend either inwards or outwards. it is to be observed, that there is more variety of appearances in the shoulders, hips, and neck, than in any other joint, because they are susceptible of the greatest variety of motions. but of this subject i shall make a separate treatise[ ]. /chap. xliv./--_of the muscles._ /the/ muscles are not to be scrupulously marked all the way, because it would be disagreeable to the sight, and of very difficult execution. but on that side only where the members are in action, they should be pronounced more strongly; for muscles that are at work naturally collect all their parts together, to gain increase of strength, so that some small parts of those muscles will appear, that were not seen before. /chap. xlv./--_of the muscles._ /the/ muscles of young men are not to be marked strongly, nor too much swelled, because that would indicate full strength and vigour of age, which they have not yet attained. nevertheless they must be more or less expressed, as they are more or less employed. for those which are in motion are always more swelled and thicker than those which remain at rest. the intrinsic and central line of the members which are bent, never retains its natural length. /chap. xlvi./--_the extension and contraction of the muscles._ /the/ muscle at the back part of the thigh shows more variety in its extension and contraction, than any other in the human body; the second, in that respect, are those which compose the buttocks; the third, those of the back; the fourth, those of the neck; the fifth, those of the shoulders; and the sixth, those of the abdomen, which, taking their rise under the breast, terminate under the lower belly; as i shall explain when i speak of each. /chap. xlvii./--_of the muscle between the chest and the lower belly._ /there/ is a muscle which begins under the breast at the sternum, and is inserted into, or terminates at the os pubis, under the lower belly. it is called the rectus of the abdomen; it is divided, lengthways, into three principal portions, by transverse tendinous intersections or ligaments, viz. the superior part, and a ligament; the second part, with its ligaments; and the third part, with the third ligament; which last unites by tendons to the os pubis. these divisions and intersections of the same muscle are intended by nature to facilitate the motion when the body is bent or distended. if it were made of one piece, it would produce too much variety when extended, or contracted, and also would be considerably weaker. when this muscle has but little variety in the motion of the body, it is more beautiful[ ]. /chap. xlviii./--_of a man's complex strength, but first of the arm._ /the/ muscles which serve either to straighten or bend the arm, arise from the different processes of the scapula; some of them from the protuberances of the humerus, and others about the middle of the os humeri. the extensors of the arm arise from behind, and the flexors from before. that a man has more power in pulling than in pushing, has been proved by the ninth proposition de ponderibus[ ], where it is said, that of two equal weights, that will have the greatest power which is farthest removed from the pole or centre of its balance. it follows then of course, that the muscle n b, _plate ii._ and the muscle n c, being of equal power, the inner muscle n c, will nevertheless be stronger than the outward one n b, because it is inserted into the arm at c, a point farther removed from the centre of the elbow a, than b, which is on the other side of such centre, so that that question is determined. but this is a simple power, and i thought it best to explain it before i mentioned the complex power of the muscles, of which i must now take notice. the complex power, or strength, is, for instance, this, when the arm is going to act, a second power is added to it (such as the weight of the body and the strength of the legs, in pulling or pushing), consisting in the extension of the parts, as when two men attempt to throw down a column; the one by pushing, and the other by pulling[ ]. /chap. xlix./--_in which of the two actions, pulling or pushing, a man has the greatest power_, plate ii. /a man/ has the greatest power in pulling, for in that action he has the united exertion of all the muscles of the arm, while some of them must be inactive when he is pushing; because when the arm is extended for that purpose, the muscles which move the elbow cannot act, any more than if he pushed with his shoulders against the column he means to throw down; in which case only the muscles that extend the back, the legs under the thigh, and the calves of the legs, would be active. from which we conclude, that in pulling there is added to the power of extension the strength of the arms, of the legs, of the back, and even of the chest, if the oblique motion of the body require it. but in pushing, though all the parts were employed, yet the strength of the muscles of the arms is wanting; for to push with an extended arm without motion does not help more than if a piece of wood were placed from the shoulder to the column meant to be pushed down. [illustration: _page _. _chap. , _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. l./--_of the bending of members, and of the flesh round the bending joint._ /the/ flesh which covers the bones near and at the joints, swells or diminishes in thickness according to their bending or extension; that is, it increases at the inside of the angle formed by the bending, and grows narrow and lengthened on the outward side of the exterior angle. the middle between the convex and concave angle participates of this increase or diminution, but in a greater or less degree as the parts are nearer to, or farther from, the angles of the bending joints. /chap. li./--_of the naked body._ /the/ members of naked men who work hard in different attitudes, will shew the muscles more strongly on that side where they act forcibly to bring the part into action; and the other muscles will be more or less marked, in proportion as they co-operate in the same motion. /chap. lii./--_of a ligament without muscles._ /where/ the arm joins with the hand, there is a ligament, the largest in the human body, which is without muscles, and is called the strong ligament of the carpus; it has a square shape, and serves to bind and keep close together the bones of the arm, and the tendons of the fingers, and prevent their dilating, or starting out. /chap. liii./--_of creases._ /in/ bending the joints the flesh will always form a crease on the opposite side to that where it is tight. /chap. liv./--_how near behind the back one arm can be brought to the other_, plate iii. and iv. /when/ the arms are carried behind the back, the elbows can never be brought nearer than the length from the elbow to the end of the longest finger; so that the fingers will not be seen beyond the elbows, and in that situation, the arms with the shoulders form a perfect square. the greatest extension of the arm across the chest is, when the elbow comes over the pit of the stomach; the elbow and the shoulder in this position, will form an equilateral triangle. /chap. lv./--_of the muscles._ /a naked/ figure being strongly marked, so as to give a distinct view of all the muscles, will not express any motion; because it cannot move, if some of its muscles do not relax while the others are pulling. those which relax cease to appear in proportion as the others pull strongly and become apparent. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. lvi./--_of the muscles._ /the/ muscles of the human body are to be more or less marked according to their degree of action. those only which act are to be shewn, and the more forcibly they act, the stronger they should be pronounced. those that do not act at all must remain soft and flat. /chap. lvii./--_of the bending of the body._ /the/ bodies of men diminish as much on the side which bends, as they increase on the opposite side. that diminution may at last become double, in proportion to the extension on the other side. but of this i shall make a separate treatise[ ]. /chap. lviii./--_the same subject._ /the/ body which bends, lengthens as much on one side as it shortens on the other; but the central line between them will never lessen or increase. /chap. lix./--_the necessity of anatomical knowledge._ /the/ painter who has obtained a perfect knowledge of the nature of the tendons and muscles, and of those parts which contain the most of them, will know to a certainty, in giving a particular motion to any part of the body, which, and how many of the muscles give rise and contribute to it; which of them, by swelling, occasion their shortening, and which of the cartilages they surround. he will not imitate those who, in all the different attitudes they adopt, or invent, make use of the same muscles, in the arms, back, or chest, or any other parts. motion and equipoise of figures. /chap. lx./--_of the equipoise of a figure standing still._ /the/ non-existence of motion in any animal resting on its feet, is owing to the equality of weight distributed on each side of the line of gravity. /chap. lxi./--_motion produced by the loss of equilibrium._ /motion/ is created by the loss of due equipoise, that is, by inequality of weight; for nothing can move of itself, without losing its centre of gravity, and the farther that is removed, the quicker and stronger will be the motion. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. lxii./--_of the equipoise of bodies_, plate v. /the/ balance or equipoise of parts in the human body is of two sorts, viz. simple, and complex. simple, when a man stands upon his feet without motion: in that situation, if he extends his arms at different distances from the middle, or stoop, the centre of his weight will always be in a perpendicular line upon the centre of that foot which supports the body; and if he rests equally upon both feet, then the middle of the chest will be perpendicular to the middle of the line which measures the space between the centres of his feet. the complex balance is, when a man carries a weight not his own, which he bears by different motions; as in the figure of hercules stifling anteus, by pressing him against his breast with his arms, after he has lifted him from the ground. he must have as much of his own weight thrown behind the central line of his feet, as the weight of anteus adds before. /chap. lxiii./--_of positions._ /the/ pit of the neck, between the two clavicles, falls perpendicularly with the foot which bears the weight of the body. if one of the arms be thrown forwards, this pit will quit that perpendicular; and if one of the legs goes back, that pit is brought forwards, and so changes its situation at every change of posture. /chap. lxiv./--_of balancing the weight round the centre of gravity in bodies._ /a figure/ standing upon its feet without motion, will form an equipoise of all its members round the centre of its support. if this figure without motion, and resting upon its feet, happens to move one of its arms forwards, it must necessarily throw as much of its weight on the opposite side, as is equal to that of the extended arm and the accidental weight. and the same i say of every part, which is brought out beyond its usual balance. /chap. lxv./--_of figures that have to lift up, or carry any weight._ /a weight/ can never be lifted up or carried by any man, if he do not throw more than an equal weight of his own on the opposite side. /chap. lxvi./--_the equilibrium of a man standing upon his feet_, plate vi. /the/ weight of a man resting upon one leg will always be equally divided on each side of the central or perpendicular line of gravity, which supports him. /chap. lxvii./--_of walking_, plate vii. /a man/ walking will always have the centre of gravity over the centre of the leg which rests upon the ground. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. lxviii./--_of the centre of gravity in men and animals._ /the/ legs, or centre of support, in men and animals, will approach nearer to the centre of gravity, in proportion to the slowness of their motion; and, on the contrary, when the motion is quicker, they will be farther removed from that perpendicular line. /chap. lxix./--_of the corresponding thickness of parts on each side of the body._ /the/ thickness or breadth of the parts in the human body will never be equal on each side, if the corresponding members do not move equally and alike. /chap. lxx./--_of the motions of animals._ /all/ bipeds in their motions lower the part immediately over the foot that is raised, more than over that resting on the ground, and the highest parts do just the contrary. this is observable in the hips and shoulders of a man when he walks; and also in birds in the head and rump. /chap. lxxi./--_of quadrupeds and their motions._ /the/ highest parts of quadrupeds are susceptible of more variation when they walk, than when they are still, in a greater or less degree, in proportion to their size. this proceeds from the oblique position of their legs when they touch the ground, which raise the animal when they become straight and perpendicular upon the ground. /chap. lxxii./--_of the quickness or slowness of motion._ /the/ motion performed by a man, or any other animal whatever, in walking, will have more or less velocity as the centre of their weight is more or less removed from the centre of that foot upon which they are supported. /chap. lxxiii./--_of the motion of animals._ /that/ figure will appear the swiftest in its course which leans the most forwards. any body, moving of itself, will do it with more or less velocity in proportion as the centre of its gravity is more or less removed from the centre of its support. this is mentioned chiefly in regard to the motion of birds, which, without any clapping of their wings, or assistance of wind, move themselves. this happens when the centre of their gravity is out of the centre of their support, viz. out of its usual residence, the middle between the two wings. because, if the middle of the wings be more backward than the centre of the whole weight, the bird will move forwards and downwards, in a greater or less degree as the centre of its weight is more or less removed from the middle of its wings. from which it follows, that if the centre of gravity be far removed from the other centre, the descent of the bird will be very oblique; but if that centre be near the middle of the wings, the descent will have very little obliquity. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. lxxiv./--_of a figure moving against the wind_, plate viii. /a man/ moving against the wind in any direction does not keep his centre of gravity duly disposed upon the centre of support[ ]. /chap. lxxv./--_of the balance of a figure resting upon its feet._ /the/ man who rests upon his feet, either bears the weight of his body upon them equally, or unequally. if equally, it will be with some accidental weight, or simply with his own; if it be with an additional weight, the opposite extremities of his members will not be equally distant from the perpendicular of his feet. but if he simply carries his own weight, the opposite extremities will be equally distant from the perpendicular of his feet: and on this subject of gravity i shall write a separate book[ ]. /chap. lxxvi./--_a precept._ /the/ navel is always in the central or middle line of the body, which passes through the pit of the stomach to that of the neck, and must have as much weight, either accidental or natural, on one side of the human figure as on the other. this is demonstrated by extending the arm, the wrist of which performs the office of a weight at the end of a steelyard; and will require some weight to be thrown on the other side of the navel, to counterbalance that of the wrist. it is on that account that the heel is often raised. /chap. lxxvii./--_of a man standing, but resting more upon one foot than the other._ /after/ a man, by standing long, has tired the leg upon which he rests, he sends part of his weight upon the other leg. but this kind of posture is to be employed only for old age, infancy, or extreme lassitude, because it expresses weariness, or very little power in the limbs. for that reason, a young man, strong and healthy, will always rest upon one of his legs, and if he removes a little of his weight upon the other, it is only a necessary preparative to motion, without which it is impossible to move; as we have proved before, that motion proceeds from inequality[ ]. /chap. lxxviii./--_of the balance of figures_, plate ix. /if/ the figure rests upon one foot, the shoulder on that side will always be lower than the other; and the pit of the neck will fall perpendicularly over the middle of that leg which supports the body. the same will happen in whatever other view we see that figure, when it has not the arm much extended, nor any weight on its back, in its hand, or on its shoulder, and when it does not, either behind or before, throw out that leg which does not support the body. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. lxxix./--_in what manner extending one arm alters the balance._ /the/ extending of the arm, which was bent, removes the weight of the figure upon the foot which bears the weight of the whole body: as is observable in rope-dancers, who dance upon the rope with their arms open, without any pole. /chap. lxxx./--_of a man bearing a weight on his shoulders_, plate x. /the/ shoulder which bears the weight is always higher than the other. this is seen in the figure opposite, in which the centre line passes through the whole, with an equal weight on each side, to the leg on which it rests. if the weight were not equally divided on each side of this central line of gravity, the whole would fall to the ground. but nature has provided, that as much of the natural weight of the man should be thrown on one side, as of accidental weight on the other, to form a counterpoise. this is effected by the man's bending, and leaning on the side not loaded, so as to form an equilibrium to the accidental weight he carries; and this cannot be done, unless the loaded shoulder be raised, and the other lowered. this is the resource with which nature has furnished a man on such occasions. /chap. lxxxi./--_of equilibrium._ /any/ figure bearing an additional weight out of the central line, must throw as much natural or accidental weight on the opposite side as is sufficient to form a counterpoise round that line, which passes from the pit of the neck, through the whole mass of weight, to that part of the foot which rests upon the ground. we observe, that when a man lifts a weight with one arm, he naturally throws out the opposite arm; and if that be not enough to form an equipoise, he will add as much of his own weight, by bending his body, as will enable him to resist such accidental load. we see also, that a man ready to fall sideways and backwards at the same time, always throws out the arm on the opposite side. /chap. lxxxii./--_of motion._ /whether/ a man moves with velocity or slowness, the parts above the leg which sustains the weight, will always be lower than the others on the opposite side. /chap. lxxxiii./--_the level of the shoulders._ /the/ shoulders or sides of a man, or any other animal, will preserve less of their level, in proportion to the slowness of their motion; and, _vice versâ_, those parts will lose less of their level when the motion is quicker. this is proved by the ninth proposition, treating of local motions, where it is said, any weight will press in the direction of the line of its motion; therefore the whole moving towards any one point, the parts belonging to it will follow the shortest line of the motion of its whole, without giving any of its weight to the collateral parts of the whole. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. lxxxiv./--_objection to the above answered_, plate xi. and xii. /it/ has been objected, in regard to the first part of the above proposition, that it does not follow that a man standing still, or moving slowly, has his members always in perfect balance upon the centre of gravity; because we do not find that nature always follows that rule, but, on the contrary, the figure will sometimes bend sideways, standing upon one foot; sometimes it will rest part of its weight upon that leg which is bent at the knee, as is seen in the figures b c. but i shall reply thus, that what is not performed by the shoulders in the figure c, is done by the hip, as is demonstrated in another place. /chap. lxxxv./--_of the position of figures_, plate xiii. /in/ the same proportion as that part of the naked figure marked d a, lessens in height from the shoulder to the hip, on account of its position the opposite side increases. and this is the reason: the figure resting upon one (suppose the left) foot, that foot becomes the centre of all the weight above; and the pit of the neck, formed by the junction of the two clavicles, quits also its natural situation at the upper extremity of the perpendicular line (which passes through the middle surface of the body), to bend over the same foot; and as this line bends with it, it forces the transverse lines, which are always at right angles, to lower their extremities on that side where the foot rests, as appears in a b c. the navel and middle parts always preserve their natural height. /chap. lxxxvi./--_of the joints._ /in/ the bending of the joints it is particularly useful to observe the difference and variety of shape they assume; how the muscles swell on one side, while they flatten on the other; and this is more apparent in the neck, because the motion of it is of three sorts, two of which are simple motions, and the other complex, participating also of the other two. the simple motions are, first, when the neck bends towards the shoulder, either to the right or left, and when it raises or lowers the head. the second is, when it twists to the right or left, without rising or bending, but straight, with the head turned towards one of the shoulders. the third motion, which is called complex, is, when to the bending of it is added the twisting, as when the ear leans towards one of the shoulders, the head turning the same way, and the face turned upwards. /chap. lxxxvii./--_of the shoulders._ /of/ those which the shoulders can perform, simple motions are the principal, such as moving the arm upwards and downwards, backwards and forwards. though one might almost call those motions infinite, for if the arm can trace a circle upon a wall, it will have performed all the motions belonging to the shoulders. every continued quantity being divisible _ad infinitum_, and this circle being a continued quantity, produced by the motion of the arm going through every part of the circumference, it follows, that the motions of the shoulders may also be said to be infinite. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. lxxxviii./--_of the motions of a man._ /when/ you mean to represent a man removing a weight, consider that the motions are various, viz. either a simple motion, by bending himself to raise the weight from the ground upwards, or when he drags the weight after him, or pushes it before him, or pulls it down with a rope passing through a pulley. it is to be observed, that the weight of the man's body pulls the more in proportion as the centre of his gravity is removed from the centre of his support. to this must be added the strength of the effort that the legs and back make when they are bent, to return to their natural straight situation. a man never ascends or descends, nor walks at all in any direction, without raising the heel of the back foot. /chap. lxxxix./--_of the disposition of members preparing to act with great force_, plate xiv. /when/ a man prepares himself to strike a violent blow, he bends and twists his body as far as he can to the side contrary to that which he means to strike, and collecting all his strength, he, by a complex motion, returns and falls upon the point he has in view[ ]. /chap. xc./--_of throwing any thing with violence_, plate xv. /a man/ throwing a dart, a stone, or any thing else with violence, may be represented, chiefly, two different ways; that is, he may be preparing to do it, or the act may be already performed. if you mean to place him in the act of preparation, the inside of the foot upon which he rests will be under the perpendicular line of the pit of the neck; and if it be the right foot, the left shoulder will be perpendicular over the toes of the same foot. /chap. xci./--_on the motion of driving any thing into or drawing it out of the ground._ /he/ who wishes to pitch a pole into the ground, or draw one out of it, will raise the leg and bend the knee opposite to the arm which acts, in order to balance himself upon the foot that rests, without which he could neither drive in, nor pull out any thing. /chap. xcii./--_of forcible motions_, plate xvi. /of/ the two arms, that will be most powerful in its effort, which, having been farthest removed from its natural situation, is assisted more strongly by the other parts to bring it to the place where it means to go. as the man a, who moves the arm with a club e, and brings it to the opposite side b, assisted by the motion of the whole body. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. xciii./--_the action of jumping._ /nature/ will of itself, and without any reasoning in the mind of a man going to jump, prompt him to raise his arms and shoulders by a sudden motion, together with a great part of his body, and to lift them up high, till the power of the effort subsides. this impetuous motion is accompanied by an instantaneous extension of the body which had bent itself, like a spring or bow, along the back, the joints of the thighs, knees, and feet, and is let off obliquely, that is, upwards and forwards; so that the disposition of the body tending forwards and upwards, makes it describe a great arch when it springs up, which increases the leap. /chap. xciv./--_of the three motions in jumping upwards._ /when/ a man jumps upwards, the motion of the head is three times quicker than that of the heel, before the extremity of the foot quits the ground, and twice as quick as that of the hips; because three angles are opened and extended at the same time: the superior one is that formed by the body at its joint with the thigh before, the second is at the joint of the thighs and legs behind, and the third is at the instep before[ ]. /chap. xcv./--_of the easy motions of members._ /in/ regard to the freedom and ease of motions, it is very necessary to observe, that when you mean to represent a figure which has to turn itself a little round, the feet and all the other members are not to move in the same direction as the head. but you will divide that motion among four joints, viz. the feet, the knees, the hips, and the neck. if it rests upon the right leg, the left knee should be a little bent inward, with its foot somewhat raised outward. the left shoulder should be lower than the other, and the nape of the neck turned on the same side as the outward ankle of the left foot, and the left shoulder perpendicular over the great toe of the right foot. and take it as a general maxim, that figures do not turn their heads straight with the chest, nature having for our convenience formed the neck so as to turn with ease on every side, when the eyes want to look round; and to this the other joints are in some measure subservient. if the figure be sitting, and the arms have some employment across the body, the breast will turn over the joint of the hip. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. xcvi./--_the greatest twist which a man can make, in turning to look at himself behind._ plate xvii. /the/ greatest twist that the body can perform is when the back of the heels and the front of the face are seen at the same time. it is not done without difficulty, and is effected by bending the leg and lowering the shoulder on that side towards which the head turns. the cause of this motion, and also which of the muscles move first and which last, i shall explain in my treatise on anatomy[ ]. /chap. xcvii./--_of turning the leg without the thigh._ /it/ is impossible to turn the leg inwards or outwards without turning the thigh by the same motion, because the setting in of the bones at the knee is such, that they have no motion but backwards and forwards, and no more than is necessary for walking or kneeling; never sideways, because the form of the bones at the joint of the knee does not allow it. if this joint had been made pliable on all sides, as that of the shoulder, or that of the thigh bone with the hip, a man would have had his legs bent on each side as often as backwards and forwards, and seldom or never straight with the thigh. besides, this joint can bend only one way, so that in walking it can never go beyond the straight line of the leg; it bends only forwards, for if it could bend backwards, a man could never get up again upon his feet, if once he were kneeling; as when he means to get up from the kneeling posture (on both knees), he gives the whole weight of his body to one of the knees to support, unloading the other, which at that time feels no other weight than its own, and therefore is lifted up with ease, and rests his foot flat upon the ground; then returning the whole weight upon that foot, and leaning his hand upon his knee, he at once extends the other arm, raises his head, and straightening the thigh with the body, he springs up, and rests upon the same foot, while he brings up the other. /chap. xcviii./--_postures of figures._ /figures/ that are set in a fixed attitude, are nevertheless to have some contrast of parts. if one arm come before, the other remains still or goes behind. if the figure rest upon one leg, the shoulder on that side will be lower than the other. this is observed by artists of judgment, who always take care to balance the figure well upon its feet, for fear it should appear to fall. because by resting upon one foot, the other leg, being a little bent, does not support the body any more than if it were dead; therefore it is necessary that the parts above that leg should transfer the centre of their weight upon the leg which supports the body. /chap. xcix./--_of the gracefulness of the members._ /the/ members are to be suited to the body in graceful motions, expressive of the meaning which the figure is intended to convey. if it had to give the idea of genteel and agreeable carriage, the members must be slender and well turned, but not lean; the muscles very slightly marked, indicating in a soft manner such as must necessarily appear; the arms, particularly, pliant, and no member in a straight line with any other adjoining member. if it happen, on account of the motion of the figure, that the right hip be higher than the left, make the joint of the shoulder fall perpendicularly on the highest part of that hip; and let that right shoulder be lower than the left. the pit of the neck will always be perpendicular over the middle of the instep of the foot that supports the body. the leg that does not bear will have its knee a little lower than the other, and near the other leg. in regard to the positions of the head and arms, they are infinite, and for that reason i shall not enter into any detailed rule concerning them; suffice it to say, that they are to be easy and free, graceful, and varied in their bendings, so that they may not appear stiff like pieces of wood. /chap. c./--_that it is impossible for any memory to retain the aspects and changes of the members._ /it/ is impossible that any memory can be able to retain all the aspects or motions of any member of any animal whatever. this case we shall exemplify by the appearance of the hand. and because any continued quantity is divisible _ad infinitum_, the motion of the eye which looks at the hand, and moves from a to b, moves by a space a b, which is also a continued quantity, and consequently divisible _ad infinitum_, and in every part of the motion varies to its view the aspect and figure of the hand; and so it will do if it move round the whole circle. the same will the hand do which is raised in its motion, that is, it will pass over a space, which is a continued quantity[ ]. [illustration] /chap. ci./--_the motions of figures._ /never/ put the head straight upon the shoulders, but a little turned sideways to the right or left, even though the figures should be looking up or down, or straight, because it is necessary to give them some motion of life and spirit. nor ever compose a figure in such a manner, either in a front or back view, as that every part falls straight upon another from the top to the bottom. but if you wish to introduce such a figure, use it for old age. never repeat the same motion of arms, or of legs, not only not in the same figure, but in those which are standing by, or near; if the necessity of the case, or the expression of the subject you represent, do not oblige you to it[ ]. /chap. cii./--_of common motions._ /the/ variety of motions in man are equal to the variety of accidents or thoughts affecting the mind, and each of these thoughts, or accidents, will operate more or less, according to the temper and age of the subject; for the same cause will in the actions of youth, or of old age, produce very different effects. /chap. ciii./--_of simple motions._ /simple/ motion is that which a man performs in merely bending backwards or forwards. /chap. civ./--_complex motion._ /complex/ motion is that which, to produce some particular action, requires the body to bend downwards and sideways at the same time. the painter must be careful in his compositions to apply these complex motions according to the nature of the subject, and not to weaken or destroy the effect of it by introducing figures with simple motions, without any connexion with the subject. /chap. cv./--_motions appropriated to the subject._ /the/ motions of your figures are to be expressive of the quantity of strength requisite to the force of the action. let not the same effort be used to take up a stick as would easily raise a piece of timber. therefore shew great variety in the expression of strength, according to the quality of the load to be managed. /chap. cvi./--_appropriate motions._ /there/ are some emotions of the mind which are not expressed by any particular motion of the body, while in others, the expression cannot be shewn without it. in the first, the arms fall down, the hands and all the other parts, which in general are the most active, remain at rest. but such emotions of the soul as produce bodily action, must put the members into such motions as are appropriated to the intention of the mind. this, however, is an ample subject, and we have a great deal to say upon it. there is a third kind of motion, which participates of the two already described; and a fourth, which depends neither on the one nor the other. this last belongs to insensibility, or fury, and should be ranked with madness or stupidity; and so adapted only to grotesque or moresco work. /chap. cvii./--_of the postures of women and young people._ /it/ is not becoming in women and young people to have their legs too much asunder, because it denotes boldness; while the legs close together shew modesty. /chap. cviii./--_of the postures of children._ /children/ and old people are not to express quick motions, in what concerns their legs. /chap. cix./--_of the motion of the members._ /let/ every member be employed in performing its proper functions. for instance, in a dead body, or one asleep, no member should appear alive or awake. a foot bearing the weight of the whole body, should not be playing its toes up and down, but flat upon the ground; except when it rests entirely upon the heel. /chap. cx./--_of mental motions._ /a mere/ thought, or operation of the mind, excites only simple and easy motions of the body; not this way, and that way, because its object is in the mind, which does not affect the senses when it is collected within itself. /chap. cxi./--_effect of the mind upon the motions of the body, occasioned by some outward object._ /when/ the motion is produced by the presence of some object, either the cause is immediate or not. if it be immediate, the figure will first turn towards it the organs most necessary, the eyes; leaving its feet in the same place; and will only move the thighs, hips, and knees a little towards the same side, to which the eyes are directed. linear perspective. /chap. cxii./--_of those who apply themselves to the practice, without having learnt the theory of the art._ /those/ who become enamoured of the practice of the art, without having previously applied to the diligent study of the scientific part of it, may be compared to mariners, who put to sea in a ship without rudder or compass, and therefore cannot be certain of arriving at the wished-for port. practice must always be founded on good theory; to this, perspective is the guide and entrance, without which nothing can be well done. /chap. cxiii./--_precepts in painting._ /perspective/ is to painting what the bridle is to a horse, and the rudder to a ship. the size of a figure should denote the distance at which it is situated. if a figure be seen of the natural size, remember that it denotes its being near to the eye. /chap. cxiv./--_of the boundaries of objects called outlines or contours._ /the/ outlines or contours of bodies are so little perceivable, that at any small distance between that and the object, the eye will not be able to recognise the features of a friend or relation, if it were not for their clothes and general appearance. so that by the knowledge of the whole it comes to know the parts. /chap. cxv./--_of linear perspective._ /linear/ perspective consists in giving, by established rules, the true dimensions of objects, according to their respective distances; so that the second object be less than the first, the third than the second, and by degrees at last they become invisible. i find by experience, that, if the second object be at the same distance from the first, as the first is from the eye, though they be of the same size, the second will appear half the size of the first; and, if the third be at the same distance behind the second, it will diminish two thirds; and so on, by degrees, they will, at equal distances, diminish in proportion; provided that the interval be not more than twenty cubits[ ]; at which distance it will lose two fourths of its size: at forty it will diminish three fourths; and at sixty it will lose five sixths, and so on progressively. but you must be distant from your picture twice the size of it; for, if you be only once the size, it will make a great difference in the measure from the first to the second. /chap. cxvi./--_what parts of objects disappear first by distance._ /those/ parts which are of less magnitude will first vanish from the sight[ ]. this happens, because the shape of small objects, at an equal distance, comes to the eye under a more acute angle than the large ones, and the perception of them is less, in proportion as they are less in magnitude. it follows then, that if the large objects, by being removed to a great distance, and consequently coming to the eye by a small angle, are almost lost to the sight, the small objects will entirely disappear. /chap. cxvii./--_of remote objects._ /the/ outlines of objects will be less seen, in proportion as they are more distant from the eye. /chap. cxviii./--_of the point of sight._ /the/ point of sight must be on a level with the eyes of a common-sized man, and placed upon the horizon, which is the line formed by a flat country terminating with the sky. an exception must be made as to mountains, which are above that line. /chap. cxix./--_a picture is to be viewed from one point only._ /this/ will be proved by one single example. if you mean to represent a round ball very high up, on a flat and perpendicular wall, it will be necessary to make it oblong, like the shape of an egg, and to place yourself (that is, the eye, or point of view) so far back, as that its outline or circumference may appear round. /chap. cxx./--_of the dimensions of the first figure in an historical painting._ /the/ first figure in your picture will be less than nature, in proportion as it recedes from the front of the picture, or the bottom line; and by the same rule the others behind it will go on lessening in an equal degree[ ]. /chap. cxxi./--_of objects that are lost to the sight in proportion to their distance._ /the/ first things that disappear, by being removed to some distance, are the outlines or boundaries of objects. the second, as they remove farther, are the shadows which divide contiguous bodies. the third are the thickness of legs and feet; and so in succession the small parts are lost to the sight, till nothing remains but a confused mass, without any distinct parts. /chap. cxxii./--_errors not so easily seen in small objects as in large ones._ /supposing/ this small object to represent a man, or any other animal, although the parts, by being so much diminished or reduced, cannot be executed with the same exactness of proportion, nor finished with the same accuracy, as if on a larger scale, yet on that very account the faults will be less conspicuous. for example, if you look at a man at the distance of two hundred yards, and with all due attention mean to form a judgment, whether he be handsome or ugly, deformed or well made, you will find that, with all your endeavours, you can hardly venture to decide. the reason is, that the man diminishes so much by the distance, that it is impossible to distinguish the parts minutely. if you wish to know by demonstration the diminution of the above figure, hold your finger up before your eye at about nine inches distance, so that the top of your finger corresponds with the top of the head of the distant figure: you will perceive that your finger covers, not only its head, but part of its body; which is an evident proof of the apparent diminution of that object. hence it often happens, that we are doubtful, and can scarcely, at some distance, distinguish the form of even a friend. /chap. cxxiii./--_historical subjects one above another on the same wall to be avoided._ /this/ custom, which has been generally adopted by painters, on the front and sides of chapels, is much to be condemned. they begin with an historical picture, its landscape and buildings, in one compartment. after which, they raise another compartment, and execute another history with other buildings upon another level; and from thence they proceed to a third and fourth, varying the point of sight, as if the beholder was going up steps, while, in fact, he must look at them all from below, which is very ill judged in those matters. we know that the point of sight is the eye of the spectator; and if you ask, how is a series of subjects, such as the life of a saint, to be represented, in different compartments on the same wall? i answer, that you are to place the principal event in the largest compartment, and make the point of sight as high as the eye of the spectator. begin that subject with large figures; and as you go up, lessen the objects, as well the figures, as buildings, varying the plans according to the effect of perspective; but never varying the point of sight: and so complete the series of subjects, till you come to a certain height, where terrestrial objects can be seen no more, except the tops of trees, or clouds and birds; or if you introduce figures, they must be aerial, such as angels, or saints in glory, or the like, if they suit the purpose of your history. if not, do not undertake this kind of painting, for your work will be faulty, and justly reprehensible[ ]. /chap. cxxiv./--_why objects in painting can never detach, as natural objects do._ /painters/ often despair of being able to imitate nature, from observing, that their pictures have not the same relief, nor the same life, as natural objects have in a looking-glass, though they both appear upon a plain surface. they say, they have colours which surpass in brightness the quality of the lights, and in darkness the quality of the shades of the objects seen in the looking-glass; but attribute this circumstance to their own ignorance, and not to the true cause, because they do not know it. it is impossible that objects in painting should appear with the same relief as those in the looking-glass, unless we look at them with only one eye. the reason is this. the two eyes a b looking at objects one behind another, as m and n, see them both; because m cannot entirely occupy the space of n, by reason that the base of the visual rays is so broad, that the second object is seen behind the first. but if one eye be shut, and you look with the other s, the body f will entirely cover the body r, because the visual rays beginning at one point, form a triangle, of which the body f is the base, and being prolonged, they form two diverging tangents at the two extremities of f, which cannot touch the body r behind it, therefore can never see it[ ]. [illustration] /chap. cxxv./--_how to give the proper dimension to objects in painting._ [illustration] /in/ order to give the appearance of the natural size, if the piece be small (as miniatures), the figures on the fore-ground are to be finished with as much precision as those of any large painting, because being small they are to be brought up close to the eye. but large paintings are seen at some distance; whence it happens, that though the figures in each are so different in size, in appearance they will be the same. this proceeds from the eye receiving those objects under the same angle; and it is proved thus. let the large painting be b c, the eye a, and d e a pane of glass, through which are seen the figures situated at b c. i say that the eye being fixed, the figures in the copy of the paintings b c are to be smaller, in proportion as the glass d e is nearer the eye a, and are to be as precise and finished. but if you will execute the picture b c upon the glass d e, this ought to be less finished than the picture b c, and more so than the figure m n transferred upon the glass f g; because, supposing the figure p o to be as much finished as the natural one in b c, the perspective of o p would be false, since, though in regard to the diminution of the figure it would be right, b c being diminished in p o, the finishing would not agree with the distance, because in giving it the perfection of the natural b c, b c would appear as near as o p; but, if you search for the diminution of o p, o p will be found at the distance b c, and the diminution of the finishing as at f g. /chap. cxxvi./--_how to draw accurately any particular spot._ /take/ a glass as large as your paper, fasten it well between your eye and the object you mean to draw, and fixing your head in a frame (in such a manner as not to be able to move it) at the distance of two feet from the glass; shut one eye, and draw with a pencil accurately upon the glass all that you see through it. after that, trace upon paper what you have drawn on the glass, which tracing you may paint at pleasure, observing the aerial perspective. /chap. cxxvii./--_disproportion to be avoided, even in the accessory parts._ /a great/ fault is committed by many painters, which is highly to be blamed, that is, to represent the habitations of men, and other parts of their compositions, so low, that the doors do not reach as high as the knees of their inhabitants, though, according to their situation, they are nearer to the eye of the spectator, than the men who seem willing to enter them. i have seen some pictures with porticos, supported by columns loaded with figures; one grasping a column against which it leans, as if it were a walking-stick, and other similar errors, which are to be avoided with the greatest care. invention, /or/ composition. /chap. cxxviii./--_precept for avoiding a bad choice in the style or proportion of figures._ /the/ painter ought to form his style upon the most proportionate model in nature; and after having measured that, he ought to measure himself also, and be perfectly acquainted with his own defects or deficiencies; and having acquired this knowledge, his constant care should be to avoid conveying into his work those defects which he has found in his own person; for these defects, becoming habitual to his observation, mislead his judgment, and he perceives them no longer. we ought, therefore, to struggle against such a prejudice, which grows up with us; for the mind, being fond of its own habitation, is apt to represent it to our imagination as beautiful. from the same motive it may be, that there is not a woman, however plain in her person, who may not find her admirer, if she be not a monster. against this bent of the mind you ought very cautiously to be on your guard. /chap. cxxix./--_variety in figures._ /a painter/ ought to aim at universal excellence; for he will be greatly wanting in dignity, if he do one thing well and another badly, as many do, who study only the naked figure, measured and proportioned by a pair of compasses in their hands, and do not seek for variety. a man may be well proportioned, and yet be tall or short, large or lean, or of a middle size; and whoever does not make great use of these varieties, which are all existing in nature in its most perfect state, will produce figures as if cast in one and the same mould, which is highly reprehensible. /chap. cxxx./--_how a painter ought to proceed in his studies._ /the/ painter ought always to form in his mind a kind of system of reasoning or discussion within himself on any remarkable object before him. he should stop, take notes, and form some rule upon it; considering the place, the circumstances, the lights and shadows. /chap. cxxxi./--_of sketching histories and figures._ /sketches/ of historical subjects must be slight, attending only to the situation of the figures, without regard to the finishing of particular members, which may be done afterwards at leisure, when the mind is so disposed. /chap. cxxxii./--_how to study composition._ /the/ young student should begin by sketching slightly some single figure, and turn that on all sides, knowing already how to contract, and how to extend the members; after which, he may put two together in various attitudes, we will suppose in the act of fighting boldly. this composition also he must try on all sides, and in a variety of ways, tending to the same expression. then he may imagine one of them very courageous, while the other is a coward. let these attitudes, and many other accidental affections of the mind, be with great care studied, examined, and dwelt upon. /chap. cxxxiii./--_of the attitudes of men._ /the/ attitudes and all the members are to be disposed in such a manner, that by them the intentions of the mind may be easily discovered. /chap. cxxxiv./--_variety of positions._ /the/ positions of the human figure are to be adapted to the age and rank; and to be varied according to the difference of the sexes, men or women. /chap. cxxxv./--_of studies from nature for history._ /it/ is necessary to consider well the situation for which the history is to be painted, particularly the height; and let the painter place accordingly the model, from which he means to make his studies for that historical picture; and set himself as much below the object, as the picture is to be above the eye of the spectator, otherwise the work will be faulty. /chap. cxxxvi./--_of the variety of figures in history painting._ /history/ painting must exhibit variety in its fullest extent. in temper, size, complexion, actions, plumpness, leanness, thick, thin, large, small, rough, smooth, old age and youth, strong and muscular, weak, with little appearance of muscles, cheerfulness and melancholy. some should be with curled hair, and some with straight; some short, some long, some quick in their motions, and some slow, with a variety of dresses and colours, according as the subject may require. /chap. cxxxvii./--_of variety in history._ /a painter/ should delight in introducing great variety into his compositions, avoiding repetition, that by this fertility of invention he may attract and charm the eye of the beholder. if it be requisite according to the subject meant to be represented, that there should be a mixture of men differing in their faces, ages, and dress, grouped with women, children, dogs, and horses, buildings, hills and flat country; observe dignity and decorum in the principal figure; such as a king, magistrate, or philosopher, separating them from the low classes of the people. mix not afflicted or weeping figures with joyful and laughing ones; for nature dictates that the cheerful be attended by others of the same disposition of mind. laughter is productive of laughter, and _vice versâ_. /chap. cxxxviii./--_of the age of figures._ /do/ not bring together a number of boys with as many old men, nor young men with infants, nor women with men; if the subject you mean to represent does not oblige you to it. /chap. cxxxix./--_of variety of faces._ /the/ italian painters have been accused of a common fault, that is, of introducing into their compositions the faces, and even the whole figures, of roman emperors, which they take from the antique. to avoid such an error, let no repetition take place, either in parts, or the whole of a figure; nor let there be even the same face in another composition: and the more the figures are contrasted, viz. the deformed opposed to the beautiful, the old to the young, the strong to the feeble, the more the picture will please and be admired. these different characters, contrasted with each other, will increase the beauty of the whole. it frequently happens that a painter, while he is composing, will use any little sketch or scrap of drawing he has by him, and endeavour to make it serve his purpose; but this is extremely injudicious, because he may very often find that the members he has drawn have not the motion suited to what he means to express; and after he has adopted, accurately drawn, and even well finished them, he will be loth to rub out and change them for others. /chap. cxl./--_a fault in painters._ /it/ is a very great fault in a painter to repeat the same motions in figures, and the same folds in draperies in the same composition, as also to make all the faces alike. /chap. cxli./--_how you may learn to compose groups for history painting._ /when/ you are well instructed in perspective, and know perfectly how to draw the anatomy and forms of different bodies or objects, it should be your delight to observe and consider in your walks the different actions of men, when they are talking, or quarrelling; when they laugh, and when they fight. attend to their positions, and to those of the spectators; whether they are attempting to separate those who fight, or merely lookers-on. be quick in sketching these with slight strokes in your pocket-book, which should always be about you, and made of stained paper, as you ought not to rub out. when it is full, take another, for these are not things to be rubbed out, but kept with the greatest care; because forms and motions of bodies are so infinitely various, that the memory is not able to retain them; therefore preserve these sketches as your assistants and masters. /chap. cxlii./--_how to study the motions of the human body._ /the/ first requisite towards a perfect acquaintance with the various motions of the human body, is the knowledge of all the parts, particularly the joints, in all the attitudes in which it may be placed. then make slight sketches in your pocket-book, as opportunities occur, of the actions of men, as they happen to meet your eye, without being perceived by them; because, if they were to observe you, they would be disturbed from that freedom of action, which is prompted by inward feeling; as when two men are quarrelling and angry, each of them seeming to be in the right, and with great vehemence move their eyebrows, arms, and all the other members, using motions appropriated to their words and feelings. this they could not do, if you wanted them to imitate anger, or any other accidental emotion; such as laughter, weeping, pain, admiration, fear, and the like. for that reason, take care never to be without a little book, for the purpose of sketching those various motions, and also groups of people standing by. this will teach you how to compose history. two things demand the principal attention of a good painter. one is the exact outline and shape of the figure; the other, the true expression of what passes in the mind of that figure, which he must feel, and that is very important. /chap. cxliii./--_of dresses, and of draperies and folds._ /the/ draperies with which you dress figures ought to have their folds so accommodated as to surround the parts they are intended to cover; that in the mass of light there be not any dark fold, and in the mass of shadows none receiving too great a light. they must go gently over, describing the parts; but not with lines across, cutting the members with hard notches, deeper than the part can possibly be; at the same time, it must fit the body, and not appear like an empty bundle of cloth; a fault of many painters, who, enamoured of the quantity and variety of folds, have encumbered their figures, forgetting the intention of clothes, which is to dress and surround the parts gracefully wherever they touch; and not to be filled with wind, like bladders, puffed up where the parts project. i do not deny that we ought not to neglect introducing some handsome folds among these draperies, but it must be done with great judgment, and suited to the parts, where, by the actions of the limbs and position of the whole body, they gather together. above all, be careful to vary the quality and quantity of your folds in compositions of many figures; so that, if some have large folds, produced by thick woollen cloth; others, being dressed in thinner stuff, may have them narrower; some sharp and straight, others soft and undulating. /chap. cxliv./--_of the nature of folds in draperies._ /many/ painters prefer making the folds of their draperies with acute angles, deep and precise; others with angles hardly perceptible; and some with none at all; but instead of them, certain curved lines. /chap. cxlv./--_how the folds of draperies ought to be represented_, plate xviii. /that/ part of the drapery, which is the farthest from the place where it is gathered, will appear more approaching its natural state. every thing naturally inclines to preserve its primitive form. therefore a stuff or cloth, which is of equal thickness on both sides, will always incline to remain flat. for that reason, when it is constrained by some fold to relinquish its flat situation, it is observed that, at the part of its greatest restraint, it is continually making efforts to return to its natural shape; and the parts most distant from it reassume more of their primitive state by ample and distended folds. for example, let a b c be the drapery mentioned above; a b the place where it is folded or restrained. i have said that the part, which is farthest from the place of its restraint, would return more towards its primitive shape. therefore c being the farthest, will be broader and more extended than any other part. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. cxlvi./--_how the folds in draperies ought to be made._ /draperies/ are not to be encumbered with many folds: on the contrary, there ought to be some only where they are held up with the hands or arms of the figures, and the rest left to fall with natural simplicity. they ought to be studied from nature; that is to say, if a woollen cloth be intended, the folds ought to be drawn after such cloth; if it be of silk, or thin stuff, or else very thick for labourers, let it be distinguished by the nature of the folds. but never copy them, as some do, after models dressed in paper, or thin leather, for it greatly misleads. /chap. cxlvii./--_fore-shortening of folds_, plate xix. /where/ the figure is fore-shortened, there ought to appear a greater number of folds, than on the other parts, all surrounding it in a circular manner. let e be the situation of the eye. m n will have the middle of every circular fold successively removed farther from its outline, in proportion as it is more distant from the eye. in m o of the other figure the outlines of these circular folds will appear almost straight, because it is situated opposite the eye; but in p and q quite the contrary, as in n and m. /chap. cxlviii./--_of folds._ /the/ folds of draperies, whatever be the motion of the figure, ought always to shew, by the form of their outlines, the attitude of such figure; so as to leave, in the mind of the beholder, no doubt or confusion in regard to the true position of the body; and let there be no fold, which, by its shadow, breaks through any of the members; that is to say, appearing to go in deeper than the surface of the part it covers. and if you represent the figure clothed with several garments, one over the other, let it not appear as if the upper one covered only a mere skeleton; but let it express that it is also well furnished with flesh, and a thickness of folds, suitable to the number of its under garments. the folds surrounding the members ought to diminish in thickness near the extremities of the part they surround. the length of the folds, which are close to the members, ought to produce other folds on that side where the member is diminished by fore-shortening, and be more extended on the opposite side. /chap. cxlix./--_of decorum._ /observe/ decorum in every thing you represent, that is, fitness of action, dress, and situation, according to the dignity or meanness of the subject to be represented. be careful that a king, for instance, be grave and majestic in his countenance and dress; that the place be well decorated; and that his attendants, or the by-standers, express reverence and admiration, and appear as noble, in dresses suitable to a royal court. on the contrary, in the representation of a mean subject, let the figures appear low and despicable; those about them with similar countenances, and actions, denoting base and presumptuous minds, and meanly clad. in short, in both cases, the parts must correspond with the general sentiment of the composition. the motions of old age should not be similar to those of youth; those of a woman to those of a man; nor should the latter be the same as those of a boy. /chap. cl./--_the character of figures in composition._ /in/ general, the painter ought to introduce very few old men, in the ordinary course of historical subjects, and those few separated from young people; because old people are few, and their habits do not agree with those of youth. where there is no conformity of custom, there can be no intimacy, and, without it, a company is soon separated. but if the subject require an appearance of gravity, a meeting on important business, as a council, for instance, let there be few young men introduced, for youth willingly avoids such meetings. /chap. cli./--_the motion of the muscles, when the figures are in natural positions._ /a figure/, which does not express by its position the sentiments and passions, by which we suppose it animated, will appear to indicate that its muscles are not obedient to its will, and the painter very deficient in judgment. for that reason, a figure is to shew great eagerness and meaning; and its position is to be so well appropriated to that meaning, that it cannot be mistaken, nor made use of for any other. /chap. clii./--_a precept in painting._ /the/ painter ought to notice those quick motions, which men are apt to make without thinking, when impelled by strong and powerful affections of the mind. he ought to take memorandums of them, and sketch them in his pocket-book, in order to make use of them when they may answer his purpose; and then to put a living model in the same position, to see the quality and aspect of the muscles which are in action. /chap. cliii./--_of the motion of man_, plates xx. and xxi. /the/ first and principal part of the art is composition of any sort, or putting things together. the second relates to the expression and motion of the figures, and requires that they be well appropriated, and seeming attentive to what they are about; appearing to move with alacrity and spirit, according to the degree of expression suitable to the occasion; expressing slow and tardy motions, as well as those of eagerness in pursuit: and that quickness and ferocity be expressed with such force as to give an idea of the sensations of the actors. when a figure is to throw a dart, stones, or the like, let it be seen evidently by the attitude and disposition of all the members, that such is its intention; of which there are two examples in the opposite plates, varied both in action and power. the first in point of vigour is a. the second is b. but a will throw his weapon farther than b, because, though they seem desirous of throwing it to the same point, a having turned his feet towards the object, while his body is twisted and bent back the contrary way, to increase his power, returns with more velocity and force to the point to which he means to throw. but the figure b having turned his feet the same way as his body, it returns to its place with great inconvenience, and consequently with weakened powers. for in the expression of great efforts, the preparatory motions of the body must be strong and violent, twisting and bending, so that it may return with convenient ease, and by that means have a great effect. in the same manner, if a cross-bow be not strung with force, the motion of whatever it shoots will be short and without effect; because, where there is no impulse, there can be no motion; and if the impulse be not violent, the motion is but tardy and feeble. so a bow, which is not strong, has no motion; and, if it be strung, it will remain in that state till the impulse be given by another power which puts it in motion, and it will shoot with a violence equal to that which was employed in bending it. in the same manner, the man who does not twist and bend his body will have acquired no power. therefore, after a has thrown his dart, he will find himself twisted the contrary way, viz. on the side where he has thrown; and he will have acquired only power sufficient to serve him to return to where he was at first. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. cliv./--_of attitudes, and the motions of the members._ /the/ same attitude is not to be repeated in the same picture, nor the same motion of members in the same figure, nay, not even in the hands or fingers. and if the history requires a great number of figures, such as a battle, or a massacre of soldiers, in which there are but three ways of striking, viz. thrusting, cutting, or back-handed; in that case you must take care, that all those who are cutting be expressed in different views; some turning their backs, some their sides, and others be seen in front; varying in the same manner the three different ways of fighting, so that all the actions may have a relation to those three principles. in battles, complex motions display great art, giving spirit and animation to the whole. by complex motion is meant, for instance, that of a single figure shewing the front of the legs, and at the same time the profile of the shoulder. but of this i shall treat in another place[ ]. /chap. clv./--_of a single figure separate from an historical group._ /the/ same motion of members should not be repeated in a figure which you mean to be alone; for instance, if the figure be represented running, it must not throw both hands forward; but one forward and the other backward, or else it cannot run. if the right foot come forward, the right arm must go backward and the left forward, because, without such disposition and contraste of parts, it is impossible to run well. if another figure be supposed to follow this, one of its legs should be brought somewhat forward, and the other be perpendicular under the head; the arm on the same side should pass forward. but of this we shall treat more fully in the book on motion[ ]. /chap. clvi./--_on the attitudes of the human figure._ /a painter/ is to be attentive to the motions and actions of men, occasioned by some sudden accident. he must observe them on the spot, take sketches, and not wait till he wants such expression, and then have it counterfeited for him; for instance, setting a model to weep when there is no cause; such an expression without a cause will be neither quick nor natural. but it will be of great use to have observed every action from nature, as it occurs, and then to have a model set in the same attitude to help the recollection, and find out something to the purpose, according to the subject in hand. /chap. clvii./--_how to represent a storm._ /to/ form a just idea of a storm, you must consider it attentively in its effects. when the wind blows violently over the sea or land, it removes and carries off with it every thing that is not firmly fixed to the general mass. the clouds must appear straggling and broken, carried according to the direction and the force of the wind, and blended with clouds of dust raised from the sandy shore. branches and leaves of trees must be represented as carried along by the violence of the storm, and, together with numberless other light substances, scattered in the air. trees and grass must be bent to the ground, as if yielding to the course of the wind. boughs must be twisted out of their natural form, with their leaves reversed and entangled. of the figures dispersed in the picture, some should appear thrown on the ground, so wrapped up in their cloaks and covered with dust, as to be scarcely distinguishable. of those who remain on their feet, some should be sheltered by and holding fast behind some great trees, to avoid the same fate: others bending to the ground, their hands over their faces to ward off the dust; their hair and their clothes flying straight up at the mercy of the wind. the high tremendous waves of the stormy sea will be covered with foaming froth; the most subtle parts of which, being raised by the wind, like a thick mist, mix with the air. what vessels are seen should appear with broken cordage, and torn sails, fluttering in the wind; some with broken masts fallen across the hulk, already on its side amidst the tempestuous waves. some of the crew should be represented as if crying aloud for help, and clinging to the remains of the shattered vessel. let the clouds appear as driven by tempestuous winds against the summits of lofty mountains, enveloping those mountains, and breaking and recoiling with redoubled force, like waves against a rocky shore. the air should be rendered awfully dark, by the mist, dust, and thick clouds. /chap. clviii./--_how to compose a battle._ /first/, let the air exhibit a confused mixture of smoke, arising from the discharge of artillery and musquetry, and the dust raised by the horses of the combatants; and observe, that dust being of an earthy nature, is heavy; but yet, by reason of its minute particles, it is easily impelled upwards, and mixes with the air; nevertheless, it naturally falls downwards again, the most subtle parts of it alone gaining any considerable degree of elevation, and at its utmost height it is so thin and transparent, as to appear nearly of the colour of the air. the smoke, thus mixing with the dusty air, forms a kind of dark cloud, at the top of which it is distinguished from the dust by a blueish cast, the dust retaining more of its natural colour. on that part from which the light proceeds, this mixture of air, smoke, and dust, will appear much brighter than on the opposite side. the more the combatants are involved in this turbulent mist, the less distinctly they will be seen, and the more confused will they be in their lights and shades. let the faces of the musketeers, their bodies, and every object near them, be tinged with a reddish hue, even the air or cloud of dust; in short, all that surrounds them. this red tinge you will diminish, in proportion to their distance, from the primary cause. the groups of figures, which appear at a distance between the spectator and the light, will form a dark mass upon a light ground; and their legs will be more undetermined and lost as they approach nearer to the ground; because there the dust is heavier and thicker. if you mean to represent some straggling horses, running out of the main body, introduce also some small clouds of dust, as far distant from each other as the leap of the horse, and these little clouds will become fainter, more scanty, and diffused, in proportion to their distance from the horse. that nearest to his feet will consequently be the most determined, smallest, and the thickest of all. let the air be full of arrows, in all directions; some ascending, some falling down, and some darting straight forwards. the bullets of the musketry, though not seen, will be marked in their course by a train of smoke, which breaks through the general confusion. the figures in the fore-ground should have their hair covered with dust, as also their eyebrows, and all parts liable to receive it. the victorious party will be running forwards, their hair and other light parts flying in the wind, their eyebrows lowered, and the motion of every member properly contrasted; for instance, in moving the right foot forwards, the left arm must be brought forwards also. if you make any of them fallen down, mark the trace of his fall on the slippery, gore-stained dust; and where the ground is less impregnated with blood, let the print of men's feet and of horses, that have passed that way, be marked. let there be some horses dragging the bodies of their riders, and leaving behind them a furrow, made by the body thus trailed along. the countenances of the vanquished will appear pale and dejected. their eyebrows raised, and much wrinkled about the forehead and cheeks. the tip of their noses somewhat divided from the nostrils by arched wrinkles terminating at the corner of the eyes, those wrinkles being occasioned by the opening and raising of the nostrils; the upper lips turned up, discovering the teeth. their mouths wide open, and expressive of violent lamentation. one may be seen fallen wounded on the ground, endeavouring with one hand to support his body, and covering his eyes with the other, the palm of which is turned towards the enemy. others running away, and with open mouths seeming to cry aloud. between the legs of the combatants let the ground be strewed with all sorts of arms; as broken shields, spears, swords, and the like. many dead bodies should be introduced, some entirely covered with dust, others in part only; let the blood, which seems to issue immediately from the wound, appear of its natural colour, and running in a winding course, till, mixing with the dust, it forms a reddish kind of mud. some should be in the agonies of death; their teeth shut, their eyes wildly staring, their fists clenched, and their legs in a distorted position. some may appear disarmed, and beaten down by the enemy, still fighting with their fists and teeth, and endeavouring to take a passionate, though unavailing revenge. there may be also a straggling horse without a rider, running in wild disorder; his mane flying in the wind, beating down with his feet all before him, and doing a deal of damage. a wounded soldier may also be seen falling to the ground, and attempting to cover himself with his shield, while an enemy bending over him endeavours to give him the finishing stroke. several dead bodies should be heaped together under a dead horse. some of the conquerors, as having ceased fighting, may be wiping their faces from the dirt, collected on them by the mixture of dust with the water from their eyes. the _corps de reserve_ will be seen advancing gaily, but cautiously, their eyebrows directed forwards, shading their eyes with their hands to observe the motions of the enemy, amidst clouds of dust and smoke, and seeming attentive to the orders of their chief. you may also make their commander holding up his staff, pushing forwards, and pointing towards the place where they are wanted. a river may likewise be introduced, with horses fording it, dashing the water about between their legs, and in the air, covering all the adjacent ground with water and foam. not a spot is to be left without some marks of blood and carnage. /chap. clix./--_the representation of an orator and his audience._ /if/ you have to represent a man who is speaking to a large assembly of people, you are to consider the subject matter of his discourse, and to adapt his attitude to such subject. if he means to persuade, let it be known by his gesture. if he is giving an explanation, deduced from several reasons, let him put two fingers of the right hand within one of the left, having the other two bent close, his face turned towards the audience, with the mouth half open, seeming to speak. if he is sitting, let him appear as going to raise himself up a little, and his head be forward. but if he is represented standing, let him bend his chest and his head forward towards the people. the auditory are to appear silent and attentive, with their eyes upon the speaker, in the act of admiration. there should be some old men, with their mouths close shut, in token of approbation, and their lips pressed together, so as to form wrinkles at the corners of the mouth, and about the cheeks, and forming others about the forehead, by raising the eyebrows, as if struck with astonishment. some others of those sitting by, should be seated with their hands within each other, round one of their knees; some with one knee upon the other, and upon that, one hand receiving the elbow, the other supporting the chin, covered with a venerable beard. /chap. clx./--_of demonstrative gestures._ /the/ action by which a figure points at any thing near, either in regard to time or situation, is to be expressed by the hand very little removed from the body. but if the same thing is far distant, the hand must also be far removed from the body, and the face of the figure pointing, must be turned towards those to whom he is pointing it out. /chap. clxi./--_of the attitudes of the by-standers at some remarkable event._ /all/ those who are present at some event deserving notice, express their admiration, but in various manners. as when the hand of justice punishes some malefactor. if the subject be an act of devotion, the eyes of all present should be directed towards the object of their adoration, aided by a variety of pious actions with the other members; as at the elevation of the host at mass, and other similar ceremonies. if it be a laughable subject, or one exciting compassion and moving to tears, in those cases it will not be necessary for all to have their eyes turned towards the object, but they will express their feelings by different actions; and let there be several assembled in groups, to rejoice or lament together. if the event be terrific, let the faces of those who run away from the fight, be strongly expressive of fright, with various motions; as shall be described in the tract on motion. /chap. clxii./--_how to represent night._ /those/ objects which are entirely deprived of light, are lost to the sight, as in the night; therefore if you mean to paint a history under those circumstances, you must suppose a large fire, and those objects that are near it to be tinged with its colour, and the nearer they are the more they will partake of it. the fire being red, all those objects which receive light from it will appear of a reddish colour, and those that are most distant from it will partake of the darkness that surrounds them. the figures which are represented before the fire will appear dark in proportion to the brightness of the fire, because those parts of them which we see, are tinged by that darkness of the night, and not by the light of the fire, which they intercept. those that are on either side of the fire, will be half in the shade of night, and half in the red light. those seen beyond the extent of the flames, will be all of a reddish light upon a black ground. in regard to their attitudes, let those who are nearest the fire, make screens of their hands and cloaks, against the scorching heat, with their faces turned on the contrary side, as if ready to run away from it. the most remote will only be shading their eyes with their hands, as if hurt by the too great glare. /chap. clxiii./--_the method of awakening the mind to a variety of inventions._ /i will/ not omit to introduce among these precepts a new kind of speculative invention, which though apparently trifling, and almost laughable, is nevertheless of great utility in assisting the genius to find variety for composition. by looking attentively at old and smeared walls, or stones and veined marble of various colours, you may fancy that you see in them several compositions, landscapes, battles, figures in quick motion, strange countenances, and dresses, with an infinity of other objects. by these confused lines the inventive genius is excited to new exertions. /chap. clxiv./--_of composition in history._ /when/ the painter has only a single figure to represent, he must avoid any shortening whatever, as well of any particular member, as of the whole figure, because he would have to contend with the prejudices of those who have no knowledge in that branch of the art. but in subjects of history, composed of many figures, shortenings may be introduced with great propriety, nay, they are indispensable, and ought to be used without reserve, as the subject may require; particularly in battles, where of course many shortenings and contortions of figures happen, amongst such an enraged multitude of actors, possessed, as it were, of a brutal madness. expression /and/ character. /chap. clxv./--_of expressive motions._ /let/ your figures have actions appropriated to what they are intended to think or say, and these will be well learnt by imitating the deaf, who by the motion of their hands, eyes, eyebrows, and the whole body, endeavour to express the sentiments of their mind. do not ridicule the thought of a master without a tongue teaching you an art he does not understand; he will do it better by his expressive motions, than all the rest by their words and examples. let then the painter, of whatever school, attend well to this maxim, and apply it to the different qualities of the figures he represents, and to the nature of the subject in which they are actors. /chap. clxvi./--_how to paint children._ /children/ are to be represented with quick and contorted motions, when they are sitting; but when standing, with fearful and timid motions. /chap. clxvii./--_how to represent old men._ /old/ men must have slow and heavy motions; their legs and knees must be bent when they are standing, and their feet placed parallel and wide asunder. let them be bowed downwards, the head leaning much forward, and their arms very little extended. /chap. clxviii./--_how to paint old women._ /old/ women, on the contrary, are to be represented bold and quick, with passionate motions, like furies[ ]. but the motions are to appear a great deal quicker in their arms than in their legs. /chap. clxix./--_how to paint women._ /women/ are to be represented in modest and reserved attitudes, with their knees rather close, their arms drawing near each other, or folded about the body; their heads looking downwards, and leaning a little on one side. /chap. clxx./--_of the variety of faces._ /the/ countenances of your figures should be expressive of their different situations: men at work, at rest, weeping, laughing, crying out, in fear, or joy, and the like. the attitudes also, and all the members, ought to correspond with the sentiment expressed in the faces. /chap. clxxi./--_the parts of the face, and their motions._ /the/ motions of the different parts of the face, occasioned by sudden agitations of the mind, are many. the principal of these are, laughter, weeping, calling out, singing, either in a high or low pitch, admiration, anger, joy, sadness, fear, pain, and others, of which i propose to treat. first, of laughing and weeping, which are very similar in the motion of the mouth, the cheeks, the shutting of the eyebrows, and the space between them; as we shall explain in its place, in treating of the changes which happen in the face, hands, fingers, and all the other parts of the body, as they are affected by the different emotions of the soul; the knowledge of which is absolutely necessary to a painter, or else his figures may be said to be twice dead. but it is very necessary also that he be careful not to fall into the contrary extreme; giving extraordinary motions to his figures, so that in a quiet and peaceable subject, he does not seem to represent a battle, or the revellings of drunken men: but, above all, the actors in any point of history must be attentive to what they are about, or to what is going forward; with actions that denote admiration, respect, pain, suspicion, fear, and joy, according as the occasion, for which they are brought together, may require. endeavour that different points of history be not placed one above the other on the same canvass, nor walls with different horizons[ ], as if it were a jeweller's shop, shewing the goods in different square caskets. /chap. clxxii./--_laughing and weeping._ /between/ the expression of laughter and that of weeping there is no difference in the motion of the features either in the eyes, mouth, or cheeks; only in the ruffling of the brows, which is added when weeping, but more elevated and extended in laughing. one may represent the figure weeping as tearing his clothes, or some other expression, as various as the cause of his feeling may be; because some weep for anger, some through fear, others for tenderness and joy, or for suspicion; some for real pain and torment; whilst others weep through compassion, or regret at the loss of some friend and near relation. these different feelings will be expressed by some with marks of despair, by others with moderation; some only shed tears, others cry aloud, while another has his face turned towards heaven, with his hand depressed, and his fingers twisted. some again will be full of apprehension, with their shoulders raised up to their ears, and so on, according to the above causes. those who weep, raise the brows, and bring them close together above the nose, forming many wrinkles on the forehead, and the corners of the mouth are turned downwards. those who laugh have them turned upwards, and the brows open and extended. /chap. clxxiii./--_of anger._ /if/ you represent a man in a violent fit of anger, make him seize another by the hair, holding his head writhed down against the ground, with his knee fixed upon the ribs of his antagonist; his right arm up, and his fist ready to strike; his hair standing on end, his eyebrows low and straight; his teeth close, and seen at the corner of the mouth; his neck swelled, and his body covered in the abdomen with creases, occasioned by his bending over his enemy, and the excess of his passion. /chap. clxxiv./--_despair._ /the/ last act of despondency is, when a man is in the act of putting a period to his own existence. he should be represented with a knife in one hand, with which he has already inflicted the wound, and tearing it open with the other. his garments and hair should be already torn. he will be standing with his feet asunder, his knees a little bent, and his body leaning forward, as if ready to fall to the ground. light /and/ shadow. /chap. clxxv./--_the course of study to be pursued._ /the/ student who is desirous of making great proficiency in the art of imitating the works of nature, should not only learn the shape of figures or other objects, and be able to delineate them with truth and precision, but he must also accompany them with their proper lights and shadows, according to the situation in which those objects appear. /chap. clxxvi./--_which of the two is the most useful knowledge, the outlines of figures, or that of light and shadow._ /the/ knowledge of the outline is of most consequence, and yet may be acquired to great certainty by dint of study; as the outlines of the different parts of the human figure, particularly those which do not bend, are invariably the same. but the knowledge of the situation, quality, and quantity of shadows, being infinite, requires the most extensive study. /chap. clxxvii./--_which is the most important, the shadows or outlines in painting._ /it/ requires much more observation and study to arrive at perfection in the shadowing of a picture, than in merely drawing the lines of it. the proof of this is, that the lines may be traced upon a veil or a flat glass placed between the eye and the object to be imitated. but that cannot be of any use in shadowing, on account of the infinite gradation of shades, and the blending of them, which does not allow of any precise termination; and most frequently they are confused, as will be demonstrated in another place[ ]. /chap. clxxviii./--_what is a painter's first aim, and object._ /the/ first object of a painter is to make a simple flat surface appear like a relievo, and some of its parts detached from the ground; he who excels all others in that part of the art, deserves the greatest praise. this perfection of the art depends on the correct distribution of lights and shades, called _chiaro-scuro_. if the painter then avoids shadows, he may be said to avoid the glory of the art, and to render his work despicable to real connoisseurs, for the sake of acquiring the esteem of vulgar and ignorant admirers of fine colours, who never have any knowledge of relievo. /chap. clxxix./--_the difference of superficies, in regard to painting._ /solid/ bodies are of two sorts: the one has the surface curvilinear, oval, or spherical; the other has several surfaces, or sides producing angles, either regular or irregular. spherical, or oval bodies, will always appear detached from their ground, though they are exactly of the same colour. bodies also of different sides and angles will always detach, because they are always disposed so as to produce shades on some of their sides, which cannot happen to a plain superficies[ ]. /chap. clxxx./--_how a painter may become universal._ /the/ painter who wishes to be universal, and please a variety of judges, must unite in the same composition, objects susceptible of great force in the shadows, and great sweetness in the management of them; accounting, however, in every instance, for such boldness and softenings. /chap. clxxxi./--_accuracy ought to be learnt before dispatch in the execution._ /if/ you wish to make good and useful studies, use great deliberation in your drawings, observe well among the lights which, and how many, hold the first rank in point of brightness; and so among the shadows, which are darker than others, and in what manner they blend together; compare the quality and quantity of one with the other, and observe to what part they are directed. be careful also in your outlines, or divisions of the members. remark well what quantity of parts are to be on one side, and what on the other; and where they are more or less apparent, or broad, or slender. lastly, take care that the shadows and lights be united, or lost in each other; without any hard strokes, or lines: as smoke loses itself in the air, so are your lights and shadows to pass from the one to the other, without any apparent separation. when you have acquired the habit, and formed your hand to accuracy, quickness of execution will come of itself[ ]. /chap. clxxxii./--_how the painter is to place himself in regard to the light, and his model._ /let/ a b be the window, m the centre of it, c the model. the best situation for the painter will be a little sideways, between the window and his model, as d, so that he may see his object partly in the light and partly in the shadow. [illustration] /chap. clxxxiii./--_of the best light._ /the/ light from on high, and not too powerful, will be found the best calculated to shew the parts to advantage. /chap. clxxxiv./--_of drawing by candle-light._ /to/ this artificial light apply a paper blind, and you will see the shadows undetermined and soft. /chap. clxxxv./--_of those painters who draw at home from one light, and afterwards adapt their studies to another situation in the country, and a different light._ /it/ is a great error in some painters who draw a figure from nature at home, by any particular light, and afterwards make use of that drawing in a picture representing an open country, which receives the general light of the sky, where the surrounding air gives light on all sides. this painter would put dark shadows, where nature would either produce none, or, if any, so very faint as to be almost imperceptible; and he would throw reflected lights where it is impossible there should be any. /chap. clxxxvi./--_how high the light should be in drawing from nature._ /to/ paint well from nature, your window should be to the north, that the lights may not vary. if it be to the south, you must have paper blinds, that the sun, in going round, may not alter the shadows. the situation of the light should be such as to produce upon the ground a shadow from your model as long as that is high. /chap. clxxxvii./--_what light the painter must make use of to give most relief to his figures._ /the/ figures which receive a particular light shew more relief than those which receive an universal one; because the particular light occasions some reflexes, which proceed from the light of one object upon the shadows of another, and helps to detach it from the dark ground. but a figure placed in front of a dark and large space, and receiving a particular light, can receive no reflexion from any other objects, and nothing is seen of the figure but what the light strikes on, the rest being blended and lost in the darkness of the back ground. this is to be applied only to the imitation of night subjects with very little light. /chap. clxxxviii./--_advice to painters._ /be/ very careful, in painting, to observe, that between the shadows there are other shadows, almost imperceptible, both for darkness and shape; and this is proved by the third proposition[ ], which says, that the surfaces of globular or convex bodies have as great a variety of lights and shadows as the bodies that surround them have. /chap. clxxxix./--_of shadows._ /those/ shadows which in nature are undetermined, and the extremities of which can hardly be perceived, are to be copied in your painting in the same manner, never to be precisely finished, but left confused and blended. this apparent neglect will shew great judgment, and be the ingenious result of your observation of nature. /chap. cxc./--_of the kind of light proper for drawing from relievos, or from nature._ /lights/ separated from the shadows with too much precision, have a very bad effect. in order, therefore, to avoid this inconvenience, if the object be in the open country, you need not let your figures be illumined by the sun; but may suppose some transparent clouds interposed, so that the sun not being visible, the termination of the shadows will be also imperceptible and soft. /chap. cxci./--_whether the light should be admitted in front or sideways; and which is most pleasing and graceful._ /the/ light admitted in front of heads situated opposite to side walls that are dark, will cause them to have great relievo, particularly if the light be placed high; and the reason is, that the most prominent parts of those faces are illumined by the general light striking them in front, which light produces very faint shadows on the part where it strikes; but as it turns towards the sides, it begins to participate of the dark shadows of the room, which grow darker in proportion as it sinks into them. besides, when the light comes from on high, it does not strike on every part of the face alike, but one part produces great shadows upon another; as the eyebrows, which deprive the whole sockets of the eyes of light. the nose keeps it off from great part of the mouth, and the chin from the neck, and such other parts. this, by concentrating the light upon the most projecting parts, produces a very great relief. /chap. cxcii./--_of the difference of lights according to the situation._ /a small/ light will cast large and determined shadows upon the surrounding bodies. a large light, on the contrary, will cast small shadows on them, and they will be much confused in their termination. when a small but strong light is surrounded by a broad but weaker light, the latter will appear like a demi-tint to the other, as the sky round the sun. and the bodies which receive the light from the one, will serve as demi-tints to those which receive the light from the other. /chap. cxciii./--_how to distribute the light on figures._ /the/ lights are to be distributed according to the natural situation you mean your figures should occupy. if you suppose them in sunshine, the shades must be dark, the lights broad and extended, and the shadows of all the surrounding objects distinctly marked upon the ground. if seen in a gloomy day, there will be very little difference between the lights and shades, and no shadows at the feet. if the figures be represented within doors, the lights and shadows will again be distinctly divided, and produce shadows on the ground. but if you suppose a paper blind at the window, and the walls painted white, the effect will be the same as in a gloomy day, when the lights and shadows have little difference. if the figures are enlightened by the fire, the lights must be red and powerful, the shadows dark, and the shadows upon the ground and upon the walls must be precise; observing that they spread wider as they go off from the body. if the figures be enlightened, partly by the sky and partly by the fire, that side which receives the light from the sky will be the brightest, and on the other side it will be reddish, somewhat of the colour of the fire. above all, contrive, that your figures receive a broad light, and that from above; particularly in portraits, because the people we see in the street receive all the light from above; and it is curious to observe, that there is not a face ever so well known amongst your acquaintance, but would be recognised with difficulty, if it were enlightened from beneath. /chap. cxciv./--_of the beauty of faces._ /you/ must not mark any muscles with hardness of line, but let the soft light glide upon them, and terminate imperceptibly in delightful shadows: from this will arise grace and beauty to the face. /chap. cxcv./--_how, in drawing a face, to give it grace, by the management of light and shade._ /a face/ placed in the dark part of a room, acquires great additional grace by means of light and shadow. the shadowed part of the face blends with the darkness of the ground, and the light part receives an increase of brightness from the open air, the shadows on this side becoming almost insensible; and from this augmentation of light and shadow, the face has much relief, and acquires great beauty. /chap. cxcvi./--_how to give grace and relief to faces._ /in/ streets running towards the west, when the sun is in the meridian, and the walls on each side so high that they cast no reflexions on that side of the bodies which is in shade, and the sky is not too bright, we find the most advantageous situation for giving relief and grace to figures, particularly to faces; because both sides of the face will participate of the shadows of the walls. the sides of the nose and the face towards the west, will be light, and the man whom we suppose placed at the entrance, and in the middle of the street, will see all the parts of that face, which are before him, perfectly illumined, while both sides of it, towards the walls, will be in shadow. what gives additional grace is, that these shades do not appear cutting, hard, or dry, but softly blended and lost in each other. the reason of it is, that the light which is spread all over in the air, strikes also the pavement of the street, and reflecting upon the shady part of the face, it tinges that slightly with the same hue: while the great light which comes from above being confined by the tops of houses, strikes on the face from different points, almost to the very beginning of the shadows under the projecting parts of the face. it diminishes by degrees the strength of them, increasing the light till it comes upon the chin, where it terminates, and loses itself, blending softly into the shades on all sides. for instance, if such light were a e, the line f e would give light even to the bottom of the nose. the line c f will give light only to the under lip; but the line a h would extend the shadow to all the under parts of the face, and under the chin. in this situation the nose receives a very strong light from all the points a b c d e. [illustration] /chap. cxcvii./--_of the termination of bodies upon each other._ /when/ a body, of a cylindrical or convex surface, terminates upon another body of the same colour, it will appear darker on the edge, than the body upon which it terminates. and any flat body, adjacent to a white surface, will appear very dark; but upon a dark ground it will appear lighter than any other part, though the lights be equal. /chap. cxcviii./--_of the back-grounds of painted objects._ /the/ ground which surrounds the figures in any painting, ought to be darker than the light part of those figures, and lighter than the shadowed part. /chap. cxcix./--_how to detach and bring forward figures out of their back-ground._ /if/ your figure be dark, place it on a light ground; if it be light, upon a dark ground; and if it be partly light and partly dark, as is generally the case, contrive that the dark part of the figure be upon the light part of the ground, and the light side of it against the dark[ ]. /chap. cc./--_of proper back-grounds._ /it/ is of the greatest importance to consider well the nature of back-grounds, upon which any opake body is to be placed. in order to detach it properly, you should place the light part of such opake body against the dark part of the back-ground, and the dark parts on a light ground[ ]; as in the cut[ ]. [illustration] /chap. cci./--_of the general light diffused over figures._ /in/ compositions of many figures and animals, observe, that the parts of these different objects ought to be darker in proportion as they are lower, and as they are nearer the middle of the groups, though they are all of an uniform colour. this is necessary, because a smaller portion of the sky (from which all bodies are illuminated) can give light to the lower spaces between these different figures, than to the upper parts of the spaces. it is proved thus: a b c d is that portion of the sky which gives light to all the objects beneath; m and n are the bodies which occupy the space s t r h, in which it is evidently perceived, that the point f, receiving the light only from the portion of the sky c d, has a smaller quantity of it than the point e which receives it from the whole space a b (a larger portion than c d); therefore it will be lighter in e than in f. [illustration] /chap. ccii./--_of those parts in shadows which appear the darkest at a distance._ [illustration] /the/ neck, or any other part which is raised straight upwards, and has a projection over it, will be darker than the perpendicular front of that projection; and this projecting part will be lighter, in proportion as it presents a larger surface to the light. for instance, the recess a receives no light from any part of the sky g k, but b begins to receive the light from the part of the sky h k, and c from g k; and the point d receives the whole of f k. therefore the chest will be as light as the forehead, nose, and chin. but what i have particularly to recommend, in regard to faces, is, that you observe well those different qualities of shades which are lost at different distances (while there remain only the first and principal spots or strokes of shades, such as those of the sockets of the eyes, and other similar recesses, which are always dark), and at last the whole face becomes obscured; because the greatest lights (being small in proportion to the demi-tints) are lost. the quality, therefore, and quantity of the principal lights and shades are by means of great distance blended together into a general half-tint; and this is the reason why trees and other objects are found to be in appearance darker at some distance than they are in reality, when nearer to the eye. but then the air, which interposes between the objects and the eye, will render them light again by tinging them with azure, rather in the shades than in the lights; for the lights will preserve the truth of the different colours much longer. /chap. cciii./--_of the eye viewing the folds of draperies surrounding a figure._ /the/ shadows between the folds of a drapery surrounding the parts of the human body will be darker as the deep hollows where the shadows are generated are more directly opposite the eye. this is to be observed only when the eye is placed between the light and the shady part of the figure. /chap. cciv./--_of the relief of figures remote from the eye._ /any/ opake body appears less relieved in proportion as it is farther distant from the eye; because the air, interposed between the eye and such body, being lighter than the shadow of it, it tarnishes and weakens that shadow, lessens its power, and consequently lessens also its relief. /chap. ccv./--_of outlines of objects on the side towards the light._ /the/ extremities of any object on the side which receives the light, will appear darker if upon a lighter ground, and lighter if seen upon a darker ground. but if such body be flat, and seen upon a ground equal in point of light with itself, and of the same colour, such boundaries, or outlines, will be entirely lost to the sight[ ]. /chap. ccvi./--_how to make objects detach from their ground, that is to say, from the surface on which they are painted._ /objects/ contrasted with a light ground will appear much more detached than those which are placed against a dark one. the reason is, that if you wish to give relief to your figures, you will make those parts which are the farthest from the light, participate the least of it; therefore they will remain the darkest, and every distinction of outline would be lost in the general mass of shadows. but to give it grace, roundness, and effect, those dark shades are always attended by reflexes, or else they would either cut too hard upon the ground, or stick to it, by the similarity of shade, and relieve the less as the ground is darker; for at some distance nothing would be seen but the light parts, therefore your figures would appear mutilated of all that remains lost in the back-ground. contraste and effect. /chap. ccvii./--_a precept._ /figures/ will have more grace, placed in the open and general light, than in any particular or small one; because the powerful and extended light will surround and embrace the objects: and works done in that kind of light appear pleasant and graceful when placed at a distance[ ], while those which are drawn in a narrow light, will receive great force of shadow, but will never appear at a great distance, but as painted objects. /chap. ccviii./--_of the interposition of transparent bodies between the eye and the object._ /the/ greater the transparent interposition is between the eye and the object, the more the colour of that object will participate of, or be changed into that of the transparent medium[ ]. when an opake body is situated between the eye and the luminary, so that the central line of the one passes also through the centre of the other, that object will be entirely deprived of light. /chap. ccix./--_of proper back-grounds for figures._ /as/ we find by experience, that all bodies are surrounded by lights and shadows, i would have the painter to accommodate that part which is enlightened, so as to terminate upon something dark; and to manage the dark parts so that they may terminate on a light ground. this will be of great assistance in detaching and bringing out his figures[ ]. /chap. ccx./--_of back-grounds._ /to/ give a great effect to figures, you must oppose to a light one a dark ground, and to a dark figure a light ground, contrasting white with black, and black with white. in general, all contraries give a particular force and brilliancy of effect by their opposition[ ]. reflexes. /chap. ccxi./--_of objects placed on a light ground, and why such a practice is useful in painting._ /when/ a darkish body terminates upon a light ground, it will appear detached from that ground; because all opake bodies of a curved surface are not only dark on that side which receives no light, and consequently very different from the ground; but even that side of the curved surface which is enlightened, will not carry its principal light to the extremities, but have between the ground and the principal light a certain demi-tint, darker than either the ground or that light. /chap. ccxii./--_of the different effects of white, according to the difference of back-grounds._ /any/ thing white will appear whiter, by being opposed to a dark ground; and, on the contrary, darker upon a light ground. this we learn from observing snow as it falls; while it is descending it appears darker against the sky, than when we see it against an open window, which (owing to the darkness of the inside of the house) makes it appear very white. observe also, that snow appears to fall very quick and in a great quantity when near the eye; but when at some distance, it seems to come down slowly, and in a smaller quantity[ ]. /chap. ccxiii./--_of reverberation._ /reverberations/ are produced by all bodies of a bright nature, that have a smooth and tolerably hard surface, which, repelling the light it receives, makes it rebound like a foot-ball against the first object opposed to it. /chap. ccxiv./--_where there cannot be any reverberation of light._ /the/ surfaces of hard bodies are surrounded by various qualities of light and shadow. the lights are of two sorts; one is called original, the other derivative. the original light is that which comes from the sun, or the brightness of fire, or else from the air. the derivative is a reflected light. but to return to our definition, i say, there can be no reflexion on that side which is turned towards any dark body; such as roofs, either high or low, shrubs, grass, wood, either dry or green; because, though every individual part of those objects be turned towards the original light, and struck by it; yet the quantity of shadow which every one of these parts produces upon the others, is so great, that, upon the whole, the light, not forming a compact mass, loses its effect, so that those objects cannot reflect any light upon the opposite bodies. /chap. ccxv./--_in what part the reflexes have more or less brightness._ /the/ reflected lights will be more or less apparent or bright, in proportion as they are seen against a darker or fainter ground; because if the ground be darker than the reflex, then this reflex will appear stronger on account of the great difference of colour. but, on the contrary, if this reflexion has behind it a ground lighter than itself, it will appear dark, in comparison to the brightness which is close to it, and therefore it will be hardly perceptible[ ]. /chap. ccxvi./--_of the reflected lights which surround the shadows._ /the/ reflected lights which strike upon the midst of shadows, will brighten up or lessen their obscurity in proportion to the strength of those lights, and their proximity to those shadows. many painters neglect this observation, while others attend to and deduce their practice from it. this difference of opinion and practice divides the sentiments of artists, so that they blame each other for not thinking and acting as they themselves do. the best way is to steer a middle course, and not to admit of any reflected light, but when the cause of it is evident to every eye; and _vice versâ_, if you introduce none at all, let it appear evident that there was no reasonable cause for it. in doing so, you will neither be totally blamed nor praised by the variety of opinion, which, if not proceeding from entire ignorance, will ensure to you the approbation of both parties. /chap. ccxvii./--_where reflexes are to be most apparent._ /of/ all reflected lights, that is to be the most apparent, bold, and precise, which detaches from the darkest ground; and, on the contrary, that which is upon a lighter ground will be less apparent. and this proceeds from the contraste of shades, by which the faintest makes the dark ones appear still darker; so in contrasted lights, the brightest cause the others to appear less bright than they really are[ ]. /chap. ccxviii./--_what part of a reflex is to be the lightest._ /that/ part will be the brightest which receives the reflected light between angles the most nearly equal. for example, let n be the luminary, and a b the illuminated part of the object, reflecting the light over all the shady part of the concavity opposite to it. the light which reflects upon f will be placed between equal angles. but e at the base will not be reflected by equal angles, as it is evident that the angle e a b is more obtuse than the angle e b a. the angle a f b however, though it is between angles of less quality than the angle e, and has a common base b a, is between angles more nearly equal than e, therefore it will be lighter in f than in e; and it will also be brighter, because it is nearer to the part which gives them light. according to the th rule[ ], which says, that part of the body is to be the lightest, which is nearest to the luminary. [illustration] /chap. ccxix./--_of the termination of reflexes on their grounds._ /the/ termination of a reflected light on a ground lighter than that reflex, will not be perceivable; but if such a reflex terminates upon a ground darker than itself, it will be plainly seen; and the more so in proportion as that ground is darker, and _vice versa_[ ]. /chap. ccxx./--_of double and treble reflexions of light._ /double/ reflexes are stronger than single ones, and the shadows which interpose between the common light and these reflexes are very faint. for instance, let a be the luminous body, a n, a s, are the direct rays, and s n the parts which receive the light from them. o and e are the places enlightened by the reflexion of that light in those parts. a n e is a single reflex, but a n o, a s o is the double reflex. the single reflex is that which proceeds from a single light, but the double reflexion is produced by two different lights. the single one e is produced by the light striking on b d, while the double one o proceeds from the enlightened bodies b d and d r co-operating together; and the shadows which are between n o and s o will be very faint. [illustration] /chap. ccxxi./--_reflexes in the water, and particularly those of the air._ /the/ only portion of air that will be seen reflected in the water, will be that which is reflected by the surface of the water to the eye between equal angles; that is to say, the angle of incidence must be equal to the angle of reflexion. colours /and/ colouring. colours. /chap. ccxxii./--_what surface is best calculated to receive most colours._ /white/ is more capable of receiving all sorts of colours, than the surface of any body whatever, that is not transparent. to prove it, we shall say, that any void space is capable of receiving what another space, not void, cannot receive. in the same manner, a white surface, like a void space, being destitute of any colour, will be fittest to receive such as are conveyed to it from any other enlightened body, and will participate more of the colour than black can do; which latter, like a broken vessel, is not able to contain any thing. /chap. ccxxiii./--_what surface will shew most perfectly its true colour._ /that/ opake body will shew its colour more perfect and beautiful, which has near it another body of the same colour. /chap. ccxxiv./--_on what surfaces the true colour is least apparent._ /polished/ and glossy surfaces shew least of their genuine colour. this is exemplified in the grass of the fields, and the leaves of trees, which, being smooth and glossy, will reflect the colour of the sun, and the air, where they strike, so that the parts which receive the light do not shew their natural colour. /chap. ccxxv./--_what surfaces shew most of their true and genuine colour._ /those/ objects that are the least smooth and polished shew their natural colours best; as we see in cloth, and in the leaves of such grass or trees as are of a woolly nature; which, having no lustre, are exhibited to the eye in their true natural colour; unless that colour happen to be confused by that of another body casting on them reflexions of an opposite colour, such as the redness of the setting sun, when all the clouds are tinged with its colour. /chap. ccxxvi./--_of the mixture of colours._ /although/ the mixture of colours may be extended to an infinite variety, almost impossible to be described, i will not omit touching slightly upon it, setting down at first a certain number of simple colours to serve as a foundation, and with each of these mixing one of the others; one with one, then two with two, and three with three, proceeding in this manner to the full mixture of all the colors together: then i would begin again, mixing two of these colours with two others, and three with three, four with four, and so on to the end. to these two colours we shall put three; to these three add three more, and then six, increasing always in the same proportion. i call those simple colours, which are not composed, and cannot be made or supplied by any mixture of other colours. black and white are not reckoned among colours; the one is the representative of darkness, the other of light: that is, one is a simple privation of light, the other is light itself. yet i will not omit mentioning them, because there is nothing in painting more useful and necessary; since painting is but an effect produced by lights and shadows, viz. _chiaro-scuro_. after black and white come blue and yellow, then green, and tawny or umber, and then purple and red. these eight colours are all that nature produces. with these i begin my mixtures, first black and white, black and yellow, black and red; then yellow and red: but i shall treat more at length of these mixtures in a separate work[ ], which will be of great utility, nay very necessary. i shall place this subject between theory and practice. /chap. ccxxvii./--_of the colours produced by the mixture of other colours, called secondary colours._ /the/ first of all simple colours is white, though philosophers will not acknowledge either white or black to be colours; because the first is the cause, or the receiver of colours, the other totally deprived of them. but as painters cannot do without either, we shall place them among the others; and according to this order of things, white will be the first, yellow the second, green the third, blue the fourth, red the fifth, and black the sixth. we shall set down white for the representative of light, without which no colour can be seen; yellow for the earth; green for water; blue for air; red for fire; and black for total darkness. if you wish to see by a short process the variety of all the mixed, or composed colours, take some coloured glasses, and, through them, look at all the country round: you will find that the colour of each object will be altered and mixed with the colour of the glass through which it is seen; observe which colour is made better, and which is hurt by the mixture. if the glass be yellow, the colour of the objects may either be improved, or greatly impaired by it. black and white will be most altered, while green and yellow will be meliorated. in the same manner you may go through all the mixtures of colours, which are infinite. select those which are new and agreeable to the sight; and following the same method you may go on with two glasses, or three, till you have found what will best answer your purpose. /chap. ccxxviii./--_of verdegris._ /this/ green, which is made of copper, though it be mixed with oil, will lose its beauty, if it be not varnished immediately. it not only fades, but, if washed with a sponge and pure water only, it will detach from the ground upon which it is painted, particularly in damp weather; because verdegris is produced by the strength of salts, which easily dissolve in rainy weather, but still more if washed with a wet sponge. /chap. ccxxix./--_how to increase the beauty of verdegris._ /if/ you mix with the verdegris some caballine aloe, it will add to it a great degree of beauty. it would acquire still more from saffron, if it did not fade. the quality and goodness of this aloe will be proved by dissolving it in warm brandy. supposing the verdegris has already been used, and the part finished, you may then glaze it thinly with this dissolved aloe, and it will produce a very fine colour. this aloe may be ground also in oil by itself, or with the verdegris, or any other colour, at pleasure. /chap. ccxxx./--_how to paint a picture that will last almost for ever._ /after/ you have made a drawing of your intended picture, prepare a good and thick priming with pitch and brickdust well pounded; after which give it a second coat of white lead and naples yellow; then, having traced your drawing upon it, and painted your picture, varnish it with clear and thick old oil, and stick it to a flat glass, or crystal, with a clear varnish. another method, which may be better, is, instead of the priming of pitch and brickdust, take a flat tile well vitrified, then apply the coat of white and naples yellow, and all the rest as before. but before the glass is applied to it, the painting must be perfectly dried in a stove, and varnished with nut oil and amber, or else with purified nut oil alone, thickened in the sun[ ]. /chap. ccxxxi./--_the mode of painting on canvass, or linen cloth_[ ]. /stretch/ your canvass upon a frame, then give it a coat of weak size, let it dry, and draw your outlines upon it. paint the flesh colours first; and while it is still fresh or moist, paint also the shadows, well softened and blended together. the flesh colour may be made with white, lake, and naples yellow. the shades with black, umber, and a little lake; you may, if you please, use black chalk. after you have softened this first coat, or dead colour, and let it dry, you may retouch over it with lake and other colours, and gum water that has been a long while made and kept liquid, because in that state it becomes better, and does not leave any gloss. again, to make the shades darker, take the lake and gum as above, and ink[ ]; and with this you may shade or glaze many colours, because it is transparent; such as azure, lake, and several others. as for the lights, you may retouch or glaze them slightly with gum water and pure lake, particularly vermilion. /chap. ccxxxii./--_of lively and beautiful colours._ /for/ those colours which you mean should appear beautiful, prepare a ground of pure white. this is meant only for transparent colours: as for those that have a body, and are opake, it matters not what ground they have, and a white one is of no use. this is exemplified by painted glasses; when placed between the eye and clear air, they exhibit most excellent and beautiful colours, which is not the case, when they have thick air, or some opake body behind them. /chap. ccxxxiii./--_of transparent colours._ /when/ a transparent colour is laid upon another of a different nature, it produces a mixed colour, different from either of the simple ones which compose it. this is observed in the smoke coming out of a chimney, which, when passing before the black soot, appears blueish, but as it ascends against the blue of the sky, it changes its appearance into a reddish brown. so the colour lake laid on blue will turn it to a violet colour; yellow upon blue turns to green; saffron upon white becomes yellow; white scumbled upon a dark ground appears blue, and is more or less beautiful, as the white and the ground are more or less pure. /chap. ccxxxiv./--_in what part a colour will appear in its greatest beauty._ /we/ are to consider here in what part any colour will shew itself in its most perfect purity; whether in the strongest light or deepest shadow, in the demi-tint, or in the reflex. it would be necessary to determine first, of what colour we mean to treat, because different colours differ materially in that respect. black is most beautiful in the shades; white in the strongest light; blue and green in the half-tint; yellow and red in the principal light; gold in the reflexes; and lake in the half-tint. /chap. ccxxxv./--_how any colour without gloss, is more beautiful in the lights than in the shades._ /all/ objects which have no gloss, shew their colours better in the light than in the shadow, because the light vivifies and gives a true knowledge of the nature of the colour, while the shadows lower, and destroy its beauty, preventing the discovery of its nature. if, on the contrary, black be more beautiful in the shadows, it is because black is not a colour. /chap. ccxxxvi./--_of the appearance of colours._ /the/ lighter a colour is in its nature, the more so it will appear when removed to some distance; but with dark colours it is quite the reverse. /chap. ccxxxvii./--_what part of a colour is to be the most beautiful._ /if/ a be the light, and b the object receiving it in a direct line, e cannot receive that light, but only the reflexion from b, which we shall suppose to be red. in that case, the light it produces being red, it will tinge with red the object e; and if e happen to be also red before, you will see that colour increase in beauty, and appear redder than b; but if e were yellow, you will see a new colour, participating of the red and the yellow. [illustration] /chap. ccxxxviii./--_that the beauty of a colour is to be found in the lights._ /as/ the quality of colours is discovered to the eye by the light, it is natural to conclude, that where there is most light, there also the true quality of the colour is to be seen; and where there is most shadow the colour will participate of, and be tinged with the colour of that shadow. remember then to shew the true quality of the colour in the light parts only[ ]. /chap. ccxxxix./--_of colours._ /the/ colour which is between the light and the shadow will not be so beautiful as that which is in the full light. therefore the chief beauty of colours will be found in the principal lights[ ]. /chap. ccxl./--_no object appears in its true colour, unless the light which strikes upon it be of the same colour._ /this/ is very observable in draperies, where the light folds casting a reflexion, and throwing a light on other folds opposite to them, make them appear in their natural colour. the same effect is produced by gold leaves casting their light reciprocally on each other. the effect is quite contrary if the light be received from an object of a different colour[ ]. /chap. ccxli./--_of the colour of shadows._ /the/ colour of the shadows of an object can never be pure if the body which is opposed to these shadows be not of the same colour as that on which they are produced. for instance, if in a room, the walls of which are green, i place a figure clothed in blue, and receiving the light from another blue object, the light part of that figure will be of a beautiful blue, but the shadows of it will become dingy, and not like a true shade of that beautiful blue, because it will be corrupted by the reflexions from the green wall; and it would be still worse if the walls were of a darkish brown. /chap. ccxlii./--_of colours._ /colours/ placed in shadow will preserve more or less of their original beauty, as they are more or less immersed in the shade. but colours situated in a light space will shew their natural beauty in proportion to the brightness of that light. some say, that there is as great variety in the colours of shadows, as in the colours of objects shaded by them. it may be answered, that colours placed in shadow will shew less variety amongst themselves as the shadows are darker. we shall soon convince ourselves of this truth, if, from a large square, we look through the open door of a church, where pictures, though enriched with a variety of colours, appear all clothed in darkness. /chap. ccxliii./--_whether it be possible for all colours to appear alike by means of the same shadow._ /it/ is very possible that all the different colours may be changed into that of a general shadow; as is manifest in the darkness of a cloudy night, in which neither the shape nor colour of bodies is distinguished. total darkness being nothing but a privation of the primitive and reflected lights, by which the form and colour of bodies are seen; it is evident, that the cause being removed the effect ceases, and the objects are entirely lost to the sight. /chap. ccxliv./--_why white is not reckoned among the colours._ /white/ is not a colour, but has the power of receiving all the other colours. when it is placed in a high situation in the country, all its shades are azure; according to the fourth proposition[ ], which says, that the surface of any opake body participates of the colour of any other body sending the light to it. therefore white being deprived of the light of the sun by the interposition of any other body, will remain white; if exposed to the sun on one side, and to the open air on the other, it will participate both of the colour of the sun and of the air. that side which is not opposed to the sun, will be shaded of the colour of the air. and if this white were not surrounded by green fields all the way to the horizon, nor could receive any light from that horizon, without doubt it would appear of one simple and uniform colour, viz. that of the air. /chap. ccxlv./--_of colours._ /the/ light of the fire tinges every thing of a reddish yellow; but this will hardly appear evident, if we do not make the comparison with the daylight. towards the close of the evening this is easily done; but more certainly after the morning twilight; and the difference will be clearly distinguished in a dark room, when a little glimpse of daylight strikes upon any part of the room, and there still remains a candle burning. without such a trial the difference is hardly perceivable, particularly in those colours which have most similarity; such as white and yellow, light green and light blue; because the light which strikes the blue, being yellow, will naturally turn it green; as we have said in another place[ ], that a mixture of blue and yellow produces green. and if to a green colour you add some yellow, it will make it of a more beautiful green. /chap. ccxlvi./--_of the colouring of remote objects._ /the/ painter, who is to represent objects at some distance from the eye, ought merely to convey the idea of general undetermined masses, making choice, for that purpose, of cloudy weather, or towards the evening, and avoiding, as was said before, to mark the lights and shadows too strong on the extremities; because they would in that case appear like spots of difficult execution, and without grace. he ought to remember, that the shadows are never to be of such a quality, as to obliterate the proper colour, in which they originated; if the situation of the coloured body be not in total darkness. he ought to mark no outline, not to make the hair stringy, and not to touch with pure white, any but those things which in themselves are white; in short, the lightest touch upon any particular object ought to denote the beauty of its proper and natural colour. /chap. ccxlvii./--_the surface of all opake bodies participates of the colour of the surrounding objects._ /the/ painter ought to know, that if any white object is placed between two walls, one of which is also white, and the other black, there will be found between the shady side of that object and the light side, a similar proportion to that of the two walls; and if that object be blue, the effect will be the same. having therefore to paint this object, take some black, similar to that of the wall from which the reflexes come; and to proceed by a certain and scientific method, do as follows. when you paint the wall, take a small spoon to measure exactly the quantity of colour you mean to employ in mixing your tints; for instance, if you have put in the shading of this wall three spoonfuls of pure black, and one of white, you have, without any doubt, a mixture of a certain and precise quality. now having painted one of the walls white, and the other dark, if you mean to place a blue object between them with shades suitable to that colour, place first on your pallet the light blue, such as you mean it to be, without any mixture of shade, and it will do for the lightest part of your object. after which take three spoonfuls of black, and one of this light blue, for your darkest shades. then observe whether your object be round or square: if it be square, these two extreme tints of light and shade will be close to each other, cutting sharply at the angle; but if it be round, draw lines from the extremities of the walls to the centre of the object, and put the darkest shade between equal angles, where the lines intersect upon the superficies of it; then begin to make them lighter and lighter gradually to the point n o, lessening the strength of the shadows as much as that place participates of the light a d, and mixing that colour with the darkest shade a b, in the same proportion. [illustration] /chap. ccxlviii./--_general remarks on colours._ /blue/ and green are not simple colours in their nature, for blue is composed of light and darkness; such is the azure of the sky, viz. perfect black and perfect white. green is composed of a simple and a mixed colour, being produced by blue and yellow. any object seen in a mirror, will participate of the colour of that body which serves as a mirror; and the mirror in its turn is tinged in part by the colour of the object it represents; they partake more or less of each other as the colour of the object seen is more or less strong than the colour of the mirror. that object will appear of the strongest and most lively colour in the mirror, which has the most affinity to the colour of the mirror itself. of coloured bodies, the purest white will be seen at the greatest distance, therefore the darker the colour, the less it will bear distance. of different bodies equal in whiteness, and in distance from the eye, that which is surrounded by the greatest darkness will appear the whitest; and on the contrary, that shadow will appear the darkest that has the brightest white round it. of different colours, equally perfect, that will appear most excellent, which is seen near its direct contrary. a pale colour against red, a black upon white (though neither the one nor the other are colours), blue near a yellow; green near red; because each colour is more distinctly seen, when opposed to its contrary, than to any other similar to it. any thing white seen in a dense air full of vapours, will appear larger than it is in reality. the air, between the eye and the object seen, will change the colour of that object into its own; so will the azure of the air change the distant mountains into blue masses. through a red glass every thing appears red; the light round the stars is dimmed by the darkness of the air, which fills the space between the eye and the planets. the true colour of any object whatever will be seen in those parts which are not occupied by any kind of shade, and have not any gloss (if it be a polished surface). i say, that white terminating abruptly upon a dark ground, will cause that part where it terminates to appear darker, and the white whiter. colours in regard to light and shadow. /chap. ccxlix./--_of the light proper for painting flesh colour from nature._ /your/ window must be open to the sky, and the walls painted of a reddish colour. the summertime is the best, when the clouds conceal the sun, or else your walls on the south side of the room must be so high, as that the sun-beams cannot strike on the opposite side, in order that the reflexion of those beams may not destroy the shadows. /chap. ccl./--_of the painter's window._ /the/ window which gives light to a painting-room, ought to be made of oiled paper, without any cross bar, or projecting edge at the opening, or any sharp angle in the inside of the wall, but should be slanting by degrees the whole thickness of it; and the sides be painted black. /chap. ccli./--_the shadows of colours._ /the/ shadows of any colour whatever must participate of that colour more or less, as it is nearer to, or more remote from the mass of shadows; and also in proportion to its distance from, or proximity to the mass of light. /chap. cclii./--_of the shadows of white._ /to/ any white body receiving the light from the sun, or the air, the shadows should be of a blueish cast; because white is no colour, but a receiver of all colours; and as by the fourth proposition[ ] we learn, that the surface of any object participates of the colours of other objects near it, it is evident that a white surface will participate of the colour of the air by which it is surrounded. /chap. ccliii./--_which of the colours will produce the darkest shade._ /that/ shade will be the darkest which is produced by the whitest surface; this also will have a greater propensity to variety than any other surface; because white is not properly a colour, but a receiver of colours, and its surface will participate strongly of the colour of surrounding objects, but principally of black or any other dark colour, which being the most opposite to its nature, produces the most sensible difference between the shadows and the lights. /chap. ccliv./--_how to manage, when a white terminates upon another white._ /when/ one white body terminates on another of the same colour, the white of these two bodies will be either alike or not. if they be alike, that object which of the two is nearest to the eye, should be made a little darker than the other, upon the rounding of the outline; but if the object which serves as a ground to the other be not quite so white, the latter will detach of itself, without the help of any darker termination. /chap. cclv./--_on the back-grounds of figures._ /of/ two objects equally light, one will appear less so if seen upon a whiter ground; and, on the contrary, it will appear a great deal lighter if upon a space of a darker shade. so flesh colour will appear pale upon a red ground, and a pale colour will appear redder upon a yellow ground. in short, colours will appear what they are not, according to the ground which surrounds them. /chap. cclvi./--_the mode of composing history._ /amongst/ the figures which compose an historical picture, those which are meant to appear the nearest to the eye, must have the greatest force; according to the second proposition[ ] of the third book, which says, that colour will be seen in the greatest perfection which has less air interposed between it and the eye of the beholder; and for that reason the shadows (by which we express the relievo of bodies) appear darker when near than when at a distance, being then deadened by the air which interposes. this does not happen to those shadows which are near the eye, where they will produce the greatest relievo when they are darkest. /chap. cclvii./--_remarks concerning lights and shadows._ /observe/, that where the shadows end, there be always a kind of half-shadow to blend them with the lights. the shadow derived from any object will mix more with the light at its termination, in proportion as it is more distant from that object. but the colour of the shadow will never be simple: this is proved by the ninth proposition[ ], which says, that the superficies of any object participates of the colours of other bodies, by which it is surrounded, although it were transparent, such as water, air, and the like: because the air receives its light from the sun, and darkness is produced by the privation of it. but as the air has no colour in itself any more than water, it receives all the colours that are between the object and the eye. the vapours mixing with the air in the lower regions near the earth, render it thick, and apt to reflect the sun's rays on all sides, while the air above remains dark; and because light (that is, white) and darkness (that is, black), mixed together, compose the azure that becomes the colour of the sky, which is lighter or darker in proportion as the air is more or less mixed with damp vapours. /chap. cclviii./--_why the shadows of bodies upon a white wall are blueish towards evening._ [illustration] /the/ shadows of bodies produced by the redness of the setting sun, will always be blueish. this is accounted for by the eleventh proposition[ ], which says, that the superficies of any opake body participates of the colour of the object from which it receives the light; therefore the white wall being deprived entirely of colour, is tinged by the colour of those bodies from which it receives the light, which in this case are the sun and the sky. but because the sun is red towards the evening, and the sky is blue, the shadow on the wall not being enlightened by the sun, receives only the reflexion of the sky, and therefore will appear blue; and the rest of the wall, receiving light immediately from the sun, will participate of its red colour. /chap. cclix./--_of the colour of faces._ /the/ colour of any object will appear more or less distinct in proportion to the extent of its surface. this proportion is proved, by observing that a face appears dark at a small distance, because, being composed of many small parts, it produces a great number of shadows; and the lights being the smallest part of it, are soonest lost to the sight, leaving only the shadows, which being in a greater quantity, the whole of the face appears dark, and the more so if that face has on the head, or at the back, something whiter. /chap. cclx./--_a precept relating to painting._ /where/ the shadows terminate upon the lights, observe well what parts of them are lighter than the others, and where they are more or less softened and blended; but above all remember, that young people have no sharp shadings: their flesh is transparent, something like what we observe when we put our hand between the sun and eyes; it appears reddish, and of a transparent brightness. if you wish to know what kind of shadow will suit the flesh colour you are painting, place one of your fingers close to your picture, so as to cast a shadow upon it, and according as you wish it either lighter or darker, put it nearer or farther from it, and imitate it. /chap. cclxi./--_of colours in shadow._ /it/ happens very often that the shadows of an opake body do not retain the same colour as the lights. sometimes they will be greenish, while the lights are reddish, although this opake body be all over of one uniform colour. this happens when the light falls upon the object (we will suppose from the east), and tinges that side with its own colour. in the west we will suppose another opake body of a colour different from the first, but receiving the same light. this last will reflect its colour towards the east, and strike the first with its rays on the opposite side, where they will be stopped, and remain with their full colour and brightness. we often see a white object with red lights, and the shades of a blueish cast; this we observe particularly in mountains covered with snow, at sun-set, when the effulgence of its rays makes the horizon appear all on fire. /chap. cclxii./--_of the choice of lights._ /whatever/ object you intend to represent is to be supposed situated in a particular light, and that entirely of your own choosing. if you imagine such objects to be in the country, and the sun be overcast, they will be surrounded by a great quantity of general light. if the sun strikes upon those objects, then the shadows will be very dark, in proportion to the lights, and will be determined and sharp; the primitive as well as the secondary ones. these shadows will vary from the lights in colour, because on that side the object receives a reflected light hue from the azure of the air, which tinges that part; and this is particularly observable in white objects. that side which receives the light from the sun, participates also of the colour of that. this may be particularly observed in the evening, when the sun is setting between the clouds, which it reddens; those clouds being tinged with the colour of the body illuminating them, the red colour of the clouds, with that of the sun, casts a hue on those parts which receive the light from them. on the contrary, those parts which are not turned towards that side of the sky, remain of the colour of the air, so that the former and the latter are of two different colours. this we must not lose sight of, that, knowing the cause of those lights and shades, it be made apparent in the effect, or else the work will be false and absurd. but if a figure be situated within a house, and seen from without, such figure will have its shadows very soft; and if the beholder stands in the line of the light, it will acquire grace, and do credit to the painter, as it will have great relief in the lights, and soft and well-blended shadows, particularly in those parts where the inside of the room appears less obscure, because there the shadows are almost imperceptible: the cause of which we shall explain in its proper place. colours in regard to back-grounds. /chap. cclxiii./--_of avoiding hard outlines._ /do/ not make the boundaries of your figures with any other colour than that of the back-ground, on which they are placed; that is, avoid making dark outlines. /chap. cclxiv./--_of outlines._ /the/ extremities of objects which are at some distance, are not seen so distinctly as if they were nearer. therefore the painter ought to regulate the strength of his outlines, or extremities, according to the distance. the boundaries which separate one body from another, are of the nature of mathematical lines, but not of real lines. the end of any colour is only the beginning of another, and it ought not to be called a line, for nothing interposes between them, except the termination of the one against the other, which being nothing in itself, cannot be perceivable; therefore the painter ought not to pronounce it in distant objects. /chap. cclxv./--_of back-grounds._ /one/ of the principal parts of painting is the nature and quality of back-grounds, upon which the extremities of any convex or solid body will always detach and be distinguished in nature, though the colour of such objects, and that of the ground, be exactly the same. this happens, because the convex sides of solid bodies do not receive the light in the same manner with the ground, for such sides or extremities are often lighter or darker than the ground. but if such extremities were to be of the same colour as the ground, and in the same degree of light, they certainly could not be distinguished. therefore such a choice in painting ought to be avoided by all intelligent and judicious painters; since the intention is to make the objects appear as it were out of the ground. the above case would produce the contrary effect, not only in painting, but also in objects of real relievo. /chap. cclxvi./--_how to detach figures from the ground._ /all/ solid bodies will appear to have a greater relief, and to come more out of the canvass, on a ground of an undetermined colour, with the greatest variety of lights and shades against the confines of such bodies (as will be demonstrated in its place), provided a proper diminution of lights in the white tints, and of darkness in the shades, be judiciously observed. /chap. cclxvii./--_of uniformity and variety of colours upon plain surfaces._ /the/ back-grounds of any flat surfaces which are uniform in colour and quantity of light, will never appear separated from each other; _vice versâ_, they will appear separated if they are of different colours or lights. /chap. cclxviii./--_of back-grounds suitable both to shadows and lights._ /the/ shadows or lights which surround figures, or any other objects, will help the more to detach them the more they differ from the objects; that is, if a dark colour does not terminate upon another dark colour, but upon a very different one; as white, or partaking of white, but lowered, and approximated to the dark shade. /chap. cclxix./--_the apparent variation of colours, occasioned by the contraste of the ground upon which they are placed._ /no/ colour appears uniform and equal in all its parts unless it terminate on a ground of the same colour. this is very apparent when a black terminates on a white ground, where the contraste of colour gives more strength and richness to the extremities than to the middle. contraste, harmony, and reflexes, in regard to colours. /chap. cclxx./--_gradation in painting._ /what/ is fine is not always beautiful and good: i address this to such painters as are so attached to the beauty of colours, that they regret being obliged to give them almost imperceptible shadows, not considering the beautiful relief which figures acquire by a proper gradation and strength of shadows. such persons may be compared to those speakers who in conversation make use of many fine words without meaning, which altogether scarcely form one good sentence. /chap. cclxxi./--_how to assort colours in such a manner as that they may add beauty to each other._ /if/ you mean that the proximity of one colour should give beauty to another that terminates near it, observe the rays of the sun in the composition of the rainbow, the colours of which are generated by the falling rain, when each drop in its descent takes every colour of that bow, as is demonstrated in its place[ ]. if you mean to represent great darkness, it must be done by contrasting it with great light; on the contrary, if you want to produce great brightness, you must oppose to it a very dark shade: so a pale yellow will cause red to appear more beautiful than if opposed to a purple colour. there is another rule, by observing which, though you do not increase the natural beauty of the colours, yet by bringing them together they may give additional grace to each other, as green placed near red, while the effect would be quite the reverse, if placed near blue. harmony and grace are also produced by a judicious arrangement of colours, such as blue with pale yellow or white, and the like; as will be noticed in its place. /chap. cclxxii./--_of detaching the figures._ /let/ the colours of which the draperies of your figures are composed, be such as to form a pleasing variety, to distinguish one from the other; and although, for the sake of harmony, they should be of the same nature[ ], they must not stick together, but vary in point of light, according to the distance and interposition of the air between them. by the same rule, the outlines are to be more precise, or lost, in proportion to their distance or proximity. /chap. cclxxiii./--_of the colour of reflexes._ /all/ reflected colours are less brilliant and strong, than those which receive a direct light, in the same proportion as there is between the light of a body and the cause of that light. /chap. cclxxiv./--_what body will be the most strongly tinged with the colour of any other object._ /an/ opake surface will partake most of the genuine colour of the body nearest to it, because a great quantity of the species of colour will be conveyed to it; whereas such colour would be broken and disturbed if coming from a more distant object. /chap. cclxxv./--_of reflexes._ /reflexes/ will partake, more or less, both of the colour of the object which produces them, and of the colour of that object on which they are produced, in proportion as this latter body is of a smoother or more polished surface, than that by which they are produced. /chap. cclxxvi./--_of the surface of all shadowed bodies._ /the/ surface of any opake body placed in shadow, will participate of the colour of any other object which reflects the light upon it. this is very evident; for if such bodies were deprived of light in the space between them and the other bodies, they could not shew either shape or colour. we shall conclude then, that if the opake body be yellow, and that which reflects the light blue, the part reflected will be green, because green is composed of blue and yellow. /chap. cclxxvii./--_that no reflected colour is simple, but is mixed with the nature of the other colours._ /no/ colour reflected upon the surface of another body, will tinge that surface with its own colour alone, but will be mixed by the concurrence of other colours also reflected on the same spot. let us suppose a to be of a yellow colour, which is reflected on the convex c o e, and that the blue colour b be reflected on the same place. i say that a mixture of the blue and yellow colours will tinge the convex surface; and that, if the ground be white, it will produce a green reflexion, because it is proved that a mixture of blue and yellow produces a very fine green. [illustration] /chap. cclxxviii./--_of the colour of lights and reflexes._ /when/ two lights strike upon an opake body, they can vary only in two ways; either they are equal in strength, or they are not. if they be equal, they may still vary in two other ways, that is, by the equality or inequality of their brightness; they will be equal, if their distance be the same; and unequal, if it be otherwise. the object placed at an equal distance, between two equal lights, in point both of colour and brightness, may still be enlightened by them in two different ways, either equally on each side, or unequally. it will be equally enlightened by them, when the space which remains round the lights shall be equal in colour, in degree of shade, and in brightness. it will be unequally enlightened by them when the spaces happen to be of different degrees of darkness. /chap. cclxxix./--_why reflected colours seldom partake of the colour of the body where they meet._ /it/ happens very seldom that the reflexes are of the same colour with the body from which they proceed, or with that upon which they meet. to exemplify this, let the convex body d f g e be of a yellow colour, and the body b c, which reflects its colour on it, blue; the part of the convex surface which is struck by that reflected light, will take a green tinge, being b c, acted on by the natural light of the air, or the sun. [illustration] /chap. cclxxx./--_the reflexes of flesh colours._ /the/ lights upon the flesh colours, which are reflected by the light striking upon another flesh-coloured body, are redder and more lively than any other part of the human figure; and that happens according to the third proposition of the second book[ ], which says, the surface of any opake body participates of the colour of the object which reflects the light, in proportion as it is near to or remote from it, and also in proportion to the size of it; because, being large, it prevents the variety of colours in smaller objects round it, from interfering with, and discomposing the principal colour, which is nearer. nevertheless it does not prevent its participating more of the colour of a small object near it, than of a large one more remote. see the sixth proposition[ ] of perspective, which says, that large objects may be situated at such a distance as to appear less than small ones that are near. /chap. cclxxxi./--_of the nature of comparison._ /black/ draperies will make the flesh of the human figure appear whiter than in reality it is[ ]; and white draperies, on the contrary, will make it appear darker. yellow will render it higher coloured, while red will make it pale. /chap. cclxxxii./--_where the reflexes are seen._ /of/ all reflexions of the same shape, size, and strength, that will be more or less strong, which terminates on a ground more or less dark. the surface of those bodies will partake most of the colour of the object that reflects it, which receive that reflexion by the most nearly equal angles. of the colours of objects reflected upon any opposite surface by equal angles, that will be the most distinct which has its reflecting ray the shortest. of all colours, reflected under equal angles, and at equal distance upon the opposite body, those will be the strongest, which come reflected by the lightest coloured body. that object will reflect its own colour most precisely on the opposite object, which has not round it any colour that clashes with its own; and consequently that reflected colour will be most confused which takes its origin from a variety of bodies of different colours. that colour which is nearest the opposed object, will tinge it the most strongly; and _vice versâ_: let the painter, therefore, in his reflexes on the human body, particularly on the flesh colour, mix some of the colour of the drapery which comes nearest to it; but not pronounce it too distinctly, if there be not good reason for it. perspective of colours. /chap. cclxxxiii./--_a precept of perspective in regard to painting._ /when/, on account of some particular quality of the air, you can no longer distinguish the difference between the lights and shadows of objects, you may reject the perspective of shadows, and make use only of the linear perspective, and the diminution of colours, to lessen the knowledge of the objects opposed to the eye; and this, that is to say, the loss of the knowledge of the figure of each object, will make the same object appear more remote. the eye can never arrive at a perfect knowledge of the interval between two objects variously distant, by means of the linear perspective alone, if not assisted by the perspective of colours. /chap. cclxxxiv./--_of the perspective of colours._ /the/ air will participate less of the azure of the sky, in proportion as it comes nearer to the horizon, as it is proved by the third and ninth proposition[ ], that pure and subtile bodies (such as compose the air) will be less illuminated by the sun than those of thicker and grosser substance: and as it is certain that the air which is remote from the earth, is thinner than that which is near it, it will follow, that the latter will be more impregnated with the rays of the sun, which giving light at the same time to an infinity of atoms floating in this air, renders it more sensible to the eye. so that the air will appear lighter towards the horizon, and darker as well as bluer in looking up to the sky; because there is more of the thick air between our eyes and the horizon, than between our eyes and that part of the sky above our heads. [illustration] for instance: if the eye placed in p, looks through the air along the line p r, and then lowers itself a little along p s, the air will begin to appear a little whiter, because there is more of the thick air in this space than in the first. and if it be still removed lower, so as to look straight at the horizon, no more of that blue sky will be perceived which was observable along the first line p r, because there is a much greater quantity of thick air along the horizontal line p d, than along the oblique p s, or the perpendicular p r. /chap. cclxxxv./--_the cause of the diminution of colours._ /the/ natural colour of any visible object will be diminished in proportion to the density of any other substance which interposes between that object and the eye. /chap. cclxxxvi./--_of the diminution of colours and objects._ /let/ the colours vanish in proportion as the objects diminish in size, according to the distance. /chap. cclxxxvii./--_of the variety observable in colours, according to their distance, or proximity._ /the/ local colour of such objects as are darker than the air, will appear less dark as they are more remote; and, on the contrary, objects lighter than the air will lose their brightness in proportion to their distance from the eye. in general, all objects that are darker or lighter than the air, are discoloured by distance, which changes their quality, so that the lighter appears darker, and the darker lighter. /chap. cclxxxviii./--_at what distance colours are entirely lost._ /local/ colours are entirely lost at a greater or less distance, according as the eye and the object are more or less elevated from the earth. this is proved by the seventh proposition[ ], which says, the air is more or less pure, as it is near to, or remote from the earth. if the eye then, and the object are near the earth, the thickness of the air which interposes, will in a great measure confuse the colour of that object to the eye. but if the eye and the object are placed high above the earth, the air will disturb the natural colour of that object very little. in short, the various gradations of colour depend not only on the various distances, in which they may be lost; but also on the variety of lights, which change according to the different hours of the day, and the thickness or purity of the air, through which the colour of the object is conveyed to the eye. /chap. cclxxxix./--_of the change observable in the same colour, according to its distance from the eye._ /among/ several colours of the same nature, that which is the nearest to the eye will alter the least; because the air which interposes between the eye and the object seen, envelopes, in some measure, that object. if the air, which interposes, be in great quantity, the object seen will be strongly tinged with the colour of that air; but if the air be thin, then the view of that object, and its colour, will be very little obstructed. /chap. ccxc./--_of the blueish appearance of remote objects in a landscape._ /whatever/ be the colour of distant objects, the darkest, whether natural or accidental, will appear the most tinged with azure. by the natural darkness is meant the proper colour of the object; the accidental one is produced by the shadow of some other body. /chap. ccxci./--_of the qualities in the surface which first lose themselves by distance._ /the/ first part of any colour which is lost by the distance, is the gloss, being the smallest part of it, as a light within a light. the second that diminishes by being farther removed, is the light, because it is less in quantity than the shadow. the third is the principal shadows, nothing remaining at last but a kind of middling obscurity. /chap. ccxcii./--_from what cause the azure of the air proceeds._ /the/ azure of the sky is produced by the transparent body of the air, illumined by the sun, and interposed between the darkness of the expanse above, and the earth below. the air in itself has no quality of smell, taste, or colour, but is easily impregnated with the quality of other matter surrounding it; and will appear bluer in proportion to the darkness of the space behind it, as may be observed against the shady sides of mountains, which are darker than any other object. in this instance the air appears of the most beautiful azure, while on the other side that receives the light, it shews through that more of the natural colour of the mountain. /chap. ccxciii./--_of the perspective of colours._ /the/ same colour being placed at various distances and equal elevation, the force and effect of its colouring will be according to the proportion of the distance which there is from each of these colours to the eye. it is proved thus: let c b e d be one and the same colour. the first, e, is placed at two degrees of distance from the eye a; the second, b, shall be four degrees, the third, c, six degrees, and the fourth, d, eight degrees; as appears by the circles which terminate upon and intersect the line a r. let us suppose that the space a r, s p, is one degree of thin air, and s p e t another degree of thicker air. it will follow, that the first colour, e, will pass to the eye through one degree of thick air, e s, and through another degree, s a, of thinner air. and b will send its colour to the eye in a, through two degrees of thick air, and through two others of the thinner sort. c will send it through three degrees of the thin, and three of the thick sort, while d goes through four degrees of the one, and four of the other. this demonstrates, that the gradation of colours is in proportion to their distance from the eye[ ]. but this happens only to those colours which are on a level with the eye; as for those which happen to be at unequal elevations, we cannot observe the same rule, because they are in that case situated in different qualities of air, which alter and diminish these colours in various manners. [illustration] /chap. ccxciv./--_of the perspective of colours in dark places._ /in/ any place where the light diminishes in a gradual proportion till it terminates in total darkness, the colours also will lose themselves and be dissolved in proportion as they recede from the eye. /chap. ccxcv./--_of the perspective of colours._ /the/ principal colours, or those nearest to the eye, should be pure and simple; and the degree of their diminution should be in proportion to their distance, viz. the nearer they are to the principal point, the more they will possess of the purity of those colours, and they will partake of the colour of the horizon in proportion as they approach to it. /chap. ccxcvi./--_of colours._ /of/ all the colours which are not blue, those that are nearest to black will, when distant, partake most of the azure; and, on the contrary, those will preserve their proper colour at the greatest distance, that are most dissimilar to black. the green therefore of the fields will change sooner into blue than yellow, or white, which will preserve their natural colour at a greater distance than that, or even red. /chap. ccxcvii./--_how it happens that colours do not change, though placed in different qualities of air._ /the/ colour will not be subject to any alteration when the distance and the quality of air have a reciprocal proportion. what it loses by the distance it regains by the purity of the air, viz. if we suppose the first or lowest air to have four degrees of thickness, and the colour to be at one degree from the eye, and the second air above to have three degrees. the air having lost one degree of thickness, the colour will acquire one degree upon the distance. and when the air still higher shall have lost two degrees of thickness, the colour will acquire as many upon the distance; and in that case the colour will be the same at three degrees as at one. but to be brief, if the colour be raised so high as to enter that quality of air which has lost three degrees of thickness, and acquired three degrees of distance, then you may be certain that that colour which is high and remote, has lost no more than the colour which is below and nearer; because in rising it has acquired those three degrees which it was losing by the same distance from the eye; and this is what was meant to be proved. /chap. ccxcviii./--_why colours experience no apparent change, though placed in different qualities of air._ [illustration] /it/ may happen that a colour does not alter, though placed at different distances, when the thickness of the air and the distance are in the same inverse proportion. it is proved thus: let a be the eye, and h any colour whatever, placed at one degree of distance from the eye, in a quality of air of four degrees of thickness; but because the second degree above, a m n l, contains a thinner air by one half, which air conveys this colour, it follows that this colour will appear as if removed double the distance it was at before, viz. at two degrees of distance, a f and f g, from the eye; and it will be placed in g. if that is raised to the second degree of air a m n l, and to the degree o m, p n, it will necessarily be placed at e, and will be removed from the eye the whole length of the line a e, which will be proved in this manner to be equal in thickness to the distance a g. if in the same quality of air the distance a g interposed between the eye and the colour occupies two degrees, and a e occupies two degrees and a half, it is sufficient to preserve the colour g, when raised to e, from any change, because the degree a c and the degree a f being the same in thickness, are equal and alike, and the degree c d, though equal in length to the degree f g, is not alike in point of thickness of air; because half of it is situated in a degree of air of double the thickness of the air above: this half degree of distance occupies as much of the colour as one whole degree of the air above would, which air above is twice as thin as the air below, with which it terminates; so that by calculating the thickness of the air, and the distances, you will find that the colours have changed places without undergoing any alteration in their beauty. and we shall prove it thus: reckoning first the thickness of air, the colour h is placed in four degrees of thickness, the colour g in two degrees, and e at one degree. now let us see whether the distances are in an equal inverse proportion; the colour e is at two degrees and a half of distance, g at two degrees, and h at one degree. but as this distance has not an exact proportion with the thickness of air, it is necessary to make a third calculation in this manner: a c is perfectly like and equal to a f; the half degree, c b, is like but not equal to a f, because it is only half a degree in length, which is equal to a whole degree of the quality of the air above; so that by this calculation we shall solve the question. for a c is equal to two degrees of thickness of the air above, and the half degree c b is equal to a whole degree of the same air above; and one degree more is to be taken in, viz. b e, which makes the fourth. a h has four degrees of thickness of air, a g also four, viz. a f two in value, and f g also two, which taken together make four. a e has also four, because a c contains two, and c d one, which is the half of a c, and in the same quality of air; and there is a whole degree above in the thin air, which all together make four. so that if a e is not double the distance a g, nor four times the distance a h, it is made equivalent by the half degree c b of thick air, which is equal to a whole degree of thin air above. this proves the truth of the proposition, that the colour h g e does not undergo any alteration by these different distances. /chap. ccxcix./--_contrary opinions in regard to objects seen afar off._ /many/ painters will represent the objects darker, in proportion as they are removed from the eye; but this cannot be true, unless the objects seen be white; as shall be examined in the next chapter. /chap. ccc./--_of the colour of objects remote from the eye._ /the/ air tinges objects with its own colour more or less in proportion to the quantity of intervening air between it and the eye, so that a dark object at the distance of two miles (or a density of air equal to such distance), will be more tinged with its colour than if only one mile distant. it is said, that, in a landscape, trees of the same species appear darker in the distance than near; this cannot be true, if they be of equal size, and divided by equal spaces. but it will be so if the first trees are scattered, and the light of the fields is seen through and between them, while the others which are farther off, are thick together, as is often the case near some river or other piece of water: in this case no space of light fields can be perceived, but the trees appear thick together, accumulating the shadow on each other. it also happens, that as the shady parts of plants are much broader than the light ones, the colour of the plants becoming darker by the multiplied shadows, is preserved, and conveyed to the eye more strongly than that of the other parts; these masses, therefore, will carry the strongest parts of their colour to a greater distance. /chap. ccci./--_of the colour of mountains._ /the/ darker the mountain is in itself, the bluer it will appear at a great distance. the highest part will be the darkest, as being more woody; because woods cover a great many shrubs, and other plants, which never receive any light. the wild plants of those woods are also naturally of a darker hue than cultivated plants; for oak, beech, fir, cypress, and pine trees are much darker than olive and other domestic plants. near the top of these mountains, where the air is thinner and purer, the darkness of the woods will make it appear of a deeper azure, than at the bottom, where the air is thicker. a plant will detach very little from the ground it stands upon, if that ground be of a colour something similar to its own; and, _vice versâ_, that part of any white object which is nearest to a dark one, will appear the whitest, and the less so as it is removed from it; and any dark object will appear darker, the nearer it is to a white one; and less so, if removed from it. /chap. cccii./--_why the colour and shape of objects are lost in some situations apparently dark, though not so in reality._ /there/ are some situations which, though light, appear dark, and in which objects are deprived both of form and colour. this is caused by the great light which pervades the intervening air; as is observable by looking in through a window at some distance from the eye, when nothing is seen but an uniform darkish shade; but if we enter the house, we shall find that room to be full of light, and soon distinguish every small object contained within that window. this difference of effect is produced by the great brightness of the air, which contracts considerably the pupil of the eye, and by so doing diminishes its power. but in dark places the pupil is enlarged, and acquires as much in strength, as it increases in size. this is proved in my second proposition of perspective[ ]. /chap. ccciii./--_various precepts in painting._ /the/ termination and shape of the parts in general are very little seen, either in great masses of light, or of shadows; but those which are situated between the extremes of light and shade are the most distinct. perspective, as far as it extends in regard to painting, is divided into three principal parts; the first consists in the diminution of size, according to distance; the second concerns the diminution of colours in such objects; and the third treats of the diminution of the perception altogether of those objects, and of the degree of precision they ought to exhibit at various distances. the azure of the sky is produced by a mixture composed of light and darkness[ ]; i say of light, because of the moist particles floating in the air, which reflect the light. by darkness, i mean the pure air, which has none of these extraneous particles to stop and reflect the rays. of this we see an example in the air interposed between the eye and some dark mountains, rendered so by the shadows of an innumerable quantity of trees; or else shaded on one side by the natural privation of the rays of the sun; this air becomes azure, but not so on the side of the mountain which is light, particularly when it is covered with snow. among objects of equal darkness and equal distance, those will appear darker that terminate upon a lighter ground, and _vice versâ_[ ]. that object which is painted with the most white and the most black, will shew greater relief than any other; for that reason i would recommend to painters to colour and dress their figures with the brightest and most lively colours; for if they are painted of a dull or obscure colour, they will detach but little, and not be much seen, when the picture is placed at some distance; because the colour of every object is obscured in the shades; and if it be represented as originally so all over, there will be but little difference between the lights and the shades, while lively colours will shew a striking difference. aerial perspective. /chap. ccciv./--_aerial perspective._ /there/ is another kind of perspective called aerial, because by the difference of the air it is easy to determine the distance of different objects, though seen on the same line; such, for instance, as buildings behind a wall, and appearing all of the same height above it. if in your picture you want to have one appear more distant than another, you must first suppose the air somewhat thick, because, as we have said before, in such a kind of air the objects seen at a great distance, as mountains are, appear blueish like the air, by means of the great quantity of air that interposes between the eye and such mountains. you will then paint the first building behind that wall of its proper colour; the next in point of distance, less distinct in the outline, and participating, in a greater degree, of the blueish colour of the air; another which you wish to send off as much farther, should be painted as much bluer; and if you wish one of them to appear five times farther removed beyond the wall, it must have five times more of the azure. by this rule these buildings which appeared all of the same size, and upon the same line, will be distinctly perceived to be of different dimensions, and at different distances. /chap. cccv./--_the parts of the smallest objects will first disappear in painting._ /of/ objects receding from the eye the smallest will be the first lost to the sight; from which it follows, that the largest will be the last to disappear. the painter, therefore, ought not to finish the parts of those objects which are very far off, but follow the rule given in the sixth book[ ]. how many, in the representation of towns, and other objects remote from the eye, express every part of the buildings in the same manner as if they were very near. it is not so in nature, because there is no sight so powerful as to perceive distinctly at any great distance the precise form of parts or extremities of objects. the painter therefore who pronounces the outlines, and the minute distinction of parts, as several have done, will not give the representation of distant objects, but by this error will make them appear exceedingly near. again, the angles of buildings in distant towns are not to be expressed (for they cannot be seen), considering that angles are formed by the concurrence of two lines into one point, and that a point has no parts; it is therefore invisible. /chap. cccvi./--_small figures ought not to be too much finished._ /objects/ appear smaller than they really are when they are distant from the eye, and because there is a great deal of air interposed, which weakens the appearance of forms, and, by a natural consequence, prevents our seeing distinctly the minute parts of such objects. it behoves the painter therefore to touch those parts slightly, in an unfinished manner; otherwise it would be against the effect of nature, whom he has chosen for his guide. for, as we said before, objects appear small on account of their great distance from the eye; that distance includes a great quantity of air, which, forming a dense body, obstructs the light, and prevents our seeing the minute parts of the objects. /chap. cccvii./--_why the air is to appear whiter as it approaches nearer to the earth._ /as/ the air is thicker nearer the earth, and becomes thinner as it rises, look, when the sun is in the east, towards the west, between the north and south, and you will perceive that the thickest and lowest air will receive more light from the sun than the thinner air, because its beams meet with more resistance. if the sky terminate low, at the end of a plain, that part of it nearest to the horizon, being seen only through the thick air, will alter and break its natural colour, and will appear whiter than over your head, where the visual ray does not pass through so much of that gross air, corrupted by earthy vapours. but if you turn towards the east, the air will be darker the nearer it approaches the earth; for the air being thicker, does not admit the light of the sun to pass so freely. /chap. cccviii./--_how to paint the distant part of a landscape._ /it/ is evident that the air is in some parts thicker and grosser than in others, particularly that nearest to the earth; and as it rises higher, it becomes thinner and more transparent. the objects which are high and large, from which you are at some distance, will be less apparent in the lower parts; because the visual ray which perceives them, passes through a long space of dense air; and it is easy to prove that the upper parts are seen by a line, which, though on the side of the eye it originates in a thick air, nevertheless, as it ascends to the highest summit of its object, terminates in an air much thinner than that of the lower parts; and for that reason the more that line or visual ray advances from the eye, it becomes, in its progress from one point to another, thinner and thinner, passing from a pure air into another which is purer; so that a painter who has mountains to represent in a landscape, ought to observe, that from one hill to another, the tops will appear always clearer than the bases. in proportion as the distance from one to another is greater, the top will be clearer; and the higher they are, the more they will shew their variety of form and colour. /chap. cccix./--_of precise and confused objects._ /the/ parts that are near in the fore-ground should be finished in a bold determined manner; but those in the distance must be unfinished, and confused in their outlines. /chap. cccx./--_of distant objects._ /that/ part of any object which is nearest to the luminary from which it receives the light, will be the lightest. the representation of an object in every degree of distance, loses degrees of its strength; that is, in proportion as the object is more remote from the eye it will be less perceivable through the air in its representation. /chap. cccxi./--_of buildings seen in a thick air._ [illustration] /that/ part of a building seen through a thick air, will appear less distinct than another part seen through a thinner air. therefore the eye, n, looking at the tower a d, will see it more confusedly in the lower degrees, but at the same time lighter; and as it ascends to the other degrees it will appear more distinct, but somewhat darker. /chap. cccxii./--_of towns and other objects seen through a thick air._ [illustration] /buildings/ or towns seen through a fog, or the air made thick by smoke or other vapours, will appear less distinct the lower they are; and, _vice versâ_, they will be sharper and more visible in proportion as they are higher. we have said, in chapter cccxxi. that the air is thicker the lower it is, and thinner as it is higher. it is demonstrated also by the cut, where the tower, a f, is seen by the eye n, in a thick air, from b to f, which is divided into four degrees, growing thicker as they are nearer the bottom. the less the quantity of air interposed between the eye and its object is, the less also will the colour of the object participate of the colour of that air. it follows, that the greater the quantity of the air interposed between the eye and the object seen, is, the more this object will participate of the colour of the air. it is demonstrated thus: n being the eye looking at the five parts of the tower a f, viz. a b c d e, i say, that if the air were of the same thickness, there would be the same proportion between the colour of the air at the bottom of the tower and the colour of the air that the same tower has at the place b, as there is in length between the line m and f. as, however, we have supposed that the air is not of equal thickness, but, on the contrary, thicker as it is lower, it follows, that the proportion by which the air tinges the different elevations of the tower b c f, exceeds the proportion of the lines; because the line m f, besides its being longer than the line s b, passes by unequal degrees through a quality of air which is unequal in thickness. /chap. cccxiii./--_of the inferior extremities of distant objects._ /the/ inferior or lower extremities of distant objects are not so apparent as the upper extremities. this is observable in mountains and hills, the tops of which detach from the sides of other mountains behind. we see the tops of these more determined and distinctly than their bases; because the upper extremities are darker, being less encompassed by thick air, which always remains in the lower regions, and makes them appear dim and confused. it is the same with trees, buildings, and other objects high up. from this effect it often happens that a high tower, seen at a great distance, will appear broad at top, and narrow at bottom; because the thin air towards the top does not prevent the angles on the sides and other different parts of the tower from being seen, as the thick air does at bottom. this is demonstrated by the seventh proposition[ ], which says, that the thick air interposed between the eye and the sun, is lighter below than above, and where the air is whiteish, it confuses the dark objects more than if such air were blueish or thinner, as it is higher up. the battlements of a fortress have the spaces between equal to the breadth of the battlement, and yet the space will appear wider; at a great distance the battlements will appear very much diminished, and being removed still farther, will disappear entirely, and the fort shew only the straight wall, as if there were no battlements. /chap. cccxiv./--_which parts of objects disappear first by being removed farther from the eye, and which preserve their appearance._ /the/ smallest parts are those which, by being removed, lose their appearance first; this may be observed in the gloss upon spherical bodies, or columns, and the slender parts of animals; as in a stag, the first sight of which does not discover its legs and horns so soon as its body, which, being broader, will be perceived from a greater distance. but the parts which disappear the very first, are the lines which describe the members, and terminate the surface and shape of bodies. /chap. cccxv./--_why objects are less distinguished in proportion as they are farther removed from the eye._ /this/ happens because the smallest parts are lost first; the second, in point of size, are also lost at a somewhat greater distance, and so on successively; the parts by degrees melting away, the perception of the object is diminished; and at last all the parts, and the whole, are entirely lost to the sight[ ]. colours also disappear on account of the density of the air interposed between the eye and the object. /chap. cccxvi./--_why faces appear dark at a distance._ /it/ is evident that the similitude of all objects placed before us, large as well as small, is perceptible to our senses through the iris of the eye. if through so small an entrance the immensity of the sky and of the earth is admitted, the faces of men (which are scarcely any thing in comparison of such large objects), being still diminished by the distance, will occupy so little of the eye, that they become almost imperceptible. besides, having to pass through a dark medium from the surface to the _retina_ in the inside, where the impression is made, the colour of faces (not being very strong, and rendered still more obscure by the darkness of the tube) when arrived at the focus appears dark. no other reason can be given on that point, except that the speck in the middle of the apple of the eye is black, and, being full of a transparent fluid like air, performs the same office as a hole in a board, which on looking into it appears black; and that those things which are seen through both a light and dark air, become confused and obscure. /chap. cccxvii./--_of towns and other buildings seen through a fog in the morning or evening._ /buildings/ seen afar off in the morning or in the evening, when there is a fog, or thick air, shew only those parts distinctly which are enlightened by the sun towards the horizon; and the parts of those buildings which are not turned towards the sun remain confused and almost of the colour of the fog. /chap. cccxviii./--_of the height of buildings seen in a fog._ /of/ a building near the eye the top parts will appear more confused than the bottom, because there is more fog between the eye and the top than at the base. and a square tower, seen at a great distance through a fog, will appear narrower at the base than at the summit. this is accounted for in chapter cccxiii. which says, that the fog will appear whiter and thicker as it approaches the ground; and as it is said before[ ], that a dark object will appear smaller in proportion as it is placed on a whiter ground. therefore the fog being whiter at bottom than at top, it follows that the tower (being darkish) will appear narrower at the base than at the summit. /chap. cccxix./--_why objects which are high, appear darker at a distance than those which are low, though the fog be uniform, and of equal thickness._ /amongst/ objects situated in a fog, thick air, vapour, smoke, or at a distance, the highest will be the most distinctly seen: and amongst objects equal in height, that placed in the darkest fog, will be most confused and dark. as it happens to the eye h, looking at a b c, three towers of equal height; it sees the top c as low as r, in two degrees of thickness; and the top b, in one degree only; therefore the top c will appear darker than the top of the tower b. [illustration] /chap. cccxx./--_of objects seen in a fog._ /objects/ seen through a fog will appear larger than they are in reality, because the aerial perspective does not agree with the linear, viz. the colour does not agree with the magnitude of the object[ ]; such a fog being similar to the thickness of air interposed between the eye and the horizon in fine weather. but in this case the fog is near the eye, and though the object be also near, it makes it appear as if it were as far off as the horizon; where a great tower would appear no bigger than a man placed near the eye. /chap. cccxxi./--_of those objects which the eyes perceive through a mist or thick air._ /the/ nearer the air is to water, or to the ground, the thicker it becomes. it is proved by the nineteenth proposition of the second book[ ], that bodies rise in proportion to their weight; and it follows, that a light body will rise higher than another which is heavy. /chap. cccxxii./--_miscellaneous observations._ /of/ different objects equal in magnitude, form, shade, and distance from the eye, those will appear the smaller that are placed on the lighter ground. this is exemplified by observing the sun when seen behind a tree without leaves; all the ramifications seen against that great light are so diminished that they remain almost invisible. the same may be observed of a pole placed between the sun and the eye. parallel bodies placed upright, and seen through a fog, will appear larger at top than at bottom. this is proved by the ninth proposition[ ], which says, that a fog, or thick air, penetrated by the rays of the sun, will appear whiter the lower they are. things seen afar off will appear out of proportion, because the parts which are the lightest will send their image with stronger rays than the parts which are darkest. i have seen a woman dressed in black, with a white veil over her head, which appeared twice as large as her shoulders covered with black. miscellaneous observations. landscape. /chap. cccxxiii./--_of objects seen at a distance._ /any/ dark object will appear lighter when removed to some distance from the eye. it follows, by the contrary reason, that a dark object will appear still darker when brought nearer to the eye. therefore the inferior parts of any object whatever, placed in thick air, will appear farther from the eye at the bottom than at the top; for that reason the lower parts of a mountain appear farther off than its top, which is in reality the farthest. /chap. cccxxiv./--_of a town seen through a thick air._ /the/ eye which, looking downwards, sees a town immersed in very thick air, will perceive the top of the buildings darker, but more distinct than the bottom. the tops detach against a light ground, because they are seen against the low and thick air which is beyond them. this is a consequence of what has been explained in the preceding chapter. /chap. cccxxv./--_how to draw a landscape._ /contrive/ that the trees in your landscape be half in shadow and half in the light. it is better to represent them as when the sun is veiled with thin clouds, because in that case the trees receive a general light from the sky, and are darkest in those parts which are nearest to the earth. /chap. cccxxvi./--_of the green of the country._ /of/ the greens seen in the country, that of trees and other plants will appear darker than that of fields and meadows, though they may happen to be of the same quality. /chap. cccxxvii./--_what greens will appear most of a blueish cast._ /those/ greens will appear to approach nearest to blue which are of the darkest shade when remote. this is proved by the seventh proposition[ ], which says, that blue is composed of black and white seen at a great distance. /chap. cccxxviii./--_the colour of the sea from different aspects._ /when/ the sea is a little ruffled it has no sameness of colour; for whoever looks at it from the shore, will see it of a dark colour, in a greater degree as it approaches towards the horizon, and will perceive also certain lights moving slowly on the surface like a flock of sheep. whoever looks at the sea from on board a ship, at a distance from the land, sees it blue. near the shore it appears darkish, on account of the colour of the earth reflected by the water, as in a looking-glass; but at sea the azure of the air is reflected to the eye by the waves in the same manner. /chap. cccxxix./--_why the same prospect appears larger at some times than at others._ /objects/ in the country appear sometimes larger and sometimes smaller than they actually are, from the circumstance of the air interposed between the eye and the horizon, happening to be either thicker or thinner than usual. of two horizons equally distant from the eye, that which is seen through the thicker air will appear farther removed; and the other will seem nearer, being seen through a thinner air. objects of unequal size, but equally distant, will appear equal if the air which is between them and the eye be of proportionable inequality of thickness, viz. if the thickest air be interposed between the eye and the smallest of the objects. this is proved by the perspective of colours[ ], which is so deceitful that a mountain which would appear small by the compasses, will seem larger than a small hill near the eye; as a finger placed near the eye will cover a large mountain far off. /chap. cccxxx./--_of smoke._ /smoke/ is more transparent, though darker towards the extremities of its waves than in the middle. it moves in a more oblique direction in proportion to the force of the wind which impels it. different kinds of smoke vary in colour, as the causes that produce them are various. smoke never produces determined shadows, and the extremities are lost as they recede from their primary cause. objects behind it are less apparent in proportion to the thickness of the smoke. it is whiter nearer its origin, and bluer towards its termination. fire appears darker, the more smoke there is interposed between it and the eye. where smoke is farther distant, the objects are less confused by it. it encumbers and dims all the landscape like a fog. smoke is seen to issue from different places, with flames at the origin, and the most dense part of it. the tops of mountains will be more seen than the lower parts, as in a fog. /chap. cccxxxi./--_in what part smoke is lightest._ /smoke/ which is seen between the sun and the eye will be lighter and more transparent than any other in the landscape. the same is observed of dust, and of fog; while, if you place yourself between the sun and those objects, they will appear dark. /chap. cccxxxii./--_of the sun-beams passing through the openings of clouds._ /the/ sun-beams which penetrate the openings interposed between clouds of various density and form, illuminate all the places over which they pass, and tinge with their own colour all the dark places that are behind: which dark places are only seen in the intervals between the rays. /chap. cccxxxiii./--_of the beginning of rain._ /when/ the rain begins to fall, it tarnishes and darkens the air, giving it a dull colour, but receives still on one side a faint light from the sun, and is shaded on the other side, as we observe in clouds; till at last it darkens also the earth, depriving it entirely of the light of the sun. objects seen through the rain appear confused and of undetermined shape, but those which are near will be more distinct. it is observable, that on the side where the rain is shaded, objects will be more clearly distinguished than where it receives the light; because on the shady side they lose only their principal lights, whilst on the other they lose both their lights and shadows, the lights mixing with the light part of the rain, and the shadows are also considerably weakened by it. /chap. cccxxxiv./--_the seasons are to be observed._ /in/ autumn you will represent the objects according as it is more or less advanced. at the beginning of it the leaves of the oldest branches only begin to fade, more or less, however, according as the plant is situated in a fertile or barren country; and do not imitate those who represent trees of every kind (though at equal distance) with the same quality of green. endeavour to vary the colour of meadows, stones, trunks of trees, and all other objects, as much as possible, for nature abounds in variety _ad infinitum_. /chap. cccxxxv./--_the difference of climates to be observed._ /near/ the sea-shore, and in southern parts, you will be careful not to represent the winter season by the appearance of trees and fields, as you would do in places more inland, and in northern countries, except when these are covered with ever-greens, which shoot afresh all the year round. /chap. cccxxxvi./--_of dust._ /dust/ becomes lighter the higher it rises, and appears darker the less it is raised, when it is seen between the eye and the sun. /chap. cccxxxvii./--_how to represent the wind._ /in/ representing the effect of the wind, besides the bending of trees, and leaves twisting the wrong side upwards, you will also express the small dust whirling upwards till it mixes in a confused manner with the air. /chap. cccxxxviii./--_of a wilderness._ /those/ trees and shrubs which are by their nature more loaded with small branches, ought to be touched smartly in the shadows, but those which have larger foliage, will cause broader shadows. /chap. cccxxxix./--_of the horizon seen in the water._ /by/ the sixth proposition[ ], the horizon will be seen in the water as in a looking-glass, on that side which is opposite the eye. and if the painter has to represent a spot covered with water, let him remember that the colour of it cannot be either lighter or darker than that of the neighbouring objects. /chap. cccxl./--_of the shadow of bridges on the surface of the water._ /the/ shadows of bridges can never be seen on the surface of the water, unless it should have lost its transparent and reflecting quality, and become troubled and muddy; because clear water being polished and smooth on its surface, the image of the bridge is formed in it as in a looking-glass, and reflected in all the points situated between the eye and the bridge at equal angles; and even the air is seen under the arches. these circumstances cannot happen when the water is muddy, because it does not reflect the objects any longer, but receives the shadow of the bridge in the same manner as a dusty road would receive it. /chap. cccxli./--_how a painter ought to put in practice the perspective of colours._ /to/ put in practice that perspective which teaches the alteration, the lessening, and even the entire loss of the very essence of colours, you must take some points in the country at the distance of about sixty-five yards[ ] from each other; as trees, men, or some other remarkable objects. in regard to the first tree, you will take a glass, and having fixed that well, and also your eye, draw upon it, with the greatest accuracy, the tree you see through it; then put it a little on one side, and compare it closely with the natural one, and colour it, so that in shape and colour it may resemble the original, and that by shutting one eye they may both appear painted, and at the same distance. the same rule may be applied to the second and third tree at the distance you have fixed. these studies will be very useful if managed with judgment, where they may be wanted in the offscape of a picture. i have observed that the second tree is less by four fifths than the first, at the distance of thirteen yards. /chap. cccxlii./--_various precepts in painting._ /the/ superficies of any opake body participates of the colour of the transparent medium interposed between the eye and such body, in a greater or less degree, in proportion to the density of such medium and the space it occupies. the outlines of opake bodies will be less apparent in proportion as those bodies are farther distant from the eye. that part of the opake body will be the most shaded, or lightest, which is nearest to the body that shades it, or gives it light. the surface of any opake body participates more or less of the colour of that body which gives it light, in proportion as the latter is more or less remote, or more or less strong. objects seen between lights and shadows will appear to have greater relievo than those which are placed wholly in the light, or wholly in shadow. when you give strength and precision to objects seen at a great distance, they will appear as if they were very near. endeavour that your imitation be such as to give a just idea of distances. if the object in nature appear confused in the outlines, let the same be observed in your picture. the outlines of distant objects appear undetermined and confused, for two reasons: the first is, that they come to the eye by so small an angle, and are therefore so much diminished, that they strike the sight no more than small objects do, which though near can hardly be distinguished, such as the nails of the fingers, insects, and other similar things: the second is, that between the eye and the distant objects there is so much air interposed, that it becomes thick; and, like a veil, tinges the shadows with its own whiteness, and turns them from a dark colour to another between black and white, such as azure. although, by reason of the great distance, the appearance of many things is lost, yet those things which receive the light from the sun will be more discernible, while the rest remain enveloped in confused shadows. and because the air is thicker near the ground, the things which are lower will appear confused; and _vice versâ_. when the sun tinges the clouds on the horizon with red, those objects which, on account of their distance, appear blueish, will participate of that redness, and will produce a mixture between the azure and red, which renders the prospect lively and pleasant; all the opake bodies which receive that light will appear distinct, and of a reddish colour, and the air, being transparent, will be impregnated with it, and appear of the colour of lilies[ ]. the air which is between the earth and the sun when it rises or sets, will always dim the objects it surrounds, more than the air any where else, because it is whiter. it is not necessary to mark strongly the outlines of any object which is placed upon another. it ought to detach of itself. if the outline or extremity of a white and curved surface terminate upon another white body, it will have a shade at that extremity, darker than any part of the light; but if against a dark object, such outline, or extremity, will be lighter than any part of the light. those objects which are most different in colour, will appear the most detached from each other. those parts of objects which first disappear in the distance, are extremities similar in colour, and ending one upon the other, as the extremities of an oak tree upon another oak similar to it. the next to disappear at a greater distance are, objects of mixed colours, when they terminate one upon the other, as trees, ploughed fields, walls, heaps of rubbish, or of stones. the last extremities of bodies that vanish are those which, being light, terminate upon a dark ground; or being dark, upon a light ground. of objects situated above the eye, at equal heights, the farthest removed from the eye will appear the lowest; and if situated below the eye, the nearest to it will appear the lowest. the parallel lines situated sidewise will concur to one point[ ]. those objects which are near a river, or a lake, in the distant part of a landscape, are less apparent and distinct than those that are remote from them. of bodies of equal density, those that are nearest to the eye will appear thinnest, and the most remote thickest. a large eye-ball will see objects larger than a small one. the experiment may be made by looking at any of the celestial bodies, through a pin-hole, which being capable of admitting but a portion of its light, it seems to diminish and lose of its size in the same proportion as the pin-hole is smaller than the usual apparent size of the object. a thick air interposed between the eye and any object, will render the outlines of such object undetermined and confused, and make it appear of a larger size than it is in reality; because the linear perspective does not diminish the angle which conveys the object to the eye. the aerial perspective carries it farther off, so that the one removes it from the eye, while the other preserves its magnitude[ ]. when the sun is in the west the vapours of the earth fall down again and thicken the air, so that objects not enlightened by the sun remain dark and confused, but those which receive its light will be tinged yellow and red, according to the sun's appearance on the horizon. again, those that receive its light are very distinct, particularly public buildings and houses in towns and villages, because their shadows are dark, and it seems as if those parts which are plainly seen were coming out of confused and undetermined foundations, because at that time every thing is of one and the same colour, except what is enlightened by the sun[ ]. any object receiving the light from the sun, receives also the general light; so that two kinds of shadows are produced: the darkest of the two is that which happens to have its central line directed towards the centre of the sun. the central lines of the primitive and secondary lights are the same as the central lines of the primitive and secondary shadows. the setting sun is a beautiful and magnificent object when it tinges with its colour all the great buildings of towns, villages, and the top of high trees in the country. all below is confused and almost lost in a tender and general mass; for, being only enlightened by the air, the difference between the shadows and the lights is small, and for that reason it is not much detached. but those that are high are touched by the rays of the sun, and, as was said before, are tinged with its colour; the painter therefore ought to take the same colour with which he has painted the sun, and employ it in all those parts of his work which receive its light. it also happens very often, that a cloud will appear dark without receiving any shadow from a separate cloud, according to the situation of the eye; because it will see only the shady part of the one, while it sees both the enlightened and shady parts of the other. of two objects at equal height, that which is the farthest off will appear the lowest. observe the first cloud in the cut, though it is lower than the second, it appears as if it were higher. this is demonstrated by the section of the pyramidical rays of the low cloud at m a, and the second (which is higher) at n m, below m a. this happens also when, on account of the rays of the setting or rising sun, a dark cloud appears higher than another which is light. [illustration] /chap. cccxliii./--_the brilliancy of a landscape._ /the/ vivacity and brightness of colours in a landscape will never bear any comparison with a landscape in nature when illumined by the sun, unless the picture be placed so as to receive the same light from the sun itself. miscellaneous observations. /chap. cccxliv./--_why a painted object does not appear so far distant as a real one, though they be conveyed to the eye by equal angles._ [illustration] /if/ a house be painted on the pannel b c, at the apparent distance of one mile, and by the side of it a real one be perceived at the true distance of one mile also; which objects are so disposed, that the pannel, or picture, a c, intersects the pyramidical rays with the same opening of angles; yet these two objects will never appear of the same size, nor at the same distance, if seen with both eyes[ ]. /chap. cccxlv./--_how to draw a figure standing upon its feet, to appear forty braccia_[ ] _high, in a space of twenty braccia, with proportionate members._ /in/ this, as in any other case, the painter is not to mind what kind of surface he has to work upon; particularly if his painting is to be seen from a determined point, such as a window, or any other opening. because the eye is not to attend to the evenness or roughness of the wall, but only to what is to be represented as beyond that wall; such as a landscape, or any thing else. nevertheless a curved surface, such as f r g, would be the best, because it has no angles. [illustration] /chap. cccxlvi./--_how to draw a figure twenty-four braccia high, upon a wall twelve braccia high._ plate xxii. /draw/ upon part of the wall m n, half the figure you mean to represent; and the other half upon the cove above, m r. but before that, it will be necessary to draw upon a flat board, or a paper, the profile of the wall and cove, of the same shape and dimension, as that upon which you are to paint. then draw also the profile of your figure, of whatever size you please, by the side of it; draw all the lines to the point f, and where they intersect the profile m r, you will have the dimensions of your figure as they ought to be drawn upon the real spot. you will find, that on the straight part of the wall m n, it will come of its proper form, because the going off perpendicularly will diminish it naturally; but that part which comes upon the curve will be diminished upon your drawing. the whole must be traced afterwards upon the real spot, which is similar to m n. this is a good and safe method. [illustration: _page _. _chap. _. _plate _. _london, published by j. taylor high holborn._] /chap. cccxlvii./--_why, on measuring a face, and then painting it of the same size, it will appear larger than the natural one._ a b is the breadth of the space, or of the head, and it is placed on the paper at the distance c f, where the cheeks are, and it would have to stand back all a c, and then the temples would be carried to the distance o r of the lines a f, b f; so that there is the difference c o and r d. it follows that the line c f, and the line d f, in order to become shorter[ ], have to go and find the paper where the whole height is drawn, that is to say, the lines f a, and f b, where the true size is; and so it makes the difference, as i have said, of c o, and r d. [illustration] /chap. cccxlviii./--_why the most perfect imitation of nature will not appear to have the same relief as nature itself._ /if/ nature is seen with two eyes, it will be impossible to imitate it upon a picture so as to appear with the same relief, though the lines, the lights, shades, and colour, be perfectly imitated[ ]. it is proved thus: let the eyes a b, look at the object c, with the concurrence of both the central visual rays a c and b c. i say, that the sides of the visual angles (which contain these central rays) will see the space g d, behind the object c. the eye a will see all the space fd, and the eye b all the space g e. therefore the two eyes will see behind the object c all the space f e; for which reason that object c becomes as it were transparent, according to the definition of transparent bodies, behind which nothing is hidden. this cannot happen if an object were seen with one eye only, provided it be larger than the eye. from all that has been said, we may conclude, that a painted object, occupying all the space it has behind, leaves no possible way to see any part of the ground, which it covers entirely by its own circumference[ ]. [illustration] /chap. cccxlix./--_universality of painting; a precept._ /a painter/ cannot be said to aim at universality in the art, unless he love equally every species of that art. for instance, if he delight only in landscape, his can be esteemed only as a simple investigation; and, as our friend botticello[ ] remarks, is but a vain study; since, by throwing a sponge impregnated with various colours against a wall, it leaves some spots upon it, which may appear like a landscape. it is true also, that a variety of compositions may be seen in such spots, according to the disposition of mind with which they are considered; such as heads of men, various animals, battles, rocky scenes, seas, clouds, woods, and the like. it may be compared to the sound of bells, which may seem to say whatever we choose to imagine. in the same manner also, those spots may furnish hints for compositions, though they do not teach us how to finish any particular part; and the imitators of them are but sorry landscape-painters. /chap. cccl./--_in what manner the mirror is the true master of painters._ /when/ you wish to know if your picture be like the object you mean to represent, have a flat looking-glass, and place it so as to reflect the object you have imitated, and compare carefully the original with the copy. you see upon a flat mirror the representation of things which appear real; painting is the same. they are both an even superficies, and both give the idea of something beyond their superficies. since you are persuaded that the looking-glass, by means of lines and shades, gives you the representation of things as if they were real; you being in possession of colours which in their different lights and shades are stronger than those of the looking-glass, may certainly, if you employ the rules with judgment, give to your picture the same appearance of nature as you admire in the looking-glass. or rather, your picture will be like nature itself seen in a large looking-glass. this looking-glass (being your master) will shew you the lights and shades of any object whatever. amongst your colours there are some lighter than the lightest part of your model, and also some darker than the strongest shades; from which it follows, that you ought to represent nature as seen in your looking-glass, when you look at it with one eye only; because both eyes surround the objects too much, particularly when they are small[ ]. /chap. cccli./--_which painting is to be esteemed the best._ /that/ painting is the most commendable which has the greatest conformity to what is meant to be imitated. this kind of comparison will often put to shame a certain description of painters, who pretend they can mend the works of nature; as they do, for instance, when they pretend to represent a child twelve months old, giving him eight heads in height, when nature in its best proportion admits but five. the breadth of the shoulders also, which is equal to the head, they make double, giving to a child a year old, the proportions of a man of thirty. they have so often practised, and seen others practise these errors, that they have converted them into habit, which has taken so deep a root in their corrupted judgment, that they persuade themselves that nature and her imitators are wrong in not following their own practice[ ]. /chap. ccclii./--_of the judgment to be made of a painter's work._ /the/ first thing to be considered is, whether the figures have their proper relief, according to their respective situations, and the light they are in: that the shadows be not the same at the extremities of the groups, as in the middle; because being surrounded by shadows, or shaded only on one side, produce very different effects. the groups in the middle are surrounded by shadows from the other figures, which are between them and the light. those which are at the extremities have the shadows only on one side, and receive the light on the other. the strongest and smartest touches of shadows are to be in the interstice between the figures of the principal group where the light cannot penetrate[ ]. secondly, that by the order and disposition of the figures they appear to be accommodated to the subject, and the true representation of the history in question. thirdly, that the figures appear alive to the occasion which brought them together, with expressions suited to their attitudes. /chap. cccliii./--_how to make an imaginary animal appear natural._ /it/ is evident that it will be impossible to invent any animal without giving it members, and these members must individually resemble those of some known animal. if you wish, therefore, to make a chimera, or imaginary animal, appear natural (let us suppose a serpent); take the head of a mastiff, the eyes of a cat, the ears of a porcupine, the mouth of a hare, the brows of a lion, the temples of an old cock, and the neck of a sea tortoise[ ]. /chap. cccliv./--_painters are not to imitate one another._ /one/ painter ought never to imitate the manner of any other; because in that case he cannot be called the child of nature, but the grandchild. it is always best to have recourse to nature, which is replete with such abundance of objects, than to the productions of other masters, who learnt every thing from her. /chap. ccclv./--_how to judge of one's own work._ /it/ is an acknowledged fact, that we perceive errors in the works of others more readily than in our own. a painter, therefore, ought to be well instructed in perspective, and acquire a perfect knowledge of the dimensions of the human body; he should also be a good architect, at least as far as concerns the outward shape of buildings, with their different parts; and where he is deficient, he ought not to neglect taking drawings from nature. it will be well also to have a looking-glass by him, when he paints, to look often at his work in it, which being seen the contrary way, will appear as the work of another hand, and will better shew his faults. it will be useful also to quit his work often, and take some relaxation, that his judgment may be clearer at his return; for too great application and sitting still is sometimes the cause of many gross errors. /chap. ccclvi./--_of correcting errors which you discover._ /remember/, that when, by the exercise of your own judgment, or the observation of others, you discover any errors in your work, you immediately set about correcting them, lest, in exposing your works to the public, you expose your defects also. admit not any self-excuse, by persuading yourself that you shall retrieve your character, and that by some succeeding work you shall make amends for your shameful negligence; for your work does not perish as soon as it is out of your hands, like the sound of music, but remains a standing monument of your ignorance. if you excuse yourself by saying that you have not time for the study necessary to form a great painter, having to struggle against necessity, you yourself are only to blame; for the study of what is excellent is food both for mind and body. how many philosophers, born to great riches, have given them away, that they might not be retarded in their pursuits! /chap. ccclvii./--_the best place for looking at a picture._ /let/ us suppose, that a b is the picture, receiving the light from d; i say, that whoever is placed between c and e, will see the picture very badly, particularly if it be painted in oil, or varnished; because it will shine, and will appear almost of the nature of a looking-glass. for these reasons, the nearer you go towards c, the less you will be able to see, because of the light from the window upon the picture, sending its reflection to that point. but if you place yourself between e d, you may conveniently see the picture, and the more so as you draw nearer to the point d, because that place is less liable to be struck by the reflected rays. [illustration] /chap. ccclviii./--_of judgment._ /there/ is nothing more apt to deceive us than our own judgment, in deciding on our own works; and we should derive more advantage from having our faults pointed out by our enemies, than by hearing the opinions of our friends, because they are too much like ourselves, and may deceive us as much as our own judgment. /chap. ccclix./--_of employment anxiously wished for by painters._ /and/ you, painter, who are desirous of great practice, understand, that if you do not rest it on the good foundation of nature, you will labour with little honour and less profit; and if you do it on a good ground your works will be many and good, to your great honour and advantage. /chap. ccclx./--_advice to painters._ /a painter/ ought to study universal nature, and reason much within himself on all he sees, making use of the most excellent parts that compose the species of every object before him. his mind will by this method be like a mirror, reflecting truly every object placed before it, and become, as it were, a second nature. /chap. ccclxi./--_of statuary._ /to/ execute a figure in marble, you must first make a model of it in clay, or plaster, and when it is finished, place it in a square case, equally capable of receiving the block of marble intended to be shaped like it. have some peg-like sticks to pass through holes made in the sides, and all round the case; push them in till every one touches the model, marking what remains of the sticks outwards with ink, and making a countermark to every stick and its hole, so that you may at pleasure replace them again. then having taken out the model, and placed the block of marble in its stead, take so much out of it, till all the pegs go in at the same holes to the marks you had made. to facilitate the work, contrive your frame so that every part of it, separately, or all together, may be lifted up, except the bottom, which must remain under the marble. by this method you may chop it off with great facility[ ]. /chap. ccclxii./--_on the measurement and division of statues into parts._ /divide/ the head into twelve parts, each part into twelve degrees, each degree into twelve minutes, and these minutes into seconds[ ]. /chap. ccclxiii./--_a precept for the painter._ /the/ painter who entertains no doubt of his own ability, will attain very little. when the work succeeds beyond the judgment, the artist acquires nothing; but when the judgment is superior to the work, he never ceases improving, if the love of gain do not retard his progress. /chap. ccclxiv./--_on the judgment of painters._ /when/ the work is equal to the knowledge and judgment of the painter, it is a bad sign; and when it surpasses the judgment, it is still worse, as is the case with those who wonder at having succeeded so well. but when the judgment surpasses the work, it is a perfectly good sign; and the young painter who possesses that rare disposition, will, no doubt, arrive at great perfection. he will produce few works, but they will be such as to fix the admiration of every beholder. /chap. ccclxv./--_that a man ought not to trust to himself, but ought to consult nature._ /whoever/ flatters himself that he can retain in his memory all the effects of nature, is deceived, for our memory is not so capacious; therefore consult nature for every thing. the end. books _printed for j. taylor._ . sketches for country houses, villas, and rural dwellings; calculated for persons of moderate income, and for comfortable retirement. also some designs for cottages, which may be constructed of the simplest materials; with plans and general estimates. by /john plaw/. elegantly engraved in aquatinta on forty-two plates. quarto, _l._ _s._ _d._ in boards. . ferme ornÉe, or rural improvements; a series of domestic and ornamental designs, suited to parks, plantations, rides, walks, rivers, farms, &c. consisting of fences, paddock-houses, a bath, dog-kennels, pavilions, farm-yards, fishing-houses, sporting-boxes, shooting-lodges, single and double cottages, &c. calculated for landscape and picturesque effects. by /john plaw/, architect. engraved in aquatinta, on thirty-eight plates, with appropriate scenery, plans, and explanations. quarto; in boards, _l._ _s._ _d._ . rural architecture, or designs from the simple cottage to the decorated villa, including some which have been executed. by /john plaw/. on sixty-two plates, with scenery, in aquatinta. half-bound, _l._ _s._ . hints for dwellings, consisting of original designs for cottages, farm-houses, villas, &c. plain and ornamental; with plans to each, in which strict attention is paid, to unite convenience and elegance with economy. including some designs for town-houses. by /d. laing/, architect and surveyor. elegantly engraved on thirty-four plates in aquatinta, with appropriate scenery, quarto, _l._ _s._ in boards. . sketches for cottages, villas, &c. with their plans and appropriate scenery. by /john soane/. to which are added, six designs for improving and embellishing grounds, with explanations by an amateur, on fifty-four plates, elegantly engraved in aquatinta; folio, _l._ _s._ _d._ half-bound. . the architect and builder's miscellany, or pocket library; containing original picturesque designs, in architecture, for cottages, farm, country, and town houses, public buildings, temples, green-houses, bridges, lodges, and gates for entrances to parks and pleasure-grounds, stables, monumental tombs, garden seats, &c. by /charles middleton/, architect; on sixty plates, octavo, coloured, _l._ _s._ bound. . designs for gates and rails, suitable to parks, pleasure-grounds, balconies, &c. also some designs for trellis work, on twenty-seven plates. by /c. middleton/, _s._ octavo. printed by /s. gosnell/, little queen street, holborn, london. footnotes: [footnote i : vasari, vite de pittori, edit. della valle, vo. siena , vol. v. p. . du fresne, in the life prefixed to the italian editions of this treatise on painting. venturi, essai sur les ouvrages de leonard de vinci, to. paris, , p. , .] [footnote i : venturi, p. .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne. vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne. vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne. vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : it is impossible in a translation to preserve the jingle between the name vinci, and the latin verb _vincit_ which occurs in the original.] [footnote i : du fresne, vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, and .] [footnote i : lomazzo, trattato della pittura, p. .] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : vasari, . lettere pittoriche, vol. ii. p. .] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : suppl. to life of l. da vinci, in vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : venturi, ; who mentions also, that leonardo at this time constructed a machine for the theatre.] [footnote i : venturi, p. .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : de piles, in the life of leonardo. see lettere pittoriche, vol. ii. p. .] [footnote i : lettere pittoriche, vol. ii. p. .] [footnote i : du fresne. lettere pitt. vol. ii. p. .] [footnote i : vasari, , in a note.] [footnote i : let. pit. vol. ii. .] [footnote i : additions to the life in vasari, . my worthy friend, mr. rigaud, who has more than once seen the original picture, gives this account of it: "the cutting of the wall for the sake of opening a door, was no doubt the effect of ignorance and barbarity, but it did not materially injure the painting; it only took away some of the feet under the table, entirely shaded. the true value of this picture consists in what was seen above the table. the door is only four feet wide, and cuts off only about two feet of the lower part of the picture. more damage has been done by subsequent quacks, who, within my own time, have undertaken to repair it."] [footnote i : additions to the life in vasari, .] [footnote i : copies existing in milan or elsewhere. no. . that in the refectory of the fathers osservanti della pace: it was painted on the wall in , by gio. paolo lomazzo. . another, copied on board, as a picture in the refectory of the chierici regolari di s. paolo, in their college of st. barnabas. this is perhaps the most beautiful that can be seen, only that it is not finished lower than the knees, and is in size about one eighth of the original. . another on canvas, which was first in the church of s. fedele, by agostino s. agostino, for the refectory of the jesuits: since their suppression, it exists in that of the orfani a s. pietro, in gessate. . another of the said lomazzo's, painted on the wall in the monastery maggiore, very fine, and in good preservation. . another on canvas, by an uncertain artist, with only the heads and half the bodies, in the ambrosian library. . another in the certosa di pavia, done by marco d'ogionno, a scholar of leonardo's, on the wall. . another in the possession of the monks girolamini di castellazzo fuori di porta lodovica, of the hand of the same ogionno. . another copy of this last supper in the refectory of the fathers of st. benedict of mantua. it was painted by girolamo monsignori, a dominican friar, who studied much the works of leonardo, and copied them excellently. . another in the refectory of the fathers osservanti di lugano, of the hand of bernardino lovino; a valuable work, and much esteemed as well for its neatness and perfect imitation of the original, as for its own integrity, and being done by a scholar of leonardo's. . a beautiful drawing of this famous picture is, or was lately, in the possession of sig. giuseppe casati, king at arms. supposed to be either the original design by leonardo himself, or a sketch by one of his best scholars, to be used in painting some copy on a wall, or on canvas. it is drawn with a pen, on paper larger than usual, with a mere outline heightened with bistre. . another in the refectory of the fathers girolamini, in the monastery of st. laurence, in the escurial in spain. it was presented to king philip ii. while he was in valentia; and by his order placed in the said room where the monks dine, and is believed to be by some able scholar of leonardo. . another in st. germain d'auxerre, in france; ordered by king francis i. when he came to milan, and found he could not remove the original. there is reason to think this the work of bernardino lovino. . another in france, in the castle of escovens, in the possession of the constable montmorency. the original drawing for this picture is in the possession of his britannic majesty. see the life prefixed to mr. chamberlaine's publication of the designs of leonardo da vinci, p. . an engraving from it is among those which mr. rogers published from drawings.] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, , , , .] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : supp. in vasari, .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, , .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, . du fresne.] [footnote i : venturi, . suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : venturi, p. .] [footnote i : sect. . of the descent of heavy bodies, combined with the rotation of the earth. . of the earth divided into particles. . of the earth and the moon. . of the action of the sun on the sea. . of the ancient state of the earth. . of the flame and the air. . of statics. . of the descent of heavy bodies by inclined planes. . of the water which one draws from a canal. . of whirlpools. . of vision. . of military architecture. . of some instruments. . two chymical processes. . of method.] [footnote i : see the life prefixed to mr. chamberlaine's publication of the designs of leonardo da vinci, p. .] [footnote i : fac similes of some of the pages of the original work, are also to be found in this publication.] [footnote i : p. .] [footnote i : "j. a. mazenta died in . he gave the designs for the fortifications of livorno in tuscany; and has written on the method of rendering the adda navigable. argelati script. mediol. vol. ii." venturi, .] [footnote i : "we shall see afterwards that this man was leonardo's heir: he had carried back these writings and drawings from france to milan." venturi, .] [footnote i : "this was in ." venturi, p. .] [footnote i : "j. amb. mazenta made himself a barnabite in ." venturi, .] [footnote i : "the drawings and books of vinci are come for the most part into the hands of pompeo leoni, who has obtained them from the son of francisco melzo. there are some also of these books in the possession of guy mazenta lomazzo, tempio della pittura, in ^o, milano , page ." venturi, .] [footnote i : "it is volume c. there is printed on it in gold, _vidi mazenta patritii mediolanensis liberalitate an. _." venturi, .] [footnote i : "he died in ." venturi, .] [footnote i : "this is volume n, in the national library. it is in folio, of a large size, and has leaves: it bears on the cover this title: _disegni di macchine delle arti secreti et altre cose di leonardo da vinci, raccolte da pompeo leoni_." venturi, .] [footnote i : p. .] [footnote i : "a memorial is preserved of this liberality by an inscription." venturi, .] [footnote i : "this is marked at p. of the same volume." venturi, .] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : "lettere pittoriche, vol. ii." venturi, .] [footnote i : p. . his authority is gerli, disegni del vinci, milano, , fol.] [footnote i : p. .] [footnote i : it is said, that this compilation is now in the albani library. venturi, .] [footnote i : the sketches to illustrate his meaning, were probably in leonardo's original manuscripts so slight as to require that more perfect drawings should be made from them before they could be fit for publication.] [footnote i : the identical manuscript of this treatise, formerly belonging to mons. chardin, one of the two copies from which the edition in italian was printed, is now the property of mr. edwards of pall mall. judging by the chapters as there numbered, it would appear to contain more than the printed edition; but this is merely owing to the circumstance that some of those which in the manuscript stand as distinct chapters, are in the printed edition consolidated together.] [footnote i : vasari, p. , gives the initials n. n.] [footnote i : which venturi, p. , professes his intention of publishing from the manuscript collections of leonardo.] [footnote i : bibliotheca smithiana, to. ven. . venturi, .] [footnote i : libreria nani, to. ven. . venturi, .] [footnote i : gori simbolæ literar. flor. , vol. viii. p. . venturi, .] [footnote i : see his traité des pratiques geometrales et perspectives, vo. paris, .] [footnote i : p. .] [footnote i : p. .] [footnote i : he observed criminals when led to execution (lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. ; on the authority of lomazzo); noted down any countenance that struck him (vasari, ); in forming the animal for the shield, composed it of parts selected from different real animals (vasari, p. ); and when he wanted characteristic heads, resorted to nature (lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. ). all which methods are recommended by him in the course of the treatise on painting.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : venturi, , in a note.] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : additions to the life in vasari, p. .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : additions to the life in vasari, .] [footnote i : lett. pitt. vol. ii. .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : vasari, . in a note in lettere pittoriche, vol. ii. p. , on the before cited letter of mariette, it is said that bernardino lovino was a scholar of leonardo, and had in his possession the carton of st. ann, which leonardo had made for a picture which he was to paint in the church della nunziata, at florence. francis i. got possession of it, and was desirous that leonardo should execute it when he came into france, but without effect. it is known it was not done, as this carton went to milan. lomazzo, lib. ii. cap. . lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. , in a note. a carton similar to this is now in the library of the royal academy, at london.] [footnote i : vasari, p. , in a note.] [footnote i : vasari, . in the suppl. to the life, vasari, , the subject painted in the council-chamber at florence is said to be the wonderful battle against attila.] [footnote i : du fresne. vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : additions to the life in vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : additions to the life in vasari, .] [footnote i : lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. .] [footnote i : lett. pitt. vol. ii. p. .] [footnote i : additions to the life in vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : lett. pitt. vol. ii. .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : the datary is the pope's officer who nominates to vacant benefices.] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne. additions in vasari, .] [footnote i : lett. pitt. vol. ii. .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne. additions to vasari, .] [footnote i : additions to vasari, .] [footnote i : additions to vasari, .] [footnote i : additions to vasari, .] [footnote i : additions in vasari, .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : additions to vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, . in p. , it is said in a note, that there is in the medici gallery an adoration of the magi, by leonardo, unfinished, which may probably be the picture of which vasari speaks.] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : lett. pitt. vol. ii. . the real fact is known to be, that it was engraven from a drawing made by rubens himself, who, as i am informed, had in it altered the back-ground.] [footnote i : lett. pitt. vol. ii. .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : venturi, .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid. .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : du fresne. add. to the life in vasari, .] [footnote i : suppl. in vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne. add. to vasari, .] [footnote i : du fresne.] [footnote i : add. in vasari, .] [footnote i : add. to vasari, .] [footnote i : add. in vasari, .] [footnote i : add. to vasari, .] [footnote i : add. to vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid. this is the picture lately exhibited in brook street, grosvenor square, and is said to have been purchased by the earl of warwick.] [footnote i : add. to vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid. .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : lett. pitt. vol. ii. .] [footnote i : add. in vasari, .] [footnote i : add. in vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : supp. in vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid. .] [footnote i : supp. in vasari, .] [footnote i : ibid.] [footnote i : supp. in vasari, .] [footnote i : supp. in vasari, .] [footnote : this passage has been by some persons much misunderstood, and supposed to require, that the student should be a deep proficient in perspective, before he commences the study of painting; but it is a knowledge of the leading principles only of perspective that the author here means, and without such a knowledge, which is easily to be acquired, the student will inevitably fall into errors, as gross as those humorously pointed out by hogarth, in his frontispiece to kirby's perspective.] [footnote : see chap. .] [footnote : not to be found in this work.] [footnote : from this, and many other similar passages, it is evident, that the author intended at some future time to arrange his manuscript collections, and to publish them as separate treatises. that he did not do so is well known; but it is also a fact, that, in selecting from the whole mass of his collections the chapters of which the present work consists, great care appears in general to have been taken to extract also those to which there was any reference from any of the chapters intended for this work, or which from their subject were necessarily connected with them. accordingly, the reader will find, in the notes to this translation, that all such chapters in any other part of the present work are uniformly pointed out, as have any relation to the respective passages in the text. this, which has never before been done, though indispensably necessary, will be found of singular use, and it was thought proper here, once for all, to notice it. in the present instance the chapters, referring to the subject in the text, are chap. xvi. xvii. xviii. xix. xx. xxvi.; and though these do not afford complete information, yet it is to be remembered, that drawing from relievos is subject to the very same rules as drawing from nature; and that, therefore, what is elsewhere said on that subject is also equally applicable to this.] [footnote : the meaning of this is, that the last touches of light, such as the shining parts (which are always narrow), must be given sparingly. in short, that the drawing must be kept in broad masses as much as possible.] [footnote : this is not an absolute rule, but it is a very good one for drawing of portraits.] [footnote : see chap. ci.] [footnote : see the preceding chapter.] [footnote : see the two preceding chapters.] [footnote : man being the highest of the animal creation, ought to be the chief object of study.] [footnote : an intended treatise, as it seems, on anatomy, which however never was published; but there are several chapters in the present work on the subject of anatomy, most of which will be found under the present head of anatomy; and of such as could not be placed there, because they also related to some other branch, the following is a list by which they may be found: chapters vi. vii. x. xi. xxxiv. xxxv. xxxvi. xxxvii. xxxviii. xxxix. xl. xli. xlii. xliii. xliv. xlv. xlvi. xlviii. xlix. l. li. lii. cxxix.] [footnote : see chap. lxxxvii.] [footnote : it does not appear that this intention was ever carried into execution; but there are many chapters in this work on the subject of motion, where all that is necessary for a painter in this branch will be found.] [footnote : anatomists have divided this muscle into four or five sections; but painters, following the ancient sculptors, shew only the three principal ones; and, in fact, we find that a greater number of them (as may often be observed in nature) gives a disagreeable meagreness to the subject. beautiful nature does not shew more than three, though there may be more hid under the skin.] [footnote : a treatise on weights, like many others, intended by this author, but never published.] [footnote : see the next chapter.] [footnote : it is believed that this treatise, like many others promised by the author, was never written; and to save the necessity of frequently repeating this fact, the reader is here informed, once for all, that in the life of the author prefixed to this edition, will be found an account of the works promised or projected by him, and how far his intentions have been carried into effect.] [footnote : see chap. lxiv.] [footnote : see in this work from chap. lx. to lxxxi.] [footnote : see chapters lxi. lxiv.] [footnote : see chapters civ. cliv.] [footnote : the author here means to compare the different quickness of the motion of the head and the heel, when employed in the same action of jumping; and he states the proportion of the former to be three times that of the latter. the reason he gives for this is in substance, that as the head has but one motion to make, while in fact the lower part of the figure has three successive operations to perform at the places he mentions, three times the velocity, or, in other words, three times the degree of effort, is necessary in the head, the prime mover, to give the power of influencing the other parts; and the rule deducible from this axiom is, that where two different parts of the body concur in the same action, and one of them has to perform one motion only, while the other is to have several, the proportion of velocity or effort in the former must be regulated by the number of operations necessary in the latter.] [footnote : it is explained in this work, or at least there is something respecting it in the preceding chapter, and in chap. cli.] [footnote : the eyeball moving up and down to look at the hand, describes a part of a circle, from every point of which it sees it in an infinite variety of aspects. the hand also is moveable _ad infinitum_ (for it can go round the whole circle--see chap. lxxxvii.), and consequently shew itself in an infinite variety of aspects, which it is impossible for any memory to retain.] [footnote : see chap. xx. clv.] [footnote : about thirteen yards of our measure, the florentine braccia, or cubit, by which the author measures, being foot inches - ths english measure.] [footnote : see chap. cxxi. and cccv.] [footnote : it is supposed that the figures are to appear of the natural size, and not bigger. in that case, the measure of the first, to be of the exact dimension, should have its feet resting upon the bottom line; but as you remove it from that, it should diminish. no allusion is here intended to the distance at which a picture is to be placed from the eye.] [footnote : the author does not mean here to say, that one historical picture cannot be hung over another. it certainly may, because, in viewing each, the spectator is at liberty (especially if they are subjects independent of each other) to shift his place so as to stand at the true point of sight for viewing every one of them; but in covering a wall with a succession of subjects from the same history, the author considers the whole as, in fact, but one picture, divided into compartments, and to be seen at one view, and which cannot therefore admit more than one point of sight. in the former case, the pictures are in fact so many distinct subjects unconnected with each other.] [footnote : see chap. cccxlviii. this chapter is obscure, and may probably be made clear by merely stating it in other words. leonardo objects to the use of both eyes, because, in viewing in that manner the objects here mentioned, two balls, one behind the other, the second is seen, which would not be the case, if the angle of the visual rays were not too big for the first object. whoever is at all acquainted with optics, need not be told, that the visual rays commence in a single point in the centre, or nearly the centre of each eye, and continue diverging. but, in using both eyes, the visual rays proceed not from one and the same centre, but from a different centre in each eye, and intersecting each other, as they do a little before passing the first object, they become together broader than the extent of the first object, and consequently give a view of part of the second. on the contrary, in using but one eye, the visual rays proceed but from one centre; and as, therefore, there cannot be any intersection, the visual rays, when they reach the first object, are not broader than the first object, and the second is completely hidden. properly speaking, therefore, in using both eyes we introduce more than one point of sight, which renders the perspective false in the painting; but in using one eye only, there can be, as there ought, but one point of sight. there is, however, this difference between viewing real objects and those represented in painting, that in looking at the former, whether we use one or both eyes, the objects, by being actually detached from the back ground, admit the visual rays to strike on them, so as to form a correct perspective, from whatever point they are viewed, and the eye accordingly forms a perspective of its own; but in viewing the latter, there is no possibility of varying the perspective; and, unless the picture is seen precisely under the same angle as it was painted under, the perspective in all other views must be false. this is observable in the perspective views painted for scenes at the playhouse. if the beholder is seated in the central line of the house, whether in the boxes or pit, the perspective is correct; but, in proportion as he is placed at a greater or less distance to the right or left of that line, the perspective appears to him more or less faulty. and hence arises the necessity of using but one eye in viewing a painting, in order thereby to reduce it to one point of sight.] [footnote : chap. xcvi. and civ.] [footnote : see the life of the author prefixed, and chap. xx. and ci. of the present work.] [footnote : the author here speaks of unpolished nature; and indeed it is from such subjects only, that the genuine and characteristic operations of nature are to be learnt. it is the effect of education to correct the natural peculiarities and defects, and, by so doing, to assimilate one person to the rest of the world.] [footnote : see chap. cxxiii.] [footnote : see chap. cclxiv.] [footnote : see chapter cclxvii.] [footnote : sir joshua reynolds frequently inculcated these precepts in his lectures, and indeed they cannot be too often enforced.] [footnote : probably this would have formed a part of his intended treatise on light and shadow, but no such proposition occurs in the present work.] [footnote : see chapters cc. and ccix.] [footnote : see chap. ccix.] [footnote : this cannot be taken as an absolute rule; it must be left in a great measure to the judgment of the painter. for much graceful softness and grandeur is acquired, sometimes, by blending the lights of the figures with the light part of the ground; and so of the shadows; as leonardo himself has observed in chapters cxciv. cxcv. and sir joshua reynolds has often put in practice with success.] [footnote : see chap. cclxv.] [footnote : see chap. cxcvi.] [footnote : he means here to say, that in proportion as the body interposed between the eye and the object is more or less transparent, the greater or less quantity of the colour of the body interposed will be communicated to the object.] [footnote : see the note to chap. cc.] [footnote : see the preceding chapter, and chap. cc.] [footnote : the appearance of motion is lessened according to the distance, in the same proportion as objects diminish in size.] [footnote : see chap. ccxvii. and ccxix.] [footnote : see chap. ccxv. and ccxix.] [footnote : this was intended to constitute a part of some book of perspective, which we have not; but the rule here referred to will be found in chap. cccx. of the present work.] [footnote : see chap. ccxv. and ccxvii.] [footnote : no such work was ever published, nor, for any thing that appears, ever written.] [footnote : the french translation of has a note on this chapter, saying, that the invention of enamel painting found out since the time of leonardo da vinci, would better answer to the title of this chapter, and also be a better method of painting. i must beg leave, however, to dissent from this opinion, as the two kinds of painting are so different, that they cannot be compared. leonardo treats of oil painting, but the other is vitrification. leonardo is known to have spent a great deal of time in experiments, of which this is a specimen, and it may appear ridiculous to the practitioners of more modern date, as he does not enter more fully into a minute description of the materials, or the mode of employing them. the principle laid down in the text appears to me to be simply this: to make the oil entirely evaporate from the colours by the action of fire, and afterwards to prevent the action of the air by the means of a glass, which in itself is an excellent principle, but not applicable, any more than enamel painting to large works.] [footnote : it is evident that distemper or size painting is here meant.] [footnote : indian ink.] [footnote : this rule is not without exception: see chap. ccxxxiv.] [footnote : see chap. ccxxxviii.] [footnote : see chap. ccxxxvii.] [footnote : see chapters ccxlvii. cclxxiv. in the present work. probably they were intended to form a part of a distinct treatise, and to have been ranged as propositions in that, but at present they are not so placed.] [footnote : see chap. ccxlviii.] [footnote : see chap. cclxxiv.] [footnote : although the author seems to have designed that this, and many other propositions to which he refers, should have formed a part of some regular work, and he has accordingly referred to them whenever he has mentioned them, by their intended numerical situation in that work, whatever it might be, it does not appear that he ever carried this design into execution. there are, however, several chapters in the present work, viz. ccxciii. cclxxxix. cclxxxv. ccxcv. in which the principle in the text is recognised, and which probably would have been transferred into the projected treatise, if he had ever drawn it up.] [footnote : the note on the preceding chapter is in a great measure applicable to this, and the proposition mentioned in the text is also to be found in chapter ccxlvii. of the present work.] [footnote : see the note on the chapter next but one preceding. the proposition in the text occurs in chap. ccxlvii. of the present work.] [footnote : not in this work.] [footnote : i do not know a better comment on this passage than felibien's examination of le brun's picture of the tent of darius. from this (which has been reprinted with an english translation, by colonel parsons in , in folio) it will clearly appear, what the chain of connexion is between every colour there used, and its nearest neighbour, and consequently a rule may be formed from it with more certainty and precision than where the student is left to develope it for himself, from the mere inspection of different examples of colouring.] [footnote : see chap. ccxxiii. ccxxxvii. cclxxiv. cclxxxii. of the present work. we have before remarked, that the propositions so frequently referred to by the author, were never reduced into form, though apparently he intended a regular work in which they were to be included.] [footnote : no where in this work.] [footnote : this is evident in many of vandyke's portraits, particularly of ladies, many of whom are dressed in black velvet; and this remark will in some measure account for the delicate fairness which he frequently gives to the female complexion.] [footnote : these propositions, any more than the others mentioned in different parts of this work, were never digested into a regular treatise, as was evidently intended by the author, and consequently are not to be found, except perhaps in some of the volumes of the author's manuscript collections.] [footnote : see chap. ccxciii. cccvii. cccviii.] [footnote : see chap. cclxxxvii.] [footnote : this book on perspective was never drawn up.] [footnote : see chap. ccxcii.] [footnote : see chap. ccxii. ccxlviii. cclv.] [footnote : there is no work of this author to which this can at present refer, but the principle is laid down in chapters cclxxxiv. cccvi. of the present treatise.] [footnote : see chapters cccvii. cccxxii.] [footnote : see chap. cxvi. cxxi. cccv.] [footnote : see chap. cccxiii. and cccxxiii.] [footnote : to our obtaining a correct idea of the magnitude and distance of any object seen from afar, it is necessary that we consider how much of distinctness an object loses at a distance (from the mere interposition of the air), as well as what it loses in size; and these two considerations must unite before we can decidedly pronounce as to its distance or magnitude. this calculation, as to distinctness, must be made upon the idea that the air is clear, as, if by any accident it is otherwise, we shall (knowing the proportion in which clear air dims a prospect) be led to conclude this farther off than it is, and, to justify that conclusion, shall suppose its real magnitude correspondent with the distance, at which from its degree of distinctness it appears to be. in the circumstance remarked in the text there is, however, a great deception; the fact is, that the colour and the minute parts of the object are lost in the fog, while the size of it is not diminished in proportion; and the eye being accustomed to see objects diminished in size at a great distance, supposes this to be farther off than it is, and consequently imagines it larger.] [footnote : this proposition, though undoubtedly intended to form a part of some future work, which never was drawn up, makes no part of the present.] [footnote : see chap. cccvii.] [footnote : vide chap. ccxcii. ccciii.] [footnote : see chapter ccxcviii.] [footnote : this was probably to have been a part of some other work, but it does not occur in this.] [footnote : cento braccia, or cubits. the florence braccio is one foot ten inches seven eighths, english measure.] [footnote : probably the author here means yellow lilies, or fleurs de lis.] [footnote : that point is always found in the horizon, and is called the point of sight, or the vanishing point.] [footnote : see chap. cccxx.] [footnote : see chap. cccxvii.] [footnote : this position has been already laid down in chapter cxxiv. (and will also be found in chapter cccxlviii.); and the reader is referred to the note on that passage, which will also explain that in the text, for further illustration. it may, however, be proper to remark, that though the author has here supposed both objects conveyed to the eye by an angle of the same extent, they cannot, in fact, be so seen, unless one eye be shut; and the reason is this: if viewed with both eyes, there will be two points of sight, one in the centre of each eye; and the rays from each of these to the objects must of course be different, and will consequently form different angles.] [footnote : the braccio is one foot ten inches and seven eighths english measure.] [footnote : i.e. to be abridged according to the rules of perspective.] [footnote : see chap. cxxii.] [footnote : the whole of this chapter, like the next but one preceding, depends on the circumstance of there being in fact two points of sight, one in the centre of each eye, when an object is viewed with both eyes. in natural objects the effect which this circumstance produces is, that the rays from each point of sight, diverging as they extend towards the object, take in not only that, but some part also of the distance behind it, till at length, at a certain distance behind it, they cross each other; whereas, in a painted representation, there being no real distance behind the object, but the whole being a flat surface, it is impossible that the rays from the points of sight should pass beyond that flat surface; and as the object itself is on that flat surface, which is the real extremity of the view, the eyes cannot acquire a sight of any thing beyond.] [footnote : a well-known painter at florence, contemporary with leonardo da vinci, who painted several altar-pieces and other public works.] [footnote : see chap. cxxiv. and cccxlviii.] [footnote : see chap. x.] [footnote : see chap. cci.] [footnote : leonardo da vinci was remarkably fond of this kind of invention, and is accused of having lost a great deal of time that way.] [footnote : the method here recommended, was the general and common practice at that time, and continued so with little, if any variation, till lately. but about thirty years ago, the late mr. bacon invented an entirely new method, which, as better answering the purpose, he constantly used, and from him others have also adopted it into practice.] [footnote : this may be a good method of dividing the figure for the purpose of reducing from large to small, or _vice versâ_; but it not being the method generally used by the painters for measuring their figures, as being too minute, this chapter was not introduced amongst those of general proportions.] http://www.archive.org/details/williamblakecrit swinrich transcriber's note: text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). superscripted characters are enclosed by curly brackets ({superscript}). [illustration] william blake. a critical essay. by algernon charles swinburne. [illustration: "_going to and fro in the earth._"] with illustrations from blake's designs in facsimile, _coloured and plain_. london: john camden hotten, piccadilly. . [_all rights reserved._] [illustration: _william blake. a critical essay._] dedication. to william michael rossetti. there are many reasons which should make me glad to inscribe your name upon the forefront of this book. to you, among other debts, i owe this one--that it is not even more inadequate to the matter undertaken; and to you i need not say that it is not designed to supplant or to compete with the excellent biography of blake already existing. rather it was intended to serve as complement or supplement to this. how it grew, idly and gradually, out of a mere review into its present shape and volume, you know. to me at least the subject before long seemed too expansive for an article; and in the leisure of months, and in the intervals of my natural work, the first slight study became little by little an elaborate essay. i found so much unsaid, so much unseen, that a question soon rose before me of simple alternatives: to do nothing, or to do much. i chose the latter; and you, who have done more than i to serve and to exalt the memory of blake, must know better how much remains undone. friendship needs no cement of reciprocal praise; and this book, dedicated to you from the first, and owing to your guidance as much as to my goodwill whatever it may have of worth, wants no extraneous allusion to explain why it should rather be inscribed with your name than with another. nevertheless, i will say that now of all times it gives me pleasure to offer you such a token of friendship as i have at hand to give. i can but bring you brass for the gold you send me; but between equals and friends there can be no question of barter. like diomed, i take what i am given and offer what i have. such as it is, i know you will accept it with more allowance than it deserves; but one thing you will not overrate--the affectionate admiration, the grateful remembrance, which needs no public expression on the part of your friend a. c. swinburne. _november, ._ contents. page i.--life and designs ii.--lyrical poems iii.--the prophetic books list of illustrations. [in justice to the fac-similist who has so faithfully copied the following designs from blake's works, the publisher would state they were made under somewhat difficult circumstances, the british museum authorities not permitting tracing from the copies in their possession. in every case the exact peculiarities of the originals have been preserved. the colouring has been done by hand from the designs, tinted by the artist, and the three illustrations from "jerusalem" have been reduced from the original in folio to octavo. the paper on which the fac-similes are given has been expressly made to resemble that used by blake.] frontispiece. gateway with eclipse. a reduction of plate ; from "jerusalem." title-page. a design of borders, selected from those in "jerusalem" (plates , , &c.), with minor details from "marriage of heaven and hell," and "book of thel." p. . title from "the book of thel." p. . title from "marriage of heaven and hell." p. . plate , from the same (selected to show the artist's peculiar method of blending text with minute design). p. . the leviathan. from "marriage of heaven and hell." p. . from "milton." male figures; one in flames. p. . female figures. a reduction of plate from "jerusalem." p. . design with bat-like figure. a reduction of plate from "jerusalem." list of authorities. . life of william blake. by alexander gilchrist. . . poetical sketches. by w. b. . . songs of innocence. . . the book of thel. . . the marriage of heaven and hell. . . visions of the daughters of albion. . . america: a prophecy. . . songs of experience. . . europe: a prophecy. . . the first book of urizen. . . the book of ahania. . . the song of los. . . milton: a poem in two books. . . jerusalem, an emanation of the giant albion. . . ideas of good and evil. (ms.) . tiriel. (ms.) william blake. tous les grands poëtes deviennent naturellement, fatalement, critiques. je plains les poëtes que guide le seul instinct; je les crois incomplets. dans la vie spirituelle des premiers, une crise se fait infailliblement, où ils veulent raisonner leur art, découvrir les lois obscures en vertu desquelles ils ont produit, et tirer de cette étude une série de préceptes dont le but divin est l'infáillibilité dans la production poétique. il serait prodigieux qu'un critique devînt poëte, et il est impossible qu'un poëte ne contienne pas un critique.--charles baudelaire. i.--life and designs. in the year , there died, after a long dim life of labour, a man as worthy of remark and regret as any then famous. in his time he had little enough of recognition or regard from the world; and now that here and there one man and another begin to observe that after all this one was perhaps better worth notice and honour than most, the justice comes as usual somewhat late. between and the world, one might have thought, had time to grow aware whether or not a man were worth something. for so long there lived and laboured in more ways than one the single englishman of supreme and simple poetic genius born before the closing years of the eighteenth century; the one man of that date fit on all accounts to rank with the old great names. a man perfect in his way, and beautifully unfit for walking in the way of any other man. we have now the means of seeing what he was like as to face in the late years of his life: for his biography has at the head of it a clearly faithful and valuable likeness. the face is singular, one that strikes at a first sight and grows upon the observer; a brilliant eager, old face, keen and gentle, with a preponderance of brow and head; clear bird-like eyes, eloquent excitable mouth, with a look of nervous and fluent power; the whole lighted through as it were from behind with a strange and pure kind of smile, touched too with something of an impatient prospective rapture. the words clear and sweet seem the best made for it; it has something of fire in its composition, and something of music. if there is a want of balance, there is abundance of melody in the features; melody rather than harmony; for the mould of some is weaker and the look of them vaguer than that of others. thought and time have played with it, and have nowhere pressed hard; it has the old devotion and desire with which men set to their work at starting. it is not the face of a man who could ever be cured of illusions; here all the medicines of reason and experience must have been spent in pure waste. we know also what sort of man he was at this time by the evidence of living friends. no one, artist or poet, of whatever school, who had any insight or any love of things noble and lovable, ever passed by this man without taking away some pleasant and exalted memory of him. those with whom he had nothing in common but a clear kind nature and sense of what was sympathetic in men and acceptable in things--those men whose work lay quite apart from his--speak of him still with as ready affection and as full remembrance of his sweet or great qualities as those nearest and likest him. there was a noble attraction in him which came home to all people with any fervour or candour of nature in themselves. one can see, by the roughest draught or slightest glimpse of his face, the look and manner it must have put on towards children. he was about the hardest worker of his time; must have done in his day some horseloads of work. one might almost pity the poor age and the poor men he came among for having such a fiery energy cast unawares into the midst of their small customs and competitions. unluckily for them, their new prophet had not one point they could lay hold of, not one organ or channel of expression by which to make himself comprehensible to such as they were. shelley in his time gave enough of perplexity and offence; but even he, mysterious and rebellious as he seemed to most men, was less made up of mist and fire than blake. he was born and baptized into the church of rebels; we can hardly imagine a time or scheme of things in which he could have lived and worked without some interval of revolt. all that was accepted for art, all that was taken for poetry, he rejected as barren symbols, and would fain have broken up as mendacious idols. what was best to other men, and in effect excellent of its kind, was to him worst. reynolds and rubens were daubers and devils. the complement or corollary of this habit of mind was that he would accept and admire even small and imperfect men whose line of life and action seemed to run on the same tramway as his own. barry, fuseli, even such as mortimer--these were men he would allow and approve of. the devils had not entered into them; they worked, each to himself, on the same ground as michael angelo. to such effect he would at times prophesy, standing revealed for a brief glimpse on the cloudy and tottering height of his theories, before the incurious eyes of a public which had no mind to inhale such oracular vapour. it is hard to conjecture how his opinions, as given forth in his _catalogue_ or other notes on art, would have been received--if indeed they had ever got hearing at all. this they naturally never did; by no means to blake's discouragement. he spoke with authority; not in the least like the scribes of his day. so far one may at least see what he meant; although at sight of it many would cover their eyes and turn away. but the main part of him was, and is yet, simply inexplicable; much like some among his own designs, a maze of cloudy colour and perverse form, without a clue for the hand or a feature for the eye to lay hold of. what he meant, what he wanted, why he did this thing or not that other, no man then alive could make out. nevertheless it was worth the trying. in a time of critical reason and definite division, he was possessed by a fervour and fury of belief; among sane men who had disproved most things and proved the rest, here was an evident madman who believed a thing, one may say, only insomuch as it was incapable of proof. he lived and worked out of all rule, and yet by law. he had a devil, and its name was faith. no materialist has such belief in bread and meat as blake had in the substance underlying appearance which he christened god or spectre, devil or angel, as the fit took him; or rather as he saw it from one or the other side. his faith was absolute and hard, like a pure fanatic's; there was no speculation in him. what could be made of such a man in a country fed and clothed with the teapot pieties of cowper and the tape-yard infidelities of paine? neither set would have to do with him; was he not a believer? and was he not a blasphemer? his licence of thought and talk was always of the maddest, or seemed so in the ears of his generation. people remember at this day with horror and pity the impression of his daring ways of speech, but excuse him still on the old plea of madness. now on his own ground no man was ever more sane or more reverent. his outcries on various matters of art or morals were in effect the mere expression, not of reasonable dissent, but of violent belief. no artist of equal power had ever a keener and deeper regard for the meaning and teaching--what one may call the moral--of art. he sang and painted as men write or preach. indifference was impossible to him. thus every shred of his work has some life, some blood, infused or woven into it. in such a vast tumbling chaos of relics as he left behind to get in time disentangled and cast into shape, there are naturally inequalities enough; rough sides and loose sides, weak points and helpless knots, before which all mere human patience or comprehension recoils and reels back. but in all, at all times, there is the one invaluable quality of actual life. without study of a serious kind, it is hopeless for any man to get at the kernel of blake's life and work. nothing can make the way clear and smooth to those who are not at once drawn into it by a sincere instinct of sympathy. this cannot be done; but what can be done has been thoroughly and effectually well done in this present biography.[ ] a trained skill, an exquisite admiration, an almost incomparable capacity of research and care in putting to use the results of such long and refined labour, no reader can fail to appreciate as the chief gifts of the author: one who evidently had at once the power of work and the sense of selection in perfect order. the loss of so admirable a critic, so wise and altogether competent a workman, is a loss to be regretted till it can be replaced--a date we are not likely to see in our days. at least his work is in no danger of following him. this good that he did is likely to live after him; no part of it likely to be interred in his grave. for the book, unfinished, was yet not incomplete, when the writer's work was broken short off. all or nearly all the biographical part had been ably carried through to a good end. it remained for other hands to do the editing; to piece together the loose notes left, and to supply all that was requisite or graceful in the way of remark or explanation. with what excellent care and taste this has been done, no one can miss of seeing. of the critical and editorial part there will be time to speak further in its own place. all, in effect, which could be done for a book thus left suddenly and sadly to itself, has been done as well as possible; no tenderness of labour grudged, no power and skill spared to supply or sustain it. so that we now have it in a fair and sufficient form, and can look with reasonable hope for this first critical life of blake and selected edition of his works to make its way and hold its place among the precious records and possessions of englishmen. what has been once well done need not be tried at again and done worse. no second writer need now recapitulate the less significant details of blake's life: space and skill wanting, we can but refer readers to the complete biography. that the great poet and artist was a hosier's son,[ ] born near golden square, put to school in the strand to learn drawing at ten of one pars, apprenticed at fourteen to learn engraving of one basire; that he lived "smoothly enough" for two years, and was then set to work on abbey monuments, "to be out of harm's way," other apprentices being "disorderly," "mutinous," and given to "wrangling;" these facts and more, all of value and weight in their way, mr. gilchrist has given at full in his second and third chapters, adding just enough critical comment to set the facts off and give them their proper relief and significance. his labours among gothic monuments, and the especial style of his training as an engraver, left their marks on the man afterwards. two things here put on record are worthy of recollection: that he began seeing visions at "eight or ten;" and that he took objections to ryland (a better known engraver than basire), when taken to be apprenticed to him, on a singular ground: "the man's face looks as if he will live to be hanged:" which the man was, ten years later. but the first real point in blake's life worth marking as of especial interest is the publication of his _poetical sketches_; which come in date before any of his paintings or illustrative work, and are quite as much matters of art as these. though never printed till , the latest written appears to belong to , or thereabouts. here, at a time when the very notion of poetry, as we now understand it, and as it was understood in older times, had totally died and decayed out of the minds of men; when we not only had no poetry, a thing which was bearable, but had verse in plenty, a thing which was not in the least bearable; a man, hardly twenty years old yet, turns up suddenly with work in that line already done, not simply better than any man could do then; better than all except the greatest have done since: better too than some still ranked among the greatest ever managed to do. with such a poet to bring forward it was needless to fall back upon wordsworth for excuse or southey for patronage. the one man of genius alive during any part of blake's own life who has ever spoken of this poet with anything like a rational admiration is charles lamb, the most supremely competent judge and exquisite critic of lyrical and dramatic art that we have ever had. all other extant notices down to our own day, even when well-meaning and not offensive, are to the best of our knowledge and belief utterly futile, incapable and valueless: burdened more or less with chatter about "madness" and such-like, obscured in some degree by mere dullness and pitiable assumption. there is something too rough and hard, too faint and formless, in any critical language yet devised, to pay tribute with the proper grace and sufficiency to the best works of the lyrical art. one can say, indeed, that some of these earliest songs of blake's have the scent and sound of elizabethan times upon them; that the song of forsaken love--"my silks and fine array"--is sweet enough to recall the lyrics of beaumont and fletcher, and strong enough to hold its own even beside such as that one of aspatia--"lay a garland on my hearse"--which was cut (so to speak) out of the same yew; that webster might have signed the "mad song," which falls short only (as indeed do all other things of the sort) of the two great dirges in that poet's two chief plays; that certain verses among those headed "to spring," and "to the evening star," are worthy even of tennyson for tender supremacy of style and noble purity of perfection; but when we have to drop comparison and cease looking back or forward for verses to match with these, we shall hardly find words to suit our sense of their beauty. we speak of the best among them only; for, small as the pamphlet is (seventy pages long, with title-page and prefatory leaf), it contains a good deal of chaff and bran besides the pure grain and sifted honeymeal. but these best things are as wonderful as any work of blake's. they have a fragrance of sound, a melody of colour, in a time when the best verses produced had merely the arid perfume of powder, the twang of dry wood and adjusted strings; when here the painting was laid on in patches, and there the music meted out by precedent; colour and sound never mixed together into the perfect scheme of poetry. the texture of these songs has the softness of flowers; the touch of them has nothing metallic or mechanical, such as one feels in much excellent and elaborate verse of this day as well as of that. the sound of many verses of blake's cleaves to the sense long after conscious thought of the meaning has passed from one: a sound like running of water or ringing of bells in a long lull of the wind. like all very good lyrical verse, they grow in pleasurable effect upon the memory the longer it holds them--increase in relish the longer they dwell upon the taste. these, for example, sound singularly plain, however sweet, on a first hearing; but in time, to a reader fit to appreciate the peculiar properties and merits of a lyric, they come to seem as perfect as well can be: "thou the golden fruit dost bear, i am clad in flowers fair; thy sweet boughs perfume the air, and the turtle buildeth there. there she sits and feeds her young: sweet i hear her mournful song; and thy lovely leaves among, there is love, i hear his tongue." the two songs "to memory," and "to the muses" are perhaps nearer being faultless than any others in the book. this last especially should never be omitted in any professedly complete selection of the best english lyrics. so beautiful indeed is its structure and choice of language that its author's earlier and later vagaries and erratic indulgences in the most lax or bombastic habits of speech become hopelessly inexplicable. these unlucky tendencies do however break out in the same book which contains such excellent samples of poetical sense and taste; giving terrible promise of faults that were afterwards to grow rank and run riot over much of the poet's work. but even from his worst things here, not reprinted in the present edition, one may gather such lines as these: "my lord was like a flower upon the brows of lusty may: ah life as frail as flower! my lord was like a star in highest heaven, drawn down to earth by spells and wickedness; my lord was like the opening eye of day; but he is darkened; like the summer moon clouded; fall'n like the stately tree, cut down: the breath of heaven dwelt among his leaves." verses not to be despised, when one remembers that the boy who wrote them (evidently in his earlier teens) was living in full eighteenth century. but for the most part the blank verse in this small book is in a state of incredible chaos, ominous in tone of the future "prophetic books," if without promise of their singular and profound power or menace of their impenetrable mistiness, the obscurity of confused wind and cloud. one is thankful to see here some pains taken in righting these deformed limbs and planing off those monstrous knots, by one not less qualified to decide on such minor points of execution than on the gravest matters of art; especially as some amongst these blank verse poems contain things of quite original and incomparable grandeur. nothing at once more noble and more sweet in style was ever written, than part of this "to the evening star": "smile on our loves; and while thou drawest round the sky's blue curtains, scatter silver dew on every flower that closes its sweet eyes in timely sleep. let thy west wind sleep on the lake: _speak silence with thy glimmering eyes, and wash the dusk with silver_." the two lines, or half lines, which make the glory of this extract resemble perfectly, for vigorous grace and that subtle strength of interpretation which transfigures the external nature it explains, the living leader of english poets. even he has hardly ever given a study of landscape more large and delicate, an effect of verse more exquisite and sonorous. of the "spring" we have already said something; but for that poem nothing short of transcription would be adequate. the "autumn," too, should hardly have been rejected: it contains lines of perfect power and great beauty, though not quite up to the mark of "spring" or "summer." from another poem, certainly not worthier of the place it has been refused, we have extracted two lines worth remembering for their terseness and weight of scorn, recalling certain grave touches of satire in blake's later work: "for ignorance is folly's leasing nurse, and love of folly needs none other's curse." all that is worth recollection in the little play of "edward the third" has been here reproduced with a judicious care in adjusting and rejecting. blake had probably never seen the praiseworthy but somewhat verbose historical drama on the same subject, generously bestowed upon shakespeare by critics of that german acuteness which can accept as poetry the most meritorious powers of rhetoric. his own disjointed and stumbling fragment, deficient as it is in shape or plan or local colour, has far more of the sound and savour of shakespeare's style in detached lines: more indeed than has ever been caught up by any poet except one to whom his editor has seized the chance of paying tribute in passing--the author of "joseph and his brethren;" a poem which, for strength of manner and freshness of treatment, may certainly recall blake or any other obscurely original reformer in art; although we may not admit the resemblance claimed for it on spiritual grounds to the works of blake, in whose eyes the views taken by the later poet of the mysteries inherent in matters of faith or morality, and generally of the spiritual side of things, would, to our thinking, probably have appeared shallow and untrue by the side of his own mystic personal creed. in dramatic passion, in dramatic character, and in dramatic language, mr. wells' great play is no doubt far ahead, not of blake's work only, but of most other men's: in actual conception of things that lie beyond these, it keeps within the range of common thought and accepted theory; falling therefore far short, in its somewhat over frequent passages of didactic and religious reflection, of much less original thinkers than blake. one other thing we may observe of these "sketches;" that they contain, though only in the pieces rejected from our present collection, sad indications of the inexplicable influence which an early reading of the detestable pseudo-ossian seems to have exercised on blake. how or why such lank and lamentable counterfeits of the poetical style did ever gain this luckless influence--one, too, which in after years was to do far worse harm than it has done here--it is not easy to guess. contemporary vice of taste, imperfect or on some points totally deficient education, may explain much and more than might be supposed, even with regard to the strongest untrained intellect; but on the other hand, the songs in this same volume give evidence of so rare a gift of poetical judgment, such exquisite natural sense and art, in a time which could not so much as blunder except by precedent and machinery, that such depravity of error as is implied by admiration and imitation of such an one as macpherson remains inconceivable. similar puzzles will, however, recur to the student of blake's art; but will not, if he be in any way worthy of the study, be permitted for a minute to impair his sense of its incomparable merits. incomparable, we say advisedly: for there is no case on record of a man's being quite so far in advance of his time, in everything that belongs to the imaginative side of art, as blake was from the first in advance of his. in blake married, it seems after a year or two of engaged life. his wife catherine boucher deserves remembrance as about the most perfect wife on record. in all things but affection, her husband must have been as hard to live with as the most erratic artist or poet who ever mistook his way into marriage. over the stormy or slippery passages in their earlier life mr. gilchrist has passed perhaps too lightly. no doubt blake's aberrations were mainly matters of speech or writing; it is however said, truly or falsely, that once in a patriarchal mood he did propose to add a second wife to their small and shifting household, and was much perplexed at meeting on one hand with tears and on all hands with remonstrances. for any clandestine excursions or furtive eccentricities he had probably too much of childish candour and impulse; and this one hopeful and plausible design he seems to have sacrificed with a good grace, on finding it really objectionable to the run of erring men. as to the rest, mrs. blake's belief in him was full and profound enough to endure some amount of trial. practically he was always, as far as we know, regular, laborious, immaculate to an exception; and in their old age she worked after him and for him, revered and helped and obeyed him, with an exquisite goodness. for the next eighteen years we have no continuous or available record under blake's own hand of his manner of life; and of course must not expect as yet any help from those who can still, or could lately, remember the man himself in later days. he laboured with passionate steadiness of energy, at work sometimes valueless and sometimes invaluable; made, retained, and lost friends of a varying quality. even to the lamentable taskwork of bad comic engravings for dead and putrescent "wit's magazines" his biographer has tracked him and taken note of his doings. the one thing he did get published--his poem, or apology for a poem, called "the french revolution" (the first of seven projected books)--is, as far as i know, the only original work of its author worth little or even nothing; consisting mainly of mere wind and splutter. the six other books, if extant, ought nevertheless to be looked up, as they can hardly be without some personal interest or empirical value, even if no better in workmanship than this first book. during these years however he produced much of his greatest work; among other things, the "songs of innocence and experience," and the prophetic books from "thel" to "ahania;" of all which we shall have to speak in due time and order. the notes on reynolds and lavater, from which we have here many extracts given, we must hope to see some day printed in full. their vivid and vigorous style is often a model in its kind; and the matter, however violent and eccentric at times, always clear, noble, and thoughtful; remarkable especially for the eagerness of approbation lavished on the meanest of impulsive or fanciful men, and the fervour of scorn excited by the best works and the best intentions of others. the watery wisdom and the bland absurdity of lavater's axioms meet with singular tolerance from the future author of the "proverbs of hell;" the considerate regulations and suggestions of reynolds' "discourses" meet with no tolerance at all from the future illustrator of job and dante. in all these rough notes, even we may say in those on bacon's essays, there is always a bushel of good grain to an ounce of chaff. what is erroneous or what seems perverse lies for the most part only on the surface; what is falsely applied is often truly said; what is unjustly worded is often justly conceived. a man insensible to the perfect manner and noble matter of bacon, while tolerant of the lisping and slavering imbecilities of lavater, seems at first sight past hope or help; but subtract the names or alter the symbols given, and much of blake's commentary will seem, as it is, partially true and memorable even in its actual form, wholly true and memorable in its implied meaning. again, partly through ingrained humour, partly through the rough shifts of his imperfect and tentative education, blake was much given to a certain perverse and defiant habit of expression, meant rather to scare and offend than to allure and attract the common run of readers or critics. in his old age we hear that he would at times try the ironic method upon objectionable reasoners; not, we should imagine, with much dexterity or subtlety. the small accidents and obscure fluctuations of luck during these eighteen years of laborious town life, the changes of residence and acquaintance, the method and result of the day's work done, have been traced with much care and exhibited in a direct distinct manner by the biographer. nothing can be more clear and sufficient than the brief notices of blake's favourite brother and pupil, in character seemingly a weaker and somewhat violent _replica_ of his elder, not without noble and amiable qualities; of his relations with fuseli and flaxman, with johnson the bookseller, and others, whose names are now fished up from the quiet comfort of obscurity, and made more or less memorable for good or evil through their connection with one who was then himself among the obscurest of men. his alliance with paine and the ultra-democrats then working or talking in london is the most curious episode of these years. his republican passion was like shelley's, a matter of fierce dogmatic faith and rapid assumption. looking at any sketch of his head and face one may see the truth of his assertion that he was born a democrat of the imaginative type. the faith which accepts and the passion which pursues an idea of justice not wholly attainable looks out of the tender and restless eyes, moulds the eager mobile-seeming lips. infinite impatience, as of a great preacher or apostle--intense tremulous vitality, as of a great orator--seem to me to give his face the look of one who can do all things but hesitate. we need no evidence to bid us believe with what fervour of spirit and singleness of emotion he loved the name and followed the likeness of freedom, whatever new name or changed likeness men might put upon her. liberty and religion, taken in a large and subtle sense of the words, were alike credible and adorable to him; and in nothing else could he find matter for belief or worship. his forehead, largest (as he said) just over the eyes, shows an eager steadiness of passionate expression. shut off any single feature, and it will seem singular how little the face changes or loses by the exclusion. with all this, it is curious to read how the author of "urizen" and "ahania" saved from probable hanging the author of the "rights of man" and "age of reason." blake had as perfect a gift of ready and steady courage as any man: was not quicker to catch fire than he was safe to stand his ground. the swift quiet resolution and fearless instant sense of the right thing to do which he showed at all times of need are worth notice in a man of such fine and nervous habit of mind and body. in the year after paine's escape from england, his deliverer published a book which would probably have been something of a chokepear for the _conventionnel_. this set of seventeen drawings was blake's first series of original designs, not meant to serve as merely illustrative work. two of the prophetic books, and the "songs of innocence," had already been engraved; but there the designs were supplementary to the text; here such text as there was served only to set out the designs; and even these "keys" to the "gates of paradise," somewhat of the rustiest as they are, were not supplied in every copy. the book is itself not unavailable as a key to much of blake's fitful and tempestuous philosophy; and it would have been better to re-engrave the series in full than to give random selections twisted out of their places and made less intelligible than they were at first by the headlong process of inversion and convulsion to which they have here been subjected. the frontispiece gives a symbol of man's birth into the fleshly and mutable house of life, powerless and painless as yet, but encircled by the likeness and oppressed by the mystery of material existence. the pre-existent spirit here well-nigh disappears under stifling folds of vegetable leaf and animal incrustation of overgrowing husk. it lies dumb and dull, almost as a thing itself begotten of the perishable body, conceived in bondage and brought forth with grief. the curled and clinging caterpillar, emblem of motherhood, adheres and impends over it, as the lapping leaves of flesh unclose and release the human fruit of corporeal generation. with mysterious travail and anguish of mysterious division, the child is born as a thing out of sleep; the original perfect manhood being cast in effect into a heavy slumber, and the female or reflective element called into creation. this tenet recurs constantly in the turbulent and fluctuating evangel of blake; that the feminine element exists by itself for a time only, and as the shadow of the male; thus space is the wife of time, and was created of him in the beginning that the things of lower life might have air to breathe and a place to hide their heads; her moral aspect is pity. she suffers through the lapse of obscure and painful centuries with the sufferings of her children; she is oppressed with all their oppressions; she is plagued with all the plagues of transient life and inevitable death. at sight of her so brought forth, a wonder in heaven, all the most ancient gods or dæmons of pre-material life were terrified and amazed, touched with awe and softened with passion; yet endured not to look upon her, a thing alien from the things of their eternal life; for as space is impredicable of the divine world, so is pity impredicable of the dæmonic nature. (see the "first book of urizen.") for of all the minor immortal and uncreated spirits time only is the friend of man; and for man's sake has given him space to dwell in, as under the shadow and within the arms of a great compassionate mother, who has mercy upon all her children, tenderness for all good and evil things. only through his help and through her pity can flesh or spirit endure life for a little, under the iron law of the maker and the oppressor of man. alone among the other co-equal and co-eternal dæmons of his race, the creator is brought into contact and collision with space and time; against him alone they struggle in promethean agony of conflict to deliver the children of men; and against them is the creator compelled to fight, that he may reach and oppress those whose weakness is defended by all the warring hands of time, sheltered by all the gracious wings of space. in the first plate of the "gates of paradise," the woman finds the child under a tree, sprung of the earth like a mandrake, which he who plucks up and hears groan must go mad or die; grown under the tree of physical life, which is rooted in death, and the leaf of it is poisonous, and it bears as fruit the wisdom of the serpent, moral reason or rational truth, which invents the names of virtue and vice, and divides moral life into good and evil. out of earth is rent violently forth the child of dust and clay, naked, wide-eyed, shrieking; the woman bends down to gather him as a flower, half blind with fierce surprise and eagerness, half smiling with foolish love and pitiful pleasure; with one hand she holds other children, small and new-blown also as flowers, huddled in the lap of her garment; with the other she plucks him up by the hair, regardless of his deadly shriek and convulsed arms, heedless that this uprooting of the mandrake is the seal of her own death also. then follow symbols of the four created elements from which the corporeal man is made; the water, blind and mutable as doting age, emblem of ignorant doubt and moral jealousy; the heavy melancholy earth, grievous to life, oppressive of the spirit, type of all sorrows and tyrannies that are brought forth upon it, saddest of all the elements, tightest as a curb and painfullest as a load upon the soul: then the air wherein man is naked, the fire wherein man is blind; ashamed and afraid of his own nature and its nakedness, surrounded with similitudes of severance and strife: overhung by rocks, rained upon by all the storms of heaven, lighted by unfriendly stars, with clouds spread under him and over; "a dark hermaphrodite," enlightened by the light within him, which is darkness--the light of reason and morality; evil and good, who was neither good nor evil in the eternal life before this generated existence; male and female, who from of old was neither female nor male, but perfect man without division of flesh, until the setting of sex against sex by the malignity of animal creation. round the new-created man revolves the flaming sword of law, burning and dividing in the hand of the angel, servant of the cruelty of god, who drives into exile and debars from paradise the fallen spiritual man upon earth. round the woman (a double type perhaps at once of the female nature and the "rational truth" or law of good and evil) roar and freeze the winds and snows of prohibition, blinding, congealing, confusing; and in that tempest of things spiritual the shell of material things hardens and thickens, excluding all divine vision and obscuring all final truth with solid-seeming walls of separation. but death in the end shall enlighten all the deluded, shall deliver all the imprisoned; there, though the worm weaves, the saviour also watches; the new garments of male and female to be there assumed by the spirit are so woven that they shall no longer be as shrouds or swaddling-clothes to hamper the newly born or consume the newly dead, but free raiment and fair symbol of the spirit. for the power of the creative dæmon, which began with birth, must end with death; upon the perfect and eternal man he had not power till he had created the earthly life to bring man into subjection; and shall not have power upon him again any more when he is once resumed by death. where the creator's power ends, there begins the saviour's power; where oppression loses strength to divide, mercy gains strength to reunite. for the creator is at most god of this world only, and belongs to the life which he creates; the god of this world is a thing of this world, but the saviour or perfect man is of eternity, belonging to the spiritual life which was before birth and shall be after death. in these first six plates is the kernel of the book; round these the subsequent symbols revolve, and toward these converge. the seventh we may assume to be an emblem of desire as it is upon earth, blind and wild, glad and sad, destroying the pleasures it catches hold of, losing those it lets go. one love, a moth-like spirit, lies crushed at the feet of the boy who pursues another, flinging his cap towards it as though to trap a butterfly; startled with the laugh of triumphant capture even at his lips, as the wingless flying thing eludes him and soars beyond the enclosure of summer leaves and stems toward upper air and cloud. to the original sketch was appended this quotation from spenser, book , canto , v. : "ah luckless babe, born under cruel star, and in dead parents' baleful ashes bred; full little weenest thou what sorrows are left thee for portion of thy livelyhed." again, youth, with the bow of battle lifted in his right hand, turns his back upon age, and leaves him lamenting in vain remonstrance and piteous reclamation: the fruit of vain-glory and vain teaching, ending in rebellion and division of spirit, when the beliefs and doctrines of a man turn against him and he becomes at variance with himself and with his own issue of body or of soul. in the ninth plate, men strive to set a ladder against the moon and climb by it through the deepest darkness of night; a white segment of narrow light just shows the sharp tongue of precipitous land upon which they are gathered together in vain counsel and effort. this was originally a satirical sketch of "amateurs and connoisseurs," emblematic merely of their way of studying art, analyzing all great things done with ready rule and line, and scaling with ladders of logic the heaven of invention; here it reappears enlarged and exalted into a general type of blind belief and presumptuous reason, indicative also of the helpless hunger after spiritual things ingrained in those made subject to things material; the effusion and eluctation of spirits sitting in prison towards the truth which should make them free. in the tenth plate, the half-submerged face and outstretched arm of a man drowning in a trough of tumbling sea show just above the foam, against the glaring and windy clouds whose blown drift excludes the sky. perhaps the noble study of sea registered in the catalogue as no. of the second list was a sketch for this design of man sinking under the waves of time. of the two this sketch is the finer; a greater effect of tempest was never given by the work of any hand than in this weltering and savage space of sea, with the aimless clash of its breakers and blind turbulence of water veined and wrinkled with storm, enridged and cloven into drifting array of battle, with no lesser life visible upon it of man or vessel, fish or gull: no land beyond it conceivable, no heaven above it credible. this drawing, which has been reproduced by photography, might have found a place here or later in the book. in the eleventh plate, emblematic of religious restraint and the severities of artificial holiness, an old man, spectacled and strait-mouthed, clips with his shears the plumes of a winged boy, who writhes vainly in a passionate attempt at self-release, his arm hiding his face, his lithe slight limbs twisting with pain and fear, his curled head bent upon the curve of his elbow, his hand straining the air with empty violence of barren agony; a sun half risen lights up the expansion of his half-shorn wings and the helpless labour of his slender body. the twelfth plate continues this allegory under the type of father and sons, the vital energy and its desires or passions, thrust down into prison-houses of ice and snow. next, man as he is upon earth attains for once to the vision of that which he was and shall be; his eyes open upon the sight of life beyond the mundane and mortal elements, and the chains of reason and religion relax. in the evening he travels towards the grave; a figure stepping out swiftly and steadily, staff in hand, over rough country ground and beside low thick bushes and underwood, dressed as a man of blake's day; a touch of realism curious in the midst of such mystical work. next in extreme age he passes through the door of death to find the worm at her work; and in the last plate of the series, she is seen sitting, a worm-like woman, with hooded head and knees drawn up, the adder-like husk or shell of death at her feet, and behind her head the huge rotting roots and serpentine nether fibres of the tree of life and death: shapes of strange corruption and conversion lie around her, and between the hollow tree-roots the darkness grows deep and hard. "i have said to corruption, thou art my father; to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister." this is she who is nearest of kin to man from his birth to his death: "weaving to dreams the sexual strife, and weeping over the web of life." i have given thus early a rough and tentative analysis of this set of designs, rather than leave it to find a place among the poems or prophecies, because it does in effect belong rather to art than poetry, the verses being throughout subordinate to the engravings, and indeed scarcely to be accounted of as more than inscriptions or appendages. it may however be taken as being in a certain sense one of the prophetic or evangelic series which was afterwards to stretch to such strange lengths. in this engraved symbolic poem of life and death, most of blake's chief articles of faith are advanced or implied; noticeably, for example, that tenet regarding the creative deity and his relations to time and to the sons of men. thus far he can see and no farther; for so long and no longer he has power upon the actions and passions of created and transient life. him let no christians worship, nor the law of his covenant; the written law which its writer wept at and hid beneath his mercy-seat; but instead let them write above the altars of their faith a law of infinite forgiveness, annihilating in the measureless embrace of its mercy the separate existences of good and evil. so speaks blake in his prologue; and in his epilogue thus: _to the accuser, who is the god of this world._ truly, my satan, thou art but a dunce, and dost not know the garment from the man; every harlot was a virgin once, nor canst thou ever change kate into nan. though thou are worshipped by the names divine of jesus and jehovah, thou art still the son of morn in weary night's decline; the lost traveller's dream under the hill. upon the life which is but as a vesture, and as a vesture shall be changed, he who created it has power till the end; appearances and relations he can alter, and turn a virgin to a harlot; but not change one individual life to another, reverse or rescind the laws of personality. virtue and vice, chastity and unchastity, are changeable and perishable; "they all shall wax old as doth a garment:" but the underlying individual life is imperishable and intangible. all qualities proper to human nature are inventions of the accuser; not so the immortal prenatal nature, which is the essence of every man severally from eternity. that lies beyond the dominion of the god of this world; he is but the son of morning, that having once risen, will set again; shining only in the darkness of spiritual night; his light is but a light seen in dreams before the dawn by men belated and misled, which shall pass away and be known no more at the advent of the perfect day. all these mystical heresies may seem turbid and chaotic; but the legend or subject-matter of the present book is transparent as water, lucid as flame, compared to much of blake's subsequent work. the designs, even if taken apart from their significance, are among his most inventive and interesting. they were done "for children," because, in blake's mind, the wise innocence of children was likeliest to appreciate and accept the message involved in them; "for the sexes," that they might be at once enlightened to see beyond themselves, and enfranchised from the bondage of pietism or materialism. interpreted according to blake's intention, the book was a small leaf or chapter of the inspired gospel of deliverance which he was charged to preach through the organs of his art; a gospel not easily to be made acceptable or comprehensible. of the prophetic books produced about this time we shall not as yet speak; nor have we much to say of the next set of designs, those illustrative of "young's night thoughts," which were done, as will be surmised, on commission. power, invention, and a certain share of beauty, these designs of course have; but less, as it seems to me, of blake's great qualities and more of his faults or errors than usual. that the text which serves as a peg to hang them on, or a finger-post to point them out, is itself a thing dead and rotten, does not suffice to explain this; for blake could do admirable work by way of illustration to the verse of hayley. this name brings us to a new and singular division of our present task. during the four important years of blake's residence at felpham we can trace his doings and feelings with some fulness and with some confidence. they were probably no busier than other years of his life; but by a happy accident we hear more concerning the sort of labour done. in august blake moved out of london for the first time; he returned "early in ." hayley's patronage of blake is a piece of high comedy perfect in its way. the first act or two were played out with sufficient liking on either side. "mr. hayley acts like a prince" towards "his good blake," not it seems in the direct way of pecuniary gifts or loans, but in such smaller attentions as he could easily show to the husband and wife on their first arrival close at hand. it must be remarked and remembered that throughout this curious and incongruous intercourse there is no question whatever of obligation on blake's part for any kindness shown beyond the equal offices of friend to friend. it is for "mr. hayley's usual brotherly affection" that he expresses such ready gratitude. that the poor man's goodwill was genuine we need not hesitate to allow; but the fates never indulged in a freak of stranger humour than when it seemed good to their supreme caprice to couple in the same traces for even the shortest stage a man like hayley with a man like blake, and bracket the "triumphs of temper" with the "marriage of heaven and hell." england, with a deplorable ingratitude, has apparently forgotten by this time what her hayley was once like. it requires a certain strength of imagination to realise the assured fact that he was once a "greatest living poet;" retrospection collapses in the effort, and credulity loses heart to believe. such, however, was in effect his profession; he had the witness of his age under hand and seal to the fact, that on the death of his friend cowper the supreme laurels of the age or day had fallen by inheritance to that poet's accomplished and ingenious biographer. there is something pathetic and almost piteous in his perfect complacency and his perfect futility. a moral country should not have forgotten that to mr. hayley, when at work on his chief poem, "it seemed to be a kind of duty incumbent on those who devote themselves to poetry to render a powerful and too often a perverted art as beneficial to life and manners as the limits of composition and the character of modern times will allow." although the ages, he regretted to reflect, were past, in which poetry was idolized for _miraculous effects_, yet a poem intended to promote the cultivation of good humour, and designed to unite the special graces of ariosto, of dante, and of pope, might still be of service to society; or, he added with a chaste and noble modesty, "if this may be thought too chimerical and romantic by sober reason, it is at least one of those pleasing and innocent illusions in which a poetical enthusiast may be safely indulged;" who will deny it? this was the patron to whom flaxman introduced blake as an available engraver, and, on occasion, a commendable designer. hayley was ready enough to cage and exhibit among the flock of tame geese which composed his troop of swans this bird of foreign feather; and until the eagle's beak and claws came into play under sharp provocation, the felpham coop and farmyard were duly dignified by his presence and behaviour as a "tame villatic fowl." the master bantam-cock of the hen-roost in person fluttered and cackled round him with assiduous if perplexed patronage. but of such alliances nothing could come in the end but that which did come. "mr. h.," writes blake in july to mr. butts, his one purchaser (on the scale of a guinea per picture), "approves of my designs as little as he does of my poems. i have been forced to insist on his leaving me, in both, to my own self-will; for i am determined to be no longer pestered with his genteel ignorance and polite disapprobation. his imbecile attempts to depress me only deserve laughter." let a compassionate amateur of human poultry imagine what confusion must by this time have been reigning in the poor hen-roost and dove-cote of eartham! things, however, took some time in reaching the tragic pitch of these shrill discords. for months or years they appear to have run through various scales of very tolerable harmony. blake, in the intervals of incessant engraving and occasional designing, was led by his good hayley into the greenest pastures of literature and beside the stillest waters of verse; he was solicited to help in softening and arranging for public inspection the horrible and pitiful narrative of cowper's life; he was prevailed upon to listen while hayley "read klopstock into english to blake," with what result one may trust he never knew. for it was probably under the sting of this infliction that blake scratched down in pencil a brief lyrical satire on the german milton, which modern humanity would refuse to read in public if transcribed; although or because it might be, for grotesque case and ringing breadth of melodious extravagance, a scrap saved from some tattered chorus of aristophanes, or caught up by rabelais as the fragment of a litany at the shrine of the _dive bouteille_. let any man judge, from the ragged shred we can afford to show by way of sample, how a sight or handling of the stuff would have affected hayley; "the moon at that sight blushed scarlet red, the stars threw down their cups and fled, and all the devils that were in hell answered with a ninefold yell. klopstock felt the intripled turn, and all his bowels began to churn; and his bowels turned round three times three, and locked in his soul with a ninefold key; * * * * * then again old nobodaddy swore he never had seen such a thing before since noah was shut in the ark, since eve first chose her hell-fire spark, since 'twas the fashion to go naked, since the old anything was created; and * * * " only in choice attic or in archaic french could the rest be endured by modern eyes; but panurge could hardly have improved on the manner of retribution devised for flaccid fluency and devout sentiment always running at the mouth. for the rest, when out of the shadow of klopstock or cowper, blake had enough serious work on hand. his designs for various ballads of hayley's, strays of sick verse long since decomposed, were admirable enough to warrant a hope of general admiration. this they failed of; but blake's head and hands were full of other work. "miniature," he writes to mr. butts, "is become a goddess in my eyes." he did not serve her long; but while his faith in her godhead lasted he seems to have officiated with some ardour in the courts of her temple. he speaks of orders multiplying upon him, of especial praise received for proficiency in this style of work; not, we may suppose, from any who had much authority to praise or dispraise. it is impossible to imagine that hayley knew a really great work of blake's when he saw it; a clever comminution of great power must have seemed to him the worthiest use of it; whereas the design and the glory of blake was to concentrate and elevate his talent: all he did and all he touched with profit has an air and a savour of greatness. in miniature and such things he must probably have worked with half his heart and less than half his native skill or strength of eye and hand. there is a certain pathos in the changes of tone which come one by one over blake's correspondence at this time. all at first is sunlit and rose-coloured. "the villagers are not mere rustics; they are polite and modest. meat is cheaper than in london; but the sweet air and the voices of winds, trees, and birds, and the odours of the happy ground, make it a dwelling for immortals." this intense and eager pleasure in the freshness of things, this sharp relish of beauty in all the senses, which must needs run over and lapse into sudden musical expression, will recall the passages in shelley's letters where some delight of sound or sight suddenly felt or remembered forces its way into speech, and makes music of the subservient words. "work will go on here with god-speed. a roller and two harrows lie before my window." this passion for hints and types, common to all men of highly toned nerves and rapid reflectiveness of spirit, was not with blake a matter of fugitive impulse or casual occasion. in his quietest moods of mind, in his soberest tempers of fancy, he was always at some such work. at this time, too, he was living at a higher strain of the senses than usual. so sudden a change of air and change of world as had come upon him filled his nerves and brain at every entrance with keen influences of childlike and sensitive satisfaction. witness his first sweet and singular verses to flaxman and to butts--"such as felpham produces by me, though not such as she produces by her eldest son," he remarks, with some reason; that eldest son and heir of every muse being her good hayley. witness too the simple and complete pleasure with which he writes invitations and descriptions, transcribes visions and experiences. probably too in some measure, could we trace the perfect relation of flesh with spirit and blood with brain, we should find that this first daily communion with the sea wrought upon him at once within and without; that the sharp sweetness of the salted air was not without swift and pungent effect; that the hourly physical delight lavished upon every sense by all tunes and odours and changes and colours of the sea--the delight of every breath or sound or shadow or whisper passing upon it--may have served at first to satiate as well as to stimulate, before the pressure of enjoyment grew too intense and the sting of enjoyment too keen. upon blake, of all men, one may conjecture that these influences of spirit and sense would act with exquisite force. it is observable that now, and not before, we hear of visions making manifest to him the spiritual likeness of dead men: that the scene of every such apocalypse was a sea-beach; the shore of a new patmos, prolific as was the first of splendid and enormous fancies, of dreams begotten and brought forth in a like atmosphere and habit of mind.[ ] now too the illimitable book of divine or dæmonic revelation called "jerusalem" was dictated by inspiration of its authors, who "are in eternity:" blake "dares not pretend to be any other than the secretary." human readers, if such indeed exist beyond the singular or the dual number, will wish that the authors had put themselves through a previous course of surgical or any other training which might have cured a certain superhuman impediment of speech, very perplexing to the mundane ear; a habit of huge breathless stuttering, as it were a titanic stammer, intolerable to organs of flesh. "allegory," the too obedient secretary writes to his friend, "addressed to the intellectual powers, while it is altogether hidden from the corporeal understanding, is my definition of the most sublime poetry." a better perhaps could not be given; as far that is as relates to the "spirit of sense" which is to be clothed in the beautiful body of verse; but when once we have granted the power of conception, the claims of form are to be first thought of. it is of small moment how the work thus done may strike the heavy ear of vulgarity or affect the torpid palate of prurience; against mere indolence or mere misconstruction it is waste of time to contrive precautions or rear defences; but the laws and the dues of art it is never permissible to forget. it is in fact only by innate and irrational perception that we can apprehend and enjoy the supreme works of verse and colour; these, as blake indicates with a noble accuracy, are not things of the understanding; otherwise, we may add, the whole human world would appreciate them alike or nearly alike, and the high and subtle luxuries of exceptional temperaments would be made the daily bread of the poor and hungry; the _vinum dæmonum_ which now the few only can digest safely and relish ardently would be found medicinal instead of poisonous, palatable instead of loathsome, by the run of eaters and drinkers; all specialties of spiritual office would be abolished, and the whole congregation would communicate in both kinds. all the more, meantime, because this "bread of sweet thought and wine of delight" is not broken or shed for all, but for a few only--because the sacramental elements of art and poetry are in no wise given for the sustenance or the salvation of men in general, but reserved mainly for the sublime profit and intense pleasure of an elect body or church--all the more on that account should the ministering official be careful that the paten and chalice be found wanting in no one possible grace of work or perfection of material. that too much of blake's written work while at felpham is wanting in executive quality, and even in decent coherence of verbal dress, is undeniable. the pythoness who delivers these stormy and sonorous oracles is at once exposed and hampered as it were by her loose and heavy raiment; the prophetic robe here slips or gapes, there muffles and impedes; is now a tatter that hardly hides the contorted limbs, and now an encumbrance that catches or trips up the reeling feet. everything now written in the fitful impatient intervals of the day's work bears the stamp of an overheated brain and of nerves too intensely strung. everything may well appear to confirm the suggestion that, as high latitudes and climates of rarefied air affect the physical structure of inhabitants or travellers, so in this case did the sudden country life, the taste and savour of the sea, touch sharply and irritate deliciously the more susceptible and intricate organs of mind and nature. how far such passive capacity of excitement differs from insanity; how in effect a temperament so sensuous, so receptive, and so passionate, is further off from any risk of turning unsound than hardier natures carrying heavier weight and tougher in the nerves; need scarcely be indicated. for the rest, our concern at present shall still be mainly with the letters of this date; and by their light we may be enabled to see light shed upon many things hitherto hopelessly dark. as no other samples of blake's correspondence worth mention have been allowed us by the jealousy of fate and divine parsimony, we must be duly grateful and careful in dealing with all we have; gathering the fragments into commodious baskets, and piecing the shreds into available patchwork. these letters bear upon them the common stamp of all blake's doings and writings; the fiery and lyrical tone of mind and speech, the passionate singleness of aim, the heat and flame of faith in himself, the violence of mere words, the lust of paradox, the loud and angry habits of expression which abound in his critical or didactic work, are not here missing; neither are clear indications wanting of his noblest qualities; the great love of great things, the great scorn of small men, the strong tenderness of heart, the tender strength of spirit, which won for him honour from all that were honourable. ready even in a too fervent manner to accept, to praise, to believe in worth and return thanks for it, he will have no man or thing impede or divert him, either for love's sake or hate's. small friends with feeble counsels to suggest must learn to suppress their small feelings and graceful regrets, or be cleared out of his way with all their powers to help or hinder; lucky if they get off without some label of epigram on the forehead or sting of epigram in the flesh. upon hayley, as we may see by collation of blake's note-book with his letters, the lash fell at last, after long toleration of things intolerable, after "great objections to my doing anything but the mere drudgery of business," (as for instance engraving illustrations to hayley's poems designed by flaxman's sister--not by his wife, as stated at p. of the "life" by some momentary slip of a most careful pen), "and intimations that if i do not confine myself to this i shall not live. this," adds blake, "has always pursued me. you will understand by this the source of all my uneasiness. this from johnson and fuseli brought me down here, and this from mr. h. will bring me back again." in a sharper mood than this, he appended to the decent skirts of mr. hayley one of the best burlesque epigrams in the language:-- "of hayley's birth this was the happy lot: his mother on his father him begot." with this couplet tied to his tail, the ghost of hayley may perhaps run further than his own strength of wind or speed of foot would naturally have carried him: with this hook in his nose, he may be led by "his good blake" some way towards the temple of memory. what is most to be regretted in these letters is the wonderful tone of assertion respecting the writer's own pictures and those of the great italian schools. this it would be difficult enough to explain, dishonest to overlook, easy to ridicule, and unprofitable to rebuke. all that need be said of this singular habit of blake's has been said with admirable clearness and fairness in the prefatory note to the prose selections in vol. ii. higher authority than the writer's of that note no man can have or can require. and as blake's artistic heresies are in fact mere accidents--the illegitimate growth of chance and circumstance--we may be content to leave them wholly to the practical judgment and the wise charity of such artists as are qualified to pass sentence upon the achievements and the shortcomings of this great artist. their praise can alone be thoroughly worth having; their blame can alone be of any significance: and in no other hands than theirs may we safely leave the memory and the glory of a fellow-labourer so illustrious as blake. other points and shades of character not less singular it is essential here to take notice of. these are not matters of accident, like the errors of opinion or perversities of expression which may distort or disfigure the notes and studies on purely artistic matters; they compose the vital element and working condition of blake's talent. from the fifth to the tenth letter especially, it becomes evident that the writer was passing through strange struggles of spirit and passionate stages of faith. as early as the fourth letter, dated almost exactly a year later than the first written on his arrival at felpham, blake refers in a tone of regret and perplexity to the "abstract folly" which makes him incapable of direct practical work, though not of earnest and continuous labour. this action of the nerves or of the mind he was plainly unable to regulate or modify. it hurries him while yet at work into "lands of abstraction;" he "takes the world with him in his flight." distress he knows would make the world heavier to him, which seems now "lighter than a ball of wool rolled by the wind;" and this distress material philosophies or methodical regulations would "prescribe as a medicinal potion" for a mind impaired or diseased merely by the animal superflux of spirits and childlike excess of spiritual health. but this medicine the strange and strong faculty of faith innate in the man precludes him from taking. physical distress "is his mock and scorn; mental no man can give; and if heaven inflicts it, all such distress is a mercy." it is not easy, but it is requisite, to realise the perpetual freshness and fulness of belief, the inalterable vigour and fervour of spirit with which blake, heretic and mystic as he may have been, worshipped and worked; by which he was throughout life possessed and pursued. above all gods or dæmons of creation and division, he beheld by faith in a perfect man a supreme god. "though i have been very unhappy, i am so no longer. i am again emerged into the light of day; i still (and shall to eternity) embrace christianity, and adore him who is the express image of god." in the light of his especial faith all visible things were fused into the intense heat and sharpened into the keen outline of vision. he walked and laboured under other heavens, on another earth, than the earth and the heaven of material life: "with a blue sky spread over with wings, and a mild sun that mounts and sings; with trees and fields full of fairy elves and little devils who fight for themselves; with angels planted in hawthorn bowers, and god himself in the passing hours." all this was not a mere matter of creed or opinion, much less of decoration or ornament to his work. it was, as we said, his element of life, inhaled at every breath with the common air, mixed into his veins with their natural blood. it was an element almost painfully tangible and actual; an absolute medium or state of existence, inevitable, inexplicable, insuperable. to him the veil of outer things seemed always to tremble with some breath behind it: seemed at times to be rent in sunder with clamour and sudden lightning. all the void of earth and air seemed to quiver with the passage of sentient wings and palpitate under the pressure of conscious feet. flowers and weeds, stars and stones, spoke with articulate lips and gazed with living eyes. hands were stretched towards him from beyond the darkness of material nature, to tempt or to support, to guide or to restrain. his hardest facts were the vaguest allegories of other men. to him all symbolic things were literal, all literal things symbolic. about his path and about his bed, around his ears and under his eyes, an infinite play of spiritual life seethed and swarmed or shone and sang. spirits imprisoned in the husk and shell of earth consoled or menaced him. every leaf bore a growth of angels; the pulse of every minute sounded as the falling foot of god; under the rank raiment of weeds, in the drifting down of thistles, strange faces frowned and white hair fluttered; tempters and allies, wraiths of the living and phantoms of the dead, crowded and made populous the winds that blew about him, the fields and hills over which he gazed. even upon earth his vision was "twofold always;" singleness of vision he scorned and feared as the sign of mechanical intellect, of talent that walks while the soul sleeps, with the mere activity of a blind somnambulism. it was fourfold in the intervals of keenest inspiration and subtlest rapture; threefold in the paradise of dreams lying between earth and heaven, lulled by lighter airs and lit by fainter stars; a land of night and moonlight, spectral and serene. these strange divisions of spirit and world according to some dim and mythologic hierarchy were with blake matters at once serious and commonplace. the worlds of beulah and jerusalem, the existence of los god of time and enitharmon goddess of space, the fallen manhood of theotormon, the imprisoned womanhood of oothoon, were more to him even than significant names; to the reader they must needs seem less. this monstrous nomenclature, this jargon of miscreated things in chaos, rose as by nature to his lips, flowed from them as by instinct. time, an incarnate spirit clothed with fire, stands before him in the sun's likeness; he is threatened with poverty, tempted to make himself friends of this world; and makes answer as though to a human tempter: "my hands are laboured day and night and rest comes never in my sight; my wife has no indulgence given except what comes to her from heaven; we eat little, we drink less; this earth breeds not our happiness." he beheld, he says, time and space as they were eternally, not as they are seen upon earth; he saw nothing as man sees: his hopes and fears were alien from all men's; and upon him and his the light of prosperous days and the terrors of troubled time had no power. "when i had my defiance given the sun stood trembling in heaven; the moon, that glowed remote below, became leprous and white as snow; and every soul of man on the earth felt affliction and sorrow and sickness and dearth." in all this we may see on one side the reflection and refraction of outer things, on the other side the projection of his own mind, the effusion of his individual nature, throughout the hardest and remotest alien matter. strangely severed from other men, he was, or he conceived himself, more strangely interwoven with them. the light of his spiritual weapons, the sound of his spiritual warfare, was seen, he believed, and was heard in faint resonance and far reverberation among men who knew not what such sights and sounds might mean. if, worsted in this "mental fight," he should let "his sword sleep in his hand," or "refuse to do spiritual acts because of natural fears and natural desires," the world would be the poorer for his defection, and himself "called the base judas who betrays his friend." fear of this rebuke shook and wasted him day and night; he was rent in sunder with pangs of terror and travail. heaven was full of the dead, coming to witness against him with blood-shedding and with shedding of tears: "the sun was hot with the bows of my mind and with arrows of thought." in this spirit he wrought at his day's work, seeing everywhere the image of his own mood, the presence of foes and friends. nothing to him was neutral; nothing without significance. the labour and strife of soul in which he lived was a thing as earnest as any bodily warfare. such struggles of spirit in poets or artists have been too often made the subject of public study; nay, too often the theme of chaotic versifiers. a theme more utterly improper it is of course impossible to devise. it is just that a workman should see all sides of his work, and labour with all his might of mind and dexterity of hand to make it great and perfect; but to use up the details of the process as crude material for cruder verse--to invite spectators as to the opening of a temple, and show them the unbaked bricks and untempered mortar--to expose with immodest violence and impotent satisfaction the long revolting labours of mental abortion--this no artist will ever attempt, no craftsman ever so perform as to escape ridicule. it is useless for those who can carve no statue worth the chiselling to exhibit instead six feet or nine feet of shapeless plaster or fragmentary stucco, and bid us see what sculptors work with; no man will accept that in lieu of the statue. not less futile and not less indecent is it for those who can give expression to no great poem to disgorge masses of raw incoherent verse on the subject of verse-making: to offer, in place of a poem ready wrought out, some chaotic and convulsive story about the way in which a poet works, or does not work. to blake the whole thing was too grave for any such exposure of spiritual nudity. in these letters he records the result of his "sore travail;" in these verses he commemorates the manner of his work "under the direction of messengers from heaven daily and nightly, not without trouble or care;" but he writes in private and by pure instinct; he speaks only by the impulse of confidence, in the ardour of faith. what he has to say is said with the simple and abstract rapture of apostles or prophets; not with the laborious impertinence and vain obtrusion of tortuous analysis. for such heavy play with gossamer and straws his nature was too earnest and his genius too exalted. this is the mood in which he looks over what work he has done or has to do: and in his lips the strange scriptural language used has the sincerity of pure fire. "i see the face of my heavenly father; he lays his hand upon my head, and gives a blessing to all my work. why should i be troubled? why should my heart and flesh cry out? i will go on in the strength of the lord; through hell will i sing forth his praises; that the dragons of the deep may praise him, and that those who dwell in darkness and in the sea-coasts may be gathered into his kingdom." so did he esteem of art, which indeed is not a light thing; nor is it wholly unimportant to men that they should have one capable artist more or less among them. how it may fare with artisans (be they never so pretentious) is a matter of sufficiently small moment. one blessing there assuredly was upon all blake's work; the infinite blessing of life; the fervour of vital blood. in spite however of all inspiration and of all support, sickness and uncongenial company impeded his hours of labour and corroded his hours of repose. a trial on the infamous charges of sedition and assault, brought by a private soldier whose name of scholfield was thus made shamefully memorable, succeeded finally in making the country unendurable to him. it must be said here of the hapless hayley that he behaved well in this time of vexation and danger: coming forward to bail "our friend blake," and working hard for the defence in a tumultuous and spluttering way: he "would appear in public at the trial, living or dying," and did, with or without leave of doctors, appear and speak up for the accused. blake's honourable acquittal does not make it less disgraceful that the charge should at all have been entertained. his own courage, readiness of wit, and sincerity of spirit are fully shown in the letter relating this short and sharp episode in his quiet life. some months later he returned to london once for all, and once for all broke off relations with felpham: commending, it may be hoped, hayley to the muses and scholfield to the halberts. having read these letters, we are not lightly to judge of blake as of another man. thoughts and creeds peculiar to his mind found expression in ways and words peculiar to his lips. it was no vain or empty claim that he put forward to especial insight and individual means of labour. if he spoke strangely, he had great things to speak. if he acted strangely, he had great things to do. "mount sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the lord descended on it in fire." let the tree be judged by its fruit. if the man who wrote thus had nothing to do or to say worth the saying or the doing, it may fairly be said that he was mad or foolish. the involving smoke, here again, implied the latent fire. where the particles of dust are mere hardened mud, where the cloud is mere condensing fog hatched from the stagnation of a swamp, one may justly complain of the obstruction and the obscurity. there is here indeed too much of mist, but it is at least clear; the air that breeds it is high, the moisture that feeds it is pure. this man had never lived in the low places of thought. in the words of a living poet,[ ] whose noble verses are worthy to stand thus near blake's own-- "he had seen the moon's eclipse by the fire from etna's lips, with orion had he spoken, his fast with honey-dew had broken." his dialect was too much the dialect of a far country; but it was from a far country that he came, from a lofty station that he spoke. to a poet who has given us so much, to an artist who has done great things to such great purpose, we may give at least some allowance and some toleration. the distance is great which divides a fireside taper from the eclipsed moon on etna. rules which are useful or necessary for household versifiers may well be permitted to relax or even to dissolve when applied to one who has attained to see with unblinded eyes and to speak with adequate words of matters so far above them. the next point noticeable by us in the story of blake's life is his single-handed duel with cromek and stothard; and of this we need not wish to speak at much length. the engraver, swift and sharp in all his dealings--never scrupulous, insolent sometimes, and always cunning--had an easy game to play, and played it without shame; not even taking the trouble to hide his marked cards or to load his dice in private. in spite or in consequence of this rapacity and mendacity,[ ] cromek was evidently of some use to blake. and even for the exercise of these special talents he is perhaps not to be blamed; the man did but work with such qualities as he had; did but put out to use his natural gifts and capacities. but that he should have done this at blake's expense is and must remain unpardonable: and therefore he must be left to hang with the head downwards from the memorial gallows to which biography has nailed him; a warning to all such others to choose their game more warily. a tradesman who, by their own account, swindled blake and robbed scott can hardly expect to be allowed safe harbourage under the compassionate shelter of complete oblivion or behind the weather-tight screen of simple contempt. it may be worth while to condense the evidence as to his dealings with blake and stothard. one alone of these three comes out clear from the involved network of suspicious double-dealing. in the matter of the engravings to blair, cromek had entrapped and cheated blake from the first. in the matter of the drawing from chaucer, he had gone a step further down the steep slope of peculation. after the proposal to employ schiavonetti, blake might at once have thrown him over as a self-detected knave. he did not; and was accordingly plundered again in a less dexterous and a more direct manner. it is fortunate that the shameful little history has at last been tracked through all its scandalous windings by so keen an eye and so sure a hand as mr. gilchrist's. two questions arise at first sight; did cromek give blake a commission for his design of the "pilgrims"? did stothard, when cromek proposed that he should take up the same subject, know that the proposal was equivalent to the suggestion of a theft? both these questions blake would have answered in the affirmative; and in his dialect the affirmative mood was distinct and strong. further evidence on the first head can be wanted by no one of decent insight or of decent candour. that cromek, with more than professional impudence, denied the charge, is an incident in the affair neither strange nor important. the manner of his denial may be matched for effrontery with the tone of his insolent letter to blake on the subject of the designs to blair. with the vulgarities and audacities, the shifts and the doubles of this shuffling man of prey, no one need again be troubled. that a visitor caught with the spoons in his pocket should bluster, stammer, and grin as he pleads innocence or affects amazement, is natural and desirable; for every word and gesture, humble or shameless, incoherent or intrepid, serves to convict him twice over. undoubtedly he saw blake's sketch, tried to conjure it into his pocket, and failed; undoubtedly, finding that the artist would not again give up his work to be engraved by other hands, he made such approach to an honest offer as was compatible with his character; undoubtedly also he then made money in his uncleanly way out of the failure by tossing the subject to another painter as a bait. no man has a right to express wonder that blake refused to hold stothard blameless. it is nothing whatever to the purpose that, while cromek's somewhat villainous share in the speculation was as yet under cover, blake may have bestowed on stothard's unfinished design his friendly counsel and his frank applause. after the dealer's perfidy had been again bared and exposed by his own act, it was, and it is yet, a stretch of charity to suppose that his associate was not likewise his accomplice. and the manner of stothard's retort upon blake, when taxed by him with unfair dealing, was not of a sort qualified to disperse or to allay suspicion. he charged, and he permitted cromek to charge, the plundered man with the act of plunder. even though we, who can now read the whole account without admixture of personal feeling, may acquit stothard of active or actual treachery, as all must gladly do who remember how large a debt is due from all to an artist of such exquisite and pleasurable talent, it is hopeless to make out for him a thoroughly sufficient case. the fellowship of such an one as cromek leaves upon all who take his part at least the suspicion of a stain. all should hope that stothard on coming out of the matter could have shown clean hands; none can doubt that blake did. that on stothard's part irritation should have succeeded to surprise, and rancour to irritation, is not wonderful. if he was indeed injured by the fault of cromek and the misfortune of blake, it would doubtless have been admirably generous to have controlled the irritation and overcome the rancour; but in that case the worst that should be said of him is that he did not adopt the noblest course of action possible to him. admitting this, he is not blameable for choosing to throw in his lot with cromek; but we must then suppose not merely that cromek had abstained from any avowal of his original treachery, but that stothard was unhappily able to accept in good faith the bare assertion of cromek in preference to the bare assertion of blake. if we believe this, we are bound to admit no harsher feeling than regret that cromek should so have duped and blinded his betters; but in common fairness we are also bound to restrict the question within these limits. for stothard a door of honourable escape stands open; and all must desire rather to widen than to narrow the opening. no one can wish to straiten his chance of acquittal, or to inquire too curiously whether there be not a pretext for closing the door that now stands ajar. but for the rest, it is simply necessary to choose between blake's authority and cromek's; and to consider this alternative seriously for a moment would be at once an act of condescension towards cromek and of impertinence towards blake, equally unjustifiable on either side. it is possible that blake was not wronged by stothard; it is undeniable that he was wronged through him. it is probable that stothard believed himself to be not in the wrong; it is certain that blake was in the right.[ ] about the close of this quarrel, and before the publication of blake's designs to blair as engraved for cromek by schiavonetti, a book came out which would have deserved more notice and repaid more interest than has yet been shown it. the graceful design by blake on its frontispiece is not the only or even the chief attraction of dr. malkin's "memoirs of his child." the writer indeed treads ponderously and speaks thickly; but there is extant no picture at once so perfect and so quaint of a purely childlike talent. even supreme genius, which usually has a mind now and then to try, has never given us the complete and vivid likeness which a child has for once given of himself. even shakespeare, even hugo, even blake, has not done this. the husky dialect of his father suffices to express something; and the portrait is significant and pleasant, reproducing as it does the solid grace and glad gravity proper to children; a round and bright figure, with no look of over-training or disease. but the child's own scraps and scrawls contain the kernel and jewel of the book. his small drawings are certainly firmer, clearer, more inventive than could have been looked for in a six-year-old artist. any slight imitative work in a child implies the energy which impels invention in a man. his little histories and geographies are delightful for illogical sequence of events and absurd coherence of fancy. only a child could have invented and combined such unimaginable eccentricities of innocence. the language and system of proper names strongly recall blake's own habits of speech. the province of malleb and the city of tumblebob are no unfit abodes for hand and hyle, kwantok and kotope. the moral polity of allestone is not unlike that which prevails among the emanations "who in the aggregate are called jerusalem." the pamphlet, condensed and compressed into a form more thoroughly readable, would be worth republishing. it seems probable that the verses following were written by blake about this time, as mr. gilchrist refers the design of the "last judgment," executed on commission for lady egremont, to the year . they are evidently meant to match the beautiful dedication of the designs to blair, which were not brought out till the next year. less excellent in workmanship, they are not less important by way of illustration. the existence of some mythical or symbolic island of atalantis, where the arts were to be preserved as in paradise, now walled round or washed over by the blind and bitter waters of time, was a favourite vision with blake. at a first reading some of these verses seemed to refer to the subsequent series of designs from dante; but there is no evidence of any such later commission as we must in that case take for granted. "the caverns of the grave i've seen, and these i showed to england's queen; but now the caves of hell i view, who shall i dare to show them to? what mighty soul in beauty's form shall dauntless view the infernal storm? egremont's countess can control the flames of hell that round me roll. if she refuse, i still go on, till the heavens and earth are gone; still admired by noble minds, followed by envy on the winds. re-engraved time after time, ever in their youthful prime, my designs unchanged remain; time may rage, but rage in vain; for above time's troubled fountains, on the great atlantic mountains, in my golden house on high, there they shine eternally." blake was always looking westward for his islands of the blest. all transatlantic things appear to have a singular hold upon his fancy. america was a land of misty and stormy morning, struck by the fierce and fugitive fires of intermittent war and nascent freedom. in a dim confused manner, he seems to mix up the actual events of history with the formless and labouring legends of his own mythology; or rather to cast circumstances into the crucible of vision, and extract a strange amalgam of metals unfit for mortal currency and difficult to bring to any test. in the illustrations to "blair's grave" appeared, and found some acceptance; a success on which the shameful soul of cromek fed exultingly and fattened scandalously. the ravenous gamester had packed his cards from the first with all due care, and was able now to bluster without fear as he had before swindled without shame. twenty pounds of the profits fell to the share of the designer for some of the most admirable works extant in that line. the sweetness and vivid grace of these designs are as noticeable as the energy and rapidity of imagination implied by them. even in blake's lifetime their tender and lofty beauty drew down some recognition; and incautious criticism, as it praised them, forgot that the artist was not dead yet. the generous oversight was afterwards amply and consistently redeemed. for the moment it was perhaps not wonderful that even so much excellence should obtain something of mistrustful admiration. the noble passion and exaltation of spirit here made visible burnt its way into notice for a time; and cromek was allowed to claim applause for his invention of blake. we will choose two designs only for reference. none who have seen can well forget the glorious violence of reunion between soul and body, meeting with fierce embraces, with glad agony and rage of delight; with breasts yearning and eyes wide, with sweet madness of laughter at their lips; the startled and half-arisen body not less divine already than the descending soul, though the earth clings yet about his knees and feet, and though she comes down as with a clamour of rushing wind and prone impulse of falling water, fresh from the stars and the highest air of heaven. but for perfect beauty nothing of blake's can be matched against the design of the soul departing; in this drawing the body lies filled as it were and clothed with the supreme sleep of flesh, no man watching by it; with limbs laid out and covered, with eyelids close; and the soul, with tender poise of pausing feet, with painless face and sad pure eyes, looks back as with a serene salutation full of pity, before passing away into the clear air and light left at the end of sunset on heaven and the hills; where outside the opened lattice a soft cold land of rising fields and ridged moorland bears upon it the barren beauty of shadow and sleep, the breath and not the breeze of evening. the sweet and grave grace of this background, with a bright pallor in the sky and an effect upon field and moor of open air without wind, brings with it a sense as of music. a year later blake advertised and opened his exhibition; which he was about as qualified to manage as little malkin might have been. between anger, innocence, want of funds and sense of merit, he would assuredly have ruined a better chance than he ever had. with the exception of his _canterbury pilgrims_, the choice of pictures and designs for exhibition seems to have been somewhat unhappy.[ ] the admirable power and high dramatic quality of that singular but noble picture, the latent or superincumbent beauty which corrects and redeems its partial ugliness, the strong imagination and the fanciful justice of the entire work, were invisible to all but such spectators as charles lamb; if indeed there were ever another capable of seeing them to such purpose. whatever portion of the like merit there may have been in the other works exhibited was still more utterly lost upon the few who saw them at all; for of these we have scarcely any record beyond blake's own. one journal alone appears to have noticed the exhibition. an angry allusion of blake's to some assault of the _examiner_ newspaper upon his works and character has been hitherto left unexplained, presumably through a not irrational contempt. that blake may be cleared from any charge of perversity, a brief account of the quarrel is here appended. contemptible as are both the journeyman writer and his poor day's work, they have been found worth tracking down on account of the game flown at. in the thirtieth number of the _examiner_ (august th, ) there is a review (signed r. h.) of the _blair's grave_, sufficiently impudent in manner and incapable in matter to have provoked a milder spirit than blake's. fuseli's prefatory note is cited with a tone of dissentient patronage not lightly to be endured; "none but such a visionary as mr. blake or such a frantic (_sic_) as mr. fuseli could possibly fancy," and so forth; then follows some chatter about the failures of great poets, "utter impossibility of representing _spirit_ to the eye" (except by means of italic type), "insipid," "absurd," "all the wise men of the east would not possibly divine," "_small_ assistance of the title" (italics again), "how are we to find out?" (might not one reply with thersites, "make that demand of thy maker?"), "how absurd," "more serious censure," "most heterogeneous and serio-fantastic," "most indecent," "appearance of libidinousness," "much to admire, but more to censure," and all the common-places of that pestilent old style which, propped on italics and points of exclamation, halts at every sentence between a titter, a shrug, and a snarl. schiavonetti also "has done more than justice" to blake, and blair and his engraver are finally bidden to divide the real palm. who this reviewer was, no man need either know or care; but all may now understand the point of blake's allusion. next year however the real batteries were opened. it is but loathsome labour to shovel out this decomposed rubbish from the catacombs of liberal journalism; but if thus only we can explain an apparently aimless or misplaced reference on the great artist's part, it may be worth while to throw up a few spadefuls. this second article bears date september th, , no. of the _examiner_, and is labelled "mr. blake's exhibition." the contributor has already lapsed from simple fatuity into fatuity compound with scurrility. blake here figures as "an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement, and consequently of whom no public notice would have been taken, if he was not" (the man's grammar here goes mad on its own account, but what then?) "forced on the notice and animadversion of the _examiner_ in having been held up" (the case by this time is fairly desperate) "to public admiration;" such is the eccentricity of human error. the _blair_ of last year "was a futile endeavour _by_ bad drawings to represent immateriality _by_ bodily personifications," and so forth; once again, "the tasteful hand of schiavonetti," one regrets to remember, was employed to bestow "an exterior charm on deformity and nonsense. thus encouraged, the poor man" (to wit, blake) "fancies himself a great master, and has painted a few wretched pictures, some of which are"--any one may finish that for the critic. the catalogue is "a farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness (_sic_), and egregious vanity." stothard and the irrepressible schiavonetti are of course held up in contrast to the "distempered brain" which produced blake's _pilgrims_. the picture of _the ancient britons_ "is a complete caricature; the colour of the flesh is exactly like hung beef." here we will pull the man up short and have done with him. he shirks a signature this time; and whether or no he were the same as last year's critic, those may find out who care. "arcadiæ pecuaria rudere dicas;" would not one say that this mingling bray and howl had issued through the throat and nostril of some one among the roving or browsing cattle of our own daily or weekly literature, startled at smelling some incongruous rose in his half-eaten thistle-heap? such feeders were always one in voice and one in palate: it were waste of wood and iron to cudgel or to prod them. even when their clamour becomes too intolerably dissonant we may get out of hearing and solace our vexed ears and spirits with reflection on that axiom of blake's, which, though savouring in such a case of excessive optimism, we will strive to hope is true: "the bleat, the bark, bellow, and roar, are waves that beat on heaven's shore." this was not blake's only connexion or collision with the journals of his day. an adverse notice of fuseli had excited him to more direct reprisals than the attack upon himself now did. the _monthly magazine_ for july st, (vol. xxi. pp. , ), contains the following letter, which is now first unearthed and seems worth saving. it is not without perversities; neither is it wanting in vigour and fervour of thought. "to the editor of the 'monthly magazine.' "sir,--my indignation was exceedingly moved at reading a criticism in _bell's weekly messenger_ ( th may) on the picture of count ugolino, by mr. fuseli, in the royal academy exhibition; and your magazine being as extensive in its circulation as that paper, and as it also must from its nature be more permanent, i take the advantageous opportunity to counteract the widely-diffused malice which has for many years, under the pretence of admiration of the arts, been assiduously sown and planted among the english public against true art, such as it existed in the days of michael angelo and raphael. under pretence of fair criticism and candour, the most wretched taste ever produced has been upheld for many, very many years; but now, i say, now its end has come. such an artist as fuseli is invulnerable, he needs not my defence; but i should be ashamed not to set my hand and shoulder, and whole strength, against those wretches who, under pretence of criticism, use the dagger and the poison. "my criticism on this picture is as follows: 'mr. fuseli's count ugolino is the father of sons of feeling and dignity, who would not sit looking in their parent's face in the moments of his agony, but would rather retire and die in secret while they suffer him to indulge his passionate and innocent grief, his innocent and venerable madness, and insanity, and fury, and whatever paltry cold-hearted critics cannot, because they dare not, look upon. fuseli's count ugolino is a man of wonder and admiration, of resentment against man and devil, and of humiliation before god: prayer and parental affection fills the figure from head to foot. the child in his arms, whether boy or girl signifies not (but the critic must be a fool who has not read dante, and who does not know a boy from a girl); i say, the child is as beautifully drawn as it is coloured--in both, inimitable; and the effect of the whole is truly sublime, on account of that very colouring which our critic calls black and heavy. the german-flute colour, which was used by the flemings (they call it burnt bone), has [? so] possessed the eye of certain connoisseurs, that they cannot see appropriate colouring, and are blind to the gloom of a real terror. "the taste of english amateurs has been too much formed upon pictures imported from flanders and holland, consequently our countrymen are easily brow-beat on the subject of painting; and hence it is so common to hear a man say, 'i am no judge of pictures;' but, o englishmen! know that every man ought to be a judge of pictures, and every man is so who has not been connoisseured out of his senses. "a gentleman who visited me the other day said, 'i am very much surprised at the dislike which some connoisseurs show on viewing the pictures of mr. fuseli; but the truth is, he is a hundred years beyond the present generation.' though i am startled at such an assertion, i hope the contemporary taste will shorten the hundred years into as many hours; for i am sure that any person consulting his own eyes must prefer what is so supereminent; and i am as sure that any person consulting his own reputation, or the reputation of his country, will refrain from disgracing either by such ill-judged criticisms in future. "yours, wm. blake." this ready championship, erratic and excessive as it may be, is not less characteristic of the man than is that outspoken violence which helped to make his audience often deaf and unfriendly. the letter, as we said, did not happen to turn up in time for insertion in any niche of the _life_ or _appendix_: it will not seem a valueless windfall if read by the light of the catalogue, the address, and other notes on art embalmed in the second volume. no part of blake's life was nobler in action or is yet worthier of study than the period of neglected labour and unbroken poverty which followed. much of the work done is now, it appears, irretrievably lost. new friends gathered about him as the old ones died out; for indeed all men capable of seeing the beauty of greatness and goodness were drawn at once to such a man as he was. violent and petulant as he may have seemed on some rare occasions of public protest, he endured all the secret slights and wants of his latter life with a most high patience, and with serene if not joyous acceptance of his fate. without brute resignation, nay with keen sense of neglect shown and wrong done, he yet laboured gladly and without ceasing. sick or well, he was at work; his utmost rest was mere change of labour. to relax the intense nerve or deaden the travailing brain would have been painful and grievous to him. fervent incessant action was to him as the breath of every moment, the bread of every day. his talk was eager and eloquent; his habits of life were simple and noble, alike above compassion and beyond regret. to all the poor about him--and among the poor he had to live out all his latter days of life--he showed all the supreme charities of courtesy. from one or two things narrated of him, we may all see and be assured that a more perfect and gentle excellence of manner, a more royal civility of spirit, was never found in any man. fearless, blameless, and laborious, he had also all tender and exquisite qualities of breeding, all courteous and gracious instincts of kindness. as there was nothing base in him, so was there nothing harsh or weak. this old man, whose hand academicians would not take because he had to fetch his own porter, had the habit and spirit of the highest training. he was born a knight and king among men, and had the great and quiet way of such. to say that he was not ashamed or afraid of his poverty seems an expression actually libellous by dint of inadequacy. fear and shame of any base kind are inconceivable of him. the great and sleepless soul which impelled him to work and to speak could take no taint and no rest in this world. conscious as he was of the glory of his gift and capacity, he was apparently unconscious how noble a thing was his own life. the work which he was able and compelled to perform he knew to be great; that his manner of living should be what it was, he seems to have thought but simple. "few," his biographer has well said, "are so persistently brave." but his was the supreme valour which ignorantly assumes and accepts itself. it was natural to him not to cease from doing well or complain of faring ill, as it is natural to a soldier not to turn tail. that he should do great things for small wages was a condition of his life. neither, with all his just and distinct self-assertion, did he assume any special credit for this. he did not ask for more of meat and drink, more of leisure or praise; he demanded only such recognition as might have enabled him to do more work and greater while strength and sight were left in him. that neglect, and the necessities of mere handiwork involved by neglect, should thus shorten his time and impair his capacity for higher labours, he did at times complain, not without an audible undertone of scornful and passionate rebuke. "let not that nation," he says once, "where less than nobility is the 'reward,' pretend that art is encouraged by that nation." there was no angry prurience for fame or gold underlying such complaints. his famous drawings, burlesque or serious, of visionary heads are interesting chiefly for the evidence they give of blake's power upon his own mind and nerves, and of the strong and subtle mixture of passion with humour in his temperament. faith, invention, and irony are here mingled in a rare and curious manner. the narrow leer of stolid servile vigour, the keen smirk of satisfied and brutish achievement, branded upon the grotesque face of the "man who built the pyramids," implies a good satire on workmen of base talent and mean success. several others, such as "the accusers" and the celebrated "ghost of a flea," are grotesque almost to grandeur, and full of strength and significance. more important than hundreds of these are the beautiful designs to virgil--or to phillips. reproduced at page of vol. i. with the utmost care and skill, they have of course lost something by the way; enough remains, and would remain had less favour been shown them, to give great and keen pleasure. in the first, the remote sweet curve of hill against a sky filled with evening, seen far above the rows of folded sheep, may recall a splendid former design in the "blair." in the second, which perhaps has lost more than any in course of transference, the distance of winding road and deepening gorge, woods and downs and lighted windy sky, is among the noblest inventions of imaginative landscape. highest of all in poetical quality i should class the third design. upon the first two, symbolic as they are of vision and of pilgrimage, the shadow of peace is cast like a garment; rest lies upon them as a covering. in the third, a splendour of sweet and turbulent moonlight falls across blown bowed hedgerows, over the gnarled and labouring branches of a tough tortuous oak, upon soft ears of laid corn like long low waves without ripple or roll; every bruised blade distinct and patient, every leaf quivering and straightened out in the hard wind. the stormy beauty of this design, the noble motion and passion in all parts of it, are as noticeable as its tender sense of detail and grace in effect of light. not a star shows about the moon; and the dark hollow half of her glimmering shell, emptied and eclipsed, is faint upon the deep air. the fire in her crescent burns high across the drift of wind. blake's touch in this appears to me curiously just and perfect; the moon does not seem to quail or flicker as a star would; but one may feel and see, as it were, the wind passing beneath her; amid the fierce fluctuation of heaven in the full breath of tempest, blown upon with all the strength of the night, she stands firm in the race of winds, where no lesser star can stand; she hangs high in clear space, pure of cloud; but no likeness of the low-hung labouring moon, no blurred and blinking planet with edges blotted and soiled in fitful vapour, would have given so splendid a sense of storm as this white triumphal light seen above the wind. small and rough as these half-engraved designs may be, it is difficult to express in words all that is latent, even all that is evident, in the best of them. poets and painters of blake's kind can put enough into the slightest and swiftest work they do to baffle critics and irritate pretenders. friends, as we have said, were not wanting to blake in his old age; to one of them we owe, among other more direct obligations, an inestimable debt for the "illustrations to job," executed on his commission. another worthy of notice here was, until our own day called forth a better, the best english critic on art; himself, as far as we know, admirable alike as a painter, a writer, and a murderer. in each pursuit, perhaps, there was a certain want of solid worth and fervour, which at times impeded or impaired the working of an excellent faculty; but in each it is evident there was a noble sense of things fair and fit; a seemliness and shapeliness of execution, a sensitive relish of excellence, an exquisite aspiration after goodness of work, which cannot be overpraised. with pen, with palette, or with poison, his hand was never a mere craftsman's. the visible vulgarities and deficiencies of his style went hardly deeper than the surface. excess of colour and levity of handling have not unjustly been charged against him; he does not seem to have always used the material on hand, whether strychnine or mere ink, to the best purpose; his work has a certain crudity and violence of tone; his articles and his crimes are both too often wanting in the most delightful qualities of which finished art is capable; qualities which a more earnest man of lesser genius might have given them. the main object in both seems wrong, or at best insufficient; in the one case he looked less to achievement than to effect; in the other he aimed rather at money-getting than at enjoyment; which is the more deplorable, as a man so greatly gifted must have been in every way fitted to apprehend, to relish, and to realize all noble and subtle pleasure in its more vigorous forms and in its more delicate sense. what he has done however is excellent; and we need not inquire with a captious ingratitude whether another could have done better: that meaner men have since done worse, we know and lament. too often the murderer is not an artist; and the converse defect is no doubt yet more unhappily frequent. on all accounts we may suppose that in days perhaps not remote a philosophic posterity, mindful that the harvest of art has few reapers worthy of their hire, and well aware that what is exalted must also be exceptional, will inscribe with due honour upon the list of men who have deserved well of mankind the name of wainwright. those who would depreciate his performance as a simple author must recollect that in accordance with the modern receipt he "lived his poems;" that the age prefers deeds to songs; that to do great things is better than to write; that action is of eternity, fiction of time; and that these poems were doubtless the greater for being "inarticulate." remembering which things, the sternest critic will not deny that no kaiser or king ever "polished his stanza" to better purpose with more strenuous will. what concerns us at present is, that there grew up between blake and wainwright an intimacy not unpleasing to commemorate. an artist in words, in oils, and in drugs, wainwright had an exquisite power of recognition, and a really noble relish of all excellence. no good work came in his way but he praised it with all his might. the mixture of keen insight with frank pleasure, innate justice of eye with fresh effusion of enjoyment, gives to his papers on art a special colour or savour which redeems the offences of a tricked and tinselled style. clearly too he did what he could for blake in the way of journalism; but a super-editorial thickness of hide and head repelled the light sharp shafts loosed from a bow too relaxed by too unsteady a hand. it is lamentable that the backstroke of a recalcitrant hoof should have broken this bowman's arm when it might have done good service. help shown to blake about this time, especially help of the swift efficient nature that wainwright would have given, might have been infinitely important; it was no light thing to come so near and yet fall short of. exposition of the beloved "song of jerusalem," adequate at least on the side of pure art, would assuredly have given the great old man pleasure beyond words and beyond gold. this too he was not to have. there are men set about the ways of life who seem made only to fulfil the office of thorns; it is difficult for retrospection to observe that they have done anything but hurt and hinder the feet of higher men. doubtless they have had their use and taken their pleasure. these have left no trace; we can still see the scars they made on the hand and the fragments they rent from the cloak of a great man as he passed by them. a little of the honour which he has lately received would have been to blake in his life a great and pleasant thing to attain; praise of his work now leaves an after-taste of bitterness on the lips which utter it. his work, not done for wages, hardly repaid with thanks, we can touch and handle and remark upon as ability is given us; "nothing can touch him further." those who might have done what we would give much to do left it undone. and even to men who enjoy such power to do and such wisdom to choose greatly as were the inheritance of blake it is not a thing worth no regret to have been allowed upon earth no comprehension and no applause. he had a better part in life than the pleasure that comes of such things; but these also he might have had. he would not come down to chaffer for them or stoop to gather them up from unclean or unsafe ground; but they might have been laid at his feet freely and with thanks; which they never were. foiled as he had been in his good purpose, the critic at least won full gratitude from the gentle and great nature of his friend, who repaid him in a kingly manner with praise worth gold. one may hope that a picture painted by wainwright and commended by blake will yet be traced somewhere, in spite of the singular fate which hung upon so much of their lives, and which still obscures so much of their work. at least its subject and quality should be sought out and remembered. but for the strange collision with social laws which broke up his life and scattered his designs, it might also be hoped that some other relics of wainwright would be found adrift in manuscript or otherwise, and a collection of his stray works be completed and published, with an adequate notice of his life, well weeded of superfluous lamentations, duly qualified to put an end to perversion and foolish fancies, clear of deprecation or distortion, just, sufficient, and close to the purpose. few things would be better worth doing by a competent editor. even of the "inventions to the book of job," as far as i know, no especial notice was taken. upon these, the greatest of all blake's designs, such noble exposition has now at length been bestowed that further remark may henceforward well be spared. this commentary has something of the stately beauty and vigorous gravity of style which distinguish the work spoken of. blake himself, had he undertaken to write notes on his designs, must have done them less justice than this. the perfect apprehension and the perfect representation of the great qualities which all men, according to their capacity, must here in some degree perceive, give to these notes a value beyond that of mere eloquence or of mere sympathy. the words chosen do not merely render the subject with fluency and fitness; they attain a choiceness and exaltation of expression, which give to the writing much of the character of the designs. whether or not from any exceptional aptitude in the material, these designs are more lucid and dramatic in effect than perhaps any of blake's works. his specialties of belief or sentiment hardly show in this series at all; except perhaps in the passionate and penitent character which seems here to supplant the traditional divine look of patience and power. the whole work has in it a vibration as of fire; even the full stars and serene lines of hill are set in frameworks of fervent sky or throbbing flame. but for the most part those intense qualities of sleepless invention which in many of blake's other works impel him into fierce aberration and blind ecstasy, through ways which few can tread and mists which few can pierce, are now happily diverted and kept at work upon the exquisite borders and appendages. in these there is enough of fiery fancy and tender structure of symbol to employ the whole wide and vivid imagination of the artist. and throughout the series there is a largeness and a loftiness of manner which sustain the composition at the height of the poem. in the highest flights of spiritual passion and speculation, in the subtle contention with fate and imperious agony of appeal against heaven, blake has matched himself against his text, and translated its sharp and profound harmonies into a music of design not less adorable. those who have read with any care or comprehension the excellent chapters on blake's personal life will regret, not it may be without a keen suppressed sense of vain vexation, that the author did not live to get sight of the letters which have since been found and published. they will at least observe with how much reason the editor of the _life_ has desired us to notice the close and complete confirmation given by that correspondence to the accuracy of these chapters. no tribute more valuable could be devised to the high sincerity, the clear sagacity, the vigorous sense of truth and lucid power of proof, which have left us for the first time an acceptable and endurable portrait of blake. all earlier attempts were mere masses of blot and scratch, evidently impossible and false on the face of them, and even pitifully conscious that they could not be true, not being human. the bewildered patronage, fear, contempt, goodwill and despair which blake had excited among those hapless biographers have left in their forlorn failures a certain element of despicable pathos. we have now, thanks to no happier chance, but solely to the strenuous ability and fidelity of a man qualified to study and to speak upon the matter, a trustworthy, perspicuous, and coherent summary of the actual facts of blake's life, of the manner in which he worked, and of the causes which made his work what it was. among these late labours of blake the "dante" may take a place of some prominence. the seven published plates, though quite surprisingly various in merit, are worth more notice than has yet been spared them. three at least, for poetical power and nobility of imaginative detail, are up to the artist's highest mark. others have painted the episode of francesca with more or less of vigour and beauty; once above all an artist to whom any reference here must be taken as especially apposite has given with the tenderest perfection of power, first the beauty of beginning love in the light and air of life on earth, then the passion of imperishable desire under the dropping tongues of flame in hell. to the right the lovers are drawn close, yearning one toward another with touch of tightened hands and insatiable appeal of lips; behind them the bower lattice opens on deep sunshine and luminous leaves; to the left, they drift before the wind of hell, floated along the misty and straining air, fastened one upon another among the fires, pale with perpetual division of pain; and between them the witnesses stand sadly, as men that look before and after. blake has given nothing like this: of personal beauty and special tenderness his design has none; it starts from other ground. often as the lovers had been painted, here first has any artist desired to paint the second circle itself. to most illustrators, as to most readers, and (one might say) to dante himself, the rest are swallowed up in those two supreme martyrs. here we see, not one or two, but the very circle of the souls that sinned by lust, as dante saw it; and as keats afterwards saw it in the dream embalmed by his sonnet; the revolution of infinite sorrowing spirits through the bitter air and grievous hurricane of hell. through strange immense implications of snake-shaped fold beyond fold, the involved chain of figures that circle and return flickers in wan white outline upon the dense dark. under their feet is no stay as on earth; over their heads is no light as in heaven. they have no rest, and no resting-place: they revolve like circles of curling foam or fire. the two witnesses, who alone among all the mobile mass have ground whereon to set foot, stand apart upon a broken floor-work of roots and rocks, made rank with the slime and sprawl of rotten weed and foul flag-leaves of lethe. detail of drawing or other technical work is not the strong point of the design; but it does incomparably well manage to render the sense of the matter in hand, the endless measured motion, the painful and fruitless haste as of leaves or smoke upon the wind, the grey discomforted air and dividing mist. blake has thoroughly understood and given back the physical symbols of this first punishment in dante; the whirling motion of his figures has however more of blind violence and brute speed than the text seems to indicate: they are dashed and dragged one upon another like weed or shingle torn up in the drift of a breaking sea: overthrown or beaten down, haled or crushed together, as if by inanimate strength of iron or steam: not moved as we expect to see them, in sad rapidity of stately measure and even time of speed. the flame-like impulse of idea natural to blake cannot absolutely match itself against dante's divine justice and intense innate forbearance in detail; nor so comprehend, as by dint of reproduction to compete with, that supreme sense of inward and outward right which rules and attunes every word of the _commedia_. two other drawings in this series are worth remark and praise; the sixth and seventh in order. in the sixth, dante and virgil, standing in a niche of rifted rock faced by another cliff up and down which a reptile crowd of spirits swarms and sinks, look down on the grovelling and swine-like flocks of malebolge; lying tumbled about the loathsome land in hateful heaps of leprous flesh and dishevelled deformity, with limbs contorted, clawing nails, and staring horror of hair and eyes: one figure thrown down in a corner of the crowded cliff-side, her form and face drowned in an overflow of ruined raining tresses. the pure grave folds of the two poets' robes, long and cleanly carved as the straight drapery of a statue, gain chastity of contrast from the swarming surge and monstrous mass of all foulest forms beneath, against the reek of which both witnesses stop their noses with their gowns. behind and between, huge outlines of dark hill and sharp curves of crag show like stiffened ridges of solid sea, amid heaving and glaring motion of vapour and fire. slight as the workmanship is of this design also, alien as is perhaps its structure of precipice and mountain from the dantesque conception of descending circles and narrowing sides, it has a fiery beauty of its own; the background especially, with its climbing or crawling flames, the dark hard strength and sweep of its sterile ridges, seen by fierce fits of reflected light, washed about with surf and froth of tideless fire, and heavily laden with the lurid languor of hell. in the seventh design we reach the circle of traitors; the foot of the passenger strikes against one frost-bound face; others lie straight, with crowned congealing hair and beard taken in the tightening rivets of ice. to the right a swarm of huge and huddled figures seems gathering with moan or menace behind a veil of frozen air, a mask of hardening vapour; and from each side the bitter light of ice or steel falls grey in cruel refraction. into the other four designs we will not enter; some indeed are too savagely reckless in their ugly and barren violation of form or law, to be redeemed by even an intenser apprehension of symbol and sense; and one at least, though with noble suggestions dropped about it, is but half sketched in. in that of the valley of serpents there is however a splendid excess of horror and prodigal agony; the ravenous delight of the closing and laughing mouths, the folded tension of every scale and ring, the horrible head caught and crushed with the last shriek between its teeth and the last strain upon its eyelids, in the serrated jaws of the erect serpent--all have the brand of blake upon them. these works were the last he was to achieve; out of the whole dantesque series, seven designs alone have ever won their way into such notice as engraving could earn for them. the latest chapters of blake's life are perhaps also the noblest. his poverty, if that word implies anything of a destitute or sordid way of living, seems to have grown and swollen somewhat beyond its actual size in the dim form of report. stories have come to hand of late, which, being seemingly accurate in the main, though not as yet duly fixed in detail or date, remove any such ground of fear. they do better; they bring proof once again of the noble charity, the tender exaltation of mind, the swift bounty of hand, which would have made memorable a man meaner in talent. once, it is said, he lent £ to some friend in distress, which friend's wife, having laid out most of her windfall in dress, thought mrs. blake might like to see _that_ by way of change for her husband's money. once too they received into their lodging (into which does not yet seem certain) a young student of art, sick and poor, who died some time after upon their hands. these things, and such as these, we know dimly. one or two such deeds, seen through such dull vague obstruction, in the midst of so many things forgotten, should be taken to imply much. how few we know of, it is easy to say; how many there must have been, it is not easy. this also may be remembered, that the man so liberal when he had little might once have had much to give, and would not take it at the price. it is recorded on the authority of a personal friend, that some proposal had once been made to "engage blake as teacher of drawing to the royal family"; a proposal declined on his part from no folly or vulgarity of prepossession, but from a simple and noble sense of things reasonable and right. for once, it is also said, some samples of his work were laid before the king, not then, unluckily, in his strait-waistcoat; "take them away!" spluttered the lunatic--not quite as yet "blind, mad, despised, and dying," as when byron and shelley embalmed him in corrosive rhymes; not all of these as yet. but as a great man then alive and yet living[ ] has well asked--"what mortal ever heard any good of george the third?" blake's mss. contain an occasional allusion expressive of no ardent reverence for the person or family of that insane dagon, so long left standing as the leaden rather than brazen idol of hypocrites and dunces. as to the arts, it was well for blake to keep clear of the patron of west. all he ever got from government was the risk of hanging, or such minor penalty as that equitable time might have inflicted on seditious laxity of speech and thought. in smaller personal matters, blake was as fearless and impulsive as in his conduct of these graver affairs. seeing once, somewhere about st. giles's, a wife knocked about by some husband or other violent person, in the open street, a bystander saw this also--that a small swift figure coming up in full swing of passion fell with such counter violence of reckless and raging rebuke upon the poor ruffian, that he recoiled and collapsed, with ineffectual cudgel; persuaded, as the bystander was told on calling afterwards, that the very devil himself had flown upon him in defence of the woman; such tartarean overflow of execration and objurgation had issued from the mouth of her champion. it was the fluent tongue of blake which had proved too strong for this fellow's arm: the artist, doubtless, not caring to remember the consequences, proverbial even before molière's time, of such interference with conjugal casualties. these things, whenever it was that they happened, were now of the past; as were many labours of many days, to be followed by not many more. among a few good friends, and not without varieties of changed scene and company, blake drew daily nearer to death. of all the records of these his latter years, the most valuable perhaps are those furnished by mr. crabb robinson, whose cautious and vivid transcription of blake's actual speech is worth more than much vague remark, or than any commentary now possible to give. a certain visible dislike and vexation excited by the mystic violence of blake's phrases, by the fierce simplicity of his mental bearing, have not been allowed to impair the excellent justice of tone and evident accuracy of report which give to these notes their singular value. in his correspondence, in his conversation, and in his prophecies, blake was always at unity with himself; not, it seems to us, actually inconsistent or even illogical in his fitful varieties of speech and expression. his faith was large and his creed intricate; in the house of his belief there were many mansions. in these notes, for instance, the terms "atheism" and "education" are wrested to peculiar uses; education must mean not exactly training, but moral tradition and the retailed sophistries of artificial right and wrong; atheism, as applicable to dante, must mean adherence to the received "god of this world"--that confusion of the creator with the saviour which was to blake the main rock of offence in all religious systems less mystic than his own; being indeed, together with "deism," the perpetual butt of his prophetic slings and arrows. all this, however, we must leave now for time to enlighten in due course as it best may; meanwhile some last word has to be said concerning blake's life and death. to a life so gentle and great, so brave and stainless, there could be but one manner of end, come when and how it might; a serene and divine death, full of placid ardour and hope unspotted by fear. having lived long without a taint of shame upon his life, having long laboured without a stain of falsehood upon his work, it was no hard task for him to set the seal of a noble death upon that noble life and labour. he, it might be said, whom the gods love well need not always die young; for this man died old in years at least, having done work enough for three men's lives of strenuous talent and spirit. after certain stages of pain and recovery and relapse, the end came on the second sunday in august . a few days before he had made a last drawing of his wife--faithful to him and loving almost beyond all recorded faith and love. forty-five years she had cloven to him and served him all the days of her life with all the might of her heart; for a space of four years and two months they were to be divided now. he did not draw her like, it appears: that which "she had ever been to him," no man could have drawn. of her, out of just reverence and gratitude that such goodness should have been, we will not say more. all words are coarse and flat that men can use to praise one who has so lived.[ ] it has been told more than once in print--it can never be told without a sense of some strange and sweet meaning--how, as blake lay with all the tides of his life setting towards the deep final sleep, he made and sang new fragments of verse, the last oblations he was to bring who had brought so many since his first conscience of the singular power and passion within himself that impels a man to such work. of these songs not a line has been spared us; for us, it seems, they were not made. in effect, they were not his, he said. at last, after many songs and hours, still in the true and pure presence of his wife, his death came upon him in the evening like a sleep.[ ] only such men die so; though the worst have been known to die calmly and the meanest bravely, this pure lyric rapture of spirit and perfect music of sundering soul and body can only be given to these few. knowing nothing of whence and whither, the how and the when of a man's death we can at least know, and put the knowledge to what uses we may. in this case, if we will, it may help us to much in the way of insight and judgment; it may show us many things that need not be wrought up into many words. for what more is there now to say of the man? of the work he did we must speak gradually, if we are to speak adequately. into his life and method of work we have looked, not without care and veneration; and find little to conclude with by way of comment. if to any reader it should not by this time appear that he was great and good among the chief of good and great men, it will not appear for any oration of ours. most funeral speeches also are cheap and inconclusive. especially they must be so, or seem so, when delivered over the body of a great man to whom his own generation could not even grant a secure grave. in his wife was buried beside him: where they are laid now no man can say: it seems certain only that their graves were violated by hideous official custom, and their bones cast out into some consecrated pit among other nameless relics of poor men. it might not have hurt them even to foresee this; but nevertheless the doers of such a thing had better not have done it. having missed of a durable grave, blake need not perhaps look for the "weak witness" of any late memorial. such things in life were indifferent to him; and should be more so now. to be buried among his nearest kin, and to have the english burial service read over him, he did, we are told, express some wish; and this was done. the world of men was less by one great man, and was none the wiser; while he lived he was called mad and kept poor; after his death much of his work was destroyed; and in course of time not so much as his grave was left him. all which to him must matter little, but is yet worth a recollection more fruitful than regret. the dead only, and not the living, ought, while any trace of his doings remains, to forget what was the work and what were the wages of william blake. ii.--lyrical poems. we must here be allowed space to interpolate a word of the briefest possible comment on the practical side of blake's character. no man ever lived and laboured in hotter earnest; and the native energy in him had the property of making all his atmosphere of work intense and keen as fire--too sharp and rare in quality of heat to be a good working element for any more temperate intellect. into every conceivable channel or byway of work he contrived to divert and infuse this overflowing fervour of mind; the least bit of engraving, the poorest scrap or scratch of drawing or writing traceable to his hands, has on it the mark of passionate labour and enjoyment; but of all this devotion of laborious life, the only upshot visible to most of us consists in a heap of tumbled and tangled relics, verse and prose mainly inexplicable, paintings and engravings mainly unacceptable if not unendurable. and if certain popular theories of the just aims of life, duties of an earnest-minded man, and meritorious nature of practical deeds and material services only, are absolutely correct--in that case the work of this man's life is certainly a sample of deplorable waste and failure. a religion which has for walhalla some factory of the titans, some prison fitted with moral cranks and divine treadmills of all the virtues, can have no place among its heroes for the most energetic of mere artists. to him, as to others of his kind, all faith, all virtue, all moral duty or religious necessity, was not so much abrogated or superseded as summed up, included and involved, by the one matter of art. to him, as to other such workmen, it seemed better to do this well and let all the rest drift than to do incomparably well in all other things and dispense with this one. for this was the thing he had to do; and this once well done, he had the assurance of a certain faith that other things could not be wrong with him. as long as two such parties exist among men who think and act, it must always be some pleasure to deal with a man of either party who has no faith or hope in compromise. these middle-men, with some admirable self-sufficient theory of reconciliation between two directly opposite aims and forces, are fit for no great work on either side. if it be in the interest of facts really desirable that "the poor fine arts should take themselves away," let it be fairly avowed and preached in a distinct manner. that thesis, so delivered, is comprehensible, and deserves respect. one may add that if art can be destroyed it by all means ought to be. if for example the art of verse is not indispensable and indestructible, the sooner it is put out of the way the better. if anything can be done instead better worth doing than painting or poetry, let that preferable thing be done with all the might and haste that may be attainable. and if to live well be really better than to write or paint well, and a noble action more valuable than the greatest poem or most perfect picture, let us have done at once with the meaner things that stand in the way of the higher. for we cannot on any terms have everything; and assuredly no chief artist or poet has ever been fit to hold rank among the world's supreme benefactors in the way of doctrine, philanthropy, reform, guidance, or example: what is called the artistic faculty not being by any means the same thing as a general capacity for doing good work, diverted into this one strait or shallow in default of a better outlet. even were this true for example of a man so imperfect as burns, it would remain false of a man so perfect as keats. the great men, on whichever side one finds them, are never found trying to take truce or patch up terms. savonarola burnt boccaccio; cromwell proscribed shakespeare. the early christians were not great at verse or sculpture. men of immense capacity and energy who do seem to think or assert it possible to serve both masters--a dante, a shelley, a hugo--poets whose work is mixed with and coloured by personal action or suffering for some cause moral or political--these even are no real exceptions. it is not as artists that they do or seem to do this. the work done may be, and in such high cases often must be, of supreme value to art; but not the moral implied. strip the sentiments and re-clothe them in bad verse, what residue will be left of the slightest importance to art? invert them, retaining the manner or form (supposing this feasible, which it might be), and art has lost nothing. save the shape, and art will take care of the soul for you:[ ] unless that is all right, she will refuse to run or start at all; but the shape or style of workmanship each artist is bound to look to, whether or no he may choose to trouble himself about the moral or other bearings of his work. this principle, which makes the manner of doing a thing the essence of the thing done, the purpose or result of it the accident, thus reversing the principle of moral or material duty, must inevitably expose art to the condemnation of the other party--the party of those who (as aforesaid) regard what certain of their leaders call an earnest life or a great acted poem (that is, material virtue or the mere doing and saying of good or instructive deeds and words) as infinitely preferable to any possible feat of art. opinion is free, and the choice always open; but if any man leaning on crutches of theory chooses to halt between the two camps, it shall be at his own peril--imminent peril of conviction as one unfit for service on either side. for puritanism is in this one thing absolutely right about art; they cannot live and work together, or the one under the other. all ages which were great enough to have space for both, to hold room for a fair fighting-field between them, have always accepted and acted upon this evident fact. take the renaissance age for one example; you must have knox or ronsard, scotch or french; not both at once; there is no place under reformers for the singing of a "pléiade." take the mediæval period in its broadest sense; not to speak of the notably heretical and immoral albigeois with their exquisite school of heathenish verse, or of that other rebellious gathering under the great emperor frederick ii., a poet and pagan, when eastern arts and ideas began to look up westward at one man's bidding and open out saracenic prospects in the very face and teeth of the church--look at home into familiar things, and see by such poems as chaucer's _court of love_, absolutely one in tone and handling as it is with the old albigensian _aucassin_ and all its paganism,[ ] how the poets of the time, with their eager nascent worship of beautiful form and external nature, dealt with established opinion and the incarnate moralities of church or household. it is easy to see why the church on its own principle found it (as in the albigensian case) a matter of the gravest necessity to have such schools of art and thought cut down or burnt out. priest and poet, all those times through, were proverbially on terms of reciprocal biting and striking. that magnificent invention of making "art the handmaid of religion" had not been stumbled upon in the darkness of those days. neither minstrel nor monk would have caught up the idea with any rapture. as indeed they would have been unwise to do; for the thing is impossible. art is not like fire or water, a good servant and bad master; rather the reverse. she will help in nothing, of her own knowledge or freewill: upon terms of service you will get worse than nothing out of her. handmaid of religion, exponent of duty, servant of fact, pioneer of morality, she cannot in any way become; she would be none of these things though you were to bray her in a mortar. all the battering in the world will never hammer her into fitness for such an office as that. it is at her peril, if she tries to do good: one might say, borrowing terms from the other party, "she shall not try that under penalty of death and damnation." her business is not to do good on other grounds, but to be good on her own: all is well with her while she sticks fast to that. to ask help or furtherance from her in any extraneous good work is exactly as rational as to expect lyrical beauty of form and flow in a logical treatise. the contingent result of having good art about you and living in a time of noble writing or painting may no doubt be this; that the spirit and mind of men then living will receive on some points a certain exaltation and insight caught from the influence of such forms and colours of verse or painting; will become for one thing incapable of tolerating bad work, and capable therefore of reasonably relishing the best; which of course implies and draws with it many other advantages of a sort you may call moral or spiritual. but if the artist does his work with an eye to such results or for the sake of bringing about such improvements, he will too probably fail even of them. art for art's sake first of all, and afterwards we may suppose all the rest shall be added to her (or if not she need hardly be overmuch concerned); but from the man who falls to artistic work with a moral purpose, shall be taken away even that which he has--whatever of capacity for doing well in either way he may have at starting. a living critic[ ] of incomparably delicate insight and subtly good sense, himself "impeccable" as an artist, calls this "the heresy of instruction" (_l'hérésie de l'enseignement_): one might call it, for the sake of a shorter and more summary name, the great moral heresy. nothing can be imagined more futile; nothing so ruinous. once let art humble herself, plead excuses, try at any compromise with the puritan principle of doing good, and she is worse than dead. once let her turn apologetic, and promise or imply that she really will now be "loyal to fact" and useful to men in general (say, by furthering their moral work or improving their moral nature), she is no longer of any human use or value. the one fact for her which is worth taking account of is simply mere excellence of verse or colour, which involves all manner of truth and loyalty necessary to her well-being. that is the important thing; to have her work supremely well done, and to disregard all contingent consequences. you may extract out of titian's work or shakespeare's any moral or immoral inference you please; it is none of their business to see after that. good painting or writing, on any terms, is a thing quite sufficiently in accordance with fact and reality for them. supplant art by all means if you can; root it out and try to plant in its place something useful or at least safe, which at all events will not impede the noble moral labour and trammel the noble moral life of puritanism. but in the name of sense and fact itself let us have done with all abject and ludicrous pretence of coupling the two in harness or grafting the one on the other's stock: let us hear no more of the moral mission of earnest art; let us no longer be pestered with the frantic and flatulent assumptions of quasi-secular clericalism willing to think the best of all sides, and ready even, with consecrating hand, to lend meritorious art and poetry a timely pat or shove. philistia had far better (always providing it be possible) crush art at once, hang or burn it out of the way, than think of plucking out its eyes and setting it to grind moral corn in the philistine mills; which it is certain not to do at all well. once and again the time has been that there was no art worth speaking of afloat anywhere in the world; but there never has been or can have been a time when art, or any kind of art worth having, took active service under puritanism, or indulged for its part in the deleterious appetite of saving souls or helping humanity in general along the way of labour and progress.[ ] let no artist or poet listen to the bland bark of those porter dogs of the puritan kingdom even when they fawn and flirt with tongue or tail. _cave canem._ that cerberus of the portals of philistia will swallow your honey-cake to no purpose; if he does not turn and rend you, his slaver as he licks your hand will leave it impotent and palsied for all good work. thus much it seemed useful to premise, by way of exposition rather than excursion, so as once for all to indicate beyond chance of mistake the real point of view taken during life by blake, and necessary to be taken by those who would appreciate his labours and purposes. error on this point would be ruinous to any student. no one again need be misled by the artist's eager incursions into grounds of faith or principle; his design being merely to readjust all questions of such a kind by the light of art and law of imagination--to reduce all outlying provinces, and bring them under government of his own central empire--the "fourfold spiritual city" of his vision. power of imaginative work and insight--"the poetic genius, as you now call it"--was in his mind, we shall soon have to see, "the first principle" of all things moral or material, "and all the others merely derivative;" a hazardous theory in its results and corollaries, but one which blake at all events was always ready to push to its utmost consequences and defend at its extreme outworks. against all pretensions on the part of science or experimental reasoning to assume this post he was especially given to rebel and recalcitrate. whether or no he were actually prepared to fight science in earnest on its own pitched field--to dispute seriously the conquest of facts achieved by it--may be questionable; i for one am inclined to disbelieve this, and to refer much of his verbal pugnacity on such matters to the strong irregular humour, rough and loose as that of children, and the half simple half scornful love of paradox, which were ingrained in the man. for argument and proof he had the contempt of a child or an evangelist. not that he would have fallen back in preference upon the brute resource of thaumaturgy; the coarse and cheap machinery of material miracle was wholly insufficient and despicable to him. no wonder-monger of the low sort need here have hoped for a pupil, a colleague, or an authority. this the biographer has acutely noted, and taken well into account; as we must all do under pain of waste time and dangerous error. let this too be taken note of; that to believe a thing is not necessarily to heed or respect it; to despise a thing is not the same as to disbelieve it. those who argue against the reality of the meaner forms of "spiritualism" in disembodied life, on the ground apparently that whatever is not of the patent tangible flesh must be of high imperishable importance, are merely acting on the old ascetic assumption that the body is of its nature base and the soul of its nature noble, and that between the two there is a great gulf fixed, neither to be bridged over nor filled up. blake, as a mystic of the higher and subtler kind, would have denied this superior separate vitality of the spirit; but far from inferring thence that the soul must expire with the body, would have maintained that the essence of the body must survive with the essence of the soul: accepting thus (as we may have to observe he did), in its most absolute and profound sense, the doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh. as a temporary blind and bar to the soul while dwelling on earth, fit only (if so permitted) to impede the spiritual vision and hamper the spiritual feet, he did indeed appear to contemn the "vegetable" and sensual nature of man; but on no ascetic grounds. admitting once for all that it was no fit or just judge of things spiritual, he claimed for the body on its own ground an equal honour and an equal freedom with the soul; denying the river's channel leave to be called the river--refusing to the senses the license claimed for them by materialism to decide by means of bodily insight or sensation questions removed from the sphere of sensual evidence--and reserving always the absolute assurance and certain faith that things do exist of which the flesh can take no account, but only the spirit--he would grant to the physical nature the full right to every form of physical indulgence: would allow the largest liberty to all powers and capacities of pleasure proper to the pure bodily life. in a word, translated into crude practical language, his creed was about this: as long as a man believes all things he may do any thing; scepticism (not sin) is alone damnable, being the one thing purely barren and negative; do what you will with your body, as long as you refuse it leave to disprove or deny the life eternally inherent in your soul. that we believe is what people call or have called by some such name as "antinomian mysticism:" do anything but doubt, and you shall not in the end be utterly lost. clearly enough it was blake's faith; and one assuredly grounded not on mere contempt of the body, but on an equal reverence for spirit and flesh as the two sides or halves of a completed creature: a faith which will allow to neither license to confute or control the other. the body shall not deny, and the spirit shall not restrain; the one shall not prescribe doubt through reasoning; the other shall not preach salvation through abstinence. a man holding such tenets sees no necessity to deny that the indulged soul may be in some men as ignoble as the indulged body in others may be noble; and that a spirit ignoble while embodied need not become noble or noticeable by the process of getting disembodied; in other words, that death or change need not be expected to equalize the unequal by raising or lowering spirits to one settled level. much of the existing evidence as to baser spiritual matters, blake, like other men of candid sense and insight, would we may suppose have accepted--and dropped with the due contempt into the mass of facts worth forgetting only, which the experience of every man must carry till his memory succeeds in letting go its hold of them. nothing, he would doubtless have said, is worth disputing in disproof of, which if proved would not be worth giving thanks for. let such things be or not be as the fates of small things please; but will any one prove or disprove for me the things i hold by warrant of imaginative knowledge? things impossible to discover, to analyze, to attest, to undervalue, to certify, or to doubt? this old war--not (as some would foolishly have it defined) a war between facts and fancies, reason and romance, poetry and good sense, but simply between the imagination which apprehends the spirit of a thing and the understanding which dissects the body of a fact--this strife which can never be decided or ended--was for blake the most important question possible. he for one, madman or no madman, had the sense to see that the one thing utterly futile to attempt was a reconciliation between two sides of life and thought which have no community of work or aim imaginable. this is no question of reconciling contraries. admit all the implied pretensions of art, they remain simply nothing to science; accept all the actual deductions of science, they simply signify nothing to art. the eternal "après?" is answer enough for both in turn. "true, then, if you will have it; but what have we to do with your good or bad poetries and paintings?" "undeniably; but what are we to gain by your deductions and discoveries, right or wrong?" the betrothal of art and science were a thing harder to bring about and more profitless to proclaim than "the marriage of heaven and hell." it were better not to fight, but to part in peace; but better certainly to fight than to temporize, where no reasonable truce can be patched up. poetry or art based on loyalty to science is exactly as absurd (and no more) as science guided by art or poetry. neither in effect can coalesce with the other and retain a right to exist. neither can or (while in its sober senses) need wish to destroy the other; but they must go on their separate ways, and in this life their ways can by no possibility cross. neither can or (unless in some fit of fugitive insanity) need wish to become valuable or respectable to the other: each must remain, on its own ground and to its own followers, a thing of value and deserving respect. to art, that is best which is most beautiful; to science, that is best which is most accurate; to morality, that is best which is most virtuous. change or quibble upon the simple and generally accepted significance of these three words, "beautiful," "accurate," "virtuous," and you may easily (if you please, or think it worth while) demonstrate that the aim of all three is radically one and the same; but if any man be correct in thinking this exercise of the mind worth the expenditure of his time, that time must indeed be worth very little. you can say (but had perhaps better not say) that beauty is the truthfullest, accuracy the most poetic, and virtue the most beautiful of things; but a man of ordinary or decent insight will perceive that you have merely reduced an affair of things to an affair of words--shifted the body of one thing into the clothes of another--and proved actually nothing. to attest by word or work the identity of things which never can become identical, was no part of blake's object in life. what work it fell to his lot to do, that, having faith in the fates, he believed the best work possible, and performed to admiration. it is in consequence of this belief that, apart from all conjectural or problematic theory, the work he did is absolutely good. intolerant he was by nature to a degree noticeable even among freethinkers and prophets; but the strange forms assumed by this intolerance are best explicable by the singular facts of his training--his perfect ignorance of well-known ordinary things and imperfect quaint knowledge of much that lay well out of the usual way. he retained always an excellent arrogance and a wholly laudable self-reliance; being incapable of weak-eyed doubts or any shuffling modesty. his great tenderness had a lining of contempt--his fiery self-assertion a kernel of loyalty. no one, it is evident, had ever a more intense and noble enjoyment of good or great works in other men--took sharper or deeper delight in the sense of a loyal admiration: being of his nature noble, fearless, and fond of all things good; a man made for believing. this royal temper of mind goes properly with a keen relish of what excellence or greatness a man may have in himself. those must be readiest to feel and to express unalloyed and lofty pleasure in the great powers and deeds of a neighbour, who, while standing clear alike of reptile modesty and pretentious presumption, perceive and know in themselves such qualities as give them a right to admire and a right to applaud. if a man thinks meanly of himself, he can hardly in reason think much of his judgment; if he depreciates the value of his own work, he depreciates also the value of his praise. those are loyallest who have most of a just self-esteem; and their applause is best worth having. it is scarcely conceivable that a man should take delight in the real greatness or merit of his own work for so pitiful and barren a reason as merely that it _is_ his own; should be unable to pass with a fresh and equal enjoyment from the study and relish of his own capacities and achievements to the study and relish of another man's. a timid jealousy, easily startled into shrieks of hysterical malice and disloyal spite, is (wherever you may fall in with it) the property of base men and mean artists who, at sight of some person or thing greater than themselves, are struck sharply by unconscious self-contempt, and at once, whether they know it or not, lose heart or faith in their own applauded work. to recognize their equal, even their better when he does come, must be the greatest delight of great men. "all the gods," says a french essayist, "delight in worship: is one lesser for the other's godhead? divine things give divine thanks for companionship; the stars sang not one at once, but all together." like all men great enough to enjoy greatness, blake was born with the gift of admiration; and in his rapid and fervent nature it struck root and broke into flower at the least glimpse or chance of favourable weather. therefore, if on no other ground, we may allow him his curious outbreaks of passionate dispraise and scorn against all such as seemed to stand in the way of his art. again, as we have noted, he had a faith of his own, made out of art for art's sake, and worked by means of art; and whatever made against this faith was as hateful to him as any heresy to any pietist. in a rough and rapid way he chose to mass and sum up under some one or two types, comprehensible at first sight to few besides himself, the main elements of opposition which he conceived to exist. thus for instance the names of locke and newton, of bacon and voltaire, recur with the most singular significance in his writings, as emblems or incarnate symbols of the principles opposite to his own: and when the clue is once laid hold of, and the ear once accustomed to the curious habit of direct mythical metaphor or figure peculiar to blake--his custom of getting whole classes of men or opinions embodied, for purposes of swift irregular attack, in some one representative individual--much is at once clear and amenable to critical reason which seemed before mere tempestuous incoherence and clamour of bodiless rhetoric. there is also a certain half-serious perversity and wilful personal humour in the choice and use of these representative names, which must be taken into account by a startled reader unless he wishes to run off at a false tangent. after all, it is perhaps impossible for any one not specially qualified by nature for sympathy with such a man's kind of work, to escape going wrong in his estimate of blake; to such excesses of paradox did the poet-painter push his favourite points, and in such singular attire did he bring forward his most serious opinions. but at least the principal and most evident chances of error may as well be indicated, by way of warning off the over-hasty critic from shoals on which otherwise he is all but certain to run. it is a thing especially worth regretting that balzac, in his swedenborgian researches, could not have fallen in with blake's "prophetic" works. passed through the crucible of that supreme intellect--submitted to the test of that supple practical sense, that laborious apprehension, so delicate and so passionate at once, of all forms of thought or energy, which were the great latent gifts of the deepest and widest mind that ever worked within the limits of inventive prose--the strange floating forces of blake's instinctive and imaginative work might have been explained and made applicable to direct ends in a way we cannot now hope for. the incomparable power of condensing apparent vapour into tangible and malleable form, of helping us to handle air and measure mist, which is so instantly perceptible whenever balzac begins to open up any intricate point of physical or moral speculation, would here have been beyond price. he alone who could push analysis to the verge of creation, and with his marvellous clearness of eye and strength of hand turn discovery almost to invention; he who was not "a prose shakespeare" merely, but rather perhaps a shakespeare complete in all but the lyrical faculty; he alone could have brought a scale to weigh this water, a sieve to winnow this wind. that wonderful wisdom, never at fault on its own ground, which made him not simply the chief of dramatic story, but also the great master of morals,[ ] would not have failed of foothold or eyesight even in this cloudy and noisy borderland of vision and of faith. even to him too, the supreme student and interpreter of things, our impulsive prophet with his plea of mere direct inspiration might have been of infinite help and use: to such an eye and brain as his, blake might have made straight the ways which swedenborg had left crooked, set right the problems which mesmerism had set wrong. as however we cannot have this, we must do what share of interpreter's work falls to our lot as well as we can. there are two points in the work of blake which first claim notice and explanation; two points connected, but not inseparable; his mysticism and his mythology. this latter is in fact hardly more in its relation to the former, than the clothes to the body or the body to the soul. to make either comprehensible, it is requisite above all things to get sight of the man in whom they became incarnate and active as forces or as opinions. now, to those who regard mysticism with distaste or contempt, as essentially in itself a vain or noxious thing--a sealed bag or bladder that can only be full either of wind or of poison--the man, being above all and beyond all a mystic in the most subtle yet most literal sense, must remain obscure and contemptible. such readers--if indeed such men should choose or care to become readers at all--will be (for one thing) unable to understand that one may think it worth while to follow out and track to its root the peculiar faith or fancy of a mystic without being ready to accept his deductions and his assertions as absolute and durable facts. servility of extended hand or passive brain is the last quality that a mystic of the nobler kind will demand or desire in his auditors. councils and synods may put forth notes issued under their stamp, may exact of all recipients to play the part of clerks and indorse their paper with shut eyes: to the mystic such a way of doing spiritual business would seem the very frenzy of fatuity; whatever else may be profitable, that (he would say) is suicidal. and assuredly it is not to be expected that blake's mystical creed, when once made legible and even partially coherent, should prove likely to win over proselytes. nor can this be the wish or the object of a reasonable commentator, whose desire is merely to do art a good turn in some small way, by explaining the "faith and works" of a great artist. it is true that whatever a good poet or a good painter has thought worth representing by verse or design must probably be worth considering before one deliver judgment on it. but the office of an apostle of some new faith and the business of a commentator on some new evangel are two sufficiently diverse things. the present critic has not (happily) to preach the gospel as delivered by blake; he has merely, if possible, to make the text of that gospel a little more readable. and this must be worth doing, if it be worth while to touch on blake's work at all. what is true of all poets and artists worth judging is especially true of him; that critics who attempt to judge him piecemeal do not in effect judge him at all, but some one quite different from him, and some one (to any serious student) probably more inexplicable than the real man. for what are we to make of a man whose work deserves crowning one day and hooting the next? if the "songs" be so good, are not those who praise them bound to examine and try what merit may be latent in the "prophecies"?--bound at least to explain as best they may how the one comes to be worth so much and the other worth nothing? on this side alone the biography appears to us emphatically deficient; here only do we feel how much was lost, how much impaired by the untimely death of the writer. those who had to complete his work have done their part admirably well; but here they have not done enough. we are not bound to accept blake's mysticism; we are bound to take some account of it. a disciple must take his master's word for proof of the thing preached. this it would be folly to expect of a biographer; even boswell falls short of this, having courage on some points to branch off from the strait pathway of his teacher and strike into a small speculative track of his own. but a biographer must be capable of expounding the evangel (or, if such a word could be, "dysangel") of his hero, however far he may be from thinking it worth acceptance. and this, one must admit, the writers on blake have upon the whole failed of doing. consequently their critical remarks on such specimens of blake's more speculative and subtle work as did find favour in their sight have but a narrow range and a limited value. some clue to the main character of the artist's habit of mind we may hope already to have put into the reader's hands--some frayed and ravelled "end of the golden string," which with due labour he may "wind up into a ball." to pluck out the heart of blake's mystery is a task which every man must be left to attempt for himself: for this prophet is certainly not "easier to be played on than a pipe." keeping fast in hand what clue we have, we may nevertheless succeed in making some further way among the clouds. one thing is too certain; if we insist on having hard ground under foot all the way we shall not get far. the land lying before us, bright with fiery blossom and fruit, musical with blowing branches and falling waters, is not to be seen or travelled in save by help of such light as lies upon dissolving dreams and dividing clouds. by moonrise, to the sound of wind at sunset, one may tread upon the limit of this land and gather as with muffled apprehension some soft remote sense of the singing of its birds and flowering of its fields. this premised, we may start with a clear conscience. of blake's faith we have by this time endeavoured to give the reader some conception--if a faint one, yet at least not a false: of the form assumed by that faith (what we have called the mythology) we need not yet take cognizance. to follow out in full all his artistic and illustrative work, with a view to extract from each separate fruit of it some core of significance, would be an endless labour: and we are bound to consider what may be feasible rather than what, if it were feasible, might be worth doing. therefore the purpose of this essay is in the main to deal with the artist's personal work in preference to what is merely illustrative and decorative. designs, however admirable, made to order for the text of blair, of hayley, or of young, are in comparison with the designer's original and spontaneous work mere extraneous by-play. these also are if anything better known than blake's other labours. again, the mass of his surviving designs is so enormous and as yet (except for the inestimable _catalogue_ in vol. of the _life_) so utterly chaotic and unarrangeable that in such an element one can but work as it were by fits and plunges. of these designs there must always be many which not having seen we cannot judge; many too on which artists alone are finally competent to deliver sentence by authority. moreover the supreme merits as well as the more noticeable qualities merely special and personal of blake are best seen in his mixed work. where both text and design are wholly his own, and the two forms or sides of his art so coalesce or overlap as to become inextricably interfused, we have the best chance of seeing and judging what the workman essentially was. in such an enterprise, we must be always duly grateful for any help or chance of help given us: and for one invaluable thing we have at starting to give due honour and thanks to the biographer. he has, one may rationally hope, finally beaten to powder the rickety and flaccid old theory of blake's madness. any one wishing to moot that question again will have to answer or otherwise get over the facts and inferences so excellently set out in chap. xxxv.: to refute them we may fairly consider impossible. here at least no funeral notice or obsequies will be bestowed on the unburied carcase of that forlorn fiction. assuming as a reasonable ground for our present labour that blake was superior to the run of men, we shall spend no minute of time in trying to prove that he was not inferior. logic and sense alike warn us off such barren ground. of the editing of the present selections--a matter evidently of most delicate and infinite labour--we have here to say this only; that as far as one can see it could not have been done better: and indeed that it could only have been done so well by the rarest of happy chances. even with the already published poems there was enough work to get through; for even these had suffered much from the curiously reckless and helpless neglect of form which was natural to blake when his main work was done and his interest in the matter prematurely wound up. those only who have dived after the original copies can fully appreciate or apprehend with what tenderness of justice and subtlety of sense these tumbled folds have been gathered up and these ragged edges smoothed off. as much power and labour has gone to the perfect adjustment of these relics of another man's work as a meaner man could have dreamed only of expending on his own. nor can any one thoroughly enter into the value and excellence of the thing here achieved who has not in himself the impulsive instinct of form--the exquisite desire of just and perfect work. alike to those who seem to be above it as to those who are evidently below, such work must remain always inappreciable and inexplicable. to the ingeniously chaotic intellect, with its admirable aptitude for all such feats of conjectural cleverness as are worked out merely by strain and spasm, it will seem an offensive waste of good work. but to all who relish work for work's sake and art for art's it will appear, as it is, simply invaluable--the one thing worth having yet not to be had at any price or by any means, except when it falls in your way by divine accident. true however as all this is of the earlier and easier part of the editor's task, it is incomparably more true of the arrangement and selection of poems fit for publishing out of the priceless but shapeless chaos of unmanageable mss. the good work here done and good help here given it is not possible to over-estimate. every light slight touch of mere arrangement has the mark of a great art consummate in great things--the imprint of a sure and strong hand, in which the thing to be done lies safe and gathers faultless form. these great things too are so small in mere size and separate place that they can never get praised in due detail. they are great by dint of the achievement implied and the forbearance involved. only a chief among lyric poets could so have praised the songs of blake; only a leader among imaginative painters could so have judged his designs; only an artist himself supreme at once in lordship of colour and mastery of metre could so have spoken of blake's gifts and feats in metre and colour. reading these notes, one can rest with sufficient pleasure on the conviction that, wherever else there may be failure in attaining the right word of judgment or of praise, here certainly there is none. here there is more than (what all critics may have) goodwill and desire to give just thanks; for here there is authority, and the right to seem right in delivering sentence. but these notes, good as they are and altogether valuable, are the least part of the main work. to the beauty and nobility of style, the exquisite strength of sifted english, the keen vision and deep clearness of expression, which characterize as well these brief prefaces as the notes on _job_ and that critical summary in the final chapter of the _life_, one need hardly desire men's attention; that splendid power of just language and gift of grace in detail stand out at once distinguishable from the surrounding work, praiseworthy as that also in the main is; neither from the matter nor the manner can any careful critic mistake the exact moment and spot where the editor of the poems has taken up any part of the business, laid any finger on the mechanism of the book. but this work, easier to praise, must have been also easier to perform than the more immediate editorial labours which were here found requisite. with care inappreciable and invaluable fidelity has the editing throughout been done. the selection must of necessity have been to a certain degree straitened and limited by many minor and temporary considerations; publishers, tasters, and such-like, must have fingered the work here and there, snuffing at this and nibbling at that as their manner is. for the work and workman have yet their way to make in the judicious reading world; and so long as they have, they are more or less in the lax limp clutch of that "dieu ganache des bourgeois" who sits nodding and ponderously dormant in the dust of publishing offices, ready at any jog of the elbow to snarl and start--a new pan, feeding on the pastures of a fat and foggy land his arcadian herds of review or magazine: [greek: enti ge pikros, kai hoi aei drimeia chola poti rhini kathêtai]. arcadian virtue and boeotian brain, under the presidency of such a stertorous and splenetic goat-god, given to be sleepy in broadest noonday, are not the best crucibles for art to be tried in. then, again, thought had to be taken for the poems themselves; not merely how to expose them in most acceptable form for public acceptance, but how at the same time to give them in the main all possible fullness of fair play. this too by dint of work and patience, still more by dint of pliable sense and taste, has been duly accomplished. future editions may be, and in effect will have to be, altered and enlarged: it is as well for people to be aware that they have not yet a final edition of blake; that will have to be some day completed on a due scale. but for the great mass of his lyrical verse all there was to do has been done here, and the ground-plan taken of a larger building to come. these preliminaries stated, we pass on to a rapid general review of those two great divisions which may be taken as resuming for us the ripe poetry of blake's manhood. two divisions, the one already published and partially known, the other now first brought into light and baptized with some legible name; the _songs of innocence and experience_, and the _ideas of good and evil_. under this latter head we will class for purposes of readier reference as well the smaller ms. volume of fairly transcribed verses as the great mass of more disorderly writing in verse and prose to which the name above given is attached in a dim broad scrawl of the pencil evidently meant to serve as general title, though set down only on the reverse page of the second ms. leaf. this latter and larger book, extending in date at least from to (august) , but presumably beyond the later date, is the great source and treasure-house from which has been drawn out most of the fresh verse and all of the fresh prose here given us: and is of course among the most important relics left of blake. first then for the _songs of innocence and experience_. these at a first naming recall only that incomparable charm of form in which they first came out clothed, and hence vex the souls of men with regretful comparison. for here by hard necessity we miss the lovely and luminous setting of designs, which makes the _songs_ precious and pleasurable to those who know or care for little else of the master's doing; the infinite delight of those drawings, sweeter to see than music to hear, where herb and stem break into grace of shape and blossom of form, and the branch-work is full of little flames and flowers, catching as it were from the verse enclosed the fragrant heat and delicate sound they seem to give back; where colour lapses into light and light assumes feature in colour. if elsewhere the artist's strange strength of thought and hand is more visible, nowhere is there such pure sweetness and singleness of design in his work. all the tremulous and tender splendour of spring is mixed into the written word and coloured draught; every page has the smell of april. over all things given, the sleep of flocks and the growth of leaves, the laughter in dividing lips of flowers and the music at the moulded mouth of the flute-player, there is cast a pure fine veil of light, softer than sleep and keener than sunshine. the sweetness of sky and leaf, of grass and water--the bright light life of bird and child and beast--is so to speak kept fresh by some graver sense of faithful and mysterious love, explained and vivified by a conscience and purpose in the artist's hand and mind. such a fiery outbreak of spring, such an insurrection of fierce floral life and radiant riot of childish power and pleasure, no poet or painter ever gave before: such lustre of green leaves and flushed limbs, kindled cloud and fervent fleece, was never wrought into speech or shape. nevertheless this decorative work is after all the mere husk and shell of the _songs_. these also, we may notice, have to some extent shared the comparative popularity of the designs which serve as framework to them. they have absolutely achieved the dignity of a reprint; have had a chance before now of swimming for life; whereas most of blake's offspring have been thrown into lethe bound hand and foot, without hope of ever striking out in one fair effort. perhaps on some accounts this preference has been not unreasonable. what was written for children can hardly offend men; and the obscurities and audacities of the prophet would here have been clearly out of place. it is indeed some relief to a neophyte serving in the outer courts of such an intricate and cloudy temple, to come upon this little side-chapel set about with the simplest wreaths and smelling of the fields rather than incense, where all the singing is done by clear children's voices to the briefest and least complex tunes. not at first without a sense of release does the human mind get quit for a little of the clouds of urizen, the fires of orc, and all the titanic apparatus of prophecy. and these poems are really unequalled in their kind. such verse was never written for children since verse-writing began. only in a few of those faultless fragments of childish rhyme which float without name or form upon the memories of men shall we find such a pure clear cadence of verse, such rapid ring and flow of lyric laughter, such sweet and direct choice of the just word and figure, such an impeccable simplicity; nowhere but here such a tender wisdom of holiness, such a light and perfume of innocence. nothing like this was ever written on that text of the lion and the lamb; no such heaven of sinless animal life was ever conceived so intensely and sweetly. "and there the lion's ruddy eyes shall flow with tears of gold, and pitying the tender cries, and walking round the fold, saying _wrath by his meekness and by his health sickness is driven away from our immortal day. and now beside thee, bleating lamb, i can lie down and sleep, or think on him who bore thy name, graze after thee, and weep._" the leap and fall of the verse is so perfect as to make it a fit garment and covering for the profound tenderness of faith and soft strength of innocent impulse embodied in it. but the whole of this hymn of _night_ is wholly beautiful; being perhaps one of the two poems of loftiest loveliness among all the _songs of innocence_. the other is that called _the little black boy_; a poem especially exquisite for its noble forbearance from vulgar pathos and achievement of the highest and most poignant sweetness of speech and sense; in which the poet's mysticism is baptized with pure water and taught to speak as from faultless lips of children, to such effect as this. "and we are put on earth a little space _that we may learn to bear the beams of love_; and these black bodies and this sunburnt face are like a cloud and like a shady grove." other poems of a very perfect beauty are those of the piper, the lamb, the chimney-sweeper, and the two-days-old baby; all, for the music in them, more like the notes of birds caught up and given back than the modulated measure of human verse. one cannot say, being so slight and seemingly wrong in metrical form, how they come to be so absolutely right; but right even in point of verses and words they assuredly are. add fuller formal completion of rhyme and rhythm to that song of _infant joy_, and you have broken up the soft bird-like perfection of clear light sound which gives it beauty; the little bodily melody of soulless and painless laughter. against all articulate authority we do however class several of the _songs of experience_ higher for the great qualities of verse than anything in the earlier division of these poems. if the _songs of innocence_ have the shape and smell of leaves or buds, these have in them the light and sound of fire or the sea. entering among them, a fresher savour and a larger breath strikes one upon the lips and forehead. in the first part we are shown who they are who have or who deserve the gift of spiritual sight: in the second, what things there are for them to see when that gift has been given. innocence, the quality of beasts and children, has the keenest eyes; and such eyes alone can discern and interpret the actual mysteries of experience. it is natural that this second part, dealing as it does with such things as underlie the outer forms of the first part, should rise higher and dive deeper in point of mere words. these give the distilled perfume and extracted blood of the veins in the rose-leaf, the sharp, liquid, intense spirit crushed out of the broken kernel in the fruit. the last of the _songs of innocence_ is a prelude to these poems; in it the poet summons to judgment the young and single-spirited, that by right of the natural impulse of delight in them they may give sentence against the preachers of convention and assumption; and in the first poem of the second series he, by the same "voice of the bard," calls upon earth herself, the mother of all these, to arise and become free: since upon her limbs also are bound the fetters, and upon her forehead also has fallen the shadow, of a jealous law: from which nevertheless, by faithful following of instinct and divine liberal impulse, earth and man shall obtain deliverance. "hear the voice of the bard! who present, past, and future sees: whose ears have heard the ancient word that walked among the silent trees: calling the lapsèd soul and weeping in the evening dew; that might control the starry pole and fallen fallen light renew!" if they will hear the word, earth and the dwellers upon earth shall be made again as little children; shall regain the strong simplicity of eye and hand proper to the pure and single of heart; and for them inspiration shall do the work of innocence; let them but once abjure the doctrine by which comes sin and the law by which comes prohibition. therefore must the appeal be made; that the blind may see and the deaf hear, and the unity of body and spirit be made manifest in perfect freedom: and that to the innocent even the liberty of "sin" may be conceded. for if the soul suffer by the body's doing, are not both degraded? and if the body be oppressed for the soul's sake, are not both the losers? "o earth, o earth, return! arise from out the dewy grass! night is worn, and the morn rises from the slumberous mass. turn away no more; why wilt thou turn away? the starry shore, the watery floor, are given thee till the break of day." for so long, during the night of law and oppression of material form, the divine evidences hidden under sky and sea are left her; even "till the break of day." will she not get quit of this spiritual bondage to the heavy body of things, to the encumbrance of deaf clay and blind vegetation, before the light comes that shall redeem and reveal? but the earth, being yet in subjection to the creator of men, the jealous god who divided nature against herself--father of woman and man, legislator of sex and race--makes blind and bitter answer as in sleep, "her locks covered with grey despair." "prisoned on this watery shore, starry jealousy does keep my den; cold and hoar, weeping o'er, i hear the father of the ancient men." thus, in the poet's mind, nature and religion are the two fetters of life, one on the right wrist, the other on the left; an obscure material force on this hand, and on that a mournful imperious law: the law of divine jealousy, the government of a god who weeps over his creature and subject with unprofitable tears, and rules by forbidding and dividing: the "urizen" of the prophetic books, clothed with the coldness and the grief of remote sky and jealous cloud. here as always, the cry is as much for light as for license, the appeal not more against prohibition than against obscurity. "can the sower sow by night, or the ploughman in darkness plough?" in the _songs of innocence_ there is no such glory of metre or sonorous beauty of lyrical work as here. no possible effect of verse can be finer in a great brief way than that given in the second and last stanzas of the first part of this poem. it recals within one's ear the long relapse of recoiling water and wash of the refluent wave; in the third and fourth lines sinking suppressed as with equal pulses and soft sobbing noise of ebb, to climb again in the fifth line with a rapid clamour of ripples and strong ensuing strain of weightier sound, lifted with the lift of the running and ringing sea. here also is that most famous of blake's lyrics, _the tiger_; a poem beyond praise for its fervent beauty and vigour of music. it appears by the ms. that this was written with some pains; the cancels and various readings bear marks of frequent rehandling. one of the latter is worth transcription for its own excellence and also in proof of the artist's real care for details, which his rapid instinctive way of work has induced some to disbelieve in. "burnt in distant deeps or skies the cruel fire of thine eyes? could heart descend or wings aspire?[ ] what the hand dare seize the fire?" nor has blake left us anything of more profound and perfect value than _the human abstract_; a little mythical vision of the growth of error; through soft sophistries of pity and faith, subtle humility of abstinence and fear, under which the pure simple nature lies corrupted and strangled; through selfish loves which prepare a way for cruelty, and cruelty that works by spiritual abasement and awe. "soon spreads the dismal shade of mystery over his head; and the caterpillar and fly feed on the mystery. and it bears the fruit of deceit, ruddy and sweet to eat; and the raven his nest has made in the thickest shade." under the shadow of this tree of mystery,[ ] rooted in artificial belief, all the meaner kind of devouring things take shelter and eat of the fruit of its branches; the sweet poison of false faith, painted on its outer husk with the likeness of all things noble and desirable; and in the deepest implication of barren branch and deadly leaf, the bird of death, with priests for worshippers ("the priests of the raven of dawn," loud of lip and hoarse of throat until the light of day have risen), finds house and resting-place. only in the "miscreative brain" of fallen men can such a thing strike its tortuous root and bring forth its fatal flower; nowhere else in all nature can the tyrants of divided matter and moral law, "gods of the earth and sea," find soil that will bear such fruit. nowhere has blake set forth his spiritual creed more clearly and earnestly than in the last of the _songs of experience_. "tirzah," in his mythology, represents the mere separate and human nature, mother of the perishing body and daughter of the "religion" which occupies itself with laying down laws for the flesh; which, while pretending (and that in all good faith) to despise the body and bring it into subjection as with control of bit and bridle, does implicitly overrate its power upon the soul for evil or good, and thus falls foul of fact on all sides by assuming that spirit and flesh are twain, and that things pleasant and good for the one can properly be loathsome or poisonous to the other. this "religion" or "moral law," the inexplicable prophet has chosen to baptize under the singular type of "rahab"--the "harlot virgin-mother," impure by dint of chastity and forbearance from such things as are pure to the pure of heart: for in this creed the one thing unclean is the belief in uncleanness, the one thing forbidden is to believe in the existence of forbidden things. of this mystical mother and her daughter we shall have to take some further account when once fairly afloat on those windy waters of prophecy through which all who would know blake to any purpose must be content to steer with such pilotage as they can get. for the present it will be enough to note how eager and how direct is the appeal here made against any rule or reasoning based on reference to the mere sexual and external nature of man--the nature made for ephemeral life and speedy death, kept alive "to work and weep" only through that mercy which "changed death into sleep"; how intense the reliance on redemption from such a law by the grace of imaginative insight and spiritual freedom, typified in "the death of jesus."[ ] nor are any of these poems finer in structure or nobler in metrical form. this present edition of the _songs of experience_ is richer by one of blake's most admirable poems of childhood--a division of his work always of especial value for its fresh and sweet strength of feeling and of words. in this newly recovered _cradle song_ are perhaps the two loveliest lines of his writing: "sleep, sleep: in thy sleep little sorrows sit and weep."[ ] before parting from this chief lyrical work of the poet's, we may notice (rather for its convenience as an explanation than its merit as a piece of verse) this projected _motto to the songs of innocence and of experience_, which editors have left hitherto in manuscript: "the good are attracted by men's perceptions, and think not for themselves till experience teaches them how to catch and to cage the fairies and elves. and then the knave begins to snarl, and the hypocrite to howl; and all his[ ] good friends show their private ends, and the eagle is known from the owl." experience must do the work of innocence as soon as conscience begins to take the place of instinct, reflection of perception; but the moment experience begins upon this work, men raise against her the conventional clamour of envy and stupidity. she teaches how to entrap and retain such fugitive delights as children and animals enjoy without seeking to catch or cage them; but this teaching the world calls sin, and the law of material religion condemns: the face of "tirzah" is set against it, in the "shame and pride" of sex. "thou, mother of my mortal part, with cruelty didst mould my heart, and with false self-deceiving fears didst bind my nostrils, eyes, and ears." and thus those who live in subjection to the senses would in their turn bring the senses into subjection; unable to see beyond the body, they find it worth while to refuse the body its right to freedom. in these hurried notes on the _songs_ an effort has been made to get that done which is most absolutely necessary--not that which might have been most facile or most delightful. analytic remark has been bestowed on those poems only which really cannot dispense with it in the eyes of most men. many others need no herald or interpreter, demand no usher or outrider: some of these are among blake's best, some again almost among his worst.[ ] poems in which a doctrine or subject once before nobly stated and illustrated is re-asserted in a shallower way and exemplified in a feebler form,[ ] require at our hands no written or spoken signs of either assent or dissent. such poems, as the editor has well indicated, have places here among their betters: none of them, it may be added, without some shell of outward beauty or seed of inward value. the simpler poems claim only praise; and of this they cannot fail from any reader whose good word is in the least worth having. those of a subtler kind (often, as must now be clear enough, the best worth study) claim more than this if they are to have fair play. it is pleasant enough to commend and to enjoy the palpable excellence of blake's work; but another thing is simply and thoroughly requisite--to understand what the workman was after. first get well hold of the mystic, and you will then at once get a better view and comprehension of the painter and poet. and if through fear of tedium or offence a student refuses to be at such pains, he will find himself, while following blake's trace as poet or painter, brought up sharply within a very short tether. "it is easy," says blake himself in the _jerusalem_, "to acknowledge a man to be great and good while we derogate from him in the trifles and small articles of that goodness; those alone are his friends who admire his minute powers." looking into the larger ms. volume of notes we seem to gain at once a clearer insight into the writer's daily habit of life and tone of thought, and a power of judging more justly the sort of work left us by way of result. here, as by fits and flashes, one is enabled to look in upon that strange small household, so silent and simple on the outside, so content to live in the poorest domestic way, without any show of eccentric indulgence or erratic aspiration; husband and wife to all appearance the commonest citizens alive, satisfied with each other and with their minute obscure world and straitened limits of living. no typical churchwarden or clerk of the parish could rub on in a more taciturn modest manner, or seem able to make himself happy with smaller things. it may be as well for us to hear his own account of the matter: prayer. i. "i rose up at the dawn of day; 'get thee away; get thee away! pray'st thou for riches? away, away! this is the throne of mammon grey.' ii. said i, 'this sure is very odd; i took it to be the throne of god; for everything besides i have; it is only for riches that _i_ can crave. iii. 'i have mental joys and mental health, and mental friends and mental wealth; i've a wife i love and that loves me; i've all but riches bodily; iv. 'then, if for riches i must not pray, god knows i little of prayers need say; so, as a church is known by its steeple, if i pray, it must be for other people. v. 'i am in god's presence night and day, and he never turns his face away; the accuser of sins by my side does stand, and he holds my money-bag in his hand; vi. 'for my worldly things god makes him pay, and he'd pay for more if to him i would pray; and so you may do the worst you can do, be assured, mr. devil, i won't pray to you. vii. 'he says, if i do not worship him for a god,[ ] i shall eat coarser food and go worse shod; so, as i don't value such things as these, you must do, mr. devil--just as god please.'" one cannot doubt that to a man of this temper his life was endurable enough. faith in god and goodwill towards men came naturally to him, being a mystic; on the one side he had all he wanted, and on the other he wanted nothing. the praise and discipleship of men might no doubt have added a kind of pleasure to his way of life, but they could neither give nor take away what he most desired to have; and this he never failed of having. his wife, of whose "goodness" to him he has himself borne ample witness, was company enough for all days. and indeed, by all the evidence left us, it appears that this goodness of hers was beyond example. another woman of the better sort might have had equal patience with his habit of speech and life, equal faith in his great capacity and character; but hardly in another woman could such a man have found an equal strength and sweetness of trust, an equal ardour of belief and tenderness, an equal submission of soul and body for love's sake;--submission so perfect and so beautiful in the manner of it, that the idea of sacrifice or a separate will seems almost impossible. a man living with such a wife might well believe in some immediate divine presence and in visible faces like the face of an angel. we have not now of course much chance of knowing at all what manner of angel she was; but the few things we do know of her, no form of words can fitly express. to praise such people is merely to waste words in saying that divine things are praiseworthy. no doubt, if we knew how to praise them, they would deserve that we should try.[ ] the notes bearing in any way upon this daily life of blake's are few and exceptional. in the mass of floating verse and prose there is absolutely no hint of order whatever, save that, at one end of the ms., some short poems are transcribed in a slightly more coherent form. among these and the other lyrics, strewn as from a liberal but too lax hand about the chaotic leaves of his note-book, are many of blake's best things. some of the slight and scrawled designs, as noted in the _catalogue_ (pp. , ), have also a merit and a power of their own; but it is with the poet's lyrical work that we have to do at this point of our present notes; and here we may most fitly wind up what remains to be said on that matter. the inexhaustible equable gift of blake for the writing of short sweet songs is perceptible at every turn we take in this labyrinth of lovely words, of strong and soft designs. considering how wide is the range of date from the earliest of these songs to the latest, they seem more excellently remote than ever from the day's verse and the day's habit. they reach in point of time from the season of mason to the season of moore; and never in any interval of work by any chance influence do these poems at their weakest lapse into likeness or tolerance of the accepted models. from the era of plaster to the era of pinchbeck, blake kept straight ahead of the times. to the pseudo-hellenic casts of the one school or the pseudo-hibernian tunes of the other he was admirably deaf and blind. while a grazing public straightened its bovine neck and steadied its flickering eyelids to look up betweenwhiles, with the day's damp fodder drooping half-chewed from its relaxed jaw, at some dim sick planet of the mason system, there was a poet, alive if obscure, who had eyes to behold "the chambers of the east, the chambers of the sun, that now from ancient melody have ceased;" who had ears to hear and lips to reveal the music and the splendour and the secret of the high places of verse. again, in a changed century, when the reading and warbling world was fain to drop its daily tear and stretch its daily throat at the bidding of some irish melodist--when the "female will" of "albion" thought fit to inhale with wide and thankful nostril the rancid flavour of rotten dance-roses and mouldy musk, to feed "in a feminine delusion" upon the sodden offal of perfumed dog's-meat, and take it for the very eucharist of apollo--then too, while this worship of ape or beetle went so noisily on, the same poet could let fall from lavish hand or melodious mouth such grains of solid gold and flakes of perfect honey as this:-- "silent, silent night, quench the holy light of thy torches bright; for possessed of day, thousand spirits stray, that sweet joys betray. why should love be sweet, usèd with deceit, nor with sorrows meet?" verse more nearly faultless and of a more difficult perfection was never accomplished. the sweet facility of being right, proper to great lyrical poets, was always an especial quality of blake's. to go the right way and do the right thing, was in the nature of his metrical gift--a faculty mixed into the very flesh and blood of his verse. there is in all these straying songs the freshness of clear wind and purity of blowing rain: here a perfume as of dew or grass against the sun, there a keener smell of sprinkled shingle and brine-bleached sand; some growth or breath everywhere of blade or herb leaping into life under the green wet light of spring; some colour of shapely cloud or mound of moulded wave. the verse pauses and musters and falls always as a wave does, with the same patience of gathering form, and rounded glory of springing curve, and sharp sweet flash of dishevelled and flickering foam as it curls over, showing the sun through its soft heaving side in veins of gold that inscribe and jewels of green that inlay the quivering and sundering skirt or veil of thinner water, throwing upon the tremulous space of narrowing sea in front, like a reflection of lifted and vibrating hair, the windy shadow of its shaken spray. the actual page seems to take life, to assume sound and colour, under the hands that turn it and the lips that read; we feel the falling of dew and have sight of the rising of stars. for the very sound of blake's verse is no less remote from the sound of common things and days on earth than is the sense or the sentiment of it. "o what land is the land of dreams? what are its mountains and what are its streams? --o father, i saw my mother there, among the lilies by waters fair. * * * * * --dear child, i also by pleasant streams have wandered all night in the land of dreams; but though calm and warm the waters wide i could not get to the other side." we may say of blake that he never got back from that other side--only came and stood sometimes, as chapman said of marlowe in his great plain fashion of verse, "up to the chin in that pierian flood," and so sang half-way across the water. nothing in the _songs of innocence_ is more beautiful as a study of childish music than the little poem from which we have quoted; written in a metre which many expert persons have made hideous, and few could at any time manage as blake did--a scheme in which the soft and loose iambics lapse into sudden irregular sound of full anapæsts, not without increase of grace and impulsive tenderness in the verse. given a certain attainable average of intellect and culture, these points of workmanship, by dint of the infinite gifts or the infinite wants they imply, become the swiftest and surest means of testing a verse-writer's perfection of power, and what quality there may be in him to warrant his loftiest claim. by these you see whether a man can sing, as by his drawing and colouring whether he can paint. another specimen of indefinable sweetness and significance we may take in this symbolic little piece of song; "i walked abroad on a sunny day; i wooed the soft snow with me to play. she played and she melted in all her prime; and the winter called it a dreadful crime."[ ] against the "winter" of ascetic law and moral prescription blake never slackens in his fiery animosity; never did a bright hot wind of march make such war upon the cruel inertness of february. in his obscure way he was always hurrying into the van of some forlorn hope of ethics. even shelley, who as we said was no less ready to serve in the same camp all his life long, never shot keener or hotter shafts of lyrical speech into the enemy's impregnable ground. both poets seem to have tried about alike, and with equally questionable results, at a regular blockade of the steep central fortress of "urizen;" both after a little personal practice fell back, not quite unscarred, upon light skirmishing and the irregular work of chance guerilla campaigns. moral custom, "that twice-battered god of palestine" round which all philistia rallies (specially strong in her british brigade), seemed to suffer little from all their slings and arrows. being mere artists, they were perhaps at root too innocent to do as much harm as they desired, or to desire as much harm as they might have done. blake indeed never proposed to push matters quite to such a verge as the other was content to stand on during his _laon and cythna_ period; from that inconceivable edge of theory or sensation he would probably have drawn back with some haste. but such sudden cries of melodious revolt as this were not rare on his part.[ ] "abstinence sows sand all over the ruddy limbs and flaming hair, but desire gratified plants fruits of life and beauty there." assuredly he never made a more supremely noble and enjoyable effect of verse than that; the cadence of the first two lines is something hardly to be matched anywhere: the verse (to resume our old simile for a moment) turns over and falls in with the sudden weight and luminous motion of a strong long roller coming in with the wind. so again, lying sad and sick under his marriage myrtle, even in a full rain of fragrant and brilliant blossoms that fall round him to waste, he must needs ask and answer the fatal final question. "why should i be bound to thee, o my lovely myrtle-tree? love, free love, cannot be bound to any tree that grows on ground." mixed with this fervour of desire for more perfect freedom, there appears at times an excess of pity (like chaucer's in his early poems) for the women and men living under the law, trammelled in soul or body. for example, the poem called _infant sorrow_, in the _songs of experience_, ran at first to a greater length and through stranger places than it now overflows into; and is worth giving here in its original form as extracted by cautious picking and sifting from a heap of tumbled readings. i. "my mother groaned, my father wept; into the dangerous world i leapt, helpless, naked, piping loud, like a fiend hid in a cloud. ii. struggling in my father's hands, striving against my swaddling bands, bound and weary, i thought best to sulk upon my mother's breast. iii. when i saw that rage was vain and to sulk would nothing gain, twining many a trick and wile i began to soothe and smile. iv. and i grew[ ] day after day, till upon the ground i lay; and i grew[ ] night after night, seeking only for delight. v. and i saw before me shine clusters of the wandering vine; and many a lovely flower and tree stretched their blossoms out to me. vi. but many a priest[ ] with holy look, in their hands a holy book, pronouncèd curses on his head who the fruit or blossoms shed. vii. i beheld the priests by night; they embraced the blossoms bright; i beheld the priests by day; underneath the vines they lay. viii. like to serpents in the night, they embraced my blossoms bright; like to holy men by day, underneath my vines they lay. ix. so i smote them, and their gore stained the roots my myrtle bore; but the time of youth is fled, and grey hairs are on my head." now not even the spilt blood of those who forbid and betray shall quicken the dried root or flush the faded leaf of love; the myrtle being past all comfort of soft rain or helpful sun. so in the _rose-tree_ (vol. ii. p. ), when for the sake of a barren material fidelity to his "rose" of marriage, he has passed over the offered flower "such as may never bore," the rose herself "turns away with jealousy," and gives him thorns for thanks: nothing left of it for hand or lip but collapsed blossom and implacable edges of brier. blake might have kept in mind the end of his actual wild vine (vol. i. p. of the _life_), which ran all to leaf and never brought a grape worth eating, for fault of pruning-hooks and vine-dressers. in all this there is a certain unmistakeable innocence which accounts for the practical modesty and peaceable forbearance of the man's way of living. the material shape of his speculations never goes beyond a sort of boyish defiant complaint, a half-humorous revolt of the will. inconstancy with him is not rooted in satiety, but in the freshness of pure pleasure; he would never cast off the old to put on the new. the chain once broken, against which between sleeping and waking he chafes and wrestles, he would lie for most hours of the day with content enough in the old shade of wedded rose or myrtle tree. nor in leaping or reaching after the new flower would he wilfully bruise or break the least bud of the old. his desire is towards the freedom of the dawn of things--not towards the "dark secret hour" that walks under coverings of cloud. "are not the joys of morning sweeter than the joys of night?" the sinless likeness of his seeming "sins"--mere fancies as it appears they mostly were, mere soft light aspirations of theory without body or flesh on them--has something of the innocent immodesty of a birds' or babies' paradise--of a fools' paradise, too, translated into the practice and language of the untheoretic world. shelley's "epipsychidion" scarcely preaches a more bodiless evangel of bodily liberty. that famous and exquisitely written passage beginning, "true love in this differs from gold and clay," delivers in more daringly definite words the exact message of blake's belief. nowhere has the note of pity been more strongly and sweetly struck than in those lovely opening verses of the "garden of love," which must here be read once again:-- "i laid me down upon a bank where love lay sleeping: i heard among the rushes dank weeping, weeping. then i went to the heath and the wild, to the thistles and thorns of the waste; and they told me how they were beguiled, driven out, and compelled to be chaste." the sharp and subtle change of metre here and at the end of the poem has an audacity of beauty and a justice of impulse proper only to the leaders of lyrical verse: unfit alike for definition and for imitation, if any copyist were to try his hand at it. the next song we transcribe from the "ideas" is lighter in tone than usual, and admirable for humorous imagination; a light of laughter shines and sounds through the words. the will and the way. "i asked a thief to steal me a peach; he turned up his eyes; i asked a lithe lady to lie her down holy and meek, she cries. as soon as i went an angel came; he winked at the thief and smiled at the dame; and without one word spoke had a peach from the tree; and 'twixt earnest and joke enjoyed the lady."[ ] a much better and more solid version of the same fancy than the one given in the "selections" under the head of "love's secret;" which is rather weakly and lax in manner. our present poem has on the other hand an exquisite "lithe" grace of limb and suppleness of step, suiting deliciously with the "light high laugh" in its tone: while for sweet and rapid daring, for angelically puerile impudence as it were, it may be matched against any song of its fantastic sort. less complete in a small way, but worth taking some care of, is this carol of a fairy, emblem of a man's light hard tyranny of will, calling upon the birds in the harness of venus and the shafts in the hand of her son for help in setting up the kingdom of established and legal love: but caught himself in the very setting of his net. the marriage ring. "'come hither, my sparrows, my little arrows. if a tear or a smile will a man beguile, if an amorous delay clouds a sunshiny day, if the step of a foot smites the heart to its root, 'tis the marriage ring makes each fairy a king.' so a fairy sang. from the leaves i sprang; he leaped from his spray to flee away: but in my hat caught, he soon shall be taught, let him laugh, let him cry, he's my butterfly: for i've pulled out the sting of the marriage ring." it is not so easy to turn wasps to butterflies in the world of average things; but, as far as verses go, there are few of more supple sweetness than some of these. they recall the light lapse of measure found in the beautiful older germs of nursery rhyme;[ ] and the seeming retributive triumph of married lovers over unmarried, of wedlock over courtship, could not well be more gracefully translated than in the "fairy's" call to his winged and feathered "arrows"--the lover's swift birds of prey, not without beak and claw. "if they do for a minute or so darken our days, dupe our fancies, prevail upon our nerves and blood, once well married we are kings of them at least." pull out that sting of jealous reflective egotism, and your tamed "fairy"--the love that is in a man once set right--has no point or poison left it, but only rapid grace of wing and natural charm of colour. throughout the "ideas" one or two other favourite points of faith and feeling are incessantly thrown out in new fugitive forms; such as the last (rejected) stanza of "cupid," which, though the song may well dispense with it and even gain by such a loss in the qualities of shape or sound, must be saved if only as a specimen of the persistent way in which blake assumed the greek and roman habits of mind or art to be typical of "war" and restraint; an iron frame of mind good to fight in and not good for love to grow under. "'twas the greek love of war that turned love into a boy[ ] and woman into a statue of stone; and away fled every joy." more frequent and more delightful is the recurrence of such loving views of love as that taken in the last lines of "william bond;" a poem full of strange and soft hints, of mist that allures and music that lulls; typical in the main of the embodied struggle between selfish and sacrificial passion, between the immediate impulse that brings at least the direct profit of delight, and the law of religious or rational submission that reaps mere loss and late regret after a life of blind prudence and sorrowful forbearance--the "black cloud" of sickness, malady of spirit and body inflicted by the church-keeping "angels of providence" who have driven away the loving train of spirits that live by innate impulse: not the bulk of caliban but the soul of angelo being the deadliest direct enemy of ariel. "providence" divine or human, prepense moral or spiritual "foresight," was a thing in the excellence of which our prophet of divine instinct and inspired flesh could not consistently believe. his evangel could dispense with that, in favour of such faith in good things as came naturally to him. "i thought love lived in the hot sunshine, but oh, he lives in the moony light; i thought to find love in the heat of day, but sweet love is the comforter of night. "seek love in the pity of others' woe, in the gentle relief of another's care; in the darkness of night and the winter's snow, in the naked and outcast, seek love there." the infinite and most tender beauty of such words is but one among many evidences how thoroughly and delicately the lawless fervour and passionate liberty of desire were tempered in blake by an exquisite goodness, of sense rather than of thought, which as it were made the pain or pleasure, the well-being or the suffering, of another press naturally and sharply on his own nerves of feeling. deeply as his thought and fancy had struck into strange paths and veins of spiritual life, he had never found or felt out any way to the debateable land where simple and tender pleasures become complex and cruel, and the roses gathered are redder at root than in leaf. another poem, slight of texture and dim of feature, but full of a cloudy beauty, is _the angel_: a new allegory of love, blindly rejected or blindly accepted as a thing of course; foiled and made profitless in either case: then lost, with all the sorrow it brings and all the comfort it gives: and the ways are barred against it by armed mistrust and jealousy, and its place knows it no more: but this immunity from the joys and sorrows of love is bought at the bitter price of untimely age. (i offer these somewhat verbose and wiredrawn attempts at commentary, only where the poem seems at once to require analysis and to admit such as i give; how difficult it is to make such notes clear and full, yet not to stumble into confusion or slide into prolixity, those can estimate who will try their hand at such work.) frequent slips and hitches of grammar, it may be added, are common to blake's rough studies and finished writings, and are therefore not always things to be weeded out. little learning and much reading of old books made him more really inaccurate than were their writers, whose apparent liberties he might perhaps have pleaded in defence of his own hardly defensible licences. none of these poems are worthier, for the delight they give, of the selected praise and most thankful study than _the two songs_ and _the golden net_: a pair of perfect things, their feet taken in the deep places of thought, and their heads made lovely with the open light of lyric speech. between the former of these[ ] and _the human abstract_ there is a certain difference: here, the moral point of the poem is, that innocence is wholly ignorant, and sees no deeper than the shell of form; experience is mainly malignant, and sees the root of evil and seed of pain under the leaf of good and blossom of pleasant things:[ ] there, the vision is the poet's own, and deals with that evil neither actually nor seemingly inherent in the system or scheme of created nature, but watered into life by the error and fed into luxuriance by the act of "the human brain" alone; two widely unlike themes for verse. as to execution, here doubtless there is more of that swift fresh quality peculiar to blake's simpler style; but the _abstract_ again has more weight of verse and magnificence of symbol. akin to _the golden net_ is the form and manner of _broken love_; which, whatever taste may lie in the actual kernel of it, is visibly one of the poet's noblest studies of language. the grandeur of the growing metre and heat of passionate pulses felt through the throbbing body of its verse can escape no ear. in our notes on _jerusalem_ we shall have, like the "devil" of _the two songs_, to look at it from the inverse side and pass upon it a more laborious and less thankworthy comment. of the longest and gravest poem in the "ideas of good and evil" we are bound to take some careful account. this is _the everlasting gospel_, a semi-dramatic exposition of faith on the writer's part; full of subtleties and paradoxes which might well straighten the stiffest hairs of orthodoxy and bewilder the sharpest brain of speculation. blake has here stated once for all the why and the how of his christian faith; for christian he averred that it was, and we may let his word pass for it. readers must be recommended for the present to look at these things as much as possible from what we will call their artistic or poetic side, and bring no pulpit logic to get chopped or minced on the altar of this prophet's vision. his worst heresy, they may be assured, "will not bite." in effect one may hope (or fear, as the case may be) that there is much less of heresy underlying these daring forms of speech than seems to overlay their outer skirt: schism or division of body rather than of spirit from less wilful and outspoken forms of faith. let the student of this "gospel" of inverted belief and intensified paradox lay hold of and cling fast to the clue given by the "vision of the last judgment." there for one thing the prophet has laid down this rule: "moral virtues do not exist; they are allegories and dissimulations." for "moral allegory" we are therefore not to look here; we are in the house of pure vision, outside of which allegory halts blindly across the shifting sand of moral qualities, her right hand leaning on the staff of virtue, her left hand propped on the crutch of vice. conscious unimpulsive "virtue," measured by the praise or judged by the laws of men, was to blake always pharisaic: a legal god none other than a magnified and divine pharisee. thus far have other (even european) mystics often enough pushed their inference; but this time the mystic was a poet; and therefore always, where it was possible, prone to prefer tangible form and given to beat out into human shape even the most indefinite features of his vision. assuming christ as the direct and absolute divine type (divine in the essential not in the clerical sense--divine to the spiritual not the technical reason) he was therefore obliged to set to work and strip that type of the incongruous garment of "moral virtues" cast over it by the law of religious form: to prove, as he elsewhere said, that christ "was all virtue," not by the possession of these "allegoric" qualities called human virtues or abstinence from those others called human sins or vices: such abstinence or such possession cannot conceivably suffice for the final type of goodness or absolute incarnation of a thing unalterably divine. virtues are no more predicable of the perfect virtue than vices of the perfect vice. as the supreme sin cannot be said to commit human faults, so neither can the supreme holiness obey the principles of human sanctity. "deistical virtue" is as the embroidery on the ephod of caiaphas or the stain left upon the water by the purified hands of pilate. it is the property of "the heathen schools"; a bitted and bridled virtue, led by the nose and tied by the neck; made of men's hands and subject to men's laws. can you make a god worth worship out of that? to say that god is wise, chaste, humble, philanthropic, gentle, or just; in one word, that he is "good" after the human sense; is to lower your image of god not less than if you had predicated of him the exactly reverse qualities, by reason of which these exist, even as they by reason of these. how much of all this blake had fished up out of his studies of behmen, swedenborg, or such others, his present critic has not the means of deciding; but is assured of one thing; that where others dealt by inductive rule and law, blake dealt by assumptive preaching and intuition; that he found form of his own for the body of thought, and body of his own for the spirit of speculation, supplied by others; playing prometheus to their epimetheus, doing poet's or evangelist's work where they did philosophic business; not fumbling in the box of pandora for things flown or fugitive, but bringing from extreme heaven the immediate fire in the hollow of his reed or pen. such is the radical "idea" of the poem; and as to details, we are to remember that "modesty" with blake means a timid and tacit prurience, and "humility" a mistrustful and mendacious cowardice: he puts these terms to such uses in his swift fierce way, just as, in his detestation of deism and its "impersonal god," he must needs embody his vision of a deity or more perfect humanity in the personal christian type: a purely poetical tendency, which if justly apprehended will serve to account for the wildest bodily forms in which he drew forth his visions from the mould of prophecy. thus much by way of prologue may suffice for the moral side of this "gospel"; the mythological or technically religious side is not much easier to deal with, and indeed cannot well be made out except by such misty light as may be won from the prophetic books. it seems evident that blake, at least for purposes of evangelism, was content to regard the "creator" of the mere bodily man as one with the "legal" or "pharisaic" god of the churches: even as the "mother of his mortal part"--of the flesh taken for the moment simply, and separated (for reasoning purposes) from the inseparable spirit--is "tirzah." this vision of a creator divided against his own creation and having to be subdued by his own creatures will appear more directly and demand more distinct remark when we come to deal with its symbolic form in the great myth of "urizen;" where also it will be possible to follow it out with less likelihood of offensive misconstruction. one is compelled here to desire from those who care to follow blake at all, the keenest ardour of attention possible; they will blunder helplessly if they once fail to connect this present minute of his work with the past and the future of it: if they once let slip the thinnest thread of analogy, the whole prophetic or evangelic web collapses for them into a chaos of gossamer, a tangle of unclean and flaccid fibres, the ravelled woof of an insane and impotent arachne, who should be retransmuted with all haste into a palpable spider by the spell of reason. here, as in all swift "inspired" writing, there are on the outside infinite and indefinable anomalies, contradictions, incompatibilities enough of all sorts; open for any paine or paley to impugn or to defend. but let no one dream that there is here either madness or mendacity: the heart or sense thus hidden away is sound enough for a mystic. the greatest passage of this poem is also the simplest; that division which deals with the virtue of "chastity," and uses for its text the story of "the woman taken in adultery:" who is identified with mary magdalene. we give it here in full; hoping it may now be comprehensible to all who care to understand, and may bear fruit of its noble and almost faultless verse for all but those who prefer to take the sterility of their fig-tree on trust rather than be at the pains of lifting a single leaf. "was jesus _chaste_? or did he give any lessons of chastity? the morning blushed fiery red; mary was found in adulterous bed. earth groaned beneath, and heaven above trembled at discovery of love. jesus was sitting in moses' chair; they brought the trembling woman there. moses commands she be stoned to death: what was the sound of jesus' breath? he laid his hand on moses' law; the ancient heavens, in silent awe, writ with curses from pole to pole, all away began to roll; the earth trembling and naked lay in secret bed of mortal clay-- on sinai felt the hand divine pulling[ ] back the bloody shrine-- and she heard the breath of god as she heard by eden's flood: 'good and evil are no more; sinai's trumpets, cease to roar; cease, finger of god, to write the heavens are not clean in thy sight. thou art good, and thou alone; nor may the sinner cast one stone. to be good only, is to be a god, or else a pharisee. thou angel of the presence divine, that didst create this body of mine, wherefore hast thou writ these laws and created hell's dark jaws? _my_ presence i will take from thee; a cold leper thou shalt be. though thou wast so pure and bright that heaven was impure in thy sight, though thine oath turned heaven pale, though thy covenant built hell's gaol, though thou didst all to chaos roll with the serpent for its soul, still the breath divine does move-- and the breath divine is love. mary, fear not. let me see the seven devils that torment thee. hide not from my sight thy sin, that forgiveness thou mayst win. hath no man condemnèd thee?' 'no man, lord.' 'then what is he who shall accuse thee? come ye forth, fallen fiends of heavenly birth that have forgot your ancient love and driven away my trembling dove; you shall bow before her feet; you shall lick the dust for meat; and though you cannot love, but hate, shall be beggars at love's gate. --what was thy love? let me see't; was it love or dark deceit?' 'love too long from me has fled; 'twas dark deceit, to earn my bread; 'twas covet, or 'twas custom, or some trifle not worth caring for: that they may call a shame and sin love's temple that god dwelleth in, and hide in secret hidden shrine the naked human form divine, and render that a lawless thing on which the soul expands her wing. but this, o lord, this was my sin-- when first i let these devils in, in dark pretence to chastity blaspheming love, blaspheming thee. thence rose secret adulteries, and thence did covet also rise. my sin thou hast forgiven me; canst thou forgive my blasphemy? canst thou return to this dark hell and in my burning bosom dwell? and canst thou die that i may live? and canst thou pity and forgive?'" in no second poem shall we find such a sustained passage as that; such light of thought and thunder of verse; such sudden splendour of fire seen across a strange land and among waste places beyond the receded landmarks of the day or above the glimmering lintels of the night. the passionate glory of its rapid and profound music fills the sense with too deep and sharp a delight to leave breathing-space for any thought of analytic or apologetic work. but the spirit of the verse is not less great than the body of it is beautiful. "divide from the divine glory the softness and warmth of human colour--subtract from the divine the human presence--subdue all refraction to the white absolute light--and that light is no longer as the sun's is, warm with sweet heat of life and liberal of good gifts; but foul with overmuch purity, sick with disease of excellence, unclean through exceeding cleanness, like the skin of a leper 'as white as snow.'" for the divine nature is not greater than the human; (they are one from eternity, sundered by the separative creation or fall, severed into type and antitype by bodily generation, but to be made one again when life and death shall both have died;) not greater than the human nature, but greater than the qualities which the human nature assumes upon earth. god is man, and man god; as neither of himself the greater, so neither of himself the less: but as god is the unfallen part of man, man the fallen part of god, god must needs be (not more than man, but assuredly) more than the qualities of man. thus the mystic can consistently deny that man's moral goodness or badness can be predicable of god, while at the same time he affirms man's intrinsic divinity and god's intrinsic humanity. man can only possess abstract qualities--"allegoric virtues"--by reason of that side of his nature which he has _not_ in common with god: god, not partaking of the "generative nature," cannot partake of qualities which exist only by right of that nature. the other "god"[ ] or "angel of the presence" who created the sexual and separate body of man did but cleave in twain the "divine humanity," which becoming reunited shall redeem man without price and without covenant and without law; he meantime, the creator,[ ] is a divine dæmon, liable to error, subduable by and through this very created nature of his invention, which he for the present imprisons and torments. _his_ law is the law of moses, which according to the manichean heresy christ came to reverse as diabolic. this singular (and presumably "pantheistic") creed of blake's has a sort of asiatic flavour about it, but seems harder and more personal in its mythology than an eastern philosopher's; has also a distinct western type and christian touch in it; being wrought as it were of persian lotus-leaves hardened into the consistency of english oak-timber. the most wonderful part of his belief or theory is this: "that after christ's death he became jehovah:"[ ] which may mean simply that through christ the law of liberty came to supplant the bondage of law, so that where jehovah was christ is; or may typify the change of evangel into law, of full-grown christianity into a fresh type of "judaism," of the gospel or good news of freedom into the church or dogmatic body of faith; or may imply that the two forces, after that supreme sacrifice, coalesced and became one, all absolute deity, being absorbed into the divine humanity; or, as a practical public would suggest, may mean or typify nothing. it is certain that blake appears so far to have accepted the "catholic tradition" as to regard this death or sacrifice as tending somehow not merely to the redemption of man (which would be no more than the sequel or outcome of his mystic faith in the salvation of man by man, the deliverance or redemption of the accident through the essence), but also to the union of the divine crucified man with the creative governing power. somehow; but the prophet must explain for himself the exact means. we are now fairly up to the ears in mysticism, and cannot afford to strike out at random, for fear of being carried right off our feet by the ground-swell and drifted into waters where swimming will be yet tougher work. the belief in "holy insurrection" must be almost as old as the oldest religions or philosophies afloat or articulate. in the most various creeds this feature of faith stands out sharply with a sort of tangible human appeal. earlier heretics than the author of _jerusalem_ have taken this to be the radical significance of christianity; a divine revolt against divine law; an evidence that man must become as god only by resistance to god--"the god of this world;" that if prometheus cannot, zeus will not deliver us: and that man, if saved at all, must indeed be saved "so as by fire"--by ardour of rebellion and strenuous battle against the god of nature: who as of old must yet feed upon his children, and will no longer take stone for flesh though never so well wrapped up; who must have the organ of destruction and division, by which alone he lives[ ] and has ability to beget, cut off from him with the sharpest edge of flint that rebellious hands can whet. in these galliambics of blake's we see the flint of atys whetted for such work; made ready against the priests of nature and her god, though by an alien hand that will cast no incense upon the altar of cybele; no phrygian's, who would spend his own blood to moisten and brighten the high places of her worship: but one ready, with what fire he can get, to burn down the groves and melt down the cymbals of dindymus. returning now to the residue of the immediate matter in hand, we may duly notice in this excursive and all but shapeless poem many of blake's strong points put forth with all his strength: curiously crossed and intermixed with rough skirmishing attacks on the opposite faction, clerical or sceptical, by way of interlude. "you would have christ act according to what you call a rational or a philanthropic habit of mind--set the actual god to reason, to elevate, to convince or convert after the fashion in which you would set about it? redeem, not the spiritual man by inspiration of his spirit, but the bodily man by application of his arguments? make him as 'bacon and newton'" (blake's usual types of the mere understanding)? "for thus the gospel st. isaac confutes: 'god can only be known by his attributes; and as to the indwelling of the holy ghost or of christ and the father, it's all a boast and pride and vanity of imagination that did wrong to follow this world's fashion.' to teach doubt and experiment certainly was not what christ meant." certainly also no doggrel can be rougher, looser, heavier-weighted about the wrists and ankles, than this; which indeed it was perhaps hardly fair to transcribe; for take out the one great excerpt already given, and the whole poem is a mass of huddled notes jotted down in a series of hints, on stray sides and corners of leaves, crammed into holes and byways out of sight or reach. so perfect a poet is not to be judged by the scrawls and sketches of his note-book; but as we cannot have his revision of the present piece of work, and are not here to make any revision of our own, we must either let drop the chance of insight thus afforded, or make shift with the rough and ragged remnants allowed us by the sparing fingers of a close-handed fate. and this chance of insight is not to be lightly let go, if we mean to look at all into blake's creed and mind. "experiment" to the mystic seems not insufficient merely, but irrational. "reason says _miracle_; newton says _doubt_;" as blake in another place expounds to such disciples as he may get. on this point also his "vision of christ" is other than the christian public's. "thine is the friend of all mankind; mine speaks in parables to the blind." _his_ christ cared no more to convince "the blind" by plain speech than to save "the world"--the form or flesh of the world, not that imperishable body or complement of the soul which if a man "keep under and bring into subjection" he transgresses against himself; but the mere "sexual" shell which only exists (as we said) by error and by division and by right of temporal appearance. keeping in mind the utter roughness and formal incompletion of these notes--which in effect are the mere broken shell or bruised husk of a poem yet unfledged and unembodied--we may put to some present use the ensuing crude and loose fragments. "what was he doing all that time from twelve years old to manly prime? was he then idle, or the less about his father's business? if he had been antichrist aping[ ] jesus, he'd have done anything to please us; gone sneaking into synagogues and not used the elders and priests like dogs; but humble as a lamb or ass obeyed himself to caiaphas. god wants not man to humble himself. that is the trick of the ancient elf. this is the race that jesus ran: humble to god, haughty to man; cursing the rulers before the people even to the temple's highest steeple; and when he humbled himself to god, then descended the cruel rod." (this noticeable heresy is elsewhere insisted on. its root seems to be in that doctrine that nothing is divine which is not human--has not in it the essence of completed manhood, clear of accident or attribute; servility therefore to a divine ruler is one with servility to a human ruler. more orthodox men have registered as fervent a protest against the degradation involved in base forms of worship; but this singular mythological form seems peculiar to blake, who was bent on finding in the sacred text warrant or illustration for all his creed.) "'if thou humblest thyself thou humblest me: thou also dwell'st in eternity. thou art a man; god is no more; thine own humanity learn to adore, for that is my spirit of life. awake: arise to spiritual strife; and thy revenge abroad display in terror at the last judgment day.'" (another special point of faith. "redemption by forgiveness of sins? yes: but the power of redeeming or forgiving must come by strife. a gospel is no mere spiritual essence of boiled milk and rose-water. there are the energies of nature to fight and beat--unforgivable enemies, embodied in melitus or annas, caiaphas or lycon. sin is pardonable; but these things, in the body or out of it, are not pardonable. revenge also is divine; whatever you may think or say while in the body, there is a part of nature not forgivable, an element in the world not redeemable, which in the end must be cast out and tormented." to the priests of pharisaic morals or satanic religion--those who crucify the great "human" nature and "scourge sin instead of forgiving it"--to these the redeemer must be the tormentor.) "'god's mercy and long-suffering are but the sinner to justice to bring. thou on the cross for them shalt pray-- and take revenge at the last day.' jesus replied, and thunders hurled: 'i never will pray for the world. once i did so when i prayed in the garden; i wished to take with me a bodily pardon.'" these few lines, interpolated by way of comfortable exposition, are more likely to increase the offence and perplexity: but assuredly no irreverent brutality of paradox was here in the man's mind. even the "divine humanity" of his quasi-pantheistic worship must give up (he says) the desire of redeeming the unredeemable "world"--the quality subject to law and technical religion. no "bodily pardon" for that, whatever the divine pity may have hoped, while as yet full-grown in love only, not in knowledge--seraphic fire without cherubic light; before, that is, it had perfect insight into the brute nature or sham body of things. that must be put off--changed as a vesture--by the risen and reunited body and soul. what is it that has to be saved? what is it that can be? "can that which was of woman born in the absence of the morn, while the soul fell into sleep and (? heard) archangels round it weep, shooting out against the light fibres of a deadly night, reasoning upon its own dark fiction, in doubt which is self-contradiction," can that reason itself into redemption? the absolute body and essential soul, as we have said, are with all their energies, passive and active powers and pleasures, natural properties and liberties, of an imperishable and vital holiness; but their appended qualities, their form and law, their morals and philosophies, their reason and religion, these are perishable and damnable. the "holy reasoning power," in whose "holiness is closed the abomination of desolation," must be annihilated. "rational truth, root of evil and good," must be plucked up and burnt with fire. you cannot, save in an empirical sense, walk by sight and not by faith: you cannot "walk by faith and not by sight," for there is no sight except faith. (compare generally the _gates of paradise_, for illustrations of all these intricate and intense conceptions.) doubt then, being one of the perishable qualities which depend on externals, is mere impotence and error: now let us hear further:-- "humility is only doubt and does the sun and moon blot out, roofing over with thorns and stems the buried soul and all its gems. this life's dim window of the soul distorts the heavens from pole to pole and leads you to believe a lie when you see with, not through, the eye, that was born in a night, to perish in a night, when the soul slept in the beams of light." part of this reappears with no less vigour of evangelic assertion in the _auguries of innocence_, but stripped of the repellent haze of mythological form. that poem, full as it is of delicate power and clear sweetness of thought, does not however reproduce in full the emblematic beauty of our last extract: nor does it throw so much light of a fitful flame-like sort upon or over the subtlest profundities of blake's faith. elsewhere, reverting with fresh spirit to the same charge, he demands (or his spectre for him--"this was spoken by my spectre to voltaire, bacon, &c."):-- "did jesus teach doubt? or did he give any lessons of philosophy? charge visionaries with deceiving? or call men wise for not believing?" unhappily the respective answers from verulam and cirey have not been registered by a too contemptuous prophet; they would have been worth reading. the dogma of "christian humility" is totally indigestible to blake; he batters upon it with the heaviest artillery of his "gospel." "was jesus humble? or did he give any proofs of humility? boast of high things with humble tone, and give with charity a stone?" again; "when the rich learned pharisee came to consult him secretly, upon his heart with iron pen he wrote 'ye must be born again.' he was too proud to take a bribe: he spoke with authority, not like a scribe." nor can the love of enemies be accepted literally as an endurable doctrine; for "he who loves his enemies hates his friends," in the mind of the too ardent and candid poet, who proceeds to insist that the divine teacher "must mean the mere _love_ of civility" (_amour de convenance_); "and so he must mean concerning humility": for the willing acceptance of death cannot humiliate, and is therefore no test of "humility"[ ] in blake's sense; self-sacrifice in effect implies an "honest triumphant pride." (here of course the writer drops for a moment the religious view and divine meaning of the passion, and looks towards calvary from the simply human side as it appeared to casual bystanders; for here he has only to deal with what he conceives to be errors in the human conception of christ's human character. "you the orthodox, and you the reasoners, assert through the mouths of your churches or philosophies that purely human virtues are actually predicable of christ, and appeal for evidence to his life and death. well and good; we will, to gain ground for argument with you, forget that the passion is not, and admit that it is, what you would call a purely human transaction. are then these virtues predicable of it even as such?") a good man who incurs risk of death by his goodness, is too "proud" to abjure that goodness and live; here is none of that you call "humility." such a man need not have died; "caiaphas would forgive" if one "died with christian ease asking pardon" after your "humble" fashion:-- "he had only to say that god was the devil and the devil was god, like a christian civil; mild christian regrets to the devil confess for affronting him thrice in the wilderness;" and such an one might have become a very cæsar's minion, or cæsar himself. though of course mainly made up of violent quibbling and perversities of passionate humour, which falls to work in this vehement way upon words as some personal relief (a relief easily conceivable in blake's case by any student of his life), all this has also its value in helping us to measure according to what light we may have in us the stronger and weaker, the worse and better, the graver and lighter sides of the man. it belongs evidently to the period when he painted portraits of the dead and transcribed _jerusalem_ from spiritual dictation. "this," he lets us know by way of prelude or opening note, "is what joseph of arimathæa said to my fairy," or natural spiritual part by which he conversed with spirits. next in his defiant doggrel he calls on "pliny and trajan"--heathen learning and heathen power or goodness--to "come before joseph of arimathæa" and "listen patient." "what, are you here?" he asks as if in the direct surprise of vision. (i will not give these roughest notes in the perfection of their pure doggrel. as verse, serious or humorous, they are irreclaimable and intolerable; what empirical value they may have must be wrung out of them with all haste.) we may now as well look into a later division of the poem, where christ is tempted of satan to obey. "'john for disobedience bled; but you can turn the stones to bread. god's high king and god's high priest shall plant their glories in your breast if caiaphas you will obey, if herod you with bloody prey feed with the sacrifice[ ] and be obedient, fall down, worship me.' thunder and lightning broke around and jesus' voice in thunder's sound; 'thus i seize the spiritual prey; ye smiters with disease, make way. i come your king and god to seize; is god a smiter with disease?'" this divine revolt and deliverance of the spiritual human "prey" out of the hands of law and fangs of religion is made matter of accusation against him by the "unredeemable part of the world" of which we spoke--using here as its mouthpiece the "shadowy man" or phantasmal shell of man, which "rolled away" when the times were full "from the limbs of jesus, to make them his prey":-- "crying 'crucify this cause of distress who don't keep the secrets of holiness. all mental powers by diseases we bind: but he heals the deaf and the dumb and the blind, whom god has afflicted for secret ends; he comforts and heals and calls them friends.'" but christ, instead of becoming a prey to it, himself makes his prey of this unclean shadow or ghastly ghost of the bodily life now divided from him--this pestilent nature in bondage to the dæmonic deity, which thought to consume _him_ by dint of death: "an ever-devouring appetite glittering with festering venoms bright;"[ ] puts it off and devours it in three nights; even as now also he feeds upon it to consume it; being made perfect in pride, that he may overcome the body by spiritual and "galling pride:" eat what "never was made for man to eat," the body of dust and clay, the meal's meat of the old serpent: as "the white parts or lights" of a plate are "eaten away with aqua-fortis or other acid, leaving prominent" the spiritual "outline" (_life_, v. , ch. ix., p. ). this symbol, taken from blake's own artistic work of engraving--from the process through which we have with us the songs and prophecies--will give with some precision the exact point indicated, and might have been allowed of by himself, as not unacceptable or inapposite. this final absorption of the destructible body, consumption of "the serpent's meat," is but the upshot of a life of divine rebellion and "spiritual war," not of barren physical qualities and temporal virtues:-- "the god of this world raged in vain; he bound old satan in his chain: throughout the land he took his course, and traced diseases to their source: he cursed the scribe and pharisee, trampling down hypocrisy." his wrath was made as it were a chariot of fire; at the wheels of it was dragged the god of this world, overthrown and howling aloud:-- "where'er his chariot took its way those gates of death let in the day;" every chain and bar broken down from them, and the staples of the doors loosed; his voice was heard from zion above the clamour of axle and wheel, "and in his hand the scourge shone bright; he scourged the merchant canaanite from out the temple of his mind, and in his body tight does bind satan and all his hellish crew; and thus with wrath he did subdue the serpent bulk of nature's dross till he had nailed it to the cross. he put on sin in the virgin's womb, and put it off on the cross and tomb to be worshipped by the church of rome:" not to speak of other churches. one may notice how to the pantheist the catholic's worship is a worship of sin, even as his own is to the catholic. "you adore as divine the fallen nature and sinful energies of man:" "you, again, the cast-off body wherein satan and sin were shut up, that he who assumed it might crucify them." sin or false faith or "hypocrisy" was scourged out of the mind into the body, and the separate animal body then delivered over to death with the sins thereof--all the sins of the world garnered up in it to be purged away with fire: and of this body you make your god. the expressed gird at the "church of rome" is an interpolation; at first blake had merely written. "and on the cross he sealed its doom" in place of our two last-quoted lines. akin to this view of the "body of sin" is his curious heresy of the conception; reminding one of that christian sect which would needs worship judas as the necessary gateway of salvation: for without his sin how could redemption have come about? "was jesus born of a virgin pure with narrow soul and looks demure? if he intended to take on sin, his mother should an harlot (have) been: just such a one as magdalen, with seven devils in her pen. or were jew virgins still more cursed, and more sucking devils nursed?" (this ingenious solution, worthy of any mediæval heresiarch of the wilder sort in a time of leprosy, is also an afterthought. from the sudden anti-judaic rapture of grotesque faith or humour into which blake suddenly dips hereabouts, one might imagine he had been lately bitten or stung by some dealer or other such dangerous craftsman of the hebrew kind; for that any mortal jew--or for that matter any conceivable gentile--would have credited him to the amount of a penny sterling, no one will imagine. let the reader meanwhile endure him a little further, suppressing if he is wise any comment on blake's "insanity" or "blasphemous doggrel"; for he should now at least understand that this literal violence of manner, these light or grave audacities of mere form, imply no offensive purpose or significance, except insomuch as offence is inseparable from any strange kind of earnestly heretical belief. neither is blake here busied in fetching milk to feed his babes and sucklings. this he could do incomparably well on occasion, with such milk as a nursing-goddess gave to the son of metaneira; but here he carves meat for men--of a strange quality, tough and crude: but not without savour or sustenance if eaten with the right sauce and prefaced with a proper grace.) "or what was it that he took on that he might bring salvation? a body subject to be tempted, from neither pain nor grief exempted, or such a body as could not feel the passions that with sinners deal? yes: but they say he never fell. ask caiaphas: for he can tell." here follow as given by caiaphas the old charges of sabbath-breach, blasphemy and strange doctrine; given again almost word for word, but with a nobler frame of context, in the _marriage of heaven and hell_, where, and not here, we will prefer to read them. one charge will be allowed to pass as new coin, having blake's image and superscription in lieu of cæsar's. "he turned the devils into swine that he might tempt the jews to dine; since when, a pig has got a look that for a jew may be mistook. 'obey your parents'? what says he? 'woman, what have i to do with thee? no earthly parents i confess: i am doing my father's business.' he scorned earth's parents, scorned earth's god, and mocked the one and the other's rod; his seventy disciples sent[ ] against religion and government," and caused his followers to die by the sword of justice as rebels and blasphemers of this world's god and his law: overturned "the tent of secret sins and its god," with all the cords of his weaving, prisons of his building and snares of his setting; overthrew the "bloody shrine of war," the holy place of the god of battles, whose cruel light and fire of wrath was poured forth upon the world till it reached "from star to star"; thus casting down all things of "church and state as by law established," camps and shrines, temples and prisons, "halls of justice, hating vice, where the devil combs his lice." upon all these, to the great grief of caiaphas and the grievous detriment of the god of this world, he sent "not peace but a sword": lived as a vagrant upon other men's labour, kept company by preference with publicans and harlots. "and from the adulteress turned away god's righteous law, that lost its prey." so we end as we began, at that great practical point of revolt: and finally, with deep fervour of satisfaction, and the sense of a really undeniable achievement, the new evangelist jots down this couplet by way of epilogue: "i'm sure this jesus will not do either for englishman or jew." scarcely, as far as one sees: we may surely allow him that. and yet, having somehow steered right through this chaotic evangel, we may as surely admit that none but a great man with a great gift of belief could have conceived or wrought it out even as roughly as it is here set down. there is more absolute worship implied in it than in most works of art that pass muster as religious; a more perfect power of noble adoration, an intenser faculty of faith and capacity of love, keen as flame and soft as light; a more uncontrollable desire for right and lust after justice, a more inexhaustible grace of pity for all evil and sorrow that is not of itself pitiless, a more deliberate sweetness of mercy towards all that are cast out and trodden under. this "vision of christ," though it be to all seeming the "greatest enemy" of other men's visions, can hardly be regarded as the least significant or beautiful that the religious world has yet been brought into contact with. it is at least not effeminate, not unmerciful, not ignoble, and not incomprehensible: other "visions" have before now been any or all of these. thus much it is at least; the "vision" of a perfectly brave, tender, subtle and faithful spirit; in which there was no fear and no guile, nothing false and nothing base. of the technical theology or "spiritualism" each man who cares to try will judge as it may please him; it goes at least high and deep enough to draw down or pluck up matter for absolution or condemnation. it is no part of our affair further to vindicate, to excuse, or to account for the singular gospel here preached.[ ] space may be made here (before we pass on to larger things if not greater) for another stray note or two on separate poems. _the crystal cabinet_, one of the completest short poems by blake which are not to be called songs, is an example of the somewhat jarring and confused mixture of apparent "allegory" with actual "vision" which is the great source of trouble and error to rapid readers of his verse or students of his designs. the "cabinet" is either passionate or poetic vision--a spiritual gift, which may soon and easily become a spiritual bondage; wherein a man is locked up, with keys of gold indeed, yet is he a prisoner all the same: his prison built by his love or his art, with a view open beyond of exquisite limited loveliness, soft quiet and light of dew or moon, and a whole fresh world to rest in or look into, but intangible and simply reflective; all present pleasure or power trebled in it, until you try at too much and attempt to turn spiritual to physical reality--"to seize the inmost form" with "hands of flame" laid upon things of the spirit which will endure no such ardent handling--to translate eternal existence into temporal, essential into accidental, substantial into attributive; when at once the whole framework, which was meant otherwise to last out your present life, breaks up and leaves you stranded or cast out, feeble and sightless "like a weeping babe;" so that whereas at first you were full of light natural pleasure, "dancing merrily" in "the wild" of animal or childish life, you are now a child again, but unhappy instead of happy--less than a child, thrown back on the crying first stage of babyhood--having had the larger vision, and lost your hold of it by too great pressure of impatience or desire--unfit for the old pleasure and deprived of the new; and the maiden-mother of your spiritual life, your art or your love, is become wan and tearful as you, "pale reclined" in the barren blowing air which cannot again be filled with the fire and the luminous life of vision. in _mary_ we come again upon the main points of inner contact between blake's mind and shelley's. this frank acceptance of pleasure, this avowal without blushing or doubting "that sweet love and beauty are worthy our care," was as beautiful a thing to shelley as to blake: he has preached the excellence of it in _rosalind and helen_ and often elsewhere: touching also, as blake does here, on the persecution of it by all "who _amant miserè_":-- "some said she was proud, some called her a whore, and some when she passed by shut to the door;" for in their sight the tender and outspoken purity of instinct and innocence becomes confounded with base desire or vanity. this rather than genius or mere beauty seems to be the thing whose persecution by the world is here symbolized. many others of these brief poems are not less excellent; the slightest among them have the grace of form and heat of life which are indivisible in all higher works of poetry. one, _the mental traveller_, is full of sweet and vigorous verses turned loose upon a somewhat arid and thorny pasture. by a miracle of patient ingenuity this poem has been compelled to utter some connected message; but it may perhaps be doubted whether the message be not too articulate and coherent for blake. thus limited and clarified, the broad chafing current of mysticism seems almost too pure and too strait to issue from such a source: a well-head of living speech that bursts up with sudden froth and steam through more outlets than one at once. to have contrived such an elaborate allegory, so welded link by sequent link together, seems an exercise of logical patience to which blake would hardly have submitted his passionate genius, his overstrained and wayward will. separate stanzas may be retraced wellnigh through every word in other books. the latter part seems again to record, as in two preceding poems, the perversion of love; which having annihilated all else, falls at last to feed upon itself, to seek out strange things and barren ways, to invent new loves and invert the old, to fill the emptied heart and flush the subsiding veins with perverse passion. alone in the desert it has made, beguiled to second youth by the incessant diet of joy, fear comes upon love; fear, and seeming hate, and weariness and cunning; fruits of the second graft of love, not native to the simple stock: till reduced at last to the likeness of the two extremes of life, age and infancy, love can be no further abused or consumed. these stages of love, once seen or heard of, allure lovers to eat of the strange fruits and herd with the strange flocks of transforming or transformed desire; the visible world, destroyed at the first advent of love and absorbed into the soul by a single passion, is again felt nearer; the trees bring forth their pleasure, and the planets lavish their light. for the second love, in its wayward and strange delights, is a thing half material; not alien at least from material forms, as was the first simple and spiritual ardour of equal love. passionate and perverse emotion touches all things with some fervent colour of its own, mixes into all water and all wine some savour of the dubious honey gathered from its foreign flowers. pure first love will not coexist with outward things, burns up with white fire all tangible form, and so, an unfed lamp, must at last burn itself down to the stage of life and sensation which breeds those latter loves. the babe that is "born a boy," often painfully begot and joyfully brought forth, i take to signify human genius or intellect, which none can touch and not be consumed except the "woman old," faith or fear: all weaker things, pain and pleasure, hatred and love, fly with shrieking averted faces from before it. the grey and cruel nurse, custom or religion, crucifies and torments the child, feeding herself upon his agony to false fresh youth; an allegory not even literally inapt. grown older, and seeing her made fair with his blood and strong by his suffering, he weds her, and constrains her to do him service, and turns her to use; custom, the daily life of men, once married to the fresh intellect, bears fruit to him of profit and pleasure, and becomes through him nobler than she was; but through such union he grows old the sooner, soon can but wander round and look over his finished work and gathered treasure, the tragic passions and splendid achievements of his spirit, kept fresh in verse or colour; which he deals to all men alike, giving to the poorest of this divine meat and drink, the body and the blood of genius, caught in golden vessels of art and rhyme, that sight and hearing may be fed. this, the supreme and most excellent delight possible to man, is the fruit of his pain; of his suffering at the hands of life, of his union with her as with a bride. the "female[ ] babe" sprung from the fire that burns always on his hearth, is the issue or result of genius, which, being too strong for the father, flows into new channels and follows after fresh ways; the thing which he has brought forth knows him no more, but must choose its own mate or living form of expression, and expel the former nature--casting off (as theologians say) the old man. the outcast intellect can then be vivified only by a new love, or by a new aim of which love is the type; a bride unlike the first, who was old at root and in substance, young only in seeming and fair only through cruel theft of his own life and strength; unlike also the art which has now in its ultimate expression turned against him; love which can change the face of former things and scatter in sunder the gatherings of former friends; love which masters the senses and transfigures the creatures of the earthly life, leaving no light or sustenance but what comes of itself. then follow the stages of love, and the phases of action and passion bred from either stage; of these we have already taken account. if this view of the poem be wholly or partially correct, then we may roughly sum up the problem by saying that its real obscurity arises in the main from a verbal confusion between the passion of art and the passion of love. these are always spoken of by blake in terms which prove that in his nature the two feelings had actually grown into each other; had become interfused past all chance of mutual extrication. art was to him as a lust of the body; appetite as an emotion of the soul. this saying, true as to some extent it must be of all great men, was never so exclusively and finally true of any other man as of this one. it is no bad sample of blake's hurried manner of speech, that having sustained half-way through his poem an allegory of intellect in its relations to art and to common life, he should suddenly stumble over a type of his own setting up, and be led off into a new allegory of love which might better have made a separate poem. as it is, the two symbols are welded together not without strength and cunning of hand. some further and final notice may here be taken of the manifold designs scattered about the ms. pages which we have found so prodigal of verse. among the most curious of these we rank a series of drawings not quite so roughly pencilled as the rest, each inscribed with a brief text or metrical motto. many of these have been wrought up into the "gates of paradise"; many more remain to speak and shift for themselves as they may.[ ] published as it stands here, the series would exceed in length the whole of that little book: and there is evidently some thread of intended connexion between all, worn thin and all but broken. they are numbered in a different order from that in which they stand, which is indeed plainly a matter of chance. several have great grace and beauty; one in especial, where daphne passes into the laurel; her feet are roots already and grasp the ground with strong writhing fibres; her lifted arms and wrestling body struggle into branch and stem, with strange labour of the supple limbs, with agony of convulsed and loosening hair. one of the larger designs seems to be a rough full-length study for adam and eve, with these lines opposite by way of suggested epigraph: "what is it men in women do require? the lineaments of gratified desire. what is it women do in men require? the lineaments of gratified desire." these are barely to be recognised in the crude sketch: the faces are merely serious and rather grim: though designed to reproduce the sweet silence of beauty, filling features made fair with soft natural pleasure and a clear calm of soul and body. there is however a certain grace and nobility of form in the straight limbs and flowing hair, not unworthy the typical man and woman. another design which deserves remark is a fine sketch after the manner of the illustrations to blake's prophecies, in which a figure caught in the fierce slanting current of a whirlwind is drifted sideways like a drowning swimmer under sea, below the orbit of three mingling suns or planets seen above thick drifts of tempestuous air. other and better notices than ours, of various studies hidden away in the chaos of this ms., the reader will find on reference to that admirable catalogue which will remain always the great witness for blake's genius before the eyes of all who read his life. we have done now with the lyrical side of this poet's work,[ ] and pass on to things of less direct attraction. those who have found any in the record of his life and character, the study of his qualities and abilities, may safely follow him further. the perfect sweetness and sufficiency of his best lyrics and his best designs, we may not find; of these we take now farewell, with thanks and final praise such as we have to give; but we shall not fail to find the traces of a great art and an exalted spirit, to feel about us the clear air of a great man's presence. iii.--the prophetic books. before entering upon any system of remark or comment on the prophetic books, we may set down in as few and distinct words as possible the reasons which make this a thing seriously worth doing; nay, even requisite to be done, if we would know rather the actual facts of the man's nature than the circumstances and accidents of his life. now, first of all, we are to recollect that blake himself regarded these works as his greatest, and as containing the sum of his achieved ambitions and fulfilled desires: as in effect inspired matter, of absolute imaginative truth and eternal import. we shall not again pause to rebut the familiar cry of response, to the effect that he was mad and not accountable for the uttermost madness of error. it must be enough to reply here that he was by no means mad, in any sense that would authorise us in rejecting his own judgment of his own aims and powers on a plea which would be held insufficient in another man's case. let all readers and all critics get rid of that notion for good--clear their minds of it utterly and with all haste; let them know and remember, having once been told it, that in these strangest of all written books there is purpose as well as power, meaning as well as mystery. doubtless, nothing quite like them was ever pitched out headlong into the world as they were. the confusion, the clamour, the jar of words that half suffice and thoughts that half exist--all these and other more absolutely offensive qualities--audacity, monotony, bombast, obscure play of licence and tortuous growth of fancy--cannot quench or even wholly conceal the living purport and the imperishable beauty which are here latent. and secondly we are to recollect this; that these books are not each a set of designs with a text made by order to match, but are each a poem composed for its own sake and with its own aim, having illustrations arranged by way of frame or appended by way of ornament. on all grounds, therefore, and for all serious purpose, such notices as some of those given in this biography are actually worse than worthless. better have done nothing than have done this and no more. all the criticism included as to the illustrative parts merely, is final and faultless, nothing missed and nothing wrong; this could not have been otherwise, the work having fallen under hands and eyes of practical taste and trained to actual knowledge, and the assertions being therefore issued by authority. so much otherwise has it fared with the books themselves, that (we are compelled in this case to say it) the clothes are all right and the body is all wrong. passing from some phrase of high and accurate eulogy to the raw ragged extracts here torn away and held up with the unhealed scars of mutilation fresh and red upon them, what is any human student to think of the poet or his praisers? what, of the assertion of his vindicated sanity with such appalling counterproof thrust under one's eyes? in a word, it must be said of these notices of blake's prophetic books[ ] (except perhaps that insufficient but painstaking and well-meant chapter on the _marriage of heaven and hell_) that what has been done should not have been done, and what should have been done has not been done. not that the thing was easy to do. if any one would realize to himself for ever a material notion of chaos, let him take a blind header into the midst of the whirling foam and rolling weed of this sea of words. indeed the sound and savour of these prophecies constantly recall some such idea or some such memory. this poetry has the huge various monotonies, the fervent and fluent colours, the vast limits, the fresh sonorous strength, the certain confusion and tumultuous law, the sense of windy and weltering space, the intense refraction of shadow or light, the crowded life and inanimate intricacy, the patience and the passion of the sea. by no manner of argument or analysis will one be made able to look back or forward with pure confidence and comprehension. only there are laws, strange as it must sound, by which the work is done and against which it never sins. the biographer once attempts to settle the matter by asserting that blake was given to contradict himself, by mere impulse if not by brute instinct, to such an extent that consistency is in no sense to be sought for or believed in throughout these works of his: and quotes, by way of ratifying this quite false notion, a noble sentence from the _proverbs of hell_, aimed by blake with all his force against that obstinate adherence to one external opinion which closes and hardens the spirit against all further message from the new-grown feelings or inspiration from the altering circumstances of a man. never was there an error more grave or more complete than this. the expression shifts perpetually, the types blunder into new forms, the meaning tumbles into new types; the purpose remains, and the faith keeps its hold. there are certain errors and eccentricities of manner and matter alike common to nearly all these books, and distinctly referable to the character and training of the man. not educated in any regular or rational way, and by nature of an eagerly susceptible and intensely adhesive mind, in which the lyrical faculty had gained and kept a preponderance over all others visible in every scrap of his work, he had saturated his thoughts and kindled his senses with a passionate study of the forms of the bible as translated into english, till his fancy caught a feverish contagion and his ear derived a delirious excitement from the mere sound and shape of the written words and verses. hence the quaint and fervent imitation of style, the reproduction of peculiarities which to most men are meaningless when divested of their old sense or invested with a new. hence the bewildering catalogues, genealogies, and divisions which (especially in such later books as the _jerusalem_) seem at first invented only to strike any miserable reader with furious or lachrymose lunacy. hence, though heaven knows by no fault of the originals, the insane cosmogony, blatant mythology, and sonorous aberration of thoughts and theories. hence also much of the special force and supreme occasional loveliness or grandeur in expression. conceive a man incomparably gifted as to the spiritual side of art, prone beyond all measure to the lyrical form of work, incredibly contemptuous of all things and people dissimilar to himself, of an intensely sensitive imagination and intolerant habit of faith, with a passionate power of peculiar belief, taking with all his might of mental nerve and strain of excitable spirit to a perusal and reperusal of such books as job and ezekiel. observe too that his tone of mind was as far from being critical as from being orthodox. thus his ecstacy of study was neither on the one side tempered and watered down by faith in established forms and external creeds, nor on the other side modified and directed by analytic judgment and the lust of facts. to blake either form of mind was alike hateful. like the moses of rabbinical tradition, he was "drunken with the kisses of the lips of god." rational deism and clerical religion were to him two equally abhorrent incarnations of the same evil spirit, appearing now as negation and now as restriction. he wanted supremacy of freedom with intensity of faith. hence he was properly neither christian nor infidel: he was emphatically a heretic. such men, according to the temper of the times, are burnt as demoniacs or pitied as lunatics. he believed in redemption by christ, and in the incarnation of satan as jehovah. he believed that by self-sacrifice the soul should attain freedom and victorious deliverance from bodily bondage and sexual servitude; and also that the extremest fullness of indulgence in such desire and such delight as the senses can aim at or attain was absolutely good, eternally just, and universally requisite. these opinions, and stranger than these, he put forth in the cloudiest style, the wilfullest humour, and the stormiest excitement. no wonder the world let his books drift without caring to inquire what gold or jewels might be washed up as waifs from the dregs of churned foam and subsiding surf. he was the very man for fire and faggot; a mediæval inquisitor would have had no more doubt about him than a materialist or "theophilanthropist" of his own day or of ours. a wish is expressed in the _life_ that we could accompany the old man who appears entering an open door, star in hand, at the beginning of the _jerusalem_, and thread by his light those infinite dark passages and labyrinthine catacombs of invention or thought. in default of that desirable possibility, let us make such way as we can for ourselves into this submarine world, along its slippery and unpaven ways, under its roof of hollow sound and tumbling storm. "we shall see, while above us the waves roar and whirl, a ceiling of amber, a pavement of pearl." at the entrance of the labyrinth we are met by huge mythologic figures, created of fire and cloud. titans of monstrous form and yet more monstrous name obstruct the ways; sickness or sleep never formed such savage abstractions, such fierce vanities of vision as these: office and speech they seem at first to have none: but to strike or clutch at the void of air with feeble fingers, to babble with vast lax lips a dialect barren of all but noise, loud and loose as the wind. slowly they grow into something of shape, assume some foggy feature and indefinite colour: word by word the fluctuating noise condenses into music, the floating music divides into audible notes and scales. the sound which at first was as the mere collision of cloud with cloud is now the recognizable voice of god or demon. chaos is cloven into separate elements; air divides from water, and earth releases fire. upon each of these the prophet, as it were, lays hand, compelling the thing into shape and speech, constraining the abstract to do service as a man might. these and such as these make up the personal staff or executive body of his prophecies. but it would be waste of time to conjecture how or why he came to inflict upon them such incredible names. these hapless energies and agencies are not simply cast into the house of allegoric bondage, and set to make bricks without straw, to construct symbols without reason; but find themselves baptized with muddy water and fitful fire, by names inconceivable, into a church full of storm and vapour; regenerated with a vengeance, but disembodied and disfigured in their resurrection. space fell into sleep, and awoke as enitharmon: time suffered eclipse, and came forth as los. the christ or prometheus of this faith is orc or fuzon; urizen takes the place of "jehovah, jove, or lord." hardly in such chaotic sounds can one discern the slightest element of reason gone mad, the narrowest channel of derivation run dry. in this last word, one of incessant recurrence, there seems to flicker a thin reminiscence of such names as uranus, uriel, and perhaps urien; for the deity has a diabolic savour in him, and blake was not incapable of mixing the hellenic, the miltonic, and the celtic mythologies into one drugged and adulterated compound. he had read much and blindly; he had no leaning to verbal accuracy, and never acquired any faculty of comparison. any sound that in the dimmest way suggested to him a notion of hell or heaven, of passion or power, was significant enough to adopt and register. commentary was impossible to him: if his work could not be apprehended or enjoyed by an instinct of inspiration like his own, it was lost labour to dissect or expound; and here, if ever, translation would have been treason. he took the visions as they came; he let the words lie as they fell. these barbarous and blundering names are not always without a certain kind of melody and an uncertain sort of meaning. such as they are, they must be endured; or the whole affair must be tossed aside and thrown up. over these clamorous kingdoms of speech and dream some few ruling forces of supreme discord preside: and chiefly the lord of the world of man; urizen, god of cloud and star, "father of jealousy," clothed with a splendour of shadow, strong and sad and cruel; his planet faintly glimmers and slowly revolves, a horror in heaven; the night is a part of his thought, rain and wind are in the passage of his feet; sorrow is in all his works; he is the maker of mortal things, of the elements and sexes; in him are incarnate that jealousy which the hebrews acknowledged and that envy which the greeks recognized in the divine nature; in his worship faith remains one with fear. star and cloud, the types of mystery and distance, of cold alienation and heavenly jealousy, belong of right to the god who grudges and forbids: even as the spirit of revolt is made manifest in fiery incarnation--pure prolific fire, "the cold loins of urizen dividing." these two symbols of "cruel fear" or "starry jealousy" in the divine tyrant, of ardent love or creative lust in the rebellious saviour of man, pervade the mystical writings of blake. orc, the man-child, with hair and flesh like fire, son of space and time, a terror and a wonder from the hour of his birth, containing within himself the likeness of all passions and appetites of men, is cast out from before the face of heaven; and falling upon earth, a stronger vulcan or satan, fills with his fire the narrowed foreheads and the darkened eyes of all that dwell thereon; imprisoned often and fed from vessels of iron with barren food and bitter drink,[ ] a wanderer or a captive upon earth, he shall rise again when his fire has spread through all lands to inflame and to infect with a strong contagion the spirit and the sense of man, and shall prevail against the law and the commandments of his enemy. this endless myth of oppression and redemption, of revelation and revolt, runs through many forms and spills itself by strange straits and byways among the sands and shallows of prophetic speech. but in these books there is not the substantial coherence of form and reasonable unity of principle which bring within scope of apprehension even the wildest myths grown out of unconscious idealism and impulsive tradition. a single man's work, however exclusively he may look to inspiration for motive and material, must always want the breadth and variety of meaning, the supple beauty of symbol, the infectious intensity of satisfied belief, which grow out of creeds and fables native to the spirit of a nation, yet peculiar to no man or sect, common yet sacred, not invented or constructed, but found growing and kept fresh with faith. but for all the dimness and violence of expression which pervert and darken the mythology of these attempts at gospel, they have qualities great enough to be worth finding out. only let none conceive that each separate figure in the swarming and noisy life of this populous dæmonic creation has individual meaning and vitality. blake was often taken off his feet by the strong currents of fancy, and indulged, like a child during its first humour of invention, in wild byplay and erratic excesses of simple sound; often lost his way in a maze of wind-music, and transcribed as it were with eyes closed and open ears the notes caught by chance as they drifted across the dream of his subdued senses. alternating between lyrical invention and gigantic allegory, it is hard to catch and hold him down to any form or plan. at one time we have mere music, chains of ringing names, scattered jewels of sound without a thread, tortuous network of harmonies without a clue; and again we have passages, not always unworthy of an Æschylean chorus, full of fate and fear; words that are strained wellnigh in sunder by strong significance and earnest passion; words that deal greatly with great things, that strike deep and hold fast; each inclusive of some fierce apocalypse or suggestive of some obscure evangel. now the matter in hand is touched with something of an epic style; the narrative and characters lose half their hidden sense, and the reciter passes from the prophetic tripod to the seat of a common singer; mere names, perhaps not even musical to other ears than his, allure and divert him; he plays with stately cadences, and lets the wind of swift or slow declamation steer him whither it will. now again he falls with renewed might of will to his purpose; and his grand lyrical gift becomes an instrument not sonorous merely but vocal and articulate. to readers who can but once take their stand for a minute on the writer's footing, look for a little with his eyes and listen with his ears, even the more incoherent cadences will become not undelightful; something of his pleasure, with something of his perception, will pass into them; and understanding once the main gist of the whole fitful and high-strung tune, they will tolerate, where they cannot enjoy, the strange diversities and discords which intervene. among many notable eccentricities we have touched upon but two as yet; the huge windy mythology of elemental dæmons, and the capricious passion for catalogues of random names, which make obscure and hideous so much of these books. akin to these is the habit of seeing or assuming in things inanimate or in the several limbs and divisions of one thing, separate forms of active and symbolic life. this, like many other of blake's habits, grows and swells enormously by progressive indulgence. at first, as in _thel_, clouds and flowers, clods and creeping things, are given speech and sense; the degree of symbolism is already excessive, owing to the strength of expression and directness of dramatic vision peculiar to blake; but in later books everything is given a soul to feel and a tongue to speak; the very members of the body become spirits, each a type of some spiritual state. again, in the prophecies of _europe_ and _america_, there is more fable and less allegory, more overflow of lyrical invention, more of the divine babble which sometimes takes the place of earthly speech or sense, more vague emotion with less of reducible and amenable quality than in almost any of these poems. in others, a habit of mapping out and marking down the lines of his chaotic and titanic scenery has added to blake's other singularities of manner this above all, that side by side with the jumbled worlds of tharmas and urthona, the whirling skies and plunging planets of ololon and beulah, the breathless student of prophecy encounters places and names absurdly familiar; london streets and suburbs make up part of the mystic antediluvian world; fulham and lambeth, kentish town and poland street, cross the courses and break the metres of the stars. this apparent madness of final absurdity has also its root in the deepest and soundest part of blake's mind and faith. in the meanest place as in the meanest man he beheld the hidden spirit and significance of which the flesh or the building is but a type. if continents have a soul, shall suburbs or lanes have less? where life is, shall not the spirit of life be there also? europe and america are vital and significant; we mean by all names somewhat more than we know of; for where there is anything visible or conceivable, there is also some invisible and inconceivable thing. this is but the rough grotesque result of the tenet that matter apart from spirit is non-existent. launched once upon that theory, blake never thought it worth while to shorten sail or tack about for fear of any rock or shoal. it is inadequate and even inaccurate to say that he allotted to each place as to each world a presiding dæmon or deity. he averred implicitly or directly, that each had a soul or spirit, the quintessence of its natural life, capable of change but not of death; and that of this soul the visible externals, though a native and actual part, were only a part, inseparable as yet but incomplete. thus whenever, to his misfortune and ours, he stumbles upon the proper names of terrene men and things, he uses these names as signifying not the sensual form or body but the spirit which he supposed to animate these, to speak in them and work through them. in _america_ the names of liberators, in _jerusalem_ the names of provinces, have no separate local or mundane sense whatever; throughout the prophecies "albion" is the mythical and typical fatherland of human life, much what the east might seem to other men: and by way of making this type actual and prominent enough, blake seizes upon all possible divisions of the modern visible england in town or country, and turns them in his loose symbolic way into minor powers and serving spirits. that he was wholly unconscious of the intolerably laughable effect we need not believe. he had all the delight in laying snares and giving offence, which is proper to his kind. he had all the confidence in his own power and right to do such things and to get over the doing of them which accompanies in such men the subtle humour of scandalizing. and unfortunately he had not by training, perhaps not by nature, the conscience which would have reminded him that whether or not an artist may allowably play with all other things in heaven and earth, one thing he must certainly not play with; the material forms of art: that levity and violence are here prohibited under grave penalties. allowing however for this, we may notice that in the wildest passages of these books blake merely carries into strange places or throws into strange shapes such final theories as in the dialect of calmer and smaller men have been accounted not unreasonable. further preface or help, however loudly the subject might seem to call for it, we have not in this place to give; and indeed more words would possibly not bring with them more light. what was explicable we have endeavoured to explain; to suggest where a hint was profitable; to prepare where preparation was feasible: but many voices might be heard crying in this wilderness before the paths were made straight. the pursuivant would grow hoarse and the outrider saddle-sick long before the great man's advent; and for these offices we have no further taste or ability. those who will may now, with what furtherance they have here, follow us through some brief revision of each book in its order.[ ] [illustration: the book of thel the author & printer will{m} blake. .] _the book of thel_, first in date and simplest in tone of the prophecies, requires less comment than the others. this poem is as the one sister, feeblest if also fairest, among that titanic brotherhood of books. it has the clearness and sweetness of spring-water; they have in their lips the speech, in their limbs the pulses of the sea. in this book, as in the illustrations to blair, the poet attempts to comfort life through death; to assuage by spiritual hope the fleshly fear of man. the "shining woman," youngest and mortal daughter of the angels of god, leaving her sisters to tend the flocks and close the folds of the stars, fills herself with the images of perishable things; she feeds upon the sorrow that comes of beauty, the heathen weariness of heart, that is sick of life because death will come, seeing how "our little life is rounded with a sleep." let all these things go, for they are mortal; but if i die with the flowers, let me also die as they die. this is the end of all things, to sleep; but let me fall asleep softly, not without the lulling sound of god's voice audible in my ears. the flower makes answer; does god not care for the least of these? they shall not die, they shall all be changed. she answers again; the flower is serviceable to god's creatures, giving food to the pasturing lambs and flavour to the honey of the gleaning bees: but her beauty is barren as a lighted cloud's; wherefore should she live? she is bidden to seek counsel then of the cloud; and of him she asks the secret of his glad ephemeral life; for she, not less ephemeral, has no such joy of her life. here again she is shown that life and permanence are twain; the cloud has drunk at the springs of the sun, whence all hours are renewed; and shall not die though he pass away; for his falling drops find out the living flowers, and are wedded to the dew in these; and they are made one before the sun, and kept alive to feed other flowers: and all these are as women and men, having souls and senses, capable of love and prayer. but she answers, that of her fair body no cloud or bird gets food, but the worm only; why should anything survive of her who has been helpful to nothing? the worm therefore is called to witness; and appears in an infant's likeness, inarticulate, naked, weeping; but upon it too the divine earth has mercy, and the clay finds a voice to speak for it; this likewise is not the sad unprofitable thing it seems; for the very earth, baser and liker death than the least thing bred of it, is the bride of god, a fruitful mother of all his children. "we live not for ourselves;" else indeed were earth and the worm of earth things mournful and fruitless. the secret of creation is sacrifice; the very act of growth is a sacrament: and through this eternal generation in which one life is given for another and shed into new veins of existence, each thing is redeemed from perpetual death by perpetual change. this secret once made evident to thel, her fear is in a measure removed; for the very deathbed of earth in which she must lie is now revealed as a mother's bosom, warm and giving warmth, living and prodigal of life. that god would care for the least thing he made she knew always; but now knows also that in the least thing there is something of god's life infused, which makes it substantially imperishable. so far one may say the poem is as fluent and translucent as the merest sermon on faith, hope, and charity could well be: and not less inoffensive. the earth, who has overheard and gathered up all the flitting sighs of this unwedded eve, now unveils to her the mysteries of the body, bred in the grave whither all sorrows tend and whence all tears arise. the forces of material nature give way before her; passing to her own grave, she hears thence a voice lamenting over the nature of all the senses, their sweet perilous gifts and strange limits, and all their offices which fill and discolour the days of mortal life. to this, the question lying at the root of life and under the shadow of death, nothing makes answer; as though no word spoken upon earth or under could explain the marvel of the flesh, the infinite beauty and delight of it, the infinite subtlety and danger; its prodigalities and powers, its wide capacity and utter weakness. set face to face with this bodily mystery, and affrighted at the sudden nakedness of natural life, the soul recoils; and thel regains the common air and quiet light of earth. such, cut short and melted down, is the purport of this poem: a prophecy as literally as any other of blake's, being professedly an inspired exposition of material things; for none of course pretend to be prophecies in the inaccurate and vulgar sense of prediction. it is full of small sweet details, bright and soft as summer grass, regular to monotony in its cadence until the last division, where the tone suddenly strengthens and deepens. there and not for the last time the strong imagination of blake wrestles with the great questions of physical life, constraining the mute rebellious flesh as in a fervent and strenuous grasp of spirit, if perchance it will yield up the heart of its mystery. throughout the book his extreme and feminine tenderness of faith speaks more softly and shows a simpler face than elsewhere. one might almost say that _thel_ had overmuch of this gracious and delicate beauty; that the intense faith and compassion which thus animate all matter give a touch of almost dubious and effeminate sweetness to the thought and style. not however justly; for there is a firm body of significance in the poem, and the soft light leaves in which the fruit lies wrapped are solid as well as sweet. it is well worth while to compare any average copy of _thel_ with the smaller volume of designs now in the british museum, which reproduces among others the main illustrations of this book. the clear, sweet, pallid colour of the fainter version will then serve to throw into full effect the splendour of the more finished work. especially in the separate copy of the frontispiece, the sovereignty of colour and glorious grace of workmanship double and treble its original beauty; give new light and new charm to the fervent heaven, to the bowing figure of the girl, to the broad cloven blossoms whose flickering and sundering petals release the bright leaping forms of loving spirits, raindrop and dewdrop wedded before the sun; and again, where thel sees the worm in likeness of a new-born child, the colours of tree and leaf and sky are of a more excellent and lordly beauty than in any copy known to me of the book itself; though in all good copies these designs appear full of great and gracious qualities. of the book of designs here referred to more must not now be said; not even of the twelfth plate where the mother-goddess and her fiery first-born child exult with flying wingless limbs through splendid spaces of the infinite morning, coloured here like opening flowers and there like climbing fire, where all the light and all the wind of heaven seem to unite in fierce gladness as of a supreme embrace and exultation; for to these better praise than ours has been already given at p. of the _life_, in words of choice and incomparable sufficiency, not less bright and sweet, significant and subtle, than the most tender or perfect of the designs described. [illustration: the marriage of heaven and hell.] in blake produced the greatest of all his books; a work indeed which we rank as about the greatest produced by the eighteenth century in the line of high poetry and spiritual speculation. _the marriage of heaven and hell_ gives us the high-water mark of his intellect. none of his lyrical writings show the same sustained strength and radiance of mind; none of his other works in verse or prose give more than a hint here and a trace there of the same harmonious and humorous power, of the same choice of eloquent words, the same noble command and liberal music of thought; small things he could often do perfectly, and great things often imperfectly; here for once he has written a book as perfect as his most faultless song, as great as his most imperfect rhapsody. his fire of spirit fills it from end to end; but never deforms the body, never singes the surface of the work, as too often in the still noble books of his later life. across the flicker of flame, under the roll and roar of water, which seem to flash and to resound throughout the poem, a stately music, shrill now as laughter and now again sonorous as a psalm, is audible through shifting notes and fitful metres of sound. the book swarms with heresies and eccentricities; every sentence bristles with some paradox, every page seethes with blind foam and surf of stormy doctrine; the humour is of that fierce grave sort, whose cool insanity of manner is more horrible and more obscure to the philistine than any sharp edge of burlesque or glitter of irony; it is huge, swift, inexplicable; hardly laughable through its enormity of laughter, hardly significant through its condensation of meaning; but as true and thoughtful as the greatest humourist's. the variety and audacity of thoughts and words are incomparable: not less so their fervour and beauty. "no bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings." this proverb might serve as motto to the book: it is one of many "proverbs of hell," as forcible and as finished. it was part of blake's humour to challenge misconception, conscious as he was of power to grapple with it: to blow dust in their eyes who were already sandblind, to strew thorns under their feet who were already lame. those whom the book in its present shape would perplex and repel he knew it would not in any form have attracted; and how such readers may fare is no concern of such writers; nor in effect need it be. aware that he must at best offend a little, he did not fear to offend much. to measure the exact space of safety, to lay down the precise limits of offence, was an office neither to his taste nor within his power. those who try to clip or melt themselves down to the standard of current feeling, to sauce and spice their natural fruits of mind with such condiments as may take the palate of common opinion, deserve to disgust themselves and others alike. it is hopeless to reckon how far the timid, the perverse, or the malignant irrelevance of human remarks will go; to set bounds to the incompetence or devise landmarks for the imbecility of men. blake's way was not the worst; to indulge his impulse to the full and write what fell to his hand, making sure at least of his own genius and natural instinct. in this his greatest book he has at once given himself freer play and set himself to harder labour than elsewhere: the two secrets of great work. passion and humour are mixed in his writing like mist and light; whom the light may scorch or the mist confuse it is not his part to consider. in the prologue blake puts forth, not without grandeur if also with an admixture of rant and wind, a chief tenet of his moral creed. once the ways of good and evil were clear, not yet confused by laws and religions; then humility and benevolence, the endurance of peril and the fruitful labour of love, were the just man's proper apanage; behind his feet the desert blossomed; by his toil and danger, by his sweat and blood, the desolate places were made rich and the dead bones clothed with flesh as the flesh of adam. now the hypocrite has come to reap the fruits, to divide and gather and eat; to drive forth the just man and to dwell in the paths which he found perilous and barren, but left safe and fertile. churches have cast out apostles; creeds have rooted out faith. henceforth anger and loneliness, the divine indignation of spiritual exile, the salt bread of scorn and the bitter wine of wrath, are the portion of the just man; he walks with lions in the waste places, not worth making fertile that others may reap and feed. "rintrah," the spirit presiding over this period, is a spirit of fire and storm; darkness and famine, wrath and want, divide the kingdoms of the world. "prisons are built with stones of law; brothels with bricks of religion." "as the caterpillar chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys." in a third proverb the view given of prayer is no less heretical; "as the plough follows words, so god rewards prayers." this was but the outcome or corollary of his main doctrine; as what we have called his "evangel of bodily liberty" was but the fruit of his belief in the identity of body with soul. the fear which restrains and the faith which refuses were things as ignoble as the hypocrisy which assumes or the humility which resigns. veils and chains must be lifted and broken. "folly is the cloak of knavery; shame is pride's cloak." again; "he who desires but acts not breeds pestilence." "sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires." the doctrine of freedom could hardly run further or faster. translated into rough practice, and planted in a less pure soil than that of the writer's mind, this philosophy might bring forth a strange harvest. together with such width of moral pantheism as will hardly admit a "tender curb," leave "a little curtain of flesh on the bed of our desire," there is a vehemence of faith in divine wrath, in the excellence of righteous anger and revenge, to be outdone by no prophet or puritan. "a dead body revenges not injuries." sincerity and plain dealing at least are virtues not to be thrown over; blake indeed could not conceive an impulse to mendacity, a tortuous habit of mind, a soul born crooked. this one quality of falsehood remains damnable in his sight, to be consumed with all that comes of it. in man or beast or any other part of god he found no native taint or birthmark of this. upon all else the divine breath and the divine hand are sensible and visible. "the pride of the peacock is the glory of god; the lust of the goat is the bounty of god; the wrath of the lion is the wisdom of god; the nakedness of woman is the work of god." all form and all instinct is sacred; but no invention or device of man's. all crafts and creeds of theirs are "the serpent's meat:" and that a man should be born cruel and false is barely imaginable. "if the lion was advised by the fox he would be cunning." such counsel was always wasted on the high clear spirit and stainless intellect of blake. [illustration: proverbs of hell] we have given some of the most subtle and venturous "proverbs of hell"--samples of their depth of doctrine and plainness of speech. but even here blake rarely indulges in such excess and exposure. there are jewels in this treasure-house neither set so roughly nor so sharply cut as these; they may be seen in the _life_, taken out and reset, so as to offend no customer. and these sayings must themselves be read by the light of blake's life and weighed against others of his words not less weighty than they. apology shall now and always remain as far from us as it was in life from blake himself; to excuse and to explain are different offices. to plead for his acquittal on the base and foolish ground that he meant no harm, knew not what he did, had no design or desire to afflict or offend, is no office for his counsel; who must strive at least to speak not less frankly and clearly than did blake when he could speak in his own cause. neither have we to approve or condemn; but only to endeavour that we may see the right and deliver the truth as to this man and his life. "that i cannot live," he says, in the butts correspondence, "without doing my duty to lay up treasures in heaven, is certain and determined, and to this i have long made up my mind. and why this should be made an objection to me, while drunkenness, lewdness, gluttony, and even idleness itself does not hurt other men, let satan himself explain. the thing i have most at heart--more than life, or all that seems to make life comfortable without (it)--is the interest of true religion and science." his one fear is to "omit any duty to my station as a soldier of christ;" a fear that "gives him the greatest torments;" for "if our footsteps slide in clay, how can we do otherwise than fear and tremble?" and such books as these were part of his spiritual taskwork. from whencesoever the inspiration of them came, inspiration it was and no invention. he is content with that knowledge; and if it please the hearer to call it diabolic, diabolic it shall be. if he has a devil, he will make the most and the best of him. if these things come from hell, let us look to it and hold them fast, that we may see what it is that divides hell from heaven. "as a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years since its advent: the eternal hell revives. and lo! swedenborg is the angel sitting at the tomb: his writings are the linen clothes folded up. now is the dominion of edom, and the return of adam into paradise; see isaiah xxxiv. and xxxv. chap. "without contraries is no progression. attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. "from these contraries spring what the religious call good and evil. good is the passive that obeys reason. "evil is the active springing from energy. "_good is heaven. evil is hell._ "the voice of the devil. "all bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors. " . that man has two real existing principles--viz., a body and a soul. " . that energy, called evil, is alone from the body; and that reason, called good, is alone from the soul. " . that god will torment man in eternity for following his energies. "but the following contraries to these are true. " . man has no body distinct from his soul, for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age. " . energy is the only life, and is from the body; and reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy. " . energy is eternal delight. "those who restrain desire to do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer, or reason, usurps its place and governs the unwilling. "and being restrained it by degrees becomes passive, till it is only the shadow of desire. "the history of this is written in 'paradise lost,' and the governor, or reason, is called messiah. "and the original archangel, or possessor of the command of the heavenly host, is called the devil or satan, and his children are called sin and death. "but in the book of job milton's messiah is called satan. "for this history has been adopted by both parties. "it indeed appeared to reason as if desire was cast out; but the devil's account is, that the messiah fell, and formed a heaven of what he stole from the abyss. "this is shewn in the gospel, where he prays to the father to send the comforter or desire, that reason may have ideas to build on, the jehovah of the bible being no other than he who dwells in flaming fire. know that after christ's death, he became jehovah. "but in milton the father is destiny, the son a ratio of the five senses, and the holy ghost, vacuum. "note.--the reason milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of angels and god, and at liberty when of devils and hell, is because he was a true poet, and of the devil's party without knowing it." something of these high matters we have seen before, and should now be able to allow for the subtle intricate fashion in which blake labours to invert the weapons of his antagonists upon themselves. neither can the banns of marriage be published between heaven and hell with the voice of a parish clerk. this prophet came to do what swedenborg his precursor had left undone, being but the watchman by the empty sepulchre, and his writings as the grave-clothes cast off by the risen christ. blake's estimate of swedenborg, right or wrong, was, as we shall see, distinct and consistent; to this effect; that his inspiration was limited and timid, superficial and derivative; that he was content with leaves and husks, and had not the courage to examine the root and the kernel of things; that he clove to the heaven and shrank from the hell of other men; whereas, to men in whom "a new heaven is begun," the one must not be terrible nor the other desirable. to them the "flaming fire" wherein dwells a god whom men call devil, must seem a purer element of life than the starry and cloudy space wherein dwells a devil whom they call god. it must be remembered that blake uses the current terms of religion, now as types of his own peculiar faith, now in the sense of ordinary preachers: impugning therefore at one time what at another he will seem to vindicate. vague and violent as this overture may appear, it must be followed with care, that the writer's intensity of spiritual faith may be hereafter kept in sight. the senses, "the chief inlets of soul in this age" of brute doubt and brute belief, are worthy only as parts of the soul. this, it cannot be too much repeated and insisted on, this and no prurience of porcine appetite for rotten apples, no vulgarity of porcine adoration for unctuous wash, is what lies at the root of blake's sensual doctrine. let no reader now or ever forget, that while others will admit nothing beyond the body, the mystic will admit nothing outside the soul. that the two extremes, if reduced to hard practice, might run round and meet, not without lamentably curious consequences, those may assert who will; it is none of our business to decide. even granting that the result will be about equivalent if one man does for his soul's sake all that another would do for his body's sake, we might plead that the difference of thought and eye between these two would remain great and important. indulgence bracketed to faith and vivified by that vigorous contact with things divine is not (we might say) the same, whether seen from the actual side of life or from the speculative, as indulgence cut loose and left to decompose. but these pleas we will leave the mystic to advance, if it please him, on his own behalf. "a memorable fancy. "as i was walking among the fires of hell, delighted with the enjoyments of genius, which to angels look like torment and insanity, i collected some of their proverbs: thinking that as the sayings used in a nation mark its character, so the proverbs of hell show the nature of the infernal wisdom better than any description of buildings or garments. when i came home, on the abyss of the five senses, where a flat-sided steep frowns over the present world, i saw a mighty devil folded in black clouds, hovering on the sides of the rock; with corroding fires he wrote the following sentence, now perceived by the minds of men, and read by them on earth:-- "'how do you know but ev'ry bird that cuts the airy way is an immense world of delight, clos'd by your senses five?'" here follow the "proverbs of hell," which give us the quintessence and the most fine gold of blake's alembic. each, whether earnest or satirical, slight or great in manner, is full of that passionate wisdom and bright rapid strength proper to the step and speech of gods. the simplest give us a measure of his energy, as this:--"think in the morning, act in the noon, eat in the evening, sleep in the night." the highest have a light and resonance about them, as though in effect from above or beneath; a spirit which lifts thought upon the high levels of verse. from the ensuing divisions of the book we shall give full extracts; for these detached sections have a grace and coherence which we shall not always find in blake; and the crude excerpts given in the _life_ are inadequate to help the reader much towards a clear comprehension of the main scheme. "the ancient poets animated all sensible objects with gods or geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive. "and, particularly, they studied the genius of each city and country, placing it under its mental deity. "till a system was formed, which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood, "choosing forms of worship from poetic tales; "and at length they pronounced that the gods had ordered such things. "thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast." from this we pass to higher tones of exposition. the next passage is one of the clearest and keenest in the book, full of faith and sacred humour, none the less sincere for its dramatic form. the subtle simplicity of expression is excellently subservient to the intricate force of thought. "a memorable fancy. "the prophets isaiah and ezekiel dined with me, and i asked them how they dared so roundly to assert that god spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time that they would be misunderstood, and so be the cause of imposition. "isaiah answered, 'i saw no god, nor heard any, in a finite or organical perception; but my senses discovered the infinite in everything, and as i was then persuaded, i remain confirmed, that the voice of honest indignation is the voice of god. i cared not for consequences, but wrote.' "then i asked, 'does a firm persuasion that a thing is so, make it so?' "he replied, 'all poets believe that it does, and in ages of imagination this firm persuasion removed mountains. but many are not capable of a firm persuasion of anything.' "then ezekiel said, 'the philosophy of the east taught the first principles of human perception. some nations held one principle for the origin and some another. we of israel taught that the poetic genius (as you now call it) was the first principle, and all the others merely derivative, which was the cause of our despising the priests and philosophers of other countries, and prophesying that all gods would at last be proved to originate in ours, and to be the tributaries of the poetic genius. it was this that our great poet king david desired so fervently and invokes so pathetically, saying by this he conquers enemies and governs kingdoms; and we so loved our god, that we cursed in his name all the deities of surrounding nations, and asserted that they had rebelled; from these opinions the vulgar came to think that all nations would at last be subject to the jews. "'this,' said he, 'like all firm persuasions, is come to pass, for all nations believe the jews' code and worship the jews' god, and what greater subjection can be?' "i heard this with some wonder, and must confess my own conviction. after dinner, i asked isaiah to favour the world with his lost works. he said none of equal value was lost. "ezekiel said the same of his. "i also asked isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years? he answered, the same that made our friend diogenes the grecian. "i then asked ezekiel, why he eat dung, and lay so long on his right and left side? he answered, the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite. this the north american tribes practise; and is he honest who resists his genius or conscience, only for the sake of present ease or gratification?" the doctrine of perception through not with the senses, beyond not in the organs, as also of the absolute existence of things thus apprehended, is again directly enforced in our next excerpt; in praise of which we will say nothing, but leave the words to burn their way in as they may. "the ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true, as i have heard from hell. "for the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life; and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed, and appear infinite and holy, whereas it now appears finite and corrupt. "this will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment. "but first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged; this i shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away and displaying the infinite which was hid. "if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. "for man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern." after which corrosive touch of revelation there follows a vision of knowledge; first, the human nature is cleansed and widened into shape, then decorated, then enlarged and built about with stately buildings for guest-chambers and treasure-houses; then the purged metal of knowledge, melted into form with divine violence, is made fluid and vital, that it may percolate and permeate the whole man through every pore of his spirit; then the metal is cast forth and put to use. all forms and forces of the world, viper and lion, half-human things and nameless natures, serve to help in this work; all manner of aspiration and inspiration, wrath and faith, love and labour, do good service here. "the giants who formed this world into its sensual existence, and now seem to live in it in chains, are in truth the causes of its life and the sources of all activity; but the chains are, the cunning of weak and tame minds, which have power to resist energy; according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning. "thus one portion of being is the prolific, the other, the devouring; to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains; but it is not so; he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole. "but the prolific would cease to be prolific, unless the devourer as a sea received the excess of his delights. "some will say, is not god alone the prolific? "i answer, god only acts and is in existing beings or men. "these two classes of men are always upon earth, and they should be enemies; whoever tries to reconcile them, seeks to destroy existence. "religion is an endeavour to reconcile the two. "note.--jesus christ did not wish to unite but to separate them, as in the parable of sheep and goats! and he says i came not to send peace but a sword. "messiah or satan or tempter was formerly thought to be one of the antediluvians who are our energies." these are hard sayings; who can hear them? at first sight also, as we were forewarned, this passage seems at direct variance with that other in the overture, where our prophet appears at first sight, and only appears, to speak of the fallen "messiah" as the same with the christ of his belief. verbally coherent we cannot hope to make the two passages; but it must be remarked and remembered that the very root or kernel of this creed is not the assumed humanity of god, but the achieved divinity of man; not incarnation from without, but development from within; not a miraculous passage into flesh, but a natural growth into godhead. christ, as the type or sample of manhood, thus becomes after death the true jehovah; not, as he seems to the vulgar, the extraneous and empirical god of creeds and churches, human in no necessary or absolute sense, the false and fallen phantom of his enemy, zeus in the mask of prometheus. we are careful to note and as far as may be to correct any apparent slips or shortcomings in expression, only because if left without a touch of commentary they may seem to make worse confusion than they do actually make. subtle, trenchant and profound as is this philosophy, there is no radical flaw in the book, no positive incongruity, no inherent contradiction. a single consistent principle keeps alive the large relaxed limbs, makes significant the dim great features of this strange faith. it is but at the opening that the words are even partially inadequate and obscure. revision alone could have righted and straightened them; and revision the author would not give. impatient of their insufficiency, and incapable of any labour that implies rest, he shook them together and flung them out in an irritated hurried manner, regardless who might gather them up or let them lie. in the next and longest division of the book, direct allegory and imaginative vision are indivisibly mixed into each other. the stable and mill, the twisted root and inverted fungus, are transparent symbols enough: the splendid and stormy apocalypse of the abyss is a chapter of pure vision or poetic invention. why "swedenborg's volumes" are the weights used to sink the travellers from the "glorious clime" to the passive and iron void between the fixed stars and the coldest of the remote planets, will be conceivable in due time. "a memorable fancy. "an angel came to me and said, 'o pitiable foolish young man! o horrible! o dreadful state! consider the hot burning dungeon thou art preparing for thyself to all eternity, to which thou art going in such career.' "i said, 'perhaps you will be willing to show me my eternal lot and we will contemplate upon it and see whether your lot or mine is most desirable.' "so he took me through a stable and through a church and down into the church vault at the end of which was a mill; through the mill we went, and came to a cave; down the winding cavern we groped our tedious way, till a void, boundless as a nether sky, appeared beneath us, and we held by the roots of trees and hung over this immensity; but i said, 'if you please, we will commit ourselves to this void, and see whether providence is here also; if you will not, i will.' "but he answered, 'do not presume, o young man, but as we here remain, behold thy lot, which will soon appear when the darkness passes away.' "so i remained with him, sitting in the twisted root of an oak; he was suspended in a fungus, which hung with the head downward into the deep. "by degrees we beheld the infinite abyss, fiery as the smoke of a burning city; beneath us at an immense distance was the sun, black but shining; round it were fiery tracks on which revolved vast spiders, crawling after their prey; which flew or rather swam in the infinite deep, in the most terrific shapes of animals sprung from corruption; and the air was full of them, and seemed composed of them; these are devils, and are called powers of the air. i now asked my companion which was my eternal lot? he said, between the black and white spiders. "but now, from between the black and white spiders a cloud and fire burst and rolled through the deep blackening all beneath, so that the nether deep grew black as a sea and rolled with a terrible noise: beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest, till looking east between the clouds and the waves, we saw a cataract of blood mixed with fire, and not many stones' throw from us appeared and sunk again the scaly fold of a monstrous serpent; at last, to the east, distant about three degrees, appeared a fiery crest above the waves; slowly it reared, like a ridge of golden rocks, till we discovered two globes of crimson fire, from which the sea fled away in clouds of smoke: and now we saw it was the head of leviathan; his forehead was divided into streaks of green and purple, like those on a tiger's forehead: soon we saw his mouth and red gills hang just above the raging foam, tinging the black deep with beams of blood, advancing toward us with all the fury of a spiritual existence. "my friend the angel climbed up from his station into the mill; i remained alone, and then this appearance was no more; but i found myself sitting on a pleasant bank beside a river by moonlight, hearing a harper who sung to the harp, and his theme was, the man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind. "but i arose, and sought for the mill, and there i found my angel, who, surprised, asked me how i escaped? "i answered, 'all that we saw was owing to your metaphysics: for when you ran away, i found myself on a bank by moonlight hearing a harper. but now we have seen my eternal lot, shall i show you yours?' he laughed at my proposal: but i by force suddenly caught him in my arms, and flew westerly through the night, till we were elevated above the earth's shadow: then i flung myself with him directly into the body of the sun; here i clothed myself in white, and taking in my hand swedenborg's volumes, sunk from the glorious clime, and passed all the planets till we came to saturn: here i staid to rest, and then leaped into the void, between saturn and the fixed stars. "'here,' said i, 'is your lot, in this space, if space it may be called.' soon we saw the stable and the church, and i took him to the altar and opened the bible, and lo! it was a deep pit, into which i descended, driving the angel before me; soon we saw seven houses of brick; one we entered; in it were a number of monkeys, baboons, and all of that species chained by the middle, grinning and snatching at one another, but withheld by the shortness of their chains; however, i saw that they sometimes grew numerous, and then the weak were caught by the strong and, with a grinning aspect, first coupled with and then devoured, by plucking off first one limb and then another, till the body was left a helpless trunk; this, after grinning and kissing it with seeming kindness, they devoured too; and here and there i saw one savourily picking the flesh off of his own tail. as the stench terribly annoyed us both, we went into the mill, and i in my hand brought the skeleton of a body, which in the mill was aristotle's 'analytics.' "so the angel said; 'thy phantasy has imposed upon me, and thou oughtest to be ashamed.' "i answered; 'we impose on one another, and it is but lost time to converse with you, whose works are only analytics.'" the "seven houses of brick" we may take to be a reminiscence of the seven churches of st. john; as indeed the traces of former evangelists and prophets are never long wanting when we track the steps of this one. lest however we be found unawares on the side of these hapless angels and baboons, we will abstain with all due care from any not indispensable analysis. it is evident that between pure "phantasy" and mere "analytics" the great gulf must remain fixed, and either party appear to the other deceptive and deceived. that impulsive energy and energetic faith are the only means, whether used as tools of peace or as weapons of war, to pave or to fight our way toward the realities of things, was plainly the creed of blake; as also that these realities, once well in sight, will reverse appearance and overthrow tradition: hell will appear as heaven, and heaven as hell. the abyss once entered with due trust and courage appears a place of green pastures and gracious springs: the paradise of resignation once beheld with undisturbed eyes appears a place of emptiness or bondage, delusion or cruelty. on the humorous beauty and vigour of these symbols we need not expatiate; in these qualities rabelais and dante together could hardly have excelled blake at his best. what his meaning is should by this time be as clear as the meaning of a mystic need be; it is but partially expressible by words, as (to borrow blake's own symbol) the inseparable soul is yet but incompletely expressible through the body. whether it be right or wrong, foolish or wise, we will neither inquire nor assert: the autocercophagous monkeys of the mill may be left to settle that for themselves with "urizen." we come now to a chapter of comments, intercalated between two sufficiently memorable "fancies." "i have always found that angels have the vanity to speak of themselves as the only wise; this they do with a confident insolence sprouting from systematic reasoning. "thus swedenborg boasts that what he writes is new, though it is only the contents or index of already published books. "a man carried a monkey about for a show, and because he was a little wiser than the monkey, grew vain, and conceived himself as much wiser than seven men. it is so with swedenborg: he shows the folly of churches and exposes hypocrites, till he imagines that all are religious and himself the single one on earth that ever broke a net. "now hear a plain fact: swedenborg has not written one new truth. "now hear another: he has written all the old falsehoods. "and now hear the reason: he conversed with angels who are all religious and conversed not with devils who all hate religion; for he was incapable, through his conceited notions. "thus swedenborg's writings are a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further. "hear now another plain fact: any man of mechanical talents may, from the writings of paracelsus or jacob behmen, produce ten thousand volumes of equal value with swedenborg's; and from those of dante or shakespeare, an infinite number. but when he has done this, let him not say that he knows better than his master, for he only holds a candle in sunshine." this also we will leave for those to decide who please, and attend to the next and final vision. that the fire of inspiration should absorb and convert to its own nature all denser and meaner elements of mind, was the prophet's sole idea of redemption: the dead cloud of belief consumed becomes the vital flame of faith. "a memorable fancy. "once i saw a devil in a flame of fire, who arose before an angel that sat on a cloud, and the devil uttered these words. "the worship of god is: honouring his gifts in other men, each according to his genius, and loving the greatest men best; those who envy or calumniate great men hate god, for there is no other god. "the angel hearing this became almost blue, but mastering himself, he grew yellow, and at last white, pink, and smiling; and then replied, thou idolator, is not god one? and is not he visible in jesus christ? and has not jesus christ given his sanction to the law of ten commandments? and are not all other men fools, sinners, and nothings? "the devil answered; bray a fool in a mortar with wheat, yet shall not his folly be beaten out of him: if jesus christ is the greatest man, you ought to love him in the greatest degree; now hear how he has given his sanction to the law of the ten commandments: did he not mock at the sabbath, and so mock the sabbath's god? murder those who were murdered, because of him? turn away the law from the woman taken in adultery? steal the labour of others to support him? bear false witness when he omitted making a defence before pilate? covet when he prayed for his disciples, and when he bid them shake off the dust of their feet against such as refused to lodge them? i tell you, no virtue can exist without breaking these ten commandments. jesus was all virtue, and acted from impulse, not from rules. "when he had so spoken, i beheld the angel who stretched out his arms embracing the flame of fire, and he was consumed, and arose as elijah. "note. this angel, who is now become a devil, is my particular friend: we often read the bible together in its infernal or diabolical sense, which the world shall have if they behave well. "i have also the bible of hell, which the world shall have, whether they will or no." under this title at least the world was never favoured with it; but we may presumably taste some savour of that bible in these pages. after this the book is wound up in a lyric rapture, not without some flutter and tumour of style, but full of clear high music and flame-like aspiration. epilogue and prologue are both nearer in manner to the dubious hybrid language of the succeeding books of prophecy than to the choice and noble prose in which the rest of this book is written. the overture must be read by the light of its meaning; of the mysterious universal mother and her son, the latest birth of the world, we have already taken account. the date of must here be kept in mind, that all may remember what appearances of change were abroad, what manner of light and tempest was visible upon earth, when the hopes of such men as blake made their stormy way into speech or song. "a song of liberty. . the eternal female groan'd! it was heard over all the earth. . albion's coast is sick silent; the american meadows faint! . shadows of prophecy shiver along by the lakes and the rivers, and mutter across the ocean. france, rend down thy dungeon; . golden spain, burst the barriers of old rome; . cast thy keys, o rome, into the deep down falling, even to eternity down falling; . and weep. . in her trembling hands she took the new-born terror howling: . on those infinite mountains of light now barred out by the atlantic sea, the new-born fire stood before the starry king! . flag'd with grey-browed snows and thunderous visages the jealous wings waved over the deep. . the speary hand burned aloft, unbuckled was the shield, forth went the hand of jealousy among the flaming hair, and hurled the new-born wonder thro' the starry night. . the fire, the fire is falling! . look up! look up! o citizen of london, enlarge thy countenance: o jew, leave counting gold! return to thy oil and wine; o african! black african! (go, winged thought, widen his forehead.) . the fiery limbs, the flaming hair, shot like the sinking sun into the western sea. . waked from his eternal sleep, the hoary element roaring fled away. . down rushed, beating his wings in vain, the jealous king; his grey-browed councillors, thunderous warriors, curled veterans, among helms and shields, and chariots, horses, elephants; banners, castles, slings and rocks; . falling, rushing, ruining! buried in the ruins, on urthona's dens; . all night beneath the ruins, then their sullen flames faded emerge round the gloomy king. . with thunder and fire, leading his starry hosts thro' the waste wilderness, he promulgates his ten commands, glancing his beamy eyelids over the deep in dark dismay; . where the son of fire in his eastern cloud, while the morning plumes her golden breast, . spurning the clouds written with curses, stamps the stony law to dust, loosing the eternal horses from the dens of night, crying, empire is no more! and now the lion and the wolf shall cease. chorus. let the priests of the raven of dawn no longer in deadly black with hoarse note curse the sons of joy; nor his accepted brethren, whom, tyrant, he calls free, lay the bound or build the roof; nor pale religious letchery call that virginity that wishes but acts not; for everything that lives is holy." and so, as with fire and thunder--"thunder of thought, and flames of fierce desire"--is this _marriage of heaven and hell_ at length happily consummated; the prophet, as a fervent paranymph, standing by to invoke upon the wedded pair his most unclerical benediction. those who are not bidden to the bridegroom's supper may as well keep away, lest worse befall them, not having a wedding garment. for us there remains little to say, now that the torches are out, the nuts scattered, the songs silent, and the saffron faded from the veil. we will wish them a quiet life, and an heir who may combine the merits and capacities of either parent. it were pleasant enough, but too superfluous, to dwell upon the beauty of this nuptial hymn; to bid men remark what eloquence, what subtlety, what ardour of wisdom, what splendour of thought, is here; how far it outruns, not in daring alone but in sufficiency, all sayings of minor mystics who were not also poets; how much of lofty love and of noble faith underlies and animates these rapid and fervent words; what greatness of spirit and of speech there was in the man who, living as blake lived, could write as blake has written. those who cannot see what is implied may remain unable to tolerate what is expressed; and those who can read aright need no index of ours.[ ] [illustration] the decorations of this great work, though less large and complete than those of the subsequent prophecies, are full of noble and subtle beauty. over every page faint fibres and flickering threads of colour weave a net of intricate design. skies cloven with flame and thunder, half-blasted trees round which huddled forms of women or men cower and cling, strange beasts and splendid flowers, alternate with the engraved text; and throughout all the sunbeams of heaven and fires of hell shed fiercer or softer light. in minute splendour and general effect the pages of blake's next work fall short of these; though in the _visions of the daughters of albion_ the separate designs are fuller and more composed. this poem, written in a sort of regular though quasi-lyrical blank verse, is more direct and lucid in purpose than most of these books; but the style is already laxer, veers more swiftly from point to point, stands weaker on its feet, and speaks with more of a hurried and hysterical tone. with "formidable moral questions," as the biographer has observed, it does assuredly deal; and in a way somewhat formidable. this, we are told, "the exemplary man had good right to do." exemplary or not, he in common with all men had undoubtedly such a right; and was not slow to use it. nowhere else has the prophet so fully and vehemently set forth his doctrine of indulgence; too albigensian or antinomian this time to be given out again in more decorous form. of pure mythology there is happily little; of pure allegory even less. "the eye sees more than the heart knows;" these words are given on the title-page by way of motto or key-note. above this inscription a single design fills the page; in it the title is written with characters of pale fire upon cloud and rainbow; the figure of the typical woman, held fast to earth but by one foot, seems to soar and yearn upwards with straining limbs that flutter like shaken flame: appealing in vain to the mournful and merciless creator, whose sad fierce face looks out beyond and over her, swathed and cradled in bloodlike fire and drifted rain. in the prologue we get a design expressive of plain and pure pleasure; a woman gathers a child from the heart of a blossom as it breaks, and the sky is full of the golden stains and widening roses of a sundawn. but elsewhere, from the frontispiece to the end, nothing meets us but emblems of restraint and error; figures rent by the beaks of eagles though lying but on mere cloud, chained to no solid rock by the fetters only of their own faiths or fancies; leafless trunks that rot where they fell; cold ripples of barren sea that break among caves of bondage. the perfect woman, oothoon, is one with the spirit of the great western world; born for rebellion and freedom, but half a slave yet, and half a harlot. "bromion," the violent titan, subject himself to ignorance and sorrow, has defiled her;[ ] "theotormon," her lover, emblem of man held in bondage to creed or law, will not become one with her because of her shame; and she, who gathered in time of innocence the natural flower of delight, calls now for his eagles to rend her polluted flesh with cruel talons of remorse and ravenous beaks of shame: enjoys his infliction, accepts her agony, and reflects his severe smile in the mirrors of her purged spirit.[ ] but he "sits wearing the threshold hard with secret tears; beneath him sound like waves on a desert shore the voice of slaves beneath the sun, and children bought with money." from her long melodious lamentation we give one continuous excerpt here. sweet, and lucid as _thel_, it is more subtle and more strong; the allusions to american servitude and english aspiration, which elsewhere distract and distort the sense and scheme of the poem, are here well cleared away. "i cry arise, o theotormon; for the village dog barks at the breaking day; the nightingale has done lamenting; the lark does rustle in the green corn, and the eagle returns from nightly prey and lifts his golden beak to the pure east; shaking the dust from his immortal pinions, to awake the sun that sleeps too long. arise my theotormon, i am pure because the night is gone that closed me in its deadly black. they told me that the night and day were all that i could see; they told me that i had five senses to enclose me up, and they enclosed my infinite beam into a narrow circle, and sank my heart into the abyss, a red round globe hotburning till all from life i was obliterated and erased. instead of morn arises a bright shadow like an eye in the eastern cloud; instead of night a sickly charnel-house. but theotormon hears me not: to him the night and morn are both alike; a night of sighs, a morning of fresh tears. and none but bromion can hear my lamentations. with what sense is it that the chicken shuns the ravenous hawk? with what sense does the tame pigeon measure out the expanse? with what sense does the bee form cells? have not the mouse and frog eyes and ears and sense of touch? yet are their habitations and their pursuits as different as their forms and as their joy. ask the wild ass why he refuses burdens, and the meek camel why he loves man: is it because of eye, ear, mouth or skin, or breathing nostrils? no: for these the wolf and tiger have. ask the blind worm the secrets of the grave and why her spires love to curl around the bones of death: and ask the ravenous snake where she gets poison; and the winged eagle why he loves the sun; and then tell me the thoughts of man, that have been hid of old. silent i hover all the night, and all day could be silent, if theotormon once would turn his loved eyes upon me; how can i be defiled when i reflect thy image pure? sweetest the fruit that the worm feeds on, and the soul prey'd on by woe; the new-washed lamb tinged with the village smoke, and the bright swan by the red earth of our immortal river; i bathe my wings and i am white and pure to hover round theotormon's breast. then theotormon broke his silence, and he answered; tell me what is the night or day to one overflowed with woe? tell me what is a thought? and of what substance is it made? tell me what is joy? and in what gardens do joys grow? and in what rivers swim the sorrows? and upon what mountains wave shadows of discontent? and in what houses dwell the wretched drunken with woe forgotten, and shut up from cold despair? tell me where dwell the thoughts forgotten till thou call them forth? tell me where dwell the joys of old? and where the ancient loves? and when will they renew again and the night of oblivion be past? that i might traverse times and spaces far remote and bring comfort into a present sorrow and a night of pain! where goest thou, o thought? to what remote land is thy flight? if thou returnest to the present moment of affliction wilt thou bring comforts on thy wings and dews and honey and balm or poison from the desert wilds, from the eyes of the envier?" after this bromion, with less musical lamentation, asks whether for all things there be not one law established? "thou knowest that the ancient trees seen by thine eyes have fruit; but knowest thou that trees and fruits flourish upon the earth to gratify senses unknown, in worlds over another kind of seas?" are there other wars, other sorrows, and other joys than those of external life? but the one law surely does exist "for the lion and the ox," for weak and strong, wise and foolish, gentle and fierce; and for all who rebel against it there are prepared from everlasting the fires and the chains of hell. so speaks the violent slave of heaven; and after a day and a night oothoon lifts up her voice in sad rebellious answer and appeal. "o urizen, creator of men! mistaken demon of heaven! thy joys are tears: thy labour vain, to form man to thine image; how can one joy absorb another? are not different joys holy, eternal, infinite? and each joy is a love. does not the great mouth laugh at a gift? and the narrow eyelids mock at the labour that is above payment? and wilt thou take the ape for thy counsellor, or the dog for a schoolmaster to thy children? * * * * * does the whale worship at thy footsteps as the hungry dog? or does he scent the mountain prey, because his nostrils wide draw in the ocean? does his eye discern the flying cloud as the raven's eye? or does he measure the expanse like the vulture? does the still spider view the cliffs where eagles hide their young? or does the fly rejoice because the harvest is brought in? does not the eagle scorn the earth and despise the treasures beneath? but the mole knoweth what is there, and the worm shall tell it thee." perhaps there is no loftier note of music and of thought struck anywhere throughout these prophecies. for the rest, we must tread carefully over the treacherous hot ashes strewn about the latter end of this book: which indeed speaks plainly enough for once, and with high equal eloquence; but to no generally acceptable effect. the one matter of marriage laws is still beaten upon, still hammered at with all the might of an insurgent prophet: to whom it is intolerable that for the sake of mere words and mere confusions of thought "she who burns with youth and knows no fixed lot" should be "bound by spells of law to one she loathes," should "drag the chain of life in weary lust," and "bear the wintry rage of a harsh terror driven to madness, bound to hold a rod over her shrinking shoulders all the day, and all the night to turn the wheel of false desire;" intolerable that she should be driven by "longings that wake her womb" to bring forth not men but some monstrous "abhorred birth of cherubs," imperfect, artificial, abortive; counterfeits of holiness and mockeries of purity; things of barren or perverse nature, creatures inhuman or diseased, that live as a pestilence lives and pass away as a meteor passes; "till the child dwell with one he hates, and do the deed he loathes, and the impure scourge force his seed into its unripe birth ere yet his eyelids can behold the arrows of the day:" the day whose blinding beams had surely somewhat affected the prophet's own eyesight, and left his eyelids lined with strange colours of fugitive red and green that fades into black. however, all these things shall be made plain by death; for "over the porch is written take thy bliss, o man! and sweet shall be thy taste, and sweet thy infant joys renew." on the one hand is innocence, on the other modesty; infancy is "fearless, lustful, happy;" who taught it modesty, "subtle modesty, child of night and sleep?" once taught to dissemble, to call pure things impure, to "catch virgin joy, and brand it with the name of whore and sell it in the night;" once corrupted and misled, "religious dreams and holy vespers light thy smoky fires: once were thy fires lighted by the eyes of honest morn." not pleasure but hypocrisy is the unclean thing; oothoon is no harlot, but "a virgin filled with virgin fancies, open to joy and to delight wherever it appears; if in the morning sun i find it, there my eyes are fixed in happy copulation:" and so forth--further than we need follow. "is it because acts are not lovely that thou seekest solitude where the horrible darkness is impressed with reflections of desire?-- father of jealousy, be thou accursed from the earth! why hast thou taught my theotormon this accursed thing? till beauty fades from off my shoulders, darkened and cast out, a solitary shadow wailing on the margin of non-entity;" as in a later prophecy ahania, cast out by the jealous god, being the type or embodiment of this sacred natural love "free as the mountain wind." "can that be love which drinks another as a sponge drinks water? that clouds with jealousy his nights, with weepings all the days? * * * * * such is self-love, that envies all; a creeping skeleton with lamp-like eyes watching around the frozen marriage-bed." but instead of the dark-grey "web of age" spun around man by self-love, love spreads nets to catch for him all wandering and foreign pleasures, pale as mild silver or ruddy as flaming gold; beholds them without grudging drink deep of various delight, "red as the rosy morning, lustful as the first-born beam." no single law for all things alike; the sun will not shine in the miser's secret chamber, nor the brightest cloud drop fruitful rain on his stone threshold; for one thing night is good and for another thing day: nothing is good and nothing evil to all at once. "'the sea-fowl takes the wintry blast for a covering to her limbs, and the wild snake the pestilence, to adorn him with gems and gold; and trees and birds and beasts and men behold their eternal joy. arise, you little glancing wings, and sing your infant joy! arise and drink your bliss! for everything that lives is holy.' thus every morning wails oothoon, but theotormon sits upon the margined ocean, conversing with shadows dire. the daughters of albion hear her woes, and echo back her sighs." it may be feared that oothoon has yet to wait long before theotormon will leave off "conversing with shadows dire;" nor is it surprising that this poem won such small favour; for had it not seemed inexplicable it must have seemed unbearable. blake, as evidently as shelley, did in all innocence believe that ameliorated humanity would be soon qualified to start afresh on these new terms after the saving advent of french and american revolutions. "all good things are in the west;" thence in the teeth of "urizen" shall human deliverance come at length. in the same year blake's prophecy of _america_ came forth to proclaim this message over again. upon this book we need not dwell so long; it has more of thunder and less of lightning than the former prophecies; more of sonorous cloud and less of explicit fire. the prelude, though windy enough, is among blake's nobler myths: the divine spirit of rebellious redemption, imprisoned as yet by the gods of night and chaos, is fed and sustained in secret by the "nameless" spirit of the great western continent; nameless and shadowy, a daughter of chaos, till the day of their fierce and fruitful union. "silent as despairing love and strong as jealousy, the hairy shoulders rend the links, free are the wrists of fire." at his embrace "she cast aside her clouds and smiled her first-born smile, as when a black cloud shows its lightnings to the silent deep." "soon as she saw the terrible boy then burst the virgin's cry; i love thee; i have found thee, and i will not let thee go. thou art the image of god who dwells in darkness of africa, and thou art fallen to give me life in regions of dark death." then begins the agony of revolution, her frost and his fire mingling in pain; and the poem opens as with a sound and a light of storm. it is throughout in the main a mere expansion and dilution of the "song of liberty" which we have already heard; and in the interludes of the great fight between urizen and orc the human names of american or english leaders fall upon the ear with a sudden incongruous clash: not perhaps unfelt by the author's ear also, but unheeded in his desire to make vital and vivid the message he came to deliver. the action is wholly swamped by the allegory; hardly is it related how the serpent-formed "hater of dignities, lover of wild rebellion and transgressor of god's law," arose in red clouds, "a wonder, a human fire;" "heat but not light went from him;" "his terrible limbs were fire;" his voice shook the ancient druid temple of tyranny and faith, proclaiming freedom and "the fiery joy that urizen perverted to ten commands;" the "punishing demons" of the god of jealousy "crouch howling before their caverns deep like skins dried in the wind; they cannot smite the wheat nor quench the fatness of the earth; they cannot smite with sorrows nor subdue the plough and spade; for terrible men stand on the shores, and in their robes i see children take refuge from the lightnings. * * * * ah vision from afar! ah rebel form that rent the ancient heavens! * * * * red flames the crest rebellious and eyes of death; the harlot womb oft opened in vain heaves in eternal circles, now the times are returned upon thee." "thus wept the angel voice" of the guardian-angel of albion; but the thirteen angels of the american provinces rent off their robes and threw down their sceptres and cast in their lot with the rebel; gathered together where on the hills "called atlantean hills, because from their bright summits you may pass to the golden world, an ancient palace, archetype of mighty emperies, rears its immortal pinnacles, built in the forest of god by ariston the king of beauty for his stolen bride." a myth of which we are to hear no more, significant probably of the rebellion of natural beauty against the intolerable tyranny of god, from which she has to seek shelter in the darkest part of his creation with the angelic or dæmonic bridegroom (one of the descended "sons of god") who has wedded her by stealth and built her a secret shelter from the strife of divine things; where at least nature may breathe freely and take pleasure; whither also in their time congregate all other rebellious forces and spirits at war with the creator and his laws. but the speech of "boston's angel" we will at least transcribe: not without a wish that he had never since then spoken more incoherently and less musically. "must the generous tremble and leave his joy to the idle, to the pestilence, that mock him? who commanded this? what god? what angel? to keep the generous from experience, till the ungenerous are unrestrained performers of the energies of nature, till pity is become a trade and generosity a science that men get rich by; and the sandy desert is given to the strong? what god is he writes laws of peace and clothes him in a tempest? what pitying angel lusts for tears and fans himself with sighs? what crawling villain preaches abstinence and wraps himself in fat of lambs? no more i follow, no more obedience pay." this is perhaps the finest and clearest passage in the book; and beyond this point there is not much extractable from the clamorous lyrical chaos. here again besides the mere outward violence of battle, the visible plague and fire of war, we have sight of a subtler and wider revolution. "for the female spirits of the dead pining in bonds of religion run from their fetters reddening and in long-drawn arches sitting. they feel the nerves of youth renew, and desires of ancient times." light and warmth and colour and life are shed from the flames of revolution not alone on city and valley and hill, but likewise "over their pale limbs, as a vine when the tender grape appears; * * * * * the heavens melted from north to south; and urizen who sat above all heavens in thunders wrapt, emerged his leprous head from out his holy shrine; his tears in deluge piteous falling into the deep sublime." notwithstanding for twelve years it was fated that "angels and weak men should govern o'er the strong, and then their end should come when france received the demon's light:" and the ancient european guardians "slow advance to shut the five gates of their law-built heaven, filled with blasting fancies and with mildews of despair, with fierce disease and lust;" but these gates were consumed in the final fire of revolution that went forth upon the world. so ends the poem; and of the decoration we have barely space to say enough. on one page are the visions of the renewed world, on another the emblems of oppression and war: children sleeping nestled in the fleece of a sleeping ram with heavy horns and quiet mouth pressing the soft ground, while overhead shapely branches droop and gracious birds are perched; or what seems the new-born body of orc cast under the sea, enmeshed in a web of water whose waves are waves of corn when you come to look; maidens and infants that bridle a strong dragon, and behind them a flight of birds through the clouds of a starry moonlit night, where a wild swan with vast wings and stretching neck is bestridden by a spirit looking eagerly back as he clutches the rein; eagles that devour the dead on a stormy sea-beach, while underneath fierce pikes and sharks make towards a wrecked corpse that has sunk without drifting, and sea-snakes wind about it in soft loathsome coils; women and children embrace in bitter violence of loving passion among ripples of fruitful flame, out of which rise roots and grasses of the field and laden branches of the vine. of all these we cannot hope to speak duly; nor can we hope to give more than a glimpse of the work they illustrate. throughout the prophecy of _europe_ the fervent and intricate splendours of text and decoration are whirled as it were and woven into spreading webs or twining wheels of luminous confusion. the museum copy, not equal in nobility of colour to some others, is crowded with ms. notes and mottos of some interest and significance. to the frontispiece a passage of milton is appended; to the first page is prefixed a transcript of some verses by mrs. radcliffe concerning a murdered pilgrim, sufficiently execrable and explanatory; and so throughout. these notes will help us at least to measure the amount of connexion between the text and the designs; an amount easily measurable, being in effect about the smallest possible. fierce fluctuating wind and the shaken light of meteors flutter or glitter upon the stormy ways of vision; serving rather for raiment than for symbol. the outcast gods of star and comet are driven through tempestuous air: "forms without body" leap or lurk under cloud or water; war, a man coated with scales of defiled and blackening bronze, handling a heavy sword-hilt, averts his face from appealing angels; famine slays and eats her children; fire curls about the caldron in which their limbs are to be sodden for food; starved plague-stricken shapes of women and men fall shrieking or silent as the bell-ringer, a white-haired man with slouched hat drawn down and long straight cassock, passes them bell in hand; a daughter clings to her father in the dumb pain of fear, while he with arms thrust out in repulsion seems to plead against the gathering deluges that "sweep o'er the yellow year;" mildews are seen incarnate as foul flushed women with strenuous limbs contorted, blighting ears of corn with the violent breath of their inflated mouths; "papal superstition," with the triple crown on a head broader across cheek and jowl than across the forehead, with bat's wings and bloodlike garments dripping and rent, leers across the open book on his knees; behind his reptile face a decoration as of a cleft mitre, wrought in the shape of gothic windows that straiten as it ascends, shows grey upon the dead black air; this is "urizen seen on the atlantic; and his brazen book that kings and priests had copied on earth, expanded from north to south;" all the creeping things of the prison-house, bloated leaf and dropping spider, crawl or curl above a writhing figure overgrown with horrible scurf of corruption as with network; the gaoler leaves his prisoner fast bound by the ankles, with limbs stained and discoloured; (the motto to this is from "the two noble kinsmen," act ii., sc. ., "the vine shall grow, but we shall never see it," &c.); snakes and caterpillars, birds and gnats, each after their own kind take their pleasure and their prey among the leaves and grasses they defile and devour; flames chase the naked or swooning fugitives from a blazing ruin. the prelude is set in the frame of two large designs; one of the assassin waiting for the pilgrim as he turns round a sharp corner of rock; one of hurricane and storm in which "horror, amazement and despair" appear abroad upon the winds. a sketch of these violent and hideously impossible figures is pasted into the note-book on a stray slip of paper. the ms. mottos are mostly from milton and dryden; shakespeare and fletcher, rowe and mason, are also dragged into service. the prophecy itself is full of melody and mist; of music not wholly unrecognisable and vapour not wholly impermeable. in a lull of intermittent war, the gods of time and space awake with all their children; time bids them "seize all the spirits of life and bind their warbling joys to our loud strings, bind all the nourishing sweets of earth to give us bliss." orc, the fiery spirit of revolution, first-born of space, his father summons to arise; "and we will crown thy head with garlands of the ruddy vine; for now thou art bound; and i may see thee in the hour of bliss, my eldest born." allegory, here as always, is interfused with myth in a manner at once violent and intricate; but in this book the mere mythologic fancy of blake labours for the most part without curb or guide. enitharmon, the universal or typical woman, desires that "woman may have dominion" for a space over all the souls upon earth; she descends and becomes visible in the red light of orc; and she charges other spirits born of her and los to "tell the human race that woman's love is sin," for thus the woman will have power to refuse or accede, to starve or satiate the perverted loves and lives of man; "that an eternal life awaits the worms of sixty winters, in an allegorical abode where existence hath never come; forbid all joy, and from her childhood shall the little female spread nets in every secret path." to this end the goddess of space calls forth her chosen children, the "horned priest" of animal nature, the "silver-bowed queen" of desolate places, the "prince of the sun" with his innumerable race "thick as the summer stars; each one, ramping, his golden mane shakes, and thine eyes rejoice because of strength, o rintrah, furious king." moon and sun, spirit and flesh, all lovely jealous forces and mysteries of the natural world are gathered together under her law, that throughout the eighteen christian centuries she may have her will of the world. for so long nature has sat silent, her harps out of tune; the goddess herself has slept out all those years, a dream among dreams, the ghostly regent of a ghostly generation. the angels of albion, satellites once of the ancient titan, are smitten now with their own plagues, crushed in their own council-house, and rise again but to follow after rintrah, the fiery minister of his mother's triumph. him the chief "angel" follows to "his ancient temple serpent-formed," ringed round with druid oaks, massive with pillar and porch built of precious stones; "such eternal in the heavens, of colours twelve, few known on earth, give light in the opaque." "placed in the order of the stars, when the five senses whelmed in deluge o'er the earth-born man: then bound the flexile eyes into two stationary orbs concentrating all things: the ever-varying spiral ascents to the heaven of heavens were bended downward, and the nostril's golden gates shut, turned outward, barred and petrified against the infinite. thought changed the infinite to a serpent; that which pitieth to a devouring flame; and man fled from its face and hid in forests[ ] of night; then all the eternal forests were divided into earths rolling in circles of space, that like an ocean rushed and overwhelmed all except this finite wall of flesh. then was the serpent temple formed, image of (the) infinite shut up in finite revolutions,[ ] and man became an angel; heaven a mighty circle turning; god a tyrant crowned." thus again recurs the doctrine that the one inlet left us for spiritual perception--that namely of the senses--is but one and the least of many inlets and channels of communication now destroyed or perverted by the creative demon; a tenet which once well grasped and digested by the disciple will further his understanding of blake more than anything else can: will indeed, pushed to the full extreme of its logical results, elucidate and justify much that seems merely condemnable and chaotic. to resume our somewhat halting and bewildered fable: the southern porch of this temple, "planted thick with trees of blackest leaf, and in a vale obscure, enclosed the stone of night; oblique it stood, o'erhung with purple flowers and berries red;" image of the human intellect "once open to the heavens" as the south to the sun; now, as the head of fallen man, "overgrown with hair and covered with a stony roof;" sunk deep "beneath the attractive north," where evil spirits are strongest, where the whirlpool of speculation sucks in the soul and entombs it. standing on this, as on a watch-tower, the "angel" beholds religion enthroned over europe, and the pale revolution of cloud and fire through the night of space and time; beholds "albion," the home once of ancient freedom and faith, trodden underfoot by laws and churches, that the god of religion may have wherewithal to "feed his soul with pity." at last begins the era of rebellion and change; the fires of orc lay hold upon law[ ] and gospel; yet for a little while the ministers of his mother have power to fight against him, and she, allied now and making common cause with the god alien to her children, "laughs in her sleep," seeing through the veil and vapour of dreams the subjection of male to female, the false attribute of unnatural power given to women by faith and fear. not as yet can the promethean fire utterly dissolve the clouds of urizen, though the flesh of the ministering angel of religion is already consumed or consuming; nor as yet can the trumpet of revolution summon the dead to judgment. that first blast of summons must be blown by material science, which destroys the letter of the law and the text of the covenant. when the "mighty spirit" of newton had seized the trumpet and blown it, "yellow as leaves of autumn the myriads of angelic hosts fell thro' the wintry skies seeking their graves, rattling their hollow bones in howling and lamentation;" as to this day they do, and did in blake's time, throughout whole barrowfuls of controversial "apologies" and "evidences." then the mother-goddess awoke from her eighteen centuries of sleep, the "christian era" being now wellnigh consummated, and all those years "fled as if they had not been;" she called her children around her, by many monstrous names and phrases of chaotic invocation; comfort and happiness here, there sweet pestilence and soft delusion; the "seven churches of leutha" seek the love of "antamon," symbolic of christian faith reconciled to "pagan" indulgence and divorced from jewish prohibition; even as we find in the prophet himself equal faith in sensual innocence and spiritual truth. of "the soft oothoon" the great goddess asks now "why wilt thou give up woman's secrecy, my melancholy child? between two moments bliss is ripe." last she calls upon orc; "smile, son of my afflictions; arise and give our mountains joy of thy red light." "she ceased; for all were forth at sport beneath the solemn moon, waking the stars of urizen with their immortal songs, that nature felt thro' all her pores the enormous revelry. till morning oped her eastern gate; then every one fled to his station; and enitharmon wept." but with the dawn of that morning orc descended in fire, "and in the vineyards of red france appeared the light of his fury." the revolution begins; all space groans; and lion and tiger are gathered together after their prey: the god of time arises as one out of a trance, "and with a cry that shook all nature to the utmost pole called all his sons to the strife of blood." our study of the _europe_ might bring more profit if we could have genuine notes appended to the text as well as to the designs. such worth or beauty as the poem has burns dim and looms distant by comparison; but there is in it more of either than we have here time or means to indicate. at least the prelude so strangely selected for citation and thrown loose upon the pages of the biography in so crude and inexplicable a manner, may now be seen to have some tangible or presumable sense. the spirit of europe rises revealed in the advent of revolution, sick of time and travail; pleading with the mother-goddess, cybele of this mythology; wrapping about her veils of water and garments of cloud, in vain; "the red sun and moon and all the overflowing stars rain down prolific pains." out of her overlaboured womb arise forms and forces of change, fugitive fires of wrath, sonorous shapes of fear; and they take substance in space, but bring to their mother no help or profit, no comfort or light; to the virgin daughter of america freedom has come and fruitful violence of love, but not to the european mother. she has no hope in all the infinity of space and time; "who shall bind the infinite with an eternal band, to compass it with swaddling bands?" by comparison of the two preludes the relations of the two kindred poems may be better understood: the one is plaintive as the voice of a world in pain, and decaying kingdom by kingdom; the other fierce and hopeful as the cry of a nation in travail, whose agony is not that of death, but rather that of birth. _the first book of urizen_ is perhaps more shapeless and chaotic at a first glimpse than any other of these prose poems. clouds of blood, shadows of horror, worlds without form and void, rise and mingle and wane in indefinite ways, with no special purpose or appreciable result. the myth here is of an active but unprolific god, warring with shapes of the wilderness, and at variance with the eternals: beaten upon by time, who figures always in all his various shapes and actions as the saviour and friend of man. "earth was not, nor globes of attraction; the will of the immortal expanded or contracted at will his all-flexible senses. death was not; but eternal life sprang." ( . urizen, ii. .) urizen, the god of restraint, creator of prohibition, whose laws are forbearance and abstinence, is for ages divided from eternity and at war with time; "long periods in burning fires labouring, till hoary, and age-broken, and aged, in despair and the shadows of death." ( . urizen, iii. .) in time the formless god takes form, creating and assuming feature by feature; bones, heart, eyes, ears, nostrils, throat with tongue, hands with feet; an age of agony being allotted to each of the seven created features; still toiling in fire and beset by snares, which the time-spirit kindles and weaves to avert and destroy in its birth the desolate influence of the deity who forbids and restrains. these transformations of urizen make up some of blake's grandest and strangest prophetic studies. first the spinal skeleton, with branchwork of rib and savage nudity of joint and clavicle, shaped mammoth-wise, in grovelling involution of limb. in one copy at least these bones are touched with dim green and gold colour; such a faint fierce tint as one might look for on the cast scales or flakes of dragons left astrand in the ebb of a deluge. next a huge fettered figure with blind shut eyes overflowing into tears, with convulsed mouth and sodden stream of beard: then bones painfully gathering flesh, twisted forms round which flames break out fourfold, tortured elemental shapes that plunge and writhe and moan. until time, divided against himself, brings forth space, the universal eternal female element, called pity among the gods, who recoil in fear from the dawn of human creation and division. of these two divinities, called in the mythology los and enitharmon, is born the man-child orc. "the dead heard the voice of the child and began to awake from sleep; all things heard the voice of the child and began to awake to life." (vii. .) here again we may spare a word or two for that splendid figure (p. ) of the new-born child falling aslant through cloven fire that curls and trembles into spiral blossoms of colour and petals of feverish light. and the children of urizen were thiriel, born from cloud; utha, from water; grodna, from earth; fuzon, "first-begotten, last-born," from fire--"and his daughters from green herbs and cattle, from monsters and worms of the pit. he cursed both sons and daughters; for he saw that no flesh nor spirit could keep his iron laws one moment." (viii. , .) then from his sorrows for these his children begotten on the material body of nature, the web of religion begins to unwind and expand, "throwing out from his sorrowing soul, the dungeon-like heaven dividing" (viii. )--and the knotted meshes of the web to involve all races and cities. "the senses inward rushed shrinking beneath the dark net of infection: till the shrunken eyes, clouded over, discerned not the woven hypocrisy; but the streaky slime in their heavens, brought together by narrowing perceptions, appeared transparent air; for their eyes grew small like the eyes of a man. six days they shrank up from existence, and the seventh day they rested, and they blessed the seventh day, in sick hope; and forgot their eternal life." ( . urizen, ix. , , .) hence grows the animal tyranny of gravitation, and hence also the spiritual tyranny of law; "they lived a period of years, then left a noisome body to the jaws of devouring darkness; and their children wept, and built tombs in the desolate places; and formed laws of prudence and called them the eternal laws of god." (ix. , .) seeing these his brethren degraded into life and debased into flesh, the son of the fire, fuzon, called together "the remaining children of urizen; and they left the pendulous earth: they called it egypt, and left it. and the salt ocean rolled englobed." (ix. , .) the freer and stronger spirits left the world of men to the dominion of earth and water; air and fire were withdrawn from them, and there were left only the heaviness of imprisoning clay and the bitterness of violent sea. this is a hurried and blotted sketch of the main myth, which is worth following up by those who would enter on any serious study of blake's work; all that is here indicated in dim hints being afterwards assumed as the admitted groundwork of later and larger myths. in this present book (and in it only) the illustrative work may be said almost to overweigh and stifle the idea illustrated. strange semi-human figures, clad in sombre or in fiery flesh, racing through fire or sinking through water, allure and confuse the fancy of the student. every page vibrates with light and colour; on none of his books has the artist lavished more noble profusion of decorative work. it is worth observing that while some copies are carefully numbered throughout "first book," in others the word "first" is erased from every leaf: as in effect the second book never was put forth under that title. next year however the _book of ahania_ came out--if one may say as much of a quarto of six leaves which has hardly yet emerged into sight of two or three readers. this we may take--or those may who please--to be the _second book of urizen_. it is among the choicer spoils of blake, not as yet cast into the public treasury; for the museum has no copy, though possessing (in its blind confused way) duplicates of _america_, _albion_, and _los_. some day, one must hope, there will at least be a complete accessible collection of blake's written works arranged in rational order for reference. till the dawn of that day people must make what shift they can in chaos. in _ahania_, though a fine and sonorous piece of wind-music, we have not found many separate notes worth striking. formless as these poems may seem, it is often the floating final impression of power which makes them memorable and valuable, rather than any stray gleam of purple or glitter of pearl on the skirt. thus the myth runs--to the best of its power; but the tether of it is but short. fuzon, born of the fiery part of the god of nature, in revolt against his father, divides him in twain as with a beam of fire; the desire of urizen is separated from him; this divided soul, "his invisible lust," he sees now as she is apart from himself, and calls sin; seizes her on his mountains of jealousy; kisses and weeps over her, then casts her forth and hides her in cloud, in dumb distance of mysterious space; "jealous though she was invisible." divided from him, she turns to mere shadow "unseen, unbodied, unknown, the mother of pestilence." but the beam cast by fuzon was light upon earth--light to "egypt," the house of bondage and place of captivity for the outcast human children of urizen. thus far the book floats between mere allegory and creative myth; not difficult however to trace to the root of its purport. from this point it grows, if not wilder in words, still mistier in build of limb and shape of feature. fuzon, smitten by the bow of urizen, seems to typify dimly the christian or promethean sacrifice; the revolted god or son of god, who giving to men some help or hope to enlighten them, is slain for an atonement to the wrath of his father: though except for the mythical sonship prometheus would be much the nearer parallel. the bow, formed in secresy of the nerves of a slain dragon "scaled and poisonous-horned," begotten of the contemplations of urizen and destroyed by him in combat, must be another type, half conceived and hardly at all wrought out, of the secret and jealous law of introspective faith divided against itself and the god of its worship, but strong enough to smite the over-confident champion of men even in his time of triumph, when he "thought urizen slain by his wrath: i am god, said he, eldest of things." (ii. .) suddenly the judgment of the jealous wrath of god falls upon him; the rock hurled as an arrow "enters his bosom; his beautiful visage, his tresses that gave light to the mornings of heaven, were smitten with darkness.--but the rock fell upon the earth, mount sinai, in arabia:" being indeed a type of the moral law of moses, sent to destroy and suppress the native rebellious energies and active sins of men. here one may catch fast hold of one thing--the identity of blake's "urizen," at least for this time, with the deity of the earlier hebrews; the god of the law and decalogue rather than of job or the prophets. "on the accursed tree of mystery" that shoots up under his heel from "tears and sparks of vegetation" fallen on the barren rock of separation, where "shrunk away from eternals," alienated from the ancient freedom of the first gods or titans, averse to their large and liberal laws of life, the jealous god sat secret--on the topmost stem of this tree urizen "nailed the corpse of his first-begotten." thenceforward there fell upon the half-formed races of men sorrow only and pestilence, barren pain of unprofitable fruit and timeless burden of desire and disease. one need not sift the myth too closely; it would be like winnowing water and weighing cloud with scale or sieve. the two illustrations, it may here be said, are very slight--mere hints of a design, and merely touched with colour. in the frontispiece ahania, divided from urizen, floats upon a stream of wind between hill and cloud, with haggard limbs and straightened spectral hair; on the last leaf a dim titan, wounded and bruised, lies among rocks flaked with leprous lichen and shaggy with bloodlike growths of weed and moss. one final glimpse we may take of ahania after her division--the love of god, as it were, parted from god, impotent therefore and a shadow, if not rather a plague and blight; mercy severed from justice, and thus made a worse thing than useless. such may be the hinted meaning, or at least some part of it; but the work, it must be said, holds by implication dim and great suggestions of something more than our analytic ingenuities can well unravel by this slow process of suggestion. properly too ahania seems rather to represent the divine generative desire or love, translated on earth into sexual expression; the female side of the creative power--mother of all things made. "the lamenting voice of ahania weeping upon the void and round the tree of fuzon. distant in solitary night her voice was heard, but no form had she; but her tears from clouds eternal fell round the tree. and the voice cried 'ah urizen! love! flower of morning! i weep on the verge of non-entity: how wide the abyss between ahania and thee! i lie on the verge of the deep, i see thy dark clouds ascend; i see thy black forests and floods, a horrible waste to my eyes. weeping i walk over the rocks, over dens, and through valleys of death. why dost thou despise ahania, to cast me from thy bright presence into the world of loneness? i cannot touch his hand; nor weep on his knees; nor hear his voice and bow; nor see his eyes and joy; nor hear his footsteps, and my heart leap at the lovely sound; i cannot kiss the place where his bright feet have trod: but i wander on the rocks with hard necessity. where is my golden palace? where my ivory bed? where the joy of my morning hour? where the sons of eternity singing to awake bright urizen my king to arise to the mountain sport, to the bliss of eternal valleys, to awake my king in the morn, to embrace ahania's joy on the breath of his open bosom; from my soft cloud of dew to fall in showers of life on his harvest? when he gave my happy soul to the sons of eternal joy; when he took the daughters of life into my chambers of love; when i found babes of bliss on my beds and bosoms of milk in my chambers, filled with eternal seed. o! eternal births sung round ahania in interchange sweet of their joys; swelled with ripeness and fat with fatness, bursting in clouds my odours, my ripe figs and rich pomegranates, in infant joy at thy feet, o urizen, sported and sang: then thou with thy lap full of seed, with thy hand full of generous fire, walkedst forth from the clouds of morning, on the virgins of springing joy, on the human soul, to cast the seed of eternal science. the sweat poured down thy temples, to ahania returned in evening; the moisture awoke to birth my mother's joys sleeping in bliss. but now alone over rocks, mountains--cast out from thy lovely bosom--cruel jealousy! selfish fear! self-destroying! how can delight renew in these chains of darkness, where bones of beasts are strewn on the bleak and snowy mountains, where bones from the birth are buried before they see the light?'"--_ahania_, ch. v., v. - . with the prolonged melody of this lament the _book of ahania_ winds itself up; one of the most musical among this crowd of singing shadows. in the same year the last and briefest of this first prophetic series was engraved. the _song of los_, broken into two divisions headed _africa_ and _asia_, has more affinity to _urizen_ and _ahania_ than to _europe_ and _america_. the old themes of delusion and perversion are once again rehandled; not without vigorous harmonies of choral expression. the illustrations are of special splendour, as though designed to atone for the lean and denuded form in which _ahania_ had been sent forth. in the frontispiece a grey old giant, clothed from the waist only with heavy raiment of livid and lurid white, bows down upon a druid altar before the likeness of a darkened sun low-hung in heaven, filled with sombre and fiery forms of things, and shooting out upon each quarter a broad reflected ray like the reflection struck by sunlight from a broad bare sword-blade, but touched also, as with strange infection, with flakes of deadly colour that vibrate upon the starless solid ground of an intolerable night. less of menace with more of sadness is in the landscape and sky on the title-page: a titan, with one weighty hand lying on a gigantic skull, rests at the edge of a green sloping moor, himself seeming a grey fragment of moorland rock; brown fire of waste grass or rusted flower stains crag and bent all round him; the sky is all night and fire, bitter red and black. on the first page a serpent, splendid with blood-red specks and scales of greenish blue, darts the cloven flame of its tongue against a brilliant swarm of flies; and again throughout the divided lines a network of fair tortuous things, of flickering leaf and sinuous tendril and strenuous root, flashes and curls from margin to margin. this song is the song of time, sung to the four harps of the world, each continent a harp struck by time as by a harper. in brief dim words it celebrates the end of the world of the patriarchs where faith and freedom were one, the advent of the iron laws and ages, when god the accuser gave his laws to the nations by the hands of the children of time: when to the extreme east was given mere abstract philosophy for faith instead of clear pure belief, and man became slave to the elements, the slave and not the lord of the nature of things; but not yet was philosophy a mere matter of the five senses. thus they fared in the east; meantime the spirits of the patriarchal world shrank beneath waters or fled in fires, adam from eden, noah from ararat; and "moses beheld upon mount sinai forms of dark delusion." over each religion, indian and jewish and grecian, some special demon or god of the mythology is bidden preside; christianity, the expression of human sorrow, human indulgence and forgiveness, was given as gospel to "a man of sorrows" by the two afflicted spirits who typify man and woman, in whom the bitter errors and the sore needs of either several sex upon earth are reproduced in vast vague reflection; to them therefore the gentler gospel belongs as of right. next comes mahometanism, to give some freedom and fair play to the controlled and abused senses; but northwards other spirits set on foot a code of war to satiate their violent delight. so on all sides is the world overgrown with kingdoms and churches, codes and creeds; inspiration is crushed and erased; the sons of time and space reign alone; har and heva, the spirits of loftier and purer kind who were not as the rest of the titan brood that "lived in war and lust," are fled and fallen, become as mere creeping things; and the world is ripe to bring forth for its cruel and mournful god the final fruit of reason debased and faith distorted. "thus the terrible race of los and enitharmon gave laws and religions to the sons of har, binding them more and more to earth, closing and restraining; till a philosophy of five senses was complete; urizen wept, and gave it into the hands of newton and locke." these "terrible sons" of time and space are the presiding demons of each creed or code; the sons of men are in their hands now, for the father and mother of men are fallen gods, oblivious and transformed: and these minor demons are all subservient to the creator, whose soul, sorrowful but not merciful, animates the whole pained world. so, with cloud of menace and fire of wrath shed out about the deceased gods and the new philosophies, the first part ends. in the second part the clouds have broken and the fire has come forth; revolution has begun in europe; the ancient lords of asia are startled from their dens and cry in bitterness of soul for help of the old oppressions; for councillors and for taxes, for plagues and for priests, "to turn man from his path; to restrain the child from the womb; to cut off the bread from the city, that the remnant may learn to obey: that the pride of the heart may fail; that the lust of the eye may be quenched; that the delicate ear in its infancy may be dulled, and the nostrils closed up; to teach mortal worms the path that leads from the gates of the grave." at their cry urizen arose, the lord of asia from of old, ever since he cast down the patriarchal law and set up the mosaic code; "his shuddering waving wings went enormous above the red flames," to contend with the rekindled revolution, "the thick-flaming thought-creating fires of orc;" "his books of brass, iron, and gold melted over the land as he flew, heavy-waving, howling, weeping. and he stood over judea, and stayed in his ancient places, and stretched his clouds over jerusalem. for adam, a mouldering skeleton, lay bleached on the garden of eden; and noah, as white as snow, on the mountains of ararat." thus, with thunder from eastward and fire from westward, the god of jealousy and the spirit of freedom met together; earth shrank at the meeting of them. "forth from the dead dust rattling bones to bones came; shaking, convulsed, the shivering clay breathes; and all flesh naked stands; fathers and friends; mothers and infants; kings and warriors; the grave shrieks with delight, and shakes her hollow womb, and clasps the solid stem; her bosom swells with wild desire; and milk and blood and glandous wine in rivers rush and shout and dance on mountain, dale and plain. the song of los is ended. urizen wept." so much for the text; which has throughout a contagious power of excitement in the musical passion of its speech. for these books, above all, it is impossible to read continuously and not imbibe a certain half-nervous enjoyment from their long cadences and tempestuous undulations of melody. such passion went to the writing of them that some savour of that strong emotion infects us also in reading pages which seem still hot from the violent touch of the poet. the design of har and heva flying from their lustful and warlike brethren across green waste land before a late and thunder-coloured sky, he grasping her with convulsive fear, she looking back as she runs with lifted arm and flame-like hair and fiery flow of raiment; and that succeeding where they reappear fallen to mere king and queen of the vegetable world, themselves half things of vegetable life; are both noble if somewhat vehement and reckless. in this latter, the deep green-blue heaven full of stars like flowers is set with sweet and deep effect against the darkening green of the vast lily-leaves supporting the fiery pallor of those shapely chalices which enclose as the heart of either blossom the queen lying at her length, and the king sitting with bright plucked-out pistil in hand by way of sceptre or sword; and below them the dim walls of the world alone are wholly black: his robes of soft shot purple and red, her long chrysalid shell or husk of tarnished gold, are but signs of their bondage and fall from deity; they are fallen to be mere flowers. more might be said of the remaining designs; the fierce glory of sweeping branches and driven leaves in a strong wind, the fervent sky and glimmering hill, the crouching figures above and under, the divine insane luxuriance of cloudy and flowery colour which makes twice luminous the last page of the poem; the strange final design where a spirit with huge childlike limbs and lifted hair seems to smite with glittering mallet the outer rim of a huger blood-red sun; but for this book we have no more space; and much laborious travel lies ahead of us yet. [illustration] with the _song of los_ the first or london series of prophecies came to a close not unfit or unmelodious. as their first word had been revelation, their last was revolution. we have now to deal with the two later and larger books written at felpham, but not put forth till . to one of these at least we must allow some tolerably full notice. the _milton_ shall here take precedence. this poem, though sufficiently vexatious to the human sense at first sight, is worth some care and some admiration. its preface must here be read in full. "the stolen and perverted writings of homer and ovid, of plato and cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the sublime of the bible; but when the new age is at leisure to pronounce, all will be set right, and those grand works of the more ancient and consciously and professedly inspired men, will hold their proper rank; and the daughters of memory shall become the daughters of inspiration. shakespeare and milton were both curbed by the general malady and infection from the silly greek and latin slaves of the sword. rouse up, o young men of the new age! set your foreheads against the ignorant hirelings! for we have hirelings in the camp, the court, and the university; who would, if they could, for ever depress mental and prolong corporeal war. painters! on you i call! sculptors! architects! suffer not the fashionable fools to depress your powers by the prices they pretend to give for contemptible works or the expensive advertising boasts that they make of such works: believe christ and his apostles, that there is a class of men whose whole delight is in destroying. we do not want either greek or roman models if we are but just and true to our own imaginations, those worlds of eternity in which we shall live for ever, in jesus our lord. and did those feet in ancient time walk over england's mountains green? and was the holy lamb of god on england's pleasant pastures seen? and did the countenance divine shine forth upon our clouded hills? and was jerusalem builded here, among these dark satanic mills? bring me my bow of burning gold; bring me my arrows of desire; bring me my spear: o clouds, unfold; bring me my chariot of fire. i will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till we have built jerusalem in england's green and pleasant land. 'would to god that all the lord's people were prophets.'--numbers xi. ." after this strange and grand prelude, which, though taken in the letter it may read like foolishness, is in the spirit of it certainty and truth for all time, we pass again under the shadow and into the land that shifts and slips under our feet. something however out of the chaos of fire and wind and stormy colour may be caught at by fits and stored up for such as can like it. thus the poem opens, with not less fervour and splendour of sound than usual. "daughters of beulah! muses who inspire the poet's song! record the journey of immortal milton thro' your realms of terror and mild moony lustre, in soft sexual delusions of varied beauty, to delight the wanderer and repose his burning thirst and freezing hunger! come into my hand, by your mild power descending down the nerves of my right arm from out the portals of my brain, where by your ministry the eternal great humanity divine planted his paradise and in it caused the spectres of the dead to take sweet forms in likeness of himself." (observe here the answer by anticipation to the old foolish charge of madness and belief in mere material visions; a charge indeed refuted and confuted at every turn we take. thus, and no otherwise, did blake believe in his dead visitors and models: as spectres formed into new and significant shape by god, after his own likeness; _not_ called up as by some witch of endor and reclothed with the rags and rottenness of their dead old bodies; creatures existing within the brain and imagination of the workman, not as they were once externally and by accident, but as they will be for ever by the essence and substance of their nature. for the "vegetated shadow" or "human vegetable" no mystic ever had deeper or subtler contempt than blake; nor was ever a man less likely to care about raising or laying it after death.) "tell also of the false tongue! vegetated beneath your land of shadows; of its sacrifices, and its offerings: even till jesus, the image of the invisible god, became its prey; a curse, an offering, and an atonement for death eternal, in the heavens of albion, and before the gates of jerusalem his emanation, in the heavens beneath beulah." let the súfis of the west make what construction they can of that doctrine. we will help them, before passing on, with another view of the atonement, taken from _the everlasting gospel_. "but when jesus was crucified, then was perfected his galling pride. in three days he devoured his prey, _and still he devours the body of clay_; for dust and clay is the serpent's meat, which never was meant for man to eat." that is, the spirit must be eternally at work consuming and destroying the likeness of things material and the religions made out of them. this over-fervent prophet of freedom for the senses as well as the soul would have them free, one may say, only for the soul's sake: talking as we see he did of redemption from the body and salvation by the spirit at war with it, in words which literally taken would hardly have misbecome a monk of nitria. returning to the _milton_, we are caught again in the mythologic whirlpools and cross-currents of symbol and doctrine; our ears rung deaf and dazed by the hammers of los (time) and our eyes bewildered by the wheels and woofs of enitharmon (space): "her looms vibrate with soft affections, weaving the web of life out from the ashes of the dead." this is a fragment of the main myth, whose details los and enitharmon themselves for the present forbid our following out. "the three classes of men regulated by los's hammer, and woven by enitharmon's looms, and spun beneath the spindle of tirzah: the first: the elect from before the foundation of the world; the second: the redeemed. the third: the reprobate and formed to destruction from the mother's womb." into the myth of the harrow and horses of palamabron, more asiatic in tone than any other of blake's, and full of the vast proportion and formless fervour of hindoo legends, we will not haul any reluctant reader. let him only take enough by way of extract to understand how thoroughly one vein of fiery faith runs through all the prophetic books, and one passionate form of doctrine is enforced and beaten in upon the disciple again and again; not hitherto with much material effect. "and in the midst of the great assembly palamabron prayed; o god, protect me from my friends that they have not power over me; thou hast given me power to protect myself from my bitterest enemies." then the wrath of rintrah, the most fiery of the spirits who are children of time, having entered by lot into satan, who was of the elect from the first, "seeming a brother, being a tyrant, even thinking himself a brother while he is murdering the just," "with incomparable mildness," believing "that he had not oppressed"--a symbolic point much insisted on-- "he created seven deadly sins, drawing out his infernal scroll of moral laws and cruel punishments upon the clouds of jehovah, to pervert the divine voice in its entrance to the earth with thunders of war and trumpet's sound, with armies of disease; punishments and deaths mustered and numbered; saying, i am god alone, there is no other; let all obey my principles of moral individuality i have brought them from the uppermost innermost recesses of my eternal mind; transgressors i will rend off for ever; as now i rend this accursed family from my covering." this is the satan of blake, sufficiently unlike the miltonic. of himself he cannot conceive evil and bring forth destruction; the absolute spirit of evil is alien from this mythology; he must enter into the body of a law or system and put on the qualities of spirits strange to himself (rintrah); he is divided, inconsistent, a mystery and error to himself; he represents monotheism with its stringent law and sacerdotal creed, jewish or christian, as opposed to pantheism whereby man and god are one, and by culture and perfection of humanity man makes himself god. the point of difference here between blake and many other western pantheists is that in his creed self-abnegation (in the mystic sense, not the ascetic--the oriental, not the catholic) is the highest and only perfect form of self-culture: and as satan (under "names divine"--see the epilogue to the _gates of paradise_) is the incarnate type of monotheism, so is jesus the incarnate type of pantheism. to return to our myth; the stronger spirit rears walls of rocks and forms rivers of fire round them; "and satan, _not having the science of wrath but only of pity_,[ ] rent them asunder; and wrath was left to wrath, and pity to pity." this is blake's ultimate conception of active evil; not wilful wrong-doing by force of arm or of spirit; but mild error, tender falsehood innocent of a purpose, embodied in an external law of moral action and restrictive faith, and clothed with a covering of cruelty which adheres to and grows into it (decalogue and law). a subtle and rather noble conception, developing easily and rapidly into what was once called the manichean doctrine as to the old testament. "if the guilty should be condemned, he must be an eternal death, and one must die for another throughout all eternity; satan is fallen from his station and can never be redeemed, but must be new-created continually moment by moment, and therefore the class of satan shall be called the elect, and those of rintrah the reprobate, and those of palamabron the redeemed; for he is redeemed from satan's law, the wrath falling on rintrah. and therefore palamabron cared not to call a solemn assembly till satan had assumed rintrah's wrath in the day of mourning, in a feminine delusion[ ] of false pride self-deceived." the words of the text recur not unfrequently in the prophetic books. a single final act of redemption by sacrifice and oblation of one for another is not admitted as sufficient, or even possible. the favourite dogma is this, of the eternity of sacrifice; endless redemption to be bought at no less a price than endless self-devotion. to this plea of "an eternal" before the assembly succeeds the myth of leutha "offering herself a ransom for satan:"[ ] a myth, not an allegory; for of allegory pure and simple there is scarcely a trace in blake. "i formed the serpent of precious stones and gold turned poison on the sultry waste. to do unkind things with kindness; with power armed, to say the most irritating things in the midst of tears and love; these are the stings of the serpent." this whole myth of leutha is splendid for colour, and not too subtle to be thought out: the imaginative action of the poem plays like fire and palpitates like blood upon every line, as the lips of caressing flame and the tongues of cleaving light in which the text is set fold and flash about the margins. "the elect shall meet the redeemed, on albion's rocks they shall meet, astonished at the transgressor, in him beholding the saviour. and the elect shall say to the redeemed; we behold it is of divine mercy alone, of free gift and election, that we live; our virtues and cruel goodnesses have deserved eternal death." forgiveness of sin and indulgence, the disciple perceives, is not enough for this mythology; it must include forgiveness of virtue and abstinence, the hypocritic holiness made perfect in the body of death for six thousand years under the repressive and restrictive law called after the name of the god of the jews, who "was leprous." thus prophesies blake, in a fury of supra-christian dogmatism. here ends the "song of the bard" in the first book. "many condemned the high-toned song, saying, pity and love are too venerable for the imputation of guilt. others said, if it is true!" let us say the same, and pass on: listening only to the bard's answer:-- "i am inspired! i know it is truth! for i sing according to the inspiration of the poetic genius who is the eternal all-protecting divine humanity to whom be glory and power and dominion evermore. amen." then follows the incarnation and descent into earth and hell of milton, who represents here the redemption by inspiration, working in pain and difficulty before the expiration of the six thousand satanic years. his words are worth quoting:-- "when will the resurrection come, to deliver the sleeping body from corruptibility? o when, lord jesus, wilt thou come? tarry no longer; for my soul lies at the gates of death: i will arise and look forth for the morning of the grave: i will go down to the sepulchre and see if morning breaks. i will go down to self-annihilation and eternal death lest the last judgment come and find me unannihilate and i be seized and given into the hands of my own selfhood." this grand dogma, that personal love and selfishness make up the sin which defies redemption, is in a manner involved in that former one of the necessary "eternity of sacrifice," for "i in my selfhood am that satan; i am that evil one; he is my spectre." now by the light of these extracts let any student examine the great figure at p. , where "he beheld his own shadow--and entered into it." clothed in the colours of pain, crowned with the rays of suffering, it stands between world and world in a great anguish of transformation and change: passion included by incarnation. erect on a globe of opaque shadow, backed by a sphere of aching light that opens flower-wise into beams of shifting colour and bitter radiance as of fire, it appeals with a doubtful tortured face and straining limbs to the flat black wall and roof of heaven. all over the head is a darkness not of transitory cloud or night that will some time melt into day; recalling that great verse: "neither could the bright flames of the stars endure to lighten that horrible night." "as when a man dreams he reflects not that his body sleeps, else he would wake; so seemed he entering his shadow; but with him the spirits of the seven angels of the presence entering, they gave him still perceptions of his sleeping body which now arose and walked with them in eden, as an eighth image, divine tho' darkened, and tho' walking as one walks in sleep; and the seven comforted and supported him." the whole passage is full of a deep and dim beauty which grows clearer and takes form of feature to those only who bring with them eyes to see and patience to desire it. take next this piece of cosmography, worth comparing with dante's vision of the worlds:-- "the nature of infinity is this; that everything has its own vortex: and when once a traveller thro' eternity has passed that vortex, he perceives it roll backward behind his path into a globe itself enfolding, like a sun or like a moon or like a universe of starry majesty, while he keeps onward in his wondrous journey thro' the earth, or like a human form, a friend with whom he lived benevolent: as the eye of man views both the east and west encompassing its vortex, and the north and south, with all their starry host; also the rising and setting moon he views surrounding his cornfields and his valleys of five hundred acres square; thus is the earth one infinite plane, and not as apparent to the weak traveller confined beneath the moony shade; thus is the heaven a vortex passed already, and the earth a vortex not yet passed by the traveller thro' eternity." one curious piece of symbolism may be extracted from the myth, as the one reference to anything actual:-- "then milton knew that the three heavens of beulah were beheld by him on earth in his bright pilgrimage of sixty years in those three females whom his wives, and those three whom his daughters had represented and contained, that they might be resumed by giving up of selfhood." but of milton's flight, of the cruelties of ulro, of his journey above the mundane shell, which "is a vast concave earth, an immense hardened shadow of all things upon our vegetated earth, enlarged into dimension and deformed into indefinite space," we will take no more account here; nor of the strife with urizen, "one giving life, the other giving death, to his adversary;" hardly even of the temptation by the sons and daughters of rahab and tirzah, when "the twofold form hermaphroditic, and the double-sexed, the female-male and the male-female, self-dividing stood before him in their beauty and in cruelties of holiness." (compare the beautiful song "to tirzah," in the songs of experience.) this tirzah, daughter of rahab the holy, is "natural religion" (theism as opposed to pantheism), which would fain have the spiritual jerusalem offered in sacrifice to it. "let her be offered up to holiness: tirzah numbers her: she numbers with her fingers every fibre ere it grow: where is the lamb of god? where is the promise of his coming? her shadowy sisters form the bones, even the bones of horeb around the marrow; and the orbed scull around the brain; she ties the knot of nervous fibres into a white brain; she ties the knot of bloody veins into a red-hot heart; she ties the knot of milky seed into two lovely heavens, two yet but one; each in the other sweet reflected; these are our three heavens beneath the shades of beulah, land of rest." here and henceforward the clamour and glitter of the poem become more and more confused; nevertheless every page is set about with jewels; as here, in a more comprehensible form than usual:-- "god sent his two servants whitfield and wesley; were they prophets? or were they idiots and madmen? 'show us miracles'? can you have greater miracles than these? men who devote their life's whole comfort to entire scorn, injury, and death?" take also these scraps of explanation mercifully vouchsafed us:-- "bowlahoola is named law by mortals: tharmas founded it because of satan: * * * * but golgonooza is named art and manufacture by mortal men. in bowlahoola los's anvils stand and his furnaces rage. bowlahoola thro' all its porches feels, tho' too fast founded its pillars and porticoes to tremble at the force of mortal or immortal arm; * * * the bellows are the animal lungs; the hammers the animal heart; the furnaces the stomach for digestion;" (here we must condense instead of transcribing. while thousands labour at this work of the senses in the halls of time, thousands "play on instruments stringed or fluted" to lull the labourers and drown the painful sound of the toiling members, and bring forgetfulness of this slavery to the flesh: a myth of animal life not without beauty, and to blake one of great attraction.) "los is by mortals named time, enitharmon is named space; but they depict him bald and aged who is in eternal youth all-powerful, and his locks flourish like the brows of morning; he is the spirit of prophecy, the ever-apparent elias. time is the mercy of eternity; without time's swiftness which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal torment." at least this last magnificent passage should in common charity and sense have been cited in the biography, if only to explain the often-quoted words los and enitharmon. neither blindness to such splendour of symbol, nor deafness to such music of thought, can excuse the omission of what is so wholly necessary for the comprehension of extracts already given, and given (as far as one can see) with no available purpose whatever. the remainder of the first book of the _milton_ is a vision of nature and prophecy of the gathering of the harvest of time and treading of the winepress of war; in which harvest and vintage work all living things have their share for good or evil. "how red the sons and daughters of luvah! here they tread the grapes, laughing and shouting, drunk with odours; many fall o'erwearied, drowned in the wine is many a youth and maiden; those around lay them on skins of tigers and of the spotted leopard and the wild ass till they revive, or bury them in cool grots, making lamentation. this winepress is called war on earth; it is the printing-press of los, there he lays his words in order above the mortal brain as cogs are formed in a wheel to turn the cogs of the adverse wheel." all kind of insects, of roots and seeds and creeping things--"all the armies of disease visible or invisible"--are there; "the slow slug; the grasshopper that sings and laughs and drinks (winter comes, he folds his slender bones without a murmur);" wasp and hornet, toad and newt, spider and snake, "they throw off their gorgeous raiment; they rejoice with loud jubilee around the winepresses of luvah, naked and drunk with wine. there is the nettle that stings with soft down; and there the indignant thistle whose bitterness is bred in his milk; who feeds on contempt of his neighbour; there all the idle weeds that creep around the obscure places show their various limbs naked in all their beauty, dancing round the winepresses. but in the winepresses the human grapes sing not nor dance, they howl and writhe in shoals of torment, in fierce flames consuming;" tortured for the cruel joy and deadly sport of luvah's sons and daughters; "they dance around the dying and they drink the howl and groan; they catch the shrieks in cups of gold, they hand them one to another; these are the sports of love, and these the sweet delights of amorous play; tears of the grape, the death-sweat of the cluster; the last sigh of the mild youth who listens to the luring songs of luvah." take also this from the speech of time to his reapers. "you must bind the sheaves not by nations or families, you shall bind them in three classes; according to their classes so shall you bind them, separating what has been mixed since men began to be woven into nations. * * * * * the elect is one class; you shall bind them separate; they cannot believe in eternal life except by miracle and a new birth. the other two classes, the reprobate[ ] who never cease to believe, and the redeemed who live in doubts and fears, perpetually tormented by the elect, these you shall bind in a twin bundle for the consummation." the constellations that rise in immortal order, that keep their course upon mountain and valley, with sound of harp and song, "with cups and measures filled with foaming wine;" that fill the streams with light of many visions and leave in luminous traces upon the extreme sea the peace of their passage; these too are sons of los, and labour in the vintage. the gorgeous flies on meadow or brook, that weave in mazes of music and motion the delight of artful dances, and sound instruments of song as they touch and cross and recede; the trees shaken by the wind into sound of heavy thunder till they become preachers and prophets to men; these are the sons of los, these the visions of eternity; and we see but as it were the hem of their garments. a noble passage follows, in which are resumed the labours of the sons of time in fashioning men and the stations of men. they make for doubts and fears cabinets of ivory and gold; when two spectres "like lamps quivering" between life and death stand ready for the blind malignity of combat, they are taken and moulded instead into shapes fit for love, clothed with soft raiment by softer hands, drawn after lines of sweet and perfect form. some "in the optic nerve" give to the poor infinite wealth of insight, power to know and enjoy the invisible heaven, and to the rich scorn and ignorance and thick darkness. others build minutes and hours and days; "and every moment has a couch of gold for soft repose (a moment equals a pulsation of the artery) and every minute has an azure tent with silken veils, and every hour has a bright golden gate carved with skill, and every day and night has walls of brass and gates of adamant shining like precious stones and ornamented with appropriate signs, and every month a silver-paved terrace builded high, and every year invulnerable barriers with high towers, and every age is moated deep, with bridges of silver and gold, and every seven ages are encircled with a flaming fire." there is much more of the same mythic sort concerning the duration of time, the offices of the nerves (_e.g._, in the optic nerve sleep was transformed to death by satan the father of sin and death, even as we have seen sensual death re-transformed by mercy into sleep), and such-like huge matters; full, one need not now repeat, of subtle splendour and fanciful intensity. but enough now of this over-careful dredging in such weedy waters; where nevertheless, at risk of breaking our net, we may at every dip fish up some pearl. at the opening of the second book the pearls lie close and pure. from this (without explanation or reference) has been taken the lovely and mutilated extract at p. of the _life_. thus it stands in blake's text:-- "thou hearest the nightingale begin the song of spring; the lark, sitting upon his earthy bed, just as the morn appears, listens silent; then, springing from the waving corn-field, loud he leads the choir of day: trill--trill--trill--trill-- mounting upon the wings of light into the great expanse, re-echoing against the lovely blue and shining heavenly shell his little throat labours with inspiration; every feather on throat, and breast, and wing, vibrate with the effluence divine. all nature listens to him silent; and the awful sun stands still upon the mountains, looking on this little bird with eyes of soft humility, and wonder, love, and awe. then loud, from their green covert, all the birds began their song,-- the thrush, the linnet and the goldfinch, robin and the wren, awake the sun from his sweet reverie upon the mountains; the nightingale again essays his song, and through the day and through the night warbles luxuriant; every bird of song attending his loud harmony with admiration and love. (this is a vision of the lamentation of beulah over ololon.) thou perceivest the flowers put forth their precious odours, and none can tell how from so small a centre come such sweets, forgetting that within that centre eternity expands its ever-during doors that og and anak fiercely guard.[ ] first ere the morning breaks joy opens in the flowery bosoms, joy even to tears, which the sun rising dries; first the wild thyme and meadow-sweet downy and soft waving among the reeds, light springing on the air, lead the sweet dance; they wake the honeysuckle sleeping on the oak, the flaunting beauty revels along upon the wind; the white-thorn, lovely may, opens her many lovely eyes; listening, the rose still sleeps, none dare to wake her: soon she bursts her crimson-curtained bed and comes forth in the majesty of beauty; every flower, the pink, the jessamine, the wallflower, the carnation, the jonquil, the mild lily, opes her heavens; every tree and flower and herb soon fill the air with an innumerable dance, yet all in order sweet and lovely; men are sick with love. such is a vision of the lamentation of beulah over ololon." this beulah is "a place where contrarieties are equally true;" "it is a pleasant lovely shadow where no dispute can come because of those who sleep:" made to shelter, before they "pass away in winter," the temporary emanations "which trembled exceedingly neither could they live, because the life of man was too exceeding unbounded." of the incarnation and descent of ololon, of the wars and prophecies of milton, and of all the other felpham visions here put on record, we shall say no more in this place; but all these things are written in the second book. the illustrative work is also noble and worth study in all ways. one page for example is covered by a design among the grandest of blake's. two figures lie half embraced, as in a deadly sleep without dawn of dream or shadow of rest, along a bare slant ledge of rock washed against by wintry water. over these two stoops an eagle balanced on the heavy-laden air, with stretching throat and sharpened wings, opening beak, and eyes full of a fierce perplexity of pity. all round the greenish and black slope of moist sea-cliff the weary tidal ripple plashes and laps, thrusting up as it were faint tongues and listless fingers tipped with foam. on an earlier page, part of the text of which we have given, crowd and glitter all shapes and images of insect or reptile life, sprinkling between line and margin keen points of jewel-coloured light and soft flashes as of starry or scaly brilliance. the same year saw the huge advent of _jerusalem_. of that terrible "emanation," hitherto the main cornerstone of offence to all students of blake, what can be said within any decent limit? or where shall any traveller find a rest for feet or eyes in that noisy and misty land? it were a mere frenzy of discipleship that would undertake by force of words to make straight these crooked ways or compel things incoherent to cohere. _supra hanc petram_--and such a rock it is to begin any church-building upon! many of the unwary have stumbled over it and broken their wits. seriously, one cannot imagine that people will ever read through this vast poem with pleasure enough to warrant them in having patience with it. [illustration] several things, true in the main of all the prophetic books, are especially true and memorable with regard to those written or designed during the "three years' slumber" at felpham. they are the results of intense and active solitude working upon the capricious nerves and tremulous brain of a man naturally the most excitable and receptive of men. they are to be read by the light of his earlier work in the same line; still more perhaps by the light of those invaluable ten letters printed in vol. ii. of the _life_, for which one can hardly give thanks enough. the incredible fever of spirit under the sting and stress of which he thought and laboured all his life through, has left marks of its hot and restless presence as clearly on this short correspondence as on the voluminous rolls of prophecy. the merit or demerit of the work done is never in any degree the conscious or deliberate result of a purpose. possessed to the inmost nerve and core by a certain faith, consumed by the desire to obey his instinct of right by preaching that faith, utterly regardless of all matters lying outside of his own inspiration, he wrote and engraved as it was given him to do, and no otherwise. as to matter and argument, the enormous _jerusalem_ is simply a fervent apocalyptic discourse on the old subjects--love without law and against law, virtue that stagnates into poisonous dead matter by moral isolation, sin that must exist for the sake of being forgiven, forgiveness that must always keep up with sin--must even maintain sin that it may have something to keep up with and to live for. without forgiveness of sins, the one thing necessary, we lapse each man into separate self-righteousness and a cruel worship of natural morality and religious law. for nature, oddly enough as it seems at first sight, is assumed by this mystical code to be the cruellest and narrowest of absolute moralists. only by worship of imaginative impulse, the grace of the lamb of god, which admits infinite indulgence in sin and infinite forgiveness of sin--only by some such faith as this shall the world be renewed and redeemed. this may be taken as the rough result, broadly set down, of the portentous book of revelation. never, one may suppose, did any oriental heretic drive his deductions further or set forth his conclusions in obscurer form. never certainly did a man fall to his work with keener faith and devotion. sin itself is not so evil--but the remembrance and punishment of sin! "injury the lord heals; but vengeance cannot be healed." next or equal in hatefulness to the division of qualities into evil and good (see above, _marriage of heaven and hell_) is the separation of sexes into male and female: hence jealous love and personal desire, that set itself against the mystical frankness of fraternity: hence too (contradictory as it may seem till one thinks it out) the hermaphroditic emblem is always used as a symbol seemingly of duplicity and division, perplexity and restraint. the two sexes should not combine and contend; they must finally amalgamate and be annihilated.[ ] all this is of course more or less symbolic, and not to be taken in literal coarseness or folly of meaning. the whole stage is elemental, the scheme one of patriarchal vapour, and the mythologic actors mere titans outlined in cloud. reserving this always, we shall not be far out in interpreting blake's dim creed somewhat as above. one distinction it is here possible to make, and desirable to keep in mind: blake at one time speaks of nature as the source of moral law, "the harlot virgin-mother," "rahab," "the daughter of babylon," origin of religious restrictions and the worship of abstinence; mother of "the harlot modesty," and spring of all hypocrisies and prohibitions; to whom the religious and moral of this world would fain offer up in sacrifice the spiritual jerusalem, the virgin espoused, named among men liberty, forbidding nothing and enjoying all, but therefore clean and not unclean: by whom comes indulgence, after whom follows redemption. at another time this same prophet will plead for freedom on behalf of "natural" energies, and set up the claims of nature to energetic enjoyment and gratification of all desires, against the moral law and government of the creative and restrictive deity--"urizen, mistaken demon of heaven." with a like looseness of phrase he uses and transposes the words "god" and "satan," even to an excess of laxity and consequent perplexity; not, it may be suspected, without a grain of innocent if malign pleasure at the chance of inflicting on men of conventional tempers bewilderment and offence. but as to this question of the term "nature" the case seems to lie thus: when, as throughout the _marriage of heaven and hell_, he uses it in the simple sense of human or physical condition as opposed to some artificial state of soul or belief, he takes it as the contrary of conventional ideas and habits (of religion and morality as vulgarly conceived or practised); but when, as throughout the _milton_ and _jerusalem_, he speaks of nature as opposed to inspiration, it must be taken as the contrary of that higher and subtler religious faith which he is bent on inculcating, and which itself is the only perfect opposite and efficient antagonist to the conventional faith and (to use another of his quasi-technical terms) the "deistical virtue" which he is bent on denying. blake, one should always remember, was not infidel but heretic; his belief was peculiar enough, but it was not unbelief; it was farther from that than most men's. to him, though for quite personal reasons and in a quite especial sense, much of what is called inspired writing was as sacred and infallible as to any priest of any church. only before reading he inverted the book. "both read the bible day and night, but thou read'st black where i read white." (_everlasting gospel_, ms.) thus, by his own showing, in the recorded words of christ he found authority for his vision and sympathy with his faith; in the published creed of reason or rationalism, he found negation of his belief and antipathy to his aims. hence in his later denunciation he brackets together the churches of rome and england with the churches of ferney and lausanne; it was all uninspired--all "nature's cruel holiness--the deceits of natural religion"; all irremediably involved, all inextricably interwoven with the old fallacies and the old prohibitions. [illustration] such points as these do, above most others, deserve, demand, and reward the trouble of clearing up; and these once understood, much that seemed the aimless unreflecting jargon of crude or accidental rhetoric assumes a distinct if unacceptable meaning. it is much otherwise with the external scheme or literal shell of the _jerusalem_. let no man attempt to define the post or expound the office of the "terrible sons and daughters." these, with all their flock of emanations and spectrous or vegetating shadows, let us leave to the discretion of los; who has enough on his hands among them all. neither let any attempt to plant a human foot upon the soil of the newly-divided shires and counties, partitioned though they be into the mystic likeness of the twelve tribes of israel. nor let any questioner of arithmetical mind apply his skill in numbers to the finding of flaws or products in the twelves, twenty-fours, and twenty-sevens which make up the sum of their male and female emanations. in earnest, the externals of this poem are too incredibly grotesque--the mythologic plan too incomparably tortuous--to be fit for any detailed coherence of remark. nor indeed were they meant to endure it. such things, and the expression of such things, as are here treated of, are not to be reasoned out; the matter one may say is above reasoning; the manner (taken apart from the matter) is below it: the spirit of the work is too strong and its form too faulty for any rule or line. it will upon the whole suffice if this be kept in mind; that to blake, in a literal perhaps as well as a mystical sense, albion was as it were the cradle and centre of all created existence; he even calls on the jews to recognize it as the parent land of their history and their faith. its incarnate spirit is chief among the ancient giant-gods, titans of his mythology, who were lords of the old simple world and its good things, its wise delights and strong sweet instincts, full of the vigorous impulse of innocence; lords of an extinct kingdom, superseded now and transformed by the advent of moral fear and religious jealousy, of pallid faith and artificial abstinence. in this manner albion is changed and overthrown; hence at length he dies, stifled and slain by his children under the new law. his one friend, not misled or converted to the dispensations of bodily virtue and spiritual restraint, but faithful from of old and even after his change and conversion to moral law, is time; whose spectre, or mere outside husk and likeness, is indeed (as it must needs be) fain to range itself on the transitory side of things, fain to follow after the fugitive emanation embodied in these new forms of life and allied to the faith and habit of the day against the old liberty;[ ] but for all the desire of his despair and fierce entreaties to be let go, he is yet kept to work, however afflicted and rebellious, and compelled to labour with time's self at the building up within every man of that spiritual city which is redemption and freedom for all men (ch. i.). all the myth of this building of "golgonooza," (that is, we know, inspired art by which salvation must come) is noticeable for sweet intricacy of beauty; only after a little some maddening memory (surely not pure inspiration this time, but rather memory?) of the latter chapters of ezekiel, with their interminable inexplicable structures and plans, seizes on blake's passionate fancy and sets him at work measuring and dividing walls and gates in a style calculated to wear out a hecatomb of scholiasts, for whole pages in which no subtilized mediæval intellect, though trained under seraphic or cherubic doctors, could possibly find one satisfactory hair to split. for it merely trebles the roaring and rolling confusion when some weak grain of symbolism is turned up for a glimpse of time in the thick of a mass of choral prose consisting of absolute fancy and mere naked sound. not that there is here less than elsewhere of the passion and beauty which redeem so much of these confused and clamorous poems. the merits and attractions of this book are not such as can be minced small and served up in fragments. to do justice to its melodious eloquence and tender subtlety, we should have to analyze or transcribe whole sections: to give any fair notion of the grandeur and variety of its decorations would take up twice the space we can allow to it. let this brief prologue stand as a sample of the former qualities. "reader! lover of books! lover of heaven and of that god from whom all things are given; who in mysterious sinai's awful cave to man the wondrous art of writing gave; again he speaks in thunder and in fire, thunder of thought and flames of fierce desire; even from the depths of hell his voice i hear within the unfathomed caverns of my ear; therefore i print; nor vain my types shall be; heaven, earth, and hell henceforth shall live in harmony." "we who dwell on earth," adds the prophet, speaking of the measure and outward fashion of his poem, "can do nothing of ourselves; everything is conducted by spirits no less than digestion or sleep." it is to be wished then that the spirits had on this occasion spoken less like somnambulists and uttered less indigested verse. for metrical oratory the plea that follows against ordinary metre may be allowed to have some effective significance; however futile if applied to purer and more essential forms of poetry. it will be enough to understand well and bear well in mind once for all that the gist of this poem, regarded either as a scheme of ethics or as a mythological evangel, is simply this: to preach, as in the saviour's opening invocation, the union of man with god:--("i am not a god afar off;--lo! we are one; forgiving all evil; not seeking recompense"): to confute the dull mournful insanity of disbelief which compels "the perturbed man" to avert his ear and reject the divine counsellor as a "phantom of the over-heated brain." this perverted humanity is incarnate in albion, the fallen titan, imprisoned by his children; the "sons of albion" are dæmonic qualities of force and faith, the "daughters" are reflex qualities or conditions which emanate from these. as thus; reason supplants faith, and law, moral or religious, grows out of reason; jerusalem, symbol of imaginative liberty, emanation of his unfallen days, is the faith cast out by the "sons" or spirits who substitute reason for faith, the freedom trodden under by the "daughters" who substitute moral law for moral impulse: "vala," her spectre, called "tirzah" among men, is the personified form in which "jerusalem" becomes revealed, the perverted incarnation, the wrested medium or condition in which she exists among men. thus much for the scheme of allegory with which the prophet sets out; but when once he has got his theogony well under way and thrown it well into types, the antitypes all but vanish: every condition or quality has a god or goddess of its own; every obscure state and allegorical gradation becomes a personal agent: and all these fierce dim figures threaten and complain, mingle and divide, struggle and embrace as human friends or foes. the main symbols are even of a monotonous consistency; but no accurate sequence of symbolic detail is to be looked for in the doings and sayings of these contending giants and gods. to those who will remember this distinction and will make allowance for the peculiar dialect and manner of which some account has already been taken, this poem will not seem so wholly devoid of reason or of charm. for its great qualities are much the same in text as in design: plenteous, delicate, vigorous. there is a certain real if rough and lax power of dramatic insight and invention shown even in the singular divisions of adverse symbol against symbol; in such allegories as that which opposes the "human imagination in which all things exist"--do actually exist to all eternity--and the reflex fancy or belief which men confound with this; nay, which they prefer to dwell in and ask comfort from. these two the poet calls the "states" of beulah and jerusalem. as the souls of men are attracted towards that "mild heaven" of dreams and shadows where only the reflected image of their own hopes and errors can abide, the imagination, most divine and human, most actual and absolute, of all things, recedes ever further and further among the clouds of smoke, vapours of "abstract philosophy," and is caught among the "starry wheels" of religion and law, whose restless and magnetic revolution attracts and absorbs her. "o what avail the loves and tears of beulah's lovely daughters? they hold the immortal form in gentle bands and tender tears, but all within is opened into the deeps"-- the deeps of "a dark and unknown night" in which "philosophy wars against imagination." here also the main myth of the _europe_ is once more rehandled; to "create a female will," jealous, curious, cunning, full of tender tyranny and confusion, this is "to hide the most evident god in a hidden covert, even in the shadows of a woman and a secluded holy place, that we may pry after him as after a stolen treasure, hidden among the dead and mured up from the paths of life." thus is it with the titan albion and all his race of mythologic men, when for them "vala supplants jerusalem," the husk replaces the fruit, the mutable form eclipses the immutable substance. but into these darker parts of the book we will not go too deep. time, patience, and insight on the part of writer and reader might perhaps clear up all details and lay bare much worth sight and study; but only at the expense of much labour and space. it is feasible, and would be worth doing; but not here. if the singular amalgam called blake's works should ever get published, and edited to any purpose, this will have to be done by an energetic editor with time enough on his hands and wits enough for the work. we meantime will gather up a few strays that even under these circumstances appear worth hiving. in the address (p. ) to the jews, &c., blake affirms that "britain was the primitive seat of the patriarchal religion": therefore, in a literal as well as in a mystical sense, jerusalem was the emanation of the giant albion. (this it should seem was, according to the mythology, before the visible world was created; in the time when all things were in the divine undivided world of the gods.) "ye are united, o ye inhabitants of earth, in one religion: the most ancient, the eternal, and the everlasting gospel. the wicked will turn it to wickedness; the righteous, to righteousness." if there be truth in the jewish tradition, he adds further on, that man anciently contained in his mighty limbs all things in heaven and earth, "and they were separated from him by cruel sacrifices; and when compulsory cruel sacrifices had brought humanity into a feminine tabernacle in the loins of abraham and david, the lamb of god, the saviour, became apparent on earth as the prophets had foretold: the return of israel is a return to mental sacrifice and war," to noble spiritual freedom and labour, which alone can supplant "corporeal war" and violence of error. the second address (p. ) "to the deists" is more singular and more eloquent. take a few extracts given not quite at random. "he," says blake, "who preaches natural religion or morality is a flatterer who means to betray, and to perpetuate tyrant pride and the laws of that babylon which he foresees shall shortly be destroyed with the spiritual and not the natural sword; he is in the state named rahab." the prophet then enforces his law that "man is born a spectre or satan and is altogether an evil," and "must continually be changed into his direct contrary." those who persuade him otherwise are his enemies. for "man must and will have some religion; if he has not the religion of jesus he will have the religion of satan." again, "will any one say, where are those who worship satan under the name of god?--where are they? listen. every religion that preaches vengeance for sin is the religion of the enemy and avenger, and not of the forgiver of sin: and their god is satan named by the divine name." this, he says, must be at root the religion of all who deny revelation and adore nature;[ ] for mere nature is satanic. adam the first man was created at the same time with satan, when the earth-giant albion was cast into a trance of sleep: the first man was a part of the universal fluent nature made opaque; the first fiend, a part contracted; and only by these qualities of opacity and contraction can man or devil have separate natural existence. those, the prophet adds in his perverse manner, who profess belief in natural virtue are hypocrites; which those cannot be who "pretend to be holier than others, but confess their sins before all the world." _therefore_ there was never a religious hypocrite! "rousseau thought men good by nature; he found them evil, and found no friend. friendship cannot exist without forgiveness of sins continually." and so forth. at p. is a passage recalling the myth of the "mental traveller," and which seems to bear out the interpretation we gave to that misty and tempestuous poem. this part of the prophecy, describing the blind pitiful cruelty of divided qualities set against each other, is full of brilliant and noble passages. even the faint symbolic shapes of tirzah and all her kind assume now and then a splendour of pathos, utter words of stately sound, complain and appeal even to some recognizable purpose. so much might here be cited that we will prefer to cite nothing but this slight touch of myth. in the world of time "they refuse liberty to the male: not like beulah, where every female delights to give her maiden to her husband." the female searches sea and land for gratification to the male genius, who in return clothes her in gems and gold and feeds her with the food of eden: hence all her beauty beams. but this is only in the "land of dreams," where dwell things "stolen from the human imagination by secret amorous theft:" and when the spectres of the dead awake in that land, "all the jealousies become murderous:--forming a commerce to sell loves with moral law; an equal balance, not going down with decision: therefore--mutual hate returns and mutual deceit and mutual fear." in fact, the divorce batteries are here open again. the third address "to the christians" is too long to transcribe here; and should in fairness have been given in the biography. its devout passion and beauty of words might have won notice, and earned tolerance for the more erratic matter in which it lies embedded. "what is the joy of heaven but improvement in the things of the spirit? what are the pains of hell but ignorance, bodily lust, idleness, and devastation of the things of the spirit?" mental gifts, given of christ, "always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrite as sins; but that which is a sin in the sight of cruel man is not so in the sight of our kind god." every christian after his ability should openly engage in some mental pursuit; for "to labour in knowledge is to build up jerusalem; and to despise knowledge is to despise jerusalem and her builders." a little before he has said: "i know of no other christianity and no other gospel than the liberty both of body and mind to exercise the divine arts of imagination." god being a spirit, and to be worshipped in spirit and in truth, are not all his gifts spiritual gifts? "the christians then must give up the religion of caiaphas, the dark preacher of death, of sin, of sorrow, and of punishment, typified as a revolving wheel, a devouring sword; and recognize that the labours of art and science alone are the labours of the gospel." as to religion, "jesus died because he strove against the current of this wheel--opposing nature; it is natural religion. but jesus is the bright preacher of life, creating nature from this fiery law, by self-denial and forgiveness of sin." so speaks to the prophet "a watcher and a holy one;" bidding him "go therefore, cast out devils in christ's name, heal thou the sick of spiritual disease; pity the evil; for thou art not sent to smite with terror and with punishments those that are sick. * * * * but to the publicans and harlots go: teach them true happiness; but let no curse go forth out of thy mouth to blight their peace. for hell is opened to heaven; thine eyes behold the dungeons burst, the prisoners set free. england, awake! awake! awake! jerusalem thy sister calls; why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death and chase her from thy ancient walls? thy hills and valleys felt her feet gently upon their bosoms move; thy gates beheld sweet zion's ways; then was a time of joy and love. and now the time returns again; our souls exult; and london's towers receive the lamb of god to dwell in england's green and pleasant bowers." much might also be said, had one leave of time, of the last chapter; of the death of the earth-giant through jealousy, and his resurrection when the saviour appeared to him revealed in the likeness and similitude of time: of the ultimate deliverance of all things, chanted in a psalm of high and tidal melody; a resurrection wherein all things, even "tree, metal, earth and stone," become all "human forms identified; living, going forth, and returning wearied into the planetary lives of years, months, days, and hours: reposing and then awaking into his bosom in the life of immortality. and i heard the name of their emanations: they are named jerusalem." we will add one reference, to pp. - , where god shows to jerusalem in a vision "joseph the carpenter in nazareth, and mary his espoused wife." through the vision of their story the forgiveness of jerusalem also, when she has gone astray from her lord, is made manifest to her. "and i heard a voice among the reapers saying, 'am i jerusalem the lost adulteress? or am i babylon come up to jerusalem?' and another voice answered saying, 'does the voice of my lord call me again? am i pure through his mercy and pity? am i become lovely as a virgin in his sight, who am indeed a harlot drunken with the sacrifice of idols?--o mercy, o divine humanity, o forgiveness and pity and compassion, if i were pure i should never have known thee: if i were unpolluted i should never have glorified thy holiness, or rejoiced in thy great salvation.'" the whole passage--and such are not so unfrequent as at first glimpse they seem--is, if seen with equal eyes, whether its purport be right or wrong, "full of wisdom and perfect in beauty." but we will dive after no more pearls at present in this huge oyster-bed; and of the illustrations we can but speak in a rough swift way. these are all generally noble: that at p. is great among the greatest of blake's. spires of serpentine cloud are seen before a strong wind below a crescent moon; druid pillars enclose as with a frame this stormy division of sky; outside them again the vapour twists and thickens; and men standing on desolate broken ground look heavenward or earthward between the pillars. of others a brief and admirable account is given in the _life_, more final and sufficient than we can again give; but all in fact should be well seen into by those who would judge fitly of blake's singular and supreme gift for purely imaginative work. flowers sprung of earth and lit from heaven, with chalices of floral fire and with flower-like women or men growing up out of their centre; fair large forms full of labour or of rest; sudden starry strands and reaches of breathless heaven washed by drifts of rapid wind and cloud; serrated array of iron rocks and glorious growth of weedy lands or flowering fields; reflected light of bows bent and arrows drawn in heaven, dividing cloud from starlit cloud; stately shapes of infinite sorrow or exuberant joy; all beautiful things and all things terrible, all changes of shadow and of light, all mysteries of the darkness and the day, find place and likeness here: deep waters made glad and sad with heavy light that comes and goes; vast expansion of star-shaped blossom and swift aspiration of laborious flame; strong and sweet figures made subject to strange torture in dim lands of bondage; mystic emblems of plumeless bird and semi-human beast; women like the daughters of giants, with immense shapeliness and vigour of lithe large limbs, clothed about with anguish and crowned upon with triumph; their deep bosoms pressed against the scales of strong dragons, their bodies and faces strained together in the delight of monstrous caresses; similitudes of all between angel and reptile that divide illimitable spaces of air or defile the overlaboured furrows upon earth. it is easier to do complete justice to the minor prophecies than to give any not inadequate conception of this great book, so vast in reach, so repellent in style, so rich, vehement, and subtle beyond all other works of blake; the chosen crown and treasured fruit of his strange labours. extracts of admirable beauty might be gathered up on all hands, more eligible it may be than any here given; none i think more serviceable by way of sample and exposition, as far as such can at all be attained. that the book contains much of a personal kind referring in a wild dim manner to his own spiritual actions and passions, is evident: but even by the new light of the felpham correspondence one can hardly see where to lay finger on these passages and separate them decisively from the loose floating context. not without regret, yet not with any sense of wilful or scornful oversight, we must be content now to pass on, and put up with this insufficient notice. the only other engraved work of a prophetic kind did not appear for eighteen years more. this last and least in size, but not in worth, of the whole set is so brief that it may here be read in full. the ghost of abel. a revelation in the visions of jehovah. seen by william blake. to lord byron in the wilderness.--what dost thou here, elijah? can a poet doubt the visions of jehovah? nature has no outline: but imagination has. nature has no time; but imagination has. nature has no supernatural, and dissolves; imagination is eternity. scene.--_a rocky country._ eve _fainted over the dead body of_ abel _which lays near a grave_. adam _kneels by her_. jehovah _stands above_. jehovah. adam! adam. it is in vain: i will not hear thee more, thou spiritual voice. is this death? jehovah. adam! adam. it is in vain; i will not hear thee henceforth. is this thy promise that the woman's seed should bruise the serpent's head? is this the serpent? ah! seven times, o eve, thou hast fainted over the dead. ah! ah! (eve _revives_.) eve. is this the promise of jehovah? o it is all a vain delusion, this death and this life and this jehovah. jehovah. woman, lift thine eyes. (a voice _is heard coming on_.) voice. o earth, cover not thou my blood! cover not thou my blood! (_enter the_ ghost of abel.) eve. thou visionary phantasm, thou art not the real abel. abel. among the elohim a human victim i wander: i am their house, prince of the air, and our dimensions compass zenith and nadir. vain is thy covenant, o jehovah: i am the accuser and avenger of blood; o earth, cover not thou the blood of abel. jehovah. what vengeance dost thou require? abel. life for life! life for life! jehovah. he who shall take cain's life must also die, o abel; and who is he? adam, wilt thou, or eve, thou, do this? adam. it is all a vain delusion of the all-creative imagination. eve, come away, and let us not believe these vain delusions. abel is dead, and cain slew him; we shall also die a death and then--what then? be as poor abel, a thought; or as this? o what shall i call thee, form divine, father of mercies, that appearest to my spiritual vision? eve, seest thou also? eve. i see him plainly with my mind's eye: i see also abel living; tho' terribly afflicted, as we also are: yet jehovah sees him alive and not dead; were it not better to believe vision with all our might and strength, tho' we are fallen and lost? adam. eve, thou hast spoken truly; let us kneel before his feet. (_they kneel before_ jehovah.) abel. are these the sacrifices of eternity, o jehovah? a broken spirit and a contrite heart? o, i cannot forgive; the accuser hath entered into me as into his house, and i loathe thy tabernacles. as thou hast said so is it come to pass: my desire is unto cain and he doth rule over me: therefore my soul in fumes of blood cries for vengeance: sacrifice on sacrifice, blood on blood. jehovah. lo, i have given you a lamb for an atonement instead of the transgressor, or no flesh or spirit could ever live. abel. compelled i cry, o earth, cover not the blood of abel. (abel _sinks down into the grave, from which arises_ satan _armed in glittering scales with a crown and a spear_.) satan. i will have human blood and not the blood of bulls or goats, and no atonement, o jehovah; the elohim live on sacrifice of men: hence i am god of men; thou human, o jehovah. by the rock and oak of the druid, creeping mistletoe and thorn, cain's city built with human blood, not blood of bulls and goats, thou shalt thyself be sacrificed to me thy god on calvary. jehovah. such is my will--(_thunders_)--that thou thyself go to eternal death in self-annihilation, even till satan self-subdued put off satan into the bottomless abyss whose torment arises for ever and ever. (_on each side a chorus of angels entering sing the following._) the elohim of the heathen swore vengeance for sin! then thou stood'st forth, o elohim jehovah, in the midst of the darkness of the oath all clothed in thy covenant of the forgiveness of sins. death, o holy! is this brotherhood? the elohim saw their oath eternal fire; they rolled apart trembling over the mercy-seat, each in his station fixed in the firmament, by peace, brotherhood, and love. _the curtain falls._ ( . w. blake's original stereotype was .) on the skirt of a figure, rapid and "vehemently sweeping," engraved underneath (recalling that vision of dion made memorable by one of wordsworth's nobler poems) are inscribed these words--"the voice of abel's blood." the fierce and strenuous flight of this figure is as the motion of one "whose feet are swift to shed blood," and the dim face is full of hunger and sorrowful lust after revenge. the decorations are slight but not ineffective; wrought merely in black and white. this small prose lyric has a value beyond the value of its occasional beauty and force of form; it is a brief comprehensible expression of blake's faith seen from its two leading sides; belief in vision and belief in mercy. into the singular mood of mind which made him inscribe it to the least imaginative of all serious poets we need by no means strive to enter; but in the trustful admiration and the loyal goodwill which this quaint inscription seems to imply, there must be something not merely laughable: as, however rough and homespun the veil of eccentric speech may seem to us at first, we soon find it interwoven with threads of such fair and fervent colour as make the stuff of splendid verse; so, beyond all apparent aberrations of relaxed thought which offend us at each turn, a purpose not ignoble and a sense not valueless become manifest to those who will see them. here then the scroll of prophecy is finally wound up; and those who have cared to unroll and decipher it by such light as we can attain or afford may now look back across the tempest and tumult, and pass sentence, according to their pleasure or capacity, on the message delivered from this cloudy and noisy tabernacle. the complete and exalted figure of blake cannot be seen in full by those who avert their eyes, smarting and blinking, from the frequent smoke and sudden flame. others will see more clearly, as they look more sharply, the radical sanity and coherence of the mind which put forth its shoots of thought and faith in ways so strange, at such strange times. faith incredible and love invisible to most men were alone the springs of this turbid and sonorous stream. in blake, above all other men, the moral and the imaginative senses were so fused together as to compose the final artistic form. no man's fancy, in that age, flew so far and so high on so sure a wing. no man's mind, in that generation, dived so deep or gazed so long after the chance of human redemption. to serve art and to love liberty seemed to him the two things (if indeed they were not one thing) worth a man's life and work; and no servant was ever trustier, no lover more constant than he. knowing that without liberty there can be no loyalty, he did not fear, whether in his work or his life, to challenge and to deride the misconstruction of the foolish and the fraudulent. it does not appear that he was ever at the pains to refute any senseless and rootless lie that may have floated up during his life on the muddy waters of rumour, or drifted from hand to hand and mouth to mouth along the putrescent weed-beds of tradition. many such lies, i am told, were then set afloat, and have not all as yet gone down. one at least of these may here be swept once for all out of our way. mr. linnell, the truest friend of blake's age and genius, has assured me--and has expressed a wish that i should make public his assurance--that the legend of blake and his wife, sitting as adam and eve in their garden, is simply a legend--to those who knew them, repulsive and absurd; based probably, if on any foundation at all, on some rough and rapid expression of blake's in the heat and flush of friendly talk, to the effect (it may be) that such a thing, if one chose to do it, would be in itself innocent and righteous,--wrong or strange only in the eyes of a world whose views and whose deeds were strange and wrong. so far blake would probably have gone; and so far his commentators need not fear to go. but one thing does certainly seem to me loathsome and condemnable; the imputation of such a charge as has been brought against blake on this matter, without ground and without excuse. the oral flux of fools, being as it is a tertian or quotidian malady or ague of the tongue among their kind, may deserve pity or may not, but does assuredly demand rigid medical treatment. the words or thoughts of a free thinker and a free speaker, falling upon rather than into the ear of a servile and supine fool, will probably in all times bring forth such fruit as this. by way of solace or compensation for the folly which he half perceives and half admits, the fool must be allowed his little jest and his little lie. only when it passes into tradition and threatens to endure, is it worth while to set foot on it. it seems that blake never cared to do this good office for himself; and in effect it can only seem worth doing on rare occasions to any workman who respects his work. this contempt, in itself noble and rational, became injurious when applied to the direct service of things in hand. confidence in future friends, and contempt of present foes, may have induced him to leave his highest achievements impalpable and obscure. their scope is as wide and as high as heaven, but not as clear; clouds involve and rains inundate the fitful and stormy space of air through which he spreads and plies an indefatigable wing. there can be few books in the world like these; i can remember one poet only whose work seems to me the same or similar in kind; a poet as vast in aim, as daring in detail, as unlike others, as coherent to himself, as strange without and as sane within. the points of contact and sides of likeness between william blake and walt whitman are so many and so grave, as to afford some ground of reason to those who preach the transition of souls or transfusion of spirits. the great american is not a more passionate preacher of sexual or political freedom than the english artist. to each the imperishable form of a possible and universal republic is equally requisite and adorable as the temporal and spiritual queen of ages as of men. to each all sides and shapes of life are alike acceptable or endurable. from the fresh free ground of either workman nothing is excluded that is not exclusive. the words of either strike deep and run wide and soar high. they are both full of faith and passion, competent to love and to loathe, capable of contempt and of worship. both are spiritual, and both democratic; both by their works recall, even to so untaught and tentative a student as i am, the fragments vouchsafed to us of the pantheistic poetry of the east. their casual audacities of expression or speculation are in effect wellnigh identical. their outlooks and theories are evidently the same on all points of intellectual and social life. the divine devotion and selfless love which make men martyrs and prophets are alike visible and palpable in each. it is no secret now, but a matter of public knowledge, that both these men, being poor in the sight and the sense of the world, have given what they had of time or of money, of labour or of love, to comfort and support all the suffering and sick, all the afflicted and misused, whom they had the chance or the right to succour and to serve. the noble and gentle labours of the one are known to those who live in his time; the similar deeds of the other deserve and demand a late recognition. no man so poor and so obscure as blake appeared in the eyes of his generation ever did more good works in a more noble and simple spirit. it seems that in each of these men at their birth pity and passion, and relief and redress of wrong, became incarnate and innate. that may well be said of the one which was said of the other: that "he looks like a man." and in externals and details the work of these two constantly and inevitably coheres and coincides. a sound as of a sweeping wind; a prospect as over dawning continents at the fiery instant of a sudden sunrise; a splendour now of stars and now of storms; an expanse and exultation of wing across strange spaces of air and above shoreless stretches of sea; a resolute and reflective love of liberty in all times and in all things where it should be; a depth of sympathy and a height of scorn which complete and explain each other, as tender and as bitter as dante's; a power, intense and infallible, of pictorial concentration and absorption, most rare when combined with the sense and the enjoyment of the widest and the highest things; an exquisite and lyrical excellence of form when the subject is well in keeping with the poet's tone of spirit; a strength and security of touch in small sweet sketches of colour and outline, which bring before the eyes of their student a clear glimpse of the thing designed--some little inlet of sky lighted by moon or star, some dim reach of windy water or gentle growth of meadow-land or wood; these are qualities common to the work of either. had we place or time or wish to touch on their shortcomings and errors, it might be shown that these too are nearly akin; that their poetry has at once the melody and the laxity of a fitful storm-wind; that, being oceanic, it is troubled with violent groundswells and sudden perils of ebb and reflux, of shoal and reef, perplexing to the swimmer or the sailor; in a word, that it partakes the powers and the faults of elemental and eternal things; that it is at times noisy and barren and loose, rootless and fruitless and informal; and is in the main fruitful and delightful and noble, a necessary part of the divine mechanism of things. any work or art of which this cannot be said is superfluous and perishable, whatever of grace or charm it may possess or assume. whitman has seldom struck a note of thought and speech so just and so profound as blake has now and then touched upon; but his work is generally more frank and fresh, smelling of sweeter air, and readier to expound or expose its message, than this of the prophetic books. nor is there among these any poem or passage of equal length so faultless and so noble as his "voice out of the sea," or as his dirge over president lincoln--the most sweet and sonorous nocturn ever chanted in the church of the world. but in breadth of outline and charm of colour, these poems recall the work of blake; and to neither poet can a higher tribute of honest praise be paid than this. we have now done what in us lay to help the works of a great man on their way towards that due appreciation and that high honour of which in the end they will not fail. much, it need not be repeated, has been done for them of late, and admirably done; much also we have found to do, and have been compelled to leave undone still more. if it should now appear to any reader that too much has been made of slight things, or too little said of grave errors, this must be taken well into account: that praise enough has not as yet been given, and blame enough can always be had for the asking; that when full honour has been done and full thanks rendered to those who have done great things, then and then only will it be no longer an untimely and unseemly labour to map out and mark down their shortcomings for the profit or the pleasure of their inferiors and our own; that however pleasant for common palates and feeble fingers it may be to nibble and pick holes, it is not only more profitable but should be more delightful for all who desire or who strive after any excellence of mind or of achievement to do homage wherever it may be due; to let nothing great pass unsaluted or unenjoyed; but as often as we look backwards among past days and dead generations, with glad and ready reverence to answer the noble summons--"let us now praise famous men, and our fathers who were before us." those who refuse them that are none of their sons; and among all these "famous men, and our fathers," no names seem to demand our praise so loudly as theirs who while alive had to dispense with the thanksgiving of men. to them doubtless, it may be said, this is now more than ever indifferent; but to us it had better not be so. and especially in the works and in the life of blake there is so strong and special a charm for those to whom the higher ways of work are not sealed ways that none will fear to be too grudging of blame or too liberal of praise. a more noble memory is hardly left us; and it is not for his sake that we should contend to do him honour. the end. bradbury, evans, and co., printers, whitefriars. footnotes: [ ] gilchrist's "life of blake." [ ] it may be as well set down here as at any further stage of our business, that the date of blake's birth appears, from good ms. authority, to have been the th of november ( ), not the th; that he was the second of five children, not four; james, the hosier in broad street, being his junior, not, as the biography states, his senior by a year and a half. the eldest son was john, a favourite child who came to small good, enlisted, and died it seems in comparative youth; of him mr. gilchrist evidently had not heard. in some verses of the felpham period (written in , printed in vol. ii. p. of the "life and selections") blake makes mention, hitherto unexplained, of "my brother john the evil one," which may now be comprehensible enough. [ ] our greatest poet of the later days may be cited as a third witness. through the marvellous last book of the _contemplations_ the breath and sound of the sea is blown upon every verse; when he heard as it were the thunder and saw as it were the splendour of revelation, it was amid the murmur and above the motion of the channel; près du dolmen qui domine rozel, À l'endroit où le cap se prolonge en presqu'île. [ ] w. b. scott. the few and great words cited above occur, it will be observed, in a poem affording throughout no inapt allegory of blake's life and works. more accurate and more admirable expression was never given to a theme so pregnant and so great. the whole "fable" may be well applied by students of the matter in hand to the history of blake's relations with minor men of more turn for success; which, as victor hugo has noted in his royal manner, is so often "a rather hideous thing." [ ] it appears that some effort, laudable if wholly sincere, and not condemnable if partly coloured by personal feeling, has been made to rebut the charges brought against stothard and cromek by the biographer of blake. what has been written in the text is of course based upon the assumption that mr. gilchrist has given an account of the matter as full and as fair as it was assuredly his desire to make it. as junior counsel (so to speak) on behalf of blake, i have followed the lead of his biographer; for me in fact nothing remained but to revise and restate, with such clearness and brevity as i could, the case as laid down by him. this, finding on the face of it nothing incoherent or incredible, i have done; whether any man can disprove it remains to be seen. meantime we are not left to our own choice in the matter of epithets. there is but one kind of phrase that will express such things and the doers of such things. against stothard no grave charge has been brought; none therefore can be refuted. any reference to subsequent doings or sufferings of his must be unspeakably irrelevant to the matter in hand. against cromek a sufficiently heavy indictment has been laid; one which cannot be in the least degree lightened by countercharges of rash violence on blake's part or blind hastiness on mr. gilchrist's. one thing alone can avail him in the way of whitewash. he is charged with theft; prove that he did not steal. he is charged with breach of contract; prove that his contract was never broken. he is charged with denying a commission given by him; prove that he did not deny it. for no man, it is to be feared, will now believe that blake, sleeping or waking, forged the story of the commission or trumped up the story of the contract. that point of the defence the counsel for cromek had best give up with all convenient speed; had better indeed not dream at all of entering upon it. again: he is charged, as above, with adding to his apparent perfidy a superfetation of insolence, an accretion or excrescence of insult. prove that he did not write the letter published by mr. cunningham in . it is undoubtedly deplorable that any one now living should in any way have to suffer for the misdoings of a man, whom, were it just or even possible, one would be willing to overlook and to forget. but time is logical and equable; and this is but one among many inevitable penalties which time is certain to bring upon such wrong-doers in the end; penalties, or rather simple results of the thing done. had this man either dealt honestly or while dealing dishonestly been but at the pains to keep clear of walter scott and william blake, no writer would have had to disturb his memory. but now, however strong or sincere may be our just sense of pity for all to whom it may give pain, truth must be spoken; and the truth is that, unless the authorities cited can be utterly upset and broken down by some palpable proof in his favour, cromek was what has been stated. mr. gilchrist also, in the course of his fair and lucid narrative, speaks once of "pity." pity may be good, but proof is better. until such proof come, the best that can be done for cromek is to let well alone. less could not have been said of him than equitable biography has here been compelled to say; no more need be said now and for ever, if counsel will have the wisdom to let sleeping dogs lie. this advice, if they cannot refute what is set down without more words, we must give them; [greek: mê kinei kamarinan]. the waters are muddy enough without that. vague and vain clamour of deprecation or appeal may be plaintive but is not conclusive. as to any talk of cruelty or indelicacy shown in digging up the dead misdeeds of dead men, it is simply pitiable. were not reason wasted on such reasoners it might be profitable (which too evidently it is not) to reply that such an argument cuts right and left at once. suppress a truth, and you suggest a lie; and a lie so suggested is the most "indelicate" of cruelties possible to inflict on the dead. if, for pity's sake or contempt's or for any other reason, the biographer had explained away the charges against cromek which lay ready to his hand, he must have left upon the memory of scott and upon the memory of blake the stain of a charge as grave as this: if cromek was honest, they were calumniators. to one or two the good name of a private man may be valuable; to all men the good name of a great man must be precious. this difference of value must not be allowed to weigh with us while considering the evidence; but the fact seems to be that no evidence in disproof of the main charges has been put forward which can be seriously thought worth sifting for a moment. this then being the sad case, to inveigh against blake's biographer is utterly idle and hardly honest. if the stories are not true, any man's commentary which assumes their truth must be infinitely unimportant. if the stories are true, no remark annexed to the narrative can now blacken the accused further. those alone who are responsible for the accusation brought can be convicted of unfairness in bringing it; mr. gilchrist, it must be repeated, found every one of the charges which we now find in his book, given under the hand and seal of honourable men. these he found it, as i do now, necessary to transcribe in a concise form; adding, as i have done, any brief remarks he saw fit to make in the interest of justice and for the sake of explanation. let there be no more heard of appeal against this exercise of a patent right, of invective against this discharge of an evident duty. disproof is the one thing that will now avail; and to anything short of that no one should again for an instant listen. [ ] it is to be regretted that the share taken in this matter by flaxman, who defended stothard from the charge of collusion with cromek, appears to have alienated blake from one of his first friends. throughout the ms. so often cited by his biographer, he couples their names together for attack. in one of his rough epigrams, formless and pointless for the most part, but not without value for the sudden broken gleams of light they cast upon blake's character and history, he reproaches both sculptor and painter with benefits conferred by himself and disowned by them: and the blundering stumbling verses thus jotted down to relieve a minute's fit of private anger are valuable as evidence for his sincere sense of injury. to f. and s. "i found them blind: i taught them how to see; and now they know neither themselves nor me. 'tis excellent to turn a thorn to a pin, a fool to a bolt, a knave to a glass of gin." whether or not he had in fact thus utilized his rivals by making the most out of their several qualities, may be questionable. if so, we must say he managed to scratch his own fingers with the pin, to miss his shot with the bolt, and to spill the liquor extracted from the essence of knavery. the following dialogue has equal virulence and somewhat more sureness of aim. mr. stothard to mr. cromek. "for fortune's favour you your riches bring; but fortune says she gave you no such thing. why should you prove ungrateful to your friends, sneaking, and backbiting, and odds-and-ends?" mr. cromek to mr. stothard. "fortune favours the brave, old proverbs say; but not with money; that is not the way: turn back, turn back; you travel all in vain; turn through the iron gate down sneaking lane." for the "iron gate" of money-making the brazen-browed speaker was no unfit porter. the crudity of these rough notes for some unfinished satire is not, let it be remembered, a fair sample of blake's capacity for epigram; and it would indeed be unfair to cite them but for their value as to the matter in hand. [ ] since writing the lines above i have been told by mr. seymour kirkup that one picture at least among those exhibited at this time was the very noblest of all blake's works; the "ancient britons." it appears to have dropped out of sight, but must be still hidden somewhere. against the judgment of mr. kirkup there can be no appeal. the saviour of giotto, the redeemer of dante, has power to pronounce on the work of blake. i allow what i said to stand as i said it at first, only that i may not miss the chance of calling attention to the loss and paying tribute to the critic. [ ] written in . mr. landor died sept. th, . [ ] since the lines above were written, i have been informed by a surviving friend of blake, celebrated throughout italy as over england, in a time nearer our own, as (among other things) the discoverer of giotto's fresco in the chapel of the podestà, that after blake's death a gift of £ was sent to his widow by the princess sophia, who must not lose the exceptional honour due to her for a display of sense and liberality so foreign to her blood. at whose suggestion it was made is not known, and worth knowing. mrs. blake sent back the money with all due thanks, not liking to take or keep what (as it seemed to her) she could dispense with, while many to whom no chance or choice was given might have been kept alive by the gift; and, as readers of the "life" know, fell to work in her old age by preference. one complaint only she was ever known to make during her husband's life, and that gently. "mr. blake" was so little with her, though in the body they were never separated; for he was incessantly away "in paradise"; which would not seem to have been far off. mr. kirkup also speaks of the courtesy with which, on occasion, blake would waive the question of his spiritual life, if the subject seemed at all incomprehensible or offensive to the friend with him: he would no more obtrude than suppress his faith, and would practically accept and act upon the dissent or distaste of his companions without visible vexation or the rudeness of a thwarted fanatic. it was in the time of this intimacy (see note at p. ) that mr. kirkup also saw, what seems long since to have dropped out of human sight, the picture of _the ancient britons_; which, himself also an artist, he thought and thinks the finest work of the painter: remembering well the fury and splendour of energy there contrasted with the serene ardour of simply beautiful courage; the violent life of the design, and the fierce distance of fluctuating battle. [ ] the direct cause of blake's death, it appears from a ms. source, "was the mixing of the gall with the blood." it may be worth remark, that one brief notice at least of blake's death made its way into print; the "literary gazette" (no. ; the "gentleman's magazine" published it in briefer form but nearly identical words as far as it went) of august , , saw fit to "record the death of a singular and very able man," in an article contributed mainly by "the kindness of a correspondent," who speaks as an acquaintance of blake, and gives this account of his last days, prefaced by a sufficiently humble reference to the authorities of fuseli, flaxman, and lawrence. "pent, with his affectionate wife, in a close back-room in one of the strand courts, his bed in one corner, his meagre dinner in another, a ricketty table holding his copper-plates in progress, his colours, books (among which his bible, a sessi velutello's dante, and mr. carey's translation, were at the top), his large drawings, sketches, and mss.; his ankles frightfully swelled, his chest disordered, old age striding on, his wants increased, but not his miserable means and appliances; even yet was his eye undimmed, the fire of his imagination unquenched, and the preternatural never-resting activity of his mind unflagging. he had not merely a calmly resigned, but a cheerful and mirthful countenance. he took no thought for his life, what he should eat or what he should drink; nor yet for his body, what he should put on; but had a fearless confidence in that providence which had given him the vast range of the world for his recreation and delight. blake died last monday; died as he had lived, piously, cheerfully, talking calmly, and finally resigning himself to his eternal rest like an infant to its sleep. he has left nothing except some pictures, copper-plates, and his principal work, a series of a hundred large designs from dante.... he was active" (the good correspondent adds, further on) "in mind and body, passing from one occupation to another without an intervening minute of repose. of an ardent, affectionate, and grateful temper, he was simple in manner and address, and displayed an inbred courteousness of the most agreeable character." finally, the writer has no doubt that mrs. blake's "cause will be taken up by the distributors of those funds which are raised for the relief of distressed artists, and also by the benevolence of private individuals": for she "is left (we fear, from the accounts which have reached us) in a very forlorn condition, mr. blake himself having been much indebted for succour and consolation to his friend mr. linnell the painter." the discreet editor, "when further time has been allowed him for inquiry, will probably resume the matter:" but, we may now more safely prophesy, assuredly will not. [ ] of course, there can be no question here of bad art: which indeed is a non-entity or contradiction in terms, as to speak of good art is to run into tautology. it is assumed, to begin with, that the artist has something to say or do worth doing or saying in an artistic form. [ ] observe especially in chaucer's most beautiful of young poems that appalling passage, where, turning the favourite edgetool of religious menace back with point inverted upon those who forged it, the poet represents men and women of religious habit or life as punished in the next world, beholding afar off with jealous regret the salvation and happiness of venus and all her servants (converse of the hörsel legend, which shows the religious or anti-satanic view of the matter; though there too there is some pity or sympathy implied for the pagan side of things, revealing in the tradition the presence and touch of some poet): expressly punished, these monks and nuns, for their continence and holiness of life, and compelled after death to an eternity of fruitless repentance for having wilfully missed of pleasure and made light of indulgence in this world; which is perfect albigeois. compare the famous speech in _aucassin et nicolette_, where the typical hero weighs in a judicial manner the respective attractions of heaven and hell; deciding of course dead against the former on account of the deplorably bad company kept there; priests, hermits, saints, and such-like, in lieu of knights and ladies, painters and poets. one may remark also, the minute this pagan revival begins to get breathing-room, how there breaks at once into flower a most passionate and tender worship of nature, whether as shown in the bodily beauty of man and woman or in the outside loveliness of leaf and grass; both chaucer and his anonymous southern colleague being throughout careful to decorate their work with the most delicate and splendid studies of colour and form. either of the two choice morsels of doctrinal morality cited above would have exquisitely suited the palate of blake. he in his time, one need not doubt, was considerably worried and gibbered at by "monkeys in houses of brick," moral theorists, and "pantopragmatic" men of all sorts; what can we suppose he would have said or done in an epoch given over to preachers (lay, clerical, and mixed) who assert without fear or shame that you may demand, nay are bound to demand, of a picture or poem what message it has for you, what may be its moral utility or material worth? "poetry must conform itself to" &c.; "art must have a mission and meaning appreciable by earnest men in an age of work," and so forth. these be thy gods, o philistia. [ ] i will not resist the temptation to write a brief word of comment on this passage. while my words of inadequate and now of joyless praise were in course of printing, i heard that a mortal illness had indeed stricken the illustrious poet, the faultless critic, the fearless artist; that no more of fervent yet of perfect verse, no more of subtle yet of sensitive comment, will be granted us at the hands of charles baudelaire: that now for ever we must fall back upon what is left us. it is precious enough. we may see again as various a power as was his, may feel again as fiery a sympathy, may hear again as strange a murmur of revelation, as sad a whisper of knowledge, as mysterious a music of emotion; we shall never find so keen, so delicate, so deep an unison of sense and spirit. what verse he could make, how he loved all fair and felt all strange things, with what infallible taste he knew at once the limit and the licence of his art, all may see at a glance. he could give beauty to the form, expression to the feeling, most horrible and most obscure to the senses or souls of lesser men. the chances of things parted us once and again; the admiration of some years, at last in part expressed, brought me near him by way of written or transmitted word; let it be an excuse for the insertion of this note, and for a desire, if so it must be, to repeat for once the immortal words which too often return upon our lips; "ergo in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale!" [ ] there are exceptions, we are told from the first, to all rules; and the sole exception to this one is great enough to do all but establish a rival rule. but, as i have tried already to say, the work--all the work--of victor hugo is in its essence artistic, in its accident alone philanthropic or moral. i call this the sole exception, not being aware that the written work of dante or shelley did ever tend to alter the material face of things; though they may have desired that it should, and though their unwritten work may have done so. accidentally of course a poet's work may tend towards some moral or actual result; that is beside the question. [ ] the reader who cares to remember that everything here set down is of immediate importance and necessity for the understanding of the matter in hand (namely, the life of blake, and the faith and works which made that life what it was) may as well take here a word of comment. it will soon be necessary for even the very hack-writers and ingenious people of ready pens and wits who now babble about balzac in english and french as a splendid specimen of their craft, fertile but faulty, and so forth--to understand that they have nothing to do with balzac; that he is not of their craft, nor of any but the common craft of all great men--the guild of godlike things and people; that a shelf holding "all balzac's novels--forty volumes long," is not "cabin-furniture" for any chance "passenger" to select or reject. error and deficiency there may be in his work; but none such as they can be aware of. of poetic form, for example, we know that he knew nothing; the error would be theirs who should think his kind of work the worse for that. among men equally great, the distinctive supremacy of balzac is this; that whereas the great men who are pure artists (shakespeare for instance) work by implication only, and hardly care about descending to the level of a preacher's or interpreter's work, he is the only man not of their kind who is great enough to supply their place in his own way--to be their correlative in a different class of workmen; being from his personal point of view simply impeccable and infallible. the pure artist never asserts; he suggests, and therefore his meaning is totally lost upon moralists and sciolists--is indeed irreparably wasted upon the run of men who cannot work out suggestions. balzac asserts; and balzac cannot blunder or lie. so profound and extensive a capacity of moral apprehension no other prose writer, no man of mere analytic faculty, ever had or can have. this assuredly, when men become (as they will have to become) capable of looking beyond the mere clothes and skin of his work, will be always, as we said, his great especial praise; that he was, beyond any other man, the master of morals--the greatest direct expounder of actual moral fact. once consent to forget or overlook the mere _entourage_ and social habiliment of balzac's intense and illimitable intellect, you cannot fail of seeing that he of all men was fittest to grapple with all strange things and words, and compel them by divine violence of spiritual rape to bring forth flowers and fruits good for food and available for use. [ ] could god bring down his heart to the making of a thing so deadly and strong? or could any lesser dæmonic force of nature take to itself wings and fly high enough to assume power equal to such a creation? could spiritual force so far descend or material force so far aspire? or, when the very stars, and all the armed children of heaven, the "helmed cherubim" that guide and the "sworded seraphim" that guard their several planets, wept for pity and fear at sight of this new force of monstrous matter seen in the deepest night as a fire of menace to man-- "did he smile his work to see? did he who made the lamb make thee?" we may add another cancelled reading to show how delicately the poem has been perfected; although by an oversight of the writer's most copies hitherto have retained some trace of the rough first draught, neglecting in one line a change necessary to save the sense as well as to complete the sentence. "and when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand and what dread feet could fetch it from the furnace deep and in thy horrid ribs dare steep? in what clay and in what mould were thine eyes of fury rolled?" having cancelled this stanza or sketched ghost of a stanza, blake in his hurry of rejection did not at once remember to alter the last line of the preceding one; leaving thus a stone of some size and slipperiness for editorial feet to trip upon, until the recovery of that nobler reading-- "what dread hand _framed thy_ dread feet?" nor was this little "rock of offence" cleared from the channel of the poem even by the editor of , who was yet not afraid of laying hand upon the text. so grave a flaw in so short and so great a lyric was well worth the pains of removing and is yet worth the pains of accounting for; on which ground this note must be of value to all who take in verse with eye and ear instead of touching it merely with eyelash and finger-tip in the manner of sand-blind students. [ ] compare the passage in _ahania_ where the growth of it is defined; rooted in the rock of separation, watered with the tears of a jealous god, shot up from sparks and fallen germs of material seed; being after all a growth of mere error, and vegetable (not spiritual) life; the topmost stem of it made into a cross whereon to nail the dead redeemer and friend of men. [ ] compare again in the _vision of the last judgment_ (v. , p. ), that definition of the "divine body of the saviour, the true vine of eternity," as "the human imagination, who appeared to me as coming to judgment among his saints, and throwing off the temporal that the eternal might be established." the whole of that subtle and eloquent rhapsody is about the best commentary attainable on blake's mystical writings and designs. it is impossible to overstate the debt of gratitude due from all students of blake to the transcriber and editor of the _vision_, whose indefatigable sense and patient taste have made it legible for all. to have extracted it piecemeal from the chaos of notes jotted down by blake in the most inconceivable way, would have been a praiseworthy labour enough; but without addition or omission to have constructed these abortive fragments into a whole so available and so admirable, is a labour beyond praise. [ ] this exquisite verse did not fall into its place by chance; the poem has been more than once revised. its opening stanza stood originally thus:-- "sleep, sleep; in thy sleep thou wilt every secret keep; sleep, sleep, beauty bright, thou shalt taste the joys of night." before recasting the whole, blake altered the second line into-- "canst thou any secret keep?" the gist of the song is this; the speaker, watching a girl newly-born, compares her innocuous infancy with the power that through beauty will one day be hers, her blameless wiles and undeveloped desires with the strong and subtle qualities now dormant which the years will assuredly awaken within her; seeing as it were the whole woman asleep in the child, he smells future fruit in the unblown bud. on retouching his work, blake thus wound up the moral and tune of this song in a stanza forming by its rhymes an exact antiphonal complement to the end of the first _cradle song_. "when thy little heart does wake, then the dreadful lightnings break from thy cheek and from thine eye, o'er the youthful harvests nigh; infant wiles and infant smiles heaven and earth of peace beguiles." the epithet "infant" has supplanted that of "female," which was perhaps better: as to the grammatical licence, blake followed in that the elizabethan fashion which made the rule of sound predominate over all others. the song, if it loses simplicity, seems to gain significance by this expansion of the dim original idea; and beauty by expression of the peril latent in a life whose smiles as yet breed no strife between friends, kindle no fire among the unripe shocks of growing corn; but whose words shall hereafter be as very swords, and her eyes as lightning; _teterrima belli causa_. [ ] "his," the good man's: this lax piece of grammar (shifting from singular to plural and back again without much tangible provocation) is not infrequent with blake, and would hardly be worth righting if that were feasible. a remarkable instance is but too patent in the final "chorus" of the _marriage of heaven and hell_. such rough licence is given or taken by old poets; and blake's english is always beautiful enough to be pardonable where it slips or halts: especially as its errors are always those of a rapid lyrical style, never of a tortuous or verbose ingenuity: it stammers and slips occasionally, but never goes into convulsions like that of some later versifiers. [ ] such we must consider, for instance, the second _little boy lost_, which looks at first more of a riddle and less worth solution than the haziest section of the prophetic books. a cancelled reading taken from the rough copy in the _ideas_ will at all events make one stanza more amenable to reason: "i love myself; so does the bird that picks up crumbs around the door." blake was rather given to erase a comparatively reasonable reading and substitute something which cannot be confidently deciphered by the most daring self-reliance of audacious ingenuity, until the reader has found some means of pitching his fancy for a moment in the ordinary key of the prophet's. this uncomfortable little poem is in effect merely an allegoric or fabulous appeal against the oppression of formulas (or family "textualism" of the blind and unctuous sort) which refuse to single and simple insight, to the outspoken innocence of a child's laughing or confused analysis, a right to exist on any terms: just as the companion poem is an appeal, so vague as to fall decidedly flat, against the externals of moral fashion. both, but especially the _girl_, have some executive merit: not overmuch. to the surprising final query, "are such things done on albion's shore?" one is provoked to respond, "on the whole, not, as far as we can see;" but the "albion" of blake's verse is never this weaving and spinning country of our working days; it is rather some inscrutable remote land of titanic visions, moated with silent white mist instead of solid and sonorous surf, and peopled with vague pre-adamite giants symbolic of more than we can safely define or conceive. an inkling of the meaning may, if anything can, be extracted from some parts of the _jerusalem_; but probably no one will try. [ ] with more time and room to work in, we might have noticed in these less dramatic and seemingly less original poems of the second series which take up from the opposite point of view matters already handled to such splendid effect in the _songs of innocence_, a depth and warmth of moral quality worth remark; infinite tenderness of heart and fiery pity for all that suffer wrong; something of hugo's or shelley's passionate compassion for those who lie open to "all the oppression that is done under the sun"; something of the anguish and labour, the fever-heat of sleepless mercy and love incurable which is common to those two great poets. the second _holy thursday_ is doubtless far enough below the high level of the first; but the second _chimney-sweeper_ as certainly has a full share of this passionate grace of pain and pity. blake's love of children never wrung out into his work a more pungent pathos or keener taste of tears than in the last verse of this poem. it stood thus in the first draught: "and because i am happy and dance and sing they think they have done me no injury, and are gone to praise god and his priest and king, who wrap themselves up in our misery." the quiet tremulous anger of that, its childish sorrow and contempt, are no less true than subtle in effect. it recalls another floating fragment of verse on social wrongs which shall be rescued from the chaos of the _ideas_: "there souls of men are bought and sold, and milk-fed infancy, for gold; and youths to slaughter-houses led, and maidens, for a bit of bread." [ ] this verse is of course to be read as one made up of rough but regular anapæsts; the heavier accents falling consequently upon every third syllable--that is, upon the words _if_, _not_, and _him_. the next line is almost as rough, and seems indeed to slip into the solid english iambic; but may also be set right by giving full attention to accent. [ ] a strange and rather beautiful, if grotesque, evidence of the unity of faith and feeling to which blake and his wife had come by dint of living and thinking so long together, is given by one of the stray notes in this same book: which we transcribe at full on account of its great biographical value as a study of character. space might have been found for it in the life, if only to prove once again how curiously the nature and spiritual habits of a great man leave their mark or dye upon the mind nearest to his own. "south molton street. "_sunday, august, ._--my wife was told by a spirit to look for her fortune by opening by chance a book which she had in her hand; it was bysshe's 'art of poetry.' she opened the following:-- 'i saw 'em kindle with desire, while with soft sighs they blew the fire; saw the approaches of their joy, he growing more fierce and she less coy; saw how they mingled melting rays, exchanging love a thousand ways. kind was the force on every side; her new desire she could not hide, nor would the shepherd be denied. the blessed minute he pursued, till she, transported in his arms, yields to the conqueror all her charms. his panting breast to hers now joined, they feast on raptures unconfined, vast and luxuriant; such as prove the immortality of love. for who but a divinity could mingle souls to that degree and melt them into ecstasy? now like the phoenix both expire, while from the ashes of their fire springs up a new and soft desire. like charmers, thrice they did invoke the god, and thrice new vigour took.'--_behn._ "i was so well pleased with her luck that i thought i would try my own, and opened the following:-- 'as when the winds their airy quarrel try, jostling from every quarter of the sky, this way and that the mountain oak they bear, his boughs they scatter and his branches tear; with leaves and falling mast they spread the ground; the hollow valleys echo to the sound; unmoved, the royal plant their fury mocks, or, shaken, clings more closely to the rocks: for as he shoots his towering head on high, so deep in earth his fixed foundations lie.'--_dryden's virgil._" nothing is ever so cynical as innocence, whether it be a child's or a mystic's. as a poet, blake had some reason to be "well pleased" with his wife's curious windfall; for those verses of the illustrious aphra's have some real energy and beauty of form, visible to those who care to make allowance, first for the conventional english of the time, and secondly for the naked violence of manner natural to that she-satyr, whose really great lyrical gifts are hopelessly overlaid and encrusted by the rough repulsive husk of her incredible style of speech. even "astræa" must however have fair play and fair praise; and the simple truth is that, when writing her best, this "unmentionable" poetess has a vigorous grace and a noble sense of metre to be found in no other song-writer of her time. one song, fished up by mr. dyce out of the weltering sewerage of aphra's unreadable and unutterable plays, has a splendid quality of verse, and even some degree of sentiment not wholly porcine. take four lines as a sample, and blake's implied approval will hardly seem unjustifiable:-- "from thy bright eyes he took those fires which round about in sport he hurled; but 'twas from mine he took desires enough to undo the amorous world." the strong and subtle cadence of that magnificent fourth verse gives evidence of so delicate an ear and such dexterous power of hand as no other poet between the restoration date and blake's own time has left proof of in serious or tragic song. great as is dryden's lyrical work in more ways than one, its main quality is mere strength of intellect and solidity of handling--the forcible and imperial manner of his satires; and in pure literal song-writing, which (rather than any 'ode' or such-like mixed poem) may be taken as the absolute and final test of a poet's lyrical nature, he never came near this mark. françois villon and aphra behn, the two most inexpressibly non-respectable of male or female bohemians and poets, were alike in this as well; that the supreme gift of each, in a time sufficiently barren of lyrical merit, was the gift of writing admirable songs; and this, after all, has perhaps borne better fruit for us than any gift of moral excellence. [ ] another version of this line, with less of pungent and brilliant effect, has yet a touch of sound in it worth preserving: some may even prefer it in point of simple lyrical sweetness: "she played and she melted in all her prime: ah! that sweet love should be thought a crime." [ ] on closer inspection of blake's rapid autograph i suspect that in the second line those who please may read "the ruddy limbs and flowering hair," or perhaps "flowery;" but the type of flame is more familiar to blake. compare further on "a song of liberty." [ ] other readings are "soothed" and "smiled"--readings adopted after the insertion of the preceding stanza. as the subject is a child not yet grown to standing and walking age, these readings are perhaps better, though less simple in sound, than the one i have retained. [ ] here and throughout to the end, duly altering metre and grammar with a quite laudable care, blake has substituted "my father" for the "priests;" not i think to the improvement of the poem, though probably with an eye to making the end cohere rather more closely with the beginning. this and the "myrtle" are shoots of the same stock, and differ only in the second grafting. in the last-named poem the father's office was originally thus; "oft my myrtle sighed in vain to behold my heavy chain: oft my father saw us sigh, and laughed at our simplicity." here too blake had at first written, "oft the priest beheld us sigh;" he afterwards cancelled the whole passage, perhaps on first remarking the rather too grotesque confusion of a symbolic myrtle with a literal wife; and the last stanza in either form is identical. the simple subtle grace of both poems, and the singular care of revision bestowed on them, are equally worth notice. [ ] those who insist on the tight lacing of grammatical stays upon the "painèd loveliness" of a muse's over-pliant body may use if they please blake's own amended reading; in which otherwise the main salt of the poem is considerably diluted as by tepid water: the angel (one might say) has his sting blunted and the best quill of his pinion pulled out. "and without one word said had a peach from the tree; and still as a maid," &c. [ ] we may find place here for another fairy song, quaint in shape and faint in colour, but with the signet of blake upon it; copied from a loose scrap of paper on the back of which is a pencilled sketch of hercules throttling the serpents, whose twisted limbs make a sort of spiral cradle around and above the child's triumphant figure: an attendant, naked, falls back in terror with sharp recoil of drawn-up limbs; alcmena and amphitryon watch the struggle in silence, he grasping her hand. "a fairy leapt upon my knee singing and dancing merrily; i said, 'thou thing of patches, rings, pins, necklaces, and such-like things, disgracer of the female form, thou paltry gilded poisonous worm!' weeping, he fell upon my thigh, and thus in tears did soft reply: 'knowest thou not, o fairies' lord, how much by us contemned, abhorred, whatever hides the female form that cannot bear the mortal storm? therefore in pity still we give our lives to make the female live; and what would turn into disease we turn to what will joy and please.'" even so dim and slight a sketch as this may be of worth as indicating blake's views of the apparent and the substantial form of things, the primary and the derivative life; also as a sample of his roughest and readiest work. [ ] lest the kingdom of love left under the type of a woman should be over powerful for a nation of hard fighters and reasoners, such as blake conceived the "ancients" to be. compare for his general style of fancies on classic matters the prologue to "milton" and the sibylline leaves on homer and virgil. to his half-trained apprehension rome seemed mere violence and greece mere philosophy. [ ] let the reader take another instance of the culture given to these songs--a gift which has happily been bequeathed by blake to his editor. this one was at first divided into five equal stanzas; the last two running thus:-- "'and pity no more would be if all were happy as we;' at his curse the sun went down, and the heavens gave a frown. "down poured the heavy rain over the new-reaped grain; and misery's increase is mercy, pity, peace." thus one might say is the curse confuted; for if, as the "grievous devil" will have it, the root of the sweetest goodness is in material evil, then may the other side answer that even by his own showing the flower or "increase" from that root is not evil, but good: a soft final point of comfort missed by the change which gives otherwise fresher colour to this poem. [ ] but as above shewn the vision of the wise man or poet is wider than both; sees beyond the angel's blind innocent enjoyment to a deeper faith than his simple nature can grasp or include; sees also past the truth of the devil's sad ingenious "analytics" to the broader sense of things, seen by which, "good and evil are no more." [ ] query "putting?" this whole poem is jotted down in a close rough handwriting, not often easy to follow with confidence. [ ] in the line "a god or else a pharisee," blake with a pencil-scratch has turned "a god" to "a devil"; as if the words were admittedly or admissibly interchangeable! a prophet so wonderfully loose-tongued may well be the despair of his faithfullest commentators: but as it happens the pencil-scratch should here be of some help and significance to us: following this small clue, we may come to distinguish the god of his belief from this demon-god of the created "mundane shell"--the god of pharisaic religion and moral law. [ ] the creator by division, father of men and women, fashioner of evil and good; literally in the deepest sense "the god of this world," who "does not know the garment from the man;" cannot see beyond the two halves which he has made by violence of separation; would have the body perishable, yet the qualities of the bodily life permanent: thus inverting order and reversing fact. parallel passages might be brought in by the dozen on all hands, after a little dipping into mystic books; but i want to make no more room here for all this than is matter of bare necessity. [ ] we shall see this presently. i conceive however that blake, to save time and contract the space of his preaching, uses the consecrated hebrew name to design now the giver of the mosaic law, now that other and opposite divinity which after the "body of clay" had been "devoured" was the residue or disembodied victorious spirit of the human saviour. mysticism need not of necessity be either inaccurate or incoherent: neither need it give offence by its forms and expressions of faith: but a mystic is but human after all, and with the best intentions may slip somewhere, especially a mystic so little in _training_ as blake, and so much of a poet or artist; who is not accustomed to any careful feeling of his way among words, except with an eye to the perfection of their bodily beauty. indeed, as appears by mr. crabb robinson's notes of his conversation, blake affirmed that according to scripture itself the world was created by "the elohim," not by jehovah; whose covenant he elsewhere asserted was simply "forgiveness of sins." thus even according to this heretical creed the god of the jews would seem to be ranged on the same side with christ against "the god of this world." [ ] compare this fragment of a paraphrase or "excursus" on a lay sermon by a modern pagan philosopher of more material tendencies; but given to such tragic indulgence in huge titanic dithyrambs. "nature averse to crime? i tell you, nature lives and breathes by it; hungers at all her pores for bloodshed, aches in all her nerves for the help of sin, yearns with all her heart for the furtherance of cruelty. nature forbid that thing or this? nay, the best or worst of you will never go so far as she would have you; no criminal will come up to the measure of her crimes, no destruction seem to her destructive enough. we, when we would do evil, can disorganise a little matter, shed a little blood, quench a little breath at the door, of a perishable body; this we can do, and can call it crime. unnatural is it? good friend, it is by criminal things and deeds unnatural that nature works and moves and has her being; what subsides through inert virtue, she quickens through active crime; out of death she kindles life; she uses the dust of man to strike her light upon; she feeds with fresh blood the innumerable insatiable mouths suckled at her milkless breast; she takes the pain of the whole world to sharpen the sense of vital pleasure in her limitless veins: she stabs and poisons, crushes and corrodes, yet cannot live and sin fast enough for the cruelty of her great desire. behold, the ages of men are dead at her feet; the blood of the world is on her hands; and her desire is continually toward evil, that she may see the end of things which she hath made. friends, if we would be one with nature, let us continually do evil with our might. but what evil is here for us to do, where the whole body of things is evil? the day's spider kills the day's fly, and calls it a crime? nay, could we thwart nature, then might crime become possible and sin an actual thing. could but a man do this; could he cross the courses of the stars, and put back the times of the sea; could he change the ways of the world and find out the house of life to destroy it; could he go into heaven to defile it and into hell to deliver it from subjection; could he draw down the sun to consume the earth, and bid the moon shed poison or fire upon the air; could he kill the fruit in the seed and corrode the child's mouth with the mother's milk; then had he sinned and done evil against nature. nay, and not then: for nature would fain have it so, that she might create a world of new things; for she is weary of the ancient life: her eyes are sick of seeing and her ears are heavy with hearing; with the lust of creation she is burnt up, and rent in twain with travail until she bring forth change; she would fain create afresh, and cannot, except it be by destroying: in all her energies she is athirst for mortal food, and with all her forces she labours in desire of death. and what are the worst sins we can do--we who live for a day and die in a night? a few murders, a few"--we need not run over the not so wholly insignificant roll-call; but it is curious to observe how the mystical evangelist and the material humourist meet in the reading of mere nature and join hands in their interpretation of the laws ruling the outer body of life: a vision of ghastly glory, without pity or help possible. [ ] blake had first written "the creeping," then cancelled "the" and interlined the word "antichrist": i have no doubt intending some such alteration as that in the text of "creeping" to "aping"; but as far as we can now know the day for rewriting his fair copy never came. [ ] there are (says the mystic) two forms of "humility": detestable both, and condemnable. by one, the extrinsic form, a man cringes and submits, doubts himself and gives in to others; becomes in effect impotent, a sceptic and a coward; by the other or intrinsic form, he conceives too meanly of his own soul, and comes to believe himself less than god--of course, to a pure pantheist, the one radical and ruinous error which throws up on all sides a crop of lies and misconceptions, rank and ready; as base a thing to believe as an act of bodily "humility" were base to do: consequently any mere external worship is by this law heathenish, heretical and idolatrous. this heathenish or idolatrous heresy of spiritual humility comes merely of too much reliance on the reasoning power; man is undivine as to his mere understanding, and by using that as an eye instead of an eyeglass "distorts" all which he does not obliterate. "pride of reason" is a foolish thing for any clerical defender of the "faith" to impugn; such pride is essentially humility. to be proud of having an empty eye-socket implies that you would be ashamed of having eyesight; then you are proud on the wrong side, and humble there exactly where humility is a mere blundering suicide's cut at his own throat; if you are _not_ of your nature heavenly, how shall any alien celestial quality be sewn or stuck on to you? in whose cast clothes will you crawl into heaven by rational or religious cross-roads? "imputed righteousness" will not much help your case; if you "impute" a wrong quality to any imaginable substance, does your imputation change the substance? what it had not before, it has not now; your tongue has not the power of turning truth to a lie or a lie to truth; the fact gives your assertion a straight blow in the face. the mystic who says that man is god has some logical cause for pride; but the sceptic has no more than the cleric--he who asserts that reason, which is finite, can be final, is essentially as "humble" as he who admits that he can be "saved" by accepting as a gift some "imputed" goodness which is not in any sense his. for reason--the "spectre" of the _jerusalem_--is no matter for pride; if you make out that to be the best faculty about you, you give proof of the stupidest modesty and hatefullest humility. look across the lower animal reason, and over the dim lying limit of tangible and changeable flesh; and be humble if you can or dare, then; for if what you apprehend of yourself beyond is not god, there is none--except in that sad sense of a dæmon or natural force, strong only to create and to divide and to destroy and to govern by reason or religion the material scheme of things. _extra hominem nulla salus._ "god is no more than man; _because_ man is no less than god:" there is blake's pantheistic iliad in a nutshell. [ ] an ugly specimen of ready-writing; meaning of course "with the sacrifice of bloody prey:" but doubtless even blake would not have let this stand, though we cannot safely alter it: and the passage did upon the whole appear worth citing. [ ] this is so like blake's style of design that one can scarcely help fancying he must somewhere have translated it into colours perhaps more comprehensible than his words: have given somewhere in painter's types the likeness of that bodily appetite, serpentine food of the serpent, a lithe and strenuous body of clay, fair with luminous flakes of eruptive poison, foul with cold and coloured scales as the scales of a leper in grain; with green pallor of straining mouth and bloodlike expansion of fiery throat; teeth and claws convulsed with the painful lust of pain, eyelids cloven in sunder with a dull flame of desire, the visible venom of its breath shot sharp against the face and eyes of the divine human soul: he, disembodied yet incarnate in the eternal body, stripped of accidental and clothed with essential flesh, naked of attribute that he may be girdled with substance, wrestling silent with fair great limbs, but with calm hair and brows blanched as in fire, with light of lordship in the "sunclear joyful eyes" that already absorb and devour by sweet strength of radiance the relapsing reluctant bulk of body, that foulest ravenous birth begotten of accident or error upon time; eyes beautiful with the after-light of ancient tears, that shall not weep again for ever: "for the former things are passed away": and by that light of theirs shall all men see light. behind these two, an intense and tremulous night stricken through with stars and fire; and overhead the dividing roof and underfoot the sundering floor-work of the grave; a waste place beyond, full of risen bones that gather flesh and springing roots that strike out or catch at light flying flames of life. decidedly the design must exist somewhere; and presumably in "golgonooza." we have the artist's prophetic authority for believing that his works written and painted before he came upon earth do in effect fill whole chambers in heaven, and are "the delight and study of archangels:" an apocalyptic fact not unnaturally unacceptable and inconceivable to the cleverest of scotch stonemasons. [ ] compare hugo's admirable poem in the _châtiments_ (vii. . p. - )--"paroles d'un conservateur à propos d'un perturbateur:"--where, speaking through the mouth of "elizab, a scribe," the chief poet of our time gives in his great swift manner a dramatic summary of the view taken by priests and elders of christ. it is worth looking to trace out how nearly the same historical points of objection are selected and the same lines of inference struck into by the two poets; one aiming straight at present politics, one indirectly at mystic doctrine. "cet homme était de ceux qui n'ont rien de sacré, il ne respectait rien de tout ce qu'on respecte. pour leur inoculer sa doctrine suspecte, il allait ramassant dans les plus méchants lieux des bouviers, des pêcheurs, des drôles bilieux, d'immondes va-nu-pieds n'ayant ni sou ni maille: il faisait son cénacle avec cette canaille. * * * * * l'honnête homme indigné rentrait dans sa maison quand ce jongleur passait avec cette sequelle. * * * * * il traînait à sa suite une espèce de fille. il allait pérorant, ébranlant la famille, et la religion et la société. il sapait la morale et la propriété. * * * * * quant aux prêtres, il les déchirait; bref, il blasphémait. cela dans la rue. il contait toutes ces horreurs-là aux premiers gueux venus, sans cape et sans semelles. il fallait en finir, les lois étaient formelles, on l'a crucifié." [ ] in a briefer and less important fragment of verse blake as earnestly inculcates this faith of his: that all mere virtues and vices were known before christ; of right and wrong plato and cicero, men uninspired, were competent to speak as well as he; but until his advent "the moral virtues in their pride" held rule over the world, and among them as they rode clothed with war and sacrifice, driving souls to hell before them, shone "upon the rivers and the streams" the face of the accuser, holy god of this pharisaic world. then arose christ and said to man "thy sins are all forgiven thee;" and the "moral virtues," in terror lest their reign of war and accusation should now draw to an end, cried out "crucify him," and formed with their own hands the cross and the nails and the spear: and the accuser spoke to them saying:-- "am i not lucifer the great and ye my daughters, in great state, the fruit of my mysterious tree of good and evil and misery?" if, the preacher adds, moral virtue was christianity, christ's pretensions were madness, "and caiaphas and pilate men praiseworthy;" and the lion's den a fitter emblem of heaven than the sheepfold. "the moral christian is the cause of the unbeliever;" and antichrist is incarnate in those who close heaven against sinners "with iron bars in virtuous state and rhadamanthus at the gate." but men have so long allowed the heathen virtues, whose element is war and whose essence retaliation, to "take jesus' and jehovah's name" that the accuser, antichrist and lucifer though he be, is now worshipped by those holy names over all the world: and the era called christian is the era of his reign. for the rest, this new relic has no special merit, although it may be allowed some share of interest as a supplement or illustration to the larger poem or sermon. [ ] the words "female" and "reflex" are synonymous in all blake's writings. what is feminine in its material symbol is derivative in its spiritual significance; "there is no such thing in eternity as a female will;" for in eternity substances lose their shadows, and essence puts off accident. the "frowning babe" of the last stanzas is of course the same or such another as the one whose birth is first spoken of; not the latter female growth born in the earthly house of art, but genius itself, whose likeness is terrible and unlovely at first sight to the run of men, filling them with affright and scandal, with wonder and the repellent sense that a new and strange thing is brought into the world. [ ] it seems not impossible that this series may have been intended, in its complete form, to bear the title of _ideas of good and evil_, which we find loosely attached to the general ms. when the designer broke it up into different sets, this name would naturally have been abandoned. [ ] of blake's prose other samples are extant besides the notes on art published in the second volume of the _life and selections_. these strays are for the most part, as far as i have seen, mere waifs of weed and barren drift. one fragment, not without some grace and thoughtfulness curiously used up and thrown away, is an allegory of "the gods which came from fear," of shame born of the "poisonous seed" of pride, and such things; written much in the manner of those early ossianic studies which dilate and deform the volume of _poetical sketches_: perhaps composed (though properly never composed at all) about the same time. another, a sort of satire on critics and "philosophers," seems to emulate the style of sterne in his intervals of lax and dull writing; in execution it is some depths below the baby stories of little malkin, whose ghost might well have blushed rejection of the authorship. the fragment on _laocoon_ is a mere cento of stray notes on art which reaffirm in a chaotic and spluttering manner blake's theories that the only real prayer is study of art, the only real praise, its practice; that excellence of art, not moral virtue, is the aim and the essence of christianity; and much more of the same sort. these notes, crammed into every blank space and corner of the engraved page, burst out as it were and boil over, disconnected but irrepressible, in a feverish watery style. all really good or even passable prose of blake's seems to be given in the volume of _selections_. [ ] it should not be overlooked that this part of his work was left unfinished, all but untouched, by the author of the _life_. without as long a study and as deep a sympathy as his, it would seem to any follower, however able and zealous, the most toilsome as well as the most sterile part of the task in hand. the fault therefore lies with chance or fate alone. less than i have said above could not here be said; and more need not be. i was bound at starting to register my protest against the contempt and condemnation which these books have incurred, thinking them as i do not unworthy the trouble of commentary; but no word was designed to depreciate the careful and admirable labour which has completed a monument cut short with the life of the sculptor, joined now in death to the dead whom he honoured. [ ] something like this may be found in a passage of werner translated by mr. carlyle, but mixed with much of meaner matter, and debased by a feebleness and a certain spiritual petulance proper to a man so much inferior. the german mystic, though ingenious and laborious, is also tepid, pretentious, insecure; half terrified at his own timid audacities, half choked by the fumes of his own alembic. he labours within a limit, not fixed indeed, but never expansive; narrowing always at one point as it widens at another: his work is weak in the head and the spine; he ventures with half a heart and strikes with half a hand; throughout his myth of phosphorus he goes halting and hinting; not ungracefully, nay with a real sense of beauty, but never like a man braced up for the work requisite; he labours under a dull devotion and a cloudy capacity. above all, he can neither speak nor do well, being no artist or prophet; and so makes but a poor preacher or essayist. the light he shows is thick and weak; blake's light, be it meteor or star, rises with the heat and radiance of fire or the morning. [ ] a word in passing may here be spared to the singular ms. of _tiriel_. this little poem or mythical episode is evidently a growth of the crude ossianic period; in style it is somewhat weak and inadequate to any grave or subtle expression of thought: a few noticeable lines intervene, but the general execution is heavy, faint, and rough even for a sketch. here however (if i am not incorrect in referring it to a date earlier than the earliest of the prophetic books) we may see the dull dawn of a day full of fiery presage, of the light and vapour of tempestuous revelation. the name of tiriel king of the west, father of a rebellious race of children who perish by his curse, hardly reappears once as "thiriel" the cloud-born son of urizen; har and heva, the gentler father and mother of the great eastern family, who in the _song of los_ are seen flying before the windy flames of a broad-blown sunset, chased over asia with fire and sword by the divine tyrant and his tributary kings, are here seen forsaken of their sons in extreme and childish age, but tended by "mutha" their mother; "they are holy and forgiving, filled with loving mercy, forgetting the offences of their most rebellious children." into the story or subject-matter we need not go far; but it is worth notice that the series of twelve designs classified in the catalogue, section b., no. , pp. - of vol. , must evidently (as is there half suggested) be a set of illustrations to this _tiriel_. in one of these any reader will recognize the serpentine hair which at her father's imprecation rose and hissed around the brows of "hela" (_tiriel_, ch. ); but these designs have as evidently fallen out of order; thus the one lettered (_k_) appears to illustrate the very first lines of the poem; and others seem equally misarranged. in this faint allegory of the blind discrowned king with his two brothers, the mad invulnerable giant of the woods and the fettered dotard dwelling in caves, some fresh incomplete symbol is discernible of tyranny and error, of strength made insane or perverse and weakness made cruel or imbecile by oppression of the spirit or the flesh; the "eloquent" outcast oppressor might then be the uninspired intellect, against whose errors and tyrannies its own children revolt, and perish by the curse of their perishing father and mother, blind reason and powerless faith: but from such shallow and sandy soil the conjectural muse of commentary can reap little worth her pains to garner, and at every sweep of her sickle must risk being blinded by the sand blown into her eyes. some stray verses might be gathered up, perhaps worth a place in the gleaner's loose sheaf; such as these: "and aged tiriel stood and said: where does the thunder sleep? where doth he hide his terrible head? and his swift and fiery daughters, where do they shroud their fiery wings and the terrors of their hair?" anything better worth citation than such crude sonorous snatches of lyric style i have not found here, except in chap. vii., where the dying tiriel lays his final curse on har--"weak mistaken father of a lawless race," whose "laws and tiriel's wisdom end together in a curse." here, in words afterwards variously repeated and enlarged, he appeals against the laws of mere animal life, the narrowed senses and material bondage of men upon earth; against unnatural training and abstinence through which "milk is cut off from the weeping mouth with difficulty and pain," when first "the little lids are lifted and the little nostrils opened;" against "hypocrisy, the idiot's wisdom and the wise man's folly," by which men are "compelled to pray repugnant and to handle the immortal spirit" till like tiriel they become as subtle serpents in a paradise which they consume fruit by fruit and flower by flower till at its fall they themselves are left desolate. thus too he inveighs against faith in matter and "respect of persons" under their perishable and finite forms: "can wisdom be put in a silver rod or love in a golden bowl? is the son of a king warmed without wool? or does he cry with a voice of thunder? does he look upon the sun and laugh, or stretch his little hands into the depths of the sea?" much of this has been half erased, probably with a view to remoulding the whole: for here alone does anything in tone or thought recall the nobler mysticism of blake's later writings. [ ] before we dismiss the matter from view, it may be permissible to cast up in a rough and rapid way the sum of blake's teaching in these books, if only because this was also the doctrine or moral of his entire life and life's work. i will therefore, as leave has been given, append a note extracted from a manuscript now before me, which attempts to embody and enforce, if only by dint of pure and simple exposition, the pantheistic evangel here set forth in so strange a fashion. thus at least i read the passage; if misinterpreted, my correspondent has to thank his own laxity of expression. "these poems or essays at prophecy" (he says) "seem to me to represent in an obscure and forcible manner the real naked question to which all theologies and all philosophies must in the end be pared down. strained and filtered clear of extraneous matter, pruned of foreign fruit and artificial foliage, this radical question lies between theism and pantheism. when the battles of the creeds have been all fought out, this battle will remain to fight. i do not see much likelihood on either hand of success or defeat. faith and reason, evidence and report, are alike inadequate to decide the day. this prophet or that prophet, this god or that god, is not here under debate. histories, religions, all things born of rumour or circumstance, accident or change, are out of court; are, for the moment, of necessity set aside. gentile or jew, christian or pagan, eastern or western, can but be equal to us--for the moment. no single figure, no single book, stands out for special judgment or special belief. on the right hand, let us say (employing the old figure of speech), is the theist--the 'man of god,' if you may take his own word for it; the believer in a separate or divisible deity, capable or conceivably capable of existence apart from ours who conceive of it; a conscious and absolute creator. on the left hand is the pantheist; to whom such a creed is mainly incredible and wholly insufficient his creed is or should be much like that of your prophet here;" (i must observe in passing that my correspondent seems so unable to conceive of a comment apart from the text, an exponent who is not an evangelist,--so inclined to confuse the various functions of critic and of disciple, and assume that you must mean to preach or teach whatever doctrine you may have to explain--in a word, so obtuse or perverse on this point that he might be taken for a professional man-of-letters or sworn juryman of the press; but i will hope better things of him, though anonymous;) "and that creed, as i take it, is simply enough expressible in blake's own words, or deducible from them; that 'all deities reside in the human breast'; that except humanity there is no divine thing or person. clearly therefore, in the eyes of a theist, he lies open to the charge of atheism or antitheism. the real difference is perhaps this; god appears to a theist as the root, to a pantheist as the flower of things. it does not follow logically or actually that to this latter all things are alike. for us (he might say), for us, within the boundaries of time and space, evil and good do really exist, and live no empirical life--for a certain time, and within a certain range. 'there is no god unless man can become god.' that is no saying for an atheist. 'there is no man unless the child can become a man'; is that equivalent to a denial of manhood? but if a man is to be born into the world, the mother must abstain from the drugs that produce abortion, the child from strong meats and drinks, the man from poisons. so it is in the spiritual world; tyranny and treachery, indolence and dulness, cannot but impede and impair the immutable law of nature and necessary growth. these and their like must be and must pass away; the eternal body of things must change. as the fanatic abstains through fear of god or of hell, the free-thinker abstains from what he sees or thinks to be evil (_i. e._, adverse or alien to his nature at its best) through respect for what he is and reverence for what he may be. pantheism therefore is no immoral creed, and cannot be, if only because it is based upon faith in nature and rooted in respect for it. by faith in sight it attains to sight through faith. it follows that pure theism is more immediately the contrary of this belief, more unacceptable and more delusive in the eyes of its followers, than any scheme of doctrine or code of revelation. these, as we see by your blake" (again), "the pantheist may seize and recast in the mould of his own faith. but theism, but the naked distinct figure of god, whether or not he assume the nature of man, so long as this is mere assumption and not the essence of his being--the clothes and not the body, the body and not the soul--this is to him incredible, the source of all evil and error. grant such a god his chance of existence, what reason has the theist to suppose or what right to assume his wisdom or his goodness? why this and not that? whence his acceptance and whence his rejection of anything that is? 'shall the clay demand of the potter, why hast thou made me thus?' shall it not? and why? of whom else should a man ask? and if sure of his god, what better should he do? theism is not expansive, but exclusive: and the creeds begotten or misbegotten on this lean body of belief are 'satanic' in the eyes of a pantheist, as his faith is in the eyes of their followers." there is much more, but it were superfluous to mix a narcotic over strong: and in pursuit of his flying "faith" my friend's ideal "pantheist" is apt to become heretical. [ ] that is, woman has become subject to oppression of customs; suffers violence at the hands of marriage laws and other such condemnable things. "emancipation" and the cognate creeds of which later days have heard so much never had a more violent and vehement preacher. not love, not the plucking of the flower, but error, fear, submission to custom and law, is that which "defiles" a woman in the sight of our prophet. [ ] even thus told, the myth is plain enough; a word or two of briefer translation may serve also to light up future allusions. "i plucked leutha's flower," says oothoon in the prelude of this poem, "and i was not ashamed;" the flower that brings forth a child, which nature permits and desires her to gather; leutha is the spirit emblematic of physical pleasure, of sensual impulse and indulgence, from whom comes the "loose bible" of mahomet (_song of los_). but crossing the seas eastward to find her lover, the strong enslaved spirit of europe, she, type of womanhood and freedom, is caught and chained as he by the force of conventional error and tyrannous habit, which makes her seem impure in his eyes; so they sit bound back to back, afraid to love; the eagles that tear her flesh are emblems of her lover's scorn; vainly, a virgin at heart, she appeals to all the fair and fearless face of nature against her rival, the prurient modesty of custom, a virgin in face, a harlot at heart; against unnatural laws of restraint upon youths and maidens, whose inevitable outcome is in the licentious alternative not less unnatural; he will not answer but with vain and vague lamentation, will not turn himself and love her for all her crying: the mystery of things and thoughts, the tyranny of times and laws, is heavy upon them to the end. all forms of life but these are free to be fair and happy: only from east to west the prison-houses are full of the wailing of women. [ ] night, or the darkness of worlds yet undivided and chaotic, is always typified by blake as a "forest" dark with involved and implicated leaf or branch. compare "the tiger." [ ] along this page a serpent of imperious build rears the strong and sinuous length of his dusky glittering body, and spits forth keen undulating fire. [ ] it is possible that blake intended here some grotesque emblematic reference to the riots witnessed by himself, in which lord mansfield's house and mss. were destroyed by fire. at all events, here alone is there any visible allusion to a matter of recent history. [ ] that is, being unable to reconcile qualities, to pass beyond the legal and logical grounds of good and evil into the secret places where they are not. the whole argument hinges on this difference between pantheism, which can, and theism, which cannot, and is therefore no surer or saner than a mere religion based on church or bible, nor less incompetent to include, to expound, to redeem the world. [ ] compare, for the doctrine as to delusion and jealousy being _feminine_ principles (destructive by their weakness, not by their strength), this strange expostulation with god, recalling the tone of earlier prophets:-- "why art thou silent and invisible, father of jealousy? why dost thou hide thyself in clouds from every searching eye? why darkness and obscurity in all thy words and laws, that none dare eat the fruit but from the wily serpent's jaws? or is it because jealousy[a] gives feminine applause?" [a](this word, half rubbed off in the ms., may be "secrecy"; and the point would remain the same.) [ ] leutha, the spirit or guardian goddess of natural pleasure and physical beauty, is sacrificed as a ransom to redeem the spirit or guardian god of prohibitive law or judicial faith; to him she is sacrificed that through her he may be saved. thus, in the _visions of the daughters of albion_, the maiden who "plucks leutha's flower," who trusts and indulges nature, has her "virgin mantle torn in twain by the terrible thunders" of religious and moral law: woman was sacrificed and man "fast bound in misery" during the eighteen centuries--through which the mother goddess lay asleep, to weep over her children at her waking; as in the prophecy of _europe_ time the father and space the mother of men are afflicted and spellbound until the sleep of faith be slept out. there again the emblematic name of leutha recurs in passing. [ ] that is of course the reprobate according to theology, such as the heretical prophet himself: the class of men upon which is laid the burden of the sins of the elect, as satan's upon rintrah in the myth. [ ] this line appears to have been too much for the writer in the _life_, who here breaks his quotation short off by the head, annihilating with a quite ingenious violence at once grammar, sense, and sound. it is but a small nut to have broken his critical tooth upon; the evident meaning being simply this: that within the centre of everything living by animal or vegetative life there is by way of kernel something imperishable; the fleshly or material life of form contains the infinite spiritual life, lurking under leaf or latent under limb: man and flower and beast have each the separate secret of a soul or divisible indestructible spirit (compare even the _songs of innocence_); but while the earthly and fleshly form remains there stand as wardens of the ways the two material giants, strength and force, binding the soul in the body with chains of flesh and sex, the spirit in the petals with bonds of vegetable form, fashioned fastenings of chalice and anther, sprinklings of dusty gold on leaf or pistil; always, without hammer or rivet of vulcanic forging, able to hold fast prometheus in blind bondage to the flesh and form of things; so that except by inspiration there can be no chance of seeing what does exist and work in man or beast or flower; only by vision or by death shall one be brought safe past the watch guarded by the sentinels of material form and bodily life, the crude tributary "afrites" (as in the Æschylean myth) of the governing power which fashions and fetters life in men and things. and thus this, the singing of birds and dancing of flowers, the springing of colour and kindling of music at each day's dawn, is a symbol--"a vision of the lamentation of beulah over ololon"--of the dwellers in that milder and moonlight-coloured world of reflex mortal spirits over the imperishable influences of a higher spiritual world, which descending upon earth must be clothed with material mystery and become subject to sensuous form and likeness in the body of the shadow of death. this glorious passage, almost to be matched for wealth of sound, for growth and gradation of floral and musical splendour, for mastery of imperial colour, even against the great interlude or symphony of flowers in _maud_, was not cast at random into the poem, but has also a "soul" or meaning in it--though the ways of seeing and understanding are somewhat too closely guarded by "og and anak." reading it as an excerpt indeed one need hardly wish to see beyond the form or material figure. that "innumerable dance" of tree and flower and herb is not unfit for comparison with the old [greek: anêrithmon gelasma] of the waves of the sea. [ ] one may fear that some such symbolic stuff as this is really at the root of the admirable poem christened by its editor with the name of _broken love_: which i gravely suspect was meant for insertion in some fresh instalment of prophetic rhapsody by way of complement or sequel to _jerusalem_. the whole tone of it, and especially that of some rejected stanzas, is exactly in the elemental manner of the scenes (where scene is none) between albion, jerusalem, and vala the spectre of jerusalem (books st and nd):-- "thou hast parted from my side-- once thou wast a virgin bride: never shalt thou a true love find-- my spectre follows thee behind. "when my love did first begin, thou didst call that love a sin; secret trembling, night and day, driving all my loves away." these two stanzas (recalling so many other passages where blake has enforced his doctrines as to the fatal tendency of the fears and jealousies, the abstinence and doubt, produced by theoretic virtue and hatched by artificial chastity) stood originally as third and fourth in the poem. they are cancelled in blake's own ms.; but in that ms. the poem ends as follows, in a way (i fear) conclusive as to the justice of my suggestion; i mark them conjecturally, as i suppose the dialogue to stand, by way of helping the reader to some glimpse of the point here and there. "when wilt thou return and view my loves and them to life renew? when wilt thou return and live? when wilt thou pity as i forgive?" "never, never, i return; still for victory i burn. living, thee alone i'll have; and when dead i'll be thy grave. "through the heaven and earth and hell thou shalt never, never quell: i will fly and thou pursue; night and morn the flight renew." (this i take to be the jealous lust of power and exclusive love speaking through the incarnate "female will." see _jerusalem_ again.) "and i, to end thy cruel mocks, annihilate thee on the rocks, and another form create to be subservient to my fate. "till i turn from female love and root up the infernal grove, i shall never worthy be to step into eternity." (this stanza ought probably to be omitted; but i retain it as being carefully numbered for insertion by blake: though he by some evident slip of mind or pen has put it before the preceding one.) "let us agree to give up love and root up the infernal grove, then shall we return and see the worlds of happy eternity. "and throughout all eternity i forgive you, you forgive me; as our dear redeemer said, this the wine and this the bread." that is perfect _jerusalem_ both for style and matter. the struggle of either side for supremacy--the flight and pursuit--the vehemence and perversion--the menace and the persuasion--the separate spectre or incarnation of sex "annihilated on the rocks" of rough law or stony circumstance and necessity--the final vision of an eternity where the jealous divided loves and personal affections "born of shame and pride" shall be destroyed or absorbed in resignation of individual office and quality--all this belongs but too clearly to the huge prophetic roll. few however will be desirous, and none will be wise, to resign for these gigantic shadows of formless and baseless fancy the splendid exposition given by the editor (p. of vol. ii). seen by that new external illumination, though it be none of the author's kindling, his poem stands on firmer feet and is clothed with a nearer light. [ ] in the mythologic scheme, also, los god of time and albion father of the races of men are rival powers; and the "spectre" or satellite deity reproaches his lord with resignation of the world and all its ways and generations (which should have been subject only to the time-spirit) to the guidance of the nations sprung from the patriarch albion (called in biblical records after jewish names, here spoken of by their english or other titles, more or less burlesque and barbaric) who have taken upon themselves to subdue even time himself to this work and divide his spoils. so closely is the bare mythical construction enwound with the symbolic or doctrinal passages which are meant to give it such vitality and such coherence as they may. 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"mr. hotten has published a work which presents the best view of the country yet made public. it will undoubtedly supply a want greatly felt."--_morning post._ "very complete and well digested. a cyclopædia of information concerning the country."--_publisher's circular._ "the author is certainly entitled to considerable _kudos_ for the manner in which he has collected and arranged very scattered materials."--_the press._ "it abounds in interesting and romantic incident, and embodies many graphic pictures of the land we are about to invade. as a handbook for students, travellers, and general readers, it is all that can be desired."--_court journal._ "a book of remarkable construction, and at the present moment, peculiarly useful--very valuable and very interesting."--_morning star._ immediately. new book by the late artemus ward. a genuine unmutilated reprint of the first edition of captain grose's classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue, . only a small number of copies of this very vulgar, but very curious book, have been printed for the collectors of "street words" and colloquialisms, on fine toned paper, half-bound morocco, gilt top, s. in crown vo., pp. , s. d. caricature history of the georges; or, annuals of the house of hanover, from the squibs, the broadsides, the window pictures, lampoons, and pictorial caricatures of the time. by thomas wright, f.s.a. uniform with "history of signboards," and a companion volume to it. a most amusing and instructive work. "the standard work on precious stones." the new edition, prices brought down to the present time.--post vo., cloth extra, full gilt, s. d. diamonds and precious stones; their history, value, and properties, with simple tests for ascertaining their reality. by harry emanuel, f.r.g.s. with numerous illustrations, tinted and plain. "will be acceptable to many readers."--_times._ "an invaluable work for buyers and sellers."--_spectator._ see the _times_ review of three columns. this new edition is greatly superior to the previous one. it gives the latest market value for diamonds and precious stones of every size. cruikshank's famous designs. this day, choicely printed, in small to., price s. german popular stories. collected by the brothers grimm from oral tradition, and translated by edgar taylor. with twenty-two illustrations after the inimitable designs of george cruikshank. both series complete in vol. these are the designs which mr. ruskin has praised so highly, placing them far above all cruikshank's other works of a similar character. so rare had the original book (published in - ) become, that £ or £ per copy was an ordinary price. by the consent of mr. taylor's family a new edition is now issued, under the care and superintendence of the printers who issued the originals forty years ago. the illustrations are considered amongst the most extraordinary examples of successful reproduction that have ever been published. a very few copies on large paper; proofs of plates on _india paper_, price one guinea. the best book on confectionery and desserts. new edition, with plates, post vo., cloth, s. d. gunter's modern confectioner. an entirely new edition of this standard work on the preparation of confectionery and the arrangement of desserts. adapted for private families or large establishments. by william jeanes, chief confectioner at messrs. gunter's (confectioners to her majesty), berkeley square. "all housekeepers should have it."--_daily telegraph._ this work has won for itself the reputation of being the standard english book on the preparation of all kinds of confectionery, and on the arrangement of desserts. gustave dorÉ's special favourites. this day, oblong to., handsome table book, s. d. historical cartoons; or, pictures of the world's history from the first to the nineteenth century. by gustave dorÉ. with admirable letterpress descriptions of the nineteen centuries of european history. a new book of daring and inimitable designs, which will excite considerable attention, and doubtless command a wide circulation. now ready, s. d. history of signboards. a fourth edition. the _times_, in a review of three columns, remarked that the "good things in the book were so numerous as to defy the most wholesale depredation on the part of any reviewer." nearly most curious illustrations on wood are given, showing the various old signs which were formerly hung from taverns and other houses. the frontispiece represents the famous sign of "the man loaded with mischief," in the colours of the original painting said to have been executed by hogarth. in to., half-morocco, neat, s. "large-paper edition" of history of signboards. with seventy-two extra illustrations (not given in the small edition), showing old london in the days when signboards hung from almost every house. in crown vo., handsomely printed, s. d. horace and virgil (the odes and eclogues). translated into english verse. by herbert noyes. the new "special" guide. pages, illustrations, bird's-eye view map, plan, &c. crown vo., price one shilling. hotten's imperial paris guide. issued under the superintendence of mr. charles augustus cole, commissioner to the exhibition of . this guide is entirely new, and contains more facts and anecdotes than any other published. the materials have been collected by a well-known french author, and the work has been revised by mr. cole. a sequel to the "sham squire." new and enlarged edition, crown vo., boards, s. d. ireland before the union. with revelations from the unpublished diary of lord clonmell. by w. j. fitzpatrick, j.p. this day, price s., pages, a visit to king theodore. by a traveller returned from gondar. with a characteristic portrait. a very descriptive and amusing account of the king and his court by mr. henry a. burette. a very useful book. now ready, in folio, half-morocco, cloth sides, s. d. literary scraps, cuttings from newspapers, extracts, miscellanea, &c. a folio scrap-book of columns, formed for the reception of cuttings, &c. with guards. a most useful volume, and one of the cheapest ever sold. the book is sure to be appreciated, and to become popular. a magnificent work. immediately, in crown to., sumptuously printed, £ . lives of the saints. with exquisite to. illuminations, mostly coloured by hand; the letterpress within woodcut borders of beautiful design. the illustrations to this work are far superior to anything of the kind ever published here before. in crown vo., uniform with the "slang dictionary," price s. d. lost beauties of the english language. revived and revivable in england and america. an appeal to authors, poets, clergymen, and public speakers. "ancient words that come from the poetic quarry as sharp as swords." hamilton's _epistle to allan ramsay_. new and genuine book of humour. uniform with artemus ward. crown vo., toned paper, price s. d. mr. sprouts his opinions. readers who found amusement in artemus ward's droll books will have no cause to complain of this humorous production. a costermonger who gets into parliament and becomes one of the most "practical" members, rivalling bernal osborne in his wit and roebuck in his satire, ought to be an amusing person. in vols. crown vo., £ . s. d. melchior gorles. by henry aitchenbie. the new novel, illustrative of "mesmeric influence," or whatever else we may choose to term that strange power which some persons exercise over others, controlling without being seen, ordering in silence, and enslaving or freeing as fancy or will may dictate. "the power of detaching the spirit from the body, of borrowing another's physical courage, returning it at will with (or without) interest, has a humorous audacity of conception about it."--_spectator._ popular memoir of faraday. this day, crown vo., toned paper, portrait, price d. michael faraday. philosopher and christian. by the rev. samuel martin, of westminster. an admirable résumé--designed for popular reading--of this great man's life. now ready, one shilling edition of never caught: personal adventures in twelve successful trips in blockade running. a volume of adventure of thrilling interest. folk-lore, legends, proverbs of iceland. now ready, cheap edition, with map and tinted illustrations, s. d. oxonian in iceland; with icelandic folk-lore and sagas. by the rev. fred. metcalfe, m.a. a very amusing book of travel. mr. edmund ollier's poems. this day, cloth neat, s. poems from the greek mythology, and miscellaneous poems. by edmund ollier. "what he has written is enough, and more than enough, to give him a high rank amongst the most successful cultivators of the english muse."--_globe._ the new riddle book. new edition of "an awfully jolly book for parties." on toned paper, cloth gilt, s. d.; cloth gilt, with illustration in colours by g. doré, s. d. puniana; or, thoughts wise and otherwise. best book of riddles and puns ever formed. with nearly exquisitely fanciful drawings. contains nearly , of the best riddles and , most outrageous puns, and it is believed will prove to be one of the most popular books ever issued. why did du chaillu get so angry when he was chaffed about the gorilla? why? we ask. why is a chrysalis like a hot roll? you will doubtless remark, "because it's the grub that makes the butter fly!" but see "puniana." why is a wide-awake hat so called? because it never had a nap, and never wants one. a reproduction in exact facsimile, letter for letter, of the excessively rare original of shakespeare's famous play, much adoe about nothing. as it hath been sundrie times publikely acted by the right honourable the lord chamberlaine his seruants. written by william shakespeare, . small quarto, on fine toned paper, half bound morocco, roxburghe style, s. d. (original price s. d.) immediately, in crown to., exquisitely printed, £ . s. saint ursula, and the story of the , virgins, now newly told by thomas wright, f.s.a. with twenty-five full-page to. illuminated miniatures from the pictures of cologne. the finest book-paintings of the kind ever published. the artist has just obtained the gold prize at the paris exposition. new edition, with large additions, th thousand, crown vo., cloth, s. d. slang dictionary. with further particulars of beggars' marks. "beggars' marks upon house corners.--on our doorways, and on our house corners and gate-posts, curious chalk marks may occasionally be observed, which, although meaningless to us, are full of suggestion to tramps, beggars, and pedlars. mr. hotten intends giving, in the new edition of his 'slang dictionary'--the fourth--some extra illustrations descriptive of this curious and, it is believed, ancient method of communicating the charitable or ill-natured intentions of house occupants; and he would be obliged by the receipt, at , piccadilly, london, of any facts which might assist his inquiry."--_notes and queries._ uniform with essays written in the "intervals of business." this day, a choice book, on toned paper, s. the collector. essays on books, authors, newspapers, pictures, inns, doctors, holidays, &c. introduction by dr. doran. a charming volume of delightful essays, with exquisitely-engraved vignette of an old-book collector busily engaged at his favourite pursuit of book-hunting. the work is a companion volume to disraeli's "curiosities of literature," and to the more recently published "book-hunter," by mr. john hill burton. "a perfect marvel of cheapness." five of scott's novels, complete, for s., well bound. waverley novels. "toned paper." five choice novels complete for s., cloth extra, pp. this very handsome volume contains unmutilated and author's editions of ivanhoe, old mortality, fortunes of nigel, guy mannering, bride of lammermoor. also, _first series_, fifth thousand, containing waverley, the monastery, rob roy, kenilworth, the pirate. all complete in vol., cloth neat, s. a guide to reading old manuscripts, records, &c. wright's court hand restored; or, student's assistant in reading old deeds, charters, records, &c. half-morocco, s. d. a new edition, corrected, of an invaluable work to all who have occasion to consult old mss., deeds, charters, &c. it contains a series of facsimiles of old mss. from the time of the conqueror, tables of contractions and abbreviations, ancient surnames, &c. old english religious ballads and carols. this day, in small to., with very beautiful floriated borders, in the renaissance style. songs of the nativity. an entirely new collection of old carols, including some never before given in any collection. with music to the more popular. edited by w. h. husk, librarian to the sacred harmonic society. in charmingly appropriate cloth, gilt, and admirably adapted for binding in antique calf or morocco, s. d. a volume which will not be without peculiar interest to lovers of ancient english poetry, and to admirers of our _national sacred music_. the work forms a handsome square vo., and has been printed with beautiful floriated borders by whittingham & wilkins. the carols embrace the joyous and festive songs of the olden time, as well as those sacred melodies which have maintained their popularity from a period long before the reformation. "does for winchester what 'tom brown' did for rugby." this day, crown vo., handsomely printed, s. d., school life at winchester; or, the reminiscences of a winchester junior. by the author of the "log of the water lily." with numerous illustrations, exquisitely coloured after the original drawings. anglican church ornaments. this day, thick vo., with illustrations, price s. english church furniture, ornaments, and decorations, at the period of the reformation. edited by ed. peacock, f.s.a. "very curious as showing what articles of church furniture were in those days considered to be idolatrous or unnecessary. the work, of which only a limited number has been printed, is of the highest interest to those who take part in the present ritual discussion."--_see reviews in the religious journals._ new book by the "english gustave dorÉ."--companion to the "hatchet-throwers." this day, to., illustrations, coloured, s. d.; plain, s. legends of savage life. by james greenwood, the famous author of "a night in a workhouse." with inimitably droll illustrations drawn and coloured by ernest griset, the "english gustave doré." readers who found amusement in the "hatchet-throwers" will not regret any acquaintance they may form with this comical work. the pictures are among the most surprising which have come from this artist's pencil. companion volume to "leech's pictures." this day, oblong to., a handsome volume, half morocco, price s. seymour's sketches. the book of cockney sports, whims, and oddities. nearly highly amusing illustrations. a reissue of the famous pictorial comicalities which were so popular thirty years ago. the volume is admirably adapted for a table-book, and the pictures will doubtless again meet with that popularity which was extended towards them when the artist projected with mr. dickens the famous "pickwick papers." mr. swinburne's new work. this day, in demy vo., pp. , price s. william blake; artist and poet. a critical essay. by algernon charles swinburne. the coloured illustrations to this book have all been prepared, by a careful hand, from the original drawings painted by blake and his wife, and are very different from ordinary book illustrations. recent poetry. mr. swinburne's new poem. this day, fcap. vo. toned paper, cloth, s. d. a song of italy. by algernon charles swinburne. the _athenæum_ remarks of this poem:--"seldom has such a chant been heard, so full of glow, strength, and colour." mr. swinburne's "poems and ballads." _notice.--the publisher begs to inform the very many persons who have inquired after this remarkable work that copies may now be obtained at all booksellers, price s._ mr. swinburne's notes on his poems and on the reviews which have appeared upon them, is now ready, price s. also new and revised editions. atalanta in calydon. by algernon charles swinburne. s. chastelard: a tragedy. by a. c. swinburne. s. rossetti's criticism on swinburne's "poems." s. d. uniform with mr. swinburne's poems. in fcap. vo., price s. walt whitman's poems. (leaves of grass, drum-taps, &c.) selected and edited by william michael rossetti. for twelve years the american poet whitman has been the object of widespread detraction and of concentrated admiration. the admiration continues to gain ground, as evidenced of late by papers in the american _round table_, in the _london review_, in the _fortnightly review_ by mr. m. d. conway, in the _broadway_ by mr. robert buchanan, and in the _chronicle_ by the editor of the selection announced above, as also by the recent publication of whitman's last poem, from advance sheets, in _tinsleys' magazine_. in preparation, small to. elegant. carols of cockayne. by henry s. leigh. [vers de société and humorous pieces descriptive of london life.] with numerous requisite little designs, by alfred concannen. now ready, price s. d. the prometheus bound of Æschylus. translated in the original metres. by c. b. cayley, b.a. now ready, to. s. d., on toned paper, very elegant. bianca: poems and ballads. by edward brennan. now ready, cloth, price s. poems from the greek mythology: and miscellaneous poems. by edmund ollier. in crown vo. toned paper. poems. by p. f. roe. in crown vo. handsomely printed. the idolatress, and other poems. by dr. wills, author of "dramatic scenes," "the disembodied," and of various poetical contributions to _blackwood's magazine_. hotten's authorized only complete editions. this day, on toned paper, price d.; by post, d. hotten's new book of humour. "artemus ward among the fenians." this day, th edition, on tinted paper, bound in cloth, neat, price s. d.; by post, s. d. hotten's "artemus ward: his book." the author's enlarged edition; containing, in addition to the following edition, two extra chapters, entitled "the draft in baldinsville, with mr. ward's private opinion concerning old bachelors," and "mr. w.'s visit to a graffick" (soirée). "we never, not even in the pages of our best humorists, read anything so laughable and so shrewd as we have seen in this book by the mirthful artemus."--_public opinion._ new edition, this day, price s.; by post, s. d. hotten's "artemus ward: his book." a cheap edition, without extra chapters, with portrait of author on paper cover, s. notice.--mr. hotten's edition is the only one published in this country with the sanction of the author. every copy contains a. ward's signature. the _saturday review_ of october st says of mr. hotten's edition: "the author combines the powers of thackeray with those of albert smith. the salt is rubbed in by a native hand--one which has the gift of tickling." this day, crown vo., toned paper, cloth, price s. d.; by post, s. d. hotten's "artemus ward: his travels among the mormons and on the rampage." edited by e. p. hingston, the agent and companion of a. ward whilst "on the rampage." notice.--readers of artemus ward's droll books are informed that an illustrated edition of his travels is now ready, containing numerous comic pictures, representing the different scenes and events in artemus ward's adventures. this day, cheap edition, in neat wrapper, price s. hotten's "artemus ward: his travels among the mormons." the new shilling edition, with ticket of admission to mormon lecture. the choicest humorous poetry of the age. hotten's "biglow papers." by james russell lowell. price s. this edition has been edited, with additional notes explanatory of the persons and subjects mentioned therein, and is the only complete and correct edition published in this country. "the celebrated 'biglow papers.'"--_times._ biglow papers. another edition, with coloured plates by george cruikshank, bound in cloth, neat, price s. d. handsomely printed, square mo., advice to parties about to marry. a series of instructions in jest and earnest. by the hon. hugh rowley, and illustrated with numerous comic designs from his pencil. an extraordinary book. beautifully printed, thick vo., new, half morocco, roxburghe, s. d. hotten's edition of "contes drolatiques" (droll tales collected from the abbeys of loraine). par balzac. with four hundred and twenty-five marvellous, extravagant, and fantastic woodcuts by gustave dorÉ. the most singular designs ever attempted by any artist. this book is a fund of amusement. so crammed is it with pictures that even the contents are adorned with thirty-three illustrations. _direct application must be made to mr. hotten for this work._ the original edition of joe miller's jests. . price s. d. joe miller's jests: or, the wit's vade-mecum; a collection of the most brilliant jests, politest repartees, most elegant bons mots, and most pleasant short stories in the english language. an interesting specimen of remarkable facsimile, vo., half morocco, price s. d. london: printed by t. read, . only a very few copies of this humorous book have been reproduced. this day, handsomely printed on toned paper, price s. d.; cheap edition, s. hotten's "josh billings: his book of sayings;" with introduction by e. p. hingston, companion of artemus ward when on his "travels." for many years past the sayings and comicalities of "josh billings" have been quoted in our newspapers. his humour is of a quieter kind, more aphoristically comic, than the fun and drollery of the "delicious artemus," as charles reade styles the showman. if artemus ward may be called the comic story-teller of his time, "josh" can certainly be dubbed the comic essayist of his day. although promised some time ago, mr. billings' "book" has only just appeared, but it contains all his best and most mirth-provoking articles. this day, in three vols., crown vo., cloth, neat. orpheus c. kerr papers. the original american edition, in three series, complete. three vols., vo., cloth; sells at £ . s. d., now specially offered at s. a most mirth-provoking work. it was first introduced into this country by the english officers who were quartered during the late war on the canadian frontier. they found it one of the drollest pieces of composition they had ever met with, and so brought copies over for the delectation of their friends. orpheus c. kerr [office seeker] papers. first series, edited by e. p. hingston. price s. thackeray and george cruikshank. in small vo., cloth, very neat, price s. d. thackeray's humour. illustrated by the pencil of george cruikshank. twenty-four humorous designs executed by this inimitable artist in the year - , as illustrations to "the fatal boots" and "the diary of barber cox," with letterpress descriptions suggested by the late mr. thackeray. the english gustave dorÉ. this day, in to., handsomely printed, cloth gilt, price s. d.; with plates uncoloured, s. the hatchet-throwers; with thirty-six illustrations, coloured after the inimitably grotesque drawings of ernest griset. comprises the astonishing adventures of three ancient mariners, the brothers brass of bristol, mr. corker, and mungo midge. "a munchausen sort of book. the drawings by m. griset are very powerful and eccentric."--_saturday review._ this day, in crown vo., uniform with "biglow papers," price s. d. wit and humour. by the "autocrat of the breakfast table." a volume of delightfully humorous poems, very similar to the mirthful verses of tom hood. readers will not be disappointed with this work. cheap edition, handsomely printed, price s. vere vereker: a comic story, by thomas hood, with punning illustrations. by william brunton. one of the most amusing volumes which have been published for a long time. for a piece of broad humour, of the highly-sensational kind, it is perhaps the best piece of literary fun by tom hood. immediately, at all the libraries. cent. per cent.: a story written upon a bill stamp. by blanchard jerrold. with numerous coloured illustrations in the style of the late mr. leech's charming designs. a story of "the vampires of london," as they were pithily termed in a recent notorious case, and one of undoubted interest. an entirely new book of delightful fairy tales. now ready, square mo., handsomely printed on toned paper, in cloth, green and gold, price s. d. plain, s. d. coloured (by post d. extra). family fairy tales: or, glimpses of elfland at heatherston hall. edited by cholmondeley pennell, author of "puck on pegasus," &c., adorned with beautiful pictures of "my lord lion," "king uggermugger," and other great folks. this charming volume of original tales has been universally praised by the critical press. pansie: a child story, the last literary effort of nathaniel hawthorne. mo., price d. rip van winkle: and the "story of sleepy hollow." by washington irving. foolscap vo., very neatly printed on toned paper, illustrated cover, d. anecdotes of the green room and stage; or, leaves from an actor's note-book, at home and abroad. by george vandenhoff. post vo., pp. , price s. includes original anecdotes of the keans (father and son), the two kembles, macready, cooke, liston, farren, elliston, braham and his sons, phelps, buckstone, webster, charles matthews, siddons, vestris, helen faucit, mrs. nisbet, miss cushman, miss o'neil, mrs. glover, mrs. charles kean, rachel, ristori, and many other dramatic celebrities. berjean's (p. c.) book of dogs: the varieties of dogs as they are found in old sculptures, pictures, engravings, and books. . half-morocco, the sides richly lettered with gold, s. d. in this very interesting volume are plates, facsimiled from rare old engravings, paintings, sculptures, &c., in which may be traced over varieties of dogs known to the ancients. this day, elegantly printed, pp. , wrapper s., cloth s., post free. carlyle on the choice of books. the inaugural address of thomas carlyle, with memoir, anecdotes, two portraits, and view of his house in chelsea. the "address" is reprinted from _the times_, carefully compared with twelve other reports, and is believed to be the most accurate yet printed. the leader in the _daily telegraph_, april th, largely quotes from the above "memoir." in fcap. vo., cloth, price s. d. beautifully printed. gog and magog; or, the history of the guildhall giants. with some account of the giants which guard english and continental cities. by f. w. fairholt, f.s.a. with illustrations on wood by the author, coloured and plain. the critiques which have appeared upon this amusing little work have been uniformly favourable. the _art journal_ says, in a long article, that it thoroughly explains who these old giants were, the position they occupied in popular mythology, the origin of their names, and a score of other matters, all of much interest in throwing a light upon fabulous portions of our history. now ready, handsomely printed, price s. d. hints on hats; adapted to the heads of the people. by henry melton, of regent street. with curious woodcuts of the various style of hats worn at different periods. anecdotes of eminent and fashionable personages are given, and a fund of interesting information relative to the history of costume and change of tastes may be found scattered through its pages. this day, handsomely bound, pp. , price s. d. history of playing cards: with anecdotes of their use in ancient and modern games, conjuring, fortune-telling, and card-sharping. with sixty curious illustrations on toned paper. skill and sleight-of-hand; gambling and calculation; cartomancy and cheating; old games and gaming-houses; card revels and blind hookey; piquet and vingt-et-un; whist and cribbage; old-fashioned tricks. "a highly-interesting volume."--_morning post._ this day, in vols., vo., very handsomely printed, price s. the household stories of england. popular romances of the west of england; or, the drolls of old cornwall. collected and edited by robert hunt, f.r.s. for an analysis of this important work see printed description, which may be obtained gratis at the publisher's. many of the stories are remarkable for their wild poetic beauty; others surprise us by their quaintness; whilst others, again, show forth a tragic force which can only be associated with those rude ages which existed long before the period of authentic history. mr. george cruikshank has supplied two wonderful pictures as illustrations to the work. one is a portrait of giant bolster, a personage twelve miles high. pp. , handsomely printed, cloth extra, price s. d. holidays with hobgoblins; or, talk of strange things. by dudley costello. with humorous engravings by george cruikshank. amongst the chapters may be enumerated: shaving a ghost; superstitions and traditions; monsters; the ghost of pit pond; the watcher of the dead; the haunted house near hampstead; dragons, griffins, and salamanders; alchemy and gunpowder; mother shipton; bird history; witchcraft and old boguey; crabs; lobsters; the apparition of monsieur bodry. supplementary volume to hone's works. in preparation, thick vo., uniform with "year-book," pp. . hone's scrap book. a supplementary volume to the "every-day book," the "year-book," and the "table-book." from the mss. of the late william hone, with upwards of one hundred and fifty engravings of curious or eccentric objects. barnum's new book. humbugs of the world. by p. t. barnum. pp. . crown vo., cloth extra, s. d. "a most vivacious book, and a very readable one."--_globe._ "the history of old adams and his grisly bears is inimitable."--_athenæum._ "a history of humbugs by the prince of humbugs! what book can be more promising?"--_saturday review._ a keepsake for smokers. this day, mo., beautifully printed from silver-faced type, cloth, very neat, gilt edges, price s. d. smoker's text book. by j. hamer, f.r.s.l. this exquisite little volume comprises the most important passages from the works of eminent men written in favour of the much-abused weed. its compilation was suggested by a remark made by sir bulwer lytton:-- "a pipe is a great comforter, a pleasant soother. the man who smokes thinks like a sage and acts like a samaritan." a few copies have been choicely bound in calf antique and morocco, price s. d. each. a new book by the late mr. thackeray. the student's quarter; or, paris life five-and-twenty years since. by the late william makepeace thackeray. with numerous coloured illustrations after designs made at the time. for these interesting sketches of french literature and art, made immediately after the revolution of , the reading world is indebted to a gentleman in paris, who has carefully preserved the original papers up to the present time. thackeray: the humorist and the man of letters. the story of his life and literary labours. with some particulars of his early career never before made public. by theodore taylor, esq., membre de la société des gens de lettres. price s. d. illustrated with photographic portrait (one of the most characteristic known to have been taken) by ernest edwards, b.a.; view of mr. thackeray's house, built after a favourite design of the great novelist's; facsimile of his handwriting, long noted in london literary circles for its exquisite neatness; and a curious life sketch of his coat of arms, a pen and pencil humorously introduced as the crest, the motto, "nobilitas est sola virtus" (virtue is the sole nobility). this day, neatly printed, price s. d.; by post s. d. mental exertion: its influence on health. by dr. brigham. edited, with additional notes, by dr. arthur leared, physician to the great northern hospital. this is a highly important little book, showing how far we may educate the mind without injuring the body. the recent untimely deaths of admiral fitzroy and mr. prescott, whose minds gave way under excessive mental exertion, fully illustrate the importance of the subject. every housekeeper should possess a copy. now ready, in cloth, price s. d.; by post s. d. the housekeeper's assistant; a collection of the most valuable recipes, carefully written down for future use, by mrs. b---- during her forty years' active service. as much as two guineas has been paid for a copy of this invaluable little work. how to see scotland; 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nor do i find reason to vary it after years of additional deliberation. i have not before dealt with the other propositions now put forward. the notes being voluminous i have relegated them to the end of the book, leaving the feet of the text pages for references only. where foreign works quoted have been translated into english, the english titles are recorded, and foreign quotations are given in english, save in one or two minor instances where the sense could not be precisely rendered in translation. e. g. new york, january, . contents page introduction definitions of "art" and "beauty"--Æsthetic systems--the earliest art--art periods--the grecian and italian developments--national and individual "inspiration"-- powers of imagination and execution--nature of "genius"-- the impressionist movement--sprezzatura--the broad manner-- position in art of rembrandt and velasquez--position of landscape in art. _book i_ chapter i.--classification of the fine arts the arts imitative of nature--classified according to the character of their signs--relative value of form in poetry--scope of the arts in the production of beauty. ii.--law of recognition in the associated arts explanation of the law--its application to poetry--to sculpture--to painting--to fiction. iii.--law of general assent general opinion the test of beauty in the associated arts. iv.--limitations of the associated arts production of beauty in the respective arts--their limitations. v.--degrees of beauty in the painter's art vi.--expression. part .--the ideal vii.--expression. part .--christian ideals the deity--christ--the madonna--madonna and child. viii.--expression. part .--classical ideals ideals of the greeks--use of the ancient divinities by the painter. ix.--expression. part .--general ideals x.--expression. part .--portraiture limitations of the portrait painter--emphasis and addition of qualities in portrait painting--practice of the ancient greeks--dignity--importance of simplicity--some of the great masters--portraiture of women--the english masters--the quality of grace--the necessity for repose. xi.--expression. part .--miscellaneous grief--the smile--the open mouth--contrasts-- representation of death. xii.--landscape limitations of the landscape painter--illusion of opening distance--illusion of motion in landscape-- moonlight scenes--transient conditions. xiii.--still-life xiv.--secondary art paintings of record--scenes from the novel--from the written drama--from the acted drama--humorous subjects--allegorical paintings. xv.--colour _book ii_ introductory.--illusion in the painter's art chapter i.--illusion of relief ii.--illusion of motion with men and animals iii.--illusion of suspension and motion in the air notes index of artists and works of art mentioned in this book general index list of plates page frontispiece.--detail from fragonard's the pursuit (frick collection, new york). this work, which is one of the celebrated grasse series of panels, offers a very fine example of the use of an ideal head in a romantic subject. (see page .) plate .--the earliest great sculptures (a). head from a statue of chefren, a king of the th egyptian dynasty, about b.c. (cairo museum.) (b). head from a fragmentary statuette of babylonia, dating about b.c. (louvre: from spearing's "childhood of art.") the first head is generally regarded as the finest example of egyptian art extant, and certainly there was nothing executed in egypt to equal it during the thirty centuries following the th dynasty. the babylonian head is the best work of chaldean art known to us, though there are some fine fragments remaining from the period of about a thousand years later. it will be observed that the tendency of the art in both examples is towards the aims achieved by the greeks. (see page .) plate .--"le bon dieu d'amiens", in the north porch, amiens cathedral this figure by a french sculptor of the thirteenth century, was considered by ruskin to be the finest ideal of christ in existence. it is another example of the universality of ideals, for the head from the front view might well have been modelled from a grecian work of the late fourth or early third century b.c. (see page .) plate .--after an ancient copy of the cnidian venus of praxiteles. (vatican) it is commonly agreed that this is the finest model in existence after the great work of praxiteles, which itself has long disappeared. the figure as it now stands at the vatican, has the right arm restored, and the hand is made to hold up some metallic drapery with which the legs are covered, the beauty of the form being thus seriously weakened. (see pages _et seq._) plate .--venus anadyomene (a). ancient greek sculpture from the design of venus in the celebrated picture of apelles. (formerly chessa collection, now in new york.) the immense superiority of the sculpture over the painting (plate ), from the point of view of pure art, is visible at a glance. it is an indication of the far-reaching scope of the sculptor when executing ideals. (see page .) plate .--venus anadyomene, from the painting by titian. (bridgewater collection.) compare with the sculpture on plate . (see page ) plate .--venus reposing, by giorgione. (dresden gallery) this is the finest reposing venus in existence in painting. it was the model for the representation of the goddess in repose used by titian, and many other artists who came after him. (see page .) plate .--demeter (a). head from the cnidos marble figure of the fourth century b.c., attributed to scopas. (british museum.) (b). small head in bronze of the third century b.c. (private collection.) in each of these heads the artist has been successful in maintaining the ideal, while indicating a suggestion of the sorrowful resignation with which grecian legend has enveloped the mind picture of demeter. nevertheless, even this slight departure from the established rule tends to lessen the art, though in a very small degree. (see page .) plate .--raphael's sistine madonna (dresden gallery), with the face of the central figure in fragonard's the pursuit substituted for that of the virgin this and the two following plates show very clearly that in striving for an ideal, artists must necessarily arrive at the same general type. (see pages _et seq._) plate .--raphael's virgin of the rose (madrid), with the face of the figure representing profane love in titian's picture substituted for that of the virgin plate .--raphael's holy family (madrid), with the face of luini's salome substituted for that of the virgin plate .--the pursuit, by fragonard. (frick collection, n. y.) a detail from this picture forms the frontispiece. it will be observed that in the complete painting the central figure apparently wears a startled expression, but that this is entirely due to the surroundings and action, is shown by the substitution of the face of the central figure for that of the virgin in the sistine madonna, plate . (see page .) plate .--portrait heads of the greek type, fourth century, b.c. (see page ) (a). head of plato. (copenhagen museum.) (b). term of euripides. (naples museum.) plate .--portrait heads of the time of imperial rome. (see page ) (a). vespasian. (naples museum.) (b). hadrian. (athens museum.) plate .--sacrifice of iphigenia, from a pompeian fresco. (roux ainÉ's herculanum et pompei, vol. iii) this work is presumed to be a copy of the celebrated picture of timanthes, in which the head of agamemnon was hidden because the artist could see no other way of expressing extreme grief without distorting the features. (see pages and .) plate .--all's well, by winslow homer. (boston museum, u. s. a.) an instance where the permanent beauty of a picture is killed by an open mouth. after a few moments' inspection, it will be observed that the mouth appears to be kept open by a wedge. (see page .) plate .--hercules contemplating death, by a. pollaiuolo. (frick collection, new york.) the only known design of this nature which appears to exist in any of the arts. (see pages and .) plate .--arcadian landscape, by claude lorraine. (national gallery, london) a fine illusion of opening distance created by the precise rendering of the aerial perspective. the illusion is of course unobservable in the reproduction owing to its small size and the want of colour. (see page ). plate .--landscape, by hobbema. (met. museum, new york) a fine example of hobbema's work. a strong light is thrown in from the back to enable the artist to multiply his signs for the purpose of deepening the apparent distance. (see page .) plate .--landscape, by jacob ruysdael, (national gallery, london) example of an illusion of movement in flowing water. (see page .) plate .--the storm, by jacob ruysdael. (berlin gallery) exhibiting an excellent illusion of motion, due to the faithful representation of a series of consecutive movements of water as the vessel passes through it. the illusion is practically lost in the reproduction, but the details of design may be observed. (see page .) plate .--the litta madonna, by lionardo da vinci. (hermitage) this is perhaps the best example known of an illusion of relief secured by shading alone. (see page .) plate .--christ on the cross, by van dyck. (antwerp museum) a superb example of relief obtained by the exclusion of accessories. van dyck took the idea from rubens, who borrowed it from titian, this artist improving on antonella da messina. the relief of course is not well observed in the reproduction because of its miniature form. the work is usually regarded as the finest of its kind in existence. (see page .) plate .--patricia, by lydia emmet. (private possession, n. y.) a very excellent example of the plan of securing relief described in book ii, chap. i. here also the relief is not observed in the reproduction, but the original is of life size and provides an illusion as nearly perfect as possible. (see page .) plate .--the creation of adam, by michelangelo. (vatican) instance of the use of an oval form of drapery to assist in presenting an illusion of suspension in the air. (see page .) plate .--the pleiads, by m. schwind. (denner collection.) one of the finest examples of illusion of motion in the air. (see page .) plate .--st. margaret, by raphael. (louvre) perhaps the best example in existence of a painted human figure in action. it will be seen that every part of the body and every fold of the drapery are used to assist in the expression of movement. (see page .) plate .--diana and nymphs pursued by satyrs, by rubens. (prado) a good example of an illusion of motion created by showing a number of persons in different stages of a series of consecutive actions. (see page .) plate .--automedon with the horses of achilles, by h. regnault. (boston museum, u. s. a.) the extraordinary spirit and action of these horses are above the experience of life, but they do not appear to be beyond the bounds of possibility. in any case the action is perfectly appropriate here, as the animals are presumed to be immortal. (see page .) plate .--marble figure of ariadne. (vatican) this work, of the hellenistic period, illustrates the possibility of largely varying the regular proportions of the human figure without injury to the art, by the skilful use of drapery. (see page .) art principles introduction in view of the many varied definitions of "art" which have been put forward in recent times, and the equally diverse hypotheses advanced for the solution of æsthetic problems relating to beauty, it is necessary for one who discusses principles of art, to state what he understands by the terms "art" and "beauty." though having a widely extended general meaning, the term "art" in common parlance applies to the fine arts only, but the term "arts" has reference as well to certain industries which have utility for their primary object. this work considers only the fine arts, and when the writer uses the term "art" or "arts" he refers to one or more of these arts, unless a particular qualification is added. the definition of "art" as applied to the fine arts, upon which he relies, is "the production of beauty for the purpose of giving pleasure," or as it is more precisely put, "the beautiful representation of nature for the purpose of giving disinterested pleasure." this is, broadly, the definition generally accepted, and is certainly the understanding of art which has guided the hands of all the creators of those great works in the various arts before which men have bowed as triumphs of human skill. there has been no satisfactory definition of "beauty," nor can the term be shortly interpreted until there is a general agreement as to what it covers. much of the confusion arising from the contradictory theories of æstheticists in respect of the perception of beauty is apparently due to the want of separate consideration of emotional beauty and beauty of mind, that is to say, the beauty of sensorial effects and beauty of expression respectively.[ ] there are kinds of sensorial beauty which depend for their perception upon immediately preceding sensory experience, or particular coexistent surroundings which are not necessarily permanent, while in other cases a certain beauty may be recognized and subsequently appear to vanish altogether. from this it is obvious that any æsthetic system based upon the existence of an objectivity of beauty must fall to the ground. on the other hand, without an objectivity there can be no system, because in its absence a line of reasoning explaining cause and effect in the perception of beauty, which is open to demonstration, is naturally impossible. nor may we properly speak of a philosophy of art.[ ] we may reasonably consider æsthetics a branch of psychology, but the emotions arising from the recognition of beauty vary only in degree and not in kind, whether the beauty be seen in nature or art. consequently there can be no separate psychological enquiry into the perception of beauty created by art as distinguished from that observable in nature. it must be a natural attraction for the insoluble mysteries of life that has induced so many philosophers during the last two centuries to put forward æsthetic systems. that no two of these systems agree on important points, and that each and every one has crumbled to dust from a touch of the wand of experience administered by a hundred hands, are well-known facts, yet still the systems continue to be calmly presented as if they were valuable contributions to knowledge. each new critic in the domain of philosophy carefully and gravely sets them up, and then carefully and gravely knocks them down.[ ] an excuse for the systems has been here and there offered, that the explanations thereof sometimes include valuable philosophical comments or suggestions. this may be, but students cannot reasonably be expected to sift out a few oats from a bushel of husks, even if the supply be from the bin of a hegel or a schopenhauer. is it too much to suggest that these phantom systems be finally consigned to the grave of oblivion which has yawned for them so long and so conspicuously? bubbles have certain measurements and may brilliantly glow, but they are still bubbles. it is as impossible to build up a system of philosophy upon the perception of beauty, which depends entirely upon physical and physiological laws, as to erect a system of ethics on the law of gravitation, for a feasible connection between superstructure and foundation cannot be presented to the mind. we may further note that a proper apprehension of standards of judgment in art cannot be obtained unless the separate and relative æsthetic values of the two forms of beauty are considered, because the beauty of a work may appear greater at one time than at another, according as it is more or less permanent or fleeting, that is to say, according as the balance of the sensorial and intellectual elements therein is more or less uneven; or if the beauty present be almost entirely emotional, according as the observer may be affected by independent sensorial conditions of time or place. consequent upon these considerations, an endeavour has been made in this work to distinguish between the two forms of beauty in the various arts, and the separate grades thereof. it will be noticed that the writer has adopted the somewhat unusual course of including fiction among the fine arts. why this practice is not commonly followed is hard to determine, but no definition of a fine art has been or can be given which does not cover fiction. in the definition here accepted, the art is clearly included, for the primary object of fiction is the beautiful representation of nature for the purpose of giving disinterested pleasure. * * * * * art is independent of conditions of peoples or countries. its germ is unconnected with civilization, politics, religion, laws, manners, or morals. it may appear like a brilliant flower where the mind of man is an intellectual desert, or refuse to bloom in the busiest hive of human energy. its mother is the imagination, and wherever this has room to expand, there art will grow, though the ground may be nearly sterile, and the bud wither away from want of nourishment. every child is born a potential artist, for he comes into the world with sensorial nerves, and a brain which directs the imagination. the primitive peoples made beautiful things long before they could read or write, and the recognition of harmony of form appears to have been one of the first understandings in life after the primal instincts of self-preservation and the continuation of the species. some of the sketches made by the cave men of france are equal to anything of the kind produced in a thousand years of certain ancient civilizations, commencing countless centuries after the very existence of the cave men had been forgotten; and even if executed now, would be recognized as indicating the possession of considerable talent by the artists. the greatest poem ever written was given birth in a country near which barbaric hordes had recently devastated populous cities, and wrecked a national fabric with which were interwoven centuries of art and culture. that the author of this poem had seen great works of art is certain, or he could not have conceived the shield of achilles, but the laboured sculpture that had fired his imagination, and the legends which had perhaps been the seed of his masterpieces were doubtless buried with his own records beneath the tramp of numberless mercenaries. fortunately here and there the human voice could draw from memory's store, and so the magic of homer was whispered by the dying to the living; but even his time and place are now only vaguely known, and he remains like the waratah on the bleached pasture of some desert fringe--a solitary blaze of scarlet where all else is drear and desolate. strong is the root of art, though frail the flower. stifled in sun-burnt ground ere it can welcome the smile of light; fading with the first blast of air upon its delicate shoots; shrivelling back to dust when the buds are ready to break; or falling in the struggle to spread its branches after its beautiful blossoms have scattered their fragrance around: whatever condition has brought it low, it ever fights again--ever seeks to assure mankind that while it may droop or disappear, its seed, its heart, its life, are imperishable, and surely it will bloom again in all its majesty. sometimes with decades it has run a fitful course; sometimes with centuries; sometimes with millenniums. it has heralded every civilization, but its breath is freedom, and it flourishes and sickens only with liberty. trace its course in the life of every nation, and the track will be found parallel with the line of freedom of thought. a solitary plant may bloom unimpeded far from tyranny's thrall, but the art and soul of a nation live, and throb, and die, together. [illustration: plate (see page ) head of cephren, th egyptian dynasty (_cairo museum_) chaldean head: about b.c. (_louvre_)] egypt, babylon, crete, greece, rome, tell their stories through deathless monuments, and all are alike in that they demonstrate the dependence of art expansion upon freedom of action and opinion. an art rises, develops another and another, and they proceed together on their way. sooner or later comes catastrophe in the shape of crushing tyranny which curbs the mind with slavery, or steel-bound sacerdotal rules which say to the artist "thou shalt go no further," or annihilation of nation and life. what imagination can picture the expansion of art throughout the world had its flight been free since the dawn of history? greece reached the sublime because its mind was unfettered, but twenty or thirty centuries before phidias, egyptian art had arrived at a loftier plane than that on which the highest plastic art of greece was standing but a few decades before the olympian zeus uplifted the souls of men, while whole civilizations with their arts had lived and died, and were practically forgotten. it is to be observed that while in its various isolated developments, art has proceeded from the immature to the mature, there has been no general evolution, as in natural life, but on the other hand there seems to be a limit to its progress. so far as our imagination can divine, no higher reaches in art are attainable than those already achieved. the mind can conceive of nothing higher than the spiritual, and this cannot be represented in art except by means of form; while within the range of human intelligence, no suggestion of spiritual form can rise above the ideals of phidias. of the purely human form, nothing greater than the work of praxiteles and raphael can be pictured on our brains. there may be poets who will rival homer and shakespeare, but it is exceedingly doubtful. in any case we must discard the law of evolution as applicable to the arts, with the one exception of music, which, on account of the special functioning of its signs, must be put into a division by itself.[a] [a] see chap. iii. but although there has been no general progression in art parallel with the growth of the sciences and civilization, there have been, as already indicated, many separate epochs of art cultivation in various countries, sometimes accompanied by the production of immortal works, which epochs in themselves seem to provide examples of restricted evolution.[ ] it is desirable to refer to these art periods, as they are commonly called, for the purpose of removing, if possible, a not uncommon apprehension that they are the result of special conditions operating an æsthetic stimulus, and that similar or related conditions must be present in any country if the flame of art there is to burn high and brightly.[ ] the well-defined periods vary largely both in character and duration, the most important of them--the grecian development and the italian renaissance--covering two or three centuries each, and the others, as the french thirteenth century sculpture expansion, the english literary revival in the sixteenth century,[ ] and the dutch development in painting in the seventeenth, lasting only a few decades. these latter periods can be dispensed with at once because they were each concerned with one art only, and therefore can scarcely have resulted from a general æsthetic stimulus. but the grecian and italian movements applied to all the arts. they represented natural developments from the crude to the advanced, of which all nations produce examples, and were only exceptional in that they reached higher levels in art than were attained by other movements. but there is no evidence to show that they were brought about by special circumstances outside of the arts themselves. while there were national crises preceding the one development, there was no trouble of consequence to herald the other, nor was there any parallel between the conditions of the two peoples during the progress of the movements. a short reference to each development will show that its rise and decline were the outcome of simple matter-of-fact conditions of a more or less accidental nature, uninfluenced by an æsthetic impulse in the sense of inspiration. the most common suggestion advanced to account for the rise in grecian art, is that it was due to the exaltation of the greek mind through the victories of marathon, platæa, and salamis. that a people should be so trampled upon as were the greeks; that their cities should be razed, their country desolated, and their commerce destroyed; that notwithstanding all this they should refuse to give way before enemies outnumbering them twenty, fifty, or even a hundred to one; and that after all they should crush these enemies, was no doubt a great and heroic triumph, likely to exalt the nation and feed the imagination of the people for a long time to come; but that these victories were responsible for the lofty eminence reached by the greek artists, cannot be maintained. from what we know of calamis, myron, and others, it is clear that grecian art was already on its way to the summit reached by phidias when marathon and salamis were fought, though the victories of the greek arms hastened the development for the plain reason that they led to an increased demand for works of art. and the decline in grecian art resulted purely and simply from a lessened demand. though this was the reason for the general decay, there was a special cause for the apparent weakening with the commencement of the fourth century b.c. in the fifth century phidias climbed as high in the accomplishment of ideals as the imagination could soar. he reached the summit of human endeavour. necessarily then, unless another phidias arose, whatever in art came after him would appear to mark a decline. but it is scarcely proper to put the case of phidias forward for comparative purposes. he carried the art of sculpture higher than it is possible for the painter to ascend, and so we should rather use the giants of the fourth century--scopas, praxiteles, lysippus, apelles--as the standards to be compared with the foremost spirits of the italian renaissance--raphael and michelangelo--for each of these groups achieved the human ideal, though failing with the spiritual ideal established by phidias. it must be remembered that all good art means slow work--long thinking, much experiment, tedious attention to detail in plan, and careful execution. meanwhile men have to live, even immortal artists, and rarely indeed does one undertake a work of importance on his own account. it is true that in the greater days of greece the best artists were almost entirely employed by a state, or at least to execute works for public exhibition, and doubtless the payment they received was quite a secondary matter with them, but nevertheless few could practise their art without remuneration. during the fifth and fourth centuries great events were constantly happening in greece, and in consequence there were numberless temples to build and adorn, groves to decorate, men to honour, and monumental tombs to erect. innumerable statues of gods and goddesses were wanted, and we must not forget the wholesale destruction of athenian and other temples and sculptures during the persian invasion. in fact for a century and a half after platæa, there was practically an unlimited demand for works of art, and it was only when the empire of alexander began to crumble away that conditions changed. while greece was weakening rome was growing and her lengthening shadows were approaching the walls of athens. greece could build no more temples when her people were becoming slaves of rome; she could order no more monuments when defeat was the certain end of struggle. and so the decline was brought about, not by want of artists, but through the dearth of orders and the consequent neglect of competition. in the case of the italian renaissance the decadence was not due to the same cause. the art of greece declined gradually in respect of quantity as well as quality, while in italy after the decay in quality set in, art was as nourishing as ever from the point of view of demand. the change in the character of the art was due entirely to raphael's achievements. as with the early greek, nearly the whole of the early italian art was concerned with religion, though in this case there were very few ideals. the numerous ancient gods of greece and rome were long gone, to become only classical heroes with the italians, and their places were taken by twenty or thirty personages from the new testament. incidents from the old testament were sometimes painted, but nearly all the greater work dealt with the life of christ and the saints. the painters of the first century of the renaissance distributed their attention fairly equally among these personages, but as time went on and the art became of a superior order, artists aimed at the highest development of beauty that their imaginations could conceive, and hence the severe beauty that might be shown in a picture of christ or a prominent saint, had commonly to give way to a more earthly perfection of feature and form, which, suggesting an ideal, could only be given to the figure of the virgin. and so the test of the power of an artist came to be instinctively decided by his representation of the madonna. no doubt there were many persons living in the fifteenth century who watched the gradually increasing beauty of the madonna as depicted by the succession of great painters then working, and wondered when and where the summit would be reached--when an artist would appear beyond whose work the imagination could not pass, for there is a limit to human powers. the genius arose in raphael, and when he produced in the last ten or twelve years of his life, madonna after madonna, so far in advance of anything that had hitherto been done, so great in beauty as to leave his fellow artists lost in wonder, so lofty in conception that the term "divine" was applied to him in his lifetime, it was inevitable that a decadence should set in, for so far as the intelligence could see, whatever came after him must be inferior. he did not ascend to the height of phidias, for a pure ideal of spiritual form is beyond the power of the painter,[b] but as with praxiteles he reached a perfect human ideal, and so gained the supreme pinnacle of his art. but while there was an inevitable decadence after him, as after praxiteles, it was, as already indicated, only in the character of the art, for in italy artists generally were as busy for a hundred years after raphael, as during his time. michelangelo, titian, and the other giants who were working when raphael died, kept up the renown of the period for half a century or so, but it seemed impossible for artists who came on the scene after raphael's death, to enter upon an entirely original course. the whole of the new generation seemed to cling to the models put forward by the great urbino painter, save some of the venetians who had a model of their own in titian. [b] see chap. ix. thus it is clear that the rise and decline of the grecian and italian movements were due to well ascertained causes which had nothing to do with a national æsthetic impulse; nor is there evidence of such an impulse connected with other art developments. the suggestion that a nation may be assisted in its art by emotional or psychological influences arising from patriotic exaltation, is only an extension of an opinion commonly held, that the individual artist is subject to similar influences, though due to personal exaltation connected with his art. it is as well to point out that there is only one way to produce a work of art, and that is to combine the exercise of the imagination with skill in execution. the artist conceives an idea and puts it into form. he does nothing more. he can rely upon no extraneous influence. it is suggested that to bring about a supreme accomplishment in art, the imagination must be associated with something outside of our power of control--some impulse which acts upon the brain but is independent of it. this unmeasured force or lever is usually known by the term "inspiration." it is supposed that this force comes to certain persons when they have particular moods upon them, and gives them a great idea which they may use in a painting, a poem, or a musical composition. the suggestion is attractive, but in the long range of historical record there is no evidence that accident, in the shape of inspiration or other psychological lever, has been responsible in the slightest degree for the production of a work of art. the writer of a sublime poem, or the painter of a perfect madonna, uses the same kind of mental and material labour as the man who chisels a lion's head on a chair, or adds a filigree ornament to a bangle. the difference is one of degree only. the poet or painter is gifted with a vivid imagination which he has cultivated by study; and by diligence has acquired superlative facility in execution, which he uses to the best advantage. the work of the furniture carver or jeweller does not require such high powers, and he climbs only a few steps of the ladder whose uppermost rungs have been scaled by the greater artists. if in the course of the five and twenty centuries during which works of high art have been produced, some of them had been executed with the assistance of a psychological impulse directed independently of the will, there would certainly have been references to the phenomenon by the artists concerned, or the very numerous art historians, but without a known exception, all the great artists who have left any record of the cause of their success, or whose views on the subject are to be gained by indirect references, have attributed this success to hard study, or manual industry, or both together. we know little of the opinion of the ancient greeks on the matter, but the few anecdotes we have, indicate that their artists were very practical men indeed, and hardly likely to expect mysterious psychological influences to help them in their work. so with the romans, and it is noticeable that the key to the production of beauty in poetry, in the opinion of virgil and horace, is careful preparation and unlimited revision. this appears to be the view of some modern poets, and if dante, shakespeare, and milton, had experienced visionary inspiration, we should surely have heard of it. fortunately some of the most eminent painters of modern times have expressed themselves definitely upon the point. lionardo observed that the painter arrives at perfection by manual operation; and michelangelo asserted that raphael acquired his excellence by study and application. rubens praised his brushes, by which he meant his acquired facility, as the instruments of his fortune; and nicholas poussin attributed his success to the fact that he neglected nothing, referring of course to his studies. according to his biographers, the triumphs of claude were due to his untiring industry, while reynolds held that nothing is denied to well directed labour. and so with many others down to turner, whose secret according to ruskin, was sincerity and toil. it would seem to be possible for an artist to work himself into a condition of emotional excitement,[ ] either involuntarily when a great thought comes to him, or voluntarily when he seeks ideas wherewith to execute a brilliant conception; and it is comprehensible that when in this condition, which is practically an extreme concentration of his mental energy upon the purpose in hand, images or other æsthetic suggestions suitable for his work may present themselves to his mind. these he might regard as the result of inspiration, but in reality they would be the product of a trained imagination operating under advantageous conditions. nor can any rule be laid down that the character or temperament of an artist influences his work, for if instances can be given in support of such an assertion, at least an equal number may be adduced which directly oppose it. if we might approximately gauge the true characters of fra angelico and michelangelo from a study of their work, it is certain that no imagination could conjure up the actual personalities of perugino and cellini, from an examination of the paintings of the one and the sculptures of the other. what can be said on the subject when assassins of the nature of corenzio and caravaggio painted so many beautiful things, and evil-minded men like ribera and battistello adorned great churches with sacred compositions? if the work of claude appears to harmonize with his character, that of turner does not. "friendless in youth: loveless in manhood; hopeless in death." such was turner according to ruskin, but is there any sign of this in his works? not a trace. if any conclusion as to his character and temperament can be drawn from turner's paintings, it is that he was a gay, light-hearted thinker, with all the optimism and high spirits that come from a delight in beautiful things. the element of mood is unquestionably of importance in the work of an artist, but it is not uncommon to find the character of his designs contrary to his mood. poets, as in the case of hood, or painters as with tassaert, may execute the most lively pieces while in moods verging on despair. with some men adversity quickens the imagination with fancies; with others it benumbs their faculties. the tendency of popular criticism to search for psychological phenomena in paintings, apparently arises largely from the difficulty in comprehending how it is that certain artists of high repute vary their styles of painting after many years of good work, and produce pictures without the striking beauty characterizing their former efforts. sometimes when age is beginning to tell upon them, they broaden their manner considerably, as with rembrandt and others of the seventeenth century, and many recent artists of lesser fame. the critic, very naturally perhaps, is chary of condemning work from the hand of one who has given evidence of consummate skill, and so seeks for hidden beauties in lieu of those to which he has been accustomed. a simple enquiry into the matter will show that the change of style in these cases has a commonplace natural cause. [illustration: plate (see page ) "le bon dieu d'amiens" (_amiens cathedral_)] to be in the front rank an artist must have acquired a vast knowledge of the technique of his art, and have a powerful imagination which has been highly cultivated. but the qualifications must be balanced. commonly when this balance is not present the deficiency is in the imagination, but there are instances where, though the power of execution is supreme, the imagination has so far exceeded all bounds as to render this power of comparatively small practical value. the most conspicuous example of this want of balance is lionardo, who accomplished little though he was scarcely surpassed in execution by raphael or michelangelo. his imagination invariably ran beyond his execution; his ideas were always above the works he completed or partly finished: he saw in fact far beyond anything he could accomplish, and so was never satisfied with the result of his labour. at the same time he was filled with ideas in the sciences, and investigated every branch of knowledge without bringing his conclusions to fruition. during the latter part of his life, michelangelo showed a similar defect in a lesser degree, for his unfinished works of the period exceed in number those he completed. naturally such intellectual giants, whose imaginations cannot be levelled with the highest ability in execution, are few, but the lesser luminaries who fail, or who constantly fail, in carrying out their conceptions, are legion, though they may have absorbed the limit of knowledge which they are capable of acquiring in respect of execution. it is common for a painter to turn out a few masterpieces and nothing else of permanent value. this was the case with numerous italian artists of the seventeenth century, and it is indeed a question whether there is one of them, except perhaps domenichino, whose works have not a considerable range in æsthetic value. there have been still more artists whose powers of execution were far beyond the flights of their imaginations. they include the whole of the seventeenth century dutch school with rembrandt at their head, and the whole of the spanish school of the same period, except el greco, zurbaran, and murillo. when an artist is in the first rank in respect of execution, but is distinctly inferior in imaginative scope, his work in all grades of his art, except the highest, where ideals are possible, seems to have a greater value than it really possesses because we are insensibly cognizant that the accomplishment rises above the idea upon which it is founded. on the other hand his work in the highest plane appears to possess a lower value, because we are surprised that ideals have not been attempted, and that the types of the spiritual and classical personages represented are of the same class of men and women as those exhibited in works dealing with ordinary human occupations or actions. this is why the sacred and classical pictures of rembrandt, vermeer of delft, and the other leading dutch artists, appear to be below their portrait and genre work in power. the course of variation in the work of a great painter follows the relative power of his imagination and his execution. where there is a fair balance between the two, the work of the artist increases in æsthetic value with his age and experience; but when his facility in execution rises above the force of his imagination, then his middle period is invariably the best, his later work showing a gradual depreciation in quality. the reason is obvious. the surety of the hand and eye diminishes more rapidly than the power of the mind, which in fact is commonly enhanced with experience till old age comes on. great artists who rely mostly upon their powers of execution, and exhibit limited fertility in invention, such as rembrandt, have often a manner which is so interwoven with the effects they seek, that they are seldom or never able to avail themselves of the assistance of others in the lesser important parts of their work. a man with the fertile mind of a rubens may gather around him a troupe of artists nearly as good as himself in execution, who will carry out his designs completely save for certain details. thus he is not occupied with laborious toil, and the decreasing accuracy of his handiwork troubles him but little. on the other hand a rembrandt, whose merits lie chiefly in the delicate manipulation of light effects and intricate shades in expression, remains tied to his canvas. he feels intensely the decreasing facility in the use of his brush which necessarily accompanies his advancing years, and his only recourse from a stoppage of work is an alteration in manner involving a reduction of labour and a lessened strain upon the eyesight. with few exceptions the great masterpieces of rembrandt were produced in his middle period. during the last ten or fifteen years of his life he gradually increased his breadth of manner. he was still magnificent in general expression, but the intimate details which produced such glorious effects in the great amsterdam picture, and fifty or more of his single portraits, could not be obtained with hog's hair.[ ] disconnecting then the work of the artist with inspiration or other psychological force, we may now enquire what is mean by "genius," "natural gift," or other term used to explain the power of an artist to produce a great work? it would appear that the answer is closely concerned with the condition of the sensorial nerves at birth, and the precocity or otherwise of the infantile imagination. from the fact that we can cultivate the eye and ear so as to recognize forms of harmony which we could not before perceive, and seeing that the effect of this cultivation is permanent, it follows that exercise must bring about direct changes in the nerves associated with these organs, attuning them so to speak, and enabling them to respond to newer harmonies arising from increased complexity of the signs used.[ ] it is matter of common knowledge that the structure of the sensorial nerves varies largely in different persons at birth, and when a boy at a very early age shows precocious ability in music or drawing, we may properly infer that the condition of his optic or aural nerves is comparatively advanced, that is to say, it is much less rudimentary than that of the average person at the same age; in other words accident has given him a nerve regularity which can only be gained by the average boy after long exercise. the precocious youth has not a nerve structure superior in kind, but it is abnormally developed, and so he is ahead of his confreres in the matter of time, for under equal conditions of study he is sooner able to arrive at a given degree of skill. but early appreciation of complex harmony, and skill in execution, are not enough to produce a great artist, for there must be associated with these things a powerful imagination. while the particular nerves or vessels of the brain with which the imagination is concerned have not been identified, we know by analogy and experience that the exercise of the imagination like that of any other function, is necessary for its development, and according as we allow it to remain in abeyance so we reduce its active value. clearly also, the seat of the imagination at birth is less rudimentary in some persons than in others. from these facts it would appear that when both the sensory nerve structure and the seat of the imagination are advanced at birth, then we have the basis upon which the precocious genius is built up. with such conditions, patient toil and deep study are alone necessary to produce a sublime artist. evidently it is extremely rare for the imagination and nerve structure to be together so advanced naturally, but commonly one is more than rudimentary, and the deficiency in the other is compensated for by study.[ ] of course these observations are general, for there arises the question, to what extent can the senses and imagination be trained? we may well conceive that there is a limit to the development of the sense organs. there must come a period when the optic or aural nerves can be attuned no further; and is the limit equal in all persons? the probability is that it is not. the physical character of the nerves almost certainly varies in different persons, some being able to appreciate more complex harmonies than others, granted the limit of development. this is a point which has to be considered, particularly in the case of music wherein as a rule, the higher the beauty the more complex the combinations of signs. there is a parallel problem to solve in respect of the imagination. we can well believe that there was something abnormal in the imagination of shakespeare, beyond the probability that in his case the physiological system controlling the seat of the imagination was unusually advanced at birth. it is quite certain that with such a man a given training would result in a far greater advance in the functioning capacity of the imagination, than in the vast majority of persons who might commence the training on apparently equal terms; and he would be able to go further--to surpass the point which might be the limit of development with most persons. these questions are of the highest importance, but they cannot be determined. we are acquainted with certain facts relating to the general development of the sense organs, and of the imagination; and in regard to the former we know that there is a limit within comprehensible bounds, but we see only very dimly anything finite in the scope of the imagination. with what other term than "limitless" can we describe the imagination of a shakespeare? but in all cases, whatever the natural conditions at birth, it is clear that hard work is the key to success in art, and though some must work harder than others to arrive at an equal result, it is satisfactory to know that generally carlyle was right when he described "genius" as the transcendent capacity for taking trouble, and we are not surprised that cicero should have come to the conclusion that diligence is a virtue that seems to include all the others. seeing that the conclusions above defined (and some to be later drawn), are not entirely in accord with a large part of modern criticism based upon what are commonly described as new and improved forms of the painter's art, it is necessary to refer to these forms, which are generally comprehended under what is known as impressionism.[c] alas, to the frailty of man must we ascribe the spread of this movement, which has destroyed so many bright young intellects, and is at this moment leading thousands of gentle spirits along the level path which ends in despair. for the real road of art is steep, and difficult, and long. year upon year of patient thought, patient observation, and patient toil, lie ahead of every man who covets a crown of success as a painter. he must seek to accumulate vast stores of knowledge of the human form and its anatomy, of nature in her prolific variety, of linear and aerial perspective, of animals which move on land or through the air, of the laws of colours and their combinations. he must sound the depths of poetry, and sculpture, and architecture; absorb the cream of sacred and profane history; and with all these things and many more, he must saturate his mind with the practical details of his art. every artist whose work the world has learned to admire has done his best to gain this knowledge, and certainly no great design was ever produced by one whose youth and early manhood were not worn with ardent study. for knowledge and experience are the only foundations upon which the imagination can build. every new conception is a rearrangement of known signs, and the imagination is powerless to arrange them appropriately without a thorough comprehension of their character and significance. [c] the varied interpretations of impressionism are referred to elsewhere (see page ). when using the term in this book without qualification, the writer means thereby the subordination of design to colour, which definition covers all the forms of the "new art" without going beyond any of them. this then is the programme of work which must be adopted by any serious aspirant to fame in the art of the painter, and it is perhaps not surprising that the number of artists who survive the ordeal is strictly limited. in any walk of life where years of struggle are necessary for success, how small the proportion of men who persevere to the end; who present a steel wall to misfortune and despair, and with an indomitable will, overcome care, and worry, and fatigue, for year after year, till at last the clouds disappear, and they are able to front the world with an all-powerful shield of radiant knowledge! but unfortunately in the painter's art it is difficult to convince students of the necessity for long and hard study, because there is no definite standard for measuring success or failure which they can grasp without long experience. in industries where knowledge is applied to improvement in appliances, or methods with definite ends, or to the realization of projects having a fixed scope, failure is determined by material results measured commonly by mathematical processes of one kind or another. a man produces a new alloy which he claims will fulfil a certain purpose. it is tested by recognized means: all concerned admit the validity of the test, and there the matter ends. but in the arts, while the relative value of the respective grades is equally capable of demonstration, the test is of a different kind. instead of weights and measures which every man can apply, general experience must be brought in. the individual may be right in his judgment, and commonly is, but he is unable to measure the evidence of his senses by material demonstration, and as he has no means of judging whether his senses are normal, except by comparison, he is liable to doubt his own experience if it clash with that of others. thus, he may find but little beauty in a given picture, and then may read or hear that the work has a high æsthetic value, and without calling to mind the fact that no evidence in the matter is conclusive unless it be based on general experience, he is liable to believe that his own perception is in some way deficient. thus in the arts, and particularly in painting, there is ample scope for the spread of false principles. poetry has an advantage in that the intellect must first be exercised before the simplest pictures are thrown on the brain, so feeble or eccentric verse appeals to very few persons, and seldom has a clientèle, if one may use the word, outside of small coteries of weak thinkers. it is difficult also in sculpture to put forward poor works as of a high order, because this art deals almost entirely with simple human and animal forms in respect of which the knowledge is universal, and so as signs they cannot be varied except in the production of what would be immediately recognized as monstrosities. but in painting an immense variety in kind of beauty may be produced, from a simple colour harmony to the representation of ideal forms involving the highest sensorial and intellectual reaches, and there is ample scope for the misrepresentation of æsthetic effects--for the suggestion that a work yielding a momentary appeal to the senses is superior to a high form of permanent beauty. it is to the ease with which simple forms of ephemeral beauty may be produced in painting that is due the large number of artists who should never have entered upon the profession. nearly every person of average intelligence is capable with a few lessons of producing excellent imitations of natural things in colour, as for instance, flowers, bits of landscape, and so on, and great numbers of young men and women, surprised at the facility with which this work can be done, erroneously suppose that nature has endowed them with special gifts, and so take up the art of painting as a career. hence for every sculptor there are twenty painters. now these youthful aspirants usually start with determination and hope, but although they know the value of studious toil, they rarely comprehend that this toil, long continued, is the only key to success. most of them seem under the impression that inspiration will come to their assistance, and that their genius will enable them to dispense with much of the labour which others, less fortunate, must undertake. they do not understand that all painters, even a raphael, must go through long years of hard application. we need not be surprised that there should be occasional eruptions in art circles tending to the exaltation of the immature at the expense of the superior, or even the sublime, for we have always with us the undiligent man of talent, and the "unrecognized genius." but hitherto, movements of the kind have not been serious, for with one exception they are lost in oblivion, and the exception is little more than a vague memory. that the present movement should have lasted so long is not difficult to understand when we remember the modern advantages for the spread of new sensations--the exhibitions, the unlimited advertising scope, and above all the new criticism, with its extended vocabulary, its original philosophy, and its boundless discoveries as to the psychological and musical qualities of paint. that history is silent as to previous eruptions of the kind before the seventeenth century is a matter of regret. it is unlikely that the greatest of all art epochs experienced an impressionist fever, for one cannot imagine the spread of spurious principles within measurable distance of a state (thebes) which went so far as to prohibit the representation of unbeautiful things. in respect of poetry we know that the greeks stood no nonsense, for did not zoilus suffer an ignominious death for venturing upon childish criticism of homer? in rome eccentric painters certainly found some means to thrive, for where "bohemian" poets gathered, who neglected the barber and the bath, and pretended an æsthetic exclusiveness, there surely would painters of "isms" be found in variety. naturally in the early stages of the renaissance, when patronage of the arts was almost confined to the church, and so went hand in hand with learning, inferior art stood small chance of recognition; and a little later when lorenzo gathered around him the intellectual cream of italy; when the pupils of donatello were spreading the light of his genius; when the patrician beauties of florence were posing for ghirlandaio and his brilliant confrères, and when the minds of lionardo and michelangelo were blooming; who would have dared to talk of the psychological qualities of paint, or suggest the composition of a fresco "symphony"? [illustration: plate (see page ) ancient copy of the cnidian venus of praxiteles (_vatican_)] but another century and more passed away. the blaze of the renaissance had gone down, but the embers were kept alive, for italy still seemed to vibrate with a desire to paint. simultaneously in flanders, in holland, in france, and in england, private citizens appeared to develop a sudden demand for pictures, and quite naturally artists multiplied and fed the flame. outside of italy the hustle and bustle in the art world were novelties to the general public, though pleasant ones withal, and for half a century or more they delighted in the majestic designs of rubens and van dyck, the intimate scenes of the dutch artists, and the delicate landscapes of claude and poussin and their followers, which were continually finding their way from rome. the simplicity of the people protected the arts. they knew the hard labour involved in the production of a picture; the worries, the struggles, the joys of the painters; and daily saw beautiful imitations of every-day life in the shops and markets. they must have been proud of them--insensibly proud of the value of human endeavour. for them the sham and immature had no place: there is not a single example of spurious art of the first three quarters of the seventeenth century that has come down to us from holland or flanders. but while the dutch school was at the height of its fame, a change was marking italian art conditions. the half score of academies scattered through the country were still in a state of activity, carrying on, as far as they could, the traditions of the renaissance: from all parts of europe students were still pouring in, endeavouring to glean the secrets of the immortals; and there was no apparent decrease in the demand for pictures from the religious foundations and private buyers. but the character of the art produced was rapidly declining: the writing on the wall was being done by the hand that wielded the brush. as a necessary consequence the trader was called in and art began to be commercialized. worse still, fashions appeared, guided by successive masters in the various centres, often with an influence quite out of proportion with their merits. by the middle of the century a general fall in activity and enthusiasm was noticeable. the disciples of the roman school, largely through the pernicious influence of bernini, had nearly forgotten the great lessons taught by the followers of raphael, and later by the three carracci, and were fast descending below mediocrity; the florentine school included half a dozen good painters, mostly students of berritini: venice was falling into a stagnation in which she remained till the appearance of longhi and tiepolo and their brethren; bologna was living on the reputation of the carracci, and had yet to recover with the aid of cignani: milan and genoa as separate schools had practically faded away; and the neapolitan school was relying on salvator rosa, though luca giordano was growing into an inexhaustible hive of invention. this was the condition of italian art, while political and other troubles were further complicating the position of artists. for most of them the time was gloomy and the future dark. a few turned to landscape; others extended the practice of copying the early masters for the benefit of foreign capitals, while some sought for novelty in still-life, or in the then newly practised pastel work. but there was a considerable number who would have none of these things; some of them with talent but lacking industry, and others with industry but void of imagination. what were these to do at a time when at the best the outlook was poor? an answer came to this question. a new taste must be cultivated, and for an art that required less study and trouble to produce than the sublime forms with which the renaissance culminated. so whispers went round that raphael was not really so great a master as was supposed, and that with michelangelo he was out of date and did not comprehend the real meaning of art--very similar conclusions with which the modern impressionist movement was heralded.[ ] the discovery was made in rome, but the news expanded to florence and naples, and venice, and behold the result--sprezzatura, or to use the modern word, impressionism, that is to say, the substitution of sketches for finished pictures, though this is not the definition usually given to it. but fortunately for the art of the time the innovation was chiefly confined to coteries. all that could be said or done failed to convince the principal patrons of the period that a half finished work is so beautiful as a completed one, and so the novelties rarely found entrance into great collections, nor were they used to adorn the interiors of public buildings. but a good many of them were executed though they have long ceased to interest anybody. now and again one comes across an example in a sleepy italian village, or in the smaller shops of rome or florence, but it is quickly put aside as a melancholy memento of a disordered period of art when talented painters had to struggle for fame, and the untalented for bread. the cult of sprezzatura faded to a glimmer before the end of the seventeenth century. bernini was dead, and carlo maratta with a few others led the way in re-establishing the health if not the brilliancy and renown of italian art. nor did a recurrence of the movement occur in the next century. during this period there was comparatively little call for art in italy, and at the end of it, when political disturbances made havoc with academies and artists, the principal occupation of italian painters with talent was precisely that of their skilled brethren in holland and flanders--the manufacture of "old" masterpieces. it was reserved for the second half of the nineteenth century for sprezzatura to make its reappearance, and this time italy followed the lead of france. there are many methods and mannerisms which go under the name of impressionism, but they are mostly suggestions in design or experiments in tones which were formerly produced solely as studies to assist artists in executing their complete works, or else eccentricities which are obviously mere camouflage for lack of skill.[ ] sometimes the sketches are slightly amplified with more or less finished signs, and now and then novelties are present in the shape of startling colour effects; but in all cases the impartial observer sees in the pictures only sensorial beauty of a kind which is inevitably short lived, while his understanding is oppressed with the thought, firstly that the picture is probably the result of a want of diligence on the part of the artist, and secondly that its exhibition as a serious work is somewhat of a reflection upon the intelligence of the public. obviously the fundamental basis of impressionism is weak and illogical, for in our conception of nature it invites us to eliminate the understanding. what the impressionist practically says is: "we do not see solid form; we see only flat surface in which objects are distinguished by colours. the artist should reproduce these colours irrespective of the nature of the objects." but the objects are distinguished by our knowledge and experience, and if we are to eliminate these in one art, why not in another? why trouble about carving in the round when we only actually see in the human figure a flat surface defined by colour? there is no scene in nature such as the impressionist paints, nor can such a scene be thrown upon the mind of the painter as a natural scene. except in absolute deserts there are no scenes without many signs which are clearly defined to the eye, and which the artist can paint. he cannot of course produce all the signs in a view, but he can indicate sufficient of them to make a beautiful picture apart from the tones, and there can be no valid æsthetic reason for substituting for these signs vague suggestions of colour infinitely less definite than the signs as they appear in nature. nor is there any such atmosphere in nature as the impressionist usually paints. we do not see blotched outlines of human figures, but the outlines in nature, except at a considerable distance, appear to us clear and decisive though delicately shaded, and not as seen through a veil of steam. nor has any valid reason been advanced for juxtaposing pure colours instead of blending them before use.[ ] why should the eye have to seek a particular distance from a painting in order that the colours might naturally blend, when the artist can himself blend them and present a harmony which is observable at any reasonable distance? we do not carve a statue with blurred and broken edges, and then tell the observer that the outlines will appear correct if he travel a certain distance away before examining them. in giving nearly his whole attention to colour the impressionist limits his art to the feeblest form, and produces a quickly tiring, ephemeral thing, as if unconscious of natural beauty. sylvan glades and fairy dales, where the brooks ripple pleasantly as they moisten the roots of the violet, and gently lave the feet of the lark and the robin; where shady trees bow welcome to the wanderer; where the grassy carpet is sprinkled with flowers, and every bush can tell of lovers' sighs! does the impressionist see these things? offer him the sweetest beauties of nature, and he shows you in return a shake of a kaleidoscope. mountain peaks towering one above the other till their snowy crests sparkle the azure sky; mighty rivers dividing the hills, crumbling the granite cliffs, or thundering their course over impeding rocks; cascades of flowing crystal falling into seething seas of foam and mist; the angry ocean convulsively defying human power with its heaving walls and fearsome caverns! nature in her grandest form: sublime forces which kindle the spirit of man: exhibit them to the impressionist, and he presents to you a flat experiment in the juxtaposition of pure colours! and the majesty of the human form, with its glorious attributes; the noble woman and courageous man; incidents of self-sacrifice; the realms of spiritual beauty, and the great ideals which expand the mind to the bounds of space and lift the soul to heaven! what of these? ask the impressionist, and he knows nothing of them. for his pencil they are but relics of the past, like the bones of the men who immortalized them in art. this is perhaps an overstatement of impressionism as applied to the works of a large number of artists, who although commonly sacrificing form to colour, infuse more or less interest in the human poses and actions which are nominally the subjects of their pictures. but one can only deal generally with such a matter. the evil of impressionism does not lie in the presentation of colour harmonies as beautiful things, for they are unquestionably pleasing, though the beauty is purely sensorial and of an ephemeral character. the mischief arises from the declaration, overt or implied, that these harmonies represent the higher reaches of the painter's art, and that form or design therein is of secondary importance. let something false in thought or activity be propagated in any domain where the trader can make use of it, then surely will the evil grow, each new weed being more rank than its predecessor. impressionism is not a spurious form of art, but seeing that its spurious claims were widely accepted, with substantial results, there soon appeared innumerable other forms inferior to it. there is no necessity to deal here with these forms, with the crude experiments of cézanne, the vagaries of van gogh,[ ] the puerilities of matisse, or the awful sequence of "isms," commencing with "post-impressionism," and ending in the lowest depths of art degradation; but it is proper to point out that so long as impressionism puts forward its extravagant pretensions, these corrupt forms will continue to taint the realm of art to the detriment of both artists and public. the significance of impressionism is alleged by its advocates to be of such considerable import that in the public interest they should have brought forward the most cogent arguments for its support. but we have no such arguments, nor has any logical reason been advanced to offset the obvious practical defects of the innovation, namely, that in the general opinion the art is incomplete and decidedly inferior, and that the leading critics of every country have ignored or directly condemned it as an immature form of art. nevertheless, although there has been no determined attempt to upset the basis of art criticism as this basis has been understood for more than twenty centuries; although the whole of the arguments in support of the various forms of impressionism have failed to indicate any comprehensible basis at all, but have dealt entirely with vague sensorial theories, and psychological suggestions which have no general meaning; although it has never been remotely advanced that the beauty produced by means of impressionism is connected with intellectual activity, as any high form of art must necessarily be: notwithstanding all this, there has been gradually growing up in the public mind, a vague and uncertain signification of the comparative forms of art, which tends to the general confusion of thought amongst the public, and a chaos of ideas in the minds of young artists. the root of these spreading branches of mysticism is to be found in the insistent affirmation that the broad manner of painting is necessary for the production of great work, and that only those old masters who used this manner are worthy of study. it is, as if the advocates of the new departure declare, "if we cannot demonstrate the superiority of our work, we can at least affirm that our methods are the best." where a small minority is persistent in advocating certain views, and the great majority do not trouble about replying thereto, false principles are likely to find considerable area for permeation among the rising generation, who are easily impressed with the appearance of undisputed authority. in the matter we are discussing, the limited authority is particularly likely to be recognized by the inexperienced of those mostly concerned, that is to say, young artists, because it sanctions a method of work which reduces to a minimum the labour involved in arriving at excellence by the regular channels. now the artist is at liberty to use any method of painting in producing his picture providing he presents something beautiful. there is no special virtue in a broad manner, a fine manner, or any other manner, and the public, for whom the artist toils, is not concerned with the point. it is as indifferent to the kind of brushwork used by the painter, as to the variety of chisel handled by the sculptor. the observer of the picture judges it for its beauty, and if it be well painted, then the character of the brushwork is unconsidered. if, however, the brushwork is so broad that the manner of painting protrudes itself upon the observer at first sight, then the work cannot be of a high class. all the paintings which we recognize as great works of art are pictured upon the brain as complete things immediately they are brought within the compass of the eye, and to this rule there is no exception. if, when encompassed by the sight we find that a picture is so broadly painted that we must move backwards to an unknown point before the character of the work can be thoroughly comprehended as a complete whole, then it is distinctly inferior as a work of art, because, being incomprehensible on first inspection, it is necessarily unbeautiful, and the act of converting it into a thing of beauty, by means of a mechanical operation, complicates the picture on the brain and so weakens its æsthetic value.[ ] this is axiomatic. there are proportions and propriety in all the arts, and the good artist is quite aware of the lines to be drawn in respect of the manner he adopts. jan van eyck's picture of arnolfini and his wife, and holbein's ambassadors, both painted in the fine manner, are equally great works of art with titian's portraits; and raphael's portrait of julius ii. (the pitti palace example),[ ] which is in a manner midway between that of holbein and titian, is superior to the work of all other portrait artists. but the most remarkable outcome of the spread of impressionism is not the extravagant use of the broad manner, for vagaries of this sort will always find support among immature minds and undiligent hands, but the establishment of a species of cult connected with certain old masters who are not in the very first rank, and the attempted relegation to the background of public opinion, of the few sublime painters whose colossal genius and superiority are recognized by well balanced minds wherever the breath of man can open the door of his soul. it is unnecessary to enter upon a long enquiry as to the validity of these proceedings, but the new position in which two great masters have been placed can scarcely be ignored. these masters are rembrandt and velasquez, who appear to have been set upon the loftiest of pedestals in order that some of their glory may be shed upon the new varieties of sprezzatura. it has been frequently said that these masters were the first of impressionists, but the connection between their work and impressionism is hard to find.[ ] not only is rembrandt entirely distinct in his manner from velasquez; not only were they both portrait painters primarily, while the great bulk of impressionist work is landscape; but their aims, their ideas, and the whole of their works are as far removed from the new school as the poles are asunder. the work of the two great painters deals almost entirely with expression, that of the impressionists with colour harmonies. in the one case intellectual beauty is sought to accompany the sensorial, in the other the production of beauty which is not purely or almost entirely sensorial, is not even pretended. while these differences are obvious, and while no man of ordinary intelligence is likely to be confused in his mind in respect of them, the fact remains that the movement, which was born with impressionism some forty years ago, to raise rembrandt and velasquez to an elevation in art to which they are not entitled, has met with much success amongst that considerable section of the community which is interested in art and appreciates its value, but suffers from the delusion that special knowledge, which it has not acquired, is necessary for the recognition of high æsthetic merit. no definite propositions have been laid down in support of the movement: there has been no line of reasoning for the critic to handle, nor have the old standards been upset in the slightest degree: the position has been brought about chiefly by a continuous reiteration of vague assertions and mystic declarations, and by the glamour arising from the enormous prices paid by collectors for the works of the masters named, consequent upon the skilful commercial exploitation of this exaggerated approbation. [illustration: plate (see page ) venus anadyomene (_sculpture after the painting of apelles_)] [illustration: plate (see page ) venus anadyomene (_the painting of titian_)] portraiture is necessarily on a lower scale of art than historical painting (using this term in its higher application), firstly because ideals are not possible therein, and secondly in that the imagination of the artist is very restricted. the greatest portrait ever painted is immeasurably below a picture where a beautiful ideal form, with ideal expression is depicted; as far below in fact as the best ancient sculptured busts were inferior to the gods of praxiteles. neither rembrandt nor velasquez was capable of idealization of form, and so neither left behind him a single painted figure to take its place as a type. rembrandt was a master of human expression, and in the representation of character he was perhaps unsurpassed by any painter, but if we analyze the feeling that is at the bottom of the appreciation of his portraits, we find that it largely consists of something apart from admiration of them as things of beauty. there enters into consideration recognition of the extraordinary genius of the artist in presenting character in such a way that the want of corporeal beauty seems to be unfelt. instead of observing that the expression in a countenance harmonizes with the features, we involuntarily notice that the features harmonize perfectly with the expression, which seems in itself to be the picture. of course inasmuch as the expression invariably appeals to the good side of our nature, it means intellectual beauty, but as the depth of any impression of this kind of beauty depends upon the development of the mind, the admiration must, except where the artist presents corporeal beauty, be confined generally to the cultivated section of the community. from the point of view of pure art, his fame as a great painter can only rest upon those of his pictures which are also appreciated for the corporeal beauty exhibited. the extraordinary power of velasquez lay in the sure freedom of his execution, and in this he was equal to titian. he was besides a master of balance, and so every portrait he painted is one complete whole, and has exactly the effect that a portrait should have--to direct the mind of the observer to the subject, and away altogether from the painter. but these high qualities as portrait painters do not place rembrandt and velasquez on a level with raphael, and michelangelo, and correggio. whatever the individual opinion, it is impossible to move aside from the long path of experience and the laws dependent upon natural functions, and so long as the world lasts, a work of ideal beauty, whether it be a madonna by raphael, a prophet by michelangelo, or a symbolical figure by fragonard, will live in general estimation, which is the only test of high beauty, far above portraits from life and scenes of every day labour, however they may be painted. the beauty of the one is eternal and exalting; and of the other, sympathetic and more or less passive. the appreciation of raphael and michelangelo is universal, spontaneous, emphatic; of rembrandt and velasquez, sometimes imperative, but usually deliberative and cultivated. in fact it is only amongst a section of cultivated people, that is to say, a small percentage of the community, that rembrandt and velasquez are given a status which is not, and cannot be, accorded them if we adhere to the natural and time-honoured standards of judgment accepted by the first artists and philosophers known to the world since art emerged from the prehistoric shade. to place these artists above, or on a level with, the italian artists named, is to cast from their pedestals homer, phidias, praxiteles, apelles, shakespeare, dante, and every other admittedly sublime genius in art of whom we have record. another baneful result of impressionism is the attempt to raise landscape to a higher level in art than that to which it is properly entitled. this is perhaps a natural consequence of the elevation of colour at the expense of form, for the movement is based upon new methods of colouring, and the significance of colour is vastly greater in landscape than in any other branch of art. elsewhere the disabilities of the landscape painter are pointed out, and it will be seen that fixed and unalterable restrictions compel an extreme limitation to his work. it is because of these restrictions that the very greatest artists have refrained from paying close attention to this branch of art as a separate department. from indirect records we may presume that landscape painting was well understood in the days of ancient greece, but there is no evidence that it then formed a separate branch of art. in roman times according to pliny, landscape was used for mural decoration. of its character we can only judge from the examples exposed during the excavations at pompeii and herculaneum, which indicate that the pictures had but a topographical interest, or formed settings for the representation of industrial pursuits or classical adventures. certainly there is no instance in greek or roman art recorded or exhibited, of any landscape as we understand it, that is, a work built up as a beautiful representation of nature, to be instantly recognized by the observer as a complete whole, as one sign in fact. the artists of the italian renaissance did not paint landscapes as separate pictures unless by way of study or experiment. they evidently considered landscape signs purely as accessories, and composed their natural views with special reference to figure designs. some of them, particularly the leaders of the venetian school, occasionally painted pictures in which landscape appears to play an important part, but in these cases the landscape is really subsidiary, though essential to the design; and the works cannot be compared in any way with those of claude and others who often added figures to their landscapes in order to comply with the wishes of their patrons. the fifteenth century flemish artists also dealt with landscape purely as background, and so with martin schongauer, dürer, and other early german painters. but all the great painters down to the decline of the renaissance, closely studied landscape, as is evidenced by the numerous sketches still existing, and the finished pictures remaining clearly indicate that by the middle of the sixteenth century artists had little or nothing to learn in landscape art, save the management of complex aerial perspective. since landscape painting was introduced as a separate art towards the end of the sixteenth century, it has only commanded general attention when the higher art of the painter has appeared to decline. in flanders the spurt in landscape due to paul bril was terminated with the last of the breughels by the overpowering splendour of rubens in historical work, and the attempts of even rubens himself to create a greater interest in landscape signally failed. there were some good landscape painters in holland during the flourishing period of the dutch school, but it was only when rembrandt, dow, terburg, and the rest of the bright constellation of figure painters had passed their zenith, or were resting in quiet graves, that landscape painting became in any way general. then it was that hobbema, jacob ruysdael, and their numerous followers, with coast painters like van der cappelle, and sea painters as william van de velde, turned out the many fine works which are now so highly prized. the italians of the seventeenth century were too close to raphael, and michelangelo, and titian, to permit of a landscape being generally received as a great work of art, but there appeared at this time in rome numerous foreigners from france, and flanders, and holland, who were devoted to landscape, and amongst them the greatest genius known in the art--claude lorraine. he was the first to put the sun in the sky on canvas for the purpose of pure landscape; the first to master thoroughly the intricate difficulties of aerial perspective; the first to adorn the earth with fairy castles and dreamy visions of nature, such as we might suppose to have been common in the days of the golden age, ere yet men fought for power, or toiled from morn to eve for daily bread. with his magic wand he skimmed the cream of natural beauty and spread it over the roman campagna, transforming this historic ground into a region of palaces, terraces, cascades, and glorious foliage. at the same time nicholas poussin was also using the campagna for the landscape settings of his classical compositions--such perfect settings that it is impossible to imagine the figures separated from their surroundings. these two artists with their disciples, and many flemish and dutch painters headed by berghem and the two boths, formed a landscape colony of considerable importance, but no italian landscape school was founded from it. in the next century there was little pure landscape in italy. some fine works of topographical, and a few of general interest were produced by canaletto and his followers, and a kind of landscape school was maintained in venice for half a century or more, but elsewhere in italy the cultivation of landscape was spasmodic and feeble. in england and france, landscape as a separate art has only made considerable headway quite recently, though there have been local schools, as the norwich and barbizon, which followed particular methods in design. meanwhile england produced some isolated giants in landscape, as wilson, gainsborough, turner, and constable, turner standing out as the greatest painter of strong sun effects on record. it will be seen that until the last generation or so, in no country has landscape been admitted to high rank as a separate art, universal opinion very properly recognizing that the highest beauty in the handiwork of man is to be found in the representation of the human figure. profound efforts of the imagination are not required in landscape, for it consists of a particular arrangement of inanimate signs which have no direct influence upon the mind, and cannot appeal to the higher faculties. there is no scope therein for lofty conceptions, and consequently the sensorial beauty exhibited must be very high to have more than a quickly passing effect upon the observer. this high beauty is most difficult to obtain, and can only be reached by those who have a supreme knowledge of the technique of their art; who have made a long and close study of natural signs and effects; and who are possessed of uncommon patience and industry. we need not be surprised that scarcely one out of every hundred landscape painters executes a work which lasts a generation, and not one out of a thousand secures a permanent place on the roll of art. the man who does not give his life from his youth up, to his work, concentrating his whole energy upon it, to the exclusion of everything else, will paint only inferior landscapes. the four greatest landscape painters known to us are claude and turner in distance work, and hobbema and jacob ruysdael in near-ground. claude was labouring for twenty-five years before he succeeded in accomplishing a single example of those lovely fairy abodes so forcibly described by goethe as "absolute truth without a sign of reality." turner took more than twenty years to master the secrets of claude; jacob ruysdael spent a quarter of a century in working out to perfection the representation of flowing water, and hobbema passed through more than half of his long life before arriving at his superlative scheme of increasing his available distance by throwing in a powerful sunlight from the back of his trees. and a long list of landscape painters of lesser lustre might be given, who went through from fifteen to thirty years of painstaking labour before executing a single first-class picture. great landscapes of the pure variety are of two kinds, and two kinds only. the highest are those where an illusion of opening distance or other movement is provided, and the second class are where natural scenes of common experience, under common conditions of atmosphere, are faithfully reproduced. the lighter landscapes representing phases, as the sketches of the barbizon school,[ ] with the moonlight scenes, and the thousand and one sentimental colour harmonies unconcerned with human motives, which are turned out with such painful regularity every month, serve their purpose as wall decorations of the moment, but then die and fade from memory like so many of the unfortunate artists who drag their weary way to the grave in the vain struggle for fame by means of them. no landscape of the phase class can be anything more than a simple harmony of tone and design, more ephemeral than the natural phase itself. the quiet harmony is restful for the fatigued eye, and every eye is fatigued every day; and because the eye feels relieved in glancing at the picture, the conclusion arises to the unthinking that it must be a great work of art. glowing eulogies were pronounced upon whistler's nocturne, in the metropolitan museum of new york, when it was first placed there, but is there anything less like a work of beauty than the dark meaningless patch as it is now seen? and the same thing has happened with a thousand other landscapes of the kind--first presented to the tired eyes of business and professional men, and then placed in collections to be surrounded by permanently beautiful works. all these phase pictures must quickly lose their beauty in accordance with natural laws which cannot be varied. let it not be supposed that the writer means to suggest that these simple works should not be executed. they are surely better than no decoration at all in the many homes for which really fine pictures are unavailable, but it is entirely wrong to endeavour to pervert the public judgment by putting them forward as works of high art. and what of the struggling artists? look around in every city and see the numbers of bright young men and women wearing away the bloom of their youth in vain endeavours to climb the heights of art by the easy track of glowing colours! it is the call of fame they think, that leads them along, for they know not the voice of the siren, and see not the gaping precipice which is to shatter their dreams. there is but one sure path to the top of the mountain, but it is drab-coloured, and many are the slippery crags. few of the strongest spirits can climb it, but all may try, and at least they may direct their minds upwards, and keep ever in front of them a vision of the great idealists wandering over the summit through the eternal glow of the fires they lit ere death consecrated their glory. book i chapter i classification of the fine arts the arts imitative of nature--the arts classified according to the character of their signs--poetry not a compound art, primarily--the extent to which the arts may improve upon nature. since art uses natural signs for the purpose of representing nature, it is necessarily mimetic in character.[ ] poetry represents all that the other arts imitate, and in addition, presumed divine actions. specially it imitates human and presumed spiritual actions, with form and expression; expression directly, form indirectly. sculpture imitates human and presumed spiritual form and expression; form directly, expression indirectly. it also represents animal forms, and modifications of natural forms in ornament. painting imitates natural forms and products, and specially human form and expression; form directly, expression indirectly. fiction imitates human actions, and form and expression; expression directly, form indirectly. music imitates natural sounds and combines them and specially represents human emotional effects. architecture is the least imitative of the arts, its freedom in the representation of nature being restricted by the necessity of serving the end of utility. it combines geometrical forms, and in the positions and proportions of these, is compelled to represent what we understand from experience of nature as natural balance. the poet may give to a character sublime attributes far above experience, or expand form as homer raises the stature of strife to the heavens, but he cannot provide attributes beyond experience in kind, or any part of a form outside of nature. he may combine or rearrange, and enlarge or diminish as he will, and so may the painter, the sculptor, or musician, but he is powerless to create signs unknown to nature. it follows then, that he who imitates nature in the most beautiful way, that is to say, he who combines the signs of nature to form the most beautiful whole, produces the greatest work of art. it would appear that upon the character of their principal signs is dependent the relative position of the arts in respect of the recognition of beauty therein. of the six fine arts, namely, poetry, sculpture, painting, fiction, music, and architecture, the first four, which hereafter in this work will be known as the associated arts, have for their principal sign the human figure, to which everything else is subordinate; while in music the signs consist of tones, and in architecture, of lines. all the other arts whose object is to give pleasure, as the drama, dancing, etching, are either modifications of one of the fine arts, or combinations of two or more of them. in recent times it has been held that poetry is a combined art, owing to the almost invariable use of a simple form of music in its construction, but it would appear that primarily poetry is independent of metrical assistance. this was clearly laid down by aristotle, but modern definitions of the art have usually included some reference to metre.[ ] now in our common experience two things are observable in respect of poetry. the first is, that when by way of admiration or criticism, we discuss the works of those poets whom all the world recognizes as the greatest known to us, we deal only with the substance of what is said, and the manner of saying it, without reference to the metrical form. in the second place we observe that the higher the poetry, the more simple is the metrical form with which it is associated. the great epics, which necessarily take first rank in poetry, have only metre, the higher musical measures in which lyrics are set being avoided. but as we descend in the scale of the art, metrical form becomes of more importance, and when simple subjects are dealt with, and a grand style is inappropriate, the production would not be called poetry unless in the form of verse. [illustration: plate (see page ) the reposing venus of giorgione (_dresden gallery_)] in epic and dramatic poetry, we call one poet greater than another because of his superior invention and beauty of expression, let the measure be what it will. but the invention comes first, for only high invention can be clothed with lofty expression. the actions of deathless gods or god-like men; qualities of goodness, nobility, courage, grandeur, so high as to be above human reach: only these can form the subject of language and sentiment soaring into regions of the sublime, and indifferent to metrical artifice. in the sacred books of all great religions we may find the loftiest poetry without regular form, and any prose translation of the greek poets will provide many examples,[ ] though often there is a cadence--a rise and fall in the flow of words which is more or less regular, and has the effect of emphasizing the sentiment, and of throwing the images upon the mind with directness and force. we must conclude then that in poetry, while metrical form is generally essential, it is not vital to the highest flights of the poet, and so strictly, poetry is primarily a pure and not a compound art. seeing that art uses the signs of nature of which man is at once a product and a tool, it must in its progress follow the general course of nature. in her development of life, nature is chiefly concerned in the improvements of types for her own purposes, and only uses the individual in so far as he can assist in this end, while the natural instinct of the individual is to conserve and improve his type. the art which represents life is compelled to deal chiefly with types, for it is only by the use of a type that the artist can apply his imagination to the production of high beauty, to whatever extent he may use the individual to help him in this purpose, and it is instinctive in the human being to maintain and improve the æsthetic attraction of the species. the highest art, as the highest work of nature, consists of the presentation of a perfected type. the artist therefore must consider the species before the individual; the essential before the accidental; the general before the particular. the living signs of nature with which art deals are of two classes. in the one sign the position of parts is the same throughout the species, and is fixed and invariable, as in fully developed animals; in the other the position is irregular, and variable within limits, as in plants. in the latter case the position of parts may be commonly varied indefinitely without a sense of incongruity arising, as in a tree, and hence there can be no conceivable general form or type upon which art may build up perfected parts and proportions. in respect of such a sign therefore, art cannot improve, or appear to improve, upon nature, by combining perfected parts into a more beautiful whole than nature provides. in the case of a fully developed animal, where the position of parts is fixed, a type may be conceived which is superior in symmetry and harmony to any individual of the species produced by nature, for the imagination is restricted to an unchangeable form, and has but to put together perfected parts and proportions. but this conception can only be applied in art to human beings, because in respect of other animals, while no two are alike, the members of each species, or each section of a species, seem to be alike, or so closely alike in form and expression, that no perfected type can be conceived which will appear to be superior in general beauty to the normal individual of the species, or section thereof, coming within actual experience. thus, the most perfect conceivable racehorse painted on canvas, might in reality be more perfect in form than any actual racehorse, but to the observer of the picture it would not appear to be of greater perfection or higher beauty than racehorses that come, or may come, within experience. the poet may describe the actions and appearance of a courser in such a way as to suggest that the animal has qualities far above experience, but the form of the animal when thrown on the mind of the reader, would still appear to be within the bounds of experience. with the human being, in addition to the general form there enters into consideration the countenance, which is the all-important seat of beauty, is the principal key to expression, and which, to the common knowledge, differs in every person in character and proportions. nature never produces a perfect form with a perfect countenance, and she actually refuses to provide a countenance which is free from elements connected with purely human instincts and passions. but it is within the power of art to correct the work of nature in these respects--to put together perfect parts, and to provide a general expression approaching our highest conceptions of human majesty. homer, phidias, and raphael have enabled us to throw upon our minds images far above any of actual experience. apart from these ideal forms, nature cannot be surpassed by art in the production of beauty, either in respect of animate or inanimate signs, separately or collectively, the latter because within the limitations of art, there is no grouping or arrangement of signs possible which would not appear to correspond with what may be observed in nature, unless something abnormal and less beautiful than any natural combination be presented. poetry, painting, and sculpture may be concerned with ideals. in fiction an ideal is impossible because the writer must treat of life as it is, or as it appears to be, within the bounds of experience. in neither music nor architecture is there a basic sign or combination of signs upon which the imagination may build up an ideal. chapter ii law of recognition in the associated arts explanation of the law--its application to poetry--to sculpture--to painting--to fiction. while we are unable to explain, logically and completely, our appreciation of what we understand as beauty, experience has taught us that there are certain phenomena connected with æsthetic perception which are so regular and undeviating in their application as to have all the force of law. the first and most important of these phenomena relates to the interval of time elapsing between the sense perception of a thing of art, and the recognition by the mind of the beauty therein. we know from common experience of the associated arts that if one fails to appreciate a work almost immediately after comprehending its nature and purport, he arrives at the conclusion that there is no beauty therein, or at least that the beauty is so obscure as to be scarcely worth consideration. but sometimes on further acquaintance with the work the view of the observer may be changed, and he may become aware of a certain beauty which he did not before appreciate. we notice also that when the beauty is comparatively high, it is more rapidly recognized than when it is comparatively low. continuing the examination we arrive at what is evidently an unalterable law, namely, that the higher the æsthetic value in a particular sphere of art, the more rapidly is the beauty therein recognized; that is to say, given any two works, other things being equal, that is the higher art the beauty in which is the more quickly conveyed to the mind of the observer after contact with it, and precisely to the extent to which the reasoning powers are required to be exercised in comprehending the work, so the beauty therein is diminished. the law may be called for convenience the law of recognition. but there are different kinds of beauty as well as degrees. one kind may be more quickly recognized, and yet make a weaker impression on the mind, a condition which is due to the varying relations between the sensorial and intellectual elements in the works. we note that in all the associated arts, as the works therein descend in æsthetic value, the emotional element becomes more evident, and consequently the impression received, less permanent. but sensorial beauty is the first essential in a work of art: hence while the direct appeal to the mind must be made as strong as possible, this must not be done at the expense of the emotional elements. we unconsciously measure the emotional with the intellectual effect, and if the former does not at least equal the latter, we reject the work as inferior art. a painted madonna wanting in beauty of features is instantly and properly condemned even if her figure be enshrined within surroundings of saintly glories which in themselves make a powerful appeal to the mind. in fact the highest reaches in art were probably originally suggested by the necessity of balancing the one with the other form of beauty. the highest intellectual considerations seem to rise far above any emotional experiences connected with ordinary life, and hence to enable these considerations to enter the domain of art, the divine must be introduced so that the artist may extend his imaginative scope for the provision of emotional effects commensurate, as far as possible, with the importance of his appeal to the mind. hence in all arts which combine an intellectual with an emotional appeal, the highest forms must ever be connected with the spiritual. in other grades of these arts also, the artist has to use special means to maintain a due balance between the two kinds of beauty. shakespeare could not give men and women of every-day experience the wisdom, the judgment, and the foresight necessary for the presentation of the powerful pictures which some of his characters throw upon the mind, so he raises them above the level of life by according them greater virtues and nobler passions than are to be found in people of actual experience. the supreme emotional effects he produces seem perfectly appropriate therefore to the intellectual appeals. in the next lower form of art, where the representation does not go beyond life experience, the emotional appeal is of still greater relative importance because the appeal to the mind is rarely striking. the emotional effect here may indeed be so overpowering that the purely mental considerations are lost sight of, and we observe that in all the greater works of art in the division, whether of poetry, painting, sculpture, or fiction, the intellectual appeal is vastly exceeded by the emotional. when we reach the grade which deals with subjects inferior to the average level of human life, as the representation of animals, landscape, humour, still-life, the sensorial effect must be exceedingly strong relatively, otherwise the art would scarcely be recognizable, the appeal to the mind being necessarily weak. it is clearly compulsory then that the associated arts, all of which may appeal to the mind as well as to the senses, should be separated into divisions for the purpose of applying the law of recognition, and these divisions are obvious, for they are marked by the strongest natural boundary lines. they are: . the art which deals with divinities. . that which exhibits beauty above life experience, but does not reach the divine. . that which represents life. . that which produces representations inferior to life. this separation corresponds with that applied by aristotle to poetry and painting, except that he joined the two first sections into one, which he described as better than life. but the division of the great philosopher, while being sufficient for his purpose, is hardly close enough for the full consideration of the kinds of beauty, since it puts in the same class, representations of the divinity and the superman--joins homer and phidias with praxiteles and raphael. in dealing with the divine the artist need place no limit to his imagination in the presentation of his picture, whereas with the superman he must circumscribe his fancy within the limits of what may appear to the senses to be possibly natural. it is true that the poet may use the supernatural as distinguished from the divine, to enable him to extend his imaginative scope, and so give us beautiful pictures which would be otherwise unpresentable. shakespeare makes us imagine puck encircling the earth in forty minutes, and shelley shows us iron-winged beings climbing the wind, but we immediately recognize these pictures as figures of fancy, or as in the nature of allegory, and they do not impress us so deeply as the miraculous flight of a goddess of homer, or an assemblage of the satellites of satan in the hell of milton, for we involuntarily regard these events as compatible with the religious faith of great nations, and so as having a nearer apparent semblance of truth. sacred art therefore, being capable of providing beauty of a much higher kind than any other form, should be placed in a separate section for the purpose of considering the law under discussion. only poetry among the arts is capable of appropriately representing divine actions, and only sculpture of producing a form so perfect as to bring a divinity to mind. hence these arts are alone concerned with the law of recognition as applied to the first section of the associated arts. the law applies to all the associated arts, and to all sections of them, except the lowest form of painting--that represented by harmony of colour without appeal to the mind of any kind--but this form is so weak and exceptional that it need hardly be considered in the general proposition. indeed we might reasonably argue that it does not come within the fine arts, as it is produced by a mechanical arrangement of things with fixed and unalterable physical properties. the law cannot apply to music and architecture, for the effects of these are purely emotional, and so directly vary with conditions of time and place respectively. a work of architecture may seem more beautiful in one place than in another; and a work of music more or less beautiful according as it more or less synchronizes with emotional conditions of human activity surrounding the hearer at the time of the performance. while this law is unvarying in the associated arts, there are artificial restrictions which must be considered in order that apparent deviations from it may be understood. special restrictions in relation to the higher poetry and sculpture are mentioned later on, but there is also an important general restriction. the sense nerves and the imagination, like all other functions, must be exercised in order that normal healthy conditions may be retained; but a large section of the people, by force of circumstances or want of will, have neglected this exercise, and so through disuse or misuse these functions are often in a condition which is little more than rudimentary. hence such persons are practically debarred from appreciation of many forms of art, and particularly those wherein intellectual beauty is a marked feature. in discussing the operation of this law amongst people in general therefore, the writer must be understood to refer only to that section of the community whose sense nerves and imaginations may be supposed to be in a healthy, active condition. experience with all the associated arts has clearly demonstrated the validity of this law. the strength of the devices used by the poet lies in simplifying the presentation of his pictures. metaphor is necessary to the poet, for without it he would be powerless to present pictures made up of a number of parts, but he also uses it for the purpose of throwing simple images upon the mind more rapidly, and consequently more forcibly, than would be possible if direct means were employed; and the beauty of the metaphor appears the greater according as it more completely fills in the picture which the poet is desirous of presenting. when other artifices than metaphor or simile are applied, the result only appears very beautiful when the condensation of the language used is extreme, and when there is no break in the delineation of the action. a few supreme examples of beauty derived from the principal devices of the poet for presenting his pictures may be instanced, and it will be found that in each case the power of the image is directly due to the brevity of expression, the simplicity of description and metaphor, or the unimpeded representation of action. more than three thousand years have passed since the period assigned to helen of troy, and yet each generation of men and women as they learn of her, have deeply sealed upon their minds the impression that she was of surpassing beauty, almost beyond the reach of human conception. we have practically no details of her appearance from homer or hesiod, except that she was neat-ankled, white-armed, rich-haired, and had the sparkling eyes of the graces, but already in the time of hesiod her renown "spread over the earth." what was it then that established the eternal fame of her beauty? simply a few words of homer indicating the startling effect of her appearance before the elders of troy. we are allowed to infer that these dry, shrunken-formed sages, shrill-voiced with age, became passionately disturbed by a mere glance at her figure, and nervously agreed with each other that little blame attached to the greeks and trojans for suffering such long and severe hardships on account of her, for only with the goddesses could she be compared. how wondrous must be the beauty when a glimpse of it suffices to hasten the blood through shrivelled veins, and provoke tempestuous currents to awake atrophied nerves! without the record of this incident, the vague notices of helen's appearance would be very far from sufficient to account for the universal recognition of her marvellous beauty.[ ] [illustration: plate (see page ) greek sculpture, th century b.c. attributed to scopas greek bronze, d century b.c. heads of demeter] one of the finest lines of shakespeare is, "how sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank." the beauty of the line rests entirely upon the use of the word "sleeps" to express something which could not be otherwise said without the use of many words. the moonbeam is apparently perfectly still, the atmosphere calm, and there is nothing in the surroundings to disturb the natural tranquillity, these conditions inducing a feeling of softness and rest in the observer. if it had been necessary to say all this, shakespeare would certainly have omitted reference to the moonlight, but his powerful imagination brings to mind the word "sleeps" to express the conditions, and we are overwhelmed with a beautiful picture suddenly thrown on the brain as if by a brilliant flash of light. among the many illustrations of the point which may be found in the bible, is the great passage, "and god said, 'let there be light,' and there was light." this is described by longinus as nobly expressed, but he does not suggest any cause for its æsthetic effect. it is true that nothing could be finer, but the nobility of the expression is derived from its brevity--from the extreme rapidity with which so vast and potent an event as an act of creation is pictured on the brain.[ ] a description of an act of creation, although involving psychological considerations of sublimity, is not necessarily so beautiful in expression as to be a work of art. in the case of lyric poetry, brevity of expression, though still of high importance, is not of so much moment as in epic or dramatic verse, because the substance is subordinated to beauty of expression and musical form. devices are used chiefly for strengthening the sensorial element, the appeal to the mind being in most cases secondary. nevertheless the lyric poet wastes no words. take for example sappho's _ode to anactoria_. the substance of these amazing lines is comparatively insignificant, being merely the expression of emotion on the part of an individual consequent upon disappointment, yet the transcendent beauty of the poem has held enthralled fourscore generations of men and women, and still the world gasps with astonishment at its perfection. obviously the beauty of the ode rests mainly on qualities of form which cannot be reproduced in translation, but the substance may be, and it will be observed that the description of the action is unsurpassable. the picture, the whole picture, and nothing but the picture, is thrown on the mind rapidly and directly; so rapidly that the movement of the brush is scarcely discernible, and so simply that not a thought is required for its elucidation. with the chain of symptoms broken or less closely connected, the passion indicated would be comparatively feeble, whatever the force of the artifices in rhythm and expression which sappho knew so well how to employ.[ ] as with poetry, so with the arts of sculpture and painting: the greatest works result from simple designs. all the sculptures which we recognize as sublime or highly beautiful, consist of single figures, or in very rare cases, groups of two or three, and indeed it is difficult to hold in our minds a carved group of several figures. the images of the zeus and athena of phidias, though we know little of them except from literary records and inferior copies, are far more brilliantly mirrored upon our minds than the parthenon reliefs. the importance of simplicity is perhaps more readily seen in sculpture than in any other art, for the slightest fault in design has an immediate effect upon the mind of the observer. it is noticeable that the decadence of a great art period is usually first marked by complications in sculptured figures.[ ] in painting, the pictures which we regard as great are characterized by their simplicity, and the immediate recognition of their purport. they are either ideal figures, or groups where at least the central figure is idealized and commonly known. the work must be grasped at one glance for the beauty to be of a high order. hence in the case of frescoes great artists have not attempted to make the beauty of any part dependent upon the comprehension of the whole. it is impossible for the eye to take in at a single glance the whole of a large fresco painting, and this explains why a fresco celebrated for its beauty is often disappointing to one who sees it for the first time, and endeavours to impress it on his mind as a single picture by rapidly piecing together the different parts.[ ] polygnotus could well paint forty scenes from homer as mural decoration in one hall, for they could only be examined and understood as separate pictures; and the ceiling of michelangelo at the vatican is so arranged that there is no necessity for combining the parts in the mind. so with the parma frescoes of correggio. raphael had a different task in his vatican frescoes, but he accomplished it by arranging his figures so that each separate group is a beautiful picture; and lionardo in his great work at milan divided the apostles into groups of three in order to minimize the consideration necessary for the appreciation of so large a work. fiction is divided into two sections, the novel and the short story, and they are so distinct in character that they must necessarily be considered separately in the application of the law under discussion. form is of high importance in both classes of the art, but weighs more in the short story because here the appeal to the mind is unavoidably restricted. the novelist is capable of producing a higher beauty than is within the range of the short-story writer. the latter is limited in his delineation of character to the circumstances surrounding a single experience, while the novelist, in describing various experiences, may add shade upon shade in expression and thus elevate the characters and actions above the level possible of attainment by means of a single incident. but within his limit the short-story writer may provide his beauty more easily than the novelist, because a picture can be more readily freed from complications when away from surroundings, than when it forms one of a series of pictures which must have connecting links. a good short story consists of a single incident or experience in a life history. it is clearly cut, without introduction, and void of a conclusion which is not directly part of the incident. the subject is of general interest; the language simple, of common use, and free from mannerisms; while there are no accessories beyond those essential for the comprehension of the scheme. these conditions, which imply the most extreme simplicity, are present in all the greatest short stories known to us--the best works of the author of the _contes nouvelles_, of sacchetti, boccaccio, margaret of navarre, hoffman, poe, and de maupassant. the novel differs from the short story in that it is a large section of a life with many experiences, but the principles under which the two varieties of fiction are built up, are precisely the same. obviously the limit in length of a novel is that point beyond which the writer cannot enhance the beauty of character and action, while maintaining the unity of design. this means the concentration of effort in the direction of simplicity, facilitating the rapid reception of the pictures presented by the writer upon the mind of the reader. it is thus evident that the higher the beauty in the associated arts, the simpler are the signs or sign combinations which produce it; and hence the law of recognition rests on a secure foundation, for the simple must necessarily be recognized before the complex. chapter iii law of general assent general opinion the test of beauty in the associated arts. the first aim of art is sensorial beauty, because sensorial experience must precede the impression of beauty upon the mind. the extent to which something appears to be sensorially harmonious depends upon the condition or character of the nerves conveying the impression of it to the brain. we know from experience that exercise of these nerves results in the removal or partial removal of natural irregularities therein, and enables a complex form of beauty to be recognized which was not before perceived. the vast majority of the people have not cultivated their sense nerves except involuntarily, and consequently can only recognize more or less simple beauty: thus, as the sign combinations become more complicated, so is diminished the number of persons capable of appreciating the beauty thereof. the highest form of beauty conceivable to the imagination is that of the human being, because here corporeal and intellectual beauty may be combined. this is universally admitted and has been so since the first records of mental activity. the human figure must be regarded as a single sign since the relation of its parts to each other is fixed and invariable; and further it is the simplest, because of all signs none is so quickly recognized by the rudimentary understanding. in the associated arts therefore, the highest beauty is to be found in the simplest sign, and this is the one supremely important sign in these arts, for without it only the lowest forms may be produced. from all this we determine that the higher the beauty in a work of the associated arts, the larger is the number of persons capable of recognizing it; so that if we say that something in these arts is beautiful because it pleases, we imply that it is still more beautiful if we say that it generally pleases, and the highest of all standards of beauty is involved in the interpretation of longinus: "that is sublime and beautiful which always pleases, and takes equally with all sorts of men." thus, in the associated arts, the general opinion as to the æsthetic value of a work of high art is both demonstration and law.[ ] in music the significance of the signs is inverted compared with the progression in the associated arts, for while in the latter the highest form of beauty is produced by the simplest of single signs, in music the higher forms are the result of complex combinations of signs. the greatest musical compositions consist of an immense variety of signs arranged in a hitherto unknown order. thus, while the immature or uncultivated mind recognizes the higher forms of beauty before the lower in the associated arts, it first recognizes the lower forms in music. in the associated arts therefore, cultivation results in the further appreciation of the forms of art as they descend, and in music as they ascend. in painting, the most uncultivated persons, even those who have never exercised their organs of sight except involuntarily, will always admire the higher forms before the lower.[ ] they will more highly appreciate a picture of a madonna or other beautiful woman than an interior where the scene is comparatively complicated by the presence of several persons, and they will prefer the interior to a landscape, and a landscape to a still-life picture. so in sculpture. other things being equal, a figure of a man or woman will be preferred to a group, and the group to an animal or decorative ornament. an exception must however be made in respect of the sublime reaches of grecian sculpture in the fifth and fourth centuries b.c., owing to an artificial restriction. there is very little of this sculpture to be actually seen, nearly all the more important works being known only from records or variable copies. considerable observation, comparison, and study, are necessary before one can gain a fair conception of the grecian ideals, and so they are practically lost to the bulk of the people. in fiction it is common knowledge that the greatest works from the point of view of art are always the most popular, as they are invariably the most simple in construction and diction. in considering poetry we must exclude the great epics, as those of homer, virgil, dante, and milton, because where the actions of supernatural persons are described, the sentiments and language employed are so elevated in character, and the images and literary references so numerous, that a certain superior education is required before the sense of the poems can be comprehended. subject to this artificial restriction, the rule holds entirely good. shakespeare is at once the greatest and most popular of our poets: shelley, byron, and burns, are as far ahead of tennyson and browning in popularity as they are in general beauty and simplicity. in music on the other hand the lower forms are the simplest and consequently the most popular. songs, dance measures, and ditties of various kinds, are enjoyed by the mass of the people in preference to beethoven and wagner, a certain cultivation of the aural nerves being necessary for the appreciation of the greater artists. the architect is under the necessity of meeting the ends of utility, but subject to this restriction it is obvious that simplicity must be the keynote to his design, for the highest quality of beauty in his power to produce is grandeur, and this diminishes with an increase in the complexity of his sign combinations. the combination of simplicity with grandeur is the first form of beauty that would be recognized by the immature eye, and consequently in respect of the general test of art excellence, architecture falls into line with the associated arts, and not with music. from what has been said it will be understood how it is that in the associated arts opinion as to the æsthetic value of particular works begins to differ as soon as we leave the recognized masterpieces of the first rank, and why the divergence widens with every step downwards. as the character of the art is lowered so is diminished the number of persons capable of appreciating it. in painting and sculpture this diminution is direct with the increased complexity of the signs used, and indirect according as the character of the signs weakens. in poetry the same rule applies generally, but in the lower forms alliance with the art of music may bring about a variation. only the very lowest forms of music may be used with the higher forms of poetry because the poet must have the minimum of restriction when dealing with the character and actions of the personages who constitute the principal signs in his work, but as the art descends the musical form becomes of more importance, and the substance more simple. hence the sensorial beauty of a lyric may be appreciated more quickly than that of a poem which is, in substance, of a much higher order, though the kind of beauty recognized will differ in the two cases. but even in the greatest lyric the musical form is comparatively very simple, its beauty being recognized without special cultivation of the aural nerves: thus, subject to the division of poetry into its natural grades--the two sections where substance and form respectively predominate--the measure of its beauty is the extent to which it is generally appreciated. none of the other associated arts may be allied with a second art without crippling it as a fine art, because of the extraordinary limitations forced upon the artist by the alliance; and hence in respect of sculpture, painting, and fiction, there is no exception to the rule that the beauty capable of being produced diminishes strictly with an increase in the complexity of the signs used. these facts appear sufficiently to establish what may be called the law of general assent in the associated arts; that is to say, in the arts of poetry, sculpture, painting, and fiction, the supreme test of the æsthetic value of a work, is general opinion; and a corollary of this is that the smaller the number of persons to whom a work of one of these arts appeals, the weaker is the art therein. chapter iv limitations of the associated arts the production of beauty in the respective arts--how they differ in scope. the associated arts have all the same method of producing beauty: they throw pictures on the brain.[ ] sensorial or intellectual beauty, or both together, may be exhibited, but in the arts of the painter and sculptor the picture is transferred to the brain through the optic nerves, and is necessarily presented before the intellect can be brought to bear upon the impression. the arts of the poet and the story writer involve the presentation of a picture representing the complete composition, and in addition when the work is lengthy, of a series of pictures each of which strengthens the relief of the general design. the painter and sculptor each presents a complete picture, the meaning of which is immediately determined through the sense of sight, and the extent of the beauty is bounded by what can be recognized by this sense. all the signs necessary to perfect the composition are simultaneously indicated, the artist exhibiting at one blow a full description of what makes up his thing of beauty. but the poet cannot so produce a picture because he presents the parts successively and not simultaneously, and in the most important of all the forms which he represents--that of the human countenance--both beauty and expression have to be defined, and the separate elements are indescribable. consequently, however, we may combine the features of a countenance as described by the poet, we cannot throw a picture of the whole upon our minds. a particular form of beauty must be presented to the eye before it can be mentally pictured. the poet therefore does not attempt to dovetail his picture of the human form with descriptive details, but relies upon imagery, suggestion, or other artifice, to indicate his meaning in the most rapid way possible.[ ] the novelist is in the same position as the poet in this respect, except that some of the devices of the latter are denied him. but although the poet or novelist cannot put together the parts in his description, he may in certain cases present natural beauty to the mind, his scope depending upon the nature of the parts and the extent to which they depend upon each other for the completion of the picture. where the beauty of the whole rests upon a combination of perfected parts of form only, as in the case of a horse, then the poet is able to present beauty of form notwithstanding that the separate parts are in themselves not beautiful, though the beauty would be that of the type and not of the individual. the beauty of a horse depends upon its possession of a collection of features which have each a particular significance. if we are able to recognize from a description that a horse has qualities of form and action indicating speed, high spirits, proud bearing, and so on, and at the same time has a harmonious symmetry in its general outline, a beautiful animal is thrown on the mind without difficulty. we readily picture the courser described by shakespeare in his _venus and adonis_ as a beautiful horse, but we should not be able to differentiate it from the courser of mazeppa. where the parts of the thing described are in themselves beautiful, then the poet may successfully throw on the mind a series of pictures of æsthetic interest. thus, he may call to the imagination parts of a landscape which are in themselves beautiful scenes, as for instance a deep gorge opening on to a lake, or a flowery valley, though the parts could not be put together on the mind so that the beauty of the whole may be presented.[ ] summing up the limits of the associated arts in the presentation of the two kinds of beauty, the poet and the novelist can present general or particular beauty of mind, and general sensorial beauty, but are powerless with particular sensorial beauty; the sculptor and painter may present general or particular sensorial beauty, and general, but not particular, beauty of mind. particular sensorial beauty may be suggested by the poet or novelist, by indicating its emotional effect, or by symbols in the form of metaphor; and particular intellectual beauty may be suggested by the sculptor or painter by representing the effect in expression of a particular action, or by symbols in the form of human figures of beauty. [illustration: plate (see page ) raphael's sistine madonna, with the face of the central figure in fragonard's "the pursuit" substituted for that of the virgin] but while the poet cannot throw upon the brain a particular form of human beauty, he may suggest a greater beauty than that which the painter or sculptor can depict, and further produce emotional effects relating to spiritual and human actions and passions which are beyond the plastic arts: hence his art is capable of the highest reaches. next to him come the sculptor and painter, for they may represent ideal forms which must be excluded from fiction. theoretically, painting and sculpture are equal in respect of the production of human beauty, for there is no form designed by the one which may not be presented by the other; but practically the painter cannot attain to the height of the sculptor in the representation of ideal beauty.[a] [a] see chapter ix. the sculptor and painter are at a disadvantage compared with the poet and novelist, for the limitation of their arts compels them to confine their imaginations to structural work. each of the associated arts consists nominally of three parts: (_a_) the scheme, or idea, or fable; (_b_) the design or invention[ ]; (_c_) the execution. in a representation of action, the painter or sculptor can only depict a particular moment of it, neither the beginning nor the end being visible. he must therefore choose an action of which the beginning and end are known, for while either may be suggested in a simple design, both cannot be implied so that the whole story is obvious. he has consequently to take his moment of action from a fact or fable in one of the literary arts, or from actual life experience.[ ] where no particular action is indicated, as in many pastoral and interior scenes in painting, or ornamental figures in sculpture, the conception and invention are one. thus, the painter or sculptor is confined to only two parts of his art, the design and execution. while therefore the scope of the poet and novelist is as unlimited as the sea of human motives and passions, that of the painter and sculptor is held within strictly marked bounds. all the associated arts are alike in that they cannot be specially used for moral or social purposes without suffering a marked deterioration. this is because of the limitations imposed upon the artist. his wings are clipped: his imagination is confined within a narrow groove: he is converted from a master to a slave. hence no great work of one of these arts has been produced where the conception of the artist was bound by the necessity of pointing a moral, or of conforming to some idea of utility.[ ] chapter v degrees of beauty in the painter's art the degrees of beauty which the art of the painter can exhibit appear to be, in order of their value, as follows: . that which appeals to the senses with form, and to the mind with expression, above the possibility of life experience. this double beauty can only be found in ideals, and the real cannot be associated with it except as accessory. the highest art of the painter is therefore confined to sacred, mythological, and symbolical subjects. . that which appeals to the senses through representation of the human form, without, or with only partial idealization, and to the mind through the indication in expression of high abstract qualities. this section comprises subjects of profane history, and high class portraiture. it varies from the succeeding section in that the artist may represent the human being as he ought to be, or would be with the higher physical and abstract qualities emphasized, or in certain cases, with these qualities added. . that which appeals to the senses through the harmony of tone and design, and to the mind through the representation of human action within the compass of life experience. this section comprises interiors and exteriors relating to daily life and labour, and portraiture which is merely accurate imitation of features. it differs from the previous section in that it represents the human being as he is, and not as he ought to be. . that which appeals to the senses through harmony of colour and design, in respect of the imitation and the things imitated, in addition to pleasing because it excites admiration of the skill in imitation. this section comprises landscape, flowers, fine plumaged birds, and certain symmetrical animal forms. . that which appeals to the senses through harmony of tone and design, and indirectly to the mind through association of ideas connected with the other arts; in addition to pleasing because of the excellent imitation, and possibly because of the beauty of the things imitated. this section comprises paintings of things connected with the other arts, and which are neither beautiful nor displeasing, such as books and musical instruments; or which are imitations of products of another art, as plate, marble reliefs, or architectural forms. . that which appeals to the senses through harmony of tone and design, in addition to pleasing because of the excellent imitation. this class of beauty comprises paintings of objects which in themselves are not beautiful, as vegetables, kitchen utensils, and certain animals; or which are even repellent, as dead animals. . that which appeals to the senses through harmony of colour, the design having no beauty in itself. this form of art, which is the lowest in the scale of the painter, is only adapted for the simplest formal decoration. the first three sections may produce both sensorial and intellectual beauty; the others only sensorial. limited abstract qualities are associated with certain animals in nature, but cannot be indicated in the uncombined art of the painter. beyond these sections, there are classes of pictures which do not belong to the pure art of the painter, namely, those executed for use and not for beauty[ ]; those painted to illustrate sports, or to record passing events; certain allegorical paintings; and those works which, while they cannot represent the ideal, require the assistance of another art for their interpretation; as for instance, incidents to illustrate particular morals or stories; scenes from the drama other than tragedy; portraits of persons in character; humorous subjects, and so on. such works, on account of the restrictions imposed on the artist, can exhibit but limited and fleeting beauty. elsewhere they are noticed under the heading of "secondary art." chapter vi expression. part i.--the ideal the human being is the only sign in the arts capable of idealization, because, while its parts are fixed and invariable, it is the only sign as to which there is a universal agreement in respect of the value of abstract qualities connected with it. there can be no ideal of the human form separately, because this implies expression which results from abstract qualities. nor can there be an ideal combination of these qualities, except a general expression covering all the virtues and eliminating all the passions, which expression cannot be disassociated from form. the ideal human being is therefore a perfect generalization of the highest conceivable qualities of form and expression. necessarily in matters of art, when we use the term "ideal," we mean a general ideal, that is to say, an ideal that would be accepted as such by the general body of men and women. from the fact that the sensorial nerves in all persons are alike in form and character, and that they act in the same way under like conditions, it follows that there must be a general agreement as to degrees of beauty, and thus a common conception of the ideal human being. experience has demonstrated this at all times, both in respect of the general ideal we are now discussing, and of particular ideals involving special types and characters; and so invariable is this experience that the progression towards similar ideals has all the force of law.[ ] this general agreement is subject to certain restrictions. the first is in regard to form in which the imagination cannot proceed beyond experience. the component parts of an ideal form cannot include any which are higher in quality than those which have come within the experience of the person compounding the ideal. secondly, in regard to abstract qualities, the estimation of these depends upon intelligence and education, and the accumulated experience of these things, which we measure in terms of degrees of civilization. consequently, different interpretations would be placed upon the phrase "the highest conceivable qualities of form and expression," by the various races of mankind. according as the experience was greater, so would the ideal form be higher in type; and as the civilization was more advanced, so would the abstract qualities exhibited be more perfect in character. but among civilized peoples what is, within our understanding, the ultimate form of the ideal, would not change in respect of abstract qualities, and as to form would only vary in comparatively insignificant details with the width of experience. it is obvious that there can be only one general ideal covering perfection of form and mind, and this being beyond human experience, can only be associated with a spiritual personage, and necessarily with the highest conceivable spiritual personage--the supreme being. in its absolute perfection it may be significant of the supreme being of any religion of civilized peoples, but not of other spiritual personages to whom such perfection may also be attributed, because absolute power can only be implied in one such personage. this power cannot be indicated in an ideal expression, and hence there is no alternative but to leave the one general ideal to the supreme being. there are only two religions in which an ideal human form has been used in art to typify the supreme being, and these are the ancient grecian and the christian; but the one general ideal referred to has only been used by the greeks. the christian conception of the deity is far nobler than that which the greeks had of zeus, but in art nothing greater than the grecian ideal has been executed. as a type of an almighty power the best christian representation is distinctly inferior, and it must necessarily be so because convention requires that a particular feature of expression must be indicated therein which is not compulsory in the grecian ideal. forgiveness of sins is a cardinal principle in the christian doctrine, and consequently whatever the character of expression given to the deity, a certain gentleness has to be exhibited which materially limits the comprehensive nature of the expression. the grecian ideal, as sculptured, strictly denied any particular characteristic, while covering every good quality, and hence for the christian it is not so suitable as the accepted modification. among the greeks, ideal types of the gods and goddesses other than zeus varied considerably. those representations that have come down to us are usually deviations from the zeus type with certain special characteristics, though often they can only be distinguished from each other by symbols. they are above human life and so cannot be appropriately associated with human surroundings. ideals appertaining to christianity are practically fixed by convention, or are interchangeable with ideals in allegorical and symbolical art. art is not concerned with what are termed ideal physical qualities because beauty is its first consideration. a form with powerful limbs and muscles may be generally accepted as an ideal form of strength, but these very limbs and muscles would detract from the beauty of the figure, and so separately such a form would be inferior art. an ideal can only be applied to excellence. in art, moral or physical deformity cannot be exaggerated for the purpose of emphasis or contrast without lessening the deformity or injuring the art. in the work of the greater artists the former result follows; in that of less skilful artists, the latter. homer could not deal with evil characters without exciting a certain sympathy with them, thus diminishing the deformity in the minds of his readers. there is a measure of nobility about shakespeare's bad men, and milton distinctly ennobled satan in portraying his evil powers and influence. in painting and sculpture there is no place for hideous forms of any description, for they either revolt the imagination and so neutralize the appreciation of the beautiful figures present in the composition, or they verge upon the ridiculous and disturb the mind with counteracting influences. with rare exceptions the greater artists have not failed to recognize this truth,[ ] and in respect of the very greatest men, no really hideous figure is to be found in any of their works, if we except certain instances where the artist had to comply with fixed rules and conditions, as for example in michelangelo's last judgment where evil beings had perforce to be presented, and could only be shown as deformities. attempts to emphasize ugliness by artists of inferior rank result in the fantastic or the ludicrous, as in the representation of evil spirits on the old etruscan tombs, and the whimsical imps of the breughels and the younger teniers. chapter vii expression. part ii.--christian ideals the deity--christ--the madonna--the madonna and child. in considering the scope for the exhibition of ideals in art, it should be remembered that ideal types of some of the principal personages in religious and mythological history have been already fixed by great artists, and it is impossible to depart from them without producing what would appear to be abnormal representations. homer led the way with occasional hints of the presumed physical appearance of some of the leading deities of greece, and except in the case of aphrodite the later grecian sculptors closely followed him. the zeus of homer as improved by phidias has been the model of this deity in respect of form for nearly every succeeding sculptor to this day, while it was also the model which suggested the christian father as represented by the first artists of the renaissance, though, as already indicated, the majestic dignity of the phidian zeus was partly sacrificed by the christian artists. phidias in fact created a type which, so far as human foresight can judge, must ever guide the artistic mind, whether portraying the mighty son of kronos, or the god of the christians. only very rarely nowadays is the christian deity pictured in art, and as time goes on his introduction in human shape in a painting will become still more rare in conformity with changing religious ideas and practices; but now and hereafter any artist who contemplates the representation, must, voluntarily or involuntarily, turn to the frescoes of raphael and michelangelo for his guide. there is no tradition upon which to base an actual portrait of christ. for the first four centuries a.d., when he was represented in art, it was usually by means of symbols, or as a young man without beard, but there are some roman relics of the fifth century remaining in which he is depicted much in the later generally accepted type, with short beard and flowing hair. during the long centuries of the dark age, when religious art was practically confined to the byzantine greeks, christ was almost invariably portrayed with a long face and emaciated features and limbs, as the epitome of sadness and sorrow. this expression was modified as the arts travelled to the north and west of europe, and gradually his face began to assume more regularity and beauty. then came cimabue to sow the seed of the renaissance, and with him the ideal of christ was changed to a perfect man of flesh and blood. a century or more was occupied in establishing this ideal, but it was so established, and has maintained its position to this day.[ ] [illustration: plate (see page ) raphael's virgin of the rose with the face of "profane love" in titian's picture substituted for that of the virgin] this ideal represents the saviour as a man of about thirty-three years--his age at the crucifixion. he wears flowing hair with a short beard and usually a moustache. his face is rather long, often oval; the features have a perfect regularity, and the expression is commonly one of patient resignation. naturally his body must appear well nourished, otherwise corporeal beauty cannot be expressed. this is the type which has been used since the height of the renaissance, though there have been a few exceptional representations. thus, the face of christ in lionardo's last supper at milan is that of a beardless young man of some twenty-five years[a] and raphael in an early picture shows him beardless, but gives him an age of about thirty.[b] some early flemish artists also rendered him beardless at times, notably the maitre de flémalle, van der weyden, and quentin matsys. michelangelo in his last judgment represents the saviour sitting in judgment as a robust, stern, commanding figure, beardless, and with an expression and bearing apparently serving the idea of justice.[c] strange to say the artist gives a very similar face to st. stephen in the same series of frescoes. a still more unusual representation is that of francisco di giorgio, who gives christ the appearance of an apollo,[d] while bramantino depicts his face worn with heavy lines.[e] in one picture marco basaiti shows him as a young man with long hair but without beard, and in another with a thick beard without moustache.[f] there was considerable variation in the type among the venetians of the sixteenth century, but not in important features, and since then very few artists indeed have ventured to depart from the ideal above described. the only notable exception in recent times is in a work by burne-jones who represents christ as a beardless youth, though indicating the wound to st. thomas.[g] it is supposed that the artist presumed that the person of christ underwent a complete change after the resurrection. [a] and in the drawing for the picture at the brera. [b] christ blessing at the brescia gallery. [c] in the sistine chapel frescoes. [d] christ bereft of his clothes before the crucifixion, sienna academy. [e] christ, mayno collection. [f] the dead christ, and calling of the children of zebedee, academy, venice. [g] dies domini. it is evident that the ideal christ as established by the italians can scarcely be improved upon in art within the prescribed limitations. christ having lived as an actual man, his representation must be within the bounds of possible experience; and since he died at the age of thirty-three, intellectual power cannot be suggested in his countenance, for this in life means an expression implying large experience warranted only by mature age. the representation is therefore confined to that of a man who, while exhibiting a healthy regularity of form and feature, has lost all sense of earthly pleasure. the beauty achieved by this type is negative, the only marked quality being a suggestion of sadness which, in painting, is necessarily present in all expression where an unconcern with human instincts and passions is depicted. the italians in their representation of christ were thus unable to reach the height of the greek divine portrayals. they were confined to earth, while the greek figures were symbols of spiritual forms which were pure products of the imagination. giotto and his successors sought a physically perfect man with all purely human features in expression eliminated. the greeks, even when representing divinities below zeus, generalized all human attributes, excluding nothing but the exceptional. they embodied in their forms, truths acknowledged by the whole world; summed up human life to the contentment of all men: there was nothing in their divinities which would prevent their acceptance as spiritual symbols in all religions of civilized peoples. to them human instincts were sacred: all human passions could be ennobled: everything in the natural progression of life came within the purview, and under the protection, of the gods. so the course of their art was definite: there was never a difference as to the goal, for it was universal. from the point of view of the development of art the ideal christ has been of little importance compared with the ideal madonna, though here also the italians aimed for a particular instead of a general type. they wanted a living woman with the form and features of a pulsating mother; a woman of ordinary life in fact, but infinitely superior in physical beauty, and endowed with the highest grace that their imaginations could conceive and their hands execute. this ideal seemed to germinate with cimabue, but an immense advance upon him was made by giotto who was unsurpassed in the representation of the holy mother for more than a century. but the ideal was yet purely formal and continued so till past the middle of the fifteenth century, both in italy and flanders. giotto was then excelled by many artists, but the madonnas they produced, though often very beautiful, are not humanly attractive. they are on the side of the angels; have never been women evidently, and are far, far away from the human type with tingling veins and heaving breath. filippo lippi marked the border line between this type of madonna, and the advanced pattern produced by the series of great artists of the latter part of the fifteenth century. but with lionardo, ghirlandaio, botticelli, and the rest, the madonna was scarcely an ideal woman. living persons were commonly taken as models, and although the portraits were no doubt "improved," they have little connection with the ideal which the artists evidently had in mind. the very life which the artist transfers to canvas in a portrait is destructive of the ideal, for it is a particular life with evidence of particular emotions and passions from which the madonna should be free. a mighty barrier must be passed before a woman is translated on canvas into the type of madonna sought by the first renaissance artists. she must be a woman of the earth; a woman who has grown up amidst human surroundings from infancy to girlhood, and from girlhood to womanhood; with human aspirations and sympathies, and experience of joys and trials: she must have all these, and as well have become a mother; and yet with human beauty, her countenance must be such that by no stretch of the imagination can the possibility of desire be suggested. this was the problem, and certainly only a genius of the highest order could arrive at a solution, for the task appears on the face of it to be almost superhuman. but raphael succeeded in accomplishing it, and his achievement will stand for all time as one of the greatest epoch-making events in history. even michelangelo, who created so many superb forms, never succeeded with an ideal suitable for a madonna.[ ] it is clear that in reaching for his ideal, raphael did not strive for an expression relating to the spiritual. his purpose was to eliminate from the features anything which might possibly be construed as indicating earthly desires, and yet retain the highest conceivable human beauty. with this double object contentment is a quality in expression which is indispensable, and this raphael was careful to give, sometimes emphasizing it with a suggestion of happiness. it is not possible to go further with an expression which is to generalize the highest human physical and abstract qualities, while keeping the figure within the range of apparent feasible realization in life. the result was ideal but not exclusive. it is a universal type, and is suited to the madonna because there is nothing humanly higher within our comprehension; but it has a further general import which is dealt with elsewhere. although the aim achieved by raphael must necessarily be the goal of all artists in the representation of the madonna, it is of course not essential that he should be accepted as the only guide to her form. her features may vary indefinitely so long as the ideal is maintained, and raphael himself painted no two madonnas with the same features. but certain traditions must be observed, however much one may depart from the actual circumstances of her life. the first is in respect of her presumed age. in pictures dealing with her life soon after marriage, as for instance, the nativity and the flight into egypt, the madonna is invariably represented as many years older than she appears in annunciation subjects, though only a year or so actually passed between the respective events. the reason for this is obvious. she must be shown with the bloom of a matured woman. the highest form of nobility cannot be disassociated from wisdom and experience, which could not be indicated in the countenance of a girl in her teens. innocence and purity may be present, and a certain majesty even, but our conception of the madonna as a woman involves the triumph over known evils, the full knowledge of right and wrong, and the consciousness of a supreme position above the possibility of sin. hence in all representations of the madonna at the nativity and afterwards, she must be shown at an age suggesting the fullest knowledge of good and evil. while, between the annunciation and incidents occurring during the infancy of christ, many years must be presumed to have passed, from this latter period on, the madonna must be supposed to have aged very little, if at all, right up to the crucifixion. it is not often that we find her included in a design illustrating the life of christ between his infancy and the death scene, a fact probably due to the age difficulty. in the exceptions her face is often partly or wholly hidden. but in scenes of the crucifixion, where the virgin is almost invariably introduced, artists of all periods, with few exceptions, have been careful to avoid suggesting the full presumed age. commonly the age indicated is between twenty-five and thirty years, but as the face is always pale, and often somewhat drawn, her comparatively youthful appearance is not conspicuous. obviously under no circumstances should lines be present in the features, for this would suggest a physical decay not in conformity with christian ideas.[ ] even in pictures relating to her death, which is presumed to have occurred at an age between fifty and sixty years, her face is shown with perfectly regular and smooth features, though an extreme pallor may be painted. but from the point of view of art, the virgin must be regarded as an accessory in works relating to the crucifixion, for to throw her into prominence would result in dividing the attention of the observer of the picture on first inspection, and so lessening the art. in any case she must be painted with an expression of grief, and hence an unalloyed ideal of transcendent beauty is out of the question. the custom of representing the madonna in costume and surroundings indicating a higher social level than that in which she actually moved, is now firmly established, and cannot be departed from without lowering the ideal. a woman in a lowly position of life, who is compelled to bear all the responsibilities of a home, with the care of a husband and child, is seldom seen except in the performance of household duties. we cannot see her without associating her in our minds with toil and possible privation, and we naturally expect that the effect of these will be indicated in her expression and general bearing. if away from her home her costume would usually declare her position, while habits of mind connected with her daily occupation commonly engender mannerisms in air and gait which support the inference drawn from the character of her attire. it would appear anomalous to paint a woman so situated with such beauty of form and expression that she appears to have never experienced earthly cares of any kind, much less the long repeated daily worries consequent upon the charge of a poor household. perfect beauty of form being essential in the representation of the madonna, she must be painted amidst surroundings conformable with the supposition that she is free from earthly responsibilities, and that her mind is entirely occupied with the boundless joy and happiness arising from the contemplation of the divine mission of her son.[ ] [illustration: plate (see page ) raphael's holy family (madrid), with the face of luini's salome substituted for that of the virgin] the difficulty in painting the madonna is complicated when the infant christ is introduced, because of the liability of the child to interfere with a fine presentation of her figure. a similar problem was met with by the early greeks, and doubtless they dealt with it in their paintings as in their sculptures, a few of which, showing an adult holding a child, have come down to us. these represent the child reduced in size as far as possible, and carried at the side of the adult figure.[a] a like system was followed by most of the byzantine workers, and it is very noticeable in some of the fine french sculpture of the thirteenth century.[b] in the same period giovanni pisano in sculpture,[c] and cimabue in painting,[d] maintained the tradition in italy, and in the century following, giotto,[e] duccio,[f] lorenzetto,[g] and others, often adopted the plan. towards the middle of the fifteenth century, the relative importance attached to the child in the group generally increased, and by the end of it, the old practice had been almost entirely abandoned. meanwhile the artists had some hard problems to meet. the first was as to the size of the child. it appeared to be generally agreed that an older child should be represented than had been the custom, though a few artists held back, notably fra angelico, while in sculpture, donatello maintained his habit of moulding the child as only a few weeks old. with an increased age of the child, the difficulty of securing repose for the group was enhanced, for it seemed to be proper with a child past its infancy, that it should be pictured as engaged in one of the charming simple actions common to childhood. these questions were settled in different ways according to the genius and temperament of the artists. a few of them, as mantegna,[h] lorenzo costa,[i] and montagna,[j] gave the child an age of two years or more, and in some of their designs the figures seem to be of equal significance, mantegna and montagna in several examples actually standing the child in the virgin's lap with the heads touching each other. [a] see the olympian hermes of praxiteles, and irene and pluto after cephisodostus at munich. [b] groups in the southern and western porches of amiens cathedral. [c] madonna and child, arena chapel, padua. [d] groups at the florence academy and the louvre. [e] florence academy. [f] national gallery, london. [g] san francisco, assisi. [h] madonna and angels, at milan, and other works. [i] coronation of the virgin, bologna. [j] enthronement of the virgin, brera, milan. the plans usually adopted by the greatest masters, were, to present the maximum repose with the child sitting in the lap of the virgin; or to place him apart from her, and engaged in some slight action; or to show him in the arms of the virgin, either held at the side, or in front, with the virgin more or less in profile. in all of these schemes the serene contemplation of the holy mother is practically undisturbed. in his many groups of the virgin and child, and of the holy family, raphael only varied twice from these plans,[a] and in both the exceptions the child reclines across the lap of the virgin, so that very little of her figure is hidden. titian has the child standing by her side,[b] or held away from her, and in one example the virgin is placing him in the hands of st. joseph.[c] correggio, when away from the influence of mantegna, usually showed the child held apart from the mother, or placed on the floor, or on a bench. it is a common device to show the child on the lap of the virgin, but leaning over to take a flower or other object offered him,[d] and numerous artists allow him to play around separately.[e] in holbein's fine group at augsburg, the child stands between the virgin and st. anne, and another german painter shows him held up by the same personages, but clear from both of them.[f] murillo commonly stands the child at the side of the virgin, but in one picture adopts the novel method of placing him in the arms of st. joseph.[g] [a] madonna and child, bridgewater coll., england; and same group with st. john, berlin. [b] madonna of the cherries, imperial gallery, vienna. [c] meeting of joachim and anna, bridgwater coll., england. [d] filipino lippi's madonna and angels, corsini palace, florence. [e] luca signorelli's group at munich, and bonfiglio's at perugia. [f] hans fries, national museum, nuremburg. [g] holy family, petrograd. when the child is shown distinctly apart from the virgin, or leaning away from her lap, great care is necessary in avoiding strength in the action, otherwise it will draw attention away from the virgin. a notable example of this defect is in a picture by parmigiano, where the child leans over and has his head brought close to that of a kneeling saint who is caressing him, the effect being most disturbing.[a] bramantino shows the child in an extraordinary attitude, for he holds his head above his arms without any apparent reason, the action confusing the design.[b] many artists represent him in the act of reaching out his hand for flowers, without choosing for the moment of portrayal, an instant of transition from one part of the action to another,[c] a point rarely overlooked by the first masters.[d] occasionally variety is given in the introduction of nursery duties, as for instance, washing the child,[e] but these are inappropriate for reasons already indicated, apart from the over strong action necessarily exhibited in such designs. nor should the child have an unusual expression, as this will immediately catch the eye of the observer. in one work del sarto actually makes him laugh,[f] and a modern artist gives him an expression of fear.[g] it is questionable whether masaccio[h] and others (including a. della robbia and rossellino in sculpture) did not go too far in portraying the child with a finger in its mouth, for although such an incident is common with children, in this case it seems opposed to propriety. generally the first artists have striven to free the figure of the virgin as far as possible, and this is in conformity with first principles, for it simplifies the view of the chief figure in the composition. in all cases repose should be the keynote of the design. [a] madonna and child with saints, bologna academy. [b] virgin with a turban, brera, milan. [c] as in b. da bagnacavallo's holy family, bologna; and boltraffio's holy family, milan. [d] see titian's madonna with ss. anthony and john, uffizi gallery. [e] giulio romano's holy family, dresden. [f] holy family, hermitage, petrograd. [g] uhde's the three magi, magdeburg museum. [h] madonna enthroned, sutton coll., england. there are no general ideals in christian art other than those mentioned. the presumed occupants of the celestial regions beyond these personages, are painted as the fancy of the artist may dictate, subject only to the limitations of the accepted christian doctrines. there are certain conventions in respect of angels and saints, but they are by no means strict; and for the old testament prophets, michelangelo's work in the sistine chapel is commonly taken as a guide. it is scarcely likely that his examples will ever be exceeded in majestic beauty. chapter viii expression. part iii.--classical ideals ideals of the greeks--aphrodite--hera--demeter--athena--apollo-- diana--neptune--mars--mercury--bacchus--vulcan--general classical compositions. what human being can appropriately describe the great ideals in art of ancient greece? above us all they stand, seemingly as upon the pinnacle of the universal mind, reflecting the collective human soul, and exhibiting the concentrated essence of human nature. the best of men and women of all ages is combined in these ideal heads, which look from an endless past to an eternal future; which embody every passion and every virtue; every religion and every philosophy; all wisdom and all knowledge. they are ideal gods and goddesses, but are independent of legends and history. they represent no mythological deities except in name, and least of all do they assort with the deities of homer and hesiod. in all other religions the ideals expressed in art fail entirely to reach the height of the general conceptions, and are far below the spiritual beings as depicted in the sacred books; but the grecian ideals as recorded in stone are so far beyond the legendary gods of the ancient poets, that we are unable to pass from the stone to the literature without an overwhelming feeling of astonishment at the contrast. it is unfortunate that we are powerless to re-establish these ideals definitely, for the originals have been mostly lost; nevertheless the ancient copies, a few contemporary complete sculptures, and many glorious fragments; as well as intimate descriptions and repeated eulogies, often reaching to hyperbole, of eminent men, expressed over a succession of centuries when the great works were still exposed to view--all this assembled evidence indelibly stamps upon our minds the nature of the ideals; gives us a clear impression of the most profound conceptions that have emanated from the human brain. the people who accomplished these great monuments seem to have thought only in terms of the universe. they did not seek for the embodiment of goodness, nobility, and charity, perfection in which qualities we regard as divine, but they aimed at a majesty which included all these things; which comprehended nothing but the supreme in form and mind; and with an all-reaching knowledge of the human race, stood outside of it, but covered it with reflected glory, as the sun stands ever away from the planets but illumines them all. the wonder is not that these ideals were created in the minds of the greeks, for there is no boundary to the imagination, but that minds could be found to set them down in design, and hands to mould and shape them in clay and stone; and that many minds and hands could do these things in the same epoch. that these sculptured forms have never been equalled is not wonderful; that they never will be surpassed is as certain as that death is the penalty of life. so firmly have they become grafted into the minds of men as things unapproachable in beauty, that they have themselves been converted into general ideals towards which all must climb who attempt to scale the heights of art. the greatest artists known to us since the light of greek intelligence flickered away, have been content to study these marble remains, and to cull from them a suggestion here, and an idea there, with which to adorn their own creations. indeed it is clear that from the time of niccolo pisano, who leaped at one bound to celebrity after studying the antique sculptures at pisa, through giotto to the fifteenth and sixteenth century giants, there was hardly a great artist who was not more or less dependent upon grecian art for his skill, and the most enduring of them all--donatello, raphael, michelangelo, titian, correggio--were the most deeply versed in the art.[ ] bellori affirmed that the roman school, of which raphael and michelangelo were the greatest masters, derived its principles from the study of the statues and other works of the ancients.[a] this is not strictly exact, but it is near the truth, and certain it is that michelangelo, the first sculptor known to the world since the dark age, willingly bowed his head before the ancient triumphs of art presented to his view. and yet he did not see the parthenon sculptures and other numerous works of the time of phidias, with the many beautiful examples of the next century which have been made available since his day. what he would have said in the presence of the glories of the parthenon, with the hermes of praxiteles and the rest of the collection from olympia, is hard to conjecture, though it may well be suggested that they would have prompted him to still higher work than any he accomplished. with these stupendous ideals in front of us, it seems almost unnecessary to talk of the principles of art. their very perfection indicates that they were built up on eternal principles, so that in fact and in theory they form the surest guide for the sculptor and painter. [a] _le vite de' pittori, scultori, e architteti moderni._ but how is the painter to use these ancient gods and goddesses, for the time has gone by to gather them together on the heights of olympus, or to associate them with human frailties? surely he may leave aside the fables of the poets, and try to portray the deities as the grecian populace saw them in their hearts--noble forms of adoration, or images of terror, objects of curses veneered with prayer and of offerings wrapped in fear. the artist has not now to be troubled with pangs of dread, nor will his imagination be limited by sacerdotal scruples. the rivalry of praxiteles need not concern him, for there are wondrous ideals yet to be wrought, which will be comprehended and loved even in these days of hastening endeavour. but the painter must leave alone the zeus and the variation of this god in the pictured christian deity, for the type is so firmly established in the minds of men that it would be useless to depart from it. the other important grecian deities with which art is concerned may be shortly considered from the point of view of the painter, though they are naturally of far more importance to the sculptor because it is beyond the power of the painter to suggest an illusion of divine form, since he must associate his figures with human accessories.[ ] aphrodite astarte, aphrodite, venus, spirit of love, or by whatever name we call her; the one eternal divinity recognized by all ages, all races; the universal essence whose fragrance intoxicates every soul: the one queen before whom all must bow: the one imperial autocrat sure of everlasting rule--sure of the devoted allegiance of every living thing to the end of time! such is aphrodite, for that is the name under which we seem to love her best--the aphrodite of the greeks, without the vague terrifying aspect of astarte, or the more earthly qualities of the roman venus. who loves not the aphrodite sprung from the foam of the sea; shading the sun on the cytheran isle with the light of her glory; casting an eternal hallow over the groves of cyprus; flooding the god-like mind of greece with her sparkling radiance? what conception of her beauty can rise high enough when the grass in astonishment grows beneath her feet on desert rocks; when lions and tigers gently purr as she passes, and the rose and the myrtle throw out their scented blossoms to sweeten the air? hera and athena leave the heavens to help man fight and kill: aphrodite descends to soothe despairing hearts, and kindle kindly flame in the breast of the loveless. the spear and the shield with the crested helmet she knows not, nor the fiery coursers accustomed to the din of strife. serenely she traverses space at the call of a lover's prayer, her car a bower of celestial blooms. from the ends of the earth fly the sparrows to draw it, till their myriads hide the sun, and mortals learn that the time has come when their thoughts may turn to the spirit of love. this was the aphrodite of grecian legend and poetry, if we except homer and hesiod. it is the type of the goddess whom sappho implored, and must be accepted as the general ideal of the grecian worshippers who desired divine mediation when troubled with pangs of the heart. but it was not the type of phidias and his school, for phidias passed over hesiod and purified homer, representing aphrodite with the stately mien and lofty bearing of a queen of heaven, daughter of the all-powerful dione: goddess of beauty and love certainly, but so far above the human understanding of these terms that all efforts to associate her with mundane ideas and aspirations must signally fail.[ ] so far as we know it was praxiteles who first attempted to realize in stone the popular ideal of the goddess, and certainly the cnidian aphrodite was better understood by the people of greece as a type of this ideal than any work that preceded it. we can attach to it in our minds but very few of the homeric and other legends surrounding the history of the goddess, but we can well imagine that a deity who was the subject of so much attention and so much prayer, could rest in the hearts of the people only as one with every supreme earthly charm, combined with a divine bearing and dignity. these qualities the aphrodite of praxiteles appears to have possessed, though it lacked the majesty and exclusiveness of the parthenon gods.[ ] thus there was formed a type of beauty acceptable to the average human mind as an unsurpassable representation of an ideal woman: to the worshipper at the ancient shrines, a comprehensible goddess; to all other men the personification of sublime beauty. the fifth century goddess was left aside as beyond mortal reach, and from the time it left the sculptor's hands to this day, the cnidian venus has been regarded as a model for all that is true and beautiful in women. to the sculptor it is an everlasting beacon; to all men a crowning glory of human handiwork. and this notwithstanding that so far as we know, the original figure has long been lost, and we have preserved little more than records of its renown, a fair copy of it, and a single authentic example of the other work of the sculptor. but if we had the actual aphrodite before us, it could not occupy a higher place in our minds than the goddess which our imagination builds upon this framework. as in all cases where a supreme artist rises above his fellows and creates works of which emulation appears hopeless, the period succeeding the time of praxiteles seems to mark a decline in the art of sculpture, and though the decline was more apparent than real for about half a century, there was naturally a depreciation in the representation of the deities of whom the great man had fashioned masterpieces. this was so in the case of aphrodite. whoever the sculptor it seemed impossible to approach the cnidian ideal, and the result was a series of variations stamped with artificial devices as if to emphasize the departure. but meanwhile the painter's art had developed upon much the same lines as sculpture, and apelles produced an aphrodite, which, considering the limitation of the painter, appears to have been almost, if not quite, as marvellous as the stone model of praxiteles. nearly two thousand years have passed since the painting was last known to exist, but its fame was so great that the reverberations from the thunder of praise accorded it have scarcely yet died away. no close description of the painting remains, but from certain references to it by ancient authors we know that it represented the sea-born goddess walking towards the shore to make her first appearance on earth, holding in each hand a tress of hair as if in the act of wringing out the water therein.[ ] these are practically all the written details we have of the famous venus anadyomene, but we really know much more of it from the existence of certain pre-roman sculptures. all but one are broken, with parts missing, but the exception, which dates from about the beginning of the third century b.c., enables us to gain a good idea of the picture. the figure represents the goddess with her lower limbs cut off close to the hips; that is to say, it produces the whole of that part of the figure in the picture of apelles which is visible above the water.[a] clearly a subject in which venus is shown to be walking in the sea, so foreign to the art of the sculptor, could not have suggested itself independently to a grecian artist, nor would we expect to find one attempting a work which necessitated amputation of the lower limbs, unless a very special occasion warranted the design. the special occasion in this case was the picture of apelles, which was at the time renowned through the whole of greece as an extraordinary masterpiece, and with this work in their minds the sculptured head and torso would appear quite appropriate to those greeks interested in the arts, that is to say, the entire citizen population. [a] see plate . these two works then, the cnidian venus and the venus anadyomene of apelles, constitute the models upon which the world relies for its conceptions of the goddess of beauty. both models depend more or less upon the imagination for completion, but they are sufficiently definite for the artist, who, of course, desires general rather than particular ideas for his purpose. [illustration: plate (see page ) the pursuit, by fragonard (_frick collection_)] it must be confessed that the attempts to rival apelles in the creation of a venus anadyomene have not been very successful. raphael painted a small picture of the subject, introducing the figure of time putting an end to the power of the titans.[a] venus stands in the water with one foot on a shell, while holding a tress of hair with her left hand. as may be expected the execution is perfect, but the design is less attractive than that of apelles. the only important work of the renaissance directly based upon the greek design, is from the hand of titian.[b] he represents the goddess walking out of the water, the surface of which only reaches half way up the thighs, with the result that considerably more action is indicated than is necessary. but the great artist was evidently at a loss to know how to give the figure the size of life or thereabouts, while indicating from the depth of water that she had an appreciable distance to go before touching dry land. he solved the problem by placing the line of the front leg to which the water rises, at the bottom of the canvas, so that the picture suggests an accident which has necessitated the cutting away of the lower portion of the work. the master also varies the scheme of apelles by crossing the left hand over the breast. this inferior device was imitated by rubens, who, however, exhibits the goddess rising from the water amongst a group of nymphs and tritons.[c] modern artists in designs of the birth of venus, usually represent her as having reached the shore,[d] the best work of this scheme being perhaps that of cabanel who shows the goddess lying at the water's edge and just awaking, suggesting a state of unconsciousness while she floated on the waves.[e] another exception is by thoma, who exhibits the goddess walking in only a few inches of water, reminding one of the old roman bronze workers who imitated the form as painted by apelles, but modelled the whole figure. [a] in the bathroom of cardinal bibiena, vatican. there is a drawing for the figure of the goddess at the munich gallery. [b] bridgewater coll., england. see plate . [c] birth of venus, at potsdam. [d] notable examples are those of ingres and bouguereau. [e] at the luxembourg, paris. there are several replicas of this picture. repose being the first compulsory quality in the representation of aphrodite, it is not surprising to find that the greatest picture of the goddess extant--the masterpiece of giorgione--shows her asleep.[a] she rests on a verdure couch in a landscape of which the signs indicate a soft and tranquil atmosphere, with no suggestion to disturb the repose or remove the illusion of life so strongly marked by the skilful drawing. only the calm sleeping beauty is there without appearance of fatigue or recovery from it: no expression save of perfect dreamless unconsciousness. the work is the nearest approach to a classical ideal that exists in venetian painting. titian in his various pictures of venus reposing never reached the excellence of his master. in all, he painted the goddess in a resting position, sometimes radiant and brilliant, and invariably with a contented expression which precludes sensual suggestions: still there is ever a distinctly earthy tone about the figures. his venuses in fact are pure portraits. he did not seek to represent profound repose. his most important example is at the uffizi gallery,[b] the design of which was taken from giorgione's work. the goddess is a figure of glowing beauty, but the pose indicates consciousness of this fact and calls the model to mind. perhaps the surroundings tend to accentuate the drawback, for in this, as in most of his other pictures of venus, the artist has introduced venetian accessories of the period. palma vecchio also took giorgione's work as a guide for his reposing venus, but he represents her fully awake with cupid present.[c] an exceptional work of the subject was designed by michelangelo, and painted by pontormo[d] and others. it represents the goddess reclining with cupid at her head; but the form is entirely opposed to all our conceptions of venus, for she is seen as a broad massive woman with a short neck, and a strongly formed head--a fit companion for some of the figures in the sistine chapel. proud dignity and a certain majesty are suggested in the expression, but the figure is without the grace and charm usually associated with the goddess. the only other early italian reposing venus of interest is botticelli's, where he shows her in deep thought with two cupids by her side.[e] [a] dresden gallery. see plate . titian added a cupid to this picture, but the little god was subsequently painted out by a restorer. (l. venturi, _giorgione e il giorgionismo_, .) [b] the sitter is supposed to have been the model also for la bella in the uffizi, and the woman in fur at the vienna gallery. [c] dresden gallery. [d] hampton court palace, england. [e] national gallery, london. in the seventeenth century venus was rarely represented reposing. nicholas poussin has a fine picture on the subject, but unfortunately for the repose a couple of cupids are in action beside the sleeping goddess, while the heads of two satyrs are dimly seen.[a] in the sleeping venus of le sueur, which was much praised in former times, cupid is present with a finger to his mouth to indicate silence, but vulcan is seen in an adjoining room wielding a heavy hammer, the suggestion of repose being thus destroyed. no reposing venus of importance has since been produced, though a few french artists have treated the subject in a light vein, notably boucher in his sleeping venus, and fragonard in a delicate composition of venus awakened by aurora. [a] dresden gallery. venus cannot be represented as conscious of her beauty, or the design would immediately suggest vanity. consequently when shown looking into a mirror, she should be engaged at her toilet, or at least the reflection should be accidental. titian painted the first great picture of the goddess at her toilet, but this is just completed and her hands are at rest.[a] the attitude would be extravagant were it not that any suggestion of satisfaction is overcome by the artist making cupid hold the mirror, and giving venus an expression of unconcern as she glances at her reflection. the work suggested to rubens a similar design, but he shows the goddess dressing her hair, this being apparently the only definite action which may be properly introduced into such a composition.[b] albani has a delightful picture in which cupid compels venus to hold a mirror,[c] and some later artists have represented her adorning her tresses with the aid of a water reflection. the only notable _faux pas_ in a painting of this subject is in the venus and cupid assigned to velasquez, in which venus lies on her side and looks into a mirror held by cupid at her feet.[d] there is no suggestion of toilet or accident, and hence the attitude is quite inapplicable to a goddess. [a] the hermitage, petrograd. [b] hofmuseum, vienna. [c] the louvre. [d] national gallery, london. it should be remembered that the province of aphrodite is to infuse the gentle warmth of love into the human race, and not to attract love to herself. the rays are presumed to proceed from her only, for a mortal having no divine powers would be incapable of reflecting them. zeus was required to bring about the adventure with anchises. hence a voluptuous form should never be given to the goddess, and if an artist err at all in the matter, it should be on the side of restraint lest the art be affected by a suggestion of the sensuous. the surest means of preventing this is to represent the goddess in an attitude of repose, with perfect contentment as a feature in expression. if any action be indicated, it must be light and purely accidental in its nature. to introduce an action involving an apprehension of human failings tends to bring the goddess down to the human level, and thus to destroy the ideal. the venus de' medici is a superb sculpture of a woman, but an inferior representation of venus, for modesty is a human attribute arising from purely artificial circumstances of life, its meaning varying with race conditions and customs. to depict a goddess in an action suggestive of modesty or other antidote to the coarser effects of natural instincts, is therefore an anomaly. hera there is no fixed type in art of the ox-eyed sister and spouse of zeus, the queen of olympus, whose breast heaves ever high, and flaming, with the rushing fire of jealousy; the virgilian incarnation of bitter rage; yet withal the symbol of eternal earth, yearly renewing her fruitful youth with the burning kiss of the sun. the sculptors of greece saw in her only the supreme matron-spouse, serenely pondering the march of time beneath the awful sway of her lord. a mantle she wore, and a high-throated tunic, as she looked into space from a square-wrought throne; or she stood in her temple with flowing robe and diadem, inscrutable, before the offerings of an adoring multitude. but nevertheless she was not insensible to the radiance of aphrodite. polyclitus did well to place a cuckoo on her sceptre, and who can forget how the lotus and the hyacinth cushioned the ground on the heights of ida beneath a golden cloud, which held suspended around the glittering couch a screen of sparkling dew? it is unfortunate that the painter is at a loss to deal with the majestic scenes in great juno's story. how is he to depict her flying in the celestial chariot between heaven and earth, each leap of the fiery coursers measuring the range of the eye from a lofty peak across the sea to the endless haze? how can he paint her anointed with ambrosial oil which is ever struggling for freedom to bathe the rolling earth in fragrance? he may add a hundred tassels to her girdle; perhaps give her the triple grace-showering eardrops, and even the dazzling sun-bright veil; but the girdle of aphrodite, which peeps from her bosom, will fail to turn the brains of men, or pierce their hearts with rays of soft desire. and the more dreadful side of hera's history would equally trouble the despairing artist, for dire anger and jealousy ill-become the countenance of a goddess. the smouldering fire must never leap into flame. eyes may not flash, not the lips quiver, and the noble brow must be free from fitful thought. so with hera there is no middle course for the painter. he must represent her alone, calm and passionless, unfathomable, with a sublime disregard of earth; or else join with his predecessors and drag her down to a mundane level in scenes of trivial fable. but there is room for untold heras of the higher type. demeter matron-guardian of the yielding soil; heart-stricken wanderer over the earth; mysterious silent food-mother whom all men love and the gods revere; eternal life-preserver; fruitful, but passionless save where the vision of pluto looms, iasus and poseidon notwithstanding! such was the demeter of the ancient greeks till the hordes of alexander mingled her fame with the lustre from isis and de. so the mourning _haute dame_ of olympus came nearer the seat of her care, nearer the dread home of her daughter: passed from homer to theocritus; from the adoration of the higher priesthood of greece, to become merged in the ceres of rome, the goddess beloved of the lowly, who received the first fruits of the field amidst joyful measures of dance and song. but it is the _haute dame_ that strikes our imagination--the staid and mystic demeter of eleusis, and not the ceres of the roman lyric. the light-hearted ceres, as a beautiful woman in the prime of life, may be adorned with poppies and wheat-ears, may stand serene and smiling as a symbol of harvest or the goddess of a latin temple; but paint her as one will, she will do little more than serve to show how fallen are the idols--how immeasurable is the descent from the stately earth-mother whose image would be stamped on the brain of a phidias. but where is the phidian demeter? surely such a goddess, "deeply musing in her hallowed shrine," was a theme for the carver of the immortal zeus and athena! perhaps those inscrutable headless "fates" from the parthenon, so wonderful in noble grace that the conception of befitting heads is beyond the reach of our minds, include the earth-mother and her daughter! how easy it is to imagine the reclining figure as persephone leaning upon the mother who loved her so well! but we must be content with what we have of demeter in art, which is little more than a few fifth century frieze reliefs, the figure from cnidos attributed to scopas,[a] and some damophon memories of phidias. [a] see plate . so the artist is free and untrammelled in respect of the representation of the far-famed goddess. there is no definite type of her which has fixed itself on the minds of men, though the legend and story weaved about her name are beautiful and wonderful in a high degree. athena though swathed in legend and surrounded with a hallow of grecian reverence, athena is always cold. she may dim the sun with the radiance of her armour; ride in a flaming car, and have strength and invisibility for her allies; but she fights only on the side of the strong, and uses the tactics of spies against her enemies. with the gorgon's head on her shield, and a helmet which will cover the soldiers of a hundred towns, she yet whispers advice to grecian heroes, and deflects a trojan arrow in its flight. truly as goddess of war she is somewhat difficult to generalize. but she is also the divinity of the arts and sciences; invents the pipe and the shuttle, and becomes the depository of all industrial knowledge. hence she embodies the triumphs of peace and war--combines the extremes of human exertion. how phidias overcame the task of representing the goddess is well known. he generalized war and wisdom, and from his great work of the parthenon there can be little departure in respect of bearing and attitude, so long as the province of war is symbolized in the design. the actual work of the greek master has disappeared, but from various records and copies, it would appear that the parthenon athena was the loftiest conception ever worked out in sculpture, if we except the olympian zeus. majestic grace and the unconscious power derived from supreme knowledge, seem to have been the first qualities exhibited in the statue. in the fourth century there was no great departure from the phidian ideal, and it is difficult to see how there could be much modification in the direction of bringing the conception closer to earth, for the goddess had no special presumed form which could be adapted by the artist to popular ideas. a nude figure would be impossible because in this the force and power implied in a hero of war could not be combined with feminine attributes. the greeks drew the line at observable muscular developments, invariably clothing nearly the whole of the figure, but they did not, and could not, free her general bearing from certain masculine qualities. it is true that the costume of the goddess might be modified, and phidias himself represented her in one or two statues without a helmet, an example followed by several artists of the renaissance,[a] but so long as the symbols of war are included in her habit, she can be only of formal use to the painter. [a] see piero di cosimo's marsyas and the pipes of athena,[ ] and botticelli's athena and the centaur. apollo although in mythology apollo is connected with everything on earth which is useful or pleasing to mankind, in art custom has so confined his representation in respect of both appearance and symbols, that a type has been established from which it would be difficult to depart without a suggestion of incongruity arising. this type is of a more purely formal character than that of any other god, except perhaps mercury, a circumstance probably arising from the fact that the reputed hard nature of apollo fails to lend itself to sympathetic idealization. he does not appear to have been a favourite subject with the greatest sculptors of ancient times, for nearly all the innumerable statues of him which have come down to us, are reproductions of two or three types which in themselves vary but little. it is difficult to see how a really noble ideal of such a god can be suggested. stern and inflexible, with many human vices but no weaknesses or gentle traits, and withal a model of physical beauty without strength or apparent power--in fact an emphasized feminine form: such is the apollo of tradition and art. we cannot wonder that the type was quickly fixed, the limitations to avoid the abnormal being so well defined. the painter then has small scope with the figure of this god. he may only slightly vary the accepted form, which admits of but a negative expression. the best representation of apollo in modern art is the one by raphael in the parnassus fresco at the vatican, though the beautiful figure in the marsyas work at the louvre is very nearly as perfect.[ ] raphael does not give to the god the rounded swellings of a female form, but overcomes the difficulty by showing him as a young man of perfect figure who has just reached maturity. the expression is entirely general, but does not suggest a god-like power. diana it would scarcely be natural to be sympathetic with artemis. she seems to be the feminine type of a cold flint-like nature, as apollo is the masculine, and one can well understand that mythology makes of them brother and sister. mistress of wild beasts and goddess of sudden death, she was always worshipped from fear: her wrath had ever to be appeased; she inspired neither affection nor respect. true, she wore the mantle of ililythia, but only to be dreaded, and even the attempt to throw a warm halo over her by the theft of the endymion story for her benefit, failed to lift her reputation for the tireless satisfaction of a supernatural spleen. nevertheless for the painter diana has always had a certain attraction, because the legends connected with her offer opportunities for the exercise of skill in the representation of the nude. but there is an end of all things, and the bathing and hunting scenes have been fairly exhausted. for the sculptor only is artemis likely to live. bright colours are not the vehicle to represent the symbol of an idea which is beyond, but not above, nature--a useless abstraction which neither warms the heart nor elevates the soul. callisto draws our sympathy, and niobe our tears: the goddess freezes our veins. neptune brother of jupiter and pluto; sire of theseus, of polyphemus, and of the titanic lads who threatened to pile mountain on mountain in order to destroy the home of the deities; the god whose footsteps tremble the earth; who disputes with the sun; who uses floods and earthquakes for weapons; who owns vast palaces in the caverns of the deep; for whom the angry waves sink down beneath the shining sea, and ocean monsters play around his lightning track across the waters: this is the divinity whom the painter is accustomed to portray as a rough bearded man with dishevelled hair and rugged features, holding a three-pronged fork, and associating with dolphins, mermaids, and shells. but neptune is not a popular god. he does not appeal to the mind as a good-natured god like jupiter or mercury, with many of the virtues and some of the failings of mankind. his acts are mostly violent; he punishes but does not reward; grows angry but is never kind. there is consequently no sympathetic attitude towards him on the part of the artist, who would sooner paint good than bad actions. beyond his violent acts, the circumstances which make up the history of the god, provide subjects more suitable for the poet than the painter, who is practically confined to unimportant and casual incidents which, with changes of accessories, would answer a thousand scenes in mythological history. neptune then may well disappear from the purview of the painter, with the tritons and the seaweed entourage. mars from the point of view of the painter, there is little to say about the grecian ares. he has not a single good trait in legend or story, and we know nothing of his presumed personal form beyond the military externals. it is difficult to understand how such a god came to be included among the deities of a civilized race. of what service could be prayer when it is addressed to a blatant, bloodstained, genius of the brutal side of war, without feeling or pity, and apparently so wanting in intelligence that he has to leave the direction of battles to a goddess? one would think that homer intended him as the god of bullies, or he would not have made him roar like ten thousand men when struck with a stone, nor would he have allowed him to be imprisoned by two young demigods, and contemptuously wounded by a third. but who is responsible for the association of such a wretched example of divinity with the radiant aphrodite, for surely it is only the cloak of homer that covers the story! was it a painter who had sought in vain from the poets a suggestion for a composition in which the god would at least appear normal, or a cynical critic who wished to incite ridicule as well as contempt for the divinity? in any case the painter must sigh in vain for an inspiriting design with ares as the leading figure: he cannot harmonize love and terror. the roman mars has a slight advantage over ares, for the name of silvia is sweetly-sounding, but she should be represented alone, as the star of the wild campagna, while yet it was forest-clad: the gleaming light whose rays are to illumine the earth. mars may disappear with the wolf, but who can hide the glory of rome? mercury it is difficult to connect the hermes of the poet with the tedious expressionless figure commonly seen in painting, whose only costume is a helmet, and whose invariable province is apparently to look on and do nothing. for the sculptor he is a god; for the painter a symbol of subordination. a rubens may give him the pulse of life, but only the sculptor can suggest the divinity. with the painter the winged helmet is a bizarre ornament; the immortal sandals are shrunken to leather; the caduceus is a thing of inertia which is ever in the way. but with the sculptor all these things may be endowed with the quickening spirit of a soaring mind, for does not giovanni di bologna show the lithesome god speeding through space ahead of the wind, the feathery foot-wings humming with delirium, the trembling air dividing hastily before the wand? true, the painter may represent the divine herald on his way through space, as when he conducts psyche to olympus, or leads the shades of the suitors to hades; but the accessories present must surround him with an earthy framework, unless the design be confined to a ceiling, and shut away from things mundane with architectural forms, as in the plan of raphael at the farnese villa, or to a fresco executed in the manner of a flaxman drawing. beyond these artifices the artist cannot go with propriety. few and worn are the scenes in the history of the god in which he takes a leading part. the head of argus seems to be cut off, or awaiting separation, in nearly every collection, sometimes with juno on a cloud deeply frowning with revengeful ire, occasionally with the peacock expectant of its glorious fan, but always with the weak-looking helmeted piper, passive and unconcerned as if fulfilling a daily task. a correggio may weave his golden fancy around a scene where cupid learns to strengthen his arrows with the rules of science and the wiles of art; but let the painter beware of the infant bacchus in the arms of the messenger-god, lest a vision of the olympian group arise and enfold his work in a robe of charity. the schemes whereby the cradled thief deceived the pythian god are beyond the scope of the painter, though there is a certain available range in the charming actions surrounding the invention of the lyre. and if the designs relating to the unfortunate lara be properly consigned to oblivion, surely the connection of hermes with pandora offers a field for the sprightly imagination. but save where the god is a symbol of commerce or speed, the helmet should be dispensed with, for it is hackneyed beyond endurance. the modern painter is not bound by custom unless the provision of beauty conflict with the lucidity of the design or the reverence for universal sentiment. let the winged heels suffice, for the shadow of persius will scarcely rise in protest. [illustration: plate (see page ) greek portraiture head of plato head of euripides] bacchus centuries of bacchanalian festivities and revelries have nearly killed bacchus for the painter. who can further interest himself in meaningless processions, where the most prominent figure is a fat, drunken, staggering man, supported by goat-hoofed monstrosities, and attended by all the insignia of vinous royalty? silenus is no more the loving nurse of the infant god; the satyrs are no more the followers of a reed-playing woodland deity; the nymphs have long forgotten the flowery dales, the faithful trees that lived and died with them, the fairy bowers where first semele's offspring clapped his hands to the measure of dance and pipe. why should the dance be turned into a drunken revel? why should the artist remember the orgies of rome, and forget the grecian pastoral fancies? what has become of dionysus, inheritor of vishnu traditions, the many-named father of song, the leader of the muses, and the fire-born enemy of pirates? nothing remains of him worth remembering, save ariadne the golden-haired, and she must in future be left on the desert isle lest the pathos of her figure be disturbed by the motley followers of her rescuer. it is passing strange that the artists of the renaissance did not attempt to lift bacchus out of the ditch of ignominy into which he had fallen. they seem to have taken their ideas from the recorded accounts of the roman rites and vine festivals, overlooking the grecian suggestions relating to dionysus, and even the later restrained reliefs picturing incidents in his history. in their art, however, as is evidenced by pompeian frescoes, the romans often treated bacchus in a serious manner, associating him with higher interests than those connected with festival orgies. it may be that the figure of the god carved by michelangelo[a] had something to do with the later coarse representations of him, for it would have been impossible for artists succeeding so great a sculptor, to ignore the types he created. but it will be an eternal mystery how he came to design such a bacchus. a voluptuous semi-realistic god, opposed to everything else that was conceived by the sculptor, and antagonistic to all that was known in greece, it can never be anything more than a sublime example of a purely earthly figure. one stands amazed before the perfect modelling, but aghast at the conception. it represents the most extraordinary transition from the god-like man of the greeks, to a man-like god, ever seen in art. [a] in the bargello, florence. the painter then has little left to use of the conventional bacchus and his history, except the never-dying ariadne, but there is nothing to prevent him from reverting to the pastoral dionysus, to the delightful abodes of the nymphs his foster-mothers, where pan played and the muses sang, while the never-tiring son of maia breathed tales of love into willing ears. vulcan the poet may continue to hold our fancy with volcanic fires and cyclopean hammers, but on canvas etna becomes a blacksmith's forge, and the figure of a begrimed human toiler is given to the divinity responsible for the golden handmaids, and the brazen bull whose breath was scorching flame. there is rarely a painting of vulcan without a forge and leather bellows, with a smith who is stripped to the waist, which earthly things necessarily kill all suggestions of celestial interest, notwithstanding the presence of venus, or the never-fading bride of palsied peleus. occasionally we have the incident with mars, and strangely look for the invisible net, but not finding it we are immediately called back to earth to ponder over the wiles of the ancient legend gatherers. the art is lost behind the unreality. but why does not the painter revert to the childhood of vulcan, when he was hiding in the glistening cavern beneath the roll of ocean, fashioning resplendent eardrops for silver-footed thetis? here is scope for the imagination--to indicate the fancies of the budding genius who was to carve the wondrous shield, and adorn the heaven-domed halls of olympus. let hephæstus mature as he will for the poet: he should only bloom for the painter. general classical compositions scenes of adventure from the ancient poets in which the gods and goddesses are concerned, appear to be rapidly becoming things of the past for the painter. this is partly due to the circumstance that these scenes have been so multiplied since the early days of the renaissance, that they are now positively fatiguing to both artists and the public; but there is a deeper reason. if we try to number the paintings of classical subjects by first-class artists which are enshrined in our minds, we can count very few, and nearly all of these are single figures, as a venus, a leda, a psyche, or a pandora. we do not call up a judgment of paris, or a diana and actæon, or any other design where divinities are mixed with mortals in earthly actions. the cause of this seems to be that our minds naturally revolt against a glaring incongruity. the imagination is unable to harmonize the qualities of a god with the possession of human instincts and frailties, or strike a balance between divine actions and human motives. we see these pictures and admire the design and execution, but they leave us cold: we are unable to kindle enthusiasm over patent unreality. the general conclusion is that painters would be wise to avoid such compositions, and confine their attention in classical work to single figures of goddesses or heroines, leaving to the poet suggestion of miraculous powers. chapter ix expression. part iv.--general ideals limitation of the painter with general ideals--ideal heads interchangeable in sacred and symbolical art--ideal male human countenances impossible for the painter. in the arts of sculpture and painting, where it is necessary that the beauty should be immediately recognized by the eye, it is obvious that a general expression is superior to the particular. this is so because the general covers universal experience and the particular does not. but in the art of the painter there is a limit to the expression of general beauty. theoretically there is no beauty possible to the sculptor which the painter cannot produce, but practically there is. a sculptor may carve what we understand as a god-like figure--a glorious image embodying all the highest qualities that may be conceived by man, with a general expression covering supreme wisdom and every noble attribute--such a figure as the greatest grecian artist chiselled. this figure would stand in front of us, isolated, serene in its glory, and we should look and wonder, and a second or two would suffice to fill our entire mind with the image. for it would be above the earth, above all our surroundings. we could connect nothing on earth with it--neither human beings, nor green fields, nor the seas, and certainly not human habitations, and ways, and manners, and actions. a phidian god can have no setting. everything on earth is too small, too insignificant to bear it company. the reflection from the majesty of the design throws into shadow our loftiest earthly conceptions. let us suppose that a painter could be found who could execute such a figure: how could he isolate it to the mind? he may not use accessories, for these could not be separated by the eye, and the association with earth which they would imply would destroy the illusion. but the figure must have relief, and hence tones. a monochrome would not do, for the frame or sides of the wall containing the picture would flatten it, and suggest a painted imitation of a sculpture. we may imagine a colossal figure painted on an immense wall whose bounds are hidden by the concentration of all the available light on the figure. even then the colouring of the wall must be unseen. the figure must stand out as if against infinite space, surrounded by ambient air, in majestic solitude, pondering over the everlasting roll of life towards perfection. in this way only could the painter match the sculptor, but the practical difficulties are so enormous as to render the scheme to all intents and purposes impossible. for the painter then there is a limit to expression. he cannot proceed with his ideal higher than praxiteles. his limit is the most supreme form and expression conceivable by his imagination, which does not exceed the apparent possibility of human experience. apparent, because an ideal must necessarily be actually above the possibility of experience, but it may not appear to be so. for instance a raphael madonna does not seem to represent a supernatural woman. there is no single feature painted which cannot be matched in life, and hence it would not occur to the observer that the expression is contrary to the possibility of experience. but the expression cannot be met with in life, for besides being entirely general, it excludes all phases due to the emotions or passions. one cannot imagine a woman with the expression of a raphael madonna having concern with any special human interest, and least of all with feelings and failings arising from natural instincts. yet the expression covers every form of noble endeavour; every phase of innocent pleasure; every degree of mental activity within the province of woman. and herein lies the art--the exclusion of the bad in our nature, with the exaltation of the good. now it is obvious that if the expression be so general that no particular quality can be identified therein, the countenance will serve for the head of any personage painted in whose expression it is desirable to indicate the possession of high attributes, without suggesting a particular condition of mind. thus, the head of a raphael madonna would equally serve for the head of a saint cecilia or a judith; or, providing the age were suitable, for a heroine of the stamp of joan of arc, so long as the character of her actual features were unknown. further it would be well adapted for a symbolical figure, as prudence or truth. but a far wider significance than is thus indicated, is conveyed by the necessity for generalizing expression in order to reach the painter's ideal. it has already been noted that inasmuch as all men have the same general idea of beauty--that they generally agree as to what is, or is not, beautiful, it follows that there must be a common opinion as to degrees of beauty, and so a universality of ideal; that is of course, among people with similar experience of life, as for instance the white races of the world.[ ] hence the ideals of all painters must be similar. they must necessarily aim for the same generalization--exclude or emphasize like. manner or style, or national type may vary; purely sensorial effects may differ as the minds of the painters have been variously trained, but the combination of features and effects which regulate the expression will be practically identical in every realized ideal. consequently, subject to changes in attitude or age, ideal heads of all artists are interchangeable without incongruity resulting, irrespective of the motive of the design, for the ideal countenance indicated adapts itself to any character where no emotional or passionate expression is required. the head of the figure representing "profane love" in titian's great picture, would serve to express spiritual nobility in a madonna,[a] and when a head in a madonna by raphael is exchanged with that of the central figure in fragonard's the pursuit,[b] there is no resulting suggestion of impropriety in either picture.[c] ideal countenances have sometimes been given to evil characters, as in luini's salome,[d] and the head in this picture would equally well serve for a madonna.[e] [a] see plate . [b] frick collection, new york.[ ] [c] see plate . [d] uffizi gallery, florence. [e] see plate . an ideal head then will suggest any expression that the design in which it is included seems to require, subject to the restrictions before noted. in the pursuit the face of the woman presumed to be fleeing from her lover indicates some concern, and even a little fear,[a] but that this is due to the surroundings in the work, is shown when the head is substituted for another in a different picture, for the concern has disappeared, and the expression becomes one which may properly represent the highest attributes connected with the madonna. [a] see frontispiece and plate . the limits within which the form and countenance of a woman may be idealized, are prescribed by raphael in his works. the presumed age must be that when she reaches the full bloom of womanhood. youth will not do because it involves an expression denying experience, while physically a girl cannot be supposed to have reached an age where her form has ceased to progress towards perfection. beauty of feature and form is the first consideration of the artist, and hence his difficulty in fixing an expression which shall be entirely free from the possibility of suggesting desire. for this reason no model, or series of models, will suffice the painter: he has always to bring his imagination to bear, as raphael admitted he had to do.[a] [a] "e di belle donne, io mi servo di certa idea che mi viene nella mente." letter to castiglione. it is impossible to find a head of a woman, painted before the time of raphael, which fulfils the requirements of art as an ideal. the figures are either too formal, or too distinctive in type, or are evidently portraits, while in many of the greatest pictures of the fifteenth century the artists had not yet learned how to put warm blood into their madonnas. raphael, however, after taking up his sojourn at florence, became an object lesson for nearly every school, and ideal countenances were produced by other masters, though no painter other than raphael succeeded with more than one or two. nowadays the ever increasing hustle in the struggle for existence, does not lend itself to deep study and long contemplation on the part of painters, but hope springs eternal, and surely the list of immortals is not yet closed. an ideal man of flesh and blood is not possible in the art of the painter, for there is no general conception of male beauty below the level of the god-like. perfection of form can be given, but a supreme expression in the face of a man implies deep wisdom, and this must necessarily be associated with maturity when high sensorial beauty of feature can scarcely be expected. chapter x expression. part v.--portraiture limitations of the portrait painter--generalizations--emphasis and addition of qualities--practice of the ancient greeks-- dignity--importance of simplicity--some of the great masters-- portraiture of women--the english masters--the quality of grace--the necessity of repose. while in the scale of the painter's art, portraiture ranks next to the higher branches of historical work, yet it is some distance behind them, for apart from the commonplace of scenic arrangement, the imagination of the portrait painter cannot be carried further than the consideration of added or eliminated details of form and expression in relation to a set subject. but these details are very difficult, and so it comes about that a good portrait involves a far greater proportion of mental labour than the result appears on the surface to warrant. it is indirectly consequent upon the complexity of his task that the work of the artist who devotes practically his whole time to portraiture, often varies so largely in quality. he paints some portraits which are generally appreciated, but as time goes on he is overwhelmed with orders which he cannot possibly fulfil without reducing the value of his work. he thus acquires a habit of throwing his whole power into his work only when the personage he represents is of public importance, or has a countenance particularly amenable to his manner or style. it is necessary that this fact should be borne in mind, otherwise erroneous standards are likely to be set up when artists like van dyck, reynolds, or romney, are referred to as examples. in a general sense nearly all painting where the human figure is introduced, is portraiture, and it has been so since soon after the middle of the fifteenth century, when artists commenced to use living men and women for secondary or accessory figures in sacred pictures. the increasing importance attached to the anatomy of the figure resulted in the extensive use of models, and so in a measure portraiture rose to be a leading feature in the work of the artist. the figures in the larger compositions of every kind by the greater painters of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, consist almost entirely of portraits of friends and acquaintances of the artists, the exceptions being the countenances of the deity and christ, which had to be modelled from accepted types, and those of the later saints the character of whose features had been handed down by tradition. a few painters, as raphael and correggio, idealized the virgin away from suggestion of portraiture, but others, as del sarto and pontormo, even in this case took a wife or other relative as a model. the practice was continued by many artists in respect of central figures, till the end of the seventeenth century, after which time the identity of the figures was, as a rule, purposely lost. nevertheless the figures, other than ideals, used in all good compositions, must necessarily be portraits or adaptations thereof, for only from life can superior representation of life be obtained. the first duty of the portraitist is to generalize the expression of his subject. a face seen once will be thrown upon the mind only with the particular expression observable at the moment of view. if seen a second time we involuntarily combine the effects of the dual experience, and the more often we see the countenance, the more closely will our mental picture of it correspond with the general or average expression worn. it is this average appearance that the portraitist tries to represent, emphasizing of course whatever good qualities may be indicated. the second most important task of the artist is to balance every part of the picture, so that neither setting, nor colour, nor handling, is strikingly noticeable. the portrait should appear at first glance as one complete whole, in order that the mind of the observer be immediately directed to the subject, and away from the artist or the manner of execution. the painter is limited to the actual character and physiognomy of the figure. he must make each feature harmonize with the others, and add or subtract, hide or reveal, without changing the general individuality, but he cannot do more. his scope is, therefore, strictly limited. very naturally some of the greatest portraitists have rebelled at this limit. they appear to have painted with an eye to posterity, rather than to satisfy their patrons and the people of the time with an effective generalization of character and bearing. if we compare the portraits executed by titian with those representing certain accessory figures in some important compositions of the great masters, as for instance, the school of athens of raphael,[a] and the death of st. francis of ghirlandaio,[b] we find a marked difference. the latter are obviously true portraits of living men, with little accentuated or eliminated, just such portraits as carlyle wanted from which to obtain real instruction for his biographies. titian painted no portraits of this kind. he gives a lofty bearing to every person he portrays. his figures seem to belong to a special race of men, endowed with rare qualities of nobility and dignity, with little interest in the doings of ordinary people. yet we know that some of his characters lived in an atmosphere of evil. we cannot really believe that the aretino of titian[c] was aretino the man, and we find it hard to imagine that philip ii.,[d] or the duke of alba,[e] as titian painted him, could grow into the monster he proved to be. nevertheless titian was justified. it is not the business of the artist to consider the historian: his art is all that concerns him. titian produced beautiful pictures which are commonly recognized as great portrayals of character; whose character matters not, though when we have data upon which to rest a judgment, we find the lineaments in his works are fully sufficient for purposes of identification. [a] at the vatican. [b] fresco at santa trinita, florence. [c] frick collection, n. y. [d] the padro, madrid, and elsewhere. [e] huescar coll., madrid. while titian went further than any other renaissance painter in ennobling his subjects, he did not approach the ancient greeks in this respect. their sculptured busts and terms represent the highest portraiture known to us. many examples remain, mostly copies it is true, but quite fifty of them are clearly faithful reproductions, made apparently in the early days of imperial rome, and accord closely with the few existing originals. the grecian portraits differ from the roman, and all later painted or carved portraits in a most important feature.[a] the latter aimed at what is still understood as the highest level in portraiture. they endeavoured to give a general individualism of mind and bearing, avoiding particular expression; in fact to represent character. since the christian era commenced neither sculptor nor painter has gone further than this, with very few exceptions in roman days when grecian sculptors of the time imitated the practice of the fourth and early third centuries. the earlier greeks on the other hand not only generalized portraits in an extreme degree, but, except in the case of athletes, they altered the contour of the head and varied the actual features of the subject, so that the possession of the higher human attributes should be indicated as clearly as possible. they invariably showed a large facial angle, placed the ears well close to the head, sunk the eyes deep in their sockets, and ennobled the brows to suggest majesty or profound thought. in fact the grecian portrait heads only differ from their sculptured gods in that particular countenances are depicted, and consequently the expression in them does not appear to be above the possibility of human experience. apparently in grecian times, only men who had become celebrated in some way were represented in stone, and hence the artist had features to depict which could be semi-idealized without impropriety. even socrates, whose ugliness was proverbial, was given a noble and dignified expression.[b] [a] see plates and . [b] see heads in the national museums of rome and naples. that the painter is at liberty to follow the example of the greeks, there can be no question from the point of view of art, for his first object is to produce a beautiful picture; but in portraiture, practical and conventional considerations have to be met, with which other branches of painting are not concerned. with rare exceptions the portraits executed are of living persons, and extreme accentuation of high qualities would be likely to result in a representation of the sitter that would appear false to contemporary observers, though we might well imagine that a work exhibiting this accentuation would seem to be of high excellence in the judgment of future generations. there must therefore be a line drawn in respect of added or accentuated qualities, and the position of this line would naturally vary with the celebrity of the subject and the power of the artist. something definite may, however, be said in regard to the emphasis of certain qualities of form, and particularly of dignity, a feature that has occupied the attention of some of the greatest masters. [illustration: plate (see page ) roman portraiture head of vespasian head of hadrian] the question arises, how far may the artist go in imitating the manner of the stage with his portraits? on the theatrical stage formalities are required with certain characters in order to emphasize their position--to assist in the recognition of their standing or relative significance in the drama, for it is of the first importance that the audience should comprehend the meaning of the actions presented as rapidly as possible. the actor must often exaggerate life habits of pose and manner in order to heighten the contrast between two characters, or to give special significance to the words. and the elevation of the diction sometimes compels this exaggeration. in high drama where the language used is above experience of ordinary life in measure and force, there must be appropriate pose and action to accompany it, and hence a height of dignity or even majesty may appear perfectly proper on the stage, which would be ridiculous in surroundings away from it. from the practice of certain painters it would seem that they have looked upon portraiture as the transference of their subjects to the public stage as it were, so that they might appear to occupy a higher position in the drama of life than that to which they are habituated. no harm can arise from this provided the portraitist does not pass beyond the custom of the theatrical stage, where, whatever the exaggeration, the representation appears, or should appear, appropriate to the action; that is to say, where the exaggeration is not recognized as such. accentuation of high qualities of expression, or even variations in certain physical features, such as the greeks brought about, would not appear exaggerations in a portrait, but where dignity of form is added to such an extent that the observer immediately recognizes it as untrue to experience, then the artist goes too far. while this is so, we do not condemn titian, van dyck, and the few other portrait painters who emphasized the quality of dignity of form in past times. the reason for this appears to be that the usual methods of teaching history lead us to suppose that nobles and leaders of society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, who were usually the portrait subjects of the greater artists, commonly assumed a demeanour and bearing far above our own experience. at the present day, when it is a matter of universal knowledge that a formal dignified pose is very rarely assumed by any one, such a bearing in a portrait would be regarded as untrue. the portraitist may improve the expression of his subject, adding any good quality within his power, and he may remove from the features or figure any marked physical defect, because the portrait would still appear to be correct; but if he add a strong dignified pose, then the result would be something that is possibly, but improbably accurate, and therefore inferior art. the quality of dignity should be expressed rather in the countenance than in the pose, the bearing of the form being produced as in life, for this lends assistance to the true representation of character. a dignified expression may well be appropriate to an awkward form whose personality would be undistinguished by dignity of pose. titian was the first great artist to give a pronounced dignity of form to his subjects, and he never varied from the practice unless the subject were exhibited in action,[a] or too old to be represented as an upright figure.[b] nor did he once exaggerate the pose so that arrogance might be suggested. though he squared the shoulders, he rarely threw back the head to emphasize the bearing,[c] and only in one portrait is the body slightly arched as the result of the pose.[d] in fact so careful was the artist in avoiding over-emphasis, that there is a tendency in two or three of his figures for the upper part of the body to lean a little forward.[e] obviously titian gave this dignified attitude to his portrait subjects of set purpose, as in his general compositions there is no suggestion of it.[ ] [a] portrait of his daughter, berlin gallery, and of jacopo di strada at vienna. [b] paul iii. at naples, and his own portrait at the uffizi gallery. [c] an exception is charles v. at mühlberg, prado, madrid. [d] portrait of his daughter as a bride, at dresden. [e] notably in the portrait of the duke of ferrara, pitti palace. velasquez no doubt acquired his habit of lending dignity to his important subjects from the examples of titian's portraits which came under his view in spain. except in one notable instance where the bearing is much over-emphasized,[a] he was equally successful with the italian master in the practice, though many of his characters are far from lending him any natural assistance. in the case of a court dwarf, however, the high dignity given to him by the painter seems to require explanation.[b] [a] count-duke olivares, holford, coll., london. [b] don antonio el ingles, prado. before he went to italy, van dyck followed the natural system of rubens in posing his portrait subjects, but at genoa he painted under the spell of titian's memory, and thereafter during his whole life, he gave a dignified bearing to his figures whenever this was not opposed to individual traits. during his english period, when he undertook more work than he could properly accomplish, he sometimes over-emphasized the dignity of a figure by arching the body,[a] but as a rule he produced a just balance of pose and setting, completing altogether a magnificent series of portraits which remain the astonishment of the world. [a] earl of newport, northbrook coll., england; earl of bedford spencer coll.; and queen henrietta (three-quarter length), windsor castle. it is obviously the duty of the portraitist so to design his work that the attention of the observer is concentrated upon the countenance of the subject immediately he has grasped the whole composition, and it is in the successful accomplishment of this object that the power of rembrandt lies. he rarely used accessories, and in only a few cases a background of any kind. he avoided portraits where an elaborate setting was required, as for instance full length standing figures, of which he only painted two[a]; and in his many three-quarter length portraits, there is seldom more than a table or chair to be seen apart from the figure. with this simplicity of design, and with nearly all the available light directed full upon the head of the subject, the eye of the observer of the picture is necessarily centred instantaneously upon the features. these are invariably cast into bold relief by perfect management of the chiaroscuro, and the correspondence with life seems as complete as it well can be. rembrandt thus accomplishes the aim of every great artist: he executes a faithful picture, and throws it on the mind of the observer with the maximum of rapidity. only artists of a high order can successfully ignore a more or less elaborate setting for a portrait, particularly if it be larger than bust size. great care has to be taken with such a setting lest the eye of the observer be attracted by the pose of the figure and the general harmony of the work before being directed to the countenance. if we take the general opinion of known portraits, so far as it can be gauged, we find that the most highly esteemed of them are: the julius ii. of raphael, the mona lisa of lionardo, the man with the gloves by titian, the old man with a boy by ghirlandaio, and innocent x. by velasquez.[b] all of these except mona lisa are remarkable for the simplicity of the setting, and in the exception the formal landscape is altogether subordinated to the figure. raphael was the first artist who saw the value of avoiding accessories in portraiture. his half-length portraits painted after his arrival in florence, are all free from them, and his julius ii. has only the chair on which the pope is seated. [a] martin day and machteld van doorn, both in gustave rothschild coll., paris. [b] the first at the pitti palace, the last at the doria gallery, and the others at the louvre. rembrandt further aided the concentration of attention on the countenance of a sitter by the use of warm inconspicuous tones in the clothing, which harmonize with all kinds of surroundings in which the picture may be seen. the colours never specially attract the eye, and the attire consequently forms so completely a part of the figure, that after an inspection of the work one can rarely describe the costume. this subordination of colour is of the highest importance in portraiture, though it is not sufficiently practised nowadays. velasquez used quiet tones whenever possible, that is, when he was not painting great personages, and titian, rubens, and van dyck, followed the same course in half-length portraits. none of these, however, seemed so careful as rembrandt in adapting the tones to the general character of the figure, so that the impression left on the mind of the observer should relate entirely to the personality. rembrandt, in fact, aimed at a representation of the man, and the man only; and he gave us a natural human being of a commonly known type, with his virtues somewhat emphasized, and his faults a little veiled. the extraordinary power of velasquez as a portraitist was due to the same general cause operating in the case of rembrandt, namely, extreme simplicity in design. apart from those instances where royal or official personages had to be represented in decorative attire, every portrait of velasquez is merely the impress of a personality. there are no accessories; the clothing is subordinated to the last degree, and there is nothing for the eye to grasp but a perfectly drawn set of features thrown into strong relief by a method of chiaroscuro unsurpassed in depth and accuracy. thus, as in the case of rembrandt, the portrait fulfils the first law of art--the picture is thrown on the brain in the least possible fraction of time. velasquez was remarkable in a greater degree than any other artist, if we except hals, for his facility in execution. in his brush-work he appeared to do the right thing at all times without hesitation, achieving the most perfect balance as if by instinct. so far as we can judge from those instances where his subjects were painted also by other artists, his portraits are good likenesses, but he followed the best practice in generalizing the countenance to the fullest extent. it is unfortunate that his work was confined to so poor a variety of sitters. of his known portraits more than half represent philip iv. or his relatives; eight others are nobles of the time, and another half dozen are dwarfs and buffoons, leaving only seventeen examples of the artist's work amongst ordinary people. there never was a weaker royal family than that of philip iv., and it is really astonishing how velasquez was able to produce such excellent works of art by means of their portraits. with his abnormal lips and weak face, the king himself must have been a most difficult person to ennoble, yet the painter managed in three portraits to give him a highly distinguished countenance and bearing, without in any way suggesting exaggeration.[a] of another weak man--innocent x.--velasquez painted what reynolds described as the greatest portrait he saw in rome; and it is truly one of the most amazing life representations ever executed.[b] a reddish face peers out through a blaze of warm surroundings and background; a face in full relief as if cut out of apoplectic flesh--almost appalling in its verity. it is like nothing else that velasquez painted: it overpowers with its combined strength and realism. but it is a picture to see occasionally, and admire as a great imitation. if one lived with it, the colour would hurt the eye, the unpleasant face would tire the mind. such a face should not be painted: it should be carved in stone, where truth may be given to form without the protrusion of mortal decay. bernini sculptured the countenance, and gave the pope a certain majesty which no painting could present. as a life portrait the work of velasquez is unrivalled, but as a pure work of art, it is behind the three portraits of philip iv. already mentioned. a distinctly unhealthy face cannot be produced in portraiture without injuring the art, for it is a variety of distortion. [a] the full example at the prado; the parma full length, in the frick coll., n. y.; and the three-quarter length portrait at the imperial gallery, vienna. [b] in the doria gallery, rome. velasquez was so naturally a portraitist that apart from his actual portrait work, every figure composition he painted seems to consist merely of the portraits of a group of persons. he took little pains to connect the figures in a life action, often painting them with a look of unconcern with the proceedings around them, as if specially posing for the artist. in several of his works there are faces looking right out of the picture, and it is evident that in these the artist had little thought in his mind away from portrait presentation.[a] the surrender of breda and las meninas,[b] regarded generally as his best compositions, are admittedly portrait groupings, but the setting in each case is one of action, and hence the faces looking out of the picture are a great drawback, as they disrobe the illusion of a natural scene. that a man so accurate in his drawing, so perfect in his chiaroscuro, and so skilful in his brushwork, should yet be so conspicuously limited in imagination, is a problem which art historians have yet to solve. [a] see the breakfast, hermitage; christ in the house of martha, national gallery, london; and the drinkers, prado. [b] both at the prado. franz hals was on a level with velasquez in respect of facility in execution, and like him seems to have been a born portraitist. his brushwork was so rapid and decisive that in scarcely any of his designs is there evidence of deliberation. he seems to have been able to take in the essential features of a subject at a glance, and to transfer them to canvas without preliminaries, producing an amazing countenance with the least possible detail. though some of his large groups are a little stiff, this is rather through his want of capacity in invention than a set purpose of exaggeration with a view to heightening the dignity of pose, for it is obvious that hals had little imagination, and knew nothing of the boundless possibilities of his art in general composition. he appears to have passed through life without concern for his work beyond material results, being well convinced that the magic of his execution would leave nothing further for the public to desire. in the last forty years of his life he made no advance in his art except in one respect, but the change was great, for it doubled the art value of his portraits. he learned how to subordinate his colours; how to modify his chiaroscuro in order to force the immediate attention of the observer on the countenance of his subject.[ ] such an advance with such an artist placed him in the rank of the immortals among the portraitists. it will be seen that in the judgment of the greatest painters, decoration in a portrait should be altogether subordinated to the truthful representation of character, this practice being only varied when the personage portrayed is of public importance, and the portrait is required more or less as a monument. the rule is natural and reasonable, being based upon the universal agreement that the all-important part of a man comprehended by the vision is his countenance. but the rule only strictly applies to a single figure portrait, for when the painter goes beyond this, and executes a double portrait or a multiple group, he restricts the scope of his art. other things being equal a double portrait is necessarily inferior art to a single figure picture, since the dual objective complicates the impression of the work on the brain, and the only remedy, or partial remedy, for this drawback possessed by the painter is to introduce accessories and arrange his group in a subject design. this plan results in detracting from the force of the actual portraits, as it divides the attention of the observer, but there is no help for it unless one is content with the representation of the figures in a stiff and formal way which extinguishes the pictorial effect of the work. the greatest artists have avoided dual or triple portrait works where possible except in cases of gatherings of members of the same family, as one of these groups may be regarded as a unity by the observer. nevertheless in his picture of leo x., and the two younger medici,[a] raphael was careful to subordinate the cardinals so that they should appear little more than accessories in a painting of the pope; an example which was followed not quite so successfully by titian in his triple portrait of paul iii. with the two brothers farnese.[b] a group of two persons who are in some way associated with each other, though unconnected in action, rarely looks out of place, as in the pictures of father and son, or of two brothers, painted by van dyck, or in the ambassadors of holbein,[c] but no painter has yet succeeded in producing a first-class work of art out of a multiple portrait group when the personages represented are unconnected with each other, either directly in action, or indirectly through association derived from the title. the picture of rubens representing lipsius and three others, would appear much more stiff and formal than it is, without one of the two titles given to it, notwithstanding the general excellence of the composition.[d] when the figures introduced are very numerous, as in the many groups of civic organizations painted by hals, ravesteyn, and others, the compulsory formality seriously detracts from the æsthetic value of the works, however superior they may be in execution, or whatever the connection of the personages represented; and when we come to such crowded paintings as terburg's signing the peace of münster,[e] we obtain but little more than a record, though it be of absorbing historical interest. [a] pitti palace, florence. [b] naples museum. [c] national gallery, london. [d] the four philosophers, or lipsius and his disciples, pitti palace. [e] national gallery, london. it is observable that as a rule portraitists have been more successful with delineations of men than of women. this is to be accounted for by the necessity for subordinating the representation of character to the art in the case of women unless they have passed the prime of life; while with men the art is usually subordinated to the portrait, character being sought independently of sensorial beauty. strictly it is the duty of the artist to make his portrait, whether of a man or a woman, sensorially attractive, but here again in portraiture custom and convention have to be considered with the rules of art. it is agreed that with a woman sensorial beauty must be produced if that be possible, even with the sacrifice of certain elements of character; but with a man the portrait must be recognized by the acquaintances of the subject as corresponding in most details with his life appearance. the future of the portrait is out of the question for the time being. nevertheless the painter has certain advantages in dealing with the features of a man, for the presence of lines in the brow, or other evidence of experience, does not interfere with the nobility or dignity which may be added to his general bearing; but what would be lines in the countenance of a man would be wrinkles in that of a woman, because here they can scarcely be neutralized by attitude and expression which imply strength of character, without destroying what is best described as womanly charm, which is a compulsory feature in every woman's portrait. with a man therefore the portraitist considers character first and emphasizes qualities of form within his power; while with a woman, during the period of her bloom, beauty of form and feature must be the first care of the artist, unconflicting qualities of character being emphasized or added. all this was of course recognized by the great portraitists of the renaissance and the seventeenth century, but while most of them endeavoured to enhance the sensorial beauty of their men subjects, little attempt was made to add intellectual grace to the portrayals of women. antonio moro[a] and van dyck, in their full length portraits of women, sometimes succeeded in converting dignity of form into what we understand as grandeur, which implies dignity of expression as well as grace and dignity of form, but they were largely handicapped by the dress fashions of their times. they had to deal with heavy formal drapery which hung over the figures like elongated bells, and bid defiance to freedom of pose. when fashions and customs had so changed as to allow of definition being given to the figures, van dyck had been dead for many years. meanwhile hals, rembrandt, velasquez, and hundreds of lesser lights, were casting around their flowers of form and mind, but all on the old plan, for it is difficult to find a portrait of a woman painted during the century succeeding van dyck, where beauty of feature is allied to nobility in expression. [a] catilina of portugal, and maria of austria, both at the prado. [illustration: plate (see page ) sacrifice of iphigenia (pompeian fresco) supposed copy of a painting by timanthes] the production of this combination awaited the maturity of reynolds, who with gainsborough, broke into a new field in the portraiture of women. gainsborough took the grandeur of van dyck for his pattern, but improved upon it by substituting simplicity for dignity and elaboration, which he was able to manage without great difficulty, as he had a clear advantage over the flemish master in that the costumes in use in his time were lighter in character, and permitted of the contour of form being properly exhibited. this simple grace of form allied to grandeur in bearing, naturally brings about an apparent modification in expression in conformity with it, so long as there are no conflicting elements in expression present, which gainsborough was careful to avoid. reynolds went further than gainsborough, for after the middle of his career he directly added an expression of nobility to his portraits of women whenever the features would admit of it, and so brought about the highest type of feminine portraiture known in art. he was more nearly allied to titian than van dyck, and though in sheer force of sensorial beauty he did not reach the level of the venetian master, yet in pure feminine portraiture, where high beauty of expression is combined with a perfect generalization of the features, reynolds is unsurpassed in the history of painting, so far as we can judge from examples remaining to us. for we must estimate an artist from his best work. reynolds painted forty or fifty portraits of women of the character indicated, and a few of them, notably mrs. siddons as tragedy,[a] and mrs. billington as st. cecilia,[b] are amongst the most luminous examples of feminine portraiture in existence. there are many artists who equalled reynolds in the representation of men, but there are very few indeed who even attempted to strike a just balance between sensorial and intellectual effects in the countenance of a woman. [a] westminster coll., london. [b] new york public library. with such great leaders as reynolds and gainsborough, it might have been hoped that the school they founded in portraiture would have taken a long lease of life, but it rapidly died away, leaving very few indeed of footsteps sunk deep in the sands of glory, save those of raeburn, hoppner, lawrence, and romney. but between reynolds and romney there is a wide gulf, for while the former sought for his beauty among the higher gifts of nature, romney, with rare exceptions, was content with a formal expression allied to grace of pose. we may shortly consider this graceful attitude for it seems to be often regarded as an all-sufficing feature in the representation of women.[ ] the charm of grace lies chiefly in movement, and a graceful attitude in repose implies rest from graceful movement, but this attitude is ephemeral in nature, for if prolonged it quickly becomes an artificial pose. in art therefore, a graceful pose, whether exhibited in action or at rest, must soon tire unless attractive expression be present to deepen the impress of the work upon the mind of the observer. the general æsthetic value of graceful form in a painted figure varies with the scale to which the figure is drawn. with a heroic figure, grace is of the smallest importance; in one of life size, as a portrait for instance, the quality is of considerable assisting value; and as the scale is diminished, so does the relative value of grace increase. this is because details of expression can be less truthfully rendered in small figures than in those of life size, while in miniature figures certain high qualities of expression, as nobility, or a combined expression of mind and form, as grandeur, can be scarcely indicated at all, so that purely sensorial beauty, as that arising from grace of pose, becomes of comparatively vast importance. this was well understood in ancient times. the grecian sculptured life-size figures are nearly always graceful, but the grace arises naturally from perfection of form and expression, and not from a specially added quality, a particular grace of pose being always subordinated, if present at all. on the other hand, in the smaller grecian figures, such as those found at tanagra and in asia minor, anything in expression beyond regularity of features is not attempted, but grace is always present, and it is entirely upon this that the beauty of the figurines depends. we may presume from the frescoes opened out at pompeii, that the ancients were well aware of the value and limitations of grace in art. in all these decorations where the figures are of a general type, as fauns, bacchantes, nereids, dancers, and so on, they are represented in motion, flying drapery being skilfully used to provide illusion. grace is the highest quality evident in these forms, while the expression is invariably negative. for pure wall decorations, which are observed in a casual way, a high quality of grace such as these frescoes provide is all-sufficient, but as with the greeks, the romans did not make grace a leading feature in serious art. with the great painters of the renaissance, nobility, grandeur, and general perfection of form and expression, though necessarily implying a certain grace in demeanour, altogether dwarfed the feature of grace of pose. in the seventeenth century, grace was subordinated to dignity of form in the case of van dyck and velasquez, and to actual life experience with rubens and rembrandt. when either of these last two added a quality of form to their figures, it was always dignity and not grace. murillo was the first spanish painter to pay particular attention to the grace of his figures, but he never gave it predominance. the french masters of the period, le brun, le sueur, poussin, mignard, and rigaud, leaned too closely to classical traditions to permit of grace playing a leading part in their designs, though some of slightly lesser fame as noel and antoine coypel, appeared to attribute considerable value to the quality. it was during this century in italy that grace first appeared as a prominent feature in figure painting. in his pastoral and classical scenes, albani seems to have largely relied upon it for his beauty, and cignani, andrea sacchi, sassoferrato, and others followed in his footsteps in this respect, though up to the end of the century no attempt was made in portraiture to sacrifice other features to grace of pose. rosalba then made her appearance as a portraitist, and she was the first to rest the entire beauty of her work on sensorial charm of feature and grace of pose. she developed a weakened school in france which culminated with nattier; and in england, angelica kauffmann, and some miniature painters, notably cosway and humphrey, took up her system for their life-size portraits, while many artists "in small" as cipriani and bartolozzi, assisted in forming a cult of the style. but of the greater british painters, only romney gave high importance to grace of pose in portraits of women. it is safer for an artist to eschew grace of pose altogether than to sacrifice higher qualities to it. a little added dignity is always preferable to a graceful attitude in a portrait, because in nature it is not so evanescent a feature. grace is a good assisting quality, but an inferior substitute. the greatest repose possible is necessary in a portrait, as a suggestion of action tends to draw the attention of the observer to it, thus impeding the impression of the whole upon his mind. the leading portraitists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries never erred in this matter, unless we except a single work by titian--the portrait group of paul iii. and the cardinals farnese, where the last named has just arrived and is apparently in the act of bowing before completing his final step; but even here it may be fairly argued that a moment of rest between two parts of the final action is to be presumed. it was not an uncommon practice of van dyck to pose a subject arrested in the act of walking, or with one foot on the lowest step of a stairway as if about to ascend; but in each of these instances the head is turned, and it is obvious that the motion is temporarily stayed.[a] a similar pose was sometimes adopted by british artists of the eighteenth century with conspicuous success. if a portrait figure be painted in the act of walking on level ground, the feet must be together even if the moment represented be that between two steps in the action, because it is contrary to all experience for a man to rest while so walking, with one foot in front of the other. in a general composition the representation of a man walking with the feet separated is permissible, because it is part of a general action, and accessory in its nature, but in a portrait the beginning and end of the action depicted are usually unknown, and hence any action must be meaningless and disturbing to the observer.[b] [a] see earl of pembroke, wilton coll., countess of devonshire, chatsworth, and philip le roy, wallace coll., all in england. [b] see chase's master roland, private coll., n. y.; and manet's boy with a sword, met. museum, n. y. the french and english artists of the eighteenth century followed the practice of their predecessors in avoiding the exhibition of movement in their portraits, but occasionally they departed from the rule. in his fine portrait of mrs. thomas raikes, romney shows the lady playing a harpsichord, with the fingers apparently in motion; and in his group of the ladies spencer, one of them is fingering a harp. the result in each case is a stiff attitude which detracts from the beauty of the work. van dyck managed such a design in a much better way, for in his portrait of his wife with a cello, she holds the bow distinctly at rest.[a] titian also, when representing a man at an organ, shows his hands stayed, while turning his head.[b] reynolds moved aside once from the custom in respect of action,[c] and raeburn seems also to have erred only on a single occasion.[d] [a] munich gallery. [b] venus and the organ player, prado. [c] viscountess crosbie, tennant coll., london. [d] dr. nathaniel spens, royal co. of archers, edinburgh. chapter xi expression. part vi--miscellaneous grief--the smile--the open mouth--contrasts--representation of death. the painter has ever to be on his guard against over-emphasis of facial expression. his first object is to present an immediately intelligible composition, and this being accomplished, much has already been done towards providing appropriate expressions for his characters. it has been seen that attitude alone may appear to lend to a countenance suitable expression which is not observed when the head of the figure is considered separately; and while such a condition is not frequent, its possibility indicates that the painter is warranted in relying more or less upon the details of his action for conveying the state of mind of the personages concerned therein. it is not the purpose here to deal with the various forms of expression that may be of use to the painter, nor indeed is it necessary. the work of raphael alone leaves little to be learned in respect of the expression of emotion so far as it may be exhibited in a painting[ ]; but there are a few matters in relation to the subject which appear to require attention, judging from experience of modern painting, and short notes upon them are here given. grief intense grief is the most difficult expression to depict in the whole art of painting, because in nature it usually results in distortion of the features, which the artist must avoid at all cost. of the thousands of paintings of scenes relating to the crucifixion, where the virgin is presumed to be in great agony at the foot of the cross, very rarely has an artist attempted to portray this agony in realistic manner.[a] he generally substitutes for grief an expression of sorrow which is produced without contraction of the features. this expression, which is invariably accompanied with extreme pallor, does not prevent the addition of a certain nobility to the countenance, and hence no suggestion of insufficiency arises in the mind of the observer. but the sublime expression which may be given to the virgin would be out of place in her attendants who are not infrequently made hideous through attempts to represent them as overcome with grief. [a] a notable exception is poussin's descent from the cross, hermitage. a method of avoiding the difficulty is to conceal the face of the personage presumed to be suffering from grief. timanthes is recorded by pliny as having painted a picture of the sacrifice of iphigenia in which the head of agamemnon was completely covered by his robe; and a picture of the same subject in a pompeian fresco represents the grecian monarch hiding his face with his right hand, while the left gathers up his robe.[a] this invention was the subject of considerable discussion in europe in the eighteenth century, in which reynolds, falconet, lessing, and others took part. reynolds said of the device that an artist might use it once, but if he did so a second time, he would be justly suspected of improperly evading difficulties. falconet compared the action of timanthes to that of a poet who avoided expressing certain sentiments on the ground that the action of his hero was above anything that could be said[b]; while lessing held that the grief which overcame agamemnon could only find expression in distortion, and hence the artist was right in covering the face.[c] unquestionably lessing was justified, for nothing more is demanded of the painter than to impress the imagination of the observer with the intensity of the grief depicted, and in this he succeeds. obviously the poet is in a different position from the painter because he can express deep grief easily enough without suggesting distortion of the features. [a] see plate [ ]. [b] "traduction des me, me, et me livres de pline." [c] laocoon. the artifice of timanthes was practically unused during the renaissance, though botticelli once conceals the face of a woman lamenting over the body of christ,[a] and richardson quotes a drawing by polidoro where the virgin hides her face in drapery in a lamentation scene. in flanders at a little earlier period, roger van der weyden used the device,[b] and the maître de flémalle shows st. john turning his head away and holding his hand to his face in a crucifixion scene.[c] in the succeeding centuries little was known of the practice, but quite lately it has come into use again. boecklin painted a pietà in which the virgin has thrown herself over the dead body of christ in an agony of grief, her whole form being covered by a cloak. feuerbach has a somewhat similar arrangement, and in a picture of the departure of jason, he hides the face of an attendant of medea, a plan adopted in two or three frescoes of the subject at pompeii. prud'hon, in a crucifixion scene, hides the face of the magdalene in her hands, and kaulbach in his marguerite so bends her head that her face is completely concealed from the observer. where the face cannot altogether be hidden owing to the character of the design, it is sometimes thrown into so deep a shade that the features are indistinguishable, this being an excellent device for symbolical figures typifying great anguish.[d] [a] the brera, milan. [b] in a scene of the eucharist, antwerp. [c] christ on the cross, berlin. [d] as in hacker's cry of egypt. it is not a good plan in a tragic design merely to turn the head away to indicate grief or sorrow, because in such a case the artist is unable to differentiate between a person experiencing intense grief, and one who turns his head from horror of the tragedy.[a] the scheme of half veiling the face is not often successful, since the depth of emotion that would be presumed from such an action may be more than counterbalanced by the very limited feeling which can be indicated by the part of the face remaining exposed. on account of a neutralizing effect of this kind, loefftz's fine picture of the dead christ at munich is much weakened, for there is no stronger expression on the part of the virgin than patient resignation. sorrow may well be displayed by semi-concealment of the features, because here the necessary expression may be produced by the eyes alone.[b] in ancient art, to half conceal the face indicated discretion, as in the case of a pompeian fresco where a nurse of the young neptune, handing him over to a shepherd for education, has her mouth and chin covered, the meaning of this being that she is acquainted with the high birth of the boy, but must not reveal it. [a] see gros's timoleon of corinth. [b] leighton's captive andromache. the smile a pronounced smile in nature is always transitory, and hence should be avoided when possible in a painting. the only smile that does not tire is that which is so faint as to appear to be permanent in the expression, and it has been the aim of many painters to produce this smile. an examination of numerous pictures where a smile is expressed in the countenance has convinced the writer that when either the eyes alone, or the eyes and mouth together, are used to indicate a smile, it is invariably over-pronounced as a suggestive permanent feature, and that in every case of such permanence, success arises from work on the mouth alone. the permanent smile was not studied in europe till the milanese school was founded, and in this nearly every artist gave his attention to it, following the example of lionardo. this great master, who was well acquainted with the principles of art, is not likely to have had in his mind an evanescent expression when he experimented with the smile, and one can hardly understand therefore why this feature is almost invariably over-emphasized in his works. in his portrayal of women he used both eyes and mouth to bring about the smile,[a] and more commonly than not paid most attention to the eyes. perhaps he had in view the production of a permanent smile solely by means of the eyes, which play so great a part in general expression. in nature it is physically impossible for a smile to be produced without a faint variation in the mouth line, while the lower eyelids may remain perfectly free from any change in light and shade, even with a smile more pronounced than is necessary for apparent permanence. in the mona lisa at boston,[ ] the smile is very faintly indicated by the eyes, and most pronounced at the mouth, while in the famous paris picture, the eyes are chiefly responsible for the smile, the mouth only slightly assisting.[ ] many smiling faces were produced by others of the milanese school, and as a rule the mouth only was used, often with complete success, notably by b. luini,[b] pedrini,[c] and ferrari.[d] raphael never used the eyes to assist in producing a smile, except with the child christ,[e] and in all cases where he exhibits a smile in a madonna[f] or portrait,[g] it appears definitely permanent. as a rule the great artists of the renaissance other than the disciples of lionardo, rarely produced a smile with the intention of suggesting a permanently happy expression, and in the seventeenth century little attention was given to it. [a] an exception where the mouth only is used is a drawing for the madonna and child with st. anne, burlington house, london. [b] salome, uffizi gallery, florence. [c] madonna and child, arezzo. [d] madonna and child, brera, milan. [e] cowper madonna, panshanger, england. [f] see casa tempi madonna, munich; and virgin with a goldfinch, uffizi. [g] portrait of a young man, budapest; and the fornarina, barberini gallery, florence. the great french portraitists of the eighteenth century frequently made the smile a feature in expression, and a few of them, notably la tour, seldom produced a countenance without one. in most cases the smile is a little too pronounced for permanence, but there are many examples of a faint and delicate smile which may well suggest an habitual condition. rigaud's louis xv. as a boy is an instance,[a] though here the illusion quickly passes when we bring to mind the other portraits of the monarch. nattier,[b] boucher,[c] dumont le romain,[d] perronneau,[e] chardin, roslin, and others, sometimes succeeded, but the french master of the smile was la tour who executed quite a dozen examples which lionardo might have envied.[f] of british artists romney was the most adept in producing a permanent smile,[g] but strange to say there is no instance of one in his many portraits of lady hamilton, beyond her representation as a bacchante.[h] here the smile is far too pronounced for a plain portrait, but a bacchante may reasonably be supposed to be ever engaged in scenes of pleasure, and hence the feature does not seem to be out of place. reynolds commonly used both eyes and mouth in creating his smiles,[i] but raeburn was nearly equal to romney in the number of his felicitous smiles, while he seldom exceeded the minimum expression required for permanence.[j] gainsborough produced a few portraits of women with a vague furtive smile, sweet and expressive beyond degree.[k] they are invariably brought about by a faint curvature of the mouth line. [a] at versailles. [b] madame louise, at versailles. [c] portrait of a young woman, the louvre. [d] two examples in the group madame mercier and family, louvre. [e] madame olivier, groult (formerly), coll., paris. [f] see madame de la popelinière and mdlle. carmago, both at saint quentin museum; and madame pompadour, louvre. [g] see mrs. yates, llangattock coll.; william booth, lathom coll.; and mrs. tickle, a. de rothschild (formerly) coll., all england. [h] t. chamberlayne coll., england. [i] for exceptions see hon. lavinia bingham, spencer coll., and mrs. abington, fife coll., both england. [j] see farmer's wife, mitchell coll.; mrs. lauzun, national gallery, london; and mrs. balfour, beith coll., scotland. [k] lady sheffield, alice rothschild coll.; and mrs. leybourne, popham coll. the open mouth if there be one transient feature more than another which should be avoided in a painting, and particularly in the principal figure, it is a wide-open mouth. necessarily, after a short acquaintance with a picture containing such a feature, either the mouth appears to be kept open by a wedge, or, as in the case of a laugh, the face is likely to wear an abnormal expression approaching to idiocy, for it is altogether contrary to experience of normal persons in real life, for a mouth to be kept open longer than for an instant or two. hence the first artists have studiously refrained from exhibiting a wide-open mouth, or indeed one that is open at all except to such an extent that the parted lips appear a permanent condition. but a few great men have erred in the matter. thus, mantegna shows the child christ with the mouth widely open in a half-vacant and half-startled expression, which is immediately repelling.[a] dosso dossi has several pictures much injured by the feature,[b] and in ercole di roberti's concert, no less than three mouths are wide open.[c] one of the figures in velasquez's three musicians opens his mouth far too widely,[d] while hals has half a dozen pictures with the defect.[e] a rare mistake was made by carlo dolci when showing christ with his mouth open wide in the act of utterance,[f] and mengs erred similarly in st. john baptist preaching.[g] in more modern times the fault is seldom noticeable among artists of repute, though occasionally a bad example occurs, as in winslow homer's all's well.[h] even when an open mouth seems unavoidable, the effect is by no means neutralized.[i] [a] virgin and child at bergamo. [b] notably a muse instructing a court poet, and nymph and satyr, pitti palace. [c] national gallery, london. [d] berlin gallery. [e] see merry company at table, met. mus., n. y., and similar pictures. [f] christ blessing, a single figure picture. [g] hermitage, petrograd. [h] boston museum, u. s. a. see plate . [i] as in dow's the dentist, schwerin mus., and a similar work at the louvre. when the blemish is in an accessory figure, it is of lesser importance as there it becomes an incidental circumstance on the mind of the observer. thus, in reynolds's infant hercules, where alcmena, on seeing the child holding the snakes, opens her mouth with surprise and alarm, the action of the central figure is so strong that the importance of the others present is comparatively insignificant.[a] nevertheless in a pompeian fresco of the same subject, care has been taken to close the mouth of alcmena. where the design represents several persons singing, it is well possible to indicate the action without showing the mouths open, as in raphael's st. cecilia.[b] in a picture of a like subject, with the saint in the centre of a group of five singers, domenichino shows only the two outside figures with open mouths, and one of these is in profile. there are several works where david is seen singing to the accompaniment of a harp, but though his mouth is open, the figure is in profile, and the lips are hidden by moustache and beard.[c] [a] hermitage, petrograd. [b] bologna museum. [c] for example, rubens's david's last song, frankfort museum. it may be observed, however, that in certain cases artificial conditions may render an open mouth in a picture of comparatively little significance. a painted laugh for instance may only become objectionable to the observer when the work is constantly before him; but when it is in a picture gallery and he sees it but rarely, the lasting character of the feature is not presented to his mind. the laughing cavalier of franz hals, though violating the principle, does not appear in bad taste to the average visitor to the wallace collection. in the case of rembrandt's portrait of himself with saskia on his knee, where the artist has his lips parted in the act of laughing, there is an additional reason why the transient expression should not tire. because of the number of self-portraits he painted, the countenance of rembrandt is quite familiar to most picture gallery visitors, and to these the laugh in the dresden picture could not possibly pass as an habitual expression. [illustration: plate (see page ) winslow homer's all's well (_boston museum_)] contrasts designs specially built up for the purpose of contrasting two or more attributes or conditions are almost invariably uninteresting unless the motive be hidden behind a definite action which appears to control the scheme. this is because of the difficulty of otherwise connecting the personages contrasted in a particular action of common understanding. a design of hercules and omphale affords a superior contrast of strength and beauty to a composition of strength and wisdom. in each case a herculean figure and a lovely woman represent the respective qualities, but in the first the figures are connected by expression and action, and in the second no connection can be established. so in contrasting beauty of mind with that of form, this is much better represented by such a subject as hippocrates and the bride of perdiccas than in the venetian manner of figures unconnected in the design. and in respect of conditions, frith's picture of poverty and wealth, where a carriage full of fashionable women drives through a poor section of london, has little more than a topographical interest, but in a subject such as the first visit of croesus to Æsop, the contrast between poverty and wealth would deeply strike the imagination. in contrasts of good and evil, vice and virtue, and similar subjects, it is inferior art to represent the evil character by an ugly figure. as elsewhere pointed out, deformity of any kind injures the æsthetic value of a picture because it tends to neutralize the pleasurable feeling derived from the beauty present. the poet may join physical deformity with beauty because he can minimize the defect with words, but the painter has no such recourse.[ ] a deformed personage in a composition is therefore to be deprecated unless as a necessary accessory in a historical work, in which case he must be subordinated to the fullest extent possible. the figure of satan, of an exaggerated satyr type, has often been introduced into subjects such as the temptation of christ, though not by artists of the first rank.[a] such pictures do not live as high class works of art however they be painted. correggio makes a contrast of vice and virtue in two paintings,[b] representing vice by a man bound, but usually in the mature time of the renaissance, vice was shown as a woman, either beautiful in features, or with her face partly hidden, various accessories indicating her character. a notable exception is salviati's justice where a hideous old woman takes the rôle of vice.[c] even in cases where a witch has to be introduced, as in representations of samuel's curse, it is not necessary to follow the example of salvator rosa, and render her with deformed features, for there are several excellent works where this defect is avoided.[d] [a] see examples by ary scheffer, luxembourg; and h. thoma, burnitz coll. [b] both at the louvre. [c] the bargello, florence. [d] as in k. meyer's picture. an effective design with the purpose of contrasting the ages of man is not possible, firstly, because the number of ages represented must be very limited, and, secondly, for the reason that the figures cannot be connected together in a free and easy manner. hence all such pictures have been failures, though a few great artists have attempted the subject. titian tried it with two children, a young couple, and an old man, assorting the personages casually in a landscape without attempting to connect them together in action.[a] at about the same time lotto produced a contrast, also with three ages represented, namely, a boy, a young man, and an elderly man.[b] these personages sit together as if they had been photographed for the purpose, without a ray of intelligence passing between them. but this is far better than grien's three ages,[c] for here the artist has strangely confused life and death, exhibiting a grown maiden, a middle-aged woman, and a skin-coated skeleton holding an hour-glass. the best design of the subject is van dyck's four ages.[d] he shows a child asleep near a young woman who is selling flowers to a soldier, and an old man is in the background. there is thus a presumed connection between three of the personages, but naturally the composition is somewhat stiff. the only other design worth mentioning is by boecklin, who also represents four ages.[e] two children play in the background of a landscape; a little farther back is a young woman; then a cavalier on horseback; and finally on the top of an arch an old man whom death in the form of a skeleton is about to strike. but here again there is no connection between the figures, the consequent formality half destroying the æsthetic value of the work. from these examples than which there is none better, it may be gauged that it is hopeless to expect a good design from a subject where the ages of man are contrasted. if represented at all, the ages should be contrasted in separate pictures, as lancret painted them. [a] bridgewater coll., england. [b] pitti palace, florence. [c] the prado, madrid. [d] vincenza museum. [e] vita somnium breve. the practice of presenting nude with clothed figures where the subject does not absolutely compel it, is commonly supposed to be for the purpose of contrast. this may have been the object in some cases, but in very few is the interest in the contrast not outweighed by the bizarre appearance of the work. as a rule in these pictures there is nothing in the expressions or actions of the personages depicted to suggest a reason for the absence of clothes from some of them, and so to the average observer they form a "problem" class of painting. the first important work of the kind executed was sebastiano del piombo's concert, in which the group consists of two nude women, one with a reed pipe, and two men attired in venetian costume, of whom one handles a guitar.[a] the figures are very beautiful and the landscape is superb, but as one cannot account for the nude figures in an open-air musical party, the æsthetic value of the work is largely diminished. this painting has suggested several designs to modern artists, the most notable being manet's déjeuner sur l'herbe, where a couple of nude women with two men dressed in modern clothes are shown in a picnic on the grass. not only is the scheme inexplicable, but the invention is so extravagant as to provoke the lowest of suggestions. in a composition of this kind only a great artist can build up a harmonious design. [a] at the louvre. formerly attributed to giorgione. titian's picture known as sacred and profane love,[a] where the figure of a nude woman is opposed to one clothed, may really signify any of a dozen ideas, but the artist probably had no other scheme in his mind than to represent different types of beautiful women. crowe and cavalcaselli's suggested title of l'amour ingénu et l'amour satisfait, was certainly never conceived by titian, nor is burckhardt's proposal, love and prudery, possible in view of the flowers in the hand of the draped figure. in any case this picture is the greatest of its kind, for the composition is so delicate and harmonious, and the art so perfect, as to render its precise meaning a matter of little consideration. another picture of sacred and profane love was painted by grien.[b] he shows a nude woman from whom cupid has just drawn the drapery, and another woman concealing her figure with loose drapery. the effect is weak. the nude figures in the well-known drinkers of velasquez[c] are undisturbing because they are not very prominent in the picture, but their significance is not apparent. [a] borghese gallery, rome. [b] frankfort museum. [c] the prado, madrid. no one has yet properly explained the meaning of the nude male figures standing at ease in the background of michelangelo's celebrated holy family.[a] they are apparently pagan gods, and it is suggested that the artist intended to signify the overthrow of the grecian deities by the coming of christ. such an explanation might be possible with another painter, but it does not accord with our conception of the mind of michelangelo. a still greater puzzle is offered by luca signorelli who, in the landscape background of the bust portrait of a man, shows two nude men to the right of the portrait, and two attired women at the left.[b] it is impossible to suggest any meaning of this extraordinary invention. [a] uffizi gallery, florence. [b] berlin gallery. the representation of death death is a subject inappropriate to the art of painting except where it is dealt with symbolically or as an historical incident. naturally in either of these cases any realistic representation of death, or of distortion connected therewith, should be studiously avoided. for while many aspects of death may not be unpleasant to the senses, its actual presence--the cold immobility; the pulseless soulless, decaying thing; the appalling mirror of our own fate--these things are most unpleasant, and hence should have no place in painting. in sculpture, represented in a certain way, death is admissible, for in marble or bronze a body may be carved indicating only the eternal composure of a beautiful form. this is how the greeks showed death, whether in the case of a warrior fallen on the battlefield, or as the twin brother of sleep. but the painter is less fortunate: for him death is decay. the presence of so many scenes of death in the paintings of the past was the result of accident. for a long while after the dawn of the renaissance, those controlling churches and other religious institutions of the christians were the chief and almost the only patrons of art, and they required paintings as well for didactic purposes as for decoration. for some time pictures often took the place of writing, where comparatively few could read, in the inculcation of christian doctrines and history, and they were largely used as images before which people could kneel in prayer. the most important facts bearing upon christian faith are concerned with death, and so there have been accumulated thousands of paintings of scenes of the crucifixion, the death-beds of saints, instances of martyrdom, and so on. while these paintings have been highly useful as tending to invite reverence for a sublime creed, it would be injurious to suggest that generally they take a high place in art. some of them do, but the very large number of them which indicate dying agony, or recent death with all its mortal changes, must not be approved from a strict art point of view, for any beauty which may be present apart from the subject is instantly neutralized by the pain and horror arising from the invention. but it is evidently unnecessary to produce such pictures, even in the case of the crucifixion, for there are ample works in existence to show that the face and body of christ can be so presented as to be free from indications of physical suffering or decay. but if we are to protest against designs exhibiting forbidding aspects of death in sacred works, what can we say of the pictures of executions, massacres, plagues, and so on, which ever and again have been produced since the middle of the nineteenth century? deeds of heroism or self-sacrifice on the battlefield where bodies of the fallen may be outlined are well, but simple wholesale murders as presented by benjamin-constant, heim, and fifty others, where the motive does not pretend to be anything else than massacre or other ghastly event, can only live as examples of degraded art. there may be something said for verestchagin, who painted heaps of heads and skulls, and scattered corpses, in order to show the evils of war, but if the arts are to be used at all for such a purpose, the poet or orator would be much more impressive because he could veil the hideous side of the subject with pathos and imagery, and further differentiate between just and unjust wars. the painter is powerless to do these things. he can only represent the horrors of war by depicting horrible things which is entirely beyond the province of his art. the purpose of art is to give pleasure, and if the design descend below the line where displeasure begins, then the art is no more. how easy it is for the æsthetic value of a picture to be lowered by the representation of a corpse, is shown in three celebrated paintings--the anatomical works of rembrandt[a] and de keyser.[b] probably these works were ordered to honour the surgeons or schools concerned, but the object would have been better served by a composition such as eakin's dr. cross's surgical clinic.[c] here the leading figure is also giving a lesson to students, and practical demonstration is proceeding, but there is no skeleton or corpse to damage the picture. fromentin said that the tulp work left him very cold,[d] and although he endeavoured to find technical ground for this, it is more than likely that the principal reason lay in the involuntary mental disturbance brought about by the corpse. another fine design largely injured by corporeal evidence of death is ingres's oedipus and the sphinx,[e] where a foot rises out of a hole in the rock near the sphinx, the presumption of course being that the body of a man who had failed with the riddle had lately been thrown there. the invention is most deplorable in such a picture. [a] lesson in anatomy of professor tulp, and the fragment of a similar work, both at the hague. [b] rijks museum, amsterdam. [c] jefferson medical college, philadelphia. [d] masters of other days. [e] at the louvre. the use of a skeleton as a symbol of death in painting seems to have been unusual during the renaissance till towards the end of the fifteenth century. the earliest artist of note in this period to adopt it, was jean prevost who represented a man taking a letter from a skeleton without seeing the messenger.[a] then came grien who painted three works of the kind. in the first death holds an hour-glass at the back of a woman, and points to the position of the sand[b]; in the second the bony figure has clutched a girl by the hair[c]; and the third represents a skeleton apparently kissing a girl.[d] they are all hideous works, and might well have acted as a warning to succeeding artists. after grien the use of a skeleton in design was practically confined to the smaller german masters till the middle of the second half of the sixteenth century, when it disappeared from serious work. from this time on, for the next three centuries artists of repute rarely introduced a skeleton into a painting, though it is to be found occasionally in engravings. one might have supposed that the unsightly form had been abandoned with the imps, evil spirits, and other crudities of past days, but it was not to be. the search for novelties in recent times has only resulted in the resuscitation of bygone eccentricities, and we must not be surprised that the skeleton is amongst them. [a] old man and death, bruges. [b] imperial gallery, vienna. [c] girl and death, basle museum. [d] basle museum. modern artists have displayed considerable ingenuity in the use of the skeleton, but the results have necessarily only succeeded in degrading the art. rethel figures a skeleton in the costume of a monk who is ringing a bell at a dance.[a] several of the dancers have fallen dead, apparently from plague, and the whole scene is ghastly. henneberg has a fortune allegory in which death is about to seize a horseman who is chasing a nude woman,[b] this design being a slight modification of a variety of prints executed in the sixteenth century. thoma uses a skeleton in a most bizarre manner. he substitutes it for the serpent in a picture of adam and eve,[c] and in another work associates it with cupid.[d] two lovers are talking, and death stands behind the woman whose hat cupid is lifting. a terrible picture with a political bearing was painted by uhde.[e] it represents a crowd of revolutionists rushing towards a bridge, while a skeleton in modern costume waves a sword and cheers them on. these instances suffice to indicate the difficulty in the production of a fine work of art with so hideous a form as a skeleton thrown into prominence. [a] death at a masked ball. [b] race for fortune. [c] sin and death. [d] cupid and death. [e] revenge. how simply one may avoid the introduction of a skeleton in a design concerned with death, is shown by an example where three artists deal with the same motive--death, the friend. the first composition shows an old man sitting dead in a chair while a skeleton costumed as a monk, tolls a bell[a]: in the second there is also an old man in a chair, but an angel with a scythe is substituted for the skeleton[b]: in the third an angel with huge folded wings forming an oval framework for her figure, leans over the body of a child which has its face hidden.[c] the second design is a vast improvement over the first, but the third is incomparably the best of the three. it may be remarked that a scythe is too trivial an emblem for the angel of death, for whom indeed an emblem of any kind is only admissible when death is represented as the result of eternal justice, in which case a flaming sword is appropriate. [a] woodcut by a. rethel. [b] lithograph by o. redon. [c] painting by g. f. watts. very rarely indeed can a good picture be made out of a funeral scene. such a scene attending the death of a great man may be fitly produced, so long as the imagination can be used in the composition; that is to say, if there are few or no records of the actual funeral[a]; but paintings relating to the modern burial of unnamed persons are of little value as works of art, for the imagination of the artist cannot extend beyond unpleasant prosaic incidents of common acquaintance. the purpose of the funeral scenes of courbet[b] and anne ancher[c] has never been explained; and the various interiors, each with a coffin and distracted relatives of the dead, by wiertz,[d] dalsgaard,[e] and other modern artists, are capable of bringing only misery instead of pleasure to the observer. [a] as in rubens's funeral of decius, vienna. [b] the burial at ornans. [c] the funeral. [d] the orphans. [e] the child's coffin. but while funerals are unsuitable for the painter, interior scenes where death has occurred and friends are watching the body, offer special inducements to artists, because the perfect stillness of the living persons represented may be properly assumed, and so the illusion of life is little likely to be disturbed through the non-completion of an indicated action. on this account these works appear very impressive when well executed, and they may take high rank even when the artist is limited in his scope by the conditions of an actual scene. very little is required however to destroy the illusion of continuity. in kampf's picture of the lying-in-state of william i.,[a] where many watchers are shown who are presumed to be motionless, a boy in the middle distance in the act of walking, is a most disturbing element. an example where an illusion of continuity is perfectly maintained is orchardson's borgia, where cæsar borgia stands in contemplation over the body of his poisoned victim. the silence indicated appears practically as permanent as the painted design, for any reasonable time spent by the observer in examining the picture, is not likely to be longer than that during which cæsar may be presumed to have remained still at the actual occurrence. scenes of approaching death may be arranged to produce a similar illusion, as for instance where those present are praying, or a single figure is waiting for the life to pass from the sick person. [a] the night of march , , at berlin. [illustration: plate (see page ) hercules contemplating death, in bronze, by pollaiuolo (_frick collection_)] little attention has been paid in art to the expression of dying persons. there are many pictures representing celebrated men and women in their dying moments, but very few of them exhibit an expression of noble resignation and fearlessness, qualities which are naturally associated with a great man as his end draws near. no doubt the artist is often limited in his invention by the actual circumstances of the death scene, as in copley's death of chatham,[a] for the statesman was unconscious at the moment of representation. other than this the best known works of the kind relate to the death of seneca,[b] queen elizabeth,[c] and general wolfe.[d] in the last instance only is there a fine expression. how it was that rubens missed his opportunity with seneca is hard to understand. the presence of a clerk taking down the utterances of a philosopher as he bleeds to death, gives the design a theatrical appearance, and removes any suggestion of unconcerned resignation which might have arisen. one of the most powerful designs in existence relating to approaching death, is a sculptured figure in bronze of hercules contemplating death.[e] the demi-god is represented standing on an altar. his left foot is raised upon the skull of an ox; his head is slightly bent, and the whole attitude suggests a few moments of rest while he contemplates his coming fate. the conception is as fine as the subject is rare. [a] national gallery, london. [b] by rubens, at munich. [c] by delaroche, at the louvre. [d] by benjamin west, westminster coll., london. [e] by a. pollaiuolo, frick coll., new york. see plate [ ]. the artist should glorify death if possible, but he can only do this when the subject has a general application. many painters have introduced the angel of death into scenes where death has occurred, and have thus converted them into work of pathos and beauty. notable examples of this are watts's death, the friend, already referred to, and h. levy's young girl and death, where the angel gently clasps the body of a girl whose face is hidden. one of the finest designs of the kind is lard's glory forgets not obscure heroes. on a battlefield, where all else has gone, lies the body of a soldier over whom stoops a lovely winged figure who raises the head of the hero, and seems to throw a halo of glory over him.[a] in historical paintings the appearance of sleep is often given to a dead body, as in cogniet's tintoretto painting his dead daughter, a pathetic picture, bringing to mind the story of luca signorelli painting his dead son.[b] [a] the design for this picture was probably suggested by longepied's fine sculptured group of immortality at the louvre, the idea of which was no doubt drawn from canova's l'amour et psyche. there are tangara groups and fragments of larger works in existence showing that the greeks executed many designs of a similar character. [b] see also girodet's burial of atala, and le brun's death of cato. chapter xii landscape limitations of the landscape painter--illusion of opening distance--illusion of motion in landscape--moonlight scenes--transient conditions. considered as a separate branch of the painter's art, landscape is on a comparatively low plane, because the principal signs with which it deals, and the arrangement of them to form a view, may be varied indefinitely without a sense of incongruity arising. thus there can be no ideal in the art; that is to say, no ideal can be conceived which is general in its character. the artist can aspire to no definite goal: his imagination is limited to the arrangement of things which are inanimate and expressionless. he may produce sensorial, but not intellectual, beauty. the nobler human attributes and passions, as wisdom, courage, spiritual exaltation, patriotism, cannot be connected with landscape, and so it is unable to produce in the mind the elevation of thought and grandeur of sentiment which are the sweetest blossoms of the tree of art.[ ] another drawback in landscape is the necessity for painting it on an extraordinarily reduced scale. because of this the highest qualities of beauty in nature--grandeur and sublimity--can only with difficulty be suggested on canvas, for actual magnitude is requisite for the production of either of these qualities in any considerable degree. a volcano in eruption has no force at all in a painting, a result which is due, not so much to the inability of the painter to represent moving smoke and fire, as to the impossibility of depicting their enormous masses. the disability of the painter in respect of the representation of magnitude is readily seen in the case of a cathedral interior. this may or may not have the quality of grandeur, but a picture cannot differentiate between one that has, and one that has not, because no feeling of grandeur can arise in looking at a painted interior, the element of actual space being absent. seeing that an ideal in landscape is impossible, the landscape painter cannot improve upon nature. in the case of the human figure the painter may improve upon experience by collecting excellencies from different models and putting them into one form, thus creating what would be universally regarded as ideal physical beauty; and he may give to this form an expression of spiritual nobility which is also beyond experience because it would imply the absence of inferior qualities inseparable from man in nature. thus to the physical, he adds intellectual beauty. such a perfect form may be said to be an improvement upon nature, for it is not only beyond experience, but is nature purified. but the landscape painter cannot improve upon the signs which nature provides. he may vary the parts of a tree as he will, but it would never be recognized as beyond possible experience unless it were a monstrosity.[ ] and even if he could improve upon experience with his signs, this would help him but little, for the beauty of a landscape depends upon the relation of the signs to each other, and not upon the beauty of the separate signs which vary in every work with the character of the design. in colour also the painter cannot apply to his landscape an appropriate harmony which the sun is incapable of giving. from all this it follows that the æsthetic value of a landscape depends entirely upon its correspondence with nature. a good landscape must necessarily be invented, because it is impossible to reproduce the particular beauty of a natural scene.[ ] this beauty is due to a relation of parts of the view, infinite in number, to each other, but what this relation is cannot be determined by the observer. further, whatever be the relation, the continuous changing light and atmospheric effects bring about a constant variation in the character of the beauty. it is possible for an actual view to suggest to the artist a scheme for a beautiful landscape, but in this the precise relation of the parts would have to be invented by the painter and fixed by experiment. the principal features from a natural view may be taken out, but not those which together bring about the beauty. there is no great landscape in existence which was painted for the purpose of representing a particular view. there have of course been scenes painted to order, even by notable artists, but these only serve the purpose of record, or as mementoes. the great view of the hague, painted by van goyen under instructions from the syndics of the town, is the feeblest of his works, and the many pictures of the kind executed by british and german artists of the eighteenth century have now only a topographical interest. constable painted numerous scenes to order, and there are something like forty views of salisbury cathedral attributed to him, but only those in which he could apply his own invention are of considerable æsthetic value. a good artist rarely introduces into a painting even a small sketch of a scene made from nature. titian is known to have drawn numerous sketches in particular localities, but not one has been identified in his pictures. in nearly every painting of nicholas poussin the roman campagna may be recognized, and here he must have made thousands of sketches during the forty years he spent in the district, yet the most patient examination has failed to identify a single spot in his many beautiful views. so with gaspar poussin, who, unlike his famous brother-in-law, occasionally set up his easel in the open air; and with claude who never left off sketching in his long life. the greatest landscapes are those which are true to nature generally, but are untrue in respect of any particular natural scene. seeing that in landscape the production of sensorial beauty only is within the power of the painter, and that the beauty is enhanced as nature is the more closely imitated, it is obvious that for the work to have a permanent interest, the scene depicted and the incidents therein should be of common experience, otherwise the full recognition of the beauty is likely to be retarded by the reasoning powers being involuntarily set to work in the consideration of the exceptional conditions. naturally the term "common experience" has a varied application. what is of common experience in scenery among people in a temperate climate, is rare or unknown to those living under the burning sun of africa. the artist is fully aware of this, and in designing his work he takes into account the experience of the people who are likely to see his paintings. a view of a scene in the east, say in palestine or siam, may be a beautiful work and be recognized as true because the conditions depicted are commonly known to exist; it would further have an informative value which would result in added pleasure; but among people habituated to a temperate climate it would tire more quickly than a scene of a kind to which they are daily accustomed. in the one case an effort, however slight, is required to accommodate the view to experience, and in the other the whole meaning of the scene is instantaneously identified with its beauty. in nature there is always movement and sound. even on those rare days when the wind has ceased and the air seems still and dead, there is motion with noise of some kind. a brook trickles by, insects buzz their zigzag way, and shadows vary as the sun mounts or descends. but most commonly there is a breeze to rustle the trees and shrubs, to ripple the surface of the water, and to throw over the scene evidence of life in its ever charming variety. the painter cannot reproduce these movements and sounds. all he represents is silent and still as if nature had suddenly suspended her work--stayed the tree as it bent to the breeze, stopped the bird in the act of flight, fixed the water, and fastened the shadows to the ground. what is there then to compensate the artist for this limitation? why, surely he can represent nature as she is at a particular moment, over the hills and valleys, or across great plains, with sunlight and atmosphere to mark the breadth and distance and so produce an illusion of movement to delight the eyes of the observer with bewitching surprise. for the eye as it involuntarily travels from the foreground of the picture to the background, proceeds from sign to sign, each decreasing in definition in conformity with the changes in nature, till vague suggestions of form announce that far distance has been reached. the effect is precisely that of the cinematograph, except that the eye moves instead of the picture. the apparent movement corresponds closely with the opening of distance in nature when one proceeds in a fast moving vehicle along a road from which a considerable stretch of country may be observed. very rarely is the illusion so marked that the apparent movement is identified to the senses. when it is so marked the distance seems to come forward, but is instantaneously stayed before consideration can be brought to bear upon it. clearly if one specially seek the illusion, it becomes impossible because search implies reason and an examination slow out of all proportion with the rapidity of the sensorial effect. accident alone will bring about the illusion, for it can only arise when the eye travels at a certain rate over the picture, the minimum of which rate is indeterminable. it is evident that any landscape of fair size in which considerable depth is indicated must necessarily produce an illusion of opening distance if the varying signs are sufficiently numerous and properly painted in accordance with the aerial perspective; and this illusion is undoubtedly the key to the extraordinary beauty observed in the works of the great masters of landscape since claude unveiled the secrets of distance painting. that the apparent movement is rarely actually defined is immaterial, for it must be there and must act upon the eye, producing an involuntary sensation which we interpret as pleasure arising from admiration of the skill of the artist in giving us so good a representation of distance in his imitation. [illustration: plate (see page xii) arcadian landscape, by claude lorraine (_national gallery, london_)] as will presently be seen there are other kinds of illusion of motion which may be produced in landscape, but this illusion of opening distance is the most important, and it should be produced wherever distance is represented. in nature the effect of the unfolding of distance is caused by a sequence of signs apparently diminishing in size and clearness as the eye travels back, and a sequence of this kind should be produced by the artist in his picture. it is not sufficient that patches of colour of the tone and shape of sections of vegetation, trees, varied soils, and so on, be given, for while these may indicate distance as any perspective must do, yet an illusion cannot be produced by such signs because they are not sufficiently numerous for the eye to experience a cinematographic effect when passing over them. it is not distance that gives the beauty, but an illusion of opening distance, without which, and presuming the absence of any other illusion, only simple harmonies of tone and inanimate forms are possible. moreover the patches of colour do not properly represent nature either as she appears to the eye, or as she is understood from experience. if one were to take a momentary glance at a view specially to receive the general colour impression, he might conceivably retain on his mind a collection of colour masses such as is often put forward as a landscape, but natural scenes are not observed in this way, and the artist has no right to imply that a view should be painted as it is observed at an instantaneous glance. one cannot be supposed to keep his eyes closed, except for a moment, when in front of nature, and he cannot be in front of nature for more than a moment without involuntarily recognizing thousands of signs. there must necessarily be a certain clearness of the atmosphere for distance to be represented, and in the minimum clearness, trees, bushes, rivulets, and buildings of every kind, are well defined at least to the middle distance. these can and should be painted, and there can be no object whatever in omitting them, except the ignominious end of saving trouble. and it is necessary that the signs, whether shadow or substance, should be completely painted as they appear to the eye in nature when observed with average care by one inspecting a view for the purpose of drinking in all its beauties, for this is how a painted landscape is usually examined. there is no place in the painter's art for a suggestive sign in the sense that it may suggest a required complete sign. a sign must be painted as completely as possible in conformity with its appearance as seen from the presumed point from which the artist sketched his view, for the reason that its value as a sign depends upon the readiness with which it is understood.[ ] this is incontrovertible, otherwise the art of painting would be an art of hieroglyphics. in poetry suggestion is of great importance, and it may be so glowing as to present to the imagination a higher form of beauty than can be painted; but the signs of the painter cannot suggest beauty in this way, because the exercise of the imagination in respect of them is limited by their form. a sign painted less distinctly than as it is seen in nature is obviously removed from its proper relative position, or else is untrue, and in either case it must have a weakening effect upon the picture. the successful representation of aerial perspective depends upon the careful and close gradation of tones in conformity with the varying atmospheric density. this is difficult work because of the disabilities arising from the reduction of the scene into miniature form, which necessitates the omission of many tones and effects found in nature, just as a portrait in miniature involves the exclusion of various elements of expression in the human countenance. but fortunately in landscape the variableness of nature greatly assists the artist. only rarely is the atmosphere of equal density over a considerable depth of ground, and this fact enables the painter to simplify his work in production of the illusion without appearing to depart from nature. thus he may deepen or contract his foreground within wide limits. the changes in the appearance of the atmosphere in nature have to be greatly concentrated in a painting, and as this concentration becomes more difficult as distance is reached, it follows that the artist has a better chance of success by making the foreground of his picture begin some way in front of him, rather than near the spot where he is presumed to stand when he executes his work. he may of course maintain some very near ground while materially shortening his middle distance, but this method must obviously lower the beauty of the painting as a distance landscape, and make the execution vastly more difficult. claude adopted this plan sometimes, but it is seen in very few of his important works. in his best time turner was careful to set back his foreground, and to refrain from restricting his middle ground. if a scene be taken from the middle distance only, as in many barbizon works, the labour is much simplified because neither the close delineation of foliage, nor any considerable gradation of atmosphere is required, but then the beauty resulting from either of these two exercises is missing. it is equally impossible for such a scene to indicate growth and life, or the charm of a changing view. some modern artists have a habit of blotting out the middle and far distance by the introduction of a thick atmosphere but this is an abuse of the art, because however true the aspect may be in the sense that a natural view is sometimes obscured by the atmosphere, the beauty of the scene as a whole is hidden, and the picture consists largely of an imitation of the mist, where an illusion of movement is impossible. the painter should imitate the more beautiful, and not the less beautiful aspects of nature. jupiter has been sometimes painted as an incident in a picture, nearly wholly concealed by a cloud, but to exhibit a separate work of the god so concealed, would only be regarded as an excuse for avoiding exertion, however well the cloud may be painted; yet this would not be more reprehensible than to hide the greater part of a view by a dense atmosphere. with a clear atmosphere an illusion of opening distance may be secured with the far distance and the greater part of the middle distance unobservable, but in such a case a successful design is difficult to accomplish owing to the limited number of signs available. many signs, as trees and houses, either darken or hide the view, while sunlight effects on unobstructed ground, sufficiently definite to be used as signs, could not be very numerous without appearing abnormal. the only really first-class method of producing a satisfactory near-ground illusion was invented by hobbema in the later years of his life. this is to use skilfully placed trees and other signs through which paths wind, or appear to wind, and to throw in a strong sunlight from the back.[a] the light enables far more signs to be used in depth than would otherwise be possible, and so the eye has a comparatively long track to follow. that the remarkable beauty of the pictures of hobbema composed in this way is almost entirely due to the illusion thus created, is readily seen when they are compared with some of his other works, very similar in all respects except that the light is thrown in from the front or the side. before placing his light at the back, the artist tried the side plan in many pictures, and while this was a decided improvement upon his earlier efforts to secure depth of near-ground signs, it was naturally inferior to the latest scheme. jacob ruysdael adopted the plan of hobbema in two or three works with great effect.[b] [a] see plate . [b] for example, the marsh, hermitage. when the middle distance is hidden by a rising foreground, an illusion may be created by the far distance alone if this be of considerable depth. since the fifteenth century it has been a frequent practice to conceal the middle distance, though mostly in pictures of figure subjects.[ ] the dutch artists of the seventeenth century who painted open-air scenes of human and animal life, as paul potter, wouverman, and albert cuyp, avoided the middle distance whenever possible, but often managed to secure a fair illusion. in pure landscape the system is less often practised, and never by great artists. the only means available to the painter of land views for creating an illusion of motion, apart from that of opening distance, is by the representation of flowing water so that a series of successive events in the flow, each connected with, but varying in character from, the preceding one, can be exhibited. thus, a volume of water from a fall proceeds rapidly over a flat surface to a ledge, and thence perhaps to another ledge of a different depth, from which it passes over or round irregular rocks and boulders, and thence over smaller stones or into a stream, creating in its passage every kind of eddy and current.[a] here is a series of progressive natural actions in which the progression is regular and continuous, while the separate actions cover such time and space that they may be readily separated by the eye. if, therefore, the whole series be properly represented, an illusion of motion will result.[ ] obviously the canvas must be of considerable size, and the breaks in the flow of water as varied in character and as numerous as possible. everdingen and jacob ruysdael seem to have been the first artists to recognize the significance of this progression, but ruysdael far surpassed his master in the exhibition of it. he examined the problem in all its variations, solved it in a hundred ways, and at his death left little for succeeding painters to learn regarding it. very rarely, one meets with a landscape where the double illusion of motion of water and opening distance is provided, and needless to say the effect is superb.[b] [a] see plate . [b] for examples see s. bough's borrowdale, and thoma's view of laufenburg. sea views occupy a position by themselves inasmuch as there is a fixed horizontal distance for the artist. he cannot shorten this depth without making his work look abnormal, and an effort to increase it by presuming that the picture is painted from a considerable height above the sea level, is seldom successful because the observer of the work finds a difficulty in fitting in the novelty with his experience. except when depicting stormy weather, or showing a thick atmosphere, the painter of a sea view has no trouble in obtaining absolute accuracy in his linear perspective, but this is not sufficient, for if a variety of trees, herbage, brooks, and so on, requires an illusion of movement, then certainly does a sea view which has monotony for its keynote. the motion of the waves in fine weather cannot be suggested on canvas because it is continuous and equal. one wave displaces another and so far as the eye can reach there is only a succession of similar waves. thus the motion appears unbroken, and from the canvas point of view the waves must be motionless as the sand hillocks of a desert. of course in the actual view, the expanse, the "immeasurable stretch of ocean," is impressive and to some extent weird, but nothing of this feeling is induced by a painted miniature. with a bright sky and clear atmosphere the painter of a sea view cannot well obtain an illusion of opening distance by means of a multiplication of signs as on land, for the introduction of many vessels would give the work a formal appearance, but the problem can be satisfactorily solved by putting the sun in the sky towards the setting, and using cloud shadows as signs. aivasovsky, one of the greatest marine painters of modern times, was very successful with this class of work. his long shadows thrown at right angles to the line of sight, carry back the distance till the horizon seems to be further off than experience warrants, the illusion being perfect. an illusion of opening distance may, however, be easily obtained in a sea view when there is a haze covering, but not hiding, the horizon, by introducing as signs, two or three vessels, the first in the middle distance. another method of giving a suggestion of motion, which may be used by the sea painter, is in truthfully representing the appearance of the water round a vessel passing through it. what is probably the finest example of this work in existence is jacob ruysdael's the rising storm.[a] the sea is shown close to a port, and half a dozen smacks and small boats are being tossed about by choppy, breaking waves. in the centre of the picture is a large smack over the weather bow of which a huge foaming wave has broken, and part is spending its force on the lee bow, from which the water gradually becomes quieter till at the stern of the boat little more than a black concavity is seen. the progression of wave movement is completely represented, and the effect is very impressive. [a] berlin gallery. see plate . the coast painter can produce an excellent illusion of motion from waves breaking on a beach, for in nature this action is made up of a series of different consecutive acts each of which is easily distinguishable to the eye. the wave rises, bends over its top which becomes crested, and splashes forward on the beach, to be converted into foam which races onwards, breaking up as it goes till it reaches the watermark, then rapidly falling back to be met by another wave. here is a series of consecutive incidents which can all be painted so as to deceive for a moment with the idea of motion. the attempt to represent the action of waves breaking against steep rocks is invariably a failure, because of the great reduction of the apparent number of incidents forming the consecutive series. in nature the eye is not quick enough to follow the separate events, and so they cannot be distinguished in a painting. thomson's fine picture of fast castle is distinctly marred by a wide irregular column of water shown splashing up against a rock. there is no possibility here of representing a series of actions, and so an instant suffices to fix the water on the rock. in another work by the same artist there are waves breaking against precipitous rocks, but in this case the water first passes over an expanse of low lying rocks, and a sequence of actions is shown right up to the cliff, an excellent illusion of movement being brought about.[a] [a] dunluce castle, which with fast castle, is in the kingsborough collection, scotland. apart from those exhibiting an illusion of motion of some kind, the only landscapes which have a permanent value, are near-ground scenes in which conditions of atmosphere of common experience, as rain or storm are faithfully rendered. in these works the signs must be numerous and varied in character, for it is only in the multiplication of small changes of form and tone that the natural effects of a particular weather condition can be imitated. jacob ruysdael and constable were the greatest masters of this form of landscape, crome and boecklin closely approaching them, but it is uncommon for a serious worker in landscape to attempt a picture where distance is not recorded. the best paintings of constable present an illusion of opening distance, and when jacob ruysdael painted near-ground only, it was nearly always a hilly slope with water breaking over low rocks. moonlight and twilight scenes are not good subjects for the painter of landscape, because, shown as they must be in daylight, or with artificial light, they become distinctly uninteresting after the first impression of tonal harmony has passed away, owing to the unconscious revolt of the mind against something with an unreal appearance.[ ] this is the chief reason why no scene has lived which depended for its beauty entirely upon moonlight effects. it is about two hundred and fifty years since van der neer died, and he still remains practically the only moonlight painter known to us whose works seem of permanent interest. but he did not rely altogether upon moonlight effects for his beauty, for the representation of distance is the principal feature in all his works. further he commonly makes us acquainted with the human life and habitations of his time, and in this way enhances our appreciation of his pictures. before van der neer, moonlight scenes were very rarely executed, and only two or three of these have remained which are worthy of serious consideration. the best of them is a view by rubens, where the light is comparatively strong, and practically the whole of the beauty rests in the opening distance, which can hardly be surpassed in a work of this kind.[a] [a] landscape by moonlight, mond collection, london. it is not necessary to deal with varieties of pure landscape other than those mentioned. they are painted in their myriads, and form pleasant tonal harmonies, or have local interest, but they do not live. as the foliage in springtime they are fresh and welcome to the eye when they first appear, but all too soon they fade and disappear from memory like the leaves of the autumn. in landscape as in all other branches of painting, whatever is ephemeral in nature, or of uncommon experience, should be avoided. rare sun effects and exceptional phases of atmosphere should not find their way into pictures, while strokes of lightning and rainbows should only be present when they are necessitated by the design, and then must be subordinated as far as possible. of all these things the most strongly to be deprecated are strange sunlight effects, for they have the double drawback for the painter, of rarity and evanescence in nature. a stroke of lightning is not out of place where the conditions may be presumed to be more or less permanent, as in the celebrated picture of apelles, where alexander was represented in the character of jupiter casting a thunderbolt, and forks of lightning proceed from his hand; or where the occurrence is essential in the composition, as in gilbert's slaying of job's sheep.[a] so in danby's the sixth seal opened, the lightning is quite appropriate, for all nature is disturbed. in martin's plague of hail, and the destruction of pharaoh, the first a night scene, and the second a view darkened by dense black clouds, lightning is well used for lighting purposes; and in cot's the storm,[b] where the background is dark and no sky is visible, lightning is the only means possessed by the artist of explaining that the fear expressed by the lovers in the foreground, arises from the approaching storm. great masters like giorgione,[c] rubens,[d] poussin,[e] used a stroke of lightning on rare occasions, but took every care that it should not be conspicuous, or interfere in any way with the first view of the picture. the lightning is invariably placed in the far background, and no light is apparently reflected from it. [a] the fire of god is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep and the servants. job , . [b] metropolitan museum, n. y. [c] adrastus and hypsipyle, venice. [d] landscape with baucis and philemon, munich. [e] jonah cast into the sea. [illustration: plate (see page ) landscape, by hobbema (_metropolitan museum, n. y._)] a rainbow in nature has a life of appreciable duration, and so may be appropriately used in landscape, but obviously it should be regarded as a minor accessory except where it forms a necessary feature in the design.[a] the great drawback in a prominent rainbow is that it forces itself upon the attention of the observer to the detriment of the picture as a whole, and if it be very conspicuous and crosses the middle of the painted view, as in turner's arundel castle, the picture appears divided in two parts, and the possibility of an illusion of opening distance is destroyed.[b] almost as bad is the effect when a rainbow cuts off a corner of a picture, for this suggests at first sight an accidental interference with the work.[c] of all artists rubens seemed to know best how to use a rainbow. he adopts three methods. the first and best is to put the bow entirely in the sky[d]; the second to throw it right into the background where part of it is dissolved in the view[e]; and the third to indicate the bow in one part of the picture, and overshadow it with a strong sunlight thrown in from another part.[f] any of these forms seems to answer well, but they practically exhaust the possibilities in general design. a section of a rainbow may be shown with one end of it on the ground, because this is observable in nature[g]; but to cut off the top of the arch as if there were no room for it on the canvas is obviously bad, for the two segments left appear quite unnatural.[h] [a] as in martin's i have set my bow in the clouds. [b] in the rivers of england series. [c] the rainbow of millet, and a similar work of thoma. [d] harvest landscape, munich gallery. [e] harvest landscape, wallace collection, london. [f] landscape with a rainbow, hermitage, petrograd. [g] rubens's shipwreck of Æneas, berlin gallery. [h] a. p. van de venne's soul fishery, amsterdam. the small rainbows sometimes seen at waterfalls are occasionally introduced into paintings, but rarely with success because they tend to interfere with the general view of the scene. such views are necessarily near ground, and so a bow must seriously injure the picture unless it be placed at the side, as in innes's fine work of niagara falls (the example of ). the use of a rainbow as a track in classical pictures is sometimes effective, though the landscape is largely sacrificed owing to the compulsory great width and bright appearance of the bow, which must indeed practically absorb the attention of the observer. the best known picture of this kind is schwind's rainbow, which shows the beautiful form of iris wrapped in the sheen of the bow, and descending with great speed, the idea being apparently taken from virgil.[a] to use the top of the rainbow for a walking track is bad, as the mind instinctively repels the invention as opposed to reason.[b] [a] Æneid v., where juno sends iris to the trojan fleet. [b] thoma's progress of the gods to walhalla. but if fleeting natural phenomena become disturbing to the observer of a picture, how much more objectionable are the quickly disappearing effects of artificial devices, as the lights from explosions. in a battle scene covering a wide area of ground, a small cloud of smoke here and there is not out of place, because under natural conditions such a cloud lasts for an appreciable time; but no good artist will indicate in his work a flash from a gun, for this would immediately become stagy and unreal to the observer. nor can fireworks of the ordinary kind be properly represented in a picture. the beauty of these fireworks lies in the appearance out of nothing, as it were, of brilliant showers of coloured lights, and their rapid disappearance, to be replaced by others of different form and character, the movement and changes constituting important elements in their appreciation. but the painter can only indicate them by fixed points of light which necessarily appear abnormal. stationary points of light can have no resemblance whatever to fireworks, and if the title of the picture forces the imagination to see in them expiring sparks from a rocket, the impression can only last a moment, and will be succeeded by a revolt in the mind against so glaring an impossibility as a number of permanent sparks. the only painted firework display that does not appear abnormal is a fountain of fire and sparks which may be presumed to last for some time, and therefore would not quickly tire the mind.[a] [a] see examples by la touche, notably la fête de nuit, salon, . chapter xiii still-life its comparative difficulty--its varieties--its limitations. right through the degrees of the art of the painter till we reach still-life, the difficulty in producing the art is in proportion to the general beauty therein, but in the case of still-life the object is much less readily gained than in simple landscape which is on a higher level in painting. the causes of this apparent anomaly appear to be as follows:--firstly in miniature painting one does not expect such close resemblance to nature as in still-life which usually represents things in their natural size: secondly, in still-life the relative position of the parts can never be such as to appear novel, whereas in landscape their position is always more or less unexpected: thirdly, in still-life the colours are practically fixed, for the painter cannot depart from the limited variety of tints commonly connected with the objects indicated, while in landscape the colouring may vary almost indefinitely from sun effects without appearing to depart from nature. the beauty in still-life paintings may arise from several causes, namely, the pleasure experienced from the excellence of the imitation; the harmony of tones; the beauty of the things imitated; the association of ideas; and the pleasure derived from the acquisition of knowledge. aristotle seemed to think this last one of the principal reasons for our appreciation of the painter's work, though he agreed that the better the imitation, the greater the pleasure to the observer. the argument appears to apply particularly to the lower forms of life because in nature they are not often closely examined. a cauliflower for instance may be seen a thousand times by one who would not carefully note its structure, but if he see an imitation of it painted by a good artist, his astonishment at the excellence of the imitation might cause him to observe the representation closely, and learn much about the vegetable which he did not know before. in this way the information gained would add to his pleasure. as in landscape, from the absence of abstract qualities from the things represented, and since the position of the signs may be indefinitely varied without a sense of incongruity resulting, there can be no ideal in still-life, and so the painter cannot pass beyond experience without achieving the abnormal. the painter of still-life has the choice of four kinds of imitation, namely, the representation of products of nature which are in themselves beautiful, as roses and fine plumaged birds; the imitation of products of human industry which are in themselves beautiful, as sculptured plate or fine porcelain; the representation of natural and manual products which in themselves are neither beautiful nor displeasing, but interest from association of ideas, as certain fruits, books, and musical instruments; and the imitation of things which in themselves are not pleasing to the sight, as dead game, kitchen utensils, and so on. obviously the artist may assort any two or more of these varieties in the same picture. he may also associate them with life, but here he is met with a grave difficulty which goes to the very root of art. if two forms, not being merely accessories, are associated together in a design, the lower form must necessarily be subordinated, otherwise the mind of the observer will be disturbed by the apparent double objective. a live dog or other animal in a still-life composition will immediately attract the eye of the observer, drawing off his attention from the inanimate objects represented, which will consequently thereafter lose much of their interest. the presence of a man is still worse. not only is it natural and inevitable that a human being should take precedence of whatever is inanimate in a work of art, but in the case of still-life, where he is painted of natural size, he must necessarily overshadow everything else in the picture. further, his own representation is much injured because the surroundings exercise a disconcerting influence. even with the human figures of such a work executed by a painter of the first rank, they are quite uninteresting.[a] [a] see still-life pictures at the hague and vienna museums by van dyck and snyders. beautiful products of nature such as brilliant flowers and butterflies, cannot be imitated so well that the representations appear as beautiful as the things themselves, and so are unsuited as entire subjects for paintings, for we are usually well acquainted with these things, and consciously or unconsciously recognize the inferiority of the imitation. the greatest flower painters have therefore wisely refrained from introducing into their works more than a few fine roses or similar blooms. the presence of many less beautiful flowers in which the imitation is, or appears to be, more pleasing than the natural forms, neutralizes or overcomes the effect of the inferior imitation of the more beautiful. in fact the extent to which natural products which are necessarily more beautiful than the imitations, may be used in painting, except as incidentals, is very limited. they cannot appropriately be used at all on walls and curtains where they continually cross the vision, for they would there quickly tire owing to the involuntary dissatisfaction with the representation. the japanese, whose whole art of painting was for centuries concentrated upon light internal decoration, rightly discard from this form of art all natural products which are necessarily superior to the imitations, and confine their attention to those signs which, while being actually more beautiful, when closely seen, than the imitations, do not appear to be so in nature where they are usually observed at some distance from the eye. thus, waterfowl of various kinds, small birds of the hedges, storks, herons, branches of fruit blossoms, light trees and vegetation, are infinitely preferable to the more beautiful products for purely decorative purposes. a common pigeon with an added bright feather, is better on a wall or screen than the most brilliant pheasant, for in the one case the representation appears above ordinary experience, and in the other case, below it. the decorative artist then is at liberty to enhance the beauty of his signs, but not to take for them things which are commonly observed in nature, and whose beauty he cannot equal. but there should be no wide divergence between the natural beauty and the art, and nothing which in itself is unpleasing is suitable for decoration. it may be introduced in a hanging picture, because here a sense of beauty may be derived from the excellence of the imitation, as in the case of a dead hare or a basket of vegetables; but in pure decoration the effect is general and not particular, and so the imitation yields no beauty apart from that of the thing imitated. chapter xiv secondary art paintings of record--scenes from the novel and written drama--from the acted drama--humorous subjects--allegorical works. when the invention of the painter is circumscribed by the requirements of another art, whether a fine art or not, then his art ceases to be a pure art and becomes an art of record, subordinate to the art by which his work is circumscribed. this may be termed the secondary art of painting. the art may be of importance outside the purposes of the fine arts, and in certain cases may be productive of good pictures, but only by way of accident: hence a work of secondary art never engages the attention of a great artist unless he be specially called upon to execute it. hard and fast lines dividing the pure from the secondary art cannot be laid down, as one often verges on the other, but there is a general distinction between them which is easily comprehensible in the separate branches of painting. [illustration: plate (see page ) landscape, by jacob ruysdael (_national gallery, london_)] secondary art is not produced from incidents or characters taken from sacred or mythological history, because here the general invention of the painter is never circumscribed, for he is able to produce form and expression above experience. in profane history the art is secondary when the painter confines his invention to recorded details. thus in a picture of the coronation of charlemagne, the composition is entirely invented by the artist, and so the work becomes one of pure art; but the representation of the coronation of queen victoria, where the artist reproduces the scene as it actually occurred, is secondary art, for he is precluded from the exercise of his imagination in the design, the end of art being subordinated to that of record or history. such a picture is necessarily stiff and formal. where the scene represents a number of actions, as in a battle design, the artist is unable to record the actual occurrence, though he may represent particular actions; consequently he has large scope for his imagination, and may limit his representation to those actions which together make a fine example of pure art. but a battle scene where a particular event, as a meeting of generals, has to be painted, immediately becomes secondary art, for then the surrounding battle events would be accessory in their nature. it is possible for simple historical works painted to order centuries ago to appear now as of high art value, because we commonly connect a strict formality with old pictures of the kind, whether executed from records or invention. thus holbein's henry viii. presenting a charter to the barber-surgeons no doubt closely depicts the actual event, yet the stiffness of the design does not seem out of place.[a] nevertheless it is a refreshing change from this picture to richard iii. offered the crown by london merchants, which is a magnificent modern work of pure invention.[b] [a] barbers' hall, london. [b] royal exchange, london. a scene from a story of actual life is necessarily secondary art, because here the painter imitates what is already an imitation, and cannot ascend above experience. he is confined to the invention of the novelist, and is therefore subordinate to him. the written drama is available for the painter as a source for designs only in cases of high tragedy, or mixed plays containing strong dramatic events of tragic import. seeing that the drama is itself an imitative art, only such actions or characters can be used by the painter which are above life experience, and it is only in tragedy that the dramatist can exalt human attributes, and ennoble the passions above this experience. tragedy deals directly with the two great contrasting human mysteries--life and death. from one to the other is the most awful and sublime action within human knowledge, and consequently the motives and sentiments relating to it may be carried to the loftiest reach of the understanding. an exaggeration of ordinary life, where the combination of perfected parts in form and expression is not possible, means only the abnormal; while comedy, which imitates conditions inferior to ordinary life, cannot be exaggerated except into distortion. high tragedy therefore is the only section of the written drama that concerns the painter. if he draw from any other work of the dramatist he only produces secondary art, as when he draws from the novelist. the picture may be interesting, but both interest and beauty will be fleeting. while the painter may use the written drama in certain cases, he can by no means be concerned with the acted drama. it is useless to attempt to produce a good picture by imitating an imitation accomplished by a combined art, as the opera or drama. a painted scene from a play as it is acted, is merely the execution of another man's design which in itself is entirely circumscribed by conditions of action and speech wholly foreign to the art of the painter. a picture of a particular moment of action in a written play, as it is thrown upon the brain in the course of reading, is interesting, firstly because our imagination has wide limits of invention, and we naturally and instinctively adopt a harmonious rendering of the scene so far as the writing will allow; and secondly for the reason that we pass rapidly from impression to impression, and so the whole significance of each picture, separately and relatively, is conveyed to us. but a painting of an acted scene is meaningless, for it can represent only one in a series of a thousand moments of action which are all connected, and of which the comprehension of any one is dependent upon our knowledge of the whole. the painter has no scope. he simply copies a number of figures in a fixed setting, and the result is necessarily inferior art to a copy of the poorest original picture, since in this case the artist at least copies the direct product of the imagination, while in the other he has only before him a series of dummies who are imitating the product. the sense of unreality arising from such a picture must instantly overpower any harmony of colour or form that may be present. where the portrait of an actor is painted in a stage rôle, the same principle is involved, though the result is not so disastrous. we still have the unreal, but it is painted and put forward as a living person. the artist moreover has a little imaginative scope. he can choose a moment of action best suited to his art, and may even vary the character of the action, which is not possible where an acted scene is depicted. but notwithstanding all the relative advantages, a raphael could not make a fine picture out of a man in character. he may largely overcome the disabilities arising from the limitation to his invention; he may introduce great effects of light and shade; may ennoble expression and give grandeur to form; but he will never hide the sham--never conceal the fact that he is representing an imitation of life. the actor on the stage is one of a number of signs used by the dramatist. his identity apart from the sign is lost, or presumed to be lost for the time being, and so he is not a sham; but outside of the stage his use or meaning as a sign does not exist. hence the representation of this sign as a subject of a painting is only a degree less incongruous than would be the introduction of a painted figure as one of the characters of a stage scene. it is an indication of the sure public instinct in matters of art principles, that general opinion has always tacitly condemned paintings of stage scenes and characters. they have not infrequently been produced, and sometimes artists of high rank, as reynolds and lawrence, have painted portraits of actors in stage rôles, but never has one met with public appreciation as a work of art. probably in most cases these works were executed as mementoes rather than as works of art, for it is scarcely possible to conceive a painter of the stamp of reynolds, who was so well acquainted with first principles, putting forward even a portrait of garrick in a stage rôle, as a serious work, notwithstanding that he might well know that it was a masterpiece in respect of execution. humour is not a subject for the painter to deal with, for a humorous picture cannot be comprehended without the assistance of another art. further, comedy is founded upon a sense of the ridiculous, which means distortion of form or idea. distortion of form would tend to destroy the art if reproduced, and distortion of idea implies events in time which are beyond the scope of the painter. if any humour were exhibited in the representation of a single moment of action in a story, it would quickly disappear, for a permanent joke is beyond the range of human understanding. in poetry and fiction, humour may be appropriately introduced, because here it is of a fugitive character, and may serve as a possible relief of the mind, as a discordant note in music; but in a painting, the moment of humour is fixed, and a fixed laugh suggests mental disorder. nor is there place in the art of the painter for works intending to convey satire or irony, for such pictures also mean distortion. moreover they are merely substitutes for, or adjuncts to, the art of writing. the object of caricature is to present an idea in a more direct and rapid way than it can be expressed in writing, and not specially to exhibit beauty, which is the purpose of the painter. hogarth's many caricatures are composed of superlative signs of writing, and not of any fine art. cartoons (as the word is commonly understood) are of the nature of allegory, and may afford scope for the painter, but as they necessarily refer to more or less fleeting conditions of a political or social character, they cannot retain permanent interest. allegorical paintings are secondary art when they endeavour to cover more than a moment of time in a single design, or when the allegory is merely a metaphor applying to action. the first variety is rarely seen in modern works, but it was not very uncommon from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, though it was never produced by first-class artists, and seldom indeed by those of the second rank. quite a number of works of this period, formerly supposed to have an allegorical signification, are now properly identified as rarely represented mythological legends, or historical incidents which have only lately been unearthed,[a] and we may rest assured from internal evidence that many others of the same kind will yet be newly interpreted. a good design cannot be produced from an event in time because the figures in a presumed action must be shown in repose,[b] or else the action appears incongruous and opposed to experience, as when a goddess is overpowered by a personage with the appearance of a human being.[c] in both cases the figures must seem to be falsities. designs of the first kind can only be properly represented in a sequence of pictures, each indicating a particular action, as in the marie de' medici series of rubens; and those of the second by commonly accepted figures of sacred or mythological history or legend, as where st. michael and the dragon typify good overcoming evil. [a] examples are lorenzo costa's cupid crowning isabella d'este, giorgione's adrastus and hypsipyle, and piero di cosimo's marsyas picture. [b] religion succoured by spain, the prado, madrid. [c] lotto's triumph of chastity, rospigliosi gallery, rome. it is scarcely necessary to do more than barely refer to the use of metaphor by the painter when the representation of action is involved, as for instance if he should produce a picture of a heaving ship in a storm, to meet the metaphor "as a ship is tossed on a rough sea, so has been the course of my life," though this kind of picture has been occasionally executed, the artist forgetting that it is not the object depicted that is compared, but the action--in the example quoted, the tossing of the ship--which cannot be represented on canvas. another form of metaphor sometimes used by the painter is that where a comparison of ideas is represented by physical proportions, as in wiertz's things of the present as seen by the future, in which the things of the present are indicated by liliputian figures on the hand of a woman of life size who represents the future. needless to say that such designs, of which there are about a dozen in existence, can only suggest distortion, for the smaller figures must appear too small, and the larger ones too great; or if our experience with miniature imitations of the human figure warrants us in regarding the smaller figures as reasonable, then the larger ones must appear as giants of the brobdingnagian order. the only form of metaphor which may be used by the painter is that wherein a beautiful symbol typifies a high abstract quality. metaphor belongs properly to the arts of the poet and novelist who can indicate the symbol and things symbolized in immediate succession, so that the whole meaning is apparent. the painter can only represent the symbol, and unless this is beautiful and its purport readily comprehended, his sign is merely a hieroglyph--a sign of writing. secondary art includes symbolic painting when the symbol may represent either the symbol itself or the thing symbolized, for such a condition involves a confusion of ideas which tends to destroy the æsthetic effect of the work. the most notable painting of this kind is holman hunt's the scapegoat, where the design shows only a goat in desert country. the scapegoat has ceased to be an actuality for centuries, and the only meaning of the term as it is now used applies to a man: hence, with the title the goat appears to be a symbol of both a man and an animal, while without the title it is merely the image of a goat without symbolism. but the conception of an animal of any kind as a symbol is foreign to the art of the painter whose symbol should always be beautiful, whatever the nature of the representation. chapter xv colour in itself colour has no virtues which are not governed by immutable laws. these are apart from the exercise of human faculties, the recognition of colour harmony being involuntary and entirely dependent upon the condition of the optic nerves. thus there can be no meaning in colour apart from its application to form, and the extent to which it may be properly used in the representation of form is necessarily bound by our experience of nature. other things being equal, the most perfect painting is that wherein there is a just balance between the colour and the form, that is to say, where the colour is not so vivid as to act upon the sense nerves before the general beauty of the work is appreciated, or so feeble or discordant that its want of natural truth is immediately presented to the mind, thus disturbing the impression of the design. as with metrical form in poetry, the importance of colour in painting varies inversely with the character of the art. in the highest art, where ideals are dealt with, colour is of the least importance. a composition with ideal figures may be produced by drawing only, that is to say, by the use of a single tone in outline and shading. the addition of colour heightens the beauty of a composition of this kind, not so much because of the new sensorial harmony acquired, as for the reason that a painting in colours, corresponding better than a colourless drawing with our experience of nature, assists in defining the work and so reduces the fractional time necessary for the recognition of the general beauty of the design, which is a matter of importance. the comparatively small value of colour in the highest art is demonstrated by experience. if we were to choose from paintings known to us, those which general opinion regards as the very greatest works, we should unquestionably name the frescoes of raphael and michelangelo at the vatican, and those of correggio at parma. these, with a few easel pictures of raphael, and perhaps a dozen other pictures by various masters, are the only works of the painter's art to which the term "sublime" may be properly applied. as with the great epic poems, they are concerned entirely with ideals--with personages far above the level of life, rising to the spiritual domain--or with human beings as they would be if the highest conceptions of our imagination were possible of realization. when we recall these splendid legacies of genius to our minds, and ponder over the apparently limitless range of human vision which they evidence, it is the designs that absorb us, and not the colour--the forms and expression, and not the tints by which their definition is assisted. we do not usually analyse the impression we receive from these frescoes and pictures, but were we to do so, it would be borne in upon our minds that while a raphael, a michelangelo, or a correggio, would be required to conceive and execute such stupendous designs, many thousands of unknown patient workers could be found to colour them efficiently. on the other hand if we remove the colour from the greatest landscape known to us, we find that most of the beauty of the work has disappeared, and that we have only a kind of skeleton left, for the beauty of such a picture rests very largely upon the aerial perspective, which is unobtainable without colour. that the appreciation of colour is relative to the character of the design may be observed from common experience. we may see the sistine madonna half a dozen times and then be unable to recall the colours when bringing the picture to mind, so small an effect have they had upon us as compared with that of the majesty and general beauty of the central figure. so with many of raphael's other pictures. it is a common thing for one to call attention to the superb colouring of an easel picture by correggio, but how rarely does an observer notice the colouring of his frescoes at parma, which are his masterpieces? with some of the venetian artists, the colouring is often so brilliant, not to say startling, that it seems to overpower the observer for a moment, and necessity compels him to accustom himself to the tones before considering the design. the colouring of titian is not so strong, but it is always forcible; nevertheless one seldom hears a comment upon the colours in his works, the superior design and general beauty of the compositions far outweighing the purely sensorial elements therein. titian in fact secured an approximately just balance between form and colour, while with his great followers the colour usually exceeded in strength the requirements of the design. in the time of tintoretto and veronese the prestige and prosperity of venice were rapidly declining, but we have been so accustomed to associate with this city during the renaissance, a luxurious life with something of the character of an eastern court, that gorgeous colour of any kind does not seem out of place as one of its products. but this special appropriateness has not the effect of elevating the gay coloured voluptuous forms of the artists named, observable in their classical and allegorical works, to a high level in art. we cannot accommodate the forms to the ideas of the poets who invented or described them, or to the attributes with which they were commonly associated; and the colouring tends to bring them closer to earth. while we feel bound to admire the colouring, we are equally compelled to regret the particular application.[ ] speaking generally, when the design is good we remember the composition irrespective of the colours, but when the beauty of the work depends upon the colour harmony it fades from our memory as soon as our eyes experience new colour combinations. the imagination may call up the harmony again upon the mind, but the pleasure experienced from this reflection must be very feeble indeed because the senses are not directly affected thereby. it can have no more effect than a written description of the harmony. [illustration: plate (see page ) the storm, by jacob ruysdael (_berlin museum_)] the painter is at liberty to make what use he will of colour so long as he provides a thing of beauty, but he must remember that the appreciation of colour harmony is dependent not only upon the condition of the optic nerves of the observer, but also upon his experience at the time of observation. as to the first consideration little heed need be taken, because rudimentarily the nerve structure is equal or nearly so, in all persons, and while accident at birth may provide in some an advanced condition which in others is only obtained by exercise, yet in respect of colours, experience in complex harmony is gained involuntarily in contact with every-day nature. hence for the purpose of the painter, all men may be considered alike in regard to the recognition of colour harmony. but individual experience at the time of observation of a painting varies largely,[ ] a circumstance which is not of importance in dealing with works of the higher art, but becomes of great significance when considering the lower forms. no organ of the body is so susceptible to fatigue as the eye, and a painting of the kind known as a colour scheme may or may not be pleasing according as the tone is a relief or otherwise to the sight. sometimes a few seconds are sufficient to fatigue the eye, as for instance when it is directed towards a vivid maroon hanging, but let a landscape with a grey tone be placed on the hanging and considerable pleasure will be involuntarily experienced through the relief to the optic nerves. remove the picture to a grey wall, and it will instantly lose its charm, except such as it may possess apart from the colour. as with particular tones, so with colours generally. people habituated to conditions of nature where extremes of sun effects are uncommon, as in the northern latitudes, may be temporarily pleased with schemes of glowing colours on their walls, because these relieve the monotony of daily experience, but they must necessarily quickly tire, as with all exceptional conditions of life which are concerned with the senses only. how soon one is fatigued with bright colours generally is obvious to any visitor to a public gallery which is crowded with pictures. in an hour or less the fatigue of his eyes becomes so extreme that his whole nervous system is affected, and he loses energy of both mind and body. but brilliant colors used sparingly with good designs may be a perpetual source of pleasure. place a fine work by rubens or paolo veronese in a living-room and it will attract attention every time one enters, for the colouring will always be a change from the normal eye experience. one turns to the picture involuntarily, and then the design is observed, and so one passes from sensual to intellectual pleasure. this process is repeated day by day, and the work never tires. of course it is a condition that the design is able to hold the attention, otherwise the bright colours would serve little better purpose than if they defined a geometrical pattern. nowadays quite a number of paintings are produced in which unusual tones are given to signs or shadows, but these are not to be taken seriously by the earnest student. in the sunlight, amidst certain surroundings, the arm of a woman may appear for some moments to have a bluish tone, but the artist would be entirely wrong to paint a bluish arm. the picture is to be seen under all lights, and if the tones be contrary to general experience under any of these lights, then the work appears to be a falsity, for the artist does not, and cannot, reproduce the conditions which together bring about the exceptional colours. to the normal eye under ordinary circumstances, the arm of a woman is of flesh colour, and the artist is not at liberty to vary this tone. he has to represent what appears to be true in general opinion, whether it be really true or not under certain conditions. the dictum of aristotle in regard to poetry--that what appears probable, though in reality is impossible, is better than what seems improbable but is really possible--is equally true in painting. in fact it is of more importance that this maxim should be remembered in painting than in poetry, because the signs of the painter are permanent. a poet or novelist may refer to a passing exceptional sun effect, for the impression on the mind of the reader would probably be as transient as, or more transient than, the effect itself, but with the painter the transient effect becomes fixed. the blue arm is always blue, and in a very short time becomes a disagreeable unreality. it may be claimed that the objectionable sun effects are not really exceptional, though they are seldom noticed; but for the purpose of art, what appears to be exceptional must be definitely regarded as so, and for this reason discarded by the artist who desires to paint a good picture. generally then, the value of colour lies firstly in its correspondence with nature, for upon this depends its harmony and the assistance it lends to the recognition of the beauty in the whole composition. beyond this it may or may not have an ephemeral value according to local conditions. in any case colour must ever be subordinated to design in a picture, and this is what poussin meant when he said that particular attention to colour is an obstacle to the art student. book ii illusions in the painter's art introductory the painter is occupied in a perpetual struggle to produce an illusion. he does not directly aim for this, but except in the very highest art where ideals are realized, the better the picture he paints, the greater the illusion. the natural test of the value of his work is its correspondence with nature, and the nearer it so corresponds, the more complete the illusion. but the whole picture is never an illusion (we leave out of consideration those instances where artificial devices are used to conceal the surroundings of the actual painted surface), for the frame and other material evidence inform us of the art. the illusion, when it exists, is forced upon our minds from moment to moment as our eyes travel over the work. it occurs to us perhaps that a face "lives," that the drapery is true to life, that the tones are real, and so on, and obviously these circumstances cannot impress us in this way unless we are momentarily deceived. and it is a sign of good quality in the work when we are so struck. this does not mean that the closer the imitation, the better the picture: on the contrary it is rare to find a good work of art produced by an exact imitator. the duty of the artist is to generalize everything that can be generalized without departing from the character of the thing represented. true there are degrees of generalization which depend on the nature of the design, the size of the work, the accessories, and other matters, but if a just balance of generalization be secured throughout, then the imitation is better than a closely detailed reproduction, because a work is always involuntarily judged from general, and not from particular, experience. a portrait for instance is a much better work of art if we can say of it "this is a good portrait of a man," than if we are compelled to confine ourselves to "this is a good portrait of mr. jones," even if the lineaments of the particular countenance are better defined in the latter example than in the former. the illusion would be stronger, for we are more intimately acquainted with "a man" than with "mr. jones." and so with accessories. an exceptionally fine rose or cabbage is never so good in a painting as one of these articles which is of an average type, because with this the illusion is more certain, for it is not likely to be disturbed with a mental inquiry into the unusual article. the painter may produce his illusions then without sacrificing anything in his art, and with the surety that good paintings necessarily result in momentary illusions except when form or expression above life experience are dealt with. the first and most important illusion in the art is that of relief, for without this no other illusion can be produced. it is a general condition applying to all work on a flat surface. the other illusions that may be provided are: (a) of opening distance in landscape; (b) of motion in natural actions, as in flowing water; (c) of human and animal actions; (d) of suspension and motion in the air. the two first are dealt with under "landscape"; the others are now considered. chapter i illusion of relief the greatest value in the illusion of relief lies in its assistance to recognition, for with the forms rounded by shading and separated with the appearance of relief which they have in nature, details of the work are less likely to complicate the design to the eye, than if the flat surface of the canvas be emphasized by the avoidance of relief. for the eye has to be considered before the mind, and it is of immense importance that the brain should have the least possible work to do in assisting the eye to interpret a thing of art. it would appear then that the minimum extent to which relief should be given in a painting is that point below which the things painted do not seem to have their three dimensions indicated. beyond this the painter is at liberty to proceed as he pleases. some great artists, notably lionardo, were inclined to think that it is impossible to give too much relief to a figure, and this may be so theoretically, but practically there is a line to be drawn because life is limited, and after a certain point is reached, the work of shading for relief is so tedious an operation, that half a lifetime would be required to execute a picture of three or four figures if the artist wished to produce the strongest illusion in his power to give. a russian artist of high merit who essayed the task, spent an average time of five years in ceaseless toil on each figure he completed, and even then frequently remarked that he had not given to his figures the full relief he desired to exhibit. it is well known that lionardo gave long and close attention to this matter in his pictures, and he produced some extraordinary examples of relief, of which the finest is, perhaps, the litta madonna,[a] but one cannot help regretting that he did not rest satisfied with a lower point of excellence in respect of the illusion, so that he could spend more time in general design. [a] at the hermitage. see plate . apart from the relief given by shading in painting, there is an important mechanical method of improving the illusion, though this can only be occasionally adopted. the figures in any well painted picture will appear to stand out in high relief if we lose sight of the frame and other surroundings which distinctly inform us that the work is a flat surface. this is why a painting invariably seems to improve if seen through a tube of such diameter that the frame is excluded from the vision. advantage of this fact has been many times taken in the exhibition of single pictures, when, by the exclusion of the frame, the concealment of the edges of the work by curtain arrangements, and the concentration of all the available light upon the canvas, such perfect relief has been obtained that observers have been sometimes unable to distinguish the art from the life. it was the effect of the surroundings of a picture upon the sight, that led to a practice in design resulting in the exclusion of these surroundings to some extent when the eye is directed towards the centre of the work where the principal figure is commonly stationed. this practice is to avoid accessories as far as possible near the figure, and to provide considerable open space above it, and also at the sides when the composition allows, so that the observing eye has not of necessity to range close to the frame of the picture. in a good design of this kind the central figure or figures come out in strong relief, the attraction of the work being consequently much enhanced. obviously the painted figures should be of life size, or nearly so, for the illusion of relief to be strikingly marked, and the conditions necessarily prevent the adoption of the scheme in a design of many figures. it is most successful with a single figure, and has been carried out with two figures, but never with more than two except in a few pictures of great size. [illustration: plate (see page ) the litta madonna, by lionardo da vinci (_hermitage_)] the number of artists who have taken advantage of this mechanical device is not large, but it includes some of the first masters. the plan may be used in both exterior and interior scenes. in the former the figures must be thrown against the sky, and it is a distinct advantage if there be no trees or other objects on either side of the figures, which also stand out above the horizon, though this is immaterial if the figure be set in a confined space, as an arch, or between the columns of a loggia, and the foliage is not seen through this space. the most famous pictures where the scheme is used in exterior work are amongst the finest portraits known to us, namely, lionardo's mona lisa, and raphael's maddalena doni and angelo doni.[a] in or thereabouts, lionardo painted a portrait of mona lisa sitting in a loggia, the wall of which reached to a third of the height of the canvas.[b] on the wall at each side of the design is a column divided down the centre by the edge of the canvas. there is a landscape setting, in which the middle distance is hidden by rising ground, and only part of the head appears above the horizon. in raphael made a study from this picture in which he retained the columns, but raised the wall, and threw the whole head of the figure against the sky. he used this study for the portrait of maddalena doni, but in this he still further improved the design by removing the columns, and extending to the shoulders that part of the figure above the horizon, the line of which divides the picture in equal halves, instead of being drawn at two thirds of the height as in the first mona lisa. when lionardo executed the louvre portrait of this lady, he removed the columns, but slightly reduced the portion of the head seen against the sky. raphael's plan, which was also used in the portrait of angelo doni, is obviously far superior to that in the mona lisa design, for the relief is necessarily better marked. the scheme was not new to raphael at the time, except in portraiture, for it is exhibited in three of his very early sacred works.[c] [a] the first at the louvre, and the others at the pitti palace, florence. [b] this painting, or one corresponding to it, is in the boston museum, u. s. a. see note . [c] saint sebastian, at bergamo; the redeemer at brescia; and the prophets and sybils at perugia. one of the best examples in existence of this method of securing relief is tintoretto's presentation of the virgin.[a] on the right of the picture is a wide flight of stairs, curving round as they ascend. the virgin is moving up these steps in advance of some attendants, and the curved stairway enables all the figures to stand out in fine relief against the sky. if well managed some considerable space above the figures is sufficient for the illusion even if the sides are partly closed, as in albertinelli's beautiful salutation.[b] where only a small portion of the figure can be shown above the horizon, the use of a faint far distance helps in the scheme of relief. thus, in marco basaiti's christ on the mount of olives,[c] where christ stands on the top of a rock which hides the middle distance, his head only is above the horizon, but the rest of the figure is thrown against a faint far distance, the relief being excellent. a modification of this plan is observable in lionardo's virgin and child with st. anne.[d] [a] madonna del orto, venice. [b] uffizi gallery, florence. [c] venice academy. [d] the louvre. so far as the writer has been able to ascertain, the first known painting where a crucifix is thrown against the sky is by antonella da messina.[a] the cross is fixed in the foreground and extends to the top of the picture, being cut half-way up and just below the feet of christ by the line of the horizon. the relief is very fine. this scheme was imitated with more or less success but never quite so perfectly, till titian produced his magnificent cross. here the crucifix is cast against a sombre evening sky, with the virgin and two imploring saints at the foot.[b] rubens improved upon this design with several variations. in one he hid the foot of the cross, though the tops of buildings are seen in the middle distance[c]; and in another, which is still finer, the time of the scene is late evening, and dark vague outlines suggest a landscape. but all these examples are cast into the shade by van dyck's antwerp picture, than which there is certainly no more impressive painted crucifixion in existence. in this the foot of the cross is not shown, nor is there any ground to be seen, and the figure stands out against a dark forbidding sky, awful, but sublimely real, as if set in boundless space for all eternity.[d] [a] national gallery, london. [b] ancona gallery. [c] antwerp museum. [d] this work was repeated several times with variations. see plate . there are many variations of the above designs, particularly among the works of venetian artists, but those quoted may be regarded as typical. how easy it is to hinder the illusion is seen in sodoma's sacrifice of abraham,[a] where both figures are set against the sky, but trees behind them and at the side destroy the relief, though the foliage is by no means thick. in girolami da libri's madonna and child with st. anne, a pomegranate tree interposes[b]; and a curtain falls at the back of a group by bernadino da conti,[c] the illusion in both cases being consequently robbed of its effect. [a] pisa cathedral. [b] national gallery, london. [c] poldo pezzoli museum, milan. some of the dutch artists of the seventeenth century used a clear sky for the purpose of enhancing the relief of their figures, but as these are usually of a comparatively small size, the result is only partially effective. albert cuyp and philip wouverman painted many pictures with men and animals silhouetted above the horizon, and paul potter executed a few of the kind, but of all dutch painters, jan steen secured the best relief with his terrace scene.[a] in more recent times the scheme has seldom been adopted for the purpose of relief, but a few scottish painters practised it in the early nineteenth century. simson followed cuyp's plan,[b] and dyce in a sacred piece equalled the best of the old masters in his manner of producing the illusion.[c] grant also painted a fine example.[d] some portrait painters of the english school of the eighteenth century used the scheme in a partial way, but they commonly placed clouds behind the figures thrown against the sky, thus disturbing the illusion. [a] national gallery, london. [b] national gallery, edinburgh. [c] st. john leading the virgin from the tomb, national gallery of british art, london. [d] the countess of chesterfield and mrs. anson, gilmour collection, scotland. there is only one method of using this device for assisting in the production of relief in interiors. this is to throw the figure against a high wall which is undecorated or nearly so. the figure must be some little distance in front of the wall, and it is observable that the best effect is obtained when the light throughout the room is equal, but in any case the wall should not have less light than the figure. inasmuch as the figure has to be of life size or nearly so, to produce the desired result, a very large picture would be necessary for the representation of a standing adult; hence the plan is not attempted with a life-size figure, except with a sitting adult or a standing child. before this scheme was used for the human figure, that master of relief, m. a. caravaggio, adopted it for a simple still-life work.[a] a basket of fruit on a plain table, with a high bare wall at the back--the canvas now sombre and darkened, like the soul of the artist, but still remarkable for the relief: this was the first application to interiors of a plan which had been used in exteriors by some of the greatest masters for more than a century. [a] ambrogia museum, milan. so far as can be gathered from existing works, thirty or forty years elapsed after the picture of caravaggio was painted before the scheme was brought into use for the human figure in interiors. in , or thereabouts, velasquez produced his christ at the column.[a] here the wall is not actually high, but christ is shown seated on the floor, and hence there is ample wall space over which the eye may rove. it is possible that the adoption of the plan in this instance was the result of accident, but the very unusual pose of christ hardly warrants the suggestion. velasquez painted no more pictures of the kind till a quarter of a century later, when he produced las meninas. in this the relief is excellent, but it would have been still better without the picture on the wall, and the open door in the background, though the figure seen on the steps through the doorway lends assistance to the illusion. [a] the prado, madrid. towards the middle of the seventeenth century, some followers of the neapolitan school used the plan occasionally, but the best existing italian works of the time where it is seen are from the hand of evaristo baschenis, a bergamese monk. he was an excellent painter of still-life, and produced several pictures, each with a boy or a woman seated in the middle of a room near a plain table on which rests a dish of fruit or a gathering of various articles, while at the back there is a high bare wall. in all of these works a fine relief is exhibited, though they are now considerably marred by darkened shadows. a few years later the plan was adopted by some dutch artists, and later still in france and germany. chardin, who in more ways than one seems to have been a french baschenis, used it in several pictures. in recent times since the study of velasquez has become a vogue, many artists have successfully followed the plan, and one of the finest examples of it in existence--lydia emmet's patricia[a]--dates as late as . [a] exhibition of the national (american) association of portrait painters, n. y., . see plate . there are several minor mechanical ways of enhancing relief, most of them providing a setting which acts as a kind of inner frame to the design, the object being to reduce the effect of the actual frame in disturbing the illusion. portrait painters of the dutch, flemish, and english schools, have often placed half length figures in painted ovals on canvas rectangles, and in the case of hals he sometimes further improved the illusion by extending a hand of the subject over the oval. hanneman used this oval in a most exceptional way. on a large canvas he painted the bust portraits of constantine huygens and his six children, each in a separate oval, the father being in the centre.[a] the scheme is strangely effective, for the attention of the observer is involuntarily confined to one portrait at a time. in genre pictures a doorway may act as the inner frame, but this is only of material value if the picture be of considerable size. the dutch painters, notably gerard dow, loved to paint figures leaning over window-sills, this method usually enhancing the relief, because the eye is apt to be confined for a time to the window-frame. perhaps the best use of a window for the purpose of relief is rembrandt's samson menacing his father-in-law, where the old man's head and hands, of life size, are seen protruding from a small window.[b] [a] hague gallery. [b] berlin gallery. chapter ii illusion of motion with human figures--with animals. from the earliest times great sculptors, in producing a single figure in action, have chosen for the representation a moment of rest between two steps in the action, so that the character of these steps is instantly recognized by the observer, whose imagination unconsciously carries through the action. if every part of the figure is built up conformably with the action, with due regard to the position from which the statue is to be seen, an illusion of motion will follow, though this is necessarily so rapid that the effect upon the observer is indirect: he translates the impression into appreciation of the lifelike attitude of the figure. nearly all the ancient greek sculptured figures known to us, commencing with those of myron, are characterized by this excellence in design, and so with the best work of the italian renaissance. modern sculptors of repute have also endeavoured to provide the illusion, rodin in particular holding that it should be the aim of every sculptor.[ ] the painter is in a different position from the sculptor because the latter may design his figure with special reference to the position it is to occupy, and so he can in a measure compel the observer to see it in a particular way. thus, the base of the statue may be some height above the ground, in which case the observer must necessarily run his eyes up the figure from the feet; or it may be seen first in a three-quarter view so that the position of the limbs will apparently change as the observer moves to the front. such accidental circumstances may be considered by the sculptor in his plan. the painter has no such advantage, for his figure is the same from whichever point it is to be seen, within reasonable limits; but he has compensation in the use of tones and accessories of which the sculptor is deprived. that the painter may provide an excellent illusion with a single figure in action is evidenced by raphael's superb st. margaret, where the saint is seen stepping over the dragon.[a] every part of her body, and every fold of drapery is used in the expression of movement, the effect being so perfect that we cannot disassociate the figure from the action.[ ] [a] at the louvre. see plate . the painters of the first century of the renaissance never properly represented a figure in the act of walking, and there are few pictures even of the fifteenth century where a serious attempt is made to choose the best moment in which to exhibit such a figure. the first successful essay in the task seems to have been in the tribute money of masaccio,[a] who indeed was fifty years ahead of his fellows in the faithful representation of action. there was a jump of two decades or so after masaccio to the next good figure, which was that of an attendant in filipo lippi's complex tondo at florence.[b] this figure must have caused considerable surprise at the time, for it was copied into several works by subsequent artists, notably domenico ghirlandaio,[c] and probably suggested the fine figure carrying a jar of water on her head in raphael's fire at the borgo.[d] but raphael, who mastered every problem in composition, solved this one so completely that he left nothing for his successors to learn respecting it. not only are the limbs of his moving figures so perfectly arranged that we see only action, but folds of the drapery used on the figures are sufficient to indicate preceding movements,[e] and this is so even when the figures are stationary, but the head, arms, or upper part of the body have moved.[f] this extraordinary feature of raphael's work will ever form a subject of astonishment and admiration. [a] santa maria del carmine, florence. [b] madonna and child with other scenes from her life, uffizi, florence. [c] birth of st. john baptist, santa maria novello, florence. [d] fresco at the vatican. [e] see deliverance of st. peter, flight of lot and his family, moses striking the rock, and others at the vatican. [f] the transfiguration, vatican. [illustration: plate (see page ) christ on the cross, by van dyck (_antwerp museum_)] the painter has a comparatively easy task in presenting an illusion with several figures presumed to be moving, for he has only to comply with two simple conditions. the first is that the particular step represented in the act of progression of any individual should vary from the steps of the persons immediately behind or in front of him; and secondly that the actions of the different persons be connected with each other so far as possible. with these conditions reasonably fulfilled, illusion of motion necessarily follows. naturally in such a mechanical matter, the character of the invention depends upon the scale of the design. when the moving figures are presumed to be comparatively near at hand, the position of the limbs must be entirely presented, or the progression will appear broken. the effective illusion presented in burne-jones's golden staircase is due to his ingenuity in so arranging the numerous figures descending the winding stairs, that all their feet are visible. in the case of a crowd of figures of whom some are supposed to be moving and others standing still, the visibility of the limbs is of less importance than the connection of the various actions. in menzel's market in verona,[a] the illusion, which is remarkable, is entirely produced by the skill in which innumerable instances of action are made dependent upon others. an illusion is created in the same way though in a lesser degree by gustave doré in several works.[b] when the motion arises from the actions of the arms of a number of persons, it suffices if the arms are in various positions, as in menzel's iron mill, and cavalori's woolworkers[c] where many men are using long tools; but if the limbs are working together, an illusion is impossible. the beauty of guardi's great picture, regatta on the grand canal, is much diminished by the attitude of the gondoliers, who all hold their poles in the same position. [a] dresden gallery. [b] see samson slaying the philistines. [c] palazzo vecchio, florence. where many persons are moving together in the same direction, great care has to be exercised in presenting the actions conformably with the rate at which the movement is proceeding, for upon this of course depends the angles of the bended knees, and the extent to which some of the feet may be carried from the ground. in slow natural movements, as where a number of men are dragging a heavy burden, it is rare to find an artist wrong in his representation[a]; but in the case of numerous figures walking irregularly, a true nearground design is uncommon, the painter usually giving insufficient action, with the result that his figures present a stagy appearance.[b] but a defect of this kind is not so serious as where several men, not being in marching order, are moving in the same direction with their feet in similar positions, and each with a foot off the ground,[c] for this is only an aggravation of a case where the picture shows but a single figure walking with one foot in the air. [a] for good examples see benoit's morning of july , , poynter's building the treasure city, and colton's royal artillery memorial (sculptured relief). [b] dehodencq's bohemians returning from a fête, chaumont museum. [c] as in breton's cry of alarm. an illusion of motion may be given to a line of figures in the middle distance of a landscape by simply winding the road along which they pass[a]; but the angles of the turns must be large, for when they are small, or when there is a distinct zigzag, the illusion is destroyed through the lengthy operation of the eye in comprehending the whole scene. [a] diaz's descent of the bohemians. when many figures are moving close together, even if they be marching to the same step, an illusion of movement may be given by the representation of a flying figure proceeding in the same direction. this scheme has been adopted in sculpture with high success, as in the shaw memorial at boston,[a] and the marseillaise of rude.[b] in painting, several horizontal figures may be used, but they must be placed irregularly to avoid the appearance of formality. some modern french artists are responsible for effective designs indicating the arrival of spring by an overhead figure flying above young people moving through flowery fields.[c] [a] by a. saint-gaudens. [b] arc de triomphe, paris. [c] see aman-jean's decorative panels at the sorbonne. a suggestion of motion may be obtained by exhibiting a number of persons engaged in similar actions, but shown in a consecutive series of stages thereof. this plan is admirably worked out by watteau in his embarkation for cythera.[a] a line of couples commences at the right of the picture, proceeds towards the left, and then descends a slope to the place of embarkation. the first couple are sitting and conversing, the next are in the act of rising, and the third have just risen and are about to follow the other couples already walking, the whole device being most effective. a similar kind of illusion is caused by rubens in his diana and nymphs pursued by satyrs.[b] on the extreme right of the picture some of the figures are stationary; then come a few who are struggling, and finally some running nymphs and satyrs, a perfect progression of events being suggested. [a] in the louvre, and repeated with variations at berlin. [b] the prado, madrid. see plate . illusion of motion is more easily obtained with animals than with human figures, providing they are fairly large, because of the greater number of their feet and the consequent wider variation between the apparent and the real movements. it is exceedingly difficult to produce a suggestion of motion with a single animal represented in a natural attitude, but the painter is only concerned with what appears to be natural or probable, and not with what is actually so. we have only a general idea of the action of a horse in nature from what we see, and consequently in design this action must be generalized irrespective of natural possibilities. some artists combine parts of different actions as exhibited in a series of photographs in order to represent a moment of action as it is generalized to the eye, but this is only serviceable where the presumed action of the animal is one of a series of similar events, as in walking or trotting. it would not answer in the case of an isolated action, as jumping or rearing, because such actions vary with the circumstances surrounding them, as the height of the jump or the cause of the rearing. in these events therefore the artist may exaggerate to a great extent without appearing to present impossible movements. in fact nearly all good pictures of one or two horses in action are strong exaggerations of nature, but this hardly affects their æsthetic worth because the action is not recognized as abnormal or impossible. the finest painting of horses in action known to us, is regnault's automedon with the horses of achilles,[a] where the animals exhibit spirit and movement far above experience, but even if we did not know that they are presumed to be immortal, we should only regard the action as exceptional, for it does not appear to be impossible. [a] boston museum, u. s. a. see plate . there is ample scope for the presentation of an illusion with a number of moving animals. all that is necessary is that they should be kept fairly well together with their legs in various moving attitudes. this illusion is perfectly managed by many of the french painters of battle scenes in the nineteenth century, notably horace vernet,[a] gros,[b] chartier,[c] morot,[d] and meissonier.[e] the action in the cavalry charges of morot and chartier is amazingly true to life. even three or four animals will suffice for an illusion,[f] but this cannot be provided with the smaller animals, as sheep or goats, because although a series of progressive actions may be given to those outside animals in a flock whose legs are visible to the spectator of the picture, the scale to which they are painted is necessarily so small that the eye has an entirely insufficient range for operating the illusion. where several horses are represented as moving at considerable speed, it is necessary that some of their feet should touch the ground, otherwise the illusion is destroyed, or else the animal may appear to be racing through the air.[g] the effect is not so disturbing when all the feet of the moving animals are on the ground,[h] or where they are hidden by herbage,[i] or where all the animals are on their hind legs,[j] though in these instances an illusion is almost impossible. [a] la smalah at versailles. [b] the combat of nazareth. [c] jena, , and hanau, . [d] reichsoffen. [e] . [f] rosa bonheur's ploughing in nivernois. [g] fromentin's couriers des ooled nayls, luxembourg; schreyer's the attack, n. y. public library; and gericault's epsom, louvre. [h] a. brown's the drove. [i] uhde's cavalry soldiers going into action, muffel collection. [j] snyder's hunt, munich gallery. in cases where horses and men are crowded together, and are struggling in confusion, it is only necessary in order to provide an illusion, that no action should be entirely separated from the others. there was a fine example of this work in a lost drawing or painting of titian, of pharaoh's host overwhelmed in the red sea[a]; and many artists of the renaissance produced like illusions in pictures of the rape of the sabines. where the movement is spread over a large area, and the scale to which the animals are drawn is comparatively small, the various groups engaged must obviously be connected together in a series. franz adam arranges a scheme of this kind in a battle scene, using running soldiers or hauled guns as links in the chain.[b] [a] an engraving on wood by a. andreani is in existence. [b] a bavarian regiment before orleans, munich. an illusion of motion is sometimes assisted by the title of the picture. a remarkable example of this is robert's the israelites depart. although individual action cannot be distinguished owing to the scale of the design, yet when one is acquainted with the title, the imagination is instinctively set to work, and the enormous crowds packing the wide streets seem to be streaming in one direction. obviously for the title to have this effect, the number of signs must be overwhelming, and there must be no possibility of interpreting the picture in two ways; that is to say, accessory signs must be used to indicate the direction in which the crowd is moving.[ ] chapter iii illusion of suspension and motion in the air with the assistance of drapery--of clouds--of winged figures--miscellaneous devices. the representation of figures suspended in the air, or moving through it, has never offered much trouble to painters, though necessarily involving an apparent miracle. the very slightest pretended physical assistance suffices for the illusion, and this help is usually rendered in the shape of flying drapery, winged figures, clouds, or artificial devices based upon the contact of two or more figures. the only difficulty met with is in respect of an upward vertical movement. here, wings or clouds can scarcely be made to differentiate between a rising and a falling movement, and flying drapery is of little service inasmuch as a rush through the air would, if the feat were actually performed, cause the drapery to cling to the figure. the surest remedy for the disabilty is to support the figure directly by winged figures placed at a considerable angle from the vertical, but this plan is only rarely adopted by great masters because of the consequent complications in the design of the group. since flying drapery is commonly added to the figure presumed to be ascending, and seeing that artists almost invariably insist upon giving their ascending figures upright attitudes, it is seldom that the movement is correctly expressed. usually the figure appears to be held immovably in suspension, but occasionally, owing to the drapery arrangement, a descending movement is indicated.[a] without the assistance of winged figures, the illusion of ascension can only be given when the figure is shown directed upwards at an angle of at least fifteen or twenty degrees from the vertical. as a rule the larger the angle, the more easy is the production of an illusion. with a fairly large angle, and an appropriate arrangement of limbs and drapery, heavy figures can be made to appear naturally ascending, as in rubens's boreas and orithyia, both voluptuous forms.[b] [a] as in murillo's ascension of christ, madrid academy. [b] venice academy. only a very few of the first artists have been able to give an illusion of movement in the air by use of drapery alone, the device adopted by michelangelo in the sistine chapel frescoes being perhaps the most effective. he throws behind the moving figure of the deity a large fold of drapery, which assumes an oval or nearly round shape, the whole acting as a concave framework for the deity and attending angels.[a] the success of the plan arises of course from the apparent resistance to the air offered by a large and compact surface. this form with more or less marked modifications in the concavity was probably used by the ancient greeks in their paintings, as a nearly similar arrangement is found in a sculptured figure which has come down to us, though in this case a running movement is indicated.[b] it is also seen in some pompeian frescoes, where it is applied to figures moving through the air and on the ground.[c] raphael adopted the device occasionally,[d] but generally varied it with excellent effect by flowing out from the waist a large scarf-like fold to take a circular form above the head and shoulders of the figure,[e] or by causing heavy drapery to flow out from the lower part of the body.[f] no doubt in the case of raphael, the extraordinary grace of figure, and the perfect pose of the limbs, assist the illusion. tintoretto and other artists of the renaissance used an oval drapery in a similar way; while sometimes the figure is half hidden within it,[g] and le sueur wrapped part of the figure in folds before forming the oval.[h] there seems to be a simple virtue in any oval form connected with figures presumed to be suspended in the air. it was quite common in the early days of the renaissance for the deity or virgin and child to be placed in a regular oval framework, sometimes supported by angels or cherubs, and the illusion was usually successful.[i] rubens by way of experiment went a little further in one picture, for he placed the virgin and child in an oval picture frame supported by cherubs.[j] this however does not seem so novel as some of perugino's ovals which are bordered with the heads of cherubs.[k] [a] see plate . [b] the son of niobe, uffizi gallery, florence.[ ] [c] herculanum et pompei, vol. iv., by roux ainé. [d] ceiling of the hall of heliodorus, vatican. [e] vatican frescoes god separating water and earth, and god appearing to isaac. [f] the creation of the sun and moon. [g] poussin's st. francis zavier, louvre. [h] the virgin appearing to st. martin. [i] see the assumption of orcagna, and of luca di tome; giunto pisano's christ and the virgin; and mainardi's madonna giving her girdle to st. thomas. [j] virgin and child, chiesa nuovo, rome. [k] ascension of christ, perugia; assumption, florence academy, and others. wings are seldom sufficient to suggest lightness in the air, because they can scarcely be designed of the size and strength which we judge to be proportionate to the presumed weight of the body, without making the form appear abnormal, though there are instances in which partial success has been achieved by using comparatively small figures and giving them unusually large wings.[a] the use of more than a single pair of wings is hardly permissible because of the apparent anomaly. actually one pair is not less incomprehensible from an anatomical point of view than several pairs, but custom has driven from our minds any suggestion of incongruity in respect of the representation of the common type of angel. naturally when skilfully arranged, the more wings, the stronger the illusion of flight, and if a habit of giving four wings to an angel were engendered, we should perhaps see nothing strange in them. even six wings have been given to angels without making them appear ungraceful.[b] [a] j. h. witt's bless the lord. [b] picart's the burning coal. when there is no assistance, as clouds or flowing drapery, lent to angels to promote the illusion of suspension, it is necessary to give them an attitude which is nearly horizontal. properly managed, a pair of comparatively small wings may in this way appear to support a heavy form.[a] luini actually adds the weight of the body of st. catherine to three angels, flying horizontally, who carry her to the tomb[b]; an invention, strangely enough, followed by kulmbach in germany at about the same time.[c] in both cases the illusion is excellent. some of the early flemish and german masters, including van eyck[d] and holbein,[e] employed angels in scenes with the virgin to hold suspended behind her seat, large falls of brocaded material, and it is curious to note that the angels themselves seem to be supported by the drapery. in order to assist the suggestion of lightness, perugino sometimes arched the lower limbs of the angels, adding a narrow tape scroll[f]; an addition improved upon by raphael who substituted for the scroll a loosened girdle flying out from the waist.[g] [a] rembrandt's the angel quitting tobias, louvre. [b] the brera, milan. [c] st. mary's, krakan. [d] virgin and child at the fountain, antwerp. [e] virgin and child, augsburg. [f] the ascension, borgo san sepolcro, perugia. [g] creation of woman, castello gallery; prophets and sybils, perugia, and others. the most frequently used form of support for figures in suspension are irregular masses of clouds, upon which the figures sit or stand, and occasionally are partly enfolded therein. sometimes the cloud bank is more or less shaped for the purpose of relief, or for variety in design. thus, raphael makes part of the cloud a perfect footrest for the virgin,[a] and palma giovane does a similar thing for a figure of christ,[b] but in this case the illusion is hazarded as the seat is not directly indicated. ingres produces an excellent illusion by making the footrest a small separate cloud,[c] which is a variation from the practice of many painters of the renaissance, who used a separate cloud for each personage in the composition, or even with each foot as with carlo crivelli.[d] in a fresco of the evangelists at florence, each of them sits with his insignia on a foliated bank of clouds.[e] perugino in using a similar plan sometimes places the clouds at the bottom of the picture, no part of the earth being seen, so that the illusion is considerably enhanced.[f] at other times he shows angels apparently running through the air, with each front foot resting on a tiny cloud, giving the impression that it is fastened there.[g] durer extended this plan by directly attaching a small cloud to each foot, the effect being somewhat whimsical.[h] titian was unsuccessful in the use of an isolated cloud.[i] in a resurrection scene christ stands on a small thin cloud, and holds a flag-pole, the lower end of which rests upon the cloud. obviously with such a design no suggestion of ascent can enter the mind. [a] foligna madonna, vatican. [b] christ in judgment, venice. [c] the oath of louis xiii. [d] coronation of the virgin, milan. [e] santa maria. by an unknown artist of the ghirlandaio school. [f] christ's rule. [g] madonna and child with penitents, and others. [h] the virgin with a canary, berlin. [i] urbino gallery. [illustration: plate (see page ) patricia, by lydia emmet (_private owner, n. y._)] some artists, as luca signorelli,[a] hide the lower part of the figure behind clouds, but this method, while indicating suspension, cannot provide an illusion of movement without an assisting device. thus schonherr shows an angel so concealed in a nearly horizontal position with wings fully expanded, the effect being good.[b] when a figure is suspended on clouds, very rarely indeed is repose emphasized by placing it in a horizontal position, but poussin once adopts the plan,[c] and guercino goes so far as to represent a reclining angel resting her head on her hand as if suffering from fatigue.[d] perfect repose of the deity in an upright position on clouds is produced by gustave doré, who reduces the size of the earth, above which he stands, to an insignificant proportion, so that the imagination sends it moving round below him.[e] [a] madonna and child in glory, arezzo. [b] the agony in the garden. [c] adam and eve. [d] martyrdom of st. peter, modena. [e] creation of the earth. quite a number of artists represent the suspended figures standing on the backs of cherubs or cupids, which in their turn are supported by clouds, as for instance, r. ghirlandaio,[a] liberale di verona,[b] and francesco da cotignola.[c] fra bartolommeo places a single foot of the deity on a cherub who holds a banderole, the illusion being excellent.[d] domenichino adopts a most ingenious device in st. paul's vision. he shows the apostle being carried to heaven by winged cherubs, who appear to find the weight considerable, and to struggle under it. there is little else to induce the illusion, which is complete.[e] a similar scheme is successfully managed in prud'hon's abduction of psyche. tassaert uses a like device, but in addition has a cherub supporting each arm of the virgin. palma vecchio makes the virgin stand on the outstretched wings of a cherub, but her robe blows upwards, giving her the appearance of descending instead of ascending.[f] rubens has three alternatives in the use of cherubs. the figure sits on clouds with feet resting on small globes sustained by cherubs[g]; or the cherubs hold the dress and mantle of the virgin; or they help to control the clouds upon which she sits.[h] in some of his pictures of the immaculate conception, murillo also uses globes, but places the cherubs on them instead of under. francia has a picture in which cherubs hold up clouds bearing the virgin,[i] a device once used by rembrandt.[j] genga shows the deity kneeling upon the heads of cherubs, a scheme not satisfactory.[k] cherubs were used by titian to hold up the virgin and clouds,[l] while velasquez rested the robes on clouds, but used cherubs to sustain the holy mother.[m] [a] the madonna giving her girdle to st. thomas, prato. [b] the magdalene and saints. [c] adoration of the shepherds, ravenna academy. [d] the deity with ss. catherine and magdalene. [e] assumption of the virgin. [f] assumption of the virgin, venice. [g] the deity and christ, weimar. [h] assumption of the virgin at dusseldorf, augsburg, brussels, and vienna. [i] madonna and child in glory, berlin. [j] the ascension, munich. [k] the magdalene and saints, milan. [l] assumption of the virgin, venice. [m] coronation of the virgin, madrid. the illusion is usually more complete when angels are used instead of cherubs for support, apparently because they may be presumed to have greater strength, and the plan was adopted by some of the earlier masters of the renaissance. the simple design of rubens in resting the foot of christ on the arm of a flying angel is quite successful.[a] fontana places the deity on clouds supported by angels,[b] a method adopted by granacci, who however assists the illusion by adding two angels who are directly supporting the figure.[c] peter cornelius has the deity with his foot on a small globe which is held in position by angels.[d] a fine example of their use is shown by gutherz. two angels with large outstretched wings are bearing the body of a woman to heaven. she lies recumbent upon a lengthy hammock formed by the robes of the angels, the ends of the drapery being gathered up by the flying cherubs.[e] the illusion is perfect. rembrandt also has a beautiful design in a resurrection scene, for he shows the figure of christ as a shade whose hands are held by a flying angel lifting him to heaven.[f] a few artists, as poussin[g] and bouguereau,[h] use angels to carry the figure with no other assisting device, but if the body is recumbent it is necessary that the angels should be in a nearly upright position, otherwise they will appear to be moving horizontally.[i] rubens in an ascension uses the strange method of placing an angel beneath christ, but without touching him.[j] the drapery flies out at the back, so that without some assistance he would appear to be descending; but the angel below, with her hands held up, seems to correct the position. guido reni carries the virgin up with angels who support her beneath, and she seems in fact to be standing on their shoulders.[k] in one instance correggio substitutes a smiling boy for an angel, and he holds up a cloud on which the virgin sits.[l] there are many works where winged figures hold a body in suspension, most of them providing excellent illusions. among the best is lux's sarpedon, where the body of the trojan is held up for jupiter to kiss.[m] [a] ascension of christ, vienna. [b] vision of the resurrection. [c] the virgin giving her girdle to st. thomas, uffizi gallery, florence. [d] let there be light. [e] "they shall bear thee up." [f] munich gallery. [g] assumption of the virgin, and vision of st. paul. [h] assumption of the virgin. [i] bouguereau's une ame au ciel. [j] the academy, venice. [k] assumption of the virgin, munich. [l] madonna and child with saints, parma. [m] the luxembourg. even a simple banderole or scarf suffices to indicate movement in the air if well arranged. usually a flying cherub holds an end of the banderole, and ferri shows a wingless putto even, flying with no other assistance.[a] boucher creates an illusion by the bold device of connecting two cupids with a narrow scarf blown out into a semicircle[b]; and in another instance very narrow tape streamers suffice.[c] [a] david plans a temple. [b] birth of venus. [c] altdorfer's nativity at berlin. the use of thick smoke for suspension purposes is nearly always successful, because volumes of smoke in nature necessarily tend to move upwards; but obviously this scheme can only be arranged when an altar is possible. the plan is not uncommon in pictures relating to cain and abel, and the translation of enoch. in one of the latter subject, hoet makes part of the smoke from an altar envelop the surrounding ground so as to widen the volume, while schnorr achieves the same end by curling round the smoke as it ascends into the form of a large saucer upon which the deity sits,[a] a method slightly varied by amiconi.[b] [a] god's promise to abraham. [b] god appearing to moses. where a number of figures are connected together in a circular form in the air, the double illusion of suspension and motion follows naturally, provided their attitudes indicate a circular movement. an excellent example of this is shown in a picture by botticelli, where angels dance in the air over the hut of the nativity.[a] the finest work of the kind in existence is probably schwind's pleiads, in which the stars are represented by a circle of beautiful nude women.[b] extraordinary activity is suggested by the perfect arrangement of the limbs and light flowing drapery used. bouguereau has a work of a similar kind, the lost pleiad, but here the dancers are upright, and the circle is only accessory to the title figure.[c] watteau is fairly successful in giving an illusion of suspension to cupids even with a half circle, though the invention is somewhat formal.[d] [a] national gallery, london. [b] denner collection. see plate . [c] brooklyn museum, new york. [d] the berlin example of the embarkation for cythera. some of the devices used to bring about an illusion are most ingenious. thus in his bacchus and ariadne,[a] tintoretto actually applies a disability of his art for the purpose. venus is shown in a horizontal position in the air, placing a crown of stars upon the head of ariadne. bacchus is standing by, and the form of the goddess floats just at the back of him, the lower side of her hip being on a level with the top of his head. seeing that the head is covered with a profusion of vine leaves, it is impossible for the artist to indicate, or the observer to recognize, that the goddess does not actually touch the head of bacchus, and she apparently balances herself upon his head while crowning ariadne, the artist having been careful to place the centre of gravity of her figure over the apparent point of contact. a similar kind of illusion is provided by burne-jones, whose angel of the annunciation is upright in midair near the ground, but her feet seem to find support on the branches of a shrub.[b] rossetti, in the same subject, shows the angel with his feet wrapped in flames, the weight being thus apparently removed. the design seems bizarre, perhaps because of the absence of an expression of surprise which one would expect to see on the countenance of the virgin at so extraordinary a phenomenon.[ ] schwind also uses a disability of his art for an illusion in his phantom of the forest.[c] she moves near the ground away from the spectator with such rapidity that her robe, a simple rectangular piece of drapery, has opened out wide from the front, and hides her figure from the shoulders down, so that from the point of view of the observer she may, or may not, be touching the ground as she moves. [a] ducal palace, venice. [b] tate gallery, london. [c] schack gallery, munich. how slight the apparent support need be, is indicated in bouguereau's aurora and twilight. each figure is represented by a nude woman holding a light scarf, the first rapidly, and the second slowly, skimming the surface of a stream of water with soft touches of the feet, and yet there is no anomaly that strikes the mind. a still more daring device is used by battistello, though quite successfully. he places two wingless putti in the air, but one holds up the other, and this action seems to sustain them both.[a] another amazing design is from the hand of a. p. roll, who shows a nude-man in the air clutching another, and apparently struggling to pull him down, yet the action seems perfectly natural.[b] [a] adoration of the shepherds, san martino, naples. [b] design for the petit palais, paris. * * * * * notes note . page it is usual and proper to distinguish three kinds of beauty in painting, namely, of colour, of form, and of expression. but form must be defined by tones, and colour without form is meaningless: hence in the general consideration of the painter's art, it is convenient to place form and colour together as representing the sensorial element of beauty. nevertheless colour and form are not on the same plane in regard to sense perception. harmony of colour is distinguished involuntarily by nerve sensations, but in the case of harmony of form there must be a certain consideration before its æsthetic determination. the recognition of this harmony commonly appears to be instantaneous, but still it is delayed, the delay varying with the complexity of the signs, that is to say, with the quality of the beauty. note . page benedetto croce, the inventor of the latest serious æsthetic system, talks of the "science of art," but he says[a]: science--true science, is a science of the spirit--philosophy. natural sciences spoken of apart from philosophy, are complexes of knowledge, arbitrarily abstracted and fixed. it is perhaps needless to say that croce's æsthetic system, like all the others, collapses on a breath of inquiry. on the purely philosophical side of it, further criticism is unnecessary, and its practical outcome from the point of view of art is not far removed from the amazing conclusions of hegel. from the latter philosopher we learn that an idol in the form of a stone pillar, or an animal set up by the primitive races, is higher art than a drama by shakespeare, or a portrait by titian, because it represents the idea (hegel's unintelligible abstraction--see note ), while croce tells us that "the art of savages is not inferior, as art, to that of civilized peoples, provided it be correlated to the impressions of the savages." clearly if this be so, we are not surprised to learn from croce that aristotle "failed to discern the true nature of the æsthetic." nevertheless, whatever be the outcome of croce's arguments, his system is at least more plausible than that of either hegel or schopenhauer, for while these two invent highly improbable abstractions upon which to base their systems, croce only gives new functions to an old and reasonable abstraction. [a] _Æsthetic_, douglas ainslie translation, . note . page the writer does not mean to suggest that these systems are set up for the purpose of being knocked down: he desires only to indicate surprise that in new works dealing with the perception of beauty, it is considered necessary to restate the old æsthetic theories and to point out their drawbacks, albeit the fatal objections to them are so numerous that there is always fresh ground available for destructive criticism. the best of the recent works on the subject that have come under the notice of the writer, is e. f. carritt's review of the present position in respect of æsthetic systems. though profound, he is so comprehensive that he leaves little or nothing of importance for succeeding critics to say till the next system is put forward. yet here is his conclusion[a]: if any point can be thought to have emerged from the foregoing considerations, it is this: that in the history of æsthetics we may discover a growing pressure of emphasis upon the doctrine that all beauty is the expression of what may be generally called emotion, and that all such expression is beautiful. this is all that an acute investigator can draw from the sum of the æsthetic systems advanced. now what does this mean? let us turn to the last page of carritt's book and find the object of the search after a satisfactory æsthetic system. it is, he says, "the desire to understand goodness and beauty and their relations with each other or with knowledge, as well as to practise or enjoy them." if we accept beauty as the expression of emotion, how far have we progressed towards the indicated goal? not a step, for we have only agreed upon a new way of stating an obvious condition which applies to the animal world as well as to human beings. beyond this there is nothing--not a glimpse of sunshine from all the æsthetic systems laid down since the time of baumgarten. more than twenty years ago leo tolstoy pointed out the unintelligible character of these systems, but no further light has been thrown upon them. nevertheless tolstoy's own interpretation of the significance of beauty cannot possibly meet with general approval. he disputes that art is directly associated with beauty or pleasure, and finds in fact that what we call the beautiful representation of nature is not necessarily art, but that[b] art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are affected by these feelings, and also experience them. this definition may mean almost anything, and particularly it may imply pure imitation which tolstoy condemns as outside of art. but it certainly does not include many forms of what we call art, the author specially condemning for instance, _romeo and juliet_, and declaring that while _faust_ is beautiful, "it cannot produce a really artistic impression." the definition then seems to represent little more than a quibble over terms. tolstoy says that the beautiful representation of nature is not art, but something else is. very well then, all we have to do is to find a new term for this representation of nature, and the position remains as before except that the meaning of the term "art" has been changed. [a] _the theory of beauty_, . [b] _what is art?_ aylmer maude translation. note . page the evolutionary principle has been applied to art by herbert spencer and j. a. symonds, but not in the sense in which it is used in connection with the development of living organisms. spencer traces a progression from the simple to the complex in the application of the arts, but not in the arts themselves[a]; and symonds endeavours to prove that each separate marked period of art shows a progression which is common to all; that is, from immature variations to a high type, then downwards through a lower form represented by romanticism or elegance, to realism, and from this to hybrid forms.[b] spencer's argument is suggestive, but his conclusions have been mostly upset by archaeological discoveries made since his great book was published. the illustrations given by symonds are highly illuminating, but they are very far from postulating a general law of evolution operating in the production of art. [a] _first principles_. [b] essay on _evolutionary principles_. [illustration: plate (see page ) the creation of adam, by michelangelo (_vatican_)] note . page it seems necessary to mention hegel's art periods, though one can only do so with a feeling of regret that a man who achieved a high reputation as a philosopher should have entered the province of art only to misconstrue its purpose with fantastic propositions which have no historical or other apparent foundation. he divides art history into symbolic, classic, and romantic periods respectively. to accomplish this he invents or discovers a new abstraction which he calls the idea, this representing man's conception, not of god, but of his perfection--his supreme qualities, so that in one sense the idea may be called the absolute, in another the spirit, and in another, truth. these terms are in fact interchangeable, and each may be a manifestation of another, or of god. this idea, he says, being perfect beauty, is the basic concept of art. in archaic times man was unable to give expression to this concept, so he represented it by symbols: hence the earliest art was symbolic art. in the time of the greeks man had so advanced that he was able to give higher expression to the idea, and he embodied it in a perfect human form. this is the classic period, which hegel indicates continued till christianity spread abroad, when classic form, though perfect as art, was found insufficient for the now desired still higher expression of the idea. this expression could not be put into stone, so other arts than sculpture were used for it, namely, poetry, painting, and music, which are placed together as romantic art. this is as nearly as possible a statement of the periods of hegel in short compass. it is impossible to interpret logically his arguments, nor is it necessary, for his conclusions when tested in the light of experience, develop into inexplicable paradoxes and contradictions which border on the ridiculous. needless to say, the acceptance of this division means the annihilation of our ideas of the meaning of art, and the condemnation to the limbo of forgetfulness of nearly all the artists whose memory is honoured. the general interpretation of the terms "classic art" and "romantic art" widely differs from that of hegel, and varies with the arts. in the literary arts the distinction is obvious, but the terms are used to define both periods and classes; in architecture the gothic period is usually called the romantic epoch; and in painting the terms have reference to manner, the more formal manner being called classic, and the soft manner, romantic; though it is commonly understood that romantic art is especially concerned with subjects associated with the gentler side of life. but there is no general agreement. some writers assert that giorgione was the first of the romanticists, others give the palm to watteau, a third section to delacroix, and a fourth to the barbizon school. we must await a clear definition of "romantic art." note . page it may be reasonably argued that the want of development of the plastic arts in england during the literary revival, was largely due to artificial restrictions. fine paintings were ordered out of the churches by elizabeth, and many were destroyed; while, following the lead of the court, there was little or no encouragement offered by the public to artists except perhaps in portraiture. flaxman truly said of the destruction of works of art in this period, that the check to the national art in england occurred at a time which offered the most essential and extraordinary assistance to its progress. note . page during the last half century or so, various writers of repute, including ruskin and dean farrar, have professed to find in the poorer works of the italian painters of the fourteenth century, and even in paintings of margaritone and others of the previous century, evidence of strong religious emotion on the part of the artists. it is claimed that their purpose in giving simple solemn faces to their madonnas and saints, was "to tell the sacred story in all its beauty and simplicity"; that they possessed a "powerful sincerity of emotion"; that they "delivered the burning messages of prophecy with the stammering lips of infancy," and so on. it is proper to say that there is nothing to support this view of the early painters. we find no trace of any suggestions of the kind till the last of these artists had been dead for about four hundred years, while their lives, so far as we have any record, lend no warranty to the statements. the painters of the fourteenth century took their art seriously, but purely as a craft, and it was not uncommon with them to combine two or three other crafts with that of painting. they designed mostly sacred subjects for the simple reason that the art patrons of the day seldom ordered anything else. in their private lives they associated together, were generally agreeable companions, and not averse to an occasional escapade. moreover the time in which they lived was notable for what we should call loose habits, and indeed from the thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth, religious observances and practices were of a more hollow and formal character than they have ever been since. the position occupied by these painters in the progression of art from the crude byzantine period upwards, corresponds with that of the roman painters of the third and fourth centuries in the progression downwards to the byzantine epoch, and there is no more reason for supposing that the italians were actuated by special emotions in their work, than that the romans were so moved. in both cases the character of the work, as reynolds put it in referring to the italians, was the result of want of knowledge. the countenances usually presented by both roman and italian artists have a half sad, half resigned expression, because this was the only kind of expression that could be given by an immature painter whose ideal was restricted by the necessity of eliminating elements which might indicate happiness. giotto, taddeo gaddi, duccio, and a few more, were exceptions in that their art was infinitely superior to the average of the century, but all from giotto downwards, laboured as craftsmen only. no doubt they often worked with enthusiasm, and in this way their emotions may have been brought into play, but there is no possible means of identifying in a picture the emotions which an artist may have experienced while he was painting it. as to the sad expression referred to in these italian works, it may be observed that edgar a. poe held that the tone of the highest manifestation of beauty is one of sadness. "beauty of whatever kind," he says, "in its supreme development invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears."[a] but poe is clearly mistaken here. it is not the beauty of the work that affects the emotions to tears, when they are so affected, but the subject of the design exhibiting the beauty. a picture or poem representing a sad subject may be very beautiful, but the sadness itself would not assist the beauty, though it might increase the emotional effect. the higher forms of beauty rarely draw our tears, but elicit our admiration without direct thought of anything but the beauty. who would weep when in front of the greatest marvels of greek sculpture? [a] _the philosophy of composition._ note . page it is commonly, but wrongfully, supposed that rembrandt used his broadest manner in painting commissioned portraits. the number of his portraits known to exist is about , of which fifty-five are representations of himself, and fifty-four of members of his household, or relatives. there are, further, more than seventy studies of old men and women, and thirty of younger men. the balance are commissioned portraits or groups. this last section includes none at all of his palette knife pictures, and not more than two or three which are executed with his heaviest brushes. generally his work broadened in his later period, but up to the end of his life his more important works were often painted in a comparatively fine manner, though the handling was less careful and close.[a] the broadest style of the artist is rarely exhibited except in his studies and family portraits. further it is extremely unlikely that a palette-knife picture would have been accepted in holland during rembrandt's time as a serious work in portraiture. [a] see among works dating after , the syndics of the drapers, portrait of a young man, wachtmeister collection; lady with a dog, colmar museum; and portrait of a young man, late beit collection. note . page darwin pointed out the permanent character of the changes in the nerves, though he submitted another demonstration[a]: that some physical change is produced in the nerve cells or nerves which are habitually used can hardly be doubted, for otherwise it is impossible to understand how the tendency to certain acquired movements is inherited. [a] _the expression of the emotions in man and animals._ note . page reynolds evidently had little faith in original genius. addressing royal academy students, he said[a]: you must have no dependence on your own genius. if you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply the deficiency. nothing is denied to well-directed labour; nothing is to be obtained without it.... i will venture to assert that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposition eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects similar to those which some call the result of natural powers. on another occasion reynolds observed of michelangelo[b]: he appears not to have had the least conception that his art was to be acquired by any other means than great labour; and yet he of all men that ever lived, might make the greatest pretensions to the efficacy of native genius and inspiration. gibbon said that reynolds agreed with dr. johnson in denying all original genius, any natural propensity of the mind to one art or science rather than another.[c] hogarth also agreed with reynolds, for he describes genius as "nothing but labour and diligence." croce says that genius has a quantitative and not a qualitative signification, but he offers no demonstration.[d] evidently he is mistaken, for the signification is both quantitative and qualitative. it is true that what a phidias, or a raphael, or a beethoven puts together is a sum of small beauties, any one of which may be equalled by another man, but he does more than represent a number of beauties, for he combines these into a beautiful whole which is superior in quality and cannot be estimated quantitatively. we may possibly call darwin a genius because of the large number of facts he ascertained, and the correct inferences he drew from them, but we particularly apply the term to him by reason of the general result of all these facts and inferences, this result being qualitative and not quantitative. croce probably took his dictum from schopenhauer, who, however, represented degrees of quality as quantitative,[e] which is of course confusing the issue. [a] reynolds's second discourse. [b] his fifth discourse. [c] gibbon's _memoirs of my life and writings_. [d] _Æsthetic._ [e] essay on "genius." note . page it is often observed by advocates of "new" forms of art that the work of many great artists has been variously valued at different periods--that leaders of marked departures in art now honoured, were frequently more or less ignored in their own time, while other artists who acquired a great reputation when living, have been properly put into the background by succeeding generations. for the first statement no solid ground can be shown. in painting, the artists since the dark age who can be said to have led departures of any importance, are cimabue, giotto, the van eycks, masaccio, lionardo, dürer, giorgione, raphael, michelangelo, titian, holbein, claude, rubens, rembrandt, velasquez, watteau, reynolds, and fragonard. all of these had their high talents recognized and thoroughly appreciated in their lifetime. in sculpture the experience is the same, for there is no sculptor now honoured whose work was not highly valued by his contemporaries. so with poetry, but before the invention of printing and in the earlier days of this industry, poetry of any kind was very slow in finding its way among the people. what might seem nowadays to have been inappreciation of certain poets was really want of knowledge of them. there is more truth in the assertion that many artists who had a high reputation in their lifetime are now more or less disregarded, though it does not follow from this that there has been a reversal of opinion on the part of the public, or a variation in the acuteness of æsthetic perception. generally we find that these artists very properly held the position they occupied in their time and country, and if they do not now stand on exalted pedestals it is only because we compare them with men of other periods and places, which their contemporary countrymen did not do, at least for the purpose of establishing their permanent position in art. carlo maratta for instance was celebrated in italy as the best painter of his country in his time, and even now we must so regard him, but his contemporaries as with ourselves did not place him on so high a level as his great predecessors of the sixteenth century, and some of the seventeenth. a special reason why many of the seventeenth century artists of italy have fallen in public esteem may be found in the fact that they excelled mostly in the production of sensorial beauty, paying little attention to intellectual grace, and the ripening of general intelligence as time goes on makes us more and more sensitive to beauty of mind. note . page there have been many definitions of "impressionism" given, but they vary considerably. professor clausen describes it as the work of a number of artists whose interest is in recording effects of light, seeking to express nature only and disregarding old conventions.[a] mr. d. s. maccoll says that an impressionist is[b] a painter who, out of the completed contacts of vision constructs an image moulded upon his own interest in the thing seen, and not on that of any imaginary schoolmaster. this definition is insufficient by itself, but the writer makes his meaning clearer in the same article when he says: impressionism is the art that surveys the field, and determines which of the shapes and tones are of chief importance to the interested eye, and expresses these and sacrifices the rest. according to c. mauclair, an acknowledged authority on impressionism, the impressionist holds: light becomes the one subject of a picture. the interest of the objects on which it shines is secondary. painting thus understood becomes an art of pure optics, a seeking for harmonies, a species of natural poem, entirely distinct from expression, style, drawing, which have formed the main endeavour of preceding painting. it is almost necessary to invent a new word for this special art, which, while remaining throughout pictural, approaches music in the same degree as it departs from literature or psychology.[c] what can be said of so amazing a declaration? the arts of painting and music do not, and cannot, have any connection with each other. they are concerned with different senses and different signs, and by no stretch of the imagination can they be combined. seeing that musical terms when used in respect of painting by modern critics are almost invariably made to apply to colour harmonies, we may infer that a confusion of thought arises in the minds of the writers from the similar physical means by which colour and sound are conveyed to the senses concerned. but this similarity has nothing to do with the appreciation of art. the æsthetic value of a work is determined when it is conveyed to the mind, irrespective of the means by which it is so conveyed. according to la touche it was fantin latour who invented modern impressionism. braquemond relates that la touche told him the following story.[d] he (la touche) was one day at the louvre with manet, when they saw latour copying paolo veronese's marriage at cana in a novel manner, for instead of blending his colours in the usual way, he laid them on in small touches of separate tones. the result was an unexpected brilliancy ("papillotage imprevu") which amazed but charmed the visitors. nevertheless when manet left the louvre with la touche, he appeared anything but satisfied with what he had seen, and pronounced it humbug. but latour's method evidently sunk into his mind, for a few days later he commenced to use it himself. thus, added la touche, was modern impressionism unchained. the date of this visit was not given by la touche, but was subsequently suggested. this account does not fit in with the statement of maccoll that when monet and pissarro were in london during the siege of paris, the study of turner's pictures gave them the suggestion of these broken patches of colour.[e] if this be true monet must have antedated manet in the application of isolated tones. d. s. eaton asserts that in the salon of , there was exhibited a picture by monet which was entitled impressions,[f] and from this arose the word "impressionist"; but phythian says that the word resulted from monet's "impression, soleil levant," exhibited in at the nadar gallery in paris with other works from le société anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, et graveurs. phythian adds[g]: thus, unwittingly led by one of the exhibitors, visitors to the exhibition came to use the word "impressioniste," and within a few days a contemptuously unfavourable notice of the exhibition appeared in _le charivari_ under the heading "exposition des impressionistes." it was not until the lapse of several years that the name came into general use. the painters to whom it was applied disowned it because it was used in a depreciatory sense. eventually however, unable to find a better one, they adopted it. another origin of impressionism is given by muther. he says[h]: the name "impressionists" dates from an exhibition in paris which was given at nadar's in . the catalogue contained a great deal about impressions--for instance, "impression de mon pot au feu," "impression d'un chat qui se promene." in his criticism claretie summed up the impressions, and spoke of the salon des impressionistes. but the real origin of impressionism must be sought earlier than , for in manet exhibited his olympia in the salon des refusés. this picture did not represent what was understood as impressionism ten years later, but it led the way towards the establishment of the innovation, in that it pretended that healthy ideas and noble designs were secondary considerations in art. certainly manet could not descend lower than this wretched picture, and in this sense his subsequent work was a distinct advance. [a] royal academy lectures. [b] article on "impressionism," _encyclopædia britannica_, th edition. [c] _l'impressionism, son histoire, son esthétique, ses maîtres._ [d] _le journal des arts_, . [e] article on "impressionism," _encyclopædia britannica_, th edition. [f] _handbook of modern french painting._ [g] _fifty years of modern painting._ [h] _history of modern painting_, vol. iii. note . page the reason given by impressionists for the juxtaposition of pure colours is that the natural blend produced is more brilliant than the tone from the mixed colours applied, but it is pointed out by moreau-vauthier that the contrary is the case. he says[a]: we find in practice that the parent colours do not, with material colours, produce the theoretical binaries. we get dark, dull greens, oranges, and violets, that clash with the parent colours. to make them harmonize we should be obliged to dim these material colours, to transform them, and consequently to lose them partly. [a] _the technique of painting_, . note . page cézanne and van gogh are not usually put forward as representative impressionists, but it is impossible to differentiate logically between the various "isms" of which impressionism is the mother, and to attempt a serious argument upon them would be apt to reflect upon the common sense of the reader. the sincere impressionist certainly produces a thing of beauty, however ephemeral and lacking in high character the beauty may be, but most of the productions of the other "isms" only serve the purpose of degrading the artist and the art. note . page this form of picture is by no means new, though except among the inventors of sprezzatura, and the modern impressionists, it has always been executed as a rough sketch for the purpose of settling harmonies for serious work. lomazzo relates that aurelio, son of bernadino luini, while visiting titian, asked him how he managed to make his landscape tones harmonize so well. for reply the great master showed aurelio a large sketch, the character of which could not be distinguished when it was closely inspected, but on the observer stepping back, a landscape appeared "as if it had suddenly been lit up by a ray of the sun."[a] from luini's surprise, and inasmuch as we have no record of similar work before his time, it is reasonable to suppose that titian was the first great artist to use this form of sketch for experimental purposes. [a] _trattato dell' arte de la pittura._ [illustration: plate (see page ) the pleiads, by m. schwind] note . page the example of this picture at the pitti palace is specially noted because it seems impossible that the duplicate in the uffizi gallery can be by raphael, for it has obvious defects, some of which have many times been pointed out. the expression is vastly inferior to that in the pitti portrait, for instead of a calm, noble, benign countenance, we have a half-worried senile face which is anything but pleasant. raphael was the last man to execute a portrait of a pope without generalizing high character in the features. it will be observed also that in the uffizi portrait, the left hand is stiff and cramped, and the drapery ungracefully flowing, while both uprights of the chair are actually out of drawing. there are other examples of the same picture in different museums, but the pitti work is far above these in every respect, and seems the only one which can be properly attributed to the master. passavant affirms that some of the repetitions of the work were certainly made in the studio of raphael under his orders, and thinks that the duplicates passed for originals even in his time.[a] [a] _raphael d'urbin_, vol. ii. note . page to the knowledge of the writer, the only logical connection between the work of rembrandt and impressionism that has been suggested, is from the pen of professor baldwin brown, who remarks[a]: rembrandt in his later work attended to the pictorial effect alone, and practically annulled the objects by reducing them to pure tone and colour. things are not there at all, but only the semblance, or effect, or impression of things. breadth is in this way combined with the most delicate variety, and a new form of painting, now called "impressionism" has come into being. the professor is mistaken here. during the last fifteen years of his life, apart from portraits, a few studies of heads, and some colour experiments with carcases of meat, rembrandt executed, so far as is known, about three dozen pictures, and in all of these he effectually prevents us from forming a general impression of the designs before considering the more important details, by concentrating nearly all the available light upon the countenances of the principal personages represented; while in the management of the features, the whole purpose of the chiaroscuro is for the purpose of obtaining relief. moreover the pictures are nearly all groups of personages in set subjects, and there would be no meaning in the designs if the objects were "practically annulled," for particular action and expression are necessary for their comprehension. as to velasquez there is no evidence tending to support the statement that he was an impressionist. the first authority on the artist has definitely pointed out that he never took up his brushes except for an important and definite work: "he neither painted impressions nor daubs."[b] [a] article on "painting," _encyclopædia britannica_, th edition. [b] _velasquez_, by de beruete, . note . page it will always be a matter of surprise that so much popularity was secured by the light sketches of the barbizon school, considering their general insignificance from the point of view of art, and the conspicuously artificial means adopted for their exploitation. some of the artists of this school, having accomplished many studio works of merit, acquired the habit of painting in the open air. by this method it is impossible to execute a comprehensive natural scene, and the painters did not attempt the task, but they produced numberless sketchy works of local scenes under particular atmospheric conditions. they laboured honestly and conscientiously, and their sketches were put out for what they were and nothing more. the paintings would probably have retained their place as simple studies had not some commercial genius conceived the idea of putting them into heavy, gorgeous, gilt frames. with this embellishment they were successfully scattered round the world, mostly in the newer portions, much to the general astonishment. the _raison d'être_ of the frames puzzled many persons, though it was frequently observed that the pictures do not look well unless surrounded by ample gold leaf. thus, c. j. holmes, director of the london national gallery, and an authority on impressionism, notes[a]: barbizon pictures are almost invariably set in frames with an undeniably vulgar look. yet in such a rectangle of gilded contortion a corot or a daubigny shows to perfection: place it in a frame of more reticent design, and it becomes in a moment flat, empty, and tame. the purpose of this frame is obvious. the eye is caught by the dazzling glitter, and feels immediate relief when it rests upon the quiet grey tone of the painting, the pleasurable sensation resulting therefrom being mistaken for involuntary appreciation of the beauty of the work. as finished paintings these barbizon sketches are novel, but as studies they are not, for similar work has been executed for two or three centuries, and particularly by the dutch artists of the seventeenth century. in every considerable collection of drawings such sketches may be found, and there is scarcely a barbizon painter whose work was not anticipated by a dutch master. one has only to examine the drawings in the public art institutions of europe by de molyn, blyhooft, jan de bischop, lambert doomer, berghem, avercamp, and others, to find examples which, if executed now, might easily be taken for works by the barbizon masters. [a] _notes on the science of picture-making._ note . page in recent times attempts have been made to upset the dictum of aristotle as to the imitative character of the arts generally, exception being taken in respect of music and architecture. the first objection as to music arose with schopenhauer, though he does not appear to have been quite certain of his position. he stated that while the other arts represent ideas, music does not, but being an art it must represent something, and he suggested that this something is the "will," the term being used in the schopenhauer philosophical sense, that is to say, implying the active principle of the universe, not being god. this means nothing at all from the point of view of art, and cannot even be seriously considered. the most notable essay on the subject since schopenhauer is from the pen of sidney colvin who places music and architecture in a non-imitative group by themselves, the former on the principal ground that "it is like nothing else; it is no representation or similitude of anything whatever"; while architecture, he says, "appeals to our faculties for taking pleasure in non-imitative combinations of stationary masses."[a] but what aristotle meant is that the arts are imitative in character, and not that they necessarily attempt to produce works of similitude with nature, this being evident from the fact that he pointed out that the higher works of art surpass nature, and he divided poetry and painting into three sections, of which the first is better than life, and the third inferior to it. the musician in producing his art proceeds in precisely the same way as the poet or painter. he takes natural signs and rearranges them in a new order, producing a combination which is not to be found complete in nature, but every sign therein is natural and must necessarily be so. the higher the flight of the poet, or musician, or painter, or sculptor, the farther is the result from nature, but nevertheless the whole aim of the musician, as of the poet, is to represent emotional effects or natural phenomena beyond experience in life, as the great sculptor represents form and expression, and the great poet besides these things, every abstract quality, passion, and emotional effect, above this experience; but he cannot do more; he cannot represent something outside of nature, and so must imitate, that is, in the sense of representation. darwin notes that even a perfect musical scale can be found in nature. he says[b]: it is a remarkable fact that an ape, a species of the gibbon family, produces an exact octave of musical sounds, ascending and descending the scale by half tones. from this fact, and from the analogy of other animals, i have been led to infer that the progenitors of man probably uttered musical tones, and that consequently, when the voice is used under any strong emotion, it tends to assume, through the principle of association, a musical character. it has been further demonstrated that the strength of the sensory impressions from certain sounds is due to the structure of the ear, and that generally a particular kind of sound produces a similar kind of emotional effect in animals as in man. obviously the musician is powerless to do more than widen or deepen this effect. colvin admits that the musician sometimes directly imitates, as when he produces the notes of birds or the sounds of natural forces, or when he represents particular emotions; but he regards the former instances as hazardous and exceptional, and indicates that a particular emotional harmony may affect the hearers differently. true, but the hazard of the first condition is the result of the limitations of the artist, and the second condition is the consequence of the limitations of the art. the effect of music being purely sensorial must vary with the emotional conditions surrounding the hearer. the musician does what he can, but he is unable to go so far as the poet and produce an emotional effect which will with certainty be recognized by every person affected, at all times, as having the same particular bearing. taine separates music ("properly so called" as distinguished from dramatic music) and architecture from the imitative arts, as they "combine mathematical relationships so as to create works that do not correspond with real objects."[c] obviously the whole purpose of dramatic music is to imitate the effects of the passions, but its necessary inclusion amongst the imitative arts upsets the dictum of taine, for the emotional effects of one kind of music only differ from those of another kind when they differ at all, in the character of the natural emotional effects represented. in the case of the architect, seeing that his art is subordinated to utility, his scheme, his measurements, and the character of his materials, are largely or almost entirely governed by conditions outside of his art, and consequently it is only possible for him to represent nature to a limited extent. rarely can he vaguely suggest a natural aisle beneath the celestial dome, a rock-walled cave whose roof soars into obscurity, or a fairy grotto backed by a beetling cliff. sometimes he may cause us to experience similar effects in kind to those we feel when we recognize grandeur in nature, but usually he is compelled to confine his beauty to harmonies produced by symmetrical designs of straight lines and curves. but in his simplest as in his most complex designs, he must follow nature as closely as possible. purely ornamental forms always appear more beautiful when the parts have a direct mathematical relationship with each other than when they have not; that is to say, when the parts appear to be naturally related. thus, that a cross appears to be less agreeable to the sight when the horizontal bar is below the centre of the perpendicular than when it is above this point, is due to what appears to be a want of balance because the form is unobservable in nature. in trees the horizontal parts are usually above the middle of the height of the observable trunk, and in the exceptions nature gives the whole tree a conical or other shape, the relative position of the horizontal parts being obscured in the general form. as with parts of forms, so with the forms as wholes. other things being equal, that design is the best where the forms are directly proportioned one with the other and with the whole, and this is because we are accustomed to the order of design in nature where everything is balanced by means of direct proportions and corresponding relations. the architect therefore, like the musician or poet, must represent nature so far as he can within the limits of his art, though his representation is comparatively weak owing to the artificial restrictions imposed upon him. [a] article on "fine arts," _encyclopædia britannica_, th edition. [b] _the expression of the emotions in man and animals._ [c] _on the ideal in art._ note . page the dictum of aristotle in reference to metre in poetry related only to epic and dramatic verse, for what we understand as lyric poetry was separated by the greeks as song in which of course metre is compulsory. it is doubtful whether a single definition can cover both epic poetry, whose beauty lies almost wholly in the substance, and lyric verse where the beauty rests chiefly in qualities of expression and musical form, and in which indeed the substance may be altogether negligible. a cursory examination of watts-dunton's definition of "poetry," which is admittedly the best put forward in recent times, shows its entire inadequacy. "absolute poetry," he says, "is the concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional and rhythmical language."[a] this would exclude from the art some of the finest sacred verse, which, though in the form of prose, has been recognized as poetry from time immemorial. metre is only one of the devices of the poet for accomplishing his end---the presentation of beautiful pictures upon the mind, but in high poetry there is a still more compulsory artifice which is not included in watts-dunton's definition, and that is metaphor. in the form of words the details of a picture can only be dealt with successively, and not simultaneously, and without metaphor the poet would sometimes be in the position of the painter who should present a dozen different pictures each containing only one part of a composition, and call upon the observer to put the pieces together in his mind. further the term "absolute" in the definition quoted has no comprehensible meaning if it does not exclude a good deal of verse which is commonly recognized as poetry, while, as is admitted by watts-dunton, there is much accepted lyric verse without concrete expression. in high poetry as in high painting, the beauty appeals both to the senses and the mind, and in each art the quality descends as the sensorial overbalances the intellectual appeal, and the effect becomes more ephemeral. in the very highest of the plastic arts, colour has little value except in assisting definition; and in the very highest poetry musical form has only an emphasizing value, for the sensorial beauty arising from form in the one case, and form and action in the other, entirely overpowers the harmonies of colour and tone respectively. but colour without design is meaningless, so that it cannot be applied in the fine arts apart from design: hence in painting, colour presents no complication in respect of definition. on the other hand music, with or without association with poetry, is equally an art since in either case it imitates the effects of human emotions in a beautiful way. thus, where metre is present poetry is a combined art, and seeing that metre may not be present, a definition of "poetry" must cover what may be in one case a pure, and in another, a compound art. [a] article on "poetry," _encyclopædia britannica_, th edition. note . page there seems to be a tendency to overestimate the disparity between translations of high poetry and the originals. the value of a translation depends primarily upon the character of the thing translated, since it is the form that is unreproducible in another tongue, and not the substance. in epic and dramatic poetry where the form is of secondary importance, a good literal translation may come much nearer to the original than a translation of a lyric where the form is usually of at least equal importance with the substance. we lose less of homer or sophocles than of sappho or theocritus in translation. in the case of epic poetry the higher its character, the closer to the original appears the translation, because the form is of less relative importance. more of dante is lost than of homer in literal translation, but the difference narrows when the new versions are in metrical form, for the use of metre in translation is necessarily more detrimental as the substance of the original increases in power, and this relative weakening is emphasized as the beauty of form in the translation is raised. pope is farther from homer than chapman, and chapman than the prose translations of buckley and lang. as we descend in the scale of the art, so it becomes more difficult to reproduce the poet in translation, and in most lyric poetry the beauty seems almost entirely lost in another tongue from the original, though when the substance is of weight, and the translator is himself a good poet, he sometimes gives us a paraphrase with a high beauty of its own. some modern poets seem to eschew substance altogether. much of the verse of esteemed french and belgian poets is quite meaningless in literal translation, the authors relying for the effects entirely upon musical form and beauty of expression. note . page lessing points out this remarkable picture of homer as emphasizing the beauty of helen, observing: what could produce a more vivid idea of beauty than making old age confess that it is well worth while the war which cost so much blood, and so much treasure? nevertheless the remark of the old men does not seem to mean so much as the description of the sages and their reference to the goddesses. it is difficult to imagine several wise men agreeing that the sanguinary war of nine years was really excusable in view of helen's beauty, and the statement therefore is naturally received as a permissible overcolour. consequently the effect of the remark would be discounted, and unlikely to be sufficient for the purpose of the poet. true, the greeks seem to have been childlike sometimes in their simplicity, but there is no evidence that they were so wanting in a sense of proportion as to accept literally this opinion of the elders. but when we observe the senility of the elders, and the physical feebleness which has apparently rendered them incapable of sensual pleasures, then indeed we must marvel at a beauty which excites their emotions so powerfully as to bring the goddesses to their minds.[a] in discussing the suitableness of this incident as a subject for a painting, lessing remarks that the passion felt by the old men was "a momentary spark which their wisdom at once extinguished," but later on, referring to the possibility that the veil worn by helen when she passed through the streets of troy had not been removed when she was seen by the elders, he points out[b]: when the elders displayed their admiration for her, it must not be forgotten that they were not seeing her for the first time. their confession therefore did not necessarily arise from the present momentary view of her, for they had doubtless often experienced before the feelings which they now for the first time acknowledged. this is very true, but it only serves to deepen the impression of helen's beauty, for the element of surprise is removed from the minds of the elders, the mere sight of her, veiled or unveiled, being sufficient to recall the passionate thrills previously experienced. [a] see on this subject quintilian, viii., . [b] _laocoon_, rönnfeldt translation. note . page in nearly all the instances of sublimity quoted by longinus there is this particular merit of brevity---the picture is thrown upon the brain immediately, without pause or anything whatever to complicate the beauty. but the learned critic directs attention only to the magnificent thoughts and the appropriate use of them, without pointing out the extraordinary condensation of the language employed. apart from the instance from genesis given, there is another of his examples in which practically the whole beauty of the picture is produced by the rapidity of its presentation. this is the exclamation of hyperides when accused of passing an illegal decree for the liberation of slaves--"it was not an orator that made this decree, but the battle of chæronea." longinus observes[a]: at the same time that he exhibits proof of his legal proceedings, he intermixes an image of the battle, and by that stroke of art quite passes the bounds of mere persuasion. but it was rather the manner in which the battle was introduced than the fact of its introduction, that gave force to the argument. if instead of confining himself to a short brilliant observation, hyperides had carefully traced cause and effect in the matter, he would still have intermixed an image of the battle, but he would not then have produced a work of art. still finer instances of the use of brevity in expresssion by the orator are to be found in the speeches of demosthenes. for example in his oration on the crown he says: "man is not born to his parents only, but to his country." a whole volume on the meaning and virtue of patriotism could not say more: hence the sublime art. the simple statement lights a torch by which we examine every convulsion in history; presents a moving picture in which we see the motives and aspirations guiding the patriots of a hundred generations; sets an eternal seal of nobility upon the love of man for his native country. and a few words suffice. the same thought might be elaborated into a large volume, but the art would fly with the brevity. [a] _on the sublime_, xv., william smith translation. note . page there are many translations of the ode to anactoria, but the best of them reflects only slightly the depth of passion in the original. the version which most nearly represents the substance, while maintaining the unhalting flow of language, is perhaps that of ambrose philips ( - ), which runs thus:-- blest as th' immortal gods is he, the youth who fondly sits by thee, and hears, and sees thee all the while softly speak, and sweetly smile. 'twas this deprived my soul of rest, and raised such tumults in my breast; for while i gazed, in transport tost, my breath was gone, my voice was lost. my bosom glowed; the subtle flame ran quick through all my vital frame; o'er my dim eyes a darkness hung; my ears with hollow murmurs rung. in dewy damps my limbs were chilled; my blood with gentle horrors thrilled; my feeble pulse forgot to play; i fainted, sunk, and died away. the english reproductions of this ode in the sapphic measure are not very successful, the difficulty of course being due to the practical impossibility of fulfilling the quantitative conditions of the strophe without stilting the flow of language, or unduly varying the substance. but it has been shown by dr. marion miller in his translation of sappho's hymn to aphrodite, which is much higher in substance and somewhat less condensed in expression than the ode to anactoria, that with certain liberties in respect of quantities, a very beautiful semblance of the sapphic measure may be produced in english. his translation of this hymn is unquestionably the best in our language, though this is perhaps partly due to the fact that he is almost the only translator who has adhered to the text in regard to the sex of the loved person. to make the object of affection a man seems inappropriate to the language employed in the verse. (it is proper to mention that a license taken by dr. miller in his translation---where he renders the passage relating to the sparrows, as "clouding with their pinions, earth's wide dominions"--suggested to the present writer the somewhat similar picture to be found on page .) [illustration: plate (see page ) st. margaret, by raphael (_louvre_)] note . page the gradual decadence of the great period of grecian sculpture is well marked by the successive variations of the cnidian aphrodite of praxiteles. the copy of this at the vatican is no doubt a close representation of the original, but later there was commenced a long series of variations, all of them more or less complicating the design. first a pillar was substituted for the vase, reaching nearly to the armpits, and the left forearm rested upon it, while drapery fell down the front, so that some exertion was required to separate the figure to the eye. then a dolphin was substituted for the pillar, the head of the animal resting on the ground, and the body rising up straight with the bent tail forming the support. then for this was placed a dolphin with its body corkscrew shaped, which was particularly weak as it tended to deprive the figure of repose. after this, while the dolphin was maintained, a cestus was sometimes added, and heavy drapery applied in various folds. finally the attitude of the figure was changed, that of the venus de' medici being adopted, while the pillar or dolphin was retained. each alteration necessarily diminished the beauty of the figure. note . page reynolds seems to have been disappointed with the frescoes of raphael when he first saw them, and this fact has been called in evidence by some modern critics to support their contention that the art of the great masters is really inferior to that wherein design is subordinated to colour. but reynolds very definitely admitted that his first impression was wrong, for after studying the frescoes, he notes[a]: in a short time a new taste and a new perception began to dawn upon me, and i was convinced that i had originally formed a false opinion of the perfection of art, and that this great painter was well entitled to the high rank which he holds in the admiration of the world. reynolds was quite a young man when he went to rome, and his appreciation of raphael increased as his experience matured. more than twenty years after the visit, he remarked that raphael had "a greater combination of the high qualities of the art than any other man,"[b] and ten years later he affirmed that the urbino artist stood foremost among the first painters.[c] reynolds supposed that his lack of appreciation of the frescoes when he first saw them arose from want of immediate comprehension of them: he was unaccustomed to works of such great power, but it is to be observed that his inspection was a very short one, and we may reasonably draw the conclusion that changing light conditions had much to do with the effect the paintings left upon him at the time. when one enters a room where the light differs materially in intensity or quality from that experienced just previously, it is advisable to rest quietly for a little while before examining works defined by colour, in order that the eyes may become accustomed to the new light. [a] reynolds's _italian note book_. [b] his fifth discourse at the royal academy. [c] his twelfth discourse. note . page that the judgment of the public upon a work of art is final seems to have been recognized by all the ancient writers who dealt with the matter, and that the greeks generally held this view is evident from many incidents, notably the reference to public judgment in the great competition between phidias and alcamenes. during the renaissance also the opinion held good, and it is worth noting that the suggestion sometimes made that michelangelo did not conform to this view is unsupported by evidence. vasari relates the following anecdote[a]: he [michelangelo] went to see a work of sculpture which was about to be sent out because it was finished, and the sculptor was taking much trouble to arrange the lights from the windows to the end that it might show up well; whereupon michelangelo said to him: "do not trouble yourself, the important thing will be the light of the piazza"; meaning to infer that when works are in public places, the people must judge whether they are good or bad. lionardo went so far as to advise artists to hear any man's opinion on his work, "for," he said, "we know very well that though a man may not be a painter, he has a true conception of the form of another man."[b] it is a common misconception with the general public, though not among serious artists, that by reason of their profession artists are better judges of works of art than other men. obviously the recognition of beauty in art is apart altogether from the means by which it is created, and subject to the exceptions noted elsewhere, all men are alike able to appreciate high beauty. winckelmann even advised his readers against the judgment of artists on the ground that they generally preferred what is difficult to what is beautiful,[c] but experience with the great art bodies in europe who hold exhibitions does not support this view. it is only the weaker artists who are liable to be prejudiced in such matters, and when the judges are of high attainments in art, they almost invariably make the same choice in competitions that would be made if general opinion were solicited. but although artists cannot be better judges of high-class works of art (as beautiful things) than other men of equal intelligence, their training usually enables them to distinguish obscure forms of beauty which would be unrecognized by the general public, and in matters of colour to differentiate between ephemeral and more or less permanent harmonies. hence while the public interests would not suffer from the introduction of the lay element in judging high class sculpture and painting, it is obvious that the consideration of works where the lower forms of beauty only are produced, as in formal decoration, should be confined to the profession. in music alone of the arts, for reasons already given, special cultivation is necessary for the judgment of the higher forms of beauty. [a] _life of michelangelo buonarotti_, de vere translation. [b] mccurdy's _lionardo da vinci's note books_. [c] _history of ancient art_, part v., . note . page it is commonly supposed that the vast multitude of men and women--the toilers in the fields and factories, and their families, do not appreciate great works of art; that rarely they take an interest in any kind of art, and then only in simple representations of everyday incidents. this is so apparently, but it is not strictly true. the great bulk of working people grow up amidst surroundings where they do not have an opportunity of seeing good works of art. they toil from morn to eve during their whole life: their imaginations are almost entirely confined to their means of livelihood, their daily routine of labour, and their household duties. a "mute inglorious milton" remains mute because he wants the knowledge and experience around which his fancy may roam, and a potential raphael dies in obscurity from the enforced rigidity of his imagination. but even so, notwithstanding that the nervous activities and the imaginations of the poorer workers remain undeveloped, they are still subservient to the irrevocable laws of nature. their faculties may be little changed from childhood in respect of matters appertaining to the higher senses, but they still exist. so it comes about that in all times since art has been practised, the paintings and sculptures of the greater masters have been well appreciated by the multitude when they could come into contact with them. in modern times great works of art are seldom available to the masses except in public galleries where their sense perception and minds are quickly confused and fatigued--in fact rendered incapable of legitimate use, but the trend of popular opinion is very decidedly settled by the experience of those business houses which undertake the reproduction of important works. there are many times the demand for prints and cards of pictures belonging to the higher forms of art, as for instance, sacred and historical subjects, and portraits, than for interiors and landscapes, and so incessant is this demand for the better works, that a painter desiring to copy one of the great raphael or correggio madonnas at florence for reproduction, will usually have to wait three or four years after entering his name, before his turn comes to set up his easel. it is rather the want of intelligent contact with them, than indifference to them, that is due the apparent lack of interest in great works of art on the part of the labouring classes. there is a deal of truth in the incisive remarks of leo tolstoy when dealing with this question. he says [a]: art cannot be incomprehensible to the great masses only because it is very good, as artists of our day are fond of telling us. rather we are bound to conclude that this art is unintelligible because it is very bad art, or even is not art at all. so that the favourite argument (naïvely accepted by the cultured crowd), that in order to feel art one has first to understand it (which really means to habituate oneself to it), is the truest indication that what we are asked to understand by such a method, is either very bad art, exclusive art, or is not art at all. one may observe however that, as a rule, it is only inferior artists who complain of the want of public appreciation of great works of art. [a] _what is art?_ aylmer maude translation, . note . page according to lessing and watts-dunton, what the former calls the dazzling antithesis of simonides--"poetry is speaking painting, and painting dumb poetry"--has had a wide and deleterious effect upon art criticism. lessing, who wrote _laocoon_ about , said in his preface in reference to this saying: it was one of those ideas held by simonides, the truth of which is so obvious that one feels compelled to overlook the indistinctness and falsehood which accompany it.... but of late many critics, just as though no difference existed, have drawn the crudest conclusions one can imagine from this harmony of painting and poetry. watts-dunton, writing a few years ago, added to this[a]: it [the saying of simonides] appears to have had upon modern criticism as much influence since the publication of lessing's _laocoon_ as it had before. lessing points out that the greeks confined the saying to the effect produced by the two arts, and (evidently referring to aristotle) did not forget to inculcate that these arts differed from each other in the things imitated and the manner of imitation. since the business of both poetry and painting is to throw pictures on the mind, the declaration of simonides must be accepted, but it has no particular meaning as applied either to criticism or the practice of the arts. it is merely a fact of common knowledge put into the form of a misleading _jeu d'esprit_, though one has a natural reluctance in so describing a time-honoured saying. there is room for doubt whether it really had the effect upon criticism that is alleged. annibale carracci varied it slightly into a better form with "poets paint with words, and painters speak with the pencil," and it was certainly as well known in his time as in the eighteenth century, yet we find no particular evidence of weak art criticism either in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. moreover allegorical painting was not less common in these centuries than in the century following; and while there was unquestionably a spurt of descriptive poetry in the eighteenth, it is difficult to trace a connection between this phenomenon and general criticism based upon the dictum of simonides. in regard to later times, the statement of watts-dunton wants demonstration. [a] article on "poetry," _encyclopædia britannica_, th edition. note . page a few distinguished poets have attempted to portray beauty of form by description of features, but they have all been signally unsuccessful. the best known essay of the kind is ariosto's portrait of araminta, where he closely describes all details of her features and form, using forty lines for the purpose; but put together the pieces as one will, it is quite impossible to gain from them an idea of the beauty of her countenance.[a] this is pointed out by lessing. the very length of the catalogue is apt to kill the beauty as one endeavours to dovetail the separate elements. perhaps the lines of cornelius gallus to lydia form the most perfect poetical delineation of a beautiful face known to us, but as will be seen from the translation below, they are quite insufficient to enable us to picture the beauty of the combined features on our minds.[b] lydia! girl of prettiest mien, and fairest skin, that e'er were seen: lilies, cream, thy cheeks disclose; the ruddy and the milky rose; smooth thy limbs as ivory shine, burnished from the indic mine. oh, sweet girl! those ringlets spread long and loose, from all thy head; glistening like gold in yellow light o'er thy falling shoulders white. show, sweet girl! thy starry eyes, and black brows that arching rise: show, sweet girl! thy rose-bloom cheeks, which tyre's vermillion scarlet streaks: drop those pouting lips to mine, those ripe, those coral lips of thine. [a] _orlando furioso_, c. vii. [b] c. a. elton translation. note . page if there be one example of descriptive poetry relating to landscape which throws upon the mind a complete natural scene during the process of reading, it is the beautiful chant of the chorus in _oedipus coloneus_. the perfection of form and majestic diction of this poetry are remarkable, but the successful presentation of the picture on the mind is largely due to the simple and direct language used, and the astonishing brevity with which the many features of the scene are described. green dells, fields, plains, groves, rocks, flowers, fruit, and rushing waters, are all brought in, and the few lines used do not prevent the introduction of the muses, the jovial bacchus with the nursing nymphs, and radiant aphrodite. all modern poetry descriptive of landscape entirely fails in presenting a comprehensive view. it is too discursive--over descriptive, to permit of the mind collecting the details together as one whole. here is the best prose version of the lines of sophocles[a]: thou hast come, o stranger, to the seats of this land, renowned for the steed; to seats the fairest on earth, the chalky colonus; where the vocal nightingale, chief abounding, trills her plaintive note in the green dells, tenanting the dark-hued ivy, and the leafy grove of the god, untrodden, teeming with fruits, impervious to the sun, and unshaken by the winds of every storm; where bacchus the reveller ever roams attending his divine nurses. and ever day by day the narcissus, with its beauteous clusters, bursts into bloom by heaven's dew, the ancient coronet of the mighty goddesses, and the saffron with golden ray; nor do the sleepless founts of cephisus that wander through the fields fail, but every day it rushes o'er the plains with its limpid wave, fertilizing the bosom of the earth; nor have the choirs of the muses loathed this clime; nor aphrodite too, of the golden reign. [a] oxford translation. note . page it is perhaps necessary to remind some readers that the term "invention" is used in two senses in art, referring to the original idea or scheme, or to the preparation of the design embodying the idea. in poetry and fiction the term has the former significance; in painting and sculpture the latter. the restriction in the use of the term in the last named arts is compulsory. (see chap. iii., and note .) note . page apparently lessing did not observe that inasmuch as the painter cannot present the beginning and end of an incident, he must necessarily take his moment of action from the literary arts or from nature. the critic notices that the painter does not invent the action he depicts, but states that this is due to his indifference towards invention, developed by the natural readiness of the public to dispense with the merit of invention in his case. that is to say, the public expects the painter to take his idea from the poet or from nature, and looks to him only for correct design and execution: hence the painter is under no necessity to invent his own scheme. it is curious that a reason of this kind for the practice of the painter should be put forward by so keen a critic as lessing, but it is not altogether surprising when we remember the discussion as to whether virgil drew his representation of the laocoon incident from the celebrated sculptured group, or the sculptors adopted the device of the poet. lessing definitely settled the point in favour of the poet as the author of the design, and since his time this decision has been confirmed over and over again by practical evidence. but the conclusion of lessing seems obvious in the absence of any such evidence. as we must exclude the possibility of both poet and sculptors taking the design from the same original source, it is clear that the poet could only have imitated the sculptors on the supposition that they had so widely varied the legend as to necessitate a new beginning and end of the story, these being provided by the poet. consideration of such a series of events is not permissible, as it would reflect upon the common sense of the sculptors, and actually degrade the poet. consequent upon the inability of the painter to originate a scheme for a picture, the famous proposition of lessing as to the relative importance of invention and execution with the poet and painter, must fall to the ground. the critic states that our admiration of homer would be less if we knew that he took certain of his work from pictures, and asks[a]: how does it happen that we withdraw none of our esteem from the painter when he does no more than express the words of the poem in forms and colours? he suggests as an answer to this: with the painter, execution appears to be more difficult than invention: with the poet on the other hand the case seems to be reversed, and his execution seems to be an easier achievement than the invention. the word "invention" is to be taken here in the sense of plot or fable, and not as the details of design invented by the painter for the purpose of representing the action described by the poet. the premisses of lessing's argument therefore will not stand, for the painter cannot originate a fable by means of a picture. and sequential to this of course, the painter can be of no service to the poet. homer could not draw an original scheme from a painting. nor may the poet take a detail from the painter, for this has already been borrowed. a poet may vary a detail in a legend because he can make the successive parts of his relation fit in with the variation, but the painter can only deal with a single moment of action, and if this does not correspond with an accepted legend, then his design appears to be untrue. it may be said in regard to painting, that the relative difficulty of the invention (the work of gathering and arranging the signs) and the execution, varies with the character of the art. in the higher forms, as sacred and historical work, the invention is the more difficult; in ordinary scenes of life and labour the trouble involved in invention would about equal that in execution; while in the lower forms, as landscape and still-life, the execution is obviously the more difficult. in the case of the poet, the idea or fable is the hardest part of his work, but the relative difficulty of the arrangement of the parts, and the execution, would naturally depend upon the general character of the composition, and the form of the poem. [a] _laocoon_, phillimore translation. note . page the works here referred to are those designed for the purpose of achieving a political or social aim, or conveying instruction or moral lessons. there are many examples of good art where advocacy of a social or administrative reform is presented by way of incident or accessory, though the art itself is never, and cannot be, assisted thereby. "didactic art," if such a term may be appropriately used, is practically a thing of the past, but judging from certain conventions the opinion seems to be rather widely held that art should point a moral when possible, and an opinion of aristotle is not infrequently called in to support this view. but when aristotle connected morals with art, he evidently did not mean to suggest that art should have a moral purpose, but that it should have a moral tendency in not being morally harmful, for art which is not morally harmful must necessarily be morally beneficial. the general connection of the good with the beautiful in ancient greece seems to have merely implied that what is good is beautiful, and what is beautiful is good, or should be good, and not that goodness is a manifestation of beauty, or beauty of goodness. it was admitted that the two things may not coincide. note . page that landscape painting may be of considerable value in assisting scientific exploration is instanced by an anecdote related to the writer by a geological friend. professor jack, formerly government geologist of queensland, while travelling in that colony, having put up one night at the house of a small squatter, noticed on the walls of the interior, a number of colour drawings which had been painted by a son of the settler from views in the neighbouring hills. one of these drawings showed a reddish-brown tint running down the slope of a grey and nearly barren hill. this caught the eye of the professor who asked the artist if the colours roughly represented the natural conditions, and receiving an affirmative reply, recommended the squatter to prospect the ground for minerals. this was done with the result that profitable copper deposits were found. it seems that in australia many of the best mineral veins are capped with iron, and run through schistose rocks traversed by dioritic dykes. professor jack was well aware that the hills in the district were formed of these rocks and dykes, and as the reddish-brown streak indicated iron oxide, it occurred to him that the iron might be the cap of a lode holding valuable minerals.[a] [a] this note is from _the position of landscape in art_, by the present author. note . page remarkable evidence of the universality of ideals, is afforded by the galaxy of french sculptors who appeared in the thirteenth century. they could have had no teachers beyond those responsible for the stiff and formal works characterizing the merging of norman with gothic art; they could have seen few of the fragments of ancient sculpture; and yet they left behind them monuments which rival in noble beauty much of the work produced in the greatest art period. how their art grew, and how it withered; how such a brilliant bloom in the life of a nation should so quickly fade, needs too detailed an argument to be ventured upon here, if indeed a properly reasoned explanation can be given at all; but the flower remains, as great a pride to mankind as it is a glory to france: remains, though sadly drooping, for the petals of rheims are gone. now these frenchmen were in much the same position as the early greeks. they were confronted with the task of making images of their objects of worship for great temples. they had no more real knowledge of the personality of christ, the virgin, and most of the saints than had the greeks of the homeric gods and legendary heroes, and like the grecian sculptors they fully believed in the spiritual personages and religious events with which they dealt. the grecian and french artists therefore started from the same line with similar general ideals, for the ancient workers took no heed of homer and hesiod in respect of the failings of their gods; and they both had only pure formalities in sculpture behind them. and what was the result? the ideal divine head of the christian frenchman is much the same as that of the greeks in regard to form, and only varies in expression with the character of the respective religious conceptions. the french sculptors did not reach the sublime height of the phidian school, nor did they attempt the more human beauty typified by the giants of the fourth century b.c.; but apart from these, and leaving aside considerations of the nude with which they were little concerned, they climbed to the highest level of the latter end of the fourth century and the beginning of the third--the level attained by those grecian sculptors who more or less idealized portrait heads by adding phidian traits. and it would appear that in reaching towards their goal they followed the same line of thought as the greeks, and arrived at similar conclusions in respect to every detail of the head and pose of the figure. as a rule they gave to the faces of christ and the saints a large facial angle, set the eyes in deeply and the ears close to the head, and generally worked on parallel lines with the principal sculptors of peloponesia living sixteen hundred years before their time. it is perhaps natural that they should make similar variations in the proportions of the figures to provide for the different levels from which they were to be seen, but it is curious that they should adopt the practice followed by the greeks in the representation of children in arms, by minimizing to the last degree the figure of the infant christ in the arms of the madonna. they could not have more closely imitated the greeks in this respect had they had grecian models in front of them. no doubt they fixed the position of the child at the side of the virgin in order that the line of her majestic form might not be broken, and that her face might be revealed to observers below the level of the statues, but that they should have made the child so extremely small and insignificant considering his relative importance compared with that of the grecian infant in arms, is remarkable. note . page it is too early yet to fix definitely the position of rodin in art. there is much sifting of his works to be done, for of all artists with a wide reputation, he was perhaps the most variable. still he may be called one of the greater artists, and so is amongst the rare exceptions mentioned, for he executed one or two hideous figures, the most notable being la vieille heaulmière.[a] this cannot properly be described as a work of art because it is revolting to the senses: it is merely a species of writing--a hieroglyph, and rodin's own apology for it is a direct condemnation, since a work of sculpture cannot be good if general opinion does not approve of it. he says[b]: what matters solely to me is the opinion of people of taste, and i have been delighted to gain their approbation for my la vieille heaulmière. i am like the roman singer who replied to the jeers of the populace, _equitibus cano_. i sing only for the nobles; that is to say for the connoisseurs. the vulgar readily imagine that what they consider ugly is not a fit subject for the artist. they would like to forbid us to represent what displeases and offends them in nature. it is a great error on their part. what is commonly called "ugliness" in nature can in art become full of great beauty. in the domain of art we call ugly what is deformed, whatever is unhealthy.... ugly also is the soul of the vicious or criminal man.... but let a great artist or writer make use of one or other of these uglinesses, instantly it becomes transfigured: with a touch of his fairy wand he has turned it into beauty: it is alchemy: it is enchantment. rodin then goes on to refer to the description of ugly objects by the poets, in support of his argument that they may be represented by the painter! it was his error in confusing the objects of the literary with those of the plastic arts, that led him to carve la vieille heaulmière, for he admitted that he wished to put into sculpture what villon had put into a poem. professor waldstein properly pointed out that, this being so, the observer of the sculpture should be provided with a copy of the poem when in front of the statue, adding[c]: and even then the work remains only the presentation of a female figure deformed in every detail by the wear and tear of time, and of a life ending in disease and nothing more. it is the worst form of literary sculpture, of which we have had so much by artists who represent the very opposite pole of the modern realists. elsewhere the respective positions of the poet and painter (or sculptor) in the representation of ugliness are dealt with, but it may be added that in the case of la vieille heaulmière, rodin does not render in sculpture the poem of villion, but only a part of it, for of course he could not show the progression in the life of the courtesan, indicated by the poet, which progression puts an entirely different complexion upon the ugly figure of the poet compared with that of the sculptor. clearly rodin was misled when he said that people of taste have given their approbation to his appalling figure, for it has been condemned among all classes, while its few defenders have failed to support their opinions by reason or experience. we may note that at another time rodin reflected upon the character of the ancient greek sculpture for the very reason upon which he bases his claim for public approval of la vieille heaulmière. he says[d]: that was the fault of the hellenic ideal. the beauty conceived by the greeks was the order dreamed of by intelligence, but it only appealed to the cultivated mind, disdaining the humble. here also is a confusion of ideas, for the intelligence cannot dream of a special kind of beauty which would not be recognized by the humble, unless it were so feeble as to be altogether below greek conceptions. the aim of the greek sculptors was to appeal to all classes, and in this they were eminently successful. [a] at the luxembourg. [b] gsell's _art, by auguste rodin_. [c] _greek sculpture and modern art_, . [d] gsell's _art, by auguste rodin_. [illustration: plate (see page ) diana and nymphs, by rubens (_prado, madrid_)] note . page ruskin considered the figure of christ, known as le bon dieu d'amiens, at amiens cathedral, the noblest ideal of christ in existence,[a] and dean farrar wrote of it: "christ is represented as standing at the central point of all history, and of all revelation."[b] it is true that the sculpture is a noble representation of christ, but this is not because it is a christian ideal. in type it is purely greek of the late fourth or early third century b.c. the expression is general, exhibiting the calm repose that the greeks gave to a great philosopher. [a] _the bible of amiens._ see plate . [b] _the life of christ as represented in art._ note . page in the case of the madonna, michelangelo does not appear to produce an ideal woman: he only gives an improved woman. his nearest approach to the ideal is in his early pieta at st. peter's, but even here the virgin is only a less earthly prototype of his later figures. the madonna in the holy family at the uffizi is much inferior, being merely a slightly ennobled italian peasant. the other madonnas are far higher in character and seem to suggest the antique, except that the more material qualities of woman are always present. the madonnas at the bargello and san lorenzo are of the same general type as the figure in the last judgment, the night in the medici chapel, the leda in the bargello, and the venus in the sketch made for pontormo. this being so, it may be imagined when the leda is called to mind, that it is hard to associate the two madonnas with christian ideals. the figures are magnificent works, but they are behind the madonnas of raphael from the point of view of christian conceptions. the expression is general, and all the countenances except one, indicate unconcern with surroundings; not the sublime unconcern of a phidian god, which implies an apparent disregard of particulars because they are necessarily understood with an all-powerful comprehension of principles, but an unconcern which suggests a want of deep interest in life. the exception is the san lorenzo madonna, in which a certain calm resignation is the principal feature in expression. michelangelo was more successful with his men than with his women. his painted prophets in the sistine chapel are as sublime as his scenes from the creation; and his moses in st. peter's is rightly regarded as the first sculpture of the renaissance. note . page when the pieta of michelangelo (in st. peter's, rome) was first exposed, some comment was made upon the comparatively youthful appearance of the virgin, and condivi relates that he spoke to the sculptor on the subject. in reply michelangelo said[a]: don't you know that chaste women preserve their beauty and youthful character much longer than those who are not chaste? how youthful then must appear the immaculate virgin who cannot be supposed ever to have had a vitiated thought. and this is only according to the natural order of things: but why may not we suppose in this particular case, that nature might be assisted by divine interposition, to demonstrate to the world the virginity and perpetual purity of the mother? this was not necessary in the son, nay, rather on the contrary, since divine omnipotence was willing to show that the son of god would take upon him, as he did, the body of man, with all his earthly infirmities except that of sin. therefore it was not necessary for me to make the human subordinate to the divine character, but to consider it in the ordinary course of nature under the actual existing circumstances. hence you ought not to wonder that from such a consideration, i should make the most holy virgin-mother of god, in comparison with the son, much younger than would otherwise be required, and that i should have represented the son at his proper age. [a] lanzi's _history of painting in italy_, roscoe translation, vol. i. note . page a few modern painters have produced works in which the holy family are pictured in lowly surroundings, but generally they appear to shock the public sense of propriety. many persons will remember the sensation caused by millais's the carpenter's shop, where christ is shown as a boy of about ten years of age in the workshop of st. joseph, and holman hunt's shadow of the cross. later artists have been still more realistic, notably uhde, whose sacred scenes almost stagger one with their modern suggestions, and demont-breton, whose divine apprentice represents the boy christ sharpening a tool at a grindstone which is turned by the virgin. note . page unquestionably the rapid advance in italian art in the fifteenth century was largely due to the influence of the ancient greek and roman remains. indeed there are very few sculptors of the period who fail to show evidence of studies in greek forms and ornaments, while in painting there are hundreds of figures which could scarcely have been designed in the absence of antique models. true in some cases the artists do not appear to have gone beyond the ancient literature, as with masaccio who must have had homer in his mind when he painted his figures of eve in the florence frescoes, and piero di cosimo, whose fanciful compositions savour of the old legends wrapped up in fairy stories; but many painters were steeped both in the art and literature of greece and rome, and made good use of them. but the most direct evidence of the influence of greek art upon italian artists of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, is to be found in the splendid series of bronze statuettes of the period. in their monumental figures the sculptors were more or less confined in their designs by considerations of portraiture, conventional drapery and symbols, and local requirements, and while they were greatly assisted by greek experience, yet only rarely were they strictly at liberty except with ornaments and accessories. but in the small bronze figures their fancy could roam at will, and they made good use of this freedom in displaying their ready acceptance of the first principle in the design of the human figure recognized by the greeks--that the sculptor must arrive at perfection of form if that be possible; that this perfection is not to be found in any single form in life, and consequently the artist must combine perfected parts into a harmonious whole, independently of particular models. the agreement with this principle was general, with scarcely an exception amongst the bronze figure designers, and the result was that in the period say, from to , there was executed a series of bronzes fully representative of the highest level which plastic art has reached since the greater days of greece. right up to the time of the maturity of michelangelo, nearly every bronze figurine cast is purely grecian in type, and every ornament, and even every accessory which is not from its nature of contemporary style, can be traced to greece, either directly or through rome. michelangelo brought about a change in accentuating the muscular development of the body, and before the middle of the sixteenth century most sculptors had come under his influence. this was unfortunate for he alone seemed to be capable of harmoniously combining greek lines with muscular power. a few of his contemporaries, as sansovino, leone, cellini, learned how to join, with due restraint, his innovations with modifications of the greek torso, but generally the imitation of the great florentine initiated a decadence, as it was bound to do, for it was accompanied with life modelling, and so meant a radical departure from the greek forms. giovanni di bologna alone among the later sixteenth century sculptors, was strong enough to move in an independent direction. he restrained the accentuation of the muscles, and lightened the greek type of torso, combining with these conditions an elegance in design which has never since been surpassed. this then is the principal cause of the high æsthetic value of the renaissance bronzes: the human form exhibited by them is altogether more beautiful than the form coming within the compass of life experience. then the details of work on the bronzes are immensely superior to those of the general modern handiwork. for instance the chiselling of such men as riccio and cellini, has never been equalled since their time, save perhaps by gouthière. and how poor, comparatively, are the present-day castings! how carefully the old masters worked; how particular they were with their clay; how skilfully they prepared their wax, and how slowly and deliberately the mould! how many artists now would have the patience to make such a mould? for the beautiful patinas on many of the renaissance bronzes, age is mostly responsible, though lacquers were often used for the provision of artificial patinas, particularly after the middle of the sixteenth century, the finest being found on some of the works of giovanni di bologna. the tone of natural patina depends largely upon the kind of oxidation to which the bronze has been subjected, and it is no doubt often affected by the alloy used. few modern artists have given close attention to the alloys, while the method of casting is now usually regarded as a detail of minor importance. seeing that the production of figurines accompanied every civilization from the dawn of history to the collapse of the roman empire, it is curious that the renaissance of sculpture after the dark age should have progressed a long way before general attention was again turned to these bronzes. there are a few figures of animals which seem to be italian work of the late trecento, but beyond these the small cast bronzes made in italy before the maturity of ghiberti, were practically confined to madonnas and saints, mostly gilt, made to fill gothic niches, or adorn the altars of churches and private chapels. slender saints they were as a rule, but always elegant, with serene countenances and delicate features; beautifully modelled as became the inheritors of the traditions of the pisanos. it was somewhere about the middle of the fifteenth century that italy commenced to make ungilt statuettes suitable for household ornaments, and fully ten or fifteen years more passed away before they were produced with any regularity. the earliest of them of any importance appear to be a couple of flagellators from the design of ghiberti. they are fine pieces of work, evidently from clay models made for the scourging scene in one of the gates of the florence baptistry--gates described by michelangelo as worthy to fill the portals of paradise. these figures date about . there is a child christ of a few years later by luca della robbia; and two or three figures from models of donatello may be assigned to the neighbourhood of . in the next ten years were turned out some figures from remaining models of donatello which had been used for his work at prato and padua. so far the small bronzes made were from studies for larger works of sculpture, but about this time intense interest began to be taken in the remains of greek and roman art, and no doubt it was the increased importance attached to the antique bronze figures, mostly household gods of the greeks, etruscans, and romans, that first led the principal renaissance artists to turn their attention to similar work. from this time on, for a century and a half, these bronze figures were regularly made. the existing figurines may be broadly classified in four divisions, namely, the paduan and florentine figures executed prior to ; those of the school of michelangelo; those of the venetian school headed by sansovino; and those of giovanni di bologna and his school. leaving out of consideration the small ornaments for inkstands, vases, etc., the little animals, and the purely commercial imitations, chiefly venetian, made at the end of the sixteenth century, the total number of renaissance bronzes now known is roughly six thousand. of these under a hundred are from models for larger works by ghiberti, donatello, verrocchio, lionardo, michelangelo, and a few lesser lights; about two thousand represent original designs specially prepared for bronze production; some three thousand five hundred are duplicates of, or slight variations from, these originals, executed by pupils or near contemporaries of the masters; and the balance of four hundred or so, are direct reproductions of, or variations from, antique sculptures. naturally all collectors aim for the first two sections, but the third section contains many fine bronzes, often close to the originals, with equally good patinas. they vary greatly, though they are all ascribed in commerce to the artists responsible for the originals. the character of these variations is best seen in the case of riccio, the most prolific of the bronze workers of the renaissance. he designed and executed under forty small bronze figures and groups, besides some large bronze works of high importance. of his small pieces there are in existence about a hundred duplicates made by his pupils and immediate contemporaries, who also adapted into household ornaments, various details from his larger works, bringing up the number of riccios made from his models during his lifetime, other than by himself, to about a hundred and fifty. these are all bronzes of a high order. then about an equal number of both kinds of models were reproduced during the twenty years following his death, all fairly good, but often slightly varied from the originals; and finally there are riccios copied by venetian craftsmen in the third quarter of the sixteenth century, sometimes considerably varied, and occasionally with purely venetian ornaments added. these last mark the first distinct decadence in the small bronze art of the period. next to riccio among the earlier sculptors, in the number of bronzes designed, was his great contemporary, antico, who accomplished some thirty or so. he differed from riccio in that while the latter adhered to the grecian practice in the design of details and ornaments, but varied the modelling somewhat to bring it more in conformity with the contemporary ideas of elegance, antico kept strictly to the grecian modelling, but commonly varied the ancient designs. there are few duplicates of antico's work, made either during his lifetime or after. as with riccio, his imitators overcame the difficulty of the chiselling by leaving it out, relying upon the wax to give close enough resemblance to the originals. of the other small bronze sculptors prior to the maturity of michelangelo, few executed more than half a score of figures. the best known are the immediate successors of donatello in the paduan school, as bertoldo and bellano, and the giants of the florentine school, as filarete and a. pollaiuolo. bronzes by these artists are very rare, and so are the duplicates of them made by pupils, though bertoldo, who reminds one strangely of lysippus, had occasional imitators for the next two centuries. these bronzes include many models which have not been equalled by the greatest of later sculptors, and they will never be matched until there arises a new school of sculptors resolved to imbibe the truths which the renaissance artists gleaned from the ancient greeks. note . page the writer has used greek and roman names for these gods to some extent indiscriminately, in accordance with the universal custom in art. nevertheless the practice is to be regretted as it tends to complicate the general ideas of the greek and roman religions. notwithstanding the occasional direct association of some of their deities with human personages by their poets, the romans regarded their gods as purely spiritual beings, having no special earthly habitation, or sex relations with the human race, while their powers widely differed from those of the respective greek deities with whom they are commonly identified. authorities differ as to whether the gods were supposed to have spiritual marital relations with each other.[a] in any case the whole nature of their religion precluded the development amongst the romans of a separate sacred art. their sculptured gods, which were taken from grecian models, were symbols rather than presumed types. [a] see j. g. frazer's _adonis, attis, osiris_, , vol. ii.; and w. w. fowler's _religious experience of the roman people_, . note . page if we may judge from the headless figures of the goddesses, commonly known as the three fates, from the east pediment of the parthenon, there seems to be little difference between the general lines of the feminine torso represented by the phidian ideal, and those of the praxitelean model. the parthenon torsos are more massive proportionately, but the object of both phidias and praxiteles was evidently to straighten the outer lines of the torso as nearly as possible, making due allowance for the varied natural swellings of their respective forms. it is obvious that the use of attire gave phidias (presuming the parthenon figures referred to were designed by him, as they probably were) a latitude in varying the proportions of the torsos which he could not have exercised in the case of nude forms. unclothed, the figures would appear unwieldy, and the graceful flowing lines resulting from the partly clinging drapery could not be so completely presented with nude reclining or semi-reclining figures. there are other features also which prevent the nude representation of such massive forms. thus, the breasts would necessarily be out of proportion in size, and widely separated. these conditions are common in fifth century and archaic figures, and do not appear to be defects in forms of life size or less, but they would be strikingly noticeable in super figures of the broad massive type with phidian lines. the addition of light drapery, however, converts the apparent faults into virtues, for the artist is enabled therewith to give new sweeping curves to the forms which conspicuously enhance the general beauty of the figure. a still more amazing instance where the use of drapery allows the artist to vary the recognized proportions of the feminine form to an extent which would be impossible with nude figures, is the celebrated ariadne at the vatican.[a] this beautiful work, which is of the hellenistic period, shows the daughter of minos attired in a light flowing single garment, and reclining on a couch, asleep. the upper part of her body leans against the head of the couch, but the remainder is extended nearly at full length. the extraordinary feature of the work is that the length of the figure is altogether out of proportion with the head and with the breadth of the torso, being much too great, and yet so skilfully is the drapery arranged that this very defect becomes an advantage, for it enables a lofty grace, almost approaching grandeur, to be given to the figure, which would be impossible without the exaggeration. by the excellent device of a closely arranged cross fold of drapery passing round the middle of the figure, the artist apparently shortens it, so that the eye of the observer is not held by its great length. only one other example of the supreme use of drapery in this way seems to be known--a bronze sitting figure of calliope,[b] which is of the late hellenistic period, and is obviously of the same school as the ariadne marble. [a] see plate . [b] dreicer collection, new york. note . page praxiteles is known to have executed at least four other statues of aphrodite besides the cnidian example, but this last is the only one as to which we have fairly complete records, and of which copies have been closely identified. it is also the most celebrated. we may therefore accept the work as typical for comparative purposes. note . page there has been much discussion as to whether apelles showed the same extent of figure as is represented in the sculpture, a common suggestion being that he brought the surface of the water to the waist line; but it is evident that the painting corresponded with the sculpture in this particular. the artist had to represent the goddess walking towards the shore. if he brought the water to the waist line he could not definitely suggest movement, as a deflection of the shoulder line might mean that the goddess was in an attitude of rest, corresponding to the pose of nearly all the sculptured figures of the praxitelean school. on the other hand if he carried the water line down towards the knees, the advance of the right leg would be most marked, and the effect disturbing because of the loss of repose, a quality at all times valuable in a painting of a single figure, and really necessary in the representation of venus. the artist very properly reduced the portion of the thighs visible to the smallest fraction possible compatible with an expression of movement, in order to give the figure the greatest repose attainable. under any circumstances there was nothing to gain by showing the water reaching to the waist. certain details of the picture by apelles are to be obtained from grecian epigrams. thus, one by antipater of sidon contains these lines[a]: venus, emerging from her parent sea, apelles' graphic skill does here portray: she wrings her hair, while round the bright drops flee, and presses from her locks the foamy spray. from this it would appear that the position of the goddess when painted was presumed to be comparatively near the artist, otherwise the separate drops of falling water would not have been observed. the last line in the following epigram by leonides of tarentum indicates the ideal character of the countenance, though evidence of this is scarcely necessary[b]: as venus from her mother's bosom rose (her beauty with the murmuring sea-foam glows), apelles caught and fixed each heavenly charm; no picture, but the life, sincere and warm. see how those finger tips those tresses wring! see how those eyes a calm-like radiance fling! [a] translated by lord neaves. [b] translated by lord neaves. note . page so far as the writer knows, piero was the only artist of the renaissance who used this mythological story for a composition (his picture has hitherto been called an allegory), a circumstance which is rather singular considering the suitableness of the subject for the provision of effective designs. the greek sculptors in dealing with the legend confined themselves to the moment when athena threw down the pipes, apparently for the reason that this instant gave an opportunity of rendering marsyas in a strong dramatic action. the famous statue of the faun after myron in rome, is supposed to have formed part of a group representing athena and marsyas immediately after the pipes were dropped, and the design appears on still existing coins and vases of the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. piero takes a later moment, showing marsyas comfortably squatting in the foreground of a delightful fanciful landscape, expressing boyish satisfaction with the prizes he is about to try. he is properly shown as a satyr instead of in the faun form of the sculptor. there appears to be no legitimate place in painting for a faun, while a satyr may at times be appropriately introduced into a pastoral composition. note . page controversy has raged around this picture for something like seventy years. the work came to light before at a public auction sale when it was attributed to mantegna, with whom of course it had nothing to do. then it was pronounced a raphael, but this was disputed by passavant who held that on account of the thin lower limbs of the figures, and the minute way in which the landscape was painted, it could not be by raphael, but was of the school of francia, or by timoteo della viti. morelli brought back the attribution to raphael, and the work then came into the possession of the louvre. subsequently pinturicchio and perugino were alternately suggested as the painter, and to the latter the picture was assigned by the louvre authorities. all are agreed that the date of the work is about . it does not seem possible that perugino could have painted the picture, for the subject and invention are entirely foreign to him, while the lithe active form of apollo does not consort with the least formal of his known figures. the landscape is much in his manner, but so it is also in the style of raphael's early period, while the small buildings therein are closely finished as in some of raphael's other works of the time.[a] perugino used similar towers and buildings, but being a more experienced painter he did not so finely elaborate the details. the suggestion relating to the school of francia was afterwards very properly withdrawn, and pinturicchio must be ruled out on account of the landscape, apart from the supple figure of apollo of which he was incapable. there remain then only timoteo della viti and raphael as the possible painters of the work. but it cannot reasonably be suggested that timoteo could have accomplished so perfect a figure as the apollo, and moreover so original a figure. it certainly required an exceptionally bold mind to overcome the difficulty in rendering the traditionally semi-feminine form of apollo by representing him as a young man just past his teens. besides, the general delicacy of the work is not in the style of timoteo. passavant's objection to the limbs is overruled by the presence of similar limbs in the mond crucifixion. it would seem then that morelli was right in assigning the beautiful little picture to the youthful period of the greatest of all painters. [a] see portrait of a young man at budapest, and the terranuova virgin and child at berlin. note . page the white races are here referred to merely by way of example, and there is no intention to suggest that the more or less uncivilized peoples have no perception of beauty. it is well known that both semi-civilized and savage races differ from the whites in the matter of beauty, and the fact has been partly responsible for several theories for explaining æsthetic perception, notably that of association, laid down by alison and jeffrey, but long since discarded. seeing that there is no difference in kind between the sense nerves of the whites and the blacks, they must necessarily act in the same way. that the blacks appreciate as beautiful forms which the whites disregard, seems to arise partly from want of experience, partly from training, and partly from neglect in the exercise of the sense nerves. take for example an inhabitant of morocco where corpulency is commonly regarded as an element of beauty in women. if none but moroccan women are seen or pictured, it is impossible for a higher form of beauty than is to be found amongst them to be conceived, for the imagination cannot act beyond experience. in cases where the moroccan has had experience of both white and black, it is certain that, other things being equal, the white woman would be the more admired, for this is the general experience among the black races, and is strikingly noticeable in america with the descendants of african tribes. the appreciation of very fat women can easily be understood on the ground of custom or training. a youthful moroccan may be firmly of opinion that corpulency is not an element of beauty, but seeing that his older acquaintances hold a contrary view, he may well form the conclusion that his judgment is wrong, and so accept the decision of his more mature countrymen. it is quite common among the whites for people to doubt their own æsthetic perceptions when an inferior work of art is put forward as a thing of beauty. the general want of appreciation of certain musical harmonies on the part of uncivilized peoples is undoubtedly due to the neglect of the sense nerves concerned, for these are not cultivated except to a small extent involuntarily. the most ignorant and poor of the whites unavoidably come into frequent contact with the simpler forms of art, but the savage races see only the result of their own handiwork. the uncivilized races can scarcely be expected to admire the higher reaches of art wherein intellectual considerations enter, except for their sensorial excellence. [illustration: plate (see page ) automedon and the horse of achilles, by regnault (_boston museum_)] note . page there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether fragonard intended his splendid series of the frick collection to represent the subjects usually assigned to them, namely, the pursuit (or the flight of design, a title given to the original sketch for the picture); the rendezvous (or the surprise, or the escalade); souvenirs (or confidences, or the reader); the lover crowned (or before the painter); and the abandonment (or the reverie). it is suggested that the works have an allegorical signification connected with art, and certainly three of them--the first, second, and fourth--could be so interpreted. but magnificent paintings of this kind are usually fitted for many allegorical suggestions. each picture represents an incident of common experience, elaborated with beautiful figures in a perfect setting. this approaches the summit of the painter's art, for no conception can be greater apart from spiritual ideals. it is symbolism in its highest form--of universal experience in which all are interested. the works are not to be taken as a necessary sequence (the last of the series was painted twenty years after the others), but the scheme of one or more of them has come within the experience of every man and woman since the world began. note . page seeing that this precise dignified pose, coming so near the line of exaggeration, but never crossing it, is present in all the authenticated portraits of titian, save those of very aged persons, we may reasonably consider the pose an important factor in determining the validity of certain portraits as to which a doubt has arisen. thus in the case of the physician of parma[a] (this title is admittedly wrong), which has been variously given to titian and giorgione, the verdict must be in favour of titian, for the pose is certainly his, while it is unknown in any work of giorgione. on the other hand, the portrait of catherine cornara,[b] commonly ascribed to titian, but also attributed to giorgione,[c] cannot be by the former master; nor is the portrait of a man (with his hand on a bust),[d] which seems to pair with the cornara portrait. the portrait known as an old man asleep,[e] sometimes given to titian, clearly does not belong to him. it should be noted that the general confusion observable for many years in the estimation of giorgione's work arose from the attribution to him of paintings executed in the comparatively broad manner of titian, but which this artist did not adopt till giorgione had been dead for a decade or more. the recent exhaustive critique of lionelli venturi[f] of the earlier master has cleared the air, and we now know the range of his work very positively. giorgione was less fine in some of his paintings than in others, for he paid more attention to chiaroscuro as he matured, but there is no instance where he painted in the broader manner occasionally exhibited by titian. all the works in the style of the concert and the three ages are now known to be by other hands than those of giorgione, and it must be unfortunately admitted that not a single painting by him exists either in england or america. [a] vienna gallery. [b] cook collection, london. [c] by herbert cook in _giorgione_. [d] uffizi gallery, florence. [e] the brera, milan. [f] _giorgione e il giorgionismo_, . note . page hals is another artist as to whom many misconceptions have arisen in regard to his use of a very broad manner in his portraits. there is a total of about works attributed to him, of which some two thirds are single portraits, and twenty are portrait groups. the balance includes over thirty genre pictures, mostly with single figures, and fifty heads of boys and girls generally shown in the act of laughing. it is in his genre work that the broad manner is mostly observable, and only very occasionally is it to be found in his portraits. in the more important works of the artist, even during his later period, his manner is by no means broad,[a] though it is not so fine as in his best years, say from to . this estimate can however only be general, as his dated paintings of different periods after often correspond so closely that it is difficult to assign dates to the other pictures with certainty. perhaps the frequent attribution to hals of works by his pupils and imitators, has had something to do with the public estimation of the breadth of his manner. this was often greatly exaggerated by his followers, and many portraits are given to him which he could not possibly have painted. in his important work on the artist, dr. von bode points out that some of the duplicates of his pictures were apparently executed by his pupils, but these are not separated in the book.[b] it is a simple matter to divide the works painted by hals from the studio copies and the portraits of imitators. his brushwork and impasto were quite exceptional. he had a firm direct stroke, never niggled or scumbled, and his loading was restrained though very effective. quite naturally his pupils, however industrious and skilled, could not closely imitate his remarkable freedom in handling. they were incapable of firm decisive strokes throughout a portrait, and endeavoured to overcome the loading difficulty by using brushes of a coarseness foreign to the master when rendering light tones. moreover hals was nearly perfect in drawing, and in this there are usually marked defects in the studio copies. [a] see stephanus gereardts, antwerp museum; isabella coymans, e. rothschild collection, paris; lady with a fan, national gallery, london; and william van heythuysen, liechtenstein collection, vienna. [b] _frans hals: his life and work_, . note . page the term "grace" as applied in art has so many significations that it is difficult to deal with one of them without confusion. what is here specially referred to is the grace of pose designed by the artist. the object of the portrait painter is to pose his sitter so that the grace indicated shall appear natural and habitual, a feature as important now in the appearance of women as it was twenty-five centuries ago when sappho asked[a]: what country maiden charms thee, however fair her face, who knows not how to gather her dress with artless grace? but the grace of pose never appears to be artless, after the first inspection, unless there is something in the expression to hold the mind. without this appeal to the mind the portrait must soon tire, and the pose become artificial and stiff, that is to say, in representations of life size, for in miniature portraiture the countenance seldom or never crosses the vision involuntarily. in the ancient greek forms, winckelmann distinguishes four kinds of grace--lofty, pleasing, humble, and comic--but the grace exhibited by sculptured forms necessarily depends upon the harmony of expression, character of form, and pose. this should be the case with painted portraits also, but drapery restrictions and accessories commonly compel a limitation in the design of the artist. in three quarter and full length portraits it is impossible to depart from the dress customary at the period of execution, unless the sitter assume a classical character, and this is only possible in comparatively few instances. in any case the pose should always be subordinated to the expression. [a] free translation (quoted by wharton), the term "artless grace" being implied but not expressed by sappho. note . page the remarkable range of raphael in expression has been commented upon by many critics, and practically all agree with lanzi in his eloquent summary[a]: there is not a movement of the soul, there is not a character of passion known to the ancients and capable of being expressed in art, that he (raphael) has not caught, expressed, and varied in a thousand different ways, and always within the bounds of propriety.... his figures are passions personified; and love, hope, fear, desire, anger, placability, humility, and pride, assume their places by turns as the subject changes; and while the spectator regards the countenances, the air, and the gestures of the figures, he forgets that they are the work of art, and is surprised to find his own feelings excited, and himself an actor in the scene before him. [a] _history of painting in italy_, vol. i., roscoe translation. note . page this pompeian fresco is supposed to be a copy of the picture of timanthes, but there is an ancient marble relief of the same subject at florence, the design of which is also said to have been taken from the grecian painter, though it differs considerably from the fresco. quintilian observes as to the work of timanthes, that having rendered calchas sad, ulysses still more sad, and menelaus with the deepest expression of grief possible in art, the painter could not properly portray the countenance of agamemnon, who as father of iphigenia was presumed to be the most deeply affected of all present, and so covered his head, leaving the intensity of his suffering to be understood.[a] [a] _school of oratory_, ii. note . page the authenticity of the boston example of mona lisa is still in dispute. so far no serious objection to it has been brought forward, and there are certain points in its favour, as the presence of the columns which are reproduced in raphael's sketch, and the bold brushwork of the drapery where this can be distinguished. but there is another example of the work in existence, and this fact, with the natural hesitation in pronouncing definitely on so important a matter, will probably leave the authenticity of the picture undecided for a long time. meanwhile the literature upon mona lisa is ever increasing, and some important facts have been recently brought out. amongst these is an announcement by a. c. coppier that the lady was not a florentine, but a neapolitan of the gheradini family, and that she was married in , when eighteen years of age.[a] she would therefore be twenty-seven years old in when the picture which raphael sketched is supposed to have been painted. but the mona lisa in the louvre was completed between and ; hence there is much to ascertain as to the history of the work. [a] _les arts_, no. , . note . page the various suggestions that have been made as to the meaning of mona lisa's smile, seem to have no other foundation than the fancies of mystic minds. the smile has been called dangerous, sinister, ambiguous, provocative, purposely enigmatic, significant of a loose woman, expressive of sublime motherhood, reminiscent of eastern intrigue, and so on, the mildest criticism of this kind affirming that the smile will ever remain an enigma. it is of course impossible for any meaning to be put into a smile by the painter, other than that of pleasure. psychological suggestions are possible with the poet or novelist, but not with the painter. if there be any enigma or mystery in a picture, then the art is bad, for the work is incomprehensible, but there is no problem to be solved in mona lisa's smile. it is not different from any other smile except in degree, and of course in the quality appertaining to the particular countenance. lionardo, with his scientific turn of mind, was not likely to attempt the impossible by trying to mix psychology with paint. note . page it is necessary to dissent from the conclusion of lessing as to the representation of ugliness by the poet. he says in referring to homer's portrayal of thersites[a]: why in the case of ugliness did he adopt a method from which he so judiciously refrained in that of beauty? does not a successive enumeration of its compound parts diminish the effect of ugliness, just as a similar enumeration of its parts destroys that of beauty? undoubtedly it does, but in this very fact lies homer's justification. for the very reason that ugliness in the poet's description is reduced to a less repulsive appearance of bodily imperfection, and in point of its effect ceases as it were to be ugliness, the poet is enabled to make use of it. it is true that as he cannot present a particular form of beauty by description, so the poet cannot describe an ugly countenance in such a way that it may be pictured on the mind as a whole; but on the other hand, as he can, by reference to its effect, or by imagery, present a greater beauty than the painter can portray, so he may by similar means suggest a more hideous form of ugliness. and apart from this, while a detail in the description of a beautiful countenance is immaterial until it is combined with other details, a detail of ugliness may in itself be sufficient to render the countenance wholly repulsive to the reader. thus, if one said of a maid that her cheeks were a compound of the lily and the rose, this would not necessarily imply that she was generally beautiful; but if it were said of a man that he had a large bulbous nose, we should consider him ugly whatever the character of his other features. it was only necessary for milton to refer to one or two details of the figure of sin, to throw upon our minds a form of appalling ugliness.[b] a successive enumeration of its component parts, does not therefore diminish the effect of ugliness, as lessing claims, but increases it. on the other hand a successive enumeration of the parts of beauty does not destroy the beauty, but simply fails to represent it. the poet may use ugliness where the painter cannot, because his ugly form does not dominate the scene, save for an instant or two, being quickly subordinated by surrounding conditions of speech and action; whereas the ugly figure of the painter is fixed for ever. further, the poet may surround his description of the ugly thing with beautiful imagery and lofty sentiment, practically hiding the ugliness with a cloak of beauty; but the painter can only depict the ugly thing as it is, naked to the sight, without gloss or apology. [a] _laocoon_, ronnfeldt translation. [b] _paradise lost_, ii. note . page it has been suggested that the foot of hercules in this fine bronze was placed upon the skull of an ox to indicate a successful hunt,[a] but hercules was a demigod, and so could not be connected in art with any but a superhuman task or exploit. moreover the only instance recorded in mythological history where hercules fought with an ox (unless the feat of strength against the white bull of augeas be called a fight), is that of the cretan bull, which was captured and not killed. there is no other sculptured figure now known where a foot is placed on the skull of an ox, but pausanias records that he saw one in a temple of apollo at patræ, the figure being that of the god himself.[b] pausanias attributes the motive of the design to apollo's love of cattle. there is no doubt about the significance of the frick bronze. the skull of an ox, and rams' heads are frequently found on ancient tombs, and acanthus leaves were commonly used both in greece and rome as funereal signs, while the base of the statuette, which is cast with the figure, is clearly intended to represent an altar. it is noticeable that the form of acanthus leaf used is roman, suggesting that pollaiuolo had access to the reproductions of tomb inscriptions made to the order of lorenzo de' medici. there is apparently no other existing design of a hero contemplating death, but lysippus carved several figures, now lost, of hercules in a sad or depressed mood. in the most celebrated of these, the demigod was seated in a thoughtful attitude on a lion's skin, and it is possible that this design was connected with the contemplation of death, because it was produced in relief soon after the time of lysippus, and later in a pompeian fresco, in both cases in the presence of lichas, the bearer of the poisoned garment. [a] bode's preface to the _catalogue of the morgan bronzes_. [b] pausanias, vii. note . page the attempt of ruskin to raise landscape to a high level in the art of the painter[a] need scarcely be referred to here, so completely have his arguments been refuted elsewhere. the authority of alexander humboldt has been sometimes quoted in support of the assertion that landscape can appeal to the higher attributes, the passage relied upon affirming that descriptive poetry and landscape painting "are alike capable in a greater or lesser degree of combining the visible and invisible in our contemplation of nature." but it is clear from the whole references of the writer to these arts, that he means nothing more by his statement than that a painting or descriptive poem may, like an actual landscape, induce a feeling of wonder at the powers of the original cause of nature. the opinion of humboldt upon the position of landscape painting may be gathered from his definite observation that it has "a more material origin and a more earthly limitation than the art which deals with the human form."[b] [a] _modern painters_, vols i. and ii., and the preface to the second edition of the work. [b] _cosmos_, vol. ii. note . page it is doubtful whether an artist can invent a form of tree which does not exist in nature, without producing something of the character of a monstrosity. from the point of view of dimensions, the two extreme forms of trees used in painting, are represented in raphael's madonna with the goldfinch[a] as to the slender forms, and as to the giant trunks, in two or three of claude's pictures. the very beautiful trees of raphael have been often regarded as pure inventions, and ruskin was actually surprised that the artist did not delineate the "true form of the trees and the true thickness of the boughs";[b] but as a matter of fact precisely similar trees (a variety of ash) are to be found in the valleys of the apennines to this day. all the change that raphael made was to transport the trees from a sheltered spot to an open position. very similar trees are introduced in the same master's apollo and marsyas.[c] perugino was the first painter to use them, and in some of his earlier works he made them of great height,[d] but he gradually modified the form till he approached the perfect symmetry and delicacy of raphael's examples.[e] marco basaiti introduced them into at least three of his pictures, and they are also to be found in works by timoteo della viti and francia.[f] higher and equally slender trees have been appropriately used by antonio della ceraiuolo,[g] and even by so late a painter as nicholas poussin.[h] [a] uffizi gallery, florence. [b] _modern painters_, vol. iv. [c] the louvre. [d] baptism of christ, perugia; and the crucifixion, florence. [e] the deposition, pitti palace. [f] madonna and child in a rose garden, munich. [g] the crucifixion, florence academy. [h] diana sleeps in the forest, prado, madrid. note . page in noting the fact that the great landscape artist invents his designs, byron observes that nature does not furnish him with the scenes that he requires, and adds[a]: nature is not lavish of her beauties; they are widely scattered, and occasionally displayed, to be selected with care, and gathered with difficulty. had byron been a painter, he would have known that the trouble of the artist is due to the over, and not the under, supply of beauty by nature. the artist sees the beauty, but cannot identify it with particular signs, and so has to invent a scene himself, using nature only for sketches or ideas. [a] _art and nature._ note . page "the force of natural signs," says lessing, "consists in their resemblance to the things they represent."[a] in a criticism upon the second part of _faust_, g. h. lewes writes[b]: the forms which are his (the artist's) materials, the symbols which are his language, must in themselves have beauty and an interest readily appreciable by those who do not understand the occult meaning. unless they have this they cease to be art: they become hieroglyphs. art is picture painting, not picture writing. while this is generally true, beauty in the lesser signs of the poet is of greater importance than in those of the painter, because a painting is looked upon direct as a whole, while a poem has to be comprehended in its parts before it can be properly considered as a whole. [a] laocoon. [b] _life of goethe_, d edition. note . page although those of the fifteenth-century artists who treated landscape seriously did not thoroughly understand perspective, yet they were seldom at a loss in representing distance, that is, in the clear atmosphere which they invariably used. they were diffident in attempting distance with unbroken level country, and till quite the end of the century there is no instance where middle and far distance are shown together, even with the assistance of hilly ground. the almost invariable practice of the leading painters who made landscape a feature in their works, was to introduce water leading back from the foreground, so that breaks therein could be used to indicate distance. more or less numerous jutting forks of low lying land were thrown into the stream from either side, this plan being successfully adopted in italy,[a] flanders,[b] and germany.[c] early in the sixteenth century much improvement was made in the use of water for providing distance, and a few of the venetian painters gave some consideration to aerial perspective, but the most perfect example of this perspective in the period is contained in an early work of raphael.[d] in the background is a lake extending into a gradually deepening haze, and in this a boat is so skilfully placed as to increase considerably the apparent distance to the horizon. this picture is a distinct advance upon the venetian distance work of the time.[e] later on in the century an artist rarely introduced water into a view specially to assist in producing distance by means of boats, more advanced methods being adopted. titian used sunlight effects with varying shadows,[f] or alternating clear and wooded ground.[g] these plans, and the use of water with the addition of trees and low hills,[h] constitute the chief devices to be found in the late sixteenth-century italian pictures. some of the sun effects rendered for distance purposes even before titian's best time are quite effective, though formal.[i] [a] see piero di cosimo's death of procris, national gallery, london, and mars and cupid, berlin. [b] van eyck's chancellor rollin before the virgin, and bout's adoration of the magi. [c] lucas moser's voyage of the saints ( ), tiefenbroun, germany. [d] central panel in a triptych of the crucifixion, hermitage, petrograd. this picture has been sometimes attributed to perugino, but it is unquestionably from the hand of raphael. [e] see titian's jacopo pesaro presented to st. peter, antwerp. [f] charles v. at mühlberg, madrid. [g] meeting of joachim and anna, padua; and others. [h] bronzino's venus and cupid, uffizi, florence. [i] schiavone's jupiter and io, hermitage. note . page lessing apparently overlooked the possibilities of landscape painting in his dictum as to progressive actions. he writes[a]: if painting on account of the signs and means of imitation which it employs, and which can only be combined in space, must entirely renounce time, then progressive actions cannot, in so far as they are progressive, be included in the number of its subjects, but it must content itself with coexistent actions, or with mere bodies, which on account of their position cause an action to be suspected. it is true that a series of progressive human actions cannot be included in one painting, but progressive natural actions can be so included when the progression is regular and repeated and the actions are clearly separated to the eye. although the painter can only depict a moment of time, he can show the whole progression, which is not the case in a series of human actions, as in the example quoted by lessing, of pandarus arranging his bow, opening his quiver, choosing an arrow, and so on. strange to say, de quincey, in an explanatory note to lessing's observations, also overlooks the movement of water broken by rocks, though he refers specially to landscape painting. he says[b]: in the succession of parts which make up appearance in nature, either the parts simply repeat each other (as in the case of a man walking, a river flowing, etc.), or they unfold themselves through a cycle, in which each step effaces the preceding, as in the case of a gun exploding, where the flash is swallowed up by the smoke effaced by its own dispersion. but for the purpose of the painter, the action of water breaking over ledges and boulders does not correspond with the case of a man walking or a river flowing, because the series of events forming the progression in the case of the water breaking, cover such time and space that the events can be distinctly separated by the eye. clearly also this action should not be included in de quincey's second category, because the repetition is both regular and (to all intents and purposes) perpetual. there should therefore be a third category to comprise those repeated progressive acts in which the events can be so separated by the eye as to be portrayed on canvas in the order of their progression, and in such a way that the whole progression, and the meaning of it, are at once apparent. [a] _laocoon_, phillimore translation. [b] essay on "lessing." [illustration: plate (see page ) greek sculpture of ariadne (_vatican_)] note . page professor clausen relates that whistler told him that his object in painting nocturnes was to try and exhibit the "mystery and beauty of the night." it is obvious that whistler was here confusing psychological with visual impressions. the depth of gloom, the apparently limitless dark void which the eye cannot penetrate, mean mystery in a sense, because we can never accustom ourselves to the suggestion of infinity involved in something which is boundless to the senses. a sensation of the sublime may consequently arise, and this means beauty in a psychological sense. but we are considering art and not psychology. where nothing is distinguished, nothing can be painted, and if there be sufficient light for objects to be determined, there can be no mystery for the painter. if he be desirous of representing night, he must follow the example of michelangelo and symbolize it. it is curious that since the death of whistler, a picture entitled mysteries of the night has been painted by another american artist--j. h. johnston. a figure of a beautiful nude woman is standing on a rocky shore in a contemplative attitude, with the moonlight thrown upon her. the design is excellent, but the realistic modelling of the figure effectually kills any suggestion of mystery. note . page vasari mentions that michelangelo, though admiring the colour and manner of titian regretted that the venetian painters did not pay more attention to drawing in their studies.[a] in quoting this, reynolds observed[b]: but if general censure was given to that school from the sight of a picture by titian, how much more heavily and more justly would the censure fall on paolo veronese, and more especially on tintoretto. reynolds himself rightly excluded titian when he condemned the later venetian painters of the renaissance for their exaggeration of colour, and no doubt titian was also exempted by j. a. symonds in his trenchant criticism of the work of this school. when dealing with the decline of lesbian poetry after the brilliant period of sappho, he wrote[c]: in this the lesbian poets were not unlike the provençal troubadours, who made a literature of love, or the venetian painters, who based their art on the beauty of colour, the voluptuous charms of the flesh. in each case the motive of enthusiastic passion sufficed to produce a dazzling result. but as soon as its freshness was exhausted there was nothing left for art to live on, and mere decadence to sensuality ensued. [a] _life of titian_. [b] reynolds's fourth discourse. [c] _studies of the greek poets_, vol. i. note . page sir george beaumont relates of reynolds[a]: on his return from his second tour over flanders and holland, he observed to me that the pictures of rubens appeared much less brilliant than they had done on his former inspection. he could not for some time account for this little circumstance; but when he recollected that when he first saw them he had his notebook in his hand for the purpose of writing down short remarks, he perceived what had occasioned their now making a less impression than they had done formerly. by the eye passing immediately from the white paper to the picture, the colours derived uncommon richness and warmth; but for want of this foil they afterwards appeared comparatively cold. [a] cunningham's _lives of the british painters_. note . page rodin[a] observes that in giving movement to his personages, the artist represents the transition from one pose to another--he indicates how insensibly the first glides into the second. in his work we still see a part of what was, and we discover a part of what is to be. rodin points to rude's fine statue of marshal ney, and practically says that here the illusion is created by a series of progressive actions indicated in the attitude: the legs remaining as they were when the sword was about to be drawn, and the hand still holding the scabbard away from the body, while the chest is being thrown out and the sword held aloft. thus the sculptor compels, so to speak, the spectator to follow the development of an act in an individual. the eyes are forced to travel upwards from the lower limbs to the raised arm, and as in so doing they find the different parts of the figure represented at successive instants, they have the illusion of beholding the movement performed. rodin himself has followed a similar course with much success. the ancient greek sculptors, when representing a figure in action, invariably chose a moment of rest between two progressive steps in the action. the discobolus and marsyas of myron, and particularly the atalanta in the louvre, are fine examples. [a] _art, by auguste rodin_, compiled by paul gsell, . note . page mengs, in referring to the arrangement of the drapery in raphael's figures, says[a]: with him every fold has its proper cause; either in its own weight or in the motion of the limbs. sometimes the folds enable us to tell what has preceded; herein too raphael has endeavoured to find significance. it can be seen by the position of the folds, whether an arm or a leg has been moved forwards or backwards into the attitude which it actually occupies; whether a limb has been, or is being, moved from a contracted position into a straightened one, or whether it was extended at first and is being contracted. [a] _the works of anton raphael mengs_, vol. ii., d'azara translation. note . page besides assisting in providing an illusion, the title of a picture may lend great additional interest to it. thus in millet's the angelus the associations called up by the title act most powerfully on the mind, and one almost listens for the sound of the bell.[a] a work of a similar character is bonvin's ave maria, where the nuns of a convent are answering the call[b]; and horace walker has a picture with the same title, in which a boy who is driving cattle, stops in front of a crucifix by the wayside[c]. an excellent example of this added interest is the title of turner's great picture of the _temeraire_,[d] as to which r. phillimore writes[e]: it is not difficult to imagine the picture of an old man-of-war towed by a steam tug up a river. the execution of such a subject may deserve great praise and give great satisfaction to the beholder. but add to the representation the statement that it is "the fighting temeraire towed to her last berth, " and a series of the most stirring events of our national history fills our imagination. [a] the louvre. [b] the luxembourg. [c] corcoran gallery, washington. [d] national gallery, london. [e] preface to translation of lessing's _laocoon_. note . page there is an antique sculptured group in the vatican in which a precisely similar figure of the son of niobe has his left hand on the shoulder of his sister who has fallen to her knees from the effect of a wound, and it is very reasonably suggested that the florence figure originally formed part of a like group. but the explanation of the act given by perry[a] and others, that the drapery was raised by the brother to shield the girl, will scarcely hold good, as the folds are spread out at the back, forming a concavity, whereas they would fall loosely if the youth were resting. apart from this, his legs are widely separated, and in a running position. it may therefore be surmised that in the vatican group the artist intended to represent the precise moment when the fleeing youth reached his sister. [a] _greek and roman sculpture._ note . page it is curious that among the countless pictures of the annunciation, in very few indeed has surprise been expressed in the countenance and attitude of the virgin, though it is impossible to imagine an incident more properly calling for profound astonishment on the part of the principal personage in a composition, even in the absence of startling miraculous accessories such as that introduced by rossetti. probably the reason for this is connected with the difficulty of expressing great surprise unaccompanied with some other feeling, as pleasure, or sorrow, or fear, but there does not seem to be any cause why an exalted joyful excitement should not be exhibited. mrs. jameson thinks that the virgin should not appear startled, as she was "accustomed to the perpetual ministry of angels who daily and hourly attended on her,"[a] but it is questionable whether this can be properly assumed by the artist, and in any case from the point of view of art, the action should correspond with the nature of the event as it is generally understood. of the few masters who have indicated surprise in an annunciation picture, tintoretto has gone the farthest. he shows the virgin with her lips parted, and both hands held up, evidently with astonishment,[b] an example followed by paris bordone.[c] raphael in an early picture represents her holding up one hand, but the attitude might signify the reception of an announcement of importance.[d] perugino shows her with both hands raised, but otherwise she appears unconcerned.[e] a few other artists, including venusti and foppa, and among modern men, girodet, adopt raphael's method of composition. rubens goes a step farther, and represents the virgin apparently standing back with surprise, though this is only faintly suggested by the facial expression.[f] [a] _legends of the madonna._ [b] scuolo di san rocoo, venice. [c] sienna gallery. [d] the vatican. [e] santa maria nouvo, perugia. [f] vienna gallery. index of sculptors, painters, and works of art note.--the schools to which the earlier italian painters belonged are given in brackets. a adam, franz, - , german --bavarian regiment before orleans, aivasovsky, i. k., - , russian, albani, francesco, - , italian, --toilet of venus, albertinelli, mariotto, - , italian [florentine] --the salutation, alcamenes, fifth century b.c., greek, altdorfer, a., (_c._)- , german --the nativity, aman, jean, -, french --sorbonne panels, ancher, anna k., -, danish --the funeral, andreani, a., - , italian, angelico, fra (giovanni da fiesole), - , italian [florentine], , antico (pier giacomo ilario), worked late th and early th century, italian, antonella da messina, (_c._)- , italian [venetian] --crucifixion, antonio del ceraiolo, worked first half sixteenth century, italian [florentine], apelles, fourth century b.c., greek, , --venus anadyomene, , , plate ; alexander in the character of jupiter, avercamp, hendrick van, - , dutch, b bartolommeo da bagnacavallo (bart. ramenghi), - , italian [bolognese] --holy family, bartolommeo, fra (baccio della porta, or bart. di pagholo), - , italian [florentine] --adoration of the shepherds, bartolozzi, francesco, - , italian, basaiti, marco, died after , italian [venetian] --the dead christ, ; calling of the children of zebedee, ; christ on the mount of olives, baschenis, evaristo, - , italian, battistello (giovanni battista caracciolo), - , italian, --adoration of the shepherds, bellano, bartolommeo, - , benjamin-constant, j. j., - , french, benoit-levy, jules, -, french --morning of july , , berghem, nicholas (or berchem), - , dutch, , bernadino da conti, died , italian [venetian] --virgin and child, bernini, g. l., - , italian, , berritini, pietro, - , italian, bertoldo di giovanni, (_c._)- , italian, bischop, c, - , dutch, blyhooft, z., (_c._)- , dutch, boecklin, a., - , german, --vita somnium breve, ; pietà, boltraffio, g. a., - , italian [milanese] --virgin and child, bonfiglio, benedetto, - (_c._) italian [perugian] --virgin and child, bonheur, rosa, - , french --ploughing in nivernois, bordone, paris, - , italian [venetian] --annunciation, both, andries, - , flemish, both, jan, (_c._)- , flemish, botticelli, sandro (alessandro di mariano dei filippi), - , italian [florentine] --pietà, ; nativity, ; reposing venus, ; athena and the centaur, boucher, françois, - , french --louvre portrait, ; sleeping venus, ; birth of venus, bough, s., - , british --borrowdale, bouguereau, a. w., - , french --assumption of the virgin, ; une âme au ciel, ; birth of venus, ; aurora, ; twilight, ; the lost pleiad, bouts, dirk, - , flemish --adoration of the magi, braquemond, j. f., -, french, bramantino (bartolommeo suardi), -(_c._) , italian [milanese] --christ, ; virgin and child, breton, jules, - , french --cry of alarm, breughel, jan, - , flemish, breughel, pieter, - , flemish, bril, paul, - , flemish, bronzino (angelo allori), - , italian [florentine] --venus and cupid, brown, arnesby, -, british --the drove, burne-jones, e. b., - , british --annunciation, ; golden stairs, ; dies domini, c cabanel, aexandre, - , french --venus anadyomene, calamis, fifth century b.c., greek, canaletto (antonio canale), - , italian, canova, antonio, - , italian --l'amour et psyche, cappelle, jan van de, (_c._)- , dutch, carracci, agostino, - , italian, carracci, annibale, - , italian, carracci, ludovico, - , italian, caravaggio, m. (michelangelo amerighi), - , italian, , cavalori, mirabello, middle sixteenth century, italian [florentine] --the carpet weavers, cellini, benvenuto, - , italian, , cephisodostos, early fourth century b.c., greek --irene and pluto, cézanne, paul, - , french, , chardin, j. s., - , french, , chartier, h., (_c._)-, french --jena, ; hanan, chase, w. m., - , american --master roland, cignani, carlo, - , italian, , cimabue, giovanni, (_c._)- , italian [florentine] , , --virgin and child, cipriani, g. b., - , italian, claude lorraine (claude gelée), - , french, , , , , , , --arcadian landscape, plate clausen, george, -, british, , cogniet, l., - , french. --tintoretto painting his dead daughter, colton, w. r., -, british --royal artillery memorial, constable, john, - , british, , , copley, j. s., - , american --death of chatham, corenzio, bellisario, (_c._)- , greek, cornelius, peter, - , german --let there be light, correggio (antonio allegri), - , italian [parma], , , , , --vice, ; virtue, ; mercury instructing cupid, ; madonna and child with saints (parma), ; parma frescoes, costa, lorenzo, - , italian [ferrarese] --coronation of the virgin, ; cupid crowning isabella d'este, cosway, richard, - , british, cot, p. a., - , french --the storm, courbet, g., - , french --funeral at ornans, coypel, antoine, - , french, coypel, noel, - , french, crivelli, carlo, (_c._)- , italian (venetian) --coronation of the virgin, crome, john, - , british, cuyp, albert, - , dutch, , d dalsgaard, christen, -, danish --the child's coffin, damophon, second century b.c., greek, danby, f., - , british, dehodencq, e. a., - , french --bohemians returning from a fête, delacroix, e. v. e., - , french, delaroche, paul (hippolyte delaroche), - , french --death of queen elizabeth, demont-breton, v., -, french --the divine apprentice, diaz, n., - , french --descent of the bohemians, dolci, carlo, - , italian --christ blessing, domenichino (domenico zampieri), - , italian, --st. cecilia, ; st. paul's vision, donatello (donate di betto bardi), (_c._)- , italian, , , , doomer, lambert, (_c._)- , dutch, doré, gustave, - , french --creation of the earth, ; samson slaying the philistines, dossi, dosso, - , italian [ferrarese] --muse instructing a court poet, ; nymph and satyr, dow, gerard, - , dutch, , --the dentist, duccio, boninsegna di, (_c._)- , italian [siennese], --madonna and child, dumont, jacques (le romain), - , french --madame mercier and family, dürer, albrecht, - , german, --the virgin with a canary, dyce, william, - , british --st. john leading the virgin from the tomb, e eakins, thomas, - , american --dr. cross's surgical clinic, emmet, lydia, -, american --patricia, , plate ercole di roberti (e. di r. grandi), (_c._)- , italian [ferrarese] --the concert, everdingen, e. van, - , dutch, f falconet, p. e., - , french, ferrari, gaudenzio, - , italian [milanese] --madonna and child, ferri c., - , italian --david plans a temple, feuerbach, a., - , german --medea, filarete (antonio averlino), (_c._) - , italian, flaxman, john, - , british, fontana, b. (g. b. farinati), - , italian --vision of resurrection, foppa, vincenzo, (?)- , italian [milanese] --annunciation, fragonard, j. h., - , french, , --the pursuit, ; the rendezvous, ; souvenirs, ; the lover crowned, ; the abandonment, ; venus awakened by aurora, francesco da cotignola (f. dei zaganelli), worked early sixteenth century, italian [parma] --adoration of the shepherds, francia (francesco raibolini), - , italian [bolognese], --madonna and child in glory, ; madonna and child in a rose garden, fries, hans, (_c._) - , german --virgin and child with st. anne, frith, w. p., - , british --poverty and wealth, fromentin, e., - , french, --couriers des ooled nayls, g gaddi, taddeo, - , italian [florentine], gainsborough, t., - , british, --mrs. leybourne, ; lady sheffield, genga, girolamo, - , italian. magdalene with saints, géricault, jean louis, - , french --epsom, ghiberti, lorenzo, - , italian, ghirlandaio, domenico, - , italian [florentine], , --old man and boy, ; birth of st. john baptist, ; death of st. francis, ghirlandaio, ridolfo, - , italian [florentine] --madonna giving her girdle to st. thomas, gilbert, john, - , british --slaying of job's sheep, giordano, luca, - , italian, giorgio, francesco di, - , italian [siennese] --christ bereft of his clothes before the crucifixion, giorgione (giorgio barbarelli), - , italian [venetian], , , --adrastus and hysipyle, , ; the sleeping venus, giotto (giotto di bondone), (_c._)- , italian [florentine], , , , --madonna and child, giovanni di bologna (jean de douai), - , french or flemish, --mercury, girodet de roncy, a. l., - , french --burial of atala, ; annunciation, girolamo da libri, - , italian [venetian] --virgin and child, gouthière, pierre, - , french, goyen, jan van, - , dutch --view of the hague, granacci, francesco, - , italian [florentine] --the virgin giving her girdle to st. thomas, grant, francis, - , british --countess of chesterfield and mrs. anson, greco, el (dominico theotocopuli), (_c._)- , greek, grien, hans baldung, - , german --the three ages, ; sacred and profane love, ; pictures representing death, gros, a. j., - , french --the combat of nazareth, ; timoleon of corinth, guardi, francesco, - , italian --regatta on the grand canal, guercino (g. f. da cento), - , italian --martyrdom of st. peter, gutherz, c, - , swiss --"they shall bear thee up," h hacker, a., -, british --the cry of egypt, hals, franz, - , dutch, , , --the laughing cavalier, ; stephanus gereardts, ; isabella coymans, ; lady with a fan, ; willem van heythuysen, ; merry company at table, hanneman, adrian, - , dutch --constantine huygens and children, heim, f. j., - , french, henneberg, r. f., - , german --race for fortune, hobbema, m., - , dutch, , , --landscape, plate hoet, g., - , dutch --translation of enoch, hogarth, w., - , british, , holbein, hans, - , german, --the barber surgeons, ; holy family, ; the ambassadors, , ; virgin and child, homer, winslow, - , american --all's well, , plate hoppner, john, - , british, humphrey, ozias, - , british, hunt, w. h., - , british --shadow of the cross, ; the scapegoat, i ingres, j. a. d., - , french --oath of louis xiii., ; [oe]dipus and the sphinx, ; birth of venus, innes, george, - , american --niagara falls, j johnstone, j. h., -, american --mysteries of the night, k kampf, arthur, -, german --night of march , , kauffmann, maria angelica, - , german, kaulbach, w. von, - , german --marguerite, keyser, thomas de, (_c._)- , dutch --lesson in anatomy, kulmbach, hans (hans suess), (_c._)- , german --entombment of st. catherine, l lancret, nicolas, - , french, lard, f. m., late nineteenth century, french --glory forgets not obscure heroes, la touche, g., - , french, --firework pictures, la tour, maurice q., - , french --madame de la popelinière, ; mdlle. camargo, ; madame de pompadour, latour, i. h. fantin, - , french, lawrence, thomas, - , british, , le brun, charles, - , french, --death of cato, leighton, f., - , british --captive andromache, leoni, leone, died , italian, le sueur, e., - , french, --venus reposing, ; the virgin appearing to st. martin, levy, h. l., - , french --young girl and death, liberale di verona, - , italian [veronese] --magdalene with saints, lionardo da vinci, - , italian [milanese], , , , , , , --the last supper, , ; mona lisa (paris), , , --(formerly boston), , ; litta madonna, , plate ; virgin and child with st. anne, , lippi, filippo, - , italian [florentine], --virgin and child, , loefftz, l., -, german --the dead christ, longepied, l., - , french --immortality, longhi, pietro, - , italian, lorenzetto, p., first half fourteenth century, italian [siennese] --madonna and child, lotto, lorenzo, - , italian [venetian] --three ages of man, ; triumph of chastity, luca di tome, first half fourteenth century, italian [siennese], luini, aurelio (a. del lupino), - , italian [milanese], luini, bernadino (b. del lupino), (_c._)- , italian [milanese] --entombment of st. catherine, ; salome, lux, h. l., late nineteenth century, french --sarpedon, lysippus, fourth century b.c., greek, --hercules in depressed mood, m mainardi, s., died about , italian [florentine] --madonna giving her girdle to st. thomas, maître de flemelle (robert campin), (_c._)- , french or flemish, , manet, edouard, - , french, --boy with a sword, ; déjeuner sur l'herbe, ; olympia, mantegna, andrea, - , italian [paduan] --the infant christ, ; virgin and child, margaritone of arezzo, - , italian [tuscan], maratta, carlo, - , italian, , martin, john, - , british --plague of hail, ; destruction of pharaoh, ; "i have set my bow in the cloud," masaccio (tommaso guidi), - , italian [florentine], , --the madonna enthroned, ; tribute money, matisse, henry, -, french, matsys, quentin, (_c._)- , flemish, meissonier, j. l. e., - , french -- , mengs, anton r., - , german, --st. john baptist preaching, menzel, a., - , german --market place in verona, ; iron mill, meyer, k., - , swiss, michelangelo buonarotti, - , italian [florentine, roman], , , , , , , , , , , , , --holy family (florence), ; last judgment, , ; reposing venus, ; leda, ; night, ; san lorenzo madonna, ; bargello madonna, ; pietà, ; moses, ; bacchus, ; st. stephen, ; creation of adam, plate mignard, pierre, - , french, millais, j. e., - , british --the carpenter's shop, millet, j. f., - , french --the angelus, molyn, p., (_c._)- , dutch, monet, c. j., -, french, montagna, b., (_c._)- , italian [venetian] --the virgin enthroned, moro, antonio, - , flemish --catilina of portugal, ; maria of austria, morot, a. n., -, french --reichsoffen, moser, lucas, first half fifteenth century, german --voyage of the saints, murillo, b. e., - , spanish, , --holy family, ; ascension of christ, ; immaculate conception pictures, myron, fifth century b.c., greek, , --discobolus, ; marsyas, , n nattier, j. m., - , french, --madame louise, o orcagna (andrea di cione), (_c._)- , italian [florentine] --assumption of the virgin, orchardson, w. q., - , british --the borgia, p palma giovane (jacopo palma), - , italian [venetian] --christ in judgment, palma vecchio (jacopo palma), (_c._)- , italian [venetian] --reposing venus, ; assumption, parmigiano (francesco mazzuoli), - , italian [parma] --madonna and child with saints, pedrini, giovanni (giampietrino), late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, italian [milanese] --madonna, perronneau, j. b., - , french --madame olivier, perugino, pietro (pietro vanucci), - , italian [umbrian], , --christ's rule, ; deposition, ; assumption of the virgin, ; ascension, , ; baptism of christ, ; madonna with child and penitents, ; annunciation, ; crucifixion (florence), phidias, fifth century b.c., greek, , , , , , , , --olympian zeus, ; parthenon athena, , picart, b., - , french --the burning coal, piero di cosimo (piero rosselli or piero di lorenzo), - , italian [florentine], --marsyas and the pipes of athena, , , ; death of procris, ; mars and cupid, pinturicchio, b., - , italian [umbrian], pisano, giovanni, fourteenth century, italian --madonna and child, pisano, giunto, first half thirteenth century, italian --christ and the virgin, pisano, niccolo, (_c._)- , italian --infant christ, pissarro, c., - , french, polidoro da caravaggio (polidoro caldara), died , italian [neapolitan], pollaiuolo, antonio (a. di jacopo benci), - , italian [florentine], --hercules contemplating death, , plate , polyclitus, fifth century b.c., greek --hera, polygnotus, fifth century b.c., greek --frescoes from homer, pontormo (jacopo carrucci), - , italian [florentine], --venus reposing, potter, paul, - , dutch, , poussin, gaspar (gaspar dughet), - , french, poussin, nicholas, - , french, , , , , --jonah cast into the sea, ; assumption of the virgin, ; st. francis xavier, ; vision of st. paul, ; venus reposing, ; adam and eve, ; diana sleeps in the forest, ; descent from the cross, poynter, e. j., -, british --building the treasure city, praxiteles, fourth century b.c., greek, , , , , , --the cnidian aphrodite, , ; hermes and the infant bacchus, , , prevost, jean, died , french --old man and death, prudhon, p. p. - , french --crucifixion, ; abduction of psyche, r raeburn, henry, - , british, --the farmer's wife, ; mrs. lauzun, ; mrs. balfour, ; dr. n. spens, raphael (raffaello sanzio), - , italian [umbrian, florentine, roman], , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , --god appearing to isaac, ; god separating water from earth, ; creation of the sun and moon, ; transfiguration, ; julius ii., , , ; school of athens, ; parnassus, ; prophets and sybils, , ; foligna madonna, ; creation of woman, ; maddalena doni, ; angelo doni, ; study from mona lisa, ; the redeemer, ; madonna and child (bridgewater), ; madonna and child with st. john (berlin), ; holy family (madrid), deliverance of st. peter, ; fire at the borgo, ; flight of lot and his family, ; crucifixion, ; moses striking the rock, ; saint cecilia, ; saint sebastian, ; venus anadyomene, ; christ blessing, ; casa tempi madonna, ; cowper madonna, ; leo n. and the cardinals medici, ; fornarina, ; portrait of a young man, ; mercury and psyche, ; st. margaret, , plate ; annunciation, ; apollo and marsyas, , , ; virgin with a goldfinch, , ; sistine madonna, ravestyn, jan van, - , dutch, redon, o., died , french --death, the friend, regnault, h., - , french --automedon and the horses of achilles, , plate rembrandt van ryn, h., - , dutch, , , , , , --rembrandt and saskia, ; angel quitting tobias, ; lesson in anatomy, ; lady with a dog, ; ascension of christ, , ; night watch, ; syndics of the drapers, ; portrait young man (beit coll.), ; do. (wachtmeister coll.), ; martin day, ; machteld von doorn, ; samson menacing his father-in-law, reni, guido, - , italian --assumption of the virgin, rethel, a., - , german --death at a masked ball, ; death the friend, reynolds, joshua, - , british, , , , , , --the infant hercules, ; mrs. siddons as tragedy, ; mrs. billington as cecilia, ; hon. lavinia bingham, ; mrs. abington, ; viscountess crosbie, riccio (andrea briosco), - , italian, , ribera, giuseppe, - , italian, rigaud, h., - , french, --louis xv. as a boy, robbia, luca della, - , italian, robbia, andrea della - , italian, roberts, david, - , british --the israelites depart, rodin, a., - , french, , --la vieille heaulmière, roll, a. p., -, french, romano, giulio (g. pippi), - , italian [roman] --holy family, romney, george, - , british, , , --lady hamilton as a bacchante, ; william booth, ; mrs. thomas raikes, ; the ladies spencer, ; mrs. yates, ; mrs. tickle, rosa, salvator, - , italian, --samuel's curse, rosalba (rosalba carriera), - , italian, roslin, a., - , french, . rossellino, antonio, - , italian, rossetti, d. g., - , british --annunciation, rubens, p. p., - , flemish, , , , , , , --assumption of the virgin (dusseldorf), ; do. (vienna), ; do. (augsburg), ; do. (brussels), ; ascension (vienna), ; do (venice), ; deity and christ, ; diana and nymphs, , plate ; harvest landscape (munich), ; do. (wallace coll.), ; virgin and child (rome), ; birth of venus, ; landscape with a rainbow, ; shipwreck of Æneas, ; annunciation (vienna), ; landscape with baucis and philemon, ; funeral of decius, ; boreas and oreithyia, ; landscape by moonlight, ; toilet of venus, ; christ on the cross, ; death of seneca, ; the four philosophers, ; david's last song, ; marie de' medici series, rude, françois, - , french --marshal ney, ; marseillaise, ruysdael, jacob, (_c._)- , dutch, , , --the rising storm, , plate ; landscape with flowing water, , plate ; the marsh, s sacchi, andrea, - , italian, saint-bonvin, f., - , french --ave maria, saint-gaudens, a., - , american --shaw memorial relief, salviati, f. (francesco de rossi), - , italian [florentine] --justice, sansovino (jacopo tatti), - , italian, sarto, andrea del (andrea agnolo), - , italian [florentine], --holy family (hermitage), sassoferrato (giovanni battisto salvi), - , italian, scheffer, ary, - , dutch --temptation of christ, schiavone, andrea, - , italian [venetian] --jupiter and io, schnorr, j. von k., - , german --god's promise to abraham, schongauer, martin, (_c._) - , german, schonherr, c., nineteenth century, german --agony in the garden, schreyer, adolf, - , german --the attack, schwind, m., - , austrian --the pleiads, , plate ; rainbow, ; phantom in the forest, scopas, fourth century b.c., greek, --demeter, , plate sebastiano del piombo (sebastiano luciani), - , italian [venetian] --concert, signorelli, luca, (_c._)- , italian [umbrian], --portrait of a man, ; madonna and child, , simson, william, - , british, snyders, frans, - , flemish, , sodoma, il, (giovanni a. bazzi), - , italian [siamese] --sacrifice of abraham, steen, jan, - , dutch --terrace scene, t tassaert, o., - , french, --assumption of the virgin, teniers, david, - , dutch, terburg (or terborch), gerard, - , dutch, --peace of munster, thoma, hans, -, german --temptation of christ, ; cupid and death, ; sin and death, ; progress of the gods to walhalla, ; rainbow, ; view of laufenburg, thomson, john, - , british --fast castle, ; dunluce castle, tiepolo, g. b., - , italian, timanthes, fourth century b.c., greek --sacrifice of iphigenia, , plate , tintoretto (jacopo robusti), - , italian [venetian], --bacchus and ariadne, ; annunciation, ; presentation of the virgin, titian (titiano vecelli), - , italian [venetian], , , , , , , , --assumption of the virgin, ; sacred and profane love, , ; resurrection, ; madonna of the cherries, ; meeting of joachim and anna, ; three ages of man, ; madonna with ss. anthony and john, , ; jacopo pesaro presented to st. peter, ; paul iii. with the two brothers farnese, , ; reposing venus (uffizi), ; venus anadyomene, ; aretino, ; man with the gloves, ; duke of alba, ; portraits of philip ii., ; charles v. at mühlberg, , ; portraits of his daughter, ; duke of ferrara, ; physician of parma, ; toilet of venus, ; christ on the cross, ; pharaoh's host overwhelmed, ; self-portrait, ; venus and the organ player, turner, j. m. w., - , british, , , --arundel castle, ; the _temeraire_ towed to her last berth, u uhde, fritz von, -, german, --cavalry going into action, ; revenge, ; the three magi, v van der neer, a., - , dutch, van de velde, w., - , dutch, van der venne, a. p., - , dutch --the soul fishery, van der weyden, roger, (_c._)- , flemish, , van dyck, anthony, - , flemish, , , , --four ages, ; christ on the cross, , plate ; earl of pembroke, ; earl of bedford, ; philip le roy, ; henrietta maria (windsor), ; portrait of his wife, ; earl of newport, ; countess of devonshire, van eyck, jan, (_c._)- , flemish, --virgin and child at the fountain, ; arnolfini and his wife, ; chancellor rollin before the virgin, van gogh, v., - , dutch, , velasquez, d. r. de silva, - , spanish, _et seq._, --christ at the column, ; las meninas, , ; coronation of the virgin, ; the drinkers, ; the three musicians, ; the breakfast, ; portraits of philip iv., ; olivares, ; innocent x., ; don antonio el ingles, ; rokeby venus, ; surrender of breda, ; christ in the house of martha, venusti, marcello, died after , italian [florentine] --annunciation, verestchagin, v., - , russian, vermeer, jan (of delft), - , dutch, vernet, e. j. horace, - , french --la smalah, veronese, paolo (paolo caliari), - , italian [venetian], , , verrocchio, andrea del, - , italian, viti, timoteo della, - , italian [umbrian], , w walker, horatio, -, american --ave maria, watteau, antoine, - , french, , --embarkation for cythera (paris), ; do. (berlin), watts, george f., - , british --death, the friend, , west, benjamin, - , american --death of general wolfe, whistler, j. a. mcn., - , american, , wiertz, a., - , belgian --the orphans, ; things of the past, wilson, richard, - , british, witt, j. h., - , american --bless the lord, wouverman, philip, - , dutch, , z zurbaran, francisco, - , spanish, general index a actors in stage rôles, portraits of, aerial perspective, claude the first master of, ; its importance, ; method of producing, Æsthetic systems, all of them untenable, , ; carritt on, ; of hegel, ; of croce, ages of man, pictures contrasting the, allegorical painting, when secondary art, angel of death in art, instances of, ; symbol of, angels, representation of, in aerial suspension and flight, , animal painting, in action, ; ideals in, not possible, annunciation, the, indication of surprise in expression, , apelles, his venus anadyomene, , ; epigrams on, aphrodite (_see_ venus) apollo, his representation in art, architecture, its position in the fine arts, ; imitative character of, , ; unconcerned with ideals, ; produces sensorial beauty only, ; simplicity its keynote, ; standard of judgment in, ; s. colvin on, ares (_see_ mars) aristotle, on imitation in art, , ; on metrical form in poetry, , ; his division of the painter's art, ; his connection of morals with art, art, definition of, ; its mimetic character, ; sensorial beauty, first aim of, ; must deal chiefly with types, ; independent of social and political conditions, ; of psychological impulses, , ; great periods of, ; suggested evolution in, ; "classic" and "romantic," ; relation of, to nature, ; popular appreciation of, ; grecian, cause of its decline, ; italian renaissance of, cause of its decline, ; limitation of sculpture and painting in, ; tolstoy's definition of, ; ideals in (_see_ the ideal in art) artemis (_see_ diana) artists, training necessary for, ; cause of variation in work of, ; reputations of great, ; as judges of works of art, arts (_see_ fine arts) assent, law of general, _et seq._ associated arts, the arts associated, ; first law of the, ; highest art in, recognized by general opinion, ; ideals in, ; cannot properly be used for moral or social purposes, ; their method of producing beauty, _et seq._; limitations of, athena, her representation in art, atmospheric effects, limitations in producing, ; exceptional phases, b bacchus, his representation in art, barbizon school, anticipated by dutch masters, ; sketches of the, of little importance, ; use of heavy gilt frames for works of the, beauty, definitions of, unsatisfactory, , ; alleged objectivity of, ; highest form of, ; unconnected with philosophy, ; first law of, in the associated arts, ; ideal, ; kinds of, in the arts, , , ; degrees of, in the arts generally, , in painting, ; sensorial (or emotional), , ; intellectual (or beauty of expression), , ; of form, ; of color, _et seq._; methods of producing, ; as the "expression of emotion," ; longinus on the highest, ; standard of judgment of, in poetry, , in sculpture, , in painting, , in architecture, , in fiction, , in landscape, , in still-life, , in secondary art, _et seq._; general agreement in respect of, bon dieu d'amiens, ruskin on, ; farrar on, ; corresponds with certain greek art, , plate brevity in expression, highest beauty in poetry, marked by, broad style of painting, cause of, with great artists, ; its limitations, ; advocacy of, by impressionists, ; as used by rembrandt, ; by hals, bronze statuettes of the renaissance, _et seq._ byron on nature and art in respect of landscape, c caricature, its place in art, carritt, e. f., on the result of æsthetic systems, cave men, their art, ceres (_see_ demeter) chaldean art, illustration of, plate character of artists, influence of, in their work, cherubs, use of, in assisting illusion of suspension in the air, christ, representation in art, ; the established ideal, ; ruskin on the best ideal of, christian conception of the deity, its effect in art, "classic art," hegel's definition, ; varied meanings of the term, claude lorraine, the first great landscape painter, ; the cause of his success, ; goethe on, ; the model for turner, clausen, g., his definition of impressionism, ; on whistler's nocturnes, clouds, use of, in relation to air-suspended figures, coast views, illusion of motion in, color, beauty of, _et seq._; its relative importance, ; in landscape, ; juxtaposition of pure colors, , ; by venetian artists, , ; exceptional color effects, ; its use by impressionists, _et seq._ colvin, s., claims music and architecture as non-imitative arts, comedy, its place in the painter's art, contentment, quality of expression in the madonna, ; in venus, contrast, its use in composition, ; of forms, ; of ages, ; of beauty and strength, ; of good and evil, ; of poverty and wealth, ; of vice and virtue, ; of nude and clothed figures, correggio, and the sublime, criticism, the new, croce, b., his æsthetic system, ; on genius, d darwin, c., on the result of nerve exercise, ; on natural music, death, representation of, _et seq._; in the crucifixion, ; typified by a skeleton, ; in massacres and executions, ; in interior scenes, ; funeral scenes, ; scenes of approaching, ; angel of, decorative art, imitation in, deformity in art, deity, the, representation of, ; ideals of, demeter, representation of, , plate demosthenes, example of his art, de quincey, t., on the representation of progressive actions, descriptive poetry, its limits, ; in the seventeenth century, ; example from sophocles, , from cornelius gallus, diana, representation of, dignity, in portraiture, ; practice of titian, ; of van dyck, ; of velasquez, dionysus (_see_ bacchus) drama, the, pictures from the written, ; from the acted, ; importance of tragedy in painting, drapery, with use of in sculpture, proportions possible which are not feasible in nude figures, ; use of, in painting by raphael, , ; for assisting illusions, dutch painters of the seventeenth century, their limited imaginations, e eaton, d. c., on the origin of impressionism, egyptian art, its early high development, , plate emotional element in beauty (_see_ beauty) emotions, the, influence of, in the work of artists, ; expression of, in relation to beauty, evolution, not applicable to art generally, ; spencer on, ; symonds on, execution in painting, must be balanced with imagination, ; of hals, ; of lionardo, ; of rembrandt, ; of velasquez, expression, in ideals generally, ; in christian ideals, _et seq._; in classical ideals, _et seq._; in portraiture, _et seq._; in the representation of grief, ; with the smile, ; the open mouth, ; in the exhibition of deformity, ; in scenes of death, ; of raphael, ; of rembrandt, ; of the fourteenth century italian painters, ; of the thirteenth century french sculptors, ; in the literary arts, _et seq._ f falconet, e., on the representation of grief, farrar, dean, on the ideal of christ, ; on the early italian painters, fiction, as a fine art, , ; one of the associated arts, ; imitation in, ; forms of, ; basic and structural in character, ; standard of judgment in, ; in relation to sensorial beauty, ; unconcerned with ideals, (_see also_ novel) fine arts, imitative in character, ; classified according to their signs, ; their methods of producing beauty, ; standards of judgment in the, fireworks, unsuitable for the painter, flight, representation of (_see_ illusion of suspension and motion in the air) flowers, their representation in still-life, ; in decorative art, foreground in landscape, illusion of opening distance in, form, beauty of, ; ideal, frames of pictures, their use in barbizon works, ; exclusion of, in artificial means to secure relief, french sculptors of the thirteenth century, their forms in the greek manner, ; their representation of the virgin and child, , frescoes, necessarily divided into sections, ; reynolds on raphael's, funeral scenes in art, g general opinion, standard of judgment in all arts except music, , genius, how produced, _et seq._; reynolds on, ; johnson on, ; hogarth on, geology, study of, may be assisted by landscape painting, gods, mythological (_see_ grecian, under their separate headings); roman, grace, inferior as a special quality in portraiture, ; as applied in greece and rome, ; in sixteenth century art, ; in seventeenth century art, ; in england in the eighteenth century, ; in france, ; kinds of, grandeur, highest quality of beauty in architecture, ; practically impossible in landscape, ; in portraiture, ; in van dyck's works, ; in gainsborough's works, grecian art, cause of its decline, ; development of, compared with that of the renaissance, _et seq._ grecian sculpture, its high place in art, ; ideals in, , ; representation of adults with children in, ; studied by the great masters of the renaissance, ; in portraiture, h hals, franz, his facility, ; his limited imagination, ; his broad manner, ; the works of pupils attributed to him, hegel, g. w., his "periods" in art, hephæstus (_see_ vulcan) hera (_see_ juno) hercules, his representation as contemplating death, hermes (_see_ mercury) historical painting, its place in art, hogarth, w., on genius, holmes, c. j., on the framing of barbizon pictures, homer, example of his art, hood, t., his moods and his work, horses, representation in action, human figure, principal sign in the associated arts, , ; produces highest form of beauty, ; general ideal of, ; greek ideals, humboldt, a., on the position of landscape in art, humorous subjects, their place in the painter's art, hyperides, example of his art, i ideal in art, the, only possible in respect of the human form, , ; inapplicable to form without expression, ; definition of, ; must be general, ; general agreement in respect of, ; can only be applied to excellence, ; limitation of, ; ideals of the greeks, , , of the early italians, , of the thirteenth century french sculptors, , of the deity, , , of christ, , , of the madonna, , of zeus, , of the other grecian deities, , of phidias, , of raphael, , , of praxiteles, , in, of michelangelo, ; general ideals, ; universality of, , ; ideal qualities, illusion of continuity, in death scenes, illusion of movement, in landscape, ; in sea views, ; in coast views, ; in sculpture, , ; in figure painting, _et seq._; in animal painting, _et seq._; may be suggested by title of work, illusion of opening distance, in distance landscape, ; in nearground work, ; in sea views, illusion of relief, its value in painting, ; mechanical methods of producing, illusion of suspension and motion in the air, with the assistance of flowing drapery, ; of clouds, ; of cherubs, ; of angels, ; of smoke, imagination, the, influence of precocious, in the production of genius, ; must be balanced with skill in execution, ; of lionardo, ; of the dutch painters, ; of the spanish painters, ; of shakespeare, , imitation, the province of art, ; should be generalized, ; in landscape, , in still-life, , in decorative art, , in architecture, , in music, ; of other arts by the painter, _et seq._; aristotle on, ; s. colvin on, in respect of the fine arts, impressionism, definitions of, , _et seq._; its origin, _et seq._; its influence, ; its limitations, ; its defects, _et seq._; its effects, ; its correspondence with sprezzatura, industry, the key to success in art, , inspiration in art, not recognized by great artists, ; actual instances of, unknown, ; suggested national, _et seq._; individual, interiors, pictures of, their place in art, invention in art, its relative importance, ; in poetry, ; in painting, ; lessing on, in poetry and painting, ; in landscape, ; the term used in two senses, irony, works conveying, unsuitable for the painter, italy, art of, decline of the renaissance, _et seq._; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, _et seq._; renaissance ideals, j japanese, their practice in decoration, johnson, dr., on genius, juno, representation of, by the painter, jupiter, greek representation of, , ; ideal of, , ; by the painter, l landscape painting, its place in art, , ; produces only sensorial beauty, ; humboldt on, ; signs in, ; disadvantages of, ; limitations in, _et seq._, ; varieties of, ; relative difficulty of execution in, ; compositions must be invented, ; illusion of motion in, _et seq._; precise imitation necessary in, ; as a useful art, ; early development of, , in ancient rome, , in italy, , in holland, , in england and france, lanzi, a. l., on the range of raphael in expression, la touche, g., on the origin of impressionism, latour, fantin, and the origin of impressionism, laugh, a, when unobjectionable in painting, lessing, g., on progressive actions, ; on the relative importance of invention and execution, ; on the representation of grief, ; on descriptive poetry, ; on signs in art, ; on homer and the beauty of helen, ; on the laocoon design, ; on the dictum of simonides, ; on ugliness in poetry and painting, lewes, g. h., on the execution of signs in art, lightning, its use in landscape, ; must be subordinated, ; where used in painting by great masters, lionardo da vinci, his imagination compared with his execution, ; his relief, ; on success in painting, ; his representation of christ, literary arts, the painter must take his action from them or from nature direct, (_see_ poetry and the novel). literary movement in england in the sixteenth century, longinus, on the test of the sublime and beautiful, ; on certain examples of beauty in the literary arts, luini, a., on an "impressionist" landscape by titian, m maccoll, d. s., on the origin of impressionism, madonna, the, her representation, the test of art during the renaissance, , by cimabue and giotto, , in crucifixion scenes, ; her surroundings in art, , her representation at different ages, , michelangelo on her presumed age, ; her presumed social condition, ; the ideal of the early italian, , , of raphael, , michelangelo's portrayals of, ; limitations in the ideal of, madonna and child, representation of, by thirteenth century french sculptors, , ; in italy, ; changes in grouping of, in the fifteenth century, ; practice of later artists, _et seq._ manner in painting, its limitations, ; the public indifferent to, ; of rembrandt, ; of hals, manet, e., his connection with the rise of impressionism, marine painting (_see_ sea views) mars, representation of, in painting, mauclair, c., on impressionism, mengs, a. r., on raphael's treatment of drapery, mercury, his representation in painting, metaphor, with the poet, , , ; with the painter, michelangelo, and the sublime, ; his studies in greek art, ; reynolds on, ; his ideals of the madonna, ; on her presumed age at the crucifixion, ; on the cause of raphael's success, ; on the public judgment of works of art, ; on the venetian painters, miller, marion m., his translation of sappho's hymn to aphrodite, minerva (_see_ athena) modesty, quality in expression unsuitable to a goddess, mona lisa, the louvre example, , ; the boston example, ; her reputed age in the picture, ; her smile, mood, influence of, in the work of artists, moonlight scenes, their place in art, morals, pictures illustrating, their place in art, moreau-vautier, c., on the juxtaposition of pure colors, music, highest beauty in, produced by complex combinations of signs, ; greatest works in, the least popular, ; ideals not possible in, ; cannot present intellectual beauty, ; standard of judgment in, ; cannot be connected with painting, ; its connection with poetry, , ; imitative character of, , ; claimed by colvin as non-imitative, ; darwin on natural, muther, r., on the origin of impressionism, mystery in painting, indicates inferior art, mythological subjects, their place in painting, , n nature, relation of, to art, ; and landscape, byron on, near-ground painting in landscape, neptune, his representation in painting, nerves of the senses, their advanced condition at birth cause of precocity in art, ; alike in all people, ; connection of genius with development of, ; physiological changes in, , ; darwin on the, night, should be symbolized in painting, ; whistler attempts to represent beauty of, nocturnes, origin of whistler's, norwich school of painting, novel, the, compared with the short story, ; limit of, ; of little service to the painter, (_see_ fiction) nude with clothed figures, contrasts of, o objectivity of beauty, open mouth, the, ; when not objectionable, p painter, the, his requirements, painting, imitative character of, ; degrees of beauty in, ; compared with sculpture, ; its relation to poetry, ; general ideals in, _et seq._; classical ideals in, _et seq._; christian ideals in, _et seq._; action cannot be originated in, ; great, marked by simplicity, ; standard of judgment in, ; general expression in, ; relation of invention to execution in, ; broad manner of, ; of divinities, ; of classical scenes, ; of humorous subjects, ; of contrasts, _et seq._; of scenes from fiction, , from the written drama, , from the acted drama, ; of portraits in character, ; of ugliness, ; deformity in, ; representation of death in, ; portrait, _et seq._; landscape, _et seq._; of moonlight scenes, ; of still-life, ; secondary art of, , ; metaphor in, ; color in, _et seq._; impressionist, ; of events in time, ; symbolical, ; barbizon school of, ; quality of grace in, , of contentment, , of modesty in respect of goddesses, ; illusion of relief in, _et seq._; illusion of movement in, , in animal action, , of opening distance, , of suspension in the air, , in representation of progressive actions, , of continuity, , assisted by title, ; portraiture, _et seq._ pastoral occupations, pictures representing, periods of art, not attributable to national æsthetic stimulus, ; hegel's, phidias, his exalted position in art, ; his ideals, philips, a., his translation of sappho's ode to anactoria, philosophy, art not specially related to, pythian, f., on the origin of impressionism, poe, edgar a., on sadness and beauty, poetry, the highest art, ; its imitative scope, ; not primarily a combined art, ; value of metrical form in, ; its association with music, ; its relation to painting, ; cannot depict sensorial beauty by description, ; descriptive, ; in relation to human beauty, , to natural beauty, ; basic and structural in character, ; its range unlimited, ; ugliness in, ; standard of judgment in, , ; watts-dunton's definition of, ; translations of, pompeian frescoes, , , , , , , popular appreciation of art, _et seq._, ; tolstoy on, portraiture, its position in art, ; variation in work of portraitists, ; generalization, ; added qualities in, ; quality of dignity in, ; quality of nobility in, ; action in, ; use of the smile in, ; of stage characters, ; in ancient greece, , ; in ancient rome, ; of women, ; of raphael, ; of titian, ; of moro, ; of van dyck, ; of rembrandt, ; of velasquez, , ; of hals, ; of reynolds, ; of gainsborough, ; of romney, ; effects of fashion in, ; quality of grace in, ; limitations in, , ; decoration in, should be subordinated, ; multiple portraits, poseidon (_see_ neptune) praxiteles, his development of new ideals, ; his cnidian aphrodite, precocity in art, cause of, progressive actions, in figure subjects, ; in sea views, ; in coast scenes, ; in landscape, ; lessing on, ; de quincey on, psychological influence in art conceptions, alleged, q quintilian: on the sacrifice of iphigenia, by timanthes, r rainbow, its use in landscape, _et seq._ raphael, and the sublime, ; his superiority the cause of the decline of the renaissance, ; his achievement in the ideal madonna, _et seq._, ; the composition of his ideal, ; his range in expression, ; lanzi on, ; his representation of movement, ; his portraiture, ; his drapery arrangements, ; his representation of suspension in the air, ; his study of ancient art, ; his fresco work, ; michelangelo on, ; his trees, recognition, law of, explanation of, ; examples of, _et seq._; music and architecture excluded from the, ; division of the arts in applying, relief (_see_ "illusion of relief") rembrandt, his imagination compared with his execution, ; cause of variation in his work, ; his simplicity, ; his broad work, ; his use of color, ; his position in art, ; his representation of character, ; suggested as impressionist, , ; compared with the idealists, ; his palette-knife pictures, ; classification of his portraits, renaissance (_see_ italy, art of) repose, in portraiture, ; in the representation of venus, reynolds, joshua, his high position in portraiture, ; on color, ; on the representation of grief, ; on the cause of excellence in painting, ; on genius in art, ; nobility in his portraits, ; as a painter of women, ; on the work of raphael, ; on michelangelo, ; on the early italian painters, ; on the venetian painters, ; his portraits of actors in character, ; his use of the smile, rodin, a., on the suggestion of movement in sculpture, , ; on ugliness in art, ; his la vieille heaulmière, ; on greek ideals, romans, the ancient, had no separate sacred art, "romantic art," its various meanings, ; hegel's period of, romney, g., the quality of grace in his portraits, ruskin, j., on the trees of raphael, ; on the ideal of christ, ; on the position of landscape in art, ; on the italian painters of the fourteenth century, ruysdael, jacob, his painting of breaking water, , ; his near-ground work, s sacred art, offers highest scope for the artist, ; in greece, ; in italy, sadness, as a quality of beauty, saints, representation of, sappho, her ode to anactoria, and the cause of its beauty, ; translation of the ode, ; her hymn to aphrodite, satan, representation of, satire, works conveying, unsuited to the painter, schopenhauer, on music as a non-imitative art, sculpture, its imitative scope, ; ideals in, ; compared with painting, ; importance of simplicity in, ; standard of judgment in, ; illusion of motion in, ; rodin on the illusion, ; in ancient greece, ; in greek and roman portraiture, ; thirteenth century french, sea views, illusion of opening distance in, ; progressive actions in, secondary art, its nature, ; in historical work, ; in actions drawn from the novelist, ; from the written drama, ; from the acted drama, ; humorous pictures, ; in allegorical and symbolical painting, _et seq._ shakespeare, his imagination, ; example of his art, ; represents characters above experience, short story, the, its essentials, ; compared with the novel, (_see also_ fiction) signs, of the fine arts, ; separation of the arts according to character of, ; the two classes of, in art, ; must be completely painted, ; lewes on, ; lessing on, ; suggestive, belong to the poet and not to the painter, simonides, on the relation of poetry to painting, simplicity, necessary in the higher forms of the associated arts, skeleton, as a symbol in art, _et seq._ smile, the, transitory, should be avoided in art, ; in raphael's work, ; in lionardo's, , ; of the milanese artists generally, ; in portraiture, ; in french portraits, ; in british, smoke, use of, in illusions of air suspension, sophocles, example of descriptive poetry from, spencer, herbert, on evolution in art, sporting pictures, their place in art, sprezzatura, origin of, in the seventeenth century, _et seq._; correspondence with impressionism, stage scenes, pictures of, still-life, its place in art, , ; beauty in, ; its varieties, ; in decoration, ; custom of the japanese in, stories, pictures illustrating, their place in art, , ; painter of, subordinate to the writer, sublime, the, longinus on, ; painters who have achieved, supreme being, final ideal of human form can only apply to, "symbolic" period of painting, hegel's, symbolical painting, when secondary art, symonds, j. a., on evolution in art, ; on the venetian artists, t taine, h., on music as a non-imitative art, tanagra figures, quality of grace in, temperament, influence of, on the work of artists, titian, as a portrait painter, ; the dignified pose in his figures, ; the pose a test of his portraiture, ; his impressionist landscape, ; his coloring, ; some doubtful attributions to, titles of pictures, may assist in providing illusion of motion, ; may add interest to a work, tolstoy, leo, on the meaning of "art," ; on popular appreciation of art, tragedy, only section of drama which the painter may properly use, translations of poetry, varying values of, trees in art, the slender trees of raphael, ; of other artists, turner, j. m. w., secret of his success, twilight scenes, their place in art, types, importance of, in nature and art, u ugliness in art, may be used in poetry, but not in painting, ; rodin on, ; lessing on, ; waldstein on, uncivilized races, their understanding of beauty, v van dyck, a., ; his portraiture, velasquez, his place in art, ; his simplicity in design, ; his limited imagination, ; his execution, ; compared with the idealists, ; his perfect balance, ; claimed as an impressionist, , venus, her representation in art, ; anadyomene, _et seq._; reposing, ; at her toilet, ; of phidias, ; of praxiteles, _et seq._; of apelles, ; of raphael, ; of michelangelo, ; de' medici, ; of titian, ; of other artists, _et seq._ verestchagin, v., his war pictures, vinci, lionardo da (_see_ lionardo) virgin, the (_see_ madonna, the) virtue and vice, pictures representing, vulcan, representation in painting, w waldstein, c., on ugliness in sculpture, watts-dunton, t., his definition of poetry, whistler, j. mcn., his nocturnes, wings, use of, in suspended figures, women in portraiture, during the renaissance, ; by moro, ; by van dyck, ; by the eighteenth century british artists, ; reynolds preeminent in painting of, z zeus (_see_ jupiter)